American Atheists has stepped up to recognize some of the new media promoting atheism — blogs, podcasts, all that stuff — with the inaugural ‘EVOLVE Awards’.The first awardees are eminent and deserving…follow the link to find out who!
It’s pathetic what the slymers are up to now: they’re inventing lies, then getting angry at the offenses in the lies, none of which occurred. They keep going around and around on this Ferris wheel of nonsense.
It’s just plain weird. When Brayton and I put this network together, the unifying idea was to encourage diverse voices to speak out for freethought. We had no idea that the warped regressive side of atheism would respond with such sustained petty tantrums, but here we are — still going strong, still growing, and not backing down…and still getting nonstop harassment from fools. I wish they’d grow up and face reality: just as the United States is changing demographically, so is atheism, and the howls and kicks and screams of those privileged obnoxious children are going to be left behind by history.
Well, except as embarrassing blemishes on the record.
I’m still trying to get caught up…on sleep, on fluids, on FtB.
Miri deplores dictionary racism. You know, any time you run to a dictionary to get a definition of a topic in an argument, you might as well admit…you’ve lost.
Lilandra has annoyed Ken Ham greatly. I approve.
Ashley talks about accessiblity and mental health.
Zinnia is asking for help in explaining trans issues to cis people. At last, something we cis people are experts at: not understanding.
Taslima lists some recently discovered species. I rather like Chondrocladia lyra.
Dana doesn’t sound too happy with a particular open letter.
Ophelia finds a Saudi writer who encourages men to sexually harass women in the workplace…to send them fleeing home, where their chastity will be safe.
Stephanie highlights the hypocrisy of facebook.
Hey, we added a couple of male bloggers here…I thought we were supposed to be man-hatin’ banshee feminists? It’s surprising but true, though, that some people with a Y chromosome and a penis can actually care about social justice. Say howdy to Ally Fogg and our very newest addition, Tauriq Moosa, who helpfully explains how to pronounce his name in his first post.
What’s going on, gang?
Stephanie discusses a common fallacy about harassment.
Avicenna finds an MRA woman making excuses for pedophilia. I need to shower now.
Aron debated a creationist rapper. I’m hoping it was a rap battle.
Ashley is getting all miscellaneous up in her place.
Brianne is in Belize. I am envious.
Black Skeptics announce that Sikivu Hutchinson has a new book, Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels
Miri explains privilege. C’mon, people, it’s really not so difficult!
The Digital Cuttlefish cheers as we hit a new record—the highest CO2 in 3 million years!
Ed says a rude word to the goons who arrested atheist bloggers in Bangladesh.
Jason expresses his exasperation that Benedict Cumberbatch has been cast as…Khan Noonien Singh? WTF?
Taslima features an ex-Muslim who is proud to be an atheist.
Stephen looks at Iceland, and notices that they spurned the austerity option…a wise choice.
Religion is “a great body of knowledge”? Ophelia doesn’t think so.
Freethoughtblogs has a brand new addition, YEMMYnisting, who is “Proudly Feminist, Proudly Bisexual and Proudly Atheist.” I think she might just fit in.
Whatcha doin’, readers? There’s stuff on FtB, like always.
Miri is writing about beauty.
Avicenna makes an interesting observation about American news coverage of terrorist violence: if it’s foreign, it’s bloodless, if it’s domestic, we stare at the victims.
Taslima is advertising sex tourism for married men.
Kate questions the dogma about MPD.
Mano notes that churches are two-faced about keeping government from meddling in religion. Privileges OK, responsibility…not so much.
Brianne is gazing upon children and getting all judgmental.
Sikivu will be at the LA Times Festival of Books.
Maryam defends outspoken freethinkers.
Ian is highly qualified to discuss pride.
Karen is finding fault.
Greta has written a book.
Comrade, I am hungry. Feed me!
Stephen is advising the Commies.
Ed has gone to Louisiana and eaten all the food!
The Digital Cuttlefish flings rhymes at the blamers.
Bad news: I’m informed offline by Mattir that fellow hordeling crowepps has passed away, not particularly expectedly.
She wasn’t the most loquacious commenter here, and I didn’t know her at all aside from reading what she wrote here. But I always liked what she had to say.
She was funny:
I am boggled by the lack of logic behind “Make me a sammich.” Seriously, so you don’t want to listen to someone’s opinion, you want to treat them as having no more value than a household appliance, so you send them into the kitchen, where all the *poisons* are, to prepare food? Want a side of Valium overdose with that, or just a garnish of the traditional rat poison?
I didn’t know her well enough to say with certainty that she made the world a better place — those who knew her can weigh in on that — but she definitely made Pharyngula a smarter place. Thanks for that, crowepps.
You’ve all seen it, the increasingly common inept attempt people make to defuse valid criticism of their untenable positions. Most recent sighting for me was this comment at The Mary Sue, which consisted mainly of the commenter saying that no way would any man have pulled the “fake geek girl” routine on Rae Johnston and even if they did no way could she have been clever and snarky enough to leave him in the funniest smoking crater of all time, and then said commenter ended with:
Let the bashing commence I guess.
You’ve seen variations on this trope. “Flame away,” “I’ll get flamed for this,” references to asbestos undergarments and SPF 400 flameblock.
And there’s a commonality among the people who use that trope, generally having to do with shitty argumentation. As Sally Strange said here last week,
Has there EVER been a time when someone preemptively complained about flaming, when the content of their post was NOT eminently flame-worthy? Not in my experience.
Sally’s correct, and there’s a reason for that. Well, two reasons.
Frankly, if even the execrable H*go Schw*zer has seen through this particular pathetic trope, it’s time to stop it. As that post with its triggering comments (and OP) points out, trolls use this trope because it works.
So I’m calling this a New Rule. It covers my posts here, and it should cover every other person’s posts everywhere else online as well. If you tell people to “flame away,” you will not be taken seriously. Because as any well-read atheist knows, the lions took no interest in Daniel whatsoever when he was thrown into their den. They didn’t kill him, they didn’t bat him around; they just sat in a comfortable corner of their den and rolled their eyes at him every now and then as he made a spectacle of himself praying not to be eaten. And afterwards he became the topic of a number of lion in-jokes. Or so I’m guessing. The story may be apocryphal.
…that I was responsible for the Thunderf00t fiasco here? I don’t pay any attention to his videos any more, but Richard carried out an amazingly thorough dissection of one of his recent videos that, as seems to be common nowadays, rants and raves about Freethoughtblogs, feminism, me, and of all things, minorities in atheism. I spot-checked some of Richard’s claims about the video — he references timestamps throughout — and was astounded to hear Thunderf00t actually sneer with contempt at the idea of broadening atheism’s appeal to a wider audience.
You know, all these deranged angry anti-social justice atheists are always complaining that FtB is trying to kick them out of atheism, but we aren’t — we don’t have that power or any authority at all (do they even realize that this is just a blog network with no jurisdiction over anything other than our local traffic?) The real situation is that people like Thunderf00t are doing an awesome job of marginalizing themselves.
