HuffPo - Headless Torsos: How Smart Phone Apps Have Changed Dating for the Worse →

The gay culture has drifted further away from the values a real relationship make at a time where we are mere inches away from being granted the right walk down the aisle. We have gone so far in de-emphasizing our intellectual traits in mating and dating that we actually cut our heads off in order to attract a mate. This phenomenon may not be as directly apparent in the more traditional approaches of dating, but the culture of “sexual priorities” can still be felt.

Of course, these “social media” apps aren’t solely to blame for the over-emphasis of the sexual in lieu of intellectual in gay culture. Unlike our heterosexual counterparts, our “training years” when we are supposed to learn the basics of dating, mating and boundaries are typically truncated. The duration of this relationship limbo depends on how long our closeted period lasts. So, when we finally get the chance to play house with members of the same sex, we typically head straight to the bedroom.

Yet, after decades of many trials and travails of the gay rights movement, we are now recognized as a beautifully diverse and emotionally engaged group of society. 
Juxtaposed with this feat of accomplishment that seemed nearly impossible just years earlier is the general regression of the gay man’s dating game. The use of hook-up apps are one thing, but the context of leading with the physical in hopes of the emotional has most gay men spinning in circles… and I can’t help but to think that that mean little black-and-yellow face on almost every one of our phones (okay, so you just deleted it) is at least partially to blame.

an interesting thesis/article.  the point of view strikes me as being a bit conservative and “in the good old days, dating was way better” and being really closed to change.  obviously “physical leads emotional” has always been the case.  

i agree that dating is changing.  but to say that it’s changing for the worse is debatable.  i guess i find this more compelling than most doomsday “dating is ruined nobody will ever find their significant other” articles.  but to say that things have changed so much that one can’t make genuine connections via grindr, etc, seems a bit dramatic.

View high resolution

wow.

Portrait of an Eastern Screech Owl - Masters of disguise. The Eastern Screech Owl is seen here doing what they do best. You better have a sharp eye to spot these little birds of prey. Okeefenokee Swamp, Georgia, USA.

via http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2013/05/national_geographic_traveler_m_1.html

tornado follow up

various tornado related pieces:

Just 16 minutes before a gigantic twister first developed near Oklahoma City on Monday, the National Weather Service put out a tornado warning.

That doesn’t sound like very much time to get out of the way. For many, it wasn’t: At least 24 people died when the tornado ripped a mile-wide path through the city of Moore, Okla.

But those 16 minutes actually represent an enormous advance for weather science. Back in the 1980s, the average tornado lead time was a scant five minutes. Today, it’s about 13 minutes.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/21/why-are-tornadoes-so-hard-to-predict/

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some frankly mindblowing photos:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2013/05/20/photos-of-moore-oklahoma-after-the-tornadoes.html#23c1d28a-d95f-47be-b73c-1eff780928e2

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Why We Can’t Forget That Oklahoma’s Senators Voted Against Sandy Relief

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/05/why-we-cant-forget-oklahomas-senators-voted-against-sandy-relief/65435/

Nearly four months ago, Oklahoma Senators Tom Coburn and James Inhofe both voted against H.R.152, the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act that eventually sent $50.5 billion in relief to victims of Hurricane Sandy. And in the flurry of last night’s devastation in Moore, Oklahoma. it was impossible not to forget that fact, knowing the federal government would soon rally to the cause.

What Shuster and others are stating is fact. Coburn and Inhofe were two of the 36 Senators who voted against giving victims of Hurricane Sandy what turned out to be $60 billion. Inhofe and Coburn, as HuffPo’s Christina Wilkie pointed out, backed a measure to slash disaster relief to Sandy victims by some $27 billion. In December, Coburn’s office released a statement defending the vote by saying that the bill contained “wasteful spending.” But that bill wasn’t their only shot fired at disaster spending. Wilkie adds: 

In 2011, both senators opposed legislation that would have granted necessary funding for FEMA when the agency was set to run out of money. Sending the funds to FEMA would have been “unconscionable,” Coburn said at the time.

The point here is that these Senators, by their votes, did not show compassion to victims of disaster and have a long history of voting that way. So now, with disaster on their own state’s doorstep, are these Senators going to ask for help and money the same way New Jersey’s and New York’s legislators did?

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Backpacks, Human Shields, Above and Beyond: The Oklahoma Teacher Heroes

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/05/oklahoma-teacher-heroes/65461/

Roughly 1,500 miles separate the elementary schools in Moore, Oklahoma, and Newtown, Connecticut. Six months separate their tragedies. And while there are marked differences between the devastating violence in these two towns brought so quickly and emotionally to the American spotlight, there is at least one uplifting constant: the courage of teachers who tried everything in their power to save the children. Because that’s what teachers do.

“Among the victims were young children trying to take shelter in the safest place they knew: their school,”President Obama said during his press conference addressing the Oklahoma tornado Tuesday. As of Tuesday evening, all students at Briarwood Elementary School and AgapeLand Learning Center have been accounted for; police said seven of nine children confirmed to have died in the storm’s path went to Plaza Towers Elementary. 

Of course the terror at Sandy Hook Elementary is not the same as that of the three schools hit by the tornado. And, yes, the death of such young children is a horrifying connection. But as the recovery efforts continue, know that there are men and women in Oklahoma, not unlike the guardians of Sandy Hook, who were there when America’s kids needed them most. These are their stories:

Plaza Towers Elementary

• The Woman of Steel “We had to pull a car out of the front hall off a teacher and I don’t know what her name is, but she had three little kids underneath her,” a rescuer is quoted as saying in a story from CNN’s LZ Granderson. Yes, you read that right, rescuers pulled a car off a teacher who was shielding students from harm. And she seemed to survive, as the rescue worker toldKFOR, via Today: “’ 

  Good job, teach,’ he said, breaking into tears.”

The determined Rhonda Crosswhite A sixth-grade teacher at Plaza Towers, Crosswhite threw herself over students who were hiding in the school bathroom as the tornado ripped it to shreds. “I was in a stall with some kids and it just started coming down, so I laid on top of them,” Crosswhite told Savannah Guthrie this morning. ”One of my little boys just kept saying, ‘I love you, I love you, please don’t die with me.’” The children Crosswhite protected are now safe. 

AgapeLand Learning Center

• Calm during the storm. According to a report from The New York Times, the staff at AgapeLand Learning Center, a daycare facility, was watching over some 15 children when the tornado struck. Staffers began “draping them with a protective covering and singing songs with them to keep them calm,” Times reporters Nick Oxford and Michael Schwirtz write. And “as the wind ripped the roof off one of the bathrooms, and debris rained down on the children, they remained calm, singing ‘You Are My Sunshine,’” the Times team reports, adding that although the daycare facility was smashed to pieces, not one child was harmed. 

Ebay - GOOGLE logo Fleece HOODIE SWEATSHIRT Large Gray LG Brand NEW Employee Only NWoT →

lol, this is a little goofy

I’m not guaranteeing that buying this hoodie will get you more dates. But consider what I saw on a past Thursday night here in Silicon Valley. At one of the bars in downtown Mountain View, there were a couple of guys, evidently Google employees, surrounded by attractive young ladies hanging on their every word. You knew these guys were Googleites because they were wearing white Google logo polo shirts. The Google IPO had just hit the market a few months ago, and the buzz in the Valley was that there were a few thousand Google millionaires minted on that day.

Not that those ladies were just interested in those guys just for their money—I can’t be that crass to assume that. Girls here are just as likely to flock to a man who exhibits profound intelligence—this is Silicon Valley, after all. Ladies, if you’re a graduate of MIT or Carnegie Mellon or Harvey Mudd, why would you pick up a dumb guy?

So tech dudes, listen up—I can’t guarantee that this hoodie will make you a hit with the ladies, or increase your dating ratio by an exorbitant Fibonacci number, but based on what I saw (with my own 2**2 eyes) at that bar, it could just make you a Silicon Valley stud.

And if not, heck, you’ll have purchased a darn good hoodie anyway.

but you know what i say about the girls at the facebook winter party!  

also, this (via daniel): 

http://wheninpaloalto.tumblr.com/post/35668256876/when-an-engineer-flirts-with-me

WHEN AN ENGINEER FLIRTS WITH ME

If he works at Google/Facebook/Apple:

HowAboutWe articles about dating

they published 3 really great pieces, imo, that are squarely in the james school of thought.  though i do have to admit my thoughts about this have been changing lately.  

Why You’re Lying When You Say ‘I Need a Break From Dating’

http://www.howaboutwe.com/date-report/why-youre-lying-to-yourself-when-you-say-i-need-a-break-from-dating/#

Thinking he’ll show up when you’re not looking

I hate this advice. It’s the romantic equivalent of “Don’t think of a white elephant.” If meeting a partner, lover, boyfriend, etc., is something you really want, you don’t stop looking. This makes no sense.

And yet, this is what women tell each other. Your friends tell you to stop looking, because “that’s exactly how they met their boyfriends.” Unfortunately, what they’re telling you is causally incorrect. It wasn’t the “not looking” that made it happen. It was the not needing, the not obsessing. Closing your eyes to what you really want is the worst idea ever. Quitting dating doesn’t make you better at dating, and certainly doesn’t help you meet people you could really like.

TRY THIS INSTEAD:

Engage, don’t obsess. Let go of your attachment to the idea of how things will or should turn out. That is what’s making you mental. When someone tells you she met the love of her life when she wasn’t even looking, she means she was living her life, not looking to the universe to fill a void. She wasn’t predicting doom or anticipating failure or hating herself for being single. As a result, she was able to be open and engage with other people without a white-knuckled need for This to Be the One.

That’s what you should be doing. When you care for yourself and focus on your life while you stay engaged and open to the people around you, connection becomes an option and a joy. It’s the difference between looking for someone to save you from your life—and looking for someone to share it with.

Self-flagellation

Dating isn’t nearly as hard as the story you tell yourself about it, and the pressure you heap on it. Two people can go on the same date at the same time, and the one who beats herself up more will have a far less satisfying time. The fun of dating comes from the sense of adventure—and a detachment from the outcome.

I know that seems counterintuitive when what you want IS the outcome (i.e., a wonderful relationship with someone who adores you), but it’s that very pressure that sabotages the dater. What you need isn’t a break from dating, but a break from the scary high expectations you have and your own harsh self-judgment.

TRY THIS INSTEAD:

Make connection, not perfection, the goal. Screw finding your soul mate on every date — this is a recipe for disappointment. Go into any and every interaction, whether it’s a formal date or not, with an air of adventure and curiosity. What can you learn about this person, and yourself, in the process? How does it feel to connect with other people, to flirt with them and enjoy their company, regardless of what may follow?

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Graduates, Here’s What You Need to Know About Dating Post-College

http://www.howaboutwe.com/date-report/graduates-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-dating-post-college/#

People Are Gonna Have Shitty Apartments.

You’ll probably spend at least one night in the next five years on an air mattress, next to a plastic box from the Container store that’s doubling as a night stand, lying awake to the sound of an old man’s phlegmy cough, in some distant, distant part of the city. (But it will probably be worth it, even if you do have to use the map feature on your phone the next morning to find out where the heck you are.)

You’re Going to Be Broke.

You thought you were broke in college, and maybe you were — except you probably also had a nice enough dorm room, an all-you-can-eat cafeteria, and a social life consisting mostly of free parties and campus events.

Now, you have an adult job, but also rent to pay, groceries to buy, and bar tabs to settle. And most, if not all, of your friends are in the same boat.

When it comes to dating, the early-twenties are a tricky time. Guys may be used to the idea of paying for their dates’ meals and drinks and tickets, but it’s possible that the guys you date after college literally cannot afford to be chivalrous. Which is fine, because it’s 2013, and you’re more than able to step up to the plate.

If you’re seeing someone, alternate on splitting the bill — one day he gets it, and one day you get it. Stick to cheaper restaurants (falafel can be romantic!), pre-game when you’re going out (sharing a flask can be romantic!) and be on the lookout for free events, like book readings, free museum days, gallery opens, etc. (Frugality can be romantic!)

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Survey Finds Cheating Via Text Is Worse Than Cheating in Real Life

http://www.howaboutwe.com/date-report/why-cheating-via-text-is-worse-than-cheating-in-real-life/#

So what is “cheating,” and what is not? The answer, of course, is purely subjective, and depends on the comfort level of each person in the relationship. Still, it’s always good to know what everyone else thinks.

And thus the Huffington Post, in partnership with YouGov, set out to poll 1,000 U.S. adults about what they consider to be adulterous behavior. Here are some highlights of the findings:

- 60% say it’s cheating if you form a “deep emotional connection” with someone else.

- 48% would consider it cheating if their partner kissed someone else on the lips.

- 24% said messaging an ex on Facebook equals cheating.

- 24% would consider it cheating if their partner went to a strip club.

- 79% of respondents said sending sexy texts or photos to someone else is cheating.

Yes, you read that right — less than a quarter of people have NO PROBLEM with their partners going to strip clubs, but almost 80% say it’s cheating if you send someone sexy texts. And many of the people who said it’s cheating to text someone DON’T think it’s cheating if you kiss someone else on the lips.

io9 - Star Trek Into Darkness: The Spoiler FAQ →

a very troll-y, hilarious SPOILER FILLED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! takedown of star trek.  to quote the article: maximum spoilers ahead:

How does the movie start?

Well, with Kirk and Bones fucking with a planet of primitive aliens. They steal some kind of holy scroll, and then get chased through a red jungle.

Seems like kind of a dick move.

Well, it’s not very clear, but ostensibly they’ve stolen the scroll to get chased, in order to draw the aliens away from a volcano that’s about to explode.

Okay, that seems reasonable.

Except that 1) when the volcano erupts, it’s going to kill everybody on the planet, so it hardly matters where they are, and 2) Spock is getting dropped down into the volcano to set off a cold fusion bomb.

Wait, what?

Yeah, he sets off the cold fusion bomb and all the lava freezes.

You know cold fusion isn’t actually cold, right? It’s only “cold” in the sense that opposed to regular fusion it’s not a bazillion degrees hot.

Huh.

And did you say Spock was in the volcano? Why the hell didn’t they just beam the bomb in there?

Um, something about the planet’s magnetic field. Although they do beam Spock out of the volcano just a few minutes later, so…

And why did Spock have to go with the bomb to set it off? Are you telling me in the 23^rd century that people don’t have a way to detonate bombs remotely? That’s stupid.

Well —

And why the fuck is the Enterprise just carrying around a cold fusion suitcase bomb anyways?

Look, you’re getting very upset, and this is just the first scene of the movie.

and

So next movie is “The Search for Kirk,” I suppose?

Nah. See, Bones drew some of Khan’s blood to figure out why he was so strong and resilient, and he injected it into a dead Tribble because… because I suppose Bones’ hobby is inject dead things with various people’s blood? It’s a little weird.

/sound of facepalm

As it happens, as soon as Bones’ hears Kirk has died, the dead Tribble comes back to life, thanks to Khan’s blood!

/sound of gun being loaded

The Killerprise has crash-landed on San Francisco, and Khan is of course fine despite the destruction of many, many high-rise buildings and thousands upon thousands of people. Spock chases Khan down, they have a fist fight on top of some moving flying cars, and with help from Uhura they get their man. And they bring Kirk back to life!

Uh-huh. So they’ve just eliminated death forever.

Beg pardon?

Kirk was dead for many, many minutes of radiation poisoning, right? He gets injected with Khan’s blood —

A synthesized version of it.

— even better. So what wouldn’t Khan’s blood fix? Decapitation, but most other mortal wounds? Poisons? Phaser blasts, I bet. Certainly most other illnesses and cancers and such. And probably aging, at leats to an extent. So basically Bones has discovered the secret to eternal life, and not only will no one on the Enterprise ever need to die again unless their body is somehow destroyed, but all of the civilization — heck, probably galactic civilization – will be irrevocably changed because of this amazing discovery.

Uh, I don’t think so. I think they just save Kirk and then forget about it.

Of course they do. And I suppose the Tribble that Bones brought back to life multiplies like Tribbles do and causes its own horrible situation?

No, it’s just not mentioned again. Maybe Bones kills it with his bare hands to keep it from spawning. Or maybe he injects it with Mountain Dew or something, since that’s how he rolls.

/sound of gun being cocked

And then Kirk gives a speech at Starfleet a year later, because everything is all about him, and then they start on their five-year mission! Which will almost certainly involve Space Whales, since that’s the next biggest thing people remember about Star Trek. The end!

OMG SPACE WHALES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Whilst in SF: Arrested Development Edition →

AFTER YOUR 9TH CRAIGSLIST OPEN HOUSE

TRYING TO LISTEN TO THE TRAIN CONDUCTOR OVER THE LOUDSPEAKER

THE MOMENT I REALIZE I’VE MADE EYE CONTACT 
WITH A CANVASSER

BEING THE ONLY PERSON HEADING TO 
BAY TO BREAKERS ON THE BUS

ANYTIME ANYTHING HAPPENS ON MUNI, IT’S JUST LIKE:

Quora - Are people in San Francisco more flaky than those in the rest of the country? →

this is so delicious

Oh heavens yes.

Here in Boston, if you and I agree to meet at Mass Ave and Boylston Street at 9:30 AM three weeks from Thursday, that’s it. It’s done. Nothing more needs to be said, and barring force majeure, both of us will be at the corner of Mass and Boylston at 9:30 AM that day—actually, probably at 9:25 AM. (*)

If, for some reason—some LEGITIMATE reason—it becomes impossible that we meet that day, the afflicted party contacts the other to reschedule as soon as it becomes clear that’s the case. The amount of apologizing this involves varies inversely with the time left until the moment we originally agreed to meet.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, if two people agree to meet at 9:30 AM, one of them will show up at 10, and will call the other person at 10:15. When they eventually get through to them, it’ll transpire that the missing party decided to go up to Napa that day. “But you never called me to confirm, so I figured we were off.”

If you’re saying to yourself right now “What’s this ‘called to confirm’ nonsense?”, well, that’s just what I said to myself the first two or three times someone pulled this stunt on me.

I wouldn’t say this is the only reason I decided to move back to the East Coast, but it’s an important one.

or

Having moved here from Israel in 2002, the difference was very, very noticeable. I was used to “let’s meet up on Friday” meaning “let’s meet up on Friday”, not “I will add you to my already oversubscribed list of options for Friday, and will choose whichever I feel like at the last minute”. 

Now, when I go back to Israel, I’m surprised when people consistently follow through on plans… 

My observation has been that, in general (and obviously there are exceptions) Americans are more flaky than Europeans, Californians are more flaky than Americans, and San Franciscans are more flaky than Californians.

I suspect it may have something to do with the fact that people in SF are not grounded here. Very few people you meet here grew up here or will grow old here. SF is a playground for 20- and 30-somethings to have self-centered fun in a state of arrested development. 

But in the back of everyone’s mind is the day when they get married and move to the suburbs, or back to wherever-it-is-they-are-from. So we don’t form lasting communities, just temporary mutual interest groups. And the level of commitment drops accordingly. 

WaPo - Here’s what the Oregon Medicaid study really said →

this is more of a link interesting to me than others.  (via trevor, a fellow actuary!!!)

The Oregon Medicaid experiment is an academic miracle born out of a human tragedy.

A few years back, Oregon found the money to add 10,000 residents to the state’s Medicaid program. The only problem was that there were 90,000 residents who qualified for the program and desperately wanted in. So the state held a lottery. Welcome to the American health-care system. Greatest in the world, folks.

But 80,000 Oregonians’ loss was science’s gain. The lottery gave researchers an opportunity that’s almost never available in policymaking: They could create a randomized controlled study — the absolute gold-standard of experimental design — comparing the health outcomes of the lucky Oregonians who received Medicaid to those who didn’t. It would be the first time that kind of study had even been used to compare the insured and the uninsured.

 how cool is this?!   the cost of the uninsured vs. cost of insured is actually something that we spent a lot of time debating at our job since many uninsured are going to be covered (hopefully by kaiser!) (unless they’re unhealthy, in which case hopefully not by kaiser!) next year.  

So here’s what happened in the first two years of the Oregon Medicaid experiment: Medicaid proved itself good health insurance. The people who got Medicaid used more health care, and seem to have done so smartly — they got preventive care, they got their diabetes diagnosed and began managing it, they treated their depression, and so on. But the health care itself didn’t work as well as we hoped — at least not in terms of cutting rates of hypertension and cholesterol.

There are a number of possible spins you can put on that finding. One is that the study was simply too small, with too few sick people, to show the kind of quick health changes the researchers were looking for. Sharply increasing the number of people who are managing their diabetes and mental health, getting colonoscopies and mammograms, and making regular trips to the doctor sure seems like the kind of thing that will improve long-term health outcomes. Other studies with a less rigorous — but still credible — design and a longer timeframe have shown that states that expanded Medicaid saw a six percent drop in death rates among the newly insured group.

Another is that the Medicaid enrollees are getting bad health care. But the study mostly seems to blow up that argument. Medicaid’s critics have long worried that the program pays so little that the people on it don’t actually get care. But Medicaid recipients were getting care, and the care they were getting appears to have made sense.

A third and more radical interpretation is that health care — or at least the kind of routine health care insurance buys you — simply doesn’t work that well. After all, it’s not as if the Oregon study contradicts past randomized studies pitting the insured against the uninsured. It’s the only study of its kind. In that way, it’s a unicorn.

TVLine - How I Met Your Mother Final Season Scoop: [Spoiler] Will Meet the Mother First →

so after 8 long seasons, viewers finally got to see who the mother is in how i met your mother.  

Series cocreator Carter Bayspreviously revealed that as HIMYM unspools its ninth and final season, viewers will become “much better” acquainted with Cristin Milioti’s bass-playing cutie – whom we first and briefly laid eyes on at the close of the Season 8 finale — as the show tells “the epic story of the longest wedding weekend ever.”

CBS entertainment president Nina Tassler has now confirmed for TVLine that Season 9′s entire run will, in fact, span the wedding weekend and just the wedding weekend, as the comedy details “how each character,before Ted, meets the mother. So, they each meet her independently before he does.”

but the entire season will rotate around *one* weekend!?  this sounds so epic.  i want an epic weekend like that.  i’m excited.  

apparently another new show in 2013, mixology, will be playing with time as well and the entire season will take place over the course of ONE NIGHT IN A BAR, even more crazy than the HIMYM gauntlet.  i can only imagine there are a LOT of flashbacks.