Tiny got in the watering hole and can’t get out. The bank is just a little too steep and a little too slippery. The elephants try to help by screaming and bellowing, but it doesn’t quite work. One craps copiously in Tiny’s general direction, but that doesn’t do it either. Pulling doesn’t do it…but maybe pushing? Worth a try.

… Read the rest

Uh.

Randy Milholland ‏@choochoobear 5 hours ago
So MRAs are planning a meet up in a Chicago park & invited a guy who proposed rape be legalized in public places https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20160202/rogers-park/pro-rape-mens-rights-group-plans-saturday-rally-rogers-park …

Once your organization actively bands with a guy who wants rape legalized, the argument of “we don’t hate women” is harder to make.

I’m curious if there will be any MRAs who actually stop, look at this, and say, “No, that’s not someone I want to be associated with.”

And got my first angry MRA.

“He’s not an MRA, do your goddamn research” – I never said he was. I said he was going to be at a gathering of MRAs & he’s pro rape.

So, yes –

A story a couple of years ago reporting on research that suggests elephants comfort each other.

Credit: Elise Gilchrist Copyright: Think Elephants International, Inc. CC BY SA

Asian elephants reassure other distressed elephants by touching them and “talking” to them, which suggests they are capable of empathy and reassurance, according to new research.

 …

The researchers found that when “an elephant would show distress, the other elephants would adopt that same state — and we call that “emotional contagion” — which is something you typically see in an empathic reaction,” Plotnik said.

Then, the elephants would move toward each other, touch each other’s faces and genitals, and put their trunks in each other’s mouths and chirp, he

A friend sent me the link to a post by a Man on a blog called “Fix the Family” – a post about reasons “to NOT send your daughter to college.” “You” here of course assumes you are a Man. Only men get to send anyone anywhere, and only men get to keep people away from anywhere.

(I look at the top and see home, about, videos, blog, man room…)

(There’s no woman room. Don’t be silly.)

The logo is a guy talking.

Probably the most controversial and rejected position we have at Fix the Family is that parents should not send their daughters to college.  It is even more vehemently opposed than the submission of wives to their husbands. 

I knew this yesterday, but didn’t feel like posting about it.

One of my quondam elephant friends, Chai, was found dead Saturday morning. It breaks my damn heart. I was working at the zoo (Woodland Park in Seattle) when she arrived there in 1980. I went to take a look the day she arrived. She was a year old. A couple of years later I became one of her keepers. She was a wonderful elephant.

 … Read the rest

Raw Story has more on Roosh V’s plans to promote rape as a good thing. It turns out it’s supposed to be a global event, like those protests against wars or slavery or similar. Of course this Roosh guy is doing the opposite of protesting bad shit, so that’s a twist on the story.

The spokesperson for a U.S.-based anti-woman group who advocates for “legal” rape has organized worldwide meet-up events in 43 different countries on Saturday.

On a website advertising the “Return of the Kings” event, self-styled “pick up artist” Daryush “Roosh V” Valizadeh has encouraged his misogynist supporters to “come out of the shadows and not have to hide behind a computer screen for fear of retaliation,” The

Nina Liss-Schultz at Mother Jones:

Amid the rapid spread of the mysterious Zika virus throughout Latin America and the growing evidence that it may lead to birth defects, governments in the region have made an unusual request: that women should hold off on having children for as many as two years. The unprecedented directives from heads of state and government officials have shocked many public health and medical experts. They say the prohibition of pregnancy could have untold effects on the birthrate in Latin America, and that managing and terminating a pregnancy is often not an option for many women in the region, where contraceptive access is limited and abortion laws are some of the strictest in the world.

Dear god.

From the Scottish paper The National:

CONTROVERSIAL American pick-up artist and rape advocate Roosh V has organised meetings in Edinburgh and Glasgow for next Saturday.

Only heterosexual men will be allowed to attend the meetings, and any women attempting to come along will be filmed with footage sent to his worldwide “anti-feminist” network who will then “exact furious retribution”.

It would be interesting to see a Venn diagram of that network and people who follow Dawkins on Twitter.

At 8pm next Saturday supporters of the militant misogynist will turn up at Glasgow’s George Square and Edinburgh’s Grassmarket to meet other men before heading to another, secret location.

It’s part of an international meet-up taking place in 40