It’s the end of the week, and TGIFF, you B’s. Maybe it’s just the unseasonably warm weather here in Montana, but I can’t help but feel that a veil is falling away. Ours is an impressively euphemistic society, where bitter spite goes dressed in the robes of parliamentary procedure and cold depredation smiles warmly from the podium. Unlike a lie, though, the truth is there whether you’re talking about it or not, and like the gay director of your church camp, it will eventually out itself. This week was a surprisingly good one for calling things by their right names, to the point that even our usually gloomy Friday links have taken on the rosy glow of…god, I can’t think of the word. What’s that thing that’s the opposite of despair? You know, the thing that rich charlatans laugh at? I know it’s a political strategy of some sort, but I feel like it has an archaic definition, too. Ah, well—I’m sure I’ll think of it, and if I never do I’ll still have consumer electronics. In the meantime, enjoy this week’s link roundup, in which a mighty herd of telling it like it is goes sweeping across the nation, paradoxically leaving a little less bullshit in its wake.