The Walking Thread

[Content Note: Violence; self-harm. Spoilers are lurching around undeadly herein.]

A scene from my favorite show that doesn't exist: The Daryl and Carol Show.
When last we left our merry band of zombie bait, everything was terrible and Andrea was dead. RIP Andrea. In typical Walking Dead fashion, the entirely of last season's unfathomably slow incremental storytelling built up to a brief and resoundingly unfulfilling action sequence that is not even referenced in this season's opening episode. And 'round and 'round we go. Because this show itself is a lurching zombie with no brain or soul, ambling aimlessly in pursuit of just enough random sustenance to survive. I hope you are FASTENING YOUR SEATBELTS for another high-octane season of NOTHING leading up to some DISAPPOINTMENT!

The good news is: I still hate this show more than ever! So, in case you were worried I might NOT hate it and might RESIST writing deeply sarcastic recaps about how terrible it is, FEAR NOT! Let us begin.

When the premiere episode of Season Four opens, everything is sunny at Grimes Jail. Grimes is gardening, and either he buried his gun because he's Grimes and that's the kind of stupid shit he does, or he's growing revolvers by planting bullets and fertilizing the rich Georgia soil with shredded copies of the second amendment and the remains of Yankee socialists who were first to succumb to the zombiepocalypse after refusing to own guns in early twenty-first century America.

Clearly, some time has passed, presumably to help explain why Carl the Hat is now fully a middle-aged man with three children and a mortgage in real life. He is an angsty teen who stays up all night reading comics, but still a sweet kid who names the pigs that they're raising for food. Violet the Pig is sick, and it is at this point I say, "She is definitely going to give swine flu to all the new secondary characters!" WONDER IF I WAS RIGHT?!

Cut to: Let's meet all the new secondary characters! There's Patrick, the geeky teen who's overly impressed with Daryl. There's Karen, the pretty lady who hid under a dead body while Governor Cyclops mowed down all his peeps. There's Zach, who's Blonde Girl's boyfriend, and she refuses to tell him goodbye before he goes on a supply run, so HE'S DEFINITELY DEAD. And there's Bob, who was out on his own for a long time and used to be an Army medic, and he wants to be of help, even though he just got here, so HE'S DEFINITELY GOING TO BE A PROBLEM.

Also: Everyone is in love! Glenn ♥ Maggie. Tyreese ♥ Karen. Blonde Girl ♥ Zach. Grimes ♥ himself. I can't tell if Daryl ♥ Carol, but Carol still definitely ♥ Daryl. Daryl grouses that the whole place looks like a romance novel, and I laugh and agree. Ha ha, Daryl, you are LITERALLY the only reason to watch this show.

Michonne returns from who knows where, looking totally badass on horseback, and Grimes looks happy to see her. "Are you happy to see me, or is that just any one of about a dozen different possible weapons stuck down your pants?"—Michonne.

Everyone who's anyone goes on a supply run to Zombie Depot, except for Grimes, who OF COURSE has to go on some mission outside camp to collect rabbit carcasses on his own. Hershel shows up to say Meaningful Things, which I cannot hear over the sound of my own loudly dramatic yawning.

At Zombie Depot, there is a carefully orchestrated plan to get in and get out safely, but this plan does not take into account that there's a helicopter and a bunch of zombies on the roof, none of whom have concentrated in the same soggy area until Bob—GODDAMMIT, BOB!—dithers too long about whether to take a bottle of wine with him, and then knocks over a display case, and gets trapped under it as zombies rain through the ceiling like they're auditioning to play frogs in the final act of a film of magical realism written and directed by P.T. Anderson.

Zombies zombies zombies. Fight fight fight. Just as predictably as Bob causes trouble (although I will admit I did not predict that trouble would come in the form of what appeared to balancing the maintenance of one's hard-won sobriety against facing the zombiepocalypse sober, which is one of the most interesting potential storylines this show has ever even inadvertently and fleetingly explored, so naturally we will probably never revisit it), Zach gets caught by a zombie. RIP Zach. Rest well knowing your death will be used to justify the eleventy-twelfth scene of regret that people we care about (or don't!) die with some regularity during a zombiepocalypse.

Meanwhile, Grimes jerks around in the woods and meets a very dirty lady who asks him to follow her back to her camp because her husband is hungry. GRIMES, YOU DOPE, HER HUSBAND IS A ZOMBIE AND SHE WANTS TO FEED YOU TO HIM! I think to myself, very loudly, to no avail. That is precisely what happens, but instead of killing Grimes, she kills herself, and Grimes leaves and who cares. This fucking show.

At "storytime" for all the new camp kids (who all appear to be pretty little white girls, except for Patrick?), Carol reads some story (because SHE'S A LADY and thus still on BABYSITTING DUTY) and then pulls out a bunch of knives and begins to tell the children how to defend themselves. Patrick asks to leave because he's gonna throw up. Carl the Hat, who isn't wearing his dad's hat anymore, but he will always be Carl the Hat to me, so there, thinks storytime is for babies, but he spies on them and sees Carol doing knife-training. "Don't tell your father," she pleads. Because even though Grimes ostensibly isn't running everything on his own anymore, he would DEFINITELY FREAK THE FUCK OUT ABOUT A WOMAN TEACHING YOUNG GIRLS HOW TO PROTECT THEMSELVES BECAUSE THAT IS HOW GRIMES ROLLS, by which I mean Grimes would FOR SURE have some bullshit reason why children shouldn't be taught to protect themselves BECAUSE INNOCENCE, even though everyone is best served by everyone knowing how to protect themselves as best as possible, but HOW WILL MEN FEEL LIKE PATRIARCHS if even little girls can protect themselves?!

Let's all just be a little more sensitive to Grimes' delicate masculinity during the zombiepocalypse, OKAY CAROL?

Anyway.

Something something Blond Girl doesn't even cry anymore. No tears for you, Zach! Sad trombone. Something something Tyreese hates the zombiepocalypse. I don't blame you, Tyreese! It looks terrible! Something something Maggie isn't pregnant. Good. Something something Hershel and Grimes having a Special Man Moment, in which Hershel says something that contradicts what the dirty dying lady said about Grimes' ability to "come back" from bad deeds. Blah blah fart.

In the final scenes, the pig is dead, and Patrick is very sick. He stumbles to the shower and leaves sweaty footprints everywhere and coughs into the water supply and then he falls down dead. And he will not RIP because now he's a zombie.

Which would be super intense and terrifying if I gave a fuck about any of these characters, but I don't. I hope he kills everybody and that's the end of the show.

Scenes from the next episode reveal, however, it is not. Oh well. See you back here next week!

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Daily Dose of Cute

Zelly, being a good girl, as always.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.

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Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

The Fall Guy

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Liss Says Stuff #5: Feminst Noobs and Feminist Identity

[Content Note: Anti-feminist stereotypes about feminists.]

One of the most frequent emails I get is from people who are frustrated with a friend, family member, or colleague who says some variation on "I believe that women and men should be equal, but I'm no feminist," and ask me how to approach that argument. So, here's a quick video on what I've found is the best approach to that conversation. Ultimately, however, identification is an individual option, and the goal shouldn't be about forcing anyone to accept any label or identity at all, but to help someone who wants to have this conversation understand what those labels and identities actually represent to the people who do choose to wear them. After all, choice is central to feminism.

One of the most frequent questions I get via email is how to engage with someone who supports equality for women and men, but doesn't wear the label of "feminist."

And the first thing I wanna say about that is that there are plenty of women who are well-versed in feminism and choose not to wear that label. There are women of color who prefer to identify as womanists—and they may or may not also identify as feminists. And there are women who are also extremely well-versed in, ahh, the history of feminism, and choose not to wear the label because, um, they don't feel comfortable with the history of mainstream feminism, which includes transphobia, racism, and other bigotries.

So, it's really important to be aware that there are, ahh, people who don't wear the label of "feminist," even though they support equality for women and men—and it's not necessary for, um, for anyone to wear that label. Um, and any conversation that is had about this subject should be approached with that in mind; um, it's not necessary to wear the label of "feminist" just because you support equality for women and men.

Ahh, but mostly what these emails are about, uh, are people who say, you know, "I'm not a feminist because—" and then follow that with some, um, feminist stereotypes—some reason why they're not feminist that actually reflect a fundamental mi— misunderstanding of what feminism is. So they might say, "Well, I'm not a man-hater" or "I'm not angry all the time" or, um, "Aren't all feminists lesbians? Aren't they all ugly?"—you know, really, um, stereotypical antifeminist tropes.

And, um, so this is the conversation that people are really asking me about: How do I address that? And, um: How do I sort of tell this person, "Actually, that's not what feminism is, and thus you are a feminist."?

Um, really it's a—it's not a fair approach, and it's not an effective approach to impose on someone an identity that they don't embrace. So, responding to that by saying, "All th— all that stuff is wrong, and you're actually a feminist" is, um, not good. It's not kind to impose labels on people, or identities that they don't want to wear—and it's also just not effective, because it tends to make them resistant to the philosophy of feminism.

So the effect—ah, or, the strategy that I've found the most effective is to ask them: "Why is it that you don't identify as a feminist?" And then, when they sort of trot out these antifeminist tropes, that are really ubiquitous in our culture, I can challenge them and I can sort of sweep them away. And once those are gone, once I have broken down what feminism isn't, then I can introduce what feminism is, at least to me. Um, what does it mean to me to be a feminist.

And, um, I do that without hope or expectation that they will then themselves identify as a feminist at the end of it. Um, I think the goal is education, rather than, um, the objective of winning over someone and saying, you know, great, they identify as a feminist now.

Although, in my experience, once I've had that conversation with people, I tend to find that they say, "Well, you know what? It turns out I'm a feminist after all." That's a great result—but I don't think you wanna approach it with that as your goal. I think the goal has to be: Sweeping away antifeminist tropes and talking to someone one-on-one about what being a feminist means to you. And hoping that it gives them a better understanding of what feminism is.

A final thought: Speaking to feminist noobs always from a place of what being a feminist, or a womanist, means to you personally, why you value it and how you practice it in your life, is one of the best ways we break down the monolithizing of feminists. Making it personal is what makes it powerful.

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In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today! (Your daily shutdown thread is here.)

[Content Note: Misogyny] The government shutdown, currently being negotiated exclusively by men, is having a disproportionate effect on women.

[CN: Violence] Sailors aboard the vessel captained by Richard Phillips, currently the subject of a motion picture starring Tom Hanks, say that Captain Phillips was actually kind of a d-bag. Whoops!

[CN: Racism; slur] Famous sportscaster Bob Costas says the "Redskins" team name is "an insult, a slur, no matter how benign the present day intent." Oh goody. Maybe now that a white man has said it, racist dipshits will finally believe it's true! Don't worry, though—Costas still definitely knows where to draw the totally racist line: "Objections to names like Braves, Chiefs, Warriors and the like, strike many of us as political correctness run amok. These nicknames honor, rather than demean. They're pretty much the same as Vikings, Patriots, or even Cowboys. And names like Blackhawks, Seminoles and Chippewas, while potentially problematic, can still be okay provided the symbols are appropriately respectful." Good grief.

Carmen Segarra, formerly a senior examiner with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, says she was fired from her job after she was asked, and refused, to falsify her findings that Goldman Sachs' conflict of interest policy was insufficient. Segarra's finding "potentially had serious implications for Goldman, which was already under fire for advising clients on both sides of several multibillion-dollar deals and allegedly putting the bank's own interests above those of its customers. It could have led to closer scrutiny of Goldman by regulators or changes to its business practices. Before she could formalize her findings, Segarra said, the senior New York Fed official who oversees Goldman pressured her to change them. When she refused, Segarra said she was called to a meeting where her bosses told her they no longer trusted her judgment. Her phone was confiscated, and security officers marched her out of the Fed's fortress-like building in lower Manhattan, just 7 months after being hired." Segarra has filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against the New York Fed.

[CN: War] Photographer Lalage Snow has done a portrait series of British soldiers deployed to Afghanistan, which is extremely powerful and sad. "Presented as triptychs, they portray British soldiers at points before, during and after a seven month deployment to Afghanistan." You can click here to go directly to the gallery.

What—did you think James Franco isn't a shameless self-promoter? You're so weird. He definitely is!

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DNLee and the Valuing of Women's Work

[Content Note: Misogyny; racism; sex trade shaming; rape culture.]

DNLee, a black female biologist who blogs at The Urban Scientist, recently received an invitation from the blog editor of Biology-Online.org asking her if she wanted to guest blog for them. She had a couple of questions, including whether she would be compensated for her contributions, the answer to which was no. After she politely declined, the blog editor replied:

Yes, you are reading that correctly: Because DNLee did not want to blog for free in a space that was promising her only a level of potential exposure no greater than the one she already has, she's a "whore."

DNLee's response to this contemptible garbage can be read here and here, since, per Mike the Mad Biologist at the latter link, "Scientific American [where DNLee's Urban Scientist blog is hosted] apparently censored DNLee about this–the aggregator has ties with Scientific American."

As DNLee points out in her YouTube response, there are a lot of reasons why an established blogger may or may not choose to blog in another space, and money is only one of those considerations. And, speaking for myself only, there are places to which I will submit original work without compensation, and places I won't. There are places I will let my work be reposted without compensation, and places I won't. There are individual people for whom I will do a lot of free editing work, or help with research, or offer loads of time to do background for them, for a piece for which they're getting paid and I'm not, and people for whom I wouldn't offer my time without compensation.

And all of these decisions come down to my believing in the people to whom I'm giving my work/time/energy, and/or feeling passionately about the subject to which I'm contributing. It never, ever, comes down to: "This will be great exposure for me!" So all those emails like the one the heapshit from Biology-Online.org sent DNLee, promising me an audience (that's usually smaller than Shakesville's current daily traffic) but no compensation? They go straight in the trash.

Because these people think they're doing me some kind of favor, by asking me to do free work for them. Which I share in order to contextualize the attitude with which this shit lands in bloggers' inboxes in the first place. And when it's the inbox of a black female blogger, who politely declines, it's that attitude, in combination with misogynoir as thick as pigshit, that underwrites a response demanding to know if she's some kind of whore.

Because women, especially women of color, are supposed to provide our labor for free. Because we don't have the right to say no to a man's invitation to do free work for him. Not without being punished or shamed, anyway.

DNLee did not even ask him to value her work. She didn't try to negotiate for pay. She simply valued her own work at more than nothing. And even valuing her own work means, to some men, that she must be punished and shamed.

Because valuing women's work is a feminist act. And nothing brings out the ugly in entitled misogynists than feminist acts.

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Community Note

As you may recall, a few months ago, Disqus automatically switched us to its new commenting interface, but then gave us a short reprieve in which we could keep the old interface. Well, time is up, and we are being forced into the new interface this week. Unfortunately, none of the issues that we raised regarding safety and accessibility have been (or are going to be) addressed, so there are going to be some changes in our commenting policy in order to make the new interface work for us.

I'll be posting those at the end of the day today, but, in the meantime, I wanted to let you know that one of the new "features" is that I don't have the option to turn off avatars. So, if you currently have a Disqus avatar associated with your profile that you don't want seen, please take the time now to remove it at Disqus.com.

Thanks very much for your patience and understanding during this transition.

Please be assured that I have spent an enormous amount of time researching and testing alternatives, and Disqus remains the best option for this community at this time.

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Shutdown, Continued

[Content Note: Racism; Nazi references.]

Republicans still terrible. Government still shut down.

There are people who still try to argue with a straight face that the impenetrable hatred for President Barack Obama underwriting this shutdown isn't largely informed by racism. Yesterday, about 200 Tea Party protestors, joined by Republican Senators Mike Lee and Ted Cruz and former Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, converged on D.C.'s World War II memorial, and, as some participants called for President Obama's impeachment, over the shutdown orchestrated by the Republican Party, at least one Confederate Flag was waving as they marched to the White House.

CNN describes the rally as having a distinct Tea Party-esque flavor, heavy on the anti-Obama sentiment:

One speaker went as far as saying the president was a Muslim and separately urged the crowd of hundreds to initiate a peaceful uprising.

"I call upon all of you to wage a second American nonviolent revolution, to use civil disobedience, and to demand that this president leave town, to get up, to put the Quran down, to get up off his knees, and to figuratively come out with his hands up," said Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch, a conservative political advocacy group.

At a certain point, they walked over to the White House, bringing the barriers [erected to keep people out of the memorial during the shutdown while memorial workers are furloughed] with them — and at least one large Confederate flag.

Once they reached the White House, the protestors heckled police, "calling them 'brown shirts,' the 'Gestapo,' the 'Stasi,' and opining that the unit 'looks like something out of Kenya'."

Again: Two sitting Republican Senators and a former Republican vice-presidential nominee were part of this protest.

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Open Thread

Hosted by maple leaves.

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Open Thread

Hosted by the Ghostbusters logo ghost.
This week's open threads have been brought to you by pop culture ghosts.

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Open Thread

Hosted by Inky, Pinky, Blinky and Clyde.

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The Virtual Pub Is Open

[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]

TFIF, Shakers!

Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!

(And don't forget to tip your bartender!)

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Blog Note

It's not just you. Comments are being glitchy at the moment and are sporadically failing to load. Hopefully Disqus will get it resolved soon. In the meantime, my apologies for the interruption in service.

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Quote of the Day

[Content Note: Violence.]

"I want to become the prime minister of Pakistan. [I used to dream of being a doctor, but] through politics I can serve my whole country, become doctor of the whole country, help children get education, help them go to school, improve the quality of education. ...They can only shoot a body, they cannot shoot my dreams. They shot me because they wanted to tell me that, 'We want to kill you and to stop you campaigning,' but they did the biggest mistake: They inured me, and they told me, through that attack, that even death is supporting me—even death does not want to kill me. ...This cause is never going to die. A day will come when every child, girl or boy, black or white, Christian and Muslim, he or she will be going to school."—Malala Yousafzai, on her plans for the future.

All the blubs in the world. What a truly extraordinary young woman.

And what an amazing quote for International Day of the Girl 2013: Innovating for Girls' Education.

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Disney Markets Racism To Children

[Content Note: Racism]

Twice while shopping this week, I've run into the Disney Infinity franchise only to then experience a total blue screen moment as I stare in disbelief at the universe.

For those who haven't encountered this franchise yet, it's a combination video game + collect-all-the-figurines marketing ploy, where buying the figurines unlocks relevant areas of gameplay. In other words, and if I understand correctly, you have to buy the physical Monsters, Inc. add-on playset in order to access the Monsters, Inc. areas of the game. The platform options for the game are various gaming consoles (XBOX 360, PS3, Wii, etc.), online, and iPads. To quote the wikipedia article:

Disney Infinity is a platformer sandbox video game developed by Avalanche Software and published by Disney Interactive Studios. [...] Similar to Activision's Skylanders franchise, the game uses collectible figurines that are then synchronized with the game, allowing for characters from Disney and Pixar properties to interact and go on adventures. The game was released for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, Wii U, and Nintendo 3DS in August 2013.

[...] Disney Infinity is an action-adventure game with physical toys, open world creation and story-driven gameplay. Characters, play-sets and other features are brought into the game using figurines and discs with the included Infinity Base.

[...] [P]lay sets have their own unique campaign, which can be played with up to two players. However, only characters from a specific franchise can play in their respective play-set (for example, Mr. Incredible can't be used in the Pirates of the Caribbean play set), meaning two figures from the same series are required to play a play-set in split-screen multiplayer. Playing through play set unlocks objects and vehicles that can be used in the Toy Box mode.

So we're all on the same page, right? This is a video game, marketed to children, containing lots of Disney and Pixar characters, and children are encouraged to buy representations of all the characters, because without the add-on playsets, sections of the game are locked off. So fine, so standard.

My horror comes from the fact that of the 18 currently buyable-and-playable characters, 2 of them are Lone Ranger and Tonto from the recently super-racist film which was projected back in August of being so massively unpopular that the flop may cost Disney $150 million.

The Lone Ranger and Tonto figurines from Disney Infinity.

"Screw you adults for refusing to consume our racist swill! We'll just pressure and trick children into doing so instead!" ~ Disney, apparently.

Way too many privileged people like to assume that racism not only happens in a vacuum, but that it also happens with the best of innocent intentions. Like somehow Disney just failed to receive all the many messages, prior to their racist film, that their racist film was hella racist. "Whoops!" becomes the rallying cry of racism apologetics, like it's just so damn hard to educate yourself on how racism is a thing.

This excuse is (as ever) bullshit, but I think it's especially telling in a situation like this, where Disney already knows with the power of numbers that their super-racist film was both super-racist and horribly unpopular. Instead of doing the decent thing and apologizing for the movie, letting it quietly slink off to the Disney movie vaults to rot, and doing better next time, Disney is trying to recoup some of its lost money by repackaging the racism and selling it to children in a marketing scheme where they can't access existing game content if they don't buy the Native American Appropriation and Racist Stereotypes add-on playset.

Swell.

And, you know, despite the fact that (best I can tell) none of the other 16 playable characters are people of color or voiced by actors of color, I can still imagine that children of color might want to play Disney Infinity if it's a fun game or has characters from films they care about. So it is especially classy of Disney to create a game which mandates that children of color play a racist stereotype if they want to access the full game.

Disney, you are the worst.

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Fatsronauts 101

Fatsronauts 101 is a series in which I address assumptions and stereotypes about fat people that treat us as a monolith and are used to dehumanize and marginalize us. If there is a stereotype you'd like me to address, email me.

[Content Note: Fat bias; medical malfeasance; body policing.]

#21: Fat bodies have no feeling.

So, on a recent episode of The Mindy Project, which has so many issues around fat shaming and body policing that it really needs its own post, there was a scene in which Mindy (played by Mindy Kaling) was a fish out of water at a sort of hippie music festival. And one of the "horrors" she experienced in this scene was a shirtless fat guy walking by her, after which she exclaimed: "I just got that guy's fat roll in my mouth!"

No. No you didn't get a guy's fat roll in your mouth.

And no, a fat guy did not end up with part of his body in someone else's mouth and not notice.

This is one my most hated fat joke conceits—the one where fat people don't have any feeling in our bodies and don't know what our bodies are doing.

The idea that a fat person would not know if a part of our body ended up in someone's mouth, that we would just keep on walking and not even notice, is predicated on this strangely pernicious idea that our bodies aren't real human bodies and don't have any sensation in them. Our bodies haven't lost feeling because they are fat.

(There are, of course, fat people who have lost sensation in parts of their bodies for one reason or another, e.g. nerve damage. But there are thin people for whom that is true, too. It's not a fat-exclusive issue.)

These types of jokes are also predicated on the equally ubiquitous idea that fat people have no idea what their bodies are doing, as if we have no sense of our own size. Sometimes that happens—like it happens to any human being of any size, that one doesn't realize what's behind them and bumps into it when they bend over, or that one has a moment of klutziness, or whatever. And fat people, like all other people, are not monolithic in their body awareness proficiency. Some human beings have keen body awareness, and some don't.

But the thing about fat people is that, in general, we are hyper aware of where our bodies are and how they're positioned and what they're doing and how they fill a space, because the pressure on us to be smaller, to be invisible, to not take up space, is so intense.

All fat jokes are dehumanizing garbage, but the "fat people just walk around throwing their fat around without a care in the world and don't even know when it gets in someone's way" somehow feels extra dehumanizing to me. It robs us of the very basic human sense of touch, and disappears one of the most defining aspects of many our lives—this obligation to be intently vigilant about our bodies at all times, to make sure they don't (fates forfend!) get in a thin person's way.

Or, apparently, their wide-open mouths at music festivals.

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Previously:

#20: Fat people aren't that bright.
#19: All fat people hate/want to change their bodies.
#18: You can diagnose fat people's health issues by looking at them.
#17: Fat people's choices are always dictated by their fat.
#16: You are helping fat people by shaming them.
#15: Fat people hate having their pictures taken.
#14: All fat people are unhealthy.
#13: Fat people looooooooooove Twinkies!
#12: Fat people don't like/want to see media representations of themselves.
#11: No one wants to be fat.
#10: Fat people need you to intervene in their lives.
#9: Fat people don't know how they look.
#8: Fat people don't deserve anything nice.
#7: Fat people are permission slips for thin people to eat what they want.
#6: Any fat person eating a salad or exercising is trying to lose weight.
#5: Fat is axiomatically ugly.
#4: Fat people eat enormous amounts of food.
#3: Fat people are jolly/mean, and fat people are shy/loud.
#2: I can tell how someone eats all the time, because of how they eat around me.
#1: Everyone who is fat is fat for the same reason.

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Friday Blogaround

This blogaround brought to you by poutine.

Recommended Reading:

TLC: This Week, Ray Ramsey Became Concord High School's First Transgender Student to Be Crowned Homecoming King

Mannion: [Content Note: Disablism] Educating the Professors and Other Liberals on Disabilities

Julianne: [CN: Racism; classism; food insecurity] An Oasis in the South L.A. Food Desert

T.F.: [CN: Transphobia] Religious Right at Crossroads on Transgender Issues?

BYP: Man Quits Wall Street Job to Make a Difference in the Lives of Youth

Sean: African-American Marine Veteran Launches Marriage Equality PAC in Illinois

Esther: The Math Problem That Had Einstein Asking for Help from His Assistant

Leave your links and recommendations in comments...

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Daily Dose of Cute

The Queen, and her sleepily photobombing minion.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.

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Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

"ABC Afterschool Specials" Theme

This week's TMNS brought to you by funny old junk that I love.

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In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today! (Your daily shutdown thread is here.)

[Content Note: Homophobia] Despite Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's best efforts to halt same-sex marriage in his state, state Judge Mary Jacobson has denied the request for a stay, which means "the state must grant marriage licenses for same-sex couples starting 21 October."

Google has changed its Terms of Service to allow users to opt in to a "Shared Endorsements" program, which grants Google permission to use your "profile name, profile photo or comments...in online advertising." I guess they learned from the Instagram debacle that defaulting to "we own your shit" is a bad idea.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has won the Nobel Peace Prize.

RIP Scott Carpenter, one of the original Project Mercury astronauts, who has died at age 88.

[CN: Disablism] The NFL is fining Chicago Bears wide receiver Brandon Marshall, who was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder in 2011, for wearing green shoes to mark Mental Illness Awareness week during the Bears game against the New York Giants. Travis Waldron asks: "But why should Marshall face a fine? Is mental health not as deserving of awareness as breast cancer," in awareness of which the NFL has allowed "pink towels, pink gloves, pink hats and penalty markers and first down lines and anything else that could possibly be pink-ified"?

If you have been enjoying ABC's Agents of SHIELD, good news: It's gotten a "full season order. ABC has picked up the back-nine episodes to round out a full traditional 22-episode season."

Like dogs, elephants "seem to have an instinctive understanding of what it means when a human points to something," which is a special communication skill that allows for a unique bond with humans.

Speaking of dogs, a pitbull being fostered by a family on a short-term basis saved the life of a four-year-old family member by alerting that his blood sugar had crashed. The dog been there less than a week, and is now a permanent part of the family. Blub.

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