Ian Murphy of the Buffalo Beast – I totally know the Buffalo Beast, they interviewed me once, like a million years ago – Ian Murphy of the Buffalo Beast, I say, had a little chat with Michael Shermer.

A friend warns, don’t read it aloud to someone who’s driving a car. That clearly implies also don’t read it while drinking, eating, lighting a match, balancing on a high wire, cutting your toenails, sitting with a cat on your lap, holding a baby, soldering a pipe, crossing a street, swimming.

It starts this way:

DR. MICHAEL SHERMER is known as an editor, a skeptic, a TED talker, a thinker. Others see him as “that intellectual lightweight who loves Ayn Rand

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Yesterday I told you about that stupid Facebook page Skeptics and Atheists against Rebecca Watson. Today Rebecca presents some new information about one of the people behind that page. First, there was a message…

A few days ago, I received this email via the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe contact form:

From: Cecil Fuson

Email: Viciousvestments@gmail.com

Location: Raleigh, NC

Category: Question for the Show

Subject: quote request

Message: Good day, my name is Cecil Fuson. Together with Brandi Olson and a member of the Atheist news group (A news) we run a small Facebook group that is called Skeptics and Atheists against Rebecca Watson. We currently have 87 members and are growing everyday. It should be noted that a

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John Scalzi quoted an informant who emailed him about ElevatorGATE and harassment via Twitter and Storify yesterday. (The quoting was with permission.)

A Twitter and Storify user who goes by the handle “@elevatorGATE” is a well-known cyberstalker of women via social media. His latest method of doing this is to compile thousands of pieces on Storify, often including every single tweet sent by his chosen targets, and then publish them, which notifies the women in question that he had published yet another piece archiving their every word. After repeated complaints and requests for help, Storify temporarily deactivated the notification feature on his account, which doesn’t actually solve the problem.

In a conversation yesterday with Xavier Damman, the Storify CEO

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Oh and did you know Alex Gabriel has joined Freethought Blogs? He has.

This is very good news.

Of course, it’s sad for him that FTB is in imminent danger of collapse – well people do keep telling us that, so it must be true – but he’s young, I’m sure he’ll bounce right back when it happens.… Read the rest

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A beautiful Jesus and Mo yesterday.

I love the “women still dodgy” bit, also the fact that it’s in the Guardian.… Read the rest

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Oh I think I get it – what DJ Grothe meant by saying he thinks “unduly-moralistic scolds end up actively diminishing human flourishing by their sex-negativity.”

He means if we get our way, and sexual harassment at atheist/skeptic conferences becomes unfashionable (aka “politically incorrect”), then there will be less sex at those conferences. There will be less total sex. Our goal, if achieved, would lead to less sex. That equals sex negativity.

Yes, if you define it that way, he’s right. The kind of sex where a dudebro plies a woman with alcohol until she becomes too out of it to consider whether or not she wants to have sex with him and just has it – that kind of … Read the rest

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And for today’s installment of thinly-veiled loathing – Stephanie quotes DJ Grothe on Facebook.

It’s rank.

There is an impressive distemper these days on the internets.

Many smart, good people that I know personally seem to fear this “call-out culture” online that is going on right now in many communities online. Folks are immobilized by a moral scare or panic that they think they are watching unfold presently. As for me, I think it all seems increasingly like some surreal science fiction imagining of some bizarre future dystopia. And so, I say:

Consensual sex — between any mature adult male or female etc. — is a human good. It is something that should be prized and promoted (would there

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Transcription courtesy of John Morales.

I want to take this time today to answer this question I get a lot: why don’t I believe in the gospels.

Um — the first big problem I have with the gospels is that they are anonymous — a lot of people don’t know that, but it’s true.

Um, and no good skeptic, atheist, freethinker should ever accept any anonymous report just offhand; aah especially when we’re talking about something truly awful — I mean, the gospel writers have Jesus doing some pretty ugly stuff.  Umm, killing a tree for no reason, which makes him look completely insane; they have him claiming to be God, which would have been a major … Read the rest

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A three-year-old observation by John Scalzi, just because I saw it and like it. The failure mode of clever is asshole.

So, apropos of nothing in particular, let’s say you wish to communicate privately with someone you’ve not communicated with privately before, for whatever reason you might have. And, wanting to stand out from the crowd, you decide to try to be clever about it, because, hey, you are a clever person, and as far as you know, people seem to like that about you. So you write your clever bit and send it off, safe in the knowledge of your cleverosity, and confident that your various cleverations will make the impression you want to make on the intended cleveree.

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Behold: an asshole.

Start at 5:15.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMZ86PGVOQk

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American Atheists has sent out a press release.

Cartersville, Georgia—Beginning Wednesday, visitors to Georgia State Parks vacationing in government-owned rental cabins can read atheist books during their stay courtesy of American Atheists. The national non-profit announced that its former President, Ed Buckner, will distribute hundreds of donated copies of atheist literature to the Red Top State Park for placement in cabin bedside drawers, alongside Bibles already placed there, on Wednesday morning.

Additional atheist books will be distributed to A.H. Stephens Historic Park in Crawfordville, Georgia at 2:00 PM EDT on Wednesday afternoon, with more parks to follow later this week.

In May of this year, Buckner was vacationing in Amicalola Falls State Park with his family, where he had rented … Read the rest

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We need a painting.

Vermeer

The Geographer

… Read the rest

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Because it’s a hot afternoon. Also because they kept making me laugh.

@TheTweetOfGod

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. But then there’s like two million more after that, so what’s the point?

Laurie Penny @PennyRed

That’s a shame-  the main reason I do politics is so that internet creeps will want to fuck me.

Then I read the conversation in that one. That part isn’t amusing. It’s stupid.

Guardian Reader @guardianista

Not trying to sound sexist or anything, but who do you think’s more attractive of tonight’s debaters: @AlexandralSwann or @pennyred?

So that’s enough of that conversation. And good old “Don’t take this the wrong way/Not to be politically incorrect or … Read the rest

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Marie-Thérèse has a haunting post about summer holidays in Rathdrum, County Wicklow, which was the one escape from the misery of Goldenbridge that most of the children had.

As a child at Goldenbridge industrial “school” during the sixties summertime season, I absolutely adored heading off on the ‘Special’ bus to Rathdrum, Co. Wicklow. Bernadette Fahy in her book “Freedom of Angels” referred to St. Joseph’s Holiday Home, that was for Goldenbridge children who had no families to take them out on summer holidays, as a haven. She felt that all the stress built up from being enclosed in Goldenbridge just lifted when she went there. She felt her sanity had been restored. The same was applicable with

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How fucking stupid is this? From the Charleston Gazette:

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The rape of a 16-year-old girl by two football players in eastern Ohio– a case brought to light by social media — is being used by a federal prosecutor to educate athletes in West Virginia about being responsible when texting and making posts on the Internet.

Excuse me? Being responsible when texting and making posts on the Internet? How about being responsible when not raping someone?!

The rape case “definitely played a role in causing us to think, ‘Who do we need to focus upon?” Ihlenfeld told The Associated Press. “We thought, ‘Let’s start calling athletic directors and coaches to see if they’re interested. That investment of

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