A nasty item out of Brighton:

A senior lecturer convicted of beating a former student he was in a relationship with was allowed to continue teaching, despite the protests of his traumatised victim.

Dr Lee Salter, a media and communications lecturer at the University of Sussex, remains employed by the institution after being found guilty of assaulting Allison Smith, a 24-year-old student he met during an induction day at the university.

He was convicted on July 13th.

Ms Smith had been punched in the face, knocked out and stamped on, and said she had salt poured into her eyes and ears.

Pedagogy at its finest.

Dr Salter was charged on 20 June and, despite repeated complaints made to the

BuzzFeed has a long piece about how thoroughly for what a long time Twitter has failed to do anything about Twitter harassment.

[H]arassment on Twitter is rampant — so much so that it has become a primary destination for trolls and hate groups. So much so that its CEO declared, “We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years.” So much so that numeroushigh-profileusershavequittheservice, citing it as an unsafe space. Today, Twitter is a well-known hunting ground for women and people of color, who are targeted by neo-Nazis, racists, misogynists, and trolls, often just for showing up. Just this summer,

I’m hoping this post is off-the-charts atypical. It’s from a transgender dating site, TransSingle. The post is titled Why Get A Transgender Girlfriend.

The modern cis dating market is almost a Mad-Max Thunder Dome dystopia. Anyone who has been in the cis dating market for some time finds to his dismay that cis-women in the modern dating market have more issues than Time magazine. It is a ruthless winner-takes-all-situation. Cis-women are hyper judgmental beings, and men have been reduced to being circus performers who have to constantly entertain the cis-women non-stop or face rejection.

Wow. Talk about Assumed Male.

It starts with the cis dating market, as if the subject is dating from all points of view, but then … Read the rest

Orac found some choice photos of Phelps with the cupping in progress.

https://www.instagram.com/p/7djtuUyx7j/

And there’s Natalie Coughlin – saying it hurts a lot. Benign?

Laughing because it hurts so bad. Gonna leave a mark! #AthleteLife

A photo posted by Natalie Coughlin (@nataliecoughlin) on Dec 9, 2015 at 11:02am PST

And here she is looking downright scalded:

Gee, I hope my #GoldenGoggles dress is open-backed.

A photo posted by Natalie Coughlin (@nataliecoughlin) on Nov 20, 2013 at 3:54pm PST

Orac also shares a photo of cupping bruises turned necrotic.… Read the rest

Guest post by Bruce Everett.

It’s a peculiar thing, watching people who slowly slide towards fascism without realizing it. Their fear of humiliation from mostly imaginary threats is a given, but what’s really striking is how a number of them – even the ones with university educations – have a propensity to call out really odd targets as being fascists, in a way totally divorced from the facts of 20th century history.

Left-wing unionists aren’t perfect, and some of them can be authoritarian and down right nasty. But even when they are authoritarian, they aren’t fascists – they can’t be.

Ditto with calling feminists “fascist”. Fascism has always, without exception, on one way or another, positioned women as second class … Read the rest

Reeves Wiedeman, who wrote a long profile of Simone Biles for the New Yorker, says how the tv coverage of women’s gymnastics is shit – it’s that it avoids explaining the technicalities to focus on drama instead, pretty much on the grounds that that’s what the laydeez want, because we’re stupid.

In defending its coverage of gymnastics and other Olympic sports, NBC often falls back on the fact that more women than men watch the Olympics, which the network believes should affect the way it covers the events. “They’re less interested in the result and more interested in the journey,” John Miller, NBC’s chief marketing officer for the Olympics, said last month, explaining the network’s coverage. “It’s sort of like

Max Bearak at the Washington Post on the dreadful situation in Baluchistan:

Baluchistan is a place that desperately needs lawyers.

Pakistan’s largest province by area, it is the home of a decades-old separatist insurgency, fueled by real grievances over neglect and lack of political representation. It is also increasingly the target of Sunni extremists, who bomb and kill its Shiite minorities. What leaders the province has are widely considered corrupt. Dozens of local journalists have been kidnapped in the past few years. It is nearly impossible for foreign reporters to enter Baluchistan. Lawyers are almost all that give the province a semblance of justice.

And now a large percentage of them have been slaughtered.

They were packed into

Inspire posted on Facebook:

Yesterday after the conviction of Tanveer Ahmed who murdered Asad Shah, Bradford Council of Mosques told BBC Newsnight that the Government should reintroduce blasphemy law in the UK as “faith communities have the right not to be offended.”

We at Inspire firmly disagree and would oppose any attempt to bring back any kind of blasphemy law. There is no right not to be offended. There is is however the right to free expression and freedom of religion.

I do wish someone could disabuse religious “communities” of that fatuous idea. They don’t have any “right not to be offended” in the sense they’re using there – the sense that would justify a blasphemy law. There … Read the rest

And while we’re on the subject of more or less veiled or implied or ambiguous threats – Peter Walker shared this cuddly story about a guy who “monitored” cops at a Portland (Oregon) precinct for months, from a car that held enough weapons and ammunition to take down a platoon.

A 39-year-old man who police describe as a “self-proclaimed Constitutionalist” was arrested Sunday with a cache of weapons.

Officers first noticed Eric Eugene Crowl parked outside Portland Police Bureau’s East Precinct in April. He would reportedly sit in his gray Chevrolet Tahoe and film police officers as they entered and left the building during shift changes, police said.

He also had a police scanner in his car, according to

I’d forgotten this. Sarah Palin’s cross-hairs on political “enemies” – one of whom was Gabby Giffords, who was shot in the head days later.

… Read the rest

Two of the worst guys in the world have patched up their quarrel. Putin and Erdoğan are besties again.

What brought the two he-men back together?

[A]fter the 15 July coup attempt in Turkey, Mr Putin expressed support for Mr Erdogan. He did not criticise Mr Erdogan’s crackdown on political opponents and purge of alleged “plotters” in state institutions.

The BBC’s Sarah Rainsford says Russia is keen to capitalise on Turkey’s cooling relations with the West following the failed coup.

Mr Erdogan was angered by criticism from the EU and the US of the mass detentions of suspected plotters.

If people are giving you the stink-eye because of your brisk way with human rights, who ya gonna call? Not … Read the rest