Link round-up for 17 July 2022
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Such a godly man (link from commenter NickM).
Cats glow, sleep, and pout here.
Idris Elba has fans.
Evidently an early stage of gay pride?
Never express a simple thought in an over-complicated way.
Catholic priests vacation incognito.
Escape tracking by cutting off the antenna (not that you'll be going anywhere).
Lollipops and horses can solve many problems.
Signs of the times, I guess.
It's uh assault rifle, I tells ya!
Australians turn the tables.
Some assembly required.
There's now a car air-conditioner adapter for men.
The fire department was not at the top of its game here.
Animals keep cool.
Irish pride!
Yeah, that would be pretty scary.
I can't decide whether this shirt is a good idea or a bad one.
What "lifestyle"?
The Japanese do math by sorcery.
Now this is a treehouse with character.
Sorry, objective reality exists.
That's a big tornado.
Fear the savage mouse.
Impressive snow avalanche here.
See the world's largest single-drop waterfall, four and a half times as high as Niagara Falls.
Film critics are hopelessly out of touch.
Blogger Ami recommends this work-around for paywalls. It works for her but not for me; your results may vary.
If Amazon sends you something you didn't order, beware of this scam.
"This life has a hunger for chaos....."
Japanese manga are becoming dominant in the US domestic comics market.
What a difference a ban on billboards makes.
Special-effects artists find Marvel a nightmare to work with.
We may soon have a "universal" flu vaccine, thanks to our knowledge of evolution.
Here are some of the first images from the Webb telescope (click on the blue boxes above the image field to see different ones). To Algerians, one picture looks oddly familiar.
Aliens, like gods, are psychologically-revealing products of the human imagination.
Asteroids are soft and fluffy.
They've actually made a movie glorifying slave traders.
Sponsorblock purports to be a more advanced ad-blocker for those paid promotions in YouTube videos.
It was known as far back as 1956 the rising carbon dioxide levels would produce global warming.
When "truth" has a qualifier, it's not the truth.
Remember who really did everything.
In 1922, these swimsuits were considered so daring they led to arrests.
How is the US relationship with our oldest ally?
".....whenever right-wingers accuse others of something, it's definitely because they're projecting."
This is an astounding piece of ignorance. The evolution of the eye is extremely well understood, including the very beginning stages, the development of lenses and irises, etc. Yet this piece appeared in a major MSM newspaper, The Guardian. You just can't trust MSM reporting about science, even in "prestige" papers. They really don't know what they're talking about.
Play the search game.
Evangelical nutjobs buy trucking company, surreal madness ensues.
Things were so much better back when America was godly.
Annie Asks You reviews options for helping get-out-the-vote efforts.
Science vs religion doesn't qualify as a "debate".
Banning abortion is not "saving babies" -- this is.
The collapse of the crypto scam is hitting the marks hard.
The world will end next year, a demon explains vaccines, celebrities perform Satanic rituals, Elvis returns, and more!
Blogger Michael Mock responded to Michael Brown's seven questions for atheists.
A lesbian from a religious family describes the long journey toward accepting her real self.
The data show covid is becoming endemic in the US.
Abortion has mental and physical benefits for women.
The CDC's unclear messaging about monkeypox is endangering gay men.
Nobody hates a non-existent God, but if he did exist.....
Abortion rights are too important to waste energy on fake-language nonsense. Daniel Kaufman gets it.
There is now a special hotline number for mental-health emergencies.
As soon as you resort to threats and harassment, you're the one who's in the wrong, regardless of what cause you're acting on behalf of.
The world needs more skepticism, even though it makes some people uncomfortable.
Some Texas hospitals are refusing to treat problem pregnancies for fear of running afoul of the state's nightmare anti-abortion laws.
Here's why a victim of repeated sexual abuse is suing a rape crisis center.
Southern Baptist pastors can't claim they didn't know about pervasive sexual abuse.
Germany waited too long before disengaging from fossil fuels -- we should avoid following their example.
The low minimum wage is what enables the wealthy parasite class.
"Because there is one place that snickering, eye-rolling and so forth are very effective: within an insular group."
Expertise matters.
The horrifying story of a ten-year-old Ohio girl forced to go to Indiana for an abortion was widely denounced as false on various wingnut sites, and even by the Wall Street Journal and the governor of South Dakota -- but now the man who raped and impregnated the girl has confessed and been arrested. This reminds me of how similar assholes claimed the Wi Spa incident was a hoax until the flasher was identified and charged with his crime. Misogynists do seem to show a pattern of calling women liars in such cases.
Non-theocrat Republicans fear that the Ohio case will hurt the party at the ballot box -- but all these anti-abortion laws guarantee an endless stream of such horror stories. There's evidence that the fall of Roe is indeed mobilizing the pro-choice majority. Meanwhile, the Indiana attorney general is going after the doctor who treated the victim. She is fighting back and getting support.
Some people should now feel more welcome in Ohio (found via Fair and Unbalanced).
There was some positive news in that June inflation report.
The economy is mostly doing well, so why aren't voters giving Biden more credit?
One day before the Stasi fell.....
Some things are calming down, some aren't -- try not to hate your neighbors.
550 women (!) are suing Uber over alleged sexual assaults by drivers.
Albuquerque is the site of the latest police atrocity.
Quacks like this can't face the plain truth about what they do.
Yes, one big-name fundie explicitly would force a pregnant ten-year-old to give birth. Then there's this guy.
A Capitol police officer responds to Hutchinson's testimony.
Philadelphians take action against the local crime wave.
Guards at an Indiana prison sold male inmates access to women's cells so they could sexually assault them.
Read the words of a true Christian leader.
Many liberals don't know what's being done in the name of gender ideology (probably due to their dittohead-like determination to avoid any information source that's not in lockstep with what they already believe). Expect public opinion to shift more and more as information spreads.
Anti-covid-vaccine nonsense is in retreat around the world.
Here's how the global economy is divided up.
In Canada, a new effort to colonize and destroy indigenous Indian culture.
In the UK, overwhelming majorities (up to 98% depending on the issue) support keeping separate single-sex toilets, changing rooms, sports teams, and so on. Many women no longer feel safe in women's facilities and services where men now have access to them -- probably due to experiences like these.
It takes guts to stand up to threats.
In France, thugs destroy a collage by grieving mothers commemorating babies lost to abuse.
US-supplied HIMARS rocket systems are seriously damaging Russian fighting ability in Donbas.
We're hearing a lot about Russian missile attacks on Ukrainian cities (perhaps due to frustration at the slow progress in Donbas), but the Ukrainians are actually shooting down a lot of the missiles. Anti-missile defenses seem to be getting better and better.
Mexican activists are already smuggling abortion pills to American women in forced-birth states.
Peruvians handled covid a lot better than Americans did.
Another small positive step: Saudi Arabia opens its airspace to Israeli airliners. Also, this is probably a good sign.
Chinese people are using puns and homonyms as work-arounds for online censorship, much to the regime's anger.
China's tech sector is being swept by layoffs, but some don't much miss the grind.
Some banks in central China have frozen depositors' accounts, locking many people out of their life savings for months and triggering huge protests. After the usual brutal crackdown failed to quell mass anger, the regime has begun issuing payments to some victims.
More links at Fair and Unbalanced.
My own posts this week: answering Michael Brown's questions for atheists, some video rap battles, and an image round-up.
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Having to abandon or change a long-held belief is always unpleasant, but it's hard to consider anyone intellectually mature who hasn't done so a few times.
The fact that you personally don't understand the scientific evidence for something doesn't mean that that evidence is not conclusive.
Casual profanity has become a tired cliché, instantly marking any utterance in which it appears as tedious.
The last thing any liberationist should want is chaos. Chaos quickly makes most people hungry for order, even authoritarian order.
[Image at top found via Hackwhackers.]
posted by Infidel753 at 12:15 AM
13 Comments:
That Japanese maths trick is fascinating - to me. I have a long-term project - so long-term I haven't even really started to write it - a popular history of mathematical notation.
I was also amused by your use of the word "sorcery" here. Mathematicians were once seen as wizards. Kepler's day job was as an astrologer to the Imperial Court in Prague.
Thanks for including me among the links. I hope you are right about Roe mobilizing the pro-choice majority. It would be great to see record-setting voter turnout for the midterms to keep the extremists on the sidelines.
This might be a good time to mention I'm Lakota and um ackshually, the white woman at Ovarit couldn't be more wrong: Blood quantum (and Status/Non-Status, Canada's version which adds a bit of sexism by emphasizing the father's lineage) was created by the government in an actual attempt to colonize and destroy indigenous culture.
Not to say idiots and fraudsters taking advantage of said idiots don't exist. But then you also have fraudsters like the late and unlamented Wallace Black Elk (no relation to the more famous Black Elk).
NickM: I'm not surprised mathematicians were once seen as wizards. Any form of math one doesn't understand seems like an arbitrary magic trick. Certainly that Japanese method looks like that, though I'm sure there's an underlying logic to it that a mathematician would easily see.
Jack: Thanks for your posts. If you look at that link about mobilizing the pro-choice majority, there is evidence that pro-choice voters are making abortion a higher priority in their voting choices. In the past the forced-birthers tended to be the more formidable voting bloc even though they're in the minority, because they're far more likely to be single-issue voters about abortion.
Anon: Whatever the origin of that particular concept, in this case it was the indigenous organizers making the rules -- as they had a right to do. It's sad that in this case they caved so easily to the idiots and fraudsters pressuring them to change.
the story and stories about the 10 year old just makes me sad and crazy angry at the same time..fuck them.
That Jewel Cooler is actually not a bad idea.
Infidel,
Kepler & Tycho Brahe* & others would be referred to as a "Mathematicus" which was what they called astrologers back then. That is where the name comes from. I have actually studied astrology and once you get past the basic sun-sign stuff it gets very complicated and quite mathematically so if done "properly". I did this because the history of this stuff intrigues me. It is quite a journey from a naked "prophet" (or whatever) ranting in the desert to the James Webb 'scope.
Now, try this...
Start with any four-digit number that is made up of least two different digits, including zero.
Re-arrange the digits in ascending order for one four-digit number and in descending order for a second four-digit number (don't forget those zeros)
Subtract the smaller number from the larger number
Repeat until you get the same number for every iteration
Try it for a few. I dunno what you started with but you wound up with 6174 didn't you?
I have only just (straight-up, honest) found this video of it...
https://youtu.be/d8TRcZklX_Q
Prof Roger Bowley actually taught me statistical mechanics at Nottingham University. Stat-mech is much cooler than it sounds.
*Who had a golden nose and a private island - Uraniborg, named for the muse of Astronomy, including a cavalcade of side-show freaks for Brahe's amusement. It even had an underground annex. I dunno whether Brahe wore a Mao suit and had a Persian cat... But the bugger ticks almost all the boxes to be a C16 Bond villian. "No, Herr Kepler, I expect you to die!"
It should. This is what a world without abortion looks like: Incest, and a type of slavery and cannibalism in the form of forced pregnancy.
About a 10-year-old and puberty, when I was 9, I was already having wet dreams. While my penis and testes were growing, they were nowhere near adult size. I didn't have pubic hair, and my voice was only starting to crack. I was tall, but so is every man in my family.
Now keep in mind, my genitalia were still very childlike in terms of proportion. But I was ejaculating, both consciously and unconsciously.
I could easily see a girl that age ovulating but still having genitalia inadequate for childbirth.
Granny: It's surreal, more like something from a horror story than the real world.
Ricko: Possibly -- though I wonder if it might result in painfully-chilled bollocks while reducing efficiency of cooling the rest of the car.
NickM: I'd heard of the complex math used in astrology -- a textbook case of GIGO since the results are equally nonsensical regardless of the intricacy of the method. Also of Brahe's golden schnozz and fondness for annoying Kepler. Even the most brilliant minds often cannot escape the delusions of their time -- I recall Newton's efforts to analyze the Book of Revelation. At least now we have more worthy uses for math.
Anon: Repugnant thoughts, but evidently so, since it happened. People need to let kids be kids, regardless of details of the maturation process.
Tornadoes are flippin' scary.
I hadn't heard of a grasshopper mouse but wow. That's a badass mouse.
I hope that mouse never becomes common where I live. We'd need to breed more badass cats to control them.
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