Sorry, Cass. I shoulda' put a warning in that post.

It wasn't easy to read, but I'm glad I did. Also, the cat nation idea was pretty great.

the cat nation idea was pretty great.

That was the only part of that post I liked. I mean, I'm glad Matthew Inman's family was safe, and he's a resilient person, but -- yeah, pretty much the whole thing was really upsetting. But I would have read it if I were on The Oatmeal's page (versus it being linked here, is what I mean), so I'm not upset it was linked here or anything.

ION, we are all ready to kill an author. We are literally a month behind schedule. Our process is to edit an article, typeset it, proofread it, correct it, and then send a galley proof to the author. Cumulatively, we can spend upwards of 12-15 hours on some really complicated articles before a galley ever goes to the author.

So, we sent a galley of one of these big, time-consuming articles to the author, and he sent back a NEW WORD DOCUMENT, saying "our team converted the wrong version" of his manuscript and we needed to use the attached document and send him a new galley right away. (Note: we only ever had ONE manuscript. We didn't have several, with different dates on them, and picked the wrong one. We had ONE. Which is what we used.)

Yeah, no. You send a NEW document, we have to re-edit it, re-typeset it, re-proof it, and re-correct it before it can ever go back out. Essentially, we have to treat it as a totally new article. So all the time we spent on it -- remember, we are a month behind schedule -- was wasted.

Fortunately, the proper official response to this author is actually along the lines of, Hey, this is not how things are done. If you would like us to use your new manuscript, it will get treated as a new article and will be re-scheduled for several months from now. Also, piss off.

Possibly that last sentence will not be included.

Normally I find "bad things happen to cats" stories very upsetting, but the Oatmeal thing only upset me a little. Maybe because it didn't go into too much detail for me.

I found the Oatmeal cat thing confusing, because first all the cats left to form cat nation and then they were in the house for a fire? I had a hard time following.

I have been hearing a phrase lately from the young people-- saying someone is "throwing shade". What does that mean?

"throwing shade". What does that mean?

They're really tall?

Talking shit, but sassy.

"throwing shade". What does that mean?

They are Shadow Master, Master of Shadows?

Isn't throwing shade an old school phrase? Maybe regional? I will have to look it up!

Urban Dictionary:

throw shade

to talk trash about a friend or aquaintance, to publicly denounce or disrespect. When throwing shade it's immediately obvious to on-lookers that the thrower, and not the throwee, is the bitcy, uncool one

"How does Kimmy keep any friends? Last night at the party all she did was throw shade at people."

[link]

Yes! Was a drag queen thing since the vogueing days.