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

• Malaysia’s adoption of Hudud – Following in the Footsteps of Mengele–“And theft… theft is what we are here to discuss. Theft is punished by amputation.”
• Guest post by Leo Igwe: The menace of Boko Haram–“Unfortunately, efforts by the Nigerian government to contain the insurgency and attacks have proved largely ineffective. So Nigeria needs help, urgent international help to boost its counter terrorism initiatives.”
• Beautiful and Fragile: My Story for the Atheist Photo Book, “A Better Life”–“The day these photos were taken was the day I found out I had cancer. I literally had gotten the news about the cancer thirty seconds before Chris knocked on my door.”
• “But a feminist was mean to me!”–“Everyone is mean sometimes, but ‘default’ categories like ‘white’ and ‘male’ are made invisible because they’re considered the norm from which everyone else deviates, so nobody besides women and minorities and their allies usually makes much of fuss about the meanness of men or white people specifically.”

The Wider Web

• Most Fitness Apps Don’t Use Proven Motivational Techniques–“Creating a good motivational app isn’t simple, Conroy notes. For instance, people need different motivation aids to start exercising, and then to continue once that becomes routine.”
• Finnish Weird–“This [free] publication introduces you to suomikumma, “Finnish Weird”, showcases a few of its bright stars, and also gives you a couple of short stories to read.”
• In Greece v Galloway, Even Kagan Just Doesn’t Get It–“How does a round robin of various religious prayers and secular invocations at city council meetings fix the problem of making a single meeting welcoming to all citizens?”
• Why There’s So Much Confusion Over Nutrition and Health–“In reality, there’s significant agreement on diet and health issues among experts, but the general public is conflicted. So why are we so confused when experts agree?”
• Call Me Crazy: Why Sanism Matters to Queer and Feminist Activists–“Indeed, some of the most common reasons for treatment in insane asylums in early medical history were “sexual perversion”, masturbation, and homosexual tendencies.”
• Judicial Hijinks in Effort to Kill Walker Criminal Probe and Destroy Evidence–“Perhaps even more astoundingly, Randa ordered prosecutors to destroy all evidence gathered in the investigation.”
• Lying to Men–“I have been lying to men since I was old enough to know the difference between truth and lies.”
• How Internet Trolls Improved My Self Esteem–“Back when the insults began in earnest, it would have been shockingly easy to hurt my feelings. What I realized, though, was that the trolls were so terrible at it.”
• White House solar panels power up–“Obama will – once again – bypass a deadlocked Congress and use his executive authority to announce $2bn funding for energy-saving measures at federal government buildings, as well as new financing and training programmes for solar installations.”
• FBI investigating Bundy supporters in BLM dispute–“Bundy supporters have insisted in emails and calls to 8 News NOW that no one in the crowd pointed weapons at BLM or Metro, but officers told the I-Team that is exactly what they saw, that many with guns set up behind women and children.”
• Axes of Access Don’t Intersect for the Disabled Patient–“A person with multiple sclerosis (MS) can run into these poor fits between environment and form at any turn of the road or the wheelchair, but the last place one might expect a difficulty is in the healthcare environment.”
• Are you an atheist? Get mad at the US supreme court. Believer? You, too–“And it will only intensify the clashes between those who want to invoke specific deities, and those who have amorphous or other religious beliefs – as if both of those groups weren’t preparing for future battles over prayer already.”
• A modern pope gets old school on the Devil–“Largely under the radar, theologians and Vatican insiders say, Francis has not only dwelled far more on Satan in sermons and speeches than his recent predecessors have, but also sought to rekindle the Devil’s image as a supernatural entity with the forces­ of evil at his beck and call.”