God, he’s still doing it. The stubborn dishonesty of it and the absolute determination to remove the young woman who was assaulted from the picture is mind-boggling. Is this what Republicans are? Guys who struggle hard to draw a veil over attempted rape so that they can take women’s reproductive rights away at last?

As would mine. But I would not want to be the father who says: "Your life will now be defined by this one moment at a party, so just accept that it will be used at will at any point in your life."

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) September 16, 2018

It was more than a moment – they shoved her into the room, they locked the … Read the rest

Lordy lordy lordy – even Radio Free Tom, who is normally…sensible, at least.

Whoa. One was accused of as a continuing behavior while a senior supervisor at a Federal agency. The other's been accused of an incident of drunken assault at 17 years old. Both are terrible things, but they're not generically the same.

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) September 16, 2018

It's giving me the willies to go back to "this happened between minors at a party in high school" as a permanent disqualification for anything. This is a powerful weapon that will be deployed again, and I think in ways that will have drastic and unintended consequences.

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) September 16, 2018

ARGGGHHH! It did not “happen … Read the rest

Now the woman who said Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were both teenagers has gone public – with great reluctance.

Earlier this summer, Christine Blasey Ford wrote a confidential letter to a senior Democratic lawmaker alleging that Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her more than three decades ago, when they were high school students in suburban Maryland. Since Wednesday, she has watched as that bare-bones version of her story became public without her name or her consent, drawing a blanket denial from Kavanaugh and roiling a nomination that just days ago seemed all but certain to succeed.

Now, Ford has decided that if her story is going to be told, she wants to be the

Philosopher Asia Ferrin explains why feminists must defer to trans women no matter what:

There has been some online discussion recently about how, or if, people can have open conversations about policies that aim to create more inclusive spaces for trans people, trans women in particular. I will not recount the conversation here, but readers might want to see these posts, first from Kathleen Stock, then a reply from Talia Mae Bettcher, and a reply to the reply from Stock. Similar themes also come up in a recent post here on hostility in such discussions.

That’s one way to put it, but it’s quite a loaded way. “Inclusive” has become a highly deceptive or tendentious word in some contexts, … Read the rest

Eleazar David Melendez on Facebook:

They did not die in the hurricane.

They died in pain, at home, of kidney failure unable to access the dialysis clinic for weeks.

They died, gasping for hours near the end, when the oxygen tank they needed to breathe gave out.

They died in the dark and the heat of unsanitary ICU units, of burns or gunshot wounds received before the hurricane that they almost certainly would have survived otherwise.

They died, burning up with fever, of leptospirosis from being in touch with flood waters during the effort to save their neighbors.

They died in fear and confusion after being forced to go off their regular medication.
They died of heat stroke.

They

Isaac Chotiner’s Buruma interview is today’s news in Abusers’ Corner; yesterday’s was John Hockenberry doing his “This has all been so sad for me” thing in Harper’s.

He starts off by telling us everything we know about him, which is why I stopped reading it yesterday, gagging. He goes on to tell us about all his stuff in a storage unit now, how important he used to be, how sad, poor him.

Then he tells us his friends don’t shower him with affection any more.

I have also faced unrelenting anger from both male and female colleagues. Or, more common and more painful, I have faced their stony and, in my view, cowardly silence. Only one of my accusers

Justin Weinberg at Daily Nous yesterday:

Scientific American is a monthly magazine aimed at popularizing scientific and technological findings. But how trustworthy a magazine is it?

This question is prompted by several articles that Scientific American has published on topics in philosophy. It is wonderful that the magazine’s editors recognize how much philosophy is relevant to science and scientific practices. But the quality of those articles has been questionable.

Yes, I’ve noticed that, for instance when they publish Michael Shermer pretending to be a moral philosopher.

The uneven quality of Scientific American articles on topics I am familiar with has led me to question its trustworthiness more generally. I know I’m not alone in that questioning.

As for the 

Oh good GRIEF.

Our $10+ Patrons now have access to A Day of Reckoning – 1 – Why can't we have civil conversations about race, politics, gender etc. featuring @SamHarrisOrg , @DouglasKMurray , @MaajidNawaz , @BretWeinstein & @EricRWeinstein . Moderated by @joshzepps
https://t.co/fgYPHzsZ7K pic.twitter.com/LVYbafBZHV

— Travis Pangburn (@ThePangburn) September 13, 2018

Why can’t seven guys team up to pronounce on gender? Why can’t six white guys plus one brown guy (see how woke we are?) tell us all what to think about gender and race, and charge money for it? Who doesn’t want to hear what all-male panels think about gender?

That’s the intellectual dark web. You can tell because it’s dark outside the window.… Read the rest

Welllll…

It’s like this: going to Salisbury to see the sights is plausible as part of an extended tourist adventure. I know this for a fact because I’ve done it myself – gotten a rail pass and run around visiting places for seven days. Salisbury was one of the places, and I wasn’t disappointed. But as a destination? On a one-day trip to London? Nah.

And now there’s Pyotr Verzilov. Masha Gessen at the New Yorker:

There is little I can say about the latest apparent poisoning in Russia that I haven’t said before. And before that. And more recently. That Russian enemies of the current regime are often killed, most frequently by poisoning, is now a

These Trumps. Eric this time.

Eric Trump was talking up his father on Fox News on Wednesday morning when he was lobbed a friendly prompt from one of the network’s anchors.

During a segment that touched on Democrats’ calls for impeachment as well as the current success of the economy, “Fox & Friends” host Steve Doocy brought up the perception created by both Bob Woodward’s new book and the New York Times’s anonymous op-ed last week that the Trump administration is in chaos.

But they sure are getting a lot done, Doocy smarmed.

Trump then launched into an attack in the second person about someone who writes a “sensational nonsense book” and is rewarded with a CNN appearance, before

Now to cheer us up…

A view of storms over the Cascades this evening, seen from the office! #wawx pic.twitter.com/xAQHDRNMDd

— NWS Seattle (@NWSSeattle) September 13, 2018

That’s Lake Washington. It forms the eastern border of Seattle (and continues well past it north and south – it’s about 20 miles long) while Puget Sound makes the western border. The National Weather Service office is at NOAA, which is at the northern edge of Magnuson Park, which is a huge wildish heath that used to be a naval base. This is a view accessible to the public.

There’s a lot to like about Seattle.… Read the rest

The Times (NY) is doing a live update on the hurricane.

The storm is forecast to crawl inland, drenching a wide area with extremely heavy rains — 20, 30 or even 40 inches of rainfall are predicted in some spots on the Carolina coast. Places as far inland as Charlotte, about 150 miles from the coast, could receive more than 10 inches of rain. Learn more about why slow-moving hurricanes are so dangerous here.

It’s kind of hard to imagine 40 inches of rain.

President Trump on Thursday falsely accused Democrats of inflating the death toll from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico last year, rejecting a government assessment that the storm had claimed nearly 3,000 lives. Read more

More on that whole North Carolina coast – climate denial – ignore the future tragedy:

The approaching storm almost certainly gained destructive power from a warming climate, but a 2012 law, and subsequent actions by the state, effectively ordered state and local agencies that develop coastal policies to ignore scientific models showing an acceleration in the rise of sea levels.

In the years since, development has continued with little regard to the long-term threat posed by rising sea levels. And the coastal region’s population and economy have boomed, growing by almost half in the last 20 years.

In other words state law has put a large number of people in harm’s way, because of pure obstinate fingers-in-ears Denial.

Business

Ah, this Mark Knight has a history with the racist cartoons thing. Imagine my surprise.

On Wednesday, the Herald Sun provided its response to critics of the cartoon by doubling down. The newspaper republished Knight’s Serena Williams image as part of a front-page montage of Knight caricatures — including of President Trump — with the headline “WELCOME TO PC WORLD” and the text: “If the self-appointed censors of Mark Knight get their way on his Serena Williams cartoon, our new politically correct life will be very dull indeed.” The cover includes the cheeky label “Satire Free Zone.”

…

In early August, for a cartoon about train-station safety in the Australian state of Victoria, Knight also faced ire for how