Well. I am pleased, though not celebratory, that #HowToArgueWithARacist has returned to the Sunday Times Bestseller list at No.5. In these troubling times, it is incumbent upon us all to learn our histories, and equip ourselves with evidence-based arguments against bigotry.
Alongside amazing authors on related subjects, inc. @renireni, Layla Saad #meandwhitesupremacy, her words below. Many of these books are sold out at major retailers, but you can always find them at your local indies.
Science is no ally to racists. Science can and should be deployed as an anti-racist tool.
For my American friends, a rewritten US-specific edition will be out Aug 11, with a new introduction
(and all the references to football changed to soccer) theexperimentpublishing.com/catalogs/sprin…
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Round 2: here’s more on the scientific racist story from yesterday’s thread. This time, it’s focussed on the access and utility of Biobank data to fuel their ideologically driven agenda.
And the connected reports on the weird figureheads of the pronatalism cult, that @hopenothate and @harryshukman got stuck into.
These people are scientifically illiterate, ostentatiously strange, but motivated and publicity slakeless.
It is worth noting that though the focus is on Kirkegaard, the Collinses, Edward Dutton and a few others, there are plenty more of these grifters floating around in this faecosystem. A couple of them are or were bona fide academics, though in largely unrelated fields.
Ok, here we go: Much of my work concerns the history and return of scientific racism. I’ve written extensively about attempts to resurrect the shuffling corpse of
race science and eugenics for many years. Bigotry dressed up as biology. 1/n
Today, the Guardian, alongside @hopenothate , today publish an in depth undercover investigation into the efforts of a network of far right race and IQ obsessives, who have been trying to influence discourse about race science. theguardian.com/world/2024/oct…
@hopenothate I’ve been tracking these ideas and clowns for years, and have helped with this incredible investigation.
I was naïve in writing them off as basement dwelling racist weirdos, as what the investigation shows is that they got organised, with funding and strategy.
A short thread on grammar, as the fewer/less crowd are outnabout. I used to really care until I started working regularly on @BBCRadio4, where I discovered that the most frequent complaints were from male grammar pedants.
They typically moaned about decimate, fewer/less, octopus and bacterium/bacteria. The thing about grammar pedants is that they’re not pedantic enough, and their corrections were often erroneous - stuff that is easy to Google - and born of doctrinaire oneupmanship.
And so I revised my position to be a descriptivist. Not everyone was taught the ‘correct’ form of grammar, which obviously, is entirely made up. The only thing that matters is effectiveness of communication. @OliverKamm is my Obi Wan on this matter.
I’ve had some fun with the race wienies today - it’s almost as if I could write a book on how to argue with a racist. Anyway, here’s some of the highlights: 1) the credentialists. How can it be that I have a job in one of the best genetics departments on Earth, and the BBC?? 😘
2) ‘you’re a disingenuous retard’
3) ‘I understand population genetics cos I have eyes’. Wish I’d known it was that easy before spending all that time learning it
I read a lot of books, and here are my non-fiction books of the year, just in time for presents, in no particular order.
1: Toxic by Sarah Ditum. Britney, Paris, Lindsay, Janet, Amy. These early-noughties mononym women who stood charged with being women at the juncture between the old media and the new. Will make you sad, angry and baffled.
2: Ultra-Processed People by @DoctorChrisVT revelations about an industrial complex that underlies so much of the health problems humankind faces, because our lives are flooded by food that is not food.
I went to see Oppenheimer. It is hard to imagine a film that I disliked more intensely. Apart from Tenet.
Positives: acting is fabulous, cinematography beautiful, music a bit overbearing but massive.
Negatives <deep breath>
* learn to write dialogue. People don’t speak like that. Every sentence is designed to elicit a zinger or exposition point in response.
* the editing is frenetic. Intercutting from different locations, colour/black and white, mad angles that make no sense.
The whole film is a montage.