Google Censorship

Google, which owns the Blogger platform, recently notified me it put my post "Scary rightwing anti-democratic Quillette-funding Peter Thiel" behind a warning because it "violated community standards."  

The notification provided a link to its community standards and I see nothing that violates them. So you have to GUESS what Google doesn't like.

It may be political censorship, but it could also be because Google has stupidly decided to let AI moderate Blogger content. 

On my personal website, a post about Watergate was flagged. Again, Google does not tell you what exactly is the problem, but my guess is that because Woodward and Bernstein relied on W. Mark Felt to be their deep background source, and because they gave Felt the alias "Deep Throat," Google's AI moderator decided that was porn. But again, just a guess.

I will be migrating Pinkerite from the Blogger platform as soon as possible. It's better to go the independent web route anyway.

You can now read the original article here: Scary rightwing anti-democratic Quillette-funding Peter Thiel.

Gregory Cochran demonstrates how to do race pseudoscience *** PLUS *** racists on Linked In

Cochran:

Rushton thought that the explanation of geographical variation in IQ was adaptation to a world with winters. I didn’t think that was crazy, but I was pretty sure I could come up with ten other comparably plausible explanations. In some, the key events might have happened tens of thousands of years ago, while others might have been recent enough to be documented in the historical record. 

 

Increasingly, I suspect that there is no single explanation. Maybe several of my notions are partly true. The Ashkenazi Jews look like a case of recent selection for white-collarism in a reproductively closed merchant caste – and maybe there are similar explanations for the Parsees and some of the high Indian castes. Cousin marriage explains some of what we see in places like Iraq or Uttar Pradesh.

More racist brainfarting here.

Basically, you just imagine what you consider plausible scenarios about race and intelligence. 

Write it down. 

Boom, you did a race pseudoscience. 

But I doubt Cochran, who I think is likely every bit as racist as his late partner in pseudoscience, Henry Harpending, thinks he needs to prove anything. I expect he believes that he knows better than anthropologists like R. Brian Ferguson (who Cochran has insulted) and geneticists like Adam Rutherford (who Cochran also insulted), even though Cochran's training is in physics. 

What was biologist PZ Myers saying again about physicists?

Rushton was the racist who got lots of support from E. O. Wilson.

Crackpot Ron Unz was so impressed by Cochran's "Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence" brainfart he gave him more than half a million dollars. Racism is very lucrative if you have the right racist kook as your sugar daddy. 

Cousin marriage was the explanation that Steve Sailer dreamed up, and Steven Pinker was so impressed he put the theory into The Best Science and Nature Writing of 2004.

Speaking of Sailer - like Cochran, professional racist Steve Sailer has a profile on Linked In. 

And so does professional racist Jared Taylor. Although, like Sailer, he doesn't list his racist "accomplishments" but instead lists himself as "Translation Consultant and Professional." Not a word about Taylor's actual job as an infamous white supremacist creep.

And professional racist Richard Spencer is also on Linked In. He does mention his racist history, kind of, but no doubt few know how hardcore racist Taki's Mag is.

I didn't go looking for these profiles by the way. When I looked at Cochran's profile, all these other professional racists popped up in the right-hand sidebar under the heading "People Also Viewed."

Professional racists funded by right-wing racist plutocrats - this is why we can't have nice things.

Oh look David Duke has a Linked In profile which lists under Experience "Grand Wizard of the KKK" and he uses a photo of George Floyd as his avatar.  I reported that account. If you have a Linked In account, you should too. Just click the More button under the profile name, and then select "Report" from the drop-down.

Apparently Linked In has no moderators - or just doesn't care

Update on the Pamela Paul NYTimes embarrassment

Egged on by public embarrassments Anna Krylov and Jerry "get offa my lawn" Coyne, Pamela Paul made absurd claims based on the phony panic trumped up by Krylov and friends.

The NYTimes published some excellent responses included from two of my favorite social media champions against race pseudoscience, professor of biology Carl T. Bergstrom and science historian David Sepkoski.

Bergstrom:

Public understanding of science is essential for democracy. Misleading readers to score political points with an argument that scientists have exchanged merit and objectivity for progressive ideology is a disservice to science and the public alike.

Sepkoski:

Scientific racism, for example, is sadly not a historical relic. The field of human behavioral genetics thrives on publishing papers clinging to the notion that group differences (read: racial differences) exist in intelligence and other measures of ability, despite countless studies undermining such conclusions. Perhaps not coincidentally, most of the researchers who conduct these studies are white (and predominantly male), and their work has attracted great enthusiasm in the white nationalist community.

Payton Gendron, the perpetrator of the 2022 Buffalo massacre, cited the work of leading scientific proponents of innate racial differences. There is a direct connection between this discredited science and violent extremism.

Thanks for your good work gentlemen.

Only Quillette would be unethical enough to ask Lawrence Krauss to defend a harasser

But then Quillette loves harassers like Lawrence Krauss and Michael Shermer. 

And Quillette founder Claire Lehmann hates women.

Also noteworthy - senescent Richard Dawkins promoting shitty racist rag Quillette and defending harassers.

Original tweet here.

PZ Myers has a response video here.

Steve Sailer blocked me. Therefore...

Based on Sailer's reason for why Nikole Hannah-Jones blocked him, I assume he blocked me for the same reason. As I suspected.





However, I would have thought the reason Hannah-Jones blocked Sailer is because he's a toxic troll who has devoted his life to racism and race pseudoscience.

We know he can't write, in spite of Steven Pinker including a rank piece of garbage by Sailer in The Best Science and Nature Writing.

Speaking of Sailer, for some reason this post has blown up but I haven't yet figured out why:
The mind of a racist, part 6: Steve Sailer and IDW funding

And if there's any doubt that Twitter is a stinking racist cesspit, doubt no more. Racists have posted an advertisement for a VDARE conference to take place in the White Supremacist Castle.  Sailer is one of the guest speakers.

The White Supremacist Castle is courtesy of the right-wing "respectable" plutocrats who donate to Donors Trust. Racism sure is lucrative in the United States.

NEVER FORGET how much Steven Pinker promoted the career of Steve Sailer. And they had a mutually beneficial relationship as Sailer will tell you himself.

I've been searching for years and I have never found an example of Pinker publicly repudiating Sailer. He simply stopped promoting Sailer around 2011-2012, and now, any time he is asked about his connection he screams "guilt by association" like he didn't actively promote Sailer rather than innocently "associate" with him.

Sailer is also a fan of Kathryn Paige Harden.

I wouldn't be surprised if they are friends. After all, Harden is a friend of Razib Khan, acknowledging him in her book "The Genetic Lottery."

Khan's race beliefs are the exact same - handed down by J. P. Rushton - as Sailer's.

Speaking of Khan, Ross Douthat is promoting him in the NYTimes in spite of the fact that the Times dumped Khan for his racism.

UPDATE: I created a new Twitter account in July, tweeted at someone who had replied to a tweet by Sailer - I didn't even tweet directly to Sailer - and within 30 minutes Sailer blocked me. What a pathetic coward.

Happy Memorial Day with the Majority Report and David Blight

Normally my various interests are well-compartmentalized, so it's fun when two or more come together like they do today. I've recently been posting lots of videos from the Majority Report and I was very pleased to see that the MR had had an interview with one of my favorite historians, David Blight.

Blight won the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Frederick Douglass, and was featured prominently in the documentary "Frederick Douglass in Five Speeches" (highly recommended) which is how I came to learn about Blight -  I am currently doing research for a play I am writing about the relationship between Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, who met three times while Lincoln was president.

Blight is an expert on the Civil War and one of his most important discoveries was the first, unofficial observation of Memorial Day, by formerly enslaved people. You can watch him discuss it in this video at the NY Historical Society website (I've recently become a member of the NYHS) 

My only complaint about Blight is that he is one of the liberals who got suckered into what I believe is a Koch and Thiel funded (directly and indirectly) project, the Harper's Letter. All those well-known liberals gave a right-wing project a nice bipartisan camouflage. Blight should have known better.

Anna Krylov embarrasses herself in print yet again

She's done it twice before - the first was her incredibly bad argument for why we should panic about renaming science terms - she equated renaming terms with being burnt at the stake.

Then she published in racist garbage rag Quillette.

And now her transparent grift, with Jerry Coyne, to create another stupid false panic about science, aided and abetted by Intellectual Dark Web friendly Pamela Paul in the New York Times. I've already written about it, but the American Prospect has more to say (my highlights):

The authors’ claim that their article was rejected by many scientific journals based on political criteria is false. In an interview, Anna Krylov, a professor of quantum chemistry at the University of Southern California who was one of the scientists who initiated the article, admitted to me that they had formally submitted their article to only one established journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which rejected it.  

 

What she and other co-authors had actually done was, in Krylov’s words, make “informal inquiries” to journal editors, about whether they might consider the article. This practice violates scientific norms of submitting articles to journals anonymously to avoid potential bias. Despite her efforts to use her and her colleagues’ networks to feel out journal editors, Krylov claimed that all of them discouraged her from submitting the article because of its viewpoint, but she offered no evidence from those conversations or emails. 

 

These authors know very well that the overwhelming majority of research articles submitted to serious scientific journals are rejected. The eminent journal Science accepts only 6.1 percent of submitted papers. Other prestigious journals have similarly low acceptance rates, including Nature (7.6 percent), the British Medical Journal (4 percent), The New England Journal of Medicine(5 percent), The Journal of the American Medical Association (4 percent), and The Lancet (5 percent). 

 

The one journal to which they formally submitted their paper, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), accepts only 15 percent of all submissions, according to Prashant Nair, a spokesperson for the journal. PNAS’s rejection is hardly evidence of the editors’ leftist bias. Krylov refused to provide copies of the evaluations of their article by the three reviewers solicited by the journal, but she did provide a copy of an email exchange between her and one of the editors, Zan Dodson, who asked the authors to clarify the differences between “merit” in scientific research and in other arenas, such as college admissions. According to PNAS’s Nair, the article “was sent for review, and the Editorial Board found that a number of claims made in the manuscript were unsupported by citations or additional argument. The Board concluded that it cannot recommend any particular protocol for improving the cogency of the arguments. As such, the manuscript was rejected.”

Conclusion: Anna Krylov and Jerry Coyne are lying grifters.

I assume they do it to earn their Thielbucks.

UPDATE: PZ Myers has an excellent response video.

Some More News: O Their Prophetic Souls

 Well I decided to take a break from posting videos from The Majority Report and instead post another video from Some More News. I love these guys and you should too and you should give them money every month like I do. YouTube shows like this are like the Daily Show in the early 2000s.

Topics for this episode include The Twitter Files; Elon Musk; Repealing Roe V. Wade; the Metaverse failure; the Fake Shoplifting Crisis - Candace Owen gets a shout-out for her Nazi shit; Havana Syndrome is not a thing; Grifters - includes Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin; and Tucker Carlson.

Jerry Coyne and whoever JayMan is

JayMan and Jerry agree on so much -
like, apparently, that Italy has four distinct races
----------------------------------------------------------------------

I was just observing earlier this month:

(Anna) Krylov and her IDW pals are not even pretending anymore - they are just blatant about being far-right and racist ghouls.

 

I was certainly thinking of Jerry Coyne as one of Krylov's pals, since he teamed up with her to produce another right-wing sob story, but even so, I was still astounded that Jerry Coyne has sunk so low, he is using anonymous "human biodiversity" loser "JayMan" on his blog now.

Wow. Just when you think these freaks can't sink any lower.

JayMan's identity is unknown but he claims to be Black. I don't think there's any reason to believe the claims of whoever is behind their accounts until their identity is verified.

I assume Ron Unz knows JayMan's true identity since JayMan has worked for Ron Unz. Well, Unz's payments to Razib Khan, Steve Sailer and Gregory Cochrane showed up online one day, so maybe records showing his payment to JayMan will show up one day, with real name available.

Speaking of Gregory Cochran, here we can see him hanging with JayMan and the grubby pack of extreme racists and right-wingers like Razib Khan, Emil Kirkegaarrd and HBD Chick - another anonymous coward like JayMan. 

My theory is that HBD Chick and JayMan are both sock puppets of the same white nationalist man-baby.

But of course it is possible JayMan is Black. After all, Ron Unz himself, a Jewish holocaust denier, is a perfect example of an irrational self-hating weirdo. 

And then there are Claire Lehmann, Camille Paglia, Cathy Young and Christina Hoff Sommers, who have built careers on hating women.

There will always be some, of any ethnicity or gender, who will be happy to throw others under the bus for the right price.

By the way, if you ever doubt how much racist weirdos love Pinker, feast your eyes on JayMan's HBD Fundamentals - Pinker AND Judith Rich Harris, the patron saint of biosocial criminology - right Kevin Beaver?

So, while an extreme racist is posting on his blog, what is Jerry Coyne doing? 

He's touring Europe, stuffing his face and, I assume, spending all those Thielbucks.

And then... crickets

As we see in the exchange above with J. Farmer, JayMan, like Jonathan Haidt, mistakenly - or maybe deliberately - uses the term heritable when they mean inherited traits.

The second link goes to Scientific American which says:

The important thing to keep in mind is that inherited traits are directly passed down from parents to children, whereas heritable traits are not necessarily genetic.

Oh fun fact - JayMan confesses that Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate set them on the road to race pseudoscience!

Steven Pinker, a great academic, and whose 2002 book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature introduced me to hereditarian explanations for human behavior (and which is required reading for anyone with no familiarity with the role that genes play in human behavior) has recently sent a note to Ron Unz attacking his mischaracterization of Richard Lynn’s position in Lynn’s response to Unz.

Even better, on the same page, JayMan offers an explanation for why Pinker is such a gigantic weasel about race pseudoscience:

Pinker has been one of the great voices speaking for the importance of heredity when explaining individual and gender differences, but he skirts around the truth when it comes to differences between groups. I think that Pinker’s response to Unz and Pinker’s discussion of Ashkenazi intelligence shows that Pinker knows full well about genetic contributions to group differences. But, he doesn’t endorse any of these. Why? Why be obtuse about facts? I think that this is because he fears Watsoning. He is the “Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University,” after all. One would imagine that this title at least provides him with an office with one of the really nice views. He doesn’t want to give that up, as his former university president Larry Summers was forced to do. Pinker’s own words about Richard Lynn to Unz tells us why:

You write as if Lynn were a well-respected psychologist whose findings have been widely accepted. This is very far from the case. Outside the circle of a handful of bloggers and behavioral geneticists he is somewhere between obscure and radioactive. (I believe several of his books are either self-published or put out by fringe publishers.)

Pinker doesn’t want this to happen to him.

This is a sad statement on the current state of intellectual discourse, and a great waste for a brilliant man like Steven Pinker. 

For clarity on heritability, I recommend The Heritability Fallacy  which includes:

Heritability statistics do remain useful in some limited circumstances, including selective breeding programs in which developmental environments can be strictly controlled. But in environments that are not controlled, these statistics do not tell us much. In light of this, numerous theorists have concluded that ‘the term “heritability,” which carries a strong conviction or connotation of something “[in]heritable” in the everyday sense, is no longer suitable for use in human genetics, and its use should be discontinued.’ Reviewing the evidence, we come to the same conclusion. Continued use of the term with respect to human traits spreads the demonstrably false notion that genes have some direct and isolated influence on traits. Instead, scientists need to help the public understand that all complex traits are a consequence of developmental processes. Without such an understanding, we are at risk of underestimating the extent to which environmental manipulations can have profoundly positive effects on development. Thus, the way ‘heritability’ is used in most discussions of human phenotypes not only perpetuates false ideas; it also blinds us to steps we might otherwise take to improve the human condition.

Although to be fair, I don't think JayMan and the people who fund him are especially interested in improving the human condition, but rather, in improving the prospects for white nationalism. Or in the case of Ron Unz, to get to the "real" truth about 9/11.

Oh cool - even better - on the right-hand sidebar of Jayman's blog, is a section called

HBD-AWARE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL COMMENTATORS

And the first two commentators are perfect. First there is Randall Parker:

ParaPundit Randall Parker’s blog making social commentary and discussing some of the implications of HBD

This tells you everything you need to know about how scientific "human biodiversity" is - Randall Parker, as I discovered when reviewing Sailer's "The Cousin Marriage Conundrum" is just some guy with a blog.

But Sailer cited him as if he was an important authority for his theory on cousin marriage and democracy.

The next commentator listed is Sailer:

Steve Sailer's iSteve Blog The man who (largely) started it all

Now the man who started it all has a background in marketing research. According to Pinker he's good with data, but as I noted in my review of the Cousin Marriage Conundrum (the CMC appears in "The Best American Science and Nature Writing" thanks to Pinker) Sailer didn't look at available data on consanguinity around the world and compare it to available data on democracies around the world. I assume because it would have demonstrated that Sailer's theory was wrong - cousin marriage does not prevent democracy, as Sailer argued it would in Iraq.

So some right-wing racist marketing guy, who ignores inconvenient data, started the collection of crackpot speculations called "human biodiversity."

Because I guess actual scientists have always been too "woke" for people like JayMan.

Never forget that Pinker promoted Sailer's career for years, and according to Sailer, he's been a big influence on Pinker, as he testified on Twitter.

I assume I never saw JayMan's tweets on Twitter before because he blocked me, like the pathetic coward he is. But now that I no longer logon to Twitter, I am no longer blocked. And wow, JayMan sure likes the far-right paedophilia apologist called Emil. Who also blocked me, like the pathetic coward he is.

I will be very surprised if JayMan turns out to be anything other than a white nationalist man-baby. 

Wonkette and Bari Weiss' University of Martyrdom

Peter Boghossian, philosopher of white grievance
--------------------------------------------------------------

From Wonkette:

Intellectual Dark Web Dorks Explore Deep Questions At Bari Weiss' University Of Martyrdom

...let’s take a look at their page on the school’s website. Oh look, there is one of those former professors who huffily quit writing forbidden professorial things on a whiteboard: 

 

What’s he writing? What questions of the mind is he leading his students on a deep intellectual exploration of? What are they doing with their unfettered freedom of inquiry and civil discourse?
Let us just zoom in here:

 

“Non-black people cannot use the n-word.” 

 

Oh. Okay. The forbidden word so forbidden even the people complaining that it’s forbidden won’t even write it out when in a room full of people who also don’t understand why they can’t say the forbidden word.

The professor in question, as I unfortunately knew on sight, is Peter Boghossian.

This is what ChatGPT has to say about the University of Austin and Peter Thiel:

Does Peter thiel financially support the University of Austin?

Peter Thiel, a billionaire entrepreneur and investor, has been reported to be a financial supporter of the University of Austin, a new university that is being established in Austin, Texas. However, the extent and nature of his support are not entirely clear, and Thiel himself has not confirmed or denied his involvement.

In December 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported that Thiel had donated $10 million to the University of Austin, citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter. The report also stated that Thiel was one of the university's initial backers and had been involved in its planning stages.

However, Thiel has not made any public statements regarding his involvement with the University of Austin or his alleged donation. It's worth noting that Thiel has been known to support controversial causes and has faced criticism for his views on various issues, including higher education. Therefore, his reported support for the University of Austin has generated some debate and scrutiny.

Overall, the exact nature of Thiel's involvement with the University of Austin remains unclear, and there is no official confirmation from either Thiel or the university about his alleged donation.

 However, this must be investigated further, since ChatGPT is known to be factually unreliable.

We already know University of Austin has a Koch connection.

And the Majority Report has plenty to say!

Chaya Raichik ~ stochastic terrorist and proud of it

This blog is turning into a publicity site for The Majority Report, lately, I'm reposting their videos so often, but I can't help myself. I had to share this video, an epic take-down of the sociopathic stochastic terrorist Libs of TikTok's Chaya Raichik, and best of all they mention that the Babylon Bee's Seth Dillon is supporting this evil freak.

PLUS - unexpected bonus - criticism of Koch man Conor Friedersdorf.

Chat GPT spills the tea about Peter Thiel and the Intellectual Dark Web

Since ChatGPT told me that Bari Weiss received a quarter of a million dollars from Peter Thiel in 2017, it occurred to me that perhaps her 2018 article for the New York Times about the splendors of her fellow travellers, Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web, was a public announcement of who had agreed to be on the Peter Thiel payroll. In addition to all those associated with Quillette.

In the article there were twenty-five individuals named by Weiss as connected to the Intellectual Dark Web, including Steven Pinker, Kanye West, Milo Yiannapoulos, Stefan Molyneux and Alex Jones. 

But the most significant of the IDW bunch are those who were photographed for the article, standing in the dark in the bushes. 

I guess the photographer wanted to make a point by posing these Intellectuals in the Dark, but drew the line at literally portraying them in a Web and so had to stick them in some bushes instead.

The eight bush skulkers include Joe Rogan, Michael Shermer, Sam Harris, Heather Heying, Christina Hoff Sommers, Dave Rubin and Eric and Bret Weinstein.

So what does ChatGPT have to say about them?

NOTE:  this must be investigated further, since ChatGPT is known to be factually unreliable.

        Has Peter Thiel ever funded Sam Harris?

Yes, Peter Thiel has provided funding to Sam Harris in the past. In fact, Thiel was one of the early supporters of Harris' podcast and helped fund the creation of the Waking Up app, which was later renamed to the Sam Harris app. Thiel and Harris have also engaged in public conversations and have expressed mutual respect for each other's work in various fields.

----------------------------------------

Supposedly Harris says he's done with the Intellectual Dark Web.

I came up empty on a Thiel funding source for Michael Shermer, but ChatGPT did have this info, which is not even available at SourceWatch.

Has the Skeptic magazine received funding from Donors Trust?

Yes, according to public records, Skeptic magazine has received funding from Donors Trust, a donor-advised fund that provides support to a variety of conservative and libertarian organizations. Specifically, tax filings from Donors Trust show that they provided funding to the Skeptics Society, the organization that publishes Skeptic magazine, in both 2014 and 2015. It's worth noting that Donors Trust supports a wide range of organizations across the political spectrum, and the fact that an organization receives funding from Donors Trust does not necessarily imply any particular political alignment or agenda. 

----------------------------------------

Donor's Trust is the infamous right-wing funding vehicle that also gives millions to racist monsters VDARE.

ChatGPT had nothing about Thiel or Donors Trust funding for Christina Hoff Sommers, but it's not a secret that she's taken money from Koch-funded organizations for decades. ChatGPT agreed:

Christina Hoff Sommers, a conservative writer and critic of contemporary feminism, has received funding from a number of conservative and libertarian organizations over the years, particularly those focused on policy, education, and advocacy. Some of the organizations that have provided support to Sommers     include:

• The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative think tank that promotes free enterprise, limited government, and traditional values. (Pinkerite's note: funded by Koch)
• The Bradley Foundation, a conservative foundation that supports a range of causes, including education, civic engagement, and free markets.
• The Charles Koch Foundation, a philanthropic organization that funds research and education programs on a variety of topics, including economics, political science, and civil liberties.
• The Independent Women's Forum (IWF), a conservative organization that advocates for policies and initiatives that promote economic freedom, limited government, and individual responsibility. (Pinkerite's note: funded by Koch)
• The Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank that focuses on policy research in areas such as urban policy, energy, and education. (Pinkerite's note: funded by Koch)

Here's what ChatGPT had to say about Heather Heying:

Heather Heying has received funding from a number of conservative and libertarian organizations over the years, particularly those focused on science, education, and policy. Some of the organizations that have provided support to Heying include:

• The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, a conservative think tank that promotes free speech and intellectual diversity on college campuses.
• The John William Pope Foundation, a conservative foundation that supports a range of causes, including education, healthcare, and public policy.
• The Templeton Foundation, a philanthropic organization that funds research on science, spirituality, and human purpose.
• The Discovery Institute, a conservative think tank that promotes intelligent design theory and critiques of evolutionary biology.
• The Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank that focuses on political philosophy, constitutionalism, and American exceptionalism.

I'm curious what The Discovery Institute hopes to get from Heying for its money, since it promotes intelligent design and critiques of evolutionary biology.

We do know that Heying and her husband Bret Weinstein have promoted junk science during the Covid pandemic. But that's Game Theory.

When I asked ChatGPT about Dave Rubin it said:

Rubin has expressed support for many conservative and libertarian ideas and causes, and he has collaborated with a number of individuals and organizations in these spheres. Some of the individuals and organizations that have expressed support for Rubin or his ideas include:

• Peter Thiel: As mentioned earlier, Thiel has expressed support for Rubin and his work, but there is no clear evidence that he has provided direct financial support to Rubin.
• PragerU: Rubin has collaborated with PragerU, a conservative educational organization that produces videos promoting conservative and libertarian ideas.
• Turning Point USA: Rubin has also worked with Turning Point USA, a conservative student organization that promotes conservative and libertarian ideas on college campuses.
• The Federalist Society: Rubin has expressed support for the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization that promotes originalist interpretations of the US Constitution.
• Republican politicians: Rubin has expressed support for several Republican politicians, including Donald Trump, Rand Paul, and Ron Paul.

Eric Weinstein of course works for Thiel Capital, but I did not know he and Bret had been Thiel Fellows:

Bret and Eric Weinstein were both fellows at the Thiel Foundation, which provides funding to young entrepreneurs to start their own businesses. The Weinsteins have also been associated with the Intellectual Dark Web, a loose network of public intellectuals who are known for challenging mainstream narratives on a range of topics. While the IDW is not a formal organization and does not receive direct funding, many of its members are supported by conservative and libertarian donors who share their views.

Curiously ChatGPT wouldn't say that Bret Weinstein was funded by the same organizations who fund his wife, Heather Heying, which makes no sense. It did say about Weinstein:

Weinstein has also been critical of what he calls "woke ideology" and the progressive movement, and has spoken out in support of free speech and academic freedom. These views have earned him support from some conservative and libertarian organizations and donors. For example, he has appeared as a guest speaker at events hosted by the National Review Institute, a conservative think tank, and has been praised by conservative commentators like Ben Shapiro.

Shapiro was another person named in Weiss's NYTimes article as IDW.

I came up with bupkis for Joe Rogan.

So according to ChatGPT,  Sam Harris has taken money from Thiel, and Eric and Bret Weinstein were fellows at the Thiel Foundation, and all the others, except Joe Rogan have connections to lots of other far-right funders.

And since Thiel has funded Quillette we can infer these people have received Thielbucks due to Quillette authorship (my annotations in parentheses):

Quillette is an online magazine that publishes articles on a wide range of topics, including politics, culture, science, and technology. Some of the individuals who have written articles for Quillette include:

• Jordan Peterson: Canadian psychologist and author (IDW member per Weiss article)
• Claire Lehmann: Australian psychologist and founder of Quillette (Quillette is the primary publication of the IDW per the Weiss article)
• Sam Harris: American philosopher and author (see above)
• Christina Hoff Sommers: American philosopher and cultural critic (see above)
• Jonathan Haidt: American social psychologist and author 
• Heather Mac Donald: American political commentator and author
• Gad Saad: Canadian evolutionary psychologist and author
• Bret Weinstein: American biologist and evolutionary theorist (see above)
• Douglas Murray: British author and political commentator (named member of IDW)
• Andrew Doyle: British comedian and writer (or "comedian")
• Cathy Young: Russian-American journalist and author
• Debra Soh: Canadian sex researcher and science writer (named member of IDW)
• Conor Friedersdorf: American journalist and writer
• Peter Boghossian: American philosopher and professor
• Toby Young: British journalist and author (also was Quillette associate editor)
• Maajid Nawaz: British activist and writer
• Meghan Daum: American author and columnist
• Yascha Mounk: German-American political scientist and writer
• Helen Pluckrose: English author and editor of Areo Magazine
• James Lindsay: American author and mathematician
• Bruce Gilley: American political scientist and professor
• Claire Fox: British author and commentator
• Jamie Palmer: British writer and commentator (Quillette editor)
• Heather Heying: American evolutionary biologist and writer (see above)
• Ed Husain: British writer and commentator
• Coleman Hughes: American writer and podcaster
• Frances Widdowson: Canadian academic and writer

This is not an exhaustive list, as many other individuals have also written articles for Quillette.

----------------------------------------

It's important to note that Peter Thiel is a democracy-hating far-right funder of monsters like Donald Trump, and has been called both a psychopath and a sociopath. And he's a babbling, Bible-quoting crackpot, with billions to spend on his far-right agenda. 

And those people have taken his money.

Or as David Bertoli, one of the admirers of the Anna Krylov/Jerry Coyne grift might say:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” 

Claire Lehmann loves race pseudoscience and hates women

It should come as a surprise to nobody that Claire Lehmann, founder of right-wing race pseudoscience rag Quillette, is still promoting race pseudoscience.

And Iona Italia, who interviewed Lehmann for her site Areo, was in full agreement with her. Italia herself has published articles in Quillette.

Now the reason that these two are so sleazy, besides their racism, is because they won't admit they get funding from right-wing plutocrats. 

It's been reported that Quillette gets funding from Peter Thiel, and when I asked ChatGPT if Peter Thiel had funded Areo, this was the response (my highlight):

There have been reports that Peter Thiel has financially supported Areo Magazine in the past. Areo Magazine is a digital magazine that covers politics, culture, and society from a liberal and rationalist perspective. Thiel is known to have supported a number of conservative and libertarian causes and organizations over the years, so it is possible that he has provided financial backing to Areo Magazine as well. However, I don't have access to up-to-date information on whether Thiel is currently supporting Areo Magazine or not.

Unfortunately, ChatGPT has been shown to be factually unreliable, so this must be confirmed by other sources.

And Areo publishes many of the same people who publish in Quillette and has published articles by extreme racists Noah Carl and Razib Khan, and neo-Nazis Bo Winegard and James Lindsay. All while claiming to be a liberal publication. I assume in order to move the "Overton window" - a concept Claire Lehmann is well acquainted with.

I didn't listen to the entire interview with Italia and Lehmann because there's only so much ninnitude I can stomach in one 24-hour period. I actually wanted to find out if Lehmann still admires pedophila-loving Camille Paglia and OF COURSE SHE DOES.

But as I was searching for the Paglia section I landed on the section right before, where they discuss their support for race pseudoscience:

Minute 47:35 (my highlights)

ITALIA

A lot of articles have been published in Quillette about links between race and IQ and about human biodiversity. In fact someone, a mutual of mine on Twitter says that you coined the term human biodiversity 1., you personally, which seems I think is probably incorrect? But I think that that is the thing that is probably on the Left causing the most anger, and I have even been the subject of a lot of kind of the backwash from that myself - an academic who has a very large following wrote this thread in which he said I was a fascist and racist 2.a and I had published lots of articles on race and IQ, and although I think it's perfectly valid to publish on that topic, um I've never published anything on that in Areo 2.b and I said this and all his examples were articles from Quillette. 3. Because he was confused, right who is associated where? What is your response to people who accuse you of having a kind of hierarchical notion of race that is based on differing average IQ or other kind of hereditary markers? 4.

 

LEHMANN

Well, I would disagree with anyone if they were to suggest that I had to have a hierarchical view of races. I mean, that's just completely wrong and I reject that completely. I do not think that all I don't believe the science suggests that all human populations, whether we wanted to describe them as racial populations or all humans of all ethnic backgrounds, I don't think we're all the same basically. And just as men and women are not the same 5. and this, this is not my opinion, this is just scientific fact. 

I guess, what we've been in trouble, what we've gotten in trouble for at Quillette is simply airing a hypothesis called the hereditarian hypothesis.6. Now the group differences in intelligence scores on standardised intelligence tests is a scientific fact. What is controversial is the hypothesis that these gaps may have a genetic, partially genetic component. Now, I'm not a scientist. I'm not doing research in this area. I am not going to make a claim one way or the other. These gaps could be entirely the result of environmental factors like poor nutrition, lack of vitamin D, whatever. But I think to rule out that genes may play some role is to be antiscientific, anti intellectual. So I mean we've published articles that have aired this hypothesis and but this hypothesis is completely taboo. In certain academic circles. 

But I mean we just as we don't apologise for running articles on the efficacy of vaccines and the stupidity of advocating for Ivermectin without good evidence,7. I mean, we will also publish articles about that plausible and valid scientific hypothesis when it comes to individual differences, intelligence and other human other factors important to human behaviour.8.

Now I have a little bit of back - I mean, I'm not a scientist and I'm not doing research in this area, but I was trained as a psychologist and I did learn about intelligence. I did learn about individual differences whilst at university. So I have some confidence in my ability to read scientific papers aroud these subejcts. So I'm confident that everything we've published at Quillette is scientifically valid. 9. 

But I certainly reject any notion that because there may be group differences or individual differences, and there may be differences in IQ scores, I certainly reject any notion that that suggests people are morally unequal 10. or unequal. In terms of their human worth, their value, that innate dignity, I think every human being on the planet is precious, and we all have equal we’re all deserving of equal human rights and and respect and dignity and I abhor ideologies which rank people according to racial groups.11. I think it's abhorrent and vile and I actually don't think there's anything I. I don't think there's any justification of it. I mean I I'm not going to, you know, if I have a sibling or one of my children is let you know schools, Warren and IQ tests and the other, I'm not going to rank them in terms of their moral values. You know, I love my children equally and I think, we have to be able to separate compassion and our love for each other as human beings from, you know, being completely identical on traits, measurable traits 'cause it's just impossible. We can't all be the same. We can't, you know, I can't have the same score as someone else on an IQ test 12., but we have to be able to treat each other equally and with equal dignity and respect. 13.

1.  Steve Sailer coined "human biodiversity" as I just mentioned a couple of days ago. Although it's not surprising if someone confuses Lehmann with Sailer. RationalWiki has a great summation of Lehmann in its Quillette entry:

Claire Lehmann, Editor-in-Chief who founded Quillette in 2015 — an anti-feminist crank, who blames feminists for obesity[12] and has made videos for the alt-right The Rebel Media. Lehmann is a proponent of HBD and was quoted by Hbdchick in 2014 for posting a definition of "human-biodiversity".[13] Lehmann follows more than 16 alt-right accounts on Twitter including Richard Spencer and Steve Sailer.

 

2. a Italia doesn't say who called her a racist and fascist, so I can't verify the claim - a Google search came up empty although it did find Italia defending racist E. O. Wilson, as reported by reactionary race pseudoscience clown Jerry Coyne.

 2. b  A lie - Areo published a pro-hereditarian article in 2017 by Quillette author Oliver Traldi called The Philosophy of Group Differences. Areo has also published notorious racist  Noah Carl, another Quillette author, and not only published neo-Nazi Bo Winegard, they published an article presenting his side of his "I was fired because they hate free speech!" campaign. Written by Christopher Ferguson who of course has also published in Quillette.

3. Understandable confusion, since Areo is Quillette Lite as I discussed four years ago.

4. Notice how Italia claims that IQ is an "hereditary marker."

5. But women are also different from each other - I very much like to think I am very different from right-wing ninnies Claire Lehmann and Iona Italia.

6.a  Sleazy sleazy Lehmann. First, Quillette doesn't "simply air" the hereditarian hypothesis, they heartily agree with it, as when Razib Khan agreed with Charles Murray that Black Americans are an existential threat - when Murray claimed Black people are genetically inclined to criminality.  

Lehmann commented on the article comment thread:

Not a word of complaint about Khan's and Murray's incredibly vicious, racist claims about Black American morality.

(Like much of Quillette content lately, the Khan article is now behind a paywall, but you can still see it via the Wayback Machine.)

6.b  Second, it's the ONLY hypothesis they discuss - they never present criticisms or alternatives to the hereditarian hypothesis. Probably because Peter Thiel is a great big racist.

7.  In the moderate abilitied-brain of Lehmann,  the hereditarian hypothesis is as scientifically valid as vaccinations.

8. 9.  Lehmann thinks the hereditarian hypothesis is "plausible." Probably because she's a racist. And stupid.

10.  Clearly a lie - see note 6.a.

11. Another shameless, easily-refuted lie, as Quillette is a firm supporter of Linda Gottfredson. Gottfredson likes to rank races as I documented here.  

Also Quillette employs Bo Winegard who is such a neo-Nazi he wants to use "racial demographics" to "preserve a country's demographic composition." Presumably in Winegard's mind, he and his friends will be in charge of ranking races to determine the best "demographic composition."

12.  Apparently Lehmann is not aware that IQ tests are scored within a finite range. Of course you can have the same IQ score as someone else.

13.  Unless you're Florence Griffith Joyner. Lehmann became an internationally-reviled Twitter main character for her vicious lie about Flo-Jo. I can find no evidence that Lehmann ever apologized for her false claims about the death of Griffith Joyner.

Now what did Lehmann say about Camille Paglia? 

Minute 53:00 (my highlight)

LEHMANN

It's been a little while since I read Paglia, but I do love her work and she has been very influential. She was, I discovered her when I was an undergraduate in English, I  studied English before I went into psychology. And she was the first person I found who actually criticised the post-structuralists. She was the only critic I could find who was willing to to push back on Foucault and Derrida and the others whose philosophical thought came to dominate the humanities, to its detriment. 

And so I loved her for that. I loved her for her criticism of post-structuralism, I loved her for her sex positive feminism. I consider myself a feminist, but it's a complicated kind of feminism 1. because I actually think that women have a have a lot of power. I don't think we're necessarily oppressed by the patriarchy. I also think that sexism exists. It's just that I think that women have a particular type of power that is, is not, that is female power and some some people might describe it as sexual power.2. That's certainly part of it. But I think female power has been under-appreciated by scholars and even feminists and but Paglia was one of the only thinkers who was able to conceptualise and articulate what female power was, and I found it just extraordinarily refreshing, empowering, invigorating to read her work and she's just such an original thinker. I mean, she she's she's not the most exquisite writer. Her stuff is a little bit punchy, but just the density of original thought in her work is just unparalleled, I think. I think she's just an international treasure. 3.

 

1.  I assume when Lehmann says hers is a "complicated kind of feminism" she means the kind of feminism where you despise women, as a group. This week Quillette is running a defense of Roman Polanski. The author, Peggy Sastre, is one of those misogynist boys-will-be-boys types. Or as the website Philonomist says, Sastre "is a journalist and writer with a PhD in philosophy of science, known for her polemical essays against feminism." 

But "asshole" is more to the point.

2.  So does Lehmann think that, for example, Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister because of her particular kind of female sexual power?

3.  This is what "international treasure" Paglia said about pedophilia:

...As far as Ginsberg's pro-NAMBLA stand goes, this is one of the things I most admire him for. I have repeatedly protested the lynch-mob hysteria that dogs the issue of man-boy love. In "Sexual Personae," I argued that male pedophilia is intricately intertwined with the cardinal moments of Western civilization. Donatello's historically pivotal bronze sculpture, "David" (1430), was my main exhibit -- a languidly flirtatious work that would get the artist arrested for kiddie porn these days. In "Vamps & Tramps," I said that Western moralism and hypocrisy have driven the matter underground and overseas, where impoverished Third World boys now supply the sex trade.

Allen Ginsberg was the apostle of a truly visionary sexuality. Like the expansive, sensual, democratic Whitman but unlike the twisted, dishonest, pretentious Foucault, he saw the continuity between great nature and the human body, bathed in waves of cosmic energy. Seen from this pagan perspective, Ginsberg's celebration of boy-love was pure and sinless, demonstrating the limitations of Judeo-Christian paradigms of sexuality.

So does this not bother Lehmann? If she has a young son, would she let someone who agrees with Paglia babysit him? 

Or is she too stupid or lazy to bother to do any research on Paglia before calling her an international treasure?

Lehmann and Italia - what a couple of dull tools, useful only to right-wing racist plutocrats.

UPDATE - I took a quick stroll through professional race pseudoscience hawker Razib Khan's tweets recently and found him promoting Italia promoting an idiotic "decoupling" article in rightwing Unherd from 2020.

From the Unherd article:

As a high-decoupler, Harris thought that it was OK to talk about what-ifs; if there are genetic components to racial differences, then we still need to treat everyone with equal dignity, etc: “I’m not saying there are, but if there are…” He thought he’d performed the ritual.

 

But for Klein, the editor of Vox, the ritual was not strong enough. Murray’s ideas are reminiscent of a grim history, in which pseudoscientific ideas about a hierarchy of humans were used to justify slavery or Jim Crow laws. For Klein (a low-decoupler, in Nerst’s taxonomy), you can’t simply take an idea out of its context like that. The context comes with it.

What utter bullshit. This tells you everything you need to know about the author, in addition to the fact that he writes for rightwing Unherd.

Harris did not simply ask "what-if" - he defended The Bell Curve by linking to an article in QUILLETTE written by Ben Winegard and his twin, Bo Winegard, which claims the hereditarian hypothesis promoted by The Bell Curve is correct. 

According to ChatGPT, Unherd's funders are funded by Peter Thiel  - my highlight.

UnHerd's website lists its supporters and partners, but Peter Thiel is not mentioned among them. It's worth noting, however, that some of the organizations that have supported UnHerd in the past, such as the Nuffield Foundation and the Legatum Institute, have also received funding from Thiel's charitable organization, the Thiel Foundation. Nonetheless, it's important to emphasize that UnHerd maintains editorial independence and the views expressed in its articles do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of its supporters or funders.

It's not just that the IDW-race pseudoscience industry is rightwing and racist, it's that they are so sleazy in their pretending not to be rightwing and racist. 

ChatGPT has something to say about Sam Harris and Peter Thiel - more about that tomorrow.