Not that this is news, but

The Ten Most Profitable U.S. Companies Paid a 9% Federal Tax Rate

Second verse, same as the first...

QOTD

Never in all my medical career have I seen this much muscle on a tiny person.

-- A doctor examining Gabby Douglas

Yes, yes...

We're all delighted that Joss Whedon is on board for Avengers 2, but honestly, the great news is that Bret Easton Ellis is out as screenwriter for 50 Shades of Grey.

Incidentally, he stirred up a bit of a Twitter storm with comments about Matt Bomer being too gay to play Christian Grey. (Why Bomer? Why not, apparently.)

Details here (hey, someone besides me remembers Young Americans!) and also I recommend this article on the subject, for this quote:

Playing a heterosexual male is hardly acting's greatest challenge. I would simply imagine the world was created for my benefit, and that everything and everyone was a receptacle for my ego and penis.

Zing!

Another QOTD

This is America. We are, at the very least, supposed to have our thorough corruption of the voting process appear facially neutral. This is offensive to everything I’ve come to expect from targeted voting restrictions in America.

-- Wonkette, on Ohio voting rules that openly favor Republicans.

This is a very long article

In the NYT Magazine on gender nonconforming children, with some truly gut-punching anecdotes. It focuses on boys who adopt trappings of femininity because:

These days, flouting gender conventions extends even to baby naming: first names that were once unambiguously masculine are now given to girls. The shift, however, almost never goes the other way. That’s because girls gain status by moving into “boy” space, while boys are tainted by the slightest whiff of femininity. “There’s a lot more privilege to being a man in our society,” says Diane Ehrensaft, a psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who supports allowing children to be what she calls gender creative. “When a boy wants to act like a girl, it subconsciously shakes our foundation, because why would someone want to be the lesser gender?” Boys are up to seven times as likely as girls to be referred to gender clinics for psychological evaluations. Sometimes the boys’ violation is as mild as wanting a Barbie for Christmas. By comparison, most girls referred to gender clinics are far more extreme in their atypicality: they want boy names, boy pronouns and, sometimes, boy bodies.

ETA: For the love of God, don't read the comments.