Links - 14th November 2018 (2)

Camille Paglia on Movies, #MeToo and Modern Sexuality: "Endless, Bitter Rancor Lies Ahead" - "no profession has been more shockingly exposed and damaged than the entertainment industry, which has posed for so long as a bastion of enlightened liberalism. Despite years of pious lip service to feminism at award shows, the fabled “casting couch” of studio-era Hollywood clearly remains stubbornly in place. The big question is whether the present wave of revelations, often consisting of unsubstantiated allegations from decades ago, will aid women’s ambitions in the long run or whether it is already creating further problems by reviving ancient stereotypes of women as hysterical, volatile and vindictive... Expecting the artist to be a good person was a sentimental canard of Victorian moralism, rejected by the “art for art’s sake” movement led by Charles Baudelaire and Oscar Wilde. Indeed, as I demonstrated in my first book, Sexual Personae, the impulse or compulsion toward art making is often grounded in ruthless aggression and combat — which is partly why there have been so few great women artists... It was overwhelmingly men who created the machines and ultra-efficient systems of the industrial revolution, which in turn emancipated women. For the first time in history, women have gained economic independence and no longer must depend on fathers or husbands for survival. But many women seem surprised and unnerved by the competitive, pitiless forces that drive the modern professions, which were shaped by entrepreneurial male bonding. It remains to be seen whether those deep patterns of mutually bruising male teamwork, which may date from the Stone Age, can be altered to accommodate female sensitivities without reducing productivity and progress. Women’s discontent and confusion are being worsened by the postmodernist rhetoric of academe, which asserts that gender is a social construct and that biological sex differences don’t exist or don’t matter. Speaking from my lifelong transgender perspective, I find such claims absurd. That most men and women on the planet experience and process sexuality differently, in both mind and body, is blatantly obvious to any sensible person."

Camille Paglia’s Sexual “Realism” - "she, a mother, rails against the absence of any positive account of children who are at most “a management problem to be farmed out to working-class nannies” or day-care centers when they haven’t been “dealt with” ahead of time. Paglia, who is by no means a “pro-lifer,” exposes the callousness of the feminist sine qua non that does not reckon with the violence of abortion. Paglia’s insistence on looking at the evidence of things and “getting back to nature” shows up most prominently in her dealings with sexual desire. Being a lapsed Catholic of Mediterranean extraction, she is allergic to the “pinched, cramped, body-denying Protestant culture” that runs through so much of American feminism... By denying all this and throwing social cautions to the wind, telling women “they can do anything, go anywhere, say anything, wear anything,” it is feminism, declares Paglia, that has made them vulnerable, not patriarchy. “A girl who lets herself get dead drunk at a fraternity party is a fool. A girl who goes upstairs alone with a brother at a fraternity party is an idiot. Feminists call this ‘blaming the victim.’ I call it common sense.”... much of Paglia’s pro-man talk is driven by the fact that men are the ones chiefly responsible for “transcending” nature through art, science, and politics, by virtue of their general capacity to project (a talent expressed in their very physiology). She famously wrote in her Sexual Personae: “If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts.”"

Laura Kipnis on the Future of Seduction - "Coaxing people into things they’re initially reluctant (though might secretly yearn) to do in the realm of sex and romance, though a time-honored ritual of literature, movies, and perhaps a few well-burnished memories, has become rather suspect... even in the classic gender arrangement, the seduced wasn’t a passive bystander: Her resistance was critical. Yielding too soon dooms the whole enterprise (as does not yielding at all). From this point of a view, a seduction is a joint project between two people collaborating in the weakening of one’s defenses, watching them melt like chocolate in a double boiler... The dismal truth is that none of us is particularly unique, but it’s a solace to occasionally be persuaded otherwise, even temporarily. It does, of course, mean that the people we’re best at conning will be ourselves — and never more than in the reassuring fables we tell of preyed-upon innocence and virtue wronged."

The Dangers of Ignoring Cognitive Inequality - "IQ scores tested during conscription were a significant and robust predictor, not only for APD or CD, but for all categories of mental disorders. Conscripts with low IQ were substantially more likely to be diagnosed with one or more mental disorders, to suffer from mood and personality disorders, and to be hospitalized for mental illness. Those in the lowest band—like Bryant—were most at risk of severe psychological disorders... A 2016 study by four psychologists using data from the Danish Conscription Database (containing 728,160 men) revealed low IQ to be a risk factor for almost all causes of death... Because the role of cognitive ability is de-emphasized in childhood success, and often treated as a function of effort, children in these circumstances can find themselves trying harder than every other child in the classroom, while still being admonished to ‘try harder.’ While wise caregivers abstain from blaming these children outright for their failures, a taboo on acknowledging the importance of intelligence means that low IQ individuals themselves may be unaware of their condition or its full ramifications, making them likely to engage in repeated self-blaming injurious to self-esteem and mental stability."
So much for IQ being a useless concept

Too hungry, too destructive, too many: South Africa to begin elephant cull - "Amid words of protest and expressions of relief environment minister Martinus van Schalkwyk announced the elephant had been a victim of its own success with numbers growing from 8,000 to nearly 20,000 in national parks and private reserves in just over a decade... Supporters of culling point to growing difficulties in managing elephants in the country's biggest and most famous game reserve, Kruger National Park. It has more than 12,500 elephants, 5,000 more than is sustainable, according to park officials. Ecologists say the animals' huge appetites and fondness for "habitat re-engineering" - reducing forests to flatland by uprooting trees and trampling plants as they feed and roam - threaten the park's biodiversity... A national park or private reserve will only be allowed to cull with the approval of the authorities and an elephant management specialist, who must be satisfied all other options are not viable. These include contraception, a tricky process that can cause females much distress, and relocation of entire elephant families, which can be stressful for the animals and is expensive... Rob Little, conservation director at WWF in South Africa, welcomed the announcement. He said the country's rapid elephant population growth of 6% - mainly due to the absence of natural predators of mature animals - was unsustainable"

Rutgers may discipline professor who made anti-white Facebook posts - "A longtime Rutgers University history professor could be facing disciplinary action after an investigation by the university concluded he violated its discrimination and harassment policy when he posted on Facebook that he hates white people, a comment he argues was “satirical.” Rutgers’ decision, the professor says, threatens the tradition of academic freedom at public institutions. But the university argues it needs to maintain a discrimination-free environment... Livingston’s original post was blocked by Facebook. Facebook alerted him at the time that it violated its community standards. Still, Livingston wrote follow-up posts reiterating his comments. “I just don't want little Caucasians overrunning my life,” he wrote . “Remand them to the suburbs, where they and their parents can colonize every restaurant.”"

San Francisco's sidewalks are covered with human feces, so the city is launching a 'Poop Patrol' to deal with the city's No. 2 problem - "a team of five Public Works employees will take to the streets of San Francisco’s grittiest neighborhood, the Tenderloin, in a vehicle equipped with a steam cleaner. They will ride around the alleys to clean piles of poop before city denizens have a chance to complain about them... the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unitspent three days surveying 153 blocks of downtown San Francisco to see what they would find. Their search turned up drug needles, garbage, and feces in concentrations comparable to some of the world’s poorest slums... In Los Angeles, an outbreak of hepatitis A was linked to the city’s 50,000 homeless people, who sometime defecate in the streets and spread disease."

Dutch Culture Taught Me to Be Brutally Honest: The Dutch Directness - "we Americans fuck ourselves over -- in our relationships, in the workplace -- by pretending to be so damn nice all the time... To the Dutch, the truth is productive. Honest feedback changes your perspective on yourself and the situations around you. Now comes my favorite anecdote of all. When Geske was nervous about going into labor, her Dutch doctor took her to a window, pointed at a woman, and said, “Look at that woman over there. Does she look overly intelligent? No. Even idiots can have children.”... On the flip side, the Dutch find Americans confusing and passive aggressive "

Homoeopathy as a Feminist Form of Medicine
I can certainly see the similarities

The Tech Industry’s Psychological War on Kids - "the core of some UX research is about using psychology to take advantage of our human vulnerabilities. That’s particularly pernicious when the targets are children... Self-inflicted injuries, such as cutting, that are serious enough to require treatment in an emergency room, have increased dramatically in 10- to 14-year-old girls, up 19% per year since 2009."

Jeremy Michael Robins - "As a mother of 4 boys, I find it extremely disturbing that all that is required today to ruin a young man's life, is a decade's old accusation. Even when all of the accusers "witnesses" have all claimed that they have no recollection of the incident. The presumption of innocence is no more. Now, men are guilty until proven innocent and it seems that no amount of reason, common sense or plain old facts will matter in the face of an accusation. Almost every woman I know has had a drunken one night stand that they regretted the next day. Now, those women can claim to have been raped, simply because they were intoxicated. It doesn't matter if the man was even more intoxicated, it doesn't matter if it was the woman who pursued the man, the presumption of guilt lies squarely at his feet. Whatever happened to personal responsibility? Women are not delicate flowers that need to be protected from every potential interaction they have with a man. This is absolutely absurd. I have read some very disturbing cases of very young men having their lives ruined, men who were expelled from college because the college failed to investigate claims thoroughly... Is this good enough, is this the future we want for our boys, is this the culture we want them growing up in? It's not good enough for my boys and it shouldn't be good enough for anyone else's. Be careful what you blindly support now, it will be too late to affect change 15 years from now, when it is your own sons on the receiving end of baseless accusations. This goes far beyond the realm of dirty politics, this has permeated into the lives of ordinary young men, everywhere. I refuse to raise my boys to believe that all masculinity is toxic, that all men are potential rapists, or worse, that all men are just inherently "bad"."

Why You Shouldn’t Open a Restaurant (Ep. 347) - Freakonomics Freakonomics - "Kenji LÓPEZ-ALT: If you use vodka in place of some of the water in your pie crust, you end up with a dough that is much flakier and much lighte
He investigated whether the key ingredient in New York pizza really is the water.
LÓPEZ-ALT: So I did a full double-blind experiment where I got water — starting with perfectly distilled water and up to various levels of dissolved solids inside the water. And what we basically ended up finding was the water makes almost no difference compared to other variables in the dough.
He found that the secret to General Tso’s chicken lay in geometry.
LÓPEZ-ALT: The geometry of food is important because one of the big things is surface-area-to-volume ratio.
And he explored the relationship between meat and salt; he proved why it’s important to salt a hamburger at the last minute, on the surface of the meat"

The extraordinary history of ordinary things - History Extra - "You find the most amazing stuff in [chimneys]... we find the most extraordinary things up chimneys. Shoes, cats. But letters. Wonderful collection of childhood letters to Father Christmas which have been burnt, semi-burnt. Been whipped up the fire and then got stuck.. And so builders have been finding them… someone found a early 17th century map of the world stuck up their chimney… There are not four of these things on earth. And it was found in pieces up a chimney. And loads of legal documents. Chimneys are basically archives and I reckon wells are as well."

Biology Matters - "Regardless of how often we hear, “it doesn’t matter who raises a child as long as they are safe and loved,” the data reveals that being raised by both biological parents is one of the strongest predictors of whether or not a child will actually be safe and loved... 'if a stepfather joins a family headed by a lone mother, then the children are likely to grow up with the same problems as children from families that continue to be led by a lone mother.'"
Interestingly, this militates against the claim that single mothers are worse for kids only because of a lack of money and a lack of manpower - since adding a stepfather (who can provide both) doesn't appreciably improve outcomes

CDC: Children do best with two biological parents - "Two biological parents provide the safest environment for a child, according to a study released last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics. The study is the first to look specifically at biological and non-biological parents, rather than married, cohabitating, or same-sex parents"

Helen Dale - "2. A left-wing friend has written to me saying s/he is really worried about writing something critical of a currently popular left position because s/he is frightened of losing all his/her left-wing writing gigs.
3. A right-wing friend with regular gigs in right-wing outlets thinks economic inequality matters more than most conservatives and classical liberals think it does. He’s at no risk of losing his gigs, but if he wants to write on that topic he’s been directed to ‘publish it elsewhere’.
4. Every day, I encounter people who boast that they don’t read anything published by individuals ‘on the other side’. Often entire outlets are written off (The Australian, the Guardian, etc, depending on politics).
5. I have leftie friends - personal friends - who didn’t know I had a new book out because, well, I wrote about it (and other people wrote about it) in The Australian, Spectator, Quillette etc."