YOUR MIND IS BEAUTIFUL, YOUR BODY STRONG, AND I WANT TO BUY YOU A BURRITO, IF YOU'D LIKE. IF NOT, B-).
SORRY IT LOOKED LIKE I WAS WINKING. I HAD DUST IN MY EYE AND I WAS TRYING TO CHOOSE A FAVE BEYONCE SONG. COULDN'T DO IT!!
DO U LIKE SPIRIT ANIMAL QUIZZES? ME TOO! WHAT'S UR FAVE STEVIE SONG? STEVE NICKS, I MEAN.
I’M SURE YOU'RE BUSY. THIS WILL ONLY TAKE A SECOND AS YOU'RE BIKING PAST: I BET YOU HAVE AN INDOMITABLE SPIRIT.
I HOPE YOU'RE EXPERIENCING DEEP, PROFOUND JOY DESPITE ALL THE BAD THINGS HAPPENING IN OUR SHARED WORLD.
I LOVE MULDER'S ONE-LINERS BUT I CAN'T HELP BUT THINK SCULLY'S THE BACKBONE OF THE DUO. SHE KEEPS THINGS AFLOAT.
WOULD YOU LET ME BUY YOU BBQ? IF YOU ARE VEGAN, I ALSO KNOW OF A VEGAN BBQ RESTAURANT.
IT'S REALLY GOOD.
ISN'T IT STUPID HOW OUR CULTURE SHAMES PEOPLE FOR LIKING FAST-PACED EXCITING BOOKS???
I AGREE THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH ENJOYING ROMANCE IN BOOKS AND MOVIES. IT'S FINE!!!
IF I WERE A FROZEN BEVERAGE, I'D BE A SHAMROCK SHAKE. CARE TO SHARE WHAT YOU'D BE? NO? OK, I HOPE YOU HAVE A NICE DAY!
IF YOU SUSTAINED AN INJURY, I'D CALL TIM RIGGINS AND HE'D CARRY YOU TO THE HOSPITAL.
I'M SORRY IF YOU'RE NOT SMILING CUZ THIS WORLD HAS YOU DOWN. IF YOU'RE JUST THINKING, SORRY FOR THE INTERRUPTION!
HERMIONE IS OBVIOUSLY MY FAVORITE CHARACTER. WHAT ABOUT YOU????
WHO ARE YOUR FAVE FEMINIST THINKERS? I'M TRYING TO EDUCATE MYSELF!
WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE BRAND OF WHISKY? IF YOU DON'T WANT TO ANSWER, I UNDERSTAND.
IF YOU WANT TO BE A RAPPER OR A COMIC OR A GAMER, I SUPPORT THAT AND WON'T THREATEN YOU WITH DEATH AND/OR RAPE!
YOU WILL BE A WONDERFUL CAREERPERSON AND PARENT, IF THAT'S WHAT YOU WANT.
I BET YOU LOVE YOUR JOB.
YOU CAN HAVE THIS BAG OF CAPPUCINO LAYS POTATO CHIPS AS I THINK THEY ARE DISGUSTING. BEST OF LUCK.
I DON'T THINK VAMPIRE DIARIES IS STUPID. IT'S ACTUALLY REALLY SMART WRITING.
IT'S WEIRD HOW HATEFUL EVERYONE IS TOWARD KIM KARDASHIAN, DON'T YOU THINK???
ARE YOU AT ALL INTERESTED IN HEARING ABOUT MY FAVORITE UNDERRATED FEMALE HORROR WRITER??
EXCUSE ME, MS, CARE TO SIGN MY PETITION TO GET ALZHEIMERS-CAUSING INGREDIENTS TAKEN OUT OF WOMEN'S DEODORANT?
Emily Henry is a young, adult writer who is a young-adult writer, and she's wearing the same thing as last time you saw her. Her debut novel, THE LOVE THAT SPLIT THE WORLD, will be available in 2016 from Razorbill/Penguin. She also tweets.
The day has finally come. You can now watch Game of Thrones without stealing your dad’s HBO Go password or stealing it online.
At the Apple event on Monday, HBO CEO Richard Plepler announced a new service called HBO NOW will let viewers watch the network’s programming on various Apple devices – including Apple TV – without purchasing a cable subscription.
It launches in April, just in time for the fifth season of “Game of Thrones,” as the company points out in their press release.
Anyone can download the HBO Now app to their phone and purchase the subscription for $14.99 per month. The service is premiering “exclusively” on Apple TV, iPhone and iPad, but the shows can also be viewed on your computer once you have registered at HBONOW.com, according to the announcement.
HBO is also offering a 30-day free trial to people who sign up through Apple, and the price of Apple TV was reduced to $65.
A new trailer for the upcoming season of “Game of Thrones” was also shown at the event, which you can watch below.
The Facebook clone claims it is independent and not actually sponsored by ISIS (even though it has ISIS logos all over its homepage). It says its goal is to show the world that they don’t only “live in caves” and “carry guns,” and they vow to “will rule the world by Allah’s permission.”
Khelafabook was set up by a man in Mosul, Iraq, according to The Independent, and is hosted in Egypt. There’s also an associated Twitter account which is linked to from the site.
The site first popped up last week, but has already been taken offline “to protect the info and details of its members,” according to a message on the page.
After it was taken down, Twitter accounts associated with Anonymous appeared to claim responsibility, as Vocativ points out.
For the the time being they’ll have to look elsewhere to share their terrorist pancake recipes.
Tina Fey’s new series “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” premiered on Netflix this weekend for your binging pleasure, and if you’ve watched even one episode, you probably already have the theme song stuck in your head.
It’s not your typical TV intro, but a fake news story that has been turned into a fake viral video by actual YouTube stars.
It was produced by The Gregory Brothers (aka Schmoyoho) who are known for auto-tuning the news and their “Songify” video series which turns viral clips into musical masterpieces. One of their more popular clips was the “Bed Intruder Song” with Antoine Dodson.
it was an honor working on this song for @netflix' Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt with the brilliant Jeff Richmond –
https://t.co/wFQjTj4wAl
The comedy series is based on a group of women who spent most of their lives underground in a bunker as part of an apocalypse cult. Of them, Kimmy Schmidt (played by Ellie Kemper) has moved to New York and tries to start a new life working for a wealthy woman played by “30 Rock” star Jane Krakowski.
The fake news segment features a man named Walter Bankston who describes the scene of the woman being rescued.
Unbreakable!
They alive, dammit!
Females are strong as hell.
You can watch the extended version above, and The Gregory Brothers have also already created a cover of their theme which you can check out below.
Octopuses are climbing out of their cages, koalas are walking the streets like humans and now lions have learned to break into cars. Pretty soon they’ll be behind the wheel, and then it’s game over.
This video of a family in South Africa is freaking everyone out, and rightly so, as one of these giant cats casually walks over to them and figures out how to open the car door with its teeth.
This could just be revenge for all the delicious hipster children and bros who have ben taunting them in videos for our amusement.
A lion in San Diego also recently gave a speech to zoo-goers, which must have been a call for action to lions around the world.
This clip was filmed last year, but has gone vial this week with over 4 million views.
The viral white & gold/black & blue dress may be last week’s news, but the Salvation Army in South Africa has turned the trend into a force for good.
The charity group is featuring it in a new, powerful ad campaign to raise awareness about violence towards women.
They tweeted out the image on Friday with text that reads: “The only illusion is if you think it was her choice. One in 6 women are victims of abuse. Stop abuse against women.”
The photo shows a woman wearing the white and gold version with black and blue bruises all over her body.
One week later, and the conversation about the dress has suddenly gotten a lot more serious.
In an recent interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo, Carson said that he “absolutely” thinks homosexuality is a choice, and he used jail as an example.
“A lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight, and when they come out, they’re gay,” he said. “So, did something happen while they were in there? Ask yourself that question.”
It’s sort of like how Carson went into CNN’s studio as a possible presidential candidate and came out a laughingstock.
“I realized that my choice of language does not reflect fully my heart on gay issues,” he said. “I do not pretend to know how every individual came to their sexual orientation. I regret that my words to express that concept were hurtful and divisive. For that I apologize unreservedly to all that were offended.”
Carson announced that he had launched an exploratory committee this week on Twitter and in a YouTube video.
You’re going to need to include these in your TPS reports.
The new movie “Unfinished Business” has teamed up with iStock by Getty Images to release a free set of hilarious office stock photos featuring the cast.
A hard-working small business owner and his two associates travel to Europe to close the most important deal of their lives. But what began as a routine business trip goes off the rails in every way imaginable – and unimaginable – way, including unplanned stops at a massive sex fetish event and a global economic summit.
If only they had made a music video like this as well.
The site is releasing 4 limited edition images at a time with the next batches set to come out on the 9th and 16th. You can check out some more of the photos below via AdWeek:
The news
Just came in
From the County of Keck
That a very small bug
By the name of Van Vleck
Is yawning so wide
You can look down his neck.
This may not seem
Very important, I know.
But it IS. So I’m bothering
Telling you so.
I never noticed, until Zelda was born, my very odd need for repetition and order. Only now, where chaos is born and reborn in the space of a child’s room each day anew do I see it: I do the same things over and over. I write in my journal each day, no matter how mundane the activities I log. I note the temperature and the time. I sometimes count in my head while doing other things for no reason other than I feel like it. I silently stand at the kitchen drawer sorting the silverware after opening the drawer just to get a spoon. It feels satisfying in a way I can’t make sense of. It’s not that I’m overly neat or fastidious; don’t open my clothing drawers, because they are worse than a teen’s.
And so, because I am insane, I take the “make your baby’s bedtime routine the same every single night” thing to heart. Like, seriously: I do the exact same thing down to almost the minute, night in, night out, in the hopes that my daughter, like her mother, will one day grow up to list “sleeping” in her top five life activities. I read Dr. Seuss’s Sleep Book to Zelda every single night.
Dr. Seuss’s Sleep Book is one thousand, seven hundred and seventy-six words long and has fifty-six pages. It used to take me approximately twelve minutes to read, but now I can mow through it in about eight. By my count, (I counted), I have read the book to her two hundred and ninety-eight times (once I subtract the first horror-ridden weeks where bedtime didn’t exist and the very few nights when someone else has put her to bed). I know the book inside out and backwards. By August—when Zelda was six months old—I was already bragging to friends that I had it memorized (cool brag). My memory was tested a month or two later when I turned down the lights as Zelda finished off her milk, laid her down in her crib, cranked up the white noise, and began, as always, while still cleaning up: “The news just came in from the County of Keck,” I said, reaching for the book which wasn’t there. “Shit,” I realized, “I took it downstairs to tape one of its pages back together earlier today. I can’t leave the room; I’m going to have to wing it.”
I did. I could. I didn’t fuck up, not once. I remembered Van Vleck and the Biffer-Baum birds, the Herk-Heimer Sisters and the old drawbridge draw-er. I remembered the stilt-walker walkers, the Hinkle-Horn Honkers, the Collapsible Frink and Jo and Mo Redd-Zoff. I didn’t forget the Hoop-Soup-Snoop Group or the Curious Crandalls or the Chippendale Mupp or Mr. & Mrs. J. Carmichael Krox. Of course the sleepers at the Zwieback Motel were recalled, as were Snorter McPhail and his Snore-a-Snort band, plus the two Foona-Lagoona Baboona and of course, my favorite, Jedd. The Offt I remembered and the fucking Moose and the goddamned Goose too. Who could forget the Bumble-Tub Club? Or the five foot-weary salesmen taking a load off from a long day of trying to peddle Zizzer-Zoof seeds? And the worm and the fish and the whale and “good night.”
The Sleep Book, and parenting in general, has given me a wide range of ways to explore and recognize my more insane, compulsive desires. I test myself every evening: I count in my head the number of pages left as I “read.” These days, sometimes I literally phone it in: Zelda half asleep, barely listening, passing out in the crib, me writing sick burns on Twitter, my iPhone hidden in the book whose pages I don’t bother turning anymore. I snap photos of her curled into a ball and drop them into GroupMe or Slack. I email editors. I browse baby clothes on the Gap.com. All while reciting this poem, all two hundred and forty-seven lines of it. And I do this, not because I’m fully bored (though man I am bored some evenings), but because I like the challenge of multitasking. I like to see what all I can do while not fucking up my beautiful recitation of The Sleep Book.
Another way my compulsions reveal themselves is in Zelda’s toy collection. One afternoon a few months ago, my friend Lisa and I had hauled our daughters in the cold to Play, a sort of indoor playground for babies and toddlers in Greenpoint. It’s just a large open space with padded floors and a ton of toys in bins. Sitting there on the floor in the chaos as our babies did baby stuff, I watched the girl working there periodically and methodically putting away the toys. She wasn’t just chucking them into the bins however: she was slowly and gently organizing them: the play food into one bin, the toy cups and plates in the next. The bristle blocks together, the sorting blocks together. She did it almost as a reflex, a soothing and gentle ritual, it seemed to me. It seemed that way to me because I recognized it, and I longed to join her.
I remarked to my friend that I too, did this at the end of every night. Not because I wanted the things out of sight exactly, but because I felt a keen sense of fulfillment from seeing like with like. For instance, Zelda has a little bucket shape sorter: there are two square blocks, two star blocks, two circles, and so on. For months now, at the end of each day, I count them out as she lays in bed to make sure all ten are there in the bucket where they belong. I put all of the musical instruments together in a bin. I sort the books by type or size and shape and sometimes, as I said, alphabetically. Even when I am just dead tired, I go through some form of this ritual. I just hadn’t thought about it until I saw someone else—who was being paid to do it—doing it.
And the book, that’s it. It’s a ritual. I can’t NOT finish the book. Even if Zelda is totally zonked out, I almost always see it through to the end. I feel something tickling inside me: I want the book to be over—dear God why did I choose a bedtime story that is so fucking long—but I can’t not finish I MUST FINISH, I must get to the worm on the fish hook. Zelda doesn’t give a shit but I’ll be damned if I walk out that door before every light between “here and Far Foodle is out.”
Being this way has helped me in this past year, because babies are nothing if not creatures of some habit. They seem to flourish on the repetition and the mimicry. Just now, Zelda wiped her hands together as if washing them as I stood at the sink, washing my own grimy mitts. And nothing, I mean nothing makes me happier than to see her newest skill, repeated and repeated: Picking up her shape sorting blocks and returning them to their bucket, one by one. When she immediately dumps them out again, I feel safe in the knowledge that she knows where they go now.
Sometimes I randomly blurt out, in the middle of the day, just to see what happens: “The news just came in from the County of Keck.” Invariably, Zelda looks at me, smiling but bewildered, as if to say, “not now: it isn’t the right time.” She is already learning that there is a time, and a place, for everything. If she is still awake, at night, when I get to the end of The Sleep Book, she always smiles and lays her cheek onto the mattress, as if giving up on the day finally, when I get to the same point:
Ninety-nine zillion,
Nine trillion and two
Creatures are sleeping!
So…
How about you?
When you put out your light,
Then the number will be
Ninety-nine zillion
Nine trillion and three.
Good night.
The Parent Rap is an endearing column about the fucked up and cruel world of parenting.
In a 1998 episode of “The Simpsons” called “The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace,” Homer knew about the Higgs boson (aka “God Particle”) many years before it was even discovered.
He is shown writing an equation on a chalkboard, which actually turns out to be a lot more than just a bunch of gibberish.
“That equation predicts the mass of the Higgs boson,” Simon Singh, author of The Simpsons and their Mathematical Secrets, told “The Independent”. “If you work it out, you get the mass of a Higgs boson that’s only a bit larger than the nano-mass of a Higgs boson actually is. It’s kind of amazing as Homer makes this prediction 14 years before it was discovered.”
Peter Higgs theorized about the particle in the ’60s, and it was finally discovered in 2012.
The writers on the show are all a bunch of math geeks, who have hidden easter eggs throughout the series since it premiered. Another of the equations Homer is working on in the same scene references Fermat’s Last Theorem, which Singh also has written about.
You can read more about the chalkboard scene and the math involved in this chapter from Singh’s book published at Boing Boing.
Here’s a more detailed explanation about the Higgs portion:
The first equation on the board is largely Schiminovich’s work, and it predicts the mass of the Higgs boson, M(H0), an elementary particle that that was first proposed in 1964. The equation is a playful combination of various fundamental parameters, namely the Planck constant, the gravitational constant, and the speed of light. If you look up these numbers and plug them into the equation,1 it predicts a mass of 775 giga-electron-volts (GeV), which is substantially higher than the 125 GeV estimate that emerged when the Higgs boson was discovered in 2012. Nevertheless, 775 GeV was not a bad guess, particularly bearing in mind that Homer is an amateur inventor and he performed this calculation fourteen years before the physicists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, tracked down the elusive particle.
“White dudes hold the record for creepy crimes, but females are strong as hell!” sings an Auto-Tuned, Antoine Dodson-type character in a viral video at the beginning of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. With this wry bit of catchphrase-feminism, Tina Fey's new television series sets itself up as a feel-good, lady-centric comedy, complete with some of the unabashed topicality of her defining show, 30 Rock. The premise is simple enough: Ellie Kemper plays a 28-year-old doomsday cult survivor starting life over again in the big city after spending 15 years underground in a bunker. The first trailer for the show is all saccharine smiles, complete with un-ironic “raising the roof” gestures and an achingly bright-eyed Kemper staring in awe at New York skyscrapers, a version of the fresh-faced stereotype30 Rock loved to mock.
Initially, the cult backstory seems like a comic device to show Kimmy experiencing the messiness of modern life for the first time, and to wrest some easy laughs from her regressive, childish ways. (Among her first purchases as a free woman: Light-up sneakers and candy for dinner.) But it quickly becomes clear that Kimmy's past has a bleaker and more specific narrative purpose: Her memories are the PTSD-inducing kind that fuel flashbacks, nightmares, random fits of anger, and distrust. While much of the show finds glee in Kimmy’s propensity for gaffes and ineptitude for slang, it’s equally interested in how her cheeriness is a necessary façade for her inner pain. In other words, her past is much more than an excuse to have Kemper play the cute, out-of-touch oddball in the mean city, which sets Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt up as an unusually earnest and upbeat member of the dark comedy genre.
The show’s warmth and mostly PG-nature distinguishes it from its black-comedy TV peers, like Comedy Central's Review or FX's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Archer, which aim more for absurdity, amorality, and, often and to great effect, mean-spiritedness. Kimmy’s upbeat outlook isn't naiveté or stupidity so much as a survival technique she developed after being kidnapped in middle school by an old, white cult leader. This underlying bleakness in turn sets Kimmy Schmidt apart from the inherent optimism of other TV comedies like Parks and Recreation, New Girl, and Modern Family. It's a tricky premise, and the first half of the season gets off to an unwieldy start typical of a new comedy, but it certainly improves the more you watch (it helps that the entire season is dropping on Netflix March 6).
Kimmy’s not the only character trying to come to terms with her past. Her roommate, Titus, is a gay, black, former Times Square robot performer/aspiring star from Mississippi (Titus Burgess, a.k.a. D’Fwan from 30 Rock). Her new boss, Jacqueline Voorhees (played by Jane Krakowski, a.k.a. Jenna Maroney), also has a history that undercuts her current life as a rich, neglected Manhattanite housewife. A few episodes into the first season, Titus becomes convinced that he’s past his prime and no longer desirable. He walks down the street in a Huxtable-esque sweater and loudly laments, “Gay, black, and old? I won’t even know which box to check on the hate-crime form!”
Each is arguably a victim in ways that become more clear a few episodes into the show. And Kimmy Schmidt seems very interested in confronting this notion of victimhood—how does enduring something bad, change who you are? And how does it affect how the rest of the world sees you and treats you?
The show's fascination with trauma, and how optimism and laughter can arise from it, perhaps has roots in Fey’s own life. In an incident she almost never discusses, Fey was attacked by a stranger with a knife while she was in kindergarten. While it feels invasive to draw a connection like this—from the most private moments of a person’s life to their most public art—it might be particularly pertinent with Kimmy Schmidt. Fey has some understandable reasons for not wanting to draw attention to the incident: “It’s impossible to talk about it without somehow seemingly exploiting it and glorifying it,” she told Vanity Fair. Her husband, Jeff Richmond, a producer and composer for 30 Rock, also said, “I think it really informs the way she thinks about her life. When you have that kind of thing happen to you, that makes you scared of certain things, that makes you frightened of different things, your comedy comes out in a different kind of way, and it also makes you feel for people.”
Hardship—whether in the form of sickness, mental illness, a traumatic event, addiction, or bigotry—has a strong history of fueling great comedy. (Just look at Maria Bamford, Mitch Hedburg, Margaret Cho, Bill Hicks, and Robin Williams, to name a few). Strife can engender divisions between people that might not otherwise exist; humor, meanwhile, facilitates human connection. At one point, Kimmy becomes convinced someone’s misinterpreting a faux pas on her part as evidence of her insanity; despite her best efforts, she's internalized this image of herself as a nutjob forever tainted by her time in a cult. If there’s anything Kimmy wants more than to have candy for dinner, it’s to be treated like a normal person. Or to at least have a say in her own narrative.
Kimmy Schmidt is virtually impossible to watch without considering it through the lens of Fey’s defining work. Some characters are clear 30 Rock derivatives, or at least delightful permutations. But for all its overlaps, Kimmy Schmidt stakes out its own territory; it’s no ripoff. There are almost no “white dudes” à la Alec Baldwin’s alpha-male, network executive Jack Donaghy. Kimmy is less snarky Liz Lemon and more Kenneth Parcell, the goofy, sweet-spirited, perennially grinning NBC page. Still, so much of the show’s best humor has unmistakable origins in Liz Lemon's world, so it's perhaps no surprise that 30 Rock presaged some of Kimmy Schmidt’s darkly funny themes.
In the episode “Operation Righteous Lightning Cowboy,” 30 Rock makes fun of the way media coverage exploits tragedy: Jack Donaghy plots to capture huge ratings by preparing an all-purpose disaster special, complete with a Mad Libs-style song urging viewers to “help the people the thing that happened, happened to.” (The plan backfires when the “tragedy” turns out to be a storm that only affects a private island owned by the thoroughly unpopular Mel Gibson). In “The Chain Reaction of Mental Anguish,” 30 Rock touched on the way human beings need each other when experiencing sadness: Jack, Liz, and Kenneth turn to each other as therapists upon which to unload their troubles, but then the situation escalates as each in turn needs someone else to pour their newly unearthed memories of suffering onto.
These examples are admittedly subtler than Kimmy declaring in the pilot episode, “Life beats you up. You can either curl up in a ball and die, or you can stand up and say ‘We’re different, and you can’t break us!’” Her total lack of irony can feel a tad galling, but there’s also value to little manifestos like these: eyeroll-worthy bromides about resilience. "You can stand anything for 10 seconds" is one of Kimmy’s mantras—any time something feels impossible, you just count slowly to 10, and if needed, you start back at one again and keep counting until it (whatever it is) is over.
“In the day-to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance,” David Foster Wallace said in his famous 2005 Kenyon College commencement address, delivered just three years before the writer took his own life. Whether via banal platitudes or an unbreakable can-do attitude, people often resort to less sophisticated means of coping with life for a reason: because they often work when nothing else does. “You yell in your sleep,” Titus tells Kimmy in the trailer. “You bite my nails, and we still don’t know why you’re afraid of Velcro!” For some people like her, cynicism and fatalism aren't signs of cachet or maturity so much as luxuries.
So, yes, Kimmy Schmidt is about a young woman who refuses to curl up in a ball and die. It's possible this gung-ho spirit will elicit some groans. But with any luck, she and Fey's new show will learn to thrive on their own terms, banana-yellow cardigan, light-up sneakers, and all.
Once again, Australia has proven itself to be the land of real-life monsters.
The most recent discovery: a rare Goblin Shark (aka Mitsukurina owstoni) with an “alien-like” mouth that will haunt your nightmares.
The fish was located in January off the coast of Eden, Australia by fisherman who gave it to the Australian Museum for research.
It has a pink, flabby body and a large flat snout with pores which it uses to detect prey. Once it has spotted some food, its jaw full of sharp, pointed teeth juts out of its face and swallows the creature whole.
“It’s pretty impressive, it’s not hideous it’s beautiful,” said fish collection manager at the museum Mark McGrouther.
The goblin shark dates back 125 million years and lives at depths more than 300-feet below the surface of the ocean.
While I have been compensated for this poutine spring roll recipe by #CollectiveBias and its advertisers, all opinions are my own. Thanks for supporting the brands that support me! #SpringIntoFlavor
Baked poutine spring rolls, filled with sweet potato fries, grilled chicken and cheddar cheese, with mushroom gravy dipping sauce. Comfort food done light.
Regular readers know I'm a huge fan of poutine, that Quebecois comfort-food favorite of crispy french fries smothered with rich beef gravy and melty cheese curds. Talk about comfort!
But, in the same breath, I have talk about how not-so-healthy poutine can be -- which is why we don't eat it very often.
Leave it to The Ninj to figure out a way to get all the comfort-food flavor of poutine in a lighter, fresher package: poutine spring rolls, filled with sweet potato fries, grilled chicken and sharp cheddar cheese and served with a mushroom gravy dipping sauce.
While these poutine spring rolls may look complicated and decadent, I swear they're neither. For one, they're baked, not fried, which makes them that much healthier -- as well as easy to make. Plus, I've swapped the heavy cheese curds for just a sprinkle of sharp cheddar cheese and the thick gravy for a much lighter mushroom dipping sauce. They're comfort food done light. Continue reading >>
In his novel Flex, author Ferrett Steinmetz comes up with a rather ingeniuous way of controlling the ultimate cosmic power that magic-wielders could have against the rest of the world — and suggests why maybe magic isn’t always what’s it’s cracked up to be.
FERRETT STEINMETZ:
We all have obsessions. I have a friend who’s played through Dragon Age eighteen times so she can hear every one of the 80,000 potential lines of dialogue. I have a friend who scrutinizes the Internet code that determines where text is placed in your browser, in the hopes of discovering that the webkit-transform property actually rotates an image 7.3 degrees, not 7.0 as promised.
What if those obsessions started to wear holes in the universe?
What if, merely by pouring so much attention into some random hobby, the laws of physics would soften to fit your outlook on life?
And what if the universe hated you for bending its rules?
Personally, I’ve always hated those stories where magicians a) had no limitations on their power, and b) weren’t ruling the world. If magic came with zero drawbacks, then wizards would clobber the paranormally-illiterate with magic missiles in less time than it takes to say Neanderthals went extinct.
So when I wrote Flex, I wanted a really good reason why magicians hadn’t kicked Obama off the White House and installed themselves as the Eternal Emperor-Kings of Washington.
The key was obsession. I liked the idea that every ‘mancer would have their own set of powers keyed to whatever snared their attention – illustromancers, videogamemancers, origamimancers, deathmetalmancers – but that tight focus would be as much a hindrance as a help. By the time that Crazy Cat Lady has crossed the event horizon to become a felimancer, her priorities had warped. Does a crazy cat lady want to rule the land with an iron fist? No! She wants a house with infinite corridors so her kitties can roam safely under her benevolent cat-centered pocket empire.
Yet when my sister-in-law almost died, what I needed was a bureaucromancer.
See, I fantasized about having a magical power over paperwork when I was fighting the insurance companies to get life-saving surgery for my sister-in-law. She had a rare disease (at the time, her malady didn’t even have a Wikipedia entry). The insurance company kept returning our paperwork because we filled out the wrong form, even though that was the form they’d sent us. They claimed her treatment was experimental (and hence uncovered), when in fact so few cases of this disease had surfaced that every treatment counted as experimental. They refused claims for ridiculously trivial reasons, hoping my sister-in-law would quietly kick the bucket before they’d have to shell out $200,000 for her kidney surgery.
You can get wrapped around the axle, seeing that kind of injustice. My sister-in-law’s okay now… but even the slightest discussion of medical paperwork can send me into a frothing tirade.
So when I envisioned a magic system based on obsession, the first thing that came to mind was the living hell of a compassionate man working at a cut-rate insurance company like the kind that almost killed my sister-in-law.
That man would hate his employer. Except instead of quitting, and letting the insurance company win, a truly compulsive man would sabotage the system from within. He’d spend years mastering the insurance company’s paperwork, staying at the office after dark, filling out the right forms for customers so the insurance company would have to pay for their surgeries.
And so I created Paul Tsabo, employed him at crappy ol’ Samaritan Mutual, and drove him magically insane.
To Paul, paperwork is power. Fill out the right requests for information, and governments will fall. Now Paul can send SWAT teams crashing through your door by magically dropping warrants onto the right people’s desks.
He is righteous. He is pure.
He is hopelessly, hopelessly naïve.
Now, I don’t plot my books extensively; I just find a person I like well enough that I’d be willing to follow them through four hundred pages’ worth of book. Paul was the kind of stand-up dude I personally would root for.
But sadly, the grand tradition of fiction is this: choose your hero. Yank him out of his comfort zone, plop him into a new battleground where all of his strengths no longer matter, where in fact all those grand ideals may be liabilities. Make sure he’s going to have to either grow new talents to survive, or die horribly as he clings to the wreckage.
I needed to make Paul’s life a nightmare. And having watched my sister-in-law’s health dwindle, I can tell you that there’s no greater hell than watching someone you love hurt and being unable to help.
So when Paul’s daughter gets burned in a terrorist incident, he doesn’t have the skills to magically summon up the money he needs to get her the reconstructive surgery. Because, he’s new to this whole “bureaucromancy” schtick, a complete novice at his powers – and as mentioned, the universe hates ‘mancy. Do enough magic, and the universe rains horrific coincidences down upon your head, sabotaging you with bad luck until the scales are balanced out.
(We’re not even going to talk about the Bad Thing Paul accidentally did to his kid the first time he tried to save her.)
He’d do anything to save his kid, of course. So what profession, I asked, was a paperwork-loving, government-adoring bureaucromancer least suited for?
Brewing magical drugs, of course.
And who’s the only person who can help him to master his magical backlash so he can get his daughter the treatment she needs?
That’s right; the videogame-playing, magical terrorist who burned his daughter. Who happens to need some help brewing magical drugs.
Ladies and gentlemen, explosions are about to begin. Big magical battles. The quiet implosion of ideals meeting a raw and ruined reality on the ground. Obsessions compromised.
On January 25, 2015, Luchang Wang swiped into her residential college at Yale for the last time. It was a Sunday—a day that many Yale students spend in the library, stressed as they prepare for the week ahead. At some point in the next two days, Wang, a sophomore math major, left New Haven and boarded a plane for San Francisco, using a one-way ticket she had ordered online. She would not be coming back. At 1:26 p.m. on Tuesday, January 27, Wang posted a worrying status on Facebook that sent students and administrators frantically searching for her whereabouts. It read, in part:
Dear Yale: I loved being here. I only wish I could’ve had some time. I needed time to work things out and to wait for new medication to kick in, but I couldn’t do it in school, and I couldn’t bear the thought of having to leave for a full year, or of leaving and never being readmitted. Love, Luchang.
About five hours later, Jonathan Holloway, the dean of Yale College, informed the school via email that Wang had died in "an apparent suicide." A subsequent report by theYale Daily News stated that a "despondent female" had jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco Bay. Although a backpack left on the bridge appeared to belong to Wang, the California Coast Guard couldn’t recover a body and thus couldn’t confirm that she had jumped. Remembered for her compassion, she was 20 years old.
In the weeks following Wang’s death, Yale students have expressed grief and frustration—the latter because of the school’s withdrawal and readmission policies. These policies, some say, make it especially difficult for students with mental-health issues to feel comfortable leaving campus, even when taking time off from school may improve their wellbeing. According to several Yale undergraduates, some of whom asked for anonymity, there is a significant fear on campus that the administration will force mentally ill students to leave; there’s also a related fear that sick students will not be allowed to return. As a result, students suffering from anxiety, depression, and other disorders may not be getting the treatment they need. And for many of those who are, the question soon becomes: "How much should I open up?"
"The fact that [Wang’s] suicide note specifically mentioned the role of withdrawal and readmission policies was pretty inflammatory among undergraduates," said Caroline Posner, a sophomore at Yale who has advocated for mental-health reform on campus. "There are a number of people who are not seeking out help because of the threat that they will be withdrawn or hospitalized for their conditions. There’s no clear standard established that says exactly what students will get involuntarily hospitalized or withdrawn for. So people will lie to their therapists." (Wang had already withdrawn from and been readmitted to Yale once; the school’s policies state that a second readmission will only be considered "under unusual circumstances, ordinarily of a medical nature.")
To be sure, the complexities of college mental-health policies are not unique to Yale, which serves roughly 5,500 undergraduates. Ivy League schools like Brown, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania, as well as other elite schools like Duke and the University of California, have, at times, come under fire for how their bylaws affect mentally ill students. (UPenn, for example, has seen a spate of student suicides in the past two years.) Indeed, the mental health of college students is a perennial concern—and one that only seems to be getting worse.
But for various reasons, including Wang’s death and the media attention it received, the shortcomings of such policies are becoming increasingly visible at Yale. Last week, dozens of students at the Ivy League university confronted school officials at a town hall on mental health, framing their complaints in terms of fundamental fairness and transparency. Ultimately, what’s brewing at Yale illustrates that while individual experiences differ, school policies risk exacerbating students’ existing mental-health battles. At best, that can mean deepened uncertainty; at worst, it can mean being cut off from one’s college community.
Yale’s current policies state that undergraduates in good academic standing have until the 10th day of the semester to petition for a one- or two-term leave of absence. For students who wish to spend that time traveling or completing an internship, this provides an easy option to transition on and off campus: There’s no need to apply for readmission. But if a student has to leave Yale after that deadline, they must formally withdraw. (It doesn’t make a difference if they’re leaving for medical or personal reasons; it can be a diagnosis of cancer, a family emergency, or an onset of major depression.) Furthermore, if a student eventually wants to come back to Yale—a decision he or she may not be ready to make at the time—that person must satisfy several requirements after withdrawal.
For at least a decade, these requirements have caused a good deal of consternation among many Yale students. The bylaws use vague language demanding that students be "constructively occupied" and maintain "a satisfactory standard of conduct" while away from campus—but fail to explicitly define what that means. Typically, though, this translates to undertaking a job or completing college courses. On top of that, students who withdraw for mental-health reasons may be required to seek counseling. Any undergraduate who applies for readmission must return to campus for interviews, which "are normally conducted just prior to the beginning of the term" that the student has reapplied for. Although these students are evaluated by a separate readmissions committee, their chances of getting back in may be affected by the general-applicant pool: Yale’s regulations state that the school can cap the number of students it readmits to control total undergraduate enrollment. (The readmissions-committee chairwoman, Pamela George, couldn’t be reached for comment.)
A Yale spokesman, Tom Conroy, declined to specify the percentage of withdrawn students who are readmitted each year. But the school is more than happy to share how few students are accepted in the first place. Last year, Yale’s admissions rate for the class of 2018 was 6.26 percent—fewer than 2,000 high-schoolers were admitted from a pool of more than 30,000 applicants. This rate was in line with those at other elite schools: Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford accepted an average of 6.1 percent of applicants. Conroy indicated that the acceptance rate for readmission is much higher than that of regular applicants: "The way the policies play out is that the vast majority of students who withdraw are readmitted," he wrote in an email. "The purpose of the readmission process is to determine that the issue or issues that led to a withdrawal have been resolved and that the student will return and be successful and have a rewarding experience."
Still, students who have gone through Yale’s readmission process claim that it is mired in financial and logistical uncertainties. Outside courses cost money, and many schools will offer little or no financial aid to withdrawn students because they are typically only enrolled part-time. Moreover, students with mental illnesses may be required to seek specialized treatment, which can cost thousands of dollars, to prove they are healthy enough to return. As Alexa Little, a junior at Yale who left in 2013 and came back this past fall, recently told Bloomberg, "Students who get sick later in the term, or whose chronic health issues flare up unexpectedly, are treated as if they chose to fall ill and punished severely with financial burdens and this complicated process."
On paper, Yale’s readmission requirements seem reasonable, if a little vague. And the bylaws may be vague for a reason: They allow for individual circumstances to be taken into account. Meanwhile, studies show that students who leave school for mental-health reasons should generally seek treatment to get better. And the school has a valid interest in admitting people who can handle their coursework and graduate in a timely manner: Many high-schoolers compete in and outside of the classroom to get in.
Yet, a more cynical interpretation voiced by some students is that Yale effectively treats those with serious mental-health conditions as liabilities rather than as members of the community. A junior studying psychology at Yale who asked to remain anonymous said that the way Yale deals with mental health "creates a culture of shame and silencing and self-silencing," which makes it hard to "feel that you can speak openly and be heard as a student about mental-health issues." She added that Yale’s withdrawal and readmission policies make undergraduates unwilling to be open, above all in regards to suicidal thoughts, self-destructive behavior, and debilitating depression. Discussing these conditions, the student said, may lead officials to question whether a student should be at—or is fit for—Yale.
"It is almost taken as a given that no matter how distressing the thoughts [of self-harm] are, or how productive it might be to talk about them in a therapeutic session, bringing them up will most often result in hospitalization, unless you’re very delicate with your words," she said. "I know students who have been hospitalized involuntarily, or asked to take medical leave. When it happens involuntarily, the assumption is that you’re not capable of protecting yourself, or handling yourself, or even evaluating the state of affairs [you find yourself in] reasonably."
Yale’s policies state that the school can force students to withdraw for medical reasons when they pose "a danger to self or others," or refuse to cooperate with the administration’s efforts to make such a determination. This is standard across colleges and universities around the country. Yale refuses to comment on specific cases for confidentiality reasons, but student accounts of compulsory withdrawals in op-eds and online forums describe harrowing nights spent at Yale-New Haven Hospital, where undergraduates are taken in emergencies, as well as the various administrative and psychological challenges they faced when trying to return to campus. Last year, Rachel Williams—then a readmitted freshman at Yale—published an essay in the student newspaper recounting her experience of being hospitalized under school’s orders after cutting herself. She was eventually told she would have to withdraw from Yale and go home, with no guarantee of readmission. "Upon release from the hospital … my Yale ID was confiscated, as was my room key," Williams wrote. "I was given one evening to pack up my entire life." She returned to school in January 2014.
Although Williams's case may be extreme, such an outcome is what many students likely fear when meeting to discuss mental-health issues with school officials, such as a Yale clinician or academic dean. Tammy Pham, a senior who was friends with Luchang Wang, said many students at elite schools are so driven to succeed that taking a leave of absence does not feel like an option, even if doing so could be beneficial. As at similar schools, there is pressure at Yale to always appear happy or "okay." Pham added that she hopes Yale will remove obstacles to withdrawal and readmission for students, such as the requirement to take courses while away from Yale and the need to declare a leave of absence within the first 10 days of any given semester.
"Basically, the only difference between a leave of absence and withdrawal is foresight, and yet it has massive repercussions," she said. "Ten days seems arbitrary and restrictive."
For its part, Yale in December formed a six-person committee to start reviewing its withdrawal and readmission policies. And in late January, just days after Wang’s death, the university sent a letter to recently readmitted students asking for their "feedback and advice" about the entire withdrawal and readmission process. (It’s unclear whether the letter was sent in direct response to Wang’s death; it was leaked by a readmitted student on Facebook in early February, and the committee’s chairman deferred comment to Conroy, Yale’s spokesman.) Among the questions included in the letter: "Was your decision to withdraw from Yale College affected by your concern for readmission?" and "Did you understand the conditions, if any, of readmission, such as the holding of a job, enrollment in college courses, or therapeutic or medical treatment?" Conroy could not say how long the review will take.
Students have called for changes to Yale’s mental-health policies, resources, and environment for some time now. But undergraduates like senior Geoffrey Smith have recently amplified those calls, supporting a boycott of the annual senior-class fundraising campaign until Yale makes its procedures for withdrawal and readmission less stringent; the campaign has seen an 18.6 percent drop in fundraiser participation this year as compared to 2014. In an email, Smith pointed to recommendations made by student leaders last March as "a precise set of serious and reasonable reforms" for how Yale could ease the burden of taking time off. These include allowing students to take a voluntary leave of absence at least until midterm; for comparison, Harvard College allows students to do so until the seventh Monday of the term. Other reforms include determining requirements for return "tailored to the students’ needs," considering students’ financial means on a case-by-case basis, and informing students of whether they’ve been readmitted to Yale at least one month before their return. If students who withdraw could return to campus more easily, Smith wrote, the fear of involuntary withdrawal would be less "existential," and would not "throw students into [a] terrifying mess."
The debate at Yale comes at a time when mental-health issues are on the rise at schools nationwide. A recent UCLA survey of more than 150,000 college freshmen nationwide found that nearly 10 percent of respondents had "frequently" felt depressed in the past year, up from 6.1 percent in 2010; additionally, respondents rated their emotional health at an average of 50 percent, the lowest level in the survey’s five-decade-old history. Likewise, in 2012, the Association for University and College Counseling Directors revealed that 70 percent of officials who completed its annual member survey said that the number of students on their campus with "severe psychological problems" had increased since the year before. It’s worth noting that at Yale, nearly 40 percent of undergraduates use the school’s mental-health resources before graduating—a demand that, some students claim, has caused long wait-times for appointments and is believed to take a toll on the quality of care.
Victor Schwartz is a psychiatrist who has been studying the mental health of young adults for years. As medical director of the Jed Foundation—a nonprofit devoted to preventing suicide among students enrolled in higher-ed institutions—Schwartz knows of many schools that provide excellent mental-health resources but aren’t doing enough to market and promote them. The popular perception of withdrawal and readmission policies, he added, is as important as the policies themselves: If students believe that they’re punitive or rigid, fewer people will come forward with their problems. "The school has an obligation to offset that negative information," Schwartz said. "Schools are at a disadvantage here for confidentiality reasons; they can’t go out there and say that a particular student’s situation is completely inaccurate in what’s been reported in the school newspaper. But if you’ve accepted a student, you’ve made a certain type of commitment to make sure the student gets to the finish line."
Pham, the Yale senior who knew Wang, says students shouldn’t focus on assigning blame to the school; instead, they should work toward fostering a more positive environment on campus for their peers’ emotional wellbeing. This solution would certainly require updating Yale’s withdrawal and readmission policies, she said. But she believes that students’ concerns can be addressed—at least in part—by improving peer-support systems and promoting education about mental health: a mental-health fellows program, increased communication from the school’s health officials, and workshops during freshmen orientation, for example.
"Yale has the opportunity to lead the way universities treat mental health," Pham said. "It has a lot of power, a lot of visibility. Unfortunately, sometimes it takes a death for people to come together and realize there’s a problem. But now, we need to focus on those who are still living."
Sometimes I want to write something innocuous on Facebook like “Puppy kisses are awesome!” so hundreds of people will click the “like” button, but then go back in and edit that post to say something like “I just made a blanket out of skinned kittens”. And then I’d go into the comments and be like “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? WHY WOULD YOU LIKE THIS? This was a test and you failed. Stop skinning kittens.”
And then I’d write a new Facebook status saying that to clear my head I’d just made a bacon-wrapped mac & cheese burrito, and after getting a bunch of comments like “Sounds delish! Share the recipe!” and “Now I’m starving. I want one!” I’d go back and change that status to “Nothing smells better than a newborn baby”.
Then I’d probably have to stop using Facebook. That might be for the best anyway.
******************
And now, the weekly wrap-up of awesomeness:
Shit I made in my shop (Named “EIGHT POUNDS OF UNCUT COCAINE” so that your credit card bill will be more interesting.):
As requested, a clipboard for the office. The first side will be hidden under your papers but you’ll know it’s there. The back can be flashed at people who are assholes and need to back off.
This week’s wrap-up is brought to you by the lovely Clumsy Bloggers Workshop: “Are you a clumsy blogger? Do you want to be awesome? Take your blog form boring to kick-ass in eight weeks with the Clumsy Bloggers’ Workshop. Whether you’re just starting out or have been at it a while, you’ll learn something new — design, scheduling, pictures, mailing lists, social media, and more. Price tag is $150; use promo code “BLOGGESS” for 20% off.”
I’m a sucker for crunchy homemade granola, but I always wish there was a way to make it without loading in the oil and sugar. Well, when I made a batch of Pumpkin Spice Granola last fall, I accidentally discovered that fruit purée can act as a binder in a similar way to the oil and sugar in traditional granolas. Sooooo, it was time for me to experiment with that theory some more.
For this Banana Nut Granola, I combined mashed up bananas and unsweetened apple sauce to act as the binder. When the granola bakes, the fruit purées dehydrate and bind the oats together into beautifully crunchy clumps. Perfect! And instead of adding a big slosh of oil, I just went with some natural peanut butter. The oil in the peanut butter helps makes things crispy and adds a wonderfully nutty flavor (banana+peanut=YUM). I also added a handful of unsweetened shredded coconut for more texture and flavor, and tossed in a few crushed up banana chips at the end.
The result is a rich, nutty granola with a faint whisper of natural sweetness, but it’s not a sweet granola like something you’d buy off the shelf. If someone in your house does like sweet granola, simply customize their bowl with a quick drizzle of honey (honey+PB=YUM). And I can’t lie, a few chocolate chips thrown in at the end wouldn’t be a terrible idea, either. Not terrible at all.
Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Mash the bananas with a fork until they're mostly smooth (a few chunks are okay). Measure the banana mash, then add enough unsweetened apple sauce to make 2 cups total (about one cup of each).
Place the bananas and apple sauce in a small sauce pan with the peanut butter, cinnamon, vanilla extract, and salt. Stir and cook over low heat for about five minutes, or until the mixture is evenly mixed and warmed through (this makes it more runny and easier to mix with the oats).
Add the dry oats and shredded coconut to a very large bowl. Pour the banana, apple sauce, and peanut butter mixture over the oats and coconut, then stir well until all of the ingredients are incorporated. There should be no clumps of dry oats left.
Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper, then spread the oat mixture in an even layer over the parchment, no more than one inch thick. If there is too much for one baking sheet, divide the mixture between two sheets.
Bake the granola in the 300 degree oven for one to one and a half hours, stirring once after 30 minutes, then every 15 minutes after that**. Baking time will vary depending on whether you use one or two baking sheets. Keep an eye on the granola and stir every 15 minutes towards the end. The granola is finished when it is crisp and golden brown. Allow the granola to cool completely. Crush the banana chips into small pieces, then stir into the granola. Store the cooled granola in an air-tight container.
Notes
*Look for unsweetened shredded coconut and banana chips in the bulk bin section of larger grocery stores or health food stores.
**When stirring the granola, aim to move the granola from the outer edges in towards the center and the granola from the center out to towards the outer edges. This will help it bake and dry evenly.
3.2.2925
Step by Step Photos
Start by preheating the oven to 300 degrees. Mash up two bananas. Measure the mashed bananas (should be around one cup) and then add enough unsweetened apple sauce to make two cups (about 1 cup of apple sauce).
Add the banana and apple sauce to a small sauce pot with 1/2 cup natural peanut butter, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp vanilla extract, and 1/4 tsp salt.
Heat and stir these ingredients together over low heat until it is smooth and warmed through. This just helps make it a little more fluid and easier to mix with the oats.
Add six cups of old fashioned rolled oats and 1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut to a very large bowl.
Pour the banana/apple sauce/peanut butter mixture over the oats and coconut, then stir and stir and stir until everything is very evenly mixed. You should not have any dry oats or dry clumps left in the bowl.
Cover a large baking sheet with parchment paper, then spread the wet granola over the sheet in an even layer. If there’s too much granola for one baking sheet (it shouldn’t be layered more than one inch thick), divide it between two baking sheets. I prefer parchment for this as opposed to foil because foil reflects the heat and can cause faster browning. Bake the granola for one to one and a half hours, stirring once after 3o minutes, then every 15 minutes after that. Cooking it low and slow like this helps the fruit purée to dehydrate rather than “cook”. The time it takes your granola to bake will depend on how thick it is piled on that baking sheet, so if you use two it will bake faster. You’ll know it’s done when it’s all dry and slightly golden brown.
Break one cup of banana chips into smaller pieces so that you get more pieces in every bowl and bite.
After the granola is finished baking, stir in the crushed banana chips.
Make sure to let the granola cool completely before storing it in an air-tight container. This recipe makes about 8 cups, or 12 servings of 2/3 cup.
He passed away today at 83.Here’s the New York Times obituary. Doubt there are many people in the world who were so plainly and simply admired as he was, and is.
And rather than to be entirely sad about the end of a life lived well and prosperously, here’s a couple of music videos for you.
Rest in peace, Leonard Nimoy. We are, will always be, your friends.
Thirty-seven percent of white Americans believe that the police treat black people less fairly; 70 percent of black Americans feel the same way. Similar chasms exist when it comes to perceived discrimination in stores, the courts, and schools, which means that much of the nation's dialogue about racial inequality is defined by the clashing of intractable subjectivities.
Those two researchers are Redzo Mujcic and Paul Frijters, and their paper describes the results of an experiment they arranged in the state of Queensland, Australia. Mujcic and Frijters liken the racial overtones of Queensland's history to those of the American South; it took until 1963 for black Aboriginals to gain the right to vote in Australia. In their experiment, Mujcic and Frijters enlisted 29 volunteers from different racial and ethnic backgrounds to board public buses, tell the drivers that they lacked the roughly $3.50 needed to ride, and say that they needed to get to a stop about a mile away. They were then asked to record whether the driver let them stay onboard. (They were also told to note the time of day and the weather conditions, which the researchers figured could engender compassion among the bus drivers.)
In all, the experiment yielded data on more than 1,500 encounters between volunteers and drivers. Nearly two-thirds of the volunteers’ pleas were successful, but the rate at which they were granted differed greatly across ethnicities. White participants were given a lot more leeway than black ones: 72 percent of white subjects were allowed to stay onboard, while only 36 percent of black ones were. The rate for South Asian subjects was around 50 percent, and for East Asians it was 73 percent.
Percentage of Passengers Who Were Allowed to Ride for Free, by Ethnicity
Data: Mujcic and Frijters
The researchers also put two twists on their experiment. First, they had subjects dress in businesswear in order to look wealthier, and see if that might change the chances that a rider wouldn’t be kicked off. They then had some subjects put on military getup to make them appear more patriotic. When black people wore a suit or an army uniform, they saw their chances of staying onboard increase roughly twofold. This put them in the same statistical neighborhood as white participants who were dressed casually—though when white people were instructed to wear this clothing, the percentage of them who stayed onboard jumped into the mid-90s.
Percentage of Passengers Who Were Allowed to Ride for Free, by Ethnicity and Attire
Data: Mujcic and Frijters
Erika Hall, a professor of organization and management at Emory University, has also conducted research that puts numbers on racial discrimination. “When we quantify implicit biases, people are given a tangible representation of the cost of prejudice,” she says. “Many people conceptualize prejudice as being subjective, emotional, and open to the interpretation of the victim. However, thinking of prejudice in this way can lead to ‘victim blaming’ because people assume that the victim’s depiction of the events is self-serving. By quantifying these biases, researchers make the bias more objective.”
Thinking of discrimination numerically is not without its pitfalls, though Hall believes they’re more than nullified by the usefulness of empirical data. “The potential downside is that when people have a quantitative statistic…they [can] fail to realize that these studies took place in a specific context and with a specific population,” she says. “Thus, the research context may not be generalizable to the one that they are referencing.” This is not an argument for completely dismissing the findings of the Queensland study, but rather for replicating it in other countries.
Once biases have been catalogued objectively, there remains the problem of what to do about them. A side experiment that Mujcic and Frijters describe in their paper hints at one possible solution. They approached several bus drivers on break, showing them a picture of a subject from the original experiment and asking the driver if that rider would be allowed to stay on. In that survey, 86 percent of drivers said they’d let a black passenger stay onboard—a rate far higher than what happened out on the streets. Perhaps drivers knowthat they shouldn’t discriminate, but only act on that knowledge when they think their actions are being recorded. Putting policies in place that force people to step outside of their everyday rhythms and evaluate their own fairness might be a useful strategy. Or maybe it comes down to devising something that makes them feel the pressure of that ultimate motivator, social pressure.
Don’t be deceived by their colorful manes and cheery disposition. Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle just want to spy on you.
The Intercept has obtained a top secret document from Edward Snowden that reveals a massive cybersecurity operation in Canada which monitors and saves millions of emails sent to the government.
So yes, a bunch of bronies in Canada are reading all of your emails and holding onto them for months or even years.
The CSE, as The Intercept notes, is the Canadian equivalent of the NSA in the U.S., and the goal of Pony Express is to combat malware and cyber attacks.
This is the first time the scale of the operation has been made public, and they are also taking advantage of a loophole in Canadian law.
Under Canada’s criminal code, CSE is not allowed to eavesdrop on Canadians’ communications. But the agency can be granted special ministerial exemptions if its efforts are linked to protecting government infrastructure.
Pony Express collects about 400,000 emails every day, according to the CBC, and despite the good intentions behind it, some people are none too pleased.
“You should be able to communicate with your government without the fear that what you say could come back to haunt you in unexpected ways,” said security expert Chris Parsons.
So be careful what you email, because Big Brother Brony is watching.
Zendaya is not happy abotu the remarks, and and she made that clear in a lengthy statement after the show aired.
“There is a fine line between what is funny and disrespectful,” she wrote. “Someone said something about my hair at the Oscars that left me in awe. Not because I was relishing in rave outfit reviews, but because I was hit with ignorant slurs and pure disrespect.”
You can check her full response below as well as the original clip from the show.
![Googling inevitably reveals that my problem is caused by a known bug triggered by doing [the exact combination of things I want to do]. I can fix it, or wait a few years until I don't want that combination of things anymore, using the kitchen timer until then.](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/hard_reboot.png "Googling inevitably reveals that my problem is caused by a known bug triggered by doing [the exact combination of things I want to do]. I can fix it, or wait a few years until I don't want that combination of things anymore, using the kitchen timer until then.")
Start by preheating the oven to 300 degrees. Mash up two bananas. Measure the mashed bananas (should be around one cup) and then add enough unsweetened apple sauce to make two cups (about 1 cup of apple sauce). 
Add the banana and apple sauce to a small sauce pot with 1/2 cup natural peanut butter, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp vanilla extract, and 1/4 tsp salt.
Heat and stir these ingredients together over low heat until it is smooth and warmed through. This just helps make it a little more fluid and easier to mix with the oats.
Add six cups of old fashioned rolled oats and 1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut to a very large bowl.
Pour the banana/apple sauce/peanut butter mixture over the oats and coconut, then stir and stir and stir until everything is very evenly mixed. You should not have any dry oats or dry clumps left in the bowl.
Cover a large baking sheet with parchment paper, then spread the wet granola over the sheet in an even layer. If there’s too much granola for one baking sheet (it shouldn’t be layered more than one inch thick), divide it between two baking sheets. I prefer parchment for this as opposed to foil because foil reflects the heat and can cause faster browning. Bake the granola for one to one and a half hours, stirring once after 3o minutes, then every 15 minutes after that. Cooking it low and slow like this helps the fruit purée to dehydrate rather than “cook”. The time it takes your granola to bake will depend on how thick it is piled on that baking sheet, so if you use two it will bake faster. You’ll know it’s done when it’s all dry and slightly golden brown.
Break one cup of banana chips into smaller pieces so that you get more pieces in every bowl and bite.
After the granola is finished baking, stir in the crushed banana chips.
Make sure to let the granola cool completely before storing it in an air-tight container. This recipe makes about 8 cups, or 12 servings of 2/3 cup. 
Oooh yeah, pour some ice cold milk over THAT. 
