Organized Atheism Also at Fault

I’m pretty quick to point out that terves very much share blame for the recent losses on women’s rights.  Transphobia was one of the levers that helped buoy fascists and autocrats in elections across the globe recently.  But this isn’t a terf blog network, it’s an atheist one.  That’s our beat.  So to that end, let me just reiterate this point I’ve made before.

Organized atheism should always have been a force for progressivism, against the barbarity of religious belief.  But nope.  The idea of listening to even the mildest of feminist critique caused all our talking heads to leap headlong into bed with fascists, to promote the movements that ultimately led to Trump’s election and the current slate in the supreme court.  DickDawk can whine all he wants that he’s liberal, that we should believe that counts for fuckin’ anything, while he engages in piteous dickriding transphobia and platforms the hero of incel mass shooters everywhere.

There is a straight line from elevatorgate to gamergate to altright white supremacy to cheeto hitler to the end of Roe v Wade.  Terfs did their part, but we were in the game of ruining civilization as we know it when those bitches were barely getting started.  We had a lot of friends along the way in building this theocracy, but we should never lose sight of our part in subverting our own ostensible ends.  Like terfs – they should never be allowed to forget they helped set feminism back eighty years, and we should never be allowed to forget we set atheism back as well.

My own part was small.  I let a subtle brew of ableism and islamophobia drive me to participate in boosting new atheism, participating in the comments and the discourse, not doing enough to change the rotten core of the movement or start a better one.  I’ll own that.  I wonder if the narcissistic thunk leaders of our defunct movement will ever process the same, ever feel that as they fade from the earth.  I doubt it.

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Are You Bored?

Wish FtB was more active right now?  Need something to read?  Check out some of my old articles.  I got to thinking about old articles on my blog that never got a comment, stuff that really deserved better.  Maybe people just whiffed on those articles because something more thrilling was happening at FtB then, or it was an off day.  Whatever the case, why not peruse these GAS articles that didn’t hit the first time, but are totally righteous?  The last two articles include links to two full length novels you could read if so inclined…

My thoughts on levitation as a concept, with a fun comment game.

Similar feelings about The English Faust Book.

A cute little guest post about music by an excellent guy.

A more excellent guest post by that excellent guy.

An interview with that excellent guy re: the will to make art.

Get to know Satan:  A day in my life when I was unemployed.

Get to know Satan:  A day in my life when I worked at mega retailer.

Get to know Satan:  What my gender identity means to me.

My Philosophy:  Self and Self- Esteem

My Philosophy:  How to Be Good

My Philosophy:  Needs and Society

This one about RPGs wasn’t ignored but literally nobody agreed with me and that’s ridiculous.

An important bit of advice from me to wannabe writers.

Some sharp shit about calamity and conspiracy theories nobody commented on.

Making fun of the song Two Princes and getting too deep.

An article where you can comment on one of my finished novels (first draft).

An article where you can comment on another of my finished novels (first draft).

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Somebody Oughtta Do Somethin

Content Warning:  Back on that Climate Doom Bullshit.

There are very few people in the world with the power to course correct on the capitalism-inflicted extinction of humanity, but the facts that are as clear as day to you and I?  Those privileged few are as blind to them as we are to (most*) ultraviolet light.  I mean that.  We can be surrounded by UV, soaked in it, and not perceive it with our senses or minds.

Privilege is a powerful blinder – even at the feeblest levels.  A middle class person one medical situation away from crushing poverty is measurably less empathetic and less generous compared to the poor.  Take that effect and multiply it by a billion.  Musk, Gates, Saudi princes – they could have the plainest truths immediately in front of them, blotting out anything else, and rather than see it they will simply go blind to everything.  Hence the ludicrous fantasia of space escape.

That’s why they don’t take action.  I’ve said before capitalism is a blame diffusion engine par excellence.  Millionaires, politicians, people with hands on levers and buttons of that could theoretically take action – they want to take care of themselves and their own, can always leave it to someone else to take the meaningful action, always have an excuse.  Billionaires are wealthy enough to have a real chance of escape from that game.  The existence of trillionaires?  That means we’ve officially reached the point where a single person could easily plow through all those mirrors and illusions and games, could just decide to do something about the problem and make it real.  But they won’t.  They don’t.

I feel that blinded by god emperor privilege, maybe they can’t?  Maybe the argument that capitalism is an inevitable expression of human nature and that anything else is sky-eyed impossible dreams, while facile and defeatist, might be completely true.  But I’ll take it a step farther than the people who use that as a defense of capitalism – If this argument is true, we’re all gonna fuckin’ die like (most**) dinosaurs.  We’ll be lucky if there’s an organism like Lystrosaurus left to eke out a future for tetrapods of any kind.  I’ve said before that I think some few humans are likely to survive the climate apocalypse by merit of our social and mental powers, but if we are truly as greedy and useless the capitalist beast?  We won’t make it.

I don’t remember why I started writing this article.  I claimed once before I was swearing off climate doomposts, but originally this wasn’t meant to be about that.  I think I just wanted to expand on my “angler” thesis with some recent insight I’ve had.  What was that?  I’m too warm to think.  That kind of design flaw isn’t gonna be helpful in short order on this bitch of an earth.  Hm…

Fucking hell.  I have completely fucking forgotten my point.  This sucks ass.  I fucking despise summer.

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*I had a feeling I should double check that, given the depth of complexity and weirdness and nature, and found an article to undermine my simile.  Ignore that, please.   **I knew this I just wanted to say the phrase “die like dinosaurs” because like many clown-ass writers I like alliteration.  Then I felt guilty about it, hence this edit.  Now it looks ridiculous for other reasons.

A Trans Wrath Minute

Content Warnings: Transphobia, Violence, Suicide, Cussin’.  I cuss.

I’m not usually a poet but I woke up with a few lines coming to mind,
and had to spend some time fleshing out the whole thing.
It’s open mic night, babes.  Drink up ~~~

Grab your “Down with Cis” t-shirts and get on the bus

It’s time to bash back before the fucks get to us.

Every fascist from Kremlin to Pittsburgh PA

Has decided that trans is worse now than gay.

Transition’s irreversible so you better not try

Make yourself cishet or make yourself die

And god forbid nature make your gender ambiguous

Carve up your babies, so you can pass off as cis.

Black transphobes think this some “white people shit?”

Marsha was out while you were sucking hind tit

Prob’ly killed by a black guy ashamed of sucking her dick.

So many black queer folk I won’t sully their names

Bringing them down to my white level and rage.

Sick of hearing about queers? Then get our names out your mouths

We can’t be like Bill Tipton and keep our lips zipped when

Your friends in the senate order genital inspections

“I didn’t write those laws, they just reflect my positions.

It’s so many words, can’t do no one wrong.”

Mein Kampf has a death toll ten million strong.

This time’ll be different, you nazi fucks learned your lesson

There’s no need for mass graves when you can just disappear us

Use disgust powered media to make Joe Public fear us.

Pricky Gervais I’mma rip off your face.

Just Kidding Rowling will likewise be howling.

Fuckass Mulaney in such fucking pain he

Won’t know what the hell’s left of David Chappelle.

You think I give a shit about your fucking celebrity?

I’ll slap the whole fucking Oscars but why limit my enmity?

Fuck this whole goddamn world that won’t save a trans girl

And suck my motherfucking dick.

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Department of Bad Ideas – Mass Shootings

Content Warnings: Murder, Ableism, Suicide, Abuse, etc.  This is me being a shitty edgelord for a minute.

Nobody likes mass shootings, even rethuglicans.  A few people carry out the practical end of Fucker Carlston’s stochastic terrorism and gun control looks reasonable – the NRA doesn’t want that, even if they don’t give a shit about a mountain of dead children.  Nobody who knows one of these killers is surprised by them doing the deed.  Sometimes they’ve even been ratted out to the authorities, who were too slow to act on the information.  This suggests to me a solution.

If you’re very pro-gun and you know somebody who is going to kill lots of people, murder them before they can do it.  They are usually troubled enough you could make it look like a suicide easy, and who is going to believe this as a motive for murder?  You’ll know in your heart that you saved lives – you were the fabled good guy with a gun, putting one in the back of your friend’s dome like George did Lenny.  And you’ll know you helped prevent bad press for your beloved assault rifles.

Literally everybody wins.  The children live, the guns keep their good name, you get the joy of committing a murder which is something I know you all desire so richly, and your troubled friend is released from all earthly suffering – their boiling rage allowed to cool and subside into the earth along with their physical corpus.

There are of course multiple reasons this is a bad idea.  Conservatives are spectacularly bad judges of where the violence and abuse in society are coming from.  Youth Pastor Handsy?  Solid dog.  Coach Concussion?  Made you into a real man.  Officer Beatdown?  The thin blue line.  Autistic Steve with the tics?  Who let him be a janitor?  Somebody should part him out for organ donations.  Making this ask to the kind of people in a position to carry it out is both advocating murder, and asking them to be as ableist as possible about who they choose to kill.

I just felt clever in a terrible way for two seconds and had to share my faulty math.  I hope you enjoyed it as dark humor and forgive me if you did not.  Thanks.

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Commercial Implications

Watching the streams of CW tv shows, they changed the way their video works so my adblocking software is no longer compatible, and I haven’t gone through the effort to resolve that yet.  So I’ve been seeing commercials again.  Commercials with weird implications and issues.  I might be missing something because I always have these commercials muted.

There’s some kind of treatment for anxiety and depression which I imagine is not approved for people assigned male at birth.  One of the commercials focused on this really pretty young lady, and you know how these drug commercials are – unnaturally beautiful light suffusing everything, delicate camera movements.  Porn wishes it had what they have, heh.  However the company branded this treatment “Hers.”  A surely unintended implication: depressed trans dudes get fucked.

so cute

There’s a commercial for this credit card that claims you can build your credit score by purchasing everything with it.  We rapidly follow a kinda sweaty unkempt young man through the stages of his life as the credit score improves his circumstances.  Weirdly they include a post-coital moment of relaxation as part of the narrative of him buying house – getting married – having baby.  Each stage has him or his lover expressing their thrill with “whoa” like faker Neos.  Anyway, implication: all those things denied to you young generations by the fathomless greed of the Capitalist Lich Lords?  Actually just a funny misunderstanding.  You weren’t building your credit score, and now you can!

There’s a commercial for an HIV medicine that says it can make your viral loads undetectable, and “U=U,” undetectable equals untransmissible.  Or it’s a weird emoji.  But the way they illustrate this is by having our cute successful young homosexual in a variety of social situations having brief moments of platonic contact with people.  He shakes somebody’s hand, passes a document, touches an arm.  And all while not transmitting HIV!  Amazing!

so cute

The weird unintended implication there is, of course, that HIV could be transmitted by all sorts of actually harmless things.  But the commercial would probably have a harder time getting cleared for TV if it implied he was having unprotected sex and sharing needles without transmitting HIV.

But that credit card commercial had implied fucking, so like, get creative guys.

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Fucking Poaching … Srsly?

Pornography.  Watch parts.  Dating services.  Quack COVID cures.  Mail order brides.  CBD products.  Roofing.  Drywall.  Bridal party planning.  Eyeglasses.

The constellation of services being pitched by spambots grows from time to time.  New to my spam traps – ads for people who want to kill endangered African wildlife.  Come on a poacher safari!  Shoot rare beautiful things while they still exist!

Readers of this blog, if I let that out of the spam trap, would you click the link?  Risk spywares and malwares and such for a chance at such a wonderful experience?  No?

I have a theory the outrage is the idea.  I’m supposed to see that and get curious about it in my anger, get suckered into contact with dangerous con artist types.  Or maybe they’re legit trying to give great white hunters tha hookup, for relevant fees.  Either way, that’s grody.  Thanks, fuckers.

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More TV Thoughts

If you’re on tumblr or a place that circulates screencaps of tumblr posts, you may have noticed a lot of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine images and memes.  If you’re an executive with rights to Star Trek content, you might be thinking – Yisss, paydirt, time for shitty DS9 reboot to cash in!  You are mistaken.  This is specifically a backlash against Star Wars going to hell in a handbasket.  I know this because I’ve seen a blog go from semi-ironic love for B-list Star Wars canon fodder to having zero SW and nothing but ST overnight, right around the time the mouse sharted out episode nine.

You’re begging for a backlash to the backlash if you go in like a greedlord.  I suppose you don’t care, but just understand this: DS9 Retread will not make money.  Not a bit.  Impoverished fandom dorkwads casting about listlessly after all the franchises and stars that they love turn to shit, these are not people with money to burn.  There’s hardly anybody left with money to burn.  We’re all wasting time dinking around on our phones until capitalism finishes eating itself and the survivors have to waste their time dinking around with radiotrophic fungus instead.

On another subject, Naomi never got any better.

Remember when Stargirl made superpowers look fun and amazing and comic booky?  Never gonna happen here.  Superpowers are just whatever you can make happen with actors standing around and glowy shit painted in with after effects.  It makes them feel like an abstract idea in a bad way.  In action adventure done well, the power or skill a character possesses feels like their desire made manifest.  I will defeat the bad guy.  I want it bad enough that I can fly.  The character motivations just don’t move anything and the visuals are so lackluster that’s all you have.  Actors are fine, doing the best they can.  The writing is mediocre.  The sense of anything “super” happening is fucking abysmal.

I might be just about done with CW superhero shows.  The flagship primo properties all ended their run or are showing their budget in the worst ways.  The writing of the newest season of The Flash is full of budget-shaped plot holes.  Even in the best of seasons that show spends too much time on maudlin tragedy.  The last couple seasons the main actress Candice Patton has been sequestered from the crew by writing excuses so much it feels like she must have beef with them or something.  It just has me tired as hell.

It’s just as well.  I got things to do.

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What the Cock is this Real ID Shit

Apparently 17 years ago the US gubmint passed a law that’s starting to take effect now-ish, requiring a extra-special super ID.  When I first heard people talking about this, I assumed it was a voter disenfranchisement scheme implemented by various states, but I recently found out it’s federal.  There’s a copy of the law here and I can’t understand every part of it, but I hear it’s going to be required for interstate air travel.  I don’t cotton to it, no sir.

Can anybody in the know explain anything I should know about this bullshit?

ETA:  One interesting requirement I noticed is that you’re not allowed to have a legal driver’s license in more than one state at a time.  You literally have to get one state DL cancelled to get another.  Ridiculous.

 

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RP by Comment

EDIT: RP BY COMMENT IS CLOSED FOR LACK OF PARTICIPATION.  You snooze you lose.

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I’m bored.

First three people to post a comment are the adventuring party.  I do all rules.  World is like in the “soulsborne” games, you can have some cheap combat powers but nothing amazing.  Should have some kind of weird signature weapon, like giant scissors or a sharp hat.  When you get bored of the game (or just want to make room for a player to replace you) let me know and your character will get an exotic death or reward commensurate with how long you lasted in the game.

Out of character or metagame comments in parentheses.  No more than one comment per person between comments by me, altho I’ll let you have a parenthetical out of character one if you really feel it necessary.  I might be willing to edit a mistake in a comment for you if you like.  I’m favoring past tense but I’ll probably slip up and I know most people prefer to RP in present tense, so whatever on that.

 

IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT

The spring felt like summer already, but what were seasons anymore?  The moon was somehow always visible despite the cosmically gigantic black clouds boiling around it, the air alternating bitter little lashes of rain and muggy swells of humid vapors.  Thunder rolled and lighting cracked like snake tongues or vague sheets of ghost-like energy.  As you awakened to the world, you hated it.

Something drew you from the place where you were.  Something shivered your timbers like the veriest of pirates.  You awakened in some kind of mild bondage from which you can escape – wound over with vines or wires, half buried in dry mud, etc.  You were wearing interesting and minutely detailed garments.  You had a name and looked cool.

(Describe all these things, and your escape, and how you feel about the drawing and the shivering upon your soule.  Go.)

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