February 2012
86 posts
In San Francisco, rents jumped close to 5 percent last year →
nytimes.com
Wow what a great time to leave my rent-controlled apartment in San Francisco to roam around the world working on a startup. Or not, haha. Ah well, I can’t let the bloated rents of the latest tech bubble dictate what I do with my life.
- My sister: Gurl, I'm being a living stock image right now
- Me: Laughing with salad?
- My sister: I'm smiling and eating a salad
Forced sterilization for transfolk in Europe. →
motherjones.com
Red countries require surgery in order to transition genders on legal docs, green countries do not, purple countries have no legal recognition of trans people. This Mother Jones article also describes trans rights problems in Canada, notably this: “[…] in order to change the gender on their passports in Canada, trans Canadians must have had or be scheduled for a gender reassignment surgery.” Trans Canadians may also be barred from boarding a flight if they do not appear “to be of the gender indicated on the identification” they present at the airport.
The Forgetting Pill Erases Painful Memories Forever →
wired.com
“The problem with eliminating pain, of course, is that pain is often educational. We learn from our regrets and mistakes; wisdom is not free.”
This is why I want something like this for some very specific memories from my love life: sometimes you learn things that don’t actually make you a better person. Sometimes instead it makes you jaded. I don’t see the value added there. My cynicism about relationships does not make me a better person.
“[Cornell University’s Suzanne Mettler] tells us that 44 percent of Social Security recipients, 43 percent of those receiving unemployment benefits, and 40 percent of those on Medicare say that they ‘have not used a government program.’”
—Moochers Against Welfare by Paul Krugman in the New York Times.
Play
0:12
Lena Dunham A.V. Club interview →
avclub.com
AVC: There’s a scene in the third episode of Girls where Hannah is sitting there and trying to compose a tweet and keeps deleting it because she’s not happy with what it says. It’s almost like voiceover or a musical number, where you can express emotions more directly and people will buy what’s going on.
LD: That’s such a great analogy, because it is. It’s like the moment in episode three, when Hannah tweets out her feelings about her gay boyfriend, her HPV. That was a moment when her Twitter allows her to really state her perspective on what’s just happened in the way that a facial expression would be more ambiguous. You’re totally right. That is its function.
