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Ted McCormick Profile picture
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14 Dec, 4 tweets, 1 min read
OK but what if they're terribly written and poorly argued
also I think we all know the real "editor" of a newspaper is the person in charge of the whole paper, enough with calling every so-and-so in charge of some tiny corner of page B6 an "editor". Feels fraudulent
pls drop the "editor" Mr Gigot. You're just an opinion-writer-organizer
Please note: if this take is too Provocative for you, I hereby graciously allow you to publish it

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More from @mccormick_ted

Ted McCormick Profile picture
13 Dec
An example of the “impossible conversations” that fans of Sokal Squared, Quillette, and the rest of the radical center want to have — a bottomless display of ignorant outrage at... Indigenous students pursuing graduate degrees in information science

“Criminal!”
“Book burning!”
The anger is matched only by the lack of anything substantive to be angry about.

It seems the mere word “decolonization” — not a new word, and not a new idea either — is enough to rob self-proclaimed defenders of Great Books of their basic literacy, not to mention their decency.
And, inevitably,
Read 7 tweets
Ted McCormick Profile picture
13 Dec
More semi-pro outrage. Here the panic is over a program of graduate study in information science. It has nothing to do with teaching or not teaching great books.

Great Books fans: I’d feel more confident in your literary judgment if you could successfully read a press release.
Because reacting to an item on *Indigenous students taking advanced degrees in library science* by yelling about “replacing greatness with mediocrity” makes you look like racist dipshits, not accomplished readers.
Love this bit of top-notch independent, critical thinking: “I didn’t see any evidence of what I’m saying so I just decided to echo someone’s rant and add my own bit about criminal intentions”
Read 4 tweets
Ted McCormick Profile picture
13 Dec
It’s not odd that people who study things in social and historical context should use categories of race, class, and gender to analyze them. The sources invite this.

What’s odd is reacting to word of this not by reading or criticizing but by accusing them of calling you a Nazi.
If “oh, so now they think *I’m* a Nazi!” is genuinely your first thought, I think that reaction requires more explanation that the fact that *people who study societies evidently divided by race, class, and gender* should study those societies in terms of those divisions.
If, on the other hand, this reaction comes not from reading this work itself but instead from accounts or blogs that subsist by whipping up outrage, promoting race science, and claiming that academic work is brainwashing — well, the source of the problem is no great mystery.
Read 4 tweets
Ted McCormick Profile picture
13 Dec
This is a good example of Quillette’s and the IDW’s style of engagement with ideas: rather than thinking, find the quickest way to a simplistic one-line dismissal, ideally putting a Nazi reference in your target’s mouth, naturally.
Now, you may or may not agree with the point the article and tweets make about gardening; you may be unable to get past their language.

But it’s not really controversial that gardening is and has been “political.” It is, after all, a matter of land and labor (or leisure).
It’s also a matter of longstanding historical knowledge not only that gardening has been a form of elite display but also that botanical gardens (like Kew, with which the author of the piece is familiar) have been centrally in extracting wealth and knowledge through colonialism.
Read 28 tweets
Ted McCormick Profile picture
10 Dec
Odd that more scientists didn’t vote for the guy who told people to drink bleach. Risks alienating bleach-drinkers if you ask me
Coastal scientific elites look down on Pizzagate conspiracy theorists. But at what cost to Science???
It’s like scientists are just going mask off saying “if you think QAnon is onto something and maybe injecting bleach is a good idea and the pandemic is a Deep State ploy doctors are in on then idk perhaps science isn’t the career for you”.

What kind of message is that!?!?, etc
Read 4 tweets
Ted McCormick Profile picture
10 Dec
Here's Quillette touting a project pretending to spread "Enlightenment Literature" without mentioning a single work of... Enlightenment Literature
I don't know who needs to hear this (Quillette), but Steven Pinker and Sam Harris are not, in fact, Enlightenment authors, and neither was John Stuart Mill.

The only Enlightenment-era author to even get a mention is that famous champion of Reason over Tradition... Edmund Burke.
Nor does the project Quillette is puffing seem to have any concern with "Enlightenment literature." It mostly seems to be translations of pop science books and Wikipedia articles (eg "Logical Fallacies").

Which says a lot about what Quillette thinks "Enlightenment" is, I guess
Read 11 tweets

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