• Yahoo! buys tumblr. for $1.1 billion.

• Yahoo! drops a vowel to promote cross-brand synergy, becomes Yaho!.

• All Yaho! employees now required to work from home, in the middle of the night, when they're about to go to bed after they read this one last thing.

• Both private-messaging features offered by tumblr. (now called "Tumblr?" for punctuational synergy) include a Sent folder. Users reel in confusion: "I can see both sides of the conversation? I don't understand. Which part did I say?"

• Yaho!'s women's section, Shine (now "Shne"), now just GIF after GIF of Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

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Dream job alert.

First, graduate college. Congrats, you did it. Read a bunch of trend pieces about how the economy is in the crapper and thousands of college graduates are moving home with mom and dad. Consider the prospect of moving into your childhood bedroom with the flimsy wood paneling, where you can hear your parents rutting vigorously in the next room. Still in love after all these years.

Panic, have stress diarrhea. You're on the precipice, although you don't know it yet. For a short while longer you'll still be a virgin. Your Search Engine Optimization hymen is intact and would be worth 100, even 200 goats in some areas of the Internet. In the future you will look back on this time and wonder at the sweet, naïve girl you used to be. Before you could slip a link about diet pills into a blog post about rubber playground floors. Back when you took the Internet at face value.

Follow a lead from a friend who “worked freelance” one summer. Send in a writing sample to a company that sells scammy diet pills and get a job without an interview. Ben says you'll be perfect for the new health blog they're starting, with your background in science and writing. You talk briefly on Skype, and he's beautiful and obnoxious. He wears an expensive t-shirt and his hair is gelled into an urban bouffant. It will be a few weeks before the full picture of your situation settles in. Before you'll visualize hate-fucking Ben, rubbing his face into a bunch of articles with titles like “50 Cool Facts About Strawberries,” “Mohican Indian Resource List,” and “The Best Documentaries on Eating Green.”

You like that content, Ben? You like that?  READ MORE

Well, today you can take 15% off your next Seamless order, until 3 a.m. tomorrow morning (use code gimme15). Or if you order from Seamless more than once a day, maybe it'll be your next-next order. There must be some kind of cocktail of reasons for why certain people spend so much time looking at Seamless menus online. Do other people do this, too? The main reason I used to leave my house was to buy things I'd then bring back and consume, but Seamless eliminates even this need. Thank you, Seamless. Seamless taught me. Seamless taught me.

1. Newspapers

Newspapers record breaking current events with local and global perspectives. They also feature cartoons that make you chuckle although you aren’t sure why, and sometimes editorials written by your dad that you pretend to understand. In addition to serving as daily chronicles for the people, they also tell you what your day is going to be like based on your astrological sign. They've been around since ancient Rome, where news items were things like “Eating Lying Down Still Awesome” and “Another Day, Another Christian Eaten By A Lion,” and, finally, “Bread and Circus: The Big Con Caesar Doesn’t Want You To Know About.” They're typically printed on cheaper paper, and used to be folks wrapped their fish in them. They've suffered since the recession, but never doubt the ability of this classy in-touch broad(sheet) to bounce back.

Get This Look:  READ MORE

In February 2013 I was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer. I was 18 weeks pregnant at the time. This is an ongoing comic about it all.

Artist and animator Matilda Tristram is documenting her simultaneous pregnancy/cancer battle both in
comics and on Twitter.

In addition to being poignant and funny and really interesting, the project sheds a strange retrospective light on an earlier comic of hers, “Having Babies Is Easy.”

This amazing Slate piece takes to task America’s choices for official state birds as “a big joke.” Apparently, governmental ornithologists (or whoever makes the bird decisions around here) demonstrated “a general lack of thought” and didn’t even “research the bill color” of their selections.

It's a fun read, even though the author failed to recognize that at least one state should have a dinosaur for a state bird, because same diff. Maybe Utah—they find a lot of fossils there. Extinction doesn't matter. Grizzly bears are extinct in California, and they still have one on the flag.

1. Lentils. Why do I keep messing them up? They are never a) the same texture twice, or b) the texture I want them to be.

The big lentil secret that most recipes never seem to bother telling you is how totally different all of the varieties are. Each has it's own unique texture, flavor, and way that it likes to be treated. Hopefully a quick breakdown of the most common lentils, and what to do with them will help!

• Yellow or Red Lentils: These are your classic dal lentils, perfect for soups and other loose puree things. They break down into mash when cooked, so don't use them for recipes where you want lentils to retain their structural integrity. For the best and easiest soupy red/yellow lentil thing, saute some onions, garlic, and ginger, throw in lentils and broth (a two cups of broth for every cup of lentils ratio usually works well), and finish it off with some sriracha and whatever greens you have lurking at the bottom of your vegetable drawer.

• Puy or Green Lentils: The caviar of lentils, puy lentils are super fancy, French, and great in lentil salads. They hold their shape really well, and have a nice, kind of nutty flavor. Cook them simply, toss them with vinaigrette, and call it a salade aux lentils.

• Black Lentils: These hold their shape really well, and make a great side dish braised with some root vegetables or turned into a salad with some garlic and fresh herbs. They're also delicious cooked in water, than tossed with pasta, caramelized onions, and kale.

• Brown Lentils: Your basic workhorse lentils, what you should use if a recipe just says “lentils.” They make great soup, because they straddle the line between goopy and firm, and are also the best thing ever when cooked with fried onions and rice, like my Sephardic great grandma used to make.

If your problem is messing up the same variety in a number of ways, than the main thing to remember is to use enough liquid, and enough salt. Keep the temperature of your stove low as well to prevent those puppies from scorching, and you'll be fine. Recipes will tell you to add specific amounts of liquid, but really, you should keep checking and stirring and add whatever amount of liquid looks like it needs to be added. This is easier than it sounds, I promise.  READ MORE

Turns out, booty shaking and stamping your husband’s last name on a product of your own creativity makes a lot of folks question your feminist values. (Beyoncé recently told Vogue UK that though the word “can be extreme...I guess I am a modern-day feminist. I believe in equality.”) Some of the equivocation is no doubt caused by Beyoncé’s slick, pop-princess brand. It is difficult to square the singer’s mainstream packaging with subversion of conventional and sexist views of gender. But ultimately, the policing of feminist cred is the real moral contradiction. And the judgment of how Beyoncé expresses her womanhood is emblematic of the way women in the public eye are routinely picked apart—in particular, it’s a demonstration of the conflicting pressures on black women and the complicated way our bodies and relationships are policed.

Tamara Winfrey Harris has published perhaps the most comprehensive analysis of the public's perceptions of Beyoncé's feminism over at Bitch Magazine (Hairpin contributor Anne Helen Petersen is quoted at length), and elsewhere, we've got a new leak from the Queen Bey's new album. A friend described "Grown Woman" as a "B-side 'End of Time,'" which is pretty spot-on. I'm having issues with the piped-in fake crowd music, but that "'cause I walk with a vengeance" line is too good. (Edit: The leak has been un-leaked.)

This is a little late, but in case you missed it, here's a gorgeous song and video from rising British soul musician Laura Mvula, who also has an excellent new[ish] album out: Sing to the Moon. Need that red dress.

Laura Mvula is currently on tour. Go see her! Or listen to her on NPR. Definitely watch her other videos.

Out of all of the horrible news coming out of Moore, Okla., here is one nice thing, courtesy of a CBS interview yesterday: Standing in the rubble of her home, Moore resident Barbara Garcia recounts sitting on a stool in her bathroom as the storm hit, holding her dog, and then losing the stool from under her. At the end of the interview, she finds the dog.

You can find information about how to help Oklahoma's tornado victims here.

In 1969, a young dancer named Morganna Roberts jumped onto the field at Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium, ran up to Reds star Pete Rose, and kissed him. She was making good on a friend's "dirty double dare," she said later, but it started one of the more unusual forms of fame America has ever known. She kissed more than 50 professional athletes throughout the next 30 years, including Chipper Jones and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and she became something of a mascot in the major leagues, where she was widely known as the "Kissing Bandit."

Adam Kurland released Always Leave Them Wanting More (language and some visuals NSFW), a documentary short about Morganna's life, over on Roopstigo this month, and it's worth a watch—though it doesn't mention my favorite detail about her run. From a July 1988 Milwaukee Journal story [sic'd]:

She got into a lot of trouble after she ran onto the field at the Astrodome on April 9, 1985, and kissed Nolan Ryan and Dickie Thon of Houston. She was arrested on charges that could have gotten her a year in jail.

"We won the case on the gravity defense," she said. "I just leaned over the fence and gravity took its toll and took me into the arms of Nolan Ryan and Dickie Thon. Whose gonna argue with Isaac Newton?"

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For months now, I’ve been leaving a glowing trail of dessert recipes. Recently I’ve begun to gather them up, turn on my oven, and bake. But once I get going, I’m like Hansel and Gretel gnawing on the witch’s house: I CAN’T STOP MYSELF. I want a taste of this, and oooh, what does that taste like, and what would it be like if I mixed this with that one over there… and before I know it, I’ve cooked enough to build my very own magical sugary cottage.

There are an infinite number of scrumptious cakes, and I don’t know if it’s even possible to pick favorites, but I loooove carrot cake. I picked carrot cake for my many-moons-ago July wedding (frosted, too-sweet, still wonderful), and baked carrot cake cupcakes for my daughter’s first birthday (overly dense, but with the simplest, best walnut cream cheese frosting ever). There are so many ways to make a lovely carrot cake, and even if they’re not everything you’d hoped for and then some, usually they’re still pretty great. 

My personal preference is for a less-sweet carrot cake. You know, the kind you can respectably gobble up for breakfast. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I definitely get excited about sweet-sweets. But, I’ve always felt there are two kinds of sweets: after-dinner-only sweets, and breakfast-sweets. My version of carrot cake — adapted from this gem of a recipe, and this — is definitely a *breakfast*-sweet. A flourless cake, it’s loaded with moist carrots and light, ground almonds and just the right amount of sugar and spice. And FYI, it’s totally worth it to buy almond extract if you don’t have it already – it makes the cake smell like Passover almond macaroons.

I’ve spotted versions of this cake with ground roasted hazelnuts instead of almonds (which I think would be incredible, right??). Toasted almond slices on top would be a fine touch, too. And I’ve seen versions topped with cream cheese frosting, vegan coconut-cream frosting, whipped cream, and powdered sugar. Personally, I thought the cake was perfect as is, but you can decide for yourself.

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