Happy Halloween!

I’m on my way back! I’ve been completely out of touch for the last few days — it turns out that China has completely blocked Google, Twitter, YouTube, and…FreethoughtBlogs (I think that last one is an accident of our google adserver code), so I’ve had no access to email or FtB since Thursday. You don’t have to wag a finger at me, since my daughter has “tsk, tsk”ed me already for failing to set up a VPN before I left.

But aside from that one little deficiency, I have had a wonderful time in China. I was blown away by Chinese hospitality, and got so much good food, and got to tour the Forbidden Palace, the Great Wall, and the Summer Palace — it was a terrific experience, and I want to do it again.

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At least you had a couple of slymepitters around for a little low quality entertainment — one of them made 107 comments all by his little self. It’s kind of sad and pathetic.

I’ve done a little cleanup, now that I’ve left Chinese airspace, but you’ll have to wait a bit for more substantive posts. I expect I’ll arrive home in Morris around 2am, and I have to get up bright and early to teach a 9am course.

Disgraceful exploitation

A woman says she was raped by Neil deGrasse Tyson in grad school. She contacted me and asked me to share her story. But here’s the disgraceful exploitation that’s going on.

She did not know who I am, at all. She came to me because she was advised to…by slymepitters. The same people who have been indignant for years that women might speak out against harassers. They are trying to deploy this woman as a weapon.

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Rewriting history and sucking up to misogynists

integrity

There’s a reason I’ve lost all respect for Hemant Mehta: wearing smug sanctimony while pandering to MRAs, slymepitters, and notorious harassers is not a good look. He’s now insisting that Phil Plait, Rebecca Watson, and I owe Tim Hunt an apology, on the basis of a poorly written bit of hackery, inspired by that blinkered obsessive, Louise Mensch, in a far right wing rag. It’s the latest bit of revisionist history, and it’s published in Commentary magazine, alongside articles whining about Obamacare, the Iran deal, and students opposing campus rape culture, overseen by editor John Podhoretz. I suppose it’s possible that he didn’t notice the stench of the company it’s keeping, but he might at least have thrown a red flag at the title: The Timothy Hunt Witch Hunt.

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Where are the toxic communities in atheism?

slime

Jadehawk has been suffering to provide evidential support for Secular Woman, in particular their recent statement on their priorities.

However, one issue that has surfaced during this dispute demands our attention due to our understanding of events. Our stated values make it clear that we stand with survivors of sexual assault and those who believe and support them. We choose not to associate with those who align themselves with abusers rather than victims.

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Going ionic, dissociating all over the place

dissociation

Everyone is breaking up with everyone else, and it’s a good thing. Secular Woman states how silly it is to dissociate someone from an organization they don’t belong to, but goes on to point out that persistent pleas for civility are often used to displace concerns about more serious issues, as a way to silence dissent from the status quo, and that maybe we ought to be more concerned about the prolonged campaigns of harassment against women in the atheist community.

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“start acting whiter”

I can’t stand it. I’ve banned a fair number of people for being vile scumbags, and they keep coming back and shitting out their crap in the comments…even when they know they’ll be blocked. In the thread, The Charleston shooting: the prequel, a long-ago banned slymepitter (you know, that simple little place that specializes in exposing plagiarism, just like gamergate is about ethics in journalism) named bovarchist (some of you may remember him) decided to plop this in the comments:

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Farewell, Avicenna

One of our colleagues at Freethoughtblogs, Avicenna, has been on the receiving end of an astonishing flood of hate and patently baseless accusations. An online group of trolls, ironically many of the same people who are quick to accuse us of “witch hunts” and “lynch mobs”, have been baying for his blood for months, questioning his profession, his training, even his ancestry — all nonsense and known to us as completely bogus, pure dishonest attempts to harass him. Almost all of the accusations were lies.

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The end of the @micknugent saga

There has been a rather one-sided ‘conversation’ going on with Michael Nugent for the past month or so. It’s a little bit disturbing, and I provide here a chronology. If it’s too long for you, I’ll understand — I’ve found it hopelessly tedious — and the bottom line is that I won’t be talking to him again, and it ends here, as far as I’m concerned.

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