A man with a mission

May 25th, 2018 4:08 pm | By

A long and very interesting piece on Jordan Kermit Peterson by a longtime colleague and friend who successfully pushed for the University of Toronto to hire him twenty years ago. He now thinks that was a mistake.

The takeaway: Peterson was always eccentric and intense, but he’s gotten worse, especially since he became a famous guru.

I thought long and hard before writing about Jordan, and I do not do this lightly. He has one of the most agile and creative minds I’ve ever known. He is a powerful orator. He is smart, passionate, engaging and compelling and can be thoughtful and kind.

I was once his strongest supporter.

That all changed with his rise to celebrity. I am

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Goodbye 8th

May 25th, 2018 2:41 pm | By

Ireland has voted massively to repeal the 8th amendment.

Ireland has voted by a landslide margin to change the constitution so that abortion can be legalised, according to an exit poll conducted for The Irish Times by Ipsos/MRBI.

The poll suggests that the margin of victory for the Yes side in the referendum will be 68 per cent to 32 per cent – a stunning victory for the Yes side after a long and often divisive campaign. See here for liveblog coverage of events across Friday in the referendum vote.

The Irish Times reported on an issue with the abortion ban in April:

The Eighth Amendment has caused pregnant women with cancer to die and will continue to put

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Flanked by several sex crimes detectives

May 25th, 2018 11:01 am | By

Harvey Weinstein turned himself in this morning.

Harvey Weinstein turned himself in to New York City detectives and appeared in court on Friday on charges that he raped one woman and forced another to perform oral sex, a watershed in a monthslong sex crimes investigation and in the #MeToo movement.

Around 7:30 a.m., Mr. Weinstein walked into a police station house in Lower Manhattan, flanked by several sex crimes detectives. Toting three large books under his right arm, he looked up without saying a word as a crush of reporters and onlookers yelled, “Harvey!”

He was fingerprinted and formally booked. Then about an hour later, he was led from the First Police Precinct in TriBeCa and taken to

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Miller and Kushner laughed

May 25th, 2018 9:58 am | By

Trump is reeeeeeeally mad at Kirsten Nielsen – not of course because she’s too racist and xenophobic but because she’s not racist and xenophobic enough.

As illegal crossings are once more on the rise and Trump hears a cascade of criticism from conservative allies, Nielsen finds herself on the receiving end of the president’s visceral anger about immigration, seeing the issue as the reason he won in 2016 and a key to his politicking ahead of the midterm elections.

The president has chastised her on several occasions this spring, including a much publicized meeting earlier this month when he attacked her in front of the entire Cabinet. He has grown furious because his administration has made little progress building

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What possible legitimate purpose?

May 24th, 2018 5:56 pm | By

Yes, thank you for asking, it is quite strange that subjects of an investigation were allowed to plant their lawyers and friends in a meeting to discuss the investigation while it is in progress. As a matter of fact, to put it more technically, it’s a fucking circus.

The president’s chief of staff and the White House counsel attended a classified briefing Thursday with top Justice Department officials and lawmakers about an investigation into the president and his associates — and the events have floored national-security experts and former intelligence officials.

When the White House announced the first of the two briefings earlier this week, it said chief of staff John Kelly would not be attending.

One former FBI

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Accuracy patrol

May 24th, 2018 12:29 pm | By

Honestly, they’re still getting this wrong.

The story: senior academic, a male, when a voice on a crowded elevator at a conference invites people to call out their floors, calls out “Ladies’ Lingerie!” Haw haw. Another academic, a woman, makes a complaint, and since this is in the Daily Mail you know the rest.

But then the senior male academic, Richard New Lewbow, telling this sad tale, gets to Tim Hunt.

I know many in my profession are more vulnerable to threats and bullying than I am — at 76 I am near the end of my career. But students and young dons will feel an even greater need to censor their thoughts in a world where people who

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Guest post: A very obvious funnel

May 24th, 2018 11:49 am | By

Originally a comment on Toby tell us again.

During my first degree in computer science (not at Oxford, at Teesside of all places) in the early 90s there were four women out of about 300 students. There were eight people who were not white. During later degrees at Newcastle and Leeds and having worked in those universities for decades, I didn’t see as much improvement as I’d hoped.

There were women and people of colour in top faculty positions, for sure. But there was also a very obvious funnel: women and people of colour didn’t seem to rise through the ranks as easily as white dudes did. Women of colour in particular seemed to find it difficult to find … Read the rest



Kelly and Flood sit in

May 24th, 2018 11:27 am | By

The Times reports on Trump’s shockingly open obstruction of justice:

Top law enforcement and intelligence officials briefed congressional leaders from both parties on Thursday about the F.B.I.’s use of an informant in the Russia investigation, a highly unusual concession to Congress all but ordered by President Trump.

House Republicans close to the president, led by Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California and the Intelligence Committee chairman, had been pressing unsuccessfully for weeks for access to material related to the informant, issuing a subpoena and threatening to hold top Justice Department officials in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn it over.

So that they could covertly hand it over to Trump and his lawyers so that they could improve … Read the rest



Stand up straight with the lobsters

May 24th, 2018 10:33 am | By

Helen Lewis has some characteristically amusing observations on Kermit Peterson:

This is the Peterson brand: interweaving a story of dragons and witches, and masculine order and feminine chaos, around some crushingly banal life advice about trying to be a good person, wash behind your ears, and maybe a slick of deodorant once in a while wouldn’t go amiss, eh? If he was a woman, writing for women, we would see him for what he is: a mash-up of Cosmo tips and My First Book of Myths. But because he’s writing for sad young white men – and their problems are, you know, real problems, not like anorexia or rape or sexual harassment at work – he’s a public

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The only prize he wants

May 24th, 2018 9:53 am | By

I saw this.

I thought “Really?? He said that?!” I looked it up. He said that.

Trump was asked by a reporter at the White House if he’s deserving of the prize after news broke Wednesday that three American men who had been imprisoned by North Korea were on their way home to the United States.

“Everyone thinks so, but I would never say it,” said Trump, who is preparing to meet face-to-face with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in coming weeks,

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Toby tell us again

May 24th, 2018 9:28 am | By

David Lammy MP:

Toby … Read the rest



Maybe you shouldn’t be in the country

May 24th, 2018 9:15 am | By

Elsewhere in Trump:

President Trump praised the NFL’s decision to mandate that players either stand for the national anthem or stay in the locker room in a TV interview that aired Thursday.

And he questioned whether players who choose not to stand “proudly” should be in the country at all.

Oh did he. Did he really. This lying stealing bullying garbage fire of a man who defecates on this country every day has the gall to question whether African American athletes who protest racism by kneeling instead of standing while a song is sung should be in the country at all.

“Well, I think that’s good,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News. “I don’t think people should

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But ours are so massive and powerful

May 24th, 2018 8:52 am | By

Trump canceled the meeting with Kim, and sent him a ridiculous letter saying so…and tweeted the ridiculous letter so that we can all see how ridiculous it is. He seems to have actually written much of it (that is, spoken it aloud) himself.

I was very much looking forward to being there with you. Sadly, based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting.

Says the childish stupid man who called Kim “Little Rocket Man” repeatedly on Twitter.

Trump withdrew from the summit after a North Korean vice minister of foreign affairs slammed Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday as a

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Unblock

May 23rd, 2018 5:49 pm | By

Trump can lie cheat and steal but at least he can’t block his critics on Twitter.

U.S. District Court Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald cited First Amendment principles in holding that the social media platform offered a forum in which people could not only consume information and opinion from public figures but offer feedback to elected officials — just as they have the right to do in newsprint or in person in public spaces.

Buchwald boiled down the case to two simple questions: Can a public official block someone from seeing her or his Twitter feed given First Amendment protections of free speech? And does it matter if that public official is the president?

“The answer to both questions is

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Guest post: So that the worst person in the world can skate by

May 23rd, 2018 4:10 pm | By

Originally a comment by Seth on The ultimate disrupter.

The worst thing about this whole mess is that, if the Republic does somehow limp through and Trump manages to get re-elected without going full-on fascist and sunsets without too much fuss when it’s over, the presidency will forever then be seen as an insulating force to one’s criminality and indeed one’s reputation. Just listen to the milquetoast way the author says ‘…a president who might not always be known for accuracy’.

Such an obvious Bowdlerisation of what everyone knows to be true is disgusting. Everyone who matters is pretending that the prestige of the office is paramount, and in so doing they are shitting on all of the work … Read the rest



The ultimate disrupter

May 23rd, 2018 3:17 pm | By

Mark Leibovich at the Times talked to some press secretaries for the Golden Hitler.

“What’s true on Monday in terms of a process decision may change by Friday,” Sanders said. “And I can’t always know that things will be different.” It often does not take that long for a “process” to evolve, I said. Sometimes a 5 a.m. tweet generated from the White House residence amounts to a “process” in Trump’s presidency. Or an old friend of Trump’s who just joined his legal team might go to dinner and jump on Fox News for a few minutes, and then the “process” jumps again. Like many of her White House colleagues, Sanders is quick to suggest that some of the criticism

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By the way, Trump’s phones are insecure

May 23rd, 2018 11:47 am | By

But her emails.

President Donald Trump uses a White House cellphone that isn’t equipped with sophisticated security features designed to shield his communications, according to two senior administration officials — a departure from the practice of his predecessors that potentially exposes him to hacking or surveillance.

The president, who relies on cellphones to reach his friends and millions of Twitter followers, has rebuffed staff efforts to strengthen security around his phone use, according to the administration officials.

He doesn’t have time for that, he’s too busy tweeting. On his phone. The one without sophisticated security features designed to shield his communications.

The president uses at least two iPhones, according to one of the officials. The phones — one capable

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Hurry up with those boots

May 23rd, 2018 11:00 am | By

Lie often enough and shamelessly enough and you win the game.

James R. Clapper said something Tuesday that he maybe shouldn’t have. In the course of rebutting President Trump’s conspiracy theories about the FBI “spying” on his campaign, the former director of national intelligence momentarily conceded Trump’s premise.

“They were spying on — a term I don’t particularly like — but on what the Russians were doing,” Clapper said. Asked whether Trump should be happy the FBI was doing this, Clapper said, “He should be.”

“He should be” if he cared about US interests, or about how authoritarian and criminal Putin is, or both.

Trump’s response? Take that badly out of context.

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Follow the money

May 23rd, 2018 10:37 am | By

From the Beeb:

Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, received a secret payment of at least $400,000 (£300,000) to fix talks between the Ukrainian president and President Trump, according to sources in Kiev close to those involved.

The payment was arranged by intermediaries acting for Ukraine’s leader, Petro Poroshenko, the sources said, though Mr Cohen was not registered as a representative of Ukraine as required by US law.

The meeting at the White House was last June.

Shortly after the Ukrainian president returned home, his country’s anti-corruption agency stopped its investigation into Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort.

Cash and carry diplomacy; what could go wrong?

A high-ranking Ukrainian intelligence officer in Mr Poroshenko’s administration described what happened before

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Be your best feminazi mother from hell

May 23rd, 2018 9:51 am | By

Glosswitch in the Staggers on bullshit about how to raise boys:

I suspect many of my fellow feminists have no idea just how truly awful the literature aimed at mothers raising sons has been. Think “misogynistic and essentialist” – Piers Morgan, perhaps – then times that by 1,000.

Of course, it doesn’t mean to be that way. Such literature is, we are told in that sad, regretful tone adopted by neurosexists and evolutionary misogynists everywhere, merely presenting the facts. No one wants to believe boys are naturally aggressive, girls naturally submissive, but you can’t argue with bullshit science. Just don’t blame the messenger, OK?

In 1997’s Raising Boys – a bestseller, still in print today – godfather of raising

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