Their confusion and incomprehension seems genuine. They seriously seem to believe that Trump’s comments were upsetting to others solely because he uttered the word “pussy” — completely overlooking what the rest of the world found deplorable, that he was boasting of sexual assault, of grabbing women “by the pussy” without their consent. Such staggering incomprehension is only possible due to these “conservative” folks’ utter inability to grasp the necessity of consent.
We see this same incomprehension manifested in many other ways, such as the constant appalling refrain from religious right types that not criminalizing same-sex couples will inevitably result in legalizing pedophilia and bestiality. Apart from the deliberate cruelty of that claim, it’s simply dumb — appealing only to those unable and unwilling to understand the meaning and primacy of consent.
Life Before Smartphones
LinkLife before smartphones was boring because you didn’t feel crazy all the time. It was boring because you could still believe that what happened next might be okay. It was boring because you could look beyond what was in your hand and what you saw there was ambiguous enough that you needed to determine its shape on your own, rather than passively accepting whatever was presented to you. Life before smartphones was boring to the extent that your brain had to do actual work back then, and there is nothing your
Moltmann Monday: The Consequences of Discipleship
QuoteSo let us be clear about the question: what have we to fear more, the consequences of discipleship or the consequences of non-discipleship?
“Harvard University just got a $10 million grant to study Black poverty in Boston area. The dining hall staff are on strike for living wages.”
QuoteHarvard University just got a $10 million grant to study Black poverty in Boston area. The dining hall staff are on strike for living wages.
— Bill Humphrey (@BillHumphreyMA) October 13, 2016
Letter to a Dying Church: Either Die or Live Like You Mean It
LinkThen, you could start doing some really radical stuff, expecting nothing in return. Instead of worrying about the cost/benefit analysis and the ROI on everything, you could just do things that make the world look like God actually loves it. The clock is ticking, so you could do amazingly generous and slightly crazy things without being concerned whether people would like it or whether it would finally attract the kind of admirers you’ve always been certain you deserved. Feed a hungry person or buy a pair of shoes for that guy who hangs out at the bus stop. Advocate for civil rights, for equality for women, for fairness for LGBT people, for hospitality for immigrants. Make friends with a Muslim. Put a hand on the shoulder of a kid who’s being bullied. Throw open your doors to everyone and invite them to come in. Or sell everything you have and give it to the poor. In other words, you could do the right thing … because it’s the right thing to do—you know the kind of stuff Jesus called you to do if you want to follow him.
“You’ve got that eternal idiotic idea that if an…”
QuoteYou’ve got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists.
Understanding Trump’s Name
LinkThe name Trump is his brand, his product; he sells his name. When he seeks financial backing for a project, he insists that he be paid very well for the use of his name, even if his name is used just to get investors or bank loans. The condition is that he gets paid for the use of his name, even if the project fails and goes into bankruptcy. Time and again, his companies have gone bankrupt; but though others — builders, employees, investors — lose money, Trump is always paid for the use of his name.
What it is about the name “Trump” that sells, and would it sell if it were changed a bit?
Donald Trump: The Dress Rehearsal for Fascism
QuoteFascism, at its core, is an amorphous and incoherent ideology that perpetuates itself by celebrating a grotesque hypermasculinity, elements of which are captured in Trump’s misogyny. It allows disenfranchised people to feel a sense of power and to have their rage sanctified. It takes a politically marginalized and depoliticized population and mobilizes it around a utopian vision of moral renewal and vengeance and an anointed political savior. It is always militaristic, anti-intellectual and contemptuous of democracy and replaces culture with nationalist and patriotic kitsch. It sees those outside the closed circle of the nation-state or the ethnic or religious group as diseased enemies that must be physically purged to restore the health of nation.
The High-end VR Room of the Future Looks Like This
LinkToday’s VR systems are both fantastic and restrictive: they blow you away, but it’s clear how far they have to go. The HTC Vive is arguably the best out there, but having to buy a souped-up laptop just to run it, paying full price for brief games that feel more like demos, and trailing a huge cable off your head and fumbling to mount trackers on your ceiling…it’s not ideal. But it’s still incredible enough to give a taste of where it’s headed.
Here’s my best guess of what the future high-end VR setup looks like. I’m an early-stage VC focused on virtual and augmented reality, so I pieced this together based on the forward-thinking pitches and demos I’ve been lucky enough to see through my work, plus a lifetime of burning through sci-fi and video games. Check out the bottom of this post for a list of VR inspiration.
Side note that AR will be much bigger than VR, in both the diversity of use cases and market size (analysts predict $30B for VR versus $90B for AR by 2020), but I still believe that most homes will have a dedicated VR space for total immersion.
A response to threats about our presidential endorsement
LinkWhat is the correct response, really, to this?
YOU’RE DEAD. WATCH YOUR BACK.
WE WILL BURN YOU DOWN.
YOU SHOULD BE PUT IN FRONT OF A FIRING SQUAD AS A TRAITOR.
How did I come to be hearing these threats?
Taking Trump voters’ concerns seriously means listening to what they’re actually saying
LinkThere is absolutely no evidence that Trump’s supporters, either in the primary or the general election, are disproportionately poor or working class. Exit polling from the primaries found that Trump voters made about as much as Ted Cruz voters, and significantly more than supporters of either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. Trump voters, FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver found, had a median household income of $72,000, a fair bit higher than the $62,000 median household income for non-Hispanic whites in America.
The Universe Has Almost 10 Times More Galaxies Than We Thought
Link
A new study finds there are about 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe, up from about 200 billion. It’s the first major revision to that number since the 1990s.