Here is some stuff in the news today!
[Content Note: War] The South Sudan peace talks have stalled: "Even as several dozen people held a peace march in Juba, South Sudan's capital, on Wednesday, there was little evidence that the conflict is moving toward resolution, more than three weeks after spiralling violence broke out. Two officials in Ethiopia [where the peace talks are being held] said the peace talks had stalled over the issue of political prisoners. The special envoy of Igad, a bloc of East African countries, has flown to Juba to speak about political detainees."
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a holdover from the Bush administration, has written a new memoir in which he "unleashes harsh judgments about President Obama's leadership and his commitment to the Afghanistan war. ...It is rare for a former Cabinet member, let alone a defense secretary occupying a central position in the chain of command, to publish such an antagonistic portrait of a sitting president." Huh.
The Republican Party continues its bid to look less garbagey while not actually changing its garbage policies: "First, Republicans were given lessons on how to talk to women while denying them reproductive services. Now, they're learning how to talk to the long-term unemployed and their families while denying them benefits. As members of the Republican Party fight against extending unemployment insurance to those who have been out of work for more than 26 weeks, the party's leadership is circulating talking points on the best language to use when discussing such opposition, the Washington Post reports. The goal is to show compassion." The goal is to show compassion, while not actually having any.
[CN: Gun violence] A beautiful, moving essay from former Congressional representative Gabby Giffords: "The Lessons of Physical Therapy."
[CN: Transphobia] Laverne Cox and Carmen Carrera Enlighten Katie Couric on Gender Identity: "By focusing on bodies we don't focus on the lived realities of that oppression and that discrimination."
Congratulations to Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner, who were married in Los Angeles on New Year's Eve after 42 years together.
Terrific news for lovers of fat hatred: The Paul Blart: Mall Cop sequel has its director!
In the News
I Have Questions
[Content Note: Lack of healthcare access; class warfare; fat hatred; racism; consent issues.]
So, there's a really important article in The Atlantic today about poverty and healthcare in the US: "Living Poor and Uninsured in a Red State: Obamacare assumed states would expand Medicaid, but half of them aren't. What will happen to those states' uninsured people?"
I am recommending the article, because it's very good. But I have questions about the photo that was chosen for the top of the article.
All of the other photos in the piece were taken by the writer, but the one at the top, the first thing people see, is an AP photo of an unnamed fat woman with her face covered with her hand. Which doesn't make her a headless fatty, but a faceless one.
Now, certainly, there is an anonymity issue to consider when publishing an image of a person accessing healthcare. But are The Atlantic's editors really unaware of the issues surrounding publishing images of fat people whose faces and/or heads are not visible?
Further, are they really unaware of the narratives around fat people and healthcare? And fat people and poverty? And the potential for this particular image to flavor the entire article in a very specific way for the many people who are inclined to believe that fat (especially fat and poor) people do not deserve access to healthcare, especially healthcare subsidized by tax dollars?
That the woman in the photo may be Latina only further complicates the issues around an article primarily about healthcare and poverty in Texas.
Were none of the people to whom the author spoke willing to have their photos taken while accessing healthcare? If not, did the woman in this image give her consent for her image to be used in a story about poverty and healthcare in Texas?
(I realize consent for the publication of wire images is not the norm. But just because something is the norm doesn't mean it's right. See: Why Progressives Exist.)
I'm not assuming bad faith. I don't imagine whoever chose to use this picture did so with any kind of malicious motives. But, as every journalist and editor knows (or should know), images of people from marginalized populations tend to turn those people into representatives of whole populations against which people with biases wield their judgments.
Using a picture of a fat woman of color in a story about healthcare and poverty has to be done sensitively. It has to center consent, so as to honor individual identity. It cannot be (even inadvertently) dehumanizing.
If you cannot find a subject who explicitly consents to participation in that way, well, maybe there's a reason for that. And maybe you just need to use another kind of picture altogether.
I Have a Suggestion
[Content Note: Misogyny; harassment.]
It's a three-part suggestion, actually, for any straight dude who may, in 2014, consider writing a How Not to Be Creepy article for his fellow straight dudes, e.g. How Not to Be Creepy While Asking a Girl Out, or How Not to Be Creepy on Social Media, or whatever.
1. Don't write it. Because framing harassment, hostility to consent, or potential sexual assault as "creepiness" in a conversation with other dudes is bullshit. Here's the thing: I would wager that virtually all of the men who have behaved toward me in ways described as "creepy" don't consider themselves creepy. "Creepy" is something other dudes are. If you want to have a serious talk with men about their interactions with women, you can't use language that very few of the men who need to take this lesson believe applies to them.
When you write a piece about "creeps," you're writing about "other guys," as far as lots and lots of dudes are concerned. You might get lots of cookies from grateful women, and some high fives from dudes who are also definitely not creepy, but if the point of your piece is validation rather than a meaningful conversation with men who cause harm, then you're kind of a creep yourself.
2. Don't write it. Because inevitably there's a flavor to How Not to Be Creepy advice pieces of offering help to well-intentioned but clueless dudes. And, sure, maybe some of those guys exist, but the assumption that most dudes are just creepy by accident, because they don't know any better, is bullshit. And it serves as rape apologia. One of the most pernicious narratives about men who harm women sexually is that they just made a mistake. Hostility to consent is not a mistake.
Cultural and institutional reform to reduce "creepiness" toward women begins with acknowledging that predators are not otherwise good boys who just made a mistake. But they're sure grateful when we think they are, and talk about "creepiness" as the misguided bumblings of a hapless dude who just didn't know any better.
And if you're inclined to insist but there really are hapless dudes who just don't know any better! I will ask you to consider: 1. How do you know? Listen to the women who can tell you story after story of men who insistently breached their consent, who "creeped" on them in spite of their clear, explicit communication to stop, but could play the hapless doofus for the benefit of other men, specifically because they know narratives about "mistakes" exist and that playing into those narratives protects and abets them. 2. So what if those guys do exist? If those guys want to not harm women, they'll learn even if you target your allyship in a way that centers accountability for any harm, irrespective of intent.
3. Don't write it. Instead, invite a woman to write a piece about consent from her perspective, then leverage your male privilege to endorse and champion it. Host it in your space. Invite other men to listen to what your female guest writer has to say. The thing about "creeps" is that they don't respect women; they don't listen to us; they don't empathize with us.
If you really want men to not harm women, then find ways of encouraging them to respect, listen to, and empathize women. To see what "creepiness" looks like from our perspective.
Talking about women as targets, as objects, as things to be approached this way and not approached that way, is not humanizing. It's othering.
If you want to reduce harm to women, not othering us is a good place to start.
[Related Reading: Please, No More Dating Guides.]
Open Thread
Hosted by Matthew Lillard and his friend Kermie.
Today's Lillard Fact: Matthew Lillard and I have the same middle name—Lyn!
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker Grey: "What is your favorite use of a song or other piece of music in television or film?"
[Got a good suggestion for a QotD? Drop it into comments here.]
Greyhound Goofiness
Everyone in the multiverse (and thanks to each and every one of you!) has sent me this terrific video of a greyhound named Mosley wearing Batman pajamas and playing in the snow. So here it is! Enjoy!
(And, yes, this is exactly how Dudley behaves in the snow. Earlier this afternoon, I was watching him through the kitchen window as he ran around in the backyard, dramatically leaping in snowdrifts and spinning in circles to get Zelly to chase him. And right in the middle of a huge loop through the garden, he came to a complete stop, then pivoted and ran for the back door and started whining pitifully to be let back in. When he's had enough, he's had enough!)
Video Description: Mosley, a brindle greyhound wearing Batman pajamas runs around in a big fenced yard, covered in snow. He runs toward his guardian holding the camera, grinning and panting. He spins in silly circles. Then stops. Then runs a little. Then stops. Then runs and spins. Pant pant pant. Play-bow. Run. Spin. Zooooooom! He play-yaps at his guardian. Play-bow. Run. Spin. Rinse and repeat. Wheeeeeeeee!
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
[Content Note: Misogyny; gender essentialism.]
James Taranto: "The Moralistic Fallacy." Below, an actual excerpt:
Nonetheless, the vast majority of children who are growing up without fathers are doing so in large part because of their mothers' choices. In our column last month, we half-facetiously raised "the converse lament that young females are insufficiently interested in 'becoming reliable wives and mothers.' " Let us now raise it half-seriously. It is trivially true that an unmarried woman who bears a child is not a reliable wife. If Hymowitz is correct about the baneful effects of fatherlessness on boys, such a woman also is not a reliable mother, at least to her sons.LOLOLOL FOREVER. This is a real thing that a real adult human being wrote and which a real media organization published in the year of our lord Jesus Jones two thousand and fourteen.
[H/T to Shaker MMC.]
Discussion Thread: Internet Life
I republished "Getting Real" in anticipation of this discussion thread, in which I want to invite a discussion about the ways the internet compliments our offline lives. I've recently read a(nother) handful of pieces about how the internet is inherently bad for and/or subversive of human interaction, and yet many people, myself among them, clearly have lives enhanced by access to the internet, in myriad ways, from forging friendships to providing access to educational and social justice resources with which we might not otherwise come in contact to the peculiarities of internet communication allowing parts of our personalities to flourish that offline life doesn't.
There are, to be sure, drawbacks to interacting with other humans on the internet, but this is a thread for discussing the ways in which our lives are enriched by it.
Have at it.
Getting Real
[Content Note: Bullying. This piece was originally published February 14, 2013.]
I've been thinking about the "real life vs. internet life" article about which I wrote here, which was chiefly about dating but included general commentary underwriting narratives about how online relationships are inherently inferior to those formed in meatspace. It's a trope with which I am obliged to frequently engage, as it's deployed with regularity by apologists for Bad Behavior, particularly the harassment of social justice advocates, who are keen to educate me that It's the Internet and demand to know what do I expect. (Spoiler Alert: More!)
It's a problematic construction for a few reasons, not least of which, as I have observed previously, is that the internet is not separate from culture, but a reflection of culture. It takes a special sort of cultivated ignorance to imagine that the anonymity of the internet creates the urges that underlie bullying, rather than merely empowering bullies to be uglier, meaner, bolder than some of them would be face-to-face.
It's not like no random dude ever called me a fat cunt before I started a blog.
The distinction between "real life" and "internet life" is a false one. Communities on the internet, and relationships formed on the internet, are as real as those in meatspace, even if they are different.
And sometimes those differences are neutral. Sometimes they expose deficiencies, or benefits, in either in-person relationships or (primarily or exclusively) online relationships. Often, they create matched sets: Written communication lacks the nuance that in-person communication does; in-person communication does not engage the additional filter that written communication can. Or: There are indeed ways to deceive people on the internet that in-person interactions do not support; online communications protect against certain kinds of harm that interpersonal interactions do not. Et cetera.
Each has its own limitations and values, which themselves are entirely subjective based on the individual person(s) involved. While body language and facial expressions may be meaningful to me, they may not be of particular use to someone neuro-atypical who struggles to correctly interpret them.
For me, one of the most precious advantages of the internet is that it keeps me connected. I don't mean the ability to keep up with the goings-on of old friends and distant relations—although that, too. I mean that it keeps me from disappearing.
I disappear easily, vanishing from social interaction like a retreating turtle into its shell—long stretches of desired lonesomeness during which I am perfectly content to be my only company. It's not because I love my friends any less, or because I'm depressed, or for any Important Reason at all, except that I am who I am, and that is someone who is very shy.
I am a "learned extrovert," as Molly Shannon's character described herself on the last (brilliant) episode of Enlightened, but the first 13 years of my life, I was so painfully shy that I never laughed out loud at school, ever, which is difficult for friends made after that time to believe, because I laugh loudly and easily and often now. I still remember the first time I tried an out-loud laugh, hesitatingly and consciously, in Mr. Martz's social studies class, and Garth Miller looked at me from the next desk over with an expression one usually reserves for events like alien invasions and said, "I've never heard you laugh before!" Bless him, I had such a crush on him, and if he'd said it with less wonder and more judgment, I might never have laughed out loud again.
That is who I am, in the deepest roots of myself, the girl who had to summon the gumption to laugh out loud in class. And that is why it's so easy and so comfortable for me to disappear.
And disappearing, as I have a wont to do, was different before the internet. It read, quite understandably, like avoidance, when I stopped inviting people to socialize and picking up the phone. Even during a disappearance, I might still accept invitations and answer the phone to chat, but I stop reaching out. All of my limbs and my head and my tiny little triangular turtle tail get tucked inside the shell. And it isn't kind to be a friend who disappears without explanation, so I explain, as best "I am a shy turtle girl right now; no it isn't personal; no I am not depressed; no nothing is wrong I swear" can be explained, which I've found depends a lot on how inclined to turtliness the listener hirself is.
The internet has made disappearing easier, in the sense that I don't totally disappear. I can maintain the necessary indulgence of my introvert nature and still be the one doing the reaching out. Sometimes, it is during a disappearance that I write the most meaningful emails, have the most wonderful tumbling conversations via text, give my friends the biggest laugh by posting some elaborate Photoshopped monstrosity of their favorite things on their Facebook walls. Dispatches from the shell.
That is a life that feels real to me, and fuller than my life without the internet, which is a tool that helps me actively maintain relationships with my dear and deeply valued friends, in spite of the social anxiety that constantly invites me to retreat.
I find less need now to attend events during periods when my shyness and anxiety conspire to engulf me; I have fewer instances of sitting at the end of the bed, ostensibly deciding what to wear, but actually contemplating whether it is worth risking a panic attack in a crowded space in order to avoid having to make a call to a friend who would totally understand that I'm not coming. Not disappearing completely helps me engage in self-care.
Which is to say nothing about all the friendships I have made via the internet, not a few of which are with people who are shy in the same way I am. I value beyond measure my extroverted friends, but they can't totally relate to the part of me that does the disappearing act. It feels good to be understood intimately, by people who disappear, too.
It is a combination of in-person and online communication that lets me be who I am actually am.
That, I realize, it what gets under my skin about the diminishment of online communications and friendships as "not real"—because the internet has helped me become my realest self.
[Related Reading: The Sound of My Voice.]
Liss and Ana Talk About Elementary
[Content Note: Spoilers for the most recent episode of Elementary.]
"Sherlock, I'm worried that Joan is coming between us."
Ana: It's a Natalie Dormer episode!!!
Liss: Yay Natalie Dormer!
Ana: I'm kinda pissed, lol, because I had finally decided to ride out my Amazon Video season pass and then not bother with Season 3, but then they dangle Natalie Dormer at me.
Liss: There's no resisting Natalie Dormer, lol.
Ana: I was super-concerned at the beginning when Sherlock was writing to her about Joan, because that's personal stuff and it seemed wrong for him to share it without her permission. (Especially since Joan is the one who caught Moriarty and revenge is a possible concern here. Let's maybe NOT share personal details that could be used to hurt her.) But I was glad that Joan pointed out that was wrong and very uncool, and he seemed uncomfortable about his own actions, so…okay? He's not perfect, and he messes up, but he's still trying, I guess? I don't recall if we got a real apology over that, though.
Liss: It's interesting to watch Sherlock start to navigate boundaries within a friendship. Like the stuff about sharing details about Joan's personal life—it's like he's at this point where he wants to share things because he cares about her and finds her interesting and all that, something that's a new experience for someone who never had much use for friends before, but he still doesn't understand that caring about someone and having access to hir life doesn't give you ownership of it.
Ana: Yes. I did very much like the themes of change and being a better person because you don't want to harm others, especially people who you care about. (I might be reading this through my own biases; I could see how the message is being a better person because you care what people think about you, but I'm going to be charitable here because I still want this show to be good, lol.) I liked that Moriarty wasn't really the villain like we were led to believe, which I thought was a good twist. I liked that this wasn't an episode about breaking her out of prison—she didn't try to run, she just did what she needed to do and then called Sherlock to pick her up with the police.
I liked that she didn't need Sherlock's help to save her daughter. This was really HER episode. I liked that she didn't bother trying to see her daughter—I thought it was an interesting touch that she cared about the safety of her daughter, but wasn't seeking a personal relationship with her. They didn't try to force her into an Emotional Mother role. (And I thought it was also a sensible move on her part and in keeping with her genuinely smart character; she seemed to recognize that trying to find the girl while dealing with her injuries would have just scared her and made things worse. I like that Moriarty is actually smart and not faux Smart Girl smart.)
Liss: I liked all of that stuff, too. And the code sent through the sketches! So clever. Yes yes yes to Moriarty being actually smart. I also loved the reveal at the end that the coordinates were to a vault where seeds are stored. LOL. It was just perfectly absurd, but also it was terrific that she knew exactly where that vault is.
Daily Dose of Cute
Dudley was lying on the couch yesterday, and a beam of sunlight coming through the window caught his ear just right, illuminating his racing tattoo from behind:
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Quote of the Day
"This is a guise to obstruct, as has been happening during the five years President Obama has been President of the United States, and I object with as much fervor as I can."—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, during a Senate debate about the extension of unemployment benefits, in response to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's proposal "that he would be amenable to vote for an extension if Democrats agreed to a one-year delay of the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act."
Republicans think people aren't entitled to food—and they also think people aren't entitled to healthcare and unemployment benefits.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today!
Janet Yellen has been confirmed by the US Senate as the next chair of the Federal Reserve. Congrats, Ms. Yellen!
[Content Note: Guns] A federal judge has overturned Chicago's ban "on the sale and transfer of firearms, ruling that the city's ordinances aimed at reducing gun violence are unconstitutional. ...The decision is just the latest to attack what were some of the toughest gun-control laws in the nation. In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Chicago's long-standing gun ban. And last year, Illinois legislators were forced by a federal appeals court to adopt a law allowing residents to carry concealed weapons in Illinois, the only state that still banned the practice." Perfect.
AT&T's new policy threatens Network Neutrality: "AT&T today confirmed a long-rumored plan to monetize wireless data caps by charging content providers for the right to serve up video and other media without chewing up consumers' monthly data limits." AT&T claims the new policy doesn't threaten net neutrality, because the cost is charged to content providers instead of consumers, but yeahno.
[CN: Violence; police brutality; disablism] Keith Vidal's family are seeking answers after the 18-year-old was shot and killed by a police officer: "Mark Wilsey, the young man's stepfather, told reporters that the family called police to help subdue Vidal because he was holding a small screwdriver and threatening to fight his mother during a schizophrenic episode. But the situation appeared to be under control, with two officers restraining the 90-pound Vidal, when the third officer arrived and shot Vidal point-blank, Wilsey contended," after the officer reportedly said, "I don't have time for this. Tase him. Let's get him out of here." Once the teen had dropped to the floor after being hit with a stun gun, Wilsey alleges the officer shot him. When he asked why the officer shot him, he reportedly replied that he was "protecting my officers." From a 90-pound teenager who was lying on the floor. "He reached right up, shot this kid point-blank, with all intent to kill," Wilsey said. "He just murdered him flat out."
[CN: War on agency] A judge in Texas says pregnant people should stop whining about having to drive 150 miles to the nearest abortion clinic: "Do you know how long that takes in Texas at 75 miles an hour? This is a peculiarly flat and not congested highway." Ha ha fuck off.
[CN: Racism] Amy Chua, the author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, is back with another new book that sounds terrific: "[The Triple Package] claims some ethnic and religious groups are inherently more likely to succeed because of three specific traits... The book highlights Jews, Indians, Chinese, Iranians, Lebanese-Americans, Nigerians, Cuban exiles and Mormons as groups with three qualities that set them apart. A superiority complex, insecurity, and impulse control are the 'three cultural forces' driving these groups to achieve a disproportionate amount of success." Um.
This story about fisherman John Aldridge surviving going overboard on the North Atlantic is amazing!
[CN: Animal cruelty] Here's a perfect example of the damage done by blanket discrimination against individual dog breeds. Seethe.
But What If She Were Fat?
[Content Note: Body shaming; fat hatred.]
While we were on break, another incident of public fat-shaming of an actress made the news. This time, it was comedian Jay Mohr, who body-shamed Alyssa Milano on his podcast after hosting a NASCAR event where Milano was a presenter. He said, in part: "It seems like she had a baby and said, 'I don't really give a shit. ...I read it on her gut. ...Somebody sat in the director's chair and was not wearing Spanx and I was like, 'Jesus Christ.'"
Anyway, Milano got wind of it and tweeted: ".@jaymohr37 So sorry you felt the need to publicly fat-shame me. Be well and God Bless. Please send my love to your beautiful wife."
From there, it took the usual path, as Mohr insisted it was a joke, and that it should have been obvious he was just joking (what—don't you have a sense of humor?!) because Milano is thin and beautiful and irony blah blah fart.
As if a man who's been in show business for a million years is unaware that thin women get earnestly fat-shamed and unironically body-policed all the time, too. Sure.
Eventually, he sorta apologized, while still insisting he was just joshing: "I had thought (incorrectly) in an improvisational moment, that the incongruousness of my statements, when held up to the light of how beautiful Alyssa Milano is, would have been funny given that she is the size of a thimble."
First of all, I call bullshit on his claim of being ironic, because nope. We all know what "ironic fat-hate" being deployed as an ostensible compliment looks like ("Boy, it's just too bad that [famously thin and beautiful woman] is so fat!") (which, by the way, is still gross) (just the worst), and what Mohr said doesn't look like that at all. It does, however, look exactly like the way insecure dudes bash women's bodies when they think they're in a closed conversation.
So, thumbs-down on Mohr's apology because he can't even be honest enough to own what he really did.
But secondly, and more importantly, this incident is yet another in a string of similar incidents of public fat-shaming (always as "a joke," of course) in which the dénouement is essentially: We all agree that the thin, beautiful woman who was fat-shamed is actually thin and beautiful, and all is right with the universe again.
Except, here's the thing...
Fat-shaming isn't wrong only when it's deployed against someone who isn't fat. It's wrong all the time. In fact, an actual fat woman who's subjected to public fat-shaming doesn't have access to this neat resolution where basically everyone agrees that she's gorgeous and she doesn't deserve to be fat-shamed and the fat-shamer is a real loser who should apologize to her.
An actual fat woman who's subjected to public fat-shaming is more likely to be told she deserves it; that she's ugly; that she's unhealthy. What does she expect, being all fat in public like that? The fat-shamer is a hero for saying out loud what everyone was thinking, anyway—a champion for not capitulating to the PC police.
It's a completely different narrative. No one makes apologies about how "heartbroken" they are for fat-shaming a fat woman.
There is no soft landing in the knowledge that, despite what some dipshit said, you have a socially-approved body.
Fat-haters wonder why the fuck fat activists talk publicly and often about loving our own bodies. Well, that's why: Because sometimes we are the only ones who do. When we get publicly fat-shamed, there is no outpouring of compliments, no reassurances that we are fine the way we are. We're responsible for providing all of that love and acceptance on our own.
The narrative has to change. Jay Mohr fat-shaming Alyssa Milano wasn't bullshit because she's not fat. (Although: That, too.) It was bullshit because fat-shaming is bullshit. It's utterly unjustifiable irrespective of the shape of the body of the person at whom it's directed.
Our collective response doesn't need to be: "Look at her—she's beautiful!" It needs to be: "Look at her—she is a human being."
Of course I realize that not everyone, especially not white male comedians, shares my opinion that human beings are entitled to dignity. But the only hope we have of subverting that pernicious disagreement is by changing our baseline expectations. I expect more than defending only privileged women against fat hatred, on the basis they're not even fat, anyway.
What if Alyssa Milano were fat? That shouldn't make a difference about how many people come to her defense.
But it does.
[Related Reading: This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.]
You Know Who Throws Awkward Office Christmas Parties?
U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson filed a lawsuit Monday in an attempt to block the federal government from helping to pay for health care coverage for members of Congress and their staffs.
The lawsuit stems from a provision in the Affordable Care Act that requires members of Congress and their staffs to buy health insurance on the marketplaces set up through the law, which is also known as Obamacare.
A rule issued in October by the personnel office stated that the federal government could continue to contribute to pay the cost of health benefits for members of Congress and their staffs — just as it does for other federal employees — even though they would be buying health insurance on a marketplace.
'I value all of your efforts this past year, just not as much as I hate President Obama.'
'No, but seriously, help me out with this lawsuit-- your share of health insurance premiums isn't going to raise itself.'
Dispatches from the Polar Vortex!
The view from my front porch.
Welp, it's still cold: "Monday's temperatures in Chicago were colder than those recorded at the South Pole in Antarctica." That seems reasonable.
UPDATE: My friend Miller took this pic from the window of her Chicago apartment yesterday morning (shared w/ permission):
That's steam rising off Lake Michigan.
Question of the Day
It's that time again: What would you like to see asked as a future Question of the Day? Either something that's never been asked, or something that I haven't asked for awhile and you really enjoyed the first time around.
Photo of the Day
European Southern Observatory: "Striking new observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope capture, for the first time, the remains of a recent supernova brimming with freshly formed dust. If enough of this dust makes the perilous transition into interstellar space, it could explain how many galaxies acquired their dusty, dusky appearance."Everything about that is absolutely breathtaking.
[Via Science Recorder.]
