Slut-shaming has little to do with sex, study findsPart of my previous post implied, but didn't explicitly call out, a link between repressive conventionalism and classism. I think I should go into more detail on that and flesh it out a bit more ( Read more... )

I came across this link the other day, and it sparked some thoughts that have only led to more thoughts about more implications. Not about the fact that DHS has de-emphasized investigation of these terrorist groups or the implication in the first link that the mainstream media also are underreporting these cases, but about the larger picture of ( Read more... )

It's been interesting to watch the right-wing extremists struggle to manufacture illusions of threatening conspiracies arrayed against them, this past couple of weeks. Most of the claims boil down to hysterical warnings about things "Christians" "will have to live with" as a result of the SCOTUS decision, that are pure fantasy, but still ( Read more... )

I've been thinking a lot over the past couple of days about social-normative enforcement, the kind that ranges from general hostility to outright verbal harassment and/or violence. And there are some thoughts in there that I think are worth sharing ( Read more... )

I've been online mostly through Facebook and Google+, and had some success and made some connections on both, but I'm not happy with either, because neither one is particularly geared to writers. So I'm re-emerging from my dormancy here and will be posting again from time to time. I might link some or all of my posts here to both FB and G+, but I ( Read more... )

This article started out in a direction sort of like the one that triggered a near-catastrophic meltdown for me, a couple of days ago, but then went somewhere interesting. And I decided to open up a bit about why the one a couple days ago nearly caused me to cut almost all of my social connections with a certain community where it was circulating ( Read more... )

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I have a neighbor at work who's been doing an unusually good job of challenging my brain lately, and one of the subjects we keep coming back to is the economics of why the US economy fundamentally isn't working, and why the "economic stimulus" measures that were supposed to fix that don't seem to have done much other than make the bankers richer ( Read more... )

.. both as in beer and as in speech:

From Dictatorship to Democracy

It is, in fact, the very definition of free in both senses, because the entire work was published virally, initially in the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar, and is now completely in the public domain.

I was not aware this book existed until about a month ago when CNN posted ( Read more... )

With the ink on recent SCOTUS decision on the individual-mandate provision of the Affordable Care Act still not quite dry, it's worth discussing some of the benefits and shortcomings of that measure as well as why it is a good thing for now, but is not a good thing in the long term ( Read more... )