Taking the Ableism Challenge

The excellent Ania Bula offered this challenge “for all of (her) blogger friends” – which I take to mean she isn’t expecting randos to participate.  So calm thyselves if riled, randos.  This isn’t for you.  The challenge in short: Do not use any ableist language in your writing for one month. This is not a challenge I am personally accepting because I’m trying to do it forever rather than a short time, and because she doesn’t know me. I’m a rando.

I mention and link it because it lays out the good case against ableism in writing – which in the atheist and skeptic communities is mostly synonyms for “unintelligent” and “mentally ill” being used as insults. A response article by the righteous and mighty Luxander Pickel is also well worth a read. Below are some choice chunks from both articles: [Read more…]

Levitate Me

What Else Is There? – Röyksopp ft. Karin Dreijer

This is a repost from my writing elsewhere.

Trigger warnings? Things that could bother people: the dark mood, time lapse photography of mold (eww), depiction of dead ducks that may or may not have been real, images of buildings falling apart in stormy weather.

This spooky jam is sung by Karin, who is not the lip-syncing floaty model in the video, but rather the tight-lipped weirdo in the ruff collar.  You probably know her from The Knife and Fever Ray.  Music is by Röyksopp.

I’m posting this because levitation.  People sometimes experience a feeling of floating in altered mental states.  Whether you’ve experienced that or not, there’s something about the feeling of it that resonates with a primal part of the mind.  It shows up in a lot of art – song, visual depictions, writing.  I found the use of it in The Lost Boys especially evocative.

I feel like the way an animal learns to move is by willing itself in the desired direction and flailing its body that way until muscle learning catches up to  desire.  In order to want to move the body at all, there has to be an inherent feeling in the mind that movement is possible, which exists before any knowledge of how to make movement happen.  (As always, I could be very wrong.)

Essentially, we’re all natural born levitators.  The only thing keeping us from being able to float towards our desires is physical constraints.  That’s no small limitation – psychic levitation isn’t real or possible, as far as anyone knows.  But the feeling is there.  And maybe the limits of our bodies are the reason evoking that feeling can be so eerie, melancholy, or abstractly powerful.

And on an entirely different note,

Float On – The Floaters

This song is the equivalent of a video personal ad for the singers.
I challenge you to invent your own additional verse for the tune.

 

Gotdam Windows 10 Rassle Frackle

Our household recently got a new computer with Windows 10. I knew the moment I saw the technomagical commercials about it on TV that I would hate it. Calling programs “apps” now? Having some fake Siri on by default? This is a desktop machine, assholes. We don’t even have a mic plugged into it. But of course, that’s not the worst part.

Restarting the computer to do updates with ZERO WARNING. And the updates taking ten times as long as in Win 7. We started this computer before noon and couldn’t use it for HOURS. Microsoft, I hate you so god damn much. I just hate Macs like 15% more, so keep up the good work. You just might drive me away yet.

If anyone wants to advocate for the libertarian penguin OS or otherwise platform war here, as long as your invective isn’t too ad hominem (against corporations and technology is OK), get into it. Sometimes people can learn something useful from those conversations, and it might be cathartic to gripe about the bastards who make our machines suck.

Also if anyone has a good set of bare minimum mods & setting changes to make Windows 10 cool, holla.

Satan Says: Islamophobia is Real

this is reposted & slightly edited from a previous iteration of this blog
Trigger Warnings – child sexual abuse, racism, islamophobia, anti-semitism, ableism

Deep Rifts 2.0 is about the division between regressive and progressive sides of the atheist and skeptic communities. Before this rift, one notion popular in atheist communities was that we were the free thinkers who arrived at our beliefs by reason and observation, while our opponents – the theists – believed what they were told like mindless obedient dogmabots. It’s a nice idea for atheists – in a society that despises us, we get to feel superior to the mainstream in some respect. Since the rift though, some of us have used this against our atheist opposites. What sense does that make? Where is this dogma codified? Who is walking in lockstep, refusing to question our dear leaders? This casts a lot of doubt on the original premise as used against theists, which is a loss for all of us. (Edit: I now know it’s ableist to think oneself superior on the metric of intelligence, so at this point I’m not feeling that loss so much.)

I’m not going to mirror my atheist opposites’ mistakes and claim they are a monolith, even though their beliefs line up better with the unjust status quo of the USA. I’m just going to keep poking holes in this ridiculous meme. The progressive side of the divide is not a monolith. We have our disagreements, and these are not small ones. Some of us continue to work with or promote people like Richard Dawkins (less so now than when this originally posted), some have joined in the masses ridiculing his ignorance and his strange grudge against Rebecca Watson. Some of us want to find common cause with theists to promote the secularism that can protect us all, some want to keep eviscerating the foundations of faith at the expense of potential allies. Some of us don’t have a decided stance on one more of these essential issues, and some people who generally come down on the progressive side are professional fence riders. All of this can be found within one blog network – Freethoughtblogs – if you look long enough. On the common cause vs. evisceration issue, you can find discord even within the A+ forums (now dead), and I am personally riding that fence at the moment.

One of these important areas of dispute – and the topic of this post – is the legitimacy of the term “islamophobia.” [Read more…]

Comment Policy

art by me

Cartoon image of a nerdy non-muscular version of Blake’s Red Dragon, holding a giant gavel.

If I catch a whiff that you are affiliated with the internet’s sundry hate mobs – goobergate, tha swinepit, men’s gripes activists, whatever – I’m blocking you. You have plenty of places to talk shit about us, you don’t get to do it here. Actually, if you’re conservative at all, I just really don’t need to hear your opinion about fucking anything. The difference between social conservatives and fiscal conservatives is whether they want to kill the gays or kill the poor, so even if we’re in agreement about the subject at hand? Not interested. I’d rather have no comments at all than a conservative anywhere near me.

Seriously, I’m annoyed enough that the average jackass I’m sitting next to on the bus is one change of conversation away from saying something racist, misogynistic, or transphobic, I don’t need it here. I’m treating this blog like I treat my house. If you aren’t family or progressive, you’re not welcome. Other people on FtB and even The Orbit might be more accommodating, in the spirit of debate or whatever.

I am open to criticism. I realize I am not the best or most thoughtful writer around here. But that criticism has to be from a progressive position or it isn’t worth my time, because regressives are wrong about fucking EVERYTHING, except whatever crumbs they snatch from the nice people table. There are other places for you to go. Find them. And talk shit about me from sunrise to sunset there if you want to. Follow your joy.

I don’t have a specific policy about ableism yet. I know even for proper lefties that is a hard thing to shake out of your language, so I’ll tolerate a slip up or two. If you’re using “stupid,” “insane,” or any synonyms thereof, please don’t. I might have to block you. At this point I’m allowing intent to count for something despite its lack of magic, but I might have to get more strict. We’ll see.

Lastly, as much as this may seem at odds with the fire I just spit, I’d like things to be less punchy here in the comments than on Pharyngula. If you’ve got something negative to say about someone who is present / commenting, try to make it about their ideas rather than the individual. Example: “I disagree with what you said” rather than “You are crap / fake / whatever.” If it’s about someone who is not present, less of a problem.

I just don’t want people having a personal row here. For my part, I’m trying to be less ragey here than I have been. Blocking fuckos is a first step towards that serenity.

EDIT TO ADD:
I’m turning off nested comments. I just realized how much of a mess they can become. If you want to respond to a specific comment, at the top mention the user name and post number. Do include both because if someone’s comments need to be deleted, what you mean may become misinterpreted.

EDIT AGAIN:
I did receive one comment on this article that seemed likely to be trollfoolery, but wasn’t completely clear. It’ll hang in moderation unless the person in question decides to follow up in some way. –They did and it’s approved. Leaving this note here to explain how I’ll handle similar situations if I see them.

Morality in Fiction

What’s the moral of the story? It’s a question you probably left behind in high school, sometimes because the morals are obvious (“well I’m all broken up about that man’s rights“), more often because that’s not why you came to the story in question (“there is no spoon“). I didn’t pay it much mind for years, but recently it’s been getting my attention. I’ll just lay out the thoughts in their own paragraphs, whether they reach a conclusion or not…
[Read more…]

No Problem Tuesdays, 15th March 2016

Image of a cartoon devil winking out a star and making the OK sign, with text "no problem tuesdays."
          This image is an homage to chickensnack comix‘s famous dog, redrawn by me to fit the theme.

In honor of an esteemed tumblr meme, I would like to keep Tuesdays positive. I can’t think of anything to write this week, so I’ll just post a cute and funny thing I saw on that site recently. Still getting used to the interface here, so hopefully much more to look at or read next Tuesday.

tweet by trashwtch of two pretty dogs with a funny caption
Tweet from “trashwtch” (twitter deleted) of two long-haired slender white dogs lounging together on grass, text: “what kind of dogs are these, they make me nervous like if I talk to them they’ll speak back but only in riddles”

 

‘Net H8rs R a Bunch of Arch Hall Jr. Characters

This is a reblog from previous versions of G-A-S

Arch Hall Jr. as The Sadist

There’s this old Arch Hall Jr. movie called “The Sadist,” which doesn’t feature a sympathetic portrayal of one who engages in a risky kink ethically. Rather, it’s about a criminal in floods who enjoys psychologically tormenting his victims.

Arch Hall Jr. as The Sadist

The character has a catch phrase which I think befits the underlying psychology of the internet’s sundry hate mobs perfectly: “You think you’re better than me?” Then he’ll stalk menacingly at you, looking like he’s carrying a massive deuce in his drawers. No offense to AHj, this character was supposed to be creepy and job well done.

There’s clearly a sense of aggrievement on their part. They feel upset at being scorned. Our side is motivated by compassion for the victims of abuse and the desire to make the world a better place. The less self-aware on their side might feel like they’re into these goals as well, but find that overwhelmed by the outrage that someone might be looking down on them. You especially see this in the response to things like Schrodinger’s Rapist. No matter how kindly or carefully parsed, any idea that could be perceived – correctly or not – as a criticism of them (or the kind of person they imagine themselves to be) raises this knee-jerk response. You think you’re better than meee?

So then they start doing the poopy pants walk while waving guns around (metaphorically and literally) and make things so much worse. To borrow a much more sensible catch phrase, guys, don’t do that. Seriously, even if you fundamentally disagree with social justice advocates on every issue, just agree to disagree and strut. If you honestly believe your position to be the right one, you have a million motherfuckers to agree with you and coddle your shared privilege. You wouldn’t feel the need to freak out about the fact someone else has a different belief unless – on some level – you think they might be right, and that their rightness would make you feel bad.

You don’t have to feel bad about yourself to accept the truths SJWs be spittin’ – at least, not much. Because no one has to be perfect, we can all learn from our mistakes, all try to be better people. And honestly trying is good enough. Doing something racist/sexist/transphobic/etc doesn’t make you a bigot, outside of that moment. Being unrepentant, being so chickenshit of the possibility of your own imperfection that you double down and make it worse – even make it a part of your raison d’être – this is deciding to wallow in bigotry.

Come off yourself, calm down, drop the fucking keyboard, take a day off. Even if your beliefs don’t change, at least recusing yourself from participating in a hate movement is a step in the right direction. Be cool. Get steppin’.

Great Galloping Satans!

Hello FtB, I’m Great American Satan.  Two or three of you might recognize me from my time at atheismplus dotcom (dead).  I also have a tumblr, which is mostly reblogs of short insightful posts from random people and longer articles / excerpts from various people more thoughtful than myself.  Occasionally I make art.

My handle represents a bit of punchy immaturity on my part.  As I’ve said elsewhere, if you ain’t living your life in a way that would piss off an ayatollah, you ain’t living right. That said, I stand against islam only as much as I personally reject all abrahamic faiths.  Islamophobia is for cowards.  I also refuse to capitalize religions, as you may have noticed.

What you will ultimately see here:  At least one post a week of some kind.  Most will be writing, some will be art, and some will be shameless self-promotion of merchandise I’m currently developing with social justice themes.  If I ever start to make more money than poverty level + medical needs of family, I will start donating a good part of proceeds to charities that benefit various oppressed groups.  It’s hard to know what the future will bring, but this doesn’t seem too likely as of yet.

My greatest struggle in advocating the movement is anger.  It hurts my ability to write persuasively, sometimes just hurts my mind.  Once you’re clued in to the kinds of oppression that affect those you care about, the world is full of landmines.  Because I can’t always write anything of use to the cause, I will use my art skills and provide other services.

See you around!

 

Note on moderation:  At A+, I used to change the words of slymers and regressives into funny harmless things.  That was too much work – more than they deserve.  So here, I’m just going to set any offensive or sealioning crap to go straight to a garbage bin that I’m not even going to look at.  You’re welcome.  <3

EDIT – They’re heeee-eeere.  I just added my first crap human to my spam filter.  Congrats, you know who you are.