Originally a comment by iknklast on Maybe it’s time for Vanity Fair to do one.

Vanity Fair, which looks like it is on its last legs

That’s the same thing he says about every news source he doesn’t like – looks like it is on its last legs. He has no imagination, no creativity, no ability to hold enough phrases in his head to even say anything that isn’t a repeat of what he’s said dozens of times before.

And I wish everyone would shut the hell up about Hillary and focus on what we need to focus on – Donald J. Trump, toddler-in-chief. I am sick of hearing pundits who have never been to the midwest for any … Read the rest

An article at Scientific American claims that new research suggests that men are less green aka environmentally conscientious than women because they think green=girly.

Some researchers have suggested that personality differences, such as women’s prioritization of altruism, may help to explain this gender gap in green behavior.

Our own research suggests an additional possibility: men may shun eco-friendly behavior because of what it conveys about their masculinity. It’s not that men don’t care about the environment. But they also tend to want to feel macho, and they worry that eco-friendly behaviors might brand them as feminine.

Oh noes.

We showed that there is a psychological link between eco-friendliness and perceptions of femininity. Due to this “green-feminine stereotype,” both men and

Was Vanity Fair’s “advice” to Hillary Clinton sexist shit or “lighthearted” and amusing speaking up to power?

Maybe it's time for Hillary Clinton to take up a new hobby in 2018 pic.twitter.com/sbE78rA5At

— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) December 23, 2017

Well the fact is she has taken up a new “hobby” – she’s not running again, and she’s doing other things. But by “hobby” they really mean hobby, as opposed to serious grown-up work; they mean go away, be quiet, don’t keep being public and saying words.

Funny that they didn’t say that to Sanders or Biden, isn’t it. I wonder what the mystery ingredient might be that makes it ok for them to keep being public and saying words and … Read the rest

Another chilling piece of ugliness from the Trump administration via Chiraag Bains, a former senior counsel in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

Last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions retracted an Obama-era guidance to state courts that was meant to end debtors’ prisons, which throw people who are too poor to pay fines into jail. This practice is blatantly unconstitutional, and the guidance had helped jump-start reform around the country. Its withdrawal is the latest sign that the federal government is retreating from protecting civil rights for the most vulnerable among us.

What are we to conclude from this? That Trump and Sessions want to see poor people rot in jail because they can’t pay court fines.

The Justice

John Stuart Mill on how women are trained to accept subordination:

All causes, social and natural, combine to make it unlikely that women should be collectively rebellious to the power of men. They are so far in a position different from all other subject classes, that their masters require something more from them than actual service. Men do not want solely the obedience of women, they want their sentiments. All men, except the most brutish, desire to have, in the woman most nearly connected with them, not a forced slave but a willing one, not a slave merely, but a favourite. They have therefore put everything in practice to enslave their minds. The masters of all other slaves rely, for

Shawn Vestal points out that it’s really not a matter of not knowing sexual harassment is not ok.

As a man, on behalf of men, speaking with the full power and authority of the patriarchy at my back, let me just say: We don’t need sexual harassment training.

None of us needs a seminar to learn not to swap a job offer for sex. None of us is just one bullet point shy of understanding he shouldn’t lock the door and start masturbating in front of a woman. No man requires a PowerPoint to get that he shouldn’t ask a subordinate to watch him take a shower or text [her] a nude picture of himself.

Knowing they shouldn’t is part … Read the rest

A horror out of Karachi: a pair of teenage neighbors tried to run away together from their poor neighborhood of Ali Brohi Goth, and were murdered by their male relatives. First the 15-year-old girl, Bakhtaja, was tied down and electrocuted, and the next day it was 18-year-old Ghani’s turn.

His father finished dinner, then returned. With the help of an uncle, he strapped his son to a rope bed, tying one arm and one leg to the frame with uncovered electrical wires.

Bakhtaja had endured 10 minutes of searing electrical jolts before she died. The boy took longer, and eventually the uncle stepped in and strangled him. The couple were buried in the dead of night.

You’d think parental … Read the rest

Updating to add: disregard the whole “the minute they” part, because I overlooked the date. This is actually about how they did both at the same time…which is even more ridiculous but also less sneaky. My source was an excoriating Twitter thread by Ben Wikler.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand the minute they get their slash taxes on the rich bill signed, they say they’re going to slash Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Of course they do. Inch by inch they get closer to their goal: heavy taxation on the poor and zero taxation on the rich.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said Wednesday that congressional Republicans will aim next year to reduce spending on both federal health care and

A couple in Virginia were shot to death three days before Xmas by a teenage boy they’d told their daughter to stop seeing on account of he was a racist.

The teenager shot Scott Fricker, 48, and his wife, Buckley Kuhn-Fricker, 43, around 5 a.m. Friday before shooting himself, the police said.

The couple, who lived in Reston, Va., about 20 miles west of Washington, were pronounced dead at the scene. The teenager survived and was hospitalized in “life-threatening condition,” according to a statement from the Fairfax County Police Department.

…

Family members recently tried to persuade Ms. Kuhn-Fricker’s 16-year-old daughter to stop seeing the teenager because they worried he was sharing white supremacist ideas with her, Janet Kuhn,

This crap again.

Police have arrested a blogger [at] Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport on Monday evening on charge of defaming Prophet Mohammad (pbuh) in a blog post.

According to the officer-in-charge of Barguna’s Amtali police station, the blogger Asaduzzaman Nur, more commonly known as Asad Nur, has been on the run after a case was filed against him on January 11 this year under ICT act. The case was filed for a blog post which allegedly carried defamatory language against the prophet.

You can’t “defame” dead people. Defamation applies to alive people only, people who can be harmed in their real, contemporary lives. The law doesn’t protect the reputations of dead people. They don’t mean “defamatory,” they mean “obnoxious … Read the rest

Barry Duke at The Freethinker reports that the BBC recently appointed James Purnell Radio and Education Director at the BBC, and then word got out that he’s…hold onto your hats…A Natheist.

He was talking to Nick Robinson on Radio 4’s Today about the BBC’s plan to set up a new unit for improving religious coverage, and Robinson asked him if he’s a godbotherer. (Not his exact words.) Purnell said he wasn’t.

I’m not. I’m an atheist but I think the issues around belief are incredibly important to how we live.

Robinson asked him:

Is that not a problem though? You are head of the BBC’s religious programming, you got the job because the BBC decided to abolish the post of

Also Happy Return of the Light.

… Read the rest