I have never in my life found myself in a situation where I’ve stopped work and said, ‘Thank God it’s Friday.’ But weekends are special even if your schedule is all over the place. Something tells you the weekend has arrived and you can indulge yourself a bit.
– Helen Mirren

This has been a roller coaster of a week for me, kittens, both newswise and personally and I am very glad the weekend is here. Apart from laundry and cleaning the house, I intend to do as little as I can get away with. I need to pick up and mail off some presents to people, send out some cards, and write some blog posts, but other than that all bets are off. I’ll be avoiding the news this weekend because as fake Lester Holt put it…

POTUS gave a SOTU address (remember that? It seems a weirdly long time ago…) and there have been endless think pieces so I won’t bore you with those. But I will say that there was a lot of rhetoric with little policy and no plans, with a nice undercurrent of the kind of talk that historically precursor-ed foreign conflicts. In case you were wondering how I felt about it.

There was an awful train accident with a number of congresspeople as passengers. Thankfully there was only one fatality, but tragically it was the driver of a vehicle that the train struck, which is awful. Horribly, the conspiracy theories about this accident started almost right away, and I’m not going to link to a single one. We live in a scary time. Meanwhile, here’s the GoFundMe campaign to support the family of the victim.

The incredible reinvention of the Religious Right, even just in my own lifetime, is constantly remarkable to me. In a bad way.

Trigger warning, this is a story about revenge porn. And it’s important to read because, given changes in media and technology, this possibility even more insidious than usual.

Meanwhile, most of the kids remain solidly alright.

Hmmmmmm….

Racked did a great piece on the history of black-owned beauty brands that is well worth a read. The market is making great strides in correcting the absolutely ridiculous limitations of shade ranges and products for women of color (and its propensity to treat “ethnic” products separately from “normal” products), but there is still work to be done. Insert reminder here that the best way to support the brands making change happen is with your money.

Stop accusing women in Mr. Trump’s orbit of sleeping their way to power. There is no evidence of this and even if there were, it’s a gross tactic to delegitimize their power. There is plenty to consider or critique without a single comment on their sexual choices.

We might need bodice ripper sex ed.

This is why.

It’s all about the statement outerwear this year, Paris says so!

“I wanted to tell my story because I’m afraid people are forgetting. We can never forget what happened. We can never let it happen again.”

This guy was afraid of being shunned so murder was his out?!

This deep dive report by the New York Times into the world of fake or “bot” social media accounts, including how they can be bought and sold as “followers, is required reading to understand the bizarre media landscape we find ourselves in. From Fake News, to social media influencers, to online popularity wars, how much of this landscape is false or fraudulent? Turns out, a lot of it. What does this mean, and how should this knowledge affect us? I’m clearly not the only one who has questions about the worth of social media on the brain.

Meanwhile, here in Britain…

So, the FBI is saying that the infamous memo is dangerously inaccurate. Great.

This beauty article is getting some hype this week, but I find its premise flawed. Beauty rituals have medical and psychological value. By all means, tell people to be smart about the chemicals they put on their skin. But don’t tell them that there is no value in taking care of your skin or that they are stupid for doing so or pretend that humans haven’t been slathering themselves in treatments for thousands of years to right a variety of wrongs and health situations.

Here’s a much better piece on why content on or about skincare is so prevalent right now.

San Francisco is trying something different.

While the president’s language around immigration seems vested in violence, here’s a casual reminder that the greatest amount of exteremist crimes in the US last year was by white supremacists.

A touching archaeological find from our extinct cousins/ancestors.

Hmmm, is Glossier making some mistakes with its latest product offering? The reigning UK Queen of Skincare weighs in.

And finally, the #Releasethememo frenzy hit its peak with the release of the memo in question, over the objections of the FBI. NPR has annotated and fact checked the document. My opinion is that the memo actually undermines the White House’s narrative that the investigation into whether or not the administration has had improper dealings with Russia started with the infamous Steele dossier. But if the aim is simply to throw the intelligence community into chaos and undermine public trust…mission bloody accomplished, and all of us are endangered for it.

“We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late. ” 
― Edward R. Murrow

Another riotous week of political news, but never fear! I shan’t let the confirmation that the President probably tried to fire the man investigating him derail our good humor this weekend. There is much to celebrate and cheer on, kittens, in spite of the fact that the Doomsday Clock hasn’t been this close to midnight since before I was born.

We are defiant, unbowed, and full of confidence. Let this gif of Judge Aquilina’s handling of Larry Nassar’s letter, stating how distressing it was for him to hear the stories of his victims, be your moodboard for this weekend and all of 2018:

Greatist put together a list of resources and content for survivors of sexual assault and the people who want to care for them.

This piece on Buzzfeed of life after a polygamous FLDS cult is hard to read but powerful.

No shit.

Whoa, bad news for the Y chromosome, scientifically speaking…

So, we’re doing this every year now, yes? Regardless of the party in power, yes? Good.

Irony is dead.

I am so excited for this return, as much as I’m apprehensive of the emotional roller coaster it’s going to send me on.

Waiting for them to get to Gemini!

UGH. (Update, the reaction to this piece has been so extraordinary that the Financial Times has removed the paywall. Good. The only treatment for systemic bullshit hidden in shadows is sunlight. Follow up is still rolling out.)

So you want to write a nonfiction book? Let Friend of the Blog Caitlin Kelly walk you through the process.

It’s weirdly charming to me to think of a leader who doesn’t default to Twitter. I mean, no excuse for the collective heart attack, though!

The FBI Director threatened to resign this week in our perfectly normal and functioning democracy, thank you very much.

Inclusivity in beauty pays. Literally.

There was another awful school shooting incident, made more awful by confirmation that it’s the 11th such event so far this year. We’re not out of January yet.

You can take the girl out of Utah, but you’ll pry the RadioWest podcast from Salt Lake City’s public radio station from my cold, dead fingers. This past week they covered the Sundance Film Festival with a series of filmmakers and subjects in interviews worth listening to. My favorites were Believer, about a major poprock artist who seeks to find a way to advocate for LGBT communities without alienating his own Mormon people, and Won’t You Be My Neighbor, a film about the life of Fred Rogers.

Suck a shedload of lemons, dude.

“A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices.” 
― Edward R. Murrow

Happy weekend, ducklings! It’s a gray weekend and I had to bring some work home with me, so the intro is short but the links list is extra long this week to make up for it. Tell me what you’re up to this weekend in the comments.

There is an old an abiding stigma against female anger and a pressure to swallow it down and stay silent. In the current cultural moment, for whatever reasons you want to attribute to, it feels like women are getting angry again, in a way that I haven’t yet seen in my own lifetime but I imagine many of you might remember from past decades. We’re angry. Out loud. In public. And it is glorious. 

“Like every other feminist with a public platform, I am perpetually cast as a disapproving scold. But what’s the alternative? To approve? I do not approve.”

The Paradise Papers story summarized thus far. I’ve seen the world of the ultra-wealthy from my work in property, but where that money ends up and how it moves is still endlessly fascinating to me.

Have you been following the news out of Saudi Arabia? It’s complicated. The Atlantic had a later piece that analyzes what might be happening and what the risks are for a regime ostensibly trying to modernize through might.

Greeeaaatttt.

There was another mass shooting this week and to all those sending “thoughts and prayers,” these victims were In. A. Church. Save the platitudes, send sensible and consistent policies. Because the president calling this shooting the product of mental unwellness, months after signing a bill that lifts restrictions on those with dangerous mental health backgrounds from buying guys while simultaneous trying rolling back health coverage for mental conditions seems the height of hideousness.

For the record this has been by far the most deadly and violent months in years.

I am beyond excited for the Black Panther movie. It’s going to look gorgeous.

This was a strange and disturbing read about how algorithms and content creation are intermeshing in weird ways.

Public broadcasting is doing the important work.

A number of allegations came out against Roy Moore this week. Some people then came to his defense. This is by far the worst version of that. Any justification of sexual conduct between an adult and a child is hideous and I am disgusted to see how many people are doing mental gymnastics to justify their political preferences. If you would rather vote for an alleged child abuser over a person of a different political party (as if there isn’t a VAST spectrum of options between the two), you never get to call yourself a “values voter” again.

Speaking of, here is an interesting take on religion and politics from a talk given at my alma mater that I think religious people and secularists alike should read.

Editor’s note: I would be remiss not to say that a single accusation brought down Kevin Spacey but there are at least four accounts in this case. Spare me the hand wringing and take women at their word.

The Baroness was always kind of a badass to me. This make me spit-take with laughter.

We had a fascinating discussion in the Small Dog house this week where my (feminist, ally and decently woke husband) demanded of me, “Men randomly masturbating or whipping their dick out in front of women–is this a thing?!” And I had the dubious honor of counting the number of incidents I can remember.

Abuse and sexual coercion is NOT NEW.

Album of the week: Weightless EP, by Adam French