I’m A Man And It Took Me Years To Recognize I Had Been Sexually Assaulted: In our ongoing and expanding dialogue on the nature of sexual assault, I only hope that we continue to encourage men to feel safe in recognizing their experiences with it. Vulnerability isn’t weakness and victimhood need not be a badge of shame
An interview with Richard Grant, on his abusive alcoholic father. I find this view a bit hard to reconcile: Of course, like he always was, he either had blacked out or had no memory of what he’d done the night before, and would sign a check and push it across the breakfast table and be full of remorse and beg for forgiveness and all of that.
I absolutely loved and adored him, because he was a very, very funny, sharp-witted man and very provocative in his conversations. He was very well-read and all of those things. So reconciling that with this person that he turned into — I think that it’s a measure of how much a child loves a parent. That even though [I had] suffered those things, I always very, very clearly understood that who he became when he was drunk was not who he was. To me, that was the monster, and it wasn’t my father who I loved.
This brought tears to my eyes: In “The Barefoot Woman,” Mukasonga’s latest book, translated from the French into English by Jordan Stump, she attempts to fulfill her daughterly duty: “Mama, I wasn’t there to cover your body, and all I have left is words — words in a language you didn’t understand — to do as you asked. And I’m all alone with my feeble words, and on the pages of my notebook, over and over, my sentences weave a shroud for your missing body.”
From earlier this year, Kristi Yamaguchi, Unlaced: On the eve of the National Championships, Nicole Chung and champion skater Kristi Yamaguchi discuss life after the Olympics, what it means to be ‘the first,’ and the state of figure skating in 2018.
I’d never heard of Direct Air before this article, and I’m glad I hadn’t! What terrible people.
My empathies to Joe’s family as they are dealing with a rough situation with his mom’s dementia. Brings back some bad memories for me since it happened when we were much more precarious financially and didn’t have the resources to get her a better caretaker than us. I am glad that Joe is in a much better position than we were in.
RB40 asked: “Do you feel guilty for not giving your family the best when you can?”
(He’s talking about material things.) Nope, because I do give them the best I can. It’s just that to me, the best doesn’t mean the most expensive or what other people think is the best. The best is the thing that serves the purpose well without generating unnecessary waste. What do you think?
Related to that, Matt talks about how to be happy and you might notice that buying it isn’t a good long term plan for that sort of thing. There is a threshold where money makes a real difference, but after all our needs and most of our reasonable wants are covered, I want myself and my family to embrace gratitude and contentment, and not have to keep chasing the next high.
Why do you tell your story? Good question! It used to be because I didn’t have enough people to discuss money with but that’s less true these days.
What a litter!
The most popular videos of 2018: Golden retriever mother takes tiger, lion and hyena cubs as her own pic.twitter.com/VhnZtYPNHn
I knew the CRISPR baby gene editing was bad, I didn’t realize quite how bad it was. But of course if you’re going to be unethical, why would you bother to be meticulous about the quality of your work?
Oh great, another data breach. This time with my favorite hotel chain: Starwood.
As much as I’m an introvert and don’t want to talk to anyone, I also do want a little bit of a fabulous neighborhood.
Whew. A standard marriage according to the research sounds absolutely terrible: “Experts used to tell straight couples they should get hitched and stay that way, no matter what. But one researcher told a different story: marriage was not only harder for women—it could actually ruin their lives.” Also I’m not so sure what the big deal is about your friends choosing to have polyamorous relationships. In what way does that affect you?
This FlyerTalker’s question about what salary you make and how often you fly business class was interesting in how people pushed back. Some interesting anecdotal information there. Personally we make more than the OP, together, but I don’t think we’ve ever flown business class. There was that time Dad went and bought us Premium Economy for an overseas flight when we could ill afford it but that was foolishness in the extreme, they were paying for that for ages. One set of friends got hooked on business class recently because of an unexpected upgrade and blanched at the real business prices ($5000 for a single overseas flight). I don’t think I know anyone else who travels business class regularly (outside of Kathy) but I’d like to, once or twice. It’s not really a thing you do with kids, though. Still other well-off friends choose to travel economy, despite traveling in style during their working years, to preserve their retirement income for all the other fine things in life they enjoy.
Massive climate change report: probably no surprise at all that this was released a month early, on Black Friday, when it would garner the least attention
As a parent who manages kid-free unattached staff and covers for them days nights, weekends and holidays as they need to care for their family or personal needs, as a person with chronic pain who never calls out unless it’s dire crippling pain and even then I don’t want to ask them to cover, I find these parent-coworkers enraging. What terrible selfish people!
Nnedi wanted to give Fwadausi Bello of this terrible story an alternative ending of triumph.
Thank goodness for this federal judge: A federal judge on Tuesday blocked a Mississippi state law that sought to forbid most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, writing a sharply worded opinion with implications for states weighing similar measures. Furthermore, he called the Legislature’s professed interest in women’s health “pure gaslighting,” pointing to evidence of the state’s high infant and maternal mortality rates. “Its leaders are proud to challenge Roe but choose not to lift a finger to address the tragedies lurking on the other side of the delivery room, such as high infant and maternal mortality rates,” he wrote in a footnote.
I didn’t know any of this about Billie Holiday’s life and death.
This year I’m dry brining and roasting a turkey but maybe next year I’ll feel up to spatchcocking, if we get a big enough pan. Maybe I should test it on a chicken first?
I am hardly any hand at sewing but I am living Kristine’s needlecraft posts because they’re so accessible and get that part of my brain that WANTS to create ticking over with ideas. This week is darning! I used to attempt darning socks purely based on my mental theory of what should be done and the results were pretty hideous but I’m willing to try again now that I have a good guide.
One climate scientist’s commitment to not flying. We are working on our carbon footprint and fly a lot less now than we did years before which is a step in the right direction but I don’t think that we’ll be able to completely give it up for a while yet between my health limitations and being hundreds of miles away from loved ones. I think as we grow our financial independence and have the options to take more time to travel, we can reduce our flying even more. At present I think we’re flying once or twice a year.
Mining crytocurrencies is absolutely devastating for our environment: During the past two years, researchers estimate cryptocurrencies generated between 3 million and 15 million tons of carbon emissions.
I would LOVE to do a 100 best pens test.
