I’m heading off to Seattle today, and I’ll be speaking at Town Hall on Thursday. I’m also planning on a get-together with Ophelia and other interested parties on Friday evening, somewhere in the city, but I’m not announcing where in public — intrusive trolls are even worse in the world of meat than they are in the world of the internet. If you’re in the area and interested in joining us, you’ll have to email me, say a little about yourself, and maybe I’ll reply with the top secret location. Maybe. If you sound nice.
Or if you know Ophelia, you can talk to her. We’re being cautious because I’m expecting a quiet evening of friendly conversation, and there actually are assholes in Seattle, as nice a city as it is otherwise, and they’re not invited. And if they show up, we’ll just be ignoring them.
It’s kind of depressing that this has become a necessary step for any skeptic/atheist blogger who also cares about people, even if they’re *shock* *horror* NOT cis-gender heterosexual white men.
Enjoy the local fauna!
We got our tickets a couple weeks ago. Looking forward to it!
Hope you have a great time; that combination of people sounds perfect. I shall enjoy it vicariously from way over here on a different continent (especially if you (plural) blog a bit about your conversation afterwards!).
You’re BLACKLISTING people!!!! According to the Douchebag’s Bill of Rights in the Skeptic Constitution, that can only be done after a formal indictment and trial at which it is established beyond a reasonable doubt that someone is an asshole!
Oh, won’t somebody think of the peaches?
Sounds like a smart idea.
Jerry Coyne wrote that he went to an atheist meeting down south. It might have been at a university to give a talk, but I don’t remember the details.
At any rate, someone thought it was necessary to provide an armed guard.
Xians have a 2,000 year history of violence and that hasn’t ended yet.
I’m more worried about douchebro atheists than Christians.
Is it really that bad that there are (organised?) “douchebro atheists” (to use your term) turning up in sufficient numbers and behaving sufficiently badly to disrupt pretty innocent, standard general get-togethers? Wow!
Beyond, you know, the standard behaviour of the egregious douchebro: clueless entitlement, internet douchebaggery, online harassment, meatspace harassment, sexual harassment, sexual assault, rape, spree killings…
..Oh.
Louis
Peaches wanna be free, mon!
Worry about both of them.
At least Elliot Rodgers or Dennis M. from Montreal won’t be showing up.
Another tragedy: my recent checkup was mostly good — no heart or circulatory problems, great blood pressure, generally excellent health. One catch, though, is that I’ve been on a collection of pills for a couple of years, and the liver panel revealed some worrisome anomalies. I’ve been taken off several pills (yay!)’, but I’ve also been given strict orders.
NO ALCOHOL AT ALL. Not until I get cleared on another blood test in a couple of weeks.
So I’ll be sipping tea or juice. Heartbreaking.
Well at least you’ll be in Washington, skip the booze and have a brownie.
Just bought a ticket! Can’t wait.
And no brownies yet, not for another month or so. Legally, anyway. The scuttlebutt is that retailers will be able to open their doors and sell that sticky-icky-icky at the beginning of July.
Why wait till July? I’ve got a freezer full of happy time brownies, and just may bring some over if I come.
Yeah, umm, re #7/#10:
I don’t figure it’s news to anyone here, but it’s the reality. The asshat ‘skeptics’ willfully blind to problems of profound social consequence which they don’t see as troubling them personally are clearly, now, in fact, the larger practical problem, for anyone anywhere near them who would actually like to change inequities religions were long recruited to enforce. Had you a lifetime and a bellyfull of priests, rabbis, and imams–along with their slackjawed follower–shushing you on their sacred, laughable theology? Lovely. Add to this the layer of stunned, ‘post-ideological’ tools who will make it their mission to shout down and harass all to hell and out of the public spaces any honest discussion of any social stratification that doesn’t happen to advance their personal interests…
(I’d call this an empirical result, by the way. As ‘skeptics’, I’m ever so sure they must respect this finding. Let us look at who’s doing the shouting, who’s doing the silencing, which discussions are being pressed toward impractical, what utter incoherence the MRAs, to name one prong, bring to discussions of, say, wage parity, or violence driven by concepts of gender. The average woman on the web in the west wants to talk about misogyny knows damned well no one from Iran’s revolutionary council is likely to to give them much trouble. The smug, clueless, culturally illiterate jerk sitting there in the next cube imagining feminism is somehow a hostile ‘religion’, because, hey, women do now have the vote, on the other hand…)
Pretty sad, really. In a world full of assorted theocrats, across multiple sects and faiths, you’re unlikely to have much time for directly addressing those holding up that banner. You’re going to be too busy dealing with their vigourously helpful fellow travellers, proudly and enthusiastically defending the same ideals they champion, but this time in the name of ‘oh, really, we just want equality, you can trust us, we’re skeptics’…
Not that it makes me despise their clueless asses, or nothing. Oh no. I’m way too ‘post-ideological’ for that.
(/Nay. The reason I wouldn’t cross the street to piss on them if they were on fire–a sentiment I’m sure they will also have to rationally defend purely on the basis of the calories expended–is: this would be irrational. I can just as well piss here.)
(But on a cheerier note: have fun in Seattle, both/all of you. And given the alcohol thing, I hear they do have pretty awesome coffee, in that town.)
The event page? Ugh. I read the comments.
Although something about the wording of many of them triggers a less-than-consciously analytical portion of my brain to say that many of these comments coming in under different ‘nyms may actually be written by one person.
If you think someone is sockpuppeting, they probably are. It’s ubiquitous among the trolls, one of their few talents along with obsessions.
Dennis of Montreal had a near infinite number of nyms and created ones every few minutes sometimes.
Do say “hello” to Dana Hunter for me, if she turns up! And tell her I’m building an awesome new catapult!
Oh noooooo, Trebuchet, you’re not coming? Not even to Sooper Sekrit Meetup and Baby Roast?
I haz a disappointed. And I just sent a grovelling email to PZed, too, angling for an invite-y! *pout*
As for this being necessary in Seattle…
well, internet harassers and a-holes gotta live _somewhere_ away from keyboard, and gotta park those keyboards somewhere as well. Unfortunately, at least one of the memorable (for un-good reasons of Team Harassment membership/leadership) ones is a Seattle local.
#notallseattle-ites! Oh, wait…I don’t actually live within City Limits any more, so I don’t gotta feel picked on by PZed’s implied criticism. Whew, that was close!
CripDyke@17
OMFSM, why, oh WHY did I follow that link to see for myself?
And that’s at the _venue’s_ official website…that’s going out of their way to slyme dirty laundry in public. And the official sponsors listed? None has anything to do with organized atheoskepticsm, and all are very mainstream, well-respected organizations.
If I weren’t so absolutely disgusted, I might be embarrassed for them, they’re so clearly unsuited to polite society–even as casual and informal as that concept is out here by Puget Sound!
We’ve got a couple of excellent Vancouverites joining us, although not as many as I wanted.
@Ophelia:
I’m a Vancouverite looking to come down and needing a ride – at least home. I can’t come on Thursday, so a ride down would have to be with someone not going to the Thursday night talk but just coming to the Friday thing.
Is there anyone with whom you can put me in touch?
It’s my daughter’s birthday party weekend, and the train/bus schedules just don’t allow for a reasonable return (given tix already sold out), though I could conceivably get down to Seattle on a bus by myself.
Crip – I think the way it worked out is that one of the two is driving and had room for one person, and the other is going with him. I could ask them to make sure though.
It looks like I’ll now be able to take the car.
Thus if any 1-3 people want to go down just for Friday, I’ll be able to haul you along. I may not have time to jaunt all over the lower mainland, however. Meeting at the ferry terminal @Tsawwassen or in Vancouver are doable. driving multiple places to pick up multiple folk…not so much.
Just Friday is what they’re doing, although what I told them was that you were looking for a ride! So…I gave them your addy.
Having all of us in one car would be better – esp if I could leave the family car home in case the kids need something.
So thanks for giving them my address!
Barring calamity, I should meet you fr night.
PZ:
Do you have a go-to alcoholic drink of choice?
So does anyone know if the Fri Evening festivities will include going out to dinner or otherwise having substantial food?
I’m just trying to figure out if I should stop by Annapurna before the super secret meet up?
Does anyone else want to go to a less-than-super-secret meet up @ Annapurna before catching the Honolulu flight for the secret thing?
Ooops! Now I’ve done it! All the jerks are now going to fly to Honolulu Friday night just to cause us misery!
There are supposed to be bars & food nearby. I was planning to come in a bit early to eat somewhere, then hang out the rest of the evening in the secret place.