January 2012
2 posts
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December 2011
8 posts
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I know that I sung the praises of unironic...
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WatchA special Christmas edition of Drunk History, featuring Ryan Gosling.
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November 2011
3 posts
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Is Bella actually a secretly feminist heroine? ......
I’ve never read a Twilight novel and I’ve never seen a Twilight movie. The only thing I know about the series is that Robert Pattinson ruined my ex-favourite bar in Vancouver and that Stephanie Meyer is super religious.
But like most things I know nothing about, I have fully formed opinions on the trilogy.
Enter this article at The Hairpin, written by the eminently qualified...
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October 2011
6 posts
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Forgiving sexism in the media we love.
Nerd circles are famous for their fandom: obsessive loyalty to a TV series/movie/book/game/etc. And while it’s perfectly acceptable to critique story progression or argue over the merits of various spin-offs and sequels, the core tenets of the franchise are generally above rebuff.
This might be a function of gratitude. Often we nerds are so grateful that some Hollywood studio or TV...
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I am a female nerd. Apparently. →
Really great dissection of the sexism inherent in the exaltation of the Female Nerd. Sometimes someone sums up my opinions on a topic in such an articulate fashion that I no longer feel a need to contribute anything to the discussion. Marriane Cassidy is one of those someones.
Excerpt:
“These suspicions are confirmed when I see that many men (and some women) think girls are allowed like...
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August 2011
10 posts
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I didn’t really “get” Adele...
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Nice Guys vs. nice guys
Super cogent, super long dissection of the Nice Guy vs. nice guy dichotomy that many men have difficulty understanding. You see the Nice Guy attitude a lot in Geek Culture, where a lot of men seem to think that because they are “nice guys” who would never, ever, EVER cheat on or physically abuse a woman, they are entitled to a partner. It’s almost always tied into a type of...
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“My understanding of queer is a term that desires that you don’t have to present...”
– Judith Butler, The Desire for Philosophy: An Interview with Judith Butler (via thisnik)
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Radical feminism bums me out.
I was reading through r/feminisms today and stumbled upon Imaginary Feminism 101 by Holly at The Pervocracy. It was a good read, echoing conversations I’ve had in the past about the imaginary feminist bogey monster that most men “opposed to feminism” are afraid of.
One of her points is that feminism is a diverse ideology - that not all women (or men) that consider themselves...
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Panic on the streets of London
In the 1986 Smiths song “Panic,” brooding misanthrope extraordinaire Morrissey laments the alienation he feels when confronted with mainstream culture. To be fair, Morrissey seems to square off against alienation just about every time he gets near a microphone, but in “Panic” his resentment takes particularly poignant form when considered in the context of certain recent...
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“Na’vi, the invented language spoken by the blue-skinned aliens in the Hollywood...”
– http://www.metronews.ca//vancouver/local/article/937350—talk-na-vi-to-me (via mattymc99)
I don’t get it. If these people want to role play at being an indigenous group that has traditionally acted as stewards to the natural world, but get displaced by American imperialism and Western...
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July 2011
4 posts
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Austin's "No Girls Allowed" LAN Party is an...
So the internet is all abuzz with this LAN party in Austin that has decided to enforce a “No Girls Allowed” policy. The organizers are apparently worried that their particular brand of party might be offensive to women - even unsafe! So, of course, the logical conclusion would be to bar female attendance in the best interests of everybody.
As Lesley at Two Whole Cakes points out, the...
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June 2011
2 posts
"spectacular vancouver conquers itself" - tristan... →
A much more intelligent take on spectacle, mediation and the ideology of the riot. Good stuff.
letitallbe:
Last bit of post-riot analysis I’m willing to deal with today.
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In defense of the widespread rioting in Vancouver.
I am pro-riot. Based on the Facebook statuses I’m reading and the admonitions from the news anchors I’m watching, I guess this is a bit of a contentious position. I’d love to explain why I’m pro-riot, but it’s going to take a while.
Are you ready?
Here we go.
I don’t think rioting is an understandable response to something as trivial as simply losing a...
March 2011
2 posts
The best Franz Kafka joke of the evening.
Q: Why did Franz Kafka cross the road?
A: An unaddressed letter told him he did not correctly fill out his chicken accreditation forms.
(source)
January 2011
2 posts
Tron Thoughts
In the frame for Tron Legacy — the bit that takes place in the “real world” — our hero is an anarchistic troublemaker that hacks into his own software company to release its flagship product for free across the internet. Our villains are the comically greedy board members that want to charge excessive and unfair prices for said flagship product.
So it’s safe to say...
December 2010
1 post
Epic Pooh
Michael Moorcock wrote an essay in 1989 called “Epic Pooh,” which likens Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy to a nursery tale ripe with conservative ideology. I read it today, and was shocked at how he manages to give voice to what was previously simply just a vaguely embarrassing and ill-defined notion of “dislike” which I harboured against the series.
Here are...
November 2010
2 posts
“The role of gender in society is the most complicated thing I’ve ever spent a...”
– Randal @ The XKCD Blag.
It’s not often you get a science geek thinking about gender identities… But it turns out they have some pretty good ideas when they do.
October 2010
2 posts
“All of that being said, I wouldn’t mind terribly if Whoopi Goldberg and Joy...”
– Videogum
“Futurists and sci-fi writers talk about a “post-scarcity” society,...”
– Cracked
September 2010
9 posts
“The discourse of masculinity found within conservative religious movements, such...”
– Amy Schindler
“I think I just like seeing the best in humanity. If you believe in the inherent...”
– Kat Banyard, speaking to The Guardian, via Miss World. (via letitallbe)
Yessssss…
“The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a...”
– Carl Sagan
