God my head hurts today

[conuly]

and I just don't know why. Finally remembered to try a painkiller.

**********

How a Frozen Pizza Brand Became Norway’s Unofficial National Dish

The Robin Hood You Love is A Lie

What the Archaeology of Night Reveals

Is 'bisexual lighting' a new cinematic phenomenon?

Mas Subramanian's Quest for a Billion-Dollar Red

The Great Chinese Dinosaur Boom

How Connecticut’s Homegrown Silk Industry Unraveled

How to Talk With Evangelicals About Evolution

Is Rural America Getting Tired of Tough-on-Crime Policies?

Why Public Defenders Matter More Than Ever in a Time of Reform

Indiana abortion law signed by Mike Pence ruled unconstitutional

Pakistan's Ziarat: An ancient juniper forest and its living fossils

Justice Department demands info from all four major US wireless carriers in probe of alleged collusion

Engineers Are Leaving Trump’s America for the Canadian Dream

New Study Says Ancient Humans Hunted Big Mammals To Extinction

OLPC’s $100 laptop was going to change the world — then it all went wrong

‘My Dearest Fidel’: An ABC Journalist’s Secret Liaison With Fidel Castro

Why a Statue of the 'Father of Gynecology' Had to Come Down

Trump complaining that Gorsuch is becoming too liberal: report (The independent judiciary is an important feature of the balance of powers, buddy.)

How Jerry Falwell Jr. transformed Liberty University, one of the religious right's most powerful institutions, into a wildly lucrative online empire.

The Island Where France's Colonial Legacy Lives On

Italy Is the West’s Future

Armenian leaders face crunch talks after protests

‘Men Treat Us Like We Aren’t Human.’ Indian Girls Learn to Fight Back.

At 17, this sexual abuse survivor set out to fix a broken system

Fake media is coming for our memories

Giant plastic 'berg blocks Indonesian river

China’s Global Dreams Give Its Neighbors Nightmares

One death, then another, and another — all in the same house. The first two written off as a tragic coincidence, until the third shattered doubts.

Too Many Atheists Are Veering Dangerously Toward the Alt-Right

Investigating pathways to the alt-right is SPLC's exploration of the question, "what brings someone into the alt-right ecosystem?"

Congress Has Willfully Abdicated Its Responsibility Over War

Comments

[wpadmirer]

I hope your head feels better.

[conuly]

So far so good....

[greghousesgf]

what do antibiotics have to do with evolution?

[conuly]

Bacteria evolve. That's why you have to take the proper dose of antibiotics, so as not to breed resistant ones.

Except this crowd is mostly okay with "microevolution" and not "macroevolution", which is a silly made-up distinction.

[stardreamer]

Re the Harrison deaths, I notice that the article carefully dances around the elephant in the room. The first victim was a black man married to a white woman. The second victim was that white woman. The third victim was another black man who had been married to a white woman, and who was embroiled in a bitter custody dispute with her. What are the odds that racism, either overt, institutionalized, or both, played no part in all this? Damn slim, if you ask me. In particular, the dismissal of the suspicious characteristics of the first death stinks to high heaven of institutionalized racism, and the treatment of the second death looks like pure bigotry against a "race traitor". Not that anyone would actually say that...

[conuly]

There is that as well.

[jesse_the_k]

I feel properly fannish, now.

I clicked through to the BBC re: "bisexual lighting," thinking, "Well, I hope they mention the massive Tumblr speculation re: John Watson's stag-do in the ultra-violet bar" and the Beeb cites it as an origin point.

Cultural literacy, I have some.

[siderea]

Okay, so, I originally read the tag as "bisexual lightning", and I was all, "Bwuh?"

I clicked through and now I am less mystified, but much more bemused.

Still want to know what bisexual lightning might be. Like, when the invisibility field gets so strong, it spontaneously discharges through the air?

[conuly]

Still want to know what bisexual lightning might be.

It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden, it vanishes before you can say it brightens.

Well, that's not a very inspiring thought. Let's try again.

It's an unsheathed sword which consumes the scabbard which would contain it? That sounds dirty, somehow.

WAIT HOLD UP.

I was googling to find lightning quotes to repharse and Wikipedia says that lightning sometimes occurs during volcanic eruptions!? WTF?

[siderea]

[conuly]

0.0

[jesse_the_k]

That's truly epic!

[jesse_the_k]

According to fannish theory, it's when the colors associated with the bi-pride flag--pink, purple, blue--are the principal lighting colors in a scene.

This is the scene I'm referring to in my comment:

[conuly]

:D

[archersangel]

New Study Says Ancient Humans Hunted Big Mammals To Extinction

i thought that was established years ago.

[conuly]

SO DID I BUT APPARENTLY NOT.

[siderea]

Too Many Atheists Are Veering Dangerously Toward the Alt-Right

I don't disagree with the authors fundamental point, but I am wondering if, given his examples, this headline is disingenuous.

He discusses, e.g., Richard Spenser and how he rejects all religion because it insists on universal brotherhood of man and he believes enmity is a necessary pre-condition of civilization. That's not an atheist verring towards the alt-right. That's an alt-rightist shedding religion – and adopting atheism – because it cramps his genocidal style.

So is the problem atheists heading altrightward? Or it is the alt-right heading towards atheism?

Not that I expect anyone here to know the answer, but not a rhetorical question. I think this is an interesting and possibly very important distinction.

Atheism has always attracted contentious malcontents who wanted to shock by rebelling. (And what a pain in the ass these guys are to the rest of us atheists.) The problem, from their point of view, is that atheism does deliver a whallop of a shock, in the right cultural contexts, but then... what? Atheism isn't a thing you do. It doesn't have a snazzy uniform or any cultural practices at all. Atheism is a philosophical position, and basically nothing else.

And this has been, in general, a problem for atheists, to which some have responded by trying to found atheist church-equivalents, holding conferences, having membership organizations, engaging in organized charity, etc.

Satanism, btw, has the same problem.

But the alt-right, man! The alt-right does for contentious malcontents who want to stick it to mom and dad what atheism never did for them. It has all the shock value, and something to do with your time! Purpose! Camraderie! Feeling like part of a larger whole! Shiny, shiny jack boots!

So I wonder if what's happening is that the alt-right has syphoned off the flow of contentious malcontents who otherwise would otherwise just declared for atheism. Or, maybe a better metaphor is that they're pissing in the stream before it reaches the atheist pool.

[jesse_the_k]

Huh, I know Satanists with regular worship ceremonies. No catechism, yet.

Or, maybe a better metaphor is that they're pissing in the stream before it reaches the atheist pool.

From your lips to the walls of every toilet stall in Washington DC.

[conuly]

There are at least two different groups of Satanists.

[conuly]

(And what a pain in the ass these guys are to the rest of us atheists.)

Some of them outgrow it, at least.