A PEN event in Brooklyn September 16 –

Roulette, 509 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11217

Free and open to the public.

As the fight for freedom of speech in Bangladesh continues, artists of Bangladeshi origin take the stage to commemorate the voices of four recently slain bloggers, and protest the threat looming over more than 70 other Bangladeshi intellectuals, many of whom are in hiding. Join them at Roulette for an evening of solidarity, live music, and readings to condemn the assassinations of Avijit Roy, Oyasiqur Babu, Ananta Bijoy Das, and Niloy Neel, and to celebrate writing. Featuring Farah Mehreen Ahmad, Abeer Y. Hoque, Majib Hoque, Tanwi Nandini Islam, Javed Jahangir, and Anik Khan. The evening will also

The pope cleans up.

VATICAN CITY—Hurrying outside after hearing a disturbingly loud thud against the side of the church, Pope Francis was reportedly left to clean up the remains of a dead angel Monday that flew straight into one of the Sistine Chapel’s windows. “It’s really sad; it seems like one of these guys crashes into a window at least once a week,” said the pontiff, who appeared visibly distressed while sweeping up the feathers scattered around the angel’s lifeless body.

They should put pieces of tape on the windows, or tint them, or do something so that the poor angels don’t think they’re apertures in the walls.

At press time, the Bishop of Rome was attempting to scrape

Oh dear, Josh Duggar is being unsubmissive and disobedient. That’s not very quiverfull of him.

Former “19 Kids and Counting” star Josh Duggar went into a Christian rehab after he was exposed for cheating on wife Anna in the Ashley Madison hack, but now his whereabouts might be unknown, Radar Online reported Tuesday. Duggar reportedly entered the Reformers Unanimous treatment center, in Rockford, Illinois, which his parents publicly have supported, to treat his admitted porn addiction, but the eldest Duggar sibling has not shown up to church services and meetings mandated by the program.

Well, his messing around on the side without his wife’s knowledge or submission (we have to assume there’s no such thing as “consent” from a … Read the rest

My friend Author has been paying attention.

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Godalmighty, these people.

Christopher J Benton ‏@ChrisJBenton 1 hour ago
@MAMelby @ImprobableJoe Your call of course, but it’s probably best to leave Milophelia alone. There’s nothing left you can usefully say.

@MAMelby @ImprobableJoe To be fair, Milo’s articles are largely text he wrote himself. OK, OK, I’ll be nice now.

M. A. Melby ‏@MAMelby 24 minutes ago
@ChrisJBenton @ImprobableJoe Zing!

But they’re nothing like the slime pit. Good heavens no. Comparing me to Milo Yiannopoulos is nothing like the slime pit at all whatsoever, plus it’s totally rational and evidence-based and humanistic.

Chris Benton used to put a lot of energy into tracking down some of the Twitter harassers; now he acts like one. Sucks to be him.… Read the rest

David Auerbach on the uses of Wittgenstein.

Wittgenstein’s first period, culminating in 1921’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus(which Pears had co-translated), drew heavily on Bertrand Russell’s work in philosophical logic and made a huge impact on the logical positivist movement of the time, which would later in turn influence computer science, artificial intelligence, and linguistics. The Tractatus makes an ambitious and ostensibly definitive attempt to chart out the relationship between language and the world.

Then he went away and did other things for ten years (like teaching school and beating up his students, for instance), and then he said no that was all wrong, and started over.

Language did not have such a fixed, eternal relation to reality bound by logic.

This is just cruelty: students walk out of class to protest a trans student’s use of the girls’ restroom.

More than 100 students at Hillsboro High School, about an hour south of St Louis, walked out of class on Monday in protest.

“I’m hoping this dies down,” said Lila Perry, the 17-year-old who began identifying as a girl publicly in February. “I don’t want my entire senior year to be like this.”

Ms. Perry, who began feeling “more like a girl than a boy” when she was 13, said school officials gave her permission to use the girls’ facilities as the new school year began.

It’s not just kids feeling squicked out – there’s something more sinister behind it. … Read the rest

From a 2013 piece by Delilah Campbell at Trouble and Strife about the [cough] tensions between feminism and trans activism:

It is notable that the policing of what can or cannot be said about trans in public is almost invariably directed against women who speak from a feminist, and especially a radical feminist, perspective. It might be thought that trans people have far more powerful adversaries (like religious conservatives, the right-wing press and some members of the medical establishment), and also far more dangerous ones (whatever radical feminists may say about trans people, they aren’t usually a threat to their physical safety). And yet a significant proportion of all the political energy expended by or on behalf of trans activism