It’s an odd style; plus people resent it when someone adopts it. Madonna was endlessly jeered when she picked up the posh, international, pronunciations of Atlantic English while living in the UK.

My husband is in a similar boat. He’s Minnesotan, and he’s worked very hard not to sound like one. However, you get him on the phone with his mom, and oh my, he’s eating his toast on a boat.

The same is not true in Ireland. We always had more accents per square foot than was strictly needed, or sane; and they just seem to get stronger every year. I’m from Cork City and there’s parts of Cork City where I honestly can not understand one fucking word.

No idea why this is so, but it is.

I never had the slightest Boston/New England accent until I moved to North Florida. Whenever I speak to someone who has a strong southern accent, I start to drop my Rs.

Yeah I don’t find this particularly sad at all. She seems to have a lot more self-awareness and introspection than most old people, former celebs or not.

Everybody loves gossip. Nobody loves a gossiper.

I’m a little torn. She’s admittedly old, about which she can do nothing. And it seems that she regrets that she’s not...powerful, I guess...like she was earlier. And, to me, to feel regret because you’re not “powerful” is kind of sad. But she worked to be powerful and she reveled in it and benefited from it…

I only hope if I live to be 94 I don’t spend too much time thinking about an old profession. She COULD be doing other things- you’re exactly right.

I think “positivity culture” is kind of a secular recreation of religious responses to adversity.

I don’t know. I read that article this morning and was surprised at the number of comments about it being “sad.” IMO, just the fact that Smith is 94 years old and has enough mental acuity to be aware of her irrelevance automatically makes it not sad. What is unfortunate is that she only defines herself by what she…

Screen name sister!

“For now, the women are using their aggressive positivity to float above the negative press”

i’m branded a weirdo all the time. I don’t use apps. I don’t use facebook. I don’t use Uber or anythign like it. Not so much because I’m against a sharing economy. I just don’t trust it. And I hate giving out personal information or allowing apps to track me. I do, however, like commenting on blogs.

You are much more likely to be assaulted by your airbnb host than your hotel manager. I say this as someone who has found all of my housing since 2001 on craigslist. So I’m not a technophobe. But, I know, from having worked in hotels, that its a very depersonalized relationship between manager and guest. Which is good…

The sharing economy is one of the most dystopian things about the 21st century. People in the US see it as a new, shiny thing because it is cloaked in technology. And also because these startups have articulated the relationship between vendors and clients using the language of friendship.

But...why does that matter with regards what we should do now? We don’t need history to tell us whether it’s okay to care about children in a cultural context. Even if it’s never been done before, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start now.

And extending that to other parents should mean that we understand why someone would pay a coyote to smuggle their kid across a border or why they would come here to find a job so their kid doesn’t starve.

I think it all depends how you show that care, there’s a big difference between being a caring parent and a helicopter one.

If I may be blunt, it’s pretty hard to care too much about your own children. As a parent, my little guy is my number 1 priority. Over my spouse, parents, family, friends and everyone else.

John Mulaney has a bit in one of his standup specials where he says that he grew up before children were special, and I know what he means. I was often allowed to just sort of do as I pleased, and those days are over. However, I think we now live in a time in which only one’s own children have any value. Other…