Good news, everyone! Our application has been approved, and that means that FtB will be sponsoring a party room at Convergence on 2-5 July. We’re going to do the typical things one does at a nerd party: we’re planning on a table for games, we’ll have healthy fresh fruit and unhealthy quantities of liquor available, and inspired by those clever people at Skepchick who did this last year, we’re going to have some afternoon salons in which we discuss deep sciencey things.

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We’re getting a lot of complaints about ads redirecting people to the app store — and I agree, they’re obnoxious and spammy and we’re killing them as fast as we can find them. But it’s not our fault! We really don’t want them either. But apparently, spammers are currently ahead of the spamblockers. It sounds like it’s going to take OS updates to purge us of this plague.

So #GamerGate is outraged at auto-blocking software. There are several blockers out there; a lot of people are finding them useful. I think they’re fine…and I’d say that even if my name were on any of them. I simply do not understand the attitude that it is somehow a violation of a person’s right to free speech if a mechanism is provided to make it easy for other to exercise their right to not listen.

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And it could be a step forward. Randi Harper notes that sealioning is now against the rules, although I read it more as a rule against general obsessive behavior.

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We first met in 3rd grade, which would have been 50 years ago. We used to sometimes walk home together from school — we lived about 4 blocks apart — in junior high, about 43, maybe 44 years ago. I worked up the nerve to ask her out on one date in high school, the homecoming dance in 1974, which was 41 years ago. We started dating regularly in 1976, so 39 years ago. We took our time with the courtship, and got married over spring break while we were in grad school, on 16 March 1980, 35 years ago.

It seems kind of silly to say that today is our anniversary. It was more of a long and ongoing process with a few arbitrary dates flagged as discrete points in the evolution of a relationship.

It’s very strange: Australians are freaking out over Tony Abbott eating a raw onion. It’s a country full of giant spiders and poisonous everything, and it’s onions that have you boggled?

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That’s the standard discouragement offered to young people getting tattoos. The thing is, though, that it’s not a criticism of tattoos: it’s a criticism of getting older, with your skin getting thinner and more wrinkled, and your body shape changing. As one of those aging (as are we all) people, I just have to say, “bullshit!”

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There’s a cheesy country-western song that is getting quite popular. I admit, I’m not fond of the genre; while there’s the occasional spark of brilliance or great performer, most of it is smug white folks crying about how miserable their lives are while blaring out either fist-pumping patriotism or treacly self-pity. It’s still the music many people grew up with, though, so it’s fine if you like it. You don’t have to rationalize why you like it here, OK?

But some things need explaining. This new song, Pissed Off Rednecks Like Me” is getting a lot of undeserved attention because it is “controversial”. It isn’t — it’s dumb. It feeds a lot of bigotry, though, so bigots are enjoying it.

Let me explain why a lot of people detest Jamie Jones’ terrible little ditty. We’ll just go through the lyrics.

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