But that's in large part because of the critics of common core at the outset: a lot of states rebelled at the idea that they wouldn't be able to decide what was important in those disciplines.

I teach junior high, too! If your situation is one where you can relocate, I strongly recommend going to Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Kansas City, Little Rock, or cites like those (south/midwest, mid-size cities). There are teaching shortages or have been in the last three years in all four of the cities I listed—they're…

Ughhh that's useless advice. (And a shitty family situation.) But I have totally been that friend before: when people share stories of things like fucked up relatives or terrible problems at work, I don't know whether they're looking to unload or get advice. And in situations like yours, there really isn't a lot of…

Advice, please! My roommate used to always say incredibly judgmental things whenever our mutual friends or I would be talking about casual sex: to the tune of "I was raised with better morals," or "I guess I just respect myself more than that." I chalked it up to her religious upbringing and just tried to watch what…

Mind if I ask what you want to teach? (I've taught secondary in a few different cities, and I've found that schools are always desperate for qualified hard-working folks to come into the classroom. If that hasn't been your experience—and especially added on to your current frustration with your romantic life—moving…

I meant more that I don't think of Hartnett as giving off a gothic/horror edge—but yeah, I guess I also think it's weird to have an American at the center of a show about turn-of-the-century London horror.

Looks cool! But what the hell is Josh Hartnett doing in a show about gothic London?

I think it might be a class thing, too: lately, the people drinking whole milk are the people who make an effort to eat foots that are as unprocessed as possible. Locally sourced whole milk dairy is up there with organic produce these days. (At a lot of the hipster-y coffeeshops I go to, they don't even offer skim…

(I've been doing that all day. Sometimes the possibility of interesting discussions aren't worth the likelihood of vitriolic arguments fueled by purposeful misinterpretations.)

Three of the cities with top relationship formation rates have military bases. I'm guessing that people thinking "Colorado Springs, here I come!" aren't necessarily thinking about how factors like that might be artificially inflating the relationship formation rate: that is, there might be a lot of coupling up that's…

As someone who teaches in a low-income school, I agree. But I guess I don't understand why they can't both be discussed and addressed simultaneously.

In all the furor over Common Core standards, things like this—these huge, monumental gaps in learning that happen from so many causes: a teacher doesn't include something in her curriculum, assuming it will be taught the text year; a teacher doesn't teach something, assuming it is far too remedial to spend time…

Yeah, that would really piss me off, too—that someone who is supposed to be modeling good teaching would be using shitty instructional strategies. Yeesh.

Move. I went into social justice work after college that required flexibility in location, and I ended up in a small city in the Southwest. I graduated at the height of the recession, and all of my friends in big cities on the East Coast were struggling to get a job, let alone their dream job. But in cities like…

Yeah, I'm thinking that's exactly what happened. 90% of the video is the same dancing at the reception—something definitely happened with the video of the ceremony.

That's the video? It seems exactly like every wedding video that I've seen for most young/trendy weddings in the last few years—the artsy cuts at the start, the toasts over the dancing, etc. The only thing I can think might piss them off is that there aren't any shots of the ceremony itself. (Which is kind of weird.)

Relevant: 2:40

True. And as a woman who tries to be very self-aware about the way that I perceive people based on appearance, I still struggle with not paying excessive attention to things like flaky skin coated with powder, lipstick on teeth, eyeliner smudged like a black eye, etc. What a double whammy of "damned if we don't,…

Eh, her face makeup isn't really blending well with her skin tone.

I'm a little confused by this comment. You say that you think it's disgusting that men want women to engage in pseudo-lesbian play ("they look at you like a piece of meat!") but conversely want men to engage in a similar type of sexual play. You're unhappy with the idea of this kind of performative lesbianism, but…