With Christmas in mind, Anna directs us to Vulva Love Lovely, foremost retailers of “handmade feminist love.”  

We make many different types of feminist body positive products: beautiful, hand sculpted vagina pendants, uterus plushies, vulva portraits, vagina pillows, and reusable cloth menstrual pads.

Sadly, the graphic nature of certain “body positive” items prevents their display here. This is, I maintain, a classy joint and the swooning couch is still in storage. However, I can draw your attention to the impressive range of uterus plushies, lovingly detailed with smiles, ovaries and facial hair. Behold, for instance, the Frida Kahlo Uterus Plushie, which features an imposing mono-brow and “an unyielding creative presence.” As you can see, it’s a celebration of womanhood:  

Microscopes, dentist chairs, a life sized Aston Martin.

 
These are a few of the things Chris Gilmour makes with cardboard and glue. 

A tale of baseball and LSD. (h/t, Metrolander) // Two words: Sky sharks. // Contact title sequence. // Alternative Star Trek pilot. “Starring George Takei as Chief Physicist.” (1965) // Superhero box office. // Superhero nursing home. // 100 Hong Kong apartments. // Automotive babe magnets. // Attention Xbox users. // My tree house is so much better than yours. // An archive of The International Times. (h/t, Dr Westerhaus) // “Hide the decline” T-shirts. // Snug space capsules. // Undersea restaurant. // Deep sea beasties. // Jewellery made with human teeth. // Jump to 1:20 for the jet powered merry-go-round. 

John Meredith steers us to another Classic Sentence from the Guardian. Two, actually.

I’d like to say that this encounter has propelled me to carry the bag with defiance, but instead it has left me slightly bruised. I’ve since bought an incredibly sombre pair of jeans – unusual for me.

So says Mr Charlie Porter, writing of his polite yet clearly traumatic encounter with Canary Wharf security. 

All I needed for the day was a notebook, my iPod Touch, a Kindle and some keys. They all slotted snugly into a patent red zip-up bag by the young London menswear designer James Long.

Looking sharp, Mr Porter.

And it’s not just rather fabulous. It’s also a political statement.

I find the word “manbag” such a bore: it is often used mockingly, and it categorises what I think should be category-free.

Then the horror began.

Since 1994, a Pakistani activist who founded the Progressive Women’s Association “has documented 7,800 cases of women who were deliberately burned, scalded or subjected to acid attacks, just in the Islamabad area. In only 2 percent of those cases was anyone convicted.”

When terrorism is personal.

A word of caution. The images are graphic and possibly distressing. Note how often the captions read “familial dispute” or “rejected him for marriage.”

Via Brain Terminal.