Lifehacker's continuing guide to Burbling Without Blundering... when you don't really have anything to say, but you want to talk without annoying everyone in the room.
If you’ve ever been asked to give a speech or a toast on the fly, you know how much pressure it can be. You can deliver a solid impromptu speech by remembering these five elements.
Honestly, this one is less of a problem than a superpower. Most people I know, even the ones I really dislike, are convinced I like them. And I work to maintain that. Sometimes I know that I make snap judgments about people without enough information. If I don't like them, and they know it, then I don't have the opportunity to get to know someone I dislike, and maybe learn that they aren't 100% asshole all the time. Of course, sometimes they are. And in that case, flying in under their radar gives me an edge.
when it’s impossible to tell if people know you like them
There are two different ways people
view Mastermind!Parker.
Some people, and these are usually
the marks who don’t know Thief!Parker by reputation, think she is too
fill-in-the-blank to be any threat (too young, too pretty, too crazy…) They
learn better when their business blows up in their faces. Occasionally
literally; after all, this is “Everything Blows Up, Silly” Parker making the
calls now.
And then there are the people who
are terrified. Even under Nate this was considered the nastiest crew this side of the
Atlantic. And that was under an honest man. (People in the business don’t
understand Nate very well so they don’t understand that he was the most
ruthless of the lot.) They are terrified to find out what the crew has become
under the control of the crazy thief.
It turns out both groups are wrong.
Parker isn’t too any of those things to make a good mastermind. She always does
things young, like being a getaway driver, but she is always good at it. And
maybe she is a little crazy, but that helps when masterminding. As for
ruthlessness, she isn’t nearly as ruthless as Nate. In fact, just the opposite.
She is far more likely to see the potential for something better, even in her
marks, far more likely to give second chances because she is living her second
chance. She goes out of her way to help the random people who are in trouble,
not just her client. And she isn’t willing to place her team in as much risk as
Nate was because winning isn’t everything to her, family is.
Listen. John Boehner is…what’s the word…evil, and he has presided over one of the most obstructionist, least productive congresses in American history. Not to mention he tried to block Affordable Healthcare from millions of people, taking more than 50 symbolic votes in the House to repeal it. And not to mention he let an unnecessary sequester - that cut deeply into social programs - happen. And not to mention he is *still* blocking important legislation, like refusing to allow a vote on restoring the Voting Rights Act. And not to mention he once handed out big tobacco’s checks to bribe politicians, literally while standing on the floor of congress. And not to mention he fought to uphold DOMA, the former governmental policy against marriage equality
So I think we’ve established that his “emotions” and his crocodile tears, always shed for himself not others, aren’t what’s important here
I know that he may have had a pacifying effect on the Tea Party Republicans, but John Boehner is the epitome of doing nothing and enabling bad people to do evil, and that’s probably the most charitable way I can describe him
So yeah, while I can appreciate that he kept a(n alleged) promise to his mom, that doesn’t mean too much in the larger picture of doing his job, and Boehner is still very bad news and I don’t cut him any slack for being slightly less evil than the Republicans who he let ransack America
Moving on…as for the Pope being “the holiest man alive”…let’s try to look at this from another perspective, ok? Who is the holiest PERSON alive? If you asked a Catholic, a Muslim, an Atheist, a Jewish person and a Buddhist that question, do you think we might get five different answers? It’s not like we can put the Pope in a foot race with the other religious leaders and find out who can run a holy 400 meters the fastest, and then declare the winner the “holiest man alive”
So the title of “holiest” is very subjective, right?
I’m not Catholic, but I actually like Pope Francis and I think he’s bringing some much needed attention to several important issues. Pope Francis has helped broker peace deals with Iran AND Cuba. Those aren’t small things and they should not be made light of. And the pope may yet shame Republicans into doing the right thing on climate change and immigration reform (I doubt it, but I got my fingers crossed). Pope Francis has even said that we should not judge a person based on their sexual orientation - that’s hardly a ground breaking assertion, but it IS important to say (and stand behind) it, and tbh I think he deserves at least some recognition for advocating those things as the head of the Catholic Church
That all said, it doesn’t mean that I completely turn a blind eye to his shortcomings or those of the church. For example, Pope Francis has yet to *seriously* attack the still ongoing problem with child rape in the Catholic Church, and his stances on reproductive rights and marriage equality have TONS of room for improvement. And honestly, I could go on, but I’m really not trying to tear him down here. Ultimately, I think this may fall into the category of not letting the perfect become the enemy of the good?
Soo…just to recap: John Boehner allowed a lot of harmful BS under his watch and therefore is 98.75% evil, Pope Francis the individual is pretty good, but he & the Catholic Church have still got some MAjor bugs to work out, and religion is very subjective
I hope that helped. Thanks for dropping by and have a good day
Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) was finally invited to testify at one of the House Republican hearings "investigating" it over the bogus videos released over the summer purporting to show the organization participating in illegal fetal tissue sales. PPFA President Cecile Richards spent a grueling five hours battling a hostile and misogynistic line of Republican questioning that had even anti-choice activists embarrassed, calling it "inexcusable," a "farce," and a "freak show."
There were relentless attacks on Richards herself, demands that she justify her salary and whether she traveled first class and what her compensation was based on. The questioning led Democratic Rep. Carol Maloney (D-NI) to exclaim, "In my entire time I've been in Congress, I've never seen a witness beaten up and questioned about their salary, [especially a woman] […] I find it totally inappropriate and discriminatory." Republicans were trying to make the point that PPFA didn't need any federal funding, that it could do just fine with fundraising, as usual completely ignoring the fact that the affiliate clinics provide vital healthcare service to millions of men and women, but particularly low-income women, who don't have access to other providers.
In the vein of all claims about Planned Parenthood made by Republicans, Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) tried to pass of "research" showing a decline in breast cancer screenings and a spike in abortions in recent years from anti-abortion group Americans United for Life as having come from PPFA's corporate reports. There was incessant badgering of Richards over her initial apology for the tone used by a PPFA official in one of the first videos, with Rep. Jimmy Duncan (R-TN) eventually making this obnoxious comparison: "It seems to me that the apology you offered was like what some criminals do. They're not really sorry for what they have done. They are sorry they got caught and it seems to me that your apology is more because you got caught on these videos."
Yes, Duncan essentially called Richards a criminal, despite the fact that the videos have been shown to be falsified and that numerous investigations by the states have shown that PPFA is doing nothing illegal. Anywhere. For her part, Richards maintained an admirable equanimity, though it was clear that was a challenge. She nailed the whole exercise, however.
"The latest smear campaign is based on efforts by our opponents to entrap our doctors and clinicians into breaking the law—and once again our opponents failed," Ms. Richards said.
House Republicans have promised there won't be any end any time soon to the smear campaign. They're launching a select committee to supposedly investigate the information in the videos. Just like Benghazi. Another committee spending oodles of taxpayer dollars investigating nothing, but designed to attack the frontrunner in the presidential race, who just happens to be a woman, and an organization devoted to providing healthcare to women.
So much for the GOP having learned the lessons of 2012. Their War on Women couldn't be waged with any more vigor.
I have to admit though, the cliff-hanger ending actually kind of worked thematically for the show. It was a liminal moment, they were moving from the point of being the 4400, to the point of being all of humanity.
Remember The 4400, the show about a group of 4,400 people who mysteriously reappeared at the same time after vanishing at various points since 1946? Remember how the show itself vanished, in 2007, after a cliff-hanger ended its fourth season?
Given the choice between a container of fruity yogurt and a tray of fried chicken, most women will gravitate toward the former and most men toward the latter, thanks in part to the way clever marketing strategies dictate our unconscious food preferences. What’s more, marketing food toward one gender or the other can influence how men and women perceive a food’s taste.
Such are the findings of a small study, published in the latest issue of the journal Science Psychology, on gender and food marketing. So influenced are men and women by the gender stereotyping of advertising companies that women are more likely to choose nutritious, diet-conscious foods when primed to do so, while men move toward less-healthy options (for instance, processed and fried foods) when given “masculine” cues.
“nutritious” as used here is an ugly lie. what it represents is calorie restriction. women who eat “nutritious” “clean” “healthy” foods are skating the edge of malnutrition and don’t have a surplus to build the muscle, fat, and bone needed for physical strength and stamina. men, on the other hand, are encouraged to eat fatty, high-calorie foods and gain that surplus.
it is also instructive to examine how women who reject these gendered rules on diet and physical strength are treated: accusations that they are trans and intersex. they are ejected from the class woman entirely. (which is one reason it is so important that trans women be excluded from that class. cis women who deviate from accepted gender roles are punished by being associated with us.)
i told y'all before that if you thought hard about the idea that the average man will always be stronger than the average woman it would lead to horrifying places. this is one of them.
•Its good, but its depressing and I just wanted some positivity that day
•Its something I wouldn’t want to reblog without discussing, but I have no time and/or mental energy to do that at the moment
•There are no sources
•I have seen the same post on my dash three times today and frankly, so has everyone else, adding to that is doing nothing
•Its a callout post still spreading around after the blogger who made the original offense has already apologized/done what they could to fix it
•its a harsh callout post against a mistake due to the misunderstandings of a 13-15 yr old, and I as an adult feel that this is a horrible way to do things
•It includes a phrase like: If you don’t reblog, you’re a terrible person
•IM PROUD OF THIS COMMUNITY FOR TRYING TO FIX THE CRAPPYNESS OF THE WORLD, BUT GUILTING PEOPLE INTO REBLOGGING YOUR POSTS WHEN SOME PEOPLE COME HERE FOR AN ESCAPE IS NOT HELPING
the “if you dont reblog this im judging you” is such a shitty guilt trip and it makes me not want to reblog it at all.
Lindiwe Mazibuko - South African Politician - Former Parliamentary Leader for the Democratic Alliance and the first black woman to lead the parliamentary opposition in the National Assembly.
“When Ophelia appears onstage in Act IV, scene V, singing little songs and handing out imaginary flowers, she temporarily upsets the entire power dynamic of the Elsinore court. When I picture that scene, I always imagine Gertrude, Claudius, Laertes, and Horatio sharing a stunned look, all of them thinking the same thing: “We fucked up. We fucked up bad.” It might be the only moment of group self-awareness in the whole play. Not even the grossest old Victorian dinosaur of a critic tries to pretend that Ophelia is making a big deal out of nothing. Her madness and death is plainly the direct result of the alternating tyranny and neglect of the men in her life. She’s proof that adolescent girls don’t just go out of their minds for the fun of it. They’re driven there by people in their lives who should have known better. I think Shakespeare probably understood that better than most people do today.”
•Its good, but its depressing and I just wanted some positivity that day
•Its something I wouldn’t want to reblog without discussing, but I have no time and/or mental energy to do that at the moment
•There are no sources
•I have seen the same post on my dash three times today and frankly, so has everyone else, adding to that is doing nothing
•Its a callout post still spreading around after the blogger who made the original offense has already apologized/done what they could to fix it
•its a harsh callout post against a mistake due to the misunderstandings of a 13-15 yr old, and I as an adult feel that this is a horrible way to do things
•It includes a phrase like: If you don’t reblog, you’re a terrible person
•IM PROUD OF THIS COMMUNITY FOR TRYING TO FIX THE CRAPPYNESS OF THE WORLD, BUT GUILTING PEOPLE INTO REBLOGGING YOUR POSTS WHEN SOME PEOPLE COME HERE FOR AN ESCAPE IS NOT HELPING
the “if you dont reblog this im judging you” is such a shitty guilt trip and it makes me not want to reblog it at all.
Seriously, can we stop calling this "pranking" and go back to calling it "abusing people who are just trying to get through a day in hell without dealing with your shit?"
So goddamned tired of crap like this.
Internet prankster Jack Vale and magician Rahat Hussein recently teamed up to utterly confuse fast food drive-thru employees by covertly switching places in the driver’s seat while the employees weren’t looking. A couple of people caught on to their clever prank, but most of the surprised workers were freaked out.
Remember the good old days, when crazy politicians only worshiped Ayn Rand?
Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon and political novice near the top of the GOP presidential polls, does not spend much time and energy promoting specific policy stances. He has soared to a statistical tie with Donald Trump by emphasizing his outsider status and calling to revive America, deploying general right-wing rhetoric that resonates with social conservatives. At the recent Republican debate, he said, "The thing that is probably most important is having a brain." But he has provided one important clue as to his fundamental political worldview, by repeatedly endorsing a far-right conspiracy theorist named W. Cleon Skousen, who was characterized in 2007 by the conservative National Review as an "all-around nutjob." Skousen came to prominence in the 1950s as a virulent anti-Communist crusader; he later claimed that a global cabal of bankers controlled the world from behind the scenes, and he once wrote a book that referred to the "blessings of slavery."
Carson swears by Skousen, who died in 2006. In a July 2014 interview, Carson contended that Marxist forces had been using liberals and the mainstream media to undermine the United States. His source: Skousen. "There is a book called The Naked Communist," he said. "It was written in 1958. Cleon Skousen lays out the whole agenda, including the importance of getting people into important positions in the mainstream media so they can help drive the agenda. Well, that's what's going on now." Four months later, while being interviewed by Megyn Kelly on Fox News, Carson denounced unnamed Marxists who were presently seeking to destroy American society: "There was a guy who was a former CIA agent by the name of Cleon Skousen who wrote a book in 1958 called The Naked Communist, and it laid out the whole agenda. You would think by reading it that it was written last year—showing what they're trying to do to American families, what they're trying to do to our Judeo-Christian faith, what they're doing to morality." (Skousen had been an FBI employee—not a CIA officer—and mainly engaged in administrative and clerical duties; later he was a professor at Brigham Young University and police chief of Salt Lake City.) And the most recent edition of this Skousen book boasts Carson's endorsement on the front cover: "The Naked Communist lays out the whole progressive plan. It is unbelievable how fast it has been achieved."
Libraries effects are cumulative. They encourage a culture of reading, and so increase the total number of books being read, and by extension, the total number of books being bought. Libraries allow people to try books they don't know if they want to own. This encourages people to read stuff by authors they are unfamiliar with. Also, most human beings have a pretty basic level of decency. If they get something for free, and aren't treated like shit for it, they tend to want to make up for it when more able to.
I see a lot of posts on tumblr that imply borrowing a book from a library is less supportive of the author than buying it outright and I would like to offer a few unsolicited thoughts as to why that’s not true:
Every book in a public library has to earn its spot on the shelf. If no one checks it out, then it will be weeded from the collection to make way for a book that will circulate. So, if you check out a book, you’ve just given it a much a better chance at being there for someone else to discover!
A recently returned book is more likely to be propped up as a display in the tiny nooks around the library. Every shelver loves an empty display space because it means they can quickly get rid of several books. A book on display is more likely to catch someone’s eye and on and on!
You might not be able to tell this just by looking at the shelves, but when a book first comes out from an author, the library often buys several copies and based on how many people have reserved the title and how heavily it circulates, they might buy even more copies! Also, when purchasing a new title from an established author, many librarians will look at the circ stats of the author’s other books and will use that as a guide for how many copies to buy of the new book. In case you didn’t know, libraries buy a lot of books - we make up a huge portion of the book sales market.
Many people use the library as a way to discover new authors. It’s a risk-free investment and helps them experiment with a lot of different titles that they wouldn’t be able to if they had to buy all of them. And if they really love an author, they might become a life-long fan who will buy their books for years to come, all because of kismet at the library.
If you check out the book at the library, your librarian can make a better case for inviting the author to come to the library for an event for which they can get paid! This is especially true for lesser-known authors.
In conclusion, borrowing a book from the library is a wonderful thing to do. It helps make sure other people have access to that book in the future, creating an ever-wider audience for the author.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t buy books, I’m just saying, borrowing books from the library has just as many positive effects and you don’t ever have to feel bad that you’re somehow not supporting an author by borrowing their book instead of buying it. :)
Truth. And of your library doesn’t have a book you want, you can request that they get it.
And for fucks sake, borrowing a book from the library is not synonymous with torrenting a book off the internet.
The library does, after all, buy the book. The author gets paid for that! If you request your library to buy a book they don’t have, you’re basically buying it with the library’s money, and then lending it to other people in your community, just as you might loan a book you bought to your friends if you liked it and want them to get hooked along with you.
Also library bindings usually cost more than your standard mass market, both because they stand up to a lot of wear and to compensate the author for the nature of a library (one purchase, many readers).
Libraries are awesome for all these lovely reasons.
What I didn’t know at the time was that this is what time is like for most women: fragmented, interrupted by child care and housework. Whatever leisure time they have is often devoted to what others want to do – particularly the kids – and making sure everyone else is happy doing it. Often women are so preoccupied by all the other stuff that needs doing – worrying about the carpool, whether there’s anything in the fridge to cook for dinner – that the time itself is what sociologists call “contaminated.”
I came to learn that women have never had a history or culture of leisure. (Unless you were a nun, one researcher later told me.) That from the dawn of humanity, high status men, removed from the drudge work of life, have enjoyed long, uninterrupted hours of leisure. And in that time, they created art, philosophy, literature, they made scientific discoveries and sank into what psychologists call the peak human experience of flow.
And even if you have a good partner who is supportive, it doesn’t help as much as you might think. This sort of thing is baked into the cultural expectations of being female.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) was finally invited to testify at one of the House Republican hearings "investigating" it over the bogus videos released over the summer purporting to show the organization participating in illegal fetal tissue sales. PPFA President Cecile Richards spent a grueling five hours battling a hostile and misogynistic line of Republican questioning that had even anti-choice activists embarrassed, calling it "inexcusable," a "farce," and a "freak show."
