“In the current cultural climate, even euphemisms need euphemisms.”
—NPR, Taboo Revival: Talking Private Parts in Public Places
June 2012
70 posts
Obamacare upheld by the supreme court, but not yet by American voters
From The Guardian…
The degree to which Americans have an opinion about [health care reform] is in almost exactly inverse proportion to what they know about what it does. Since the debate over the policy first began in 2010, polling has routinely shown that asking about general ‘approval’ for the law gives a vastly different answers than if you ask about what the law does. People don’t like Obamacare and they would like very much a ban on discriminating against pre-existing conditions. Almost none of them realizes that the provision that makes such a ban on discrimination possible is the individual mandate, which conservatives have tried to make sound as frightening to their base as the idea of gay marriage was in 2004. But at least the public is honest: 52% of respondents to a Kaiser poll said they ‘do not have enough information about healthcare reform to understand how it will impact them.’
To a certain extent, all modern policy debates are about branding. From ‘Fast and Furious’ to the ‘War on Terror’, the crunchy details of governmental actions can hide if the banner they’re wrapped in is colorful enough, especially if those colors are red, white, and blue… [Read more]
“We are the girls with anxiety disorders, filled appointment books, five-year plans. We take ourselves very, very seriously. We are the peacemakers, the do-gooders, the givers, the savers. We are on time, overly prepared, well read, and witty, intellectually curious, always moving… We pride ourselves on getting as little sleep as possible and thrive on self-deprivation. We drink coffee, a lot of it. We are on birth control, Prozac, and multivitamins… We are relentless, judgmental with ourselves, and forgiving to others. We never want to be as passive-aggressive as our mothers, never want to marry men as uninspired as our fathers… We are the daughters of the feminists who said, ‘You can be anything,’ and we heard, ‘You have to be everything.’”
—Courtney Martin (via ceedling)
Tentative life plan for the rest of my twenties, in increasing order of vagueness:
- Grit my teeth and stay at this job another year. Try to improve my portfolio and professional web presence (i.e. make sure this Tumblr stays buried in the bowels of teh interwebz FOREVA)
- Go to grad school? Move to New York? Spend all the money I saved working at this job? Become wildly successful? Heh.
- Get married?
- Find a job I actually like, preferably in a foreign country
- Move there with Alex
- ADVENTURES!
- Have babies?!
We Are Young ft. Janelle Monae
Fun
Fun - We Are Young ft. Janelle Monáe
Today’s auto replay in my head (saw these guys live!)
“If I can’t say the word vagina, why are we legislating vaginas? What language should I use?”
—Michigan state Representative Lisa Brown wonders why she was prohibited from using the medically correct term for her vajayjay on the House floor. (via washingtonpoststyle)
