Links that I enjoyed and shared around the web. Take a gander.
Economy
• Times report: The real mortgage deadbeats are the rich. Why does it not surprise me that even in the Great Recession, the rich keep getting richer by hiring their legal team to take advantage of all the loopholes, including ones that are supposed to be helping the middle and working classes.
Fandom
• Feminist Hulk SMASH Exclusive Interview with MS.! Awesome.
Tweeting in all-caps, this size-XXXXXXL superhero fights for social justice and breaks down the gender binary–all the while looking “smashing” in purple shorts with a big smile on his face.
• Mythbusting Princess Leia’s Hair. Leia had some bizarre hair, even for the 1970s. And some hair that expert cos-players can’t figure out how to replicate. Certainly hair she couldn’t have done by herself, while on the run and fighting a war.
• Dear Drapers: A letter to ‘Mad Men’s’ first family from the Black maid. An angry letter for the much ignored and taken advantage of Carla.
• Betty White Calendar. Betty gets her own awesome calendar. Our last Golden Girl is a national treasure.
• Darth Vader Robs Bank (Photos, Oh Yes, Photos). I’m always kind of surprised this doesn’t happen more often.
Feminism
• Scots Make it Clear: My Skirt Isn’t Asking You to Rape Me.
• The Afghan women jailed for ‘bad character’. The women’s jail in Kabul is filled with women imprisoned for everything from serious crimes like murder to not-crimes such as ‘bad character.’ And with them is all their children, who are under 5-years-old.
• An Open Letter to Maureen Dowd.
Don’t you think it’s a little irresponsible to lump together the abolition of slavery and “letting women sell lingerie to women” as markers of societal progress? Or to say that “the big Gloria Steinem advance […] is that women now wear abayas with dazzling designs on the back,” effectively undercutting nascent Saudi activism and the attempts of so many women to expand interpretations of Islam? Or to equate with civil rights-era sit-ins your entirely disrespectful attempt to force your ideas of equality onto a Starbucks?
• How feminist blogs like Jezebel gin up page views by exploiting women’s worst tendencies.
[Readers are] ignited by writers who are pushing readers to feel what the writers claim is righteously indignant rage but which is actually just petty jealousy, cleverly marketed as feminism. These firestorms are great for page-view-pimping bloggy business. But they promote the exact opposite of progressive thought and rational discourse, and the comment wars they elicit almost inevitably devolve into didactic one-upsmanship and faux-feminist cliché. The vibe is less sisterhood-is-powerful than middle-school clique in-fight, with anyone who dares to step outside of chalk-drawn lines delimiting what’s “empowering” and “anti-feminist” inevitably getting flamed and shamed to bits. Paradoxically, in the midst of all the deeply felt concern about women’s sexual and professional freedom to look and be however they want, it’s considered de rigueur to criticize anyone, like [Olivia] Munn, who dares to seem to want to sexually attract men.
Feminism and Technology
• On Tech, Women and You’re Not Helping
[W]e have to stop dismissing, ignoring and downplaying the contribution of women who are already DOING what they want to do and who are justifiably proud of it. There are enough real problems in the world that we don’t have to invent them.
• 5 Organizations Helping Women Get Ahead in Tech. Actual programs, which are actually helping women learn the skills we need to complete and building a network of support.
• The iPad: Another Object of Male Desire? An interesting editorial about how men buy new technology because it’s fun or cool, and women buy new technology because it’s a good tool to help accomplish their tasks. The iPad falls pretty far away from being a good tool and is certainly more of a toy.
• No Girls Allowed: File Sharing Culture and BitTorrent. While Anita and I don’t have the same viewpoint on pornography, she does make some good points about how advertising on file sharing networks can turn off women or just those not trolling for that kind of pornography from understanding and utilizing the technology to its fullest potential.
Inspiration
• The Creativity Crisis: For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong–and how we can fix it. Not only is the US lagging behind in teaching our children real world skills, we’re also lagging behind in allowing children to be children with unstructured playtime, which is causing us to be less creative in general.
Politics
• Handy Map Demonstrates Where You Can Marry Your Cat or Your Cousin But Not Your Girlfriend. The headline says it all.
• BP photoshops fake photo of crisis command center, posts on main BP site. For reals? Seriously, this is the worse photoshoppnig I’ve seen in a long time.
Recipes (I want to cook.)
Seattle
• Nickerson ‘road diet’ starts this month. I love alternative means of transportation besides my car too. However, can we do construction projects in order so my commute doesn’t just get worse and worse.
Science
• Silly Putty ingredient found in McNuggets. Things that make me feel okay for not having eaten at a McDonalds in over 10 years.
• Rabbits disrupt project to map the universe. Because they’re awesome. Because you can’t convince me that Watership Down is actually fiction.
• Vaccine Patch May Replace Needles. This is rather cool.
Social Media
• Old Spice: The Man Your Content Could Smell Like. If you missed Old Spice’s 180+ YouTube videos, check them out. Now that is how you kick some ass at social media. One of my favorites below:
• Twitter user tweets about Wheat Thins shortage, company sends her a pallet of them. This is perhaps a little overboard. And crazy.
Technology
• Apple Infantalizing Customers with iPhone 4 Response, Censorship.
When you were a kid, if you got stomach cramps after you went swimming, mom would always remind you that she told you not to jump in the water after eating. So is it any wonder that, when the new iPhone 4 loses bars when hold it by the bottom left corner, Apple is right there to tell you that “gripping almost any mobile phone in certain ways will reduce its reception by 1 or more bars?” If you had just listened to mom, you would never have held the phone that way in the first place. The weaker signal is as much your fault as the poison ivy rash you got after playing in the bushes when mom told you not to.
• Behance Helps Creatives Showcase Portfolios on LinkedIn. Look someone’s trying to make LinkedIn not just for stuffy CEOs who collect other stuffy CEOs like Hummel figurines.
Web Design
• Design a Beautiful Cosmic Space Scene in Photoshop. A really neat tutorial.