The way she describes her infant yanking the cord off sounds rather like what my sister did when my mom was trying not to rush her into potty training; she "told" my mom she was ready by toddling over and handing her a reeking, filled diaper while at a family picnic. "Get this foul-smelling thing away from me, woman!…

Actual benefits are this comment right here.

When two similar parties within weeks of each other, in different social strata, on different continents end up in exactly the same place, everyone's excuses – it was supposed to be fun and respectful, we're not racists! – can go get stuffed.

Yep. All of that.

I was just going to post something about this. As much as I love Lisbeth Salander, she's a spectrum-y, freakish outsider. She's defined by the things that make her not typically feminine – so while having her be a hero is feminist and expands notions of what women can be and do, she doesn't present an archetype to…

The Scully Effect! I didn't really watch the X-Files, so I didn't know about that aspect of her character, but apparently so many women were similarly inspired that they coined a name for it. Gillian Anderson was talking about it at this year's NY Comic Con.

Thanks for sharing the data in numbers rather than percentages. A shift in percentages could be accounted for by lots of dudes bailing out of finance and into CS and engineering. This is something else, however. There's been a similar decline of women working in the film industry since 2003. In that case though, a lot…

I was a CN intern, got a job out of it, and briefly oversaw the interns once I was on staff. Unlike most internships we gave them actual stuff to do – taught them office skills, had them do research, gave everyone a short byline, and we gave everyone lunches and metrocards. Most of them went on to do pretty cool…

I don't think @AnnoyedwithJezebel gets the joke.

Yeah, this past season the sheriff had a half-fairy daughter named Adalynn. I expect a tidal wave of baby Adalynns is in progress.

For my next birthday I'm going to have an Internet Troll party where everyone comes dressed as fat white guys with long hair, coke-bottle glasses, and pixel tans. We're going to do nothing but tell rape jokes, argue about men's rights, give each other cheeto-fingered high fives, and systematically mock and exclude one…

LaTRIIIIIIIIIIICE!

I think it's so interesting that names that were grandma names - Sophia, Ava, Olivia, Emma, Rose, Violet, Grace, Frances, Maude – have come back into popularity as the last generation of women to have them has passed away. It sucks to have a name that's super common for your generation – I do and so do my mom and…

Is she a True Blood fan?

That does happen, though, my mom picked my name because of a stylish and fierce family friend and didn't know there was a popular soap character with the same name until there were three other little [Motoko]s in the hospital nursery. I've checked the census data and before my birth year my name is barely on the…

Or Saved by the Bell.

I'm glad that there are so many comments on this thread. While I think the friend is being shitty and not handling herself well, it's a fact (and this is sociology, people) that upward class mobility and higher education are often just as hard on the people doing the leaving as on those left behind. Sure she may have…

Eh, they're certainly not grocery store paperbacks, but in their moments, each was not considered to be high literature – Anaïs Nin might be a "real" writer, but Delta is a compilation of erotica she wrote strictly to pay the bills. These were pulpy books that were viewed with some derision because they were about…

This GIF, and your alias. Yes yes.

Seriously, are these people not familiar with Lady Chatterly, Fear of Flying, The Story of O, Delta of Venus etc. etc. I stole Lady Chatterly from the library of my great aunt who was born in 1902, people.