June 2010
Hella Good Cookies (If You Like Chewy Chocolate...
ouyangdan:
meloukhia:
Ok, so. First off. This ain’t your gramma’s cookie recipe. This is my gramma’s cookie recipe. Which means you’d better thank her before you use it. She knows if you don’t thank her. And she’ll be pissed.
Second off: follow directions.
All right.
Beat one half cup (112 grams) of butter, slightly softened, with 3/4 cup (150 grams) brown sugar until it gets light and...
May 2010
“More than one million people are still living in deplorable conditions, beneath...”
– Stefano Zannini, MSF’s head of mission in Haiti
Haiti: Time Passes But Medical Needs Persist
(via doctorswithoutborders)
Hella Good Cookies (If You Like Chewy Chocolate...
Ok, so. First off. This ain’t your gramma’s cookie recipe. This is my gramma’s cookie recipe. Which means you’d better thank her before you use it. She knows if you don’t thank her. And she’ll be pissed.
Second off: follow directions.
All right.
Beat one half cup (112 grams) of butter, slightly softened, with 3/4 cup (150 grams) brown sugar until it gets...
Disabled Trans Man Wins IML 2010 (NSFW) →
Congratulations, Tyler McCormick!
I Fry Mine In Butter: This Is Your Receipt for... →
Brazil positions the dystopian hot buttered awful as a means to tell a story – the way Costner films have used baseball for a similar effect – rather than making all those rows of neatly ordered desks the story. Even films not strictly being Orwellian in their framing – like 1998′s The Siege – depict a singular event and its chaotic aftermath (usually some kind of shocking act of human...
this ain't livin': Remembering the Dead →
I think today of friends and foes I will not see again.
We have strange and peculiar ways of honouring our dead; we do so by creating a three day holiday so that people can roast weenies and go to the beach. I want to appreciate the spirit of this, and indeed have often said myself that when I die, I would like the event to be commemorated with a big party, but somehow I doubt that the...
The Nation: Counting on the Census →
But the challenges the Census faces are both greater and more complex than the mechanics of a head count. Families like the DeLeons—young and brown-skinned migrants—are driving rapid demographic changes in the United States. Many of these new residents are uncertain about whether government is a source of support or a threat—the long arm behind immigration raids, detentions and record-high...
Guardian: Comment is free: Pakistan's hijras... →
A great challenge for Pakistan has been crafting a sense of shared identity. But with much of the ensuing identity politics spiralling into sectarian and communal violence in recent decades, it isn’t surprising that minorities here face the worst forms of neglect and persecution.
There is no more maligned group of citizens in our country than those from its transgender community....
FWD/Forward: Dear Imprudence: Food Policing,... →
Wait, what?
I really loathe it when advice columns do this. They just have to throw in a little armchair diagnosis. Robin Abrahams just had to add in a little ‘you know, perhaps you have a mental illness’ at the end, didn’t she?
This letter missed the mark in a lot of ways. Accusing the letterwriter of orthorexia instead of acknowledging the reasons she might have concerns about what’s on...
Protecting your brand →
blackamazon:
I took a day I should have been productive to do this. Help
Word up, required reading for the evening.
Guardian: Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil... →
In fact, more oil is spilled from the delta’s network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of a major ecological catastrophe caused by oil that has poured from a leak triggered by the explosion that wrecked BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig last month.
That disaster, which claimed the lives of 11 rig...
Racebending: Paramount Pictures--Diversity in the... →
This article will focus on Paramount Pictures’ diversity in terms of their most recent, top-billed lead actors from 2000 to present and beyond.
A UCLA study found that industry-wide, men are 3 times more likely than women to be the first billed lead, and that 4 out of 5 lead roles go to an actor who is white. We were curious about how Paramount would line up, particularly since Paramount...
N. K. Jemisin: Don’t Put My Book in the African... →
On the micro scale, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms doesn’t belong in the AAF section because it Contains No Actual Black People. Which should, IMO, at least be a prerequisite for being in that section. There’s Itempas, who’s black — but he’s not human, and he doesn’t show up until the end of the book besides. If the walk-on appearance of a character in two chapters of a...
Dallas Voice: ExxonMobil votes down gay... →
Each year since Exxon and Mobil merged, a proposal has come before the shareholders to add sexual orientation to the company’s nondiscrimination policy. And the percentage of shareholders voting in favor of the proposal has increased each year — until this one.
Only 22 percent of ExxonMobil shareholders voted in favor of adding the protections during today’s annual meeting at the Meyerson...
Eugene Weekly: Jump! →
I was introduced to the sport of eventing (also called horse trials) about three years ago. I tried not to let it freak me out too much that the galloping cross-country portion of it requires that you wear not only a helmet and a medical armband, but also body armor.
Eventing has its origins in the military. It was a way for the cavalry to...
Further Thinking About Kurt
I’m having a protracted email exchange with a reader, and we’re talking about a lot of things, but most particularly Kurt, and I’m really rethinking and reevaluating his character, in response both to this conversation and other conversations I’ve had about Kurt. The thing for me with Glee, as I recently mentioned, is that the show makes me so fucking angry that it is hard...
Chicago Reader: Transparency’s a Big Joke →
But the FOIA log is what understandably caught the attention of the journalists in town. Though the FOIA is designed to help all citizens access public records, it’s a critical tool for reporters, a way of asking questions about government operations with the weight of state law behind them.
Georges and Daley told reporters that posting the FOIA information online was a response to...
New Haven Advocate: Anonymity & the Internet: No... →
It’s true that the worst kinds of commenters — trolls looking to incite arguments — are emboldened by anonymity. The open-Web alarmist Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not A Gadget largely addresses the consequences of the current online structure: “There are recognizable stages in the degradation of anonymous, fragmentary communication,” he writes. “If no pack has emerged, then individuals start to...
Metro Times: Banksy bombs Detroit →
Then last week, in Detroit’s dilapidated Packard Plant — the Playboy Mansion of ruin porn — he left a painting of a boy, looking sincere, as if you just caught him doing something bad. He’s young enough that he has to use both hands to hold a can of paint. He’s also clutching a dripping brush. The phrase “I remember when all this was trees” is painted next to...
Sociological Images: More Sexualized Violence in... →
Anyone who pays much attention to the fashion world will have noticed fashion photographers have an ongoing obsession with images of women looking dead. These images are often sexualized, with the models in various states of undress, in lingerie, or lying in provocative poses. The effect is to present violence as sexy.
Hardly a month goes by that we don’t find a new example. Here are some ...
this ain't livin': I Don't Do This For Fun →
It’s tremendously draining. And a lot of the drainage, as it were, happens in places people don’t see. It, too, is incremental. I, for example, am repeatedly and constantly misgendered. It’s a thousand tiny cuts. It’s not that one incident makes me throw up my hands and gnash my teeth in fury, it’s that it happens by bits and pieces, every day. That adds up, just as erasure of other...
I Fry Mine In Butter: All Gleed Out →
A full season and a commitment to two more seasons later, and I clearly misunderestimated people’s affection for this show. For me, however, the bloom is off the rose.
I let it go when Mercedes’ closest thing to actual romance was her straight-colored glasses crush on Kurt, who is as gay as Oscar Wilde skipping through a field of daisies and whistling Tiny Tim. I gave it another chance...
Join the this ain't livin' Book Club! →
June’s selection for Talking About Books We Haven’t Read: the deleted scene from The Princess Bride.
I Know This Is A Small Thing
But I wish there was a way to save messages. I keep seeing the message count and then getting distracted because I’m saving old messages/conversations rather than deleting them. There should be a mark as read function or something so that the count in the sidebar reflects messages you have not read, rather than every message you have ever received that you didn’t want to publish with a...
1 tag
“Same-sex couples in family housing will become a reason for families to decline...”
– Elaine Donnelly, who apparently really does want me to Fed-Ex a box of poo to her office.
The Boston Phoenix: The high cost of free markets →
Free markets are not free. They always carry a cost. Sooner or later, the many get saddled with the price tag for the gains of the few. This is the case in the painful drama of ecological and economic ruin being played out on the nation’s Southern shores as millions of barrels of oil pollute the Gulf of Mexico and threaten the fragile Florida Keys. The lack of foresight by British Petroleum...
NPR: Juveniles Need A Chance, Not Life In Prison →
After I met him, my nine-year sentence for carjacking seemed like a gift. Everything I did while incarcerated meant something because I could envision a day when I’d be free — and that day pushed me. Because I had a release date, I recognized that the time was a way for me to improve myself. Seventeen hours each day to read, study and exercise. To think and become a man far different...
On Trying Things
I have a policy when it comes to trying food that I also apply to most other things in life: I will try it three times, unless there is a compelling reason (such as risk of death) not to do so.
The first time, I figure it’s new and different, and thus it’s not entirely fair to judge it on the first outing. Alien textures/flavours/experiences might distract me. Plus, what if it’s...
this ain't livin': Don’t Infringe On Me →
When you reprint my work without permission? It’s not a compliment. It’s not flattery. It is directly hurting me. I lose every time you do that and yes I am talking to you.
Infringement also takes work out of context and in that sense, it is a form of social control. Infringement of work by queer folks, nonwhite people, people with disabilities, and other people in marginalised groups is...
Colorlines: How to Make a Boycott Matter →
But all of this begs an important question about boycotting as a tool for reform: Does it work? And if so, under what conditions?
“Boycotts are tricky business,” warns Dana Frank, a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Precedent shows that if they’re carried out in a strategic way, boycotts can be effective—the famous thirteen-month Montgomery, Ala., bus...
Ok Seriously
Sexual assault is not part of the sentence.
I don’t know why this even needs to be said.
But I’ve noticed an uptick lately, reading stories about instances of horrific abuse/assault, including on ‘feminist’ websites, where commenters are suggesting things along the lines of ‘I hope these people are raped in prison.’
No. No. No. No.
Crackers and cheese,...
The Guardian: Comment is free: A crash course in... →
2. Be open about one piece of bad news and no more. You want to appear human, but you don’t want to appear like a bunch of idiots. There’s another word I’d use there, but I don’t think I can. It rhymes with mickleticks.
@BPGlobalPR: Sadly we can no longer certify our oil as Dolphin Safe.
Exceptionalism
thecurvature:
meloukhia:
Why is it that certain people in the United States are fond of regularly trumpeting variations on ‘Speak English! You’re in America now!’ yet, when traveling in Europe, expect everyone to speak English?
I’m just wondering.
Well god, mel, it’s different when you’re just VISITING. Who made rules now that visitors are supposed to be courteous? WHY DO YOU HATE MY...
Exceptionalism
Why is it that certain people in the United States are fond of regularly trumpeting variations on ‘Speak English! You’re in America now!’ yet, when traveling in Europe, expect everyone to speak English?
I’m just wondering.
this ain't livin': Social Justice Matters:... →
People with disabilities, trans* folks, and people of colour are especially vulnerable in prisons. Hierarchies exist in prison just as they do in the outside world, and people living in marginalised bodies rapidly become targets for abuse. Rates of prison rape and assault are extremely high and they are especially high for minorities. Prisons fail to meet the needs of vulnerable members of...
