You may have heard of Rule 34, as defined in xkcd: if you can think of it, there’s probably already porn of it on the internet somewhere.
I saw this on Facebook today, posted by Thomas:
I am therefore proposing Rule 01: if you can think of something tacky, it is probably already available for sale online as a redneck accessory. Continue reading
It seems like we have enough issues to worry about in America, that we don’t need to contrive concerns that the supposed adoption of medical codes originally created by the World Health Organization is somehow a threat to American sovereignty. (WARNING: Don’t click that link if you don’t want a huge heaping helping of paranoia and dumb.)
Via Imgur, a series of animals with their own Mini-Me’s:
My favorite, of course, will always be this little guy:
![Black Santa and Presents by soulchristmas [CC BY 2.0], via Flickr](http://crypticphilosopher.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/342794052_52016eb707-225x300.jpg "Black Santa and Presents by soulchristmas [CC BY 2.0], via Flickr")
Via Flickr
A suburban Albuquerque teacher who told a black student that Santa Claus is white has been placed on paid administrative leave.
Rio Rancho school district spokeswoman Kim Vesely confirmed on Tuesday that the teacher is out of the classroom while the incident is being investigated.
The teacher’s comments came after students at Cleveland High School were told they could come to class dressed as Santa, an elf or a reindeer.
Michael Rougier says when his ninth-grade son, Christopher, arrived with a Santa hat and beard, the teacher asked, “Don’t you know Santa Claus is white? Why are you wearing that?”
The incident happened the same week that Fox News Channel’s Megyn Kelly said both Santa Claus and Jesus were white.
It’s one thing to shout “Santa is white” into the void on a TV show few people really think is “news” anymore. It’s something else entirely to say it to a kid standing right in front of you and dressed as Santa. WTH, people?
Photo credit: Black Santa and Presents by soulchristmas [CC BY 2.0], via Flickr.
I cannot think of any way to view this except as an act of desperation. Here are two dudebros who apparently felt offended when a barista told them “happy holidays” instead of “merry Christmas.” Rather than ponder how this simple act of politeness might reflect a broader, more diverse world than they seem capable of imagining, they decided to sink some money into a white-boy rap video.
I don’t think it’s even worth pointing out that Christmas is not the only holiday in December, or that Jesus almost certainly was not born in December (assuming he ever existed at all in any form resembling the various accounts in the Bible), because this is not about historical accuracy. This is about a few Christian dudebros desperately trying to cling to whatever sort of cultural prominence (or even dominance) they think they deserve, presumably on account of being Christian white males in the U.S. of A.
Every year, it gets considerably more pathetic. As Robyn Pennacchia writes:
[T]hese dudes are awfully smug. “The Gospel is true even if you don’t believe it,” my ass. It’s your religion. It’s fine that it’s yourreligion, but it’s not my religion and I do not have to think it’s true. That’s not how religion works.
For the record, let me just say again–it is weird to get mad at people for being polite and friendly. That person at the coffee shop didn’t have to say anything to you. She was not required to say anything other than “Here is your coffee.” She could have said “Here’s your coffee, and your shirt is dumb.” Frankly, if you’re going to have that kind of a reaction to someone wishing you “Happy Holidays!” I hope no one is ever polite or friendly to you again. You don’t deserve it.
Can I just enjoy the holiday season, please? There is plenty of room for you and all your dudebro friends in this vibrant, diverse world in which we live. But you have to learn how to share, and how to play nice. You’re not doing that right now.
The brouhaha over that Duck Dynasty guy losing one public forum to spew ignorance has really brought out the wacky (h/t BooMan):
Embattled “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson has been suspended from his show by A&E for his remarks about gays and African-Americans, and now some high-profile conservatives are rallying to his side and defending him. On Friday, GOP congressional candidate Ian Bayne went all in, comparing Robertson to civil rights icon Rosa Parks.
“In December 1955, Rosa Parks took a stand against an unjust societal persecution of black people, and in December 2013, Robertson took a stand against persecution of Christians,” Bayne said in an email to supporters.
“What Parks did was courageous,” he added. “What Mr. Robertson did was courageous too.”
This is so beyond the realm of the merely stupid that it makes me sad. Continue reading
Charles Stross brilliantly stated what I’ve been thinking about Bitcoin, along with what I’ve long thought about libertarianism (h/t dpm). Bonus points for saying it in a post entitled “Why I want Bitcoin to die in a fire”:
To editorialize briefly, BitCoin looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central banking and money issuing banks, with a Libertarian political agenda in mind—to damage states ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens financial transactions. Which is fine if you’re a Libertarian, but I tend to take the stance that Libertarianism is like Leninism: a fascinating, internally consistent political theory with some good underlying points that, regrettably, makes prescriptions about how to run human society that can only work if we replace real messy human beings with frictionless spherical humanoids of uniform density (because it relies on simplifying assumptions about human behaviour which are unfortunately wrong).
This article by Amanda Marcotte is from July 15, 2013, but it hasn’t gotten any less relevant or important:
While spouting a series of lies, Bill O’Reilly whined recently on Fox News that women in Texas are providing what he considers insufficient reasons for getting an abortion. The exchange between him and Fox’s official fake feminist Kirsten Powers went like this:
Powers shot back: “The current status quo in Texas that these people are fighting for, who are fighting the bill, is to be able to abort your baby up until the third trimester.”
“Yeah!” O’Reilly jabbed. “For any reason! Women’s health! ‘Hey! Look I sprained my hand!’”
“Yeah,” Powers said. “For any reason. For any reason. Yeah.”
To hear O’Reilly and Powers talk, one would think that in order to get a safe, legal abortion under the standards set out by Roe v Wade, one has to go in and provide a “reason” that you “deserve” this abortion, and some kind of authority figure determines if it’s good enough before you get an abortion—their only concern is that women are supposedly not giving good enough reasons. Obviously, these two pundits know better and are just being dishonest with the viewers, but that they are engaging in this rhetoric in the first place speaks to a serious problem in how abortion is discussed in this country.
***
The confusion between how ordinary people talk about abortion in terms of deserving-ness and how the law handles abortion, as a matter of rights, is why so much polling data on abortion is bunk. Gallup is notoriously bad on this front, showing that somehow half of Americans call themselves “pro-life” but a majority still want abortion to be legal. In other words, a lot of Americans call themselves “pro-life” but disagree with the “pro-life,” i.e. anti-choice movement about abortion access. I believe that speaks to a longing a lot of people have for women to be able to access abortion, but only if they provide a good reason for it. Of course, there’s no legal way to determine the difference between a good and a bad reason, to separate the “good girls” who just “made a mistake” from those deemed unrepentant sluts.
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Unfortunately, I fear that pro-choicers may be making this problem worse by our rhetoric. Every time anti-choicers try to restrict abortion, we trot out women who’ve had abortions to put a face on the situation. It’s a good idea, but as Jessica Grose of XX Factor writes, the women in these stories almost always feel the need to justify their abortions, to explain that they are deserving—which in turn implies that others are not.
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Because of this, I have to sign off on Grose’s suggestion: Tell your abortion stories, but don’t try to justify yourself! We need to get the message out that, as with every other medical intervention out there, pre-viability abortions don’t need to be earned. You don’t need to be a “good girl” who is full of remorse. The woman who slept with 30 guys and accidentally got pregnant because she foolishly took her chances without a condom deserves her abortion just as much as the loving mother of two who has discovered a fetal defect incompatible with life. We believe this to be true, and we can only start convincing the public that it’s true if we start talking about this belief more straightforwardly.
Texas Republican gubernatorial candidate Larry Kilgore is apparently willing to work with teh gayz in getting Texas to secede, but I can’t imagine his vision of Texas would be a good place to live.
I am a Christian, and I have lots of Christian beliefs. However, I am trying to build a coalition of all different types of people. I look at the lesbians and the homosexual folks and I say, ‘Hey, D.C. is stealing my money just like they’re stealing your money.’ After we get our freedom, then we can decide all that stuff — hopefully at a county level. Right now, lesbians and homosexuals and Christians may have differences with each other, but we’ve got a bigger enemy.
This is a good example of the remarkably narrow definition of “freedom” that people like him use.
