Yum & Yuk

The women at Slates XX blog and Jezebel call out the NYTimes on some atrocious victim-blaming language in a heart-breaking article about the gang rape of an 11 year old girl: "As long as we're asking questions, I have one: How can the New York Times fail to frame these quotes properly, to point out the stunning cultural misogyny that allows a brutal gang rape to be reinterpreted as vigilante moral policing? To report these details bare, without context, puts the misogyny squarely in the voice of the Times."

Awesome! It may seem inconsequential, but for many low-income people (not just immigrants) drivers' licenses are the only formal identification they have, and can make a huge difference in their day to day lives: A bill restricting access to driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants was voted down Monday in Washington's state senate.

Image: source.

This incredible photo of the sun (taken by an amateur!) blows my mind and makes me feel slightly queasy. It's like when I took Astronomy one summer in college and found out that many of the stars we see are already dead, the light we are seeing has just traveled so far that we are now seeing it (I know, I'm very eloquent). Basically that one piece of poetic knowledge about the universe was enough to lay me flat on my back, staring up at the sky, speechless, and I couldn't absorb any more information all summer.

I haven't talked about it here because, well, I still have a few boundaries (ha), but I'm in the midst of a 6 month commitment to celibacy. There's lots to say about that, and maybe I will talk about it in more depth at some point, but for now I mention it because I appreciated this article about a sex writer taking a year off from sex and dating. She highlights some of the benefits of taking a conscious break from sex and dating, and it is great to see someone else talking about this choice/practice. A friend (an ex actually, which is sort of cool that we can discuss this stuff) told me that Dharma Punx also has a chapter about the benefits of a period of celibacy, which I really want to check out.