Yes. It was used from late Medieval times to portray the Roma as “Egyptians,” and therefore as outsiders who don’t belong in Europe. Made it much easier to persecute them.

It’s terrifying. I can’t imagine someone seeing that and thinking “Yes, this is festive.”

“Prenup!”

The threat of this is hitting us getting STEM PhDs really hard. Every single PhD researcher in science I’ve heard of is on a waived tuition progeam. I live on a$30k/year stipend, and “tuition” at an Ivy+ is over $50k/year. Including some other bits and bobs, the total tax liability would be calculated as though I made…

Sec of Education Betsy DeVos wants you drowning in student loan debt. Her family is the bank/collection agency for those loans!

Hidden in the “tax reform” proposals is this turd nugget, which I believe is of interest to many readers here: those doing POST GRADUATE DEGREES by teaching, and being compensated with tuition reduction or waiver, will now be taxed on the value of that tuition. Another shameful attack on the highly educated (or…

I think you’re taking my ‘it is what it is’ too literally, or perhaps not literally enough.

I described toxic masculinity as the devil to my mother today. In that not everyone who displays it is 100% evil, but if you’re a man especially sometimes that shit will whisper in your ear and drive you to do evil things.

I have a close friend (gay man) who worked at a store in LA when he was in college in the 1990's. He told me a story years ago (way before any of this was in the news) that he is NOT a fan of George Takei because George came into the store once and hit on him in a really aggressive way. I don’t know exactly what…

But honestly, I’m still really sad about Alan Rickman

I think what we’re seeing here — which is positive — is how toxic masculinity, patriarchy, etc works. Even ‘the good guys’ participate because that’s what it is. That’s the water, you know? The air? The things we take for granted.

I think this seems like a pretty likely take on it. It’s too bad that he couldn’t admit that he probably fucked up, somewhere along the line, even if he doesn’t remember it.

I think people often have a hard time separating “I don’t want to believe this” from “this isn’t true.” I don’t want to believe this. Hell, I didn’t want to believe it about Cosby back when his first accusers spoke up.

If he did it, I don’t doubt he doesn’t remember it. It goes back to the imbalance of interactions between celebrities and non-celebrities, and how significant those moments are in each party’s life. For Takei, this was just another man. For the accuser, it was Sulu from fucking Star Trek. The encounter probably…

Remember when we hated 2016 for killing all the famous people we loved? Good times, man.

As you said yourself, not long on that logic stuff.

I’m as annoyed with the double-standards when it comes to race as the next white guy (e.g. qualified university applicants being rejected because they aren’t a minority)