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So I'm reading this article in the New York Times about no longer naming bird species after slavers and other monsters of history...
That means the Audubon’s shearwater, a bird found off the coast of the southeastern United States, will no longer have a name acknowledging John James Audubon, a famous bird illustrator and a slave owner who adamantly opposed abolition. The Scott’s oriole, a black-and-yellow bird inhabiting the Southwest and Mexico, will also receive a new moniker, which will sever ties to the U.S. Civil War general Winfield Scott, who oversaw the forced relocation of Indigenous peoples in 1838 that eventually became the Trail of Tears.
And of course I'm thinking "I bet those culture war hereditarians of the "Intellectual Dark Web" are going to start whining about this. "
So I scroll down the article. And sure enough, there's Jerry Coyne:
But to Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago who is an avid birder, the need for more descriptive names did not seem pressing. Performative acts like this “are really deeply injurious to science,” he said. “We cannot go back through the history of science and wipe out everybody who was not a perfect human being.” Dr. Coyne added that the effort to update so many names would be better invested in something more impactful to society, such as teaching underprivileged children about birds.
Does Jerry Coyne EVER get tired of being a right-wing reactionary?
Of course you know Coyne is whining on his blog too - the best part is his right-wing amen corner, sharing the outrage in the comments section.
Quick! Call his travel buddy Anna Krylov! A few years ago she wrote a panicked article about the horrors of changing science terms, making her argument by comparing name-changes to burning people at the stake.
Read all about it in Anna Krylov and the Peril of Bullshit. I'm sure she'll reach new heights of right-wing panic over this bird situation - maybe this time she'll compare renaming to the Holocaust.
Krylov writes for Thiel-funded right-wing racist garbage rag Quillette because of course she does.
