Today’s otter is, I think, bringing bluemilk’s daughter some materials for goddamn craft. (Snapped and shared by tomosuke214 on flickr.)
Now with BONUS OTTER by the same photographer:
Today is the birthday of Indira Gandhi and Jodie Foster. It’s also International Men’s Day[1] and World Toilet Day. World Toilet Day aims to improve sanitation conditions worldwide, improving health and well-being in poor communities, promoting social inclusion, and increasing school attendance. Toilets are also (or should be) an important feminist issue – as the UN notes in their Sanitation Fosters Social Development factsheet:
“Poor women and girls are hit hardest by the absence of toilets. They care for the sick and are in greatest physical contact with human waste. Lacking toilets in overcrowded slums means going the whole day without relieving oneself and then risking exposure – or even assault – at night, a humiliating daily routine that can damage health. Menstruation adds considerably to the need for sanitary facilities. Sexual harassment and rape are also a risk in rural areas, where women often seek privacy in the darkness, and in refugee camps, which all too often fail to provide safely located, women-only toilets. These realities absorb women’s time, imperil their physical well-being, and limit their free and equal participation in the economic and social life of their societies.”
Please feel free to use this thread to natter about anything your heart desires. Is there anything great happening in your life? Anything you want to get off your chest? Reading a good book (or a bad one)? Anything in the news that you’d like to discuss? What have you created lately? Commiserations, felicitations, temptations, contemplations, speculations?
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[1] “[IMD] is an occasion to highlight discrimination against men and boys and to celebrate their achievements and contributions, in particular for their contributions to community, family, marriage, and child care.” I’m off to bake some cookies.
Today I’m heading to the Colour Parade at Town Hall. I spent yesterday with a pile of silk flowers and a hot glue gun, so I’m pretty excited for it.
I was going to ask what had happened to geekfeminism, but it’s back for me this morning so I assume it was some temporary glitch. Otherwise, today looks pretty busy so I’m not sure when I’ll have time to write more about the Penn State scandal.
I’m doing nothing much today. Hanging with the family, snuggling with the cats, reading a book. Tomorrow’s the school fete, so that should be fun – I donated boxes and boxes of books, and my goal is to come home with fewer than I donated.
Also thought I’d share a product I spotted in Lincraft a couple days ago:
The car is back from the panel beaters*! I went and bought a boot full of groceries! mr tog went into town and bought a tenor saxophone! We just had quick-roasted asparagus for lunch with fresh sliced baguette and some duck pate!
(*not my fault, I was in the passenger seat and no other cars were involved (damn those parking lot bollards))
@Lauredhel – that’s fantastic. Just what our house is missing – some cushions covered in ass fur!
Contest: #Rewrite The Ending for great justice!
I hear ass fur also makes great hats.
Also, barbarian hordes use Ass fur for earmuffs, and in times of desperation, smellaclavas, whilst beating on nazi castle doors with parking bollards, trying to storm the towers of the compassion nazis and the acceptance nazis. Both nazi groups have put their differences aside to bake more drop scones and combat muffins, under the watchfull visual units of the femiborg steampunk abortion robots.
@YetAnotherMatt:
*regards the mega-meta-ness of your comment with awe*
And NOW for something completely different:
@Li – how was the Colour Parade?
@tigtog – I’d seen a ‘lol-monster’ of that last week and it made me giggle.
Trying to motivate myself to work on the final exam. Boring. It seems deceptively ‘easy’ (I’ve finished the multiple choice segment and the ‘legal problem’ section consists of advising the clients on the best ADR methods for their various disputes) so of course I think I’m missing something and set about reading the entire textbook to see if I can figure out what I’ve ‘missed’…so looking forward to submitting and summer evenings and weekends free of study!
@doubleantandre: good luck, and happy finishing :)
You all might be interested in this slideshow by Terri Oda.
The text on the first slide is “How does biology explain the low numbers of women in computer science? Hint: it doesn’t.”
It is fantabulous. It is also an excellent resource, and Terri has released it under a CC (attribution-share alike) licence.
Jo, that’s one of my favourite slideshows :)
So my home internet is deep-sixed, and I’m online via the local library. As might be expected, it has content filters for porn and violence – a little overzealous at times, but I get their purpose.
But today I find it has a filtering category for [i]abortion[/i], blocking threads like this one – and that I find both depressing and disturbing.
Also disturbing is a new law in St Petersburg.
SunlessNick: It might be worth contacting a librarian about that malconfigured filter. Librarians tend to be fairly against censorship, in my experience. And wow, that St Petersburg law!
@SunlessNick, over-zealous filtering depresses and disturbs me, too.
I’m writing my research proposal for PhDs. It’s made me remember just how much I love doing historical research. I’ve just discovered a little town library has the archives of a company I’m interested in, and it had me literally jumping up and down in my seat.