Monday roundup

I shrugged at the Times piece on foreign funding of think tanks. It's not entirely a non-issue, but the Norway climate change example was absurd. We should be concerned about self-censorship in deference to funders, but that's a problem everywhere.

There's only so much anyone can do to fix the world, and Do No Harm isn't a bad place to start.

The humanities matter.

Sulfur-burning volcanoes are pretty.

Amanda Marcotte's piece on Twitter trolls evokes my interactions with mom:

Why did the reaction bother me so much this time? The long weekend, spent with my boyfriend and good friends, was a reminder that my life, which is busy and social and has a lot of love in it, couldn’t be any more different than that of the lonely, bitter hag that the harassers declare I must be day in and day out. The contrast between my actual reality and what I am being told about myself all day long, every day, on Twitter stunned me. I realized it’s not enough to keep reminding myself that the harassers are speaking more about what they wish to be true than what is true. Constantly reminding yourself that you do, in fact, have it good drains the energy you have to enjoy having it so good.

Using accusations of tone policing to shut down discourse has jumped the shark.

My favorite quote ever may be John Oliver's take on the space sex geckos: “...we sent those geckos to have sex in space — not because they were easy, but because he was hard.”