Let them eat cake! #rainbowbite (Taken with instagram)
Mother and daughter, entertaining themselves in the cards section. All the warm fuzzies.
Lauraemily! Is this you and your Mom?! I’m pretty sure it is. Heart.
Great find Corrina! So stealth of the Word to catch this moment my mother and I shared at the end of our 5-day vacation. Happy early-Mother’s Day everyone!
“I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.” — Barack Obama in an interview with ABC News (via nprfreshair)
(via icopythat)
Bon Iver loves his book of antique maps of Italian cities. When he is half-asleep he traces roads and rotaries, rivers and mountain tunnels on my body: almost without realizing it.
This is what holds up the L train. He insisted that he worked for the MTA and was allowed to climb between cars, needless to say, the conductors threw him off.
(Taken with Instagram at MTA Subway - Bedford Ave (L))
Huben’s gotta brand new bag. #thanksmom&dad
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We’ve been hearing a lot about the war on women, which is real enough. But there’s also a war on the young, which is just as real even if it’s better disguised. And it’s doing immense harm, not just to the young, but to the nation’s future.
Let’s start with some advice Mitt Romney gave to college students during an appearance last week. After denouncing President Obama’s “divisiveness,” the candidate told his audience, “Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business.”
The first thing you notice here is, of course, the Romney touch — the distinctive lack of empathy for those who weren’t born into affluent families, who can’t rely on the Bank of Mom and Dad to finance their ambitions. But the rest of the remark is just as bad in its own way.
I mean, “get the education”? And pay for it how? Tuition at public colleges and universities has soared, in part thanks to sharp reductions in state aid. Mr. Romney isn’t proposing anything that would fix that; he is, however, a strong supporter of the Ryan budget plan, which would drastically cut federal student aid, causing roughly a million students to lose their Pell grants.
So how, exactly, are young people from cash-strapped families supposed to “get the education”? Back in March Mr. Romney had the answer: Find the college “that has a little lower price where you can get a good education.” Good luck with that. But I guess it’s divisive to point out that Mr. Romney’s prescriptions are useless for Americans who weren’t born with his advantages.
… What should we do to help America’s young? Basically, the opposite of what Mr. Romney and his friends want. We should be expanding student aid, not slashing it. And we should reverse the de facto austerity policies that are holding back the U.S. economy — the unprecedented cutbacks at the state and local level, which have been hitting education especially hard.
Yes, such a policy reversal would cost money. But refusing to spend that money is foolish and shortsighted even in purely fiscal terms. Remember, the young aren’t just America’s future; they’re the future of the tax base, too.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste; wasting the minds of a whole generation is even more terrible. Let’s stop doing it.
” —Paul Krugman, The New York Times, “Wasting Our Minds.”
Go read the whole damned thing.
(via inothernews)
Go Krugman, Go!
(via icopythat)
Only 54% of doctors say they would choose a career in medicine again... -
3 years ago, it was the student loan burden that cemented my decision NOT to go to medical school. I could not rationalize the expense, when I knew that unless I invented a new medical device or found the cure for [insert hot button disease here], I would never be without debt.
Just 11% say they consider themselves “rich” — and 45% agree that “my income probably qualifies me as rich, but I have so many debts and expenses that I don’t feel rich.”
And here’s a really excellent comment:
With regard to the compensation bit, it is important to recognize that the student loan burden is enormous. Not only are you carrying over the loans from college, but your loans from medical school, and all of these tend to be held in limbo (“forbearance”) where they continue to earn interest that is capitalized/principalized, because during residency and fellowship (3-6 years beyond medical school graduation for medical specialists and 5-9 years beyond medical school graduation for surgical specialists) you’re making only $50K or $60K a year for your 80 hours a week work.
But I think one of the hardest bits is that during your school and training there’s never enough money to set aside, and certainly no 401(k) or pension, for retirement savings. So many of us start our “financial adulthood” in our 30s or even early 40s with a huge hole to fill - the need to save for retirement, to pay off the student loans, and at the same time, the need to start living like an adult (kids, house, non-disposable furniture, reliable transportation). And you start to get tired. When you’re 20-something or even in your early 30s, you can do the up-all-night/up-all-day thing, but when you’re in your early or mid 40s, it just gets really hard.