Category Archives: social media

Google Easter eggs

October 24, 2020 – 1:30 pm

Reader Mark Sturtevant called my attention to something that most of us probably don’t know about: Google “Easter Eggs”: results of searches that yield a bonus. He found one this way: I did not know that Google had ‘Easter eggs’. But here is one: In Google, type in: wizard of oz Click on the red […]

By whyevolutionistrue | Also posted in humor | Comments (10)

In which I deconstruct a NYT profile of Steve Pinker

July 16, 2020 – 12:00 pm

The New York Times has a new profile of Steve Pinker, with a photo that, while nice, doesn’t include his cowboy boots. It concentrates mostly on the letter signed by 550+ academics calling for the Linguistic Society of America to rescind Pinker’s “distinguished fellow” and “media expert” status. Since I’ve discussed that letter in detail, […]

By whyevolutionistrue | Also posted in Get off my lawn! | Comments (60)

Reddit bans “hate speech” but only against certain groups

June 30, 2020 – 10:45 am

As I’ve said before, I think one can make a reasonable case for designating certain crimes as “hate crimes”. For if groups like Jews, blacks, or gays are targeted repeatedly for their identity alone, then increasing the penalties for such crimes, if you can establish the reasons for the crime, will act as a deterrent […]

By whyevolutionistrue | Also posted in censorship | Comments (71)

Jon Chait on Left-wing illiberalism, and why it needs to be called out

June 17, 2020 – 1:30 pm

In an increasingly woke New York Magazine, there are two breaths of fresh air: Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Chait. Chait, like me, calls himself a liberal but spends a not inconsiderable amount of time excoriating the excesses of the Left, an endeavor he extends and explains in this week’s column (click on screenshot to read […]

By whyevolutionistrue | Also posted in Authoritarian and Regressive Left, Authoritarian Left | Comments (19)

Pinker gets flak for tweeting about the “malignant delusion of the afterlife”, deletes tweet but defends himself here

June 4, 2020 – 1:30 pm

I don’t really follow Twitter, but sometimes it makes news when a prominent person deletes a tweet, as when Nikole Hannah-Jones of the New York Times’s 1619 project deleted several tweets, including one drawing a distinction between being “politically black” and “racially black.” That made news, as did the tweet below issued about two weeks […]

By whyevolutionistrue | Also posted in religion, religionists behaving badly | Comments (36)

Is Facebook spying on you?

April 19, 2020 – 10:30 am

I spotted this post on a friend’s public Facebook postings, and found it hard to believe. However, it seems to be true: Now I just did this, and, sure enough, there was a list of sites I’ve visited, though the last entries were on April 16. Here are a few of mine that were recorded […]

By whyevolutionistrue | Comments (98)

Which social medium is most useless, annoying, or harmful?

February 23, 2020 – 12:15 pm

And here’s another poll to while away the time. This came to me when I was watching a television show yesterday about Chicago food and it praised a restaurant for having “Instagrammable food”. That immediately turned me off. Yes, food should be pretty, and yes, I do post pictures of what I eat in restaurants, […]

By whyevolutionistrue | Comments (66)

Tom Chivers has a theory about the latest Dawkins kerfuffle

February 19, 2020 – 1:00 pm

Tom Chivers is a journalist and science writer who, like me,  was taken aback by the negative reactions to Richard Dawkins’s recent tweet about eugenics. (Remember? Richard said eugenics would “work” in the sense of changing population means in humans, but immediately added that he was against it.) Now, at UnHerd, Chivers has proposed a […]

By whyevolutionistrue | Also posted in Authoritarian Left, psychology | Comments (87)

Dawkins makes a tweet

February 16, 2020 – 2:30 pm

UPDATE: Crikey, there’s a whole Twitter “event” devoted to Dawkins’s tweet. People can’t wait to jump all over him. ______________ When Matthew sent me this new tweet from Richard Dawkins this morning, I thought “Oh no! I know what he means, but there are a gazillion people out there ready to misinterpret it as an […]

By whyevolutionistrue | Also posted in artificial selection | Comments (151)

What’s wrong with social media

January 22, 2020 – 1:45 pm

The headline below could come from The Onion, though it’s not really that funny, even as a satire. But it’s not a satire: it’s true.  (Other sites—as well as the tabloids—give the same report.) You can read the story, from the entertainment site Kanyi Daily, by clicking on the screenshot below. Excerpts: A 19-year-old aspiring […]

By whyevolutionistrue | Comments (62)