I love watching videos like this and counting all the times I would have eaten shit. I think I'd make it max 26 seconds in.
This is a really entertaining ski video from Markus Eder that combines the playful free skiing of Candide Thovex with JP Auclair’s street skiing. My kids do free skiing — not on stuff like this quite yet — and let me assure you that as steep, fast, and big as everything looks in that video, it’s steeper faster, and bigger in real life. It took so much effort and planning to make that run look so easy.
As much as I would like to think I am special, most of this is so generic as to apply to literally everyone?
This is a really entertaining ski video from Markus Eder that combines the playful free skiing of Candide Thovex with JP Auclair’s street skiing. My kids do free skiing — not on stuff like this quite yet — and let me assure you that as steep, fast, and big as everything looks in that video, it’s steeper faster, and bigger in real life. It took so much effort and planning to make that run look so easy.
Re: first article. "While in the US, they start counting with the index finger, ending with the thumb." ...I most certainly do not start with the index finger! Do you guys?
Esquire interviewed Lee Pace the star of the highly anticipated show “Foundation” which premieres today 9/24 on Apple TV+. More below on his “Daddy” status and the possibility of “Pushing Daisies” returning!
On fans calling him an “Intergalactic Emperor Daddy”: “I’m deeply flattered. My mother would be so proud.”
On being a climate optimist: “I feel like, hopefully, some of us during Covid have had the experience of a way of life that doesn’t involve overconsumption and all the things that we know we should be a bit more mindful about, but we’re spoiled, so we can’t help ourselves.”
On the possible return of Pushing Daisies: “I mean, we always joke about it, fantasize about it. I know [creator] Bryan [Fuller]’s told me his ideas for it, and they sound so cool. Everyone’s busy doing different things. I would love to be with everyone again. Yeah, I mean I’m game for it.”
Style Credits: Image 1:Coat by Gucci | Tank by Gap | Jeans by Levi’s Image 2:Coat, Sweater and Trousers by Giorgio Armani | Watch by Tudor Image 3: Coat and Jeans by Polo by Ralph Lauren
[Photo Credit: Jennifer Livingston/Esquire Magazine]
Ok, I don't think this is sexual but it does seem out of line with workplace norms to me. Have you guys been in offices where people give out greeting cards with regularity?
This happened back in April, but I’m talking about it now because a coworker brought attention to it.
I’m a female junior employee in my early twenties who just graduated with my bachelor’s last year. My manager at my office job is in his fifties. This past April, I gave Easter cards to the coworkers I’m close to. My manager had been off on a business trip that day, so I had left the card on his desk.
That following Monday, he returned the card to me and told me privately that he appreciated the card, especially since people my age never send cards anymore. However, he told me that although he knew my intentions were pure, it unfortunately comes across as unprofessional when a young woman like me gives a greeting card or personal note unrelated to work to an older man in a higher position like him. He explained that the greeting card could become a liability for his career because others could assume that the card has sexual intentions, or people could assume that if I got a promotion in the future, it was only because I was exceptionally nice to him. He told me, “Unfortunately, the world is crazy these days, and even though you have a heart of gold, nobody else has one. It’s just what needs to be assumed in the professional world.”
It felt really weird to hear that at the time, especially since there was nothing sexual hinted at in the card at all (especially since I had written that I hoped he would enjoy his Easter with his wife and kids). However, I apologized to him because I figured that it’s true that anybody could misconstrue the meaning of the card, and I guessed that there was still a lot of office etiquette that I had to learn, including this.
Now move forward to this week. I’m chatting with another female coworker and an older male coworker. The conversation led to greeting cards, and the older male coworker mentioned the card I had made for him back at Easter. I said that I was glad he liked it and that I wish I could give him more. Both of them looked confused and asked me why I couldn’t make another one.
I was confused because, again, I thought this was just some normal part of office etiquette. I told them that it would be weird for me to give a card to the older male coworker. I eventually repeated what my manager had told me, and they both looked at me like I had a dead rat on my head. The male coworker said that my manager sounded really inappropriate and strange for saying that, and my female coworker added that it was gross. They both told me that there was nothing wrong with my greeting cards and that what my manager said was wrong.
This whole ordeal has left me extremely confused. Have I actually done anything inappropriate here? I tried googling what I could online, but every result I get talks about unrelated topics like “when I should I send a thank you card instead of a thank you email” or it’s someone selling funny work-inappropriate cards. Did I do anything wrong?
What on earth.
No, you did not do anything wrong.
Your manager made this gross.
Giving a greeting card to a colleague — even an older, opposite-sex colleague — is not inappropriate. People do it all the time.
For your boss to suggest that it could be misconstrued is bizarre. For him to suggest that it could be seen in a sexual light — especially when you wrote you hoped he’d enjoy his holiday with his wife and kids! — is more than bizarre; it suggests that he has really out-of-touch ideas about how men and women should relate at work. It also suggests that he might find normal non-sexual interactions to be sexually charged, and that he might be the problem he is worried about.
Your female coworker found his response gross because it is gross; he’s sexualizing a wholesome interaction and making you feel like he and others will see you as Sexually Available Young Woman more than they see you as a normal colleague.
His reaction is similar to people who worry about men and women having work lunches together or going on business trips together. It means, unfortunately, that you’ll need to be very attuned to whether he interacts with you differently than he does your male coworkers, and whether you miss out on professional opportunities because of it.
For the record: giving your coworkers cards is not inappropriate. (I would stay away from Easter cards, though — not because Easter cards signal you’re looking for some kind of sexual bacchanalia, but because it’s a specifically religious holiday and not really a secular work thing, although I realize you might be in an area of the country where it’s treated differently. But that’s totally different than what your boss was saying.)
Your boss is the one who made this weird, not you.
Sharing this just to say that I feel like the internet has gone on a full Halloween offensive and I find it disgusting. It is AUGUST. I also am over people who make Halloween their personality.
When all your favorite brands start adding spiders and bats to their stuff, you know what time of year it is. For many spooky season fans, Halloween season prep starts in summertime — and Bath & Body Works is here to indulge those early birds. The fragrance shop recently dropped new Halloween-themed candle holders and accessories, and there’s something for every type of celebrant.
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It’s Mortification Week at AAM and all week long we’ll be revisiting ways we’ve mortified ourselves at work (pulling comments and letters from the archives). Here are 15 mortifying stories to kick off today.
1. Wrong answer
“I was in my early 20′s and working with a placement agency to find that perfect job that would take me out of food service. My agency contact had set up an interview for me for my dream job, the day after my birthday. Being young and not much of a responsible drinker, I partied like it was 1999. I showed up at the interview not just hung over but still drunk. The person conducting the interview asked me if I was sick, and if I was we could reschedule. I answered, ‘Nope, not sick, drunk.’
I did mention that I had gone out for my birthday the night before and rambled about how great my party was. I was not hired. My placement agency stopped returning my calls and I do believe that the other agencies in town also had me on their do-not-deal-with list. I burned a lot of bridges that day.”
2. The cup
“Imagine me … young, mid-20’s year old female, having a good day … just cheerfully walking down the hallway at work and swinging my arms a bit (I don’t remember why, but clearly I was having a good day!). My older male supervisor is walking towards me. Unfortunately my swinging, cupped hands happened to intersect with his body at the exact moment and I ended up CUPPING HIS GENITALS! I honestly think I couldn’t have done that if I was trying, but yep.. I managed to do it. He kept walking, I stopped with a look of horror on my face and he just said ‘no no’ and kept going. Yes, I now keep my hands close to my body at all times!”
3. The weakness
“In my very first interview for a post-college job, I somehow managed answer ‘what’s your biggest weakness’ with ‘I have trouble following directions.'”
4. The ganja
“I was 23 or 24, had just started my first grown-up job, working as a sales coordinator for a real estate developer at a new condo building that was under construction–this was maybe my third day of work. We were getting ready to open our sales centre and the director of marketing had traveled over from the head office in the big city nearby to help us set up. We needed to buy some light fixtures, so he invited me to go for a walk to a couple of fancy furniture stores near our office to see if we could find something.
As we’re walking down the street, this girl I didn’t recognize said, ‘Hey, Steph!’ The marketing director and I were both dressed fairly casually as we were expected to do some physical work that day and the office wasn’t open, which is to say that it wasn’t immediately obvious that I was working, she may have thought he was my partner, or something. I said, ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ while scouring my memory trying to figure out who she was and also how I would curb the interaction so we could move on with our work stuff. She’s like, ‘Good, it’s been awhile! We have to get together with Anna sometime and smoke some ganj, get fucked up!’ and she does the smoking-a-joint hand motion with her fingers to her lips. I realized that she was very briefly roommates (like maybe for three months and mostly slept at her boyfriend’s house) with my best friend Anna. I didn’t recognize her because she wasn’t wearing makeup/had her hair pulled back when we ran into her but had always had a full face/hair done when I saw her before. We had in fact smoked weed together ONE time, and Anna was the manager of a local real estate office that was working with us so was a professional contact of the marketing director as well (I wasn’t sure if he knew we were friends at that point). I just kind of panicked and said, ‘Yeah, long time no see, you should totally give Anna a call!’ and tried to make it obvious that we had to keep moving, but she goes, ‘I totally will, we can get suuuuuper baked!’ AND DOES THE SMOKING A JOINT MOTION AGAIN.
I was EXTREMELY embarrassed, I barely even knew this girl, and never heard from her or saw her again after that. The marketing director didn’t say anything until a couple of hours later when he was kind enough to say, ‘Just so you know, I consider smoking weed akin to a glass of wine after work, it’s totally not a big deal.’ So, lucky me that everyone was so chill about it, we laughed about it later once I knew him better, but I wanted to DIE.”
5. The young adult
“I was getting my master’s, fresh out of getting my bachelor’s degree. I was the youngest in my cohort at 21, and still lived with my parents. My professor was saying something about how were adults and independent, we pay our own bills, etc. and for SOME REASON I found it important to inform him that, actually, no I did not pay my own bills, and that I still very much considered myself a young adult. He just laughed and said, ‘I’ve never had someone disagree with me that they’re not an adult.’ What possessed me to do that? I still cringe.”
6. Missed message
“One of my biggest cringes from early career days is when someone was demoted from a people manager position but I was completely clueless about the way staff announcements about firings, demotions and position changes are made, or how to read between the lines on corporate memos. I can’t remember if the staff memo was in the style of ‘departmental reorg, oh by the way Jane will be doing this other thing now’ or if it was ‘Jane is moving to this exciting (but clearly lower level) position, we’ll have more on that job they used to do later’ but either way, I was totally clueless about what was really going on.
Later that day I was in the lunchroom for a coffee break and the person in question showed up too, so I decide to get chatty and ask all kinds of questions, like didn’t they like their old job any longer and what made them excited about the new thing? It sounds so interesting! (Meanwhile Jane had to smile and nod when she presumably wanted to be alone for a few minutes) Shudder.”
7. Muscle relief
“I was TA-ing for my department and one of my tasks was making the chemical solutions for various classes. A big component of the Organic Chemistry labs was synthesis for pharmacology studies (it was the ’90s, pretty much as soon as you matriculated with some kind of Organic Chemistry graduate degree, you got a job in pharma), and the chemistry closets were chock full of USP grade starting materials and reagents. So what I did was relatively tame, all things considered, but still embarrassing.
For some reason, the department decided that all us geeky, pasty nerds needed more exercise and demanded that everyone enroll in some kind of fitness classes on top of our regular curriculum. The only one that fit my schedule that semester was weight lifting. I was a scrawny little thing and lifting weights 3x weekly resulted in some serious muscle strain as the class was taught by the hockey coach. I had to go to work directly after weight lifting and could barely move my arms without pain.
But, aha! The active components in muscle rubs are menthol (from peppermint!) and eugenol (from cloves!), which we had in abundance in the chemistry stock room. And I knew these things were soluble only in organic solvent or ethanol – and we had loads of neat dry pure non-denatured ethanol in the stockroom, too, and I had the key! (Universities lock up their pure ethanol stocks religiously and only give keys to workers who are not thought to be as stupid as me, evidently.) I poured myself out about 30 mL of neat ethanol and spooned in about 1/4 tsp each of menthol and eugenol, stirred it up and wetted a paper towel with the resulting solution, then rubbed the wet paper towel all over my aching shoulders, arms and chest.
At first, it worked beautifully and a cool numbness spread over my knotted muscles. Ah. blessed relief.
15 minutes later my entire upper torso was absolutely numb and my arms were putty. I could barely hold myself upright. I sat down in the student lounge, thinking I’d just rest a few minutes and wait to get acclimated to the numbness before going back to work.
3 hours later I was blushing furiously and asking my Anatomy & Physiology professor for help because I still couldn’t feel my entire torso or arms. When she was done laughing, she back-calculated the approximate overdose and said I should give it another few hours before going to the ER, though she wasn’t sure what the ER would realistically do. By the 6.5 hour mark, I could at least feel my stomach again, and it wore off completely overnight.
And that is why 1) herbs and Natural Products aren’t harmless 2) self-medication is not the best idea ever. On the plus side, I went on to a long career in pharma, so…”
8. Doggystyle
“I was teaching an LSAT class, and one of the examples in the textbook was about Snoop Dogg’s ‘Doggystyle.’ It was the first class of a 2-month course, and I was trying to add in some light banter to get everyone more comfortable. I intended to communicate that I was not familiar with that classic Snoop Dogg jam… instead, what came out of my mouth was, ‘I don’t even know what ‘Doggystyle’ IS!'”
9. The cat
“I have a very obnoxious cat. She was very interested in my conference call, trying to climb on my laptop, meowing into my (muted) headset, and generally being an annoyingly lovable cat. My boss sends me an IM: ‘What do you think of this training?’ My cat chose this moment to walk across my keyboard – most specifically on the P, O, and Enter keys. She sent the word POOP to my boss, and stepped on the Wi-Fi off button, immediately disconnecting me. I wanted to cry. Thankfully my boss had a great sense of humor, and more importantly, we both agreed with my cat’s assessment of the training.”
10. The velvet bra
“I was about 25 and in a meeting with two very senior people: my boss, the VP, and the CEO of the company. My boss and I were sitting in chairs in the CEO’s office facing his desk. I was explaining something and didn’t really notice, until later, that the CEO was hunched over his desk staring down at the spreadsheet I had prepared. My boss started talking and looked at me and his eyes grew wide and he looked down and then back up and kept talking. I was like ‘that was weird’ and so I looked down and my v-neck shirt, which would normally be completely appropriate had gotten stuck on my fuzzy bra and a whole boob was sticking out of my shirt. Luckily, I was wearing a sweater I could pull around without having to adjust my shirt. That made me realize why the CEO wasn’t looking at me. I never wore the velvet bra to work again.”
11. Stall invader
“A few months ago, I had an unexplained incident in the bathroom at work in which I passed out and fell under the divider and INTO THE STALL of the woman next to me, who was innocently doing her business until I came sliding in. I came to to EMS standing over me and everyone in the office crowded around outside the doors to the bathroom to watch me stretchered out. A lot of ‘are you okay to go to the bathroom alone … do you need a buddy?’ jokes followed.”
12. Not my child
“I have four kids and I was a little overtired (one of them was a baby at the time), so I spend a lot of time taking care of small children and being ‘mom.’ This is my only excuse for what follows.
I was talking to a colleague at the end of a meeting, noticed he had schmutz on his cheek, and I LICKED MY THUMB AND WIPED IT OFF HIS CHEEK without even registering what I was doing.
We both jumped back in horror and I apologized profusely. Fortunately he was a pretty good friend (our families hang out socially outside of work) so we were able to laugh about it afterwards, but I wanted to DIE ON THE SPOT.”
13. The tablecloth
“I was working at a job (this was my first job out of college) that had some odd issues about rules–not that the rules were odd, but that you might be yelled at publicly for breaking one (about dress code, etc.). I was getting ready for work at my boyfriend’s house, and realized that I hadn’t remembered to pack work pants/skirt. I only had jeans, which I had worn there the night before. I freaked out, and as I had to be at work at 8:30, no stores would be open … so I wore a tablecloth wrapped as a sarong. I was scared it would fall off, so I had my boyfriend wrap me up really tightly and I just … shuffled around all day.”
14. Whoops
“I spent many years working customer service for a newspaper, and one of my duties was to make service checks on customers starting or restarting their subscription. A short, simple call I’d made hundreds of times: ‘Hi, it’s Scrooge from the Herald. Just calling to make sure you got your paper today. Great, thanks! Have a good day.’
And then one day it happened. My mouth revolted against me, and what came out instead was: ‘Hi, it’s Scrooge from the Herald. Just calling to make sure you got your pooper today.’ There was an interminable 30 second pause, then the poor lady on the other end of the line burst into uncontrolled gales of laughter. She laughed so hard she couldn’t answer my (incredibly mangled) question. I guess it’s good I got a customer with a good sense of humor?”
15. Language barrier
“I speak another language at work and these are some of the things I’ve said accidentally:
‘When I don’t understand, sometimes I just smile and throw my head.’
‘Sophia brought us all little skulls back from vacation.’
‘I’m going to go pee at my desk now.'”
The toughest cop on TV just turned 60. Christopher Meloni, 2021’s most-unexpected sex symbol, keeps getting stronger and now he’s back with his own show, Law & Order: Organized Crime. Finally, he’s calling the shots and loving his life. IT’S MELONI TIME.
On having a renaissance in the back third of his life: “My ass is. It’s cool as shit. The aspect of age comes into play as far as the cover of [this magazine] and how I feel about it. A friend of mine said, ‘Did you ever think in a million years you’d be on the cover of Men’s Health?’ I said, ‘Certainly not at age 60.’”
On the tension in his family during his childhood: “Living in that house was like living in a dark cloud…I just remember always looking around, like, ‘Am I fucking crazy?’…I could feel it. The trauma of childhood is real. And I carry that with me.”
On how he deals with the anxiety his success brought him: “When something weird and out of the norm happens, I don’t panic. I always sit with it and go, All right, let’s experience what’s happening, because getting tenser is not going to help the situation.”
On how he felt when his career started taking off: “When my career started to happen, I could feel it. But I didn’t want to trust it, because I had struggled for so long—or at least it felt like I’d struggled for so long—and I didn’t want it to go away. I don’t know how many people get this opportunity to dream a dream and have it come to fruition. Because everyone does the first part, but to have it come to fruition then starts a whole other journey of Now what? And What is this? And How do you manage? This doesn’t fall under the category of burden or anything like that. It’s just a new world. You’re so used to the old way of: I have to keep this mindset and I’ll just dream a dream. But if the dream actually happens, then you’re like, Okay, now we have to manage the dream. What do we do, actually?”
On how his contract negotiations for Law & Order: SVU broke down: “My thought was: Instead of 22 episodes, bring me back for nine episodes, or bring me back for 18 episodes. They literally came to me on a Thursday night and said, ‘This is the deal. We want the answer by tomorrow. It’s our way or no way.’ I don’t want to fuck around with you guys. This is what I want. If you can’t do it, that’s fine. Let’s figure out my exit.”
On his mentality this time with Law & Order: Organized Crime: “This time around with the Law & Order ride, I’m not stressed by: Will it go well? Will it not go well? Not that I know how it’s going to go. Just that, eh, just ride. Just do, just be. There are bigger things, more important things. I know how important this is to me, but I have a clearer vision of life. I know a little more about love. I know a little more about real pain. I know about joy. I know better management skills. As you go through life, you get a clearer understanding of things, of your holes and of your gifts.”
[Photo Credit: Ben Watts for Men’s Health Magazine]
Oh! I walked by this last night. I think I saw the back of Blake Lively; recognize that dress. Should have stayed and gawked instead of hoofing it to Target.
We’re happy to report that we haven’t regained our red carpet cynicism just yet. Oh, we know it’s coming back. We can only be as the universe and the fates intended us to be, but right now, we’re still in that post-lockdown feeling of “Isn’t it GREAT that big, dumb movie premieres are back and celebrities are going out in horrendous outfits?” Why are we saying this? Oh, no real reason…
It just sort of popped into our heads unexpectedly.
Honestly, we’re thrilled to see Blake Lively on a red carpet in something so tacky we have to assume she’s partially trolling us all. Nature really is healing.
We, like most sentient mammals, find the Reynolds-Livelys to be a fun and charming couple. In fact, one of our favorite things about them is how they just don’t care what the other one wears on the red carpet. They’ll never coordinate their outfits and we think that comes down to being a rock-solid couple who enjoys letting the other one fly their own flag. So no, it makes no kind of sense for him to be wearing a corduroy suit next to her in a pink sequined sleeveless gown with cutouts, but they’re just so darn cute together and so clearly crazy about each other that we can’t get mad about it.
Make no mistake: her dress is terrible and corduroy suits are pretty much a fashion abomination (even if he is pulling this one off).
We feel bad about admitting this, but that trailer is actually pretty charming.
Style Credits: Ryan Reynolds:Brunello Cucinelli Corduroy Suit Styled by Ilaria Urbinati | Grooming by Kristan Serafino
Blake Lively:Prabal Gurung Dress with Cutout Detailing from the Resort 2022 Collection | Judith Leiber Couture ‘Star Solaris’ Tasseled Clutch
[Photo Credit: Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Disney, Jingyu Lin/Courtesy of Prabal Gurung, judithleiber.com]
How are people like this? I truly don't understand. I know I am someone who is nearly always early or on time, so I am definitely biased, but I'm so interested in how these people's brains work.
It’s the Thursday “ask the readers” question. A reader writes:
I’m a recent-ish college grad and am working my first position related to my college major (although I’ve been working since I was 17). My entire life I’ve been late to everything. I have no idea why. I’ve tried clocks and timers and tricks, talk therapy and even hypnotherapy and medication, all to no avail. It’s not that I don’t care about or respect people I’m meeting/bosses/coworkers, I just can’t be on time. This has been going on my whole life. I’m often even late to work right now while I’m working from home.
The only reason I haven’t been fired from my current job is because I’m the top ranked employee in my company (despite being 15-20 years younger than everyone) and often finish a whole day’s worth of work in 2-3 hours.
I’m currently looking into moving from where I currently am (a suburb) to a very big city where no one has a car and everyone uses public transit. But I have friends there who say the public transit is constantly late and takes at least an hour and a half to get anywhere. I’m still debating whether or not to take my car with me. If I can’t be on time to open my laptop to start work or get in my car and drive 20 minutes to my office, how on earth am I going to be on time to catch public transportation early to make sure I get in on time? Are bosses in big cities more lenient about punctuality? Is there a ‘perk’ or something I should look for in job descriptions that allows me to continuously be 20 minutes late? Flexible scheduling? Should I just give up?
Please help! I don’t want to be like this anymore.
Ok what are everyone's thoughts on oat milk/Oatly? I'm very retro because I drink cow's milk (half & half in my coffee or 2% for cereal etc) but I find alternative milks gross. Also re: the claim that putting a tablespoon of sugar in a 12oz cup of coffee is normal--what?? That still seems excessive to me.
For some reason, oat milk — a pretty innocuous, sustainable dairy alternative that can be found at grocery stores and coffee shops — often ends up embroiled in controversy and discourse. This time, people on Twitter are wondering whether alt-milk giant Oatly is misleading consumers and pushing a product that’s healthier than oat milk actually is.
It all started when one user shared a link to a blog post from August 2020, titled “Oatly: The New Coke.” In the article, writer Nat Eliason criticizes both the company’s marketing techniques and the high amount of sugar found in Oatly’s products. “I’m still in awe that Oatly created super sugar grain juice, cut it with canola oil, and then successfully used (amazing) marketing to convince everyone that no, this is Good,” tweeted @keccers, along with an excerpt from Eliason’s article.
In the pull quote, Eliason argues that the process of breaking down oats creates a natural form of sugar called maltose. Putting 12 ounces of Oatly into a beverage, he writes, is akin to adding almost a tablespoon of sugar. But there are a few reasons this argument is misleading: For one thing, the average Oatly drinker likely isn’t dumping that much milk into their morning coffee. And though some people might consume that amount — for instance, a large latte might include a lot of oat milk — there’s really no need to panic over sugar. As one person pointed out, “If you like sugar in your coffee, a tablespoon in a 12 oz cup sounds like a pretty normal amount.”
There also arehealth benefits to drinking oat milk. According to Healthline, oat milk can be a great source of calcium, Vitamin D, and Vitamin B. Like carbohydrates, fat, and a lot of the other ingredients centered in conversations about nutrition and, all too often, dieting, the presence of sugar doesn’t mean a product or meal is inherently bad, and the panic does little more than shame, shock, and scare people who are living healthy lives. Even if you’re concerned about your sugar intake, a splash of oat milk won’t make much of a difference.
But most people don’t switch to oat milk (or even go vegan) solely due to concerns about their own nutrition. Oat milk is an alternative that’s perfect for people with nut or soy allergies or lactose sensitivities. Many people also choose to cut out dairy due to concerns about the environment, and oat milk is widely known as the most sustainable option. All plant-based milks produce significantly lower amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, but compared to alternatives like almond milk, oat milk requires much less water.
Oatly President Mike Messersmith explained the brand’s goals in 2018: “At the end of the day, Oatly was founded to try to help accelerate the adoption of a plant-based diet, which is really good from a sustainability and climate change perspective,” he told BuzzFeed.
“If we ever want to have a chance of reaching the global climate goals of cutting the greenhouse gas emissions by 50% before 2030 and reach net zero emissions by 2050, we need to speak a language that the capital markets can understand,” wrote the company. “Getting a company like Blackstone to invest in us is something we have been working on to create maximum change to benefit the planet.”
Oatly aside, however, many people enjoy oat milk, and for good reason: It’s allergen-friendly, vegan, and great for the environment. And even if you’re just a fan because — let’s face it — it tastes amazing, that’s perfectly fine, too. Your latte isn’t going to kill you.
Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?
I actually agree with Jane on the file name thing. If you want to have the year first and avoid the month/day first controversy, you've gotta put it in YYYY format because "21-03-15" could mean March 21, 2015.
I wrote in last year and sent in an update about my coworker, who was upset that I was pregnant. I wanted to give everyone another (final?) update on my situation, and clarify a few things from my last letter.
Jane does have a son. He’s in school, but I’m not sure exactly how old he is. Some people speculated that she was undergoing IVF, and that’s why she announced she was pregnant. While I won’t speculate her motivations, she said many times that IVF wasn’t an option for her.
Shortly after my December update, Jane let everyone know she was having major surgery in February. In early January we hired Fergus, who would be covering for Jane while she was out, and then for me while on maternity leave in May. Immediately after his hire, Jane requested she be moved back to her old desk, because it “wasn’t right I be left alone with a man in my condition”. I told our boss I was totally fine working with Fergus, and the requests stopped. Surprisingly, all coldness Jane expressed towards me evaporated, seemingly overnight. Jane came into my office at least twice a day to ask me a question (she would have emailed before). I was cordial and friendly, but not as much as I had previously been.
Jane was supposed to train Fergus on some of her job responsibilities, but that never came about. When she went on leave in February for surgery, Fergus and I were left with a pile of work, some of it time sensitive, that hadn’t been touched. It was a hectic few weeks, to say the least. It quickly became evident that Fergus and I worked very well together. Tasks were being completed with more efficiency, even though we had more work to do. Fergus suggested some adjustments that worked at his old job. Some were great, others didn’t work, but we definitely improved how some things run!
Jane decided to return to work a month early, against medical advice (or so she told me). The first week she was back was incredibly stressful. Jane took back tasks that had previously been hers, but claimed they were done all wrong, or she didn’t remember how to do them. The best example I have is Fergus dated a document 21-03-15, when she would have marked it 3/15/21. Neither are wrong, just different (this didn’t affect how the document was saved – the name didn’t change, and it was still in the same folder as always).
Shortly after her return, HR and our manager pulled me into a conference room to discuss maternity leave. They then asked if I preferred working with Fergus or Jane. I did hesitate, and offered that there were advantages to working with both. When they explained that there didn’t seem to be enough work in our department for three people (true), but too much for two (also true), they were looking at filtering off some of our tasks, as well as some from other employees who were overburdened and create a new position. I was still hesitant, but did admit that I preferred working with Fergus over Jane. By the end of the week, some of Jane’s work had been shifted back to us, some of our tasks were shifted to her, and she picked up some new responsibilities. It was neither a promotion or demotion, and she was still in her same office.
My coworkers decided to host a small baby shower for me the Friday before I went on leave. Jane absolutely gushed over me (to the point that it was uncomfortable). I gave Fergus a thorough debriefing of the things I could (our work tends to have a short turn-around time, so I finished what I could and handed off the few things I couldn’t), and told him I’d be as available for questions as I could be.
The first day of leave, Fergus called me and told me that Jane had quit that morning, with no notice. I was actually surprised; she seemed more like herself after her surgery. But this means Fergus is working alone basically through July. Some of Jane’s work has been shifted around to other employees until I get back, and then we’ll reassess. I’ve assured Fergus I’ll try to answer his questions when I can.
Oh, and I had my baby last week! Thanks again to the commenters who offered well-wishes. We had some (expected and unavoidable) issues, but overall things went well. I had a little girl three days after my own birthday, so now myself, my daughter, and my mother are all May Tauruses. Kinda cool if you ask me.
Once again, thank you for all your wisdom and help. You and the commenters are great!
I'm sorry -- how did I not know that Kathleen Hanna and Ad-Rock were married?!
The three-bed, three-bath mid-century modern home, which was built in 1955, is set on on 200 feet of prime lakefront, and boasts an incredible contemporary design that retro enthusiasts will go for.
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Ok the before and after comparison is a literal crime of super shitty photo vs nicely staged photo, but I do agree with “Painting a dark, sexy space white makes it look dingy and depressing. LEAN IN and paint it a sultry, saturated color" because that's what I'm doing for my office. Also sharing for "That is all! I'm Gay! I'm a Paint Chip! Goodbye!"
Designer Orlando Soria has the photographic evidence to back up his word.
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Heres my train of thought: Wouldnt it be easier if laundry baskets were just big, solid plastic tubs so we could also use them to pre-treat or pre-wash dirty stuff? Here's the answer.
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Is this like the dress meme?? I see how at first glance they look purple/red/green, but this is fairly easy to "see through" for me?
Oh dear, this illusion just totally broke my brain. No can write now. Somehow all same ball colors. What world? What earth? Why live? (Even after reading and seeing the explanation, I had to drag this into my photo editing app to verify it with my own eyes. True true. Oh, humanity.) (via @flyosity)
In a career filled with iconic performances, one of the standout Prince moments came at the 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony for George Harrison. On stage to play While My Guitar Gently Weeps were Harrison’s son Dhani, music legends Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, and Steve Winwood, and Prince. At about 3 minutes and 30 seconds in, Prince absolutely rips the place apart with a 3-minute guitar solo for the ages. If you’ve never seen this, make sure you watch all the way to the end.
Video of the performance has been available online for years, but producer Joel Gallen recently uploaded a recut version (embedded above) that focuses more on Prince during the solo. As with all things Prince, Anil Dash shared some context for the performance, including this amazing detail about what happened to the guitar that Prince threw into the air: “long-time guitar tech Takumi Suetsugu caught the guitar & handed it to Oprah”. AS YOU DO. Dash also shared this photo by Afshin Shahidi of Prince walking, guitar in hand and seemingly unnoticed in NYC, to rehearsals for the Hall of Fame ceremony in question.
Tom sort of went over to him and said, “Just cut loose and don’t feel sort of inhibited to copy anything that we have, just play your thing, just have a good time.” It was a hell of a guitar solo, and a hell of a show he actually put on for the band. When he fell back into the audience, everybody in the band freaked out, like, “Oh my God, he’s falling off the stage!” And then that whole thing with the guitar going up in the air. I didn’t even see who caught it. I just saw it go up, and I was astonished that it didn’t come back down again. Everybody wonders where that guitar went, and I gotta tell you, I was on the stage, and I wonder where it went, too.
What’s the line between when it’s appropriate to completely ignore a message from a recruiter vs. when it’s reasonable to respond with a description of concerns that would need to be addressed?
I recently ended up writing a missive in response to a job I probably won’t take (located in my neighborhood, thus perhaps run by people I might want to work with should they engage in future, more interesting ventures), and I’m trying to decide to what extent this is a reasonable thing to do vs. a waste of everyone’s time.
I received an email from the head of HR for a business, pitching me on their company (for example, mentioning they have seven-hour days). The note ended by saying, “Your background is incredibly impressive, and I would love to connect to further discuss the opportunity. Would you have some time to connect over the coming days so that I might discuss the role with you but more importantly get to know you better?”
This is what I sent in response (anonymized in places):
Thank you for reaching out. I’m always glad to hear of another tech company in the area; that said, I do have some initial concerns. I’m going to take a minute to talk about what I look for in an employer, and perhaps we can jointly determine if this is an opportunity that makes sense to consider.
First, my core considerations:
Does a company provide an opportunity to work with people I’d be able to learn from? While I’ve had the opportunity to gain some deeply specialized experience (and may well be the person with the most experience in some specialties within any given team), I’ve also had opportunity to learn from coworkers with their own deep specialties. At [CurrentCo], for example, I work next to [specialists in subfield-1], [specialists in subfield-2 ], [specialists in subfield-3], and more.
Is the technical stack keeping up with industry cutting-edge? Given stakeholder justification (in terms of concrete benefits), is there organizational willingness to invest in technical enhancements, and a large enough technical staff to be able to keep up with maintenance while exploring high-risk/high-reward investments?
One of my professional goals is to ensure that I’m enhancing my skills over time. One way to do this is to attempt to keep pace with industry-leading standards and technology; as an example, at my current job, I was given enough leeway to start a multi-year effort to [build our own version of technology pioneered by a well-known industry leader]. The result of this has been industry leadership in [advantage of this technology] applied to [CurrentCo’s field]. (This isn’t an isolated incident, but emblematic of how [CurrentCo] operates; over the duration of my tenure there has also been a major rewrite from [OldLanguage] to [NewLanguage-A], dramatically enhancing performance of the relevant subsystems — and the company first gained my attention as an early adopter of the [NewLanguage-B] language, and the [Toolkit-C] framework on top of it).
Is the work important? Is the work challenging? I link these two together because they’re of a piece. The last company I was at which had a hard focus on limited work hours was [HugeManufacturingCo] — everyone was out at 5 pm — and frankly, I was miserable: If the things we’re working towards are so unimportant that there’s never a justification to put in extra effort, are they really worth working on at all? By contrast, before [HugeManufacturingCo], one of the startups I engaged in was building [medical software]. While the company had some serious faults, our technology was in many respects the better part of a decade ahead of the industry, and there was genuine reason to believe that successfully executing on our mission would change the way medicine was practiced worldwide. I had a cot in the office and slept there at times — and couldn’t have been happier.
To be sure, this was before I had family commitments — I wouldn’t consider any position that required those same hours on a daily basis today — but doing something that genuinely makes the world a better place remains important. (Commerce can be argued to “make the world a better place” — if you notice [startup in a similar space to NewCo] on my CV, the argument made at that time is that we were going to break up the near-monopoly held by [biggest company in a field related to NewCo’s] and help democratize the field by allowing smaller organizations to cheaply stand up competitors; not as inspiring as changing the way medicine is done, but inspiring enough.)
Is the company generally aligned with my personal ethics? Would I be working with a diverse team, or a group of “bro-grammers”? Are customers and end-users considered stakeholders — whose interests are to be represented in internal decision making — or merely a source of funds?
Speaking now to [NewCo] specifically: I haven’t had much success finding a set of job listings on your site to get a solid idea of your technical stack. Looking through LinkedIn for existing software development staff, the few individuals I can find appear to have a [Popular 2000s-era Toolkit] background; I don’t as yet have any information about what your [tooling used for a different purpose] looks like.
While my [Popular 2000s-era Toolkit] skills are still current today, I don’t consider that a place I’m looking to focus going forward; there are superior alternatives in most of the niches in which it is widely used — such as [Language-N] in numeric computing, or [Languge-M] in (small/embedded or security-critical) systems programming, or [Language-O] in systems programming contexts that don’t require the rigor associated with [Language-M]. This isn’t an automatic hard “no” for any [Popular 2000s-era Toolkit] shop, but it is a place where a [Language-M] or [Language-P] shop (or a company building on [Toolkit-R]) would have an advantage.
For the reasons described above, the focus on seven-hour days misses me somewhat. I’d much rather work longer hours — at least on occasion — if I’m spending that time doing something important: Advancing the state of the art, or making the world a better place.
If, given the above, you think [NewCo] might still be a reasonable fit: The second-in-command on the team I lead is going to be [unavailable] in [time range], so any start date would need to be after [that season] so there’s opportunity for an orderly handoff to take place; consequently, any timeline will necessarily be relaxed. If you wanted to have lunch at [proposed location] as a chance to chat in person, I’ll be fully vaccinated and available as of [date about a month out].
—
Was this worthwhile contact-building, or a waste of everyone’s time?
In this case, I suppose it depends on how she responds — but as a general rule, this was way too much for an initial email.
These are reasonable questions to have, but way too much for email. Ideally you would have said you had questions and asked for a phone call, or cut this way down to a couple of questions in a single paragraph.
Most recruiters — or hiring managers or so forth — won’t to write out the sort of lengthy reply this email would require; no one has that much time to invest in writing long emails on nuanced topics to candidates they haven’t even screened yet. (And even once you’re screened, few people involved in hiring will write out lengthy replies like this would require —they’re going to want to just get on the phone and talk it through.) Generally, if you get a response at all, it’s going to be some variation of, “These are all things we can talk about on a call.”
Similarly, I wouldn’t have proposed lunch — that’s a significant time investment when she’s almost certainly just looking for an initial phone call.
In some ways you replied as if you were mid-process already (the lunch, the discussion of start dates) when she was basically just inviting you to throw your hat in the ring.
Some of this, too, is stuff that you’ll need to figure out for yourself — like the pieces about whether the work is important, challenging, and aligned with your personal ethics. Those aren’t questions she can answer for you; they’re things you’ll have to figure out as you learn about the work and the company. That’s not to say there’s no value in noting that those are important considerations for you, but they’re framed here as questions for her to consider (in an already very long email!).
To be clear, the company approached you, and it’s perfectly reasonable for you to have questions before deciding whether you want to take the trouble of applying. But that’s why she was suggesting connecting, and it’s much easier to discuss all of this in a phone call.
This is very interesting, and like everything related to space, makes me feel dumb.
You’re probably aware that black holes are weird. You can learn more about just how extremely odd they are by watching this animated primer on black holes by Kurzgesagt. The explanation about how long black holes live starting at ~9:30 is legitimately mindblowing — that hourglass metaphor especially.
After so many of us living in isolation for the better part of last year, things could be looking up. President Joe Biden announced on Thursday night plans to speed up the vaccination process, opening up vaccines to all U.S. adults by May 1 with the hopes that people can start gathering in small groups again by the Fourth of July. And suddenly it’s starting to look like we might have some semblance of a more normal summer, including the reintroduction of casual hookups.
“While it was different for everyone, we all lost something,” Biden said from the White House East Room on Thursday, adding that the last year has been one of “collective suffering, a collective sacrifice.” The president said that as vaccine supplies continue to increase in the coming months, he will direct states to make them available to all adults by May 1 while also launching a website to help people find doses of the vaccine.
The process thus far has varied state by state, with many hurdles in the way of easily getting vaccinated as many people are “searching day and night for an appointment,” said Biden. But “finding light in the darkness is a very American thing to do. In fact, it may be the most American thing we do,” he said. Because a year into the pandemic, people across the country are exhausted by collective grief and loss and need something to look forward to.
With some newfound hope for vaccinations speeding up nationwide, the question now remains: Will this be the summer of casual sex?
Many people certainly seem to think so, as lots of tweets have been churned out with excitement for a horny, post-vaccination 2021 summer. Since the start of pandemic lockdowns last year, sex has been on a lot of people’s minds, with many of us longing for sexual intimacy, especially those weathering the pandemic alone. It’s to be expected, of course, since the federal government in 2020 advised people who don’t live together to stay apart for the foreseeable future to slow the spread of the deadly virus.
Throughout the pandemic, people have been navigating sexual and physical intimacy in different ways. Some people stopped having sex altogether, while others increased communication about boundaries and COVID risk factors before meeting up with someone new.
“What this means for the future is that we’re going to see a wide range of reactions as we come out of lockdown,” Justin Lehmiller, a research fellow at the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, told Vox last year. He later added, “Long-term abstinence, especially when it’s not by personal choice, is something that most people find very difficult to stick to.”
Some U.S. leaders recognized how hard things have become for a lot of single young people. Just last week, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders went viral on Twitter after addressing the Senate floor about the trauma and mental health risks of a year spent mostly at home and in isolation due the pandemic. “You’ve got young people who want to go to school, who want to socialize, want to date, want to do things that young people do,” the senator said. “And they can’t do it and have been unable to do that for the last year, and that has resulted in a very sharp increase in mental illness in this country.” Bernie’s call to help young people get back to having sex and dating did not go unappreciated.
While many people can look forward to the prospect of having more sex in the near future, we should also still be taking necessary precautions to keep ourselves and each other safe. New COVID cases have continued dropping across the country, but experts worry that this could also lead to more surges as people start relaxing safety measures. Meanwhile, Republican governors like Texas’ Greg Abbott are starting to lift statewide restrictions to get “back to normal” before mass vaccination efforts have been fully rolled out. And even as more and more people continue to get vaccinated, people should continue wearing masks and social distancing in public, and discussing COVID risks before meeting up with strangers.
Now that the federal government seems to have a plan to roll out more vaccinations, people are ready to get to it. For the first time in an entire year, there is some hope that we can gather with our families, hug our friends, kiss and cuddle our partners — and make up for lost time hooking up with strangers.
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what is UP with that poster?! let us please all read wildly into it.
When Republican Senator Josh Hawley burst onto the scene as a more well-spoken mouthpiece for many of Donald Trump’s dangerous, far-right ideologies, he quickly became the new star of the GOP — little did they know how quickly his “poster boy” image would be tarnished. In a recent New York Times story, numerous people from Hawley’s life — from old school friends to academic advisers — spoke about their memories of the junior senator growing into the far-right conservative politician we know today. Some of it is expected, some of it is terrifying, but one piece of information is particularly bizarre.
“I do think there was something reflexively present in Josh from early on that aligned with that kind of thinking,” Dr. David Kennedy, Hawley’s former college advisor said of his former student’s rise to one of the Republican Party’s most prominent members.
But in one memory recounted by a former Stanford classmate, Hawley appeared to have been unhinged long before the rest of us knew it. According to his classmate, he had a sepia-toned poster of a shirtless male model cradling a newborn placed directly above his bed in his dorm. Sound strange? Well, it gets stranger. When asked by classmates about the peculiar poster, Hawley would allegedly explain that it represented his fervent stance against abortion.
According to a 2007 Independent article, the monochrome image was one of the biggest-selling posters in British history in the ’80s, steadily selling millions of copies for years as the image came to represent the predicted arrival of a “New Man” who was both masculine and sensitive. But for Hawley, this image intended to portray the evolution of the male role in society seemed to stand in for his own pro-life ideals. Hawley even wrote about his stance in a series of columns for the conservative Stanford Review.
Josh Hawley at Stanford: “Above his bed he hung a sepia-toned poster of a shirtless male model cradling a newborn; when asked by classmates, he said it reflected his fervent stance against abortion.” Said poster:https://t.co/rTMANXTMndpic.twitter.com/2lerwOKVkE
This shouldn’t be a surprise coming from the man who, as part of the Senate Judiciary Committee, insisted that he would not support any Supreme Court nominee that didn’t publicly denounce Roe v. Wade. “I will vote only for those Supreme Court nominees who have explicitly acknowledged that Roe v. Wade is wrongly decided,” he told The Washington Post in July 2020. “By explicitly acknowledging, I mean on the record and before they were nominated.”
In 2019, Hawley defended the state of Missouri’s efforts to pass restrictive abortion laws saying they were a “direct response to the extremism” of abortion measures approved by Democratically-led states. And let’s not forget, he also refused to certify the 2020 election results and openly supported the Capitol insurrection on January 6 as a principled stand against the “radical left.”
When approached by the NYT, a spokesperson for Hawley said that he did not remember the poster but that “he’s proudly pro-life.”
So the poster, which strangely is the least concerning part of that story, is the only part he can’t quite recall clearly; however, his unwavering record of insisting that he knows better than women do about what they should and shouldn’t be allowed to do with their own bodies is crystal clear in his mind.
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This is how I'm sending all mail from now on. If the IRS wants my taxes they're gonna have to work for it.
Using an x-ray technique, MIT researchers have digitally unfolded and read 17th-century letters that had been “letterlocked” by their authors to prevent them from being read in transit. Reading the letters in this way allows close study without actually unfolding and potentially damaging these letters or altering them against further study. This is a fully digital image of one of the unlocked letters:
In an interview, Jana Dambrogio, the study’s lead author and a conservator at the M.I.T. Libraries, said that learning of the trove’s existence inspired her to see if more technologically inclined colleagues could find a way to digitally open the locked letters. At the time, in 2014, scholars could read and study such letters only by cutting them open, which often damaged the documents and obscured or eliminated clues as to how they had been secured.
“We really need to keep the originals,” Ms. Dambrogio said. “You can keep learning from them, especially if you keep the locked packets closed.”
The old letters were protected from prying eyes when the sheets of writing paper were carefully folded to become their own secure enclosures.
The first step of their digital opening is to scan a target letter with an advanced X-ray machine. The resulting three-dimensional image — much like a medical scan — reveals the letter’s internal configuration. A computer then analyzes the image to undo the folds and, almost magically, turn the layers into a flat sheet, revealing handwritten text that can be read.
Here’s a contemporary example of the letterlocking technique where folds, slits, and wax are used to lock the letter and provide authentication:
A letterlocking technique in action, modeled after a triangle-locked letter sent by Sir Francis Walsingham in 1587:
Whoa and this spiral-locked letter modeled on a message sent by Queen Elizabeth I to France’s Henry III in the 1570s:
And this is a list of all the letterlocking techniques and formats the researchers have identified:
In 1959, a group of students died while on a hiking trip in the Ural Mountains. The circumstances of the incident and the way in which they died presented a mystery that has remained unsolved in the decades since.
The Dyatlov Pass incident is an intriguing unsolved mystery from the last century. In February 1959, a group of nine experienced Russian mountaineers perished during a difficult expedition in the northern Urals. A snow avalanche hypothesis was proposed, among other theories, but was found to be inconsistent with the evidence of a lower-than-usual slope angle, scarcity of avalanche signs, uncertainties about the trigger mechanism, and abnormal injuries of the victims.
The cross-country skiers had actually pitched camp on a small step in the hillside, scooping away the snow to level it out. When they cut into the snowpack, they sliced through the weak layer, essentially initiating a countdown. “When you create a cut in the slope to install the tent, it’s like when you remove a retaining wall,” says Gaume, a snow physicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. The slab of denser snow now hung precariously over the camp. “All the ingredients were there,” Gaume adds. “There was a weak layer, there was a slab, and the slope angle was locally steeper than the critical angle.”
Also from the Wired piece: the researchers were inspired by the realistic snow modeling that Disney did for Frozen. (via kottke ride home)
This clip of an off-screen interviewer asking film director Werner Herzog how many languages he speaks and then Herzog answering is only slightly more than 90 seconds long, but it’s a masterclass in how to tell an entertaining story. He playfully misdirects at first and then just goes from there.
I do understand French but I refuse to speak it. It’s the last thing I would ever do. You can only get some French out of me with a gun pointed at my head.
The pandemic has introduced a ton of new vocab words into common discourse. There’s social distancing, Zoom (as a verb), COVID — and don’t get me started on “Quarantini.” But here’s one that was new to me: coronalingus.
Here, The Economist demonstrates how it could be used in a sentence: “Has a friend told you about their evening spent engaged in ‘coronalingus’ just as you were recovering from a brutal ‘zumping?’” (We’ll leave zumping for another time.)
So that’s what coronalingus is. Now: Is it safe?
It depends on your circumstance, but there is a measure of risk involved, explains Nan Wise, PhD, sex therapist, neuroscientist, and the author of Why Good Sex Matters. It’s pretty difficult to engage in coronalingus, cunnalingus, or any other linguses in between without getting within six feet of another person. “And it’s not realistic to think people are going to wear masks through love making,” Wise says. (She’d be surprised.)
“I wouldn’t say [sex during COVI-19] is completely safe,” as Erica Smith, M.Ed., a sexuality educator in Philadelphia. “If you’re going to have sex during the pandemic, think about the following: does my partner or partners take precautions against COVID in their lives, including mask wearing, hand washing, and social distancing? How many people do they live with and are they exposed to? Have they traveled to an area with high infection rates lately?”
As a general rule of thumb, masturbation is the safest way to get off during the pandemic. (As The New York City Department of Health said in a memo in June, “You are your safest sex partner.”) Sleeping with a person who’s in your “social pod” or quarantine crew is your next best bet. That includes someone you already live with, or someone you’ve been seeing often and trust to be following strict social distancing restrictions with everyone besides yourself and a few select others.
If you’re interesting in bringing a new person in to your social pod (say, someone you’ve been on a few virtual dates with), the standard “When were you last tested?” talk should now include COVID. “Ask them straight up,” Smith suggests. “It’s just as important a conversation as the STI risk one.”
If you skipped all that and got hot and heavy with someone outside of your social pod, consider self-quarantining for a few days, then getting a COVID-19 test to make sure you don’t spread the virus to others.
To sum up, coronalingus should be taken seriously — but it still can be pretty hot. “This is a fantastic opportunity to take things slow and really get to know the other person before you enter into, dare I say, a courtship,” Wise notes. “If you want to learn if they’ll be a good sex partner or life partner, you’ll want to get to know them and spend time penetrating each other’s minds first. Now, that’s sexy.”
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Working from home has had a significant adverse impact on my work-life balance and my mental health. Part of this is not being able to take advantage of the flexibility to travel because of COVID, but I think even when COVID ends (and my office will not be reopening), I will still hate not having an office to commute to, and people to interact with.
There’s no COVID-19 vaccine yet, but some CEOs seem to be itching to have employees within their sights again. According to Bloomberg, in a recent meeting, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon and analysts discussed their concern over slipping employee productivity while working from home during the pandemic. In particular, a note sent to clients on September 13th included the finding that “the WFH lifestyle seems to have impacted younger employees” — though a JPMorgan spokesperson told Bloomberg in a later statement that the productivity hit has affected all employees. The spokesperson added, however, that working remotely could lead younger workers to be “disadvantaged by missed learning opportunities.” JPMorgan’s analysis also determined that Mondays and Fridays were particularly unproductive. Many of the big bank’s traders are required to return to the office starting September 21st. Refinery29 has reached out to JPMorgan for comment on this, and will update this story if we hear back.
This concern for learning opportunities lends itself to skepticism coming from a top executive citing productivity metrics. It sounds a little too close to someone complaining that “kids these days” don’t know the value of hard work. And it leads to questions of how productivity is being measured, versus how it should be measured — especially during COVID-19. How do you tell whether someone’s productivity downturn is due to feeling like they can goof off without their manager breathing down their neck, or due to anxiety and stress related to the virus, or the many other crises Americans continue to reckon with this year?
Dimon’s concerns are just the latest volley in the debate over the myriad pros and cons of remote work, in what could ultimately set the new precedent for white-collar jobs. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings also expressed a desire to have employees back in the office, though the company plans on waiting until a vaccine is available. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal last week, Hastings said there is no advantage to employees working from home, calling it only a “pure negative.” The streaming giant is known for a company culture that’s, according to a 2018 WSJ feature interviewing former and current employees, at times “cutthroat.” Netflix allegedly encourages managers to apply a test to their employees — if you wouldn’t fight to keep them, fire them. According to the article, “some managers say they feel pressure to fire people or risk looking soft.” Refinery29 has reached out to Netflix for comment, and will update this story if we hear back.
On the other side of the aisle, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told employees in an email sent in May that they could work from home permanently. In a February earnings call with analysts, Dorsey said, “I don’t fear any slowness as we work to distribute our workforce now, and I do think we have to build a company that’s not entirely dependent on San Francisco.” Business communication platform Slack also announced in June that it would offer permanent flexible work for most of its employees moving forward. Other tech CEOs have gone on record saying that productivity has actually increased since many employees started working from home.
One thing is clear. The old argument that companies can’t offer flexible work because it puts productivity at risk has lost a lot of power, despite what some CEOs may believe. Many office workers have seen over the past several months that, although imperfect, work-from-home can work just fine. More importantly, workers who need accommodations (such as those who have disabilities) have the precedence of a massive work-from-home test on their side when they ask if they can work from home — an accommodation that they have often been denied in the past.
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Its a boat! Its a rock! Its... both, actually.
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Talk about paradise.
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When all your favorite brands start adding spiders and bats to their stuff, you know what time of year it is. For many spooky season fans, Halloween season prep starts in summertime — and Bath & Body Works is here to indulge those early birds. The fragrance shop recently dropped new Halloween-themed candle holders and accessories, and there’s something for every type of celebrant.
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The three-bed, three-bath mid-century modern home, which was built in 1955, is set on on 200 feet of prime lakefront, and boasts an incredible contemporary design that retro enthusiasts will go for.
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Designer Orlando Soria has the photographic evidence to back up his word.
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Heres my train of thought: Wouldnt it be easier if laundry baskets were just big, solid plastic tubs so we could also use them to pre-treat or pre-wash dirty stuff? Here's the answer.
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