She's pregnant, I think, in those photos. Pregnancy does weird things to hormones and facial hair.

Agreed, plus I would guess that she expects that the relationship started before she was 19, so there are some complicated feelings of violation and failure to protect her daughter from a predator.

No, because mamas be protective of their children.

If you read through the link, it's a little less dismissive than the Jez article makes it sound:

"Yes, we lost two friends, two ideological fellow member, but the world has acquired two brave, interesting, controversial human rights defenders," the letter reads. "We appreciate their choice and sincerely wish them well…

I think this could be a springboard to an interesting conversation about why certain individuals become "celebrity" political prisoners (Pussy Riot, Aung San Suu Kyi, Zhang Zhixin) and others rot in prison indefinitely and anonymously.

The iconography of the male baclava'd figure was just bad research and marketing,…

That's right about the age when my oldest started loving Madeleine. Happy reading!

In an old house in Paris, covered in vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines....

Honestly, when it comes to breast vs. formula, I think the father's role needs to be limited to supporting the mother's choice. Later, sure, parents can decide together whether to start solids at 6 or 8 months, whether to worry about arsenic in rice cereal, etc. That initial choice, though, is thoroughly the…

This, but also this:

You know, I have TONS of friends who have worked in the UAE (it seems to be the hot thing in my field) and the rules for Westerners are very different than the rules for local women, which are themselves different than the rules for guest workers. So, I wouldn't worry too much.

Congrats on the baby, and good luck in the first few weeks! I don't know about the sensitive nipples, but I do know that even flat nipples can "unflatten" when your milk lets down. That may or may not be the case for you, but if you want to nurse, it might be worth identifying a good lactation consultant now, so…

It means that I support policies that would allow any woman who wants to nurse to do so.

On a policy level, it means that I think all hospitals should have lactation consultants on hand and that insurance should cover visits with a certified lactation consultant after women leave the hospital.

It also means that I'd…

This is insane, and a violation of the bodily autonomy of women in the UAE. There is nothing redeeming here, from the violation of womens' bodies to the fact that the husbands are given the right to dictate how their wives feed their babies.

I am as big a champion of breastfeeding as you will find, and nursed my…

Allow me to translate kschang from chauvinist pig to regular spak: "Models and porn stars, no matter their X or Y chromosome, are hotter to me than my wife, who has stopped taking care of herself now that she's working full-time AND doing all the housework."

Yeppers. Also, remember that Texas has turned down millions in Medicaid expansion funds that would have been available through the Affordable Care Act.

The problem isn't that Sochi is close to Georgia. Georgia is a stable, Western-looking, democracy (with some obvious problems). The problem is that Sochi is close to Abkhazia, a breakaway region that has become a quasi-vassal state to Russia. Highly militarized and recognized as independent only by Russia,…

Sochi is lovely, honestly. It carries a heavy historic burden and is adjacent to multiple conflict areas, but it has some of the best geography that the Russian Federation has to offer. There's a reason Russia wanted to showcase it.

Here's what I noticed about sports in the former USSR, based on years of living in the region and a career spent working on it - sports are for winning. There is very little culture around doing sports for fun, so either you are training for the Olympics or you are not playing. There is a growing culture around…

I'm glad to see this getting some attention. The US and Western Europe have been focused on the anti-gay stuff, which is horrid, but there's a whole larger picture of corruption, abuse of ethnic minorities, and environmental damage that is also attending the Sochi Games.

If folks are interested in more information,…

Religious conservatism is on the rise around the region. Central Asia is getting more Muslim, while the Caucasus and Russia are getting more Orthodox (and Orthodoxy is getting WAY more political). In a way, Putin is riding the wave here, but the religious aspect is really a red herring.

Putin's real issue with the…