Tag Archives: Slate

April 15, 2013 · 3:09 am

Sunday Scraps 100

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1. GAYS: In the 2010 census, one county in the US reported 0 gay people. None. Zilch. Nada. Explore Franklin County with CNN and find out if the census is true. Hint: Doubtful.

2. SCOTUS: A little late to the game on this one, but Courtney Milan’s concise play-by-play of the Prop 8 Supreme Court case is the first time I actually think I know what’s going on. Sample truncated piece of dialogue: COOPER: But these people were injured. They didn’t want gay people to marry, and now look! Gays. Lesbians. Able to marry at will. It’s very injurious. They’re injured just thinking about it.

3. FEMINISM: I dare you not to cry at this amazing obituary of feminist revolutionary Shulasmith Firestone. Written by the incomparable Susan Faludi, it’s just… a lot. Sniff.

4. POLITICS: To my surprise, I came out of Jonathan Van Meter’s NYT profile of Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin feeling pretty sympathetic for Weiner. Maybe sympathetic’s not the word…

5. FOOTBALL: From Grantland, what would happen if an NFL player died on the field? 8 years ago, Al Lucas died during an Arena football game. Is that where we’re headed?

6. LOOKS: Why does it matter that the President called Kamala Harris good-looking? Amanda Hess at Slate knows why, and I couldn’t agree with her more.

Related Post: Sunday 99: Megan Mullally and Ron Swanson, Tavi Gevinson, Rolling Rock history and more

Related Post: Sunday 98: Chinese marriage market, George Saunders, Lena in Playboy and more

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March 17, 2013 · 10:55 pm

Sunday Scraps 98

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1. CHINA: Excellent long-form piece for the NYT Magazine about the marriage market in China. A huge gender imbalance has created a strange and stressful dynamic at every economic strata of society.

2. LENA: In this Playboy interview, Lena Dunham explains, among other things, why she’s pleased she doesn’t look like a supermodel.

3. JOURNALISM: Super fascinating look at the work of Bob Woodward. In researching his own Belushi biography, journalist Tanner Colby unravels the shoddy work of one of the most famous journalists of all time.

4. WRITERS: The relationship between writer (George Saunders) and editor (Andy Ward) is pulled apart in insane detail in this Slate interview. Jesus, these people are smaaaart.

5. BULLY: In the XX Factor‘s ongoing series about bullying, a current rabbi confronts her past as a member of a menacing tween gang.

6. GENDER: Mother Jones measures the voting records of members of Congress on women’s issues. Unsurprisingly, there’s a correlation with having daughters and a pro-woman voting record. Sigh.

Related Post: Sunday 97: Anita Sarkeesian, DNA exploring, Cindy Gallop and Ta-Nehisi Coates

Related Post: Sunday 96: Philip Roth, duct tape art, Playboy mansion visits

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March 12, 2013 · 3:27 pm

That Girls Episode with Adam and Natalia

Oof. This week for Role/Reboot I wrote about Sunday’s Girls episode (Spoiler Alert) in which Adam and Natalia had sex twice. The first time was a little stilted and a little awkward, but ultimately sweet and tender and rooted in consent. It included conversations about what she liked and didn’t like, and an explicit acknowledgment of her pleasure.

The second time was not that. I describe the scene in detail in the essay (which was not fun), and I was pretty rattled by it. It unfortunately also clicked with a wide range of other content that deals with violence against women lately (VAWA, Battlestar Galactica, some George Saunders stories), and the whole thing snowballed in my brain into one big ugly, teary, mess of frustration at the ongoing injustice in the world. It was not a super productive place to be, and writing this helped me climb out of it.

I know the internet is awash with opinions on this episode (I like Amanda Hess’ at Slate), but I’d love to hear yours too.

Screenshot_3_12_13_9_50_AMRelated Post: My favorite two minutes of Louie.

Related Post: Is Parks and Rec the most feminist show on TV?

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March 3, 2013 · 11:39 pm

Sunday Scraps 96

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1. ART: This Colossal photo series of art by Takahiro Iwasaki is called called Topographical Maps Carved from Electrical Tape. I think that about covers it.

2. DATING: Jory John’s take on Nate Silver’s take on the statistical realities of your relationship (from McSweeney’s). 

3. FAMILY: If you don’t cry, you have a heart of stone. Twelve years ago, a young gay couple found a baby on a subway platform.

4. GENDER: The always excellent Amanda Marcotte for Slate writes about Philip Roth’s relationship with women. Wanting to fuck them is not the same thing as respecting them.

5. PLAYBOY: Fun little personal essay from Lynn Levin on meeting her father at the original Chicago Playboy mansion in the early 70s.

6. EDUCATION: Part 2 of This American Life’s series on Chicago’s Harper High School.

Related Post: Sunday 95: Seth McFarlane, missed connections, Leslie Knope’s wedding dress

Related Post: Sunday 94: Connie Britton, Queen Bey, Jane Austen

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February 4, 2013 · 5:16 am

Sunday Scraps 92

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1. CHICAGO: Love this story from Chicago Magazine about the millionaire founder of Land’s End’s financial and emotional commitment to personally reinvigorating the neighborhood he grew up in.

2. TINA: Blurgh! It’s over. At least the dearly departed 30 Rock  has left us with some serious vocabulary, as catalogued by Slate.

3. TINA #2: More on 30 Rock, because it’s just that important, Wesley Morris for Grantland specifically focuses on the show’s portrayal of race.

4. ART: Photographer Paul Schneggenberger captures couples sleeping over a 6 hour period and creates sort of wierd, mostly awesome portraits of sleep.

5. GUNS: Illinois has super harsh gun laws and yet Chicago has a serious gun problem. What gives? NYT has a map showing where Chicago guns come from.

6. MARRIAGE EQUALITY: My new favorite NBA player, Kenneth Faried, introduces his two moms (who seem quite reluctant to be on camera) to lend his voice to the fight for marriage equality.

Related Post: Sunday 91 – McDonald’s and books, sci-fi gender swapping, celeb high school photos

Related Post: Sunday 90 – Lindsay Lohan, Frida, Tina + Amy Forever

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November 11, 2012 · 10:43 pm

Sunday Scraps 82

1. SPORTS: New York Times Magazine has a killer front page story on Kevin Durant, the Oklahoma City Thunder, how NBA can revitalize a city, and a city can dig in and support a team.

2. LADIES: Mother Jones has compiled a quick list of some kick-ass stats about women this election cycle. You’ve probably seen them, but it’s pretty powerful to line them up like this.

3. MARRIAGE EQUALITY: NFL-er of my dreams, Minnesota kicker Chris Kluwe, writes for Slate about what an amazing day it was on Tuesday. Progressive athletes = the coolest.

4. MADDOW: Have you seen Rachel Maddow’s summary of Tuesday’s results. Girlface kills it so hard.

5. BIGOTRY: Dominic Holden for The Stranger undertakes an interesting experiment, calling all of the biggest donors who contributed to the fight against marriage equality in Washington.

6. NYC: Great story in NYMag about the process of creating what will soon be the iconic image of post-Sandy NYC.

Related Post: Sunday 81: Callie Khouri, Anita Sarkeesian, sex surrogacy and Bill Maher.

Related Post: Sunday 80: Colbert, Leslie Gore, Halloween and a Breaking Bad parody.

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November 4, 2012 · 10:33 pm

Sunday Scraps 81

1. NASHVILLE: My new favorite soapy music dramz, Nashville, is written by Callie Khouri (who wrote Thelma and Louise). She’s interviewed by NYMag about feminism, country music, and Connie Britton.

2. SEX: In light of new movie The Sessions, Slate has an interview with a real life sex surrogate. I’m on board with this concept, but I’m skeptical that it would be treated with the same clinical approach when women are the ones seeking help with intimacy…

3. TAILOR: A holocaust survivor, Martin Greenfield, now makes suits for the President. America, sometimes pretty cool after all.

4. ELECTION: From ChartPorn, a map of the U.S. where the states are reshaped proportional to campaign spending.

5. BILL: Bill Maher is really not my cup of tea, but sometimes he gets it right. In this clip, he nails Romney to the tree of his most batshit, conservative peers.

6. ANITA: My girl Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency is interviewed by Global News about that whole time when the internet went crazy and threatened to kill/rape/beat her for researching video games and violence.

Related Post: Sunday 80: Colbert in Playboy, Leslie Gore’s PSA, Iceland’s constitution, etc.

Related Post: Sunday 79: Harper Lee, Oprah, the Clintons, etc.

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October 22, 2012 · 4:36 am

Sunday Scraps 79

1. BINDERS: Amanda Hess for Slate makes a similar argument to mine earlier this week, and I’m into it. Binders full of women leads to cabinets full of women. Not an ideal process, not an ideal phrase, but not the wrong idea either.

2. OBAMA: Love this piece by Ta-Nahesi Coates for The Atlantic on the particular burden of carrying his “people.” Cool comparison with a 1936 boxing match in which Joe Lewis was knocked out by Max Shmeling.

3. HARPER: From Letters of Note, an excellent, excellent letter from the reclusive Harper Lee to Oprah Winfrey when O picked Mockingbird for the book club.

4. CLINTONS: How’d the Clinton/Obama relationship evolve from primary bashing to cooperation to Clinton’s epic convention speech? NYMag investigates.

5. SPAIN: What do you do if the country you call home can’t support your kids’ ambitions? Carlos Duarte writes for the Huffington Post about watching his daughter leave Spain in search of more than it can offer her.

6. MARKS: The joy of punctuation. Little-known, lesser-used punctuation marks that never quite hit the mainstream.

Related Post: Sunday 78: Inigo Montoya, Rebel Wilson, Roxane Gay, the truth of the VDay kiss.

Related Post: Sunday 77: Replacement refs, Urban Cusp, Jennifer Weiner

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September 30, 2012 · 6:44 pm

Sunday Scraps 76

1.VOTING: Slate has a time lapsed map marking the last 100 years of presidential elections. Oooh, watch the pretty colors change!

2. SMARTS: Atlantic interview with Randall Munroe, creator of xkcd, about his uber famous comic and his new geeky science project, What If?

3. BOOKS: How to pair cocktails with book club books, a guide from Flavorwire. We’re reading Boss in my book club at the moment, which I think requires a Chicago beer that has been purchased in exchange for a couple of votes in a tricky precinct.

4. MAGS: The Daily Beast profiles Vice, a Brooklyn based online and print magazine that uses raunch humor, on-the-ground cheap reporting, and multi-media to try to make millennials care about the world.

5. FOOD: As nutritional labels hit McDonald’s, do consumers care if their lunch is 1,800 calories? Apparently not.

6. WRITING: Words of writerly wisdom from Zadie Smith, whose new book NW I’m very excited to read.

Related Post: Sunday 75: black moms-in-chief, library tattoos, Republican history of America

Related Post: Sunday 74: Emily Dickinson, the end of the Kournikova era, Junot Diaz

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July 16, 2012 · 2:24 am

Sunday Scraps 66

1. WORK: Great Chicago Reader essay on how the phrase “work hard, play hard” sometimes means the opposite, and how 35, single, and broke might not be the worst thing.

2. BOOKS: Troy, Michigan employed a creative campaign in reverse psychology to save their local library.

3. LGBTQ: William McGowan at Slate profiles an extortion ring that targeted closeted gay men in the 1960s.

4. CUTE: NPR reporter “interviews” his 5-year-old about why she cut her 3-year-old sister’s hair.

5. LANGUAGE: National Geographic has a slideshow of speakers of dying languages. Fun fact, a language dies every fourteen days.

6. WORDS: Think you read a lot? Think again. Nancy Pelosi is interviewed on her reading habits by the Atlantic Wire.

Related Post: Saturday 65: Nicki Minaj on double standards, Margaret Atwood on Twitter, lady scientists

Related Post: Sunday 64: Word games, comic strips, Genevieve Bell

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