Speaking of toxic fans! Racist incidents are on the rise in the WNBA fandom, and even as someone who barely pays attention to professional basketball, I can hear the tone policing going on within the media coverage of women’s basketball. It’s like some people expect “the girls” to “play pretty”, and don’t allow for them to just be highly competitive athletes who want to win at the highest level. With an influx of new fans can come some pretty sh-tty fan behavior, too. (Popsugar)
Naomi Watts and a Great Dane hit the red carpet for that dog movie she’s in. (Go Fug Yourself)
Garth Brooks has been accused of sexual assault and battery by a former employee, and he tried to get the case thrown out anonymously. Everyone’s waiting for the next domino to fall with Diddy, but we shouldn’t take our eyes off Garth Brooks, either. (Celebitchy)
I can vouch for the deliciousness of the burger sold in the Meers Store and Restaurant in Meers, Oklahoma (the cobbler is also good). I can also vouch that the town, which is now just the restaurant, is pretty f-cking depressing, a relic of Oklahoma’s land-grab past. The west is full of ghost towns, or nearly dead towns, once booming railroad, mining, and/or ranching hubs that have petered out as jobs moved toward cities and away from manual labor and agriculture. There’s something especially bleak about Meers, though, maybe because there never was a golden age, there never was any gold. It’s a town built on a wish, and it died like most wishes do. But damn, those burgers are really good. (Eater)
Spooky tales! The accabadora is a Sardinian angel of death, an old woman who sends the dying on their way. A folkloric figure, the accabadora is receiving a feminist reappraisal, as we unpick the history of witches from patriarchal structures and understanding. Were there really old women who mercy-killed in Sardinia? Maybe? Maybe not! The folklore persists regardless, and as is very common with women in folklore, the image of the ugly crone carrying out her deeds in darkness was heavily influenced by the Catholic church (who also demonized Germany’s alewives).
Accabadoras also performed midwifery and healing services, so even if they weren’t mercy-killing the residents of their towns, there definitely were women in Sardinia who ran afoul of the church and patriarchal governments for possessing knowledge and skills the burgeoning medical establishment—the exclusive domain of men—wanted rights to perform and monetize. So much of the history of witches is the history of pushing women out of communities, out of education, and out of self-reliance. (Atlas Obscura)