A rambling yet still valuable article on why the #Occupy movement failed so spectacularly: “We insist on perfect politics and perfect language, to the exclusion of experimentation, learning, or constructive critique. We wear our outsiderness as a badge of pride, knowing that saying the right thing trumps doing anything at all. No one is ever good enough for us — not progressive celebrities who don’t get the whole picture, not your Facebook friend who doesn’t quite get why we say Black Lives Matter instead of All Lives Matter, not your cousin who mourned the deaths in Paris without saying an equal number of words about those in Beirut. Instead of organizing these people, we attack them.”
We all know I hate the word “privilege” but I can’t stop wondering what it must feel like to be so incredibly privileged, fortunate and carefree that one can worry about stuff like this: “January is the season to truly hate our bodies. We come out of the holidays with all of those INDULGE messages and then suddenly in January, we’re supposed to set a resolution to work out, eat “better,” lose weight–and generally feel shameful about our flabby, doughy, *DISGUSTING* bodies while torturing ourselves into thinness just in time for “bathing suit season.” It’s enough to make even the most body positive bitch, like yours truly, get a case of the January blues.” I’d love to be this person for just two minutes to know what it feels like to have such an easy life and a burden so light.
Workers these days don’t know how to protest against economic exploitation, so they turn out to strike against cultural appropriation and penis jokes.
The perfect example of somebody who projects his personal misery onto the rest of the world. If you know anybody like that, please avoid them. Just remove them from your life entirely because these people will sabotage you and grind you down until there is nothing left. After which, they will patter along, happy and sated.
Just one of the endless numbers of example of companies destroying their own product because reason and profit are always easily sacrificed to the need to fulfill a social mandate.
The brutal world of college chess. Well, at least it’s an intellectual game, so a college is justified in spending money on it.
I did not know about this and I am appalled: “Early last year, [Obama] made an effort to levy some taxes on college savings accounts, given that 70 percent of account balances in those and similar accounts are owned by families who make more than $200,000. The revenue from the tax would have been plowed into college subsidies that would reach low- and middle-income Americans.” Trying to raid people’s college funds is nothing short of disgusting.
Washington Post published a very poorly written and superficial article on the crucial subject of poverty. The text sucks but look at the photos. They are a reminder that American poverty is obese, not emaciated. But it’s still poverty! It still needs to be addressed! Let’s stop judging indigent people based on our Dickensian fantasies about poverty.
The psychological trigger for serious illness. Let’s remember how easy it is to talk ourselves into being ill.
A really fantastic preschool. It’s so amazing that it makes me want to weep. In my area, we have beautiful, fantastic nature, yet all of our preschools are located in ugly little buildings invariably stuck on busy highways. While the kids play on sun-beaten concrete slabs with not a single tree or flower in sight, cars and trucks are bathing them in gas fumes.
Clarissa's Blog 
Leave a comment