In 2006 Ed Brayton, who is now manager at FreeThought Blogs, complained about the same pattern of behaviour by PZ Myers as PZ has been using to smear me and others eight years later. Thanks to Jan Steen for bringing this to my attention.
Ed said then that PZ had lied about him several times, that PZ’s M.O. is to start personal attacks then pretend to be above it all and clam up when criticised, and that PZ seeks to demean and destroy enemies not caring whether his attacks are rational and justified.
(As an aside, while some people are comfortable accusing others of lying, I prefer to instead say that somebody has said something that is untrue, as I do not know whether they have knowingly said something untrue, which would be lying.)
Ed also said, and remember, this was eight years ago: “It simply has to do with the fact – yes, it’s a fact – that PZ has a long history of this behavior that far too many people have just rolled their eyes at and excused it away because “oh that’s just the way he is”.
Ed added that when PZ behaves like this towards him, Ed gets numerous private emails from mutual colleagues that say, in essence, “Look, we all know PZ is a jerk, he’s always been a jerk, but that’s just the way he is. You can’t let him provoke you like that.”
That was in 2006, long before PZ’s smears and misrepresentations about Richard Dawkins and other atheists that caused me to criticise his behaviour, and PZ’s subsequent smears falsely alleging that I defend, provide a haven for, and support rapists.
The significance of this today
I am pleased to see that Ed was aware of PZ’s behaviour before I was even aware of PZ.
I hope that Ed will take this into account when he gets to read and reply to my emails of the past three weeks, in which I ask for details of how to make a complaint about PZ to the FreeThought Blogs Executive Committee.
When Ed recently got complaints about another FreeThought Blogger plagiarising, he said that his initial response, given his affinity for the blogger and the source of the accusations, was to dismiss it as much ado about nothing. Then Ed got an email from Hemant Mehta, someone he holds in high esteem and considers a friend, and Hemant told Ed that he’d been looking into the evidence and found a powerful case for plagiarism.
It may be possible that when Ed gets a complaint about PZ Myers, his initial reaction might be similar. If this is the case, I hope that he remembers his own experience at the hands of PZ, and the emails that he got from mutual colleagues about PZ, and gives those the same weight as he did to Hemant’s email about Avicenna.
I hope that Ed then chooses to investigate my complaints about PZ with the vigour and integrity that he would have liked his own complaints about PZ to be addressed eight years ago, if there had been a forum then to address them. There is such a forum now – the Executive Committee of FreeThought Blogs.
FreeThought Blogs recently hosted an online conference titled FtB Conscience, with the strapline “Atheism with a conscience”. This is an opportunity for Ed and the Executive Committee to show that they can put the principles of justice into practice in the areas that they control.
Quotes from Ed Brayton about PZ
Here are some relevant quotes from Ed Brayton in 2006.
Unfortunately, you can also find several examples of PZ Myers flat out lying about what I’ve said and done, which is hardly a surprise given his past behavior toward me.
To PZ, who is crazed in his obsession to insult and demean me with his lies, reality takes a bizarre turn when entering his mind.
No Gretchen, [PZ] is not just assuming that I disbelieve Dawkins’ retraction, he’s lying – again – when he says that I haven’t accepted it. In this comment I explicitly say that I do…
PZ, you really are just about the biggest asshole I have ever known… You’re a liar, PZ, and a first class, double-barrelled, fully automatic asshole.
Again, for any sane, rational person that would be the end of it. Which explains quite well why you won’t let it end now, PZ.
Nor am I at all alone in this judgment, I might add. PZ is often treated the way Manny Ramirez is treated by Boston Red Sox fans, who often can be heard saying “that’s just Manny being Manny.”
When he goes off on a completely unjustified attack on me like that… as he has several times in the past, I get numerous private emails from our mutual colleagues that say, in essence, “Look, we all know PZ is a jerk, he’s always been a jerk, but that’s just the way he is. You can’t let him provoke you like that.” Well, to be honest, I’m just not built that way.
You don’t have a clue about PZ’s “M.O.”. His MO is to start the personal attacks and then pretend to be above it all when they’re returned and he clams up. This isn’t the first time it’s happened and I doubt it will be the last. I’ve had this behavior aimed at me multiple times and I’m simply not going to play the passive victim.
As for the alleged childishness of “third party insults”, it had nothing to do with insults at all. It simply has to do with the fact – yes, it’s a fact – that PZ has a long history of this behavior that far too many people have just rolled their eyes at and excused it away because “oh that’s just the way he is”. Well screw that. The way he is isn’t acceptable to me, and when he aims that behavior at me he’s gonna get it blown right back at him.
PZ, on the other hand, seems to think that if it makes the other side look bad, then facts be damned, start firing; he seems completely unaware of the fact that doing so undermines our credibility when we do, as we usually do, have the evidence on our side
“Brayton loathes atheists, and would like to see them silenced.” Yeah, that’s perhaps the most ridiculous lie of all. I have written volumes on this blog defending atheists against the accusations of (mostly fundamentalist) Christians, and even more volumes defending free speech for absolutely everyone. The notion that I, of all people, wants to see atheists silenced is too ridiculous for words.
It should be clear right now that PZ has reached the point of being absolutely crazed in his antipathy to me and he has thrown all reason to the wind. This is what those with an extremist mentality do, they identify their enemies and seek to demean them and destroy them, not caring whether their attacks are rational and justified or not. Ironically, that’s the same behavior he no doubt finds appalling when done by the Jerry Falwell crowd.
Context
You can also read at that link the context of Ed’s criticism of PZ. Part of it is that Ed had criticised Richard Dawkins for signing a petition about religious education that Richard later withdrew his signature from, and PZ was accusing Ed of being unfair to Richard.
This is of course ironic, given that PZ’s recent attack on Richard (suggesting that Richard has developed a callous indifference to the sexual abuse of children) was one of the reasons that I had been asking PZ to behave more reasonably.
Ed also said that PZ had criticised him for allegedly being hesitant to call out creationists, and for allegedly taking the position that atheists should not advocate atheism.
In responding to Ed’s criticism, PZ said: “He’s an unprincipled libertarian thug; you can all stop trying to persuade me otherwise now. I’m done with him.”
Ironically, PZ also said, responding to somebody else: “You left out the part where Brayton used it as an opportunity to take another potshot at the atheists he despises, and still hasn’t bothered to retract his slander. But that’s OK… you can give him a free pass if you want. I won’t.”
But the detail of this issue is secondary to its confirmation that Ed – and the mutual colleagues who emailed him – were aware as far back as 2006 of the pattern of behaviour by PZ that he is still displaying today, and which he still refuses to apologise for and change.
In responding to Ed’s criticism, PZ said: “He’s an unprincipled libertarian thug; you can all stop trying to persuade me otherwise now. I’m done with him.
The insinuation that criticism implies violent intent (‘thug’) is typical of modern US campus politics and it’s demand for ‘safe spaces’
Sounds like you should hire Mr Mehta as your counsel in this case! Unless we are to understand that his involvement was a mere excuse for the preceding convenient (and profitable) course of ignoring the mounting evidence for Avicenna’s dishonesty.
I assume it would be of value to try to understand why Mr Brayton appears to have changed his mind about P.Z.Myers, and to what extent he was swayed by finances?
So.. basically, Ed Brayton is saying that PZ Myers always was an a’hole?
Sounds about right.
Was Ed’s place a haven for rapist, harassers, and misogynists, then? You could dismiss whatever was written there, because it called the Peezus out over his unwarranted attacks?
Come on, Ed, we’d love to know your ethical reasoning. I’m ready for a good laugh.
Wow. Reading that I find myself very curious as to how Myers and Brayton managed to end up as FtB pals. Must have been a major making-up session there.
@Jack Rawlinson:
$$$
@Michael,
Happy to help.
It will be interesting to see how the usual suspects and their apologists are going to reason this away.
“You shouldn’t take it literally.”
“Just a little friendly banter.”
I agree with Guestus and extend the idea to why Ed Brayton would quickly toss Avicenna from FtB while ignoring Michael Nugent’s complaints about PZ Myers. Avicenna plagiarized from people and organizations that sue (and win), so he was a direct, monetary threat to Ed Brayton. PZ Myers, in contrast, has merely defamed some individuals (and has “survived” previous threats of lawsuit for the same), probably increasing the traffic on Ed Brayton’s network at the same time.
So you’re saying the endresult is topbilling at freefromthoughtblogs in a few years?
All you need to do is give your integrity (and your lunch)and have a hentai-tentacle kissandmakeup session with PZ Myers.
Joking aside, you are doing fine work here Michael – stay at it.
All you need to do is give your integrity (and your lunch)and have a hentai-tentacle kissandmakeup session with PZ Myers.
Giving up his lunch?
Quote fail….
Giving up his lunch and integrity…
This eating and posting is not a good idea. But it did make my name look more gaelic.
The FtB conference – atheism with a conscience. How very apt in regards this whole issue of PZ Myers obnoxious, slanderous and bullying behavior.
Some of the talks included:
Make your code of conduct work for you
The description was as follows:
**Did you know codes of conduct cover more than sexual harassment? Did you know they can shape your event in many positive ways? Tune in and find out how to create the code of conduct that works for you, your organization, your event, and your volunteers.**
Did any of the FtB committee watch the talk to see how it might apply to their organization?
The “they´re only doing it for the $$$” myth is impossible to debunk because too many morons want it to be true, so I´ll just join:
Michael, you are clearly just being a rage blogger who wants to make some quick $$$ because no one gives a damn about your posts other than the “Peezus is a poopy head, here´s why ” ones.
People tend to aggregate on controversial posts. It’s human nature.
What’s your point Arakes?
And you will notice that, Adblock or not, there’s nothing here to pump up revenue. Not like the popups, constant ads at FTB.
Stop bullshitting for a while. It will do you good.
Oh yeah, look at all these ads Michael has to cash in on PZ’s harassment. With that and his patreon and donate button he must be raking it in.
Oh wait….
Perhaps Michael is sick of the hyperbolic accusations that fly from PZ and his commentariat and have poisoned the A/S community to such an extent that it resembles a dysfunctional Jerry Springer family.
Michael is facilitating the intervention we need.
Do you see any ads here, Arakes?
This is really quite simple:
Ed used to despise PZ, the most popular blogger on Scienceblogs. Ed declared PZ the biggest asshole he’d ever known, a conscious teller of untruths with a history of viciousness.
Then Ed went into business with PZ by founding FTB with him. FTB is an ad-supported blog network. Pharyngula traffic = money for Ed.
Ed no longer condemns PZ’s behavior or calls him a teller of untruths or the biggest asshole he’s ever met. What’s changed between 2006 and now, Arakes?
One thing that’s changed is that Ed and PZ are now business partners, and that Pharyngula’s popularity now at least indirectly benefits Ed financially—and I’d guess directly, as well.
That by itself doesn’t mean that Ed’s motivation is necessarily money. But anyone can see that it’s a distinct possibility that fits the evidence quite nicely. Your pointing the finger back at Nugent is a false equivalence, unless you can point to some analogous evidence that supports the charge. Which you can’t.
Guestus Aurelius @18,
The available information from current and former FTBloggers is that advertising revenue is divided in proportion to hit rates. I suspect that a certain percentage is taken off the top to cover administrative costs, which is reasonable. I further suspect that Ed Brayton gets compensated for his administrative duties out of that percentage, which again is not unreasonable.
I doubt the amount of revenue is enough to cover living expenses, even in Morris. Brayton working with someone as unethical and lacking in integrity as Myers in exchange for cash doesn’t surprise me. What does surprise me is how little cash it apparently takes.
Guestus Aurelius
It´s rather pointless to correct this because you´ll repeat this nonsense anyway but still: Pharyngula traffic is actually money for PZ, the ad revenue is split up based on how much traffic each blog attracts. This is not controversial – PZ and Ed said so and no blogger who has left FtB, including the ones that left on hostile terms, disputes them on this.
Arakes :
Michael Nugent a rage blogger? I give up, is he a rage blogger or a sea lion? Clue, only one out of Myers and Nugent calls people kooks,loons,douchebags and wants to fuck them “into the ground”. The one in question, I know it’s so difficult to tell which one, also fantasises about stabbing and flensing.
Typical Pharyngulite guff. Aratina nipped on over to the Pit yesterday to do some blase rationalising for the SJW doxxers. Just a bit of “razzing” back at Skep Tickle by PZ and we get so upset about it. It’s all so tiresome you know. Just stop poking fun at PZ and he won’t try and get your career compromised.
jimthepleb
No. Actually, Michael has yet to understand that there is no “we”.
@Arakes:
Am I to presume, then, that you didn’t read my whole comment? I’m thinking especially of this part, just two paragraphs below the one you quoted:
My point stands. Ed benefits financially from his business relationship with PZ. Before he benefited financially from Pharyngula, he openly despised PZ for behavior that continues. Now that he benefits financially from Pharyngula, he stays mum about PZ’s behavior. This isn’t a smoking gun, but it’s circumstantial evidence, of which you have none in support of your “tu quoque” against Michael Nugent.
Because you say so! No wait… That´s actually not how this works – you might want to try showing how Pharyngula´s popularity benefits Ed financially, indirectly and / or directly. It is completely uncontroversial that the revenue is split up proportionally based on how much traffic each blog attracts, so you are flat out wrong on the “I’d guess directly, as well”. That leaves us the “indirectly” part, for example through Pharyngula directing traffic to Ed´s blog, but I have a hard time thinking of more than two occasions where PZ has been linking to Ed´s blog (feel free to look up all of them and calculate how often PZ links to Ed´s blog per annum, it´s not as if you had anything better to do anyway). So, how exactly does Ed benefit financially from having PZ on board?
Arakes:
We’ll decide if there’s a “we”, thanks. We’ve decided that there is, and we’ve had enough of disingenuous, smearing, alternating dictionary bloviators like Myers and their point-dodging, apologists.
(not really a “tu quoque,” since Michael Nugent didn’t actually make the argument in the first place; maybe an “ille quoque”?)
Gerhard
Well, it´s cute that you think you can just declare someone to be a part of your group and demand their attention, but that´s actually not how it works – if someone wants nothing to do with you, you have to suck it up, no matter how desperately you crave their attention.
Ed benefits by FTB not keeling over through lack of interest. Are you really suggesting that attracting people to FTB does not expose all the bloggers to more traffic? You think people don’t drop in to view the drama and then peruse other blogs on the site? You don’t think that raising the FTB profile and improving the ranking affects all bloggers?
Who pays the operating costs and where does that money come from? Does increasing overall traffic increase the profit pot after operating costs?
@Arakes
You’ve convinced me. Pharyngula generates no traffic for the other blogs on FTB, despite the links to the other blogs that are literally always there when you visit the site. For the same reason, internet advertising doesn’t exist—it just doesn’t work!
@Arakes,
That doesn’t mean that all the revenue goes to the bloggers, as you appear to believe. FTB is a business. Businesses have costs. How can you be so sure that FTB could pay its costs if it didn’t have the Pharyngula cash cow? How much of the costs is made up by a salary for Ed Brayton?
You clearly understand nothing about business. But what else can one expect from a Peezus apologist? Such worldly matters only stand in the way of the True Belief.
It seems safe to assume that Ed is just as likely to address PZ’s smears as the Pitters are to delete their hateful photoshops.
@Arakes:
I apologize for the sarcasm.
That said, if you’d like to continue this discussion, I might suggest embracing your cerebrum, rather than trying to circumvent it.
@Damion:
I defy you to provide evidence of photoshops on that forum.
😐
Arakes @27. WTF are you talking about? I can tell if there’s a “we” who are sick of Myers and his ilk by the numbers of people declaring themselves to be part of that group. No declaring on my part required.
You’d almost think that there were political cartoons, parodies, and satires anywhere besides the Pit.
No, it’s just the Pit, and it’s hateful.
Damion attempting to appear morally superior to all, yet again.
Arakes wrote:
Are you really that dense that you don’t understand this? The “we” clearly refers to Michael and the readers that agree with him.
It appears you are trying so hard to find some niggling error to derail the gist of the discussion that it has stopped you from understanding obvious context.
A pathetic attempt at sophistry if there ever was one.
Damion 31
Silly photoshops are not the same as labeling people rapists, sexual assaulters, harassers or harborers of same.
Your “both sides are bad so I’m right” act has already worn thin.
Damion.
Caricatures are equivalent to defamatory statements now? “PZ Myers, atheist blogger who has been caricatured in cartoons”. “Michael Nugent, accused of defending and harbouring rapists”. If you read articles containing those statements would you consider them equally damaging?
A caricature is unmistakeable as such, taken as an opinion and understood to be exaggerated. A defamatory declaration is taken as a factual claim which, to the uninformed, arouses suspicion about the target.
It generates quite a lot of traffic for the small blogs when they get a link from PZ, but that is a short traffic peak (that translates to no more than a few dollars, if they are lucky), which per se doesn´t lead to a bigger set of followers (i.e. people who read the blog regularly instead of clicking on one link to it one time). You don´t make money as a blogger with a traffic peak that lasts 1-3 days, you make money by getting a big group of people that *follows* your blog and read it regularly. Established bloggers with a big readership like Ed and PZ can provide opportunities for small bloggers to attract more followers, but they do not need each other – Ed´s followers won´t magically vanish if he´d kick PZ off the network.
So, you think that this is Ed´s business model:
1. PZ rageblogs and thus attracts new first time readers.
2. First time readers like what they see and stay around to click on all 32 other blogs in the network, including Dispatches from the Culture Wars, because they see all those names in the sidebar.
3. Profit for Ed.
?
Gerhard,
Ah, so this “we” that needs an “intervention” according to jimthepleb doesn´t actually include PZ? Alright then – continue with your intervention 😉
A Bear
My bad! And I absolutely agree! 100%! You do need an intervention. I hope it helps.
Cerebrum, Arakes. Cerebrum.
You’ve got one. Use it.
Part of Ed’s business model is this:
1. Pharyngula, by far the most popular blog on FTB, consistently brings in lots of traffic, old and new visitors alike.
2. Some of that traffic checks out other blogs on FTB (including Ed’s).
Is it Step 1 or Step 2 that you’re having trouble understanding?
Based on what John Loftus says (not exactly a friendly witness when it comes to PZ), this “by far the most popular blog on FTB” earns PZ “over three grand a month” ( http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.de/2012/07/my-response-to-hank-fox-blue-collar.html ). So, if the “by far the most popular blog on FTB” makes three grand – how much do you think does Brayton make per month and how much of that is due to PZ?
I doubt money has much to do with it. He already made his point by ignoring the mails and twitter. Taking this further is confrontative and inconvenient. It would strain a relationship he depends on. Perhaps he knows PZ Myers is unchangeable and it would be for naught. He might believe his faction is under siege and can’t afford to show weakness. He might believe that his own supporters (or of FTB in general) would strongly disapprove of taking action, after all, many have invested in rationalisations already (and I guess Stefanie Zvan, for example, is quite influential). I guess they are more or less friends, or that there are sub-factions as well, with people who would support PZ Myers no matter what, and that makes it difficult (hasn’t the same happened with the larger “movement” in question that was ripped apart by former friends forced to take sides? He probably hasn’t enough to gain compared to potential inconvenience (think behaviorial economics).
Finally, he may see it similar as PZ Myers, and Stephanie Zvan and others. Some thoughts, if they threaten a belief system, are perhaps best ignored. And Ed Brayton isn’t the only one in this “movement” who has invested into a Bizarro Universe where they are the “good people”. Taking you seriously threatens that.
You know, I think that the idea that Brayton reconciled with Peezus with dollar signs in his eyes doesn’t have much going for it, not from the evidence we have seen here anyhow. There are something like five years between Brayton’s article excerpted above and the creation of FTB, and if Ed and the Peez weren’t obviously bosom buddies during that time, animosity wasn’t obvious either. There are posts from Ed referring to PZ that seem to indicate that there was no bad blood then, at least.
It’s more typical that people reconcile before seriously considering that there could be profitable business cooperation between the two than that they reconcile for that purpose alone. Ed and PZ may have come to get along because they agree politically, after all, or perhaps because they wanted to be acceptable to each others’ readers (with probably some financial component there, but bloggers often have other reasons to want readers than just money).
To me it seems just a bit much even to provisionally assume that the reconciliation was due to monetary concerns. To put out a less than savory hypothesis, Ed may simply be no better than Peezus, so only objected to Myers’ smears because they were directed at him. Or not. However, it doesn’t seem to have been any real duress that made him neglect the fact that Peezus smears without any real concern for truth or persons, and there’s no good evidence that it required even the lure of lucre to make Ed disregard PZ’s indecency.
We don’t know that Ed would be decent even without monetary incentives not to be.
@Arakes:
I have no idea how much of Ed’s traffic comes from Pharyngula. Do you?
Ed and PZ co-run FTB, whose biggest attraction is Pharyngula. Ed has good reason to keep PZ happy, even if only a small percentage of his own visitors come directly from Pharyngula. First, they’re business partners. Second, without Pharyngula, FTB would be a wasteland. Pharyngula brings in traffic that generates visitors for other blogs on the site. Some visitors who don’t go directly to Ed’s blog nevertheless might eventually find their way there. Everybody on FTB benefits from Pharyngula, but nobody more so than Ed and PZ. (And all this is assuming that Ed and PZ don’t pocket a percentage of the site’s overall ad revenue, which may or may not be the case.)
So yes, PZ’s presence at FTB means $$$ for Ed. I don’t know how much, and neither do you, but your insistence that it’s negligible is unfounded, and your writing off the possibility that Ed is protecting his own interests is naive—especially in the light of what Ed said about PZ’s behavior in 2006.
You also suggested that money is equally likely a motivation for Michael Nugent’s posts about PZ as it is for Ed’s refusal to condemn PZ’s behavior these days. Again: do you see any ads on this site?
Arakes.
I don’t think one can assume that money is at the root of Ed’s blind eye. But then the facts are consistent with that and your arguments otherwise don’t make sense. More money is better than less money, more popularity is better than less. Ed Brayton is a partner in the whole enterprise with PZ, not just a blogger. Maybe the paltry amounts are the difference between packing it in and staying afloat. They are clearly trying to monetise the site and losing the biggest traffic draw would drop their visibility a lot. It’s not about how much, it’s about going up or going down. Losing popularity is also a prestige issue.
Of course new traffic is going to check out other blogs on the site. They are presumably mostly the target demographic for those blogs.
@Glen:
I’d agree. I see no reason to think that PZ and Ed patched things up with money in mind.
But anyone can see that from Ed’s perspective today, it wouldn’t be good business to get on PZ’s bad side.
Being “ethically consistent” was a no-brainer in the Avicenna affair. Avicenna was a small fish, and the plagiarism put Ed and PZ in a vulnerable position legally/financially. There were no benefits to keeping Avicenna on board.
But PZ’s the big fish. If Ed were to condemn PZ’s behavior now, the only benefit would be being able to say that he’s being “ethically consistent.”
Guestus Aurelius
So what kind of $$$ are we talking about here? 100$? 50$? 10$? 1$?
Again, if the “by far [] most popular blog on FTB” (your words) makes three grand, then this conversely means that Brayton´s blog makes much less than three grand. So, if Ed´s pageviews are due to x) his regular followers, y) links and search engines and z) first time visitors (mostly attracted by PZ) who click on all 32 links in the FtB sidebar, the relevant fraction would be z / (x+y). And it is this fraction of “much less than three grand” that we are talking about here.
Sounds like big money!
I see a lot of “ifs” there, Arakes.
And considering that I’ve only indicated that $$$ is a plausible motivation here, you’re going to an awful lot of speculative trouble to dismiss the possibility.
@Gerhard #21
“Typical Pharyngulite guff. Aratina nipped on over to the Pit yesterday to do some blase rationalising for the SJW doxxers. Just a bit of “razzing” back at Skep Tickle by PZ and we get so upset about it. It’s all so tiresome you know. ”
It was something to consider in all the blame laying.
I have to admit that I more or less side with the money is not the important issue side of the Brayton Hypothesis.
Until we know, if we ever do, what sort of dollars and cents are in play, it strikes me as a rather moot argument.
Personally, I think the more relevant issue is Brayton’s apparent lack of ethical grounding, which I think is shown in a variety of ways, including his wholesale banning of and deletion of Pit people and Pit People’s comments — in at least one case, said deletion and banning was based solely upon the fact that the commentor in question criticised PZ in comments on FTB blogs other than Brayton’s blog!
Aratina Cage @53,
You mean blaming Myers for responding to a joke that he didn’t even know about for several months with exposure of a pseudonymous commenter’s name and employer, combined with encouraging his flock to contact said employer? That blame?
Please, explain exactly how that could be considered an acceptable response.
Whoops!
Should have read as:
@Aratina.
I don’t think a reasonable person can consider messing with the work of a medical consultant to be razzing, if that is what you are getting at. The blame laying is quite appropriate.
It’s funny, is it not, how many people have accused PZ Myers over the years of the same behaviour as he is displaying now and yet the penny still doesn’t drop for some. The people defending him are the same people who will crucify the outgroup for an uncharitable interpretation with no acceptance of a clarification. In a nutshell, people Myers attacks get no consideration of their response, anyone his tribe select for punishment for criticising them must forever display obeisance and grovel. The in group’s emotions and feelings must be respected and deferred to, the outgroup are denied that or any compassion.
I have to say of all the antics of FTB, the craven cowardice, the immorality of Ed Brayton remaining silent when he knew the truth about PZ by suffering the same treatment from him strikes me as the worse behavior of the FTBullies that I have read about.
Was it for money or not? If PZ and Ed were not in business as co-bloggers, would Ed have remained silent in defense of Mick or any of the others who suffered the exact same treatment as Ed had suffered?
Oh, yes, the Libertarian Thug thing.
Holding economic views associated with being a Libertarian and/or Conservative automatically qualifies you as ‘a bad person’ in Myers world view. Before I got sick and tired of his increasingly petty and juvenile behavior I noted that he would routinely ban self-professed fiscal libertarians and fiscal conservatives from his blog for no more reason than being fiscal libertarians or fiscal conservatives.
Many of those people were fellow atheists and, on social issues, were often as progressive as Myers. But because they had different views than Myers hypocritical views on economics, they were just ‘the worst sort of people.’
Bottom-line is, Paul has become both his father and grandfather. Two men he completely despised, for their self-righteous bullying behavior, when they were still alive, yet whose behavior he closely emulates.
The fruit does not fall far from the tree. No sir, it does not.
Glen Davidson January 27, 2015 at 5:01 pm wrote:
Was Ed’s place a haven for rapist, harassers, and misogynists, then? You could dismiss whatever was written there, because it called the Peezus out over his unwarranted attacks?
Funny thing is, I used to post at Pharyngula and at Ed Brayton’s blog. Quite frequently. But, in the end, I really found both of them to be complete jerks, along with the audiences they were cultivating, and stopped reading what they had to say or participating in their juvenile attacks on others.
In short, I found them to be wanting. Yet they label me a ‘rapist’ and insinuate I’m morally defective. Even though I find myself to be far more moral, over-all, than either one of them or their little crew of abusive, unthinking sycophants.
I can’t see for Brayton how it is anything than about the money. They have pop-up ads for goodness sake and there is no filtering on the adds they show. Brayton’s Blog is a constant stream of wingnut/fundamentalist Christian says something stupid. As for sharing the cash – do we know that PZ/Brayton don’t take anything off the top for being owners of the site? There are ad hits when you hit the FTB main page, who gets those?
Even though the site has gone through at least 3 design iterations we can see that no money was spent on design.
Arakes January 27, 2015 at 6:34 pm
The “they´re only doing it for the $$$” myth is impossible to debunk because too many morons want it to be true, so I´ll just join:
Michael, you are clearly just being a rage blogger who wants to make some quick $$$ because no one gives a damn about your posts other than the “Peezus is a poopy head, here´s why ” ones.
See, this the dumb stuff I was talking about (in my still in moderation post where I talk about leaving Pharyngula, Brayton, etc.)
There are NO ADDS here for click baiting. Michael, at no point, is being in-civil.
Yet we get the Tu Quoque fallacy, one of the most common fallacies that comes out in the defense of Myers:
Tu quoque (/tuːˈkwoʊkwiː/;[1] Latin for “you, too” or “you, also”) or the appeal to hypocrisy is an informal logical fallacy that intends to discredit the opponent’s position by asserting the opponent’s failure to act consistently in accordance with that position. It attempts to show that a criticism or objection applies equally to the person making it.
Michael has no economic interest associated with his blogging, unlike Myers at FTB which has turned that site into a click-bait fest. Further, Michael has been nothing but civil in attempting to receive an apology for a baseless slur. An apology truly owed to him by one of the most vile and unsympathetic trolls in the atheist/skeptic community.
I would like to amend my post at 58 above.
I had been under the impression that “craven” carried with it an implication of “greed for money”, but further research indicates it only means cowardice.
While I do mean to ascribe to Ed Brayton the attribute of cowardly, I see no reason to describe his behavior as “cowardly cowardice” when “greedy cowardice” would be more suitable.
Thank you
I’d just like to reiterate that my argument in this thread has never been “It’s all about the money.”
My first comment was indeed simply “$$$,” but almost immediately I explained that it’s just one plausible motivation. That’s been my position consistently.
Arakes has argued that it’s not plausible, that Pharyngula only generates negligible money for FTB co-owner Ed and the other FTB bloggers, and that it’s equally likely that Ed and Michael are motivated by money in their recent response (or non-response) to PZ’s behavior. Most of my comments were contradicting those claims. None of my comments were “Ed would condemn PZ’s behavior if it weren’t for the money.”
Gerhard January 27, 2015 at 8:58 pm
Damion.
Caricatures are equivalent to defamatory statements now? “PZ Myers, atheist blogger who has been caricatured in cartoons”. “Michael Nugent, accused of defending and harbouring rapists”. If you read articles containing those statements would you consider them equally damaging?
A caricature is unmistakeable as such, taken as an opinion and understood to be exaggerated. A defamatory declaration is taken as a factual claim which, to the uninformed, arouses suspicion about the target.
You know Damion doesn’t care that they’re different. right?
He’s just a PZ Mini-Me with no A/S community relevance and a coward who moderates and CHANGES comments people make on his blog and hides on twitter, save for the odd times he unblocks people to attack them then re-privatizes his twitter feed to prevent any sort of factual rebuttal being seen by his followers.
In some ways he worse than Myers, but he’s so small potatoes that he doesn’t count.
I believe
Ed Brayton considers himself a good guy
Ed Brayton considers himself a defender of what is right
Ed Brayton considers himself a defender of the abused
Ed Brayton’s experience lead him to understand as few others do the unfairness and maliciousness of PZ’s attacks.
And so I believe
there must be a very powerful force acting on Ed to keep him from condemning PZ now.
Occam’s Razor tells me that force is money.
I take some offense at you folks who think Brayton would violate all his principles on anything less.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/advertise-on-freethoughtblogs/
> “Advertise on Freethoughtblogs
If you’d like to achieve 150,000 ad impressions per day by advertising on Freethought Blogs, please email Ed Brayton.”
So you tell me how PZ’s traffic helps Ed Brayton. Why? Maybe it’s by increasing CPI (cost per impression) across the entire network?
Nah….
[meta]
A listing of the most recent posts on the subject in chronological order helps establish context:
PZ Myers has failed five times to justify his smear that I am defending and providing a haven for rapists on my blog
Thank you to Latsot for apologising for alleging that I defend rapists. PZ Myers, can you please also apologise?
My Twitter conversation today with Latsot, who like PZ Myers has falsely accused me of defending rapists
Anatomy of a smear – how PZ Myers concocted a new smear when challenged about his previous smears
Why Stephanie Zvan’s defence of PZ Myers’ ‘haven for rapists’ smear is not reasonable based on the evidence
Yet more misrepresentations in PZ Myers’ post refusing to withdraw or apologise for his smear
Chronology of misrepresentations and smears in the atheist movement by PZ Myers and others
PZ Myers updates his story about the threatened false rape allegation made against him
Is PZ Myers sexist? Am I fascist with a seedy past? It depends on whether you ask Charitable Theo or Uncharitable Theo.
The pattern continues – like PZ Myers’ smear about rapists, Theo fails to apologise for his smear about fascism
The hurtful and harmful smears of PZ Myers, “The Happy Atheist”
PZ Myers publicly hates and despises people, not merely their ideas or behaviour
PZ Myers’ new defamatory smear that I support rapists
My second email to FreeThought Blogs about their complaints procedure regarding PZ Myers
The violent rhetoric of Pope Francis and PZ Myers
My third email to FreeThought Blogs about their complaints procedure regarding PZ Myers
FreeThought Blogs manager Ed Brayton made similar complaints about PZ Myers’ pattern of behaviour
MosesZD:
It is true that the satisfaction gained from gaining a coterie is not a monetary consideration.
So, John Morales, are you ruling out the possibility that Michael Nugent is doing what he’s doing out of a genuine sense of principle? I certainly haven’t ruled that out in regards to Ed Brayton.
Guestus Aurelius, what makes you imagine I might be ruling such a possibility out? The two things are not exclusive.
But I’m happy to give you my personal opinion: I really think Michael feels a grievance and is seeking to redress it, in part via such posts as these.
Shermertron @37
“Your “both sides are bad so I’m right” act has already worn thin.”
It’s not an act, and it is not as if I’m remotely alone in pointing out the hateful material aggregated at the Pit. Here is some background reading for you:
http://www.michaelnugent.com/2013/03/03/examples-of-nasty-pushback-against-some-feminists-on-the-internet/
http://www.michaelnugent.com/2013/03/07/slymepit-members-struggle-with-the-ethics-of-removing-photoshopped-naked-image/
Your “satisfaction gained from gaining a coterie” is what prompted me to wonder and ask.
For whoever it was complaining about editing comments, enjoy:
http://slymepit.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=59229#p59229
[meta]
Guestus Aurelius @71, since you haven’t disputed me, I take it you accept there is no dichotomy there, and thus that your wonder lacked warrant.
BTW, were you around during Michael’s initial investigation of the Slymepit, and his subsequent endeavour to mediate a rapprochement?
(I was)
I agree with you, John Morales, that there’s no dichotomy there.
I don’t think my wonder was unwarranted.
I lurked but not carefully during Michael’s initial investigation of the Slymepit.
@Patrick #55
I’ll try blockquotes. Can’t remember if I have the tag right here.
Yes. A couple of people on the pit did an excellent job of lampooning my stuff about how you don’t poke a bear, but in the end, the person who made that joke might have considered that it was mean-spirited in what is known as a place that is decidedly mean-spirited toward PZ and could result in a measure of retaliation.
@Gerhard #57
Really? Why not? You know what they say, “It’s all fun and games until someone gets a broken nose.”
I actually touched on all of the stuff that is being brought up from almost a decade ago before when I said that PZ is battle hardened from being in plenty of online flamewars. Of course the party who gets stung by his words laments this, they always have as we see. I do have compassion for whoever takes a barb from him, even when he stings them so well that one has to laugh about it (not the case with regard to the blog host here or when he and Ed were fighting, more like with Chopra and Ham). I guess you could say he often chooses compassionate principles over compassion for opponents, which is one of the reasons so many find it hard to level with him when they get into it with him. That’s why I’ve tried to show everyone here what I think the tweet actually meant and why you aren’t going to get him backing down from it since it was based on compassionate principles (for someone he takes to be a victim of rape).
Ah, thank you, Guestus. Did you also notice the change in the baseline comment-count from the routine single digits to two or even three digits in response to a certain category of posts which germinated during that time period?
(I did)
@John Morales:
Is your point that it’s plausible that popularity is a motivation for Michael Nugent?
Guestus, do you rule that out?
Damion Reinhardt #31
It seems safe to assume that Ed is just as likely to address PZ’s smears as the Pitters are to delete their hateful photoshops.
Who are you manipulating here Damion and for what purpose (other than to smear the ‘pit some more)? After your recent twitter disinformation carpet bombing re: doxxing, you need to be reminded of your own actions at the ‘pit offering to doxx Aratina and hoping to entrap some shmuck –
http://i.imgur.com/nzKXbef.png
You should just drop the facade and pretences of being morally and intellectually superior to those you spit at from your confected “moral” highground – you’re neither, you have soiled yourself once too often and the plebs now know it – and go to peezee and ask him for a blog at FTB. It really is where you belong.
quote fail – Damion #31: “It seems safe to assume that Ed is just as likely to address PZ’s smears as the Pitters are to delete their hateful photoshops.”
No, I don’t rule that out, John Morales. But I do see it as another false equivalence, if you’re trying to compare it to the material interest that Ed Brayton undeniably has in keeping FTB’s cash cow happy. (Which, again, doesn’t mean that Brayton would condemn PZ’s behavior if he had nothing to lose by doing so, even though that’s exactly what he did back in 2006, and in far harsher terms than Nugent has over the past few months.)
Aratina Cage @75,
I don’t read the Slymepit (because of the volume not the content). Are you claiming that Myers encouraging his flock to attack Skeptickle’s real life job is an appropriate level of retaliation for making a joke on a relatively obscure site several months before?
Please explain your moral calculus on that one.
Guestus Aurelius @81:
Satisfaction is satisfaction, whatever its source.
Nor was I making such an attempt at comparison; I merely noted the limited domain of MosesZD’s claim — money is not the only metric.
So, it seems Ed Brayton is receiving the email complaints, and deliberately ignoring them. What’s more, he is forwarding them to the likes of Stephanie Zvan. What a way to deal with complaints! What kind of amateurish outfit is Ed presiding over.
That, of course, means that Stephanie Zvan also trivializes rape. Remember, she also attempted to defend the fact that a child rapist has a safe forum at Pharyngula and other FTB sites.
Franc,
Lovely to hear from you, in a moderated comment section no less.
How many of these are yours?
http://www.michaelnugent.com/2013/03/03/examples-of-nasty-pushback-against-some-feminists-on-the-internet/
Are you still threatening to publish Aratina’s phone number, Damion?
Nobody at the Pit wants it.
Damion offering to dox Aratina’s personal details can be found here:
http://slymepit.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=429&p=252525&hilit=d4m10n#p252525
A chorus of Pitters telling him to fuck off followed.
@John Morales:
Deepity?
Guestus, tautology.
There’s only two reasons to offer up somebody’s phone number: either you want someone to harass them or you want the people you gave the number to to get the blame if they get harassed.
Either way, it’s shitty behaviour.
Guestus, tautology.
No, repetition. Tautology would involve rephrasing it.
PZ has snarkily introduced a new service on FtB:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/01/27/our-complaints-department/
No mention about whether you’re guaranteed a reply though.
Shatterface:
More comprehensively, a tautology followed by a redundancy.
(Because what is true universally is true in particular; so, not quite a pleonasm)
Hunt @92, huh.
Clearly, Michael’s quest for vindication is having an effect.
More comprehensively, a tautology followed by a redundancy.
More like palilalia, ah say, palilalia.
Damion, you have no room for moralizing. Your sad and desperate attempts at doxxing by proxy are beneath contempt. Your children will be reading your words someday; you should look to your own morality and fix what is broken before you make yourself even worse.
Shatterface @96:
Whatever it is more like in your estimation, nonetheless I note you don’t dispute my claim about what it is.
Damion, you have no room for moralizing. Your sad and desperate attempts at doxxing by proxy are beneath contempt.
He’d made an earlier attempt to incite the Pit to dox Ogvorbis, Pharyngula’s resident self-confessed rapist.
His reasoning was that if the Pit didn’t dox Oggie and he reoffended the Pit would be responsible. Evidently Damion forgot he’s got a blog of some kind himself, even if nobody reads it, and he can dox whoever he wants over there and nobody would ever know.
The difference between him and Myers is that Myers is open about doxxing and doesn’t try to get others to do it for him.
Shatterface, perhaps you imagine this is either on-topic or accurate:
Strictly, a self-professed rapist-as-a-raped-child who strongly advocated in favour of victims and against rape culture and rapists.
—
Michael, I think that not just I will take notice when you tacitly accept this sort of allegation.
Isn’t it astonishing? I never quite understood this and nobody from the (US) “Atheist-Skeptics Movement Establishment” (and their defenders, such as Damion Reinhardt) could explain this to me.
How come that serious allegations which are posted on well-read blogs and by opinion leaders of repute and which are ruinous to someone’s reputation are seen as less severe than expressions that are satirical, mocking, derogatory, irreverent and published on an obscure forum, or (to an even lesser degree) disseminated on social media by random people with few followers.
The latter are opinions no matter how negative, and as such belong, by default, into a different class of speech than attempts to establish (false) facts that are damaging to someone’s reputation. And it’s not that such expressions also come from fans and followers of these opinion leaders, in addition to the serious allegations. That should be easy. Why isn’t it? A long time ago (nearly two years) I wrote alrady about about that, and even then it wasn’t exactly rocket science.
How do we evaluate good and bad and hurtful statements? (Comment 296, March 30, 2013). That was around the time when there were attempts for a dialogue (which Ms Zvan agreed to, yet which was generally met with strong disapproval on the FTB side).
I find this astonishing. I have the strong impression that for American atheists, this is upside down and inside out for some strange reason. I never understood this. Are there some assumptions I haven’t taken into account? I am genuinely puzzled why it’s always this Slymepit-Whataboutery. What’s even the relevance? Whatbout the many YouTube channels and their comment sections? Whatabout the comment sections on many blogs where nobody gives a hoot what nasty things are written there (and there is typically a host in charge who does moderate)? They aren’t exactly nice to various people either, nor is the nastiness restricted to people outside of the “movement”.
Aneris @101:
Such emphases!
If by serious allegations you mean that to which Michael objects, by well-read blogs you mean Pharyngula, then by ruinous to someone’s reputation either has ruined Michael’s reputation (because to be ruinous is to cause ruin).
(I hereby spare you my apperception of the referent of expressions that are satirical, mocking, derogatory, irreverent and published on an obscure forum, or (to an even lesser degree) disseminated on social media by random people with few followers)
That was borked. I meant that such expressions (irreverent, mocking etc) also come from fans and followers of opinion leaders (who smear), in addition to the serious allegations.
I have a strong suspicion where this odd whataboutery comes from. In a nutshell, blogs have a “main function” where some author post articles of many types. When you are however presented with a sea of comments and from many different people, such as in a forum, then you can train your senses to types of comments that “stand out” by some criteria via tunneling: classic selective perception, confirmation bias, and congruence biases can take over. That would however mean that American atheists and skeptics are a tad over-enthusiastic with applying the label “skeptic” or “critical thinker” to themselves.
Given the context, John Morales, I’m going with trollish deepity with a dash of equivocation.
Here is the context:
Arakes (14):
MosesZD responds (62):
Note that MosesZD has pointed out that Arakes’s “tu quoque” was a false equivalence.
Then you chime in, in reply to MosesZD (68):
And after an exchange between you and me, you write (83):
It seems to me you want to have it both ways:
On the one hand, you clearly are comparing Nugent’s and Brayton’s possible ulterior motives—popularity and money, respectively—with the rationale that popularity and money are both potential sources of satisfaction. And since your comment at 68 was a thinly veiled rebuttal to MosesZD’s point that Arakes had made a false equivalence, the trollish implication of your comparison is that Nugent’s and Brayton’s possible ulterior motives don’t just belong to the same abstract category (i.e., they’re both potential sources of satisfaction), but are actually in the same ballpark in terms of relevance and likelihood. After all, if you weren’t insinuating any of that, then your retort to MosesZD was rather meaningless, wasn’t it?
On the other hand, when I questioned you about it, you retreated to the position that, yes, your retort to MosesZD was, in fact, devoid of content, and that you didn’t mean to imply anything beyond the literal words you wrote (à la “Just sayin’!”). It wasn’t a comparison, you say, and if any of us got the impression that it was, then we were simply misreading you. But again, the giveaway is that an innocuous reading renders your point pointless.
So when you say “satisfaction is satisfaction, whatever it’s source,” and follow it up immediately with “Nor was I making such a comparison,” I smell a deepity. Trivially true if “satisfaction” is read as an abstract category, but patently false in the more substantial “deep” sense signaled by the context of your comments—i.e., satisfaction in practice operates by degree, so different potential sources of satisfaction (e.g., Nugent increasing his popularity by “sea-lioning” PZ Myers in response to being smeared as a defender and supporter of rapists, and Brayton turning a blind eye to the unethical behavior of his business partner and cash cow) differ in ways that matter.
The wonders of sophistry, eh?
As I said, trollish deepity with a dash of equivocation.
Has any defender of Myers, Brayton, etc actually addressed what Nugent had to say? Or did they quibble with the wording, the amount of damage (as they saw it) or simply dismiss it with a few short obfusticating words? If they have, would somebody kindly point to it? Thank you.
Guestus:
I am noting that such possibilities do exist — I noted the comparison made was by MosesZD was restricted to monetary concerns, but made no comparison of my own.
You imagine I have denied I intended to imply that which you think I implied, though it was devoid of content?
Heh.
MadMike @105,
I’d like to see that, too.
It occurs to me that the combination of verbosity and vacuity that exemplifies the typical Myers apologist in these threads is an evolved behavior. As the Phlock(tm) become ever more voracious, clear exposition becomes a maladaptive trait. In order to avoid being the next target, plausible deniability must be maintained. In the warm little pond of Pharyngula, the ability to say “Oh, you misunderstood me, and probably deliberately, you misogynist rape enabler!” to another commenter is the equivalent of sharper teeth and thicker hide.
Of course when these hothouse carnivorous flowers venture out of Myers’ greenhouse their content-free bloviation doesn’t fare as well. The environment matters, bitches.
John Morales @106,
You should really take that sentence out behind the barn and put it out of its misery.
Patrick @108, I think it is not its misery, but yours to which you react.
Notwithstanding your advocated treatment of pets, a perceived implication implies at least some content, no?
@John Morales:
I think my “Just sayin’!” is actually a pretty close translation of your “I merely noted the limited domain of MosesZD’s claim — money is not the only metric.”
But you didn’t really “merely note” that, did you? Because MosesZD wasn’t making the claim that money is the only metric. He was pointing out the false equivalence of an attempted tu quoque.
You replied to him, “It is true that the satisfaction gained from gaining a coterie is not a monetary consideration.”
As a retort, this carries the distinct implication that the false equivalence is salvageable by replacing Nugent’s potential “monetary” satisfaction with the “satisfaction gained from gaining a coterie.” You insist that’s not what you meant to insinuate, but then you give us the gem, “Satisfaction is satisfaction, whatever its source,” which only reinforces said implication.
tl;dr
John Morales is a bit of a troll, I fear.
Guestus Aurelius:
How you imagine an implication can be void in content particularly amuses me. Yeah, I know… it’s harsh that a tautology cannot be refuted.
—
Your argumentum ad hominem is duly noted.
@John Morales,
If the sinner repents on a Social Justice Blog his sins can be forgiven. The religious impulse is still strong in many atheists of the Pharyngulanha variety.
I must have missed the occasion on which Ogvorbis reached out to his own victims and tried to address the damage he caused.
(Not that I believe that Oggie with his recovered memories is any more credible than Avicenna or any more honest than PZ Myers.)
Jan Steen @113, you refer to someone who you think is not to be believed, but who nonetheless you think stands condemned by his own words. I like its parallelism to the concept of content-free implications.
(In passing, I take it you don’t think Michael is advocating for social justice via this blog, lest it become a social justice blog)
Unfortunately, the more I look at that post, and the snarky comments by Myers, the more I’m thinking it’s just a cruel joke. “FtBCustomerService” ? It also goes unmentioned by Brayton, or any other blogger there, and it’s not listed anywhere on FtB web pages, that I see.
FtBLetThemEatCake@googlegroups.com ???
Hunt,
Your perspicacity is admirable.
It’s not clear to me, John Morales, what your objection or even your “point” is. Could you please just write it down? You state above that you believe Michael Nugent writes these posts because he has “grievances”. I’m quite intrigued by your Sherlockian observation skills, but do you think it is not legitimate to have such grievances?
.Apparently you complain about the word “ruinous” I used above. Terms like “misogynist, harasser, rapist” next to someones name are quite a wrecking ball, don’t you think? Last question: do believe that a general audience doesn’t recognize this game of playing insanely obtuse you’re playing together with Theo, Latsot, Stefanie Zvan… What do you hope to achieve?
Aneris @118:
To which comment do you refer? #67? @68? A different one?
(Whichever it is, it is already written down)
Ah, you refer to my #70: “But I’m happy to give you [Guestus Aurelius] my personal opinion: I really think Michael feels a grievance and is seeking to redress it, in part via such posts as these.”
I think my point there is pretty clear; what part of it do you find confusing or problematic?
I did not address its (singular, not plural) putative legitimacy, I merely noted its existence.
Here, you refer to this: “If by serious allegations you mean that to which Michael objects, by well-read blogs you mean Pharyngula, then by ruinous to someone’s reputation either has ruined Michael’s reputation (because to be ruinous is to cause ruin).”
I inform you that what is apparent to you is either a perceptual or a cognitive illusion, since I made no complaint (I did mangle the syntax and leave a hanging horn), I merely noted another tautology: if that which is allegedly ruinous does not ruin (I see no ruin), in what sense is it actually ruinous?
At the cost of pedantry, I note that is two questions.
To the first, it is what is known as a leading question, and to the second, I hope to elucidate the circumstances of this situation by my critique of critiques and by my Captain Obvious observations.
I looked it up, and you are correct: it’s a “false friend”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend
The correct idea would be something what causes ruin, as in to ruin, which itself means to destroy completely. Other than than, thanks for proving the point! I guess words do have an exact meaning where any deviation is noted, unless of course the ingroup wrote it, in that case it can mean whatever is convenient. In some sense those extreme double standards are fascinating, even if frustrating…
Aneris @120:
Your guess is just that, and wrong to boot — many words have multiple senses rather than a constant, exact meaning.
Whether you intended the locution “I guess” literally or idiomatically, there is no denying that the two can be different usages, depending on circumstance.
—
I note you’ve intimated that certain “extreme double standards” exist, though their putative applicability to this particular conversation is left to the imagination.
@John Morales,
You see a contradiction where there is none. It is not difficult to understand that my condemnation applies to a situation in which Oggie’s confessions are taken as truthful, as they apparently are by most Pharyngula regulars (at least the ones who expressed an opinion). In that situation his defenders are rape apologists by any reasonable standard.
That I do not believe that Oggie is telling the truth is another matter. I have no proof for this suspicion of mine. I just go by, among other things, the implausibility of the whole sordid affair and the useful heuristic that if you know that someone is dishonest about things that you have been able to check, then that person is more likely to be dishonest as well about things you cannot readily check.
There is a difference between advocating for social justice, which I consider a laudable thing to do, and having a Social Justice Blog (note the capitalization, which hints at irony). The latter is a blog maintained and frequented by that special brand of totalitarian, self-righteous, insufferable people called the Social Justice Warriors, also known as identitarians. In that sense, I do not think that Michael Nugent is maintaining a Social Justice Blog, while PZ Myers is. On the other hand, it is evident that Michael is a true social justice advocate, while Myers is a narcissistic poseur, who believes that smearing people on a blog and on Twitter, trying to destroy the livelihood of someone who makes a joke about you, and preaching to the choir at “skeptics” conferences, amount to social justice activism.
Apart from Myers’ sociopathic traits, this represents the reality of the internet: to stand out from the crowd, you have to do something outrageous, a la Miley Cyrus a while back.
While rubbing his buttocks on Robin Thicke’s crotch during a live TV broadcast isn’t an option for PZ, wild accusations and persistent nitpicking of statements by people like Dawkins and Harris — to create a constant state of low-level drama — is.
Until Myers leaves FtB, it’s hard to see how this situation is going to end.
Aratina.
If Myers was a moral crusader going after deserving targets then he could represent them truthfully to make his point. He doesn’t, and there are examples aplenty. He routinely rails against things people never said, or even implied and resorts to mockery when requested to correct. This has nothing to do with your fantasy of people being stung by his words, a fantasy PZ seems to share with his delusion that people are desperate to get onto his blog. The reason people can’t “level” with him is because he doesn’t appear to have any sense of responsibility for what he says or openness to discussion. Your “compassionate principles” seem to include an aversion to representing people truthfully or acknowledging perverse interpretations. He is the antithesis of an honest skeptic and that is becoming apparent to more and more people. He does nothing to advance social justice. All he does is smear people from the safety of his blog and revert to being a meek wimp in public. He comes off as a frustrated nerd who achieved minor fame before his mediocrity became apparent and now he is using what little following he has left to take out his bitterness on his betters.
You are beginning to rival Zvan for shameless propaganda. You take no responsibility at all for your attempts to harass (actual harassment, not just mocking) people and brush off everything you do as trivial. Disingenuousness at best.
A few years ago a draft version of the Freethoughtblogs Rules was made public. The now infamous Executive Committee is described as follows.
In this Kafkaesque Committee two of the five members consist of people appointed by Ed Brayton, while the “man of integrity” himself is a member too. This has the advantage that, as in North Korea, the outcome of a vote will rarely, if ever, be unexpected. Should any of Brayton’s appointees vote against his wish, he can purge them from his Committee within at most a year and replace them with more docile folk.
The role of Chairman Ed Brayton, Manager for Life, is this:
Certain naive people believe that Brayton does this job for free or that this job would not be jeopardized if Pharyngula ceased to be a part of FTB. I strongly suspect that he would have to go back to being a stand-up comedian if that happened. Poor Ed must be terrified by the thought. Life as an unfunny stand-up comedian can be rough.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/camelswithhammers/2012/08/the-new-order-at-freethought-blogs/
John Morales: Strictly, a self-professed rapist-as-a-raped-child who strongly advocated in favour of victims and against rape culture and rapists.
He claims he raped three kids.
No matter how many comments he posts projecting his rapiness onto society at large (‘rape culture’) that doesn’t make him an ‘advocate’ for rape victims.
He is either a rapist who got away with it and who cares not one jot for his victims, or a fantasy rapist who shared his rape fantasies at Pharyngula and was cheered on for doing so.
That makes him an advocate for rape.
John Morales: You imagine I have denied I intended to imply that which you think I implied, though it was devoid of content?
If you can read your own comments out loud without your tongue trying to strangle you in defence of the English language I’d be staggered.
John a Morales: I inform you that what is apparent to you is either a perceptual or a cognitive illusion, since I made no complaint (I did mangle the syntax and leave a hanging horn), I merely noted another tautology: if that which is allegedly ruinous does not ruin (I see no ruin), in what sense is it actually ruinous?
Jesus wept.
I don’t think any of those words mean what you think they mean, even the ‘and’.
When it comes to language, John Morales clearly needs to do [BETA].
@John Morales:
What’s “devoid of content” is your comment at 68 without the subtext that you’ve since disavowed. With the subtext, it makes perfect sense.
Rhetorical shenanigans.
New email address for Michael Nugent to try. (Not)
_http://web.archive.org/web/20150128110428/http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/01/27/our-complaints-department/
But at least one can now be sure that PZ Myers is listening – i.e., feigned ignorance is off the table.
AFAIA, Ogvorbis has never expressed any concern or sympathy for his victims.
John Morales qualifies as a rape apologist, and not just under PZ Myers’s always-changing definition of it. Further, the failure to address the current issue of PZ making up stuff about rapists having a safe haven at a blog, enables rape culture itself.
I wonder if any other bloggers at FTB are currently witnessing the amateurish and unprofessional behaviour of Brayton/Myers/Zvan, and thinking, why should I blog for such a shoddy and rape-trivializing organisation?
If that was a serious question, Richard, then what “excuse” would you recommend to a sensible blogger who wishes to leave FtB without becoming a target of The Horde for doing so? I don’t see “need to spend more time with my family” as working in this case.
My point is that I do not believe that the behavior of PZ Myers, Ed Brayton, et al. should be held against the “minor” bloggers on FtB. They could very well want to leave, but (justifiably) feel trapped.
Nathan @123:
“While rubbing his buttocks on Robin Thicke’s crotch during a live TV broadcast isn’t an option for PZ”
That just put an image in my head I can never forget. Let’s hope no one photoshops it into reality.
It seems John Morales is intent on making his words as unclear as possible, so when confronted he can plausibly deny their meaning. The sad thing is that he seems to mistake this for intelligent rebuttals. Or he is a troll.
I posted this on a previous thread, but everyone had moved on by the time I posted it and it is relevant to the patterns of behaviour so I hope that Michael does not mind me re-posting it here.
It is interesting that PZ’s friends are apparently happy with the way in which he has used the word rape in his tweets about Michael. I am not sure why. If they think that he was being serious, then why don’t they believe that he should provide actual evidence for his accusations or apologise? If he was not being serious, then surely they can see that he was using the word rape lightly, and he needs to apologise not just to Michael and those of the Slymepit who post here, but also to his own commentariat and friends. The Skepchicks plus their FtB friends PZ Myers and Co don’t approve of trivialising rape by making jokes. They have made this clear on their blogs; here are just a couple of examples.
_http://skepchick.org/2012/07/ask-surly-amy-how-to-deal-with-hate/
_http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/07/22/rationalia-isnt/comment-page-1/#comments there is much of interest in this comment thread. For instance:
Caine (previouusly called Ing) says:
…
PZ Myers says:
In that thread you can also see that PZ cannot see the difference between freedom of speech and doxxing:
_http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/07/22/rationalia-isnt/comment-page-2/#comments
PZ Myers (to Pappa’s comment)
Interesting also to note that although he requires that others apologise, and many do (including Pappa in that thread), PZ neither forgives them when they do nor does he apologise himself (unless forced to).
Carrie.
You have to understand that he’s battle hardened from the Flame Wars, a selfless hero bravely fighting the forces of mahsoggyknee with principled compassion in defiance of the emotional combat scars. Please bear this in mind when he’s shamelessly distorting and bloviating away, he’s just using principled compassion.
John Morales @112
“Your argumentum ad hominem is duly noted.”
What will you do with that note?
Arakes @20:
You’ve said this a few times, but I think you’re leaving out some things. First, at no point has either Ed or PZ released specific details with data on how the revenue split works.
You’re implying that 100% of revenue goes to the member bloggers which doesn’t make sense. At least some of that has to go to things like bandwidth bills, server bills, etc.
It’s also assuming that all ads exist only on member blogs. In fact, that’s the only way your assumption could work. That’s patently incorrect as well, ten seconds on the FTB homepage shows that.
It’s trivial to both pay member bloggers in proportion to the traffic they drive, and hold back some portion of that overall income for the site itself. Neither of those things are at odds with each other. I’d hazard SciBlogs does the same thing, I know a lot of similar setups that function that way. I.e. you get n% of the ad revenue your posts generate, (usually rather high) or after the first n dollars the rest is yours, where n is a fairly reasonable amount that covers the actual cost of that blog.
It’s fiscally unfeasible to pay PZ 100% of the ad money he drives. The site would be out of business. Remember, unlike radio or TV, each individual reader *costs* you some non-zero amount of money. You have to deal with that. I’ve seen as many internet businesses go under due to not planning correctly for massive success as they do by completely failing. Bandwidth and server resources cost many people in the chain between you and the web site you’re reading. Those costs must be paid.
I don’t think Ed’s lying about how the payout system works at FTB in general, but I think you may be making some incorrect assumptions about the details of it. If the bloggers get 100% of their ad revenue and the only money the site gets unto itself is the main page ad revenue, while it’s possible that landing page might generate enough clicks or views to pay their probably not-tiny bandwidth and server resource bills, it’s highly unlikely.
Richard @132 – maybe that is the point. By defending the delusions of Oggie and his “rape”, Morales and others are real rape apologists. This means that if Nugent does not delete their comments, then he does become “a haven for rape apologists” at the very least, and thus is owed no apology. Nevermind that the apologists are PZ supporters – why let any facts get in the way of the narrative?
The interesting thing here is that even as far back as 2006, PZ was doing exactly what he’s doing now. But it’s only in the last couple years that he’s gotten even the slightest pushback from the community.
Exactly. PZ Myers is the hero atheists deserve, not the one they need.
@MadMike
Has any defender of Myers, Brayton, etc actually addressed what Nugent had to say?
It was met with Myers need to clarify since everyone else is just providing their perspective or interpretations.
Myers did clarify, and confirmed that he meant to smear Nugent exactly as understood, contrary to his defenders who have insisted that he didn’t mean what he actually said.
@Gerhard
Because the words “defend” and “support” and “haven” are so unambiguous right?
Well, he repeated himself, essentially. If it were that he didn’t mean what he said in the first place, he presumably didn’t mean it in the second place either.
The one thing I’d give his sycophants is that to people in the know he didn’t expect it to be taken literally, just as a vile smear that is ok when he does it. Where they’re absolutely wrong is that it carries anything but the literal meaning to those not in the know, and it’s a fact that the Pit is seen as more or less beyond the pale by a bunch of naive “skeptics” who would know better (or at least be skeptical) if they held to anything like their “principles.”
The truth is that Myers was doing to people what creationists do to the theory of evolution, just throwing as much shit and untruth as possible and hoping for maximum stickiness, his typical way of dealing with any kind of opposition. For the naive, let them think that Nugent really is in bed with rapists and what-not, and for people who know that Myers trades in filth without any apparent concern for truth or humanity, let them think that he’s an outsider to be vilified and contemned for opposing the truth of the glorious leader. The best case is that Peezus gets to smear whomever he chooses for opposing “raised consciousness,” or whatever the cultic sorts are believing now, and the worst case is that naive “skeptics” believe the literal charges, or at least suspect that it may be the case.
It’s classic defamation, nothing less.
@Gerhard @MadMike:
Yep. Myers’s initial smear and subsequent confirmation have been documented extensively by Michael Nugent. This “I know what Myers really meant, and it’s not what he thinks he meant” routine is a bit stale. On the plus side, anybody browsing this and other threads can accurately gauge the level of idiocy that appears to be the norm in SJW circles.
It must have been linked to about a thousand times, but our trainee exegetes (and the ones sure to come later) can find all they need to know here:
_http://www.michaelnugent.com/2014/10/13/pz-myers-has-failed-five-times-to-justify-his-smear-that-i-am-defending-and-providing-a-haven-for-rapists-on-my-blog/
Richard “The King” Sanderson said (circa #132):
Ally Fogg, who currently hosts one of the more commented/popular blogs on FTB (http://freethoughtblogs.com/hetpat/) has astonishingly, well, it is astonishing to me, stated unequivocally that he does not care at all that Myers et al. are doing what they do. His words, when asked about his opinioin of this series of Michael Nugent’s blog posts regarding Myers’ smears was (http://freethoughtblogs.com/hetpat/):
As I say, I find that to be astonishing and, for me, a clear indicator of where Ally’s real attitude towards Myers et al. lies. Money making? Perhaps.
Richard “The King” Sanderson said (circa #132):
Ally Fogg, who currently hosts one of the more commented at/popular blogs on FTB (http stuff here … freethoughtblogs.com/hetpat/) has astonishingly, well, it is astonishing to me, stated unequivocally that he does not care at all that Myers et al. are doing what they do. His words, when asked about his opinioin of this series of Michael Nugent’s blog posts regarding Myers’ smears was (http stuff here … freethoughtblogs.com/hetpat/):
In my opinion, a tacit support of Myers’ smears. As I say, I find that to be astonishing and, for me, a clear indicator of where Ally’s real attitude towards Myers et al. lies. Money making? Perhaps.
(Michael, when you can, could you please delete my post before this one. I removed/edited the links to deactivate them … so to speak.)
John Morales wrote:
At least he didn’t call you a rapist.
Eskarina @138:
I don’t have to do anything with it, it having already been noted.
(I know what you did with it 😉 )
Shetty:
Well, yes, they are relatively unambiguous. Any ambiguity there is still doesn’t leave room for a non-defamatory interpretation. The words he used are defamatory at face value and he would explain if he meant them to be otherwise. He is obviously quite happy with the way he was received. You seem to think Myers is incapable of conveying what he meant without your help.
Guestus Aurelius:
I have yet to disavow anything I’ve written here, and yes, it makes sense.
Let’s revisit this (#110) by you:
My initial response was @112: “How you imagine an implication can be void in content particularly amuses me. Yeah, I know… it’s harsh that a tautology cannot be refuted.”
Since you’ve now clarified the scope of your claim (my first quotation above), this is now moot.
Again: I haven’t disputed MosesZD’s claim, I’ve merely pointed out its limited domain of applicability.
I don’t dispute that so doing reveals alternative possibilities of various degrees of plausibility, but you were the one who introduced a specific one @78: “Is your point that it’s plausible that popularity is a motivation for Michael Nugent?” — a posibility you which you don’t rule out.
@Gerhard
In reverse order
You seem to think Myers is incapable of conveying what he meant without your help.
The question that was asked was why haven’t “defenders” of Myers (hmm seems to be a different meaning of defend here ) provided an explanation – Can’t have it both ways can you now?” if an alternate explanation is provided say well why couldnt Myers have said this and how do you know what Myers meant? and only Myers can state what he meant” – if no explanation is provided then “Huff , Puff look at these defenders who wont bother providing an explanation”
Well, yes, they are relatively unambiguous.
If you look at a different example – Then some people have , while criticising the murders of the cartoonists, have also critiqued the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. Counter criticisms levelled at these people have included that these people “defend or support” Islam or Fundamentalism.
No matter where you stand on the matter , it is silly to argue that “defend” or “support” are unambiguous.
@franc #80 and Shatterface #87 & #88
Oh come on now. He was pulling your leg–and mine (since he doesn’t call even after I gave him my number). 🙁
@Patrick #83
It’s a tricky area because everyone differs on how hard-hitting of a response (if any) is too much. My position is that if you are going to take part in teasing a person, beware that they might act in a way that will not be in your favor.
@Gerhard #124
He does present things truthfully. It just so happens that not everyone agrees on everything.
No he doesn’t. He has said in the past that he would blog if he had only a few readers left someday. He loves doing it. It’s his passion. However, I was there when certain people, some of whom are commenting on this thread, tried their best to break through a ban to comment on his blog. What do you think the Slymepit is? It’s in large part where all the dungeon folk went to complain about not being able to flood his blog with their free speech.
Yeah, that has definitely changed over the years, but so has the community as it split into factions. I do think Pharyngula was the most open place to certain kinds of discussions in the past, as long as one could handle all the brawling in the comments.
I don’t believe he thinks a lot of this stuff aimed at him is coming from a place of truth, either. So you’re at loggerheads.
An “honest skeptic”? Give me a break! Which skeptics think of themselves as dishonest? Skeptics question things and go against the grain. You could find a million people who would call a skeptic dishonest just for posing a question. And it isn’t true that he does nothing to help people, or he would be alone in his efforts. Maybe his causes are not yours, but they’re still worthwhile causes. As for him being a wimp in public, he hasn’t been one that I’ve seen. I think it is more accurate to say he likes to socialize, and to do so one has to avoid unpleasantries. In recorded talks and debates I’ve seen, he hasn’t backed down, either. So, I think you’re wrong on all those points.
Moi? LOL. I’m sure you and franc can produce all the evidence of my doing so, right? G’luck!
Deepak Shetty: Because the words “defend” and “support” and “haven” are so unambiguous right?
You have billions of pages out there on the internet. Maybe you can google us another example where a commentator uses the words ‘defend’, ‘support’ and ‘haven’ is such a way that their ‘ambiguity’ manifests itself as precisely the opposite meaning to that we commonly ascribe to those words.
Deepak Shetty: The question that was asked was why haven’t “defenders” of Myers (hmm seems to be a different meaning of defend here) provided an explanation – Can’t have it both ways can you now?”
That ‘different’ meaning for the word ‘defend’ is the actual meaning of the word ‘defend’.
It’s the meaning commonly ascribed to the word ‘defend’ and the meaning you will find in a dictionary.
When we say ‘defend’ we mean ‘defend’ in that sense: to resist criticism of, or mount a case for, someone. We criticise Myers, you ‘defend’ him. That’s the definition of ‘defence’. It’s not rocket science.
When Myers says Nugent is ‘defending’ rapists and rape apologists that’s what he means. He is saying Nugent resists criticism of, or conducts a case for, rapists and rape apologists.
Any alternative meanings to the word ‘defend’ are coming from those conducting a defence, ie resisting criticism of, or making a case for, PZ Myers.
Aratina Cage @156,
That is completely non-responsive to the question posed (which I note you carefully elided). Here is what I asked, again:
Do you or do you not personally support Myers attempt to cause Skeptickle problems in her real life job? If you do, how exactly do you justify that behavior?
Shatterface:
You’re not criticising the meaning, you’re criticising your perception of the motive for its use; critiquing criticism is not the same thing as resisting criticism, and its use is not restricted only to defending the target of said criticism.
Billy: If that was a serious question, Richard, then what “excuse” would you recommend to a sensible blogger who wishes to leave FtB without becoming a target of The Horde for doing so? I don’t see “need to spend more time with my family” as working in this case.
My point is that I do not believe that the behavior of PZ Myers, Ed Brayton, et al. should be held against the “minor” bloggers on FtB. They could very well want to leave, but (justifiably) feel trapped.
Their principles should be that they would rather face the wrath of the “horde” than debase themselves blogging for a network whose owners/heads are juvenile, corrupt, trivializers of rape.
It is time for people in the atheist/skeptic/liberal/humanist movement to publicly distance themselves from the likes of PZ Myers. No more excuses! The fightback has recently claimed charlatans such as CJ Werleman and Shanley – with some effort, PZ and Brayton will be next. Attack and expose!
Richard Sanderson:
Such passionate indignation!
(Such striving for social justice!)
John Greg @150:
Ally Fogg, who currently hosts one of the more commented at/popular blogs on FTB (http stuff here … freethoughtblogs.com/hetpat/) has astonishingly, well, it is astonishing to me, stated unequivocally that he does not care at all that Myers et al. are doing what they do. His words, when asked about his opinioin of this series of Michael Nugent’s blog posts regarding Myers’ smears was (http stuff here … freethoughtblogs.com/hetpat/):
In my opinion, a tacit support of Myers’ smears. As I say, I find that to be astonishing and, for me, a clear indicator of where Ally’s real attitude towards Myers et al. lies. Money making? Perhaps.
Fine, Ally Fogg by dint of his expressed disinterest is (in your opinion) a a tacit supporter of Myers’ smears, though the relevance of this to the post is… not obvious to me.
(Does that make him yet another target of “Attack and expose!”, or what?)
Well that and the fact that I’ve never actually doxxed anyone, anywhere, at any time.
But hey, technicalities.
Certainly I would have to seriously consider outing someone like Ogvorbis if he started volunteering to lead Camp Quest, while maintaining that he has a monster living inside him which is struggling to burst forth and hurt children. Because ethics and stuff.
Who ever said they were less severe, Aneris? Certainly not me, though I was named in your post.
What I did say (or imply) is that both sides are equally intransigent. I expect PZ to retract his “haven for rapists” smear on the same day that Welch apologizes for photoshopping a freethought blogger into a gaping anus.
Aratina @156 – Sorry I haven’t yet called.
Yet again, it’s clear that PZ has no intellectual integrity and he has no intention of responding to your objections. What makes him think he has the right to accuse unconvicted people of extremely serious crimes?
Either he doesn’t think rape and sexual assault are all that serious or he wants to discredit all “rivals” at any cost.
Either way, PZ doesn’t come across looking very good.
Damion 164
You STILL don’t understand that accusing someone of a VERY serious crime is not the same as making a silly photoshop.
You agree that rape and sexual assault are serious crimes…right?
Damion: Well that and the fact that I’ve never actually doxxed anyone, anywhere, at any time.
You have twice offered to doxx people at the Pit. Both times you were told to fuck off..
Certainly I would have to seriously consider outing someone like Ogvorbis if he started volunteering to lead Camp Quest, while maintaining that he has a monster living inside him which is struggling to burst forth and hurt children. Because ethics and stuff.
Why don’t your ‘ethics’ tell you to doxx on your own fucking site rather than try to drag the Pit into it? If you thought Oggie was a threat you shouldn’t be playing childish fucking games with his personal info.
aratina @156:
so then you agree with PZ saying that his proof that rapists (people who have actually raped other people) post here are that there are people who also post at the slymepit. Aka, slymepitters are rapists. Good to know your standard of proof.
Love that revisionism. But no.
yeah, he TOTALLY told off the gelato guy in person. Oh..wait.
Well, there was that time he completely told off Vacula in person…no, wait, no he didn’t.
How about that time…wait, no, it seems face to face, PZ has never done that. Of course, that was rule 6 of Pharyngula for a long time. “People are not the same face to face as they are on the internet. Get over it.”
So he formalized his cowardice into the early code of conduct for Pharyngula. Good job.
you were talking about how he’s brave in person?
Morales on his petard @163:
A common saying amongst the Clear, originated by that most Clear of all Clear, Rebecca Watson, with, of course, PZ bobbleheading along furiously is: “the standard you walk by is the standard you support.”
Since Fogg is choosing to walk by this issue, then by Clear definition, he supports it.
Damon at 164, still ensuring everyone knows he’s better than everyone on every side:
Given that I also photoshopped myself into the same anus, thereby showing the complete lack of actual real world harm such silliness actually causes and given your own list of shit to apologize for when it comes to the slymepit, you’re gonna be waiting a long time. I did nothing wrong, and if it made Zvan feel bad, touch tuchas. She doesn’t have to read the slymepit, and that is where I posted said image.
I believe she has often said, of her blog and FTB in general, “If you don’t like what is posted here, don’t read this site.” Good advice. One day, she might even follow it.
And I also love that you brought in that classic bit of child logic about how because someone else did something not nice and won’t apologize, we can’t expect PZ to apologize.
You mean *I’M* the reason PZ won’t apologize? I made a really bad photoshop of Zvan, (and myself) in a goatse pic, and so until I apologize, he’s going to slander and libel everyone who might possibly be not hating of me?
[He-Man] I HAVE THE POWERRRRRR!!!!!![/He-Man]
PARTY AT GREYSKULL!!!!
man, i have to get to work. I wonder what I could whip up that would make PZ actually punch someone. boyohboy, I have the ability to completely control someone else’s behavior via my lack of photoshop skills!
Can you tell just how astoundingly stupid I think that statement is? I may have been too subtle.
@john welch #168
Not quite. The person being called a rapist by him–the one he is referring to–is the only one I know of that he thinks is an actual rapist based on the testimony of the person he believes was raped. I think he believes that our blog host supported and defended that person, and by doing so has created a haven for people of that stripe. AFAIK, the person being referred to as a rapist does not post on the Slymepit, though they are probably going to get some support there. Also, am I recalling things correctly that someone connected to the Slymepit started up a defense fund for that person? Anyway, that’s how I think it all goes.
Not revisionism. Simply go back to the original threads on sciblogs via the Wayback Machine. You were there, so you know this to be true. Why do you want to deny it?
Perhaps someday you’ll learn how plurality is indicated in the English language. Oddly, you seem to use it properly, yet you seem to fail to understand that “rapists” is plural. Unless you’re just spouting apologist BS, which may not be so unlikely.
Based upon what evidence?
Oh, so the whole fantasy falls apart on the fact that there is no evidence that he posts there. Why even bother with your tripe, then?
You remember as well as you argue, poorly. While there’s always the possibility that she’s connected, it’s not been shown. At least I haven’t seen it, and she announced it on quite a different forum. And what if she were connected anyway? Guilt has never been shown in a proper manner.
So if you think that badly, why bother pretending to think at all?
john welch @168:
So, your misapplied use of “Clear” aside, that’s a ‘yes’ to my question — Ally Fogg has become SP in your eyes and therefore is Fair Game.
Aratina Cage @156
Is “skeptic” even the right term? What would you call someone who “go[es] against the grain” but, instead of questioning things, insists that they have the right answers?
– Refuses to use the dictionary definitions of some pretty basic words, including “atheism”
– Claims that their particular view of “atheism” is the basis for morality
– Refuses to answer basic clarification questions (including some Michael has asked PZ)
– Calls people who engage in polite persistent questioning “sea lions” and people who question critically things like “hyperskeptical”, and tells their followers to sharpen their knives to “flense” people like the latter?
– And so on
What do you see as his causes – as the “something” that he does to help people? (Not saying there aren’t any, just wondering what you offer as examples.)
Perhaps the difference is “on stage” (whether that’s performing on stage or in his online persona) versus “off stage”. There are certainly some videos of person-on-the-street interactions where some creationist or another tried to engage him in a debate and he runs out of arguments early on, and quite a few people have commented on his more subdued demeanor “off stage”. (That was my observation on meeting him, also.)
You’re certainly entitled to think that, but to get others to agree will probably require more than handwaving. 🙂
Strictly, a self-professed rapist-as-a-raped-child who strongly advocated in favour of victims and against rape culture and rapists.
No, strictly a self-professed serial rapist who has not even apologised to his victims and can therefore be fairly described as unrepentant. It is astonishing that people who would usually describe themselves as against rape can stand in solidarity with individuals like that. I have only ever seen it on FtB, mind you. I am sure there are other sites that are as protective of rapists, but that is an ugliness I won’t go looking for.
Skep Tickle @172:
Oooohhh!!! Oooh! (*raises hand*) I know that one:
A cult.
Minnow @173:
You haven’t perused the primary sources, have you?
(Contrary to your perception, he is perhaps the most apologetic person I’ve ever come across on the internet)
—
PS It amuses me to think what you would make of Pred back in the alt.tasteless days. The opposite of apologetic, he was.
Phil Giordana:
I well recall your foray into Pharyngula, and your grievance at being banned from that place. The cult place!
(So hard, you tried to belong, and now it is but sour grapes you sought)
<i(Contrary to your perception, he is perhaps the most apologetic person I’ve ever come across on the internet)
Has he apologised to his victims? If not, what are these ‘apologies’ worth? Why accept them at face value? I am surprised that you feel the need to defend such a person when you are so hot on examples of ‘rape culture’ that do involve actual rape.
John Morales: You haven’t perused the primary sources, have you?
You can’t apologise anonymously on a site you have no expectation that your victims read. That’s not how it’s done, even if it had been done.
(Contrary to your perception, he is perhaps the most apologetic person I’ve ever come across on the internet)
If the most apologetic person you know on the internet is a serial rapist who hasn’t apologised I dread to think what sites you frequent.
Minnow @177:
I could be reading Pharyngula!
(I surprise a lot of people)
—
Shatterface @178:
I’m frequenting this particular site, dreadful as you may find it.
(I surprise a lot of people)
Oh, OK, I understand now, you are just trolling.
Minnow:
Your inference on the basis of my parenthetical about your expressed surprise being not atypical is duly noted, as is the matter-of-fact certitude you express about this insight.
Significantly, you have not disputed the non-parenthetical part of my comment.
Me: If the most apologetic person you know on the internet is a serial rapist who hasn’t apologised I dread to think what sites you frequent.
John Morales: I’m frequenting this particular site, dreadful as you may find it.
So you are saying Nugent’s blog is the same as a site that promotes rape?
You really are filth.
John Morales: Your inference on the basis of my parenthetical about your expressed surprise being not atypical is duly noted, as is the matter-of-fact certitude you express about this insight.
That probably meant something before you Google-translated it from Wookiee.
“Significantly, you have not disputed the non-parenthetical part of my comment.”
I honestly don’t know what you are on about. I think you are just trolling for responses, no? I’ve nothing against trolling, just cant be arsed to play along.
>> “The difference between him and Myers is that Myers is open about doxxing and doesn’t try to get others to do it for him.” – Shatterface @99 < Well that and the fact that I’ve never actually doxxed anyone, anywhere, at any time.
But hey, technicalities. <
Technically true. But Damion is what in Oz/NZ is called an URGER. The origins of that term is during wartimes – a civilian the URGES others to go to war whilst making all manner of excuses for not doing so himself.
Damion has never doxxed, but he has spent an awful lot of time encouraging others to doxx. URGED them. This is just one aspect of a long history of manipulation, disinformation, moral grandstanding and other vile behaviour that make Aratina and oolon look like creatures that have ethical considerations.
Much is said about TROLLING. I cannot think of a better example of the modern interpretation of TROLL than Damion – playing all sides against each other, whilst standing on a moral pedestal where he is the only one that is pure. Best exhibited by Damion's plays of the "hate" card, which he has just done here –
http://i.imgur.com/f3kH2ww.jpg
The "hate" card is one of Damion's favourites. It gives him a free pass for everything.
Peezee myers and company are in rawest form honest – they make no pretence of being ugly, vicious and malicious people. Damion is far worse – he wants you to believe he is not. He is the archetypical viper in all of our religious mythologies.
Damion Reinhardt #86 –
Please be honest Damion. A moderated comment section that has no comment tampering, insinuations of “hate” speech and no morally superior posturing.
Something you would rather drown kittens than provide at your place.
You make peezee look respectable Damion.
Since PZ himself isn’t interested in clarifying or apologising for his smears against Michael, why do any of his “friends” bother to come here and say that he does not mean what he actually says, or give any other excuses for his behaviour? You can see that he is not at all grateful to them:
_http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/12/25/thunderdome-57/#comments
PZ Myers
John Morales at 175 regarding Oggy
He is apologetic to his fans at FtB. He has not, as far as I can see from all the original source material, apologised in person to his victims or tried to make amends, nor has he handed himself over to the authorities to be rehabilitated. He has said that he is still afraid that his bad side is still lurking and might break out, and yet he does not say that he is taking any measures to protect vulnerable people against him.
Aratina: Not quite. The person being called a rapist by him–the one he is referring to–is the only one I know of that he thinks is an actual rapist based on the testimony of the person he believes was raped.
Are you referring to Ogvorbis? Or Lousy? We all know PZ only believes women when the women accuse someone he doesn’t like. Otherwise, he disbelieves women, as in the case of Lousy.
I think he believes that our blog host supported and defended that person, and by doing so has created a haven for people of that stripe.
If that is the case, then you have to accept that PZ Myers and yourself are rape apologists for providing a safe haven for a KNOWN rapist (Ogvorbis). You do realise that Stephanie Zvan word salad, with all that William Lane Craig style special pleading, and its attempt to narrowly redefine reality, was dismissed and laughed at by anyone with a brain?
AFAIK, the person being referred to as a rapist does not post on the Slymepit
AFAIK, the person who CONFESSED who rape several children under his own volition DOES post at Pharyngula and several other FTB blogs. Not only that, he has their support and justification.
though they are probably going to get some support there.
Offering hugs and kisses, offers of babysitting to a known rapist is far more serious and grave than discussing an ongoing open accusation which is contested, not admitted as in the case of Ogvorbis. Huge difference.
Also, am I recalling things correctly that someone connected to the Slymepit started up a defense fund for that person? Anyway, that’s how I think it all goes.
Don’t know, but I do remember people at FTB supporting and donating to someone convicted of domestic violence.
ATTACK and EXPOSE!
Today’s new flash from the FreethoughtBlogs bizarro world…
1. Michael Nugent has now officially joined the league of harassers. This has been established by one of the Reverend Myers’s lobotomized cult members, so it must be true.
[*] The following comment by dshetty: “Because if we are supposed to be the rational/reasonable side then accusing someone of supporting rapists needs a more nuanced explanation (than what was provided at the link provided by Xanthe).
_http://web.archive.org/web/20150129140203/http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/12/25/thunderdome-57
The same dshetty (who I believe posts as Deepak Shetty here) made the following request to PZ Myers (in the thread mentioned under item 2 below):
Myers’s response to this polite suggestion is calm and rational, as one would expect from a well-known academic.
No, wait, the man is foaming at the mouth like a maniac. Which is really what we’ve come to expect of Myers. Note that a simple request immediately becomes a ‘demand’ in his fevered brain.
2. FTB has no “Customer Service Department”. The email address that Myers provided for it was part of a joke.
_http://web.archive.org/web/20150129141119/http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/01/28/that-joke-didnt-quite-work-out-as-intended/
Who knew?
What many people didn’t know was that Myers may well have stolen the idea for such a spoof email address from me. Because when John Morales asked Michael Nugent in the previous thread here which email address he had used to contact Ed Brayton, I answered:
noreply@FreethoughtBlogs.com
Myers’s post with the similar ‘joke’ came afterwards.
(Amusingly, FTB’s nitpicker extraordinaire John Morales took my answer seriously and wanted to know where I got this information from. Hahahaha.)
3. PZ Myers still owes Michael Nugent and the Slymepit an apology.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
It is instructive to see what it takes for a Social Justice Warrior to accuse someone of harassment: Asking for an apology if you are the victim of defamatory statements is harassment.
It’s pure victim-blaming. But that’s okay, because the victim is not “one of us”. Right, Xanthë? I hope you are happy in your little cult, in the “safe space” that you share with a self-confessed child rapist, under the protective banhammer of the Reverend PZ Myers.
Morales (or so he says):
Yeah, those were earlier, gentler times when I expected Myers to act as a human-being instead of a jackass. I was naive then, but thanks wisdom I’m not that dumb anymore.
I am interested that one, at least, of PZ’s followers can see that he is not behaving well in this case.
_https://archive.today/j1ssy
(“this” being:
_http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/11/01/the-end-of-the-micknugent-saga/)
I agree with dshetty on this point, it is not “nuanced enough”. It is effectively just PZ saying that he wants the whole thing to stop, and that he won’t bother with talking about the fact that he has smeared a good man any more. He won’t talk to Nugent any more and he doubles down on the smears against Michael and against the few pitters who post here. And as far as I can see, many of the people referred to by Tony are some of the nicest behaving people on the Internet, far more so than Tony and others who behave so unpleasantly at PZ’s blog. I do not see any rape apologists here, in fact many of the commenters make it clear that rapists should be reported to authorities, not harried on blogs and forums.
Well, it is hypocritical, or at the very least it is inconsistent of PZ — and extremely rude — not to take part in a proper discussion with Michael. Simply making a blog post saying that it ends the debate does not in fact do so; it simply makes him look stubborn, sulky and unable to provide evidence for his case. What nobody seems able to understand is that this is not some “bullshit claim that the pit has to say”. It is not coming from the pit, it is coming from a man who has to do real work for the atheist community in Ireland and who needs his name not to be besmirched.
What nonsense. And I find it disgusting that anyone sees a parallel between RD / WLC and Nugent / PZ. Oh wait, maybe they mean that WLC is equivalent to PZ in terms of ability to provide evidence. That would work.
That one is downright weird. How can anyone equate the nest of squabbling cats (not a pejorative term, I like cats) that is the pit with any group that worships authority or believes in a top-down approach?
And this is when it goes to the link in my last comment, where PZ responds by threatening dpshetty. PZ is coming across as more and more peculi ar.
The trouble, Carrie, is that dshetty is suggesting that a proper case be made for PZ’s claims, and there simply is no evidence, no case that PZ can make for his untrue accusations.
PZ can’t respond because he’s unwilling to admit that he made a false accusation. I suspect that many of those at Pharyngula know it, too, and merely repeat the false claims in order to excuse the non-response.
Not that I told you anything you didn’t know, I just wanted to spell it out.
Jan Steen
Yes; apparently someone who has been smeared and asks for an apology is clearly a harasser, which shows that yet another word is being thrown around lightly by the SJWs. Which means that we now have Rape, Misogyny and Harassment, which used to be very serious / crimes against humanity, becoming mere terms of abuse. Well done, SJW-dom!
Michael is a victim of hate speech and of serious smears, but we should all blame him for it because reasons and sealions and stuff.
NO! PZ should apologise, and do so with meaning.
192 Glen Davidson yes — as you say, I did know that *smile* but people do need to see how clear that fact is.
I am impressed though that one of his group is getting a little worried about it.
Funny how that sounds like a lot of ex-cultists. Well, chance and all of that… (he he).
Lest someone pull the old, “we’re not North Korea because we’re not at all near China,” fortunately Pharyngula lacks most of the power that an incorporated cult has. But then, that means that there’s even less excuse for the dreary apologetics that get trotted out by those who can’t bring themselves to question the authoritarian tactics of and lack of rational explanation from their cultic (no, not a true cult, we’ve through this) leader.
I have a humble suggestion (that is actually on-topic for this thread):
My understanding of the “Dear Muslima” debacle is that some people thought that Dawkins was implying that an unsolicited offer of coffee was not a problem at all, when he was only saying that there might be a few greater problems in the world. One possible reason for Ed Brayton ignoring Michael Nugent’s request – especially when seen in contrast to how he dealt with Avicenna – is that Ed Brayton believes that there are a few greater problems with his blog network than one member making defamatory posts. If that’s the case, then maybe the following should be used as the short-hand for this sort of situation: Dear Plagiarist.
For some perverse reason we are being, what shall I say?, cagey here. I will assume for the purposes of answering your assertions that you refer to someone who seems to be identified as ‘Famous Skeptic’ on this blog. If I am correct in doing so, when you wrote:
you meant the Michael Nugent declined to assume his guilt without a trial, on the entirely legal and correct grounds that all are innocent until proven guilty. Correct so far? It would appear, and I’m sure you will correct me if I’m wrong, that you would like to apply all the social consequences of guilt to the accused, without first going through the irritation of an actual trial. I’m sure you have read the quotes from Pharyngula—”this isn’t a witch hunt”, “there are no legal consequences”, we’re just saying” etc, and it seems you are defending this position if you tell Michael Nugent he is supporting and defending the subject of that gossip. So it appears to me that the “supporting and defending” part relies upon believing Famous Skeptic is guilty of rape, despite no guilt being ascertained in any court of law. This would constitute a defamation of Famous Skeptic. Merely saying you are repeating the words of someone else, or imagining what was in their mind is no defense in court. You are repeating a libel.
My next issue is with your rather unwise words:
I’d like you to elaborate on which people that remark includes, and what exactly you mean by their “stripe”. One very obvious interpretation is that you are implying that commenters (some? all?) here are of that “stripe”—which is to say, they are rapists too. This is a defamation of (potentially all) commenters here on this blog. Please name names, as lawyers are waiting.
Finally, the assertion that someone connected to the Slymepit started a defense fund for Famous Skeptic is demonstrably false. That fund was started by Emery Emery of Ardent Atheist, who is not associated with the Slymepit. I shall forward your message to him and tell him he may contact Damion Rheinhardt for your contact details.
What I’m attempting to impress on you and others is that this is not a game. No, I don’t mean some silly and empty internet threat by that. I’m not coming after you. But someone will, in the person of their lawyer. And if you slander, libel or defame (pick your jurisdiction for the correct terminology) they will hurt you in terms of reputation and finances. Responsible adults don’t run around throwing actionable accusations at each other unless they are willing to provide a legally valid defense, and pay for said defense. I’m completely happy for you to make accusations that you can prove, or at least, defend. That might be noble. But simply joining in with your peer group in throwing poop at someone just because it’s cool is not the way to behave. Now what’s it to be, Aratina? Shut up (as you usually do when pressed for actual answers to specific questions), or proceed onto legally thin ice and hope PZ’s lawyers don’t decide that throwing you to the wolves isn’t the best course of action? That’s the kind of thing that can happen, and while I fully admit it is nothing to do with me, I don’t like to see well-intentioned youngsters get into unnecessary trouble. Now you may decide whether you should proceed with bravado or common sense. You have had my best advice, now it’s up to you.
Morales is an ass.
Sorry Michael if that breaks your blog rules, but I have no other ways of saying it here.
Morales once entered a conversation on FB between Benson and I, did his good little SJW drain-circling shtick, and when out of arguments invited me to take it all to a private talk.
It was an offer I was more than willing to take. So I sent him a friend request and told him so on the thread we were sharing.
That’s when he told me he would never associate with the likes of me and refused the request.
The conversation never went any further.
Now, I don’t give two fucks about Morales, but a bit of honesty and trying to see beyond his brainwashed worldviews would have, maybe, helped.
But no, he’s just another asshole on the internet (quite an epidemic).
@Shatterface
: to resist criticism of, or mount a case for, someone. We criticise Myers, you ‘defend’ him.
Or I could be expressing my opinions on a controversial matter which could match P Z Myers on some points and Michael on some. The sense in which you are using defend is anyone who disagrees with whatever Michael has posted in any way or form is “defending” P Z Myers.
@Carrie
I am interested that one, at least, of PZ’s followers can see that he is not behaving well in this case.
hardly news. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/camelswithhammers/2012/06/lord-cthulhu-comes-to-camels-with-hammers-an-interview-with-pz-myers/
Scroll down to where disagreements are discussed.
say that he does not mean what he actually says,
No that’s not what I am saying. To take a different example Harris et al make a claim (I paraphrase) that moderate religious people enable fundamentalists. Different people will interpret that “enable” differently(but you need to read quite a bit to understand Harris’s argument irrespective of whether its true or not)- some people will go out of their way to conclude that Harris said moderates are as bad as extremists – what a bad New Atheist.
John Morales @152
You note it for the sake of noting it? You still must be doing something with it.
And if you “know” what I did with it you might want to apply for Randi’s Million Dollar Challenge.
Deepak, Myers threatened to ban you because you asked him to address Michael Nugent.
Are you going to continue to press Myers to address Nugent and thus get banned from FTB or are you going to just cave in?
If you press Myers and get banned will you then come back here and justify Myers banning you or will you conclude he’s an authoritarian arsehole and say as much?
Aratina, not even going to bother with you anymore.
@Shetty.
The words defend, haven and support have clear meanings. You have NOT provided an interpretation of the smear that is credible outside of la-la land where words have alternative meanings and Myers has reiterated that he meant just what he said, which is that Michael Nugent supports, defends and provides a haven for rapists. There is no evidence that MN has done those things and it is a very offensive smear regardless of whoever said what about Islam. It isn’t hard to work out. Michael Nugent does not want a public accusation that questions his attitude toward rape to stand.
@Shetty.
Your examples about Harris and extremism are of general case polemic. Myers accusations were directed at the actions of a specific person and in the context can reasonably be assumed to be about specific cases of alleged rape.
@Shatterface
Are you going to continue to press Myers to address Nugent and thus get banned from FTB or are you going to just cave in?
But my reasons are different – As such I want him to address what he means by “supporting rapists” because I believe his version is closer to mine than yours.
And no I wont continue to press (other than responding to some commenters) since I do not see the point – if Myers was going to address based on what I said , he would have – if he’s not going to then me repeating the same thing would not accomplish anything.
Getting banned doesnt worry me – his blog his rules.
Deepak Shetty
*shrug* there are not many comments, I don’t see any of his followers there taking him to task for refusing to discuss smears.
Perhaps you are not; many of the PZ apologists who post here are doing so. When I posted that first comment I had not found the origin of that Thunderdome comment to you.
Yes I have been following the fight that Harris is having quite closely as the subject interests me, and it sets my teeth on edge to see how consistently his remarks are paraphrased and mis-represented, especially since that is being done also by the mainstream media.
And that is another thing that is wrong about what PZ is doing to Michael; the mainstream media sometimes links to PZ’s blog, and his insistence on keeping the smears against Michael — who does good work for atheism — and against people from the pit, several of whom also do good work, can get a wider audience. PZ should apologise and stop smearing other atheists that he simply doesn’t like.
Deepak:
Myers on the Creation Museum:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/08/10/the-creation-museum-1/
But…their house, their rules.
Legally, sure, they can set their own rules, and legally should be able to continue to do so. And we can criticize those rules for protecting people and ideas that cannot withstand scrutiny, like PZ’s ideological pronouncements and smears, as well as creationism.
Privilege, you know.
I don’t see any of his followers
No I meant that this is an old discussion and was had on many different threads. And that not everyone fell on the Pharyngula side of the divide. fincke is an ex-FTBer who is on good terms with FTB as far as I know.
And that is another thing that is wrong about what PZ is doing to Michael
Well you draw a different conclusion from my example – I believe that some people do not understand(willfully or otherwise) the sense of the PZ Myers remarks (that we wont agree is given). For e.g. “supports rapists” is taken to mean that rapists comment on this blog or that it is conclusively proven that [named person] is a rapist and the plural implies that more than one person is being referred to. It is not how I interpret this remark.
Aratina@169:
Nonsense. You’re very deliberately ignoring the things PZ has said over twitter and other places that Michael reproduced here. PZ was very clear about that, even if you don’t wish to believe it. Again, when someone who was NOT michael asked him for proof of his “rapists” (Plural mind you) claim PZ very specifically said “he allows slymepitters to post there”
you don’t have to LIKE that. But that is a fact. PZ was not only talking about one person, and he was very clearly calling slymepitters rapists. Period. Not rape supporters, rape excusers, but people who have actually raped other people. “rapists” is unambiguous.
Now, I am sure you will once again try to revise history to make it into something else so that your massa is still the paragon of goodness you need us to think of him has, but it is not going to work. Not on me at least, and at this point, you are deliberately, with intent, trying to mislead people about what was said in the face of clear, unambiguous words by PZ.
Again, no, and you’re right, I was there. Before you in fact. Rather a few of the people who started commenting there were not in PZ’s dungeon when it started. Rather, once the FTB came up with the “slimepit” moniker, he made posting there a dungeonable offense. Even if you’d never posted on his site before. The rest of of the FC[n] followed suit rather quickly.
But, nice attempt to make it look like the only reason people commented there was because PZ had dungeoned them. You’ll make a fine propagandist one day. You’ve got the Big Lie concept down pat, as do PZ et al. You have learned well from them. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie for the folks who haven’t heard of this before.)
It’s good that you can admit your failings.
Deepak Shetty @205
Myers didn’t just say “supports rapists”. That was from his later doubling down. Here, from Michael Nugent’s summary, is exactly what he said:
Myers claims that Michael Nugent is “defending & providing a haven for harassers, misogynists, and rapists”. The only evidence he offers for this libelous accusation is “his blog commentariat is populated almost entirely by slymepitters.”
With reference to Myers’ actual words, please explain how anyone functionally literate in English would not conclude that he means that rapists comment here and at the Slymepit.
Myers owes Michael Nugent a retraction and an apology. Until he provides one, he should be a pariah in the atheism and skepticism communities.
Oh bless your stupid little heart honey. There’s a few things wrong with your flailing.
First, as I clearly said:
In other words, by the standards that you and your lot promulgate and support, he is supporting PZ’s smears.
Since I’m not a part of your stupid little cult, the problems with “the standard you walk by is the standard you support” are fairly obvious to me. Which is why I think it’s a stupid thing to say. In my opinion, Ally is saying “fuck off, all of you, i have better things to care about.” Given his background and activities, that seems logical. I don’t assume he supports or opposes PZ’s idiocy, he’s not said anything.
Since he hasn’t said anything about how he feels, I put him in the “doesn’t really care” column, and generally stop thinking much about him. He’s got a lot of company there. Billions of people if you think about it. (i know, thinking makes you hurty, but give it a shot.)
It doesn’t make him a target of anything.
As far as Clear goes, FTB and Skepchicks have been in full Scientology mode for a long time. But it’s interesting how you project that behavior on to everyone else. I guess it makes you feel less different. “Everyone does it” is still a shitty excuse, but it’s the best you’ve ever had.
more morales @175:
to everyone but his victims. So really, kind of doesn’t count. If I punch george, but only apologize to harry, phil, and marge, I’ve not really atoned to the person I wronged, namely george. Makes the apologies rather empty.
Even better, if I wait decades even before I apologize to the wrong people, then it’s even less of an apology, and more of a ploy for sympathy.
that would be assuming he was being the slightest bit honest in his tale. The chances of that story being anything but a vaporous ploy for sympathy (which had the benefit of driving an actual victim of sexual assault/rape from pharyngla, not that you or the rest seemed to give a crap) are about the same as Morales suddenly speaking clearly and plainly.
Aratina said:
Freedom of speech is not about not being offended.
No. The person who started up the [name deleted] defence fund, with a goal of a mere $5000, was not a Pit person. The fund was not created in reaction to a request from [name deleted], it was an entirely independent project — though he was made aware of it and, I think, expressed some gratitude.
John Morales [meta maroon] said:
The relevance of my comment is that it was in direct answer to the following question posed by Richard Sanderson:
Deepak Deepity said:
HAHAHAHA.
You can “interpret” all you want. That does not mean that you understand plain English which, quite obviously, you do not. Living in fantasy land and inventing new rules of English and entirely new and contrary definitions for words and terms out of whole cloth solely to fit a specific ideology does not reality make. Such facile nonsense is truly remarkable.
I must admit that I continue to be quite gobsmacked by the remarkable nonsense of this series of people insisting that PZ’s comments meant something completely different from what PZ not only actually said, but which PZ, on more than one occasion, actually defended as being what he in fact said and meant. Mind boggling. The mental gymnastics to “think” in that fashion are, well, completely alien to me. No, I do not get it.
I also find it truly fascinating that these folks are saying that the sentence “defending & providing a haven for harassers, misogynists, and rapists”, actually means “defending & providing a haven for harassers, misogynists, but not rapists — only a certain un-named individual who may or may not be a rapist so long as rapist means serving wine and saying naughty things to Friends of PZ.
Amazing. Just amazing.
Hmm.
I have a comment sitting in moderation limbo, and so far as I know, I did not include any of the No-go words or links.
Oh well. Live and learn.
Deepak, [metaman],aratina:
Would any of you object if I were to call you rapists and spread it around some relatively high traffic areas on the internet?
If you think it’s OK for PZ to do it to other people, then it appears you would have no problem having it done to you.
John Greg, you may have had a word that includes one of the no-go words. I have learned to search my messages for them before posting and then insert spaces or choose a different word.
Deepak Shetty
That really isn’t relevant to anything I have said nor to Michael’s points. It is currently very unusual to have any of PZ’s followers apparently becoming aware that PZ should do more than he has done to communicate with Michael.
Then you have not read the full context and content of his remarks, which are clearly laid out in Michael’s earlier posts and are to be seen in the timeline of tweets. When asked to provide evidence for his claim that Michael provides a haven for rapists, misogynists and harassers on his blog, PZ said that the evidence was that slymepitters post here. It is clear and unambiguous.
PZ should apologise. It really is that simple.
If anyone needs further examples of the psychopathic behaviour of the commentariat at Pharyngula they should check out Myers’ Thunderdome thread.
https://archive.today/5MpTA
Now, Deepak Shetty is bending over backwards to defend Myers behaviour here at Nugent’s but he’s currently being torn apart at Thunderdome for not doing it well enough:
56. Tony! The Queer Shoop
29 January 2015 at 12:11 pm
dshetty @51:
So I think you should do something constitutes a demand? Im curious as to how exactly can someone critique your views if this is going to be your response (unless you feel that you can never be wrong on anything)
You didn’t critique his views though. You told him he should respond to Michael Nugent. That’s a demand on your part. Moreover, you seem to think Nugent deserves or is worthy of a response.
He does not deserve a response and nor is he worthy of one.
Again, he’s an asshole who provides a platform for some of the most horrible people on the Net (the Pitters) and he defends a rapist. Fuck him.
Deepak has even joined the ranks of the ‘rape apologists’:
59 Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
29 January 2015 at 12:34 pm
dshetty, there is absolutely no reason for PZ to respond to MN. But there is plenty of reason for MN to ban the slymepit from his bolg, quit apologizing for a known rapist, and quit demeaning half the population by implying they aren’t fully human with as many rights and privileges as he has. It is called ethics and decency.
More of how Shetty is being rewarded for loyalty:
61 Tony! The Queer Shoop
29 January 2015 at 12:40 pm
God I wish you tone trollers would quit whining about the language people use. Note, I’m not talking about language that is bigoted or discriminatory. I’m talking about insults. Yes, I will use insults against those I feel deserve them. It’s a way of expressing my contempt, hatred, and/or disdain. You and other tone trollers believe that there’s some value to be had in people expressing them in the Dominant groups approved manner. Fuck that shit. Again, “discuss things the way we approve of, or we won’t even listen to you” is a great way to dismiss the problems oppressed people deal with.
62 Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
29 January 2015 at 12:46 pm
Don’t confuse emotion with abusive language.
Don’t confuse being a Vulcan with being an Earthling. Vulcan style discussions are for a philosophy. For real world problems, there is no way to avoid emotion coming into play. Sometimes, those trying to be Vulcanish need to hear the emotion to get the idea they aren’t going over with their arguments, and they are pissing people off unnecessarily by dismissing emotions. And being told essentially you aren’t a real human being is emotional.
Shorter: lose the Vulcan argument attitude. That tone trolling goes nowhere here.
https://archive.today/5MpTA
This is how the Horde reward their allies, Shetty.
64 Tony! The Queer Shoop
29 January 2015 at 12:52 pm
Goddamn civility politics! So. Over. This. Shit.
Are you getting why this brand of politics is so toxic yet?
I think people should go back and read what Shetty has posted here at Nugent’s blog and then try to reconcile that with the hatred he is getting at Thunderdome.
He has pretty much defended Myers to the hilt hasn’t he? Given Myers obvious wrongdoings I can’t imagine anybody could put up more of a defence.
So how is he rewarded?
73 Tony! The Queer Shoop
29 January 2015 at 2:01 pm
Look, when people act like fucking assholes, they deserve to be called fucking assholes.
And with that, I’m done addressing your tone trolling fuckwittery.
Nice, eh?
This is how quickly they turn on their own:
74 Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
29 January 2015 at 2:08 pm
PZ makes his own decision on what to say and how to say it. NOT YOU OR ANY OTHER TONE TROLLING WANKER. So I agree with what PZ did, as you took your sorry tone trolling out to the equation.
And some ableist slurs for good measure:
Your response shows what you are. And it your description is close to what you present here. You are deaf, and just preaching your tone trolling.
https://archive.today/5MpTA
Actually, I think Michael lacks perspective. His problem with peezee is in fact trivia compared to the vile slurs peezee himself faces. Some monster had the nerve, the nerve, to imply that some of peezee’s words are abusive –
https://twitter.com/Shermertron/status/560956416517996546
Get real Michael. I think you should drop all of this and apologise to peezee yourself. I cannot even begin to imagine how badly peezee’s feelings have been crushed already without you rubbing salt into the wounds.
Had a Twitter exchange with Alex Gabriel earlier about Ogvorbis. It was predictable – Alex was desperate to uphold the narrative that no self-confessed rapist has a safe haven at FTB. Us sensible folk know the truth. Interesingly, Giliell (one of the enablers of Islamism on PZ’s pathetic Charlie Hebdo thread) popped up to tell Alex to essentially stop communicating. Alex, got the message, and obeyed FTB central command.
Funny stuff.
PS – Someone mentioned that if PZ didn’t want to remain a pariah in the atheist/skeptic community he needs to apologize. Well, for me, he has to grovel while on his knees, and even then, he has debased himself so much, his reputation is beyond repair. Attack and Expose!
Oh, Deepak, you poor bugger. You came to defend your master and this is what you get as thanks? It might almost be enough to make you reconsider who is right and who is wrong on each side of these ‘deep rifts’! Welcome to the club. Whether you have an account or not, you are an honorary Pitter. (Hear that, PZ? He is! He’s one of us now!)
Ah! Nerd of Redhead and Tony! The Queer Shoop. Two of PZ’s loyal enforcer attack dogs. When not “sending alerts” to PZ, they seem to spend all day and all night promoting and maintaining the #FTBullies narrative.
Just to go over one of Nerd’s comments because it shows FTB ‘logic’ at work:
62 Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
29 January 2015 at 12:46 pm
Don’t confuse emotion with abusive language.
Don’t confuse being a Vulcan with being an Earthling. Vulcan style discussions are for a philosophy. For real world problems, there is no way to avoid emotion coming into play. Sometimes, those trying to be Vulcanish need to hear the emotion to get the idea they aren’t going over with their arguments, and they are pissing people off unnecessarily by dismissing emotions. And being told essentially you aren’t a real human being is emotional.
Shorter: lose the Vulcan argument attitude. That tone trolling goes nowhere here.
Nerd calls Shetty a ‘Vulcan’ four times and contrasts him with ‘Earthlings’ – yet accuses Shetty of implying that other people aren’t human.
It’s like they have no conception of what they are saying.
‘Ah! Nerd of Redhead and Tony! The Queer Shoop. Two of PZ’s loyal enforcer attack dogs. When not “sending alerts” to PZ, they seem to spend all day and all night promoting and maintaining the #FTBullies narrative.’
In fairness, we are talking the attack dog equivalents of a Poodle and a Bichon Frise here.
Who’d a thunk it: Deepak asks Myers to answer Michael so he becomes a misogynist:
93 Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
29 January 2015 at 5:59 pm
– Our intention was merely to make Professor Myers and others aware of dshetty wrote about him elsewhere, and we’ve done that.
Unnecessarily, as dshetty has been thoroughly debunked before. And yet again today. Nothing but a misogynist leaning tone troll. They are a dime a dozen.
– Our point (which could have been more clearly communicated) was merely that dshetty twice labeled Professor Myers’ words as “abusive”. The context does not somehow magically erase or negate that, does it?
Who gives a shit a tone troll says? You shouldn’t. No abuse, unless you are tone troll like dshetty.
In fairness, we are talking the attack dog equivalents of a Poodle and a Bichon Frise here.
Tony! admits in that thread that he doesn’t have much time to fight for Social a Justice in real life.
I’m gobsmacked.
In the meantime, chaitgate seems to be dying down, but Jonathan Chait did point to this article by Michelle Goldberg in The Nation
Feminism’s Toxic Twitter Wars
http://www.thenation.com/article/178140/feminisms-toxic-twitter-wars
which shows the ills of FTBullies is just one point on the spectrum of Toxic Feminism.
which shows the ills of FTBullies is just one point on the spectrum of Toxic Feminism.
It makes the very good point that feminists themselves are being battered by toxic feminists.
When campaigners for women’s health can’t use the word ‘vagina’ because it excludes transsexuals it costs lives.
Are you still complaining about comment tampering, Franc?
http://slymepit.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=59229#p59229
Why don’t you bug Lsuoma about that?
Let me guess, “It’s okay when we do it.”
Further, the ‘pit allows anyone to post, anon or not. In its entire history, the absence of problems is more than just remarkable. It is a prime example of how Freethought works in practice, as opposed to when it’s used as a brand. Your blog, OTOH, is a Swiss cheese that’s more holes than cheese. You have a lot to be proud of don’t you?
Gist of deleted comment (no complaint, perhaps a tad salty and realistic): there have been a small handful of comment edits at slymepit in ~250k posts from anyone that wants to post, anonymously or not – a link to one instance that Damion has posted here for the second time.
According to Damion, this is “hypocrisy” – and a charge of lack of integrity was levelled at the site admin. The only instances of editing to date have involved items of possible illegality or doxxing – it should be noted again that Damion only recently posted a number of items on the ‘pit encouraging the act of doxxing and even offering to supply doxx info.
Damion is not in a position to question anybodies integrity, nor in a position to point the finger about comment editing/tampering whilst using FTB standard practices as a model for his own blog.
This is as polite is I can get.
Eskarina @200:
I note it in part because it becomes a reference in addition to a retort; references are useful.
And what you did with it is to use it to ask me an inane question, to which I nonetheless provided a civil and informative reply. How you imagine my awareness of the facts of the matter is worthy of Randi’s Million Dollar Challenge is opaque to me, since your comment too was noted (@138) and substantiates my knowledge.
I further note the asymmetry where comments to or about me here often assert an opinion about my motivations and purpose as if it was a matter of fact, whereas I refer to actualities and to possibilities.
john welch @211:
My heart is not that which you should bless, but rather your ability to incorporate information.
Yet again I reiterate: I am me, but I don’t have a “lot”. I make my own determinations. I have told you this many times.
There is no cult, big or little, there is only me — so your contention is based on a flawed premise.
(BTW, my degree of stupidity is apparent to anyone anyway, no? Yet people go out of the way to proclaim it, presumably to inform those who might miss it. 🙂 )
Your deadpan amuses me greatly; as with my obtuseness, anyone can take a look for themselves and make their own determination.
Evidently, you too are unfamiliar with primary sources.
How did these professions first manifest?
Who was abused, and when, and by whom?
Under what circumstances were they abused?
(You have no idea, do you?)
I find you uninformed, yet opinionated.
And further, I think you’re blithely unaware that you are using a real person about whom you know little more than Slymepit rumour as your rhetorical hammer in your vendetta against PZ.
But then, that’s my opinion; I don’t pretend to know for sure.
John Greg @212:
Shatterface about a commenter here:
There are those who do what they think is right, and there are those do based on what will accrue reward or incur punishment.
The latter fail to grok the former.
Shatterface @226, you’re gobsmacked by particular comments (and commenters) on PZ’s blog, which you consider reflect PZ himself, but I suspect you’d repudiate any idea that commenters here similarly represent Michael Nugent.
(Do you dispute my suspicion’s tenor?)
I am flabbergasted by this. Ed Brayton seems to have made it his business to support Myers and allowed him to get away with ine thing after another on his Pharyngula blog.
I can only assume Ed feels Pharyngula is too key to the success of Freethought Blogs to throw Myers off. That he can have written this about Myers in 2006 and sat on his hands whilst wotnessing everything that has happened since should make him hang his head in shame.
noelplum99:
The cardinality of your possibility space is… remarkable, unless you actually mean you consider that the most likely possibility.
Out of curiosity, do you care to elucidate the basis upon you rule out (for example) that Ed feels PZ has no substantive case to answer?
John Morales: There are those who do what they think is right, and there are those do based on what will accrue reward or incur punishment…
Out of curiosity, do you care to elucidate the basis upon you rule out (for example) that Ed feels PZ has no substantive case to answer?
Jesus, what language is that?
Shatterface @226, you’re gobsmacked by particular comments (and commenters) on PZ’s blog, which you consider reflect PZ himself, but I suspect you’d repudiate any idea that commenters here similarly represent Michael Nugent.
Myers has explicitly threatened to ban Shetty so yes, the Horde represent Myers’ wishes.
Those who are defending Michael here are doing so because he’s right.
I’d advise anyone interested in actual feminism to read the article Jaques Cruz linked to as most of the complainants are feminists themselves – including a group which promotes women’s health but who were attacked by the Twitterati for using the word ‘vagina’ in their literature because it’s Trans-exclusionary.
http://m.thenation.com/article/178140-feminisms-toxic-twitter-wars
This is how toxic the FTB brand of feminism is: they’d rather see women die of cancer than offend a minority of a minority.
I have to wonder if Nerd of Redhead has suffered some sort of brain damage. Its comments / accusations really do seem to be impossibly over the top. I do not see how it can extrapoloate from what Shetty actually said, which was “I do think you should respond once to Michael Nugent” to a “demand” (even though somehow PZ read Shetty’s words that way too), nor how it can see anything that dshetty said as “apologizing for a known rapist, and quit demeaning half the population by impl y ing they aren’t fully human”
I think it would be good if Nerd, and many others at FtB, would stop demeaning a bunch of people, several of whom happen to be in that half of the poplulation, by continually referring to them as various forms of disgusting subhuman creatures.
The ‘pit is a mix of real human beings, many of whom do good work for humanity and for skepticism. Continually trashing them, in blogs and in the mainstream media, is very wrong; eventually people come to believe these smears such that even someone as apparently above the schism as Hemant Mehta can refer to the ‘pit slightingly too. This, throughout history, is how human beings separate themselves out from others and then “justify” treating them as worse than other animals. The worst that anyone who is a ‘pitter does online (I am not referring to the occasional trolls) is exercise puerile humour, and what on earth is wrong with that? Just because many of them disagree fundamentally with PZ, RW, and others of that group on some issues, is no reason to ostracise or pillory them. Jeez.
Michael is far overdue an apology and so are the Slymepitters.
Shatterface @ 240
Yes. To clarify: as skeptics, we look at the evidence on all sides of an issue.
Michael supplies us with plenty of evidence, as a good skeptic does when presenting an argument. PZ supplies us with no evidence but with plenty of invective and ad hominems, as a creationist does. Where does the evidence lead us? Michael is right and deserves an apology.
Carrie: I have to wonder if Nerd of Redhead has suffered some sort of brain damage. Its comments / accusations really do seem to be impossibly over the top. I do not see how it can extrapoloate from what Shetty actually said, which was “I do think you should respond once to Michael Nugent” to a “demand” (even though somehow PZ read Shetty’s words that way too), nor how it can see anything that dshetty said as “apologizing for a known rapist, and quit demeaning half the population by impl y ing they aren’t fully human”
The accusations that Deepak is a misogynist, a rape apologist and someone who thinks women aren’t people just come out of nowhere.
It starts with Deepak asking Myers to answer Michael and then a whole heap of accusations snowball. If Deepak thinks Myers should answer questions – even if Deepak thinks Myers would win – any and all accusations thrown at Deepak are legitimate.
It really is a perfect illustration of how these witch-hunts spring up.
Shatterface @240:
English.
(Try Google Translate auto-detect, if you doubt me)
You neglected to note that it was a conditional, rather than an unconditional threat, and thus you are bemused that (since the condition has not been met) it has not been instantiated.
Carrie @243:
I well remember when the Slymepit was about free speech and having yuks, rather than about moral rectitude.
(Shows the result of gazing into the abyss)
—
Carrie @243 (to Shatterface):
You quite sure about the entailment of your perception?
(Your conceit that scepticism can achieve certitude is revealing, though epistemically flawed)
Carrie:
<snicker>
OK, so you write about Nerd of Redhead without using a personal pronoun, and you are compelled to wonder whether “it” “has suffered some sort of brain damage”.
…but Nerd of Redhead is, in your estimation, not a real human being.
But you don’t think that it would be good were you not to refer to him as a thing, rather than a real human being.
Well, I guess Nerd of Redhead is not continually being thrashed, since I have now intervened and broken the continuity.
Nothing wrong with puerility; gotcha.
Well, here’s your silver lining: the longer the apology takes to arrive, the more vindicating it will be.
(Woo-hoo!)
246 John Morales
Since this is not the Slymepit, and many of us posting here are not from there, whatever the ‘pit was or is “about” is irrelevant. People supporting Michael here do so because the evidence shows him to be correct. As I said, Michael supplies us with plenty of evidence, as a good skeptic does when presenting an argument. PZ supplies us with no evidence but with plenty of invective and ad hominems, as a creationist does.
When seeking the truth, Evidence wins over evasion and bile pretty much every time.
Michael is right and deserves an apology.
I find pomposity to be amusing. Thank you for the giggles.
247 John Morales
I use “it” out of politeness, because I do not know if Nerd is male or female. This may be old-fashioned of me but does not negate my point.
I am not aware of having said any such thing. Of course, it may be a ‘bot for all I know, but my assumption, based on the evidence of its posts, is that it is a human being with some sort of sociopathic difficulty or brain problem.
John Morales @233
IOW, you’re bloviating.
That question was not inane. I’ve always wondered what people using the phrase “your whatnot is duly noted” actually mean by it. If you do note it, why let me know? Usually, I couldn’t care less.
Is it a variation of “Plonk” on Usenet?
Of course, during my time on the Internet I came across a few dyed-in-the-wool-Scientologists, who used similar phrases, if not the same. What THEY meant was “I’m writing up a Knowledge Report on you. What do YOU mean?
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
You could be dead wrong.
@Shatterface
It really is a perfect illustration of how these witch-hunts spring up.
Yawn. And this is a perfect illustration of the narrative you have tried to create. One person calling me names and another person arguing (I assume sincerely) constitutes a witch hunt – On a thread that specifically says it is no holds barred – while ignoring the couple of other regulars who disagree with the two people above on some matters and agree with them on others.
But yeah – witch hunt.
damion@229, still not better than everyone:
actually, if you read the entire thing, and you know, not just pull up one post out of context, you see that SDG was posting things that were realistically threats. As Lsuoma has said, he will remove posts/edit them when they are the kinds of things that are bordering on illegal (and he actually does consult real lawyers about it, not just internet blowhards like yourself), contain child porn, (yes, someone actually did that too, and that post got yanked) as well, etc.
Nice try Damion. Do you assume, bizarrely, that people will take you at face value?
Morales @ 234:
You are a regular long-time commenter on PZ’s blog among others. You support PZ’s actions in well, from what we can tell, you actually support any and every action PZ takes unless PZ changes his mind on it. From what anyone can tell, PZ is always right in your eyes.
You’re such a part of that group that you spend days here defending it, even though you supposedly think this group of no importance, and nothing we write here contains any validity whatsoever.
Yet day after day, here you are. Which makes one start to wonder why? you were never the subject of any of Michael’s posts. PZ has made it clear what he thinks. So there’s no real reason for you to be here if you are truly as not a part of the FTB lot as you want us to think.
You are in fact a part of that group. You participate in that group’s activities such as they are, and have done so for some time. By any definition, other than your own, you are in fact a part of that group. Don’t like it? Stop participating in that group.
simple enough even for you.
if you weren’t a part of that group, you’d not be a years-long commenter there, a participant in the group. nor would you be here defending it. Your own words make a mockery of your independence.
(in regards to oggy’s supposed apologia)
Oggy is the primary source for oggie’s crimes, as you well know. the source data is, if you believe him at all, him. He has apologized all over pharyngula, but never shown any hint of having apologized to his multiple victims. Now, if you have proof to the contrary, I invite you to present the links here so that we might all see them. I’d welcome them in fact.
Simply provide links to the posts where Oggy talks about apologizing to his victims. Should be easy enough to do.
so you’re saying that oggy didn’t claim to have committed rape/sexual assault on at least two separate occasions, separated by some years in fact, wherein the first he was “forced” to do so, but on the second, did so of his own accord? Oggy has now completely retracted that story?
That IS news. Please, provide the links that I might peruse this wonderful news.
Deepak Shetty: Yawn. And this is a perfect illustration of the narrative you have tried to create. One person calling me names and another person arguing (I assume sincerely) constitutes a witch hunt – On a thread that specifically says it is no holds barred
How can it be ‘no holds barred’ when Myers threatened to ban you?
@Shatterface
Thunderdome still has some rules – I would think Myers feels I fall afoul of
“Your comments are repetitive, especially if you repeat arguments that have already been addressed.”
Deepak Shetty is abused by his fellow cult members, but he is fine with that, because they are his fellow cult members.
Someone calls him a tone troll, he responds “fair enough”.
Myers twists his polite suggestion into a “demand”. He says “fair enough.”
Typical cult behaviour. It is frightening. Invasion-of-the-Body-Snatchers-like frightening.
When someone abuses you, and you are the one making up excuses for the person who abuses you, then something is deeply wrong.
I am looking at you, Deepak. You are being treated like shit by PZ Myers, and you go out of your way to find excuses for him. It’s sickening. Absolutely sickening.
But he didn’t address your comments, he dismissed them.
As people have remarked, you posts here excusing Myers despite the evidence, are amazing.
But not in a good way.
Eskarina @248:
John Morales @233
IOW, you’re bloviating.
You consider a direct response to a specific question to be bloviating?
(Heh)
That question was not inane. I’ve always wondered what people using the phrase “your whatnot is duly noted” actually mean by it. If you do note it, why let me know? Usually, I couldn’t care less.
But you weren’t asking why I did so; rather, you first asked what I would do with it.
Not even slightly; as you can see, I am hardly ignoring you.
I mean I have noted something, which is to say that I have made an observation and put it on the record. It’s really not that complicated a concept.
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
There you go, you don’t dispute the fact that I have knowledge of what you did with the comment. It sure looks a lot more like empirical knowledge than parasensory gnosis, no?
(“In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”)
I could break a leg when next getting out of my chair, too.
Jan Steen @253:
Such outrage on behalf of another!
(Such abuse! So frightening to you! So sickening!)
Carrie:
Really.
Fine, I hereby inform you that the poster using the ‘nym Nerd of Redhead is a man (the Redhead is his beloved wife).
(You can stop being “polite” now)
“You STILL don’t understand that accusing someone of a VERY serious crime is not the same as making a silly photoshop.” – Shermertron
Who ever said they were the same?
If you want to compare the smears against Michael (e.g. “haven for rapists”) to the smears leveled against PZ (e.g. “tentacle rape porn enthusiast”) I suppose we can do that. Don’t much see the point, though. Either way its the petty politics of personal destruction.
“You have twice offered to doxx people at the Pit.” – Shermertron
You forgot Francisco Bacopa.
“Why don’t your ‘ethics’ tell you to doxx on your own fucking site rather than try to drag the Pit into it?” – Shermertron
Because it’s effing hilarious to watch Pitters get all ragey and self-righteous.
“…there have been a small handful of comment edits at slymepit in ~250k posts from anyone that wants to post.” – Franc
Did you ever provide us with a link to the comment edits at my site? Surely you don’t expect skeptics to simply take your word on this, Franc. Let’s see the before and after shots.
“Damion is not in a position to question anybodies integrity, nor in a position to point the finger about comment editing/tampering whilst using FTB standard practices as a model for his own blog.” – Franc
I’m not the one complaining about comment editing as if it’s a cardinal offense, you are. Again, it is fairly curious how you give Lsuoma a free pass whenever he does it. Some might well call that hypocrisy, on your part, Franc.
Deepak Shetty (249):
What’s amazing to me is how you Pharyngula nutters honestly think that the kind of rhetoric in question isn’t just excusable, but is actually praiseworthy, justified, righteous—provided, of course, that it comes from the right people. The members of your clique are the ethical diamond in the rough of humanity, and everybody else isn’t just wrong; they’re evil! Abusive behavior toward the evil outsiders isn’t actually abusive, you see, because they deserve it.
And so when your in-group turns on you, what can you do? On the one hand, you’ve allowed yourself to be indoctrinated into thinking that they’re the few good people in this shitty world, and that anyone on their receiving end deserves it. On the other hand, you might have some shred of dignity left somewhere in that damaged psyche of yours, and if it was anyone else hurling that nastiness at you, you’d immediately recognize it as unacceptable and abusive.
Quite a conundrum. Either you admit that you deserved it, or you wake up and acknowledge that you’ve been hoodwinked—that these people are anything but the “good people,” and that you yourself are also accountable for having partaken in their viciousness. Neither option is appealing, but the first is easier: yes, it entails some short-term prostration, but it avoids any need for serious self-reflection. So nobody is surprised, really, that you went in that direction with your (frankly cowardly and pathetic) “My initial comment was poorly phrased.”
There’s nothing normal or okay or healthy about people being vicious.
There’s nothing admirable about a college professor hosting a “no-holds-barred” blog thread so that he can watch and encourage real people being vicious toward each other.
I mean, reflect for a moment on the very fact that he felt the need to create such a thread. What does that tell you about the people who visit his site?
What does that tell you about him?
I take part of that back—
I said, “There’s nothing normal or okay or healthy about people being vicious.” In fact, being vicious is all too normal, and most people who are vicious think they’re justified. They’re the problem.
Guestus Aurelius:
He was ahead of the blogging curve, is what it tells me.
Alas, Thunderdome is the last relic of Pharyngula of yore, before the influx of dedicated haters (hi there!) forced PZ to moderate more heavily. The exception that proves the rule, these days.
@Glen Davidson #170
Glen, I must say that I am *shocked* to see you here scolding anyone over mean things they said. I enjoyed your comments at Pharyngula, but you have to admit that you had a bite. So what gives?
Glen, I don’t know what happened to you, but this is possibly the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen you write. It was a fookin’ tweet!
Based on connecting the dots. The posts that could be seen as defending certain prominent atheists. You would have to start at least close to the beginning as I told Patrick:
Then you wrote:
Wait a minute! The only “fantasy” that falls apart would be the one where PZ said that Slymepitters are rapists–he didn’t.
Ssshhheee? I was motivated to search and it looks like it was EmeryEmery who set it up. It doesn’t matter anyway as long as the ‘Pit can be seen to be supporting and/or defending the accused in the eyes of the one being complained about here.
Just to bug you from the looks of it. Color me immensely disappointed. Again, what happened to you???
@Skep tickle #172
You would be putting all of us in a Catch-22 if you insisted that skeptics couldn’t do any of those things. For example, sometimes saying that others are wrong is a way of questioning the status quo.
He doesn’t, though! He refuses to accept that a rather simplistic dictionary definition says enough about him and probably the rest of us.
Not *the* basis, but a good one. It is foundational in many ways; for instance, it resolves the theodicy and lets people realize that good acts are of their own volition instead of divine. There are so many ways atheism clears out the clutter of superstitions that are out there.
I believe he doesn’t feel he needs to.
The sea lion thing is kind of funny (not the photoshop job though). I’m not really aware of them being a disparaging comparison outside of fishing. And you can’t take everything everyone says literally; I usually enjoy the imagery he puts into his writing even if it is rather grisly. “Hyperskeptical” is usually reserved for people questioning things from a position of grand ignorance despite an abundance of facts; I can’t see any problem with its usage.
Well, atheism, for one. I’m one of the many, many atheists who teethed on his blog. A lot of the stuff that the Slymepit pushes back on are also helpful to others. He’s also a great science educator, probably one of the top educational bloggers I’ve ever read.
Runs out of arguments or realizes it isn’t worth the effort? I’m still not sure why people expect us to be the same in writing as we are in real-time interactions. Plus, a blog is rather like a home, so that also makes the interactions there different from on-the-street public ones.
That was all handwaving to you? Jeepers.
@Richard “The King (of wut?)” Sanderson #188
Irrelevant.
@Lancelot Gobbo #197
See the posts that set this all off as identified above in my comment.
@Gerhard #202
Good to know. (Hmm… I know of someone *else* who did that that everyone here is reeeeeeaaallllyyyy upset about.)
@john welch #208
No I’m not, and no he wasn’t. Nobody here has presented anything he has said that eliminates the possibility of what I think he meant being the correct interpretation. The hangup you and Glen have over “plurals” is easily explained. It’s structurally not very different from a person saying they love this one puppy and someone who hates puppies shouting about how that person loves dogs.
I didn’t say it was the only reason, but it was a big reason.
@John Greg #212
Freedom of speech is, in the bigger picture, about allowing people to say anything, even offensive and hateful things.
In a comment on the Slymepit Aratina has dropped his mask:
This explains why PZ Myers can’t do wrong in his eyes.
Thank you. I shall try to remember that if I need to refer to him again.
An interesting thought; Aratina is now officially a Slymepitter, although it is also a PZ apologist.
Does this mean that Aratina is now officially “subhuman” and not worthy of attention, as appears to be the view from FtB of all ‘pitters?
Carrie,
It has been pointed out to him that he must now be banned from Pharyngula as a Pitter, must consider himself a ‘known misogynist, harrasser and rapist’ by being a Pitter who posts here, and, best of all, must instantly place his own name on the BlockBot’s blacklist of banned tweeters, again simply because he is now a Pitter. I don’t recall the courtesy of a reply being given.
Have it your way. Do you live in the EU?
aratina wrote:
Technically I suppose posting it on the internet is different than actually saying it, but that would be nit picking to an extreme.
How does it feel to be labelled a rapist ratty?
An interesting thought; Aratina is now officially a Slymepitter, although it is also a PZ apologist.
So’s Oolon. Technically, Blockbot is now a Slymepit invention. Those using Blockbot are Pit enablers.
This explains why PZ Myers can’t do wrong in his eyes.
Well that explains their simple black & white view of the world. No place for gray areas when morality is just picking a side.
John Morales: Alas, Thunderdome is the last relic of Pharyngula of yore, before the influx of dedicated haters (hi there!) forced PZ to moderate more heavily. The exception that proves the rule, these days.
Thunderdome is not unmoderated otherwise Myers would not have threatened to ban Deepak Shetty there.
Thunderdome is where Myers lets the pack off the leash so he can’t be held accountable for their behaviour but if anyone questions him he threatens to ban them.
That is NOT what ‘unmoderated’ means.
The other pillar of Aratina’s morality is that
Later he gets down to specifics:
http://slymepit.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=429&start=16965
This is really the kind of psychopathy behind their doxxing: if nobody was actually harmed disclosing personal details is fine. The morality of a situation is decided retrospectively. If you don’t lose your job or you aren’t assaulted by some lunatic when they put out your details it wasn’t ‘wrong ‘ to do so, just as it isn’t ‘wrong’ to drive while drunk if you are lucky enough not to hit anybody.
They’re not interested in acting responsibly.
Shatterface @271:
It was not unmoderated in 2005, either… I have no personal experience before that. In fact, I wrote “moderate more heavily”, which clearly indicates that at least some moderation existed.
For you, I elaborate: I consider that the degree of moderation in Thunderdome approximates the degree of moderation of old.
I certainly can’t deny it’s gained a reputation, but it’s surely lesser than the vicious hurly-burly of the notorious Slymepit, where free speech is fiercely upheld and moderation is nonexistent.
<snicker>
Not literally, no.
(But you acknowledge it’s a leash-free area)
Aratina Cage @263,
Yes, he did. Here, yet again since you are so averse to including Myers’ actual words in your apologetics, is the exchange:
Myers asserts that Michael Nugent provides a haven for rapists and supports that assertion with an observation that people who comment on the Slymepit also comment here.
Your mental contortions are insufficient to make Myers’ words mean anything other than what any reasonably fluent English speaker would take them to mean.
Myers owes Michael Nugent a retraction and an apology. Until he demonstrates the integrity to provide those, he should be a pariah in the atheism and skepticism communities.
@Jan Steen #264
It’s useful in getting past the fighting to look at it from a more objective position than from a side.
@Carrie #266
I didn’t avoid the ‘Pit to appease any one person; I did it because it upset me greatly every time I went to it previously. I guess I changed in that respect, but I also wanted to comment on some things there.
About being “subhuman”, don’t pretend that some at the ‘Pit aren’t trying to be exceedingly abusive toward me.
@Lancelot Gobbo #267
Hilarious!
@A Bear #268
I haven’t been (except by some troll at the ‘Pit), nor have you (AFAIK), nor has anyone at the Slymepit (AFAIK).
@Shatterface #269
Great, so you don’t mind if we slap “Slymepit Approved” on the side of it?
@Shatterface #270
I actually think that “black & white view of the world” fits a lot of people on the ‘Pit better.
@Shatterface #272
Nobody’s private info has ever been leaked on either side. It was all public beforehand. The amount of complaining about it is immeasurably lopsided given that nothing new was ever broken.
@Patrick #274
No, I don’t think he did. You are pressing an interpretation that doesn’t match with all the facts or with my and others experiences. Just look at all the railroading by PZ that went on in the fight this post references–it’s right there in front of you but instead of giving in to a more likely and less outrageous understanding you’ll all choose to see it your special way come hell or high water.
Possibly so, at the moment. In the future we will talk again.
Aratina Cage @275,
And yet you still refuse to post his actual words when claiming he means something else.
I have no idea what you mean by railroading — Myers has had numerous opportunities to clarify what he meant and he has done nothing but double down.
Here’s what’s right in front of all of us:
“It’s not about what he thinks, but what he’s doing: defending & providing a haven for harassers, misogynists, and rapists.”
“Nope. The evidence is right there: his blog commentariat is populated almost entirely by slymepitters.”
I challenge you to respond by quoting Myers’ actual words and explaining how anything other than the literal meaning should be taken from them.
PZ Myers owes Michael Nugent a retraction and an apology.
Aratina Cage @275,
Myers exposed not only Skeptickle’s real name but also place of employment and encouraged his flock to contact said employer. That information was not widely known. If you think that was an appropriate response to a joke made on an obscure site several months before, you are as much of a moral midget as Myers.
Your real name is readily available. Given that, I’m sure that your employment and/or academic details can be found. Would you like that information distributed more widely, along with calls to address your defense of someone who is trivializing misogyny and rape?
@Patrick #278
The thing you don’t seem to understand is that nobody cares. I don’t think I know anybody who would give the time of day to something like that. It does make me think, though, that you realize how bad the Slymepit looks to outsiders. Just a few days ago, it featured Kim Kardashian’s nude body with the usual people they always gripe about photoshopped onto it. I suppose the consensus is that that is fair now since some troll photoshopped Michael Nugent’s head onto a sea lion and it was met with giggles instead of outrage, is that right?
She had already released her own name and tied it to her more frequently used pseudonym–so much for it being an exposé. But besides that, there isn’t a right to hide your name from the public. And let’s not pretend the Slymepit is obscure when it comes to certain people whose names are plastered on it in almost every thread. Furthermore, the things that were called out were not fabricated. You don’t have to like it, just like they didn’t have to like what she said. Too bad.
Aratina,
Thanks for engaging here. I’ve responded to another comment of yours on a previous thread, and I thought I’d let you know here in case you miss it.
http://www.michaelnugent.com/2015/01/13/second-email-freethought-blogs-complaints-procedure-pz-myers/#comment-1578401
Aratina Cage @279,
That says a great deal more about you than it does about Myers’ defamatory smears and doxxing. Skeptickle is a medical professional. Myers attempted to get her in trouble with her employer. In addition, by making her real name more widely available he potentially caused problems with her patients. There are still a lot of areas in the world where being an atheist is not accepted.
Just because no one cares about your ethical failings, like supporting the trivialization of rape and misogyny by PZ Myers, doesn’t mean that doxxing is not a problem for others.
Non sequitur. We’re talking about Myers doxxing someone and attempting to get that person in trouble at work. Here you’re just attempting to distract from your own lack of empathy and ethics.
I note in passing that you apparently read the Slymepit far more than I do. Isn’t that grounds for banning at Pharyngula, that bastion of free speech?
No, her name was exposed by another FtB blogger. Doxxing is quite the game there. In this instance she chose to use a pseudonym. The only reason for Myers to dox her was to attempt to cause real life harm. Do you really want to defend that?
Psuedonymous communication has a long and illustrious history in the United States. I suggest you begin your education by researching “Publius”.
I would say that I hope that you are never subject to the consequences of doxxing yourself, but I’m not that enlightened. I won’t dox because, unlike yourself and Myers, I have moral principles. I would, however, enjoy the schadenfreude of seeing defenders of doxxing suffering social stigma and financial harm because of it. I suspect it’s the only way you’ll ever take it seriously.
Another attempt at distraction noted. This isn’t about the Slymepit, it’s about the slimy PZ Myers and his equally feculent apologists and sycophants.
PZ Myers doxxed Skeptickle in a clear attempt to cause real world harm. Are you still going to defend his behavior?
Aratina Cage (279):
Do you always judge the morality of an act by its legality? Or do you just do it selectively when you find yourself backed into a corner?
I read both dispatches and Pharangula. Ed has addressed this with the feud he had years ago back in 2012.
“PZ and I did have a feud for a while, about 5 years ago, and it was unfortunately not cordial at all. I called him names, he called me names, and I really wish it hadn’t happened. It was over our approach to atheism, where I am generally considered more moderate in my tone than he is (though that would come as a surprise to those who see me as a bomb-throwing ideologue). As is so often the case in such disputes, it’s easy to get lost in the fight when it’s in text. Once we met in person, we got along just fine and put all that behind us. It was all kind of silly. We’re going to agree 99% of the time, why fight over the 1%? ”
http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2012/11/03/my-rational-wiki-entry/
It’s kinda funny the notable quotes section that only has quotes from 2006 and does not have Ed’s response to the whole situation.
@Alaric,
If what Brayton said in 2006 was true (and he refers to third party witnesses) then his subsequent handwaving does not magically make it false. His conversion to Peezus only tells us something about the character and the complete hypocrisy of Mr. Brayton. He is like the former victim of a bully who unexpectedly made friends with his enemy and who now condones the bullying behaviour that he so bitterly complained about when he was still on the receiving end.
Thanks for that Alaric. It helps clarify some issues, and adds some perspective.
From the blogger Sunny Spells
“Atheist Ireland breaks up with PZ Myers”
https://sunnyspells.wordpress.com/2015/04/08/atheist-ireland-breaks-up-with-pz-myers/
Brayton has resigned from FTB and moved to Pathos. Score one for the Slymepit.