This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
‘Twas the night of Christmas
And all through the Thunderdome
Not a creature was stirring
Not even a gnome.
So how’s that War on Christmas going? Are we winning (and how could one tell)?
“What about the privies?”
…
“-You mean you crap out of the windows?
Yes.
– Oh, good. I hate those dirty indoor things.”
…
I ♥ Black Adder
100 years ago
A bit of flash fiction for the holiday season “Messiahs”
http://strawberryrevolution.wordpress.com/2014/12/16/messiahs/
First 2 paragraphs
Elijah tried to save humankind, coming as he always does, as a stranger seeking hospitality. He came as a Mexican refugee into the United States. But he was deported to Mexico; local police turned him over to narco-traffickers who killed him He returned again as a Sudanese refugee fleeing to Israel, but died in Helot of untreated diabetes.
Jesus came back to save humankind. He was born, as he always is, into a family of the poor. This time he was the son of a Detroit taxi driver. But 41 shots tore him apart as an infant when a policeman mistook his pacifier for an Uzi. Jesus came back again in Gaza as a baby girl. But an Israeli air strike upon the hospital where she was born ended her life when she was less than three hours old.:
Read the rest
http://strawberryrevolution.wordpress.com/2014/12/16/messiahs/
Continuing from timgueguen’s #1:
The horde had polished their fangs
with the greatest of care.
In the hopes that an MRA
soon would be there.
Re: The war on Christmas.
Walmart has won it.
@7 Ain’t that the truth
That Jolly Old St Nick needs to be holding you upside-down and shaking out all yer loose change into a bucket to properly represent the season.
I don’t need my glasses on to appreciate this glorious starry starry night.
Egypt bans Exodus Hollywood film
After 522 Years, Spain Seeks To Make Amends For Expulsion Of Jews
Religion’s smart-people problem: The shaky intellectual foundations of absolute faith
by John G. Messerly, Dec 21, 2014
Is my memory faulty, or didn’t posts usually list the number of comments?
Tony!
Yes, they did.
I don’t know when it stopped.
It stopped within the last month. Probably within the last 3 weeks. Definitely more than 10 days ago.
That’s the best I can give you.
Yeah, I would have said in the last couple of weeks. Going further back there used to be a link to the comment box, which was really useful for getting the end of a long thread, once the adverts had stopped loading and resetting the window to the top of the thread. A link to the end of a thread would be nice to have back. Just saying.
Slow day in Pharyngulaland.
Yeah. If only an “MRA” would show up so “the horde” could be a bunch of total dicks but feel good about it.
(last one before resolutions kick in. Have a Happy Newt Year.)
Have a nice day, Chas.
So now criticizing the misogyny of an MRA is being a dick.
Chas-world is bizarre indeed.
Bless your heart, Chas.
Over and over again.
Is Popper’s fallibilism better than skepticism?
It seems like skepticism has an outward focus (ie, “someone else is wrong”) while fallibilism brings the focus back to the person (ie “I might be wrong”). It seems more humble and far more practical, since we have much more power to change ourselves than to change others.
It’s not much different than teaching “don’t rape” vs “don’t be raped”.
I’ve felt for a long time he believes the EP shit where males have dominance over females due to *no evidence available*.
@ Teh Horde
An article as Squidmas present: The Elusive Chinese Dream.
@ Chas
That new years resolution sounds promising.
@ F.O
Try: “ ALL people are fallible.”
Chas the One Eyed Terrapin
The meanness of your utterances depends on a date in the xtian calendar? How astrological of you.
Chas,
Well, that would put some life in this long weekend.
On another note. I tried “being a nicer person next year” thing, but someone usually annoys me by lunch.
Oh, charming Chas, oh noble Chas.
What whit and gravitas he has.
Why should he back up his claims,
Waste time on those with lesser brains?
Why quibble? He’s superior,
For look!, from his posterior,
Flow accusations of PC-ishness—
Of lockstep insincere-ishness,
And who are we to argue that he’s full of bile and gas,
Or ask for evidence that he’s not squawking from his ass?
Shame on you you who persecute him! Who’d do so? Not me!
For sceptic I, why would I ask, his evidence to see?
So, Rebecca Watson is leaving the SGU. That is a bummer.
Daz pointed out that Good Omens was on BBC Radio 4. W00t!
I followed some links, and found that Small Gods will be rebroadcast over the new year. W00t²!
Funding for Netanyahu’s Likud primary campaign all from abroad
Thank you USA?
Blackadder has his underpants on his head.
I’m having one of those nights where dealing with the shit-pile that is humanity and their collective tendency toward intellectually vacancy, denial of reality and love of superstitious, supernatural claptrap is driving me to shrieking, foam-flecked rage. How do any of you deal with bullshit without going on a public shouting rampage?
Akira MacKenzie
Snuggle up in bed with a favourite book (Discworld in my case) and switch off my computer.
I watch dated British TV sitcoms.
Or right up-to-date Japanese TV dramas. (with subtitles)
Did you guys see this? It’s amazing, really, how much one can change when one honestly examines reality.
Cats. Cats are nice.
ledasmom@37,
My friends A. Mouse and A. Small-Bird beg to differ.
If A. Mouse’s friends and relations would stay out of my house, they would have nothing to fear. As for A. Small-Bird, the worst thing A.S-B. has to worry about from my lot is the possible guilt from contributing to kitty stress by hanging about outside the window, utterly out of reach.
I’m trying to train my cat to attack only invasive species.
It’s a work in progress.
@Akira MacKenzie
So it’s Thursday?
I try to become better. I guess it helps that I have a naturally aggressive nature and my challenge is using that correctly so I try to find ways to “press my teeth into the grindstone” so to speak. It’s finding ways to channel instead of vent. Venting can become a habit that comes out when you don’t want it to.
I come over here and look at what what is bothering people the most that I am capable of helping with.
Or I try to find something I don’t know how to help with yet and try look for how they are getting or wanting help.
Or I look for annoying outside agitators with illogical bullshit that I can handle.
Or I look for new “arguments” or arguments from people that I disagree with on issues I know about.
Or I look up things that allow me to directly address important basic issues in a more realistic manner for efficiency. Like how jokes are emotionally structured to deal with how people use humor in arguments. Or what the best ways to break an irrational connection might be when compared to the most basic manifestation of the behavior.
I have a hard time relaxing.
ledasmom@39,
Fine – your cats are not a problem. Cats in general most certainly are.
Nick Gotts: Oh, I know. I work at a veterinary clinic, and it shocks me how many cats still go outdoors. Bad for the cats, bad for the wildlife. We regularly get cats with bite wounds of unknown origin.
I’ll probably miss you, Sven.
I know a bit about bridge burning… the fire gets mesmerizing at some point and then you just have to keep poking at it.
Nick Gotts
Much like their facilitators, the humans.
Someone who claims to be arguing in good faith about institutional racism is nonetheless raising a lot of racist dog whistles….
(It’s when you start saying that maybe companies that don’t hire minorities are afraid of lawsuits, or maybe when you’re pedantically trying to get everyone to agree to a very specific, narrow definition of “institutional”).
Oh, man, my secret is out. The entire purpose of this blog for the last ten years has been to simply…troll Chas.
Wait….that’s a secret?
Louis
Anyone know what zezzer is on about?
Ah!
(truncated! WTF‽)
💡!
Now I understand theophontes #158 (or #658) on the previous iteration.
http://qz.com/283395/how-hong-kongs-umbrella-movement-protesters-are-using-their-native-language-to-push-back-against-beijing/
Has anybody kept track of how many times Chas has now promised to flounce?
But I think that even for Chas a Flounce anounced 14 days in advance is new. I’m wondering if he’ll stick to it for longer than he anounced it…
@ Owlmirrot
I make a point of always addressing Shenzhen officials in Cantonese.
The Big Idea: Jim C. Hines
I’ve already downloaded it. January 6th can’t get here quick enough (next book in the Magic Ex Libris series).
Iyeska,
After seeing you recommend the book so many times, I noticed Delusions of Gender in the bookstore last week and got it. It’s very good.
Beatrice:
It was SC who recommended the book constantly, not me. I did get it on her recommendation, and liked it well enough, but the author’s dive into the personal at random times left me a bit uncomfortable.
Iyeska,
Ah, I’m sorry. My thanks to SC then.
Every time I see the title of the LA thread, Warren Zevon starts to play in my head.
Venting. The Neil deGrasse Tyson twitter brouhaha really pisses me off, apparently for reasons few people care about. Tyson tweets
Cute, especially with the ‘Benny the Blue-nosed reindeer’ punchline. Problem: it’s bullshit physics. He’s dead wrong. Maybe I’ve missed something (I don’t tweet), but I’ve seen no calling out on this. Next day, Tyson tweets;
Yeah, I’m trying. Imagine a world where people give a shit about objective truths, rather than passing along, or ignoring, crap because it suits their agendas. Mocking Christians is apparently more important than getting basic physics right. Fuck that lack of noise.
And for anyone who says “it’s just a light-hearted tweet”; fuck off. This is your Great Science Communicator getting undergrad physics wrong. Good luck with that. Get better science communicators.
/Venting
Same trip, same check in, several absolutely lovely TSA agents trying to make my dog comfortable and two other assholes who decided that my sub 1-in long certified allowed-on in-carry-on leatherman keychain that was a Christmas present had to be confiscated with no option to mail home.
(It’s already flown with me before, same backpack, same set of keys)
I was reading the comments to a Language Log post about the PRC banning wordplay, and at the bottom, noticed the following:
According to Google Translate, the primary translation for “owl” is “māotóuyīng” — would this necessarily have been seen (or heard) as referencing Máo Zédōng (note differing tone)?
I tried googling a bit, and while the whole “Winking Owl” was indeed politically controversial, this long discussion does not suggest that the owl was meant as a direct reference to Mao, and the text even emphasizes that the problem, as seen by the PRC, was that: “The owl, with its one eye open and the other closed, is a self-portrait of the likes of Huang. It reveals their attitude: an animosity toward the Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the Socialist system.”
More pictures here.
I totally was unaware that this was/is a thing. I may have to adopt one of the winking owl images as an avatar.
(\___/)
(-\ /o)
/| 'V' |\
\\:':'://
-----`"" ""`-----
Everything is connected.
That’s why it shorts out so often.
— John M. Ford
Owlmirror
♥♥♥
Anyone see this from Bill Maher?
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/12/bill-maher-slams-evil-ruthless-monsanto-the-scientologists-of-the-corporate-world/
yazikus #64
To hell with him. He’s dumb, he’s boring, he isn’t funny and he supports very harmful ideas. His words have no more clout than anything from any other celebrity.
I feel sorry for the driver.
If all they needed was God, then their usual priests would do just fine. The fact that they have therapists is just another attempt to co-opt the good name of science.
(posted here instead of in the Leelah thread, since I felt it inappropriate to take a tangential swipe at Christianists there)
Off to the wild party soon.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
I’ve already sniffed the new year and it smells much like the old one. Happy Tomorrow, everyone.
Now it’s 2015.
and I’m going to bed
conversation redirected from here: The Saddest Thing I’ve Read Today
Grewgills,
You are directing this message at trans people. You are telling trans people that life isn’t fair.
I don’t know whether to call that oblivious or condescending or to just gape at the monitor in stunned incomprehension.
Seriously, you just relied the important lesson that life isn’t fair… to trans people. I kind of believe most might be aware of the fact.
That confirmation was meant to be a question or a statement? You don’t know what you think or… ?
From what? Oh, that _______ means not actually having any suggestions because you haven’t given this topic any thought. Like, none. Because from here it looks like your train of thought was “I am offended. I shall defend my dignity.”
I see Grewgills confirms exactly how much interest they hold in this topic beyond their own feelings.
(hint: none)
This is not at all an overreaction or overgeneralization or overt show of hate for an entire group for actions of some…… on the other hand, trans people really shouldn’t say they hate cis people. That’s just horrible.
Happy New Year everyone. My predictions for 2015 is Dawkins will make several dozen dumb tweets, Nugent will continue to whine about PZ, “allies” like Grewgills will not learn to look beyond their own asshole, and the authoritarians will continue to win. Not the most positive outlook for a new year, but I’m not exactly going out on any limbs either.
@73 Beatrice
And there in a nutshell is the giant fucked up doublestandard we shall henceforth refer to as Shiroferetto.
When trans people get angry and make an unfair generalization about the group that makes their lifes hell, they must be taken to task and forced to apologize, but when Shiro does it, it’s totally fair, because someone was rude and that justifies it 100%.
Well, I was going to explain to Shiroferetto that I do appreciate xir comments, because opinion, but don’t necessarily agree with them – then carlie explained it better than I could. Shiroferetto speaks from a place of how-things-should-be, where we honestly can tell people to be more polite because their lives are not in danger (even though, honestly in my opinion, politeness anywhere is overrated). Sadly, this is not the case, and I agree with carlie – I don’t begrudge them (trans people, or anyone else with justifiable anger) a bit of their anger.
And somehow I missed the SJW part of the comment (thanks, January 1 reading comprehension). So… yeah. Double-standard for the lose.
Sorry about that, everyone.
Also, Rowan and throwaway on that thread have also pretty much spoken for me. And I loved carlie‘s razor-heels metaphor.
Grewgills is an idiot. He should realize that he is posting on an atheist blog, and we’ve often got exactly that same sentiment: the religious wouldn’t be so vicious if they weren’t feeling threatened by those militant atheists. Creationism is nothing but a reaction to overly aggressive scientists — why, if they’d just back off and stop being so definitive with their statements about evolution, there wouldn’t be any problem.
I’ve heard it ten thousand times, even from people who claim to be our allies in these struggles. So when I see it from people claiming to be wanting the best outcome for trans issues, I can pretty easily translate. They aren’t helping, they just want everyone to shut the fuck up so they can go on pretending all is well in the world.
Is there a recognized Godwin’s Law-type adage for this type of situation? Something along the lines of “as a discussion regarding trans people and the issues they face grows longer, the probability of cis people derailing it into a false equivalency of how trans people being angry at their cis oppressors is just as bad as the hatred trans people face approaches unity?”
If not, there really should be. What should we call it?
@ chigau
Check this out: 1 & 2
theophontes
Stunning!
Thank you and Happy New Year.
…
it’s amazing that the ‘copter uses beer as fuel ;)
@73, Beatrice –
That blockquoted bit… How was that able to pass through their fingers after all the whining about how you shouldn’t hate an entire group because of the actions of a few? The hypocrisy it BURNS.
Jessica Grave
It’s a rather universal phenomenon: Whatever complaints marginalized people have, they get told they must voice their protest more politely. AFAICT it doesn’t matter if it’s trans* people, women, PoC…
I admit it is especially fascinating to see it in people who will righteously yell at members of the privileged group when it is about them and who then turn around and do the exact same thing to others.
I think white cis feminists are among the more frequent offenders in this category…
@Beatrice 71
It was meant to be a period. Late night, slightly intoxicated fingers.
The blank is for whatever group you are directing the ”I hate you all and I think you all should die” at.
Nowhere did I say not to be angry or not to state your case forcefully. There is a hell of a lot of ground between doormat and ”I hate you all and I want you all dead”. If you can’t see that, then you are blind.
I do apologize for not moving this discussion over here earlier and not doing that myself. Thanks to Beatrice for that.
It is worth noting here that trans* people, much like other marginalized communities are not allowed to express anger and feelings of being upset about their lot. Like in the thread’s examples, it wasn’t some trans* person going on a rant about how she was going to kill all the cis people with her machete or even anything rising up to the level of casual hatred and unintentional bullshit that trans* people have to deal with on a daily basis. It was a sigh of frustration uttered in the cold-blooded ending of yet another of our sisters due to entrenched values held by the vast majority of cisgender individuals.
And it’s reacted to not only as equal to someone ranting that they were going to start killing cis people, but also as somehow worse than casual bigotries that make it harder for trans* people to survive like Leelah couldn’t. And worse, as directly responsible for said bigotry as well as more active bigotry.
Apparently, we as the marginalized are to accept our lot quietly and meekly and with all due kindness beg the dominant powers to maybe thinking about changing the status quo.
Except…
That never works. The moment the marginalized stand up for any aspect of their humanity, the dominant come down like a sack of bricks, justifying themselves by saying they were pushed to it by “social justice warriors” or these reverse-racist/misandrist/cisphobic/etc… blah de blahs. No matter how meekly. No matter how deferential.
So we as the marginalized have a choice. Accept nothing but the status quo and have the “support” of these “allies” in… well, I suppose they aren’t actively killing us or push back and be labeled the exact reason we face the murders/bigotries/violence/discrimination/injustices/lost families that we do.
And the absolutely fascinating thing is that apparently the dominant groups have no awareness of the irony of a situation where the marginalized is consistently betrayed by those who call themselves allies, who are fucked over by those who turn at the slightest explanation of what exactly it means to live a marginalized life or any emotion other than easy-going acceptance of the status-quo and a meek submission impossible to attain in life and yet is yelled at if they react like a human being to that.
I mean, imagine if a friend said they were your friend, but they were never there when you needed them, yelled at you if you ever mentioned your life, constantly sold you out, and demanded all manner of favors and attention even when you were grieving and went off on you whenever you were having a bad day.
Would this person be your friend for very long? Would you trust them to have your back if something happens? Would you turn to them when you were hurting? Would you never start to resent or get angry with their abusive asses?
It’s a frustrating thing to endure day-in and day-out and believe me as someone who constantly has to be the token and the begging pleading freak begging for the minimum amount of being treated as a human being, it gets frustrating and really fucks with your self-esteem to be doing that over and over again while enduring constant bombardment of hatreds and near-life-ending traumas.
I shouldn’t have to beg for my humanity.
We shouldn’t have to beg for our humanities.
Trans* people shouldn’t have to apologize to the delicate feelings of cis people when they are grieving the all-too-common murder by social attitude of yet another one of their youngest, most vulnerable members.
If there is one single moment where cis people shouldn’t have the monomaniacal focus of our society’s attention, this would fucking well be it.
So yeah. No. Just no.
I don’t understand how you get that from what I said. That is assuming you are referring to my comment.
To be crystal clear, saying something (anything), is less bad than systemic bigotry that marginalizes people and ends in their misery and/or death. That doesn’t mean that saying that thing can’t in and of itself be also wrong, even if it is orders of magnitude less harmful than systemic oppression.
The point I was trying to make* was that if one’s goal is social change saying that you want all of the dominant group dead and/or telling allies and potential allies to fuck off if they aren’t (yet) sufficiently allied isn’t the most effective way to do it. I agree that arguments need to be made forcefully and that the people doing the oppressing need to be called out on it, but saying I hate all of you and want you dead is a step too far.
* in the wrong thread
Grewgills @87:
Sophi Daniels’ comment from that thread:
That was a moment of outrage not outreach. I think you’re conflating words of frustration and anger with an attempt to effect social change. Sometimes advocates of social justice take time out to express outrage. They don’t dedicate every word out of their mouth, and every minute of their lives to social change.
I can understand where that anger and frustration are coming from, given that cis people are the ones responsible for the suffering and deaths of trans people.
Oh, and btw, Sophi never called for the death of cis people. Xe only said “fuck cis people” and “I hated most all of you I ever ended up knowing.”
Grewgills @87
I actually went back to that thread and looked again at the entirety of your posts on it. Did you realize that in a post about the casual extermination of yet another of our sisters by bigoted familial attitudes, you posted not a single comment that wasn’t making this argument over and over again and calling out trans* people for somehow being responsible for how they are hated?
Not. One. Post.
It’s not like you were going “gosh these parents and society awful” and then went “whoa there, why is this trans* person personally stabbing me with their steely knives and shooting me with their death beams”.
Nope, instead, what incensed you to post was not a stark reminder of just a taste of what trans* people face on a daily basis, but rather the fact that some trans* person made a sigh of frustration to the attitudes of those that hold a position of privilege and power over her life. That was your call to action and the main focus of your responses following.
This was more of a thing demanding response than the original post. This is what made you personally feel motivated to make your voice heard.
I’m not sure you appreciate all that says about what you unconsciously support.
Also, you keep on repeating this adage about “die cis scum”. You reference it here in this post, you referenced it in your posts on the other thread.
Examples:
You @169
You @ 178
And your defender also referenced it:
Shiroferreto @154
Here’s the thing though. That post that incensed you to such anger. That outpouring of anti-cis bigotry that you cite as being personally responsible for the shabby state of support for transgender rights?
It actually went like this:
Sophi @103
And that’s really illustrative, because you weren’t the only one to take that as some inexcusable thing (in fact, the majority of initial responses actually jumped down her throat for this) and to genuinely believe it to be death threat calibre hatred and frustration…
Except it’s not. It’s someone saying fuck you in general to a dominant group after stating the source of their pain and backing it up with their lived experiences of being mistreated and ill-done by the majority of dominant group members she has encountered.
This expression of despairing levels of pain and hurt from oppression is treated as on the same scale as hatred coupled with oppression and taken as almost a death threat.
And that’s the issue. The automatic response to trans* pain and anger is to minimize a trans* person’s reasons for feeling pain and overplaying their anger to discredit them. I mean, of course you are (oh sorry, a fictional on the fence person would be) right to drop support of trans* people’s humanity after seeing such a gross death threat and outpouring of hatred as a single fuck you and an expression of pain.
That’s what a lot of marginalized communities face. What? Your kid was gunned down by cops and left on the street like a warning and now the bastard that did it is getting off and given accolades? Better put on a smile and act like it’s no big deal because if you are upset about that, you’re just an angry black person. What? Yet another friend has been raped and no one in power in the legal system, society, or your subculture seems to care? Better be kind and gentle and discuss it rationally without any anger or else you are biased and a b**** and obviously on the rag. And so on and so forth.
The marginalized community is not allowed anger. Is not allowed to express anger or people like you descend to tell us how no one will like us and give us any rights if we’re not meek and deferential and go slowly and gently so that the poor little babes don’t feel put at ease by our humanity.
We’re asked to do this while suffering things worth getting angry about. I mean, for fuck’s sake, you jumped on trans* people for being less than kind when yet another trans* kid was driven to suicide by society and their parents’ attitudes and lack of support. During a holiday season when most of us got to reflect on our disownment or had a rousing game of survive the dehumanizing misgendering hell-hole of a minimally “supportive” family. Because someone in dwelling on that death got angry and upset at the people making her and Leelah’s life harder.
This was what drove you to respond and what you are still circling around even now.
And this advice is only given to the powerless. We are to accept harder lives and unlike the dominant, we can’t kvetch and gripe about how unfair it is that we occasionally have to think. We instead must be perky and perfect. All of us. Because a single person who breaks under that unfair weight “ruins” it for all of us.
And yet we are to celebrate and count “support” that is so fragile, something so insignificantly tiny in its humanity could shatter it?
Sorry, no.
We’re not losing support from any that would carry it beyond not actively throwing up when Laverne Cox is on the TV-box.
Ah, ninjaed by Tony.
But yes, Tony, that.
That’s the other bit of humanity lost in this dance. Our lives are made political, by virtue of our humanity denied and that our existence is treated like a political issue by those that would rather we didn’t… exist.
So therefore, when we campaign for said humanity, that is all we are assumed to be. Just a little educational resource for privileged people to learn from and move on. A political slogan rather than a person.
But we’re people. We get frustrated. We get depressed. We get angry. We take breaks from the struggle and watch silly cartoons and snuggle our loved ones. We lives lives and try and survive best we can. And sometimes, if we get hit by too much, we lose the fight and get put in the grave.
We should be allowed to have the full range of human emotions and experiences that dominant groups have. Because an “acceptance” that doesn’t accept that doesn’t really accept us, it accepts the hallmark card of our lives, a paper-thin representation with little resemblance to reality.
We are not robots. We’re people.
I was dismayed when I saw people here of all places react to this…
Sophie Daniels
…as if it was some sort of display of bigotry.
Because I know exactly what Sophi is talking about there when xe refers to sympathy for cis parents. Do you know how often cis parents expect sympathy for their terrible plight of having to “deal” with a trans child? Who make their child’s life all about them and their terrible cis suffering? Who demand sympathy and shoulders to lean on as they stumble through the horror–abject horror!–of having a trans child?
And then people crawl out of the woodwork to make the thread all about cis tears.
Cis people are not being driven to their graves by trans children. Cis people are not killing themselves because someone who is trans* told them to fuck off. Cis people are not risking their lives when they use public bathrooms because they’re cis. Cis people are not under constant hateful scrutiny because they’re cis.
If you consider yourself an ally and your response to an oppressed person’s pain and complaints about the privileged group you belong to is “but what about my fee-fees :c “? You’re not a goddamn ally.
@Cerberus
When someone else has already said what I have to say, particularly when they have already said it better than I could have I don’t typically add my commentary to that. Everything I could have said about Leelah’s pain and her parents horrible reaction to it had already been said by others better than I could articulate.
My responses there were prompted more by the defenses of what I saw as a hateful comment, than by the original outburst. I did it in the wrong thread and for that I am sorry, but I still think that answering hate with hate is counterproductive.
Also I have probably a rather too large SIWOTI problem and should let things go more often.
Grewgills @92:
Your contribution to that thread was to tut-tut Sophi Daniels for using language you don’t like. You didn’t express sorrow for Leelah. You didn’t express outrage at her parents transphobia. You didn’t display any empathy for the shit trans people go through every day. Also, you have yet to acknowledge that Sophi never made any comments like “die cis people”.
I guess you didn’t bother to read what I wrote @88. Otherwise, you’d realize that Sophi’s comment wasn’t one of attempting to effect social change It was one of expressing outrage and frustration.
You’re just digging that hole deeper and deeper. Now you think Sophi was wrong for expressing anger and frustration? You’d deny hir emotions and the right to express those emotions? All bc you’ve mistaken outrage for seeking social change. Trans people have so much bullshit society throws at them, and you decided to tell them they can only express their outrage in a manner you approve of? How about you not tell trans people that they are wrong to express their anger and frustration at the way they’re treated by cis people.
Shiroferetto who I know has flounced, but I already wrote this so what the hell.
I’ve run into variations on this one too. My response was and is the same. I totally grok the sentiment, and while I’d rather it not be literally applied to me, the chances of that being the case are basically null. If someone was shouting that and waving a gun, I’d find it pretty threatening, but I find gun waving pretty threatening no matter what the waver is or isn’t saying. People waving guns around scare the daylights out of me, I’m weird that way.
Up to you. That’s my point; I’m not in a place to say how angry oppression should make someone, just to acknowledge how angry it does make some people. (Myself included; I’m pretty fucking pissed off about this shit too, and I can only imagine how much more pissed I’d be if I were personally subject to it.) Neither are you in a position to make those judgements, even if you are further down that particular privilege spectrum than I am.
Grewgills
I can’t be bothered going through and quoting specific passages, so consider this addressed to your posts in general:
The oppressed cannot end their oppression. Only the oppressors can do that. Nothing that, in this case* trans* people do, or don’t do, will stop cis people from shitting on them. We can know this, because lots of trans* people (including people right here on this blog, in threads which you have posted in and ostensibly read) have spoken and written about all the ways they have tried to jump through all the bullshit hoops cis people have demanded in exchange for recognizing their basic humanity and a right to their own identity, and then been shat on anyway. The only thing that’s going to stop cis people from shitting on trans* people is for cis people to stop fucking shitting on trans* people. That’s it. That’s the only thing that will work. And to get there, it’s important for cis people to acknowledge that shitting on trans* people is causing real harm to real people, and that it’s an asshole thing to do and they need to knock it the fuck off. And a really good way to do that is to treat people like they’re being assholes when they say and/or do horrible bigoted shit. I personally tend to get pissed off when people act like assholes, because anger is a very clear social signal to my fellow naked apes that this behaviour is something that I disapprove strongly of. If enough cis people (yes, cis people) actually act like they disapprove strongly of transphobic bullshit, then people will be less prone to say and do that kind of thing because it will expose them to the just contempt of their peers (because, you see, transphobic assholes don’t consider trans* people to be their peers). The ‘fence sitters’ (i.e. people who aren’t actively transphobic assholes but are steeped in a strongly cissexist culture and have never bothered to learn about the issues) are people who will look at an outburst of rage like the one that got you started on your wankery and think “gee, that’s pretty extreme. I wonder why they’re so upset, because this seems like a sign that something’s wrong and needs fixing”. What we, as cis people who want to be allies should do in these situations is, a) first and foremost, acknowledge the legitimacy of that anger and not wank on about politeness or tone or any of that bullshit, and then b)not tolerate anyone else doing that, or bringing any other transphobic bullshit into the discussion, and c) educate the curious ‘fence-sitters’, because a) they’ll take it more seriously from another cis person, and b) trans* people have enough shit to put up with without being expected to explain it all to every curious stranger who may or may not (but probably isn’t) be acting in good faith.
(I invite any of the Horde better positioned to make such judgements than I to correct any errors I have made above).
*this applies equally to other oppressed groups, but this particular conversation is about trans* people.
Wow, that thread won’t die. Louismorelli just keeps on going.
If I hadn’t seen his website, I would think he’s just messing with us. That website is just too much work for it to be a joke.
Good rule of thumb: There is no reason to chastise the oppressed for simply “hating” the privileged.
From Cerberus @ 87
Quoting this for truth because people need to think about it and how fucked up tone policing is. You’re literally saying to someone that you’ll support their equality if and only if they show you deference. You’ll consider them equal to you just as soon as they preference your comfort above their own lives and livelihoods. You’ll stop treating them as inferior just as soon as they concede your superiority.
I saw a photo of some graffiti that read: “Feminism is hated because women are hated.”
The same principle applies here. SJWs are hated because they defend people who are hated.
To suggest otherwise is victim-blaming, pure and simple. Nothing else to see. When you say, “The way CaitiCat acts makes me understand why people hate SJWs,” what you’re actually saying is that you already hate SJWs and CaitiCat has provided a handy excuse so that you can can escape the moral blame for doing something as irrational and oppressive as hating people who fight for social justice. Or, the most charitable reading: you are friends with bigots who hate SJWs and you’re very happy to provide them with a handy excuse so they can escape the blame for their shittiness and furtherance of oppression.
Just a reminder: All 4 episodes of the BBC Radio 4 production of Small Gods are available now.
@ chigau
Contrary to what it looks like, I actually do know what is going on here.
grewgills:
I’m with PZ @ 78. You. Are. An. Idiot. Being all sweetness and light to hetcis people isn’t going to help or change a single thing. A noisy “fuck off, you are NOT an ally” might cause at least some people to stop a moment, and think. The taste of your offended tears is better than the condescending pat from a privileged ass.
Word.
Iyeska @102:
Yup. It took a series of such short sharp shocks to set me on the road. Still plodding along, slowly.
MODERATOR REQUEST:
There’s a Christofascist troll trolling on the “Saddest Thing I’ve Read” thread.
Really needs an insta-banhammering.
Could somebody please send up the proper signal?
Thanks awfully.
Funny Diva, you can do that yourself, just click Contact a Monitor (link on the sidebar, under ‘Profile’).
Funny Diva,
I read in the Lounge that you were having an issue with that link. That’s happening because clicking on the link tries to open up your default emailing program (which must be set to Outlook).
Instead, you can right-click on the link and (depending on your browser) you should get a “Copy Email Address” option. Click that and you can then paste the email address in whichever email you use.
I think my washing machine is having a stroke.
chigau, it’s probably just the Eater Of Socks that’s nesting in the back. Feed it some odd ones to pacify it.
Lofty
I figured it out.
I’ve been doing laundry for a few hours.
(well, really, I’m internetting and the machine is doing the laundry)
All of the previous loads were on ‘Normal’ cycle, this one is on ‘Delicate’:
*swoosh*swooooosh*silence*glurk*swishswishswish*silence*
I’m afraid to go in there.
Eater Of Socks Is Not Delicate. Is Offended.
For some reason, Eater Of Socks has never eaten any of my socks.
undies, though…
I have an idea…
bodycams for everyone
except the police
I am still reading the “saddest thing” thread, but not commenting because I can’t muster up anything but “that poor girl”, and wishing she’d had better parents, or at least some supportive adults in her corner.
What I wanted to do, here so it won’t sidetrack things, is say thank you to all of you good people posting over there. I also offer hugs and your choice of beverage. I’m learning a lot, as usual.
So
-22 C is too many for my ipad
I’m writing a blog entry, it’s a 101 sort of intro to the concept of rape culture. Maybe people could give me some feedback on my main definition. If people want credit for helping me, please say so.
Unfortunately, many popular supposed definitions of “rape culture” are actually just a list of examples of rape culture, and I think that can confuse peope sometimes. So here’s what my definition looks like right now:
Rape culture is any culturally influencing activity, belief etc. (hence “culture”) which has some bad impact related to rape (hence “rape”).
It might even be more general than my definition, if that’s possible. Perhaps instead of “some bad impact” it could be better said to be some capacity to increase the incidence or impact of rape, but I wanted my definition to be nice and short.
I was kind of inspired after seeing this video where a, ahem, libertarian feminist tried to argue against the concept of rape culture. I already argued against the video in the comments section, but one thing I left mostly untouched was the definition, which I’ve now decided to address.
@116 brian
My two cents, I think being a bit more comprehensive at the expense of brevity might help. Any good definition of rape culture can’t be shorter than a good definition of culture. Starting with a solid sociological definition of culture seems like a good first step. I am assuming here you are aiming for the broadest audience. If you are assuming a more nuanced understanding of what is meant by culture from your audience you can get by with something more concise.
brianpansky @ 116
I’d say something more like “attitudes and behaviors which have the cumulative effect of creating a cultural climate wherein rape is tolerated (or even encouraged) in practice, though not necessarily in principle.”
I’m a regular reader but I’ve never posted here under my name. Could a capable Pharyngula commenter head over to TreeBuzz and engage these misogynistic, anti-homosexual bigots. http://www.treebuzz.com/forum/threads/hurt-feelings-data-sheet.29318/. There are commenters here who can make a case far more persuasive and compelling than I can. Thanks.
About my comments on the Lounge regarding Rowan’s snakes, i just wanted to say that i’m sorry i talked about you like you weren’t there, first of all, i only realised after i had done it. It’s not my intention to antagonize you, it’s just a subject i care pasionately about because i see how destructive it is and i see good people participating of it not realising the consequences and it kills me.
Azhael, I entirely understand. I think spider ball pythons should never be bred, and I’m one of the people advocating in the corn snake community for testing any animal from sunkissed lines for the genetic-stargazing trait and retiring all animals that carry hets for that mutation. Lavender used to have a heavy tendency towards kinking, and breeders will only sell the kinklets on as pet-only. Most breeders I know take outcrossing very seriously. Yes, some inbreeding occurs to fix a trait (usually a sibling pair) but after that point they try to find unrelated stock to continue it. We, as a hobby, learned that early on with the bloodreds that were so line-bred that clutch size dramatically dropped, feeding response was poor, fertility was poor, and the snakes had an unusual tendency towards cannibalism.
Tons of outcrossing has occurred since, and while the snakes no longer are that same gorgeous color, they’re now as robust as any morph or normal.
I know that I’m as careful as I can be, while still doing some linebreeding, and I’m definitely monitoring the health and feeding responses of my babies and always on the lookout for unrelated animals. I know that not everyone is, and that sucks.
I also understand the passion, because it’s how I feel about purebred dogs. There are breeds that need to go extinct, and reptile morphs that need to go extinct, for the good of the animals.
I absolutely agree that producing certain morphs are just ethically abhorrent and they need to disappear. I don’t care that they are valuable and i don’t care that someone paid a shit tone of money for them….anyone who breeds them is an inmoral bastard, period.
I take it further than you do, though, because i’m not willing to accept the kinked animals that are produced even if it’s as pets only, or even if it used to happen but now we’ve “cleaned” the bloodline. If someone is breeding with a pair knowing that a percentage of the offpsring is going to be malformed….there is no excuse to continue breeding with that pair. I don’t care that the kinks are not life-threatening, i don’t care that it’s only a portion of the offspring…it is putting the monetary value and aesthetic value of the animal before it’s well-being and i don’t see how anyone can morally justify that.
Even with mutations that are not associated to a higher incidence of certain problems, and even with loads of outcrossing, there are issues that people ignore. since the mutants are more valuable than the nominals but the mutant is one polymorphism against an unknown, but multiple amount of polymorphisms included under “nominal”, mass production of mutants inevitably means a progressive reduction in genetic diversity. Since people will also go to great lengths to guarantee the survival of any mutant, it also means that unfit individuals get to pass their mutant genes and any associated genes, in huge quantities. This makes zero sense. It’s the opposite of survival of the fittest, it’s survival of the unfit. Under this selective paradigm, fitness actually means unusual, not healthy.
The morph market is so huge and dominant that it is currently almost impossible to find locality animals, let alone non-het nominals of certain species (i know the situation in the US is not necessarily the same for some native species). Coupled with the loss of diversity, inbreeding, loss of fitness, etc, this means that people go back to acquiring WC animals to fuel the outcrossing, which is morally indefensible on its own.
It’s just bad captive management….no two ways about it….and it’s done purely for the benefit of a capricious market. It never benefits the animals, nor the species (it compromises any potential benefits that might have been achieved in captivity for the species). It’s them who always pay 100% of the price and i just don’t think there is a way to morally justify giving preference to a personal aesthetic whim over the well-being of a sentient being.
I sympathize with your concern about the more obvious cases of deleterious mutations and i’m glad to hear that you oppose them openly. It’s just that i think you, and many others, are too quick to tolerate other stuff (like the kinklets, among many other things), and i think that’s a mistake. I think most hobbyist’s level of tolerance is waaaaaay too high….
Uhh… Anyone still care about GamerGate? Also, anyone need a reason to punch their computer screen?
http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/01/gamergate-at-the-beginning-of-2015
It’s -28°C.
It’s a positively balmy 6° here. On the downside, I just opened the last beer in the house.
*hands chigau a warm comforter*
We finally managed to heat the house to a comfortable temperature.
On the downside, there is no beer in the house.
It’s getting cold here too, had to close the windows and pull on the comforter cover. I don’t have a comforter to go in it, but if I did I might have left the windows open and used it.
Does anyone know where to find a good graphic on regional voting patterns in the US going back to the 1920s or so. My google-fu has failed me.
I’m arguing with an idiot that thinks that the South began it’s shift to the GOP in the 1920s rather than in the 1960s in response to the CRA. I already have clear data showing 91 Congressmen and 21 Senators from former Confederate states for Democrats vs 11 Congressmen and 1 Senator from former Confederate states for the GOP. That should be enough to show his premise to be ahistorical crap, but more is better :-)
Thanks, Beatrice.
drowner: Damn, that article is such bullshit. But I can hardly get too worked up over because it is on First Things, which I have encountered before as a source of Christianist drivel. They describe themselves as “interfaith” but, well, wikipedia describes their contributors as “represent[ing] traditional Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and Jewish viewpoints.” I guess it is technically “interfaith”, that way.
So it is hardly surprising to see them whining about the evils of Social Justice.
Bonus: The author may be Mormon, statistically the most conservative religious demographic in the U.S. On his personal blog, recent posts include an article salivating about a Brave Man using a gun to stop domestic abuse and a post about how trolls are empowered by “hypersensitivity”. Elsewhere he has this article: http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2014/03/24/the_mormon_war_on_feminism.html. Wherein he tries to bring himself to a middle ground where he can still find a way to chastise the group calling for Mormon women to be ordained as priests as being too stubborn and shrill and whatnot. All that in mind makes the article about Gamergate make much more “sense”.
@ drowner
I’m not going to buy into his “hammer in search of a nail” claim against SJW’s. It would be nice if we were making such headway and making short shrift of iniquity. And, no, I don’t share any of his sympathies with the GG’s, reasons & history either.
Consider perhaps that he has taken an explanatory template from somewhere else and filled in the boxes. I fail to see an ideology in search of a target.
theophontes, drowner:
One actual observation I couldn’t help but make about the article itself: Right off the bat there is an obvious dishonesty. He uses sleight of hand and starts talking of the social justice movement as if it were a formal organization that takes measures to ensure stability and continued existence. He uses the line “Success is Suicide”. Well, not really, because these are more akin to protests than full time job positions. Success isn’t suicide as much as it is a case of our efforts no longer being needed and all of those in the movement being able to live in a better world afterwards, otherwise known as “success”.
And that little dishonestly really just illustrates the bias and the problems to come in the rest of the article.
@ anteprepro
Apropos what you say, I shall try to put the issue into more perspective by highlighting his boilerplate approach:
SJW’s are more like parents. We have a real concern for real people and the real challenges they face. We are motivated to see people/society develop and transform for the better. It is very personal, yet at the same time can be easily expanded to very large scales of social interaction. Such is not undertaken as part of an organisation that seeks to perpetuate itself. Perhaps his goddism has seriously affected his ability to see this bottom-up nature of what he appears to think is a top-down organisational structure. He is not necessarily dishonest. What suites his ingrained world-view is, unfortunately for him, wholly off the mark.
But let me try inserting my parenting analogy into some of his writing, for your amusement:
Personally, I think he’s right. Why, just this evening, I turned on the TV news and every single story was about happy, fluffy kittens and little baby squirrels. Clearly there is no more need for social justice advocacy, as we now live in a veritable Utopia.
Oh boy. I wonder how long before theists get the wind of this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/archaeologists-find-possible-site-of-jesuss-trial-in-jerusalem/2015/01/04/6d0ce098-7f9a-45de-9639-b7922855bfdb_story.html
From Tony’s link…
Well that nails it then, what with gates and bumpy roads being such rarities in ancient cities. I s’pose I’m just gonna have to get religion.
Kinda blowin’ my own trumpet here, but what the hell…
I got an op-ed piece on The Freethinker.
@Daz
Nice!
Nice piece, too. I liked your analogy.
And a beautifully written one at that.
Thank you Athywren.
…and Saad.
That’s a great article, Daz. Thanks for linking it here.
Thank you Beatrice.
Great article Daz. Thanks for sharing it!
Good article, Daz! Short and to the point.
Excellent article – thank you for linking, Daz! And thank you for calling out people such as the example you mention, with their o-so-“rational” ability to be bigoted without god.
I’m actually blushing, now.
Thank you AlexanderZ and opposablethumbs.
I agree with everyone else.
That was a good article and I appreciate that you not only called out transphobia butalso educated people on gender dysphoria.
@ Daz
That is a good article. I like the block metaphor.
I have one that I have been trying to develop that extends the metaphor into creating categories, and partitioning inside of categories. Sort of a starting at 0 relative to a concept. Turning that into a 1 when the concept is present at a basic level (so prone to black and white thinking). Then adding partitions in the category to get a 1-10. Polarity on the concepts can be something like -10 to +10.
Thank you Tony and Brony.
Brony, I’d say that the point is that there’s really only one category which fits all genders and sexualities: People. While I doubt a truly non-gendered (English) language is likely to emerge in the foreseeable future, we can work to make ‘he’ and ‘she’ no more than easily-changed first-approximations.
It’s probably possible to say that more eloquently, mind.
@Daz
For sex and gender purposes it’s fine in the context that you are approaching this from, so I hope I did not give you the impression that I was trying to suggest you change anything. “People” unfortunately gets complicated functionally in practice. We are not so good as a group as defining types of people. What I’m thinking about is more meta and involves finding a good way to model the categorization system to think about it.
Well, if we want to get meta, you should have read my mind as I developed the blocks analogy. Greyscale for gender, colours for sexuality, numbers of different-shaded/coloured faces of blocks… Let’s just say it got a bit daft. :-)
@ Daz
It’s not daft. Just really really sensitive and ill-defined socially in a lot of ways. The colors and patterns would be a good expansion of the metaphor. I have considered constructing similar metaphors for Gender, sex, attraction as well as issues of things I see as cognitive shapes instead of disorders (autism, adhd, tourette’s…). But in a lot of ways it’s premature.
I think a lot of people who make comments like the one in Daz’s post don’t seem to ralar they’re making a huge mistake in conflating the physical sex with a person’s identified gender. Coments like “hurr durr you have a penis so you MUST be a boy” show the commenter clearly doesn’t understand anything about such issues. Maybe the person just hasn’t had the chance to go through the extensive process of changing his/her sex; maybe the person is happy with her body despite the difference in gender. These generalizations piss me off. Double so for being under the guise of “rationality”. These people give atheists a bad name.
Daz, good article!
Rivendellyan:
I think those folks give people a bad name.
As you probably know, a new petition regarding banning of “conversion therapy” has been opened, in addition to the original one.
This is probably a stupid question, but can non-US citizens sign the “We the people” petition?
I’ve looked at Terms of Participation but found no mention of it. The ZIP code isn’t obligatory, only my name and email address are. Did I miss something? Can I sign it then? Would it disqualify the petition if its signed by a non-citizen?
Iyeska, thank you.
@Ieska 155
Yeah that’s probably a better way to put it.
I think we shall have bacon and beans for breakfast.
Nice article, Daz.
Thank you Chigau.
* * *
Something lovers of snark might appreciate. Ironic Serif: A Brief History of Typographic Snark and the Failed Crusade for an Irony Mark. My vote would go to the left-leaning italic-esque thingamabob.
@ chigau
We’re getting there slowly. I hope to train the Kobane Air Force,
We’ll see.
Just stumbled across this on MIchael Nugent’s blog:
And I wondered: Why exactly is it a bad thing to hate people like Fred Phelps, Rush Limbaugh, and Dinesh D’Souza? Reagan and Ham too, to a lesser degree (though Reagan has definitely caused more harm than any of the previous idiotic bigots). I think it is perfectly fine to have contempt for people who say horrible things, spread horrible ideas, and/or do horrible things. I don’t simply to get the line of thinking that is contrary to that. It is basically the old hoary gotcha game of claiming someone is “intolerant of my intolerance”. False equivalence, word game over, back to reality please.
Tony! The Queer Shoop: Could you respond to this thread on racism over at “Dispatches From The Culture Wars”? I know you can answer this question much better than I can.
I said, “No, sorry.”
Abby Replied
I was trying to say that making racially insensitive comments about someone who enjoys the rights and privileges of the dominant culture does not rise to level of actual “racism”. I came to this understanding because of comments you and others made on this subject at Pharyngula.
The thread is here:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2015/01/06/carlson-only-racists-think-white-privilege-exists/#comments
Jesus fuck, I didn’t even know some of the shit these other people have said.
From the Pfft unless noted otherwise. Paragraph breaks within a given blockquote for new quotes.
Bob Beckel (Trigger Warning)
He was also a “pioneer” in astroturfing! And he’s a good ol’ Democrat too. A Democrat on Fox News, sure, but still a Democrat.
Bryan Appleyard is a bit more bland. According to the Pfft, he is focused on “science’s corrosive effect on morality”. Shares something in common with Ben Stein there. He seems to have a real thing for dissing Stephen Hawking.
But also Twitter! Gotta love Twitter.
See here for fat shaming: https://twitter.com/BryanAppleyard/status/551435711216615424
And these two for transphobia: https://twitter.com/BryanAppleyard/status/548521740234915840 and https://twitter.com/BryanAppleyard/status/543837390000099331.
At least he opposes U.S. torture.
Debbie Schlussel (Trigger warning again):
And Jesus fuck, one last Trigger Warning for Richard Cohen:
See also here: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/11/richard-cohen-just-the-worst.
In addition to all of the above, he also has deployed additional rape apologetics on behalf of Roman Polanski, defending Clarence Thomas’ sexual harassment (which is hardly surprising coming from a sexual harasser), and blamed the Steubenville rape case on Miley Cyrus twerking.
And the racist asshat apparently didn’t realize slavery was a bad thing until watching 12 Years A Slave.
—————————
These are the people that Michael Nugent think it is BAD to be angry with. These are the people that Michael Nugent think it is BAD to strongly dislike, to vehemently oppose. I somehow think that Michael Nugent hasn’t thought about any of this too hard.
Jesus fuck, I didn’t even know some of the shit these other people have said.
From the Pfft unless noted otherwise. Paragraph breaks within a given blockquote for new quotes.
Bob Beckel (Trigger Warning)
He was also a “pioneer” in astroturfing! And he’s a good ol’ Democrat too. A Democrat on Fox News, sure, but still a Democrat.
Bryan Appleyard is a bit more bland. According to the Pfft, he is focused on “science’s corrosive effect on morality”. Shares something in common with Ben Stein there. He seems to have a real thing for dissing Stephen Hawking.
But also Twitter! Gotta love Twitter.
See here for fat shaming: https://twitter.com/BryanAppleyard/status/551435711216615424
And these two for transphobia: https://twitter.com/BryanAppleyard/status/548521740234915840 and https://twitter.com/BryanAppleyard/status/543837390000099331.
At least he opposes U.S. torture (?)
Debbie Schlussel (Trigger warning again):
And Jesus fuck, one last Trigger Warning for Richard Cohen:
See also here: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/11/richard-cohen-just-the-worst.
In addition to all of the above, he also has deployed additional rape apologetics on behalf of Roman Polanski, defending Clarence Thomas’ sexual harassment (which is hardly surprising coming from a sexual harasser), and blamed the Steubenville rape case on Miley Cyrus twerking.
And the racist asshat apparently didn’t realize slavery was a bad thing until watching 12 Years A Slave.
—————————
These are the people that Michael Nugent think it is BAD to be angry with. These are the people that Michael Nugent think it is BAD to strongly dislike, to vehemently oppose. I somehow think that Michael Nugent hasn’t thought about any of this too hard.
anteprepro (#163)
Fuck all the people who condemn hate as an abstract concept while ignoring any and all real-world manifestations of hate that upset their facile “both sides” narrative. Nugent sounds like the privileged kids on Tumblr who butt into every discussion of oppression with “you can’t fight hate with hate.”
Question for anyone with tech skills.
I’ve been trying to read several articles from Philly.com, but for some reason, when I click on a given link from the front page, nothing happens. I have to copy the link and paste it into a new tab to read any article. This isn’t the case with any other site I’m on. Help?
****
marcus @164:
I would, but every time I visit Ed’s blog, within a few minutes, I get a message saying my shockwave flash player has crashed, and my computer freezes, forcing me to reboot the whole thing. It doesn’t do this from any other blog at FtB. Kinda sucks, bc I regularly read Dispatches (via email updates).
Before attempting to correct Abby Normal, I’d inquire about their definition of racism first. I suspect it involves “having prejudicial or bigoted beliefs about an individual or group of people based on their actual or perceived race or ethnicity”, which is only *one* component of racism. The other is structural power. Power that is possessed by the dominant group and used against those with less power. In this case, both Ed and Tucker are white men, so there’s no punching down going on. At best, I think one could argue that Ed holds a prejudicial belief about white people (though I think even that wouldn’t be easy to argue). But racism? Uh, no.
Oh, and its news to me that “mayo on Wonder Bread” is a racial stereotype.
Tony (#167)
It sort of melds a stereotype (ie. white people only eat extremely bland food) with two euphemisms for whiteness. Pretty tame, really. Of course, Ed was trying to say that Tucker Carlson is a massive, walking stereotype already, so it’s silly to complain that he referenced a stereotype to get that across.
Tony!
That site: ‘Cannot replicate problem.’ I’ve tried it in Pale Moon, Firefox, Safari, IE, Chrome and Opera. I’d guess you have either a cookie-related or an add-on-related problem. (Out of interest, what happens if you centre-click the link?)
People like Nugent and Dawkins are fools when it comes to emotion. What they pretend infects their minds with error as inconsistency with reality takes it’s toll over time. If they insist on engaging in flaw-building exercises I have no problem taking advantage of it.
Emotion is a tool. All emotions are neutral and useful if used carefully. Like all tools emotions can be abused. Emotion is a series of logical tags that provide a sensory aspect to perception. That sensation of emotion is how our minds (brains and bodies via embodied cognition) tell us what to do with what is in perception. Recognizing these tools when others use them is information. To rule hate as illegitimate in human experience is to render oneself less capable and blind.
That makes this all the more interesting. I’m sure many of them really do “hate hate” for decent but misguided reasons. But others would also want to deny others a perfectly good human tool with just-so stories. Expressions of hate get attention and we innately know it. If a social coward were not very good with a particular tool I can see the usefulness of trying to ban the use of that tool. After all that would make them more competitive. Deep down in that place they pretend convenient things about themselves that they may know that they can’t really handle the tool themselves and so they don’t want to look bad if they use it badly or if the target of their hate looks pathetic in comparison.
Hate is a very serious tool and deserves serious discussion. If Nugent wants me to stop using a tool that I have had to spend a lifetime mastering with grossly insufficient bullshit like that, he can get an eyefull of it until he requests a reasonable accommodation of some kind. But that’s is not very likely because people that try to present more dominant aggressive characteristics are not likely to admit to such. Even then that would not justify avoiding hate anywhere else.
@ Tony
Can you use something like NoScript (lets you choose what a webpage is allowed to run) combined with Page Inspector (lets you click on parts of webpages to figure out what is running what) to isolate and kill the thing running Flash?
@ A. Noyd
I have been wondering if this is a useful way to address this. I usually just say that if you are the dominant racial category it’s bigotry because racism requires other racists to be effective. So it could be racism if an individual white person were in another country or something. But even then when it comes to specific argument/belief implications a distinction might have to be made that references white people as a category compared to any other racial groups as a category.
Seems to be a day for heart-breaking news.
Serial child abuser Mack Ford will not face charges.
Brony (#173)
Er, if what is a useful way to address what?
White supremacy is global. If you wanted to, you could look up comparisons of how foreign whites fare versus foreign people of color in various countries. Though, I don’t know how easy it would be to find decent sources. There’s a lot of white people out there whining about how they weren’t kowtowed to for showing up where they weren’t especially wanted. White people are the Nice Guys™ of the international world.
“White supremacy is global.”
[citation needed]
@A. Noyd
Sorry. A useful way to try to get the academic definition of racism across to people that might be resistant to it.
I agree white supremacy is global. But unless there is something about racism that I am missing, when it is experienced by individuals it is possible for someone who is experiencing racial bigotry in one context to experience racism in another. Such a problem is something that systemic opposition to racism itself would cure. So if you are concerned about people with privilege twisting it I’m already there mentally. But the perspectives of people with real experience of racism would be best for figuring that one out.
chigau (#176)
Really? I didn’t think this was controversial around here. You’ve never heard of skin bleaching? The difficulty people of color have in getting modeling jobs? The colorism in the various Indian movie industries? How whites are preferred for English teaching jobs in Asia? The erasure of Afro-Latin@s in Latin America? The prestige and pervasiveness of white Westerners’ media? (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie did a TED talk on this last one.)
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Brony (#177)
Ed wasn’t trying to do that, though.
Do you have any examples? I’m just not sure what you mean.
It is kind of funny how that little racist shitstain is trying to use the long retired porcupine to kick out all the Pharyngula regulars. Obviously trying to use in-group talk against, well, the in-group without having noticed that their language is so 2012…
A. Noyd #178
I’m experiencing technical difficulties, so scattershot response
…
India has a long history of
people who stay indoors vs people who work outside
none of them are ‘white’, some are just more palid
this was true long before India became The Jewel In The Crown
…
I have no experience with “Asia” but in Japan, English teaching jobs tend to go to people who are NotJapanese.
I have been assured by Japanese people that they can ‘tell’ a Japanese from a Chinese from a Korean from a …
I’m done.
I have to get up in 4 hours
Me an’ all. I’m starting to seriously lose my cool where those two idiots in the Charlie Hebdo thread are concerned. Time to pack it in for the night.
chigau (#180)
Historical classism has played a part in many places. However, there’s more to it. Why would bleach use be increasing as more people, such as tech, factory or domestic workers, spend their working hours indoors? Those people would be as pale as they could naturally get, so why use a dangerous product to get lighter? Because it’s not just about being pale relative to the rest of one’s race anymore; it’s about being pale relative to whiteness.
They¹ go to whites more than any other race. Only recently have some of the ALT dispatch companies and conversation schools made more of an effort to add diversity. They are definitely still prejudiced against the English accents of people from non-majority-white countries, like India, Nigeria, or Singapore.
……….
¹ I should point out that most English teachers in regular schools are actually Japanese natives with teaching degrees. I’m talking about the ALT or conversation school jobs offered to native speakers of English.
Daz, Beatrice:
Take care, both of you. Good job in that thread. I wanted to facepalm from the first comment Azuma left.
A. Noyd
I am in the process of Seriously Learning 日本語。
Part of this involves a Casual Conversation Club.
-some of us want native Japanese speakers to lead us
-some of us want people who have learned Japanese to lead us
the native 日本語 speakers tend to “Well, it just sounds right.”
the learned 日本語 speakers will tell us the long, painful process
oh
fuck the internet and the pad it rode in om
good night
moar coffeeeee
I knew the people at the Slymepit were not that intelligent but even this rather surprised me.
How can one argue against what is either blatant dishonesty or staggering stupidity?
Khaled Diab:
chigau #176
In addition to what A. Noyd said, there is also the practice of hiring an “office pet” in china – a white guy that gives more gravitas to your public image. It has nothing to do with any skills or nationalities or anything else. All you have to do is smile and be white.
Can we just ban the sale of beverages in glass bottles? I’m fucking sick of assholes throwing their fucking empties on the side of the fucking road. I just replaced my inner tube, after it was destroyed by broken glass on the road, and I hadn’t even gotten home yet when I picked up another fucking piece of glass and got another fucking flat.
Dalillama #191
What’s more polluting and/or wasteful, production cost and energy consumption included, glass bottles or plastic ones?
Depends on how you source your plastic.
Glass can be recycled endlessly.
As long as it’s not in bits on the roadside.
Or on the floor at the community hall.
Or the sidewalk in front of the Frat House.
@ AlexanderZ # 190
Wait… you are basing “White supremacy is global” on things like “office pet”?
Such “office pets” come way down the list of marketing priorities. If you want gravitas, enlist Yao Ming (even if you teach English) to your public image. The ultimate endorsement would be having someone like (not particularly “white”) President Obama. Then perhaps a local movie star, Hong Kong “business partner” … And so on and so forth. Or park the bosses Ferrari in the lobby (yes, inside the building). Wear a Rolex ™ … If you’re out of ideas, and money, only then settle for a lily-white “office pet”.
“Weigoren” is not differentiated in terms of race, other than to indicate (foreign + person) “foreigner”, as in: “not Chinese”. That there is a current fascination with (historical) Europe can far more easily be explained in terms strong market forces, & marketing, by Europe and within China itself. Positive perceptions of European products will also extend to services. If “whiteness” is connected to “being European”, then there will be some unearned lustre gleaned from such. Such inferences are unfair, but not necessarily driven by a racist mindset.
As one tiny component of the whole “smoke and mirrors” game, that would have happened with-or-without them, they grant themselves far too much importance. Methinks the “office pets” are projecting their own issues.
Personally, I would support the notion that “white supremacy” is “global”, almost entirely because the countries that white people have dominance over are also countries with a significant amount of power and influence (media, economic, military, and so on) over virtually every other country on Earth. The “First World” is a White World, and the First World makes every other country into either its servant or its scapegoat. It does with sanctions or sitcoms; diplomacy or drones. Even those on the fringes incidentally get exposed to our propaganda, or have the fortunes significantly altered by the fickle , momentary whims of rich white countries that are otherwise not part of their lives at all. THAT is the form that global white supremacy takes.
I’m still thinking about the things I asked about earlier.
In more positive news I am nerding our really hard right now.
The ribosome as a missing link in the evolution of life.
In graduate school it was more than once that I thought that the ribosome could be a vestigial genome. Well damn.
theophontes #195
Ming, Obama, movie stars and “business partners” bring gravitas through the fame that they have gained in their position. They sell their own accomplishments (and in case of a “business partner” – a possible lucrative investment). Ferrari Rolex showcase the owner’s wealth. What do office pets bring? Nothing, except the color of their skin. If you read the article (or this one) you’ll see that even when the pet is from a wealthy country they still often need to lie and present themselves as somebody else. You can just as well hire office pets from former Yugoslavian countries that are much poorer than China and get the same result – because the only thing that matters is their color.
Here’s a question: Persian Gulf countries are very wealthy, have a very high per capita GDP and provide much needed oil for Chinese economy. How many Arabs (or Middle Eastern looking people) work as office pets?
Dalillama #193, chigau #194
I’ve checked and in my country about 20% of plastic bottles are recycled, but only less of 1% of glass bottles are (despite consuming similar amounts of both). I guess here plastic is better.
chigau #194
I know that. That’s why I asked about total energy consumption. Plastic melts at lower temperatures, which means less fuel and less emissions. It’s also lighter so less power needed to transport it. Just focusing on recyclability gives you an incomplete picture.
Hey Daz, you like beer right? Narragansett creates a line of H.P. Lovecraft beers
We had all Azuma Hazuki, all day thread, and now we’ll get all David Wilford, all day thread.
yay
yeah, screw that. Wilford doesn’t understand history, or politics, or people.
you can’t reach people like that. ignore them or rip your hair out. I’ve ripped enough hair out for him.
Oh happy joy of joys.
We haven’t played a rousing game of “Islam is the worstest of all religions” in a while.
Can you tell how excited I am?
I just can’t hide it.
I’m about to
lose control and I think I like itscream.@203 Tony!
Damn you, damn you, damn you….
*Writes down I’m So Excited on youtube*
Damn yooooouuuuuuuu……
thank you, azhael, I escaped the first time, but now you’ve done it.
*sings horribly*
In case anyone else wants to sing horribly, but doesn’t know the lyrics…
*shudder*
Get so excited.
Ouch. kolnnauzer
ouch
What we really need is a long discussion about purity.
oh gad
I think I’ll pass
There is a god!
Just thought I’d mention that.
I’m so excited, I’m so excited… I’m… so… SCARED!!!
Re: Narragansett: Is it possible to honor H. P. Lovecraft, horror author, without also honoring H. P. Lovecraft, horrible racist?
I can understand using characters or themes from his fiction, but really, the man himself was . . . deeply problematic, to say the very least.
https://nicolecushing.wordpress.com/2012/06/20/lovecraft-racism-the-man-of-his-time-defense/
http://mediadiversified.org/2014/05/24/the-n-word-through-the-ages-the-madness-of-hp-lovecraft/
Owlmirror @213
Of course it’s possible. Especially considering that he’s dead, and none of whatever money you spend on this is any more likely to go to a racist than any other amount of money spent on any other product. One could argue that the situation gets more convoluted when the racist in question is alive and buying the product might directly help keep this person in focus, but ultimately, it’s up to you to weight whether or not to support someone or something.
I’d say that, if he was still alive and producing poems, and buying his beer could encourage him to keep writing poems, some of which were terribly racist, then there might be case for concern and discussion.
Well, how about a long discussion about Free Will?
How do we know any of this is “real” and we aren’t all just plugged into a giant computer?
Do we have a sockpuppeting Pitter?
@ chigau
Delightful warm weather in the middle of HK winter.
@A. Noyd 178
Sorry for not getting back to this sooner, and for how unclear I was. I really wanted to think about my reasons carefully and this was all complicated by the situation in France, as well as the fact that I’m assessing related discussions and conflicts I’m participating in an image board community I’m returning to. I guess that my overall question that anyone could answer if they want is, is this a useful approach to persuasion with respect to the academic definition of racism?
My larger interest here is in finding empathy hooks that make arguments easier to consider by specific groups, and I was wondering if this could be useful if carefully used. In this case I have wondered if it would be easier for some white people to accept the academic definition of racism if it could be pointed out that as society changes the definition would benefit them if/when power structures shift. I did not have a specific example in mind and to be honest I was a bit hesitant to go find one even though I’m sure somewhere a white person has experienced racial bias in an environment where another racial group had more social power. I have not experienced racism myself so I had to think about that aspect.
I’ve only made that point two or three times and it is one I would be willing to avoid if the risk exceeds the benefits. It’s also not a point that I would bring out first because it has to be contextualized by other information. Otherwise anyone present would have hypothetical racism against whites as an emotional backdrop for other information instead of the situation we are trying to change now.
I have a follow up question for everyone. What is the best way to ask here or in the Lounge about how effective I am in general? I’m rejoining an image board community that I used to frequent and I’m trying to be as effective as I can without blowing the place up from constant conflict. There are a lot of complications ranging from best ways of persuading friends, to how to ethically do this as an authority figure. I have already been in one thread where I tried to support the ability of some anons that were clearly middle eastern women to be able to express themselves.
I think I was pretty awkward when I first approached A. Noyd above because I’m unsure about the most polite way to bring questions up. I thought the subject was a good way to ask the question and I ended up confusing things. If that was actually the wrong way to approach this I’m sorry about that. I’m trying to interpret the confusion.
That was me in 219. I was signed into the wrong email account.
theophontes
“This video is private.”
Brony
Do you want the nym removed since it looks like you doxxed yourself?
This, on rape-culture and Ched Evans, is good. I just wish it didn’t have to be written.
chigau (違う) #215:
If I choose to answer this, where does it leave us?
Or if I don’t, what then?
Daz
無
@ Giliell
Not particularly. But thank you for asking.
Chigau, according to Totes reliable Google Translate™ that’s either ‘no’ in Chinese or ‘nothing’ in Japanese; but I’m guessing you meant ‘nowhere.’
I need beer.
Daz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_%28negative%29#The_text_of_the_Mu-koan
It’s a sophisticated Zen cop-out.
Ah, that’s cleared up. ‘Unfortunately’—ahem—I’ve already opened the beer that was supposed to assuage my confuddledness. Ho-hum.
Why is the rum always gone?
@ chigau
Oops, sorry about the linky. I’ll check what the problem is when I get back to Honkers.
@ AlexanderZ
Not sure I follow your reasoning. Rather than read articles by starry-eyed weigoren, perhaps read a book (Such as: “Mr. China: A Memoir”: Tim Clissold) that deals with why white foreign investors are so popular that even mimicking them proves useful.
I put “business partners” in scare-quotes, because they are not business people nor partners. They are Chinese “office pets”. Mainlanders who put on a smart suite and pretend to be Hong Kong business partners. Of course the writers of the articles would not realise this, as they fixate on their own experiences, and interpreting it through their own frames of reference.
If I was to pursue your argument, I would rather suggest following anteprepro‘s line of attack in # 196. The bottom line, you might find, is the colour of money.
The above seems to be the abridged, Cliff’s Notes ™ version.
The full version of Zhaozhou’s reply was: “Wú Wú Wú …. Arrrrroooooooh… Wú Wú Wú!!!”.
(English: ” Woof, woof, woof … arroooooh … woof woof woof !!!”)
Mu‽
Why do They™ say not to plant sage near cucumbers? Everyone claims it’s bad, but don’t ever say why.
Allegedly, the sage will negatively affect the flavor of the cucumbers
Thanks, Dalillama. I’ll move them into their own pot.
@ chigau
I’ve unshackled your linky. It should work now.
theophontes
Your technique is improving.
How was the landing? ;)
How can anything negatively affect the flavour of cucumbers? They’re cucumbers. They don’t have any flavour. They’re just crunchy water with a hint of soap.
chigau
theophontes #230
I’ll check out the book.
What does that mean? Wiki says “to refuse, to deny”, what does it mean in this context?
I’m stumped.
How do I say,
“I may ask my grandmother to look after my child.”
using
かもしれません
？
耳が遠い
mimi ga tōi
ears are distant
That is much nicer than “hard of hearing”.
@ AlexanderZ
My apologies, that is lazy transliteration on my part.
The word is: 外国人 (外=outside, 国 = country, 人 = person. In (correct) pinyin: wài guó rén) ie: “foreigner”, as opposed to 中国人 (中 = middle), in pinyin: Zhōng guó rén
Another common term for (usually white) foreigners is 魔怪 mó guài (devils/ghosts). (Which term certainly does not place them on a pedestal!) In Hong Kong, foreigners may get referred to (not always affectionately) as 鬼佬 “gweilo” (pinyin: guǐ lǎo) = ghost.
@ chigau
Es schlagt die Scheisse aus mir raus.
theophontes
Dankie in elk geval.
—
外国人
in Japanese
gai koku jin
outside country person
so,yeah
foreigner
shucks
I was getting close to a 「Total chigau recent comment」thing.
oh well, what the hell
chigau
No worries, I’ve been adding water to the wine.
theophontes #241
Thank you!
Yes, these terms don’t show particular respect towards white foreigners.
chigau (#186)
No kidding. My internet went out and when I tried to use my iPad instead, I found I couldn’t get on FTB because of the malicious advertisements redirecting me constantly to that lemode-mgz malware site. (Same problem with RawStory. Apparently the phenomenon was widespread.)
(#239)
Something like: 祖母に子供の面倒を見てくれるように頼むかもしれません。 (Sobo ni kodomo no mendō wo mite kureru yō ni tanomu ka mo shiremasen.)
I sure hope your granny is spry for her age if she’s going to be looking after her great-grandchild.
Brony (#219)
Errr, whites already do benefit under the academic definition of racism, though.
Well, it would help to avoid using pronouns in your questions. Also, beating around the bush will only make things worse if you’re asking an inherently offensive question. (Not that I think you were.) Better to just decide what you mean and ask it straight out.
I think part of the problem is that you’re putting debating effectiveness before your own understanding. Although you seem to mean well, you should really ask yourself whether it’s your place to debate bigots on matters that are mostly academic to you.
AlexanderZ (#245)
One, you should be asking what non-white foreigners get called (or how they get treated regardless of what they’re called). Two, it’s not like white supremacy doesn’t exist in the US just because black people might call whites “honkeys” or “crackers.” White supremacy generates a lot of ambivalence because of the way it was spread (colonialism, imperialism, genocide, slavery, unequal treaties, etc.). But it’s not about individual personal feelings or decontextualized historical resentments.
(If you want to know what it is about, try looking up “global south” along with “white supremacy.”)
A. Noyd #248
I don’t follow you. I agreed with you that white supremacy is global, but theophontes claimed that that isn’t entirely the case in China. My comment was a tongue-in-cheek reply to her, not any sort of argument what so ever. What personal feelings are you talking about?
@ A. Noyd 247
The people I’m encountering don’t see it. I’ll do some reading on this one before I try to ask or do anything else.
I think I’m a little defensive because I’m having to be extra vigilant about myself as I establish some new social routines. I’ll work on it.
Was that a general pronoun observation? Or did I leave something in up there? (I looked but don’t see anything) I try to avoid or use neutral pronouns as a habit now, but old habits sometimes come out. That’s one of the things I’m trying to watch for. Old habits like to pop back up when I change something big.
That’s a fair thing to be concerned about given how much I like to debate. I have some things related to social justice that I don’t debate and instead just do. I’m still developing a good sense for how I should decide what things go on that list.
Being in my other social community will inevitably involve conflicts with bigots. I’m up to four so far.
Thank you for you thoughts.
AlexanderZ (#249)
Yes, sorry. Somehow mixed you up with someone else.
The personal feelings of, say, Chinese people who get pissed off at white expats and call them “gweilo.” Those feelings aren’t some kind of negation of white supremacy. They’re not proof that white supremacy doesn’t affect the pissed off people or that the people haven’t internalized white supremacy in other ways. (Also, the personal feelings of white people who get offended over being called things like “gweilo.”)
Brony (#250)
I mean like when you substituted the pronoun “this” for two different things while you wondered “if this is a useful way to address this.” Or the pronoun “it” in “So it could be racism if an individual white person were in another country or something.” (Okay, not technically questions, but they’re effectively doing the same thing.) If you’re going to ask something or wonder something outside your own head, it really helps to be explicit rather than use pronouns.
You might even find, as I do sometimes, that you don’t actually have a concrete idea of what those pronouns are supposed to mean.
I love unintentional irony. From Ken ham:
Spoing!
PC gamer has an article on the “PC master race” meme. If you hadn’t heard it before, it’s essentially how lot’s of PC gamers online refer to themselves. The author has 2 basic objections:
1 — The phrase began as a joke. It was self criticizing satire of the elitism some PC gamers exhibit. It’s no longer being used satirically. Indeed, people in the comments are defending the face value use of the phrase (way to prove the author right).
2 — Associating oneself with nazis, even in jest (and it’s no longer entirely in jest) is generally tasteless.
Note that neither of these arguments are SJW arguments. The most staunch conservative or anti-feminist could make them. There’s nothing about social justice in those arguments. There’s nothing about political correctness in those arguments. Yet there are 2000 comments over 24 hours, a great many of which complain about SJWs and political correctness. At this point I can only conclude that political correctness and SJWs are bogeymen to some gamers.
@ AlexanderZ
Er… uh…um.. Ag ja, moenie worry nie.
Pertaining to racism in China. One situation that popped up on twitter today:
WTF !?
We have had agents in Shenzhen tell us that “Westerners” are very popular with landlords. I don’t know what the response would be if I told them I’m from Africa. Anyhow, it would seem the least beloved by landlords are mainland Chinese. This even on the mainland. (Yes, my sample size is small, but it is disconcerting to hear this repeated.)
When asked why they held this opinion, they replied that unlike locals, “Westerners” don’t complain, pay on time and don’t damage the units. This in spite of my knowing egregious examples to the contrary.
Though the above are examples of overt racism taking place, I have not found racism to be quite as pernicious as say South Africa, or USA, where people hold views of the world essentially driven by seeing everything in terms of race. (And where race-based narratives fail, xenophobia immediately fills the gap.)
theophontes #255
I’m sorry. Won’t happen again.
Naturally, those are quite extreme examples. In essence you are agreeing with A. Noyd that “white supremacy is global”, but you don’t want to use that specific term because Chinese white/Western supremacy isn’t as bad as in countries whose entire cultures are partially built on slavery. Whether Chinese act like that because of Western wealth, or xenophobia towards other Asians or anything else the fact remains that being white in China is better than any alternative. That’s white supremacy.
Granted, it may not be as obvious as it is in US, but when an autocratic global superpower, populated almost entirely by non-whites is treating white foreigners better than the locals, something is fishy.
______________
Jacob Schmidt #254
Not true. 8chan and 4chan’s /pol/ (and Aurini’s fan base to a degree) are neo-Nazi camps. The same people raving about SJWs are very likely to either be neo-Nazis or hold many similar beliefs. So claiming there is something wrong in Nazi terminology undermines their political views as well. Attacking part of their sense of superiority is an attack on their entire privilege and sense of entitlement. Besides, saying that some jokes aren’t funny because words have context, history and meaning is precisely what many feminists or other social justice activists are doing. Small wonder they see it part of a greater struggle.
However, even if they don’t see themselves as Nazis, or even if they agree with anti-“master race” arguments, they can’t say that because they would then lose their most vocal members. They are doing the same thing that many US conservatives are doing and what any closed-minded ideology is doing – closing ranks. It’s not stupid at all – it’s a very useful tactic.
Why are people so stupid?
It snowed.
The plows are coming to plow the street.
Why did you park your car there?
Right under the “No Parking / Seasonal” sign?
Why did you drive around the plows in order to park in front of where they are working to clear your street?
That driver may be the inventor of the next world saving technology and distracted by his fizzing thoughts, or just a normal human bean.
Not sure if I should copy-paste.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/01/08/lounge-487/comment-page-2/#comment-902551
Responding to David Marjanović, like 3 months late.
People are fucking infuriating.
Way too much of this on Facebook right now:
Fuck all of you whitewashing police brutality and corruption. Fuck all of you doing your fucking hardest to ignore racism and make it all about Poor Cops and Poor White People. Fuck. You.
On top of that, there were plenty of people talking shit about protestors blocking off a highway down near Boston yesterday. Apparently inconveniencing people during a protest is BEYOND THE PALE.
This in combination with general American support for torture is making me think we live in a fucking moral wasteland and I am slowly losing my last shreds of hope.
anteprepro #260
But that’s true!
Also true that not all Muslims are evil, not all US wars are just and not all people detained, tortured and killed by US have anything to do with terrorism. Funny how those defending defending murderous cops and racists never mention that.
A thought: If the pope shits in the woods, then Pooh must be Catholic by elimination.
Where does that leave Yogi and BooBoo?
Umm…
My pun-machine broke.
Cardinals?
Just a bear in the woods thing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogi_Bear
Yeah I get that. I just can’t think of a Yogi & BooBoo pun to match the shit/Pooh/elimination one.
I haz failed. Do I get a hearty meal before the inevitable?
A hearty meal will definitely help with the elimination.
Tomorrow.
Cardinals?
almost a pope?
birds?
professional athletes?
I shall think on it. Probably for much longer than a pun warrants. ’cause I’m that kind of bear. (Simon R Green reference: my mind is currently over-stuffed with fictional bears.)
Daz @269:
What kind of bear?
Gentle Ben?
Smokey the “only you can prevent forest fires” Bear?
A Hillbilly bear?
Oh, I know! A Coca-Cola polar bear!
Or maybe you’re a Little Bear, a Teddy Ruxpin, or a Care Bear?
(in case you’re wondering, I went looking for fictional bears, and came across this link to a Flavorwire article listing the 15 greatest fictional bear)
Tony!
They got #1 and #2 right for sure.
And now I have this bouncing around my bonce.
Queers destroy science fiction! [Lightspeed]
Daz @272:
Thanks for that link. I loved his comment about “[…] another group of people looking to trade their marginalization for sledgehammers”
Giliell, are you psychic?
I think there was a discussion of racism-specifically white supremacy-in China upthread, no?
http://atlantablackstar.com/2015/01/16/7-examples-of-how-blacks-are-discriminated-against-in-china/3/
A. Noyd #246
Homework is turned in.
I’ll let you know how it is received.
This is a test. Ignore.
Ogvorbis
Ogvorbis
oggie
Aleander Z
Nope, professional cynic…
Brother Og
Is it working?
There was a thread where I thought this was appropriate but I don’t remember which, so I leaving it here.
I like the idea behind that quote, chigau, but I’m leery of it because there are limits on what an individual person can know/do, and sometimes you do need a specialist/expert.
Esteleth
Lazareth Long is a character in some Robert Heinlein books.
So there are a multitude of libertarian baggage.
I really like “take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone”
and the changing of diapers
Speaking of libertarian baggage, look who Is lecturing the inter-tubes about morality.
@ Tony
I could also tell you about a (white) South African friend with strawberry-blonde hair who people in China thought was particularly ugly (she is anything but!) and would touch her hair while making disparaging comments. Not measuring up to cultural constructs with regard to appearance, or behaviour, can be a problem for anyone who does not comply. In a culture in which it is perfectly normal for someone to ask you “Why are you so fat?”, there is a lot of opportunity to find oneself being offended. As much as I think it is wrong to offend people in such a way, I am hard pressed to come up with any ready ideas to deal with it.
South Africa is a good place to look at if examining the notion of whiteness. As much as black skins are being damaged by skin-lightening products, there are white skins being damaged by tanning products. It is not a race to meet in the middle either. lightening demands as light as possible, darkening as dark as possible.
There is also an age split in notions of South African beauty. Older generations praised the fuller figure. To be called a “mafuta” (fatty) would be taken as a compliment. No longer, to a younger, urban, generation. Historically, the mafuta phenomenon makes sense, but it is now up against the denizens of the marketing world, if not only the massive cultural changes brought on by urbanization.
I would not leap to the suggestion that this is driven primarily by “Western” notions of beauty either. The new reality is an oversupply of food, rather than sporadic undersupply. A healthy figure is not perceived as one that can live through agricultural failures, but one that has the time to invest in disposing of the effects of what everyone has in abundance.
@ chigau
Cliquez sur mon nym.
(Can you read the Chinese text in Japanese?)
theophontes
Most of the characters have been changed slightly in Japanese, the pun doesn’t work well.
—
I didn’t know that Mao’s name was 毛.
Really?
Hair?
@ chigau
Check my comment there:
theophontes
Maybe Mao meant that you can’t get to heaven without Mao.
Well, I can build a wall. But why would I want to plan an act of aggression against my neighbours?
Turned on a Russian talk-show* and immediately wished I hadn’t. Among the usual talks about the war in Ukraine they decided to discuss the attack on Charlie Hebdo. The Russian representatives claimed that the attack was simultaneously caused by extreme European multiculturalism (a.k.a. accepting people from different countries/cultures) and by being too insensitive towards Islam and other religions. One idiot (can’t remember which one, though) started screaming about Islam and Pravoslavs (the Russian Orthodox Church) being the world’s most ancient religions which are targeted by Western cultural warfare.
It’s like they were trying to decide who they hate more – Muslims or Westerners, but their pea-like brains could reach a conclusion so they raved against both. After that the talk changed to self pity as they discussed how Russia is unloved and isolated by all.
*(Vladimir Solovyov’s talk-show – the most popular Russian political program, attended by high ranking politicians and hosted on the government’s Channel 1. Short of a presidential press conference it’s the best view into the Kremlin mindset)
Giliell @291.
In case they tear down that wall you’ve built? :-)
@Nick Gotts
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/01/16/somebody-is-a-little-pissed-off-by-the-pope/comment-page-1/#comment-904053
So, people who were born in 1944 Nazi Germany – we cannot rightly condemn, shame, and have contempt for them either? Is that your argument? That we cannot shame people for their culturally held beliefs because they were born into it? Sorry, no. I’m not giving individual persons a moral pass for aiding and abetting child rapists just because they’re born to parents or born to a culture who also aid and abet child rapists.
I would also characterize a large portion of the actions of the Roman Catholic Church as harassment of those they hate. Gays, condoms and AIDS esp. in Africa, other theocratic bullshits et al. I would think that it would be uncontroversial in this audience to claim that the Roman Catholic Church is not a net force for good, and we would all be better off if its leaders rotted in jail, and the organization was thereby gutted and destroyed by having its leadership rot in jail. So, again, not seeing a big difference.
The only relevant difference that I see is that the Roman Catholic Church is a religion, which means to Nick Gotts that we need to afford it additional respect and consideration, compared to other evil organizations such as N.A.M.B.L.A. and Nazis. Sorry – I don’t play the “belief in belief” game. If one willingly and knowingly identifies as a member of any voluntary organization which has systematically protected child rapists from police for decades, if not centuries, around the world, then one is not a decent human being. If someone gives money to that organization, then I want that person charged for aiding and abetting child rapists, in a similar way to how we charge people now in the US for giving money to Islamic terrorist organizations.
Frankly, your child rape apologetics is the only despicable thing going on here.
Obvious correction:
“So, people who self-identify as Nazi who were also born in 1944 Nazi Germany – we cannot rightly condemn, shame, and have contempt for them either?”
EnlightenmentLiberal #294-5
Of course we can, because Nazism carries a very specific meaning. What kind of meaning being religious carries? It means that a person is wrong and illogical on that one specific topic. They can be scientists or creationists, human rights activists or terrorists. Anything, really. There is no intrinsic set of values that belongs to The Religious, or even Catholics, for that matter. That isn’t the case with some religions that require totalitarian adherence to a leader, but a religion that has millions and billions of followers is entire malleable by the believer. Hell, some people never even think about their religion at all and are atheists in everything but name.
Give me a break! This is an atheist blog, and everybody here (particularly old commentators like Nick Gotts) don’t have any special respect to religion. That’s a completely bogus straw man and you should be ashamed of yourself.
Amen!
Giliell #280
I only now got the Chuck Testa reference.
i я stoopido…
Maybe the wall is useful to prevent the sheep from falling off the cliff.
@ chigau
Or that he was actually Mary Poppins!
More likely he just said it like it was, if in the form of a riddle. I am just amused that his sayings play in so nicely to the goings on in Honkers right now. And that Xi has a phobia for umbrellas. When he arrived at the airport in Macau recently, it was raining. But his entourage were not allowed to use their umbrellas. If they weren’t handed raincoats, they could just get wet.
RWA’s are usually quite forthright (“Two leg’s good, four legs baaa..aad.”), but here things also have to be played out into the realm of metaphors and allusions.
theophontes
I hope you and yours are well.
China is baffling and HongKong is WTFesteringfuckingwhat???
???
So we can’t identify analogous behaviors in differently sized primate fission-fusion groups? Or come up with ways of sociopolitically interacting with such groups that can work at different sizes?
I’m just going to laugh my ass off and go back to, well doing exactly that.
It is possible to copy/paste the nym of the commenter along with the comment.
Which you have copy/pasted. and sometimes typed the comment number.
theophontes
You seem to be living in an interesting time.
I’m so sorry.
I hope things get boring again.
@chigau
My apologies. I normally do so but got a bit sloppy. My quoted portion in 302 is from Nick Gotts as introduced by EnlightenmentLiberal in 294.
Brony
That wasn’t meant for only you. It was General.
but
Thank You.
In other news…
Remember “Holly Hobby Lobby?”
Oh! The schadenfreude is so delicious, it’s fattening!
Alexander Z
Whatever reference you got, I didn’t put it there ’cause I have no clue who youR’e talking about ;)
+++
So, born in 1944, that means when the war ended they were barely toddlers, that means they picked up their Nazi beliefs during a time and place when being a Nazi was extremely unpopular because nobody was and nobody had ever been.
Goodness, when making an analogy, why don’t you pick one that works at least at some level?
@Giliell
Where’s your principle of charity? Ok, bump that back 10 or 15 years.
@AlexanderZ
Who says Nazism has a very specific meaning and Catholicism does not?
Words don’t have (objective) meaning. Words have usages. Language changes over time, and words have meaning exactly to the extent of consensus (of some group). I think we agree there.
Do you agree that the Roman Catholic Church has systematically protected child rapists from prosecution on a grand scale for at least decades, and probably longer than that?
Do you agree that most organizations do not systematically protect child rapists on a large scale?
Do you agree that money is fungible, and that giving money as tithe to the Roman Catholic Church is what allows this rather unique organization to continue to rape children and protect those who rape children?
Let’s just start with tithing before we go into the murkier case of merely self-identifying as Christian. Can you at least agree with me that anyone who gives money to the Roman Catholic Church should be brought up on charges of aiding and abetting child rapists, exactly like how anyone who gives money to a terrorist organization should be brought up on charges? Are you seriously going to argue in good faith that their hospitals and other good works make up for these when there are plenty of alternatives which don’t rape children and systematically protect the rapists? Because that argument might as well apply to groups like Hezbollah – I’m told they run some excellent hospitals, schools, etc.
Did you read what he wrote? He said that we should give them a moral pass because they’re born into it. I doubt he’s would give a moral pass to a hypothetical person born in 1930* Germany who tortured and killed Jews in the holocaust. I see no reason why I should hold Catholics to any different standard. Nick Gotts called this position bigotry. Nick Gotts should be ashamed of himself.
>Let’s just start with tithing before we go into the murkier case of merely self-identifying as Catholic.
Fixed.
And yes, the word “Catholic” is not malleable as you might say. There are plenty of Nazis who didn’t know the full details of the programs of slaughtering Jews, blacks, disabled, etc., wholesale, but they still identified as Nazi. Similarly, there are plenty of people today who identify as Catholic, who know next to nothing about the horrible practices of their church.
And Catholic is not so malleable as to include any kind of Christian. What makes a Catholic a Catholic is that a Catholic believes the Pope in Rome has a direct line to the original apostle whatever his name was. Otherwise you’re a protestant, or east orthodox, etc. That’s what a Catholic is. It’s not my fault if some Catholics are too ignorant of their own religion to know this, just like it’s not my own fault if some Nazis were too ignorant to know what their organization was actually doing. There is no large group of people who call themselves (Roman) Catholics who do not pay fealty to Rome and the Roman Pope.
If I used the word Christian, or Protestant, or Muslim, to make such a broadranging assertion, then you would have a point. However, words like Sunni, Shia, and especially Catholic, are constrained enough that we can make some accurate descriptions and generalizations.
Also responding to JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness from the other thread
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/01/16/somebody-is-a-little-pissed-off-by-the-pope/comment-page-1/#comment-904166
Yes, your position is utterly ridiculous. After finding a video, essay, book, etc., which makes a good point, the onus is not on me to “fucking google” the author and do an exhaustive catalog to see if the author has done anything reprehensible before suggesting the work to someone else. Your position is completely absurd and ridiculous. In your own words “fucking worthless”.
PS: Now, if someone later points out specific points about the author and how the author has also said some reprehensible things, then there’s a potential point to be made that all works by the author should be avoided. But that’s not the ridiculous position which JAL is advocating.
So, believing in Allah is comparable to torturing and murdering Jews?
Still no. Because Sunni and Shia are also heavily tied up with ethnic identity in a way “catholic” isn’t outside of Northern Ireland.
EnlightenmentLiberal
Who said anything about this “exhaustive catalog if they’re ever done anything reprehensible”? You posted a link by a well known asshole with a snide remark about “I don’t even know if he’s said anything horrible though I’m sure he has” as if that’s reasonable. How is being an educated consumer ridiculous? How is intellectual disinterest and social justice indifference good things?
Do you know how to avoid looking like an ignorant jackass, perpetuating the status quo, and triggering your audience? It’s really that damn simple. And of course you place the onus on the oppressed and othered to point out shit to your lazy fucking ass.
EnlightenedLiberal
And what is with quoting me cussing? Smells like an elitist tone troll trying to fly under the radar.
Recommending Invisible, edited by Jim C. Hines. Fast reading, it’s a collection of excellent essays on the problems of representation in SF / Fantasy.
EnlightementLiberal:
Oh, do fuck off. Try using an actual argument for once.
This is the sort of thing I find extremely fascinating. A social conflict on Wikipedia over gamergate.
I learn a lot about people in general by watching how these things unfold. Getting to see the social mess forced into a highly structured process that simplifies elements.
@JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness
You think that I know what Hitchens has done which makes you mad in spite of me explicitly stating that I don’t know in particular what you dislike so strongly? Ok Mr/Mrs Mind Reader.
I was being snide and making the point that no matter who I chose, I’m sure I can find something that you will find objectionable, and I am not going to satisfy your self serving need to dig up dirt on someone to feed your superiority plus persecution complex, and to fuel your glorified in-effect ad hominem (you argue one should not post the video, and you will not address the contents of the video, because the speaker is evil on other topics).
@Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-
Not caring. It’s their problem that their so-called “ethnic identify” – what I call culture and religion – includes the provision that apostates should be killed, etc etc.
I’m not going to allow people to play this asinine card that – what is the card exactly anyway? That any comment along this line is necessarily racist and bigotted? Or that there’s too much risk that readers might mis-read and miscontrue my statements as racist and bigotted (and thus this problem cannot be addressed head on)? Again, not caring.
Further, how is what you just said not racist? It’s like saying that all Irish people are Catholic and drunkards. You are the one conflating an ethnicity and particular cultural beliefs and practices, such as religion. You are the one with a problem in that you cannot imagine Shia and Sunni Islam as applying to non-Arabs and non-Persians. Need I remind you that many other ethnicities happen to be Shia and Sunni? Need I remind you that many Arabs and Persians are not Shia nor Sunni?
@Iyeska
Rich, in that you take one small part which is “not an argument”, while ignoring the vast majority of my text here which is an argument that we should be socially disapproving of Catholics in a similar manner that we should be socially disapproving of people who congregate and self identify as Nazi and N.A.M.B.L.A., and especially those who fund such evil groups.
Ack: Correction:
>Need I remind you that many other ethnicities happen to contain members who are Shia and Sunni?
EnlightenmentLiberal #309-12
Nazis and Catholics, respectively. Nazis at most differ on tactical issues (whether they can carry out their plans now, or whether to push for lighter actions at first), and even that might be just a PR stunt. Catholics, on the other hand, occupy an almost endless spectrum: you have Bishops declaring Obama unchristian and nuns campaigning for his policies, you have Mel Gibson on one side and any humanitarian Catholic on the other, hell, even the Pope’s Catholicism is fundamentally different from Gibson’s, and yet they are all Catholics.
Yes, of course I agree that the Catholic church has done horrific things, but that has no baring on Catholics themselves. I might as well turn your words around and show all the vile things your country has done in recent times. Would that be enough to prove that you and your fellow citizens are all evil?
No, and you show me exactly why – this tactic, of claiming that guilt by association, is widely used to prevent funds from going to starving people in war zones all over the world, from Africa to the Middle East to Eastern Europe. Organizations, even some terror organizations, have a huge scope of operation that includes providing for people’s well being. This is why USA sends aid even to North Korea – the benefits vastly outweigh the risk of supporting a monstrous regime.
Do I think that we should give money to any organization? No, but it’s a tactical ad hoc evaluation that should not be covered a blanket criminalization.
Back to Catholicism. Even the most jaded cynic has to agree that child rape is the most important part of the Catholic church; it has schools, hospitals, and naturally the churches. If someone wants to support their local community or hospital or school they will give money to their local church. Is it a foolish and deluded move? Yes. Will the money be misused? Yes. But it still shouldn’t be criminalized. Financial support should only be criminal when the criminal activity of an organization is its main goal (i.e. you can’t help launder a criminals’ money, but you can go to a casino, even though casinos are often just fronts for money laundering).
I don’t think anything makes up for child rape, but criminalization opens up a whole different can of worms. It’s our duty to condemn people who support the Church, it’s our duty to demand that the rapist be brought to justice. But going so far as to criminalize church donations? You might as well jail people who watch Polanski’s or Alan’s movies or buy Shermer’s books.
South Lebanon (which is completely controlled by Hezbollah) is getting aid from many Western countries and organizations (and others as well). Hezbollah is part of Lebanon’s government, which has normal relations with almost every country. Your argument doesn’t hold.
No he didn’t. He implied that people should be examined on an individual basis.
No every Catholic is a rapist. There is no evidence that rape is more common among Catholics than among other people. You just can’t seem to wrap your head around the fact that a Catholic whether practicing or not, donating or not, is a separate being from the priest rapists.
They were horrible people, but even they (for the most part) weren’t persecuted by Soviet Union, because even the Soviet Union realized that not everyone can be held accountable for crimes, even if they are morally reprehensible. What does it tell you that even Stalin was softer on his enemies than you are?
Tell that to Mel Gibson and all the traditionalist Catholics who oppose the Second Vatican Council.
Yeah, and every cop who is too ignorant to understand their own work must not be a cop, despite all evidence to the contrary. Even the Catholic Church is less dogmatic than you are – that’s why they ask when was your last confession and provide penance for sins. Even they know that people won’t follow their stupid rules.
_____________________
Giliell #313
Not just Ireland. When I was in Scotland I met an Australian tourist who said she was Catholic. When I ask her what that entails she replied that she’s not religious or anything, she’s just better than the Anglican Australians, supposedly this relates to whether her ancestors were originally from Ireland and Scotland or from England.
I know that a similar ethnic divide exists between Catholics (speak Ukrainian and ethnically closer to Polland) and Orthodox Christians (speak Russian and ethnically closer to Russia) in Ukraine.
___________________________
Akira MacKenzie #307
I don’t like US puritanism when it comes to politicians and especially when it comes to non-politicians. She’s idiotic and laughable (particularly the line (NSFW?)), but journalist should leave private people alone.
___________________________
Brony #318
Great link. Interesting that even on the very conservative Wikipedia most violations are by Gaters.
@AlexanderZ
If being a member of a country was a voluntary association, yes, yes it would. If I was a member of a voluntary association which committed all of the abuses of the US government, and if I continued to be a member knowing this and proclaimed my membership, even when all of the leaders of this voluntary group remained in power and not in jail, then yes I would be a despicable human being. Especially if I gave any money to support this organization.
Again, there are other groups that don’t rape children and systematically protect child rapists to whom we can give charity money. Not giving money to the Catholic church != not giving money to save starving children. What a sick false dichotomy – support the rape of children, or allow children to starve.
Inapplicable analogy. North Korea does not allow independent organizations to operate in their territory, and so we take the least evil approach. Whereas, in the whole world, there is always a charity besides the Roman Catholic Church.
Wow. So you are going to excuse child rape and the systematic protection of child rape, and those who fund it, because they also do charity? What the fuck is wrong with you?
Yes it should. We should have arrest warrants for everyone in charge of the Roman Catholic Church (except maybe because of US presidential pardons ~spits at Bush~). It should be declared the moral and legal equivalent of a terrorist organization, and anyone giving funds to it should be charged. It should be destroyed in the most expedient way possible, and anyone standing in-between us and the destruction of this organization, such as criminal obstruction, covert funding, etc., should be held criminally responsible.
This policy should not be changed until the people in power in the organization are in prison, fresh new people are in place, and we have solid intrusive guarantees in place that they will no longer systematically protect child rapists.
If this was anything but a religious institution, this would have already been done. The need to charge people for funding the organization would not be necessary, because the people responsible would have immediately been removed, and the internal policies of the organization would have changed. However, because it’s a church, they get special privileges, which makes this a rather unique affair.
This does indeed raise an interesting point. I’m not suggesting that individual prosecutors and individual judges make the decision to prosecute contributing Catholics on their own. I want this decision made at a national government level, in a process similar to declarations that particular organizations are terrorist organizations. Such declarations have backing laws making certain contributions illegal.
Would I want “Shermer, Inc.” to be on this list? Is Shermer part of an international conspiracy to systematically protect child rapists? Do you have any good reason to think at all that giving money to Shermer will lead to more rapes? I sincerely doubt it. Whereas, we have very good reason to think that giving money to the Catholic church enables their behavior, and will lead to more child rapes.
In any moral view of the world, yes they are. Or they are ignorant of the practices of their church.
Really, here of all places you’re going to engage in this strawmanning? You know that my problem is not that priests sometimes rape children. You know my problem is that the Roman Catholic Church systematically protects child rapists from police worldwide, has done so for decades, and some evidence suggests that it’s been going on for much, much longer.
I cannot wrap my head around the idea that it’s somehow morally acceptable to give money to a charitable organization that is well known to systematically protect child rapists when there are many other equally or better capable charities which don’t as a matter of internal policy protect child rapists. Again, what the fuck is wrong with you?
It tells me that you cannot tell the difference between your ass and a hole in the ground if you think that this is even remotely comparable.
All 15 of them?
Yea, if a few cops don’t understand the difference between “paid by government and given additional legal powers for the purposes of law enforcement” vs “not that”, it doesn’t change the meaning of the word “cop”, and it doesn’t change the consensus understanding of the word “cop”, and I’m still quite reasonable to use the word “cop” to refer to “a person who is paid by the government and given additional legal powers for the purposes of law enforcement”. If someone disagrees, then they are using words incorrectly.
Words don’t have intrinsic meaning, and language derives all of its meaning and utility from the ever changing consensus, but neither am I willing to bow to any one ridiculous person’s improper use of language contrary to well established consensus usage.
EnlightenmentLiberal
No, dumbfuck. I know you don’t know what he’s done. That’s the damn point.
Fuck this dislike so strongly” bullshit. He’s said racist and sexist shit, stop downplaying that like it’s no big deal.
1.) So because of the status quo, you’re not even going to try? Figures.
2.) It’s about social justice and just because I’m in a few groups that are systematically screwed over doesn’t mean your privileged ass should dismiss it as “self-serving”.
3.)Yeah “digging up dirt” isn’t when someone has repeated published and publicly said awful things.
4.) Who said anything about superiority? Wanting to be a better person and working towards a better world (THIS ONE only minus the kyriarchy, you jackass) but of course the elitist fuckface turns that into a mental character flaw.
5.) Nope, not an ad hominem. Never said he was wrong about the pope (the OP) or Hitchen on hate speach because they’re rape apologists or sexist fucks. I stayed out of that subthread simply because I didn’t want to deal with you. Then you decided to take someone’s colloquially “in a better world” and turn it into ignorant philosophical wanking when we’re discussing protecting people from rapists.
6.) You also missed the fucking part where I said I have posted a link to Hitchens’s Mother Teresa article before but I didn’t blow off him being an asshole. There was even a link. How to handle problematic things without continuing the harm has been the point. PZ posted a video without warning people that watching it would support a rape apologist so they could make an informed decision and without saying he still doesn’t support Dalton’s bullshit because considering we’ve talked about it before, not doing so gives the appearance it’s all good. I may personally be disappoint he’s still watching Mr.Deity (hence supporting him) but everyone draws their own line and I’m not about to force people to follow my entertainment standards though I’ll obviously speak up about it. It’s not “how dare you watch this and enjoy it privately”, it’s wtf are doing posting that without even a token disclaimer. PZ has a big audience and with being social justice concerned that oversight is a problem. The problem with your Hitchen’s video is your fucking attidude of “I don’t give a fuck what he’s done, I’m sure you SJW’s will find some bullshit to complain about”.
But I don’t even know why I’m bothering when you’re jumping off assumptions and apparently can’t even read what I wrote.
@AlexanderZ
About Shermer. Let’s make the analogy apt and applicable.
Let’s imagine that Shermer was guilty of rape, and that he was tried in absentia and found guilty. Further, let’s imagine he is “on the run” from the United States police somewhere in the United States. Further, let’s imagine someone set up a website called “Help Children In Africa”, but many news reports and legal proceedings made it abundantly clear that this website also diverted some of its funds to Shermer for the express purpose of helping Shermer evade police capture. Unfortunately, this website is maintained outside the US in a country whose laws make it difficult or impossible to take the website down and arrest its maintainers.
Now the analogy is apt. Yes, in that situation, I would also want it criminal to give money to this hypothetical website. That’s what the Roman Catholic Church is.
Why do people who are **On The Internet** persist in saying, “I think I remember…”?
Can’t they just google-or-equivalent it and provide a link?
I’d rather imagine that Zul actually lives in my ‘fridge.
There is that jar, waaay in the back…
Highly dubious so far as pre-1945 is concerned (try reading Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners), complete crap so far as neo-Nazis now are concerned – which was the group you were comparing with Catholics. Even were this not so, the comparison is utterly ludicrous because, as I already pointed out, hundreds of million of people are born into Catholic cultures and indoctrinated as children. Catholicism is frequently part of their core identity. It is quite legitimate to try to persuade them to leave the church, and to point out forcefully that their financial contributions support evil actions. Attempting to make others loathe and despise them, OTOH, makes you considerably worse morally than most of them.
Enlightenment Liberal
Whut? You are absolutely fine with judging somebody according to something that’s written in a book and not by what they’re actually doing? In what world is that a moral thing to do and what colour is the sky there?
The point is that it simply IS bigotted. Since you’re not caring about being a bigot, you’re a proud bigot.
Wait, I thought you didn’t belief that such arguments were racist?
Also, you don’t make sense. Religion and ethnicity are heavily interlinked in Northern Ireland. In many places religion and ethinicty are heavily interlinked because religion is passed down from parents to children just like the rest of godsdamn culture, too. Your plain refusal to accept that little fact is on the same level as climate change denialism.
No, I am the one who accepts the fact that Shia and Sunni ARE heavily interlinked with ethnicity. They are not things that happen independently of who your family are and where you come from. This is irrespective of which ethnicity we’re talking about. If you take a close look at the mess that is currently happening in Iraq and Syria you will see the Sunni/Shia divide in there and you will (or would) see that there is a clear social divide there as well, with one group having dominated government and economy at the expense of the other.
And if you took a look at the testimonies of atheists from more religious societies you’d know that leaving comes at a price, and I’m not even talking about death for apostasy. So you’re holding them at the same time responsible for people killing apostates AND for not being apostates. From your safe armchair position.
This is either the most stupid or most evil thing you’ve said so far. Rape has a godsdamn meaning. Rapist has a specific meaning. It is not “being a member of the RCC because if you leave you’ll lose your job as a nurse and your children will be homeless” It is also not “being a member of the RCC and you’re poor and if you left you’d lose all the social support that you have.” It is plain and simply not “being a member of the RCC”.
I actually agree with you that people shouldn’t support the RCC in any way shape or form and I’ve often had discussions with a friend who is actually an atheist but remains a member for the sake of family traditions that yes, her church tithes also go to promoting horrible things. But she is not a godsdamn rapist for that.
Alexander Z
When my in-laws got married 45 years ago they were a mixed marriage, cause she’s Lutheran and he’s catholic. Today this is a no-brainer and of course you don’t get any privileges for being catholic over protestant (though you get some for being christian over atheist or muslim, the latter one being, again, heavily interlinked with ethnicity, of course…)
Oh, those peaceful Buddhists… </snark>
^
“Information Minister Ye Htut said on his Facebook page on Wednesday that he had asked the ministry of religious affairs to investigate the monk’s comments.
He added that he believed religious leaders should recite speeches reflecting love, compassion, empathy and good ethics.
But the BBC’s Jonah Fisher in Yangon says criticism of the comments has been muted because no politicians want the powerful monks to turn on them.”
Oh, Great Gods of Gobbledygook:
Ophelia Benson has me on mod and is rejecting my comments. My crimes are in this thread.
It all stems from something that appeared to be a new and wildly false claim:
The plain English reading of which would require people on the left to actually think **not of themselves as allies to Islamism, but of Islamism as an ally to those lefties doing the thinking**.
Note also that this refers to an ideology, not to people. The ideology itself is, in the claim as written (CAW), perceived by lefties to be an ally to lefties ourselves.
Ophelia later penned a non-retraction retraction (N-RR). The prelude was:
I responded, in part, with an acknowledgement that I was aware of her blog and its value in bashing ill-considered actions that help islamists but that this didn’t support the original claim:
And so then the non-retraction retraction (N-RR):
(emphasis added)
I don’t think that they are the same claim at all, but I concede that if all Ophelia is claiming is the bit about
then sure, her claim is well substantiated.
There are other things in there, and she brings in a statement I made (but can’t seem to find, my google-fu failed me) that I had stopped reading her blog for a while and another (or another part of the same?) that she interpreted as me saying she was stupid (since she didn’t link to the statement, I’m not exactly sure what was going on).
I try to concede where reasonable to concede. I certainly admit that if she’s only making the N-RR claim that she’s making a true claim and doesn’t need to provide further evidence for me to consider it well justified.
But she also goes into my supposedly believing I have a “veto” over her actions, and later portrays the others in the thread asking for evidence of the claim-as-written as missing something quite simple. (This occurs in comment #34 which begins, “This isn’t that complicated.”)
So I stopped asking for evidence of the CAW and didn’t bother with evidence for the N-RR (since that was, indeed, well supported by her blog as well as with many other examples I’ve encountered off her blog), but I did continue commenting. At first just to defend myself from Ophelia’s assertions and then others generally from the assertion that they were missing something simple which they should have gotten, when what Ophelia is insisting that they should have gotten is that her CAW == her N-RR (which I thought was anything but an obvious inference). I have respect for those who read that and wanted evidence of the claim and didn’t think they should be dismissed as being unable to understand the “uncomplicated” equation of the CAW and the N-RR.
She put me on moderation sometime after my comment #35 and before I responded to #41.
I commented originally not knowing about the moderation, but had I known about it, I would have commented anyway – I assume she has the power to just block me instead of moderating me, therefore moderating would be a, “go ahead and submit, but your efforts might be in vain” message and not a message, “I consider all your statements unwelcome here and further attempts harassing”.
The message which she denied was me addressing Danny Butts @39, who gives an example of a lefty who is part of a lobbying firm that works with/for the Muslim Brotherhood (he says, and I have no reason to doubt, though I didn’t follow the links given or pursue evidence since it wasn’t, in my mind, relevant).
My message points out to Danny that the original claim wasn’t about aiding Islamists, but rather of lefties subjectively perceiving Islamism itself as an ally to the thinker. Then I remind Danny and others that this isn’t the N-RR claim, but the CAW before the N-RR.
I try to offer some information to people who want to continue to discuss the CAW, by noting the ACLU has defended the KKK’s rights to free expression (as well as the free expression rights of theocrats and advocates of violence). This might make the ACLU allies to those persons (at least on a limited issue), but it doesn’t equate to lawyers of the ACLU thinking of the KKK as allies, and it certainly doesn’t equate to the **actual parallel** which isn’t about people, but ideologies. That would be written, “lawyers of the ACLU think of white supremacism as an ally.”
I also had a footnote about the claim-as-written ==> non-retraction retraction shift and that, given the N-RR, the CAW had no relevance to Ophelia anymore so Jesse was persisting in asking for evidence for something not claimed by Ophelia.
The worst part of my own behavior, from my perspective, was perhaps repetitiveness (though in my mind I thought this was justified by repeated errors on the part of others, it could have been seen in a negative light). Ophelia obviously took exception to a particular phrase in my #35, i.e.
(emphasis added to show where Ophelia took exception)
But I’m seriously at a loss as to what I was doing that was so bad, especially in light of Ophelia writing as if I was some controlling jerk calling her stupid.
Was I really being a jerk? Second opinions are welcome, but with Ophelia not really defending herself and everyone else talking about Islamists and unintentional (or even intentional) support thereof rather than about the actual original CAW, and with all the bits about how regularly I read her blog or not (as if that were relevant) and so much other stuff, I’m frankly bewildered.
None of this challenges her right to block me, of course, but damn, if I was really being a jerk in that thread I’d like to know, and nothing Ophelia’s written has given me a clue as to where I went wrong.
@ Crip Dyke
For whatever it’s worth, it look’s like exactly why I’m not a fan of Ophelia’s. She, in my opinion, sometimes phrases something badly and then, when confronted with an entirely reasonable interpretation of her badly phrased statement, proceeds to treat people like they’re dense for failing to read her mind.
Seven of Mine @332:
Seconding everything you said.
****
Crip Dyke @331:
I’m sorry to hear about that, but it doesn’t surprise me. Yet another reason to avoid B&W.
Thanks, 7.
Also, if I may ask? Why does someone with the ‘nym “7 of Mine” have a Chakotay avatar? I’ve long been curious.
@ CD
Because Robert Beltran’s smile. Pretty much. I’m also one of those weirdos who actually loves the idea of 7 and Chakotay as a couple and never ‘shipped Chakotay/Janeway.
CD
What Seven of Mine said.
OB does not take well to criticism. I will admit that she gets tons of shit flung at her, so that lashing out might be understandable, but I’ve decided that I really don’t need to be her whipping girl on these matters.
Crip Dyke 3331
I’m with everyone else – OB is entirely uncharitable when it comes to criticism of her words. Worse, even when she grudgingly acknowledges the criticism she makes no attempt to add a clarification to her original post so that future misunderstandings (putting it mildly) would be avoided.
I mean, you’ve told her her wording is problematic. Other people have told her that her wording is problematic. Why not add an asterisk and an explanation? Just because its other people “speaking from on high”?
Sadly, something is very rotten in the state of Ophelia.
__________________________
EnlightenmentLiberal #322-4
Like Giliell has said, belonging to a faith isn’t always a choice. For most people it isn’t. Leaving a faith entails losing your job, friends, family, and in some cases your life. That is analogous to, for example, refusing to pay taxes or refusing to being drafted and going to jail for it.
Fair enough, aiding the RCC is morally wrong, I still don’t see why people should be jailed for it.
No, I’m saying that we shouldn’t JAIL the people donating the money!
Yes, we should, but “in charge” does not equal “giving ten bucks every Sunday”. Leaders of RCC are directly responsible for the rapes both by virtue of their position and because they are the ones who continue to shelter rapists to this day. This doesn’t apply in any way to an ordinary Catholic.
No! Rape is a specific act. This “they’re all rapists” only helps rape apologists when they claim that feminists have no sense of proportions, and to color the fight against rape as a radical position. This kind of hyperbole is unhelpful and extremely disrespectful to rape survivors.
I know that, but you aren’t limiting your demands to just the rapist priests and their higher-ups, you want anyone and everyone who has ever donated money to RCC to be prosecuted for it.
Not everything that is morally wrong should be a prosecutable offense. The more I read the more I think we have different views on how the legal system should work and how the state should exercise its power.
I think I see where the disagreement lies. You have a very black and white attitude to justice. Countries have extraordinary powers and those powers should used prudently because the potential of harm from a country is millions of times greater than that of an individual. I want to make sure that this power is used only against people who clearly violate the rights of others. You seem to believe that any action that has any hint of a crime should be immediately prosecuted. I can’t agree to that. Prosecuting the hundreds of millions of Catholics, denying many of their rights, putting them in situations where they will be abused (and even raped, as it often happens in prisons) is hugely disproportionate to their actual crimes.
__________________________
chigau #325
I think I once wrote something about this, but I can’t remember which words to search for.
chigau
No, not always. For instance, I think I remember reading a magazine article 6-7 years back about a machine that automatically prints and binds books and was quite small (relatively speaking). However, I don’t remember what magazine, or exactly when, and the article might not have appeared online anyway; I saw it in a physical copy.
Thanks everyone who commented on my back-and-forth with Ophelia. I feel better about it now, though still not good.
Yeah, I’m happy to cut her a little slack in situations where one person might take something as neutral feedback or constructive criticism but OB sees it as an attack, but understandable or not, it’s certainly driving me away.
chigau:
Hard to imagine anything less self-aware or more hypocritical.
(And I post this with full awareness that efforts at self-awareness and individual or collective attempts to address the hypocrisy and double standards are unlikely to be forthcoming.)
I’ll even provide a model of what a decent individual and collective response might look like:
AlexanderZ and Dalillama
Here is a story
I was in Japan some 20mumble years ago and watched a TV drama that seemed to be a scifi thing about greed and not messing with the unknown.
At the time I had enough Japanese language skills to order a beer and find the correct train.
But the story stuck with me.
A couple of years ago, I spent about an hour googling terms like:
Japan television
construction site
big hole
coke can
soccer ball
garbage
housewife
and a bunch of other stuff
.
I actually found the author of the story
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinichi_Hoshi
.
My Faith®™ in Google is Large and Multitudinous.
AlexanderZ
And several other bits from the same post.
I apologize for not being clear enough. I don’t want any past donaters to be prosecuted. This is what: The Unites States federal government should declare that the Roman Catholic Church is the legal equivalent of a terrorist organization, and publicize the fact that giving money to it shall constitute a crime. Then have a grace period of some time before enforcement commences. Then enforcement – people start going to jail – or merely fined. Whatever punishment is best for deterrence et al.
I assume this will color some of your other replies to me.
…
@Nick Gotts
and
@AlexanderZ
Not caring. Their problem. Especially for those who give money. Especially when the giving of money is entirely voluntary with social consequences for failing to give money. Especially when those social consequences would disappear if the Catholic Church was legally declared the legal equivalent of a terrorist organization and that giving funds to it was illegal.
Would you give the same defense to people who perform female genital mutilation as part of their ethnic, cultural, and religious identity? I sincerely hope that you want female genital mutilation to be illegal. I sincerely hope that you would want criminal prosecution to those who specifically give money to support illegal covert clinics which specialize in female genital mutilation. I fail to see a meaningful difference of why we should give Catholics special treatment.
…
@Giliell
I don’t see how that’s an honest description of what I’ve said. I’ve mentioned nothing of the contents of holy books (I think), and I’ve mentioned everything about the present practices of a particular named organization, and the practices of many people to self identify as members and supporters of that organization.
The difference between bigotry and justified intolerance is in the eye of the beholder – specifically whether the targeted group is doing actual harm, if there is moral fault, and if one can expect that the intolerance will change the behavior of individuals in the group. This is how you accomplish any social, cultural, or political change. My description of bigotry vs justified intolerance is not a radical position. This should be elementary. What is radical is applying this to Catholics. I think it’s justified to be intolerant of people who give money to neo-Nazi groups, and I think it’s justified to be intolerant of people who give money to organizations known to systematically protect child rapists.
The moral difference between doing the act oneself and being an aider and abetter is not a bright line distinction. It’s gradations of gray. I agree to lessened moral and legal culpability for the average Catholic, but the culpability remains. I chose my words carefully, and to be provocative. Of course, I don’t want mundane Catholics ever charged with the legal crime of rape, but I still view them morally as child rapists because of their continued informed willful (legal and non-legal) aiding and abetting of child rapists.
Is it a choice. I refuse to recognize this absurd kind of morality where people are no longer responsible for the actions they take in possession of the facts. Take a moment to consider what you are actually proposing. What other crimes are you willing to overlook because it’s part of their ethnic, cultural, and religious identity? Only absurdity lies in that direction – indoctrination be damned.
Enlightenment Liberal
Actually, it is. There is the possibility to become stateless. Sure, in many cases it’s really difficult and would mean you’d lose your job and your family and your existence, but unless you want to be held guilty for all the crimes your country commited that’s entirely your problem.
So, what’s your nationality so we can decide what we should call you? War criminal? Torturer? Rapist?
PS: For example, what about a situation where a kid has to illegally drink alcohol, or do a small theft, in order to fit in with their friends. We all would agree that using that as a moral or legal justification for the theft is absurd, even though they could demonstrate real social consequences. I give (almost) no slack for people committing real crimes that hurt real people because of social pressures.
This should be distinguished from the cases of non-believing clergy, where I can see that the least damaging and most morally responsible position is to remain a clergy. I can even see that argument applying to some Catholic clergy, though I’m pushing myself to say that.
But when an actual crime happens, like the transfer of money after the Roman Catholic Church is declared the legal equivalent of a terrorist organization, and after it is declared that giving money to the church is illegal? (Almost) no middle ground. At that point, it’s a crime, and if you suffer merely social consequences for not doing criminal acts, that’s your own problem, not mine, and I have little to no sympathy for someone who chooses the “crime” option instead of the social consequences option.
I didn’t realize that you were a sovereign citizen. That, or you are a complete asshat for equating the difficulty of living in the antarctic with the difficulty of simply not giving money to a particular religious organization. There is government everywhere. It’s an unavoidable consequence of living on this planet. It is fundamentally dishonest to compare paying taxes to paying tithes. If you do not pay your taxes for long enough, eventually a man comes to your house with a gun, and depending on their discretion, thereafter you will go to jail. No comparable use of force exists for paying the tithe – at least in my country (US).
oh bugger
carn’t be arsed
Ooh, it just hit me that another legal avenue to pursue is treating the church like the mob and invoking RICO and related laws.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corrupt_Organizations_Act#Catholic_sex_abuse_cases
So, I am not a trained lawyer. If I’m reading that right, the steps may be to bring indictment against church leaders, and freeze their assets, and get an injunction that also seizes any new funds from parishioners going to the church. Then wait forever for the foreign nationals from the Vatican to show up for trial. In the meantime, seize all of the money, and anyone attempting to subvert this injunction to seize the money should be charged in violation of this injunction.
Perfect.
I mean, we really shouldn’t have to touch the individual Catholics. Shutting down the individual collection centers is good enough. Or allow the churches to continue operating, but bust their asses if and when they violate the injunction. I am pretty sure that it’s reasonable to swing an injunction that allows for intrusive monitoring of local church money to ensure the injunction is not being violated.
PS: Of course, step 1 of this process is to prosecute local church affiliates first, and acquire all of the local evidence that we can.
The church hierarchy think that they are above the law, and that they do not have to report child rapists to the police, and that they know better. To such brazen defiance of the law, I believe the only proper reply is to throw the book at them, which is exactly what I’m suggesting.
EnlightenmentLiberal
Wut?
You know, before you spew more bullshit, how about educating yourself? Becoming stateless has nothing to do with being a sovereign citizen or living in the antarctic. It doesn’t even mean you don’t pay taxes. It means you are no longer a citizen of any state, which happens to a lot of people whose states cease existing or who don’t have any legal paperwork or in rare cases, to people who renounce their citizenship.
It is also, of course, not a matter of “simply not giving money”, since people have already remarked that this can come with heavy come with heavy consequences, consequences that you have decided don’t matter.
I’ll give you a very concrete example:
My friend is a nurse. She works in a church owned hospital. Church owned hospitals can and do fire people who leave the RCC or the Lutheran church. If you are a member of any of these churches tithing is mandatory and done by the government. It is now very difficult to find work in the health sector if you have no christian religious affiliation. Also people who change employers get paid much less than she gets after having worked in that hospital for 20 years. She has three small children and a mortage to pay off. She’s a member of the RCC. Is she a child rapist?
Or better asked: What price do you think people should have to pay? Is there an acceptable line? If yes, who died and made you arbiter of other people’s lives?
@Giliell
Does this voluntarily give money to the Roman Catholic Church, such as tithing, or other voluntary donations? I was rather anal about focusing on this aspect, not whether your employer happens to be Catholic. In fact, I can completely sympathize due to the problem of wage slavery, and I hold no malice, contempt, nor intolerance.
I answered this in 345, with important clarification in 348. After the RICO injunction has been issued to seize all church foreign church assets pending trial on RICO charges, anyone found in violation of this injunction shall be charged. Obviously, the simplest enforcement mechanism is to do intrusive monitoring (again by injunction) of all local Roman Catholic Churches to ensure that no money is making it to foreign affiliates of the Roman Catholic Church.
Anyone found in knowing willful violation of this injunction should be treated in a manner similar to anyone else who violates similar RICO injunctions. I suspect the sentence is not all that lenient – insofaras I expect it’s not just a petty fine. AFAIK, violating court orders like this is serious business.
To re-answer another aspect of the question: What social price is too high to pay to avoid violating a court injunction? First, with the court injunction in place, I fully expect that the social consequences of not giving money to the church will quickly evaporate. However, even if not, I again ask you to consider what social consequences some people face in some western countries when deciding whether to illegally perform female genital mutilation or not. Not doing female genital mutilation for some people can carry a very high social price. And my answer is unchanged: It’s their problem. The law in those countries say no female genital mutilation, and your ethnic identity, cultural identity, and religious identity be damned.
What kind of silly question is this? My own opinion is authority enough. My own human decency, compassion, and empathy, is enough. Especially when put against public discourse such as this. By what other “authority” can anyone make any moral claim?
I already answered you: tithing is mandatory.
But I notice your complete lack of empathy with people who’ve been caught between a rock and a hard place.
I also note that you again equate actively doing harm (FGM) with being a member of a certain faith and/or donating money of which a part will be used for bad things.
Hey, what about a country that made some very immoral thing mandatory? Should people follow that law because it’s the law of the land?
It is, of course, compeltly useless to debate about the morality of giving money to the RCC after it’s been declared illegal because that’s hardly going to happen, but nice try in moving goalpost.
@Giliell
Sorry – there has been a problem with miscommunication due to cultural differences. I happen to live in the United States, where thankfully we don’t have such ridiculous shenanigans. In my secular country, there is no government enforced tithing. I’m sorry that your country is different. I understand now that you understand the word “tithing” to not be a purely voluntary activity because it is not in your country. My apologies.
In the context of wage slavery, and where you can only be hired by registering as Catholic, which then leads to government “tithing”, then I am completely sympathetic and I hold no contempt or ill will towards people in that situation. I hold that such people basically have no moral culpability for the child rape of the church.
I had hoped that this position would have been exceedingly clear given my constant and repeated use of the term “voluntary donations” to contrast it with taxes and government enforced takings of money.
However, I’m a little confused by another of your positions. You seem to be holding on both sides of the question whether taxes are voluntary with your stateless bullshit on the one hand, but on the other hand you recognize the real problems of wage slavery. I’m sensing a little dishonesty and/or logical inconsistency here.
Well, I think several people specifically asked what specific concrete steps I want taken. I was responding to those questions. I agree I also made assertions about the morality of such giving in the absence of such court injunctions.
I think my position there remains unchanged. It is wrong to do FGM. It is wrong to child rape. It is wrong to fund a group which does either when there are alternative charities. If there are no alternatives, such as because you happen to be a wage slave in a situation which requires you to tithe to the Roman Catholic Church, then I hold that such people have no moral culpability. However, if someone wants to use the excuse that they will be ostracized from their community or family for not tithing to the Roman Catholic Church, then my sympathy is remarkably less.
Of course, I think some legal avenue like the RICO injunctions described above is the best approach.
Generally in public policy debates such as this one, both sides are allowed some degree of talking about a slightly different hypothetical world where some changes have been made. This kind of debating tactic is usually called fiat power. The point of public policy debates such as this one is to take the world as it is, and try to identify changes that could be done, not the changes that will be done. Focusing only on what will happen leads to a defeatist outlook, and will change nothing.
Further, even if it will not happen immediately, I think conversations like this are important to changing the Overton window, so in the future the change might happen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
I want organizations that flout the law, rape children, and protect the rapists, to be crushed in the most expedient manner possible, and anyone who voluntarily supports such an organization which so brazenly flouts the law deserves our condemnation and contempt.
@Giliell
I have not moved the goalposts. This has been my clear position since the beginning. In my very first post in the Thunderdome on this topic (at least in the last month), I wrote this:
Quoting EL in 294
Sorry. I thought I was pretty clear with that, but apparently I was not. I assumed it was common knowledge that the United States maintains a list of terrorist organizations, and that there are US laws which criminalize giving money to these organizations. I now recognize that this may not be public knowledge. I believe the effect of 1- classifying the church as a terrorist organization (or at least the foreign elements), and 2- the RICO injunctions, should be roughly equivalent. Sorry if that wasn’t clear, but in retrospect you should see that has been my position since the beginning.
@Giliell
I did a re-read of my posts in the thread.
EL in 294
If one willingly and knowingly identifies as a member of any voluntary organization which has systematically protected child rapists from police for decades, if not centuries, around the world, then one is not a decent human being. If someone gives money to that organization, then I want that person charged for aiding and abetting child rapists, in a similar way to how we charge people now in the US for giving money to Islamic terrorist organizations.
EL in 309
Let’s just start with tithing before we go into the murkier case of merely self-identifying as Christian. Can you at least agree with me that anyone who gives money to the Roman Catholic Church should be brought up on charges of aiding and abetting child rapists, exactly like how anyone who gives money to a terrorist organization should be brought up on charges?
EL in 322
It should be declared the moral and legal equivalent of a terrorist organization, and anyone giving funds to it should be charged.
EL in 343
I apologize for not being clear enough. I don’t want any past donaters to be prosecuted. This is what: The Unites States federal government should declare that the Roman Catholic Church is the legal equivalent of a terrorist organization, and publicize the fact that giving money to it shall constitute a crime. Then have a grace period of some time before enforcement commences. Then enforcement – people start going to jail – or merely fined. Whatever punishment is best for deterrence et al.
Not caring. Their problem. Especially for those who give money. Especially when the giving of money is entirely voluntary with social consequences for failing to give money. Especially when those social consequences would disappear if the Catholic Church was legally declared the legal equivalent of a terrorist organization and that giving funds to it was illegal.
EL in 345
But when an actual crime happens, like the transfer of money after the Roman Catholic Church is declared the legal equivalent of a terrorist organization, and after it is declared that giving money to the church is illegal?
EL in 348
and many others.
…
I think I have been actually very clear the whole time from the start that my two positions are:
1- I condemn those who voluntarily give, and
2- I have been very clear that I think that any criminal prosecution should be preceded by putting the church on the terrorist group list and/or with a RICO injunction (which does not allow for prosecution of previous donaters).
AFAIK IMHO, the only possible point of honest confusion is that I used the word “tithing” to mean voluntary giving, whereas you understood my use of the word to mean “government enforced involuntary giving”. In my own defense, I can only say that I used the word “voluntary” many many times to try and make this point clear, and I contrasted it with non-voluntary giving such as taxes.
So, Giliell, I strongly suspect that you think I’m moving goalposts because you decided to not read a damn thing I wrote. Seemingly, you just pigeonholed me under some stereotype, merely skimmed what I wrote looking for cheap shots, and didn’t read fully and for comprehension. This is not a good faith and honest way to engage in a discussion.
Sorry – I know I’m spamming posts. Last one for tonight.
For those who like my RICO injunction idea, doesn’t that entail that you think the government should stop the funding of the Catholic church because the funding enables child rape? How do you handle that in light of your other belief that individual Catholics shouldn’t be held responsible for supporting child rape when they voluntarily give money to the church? I don’t think you can have it both ways.
I don’t think that “but the social consequences!” is not a good enough excuse in most cases. I hope that we can all learn the great famous moral lesson of the Nuremberg trials. “I was just following orders” is not a sufficient excuse. IMHO, this should imply “but my friends and family won’t like me if I didn’t do it” is not a sufficient excuse either.
Extra not. Fixed:
>I don’t think that “but the social consequences!” is a good enough excuse in most cases.
@ AlexanderZ 321
I won’t link it, but for anyone with the curiosity and stomach for it I got that link from the gamergate board on 8chan. It can be even more fascinating watching how they interpret the whole thing. It’s like watching creationists rationalize away about things.
Oh chigau-bless-your-heart,
People are being all “you must be this pure to ride” over Maher just because he’s anti-vaccine. You’d best toodle on over there and drop some of your unpunctuated half-thoughts. Maybe lecture someone on how blockquoting is a courtesy to readers, for an extra helping of “does she have no sense of shame whatsoever?”
Thanks, chas—oops, sorry, there I go, confusing the two of you again. No matter. You think it’s a compliment, for what I’m sure is the stupidest of reasons.
Say, Anthony K, please just leave me the fuck out of your pissy little spats in the future. Thanks.
Bite me. Thanks.
Besides, Sven, I was talking about chascpeterson, not you.
If that grotesque little freak doesn’t like it, he can put on his big boy pants and ask me himself.
EnlightenmentLiberal
I’m on board with that.
It all depends on how you define “The Church”. If it’s defined as the Vatican, then only money leaving the country will be ceased, if you define it at the diocese level (some US investigations are already working at this level) then any money leaving the parishes will be subject to seizure.
Basically, my moral thinking goes in circles or responsibility. The main criminals are the ones who commit the actual rape. Their accomplices are anyone at their church who know of the crime/s but does nothing. Anyone helping them commit further crimes by offering various protections (shuttling them to other churches, moving them out of the reach of the law, silencing the victims or destroying evidence) are also accomplices, and so is any office holder who is responsible for these actions in their region, and then their supervisors, and so on and so forth till the Pope.
As you can see, I talk about office holders only because any financial aid, unless it is given directly to the rapist, goes through so many hands (from the parish to vicars to bishops to archbishops to the Pope, and then back to a specific archbishop, who is in charge of a specific country, to a bishop in a specific diocese and ultimately to the rapist) that only a moral culpability remains, not a criminal one.
But honestly, this looks like a false dilemma. Even today low enforcement agencies have enough tools to pursue rapists and their accomplices. They can forbid church officials from leaving the country, seize documents and put on trial anyone responsible for the rapes. If Ireland is any indication, a large investigation is enough to make a great many people abandon Catholicism, or disconnect their faith from the Vatican. The problem is that the police does not use its tools, RCC officials aren’t being held accountable and nobody wants to take on the Church.
In essence, the state is also a rape enabler. So any talk about how to apply the law to RCC is pointless, when those in charge of the law are themselves guilty of covering up the crimes. Not to the extent of the Vatican, but still enough to allow rapists to go free.
____________________________________
Dalillama #338
You mean the Espresso Book Machine?
I was interested in that too.
____________________________________
chigau #342
Mastery of the Google you have, young padawan.
Envy you I do.
____________________________________
theophontes
For your eyes only: Inside the world’s safest house
It’s about an architect who decided to apply tardigrade durability to his structures.
@AlexanderZ
A pretty reasonable response.
One thing:
It would be nice for the police to start using more normal methods of investigation and charging of the people directly involved and in charge. I am dubious as to whether this would be sufficient.
The Modern World, in a nutshell;
Target’s package for ex-CEO matches package for all 17,600 Canadian workers
Gregg Steinhafel: $61M US
All 17,600 Canadian workers being laid off: $56M US
@ AlexanderZ
Many thanks for the linky. Good that you sent as sekret mesaarg. You never know who is reading these blogs!
In other good news: I have it on good authority tgat our uniforms are in “dispatch”. Aleutia continua!
theophontes #365
The Uniforms?‽!
Oh frabjous day!
Is my cyberpistol in the package?
Say wharever you want, rude place, bla bla bla… but sometimes insults here turn ny stomach
This thread:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/01/17/the-glare-was-so-bright-i-might-go-blind/
makes me want to slam my noggin against the wall. It’s so infuriating reading the comments by the Defenders of the Status Quo. They continue to deny the experiences of black people, and act as if they know better than sociologists and psychologists who have studied racism.
@Gilliel 349
Are people working to change that and the mandatory tithing? That seems very destructive to have forced religious observance to work in any non-directly faith related field. That is, I don’t mind having to be catholic to be a priest, but having to be catholic or lutheran to be a nurse, doctor, etc is insanity. Hell, here less than half the faculty at many catholic schools are catholic and a substantial minority are atheists. The same is true of the students.
I love Tardigrade House. ‘s beautiful. And a decent prototype for a fitting lair, too – all it needs is a bit of a tweak to the surroundings …
Enlightenment Liberal,
A clinic set up with the specific purpose of carrying out FGM is in no sense morally equivalent to the Catholic Church, which was not set up with the specific intention of enabling child rape. It places its own financial and propaganda interests above the interests of victims of its priests, which is bad enough, but again, your pretence that its purpose is child rape is simply evidence of your dishonesty.
Hey everyone, and especially chigau and chas, I’m really sorry for my repulsive and hurtful comments. my performance yesterday was despicable, and I had no right to take out my shit on you. I’m sorry.
So you’ve apologized (I do think you had cause to apologize to Sven, so well done there, sincerely). Of course, neither chigau nor anyone else can be “arsed” to behave decently, even to acknowledge chigau’s bad behavior, much less to suggest a retraction and/or apology. But that’s what I expected. Then again, I know everyone must be busy what with that event approaching – something to do with conscience, I believe… All carries on as usual.*
*With one exception: I finally got around to removing the “OM” from my nickname (which was far easier than I thought), as I fear it suggests my association with what’s sadly become a hypocritical and cowardly culture.
Tony @ 368:
That thread made me intensely queasy. Same feeling I had a few weeks ago, watching previews on a netflix disc – there was a preview for Jimmy P., Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian. So do I see any number of talented indigenous actors in the main role? Nope, I see Benicio Del Toro in the lead, ’cause even in the 21st century, there isn’t a single Indian actor to be found. Nope.
It’s damn near impossible to explain to the defenders of the Great White the horrible, sinking feeling of disgust and despair that erasure brings. It’s not even a matter of non-representation, it’s erasure.
SC @373:
You’re casting a pretty wide net there. To be honest I’m not sure what you’re talking about and for people who aren’t in the know, your criticisms are rather vague.
****
Caine @374:
If you’d asked me 5 years ago how I felt about minorities being erased, I would have had a puzzled look on my face. Now? I have a much better understanding of how (and why) minorities experience erasure. So. Damn. Frustrating.
(back to Caine, eh?)
Tony:
Yeah, too many messages from people thinking I dropped off the planet.
It is frustrating, beyond expression. I got caught myself, though, in being party to the evils of representation tropes while reading Invisible (linked in #316) – the essay by Nalini Haynes (Evil Albino Trope is Evil) had me feeling guilty because I’ve happily ignored the reality of albino representation for years (and I had a friend in HS who was an albino person.)
Caine, just after I finally could type Iyeska without looking it up…
;)
Tony, I will say this: Pharyngula forever ruined the mainstream media for me
Grewgills
The EHRC keeps cutting some privileges, but I don’t see this bullshit ending any time soon.
Tony:
Did you miss the link in my first post above? If not, did it occur to you to investigate what my post there was in response to? I’ll spell it out:
On the thread about the Mr. Deity video (“Somebody is a little pissed off by the pope”), people were expressing their opposition to PZ’s posting it, including chigau and Anthony. Despite the fact that chigau apparently agreed with Anthony, she responded to his posts (one had to assume, since no reference was provided) with a cryptic “You Must Be Pure!”
Anthony then quoted chigau’s comment and asked “Is that what you think I’m saying, chigau?” to which chigau replied, ever so enlighteningly,
Anthony responded to the first two lines with “Well, that’s just fucking stupid then,” and when chigau then responded with something not in English, he answered
Chigau’s answer:
chigau later responded to JAL, who was, unsurprisingly, in need of clarification:
So chigau was apologetic to JAL for bringing up irrelevancies and sowing confusion. Not, though, for making a claim about some alleged battle between two people who weren’t expected to be around to challenge the claim, demand clarification or retraction, or say anything about it. In fact, chigau used the opportunity to get in another little jab, about how these alleged battles in which one or both of us (like Anthony) demanded Purity were nothing more than “in-fighting Pharyngula bullshit.” So sg and I, who frequently came to the other’s defense against misrepresentations, are set against each other in petty, bullshit “Purity” battles – no links, no specifics, no indication of relevance, in our absence. Even had some sort of link or some evidence of any sort been provided, which it wasn’t, it would still be a gratuitous snipe at people who weren’t in the discussion at all. (And this, as several of the people here well fucking know, is part of a pattern when it comes to talking about sg and me that we and others called out in the past, with similar dismissive reactions and nonresults, which is why it continues.)
No one said at the time that they thought chigau had treated Anthony badly, although she obviously had, and of course no one asked for any substantiation regarding or even said a thing about chigau’s assertion about sg and me.
Later, I happened to see the comments and responded (my link above) making it very plain that I was unhappy about chigau’s remarks and considered them a smear. Still no apology or retraction from chigau or comments from anyone else. I bring it up here, and chigau’s response (I think – once again chigau can’t be bothered to indicate what she’s referring to), which no one seemed to have a problem with, was a sneer at the very idea that she should be expected to behave decently toward sg or me.
You know this is wrong, Tony, as do others. What chigau did on that thread was obnoxious, disreprectful, and harmful. On many occasions, people here have lectured someone who inadvertently writes something sexist or racist or homophobic on how to own up to the error and apologize. This wasn’t even inadvertent – indeed, it was casually gratuitous – and no one has called it out or called for an apology. It sends the message that people here are too cowardly to stand up for decent behavior if it means calling out one of the group, and that the rules about treating people with respect don’t apply to the locals.
Well, since the reply was dropping the names of two people who weren’t active on that thread, the smear can’t have been too bad, sc, right?
To borrow from chigau, bless your heart
And it continues. For those too lazy or unwilling to click on my link above or here, this was my response:
The inclusion of people who weren’t active on the thread was purposeful – made as silly as possible, my claims were explicitly presented as substanceless smears like chigau’s. (When it later appeared that somehow people weren’t getting it and thought there was some truth to them, by the way, I quickly emphasized that there was not. Even though this effect was inadvertent – my intent was plainly not to have the assertions believed but to draw attention to chigau’s flinging out substanceless claims – I didn’t want to let misunderstandings stand. In contrast, chigau isn’t at all concerned about tossing out such claims in perfect seriousness and leaving them out there. And you’re the same, now actively misrepresenting my post on another thread to lead people to the false impression that I simply responded to chigau’s false claims about people who weren’t around with the same. I continue to be amazed that not only do you have no shame about this pattern of misrepresentation but that this group persists in lecturing others about intellectual honesty and treating people with kindness and respect.)
But of course when your intent is to be willfully obtuse and dishonest so as to persist in your hypocritical self-righteousness,…
Your intent is fucking meaningless. You used us as props to make your point. What is more, you used at least one person, me, who has every reason to doubt your benign intentions. I object to being your plaything, I would never agree to being your plaything and it’s just one more time that you show that you have really no respect for other people. Whatever godsdamn point you think you had to make, you had absolutely no right to use me to make it. Dishonest? Look in the mirror. Because nobody who knows you will believe that you just happened to choose my name.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2015/01/it-was-not-on-bensons-blog/
Argh. Yes. I’ve been on a Joss Whedon kick recently, reading Jenny Trout’s Big Damn Buffy Rewatch recaps, rewatching Firefly, and catching up on Agents of SHIELD…
…and I’m just left gaping in horror that this man is held up as some sort of progressive, feminist icon. The racism and sexism are just staggering. Where I saw empowerment as a teen, now I just see astoundingly whitewashed worlds as the backdrops to some dude’s fetish for white (or light-skinned mixed race) emotionally shattered waifs kicking ass and getting conveniently helpless whenever a man needs to assert his manliness. Gag.
Hilarious. The fact that several people here are going to take this rant seriously, or if they can’t bring themselves to do that will let it stand, is what makes me sad. Congratulations, gang – you’ve succeeded in creating this environment of hypocrisy, double standards, self-righteous posturing, misrepresentation, the twisting of concepts meant to enlighten people about social justice for self-serving ends, and bullying cynically disguised as victimhood. You should be very proud. I’m now going to take a long if not permanent break, and think back fondly on the time before this culture developed.
*You’re a fucking idiot. The claims were obviously presented and meant to be seen as false, and the people were chosen so as to be as silly as possible in those scenarios. As is well known, I can’t stand you, but I didn’t choose your name in that claim in order to smear you any more than I chose heddle to represent the social justice perspective because I wanted to enhance his reputation. I am overwhelmed by this willful stupidity and misrepresentation and how it’s become accepted practice around here.
@Nick Gotts
What do you call the difference between clinic A which does normal services, but also is well known to provide FGM and systematically cover for their doctors who do it and obstruct the police on this matter, vs clinic B which does normal services and no FGM? And if this was common knowledge? The first thing that should happen is that the people responsible for FGM and obstruction of justice should be charged and removed from clinic A. Now supposing that it was outside the jurisdiction, but other members frequently flew in from out of jurisdiction to perform FGM? Then this is where you have to do something like a RICO indictment, followed by a RICO injunction to seize all assets that might be used to perform FGM, and assets that are used to provide cover for those who perform FGM, until trial. I’m proposing nothing less for the Catholic church.
How is it absurd? They are flagrantly violating the law of United States Of America, and many other sovereign nations. Their choices are to hand over their criminals, stop violating our laws, and admit publicly that “give Caesar what is Caesar’s” e.g. they will follow our laws. Until then, they are effectively sovereign citizens – except they’re getting away with it. ‘The book should be thrown’ at sovereign citizen who openly and with bravado ignore our laws, e.g. we should use every legal measure we (morally) can to stop them for the safety of others, and for the necessary deterrence effect.
It’s an absurd fantasy to want an international child rape conspiracy to be legally charged, and to have court injunctions to make funding this conspiracy illegal?
No it wouldn’t. The result would be a quick capitulation of the Roman Catholic Church in releasing all documents related to the child abuse and letting inspectors into their buildings to search for other records, as mandated by our search warrants and/or by new international agreements / settlements.
And if people want to go to war to ensure that more children should be raped, then that seems like a just war which I’m more than willing to take on.
Again, I’m all seeing from Nick Gotts is various reasons why nothing can be done, why we shouldn’t hold responsible the people who let it happen and who fund it. We’ve reached a new low in this recent post, where Nick Gotts implicitly argued that we should continue to let them rape children because otherwise they would go to war on us. It’s all just child rape apologetic.
Giliell:
Yeah, me too. All of it, really. A while back, I downloaded a book by Andrea Camilleri, and smacked into this: Nottata persa e figlia fimmina (A night wasted, and it’s a girl), with this bit attached: quoting the proverbial saying of the husband who has spent a whole night beside his wife in labor, only to see her give birth to a baby girl instead of that much-desired son.
Nice, ennit? FFS, I don’t have time to waste on authors who are so fucking lazy that they can’t come up with a way for a character to express frustration and futility without falling back on shitty misogyny. So, Camilleri is off my reading list.
SC (Salty Current) #378
I’m one of those “others”. I’ve read your tirade here and on B&W (thank you for the link, Beatrice #382) and I still can’t under why that one comment from chigau triggered you this much, or why you think it is indicative of some larger problem with Pharyngula. chigau was in the wrong, and acknowledged that. What more do you want? Or do you think that the entire thread, which was about religious terrorism and Dalton’s rape endorsement, should stop in its tracks and focus on you or chigau?!
Maybe because those issues are more important than whatever fight you have with chigau?
Honestly, I would have expected this from some tone-trolling pitter, not from a Pharyngula veteran like you.
_____________________________
theophontes, opposablethumbs
Glad you liked it :)
Beatrice @ 382:
Jesus. Thanks for that link.
AlexanderZ to SC @387:
She has said her piece; she has given no indication she wants any more.
<sigh>
Self-awareness would suffice (never mind acumen!) to get SC’s point.
—
PS this is another one-off, and I want to make it clear that I not only don’t have a problem with chigau, I actually like her.
Cross-posted from Butterflies & Wheels:
==============================
Ah, good to see that the Giliell/pteryxx fallout really was just a sarcastic joke, as I had very tentatively gathered from context. There are probably dozens of abortion threads I haven’t read, and I’m not good at figuring out people in general, so I had to keep wondering.
Misunderstood. Maybe misremembered even. But lied about?
(Misunderstanding sg is of course easy – he doesn’t fit anyone’s preconceptions.)
Might as well put that on Pharyngula’s comment section’s grave stone.
It looks alive and kicking to me.
SC
Goodness you’re dishonest.
I know perfectly well that your scenario was obviously false because I damn well know that I never had a fight about reproductive rights with Pteryxx. That doesn’t change shit.
You still decided that it was totally OK to use me. I still object. You use people because you decide that your point is way more important than anything those people might have to say about that, which is especially dishonest when the point you’re trying to make is “it’s not ok to use people who are not present to make some meaningless point”.
But oh, wait, one of the most intelligent people on Pharyngula was wondering about that. So maybe it was not as clear as you thought it was, but you still call me names for objecting. Wanna throw in some “overreacting” “hysterical” or “can’t take a joke”? Because you already got the “playing the victim card” when all I did was object to you using me as your prop.
And decent people recognise that when you cannot stand somebody, you leave them alone instead of bringing them up out of the blue.
Because nobody is going to fucking believe you.
Oh, wait, now even Ophelia Benson is wondering about that. Nice putting that obviously silly claim out there and then making sure it gets spread as far as possible. I hope you are also cleaning that shit up. A
Oh, no, wait, you’re throwing some more claims around.
You’Re a complete asshole. Have you registered on the slymepit yet? You got their MO right.
–from Carpe Jugulum, by Terry Pratchett.
Not everyone is aware of local drama. Expecting everyone to be aware of local drama is pretty self-absorbed.
When people make it obvious they are not aware a statement was just sarcasm, and you keep at it (or simply don’t offer an explanation), that’s deliberately encouraging a misunderstanding.
since he’s been mentioned.. I miss SGBM.
I hope he’s doing ok.
Beatrice @ 396
Indeed. I’m around enough to be surprised at an implication that Giliell and Pterryx would have had some big blowup over abortion but I also go through spurts where I don’t read much at all and could easily have missed something. Abortion is a contentious and fraught topic and it’s not at all hard to imagine that two people who are generally in agreement could have a falling out over some detail. If it’s ambiguous to someone who’s been a regular for 3-4 years, it’s not obvious by any reasonable definition of the word.
SC
Now, since in general don’t frequent B&W anymore, I’ll leave you my response here, I’m pretty sure you’ll find it.
You know, people with a shred of decency, honesty and integrity admit when their words failed to convey the intended meaning, as demonstrated by the huge amount of people who took them the wrong way. Dishonest fuckwits otoh claim that intent is magic.
Which does not even touch the point that it was assholish of you to use us as your props in the first place.
So, you admit that since lots of people now do believe bullshit about me and Pteryxx you’re quite happy about having effectively spread a lie about us. Yes, that’s the behaviour of decent people..
I’ll not even address the rest of your diatribe about completly different topics, but just to make a few things clear:
A) I was not on that thread
B) I did not make any claims about you or sg (see point A)
C) I’m neither my brother’s nor my sister’s keeper and especially not chigau’s. Guilt by association now?
D) I’m generally very careful about not voicing my opinion about either you or sg, because yes, can’t stand either of you. I generally avoid interacting with you. You know, like grown ups do.
E) I don’t believe in guilt by association, but you apparently do. (See point C)
F) Fuck you.
Giliell, I’m calling you out!
Because. Because… I don’t know. Something.
Maybe… for not being chigau?
yes, that’s it!
Giliell, you should be ashamed of yourself.
I’m sorry, beatrice. I’m really bad at being chigau. It’s probably the whisk(e)y to rum ratio.
Seven of Mine @ 398
Ditto. I was confused and concerned over this. I sure as hell didn’t immediately understand what the hell was going on. I guess I must be a “fucking idiot”, too.
Gosh, this takes me back to being a teenager. Somebody plays some weird, obfuscated social game and then shames anyone who didn’t catch on to the unspoken rules. *shudder*
It’s also quite rich to expect that everybody would have obviously known that the claim about SC and sgbm was false* and that it was therefore everybody’s duty to call that out, even if you were completely unaware that the claim had been made because you were not even reading that thread…
*Because people have not been around since forever, people have not read each and every thread and yes, personally I admit to not having a perfect memory of each and every discussion that ever happened. I don’t even remember each and every discussion or fight I have ever been involved in. The only mensa card I have is the one that lets you eat at the actual college mensa.
They had pretty good carrot&peas(and sometimes cauliflower) fritters in my college mensa. (yes, I’m aware that was left-overs from the day before )
What? Sometimes I’m low maintenance.
Honestly, for me “Meyer’s blog” gave it away as sarcasm and/or parody, but before that I had some doubts.
“Meyer’s” stuck out as odd to me as well but, then again…It’s a more common spelling than “Myers” which is precisely why the in-joke even exists in the first place. If you’re angry and/or frustrated and not taking as much care to proofread as you might normally, it strikes me as a very easy typo to make. It just added to the confusion for me as opposed to making it clear that SC was being sarcastic.
In other news, Mariupol (a city of about half a million people) is being bombarded by “Donbass rebels”. The intent is to conquer southern Ukraine to create a land bridge from Russia to Crimea.
Beatrice:
Truth. The commentariat here now, for the most part, wouldn’t have gotten Chigau’s remark, and would have let it sail overhead.
Well, that was….interesting.
Nowadays Leica M7 rangefinder cameras are really hard to come by.
I heard something about a giant snake…
Dhorvath
What happened to your bicycle?
I dunno. Lemme check.
It appears something happened to my Gravatar account. Sigh. Time for a new bike picture then.
Dhorvath
Way back, we clipped empty cigarette packs onto our bikes so they went
*whack*whack*whack* against the spokes.
’cause it sounded like a motorbike
John Morales
I like you, too.
I see that one thing has gone full circle.
Browsing B&N, I saw Shermer’s latest book on new releases, where one person gave it 5 stars and this review:
I can barely take the irony of Shermer writing a book called The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom
Caine
I know it’s hard but please try to remember that you are not a white male.
So why would your opinions count?
Chigau:
I keep forgetting…
Caine
I especially love how that review tells you exactly nothing except that the person really liked it…
Gilliel the lying hypocrite @393,
That last irony meter blew up so quickly I never seen anything like it.
Beatrice @397,
Same here. Email contact has dried up.
Aaaaaand Gilliel again,
Condescension, check. Lying, check. Failing to cope if not gracefully than at least grudgingly with copping a bit of your own medicine, ie with showing some modicum of style and insight, check. I think we’re really done here. Especially when that person likens SC to the slymepit. Just pause for a second and think about that.
Rorschach
Well, if one quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, shits like a duck…
And a heartfelt fuck you for you, too. Because all you’ve done is tell everybody how horrible I am. It’s not like you put up any, you know, evidence for all of this. I really, really have better things to do with my life than defending myself against your bullshit. I got drawn into this whole bullshit without having done anything but suddenly I’m the baddie for this. And you don’t contribute anything here but suddenly you show up and decide that hey, you could jump onto the “let’s hate Giliell bandwagon”. Were you a bully in school, too, or are you simply trying it out as an adult.
You can go fuck yourself. Have a good, happy life, die peacefully of old age in bed and leave me alone.
That from the person who gleefully encouraged people to bully me from this blog when you had the chance. To answer your question, no, I wasn’t a bully, I was a redhead and hence got bullied regularly for having red hair. And now that you’re the one somewhat on the receiving end of criticism for once (not from me, I dont give a fuck, but from people I care about and respect), all you can manage is a “just like the slymepit” gambit.
I don’t care about your or anyone else’s view of myself, but I take offense over your comments on my friend SC, and I think you likening her to the slymepit tells me all I need to know about you, your integrity, and your motives.
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
And no, I won’t talk to you about this or anything else anymore. I actually do have a life.
Gilliel on SC,OM
What’s it going to be, Pharyngula? You’re going to let that stand? Group think or integrity? Can we still be a strong vocal band of people with the same convictions and goals while rejecting petty vindictive name-calling and smearing like that? I have to say I’m not holding my breath. Well that, and I don’t care anymore anyway.
Whether it’s Gilliel or Caine or whoever, this comment section went to the dogs a long time ago. Let’s see if anyone surprises me by standing up to SC here. I know better than to hold my breath.
Woof, woof!
Indeed. Woof bloody woof.
Giliell:
I rather enjoyed the “important contribution to his [Shermer’s] work.” That’s a strange thing to say.
On occasions, it gets difficult to stand the kind of name calling that goes on here (see my #367). I can swear like a sailor, but seeing someone called a shitstain sometimes makes me feel like a shistain myself for not making that stop.
Comparing someone to a slymepitter? That’s suddenly the level to which one shall not sink?
What a random line to draw. I don’t get it.
Is this thing an argument about who’s right and who’s wrong, or who’s friends with whom?
Rorschach:
Thanks ever for dragging me into your drama. I want no part in the All about SC persecution show.
Yes, well, you showing up to fling accusations and shower shit about truly elevate the commentary.
Meh, I already know the answer. As well as the other thing this usually comes down to…
You know, I can’t not take it personally when some of the old-timers continuously moan about how this place went to shit in comparison to the good old days. Sorry for stomping all over your lawn. I know this place was a thing of beauty and reason and unicorn farts before us newbies* came along.
So sorry for ruining “your” place. I’m sure everyone agreed with everyone else before, there were no “my enemy’s enemies” or biases or anything that could mar the pristine reputation of Pharyngula commentariat.
*what has it been.. 4 years?
Beatrice:
The latter.
Yes I thought we had established that in the last 3 years. Which is why Gilliel’s comment is not a criticism, but a smear, throwing SC in with the likes of Sanderson, thunderf00t and Hoggle. And that is why I say for shame. The end does not justify the means. You want to win an internet discussion, sure, fine, but there are limits. At least that’s how I see it.
For supposed rationalists, you do tend to take matters rather personally. The relevance and truth value of arguments changes because someone is friend with someone? Well good night rationalism.
Beatrice:
I wish you wouldn’t take it personally. People think Pharyngula is rough place, but it’s downright mellow compared to the old days. Also, sexism and ableism ran rampant among the commentariat, there was a lot less writing about feminism or social justice issues, and there was a fair amount of bloated superiority over those silly ass religious people. There weren’t any social threads, so there was frequent derailing of threads, lots of in-jokes and references, and a core of popular peoples. For all that, it was still a good place for honing argument skills and learning about everything.
So, over time, things changed. Lots of consciousness was raised, a social thread happened, people got to know one another, and some of those popular people didn’t like it. I figure that’s their loss, Beatrice. I’m really glad you and so many others are here, adding your voices to the commentariat. Your voice is important, and so is that of all the other ‘new’ folks. Shrug off the occasional sourpuss, they aren’t worth taking up space in your head.
The truth value of the argument being that Gilliel objected to being used as a prop in someone else’s argument.
Flipping that around and making Gilliel somehow the aggressor in all this: yep, that is slymepit-style tactics.
Caine
Sorry. You don’t deserve that. But I’m afraid it’s airing long held griefances time so, welcome to my life.
If it helps, to me it’s still a compliment to be thrown in with you.
Rorschach:
Oh, do fuck off. You’re the one charging in whinging over your friend, and how no one will stand up to SC. If you’re going to base your whinging on friendship, you’re the one who based things on a personal level, and you’re hardly one to talk about rationalism.
Giliell:
Well, you certainly don’t deserve this shit either, and I’m happy to be in your company. For the record, SC’s behaviour was seriously over the fucking top, and as usual, anything she interprets as an insult, criticism, or smear is absolutely awful, just the worst thing ever, but it’s perfectly okay for her to use slimy tactics on other people, because reasons. Christ, I hate drama.
rorschach (#434)
Oh, ok. If we established that then good. Sorry, my groupthink updates are a bit late sometimes. Well, to be honest I “forget” to do the updates in the first place. The whole process takes too long, with all the new things I+m supposed to know and think and feel every day, so I sometimes do the “Hide update” thing.
(sorry, don’t be mad, everyone)
Seriously, I don’t get this one. There’s a bunch of lying assholes hanging around a place called Slymepit. Some of them sometimes do despicable things. Comparing someone to them is definitely an insult. As is comparing someone to a right-winger.
It feels like you wanted to push a narrative and you had to work with what you had.
Anyway.
I’m thinking about starting a campaign against all dehumanizing insults. At least that one would make sense to me.
Where to start. I don’t see anyone “making Gilliel the aggressor”. What does this even mean? Are you another dimwit confusing criticism of someone with aggression?
As to slymepit tactics, trust me I’m familair with them because not only have I been and am I still on the receiving end of them, but I was there when they were developed and honed in the first place. Gilliel isnt an aggressor, she’s just some person wrong on the internet, but she has a fanclub, and there are enough personal grievances on this blog to electrify a minor city.
What people tend to forget here is that atheism and social justice are more important than couch potato pissing contests.
rorschach
Er… yeah, that was kind of my (and I’m pretty sure, Caine’s) implication regarding your motivations.
Caine,
Eh, brain works the way it works. At most I can try to force the thoughts down a different path if I realize where they are going early enough.
rorschach #442:
Ah, so the accusation of being ‘wilfully obtuse,’ (ie: lying) wasn’t in any way meant to portray Gilliel as being actively aggressive? Uhuh. That’s me: a dimwit who takes people’s words at face value.
For that you have my sympathy. Doesn’t make it right for SC and yourself to turn around and use the same type of tactics though.
And yet, here you are, pissing all over the couch.
Can I get a shirt to go with that fanclub?
It’s funny how some people have friendships and others have fanclubs. Telling, that differentiation is.
Because , like people who explain their jokes, I like to explain my clever
onetwo-liners.rorschach,
Is it deliberate? Because it looks like a tactic. You are defending your friend, but people who argue against your claims are Giliell’s “fanclub”?
I’m not sure how to call that. It deviously undervalues any friendly relationship people who are commenting here right now have with Giliell. To hurt her or to devalue people’s arguments? Or it’s just an insult that you don’t realize the implications of?
I know slymepitters are the worst of the worst of the worst (like, almost worse than Hitler…. but there’s an unlimited number of ways to hurt people besides comparing them to a slymepitter.
You assume wrong. I don’t know SC, never met her, never had any private conversations, don’t even have her email adress. She is not my friend by any measure. I judge her based on what I have read from her in the last 7 years. Same as anyone else. Sorry if that comes as a shock to your preconceptions.
rorschach,
I actually searched the thread before writing that comment, so that I wouldn’t mess up by conflating what others wrote with what you wrote yourself:
Caine #436
It reminds me why I didn’t stick around the very first time I heard of Pharyngula (during crackergate). Good thing it changed.
rorschach
Said you cared and respected her and called her “my friend SC” in 424.
OK, and what exactly is the offence I committed here in your view? Or does the fact that I have shared an internet blog with her in the past change your judgement?
@436 Caine
Yeah, everytime i read a comment about “the good ole days” i’m always left feeling that the brand new ones seem to be a definite improvement.
Azhael@453 Everything I’ve heard about the “good ole days” makes them sound kinda “pittish” circa right now. Also who broke PZ’s echo chamber? These things are expensive and he’s only on a professor’s salary.
rorschach,
Of for fuck sake. You say one thing and then contradict it a couple of comments later.
At least have the decency not to play dumb when it’s pointed out.
Beatrice:
I generally go with asshole these days.
Rorschach:
Y’know, I’m starting to think you really are that stupid, not just playing dumb. You said (and have been quoted) that SC is your friend, that you care for her, yada yada, then several posts later, claim you don’t know her, she’s not a friend, yada yada. Make up your fucking mind, what little of it you have.
beatrice
Of course you can. How do you like the official logo?
Azhael:
Yeah, it’s an improvement, for most people, anyway. Some people just can’t cope with change.
I really hope SGBM is okay.
Thoughts on calling each other out:
– Generally I don’t give much of a thought to chigau‘s one-liners. They do annoy me. Half of the time they’re right on; on rare occasions they’re right off; the rest of the time they go way over my head – they look like sarcastic jokes, but I have no idea what they’re about, and I really resent the implication that people are just supposed to know – which is, after all, the story of my life on the autism spectrum. Anyway, I’m usually too tired to ask what they’re about, so I ignore them. It’s much like how I almost scroll past Nerd of Redhead‘s comments: half of the time they’re right on, but neither teach me anything new nor are a particular pleasure to read; the other half of the time they completely miss the point, and I’m usually too tired to explain the point – which I estimate I’ve been doing on average once every two months since 2006.
– SC, I remember when you argued a few years ago that people should not immediately call out their friends in public, but contact them privately first. …It’s good that you’ve apparently changed your mind on this attitude, which I consider to be the Root of A Third of All Evil. I was quite shocked back then, in a rather angry way.
– SC, you really need to work on making your sarcasm obvious.
============================
Way up there in comment 491:
The trouble is, rorschach, that you’ve been just this pessimistic since at least 2007. :-)
Anyway:
Huh. I remember a comment with Meyer’s in it; was it by SC?
It would indeed be completely out of character for SC to write that kind of thing (two different mistakes, not even just one!) as a lapse, just as it would be for me. But to know that, you have to remember the times when SC was a regular commenter here – and that was several years ago.
Then why, rorschach, did you bring up that you consider SC your friend? That was bound to be interpreted as meaning you react differently depending on whether your friends are concerned or not.
I don’t understand your point here. This is not sarcasm.
*pounce* *hug* *squeeze* ^_^ ^_^ ^_^
rorschach grew up in Germany. Unlike most people on the Internet, he’s not going to fulfill Godwin’s law as long as nobody calls for literal mass murder – it would be an insult he realizes the implications of.
It’s pretty clear to me from the last several years that that’s not at all an accurate diagnosis of rorschach. Rather, he worries about seeing the Internet in terms of insiders vs. outsiders, which really does occasionally happen here.
I’m just not convinced this is worse now than in 2006.
David @ 459:
Y’know, it would have been absolutely fine if SC called out Chigau, in the specific thread, thunderdome, or both. That’s not what happened, though. Rather than dealing with an upsetting comment specifically, SC dumped Giliell, Pteryxx, and Heddle into a muddled mess of supposed sarcasm, which exacerbated the whole damn thing way more than it merited. Then, that not being enough, derailed and dominated a thread on a different blog, FFS, blazing a spotlight on poor, persecuted SC. That crap should be called out, in no uncertain terms. One comment, which Chigau later stated was inappropriate, would have sailed right over most heads, and SC and Chigau could have hashed it out here in Tdome, with little fuss and hopefully, a good conclusion, but no…
David @ 460:
What in the fuck makes you think that was a diagnosis of Rorschach? It was a more general statement, David. You’re one of the people who can’t cope with change, as demonstrated by your refusal to use nyms and comment numbers when replying. The only people who have had serious trouble with that change have been old timers, and it’s not because it’s a difficult thing to do. Instead, it’s more a matter of “I didn’t do that for years, and things were okay, so why should I do it now?” attitude.
It’s a fine example of the asshole in-group attitude and behaviour.
rorschach
Huh? I think the whole “couch potato” line was bullshit and insulting everyone commenting here but I think that everytime someone comes here whining we don’t do enough in meatspace or making our activist cards subject to their approval.
I was just reading along since I was on the OT and was dragged along for the ride. I simply noticed that and commented on it. I’ve woken up a bit ago and wasn’t paying attention to time stamps, I didn’t realize people would be by to catch it and continue the convo.
=====================
I’m in a wierd spot. I understoond the names were old commenters but didn’t get the specific references. Of course, my memory does suck For instance, heddle I recognized but didn’t remember that was an asshole. I did a double-take on the Pterryxx abortion battle line but I thought “Damn, what did I miss?” not that it was obviously false. Same with SC vs. sg.
The one lesson I learned well from The Good Old Days here was to stay the fuck out of when drama like this went on because there’s so much history and shit, there’s no point in trying to swim out of my depth. (I am still sorry for that one time a remark about my rebellious streak caused a blow up in the social thread.) There’s also how I placed arguing over not supporting a rape apologist more important, (hence being pissed about the purity bit but not dealing with the rest) which makes Rorschach’s “couch potato pissing contents” line funny to me. (And the “what do you really do for social justice? Commenting means nothing. You don’t really care” is in fact common with a lot of detracts of Pharyngula, like the Slymepit. Just saying.) Of course, I also find the coincidence of this going on right after the discuss of Benson’s issues with criticism and being trans* inclusive funny in a weird way to where it spawned a mental image of both commenting sections in a wrestling match. Hell, for all I know the battle lines might have been re-drawn that way.
*shrug*
I will say the “Don’t refer to people in third person” rule gets forgotten and overlooked a lot, at least by me. Because how else to you make references? If we followed that rule, also saying you miss and have good wishes for SGBM would be wrong as well. I don’t know where the line is drawn on that one.
I know I don’t appreciate insulting the whole comment section here and acting as if not calling out one comment makes me an automatic failure. If SC’s point on creating “Substance Smear Week” and calling here misogynist was trying to illustrate how chigau was wrong, SC got the scale wrong. That is way beyond a simple “sg vs sc” remark that most here wouldn’t get rather than calling us misogynist where everyone knows what that means. And no, I didn’t catch that it was just another example, didn’t even catch the “Meyer’s”, until someone pointed it out. Because while I’ve been on threads making fun of people who should know better and still getting it wrong, in just a comment I’d think typo before reference if I noticed.
========================
David Marjanović
Ditto. And I feel so much better knowing it’s not just me who doesn’t get most of chigau’s one liners. I always feel like I’m missing something.
I completely agree with comment 461.
Context… and the fact that I’m under the impression you often mean someone specific when you say “some people”.
The one time that I try to read between lines, and it backfires. *sigh*
Yeah, sorry, I know that was brought up in this very subthread and I still haven’t had time to catch up. I hope I can do that soon; the manuscript I’m finishing up now should be submitted in a few days.
I still don’t understand how names and numbers help anyone in a way that quotes don’t. Please explain.
It is more difficult than you make it sound. First of all I’d need to pay real attention to who writes what; that doesn’t come naturally to me. Currently I don’t necessarily notice when people contradict themselves in the same thread, even when I reply to both of the comments that contradict each other! (Or remember what I just wrote about Meyer’s.) That’s not much different in meatspace, BTW; it helps when I have living breathing people in front of me instead of a few pixels, but not much.
It would be if I hypocritically called out newbies for not doing what I don’t do either. You’ve probably noticed that I’ve never done that.
It would also be if other people called out newbies but not me. That’s not what’s happening either.
@464 David
It helps a lot. Particularly for those of us who have a terrible memory for who said what, but can remember the general content of a long thread, using names and numbers enormously aides in untangling the mess of comments and pairing each comment with each commenter. In very long threads this is particularly useful. Otherwise i have to go back most of the time, looking for the original comment the quote comes from, just to make sure i’m attributing it and contextualising it correctly. It’s no big deal when the quotes comes from the post inmediately above or in the general vicinity, but when people quote comments much earlier in the discussion, it’s a headache in the making…
rorshach sez:
Jesus fucking non-existent Christ on a fucking cracker.
You said SC was your friend. Someone said you’re defending your friend. You then denied that SC was anything at all to you of which “friend” would be a reasonable description. Then two different people reminded you that you referred to SC as your friend, one of them even quoting you. And then this?
Clearly, only the most rational people directly contradict themselves back and forth from one post to the next and then act surprised when they get called on it. Holy shit.
Re: “the good old days”
As a reader for 4+ years and infrequent commenter the past 2, it always seems the “good old days” line is brought up when members of the old guard are bickering at each other. I find the bickering tiresome to read so I’m glad it’s not the good old days anymore.
Personally, I find the “ye olden days” lament to be the internet version of Plato’s complaint about the youth ;)
David M,
464
I know you have had it described for you enough times that this is a frustrating, if not dishonest, request. You can’t argue that it’s not important to other people, enough have told you that it is. To show you care about the needs of other people in this regard you could make an effort to use numbers and names, but because it’s not important to you, you ignore the many times it’s been explained to you by people who do find it important. That’s pretty much the definition of self absorbed, ignoring a simple request because it doesn’t make sense to you despite knowing, from repeated instruction, that it makes the reading experience of other participants easier, even richer, when it is observed. Nothing you have to say is so important that you get an exclusion from simple rules in saying it.
For myself, I crave continuity and context, when I come into a conversation, whether I was in it initially and am returning after an hiatus, or have stumbled on something new, I want to know that I have the positions being discussed under some manner of control before I participate. Being able to follow nyms and numbers to do so is valuable and makes me feel welcome to participate in a way that throwaways doesn’t.
David,
Today:
Sure, David. No problem.
Here you go:
May 2014:
Some explanations:
Then in the T’dom (which A- Noyd linkes as well as Matt P in the same thread:
continuation of #470:
same thread
Thank you for all that work, Beatrice (#470 / #471). All I managed was a snort of disgust upon seeing that dishonest request once again.
This quote from David is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever read at Pharyngula. When you’re dealing with people in person they FUCKING LOOK AT YOU when they’re speaking to you. If you’re involved in a group conversation and want to reference something specific someone said, you fucking say “X Person said [blahblahblah] a minute ago…”. You don’t just address the fucking wall and expect people to know who the fuck you’re talking to.
And seriously, fuck right off with pretending that nobody in the entire history of ever has explained to you why they prefer people to use ‘nyms and comment numbers. Because you’re just physically in-fucking-capable of honoring a courtesy being asked of you unless you also find it useful. Jesus fuck.
Dhorvath @469, Caine @472, Seven of Mine @473:
I obviously have a more charitable reading of David’s comments than you. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to look at a checklist of neurotypical privilege?
Or not.
Anyway, I agree with the comment quoted by Beatrice @471, from Tony;
Rob Grigjanis,
At this point, David’s responses to being asked to copy people’s names annoy me much more than the initial, rather small, irritation.
Also, someone asking something be explained to him, getting the explanation, ignoring it, asking again, getting the explanation, ignoring it over and over and over again… makes me feel like a fool.
Rob Grigjanis @ 474
I have some difficulties with hearing. I’ve mentioned this before here–and greatly appreciate the generous people who ensure there are transcripts for videos or audio information–but don’t usually talk about it in much detail. This is a real issue for me in my every day life and is part of why I dislike socializing in meat space. I rarely understand every word in a spoken conversation, people are assholes and make fun of how I pronounce things or mess up words, even people who’ve known me my entire life will turn their backs to me while speaking so I have no idea what they’re saying. There’s some serious fucking privilege going on with those around me which has a negative impact on my life. It sucks and it pisses me off and makes me feel like my value as a person is being ignored.
But sometimes I scrape my fork on a plate. This is a sound that I may not even hear most of the time, while it’s apparently loud and clear to others. With some people, it upsets them. It bothers them. It can even make some people who are especially sensitive physically ill. I’m just going along doing my own thing and then they’re begging me to stop doing something I may not even be aware I did at all.
And you know what I do? I pay very close attention so that I don’t do it. Because their hearing privilege doesn’t give me a license to be an asshole and ignore their discomfort. It’s a minor thing I can do to prevent someone else from being irritated or suffering a migraine or whatever.
I don’t care how David chooses to write his posts, but disregarding that other people have their own sensitivities and limitations–that people with dyslexia or visual impairment may be unable to parse WTF he’s writing–and insisting that unless he personally understands it someone else’s discomfort doesn’t matter? That’s not very kind. And that’s the part that does bother me.
Rob Grigianis @ 474
What exactly do you think you know about whether I’m neurotypical? Further, this has precisely nothing to do with fucking autism. David knows full well what’s expected of people re: ‘nyms and comment numbers. He knows full well why that expectation exists. This is not about lack of understanding on his part. It’s about lack of giving a shit.
I have no problem whatsoever ignoring everything David says in general. If he can’t be arsed to let me know he’s talking to me, I can’t be arsed to give a rat’s ass what he says. But when he starts this gaslighting bullshit acting like this conversation hasn’t happened 100 times before? Then I have a problem.
Rob @ 474:
Good for you. This has nothing to do with being NNT. It is a classic case of entitlement-minded passive aggressive bullshit, which is not only served up by David, but by quite a few others. Some of us have been round and round and round on this issue, always with the same small group of people.
I suggest you click on every single link provided by Beatrice, provided over two posts. There, you will find people bending over backwards, catering to David’s need to have everyone provide a possible reason for him to adapt to changes on the blog. Not that any of those reasons made a dent – as far as David is concerned, if using nyms and numbers doesn’t make things better or easier or more convenient for him, then everyone else can go get fucked.
Seven of Mine @477:
Nothing. I can’t read minds. As I wrote, ‘Or not’.
David Marjanović:
For me, the numbers help a lot because I often don’t get to a discussion until it’s in multiple hundreds of comments, and by jumping back to the quoted number I can follow what might be called a sub-thread of the discussion without trial and error searching. Names help similarly – if one person is quoted several times I probably want to pay extra attention to their comments. Also I am very bad at remembering who said what.
It’s like having an index and a table of contents: I can read a book without them, and I can find stuff in a book without them, but it’s so much easier with them. I often wish novels had indexes so I could find that page where soandso said that hilarious thing about shrimp.
FWIW, I get where David is coming from, even if he didn’t manage to express it clearly.
the way I learned to initially search threads on blogs was by unique keywords.
Chigau gave an example during his “google fu” exercise earlier in the thread in fact.
typically, when looking for the original passage someone quoted, I pick a word or phrase out of the passage and search on it.
In fact, I typically have found it MORE reliable than using quote numbers, because sometimes posts get deleted, which makes all the numbers wrong.
that said, sometimes the threads get so huge, having BOTH is indeed useful, as know a quote came from post 11 vs post 876 gives me a much better idea which page to even search for the phrase I am looking for.
so, in my case at least, I claim part laziness and part convention learned from literally decades of searching the internet.
but leda is right, there are plenty of people who for whatever reason, find it more effective for them to search by number instead of by a phrase, and so I should get used to including numbers in quotes.
but really? if you want the MOST efficiency, people should actually direct-link the original post the quote came from.
now, who’s going to do that? it’s certainly not hard to do, even here.
example:
Ledsasmom
so, if you’re gonna claim this is all about making searching for the original posts easier, then we ALL should use direct links, yeah?
Ichthyic #481
No, because comments with excess links are treated as spam. Which means that if you are putting some links of your own in your comment you have to break the comment apart, which would spam the thread.
But if you don’t use links in your comments, Pseudonym made a good tool. Daz‘s changes are here.
…which you’d have to do anyway, if you planned to use multiple links.
or just wait for PZ to approve it.
not good logic there.
Ichthyic #483
I had several of my comments swallowed up by WP and approved about a day later, so I’m being cautious. Also I generally reply to more than one person (not at the moment, but generally).
Anyway, I hope that the scrip would be useful to you.
Icthyic,
481
Oh, I don’t know as I have ever considered that. I think I could grow accustomed to that. I mean, I learned to put comment numbers in and to link with text, why not stretch a bit?
Rob G,
I wouldn’t dispute that. David has made it more than clear that he doesn’t parse social interactions in any way similar to how I do, and I ought to be able to leave it at that.
___
David M,
I am sorry for my tirade above, it’s a failing on my part that I expect things that come easily to me are easy for others as well. If I approach this issue again it will surely be in a different fashion.
yeah, it’s pretty slick, but not for everyone.
OTOH, it’s pretty easy to rt-click on the date link under someone’s nym on a post, and use that as a hyperlink back to their post.
but hey, script buttons would be even easier if they got implemented.
hmm, I’m used to using firefox, so I just assumed it would be about the same on most browswers though.
when you rt-click on the datelink, everyone gets a menu that pops up with the actual link to copy, right?
then, you just use that as an html link around the person’s nym.
or you can just paste it directly into your reply as code if you want.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/12/25/thunderdome-57/comment-page-1/#comment-905697
I’m really late to this, but some comments above re: islam (shi’a and sunni) vs catholicism and ethnic identity. It was claimed that shi’a and sunni islam are more ethnically tied than is catholicism. I don’t think that holds up to scrutiny. It appeared, though I may have misread, that it was implied that shi’a = Persian and sunni = Arab. Shi’a is a considerably smaller chunk of islam than is sunni. If you are shi’a odds are you are either Persian, Azerbaijani, or Iraqi or Lebanese Arab. Most Arab populations practice some branch of sunni islam. But if you are sunni you are as likely to be Indonesian as Arab, not to mention the various non-Arab North African ethnicities, Kurds, Turks, Pashtun, etc etc etc.
If the original comment only meant that which ethnic group one is born into will most likely guide them into a particular sect of islam, that is equally true of christianity. If someone is born Italian, Spanish, Filipino, or just about anywhere in Central or South America they are as likely to be culturally catholic as someone born in an Arab country is likely to be sunni. The sunni shi’a split in Iraq in particular is more religious than it is ethnic. Mesopotamian Arabs are split along religious lines, just as the Irish are split along religious lines.
I’m also rather late to the game on this one. I think it was Enlightenment Liberal that tied female genitial mutilation to islam in their argument against catholicism. It is true that the majority of people who practice this particularly vile bit of barbarism are muslim, but it is not a muslim practice in origin, nor is it exclusively muslim in practice. It predates islam in several African cultures and was maintained in those cultures after conversion to both christianity and islam. Neither religion rooted out the practice, being more concerned with gaining new converts than the health of the women in the communities they converted. It is disingenuous to tie it more to either religion than to the cultures from which it sprang.
I’ve got the worst of both worlds on this one. I have a really hard time tying comments to identities, and it makes it easier when others include a name and comment number. Which make it look even crappier when I forget to include the names myself, the habit thing sucks too.
You can only get so far with the non-neurotypical thing. At some point us non-neurotypicals butt heads, and some of us are better at getting angry than others. I’m not so sure I could keep making a claim on that one. It will be nice when people finally admit that “typical” is an illusion and then we can finally get a better handle on how we differ in the connection of language, emotion, and perception. At least I get a somewhat better sense for how the emotions line up in an objective sense.
@ David Marjanović 464
If it helps, the names and numbers act as a perceptual means of dividing up one’s mental filing cabinet when it comes to fitting an intense conversation into working memory. Imagine it if a chemistry textbook had no table of contents, page numbers, headers and footers, or information identifying a chapter break (if this analogy did not work for reasons relevant to this situation please let me know). I’m not going to pretend to know precisely how you and I might be different on the specifics of this issue, but for my it helps to try to make it a constant habit of including it. I still slip (now especially because of complicated community stuff), but it becomes a habit in time.
posting this here too:
someone tell me what I’m missing…
to me, this looks like the singular most important discovery in biology since the discovery of chemoautotrophs around the vent systems in the 1980s:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25894-meet-the-electric-life-forms-that-live-on-pure-energy.html#.VMXMJi6zkQl
ATP PRODUCTION WITHOUT SUGAR
fuck you, Krebs!
seriously, this is more efficient than photosynthesis.
I see this become an near limitless source of food, as it acts as a base organic system for an entire little food chain that we could use to feed ourselves.
-does not need organic input
-does not need sun even!
just basic chemicals, these guys, and a form of electricity (even geomagnetic!)
also obvious implications for potential food chains on many, many other types of planets now.
so, again… I have to check myself. what am I missing???
this seems MONUMENTALLY important. like, INSTANT Nobel doesn’t even cover it kind of important.
David M @464:
Have you given serious thought to making an attempt at it?
I was on a roll yesterday. Ican’t conclude if I overdid it
@Grewgills in 490
About FGM and Islam. Mostly agreed. I would note that there are many self-identified Muslims who do claim that FGM is about their religion, but of course not all Muslims agree, and non-Muslims do it too.
RE: David M and using ‘nyms and comment numbers. My issue isn’t really with whether he does it or not. If he says it’s too difficult, it’s too difficult. Further, he doesn’t seem terribly fussed if others don’t catch that he’s talking to them so, whatever. It means that I’ll miss any response he might make to me but, if he doesn’t care, neither do I.
The problem I have is with the pretense that nobody has ever explained the convention to him. This comes up periodically and every time he asks for explanations even though he’s received them by the dozen at this point. It’s a fairly shitty way to treat people who seem as though they’d like to be able to interact with him but can’t because of how he constructs his posts. They tell him what would make it easier for them and, not only does he refuse to accommodate them, he gaslights them about it. I don’t believe he means to do that but he’s fucking doing it and it’s bullshit.
Gah, sorry. This is Seven of Mine. The “log in with Google” button is javascript:void(0)-ing me ATM and I have no earthly idea what my actual user name is to type it in manually. :(
Figured it out. I R SMRT.
Ichthyic #492
I might be missing something, but I don’t see they reached that conclusion.
From one of the quoted papers it’s clear that the researchers didn’t look at internal workings of the bacteria at all, just whether they can derive energy from an electrode that mimics a Fe(III)/Fe(II) system. Which they could. How the articles goes from this to claiming that Earth’s electromagnetic field can help grow bacteria is beyond me. Furthermore, the cells weren’t growing in particularly austere conditions. The substrate was NCMA Medium 1(PDF) which uses Wolfe’s Vitamin Solution.
Beside, it’s not the first such experiment. The article above quotes previous experiments with other bacteria that were conducted at higher voltage, and it was already known that these cells use the external part of their membrane for this type of processes. Not to mention that the greatest breakthrough in bacterial respiration was likely the discovery of anammox bacteria that proved that any theoretically possible and beneficial thermodynamic process is likely to be already implemented by some bacteria somewhere.
BTW, isn’t the Krebs cycle already free of sugar (unless you consider pyruvate and other keto acids sugar products)? And even if the respiration was sugar-free, how would the bacteria could replicate without making ribose?
Finally finished the detail quilting on the dragon. Christ, I thought that would never, ever end. Now it’s on to the rest of the endless work.