Shakesville

Quote of the Day

"This technology brings something that was the price of a car down to the price of a latte."—Jason Hundley, president and CEO of Zero Point Frontiers, a space engineering company in Huntsville, Alabama, where engineers designed and then successfully used their 3-D printer to produce a prosthetic hand for 2-year-old Kate Berkholtz, who was born without fingers on her left hand.

Prosthetic limbs are an option for children as young as Kate, but they run anywhere from about $10,000 to $50,000, and insurance companies typically don't cover the cost because young patients will outgrow the devices so quickly. Kate's family's insurance would have paid the bulk of the fee, her mother says, leaving the family to come up with the remainder — $3,000 to $5,000 — but the "expense was still a little ridiculous," Jessica Berkholtz says.

...Hundley plans to make a variety of attachments for Kate's hand — a separate one for bike riding, for swimming, for holding the bow of a violin. While adult prosthetics are designed to accomplish a broad range of functions and to last for many years...Hundley says that the low cost of producing each of the 3-D-printed devices — about $5 for the hand, mostly to cover the cost of the straps and wires, and $1 for each attachment — means that you can make as many as you want and keep swapping them out as the child grows.

Amazing. AMAZING.

[H/T to Shaker Erin M.]

Daily Dose of Cute

image of Dudley the Greyhound lying upside down on the loveseat, grinning

This guy. ♥ LOL.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.

The Friday Blogaround

This blogaround brought to you by leaves.

Recommended Reading:

Nina: [Content Note: Sexual violence; war on agency] Congress Must Act to Protect Peace Corps Volunteers

Tressie: [CN: Racism; class warfare] Reparations: What the Education Gospel Cannot Fix

Douglas: [CN: Class warfare] House Funding Bill Disproportionately Cuts Assistance to Low-Income Renters

Justice for Shanesha: Shanesha Has Been Granted Visitation with Her Children!

Mary and Katherine: [CN: Racism; misogyny] Down Beat Aims to Beat Women's Stigmatized Roles in Filmmaking

Sean: Mama Bear Saves Cub Stranded on Canadian Highway

Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!

A Few More Words on She-Hulk and Comics

by Shakesville Moderator Hallelujah_Hippo

[Content Note: Misogyny; sexual objectification.]

This morning, one of my favorite authors and funny twitter personalities, Gail Simone, said a few things that really resonated with me, not just about She-Hulk, but about the wider world of comics and fandom.

I really appreciate how Simone makes the connections between the marginalization of women and their allies and the marginalization of female characters; about how a lot of people in positions of power want to be perceived as progressive (and get the resulting cookies) without actually being progressive. I like how she says points out that this isn't just a "women's problem"—this is a problem for everyone who expects more, and it's that expecting more which is pushing things forward whether the old guard wants it or not.

In short, even though Simone is talking specifically about comic books and She-Hulk, she is also talking about in the wider context of progress and expecting more and a lot of the smaller nuances that exist within these conversations.

Head below the fold for the full Storify...

Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Monette Moore: "Weeping Willow Blues"

This week's TMNS have been brought to you by singers with the initials MM.

Enough Already. Enough.

[Content Note: Death penalty; torture.]

Pentobarbital, which has long been used in lethal injection executions, is no longer available as manufacturers now refuse to sell it for that purpose. So US states which still have the death penalty have been searching for new alternatives, with horrific results.

In January, Ohio death row inmate Dennis McGuire was executed using "a new cocktail of drugs that took nearly a half hour to kill the gasping McGuire."

In April, Oklahoma death row inmate Clayton Lockett was executed using "a disputed cocktail of drugs" which left him "writhing on the gurney" until he finally died of a heart attack 43 minutes later.

These examples of inmates being tortured to their deaths might seem a compelling argument for eradicating the death penalty once and for all, which is to say nothing of the 4% of wrongly convicted inmates sitting on death row, but some states are very determined to kill people:

Wyoming has become the latest death penalty state to consider a return to the firing squad, while Tennessee's governor has signed a bill to bring back the electric chair, amid a scarcity of lethal injection drugs and legal battles over the secrecy that surrounds their purchase and use by jurisdictions that impose capital punishment.

Legislators in Wyoming have begun to draft a bill they plan to introduce at the state's next legislative session that would reintroduce executions at the point of a gun. The move was prompted, elected members said, by the drought in lethal injection drugs caused by a pharmaceutical suppliers' boycott of US death chambers.

On Thursday night the Tennessee governor, Bill Haslam, approved the reintroduction of the electric chair in cases where drugs for lethal injection could not be acquired.

End the death penalty now. END THE DEATH PENALTY NOW.

In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

President Obama calls out the media for their "both sides are both as bad" narrative: "You'll hear if you watch the nightly news or you read the newspapers that, well, there's gridlock, Congress is broken, approval ratings for Congress are terrible. And there's a tendency to say, a plague on both your houses. But the truth of the matter is that the problem in Congress is very specific. We have a group of folks in the Republican Party who have taken over who are so ideologically rigid, who are so committed to an economic theory that says if folks at the top do very well then everybody else is somehow going to do well; who deny the science of climate change; who don't think making investments in early childhood education makes sense; who have repeatedly blocked raising a minimum wage so if you work full-time in this country you're not living in poverty; who scoff at the notion that we might have a problem with women not getting paid for doing the same work that men are doing. ...So when you hear a false equivalence that somehow, well, Congress is just broken, it's not true. What's broken right now is a Republican Party that repeatedly says no to proven, time-tested strategies to grow the economy, create more jobs, ensure fairness, open up opportunity to all people." Damn!

(Too bad he hasn't been saying exactly that for the last six years. But still: DAMN!)

[Content Note: Racism] Mark Cuban is a fucking jackass who needs to STFU: "In a videotaped interview with Inc. Magazine on Wednesday, Cuban casually tosses out stereotypes as if he were talking about the weather. In doing so, Cuban wants credit for just being honest. But his honesty is appalling... "I mean, we're all prejudiced in one way or another. If I see a black kid in a hoodie and it's late at night, I'm walking to the other side of the street. And if on that side of the street there's a guy that has tattoos all over his face—white guy, bald head, tattoos everywhere—I'm walking back to the other side of the street. And the list goes on of stereotypes we all live up to and are fearful of." No, Mark Cuban. We "all" are not fearful of black kids in hoodies and white guys with facial tattoos.

[CN: Transphobia] New research conducted by "scholars at the Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law, estimates that nearly 150,000 transgender individuals have served in the U.S. armed forces, or are currently on active duty." Maybe we could get busy changing policy to allow trans* servicemembers to serve openly, so they are not fighting to defend freedoms they are themselves not afforded.

[CN: Possible racism] A black teenager at Proviso East High School in Maywood, Illinois, has been told he cannot be valedictorian of his class per a rule existence of which the administration cannot provide proof: "[L]ast week, both Ladarius Sapho and the school's number two student, the salutatorian, got called to the office for some bad news. Principal Tony Valente told them they didn't qualify for the honors, because both students started at the school as sophomores after moving into the district. Policy requires they must have attended for at least seven semesters to get the titles. 'You're gonna tell me just two weeks before graduation? I had a speech ready, I was ready to give this speech, practicing, and he tells me I can't be number one,' added Sapho. Community advocate Antoinette Gray has been working to help Sapho get the title he earned. 'There is no policy,' said Gray. 'They have been asked not once, but two or three times to produce that written policy. And the reason that was given by Tony Valente, the school principal, was that it was his discretion to make that decision.'" Bullshit. (I note this is "possible" racism, because Maywood is a predominantly black community. So I don't know for sure whether the issue is Sapho's race, to make way for a non-black valedictorian, or a personal issue, or some combination thereof. In any case, this is real garbage.)

[CN: Fat hatred; misogyny; article at link uses some language not favored by most fat activists (e.g. "overweight"); images may be NSFW] Instagram apologizes after taking down an image of a fat woman they deemed "'mature content,' despite the fact that the behind was covered by underwear and similar to countless thin women who have never been banned."

If you are in North America, you are likely to have a pretty good view of the Camelopardalid meteor shower tonight! Neat!

And finally! Poppy the Cat has been crowned the oldest known living cat. She is 24! Congratulations, Poppy!

I Write Letters

Dear Tall People:

I am writing to you today with much affinity: I am married to a tall person, and some of my best friends are tall people! And with no small amount of envy. The way you can just reach things on the top shelf of the kitchen cupboards? Ooh la la!

Me? I am a short person. Also I wear glasses. And, generally speaking, I like hugs!

In the interest of improving short person and tall person relations, I need to bring something to your attention that many of you don't seem to have realized: If you hug a short person who wears glasses in a way that tightly squeezes our bespectacled mugs to your front, IT HURTS OUR FACES!

Seriously. I cannot emphasize this enough: Having your glasses smashed against your face really, really hurts.

And nothing subverts the pleasure of a hug like worrying that your specs are gonna snap and/or shatter and/or puncture your eyeball.

It's also just kind of embarrassing to have onlookers seeing you look like this:

image of me with my glasses askew on my face and my hair ruffled, making a humorously consternated expression

Thank you kindly for your consideration.

Warmest regards,
Liss
5'3"

Whooooooooops Your Reform Bill!

[Content Note: Surveillance.]

I haven't been giving a whole lot of attention to the NSA reform bill making its way through the US congress, because I figured that it would be watered-down garbage by the time it came to a vote, and welp:

A landmark surveillance bill, likely to pass the US House of Representatives on Thursday, is [losing] support from the civil libertarians and privacy advocates who were its champions from the start.

Major revisions to the USA Freedom Act have stripped away privacy protections and transparency requirements while expanding the potential pool of data the National Security Agency can collect, all in a bill cast as banning bulk collection of domestic phone records. As the bill nears a vote on the House floor, expected Thursday, there has been a wave of denunciations.

"It does not deserve the name 'USA Freedom Act' any more than the 'Patriot Act' merits its moniker," wrote four former NSA whistleblowers and their old ally on the House intelligence committee staff.

The former NSA officials – Thomas Drake, William Binney, Edward Loomis and J Kirk Wiebe – and former congressional staffer Diane Roark denounced 11th-hour changes to the Freedom Act as resulting in "a very weak" bill.

"Much legislation has been exploited and interpreted by the administration as permitting activities that Congress never intended," they wrote in a letter Wednesday to Representative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat.

Lofgren told the Guardian last week that she intended to offer amendments to the Freedom Act, which cleared the House intelligence and judiciary committees two weeks ago, adding encryption protections and providing greater leeway to companies seeking to disclose surveillance orders for their customers' data.

But Lofgren warned on the House floor Wednesday that none of her amendments were put into order by the powerful House rules committee, which released a new version of the Freedom Act on Tuesday night that reflected substantial changes made at the insistence of the Obama administration, the NSA and the office of the director of national intelligence.

Most significantly, the version emerging from the rules committee expanded the definition of a "specific selection term," the root thing – formerly defined as information that "uniquely describe[s] a person, entity, or account" – the government must present to a judge, with suspicion of connection of terrorism or espionage, in order to collect data under the bill.

The new definition is "a discrete term, such as" a person, entity, account, "address or device". That revision has spurred privacy advocates and even major technology companies to doubt that the bill will actually ban the mass collection of Americans' data, its ostensible purpose.

This bill has bipartisan support, about which the the White House office of management and budget is proudly bragging, and almost nothing says "garbage legislation" these days than bipartisan support of two parties who can't agree on the color of the sky.

As I've said many times before: Once the government gets empowered to encroach on citizens' civil rights with impunity, they are very unlikely to ever give that power back.

Open Thread

comic image of the Fantastic Four

Hosted by the Fantastic Four.

Question of the Day

We've done this one before, but it's always fun and has been re-suggested by Shaker ActivistSheep: "How did you choose your username/where does it come from?"

Photo of the Day

OH HELLO!

image of two elephants standing beside each other near an enclosure barrier; one is lifting its truck and pointing it directly at the camera in close-up

From the Telegraph's Pictures of the Day for 22 May 2014: Elephants in their outdoor enclosure at the zoo in Magdeburg, Germany. [Jens Wolf/AFP/Getty Images]

Elephants forever.

Good News and Bad News

Good news, Las Vegas and Cincinnati! You are no longer in the running as potential hosts for the 2016 GOP convention!

Bad news, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, and Kansas City: You still are.

It Continues to Be a Real Mystery Why Republicans Aren't Connecting with a Majority of Female Voters

[Content Note: Misogyny; heterocentrism.]

Today's entry in our ongoing series comes via Colorado, where, earlier this week, three of the four Republican candidates for governor (Tom "Immigrants, Amirite?" Tancredo was not in attendance) participated in a debate "that was meant to reassure women that Republicans have their best interests in mind." Whooooooooooops!

Video Description: Three men—former Congressman Bob Beauprez, former state Senate Minority Leader Mike Kopp, and Secretary of State Scott Gessler—who all appear to be white, sit at a table on a stage. To one side, a man who also appears to be white stands at a podium, moderating the panel.

The moderator says: "All right, the first of three periods will be the candidates' back-and-forth to each other around our main theme—women and Colorado's future. Then, for about a half an hour, we will invite up a panel, nominated by our women of Centennial Institute co-host organization. And the moderator failed to implore the ladies to come and seat themselves at the panel table in the beginning; it's so much more ornamental if the three, four of you would be on the stage with the four of us. May I ask up Debbie Brown, Mackenzie Hughes, Christa Kapher, and Helen Raleigh [names spelled phonetically] to take their seats at the panel table? We were supposed to have—" [applause] "We were supposed to have a little of The Dating Game theme. I don't know if we can play any of that music right now, but the idea was that, uh—" [the theme from The Dating Game begins to play] "There it is! Bachelor One! Bachelor Two! Bachelor Three!" [laughter] "Actually, uh, their wives are all here tonight, so one thing the candidates cannot put over on on is any kind of a bachelorhood."

I'm not sure which part is worse: The whole "women voters pick candidates like they pick husbands" conceit or the description of women as "ornamental." Jesus fucking Jones.

Quote of the Day

[Content Note: Misogyny; sexual objectification; heterocentrism.]

"I have a theory about She-Hulk. Which was created by a man, right? And at the time in particular I think 95% of comic book readers were men, and certainly almost all of the comic book writers were men. So the Hulk was this classic male power fantasy. It's like, most of the people reading comic books were these people like me who were just these little kids who were getting the shit beaten out of them every day—'What if I became giant, and could clap my hands and create a sonic boom?' And so then they created She-Hulk, right? Who was still smart. So it was like, I think She-Hulk is the chick that you could fuck if you were Hulk, you know what I'm saying? …She-Hulk was the extension of the male power fantasy. So it's like, if I'm going to be this geek that becomes the Hulk, then let's create a giant green porn star that only the Hulk could fuck."—Screenwriter David S. Goyer, on the latest episode of the Scriptnotes podcast.

There was immediate pushback against Goyer's remarks, including by Stan Lee, co-creator of She-Hulk:

Unsurprisingly, Lee's recollection of She-Hulk's creation differs greatly from the scenario presented by Goyer. "I know I was looking for a new female superhero, and the idea of an intelligent Hulk-type grabbed me," he told The Post. (The generally accepted backstory has more to do with Marvel's concerns that CBS might create a spinoff of the live-action Incredible Hulk television series starring a female counterpart, a la Bionic Woman, giving the network ownership of the character.)

In any case, She-Hulk was not conceived as a fucktoy for the Hulk. In fact, as Alan points out at The Mary Sue, She-Hulk "is not portrayed as the only woman the Hulk can have sex with because first and foremost, they're cousins."

Anyway. Goyer's comments are manifest garbage, but what I find most interesting about his "theory" is that it not only demeans a female superhero by reducing to her a sex object, in the very same way that female superheroes are demeaned all the time, but also that it demeans She-Hulk, a very explicitly large, strong, and physically powerful woman, on the basis that she's fuckable only by the Hulk.

Or, to be very specific, little boys and men imagining themselves to be the Hulk.

The men who demean other female superheroes this way—female superheroes who may have intimidatingly powerful superpowers, but still look like idealized versions of human women—don't imagine they have to be superheroes themselves to fuck those superheroes. But give them She-Hulk, and it takes a Hulk to fuck her. Or want to fuck her.

image of She-Hulk collaring a criminal, while a male security guard in the background nurses his noggin, apparently hit by the criminal; I have added text reading: 'Oh, you don't want to fuck me, boys? No problem. The feeling is totally mutual.'

image of She-Hulk collaring a criminal, while a male security guard in the background nurses his noggin, apparently hit by the criminal; I have added text reading: 'Oh, you don't want to fuck me, boys? No problem. The feeling is totally mutual.'

Daily Dose of Cute

image of Sophie the Torbie Cat sitting on my lap on top of a blanket, looking at me intently with concern

Sophie tending to me yesterday afternoon.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.

Discussion Thread: Spendthrift Exceptions

As I've mentioned a million times before, I am a super spendthrift when it comes to purchases for myself and for our household. I'll spend inordinate amounts of time trying to find deals to save us money. I know, from comments and various conversations, that a lot of Shakers are the same way.

But even the thriftiest among us tend to have at least one exception, one product or service for which we avoid the lowest priced option available, if and when possible.

So: What's your exception? What one thing will you spend a little more money on than settling for the cheapest possible option? It could be something as simple as toilet paper, or as significant as a car. A particular food or drink, a service like home repairs, shoes, whatever.

The first thing that came to mind for me is tattooing. There are cheaper tattoo artists around, but I don't feel that searching for bargain basement pricing is really the way to go when it comes to tattooing, for both artistry and safety reasons.

Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Michael Martin Murphey: "Carolina in the Pines"

In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

[Content Note: Abduction; misogyny; terrorism; abuse] As the search for the Nigerian schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram continues, the United States "has deployed 80 troops to Chad to augment efforts to find the [girls], the White House announced Wednesday, a significant escalation of Washington's contribution to a crisis that has created global consternation. The force, made up largely of Air Force personnel, will conduct surveillance flights and operate drone aircraft but will not participate in ground searches, according to US military officials." I have such fervent hopes that the girls will be found, and yet I know they are suffering mightily in the interim, and the words of Boko Haram analyst Jacob Zenn always hang in my memory: "Any effort to rescue them will have to be done in a very piecemeal fashion and might take over a decade."

[CN: Torture] US District Judge Gladys Kessler has ordered that Guantánamo Bay officials "must hand over dozens of secret force-feeding videos" as she hears arguments regarding the force-feeding of hunger striker Abu Wa'el Dhiab. "Kessler ultimately ordered the government to hand over approximately 34 secret videos, which show Dhiab, a Syrian who has been held without charge since 2002, being forcibly extracted from his prison cell and then force-fed with tubes through his nostrils. ...The Obama administration has said force-feeding hunger strikers, although decried by various human rights activists, is the most humane way of keeping detainees alive as they protest their indefinite detention." I guess not indefinitely detaining people is just too radical.

[CN: Abduction; sexual violence; emotional abuse] A woman who was taken hostage by her mother's then-boyfriend a decade ago has escaped. "After the victim contacted a sister through Facebook she found the courage to contact police." Amazing strength. I hope she has access to all the resources she needs to process the trauma she has survived. I hope she finds justice and peace.

[CN: Worker exploitation] Fast food employees continue to make noise in pursuit of a liveable wage: "More than 100 McDonald's employees and some labor and clergy members were arrested after protesting for increased wages near the fast-food chain's headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois. The event, the latest in a series of demonstrations by workers demanding $15-an-hour pay and the right to form a union, began at 1 p.m. local time yesterday, on the eve of McDonald's Corp.'s shareholder meeting."

Congratulations to Judge Diane Humetewa, the first Native American woman ever confirmed by the US Senate as a federal judge! "Humetewa was confirmed 96-0 to serve on the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona. She is a former US attorney in Arizona and a member of the Hopi tribe. She is now the first active member of a Native American tribe to serve on the federal bench and only the third Native American in history to do so."

[CN: Racism; slavery; abuse] Ta-Nehisi Coates makes the case for reparations.

[CN: Racism; Native American slur] Fifty United States Senators have now "called for a change to change the name of the Washington Redskins in a letter to National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell." This protracted "debate," such as it is, is so fucking stupid and cruel. JUST CHANGE THE NAME ALREADY. JESUS FUCKING JONES.

[CN: Fat hatred; body policing] "In 2014, The Classical World Still Can't Stop Fat-Shaming Women." A piece about how male critics can't get past a woman's not-thin body, irrespective of her immense talent.

Minnesota Just Became the First State to Ban Anti-Bacterial Soap: "The Minnesota ban, which doesn't actually go into effect until January 1, 2017, applies to pretty much any retail consumer hygiene products that includes triclosan as an active ingredient—including about 75 percent of anti-bacterial soaps. The FDA claims there's no evidence that triclosan soap is any more effective at washing away germs than non-antibacterial soap and water. What's more, according to recent studies, triclosan can 'disrupt hormones critical for reproduction and development, at least in lab animals, and contribute to the development of resistant bacteria.' So not only is this chemical not doing you any real good, it could actually be harming you, too."

Neat: "Newly developed observational capabilities now enable us to study exploding stars in ways we could only dream of before. We are moving towards real-time studies of supernovae," says Avishay Gal-Yam, an astrophysicist in the Weizmann Institute's Department of Particle Physics and Astrophysics.

And finally! Life as a loved dogT, amirite?

Bleep

So, you know how curse words on television shows used to be completely bleeped out, and now they tend to just have the middle of the words bleeped out? It's like "fbleepk" and "shbleept." I am really curious as to what the point of even bothering to bleep at all is, at this point. Because it seems to me that people who really want to hear words bleeped out probably aren't satisfied with a censoring mechanism that makes it patently obvious what the word being bleeped is, and the rest of us don't fbleepking care.