Saturday roundup

Writers on the refugee crisis.

Michelle Knight's story of survival.

The Duggars' story of hypocrisy.

"White Feminism" analogous to Not-All-Meninism.


Breaking up with friends is just as traumatic as ending other kinds of relationships.

Friendship is not a pale imitation of sexual romance. It is a romance unto itself. I have not always loved as well as I could have. I am sometimes selfish in the wrong ways. There are women I still mourn—and I might always. 

How could Ashley Madison users not fall for a bot with a name like "toaster strudel".

Rebecca Traister nails it in her piece on Vanessa Williams.

Miss America... is open, in other words, to women who give the appearance of being imminently touchable, yet untouched, pleasingly sexual, yet pure. It rewards women who are alluring in a way that the culture demands they be alluring (thin, pneumatic, smiling, eager) but voids them — either by not including them at all, or as we know from Williams’s experience, by punishing them — if they have traded on that same allure in any way besides trying to be Miss America.

Never mind that the contest itself trades on them, that the ads playing alongside it on network television use bodies just like the ones competing to sell beer and cars. The rule is that the women themselves must never have used their bodies for their own pleasure or profit, must never have allowed anyone else but Miss America to use them either, must never have had those bodies used against their will.

Christy Turlington and Karlie Kloss give back.

Everyone knows that animals experience emotion.

When you read news about nutritional studies, always read the fine print. The press made it sound like you certain amino acids were only plant or animal proteins, but look at how small a difference it takes to get designated as one or the other:

Total protein intake was 85.1 6 23.4 g/d and protein contributed 16.2% to total energy intake. Of the 7 amino acids investigated, glutamic acid (3.2% energy intake) and leucine (1.3% energy intake) made the greatest contribution to total energy intake. Animal and vegetable sources contributed a similar amount to intake of arginine (52% animal), glutamic acid (51% animal), and glycine (55% animal), whereas intake of histidine (60% animal), tyrosine (62% animal), and leucine (61% animal) was predominantly from animal sources (Figure 1). Conversely, vegetable sources contributed more to cysteine intake (42% animal). Generally, correlations between the amino acids investigated ranged from 0.03 (glutamic acid and leucine) to 0.61 (leucine and tyrosine), although stronger correlations were observed between glycine and leucine (0.70) and arginine and glycine (0.77). 

Dear Abby's advice to this overbearing mother is priceless.