Just found this classic picture of me with a newborn, which really captures having a newborn.

At the end of a terrible week, I have taken great pleasure in making a series of over-the-top tweets about my HORROR that my fake boyfriend, Tom Hiddleston, is romantically involved with Taylor Swift, a tall, beautiful billionaire with many millions of fans whose entire wildly successful brand is Bad At Dating (remember when she dated the 18 y/o Kennedy kid and crashed his family wedding? remember when she dated JOHN MAYER?) He is behaving foolishly. You are allowed to have ONE thread discussing their relationship, you may use puns and gifs.

(I have always enjoyed Taylor Swift and her attractive friends and cat. She is not right for Tom Hiddleston, it will end in tears. This is just science. He will need me to pick up the pieces. Your contrarian takes are welcome on YOUR OWN BLOG.)

also there is zero chance those pics were taken by paparazzi, this is STRAIGHT out of Tay’s camp

Some would say this filibuster was more important:

“It is our understanding … that we have been given a commitment on a path forward to get votes on the floor of the Senate — on a measure to assure that those on the terrorist watch list do not get guns and an amendment … to expand background checks to gun shows and to internet sales,” he said in a statement.

I’m really glad Jezebel ran this interview with a woman who had an abortion at 32 weeks (her fetus was “not compatible with life,” which is the kind of awful phrasing we have to come up with for awful things), because it was brave and detailed and HARD and I feel for her so strongly and we need providers who will perform these procedures. If you would like to donate to help cover costs for pregnant people who need later abortions, you can do so here:

Tactfully, they put us in a room pretty quick, but then a nurse came in who had no idea, all smiling and talking about where we would put the baby. After that, one of the nurses went out and put the sad sticker on our door, as we called it—this purple sticker, which basically means, “be cool in here because bad shit’s going down.” After we got the sad sticker, everyone was very sensitive.

YOUR INLAWS ARE AWFUL and you have to give the damn car back and read them the riot act and it will build Stephanie’s character (eventually):

My son Chad and my step daughter Stephanie were born 4 days apart. Their birthdays were last week and well our sons 16th birthday was practically ruined. Our kids both wanted a car for their 16th birthday. My husband and I have good jobs but with recent expenses that we could not have foreseen, we can’t afford a car right now, no way in hell 2 cars. We explained this to our children and they seemed to understand.

Two weeks ago my husband informed his parents about the situation. It was just causal talk when you catch up with family, there is no way he could have known they were going to do what they did. My husband and I planned on getting them something nice and throwing a party for them both.

Last week Chad turned 16 first and we just got him some clothes he really wanted. He was ok with it, it was something he wanted and he really did not mind. What we got him looked like nothing to what my husband parents got Stephanie.

The day of Stephanie’s birthday, my husband’s parents surprised Stephanie with a brand new car outside our house. It had a ribbon on it and they did not even talk to us about it. They just showed up in it without so much as a heads up. Stephanie was so happy she was on the verge of tears. I looked over the chad and he was pissed, he was trying to hide it but you could tell he was not happy.

Your probably thinking great now the kids have a car they can share, well you would be wrong about that. Not only did Chad not get a car and Stephanie did, but Chad is not allowed to drive it, ever. The in laws have told us and made it very clear the car is for Stephanie. The car they so generously “gifted her” will be taken away if they found out Chad has driven it. They have never liked Myself or Chad, we don’t know why.

I’m looking forward to reading this:

Isenberg clearly means White Trash to be a rebuke for generations of middle- and upper-class Americans who write off poor rural whites as worthless and blame their miserable, marginalized existence not on poverty and civic neglect but on bad genes and weak character. As Toni Morrison observed during the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998 when she called Bill Clinton “our first black president,” the attributes Clinton’s haters found so revoltingly white-trash about him—“single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas”—replicate the “tropes of blackness.” In addition to being slapped with virtually the same stereotypes, poor blacks and poor whites have, as Isenberg observes, “similar economic interests.” But the one trait now most commonly associated with white trash—overt, vicious racism—keeps them at odds.

Awful:

Since the experiment, the authors point out, various public-health researchers have noticed that when they interview African-Americans about their views on the health system, they will often bring up Tuskegee unprompted — it left a deep scar on the country, yes, but on this population in particular. Why should you trust doctors, and particularly white doctors, when the government can allow something this awful to happen?

Which raised an extremely depressing question for Alsan and Wanamaker, and one that no one had yet fully tried to answer: If you tried to measure the damage done not by the Tuskegee experiment itself, but by the aftermath, in the form of mistrust for the medical establishment, as news of it spread through various African-American communities, what would the results be?

Being a single parent is so so hard, and even if you have a two-parent home, if both of you are working, getting the call from daycare to come grab your sick kid at 11am because they just threw up can play havoc with your job. Not to mention, it’s SO frequently expected that moms will always be the ones to bail out of work and come get the kid, which just plays into a weird dynamic that results in people NOT HIRING women in their childbearing years:

I am a single mother to an 8-year-old and a 19-month-old. My youngest gets sick quite often, and when she needs medical attention or simply a day home from day care, I don’t really have anyone to rely on to help me out. This usually means I have to miss work when she is sick.

In the past 2 months, I had take 3.5 sick days for her and to leave work early twice. I’m anxious this is going to reflect poorly on me, especially since I just started my job here 3 months ago.

What can I do, besides finding alternative child care, to prevent this from reflecting poorly on me? What do you think I should expect as a consequence?

Sister of The Toast Laura Ortberg Turner on Joan Didion’s politics:

Joan Didion is a cipher for anyone who reads her, but especially for the progressive young women who’ve found her in recent years. In that sense, Didion is not so unlike another “Goldwater Girl” whose politics shifted as the GOP shifted away from its laissez-faire roots. Hillary Clinton, influenced by her father’s conservatism, noted the party’s shift after the 1960s in an interview with NPR. Her reflection on the process sounds very much like what Didion might say, if she had anything more to add: “I don’t recognize this new brand of Republicanism that is afoot now, which I consider to be very reactionary, not conservative in many respects. I am very proud that I was a Goldwater girl.”

What to do if you are refused emergency contraception (you shouldn’t have to, obviously, but I do recommend buying a pack or two of Plan B and keeping it on hand so you’re not running around when you need it):

In the last few years, laws regarding EC have undergone a number of changes. Each state varies in its specific regulations, and the way the regulations shake down can depend on whether you are at a hospital, clinic, or pharmacy. Some states allow private hospitals and pharmacists to refuse on the basis of their personal beliefs. It’s also possible that the provider you encounter is plainly misinformed. No matter your age or gender, you should be able to buy levonorgestrel-based EC pills over the counter. This guide, though a bit technical, has a run-down of emergency contraception policies per state where you can find out more about the state you live in.

Here are some details on the types of EC pills and how to get them at a store or online. When you can, it’s nice to have EC on hand ahead of time just in case. It’s super-easy to order it online—and some delivery services will even take insurance. If a time comes when you need EC, you’ll be glad you have it and can take it right away.

“For people of color, achievement is a double-edged sword“:

This tragic parallelism reveals America, yet again, to be a country born out of paradox – founded on freedom and built on slavery, we have emerged as a dichotomous nation with only the extraordinarily wealthy and the exceedingly poor. We’re a country that boasts constitutional human rights but can’t come together on the fact that human is human is human, no matter whether we pee standing up or sitting down, sleep with men or women or both, choose to have an abortion or to kneel with our heads to the ground when we honor our god.

I love Kate Beckinsale’s Bad Parenting, her daughter is 17 and whatever who cares.

I need to you share my love for Clea DuVall’s work on this season of VEEP, please:

thank you but let’s not: