This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
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Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
It’s news to me that mentally healthy–whatever that means–people can’t be paranoid, delusional, or maniac. One generally has to a) have more than one significant symptom to be diagnosed b) said symptoms have to interfere with one’s life to be diagnosed. Saying someone is paranoid because they believe in the NWO which is out to get them isn’t an assumed diagnosis; it’s a description. (What else does one call believing the the black helicopters are coming for you?)
Point granted on the involuntary commitment and forced drugging. (Plus, any good psyche ward gives you a choice dontchya know: tick this box if you want to be tied down, tick this box if you want to be drugged up.)
I don’t claim that. There is such a thing as subclinical paranoia, although I would not say this automatically means “use it as an insult!” More to the point, pretty much everybody experiences paranoia at one time or another, so simple paranoia is not stigmatized as a mental health issue — and this is why I don’t necessarily regard saying someone’s paranoid to be a problem.
Regarding delusions, all of these are regarded as mental health issues, full stop.
I didn’t intend to imply that it’s okay to use any and all subclinical symptoms as insults. I can see where my mention of diagnoses can imply this, but I don’t agree with that outcome, so I guess I worded it clumsily.
Now this, I don’t know what your point is. You should note that I didn’t object to calling him paranoid. On other threads I’ve discussed specifically this word before — I don’t see a problem with it unless the speaker is raising it, beyond common paranoia, to a mental health symptom, and using that as an insult or trying to explain bad behavior via reference to mental health without sufficient evidence.
The liar WMDKitty is remarkably unable to stick a flounce.
Trolling the lounge probably wasn’t a good idea.
There’s a cool interview with Iranian-American comedian Maz Jobrani on CBC’s Q this morning.
Could serve as something of a context-setter, for anyone wondering what it’s like to be Iranian in the West–or more what it’s like to be of Middle-Eastern descent in general, as it’s largely more discussion of the general image you get through cinema, and so on. There’s also some brief discussion of Sut Jhally’s Reel Bad Arabs.
(/And also what it’s like to be an Iranian actor… Jobrani at one point actually did a Chuck Norris movie of the week. In case you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to play the generic swarthy ‘turbaned terrist’ bad guy, he can help you out, there, too.)
That comment in the Lounge made me put on my skeptical face, because it sounded a lot like a JAQer. Then I read the thread in question and saw that my initial reaction was correct. (And then some). Sorry you have to keep treading the same ground SGBM.
SGBM:
I find this particular scenario far too common.
1. Please don’t use that term.
2. Why?
3. Here is why.
4. No, it isn’t used that way.
5. Here are examples.
6. Why are you picking on me?
You’re an asshole because respond to someone saying “I find that a slur” with “no you don’t”
That’s not it. The response was “well, you shouldn’t”.
@Chas
True, but it’s much more assholeish to argue the point than to apologize and try not to use it. I can’t think of too many honest times where someone has gone frogturd over reacting to a harmless term. The few times I can think of when I thought that they made their case well.
Not sure why the simplicity of what was being said was so difficult to grasp.
yeah. For the record, I commented over there. It was pretty all starfarty imo, and not on sg’s part.
As you point out, Chas, WMDK’s post script was particularly inappropriate during that whole exchange.
SGBM@502,
Would it not be reasonable to say that a believer in the NWO’s black helicopters is delusional, as well as paranoid? After all, they don’t exist, and there is nothing that could reasonably be interpreted as evidence that they do. I get the distinction you’re making between idiosyncratic beliefs and those that result from social processes, but I don’t think it’s by any means hard-and-fast. That the DSM-IV includes delusions does not mean delusions are always the result of mental illness. Here’s some of the examples of delusions from there that you gave in the linked comment:
Extreme guilt is often the result of social processes, as is (rationally unjustified) jealousy (see Othello), while the delusion that you have a terrible disease may be temporary and not clinically diagnosable in just the same way as paranoia.
Ah, from the “Alex Jones” thread…
I’ve always heard “butthurt” used strictly in the “paddled bottom” sense (but then I don’t really run w/ the homophobic crowd), but I see how others are seeing it used so, and while I never really used it much, I’ll try my best to not use it in the future… But then…
Really? “Shriek” is homophobic?
dontpanic:
It’s like assigning “shrill” to women. The implication of shriek in that context is that the person is being hysterical, acting like a woman.
Okay, I guess. “Shreik” to me always brings to mind crows … but I’m weird. And a bit of a loner, so I don’t see people throwing around insults as much as many of you do. Also, apparently, I’m surrounded by fewer assholes. Privileged one might say.
Usually no, it would not be reasonable to say this.
If the person is reporting being personally trailed by these helicopters, then that might be a delusion of persecution. But that is not what most “believers” in black helicopters report — most report only what they’ve heard from others.
That last bit is important. Morrison: “A delusion is a false belief that cannot be explained by the patient’s culture or education; the patient cannot be persuaded that the belief is incorrect, despite evidence to the contrary or the weight of opinion […] Delusions must be distinguished from overvalued ideas, which are beliefs that are not clearly false but continue to be held despite lack of proof that they are correct. Examples include belief in the superiority of one’s own race or political party.”
There is already tremendous weight of opinion in favor of black helicopters, so the widespread belief that black helicopters exist and trail some people is simply a function of lots of people believing this and telling others; it is socially self-sustaining, when a new person begins to believe it, it is because others believe it and have transmitted the idea to this new person. People pass around bullshit all day long because they’re socially rewarded for it, that’s all.
Also, delusion have an excessive “weight” in the mind which plain-old-being-wrong false beliefs don’t have. If I may save myself the trouble of copying and pasting.
I wouldn’t a priori assert that there are no blurry cases, but I don’t recall every hearing of one. Your example isn’t, once we consider the difference between believing that “black helicopters trail some people” and “black helicopters trail me”.
Show me a discussion where everyone who uses the term specifies from the outset that they aren’t talking about mental health symptoms, and I’ll consider whether that particular discussion merits objection. I doubt you’ll find one.
Typically what happens is people trade on equivocation, using the term loosely and without regard for the stigmatization of mental health issues that results — and only upon being confronted with that possibility do some of them bother clarifying, while shitheads (like raven), who explicitly use mental illness per se as an insult, don’t need to defend their usage but are protected from criticism by the wider group’s playing fast and loose.
I am not going to act like a random discussion full of mental health insults that I happen upon is likely to not involve bigots, let alone confused people who aren’t even sure what constitutes delusion as a mental health issue and thus are absorbing misunderstandings due to equivocation.
which need to be understood in context of the “immediacy and urgency” or “pressure [and] preoccupation” (some jargon for what I’ve been referring to as the weight in the mind, or continually compelling fixations).
And might therefore not be a delusion; it can make sense to feel guilty if someone is telling you that you deserve to feel guilty. They might be wrong, but it’s a response that makes sense given the stimulus.
The type listed here is about guilt based on something that didn’t happen — “A person may, for example, believe that he or she has committed some horrible crime and should be punished severely. Another example is a person who is convinced that he or she is responsible for some disaster (such as fire, flood, or earthquake) with which there can be no possible connection” — or something minor which the individual has convinced themself of tremendous guilt for.
If someone is experiencing terrible guilt because they’re being abused and told that they’re a horrible person, probably they can benefit from therapy, of course.
I don’t know the story. What’s relevant is whether the belief is a function of the person’s culture or education.
? Not sure what the point of this is. Right, it might not last long enough to meet diagnostic criteria. That means it’s a subclinical delusional symptom.
dontpanic:
One might say. As a woman and a regular here, I’m exposed to a wealth of assholes and thanks to that, I get to hear on a regular basis, what a shrill, hysterical bitch I am simply for speaking up. It tends to make a person a tad sensitive to such things.
Caine,
A nerve to touch? ;)
John:
Natch! :D
A web-strand to trigger.
Immediately prior, I said:
«You are still engaging in implicit homophobia by handwaving away all arguments and examples and requests for interpersonal consideration from gay men as “whining”. […] Because the people whose feelings about their own oppression you are handwaving away as “whining” happen to be gay men, your action is implicitly homophobic. If we were women, your action would be implicitly sexist. And so on.»
It’s not the particular word “shrieking” but the dynamic — I present clear arguments and the expressed feelings of several gay men on the subject, and all of this is dismissed, not by saying “hmm well I’m just not convinced by this” or any acknowledgement that actual arguments were provided and gay men’s feelings on the subject are important and do matter even if someone else comes to a different conclusion, rather the dismissal comes in the form of saying that all of the above simply amounts to something unimportant and all too emotional.
If, in one of the discussions where I insist that free-will compatibilists are functionally apologists for the new Jim Crow, if Nick told me I was “shrieking” in that discussion, I would just laugh and have another go at him. I wouldn’t think anything of it. :)
It’s the dynamic of a gay man talking about homophobic language, being dismissed as unimportant and overly emotional: that’s what functions as implicit homophobia, and it can be accomplished even without any dog whistle words like “shrill.”
John:
I like that.
ॐ @522, I’d like to see a response to that.
I’m wondering what someone upset about the stigmatization of the alleged symptoms of “mental illness” would have argued when homosexuality was considered a mental illness.
I am not a gay man.
Therefore, I doubt I know all fo the terms that can be used in a derogatory way against gay men.
If a gay man told me a word was one that has been used as a slur against gay men, I’d believe it, even if I hadn’t heard it that way before, because I don’t know all the things that assholes say to gay men.
That means that, even in the case of words that are and have historically been neutral words, they might have acquired meanings different from the ones I know. It would be silly to argue that the neutral definition is the correct one, especially in the face of someone who it had been used as a slur against. Basically, it’s a case of assholes are why we can’t have nice things.
Huh?
+++++
Applying my criteria — what I ask is that people not use mental health insults, and not try to explain bad behavior by reaching for unevidenced mental health symptoms — we’d get: don’t use homosexuality as an insult, and don’t try to explain bad behavior by unevidenced homosexuality.
So, some of the right outcomes for the wrong reasons.
Modifying the second part for a better outcome: don’t try to explain bad behavior by reaching for unevidenced mental health symptoms nor for unevidenced results of mental health symptoms.
Now we’d get: don’t try to explain bad behavior by unevidenced results of homosexuality.
And that’s the right outcomes for the wrong reasons. Preferable to the wrong outcomes.
ॐ, I’m being literal.
(Were I to be allegorical, I’s suggest that dontpanic is Bambi)
Perhaps I’ll have to read that again when I’m more sober.
I think I was probably unclear. I meant: In a (recent) time when homosexuality was widely and “scientifically” pathologized, on what grounds would you have objected to homophobic insults? As homophobic? As stigmatizing the mentally ill? Both? …
Your response seems to assume such an unproblematic category as “mental health symptoms,” but my question was intended to, well, question this.
(I can only answer this a time travel question, where 2013 strange gods is transported back.) I’m not sure, because I don’t know the extent to which the pathologization permeated laypeople’s discourse. I guess I would play it by ear. Always objected to as anti-gay hate-mongering; and sometimes both, depending on whether I perceived the speaker to be relying on pathologization.
StevoR still racist trolling: https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2013/01/09/jebus-christ-guess-whos-going-to-deliver-the-benediction-at-obamas-inauguration/comment-page-1/#comment-532768
Compare: https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2012/12/05/thunderdome-11/comment-page-2/#comment-513910
SG:
Are you surprised?
Most people have placed him in Coventry, but there are still some responders.
[Hee. I was beginning to reply when unexpectedly encatted.]
Yes, that’s what I was asking (well, without the hindsight you now have).
What I’m trying to get at is…Would you have objected to the pathologization itself? If not, why not? If so, how would this have complicated your response?
Theophontes: Thanks for your perspective, I suspect that we are coming from a similar place in regards to magick/psychodrama/glycon and I regret than my current thinking on the subject is still too rudimentary to engage more substantively.
So this is not a time travel question? It requires me being born in the 40s or 50s? I am not a brave person. I would be closeted and silent.
No, wait. It’s a time travel question without hindsight? I actually don’t understand.
A continuous and unbroken chain between underlying and emergent phenomenon is not what I’m disputing. I am not proposing a disjoint (metaphysical) leap from one thing to another. (Such as in the straw vulcan.) The chain is broken only in our minds, (even if only by forgetting):
Surely you have been carried away by things you (otherwise) know too be false? Do you not cross over that threshold every time you open a book?
Hey! You missed my mouseover! (Does such a creature even exist?) This is turning to straw all the way down :O
I shall try and stick to this old definition: magic= concerns itself with the explaination and utilisation of nature to ones own purposes. (This precludes neither science nor religion.)
What is a “justifiable narrative”?
…
And now the good news: my meds are working really well. :)
And now some bad news: I may need them foreBer. :(
@ dysomniak
Expect catcalls and projectiles from the peanut gallery.
{theophontes, theatre-tardigrade extraordinaire, sweeps cloak over shoulder with a flourish. exits stage left}
theophontes, I referred to narrative identity.
@ John Morales
Thanks for linky.
What I am still needing clarity on is when one can say the narrative is (un)justifiable.
theophontes, sure.
Here:
A fantastic narrative is justifiable or unjustifiable?
What do you understand fantasy to be? :)
Well, I would suspect that there are many little fantastic leaps in any narrative. A smooth narrative would have to fill in all the (inevitable) gaps in information. Would rationally consistent (though likely wrong) infill be “justifiable”?
Beyond smoothing the narrative I guess the fantasy element would be in pure contrivance, such as Glycon’s Alan Moore. Or the fact that you are currently addressing a tiny tardigrade in a petri dish.
What I would primarily expect of (good) fantasy is that it is in essence false, yet generally coherent. I would not set believability as a criterion.
More concretely: The narrative has an aggregate of truth in a matrix of fantasy.
Typically what happens is actually that people speak English and use words like delusion which have wide and long standing colloquial uses and have also become a medical term of art. They are then informed that they’re Englishing incorrectly because less then 100 years ago someone defined the word in a new way and now apparently the old meanings are wrong, as you did in 517.
Believing in black helicopters is not a delusion in the most recent technical sense, no, but that’s irrelevant. Usually I just go along with this sort of thing, but in the case of delusion there are no synonyms with anywhere near the same color of intensity or eccentricity. (Hallucination is close, but not particularly versatile.)
Art Deco Motorcycle.
Wow! That is one ugly bike.
{theophontes strikes John Morales off the invitation list.}
I’ve been a bike rider for over 35 years, and just looking at it I shudder.
(I like cornering!)
No, no. It would be a crime to ride such a thing on those icky streets.
@ 531. strange gods before me ॐ & 532. Caine, Fleur du mal + :
StevoR still racist trolling..
I am neither “racist” nor “trolling” despite your misjudgements and mischarscterisations to the contrary.
I don’t claim to be perfect by any measure and I know I’ve fucked up here before but I’m not a fucking racist.
See, that’s where you diss its anima.
(A bike is to be ridden, or it ain’t a bike)
I never judge anyone by their skin colour and I think the whole notion of “race” is bullshit.
StevoR:
Are you still worried about “the West” being subjugated by the Muslim/Arab militants?
@555. John Morales :
Dunno.
I am worried about what they’re doing trying to achieve that horrific goal though.
What does that have to do with “race” btw?
StevoR:
You judge people by their ethnicity.
Western values versus Islamic ones does NOT equal anytthing “race” wise.
StevoR:
That when I wrote Muslim/Arab I was testing you.
(You failed)
Race, as a genetic/physiological reality, is bullshit. Race as a societal construct with real-world ramifications is definitely not bullshit. Ignoring the latter is equivalent to the “I don’t see [skin] color” shit of overcompensatory, insecure white people. If you think that race, as a construct, and Islam have absolutely no relation, you’re either amazingly disingenuous or just really stupid.
@ 557. John Morales :
No I don’t.
I judge them by what they want to do to me. If they want to kill me –well surprisingly enough i’m not infavour of them and their whoel idea of y’know killing me.
If the world they want is a sharia law Caliphate , yeah, I’m against that.
If they’re willing to live in peace and leave me alone – fine by me.
The vast majority of Muslims don’t know or care about you. The vast majority of Muslims are peaceful. The handful that aren’t have little to do with religion and more to do with socio- and geopolitical situations.
And they’re against an externally-imposted Western-style democracy. Do you think they should be able to bomb us? Or is imposing your will on others (or simply expressing a preference) only bad when you do it while foreign?
They are. You’re paranoid.
@559. John Morales : How? I really do NOT see any connection there.
Islamists come in all “races” FWIW.
Its what someone believes in and wants to do not what ethnicity or group they happen to be born into.
@560. RahXephon, Waahmbulance Driver for St. Entitlement’s Hospital
Really? I disagree.
David Hicks, to name just one, was an Aussie Islamist terrorist. The USA had its equivalents. Nothing to do with “race” everything to do with warped *beliefs* and aims.
I couldn’t give a shit about skin colour, but can do indeed give more than a shit if someone wants to murder me and those who have the same or similar values to those I hold – such as secularism, feminism and human rights.
When you defend, excuse and in any way at all support Islam and apologise for Islamists and their desires and actions and plans for us do you really understand and appreciate what a horrible ideology and what the consequences are of what you are defending?
I do not understand how you can think and act as you do.
No, I do NOT want anyone hurt or killed or made to suffer unjustly, I really don’t.
It seems to me you are supporting those who *do* want that. Cannot make sense of that.
StevoR, since you seem to love to fret, try fretting about shit that actually has a chance of happening or is already happening now:
1. Asteroid impacts
2. Global warming
3. Peak oil
4. Economic collapse
5. The total erosion of American democracy
6. Drone strikes
7. Outsourcing
And many other things I can’t think of at the moment. Notice how none of those are “StevoR getting killed by a Muslim and/or the US government being turned into a Caliphate”? Yeah, that’s because that’s totally batshit.
StevoR, you amuse me by your obliviousness.
Apropos, Nepenthe:
Fantasy.
Apparently you really don’t get the point here. This is not about your ability to pick out one or two white/Western Muslim extremists. This is about societal stereotypes about race. When you ask pretty much anyone about Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic extremism, or even just terrorism, they don’t think David Hicks. They don’t think the Unabomber. They don’t think Timothy McVeigh. They think Arab Muslims and 9/11. That was most of the seasons of 24.
So when you talk about “bombing them” or “exterminating them” or anything else, you’re not talking about Australia. Whether you mean to or not, you’re talking about the Middle East. Hence your tendency to come off like a paranoiac, genocidal fuckwit.
Given that Islamic terrorism can account for one major event in the US, while Western, heavily Christianized nations are guilty of invading, sometimes on multiple occasions, Islamic countries and ravaging their people and resources, I think they’re incredibly fucking restrained about the whole thing.
@562.
Fuck no!
Dunno.
Do women and non-Muslim minorities have a right to live in freedom and not be oppressed in Muslims theocracies?
Do you think Malala Yousufzai for instance has the right to an education and a good life not being condemned to suffer for eternity under Sharia law and taliban rule? That’s what I think.
Do you think Salman e Rushdie and danish cartoonist have a right to live free of death threats for expressing their views. Fuck yeah, I do.
The extreme Islamists want to destroy us and our way of life. Do you think they have a good point and they’re okay? I say fuck that shit.
@ John Morales
Au Contraire!
theophontes, I cannot deny that’s mildly awesome.
Yes.
Don’t know who you’re talking about or the situation.
Yes. Did you expect my answers to be any different?
So do the Cylons, and the “Islamic extremists” have only a slight lead on them, primarily because they’re not fictional. Why don’t you get freakishly obsessive about any of the other things I mentioned, StevoR? What about actual threats? Christian extremists right here in America are dismantling our secular government and trying to take away the rights of women and minorities. Yet still, even given the fact that I haven’t commented or read Pharyngula more than once or twice in the past six months, here you are, banging on about the exact same shit like a goddamn broken record. FUCKING ISLAM, MAN, FUCKING ISLAM.
@562. RahXephon, Waahmbulance Driver for St. Entitlement’s Hospital :
Then those Muslims are fine by me.
The ones’ that aren’t so peaceful – not so much, okay?
Because y’know trying to kill me and destroy my way of life – not cool with that. Are you?
..And I suppose Osama bin Laden, Al Quaea and Jemaah Islamiya are just figmants of my imagination. If only that were true.
You think one can only be paranoid about things that are fictional? Aww, bless your heart.
No, but as I said, I can list many things that are in front of “being murdered by Islamic extremists and the US government being turned into a Caliphate” on my list of existential worries. Even slipping in the bathtub beats that out. Choking on a gummi bear beats that out.
@570. RahXephon, Waahmbulance Driver for St. Entitlement’s Hospital :
You. Are. Kidding?
Surely?
No? See :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malala_Yousafzai
&
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban
I’m an Aussie not an American.
Blockquote fail dammit. Guess y’all can tell where.
@ John Morales
How can a bike that makes you happy NOT be beautiful? ;)
@ StevoR
Oi vey! Not again! Who are these “others” you are always gabbing about? And you are upsetting our serious discussion on the nature of beauty|function. If you had pulled in rambling about Pirsig you might be forgiven, but not this. Ayaaaaaaaah….
@573. RahXephon, Waahmbulance Driver for St. Entitlement’s Hospital
Ya reckon? Seriously?
I don’t.
Muslims aren’t my only worries.
Not the sole threat or problem we face. Never said they were.
But they are a real one and we shouldn’t ignore the reality that some of the Islamist Jihadist terrorists out there really are trying to kill us. You think we should just ignore that reality do you?
(No, that does NOT necessarily mean bombing or killing or nuking anyone.)
What do you suggest as a plausible realistic solution to this real issue?
Ah, right. I did hear about that. What’s it got to do with Islam? She’s Islamic, the Taliban fighting her and her people are Islamic, the Pakistanis supporting her are Islamic. It’s almost like Islam has FUCK ALL to do with it! Whodathunk?! Must be one of those pesky socio-geopolitical situations I mentioned!
Australia isn’t immune to Christian extremism, but either way, excuse my Americo-centrism.
I don’t dismiss that violence happens in those countries. Violence happens in every country. My problem is with your rabid obsession with Muslims and how dangerous they are. It’s practically cartoonish.
You seriously couldn’t tell I was mocking you?
SGBM,
“My friend told me black helicopters were trailing his sister, and I believe him.”
“I think if I sign that petition, I might be trailed by black helicopters.”
That’s not how language works. People use terms without specifying what they mean more precisely than is needed for current purposes.
Saying people “trade on equivocation” seems like an accusation of dishonesty, which I don’t think need be present.
Yes, that’s how natural language works – in general we make our meaning more precise when we need to do so or are asked to do so, and not before.
Sure, if it’s a discussion “full of mental health insults”, I’d probably do the same, having been sensitised to the issue – for which, my thanks.
Good point – but these things are continua, so there are inevitably going to be “blurry cases”.
Again, there will be blurry cases: different amounts of of social pressure will be required to make different people feel extreme guilt.
Apart from the last clause, these are clear-cut cases of psychopathology, but the last is again blurry: how minor, and how much guilt?
So – psychopathology brought about by social processes.
But typically, and in Othello’s fictional case, it’s a joint outcome of culture/education and individual psychology. In the play, Othello is a “Moor” (this would probably have meant to Shakespeare a north African Arab or Berber, although he’s often played as, and these days by, a man of black African descent), who has risen to high military command in the service of Venice, and has a devoted, virtuous, high-born and beautiful wife, Desdemona. Iago, one of Othello’s officers, plays on Othello’s insecurities as an outsider/jealous nature (there’s a lot of critical discussion of the relative roles of these factors) to convince him Desdemona is having an affair with another officer, despite a lack of any real evidence. Othello eventually murders Desdemona, then kills himself when the truth is revealed.
Again, the point is that there are cases that are neither clearly psychopathological, nor clearly just a result of culture and education, but an interaction of the latter and features of individual psychology. I can give a case from my own past. I once, in the 1990s, visited an HIV+ friend while I had a small open wound (which I couldn’t and can’t now account for) on my hand. Shortly thereafter, I had raised glands in the throat – which my friend had, I think on an earlier occasion, told me was a symptom he had had shortly after the occasion on which he believed (quite possibly wrongly) that he had contracted HIV. For some weeks I was terrified I had caught HIV from him, even though I knew, rationally, that the chances of this were vanishingly remote. Clearly, cultural factors (including my own culturally-induced homophobia) were operating – but I also have a general tendency to anxiety (for which I have at times been treated) and specifically hypochondria.
I agree that it needs questioning.
I agree; can you (SGBM) suggest an alternative?
Taking the dog for a walk and a break from this thread now and for tonight FWIW. Back later “inshallah”!
It just happens to be all I ever see you talking about. It’s not your only worry, you’re just incapable of shutting the fuck up about it for five seconds. Makes total sense.
StevoR:
Slavering Islamic terrorists are as likely to take over Australia as America, no?
(Dooooooooooom!)
Really.
What terror did David Hicks commit?
Watch out – I’ve heard that Moooslemterrists have been recruiting suicide gummi bears to the jihad!!
In Australia’s national broadcaster, the most recent news:
Six dead in latest Pakistan drone strike
(Funny, I don’t hear all that much about Islamic drones hitting America)
@ StevoR
Go ahead, google away. There are lists of these things: “8 times more likely to get killed by a cop than by a terrorist”…. etcetcetc. Should we be hating on cops 8 times as much? Or their whole communities? What about carpet bombing the communities they live in? Good value! We get more bang for our buck by being 8x as likely to stop the next murder, no?
What about White Terrorists? Should we start discriminating against white people next?
Anyone can see who is doing the dying, and where.
American teenagers. (Link: Abdulrahman.)
(He was a scary jihaddist terrorist until his grandfather produced his birth certificate. Then they just STFU.)
(The above linked to because it has sufficient items of interest wrt the Abdulrahman story, not as endorsement of the blog itself.)
StevoR if I could I would give you a trophy that had a large golden shovel on the top of it.
Do you still continue to advocate that we bomb them?
Then why bomb them?
So we just bomb them all and let Allah sort them out?
I appreciate the responses from SG (#468), theophontes (#469), consciousness razor (#472), and KG (#488, which was really good). I don’t intend to leave you hanging. I’ll respond when I find the time.
Did you intend telos, there?
Because this is teleological, rather than animistic.
Perhaps this motorcycle?
@John Morales
Fantasy has a positive, harmless color, connotes that the belief is being generated by the fantasiser–as opposed to being picked up from a Lyndon LaRouche pamphlet–and also a taste of “not truly believed” (though this is a really weak flavor). Delusion has a negative, malignant color and implies that the belief is sincerely held.
In most cases of allegedly -ist words that aren’t slurs, there’s a decent substitute, but if there is in this case it’s much more obscure than my thesaurus can manage.
seems like this has been discussed around here quite recently… (I agree)
Your thesaurus has adjectives. They are your friends: ludicrous fantasy, violent fantasy, paranoid fantasy, disgusting fantasy, etc. You can make any word every flavor of negative and malignant, even if by themselves they wouldn’t convey contempt, without the splash damage on people who have nothing to do with it. I think “fantasy” is already fairly contemptuous in many cases, so it would just be an issue of modulating it to whatever the context is. Using one word to express everything you mean rarely, if ever, works anyway. They’re not magic.
Theophontes:
Woah. Sent that link to Mister!
Nepenthe:
No, I wouldn’t say that. Rather depends on context, doesn’t it? After all, a majority of rapists and serial killers start out with fantasies of deep violence, which get darker and darker, so they pursue the need to make those true, to act them out. I don’t consider that positive, harmless colour.
@StevoR:
Islamist terrorists want to destroy your way of life? BIG WHOOP. The question you have to ask yourself, Mr. Racist Keyboard Warrior, is: can they? Do you sincerely imagine any Islamist organization has the slightest chance of overthrowing your government and setting up a Caliphate in your soil? Is that something one should be realistically worried about? Is that something worth setting up military campaigns and killing an untold number of people unrelated to said organizations? Is that worth the profiling, the racism, the religious discrimination, the eroding of personal liberties? Is that worth doing to them the exact same thing you fear they might do to you?
I don’t even know why I care saying these things. Countless people have asked the same question of you before, and you went back to repeating the same tired paranoid bullshit all over again.
You know what I consider horrible ideologies with bad consequences, you fucking piece of shit racist? Yours. You’re infected with the disease of the white first-world man, who thinks he (and he alone) knows what’s best for everyone else. You have the same rapacious mentality of every stinky, subhuman mob that ever came out of Europe since the Portuguese empire, trying to find feeble excuses for the atrocities they commit on other people “for their own good”. Your inflated ego presumes everyone wants to be like you, and those who resist the shining power of your example are “barbarians” who need to be browbeaten to accept that white first-world man knows best.
I just sincerely hope that stevenbrown is not StevoR playing games.
*
*
*
Yeah, I know. I’m a suspicious bastard.
@Caine, Fleur du mal + no. 599
I knew that was going to come up.
No, no I am not StevoR.
Just finished reading all these comments, that you pointed me to in the lounge, after getting sidetracked with that awesome/awful art deco bike.
Steven:
Good enough. I wasn’t trying to offend you or anything, if I did, I apologize. I am a terribly suspicious person, can’t seem to break the habit.
Sigh. Theophontes! Seems only us artist types like the bike.
Possibly, but “fantasy” still suggests something the fantasist knows isn’t real; “paranoid” overcomes that tendency, but then “paranoid” also suggests psychopathology; “ludicrous fantasy” is the best, I think.
Nonono. I like the bike. I just find art deco somehow ugly while still being very cool.
Steven:
Ah. Art Deco is pure delicious, however, I’ll grant it works better in some forms than others.
For me it’s like listening to Alber Ayler. It disagrees with my general sense of tone and musicality but I still love it because it’s so outside what I usually deal with. (example: http://youtu.be/dtiSA2RKDzc)
This is merely the latest example of a dog whistle, stevenbrown.
Never mind that it was the Mittbot 3000 who said the line about a binder full of women.
And GOProud is a organization for gay Republicans. That is just as conflicted as it sounds.
Theophontes, eeeeeeeeeeeee, you should see Theo thieving *very large* cookies and running off with them. So. Damn. Cute.
No, I didn’t get pics, will try next time.
Did someone mention bicycles? I like this:
Twin
Rats have stolen a tea towel. Now it’s home part two.
strange gods:
Yes, but does a strand of hair have rights? Should a nose be treated with respect? Does a finger have the right to its own bodily autonomy? Why exactly do certain ambulatory arrangements of carbon compounds have rights and intrinsic value while other arrangements of carbon compounds do not?
consciousness razor:
I’m using the definition in 2a in here, which says…”of or relating to the transcendent or to a reality beyond what is perceptible to the senses, supernatural”.
(*the preview of my href didn’t look right, hopefully it’s right when i hit submit)
Dhorvath:
Rats are quite fond of tea. What else would you expect them to use to clean up after elevenses? ;p
Seems silly to clean up after elevenses when one is going to have twelveses immediately after.
And Her Royal Fuzziness would not wipe her chin of kibble after dinner since for her there is no after dinner.
Nepenthe:
Yes, you’d think. Rats are rather insistent on the whole washing up business, though. I’ve had to put out two separate water dishes, as one is always used as the communal bath.
Because they have the capacity to think and feel.
Okay. Don’t confuse the one you gave with the one I did, and we’ll be fine. There are atheists who believe in supernatural stuff, even though they don’t believe in a god, so the answer to your question is still “yes.”
But… Why do you think it takes some non-physical part of reality to account for people thinking and feeling?
By “transcendent,” do you mean something which is part (or all) of physical reality but also goes “beyond” it, or something that is entirely separate from physical reality and is “beyond” it in that sense?
Yeah, the FTB overlords really need to do something about that.
For pete’s sake Caine, put a warning label on those links! I almost lost consciousness from squeeing too hard.
How’s Mr. Handsome doing with his eye?
Sorry, Nepenthe! Meester Handsome is doing very well, his eye is looking much better.
Notice how glibly StevoR equates and interchanges the two words I bolded in his post.
One could call it a freudian “slip”, but StevoR has already done this so many times previously, and been called out on it already so many times, that one cannot any more call it a “slip”.
All this time he has not changed one bit, nor learned a single thing from back to his first quasi-genocidal blitherings.
Disgusting and pathetic.
(Notice as well the glib manner he throws around “we” and “us”. No, there is no Islamist Jihadist Terrorist out there trying to kill me, and highly unlikely any trying to kill StevoR. Unlikely that any of them even know that either of us exist. Some might be on record saying that they want to kill a hypothetical conglomerate that might, theoretically include me and StevoR.
But saying is NOT the same as trying. Wanting is not the same as trying. And trying is NOT the same as doing.
But of course all this has long been previously explained to the racist bigoted genocide-fantasist that calls himself StevoR, and here he is, still, after all that, repeating the same hateful pitiful tripe.
*barf*)
Amphiox:
Not the least bit surprising, either. I refuse to respond to his posts in the lounge or other threads, where he manages to sound like an okay person, simply because I know that underneath that seemingly reasonable facade, seethes a bigot.
His whole “fallible human being” is crap, too. If he actually thought that about himself, he’d at least be willing to look at his bigotry and admit it, but no.
Owlmirror @592, both; if it’s not to be ridden, its purpose has been subverted and this is an insult to its spirit.
Caine,
Perhaps he’s using it ironically, much as others do their nymic appellations?
Come on joey, try to do just a little bit of thinking for yourself. Why should anyone else answer a question as stupid as that for you?
joey, just a hint. You were kind enough to praise my #488, about the reality of emergent properties. Do some arrangements of carbon compounds have emergent properties that others lack?
Why exactly do some spooks have rights and instrinsic value while other spooks don’t?
Feh. Lots of things are beyond what is perceptible to the senses. Are X-rays supernatural? Are radio waves metaphysical? How about molecules, or atoms, or quarks, or galactic clusters, or black holes, or the cosmic background radiation?
What the hell is a “metaphysical you”, such that it is not perceptible to the senses? I am certainly perceptible to my own senses.
So, anyone else irritated with FtB blogger Paul Fidalgo’s post “Sam Harris as a Trophy for Righteous Indignation” on Near Earth Object?
Fidalgo argues that being disgusted with Sam Harris because he deems torture justifiable amounts to “liberal orthodoxy”, because unlike most torture-advocates, Harris is an atheist and therefore one of us. I for one want no allegiance with Harris or his defenders. If we aren’t against torture, we ourselves are no better than the religious tyrants we so ardently condemn. And if we reflexively defend atheists who have gone well over the moral event horizon because they are also atheists, we have become every bit as mindless as the godbotters.
Also, like any brave iconoclast, Fidalgo has closed the comments on that post and the subsequent one.
Fidalgo seems to have swallowed the “you are not allowed to criticize fellow atheists” pill. Which is stupid, because atheists are perfectly capable of being wrong, and – as a movement predicated on reason and logic – if we can’t call each other out, what is the damn point?!
A note to Nick Gotts:
I quoted you (one of your comments here) in a blog post. Please let me know if there’s anything you think is inaccurate.
***
I can’t believe you actually asked this. I’m reading it, and I can’t believe it.
***
I was very irritated when I read it, and it quickly made me lose interest in his blog (not that I read it or really knew who he was before that). It was so boilerplate, like Anti-PC Iconoclast MadLibs or something. And then he closed comments so as not to have to read people quoting Harris’s actual words!
(I laughed the other night when Colbert was doing that bit about The Citadel in Idaho. I kept thinking, “Now there’s a community for Sam Harris!”)
SC,
That’s fine, and thanks for the heads-up. I tried to post the following on your blog, but I’m not sure it worked:
Damn! I’ve had it set to moderation for all comments for a long time, but yours doesn’t even seem to have gone through to that. And now that I think about it, I believe I recall David M. mentioning a while back that he had a problem as well. Blogger and comments don’t mix well, and it’s especially annoying because yours seemed to go through in the past. I hate the thought of people composing comments and then just having them disappear and being frustrated. Sorry!
I’m also angry because this:
was just what I was getting at. Thanks.
*I changed it to lower case just before posting for some reason. Might have to change it back.
Well, to begin with, strands of hair and fingers are not independently ambulatory, so that answers the question right there. Done.
But as always, one can apply the reality filter to put structure on hypotheticals.
On the day that hair and fingers speak, or otherwise independently communicate a desire for their own bodily autonomy (ie DEMONSTRATE their separate and distinct sentience, or at least possibility thereof), THEN we can start talking about whether and what degree of personal autonomy they can be afforded.
L.O.L.
The fool also referred to snowflakes as “ambulatory arrangement of water molecules” earlier.
<shrug>
First, that wasn’t your experience – your comment went through to moderation, and you were well aware of why it wasn’t posted. I’d said explicitly in the post that I was unlikely to put through profoundly stupid comments (and had explicitly told you in the past that I would do what I could to prevent you from leaving a trail you’d one day – I honestly thought it would have happened by now – find deeply embarrassing; they gave cooking pans to vervets, FFS).
For the record, it was a general point that doesn’t apply to spammers or pitdwellers, whose comments I simply don’t put through. I’m sure it cuts down on my traffic considerably in the latter case, but that’s not the traffic I want and I’m quite happy to leave their comments in permanent limbo.
Everyone should read this.
SC, agreed.
Hello … Thunderdome!
I had a bit of a drama last weekend: accidentally poured a glass of beer into the laptop. Ooops. It didn’t like it. Gave up the ghost, as we say. So I went on ebay, and bought a second-hand very-similar model, with the intention of swizzling the hard drives.
Turns out, after 3-ish days of intensive drying, the woozy bastard had come round and was booting up, albeit with most of the keyboard not working. (Apparently laptop alcohol dehydrogenase is not quite as effective as ours. Science!) I swizzled the drives anyway, and now I have a nice new laptop with all its keys (see: the Xmas 2010 incident with kid #3), a hop-fragranced DVD player, and two misleading Windows product key stickers. It’s a wonderful world.
Happy 2013! And most expensive beer ever.
cm, dammit!
If only you could’ve had Electric Dreams!
Sam Harris and I seem to have one thing in common, like Franc Hoggle and I, and that’s that he has managed to work out that gods, ghosts and spirits don’t exist. And good on him for that achievement. But there it ends. And as I said in the Lounge, I lack this reflex to drop my critical faculties just because some celebrity atheist or skeptic is a celebrity atheist or skeptic.
@555. John Morales :
I am worried about a small minority of Islamists that engage in international terrorism and seek to aquire WMDs and spark regional and global conflicts that will potentially lead to appalling consequences for everyone.
Better, clearer answer for y’all.
Additional :
1. Muslims that do not seek to attack us should NOT be bombed. Muslims that are willing to live in peace with others and who do not advocate or engage in violent acts towards the rest of Humanity should be treated like everyone else.
2. All humans have the same equal and inalienable human rights incl. to life , liberty and the pursuit of happiness, regardless of skin colour, ethnicity, “race”, sexual orientation, political beliefs, etc ..
3. Religion and religious ideologies can poison everything especially when that religion and the cultures predominantly following those religions / ideologies are as intrinsically misogynist, patriachial, violent, homophobic, anti-Semitic /Judaeophobic, pro-slavery, pro-genocide and generally messed up as Islam is. When your religion was founded by a Dark Age child raping, murdering, thieving psychopath like Mohammad and you think that “prophet” is as ideal role model who deserves to be worshipped or at all respected that’s not a good thing. When you forcibly demand by rioting, death threats, murders etc .. everyone else on the planet must pay undeserved respect to and never criticise that child raping, murdering, Medieval scumbag “prophet” that is a sign that your religion is intolerant and poses a threat to all other people whether or not individual “cafeteria Muslims” who reject side of the religion do.
Why is that not obvious to everyone here? Really?
StevoR
go away
StevoR:
Then you are also perverse and thoughtless rather than merely deluded, because your worry has you advocating policies that enhance that which your worry.
We have W88s. They’re awesome.
Remind me again what the Asiatic Terror is fielding?
@618. Amphiox :
Ok, for starters can’t you count or something Amphiox – that’s four wards not two!
Secondly, gee, it’s not like there’s no overlap there is it? /Sarcasm. Islamic Jihadist terrorists are a distinct and notorious subsection of Muslim. Ask most people in a random association word test to follow “Islam” or “Muslim” with another word and they’ll very likely say “terrorist” and vice versa. Other words commonly or likely to be found in close association with Muslim in those word cloud thingummies are “violence”, “rioting”, misogynist”, “threats”, intolerance” et cetera.
There are good historical cultural and other reasons for that as I’m sure you well know even if you won’t admit them. The Muslims don’t have these associations and this reputation for nothing.
Most – not all – but most international terrorist groups these days are Islamist.
There is an extremely long list of Islamic terrorist groups, threatening Islamic rogue and unreliable ally states most either theocracies or dictatorships, Mullahs and imams and Ayatollah’s saying hateful intolerant and bigoted things, etc ..
Sure there are occasional counter-examples and a lot of Muslims who don’t deserve to be associated with those negative connotations but there are undeniably, also those who do. By definition, you can’t be Jihadist Terrorist without also being a Muslims and I think I’ve made it plain in my comments already that I do see a difference and I do try -admittedly perhaps not always successfully to make it clear which group within the wider Muslim group I’m meaning.
By putting the Jihadists separately and specifically using that word I was actually meaning to do the exact opposite of what you claimed so that would be a major reading as well as numeracy FAIL on your part there Amphiox – although I guess its also perhaps a communication fail on my part too.
Um, that would be common English language general collective terminology usage there, Amphiox. General use of general words to convey meaning. Really not sure what the blazes you’re on about there.
*Might* be? Yeesh! No might about it. They are. We live in the West – we are non-Muslims at least I am and most others here are. (This being, y’know, an atheist blog and all). A lot of Jihadist groups have very clearly put on record their desire to destroy the Western world and convert all of us to their particular brand(s) of Islam so, again, yeesh.
Of course I wasn’t meaning us as specific individuals although, who knows, I could well have a fatwah or two against me at least as my username by now, haven’t been on any Islamist websites to see.
Huh? Well, d’uh! So? Relevance? What sort of silly sophistry is this shit supposed to show, Amphiox?
Some Jihadist terrorists and Islamists extremists *say* they want to kill us Westerners, some *try* to kill us, some have actually *killed* a great many of us. Three thousand or so all on one day in fact. Most Islamists Terrorist groups do all three. These are hardly mutually exclusive categories and there’s a pretty big overlap here and also, really, what the hell is supposed to be your case from that?
@ 621. John Morales
Wrong.
The “fallible human being” is quite sincere and I know and have admitted I’ve stuffed up in the past and said some things I shouldn’t have here. I’ve posted when drunk and emotional and gotten carried away on some specific international issues that I feel extremely strongly about. I have thought about some of those things and have apologised for and clarified them repeatedly and I am always thinking and reflecting and trying to learn and behave better. But I also know – and me being, y’know *me* as opposed to just some stranger on the net I would know – that I am no bigot and treat all people equally and well. You and others here are prejudging me as a bigot and that is simply false.
@599. Caine, Fleur du mal +
Not my style or what I’d even consider doing.
I have thought about changing my username here and have even asked PZ for permission to do so with the proviso that I will include a “formerly StevoR” component to the new moniker to make it clear and lessen the confusion as “Steven” is a common name and thus nym.
I definitely wouldn’t ever sockpuppet breaking the rules here (how stupid do you think I am?*) and wouldn’t and don’t “play games” but rather try to argue my case and express my views here reasonably and honourably.
++++++++++
* Yeah, I can guess what you may be about to say in reply to that bit. You’d almost certainly be wrong because, as I keep pointing out you and others have invented a strawperson idea of me and my views which is just that, a misjudged strawperson and not the person I actually am holding the views I actually hold. I’m no racist or bigot but instead am an opponent of racism and bigotry and if you actually read my words and thought about them properly you’d understand that.
Monitors
Can we have a chat about StevoR?
What would you like to chat about, Chigau? I’d like him to go away also.
Caine and others
I’m not really sure.
I know PZ has responded, when I alert him about obvious Bad™ stuff (slyme, etc.)
but StevoR is more like a persistent toothache or arthritis.
I also know that We The Monitors have no real power.
If we all sent an Alert with a request for banning, would that just annoy PZ?
I think the worst PZ would do you would be to take you off the list of monitors. I’m not sure where PZ is on the possible banhammering of the islamophobic bigot. I just know I would have applied the bahnammer about 6 months ago….
StevoR:
2 belies 1.
You really don’t know what words mean, do ya? ;)
—
chigau, there is a dearth of chew-toys as it is, and you want to scrap this one?
(bah)
There was something about StevoR that for the several months just lulled me.
He was rational for a bit of time, then ranting, then gone, then rational ….
But I’m tired of it.
John Morales
StevoR is not a chew-toy.
He is something entirely Other.
StevoR, for you.
Chigau:
I expect so. PZ is aware of the situation, I think this is one where he expects the commentariat to deal with it. I’d say we’re doing okay so far, basically confining any responses to Thunderdome and keeping him in Coventry otherwise. I’d dearly like it if he got a fucking clue already and just left, however, it’s obvious he’s going to insist on trying to be accepted here, in spite of overwhelming evidence he is not wanted.
I think flat out ignoring him, in all threads, is going to be the only thing which works.
Just when you thought Second Amendment nuts couldn’t get any stupider, two idiots parade their guns around Portland and terrify the locals. Not to worry, though. “We’re not threatening anyone,” Drouin explained. “We don’t have that type of criminal behavior.” See, everything is fine because it’s possible to immediately distinguish a homicidal idiot walking down the street from a perfectly harmless armed idiot from a single glance.
Caine
Agreed.
Now, if I can control myself…
StevoR why do you treat us like idiots who can’t remember what you wrote in the past?
Oh and for your reference you POS, you don’t mention anything stupid I respond to you fairly as I did this week. I clearly shouldn’t have even given you that benefit PZ’s rules be damned
With respect, two people do not make a general consensus.
Leaving a comment like this unanswered in its own thread would signal to newcomers and irregular readers that Pharyngula tolerates racism.
Actually I regret mentioning here on Thunderdome earlier, because I don’t see any obvious good from doing so. But we can’t be expected to give StevoR free rein to racism-up every thread except this one.
… regret mentioning StevoR’s comment about Wright here …
@Strange Gods
Are you saying there’s some previous evidence suggesting that appeasement doesn’t work for people like StevoR? Surely if we let him have one thread we will have peace in our life time!
ॐ
Yes. Caine and I are not a general consensus.
But if you could aid in the herding of StevoR toward the Thunderdome, I think it would be good.
Ing,
I’ve talked to a lot of racists and I can’t think of one who I can confirm exhibits StevoR’s apparent pattern of evident anti-racism followed by overt racism, although if we take Piltdown Man’s autobiography seriously then he and StevoR have that in common. Otherwise I don’t know of any people quite like StevoR. All I do know is that StevoR’s own behavior is evidence that he can’t be trusted not to racism-up other threads.
+++++
chigau,
What exactly would that mean, to herd him here? Has anyone ever done so successfully — is there an example to imitate? And would it mean not challenging him on his racism in the threads where he exhibits it? I’d regard that as unacceptable.
ॐ
re: StevoR
I really don’t know.
“StevoR, I will not discuss this here.” does seem weak.
StevoR seems to me to be different from all the others.
and I cannot put my finger on Why.
Your experience here is much longer than mine, is there an example to imitate?
Same old pathetic crap from StevoR. Call him out on his dishonest and pathetic bigotry and he’s all “no, no, I didn’t say that! I didn’t mean that!” even as his ENTIRE PREVIOUS RANTING POST is full of dogwhistles and other poor excuses that double and triple down on exactly that.
If StevoR had ACTUALLY meant to separate and make firm the distinction he CLAIMS he is making between “muslims” and “Jihadists”, then the proper way to do it is to NOT MENTION MUSLIMS IN THAT POST AT ALL AND ONLY USE THE WORD “JIHADIST”. There is NO OTHER PURPOSE TO EVEN PUT THE WORD “muslim” in that post EXCEPT to draw the parallel with “jihadist” in the next sentences.
Not like he hasn’t done this time and time and time and time again, and been called out on it time and time and time and time again, even quite politely the first few times.
But he ignores it all and just keeps up the same pitiful offensive fappery.
*barf*
SG:
You’re absolutely right. I was not referring to the two of us, and it’s my fault I didn’t make that clear. It’s from what I’ve seen – such as StevoR’s insistence on posting in the lounge, where he is ignored by most of the regulars, same in other threads. That’s what I meant by ‘general consensus’, although it hasn’t been widely discussed, it’s an action most have taken.
As for not answering his racism in other threads – you’re right, those can’t be left unanswered. However, I think I a general insistence on bringing the discussion here would be good, not only in preventing derailing, but making it clear that his opinions are not appreciated, or agreed with.
If all this proves unsatisfactory, a letter can always be drafted with a list of willing signatories to be sent to PZ. I’ll be glad to sign and send, if that’s what people wish to do.
IMHO, the only difference I can see between StevoR and various other long-term occasional trolls is that StevoR spends a lot more effort being ingratiating. Most of the others either don’t care what the regulars think of them, or use their pleading specifically to further their bigotry.
Is StevoR a particular annoyance to folks here? If so, is it because of the racist comments, or the hanging around? (Personally I just find him tedious… but being boring *to PZ specifically* sometimes merits a ban.)
chigau, you’ve been around the whole time we’ve had a dedicated troll-overflow thread.
But I was wondering if there were examples of StevoR being talked into taking an argument to Thunderdome instead of the thread where it begins. I don’t know if there are or aren’t, but I don’t imagine they’d reliably work along with the imperative of not leaving his racist comments unchallenged in the originating thread.
joey is the only person here who has been willing to keep on posting at Pharyngula without leaving his quarantine. Peterooke and absolute seem to have given up and gone away, and all the others broke out and got banned.
+++++
StevoR, would you be willing to voluntarily imitate joey here? Show you can be as moral as a Christian?
+++++
Caine,
Okay, that’s when he’s not saying something horrible. I too try to ignore him at those times.
Only if he cooperates by taking his end of the fight here to Thunderdome. Otherwise we end up with the type of problem where the regulars reduce their involvement in order to keep the peace while StevoR gets to keep trying to get the last word in at the originating thread.
That said, I don’t see any problem with trying to lead him toward Thunderdome a few times and seeing how it works out. I’m pessimistic about it, but it can be tried and then evaluated for efficacy.
Kidding, maybe:
Can we do a prisoner exchange? Put up with
Barabbasjoey running amok while locking up StevoR here?What say ye, Pontius PZ?
StevoR should be morbidly pleased by the Tuareg rebellion in Mali, where Islamists have piggy-backed onto a coup.
Pteryxx and everyone
re: StevoR
I am now at the point where I see him in the Recent Comments and I think:
“Is this a comment on the weather or another anti-Islam rant?”
and I don’t know why I care which is which
*sigh*
I wish I could be sure that my distaste is not purely selfish.
—-
ॐ
shit.
So I have.
Can we combine “not leaving his racist comments unchallenged in the originating thread” with directing the subsequent comments to Thunderdome?
—
@SG
I was just trying to be a jerk and compare him to Nazis more. Cause it’s accurate with his rhetoric and it sets him off.
*shrug* It all depends on his willingness to cooperate.
+++++
Ing: I just didn’t have a joke ready, so I answered seriously.
At the moment what annoys me most about StevoR is his outright lying. I do not think he can honestly believe what he said to RahXephon above: “It seems to me you are supporting those who *do* want [people hurt or killed or made to suffer unjustly].” I think StevoR only says that for rhetorical effect, and he knows he’s being dishonest.
Well, what I was trying to ask is, what specifically is StevoR doing that merits monitors calling on PZ to act. If the discussion’s just about the commentariat deciding how to respond, that’s open to much broader complaints… and personally I don’t have a strong opinion on it either way. I think it might look strange to passersby when he makes some innocuous comment and gets ignored or jumped on, but that might not be a concern worth addressing.
Pteryxx, no one has emailed PZ about StevoR except for StevoR himself. It’s not just about his bigotry, which is close to unbelievable, but his constant lying. A while back, he offered to simply say nothing on certain subjects anymore, but that was rejected wholesale, because he still holds loathsome ideas – he’s still a bigot. He’ll go off the rails and say something bigoted, then come here and whine and moan that he’s not a bigot, we’re all wrong, because we don’t know him. Then he whines about being a drunk, and that’s why he says such shit and it just goes around and around.
Short form: he’s an unapologetic bigot. I’m not willing to treat him as a member of this community.
@ John Morales
Here is another linky: Cool Hunter. Here you can see the bike does not lack clearance, not does it apear to lack the ability to turn properly (front wheel turned). It appears it does indeed ride. (Page down to last pic for your bonus.)
@ Caine
You like… then check out also Art Deco Train. (Ogvobis might know more about it. PRR S1)
The world’s biggest train, it could not run on some railway lines. Would that make it less beautiful I wonder?
Caine, I thought the question under discussion was whether monitors should get together to contact PZ about StevoR as a next step. Not that anyone was already doing so. If that suggestion’s been dropped already then never mind me; posting on little sleep etc.
Pteryxx: I’m not sure how a passerby would know he is being ignored. I am often here through my phone, so I cannot kill/hushfile him, so I ignore him (here and other blogs). In fact, I try to skip anything he says.
Beatrice, opposablethumbs, Ogvorbis, SG and anyone else i missed – thanks for your kind words. I’m very grateful to you all but still feel undeserving of such welcome and support
Beatrice, opposablethumbs – I’ll try to stick around but i don’t think it’d be of much help to anyone, myself included.
Ogvorbis – Sorry, I did not mean to trigger you. Maybe i should’ve added a trigger warning. Hope you’re better now than you last reported. If it helps, you’re too young to know what you’re doing was wrong, so try not be too hard on yourself.
SG – I’m very sorry and feel hopelessness and despair from time to time, but i guess i lack the will to do much harm to myself, which isn’t something i feel good admitting.
In some places bikes are primarily used to transport cargo.
Also, it is somewhat paradoxical to both ignore a person while simultaneously (and even indirectly) communicating to that person that xe is being ignored. A cold-shoulder check, as it were.
Vilém Saptar: I know how you’re feeling. I also struggle with depression and suicidal ideation. And I mostly lurk because I feel embarrassed to throw my half assed observations in where people who are so obviously smarter than I, and better writers than I, and better informed than I, are talking. But I’ve read your comments in the past and you make good contributions. Did you read the pharynguwiki article on postponing suicide? I’ve used basically that strategy to keep myself alive through a lot of dark times. You say you lack the will to harm yourself, which is good but also worrisome. If you’re still feeling that way perhaps you should (assuming you can marshal the will) take some proactive steps to make self harm more difficult? Get rid of firearms, sharp blades, dangerous drugs, etc?
Vilém Saptar,
Good to read you again.
Being too much of a coward to try and off myself is what’s keeping me alive. I hope I will one day have a chance to look back and be grateful for it. (This sounds creepily cheerful, even to me)
So yeah, I’m taking your lack of will to harm yourself as a good thing (duh ;) )
You fucked up, but that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve help and support. Or that you can’t offer meaningful thoughts and support to others.
Writing good stuff here won’t erase what you did wrong, and I’m not offering this as some kind of karma redistribution where whatever good thing you do makes the bad thing go away. Things don’t work that way, and you can only get forgiveness from the person you harmed, not us. But there is also the point where marinating yourself in guilt** gets more harmful than anything else. Instead of learning a lesson and trying to make amends, you slowly crumble inside. I’m saying that as someone for whom “marinating in guilt” comes too easily and can overshadow anything and everything good. I have to consciously work on breaking that train of thought whenever it comes if I don’t want to get dragged into pits of despair [I’m weirdly poetic today]. So I have some little insight into how you feel right now, even though I don’t know the exact circumstances. No matter how much you believe you are not worthy of help right now, that isn’t so.
If sticking around here doesn’t help you, it’s of course better if you take a break, just take a break from the break occasionally to give us an update.
I hope you will start feeling better soon. Then you can work on being better. Or maybe the being better part can come first and help you along in dealing with your guilt. Just don’t give up on yourself, please.
**note the distinction between “marinating in guilt” and “feeling guilty”. The second thing is a response one should have when they do something wrong, but the first thing is what happens when the guilt becomes overwhelming and possibly exceeds the appropriate proportions in relation to whatever one did wrong
dysomniak,
I bet half the people you admire for their smarts at least occasionally feel their contributions aren’t good enough compared to whoever they admire.
Seconding your advice about the postponing suicide article. And the rest too.
Well said, dysomniak – and yes, good to read you again Vilém Saptar. I do hope that some of what people have said helps you stick around and work out what you need to do (which needless to say does NOT include doing anything harmful to yourself, orright?).
what other kind, eh?
I just heard from Edward Gemmer about Adam’s petition:
Man, it was nice to ban him from my blog.
Odd as it sounds, the triggers I have experienced have, for the most part, been long-term positive. I hang out here knowing that I will be triggered. And when I am, it is my option as to whether to engage or run away and lick my wounds.
As you can see from my ‘nym, the triggers of last week turned out rather positive.
I can offer, again, to read if you want to write about what is troubling you. Don’t know if I can actually offer any insight, but I can read. If it helps you.
PZ: Troll spamming detected.
Ogvorbis, relly? :)
John Morales:
Really what?
Ogvorbis, your nym addendum reads Uncomfortable because I relly do feel good.
John and Caine:
Thanks.
Fixed.
Oh, dear lord. A friend of the Mrs has just introduced me to chap-hop.
It is true. We are obsessed with toilets (sorry: lavatories).
Needless to say, there’s already a vicious chap-hop rivalry (Mr B The Gentleman Rhymer Vs Professor Elemental). Thankfully, it won’t end in a shoot-out. ;-)
@ cm’s
Kewl!. Here two others I like too: Mr B The Gentleman Rhymer “Just Like a Chap” and Professor Elemental “Fighting Trousers” (his response to Mr B).
Still obsessed with lavatories: http://spitalfieldslife.com/2011/02/23/at-gods-convenience/
John Wesley, the spiritual importance of the number 8, and the etymology of the word “crapper”.
Who could resist. Chocks away, Ginger!
Edward Gemmer? Heh! He is now a slymie.
The other slymies think that he is rather funny.
http://spitalfieldslife.com/2011/02/23/at-gods-convenience/img_7615/
“John Wesley’s exercise chair to simulate the motion of horseriding,”
My kids and I have had exceptional fun using this as an imaginary prop in Gangnam style. ;-)
Janine
Funny ‘ha-ha’ or funny ‘eeeww’?
These are slymies. You make the call.
Janine:
Gee, I’m so surprised. He’s a gold-plated idiot, that one. When I informed him he was banned from my blog, he kept trying to comment. Thicker than a brick.
Funny in that he want them to make peace FtB, or funny as in needing the big orderlies in white coats with a straitjacket?
Chief Wild Eagle of Hekawi tribe say “How!”
“Chief Wild Eagle…” ChasCPeterson, don’t do that.
“big orderlies in white coats with a straitjacket” Nerd of Redhead, don’t do that.
Funny in that they thought how Gemmer handled the questions directed at him shown humor. Remember, some of us commented about his attempts at humor while he was here. What many here dismissed as failed jokes, they found genuinely funny.
Remember, they find Reap to be one funny person.
Poop joke level humor, in other words…
What athyco #701 said.
Don’t do that.
Athyco:
It was from the old television show, F Troop. That said, as a haffer, it made me uncomfortable to see it.
I dropped out of watching F Troop early on, even though there were other fish-out-of-water shows that I enjoyed. It punched down far too much for my taste, even though I didn’t know how to express it at the time.
Janine:
From your comment about Edward Gemmer, I am curious…do you check out the ‘Pit from time to time? If so, I hope you are taking a shower or two.
* “Chief Wild Eagle…” ChasCPeterson, don’t do that.
* “big orderlies in white coats with a straitjacket” Nerd of Redhead, don’t do that.
—
Bah.
This. Is. Thunderdome.
Tony, I regularly read books about the worst of humanity. While unpleasant, (It sure as hell is not fun to read the site. The misrepresentation alone is painful. And do not ask about the jokes.) it is hardly worst thing I have read.
In case you are not aware, one of the slymies has put up a petition, asking FtB and Skepchick to use critical thinking.
And the person who posted the petition is trying to plead his case. It is kind of funny in it’s own sad way.
In the news: Australians own as many guns as in 1996
Freeze Peaches:
Why is Hong Kong still so backward?
Link: Christians in prayer rally to fight gay law proposal.
/ embarrassment_by_proxy
Janine:
With a staggering 37 signers. It looks as though they are anti-petition as well as anti-feminist. Heh.
Hmmm. After reading the thread at Almost Diamonds and following a link back here, I see Paden was posting again, once more, apparently complaining about me. Janine, do you have any idea of what the fuck he’s on about? He seems to be under the impression I’m telling stories about him or something, but I haven’t been, I don’t know what he’s talking about.
I think that may be all of them?
Ogvorbis:
Supposedly, the pit has 400 members, which makes it right interesting that the number set for the petition is 100. Guess the expectations run low with that crowd.
Caine:
I never thought that there were that many.
So 400 atheists have decided that only atheism counts and human rights are negotiable and it should apply to all atheists. Interesting.
Or 400-minus-epsilon people went to check out slymepit for first-hand evidence. As some forums hide bits to only registered users, I can see people making accounts to check for that.
Well, take that 400 with a grain of salt, Ogvorbis. That’s how many signed up (registered) for the ‘pit, but it’s rarely an accurate reflection of who is active on a forum. Lots of people will register and never post, or post once and not again. I really have no idea of how many active members they have. I’ve never been there and won’t be visiting.
Also, just about every forum on the ‘net has at least one section which isn’t available to non-registered people, so you get people registering for the full poke around. I’ve done that myself enough times.
Same here.
You and nightshadequeen make a good case for the actual number being much smaller.
I tried.
God damn their search is useless, and they’re strangely hung up on mocking Greta Christina’s “cancer” (scare quotes theirs).
And seriously, how many pages of tapping the mike do they need?
nightshadequeen:
They aren’t retarded and remarks like this downplay the actual problems we face. These are regular, intelligent people (for the most part), who have consciously decided to take their stances against feminism. There are plenty of people out there who find their views reasonable and palatable, which makes it a problem which is not one to dismissed or handwaved with a remark like “minus epsilon people”.
I went there once. Once. And I shan’t be doing it again.
I do actually show up there. I think, though, that they found out I am a man and thus not worth actually going after. Or I’m too much of a light weight.
I suspect at least some of those 400 people will be ‘pitters setting up in readiness for sock-puppeting.
I read that as ‘epsilon’ representing an unknown/unknowable number. Now I’m not sure.
epsilon generally refers to a small number (which is what I concluded after reading a couple of pages – it’s seriously the same dozen or so names forever).
That said: I shouldn’t have trivalized it such, and I apologize.
Ogvorbis:
Unfortunately, I read it as ‘epsilon’ a la Brave New World.
I intended epsilon as in epsilon-delta proofs.
After the Athenians own Stalingrad, Syracuse, a group of 400 people in Athens (“The 400”) set up an oligarchy in order to “save” the Empire. They claimed that rule was actually undertaken by “The 5000” and was therefore broadly democratic. As it was, these actually never existed. The imaginary oligarchs did manage to cow the populus for a while, until the military took over and restored democracy.
From the petition:
This reminded me: Libby Anne had a pretty good post about this gender vs. equity feminism hocum recently.
going back to that StevoR discussion: I ran across his extended rant in the old Thunderfoot-reply thread where PZ already warned him to make no more tirades. I’d forgotten that was the same person. My bad.
NEW THREAD.