Thursday morning roundup and ramble

Burundi gives up on journalistic freedom.

A photo that epitomizes the Turkish protests.

Dowd and Borowitz on the Senate sexual assault hearings. 

The backlash against Lindsey West speaks volumes. Check out some of those sad, sad tweets and comments.

On women and sex (and a great picture of camel sex).

This chart on the sources of greenhouse gases is handy but you have to look at it carefully and add up some separate categories to get the role of agriculture.

Not all farmers' markets are genuine.

The politics of baby names.

Finland's baby boxes also spare women the humiliating ritual of a baby shower.

A Pinterest page... oh, I've got nothing. Mostly because I'm spoiled for choice.

Emotional health doesn't mean suppressing negative emotions.

My friends used to give me shit for not wanting to date dudes who don't read fiction, but science has vindicated my instinct on the matter. Science also (sort-of) vindicates the invisibility cloak.

***
"The Real Thing" (Stoppard, Studio, Muse) was excellent. It's hard to go wrong with Stoppard and Muse. Art imitating life imitating art. Ideas, language, good dialogue. Oh, how I love good dialogue! How I love ideas! How sick I am of plays that don't deliver, and so, ever more grateful for plays that do.

The audience was okay. They were quiet the first act--though one woman next to me was wearing dangly jewelry that made noise every time she moved, and she moved enough that a woman in the row in front of us turned around and asked her to sit still. I knew she'd be trouble the minute she sat down, because she and her husband were snacking on M&Ms. Which is not something you snack on if you have a medical reason to need to snack right before a play, which means you feel the need to snack before a play, in the theater anyway, which means you don't have the willingness or ability to sit still and shut the f* up for the duration of the play.

***
I caught myself in a first-world problem statement the other day. A (mostly-vegan) friend and I were discussing lunch locales by the office, and we both feel that Busboys and Poets has gone downhill in the way of service. I mentioned that I think--I could be wrong--but I think they put vegan cheddar instead of vegan mozzarella on my pizza ("gross!" my friend exclaimed). See, I don't order their vegan pizza because I don't like fake meat on pizza; I prefer to order a regular pizza and ask for vegan cheese on it. Actually, I usually order the vegan quesadilla, which is smaller, because I am entirely capable of putting away an entire vegan pizza in one sitting, which is not to say that I should. But I was feeling the vegan pizza, and I asked for one with vegan mozzarella. And I think I got one with vegan cheddar. It wasn't too bad, but it wasn't quite right. And that, my friends, is a first-world problem.