Today’s Otterday is hosted by this adorable young critter, photographed at Edinburgh Zoo by greenzowie, who shared it on flickr.
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?
Categories: Life
Soggy here, innit? 
In memoriam: Diana Rigg 
Getting out the ‘yes’ 
100 books by women in 2016 
Hoyden About Town 
Morning Hoydens!
I’m up bright and early this morning to do some sewing for my Mardi Gras costume. Thankfully, after trying out the new sewing machine in our house, it turns out that my previous notion that I was very bad at sewing may have actually been a result of our old sewing machine rather than my own inexperience. Tomorrow a bunch of us are all meeting up for a crafternoon and banner painting session, which should be fun. Two weeks to go!
In less pleasant news, this week I featured in my first anonymous hate meme on Facebook after having to moderate some fairly off topic and obnoxious commentary on one of the organising groups I am a part of. This internet thing can fairly suck sometimes.
Sounds like fun Li, moderating less so. The internet really can suck sometimes. I’m sure that someone or many someones are already doing interesting studies into the behaviour of people online.
My news for this lovely Saturday is that a brand new baby girl, named Kate, has come into the world and lucky for me she is my niece. I truly am blessed.
Awesome 80’s hair in Rage’s Whitney retrospective.
My 13 year old daughter has been writing songs, I haven’t been allowed to read/hear them yet but am rather chuffed that it seems to have become her leisure activity of choice 🙂
Your mornings are all far more personally rewarding than mine so far. But I found some confirmatory evidence for my suspicion that the US right is indeed going bonkers (if they want any significant number of women voting for them): http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/02/how-the-gop-went-back-to-the-1950s-in-just-one-day.php?ref=fpblg
I think it’s relevant to certain Australian self-identified feminists and their values.
Aqua, I’ve been following that. It’s gobsmackingly bizarrely disturbing, and a very bad sign.
What’s happening in the US at the moment really is terrifying once you realise it’s not just one big joke… It constantly amazes me how people can be so ignorant and backwards.
I’ve been following a facebook war (well, heated debate) this morning about the new student services and amenities fee that’s been introduced at my uni (and others too). The ignorance of some students to their own privilege is astounding. The main argument against the fee is “I don’t use these services, so why the hell should I pay?” Those services being counselling, support for students of diverse backgrounds and sexualities, union-run food and textbook outlets, mentoring services, first-year engagement initiatives, etc. Sure, some students won’t need those. The privileged ones. But if the money paid will indeed go to student services (the only part I’m a little iffy about) then I think it is well justified. Especially seeing as the fee is able to be deferred through HECS as well.
Congratulations to you and Kate’s parents Mindy!
Jo, the year I first started at uni was the year voluntary student unionism was put on the table. It’s strange going from thousands of students marching against the VSU legislation and support for it being in an extreme minority among university students to many students being against the reintroduction of service fees. Maybe it’s partially a result of how quickly most students move through the university system. It’s certainly the case that most of the current crop of Australian students don’t necessarily (with the exception of a few of the much larger universities) have experience of what fully funded student services actually look like. It’s much harder for people to see the value in services that have spent five years dealing with increasingly severe funding cuts.
Our student union has is in negotiations with the uni about the SSAF (student services and amenities fee) too. Hopefully we get a nice chunk, though as long as the money actually goes to student services and doesn’t get swallowed up by the uni we’re happy. But it’s not just the obvious student services that get funded by that money. In our uni, things like the front desk, gardening and maintenance are counted. So when VSU came in, lots of these people found themselves out of a job, which really affected the quality of the place.
@Li – that sounds fun! What’s your costume like? Does it have sequins?
@Aqua of the Questioners, I made the mistake of reading the entire first page of comments. Some good thoughts but wow, the concern trolls were out in force.
I put my car in for service early, as requested today. They called me an hour later to tell me it was ready. Considering that I only brought it in for 8am service as they said they’d need at least 3 hours to work on it… Otherwise I’d have slept in and brought it in later. Then we went into down and I had Dosa for lunch, and a quiet evening.
Fat-hating on a thread about Gina Rinehart’s media ambitions might to be expected, but still rather depressing over on LP.
I hadn’t read that thread for a while, so it was quite surprising to see the turn it had taken. Obviously I’ve been hanging out in the fato-sphere too much and forgot what it is really like. The ‘oh is that really offensive?’ got old fast.
Spent Sat night at a lovely 50th birthday party in the country, with loads of kids keeping each other occupied, which is great. But astonished, as I always am, at how random gender essentialising lines make their way into the conversation even when the whole crowd is pretty lefty/alternative/artsy. More particularly when said lines are made nonsense of by what is actually happening in front of our eyes. “Oh, boys are just drawn to guns”, sighs a mother, as her son runs around with a big plastic rifle, and about four little girls also carrying guns. Mother making balloon shapes says “I can only do dogs and swords, one for the girls and one for the boys”, as her daughter runs off wielding a balloon poodle in one hand, and a plastic sword in the other. What kind of filters do people manage to construct between their eyes and their brain?