This will be a long picture-heavy post, so I’m going to open it with a fresh link to my IT’S A REBELLION: I REBEL t-shirt at Zazzle. I don’t actually know if they’ll let me keep it up and if they don’t I won’t put it up again, so get it now while the getting is good.

I went to the Dublin arm of the International Women’s March on Washington last ( Read more... )

I’ve written an open letter to the electors via DearElector. There’s a copy of the letter posted here, where you can add your name as a signator, if you feel I’ve said anything worthwhile, but the body of the text is also replicated in this post.

Dear Elector:

These are the things I can probably safely say I know about you:

You have deeply held ( Read more... )

I’ve spent most of the past several years a lot more checked out of the news cycle than I think I should be, because so much of it is toxic or religious wars in politics and I simply have not had the emotional bandwidth to deal with it.

I *hate* that. I grew up in a very political family and I feel like it’s my duty to be informed and aware and ( Read more... )

I wish everybody who believes that voting for a third party in a two-party presidental election is a protest vote would go out and run for office themselves under a third party and work their way up through the system and create a situation where a third party was a viable option instead of taking away a vote for the party which, like it or lump it ( Read more... )

Earlier this summer a friend said they were going to vote for Trump.

I turned bright red, I kid you not. Bright bright red. Even I thought it was funny. They said, “I take it you’re a Hillary fan,” and I said, truthfully, that it wasn’t so much that I was pro-Hillary as I was vehemently anti-Trump. (This has changed: I’ve really had to examine my ( Read more... )

A friend of mine over on Facebook posted link to this article, Why Women Smile At Men Who Sexually Harass Us, which is a good article full of things that are tiresomely familiar to virtually all women and apparently continue to be surprising to many, perhaps most, men.

I think it’s a good article for men to read, because what prompted her writing ( Read more... )

For some reason I was reminded, this morning, of a discussion a few years ago post-Snowden, where an acquaintance of mine who had worked in the intelligence field spoke at great length, and passionately, about why Snowden had been wrong to leak the surveillance information that he did. His reasons were (roughly) matters of trust inside intelligence ( Read more... )

A friend of ours is visiting and working on her thesis. Early yesterday evening she​ came downstairs with the look of one martyred and suffering nobly for her cause and handed me her phone so that she couldn’t check Twitter or FB while she was supposed to be working on her thesis.

Several hours later, just before bedtime, she retrieved the phone ( Read more... )

1.9 million people turned out to vote on Friday, a 60.5% turnout that saw the highest number of ballots ever cast in an Irish referendum.

1.2 million of those people voted for marriage equality.

It seemed pretty clear by half an hour into the count that it was trending heavily toward a win for equality, but everyone here remained on pins and ( Read more... )

Ireland is going to the polls today to decide whether or not marriage is for everybody. It’s apparently the first time in the world that the question of marriage equality has been put to a national vote, so frankly, it’s going to be a huge fecking embarrassment if it fails.

I voted at about 11:30 this morning. The polling station said turnout was ( Read more... )