“…When
I say the greatest athlete in a generation, I mean the greatest in any sport.
Sorry, LeBron. Sorry, Tiger. Sorry, Derek. For fifteen years, over two
generations of tennis, Williams has been a spectacular and constant yet oddly
uncherished national treasure. She is wealthy and famous, but it seems that she
should be more famous, the most famous. Anyone who likes sports should love
Williams’s dazzling combination of talent, persistence, style,
unpredictability, poise, and outsized, heart-on-her-sleeve flaws.
But
not everyone loves her. Part of this is owing to the duelling -isms of American
prejudice, sexism, and racism….
…But
it’s not enough to say that Williams would be more uniformly adored if she were
a white woman, or a man. Instead, the failure to fully appreciate her
importance is perhaps evidence of our inability to appreciate the stubbornly
unfamiliar narrative arc of her career. Williams is underloved because, at
times, she has been unlovable and, in the end, mostly unrepentant about it—something
that might be admired as iconoclastic in a male athlete, but rarely endears
women to a wide audience….
[Recently,]
after a disappointing showing in the three previous Grand Slam tournaments,
Williams said that she adopted a new way of thinking about the game, to put
less pressure on herself by appreciating what she had already accomplished.
‘That’s the beauty of my career,’ she said before the Open. ‘I don’t need to do
anything at all. Everything I do from this day forward is a bonus. Actually, from
yesterday. It doesn’t matter. Everything for me is just extra.’ This is surely
wisdom, but it is also a form of sports sacrilege. I don’t have anything to
prove; I have been great—so great, in fact, that at this point winning doesn’t
even matter.”
Excerpted from an
article by Ian Crouch for New Yorker Magazine
Upworthy carried a story summarizing an experiment demonstrating that rats exhibit empathy. Why do I care about this? Because the graphics showing the experiment on Upworthy made me smile, and smiling is good. Here’s the link in case you want to watch the video embedded in the story.
Some scientists ran an experiment to demonstrate that. Here’s how it worked:
The scientists put a rat in water (which rats hate). Not enough to hurt the rat, but enough to annoy it.
Then they put another rat in a safer, dry area with a door it could open to save the first rat.
When the dry rat heard the damp, miserable rat get upset, she came to the rescue.
Still not satisfied with the result, the scientists ran a more complex test.
What if you bribe the dry rat with food? Will she ignore it to rescue the wet rat in the next chamber?
Scientists presumed it would be easier for the not-in-peril rat to take the obvious selfless route when it was given only one choice. But what if they gave her a delicious bribe (chocolate cereal) and then let her choose between saving her friend and a buffet?
The rats, by a significant margin, still usually saved their friend before getting their delicious bribe. What does that mean?
Rats might care more about each other than things like food, and that prioritization might be encoded in their DNA.
Why should we care about super-thoughtful rats?
It is often argued that humans are inherently selfish — that without guidance, we would all default to killing and stealing and an “every person for themselves” mentality. That we only help others if it helps us. That evolution can’t make us selfless; it’s something we have to force ourselves to do.
But if rats show human-like qualities (they laugh like us, they dream like us, they like to have selfless lovers) like altruism, that means it isn’t a human-learned behavior. It could be encoded in our DNA. It means humans could be empathetic and kind by default.
It also means that rats and humans have more in common than we think.
An adorable rat not spreading the plague and hugging a tiny teddy bear. Much empathy.
“Take care of yourselves, watch the people around you carefully, and cordon off the ones who are toxic, so that the universe can decontaminate them for you through exposure and death.”
-
Warren Ellis
This is always very good advice (I’ve written some version of it myself at various times), but it’s especially poignant for me to read it from Warren, now, because I’ve just had to remove a profoundly toxic, dishonest, manipulative, bad, bad, bad person from my life. You’d think it would be easy, but it wasn’t.
So, speaking from experience: it’s not your fault that a toxic person fooled you, even if they fooled you for years. It’s not your fault, and while it is entirely expected that you go through the normal grieving process that is associated with any loss, try not to spend any time blaming yourself for not seeing all the things that you can see now in hindsight much sooner than you did.
This is, unquestionably, the greatest moment I’ve ever read in any piece of Star Wars media. It shook me to the core going through this panel-by-panel on ComiXology. Holy. Shit. So. Good.
What if Star Wars was written by people who knew how to write
In October, Robot Chicken will premiere its third DC comics special. Co-creator Matt Senreich and writer-producer Tom Root described the demented take on Superman’s family life we’ll see and the special they’d love to do that they won’t ever get to do.
Just remember, there's no "I" in TEAM, but there is an "M" and an "E," and that spells "ME!"
One of my Facebook friends posted a status saying “There’s no I in TEAM!” and I was like:
I still don’t understand this quote. I can’t manage to get my shit together even when I do have help from a whole team. Who ispurposely turning down the help of a team so they can do everything alone? I can’t even go to the post office successfully by myself. Or is this your vague way of telling someone that you are quitting their team? Because that’s sort of brilliant. I think if I was asked to be part of the PTA I’d probably also say “There’s no I in TEAM!” because that way they’d think I was being helpful and saying yes, but really I was just saying, “No, I am not in the team. There is no I in your team. Sorry. I thought I was quite clear.” I mean, people never pick me to be on their team anyway because I can’t get my shit together but frankly it still seems a bit vague. What if we changed “There’s no I in TEAM” to “You can’t spell FAILURE without U and I”? Because that seems more accurate.
I don’t think she’s my friend anymore.
*******
And now, the weekly wrap-up…
Shit I made in my shop (Named “EIGHT POUNDS OF UNCUT COCAINE” so that your credit card bill will be more interesting.):
Shit you should buy or steal because it’s awesome:
It was a rough week and when I’m depressed (much better today) I cling to the couch and watch a lot of TV. Two of my new favorites:AN HONEST LIAR(fascinating documentary) andA Girl Walks Home Alone at Night(A bizarrely beautiful Iranian Vampire Western). If you have Netflix they’re free right now.
This week’s wrap-up is brought to you by The Chronicles of Ara: Creation, which looks like a pretty darn good book. Here’s the summary: When J.R.R. Tolkien is summoned to authenticate a recently-discovered “lost” book of Beowulf, events are set in motion that years later will unveil an imminent tragedy: The entirety of the world’s art and invention has been inspired by a corrupted muse, who has implanted a series of codes within the works of history’s most influential authors, warning of humanity’s end and a new dawn of time. You should check it out here.
Basically, the people with the most guns will never, ever own enough guns to actually ever feel safe. And, honestly, they won't be.
According to Vox, the U.S. has 4.43% of the world’s population and almost 42% of the world’s population of civilian-owned guns.
This is your image of the week:
It’s hard to say exactly, but there may be as many guns as there are people in the U.S., or even more guns than people. Since not everyone is a gun owner, that means that the typical gun owner owns more than one. In fact, they own, on average, 6.6 guns each. Two-thirds of the guns in the U.S. are in the hands of 20% of the population. Gun manufacturers know this and market accordingly.
Gun ownership is correlated with both gun homicide and suicide. Accordingly, we also have the highest rate of gun violence of any developed country. In 2013, there were 21,175 gun suicides and 11,208 gun homicides.
No kidding. Here at San Diego Comic Con, the creator of Buffy, Firefly, Dr. Horrible and Dollhouse, and the director of two Avengers movies, just told us the nature and purpose of existence. He also revealed one of his next projects: a “Victorian female Batman” called Twist.
“What are you?” I am the Dragonborn. “No, I mean, what’s your gender?” Dragonborn, learn to listen better. “No, just tell me what’s in your pants!” Forty eight heads of lettuce and an enchanted battle axe.
I was reading this morning about Tom Selleck (for those of you unfamiliar with any reasons why anyone would still care about Tom Selleck some seventeen years after ‘Magnum, P.I.’ went off the air, he’s been in the news for water theft in California) and I found myself thinking that if you were a writer of fiction, you could not have created a more unintentional metaphor for the global warming crisis than California.
It’s the perfect recipe for an allegory. You have a marginal environment that is slowly sliding into catastrophic uninhabitability (and of course, unspoken in your novel is the idea that it’s doing so primarily because of the macrocosmic problem that you’re replicating in microcosm here, which is always nice thematically) and a cast of characters who are so wealthy, so powerful, so utterly solipsistic that they’re simply unable to adapt to the changes because it involves them being told “no” and they don’t understand what it means anymore. And so droughts and wildfires gradually become endemic, turning into the new status quo, but the movie stars and big-name agents and Hollywood producers don’t understand why they have to ration their water just like the little people. Surely all that money counts for something, doesn’t it? Surely they’re just purchasing a commodity, and as long as they can afford the premium that results from high demand and limited supply, they should be allowed to use as much as they want however they see fit?
Of course, we haven’t gotten to the third act yet. As much as it’s entertaining to watch Tom Selleck publicly humiliated and forced to cough up undisclosed sums of money, I don’t think we can really call that a “climax” in a narrative sense. Maybe we’ll get a scene where L.A. goes up in flames, all the Hollywood mansions consumed by wildfire as Ariana Grande asks her PA to “do something about this”. Or maybe we’ll get a proper trial scene, not with Tom Selleck but with a big-name, bankable movie star in the role of water thief like…oh, gosh. We could go with the “poetic justice” angle and put Schwarzenegger in there, as a member of the Republican party whose stance on global warming is to stick their fingers in their ears and shout, “LA-LA-LA, I’M NOT LISTENING!” (As well as the former governor of California, and not a proponent of environmentalism or water rationing at the time.) Or you could go the “dramatic irony” route, and stick in someone like Sean Penn to show that sometimes people talk the talk but aren’t willing to walk the walk. Or hey, you could go all “meta” and cast Kevin Costner. Either way, it’d have to end with jail time.
But ideally, our “California” story should make you think. Watching people casually ignore the slow death of their home state, simply because they can’t imagine anything really bad that money won’t make go away, should maybe make people think about what’s happening in our wider world. Because the only difference between Tom Selleck and the Koch brothers is one of scale.
white dude in this horror movie : *translates old arabic text* *somehow it rhymes perfectly in english*
Now I really wanna see a horrible faltering translation from one of these movies, like “Whomsoever enters this room, they shall… well, this word is like… literally it means ‘unbecome,’ but it was used as a euphemism for death, pooping, and—wait, when was this carved? was it 15th century? Cuz it was a euphemism for sex too in the 15th century. This is either a cursed crypt, a bathroom, or a royal bedroom. Who wants to roll the dice?”
“You guys, I’ve gotta be honest, okay? This thing’s written in some kind of weird localized dialect, and I’ve only ever studied the standard form of the language. I mean, this part right here…I can’t even tell if it’s some kind of error, or an obscure slang phrase…whatever it is, I have no idea what the fuck it means.”
‘this is written in ancient sumerian. it’s about… uh… well that word is… uh. okay this is either a poem about farming, or straight-up a nasty sex guide. it might be both. i want a shower.’
“okay see the thing is in one dialect this word is the name of a terrifying Demon but in a completely different language from the same area that has the same writing system and gave a lot of loan words to the first, it means ‘horse’ - and the context is really not helping”
“You know what? This thing is bound in human skin and the walls are bleeding let’s just leave.”
Cash Cayen was interesting in signing up for a robotics class at Timmins Public Library in Ontario, Canada, but she was unable to attend because the class is labeled as "boys only." Cash Cayen then took matters into her own hands and started a petition. Now anyone between the ages of 9 and 12 can sign up for the class because she wouldn't take no for an answer.
Dear homophobes: my tolerance does not extend to beliefs that hurt and oppress other people. And no, you’re not oppressed. You’re bullies who hate being held accountable.
"Institutional racism doesn't require the enlisting of individual racists. The machine does the discriminating. ...Yet institutional racism's defenders—or more precisely, its concealers—demand an articulated proof for something that moves in silence. They demand to see chapter and verse for something that is unwritten. They demand to know the names of the individual architects of a structure built subconsciously over time by each member of the vast multitudes adding their own bit, like beavers adding branches to a dam. Institutional racism isn't so much a grand design as it is an accumulation of racial detritus. Symbols are important. Those Confederate flags must come down. That will be a spiritual victory. But we must not stop there. Institutional racism is the real prize on this hunt."—Charles M. Blow, in a terrific piece for the New York Times on how the removal of the Confederate flag from public spaces is just a starting point, not an endpoint.
Yesterday, Bristol Palin, the oldest daughter of former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, whose teenage pregnancy was hidden for the first part of Palin's campaign, made an announcement on her blog that she is again pregnant. Under the headline "Big News," this is the entirety of the post:
(I'm announcing this news a lot sooner than I ever expected due to the constant trolls who have nothing better to talk about!!!)
I wanted you guys to be the first to know that I am pregnant.
Honestly, I've been trying my hardest to keep my chin up on this one.
At the end of the day there's nothing I can't do with God by my side, and I know I am fully capable of handling anything that is put in front of me with dignity and grace.
Life moves on no matter what. So no matter how you feel, you get up, get dressed, show up, and never give up.
When life gets tough, there is no other option but to get tougher.
I know this has been, and will be, a huge disappointment to my family, to my close friends, and to many of you.
But please respect Tripp's and my privacy during this time. I do not want any lectures and I do not want any sympathy.
My little family always has, and always will come first.
Tripp, this new baby, and I will all be fine, because God is merciful.
Because Palin is part of a politically active anti-choice family, and because she herself is anti-choice, and because she is Christian and unmarried, and because she is conservative and says shitty antifeminist things, there are a whole lot of people making a whole lot of jokes, and pointing out her hypocrisy, and reveling in the schadenfreude of it all.
I don't have a single joke to make, nor do I feel the tiniest bit of schadenfreude. I just feel really damn sad after reading that pregnancy announcement.
That doesn't mean I don't care that her politics are garbage. Frankly, the fact that she espouses anti-choice and sexually repressive beliefs is part of what makes me so goddamn sad reading this, because she's clearly internalized all the attendant shame around sex and choice inherent to those beliefs—and now she does not feel like she has any meaningful choice but also can't be happy that she's pregnant.
It's just "a huge disappointment" to people who love her and to total strangers who share her beliefs. She's just trying to keep her chin up, because life is tough. She doesn't want sympathy because she is pregnant. There is absolutely no joy in this announcement. It's shame and resignation. That ain't funny.
She couldn't even reveal this information, with which she's struggling and which she know will disappoint people, on her own time frame, because the people who make a pastime out of policing the Palin women's reproduction have forced her to disclose it before they do. That isn't funny, either.
None of this is funny. It's tragic.
The reason I advocate for comprehensive reproductive rights options and reproductive justice is because I don't want pregnant people to feel shame about unwanted pregnancies, and because I want them to have the choice to terminate unwanted pregnancies, without judgment. This is the exact opposite of that.
I don't wish a sad, disappointing pregnancy on Bristol Palin. What I wish is that she felt like she could get an abortion without shame, if being pregnant is not what she wants.
And I wish she could use this experience to understand why other women might want that option, even if she doesn't, and that it's okay.
No, sexism in science doesn’t mean advisers take their students aside and say “don’t worry, you’ll pass your thesis defense, because I’ve noticed we both have a penis.” It doesn’t mean tenure committee meetings include the action item “DID YOU NOTICE SHE’S A WOMAN? INAPPROPRIATE? DISCUSS.” It doesn’t mean lab doors have signs saying “no open-toed shoes and no chicks.”
Here’s what male scientists and historically male-led departments do instead: Offer little or no maternity leave for graduate students. Evaluate women employees on their personalities rather than their competence. Make jokes that cause women colleagues to feel left out and belittled. Go on national television in a shirt that shows women as decorative, sexualized semi-nudes. Hire people who just seem to fit in with the culture that thinks all of this is okay.
Expanded from 
