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[Content Note: Crash; injury; death] At least 10 people have died in a terrible accident in California, in which a FedEx freight truck crossed a grassy median and collided with a school bus transporting students from multiple schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. I don't even know what to say. My condolences to the people who lost loved ones. I hope the survivors have access to the resources they need to heal from physical injuries and/or psychological trauma.
US District Judge Richard Young has ruled that the state of Indiana must immediately recognize the "August 2013 marriage of Amy Sandler and her ailing spouse, Nikole Quasney, who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2009." The two women, who are among the plaintiffs challenging Indiana's ban on same-sex marriage, were married in Massachusetts. "They asked Young in late March to enter an emergency order to force Indiana to recognize their marriage and, should Quasney die, require officials to issue a death certificate that lists Sandler as surviving spouse." And so he has. Now to grant the same right to every same-sex couple in the state.
This interview that Bim Adewunmi did with Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, who conceived intersectionality theory, is a must-read. "I wanted to come up with a common everyday metaphor that people could use to say: 'it's well and good for me to understand the kind of discriminations that occur along this avenue, along this axis—but what happens when it flows into another axis, another avenue?'"
[CN: Guns; violence; death] Oscar Pistorius continues to put on quite a show during testimony at his trial. It's a pretty compelling show for all the people who feel sorry for the poor man who killed a lady "by accident."
(On a side note: I was really fucking annoyed when the media kept calling Reeva Steenkamp "his girlfriend" right after the shooting, and I am even more annoyed that they keep calling her that now. She doesn't have any say in the matter, since he killed her, but I'm guessing she wouldn't still be "his girlfriend," were she given the choice. It is appropriate, at this point, to call her "his victim." The end.)
[CN: Prison mistreatment; disablism] Good (although still wholly insufficient): "A federal judge ruled Thursday that California's treatment of mentally ill inmates violates constitutional safeguards against cruel and unusual punishment through excessive use of pepper spray and isolation. US District Court Judge Lawrence Karlton in Sacramento gave the corrections department time to issue updated policies on the use of both methods but did not ban them. ...Prison officials already promised to make some changes in how much pepper spray they use and how long mentally ill inmates can be kept in isolation, but attorneys representing inmates said those changes did not go nearly far enough." Agreed.
[CN: Clergy abuse] Listen, I want to be able to praise Pope Francis for taking steps to address clergy sex abuse, because to praise him would mean that something meaningful is happening. But I'm pretty dubious when the guy who is claiming to lead on accountability is still making these sorts of defensive comments: "I feel compelled to personally take on all the evil which some priests, quite a few in number, obviously not compared to the number of all the priests, to personally ask for forgiveness for the damage they have done for having sexually abused children." That is not the time to quantify how many priests have abused people.
Finally: Here is a picture of Tom Hardy on the cover of the new issue of Esquire. You're welcome.
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