As you may recall, Richard Carrier is suing Freethoughtblogs, the Orbit, Skepticon, and a woman who objected to his behavior. We got an update from our lawyer over the weekend.

First, we got the schedule of court deadlines, and my heart skipped a few beats. We’ve got stuff scheduled for December and May of next year, and resolution of one point may not happen until August. Of next year. Yeesh. This stuff takes forever. The good news is that most of that time is spent waiting for a judge to make decisions on various concerns we’ve raised, and we’re not going to be shoveling money non-stop into a lawyer’s maw. But there will be some continuing expenses.

Another bit of amusing news is that Carrier’s lawyer discussed settling the case (I will emphasize, this was his lawyer and not Carrier himself) and tentatively suggested some possible terms: that we cover Carrier’s legal expenses so far, estimated at about $50K (heh, no way, we’re not going to fund his future SLAPP suits) and — hang onto your hats, gang, this was unbelievable — that we hand over contact information and communications from all individuals who’d ever said a bad thing about Richard Carrier.

My takeaway from this is that he’s finding us a tougher nut to crack then expected, so he’d like to find some softer targets to pick off. So it’s going to drag on a long time, but I’m heartened by the news that his lawyer is concerned. Ours is pretty damned confident.

It goes without saying that we’re not going to concede any money to him without a hard fight, and there’s no way we’re going to expose anyone else to his predatory behavior. Rather, we’re going to fight harder, and the long drawn out process is an opportunity to bleed him more. His reputation is going to be in tatters if he continues his misguided SLAPP suit.

We will still have legal expenses coming up. Help us out by donating, if you can! You can also help out Skepticon with a tax-deductible donation, although that doesn’t benefit the rest of us.

It’s the end of the first week of classes, and for some reason my stress levels are somewhere up in the stratosphere. I really don’t know why. I know exactly what I’m doing and have to do at work, I’ve got everything planned out, and the courses I’m teaching are familiar ones. But all week I’ve been feeling jittery and have been having a tough time getting any sleep — I got up at 3am this morning, and I’m starting the day in a state of exhaustion. This is the first week, and there are 15 more to go.

Not a good start. May have to take a vacation to recover next week. I can do that, right? Students won’t mind? Administration doesn’t care? Ugh. I think the only vacation I can take is to try and get more than 4 hours of sleep a night.

OK, I can do this. Deep breaths. The semester has launched, now if I can just keep my head above water, I’ll survive.

Also, the students seem nice.

I met with my first group of new student advisees this morning. I think we’ll keep them.

Also, totally irrelevant: we’re supposed to have begun the partial eclipse here in Morris, but unfortunately the sky is a uniform sheet of light gray cloudiness — I can’t even see the sun anywhere. Maybe the moon ate it.

Alex Jones visited downtown Seattle to record himself ranting on street corners about immigrants and evil antifa, and posted the video. Sadly, he later took it down because, I suspect, the response of the locals wasn’t very encouraging.

…former Seattle City Council candidate Michael Maddux approached Jones. Jones, in turn, asked him to talk. Maddux responded, “I don’t talk to racist fucks.”

Only a candidate? He needs to make this the centerpiece of his next campaign.

But my favorite part was this:

While ranting, Jones was confronted by BlöödHag singer Jake Stratton, who called out that Jones was “trash.” When Jones confronted him, Stratton threw coffee on him and taunted Jones before telling him he was going back to work, “where they have more coffee.”

We have reached peak Seattle: racists fucks getting doused with coffee by the lead singer of a two-umlaut band. I’ve got to get back and visit sometime.

Hey, I’ve seen this guy around town.

Nice way to become the most famous guy in Morris.

I have been receiving complaints from readers and other bloggers for months — and recent posts praising Fox News and blaming black Americans for racism were the final straw. We do have an ethos here, laid out plainly.

We are skeptics and critics of dogma and authoritarianism, and in addition, we recognize that the nonexistence of deities entails a greater commitment to human values, and in particular, an appreciation of human diversity and equality.

We are for feminism, against racism, for diversity, against inequity.

It’s a general sentiment, but if you can’t meet any of it, you don’t belong here. We’ve been agonizing over rejecting Anjuli Pandavar all summer long, and the consensus of the active members of the FtB community was that her continued presence was a betrayal of our principles.