"I feel readers are poised to judge and say – if I am not willing to be mono-grateful, why spawn at all?"

"I am grateful that my body will split in half in late summer, and I will probably live through it, being a resident of the affluent west, but the gratitude is ambivalent. And, as the child grows, I meet other pregnant women and learn that we are not all living in a Barbie Gets Up the Duff Dream Palace of Fecund Ecstasy; some of us are depressed, resentful, afraid. But we are, on the whole, silent, in the shadow of the tyranny of impending motherhood."

From the first paragraph of an essay by Tanya Gold called "I am silenced by the tyranny of impending motherhood," which has the last sentence: "This is the martyrdom of an entire sex and it is foolish and childlike, made by babes."

That's in The Guardian, which I'm reading this morning because it's been scooping on the spying, so I had to puzzle over the British form of expression. Duff Dream Palace? The OED says "duff" — the colloquial adjective — means "Worthless, spurious, false, bad, ‘dud’." Example: "I went down to the pub because the play was so duff." (1965   ‘J. Lymington’ Green Drift i. 8.) Less comprehensible example: "It was said by the erks that he once sold rock on Blackpool sands. This was just ‘duff gen’." (1944   G. Netherwood Desert Squadron 10.)

In the American edition of the new Dictionary of Received Ideas, under "duff," we're told: Be sure to mention that Homer Simpson drinks Duff Beer. And as long as we're composing new entries for The Dictionary of Received Ideas, under "Barbie," let's have: Assert that Barbie's measurements fail to correspond to any real woman's measurements. And under "Motherhood"... what do you think? Gold would say: All women are mono-grateful for their impending motherhood.

Hey, Gold! The mono-gratefulness presumption is the offspring of abortion rights. In the old days — I was there — there was absolutely nothing of the kind. In fact, a standard expression was "She got in trouble."

(Here's the old Dictionary of Received Ideas, one of my favorite books. It works for 19th century France. I'd like a new one, for Americans, as I've said many times.)

"What opinions will the Court issue today?... What’s the last day the Court will issue opinions?..."

We don't know what cases will come out today, but over at SCOTUSblog, where they'll live-blog the announcements (beginning at 9:30 ET), they predict that last day will be June 26 or 27 and that the same-sex marriage will come out on the last day. Here's the chart showing when cases were argued and which remain undecided. The one we've been waiting longest for is Fisher, the affirmative action case.

ADDED: Here's the live-blogging. I'll keep my eye on it. The other important case that could come out today is Shelby County, about Congress's power and the Voting Rights Act.

Daniel Ellsberg says "there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden's release of NSA material..."

"... and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago. Snowden's whistleblowing gives us the possibility to roll back a key part of what has amounted to an 'executive coup' against the US constitution."

The canonization of Snowden continues apace. The Snowden PR is cranking out material steadily. The criers of "treason" are cringing somewhere.

Obama was strolling about in California with the Chinese President — making some sort of show of not wearing neckties, assuming we'd maintain the usual admiring gaze.

Where are his defenders? Where are all the people who loved him so much and defended everything? Does he know how to operate without adulation, when the politics of infatuation with heroes has latched on to some other guy?

Ready to make some waves?

Last night's "Fluffy Cloud Café," reacted to by Chip Ahoy, who said:

Para bailar la bomba se necesita un poca de gracia, pero agitar la mar se necesita un chuchara de madera muy grande.

You can stir things up all you want over an dover but it just keeps returning to normal.

And did:

Daniel Ellsberg and Glenn Beck are on the same page.

I think I have just read about the man for which I have waited.Earmarks of a real hero. guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun…
— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) June 9, 2013

I was just with Dan Ellsberg as he learned out about Edward Snowden. He called Snowden a hero, said he's been waiting for him for 40 years.
— Trevor Timm (@trevortimm) June 9, 2013

(Via the up-and-running Wikipedia page for Edward Snowden.)

AND: Sounds so millennialist: He is the one we've been waiting for. Just what was said about Barack Obama. There's quick turnover in messiahs these days.

At the Fluffy Cloud Café...

... it's a serene place, but you can stir things up.

"Speech and publication mean something very different from what the US founding fathers meant. It’s a very laddish argument..."

"... which is not to say that women may not also support it: but the fact that Facebook relies on it means they are not listening to women and to an alternative perspective that women may put. That’s the real issue here. Facebook needs to start listening to women. No joke."

You lose control of your writings once you hand them over to a 3d party like Facebook or Google... and not just because the government can get to it. What if Facebook decided to delete everything The Women found misogynist? What if Google decided to delete all the blogs that it deemed hurtful to women... or to the Democratic Party?

***

Here's that discussion I had back in 2011 with Bob Wright about whether "free speech" means anything outside of the individual's interaction with government.

Why Kelly Ayotte could win the presidency.

Some say she "looks presidential," but I think she has a different superpower, and I don't just mean her gravitas, apparent good judgment, and ability to speak well in short, clear sentences. Here she was on "Face the Nation" today.

See if you can tell what I'm talking about. Here's some background reading: "Empathy Without Boundaries."

"Bear Species, In Order Of Quality."

"13. Fake Bears. The koala bear is not a bear. Nor is the Asian bearcat, the water bear, the teddy bear, or the red panda.... 12. Boring Brown Bear... 8. Grizzly Bear...."

You won't guess what #1 is.

The source of the NSA link: It's 29-year-old Edward Snowden, who has worked at the NSA for outside contractors.

The Guardian reveals at Snowden's request.

"I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong," he said.... In a note accompanying the first set of documents he provided, he wrote: "I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions," but "I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant."...

He has had "a very comfortable life" that included a salary of roughly $200,000, a girlfriend with whom he shared a home in Hawaii, a stable career, and a family he loves. "I'm willing to sacrifice all of that because I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."...

Some clarification about what the government does with the 3 billion phone records it collects every day.

I'm not saying the first guest on today's "Fox News Sunday," Rand Paul, wasn't sharp and interesting, but I really appreciated the knowledge and calm expertise that General Michael Hayden, who headed the NSA and the CIA (under Bush), brought to the table. (The boldface is mine.)

CHRIS WALLACE: General Hayden, let's talk first of all about the general reaction you have to Senator Paul. I'm going to get into specific issues with you. As a man who used to run these programs, how important and how effective have they been in keeping us safe and how do you feel when you hear Senator Paul talk about class action lawsuits to the Supreme Court, new congressional restrictions?

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN, FORMER HEAD OF NSA AND CIA: Well, first of all, Chris, with regard to how effective they are, I think they're very effective. We had two presidents doing the same thing with regard to electronic surveillance. Now, that seems to me to suggest that these things do work. Now, with regard to what the senator said -- if I believed NSA was doing some of the things the senator fears they're doing, I would have been backstopping him during your first segment. He said we're trolling through millions of records. That's just simply not true. The government acquires records as business records from the telecom providers, but then doesn't go into that database without an arguable reason connected to terrorism to ask that database a question. If you don't have any link to that original predicate, terrorism, your phone records are never touched.

"Sometimes they score 1. Sometimes they score 3. And they never explain!"

From rhhardin in yesterday's café: "Armstrong and Getty's sports report on the NBA finals game 1 mp3, by their guy who never watches sports."

The "Walking Dead" actress?

"I wonder what George Clooney would have to say about that. Or even someone genuinely associated with 'The Walking Dead' who I’ve actually heard of."

When the breast-cancer doctor attacks the lung-and-head-cancer doctor — with ethylene glycol in the coffee.

Things that may be true:

1. They're in love.

2. Antifreeze tastes like Splenda.

3. "She is a distinguished citizen and scientist, and these allegations are totally inconsistent with her personal and professional life."

"What’s interesting is that just because a food is delicious doesn’t necessarily make it popular."

"You enjoy it because, well, people around you seem to enjoy it. This means that items can also change contexts. This is what happened to Pabst Blue Ribbon, which went from a working-class Midwestern beer to Brooklyn’s preferred Hipster beverage. It’s also what happened to Marlboro, a poorly selling women’s cigarette ('Mild as May') before being rebranded to appeal to men. In both cases, nothing about the product itself changed. But if the peer behavior around the product changes, so too does our appreciation of it."

From an essay called "How Lobster Got Fancy/The surprising history—from food for the poor, servants, and prisoners to a soldier’s staple to everybody’s idea of a delicacy—of 'the cockroach of the ocean'" — via Metafilter — which first made me think why would anyone write an essay about lobster after there's already a greatest-essay-ever-written-level essay about lobster, which, by the way, the first-linked essay quotes — how could it not? — but doesn't link. But there's some good info and analysis about the culture of food:

During the Great Depression, impoverished families in Maine would sneak down to the ocean in the dark to empty and reset their lobster traps and take home the day’s haul to feed their families. It was still seen, at least in Maine, as a food for the poor. It was considered embarrassing for children to have to go to school with sandwiches made of lobster meat.

During World War II, however, lobster wasn’t rationed like other foods, and so people of all classes began to eat it enthusiastically, and discover its deliciousness.

Things that are delicious that you're nevertheless disgusted by. Is it because you're disgusted by other people? If you know that's your reason, do you overcome your disgust? If you do, is that because you're ashamed of yourself for looking down on other people or because you think that the food of the common people is usually pretty good and actually just what you're looking for?

But you still won't eat the cicadas, will you?

"Ten Reasons To Live In A Van."

By Ken Ilgunas, who lived in a van to avoid student debt while he attended Duke University.

"Vandwelling," you might expect, had more than its share of drawbacks. Mice would move into my ceiling upholstery, washing pots and pans became so inconvenient I stopped washing them altogether, and the bathroom was a quarter-mile sprint from my parking space.

But people adapt, mice are flattened with frying pans, and bladders grow firm and strong.

Pots and pans? I don't get why you'd cook inside the van. But, okay. Note that the hardship is mitigated by using Duke University resources: the parking space, the gym for showers, etc. Obviously, if more students tried to do this the university would crack down. And you couldn't get away with this at a school — like the University of Wisconsin — with limited parking. And yet... there's always that parking at Walmart. And a gym membership is much cheaper than renting an apartment....

Here's the book Ilgunas wrote about his experience: "Walden on Wheels: On The Open Road from Debt to Freedom."