Tag: politics

RatS 22: Taibbi – PayPal’s IndyMedia Wipeout

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May 4, 2022

11:52 pm

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Matt Taibbi has another in his infinite series of posts on powerful and sanctimonious thugs, this one free to the public. This time it’s PayPal doing the thugging, and thieving, and not for the first time, or second time, all the while preening as the defender of Truth, Justice and the American Way. A nice touch is that this time the thugging seems to be in partnership with the Anti-Defamation League. Proving, as if it were needed, that the Old Jews can be just as much assholes as the New Jews.

Read Taibbi’s post, and then scream.

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RatS 21: Taibbi – Twitter’s Chickens Come Home to Roost

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April 27, 2022

12:37 pm

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(29/04/22 Update below) We had thought about posting on this one but, given the paywall, we had decided against. Now we’ve decided for it. With Elon Musk having arranged to buy Twitter, and given our post yesterday on Twitter Fun, it seems worthwhile.

People are going nuts at the prospect of Musk controlling Twitter. They’ve been going nuts since it became clear a couple weeks ago that Musk was eyeing the company. It is appalling. One doesn’t have be a fan of Musk to be disgusted by the manipulative, hypocritical and, most importantly and nauseatingly, censorious twaddle that would-be-respectable journalists are currently spewing.

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Governor DeSantis’s Critical Race Theory and the Rejection of Mathematics Texts

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April 23, 2022

4:07 pm

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Last week, the big, crazy news out of big, crazy America was the Florida Department of Education’s decision to reject 54 school mathematics texts. The reasons? Well, supposedly the rejected texts

included references to Critical Race Theory (CRT), inclusions of Common Core, and the unsolicited addition of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in mathematics.

The claim was immediately undermined, however, by the FDOE’s declining to provide any such references, or to even identify the rejected texts. Continue reading “Governor DeSantis’s Critical Race Theory and the Rejection of Mathematics Texts” →

RatS 20: Michael Lind – The End of Progressive Intellectual Life

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April 20, 2022

11:17 pm

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Following on from Laura Kipnis, we had also never previously heard of Michael Lind. Unlike Kipnis, who seems consistently great, Lind is a mixed bag. He has a superior tone, which doesn’t sit well with some of his less-than-superior judgments; anybody who writes a book titled Vietnam: The Necessary War is on the thinnest of ice. Nonetheless, Lind is smart and thoughtful and, critically, he is willing to write what he thinks, is willing to annoy anybody.

Last week, Lind had an excellent essay published in Tablet. Titled The End of Progressive Intellectual Life, it begins,

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RatS 19: Laura Kipnis – Why Are Scholars Such Snitches?

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April 12, 2022

11:17 pm

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Last week, Matt Taibbi published a book review/interview with Laura Kipnis (paywalled, but a decent chunk is freely available). We hadn’t previously heard of Kipnis, but she seems great: smart and literate and brave and funny. Taibbi’s piece was prompted by a great essay Kipnis had published last month in The Chronicle of Higher Education, titled Academe is a Hotbed of Craven Snitches. It can naturally be read together with two of Kipnis’s earlier essays, Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe and My Title XI Inquisition.

But of course we in Australia don’t have to worry. This is all just an American thing, isn’t it?

Read Kipnis’s essays, and then scream.

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Keith Devlin Makes an Idiot of Himself

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March 6, 2022

2:08 pm

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Again.

We had considered writing this post a week ago, then decided not to bother. Then, after Keith Devlin came up in conversation, we rereconsidered.

We’ve never much liked Devlin. He has written some things we like, including his excellent book on Fibonacci, but Devlin has always seemed loud and self-promoting, and not nearly as smart as he imagines himself to be. Devlin also happily assisted the American government to make their drones work better. One of those occasions when Professor Smarts might have thought a little harder.* Still, we have mostly just tried to ignore The Math Guy.** Continue reading “Keith Devlin Makes an Idiot of Himself” →

RatS 18: Taibbi – Putin the Apostate

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March 1, 2022

10:51 am

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Putin is a psychopath and, once upon a time, he was our psychopath.

Matt Taibbi, who is regularly painted as a Putin-apologist because he didn’t buy the Russiagate garbage, was in Russia as a young, gonzo reporter when Putin’s rise began. Taibbi has written a great, depressing history of this time. It is paywalled, but anyone who is gagging on Western sanctimony and hypocrisy should read it. It begins, Continue reading “RatS 18: Taibbi – Putin the Apostate” →