My unemployment benefits have been cut by 12% because of the sequester.

My unemployment benefits have been cut by 12% because of the sequester.

Like, just now? Or do you mean the earlier cut?

As a fellow unemployed person, I need to know this. (If my company had been sold just a little sooner, we would have made it in under the cutoff where the sequester cuts kicked in. Kind of crazy to wish I had lost my job sooner.)

the war on the poor and the shaming and criminalization of poverty in this country is atrocious. I am so deeply bothered. I want to see widespread anger and yet, nsm.

Well, probably the people most affected feel too slammed to think about striking back.

Matt, I think you've got yourself a cat. And a cute one.

I expect he'll be fine for the day.

They don't just feel too slammed. There's not a lot of time to arrange protests and write your congressman when you're trying to keep your job and your house and your car, and feed your family, too.

I suppose I should have said "Putting out fires" And I don't even know what that would look like in the modern era anyway...to get attention a street protest would have to be pretty huge, and even with Occupy, there were still people boiling it down to "Get a job, dirty Hippie,"

Hey ita, if you want, there's another angle to be upset about that NBC billboard

Welcome to pretty damned consistent things I'm told that aren't problems because non-white people are invisible in real life too. Billboards aren't a conspiracy, but they're very often comfortable reinforcement of status quos.

Josh Hutcherson and Bradley Whitford made good son and father in 2005. I'm so glad that this 11 year old love story that was way creepy for me was also creepy for the 11 year old girl in it. Her precise words (involving flattery and being 11 and not ready to be loved like that) were much more eloquent than I'd have been (aka running and screaming), but a great way to end a movie there's no way I think I could have tolerated without knowing she dumped him in the end.

Does anyone here dislike elephants? Like, put them on the low end of their wild animal scale? Do elephants make you emotional? I'm a little surprised by the reaction I got to a picture with one in, and a couple of the posts have identical tags which makes me wonder if I stumbled into elephant fandom. (Which would be great--I periodically want to go rescue some, but I'm not sure where is the best place to put them after)

makes me wonder if I stumbled into elephant fandom

I think elephants are pretty universally loved. Or they should be anyway. Did you see the pictures of the rescued elephant in SC playing with its buddy, a black lab? They were in the water, and the dog would be on her back and she'd throw a ball for him to catch. ADORABLE.

Do elephants make you emotional?

Absolutely. I'm still kind of traumatized by the picture of the baby elephant crying after his mother abandoned him (he got adopted by caretakers, but still).