Eva and I went to get her some summer clothes

[conuly]

because she's finally had that growth spurt we've been waiting for. (Her arms grew first, and then they just stayed there for ages.) She now is the happy owner of a lemon-print sundress, among other things. Girl's got good taste.

While we were there, we saw some baby things, because Burlington for some reason thinks that people will spontaneously pick up plush door hangers the same way they pick up candy and magazines. Eva immediately called out the bullshit of boy-themed items saying "I'm a superhero" while girl-themed items say "I sparkle" (though we agreed that if Batman ran around throwing glitter in villains' eyes, Gotham would be much more fabulous), but meanwhile I was entirely too charmed by a little door hanger emblazoned with the phrase "the snuggle is real". It was just too adorable. If I got that on some contrasting doggie shirts you know they'd wear the hell out of them.

*****************

5 People Who Exploited Loopholes In Ridiculous Ways

Key 'step forward' in cutting cost of removing CO2 from air

Americans Think Climate Change Should Be NASA's Top Priority, Not Sending Astronauts To Mars

Is it possible to be queer, lefty, and a Latter-Day Saint? After leaving the church, Sarah Scoles sets out to understand liberal Mormons.

The Enlightenment’s Dark Side

The Racism of American Monuments Goes Well Beyond Confederate Statues

Incels aren’t monsters of cruel internet culture – they are the product of the American literary canon that has long glorified male sexual frustration. (Didn't read the original article, got stuck in the comments here. Did read this one.)

Some states taking electoral maps out of politicians' hands

Federal judge sides with Philadelphia in "sanctuary city" immigration fight

Despite Trump admin crackdown, illegal immigration on border increased in May

ACLU Suit Over Family Separations At Border Allowed To Advance

Separation of migrant families: What other countries do

As Immigration Facilities Fill Up, Detainees Are Being Transferred to Federal Prisons

‘It’s Horrendous’: The Heartache of a Migrant Boy Taken From His Father

Hundreds of Illinois Children Languish in Psychiatric Hospitals After They’re Cleared For Release

The Pentagon admitted it will never know how many civilians it has killed fighting ISIS

Comments

[wpadmirer]

I tried a bit of the news, but even the "funny" bit about loopholes was depressing.

So I'll focus on pretty sun dresses and funny t-shirt slogans for dogs. I'm "for" both.

[conuly]

I really tried this time, too :(

[stardreamer]

Speaking of racist monuments, I was really glad to find that this one has been removed to storage. The picture in the article isn't very good; it's a memorial to Stephen Foster, writer of many songs celebrating the Slavery South; Foster is posed with a barefoot black man, playing a banjo, sitting at his feet while he looks down indulgently.

(Aside: I have decided that I am no longer going to use the word "antebellum" to describe the pre-war Southern culture, because that's whitewashing in the most literal sense. I will be blunt and call it the Slavery South instead.)

The narrative of the woman who sleeps with the enemy in order to kill him isn't as celebrated as that of the frustrated man who (understandably O_o) stalks and rapes, but it's every bit as old and occasionally gets referenced in contemporary pop culture (see Rene Vorbretten's great-grandmother in the Vorkosigan series). Perhaps it's time to revitalize that narrative.

[conuly]

Pity Foster really was so darned catchy. Sigh.

The narrative of the woman who sleeps with the enemy in order to kill him isn't as celebrated as that of the frustrated man who (understandably O_o) stalks and rapes, but it's every bit as old and occasionally gets referenced in contemporary pop culture (see Rene Vorbretten's great-grandmother in the Vorkosigan series). Perhaps it's time to revitalize that narrative.

Oh, I'm sure the incels would have a lot to say about your demon whore plan. I imagine it going something like "rar rar feminazi nice guy rar rar bitch!"

[adafrog]

I love the idea of Batman with glitter.

[al_zorra]

The one you read comments, so did I. The posters got a lot wrong about literature, including attributing to Keats "To A Skylark" by Percy Bysshe Shelley to make a point that -- frankly I didn't understand what it was.

But the primary point that young women read constantly from day one of the importance in the canon that men are sexually frustrated is obvs of greatest importance. For one thing it means that later lit crit often tends to skp over the bits in the life of my best beloved 19th c novelist, George Eliot, and her tendency -- long before Lewes, and which was different -- to attempt to attach herself to other people's spouses, and those spouses tended to resent it. What did this mean for her seems to me very important, and most of all to her relationships with those women, some of whom were initially her friends who brought her into their family and social circles. It's like the poet -- whose name I've forgotten -- bit deal in the 60's and 70's -- who actually wrote poems to the wives of other poets telling them to stop trying to compete with HER who was a poet herself. So yes she's gonna hang with the guys, while you all over there sit in the kitchen and cook, talk about the kids and serve US, meaning ME.