Links - 21st September 2018 (2)

Sarah Jeong and the battle of the Twittermobs - "The same people who cheered the sacking of Roseanne Barr, who was dropped by ABC over a racist joke, have suddenly developed an extraordinary sense of tolerance. The double standard is glaring. The NYT ended its relationship with another soon-to-be editorial board member, Quinn Norton, earlier this year because of her use of slurs in old tweets and her friendship with the alt-right hacker known as ‘weev’. Even though, in Norton’s case, it was far from clear whether she even held the hateful views being attributed to her: she said she was trying to convince weev of the errors of his ways... when Jeong later provided examples of the supposed torrent of online abuse she has faced over the years, she could only find two, one of which didn’t even refer to her race... That right-wingers are now weaponising offence is the depressingly predictable consequence of the censorious outrage culture created by left-wingers, who are now rendered incapable of criticising the right-wing version from a position of principle."

Ben Shapiro on Twitter - "1. Asian-Americans are so successful that colleges discriminating against them in admissions is appropriate.
2. Asian-Americans are victims of white society and therefore Sarah Jeong’s anti-white tweets are okay.
Pick one, woke Leftists."

Paul Joseph Watson on Twitter - "Candace Owens copied Sarah Jeong's tweets, replacing the word "white" with "Jewish" and "black". She was immediately given a 12 hour suspension. Jeong's account remains unaffected. The absolute state of this platform. #FreeCandace"

Nick Monroe on Twitter - ""For a period of time she imitated the rhetoric of her harassers." How big of a timeframe are we talking about, here? Because at a glance I can pull *at least* a two year timespan. She's not "imitating" shit. There's a clear pattern of standard behavior demonstrated...
Jeong's anti-white rhetoric dates back to at least August 2013... as we reach the tail end of December 2013, take the time to reflect on the SHEER VOLUME of tweets we have from Jeong about white people. Like, throw away the face value outrage. Focus on the consistency of it. Look at how many of these tweets there are... From February 2014 to March 2014. In this one Sarah Jeong manages to attack her audience with an anti-white slam... At this point I'm confident in accusing @nytimes of not doing an independent assessment of Sarah Jeong and just taking her word at face value...
"White people have stopped breeding. You'll all go extinct soon. This was my plan all along" - Sarah Jeong, August 2014. http://archive.is/BmBJ0 Sarah Jeong advocating for a white genocide count is currently at 3, for folks following along at home...
The truth is Sarah Jeong is still racist against white people. As I go through and read 2017's tweets, that much is clear to me."
Anti-racism means hating white people

A writer at Vox defends the New York Times hiring of a racist editor. - "It’s classic postmodern wordplay. ‘It’s not racism because she didn’t mean ALL whites’. ‘It’s not racism because it is just shorthand.’ ‘It’s not racist because it means something different when they say whites’. ‘It’s not racist because that’s how they talk’. ‘It’s not racist because she isn’t in a position of power’. (Really? An editor for the NYT from one of the highest performing demographics in the country isn’t in a position of power?)"

Can Sarah Jeong Be Racist Against Whites? Ask The Jews. - "adjacent to the question of whether it’s possible to be racist against whites is the question of whether the left’s definition of racism — prejudice plus power — would include or preclude Ashkenazi Jews... “The word societies for centuries have used for punching up is satire. The word we generally use for punching down is bigotry.” This point of view — that one can’t be bigoted against someone who has institutional power — is mainstream in the left today. And yet, we Jews know how inadequate, and even dangerous, defining racism as contingent on power can be, precisely because anti-Jewish racism is always based on the belief that Jews have power, and are therefore deserving of hate."
What a strange definition of satire and bigotry
When you despise power and success...

How Anti-Semitism’s True Origin Makes It Invisible To The Left - "the hatred of Jews stems from the belief that Jews are a cabal with supernatural powers; in other words, it stems from the models of thought that produce conspiracy theories. Where the white racist regards blacks as inferior, the anti-Semite imagines that Jews have preternatural power to afflict humankind. This is also why the left is blind to anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism differs from most forms of racism in that it purports to “punch up” against a secret society of oppressors, which has the side effect of making it easy to disguise as a politics of emancipation. If Jews have power, then punching up at Jews is a form of speaking truth to power — a form of speech of which the left is currently enamored. In other words, it is because anti-Semitism pretends to strike at power that the left cannot see it, and is doomed to erase — and even reproduce — its tropes... Today’s conspiracist blends the mindset of the medieval magician with the viciousness of the inquisitor. The old fears about crop fouling and well poisoning, for example, are now directed at genetically modified organizms and fluoride in the water. The idea that doctors and sorcerers were one and the same surfaces in paranoia about AIDS and vaccines. And flat-earthers rehearse astrological debates about the cosmos... Above all else, anti-Semitism is a conspiracy theory about the maleficent Jewish elite. And it’s this that makes it easy to disguise as a politics of liberation, or, at least, to embed anti-Semitism quietly in efforts for social justice."

The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 1 - "He had been hired by Dread Pirate Roberts, the mysterious figure at the center of Silk Road. DPR, as he was often called, was the proprietor of the site and the visionary leader of its growing community. His relatively frictionless drug market was a serious challenge to law enforcement, who still had no idea who he or she was—or even if DPR was a single person at all. For over a year, agents from the DEA, the FBI, Homeland Security, the IRS, the Secret Service, and US Postal Inspection had been trying to infiltrate the organization’s inner circle. This bust of Green and his Chihuahuas in the frozen Utah desert was their first notable success."

Christopher Robin banned in China because of war on Winnie the Pooh

Making sense of 'The Handmaid's Tale' hysteria - "there's something infinitely more interesting going on beneath the surface of the great "Handmaid's Tale" brouhaha, and it highlights one of the biggest, most baffling problems of modern feminism: the consistent insinuation that women have no personal agency. It is a theme that quietly underscores almost every panicked article about "The Handmaid's Tale." But perhaps Atwood puts it best, suggesting to the Times that America — a country where minors can get IUDs without parental consent in 21 states, while Republicans earn mass panic for suggesting that Planned Parenthood doesn't need taxpayer help — is on the verge of a Ceausescu-like regime where women are "forced" to have babies... In the feminist world, babies just seem to "happen" to women; it's almost as quaint as the stork. It also all takes place in an imaginary world where modern birth control and individual agency don't exist. (Spoiler alert: Birth control, despite what you may read, is not about to get banned. It will also likely remain subsidized to the hilt.) Weirdly, for all of their talk about women needing to "control their own bodies," feminists often act as if women are helpless and completely incapable of doing so on their own — unless, that is, they're guided by a large, expansive, paternalistic government. Good heavens. Forgive me, but for a moment, that almost sounded like "The Handmaid's Tale.""

Why You Shouldn't Wrap Your Food in Aluminium Foil Before Cooking It - "My research found that the migration of aluminium into food during the cooking process of food wrapped in aluminium foil is above the permissible limit set by the World Health Organisation."

Google Struggles to Contain Employee Uproar Over China Censorship Plans - "Google bosses were scrambling to contain leaks and internal anger on Wednesday after the company’s confidential plan to launch a censored version of its search engine in China was revealed by The Intercept."
"Don't be evil"

The greedy ways Apple got to $1 trillion - "Apple gives you that tingly feeling in the worst way. Can it not build Lightning cables and MacBook chargers a little sturdier? If you avoid losing one long enough to put in some serious use, it inevitably ends up splitting where the cord meets your iPhone or exits the laptop power supply...
Want to cancel your Apple Music subscription or some other service you got roped into with a free trial? It’s SUPER easy. First, click the totally unlabeled and generic circle with a blotch in it that’s supposed to be a profile picture icon. You should see a “Manage Subscriptions” option…but you don’t. Instead, you’ll have to know to tap “View Apple ID”. Once you auth in with the same face or thumbprint that opened your phone in the first place you’ll find the option to cut them off. And as thank you for this convenience, you’ll get to pay 30 percent extra on some subscriptions if you pay through Apple. It’s clearly exploitative dark pattern design...
What’s the opposite of “it just works”? Paying extra to lug around a slew of gangly cord connectors you need just to plug things into your laptop or phone. Dongles are the emblem of Apple’s abandonment of the user experience"

Assistant engineer jailed five years for sex with 15-year-old girl - "A man indulged in a series of bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism (BDSM) sex activities with a 15-year-old schoolgirl after she posted an advert online looking for "someone who (can) afford to pay for my tuition fees". Lim Chee Keong, 33, met the girl on a website offering commercial sex but never paid her a cent... he never intended to pay her. In fact he used a fake name to engage her and also communicated with her using a pre-paid SIM card and discarded it after their sexual encounters. It was further revealed in court that Lim had engaged over six women in 2016 in the same way, promising to pay them for sex but never actually doing so."
If she'd been 16, this would presumably have been better than paying her

The Atlantic Was Wrong to Fire Kevin Williamson - "Word of Williamson’s hiring was greeted by some as if by mercenary opposition researchers determined to isolate the most outlying and offensive thoughts that he ever uttered, no matter how marginal to his years of journalistic work; to gleefully amplify them, sometimes in highly distorting ways, in a manner designed to stoke maximum upset and revulsion; and to frame them as if they said everything one needed to know about his character. To render him toxic was their purpose. That mode was poison when reserved for cabinet nominees; it is poison when applied to journalistic hires; and it will be poison if, next week or year, it comes for you. Insofar as opinion journalists indulged in it, the mode is also a professional failure... I reject the assumption that social justice or civic progress are advanced, that repressive outcomes are avoided, or that vulnerable groups are best served, by partisans who focus on everyone’s most extreme, or wrongheaded, or taboo, or outlying, or shocking, or problematic view—all but guaranteeing needless polarization...
'I’ve spent my entire adult life in an academic and media environment that put a premium on shocking the conservative conscience. Advocate for the most barbaric abortion practices? Fine. Celebrate an artist who dips a crucifix in urine? Cool. Decry 9/11 first responders as “not human” because of white supremacy? Intriguing. But the marketplace of ideas isn’t for the faint of heart'...
Robert P. George posed this question on Twitter: “Thought experiment: Imagine that The Atlantic hires Peter Singer, but critics demand that he be fired for saying it's not in principle morally wrong for parents to kill newborn infant children. Conservatives: Would you support his being fired? Liberals: Would you oppose it?”... That Williamson was fired, for better or worse, does not render The Atlantic a small tent. It remains depressingly difficult to find many bigger tents in American media."

Rihanna's Skinny Eyebrows on Vogue - Skinny Eyebrows and Mexican Culture - "I guarantee had, say, J.Lo or Gina Rodriguez graced the cover of a magazine with pencil-thin brows, they would have been ripped apart on the Internet for looking like a girl from the hood at best, or a chola at “worst.” To most Mexican and Mexican-American women, drawn-on eyebrows are a look historically representative of a marginalized culture—my culture—and have become a Latinx street style viewed as “trashy” by the rest of society. That is, until Rihanna wears them"
Uhh...

New Zealand goose: How one blind bisexual bird became an icon - "his stint as a father was short-lived, as he had his babies stolen by another goose who raised the babies himself... it is not uncommon for geese to be bisexual, though he adds that the duo were the only pair in the Waikanae Estuary to mate with the same sex. It is also not unheard of for geese to mate with swans, with the offspring of a swan and a goose known as a swoose"