Jim the Pleb Made Me Do It

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

"Scotch me up, Scotty"

With the evident caveat that it should be directly followed by "No ice! And make it a double! No! A triple!"

[Dilurk]

Thank you for posting this. I spent most of this morning watching this speech and a few other Hitchens debates and so far have ended with this Stephen Fry talk about language in Nazi Germany, that I would like to share.

[youtube]ohrtFuxUzZE[/youtube]

Yes. Classic propaganda tactics include name calling. All sides have been doing it. It serves to dehumanize. "Chill girls" "baboons".

Other classic propaganda tactics include uncharitable reading. Taking your opponents statements at their worst.

Sound familiar?

And there are more, I'll let you work it out for yourself.
http://web.archive.org/web/201301130857 ... niques.htm

We have met the enemy and he is us.

- Pogo (Walt Kelly)

[Guest]

Poor Ellenbeth. She just free climbed the east face of the "why Pharyngula sucks" learning curve and lost several toes to frostbite.

[Guest]

Poor Ellenbeth. She just free climbed the east face of the "why Pharyngula sucks" learning curve and lost several toes to frostbite.

[Michael K Gray]

It is clearly a type of feud…

The sHatphields and the McCreights?
West Vagina-Kuntucky?
Tug Fork River?
Jim Beam me up, Scotty.

How very racist of you! Jim Beam is a Bourbon, from Kentucky, no less. Scotty, as we all know, is from Sctotland. It should just have read "Scotch me up, Scotty"

Bzzzt! Forfeit.
"Scotty" was from Canadialand, now rocketted into space.
Beat you with a Canadian Club.

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

Bzzzt! Forfeit.
"Scotty" was from Canadialand, now rocketted into space.
Beat you with a Canadian Club.

Oh, he was? Didn't know that. I based my observation on the brilliant Scotty played by Simon Pegg* in the less brilliant but still quite good reboot.

IANAT (I Am Not A Trecky)





*I know, not a Scott either, but acted the part like one, IMO (I Make Omelettes)

[Dilurk]

I feel badly for EllenBeth Wachs. No one deserves to be bullied. I detested it when I saw Blu being bullied, it was part of the reason I found the 'pit in the first place, I will not be silent and watch someone else being unfairly bullied.

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

Oh, look, I made a fool of myself by believing MKG's lies without checking first!

Montgomery "Scotty" Scott is a Scottish engineer in the Star Trek media franchise

From wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Scott

I suck at trying to discuss without using outside resources of information...

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

I feel badly for EllenBeth Wachs. No one deserves to be bullied. I detested it when I saw Blu being bullied, it was part of the reason I found the 'pit in the first place, I will not be silent and watch someone else being unfairly bullied.

Personally, I just hope EBW will use this experience to understand where most of us come from, and why we might sometimes be vitriolic when this crowd and their schadenfreudes are concerned.

[codelette]

It is clearly a type of feud…

The sHatphields and the McCreights?
West Vagina-Kuntucky?
Tug Fork River?
Jim Beam me up, Scotty.

How very racist of you! Jim Beam is a Bourbon, from Kentucky, no less. Scotty, as we all know, is from Sctotland. It should just have read "Scotch me up, Scotty"

Where do you think the McCoys came from? 8-)

Gradually the Scots-Irish moved south to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, which became a launching point for further migration to the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Eventually, with so many Scots-Irish settling in the south, Charleston became the second most important arrival port (after New York) for ships from Ireland.

http://www.archives.com/experts/garstka ... rview.html

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

Where do you think the McCoys came from? 8-)

Yeah, yeah, ok, alright, fine, fine. I'll just get back to my cave and think of better jokes to make (I've felt a bit down, lately).

[Apples]

Poor Ellenbeth. She just free climbed the east face of the "why Pharyngula sucks" learning curve and lost several toes to frostbite.

:)

[Michael K Gray]

Oh, look, I made a fool of myself by believing MKG's lies without checking first!

Montgomery "Scotty" Scott is a Scottish engineer in the Star Trek media franchise

From wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Scott
I suck at trying to discuss without using outside resources of information...

James Montgomery "Jimmy" Doohan (March 3, 1920 – July 20, 2005) was a Canadian character and voice actor best known for his role as Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in the television and film series Star Trek.
Canadian Club is a brand of whisky from Canada.
You have struck Fools' Gold.

I made a fool of myself by believing MKG's lies without checking first!

You'll be hearing from Traumatic Theoepholous's barristers, lawyers, solicitors, plumbers, acoustic engineers, seamstressess' within the hour, young turk! I have engaged St. Effunny as my legal counsel.

[Eskarina]

Thank you for posting this. I spent most of this morning watching this speech and a few other Hitchens debates and so far have ended with this Stephen Fry talk about language in Nazi Germany, that I would like to share.

[youtube]ohrtFuxUzZE[/youtube]

Yes. Classic propaganda tactics include name calling. All sides have been doing it. It serves to dehumanize. "Chill girls" "baboons".

Other classic propaganda tactics include uncharitable reading. Taking your opponents statements at their worst.

Sound familiar?

And there are more, I'll let you work it out for yourself.
http://web.archive.org/web/201301130857 ... niques.htm

We have met the enemy and he is us.

- Pogo (Walt Kelly)

Bolding mine.
Thanks for reminding me of this.

I first got really involved with the "atheist and sceptic communty" via criticism of Scientology and especially the Church of $cientology and in the course of things I realised that some critics resorted to those same tactics used by Scientology missionaries.

I guess it's really just human nature or something. *sigh*

[Michael K Gray]

Where do you think the McCoys came from? 8-)

Yeah, yeah, ok, alright, fine, fine. I'll just get back to my cave and think of better jokes to make (I've felt a bit down, lately).

Prolly not a good time to pun-joust with me, then.
Not if you expect to win, at least.
You *could* claim "non-first-language-privilege", and that would be a 'slam dunk' for you in A+Theism eyes.

[Michael K Gray]

Where do you think the McCoys came from?

Damnit Jim!
I'm a Doctor, not an ethnologist!

[Apples]

I, for one, enjoy reading Wonderist's posts.

Me too. I am averse to clicking links so it's nice to read it in the post.

I'm a bit with John Greg on this. Wonderist, I appreciate what you are doing and admire your apparent energy, dedication, and good will. I bristle a bit at the constant "coaching" and am slightly bemused by your apparent self-image as the 'Pit's PR Evangelist. Not everyone has the same goals or purposes here or sees this place as a war room whose purpose is to strategize about rhetorical techniques and the long-term future of the "movement." Some people don't give a shit about arguing with/talking to the "other side" at all and are just here for the lulz.

Keep in mind that this thread is like a pub - lots of people popping in and out with different interests and priorities. I read and appreciate many of your posts and don't really care about length per se -- it only gets irritating when I see half a dozen posts within an hour or so which are cut-and-pastes of comments from Nugents (which I may have read 24 hours prior) with a long commentary from you and links to your favorite marketing books. It can start to feel very one-note.

Anyway - it's no big deal. I can use kill-file, after all (though that wouldn't really benefit either of us). But given that you said you wouldn't be reading the 'Pit this weekend and would instead be "catching up" at Nugent's, I'm anticipating another flood of copied posts and editorials.

Possible suggestion which would achieve something of the wiki idea: start a thread for that class of posts -- where you are pasting someone's Nugent post and analyzing it -- "Wonderist's guide to foundational wonderism and healing the deep rifts with critical commentary and advice for the troops." When you have a new one to add, drop a link to it here at the main thread with a brief description. Then they're all in one place, won't get lost in the flow, and the discussion about them can be more focused and proceed at whatever pace people can handle.

Or not. Whatever.

[16bitheretic]

I believe the concept of 'privilege' is a useful one but it is being misused. As it is a sociology term, it is a term that makes sense in very general terms for groups of people, not for individual people. Misused as it is, it is now being used as an excuse to shut up criticism.

Isn't that the case for all the social sciences terminology as it's used by certain groups of online slacktivists?

Depending on how one defines words you could say there are very valid ideas behind the terms they toss about, but they misuse and abuse them as slurs and silencing tools for anyone who dares to dispute their viewpoints. It's true that whites in America, on average are more privileged than let's say the average black or latino. But that's true on a scale of averages and populations, not for every individual. However, if any white person were to post on FTB or A+ and challenge something like the Sikivu Hutchinson talk where she said that Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and Dennet promoted a "white supremacist" form of science-based secularism they'd be bombarded with "check your privilege" and have their points ignored in favor of attacking their personal traits. Now this person may be poor as hell and suffer from various social and economic setbacks, but because they share one trait with a group that is statistically more likely to have more societal privileges, they will be attacked for allegedly possessing and being blinded by those privileges regardless of whether they possess them or not.

As I see it, this sort of over-reach of social studies terms being twisted into ad hominem labels to strawman and discredit opposition is being abused in every category of discussion, and many people are being unfairly miscategorized as racists, homophobes, transphobes and misogynists when they are none of those things. Is there real sexism out there? Of course there is, and I think every woman would agree with me that there is and we've experienced it at least a few times in our lives. Is there real racism out there? Of course there is, and I've personally experienced that too and felt it's effect firsthand. These things do actually exist and need to be opposed by all enlightened and civilized people when it's made apparent. But to see wild accusations tossed about haphazardly, especially online when someone simply disagrees with certain radfem dogma or radical social justice rhetoric in blog comments, is discrediting to actual civil rights activism and creates a Boy Who Cried Wolf type danger of actual prejudice going unnoticed because of all the noise and signal interference of unnecessary conflicts.

[Guest]

I feel badly for EllenBeth Wachs. No one deserves to be bullied. I detested it when I saw Blu being bullied, it was part of the reason I found the 'pit in the first place, I will not be silent and watch someone else being unfairly bullied.

You have to put it all at the feet of Myers though. It's happening on his blog, and it's his responsibility. But the thing is, I've come to the conclusion that Myers actually enjoys watching people rip each other's throats out. He's the classic sadistic provocateur. He likes watching things burn. He's the guy who sidles up to someone he dislikes and say "Psst. I've heard your girlfriend is sleeping around," then watches on in glee as the fight ensues. It's not going to stop when someone he "respects" crosses him. He's already demonstrated that his colossal ego won't allow him to pause for that. It's only going to stop when someone who has some financial power over him tells him to cease and desist. And unfortunately, that may be never.

[Dilurk]

I am aghast at Ophelia. FFS the Internet is not that important. Get the hell outside and get some fresh air.

I'm not surprised at all. She behaves exactly as I'd expect an entitled, indolent, privileged person to behave. Don't any of those who send her money wonder how she manages to live comfortably in an expensive city, without doing much actual work? Blogging and writing a few columns aren't going to cut it.

What DOES surprise me is that people continue to invite her as a conference speaker, to take her seriously, and to (literally) buy into her pity-party victim act. Someone (Wonderist, maybe?) here mentioned asking her opinion on a wiki or something like that - why would you bother? She doesn't appear to be an expert on anything ... she's too lazy and self-absorbed to attain anything close to expertise, for starters.

It's 'hero worship' inside the A/S movement. For better or worse, she is a hero and even possibly a mother figure to many inside the community. I have no problem with this at all to be honest, If people want to pay her and people go to conferences where she is at, great. What I do have a problem with is bullying.

(Nice to see you back at the 'Pyt, Dilurk, btw! :) )

I've been busy in the real world (remember that? With the blue sky and everything?) trying to build bridges.

[DownThunder]

I feel badly for EllenBeth Wachs. No one deserves to be bullied. I detested it when I saw Blu being bullied, it was part of the reason I found the 'pit in the first place, I will not be silent and watch someone else being unfairly bullied.

Personally, I just hope EBW will use this experience to understand where most of us come from, and why we might sometimes be vitriolic when this crowd and their schadenfreudes are concerned.

If anyone has social media contact with her, by all means ask her. I would be curious to see her response.

However I am not hopeful. We seem to be in a hierarchy, where even if she gets her halo knocked off, she wouldn't come around and say "oh hai, you gaiz are alright afterall". No, I think she still has uses for some mythical monolithic misogynist enemy.

Still, seeing her get called a chill girl was funny as fuck.

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

Oh, look, I made a fool of myself by believing MKG's lies without checking first!

Montgomery "Scotty" Scott is a Scottish engineer in the Star Trek media franchise

From wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Scott
I suck at trying to discuss without using outside resources of information...

James Montgomery "Jimmy" Doohan (March 3, 1920 – July 20, 2005) was a Canadian character and voice actor best known for his role as Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in the television and film series Star Trek.
Canadian Club is a brand of whisky from Canada.
You have struck Fools' Gold.

I made a fool of myself by believing MKG's lies without checking first!

You'll be hearing from Traumatic Theoepholous's barristers, lawyers, solicitors, plumbers, acoustic engineers, seamstressess' within the hour, young turk! I have engaged St. Effunny as my legal counsel.

Re bolded: you did say Scotty, not Doohan. Which makes my joke still valid. Admit! Repent!

Re underlined: eheheh.

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

You *could* claim "non-first-language-privilege", and that would be a 'slam dunk' for you in A+Theism eyes.

Not so sure. Remember the poor sod who got chastisized there for not having a perfect mastery of the english language? Anyway, I would probably be banned before my first comment even came through, filthy foreigner that I am.

[Michael K Gray]

...Wonderist... Not everyone has the same goals or purposes here or sees this place as a war room whose purpose is to strategize about rhetorical techniques and the long-term future of the "movement."

I most certainly do not share what I gather to be the short-term accomodationist goal(s) of Wonderist/Thaumas Themelious(sp?).

I care passionately about what is TRUE, not what 'might' work.
I care about combating hypocrisy.

I have a visceral revulsion toward ameliorating that innate passion in the name of comity with power-hungry parasites.

'Wonderist' is not going to damp my passion, no matter how many researched paragraphs he iterates. And reiterates. And reiterates. And reiterates. And reiterates.

[Apples]

Still, seeing her get called a chill girl was funny as fuck.

Priceless.

[Michael K Gray]

Re bolded: you did say Scotty, not Doohan. Which makes my joke still valid. Admit! Repent!
Re underlined: eheheh.

Yes, my Liege, and Noble Lord. (Or is that Laird, after consuming Haggis?)
I prostrate myself at your gold-armored feet in supplication.
It is entirely my fault that you assumed that I was solely referring to the fictional character, and not the actual person who was acting the rôle, nor a quantum superposition of the entangled pear.
What do I owe you?
A bottle of Beam?

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

Re bolded: you did say Scotty, not Doohan. Which makes my joke still valid. Admit! Repent!
Re underlined: eheheh.

Yes, my Liege, and Noble Lord. (Or is that Laird, after consuming Haggis?)
I prostrate myself at your gold-armored feet in supplication.
It is entirely my fault that you assumed that I was solely referring to the fictional character, and not the actual person who was acting the rôle, nor a quantum superposition of the entangled pear.
What do I owe you?
A bottle of Beam?

Much better. Much, much better. If you made it a bottle of Jameson, it would be even betterer. Just to piss off the Scotts. And Kentuckians. And because Jameson is my favorite, which should count for something.

But I tend to distrust promises of whisky bottles these days. Dembski set a precedent for those situations.

[AnonymousCowherd]

TOTALLY OT BUT SUPER SERIOUS--

Does anyone here have any connection to Switzerland, or could any of our European Pitters help get me more info about this case?

There is no fucking way homeboy could do that. No fucking way. I am going to do a post on it, again, but there is no fucking way and some simple evolutionary biology can acquit this guy (now convicted, over 12 years in prison).

http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/1 ... 90477.html
http://www.taz.de/Schweizer-Wunderdokto ... t/!113348/
http://www.blick.ch/news/schweiz/heiler ... 47251.html
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/sch ... -1.1631619
http://orf.at/stories/2173048/2173047/

They are all in German but maybe some Google Translate can help, if you need some translation, just PM me and I will see what I can do.

What's the context of the ev. biology reference? That it can somehow excuse illegal/immoral acts? If it is, the answer to that is ev. biology doesn't do ethics, it does science.

ERV spells out her concerns on her linked post.

It does look (from my own dodgy translation of those news stories) like this guy used a syringe, not an acupuncture needle and that he may have been "bleeding" an HIV positive patient for some time and storing infected blood (which he denies and says he has a blood phobia). I have no idea if that is enough to overcome ERV's objections. Hep C infection was also alleged. Four of the infected were his own relatives.

[Michael K Gray]

Re bolded: you did say Scotty, not Doohan. Which makes my joke still valid. Admit! Repent!
Re underlined: eheheh.

Yes, my Liege, and Noble Lord. (Or is that Laird, after consuming Haggis?)
I prostrate myself at your gold-armored feet in supplication.
It is entirely my fault that you assumed that I was solely referring to the fictional character, and not the actual person who was acting the rôle, nor a quantum superposition of the entangled pear.
What do I owe you?
A bottle of Beam?

Much better. Much, much better. If you made it a bottle of Jameson, it would be even betterer. Just to piss off the Scotts. And Kentuckians. And because Jameson is my favorite, which should count for something.
But I tend to distrust promises of whisky bottles these days. Dembski set a precedent for those situations.

Rather oddly, as Jameson's comes from Ireland, so do the Scots! (Or Scoti)
'Twas the Picts who infested Scotland.
So, Jamesons is true Scoti Whiskey.

But I tend to distrust promises of whisky bottles these days

PM me an address, and I shall mail it forthwith.
As you may remember, I am not one to "welch" on even vague wagers.
(Southern Welsh spoke "Cornish". A language utterly unrelated to others, much like Basque.)

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

PM me an address, and I shall mail it forthwith.
As you may remember, I am not one to "welch" on even vague wagers.
(Southern Welsh spoke "Cornish". A language utterly unrelated to others, much like Basque.)

Although I know for a fact you're a man of your word (previous wagers and all), I'll just take that virtual delivery as sufficient for my satisfaction. My liver agrees, so it's all ok.

Maybe a small donation to Operation Smile or Lsuoma, though...

[JackSkeptic]

Wonderist said (http://www.slymepit.com/phpbb/viewtopic ... 622#p78622):

You'll have to be specific, John. Give me examples, explain what's wrong. tl;dr is not a helpful critique. It points out a problem exists, but does not fully identify it, nor offer corrections.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Translation:

Hey, Bob, could possibly stop kicking me in the ass?

Uh, gee, Fred, what's a Ass? Could you define for me what an ass is? is it a donkey? is it a burro? Shucks-a-ma-jug, I just do not get it; you'll have to be specifc on what you mean when you say what you say when you say what I say about when I say what you say you ... erm ... I say ... or, um, summat.

/fuck me

Give you examples? Give you fucking examples?!? Every one of your ten thousand fucking posts goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on ... with unnecessary quotes / screens / paraphrases / reiterfuckingations.... endlessly; endfuckinglessly....

As I said before, and demonstrated with welch, none of these histrionics work on me. Been there. Done that. Many hundreds of times. I'm over it. Past it. It does not work on me. I spent years trolling trolls. That's how I developed the anti-trolling techniques of de-escalation and bringing things back to reasonable dialogue (or failing that, getting the troll to wander off somewhere else).

So. If you have no examples, then I can't help you. I don't know what you want specifically. If you give me some concrete examples, I can try to help. But, as I said, tl;dr is not actually a helpful critique. And, "roflcopter he couldn't read my mind!!!!" isn't either.

Wonderist, I have to ask: are you an MKG style windbag (no insult intended or directed to MKG, who I respect a lot), or are you just an endlessly verbose, spew-of-the-mouth variation on Natalie Screed?

You'll find I'm both and neither, depending on the situation. I have many techniques. Being extra verbose in order to avoid misunderstanding and confusion is one of them. Hint.

You keep doing what you want to do. Its handy to have a breakdown of what is going on with your views on it.

[Scented Nectar]

From: freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/03/21/a-reminder/comment-page-1/#comment-584374
http://www.scentednectar.com/slimepit/00017.png

PZ just can't resist the ass-rape with a knife references. Personally, it's obvious to me that this is not a real rape/death threat. It's just PZ trying to sound tough. If someone else however, had said that directed to any feminists, they'd have been screaming and blogging about getting rape, torture, and death threats.

They're self-defeating hypocrites in a jail of their own making. By insisting on all kinds of speech censoring of others, they have no choice but to (at least publicly) hold themselves to those same standards. PZ failed again. It's easy to fail like that when he's built such an ideological wall around himself. Glass houses, stones, etc.

[Michael K Gray]

PM me an address, and I shall mail it forthwith.
As you may remember, I am not one to "welch" on even vague wagers.
(Southern Welsh spoke "Cornish". A language utterly unrelated to others, much like Basque.)

Although I know for a fact you're a man of your word (previous wagers and all), I'll just take that virtual delivery as sufficient for my satisfaction. My liver agrees, so it's all ok.
Maybe a small donation to Operation Smile or Lsuoma, though...

Roger, Wilco.
A bottle of Jamesons would surely make a child smile.
Or make her Surgeon smile.
Or make her Anæsthetist slime.
Operation Still!

[Michael K Gray]

They're self-defeating hypocrites in a jail of their own making. By insisting on all kinds of speech censoring of others, they have no choice but to (at least publicly) hold themselves to those same standards. PZ failed again. It's easy to fail like that when he's built such an ideological wall around himself. Glass houses, stones, etc.

Yip.
That's part of the reason that I have been so scarce of late.
They are doing my job.
And doing it very well.

Like the Oozlum bird, flies in ever tighter feminist rhetorical circles, that it has found its own beak firmly up its own fundament, and accelerating, until all that remains is the faint echo of "..misogynst"

[Michael K Gray]

Maybe a small donation to Operation Smile or Lsuoma, though...

$240->Smile, confirmed.
From your own drinks cabinet, you 007, you!

[AnonymousCowherd]

Isn't Zvan one of the feminists who insisted that conferences needed anti-harassment policies? Now many online feminists(McEwan being one of them)are saying that Richards had to go public because when women confront men or take their complaints up the chain of command, nothing gets done. So why have these policies in the first place if their useless and never to be utilized?

It is about power, but not over the individual conference goers involved - they're just cannon fodder. The first exercise of power is getting the policy you want, in the form you want it. Then you use it to control the organisation, as in "you said in your policy you'd throw out people I don't like, and I don't like s/h/it, so throw them out or I'll have a heart attack...and it will be messy. Then I'll make such a stink of your failure to implement your own organisation's rules that you will be replaced." Win.

For a lot of these people, that's the only sort of power they want, or can even imagine. The power to do something worthwhile, or substantial comes with both work and responsiblity - much too hard.

[katamari Damassi]

Poor Ellenbeth. She just free climbed the east face of the "why Pharyngula sucks" learning curve and lost several toes to frostbite.

I hope the irony isn't lost on her. She felt so attacked by the Pit and by Vacula of all people and it was nothing compared to the unreasonableness and vitriol of FfTB. I think my worst in regards to EBW was referring to her as a lunatic.

[Submariner]

Earlier in the Adria Richards saga I made a prediction (watch how you say THAT word) that she would be hired by someone within the month. If Ellen Beth wouldn't hire her, I'm starting to have doubts about my prediction.

I think my only hope now is that Ms Hensley pulls some strings (totally not a tampon joke) and gets Adria hired at the Center for Feminist Inquisitions.

Possibly the Shakesville branch.....

[comslave]

To any FTB lurkers here, regarding Adria Richards: She was NOT fired for being an "uppity woman". She was fired because she ignored the officially posted complaint procedure to use "naming and shaming" instead.

She harmed ALL women trying to work in STEM fields by fulfilling the "shrill bitch" stereotype many people have of women these days.

Her actions will result in women not being hired and women being avoided at conferences because you can now never trust them not to post anything you say on the internet. They may even just make stuff up, or hear what they wanted to hear, which may have been the case here.

She is not a feminist hero, nor a martyr. She's just a bitch who got fired for being a bitch. That is all.

[Michael K Gray]

For a lot of these people, that's the only sort of power they want, or can even imagine. The power to do something worthwhile, or substantial comes with both work and responsiblity - much too hard.

Quite.
The sort of low-aiming dweebs that haunt committees of Lion's Club, or Rotary, where the only criterion for office-holding is an immunity to boredom, and a love of banality.
Their dream goal is to be a secretary of something-or-other. Golf-club, PTA, knitting-circle, kitten-strangling co-op.
Doesn't matter, as long as it comes with a minor title, and the right to exercise absolute power over the padlock to the handle of the tea urn. (And facilities, via by-law 16.1c amended 1998, including doilies & those little edible silver balls that you put on cakes)
Utterly feeble power games that robust folk surpassed in their 20th year.

[karlaporter]

To any FTB lurkers here, regarding Adria Richards: She was NOT fired for being an "uppity woman". She was fired because she ignored the officially posted complaint procedure to use "naming and shaming" instead.

She harmed ALL women trying to work in STEM fields by fulfilling the "shrill bitch" stereotype many people have of women these days.

Her actions will result in women not being hired and women being avoided at conferences because you can now never trust them not to post anything you say on the internet. They may even just make stuff up, or hear what they wanted to hear, which may have been the case here.

She is not a feminist hero, nor a martyr. She's just a bitch who got fired for being a bitch. That is all.

It reminds me of high school level behavior by someone who wants to be the popular girl and makes an impulsive decision to take a dangerous risk. I would not want to be her right now, I cannot imagine the pressure of the firestorm, the sinking feeling about my professional future and the guilt for causing embarrassment and further difficulty for women in employment. I feel badly for her and hope she is able to rehabilitate in a healthy way.

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

Maybe a small donation to Operation Smile or Lsuoma, though...

$240->Smile, confirmed.
From your own drinks cabinet, you 007, you!

Class act, that man! It wasn't mandatory, just a suggestion. But all the same, many thanks for the donation. Tip of the Hat!

[AnonymousCowherd]

From: freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/03/21/a-reminder/comment-page-1/#comment-584374
http://www.scentednectar.com/slimepit/00017.png

So PZ wants "the oppressed" to leave or avoid their "sanctuary" and come over to Pharyngula so they can be "rhetorically armed" and "inflamed". (No witch hunts there though). I'm sure the Shakers will be delighted to hear you think they are making women in to passive victims instead of mighty warriors in the Battle of the Sexes Genders.

So after you make rhetorical ninjas out of them PZ, what then? They join the Hive and joust with the merry japesters among the regulars, or become part of the once mighty Whored and go forth to get their arses kicked in the real world? Sounds like a million laughs, I don't know why they aren't signing up in droves.

[Apples]

@KiwiInOz -- thanks for calling out the bullshit at Nugent's that s/h/it is used as a slur on trans* people here.

[comslave]

To any FTB lurkers here, regarding Adria Richards: She was NOT fired for being an "uppity woman". She was fired because she ignored the officially posted complaint procedure to use "naming and shaming" instead.

She harmed ALL women trying to work in STEM fields by fulfilling the "shrill bitch" stereotype many people have of women these days.

Her actions will result in women not being hired and women being avoided at conferences because you can now never trust them not to post anything you say on the internet. They may even just make stuff up, or hear what they wanted to hear, which may have been the case here.

She is not a feminist hero, nor a martyr. She's just a bitch who got fired for being a bitch. That is all.

It reminds me of high school level behavior by someone who wants to be the popular girl and makes an impulsive decision to take a dangerous risk. I would not want to be her right now, I cannot imagine the pressure of the firestorm, the sinking feeling about my professional future and the guilt for causing embarrassment and further difficulty for women in employment. I feel badly for her and hope she is able to rehabilitate in a healthy way.

My predication is that she's going to try to ride this as a career move. She'll double down because now she has nothing to lose. She'll be out of technology and into "activism".

And I think you're minimizing her decision when you say it was impulsive. I think it was calculated and deliberate. She was hunting for someone to vilify. The fact that she knew to take a picture. To smile while taking the picture to make it seem like a friendly gesture. She had this thought out before it happened. The only thing she didn't get right was the reaction. She expected to be hailed as a hero, not to lose her job.

I only feel bad for the guy who lost his job for a dongle joke. He had 3 kids to support.

[Metalogic42]

I believe the concept of 'privilege' is a useful one but it is being misused. As it is a sociology term, it is a term that makes sense in very general terms for groups of people, not for individual people. Misused as it is, it is now being used as an excuse to shut up criticism.

Isn't that the case for all the social sciences terminology as it's used by certain groups of online slacktivists?

Depending on how one defines words you could say there are very valid ideas behind the terms they toss about, but they misuse and abuse them as slurs and silencing tools for anyone who dares to dispute their viewpoints. It's true that whites in America, on average are more privileged than let's say the average black or latino. But that's true on a scale of averages and populations, not for every individual. However, if any white person were to post on FTB or A+ and challenge something like the Sikivu Hutchinson talk where she said that Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and Dennet promoted a "white supremacist" form of science-based secularism they'd be bombarded with "check your privilege" and have their points ignored in favor of attacking their personal traits. Now this person may be poor as hell and suffer from various social and economic setbacks, but because they share one trait with a group that is statistically more likely to have more societal privileges, they will be attacked for allegedly possessing and being blinded by those privileges regardless of whether they possess them or not.

As I see it, this sort of over-reach of social studies terms being twisted into ad hominem labels to strawman and discredit opposition is being abused in every category of discussion, and many people are being unfairly miscategorized as racists, homophobes, transphobes and misogynists when they are none of those things. Is there real sexism out there? Of course there is, and I think every woman would agree with me that there is and we've experienced it at least a few times in our lives. Is there real racism out there? Of course there is, and I've personally experienced that too and felt it's effect firsthand. These things do actually exist and need to be opposed by all enlightened and civilized people when it's made apparent. But to see wild accusations tossed about haphazardly, especially online when someone simply disagrees with certain radfem dogma or radical social justice rhetoric in blog comments, is discrediting to actual civil rights activism and creates a Boy Who Cried Wolf type danger of actual prejudice going unnoticed because of all the noise and signal interference of unnecessary conflicts.

Most if not all of the SJW jargon has valid concepts behind it. Even "triggers". But seeing the way they use these concepts, I can only think that they're co-opting them for their own personal gain. I think there's a lot to be said about the negative effects of overusing these concepts, and I really hope no one who would actually be susceptible to a PTSD flashback ever stumbles across the A+ forum.

[Submariner]

I only feel bad for the guy who lost his job for a dongle joke. He had 3 kids to support.

[youtube]_dhjmSp30jc[/youtube]

[karlaporter]

To any FTB lurkers here, regarding Adria Richards: She was NOT fired for being an "uppity woman". She was fired because she ignored the officially posted complaint procedure to use "naming and shaming" instead.

She harmed ALL women trying to work in STEM fields by fulfilling the "shrill bitch" stereotype many people have of women these days.

Her actions will result in women not being hired and women being avoided at conferences because you can now never trust them not to post anything you say on the internet. They may even just make stuff up, or hear what they wanted to hear, which may have been the case here.

She is not a feminist hero, nor a martyr. She's just a bitch who got fired for being a bitch. That is all.

It reminds me of high school level behavior by someone who wants to be the popular girl and makes an impulsive decision to take a dangerous risk. I would not want to be her right now, I cannot imagine the pressure of the firestorm, the sinking feeling about my professional future and the guilt for causing embarrassment and further difficulty for women in employment. I feel badly for her and hope she is able to rehabilitate in a healthy way.

My predication is that she's going to try to ride this as a career move. She'll double down because now she has nothing to lose. She'll be out of technology and into "activism".

And I think you're minimizing her decision when you say it was impulsive. I think it was calculated and deliberate. She was hunting for someone to vilify. The fact that she knew to take a picture. To smile while taking the picture to make it seem like a friendly gesture. She had this thought out before it happened. The only thing she didn't get right was the reaction. She expected to be hailed as a hero, not to lose her job.

I only feel bad for the guy who lost his job for a dongle joke. He had 3 kids to support.

Yes well, I feel for him of course. But the conversation wasn't about him, it was about her. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. Her ignorance or willful defiance of protocol makes her a serious risk to any employer regardless of its mission. Someone may feel empathetic toward her and give her an opportunity but I don't think that would be a smart move for any organization, even a feminist activist one. The only place her behavior seems the norm is in entertainment where tattle tale gossip is common.

[acathode]

The Adria Richards thread at PZ's is amazing to read. (I got Adblocker, so can now read FtB guilt-free.)

There's EllenBeth's day of experiential learning about the piranhas at Pharyngula, also on Twitter some interesting comments by her & conversations including with John Brown about it. She tweeted, as someone here had suggested, that she hadn't been over to Pharyngula before & doesn't expect the response she got. Simonknowz and Melody Hensley are @'d on some of her comments; neither has replied, but their last tweets were before this all happened in the past 12 hours so maybe they were just AFK. It'll be interesting to see whether they acknowledge it. And of course Rebecca Watson is up in arms about how EllenBeth was treated, with several tweets and a new post at Skepchick about it. (<- /jk on that last line, don't hold your breath for that to happen)

There's Matthew Best with several good posts, including pointing out that Adria Richards tweeted a joke from the same conference suggesting a friend stuff a stuffed sock into his pants to amaze TSA (meaning, they would think he had a big penis). He linked to that tweet of Richards' in one place and I think to a 'capped version in another place.

And there's advertising for the Slymepit by Stacy, with an attempt by Caine to shut it down: Stacy tells kate_waters "The Slymepit is thataway —->" to which Caine replies (bolding as in original): "Do not pull that shit here. Ever."

Then when Stacy tries to explain, Caine replies "I understand, however, that sort of thing isn’t done here under any circumstance."

(Since when is it not done "under any circumstance"? PZ refers to the Slymepit frequently in banning people, and I think he has said certain people should go back to the 'pit. But it seems likely that Caine is trying to limit efflux from Pharyngula to the 'Pit - or maybe would claim that even mentioning the 'Pit is triggering?)

You also have PZ claiming that believing that the idea that black people cannot be racists is not itself racists, because there's like scientific theories on that.... Wonder what he thinks about those people in the 30s and 40s that were hooked on phrenology? Those guys where totally not racists... right PZ?

The whole notion isn't only racist as hell, it's also so damn silly it hurts. Let's see, Obama cannot be a racist, but meth-head Joe living in a trailer can? Because meth-head Joe has like, power and shit, and he's playing the game on the lowest difficulty setting there is, while Obama doesn't have power and is playing the game on hardmode... or something?

And, as been pointed out, there's also the feminist auto-pilot kicking in, dongle-jokes goes from being sexist to being objectifying of women to being harassment to being the patriarchy oppressing women everywhere all the time.

The whole thread is hilarious.

[Apples]

To smile while taking the picture to make it seem like a friendly gesture. She had this thought out before it happened. The only thing she didn't get right was the reaction. She expected to be hailed as a hero, not to lose her job.

Yep - and I too foresee her rising from the ashes -- she could make plenty from an Anita Sarkeesian-style kickstarter victim-fest.

A comment from the Pharyngula thread that exemplifies how quickly the realities of a situation disappear when the baboons have seized the narrative on an issue:

so much awesome Cerberus.

To pull out one part.

And so much more parsing and condemnation of her actions have been given than the conscious choice two douchebros made when they decided to spend an entire panel about women in engineering making sexist jokes to each other, a few scant rows from the panelists themselves.

The arrogance of people doing this has left me breathless.

The ease which people have at ripping a tool (social media of all things!) from the hands of a women, under sexist attack. A tool she, being there in the moment with better understanding of what it was like than we can ever have, chose thoughtfully, to convey her message,. A tool she wielded in the hope of making the world a better place for little girls.

And for what? To quiver at the injustice of misogynistic assholes being publicly tied to their own words, their own choices?

i just…I’m so sad.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... ent-586145

[bovarchist]

Also anyone here Bovarchist? He is now banned to the Lymepit by PeeZuss Christ.

-raises hand-

I lurk here from time to time, just joined. I never even noticed I'd been banned because I never bother checking back after making a comment. I know it would only upset me.

So...anyone have a screencap of what I said?

[AnonymousCowherd]

Quick quiz. What is wrong with these statements? (From Michael Nugent's latest "talks about talks about talks" post).

But the act of making such a statement remains (maybe with delayed effect) an inherently, objectively hurtful act. In my opinion.

Justicar is making the argument that statements are either harmful by their nature (i.e. opinions don't come into it), or that "hurtful" is, in effect, a judgement made about a statement (i.e. it's "subjective"). If the latter, and you disallow any "hurtful" statement, you are hostage to the most sensitive persons feelings (or, at least, their reported feelings).

Nugent wants to prevent that, so is going to have to allow some "hurtful" statements, if they are somehow justified. How?

I see it as observing whether harm (or hurt) actually happened, and evaluating whether on balance it was justified in that instance. Each situation has to be taken on its own merits, and there will obviously be a lot of subjectivity involved in that evaluation.

So no statement of off limits just because of its wording, but it may be out if someone claims it is hurtful and the referee agrees the value is less than the hurt. Whoever is referee will have a job, and Nugent's just created a reason for some folks to whine even louder to get the ref to make the call their way.

(cue vid of soccer player making outrageous dive).

[Submariner]

so much awesome Cerberus.

To pull out one part.


The ease which people have at ripping a tool (social media of all things!) from the hands of a women, under sexist attack. A tool she, being there in the moment with better understanding of what it was like than we can ever have, chose thoughtfully, to convey her message,. A tool she wielded in the hope of making the world a better place for little girls.

And for what? To quiver at the injustice of misogynistic assholes being publicly tied to their own words, their own choices?

i just…I’m so sad.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... ent-586145

There's some of that post-modern thinking that Jack is often pointing out. Fee-fee's are the most important thing.

[Apples]

Also anyone here Bovarchist? He is now banned to the Lymepit by PeeZuss Christ.

-raises hand-

I lurk here from time to time, just joined. I never even noticed I'd been banned because I never bother checking back after making a comment. I know it would only upset me.

So...anyone have a screencap of what I said?

Welcome, and fuck off.
http://i.imgur.com/sJm8CVb.jpg

[JackSkeptic]

From: freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/03/21/a-reminder/comment-page-1/#comment-584374
http://www.scentednectar.com/slimepit/00017.png

So PZ wants "the oppressed" to leave or avoid their "sanctuary" and come over to Pharyngula so they can be "rhetorically armed" and "inflamed". (No witch hunts there though). I'm sure the Shakers will be delighted to hear you think they are making women in to passive victims instead of mighty warriors in the Battle of the Sexes Genders.

So after you make rhetorical ninjas out of them PZ, what then? They join the Hive and joust with the merry japesters among the regulars, or become part of the once mighty Whored and go forth to get their arses kicked in the real world? Sounds like a million laughs, I don't know why they aren't signing up in droves.

He needs to spend less time on abuse and generating righteous anger and more time on communicating his ideas if he wants to be taken seriously. I can't be the only one that finds his style of writing puerile. Maybe that's why he does it as he feels he is incapable of effectively communicating his ideas. But he just comes across as another SJW blow-hard and they are two a penny.

[JackSkeptic]

To any FTB lurkers here, regarding Adria Richards: She was NOT fired for being an "uppity woman". She was fired because she ignored the officially posted complaint procedure to use "naming and shaming" instead.

She harmed ALL women trying to work in STEM fields by fulfilling the "shrill bitch" stereotype many people have of women these days.

Her actions will result in women not being hired and women being avoided at conferences because you can now never trust them not to post anything you say on the internet. They may even just make stuff up, or hear what they wanted to hear, which may have been the case here.

She is not a feminist hero, nor a martyr. She's just a bitch who got fired for being a bitch. That is all.

It reminds me of high school level behavior by someone who wants to be the popular girl and makes an impulsive decision to take a dangerous risk. I would not want to be her right now, I cannot imagine the pressure of the firestorm, the sinking feeling about my professional future and the guilt for causing embarrassment and further difficulty for women in employment. I feel badly for her and hope she is able to rehabilitate in a healthy way.

My predication is that she's going to try to ride this as a career move. She'll double down because now she has nothing to lose. She'll be out of technology and into "activism".

And I think you're minimizing her decision when you say it was impulsive. I think it was calculated and deliberate. She was hunting for someone to vilify. The fact that she knew to take a picture. To smile while taking the picture to make it seem like a friendly gesture. She had this thought out before it happened. The only thing she didn't get right was the reaction. She expected to be hailed as a hero, not to lose her job.

I only feel bad for the guy who lost his job for a dongle joke. He had 3 kids to support.

Yes well, I feel for him of course. But the conversation wasn't about him, it was about her. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. Her ignorance or willful defiance of protocol makes her a serious risk to any employer regardless of its mission. Someone may feel empathetic toward her and give her an opportunity but I don't think that would be a smart move for any organization, even a feminist activist one. The only place her behavior seems the norm is in entertainment where tattle tale gossip is common.

As I said earlier I would not employ her and if she were my client I would have to let her go purely due to the risk associated with her. She is unfortunately a liability and is a person who would think nothing of hurting others to make her point. Moreover, she will do it in a way to maximise damage. The reason she did what she did is neither here nor there, it is the way she did it. It is unacceptable in any organisation.

She may switch to full SJW mode to try and justify to herself what she did. That would be her best option as to them she will be a star.

[JackSkeptic]

Also anyone here Bovarchist? He is now banned to the Lymepit by PeeZuss Christ.

-raises hand-

I lurk here from time to time, just joined. I never even noticed I'd been banned because I never bother checking back after making a comment. I know it would only upset me.

So...anyone have a screencap of what I said?

Welcome:)

[DW Adams]

So apparently everyone is made a "target" on the Slymepit. Caine says so.

But I'm curious, when did we "target" Caine again?

Anyway. Someone called kate_waters is having a temper tantrum against EllenBeth, JAL something-or-other is throwing his/her toys out of the pram, and the rest are being pants-on-head retarded. There's two- no, THREE- people being reasonable in there, Matthew Best, evangelineclaire* and, to my great surprise, EllenBeth Wachs. I did not think I would write reasonable and EllenBeth Wachs in the same sentence any time soon, but there it is. Is the world coming to an end? Did the Mayans skip a year?

It's also extremely amusing to see erikthebassist completely double down and grovel for forgiveness.

*oh, it was Eucliwood - huh. Sneaky, Eucli!

While Caine hasn't been a target, you might find some lulz with this:
http://atheiststoday.com/images/dw_adam ... rcaine.jpg
http://talkrational.org/member.php?u=644

Maybe look at old posts...like this one:
http://talkrational.org/showthread.php? ... post365011
http://atheiststoday.com/images/dw_adams/sinister.png

Haven't looked much farther than that, so who knows.

Also:
Is this who I think it is?
http://talkrational.org/member.php?u=78

[EdwardGemmer]

Also anyone here Bovarchist? He is now banned to the Lymepit by PeeZuss Christ.

-raises hand-

I lurk here from time to time, just joined. I never even noticed I'd been banned because I never bother checking back after making a comment. I know it would only upset me.

So...anyone have a screencap of what I said?

Banned club high five.

[comslave]

Yes well, I feel for him of course. But the conversation wasn't about him, it was about her. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. Her ignorance or willful defiance of protocol makes her a serious risk to any employer regardless of its mission. Someone may feel empathetic toward her and give her an opportunity but I don't think that would be a smart move for any organization, even a feminist activist one. The only place her behavior seems the norm is in entertainment where tattle tale gossip is common.

I feel that when you give women the benefit of the doubt, you're really treating them like children. "She didn't know better" is another way of saying she's too stupid to know better.

I'll grant that adults do stupid things. But in this case she was especially conscious that she was a woman in a male sphere. She knew ahead of time there was going to be "bro-speak" because she's been there before. She's even spoken this way herself (hypocrite much?) This was not her first conference.

But now we're waiting for the other shoe to fall. It would be interesting to be an observer at the next tech conference. I foresee guys keeping a very wide berth between them and the women attendees. Or possibly a drop in the number of women invited to attend such conferences. Maybe employers will subtly send their male employees only to such conferences.

But one thing is clear about tech in general. There has never been an "all women" tech company of any size (maybe some small web development company, but I haven't heard of any). But there have been many all men tech companies. If the women who come into tech all decide that that thing to do is burn the place down, they won't be invited back. While I expect men to behave professionally and in a civilized manner, I also expect the same of women. It won't take many women like Adria to ruin it for all women.