This is so creepy/funny

Giant Squid

When I was little, my sister would scare me by telling me about the giant squid that lurked in the depths of the ocean. Fast-forward 15 years and creatures of the deep still fill me with fascination and horror. And lo! Finally we have footage of the mysterious sea monsters. Biologist Edith Widder apparently hypothesized that the enormous lights strapped to deep-sea contraptions was scaring the beasts away. She developed a exploratory machine with red lights (harder for deep-sea creatures to see) that shoots off bio phosphorescence and attracts giant squid! So anyway, read all about it here.

Also:

 

Vague Ramblings of a Girl with the Flu

I love my Stanford sweatshirt. I love my earl grey oolong, and the teapot it's steaming in. I love my bed.  I love Alias. What on earth am I going to make for lunch?

Looking forward to this!

Coruscate

New excellent word: to give off flashes of light; to sparkle or glitter; or to exhibit sparkling virtuosity. Here are some of the results if you image search:

I really want to like lifestyle bloggers, but then they say stuff like "this is really becoming my go-to look!" and I can't any longer. I just can't.

Squee, you guys. I really like this :)

Shows like South Park and Louie do a good job of using socially charged and politically incorrect humor as a way of critiquing societal and systemic norms, rather than indirectly supporting that oppression through just mindlessly regurgitating stereotypes. 

Interesting. 

Just read a hilarious interview with Bill Hader on the Billfold. This has to be one of his best impressions:

Tears at work, tears at WORK

"You would tell your younger sister, or your daughter, that she was beautiful. And you wouldn't be lying, because she is. And so are you."

Trolls

"Does free speech tend to move toward the truth or away from it? When does it evolve into a better collective understanding? When does it collapse into the Babel of trolling, the pointless and eristic game of talking the other guy into crying “uncle”? Is the effort to control what’s said always a form of censorship, or might certain rules be compatible with our notions of free speech?"

Interesting stuff, this. 

Home Reno

I'm getting pretty sick of the dingy, beige walls in my otherwise charming apartment, so I'm using my three-day weekend to repaint. So much work after you've moved in! Fortunately since the background is so light I won't have to prime but I will 1) clean the walls with vinegar and water, 2) tape the window/door frames and 3) put down two coats.

The color I'm thinking? Grey.

Julianne Moore's Home via Emily Henderson via CasaSugar

With the glossy white paint on the two window frames, double closet doors and main door, I think it will pop like this photo. Plus, can't wait to get down to some manual labor! It's the greatest cure for boredom!

The Billfold

Billfold is a new-ish blog in the Hairpin/Awl family. They do a great job of posting on a variety of finance-related and topics and best of all - it's relevant in the day-to-day. I think it's the first finance journalism I've read that applies to my life and experiences directly. Read it! 


Coming Soon: Pay to Pay!:

Last week, the two payment processors and major banks agreed to pay at least $6 billion to settle a suit that alleged they conspired to fix the fees that retailers must pay them whenever customers pay with credit cards. These “interchange” or “swipe” fees are typically a portion of the amount that customers charge to their cards, thus reducing the amount that retailers ultimately pocket.
As part of the settlement, stores such as Kroger and Rite Aid for the first time will also be able to charge customers a fee for paying with a credit card.
The idea is to discourage customers from paying with credit cards, and instead pay with cash, so that retailers wouldn’t have to fork over any fees to the card-issuing banks.

—This happened on Friday. And then American Banker asked a bunch of industry experts and analysts what the settlement means. A lot of them said a lot of things! But one of them said something that spoke to ME AND MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND LIFE (e tu, maybe?).

Overall, surcharging is a bad idea for merchants. Surcharging can cause consumers to think twice about their purchase at the checkout counter, but there’s more to it than that. … Forcing consumers to use a given payment type makes them consider how much money is on-hand in cash, in a [checking] account, and available to pay for the purchase, a mindset that can reduce the amount of goods and services consumers will buy and lower the average ticket price of sales for merchants.

—That’s Madeline Aufseeser, senior analyst at Aite Group (great website), explaining that it’s bad for everyone, except, if you read between the lines, maybe for people who might have spent an amount of money with a credit card without thinking, but once forced to think about that same purchase in terms of dollars, will decide: Not worth it.
I asked myself, what do I think of this? And: I will happily (“happily,” okay, not happily—resignedly?) pay a surcharge to use my card instead of using cash. I never have cash, so the choice is really: Go to the ATM across the street and pay a fee to get cash, or stay here, don’t move and pay to swipe? I’ll stay, thanks. I would do this right now, FYI. Cash-only is terrible and also the worst. And bad, too.

I like this lady

Ms. Caitlin Moran, regarding a survey in which 71% of American Women did not identify as feminists:


"To all those women who recoil from the word feminist, she asks, 'What part of  ‘liberation for women’ is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? ‘Vogue’ by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES? Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF THE SURVEY?'"


I've just pre-ordered her book. 

Getting psyched for the Olympics!

Photo:

Longform, by Slate

I've recently discovered this feature on Slate called Longform, from a website (www.longform.org) of the same name. They compile compelling long articles on a single topic chosen week to week. So far I've read about the Air France 447 crash, the plight of air traffic controllers, and the story of a man who tried to hijack a FedEx plane. Not to mention several harrowing articles on disease (smallpox, AIDS, swine flu), the most compelling of which moved me to tears at my desk. A woman is diagnosed with Stage IV(b) liver cancer at the age of 43.

I might spend the summer going through the archives. It's incredible how many bizarre, unexpected things happen every day. We maintain the illusion of normalcy and order, but life could not be more spontaneous or random. Marjorie Williams had cancer throughout her entire body, and lived three times longer than doctors predicted. Missiles housing smallpox were tested by the USSR but they never figured out how to get them to the US. Thousands of planes come in and out of airports, and five people in a tower with a broken toilet make them miss collisions by seconds. Tiny miracles.

This is so horrifying, and so good.

Can you call a 9-year-old a psychopath?

"By the time he turned 5, Michael had developed an uncanny ability to switch from full-blown anger to moments of pure rationality or calculated charm — a facility that Anne describes as deeply unsettling. “You never know when you’re going to see a proper emotion,” she said. She recalled one argument, over a homework assignment, when Michael shrieked and wept as she tried to reason with him. “I said: ‘Michael, remember the brainstorming we did yesterday? All you have to do is take your thoughts from that and turn them into sentences, and you’re done!’ He’s still screaming bloody murder, so I say, ‘Michael, I thought we brainstormed so we could avoid all this drama today.’ He stopped dead, in the middle of the screaming, turned to me and said in this flat, adult voice, ‘Well, you didn’t think that through very clearly then, did you?'"

How much do I love these dresses:

I'm tired of Glee everything, but this dress and styling is divine. 
Via Tom & Lorenzo.   

Don't care what anyone says, it's fabulous. Via Tom & Lorenzo.

Just for kicks, because I love this too. Via Tom & Lorenzo.