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 On the lobsters thread about the announcement, Abner Coimbre shared an archived version of the mentioned private video.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.