Jeremy Stangroom

@CF_Farrow Yeah, just up the road from Bovey. My grandma worked at Stover School in Newton Abbot. My mother spent her youth walking on Dartmoor.

@jstangroom Near Bovey Tracey. We got one of our childhood dogs from there.

My maternal family is from Devon. We could see Haytor from my Nana’s back garden, and our summer holidays there were idyllic. We’d decamp for weeks rather than go abroad, with climbing Haytor Rocks always a highlight. Devon always felt so safe and insulated; simply not somewhere you associated with brutal violent crime. Ann Widdecombe’s murder is a shocking reminder of how much the world has changed. (AP News)

@JeffreysChChCh @janeclarejones You should read this: philosophersmag.com/woman-as-resou…

@janeclarejones Wait, you do seem like a feminist in that MacKinnon tradition. So I guess this means my question will go unanswered. x.com/i/status/16647…

I’m sorry WHAT??????

@SunnydaleDreams @CF_Farrow Well, it's just pop music, so not in the same league as cathedrals or Bach (for example). But he could write a pretty tune (if you can get past the bombast). Objects in The Rearview Mirror has nice moments: youtube.com/watch?v=3jPMv9…

@CF_Farrow @jstangroom Yeah but at least those samey cathedrals are beautiful. Steinman's songs are not.

Jim Steinman was a better songwriter than Lennon/McCartney Beatles wrote perfect pop. Steinman wrote deranged, magnificent, heartbroken epics that made you feel as though you’d accidentally wandered into the last scene of civilisation. Bonnie Tyler understood that assignment.

@CF_Farrow I should say that it's a nsfw performance -- that's partly why it's bonkers. In some ways it's problematic, actually. But it's still gloriously absurd, and worth seeing if you can look past the problematic aspects.

@jstangroom I haven't seen that. Thanks for the tip. That's what I love about Steinman's actual artistic vision: operatic, excessive, romantic, absurd, sincere. The Beatles had a sound and a broader palette, but nobody did doomed romantic excess better than Steinman.

@CF_Farrow Oooops, not Bat Out of Hell -- Paradise by the Dashboard Light.

@CF_Farrow It's not just the arches, though, it's arches, spires, gargoyles, stained glass windows, buttresses etc. It's a gothic housing estate, basically. 😀 I do love Meatloaf though -- the Old Grey Whistle Test performance of Bat Out of Hell (Steinman is on piano) is totally bonkers.

@Dorasalter @RayAlexWilliams Ironically, the "beetle in a box" argument can be deployed to subvert the TRA claim that there is some veridical inner experience that amounts to being a woman.

@RayAlexWilliams Can I clarify: is *this* (below) what you're calling "Wittgensteinian pragmatism?" Ever heard of the "beetle in a box" analogy? Or the "cog turning on its own?" Or "sawing a branch from under you?"

Ok, I admit, the “does my Wittgensteinian pragmatism intimidate you” bit was definitely a bit cringe lol. Point still stands tho. Wittgensteinian pragmatism remains undefeated and absolutely mogs gender critical realism.

@RayAlexWilliams @FondOfBeetles There is a philosophical rebuttal (even accepting the Wittgenstienian framing). It would involve showing how the terms of your higher-level framing(s) collapse in on themselves in the absence of the logic of gametes. Not all language games are equal.

@FondOfBeetles What’s the matter, too scared to attempt an actual philosophical rebuttal? Or does my Wittgensteinian pragmatism intimidate you so you have to characterize all philosophical writing you disagree with as “navel gazing” because you don’t actually know how to refute my argument.

Gender Criticals claim that it’s “objectively true” that “trans women are biologically male.” This is philosophically naive. What’s “objectively true” is trans women went down small gametic pathway. But whether we as society define *that* as being what the English term “male” means is not itself a “objective fact” but a contingent fact of whatever language game we happen to be playing in different contexts. For example, are we playing the evo-bio language game or are we playing the clinical medicine game or the casual conversation among friends game or the corporate HR policy game or the airport bathroom policy game? To say the evo-bio definition of “male” which anchors on gametes is “objectively true” is simply false and misunderstands the role contingency and pragmatism plays in how concepts get defined. What’s the alternative to the gametic definition? The “layer cake model” which defines sex in layers: gametic sex, chromosomal sex, morphological sex, endocrine sex, psychological sex, etc, etc, some of which can be changed by modern technology and some of which cannot. Thus the claim that sex “cannot be changed” is itself a philosophical question concerning the philosophy of language and not a purely empirical “fact.” It depends on how we decide to define “sex” and there’s no Platonic rule book in the sky which says sex MUST be defined in strictly gametic terms vs the layer cake model.

@AmiEverAfter Should buy yourself an old Samsung Note 7. That'll do it.

ever have a day you wish your phone had spontaneously combusted sometime before lunch

@dfkodsi Trouble is: a) Shouldn't be the case you can't give lecture unless you've got "nerve" (some people are anxious, conflict averse, timid); b) Intimidation directed at attendees is a problem; c) Lack of response from authorities emboldens protestors (cf E. O. Wilson)

Fine, I’ll say it, even if every other TERF is inclined to valorise Foran’s lack of nerve. There was no reason for him to suspend his lecture series. Some students showed up to protest. So what? Talk over them until they lunge for you or leave.

@janeclarejones You’re a know-nothing ivory tower socialist neo-liberal headmistress and it’s all your fault! 😆

Well after however many years being shouted at by populists for living in an ivory tower it is refreshing to be told my opinions are worthless because I am a bratty child who knows nothing about philosophy.

@teachrprecarity Brittany Murphy & her husband separately within 6 months of each other. In 2009: abcnews.com/Health/Wellnes…

Yeah seriously, are there any pre-2020 stories about multiple celebrities dying from pneumonia?

@janeclarejones It's all got to do with the reticular activating system or maybe Lombroso-esque atavism. Definitely biological, though. 🤣

So the number of people supporting the far right in any society never changes because it’s simply a feature of their essential nature? It’s funny how the extreme constructionists get so essentialist isn’t it?

@MLife78707 @MadelaineLucyH I am indeed without spin. I am in a state of spinlessness.

@jstangroom @MadelaineLucyH Absolute spinless boomer to me.

1. Examine the excerpt below from Case Study A. Using sociological and language analysis, explain 5 reasons why this individual might be struggling with women romantically.

@MLife78707 @MadelaineLucyH Dr Gramps to you.

@jstangroom @MadelaineLucyH "Sociology PhD here" Gramps you are too old for eating abuse on the internet.

@MarkWal06578936 @JoshHochschild Chicken!

This is a good essay, and it is right, but it might not persuade the people it most needs to persuade. If someone believes that human consciousness is reducible to or emergent from physical patterns of brain activity, and that behind the LLM word generation output there are analogous patterns of electrical activity, then the arguments here won’t be enough. In short, it is common sense that the LLMs aren’t conscious, but those who lack common sense need arguments at the level of metaphysical psychology, not a repetition of common sense.

@MerriamWebster You sure it's not short for genetic fallacy?

‘Wi-Fi’ is not an acronym. It doesn’t stand for anything. Also! Since it’s a trademarked term, it should be written as ‘Wi-Fi’ (not ‘wifi’ or ‘WiFi’).