Elsewhere (261)
January 23, 2018
Further to the recent, eye-widening exchange between Jordan Peterson and Cathy Newman, Conor Friedersdorf on scandalous paraphrasing:
In the interview, Newman relies on this technique [of perverse rephrasing] to a remarkable extent, making it a useful illustration of a much broader pernicious trend. Peterson was not evasive or unwilling to be clear about his meaning. And Newman’s exaggerated restatements of his views mostly led viewers astray, not closer to the truth… One of the most important things this interview illustrates — one reason it is worth noting at length — is how Newman repeatedly poses as if she is holding a controversialist accountable, when in fact, for the duration of the interview, it is she that is “stirring things up” and “whipping people into a state of anger.”
Fabian Tassano on “critical thinking”:
It is interesting that the scholars feel able to announce in advance, on behalf of their own students, and the students of other history tutors at Oxford, a decision on whether students will engage with the [Ethics and Empire] project. One might think that the ability to “think critically” would include openness to ideas from heterodox perspectives, as well as the capacity to decide for oneself, independently of one’s tutors, whether a source of information is worthy of consideration. One has to remember, however, that the word “critical” may have a special technical meaning in the context of the humanities.
Via Claire Lehmann, Kerryn Pholi on Aboriginal taboos:
Those who mourn the demise of Aboriginal culture almost always regard things from the viewpoint of the men, who were indeed dispossessed of their land, and subsequently their traditions and status. Land wasn’t the only item of property they lost, however. They also lost or traded their women to the settlers, and this absorption – along with frontier warfare and disease – rapidly eroded tribal structures and doomed Aboriginal traditions to obsolescence. The settlers arrived with a wealth of goods and a shortage of females, and they were generally less enthusiastic about beating women than was customary in Aboriginal culture… The men lost a lot in the invasion, while the women had little to lose and plenty to gain.
And Joe Katzman on leftism as a never-ending status game:
Do you have any doubt about the left’s hatred for those who will not stay in their assigned status? Have you noticed their quickness to turn on their own allies? Fail to follow the latest fad, and your status is demoted. Perhaps you’ve noticed that endlessly callous virtue signalling is the identifying badge of our modern try-hard Striver Class. Maybe that’s because American public education is now a 20-year Milgram Experiment, where the meta-message inside political correctness is to override your own judgement, in favour of deliberately-shifting judgements from people with higher status. These aren’t accidents. They’re clues.
Very much related, the second item here.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
JP talks about the interview here:
https://youtu.be/TK2-xYyNpYk
Posted by: prm | January 23, 2018 at 13:13
Our host has linked to Penthouse. :-)
Posted by: Connor | January 23, 2018 at 13:19
Our host has linked to Penthouse. :-)
Heh. I swear I only realised after earmarking the article. Blimey, what are the odds?
Posted by: David | January 23, 2018 at 13:21
Tassano's observations combined with Katzman's thoughts on Leftism as a "positional good," where value comes from scarcity explain the lunacy displayed at "Real Peer Review" often discussed on these pages, not to mention the SJW tendency to mine ever deeper into what constitutes the "problematic" in otherwise rather prosaic human interaction.
Posted by: R. Sherman | January 23, 2018 at 13:27
tendency to mine ever deeper into what constitutes the “problematic” in otherwise rather prosaic human interaction.
The theatrical agonising – over everything from barbecues to cupcakes to spellcheck software – is very competitive and presumably exhausting. Perhaps that explains the chronic sourness of those who indulge in it.
Posted by: David | January 23, 2018 at 13:36
I just want to note for the record and in case my lovely, long-suffering wife of 30 years checks the browser history, I read the Pholi link but did not click on the "Girls" tab.
Carry on.
Posted by: R. Sherman | January 23, 2018 at 13:40
JP talks about the interview here
The notion of women as faultless, omnicompetent beings who are cruelly oppressed is most vividly undermined by the feminists who advance it.
Posted by: David | January 23, 2018 at 13:58
they were generally less enthusiastic about beating women than was customary in Aboriginal culture
But, but...I was told that such violence was a product of conquest and oppression by the evil white capitalists. I’m so confused. :-)
Posted by: Pst314 | January 23, 2018 at 14:00
...and presumably exhausting.
If your views are untethered, and a response to an outward community within which you have to signal your correctness and pieties, it must be a constant strain, looking around to see where the next pitfall is, checking you get the thumbs up and haven't strayed.
In the JP/CN interview you can see that CN is mouthing the pieties regardless of what JP says - she is playing the role for her community - whereas JP's views have been thought through and he is vastly more tethered as a result. I think that's why, when someone is red-pilled, it's usually on one specific truth, but that then leads to another, and another, and the house of cards collapses. Whereas if, for example, it was somehow proved that yes, actually the majority reason for women not being in the FTSE top 100 was a secret patriarchal cabal who deliberately excluded women, JP could update his facts, accept it, condemn it, adjust his other beliefs to accommodate, and move on.
This constant adjustment of the mental gyroscope in reaction to the need for ever more exclusive positional goods must hurt at some level. Not just the constant strain, also the bafflement you must feel if you've always played the game, e.g. as a good feminist, suddenly to find you're a Nazi because of your views on trans. We're back to the Communist flip in WW2, and we have always been at war with Eastasia.
Posted by: prm | January 23, 2018 at 14:04
...a secret patriarchal cabal who deliberately excluded women...
We meet at 7:30 PM on the third Wednesday of every month in the Fellowship Hall of St. Luke's Lutheran Church, Benkelman, Nebraska. BYOB. Set-ups provided. (The Patriarchy Ladies' Auxiliary usually provides a pot-luck supper, unless their quilting interferes.)
Posted by: R. Sherman | January 23, 2018 at 14:13
... where the meta-message inside political correctness is to override your own judgement, in favour of deliberately-shifting judgements from people with higher status.
We can always learn from other Cultures.
Posted by: Jonathan | January 23, 2018 at 14:32
The theatrical agonising – over everything from barbecues to cupcakes to spellcheck software – is very competitive and presumably exhausting. Perhaps that explains the chronic sourness of those who indulge in it.
"You're not reading that incorrectly: If someone posts a sign advertising a women's group and colors it pink, then Williams College wants you to report that to the school's anti-bias squad, which will then take all appropriate action."
http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/41007/
#NeurosisIsTheNewBlack
Posted by: Rafi | January 23, 2018 at 15:01
“Conor Friedersdorf on scandalous paraphrasing”
I was about to draw your attention to that piece myself.
Spot-on. And of course, as we've heard, she's still at it.
I noticed that Friedersdorf's tweet publicizing it calls this “twisting [of] words to make people look like extremist monsters” “a new trend in public discourse”. Oh no, it's not new. Not by a long chalk. Remember Enoch Powell? Or Barry Goldwater? (And if you think either actually was an extremist monster, that just shows how powerful the technique used to be.) It's just that in the internet age, people watching these interviews aren't sitting at home asking themselves, “Is it just me... ?” They're asking other people all over the world and realising that it absolutely isn't.
“they were generally less enthusiastic about beating women than was customary in Aboriginal culture”
No, no. That can't be right. White man bad.
Posted by: Sam Duncan | January 23, 2018 at 15:21
That.
Posted by: sH2 | January 23, 2018 at 15:44
That.
If you like that, there’s more here. A sort of devil’s dictionary for modern times, and well worth reading.
Posted by: David | January 23, 2018 at 15:52
I've not heard of this Katzman - is his position similar to Kristian Niemietz's, which I've linked to here before? It'd be interesting to see if this is something economists have cmmented upon independently.
Posted by: TomJ | January 23, 2018 at 16:32
Gotta find that pea under all those mattresses or you're not a princess after all.
Posted by: Alex deWinter | January 23, 2018 at 17:26
The theatrical agonising is very competitive and presumably exhausting.
At least in Versailles, the pecking order was well established, and fashions changed at a pace where one had at least a prayer of keeping up. Life in the Clown Quarter today is Versailles at high speed, with each of the inmates vying for their turn at playing Louis XIV and forcing the newest fad on all the courtiers.
Now I'm half-tempted to re-cast Dangerous Liaisons and insert our favorite Clown Quarter All-Stars into appropriate roles...
Posted by: Governor Squid | January 23, 2018 at 17:40
One has to remember, however, that the word “critical” may have a special technical meaning in the context of the humanities.
That. And those in the humanities no longer recognize or understand the word as described by Tassano.
Posted by: Steve E | January 23, 2018 at 18:16
Dear Penthouse,
I never thought this would happen to me. I was typing away at my blog, found an interesting link, and it serendipitously turned out to be to your fine publication!
The only thing that would improve Penthouse would be a culinary column on blowtorch cooking. I happen to live with an incineratory chef and would be delighted to write such a column.
Posted by: Pogonip | January 23, 2018 at 19:13
A Far Side cartoon that may be apposite to the aboriginal culture article:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/45/81/74/458174cf5ac4e41bcc80e0fe0a07f187.jpg
Also, I denounce myself.
Posted by: Sporkatus | January 23, 2018 at 20:53
Blimey, what are the odds?
Personal growth. :-)
Posted by: Mags | January 23, 2018 at 21:24
With white male homosexuals having already been shifted to the problematic column, it is time for white women to start moving across. http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/news-and-views/news-features/we-need-to-talk-about-the-womens-march-20180123-h0mpvw.html
I think intersectional should be rebranded as fractious, factional, splintered, or exclusionary. I wouldn't care about these people except they get space in the media to spread their nonsense and there is an excess of so called academics who get paid a lot more than I do to produce nothing but harm.
I know someone doing a phd in anthropology who is a fairly conservative white heterosexual male who was a very successful businessman. The very picture of patriarchy. I'd pay to see him defend his thesis against the department. He said he loves the subject, just wishes it was part of a different department.
Posted by: David Taylor | January 23, 2018 at 21:25
Personal growth. :-)
You wish.
Posted by: David | January 23, 2018 at 21:27
From David Taylor's link:
In what may be assumed to have been a warped show of solidarity, someone put a "pink pussy hat" atop the statue of Harriet Tubman, black abolitionist and anti-slavery resistance heroine.
That would be Harriet Tubman, the gun-toting Republican.
Posted by: R. Sherman | January 23, 2018 at 22:32
Governor Squid:
"Life in the Clown Quarter today is Versailles at high speed....
More like "Versailles ON speed".
Posted by: Bruce | January 23, 2018 at 23:52
My impression was that Cathy Newman was following the classic progressive technique of creating prepackaged arguments that "destroy" right wing nuts but she didn't bother to try the arguments out on anyone who didn't already agree with her. I regularly see these "if someone says x then destroy them by saying y!" on Facebook. They often involve question begging.
Posted by: Col. Milquetoast | January 24, 2018 at 01:12
On a completely un-related note, Honorable Chinese(?) Woman cooks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoC47do520os_4DBMEFGg4A/videos?disable_polymer=1
Posted by: jabrwok | January 24, 2018 at 01:17
The men lost a lot in the invasion, while the women had little to lose and plenty to gain.
Many years ago, when I had more time to browse libraries, I ran across an anthropologist's account of his sojourn with an Amazonian tribe. Rape of unmarried girls was common and accepted. He described the despair on the face of a young girl as she was dragged off into the bushes.
Posted by: pst314 | January 24, 2018 at 01:31
pst314,
Was that Napoleon Chagnon? Whether he was telling the unvarnished truth or exaggerating (or much worse), his work has been thoroughly denounced as rayciss lying lies by the social justice wing of academic anthropology.
New York Times Magazine, 2013Posted by: Spiny Norman | January 24, 2018 at 02:28
Here in the Dominion of Canada, we had much mau-mauing over the need for an inquiry into why so many indigenous women go missing or end up dead (statistically, they don't any more than white women in the same areas; it's a regional poverty issue).
The inquiry quietly wound down last year when it became impossible to massage the numbers to hide that the reason so many indigenous women go missing or are murdered is indigenous men.
Posted by: Daniel Ream | January 24, 2018 at 02:29
Davos jargon: A crime against the English language?
Posted by: Hal | January 24, 2018 at 08:34
>Also, I denounce myself.
Too late, Sporkatus. Your name and misdeeds have already been given to the authorities by me. (Had to save myself somehow.)
Posted by: Hector Drummond, Vile Novelist | January 24, 2018 at 10:10
Have you noticed their quickness to turn on their own allies? Fail to follow the latest fad, and your status is demoted.
By way of a timely illustration, pop artiste Taylor Swift has apparently gone from feminist-approved empowered ladyperson to enemy of the revolution. It seems she failed to attend the so-called Women’s March, which is apparently mandatory, and only tweeted her “respect” for those who did. (Quite why one should respect a dumb, narcissistic clown-show of people waving demented placards and mouthing conspiracy theories, and leaving the usual mountain of garbage for someone else to clean up, is another matter.)
I believe the last time this happened was last year, when Ms Swift publicly encouraged her fans to vote, but didn’t specify a candidate. This terrible sin was compounded by her comment: “I don’t think that I know enough yet in life to be telling people who to vote for.”
Posted by: David | January 24, 2018 at 10:16
And we mustn’t forget this instructive episode. Because the scolding must never end.
Posted by: David | January 24, 2018 at 10:28
pst314, Was that Napoleon Chagnon?
No, although I don't remember who specifically.
Posted by: pst314 | January 24, 2018 at 11:57
Professor Bret Weinstein of Evergreen College fame, attended a speech by constitutional lawyer Adam Levine at his old school on the subject of free speech - or rather how to legally prevent free speech. He wasn't impressed:
http://twitter.com/BretWeinstein/status/956090689648984064
via Yeyo
Posted by: Jonathan | January 24, 2018 at 15:51
or rather how to legally prevent free speech.
It reminded me of this:
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1980.Posted by: David | January 24, 2018 at 16:06
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a truly great man.
There's this too:
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure,"
Thomas Jefferson.
I just hope we can effect change in the West without having to spill actual blood.
Posted by: Jonathan | January 24, 2018 at 16:21
If you like that, there’s more here. A sort of devil’s dictionary for modern times...
Here also is some help for translating leftist to English.
Posted by: Farnsworth M Muldoon | January 24, 2018 at 16:26
The men lost a lot in the invasion, while the women had little to lose and plenty to gain.
"Trump is right .."
Posted by: Darleen | January 24, 2018 at 18:09
Adam Levine...on...how to legally prevent free speech
From the link:
"Some ideas, he argued, don't deserve protection. Those are the ones we get to bar."
Levine may not realize it, but he is begging to be subjected to the sorts of totalitarian laws that he espouses.
Posted by: pst314 | January 24, 2018 at 18:23
What I did witness every day was that women were worked half to death
A friend witnessed that in the Middle East: Arab men lounging around while women labored all day at home and in the fields...and were often supervised by little boys whose only function was to watch them and make sure they did not slack off.
Posted by: pst314 | January 24, 2018 at 18:27
Africa is... different.
http://www.desertsun.co.uk/blog/?p=6529
Posted by: [+] | January 24, 2018 at 18:58
Americans think it is a universal human instinct to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It's not. It seems natural to us because we live in a Bible-based Judeo-Christian culture.
This.
Posted by: pst314 | January 24, 2018 at 19:03
"It seems natural to us because we live in a Bible-based Judeo-Christian culture."
"Revert to the mean" is not just an investor term and "regression toward the mean" is not just a statistical term.
"Mean" can mean many things, I mean.
Posted by: PiperPaul | January 24, 2018 at 19:31
Yes, but do you really mean that?
Posted by: Pogonip | January 24, 2018 at 19:53
...his work has been thoroughly denounced as...
In Before the Dawn Nicholas Wade writes a fair bit about the amount of covering-up that goes on in the fields of anthropology and archeology.
One interesting story of a researcher who did not do this goes thus: The man was studying African Bushmen, who never seem able to gather in significant numbers unless some non-Bushman tribe is present to enforce their own rules on behavior. Out of the blue the researcher got it into his head to ask the about half a dozen Bushman males he was sitting with whether any of them had ever killed a man. Nearly all of them responded that they had. Taken aback by this he asked them why they had killed others.
Their answers were all much the same: Because he made me angry!
Posted by: Squires | January 24, 2018 at 20:04
It seems natural to us because we live in a Bible-based Judeo-Christian culture.
Actually it's because we live in countries created by, built by and, up until recently, entirely inhabited by people of Northwest European origin. For which I'm thankful every day.
Posted by: Jonathan | January 24, 2018 at 20:27
Africa is... different.
"The renewed efforts of the Niger State police command to rid the state of criminal elements may have started yielding results, following the discovery of a severed head of a few months old baby girl in a polythene [bag]in possession of a young man suspected to be one of the arrow-heads of a syndicate that specialises in using human parts for ritual purposes in parts of the state."
I had been assured by reliable bien pensants that pagans did not do that sort of thing, and that those who said they did were slanderous slandering slanderers.
Posted by: pst314 | January 24, 2018 at 20:35
For all your jungle hygiene needs:
http://edgarriceburroughs.com/store/product-category/soaps/
I hope that at some point Jane Goodall got a set for her birthday; long ago she did an interview where she said something to the effect that as a child she pretended to be Mrs. Tarzan and lived in the jungle talking to all the animals “ but the blighter married the wrong Jane,” or words to that effect.
Posted by: Pogonip | January 24, 2018 at 21:06
50 questions to determine the size of your vocabulary:
Online English Vocabulary Size Test
I suppose it relies on some sort of statistical calculation to arrive at the score. Mine was 30,500. I don't know, I don't think I'm so very erudite, verbose, loquacious, or sesquipedalian.
Posted by: Monty James | January 24, 2018 at 21:07
I gotted 29,975 so I is dumberer than Monty.
“Some people have a way with words, and other people...oh, uh, not have way.”
― Steve Martin
Posted by: PiperPaul | January 24, 2018 at 21:36
30,150. According to that test I am qualified to just make up words as I please. I haven't noticed a shortcoming of vocabulary ever stopping anyone, though.
sesquipedalian
For the sake of the woman in your life, I should hope not.
Posted by: Squires | January 24, 2018 at 22:00
30325 - mostly due to doing the quick crossword I’m guessing. I’m a school dropout so it ain’t education that got me there. Could Monty be our mosted wordy learned contributor?
I keep wondering why people try to spread western values to the Middle East and Africa. It’s pretty obvious they don’t want them. And the ones that do try their best to emigrate I imagine. That’s the only place I take exception with the linked article. Surely some immigrants are keen to adopt western society and get out of the place they’re in. The trick is knowing which ones. There was a recent blowup down here about ‘african’ street gangs which the usual suspects tried to drown with cries of racism. But there are other anecdotes agreeing with the article about immigrants opening shops in regional areas and generally fitting in and coming up in the benefit column.
Posted by: David Taylor | January 24, 2018 at 22:06
30,150, even though I lowered my own score when my finger accidentally brushed the wrong answer. Darn touch screens.
Mankind will probably end up playing “Global Thermonuclear War” someday because of a touch screen, a sneeze, and no Undo button.
Posted by: Pogonip | January 24, 2018 at 22:15
30,500. I had to guess at one. -goes to look up avulse, which even the spellchecker doesn't recognize-
Posted by: Alex deWinter | January 24, 2018 at 22:29
30,325, but some of them have more than one "right" answer depending on colloquial usage, e.g., "deal" - either "sale" as in "I got a great deal", or "plea" as in copping a plea via a deal with the DA.
Posted by: Farnsworth M Muldoon | January 25, 2018 at 01:03
23,100. I'm an idjit.
OTOH, I was told there would be math.
Posted by: WTP | January 25, 2018 at 01:21
Missed this part:
Your vocabulary size is equal to that of a 30-year-old successful American businessperson!
Sooo....I kinda was an idjit until I turned 25 or so. Looking at it that way...
Posted by: WTP | January 25, 2018 at 01:24
Supposedly you're able to find out which words you missed but it doesn't seem to work (or maybe I'm too dense to figure it out).
Posted by: PiperPaul | January 25, 2018 at 01:27
It's time for old poets to have their struggle sessions!
Posted by: Turk Turkleton | January 25, 2018 at 01:49
I was told there would be math.
No refunds, et sequelae.
Posted by: jabrwok | January 25, 2018 at 01:49
I was told there would be math.
No refunds, et sequelae.
Drat. Here I was trying to be all erudite and such and I went and interpolated an absent "no".
Double drat. I guess it's the rickety chair for me again:-(.
Posted by: jabrwok | January 25, 2018 at 01:51
29,800.
:-(
Posted by: jabrwok | January 25, 2018 at 01:57
If this has been posted here already I'll have to report for regrooving again.
"Leftism is a status machine"
"People often take public positions in an attempt to increase their social status.
If you’ve been in a corporate setting, or settings with certain friends, I don’t need to offer further examples of this idea. You’ve seen it happen, and you also know that you need to be “reading the room” at all times before you speak and act. Failure costs status. People notice this dynamic, and act accordingly."
[...]
"Do you really think it’s a coincidence that leftism and its “Diversity Pokemon Points” amount to a full caste system?
Do you have any doubt about The left’s hatred for those who will not stay in their assigned status?
Have you noticed their quickness to turn on their own allies? Fail to follow the latest fad, and your status is demoted.
Perhaps you’ve noticed that endlessly callous virtue signaling is the identifying badge of our modern try-hard Striver Class.
Maybe that’s because American public education is now a 20-year Milgram Experiment. Where the meta-message inside political correctness is to override your own judgement, in favor of deliberately-shifting judgements from people with higher status.
These aren’t accidents. They’re clues.
Leftism isn’t a policy machine or an economic machine. Its economic results would tell you that much in a hurry. But the machine keeps running. Which means it must work for something. The correct question is: in what way does it work?"
Posted by: PiperPaul | January 25, 2018 at 02:10
Mother of the Year Award nominee: https://sputniknews.com/europe/201801241061018805-sweden-feminism-sexual-assault/
Posted by: jabrwok | January 25, 2018 at 02:23
Jabrwok, do you have a non-Russian source for that?
Posted by: pst314 | January 25, 2018 at 03:24
pst314,
Do you mean a non-RUSSIAN BOT source.
;-)
Posted by: Spiny Norman | January 25, 2018 at 05:33
Mother of the Year Award nominee
Assuming events are as reported, it does at least suggest that those feminist pieties, so loudly professed, are not entirely sincere.
Posted by: David | January 25, 2018 at 09:03
On the fractions nature of identitarianism:
https://www.conservativehome.com/leftwatch/2018/01/labours-internal-battle-over-trans-women-and-all-women-shortlists-suggests-its-strategy-of-identity-politics-is-backfiring.html
Hopefully the revolution will eat itself before it does too much real world damage.
Posted by: TomJ | January 25, 2018 at 09:06
Karen Straughan has some thoughts on the Jordan Peterson / Cathy Newman interview.
The more you poke and parse, the more it becomes obvious just how dumb and obtuse, how non-reciprocal, and how wilfully dogmatic, Ms Newman’s position is. And by extension, the positions of those who agree with her.
Posted by: David | January 25, 2018 at 09:34
Newman: Let me get this straight. You’re saying that we should organize our societies along the lines of the lobsters?
It was absolutely vital here that Peterson broke his 'relaxed' posture and did a tactical facepalm. It would have gone even more viral than the interview subsequently did. It would be the meme of the century; it would still be played fifty years hence.
In the JP/CN interview you can see that CN is mouthing the pieties regardless of what JP says - she is playing the role for her community
Personally I think she is a bit dim, has a completely closed mind and was lazily going for a "GOTCHA!" moment which could then be edited and gone viral. Alas, the tables were reversed and Peterson "got her" instead. She is now doomed to spend the rest of her life as a meme.
Posted by: Rob | January 25, 2018 at 10:55
I haven't watched the whole interview. What I had seen was fairly atrocious, but reading that transcript...incredible. You could have got an AI program to simply say "So what you are saying is" and then repeat a number of pre-prepared statements aimed at misrepresenting him.
Presumably she is paid a large sum of money for this. Ironic given that she was complaining about the "gender gap" in pay. She sounds vastly overpaid on that example.
Posted by: Rob | January 25, 2018 at 10:58
The
interviewinquisition suggests that the most useful background to have when dealing with SJW's/"journalists" is training in clinical psychology and experience in treating mental and emotional disorders.Or you could simply apply Occam's Razor and conclude that Newman is just dishonest.
Posted by: fnord | January 25, 2018 at 11:19
In search of “woke bae,” or dating, New York feminist style.
Posted by: David | January 25, 2018 at 11:19
Or you could simply apply Occam’s Razor and conclude that Newman is just dishonest.
She is dishonest, clearly, and rather sly, albeit in a way that lacks finesse. But I think her chosen politics, her worldview, does tend to lead to bad faith. It’s practically a defining attribute.
Posted by: David | January 25, 2018 at 11:23
Attention, whitey. Know your place.
Posted by: David | January 25, 2018 at 11:56
Jabrwok, do you have a non-Russian source for that?
The article links to the alleged source (http://www.friatider.se/mamma-v-grade-anm-la-flyktingbarn-som-sexangrep-hennes-12-riga-dotter) but as I don't read Swedish, I can't corroborate it.
I did a quick spot-check on the sputniknews site to see if it raised any significant flags and didn't see any, but I might have overlooked something.
Sadly, the story itself is all too believable nowadays. I'd like to believe it isn't true, but Europe in general, and Sweden in particular, seem to have gone collectively insane.
Posted by: jabrwok | January 25, 2018 at 12:25
Mother of the Year Award nominee
Moloch is always hungry, isn't he?
Posted by: R. Sherman | January 25, 2018 at 12:34
Do you mean a non-RUSSIAN BOT source.
#WeAreAllRussianBots
Meanwhile, it appears the "Women's March" can declare a victory, or something.
Posted by: Farnsworth M Muldoon | January 25, 2018 at 12:50
Moloch is always hungry, isn’t he?
Why, in certain political circles, it’s almost a theme.
Odd, that.
Posted by: David | January 25, 2018 at 12:52
Sadly, the story itself is all too believable nowadays.
Indeed, which is why I asked for another source: It fits my impressions of what is happening in Sweden, but therefore I distrust my impulse to believe, and Russians do sometimes spread disinformation for their own purposes,
Posted by: pst314 | January 25, 2018 at 13:02
Heh.
Posted by: Farnsworth M Muldoon | January 25, 2018 at 13:10
Posted by: David | January 25, 2018 at 13:19
Do you mean a non-RUSSIAN BOT source
B-O-T-G-I-R-L
Got the whole world searching for their own bot girl.
Out in the crowd, Down in the street,
Got the whole net shaking to that big bot beat.
Posted by: Pst314 | January 25, 2018 at 13:20
Why, in certain political circles, it’s almost a theme.
I went back and reread all those old links. For the life of me, I cannot wrap my mind around the fact that some parents would willingly, without a second thought, disadvantage their own children in some misbegotten effort to attain status among their fellows. It's one thing to observe what occurs in inner city slums or the "hollers'" of deepest Appalachia and feel sympathy for people who don't know better. It's another to see people willingly kneecapping their own children for one of those "positional goods" we've discussed. One wonders where Dante would have stuck such parents in his Circles of Hell, if he were writing today.
Posted by: R. Sherman | January 25, 2018 at 13:39
Oh come on, you laughed too.
Oh well, let's try feminist science and “Research Justice 101: Tools for Feminist Science” instead, because we need, to “...practice a socially just science...”
This learning event is organized by the, and I am not making this up, "UC Santa Cruz’s Science and Justice Research Center", where, I suspect, there is not really anyone "doing" science. Well, perhaps metaphorically doing it in the Biblical sense.
Posted by: Farnsworth M Muldoon | January 25, 2018 at 13:44
I went back and reread all those old links.
No refunds, etc.
For the life of me, I cannot wrap my mind around the fact that some parents would willingly, without a second thought, disadvantage their own children in some misbegotten effort to attain status among their fellows.
Vanity is a powerful drug and can skew one’s priorities, as can dogma, as can spite. Prioritising one’s own woke self-image above the wellbeing of others, even one’s own children, isn’t too much of a leap. And I suppose that once your sense of personal virtue - and superiority - depends on such posturing, it may be a hard habit to shake. It’s hard to back-pedal, and any challenge to the façade will be reacted against as a personal affront.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that a lot of the time it’s just in-group signalling – “ban private education!” - and unlikely to be enacted as national policy, so there’s little personal cost attached, and the middle-class lefties who position themselves in this way tend to have the means and contacts to compensate, at least to some extent, should they find themselves obliged to actually live their professed values. The children of Arabella Weir, for instance, are unlikely to face quite the same challenges as a bright prole child at a crappy comprehensive.
Posted by: David | January 25, 2018 at 14:08
I so love how Canadians pronounce out. Why, I could listen to it over and over and over...
https://youtu.be/RhdEbOzcN1U
Posted by: Ten | January 25, 2018 at 14:10
Got the whole net shaking to that big bot beat
She's a bot girl, she's a bot, she's a bot bot girl.
She's a bot girl, she's a bot, she's a bot bot girl...
Posted by: pst314 | January 25, 2018 at 14:15
No refunds, etc.
Pickled eggs aside, those archives are a treasure trove.
Posted by: pst314 | January 25, 2018 at 14:15
those archives are a treasure trove.
Something to bear in mind when I do the next fundraiser.
Whaddayamean shameless…?
Posted by: David | January 25, 2018 at 14:39
Apropos of various comments around here, here's another 'So you're saying', bleached computer, big red button pretense ( noticed at Althouse https://althouse.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/erykah-badu-expresses-empathy-for.html )
Let's call it the 'Newman manoeuvre'.
Posted by: prm | January 25, 2018 at 15:29
Probably the Ninth (bottommost) Circle, which houses traitors. Specifically, its subdivision Caina, for treason against family.
(Dante's Ninth Circle also has separate areas for those who betrayed their principles, their guests, their lords, their country, etc. At the very centre are Cassius and Brutus for betraying Caesar, and Judas for betraying Jesus.)
Posted by: Microbillionaire | January 25, 2018 at 16:34
“Karen Straughan has some thoughts on the Jordan Peterson / Cathy Newman interview.”
Cathy Newman did not interview Jordan Peterson. Cathy Newman has never interviewed Jordan Peterson. Update your records accordingly.
Posted by: Sam Duncan | January 25, 2018 at 17:01
Saw this over at Ace. Can someone explain this sentence to me? As per yesterday's post I'm only about 23/20ths as smart as you people and obviously my language skilllllzzz are causing me problems:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/25/health/cuckolding-sex-kerner/index.htmlaa
How does a MAN trick his WIFE into cuckholding him?
Posted by: WTP | January 25, 2018 at 17:33
Heh...that should of course read 23/30ths. But then I am an idjit.
Posted by: WTP | January 25, 2018 at 17:33
How believing in socialism can make you miserable.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-24/how-believing-socialism-can-make-you-miserable
Posted by: [+] | January 25, 2018 at 17:46
How believing in socialism can make you miserable.
It would be interesting if we could calculate the cost of socialism to society just based solely on the opportunity costs of loss of productivity from people who have had to dedicate so much (all?) of their lives to refuting the stupidity of socialism for the last 200 years or so. Frédéric Bastiat must be spinning in his grave.
Posted by: WTP | January 25, 2018 at 18:19