Earlier this summer a friend said they were going to vote for Trump. I turned bright red, I kid you not. Bright bright red. Even I thought it was funny. They said, “I take it you’re a Hillary fan,” and I said, truthfully, that it wasn’t so much that I was pro-Hillary as I was vehemently anti-Trump. (This has changed: I’ve really had to examine my prejudices against Hillary and question how many of them were instilled by 30 years of media telling me she was evil and corrupt, but…
A friend of mine over on Facebook posted link to this article, Why Women Smile At Men Who Sexually Harass Us, which is a good article full of things that are tiresomely familiar to virtually all women and apparently continue to be surprising to many, perhaps most, men. I think it’s a good article for men to read, because what prompted her writing it was how the author’s boyfriend, who is, by her estimation, one of the good guys, responded not only to her being harassed, but to her *reaction*…
For some reason I was reminded, this morning, of a discussion a few years ago post-Snowden, where an acquaintance of mine who had worked in the intelligence field spoke at great length, and passionately, about why Snowden had been wrong to leak the surveillance information that he did. His reasons were (roughly) matters of trust inside intelligence agencies, safety of intelligence officers, necessity of some secrets being kept, and possibly a couple other things I’m now forgetting. It was well reasoned and well written and I fundamentally understood and agreed…
A friend of ours is visiting and working on her thesis. Early yesterday evening she came downstairs with the look of one martyred and suffering nobly for her cause and handed me her phone so that she couldn’t check Twitter or FB while she was supposed to be working on her thesis. Several hours later, just before bedtime, she retrieved the phone and went into her bedroom. Moments later she came back out saying, “Catie? *CATIE*?!” in increasingly alarmed tones. Ted ran out to see what was wrong and she…
1.9 million people turned out to vote on Friday, a 60.5% turnout that saw the highest number of ballots ever cast in an Irish referendum. 1.2 million of those people voted for marriage equality. It seemed pretty clear by half an hour into the count that it was trending heavily toward a win for equality, but everyone here remained on pins and needles through the morning, growing increasingly hopeful as it appeared the measure wasn’t just going to pass, but was heading rapidly toward a landslide 2-to-1. My entire Twitter…