Sad Stars

Google Reader goes away on July 1st. We're a month away from that deadline and I haven't done anything to wean myself off of it. I think I'll go with Feedly but it would be nice if I did that more than 12 hours before the whole thing goes POOF! Well, it's not going to happen today so instead I will just revel in my beloved starred file and share some stuff with you.

Our Sueb0b recommended a friend's food/recipe blog. I don't always fall in love with those. This one is fantastic. It's called Kalyn's Kitchen and I think you might find something you like there. A huge chunk of the starred file is full of her posts after I fell down a rabbit hole into the site at lunch yesterday. Gremolata? I had no idea!

Here's a great quote from Oklahoma State Rep, Doug Cox, asking what happened to sanity in the Republican party. I've been asking some of these questions for a long while, it's nice to hear them going out to a wider platform. His angle isn't perfect, as the post explains, but it's a step in the right goddamned direction.

While we're on the subject, I haven't followed through to read all of the articles associated with this but if you haven't been reading even a little about Kermit Gosnell please spend some time on it. This post is a decent place to start. The anti-choicers are, of course, using him to bolster their argument but if you follow the horror to its logical end you have to see that he's the reason we need abortion to be legal and safe. Safety first!

Can't stop there. Outside of the US there are problems, too. El Salvador is denying a woman a life-saving abortion. Let us distill the governmental response here; while calling themselves pro-life they are going to allow a woman and her fetus to die. Just let a productive member of society die a potentially brutal death. I don't think that word means what they think it means.

Schmutzie, a blogger I have long enjoyed and met a couple of times, wrote a great post that stirred up a bunch of feelings for a whole lot of people. It's a list of things that child-free people are told by some parents. The most admirable thing about the whole hoopla is, I think, the variety of responses that came from the online community she has created. The most galling thing is the number of people who have tried to tell her that these things never happen. They do. All of them. I told another child-free person about #6 and before I could even finish the thought she was nodding ruefully. Don't dismiss this. Think about it. (I'm linking to the Blogher publishing of the post, it was first published on Schmutzie's site. It's worth going to both to see the comments.)

Palate cleanser! Flowers made out of the bones of rodents. Cool. Though maybe I shouldn't call that a palate cleanser.

Many of you are doing a lot of gardening these days. Great resource for that is Sara's blog, which she's recently begun updating again with delightful photos for illustration.

Ok, let's dive back down into the muck. Did you hear about #FBRape? Facebook took offense to breastfeeding photos and gave their reasons as the pornographic nature of such images but continues to allow pro-rape pages to proliferate in their space. Users took action using #FBRape to target advertisers and ask them to quit advertising until justice and intelligence could be served. Some companies responded well, some very poorly, and thirteen companies pulled their advertising. Facebook's response, a step in the right direction yet not a solution, is here.

Coincidentally this went down the same week that it was announced that Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and author of popular non-fiction title Lean In, will be a keynote speaker at Blogher '13. They will be accepting pre-submitted questions for the Q&A. I look forward to a lively discussion.

Interesting infographic about parental leave policies at tech companies. I especially like the ones where the maternal and paternal time off policies are the same.

Another high note, the Supreme Court declined to even hear testimony on an Indiana law to defund Planned Parenthood. It's like chipping away at a glacier but I like to see the ice cubes fall.

Let's end on something light, quick, and funny. I went back and read this over and over so I could keep chuckling.