[CONTENT NOTE: violent bigotry. lots of it.]
I am ashamed to report to readers that The Washington Post lured me into a time-wasting, life-sucking vortex with a clickbait headline:
I invited Ann Coulter to speak at UC Berkeley. Here’s why.
My group doesn’t agree with her, but we believe in free speech.
Ugh why. Because I AM WEAK, people, that’s why. Coulter’s appearance at Berkeley is not even happening, and yet still I could not just let this shit stand. [Read more…]
Spring in the city = riotous color. Even those of us with the most monochromatic black winter wardrobes – for all intents and purposes a required uniform for living here – yield, however slightly, to bursts of brightness.
And why not? The streets and parks are enchantingly abloom. Apparently miniature daffodils, which I had never seen (or noticed?) before, were all the rage in the Village this April. They are fucking adorable and make me smile. (Okay, or at least make me want to.) Alas, their little yellow petals have just started to crinkle and droop, and now I haz a sad. :(
But all is not lost! Because the tulips have begun crashing their party and stealing their show. Shopkeepers are suddenly engaging in some kind of botany arms race, taking full advantage of urns and planters outside their businesses. Come see for yourself. [Read more…]
Wasn’t I juuuuuuuust joking about The New York Times being all confused and thinking it is owned by Rupert Murdoch? HAHA I AM SO FUNNY AMIRITE.
Well. Joke’s on me. [Read more…]
[CONTENT NOTE: abortion rights.]
If I had known it was a link to the Times, I never would have clicked on it. But in my defense, I was reading a decent if lightweight article about Rep. Maxine Waters [h/t Alyssa] elsewhere, when I happened upon this passage:
Waters’ forthright condemnation of right-wing media came as a relief—and a rallying point—for Democrats sick of mainstream articles urging them to abandon abortion advocacy, or talk less about trans rights, or stop speaking out against sexism and racism. Critics have argued that these moves are necessary to broaden the party’s appeal and win back white working-class voters who swung from Barack Obama to Trump, and are credited with winning the election.
What fuckery is this? I wondered. How and why would “mainstream articles” possibly justify such demonstrably counterproductive nonsense?
So I clicked on “abortion advocacy.” And down the NYT rabbit hole I went.
Fuck.
On our Freethought Resistance page, I posted a new petition (via CREDO Action*) to Democratic Senate Campaign Committee Chair Chris Van Hollen demanding he refuse to allocate campaign funds to any Democratic senator who votes or strikes a deal to advance the confirmation of right-wing extremist Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.
Directing your activism time, energy and resources toward Democrats, particularly with regard to primary campaigns, is vitally necessary. A primary challenger does not need to win in order to pressure the prevailing candidate to move left on issues that matter. There are far too many corporatist, corrupt conservatives in the party, particularly in leadership positions. If we want to put the pressure on where it counts, we need to take every opportunity to go after wayward conservative Democrats in every way possible. (Yeah I’m looking at you, Chuck Schumer.)
Read the background on the petition and then please sign if you are so inclined.
Because fuck these d00ds, that’s why.
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*CREDO is a lefty activist mobile company: every month it allocates a portion of its revenue to various activist non-profits, as voted and allocated by its customers. (CREDO is, for example, Planned Parenthood’s largest corporate donor.) Consider switching to CREDO as your mobile carrier, and stop funding anti-democratic corporations that fund conservatives like AT&T. They offer pretty much all the same deals on phones, contract buyouts, incentives, fees, etc.
From our friends at Refuse Fascism and Stop Mass Incarceration Network [NOTE: I live in the 6th Precinct].
Iris —
#RiseUp!
eNewsletter of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network NYC * March 25, 2017
______________________________
Drop the Charges Against the Stonewall 4!
WE DEMAND – DROP THE CHARGES ON THE STONEWALL 4
Postmodern Jukebox covers Aerosmith’s Dream On with Morgan James.
[h/t Jennifer]
[CONTENT NOTE: intimate partner violence and murder, suicide, abuse, harassment, rape.]
As readers surely recall, I am exceedingly proud of my half-assed, poorly-executed, highly irregular attempts to extract $82 billion worth of amusement every year from the Religion-Industrial-Complex on behalf of atheist U.S. taxpayers, on account of our government’s unconscionable $82 billion in annual taxpayer subsidies to the R-I-C. I humbly perform this service by mocking a particular church sign in the small town in Northern Maryland where my mother lives. Which, admittedly, I was already going to do anyway for my own amusement. It seems I can’t help myself.
Unfortunately this week’s sign offers scant opportunity for amusement: it simply informs us (yet again) that this Jeezus character is a creepy motherfucker who no decent person should ever wish to emulate. So instead of a good old-fashioned mocking, consider this installment an important public service announcement. [Read more…]
PZ has confronted me with utterly damning evidence that I have been an anti-squirrel crusader since at least 1918.
It’s all true! I am an ancient and ageless creature, whose ritual drinking of squirrel blood has kept me virtually immortal for so many millennia I have lost count. And yes, I’ve created and maintained relentless anti-squirrel propaganda campaigns throughout history whenever and wherever I can—including right here at Freethought Blogs—lest the nasty little beasties end up on some “protected species” list or something and I lose access to the elixir I desperately require. (Obviously, I cannot rely on the black market or worse, the dark web.)
But as readers have seen here for themselves, no matter how much terrorism, violence and wanton destruction the Sciuridae routinely leave in their wake, it is practically impossible to get humans to buy into the fact that they are not just adorable and harmless little rodents.
Which is why, as a stopgap measure, I’ve got a side project going: I refer, of course, to the tardigrades. [Read more…]
[CONTENT NOTE: homelessness, including image of a homeless person.]
It’s a dreary, snowy day in NYC. Not the fun kind of snow that hushes the city in a thick blanket of otherworldly white (and, ideally, melts overnight without a trace). This is a dismal snow, dark flurries of tiny wet flakes that liquefy upon reaching the ground.
But! Yesterday was glorious. It’s days like these that seem to electrify the city (or maybe the city-dwellers?), demanding to be witnessed in all of their vivid splendor and grotesquery. I had appointments and errands on my morning schedule, followed by a late lunch with a dear friend visiting from out of town. This is what I saw. [Read more…]