Here in Belgium some investigative journalists have been reporting on Cofnas since his appointment in March. They recently translated one of their pieces to English and made it available for non-subscribers (click on ‘Lees alleen dit artikel gratis’ to close the pop-up):

https://apache.be/2026/03/05/self-declared-race-realist-nathan-cofnas-receives-appointment-ugent

The UGent philosophy department is also not without controversy. Maarten Boudry, a former employee there, is one of the main people in this country pushing ‘climate realism’, ‘concerns about Islam’ and ‘cultural marxism was a Nazi conspiracy theory but right now we itnis actually happening in our institutions’. He’s very buddy buddy with Steven Pinker and likely trying to get more international reach.

Apart from that, plagiarism issues never make news headlines because they happen very often at universities. The only cases I’m aware of are Arday and Claudine Gay. Probably because they have a political skin color.

Jane street is pressuring olympiads to not sanction Israel.

Gee, who could have foreseen that letting them touch everything under the math sun could have consequences.

I have been looking into the mentioned clique for some time now and I share the concerns of the author. It does not take a lot of digging to learn that, for them, an interest in low level performance goes hand in with a far right worldview. Apparently it is where you end up if you are an “indepenent thinker”. Two examples:

• In the Odin 1.0 video, Bill shares his bookcase. Below the programming books I can see “The Strange Death of Europe” and “The Madness of the Crowds”. On the lobsters thread about the announcement, Abner Coimbre shared an archived version of the mentioned private video. Apparently “unions” = “communism”.
• This is the blog of one of the organizers of the Better Software Conference. Very interesting reading list this guy has. The other organizers share likeminded views on xitter. Everyone praising the conference wants you to know that it is a complete coincidence the conference consists almost solely of white dudes.

Lots of stuff to think about.

I’d recommend stepping outside of the Algol world for a little bit. […] Instead, deliberately force yourself to use a Smalltalk, a Forth, a Lisp, an ML, or a Prolog; solve one or two problems in them over a period of about one month per language.

A few years ago I messed around with Racket and I forgot I had some fun with that. Thanks for the reminder. On some level I feel like Lisp should mesh well with my brain but I never got anything of substance done. Maybe time to try again. Possibly another dialect or something else entirely from your list. Thanks for the paper. It looks interesting!

This is your call. Personally I’ve found that I can be blunt with evidence and technical claims while empathizing with the difficulty of understanding those claims, and this still allows for fruitful technical discussions.

This is something I often need to remind myself of. Sensitivity is something that comes easily to me and although throughout the years I have found a kind of strength within it, it has its drawbacks. Generally, the less “in real time” a discussion takes place, the better I can manage it.

Yeah, Blow in some way deserves his own thread.

The Dutch part was a bit of hyperbole on my part. It’s something I have seen a few times on the orange and red sites. Someone is a dick and others defend them by gesturing vaguely to different cultural norms. Almost every time a variant appears on “Did you know that, for example, the Dutch are very direct”. My Dutch colleagues and in-laws have taught me that Dutch directness is more like not being afraid to call out assholes in public. Either that or making a sale. They are excellent salespeople.