The next installment of The Intercept's investigation of DuPont (my dad told me that when he was working on the floor of their nylon factory in Kingston, safety inspectors were required to give 48 hours notice before showing up, so the plant managers would just turn off 25-50% of the machines and hang "closed for maintenance" signs on them, which would get the levels of grossness in the air and the above-acceptable amount
When you’re 18 and diagnosed bipolar after years of struggling with keeping your emotions in check, it’s hard to find a hero to relate to. I didn’t find mine till I was in my mid-twenties, and by then I’d learned to cope with the stigma that can come along with being bipolar. But just because I could often cope didn’t mean I didn’t want someone to look up to, someone who could take what could be perceived as…
Dear Bear, How do I move on from thinking life is miserable to actually enjoying the happiness I have found? I spent much of my teens sitting in my room with the company of power ballads like Heart’s Alone, progressing to the angsty grunge of the '90s and then the lesbian cliche of Indigo Girls. These songs were comforting and confirmed my view that life is lonely and full of sadness. I battled my way…
Recent studies suggest the water in California, there's plenty of it, and you shouldn't worry so much. Where's all the water? Just look at it. There's some right here, and also just behind you, from before, when you turned around and you weren't looking, but it was there. The water's plenty of it.
I’ve spent a lot of the last year driving back and forth across and up and down the United States in that awkward quarter-life crisis period toeing the, uh, thin line between “work” and “pleasure” in a precarious economy. You’d think that by the time I moved from rural California to Iowa by myself (with my bike strapped to the top of my car, in the span of three days), I would have figured out…
Aubrey Hirsch's previous Loco Parentis columns for The Butter can be found here. In June, I gave birth to a baby boy. His father, his big brother and I all welcomed him home together. He is pink and perfect. And he’s my last baby. Even through the electronic ether of cyberspace I can feel you tearing up at those words, those incredibly loaded words: LAST BABY. But please don’t. I’m not sad. I’m not…
"Tita," my eleven-year-old niece says. "Why are you always talking about yogurt?"
*
I am living in the Philippines on a Fulbright fellowship for half a year, so the only way I can see my loved ones back home in the U.S. is through videochat. The twelve-hour time difference and the spotty online connection in my Manila condo means that when we do appear on each other's laptops, the moment is precious. I hadn't…
"Tomorrow, if we go get rubber gloves – I'll pay for them – I can clean your stove. Not that it's not – you know what I mean!"
"Are these Tupperware clean or dirty, sweetheart?"
"[
After seeing the contestant who custom-makes prosthetic limbs for people who have lost their limbs
] What a nice thing to do. They say they can do it with those 3D printers now."
I sure hope you've already read Friend of The Toast Ezekiel Kweku's piece about the police:
If stopped by the police, I thought to myself, I would set my phone to record audio and put it on the passenger seat. I would send a tweet that I was being stopped and had every intention of complying with the police officer. I would turn on Periscope and livestream the stop, crowdsourcing
Previously by Carly Lane. Growing up, I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t surrounded by birth. I’m rarely a latchkey kid who frequently comes home to an empty house at the end of a school day. My little sister and I make the trek home from the bus stop, let ourselves in, and ease our backpacks from our aching shoulders. Our mother greets us from wherever she was in the house, asks us about our…
When Maggie Nelson and Harry Dodge fell in love it was a love irrevocable, shot through with want and give, “feral with vulnerability.” During the wild time of first falling she and Harry (writer and artist) discussed the conundrum of inexpressibility: “We argued and argued on this account, full of fever, not malice. Once we name something, you said, we can never see it the same way again.” But this is not dire; this is…
Maybe you didn't finish it. Maybe it was really hot outside, and you couldn't quite work up the energy to hate it. Maybe it was fine, and that's it. But you must have them; at the very least, the majority of the books you have read in your sylph and supple life cannot have changed the course of it.
Carmen Miranda, who died sixty years ago this month, was a star of the 1940s and '50s -- one of the world’s best-paid artists in both the music and movie industries, as famous for her style as for her work. Nowadays, however, she is practically unknown. If people remember her at all, it’s likely due to a Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, or Tom & Jerry cartoon -- old references themselves -- making fun of her style,…
