13 May 2018

Link round-up for 13 May 2018

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

o o o o o

Please read this story through to the end, and consider whether you would be helping or hindering the struggle against the dragon.

He keeps trying, but.....

Cats meet robot.

Learn how the thagomizer got its name.  More science names here.

There is a secret hero in our midst.

This sounds like kind of a mess.

Blogger Ming has a good reason for not visiting Kansas City.

Donna at Tell Me a Story looks at some uncommon words.

You can tell a lot about some people by the socks they wear.

This music video will keep you guessing.

Here's an interesting fan theory about The Flintstones (found via Calvin's).

Tough guy not so tough (found via Politics Plus).

A Republican discovers the world of furries, and perhaps moves a step toward redemption.

Do not date this person.

See optical glass sculptures by Jack Storms.

Check out the paint job on this house.

Never stop learning.

I'm with Dr. Wren here.

This guy makes a good point about stories with a message.

The Ozarks will be exempt from the Apocalypse, apparently.

Why are these two garments judged differently?

Actions matter more than words.

Never forget the true meaning of that immortal photo of the Rembrandt and the cell phones.

A fashion exhibit triggers the most ridiculous round of bitching about "cultural appropriation" yet.  Sorry, everything is fair game for parody.

Keep these points in mind when you see a missing-person report.  And keep this in mind when you read any shocking story.

On censorship, this sets a standard to which we should all aspire.

The Trump administration is now suffering leaks about leaks.

The oligarchy doesn't want its subjects exposed to real information about the outside world.

Stagnant society, stagnant religion.

We don't need immigrants who lack skills and won't learn English.

Nobody really believes abortion is murder (found via Mike the Mad Biologist).

On sexual harassment, Republican women feel betrayed by their party (let's hope some of them reach the obvious conclusion).

Miscellanea Agnostica looks at Bryan Fischer's latest Christofascist bullshit.

Worst tweet ever.

Worst marriage ever?

I guess you'd call this libertarian fatigue.

They really are trying to turn the US into a Third World country (found via Mike the Mad Biologist).

Fundamentalism promotes child abuse as well as wife abuse.  It's a sick blood-fetish cult.

The driving force behind global-warming denialism is not ignorance.

An emphasis on young-Earth creationism can actually weaken Evangelicalism's hold over its adherents.

The passage of FOSTA/SESTA is already killing and terrorizing sex workers (found via Mike the Mad Biologist).

Louisiana's prison-labor system evokes a bygone era of evil.

"Understand" the Alt-Right?  We do understand them, and that's the problem.

Pi-hole is the latest innovation in ad-block technology.

If you make a really unnerving noise, you can intimidate anybody.

Exercise can make your kids smarter.

This week saw the anniversary of one of our greatest victories.

If sponges can do it, so can we.

Lifelike sculptures bring us face-to-face with early humans (found via Miss Cellania).

As Trump abandons the Iran nuclear deal, Europe must take the lead.  Germany, the UK, and France immediately issued this joint declaration (found via Hackwhackers).

Here's the residence of an 18th-century German bishop -- at that time most ordinary people lived in squalid hovels.

Trump's newest appointee thinks the world's fourth-largest economic power can just be ordered around.

Germany now has a nastier variant on the "sovereign citizen" movement, though so far in small numbers.

Here's why "Islamophobia" isn't like anti-Semitism. And here's another problem.

Atheism is spreading among Turkey's younger generation.

The caste system -- an integral part of the Hindu religion -- plays a role in India's rape epidemic.

"John McCain is a tricky figure for us Resisters. Saved Obamacare, passed the plutocracy-entrenching GOP tax bill, served his country, yet foisted Sarah Freakin' Palin upon it…it's complicated. I won't tell you how to feel about Senator McCain, but if the man doesn't want America's greatest domestic enemy stinking up his memorial service with treason and overcooked steak farts, well, I'd say he's earned the right to make that call."  More commentary here.

Richard Ojeda is the kind of Democrat who might have a shot in West Virginia.

Crabby Trumpanzees refuse to see who's hurting their business.  Let's hope the canning industry and Boeing employees understand better, as these businessmen do.

Few cities want to host the 2020 Republican convention.

Help Stormy Daniels in her battle to hold Trump accountable.

Here's an overview of Tuesday's primaries.  North Carolina's result gives us a shot at flipping a seat there.  The Republican winners are bigots and Blankenship is a sore loser.  We need to be unified to win in November.  But is the blue wave petering out?

The Trumplings are just disgusting.  They hate their own best people.  It doesn't help that Trump himself has no sense of humor.

Right-wing conference, the usual bullshit.

Go ahead, tell me I'm wrong to call these people "the enemy".

If Democrats are really audacious, they can use this plan to reverse Republicans' unfair advantage in the Senate and the Electoral College (found via Mike the Mad Biologist).  In the meantime, Connecticut is about to join the National Popular Vote compact.

For more link round-ups, see Fair and Unbalanced, Love Joy Feminism, Perfect Number, and Miss Cellania (special "calling the cops on black people" edition).

[Image at top found via Hackwhackers]

8 Comments:

Anonymous Marc McKenzie said...

Thanks for another great link list. A few thoughts:

--I guess I won't be visiting Kansas City soon myself. :)

--This Catholic wasn't offended by the celebrity dresses at the New York Fashion Show--but then again, a) I am an illustrator and b) I thought Zendaya looked amazing (but whenever I see Chadwick Boseman I expect him to be wearing the Black Panther suit). You are right--when it comes to parody, everything is fair play.

--It's good to see that there are women in the GOP who are concerned about sexual harassment, but if they think their party--which is led by the sexual harasser in the White House and is filled with people like Gov. Gretien--is going to do anything, they've got another thought coming.

--Say what you want about Barack and Michelle Obama, but they really were a couple who genuinely love each other and weren't afraid to show it. Hell, even George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush were clearly in love with their wives. Trump clearly views his wife as just an ornament--but I guess that's okay with the Evangelicals who will keep giving him mulligans.

--Trump abandoning the Iran Nuclear Deal is going to have major repercussions. Of course, I would take this opportunity to say "Go fuck yourselves" to the Susan Sarandon/Jill Stein-loving idiots on the far Left who howled about how Hillary Clinton would have been a warmonger. The Iran Deal was on the ballot in 2016, as were many other things. But hey, both parties are the same to these fools. Just like the Naderites in 2000, these people were short-sighted thanks to their disgust at the candidate who would have done their best to ensure peace. Then again, they also fell for the nonsense that Trump was a peacenik.

--I have my disagreement with Senator McCain, but I would never question or insult him in regards to his experience in the Hanoi Hilton. What he went through for five years would have broken someone like Donald Trump in five minutes (or less). That it's Democrats who are defending McCain after the vile comments made by Sadler says quite a lot. And if inviting President Obama and not Trump to his funeral is McCain's way of giving Trump the finger, then I'm all for it.

--Finally, in regards to what the Trump gang is doing...no one should be surprised. They pretty much made it clear in 2016, but the media was more interested in emails and in attacking Hillary while the far Left was too busy rolling around in their purity pool. I do feel that this November will see a major turnout to punish the GOP and to take control of the House (and maybe even grab more seats in the Senate). I don't see Democrats being complacent. And Michael Avenatti should be congratulated for doing the job that the MSM should have been doing starting back in 2015--but you know, emails.

Whew! Quite a response from me!

13 May, 2018 09:45  
Blogger Mary Kirkland said...

Quite a few links to check out. Some interesting reading. I'll come back and finish the list later.

13 May, 2018 10:23  
Anonymous Rachel said...

I've read your blog over the past few weeks, and I wonder about something.

You criticize Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, et al.

But you never seem to criticize the Jewish ideology.

You rightly criticize creationism, but fail to mention that yeshivas in Brooklyn leave students illiterate.

You rightly criticize Islam's hatred of women and the hijab, but fail to mention Judaism's making women shave their heads - as shown in the town of Kiryas Joel.

Even the Islamic ideology lets women pray at the Kaaba, but Jewish ideology prohibits us from praying at the wailing wall.

You also defend Israel, a state based on Jewish ideology, even though it condemns the Rohingya for being responsible for their own genocide and sells weapons to Myanmar. You rightly say Abbas is a piece of shit for blaming the Jews for the Holocaust. When will you say the Israeli foreign ministry is just a whole bunch of pieces of shit?

The Torah tells us to commit genocide against Amalekites and any other Gentiles occupying the land god gave to us.

The Jewish ideology is the worst on earth - why won't you condemn it here? Every time you defend a Jewish government, you are hurting us who escaped from the ideology.

13 May, 2018 13:46  
Blogger dellgirl said...

This is a very thorough and thought provoking post. Your list of links is impressive. I learned a lot here. Thanks for sharing this.

13 May, 2018 16:55  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Mary: Shows you how much time I spend on the net, I guess :-)

Marc: Republicans who are basically normal people have an astonishing capacity to blinker themselves from the truth about what the party represents. If choosing the poster boy for sexual harassment as the party's Presidential candidate doesn't wake them up -- well, maybe some of them are gradually getting the idea, but it sure took long enough.

Trump did campaign as an isolationist who would avoid getting entangled in foreign wars, but of course he also campaigned against the Iran deal, and voters should have realized that once in office he would likely get drawn along by the general Republican consensus. Well, anybody who could live through the Bush years and not realize the importance of keeping Republicans out of power is probably hopeless.

The media have a lot to answer for. On the one hand they try to push a narrative of both parties being basically comparable in their degree of corruption, extremism, etc., no matter how far out of whack with reality that narrative obviously is. And they don't fact-check vigorously because that would mean revealing that it's Republicans telling most of the lies. For the sake of appearing unbiased, they've given up on the truth.

Dellgirl: Thanks! There's a lot of interesting stuff out there to be found.

14 May, 2018 05:25  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Rachel: I've criticized the Jewish religion occasionally, but fanatical religious Jews are far smaller in numbers and influence than fanatical Christians or Muslims, so the subject doesn't come up very often (the only places where they have any real power are Israel and a few enclaves in New York).

All those Abrahamic religions in their orthodox form treat women like utter shit. The exact details vary from religion to religion, but they're basically the same. The differences between societies reflect the degree of secularization more than differences between religions.

One problem is that the word "Jewish" is used to refer to an ethnic group as well as a religion, which is not true of the words "Christian" and "Muslim". I condemn all religions but no ethnic groups, and I refuse to allow terminological ambiguity to create even the appearance of anti-Semitism, so it's important to distinguish the religion and the people -- most ethnic Jews aren't very religious, in reality.

I don't know what the Israeli government says about the Rohingya, and it's not a big factor in how I assess that government. I don't know what the Iranian regime thinks about the Congo civil war, either, or what the Brazilian government says about the treatment of Dalits in India, and it wouldn't have much impact on my view of those governments. What Abbas said was different because (a) the Holocaust was unique in modern history in its scale and targeting of a specific ethnic group for total annihilation, and (b) the people he was lying about are the people the world expects to treat him as a serious negotiating partner.

The Jewish ideology is the worst on earth

That's a "tell". In terms of doctrines, the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religions are roughly equally evil -- the holy books include a lot of the same material, after all. The main difference is that the Jewish religion has far less power than the other two, which dominate vast areas of the world. The Israeli government is democratically elected, is much less influenced by religion than any other government in the Middle East (even with the stupid Orthodox laws it does have), and is much less cruel and oppressive than almost any of those regimes. If you think being a Palestinian in Israel is bad, try being a Shiite in Saudi Arabia or an atheist or homosexual in almost any Middle Eastern country other than Israel.

14 May, 2018 05:54  
Blogger Adam said...

Republicans are sick enough to be furries, so yeah, not surprised

14 May, 2018 13:45  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

I have no problem with furries. I've never heard of furries organizing to take away people's health insurance or stop black people from voting or denounce gay people as "sinners" or deny women access to abortion or what have you. Republicans, on the other hand.....

14 May, 2018 18:20  

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