And I totally see where *you* are coming from; as a man, I was never personally looking to Katniss to counter social attitudes that affected me. It's a tough call, and I think Collins got overwhelmed by her need to pound home that war can destroy even the strongest. It reminds me in ways of some of the narratives of…

I saw it completely differently, and so I kind of loved Mockingjay. Mockingjay is about how war destroys everyone. There are no happy warriors, only shattered shells, people haunted by memories of the horrors they've seen and accomplished. Mockingjay is all that stuff about war that we don't want to pay attention to…

I'm just sick of bigots. Let 'em lose all the gay people, smart women and immigrants and then they'll see what kind of a collapsed economy they're left with. Meanwhile we'll reap the benefits. In truth, Dweeze's point is well taken and that's the reason not to take my advice here, but I'm fed up to here with…

How about gay people don't move to those states which deny them rights, and as a result those states lose the economic benefits of that workforce. I know, I know, it's not Texans' fault that they're born there, alas.

It's a coded British racist insult against people with perceived Irish heritage, from back when being racist against Irish people was a thing. What's interesting is that it's sort of evolved in British culture to the point where they feel like red-headed people are supposed to be suspicious and untrustworthy but they…

Go read the coverage in the Jewish Week or the Jewish Daily Forward. A lot of these schools are indeed flouting the minimum state requirements (including teaching English), but the state of NY is turning a blind eye because the haredi are a powerful voting bloc.

Possibly because a non-Haredi photographer was taking a picture of them. Culturally, they're extremely unfriendly to outsiders.

I understand you're discussing both places, but the headline and photo don't fit, as this is obviously Brooklyn. There *are* pictures of ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods in Israel ...

There's a lot of weird social trends in Iceland, as you would expect from an extremely isolated country the population of Providence, Rhode Island with a creepy/adorable obsession with family histories and racial purity.

I have a copy of an Icelandic porn magazine from about '03, but it was a lark amongst a bunch of self-proclaimed alternative culture types. It's extremely difficult to make porn in Iceland, because porn relies on a certain level of anonymity, and NOBODY is anonymous in Iceland.

Speaking as a father, I have a very nice video of a very pregnant lady smiling wanly, and I also have a very nice video of a very tiny baby being measured on a scale while formerly pregnant lady smiles exhaustedly. What happened in between, nobody really needs to remember.

The guy has a spectacularly ambivalent relationship with his schlong. It doesn't actually help him get chicks, for anatomical reasons. He wants to be an actor, but isn't successful, except that everyone tells him he could be super-famous for waving his dick around, which he seems to alternately walk towards and then…

Dude, you're depressed, and you have a lot of shit to work out that's between you and you. You need to spend a lot of time with you. That has to be your focus. These women, well, maybe they want to 'fix' you or something, but they're a distraction - a well-meaning distraction, but a distraction nonetheless. You have…

Well, obviously, but the concept of lashon hara is generally enforced in these communities in a false way. It isn't lashon hara to persecute a girl for having stockings that aren't opaque enough, but it's lashon hara to take seriously accusations against an unlicensed therapist who locks himself in his office with…

Actually, these guys don't like Muslims any less than they like anyone else who isn't them. They consider goyim to be irrelevant, and Muslims just to be lumped under goyim. They save their real hate, if you want to believe this, for the Jews who are less Jewish than they are.

They don't usually. These are very insular groups, and they're tattling on people they know. They generally assume strangers who are dressed weirdly are outsiders, and ignore them.

It's far worse in Brooklyn, because the entire political establishment here lives in terror of the black-hats' bloc voting. Go read the Jewish Week, the Jewish Daily Forward and FailedMessiah.com if you want to see some good investigative reporting on how rotten to the core this community is.

I couldn't agree more. They are hideous, hidebound misogynists living in some perverse fantasy of a self-inflicted 18th century ghetto unquestioningly following cultlike leaders.

I just have trouble believing these trolls are real people. Like, there are so many of them on the Internet, but I've never met one of these particular assholes in real life. Which means that maybe the terror of actually having to react around real people may keep them under control. And obviously, they won't get…

Drunk Laura Beck showed up on Jezebel to write about Diane Keaton, who she wants to marry but wouldn't legally be permitted to do so because the registrar would be, like, uh, who's this "Keeton" person?