Another week flown past, another batch of links to read! This week I said goodbye to one of the junior team members I’ve been working with on a contract. She’s off to new challenges and while I’m professionally horrified (she will be difficult to replace), I’m personally thrilled for her new opportunities–I love to see my chicks soar! Meanwhile I’m waiting to hear back on a freelance proposal, and working on a few other projects.
This weekend I’m planning on doing very little, and looking forward to it immensely. Binge watching Stranger Things is on the list, as finishing at least one audiobook, doing laundry, and catching up on some reading. Jeff is already well immersed into his Saturday video games. Let the middle age wild rumpus start!
Bill O’Reilly: trash. There is a much shorter word for “non consensual sexual relationship.”
But I repeat myself, with this horrifying story.
Credit to the creator, always.
I ran into one of these ads for the first time this week.
First of all, confirmed! Second…Iowa?
Marie Claire gets blunt about where the desire to restrict or legislate birth control comes from, particularly among social conservatives. The only way to legislate women’s sex organs is to legislate the whole body attached to them, until science gets better. They are not pulling their punches, but I don’t think they are wrong. In fact, having grown up in a conservative religious culture with very strict gender expectations, I think they nailed it.
Senator Flake announced he’s retiring because there is no place for “a republican like [him]” in Trump’s America. He’s probably right, but I’d not he didn’t do much to try and stop his own party for going off the rails in the first place. And don’t throw his recent book at me as a rebuttal, that was after his party was hijacked by nationalistic nativism–which most Congressional Republicans were thrilled to capitalize on until suddenly they had to live with the consequence of stoking grievance for a decade straight. I’m sorry that another principled person feels run out of their political party, however. It bodes ill for the rest of us. I would have preferred to see him run again, even thinking he might have lost. Instead of the Charge of the Light Brigade, this feels more like a surrender.
Who wants to write for the Times?
This piece from The Cut is hard to read but I think is on to something about the stalled progress of female empowerment, and the dangers of putting all ones emotional eggs in one basket–work as much as relationships. One of my great personal revelations of the past couple of years has been my tendency to do this very thing (particularly with work) and neglect other aspects of my emotional and creative life. We women (speaking broadly and acknowledging privilege) need to diversify both happiness and our sense of accomplishment, in my opinion.
Album of the week: Glasshouse, by Jessie Ware
Small Dog Syndrome 