Influenced by feminism. Ideas are a mostly unattributable amalgamation of other ideas. I write, but don't call me a writer.
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So You’ve Decided to Get Into a Low-Stakes Fight!

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fight1. Begin with the assumption that you are acting in good faith and your opponent is not. You are trying to get to the bottom of something important, and they are trying to score cheap points. You are perfectly willing to sacrifice your needs, your schedule, your prioritiesonce againfor the sake of harmony and they are determined to take all they can from you before sucking you dry.

How dare they do that to you, that thing they’re doing or thinking of doing. After all you’ve done for them. Think about everything you’ve ever done for them, in extensive detail. Congratulate yourself for each and every one of them.

2. Remember everything that they have ever done to you. Catalogue it, make it into a list, laminate the list, hang the list up in the torched and selfless halls of your heart. Be prepared to dredge any and all of those things–those terrible, terrible things–into the conversation at a moment’s notice. You remember the things perfectly, all of them.

3. Remind yourself how hard you’ve worked to get to where you are, wherever that is. Without anybody’s help. You cracked your nails and split your knuckles clawing for everything you have, and they’ve had all they ever wanted fall into their waiting and useless lap. And does this make them appreciate your hard work? It does not.

(Ask yourself a great deal of rhetorical questions. This way you can have a supportive, encouraging conversation without having to talk to anyone who isn’t you.)

Remember the Nevers. They never supported you, not really, not even when they said they did or pretended to or made it look like they did. Nobody has ever truly supported you in the way you really needed, so everything and everyone is fair game.

4. fight This is a matter of integrity. Your integrity. Your integrity–your beautiful, untarnished, your precious integrity–is being beset by all manners of traps, stratagems and snares from

every side. The stakes aren’t the point. Of course the stakes aren’t the point. You don’t care about the stakes! It’s laughable to suggest that the stakes are what matter to you. You would gladly concede the stakes, if they’re going to care so much about the damn stakes. But it’s the principle of the thing. The very, very important principle that you’re fighting for.

5. Remember that criticism is the same thing as jealousy, and anything rooted in jealousy cannot possibly be true and is subject to immediate and permanent dismissal.

6. When at last your opponent becomes visibly upset, you have two options, both excellent:

“I feel really unsafe around you right now.” You may choose to back away here, in order to highlight how terrifying and inappropriately over-the-top their reaction is. “I really can’t talk to you about this right now, if you’re going to make me feel unsafe like this.” The natural exasperation that results from this will of course only prove your point. Or:

“When you get irrational and hysterical like this, it’s really difficult for me to have an adult conversation with you.” Say this slowly, but not so slowly you could be accused of taking advantage of your position. “I’m not trying to upset you. I’m really sorry that this is clearly so hard for you. I don’twantyou to be upset, but I can’t help it if that’s your response.” You cannot help a tiny smile at that last part, or the dark and liquid glee that sinks through your entire body, down to your fingers and your toes.

7. all sides.

Exaggerate your disbelief. “Really,” you say. “Really.”

8. Send an unpleasant email.

To anyone. About anything.9.

Tell a lie

about the fight to an uninvolved third party. Make it sound plausible, but so verifiably untrue that it would take the merest of efforts on their part to find out that you were lying. After telling the lie, whenever you run into them again, read into their every gesture and response to determine whether or not they have found you out. Wait for them to pull away from you. Come to expect and even hope for it. Feel heartsick when they do. Casually, even cheerfully, repeat the lie for no reason a month later. Look them in the eye as you tell it. Dare them to challenge what you’ve said.10. When they become panicked enough at the prospect of parting ways over something so small, now is your chance to take advantage of their desperate honesty. Tell them to a third party.

“I don’t understand,” after they struggle to give you a candid and sensitive description of their perspective. The more willing they become to assume fault, the more disinterestedly blameless you must appear. Ask for another you tell them. Ask for an explanation. Explain yourself again. Explain to them why their explanation doesn’t make any sense. “I don’t understand,” you’ll you say again, as if they’d never tried to explain in the first place.

The post So You’ve Decided to Get Into a Low-Stakes Fight! appeared first on The Toast.

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dcwarwick
4138 days ago
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Edmonton, AB, Canada
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graydon
4137 days ago
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Help me help you
grammargirl
4138 days ago
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I <3 The Toast so much already, and it hasn't even been a week yet.
Brooklyn, NY
smadin
4138 days ago
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The internet, literally constantly.
Boston

The Craziest Thing You'll See Today: The Greubel Forsey Art Piece 1, A Watch Containing a Microsculpture By Willard Wigan (Live Pics, Details, Pricing)

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As if the superlative multi-tourbillon watches that Robert Greubel and Stephen Forsey typically produce weren't enough, the pair have teamed up with artist Willard Wigan to create Art Piece 1. The watch houses both a Greubel Forsey 30 degree double-tourbillon and a Wigan microsculpture that you can admire through a magnifier in the crown at 9 o'clock. Sometimes we talk about timepieces being works of art, but the Art Piece 1 pushes this to a whole new level. Click through for a full explanation and tons of hands-on photos.


Robert Greubel, Stephen Forsey, And Willard Wigan

British artist Willard Wigan might not be a household name, but in the art world he is something of a legend and he was presented a knighthood by Prince Charles in 2007. For decades Wigan has been making sculptures that fit on the heads of pins and inside the eyes of needles, with some being even smaller than a human red blood cell. Pretty crazy, right? Even more intense is how he has to craft these tiny objects - using tools like diamond shards and hairs from house flies, Wigan shapes them under a microscope during the time between his own heartbeats to avoid shaking. And one of these sculptures sits inside the Art Piece 1.


Greubel Forsey 30 Degree Double Tourbillon

Along with Wigan's sculpture is one of Greubel Forsey's signature 30 degree double tourbillons. The interior cage, which is the one tilted at 30 degrees, rotates once per minute, while the outer cage sits parallel with the dial and completes a rotation every four minutes. A massive curved bridge holds the double tourbillon suspended between the sapphire crystal and caseback, and you can see right through it. Cliche aside, the execution here is something you really need to see to appreciate.


The Tourbillon From Behind

The dial itself is a beautiful blue color and the mainplate (visible through the sapphire caseback) is engraved with the names of the three artists involved here: Robert Greubel, Stephen Forsey, and Willard Wigan. A 72-hour power reserve indicator for the tourbillon sits around 4 o'clock. Just above this is a plate that reads "GF Art Piece 1," and when you push the button at 4 o'clock on the case, the plate moves aside and that red arrow points to the time on a 12-hour disc. The time is only there when you need it, letting Wigan's sculpture and the tourbillons take all the attention. o'clock, though it's important to note that this is the only indicator you'll find anywhere on Art Piece 1. The crown at 3 o'clock is used exclusively for winding the tourbillon. This is truly a sculpture and not a "watch" in the way you'd expect.


The Willard Wigan Microsculpture In Art Piece 1


23x Magnifier In The "Crown" At 9 O'Clock

The real treat though comes from looking through magnifier at 9 o'clock, which is styled to look like a second crown. You'll notice a dark blue bridge supporting what looks like a speck of gold from the dial-side, but looking through the 23x magnifier set into the crystal, you can see Wigan's sculpture crisply and clearly. Here we have a three mast galleon that seems to be sailing across the blue support. All the open-working allows tons of light in, letting you get a great look at the sculpture without any artificial assistance.


The Willard Wigan Microsculpture Magnified

As you would expect, very few pieces of the Art Piece 1 will be made, each containing an entirely unique microsculpture from Wigan. This "Golden Sails" edition is for sale under $2 million, though official pricing is only available upon request. Enjoy the gallery below, and visit Greubel Forsey and Willard Wigan for more.













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dcwarwick
4153 days ago
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Incredible.
Edmonton, AB, Canada
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brico
4154 days ago
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Ship in a watch
Brooklyn, NY

Single photograph looks like 4 individual photographs

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Photographer Bela Borsodi fastidiously manipulated household items in the photograph below to create an image that looks like 4 photographs. Created as an album cover for the band VLP, I can confirm it's possible to stare at this picture for many minutes.

Bela Borsodi

Bela Borsodi

Here's the photo again from a different angle, and if you're interested, here's a video of the process used to create the image.

Bela Borsodi Off Axis

Bela Borsodi Off Axis

(via unified pop theory and reddit, thx, alex)

Tags: Bela Borsodiphotography
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dcwarwick
4153 days ago
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Very neat.
Edmonton, AB, Canada
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jordanrpdx
4150 days ago
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This is cool I want to try it!
iPhone: 45.536617,-122.653656
sblom
4153 days ago
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Incredible photography hack.
Bellevue, WA
ktgeek
4153 days ago
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Fantastic, but it makes my head hurt
Bartlett, IL
bronzehedwick
4153 days ago
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Wow, this is really cool.
Tarrytown, NY
Courtney
4153 days ago
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this is deeply soothing to my brain.
Portland, OR
samuel
4154 days ago
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I love how there's a perfectly stationed cab in the second photograph.
Cambridge, Massachusetts
martinkenny
4154 days ago
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Awesome!
Adelaide, South Australia
deezil
4156 days ago
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Wow
Shelbyville, Kentucky
megankills
4156 days ago
Aaaaah it hurts my head but I can't stop looking.

This is what happens when a Canadian car dealership gets robbed.

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This is what happens when a Canadian car dealership gets robbed.

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dcwarwick
4158 days ago
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Hah. There are times when I like living in this province.
Edmonton, AB, Canada
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Courtney
4158 days ago
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OH CANADA. <3
Portland, OR

gifcraft: Amazing resonance experiment with salt Using a...

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gifcraft:

Amazing resonance experiment with salt
Using a vibrating metal plate connected to tone generator, Scientist Bruss Pup performs scientific magic by seemingly controlling and manipulating grains of salt to dance in specific patterns.

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dcwarwick
4158 days ago
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Edmonton, AB, Canada
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LonelyBob
4158 days ago
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Whoa
Saitama, Japan

The Pace of Modern Life

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'Unfortunately, the notion of marriage which prevails ... at the present time ... regards the institution as simply a convenient arrangement or formal contract ... This disregard of the sanctity of marriage and contempt for its restrictions is one of the most alarming tendencies of the present age.' --John Harvey Kellogg, Ladies' guide in health and disease (1883)
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dcwarwick
4158 days ago
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And on it goes.
Edmonton, AB, Canada
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chrisamico
4145 days ago
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All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.
Boston, MA
oliverzip
4148 days ago
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Has twitter wrecked modern communcation?
Sydney, Balmain, Hornsby.
izogi
4157 days ago
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Fortunately, as I'm informed, it had all calmed down again by the time of my parents' generation.
antgiant
4157 days ago
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"Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things." -- Douglas Adams
Oviedo, Florida
bloodvayne
4156 days ago
Society will be society, what's interesting is how inherently the "nostalgia fallacy" is simply society's self-preservation against seemingly "hostile" undercurrent. Reminds me of this article from Art of Manliness, also a very thorugh read http://www.artofmanliness.com/2012/07/12/the-generations-of-men-how-the-cycles-of-history-have-shaped-your-values-your-place-in-the-world-and-your-idea-of-manhood/
stsquad
4157 days ago
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Nice commentary on modern commentary.
Cambridge, UK
bscherrer
4158 days ago
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@mahea50 Word.
San Diego, California
iridesce
4158 days ago
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now let's make one for "damn kids are spoiled and have no respect for their elders these days"
DC
iridesce
4158 days ago
whoops, nevermind, i see you 1906.
rgsunico
4158 days ago
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Brilliant.
marcrichter
4157 days ago
tl;dnr :P
redson
4158 days ago
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The Golden Age Fallacy in action.
claysmith
4158 days ago
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“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” — Ecclesiastes 1:9
Escondido, CA
taddevries
4158 days ago
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Get off my internet lawn you free loaders.
mscholes
4158 days ago
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The summary is beautiful ;-)
benmurray
4158 days ago
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Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things. -- Douglas Adams
adamgurri
4158 days ago
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the public comments on this comic seem to imply everyone swallows the premise of the letters...I had though Munroe's point was more that we keep hearing the same arguments over and over again in each age.
New York, NY
btomhave
4158 days ago
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Those who fail to learn from history... yada yada yada...
Michdevilish
4158 days ago
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Definitive proof that human faculties have been dwindling since at least 1871, and show no signs of abating in their sad dwindleMent...
Canada
the7roy
4158 days ago
1871? Try ~360 BCE when Plato wrote, "they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality."
PaulPritchard
4158 days ago
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Nostalgia isn't as good as it used to be.
Belgium
internetionals
4158 days ago
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Nice to see it spelled out to people that "nostalgia" is of all times. And the that troubles of today were often already there earlier, but people just remember them differently.
Netherlands
Ludwig
4158 days ago
Consider the possibility that the authors of these quotes were correct (well, except the divorce and nudity one,) like that Aristotle quote where he bitches about “kids these days,” instead of resigning it to “ah, it was ever thus.”
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