Hellooooo FtB!

Hi everyone! I’m Miriam and I’m (obviously) new here. Also, despite what the sidebar would suggest, I am not, in fact, Ed.

Let’s get the labels out of the way first, shall we?

I’m a psychology student, a Russian Israeli immigrant, an ethnically Jewish atheist, a queer sex-positive feminist, a bleeding-heart but skeptical progressive, and a proud and unashamed survivor of a few mental illnesses.

In other words, I’m pretty much everything your mom warned you about. 🙂

This is my laptop and it tells you everything you need to know about me:

I mostly write about social justice, politics, psychology, sexual and mental health, feminism, and atheism. I also often write about my own life as it relates to some of that stuff, so don’t be surprised if you see some pretty personal things on this blog. (On that note, I’ve recently started including “content notes” at the beginning of posts that contain stuff that may be triggering or very uncomfortable for people, so please keep that in mind and take care of yourself if you need to. Also, once my 300+ old posts are imported, be careful with those because the older ones don’t have those content notes on them.)

I enjoy taking apart crappy arguments and criticizing things that desperately need to be criticized, which is why I like to joke that I ruin people’s fun a lot. In reality, though, I think that arguing and criticizing things can be a great deal of fun. I also think that that’s how we make a better world. Shrugging and trying to convince ourselves that things are fine as they are accomplishes nothing and helps no one.

Although I mostly exist solely on the Internet, I also enjoy reading, photography, and exploring large cities. I go to Northwestern University in Chicago. At school, I’m involved in all sorts of activism, particularly dealing with sexual and mental health, sexual assault prevention, and various political things. Improving the campus culture at Northwestern is a big concern of mine, partially because of how badly that culture triggered my depression when I started school here.

As I mentioned, I’m studying psychology and will soon finish my senior year, after which I hope to get a masters in social work and do something counseling-/activism-related, preferably on the East Coast. (I’m a New Yorker at heart.) When I’m not reading, blogging, studying, or doing my activisty things, I occasionally eat, see my friends, and sleep.

Regarding this blog, I’ll have a comment policy and such up later, but for now, the most important rule is this: don’t be an asshole. And especiallydon’t be a bigoted asshole, because I’ll hate that even more. 😛

I’ll also be importing my old posts once I figure that out, but for now, you can see them back at my old site if you’d like. I’ll also have some sort of list of what I think my best posts are in case, for whatever strange reason, you don’t feel like reading all 300+ of them.

I’m extremely excited to be here and meet all of you, bloggers and commenters alike, and I’m really grateful to Ed, PZ, and the rest of the gang for inviting me here. My ill-considered coup to take over the entire network late Thursday night may have failed, but hopefully I will find a way to make a reasonably good impression here nonetheless.

Update: Archives are up, creep away!

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Hellooooo FtB!
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65 thoughts on “Hellooooo FtB!

  1. 10

    Cool I was wondering what was going on as Ophelia mentioned you and Paul were joining ages ago! Makes it easier when there are lots of great bloggers in one place – only need to subscribe to the one RSS feed 🙂 Looking forward to your posts…

  2. 15

    Welcome, Miriam!

    I grew up in Evanston, which was at the time considered a pretty liberal place — partly because of the influence of the university, I think (this was back in the late 60’s, 70’s.). So I especially look forward to reading about why the Northwestern campus culture proved so unwelcoming. Not disputing you, of course — just curious.

    Again, glad to see you here. FtB is just getting better and better…

  3. 26

    Hello, young Miss. Greetings and felicitations, welcome to FTB, blah blah, woof woof. I see you are a progressive feminist atheist in the midwest. I’m an older, grouchier atheist on the east coast. You got to love the internet.
    I’ll try to adhere to your “Don’t be an asshole” comment policy, but truthfully, I can’t make any promises. No bigoted assholery, though; I find every thing annoys me pretty much equally. Especially stupidity. Oh Dog, the Stupid; it drives me absolutely insane. (In this we have something in common, I think.)
    Again: welcome.

  4. 28

    Whee!

    Pity I never got linked to your old site earlier. From what I read so far you make an excellent addition to the band of bloggers here. 😀

    Love the smorgasbord of political statements on the laptop cover. It’s hard to condense a personal philosophy into that little space, but you’ve done a great job at it.

    1. 30.1

      True, but most people don’t know what Evanston is and I didn’t want to bog the post down with endless explanations. 🙂

      But, fine, I will let you have your glory of actually attending school in Chicago.

      1. I’ll drive by from behind you, crouched down on a scooter in punching position. You’ll never see me coming. You’ll HEAR me, probably, so maybe I shouldn’t have WARNED you that I was going to… shit. Dammit. EVERY DAMN TIME.

  5. 32

    Здравствуйте! Очень приятно!

    It occurs to me that I don’t know if you speak Russian, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to actually use the lovely language I’m learning. >.>

    Welcome to the network.

  6. 34

    Your laptop tells me everything I need to know about you: Mac user. Therefore, welcome.
    But just to let you know, I’m Bully In Chief around here. All posts have to get approved by me first. If the feminism isn’t radical enough there’ll be hell to pay.

  7. 35

    Hello and welcome, Miriam! I can tell from your laptop I’m going to love your blog. And the name is gorgeous. Shame the coup failed – BruteReasonBlogs would’ve been awesome. Ah, well, trial run. 🙂

    Off to spelunk your archives by way of avoiding research. Hope you’ll love it here!

  8. 43

    G’day Miriam, Professional Fun-Ruiner, would it be too paradoxical to say I think I’m going to have fun reading your blog?

    Looking forward to finding out reading and maybe commenting here anyhow.

  9. 44

    I am looking forward to reading your blog. I particularly liked your Laptop “bumper sticker”: “Some chicks marry chicks–Get over it.” What more needs to be said.

    RAG

  10. 48

    I will definitely be following your blog. In addition to being a feminist and an atheist, I’m also a mental health blogger, so I’m looking forward to seeing more of your stuff. I don’t know about the Cheeze-its, though.

  11. 51

    Speaking as a godless heathen — welcome!

    Speaking as a geek — if you want to import your old posts in WordPress it’s under the “Tools > Import” menu option. Works like a charm and you can save as drafts to edit (i.e, to set the publication dates and import images, etc.) Ask Ed to install the “Media Tools” plugin, as well — it will let you import external linked images into your Media library.

    Looking forward to reading more of your thoughts.

  12. 52

    Just wanted to say, of all the indie bloggers I read, I could think of none more deserving of being invited to this network than you. Congratulations, and my gReader is updated so I can continue to follow you. Will miss getting the occasional WordPress like from you %)

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