Royal Thai Navy

I’m pretty much in desperate need of happy-making material at the moment. And yes, the film series in my previous post was quite replete with that (see especially Hugh and Gerald’s story of the First Pride Parade — their story about the police officer’s awe is great). But sometimes it takes a special sort of something to fix my doldrums.

Something like this nuclear bomb of adorableness.

Apparently the Royal Thai Navy’s efforts were instrumental in preserving the otherwise endangered hornbill sea turtles, and they’ve been doing it since 1950.

Royal Thai Navy
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“And he looks at me and says ‘So what?'”

Watch this trailer for a series of short films by Jeff Feuerzeig called “Together”. My title’s quote actually teared me up.

The series is here, presented by Pride Toronto. I’ll be watching some or all of these tonight after work, I expect. It looks like it’ll be pretty much entirely happy-making, even where it’ll obviously get poignant. I think some of us need some of that right about now.

“And he looks at me and says ‘So what?'”

Bullying the bullies into stopping bullying

As I mentioned in my essay on safe spaces, sometimes bullies win.

Sometimes the bullies wear at a person’s resolve enough so that one little weird and probably innocuous incident from an unrelated source is enough to rattle that person. Enough to change the calculus used to determine whether something is worth doing, such that suddenly something that they were gung-ho to do (like Ophelia Benson speaking at TAM) becomes a headache just not worth undertaking.
Continue reading “Bullying the bullies into stopping bullying”

Bullying the bullies into stopping bullying

“An open letter to the tone troll”

You know who you are.

George Waye lays it all out for you.

Hi there!

I bet you’re wondering why I’m writing you this letter.  You might even be wondering why people are all so mad at you right now- and why they are calling you mean names.  I know, I know- you were only trying to help, right?  You just wanted to see a little decorum, a little civility- and everyone is just amplifying the very thing you are trying to help them discard.  It must be frustrating.  It must feel as though you are experiencing the cruel effects of tribalism- a sort of “internet xenophobia”, if you will.  You are a mere missionary preaching the gospel of civil discourse and the lynch mob stands with torches and pitchforks waiting for you at the county line.

Amirite?

Here is the thing.  Those people you were trying to help?  They are having a conversation.  That conversation has a topic.  That topic is important to them.  It is important enough that they are wearing their gut reactions on their sleeves.  So when you come waltzing in, and you say “Guys- hey, guys- Y U mad, bro?” they are more than likely going to turn on you.

Why, you ask?  You’re only trying to let cooler heads prevail, right? I totally get what you’re feeling right now.  I understand.

What you need to understand is that the reason they are mad is right in front of you.  It’s right there- in the post you are reading.  Heck, it may even be summed up pretty succinctly in the title of the post.  Yet here you are, telling these people that you don’t understand what could possibly have them up in arms.  This, to them, is the problem.

Imagine you find yourself in a hotel burning to the ground.  You see a number of people frantically yelling to wake the guests up- pounding on doors and shouting.  You have that mental image yet? Don’t worry, I’ll wait…..

We good now?  Alright, so now imagine- for the sake of argument- you see this one man who seems perfectly calm.  He is standing at the Continental breakfast table pouring himself a coffee and unwrapping a stale shrink-wrapped danish.  Instead of showing any concern at all for the crisis going on around him, he grabs the occasional screaming patron and notes to them how the curtains don’t match the sofa in the lobby.  WTF, right?

You are being that guy.  You are walking into a that burning hotel to talk about interior decorating.

Read more.

“An open letter to the tone troll”

Which government better understands how to get women interested in science?

I’ll report, you decide.

The EU “Science: it’s a girl thing!” campaign:

The White House’s Girls in STEM video (hat tip to Scicurious):

Vote in the comments! IT’LL BE A FUCKEN TIGHTTE RACE, I’M SURE!!!1 (Err. Sorry, I channeled PhysioProf for a second there.)

Also, to skew your votes ever so slightly, Teen Skepchick hosts a spirited debate about what shade of eyeshadow women scientists should work on first. I think. I nodded off halfway through the title because it wasn’t jump-cutty enough.

Which government better understands how to get women interested in science?

Youtube giants join FtB!

The assimilation of the world’s greatest Youtube atheists, skeptics and freethinkers has begun!

First Zinnia Jones (ZJemptv)…

Zinnia Jones is an atheist activist, writer and videoblogger focusing on the impact of religious belief, political follies and LGBTQ rights. Since 2008, her videos have been viewed over 7 million times and her articles have been featured in the Huffington Post, The New Civil Rights Movement, and The Fight magazine in LA. Originally from Chicago, she’s currently living in Florida with her partner Heather and their two children. She is still insufferably Midwestern. Her pleasures include picking apart everyone’s arguments, rationality, feminism, philosophy, transhumanism and pet rats. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter at @ZJemptv, and her YouTube channel is at www.zinniajones.com.

…then Aron Ra

Aron Ra is one of the “YouTube atheists” and an advocate for rationalism in science classrooms. He grew up in an exclusively creationist environment where he felt like a lonely outcast just for understanding evolution, let alone accepting it. Being raised in a mostly-Mormon family encouraged him to explore other denominations and eventually non-Abrahamic spiritualism before rejecting faith-based beliefs altogether. He was drawn into activism when the Religious Right dominated his state’s Board of Education, and began undermining education in history, health, science, and social studies. His videos often focus on evolution and the evidence indicating an interrelated tree of life. His series summarizing the ‘Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism’ and his subsequent series, ‘Falsifying Phylogeny’ (including the Phylogeny Challenge’) have been mirrored, featured, referenced, and recommended by many professional scientists, secularists, and educators, and has attracted more than 60,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel.

… and now Cristina Rad (ZOMGitsCriss)!

Romanian Atheist blogger and video maker, Cristina Rad, (cybername ZOMGitsCriss – pronounced “Zoh My God, it’s Criss!”), likes to address the conflicts between secular and religious views, as well as discussions on philosophy, current events and science matters. She is the author of the online published audio-book «The Unreasonable God» and she’s an outspoken supporter of civil rights for gays and lesbians.

And as though these three weren’t enough, the giant himself, Thunderf00t!

The true beauty of a self-inquiring sentient universe is lost on those who elect to walk the intellectually vacuous path of comfortable paranoid fantasies. -That is all.

…whose profile doesn’t talk about himself. Dammit Thunderf00t, your first post at least tells the readers that you’re “just some guy”. What the hell is that quote? Nice quote and all but it tells us nothing about you.

Jeez. Newbies. Gotta teach them a thing or two about blogificating. Sigh.

Well, maybe they’ll absorb it through the Hive Mind. Err, we have one of those, right?

Youtube giants join FtB!

DOJ releases new standards to combat prison rape. Right-wingers fight it, MRAs yawn

Via Think Progress:

This week, the Department of Justice published new standards addressing the epidemic of rape and sexual abuse in our nation’s prisons. The guidelines, which apply immediately to federal prisons and give financial incentives for states to comply, are a laudable, widely praised, and long overdue step in combating rape in the United States.

Continue reading “DOJ releases new standards to combat prison rape. Right-wingers fight it, MRAs yawn”

DOJ releases new standards to combat prison rape. Right-wingers fight it, MRAs yawn

Harassment Bingo: cards 1 and 2

I had an idea earlier today, that we should start playing Bingo with the ongoing harassment campaign posts’ comment threads. We’ve done it for other topics, why not this one? So I jotted down a few, and asked people to help fill in the rest, and commenters easily filled two cards. I figure it should be its own post now.

Continue reading “Harassment Bingo: cards 1 and 2”

Harassment Bingo: cards 1 and 2

The FtB Conversation about TAM: Transcript pt. 2

Here’s the second part of the transcript for the big FtB Conversation from this past weekend, done once again by the indefatiguable Kate Donovan. She’s the poor soul who did the transcript for the “PenisGate Debate”, who volunteered for this as I guess a sort of palate-cleanser.

If you’re just joining in, read these two posts first:

In Medias Res: how to find the plot if you’re just tuning in
The harassment policy campaign timeline

Transcript pt. 1 is available here.

Transcript below the fold.

Continue reading “The FtB Conversation about TAM: Transcript pt. 2”

The FtB Conversation about TAM: Transcript pt. 2