FRIDAY IS MUSIC DAY
In Utero was vastly superiour to Nevermind and if you disagree you’re just a big dumb butthead.
Am I only going to post bands with dead lead singers? Time will tell…
We’ve always been at war with Iran
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16501566
Apparently it’s really hazardous to be an Iranian nuclear scientist.
Just try to keep these incidents in mind when the next POTUS begins a push to go to a boots-on-the-ground war in yet another predominantly Muslim country.
kill all bankers
Anytime you feel like arguing against your cranky old uncle who says “Those damn banks make all this shit too complicated on purpose, just so they can screw us,” read this first.
The most galling part of the story is that the “fines” claimed by Visa and Mastercard were part of a fine-print arrangement that is virtually impossible for merchants to learn about, much less defend against. If you want to have a restaurant, you must allow credit card charges — but if you allow credit card charges, you have to sign, sight unseen, an agreement that says you can be fined tens of thousands of dollars every time a credit card firm thinks your security procedures are bad:
P.S. Matt Taibbi is a disgusting sexist idiot. Great financial reporting, though.
what’s racist, precious
One of the best reasons that Obama-supporting liberals have come up with to discredit Ron Paul as a serious presidential contender is the fact that- *gasp* -he might be a racist!
Obama is conducting civilian-slaughtering drone campaigns in several countries at once, going so far as to murder an American citizen and his teenage son whose crimes seem to be Criticizing America While Muslim. Americans are out there conducting terror campaigns against people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, (most likely) Iran, and who knows where else. You know where you don’t see drone strikes happening? The United Kingdom. Sweden. Norway. Germany. Australia.
Ron Paul probably is a racist, based, if nothing else, on him being an old white man from Texas. But so is the President. The person who sits in the Oval Office is the leader of a global empire hellbent on showcasing aggressive military intervention in the Middle East. Voting Ron Paul won’t change that, but neither will voting Obama.
things idiot nerd dudes do
http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/o3xvm/my_friend_found_a_camera_washed_up_on_the_beach/c3ea2wh
1) Refer to women as “females”
2) Whine about PC GONE MAD, I TELL YOU
3) Passive aggressively make spambots to “inform” people who are getting called out by the only decent community in the stinking, reeking cesspit also known as Reddit
4) Feed into the bullshit strawman fantasy whereby whiny-ass internet dorkwad dudes tell each other than Feminism is all about, like, thoughtcrimes, mannnnnn
That’s the main thing for me, that these jagoff turdlords try to act like their FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS have been abridged when you call them out for being disgusting or creepy, or they go even further like Captain Crappypants up there and accuse you of policing their very thoughts. They usually couch their defense in terms like “biology”, “hard-wired”, “evolved”, and other evo-psych nonsense to justify why they act like slobbering jackals anytime someone commits the crime of being a woman on the internet.
It totally ignores the fact that most feminists would probably be totally ok with the huge first step of sexist idiots just keeping it in their pants- think whatever the hell you want to think, but have the good sense and common decency to keep it to yourself.
Nobody cares what’s going through your teenage dipshit brain– so just shut the fuck up about it.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one. “I’m a vegan/vegetarian (for political/ethical reasons), but
- I don’t care whether or not anyone else is.”
- I’m not, like, militant or anything.”
- I can take a joke about killing/eating animals.”
- getting angry about speciesism just Hurts the Cause.”
- it’s not necessarily a political issue.”
- I’m not preachy about it.”
And so on.
I have heard variations on all of these statements from people who write and fight uncompromisingly to end patriarchy, racism, imperialism, ableism, and other injustices in the world. People who (otherwise) understand that everything is political and all issues are interconnected. People who refuse to be silenced by threats of stalking, injury, rape, and death. People who are regularly ‘preachy’ in the most inspiring and badass ways.
Why is veg*nism different? Why is it Right and Good to refuse to compromise on other matters of justice, but refusing to compromise on speciesism and mass slaughter is self-righteous and extremist? I’m not posing these questions because I’m interested in anyone’s personal opinions, by the way. In this little corner of the internet, the legitimacy and urgency of veganism is not open for debate.
Ultimately, I’m not going to ask y’all to start being ‘preachy’ about veg*nism, though that would be awesome and ideologically consistent and whatnot. All I’m asking is that you cut out the appeasing bullshit double-standard that is “I’m a veg*n, but…” whenever someone else treats it like the political and ethical issue it actually is.
music for your friday
“islamist” is a bullshit word
[Edit: Important update, see comments below.]
Islamist. You’ll hear this word a lot lately, when idiots talk about new political parties and governments settling in in countries like Libya, Egypt, so on and so forth. As far as I can gather, it means “a person or political party who governs or legislates based on religious customs and precepts of Islam.” It’s total fucking bullshit.
Not because there are not people who fit this definition, because there almost certainly are. That religious people will govern according to their religion is tautological. It’s bullshit because it’s seen as some oogedy-boogedy brown people bullshit, as if it’s something inherent about how those dumb uncivilized brown folk run their countries. There’s no comparative term for Westerners, at least that I can find. We do have the term Zionist, but it hardly carries the same connotation. We don’t consider George W Bush to have been a “Christianist”, even though he distinctly invoked the divine when discussing his motivation for foreign (and domestic!) policy decisions. Not that W was even special! Search through the speeches of any President, Prime Minister, or various legislators in the West over the last, oh, 3 decades, and you’ll see they’re rife with allusion to divine will and Christian principles. I mean, fuck, you can’t even run for office in the US unless you’re explicitly and devoutly Christian.
But don’t you dare imply that Western Christians govern based on decrees what come from a fella in a black robe and white collar, ’cause that’s just silly.
This quote right here.
[I]t’s the consequence of a sexist culture, in which any time a woman shows her face or opens her mouth in public, whatever point she wanted to make stands to be delayed by a referendum on her fuckability.
This Rebecca Watson post being the post that that post is about. Only the freshest presses here at TFFP, folks.
vegan recipe time yay!
I want to share one of my absolute favorite vegan recipes. It’s amazingly versatile, fairly easy to make, and could be used on carnivores, as long as they don’t have cashew allergies. It’s a cashew “cheese” sauce for pasta dishes, made primarily from cashews, nutritional yeast, milk and oil.
http://epicureanvegan.com/2010/05/23/creamy-macaroni-and-cashew-cheese/
INGREDIENTS:
1-1/4 C raw cashews
1/2 C nutritional yeast
2 tsp onion powder
1 to 2 tsp salt, to taste
1 tsp garlic powder
1/8 tsp white pepper
3-1/2 C nondairy milk
3 Tbs cornstarch
1/2 C canola oil
1/4 C light (yellow or white) miso
2 Tbs lemon juice
12-16oz macaroni, cooked (I used about 16 ounces of both small shells and rotini)
I added 1-1/2 tsp of truffle oil, but it’s optional (I recommend it)!
Sometimes I increase the ingredients by about 50% to make a few jars’ worth of sauce, and that way I have lots of leftover I can experiment with. It keeps fairly well in the fridge if sealed in a nice tight container. Last time I think I finally used the last of it on the 5th day, and it was still good to go. If you do go for bulk, I’d recommend having a nice big food processor, cause mine was just about to bubble up over the sides and center. Also, you’ll want to use a large pot instead of a saucepan when you make the milk/oil emulsion.
DIRECTIONS:
Place cashews in a large-sized bowl of the food processor and finely grind–just don’t let the cashews turn to a paste. Add nutritional yeast, onion powder, salt, garlic powder, and white pepper. Pulse three more times to blend in spices.
In a heavy saucepan, combine milk, cornstarch and oil(s). Bring to a simmer over high heat. Decrease heat to low-medium, cover and simmer, stirring occasionally for 10 minutes, or until cornstarch dissolves.
With the food processor running, gradually add milk/oil mixture to cashew/nutritional yeast mixture. Blend for 2 minutes or until smooth and creamy. Next blend in miso and lemon juice.
Combine cashew cheese with macaroni noodles and serve. You may also bake it: Preheat oven to 325 and place macaroni mixture in a 8 or 9″ square baking dish (I recommend a 9″x13″ one). Cover and bake 20 minutes. Uncover and sprinkle with 1/2 C herbed bread crumbs. Continue baking, uncovered, for 15-25 minutes until topping is golden brown. (I’m going to do this with the leftovers)! Enjoy!
I’d recommend against using soymilk, as the last time I tried this with soymilk the soy flavor just completely overpowered everything else. I have that problem a lot when I try to use soymilk in (heated) recipes- maybe it’s the brands of milk I use, or maybe that’s just a thing about soy, I dunno. Anyway, I have great success using almond milk in this and similar recipes. You could probably also use grain milk, though I would probably not use rice milk- too sweet.
Anyway, this stuff goes great on a macaroni for a cheesy-like side dish, or you can sauté up some chicken-type replacement foods like Quorn (though it probably won’t be vegan then, since most of those use egg whites for texture, booooo) or firm tofu and smother them in this for a main dish. Truly one of my favorites.
Read http://epicureanvegan.com/ for more amazing vegan recipes, A+++ would def. read, cook, and eat again.
what MRAs don’t get
Whiny dudes who complain about how bad men have it in this world are correct about some things. Western society does dictate that men must be tougher at all times than women, so men get tasked to do things like be the sole earner of the family income, or to perform dangerous work like law enforcement, firefighting, military combat, and construction. The thing that these Men’s Rights Activists miss is that there’s a name for the cultural paradigm that defines these gender roles, and it’s called The Patriarchy. No, that doesn’t mean that only men are responsible for its implementation and continuation- some women perpetuate it too. Some women even perpetuate it willingly! It does mean if getting rid of those rigid gender roles is your primary concern, you should feel a natural, if only conditional, alliance with other groups and activists who also want to stop the Patriarchy and the harmful gender roles it locks us all in to. Guess which group that would be!
IT STARTS WITH AN F.
a new year’s message
Just a reminder that it’s 2012, 7 billion people are still being held hostage by capitalism, the patriarchy is the dominant cultural narrative, the West is bombing brown people like it’s going out of style, tens of billions of animals are slaughtered every year for pleasure, airline food still sucks, and reddit still exists. Enjoy your New Year!
2011 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 3,800 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 3 trips to carry that many people.
I’m not going to say anything about Kim Jong-il or the DPRK
…and I wish that other people who don’t know what they’re talking about would do the same. Or at least put up a disclaimer about not actually knowing what they’re talking about. Now here is a nice, soothing image for all of you.
- Image: DPRK poster of a woman picking pomegranates. Caption reads, “More fruit through the promotion of pomiculture!” Image and translation from North Korean Posters: the David Heather Collection.
Pomiculture!
The Fivefold Path 