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pinkerite.com

Criticizing race pseudoscience and those who promote it ~ like Steven Pinker
More at https://www.pinkerite.com

#TuskNotMusk

When reactionaries claim to believe in "free speech," they really mean free speech for only themselves.

A lot more people need to realize this and see through the "cancel culture" PR ploy. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/11/desantis-stop-woke-act-affirmative-action-supreme-court/

How DeSantis’s own lawyers accidentally exposed his anti-woke deceit

The real goal of the Florida governor's directives is to chill classroom discussion.

The Washington Post

One woman's crusade against bikinis, witchcraft, cell phones, and her own right to vote

https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2023/07/11/one-womans-crusade-against-bikinis-witchcraft-cell-phones-and-her-own-right-to-vote/

One woman’s crusade against bikinis, witchcraft, cell phones, and her own right to vote

Check out my new blog, My AI Obsession, and my latest post there Is it Replika’s fault that some dude tried to kill Queen Elizabeth with a crossbow? Lori Alexander–aka The Transformed W…

We Hunted The Mammoth

This is excellent from @[email protected] on why "evopsych" advocates and others who claim to be defending biology from nefarious lefties don't actually understand the science.

It's yet another case of rightist ignorance mistaking itself as a valiance for justice https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2023/06/24/moral-panics-and-the-bigoted-subversion-of-biology/

Moral panics and the bigoted subversion of biology

Fresh off that paper about how the liberals are destroying “merit” and science, Jerry Coyne fearlessly rides his hobby horse onto the pages of the Skeptical Inquirer, where he complains…

Pharyngula
Eh, ok, I give up. Here's what the guy said:

"I was an intern at SpaceX years ago, back it when it was
a much smaller company - after Elon got hair plugs,
but before his cult of personality was in full swing. I have
some insight to offer here.

Back when I was at SpaceX, Elon was basically a child €
king. He was an important figurehead who provided the
company with the money, power, and PR, but he didn't
have the knowledge or (frankly) maturity to handle day-
to-day decision making and everyone knew that. He was
surrounded by people whose job was, essentially, to
manipulate him into making good decisions.

Managing Elon was a huge part of the company culture.
Even I, as a lowly intern, would hear people talking about
it openly in meetings. People knew how to present ideas
in a way that would resonate with him, they knew how to
creatively reinterpret (or ignore) his many insane
demands, and they even knew how to "stage manage"
parts of the physical office space so that it would appeal
to Elon.

The funniest example of "stage management" I can
remember is this dude on the IT security team. He had a
script running in a terminal on one of his monitors that
would output random garbage, Matrix-style, so that it
always looked like he was doing Important Computer
Things to anyone who walked by his desk. Second
funniest was all the people I saw playing WoW at their
desks after ~5pm, who did it in the office just to give the
appearance that they were working late.

People were willing to do that at Space because Elon
was giving them the money (and hype) to get into outer
space, a mission people cared deeply about. The
company also grew with and around Elon. There were
layers of management between individual employees
and Elon, and those managers were experienced
managers of Elon. Again, I cannot stress enough how
much of the company culture was oriented around
managing this one guy.

Twitter has neither of those things going for it. There is
no company culture or internal structure around the
problem of managing Elon Musk, and I think for the first
time we're seeing what happens when people actually
take that man seriously and at face value. Worse, they're
doing this little experiment after this man has had
decades of success at companies that dedicate
significant resources to protecting themselves from
him, and he's too narcissistic to realize it."

Excellent article from @chrislehmann on how "Moms for Liberty" manipulates mainstream media reporters it knows to be lazy and ignorant about the group's fascist viewpoints and connections.

All the same mistakes that were made covering the Tea Party are being made anew with the latest reactionary group https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/moms-for-liberty-summit/

Moms for Liberty Is the Tea Party All Over Again

The growing right-wing movement proved its influence at its recent Philadelphia summit. The political press is playing right into its hands.

The Nation
Fox Corporation just settled yet another lawsuit, this one by a former Tucker Carlson producer who says the network forced her to lie in the Dominion defamation case. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/30/business/media/abby-grossberg-fox-news-settlement.html
Fox News to Pay $12 Million to Settle Ex-Producer Abby Grossberg’s Suit

The settlement with a former producer, Abby Grossberg, is the latest development in a series of legal battles involving Fox.

The New York Times
Twitter’s new view limits make it impossible to study disinformation dynamics on that platform even at a micro scale.

@ct_bergstrom Thanks for reporting back from the depths of the 10th circle.

I have yet to meet a single person who thinks Bret Stephens is smart. I suppose they might exist somewhere.

I found hell.

One of the best arguments for fully-socialized healthcare.

"...The doctors Dean surveyed were deeply committed to the medical profession. But many of them were frustrated and unhappy, she sensed, not because they were burned out from working too hard but because the health care system made it so difficult to care for their patients..."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/15/magazine/doctors-moral-crises.html

The Moral Crisis of America’s Doctors

The corporatization of health care has changed the practice of medicine, causing many physicians to feel alienated from their work.

The New York Times