Video of the day -- "let's get back to normal"

We don't need a "Trump of the left" for 2020.  We need another Obama.

Give me your banned, your flagged, your hassled bloggers yearning to post free.....

I have felt a great disturbance in the blogosphere, as if millions of voices cried out and damn well refused to be silenced.

Tumblr is one of the three main blogging platforms, the others being WordPress and Blogger (I don't count Facebook or Twitter because, though widely used, their systems and rules are oriented toward uses other than actual blog writing as I understand it).  The Tumblr user base seems to skew quite a bit younger and more radical-left than that of other platforms, and the technology is less open to interaction with outsiders than that of other platforms -- there's no equivalent of the comment threads on each post that WordPress and Blogger blogs have, for example.  I briefly tried doing a Tumblr blog once, but quickly gave up due to frustration with the built-in limitations.  Still, a lot of people like it.  There are estimated to be about 440 million Tumblr blogs.

A couple of days ago, Tumblr management announced a decision to, essentially, destroy the platform.  They declared that as of December 17, "adult content" would no longer be allowed, and the staff (or rather, algorithms) have already started flagging "explicit" posts and deleting blogs without warning.  This seems to be working out pretty much the way censorship usually does.  Innocuous art posts, drawings of animals, and even posts about minerals have been flagged.  A post about British police AI mistaking desert photos for porn was itself flagged by Tumblr's AI.  LGBT content, however mild, is especially likely to be flagged (this is not new, but will doubtless now get worse).  The algorithm even flagged Tumblr's own "suicide note" post.  But some non-sexual content such as Nazi propaganda remains unscathed.

The trigger for the new policy appears to have been a decision by Apple store to stop carrying the Tumblr app (no, I don't know what that means, and I don't care either) because of pornographic material on Tumblr, some of it genuinely nasty -- well, on 440 million blogs, any kind of content you can imagine will probably exist somewhere.  The fact that Tumblr is now indirectly owned by Verizon may also have played a role, though investors don't seem enthused about the ban.

There are quite a lot of Tumblr blogs among my regular reading, none of which are primarily dedicated to sexually-oriented material, and most of which I have never seen post anything of that description at all.  I spent most of Tuesday morning looking at those blogs, and on about three-quarters of them, the new changes were the main topic of discussion, the tone of which was a mix of ridicule and outrage.  Much erotica is as creative as any other art form, and the new rules will destroy one more safe platform for sex workers already being forced by SESTA into more dangerous ways of working.  Not a single blogger had anything good to say about the changes.

Bloggers are posting tips on saving work that may be in danger of deletion, but a major focus has been on finding a new home -- for example, apparently there's a largely-automated process for transferring an entire Tumblr blog to WordPress.  It's always possible that Tumblr will reverse course -- the Blogger platform tried something similar in 2015, but backed down within days after a firestorm of reaction from the user base.  But if the new policy stands, and Tumblr goes the way of MySpace, hundreds of millions of bloggers will be looking for a new platform.  This will potentially benefit Blogger and WordPress, but there's a growing interest in sites built and owned by users themselves, such as AO3, which cost some money to use but are at least guaranteed not to go on a mass-deletion jag just because a bunch of purse-lipped grey fossils in a shareholder meeting heard about somebody's yuri art page and freaked out.  Pressure groups, government, and corporations will never stop trying to impose the meatspace world's control-freakery on the internet, and it's surely worth a few bucks to achieve independence from them once and for all.

Link round-up for 2 December 2018

Various interesting stuff I ran across on the net over the last week.

o o o o o

Smart dog (found via Mock Paper Scissors).

Dare you order this menu item?

Here's how to upload pictures to Instagram from a computer (I'm hazy on what that means, but it sounds useful).

Bob Slatten has a cartoon round-up.

"Roger that, carry on....."

These police drug stings are getting out of hand.

In case you were wondering what became of that kid from The Omen..... (found via Calvin).

Some beasts are not meant to be caged.

Persevere, and you will reach the summit.

Ami at I. Am. Mental. is collecting bad names.

This ad for New Zealand Air is kind of cute, with a little dig at Trump.

It's nice when a pick-up line offers options.

A fool and his money are soon parted.

What home appliance could you do without?

Jesus explains what's OK and what isn't (found via Scottie).

Yuuuuge best-selling book.

Bluzdude debunks some wingnut rhetoric.

Bullshit fosters the growth of other bullshit.

Don't claim abuse is the victim's fault.

They both have issues (found via Scottie).

Not all superheroines wear capes.

This protest was an amusing fiasco.

It's not just Big Bird -- conservatives have always hated Sesame Street.

King Tut lived a short and miserable life.

Washington Post readers take a shot at re-defining words (similar to my Improving words posts).

Carolina Parrothead reviews Clarke's The Songs of Distant Earth.

I've long thought that Jesus might have been a fictional character invented by Saul of Tarsus.  But there's not even much evidence that Saul of Tarsus really existed.

Keep copies of everything -- the internet is not secure.

Evil supervillains join forces.

Ray Hill was an early fighter for gay rights in Houston.

Yesterday was the 63rd anniversary of the arrest of Rosa Parks.

There's still time to take action for net neutrality (found via Politics Plus).

So much for "compassionate conservatism".

God speaks to us, but he can't keep his story straight.

Self-checkout is a pain in the ass and worse is coming (found via Mike the Mad Biologist).

If you're hazy on who Jerome Corsi is, Green Eagle has a recap.  Apparently Corsi has a friend at the top.

Read a couple of good letters at Hackwhackers and Hometown USA.

Some people understand what energy is; others do not.

I wish they knew how to quit him.

Crooks and Liars reviews the history of anti-Semitism in the US.

This column and the story of its suppression need to go viral (found via Politics Plus).

Farm bankruptcies skyrocket as tariff wars rage.

The town of Republic, Washington considers becoming a sanctuary city (expect to see a lot more of this).

Here's another street name change I could support.

Cities start to show how liberal they are by.....giving kids school lunches.

A Christian group wants the tribe that killed John Chau "brought to justice".  I suspect they're doomed now -- fundies will keep pestering them until germs or a violent clash wipe them out.

Green Eagle reviews the world of wingnuttery, revealing that Obama dresses like a cross between Liberace and Satan.

Only 20% of Americans cite religion as their most important source of meaning in life (found via Fair and Unbalanced).

We've seen something a bit like this before (found via Mock Paper Scissors).

A North Carolina school where many parents reject vaccination on religious grounds suffers the state's worst chickenpox outbreak in twenty years (found via Massive Enormity).  The romaine lettuce disaster is the natural result of deregulation.  The Republican destruction of unions is doing this to US workers.  Our high level of economic insecurity makes poverty worse than official statistics suggest (found via Miss Cellania).  We are literally becoming a Third World country due to stupidity and ideology.

This kind of thing is why Americans will eventually vote for socialized medicine.

This kind of thing is why Americans will eventually reject unconstrained capitalism.

Health insurers increasingly refuse to pay emergency-room bills, but you do have recourse.

There are anti-science ideas on the left, but I really think very few leftists actually believe these things. 

In a time of triumphant stupidity, InSight's arrival on Mars gave the smart people something to celebrate.

Professor He Jiankui's claims of achieving anti-HIV gene editing in humans are dubious, but I note that "such work is banned in most countries", suggesting that the rest of the world is ceding leadership in this field to China.

There's still a chance to mitigate global warming, but it won't be easy.  Republicans are worse than useless.

The US begins to stand up to the gangster-regimes again:  The Senate condemns Russian aggression in Ukraine, and our Navy signals a warning to China in the Taiwan strait.

Kaveh Mousavi reviews a book arguing that US global dominance is invincible.  I note, though, that it doesn't seem to address the issue of rot from within as opposed to challenge from without (and it was written before Trump).

Perpetrators of a vicious biphobic attack in Britain suffer little punishment.

Socialist countries are slow and bureaucratic (found via Miss Cellania).

Some Western nations still take a strong stand against homophobia.

Germans and Americans have very different views of relations between their countries.

Another day, another execution in Saudi Arabia.

The latest industrial disaster in China shows once again the result of lax regulation.

Electoral-Vote looks at George HW Bush and the degeneration of the Republican party.  Pinku-Sensei remembers the last Republican President he voted for.

Shower Cap chronicles the week in Trumpworld.

The Debate Link reviews how the states are trending.

NRO sounds the alarm about the Republican implosion in Orange county.

Trump is losing clout within his own party (found via Fair and Unbalanced).

No, there isn't a Democratic equivalent to the Freedumb Caucus.  We didn't elect a Democratic majority to make nice with monsters (found via Frances Langum).  They don't play nice with us.  And can it with the pointless infighting.

Republicans will keep on cheating because it's all they've got.

Stacey Abrams and activists are fighting to restore real democracy in Georgia.

Religion is a better predictor of support for Republicans than education or gender are (found via Mike the Mad Biologist).  But Democrats made inroads with every Republican demographic.

Long before Trump, another unworthy authoritarian ruler used the military as props for self-aggrandizement.  It didn't end well for him.

[682 days down, 780 days to go until the inauguration of a real President!]

Quote for the day -- they tend to get their math right

Found via Shaw Kenawe.

SW Harvey Milk Street

Recently, while driving to work through downtown Portland, I noticed that one of the streets I crossed every day was "SW Harvey Milk Street".  I used to come downtown pretty often and I didn't remember ever seeing a street named for Harvey Milk before, so it aroused my curiosity.

It turns out that the city council voted for the change less than six months ago, renaming what had been SW Stark Street, a 13-block stretch extending west from the Willamette river to Burnside Street.  The new street signs went up even more recently.  Harvey Milk had no actual connection with the area, nor with Portland in general, but SW Stark Street was a center of gay culture in earlier days, and for some time a local citizens' group had been pushing for the change.  There was no real opposition; the only criticism came from those who would have preferred to honor a more local gay activist.

As it happens, the 40th anniversary of Milk's assassination was just two days ago.  Milk was a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the first openly-gay elected official in California, at a time when the position of gay people even in San Francisco was precarious at best -- this was the time of Anita Bryant, the Briggs initiative, and the rise of the Moral Majority.  Though a latecomer to political activism and sometimes at odds with the city's more established gay political figures, Milk made use of his office to pass a gay civil rights ordinance and to rally and organize people for the long struggle against bigotry that lay ahead.

He was assassinated by Dan White, a former fellow Supervisor who was (by San Francisco standards) relatively religious and conservative, and had clashed with Milk several times.  After a failed business venture, White entered City Hall with a gun and begged Mayor George Moscone to reinstate him as a Supervisor.  When Moscone refused, White shot him, then went to his old adversary's office and murdered him as well.

I was living in the Bay Area at the time and I still remember the announcement of these shocking events by a visibly-shaken Supervisor Dianne Feinstein (who succeeded Moscone as Mayor and went on to become the national figure she is today).  The assassination brought the deep cultural divides of the time to the surface, with police officers openly wearing "Free Dan White" shirts and gays later rioting over White's relatively light sentence.

I wonder if Milk, living at the time he did, could have anticipated the success of the movement he helped foster, with gay marriage now a reality in most of North and South America and western Europe, and boycotts forcing entire states to back down from efforts to restore discrimination.  Perhaps he did.  To devote so much effort to the struggle, he must have been an optimist on some level.

The street's previous name honors Benjamin Stark, a local landowner who briefly served Oregon as a Senator during the Civil War era; like many people at the time, he was pro-slavery.  Milk is a far more worthy figure.  SE Stark Street, the much longer section of the street east of the river, still keeps the old name.  For it, too, perhaps the city council should eventually choose a better one.

Congratulations NASA!

The InSight lander has successfully touched down on Mars after its nearly seven-month trip from Earth.  The main mission page is here.

The exploration of the solar system over the last few decades is one of the great success stories of modern science.  When Trump and his bullshit are forgotten, this will remain.

Link round-up for 25 November 2018

Various interesting stuff I ran across on the net over the last week.

o o o o o

Glögg!

Sheldon Comics presents animal anatomy.

Canadians greet a seasonal visitor.

Things were different back then (found via Yellowdog Granny).

Headline of the week.

Somebody up there has a problem with Texas, or maybe it's just Earth.

How many of these did your rage uncle cover? (found via Scottie).

Here's a new take on ethical vampire survival.

They don't specify which word became flesh.

Nice shot!

This astrological chart is the real deal (found via ErosBlog).

When bullshit becomes shrapnel.....

Don't spell with letters you don't know.  But when writing Spanish, watch the diacritics.

Some may find this gif a morale-booster.

Exotic hair colors are a form of aposematism.

Bluzdude at Darwinfish 2 found a few things to be thankful for.  Donna at Tell Me a Story has a few places not to buy from.

This is Victoria Falls, on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Ancient Mesopotamian civilizations regularly decreed mandatory debt forgiveness (found via Mike the Mad Biologist), and they may have been on to something important.

There's a difference between humans and God (found via Scottie).

What will you tell them?

Trumpanzees retreat further into social isolation.

Lock her up!

And so companies' managers tend to remain ignorant of problems.

Being bilingual affects how you see language.

Don't repeat their mistakes (found via Scottie).

The enemy freaks out over a lesbian kiss at the Macy's parade.  Look, homosexuality is part of the mainstream now.  If you insist on throwing a fit every time it manifests itself in some way, you're going to be exhausted 24-7.

Some Trumpanzees are having second thoughts, but don't let them pretend Trump never happened.

Liberals fight over the wrong things (found via Yellowdog Granny).

Steve Ruis looks at the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Trump celebrates Thanksgiving by trying to take land away from the tribe that saved the Pilgrims.

Only in %!$#@ America (found via Frances Langum).

If you're a blogger, keep back-ups of all your posts, especially if you write anything controversial.

Life is better without illusions.

Here's how the fires in California look from space.  (Here's how they look from the Dark Ages.)

The Salvation Army recognizes that its homophobia is a liability in today's America.

RedState celebrates Trump's reverence and his revival of religion in government -- with a straight face, as best I can tell.

Don't worry about the indictment of Assange (and remember, he's a monster).

Trump's $12 billion bailout to farmers hurt by his trade wars isn't helping them much.  Farmers face mounting storage costs on unsellable crops.

Here are the arguments in the racial-discrimination suit against Harvard.

The Women's March is trying to take out the garbage.

No, religion did not originate from "trying to make sense of the world".  And no, it does not work like science at all.

A blogger discovers a true heroine from history.

Neo-Nazis hate witches and can't do math.  As Christianity declines in the US, paganism is on the rise, though the strongest growth is in the non-religious category.

Trump's latest effort to dismiss global warming is a failure.

Sorry, ideology has no place in science.

Researchers in Texas are testing a promising Alzheimer's vaccine.

The European Union continues to arrogantly dictate policy to member states.  If the US were part of an organization that interfered in our internal affairs like this, we would have voted ourselves out of it years ago.

Mexico denies making a deal with Trump to keep migrants out of the US.

Several gay couples in the migrant caravan got married once they were in Mexico.

Religious crackpots disrupt a plane flight.

There is a racist apartheid state in the Middle East.

John Allen Chau is dead, but the trouble caused by his actions may be just beginning.

Taiwanese voters have rejected gay marriage, though it's unclear what will actually happen since there's a court ruling in place that says it must be legalized eventually.

The Chinese regime takes another step toward Orwellian dystopia (found via Crooks and Liars).

Ten years in prison for writing gay novels.

Arrested for being lesbian.

Duterte is a coward.

It's "a tradition that goes back thousands of years", now on Facebook (found via Politics Plus).

If Trump is still in office in 2020, the Republicans are stuck with him.  Donna at Tell Me a Story suggests an option for Democrats.

Stacey Abrams will be back.  And she's not the only one rejecting Kemp's fraudulent "victory".

The blue wave was largely powered by black and Latino voters.  The party must prioritize upholding minorities' right to vote.  Young voters' turnout also rose, though it remains low.

Cindy Hyde-Smith is in real trouble, with even some Republican voters leaning toward Mike Espy, and a new revelation about her Confederate sympathies.

Rapid growth and urbanization are transforming Texas.

We're winning -- keep the pressure up.

Hecate Demeter supports Pelosi.  So do a large majority of Democratic voters.  The fact that Republicans demonize her is a point in her favor.  Remember her track record.  If you oppose her from the left, don't be fooled.  Here's some more on the challengers.

No, we are not just a coastal party.  But there's still work to do to secure real voting rights.

The both-sides-are-alike crowd really has to struggle in the time of Trump.

Republicans have begun to pay a price for their union-bashing (found via Mike the Mad Biologist).

We have a winning issue with older voters.  Let's put it front and center for 2020.

Shower Cap reviews the week.

Here's an example of distorting the news by framing.

Trump may have made a serious mistake by picking a fight with John Roberts.

[Image at top:  Babylon in its heyday]

Black Friday.....

.....a reminder.

A few images

The politics of honesty in an age of lies

It's a cliché that there are no honest politicians.  It's also false.  Three days ago a politician gave us a display of honesty where it counted -- the kind we're going to need more of in the age of Trump.

That day, Stacey Abrams acknowledged that her Republican opponent was going to be certified the winner of the election for Governor of Georgia.  But as she made explicit, she was not delivering a concession speech:

.....to watch an elected official -- who claims to represent the people of this state, baldly pin his hopes for election on the suppression of the people's democratic right to vote -- has been truly appalling.  So, to be clear, this is not a speech of concession.  Concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true or proper.  As a woman of conscience and faith, I cannot concede.  But my assessment is that the law currently allows no further viable remedy.

The disenfranchisement and vote suppression which marked this race were gross, blatant, and flagrant even by the standards of what has come to be normal Republican practice.  Abrams's speech (click here to watch the whole speech on video or read the complete text) goes into considerable detail about the multiple schemes and scams the Republicans used to rob Democrats, and especially blacks, of their right to vote.  It's a maddening litany, especially to those of us who know something of how hard black Americans had to fight barely two generations ago to win that right, persevering in the face of ruthless and even murderous opposition.  Republicans' efforts to destroy what took such courage and determination to achieve are a disgrace to the entire country.

And after all that, Abrams ended up "losing" by less than one and a half percentage points.  The close margin makes it undeniable -- without vote suppression, she would have won.  The election was stolen, in the purest and bluntest sense.

All Abrams did was to insist on stating that simple truth.  A lesser politician would have "made nice", would have conceded "gracefully", would have kept silent about the ugly facts and legitimized the betrayal of the voters, would have contributed to the normalization of the outrageously abnormal, would have lied.  Would have acted, to put it bluntly, as a collaborator.  Certainly plenty of Democrats want our politicians to behave like that, to smile and strive for "bipartisanship" while the Republicans shit all over them and all over the electorate.  Abrams was too honest to do so.

Republicans are predictably furious that Abrams didn't follow the script and put her stamp of legitimacy on the fruit of their slimy tactics.  At least one has compared her unfavorably to Arizona Republican Senate candidate Martha McSally who, to her credit, did concede defeat without any of the usual Republican bullshit about hordes of illegal aliens or whatever voting -- but that's because she didn't face the massive campaign of cheating that Abrams and her supporters did.  McSally was rightly conceding that she lost a fair fight.  She gets credit because she refrained from lying.  Abrams, too, refrained from lying.

Abrams has made it clear that she's not going away.  Thank goodness.  We need more like her.

Link round-up for 18 November 2018

Various interesting stuff I ran across on the net over the last week.

o o o o o

If it's what you enjoy, it is not wasting time.

This just means it's a fast car, but.....

Bad ad placement.

Shit, shit, thump!

The prophecy is fulfilled.

This man is not happy with his car license plate.

You owe them nothing.

Check out this Vietnamese rock music -- seriously, the sound of that thing is surprising.

It would have been simpler to just buy a bus ticket.

Don't drink that.

Pwned!

The war is back.

Think of yourself as a hermit crab.

"What's the difference between Donald Trump and a worm?"

Here's the problem in a nutshell.

View "Angry Man Stuck in Snow", a study in exquisite frustration.

They won't lose any money.

What did people do?

Target audience, actual audience.

When mercury meets aluminum.....

The Bible teaches science and morality.

It's natural food.

If she came out in the rain..... (found via Frances Langum).

"Not for much longer," said Rihanna.

This is both-siderism (found via Scottie).

If you're looking for a religion, consider this one.

Beware the snowflakes (found via Plowing through Life).

What kind of asshole would shoot a dolphin?

Stan Lee is remembered by Crazy Eddie, Calvin, the Arm Chair Pontificator, and, er, Rainbow Loli of Justice.  Patrick Was Here assembles his cameos.

Professor Taboo has some observations on music.

Not all are welcome in the House of God.

Trumpanzee umbrella "truthers" are now a thing.

Speaking of "truthers", here's a good analysis of 9/11 conspiratardia.

Let my people sit.

This kid knows what a real hero is.

Hey, right-wingers like video games too.  And toys.

How the hell is it possible to run up a $174,000 hotel bill in twelve hours?

The Christian concept of the world is profoundly morally ghastly.

Ven der Führer says, ve ist der master race..... (found via Scottie).

Maybe the US can be like this someday.

Big Brother is watching you.

Resistance is not useless.

The Tallahassee killings remind us of the threat of murderous misogyny.

The US is no longer, in a meaningful sense, the world's richest or most advanced country. For example, health care.

The two parties represent the modernizing and backward regions of the country.

There's a more straightforward solution.

Even in the time of Trump, no one wants a blatant racist working for them.

The assholes are still harassing Christine Ford.

Christianity's forgiveness fetish is depraved.

It's not about being fair to the parties, it's about being fair to the voters.

Ghoulish scammers like this are still out there.

On one front -- pornography -- many of the enemy have pretty much given up the fight.

Yelling and banging on things has nothing to do with democracy.

There's a serious problem in the leadership (not rank-and-file) of the Women's March.

Being Republican is correlated with higher levels of certain psychopathic traits.

Roman Fedortsov collects disgusting monsters and they're all real.

New Age blather can be deadly dangerous.

A potential AIDS cure, developed in Israel, is being tested in Uganda with impressive results.

Even in secular Britain, religion menaces gay people.

Monty Python has aged well -- the BBC (and this columnist), not so much.

The CIA's conclusion that the Khashoggi murder was ordered by Mohammed Bone Sawman creates a headache for Trump.

This is Shibam, Yemen.

Misogynistic religious bigotry helps empower India's Hindu-nationalist ruling party.

Trump spent his Europe trip in a rage, then came home for some sulking and pouting.  He seems to be more unhinged than usual. In fact, he's a complete fruitloop.  Maybe it's drugs.

".....what’s going on in America right now isn’t politics as usual.  It’s much more existential than that" (found via Hackwhackers).

Stop the Pelosi-bashing.  She is a real leader supported by those who represent the party base, especially women.  Josh Marshall agrees.  And what's the alternative?

Bluzdude reviews the election results.  Shaw Kenawe looks at the sweep of the blue wave, starting with the Texas court system.  Professor Chaos debunks the NYT's negativity.  Shower Cap is back to covering the Republicans' latest antics.

Republicans have successfully stolen the Georgia Governorship, but it's not time to forget it and move on.

Texas is coming within our reach thanks to growing Hispanic turnout, which is also happening nationwide.  But turnout generally still has a lot of room to improve.

McConnell plumbs new depths of hypocrisy (found via Hackwhackers).

We cannot find common ground with this.  Polls confirm that the election was a mandate to resist Trump.  Democrats have a wealth of targets for investigation.

I like the "instructive quote".

Gerrymandering can backfire.

Juanita Jean contemplates the silence of the wingnuts.

There's something going on between Trump and Pence.

The mountain west is turning blue (found via Hackwhackers).

Here's a rarity these days -- a Republican behaving honorably.

[668 days down, 794 days to go until the inauguration of a real President!]

Improving words (8)

Some more revised word definitions, based on what the words visibly should mean.....

Approach:  A disease-bearing insect you can download to your phone

Assist:  A person whose ideology is based on posteriors

Barking:  The monarch of a tavern

Convention:  An atom found in a nunnery with some of its electrons missing

Dilate:  Princess Diana is dead

Dominion:  The obedient lackey of a female deer

Explain:  A former flatland

Gallant:  To irritate a small insect

Herbivore:  The eating porn she starred in with partners of both genders

Infuriate:  I always dressed warmly for meals

Interrogate:  A scandal involving the burial of a Star Trek character

Mallard:  Fat which accumulates due to spending time in shopping centers

Palace:  The card every gambler considers a friend

Pardon:  A scholar of golf scores

Peerage:  Anger at the consequence of a hooker mistaking you for Donald Trump

Pollute:  A stringed instrument played during surveys

Profile:  In favor of documentation

Radial:  A knob for tuning in the Egyptian Sun god

Remember:  The thing to do for someone who has been dismembered

Robust:  An arrest for possession of robots

Shamrock:  Fake stone

Subdue:  You owe me one undersea vessel

Tearing:  A secret group conspiring to drink tea

Warden:  A cozy home for fighting

[The previous "improving words" post is here.]

Video of the day -- same old same old

This certainly reflects my own experience, which is why I generally no longer bother participating in arguments about whether religion is true or not (its harmful cultural effects are another issue).

To GMS's presentation I have only one thing to add.  The fact that most religionists are so utterly mistaken about how atheists think is facilitated by the fact that they don't read what atheists have to say in the atheists' own words, as opposed to versions of it paraphrased or summarized by fellow theists.  You cannot understand an opponent's views unless you read what they themselves say -- not just a version of it interpreted by someone on your own side.  This is why I disregard the common taboo against linking to right-wing websites.  To deal with the opposition, we need to understand them accurately, and reading them in their own words, unfiltered, is the only way to do that.

Update:  Since this has turned out to be one of the more popular videos I've posted, here's his channel.

Link round-up for 11 November 2018

Various interesting stuff I ran across on the net over the last week.

o o o o o

Darkness descends.

The gods must be crazy.

Don't beam me up yet.....

What's the name of your metal band?

Ann Coulter -- pwned!

Class resentment rears its head.

How many will read your book? (found via Calvin).

Are there bad people in "the caravan"? (found via Shaw Kenawe).

Look, when you dial a wrong number, just admit it.

I dunno, Melania might wear this.

Here's a guide to being politically correct for Halloween.

Organic vegetables, better in every way.

The real loser concedes the election (found via Fair and Unbalanced). 

Check out the sky photography of Matt Bluejay Searles.

Here's a good collection of all those cases where Brits and Americans use different words.

Sometimes you don't know right away.

There's some truth in both.

Some people have goofy ideas about cardinals.

You just know he wants to.

Anti-vaxxers are this dumb.

Tumblr shuts down people's blogs for garbage reasons.

See fascinating views from above (found via Lady, That's My Skull).

These cartoons are right on target, and this one (found via Hackwhackers) is exactly what's going on.

"Wait, there's some assholes out there just letting their baby 'cry it out'?"

It's merely a social construct.

Don't use honesty as an excuse.

The "woke people" are annoying as hell (just as Bill Maher said).

The often-cited Bible passage John 3:16 needs to be understood in context.

To non-American readers -- yes, a lot of the US really looks like this.

A judge stands up to Trump's ruthless fossil-fuel fetish.

Gods are basically comic-book superheroes.

There's a price to pay for being a collaborator.

"Other countries don't do this.....not even Russia."

A powerful enemy of legal marijuana has fallen.

Google has made some concessions to its rebellious employees.  But more must be done about the new corporate colossi.

Fascism has come to America, and yes, it is wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.

Some damned ugly religious shit is going on at the Air Force Academy.

Genesis may have evolved from an ancient parable of worker revolt.

American military fetishism is empty and meaningless.

Trump's lashing out reminds blogger El Jefe of a notorious movie scene.

While the ignorant still fret about "overpopulation", the world has gone through a dramatic drop in birth rates.

Soon, the House Committee on Science will be led by someone who actually accepts science.

Don't bash technology for what are actually social shortcomings.

Really fixing global warming will require doable, but radical, changes to the energy industry.

In Switzerland, new technology allows paralyzed men to walk again (found via Mike the Mad Biologist).

Britain's £50 note may soon honor a persecuted hero.

Happy are those who can get help for their problems.

Trump wouldn't enjoy German press conferences.

Empowering women is the key to prosperity.

Efforts to contain Ebola in the Congo are being thwarted by armed conflict and, apparently, the local equivalent of anti-vaxxers.

RedState warns that Republicans' grip on the South and Texas isn't as strong as they think.

Democrats can be competitive in red-state Senate races.

Driftglass has an evocative post on the labor and rewards of street-level campaign work.

Susan Collins's vote for Kavanaugh will haunt her in 2020.

Even if Democrats want to be bi-partisan, Trump won't allow it.  He is not the President of all of us.

Voting felt different this time.

Yes, this is evil.

Elections have consequences, even in Kansas.

PM Carpenter has chosen his 2020 Presidential candidate.

Trump's weakened position may make him more dangerous, and the same is true of the Trumpanzees (found via The Mahablog).  And the Republicans' dangerous fascistic leanings are just going to get worse (found via Mike the Mad Biologist).

The new Democratic House majority has a lot of work to do.  Mike the Mad Biologist has some more suggestions.  And they have won the power to protect the Mueller investigation.  But they must avoid promising what they can't deliver.

Say it loud -- we won.  The nation has rejected Trumpism.  And there's more to come.

[Image at top found via Calvin]