Weekend Reads 9/23/17

Gamergate is never going away

“So, there's a lot of people saying I'm not qualified to do my job, and then it escalates to ‘I should go fuck myself,’ ‘you're shit,’ ‘how can you be paid to play games,’ and ‘you should go kill yourself,’” Takahasi told The Outline. “Fortunately, it's never gotten worse than that.”

What Should You Do When Your Church Does Not Condemn Hatred?

The fact is, they have lost much of the youth — sociologists have identified the culture wars as a causal factor in the rise of the nones, now some 20 percent of the U.S. population — and I want them to know it. I want them to know why.

We Finally Know Why Birds Are So Freakishly Smart

The parrot, for example, has as many neurons in its walnut-sized brain as the macaque monkey, which has a larger brain about the size of a lemon.—But by packing these neurons in such a dense fashion, birds have been endowed with higher cognitive power per pound than mammals.

Harvey and Irma aren’t natural disasters. They’re climate change disasters.

Lurking behind the horrific scenes of water rising above rooftops along swollen Texas bayous and palm trees snapping in front of battered beachfront condos is this stark reality: Climate change doesn’t "cause" disasters like this, but it most certainly is making them worse.