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Cue the double entendres. Zefrank1 is here to teach us about our favorite dam-building rodent. These resourceful mammals are good at swimming, carrying things, and eating underwater. You might know about the beaver’s wood-chomping teeth, but we bet you didn’t know all the stuff that comes out of their butts.
The Awesomer
That’s the title of an article by author and friend Sarah Hoyt, in which she considers, in the light of the Roe v. Wade brouhaha, what it means – or should mean – to be a woman. Here are a few excerpts from a long, but very thought-provoking discourse.
… our bodies influence us, in health and illness far more than we wish to believe. The thinking meat is MEAT. We are creatures of flesh and blood, who think. We are not thoughts, trapped in the flesh and blood.
And if you ignore the needs and impulses of the flesh and blood, you’ll either lose your mind or your body.
And if you ignore them as a society, you end up with a lot of unhappy, confused, angry people, who can’t figure out what’s made them so unhappy.
On the whole subject of abortion, a friend said — and I don’t intellectually disagree — that we can’t force women to carry babies, because that’s evil. And that we can’t curtail women’s sex drive, or demand they curtail it, because that too is evil. Oh, and that all birth control fails eventually (which isn’t wrong, btw. Reproductive systems are far, far more complicated than we like to believe. Which I’ll revisit again, btw.)
But something at the back of my head piped up and bitched when she said that. It wasn’t a happy something, and it was an admission against interest, since I mostly believe we should make people as free as possible (my protest on abortion is that it involves two people, and the defenseless one gets killed, but that’s something else) and since I legitimately think nature is something to conquer. But what piped up in my mind was “But is that fighting against reality?”
This was brought into full bloom last night, on a facebook thread of Brad Torgersen’s, in which a guy came in guns blazing and said we needed abortion to be safe, convenient and as available as possible so women wouldn’t be “second class citizens.” Because if women are going to be fully equal, we need to eliminate the downsides of being a woman.
At which point the bitching at the back of my mind became a scream “But women are women. You can’t eliminate the downside of being a woman, without eliminating being a woman.”
. . .
… we are not brains, or minds, in a vacuum. We’re creatures of flesh and blood. And contra the “there’s no difference” crowd, you need only have a rudimentary knowledge of biology to know your brain, your tissues, everything were formed differently according to your sex. I don’t remember and am not in the mood to go look it up, but you start differentiating at a ridiculously early gestational point, for sure before two weeks. After that the hormone baths in utero are different, and your development is markedly different.
No, you don’t know what it’s like to be the other sex. No one does. Yes, we’re way more different than our superficial outward appearance would indicate. The longer I live the more aware I become that perhaps Heinlein was right about us really being different species who are merely symbiotic.
So when making women “not second class citizens” requires making them as free from concerns about getting pregnant as men…. are we in actual fact at war with the very fact that there are women; that women are unique and have different capabilities and different downfalls? … Whether you consider getting pregnant a liability or a magic power, it is still an integral part of being a woman.
. . .
It seems to be worth it as a woman you have to pretend to be a male.
The push is on constantly. You’re sneered at for writing or reading romance, because it’s a thing women do. (Yes, men do it too, but the crossover on that is minuscule.) And now a lot of movies, including those billed as romantic comedy are consciously eliminating the Happily Ever After. Instead the woman decides to go off and have a career, or “learn to love myself.”
And I come back again to: Why can’t women be women? Why is it that performing the most basic and distinctive function of being female is considered being a second class citizen? Why are we all supposed to act like men?
. . .
Arguably civilization came about because women didn’t want to put out all the time and for everyone. If Ogg wanted Morga to put out, he had to make sure he was a good hunter, and could make the spears to make himself so. And no sleeping around with everyone, all the time, because he had to provide for Morga and their kids. In return, he had the assurance that Morga also wasn’t sleeping around, and their kids were THEIRS.
If women sleep around as much as men, the entire world becomes a giant gay-bathhouse. And kids are an inconvenience, or a “punishment.” Stop me when this sounds familiar.
There’s much more at the link. Highly recommended reading.
These are, of course, the points that radical feminists either deny outright, or reject with contempt, or simply ignore (usually because they have no answer to them). Our natures as men or women are fundamental to who we are, how we respond to external stimuli, our roles in society, and so on. Any variation on those basics tends to be only skin deep, and only effective in a society that has enough artificial supports to make them possible.
I’m here to tell you from long and (sometimes bitter) experience: when things go badly wrong, through disaster, war, or any other crisis; when the social norms to which we’re accustomed are sloughed off because there’s no time or energy or infrastructure to support them any longer; the "bad old days" of society return with a vengeance. Men are once again valued for their physical strength, their willingness to defend those weaker than themselves, and their ability to provide food, clothing and shelter. Women are once again valued for their capability to nurture, to make a house into a home, to be the heart of the family rather than its head. This happens everywhere, whenever circumstances require it. It’s not strange, it’s not unusual – it’s normal. It’s not a matter of patriarchy or matriarchy, or anything in between. It’s the cold, hard reality of life when it’s pared down to its essentials, without any of the luxuries and social trappings that modern society uses as a fig-leaf to disguise the reality of men and women and their complementary roles as human beings.
Go read Sarah’s article in full, and think about it. It’s worth your time.
Peter
Bayou Renaissance Man
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FLAMETHROWER LEVEL 100 🔥
Not the Bee
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Ladies and gentlemen, Buddy Brown and his new hit single, "Everything’s Gay in June":
Not the Bee
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If you split a wheel in half, you shouldn’t still be able to ride on it, right? Well, watch this video from The Q, in which he cut two bike wheels and tires down the middle, connected them with a long chain and positioned them so one half is always touching the ground. Miraculously, the bike rides just fine.
The Awesomer
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G Suite (formerly Google Workspace) has shut down its free plans—you can no longer pay for a domain name and use Google’s business email for free. This move isn’t really going to bother big organizations much, as they’re all on paid tiers already, but small business owners or individuals using G Suite will be forced to pay or look for free alternatives.
For most people, the smoothest transition will be to a paid G Suite account. You won’t have to migrate your data anywhere as long as you can spend a minimum of $6 per user per month. For this price, you can use 30GB of cloud storage, Gmail with your own domain, and have video meetings with up to 100 participants. If nothing else, you can consider paying for G Suite as a stopgap measure until you figure out a better alternative.
Microsoft’s suite of business apps is a direct replacement for G Suite. Its plans start at $6 per user per month, but you’ll have to spend about twice that much if you want both email and Office apps on desktop. Microsoft offers 50GB of space per inbox and 1TB of OneDrive storage, which is more than G Suite’s 30GB. Having said that, Microsoft 365 for Business is still a fairly pricey offering overall. Google Docs, Sheets, and other G Suite apps are included for free in Google’s plan, which makes Microsoft 365 look a lot more expensive.
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Zoho Workplace offers most of G Suite’s features at a much lower price. It lets you use your own domain for emails with 5GB of space for free with no advertising. You can set up an organization on Zoho and invite up to five users to this organization at no cost. There’s a 25MB limit on attachments, but the pricing makes that feel bearable.
If you’re looking for a free alternative to G Suite, it doesn’t get much better than this. You can visit the Zoho Mail pricing page and scroll down to the Forever Free Plan. If you add more than five users, Zoho Mail’s plans start at $1 per user per month (paid annually). The 50GB inbox plan costs $4 per user per month, so it’s cheaper than G Suite and Microsoft 365 for Business.
For those who want a complete office suite to go with their business email, Zoho Workplace is a decent alternative. It has email, cloud storage, video meetings, a Slack alternative, and office apps, at a starting price of $3 per user per month.
If your G Suite organization consists of one person, you may consider using a custom domain with iCloud’s email service. The iCloud+ plan costs $1 per month for up to 50GB of cloud storage, and it allows you to use a custom domain for your emails.
iCloud+ is not targeted at businesses, so you shouldn’t use this service to manage multiple users in an organization. For individuals, you have access to both iCloud email, as well as Apple’s already-free office apps, such as Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Document collaboration works well in Apple’s office apps, too.
Having said that, it’s best to note the quirks of iCloud+. You ideally don’t want to use this if you have non-Apple devices in your workflow because Apple’s support for Windows and Android devices is flaky at best. Also, iCloud’s email is serviceable, but we’ve heard several complaints about emails not showing up in the inbox and an overly aggressive spam filter.
ProtonMail offers end-to-end encryption on your emails, which means the contents of your emails cannot be read by the email service provider. If you’re looking for a more private alternative to G Suite, ProtonMail’s free tier could be worth trying out.
Its paid plans start at about $4 per month, which gives you 15GB of space, support for your own domain for emails, and up to 10 email addresses. ProtonMail doesn’t have an office suite built in, but you can use its cloud storage service called Proton Drive if you opt for the most expensive plan at about $10 per month.
You should be aware that even if you use an end-to-end encrypted email service, the encryption is valid only if you send email to others who use a similar level of protection. If you email a Gmail user from ProtonMail, the encryption falters because Gmail doesn’t encrypt emails on its service.
If you are looking for a Google Docs alternative with better security, look no further than CryptPad, an end-to-end encrypted collaborative office suite. The free tier lets you use up to 1GB of storage space and it has alternatives to Google Docs and Sheets, along with a few other tools. As long as you don’t plan to store large files here, the free tier should be good enough to store tons of documents. If you’re ready to start paying, plans start at about $5 per month for 5GB of storage.
There are several decent options for those who want an email service that isn’t owned by Google. Here’s a quick list of the best options:
Lifehacker
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With Thor: Love and Thunder just two weeks away, you might have a strong desire to stop watching new footage. You’re going to see the film. Maybe you already have tickets. Do you really want to see more clips that could spoil the action, jokes, and story writer-director Taika Waititi has in store?
For some of us, the answer is “No.” For others though, the answer is “Oh hell yes, give me everything.” This post is for those people. A brand new mini-trailer has just dropped for the fourth Thor film, starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tessa Thompson, and Christian Bale, and it reveals that Love and Thunder shares some important DNA with the previous Thor film, Ragnarok. Take a look.
You might remember in Ragnarok, Thor puts together “The Revengers,” a team he hopes can band together to defeat his sister, Hela. It was Thor, Hulk, Valkyrie, and Loki, with Korg and his friends joining up soon after. Well, in Love and Thunder, we now know that he’s building a new team. Korg and Valkyrie remain but now there’s also Jane Foster as the Mighty Thor, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and some mythical goats.
Knowing Waititi though, you get the sense this is a bit of a fake-out. Would he really go back and do the same type of thing two times in a row? Thor might, which is probably the driving force here, but Waititi will almost certainly subvert it in some way. We’re anxious to find out if we’re right.
This clip also makes us wonder just how much are the Guardians of the Galaxy in this film? They’re at the beginning, we’re guessing, because that’s the last time we saw Thor, but do they come back for the final act to face Gorr? Seems plausible. In fact, and I’m just riffing here, but one would guess if Thor: Love and Thunder has any credit scenes, the journey of the Guardians is likely to be a focus. Maybe even a Gamora or Adam Warlock tease?
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Oh, and yes, that is a badass Jean Claude Van-Damme homage there with Thor doing the splits. It fits in perfectly with the bright, ‘80s vibe Thor: Love and Thunder is going for. It’s out July 8.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel and Star Wars releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
Gizmodo
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There’s a thrilling scene in one of the Captain America movies where a heavily-armored SUV driven by Nick Fury comes under attack. The vehicle withstands an incredible amount of damage.
There’s a terrifying scene from last year, where a failed heist in South Africa yielded real-life footage of an armored 70 Series Toyota Land Cruiser coming under fire. It, too, withstood an incredible amount of damage, though not the Marvel-movie level.
Just how much punishment could a real-world armored SUV take? Canadian firm Inkas Armored Vehicle Manufacturing should know, as they specialize in the design and production of armored vehicles for embassies, paramilitary groups, law enforcement agencies, executive protection companies, security companies and civilians.
This month Inkas released footage of the insane testing done to certify one of their modified Land Cruiser 300s. To design effective ballistic and blast protection, this is what their test mules are subjected to—a grenade on the roof, a grenade beneath the car, land mines, 15kg of dynamite, nearly 800 rounds fired by assault rifles:
"In order to obtain the certification, the armored Land Cruiser 300 endured extensive ballistic testing, which specifically targeted the potential points of failure where the vehicle would be most susceptible to penetration during an attack. The INKAS Armored Land Cruiser successfully proved its reliability in the field – withstanding over 780 rounds of ammunition from various calibre firearms, 6 roof-level hand grenades (DM51), 4 underbody hand grenades (DM51), 2 land mines (DM31) as well as a 15kg TNT (equivalent) explosion from a 2 meter distance."
Core77
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In a way, the staff on The Office are kind of like the Minions from Despicable Me. They each have a quirky personality, and they all work for an annoying boss played by Steve Carrell. To celebrate the release of the new movie Minions: Rise of Gru, Illumination Entertainment released this special remake of The Office’s opening credits.
The Awesomer
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Kyle Rittenhouse, our favorite rapscallion, surveyed the land and thought about how next to trigger the left and the media (but I repeat myself). They are still upset he was found not guilty of first-degree murder by acting in self-defense against a pedophile. If he comments on gas prices, they can’t calm down. But this new venture? Young Kyle is getting into the video game industry. It’s a shooting game. A turkey shooting game. And someone wrote the words "fake news" on the side of the turkeys.
You hunt fake news turkeys. Kyle Rittenhouse developed a video game that allows you to hunt fake news turkeys as Kyle Rittenhouse.
Kyle Rittenhouse’s Turkey Shoot OFFICIAL GAME
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"The media is nothing but a bunch of turkeys with nothing better to do than push their lying agenda and destroy innocent people’s lives. […] Help me fund the lawsuits to stop these fake news turkeys."
You can preorder at RittenhouseGame.com. It’s to raise money for his Media Accountability Project so the defamation lawsuit can finally begin.
Kyle is working with Mint Studios. CEO Mint Chip — I’m trusting the Washington Examiner that’s his real name — felt the need step in after he saw what the media did to Rittenhouse. "Before the trial, you couldn’t even mention his name in a positive manner on social media without getting banned. The truth literally got you suspended. We fight for the truth."
Unfortunately, it does not look like the turkeys are named after our favorite fake news personalities. No Gobbles Stelter or Whoopi Goldfowl. Also, due to Kyle’s young age, he wouldn’t know to recreate the WKRP Turkey Drop. Only, where you need to stop the White House from bombarding a MAGA rally with Iive turkeys.
Kyle Rittenhouse is hunting fake news in a video game. The kids got some stones. I’ll give him that.
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Kyle Rittenhouse’s Rifle Gets Shredded: A Tribute | Louder With Crowder
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Louder With Crowder