Activists are personally annoying. That's just the price we have to pay for activism.
She does sound ... not good.
And now I am their advocate.
Self-aggrandising, much?
Possibly this sounds fluffy because it is run in Cosmopolitan? I mean, I know they're known for their hard-hitting and sophisticated journalism in the ordinary course of events and everything...
Also, frankly, a white girl on a short hitch who expects to get out, go to grad school and have a normal life is having a different prison experience than a black girl who has a long sentence and a lot hanging over her when she's released. There are white activist political prisoners who get treated pretty shittily - especially queer ones with longer sentences - but in general she was relatively lucky, and her narrative reflects that. I don't think she's under any illusions about it.
And of course, she's writing for an audience which is very naive about prison, despite OITNB.
People often ask if jail is like Orange Is the New Black, but I see nothing similar in incarceration and entertainment
Is she really saying that being in jail is unlike watching a TV show about jail?
"Is jail like OITNB? Oh, no, we didn't have Netflix in there."
"Totally different. I watch OITNB with a big bowl of popcorn, my boyfriend, and my kitty-cat. In jail, the popcorn was burnt."
Possibly this sounds fluffy because it is run in Cosmopolitan?
I did say this exact thing in the OP.
We're just trying to help, is a lie.
7: Look, I'm on sabbatical, so I know the opposite of what she's going through. It's the new white.
People often ask if jail is like Orange Is the New Black, but I see nothing similar. Every day in jail, you are belittled and berated.
"It's more like American Idol, really."
I learned to live in squalid conditions among people suffering the same or worse than myself. I was continually harassed, belittled, berated and insulted. Worse than this - the terrible food, the lack of home comforts, the lack of privacy, the constant abuse - I had to deal with crippling uncertainty about my future, and how what I was going through would affect not only my mental and physical health, but my prospects of happiness and fulfilment for the rest of my life.
That was grad school. Prison was a bit like that too.
11: yes, I suppose the horrors of academic life leave little room for sympathy for the comparative bliss of incarceration.
I do think I'd enjoy the routine of prison life. Comedians made me believe marriage would be the same, but it just hasn't worked out.
"Dear activist,
We have reviewed your prison experience and determined that it was insufficiently shitty. Please go back and try again."
I agree with 1.
Parenting has led me to believe I wouldn't enjoy being a prison guard.
Being at sea in grad school is like being in a jail, with the added danger of being drownedunemployable.
13: I've thought that too (about prison), but I've since realized that I was being stupid.
15: I've never thought I would enjoy being a prison guard.
I suspect what's appealing about prison is probably closer to a monastic life. Bare, minimum, rigid schedule, lots of reflection and writing and introspection, plenty of time to do push ups in the yard, no small children.
IIRC that was why British army officers were much more able to deal with the psychological stress of captivity in WW2 than British other ranks - they weren't brighter or more robust or healthier, they'd just been to boarding school, so prison camp held no fears.
Parenting would be more enjoyable if you could suit up and compel obediance with a baton. 7am crib extraction: Go! Go! Go!
20: Perhaps the people who'd weathered boarding school the worst had already self-selected themselves out.
19 gets it right. I read The Name of the Rose and think "THAT sounds like the life." As long as I get to be the one monk with a searching, questioning disposition.
22: BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WONT DROWN.
A friend of mine did a 12 days of silence retreat recently. I haven't got a chance to ask her all about it yet. It sounds awful to me, but I like the idea of other people doing it.
A friend of Jammies is looking into some crazy "Do psychadelic drugs under controlled spiritual conditions in the desert" retreat. This guy has maybe never smoked pot, but has been fairly unhappy for a number of years and is maybe grasping at straws.
Tell Jammie to warn the friend about the possibility of dying of dehydration in the sweat lodge issue.
I want everyone else to be silent. One day would be awesome.
25: Why so skeptical? Shrooms, at least, have a pretty good track record at producing lasting, emotionally positive benefits.
A friend of mine did a 12 days of silence retreat recently.
This sounds like bliss. Especially if you combine the silence with not having to be around other people at all.
prison life. Comedians made me believe marriage would be the same
Ogged was expecting more anal sex.
28: I sure like them. Again, I'm mostly just eager to hear what happens.
I think I mostly sound skeptical because it's such a wild divergence for this guy - very politically-minded Venezuelan computer programmer, married with kids in the suburbs.
Semi-OT, this post reminds me that the Vox interview (video) with Piper Kerman about prison reform was fairly good. I was already familiar with many of the things that she says, but I thought she presents them well.
29: the ones I've heard about there are other people but you're not supposed to look at each other while you meditate all day (seriously, 12 hours of meditation a day).
I assume there's a wifi connection?
I watched Into Great Silence on Netflix, alone, and didn't say a word.
08:05. Well, breakfast was OK, I suppose. Now to commune with the infinite.
08:20. All done. When's lunch?
08:30. Is it nearly lunchtime yet?
08:40. Alright, a cup of coffee?
08:50. Tea would do. Even chamomile...
09:00. Something... Anything...
35: sure, but the only way to get the WEP password is to meditate until it comes to you.
30: NO ONE EXPECTS THE ANAL SEX!
Probably better just to hole up in a remote cabin and express yourself by mailing packages.
But a CO told me he had been ordered to drive me to a subway station 45 minutes away.
I wonder about this. To the best of my knowledge they always just let you out with a Metrocard and the Q100 shows up and you're on your own.
36: Please tell me this is in your okcupid profile or equivalent, because it totally should be.
I found it sympathetic enough. SO THERE.
29: I did a three-day solo as part of my Outward Bound course. I have never been more bored in my life.
Huh. In other writing of hers that I'd seen, right after she got out, she was quite blunt about how much better she was treated than other prisoners of color, as well as how much worse she was treated than she ever had been before in her life. This is a pointless comment because I don't have time to track them down, though. She seemed eager to use her clout to, for instance, call for an investigation into the death of a prison friend via medical neglect (it was a grisly story). Is all that in the Cosmo piece too?
(Incidentally I seem to recall a profile that said she had a Latino/a parent and had grown up in poverty, although she seems to meet all the criteria for whiteness that anyone cares about. Isn't it great to have a linkdump without links? I should just make stuff up. She also had a 60-day marriage into the House of Saud, which was annulled. She and Zizek had a séance to try to talk to Derrida, which was his idea but then he started acting really weird and it turned into basically a tedious acid-babysitting job; later she wrote nakedly about her absurd regret that he didn't hit on her. I'll try to find sources for this over lunch.)
46: A lot of that is hinted at, but in a very fluffy way - she mentions growing up in a trailer park in East Texas, but in the same breath says that she didn't know they were poor, and also look at these Manolo Blahniks! Her friend Jack died, and should have been in a hospital, and it was sad.
If she writes more thoughtfully elsewhere, it points to the Cosmo editors as being flibbertigibbets.
She and Zizek had a séance to try to talk to Derrida
This was in the Cosmo article except Zizek was Angelina Jolie and Derrida was Marilyn Monroe.
To the best of my knowledge they always just let you out with a Metrocard and the Q100 shows up and you're on your own.
Unless they were specifically trying to forestall the press conference.
Hmm. Zolie I could see, but Derrida has to be Madonna rather than Marilyn, at best. For Marilyn... Heidegger? Jung?
47: there might be links from Justice for Cecily, where she does describe her friend's awful death (although she probably wasn't actually coughing up chunks of liver, I would like to be told firmly and authoritatively). I do not doubt that Cosmo did at least some sexing-up of the text, possibly, in fact, to make the author slightly less sympathetic or pitiable and reassure ordinary readers that she belongs to many worlds that they don't.
but Derrida has to be Madonna rather than Marilyn, at best
Did that give away that I've never read Derrida? Damn!
||If you thought that Arrested Development wasn't a documentary, you were wrong. As explained in awesome detail. "The host of 'a popular reality show' and her husband doing shots by a pool while their daughters, strapped into a stroller, rolled into the water."|>
I did a three-day solo as part of my Outward Bound course. I have never been more bored in my life.
I hiked the Wonderland Trail (the loop around Mt. Rainier) in the off-season, and spent three days straight without seeing another human being. A+++ WOULD EXPERIENCE AGAIN
Also, this seems like a reasonable legal position: "'In our eyes, the ADA is meant to protect people who have suffered blindness, paralysis,' he said. 'And we believe in the ADA. We just don't think the ADA was created to protect people who have Oxycodone and then drink to excess.'"
53: Big difference between going somewhere and being stuck in a 40-foot clearing for three straight days. I spent most of my time planning out all of the meals I was going to have when I got back to civilization.
||I missed an opportunity to ask in a recent thread in which the question would have been more on topic, but since you're here, Halford, I've been meaning to ask (because LAPD) if you ever heard anything about this incident. I realize that the guy who posted it is a trolling trial lawyer, but it struck me as odd that the death went unreported (as far as I can tell; I only know about it because the guy was a friend from high school).|>
56 -- I don't know anything about it, and it seems oddly reported. Condolences about your friend.
Thanks. Figured it was a long shot, but...
Speaking of wildernessy thing, how much does weight matter on a hiking trip. For example, I have a nice tent. It weights ten pounds. Is it worth it to buy a second tent for hiking, one that weights maybe 6 pounds? Assume I'm lazy and cheap and hiking less than five miles (one way).
59: I probably wouldn't bother for 5 miles unless it has a lot of vertical. Fwiw though back when I wasn't far too lazy to do this sort of thing, I did acquire a 3lb climbing tent and it did make a lot of difference in how I felt about my pack. It was tiny though (but 4 season)
I have similar questions about sleeping bags. I don't like having two versions of seldom used things. I'm trying to decide on a reasonable $/lb conversion. Or just refusing to go unless we drive to the site and then hike. Because that's basically the same thing as hiking to the site and then camping.
Ime, sleeping bags scale differently. Within the same quality band, cost (and less so, weight) scales with the lowest comfortable temperature. Outside the same quality band, it is more bulk than weight that you change. There are confounding factors like, does this work at all if soaking wet, but otherwise you are trading off how they achieve loft (e.g. Down vs synthetic). For casual use, most of this doesn't matter too much, and you just want to make sure it is In the right temperature range.
Back when I did multi-day trips I went for the lighter sleeping bag, tent, backpack, but except for the tent I only had one of each that I used anyway. I would judge by what total weight you think you could carry. If you're prepared to carry as much as 50 pounds and a 10 pound tent doesn't put you over, it's fine.
Full disclosure: I come off sounding outdoorsy here but I really haven't been for 15 years, so this may be out of date. These days I'm much more authoritative on various couch upholstery .
I am worried about total weight, unless you can make an eight-year-old carry more than I think you can.
Which I figure is maybe his own sleeping bag/clothing and enough Starburst jelly beans to count as Johnny Diabetes Seed.
With an 8 year old, I'd consider the trade off of having a less nice tent. Like soup, it's been a long time since I've done this sort of thing. Some of the trips were when I was in boy scouts and some kids do some serious whining about comfort.
Fwiw in the do past I had also managed to rent some good quality light gear from a climbing place, quite cheaply. Wasn't willing to spring for new.
I have rented an REI tent. Maybe I'll just shop for a bit more, close all my browser windows, and stay home.
Riffing off of 56... I decided to spend some time the other night working on the database of police-involved shootings.
The name I ended up researching was a horribly sad case (13-year-old killed by a police Jeep while riding his bicycle in semi-rural Wyoming), made odder by the fact that it was near-impossible to find any news stories about it. And my research skills are fairly good.
Granted, I only spent about an hour on it, but all I could come up with was a fragment, allegedly from an AP article, that was reposted on a rather melodramatic GoogleGroup (or YahooGroup, I can't remember now). I moved on to non-news sources and those were just as thin on the ground.
The worst was that, as far as I can tell from funeral home information, six months after he did, his parents lost another child -- a month-old baby. So, so sad.
Hey heebie! Good to "see" you all. I can't stay for long but good to see the place is still humming.
Also, I was tempted to argue with 1, but in all honesty I can't. It's the nature of activists to be gadflies (or worse).
I was expecting cargo and ogged didn't bring any.
Maybe I could take a diuretic and a laxative before hiking. That would save weight more cheaply.
Derrida has to be Madonna
Much like Archive Fever, Like a Virgin is concerned with the beginnings of things.
The lighter your gear is, the more whiskey you can bring along.
19, 23, 36: Into Great Silence is awesome.
45: Bring a book next time, Grizzly Adams.
82.last: reading material was specifically prohibited.
Derrida has to be Madonna
Or Prince, aka Symbol.
83: Well, bring a notebook and log the television series you intend to watch when you get home.
Be the TV series you want to see in the world.