Sage

Jun 12th, 2022 6:59 am | By

Just for fun: Jordan Peterson having a very reasonable calm thoughtful moment.

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Guest post: What kind of “experts”?

Jun 11th, 2022 4:48 pm | By

Originally a comment by Artymorty at Miscellany Room 8.

Per the New York Times:

Experts said that young people increasingly have the language and social acceptance to explore their gender identities

This drives me crazy. What kind of “experts”? The journalistic principle in play should be to weigh the testimony of “experts” against the possibility of influence by a religious belief system that’s applying pressure on the debate.

If you’re talking about any other religious belief — say, Scientology — it becomes very clear that there’s two kinds of “experts” about it: believers themselves, and those who look at the belief system from the outside. Everyone on the inside will of course have nothing but good things to … Read the rest



The work is blaphemous

Jun 11th, 2022 4:15 pm | By

Another one of those “rights” that isn’t a right.

‘We have a right not to be insulted,’ demonstrator claims as Cineworld fears for workers’ safety

Well, no, you don’t, not exactly, and especially not if you define “insulted” so broadly that it includes living in the same city as a movie house that’s showing a film about Mohammed’s daughter.

A cinema chain has been forced to pull a film about the prophet Muhammad’s daughter over fears for the safety of its staff.

And you don’t have a right to threaten and terrorize people, either.

Demonstrators outside branches in Bolton and elsewhere claimed the work was blasphemous and that freedom of speech should not apply to the subject of 

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Yale’s finest

Jun 11th, 2022 11:49 am | By
Yale’s finest

Jason Stanley is going all-in on the abuse, not to say libel.

That’s an academic colleague he’s talking to.

Interesting times. Not in a good way.

Updating to add: I see it’s a continuation of his accusations yesterday, which I shared at the time. He’s consistent, at least.

Morality aside, it just doesn’t seem sensible or reasonable or adult to talk this way to a colleague (or anyone else, but administrators could be watching the colleague problem). Bye Felicia at the Washington Post just learned that a couple of days ago.… Read the rest



Precious little Susie in China

Jun 11th, 2022 10:24 am | By

Women’s cis privilege in China:

CCTV footage of the incident widely circulated online shows a man placing his hand on a woman’s back as she shares a meal with two companions at a barbecue restaurant in the city of Tangshan in Hebei province in the early hours of Friday.

After the woman pushes him away, the man strikes her before others drag her outside and deal a barrage of blows as she lies on the ground. Another woman is also knocked to the floor.

Why are women so cruel and violent to men?

The video quickly went viral on China’s internet and renewed a debate about sexual harassment and gender-based violence in a country where the conversation around women’s

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27 more than previously known

Jun 11th, 2022 9:48 am | By

Virginia Thomas is even more coup plot-involved than we thought.

Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, pressed 29 Republican state lawmakers in Arizona — 27 more than previously known — to set aside Joe Biden’s popular vote victory and “choose” presidential electors, according to emails obtained by The Washington Post.

Which means she tried to leverage Clarence Thomas’s position to bully state legislators into stealing the election.

The Post reported last month that Thomas sent emails to two Arizona House members, in November and December 2020, urging them to help overturn Biden’s win by selecting presidential electors — a responsibility that belongs to Arizona voters under state law.

She used an online platform that … Read the rest



Their precious Susie

Jun 11th, 2022 8:44 am | By

Absolutely classic oblivious male lefty sexist pig type guy. Sports editor at The Nation.

Right? Right?? That precious little Susie, who does she think she is? Bitch.

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Four truths lied about

Jun 11th, 2022 8:02 am | By

The ACLU is promoting this shockingly bad and dishonest article by Chase Strangio and one Gabriel Arkles:

Four Myths About Trans Athletes, Debunked

The dishonesty is apparent already: the issue isn’t “trans athletes,” it’s male trans athletes invading women’s sports. They know that of course, and carefully pretend not to.

Upholding trans athletes’ rights requires rooting out the inaccurate beliefs underlying harmful policies sweeping through state legislatures.

What are “trans athletes’ rights”?

No athletes have a “right” to cheat by playing in categories that are for people smaller or younger or less muscular than they are. That’s it, that’s the issue.

For years state lawmakers have pushed legislation attempting to shut trans people out of public spaces. In 2020, lawmakers

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Define “embattled” and “minority” and “group”

Jun 10th, 2022 3:22 pm | By

You’d think an adult who works in a job where he has to handle philosophy would refrain from publicly saying fatuous nonsense like this.

It depends what the “embattled minority group” is, obviously. I mean OBVIOUSLY, spoken with all the heavy disdain of an enlightened teenager. Duhhhhhhh-uhhhhhhhhhh.

An “embattled minority group” can be anything. It can be rapists. It can be murderers. It can be mass murderers. It can be men who stalk and trap and overpower and rape and murder women. It can be men who stalk and trap and overpower and rape and murder women and Read the rest



Whining he said

Jun 10th, 2022 2:52 pm | By

This guy should be stripped of all assets and forced to clean out sewers for the rest of his life. Without a shovel.

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Return of Socrates

Jun 10th, 2022 11:39 am | By

Professional philosophy of the highest order.

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“Sticks and stones loser”

Jun 10th, 2022 11:16 am | By

Jason Stan continues to cover himself with glory.

Jason has met only “pro trans” feminists, therefore Jane Clare Jones doesn’t speak for all women. (Mind you, she’s never claimed to speak for all women, and Stanley’s sneaky insinuation that she does say that is…sneaky.) It’s not a very powerful argument. Jon Pike puts it more bluntly.

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The original identity politics

Jun 10th, 2022 10:22 am | By

Obama deals with the “Oh no identity politics ew ew we’re all individuals and only individuals matter” trope a lot more briskly than I did.

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Like their Confederate counterparts

Jun 10th, 2022 9:59 am | By

Steve Phillips at the Guardian makes an important point:

The last time the United States failed to properly punish insurrectionists, they went on to form the Ku Klux Klan, unleash a reign of murderous domestic terrorism, and re-establish formal white supremacy in much of the country for more than 100 years. As the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack begins televised hearings this week, the lessons from the post-civil war period offer an ominous warning for this moment and where we go from here.

It’s true. The insurrectionists weren’t much punished and the victims were not even slightly compensated, and the results were and are horrific.

In 1860, many people believed that America should be a

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People

Jun 10th, 2022 9:10 am | By
People

I guess preening Yale philosophers don’t have to know anything about history.

It didn’t matter whether or not women were “supportive of” lynching, whatever that means. Nobody asked them. Nobody cared. Women had no power. It’s grotesque to talk about them as if they had just as much power to “be supportive of” lynching as men had. Women could have favored communist revolution or fascist counter-revolution or a takeover by Martians, it would have made no difference to anything.… Read the rest



Right in front of your eyes

Jun 10th, 2022 8:49 am | By

World’s most conceited philosophy academic continues his campaign to malign feminist women.

One guy retweets something=”this alliance.”

(Who’s Jerry Dunleavy? I’ve never heard of him. Google tells me he’s a reporter for the Washington Examiner. Somehow that’s feminists’ fault?)

And that’s why he’s a Yale professor of philosophy and you’re not.

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Whining

Jun 10th, 2022 8:26 am | By

Trump’s thug children revealed to be thugs.

Ivanka did a whispery heavily made-up little video saying she was aware that Trump had lost the election. Did she do anything about it? Of course not. Did she keep pretending to be a Government Person, and riding on the Big Plane? Of course.

Next was Mr. Kushner. In his video he was pressed by Representative Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chairwoman, about whether he was aware that the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, had been threatening to resign because Mr. Trump was making increasingly outlandish efforts to stay in power.

“Like I said,” said Mr. Kushner, who was rarely heard from in public during his father-in-law’s presidency, “my interest at

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The unending dramatics

Jun 9th, 2022 5:00 pm | By

The Daily Beast has more on the Post ructions, which is good, because I don’t much want to go digging through days of tweets.

The seemingly unending dramatics began late last week when political reporter Dave Weigel retweeted a sexist post about bisexual women. He later apologized but not before Sonmez publicly called him out along with the paper’s management, writing, “Fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed!”

Fellow Post reporter Jose A. Del Real then publicly accused Sonmez on Saturday of “repeated and targeted public harassment of a colleague,” which led to several tweets worth of beefing between the pair until Del Real blocked her Sunday.

It all sounds a bit high … Read the rest



Misconduct including

Jun 9th, 2022 3:33 pm | By

So that went well.

Felicia Sonmez, a reporter for The Washington Post who in recent days has been at the center of a debate over the organization’s social media policies and the culture of the newsroom, was fired on Thursday…

In an emailed termination letter, which was viewed by The New York Times, Ms. Sonmez was told that The Post was ending her employment, effective immediately, “for misconduct that includes insubordination, maligning your co-workers online, and violating The Post’s standards on workplace collegiality and inclusivity.”

I added that comma after “your co-workers online” – the Oxford comma, the one the NYT style guide forbids. That comma is often needed, and that sentence is one such place. It’s three items, … Read the rest



Colleagues

Jun 9th, 2022 11:44 am | By

Vanity Fair on ructions at the Washington Post:

On Tuesday afternoon, Washington Post reporter Josh Dawsey tweeted that he was “proud” to work at the paper, a place “filled with many terrific people who are smart and collegial.”

And a lot of other familiar names followed suit.

The public outpouring of Post pride—which I’m told political reporters were urging one another to take part in—followed executive editor Sally Buzbee’s memo reiterating workplace policies and promoting collegiality among staff. The memo dropped following a few days at the Post that have been, as one reporter described it, a “clusterfuck.” Dave Weigel, a national political correspondent, is, as of Monday, suspended without pay for the next month after retweeting a

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