I can be pretty confrontational

but I don't like conflict all that much. This is a bad combination of traits, and can lead to me completely avoiding my $SITE inbox for weeks on end until I'm pretty sure everybody's forgotten what I said.

ANYway, recently I got into a petty argument with another atheist over something stupid they said (seriously) and in order to vent I went to Ana, because she was the only other human in the house. "Ugh, why are other atheists such freaking dipshits? Here's the sad truth, Ana dear, I'd like to believe that atheists are all more rational and more compassionate than theists, or at least the theists I don't like, but on the whole it just doesn't appear to be true."

So she starts talking about her intra-religious discussions with her classmate and manages to drop in that, apparently, her classmate thinks that an anti-Semite is somebody who hates religion.

Me: Wait, wait, what? No, Ana. An anti-Semite is somebody who hates or is prejudiced specifically against Jews, and not necessarily because of religion.
Ana: What!?
Me: Yeah.
Ana: I don't hate Jews!
Me: Glad to hear it.
Ana: I just don't like religion!
Me: Well, then you might call yourself an anti-theist. Or just say you're an atheist and let people work it out later.
Ana: He's been calling me anti-Semitic this whole time! Oh, man, I'm gonna punch him.
Me: Wait, is he Jewish?
Ana: NO!
Me: Well, okay then!

************

Why He Kayaked Across the Atlantic at 70 (for the Third Time)

The Snowball Fight that Mother Nature Won

I helped discover a legendary Seattle speakeasy, sealed up since Prohibition, and recently uncovered during a renovation. These are the incredible murals found inside!

John W. Jones: The Runaway Slave Who Buried Nearly 3000 Confederate Soldiers

Why the Choctaw People Sent Their Meager Funds to Ireland

Trump’s Pick for CDC Director Is Experienced But Controversial

Why Evangelicals—Still!—Support Trump

Useful link: This discussion is over because you're arguing in bad faith.

America’s Unending Tragedy

The Parkland kids keep checking their privilege

Gun deaths could become easier to study thanks to the new spending bill

Facebook faces a reputational meltdown

Cloak and Data: The Real Story Behind Cambridge Analytica’s Rise and Fall

Collateral damage: How Trump threw Canada's refugee system into turmoil

Legal-Aid Services Are Being Starved

The death of the center

Thousands of Croatian far-right supporters march in Zagreb

Police, politicians accused of joining Sri Lanka's anti-Muslim riots

Life is hard in Sisi's Egypt, but voters have little choice

The Kurds Keep Remaking the Middle East

Turkish army and allies in 'total control' of Syria's Afrin

Turkey's 'holy war' in Syria puts a more religious nationalism on display

Senators block Yemen war powers resolution

Why British Conservatives Are Salivating Over the Oxfam Scandal

Survivors of Sexual Abuse at the U.N. Say Their Stories Have Been Ignored For Far Too Long

Tomorrow's Good Friday

So I guess it's more or less been a year since we've had Finn for good!

He runs now! Like, all four feet off the floor! And he plays sometimes! And he doesn't growl (except very rarely) if you touch his back end! Obvious improvements in his behavior and demeanor are farther apart now, and more subtle, but that just shows the huge progress he's made since he came to us. Truly, I will never forgive those people.

Now, when Moonpie plays with a toy, her goal is to utterly destroy it. She chomps it and shakes it and chomps it and attacks it with her front paws and then she chomps some more. Finn chases it, chomps it a bit, and drops it again. Then he comes back for his snuggles. At first, Jenn and I thought maybe he just wasn't as interested as Moonpie is, that he was more interested in pleasing us than in play for its own sake. Then I realized we're very silly. Finn is a poodle. Poodles are water dogs. Water dogs are retrievers, specifically, they retrieve fowl from the water. He's not bored - he's playing fetch!

*********

The Controversial Process of Redesigning the Wheelchair Symbol

Scientists Still Don't Know Exactly Why Knuckles Crack

How Baseball Has Strengthened the Relationship Between the United States and Japan

Things That Are Bigger On The Inside

This Comic From 1919 Imagines What It’s Like to Have a Phone in Your Pocket

Ice age throwback: 13,000-year-old footprints found off Canadian coast

Discovery of MRSA-busting antibiotic gives hope against resistant superbugs

Misestimating travel times may stop people from walking or biking to work (Anecdotally, it's not just travel times but distances. A trip of a mile suddenly becomes three or four miles when you suggest walking it to a person who is used to driving.)

It's official: The U.S. government will no longer fund painting oil portraits (If the US government wants to cut back on expenses, I can think of a few better targets....)

Can a club for women legally exclude men? NYC launches probe

U.S. judge dismisses Exxon lawsuit to stop climate change probes

How Chinese Immigrants Built—and Lost—a Shellfish Industry

How Famine Under the Nazis Revealed the Cause of Celiac Disease

U.S. ends presumed freedom for pregnant immigrants

The U.S. Government Is Finally Scrambling to Regulate Facebook

The U.S. and Russia Are Caught in a Downward Spiral

NRA Is Pulling In Big Bucks After The Parkland Mass Shooting (You know, if there's a conspiracy afoot involving mass shootings, I don't think it's gun control advocates who are behind it....)

Mass violence in the U.S. usually follows warning signs from attackers, report finds

When the Innocent Go to Prison, How Many Guilty Go Free?

Another fannish type signalboost

intoabar is about to host a new ficathon.

To answer everybody's question

NYC has been moving away from zoning and towards school choice, especially for high school, for the past 25+ years. There are good points and bad points in both systems. Trust me, when Eva's high school admissions come around to eat my brain and I spend September - December of this year obsessing over it you will hear all about it. (Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.)

I forgot some of you weren't here when I was obsessing over Ana's high school admissions process! To sum up, during those months significantly more of my brainspace was devoted to high school admissions than to my mother's cancer treatment. I hope Eva's process is a little more streamlined. At the very least, I already have wiped off the schools I don't like from her list.