“Men argue. Nature acts.”
― Voltaire

This year is absolutely flying by, how on earth is it June already? I’ve taken some work home with me this weekend, but it’s all for a good cause as we’re off to Paris next week, and I plan on rewarding my unbalanced work ethic with a trip to see Wonder Woman. Proper summer has finally arrived, but there is one last push required to get to it!

The news this week continued grim and bad for the planet–this week a bit more specifically than usual. Because when you are talking about the entirety of the globe, there’s not much difference between Pittsburgh and Paris. Until our policy is realigned with facts–not just on climate change but on crime and labor and economic growth–we will do damage. Yes to other, but mostly to ourselves.

Here are your links, kittens. Cheer me up with good news or pictures of puppies in the comments.

Go ahead and weep, I welcome the tears. This is how it feels to be systematically excluded; and these dudes are getting a single taste of it and losing their ***. Over a single movie screening. Even if you’re not a fan of the decision, do me a favor and step back to consider the wider optics of that for a moment. 

Here’s some ice for that burn, hapless dudebro.

Trolling is not leading!

Three very different men, all harmed and two dead, but they all decided to step in because they saw that two women were being targeted by hatred and aggression.

Short poems to wreck your insides.

In honor of “covefe.”

Our robot overlords are coming.

I found this piece on President Trump’s rise to power as something of a personal tragedy, a fairytale warning of hubris, an interesting and thoughtful take. Give it a try, even if we disagree politically.

Because one’s need for certain types of healthcare does not depend on how you pray, but whether or not you have a uterus.

Album of the week: Different Days, by The Charlatans

“You’re not to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.”
― Malcolm X, By Any Means Necessary

Reading the news this week has been one long continuous headdesk. After claiming that Secretary Clinton couldn’t be trusted with classified information, President Trump…simply divulged classified information to an adversarial power. Once again he also threw his entire messaging team under the bus, after they’d gone out of their way to discredit the early claims of the leaked story, by not only confirming that this actually happened, but that he was perfectly within his rights to do so.

Let’s be clear. Of course the president CAN do and say a lot of things, but that doesn’t make it a good idea much less sound policy. I would like to politely posit that had 44 or alt-45 discussed classified information of any kind with a generally-deemed hostile government, some of you reading this would be foaming with fury right now. Add in any of the extracurricular details and I’d fear for some of your blood pressure levels. I’ve written before that I don’t believe many Americans understand how much of our government’s functionality is not codified in law so much as respected through precedent. This is a textbook example of this theory.

Editor’s note: I typed that above bit on Tuesday. By Thursday…look, I tried to summarize, but here:

Then this was Friday. I’m tired, kittens, here are your links. I’m sure we’ll check in with MORE breaking news again before the end of this weekend. Good bleeding lord.

This thread. It is life.

But, here. Have a palate cleanser before we continue.

Dinosaurs!

Interesting editorial on the difference between conservativism and what the author calls “anti-anti-Trumpism,” or the desire to see liberal positions mocked and trolled more than genuinely pushing for conservative political principles in action. I don’t agree with everything here, but I do see enough of this general attitude to take it as anecdotally true. And if we’re all more concerned with poking the “other” in the eye than actually arguing our own cause or beliefs, then we are well and truly ******.

Longbourne is for sale and it has a secret Nazi past.

This is a couple months old but the Attenbourough-inspired take on Fashion Week made me howl.

If the state of our government weren’t at stake, I could feel some sympathy for a seemingly lonely, narcissistic old fool. Unfortunately, he’s the supposed leader of the free world and I have expectations of him.

Fully intend to buy one of these at some point. Specifically this one. (Editors note: totally bought it.)

Let’s go shopping! (h/t Caitlin Kelly)

Damn it, I’ve missed out.

The Dutch king has a secret life, and it’s kind of great.

Album of the week: Compassion, by Forrest Swords

“Above all, I would teach him to tell the truth. Truth-telling, I have found, is the key to responsible citizenship. The thousands of criminals I have seen in 40 years of law enforcement have had one thing in common: Every single one was a liar.”
– J. Edgar Hoover

The news is shifting hourly at this point but at time of typing, the President of the United States fired the head of the FBI this week–ostensibly for his poor handling of the Clinton email saga but more probably because he refused to pledge personal loyalty to the president and was seeking to continue the investigation into the connections of then-candidate Trump’s election campaign to foreign nationals with an agenda of disrupting/influencing the election.

Cool.

People were hiding in–excuse me, among–bushes, Ms. Conway reappeared after being lost to the world for several weeks, the memes are writing themselves at this point.

Most recently, the president has tweeted (a phrase I am sick to the teeth of reading much less typing) veiled threats towards the now-former FBI head, sort-of-threatening to to reveal supposed recordings of conversations…that are unlikely to have taken place in the first instance–though watch this space. It it 2017, after all. Meanwhile his own statements of the timeline which lead to his decision to fire Mr. Comey have blatantly contradicted that of his supporting team. Meaning that he’s an idiot or a liar. Again.

Super cool.

Time for independent review and investigation. Like, now.

Here are you links, kittens. Let’s have a robust conversation in the comments, and share anything worth spreading below.

First and foremost, Melissa MacCarthy is hosting SNL tonight. She is READY and I am THRILLED.

I have never seen an episode of this show or any of its spinoffs, I buy none of their hawked products, I do not engage. But this piece on the Kardashians was an interesting read nonetheless.

The dissection of J. Crew’s slide continues, but I’m guilty of still reading the think pieces.

Hold the damn phone, Glossier is making sunscreen now! Behold!

Delightful.

PSA: there is a podcast called Medieval History for Fun and Profit, and its first episode is all about medieval sex. Go forth and enjoy, kittens!

Girl gangs forever.

Beloved childhood book characters, narrated by P.G. Wodehouse. They did everything but slap a “SDS Clickbait” banner across this thing.

This week in Mormon news, the LDS church announced it was ending a century-long partnership with Boy Scouts of America. A very interesting development since the scouting program has effectively functioned as the learning and development organization for boys in the church for years. Girls have their own achievement and goal-based organizations, which don’t have an equivalent level of parity or recognition outside of the church structure. It will be interesting to see what the Church puts in place for young men, another outside organization or an internally created one.

Album of the week: Blond, by Frank Ocean

“In science it often happens that scientists say, ‘You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,’ and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.”
― Carl Sagan

This week, the president wondered aloud why we couldn’t have “worked things out” and avoided the American Civil War (slavery, dude. Other satellite issues, yes, but almost entirely slavery). Then Republicans, after years saying that Obamacare was passed too hastily and without proper review–passed a new health care bill in under an hour of debate, without hearings, without a CBO score, which most experts and professionals (including the vast majority of the medical field) don’t support. K. Bette Davis acts out my feelings for us.

Here are your links, kittens, because good stuff happened and needs to be shouted out too.

The literal meaning behind the names of US states.

Get busy reading or get busy dying! h/t to the always superb and hilarious Planes, Trains, and Plantagenets 

Print is not dead, peeps.

This uptick started when I was working at a police department in the US myself and was being monitored as a threat. I find it terrifying and, in my opinion, baffling to see organizations like this effectively create what they purport to be defending against: rogue teams who pick and choose which laws they think should apply to them, act (or at least plot) wildly outside or against governments, and believe that violence is an acceptable way to achieve their political and social aims. We have a word for this: terrorists.

Humans of Wyoming, you beautiful bastards came through in spades! Props to the supporting humans of the internet. Toxic masculinity needs to go.

Childbirth is still dangerous, but people are doing great things to make it less so.

Good lord. The scary part is I can completely recognize so many of the impulses and urges here (I’ve given in to myself more than once), and I can see where this trend and problem is coming from. Separately, I love it when Racked does longform.

The Oatmeal knocks it out of the park again.

Stand down, citizens.

The kids are alright.

Album of the week: What Now, by Sylvan Esso