One thing people can do to promote freedom and equal rights for girls and women is destigmatize menstruation. Behold one such effort:

This comic book is helping girls combat the shame around periods in India.

Menstruation is still a taboo topic in the country, with millions of girls having no knowledge of the process until it happens to them.

It’s seen as a creepy disgusting contaminant. In reality it’s discarded nutrients for a future human, which you would think would be sacred rather than disgusting.… Read the rest

The Washington Post on Vera Rubin:

Dr. Rubin’s groundbreaking discoveries, made primarily with physicist W. Kent Ford, have revolutionized the way scientists observe, measure and understand the universe.

The concept of “dark matter,” an unknown substance among stars in distant galaxies, had existed since the 1930s, but it was not proved until Dr. Rubin’s studies with Ford in the 1970s. It is considered one of the most significant and fundamental advances in astronomy during the 20th century.

“The existence of dark matter has utterly revolutionized our concept of the universe and our entire field,” University of Washington astronomer Emily Levesque told Astronomy magazine this year. “The ongoing effort to understand the role of dark matter has basically spawned entire

Susan Cox argues that lesbian spaces are still needed.

We’re told we live in an era of greater acceptance of homosexuality, yet the loss of hard-won lesbian spaces and events is a growing trend. San Francisco, known as one of the most prominent LGBT communities in the world, doesn’t have a single lesbian bar, and New York City’s lesbian spaces have dwindled severely. There are no explicitly lesbian bars in Vancouver (Lick — once the city’s only lesbian bar — closed in 2011), though there are a number of bars for gay men and “queer nights” that take place within various venues.

Well you see gay men need to have bars but lesbians don’t. Lesbians are women, and women … Read the rest

I wrote this column for the Freethinker. Barry found a couple of great cartoons to illustrate. I chose the tweet at the end, because it’s so very Hitler.

… Read the rest

Turkey doesn’t allow any lèse-majesté when people mention Erdoğan. People who lèse the majesté of Erdoğan get busted.

The boss of a cafeteria at a Turkish opposition newspaper has been detained after saying he would refuse to serve tea to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Senol Buran, cafeteria head at Cumhuriyet, was remanded accused of insulting the president. He denies the refusal was an insult, his lawyer said.

Trump would do the same thing if he could, but fortunately he can’t. He can’t stop us calling him a short-fingered vulgarian, a fascist, a bully, an ignorant shallow conceited stupid loudmouth, a tiny-fisted Nazi, a Cheeto, the pussygrabber-in-chief, a sexist racist pig, a fraud, a thief, a very bad man.

Mr

The reporting on conflicts of interest has finally gotten through to Trump and the Trumplings.

Realizing that his presidency could face potentially crippling questions over conflicts of interest, Donald J. Trump and his family are rushing to resolve potential controversies — like shuttering foundations and terminating development deals — even as the president-elect publicly maintains that no legal conflicts exist.

In recent days, the president-elect and his aides have said that he intends to distribute the assets of his personal charity and then close it down, has examined a plan to hire an outside monitor to oversee the Trump Organization and has terminated some international business projects.

He’s not exactly a quick study, is he. How long has it … Read the rest

A festive treat.

… Read the rest