Now I know what they do at faculty meetings on the humanities/social sciences side of campus » « They never learn

Infinite Thread XXXIX

It’s almost spring-like outside — the skies are clear, we’ve got cool breezes on a comfortable day, the plants are coming back… I know it can’t last but I’ll make the most of it. I’ve opened windows to let birdsong in and to drive the cat crazy.

Let the pleasant conversations flow!

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Now I know what they do at faculty meetings on the humanities/social sciences side of campus » « They never learn

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  1. birgerjohansson says

    Thank you for starting a new thread. BTW are there reliable records of how many that participated in Saturday’s demonstrations? I have read a wide range of estimates.

  2. birgerjohansson says

    Humoristic anecdote from social media. A dude named Nasser got the “ass” part automatically censored. The result was actually worse:
    -“Nxxxer” .

  3. says

    For the convenience of readers, here are some links back to the previous set of comments on The Infinite Thread.

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/12/30/infinite-thread-xxxviii/comment-page-7/#comment-2296755
    […] some additional details I’ve gathered from Finnish news today. The two drones both crashed in forest near the town of Kouvola on Sunday morning, after flying nearly 100 km within Finnish airspace. At least one of them was followed by the aforementioned Finnish fighter jets, but not shot down due to reasons I’ll discuss below.

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/12/30/infinite-thread-xxxviii/comment-page-7/#comment-2296756
    “Just 67,000 US Troops In Iran […]” “Anybody smell boots on the ground?”

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/12/30/infinite-thread-xxxviii/comment-page-7/#comment-2296753
    Judge dismisses DOJ lawsuit challenging in-state tuition for undocumented students in Minnesota

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/12/30/infinite-thread-xxxviii/comment-page-7/#comment-2296751
    Trump gives Russia yet another pass, says it’s ‘fine’ for Putin to break Cuba oil blockade

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/12/30/infinite-thread-xxxviii/comment-page-7/#comment-2296747
    Mediaite: Sharpie Rebuts Trump’s Account of Phone Call With Company: ‘We Don’t Have Any Information About the Conversation’

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/12/30/infinite-thread-xxxviii/comment-page-7/#comment-2296537
    Vance suggests Iran could have used nuclear suicide vests

  5. says

    RFK Jr. Gushes Over ‘Empath’ Trump

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has blamed a brain worm for past cognitive issues, is now insisting President Donald Trump is an “empath.”

    Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Texas on Saturday, the health secretary delivered a full-throated defense of the president—one that sounded less like political alignment and more like a total character rewrite.

    “President Trump is exactly the opposite of everything that I believed him to be,” Kennedy told the crowd.

    “I basically drank the Kool-Aid—that he was this bombastic narcissist who didn’t read books and was ill-informed. But now I know the exact opposite,” he said.

    “He’s an empath.”

    Kennedy didn’t stop there.

    He also marveled at Trump’s supposed intellectual range, claiming he has “encyclopedic, molecular knowledge” of everything from Broadway to Wall Street.

    To illustrate his point, he recounted a moment on the campaign trail when Trump allegedly flipped over a placemat mid-flight and drew a “perfect map of the Mideast,” complete with troop levels along each border. [Unfuckingbelievable]

    […] He also invoked his own family legacy, suggesting that both his father, Robert F. Kennedy, and his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, would have supported Trump’s decisions on Iran and Ukraine.

    “I think that if they were around today, that they would be making the same kind of choices that President Trump is.” [Also unbelievable]

    That kind of fawning isn’t new in Trumpworld. If anything, the louder the praise, the more it tends to signal trouble behind the scenes, and some signs suggest that might be the case for Kennedy. [Yeah, that’s more likely.]

    On Saturday’s edition of Inside Trump’s Head, Trump biographer Michael Wolff said the president has been quietly calling his allies to ask blunt questions about Kennedy.

    “I know that he’s been calling around and saying to people, you know, ‘I hear people say, Bobby is crazy. You think he’s crazy?’” Wolff told co-host Joanna Coles. “And you know the answer he wants.”

    Kennedy’s tenure has been dogged by controversy, particularly over vaccines, where medical groups and public health experts have accused him of pushing unfounded claims and undermining long-standing guidance.

    Even within the administration, there have been concerns that his policies could become a political problem heading into the midterms.

    Of course, none of that came up at CPAC. Instead, Kennedy used the moment to lean all the way in, ditching any remaining distance and embracing Trump with the kind of glowing praise reserved for the president’s most loyal inner circle.

    Kennedy was met with swift ridicule online, with critics zeroing in on the more fantastical details. […]

  6. says

    Vital U.S. radar aircraft was destroyed by Iranian strike on U.S. base in Saudi Arabia, photos show

    The destruction by Iran of a warning and control system aircraft on an American base in Saudi Arabia on Friday could impact the U.S. military’s ability to monitor threats — and raises questions around its preparedness for a “longer war,” experts say.

    […] Several American service members were injured in Friday’s strike on the facility, which sits around 80 miles southeast of the kingdom’s capital, Riyadh. At least one aircraft was also damaged in the strike, two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity confirmed to NBC News. [Photo]

    […] “Iran is gradually eating away at the network of early warning systems that the US has built over decades in the region,” Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at King’s College London’s School of Security Studies, said in written comments to NBC News on Monday.

    […] The E-3 Sentry, an airborne warning and control system, or AWACS, was one of six stationed at Prince Sultan Air Base prior to Friday’s attack […]

    Krieg [Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at King’s College London’s School of Security Studies] said the U.S. should have foreseen such an attack and “should have been prepared better for a longer war,” particularly “fighting from permanent installations, especially in a theatre where the other side has large numbers of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and one-way attack drones.”

    Still, he said he believed the U.S. was still doing a “reasonably effective job overall of protecting its assets in a very difficult theatre,” with “most incoming threats” reportedly being intercepted.

    Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, a Bronze Star recipient who served for 21 years, disagreed.

    “We’re not doing OK at all,” he said in a telephone interview Monday. Davis, a senior fellow and military expert at Defense Priorities, a Washington-based think tank, added that the U.S. was “not militarily prepared for this to be a sustained war.”

    […] In an interview in Qatar on Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was “100%” confident Moscow was sharing such intelligence with Tehran to aid in targeting U.S. forces across the Middle East in the war, which began after the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran on Feb. 28. […]

  7. says

    Trump’s personal and political interests keep looking more like Saudi Arabia’s

    In recent months, Donald Trump has traveled to Mar-a-Lago nearly every weekend, and this past weekend was no exception. On Friday night, however, the president added a stop before arriving at his glorified country club: Trump went to Miami to speak at a conference for Saudi Arabia’s sovereign investment fund.

    The remarks did not go especially well. While bragging about the war in Iran he started for reasons he’s struggled to explain, Trump boasted that he and his administration “saved the Middle East” — a claim that roughly coincided with news that an Iranian missile strike had injured American service members stationed at an air base in Saudi Arabia.

    The New York Times reported, “Mr. Trump appeared to be unaware in the moment of the combined missile and drone attack, which was one of the most serious breaches of U.S. air defenses in the course of the monthlong war. While onstage, he continued to praise the dominance of the United States and its Gulf allies. The result was an unsettling, split-screen reminder that despite Mr. Trump’s contention, the war is far from resolved and could risk more American lives.”

    […] The sitting American president was speaking at a conference for Saudi Arabia’s sovereign investment fund, on the heels of his son-in-law Jared Kushner turning to Saudi officials for more money for his private investment firm. [!]

    This is the same son-in-law who also happens to be simultaneously leading the U.S. government’s negotiations in the Middle East, despite his obvious conflicts of interests and the fact that he holds no public office. [True]

    […] Riyadh — when it’s not talking business with Trump’s son-in-law, or not focused on private dealings with Trump’s family business — is playing a direct role in helping steer Trump’s foreign policy in the region. The Times also reported last week:

    Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has been pushing President Trump to continue the war against Iran, arguing that the U.S.-Israeli military campaign presents a ‘historic opportunity’ to remake the Middle East, according to people briefed by American officials on the conversations. [!]

    In a series of conversations over the last week, Prince Mohammed has conveyed to Mr. Trump that he must press toward the destruction of Iran’s hard-line government, the people familiar with the conversations said.

    So, on one hand, we see the affairs of state, with Saudi Arabia pressing the American president to continue to wage war against Saudi’s principal foe. On the other hand, we also see the American president’s family working on private deals with Saudi Arabia as Trump simultaneously extends his public support to Saudi Arabia’s sovereign investment fund. [Corruption, stupidity, and Trump’s gullibility on display.]

    All of these developments come on the heels of Trump ignoring Pentagon concerns about selling F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, which roughly coincided with Trump announcing that the White House had designated Saudi Arabia a “major non-NATO ally” as part of a new security agreement.

    The same week, Trump welcomed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the Oval Office, inexplicably praised his human rights record, suggested that murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi had it coming and chastised an American reporter for asking the Saudi leader “an insubordinate question,” as if members of the free press were somehow the crown prince’s employees.

    As the event continued, the American president horsed around with the crown prince like a pair of kids having a good time. Grabbing his guest’s hand, Trump said, “I don’t care where that hand’s been.”

    It was embarrassing at the time, but it’s quite a bit worse now that Trump’s interest in Riyadh’s interests has intensified.

  8. says

    Trump propaganda, the app

    […] Trump peddled the new White House app on Monday, the latest attempt to funnel news through a MAGA-filtered version of reality.

    “You can watch all White House events, read all my executive orders, and keep track of all of our promises made, promises kept,” Trump said, with the same enthusiasm he once used to hawk overpriced steaks in a box. “In fact, I actually kept more promises than I even talked about. We did much more than I said we were going to do.” [video]

    […] As Trump’s war persists, the White House appears to be accelerating its efforts to control the narrative with increased public attacks on independent media from top officials like Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

    Reviews of the app include both the MAGA faithful—probably of the bot variety—and critics, including one who gave a one-star review titled, “Waste of Resources.” [Example at the link]

    Some of those links to “websites” include an Immigration and Customs Enforcement tip line, which allows users to drop a dime on neighbors after they’ve read a news article telling them we’ve won the war in Iran and that the skyrocketing gas prices they’re paying at the pump are simply figments of their imagination.

    But don’t rush to your local app store just yet. According to Mashable, the app is a security nightmare that also grants the White House access to users’ precise locations, network connections, and biometric data—along with the ability to keep devices from sleeping and even modify or delete files in shared storage.
    […]

  9. cheerfulcharlie says

    Trump is an empath? Oh noes! Saint Charlie Kirk hated empathy.

    In 2022, Charlie Kirk, the CEO and co-founder of Turning Point USA, declared, “I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new-age term that…does a lot of damage.”

    See Google. Emathy was a term invented in Germany in the late 19th century. The term was Anglicized in the early 20th century. From the right hand of God in heaven, Charlie Kirk glowers down on Donald Trump.

  11. says

    cheerfulcharlie @9, yes, you are correct. And I’ve heard other right-wingers say that empathy is not a virtue.

    How empathy came to be seen as a weakness in conservative circles. (That’s an NPR link to part of a conversation broadcast of Weekend Edition Saturday.)

    People tend to think of empathy or caring about other people’s feelings as a good thing, but in some conservative circles, there’s a growing chorus of voices arguing that empathy could be bad.

    ELON MUSK: The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.

    MCCAMMON: That’s billionaire Elon Musk, speaking recently on the podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience.” They were discussing the idea that unchecked immigration into Western countries is threatening Western political and cultural values. Musk agrees and warns that societies are at risk of self-destructing.

    MUSK: There’s so much empathy that you actually suicide yourself.

    JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

    MUSK: So that – we’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on.

    MCCAMMON: Musk, of course, is a close adviser to President Trump and the leader of the administration’s DOGE initiative, which is making massive cuts to the federal government, including humanitarian programs at home and overseas. Musk said empathy can be good, but it’s too often weaponized to persuade well-meaning people to support bad ideas. In recent months, several high-profile Christian conservatives have been sounding similar warnings.

    JOSH MCPHERSON: Empathy almost needs to be struck from the Christian vocabulary.

    UNIDENTIFIED PASTOR #1: It does.

    UNIDENTIFIED PASTOR #2: Yes.

    MCPHERSON: Empathy is dangerous. Empathy is toxic. Empathy will align you with hell.

    ALLIE BETH STUCKEY: Really, I think empathy as hoisted up as the highest virtue, or even a virtue at all – I think that really gets us into a really big mess.

    JOE RIGNEY: Most people have a hard time imagining how empathy could ever be harmful. And therefore, if I’m the devil, where am I going to hide some of my most destructive tactics?

    MCCAMMON: That was pastor Josh McPherson on his podcast, “Stronger Man Nation,” conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey on the “Family Talk” podcast, and author Joe Rigney, discussing his book, “The Sin Of Empathy,” on a podcast hosted by Al Mohler of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. [MCCAMMON is an NPR host.]

    New York Times columnist David French has noticed this discourse and wrote about it in a recent column called “Behold The Strange Spectacle Of Christians Against Empathy.” French says Jesus – the central figure in Christianity – embodied empathy by coming to Earth as a man and enduring the human experience. French notes that Trump has cut programs long supported by many evangelicals and conservative Catholics, including funding for religious organizations that help the poor.

    DAVID FRENCH: So how do you rationalize this change? And I think that that’s why some of these arguments about toxic empathy and other concepts are falling upon willing and open ears because they’re – people are looking for a moral frame around which they can fit the Trump movement, and decrying empathy helps them do that.

    MCCAMMON: Some conservatives also argue that women are especially susceptible to being misled by appeals to empathy, often when it comes to helping people who are suffering or in need. Here’s Allie Beth Stuckey on “Family Talk.”

    STUCKEY: They’ll use emotional, compassionate, kind-sounding language in order to get a woman to think, well, in order to be a good person, in order to be kind, in order to even love my neighbor, then I have to be pro-open borders. I have to be pro-LGBTQ. I have to be pro-choice.

    MCCAMMON: In an interview with NPR, Joe Rigney said he believes women are more naturally empathetic, which makes them better nurturers. Rigney says they’re also more likely to reject church teachings they see as lacking compassion.

    RIGNEY: And in that kind of context, the empathetic sex is ill-suited precisely because of the ways that that empathy could be manipulated into, say, refusing to draw lines or in the name of helping a oppressed group, we’re going to abandon our biblical confession or something like that.

    MCCAMMON: David French, meanwhile, says the idea that women are uniquely vulnerable to manipulation ties in closely with Christian nationalism, the idea that Christian men should run the country.

    FRENCH: And so you do have quite a bit of literature in the far right – the Christian nationalist right – that is decrying what they see as the, quote, “feminized church, feminized political discourse.” They say that America is a gynocracy, is what they will call it. And that empathy element is a part of their argument.

    MCCAMMON: Rigney says he wouldn’t flinch from being described as a Christian nationalist.

    RIGNEY: And I want society to be Christian. So, yes, I think it’s true. I think it’s good for the world, and I think it’s, quite frankly, good for religious minorities. I think that, in many ways, in the absence of that, tyranny is inevitable.

    MCCAMMON: French says he worries that some Christians have shifted from fighting for religious freedom to fighting for Christian dominance. But when it comes to calls for public policies grounded in empathy, he acknowledges that everyone has to draw lines somewhere.

    FRENCH: There are times when the head has to overrule the heart. That is something that has to happen sometimes in public policy. But at the same time, there should be no objection to appeals to the heart because our compassion, our empathy is a fundamental part of who we should be as human beings. […]

    The sound bites that NPR played came from podcasts: “Thinking in Public,” “The Joe Rogan Experience,” “Stronger Men Nation,” and “Family Talk.”

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