This linkspam does not mention the election, since I collected the links in the previous week.

How Should We Respond to Passive Communication? – Miri discusses the conflict between “ask” and “guess” culture, and more specifically how she responds when people around her use “guess” culture.  I was also raised with ask culture.  But I’d say for me the more serious cultural conflict is between positivity and negativity.  Many people have trouble understanding that I don’t like compliments.  I’d rather people be critical of me, and let me be critical of them.

Valeant sued for botching marketing of female libido pill – Some of you may heard of Addyi (aka Flibanserin), which is used to treat hypoactive sexual desire disorder in pre-menopausal women.  After getting approved by the FDA last year, it seems to have been a market failure.  Possibly because it’s barely effective and has serious negative side effects.  And now the investors are suing the owning company for poor marketing.  Via Next Step: Cake.

Entropy and Complexity, Cause and Effect, Life and Time – Sean Carroll teams up with Minute Physics to explain stuff.  I particularly like the one on cause and effect, embedded below the cut.  One of my pet peeves is when people cite physics as supporting their intuition that causation is real.  Causation isn’t really a physics concept, it’s a philosophy concept.

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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. [Read more…]

Hey, if you’re interested in joining Freethought Blogs, you better send us an application right now.  Instructions on how to apply are here.

And now for my monthly linkspam:

Psychic Ferns EP – My brother is in this psychedelic doom metal band!  And the EP is available for free (or name your price).  Naturally, I think they are the coolest thing ever.

Aces in the Church – A collection of aces’ personal experiences with Christianity.  If you’ve ever speculated on the interaction between Christianity and asexuality, I’d ask you, are you ready to confront some real stories?  Coyote themself has some of the best writing in here but the snippets are important to show the diversity of experiences.

[cn: rape, rape apology] A Feminist Magazine’s Hypocrisy On Rape Made Me Love Feminists Even More – Chris Hall talks about an incident where a feminist magazine published a sympathetic account of a woman raping her male partner.  Although this was a feminist fuckup, Chris was grateful for the response of other feminists, and mad at MRAs for making the conversation more difficult.  MRAs upset me for similar reasons, particularly since I started being out about being a rape victim.  I still remember that time that a gay guy tried to sell me on the men’s rights movement by telling me gay men were lucky to not have any consent culture. [Read more…]

Interrupting the health insurance discussion for my monthly linkspam.

Scientific Charity Movement – Jeff Kaufman is part of the effective altruism (EA) movement, which seeks the most efficient ways to do charity. In the late 19th century, there was a “scientific charity” movement that also tried to apply scientific methods to determine the best way to do charity. Unfortunately, their “scientific” method involved investigating individuals to see if they were deserving of charity. How horrible and inefficient. I support giving people money unconditionally.

Exits and Entrances – Somebody on FTB wrote a novel! As a skeptical/atheist nonfiction blogger who may one day write a novel, this is relevant to my interests. However, at the moment I am in the middle of the Cormoran Strike series (J. K. Rowling’s pseudonymous mystery novels).

Academic transphobia and The Media: The persistence of the “activists vs science” false dichotomy – Dr. Zucker’s clinic for conversion therapy for trans kids was recently shut down, and many of its defenders use an “activist vs science” narrative.  Siobhan points out that the clinic was wrong on scientific grounds, and that critics come from both within and without academia.  Hi!

The thing about academically-minded social criticism is that it’s not very accessible.  It’s there, but it usually won’t go viral, and is harder to find.  When people say that activists and academics are opposed to each other, that tells me that they like nuance in theory, but in practice can’t be bothered to actually find it and read it.
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