Source: FoxNews
Showing posts with label rebellious youths. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rebellious youths. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Frank Bruni doesn't understand why people take parenting so seriously and treat their kids so nicely
However, he's very upfront about how little he understands about parenting, so that's nice, I guess. He leads off his article thusly:
MODERN parenting confuses me. The vocabulary, for starters.
Better write a whole article about it, then, so we can learn from your confusion.
Frank is indeed quite confused by why parents would not be straightforward and punitive with their children. "This is your fourth-to-last chance, Johnny. Why aren't you better behaved?"
Of course you are, and your kids know it. They’re not idiots.
Already, we can see the source of Frank's confusion, because the thing is that kids most certainly are idiots. They're impossible to reason with, think that $5 is a lot of money, and they like the dumbest TV shows. This isn't meant to be a judgment of kids, because it's not really their fault. They're just dumb, because they are children and not old enough to not be dumb yet.
But they’re also not adults, so why this whole school of thought that they should be treated as if they are, long before they can perform such basic tasks of civilization as driving, say, or decanting?
What is decanting? Is it something that should be considered a basic task of civilization?
/consults dictionary
Oh. I hate you more, now.
Why all the choices — “What would you like to wear?”— and all the negotiating and the painstakingly calibrated diplomacy? They’re toddlers, not Pakistan.
"Put on the fucking corduroys, Johnny. I don't give a shit if they make you look dowdy."
I understand that you want them to adore you. But having them fear you is surely the saner strategy, not just for you and for them but for the rest of us and the future of the republic.
This is kind of fucked up. It seems like you are advocating 1) not teaching children to think for themselves and 2) making sure they fear you because...otherwise it might be a little bit annoying to Frank Bruni (a.k.a. the future of the republic).
Seemingly everyone has parenting opinions, so I hereby present mine, which are those of someone who isn’t in fact a parent
So, someone who has only a passing awareness of the difficulties and joys of parenting, and might therefore not be best equipped to give out parenting opinions?
and maybe has a valuable distance and objectivity as a result.
Or that, yeah. This inspires me to share my opinions on how to fight alligators--I don't have any experience, but my distance and objectivity will be invaluable to any potential alligator fighters.
Instead of the battle hymn of a tiger mother, it’s the baffled hymn of a cubless bystander, his thoughts turned toward children as the calendar reaches yet another holiday when we shower them with attention and chocolate.
Aww, Frank! Do you wish people gave you chocolate too? And attention? But mostly chocolate?
While I have no kids of my own,
Please, continue to emphasize how little experience you have in the subject you are advising us on.
I have many I can (and sometimes do) lease for the weekend:
Most people call it "babysitting". Unless you're paying people so you can borrow their kids, which: Frank, are you paying people so you can borrow their kids?
11 actual nieces and nephews, whom I’ll be with this Easter Sunday, and perhaps twice that number of honorary ones. I have put in my time around tots and teens, and enjoy them.
"I spent a few hours with kids one time, so I've got a pretty good handle on this whole parenting thing."
I have seen my share of parenting, and am not certain what to make of it.
"I'm not certain what to make of it, so let me tell you what to make of it."
Just a few decades ago, parenting wasn’t even a proper verb or gerund. Now it’s a compound one. There’s of course helicopter parenting, which hovers, and “free range” parenting, which doesn’t, but only by principled choice.
This may be true (though I tend to think people used the word "parenting" a few decades ago). That said, this is just what the Internet has done to every subject--there's a community and a name for anything. For example [ed.: this reference is extremely forced because the writer wanted to find a way to shoehorn it in], we have communities that are specific to subsets of adult men who like My Little Pony and are also in the military. They are called FOBEquestria, apparently. Returning to the matter at hand, yes, there are lots of types of parenting communities now, because people get a little crazy about things they are passionate about, and for some reason people care a lot about their stupid kids.
As the Me Generation spawned generations of mini-me’s, our rigorous self-fascination expanded to include the whole brood and philosophies about its proper care and feeding.
It's really awful, the way people keep trying so hard to figure out how to care for and raise their children.
About the feeding: explain to me what’s gained by the voluminous discussions, within earshot of little Edwin or Edwina,
Please, don't name your child Edwina. Edwin's not so hot either, actually.
of what he or she probably won’t eat or definitely won’t eat or must somehow be made to eat, perhaps with a bribe. Any food that lands on the table after that much tortured preamble is bound to be eyed with suspicion and ultimately spurned, in part because it has ceased to be a vessel of nutrition or an answer to hunger at that point. It has become a power struggle: the parents’ wishes versus the child’s defiance.
This seems like an absurd strawman, because most parents debate this sort of thing while their kid can't hear them because that's pretty obviously the better way to approach this issue. Also, kids don't go on hunger strike because they're concerned about parental power struggles. To reiterate from earlier, kids are not the smartest.
And the battle seems to end one and only one way. With chicken fingers.
You seem like you'd be a great babysitter--oh, excuse me, I meant great child-leaser.
I’M equally confounded by the all-encompassing praise. Not every kid is gifted at every endeavor, and I wonder about the wisdom of telling him or her that a bit of doggerel is Shakespearean or that a wan patch of warbling is an “American Idol” audition waiting to happen.
I'm guessing parents do this because the alternative is to say, "Johnny, good try on this poem, but it's fucking terrible. Give up on writing forever." As for the "American Idol" reference (topical!), most children are vastly superior to your average American Idol contestant. Did you forget about this guy? He's a professional in the field of being terrible at singing.
I wonder why everybody has to be a winner. You can eliminate the valedictorians from high school but you can’t eliminate them from life, which metes out Super Bowl rings and stock options with an uneven hand, and is probably best tackled with some preparatory girding for that. Do today’s parents provide it?
If you don't repeatedly call your child a failure, how will they know how much of a failure they are later in life? Preparation is key.
Parents routinely surrender control when they shouldn’t, replacing rules with requests, and children are expected to chart their own routes to good behavior, using the faulty GPS’s of their flowering consciences, I suppose. Families are run as democracies. Parents forget: in the political realm, you don’t get a say until you’re 18. There’s a reason for that.
Where are these families that you keep talking about? Not that families like this don't exist, but you just seem to be taking examples you saw one time and assuming that all families are like that. As Frank Kotsonis put it, "the plural of anecdote is not data." [ed.: that quote was also pretty forced in]. Anyway, Bruni goes on to make a long-winded point about how kids pretty much are who they are and parenting generally doesn't change that, which seems to presume a whole hell of a lot of knowledge of childhood psychology that I don't think he has. There's some value to reminding parents that not every decision is life or death, but Bruni's insistence on alternating dispensing advice with reminding us how very unqualified he is to dispense said advice is just weird. It might be interesting to hear a parent discuss the benefits and risks of hands-off parenting--it's less interesting to hear some guy talk about how he saw kids and sometimes leases them and therefore has a firm grasp on the ins and outs of parenting.
MODERN parenting confuses me. The vocabulary, for starters.
Better write a whole article about it, then, so we can learn from your confusion.
Take the word “last.” Usually it means final. Last exit: there are none beyond it. Last rites: you’re toast.
But the “last chance” for a 4-year-old to quit his screeching, lest he
get a timeout? There are usually another seven or eight chances still to
go, in a string of flaccid ultimatums: “Now this is your last chance.” “This is really your last chance.” “I’m giving you just one more chance. I’m not kidding.”
Frank is indeed quite confused by why parents would not be straightforward and punitive with their children. "This is your fourth-to-last chance, Johnny. Why aren't you better behaved?"
Of course you are, and your kids know it. They’re not idiots.
Already, we can see the source of Frank's confusion, because the thing is that kids most certainly are idiots. They're impossible to reason with, think that $5 is a lot of money, and they like the dumbest TV shows. This isn't meant to be a judgment of kids, because it's not really their fault. They're just dumb, because they are children and not old enough to not be dumb yet.
But they’re also not adults, so why this whole school of thought that they should be treated as if they are, long before they can perform such basic tasks of civilization as driving, say, or decanting?
What is decanting? Is it something that should be considered a basic task of civilization?
/consults dictionary
Oh. I hate you more, now.
Why all the choices — “What would you like to wear?”— and all the negotiating and the painstakingly calibrated diplomacy? They’re toddlers, not Pakistan.
"Put on the fucking corduroys, Johnny. I don't give a shit if they make you look dowdy."
I understand that you want them to adore you. But having them fear you is surely the saner strategy, not just for you and for them but for the rest of us and the future of the republic.
This is kind of fucked up. It seems like you are advocating 1) not teaching children to think for themselves and 2) making sure they fear you because...otherwise it might be a little bit annoying to Frank Bruni (a.k.a. the future of the republic).
Seemingly everyone has parenting opinions, so I hereby present mine, which are those of someone who isn’t in fact a parent
So, someone who has only a passing awareness of the difficulties and joys of parenting, and might therefore not be best equipped to give out parenting opinions?
and maybe has a valuable distance and objectivity as a result.
Or that, yeah. This inspires me to share my opinions on how to fight alligators--I don't have any experience, but my distance and objectivity will be invaluable to any potential alligator fighters.
Instead of the battle hymn of a tiger mother, it’s the baffled hymn of a cubless bystander, his thoughts turned toward children as the calendar reaches yet another holiday when we shower them with attention and chocolate.
Aww, Frank! Do you wish people gave you chocolate too? And attention? But mostly chocolate?
While I have no kids of my own,
Please, continue to emphasize how little experience you have in the subject you are advising us on.
I have many I can (and sometimes do) lease for the weekend:
Most people call it "babysitting". Unless you're paying people so you can borrow their kids, which: Frank, are you paying people so you can borrow their kids?
11 actual nieces and nephews, whom I’ll be with this Easter Sunday, and perhaps twice that number of honorary ones. I have put in my time around tots and teens, and enjoy them.
"I spent a few hours with kids one time, so I've got a pretty good handle on this whole parenting thing."
I have seen my share of parenting, and am not certain what to make of it.
"I'm not certain what to make of it, so let me tell you what to make of it."
Just a few decades ago, parenting wasn’t even a proper verb or gerund. Now it’s a compound one. There’s of course helicopter parenting, which hovers, and “free range” parenting, which doesn’t, but only by principled choice.
This may be true (though I tend to think people used the word "parenting" a few decades ago). That said, this is just what the Internet has done to every subject--there's a community and a name for anything. For example [ed.: this reference is extremely forced because the writer wanted to find a way to shoehorn it in], we have communities that are specific to subsets of adult men who like My Little Pony and are also in the military. They are called FOBEquestria, apparently. Returning to the matter at hand, yes, there are lots of types of parenting communities now, because people get a little crazy about things they are passionate about, and for some reason people care a lot about their stupid kids.
As the Me Generation spawned generations of mini-me’s, our rigorous self-fascination expanded to include the whole brood and philosophies about its proper care and feeding.
It's really awful, the way people keep trying so hard to figure out how to care for and raise their children.
About the feeding: explain to me what’s gained by the voluminous discussions, within earshot of little Edwin or Edwina,
Please, don't name your child Edwina. Edwin's not so hot either, actually.
of what he or she probably won’t eat or definitely won’t eat or must somehow be made to eat, perhaps with a bribe. Any food that lands on the table after that much tortured preamble is bound to be eyed with suspicion and ultimately spurned, in part because it has ceased to be a vessel of nutrition or an answer to hunger at that point. It has become a power struggle: the parents’ wishes versus the child’s defiance.
This seems like an absurd strawman, because most parents debate this sort of thing while their kid can't hear them because that's pretty obviously the better way to approach this issue. Also, kids don't go on hunger strike because they're concerned about parental power struggles. To reiterate from earlier, kids are not the smartest.
And the battle seems to end one and only one way. With chicken fingers.
You seem like you'd be a great babysitter--oh, excuse me, I meant great child-leaser.
I’M equally confounded by the all-encompassing praise. Not every kid is gifted at every endeavor, and I wonder about the wisdom of telling him or her that a bit of doggerel is Shakespearean or that a wan patch of warbling is an “American Idol” audition waiting to happen.
I'm guessing parents do this because the alternative is to say, "Johnny, good try on this poem, but it's fucking terrible. Give up on writing forever." As for the "American Idol" reference (topical!), most children are vastly superior to your average American Idol contestant. Did you forget about this guy? He's a professional in the field of being terrible at singing.
I wonder why everybody has to be a winner. You can eliminate the valedictorians from high school but you can’t eliminate them from life, which metes out Super Bowl rings and stock options with an uneven hand, and is probably best tackled with some preparatory girding for that. Do today’s parents provide it?
If you don't repeatedly call your child a failure, how will they know how much of a failure they are later in life? Preparation is key.
Parents routinely surrender control when they shouldn’t, replacing rules with requests, and children are expected to chart their own routes to good behavior, using the faulty GPS’s of their flowering consciences, I suppose. Families are run as democracies. Parents forget: in the political realm, you don’t get a say until you’re 18. There’s a reason for that.
Where are these families that you keep talking about? Not that families like this don't exist, but you just seem to be taking examples you saw one time and assuming that all families are like that. As Frank Kotsonis put it, "the plural of anecdote is not data." [ed.: that quote was also pretty forced in]. Anyway, Bruni goes on to make a long-winded point about how kids pretty much are who they are and parenting generally doesn't change that, which seems to presume a whole hell of a lot of knowledge of childhood psychology that I don't think he has. There's some value to reminding parents that not every decision is life or death, but Bruni's insistence on alternating dispensing advice with reminding us how very unqualified he is to dispense said advice is just weird. It might be interesting to hear a parent discuss the benefits and risks of hands-off parenting--it's less interesting to hear some guy talk about how he saw kids and sometimes leases them and therefore has a firm grasp on the ins and outs of parenting.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Floridians know how to get arrested in style
Nwfdailynews.com reports that a Florida man has been arrested for resisting an officer without violence. This being Florida, there is of course much more to the story than that. And by much more, I mean cocaine. Take a look; I've helpfully illustrated the story here. The headline is a bit of a spoiler, but what can you do.
CRESTVIEW – A 21-year-old man who told officers he loved cocaine and needed more cocaine was arrested after he was caught running naked through an apartment complex.
On Feb. 24 the Crestview Police Department received numerous reports from Bel-Aire Apartments about a man running naked and yelling through the complex. At one point he tried to get into a car of a woman and her young child.
When lawmen arrived the man, now wearing pajama pants, leaped onto the hood of the patrol car and wouldn’t get down until ordered. He lay down on the grass nearby, where he made several comments about loving cocaine and needing more cocaine.
Then, he got up and tried to run away. When the officer ordered him to stop, he ran back toward the officer and dove head-first in a slide to the officer. The officer tried to handcuff him but he got away. The officer gave chase.
The man was Tased but when the charge ended, he tried to run away and
received a second jolt from the Taser. At that point the man took off
his pajama pants and was naked again.
“Statements from the defendant were not possible as he would only state he loved cocaine and needed more cocaine,” the officer wrote in the arrest report.
The man was charged with resisting an officer without violence. His court date is March 26.
Yes, follow your dreams, Florida man. Except maybe don't follow the ones where you are naked, high on cocaine, yelling, and running through an apartment complex telling police about how much you love cocaine. Those ones will lead you astray.
CRESTVIEW – A 21-year-old man who told officers he loved cocaine and needed more cocaine was arrested after he was caught running naked through an apartment complex.
On Feb. 24 the Crestview Police Department received numerous reports from Bel-Aire Apartments about a man running naked and yelling through the complex. At one point he tried to get into a car of a woman and her young child.
When lawmen arrived the man, now wearing pajama pants, leaped onto the hood of the patrol car and wouldn’t get down until ordered. He lay down on the grass nearby, where he made several comments about loving cocaine and needing more cocaine.
Then, he got up and tried to run away. When the officer ordered him to stop, he ran back toward the officer and dove head-first in a slide to the officer. The officer tried to handcuff him but he got away. The officer gave chase.
“Statements from the defendant were not possible as he would only state he loved cocaine and needed more cocaine,” the officer wrote in the arrest report.
The man was charged with resisting an officer without violence. His court date is March 26.
Yes, follow your dreams, Florida man. Except maybe don't follow the ones where you are naked, high on cocaine, yelling, and running through an apartment complex telling police about how much you love cocaine. Those ones will lead you astray.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
It's not too soon, the time is now for us as a nation to have a conversation about breakfast pastries
Schools have every reason to be on high alert these days for any sort of gun-related problems, so it's only to be expected that they might occasionally go just a little too far. However, we may be going a little over the top in some cases:
A 7-year-old boy Baltimore boy was suspended from school after his teacher complained that the boy chewed a breakfast pastry into the shape of a gun, the boy's father says.
How awful! I imagine he'd have been just jailed immediately if he'd done this:
Were they hesitant to release the rest of the details because they thought they were too horrible for parents to hear? "Then he lifted the pastry to his mouth, and screams filled the dining room."
The boy, Josh Welch, a second-grader, told the station he was actually trying to shape a mountain, "but it didn't look like a mountain really, and it turned out to be a gun, kinda."
So you're saying he got suspended for being bad at making his food into shapes. I'm glad they didn't do this when I was seven, because A) I made everything from Legos to food to like, sticks and shit that I found outside into a gun and B) I was shitty at art so even when I wasn't trying to make something a gun, it might turn out that way. Seven was a tough year. Luckily for students, anyone who was traumatized by the pastry incident has access to all necessary school resources. The following is excerpted from a letter the school sent home regarding the incident:
If your children express that they are troubled by today's incident, please talk with them and help them share their feelings. Our school counselor is available to meet with any students who have the need to do so next week. In general, please remind them of the importance of making good choices.
Lovely.
A 7-year-old boy Baltimore boy was suspended from school after his teacher complained that the boy chewed a breakfast pastry into the shape of a gun, the boy's father says.
How awful! I imagine he'd have been just jailed immediately if he'd done this:
Children at Park
Elementary School went home with a letter today explaining there was a
disruption in school. Seven year old Josh Welch, and his father, say the
disruption lead to a two day suspension for the second grader in
Brooklyn Park.
Academics are hard for Josh, who suffers from ADHD, but he excels in art
class. It is Josh's own creativity that may have gotten him into
trouble.
At Park Elementary school, Josh was enjoying his breakfast pastry when
he decided to try and shape it into a mountain.
Josh said, "It was already a rectangle and I just kept on biting it and
biting it and tore off the top and it kinda looked like a gun but it
wasn't."
Read More at: http://www.foxbaltimore.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/7yearold-suspended-teacher-says-he-shaped-pastry-into-gun-18192.shtml#.UTYMwjfnCou
In a note that was sent to parents Friday, Park Elementary School
officials told parents only that "a student used food to make an
inappropriate gesture," WBFF-TV of Baltimore reported.Read More at: http://www.foxbaltimore.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/7yearold-suspended-teacher-says-he-shaped-pastry-into-gun-18192.shtml#.UTYMwjfnCou
Children at Park
Elementary School went home with a letter today explaining there was a
disruption in school. Seven year old Josh Welch, and his father, say the
disruption lead to a two day suspension for the second grader in
Brooklyn Park.
Academics are hard for Josh, who suffers from ADHD, but he excels in art
class. It is Josh's own creativity that may have gotten him into
trouble.
At Park Elementary school, Josh was enjoying his breakfast pastry when
he decided to try and shape it into a mountain.
Josh said, "It was already a rectangle and I just kept on biting it and
biting it and tore off the top and it kinda looked like a gun but it
wasn't."
Read More at: http://www.foxbaltimore.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/7yearold-suspended-teacher-says-he-shaped-pastry-into-gun-18192.shtml#.UTYMwjfnCou
Read More at: http://www.foxbaltimore.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/7yearold-suspended-teacher-says-he-shaped-pastry-into-gun-18192.shtml#.UTYMwjfnCou
Children at Park
Elementary School went home with a letter today explaining there was a
disruption in school. Seven year old Josh Welch, and his father, say the
disruption lead to a two day suspension for the second grader in
Brooklyn Park.
Academics are hard for Josh, who suffers from ADHD, but he excels in art
class. It is Josh's own creativity that may have gotten him into
trouble.
At Park Elementary school, Josh was enjoying his breakfast pastry when
he decided to try and shape it into a mountain.
Josh said, "It was already a rectangle and I just kept on biting it and
biting it and tore off the top and it kinda looked like a gun but it
wasn't."
Read More at: http://www.foxbaltimore.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/7yearold-suspended-teacher-says-he-shaped-pastry-into-gun-18192.shtml#.UTYMwjfnCou
Read More at: http://www.foxbaltimore.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/7yearold-suspended-teacher-says-he-shaped-pastry-into-gun-18192.shtml#.UTYMwjfnCou
Were they hesitant to release the rest of the details because they thought they were too horrible for parents to hear? "Then he lifted the pastry to his mouth, and screams filled the dining room."
The boy, Josh Welch, a second-grader, told the station he was actually trying to shape a mountain, "but it didn't look like a mountain really, and it turned out to be a gun, kinda."
So you're saying he got suspended for being bad at making his food into shapes. I'm glad they didn't do this when I was seven, because A) I made everything from Legos to food to like, sticks and shit that I found outside into a gun and B) I was shitty at art so even when I wasn't trying to make something a gun, it might turn out that way. Seven was a tough year. Luckily for students, anyone who was traumatized by the pastry incident has access to all necessary school resources. The following is excerpted from a letter the school sent home regarding the incident:
If your children express that they are troubled by today's incident, please talk with them and help them share their feelings. Our school counselor is available to meet with any students who have the need to do so next week. In general, please remind them of the importance of making good choices.
Lovely.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Monday, February 11, 2013
Jeremy knows his rights, is a total asshole about it
I always hate that awkward moment when you want a cop to be a dick so you can film him and put it on Youtube but he turns out to be a pretty decent guy.
Friday, February 1, 2013
So there's just the one problem, then?
 |
| Best quote:
Donovan agrees with McVie's theory. "Probably what it [the high
rates of penile implants in prison] shows more than anything is how
incredibly boring
prison is. You've got to do something that fills in the day."
Source: The Atlantic
|
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Friday, January 18, 2013
One! Ten! 1 10 11 100!
On the minus side, you'd think robots that can play rock music are probably not that different than the robots that will inevitably seize military control of the world. On the plus side, if they keep going in this direction, they'll all develop drug problems and become burnouts before they make anything of themselves.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Romance is dead. Thanks, NOKIA
Alex Williams writes today in the New York Times that young people are continuing to have trouble with dating because they're all texting and gchatting and shit, and now the young people are growing up into confused twenty-somethings who don't get why "uwana d8 lol" isn't an appropriate method of courtship. Mr. Williams, take it away:
MAYBE it was because they had met on OkCupid. But when the dark-eyed musician with artfully disheveled hair asked Shani Silver, a social media and blog manager in Philadelphia, out on a “date” Friday night, she was expecting at least a drink, one on one.
Fair enough.
“At 10 p.m., I hadn’t heard from him,” said Ms. Silver, 30, who wore her favorite skinny black jeans. Finally, at 10:30, he sent a text message. “Hey, I’m at Pub & Kitchen, want to meet up for a drink or whatever?” he wrote, before adding, “I’m here with a bunch of friends from college.”
It sounds like the problem is less anything to do with OkCupid or people in general, and more that this one dude has no clue what the word "date" means.
Here, let me try! He texted, “Hey, I’m at Pub & Kitchen, want to meet up for a drink or whatever? I’m here with a bunch of friends from college.” Let's apply the secret decoder ring:
Looks like what he was trying to communicate was “Hey, I’m at Pub & Kitchen, want to meet up for a drink or whatever? I’m here with a bunch of friends from college.” Don't feel bad--I do have this awesome decoder ring, so I'm basically a cold war spy. Anyway, the problem here appears to still just be that this one dude doesn't know what a date is, or has some really weird ideas about group dating with his college friends, or he's a dark-eyed musician with disheveled hair and with that whole Twilight craze people are into that right now so he doesn't really have to put much effort into dating, you know?
“It’s one step below a date, and one step above a high-five,” she added. Dinner at a romantic new bistro? Forget it. Women in their 20s these days are lucky to get a last-minute text to tag along. Raised in the age of so-called “hookup culture,” millennials — who are reaching an age where they are starting to think about settling down — are subverting the rules of courtship.
You guys, they're breaking the rules and it's changing everything. As an aside, if you want to get dinner at a romantic new bistro, one good way to make that happen is ask someone "Do you want to get dinner at <name of romantic new bistro>?" A less good way is to hope that they guess that you want to do that and then talk about how their code words are inscrutable.
Hey, I'm 25 and I'm not confused at all! I just go up to people and ask "Can I land you as my boyfriend or girlfriend?" They're usually a bit unclear as to why I used the word "land" and said both boyfriend and girlfriend, and the response is pretty much the same every time.
“The new date is ‘hanging out,’ ” said Denise Hewett, 24, an associate television producer in Manhattan, who is currently developing a show about this frustrating new romantic landscape. As one male friend recently told her: “I don’t like to take girls out. I like to have them join in on what I’m doing — going to an event, a concert.”
You chose the strangest individuals to interview for this. This guy legitimately can't be bothered to alter his own plans at all for a date? This isn't a generational shift, it's just a lazy dude.
For evidence, look no further than “Girls,” HBO’s cultural weather vane for urban 20-somethings, where none of the main characters paired off in a manner that might count as courtship even a decade ago. In Sunday’s opener for Season 2, Hannah (Lena Dunham) and Adam (Adam Driver), who last season forged a relationship by texting each other nude photos, are shown lying in bed, debating whether being each other’s “main hang” constitutes actual dating.
"For evidence, let's look at fictional television shows and see what characters on TV are doing." If you did this a decade ago, you'd assume it was totally normal for people to gather in groups of six and frolic in public fountains.
The actors in the show seem to fare no better in real life, judging by a monologue by Zosia Mamet (who plays Shoshanna, the show’s token virgin, since deflowered) at a benefit last fall at Joe’s Pub in the East Village. Bemoaning an anything-goes dating culture, Ms. Mamet, 24, recalled an encounter with a boyfriend whose idea of a date was lounging in a hotel room while he “Lewis and Clarked” her body, then tried to stick her father, the playwright David Mamet, with the bill, according to a Huffington Post report.
The very strangest part of this whole paragraph is that this person has Huffington Post reporting on her dating experience in a hotel room.
"Hi. How are you?" (IMPORTANT: let them answer that before you proceed) "Not bad! Want to go out sometime?" This isn't that complicated.
What words would you use?’ ” Ms. Freitas said.
This is just sad. "What words would you use?" The same damn ones you use the rest of the time. There aren't special words for asking someone out, you just ask them. Or, you could try Amy Poehler's approach, where you just go up to someone and act like you're dating them until they forget that you aren't.
That may explain why “dates” among 20-somethings resemble college hookups, only without the dorms. Lindsay, a 25-year-old online marketing manager in Manhattan, recalled a recent non-date that had all the elegance of a keg stand (her last name is not used here to avoid professional embarrassment).
Hey, online rejection can hurt too! One time someone just tweeted this picture to me as a response, and let me tell you, I was devastated.
“I’ve seen men put more effort into finding a movie to watch on Netflix Instant than composing a coherent message to ask a woman out,” said Anna Goldfarb, 34, an author and blogger in Moorestown, N.J.
Personally, I prefer an understated "WAZZZZZAAAAAA!!!"
What makes you think I wouldn't be interested in this? WAZZZZZAAAAA!!!!!
If you're going to use words like "mancession", can you at least tell me what that is? I had to spend five whole seconds Googling.
So, earlier you were bemoaning the move away from "traditional" dating, and now you're saying that income equality is muddling the old dating structure which was dominated by men. I'm not an expert at the transitive property, but I can sorta figure where this is headed.
Yep! Men hate dating now because they can't afford it, and asking a woman to split the bill would just be the worst, right? After all, it's not about getting to know someone--it's about making sure she knows how much cash you have, and if the answer is not much, what's the point?
If you're worried about offending someone, just do the same thing you were going to do, but do it ironically! This is why hipsters are so universally loved.
MAYBE it was because they had met on OkCupid. But when the dark-eyed musician with artfully disheveled hair asked Shani Silver, a social media and blog manager in Philadelphia, out on a “date” Friday night, she was expecting at least a drink, one on one.
Fair enough.
“At 10 p.m., I hadn’t heard from him,” said Ms. Silver, 30, who wore her favorite skinny black jeans. Finally, at 10:30, he sent a text message. “Hey, I’m at Pub & Kitchen, want to meet up for a drink or whatever?” he wrote, before adding, “I’m here with a bunch of friends from college.”
It sounds like the problem is less anything to do with OkCupid or people in general, and more that this one dude has no clue what the word "date" means.
Turned off, she fired back a text message, politely declining. But in
retrospect, she might have adjusted her expectations. “The word ‘date’
should almost be stricken from the dictionary,” Ms. Silver said. “Dating
culture has evolved to a cycle of text messages, each one requiring
the code-breaking skills of a cold war spy to interpret.”
Here, let me try! He texted, “Hey, I’m at Pub & Kitchen, want to meet up for a drink or whatever? I’m here with a bunch of friends from college.” Let's apply the secret decoder ring:
Looks like what he was trying to communicate was “Hey, I’m at Pub & Kitchen, want to meet up for a drink or whatever? I’m here with a bunch of friends from college.” Don't feel bad--I do have this awesome decoder ring, so I'm basically a cold war spy. Anyway, the problem here appears to still just be that this one dude doesn't know what a date is, or has some really weird ideas about group dating with his college friends, or he's a dark-eyed musician with disheveled hair and with that whole Twilight craze people are into that right now so he doesn't really have to put much effort into dating, you know?
“It’s one step below a date, and one step above a high-five,” she added. Dinner at a romantic new bistro? Forget it. Women in their 20s these days are lucky to get a last-minute text to tag along. Raised in the age of so-called “hookup culture,” millennials — who are reaching an age where they are starting to think about settling down — are subverting the rules of courtship.
You guys, they're breaking the rules and it's changing everything. As an aside, if you want to get dinner at a romantic new bistro, one good way to make that happen is ask someone "Do you want to get dinner at <name of romantic new bistro>?" A less good way is to hope that they guess that you want to do that and then talk about how their code words are inscrutable.
Instead of dinner-and-a-movie, which seems as obsolete as a rotary
phone, they rendezvous over phone texts, Facebook posts, instant
messages and other “non-dates” that are leaving a generation confused
about how to land a boyfriend or girlfriend.
Hey, I'm 25 and I'm not confused at all! I just go up to people and ask "Can I land you as my boyfriend or girlfriend?" They're usually a bit unclear as to why I used the word "land" and said both boyfriend and girlfriend, and the response is pretty much the same every time.
“The new date is ‘hanging out,’ ” said Denise Hewett, 24, an associate television producer in Manhattan, who is currently developing a show about this frustrating new romantic landscape. As one male friend recently told her: “I don’t like to take girls out. I like to have them join in on what I’m doing — going to an event, a concert.”
You chose the strangest individuals to interview for this. This guy legitimately can't be bothered to alter his own plans at all for a date? This isn't a generational shift, it's just a lazy dude.
For evidence, look no further than “Girls,” HBO’s cultural weather vane for urban 20-somethings, where none of the main characters paired off in a manner that might count as courtship even a decade ago. In Sunday’s opener for Season 2, Hannah (Lena Dunham) and Adam (Adam Driver), who last season forged a relationship by texting each other nude photos, are shown lying in bed, debating whether being each other’s “main hang” constitutes actual dating.
"For evidence, let's look at fictional television shows and see what characters on TV are doing." If you did this a decade ago, you'd assume it was totally normal for people to gather in groups of six and frolic in public fountains.
The actors in the show seem to fare no better in real life, judging by a monologue by Zosia Mamet (who plays Shoshanna, the show’s token virgin, since deflowered) at a benefit last fall at Joe’s Pub in the East Village. Bemoaning an anything-goes dating culture, Ms. Mamet, 24, recalled an encounter with a boyfriend whose idea of a date was lounging in a hotel room while he “Lewis and Clarked” her body, then tried to stick her father, the playwright David Mamet, with the bill, according to a Huffington Post report.
The very strangest part of this whole paragraph is that this person has Huffington Post reporting on her dating experience in a hotel room.
Hookups may be fine for college students, but what about after, when
they start to build an adult life? The problem is that “young people
today don’t know how to get out of hookup culture,” Ms. Freitas said. In
interviews with students, many graduating seniors did not know the
first thing about the basic mechanics of a traditional date. “They’re
wondering, ‘If you like someone, how would you walk up to them? What
would you say?
"Hi. How are you?" (IMPORTANT: let them answer that before you proceed) "Not bad! Want to go out sometime?" This isn't that complicated.
What words would you use?’ ” Ms. Freitas said.
This is just sad. "What words would you use?" The same damn ones you use the rest of the time. There aren't special words for asking someone out, you just ask them. Or, you could try Amy Poehler's approach, where you just go up to someone and act like you're dating them until they forget that you aren't.
That may explain why “dates” among 20-somethings resemble college hookups, only without the dorms. Lindsay, a 25-year-old online marketing manager in Manhattan, recalled a recent non-date that had all the elegance of a keg stand (her last name is not used here to avoid professional embarrassment).
After an evening when she exchanged flirtatious glances with a bouncer
at a Williamsburg nightclub, the bouncer invited her and her friends
back to his apartment for whiskey and boxed macaroni and cheese. When
she agreed, he gamely hoisted her over his shoulders, and, she recalled,
“carried me home, my girlfriends and his bros in tow, where we danced
around a tiny apartment to some MGMT and Ratatat remixes.”
- When the bouncer from a nightclub asks you and your friends over for whiskey and mac and cheese, that is not a date or a "date" or anything of the sort. Comparing this to your nostalgic view of dating in the past is pretty ridiculous, because as it happens people in the past also would go home with each other after being at nightclubs, so it's just a different thing that people still do and used to do, too.
- Whiskey and mac and cheese sounds awful at first, but for some reason the more I think about it the more I want it.
- Did he really carry her home?
Relationship experts point to technology as another factor in the upending of dating culture.
Traditional courtship — picking up the telephone and asking someone on a
date — required courage, strategic planning and a considerable
investment of ego (by telephone, rejection stings). Not so with texting,
e-mail, Twitter or other forms of “asynchronous communication,” as
techies call it. In the context of dating, it removes much of the need
for charm; it’s more like dropping a line in the water and hoping for a
nibble.
Hey, online rejection can hurt too! One time someone just tweeted this picture to me as a response, and let me tell you, I was devastated.
“I’ve seen men put more effort into finding a movie to watch on Netflix Instant than composing a coherent message to ask a woman out,” said Anna Goldfarb, 34, an author and blogger in Moorestown, N.J.
I mean, have you tried picking a movie on Netflix recently? I watched Clueless one goddamn time and now all it recommends are 90s pseudo-comedy chick flicks.
A typical,
annoying query is the last-minute: “Is anything fun going on tonight?”
More annoying still are the men who simply ping, “Hey” or “ ’sup.”
Personally, I prefer an understated "WAZZZZZAAAAAA!!!"
“What does he think I’m doing?” she said. “I’m going to my friend’s
house to drink cheap white wine and watch episodes of ‘Dance Moms’ on
demand.”
What makes you think I wouldn't be interested in this? WAZZZZZAAAAA!!!!!
Dodgy economic prospects facing millennials also help torpedo the old,
formal dating rituals. Faced with a lingering recession, a stagnant job
market, and mountains of student debt, many young people — particularly
victims of the “mancession” — simply cannot afford to invest a fancy
dinner or show in someone they may or may not click with.
If you're going to use words like "mancession", can you at least tell me what that is? I had to spend five whole seconds Googling.
 |
| What, you thought I'd just tell you? You can look it up the same way I did. |
Further complicating matters is the changing economic power dynamic
between the genders, as reflected by a number of studies in recent
years, said Hanna Rosin, author of the recent book “The End of Men.”
A much-publicized study by Reach Advisors, a Boston-based market
research group, found that the median income for young, single,
childless women is higher than it is for men in many of the country’s
biggest cities (though men still dominate the highest-income jobs,
according to James Chung, the company’s president). This may be one
reason it is not uncommon to walk into the hottest new West Village
bistro on a Saturday night and find five smartly dressed young women
dining together — the nearest man the waiter. Income equality, or
superiority, for women muddles the old, male-dominated dating structure.
So, earlier you were bemoaning the move away from "traditional" dating, and now you're saying that income equality is muddling the old dating structure which was dominated by men. I'm not an expert at the transitive property, but I can sorta figure where this is headed.
“Maybe there’s still a sense of a man taking care of a woman, but our
ideology is aligning with the reality of our finances,” Ms. Rosin said.
As a man, you might “convince yourself that dating is passé, a relic of a
paternalistic era, because you can’t afford to take a woman to a
restaurant.”
Yep! Men hate dating now because they can't afford it, and asking a woman to split the bill would just be the worst, right? After all, it's not about getting to know someone--it's about making sure she knows how much cash you have, and if the answer is not much, what's the point?
Many young men these days have no experience in formal dating and feel
the need to be faintly ironic about the process — “to ‘date’ in
quotation marks” — because they are “worried that they might offend
women by dating in an old-fashioned way,” Ms. Rosin said.
If you're worried about offending someone, just do the same thing you were going to do, but do it ironically! This is why hipsters are so universally loved.
Monday, January 14, 2013
A German student [VERB]ed a group of [PLURAL NOUN] and [VERB]ed a [NOUN] at them before [VERB]ing on a [ADJECTIVE] [NOUN], police have said.
 |
| You really have to love a news story where it's literally impossible to predict what might happen in the next sentence. Suddenly, a bulldozer! |
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Also if you guys could stop shooting each other and stealing shit that would be great
The Washington, D.C. police department has recently had a bit of an issue with residents repeatedly throwing rocks at buses (which: guys, I know you're bored, but rocks at buses? Why?). Luckily, they came up with a bold plan to stop the rock-throwers: they'll release flyers asking people to stop. If this works, the implications for law enforcement around the world will be numerous.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
University of California unveils new logo, everyone points and laughs
The University of California has had the same logo for 102 years now, so somebody decided it was time for a change. There's nothing in particular wrong with the old logo--it's just kinda old, and higher-ups felt like it wasn't well suited for online use.
So they went off and consulted some graphic designers, who came up with this:
Understandably, some people were confused why UC suddenly felt like they'd be best represented by a Vista loading icon on a kickboard. Words like "derision", "blunder", "mockery", and "backlash" were thrown around by critics (really, those are all words that now appear on the first page of Google results for "UC logo").
The new logo was also an easy target for Photoshop artisans, who quickly pointed out the unfortunate resemblance to a loading icon.
UC isn't the first organization to pick a technology-themed logo which didn't really send the message they were hoping for--in fact, it's more common than you might think, even among tech companies.
Other dedicated Photoshoppers made other mockups, which: just because two things are both related to the University of California does not mean they are funny when you put them together.
Anyway, following the furor over the new logo, UC refused to back down--the logo was implemented on their site and they seemed to think that the criticism would die down, which is reasonable for anyone who's ever seen the Internet get fired up about something for approximately three hours before something else happens and everyone forgets about it. However, the criticism here seems to be sustainable--public figures up to and including the Lt. Governor of California have stated their opposition. It's unclear what the university will do--presently, the logo appears to have been largely removed from the site. In fact, it appears nowhere on the main page at present, and if you go to Berkley's page, you'll see it just once: it appears as part of a news story about the outrage over the new logo. This has been your internet controversy of the day.
 |
| There appears to be a rudimentary Kindle there in the middle. How quaint. |
 |
| No, that's not a loading screen--that's actually the logo. |
 |
| The Internet hasn't been this riled up since, well, probably some other time this morning when a thing happened. |
 |
| I guess they just figured that anything related to computers would communicate how cool and futuristic they were. Nothing says "the future" like the thing you look at when you wait for your goddamn computer to work fucking properly. |
UC isn't the first organization to pick a technology-themed logo which didn't really send the message they were hoping for--in fact, it's more common than you might think, even among tech companies.
 |
| Is that man trapped in the hourglass? Who thought this would be good as a logo? Were they drunk? |
 |
| Ha Ha! The cop's pepper spraying a bad logo, get it? Me neither. |
 |
| Nothing says "proud of our new logo" like burying it in the bottom left corner of your site. |
Friday, December 7, 2012
Today in science, we explore unfeasible beer-related solutions for pneumonia
A Japanese brewery has said that a scientific study yielded some interesting results: namely, that beer can be used to prevent or alleviate illnesses caused by the RS virus, which include pneumonia, bronchitis, and other breathing difficulties. Sounds great!
Tokyo: Consuming large quantities of a key ingredient in beer can protect against winter sniffles and even some serious illnesses
Super cool, you guys. It might be tough to consume large quantities of beer while sick, but we can power through.
in small children, a Japanese brewery said citing a scientific study.
Oh. It works only on small children. I think I'd like to hear more about study, specifically: how was this study legal at all? It sounds like you just got small children drunk when they already had pneumonia, and the officers who spoke to me last time were very clear that I was not allowed to do that.
In research with scientists at Sapporo Medical University, the compound -- humulone -- was found to be effective in curbing the respiratory syncytial (RS) virus, said the company, which funded the study.
"The RS virus can cause serious pneumonia and breathing difficulties for infants and toddlers, but no vaccination is available at the moment to contain it," said Jun Fuchimoto, a researcher from the company.
The virus tends to spread in winter and can also cause cold-like symptoms in adults.
Fuchimoto said such small quantities of humulone were present in beer that someone would have to drink around 30 cans, each of 350 millilitres (12 oz), for it to have any virus-fighting effect.
Did little Billy catch pneumonia again? Just grab a 30-rack of PBR and get cracking.
"We are now studying the feasibility of applying humulone to food
or non-alcoholic products," he said. "The challenge really is that the
bitter taste is going to be difficult for children."
Just get them some of that Bud Light Lime--tastes like Sprite. Billy's gonna love it. Anyway, it's cool that they have ideas about ways to give this to kids in ways that don't involve getting them tanked. Until they figure that out, though, will doctors face an ethical dilemma with younger pneumonia patients? "Sir, your son is sick--he can get better today, but he and I are going to have to spend about four hours in my office with a case of Colt .45s and my Lynyrd Skynyrd CDs. There's no time to waste."
Tokyo: Consuming large quantities of a key ingredient in beer can protect against winter sniffles and even some serious illnesses
Super cool, you guys. It might be tough to consume large quantities of beer while sick, but we can power through.
in small children, a Japanese brewery said citing a scientific study.
Oh. It works only on small children. I think I'd like to hear more about study, specifically: how was this study legal at all? It sounds like you just got small children drunk when they already had pneumonia, and the officers who spoke to me last time were very clear that I was not allowed to do that.
 |
| Don't worry--they're using light beer. |
In research with scientists at Sapporo Medical University, the compound -- humulone -- was found to be effective in curbing the respiratory syncytial (RS) virus, said the company, which funded the study.
"The RS virus can cause serious pneumonia and breathing difficulties for infants and toddlers, but no vaccination is available at the moment to contain it," said Jun Fuchimoto, a researcher from the company.
The virus tends to spread in winter and can also cause cold-like symptoms in adults.
Fuchimoto said such small quantities of humulone were present in beer that someone would have to drink around 30 cans, each of 350 millilitres (12 oz), for it to have any virus-fighting effect.
Did little Billy catch pneumonia again? Just grab a 30-rack of PBR and get cracking.
 |
| Pictured: modern medicine at work. |
Just get them some of that Bud Light Lime--tastes like Sprite. Billy's gonna love it. Anyway, it's cool that they have ideas about ways to give this to kids in ways that don't involve getting them tanked. Until they figure that out, though, will doctors face an ethical dilemma with younger pneumonia patients? "Sir, your son is sick--he can get better today, but he and I are going to have to spend about four hours in my office with a case of Colt .45s and my Lynyrd Skynyrd CDs. There's no time to waste."
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
My high score is 1:21
How long can you watch this video for? It will likely make you hate all people and all music and most likely cause you to break the sound output device on your computer; you've been warned. I took off my headphones and tabbed away from it at 1:21, and was shocked two minutes later when I put my headphones back on and it was still going. The takeaway lesson here is that there is no parody video so terrible that someone can't watch it and think "Yep, that one's ready to go on the Internet".
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