I share a lot of links on Twitter and Facebook that I don’t blog about because I don’t have much to add. The reading list is a periodic feature where I share those links with my blog audience too. Of course, you’re still welcome to follow me on Twitter.
Around FtB
- Joint statement by Ophelia Benson and Richard Dawkins–“Disagreement is inevitable, but bullying and harassment are not.”
- The curious case of a man named James who thinks the secular community should be in bloody civil war–“Wait, what? I’m BALDING? Oh shit, I AM! Why didn’t anyone tell me that I was balding, so I could stop talking about things on the internet!”
- Plagiarism in the age of instant, digital content–“Back to Johnson: He was not a product of something gone wrong at Buzzfeed, only the brightest example of what the content machine does.”
- Let’s Not Call People “Illiterate”–“I’m speaking from experience here. Yeah, I talk just like a toff now, but I’m from a seriously poor, working-class background.”
- Something is wrong with SIWOTI!–“But for some reason, some people get extremely bitter about being told to go away. They are outraged that you deny them the privilege of participating on your wonderful blog.”
- Terms of engagement: why the Dawkins-Benson pact is meaningful–“This isn’t a peace accord – it’s a treaty establishing terms of engagement.”
- Humanist Foundation Rallying Support for Refugee Children at U.S. Border–“When we talk about the atheist/ humanist community getting involved in humanitarian or social justice issues which disproportionately affect marginalized people — this is what we’re talking about.”
- In response to those who tell me how to write about diversity–“It says so much that these critics don’t care that perhaps, as a person who isn’t white, I’m deeply affected by a lack of racial diversity in a major creative industry and that strikes hardest while playing a game with only white characters for no good reason.”
- How… Nice… of Richard Dawkins to Provide This Opportunity So Quickly–“Some folks seem to have imagined a cease-fire situation in which one side (theirs) gets to go on saying and doing awful things, while the other side (ours) is supposed to completely shut up. They’re so precious.”
The Wider Web
- QOTD: Neutrality is not neutral. Neutrality supports the status quo.–“But the way you personally feel about rape threats is irrelevant. What’s relevant is how you behave when they happen.”
- 5 Reasons Why You Should Watch Annedroids on Amazon Prime!–“I find it a challenge sometimes with the words I have to say but as I read the script, I learn things about science.”
- The “we like sex” argument is a winning one, so why are so many people afraid to use it?–“Any thread or Twitter-stream or people-standing-with-signs or whatever about birth control would lead the casual reader to believe that 75-80% of birth control users are virgins who would never but for their painful periods.”
- Why The New Vikings Stadium Is A Problem–“The Minnesota Vikings have been made aware of how lethal their glass design will be to migrating birds by Minnesota Audubon. They’ve chosen to ignore that and it’s a big problem.”
- Change Glass, Save Birds–“This decision is a death warrant for birds. This is a billion dollar stadium, and the cost to save thousands of birds by using bird safe glass could cost about one-tenth of one percent of that.”
- “Apparently anti-feminist women have now taken to promoting the meme that feminists ‘won’t take no for an answer’ and ‘can’t accept that no means no.'”
- The Power of Paint and Powder: Brave Men’s Rights Redditor takes on women and their evil deceptive makeup.–“I’m pretty sure most men don’t get angry when a woman puts on lipstick. That’s just you, dude. Well, you and a thousand other MRAs.”
- Encouraging Everyday Diversity–“Earning your readers’ and submitters’ trust doesn’t mean that you don’t fuck up. It’s impossible to never fuck up, or at least, I don’t think it is a worthwhile aspiration.”
- Food is for White Liberals What Sex Is For The Religious Right–“There is a serious disconnect here that should tell anyone who’s paying attention that this is not about justice or health in any form––it is about vanity.”
- The Day I Leave The Tech Industry–“We joke about it, other women and I, what we will finally do when we leave.”
- Free Ally Skills Workshop for attendees of LinuxCon Chicago August 21–“Want to do your part in making the Linux community more welcoming to women and people of all sorts? Planning to attend this year’s LinuxCon NA in Chicago?”
- This Is What Has Been Happening–“What constitutes ‘legitimate criticism’ is, for example, a thread with 472 comments debating whether it’s acceptable to mock me for being fat and/or not understanding how my own body works.”
- An Awkward and Uncomfortable Masters of Sex Gets Everything Wrong–“Let’s leave aside the shittiness of turning intersex surgery into some kind of allegory for Bill’s masculinity crisis. Instead the main problem was how much this scene distorted the reality of what happened historically.”
- Geeks Without God Episode 108 – Atheist Comedians with Joseph Scrimshaw–“While we completely fail to provide any data supporting this theory, we talk about it anyway. We also talk about some religious comedians and how Tim has watched them and doesn’t think they are very funny.”
- Richard Dawkins explains a principle he himself refuses to adhere to–“Of course, Dawkins is not actually a bad writer. This was not a mistake.”
- One Reason Women Fare Worse in Negotiations? People Lie to Them.–“‘We found that in the role-play, people were significantly more likely to blatantly lie to women,’ says Laura Kray, the lead author of the study.”
- Breaking Down The New Yorker’s TERFy, Transphobic, Ahistorical Noise–“I mean, you did mention how they post trans women’s personal information online, call their medical providers in an attempt to get them to stop treatment, and contact their employers, right? Oh, no? It’s not in the above paragraphs? Odd.”
- Oh, Uncle Richard–“Imagine if he had apologized for that, had expressed horror specifically at how his ill-conceived and fallacious attack had painted a target on Watson’s back.”
- “I Have A Cultural Studies Degree” Is the New “I Have Black Friends”–“As we silently shuffled out of the theater, unable to think of anything but the horrifying images of violence committed against Black and brown bodies, I overheard a white girl nearby say that she really, really connected with the movie. Why? Because it was ‘like, basically everything I’m studying in my African-American studies classes.'”
- Richard Dawkins doesn’t speak for me…so, who does?–“Richard Dawkins is one of the handful of living scientists that Americans can name. This means that he’s something of a spokesperson for science, and for scientists. Whether I like it or not, he represents me, in his role as a public face of science.”
Thanks, much!