Earlier this month, Niki Massey of Seriously?!? died.  Dana has a roundup of memorial posts for Niki, and to that I would like to add one from Prismatic Entanglements.  All I can say about Niki was I ran into her blog around February, and it just immediately clicked for me.  I didn’t even know her and yet I feel this was a great loss.  On a side note, she was also openly ace, although not known in the ace blogosphere.

In more positive news, new bloggers are now being added to FtB.  I’ll link them all later, once they’ve been given a chance to settle.  Now, for links from the past month.

Rebirth of Dudebro – Great American Satan shared this one in the comments, in response to the idea of atheist jerks.  I definitely agree with the observation that the atheist dudebro type is systematic, and endlessly replenishes itself.  Just the other week in the local student group, some new guy made jokes about Asians.  Dude, you live in California, you can’t be that clueless.

When people complain about atheist assholes, I have a mix of feelings.  First, I don’t necessarily believe you, because everyone is a jerk according to someone else.  Second, you think you have it bad, but I willingly associate with these people on a frequent basis.  Which maybe makes me a jerk too, although I’m a different kind of jerk.

Thoughts on cults – Ozy suggests replacing “cult” with “spiritual abuse”.  “Cult” has the problem of targeting strange (but not necessarily harmful) behavior, and targeting new religions, whereas “spiritual abuse” can equally apply to major religions, and is not either/or.  I largely agree with this, although I also agree with the first comment that “cult” captures a bunch of heuristic properties of a certain kind of problematic group.

I generally avoid calling groups cults because I think of it as basically an insult for new religions, and I don’t have any particular beef with new religions.  On the contrary, since non-belief is gaining popularity among the younger generation, I fully expect to see more sympathetic atheistic new religions in my lifetime.

[cn: compulsory sexuality]
Why would men fear women with high sex drives? – Miri proposes a possible explanation, that men don’t feel allowed to refuse sex.  Therefore, a woman with a high sex drive is intimidating because she might ask for sex and he couldn’t say no.  I am not sure to what degree this is true, but it’s definitely worth considering.

I read the Mic article that Miri linked, and it includes statements like “You’d think a guy would learn to accept his new girlfriend’s libido and enjoy the ride.”  I hope I never have to read a statement like that from a feminist ever again.  Just no.  Nobody needs to learn to “enjoy the ride”.  Seriously, no.  Observe how masculine I continue to be while refusing sex.

Important Science – I saved the most important link for last, Marcus talks about how to boil eggs that will be easy to peel.  He makes observations, forms hypotheses, tests them, makes more tests in response to peer review.  As a Scientist(TM), let me tell you, this is as good it gets.  The pros don’t do any better, and also their research topics are less important.

I also hear that some politics happened this month.  The headlines told me I’d never guess what happened next, and then I proceeded to never guess.