Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on The social world is every bit as real as a booster rocket.

It’s interesting that critical thinking is often held (especially among movement skeptics) to be more closely associated with “hard” subjects like the natural sciences, mathematics and engineering than supposedly “soft” subjects like linguistics, psychology, philosophy etc. As someone with one leg in each camp*, I can definitely say that the former has been more useful in terms of employment. But in terms of critical thinking, I have to say that the most important lessons I have learned in my life – whether at school or from books – have come from “soft” fields like psychology, including things like heuristics and … Read the rest

Brave heroes of art:

The organisers of a music festival in northern France have defied pressure to cancel a performance by a once-idolised French musician who has served a jail term for beating his girlfriend to death.

More than 65,000 people have signed a petition demanding that Bertrand Cantat, former frontman of Noir Desir, be removed from the programme of the Papillons de Nuit festival, which takes place in May in the Normandy town of Saint-Laurent-de-Cuves.

“By putting Bertrand Cantat in the spotlight you are normalising violence against women and even condoning it,” claims the petition on the Change.org website, started by a “citizen feminist”.

The organisers of the festival, which drew 68,000 rock fans in 2017, have

Ok this is funny. I was reading Kevin Liptak at CNN on the tanking  morale in the White House, enriched by this gem of a sentence –

Inside the White House, aides identify the scandal involving Rob Porter, the staff secretary who departed after being accused of domestic abuse allegations, as the impetus for the latest devolvement in esteem.

There’s the goodbye of Hope Hicks, the brawl with Sessions, the hot blushing shame of Ben Carson’s taste in dining room furniture, the plan to “turn the page”…

Trump is encouraging his team to develop policy announcements that could help distract from the ongoing ruckus. On Thursday he was eager to announce protectionist measures to buffer the US steel

The Post reports Mueller is looking at Trump’s campaign to bully Sessions into resigning last July…

…according to people familiar with the matter who said that a key area of interest for the inquiry is whether those efforts were part of a months-long pattern of attempted obstruction of justice.

That’s certainly what they looked like out here in civilian world, but maybe they were just Trump’s mischievous sense of fun.

In recent months, Mueller’s team has questioned witnesses in detail about Trump’s private comments and state of mind in late July and early August of last year, around the time he issued a series of tweets belittling his “beleaguered” attorney general, these people said. The thrust of the questions was

Now Hope Hicks is out.

Her resignation came a day after she testified for eight hours before the House Intelligence Committee, telling the panel that in her job, she had occasionally been required to tell white lies but had never lied about anything connected to the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

Multiple White House aides said that Ms. Hicks’s departure was unrelated to her appearance before the committee. They said that she had told a small group of people in the days before the session that she had planned to leave her job.

But why would she leave such an awesome job working for such an awesome dude?… Read the rest

Just another day.

President Trump criticized his own attorney general, Jeff Sessions, on Wednesday and called him “DISGRACEFUL” after Mr. Sessions indicated that the Justice Department’s watchdog would look into accusations of potential abuse of surveillance laws rather than the agency’s own lawyers.

Why is A.G. Jeff Sessions asking the Inspector General to investigate potentially massive FISA abuse. Will take forever, has no prosecutorial power and already late with reports on Comey etc. Isn’t the I.G. an Obama guy? Why not use Justice Department lawyers? DISGRACEFUL!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 28, 2018

In a 43-word tweet, Mr. Trump scolded the attorney general, belittled the role of the Justice Department’s independent watchdog and pressured the agency to speed

But at least Trump is doing his best to prevent further Russian hacking, right?

Nah.

Faced with unrelenting interference in its election systems, the United States has not forced Russia to pay enough of a price to persuade President Vladimir V. Putin to stop meddling, a senior American intelligence official said on Tuesday.

Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the departing head of the National Security Agency and the military’s Cyber Command, said that he was using the authorities he had to combat the Russian attacks. But under questioning during testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he acknowledged that the White House had not asked his agencies — the main American spy and defense arms charged with conducting cyberoperations —

This is Donald Trump in a single image. pic.twitter.com/tpgy3wgT5i

— MZS (@mattzollerseitz) February 26, 2018

… Read the rest

Jared Kushner has had a pleasant 13 months seeing all the top secrets despite not having the appropriate security clearance, but that cheery idyll has come to an end. Kelly done busted him down.

Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, has been stripped of his high-level security clearance after months of delays in completing an exhaustive background check, limiting his ability to view highly classified information, a White House official and another person familiar with Mr. Kushner’s situation said.

Mr. Kushner’s top-secret clearance was reduced to secret and his portfolio, especially with regard to his conduct of foreign affairs on behalf of President Trump, is expected to contract sharply as well in the days ahead, the people

Is it stupidity or corruption or both? Who knows, who cares, either way it’s appalling.

House Speaker Paul Ryan signaled Tuesday he isn’t supportive of the proposals to impose new restrictions on gun purchases, telling reporters “we shouldn’t be banning guns for law abiding citizens.”

During a weekly news conference in the wake of the mass shooting at a Florida high school that killed 17 people, the Wisconsin Republican added, “we should be focusing on making sure that citizens who shouldn’t get guns in the first place don’t get those guns.”

As if anyone can know which citizens “should” get guns and which shouldn’t. As if anyone can know that every time, infallibly, at a glance. As if people … Read the rest

Top best most fabulous intersectionalityism:

https://twitter.com/MunroeBergdorf/status/968439202462470144

Is Munroe Bergdorf a Russian troll?

Munroe Bergdorf got “facial feminization” surgery a month ago, and posts glam shots of the result.

https://twitter.com/MunroeBergdorf/status/967428325839921152

Fine; whatever; knock yourself out; but don’t be telling women how to do feminism correctly.… Read the rest

There are people corroborating the BuzzFeed story on Lawrence Krauss on social media.

Elise Andrew for one.

Adding my voice to this – in 2013 I attended an event with Krauss and considered requesting an interview. Was told by someone who works with him that “we don’t leave female journalists alone with Lawrence”. Decided not to do the interview.

This “whisper network” people are talking about wasn’t made up of people who didn’t like him and wanted to smear him. It was people who worked with him who didn’t want to deal with the drama.

The same would apply to other people who warned women about Krauss: the goal was not [necessarily] to smear Krauss but to warn the … Read the rest

The Oath Keepers, a lunatic militia group, are organizing to “protect” schools by standing around outside them packing heat. What could possibly go wrong.

In Indiana, at least one member of the group, Mark Cowan, stationed himself outside of a Fort Wayne high school last week. He wielded a handgun and AR-15 while keeping watch near the premises, per local outlet WPTA-21.

Fabulous. And the school administration and teachers and students are supposed to know he’s protecting them as opposed to preparing to shoot them how exactly?

Bryan Humes, a leader in the Oath Keepers chapter in Indiana, said he’s not sure how many Oath Keepers are currently stationed outside of local schools, although he believes there are several.

Paul Krugman notes the flood of resistance, or what he calls “a powerful upwelling of decency,” in for instance MeToo and the reactions to the Parkland massacre.

This isn’t what anyone, certainly not the political commentariat, expected.

After the 2016 election many in the news media seemed all too ready to assume that Trumpism represented the real America, even though Hillary Clinton had won the popular vote and — Russian intervention and the Comey letter aside — would surely have won the electoral vote, too, but for the Big Sneer, the derisive tone adopted by countless reporters and pundits. There have been hundreds if not thousands of stories about grizzled Trump supporters sitting in diners, purportedly showing the out-of-touchness of

Prepare to become more Woke.

Today’s lesson: how to fight all the varieties of misia.

Offstage voices: The what?

Oh dear, you don’t know what misia is? How sad. Fortunately there is a page for laggards like you. It is the “what does ‘misia’ mean?” page. You’re welcome.

You may be wondering why our guide uses the suffix “misia” instead of the suffix “phobia.” If you’ve not encountered “misia” language before, you may also be wondering what it means. Well never fear! We are more than happy to explain this relatively new shift in language.

The suffix “phobia” comes from the Greek word for “fear of,” and so it denotes an intense aversion to the part of the