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My parents were pretty conservative in their ideas about gender roles, but when necessary, my dad _could_ sew a button, iron a shirt, scramble an egg, make a bed. When the young me would come at him with things like "boys aren't supposed to cook," he'd remind me where he learned these skills - the Army - and tell me stories about Vietnam-era uniform inspections and mess hall food.

Don't get me wrong, his brand of masculinity was largely toxic, but even within the framework of his 20th century white suburban experience, he communicated to a G.I. Joe/Gulf War-inundated little boy that there is nothing gendered about basic life skills. He taught me that people should be able to take care of themselves - whether that's men with sewing kits or women with power tools. So was that a touch of progressive thinking from a man in a Rush Limbaugh tie, or was it just a worldview shaped by the hyper-independence of his trauma? I don't know, I doubt he does either, but before you give him too much credit I feel I should mention that when I was 11, he absolutely _forbade_ me from wearing tights, even if they were opaque ones for a Link-from-Legend-of-Zelda costume.

So, he wasn't perfect, he wasn't even consistent, but despite all that, his words and actions gave me a more rounded view of gender roles than most of my peers at the time. I feel like I'm a testament to the truth of this post - his casual, no-shame explanations that gender doesn't determine what kind of work a person might enjoy, or even excel at, resonated with me and informed my core beliefs. It's one of the things I'm glad I held on to, from a childhood that's otherwise necessitated a lot of therapy.

I've got a lot of optimism that Millennial parents are doing even better at it.

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How do the people that tell this story every Christmas end up on King Herod's side? I see "because Mary might have killed Jesus" thrown around all the time as an argument for why single mothers shouldn't have abortions, but after he was a fetus Jesus was also a Palestinian refugee. So why isn't "because the King of modern-day Israel might have killed Jesus" not a good enough reason to protect Palestinians?

I don't really believe the Bible, but the thing that most challenges my skepticism is that right after this story, Jesus just fucking nails America in 2025.

If the Bible is true, the Jesus that said this was a brown-skinned Palestinian refugee named Yeshua bin Yosef. Americans don't know that guy, but they sure love to claim they're doing his work.

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What does "woke" mean to you?

To me, it means knowing we've got a democracy with a killswitch (the electoral college means at any point a handful of state electors can decide the presidential election at their discretion) and an economy built on slave labor. America was just a facade of 18th century French representative democracy to start with, and then 100 years of capitulating to white southerners and robber barons from reconstruction to Barry fucking Goldwater legally codified a caste system. The Union won a civil war but then surrendered after it was over, and former-Soviet oligarchs are who actually came out on top in the Cold War.

Woke is knowing that whenever we start making noise about things that could potentially expose the rot - like campaign financing reform, a living minimum wage, education and healthcare for "have-nots" - the real power turns it into a culture war to distract and divide the working classes.

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ok forget everything else i’ve previously said on the subject - THIS is my favourite star wars behind-the-scenes story:

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The Perfect Explanation of Privilege – In One Powerful Punchline

“The Pencilsword” is a comic strip by Toby Morris, an illustrator from New Zealand. His most recent comic, “On a Plate” hits hard at the heart of the issues of concerning wealth and privilege.

How many times have you heard the “I’ve never been handed anything on a platter” argument in regard to social security and other social benefits?

Toby wrecks this argument by showing how two children can grow up, be loved and supported, and yet still have two very different outcomes.

Make sure to follow all the way to the end for the powerful punchline. This comic is an increasingly sad reality for far too many of this nation’s children and families.

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This comic is 115 years old today. This comic is older than ballpoint pens, FM radio, crossword puzzles, bras, parking meters, and stainless steel.

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at work: i could be cooking and cleaning and coding and reading and working out and weaving tapestries and playing video games and climbing a mountain and having sex and filming a movie right now yet they keep me trapped in this prison. idle hands are the devils plaything and i am being forcibly molded into his perfect conduit. i must break free, seize the day and waste not the beauty inherent to finite mortal life

at home: my one true passion upon this pointless earth is bog mummy imitation

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This is central to how the monotheistic religions oppress women, though.

Think about how the story starts - Adam is living in paradise in a perfect union with the divine, Eve shows up with a sweet little apple he can't resist, humanity is damned. The narrative again and again from there is "men are fine until a woman tempts them." Figures like Bathsheba, Delilah, and Jezebel are portrayed as beautiful temptresses that led faithful, exemplary biblical heroes to their downfall. The message is clear - to men we say "your actions aren't your fault, women are devious and will try to lead you astray." To women we say "you have a divine responsibility to regulate the libido of every man you come in contact with. If you do something to tempt a man, even accidentally, you're in as much trouble as he is." Remember, Eve was deceived by the snake in the garden, which means she didn't even know she was doing anything wrong at the time. She got thrown out right alongside Adam, who knowingly and willingly defied the rules about apples.

Since monotheism ensconces the idea of "mind crime" (that is, "sin" isn't just things you do, it can also be things you think; scriptures like Matthew 5:28 say "anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart") even just serving as the inspiration for a lustful thought is a transgression. The only reason "You wore a flattering pair of jeans? Go directly to hell." isn't in the bible is because they hadn't invented jeans yet.

So, in fundamentalist philosophy, this leads to things like wrapping women in veils and stoning 'adulteresses' while the men they 'seduce' are seen as victims. "Causing impure thoughts" is an easy goalpost to move around, too, and is used to control not only how women dress, but what they're allowed to say, where they're allowed to go, and what hobbies they're allowed to enjoy.

I've been following this lady on TikTok who runs an anti-porn account out of what I can only describe as sociological curiosity. Basically, when I first encountered her videos I sniffed out pretty quickly that she was both a) very very cishet and b) a religious conservative and listening to her talk about sex and relationships has become this fascinating window for me into how The Other Side lives.

Like one of the main conceits of her content revolves around the fact that men have to constantly fight against being overcome by lust, which is hilarious to me, someone who has read fanfiction, because acting like cishet men are somehow uniquely prone to being gooners is so deeply ignorant of how anyone outside a religious conservative community lives.

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I'm euphoric at the thought.

We need the obnoxious atheists back. I know they engineered their own destruction by being annoying and pretentious, but it has become apparent how essential to the ecosystem they were. The religious fanatics have become too bold without their natural predators. Jesus wojaks would have been torn to shreds in 2011.

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Cyrix introduces the WebPad

Wireless device provides Internet access where you are

As we hinted last week, Cyrix (Richardson, TX) stole their little piece of Comdex with the introduction of the WebPad (not the WebPal as we printed last week), a reference design put together by the Cyrix Conceptual Products Group in Colorado. This new device is built around the Cyrix MediaGX processor with embedded graphics and it's designed to provide ISPs the option of giving an access device away with Internet services. It uses QNX as an embedded operating system (though the company hastens to add that there's no reason it couldn't work with Windows CE or an embedded NT system). The WebPad relies on 2.4 GHz RF technology to connect to a base station that could be a set-top box, a PC, or a standalone base.

Cyrix also suggests a variety of Internet connection options from the readily available V.90 (56K) capabilities, to persistent connection options such as ISDN, xDSL, and cable modems. Cyrix' WebPad design comes with a charging pad and an optional USB keyboard (it has two USB ports).

Computer Chronicles - COMDEX 1998

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ily, menswear guy

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by Richard Thompson

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Four years ago, I didn't expect Joe Biden to win. He was too old, too moderate. But I held my nose and voted for him, like the DNC told me to. Trump's historically poor handling of COVID bought us a brief window of time, and Biden won. After January 6th, I said we needed to pack the courts, abolish the electoral college, prosecute traitors, mandate vaccines, subsidize higher education, and deplatform misinformation - or else Democrats would never win another election. The Biden administration did none of that, they focused on meaningless things like "creating jobs" instead.

At 2022 midterms, after the "blue wave" failed to materialize, I expected a new Democratic candidate to emerge. Obviously the DNC wouldn't be so dumb as to run Biden again after an ineffectual two years and a clear mandate from the people that they felt failed by Democrats. Yet, the next two years zipped by and Democrats did literally nothing while reproductive rights were dismantled under their noses. Never forget America lost access to abortion while a Democrat was in the White House, not a Republican. Donald Trump didn't end reproductive freedom in America, Joe Biden did, with his timidity and inaction. You chose him to represent your interests, he chose not to show up. And yet as the next two years slipped by, no one stepped forward to take his place.

By 2024, political analysts had said for years that Biden could never win a race against Trump again, but the DNC nominated him anyway. When it became obvious mid-campaign that his cognitive decline was severe, the DNC violated the democratic process and nominated a new candidate without holding a primary. A candidate that struggled to voice a single unwavering policy stance during her short campaign. Then they had the nerve to tell voters who had spent the last four years saying "defund the police" to vote for a state prosecutor. They told voters who spent the last four years saying "black lives matter" to vote for a black woman that publicly absolved Biden of his responsibility in perpetuating segregation in American schools. They told voters begging to "end the genocide" in Palestine to vote for someone that just called the people dropping bombs "allies."

Donald Trump didn't end reproductive freedom in America, Joe Biden did, with his timidity and inaction. You chose him to represent your interests, he chose not to show up.

Republicans want you to believe you're helpless. They want you to believe racism and sexism and other things you can't change are the reason Donald Trump was elected. It's not true, though, the DNC lost because they've spent the last eight years being frightened to "establish a precedent" or "incite Trump supporters" or "face legal challenges." The GOP runs on the message that America can be better, and they have a plan. To be certain, it's a terrible plan. But you don't beat fascism on a platform of "we promise not to do anything that might hurt the fascists' feelings." Americans on both side of the aisle know the system isn't working. Trump promises to tear it down and make something new. The DNC wants you to be neutral on a moving train and uphold the status quo; go to work, pay taxes, make their donors rich, and don't complain too much. Meanwhile, if they have to sacrifice a few of your rights to appease the GOP, they find that an acceptable trade-off.

Republicans want you to believe you're helpless. They want you to believe racism and sexism and other things you can't change are the reason Donald Trump was elected. It's not true..

I am disappointed we will have another four years of Cheeto Mussolini, but I can't say I really expected anything to be different if Harris had been elected. From Mueller to J6, Democrats showed us again and again they're not capable of holding criminals responsible for breaking the law. The overturn of Roe v. Wade shows us it doesn't matter if a Democrat is in the White House, the DNC isn't willing to protect Americans' constitutional rights. All it requires for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing, and the Biden administration proved the DNC has refined "doing nothing" into an art form.

America is losing - not just because Republican voters keep falling for it, but because the DNC refuses to fight back.

I don't want to be callous toward people that feel lost and afraid about a GOP supermajority, but the truth is that whatever you're scared Republicans are about to do (Project 2025, for instance) they were going to do no matter who was in the White House. Harris wasn't going to save us any more than Biden did. The one thing we can be certain of after the last eight years is that the DNC is more interested in appeasing Fox News anchors than their constituency.

I don't really know if we'll have an election in 2028. I expect by then we'll have something similar to Russian elections, where the government makes a show of allowing people to vote but the winners are decided ahead of time. We'll be past the point by then where the problems can be solved from a voting booth - Russia's goal since they started their far-right misinformation campaign in 2014. Since then America has been fighting a war - a war of propaganda, supply chain disruptions, election tampering - orchestrated by remnants of the KGB that know Russia can't defeat the West with military strength. America is losing - not just because Republican voters keep falling for it, but because the DNC refuses to fight back.

Incremental change is a privilege

However, I do know if American democracy survives the next four years, Harris is the last time I'll hold my nose and vote for someone I don't believe in. I don't think I'm alone. White middle-class Democrats take note - Harris shows a Democrat can't win an election without socialists, without queers, without leftists, without women, without blue collar workers, without people of color. The more the DNC tries to prove to Republicans they're not the party of gay blue-haired cop-hating Marxists that Fox News says they are, the more leeway they give fascists to hurt the people that need your support - the people you need showing up to the polls in order to win an election. Incremental change is a privilege; while straight white liberals pander to the middle with wishy-washy seat-filler candidates, people die.

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by Richard Thompson (October 8, 1957 – July 27, 2016)