Tenebris Nox

On LBC radio yesterday, one of their presenters seriously asked “Are mobile phones now more dangerous than smoking?”

I was just drawing attention to the way people join in the hysteria about stuff like this. I grew up when it was illegal to own a copy The Evil Dead on video because it was a “video nasty” and would corrupt minds and lead to the fall of civilisation. I’ve lived through similar hysterics about heavy metal, hiphop, video games and hoodies.

(My son’s secondary school HAS banned ereaders and restricts computers to local apps without internet access at all.)

Wrong.

Howso? I was (non-seriously) referring to the way that the printing presses after Caxton were increasingly regulated by the English government starting in the 15th Century and reaching a high-point in the middle-16th. Fear of the wide transmission of printed materials made them do silly things like only allowing certain numbers of books before the plates had to be smashed. Remember England was a country that had prohibited printed versions of the Bible in English not long before. I’m not sure what your point about Gutenberg is.

Maybe stop spending all your time flipping pages on your book and you might get it? (Also a bit of basic historical knowledge about the history of the printing press and books would help.) Apologies if this went over your head though.

Welcome to the 15th Century where books are prohibited in schools. We favour the age-old method of the scholar-teacher as the sole source of wisdom along with the use of slates for children to copy from The Bible uplifting Psalms and Verses. Allowing children access to books during the school day would only increase the transmission of unhealthy and ungodly ideas and cause disease and anxiety in young people. Naturally, in our better schools learning is conducted in Latin. Signed: His Majesty’s English Government.

Luckily, UK govt will adopt Sam Altman’s Orb and everyone can probe who they are by eye scan. O Brave New World…

Why is Slax so small? (Or, rather, why are other distros so large?)

Huh? Aren’t YOU one of the bad guys in this instance?

Maybe not Walter Mitty (Gosh! An autistic man doesn’t manage his fantasies in the same way as neurotypicals! What a crime!) but I can give you many, many accounts of senior UK academics involved in plagiarism, falsification of data and a survey of UK academics in which one in seven admitted to plagiarism. I can also give you names of academics who have encouraged the rape of children, sexually assaulted students, theft and other forms of real criminal behaviour… I don’t doubt you could name any of these because the mainstream media didn’t whip up such a lynch mob against them. Because they were all white I suspect. And really you can’t name these because you’re hung up on Arday being a black man as well. For you and the rest of the baying mob, that’s Arday’s true crime: he’s black, autistic and was taking the seat of a privately-educated white man.

It’ll be interesting to see which of Arday’s colleagues actually come forward. My suspicion is that the none of the allegations of academic malpractice will be upheld and Arday’s autistic “fantasising” (for want of a better term) will certainly not recognised as criminality. What WILL be revealed is the extent of the lobbying done by the Race Science Network.

Can you give me examples of another academic who has suffered similar levels of witch hunt by the British media? Or are there really no other academics who do stuff like this? You know as well as I do why the witch hunt was as relentless as it was.

Even when Arday resigned his post, the witch hunt continued. I’ve heard that journalists talked about Arday killing himself long before he did. The focus should be on the process of Arday’s appointment. It wasn’t Arday’s alleged plaigarism or alleged fantasisings that caused the media witch hunt: it was because he was lauded for being young, autistic and black. Racists can’t stand stuff like.

Agree. People who are essentially racists and hung up on their obsession with so-called DEI appointments are going to continue to focus on Arday’s shortcomings rather than this. But to go back to the original subject of this thread: it is the racist, anti-DEI mob that hounded Arday to his death.

Really? Nothing to do with being black and autistic? Or that the campaign against him was launched by Nathan Cofnas, the “race realist” who dowsn’t believe that black people are intelligent enough to hold academic positions and the promoted by right-wing lobbyists? Really?

Care and thoughtfulness

Who is it that you think is providing “justice and fairness”? Our capitalist masters or their client politicians or media? O, to live in such a world where the ruling classes care for us poor people at their mercy.

Without access to the actua or estimated costs at scale of providing free water, I can’t tell you whether the distribution and processing costs cause scarcity. As I replied to someone else, there’s no issue of scarcity when it comes to buying and upgrading weapons of mass destruction which cost £billions. I’d rather taxpayers’ money spent on free water and energy rather than a bomb that sits in a silo never being used.

Oh, one of those “real world” arguments where it’s ok for example to spend crazy billions on weapons (especially those of mass destruction) that will fingers crossed never be used but in the “real world” decent water, food, energy is far too much to provide. It’s a question of priorities. Next you’ll be telling me that in the “real world” an NHS is not possible.

100%. We need to push back on the idea that everything should be commidified and sold at a profit for a tiny minority of the already-rich.

Why “reasonable”? We live on an island surrounded by water on a planet that is two-thirds water. If you want to make water a commodity to make profit then you have to intstil the idea that there’s scarcity of water.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that we should turn taps on and let them flow but we shouldn’t be charging people for a basic element of human life. At this point in human civilisation we should be working towards ensuring everyone on the planet has a subsistence level of clean air, clean water, energy and food (and, I’d argue, a roof over their head). Not price it “reasonably” so that if by luck of birth you can afford it you can fill the three olympic-sized swimming pools in your back garden while the poor old pensioner on state benefits has to worry about having a shower once a week or not using a heater in winter to make ends meet. I don’t understand why people fret over the idea things should be universally available with no costs at point of use. Always strikes me as being entitled and selfish.

You can see why they’re making a lot about water scarcity in the media now.

It’s about time we should start pushing back and saying that some things are a basic human right like air, water, food and energy (certainly at a subsistence level) which should be provided without cost.

Please don’t try to infantilise me by giving me a link to a wikipedia. I’ll just repeat: he was a vulnerable man.

Who is infantalising anyone? He was a vulnerable man. You don’t grow up autistic and suddenly become neurotypical - even if you’re a professor. Part of the reason that Cofnas targeted him was that Cofnas thought he was “weird”.

Much more important to note that the claims of plagiarism against a black autistic man were brought by the American self-declared “race realist” Nathan Cofnas who doesn’t believe that black men and women are intelligent enough to hold academic positions and on merit would “disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment”. Cofnas targeted Arday because he knew Arday was a vulnerable man.