The Reading List, 12/16/2015

I share a lot of links on Twitter and Facebook that I don’t blog about because I don’t have much to add. The reading list is a periodic feature where I share those links with my blog audience too. Of course, you’re still welcome to follow me on Twitter.

  • My run-in with hate speech at a Minnesota Vikings game“–“In that moment, I was terrified. But what scared me the most was the silence surrounding me. As I looked around, I didn’t know who was an ally or an enemy. In those hushed whispers, I felt like I was alone, unsafe and surrounded.”
  • Mock mass shooting changes location after warnings from UT“–“‘It’s a fake mass shooting, and we’ll use fake blood,’ he said. He said gun noises will be blared from bullhorns. Other people will then play the role of rescuers, also armed with cardboard weapons.”
  • Who Are You Calling A Domestic Terrorist?“–“No, Islamic extremism isn’t the face of domestic terrorism. Despite whatever whitewashed ideas popularized by politicians, media, or those we choose to admire, numbers don’t lie. At least not when it comes to statistics involving mass shootings.”
  • Updated for 2015: Dana’s Super-Gargantuan Guide to Atheist Books Suitable for Gift-Giving“–“Here’s a wonderland of atheist books not previously listed in our Super-Gargantuan Guides!”
  • He Called Her a Slut. He Got Fired“–“By giving Ford power—and therefore responsibility—she does not have, justification for targeting her can easily be created and continue, regardless of reality. This is why targets are so frequently viewed as irrelevant but also powerful, by their harassers.”
  • Sam Harris’s Quantum Universe (or, How to Say One Thing While Meaning Another)“–“Note that these paragraphs are not complementary poles of a dialectical argument whose interaction can yield a Hegelian synthesis, a third term that pushes knowledge forward. They are flatly contradictory and incompatible.”
  • Cheap white eggs: Radiolab Dodges All Discussion of Race“–“That was the term that was used. Cheap white eggs. When Tal said this, my jaw dropped, but I held out hope that this incredibly racially charged issue would then be explored a little bit.”
  • Harassment Through Impersonation: The Creation of a Cyber Mob“–“The Photoshopped tweets should have been too ridiculous for anyone to believe. The coldness they displayed in response to Iwata’s death was so clearly designed specifically to make people angry, and the statements were sheer nonsense. (Also, the second tweet is actually 141 characters long.)”
  • Ada Lovelace and the impossible expectations we have of women in STEM“–“But this just highlights the pervasive double standard that places such import on women’s personalities while giving men—particularly high-achieving men—something of a free pass. Would you question if a man’s ‘character’ might prevent him from making a groundbreaking discovery?”
  • Defense of Clergy Pedophilia Persists“–“I wish I had known in advance about the audio guy’s attitude about sex abuse in the Church. What can I say? Live and learn. Luckily, I’ve found another studio for the book taping.”
  • Things we don’t write: K Anis Ahmed on the murdered writers of Bangladesh“–“I took the Rushdie affair as counsel to steer clear of the subject of religion. Apart from one early work, a novella (Forty Steps), I have rarely referred to any Islamic tenets in my fiction, and then too never in a critical manner. But to avoid the topic entirely is frankly impossible.”
  • Thoughts from a #BLACKandSTEM Academic regarding Scalia & Roberts remarks on Dec 9, 2015“–“Black collegians, faculty, and especially #BlackandSTEM shared how hauntingly familiar Roberts and Scalia comments are. Their comments sting so bad because we’ve all heard or been told this about ourselves, the quality of our work or scholarship, and/or our productivity REPEATEDLY since college, heck high school. And IT NEVER ENDS.”
  • Peaceful Savages“–“So we refrain. We act with peace. We may make a fuss, but we don’t go eye for an eye. We can’t go eye for an eye. And you need to understand what a further burden that is.”
  • On Not Taking ‘No’ For an Answer, and Why It Isn’t Jolly Good Fun“–“Resisting social pressure can be extremely difficult, and it’s almost always unpleasant. It puts people in the position of either letting their boundaries be trampled, or repeating their ‘No’ a dozen times and being treated like a party-pooping sourpuss.”
  • Bad Life Decisions: Mary Robinette Kowal Reads Theodore Beale. Sexily.“–“But wait! There’s more! Could this possibly be a DANCE REMIX? I dare say that this is as fine a piece of music as anything that Psychosonik ever released.”
  • Expert on Fascism Sees Telltale Signs Developing“–“Many people think of fascism as an oppressive government, as if some existing administration suddenly is led by a bad guy at the top. Fascism arises from below, from a segment of the populace that has become convinced that there is no hope for the future under the present set of institutions and laws.”
  • 19 Baffling Vintage Holiday Cards“–“Because nothing says Christmas like… a boiled conker man startling an anthropomorphic bird woman.”
  • I am fat, actually.“–“So here’s how these two compliments are actually rooted in fatphobia. They equate fatness with badness.”
  • Details revealed after East Grand Forks man is charged with arson of Somali restaurant“–“Gust does not have a criminal record in Minnesota, but in 2012, he pleaded guilty to charges of terrorizing, simple assault and preventing arrest, all Class C felonies, in Grand Forks County District Court after he threatened staff at Romantix, an adult entertainment store in downtown Grand Forks, and assaulted a police officer in 2011.”
  • Planned Parenthood Clinic’s Windows Busted Out“–“Kogut says she’s thankful the woman responsible for the act did not hurt anyone and that the center was closed at the time, ‘This year has been one that’s been filled with a lot of hateful and vile rhetoric, and I think that’s creating a violent opposition to Planned Parenthood and to health care providers, and it needs to stop.'”
  • Flannery O’Connor: Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Ayn Rand“–“I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.”
  • What’s on your #scibucketlist?“–“I began to wonder: Am I the only one? Surely there are other science nerds out there who want to dissect a whale, nerd out on the Galapagos, see the Aurora Borealis, and get a bacterium named after themselves. So I asked Twitter. And invented a hashtag: #scibucketlist”
  • California Will Get ‘Bathroom Police’ If ‘Privacy’ Measure Passes, Critics Fear“–“What this would result in, essentially, is bathroom police. There’s a $4,000 bounty on catching someone, so it gives incentives to people to self-monitor bathrooms and accost people who are coming out and allows individuals to make subjective determinations about whether someone looks adequately masculine or feminine.”
  • Threats and Violent Attacks Against Muslims in the U.S., Just From This Week“–“This is just from the last week: it does not include the spate of similar and even worse attacks on Muslims and mosques in the U.S. prior to December 8, such the multiple gunshots fired at a Connecticut mosque in the wake of the November Paris attack, or the bullet-ridden Quran left outside an Islamic store in Anaheim in the wake of the San Bernardino shootings.”
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The Reading List, 12/16/2015
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