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I had a period of going to bars by myself. It's scary because it feels so taboo. But, trust me, no one is looking at you like - what a weirdo. What I do if it's night is just bring my iphone so I can read (ipad works too). But honestly, if you sidle up to a bar with a friendly bartender, you'll have some conversation…

I am male, here is my advice.

Oh for fuck's sake.

• You're writing style

Ugh, yeah, I worked at a place for about a year that worked with wedding clients a lot of the time, and it was appalling to see the kind of money these people would drop on all the festivities. It's incredible excess, and it REALLY turned me off of the idea of doing all the fancy stuff for my own (eventual, probable)…

It's the Wedding Industrial Complex. At some point a few years ago, people in the wedding industry decided that since there's only so many people who are going to get married, the only way to grow industry profits would be to encourage people to have bigger and ever more lavish celebrations. And it's been really…

I don't get it either. And just to be a debbie downer, isn't having a baby shower before the baby is born kind of taunting fate? Like...what if something happens to your baby? My little sister was born with half a heart, and died at three days old. And there was no indication before she was born that anything was…

Dear Open Letters,

I'm not sure about NZ, but in many parts of the world there's a kind of grace range, often 4 years, permitted between sexual partners crossing the legal age, ensuring that they are at least peers. Even where there isn't, there's unlikely to be a prosecution for such a narrow age gap, and given that he was only 16 (I…

Not to rain on anyone's parade, but there are not even words for how much I hate this. On every possible level. Also, can we just stop having suburban white people rap as a joke please? Pretty please? With a seriously, stop it, it is 0% funny on top?

It sounds like a clear cut case of bullying and harassment. By the local news media that is.

Some of the law issues are explored in the comments on this Public Address article. Beware; there's also a bit of armchair-lawyerism from people who like to argue hypotheticals so you might be triggered - but some insightful comments about how the police might be prevented from using the online bragging as evidence.…

So I get that they can't charge them with sexual assault if none of the victims press charges, but if there are several videos of them claiming/bragging about raping young girls and how they are going to keep doing it, can't that be considered a serious enough threat to arrest them? And if they took videos, wouldn't…

Because even a confession needs to be corroborated by other evidence, such a victim statement, a complaining witness, even a date and/or location where the crime supposedly occurred so police can investigate to find witnesses or evidence. Otherwise, it's just a statement that may or may not be true and that alone is…

Why can't they arrest any of them? They're bragging about it, ffs.

I mean, Jezebel doesn't say it's feminist either. So.

I'm a little bit confused about what I'm supposed to take away from this article.

Thank you for that. I would really like to do away with the phrase "farmer's wife." Unless we're talking about recent times and the woman in question has a job in the standard labor market, a "farmer's wife" is just a farmer who happens to be a married woman.