
Hey, folks! I still exist. I’m just having another unplanned migraine vacation — same thing yesterday — so I may not get to posting anything today beyond this.
The 4th quarter 2016 We’ve Got a Bigger Problem Now WHTM pledge drive is almost over! If you like the blog, please donate what you can! THANKS!
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: If you’re thoroughly sick of seeing Donald Trump’s orange mug plastered all over the internet, there’s a handy little Chrome extension that replaces Trump pics with adorable pics of kittens.
I’ve been testing it out a little and it works … some of the time. But when it does it’s kind of magical. Here’s what the front page of The Daily Beast’s politics section looked like to me when I visited there today:
Alas, it does not make the news itself any more adorable.
H/T — Mashable, via @megalibrarygirl
It’s time for another episode of It Came From the Comments I Don’t Let Through, in which I post notable comments by drive-by commenters that I think regular readers here will find, er, instructive.
Today, a heaping pile of homophobia from a fellow identifying himself as Reg Handford. Are you sitting comfortably? Good, then let’s begin.
Confirming what most We Hunted the Mammoth readers have suspected for years, a new study from Indiana University reports that watching cat videos on the internet makes you feel good.
According to a press release from Indiana University about the study:
Davis Aurini, the bald half of the Sarkeesian Effect brain trust, has famously declared himself “a huge white nationalist on paper.”
The candid photo above, which I definitely did not assemble using photoshop ten minutes ago, reveals that this is not entirely true. He is, in fact, a tiny white nationalist on paper.
NOTE: When I say that I “definitely did not assemble [this photo] using photoshop ten minutes ago,” this should be taken to mean that, yes, I did in fact assemble this photo using photoshop ten minutes ago. I spent a few minutes of this lovely spring day crudely photoshopping a swastika armband onto a puppy. This is the sort of sacrifice I make for this blog.
Since today is Thanksgiving — also known as Thursday, to those not in the US — I thought I would take a break from all the negativity and celebrate some of the true heroes of video gaming.
Make sure to scroll down all the way for a video of cats and dogs and lizards legitimately for real playing iPad games. Enjoy!
So yesterday I discovered a #GamerGate manifesto that started with these dramatic pronouncements:
We are Gamers.
We are alive.
And that was just the opener.
Here’s a meme posted recently to A Voice for Men’s Facebook page. I know, a graphic suggesting that any man who enters into a relationship with a woman is bound to end up “miserable, or divorced and broke” is pretty darn misogynistic.
The creator of this graphic, who has imaginatively picked “John Galt” as his pseudonym, explained his thinking thusly in several comments on the Facebook page:
In making it I was in fact thinking of the Nash Equilibrium in Game Theory, popularized by Russell Crowe in the Movie ‘A beautiful mind’. In a society where the hypergamous instincts of many women are driven to cruel extremes by feminism It is ever more relevant to highlight to men that being shamed or encouraged to compete for something that is repeatedly demonstrated as worthless is not only important but very healthy. …
[I]t is in fact Marriage I had in mind but these days cohabitation is the same as marriage under the law. Effectively it is impossible for men to trust even a purportedly good woman simply because of the law, but then it is up to women to change that – all we can do is defend our own freedoms and rights and that is what is most important to me. Of course competing for the right to be treated like garbage is the main point and intentions mean nothing without actions…for men that action must needs be self interest first – ironically the one thing we have been trained and bred to ignore.
So, yeah, in addition to being nearly incoherent, this is pretty much misogyny turned up to 11.
But I think we can do better. Let’s consider this graphic a challenge. I invite any readers here who have graphic talent — and those completely lacking graphic talent whatsoever — to come up with a fake AVFM meme that’s MORE misogynistic than this. BONUS POINTS if you can incorporate an actual quote from an AVFMer in the graphic.
To inspire you, here are some completely unrelated gifs of tiny animals being adorable. (I found them all here.)