More mail, this time via the USPS, with no return address. I think this guy is strongly anti-Trump, but it took some cipherin’ to puzzle out a few fragments.
You ever get the feeling that it is just total inchoate chaos out there swirling around, swelling and rising to a storm of destruction? Yeah, me too.
Got this via @RobinInce — an interview with Christopher Lee in which he talks about Peter Cushing and their shared fondness for Sylvester and Tweety Pie.
I now consider myself excused if I occasionally descend into being five years old again.
If this works, that is…we’re going to try to have a conversation on YouTube live.
Want to join in? Click here.
Because we’re victims of a lawsuit intended to harass us. As you’ve probably heard earlier this year, Skepticon, Amy Frank-Skiba, Stephanie Zvan, The Orbit, Freethought Blogs, and I are the target of a ridiculous $2 million lawsuit by Richard Carrier, and the legal bills are coming due (actually, I’ve already coughed up a good chunk of change). I don’t believe there’s any way we can lose, short of doing something stupid like not hiring competent legal representation, which costs money.
Skepticon is already asking for donations to help cover the legal costs, the rest of us will be tagging along shortly with a separate fundraiser. We’re all in this together, and the only reason Skepticon is doing their bit separately is because they’re a 501(c)(3) organization, so donations there are tax deductible, while the rest of us are just lowly ordinary citizens. Please do help us out by donating to Skepticon, but you might also save a few pennies to throw at the rest of us.
Oy, I can’t believe we have to do this.
Or at least learn to use it correctly. This article reminded me of one of my least favorite words:
“Controversial”.
It’s rarely used appropriately — it’s more of a weasel word applied to dignify positions that ought to be laughed off the page. For example, here are phrases that the press might qualify with the modifier “controversial”:
Every one of those claims is actually true, and is well-supported by the evidence. The existence of people who disagree with each of them is also a fact, but that fact is not sufficient to render the ideas “controversial”. We share a world with Alex Jones and David Icke, people who state the most absurd, insane, ridiculous propositions as facts, and their intrusion into any and every argument does not suddenly make every established idea that they disagree with “controversial”. I’ve had to deal with people for years who think evolution is a “controversial” theory, and the press just parrots the C-word right back for them.
So, just a suggestion for 2017: before you label something “controversial”, ask yourself whether it is actually something about which there is serious doubt and a substantial body of realistic argument on both sides…or even whether it is at all appropriate to fit it into this cartoonish two-sides model of everything. Because I guarantee you that the evidence-less, weak, minority side is going to love it when you elevate their lunacy to the status of a “controversy”.
I take it all back. 2016 sucks.
You know how when someone you love is in pain, and there’s not one damn thing you can do about it? It’s also personal and private, so I’m not going to discuss it, but at least I can show you how I feel.
We’ll all get better. But everything is going to be a bit raw for a while.
Now that I’ve decided what I’m going to teach — Ecological Developmental Biology — and gotten departmental and university approval to do it, I have to start doing the hard part, actually putting a course together. I usually start by laying out a set of goals for the course.
Carrie Fisher and I were about the same age, so I have to agree, she was too young and lively to die.
Dang. I should have headed off to Hollywood when I was 19 to become a cinema icon. Missed my chance.
Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher’s mother, has died now, too. Outliving your children is a hard burden to bear.
I usually have no qualms at all about saying “Merry Christmas”, but that’s all over now, thanks to a certain orange person who wants to compel us to say it. So fuck Merry Christmas.
I’m celebrating Sithmas this year, instead.
Oglaf (NSFW)
And every year hereafter. The man, and every other “War on Christmas” jerk, has tainted an inoffensive greeting forever.
Tell them you want to show them the true meaning of Christmas. Then play this video.
Let them know this is what you’re president-elect has in mind for us all.
You might also let them know that duck-and-cover crap is total bullshit.
