In Bob We Trust – On “Nannette” and the state of comedy (video) – Hannah Gadsby has a comedy special available on Netflix, which I saw recommended several times by different people.  But this video is the one that finally persuaded me to watch it, because Bob described it as an anti-comedy.  Well, I hate stand-up comedy, and I like deconstruction, so if there was ever a comedy special that I’d want to watch, this sounded like the one.

I thought it was good, but calling it an anti-comedy might be a bit of an exaggeration.  I thought there were plenty of jokes and laughs.  Perhaps someone who actually likes stand-up comedy might feel the number of laughs per minute is a bit low, but I just can’t see it that way myself.

On Laziness – Ozy talks about the concept of laziness, and why it’s a terrible idea.  When people lack motivation, there must be a reason for that, and calling it laziness is a way of halting any inquiry into the causes, and unhelpfully turning it into a moral issue.  Nonetheless, laziness is still a compelling concept that I probably use with some frequency myself.  I think some parallels could be drawn with the way that “stupid” is used as an insult.  We know that there’s nothing morally wrong with having less cognitive ability, and yet “stupid” is still a compelling insult that people have difficulty avoiding even when they understand it’s wrong.

When You’re An Asexual Assault Survivor, It’s Even Harder to be Heard – Is it weird that I feel the need to mention that no, I was not interviewed for this article?  I’m not the only ace guy who talks about sexual violence!

This article does a good job explaining the two main narratives of how asexuality interacts with sexual violence.  Sometimes sexual violence appears to be caused by the victim’s asexuality (e.g. corrective violence).  But even when there’s no clear causal connection (e.g child sexual abuse), being ace can affect how victims respond to trauma, and how other people respond to victims.  It’s important to keep these two distinct narratives in mind, to avoid false generalizations.

Punch a Nazi?  How About Punch a Sexist Perp? – Crip Dyke explains how it is both legally and morally justified to punch someone who perpetrates sexual assault.  Hmm…

Two Histories of Myst – This article explains two histories of the game Myst–one as remembered by “hardcore” gamers, and one as remembered in the mainstream media–and then explains why they’re both wrong.  The article is very long, but fascinating, at least to me.  I remember when people used to say that the death of adventure games was caused by the success of Myst, and I even believed it.