The Good, the Bad, and the Curious (Links for the Week)

After two unexpected snow days, I'm feeling a little stir crazy and desperate to get out of the house. Here's what I've been reading in my isolation that made me smile (The Good), cry (The Bad), and think (The Curious). 

The Good

A marriage proposal via snarky internet sites about cakes? What's not to love?

Ozy Frantz's post about grammar is fantastic:

I have gotten into shouting arguments about the Oxford comma. I take grammar seriously.
Which is why some people may consider it odd that I think grammar Puritans should shut up and fuck off.
Not everyone had the benefit of a house full of books and parents that encouraged the love of language and their very own copy of Strunk and White. Some people had to try to learn grammar from (gasp) English class.

Louis CK taking a simple question about how his kids are doing to explain white privilege:

 The Bad

Robert Saylor, a twenty-six year old man with Down's Syndrome, has died in police custody and his death has been ruled a homicide.

This xoJane post about a father who was fired for taking time off after his child was born demonstrates one of the many things wrong with the US maternity/paternity leave policies. Also, it's worth reminding everyone that we're one of the few countries that seems unable to handle the fact that babies require some attention:

Read more from the NYT here. 

The Good Men Project (a site whose mission I once really admired, back before they started publishing rape apologia on a regular basis) has a recent post bemoaning women for being "complicit" in bringing out the "inner chauvinist" in men by daring to wear yoga pants and forcing them lust after us. The Frisky has a much more nuanced response to this than I can muster.

The Curious

This aggregated data from the professional profiles of 10,000 porn stars is . . . interesting.

PhD in Parenting has a great post on how important breastfeeding is and what we can do to help.

This Salon article explains why the philosophical approaches of the millennial generation are positive:

This approach comes from a mindset that I call pragmatic idealism. Millennials definitely have high ideals — and a strong commitment to those ideals, values and beliefs. But they also know their ideals must be actionable and realizable. They therefore tend to be comfortable and confident taking small, steady, incremental, practical steps to accomplish their goals — even when their goals are ultimately big, ambitious, idealistic visions.  

I've been watching Scandal and find myself pretty drawn to the characters, so I read Christiana Mbakwe's explanation of why she loves the main character, Olivia Pope, despite the "problematic" plot lines with great interest:

In case you didn't know, Olivia Pope is the fast-talking, flawless suit wearing, hair looks like Jesus pressed it, formidably intelligent, the word FIERCE does not suffice, protagonist of Shonda Rhimes’ hit show “Scandal.” She fixes problems. Not normal problems. Olivia rectifies the type of problems that could spark civil wars and crash the stock market.
On the surface of things, she’s the perfect post-feminist icon (whatever that means). She’s strong, fearless and effortlessly bends the universe in her favor. She also happens to be having an affair with the president of the United States.

This Sociological Images post about the use of "uptalk" (raising the intonation at the end of sentences) indicates different things when used by men than it does when used by women . . . at least on Jeopardy!

Love, Joy, Feminism asks bloggers and activists to examine when we should point out the horrible things that fringe individuals say. Do we risk giving credibility to a voice that wouldn't have otherwise been heard?

The New York Times has an interesting post about advertisers' desire to court the dad market.

Armed Venus writes about the decision to break up with The Walking Dead. I sympathize.

That's what I've been reading this week. What about you?