Pretty decent article about Pinker in Boston Magazine

Pinker can be seen on Facebook, this February,
promoting the website of racist and
Nazi-sympathizer Richard Hanania.
---------------------------------------------------------------

I mean, as usual the author didn't push Pinker very hard but the article is about as critical as you can hope for from the mainstream media, which until recently rarely did anything except fawn over Pinker and his twinkling blue eyes.

Robert Huber's article Can Steven Pinker Save Harvard? actually raises the issue of Pinker's long-term alliance with race pseudoscience promoters, while somewhat down-playing how much Pinker is involved in promoting race pseudoscience by proxy.

For example:

And this is the pattern: Bad actors and dark thinkers have appropriated Pinker’s research and writing for their own ends—and Pinker has done little to stop them.

Charles Murray, coauthor of The Bell Curve in 1994, which linked IQ differences among races to genetics, has since cited The Blank Slate to support his views. Last year, Pinker appeared on the Aporia Podcast, an outlet that supports a revival of race science. In 2024, the Guardian reported that one of Aporia’s cofounders, Matthew Frost, once said that he’d been recruiting mainstream writers to give the podcast “legitimacy via association.” Pinker gave them an hour.

I should point out here that it's been a dream of Emil Kirkegaard (who owns Aporia) for a long time to team up with Pinker for the cause of race pseudoscience, as documented here.

To continue the Boston Magazine article from where we left it...

After the Guardian chastised him for appearing on Aporia, Pinker told the newspaper he only agreed to be interviewed after the outlet “attacked” his views on human progress. He also said he believes it is vital to persuade audiences one disagrees with, which is why he appears in media with diverse political orientations.

Pinker likes to say he manages his “controversy portfolio carefully.” But that means the trouble he might get into—not the trouble he creates for others by lending his credibility to people like Murray, with whom he engages rather than dismisses. Late last year, he and Murray had a back-and-forth in the Wall Street Journal about Murray’s views on “terminal lucidity” proving the existence of the soul; Pinker, ever skeptical of faith, chastised Murray for reaching beyond the data. But the debate itself was the point: Whether Pinker won the argument didn’t really matter—Murray got the platform, a serious intellectual exchange with a Harvard cognitive scientist.

Then a little later:

I put this to Pinker directly: You insist on following evidence wherever it leads. Do you take any responsibility for who has followed your work—and where they’ve taken it?

“If I have been misleading or unclear in a way that would egg on deplorable actors, I would take responsibility for that,” Pinker says. “But if I express things perfectly clearly—there’s a huge world out there. I can’t take responsibility for how some random person out on Twitter interprets a paper or an interview if there’s no content in the interview that would actually egg on or encourage them. And I can’t boycott every forum whose members hold some opinion that some third party finds repugnant.”

I guess we can infer from Pinker's response that he doesn't think Aporia (owned by neo-Nazi Emil Kirkegaard) holds repugnant opinions, only that third parties think Aporia's ideas are repugnant.

It's good that the article mentions Pinker platforming Murray - but Murray is not the only racist whose career has gotten a boost from Pinker. As I have documented since I started this Pinkerite blog (and before on my personal blog) Pinker has aided and abetted racists for the past quarter century, from Steve Sailer to Razib Khan to Bo Winegard to Emil Kirkegaard.

As recently as February of this year Pinker could be seen promoting the website of racist Richard Hanania.

The problem is that the media, even well-meaning writers, are too respectful of celebrity intellectuals to really dig into what Pinker has been up to for the past twenty-five years.

Which is why I have to keep doing this blog. So the information will be here for when a journalist decides to get serious about Pinker's pro-race pseudoscience activities.

Matt Walsh is a stooge of the fossil fuel industry and belongs in prison

I'm very pleased to have a reason to post a video from Atun-Shei Films, owned by Andrew Rakish. He is justly renowned for his series about the Civil War, "Checkmate Lincolnites." 

 

SUPPORT HIM HERE.

And then please enjoy this video, Matt Walsh's Fascist History of Slavery DEBUNKED. 

The saga of neo-Nazi Emil Kirkegaard

When we last discussed neo-Nazi Emil Kirkegaard, leader of an international network of promoters of far-right and neo-Nazi beliefs and race pseudoscience, he was pleased that the NYTimes had published an article about him and his race pseudoscience associates.

I first mentioned Kirkegaard on this blog in May 2019 in connection with gutter racist Charles Murray, but I didn't really pay a lot attention to him until 2021, when I learned he was attacking me on Twitter. 

Kirkegaard and Murray have a mutual admiration society, as we can see from a recent Murray retweet of Kirkegaard in which Kirkegaard and his Aporia toady neo-Nazi Bo Winegard are happy to explain how they became racists - or even bigger racists - thanks to Murray's best-known work, the Bell Curve. Kirkegaard has even made it available for free as a PDF on his website - I assume with Murray's permission. This is great - you don't have to pay to find all the times Murray used infamous gutter racist Jean-Phillippe Rushton as his source. Plus, any method of keeping money out of the pocket of creepy old gutter racist Charles Murray is fine with me.

The person who gave me a heads-up about the attack in 2021 is Oliver Smith, who has more first-hand knowledge of the awfulness of Emil Kirkegaard than anybody else.

The mission of this blog is more about mainstream "celebrity intellectuals" like Steven Pinker than outsiders like Kirkegaard, but since Pinker likes to make common cause with Kirkegaard and with long-time Kirkegaard allies like International Society for Intelligence Research board member Emily Willoughby, there's plenty of overlap.

Recently Oliver Smith has shared the story of his unpleasant dealings with Kirkegaard in this long post Emil Kirkegaard vs. Oliver Smith.

Some highlights:

• The purpose of this post, is to fully document what Kirkegaard put me through for over six years; the tl;dr version: Kirkegaard filed a frivolous libel lawsuit, lost the preliminary judgment, discontinued his unmeritorious claim, but refused to pay my awarded costs. I initiated enforcement action but found he changed his name to William Engman; moved country and closed his bank account after I filed a third-party debt order to prevent me seizing his assets.A warrant for his arrest was issued in a bailiff’s court (Fogedretten) in Denmark. It was in effect for several months (since he breached summonses and failed to attend court). His lengthy evasion was likened by a judge at the bailiff’s court to the movie Catch Me If You Can (2002). 

• Ultimately, for his non-attendance there would have been an imposed prison sentence (for contempt of court). Realising severity of his situation, Kirkegaard stopped evading me and began to comply with court orders; he resolved the judgment debt by reaching a settlement, which vacated the hearing on my application for a suspended committal order. While the settlement remains private, and I will not breach this confidentiality, I think anyone can take an ‘educated guess’—Kirkegaard paid me a five-digit sum; the judgment debt he owed (over £50,000) was already part of the public record and it was discussed at length in a judgment.6

• In August 2017, Kirkegaard showed up at RationalWiki (user: EmilOWK) to complain about my criticisms of his OpenPsych journals but was blocked for doxxing me (again). His account was banned on 19 October 2017 and his unblock request was denied. Not long afterwards, he began legally threatening the RationalMedia Foundation who own and operate RationalWiki. 

Note: based on the purging of articles on RationalWiki related to race pseudoscience and promoters of race pseudoscience in 2025, it seems likely to me that Kirkegaard was behind the threatened lawsuits - and possibly the actual lawsuits.

• In May 2016, OpenPsych was embroiled in a scandal that involved doxxing, specifically Kirkegaard had published the data of 70,000 OkCupid users (without their permission) in the journal Open Differential Psychology. Kirkegaard claimed that he was publishing “already public information” but this is questionable. Data he scraped from OkCupid profiles was only accessible if logged in to an account; ethics scholar Michael Zimmer therefore pointed out: “Since OkCupid users [accounts] have the option to restrict the visibility of their profiles to logged-in users only, it is likely the researchers collected and subsequently released the profiles that were intended to not be publicly viewable.” Kirkegaard was subsequently investigated—by the Danish Data Protection Authority.

• Seeming as Kirkegaard doxxed my ISP and was embroiled in scandals,20 I started to look into his digital footprint. I disturbingly discovered—Kirkegaard once admitted viewing child pornography and wrote comments on the internet, sympathising with legalising the possession of child pornography. In 2013, on a Danish internet forum, Kirkegaard under his real name discussed and linked to a list of illegal websites on a “Danish child porn filter” on Wikileaks (these were websites the Danish government blocked access to). He admitted to viewing these child porn sites (with a Tor browser to hide his Danish IP-address) since he had knowledge the websites “are still up and actually contain child porn” so must have gone through the censored list of websites.

• Kirkegaard has had some success in censoring webpages that factually document his internet posts on child pornography or that merely quote his comments; for example, the aforementioned article by DeWereldMorgen that described Kirkegaard a “pedofilie apologeet” (“pedophile apologist”) was removed despite it accurately quoted his posts downplaying the harm of CSA. Kirkegaard suppressed this information in an attempt to get his posts on paedophilia and child pornography memory-holed. He is known to deindex articles from Google (and other search-engines) which mention his comments on child pornography by sending ‘right to be forgotten’ requests. Kirkegaard currently lives in Germany; he can still deindex webpages under EU privacy law (Art. 17 GDPR).

Note: Kirkegaard's sympathy for pedophilia is not only in the past - he retweeted someone criticizing the prosecution of a teacher for abusing a student, just a couple of days ago. Apparently protecting minors is an example of American "Calvinist inheritance."

• Aside from Kirkegaard’s web of lies and deceptions to obfuscate service, I had to deal with him moving address to avoid enforcement. After he left his address in Kiel, I was informed by a journalist that he was sighted on the grounds of the Villa Adlon (a villa in the district of Potsdam). In December 2023, the German online newspaper Die Zeit reported Emil Kirkegaard was living on the grounds of the villa and was embroiled in yet another scandal. I hired a private investigator who confirmed to me he was at least visiting the guesthouse near the villa. The guesthouse’s mailbox was in his girlfriend’s name (I was shown a photograph of this) and I could not serve him by post. By January 2024, Kirkegaard was no longer spotted near the villa; he was rumoured to be in Spain.

• According to the article and investigative journalism by Die Zeit, the co-owner of Villa Adlon, Mathilda Huss gave Kirkegaard “free lodging” and “also supported Kirkegaard two years ago, in founding the Society for German-Danish Knowledge Transfer” (note this is the same company I months earlier had served Kirkegaard by publication in the District Court of Kiel). Huss, his business partner, seems to have given him a place (on the grounds of her villa) to stay or hide, after he deregistered from his property in Kiel. His girlfriend’s name was already on a mailbox. I was later informed that Kirkegaard’s girlfriend is Mathilda Huss’ au pair. Kirkegaard moved address again so I dropped the enforcement action, I had filed in the Potsdam Regional Court (Landgericht Potsdam).

Note: Mathilda Huss provided Villa Aldon to the infamous far-right Postdam meeting, which included neo-Nazi activists. This Huss-Kirkegaard connection is especially important because it demonstrates how the international neo-Nazi network will help members evade the law.

• In November 2024, I found Mankind Quarterly was offering to purchase subscriptions to the journal by PayPal. This opened up the possibility of a third-party debt order in the UK because PayPal UK Ltd is a subsidiary of PayPal Holdings Inc (the former is a private limited company in the UK with its office in London). It was clear from Hope not Hate’s undercover investigation (which was broadcast as Undercover: Exposing the Far Right) and the fact Kirkegaard is the domain registrant of Mankind Quarterly’s site that he now owned the journal.

• Aside from falsely accusing me of being a stalker, I received extensive abuse by emails under pseudonymous names when I was trying to enforce the judgment debt. It seems Kirkegaard was hiding behind these fake names (to avoid legal liability). He might not have realised, that the standard of proof in civil harassment is balance of probabilities and not evidence beyond reasonable doubt. I would only need to show it is more likely than not he sent these abusive emails. Who else would be taunting me about evading? I can only describe Kirkegaard’s behaviour as sociopathic: he filed and lost a frivolous lawsuit, refused to pay my legal costs, then was antagonising me about evading service under fake names sent from unsolicited emails while the same time playing the victim

• While writing this long post, I got in contact with Erik Ahrens now named Andrew Y who was a former friend and associate of Kirkegaard. As noted above, Ahrens fell out with Kirkegaard; he then published a blog post leaking information about Kirkegaard (such as Kirkegaard’s Human Diversity Foundation74) and his business connection to Mathilda Huss (screenshot). Ahrens confirmed Kirkegaard had lived at (or at least was visiting frequently) the Villa Adlon up to January 2024 but relocated to Spain; he lived in Spain for about five months and afterwards traveled to other countries. Ahrens told me he later moved to Berlin. I managed to confirm this, since Kirkegaard in his sworn affidavit (on 10 October 2025), explicitly stated his address was an apartment in Berlin.
• I consider Ahrens to be a reliable source of information concerning Kirkegaard (since most of his claims I have independently verified). Ahrens for months, had stayed with Kirkegaard at a house in Spain. Furthermore, he was formerly involved in setting up a company with Kirkegaard’s girlfriend (Liegent LLC) and was a close friend. According to Ahrens, Kirkegaard often discussed his dislike of me with him and openly admitted he was evading my enforcement proceedings. What Kirkegaard told Ahrens in private contradicted what he wrote in court witness statements, which sums up his dishonest character. Most concerning is Ahrens told me Kirkegaard planned in early 2024, to kill me by hiring a hitman on the dark web (as a way to stop paying me the judgment debt).

I was disappointed that Smith does not mention the 2023 smear campaign against him which included a hit piece in the Manhattan Institute's publication City Journal. The libelous article was promoted by a long list of right-wingers and racists, very much including Charles Murray and Steven Pinker. Smith successfully sued to have the article removed. 

Considering that the article was an attack on a private citizen who was owed money by Kirkegaard at the time, and considering the article attacks Rational Wiki, it looks to me like the article was published by City Jounal at the behest of Emil Kirkegaard. If true, that makes the Manhattan Institute part of the international neo-Nazi network.

Anybody who is opposed to racism and race pseudoscience should give thanks to Oliver Smith for fighting Emil Kirkegaard and documenting the fight - clearly the forces of the international neo-Nazi network - including Steven "friend of Epstein" Pinker - were brought in to try to destroy his life for daring to oppose racist, neo-Nazi weirdo Emil Kirkegaard.

UPDATE: Kirkegaard claims he's not sad the Nazis lost WWII - but somehow that doesn't stop him from promoting neo-Nazis, aligning with neo-Nazis, or continuing Mankind Quarterly which was created by Nazi-sympathizer money and devoted to the same race pseudoscience promoted by the original German Nazis.

Well, you can't expect logical consistency from neo-Nazi racist weirdos.

Books by Marvin Harris available for free

Pinkerite is a big fan of the cultural materialism promoted by anthropologist Marvin Harris. And I want to point out that most or all of his work is available for free on the Internet Archive.

I own most of these, but it's handy to have them in digital form - much easier to search on key words.

• America Now: The Anthropology of a Changing Culture
• Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches: the Riddles of Culture
• Cultural Materialism : the Struggle for a Science of Culture  (personal favorite)
• Culture, People and Nature: an Introduction to General Anthropology
• Minorities in the New World: Six Case Studies - with Charles Wagley
• The Nature of Cultural Things
• The Rise of Anthropological Theory; a History of Theories of Culture (considered by many to be his most significant work)
• The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig: Riddles of Food and Culture
• Also published as Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture
• Theories of Culture in Postmodern Times
• Town and Country in Brazil

"Cannibals and Kings," while shown in the Archive, is not available to borrow for free except for those with print disabilities. However, it is available for free here.

BONUS

Also available on the Internet Archive - from the Pacifica Radio archive, Harris is interviewed about the 1968 Columbia protests - The Columbia University Strike. Harris was roughed up by the cops.

Harris wrote an account of the strike for the Nation magazine, Big Bust on Morningside Heights.

Peter Thiel vs. the Catholic Church

 Peter Thiel's whacked-out antichrist babbling has gotten the attention of the Catholic Church:

This week, Mr. Thiel arrived in Rome to deliver four lectures on the Antichrist. The series, which began on Sunday, is exploring how “occult forces are ceaselessly at work, intent on destroying what remains of the West,” according to the conservative Christian group hosting him. 

 

In response, Catholics have decried Mr. Thiel’s vision in several articles over the past week. One was titled: “American heresy: Should we burn Peter Thiel?” 

 

Mr. Thiel held similar lectures in San Francisco last year and in Paris in January, prompting relatively little reaction from Christian thinkers. But proximity to the Vatican appears to have prompted some Roman Catholic commentators to issue a more sustained response. In the “American heresy” essay, the Rev. Paolo Benanti, an adviser to the Vatican on A.I., described Mr. Thiel’s vision as “disturbing.”

I mean, I can't stand the Catholic Church either, with its long tradition of hating women's sexuality and trying to control women's bodies, but it is probably still wealthier than Peter Thiel and so one of the few forces capable of shutting down his nutty antichrist babblings.

I wonder if Thiel still funds Quillette.

Is Nellie Bowles the worst writer in America?

The answer will not surprise you.

More at Defector:

It is not difficult to find praise for Nellie Bowles, who writes a weekly column for The Free Press, a website owned by her wife, Bari Weiss. "If you don’t read ⁦Nellie Bowles every Friday, you are leading a sad, barren, and empty existence," says Free Press columnist Niall Ferguson. Conservative writer Caitlin Flanagan says that Bowles's columns "have the exact spirit of the 70's writers whom I adored and who were so damn funny—and also deeply in the know. "

A couple of years ago her book was being trashed by enjoyers of good literature.

I will add that Bowles is also a terrible person, cheering on the stochastic terrorist Libs of TikTok versus a lesbian bar. It's what you expect for someone who is a courtier of wealthy fascists. And because she and her regime censor wife control so much media, there will always be toadies lower on the food chain to praise Bowles.

GREAT SPEECH BY OBAMA

 This is the best part.

Given at Jesse Jackson's memorial service.

As I was saying, John Oliver is a national treasure

John Oliver makes an excellent case for the fecklessness of Elon Musk, but he also mentions Harmeet Dhillon a lawyer who loves Trump and his fascist administration and was once (or still is?) the lawyer of far-right looney-toon grifter Andy Ngo. 

Claire Lehmann's Quillette used to promote his grift all the time.

Because we are living in Bizarro World, thanks to morons voting for a felon/rapist/traitor/psychopath, Dhillon is now "assistant attorney general for civil rights."

The fact that she promoted a bunch of monsters including the equally awful stochastic terrorist account Libs of TikTok tells you how horrible she is.

But the most important aspect of Oliver's piece is how utterly poisonous Twitter is - a force for pure evil. 

Oliver discusses the way that Twitter is apparently fiddling with its algorithm to push right-wing content. I hope those still on Substack - looking at you, Paul Krugman - are aware that Marc Andreessen is just as right-wing extremist and just as capable of tweaking the Substack algorithm.

And speaking of horrible people, Jesse Singal is promoting his anti-trans obsession while promoting his book in the NYTimes. He is an awful person, part of the race pseudoscience gang and an apologist for those other stochastic terrorists, Kiwi Farms.

The New York Times has a lot to answer for, over its campaign against trans-people.

Erin Reed has a response to Singal which is, unfortunately, on Substack.

Racist & misogynist club with Jeffrey Epstein, Steven Pinker and friends.

 I just recently saw this photo of a dinner party with Pinker and his Epstein circle.

This image is floating around various places, but I found this instance in the article The billionaires' eugenics project: how Epstein infiltrated Harvard, muzzled the humanities and preached master-race science

It's amazing how many images there are of Pinker with Epstein considering Pinker claims he avoided Epstein.

Of course Pinker's #1 fanboy, the embarassing Jerry Coyne, had to defend Pinker with the usual excuse whenever a member of the right-wing men's club is caught while up to some mischief: "guilt by association!"

Coyne has no response to Pinker's letter in 2012 saying he'd be delighted to meet with Epstein. Because Coyne simply ignores anything he doesn’t want to know.

Pinker could be seen promoting the career of racist and neo-Nazi Richard Hanania this month.

John Oliver, immigrant and national treasure

Happy can't wait until he's not president day.

And if you thought you couldn't hate ICE Barbie any more...

It's time for the 25th Amendment and time to vote every Republican out of office

But we won't use the 25th Amendment, because even though it is clear that Trump is a demented, Depends-wearing old psychopathic RACIST the Republican Party will not ever get rid of him because MOST REPUBLICANS ARE RACIST.

The Republican Party has destroyed the legacy of Lincoln. It should be disbanded and if not then every Republican should be VOTED OUT OF OFFICE.

Trump shares video with racist clip depicting Obamas as apes

US President Donald Trump has shared a video on social media which included a racist clip depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. 

 

The clip - set to the song "the Lion Sleeps Tonight" - was at the end of a 62-second video containing claims about voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. 

 

Republican Senator Tim Scott - who is black - called for the president to remove the post, describing it as "the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House". 

 

The White House defended the clip as an "internet meme video" and told critics to "stop the fake outrage".

Steven Pinker, the Intellectual Dark Web, Race Science and the Jeffrey Epstein files: "Steven Pinker is also a friend."

Steven Pinker praising "bad boy" Alan Dershowitz
in the October 2013 Harvard Law School video on
Youtube titled: "Celebrating Alan Dershowitz: teacher"
--------------------------------------------------------------

If you do a search in the Justice Department's Epstein files on the name "Pinker" you will see the name is mentioned 416 times. 

In a few cases the name is not connected to Steven Pinker - his sister Susan appears a few times and at least one other person named Pinker is mentioned, but the vast majority of mentions are Steven Pinker.

The most important information about Pinker's connection to Epstein has long been known:  Pinker helped Epstein's lawyer Alan Dershowitz defend Epstein in 2007.

The phrase "had sex with Dershowitz" appears 53 times in the Epstein files, as in:

• "This makes [redacted] the second woman to allege that she had sex with Dershowitz at the behest of Epstein..."

• The second time that I had sex with Dershowitz was at Epstein's house in Palm Beach. During this encounter, Dershowitz instructed me to both perform oral sex and have sexual intercourse.

• I had sexual intercourse with Dershowitz at least six times. The first time was when I was about 16, early on in my servitude to Epstein, and it continued until I was 19.

A lot of the documents in the Epstein files are duplicates or at least the information is duplicated across many documents. And to be fair, I only did a half-assed job of searching every file in which Pinker's name appears. So I could have missed something. But still, I did find some items of interest:

On March 28, 2012 Pinker received an email from Epstein's assistant:

Hello Steven. Jeffrey Epstein will be making a trip up to Harvard on Sunday April 15th. He is wondering if you might be around and available to meet with him?

To which Pinker responded:

Unfortunately I'm out of town that day, but if Jeffrey is around on Monday the 16th, I'll be back and would be delighted to meet with him.

This was five years after 2007, when Pinker had helped Dershowitz defend Epstein, and four years after Epstein pled guilty to state charges: one count of solicitating prostitution and one count of soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18.

In his response to Jeffrey Epstein's request, on June 23, 2015, to give Pinker's email address to Stephen Hawking, infamous sex pest Lawrence Krauss (his full name appears 5,209 times in the Epstein files) wrote:

Thanks. I don't normally give out email addresses, even to friends... but I guess since Jeffrey flew stephen on a plane it is ok.

An article published in the NYTimes a couple of months ago discusses Krauss's and Robert Trivers's connections to Epstein. They sound like a delightful couple of guys:

In 2018, Mr. Epstein forwarded Mr. Krauss a list of attendees for the Women in the World Summit, a convention of female leaders and activists. Mr. Krauss responded, “Let’s do a men of the world conference,” and listed men accused of misconduct: Kevin Spacey, Bill Clinton, Al Franken and Woody Allen.

The evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers is also mentioned in the new tranche of emails. In 2015, he told Reuters that Mr. Epstein had given him about $40,000 for his research. And he defended Mr. Epstein, saying girls mature sooner than they used to. “By the time they’re 14 or 15, they’re like grown women were 60 years ago, so I don’t see these acts as so heinous,” he said to Reuters.

John Brockman, the guy who edited the Epstein-funded Edge, wrote to Epstein on June 2, 2011:

Strangely, the usual billionaire crowd is not showing up for this one, so I am running hard to revision it as a serious science event, inviting more third culture intellectuals and also the global press (NYTimes, WSJ, NYorker, Economist, etc.) Ultlimately it will be a much stronger and more important event, but it's not the one advertised to you. The list status is below. (Btw, I hope you will come (Martin and Pinker would be very happy if your showed up) but will understand if you want out.

I believe Martin refers to Harvard professor Martin Nowak.

Brockman sent this email to Epstein on May 3, 2015:

I saw your boys, the Dersh, and Larry Summers, at a dinner Pinker had for Rebecca's birthday. Poor guy, he's going out for his wife, and then, the day before the event, Ilarry, his father dies. And while his whole family was in Montreal and in mourning, he persevered with smile on his face and only his close friends knew.

I talked to the Dersh - what a story! David Boies!! What's going on? Didn't talk to Summers.

Summers is a well-known good buddy of Epstein. "the Dersh" is of course Alan Dershowitz.

On February 8, 2012, Epstein wrote to Brian Boyd:

i look forward to sponsoring your dream work . 75k. we will work out the details.. Steve Pinker is also a friend. ( since you seemed to hold him in high regard )

Boyd is a University of Auckland professor  who "met disgraced sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein for breakfast, and later discussed the fee that Epstein offered to pay him to write about Nabokov’s novel Lolita."

Epstein acknowledges his "colorful past" in this letter to Bill Gates on December 4, 2013:

1. I remembered I did speak to your cfo in the past , but I believe he thought at that time that my colorful past could become an issue . the time is now ripe. 2. the event in April 4-6 0 will be with Pinker, venter . sr martin rees frank wilcek, . 6 or 7 nobel prize winners. lawrence krauss. richard dawkins...

Perhaps the most pathetic figure out of all the celebrity intellectuals collected by Epstein is Stephen M. Kosslyn, who wrote to Epstein on January 3, 2013:

Dear Jeffrey:

Thank you very much for your note, which means a lot to me. You are probably not aware of this, but I consider you one of my only real friends -- you don't want anything from me, don't try to push any agendas on me, and you care about me. The feeling is mutual.

Imagine having a rapist psychopath as one of your only real friends.

Of course you knew there would be a connection between Kosslyn and Pinker, evident in an article that is included in the Epstein files:

...Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker credits Kosslyn, his former graduate adviser, with breathing new life into another venerable institution. "The Harvard University psychology department had been a backwater, coasting on its reputation, before Steve reinvigorated it in the 1990s with an aggressive program of hiring young mid-career scientists, which vaulted the department into the front ranks," says Pinker, who joined the department in 2003. Pinker also cites Kosslyn's leadership through the financial crisis as evidence that he's the right peron to turn around the Stanford center: "I'd be surprised if Steve didn't make the center financially viable and intellectually vibrant within a few years:'

What damn fools these self-impressed academics are. 

I have not spent much time on this Pinkerite blog discussing Pinker's connection to Epstein, although most people are far more interested in that than in Pinker's 25 years - at least - of promoting hereditarianism and professional racists like Steve Sailer and Razib Khan, and writing for the racist publication Quillette and appearing on the Neo-Nazi podcast Aporia (owned by Emil Kirkegaard, a pedophilia apologist.)

But it's clear that Epstein pleading guilty to raping kids did not bother him at all. I noted in the last post that Pinker's racist ally Claire Lehmann has a history of not caring about pedophilia and is a huge fan of Camille "North American Man/Boy Love Association" Paglia.

Pinker is a fan of Paglia too, mentioning her in his Blank Slate as one of the good (i. e. misogynist) "feminists."

I think that Pinker, like many in his wealthy "celebrity intellectual" cohort, believes that moral and ethical concerns don't apply to him. That's why he screams "guilt by association" whenever anybody mentions the awful people he allies with.

So why wouldn't he be delighted to meet with Epstein in 2012? 

Why wouldn't Jeffrey Epstein consider him a friend?

UPDATE: 

Great article in The Verge by Elizabeth Lopatto that mentions the connection between Epstein and his friends and the Intellectual Dark Web:

Being able to see their emails makes something very clear: The “anti-woke” movement was not a genteel intellectual inquiry, made by disinterested parties who cared deeply about free speech. It is a social circle of powerful people who feel threatened by #MeToo. Reading through the emails, it’s possible to see that Epstein himself coordinated pushback against #MeToo. Looking back, it seems obvious that sinking #MeToo also led to where we are now: a place where laws simply don’t apply if you have enough money and power. The same players are involved. 

 

Recall the great many pronouncements about the limits and dangers of #MeToo — hilariously, Bari Weiss wrote an entire article in The New York Times about “iconoclastic” members of the “intellectual dark web” who “talk constantly about the regressive left but far less about the threat from the right.” Included in this group was a correspondent of Epstein’s: Sam Harris, to whom Epstein suggested he use “more charm and less argument” in debates. Several of the names mentioned in the article would later join Weiss’ abortive attempt at an “independent” school, the non-accredited University of Austin. Much like the group Weiss profiles itself, the University of Austin would become a tool of the far right.

UPDATE 2

Here's something I missed - Pinker was paid $10,000 for helping to defend Epstein.

Steven Pinker, the Intellectual Dark Web, Race Science and the Jeffrey Epstein files

Well that didn't last long. I called Claire Lehmann the voice of reason last month, but now, the woman who won the International Society for Intelligence Research's Constance Holden journalism award is ho-humming her way through one of the biggest stories of the year, if not the decade.

Claire Lehmann has a history of not caring if someone is pro-pedophilia as can be seen in her praise of Camille Paglia, who loves pedophilia so much she bascally declared it one of the pillars of Western Civilization.

Lehmann's circle of ghouls and grifters jumped in to agree with her about the lack of entertainment value from the Epstein files.

So who are these people who find underage rape by famous men so terribly tiresome?

Well there's Cathy Young, who mostly doesn't find underage rape interesting but she found it absolutely fascinating when a creepy guy published his ex-girlfriend's personal information in order to harm her as much as possible. Young seems to have a real fondness for Eron Gjoni, to the point where she appears to be trying to rehabilitate him, even though at the same time she got him to admit that he had no regrets about his grotesque and indefensible invasion of privacy.

I am convinced that Young has a serious case of internalized misogyny, right along with Lehmann, Paglia and Young's based Gamergate comrade, Christina Hoff Sommers, which is why, I believe, Young gets the maximum enjoyment out of seeing women, especially young women, in emotional pain.

She's also chummy with professional racist Razib Khan.

I've also mentioned Damon Linker on this blog. He's a thinktank creature who was mad that Trump was brought to justice, if only temporarily a few years ago. He's written for Lehmann's own gutter racist publication Quillette and signed the Harper's letter with the rest of the grifters and race pseudoscience promoters.

But let's not forget Matt Taibbi, who also finds stories about rape such a chore. Which is surprising, because apparently Taibbi used to find tales of rape hysterically funny and entertaining enough to write about in detail. 

Taibbi is part of Lehmann's far-right racist gang these days, which, considering all the misogyny in this crowd, is a perfect fit.

To most everybody's amazement, Lehmann was yeeted from X of all places, apparently for being bored with underaged-rape. Lehmann can be seen on Linked In complaining about it.

I find it amazing, all the people whose real names and jobs are displayed on Linked In, going public with their awfulness by supporting a gutter racist like Claire Lehmann. 

The suspension did not last long, and Lehmann is back on X now, which is the right-wing safe space, most of the time, and so a perfect home for her.

But what about Steven Pinker and Jeffrey Epstein?

I will be writing about that soon.

Steven Colbert at his best

 His entire monologue on January 26 was devoted to the execution of Alex Pretti by Trump thugs.

But of course it isn't only one demented old rapist who has caused all this misery and death. The entire Republican Party has enabled the Trump monstrosity every single step of the way. 

The Republican Party must be punished for a generation to keep it from doing fascism again any time soon.

Personally I think the Republican Party has disgraced the memory of Abraham Lincoln so badly, it should disband in shame. But they have no shame.

Jimmy Kimmel's monologue was also very good, and I especially liked his reference to the necessity of the 25th Amendment.

Both monologues ran the video of Pretti delivering a eulogy for a recently deceased veteran, praising the vet for making a sacrifice for freedom. "Today we remember that freedom is not free."

We should all memorize that speech.

And then vote every single Republican out of office.

Neo-Nazi Emil Kirkegaard and his international network of racists are in the NYTimes, finally

The New York Times has finally gotten around to paying attention to the international network of racist "researchers" and publications led by Emil Kirkegaard in an article published January 24: Genetic Data From Over 20,000 U.S. Children Misused for ‘Race Science’:

Though Dr. Pesta later submitted updates on further research he wanted to do, none explicitly described the group’s true intentions, according to court records. The legal filings also show that another group member, Emil O.W. Kirkegaard, a right-wing blogger in Denmark, suggested Dr. Pesta submit misleading proposals to gain access to additional data sets “I reckon that if we mask the nature of the study with usual medical terms, one can ‘get away with’ a lot,” Mr. Kirkegaard wrote in an email. “Getting samples for analyses that one doesn’t publish (to preserve your reputation!) are still useful because they allow us to validate our beliefs privately.” In an interview, Dr. Pesta denied misleading the N.I.H. and defended his work. “I am not a eugenicist,” he said.

Dr. Pesta’s collaborators had a history of scrounging for data to support their fringe theories and of using unreliable methodologies. 

Bryan Pesta was mentioned in the report "Race Science, Inc."

"Bryan Pesta, a former recipient of Pioneer money who is now part of HDF’s underground research team."

HDF is Human Diversity Foundation, since officially renamed Polygenic Scores LLC, owned by Kirkegaard.

I was disappointed that the NYTimes does not mention "Race Science, Inc.," published by the British organization Hope not Hate. That article gives a fuller understanding of how these racists work together. Kirkegaard is basically Pesta's employer, and I expect that obtaining data under false pretenses is part of the job of an underground research team member.

Kirkegaard has long been a fan of taking others' data without permission, another useful fact about Kirkegaard left out of the NYTimes article.

I do like the fact that the Times article points out that the "science" done by these race scientists is pure bullshit, like them inventing an ethnicity called "USA Black." One of Kirkegaard's other employees, the neo-Nazi Bo Winegard (also mentioned in the Race Science Inc. article), along with his twin brother Ben, explained their race theories a decade ago in the gutter racist publication Quillette in an article called "The Reality of Race and the Abhorrence or Racism."

...racial categories are like film categories (e.g., drama, horror, comedy). Film categories are certainly real in the sense that they offer predictive power. If one knows that A Nightmare on Elm Street is a horror film, one can be reasonably certain that it will be dark, scary, and violent. But film categories are not immutable essences that perfectly sort movies into distinct types. A genre-based satire like Scream, for example, does not snugly fit into any of the traditional film categories. It might be horror; it might be comedy; it might be some previously unknown combination of the two. Furthermore, there aren’t a fixed number of film categories. The amount and the granularity of film categories depend upon the interests of the people using them. Your friend might use four (horror, comedy, drama, and science fiction), whereas Netflix might use an apparently limitless and startlingly specific supply. (See Daniel Dennett’s book for a variety of points and related examples centering on the topic of species). 

The same principles apply to racial categories. If one knows that Thomas is a Caucasian, one can be reasonably sure that Thomas has relatively light skin, and that he has recent ancestry in Europe.

The Winegards' use of "Caucasian," a scientifically obsolete term tells you exactly how scientific they are. But then, all of the Winegards' race science originates directly from the 18th century, which is when the term Caucasian was invented.

They explain in their article that their classification of human "races" is as scientific as film categories - that is, completely subjective, or as I pointed out when I wrote about the article, what some might call "postmodernist."

Steven Pinker is a big fan of that article.

So this is the type of dum-dum who is grabbing data without permission and trying to use it to justify their own racism.

The NYTimes article mentions a couple of other race science ghouls: John G. R. Fuerst  - believed to be an anti-Semite, not a surprise considering his connection to Kirkegaard; and Jordan Lasker. The NYTimes article mentions in passing the controversy of its using hacked data by political operative Lasker (aka "Crémeiux") to attack Zohran Mamdani during his successful mayoral candidacy.

The Times article also mentions another member of the international Neo-Nazi and race pseudoscience league, Michael Woodley of Menie, but not by name: 

The agency discourages “stigmatizing research” that could promote “negative stereotypes” or cause “social detriment.” That is, in part, a nod to eugenics, a discredited field of research asserting that certain races, usually white Europeans, are genetically superior. Such ideas — and the pseudoscientific studies that support them — have been used to justify violence, including by the gunman who killed 10 Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo in 2022.

The link for "pseudoscientific studies" goes to an archive of the NYTimes article called A Racist Researcher, Exposed by a Mass Shooting which talks about how Woodley's racism was included in the manifesto of the gunman responsible for the 2022 slaughter in Buffalo. What the Times article doesn't mention is that Woodley is a participant in annual meetings of the gutter racist organization the International Society for Intelligence Research (ISIR) and that several other frequent meeting participants were also cited by the mass-murderer. Kirkegaard has participated in ISIR meetings several times, most recently in 2024.

The January 24th Times article refers to its article about Woodley, but doesn't mention Woodley has a connection to Kirkegaard. You'd never know how large the Kirkegaard network is - or even that Kirkegaard is far more pernicious than just "a right-wing blogger in Denmark"  if you only read the NYTimes.

Emil Kirkegaard thinks the NYTimes is pro-race science and claims to be happy about the article. 

But Jordan Lasker is less happy.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the NYTimes, David French has just published an op-ed that whitewashes Bari Weiss' anti-woke grifter university in Austin although French does have some criticisms. French discusses Steven Pinker's now-broken connection to University of Austin as if Pinker is the exemplar of sweet reason and "centrism" and so French does not mention Pinker's connection to Kirkegaard.

In other Kirkegaard news, someone published a paper about the lawsuit for defamation brought by Kirkegaard, which Kirkegaard lost. The main purpose of the paper is to argue against the current British court compliance methodology. But it does say this:

A preliminary issue on single meaning and whether the publications were fact or opinion was tried before Julian Knowles J in 2019. He found the single meaning of each publication was not that Mr Kirkegaard had sexually abused children (as Mr Kirkegaard had pleaded). Instead, he agreed with Mr Smith that their meaning was that Mr Kirkegaard was a supporter of, or apologist for, child sexual abuse, which was a defamatory assertion of opinion rather than fact. As a result, he awarded Mr Smith half of his costs on the preliminary issue, some £13,500.

In light of these findings, given Mr Kirkegaard's previous statements on the subject, it was plain that his action would fail, and he discontinued shortly thereafter. The final cost order in Mr Smith's favour came to some £26,000 (and was endorsed with a penal notice).

During the time that Kirkegaard owed money to Smith, the Manhattan Institute's City Journal ran a hit piece about Smith, which Smith successfully sued to have removed. Steven Pinker had helped to promote that hit piece.

It's hard to believe that someone who cares about his career so much, as Steven Pinker certainly seems to care, would ally with an organization run by a terrible person like Emil Kirkegaard. I guess because Pinker loves race pseudoscience so much, he'll align with anybody else pushing it. 

Kirkegaard and his fellow hereditarians can be seen chatting about promoting race science on Kirkegaard's chat board, wondering if they could get Pinker to help out by setting up "an academic group of anonymous scholars."

But you'd never find out about that via the New York Times.

Legal Eagle weighs in

Legal Eagle makes excellent points:

Some people are yelling get out, some are yelling get out of the car. 

You can also see clearly from Mr. Ross's vantage point that Ms. Good is looking all the way away from him as she backs up and also turns the wheel all the way to the right. In other words, turning to get out of that situation and not towards any of the agents. You can also tell from the footage that the engine is revving at this time, indicating that the car is going to speed up, but at the same time this is all taking place at a very low rate of speed, close to 0, as she's doing what is obviously a 2-point turn. 

At the same time that another agent appears to be lunging into the driver's side door in an effort to apparently turn the wheel to the left towards the agents. You can also see Ross switches his phone from his right hand to his left. That frees up his right hand to pull out his firearm. 

But it's also clear that he never drops the phone and continues recording in his left hand while simultaneously taking his firearm out with his right hand and shoots at least twice. It also seems pretty clear that the reason he was arguably in front of the car was for video recording purposes, and that at any time he could have gotten out of the way. 

And I will opine at this time that holding your cell phone in one hand while firing with the other seems pretty reckless, if not depraved indifference to human life.

Republican Party - the party of cold-blooded murder

Trump is evil, but he couldn't have the power to do his fascism without being aided and abetted by the Republican Party, the party of pure evil. VOTE THEM ALL OUT!!! 

Ice Agents Can Be Charged with Murder

 On Wednesday afternoon, ICE agents carrying out an operation in south Minneapolis were briefly obstructed by a car blocking traffic. ICE agents approached the female driver, 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, yelling, “Get out of the fucking car,” and one of them attempted to open the driver’s-side door. After the driver backed up to turn around and move, another agent drew his gun and unloaded three shots into the car. The car barreled into a light pole about 100 feet down the road, and the driver was quickly pronounced dead.

The Majority Report: 

ICE Kills Woman With Gunshots To The Face

And of course the psychopathic puppy-killer Kristi Noem immediately smears the dead woman.

ICE even refused to allow medical personnel through for 15 minutes - MURDER!!!

Killing of Renee Good

ICE agents also prevented a bystander who identified themselves as a physician from providing medical aid to the driver. No medical aid was provided for about 15 minutes and when medical first responders arrived, their vehicles could not access the site because of the ICE vehicles and they had to walk to the driver.^[16] One witness also reported seeing the shooter walk away from the scene and get in an ICE vehicle.^[9][10] United States Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem stated the ICE agent who fired the shots was treated at a hospital and later released.^[17]

UPDATE: the ICE agent is identified as Jonathan Ross. 

More evidence that Ross is a cold-blooded killer.

UPDATE 2: wow, gutter racist Claire Lehmann as the voice of reason - these are strange times.

Jamelle Bouie on Bari Weiss - she was hired to be a regime censor

Bouie details what an absolute grifting right-wing fraud Bari Weiss is. 

It was obvious to me how evil Bari Weiss is when she published her Intellectual Dark Web article, and was a major reason why I started this blog.

NYTimes columnist Bouie is a long-time critic of the race pseudoscience gang, even linking to my personal blog over ten years ago when racist Razib Khan was on the verge of being hired by the New York Times. Which is most likely why Khan hates Bouie so much.

Weiss of course was an employee of the New York Times, which helped boost her grifting right-wing reactionary career, leading to the destruction of CBS news. Unfortunately the only alternative to the New York Times is the even-worse, oligarch owned and controlled Washington Post. 

That's what happens to mainstream journalism in an age of oligarchs and fascism. 

How it started:

How it's going.

 

Moral of the story: grifters gonna grift.

Oh, so that's how Peter Thiel knows so much about the antichrist.