London Crime Wave: City Hiring Hundreds of £150 a Day ‘Anti-Racist Police Monitors’ to ‘Promote Diversity’ - "“The skills you possess are highly prized,” the Metropolitan Police tells potential candidates for the role, which requires no qualifications nor job history besides “life experience”, “an appreciation of diversity issues”, and that applicants have lived in London for three years. A role introduced in 2003 to identify and weed out potential racists amongst police recruits, community assessors are expected to “challenge inappropriate behaviour or behaviour from colleagues and bring this to the attention of the Assessment Team”, as well as to “complete, sign and date any recorded evidence of inappropriate language or behaviour”... Taxpayers Alliance chief John O’Connell said: “We are constantly told that the Met Police needs more money to keep policing crime, but more money isn’t going to make a difference if spending priorities are completely warped... the popularity of the capital’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, had plummeted from +22 in May to just +4 in September as public concern continued to grow over the city’s violent crime epidemic. However, the Labour mayor, who has used his office to take a strong, pro-globalist stance on “culture war” issues like feminism and to denounce U.S. President Donald J. Trump, insists the problem is solely down to police spending cuts by the Conservative government."
This will help tackle knife crime!
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, London's knife crime problem - "'The National Audit Office says it's not clear what effect police numbers reductions have had on crime... they have said there is no hard evidence and moreover other statistics show that stop and searches in the capital have fallen to 135,000 over the last year'...
'We set the Home Office to work with people across the board. Police officers, but also people working in education and healthcare, social services, and so on, to find out what was going on. We produced the serious violence strategy in April. And as a result of that very intensive piece of work, we, I'm afraid, found that the claim about police numbers does, isn't supported by the evidence of previous spikes in serious violence. So for example, in the late 2000s, there was a similar spike in violence. And there were many, many more police officers on the streets in that day and age. So I think actually what you know, when I speak to the victims of crime and to their families, they're not talking about police numbers, they want to stop our young people getting involved in violence in the first place. And that's why we're placing so much emphasis on the long term work of early intervention and prevention.'...
'Is there perhaps a correlation between what the police officers are being asked to do these days and the level of crime and you'll realise that I'm obviously talking about Sara Thornton, who is the chair of the National Police Chiefs' Council, a very serious senior police officer herself, and she is concerned that our focus is on the wrong thing at the moment. We need to redirect our focus towards violence and burglaries rather than the sorts of focus that it has, at the moment - gender based hate crime and that sort of thing, they cannot be the right priority she says, for a service that is overstretched'...
'On the wider issue of hate crime... if a young black man is killed, because of the color of his skin, that is a hate crime. And that absolutely must be investigated'...
'That is a crime anyway, if a young black man or a young white man is killed, that is murder and that is a crime. We don't need it to be a hate crime'
Maybe they'll just blame hate crimes for causing the crime wave next
Met police launch drive to balance the gender ranks - "The Metropolitan police commissioner, Cressida Dick, has said she wants half of London’s officers to be women, as part of a commitment to end male domination in the ranks. With just over one in four officers, 27%, being female, the Met has launched its first recruitment drive targeting women."
London acid attack map reveals the areas of the capital too dangerous for delivery drivers because of the epidemic
More than 1,400 addresses where ambulances won't go without police protection revealed as attacks on paramedics soar - "AMBULANCE crews will not attend incidents at more than 1,400 homes in England without a police escort, shocking new figures have revealed... Around eight paramedics are subjected to a serious attack every day as they try to carry out their work saving the public."
London Cop Tells LBC: "There Are No-Go Areas" - ""Rob", currently serving in the Met Police, insisted police weren't scared, but admitted bosses had told officers to avoid wearing uniforms in certain places in the capital. He told Nick Ferrari: "There has been a time when it's been advised not to wear half-blues or uniform to and from work. "It's like damage limitation. You try to do the most you can to prevent anything bad from happening... Regarding no-go areas in London, Rob added: "With gang crime in London, there are areas which you wouldn't go into as a pair of cops in a car because of the fear of having things thrown at you when you're driving through certain estates - bottles etc."
A London murder mystery: Why are killings up? - "It was then Home Secretary, and now Prime Minister, Theresa May who rolled back stop-and-search powers for police, arguing they were being used to target ethnic minorities. The number of random searches is now a quarter of what it was in 2011, when the police conducted 1.2 million of them... the likelihood that a child under 14 will eventually commit a murder can be predicted by four factors: living in a poor neighbourhood, having low socio-economic status, having a young mother or having an unemployed one. Boys with all four were five times more likely to commit murder than others. The data make one thing impossible to ignore: It's complicated. That means solutions will not be found in simplistic formulas such as more policing or body-searching... social media is spreading violent tendencies"
London's crime is out of control – and it's strategy, not police cuts, that are to blame - "The New York Police Department (NYPD) has roughly the same amount of resources to use as Scotland Yard – 30,000 officers and budgets of £3bn a year – but has managed to get rates down significantly, with murder at a record low... Huge amounts of resources have also been invested in sorting out high-profile, political cases, such as the celebrity phone-hacking scandal, leaving the most basic police job – keeping the public safe – under neglect. The London crime wave has been exacerbated all the more by the lack of leadership from our mayor, Sadiq Khan, who simply isn’t tough enough to put the fear into London’s criminals. After all, what moped thief is going to listen to a man who spends his time pondering whether bikini adverts are dangerous? Khan’s problem is prioritisation. He pays an inordinate amount of attention to fashionable issues; making videos about feminism and discussing whether London needs more gender neutral loos, for instance. All this makes for great headlines, but leaves Britain’s young men – the ones most often roped into crime and it’s consequences – desperately uncared for. His Night Tzar, Amy Lamé, is equally biased in favour of females. One of her most-publicised initiatives has been developing a night safety charter (whatever that is) to end women’s harassment. But it’s an activity of negligence, in a way, considering men are the ones being stabbed on our streets."
Why London’s soaring murder rate is everyone’s problem | The Spectator - "The news that for two months in a row London’s murder rate has been higher than New York’s has jolted the country out of this complacency... Since the revelations about the late Jimmy Savile emerged in 2012, a great number of police resources have been consumed with investigating historic sex offences. While serious sexual offences committed in the past should not be dismissed, a moral panic has led to disproportionate attention being paid to allegations which have either proved to be fantastical — such as those against the late Sir Edward Heath — or which were simply not serious enough to have been pursued decades after the events supposedly took place. The skewed priorities of some police chiefs have been compounded by the politicised approach of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders, who announced her departure from the job this week. Under her leadership, the Crown Prosecution Service has concerned itself rather more with ‘fashionable’ offences, such as date rape and hate crime. The result has been a string of collapsed rape trials — while shoplifters and burglars have escaped prosecution. The skewed priorities of some police chiefs have been compounded by the politicised approach of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders, who announced her departure from the job this week. Under her leadership, the Crown Prosecution Service has concerned itself rather more with ‘fashionable’ offences, such as date rape and hate crime. The result has been a string of collapsed rape trials — while shoplifters and burglars have escaped prosecution."
Investigating hate crime risks distracting police from their core role, warns head of Britain’s chief constables - "Investigating hate crime risks distracting police from their core role of handling emergencies, solving violent crime and burglaries and neighbourhood policing, the head of Britain’s chief constables warned today. Sara Thornton, head of the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), told the summit on Wednesday that historical probes into potential crimes committed by dead people and widening hate crime to include misogyny had also had an impact... chief constables had in July discussed recording misogyny as a hate crime after pressure from campaign groups. This would have meant recording such allegations even when no crime had been committed... she said she wanted police to “solve more burglaries and bear down on violence before we make more records of incidents that are not crimes"... “Recent randomised trials in Western Australia have shown that if a crime hotspot is unpatrolled for five days then crime is five times higher than in comparable crime hotspots that have 13 minutes patrolling a day.” Yet police were increasingly being drawn into areas that were not directly related to crime"
And some people are puzzled that knife crime is increasing, only blame funding cuts and/or deny that obsessing about trivialities/non-issues can cause real harm
UK Liberals Trash Female Cop For Suggesting Police Should Focus on Real Crimes Instead of 'Misogyny' - "Criticism of Thornton's statement largely stemmed from the view that toxic masculinity is the underlying diagnosis behind many acts of violence"
Tackle street harassment or burglary? The police shouldn’t have to choose | Suzanne Moore
What she seems to be complaining about is that wolf whistling should be seen as more of a problem than burglary, because it scares women and can lead to domestic abuse
Diane Abbott Enraged After Tory MP Backs Stop and Searching Minorities: 'They're More Likely to Kill' - "Tory backbencher Philip Davies enraged Labour Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott during a parliamentary debate on stop-and-search, pointing out that searching minorities more often than white people makes sense as they are disproportionately likely to kill... “While white people made up 87 per cent of the population, they were responsible for 67 per cent of murders. Black people made up 3 per cent of the population but 14.5 per cent of murders. Asian people were 6 per cent of the population but were responsible for 12 per cent of murders, and mixed race people were 2 per cent of the population but responsible for 5.5 per cent of murders.“It is also a fact that black people are more likely to use a knife or a sharp instrument to kill,” he continued.“That is the background and those are the facts. I am not sure anybody disputes them, because they are the official facts. If no crimes were taking place, we would not need stop-and-search, but in the real world there is crime, and it is a serious problem... Davies... disputed the contention that minorities are only overrepresented in the crime statistics because they are more likely to be searched in the first place. “I asked a parliamentary question about this in 2016. I was told that the following were the percentages of searches that resulted in an arrest. For white people who were stopped and searched, 13 per cent were arrested as a result. For black people it was 20 per cent, for Asian people 14 per cent and for mixed race people 17 per cent. “The evidence shows that the community that is much more likely to be stopped and searched and yet found to have done nothing wrong is white people. Those are the facts. They might be inconvenient facts for people who have a particular agenda, but they are nevertheless the facts.”... “In fact, one police officer told me that, in their training, they were told to avoid stopping and searching somebody from an ethnic minority because it could easily get them into trouble. What a message to send out to our police officers, who try their best to combat crime.”"
Man, 67, murdered by violent thug after police told him to investigate robbery himself - "A "vulnerable" pensioner told by police to carry out his own inquiries into a crime was murdered by a robber he tracked down. Nicholas Churton, 67, was killed in a brutal machete and hammer attack by Jordan Davidson, 26, at his address in Wrexham, North Wales"
When you can't live without bananas
Saturday, December 01, 2018
Friday, November 30, 2018
Links - 30th November 2018 (2)
The Pythagorean Cup - The Cup That Spills Your Drink When You Get Too Greedy
Republicans and Democrats Don’t Just Disagree About Politics. They Have Different Sexual Fantasies. - "Republicans were more likely than Democrats to fantasize about a range of activities that involve sex outside of marriage... self-identified Democrats were more likely than Republicans to fantasize about almost the entire spectrum of BDSM activities, from bondage to spanking to dominance-submission play. The largest Democrat-Republican divide on the BDSM spectrum was in masochism, which involves deriving pleasure from the experience of pain... What connects Republicans and Democrats, I believe, is that their fantasies are at least partly driven by what they can’t have. As I argue in Tell Me What You Want, the supersized sexual appeal that nonmonogamous and voyeuristic acts hold for Republicans likely stems from the fact that sex outside of marriage and multipartner sex are huge no-nos in a political party that continues to make “traditional marriage” one of the cornerstones of its official platform and regularly funnels federal funds toward abstinence-only sex education... Within the Democratic Party, much of what drives the political agenda is the view that inequality is the source of a wide range of social problems. This is regularly seen in the party platform, which recently made multiple mentions of the need to “level the playing field.” It’s not a stretch, then, to suggest that playing with power differentials—especially in BDSM settings, where women and men might not appear to be on equal footing and where the lines of sexual consent might not always be explicit—is taboo in many Democratic circles... the single most commonly fantasized-about politician among both parties was the same: Sarah Palin"
This is evidence that feminists really do want to be dominated
Upholding the Jihadist's Veto - "The vast majority of European democracies have abolished their blasphemy bans without an increase in religious conflict, unrest or violence. And those who do seek to enforce the “Jihadist’s Veto” by killing and threatening journalists and authors in Amsterdam, Paris and Copenhagen, should not be rewarded for their efforts. Enforcing blasphemy bans is neither a sign of progress and tolerance nor likely to appease religious extremists. That lesson should be clear from a number of Muslim majority countries where blasphemy laws contribute to more, not less, extremism and violence. In 1992, Egyptian secularist intellectual Faraq Fouda was condemned as a blasphemer by a council at the Islamic Al-Azhar Islamic for mocking Islamist ideology and pointing to dark chapters in the history of Islam. Shortly thereafter, he was murdered by Islamists. Subsequently, Al-Azhar university not only blamed Fouda for his own murder but also banned Fouda’s complete works... blasphemy laws are being abused to target religious minorities, dissenters, and to legitimize vigilant mob violence. Human rights discourse should play no part in providing legitimacy—however indirectly—to such practices... the Court’s insistence that verbal attacks on religious doctrines and figures should have a certain “factual basis” creates an impediment to rigorous and passionate debate of religion. Much contained in texts considered sacred by their followers will be rejected as falsehoods by those of other faiths or non-believers"
What's so blasphemous about free speech? - "the American First Amendment lawyer Ken White argues that hate speech isn’t capable of legal definition — because baked into any such legislation is the claim that certain words cause direct harm in the same way a violent act does. The problem with this is that what is hateful to one person may be amusing or even meaningless to another. As a result, “hate speech is whatever someone in power thinks it is”, White suggests. It’s important here to note the distinction here between hate speech and incitement, which is a crime. Incitement requires a causal link between speech and the commission of a crime. Hate speech does not. It is such US-style legal reasoning that led Irish politician Councillor Keith Redmond to call hate speech (all of it) “secular blasphemy law” during Ireland’s referendum campaign, and to argue that hate speech laws generally and religious vilification laws in particular amount to “blasphemy by the back door” — and constitute a direct assault on freedom of speech... Section 127 only applies online, people can make the most outrageously racist, sexist, or bigoted jokes at, say, a comedy club or down the pub. If, however, their speech is recorded and finishes up on the internet, they’re in trouble. Thousands of people have been convicted under this statute — we’ve only heard about Meechan and Linehan because they’re famous. It is Section 127 that allows police up and down the country to pitch up on people’s doorsteps — while loosely throwing the phrase “hate speech” around — for something they’ve posted on Facebook or Instagram."
In the Shadow of the Sword by Tom Holland – review - "The problem with the life of Muhammad is that there is almost no textual support for it until almost two centuries after his death. Holland is not going so far as to say that he never existed. Just that the account we have comes from the 800s, by which time Haroun al-Rashid was caliph over an empire that stretched from China to the Atlantic, and the 1,001 Nights was being compiled. The veracity of details and perhaps also some of the more important moments of the prophet's life were – are – impossible to prove. The same goes for the Qur'an. There is no written mention of it in the period immediately following Muhammad – nor any commentary on it until the eighth century... Holland points out that "there is not a shred of backing" in the Qur'an for locating Mecca in the Hijaz"
Christian News Site 'LifeSite' Blacklisted by Web Host
Trump approval rating with blacks now at 36%, Rasmussen poll says - "Trump proudly and frequently cites the current low unemployment figures among African-Americans as a reason voters from that demographic should support him. On Friday, Trump cited those numbers in a tweet in which he also said he was "honored" to have the support of musician Kanye West. In May, Trump boasted to a crowd at a National Rifle Association convention that West's endorsement had doubled his percentage of African-American supporters after a Reuters poll showed it went from 11 to 22 percent in one week"
Even Good Husbands Are Sexist. Here's What I Did About Mine. - "To be frank, they tend to sit out anything bigger than cutting up an onion. And when they do cut up onions, they often do it wrong — chopping for a salad instead of slicing for a stir fry. Most of the time, it’s easier for us just to do it ourselves, rather than accept their "help."... There’s no comparison to the feeling of failure a woman has when her “work day” is done and she comes home and the house is a complete mess. I’ve never seen a man lose his mind over a dirty countertop, but I have seen and heard many women pour their hearts out on the issue (and I have definitely been one of those women). And that’s OK! I don’t think a woman should ever apologize for wanting things to be tidy or to look a certain way. But, emotional labor also has a way of slowly scraping us from the inside out. As generous as some of us are by nature, it can feel like we are chasing our tails for no one when our time- and brain-consuming efforts are taken for granted... "I am still running around the morning our house cleaner comes to ‘clean before she cleans,’ which my husband thinks is crazy.”... She would do what many of us are normalized to do — resent the fact that he wasn’t helping and then feel even more resentful when he didn’t complete the task up to her standards... Geoff and I came up with a “hack.” On even-numbered nights during the workweek, he would provide dinner for us. He could cook, he could order takeout, we could go out to eat — the decision was totally up to him. The only rule was that he couldn’t ask me for any insight, preferences, or cravings beforehand, and I couldn’t make any suggestions or provide any opinions before or during the meal. I would just arrive home and dinner would be there for me, and I would have to eat it whether I liked it or not. On odd-numbered nights of the week, I would do the same for him... I bit my tongue a lot. If I had Thai food for lunch and he ordered Thai food for dinner, I would eat Thai food twice in one day without telling him. It was hit or miss, but I couldn’t complain. Like, I literally could not complain. And that silence was a game changer — as was my attitude. Even when the food was kind of meh, I made sure Geoff knew how much I appreciated his efforts, and this paid off in spades (and pasta). Regardless of gender, compliments and encouragement are the oldest "hack" in the book. And I had all this extra space in my brain!... I’ve stopped micromanaging and making assumptions about who can or can’t do what chores well. Perfect is the enemy of the good, and honestly it’s just great not having to decide what’s for dinner."
She almost realised the answer to her question - "emotional labour" is to a large extent women caring about things that men don't care about and don't see the need to care about, or getting upset that men don't do things the way they would (actually this isn't even limited to a gender divide - women also disagree with other women on how to do the same task)
Keywords: a cleaner before, embarrassed, women have higher standards for cleanliness
Melissa Chen - Can we please appreciate my sister's commitment to... - "Can we please appreciate my sister's commitment to Halloween? They had a Halloween costume contest at work and she stayed in character as Rafiki all day, singing "asante sana squash banana" and going up to co-workers and smearing whipped cream on their foreheads, saying "Siiiiiiiimba.""
Canada resort staff were fired for being white - tribunal - "Resort owner Kin Wa Chan said he wanted to hire Chinese employees because he believed they were cheaper. The tribunal found the seven staff were forced out in August 2016, and replaced with Chinese workers."
Canada woman loses snoring row complaint with neighbours - "A Canadian woman who complained of harassment after her landlords urged her to seek help for her snoring has lost her case. The woman had taken her landlords to Quebec's rental board seeking a rent reduction over the dispute. The board's tribunal said her excessive snoring could not be considered a normal level of noise expected in an apartment complex. It also said she was wrong to refuse to see a doctor about her snoring."
Seventy Years of the New York Times Describing Saudi Royals as Reformers - "In honor of Thomas Friedman's latest love letter to the ruling dynasty in Saudi Arabia, here is seventy years worth of the New York Times describing the royal family as reformers"
Ben & Jerry's partners with group tied to Anti-Semite Farrakhan - "Vermont-based ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s released a new flavor to show its support for groups fighting President Donald Trump’s agenda, including the Women’s March, a group whose leaders enjoy ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan."
"Resist"
Are Koreas About to Finally Make Peace? U.S. Helps Disarm World’s Most Heavily Fortified Border - "North and South Korean personnel have completed disarming an important section of the massive demilitarized zone that lies between them, an unprecedented step amid a warming of relations between the longtime foes."
Trump haters can't continue to insist that there's no progress - so they'll just claim he has nothing to do with this
Trump’s reversal of failed Obama policies has created a booming economy - "The unemployment rate in September stood at 3.7 percent, the lowest rate since 1969. Not coincidentally, for the week ending Oct. 15, initial claims for unemployment benefits were the lowest since 1973, when the U.S. population was 110 million people smaller. This is because the Trump economy’s job creation numbers are regularly beating expectations – averaging over 208,000 jobs per month so far this year. Will hiring continue to increase, causing the number of workers forced onto the unemployment rolls to continue its decline? Yes, it will. There are currently more job openings than people unemployed. Last March was the first time that had happened since the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) began compiling the data. It has happened every month since. In August, there were 7.1 million job openings – the highest number ever recorded – with only 6.2 million people unemployed. In other words, there were 900,000 more job openings than people who had looked for a job in the past 30 days. Again, a remarkable record. Who is benefitting? Is it, as Democrats claim, only the rich who benefit from tax cuts and economic growth? No. People are benefitting across demographics regardless of race, sex or level of education. Unemployment rates are at or near record lows for African- Americans, Hispanics, Asians, women and people without high school diplomas. The BLS announced Wednesday that the wages and salaries of American workers in the third quarter of this year were 3.1 percent higher than during the same period one year ago – the biggest increase in 10 years... We are averaging 3.3 percent GDP growth year to date with GDP growth coming in at 4.2 percent in the second quarter and 3.5 percent in the third... Following the 2016 election, Obama economists initially tried blaming structural problems for his failure to generate better economic growth. They also were quick to demean the Trump administration’s 3 percent GDP growth forecasts. A February 2017 Business Insider article discussing 3 percent GDP growth quoted former Obama administration economist Lee Branstetter as stating that “it's essentially mathematically impossible to get the growth they're talking about.” In March, economist and Obama administration alum Jason Furman blamed changed economic circumstances and forecast 10 years of GDP growth “around 2 percent a year.” In May, fellow Obama economist Larry Summers, compared believing in the Trump administration’s forecast of 3 percent GDP growth to believing “in tooth fairies.”"
Republicans and Democrats Don’t Just Disagree About Politics. They Have Different Sexual Fantasies. - "Republicans were more likely than Democrats to fantasize about a range of activities that involve sex outside of marriage... self-identified Democrats were more likely than Republicans to fantasize about almost the entire spectrum of BDSM activities, from bondage to spanking to dominance-submission play. The largest Democrat-Republican divide on the BDSM spectrum was in masochism, which involves deriving pleasure from the experience of pain... What connects Republicans and Democrats, I believe, is that their fantasies are at least partly driven by what they can’t have. As I argue in Tell Me What You Want, the supersized sexual appeal that nonmonogamous and voyeuristic acts hold for Republicans likely stems from the fact that sex outside of marriage and multipartner sex are huge no-nos in a political party that continues to make “traditional marriage” one of the cornerstones of its official platform and regularly funnels federal funds toward abstinence-only sex education... Within the Democratic Party, much of what drives the political agenda is the view that inequality is the source of a wide range of social problems. This is regularly seen in the party platform, which recently made multiple mentions of the need to “level the playing field.” It’s not a stretch, then, to suggest that playing with power differentials—especially in BDSM settings, where women and men might not appear to be on equal footing and where the lines of sexual consent might not always be explicit—is taboo in many Democratic circles... the single most commonly fantasized-about politician among both parties was the same: Sarah Palin"
This is evidence that feminists really do want to be dominated
Upholding the Jihadist's Veto - "The vast majority of European democracies have abolished their blasphemy bans without an increase in religious conflict, unrest or violence. And those who do seek to enforce the “Jihadist’s Veto” by killing and threatening journalists and authors in Amsterdam, Paris and Copenhagen, should not be rewarded for their efforts. Enforcing blasphemy bans is neither a sign of progress and tolerance nor likely to appease religious extremists. That lesson should be clear from a number of Muslim majority countries where blasphemy laws contribute to more, not less, extremism and violence. In 1992, Egyptian secularist intellectual Faraq Fouda was condemned as a blasphemer by a council at the Islamic Al-Azhar Islamic for mocking Islamist ideology and pointing to dark chapters in the history of Islam. Shortly thereafter, he was murdered by Islamists. Subsequently, Al-Azhar university not only blamed Fouda for his own murder but also banned Fouda’s complete works... blasphemy laws are being abused to target religious minorities, dissenters, and to legitimize vigilant mob violence. Human rights discourse should play no part in providing legitimacy—however indirectly—to such practices... the Court’s insistence that verbal attacks on religious doctrines and figures should have a certain “factual basis” creates an impediment to rigorous and passionate debate of religion. Much contained in texts considered sacred by their followers will be rejected as falsehoods by those of other faiths or non-believers"
What's so blasphemous about free speech? - "the American First Amendment lawyer Ken White argues that hate speech isn’t capable of legal definition — because baked into any such legislation is the claim that certain words cause direct harm in the same way a violent act does. The problem with this is that what is hateful to one person may be amusing or even meaningless to another. As a result, “hate speech is whatever someone in power thinks it is”, White suggests. It’s important here to note the distinction here between hate speech and incitement, which is a crime. Incitement requires a causal link between speech and the commission of a crime. Hate speech does not. It is such US-style legal reasoning that led Irish politician Councillor Keith Redmond to call hate speech (all of it) “secular blasphemy law” during Ireland’s referendum campaign, and to argue that hate speech laws generally and religious vilification laws in particular amount to “blasphemy by the back door” — and constitute a direct assault on freedom of speech... Section 127 only applies online, people can make the most outrageously racist, sexist, or bigoted jokes at, say, a comedy club or down the pub. If, however, their speech is recorded and finishes up on the internet, they’re in trouble. Thousands of people have been convicted under this statute — we’ve only heard about Meechan and Linehan because they’re famous. It is Section 127 that allows police up and down the country to pitch up on people’s doorsteps — while loosely throwing the phrase “hate speech” around — for something they’ve posted on Facebook or Instagram."
In the Shadow of the Sword by Tom Holland – review - "The problem with the life of Muhammad is that there is almost no textual support for it until almost two centuries after his death. Holland is not going so far as to say that he never existed. Just that the account we have comes from the 800s, by which time Haroun al-Rashid was caliph over an empire that stretched from China to the Atlantic, and the 1,001 Nights was being compiled. The veracity of details and perhaps also some of the more important moments of the prophet's life were – are – impossible to prove. The same goes for the Qur'an. There is no written mention of it in the period immediately following Muhammad – nor any commentary on it until the eighth century... Holland points out that "there is not a shred of backing" in the Qur'an for locating Mecca in the Hijaz"
Christian News Site 'LifeSite' Blacklisted by Web Host
Trump approval rating with blacks now at 36%, Rasmussen poll says - "Trump proudly and frequently cites the current low unemployment figures among African-Americans as a reason voters from that demographic should support him. On Friday, Trump cited those numbers in a tweet in which he also said he was "honored" to have the support of musician Kanye West. In May, Trump boasted to a crowd at a National Rifle Association convention that West's endorsement had doubled his percentage of African-American supporters after a Reuters poll showed it went from 11 to 22 percent in one week"
Even Good Husbands Are Sexist. Here's What I Did About Mine. - "To be frank, they tend to sit out anything bigger than cutting up an onion. And when they do cut up onions, they often do it wrong — chopping for a salad instead of slicing for a stir fry. Most of the time, it’s easier for us just to do it ourselves, rather than accept their "help."... There’s no comparison to the feeling of failure a woman has when her “work day” is done and she comes home and the house is a complete mess. I’ve never seen a man lose his mind over a dirty countertop, but I have seen and heard many women pour their hearts out on the issue (and I have definitely been one of those women). And that’s OK! I don’t think a woman should ever apologize for wanting things to be tidy or to look a certain way. But, emotional labor also has a way of slowly scraping us from the inside out. As generous as some of us are by nature, it can feel like we are chasing our tails for no one when our time- and brain-consuming efforts are taken for granted... "I am still running around the morning our house cleaner comes to ‘clean before she cleans,’ which my husband thinks is crazy.”... She would do what many of us are normalized to do — resent the fact that he wasn’t helping and then feel even more resentful when he didn’t complete the task up to her standards... Geoff and I came up with a “hack.” On even-numbered nights during the workweek, he would provide dinner for us. He could cook, he could order takeout, we could go out to eat — the decision was totally up to him. The only rule was that he couldn’t ask me for any insight, preferences, or cravings beforehand, and I couldn’t make any suggestions or provide any opinions before or during the meal. I would just arrive home and dinner would be there for me, and I would have to eat it whether I liked it or not. On odd-numbered nights of the week, I would do the same for him... I bit my tongue a lot. If I had Thai food for lunch and he ordered Thai food for dinner, I would eat Thai food twice in one day without telling him. It was hit or miss, but I couldn’t complain. Like, I literally could not complain. And that silence was a game changer — as was my attitude. Even when the food was kind of meh, I made sure Geoff knew how much I appreciated his efforts, and this paid off in spades (and pasta). Regardless of gender, compliments and encouragement are the oldest "hack" in the book. And I had all this extra space in my brain!... I’ve stopped micromanaging and making assumptions about who can or can’t do what chores well. Perfect is the enemy of the good, and honestly it’s just great not having to decide what’s for dinner."
She almost realised the answer to her question - "emotional labour" is to a large extent women caring about things that men don't care about and don't see the need to care about, or getting upset that men don't do things the way they would (actually this isn't even limited to a gender divide - women also disagree with other women on how to do the same task)
Keywords: a cleaner before, embarrassed, women have higher standards for cleanliness
Melissa Chen - Can we please appreciate my sister's commitment to... - "Can we please appreciate my sister's commitment to Halloween? They had a Halloween costume contest at work and she stayed in character as Rafiki all day, singing "asante sana squash banana" and going up to co-workers and smearing whipped cream on their foreheads, saying "Siiiiiiiimba.""
Canada resort staff were fired for being white - tribunal - "Resort owner Kin Wa Chan said he wanted to hire Chinese employees because he believed they were cheaper. The tribunal found the seven staff were forced out in August 2016, and replaced with Chinese workers."
Canada woman loses snoring row complaint with neighbours - "A Canadian woman who complained of harassment after her landlords urged her to seek help for her snoring has lost her case. The woman had taken her landlords to Quebec's rental board seeking a rent reduction over the dispute. The board's tribunal said her excessive snoring could not be considered a normal level of noise expected in an apartment complex. It also said she was wrong to refuse to see a doctor about her snoring."
Seventy Years of the New York Times Describing Saudi Royals as Reformers - "In honor of Thomas Friedman's latest love letter to the ruling dynasty in Saudi Arabia, here is seventy years worth of the New York Times describing the royal family as reformers"
Ben & Jerry's partners with group tied to Anti-Semite Farrakhan - "Vermont-based ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s released a new flavor to show its support for groups fighting President Donald Trump’s agenda, including the Women’s March, a group whose leaders enjoy ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan."
"Resist"
Are Koreas About to Finally Make Peace? U.S. Helps Disarm World’s Most Heavily Fortified Border - "North and South Korean personnel have completed disarming an important section of the massive demilitarized zone that lies between them, an unprecedented step amid a warming of relations between the longtime foes."
Trump haters can't continue to insist that there's no progress - so they'll just claim he has nothing to do with this
Trump’s reversal of failed Obama policies has created a booming economy - "The unemployment rate in September stood at 3.7 percent, the lowest rate since 1969. Not coincidentally, for the week ending Oct. 15, initial claims for unemployment benefits were the lowest since 1973, when the U.S. population was 110 million people smaller. This is because the Trump economy’s job creation numbers are regularly beating expectations – averaging over 208,000 jobs per month so far this year. Will hiring continue to increase, causing the number of workers forced onto the unemployment rolls to continue its decline? Yes, it will. There are currently more job openings than people unemployed. Last March was the first time that had happened since the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) began compiling the data. It has happened every month since. In August, there were 7.1 million job openings – the highest number ever recorded – with only 6.2 million people unemployed. In other words, there were 900,000 more job openings than people who had looked for a job in the past 30 days. Again, a remarkable record. Who is benefitting? Is it, as Democrats claim, only the rich who benefit from tax cuts and economic growth? No. People are benefitting across demographics regardless of race, sex or level of education. Unemployment rates are at or near record lows for African- Americans, Hispanics, Asians, women and people without high school diplomas. The BLS announced Wednesday that the wages and salaries of American workers in the third quarter of this year were 3.1 percent higher than during the same period one year ago – the biggest increase in 10 years... We are averaging 3.3 percent GDP growth year to date with GDP growth coming in at 4.2 percent in the second quarter and 3.5 percent in the third... Following the 2016 election, Obama economists initially tried blaming structural problems for his failure to generate better economic growth. They also were quick to demean the Trump administration’s 3 percent GDP growth forecasts. A February 2017 Business Insider article discussing 3 percent GDP growth quoted former Obama administration economist Lee Branstetter as stating that “it's essentially mathematically impossible to get the growth they're talking about.” In March, economist and Obama administration alum Jason Furman blamed changed economic circumstances and forecast 10 years of GDP growth “around 2 percent a year.” In May, fellow Obama economist Larry Summers, compared believing in the Trump administration’s forecast of 3 percent GDP growth to believing “in tooth fairies.”"
Post ID: 8336652631181356908
This isn't on Jezebel, but it could be - What I Told My White Son He Could Learn From His Black Bully
"It was a Tuesday afternoon like any other when I picked Jamie up from school. He slunk sheepishly into the passenger seat and dropped his bag on the floor. "How was yoru day?" I asked buoyantly. A reticent "Don't wanna talk about it..." was his reply. After a brief moment of concerned pause, I drove off.
Around half of the way home, Jamie started to whimper. I glanced over to see a contorted expression on his face, and in moments he erupted into tears. "I was bullied again," was all he could muster through plaintive sobs.
Some weeks prior, Jamie had confided to me that another child at his school had been targeting him. Jamie, my son, is an 8-year-old white boy. His bully, so he described, was a young black child of 8 or 9. For the sake of privacy, I'll refer to him as Kyle.
I pulled the car over to a residential curbside and cut the engine. Jamie was still weeping uncontrollably. As a mother, my nature impulse was of course to comfort him. But as a committed ally of people of color, and a woman firmly devoted to the dismantling of all forms of cultural and institutional class oppression, I knew I had to take a different approach. I collected my thoughts and began.
"Jamie, do you understand what it means for you to be a white boy, and for Kyle to be a black boy??" I offered gently. Jamie rubbed his eyes and shook his head. I continued, "It means that there exists something called a systemic power differential between you and Kyle. As a person of color, Kyle can't do or enjoy the same things as we can, honey. Kyle isn't bullying you, but is instead expressing his voice as a victim of systemic oppression." I rubbed his back as he kneeled over, head in his hands.
We proceeded home and walked into the house. My boyfriend, Charles, was already home cooking dinner for us. Jamie ran up to his room and shut the door without a word. Charles asked if Jamie was okay. "Just a little temper tantrum. Schoolyard woes," I responded. He gave me a peck on the cheek.
Jamie was still sullen when he joined us at the dinner table that evening. Charles and I shot each other..."
Post ID: 7093534743581893425
Links - 30th November 2018 (1)
Mobile Gaming's Whales Overwhelmingly Male, Spend Big On All Types Of Video Games - ""We classify mobile whales as the top 5% of mobile spenders," Jesse Divnich, of video game research firm EEDAR, tells me. "They spend in excess of $10 or more a month on mobile gaming."... young men are more likely to be whales than women, by a 2:1 ratio, which is one reason we see games targeting male audiences more than females.
More limitations of the "more women are gamers than men" claim
If the spending threshold were increased the number of men would probably be even more overwhelming
Making new plastic is now cheaper than recycling - "As oil prices plummet, a surprising piece of the economy is taking a huge hit: the market for recycled plastic."
P. T. Barnum & the Circus - "Eight months after it retired the elephants, the circus announced on January 14, 2017, that the circus would close in May 2017, and would lay off more than 462 employees between March and May 2017. The circus cited steeply declining ticket sales associated with the loss of the elephants combined with high operating costs as reasons for the closure"
Once again (as with SJW protests), those who protest aren't the ones who buy tickets. Neglecting your audience in order to appease non-noisy customers is folly
Doctor writes to forum: Errant SAF commanders and MOs who revoke NSFs' medical leave should be reported - "Just as the Ministry of Manpower and the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) are concerned that some doctors are not giving injured workers the rest they need, the Ministry of Defence (Mindef) and the SMC should be concerned that our young and injured NSFs are not given the rest they require to recover. When the NSF is injured and is unable to perform his duties, he is entitled to medical leave"
North Yorks Enquirer | Labour Activists Threaten Violence - "Speaking at the counter protest was Scarborough & Whitby Labour Party Prospective Parliamentary candidate, Hugo Fearnley. Fearnley joined in shouting “Whose Streets? Our Streets!” along with black-clad, bovver-booted comrades in an attempt to intimidate those protesting against child rape and trafficking gangs."
Actor James Cromwell warns of 'blood in the streets' if Democrats don't win election - "“This is nascent fascism. We always had a turnkey, totalitarian state — all we needed was an excuse, and all the institutions were in place to turn this into pure fascism,” Cromwell said. “If we don’t stop [President Trump] now, then we will have a revolution for real. Then there will be blood in the streets.”"
Losing an election and then resorting to violence is apparently upholding democratic ideals
Research Shows Spanish Speakers Take Longer To Learn English. Why? - "Students whose home language was Spanish were considerably less likely to reach proficiency than any other subgroup. And, on the extreme end, Spanish speakers were almost half as likely as Chinese speakers to cross the proficiency threshold."
Whatever you think causes this, having more poor performing students is a burden for the country
Exclusive: Trump targeting birthright citizenship with executive order - Axios - "Until the 1960s, the 14th Amendment was never applied to undocumented or temporary immigrants... The Supreme Court has already ruled that children born to immigrants who are legal permanent residents have citizenship. But those who claim the 14th Amendment should not apply to everyone point to the fact that there has been no ruling on a case specifically involving immigrants in the country illegally or those with temporary legal status"
Is it possible to end birthright citizenship? - "65 percent of likely U.S. voters do not support birthright citizenship, which is automatic citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil. A 2010 CBS News poll found that 47 percent of Americans are in favor changing the law so that the children of immigrants in the U.S. illegally cannot become citizens, whereas 49 percent say it should stay the same... Trump also noted that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid once backed the idea of ending birthright citizenship"
How to make cities more walkable - "Cities with high walk scores also have high property values. According to a 2009 study, each additional walk score point resulted in home values increasing between $500 and $3,000. Investing in walkable cities, whether through allocating funds to repaint pedestrian walkways or building affordable housing close to downtowns, also attracts diverse populations and creates jobs... People also tend to spend more money in walkable cities, stimulating the local economy"
Dancers in Thongs at Business Gala Still OK in Post-MeToo France - "The decision to hold a male-dominated corporate event with half-naked women highlights how there are differing views on what’s considered acceptable in a business setting. That’s especially true in France, where attitudes toward sex and nudity are freer and it’s common to see topless women in a storefront magazine... The Moulin Rouge said it continues to hold corporate parties with dancers and professional artists for all ages, including children. The Crazy Horse, another venue known for nude female dancers, also offers corporate events. On its website, the venue advertises that “your company evening party at Crazy Horse Paris is specially designed to seduce you.”"
Baidu launches simultaneous language translation AI - "STACL, unlike most AI translation systems, is capable of beginning a translation just a few seconds into a speaker’s speech and finishing seconds after the end of a sentence. It’s the opposite of consecutive interpretation, where a translator waits until the speaker pauses to start translating... “In [the example] Bùshí Zǒngtǒng zài Mòsīkē (‘Bush President in Moscow’) and the English translation so far ‘President Bush,’ which is k=2 words behind Chinese, our system accurately predicts that the next translation word must be ‘meet’ because Bush is likely ‘meeting’ someone (e.g., Putin) in Moscow, long before the Chinese verb appears.”
Bokhari: New Establishment Argument -- Tech Bias Does Exist, But It's Good - "Rifkind’s argument is important because it’s a different approach to the one taken by Congressional Democrats, who have thus far maintained that bias and censorship against conservatives and populists on the part of social media companies is simply a “conspiracy theory.” Rifkind, by way of contrast, accepts that the bias exists — he just thinks it’s good, and should go further. In the coming battle over the digital public square, I predict the “conspiracy theory” argument will fall out of favor... in “The Good Censor,” an internal presentation leaked to Breitbart News, Google admitted in plain terms that the tech platforms that “dominate the majority of online conversations” have “shifted towards censorship.” There will surely be a few Democrats shameless enough to insist that internet censorship is still just a conspiracy theory, but when the world’s most powerful tech company contradicts them, it’s hard to imagine who’ll be gullible enough to buy it... Google executives have made it clear: they want the populist movement to be snuffed out. In leaked footage obtained by Breitbart News, Google VP Kent Walker said “history teaches us that there are periods of populism, of nationalism… That’s why we have to work so hard to ensure that it doesn’t turn into a World War or something catastrophic, but instead is a blip, is a hiccup.” The video also showed top Google executives, including co-founder Sergey Brin and CEO Sundar Pichai, addressing questions about what to do following the 2016 election. Their answers included a promise to look into combating “fake news,” and a brief discussion of Google’s anti-extremist “Jigsaw” project in relation to allegedly “extremist” Trump supporters."
Google, The ‘Good Censor’ - "Don’t believe Breitbart? You can read the entire document at the end of the report... 'there’s a number of commenters who won’t read it because Breitbart leaked it. Just as Center for Medical Progress’s videos on Planned Parenthood were ignored as soon as some PR hack came up with the word “edited” to dismiss the content. Wikileaks faces silent ostracism as well: there’s just too much info discrediting the mainstream narrative, and because there’s so much of it it’s easy to just ignore it all, double-down on the narrative, and run character attacks on the outlets still nuts enough to go after you. I don’t see how to get through that brick wall they’re building; it’s a heck of a lot stronger than any wall Trump wanted to build.'"
Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination - The New York Times - "the two were on a sales trip and spotted a troop of baboons on the roadside, he said. “‘Your brothers,’” he said his boss exclaimed, urging Mr. Ochieng’ to share some bananas with the primates. And it happened again, he said, with his boss referring to all Kenyans as primates... their office bathrooms were separated by race: one for Chinese employees, the other for Kenyans... during the train’s maiden voyage, with President Uhuru Kenyatta on board, two Kenyan women drove the train to much fanfare. In interviews with The New York Times, several current and former locomotive drivers agreed that only Chinese drivers got to operate the train, describing a range of racist behavior... China has had a tendency to dismiss criticism of its conduct by noting that the West, not China, fueled the slave trade and colonized the continent. But that misses the point, Mr. French said, by ignoring the treatment of Africans today."
A China lover proclaimed that only the West is racist and there's no racism in China
More evidence that being obsessed with historical grievances cripples you today
Kenya Tells Workers to Learn from Chinese, Despite Abuse Allegations - "Even as we talk about the [railway] and the racism and all that, it might be necessary for us as a country to change our work ethic"
A White Woman, Teresa Klein, Called the Police on a Black Child She Falsely Said Groped Her - The New York Times - "A white woman who called the police after claiming that a young black boy touched her behind in a Brooklyn deli drew a storm of ridicule and criticism on social media"
#Believeallwomen
How to Attract a Killer Tigress? Try a Man’s Cologne - The New York Times - "For the past six months, forest rangers in a wet and bushy patch of central India have been chasing a cunning female tiger suspected of killing 13 people. They have thrown just about everything they have at the tigress: hundreds of foot soldiers to comb the jungle, bulldozers to clear it, sharpshooters, jeeps, camera traps, a thermal imagery drone and five Indian elephants in hopes of surrounding the tiger so the veterinarians riding the elephants can dart her. No luck. So the rangers plan to deploy a new weapon: a bottle of Calvin Klein Obsession cologne."
Women Struggling to Drink Water - "Previously: Women Laughing Alone With Salad."
Fallen from grace, Grab could learn ‘the hard way’ if it does not change its ways: Report - "The fall from grace of “digital darling" Grab serves as a cautionary tale for digital disruptors, after its Uber takeover left riders and drivers up in arms over price hikes and lower incentives. Among other things, the firm’s rapid descent in the minds of riders and drivers points to the pitfalls of “weak” customer experience"
The Democrats’ Culture Divide - "Energized progressives are thrilled with their momentum in the Trump era. But the party’s blue-collar base might not want what the new left is delivering."
Why students feel so vulnerable - "I wasn’t at all surprised to read reports this week about more and more university students seeking mental-health support. Apparently the number has increased by more than 50 per cent in the past five years in the UK. My research suggests that young people’s quest for identity has become entwined with ideas of emotional fragility and vulnerability. They are encouraged by contemporary culture to interpret their problems through the prism of mental health... students who cut themselves and then flaunt their scars and compete with one another about who has experienced the greatest pain. That self-inflicted scars are now a kind of identity surprised me. What didn’t surprise me, however, was the fact that the quest for identity has become so destructive... The fairly routine challenges involved in becoming an undergraduate – whether it’s making the transition from school life to college life or dealing with homesickness – came to be reframed as threats to students’ wellbeing. The presumption that students were unable to cope with life on campus led to calls for the provision of more and more mental-health support from university authorities... Because the idea of the fragile student is now so widely accepted, it is easy to overlook the fact that it is a relatively recent development... how university students are conceived of today – as weak and lacking in traditional coping mechanisms... unlike previous generations, the current cohort of students find it difficult to flourish in the often unstructured environment of higher education... undergraduates are ‘significantly more unhappy and anxious on average than other young people the same age’"
The perils of victim culture, how it can become a self fulfilling prophecy and how an obsession with preventing harm sensitises people and actually increases harm
More limitations of the "more women are gamers than men" claim
If the spending threshold were increased the number of men would probably be even more overwhelming
Making new plastic is now cheaper than recycling - "As oil prices plummet, a surprising piece of the economy is taking a huge hit: the market for recycled plastic."
P. T. Barnum & the Circus - "Eight months after it retired the elephants, the circus announced on January 14, 2017, that the circus would close in May 2017, and would lay off more than 462 employees between March and May 2017. The circus cited steeply declining ticket sales associated with the loss of the elephants combined with high operating costs as reasons for the closure"
Once again (as with SJW protests), those who protest aren't the ones who buy tickets. Neglecting your audience in order to appease non-noisy customers is folly
Doctor writes to forum: Errant SAF commanders and MOs who revoke NSFs' medical leave should be reported - "Just as the Ministry of Manpower and the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) are concerned that some doctors are not giving injured workers the rest they need, the Ministry of Defence (Mindef) and the SMC should be concerned that our young and injured NSFs are not given the rest they require to recover. When the NSF is injured and is unable to perform his duties, he is entitled to medical leave"
North Yorks Enquirer | Labour Activists Threaten Violence - "Speaking at the counter protest was Scarborough & Whitby Labour Party Prospective Parliamentary candidate, Hugo Fearnley. Fearnley joined in shouting “Whose Streets? Our Streets!” along with black-clad, bovver-booted comrades in an attempt to intimidate those protesting against child rape and trafficking gangs."
Actor James Cromwell warns of 'blood in the streets' if Democrats don't win election - "“This is nascent fascism. We always had a turnkey, totalitarian state — all we needed was an excuse, and all the institutions were in place to turn this into pure fascism,” Cromwell said. “If we don’t stop [President Trump] now, then we will have a revolution for real. Then there will be blood in the streets.”"
Losing an election and then resorting to violence is apparently upholding democratic ideals
Research Shows Spanish Speakers Take Longer To Learn English. Why? - "Students whose home language was Spanish were considerably less likely to reach proficiency than any other subgroup. And, on the extreme end, Spanish speakers were almost half as likely as Chinese speakers to cross the proficiency threshold."
Whatever you think causes this, having more poor performing students is a burden for the country
Exclusive: Trump targeting birthright citizenship with executive order - Axios - "Until the 1960s, the 14th Amendment was never applied to undocumented or temporary immigrants... The Supreme Court has already ruled that children born to immigrants who are legal permanent residents have citizenship. But those who claim the 14th Amendment should not apply to everyone point to the fact that there has been no ruling on a case specifically involving immigrants in the country illegally or those with temporary legal status"
Is it possible to end birthright citizenship? - "65 percent of likely U.S. voters do not support birthright citizenship, which is automatic citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil. A 2010 CBS News poll found that 47 percent of Americans are in favor changing the law so that the children of immigrants in the U.S. illegally cannot become citizens, whereas 49 percent say it should stay the same... Trump also noted that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid once backed the idea of ending birthright citizenship"
How to make cities more walkable - "Cities with high walk scores also have high property values. According to a 2009 study, each additional walk score point resulted in home values increasing between $500 and $3,000. Investing in walkable cities, whether through allocating funds to repaint pedestrian walkways or building affordable housing close to downtowns, also attracts diverse populations and creates jobs... People also tend to spend more money in walkable cities, stimulating the local economy"
Dancers in Thongs at Business Gala Still OK in Post-MeToo France - "The decision to hold a male-dominated corporate event with half-naked women highlights how there are differing views on what’s considered acceptable in a business setting. That’s especially true in France, where attitudes toward sex and nudity are freer and it’s common to see topless women in a storefront magazine... The Moulin Rouge said it continues to hold corporate parties with dancers and professional artists for all ages, including children. The Crazy Horse, another venue known for nude female dancers, also offers corporate events. On its website, the venue advertises that “your company evening party at Crazy Horse Paris is specially designed to seduce you.”"
Baidu launches simultaneous language translation AI - "STACL, unlike most AI translation systems, is capable of beginning a translation just a few seconds into a speaker’s speech and finishing seconds after the end of a sentence. It’s the opposite of consecutive interpretation, where a translator waits until the speaker pauses to start translating... “In [the example] Bùshí Zǒngtǒng zài Mòsīkē (‘Bush President in Moscow’) and the English translation so far ‘President Bush,’ which is k=2 words behind Chinese, our system accurately predicts that the next translation word must be ‘meet’ because Bush is likely ‘meeting’ someone (e.g., Putin) in Moscow, long before the Chinese verb appears.”
Bokhari: New Establishment Argument -- Tech Bias Does Exist, But It's Good - "Rifkind’s argument is important because it’s a different approach to the one taken by Congressional Democrats, who have thus far maintained that bias and censorship against conservatives and populists on the part of social media companies is simply a “conspiracy theory.” Rifkind, by way of contrast, accepts that the bias exists — he just thinks it’s good, and should go further. In the coming battle over the digital public square, I predict the “conspiracy theory” argument will fall out of favor... in “The Good Censor,” an internal presentation leaked to Breitbart News, Google admitted in plain terms that the tech platforms that “dominate the majority of online conversations” have “shifted towards censorship.” There will surely be a few Democrats shameless enough to insist that internet censorship is still just a conspiracy theory, but when the world’s most powerful tech company contradicts them, it’s hard to imagine who’ll be gullible enough to buy it... Google executives have made it clear: they want the populist movement to be snuffed out. In leaked footage obtained by Breitbart News, Google VP Kent Walker said “history teaches us that there are periods of populism, of nationalism… That’s why we have to work so hard to ensure that it doesn’t turn into a World War or something catastrophic, but instead is a blip, is a hiccup.” The video also showed top Google executives, including co-founder Sergey Brin and CEO Sundar Pichai, addressing questions about what to do following the 2016 election. Their answers included a promise to look into combating “fake news,” and a brief discussion of Google’s anti-extremist “Jigsaw” project in relation to allegedly “extremist” Trump supporters."
Google, The ‘Good Censor’ - "Don’t believe Breitbart? You can read the entire document at the end of the report... 'there’s a number of commenters who won’t read it because Breitbart leaked it. Just as Center for Medical Progress’s videos on Planned Parenthood were ignored as soon as some PR hack came up with the word “edited” to dismiss the content. Wikileaks faces silent ostracism as well: there’s just too much info discrediting the mainstream narrative, and because there’s so much of it it’s easy to just ignore it all, double-down on the narrative, and run character attacks on the outlets still nuts enough to go after you. I don’t see how to get through that brick wall they’re building; it’s a heck of a lot stronger than any wall Trump wanted to build.'"
Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination - The New York Times - "the two were on a sales trip and spotted a troop of baboons on the roadside, he said. “‘Your brothers,’” he said his boss exclaimed, urging Mr. Ochieng’ to share some bananas with the primates. And it happened again, he said, with his boss referring to all Kenyans as primates... their office bathrooms were separated by race: one for Chinese employees, the other for Kenyans... during the train’s maiden voyage, with President Uhuru Kenyatta on board, two Kenyan women drove the train to much fanfare. In interviews with The New York Times, several current and former locomotive drivers agreed that only Chinese drivers got to operate the train, describing a range of racist behavior... China has had a tendency to dismiss criticism of its conduct by noting that the West, not China, fueled the slave trade and colonized the continent. But that misses the point, Mr. French said, by ignoring the treatment of Africans today."
A China lover proclaimed that only the West is racist and there's no racism in China
More evidence that being obsessed with historical grievances cripples you today
Kenya Tells Workers to Learn from Chinese, Despite Abuse Allegations - "Even as we talk about the [railway] and the racism and all that, it might be necessary for us as a country to change our work ethic"
A White Woman, Teresa Klein, Called the Police on a Black Child She Falsely Said Groped Her - The New York Times - "A white woman who called the police after claiming that a young black boy touched her behind in a Brooklyn deli drew a storm of ridicule and criticism on social media"
#Believeallwomen
How to Attract a Killer Tigress? Try a Man’s Cologne - The New York Times - "For the past six months, forest rangers in a wet and bushy patch of central India have been chasing a cunning female tiger suspected of killing 13 people. They have thrown just about everything they have at the tigress: hundreds of foot soldiers to comb the jungle, bulldozers to clear it, sharpshooters, jeeps, camera traps, a thermal imagery drone and five Indian elephants in hopes of surrounding the tiger so the veterinarians riding the elephants can dart her. No luck. So the rangers plan to deploy a new weapon: a bottle of Calvin Klein Obsession cologne."
Women Struggling to Drink Water - "Previously: Women Laughing Alone With Salad."
Fallen from grace, Grab could learn ‘the hard way’ if it does not change its ways: Report - "The fall from grace of “digital darling" Grab serves as a cautionary tale for digital disruptors, after its Uber takeover left riders and drivers up in arms over price hikes and lower incentives. Among other things, the firm’s rapid descent in the minds of riders and drivers points to the pitfalls of “weak” customer experience"
The Democrats’ Culture Divide - "Energized progressives are thrilled with their momentum in the Trump era. But the party’s blue-collar base might not want what the new left is delivering."
Why students feel so vulnerable - "I wasn’t at all surprised to read reports this week about more and more university students seeking mental-health support. Apparently the number has increased by more than 50 per cent in the past five years in the UK. My research suggests that young people’s quest for identity has become entwined with ideas of emotional fragility and vulnerability. They are encouraged by contemporary culture to interpret their problems through the prism of mental health... students who cut themselves and then flaunt their scars and compete with one another about who has experienced the greatest pain. That self-inflicted scars are now a kind of identity surprised me. What didn’t surprise me, however, was the fact that the quest for identity has become so destructive... The fairly routine challenges involved in becoming an undergraduate – whether it’s making the transition from school life to college life or dealing with homesickness – came to be reframed as threats to students’ wellbeing. The presumption that students were unable to cope with life on campus led to calls for the provision of more and more mental-health support from university authorities... Because the idea of the fragile student is now so widely accepted, it is easy to overlook the fact that it is a relatively recent development... how university students are conceived of today – as weak and lacking in traditional coping mechanisms... unlike previous generations, the current cohort of students find it difficult to flourish in the often unstructured environment of higher education... undergraduates are ‘significantly more unhappy and anxious on average than other young people the same age’"
The perils of victim culture, how it can become a self fulfilling prophecy and how an obsession with preventing harm sensitises people and actually increases harm
Post ID: 6993909884752914835
Thursday, November 29, 2018
Links - 29th November 2018 (Caravan)
I've enough to make a dedicated links post on this
Migrants in Caravan Turn Down Mexican Offer of Work Permits, Asylum - "Only about 1700 of the estimated 7,000 Central American refugees in a caravan heading to the U.S. border have accepted an offer from the Mexican government for asylum. The rest, now about 1,000 miles from the U.S. border, are continuing on their way... There is no doubt the migrants are fleeing poverty and violence. So why not accept Mexico's generous offer of asylum and benefits?... The American media has deliberately chosen to see the caravan as a genuine migration of people fleeing for their lives, and aren't even investigating who is behind the migration and what their motives are. They would love nothing better than a confrontation at the U.S. border. What a great story that would be! The ogre Trump denying women and children succor and asylum. Meanwhile, other caravans are forming and the potential for a human wave coming toward the U.S. from Central America grows."
Migrant caravan says no to work visas in Mexico heads to U.S. border - "The Mexican government has sent planeloads of police to southern Mexico and warned the caravan its participants were not welcome to traverse Mexico, but authorities have been unable to slow it so far. The caravan has crossed closed borders and pushed past police blockades since departing Honduras in mid-July. It has also inspired additional caravans... Denis Omar Contreras, a caravan coordinator with the migrants-advocacy group Pueblo Sin Fronteras, told USA TODAY that the caravan's goal, Tijuana, offered the participants more employment opportunities... Migrants traveling in the caravan said they want to reach the United States rather than stay in Mexico, where the daily minimum wage is just $4.50... "You can make enough money to eat in Honduras, but not much else""
Are Mexican liberals slamming their government for its brutality?
Mexican Police Block New Migrant Caravan From Guatemala - "Several hundred migrants tried to cross the Suchiate River from Guatemala to Mexico en masse on Monday, but were met by ranks of Mexican federal police who blocked them from entering. The standoff on the riverbank follow a more violent confrontation that occurred on the nearby bridge over the river the night before, when migrants tossed rocks and used sticks against Mexico police... The migrants had gasoline bombs made of soft-drink bottles, and improvised PVC tubes to launch fireworks or other projectiles... Guatemala’s Interior Ministry said the second group had wounded Guatemalan police and used children as human shields... Navarrete Prida said Mexican federal police and immigration agents were attacked with rocks, glass bottles and fireworks when migrants broke through a gate on the Mexican side of the border, but were prevented from entering. Navarrete said some of the attackers carried guns and firebombs"
Caravan Packed With Hundreds Of Convicted Criminals, Gang Members, Feds Say - "A new report from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says that there are hundreds of convicted criminals or known gang members traveling in the migrant caravan that is traveling through Mexico to the U.S. southern border... "Mexican officials have also publicly stated that criminal groups have infiltrated the caravan. We also continue to see individuals from over 20 countries in this flow from countries such as Somalia, India, Haiti, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh"... DHS's report also included an October 29 statement from the Mexican ambassador to the U.S., who described some of the caravan members as "very violent," saying, "Unfortunately, some of the people in the caravan have been very violent against authority, even though they have offered the possibility of entering in compliance with immigration law and refugee status.""
The Caravan Challenges the Integrity of U.S. Borders - "Short of an election-eve exoneration by Robert Mueller, it would be hard to imagine a nicer October surprise for Donald Trump than an attempt by thousands of unauthorized immigrants to force the borders of the United States. It dramatizes every one of his themes, but none more spectacularly than this: his claim that his opponents will not defend the borders of the United States... Organizers seem to hope that the unprecedented mass of the caravan will overawe Mexican and U.S. authorities... The theory behind the caravans—this latest, and its smaller predecessors over the past 15 years—is that Central Americans have valid asylum claims in the United States because of the pervasive underemployment and gang-violence problems in their countries. If that claim is true, that is a claim shared not only by the thousands in the current caravan, but by the millions back home. A 2013 Pew survey found that 58 percent of Salvadorans would move to the United States if they could... Trump’s election owes something to the surge across the U.S.’s southern border in the summer of 2014. Tens of thousands of women and children crossed the border in only a few weeks. Many of those who entered in 2014 remain in the United States to this day, even after their cases have been negatively adjudicated, because they have disregarded their removal orders and vanished into the vast U.S. population of unauthorized immigrants... If liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals will not do"
Migrant caravan: Hundreds reach Tijuana on US border - "The group of 400, which includes LGBTQ migrants, broke away from the larger caravan of 5,000 people in Mexico City.US Defence Secretary James Mattis said he would go to the US-Mexico border on Wednesday, his first visit since thousands of troops were deployed.Larger groups are expected to arrive at the border in the coming days."
Funny, we were told that they were supposed to take months and that Trump's mobilising the military was a cynical election ploy
Migrant caravan update: Violence erupts as migrants pack into Tijuana, Mexico - "about 300 local residents gathered by the encampment to demand the migrants leave the upscale Playas de Tijuana neighborhood and go to the facility.During a confrontation that lasted more than three hours, area residents sang the Mexican national anthem and waved Mexican flags. They chanted “Mexico! Mexico!” each time a bus transporting migrants left the beach for the temporary shelter.
Looks like Mexico has "Nazis" too
Flash - C.American caravan gains speed, more migrants reach border - The buses dropped them off in the town of Navojoa, in the northern state of Sonora, then returned to pick up a second group of 2,000 migrants who had stayed behind... the caravan is moving far more quickly through the dangerous and sparsely populated north than it did through the south and center of the country, thanks to donated transport -- sometimes from local authorities who would rather send the migrants on their way than host them in shelters."
Migrant caravan: Mexico to deport group which stormed US border - "Mexico will deport up to 500 migrants who attempted to storm the US border, according to its interior ministry. The group were rounded up after trying to cross the border "violently" and "illegally"... The ministry added that, "far from helping their objectives", the migrants' actions had violated the legal migration framework and could have led to a "serious incident"... number managed to climb over the first fence. It was as they tried to cross a second, spike-topped wall that officials on the US side began throwing tear gas. An AFP journalist saw the migrants - including mothers and children - trying to protect themselves from the gas, with some crying out that they only wanted to find a work and a better life in the US. Associated Press journalist Chris Sherman said he had seen parents running away with choking toddlers... Mr Trump has deployed about 5,800 troops to the border. He previously described the migrants as an "invasion"."
Mexico must be full of Nazis
Maybe if you bring your children, it's not considered an invasion even if you violently storm a border in a group (needless to say, illegally)
Shouting 'Mexico First,' Hundreds In Tijuana March Against Migrant Caravan - "The message for the migrant caravan was clear from marchers on Sunday in Tijuana, Mexico: We don't want you here. "We want the caravan to go; they are invading us," said Patricia Reyes, a 62-year-old protester, hiding from the sun under an umbrella. "They should have come into Mexico correctly, legally, but they came in like animals."... Demonstrators held signs reading "No illegals," "No to the invasion" and "Mexico First."... "I would dare say that not all of them are migrants," Mayor Juan Manuel Gastélum said last week in an interview with Milenio television, suggesting some members of the caravan were criminal infiltrators. "Sure, there are some good people in the caravan, but many are very bad for the city."
Is it racism if they're all Hispanic?
Tim Pool - "So the migrant caravan rejected an offer of asylum for the most part (about 1300 applied out of around 10,000)
Most refused the job fair in Tijuana
They are now rushing the US border
Videos today show dozens of men rushing the border as many throw stones
DHS reported intel suggested this would happen.
Unions used to oppose illegal immigration because it depresses wages.
The left used to call open borders a right wing conspiracy to bring in unskilled and low wage workers.
Why is it now the left defending this?"
WATCH: MSNBC Reporter Destroys Media's Narrative About Caravan Migrants - "MSNBC reporter Gadi Schwartz busted the media's narrative that the caravan migrants are mostly women and children on Monday while reporting from Tijuana, Mexico. Schwartz appeared on MSNBC's "Live with Velshi & Ruhle" where he reported that one migrant woman that he spoke to "admitted that she had not actually expected to cross and was really participating to protest; she also later stated that her intention was to go to the United States to work, rather than to apply for asylum"... "The truth is, the majority of the people that are in this caravan, especially outside — if we can make our way all the way over there, we’ll show you the majority of them are men""
Kirstjen Nielsen agrees migrants ARE using children as 'human shields' - "A Honduran migrant in the caravan held a sign as he crossed from Guatemala into Mexico reading: 'Donald Trump, we are not criminals, we are workers who want to work'... 'They were chanting, waving a Honduran flag, and throwing rocks at the agents,' Scott said. 'If they were truly asylum seekers, they would have just walked up with their hands up and surrendered. And that did not take place.'... Asylum applicants must persuade American officials that they have a 'credible fear' of returning to their own countries, a task made harder when they wave those nations' flags"
Given that at least one has admitted that he's an economic migrant...
Obama Used Tear Gas At Least 80 Times at Border - "Under the Obama Administration, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) law enforcement officials, including Border Patrol agents, utilized tear gas against migrants at or near the border at least 80 times between FY2012 and early FY2017... Despite media reports to the contrary, CBP officers and agents operating under the Trump Administration responded the same way they did during the Obama Administration when, in 2013, migrants rushed the same stretch of border, Breitbart News’ Neil Munro reported.Democrat congressional leaders and Hollywood activists teamed up to condemn the Trump Administration’s use of force in defending the border but ignored President Obama’s prior, identical response.Pop star Rihanna accused the Trump Administration of “terrorism” for spraying tear gas at the border. Others called for the president’s impeachment over the clash. Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said the migrant caravan members are like the Jews fleeing the Holocaust, while Vermont Senator and possible 2020 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders called President Trump’s use of force “authoritarian.”"
Commentary: Caravan confirms what Trump has been saying for weeks - "On Sunday, hundreds of would-be illegal immigrants gathered at the U.S. border to make a massive contribution to the Trump 2020 re-election campaign. They chanted that they weren't bound by the idea of borders and laws ("We are not criminals! We are international workers!"). They hurled rocks at U.S. Border Patrol agents. They rushed the border itself, cutting holes in fencing and climbing walls. They forced authorities to use tear gas to protect themselves and turn back the mob. The San Ysidro Port of Entry was forced to close for more than five hours.In other words, they confirmed what President Trump has been saying for weeks about the caravan and what it represents. And, like clockwork, the president's progressive opponents have been answering his extreme rhetoric with their own. The video of crowds of caravan participants pushing their way through border fencing or throwing rocks at uniformed Americans is disturbing. Even more disturbing is the fact that the caravan's participants and organizers (like the subtly-named group "People Without Borders") have been telegraphing their plans for weeks. Weeks ago, while media outlets criticized President Trump over the caravan issue and insisting that it posed no threat, actual participants were looking into TV cameras and announcing their intention to cross the U.S. border — no matter what. And now they've tried to do just that. The situation is so bad that Mexico's interior department announced Sunday it will deport around 500 migrants because they ignored Mexican authorities and tried to cross the border "violently" and illegally." Does it now seem so ludicrous to put a few thousand American soldiers at that border?The American Left still thinks so. Tear gas seems like a reasonable police response a rock-throwing mob trying to rush the U.S. border. But Democrats and their media allies immediately tried to portray the U.S. Border Patrol as over-reacting….or worse... Seeking asylum doesn't involve throwing rocks or climbing fences or rushing border stations. And Central America isn't Hitler's Germany or even Assad's Syria. If everyone who lives in poverty and under a dysfunctional government were entitled to asylum in the U.S., our borders would be open to about a billion people... As the Washington Post (no fans of Trump) reported this weekend:"Last month, 23,121 members of 'family units' were arrested along the U.S. southern border, the highest number on record and a 150 percent increase since July." According to the Post, smugglers working with would-be illegal immigrants have essentially weaponized children in their attacks on our borders."Thousands more children are coming in the migrant caravans ... This is happening because Central Americans know they will have a better chance of avoiding deportation, at least temporarily, if they are processed along with children." The Post says smugglers are even lowering their prices when would-be border crosses come with kids. All of which bolsters the views of President Trump and his supporters that America's compassion and rule of law are being used against it, that the bad guys will take advantage of our desire to avoid "harsh" enforcement to get what they want — namely, people inside the U.S., by hook or by crook."
CBS joins the Nazis
Migrants in Caravan Turn Down Mexican Offer of Work Permits, Asylum - "Only about 1700 of the estimated 7,000 Central American refugees in a caravan heading to the U.S. border have accepted an offer from the Mexican government for asylum. The rest, now about 1,000 miles from the U.S. border, are continuing on their way... There is no doubt the migrants are fleeing poverty and violence. So why not accept Mexico's generous offer of asylum and benefits?... The American media has deliberately chosen to see the caravan as a genuine migration of people fleeing for their lives, and aren't even investigating who is behind the migration and what their motives are. They would love nothing better than a confrontation at the U.S. border. What a great story that would be! The ogre Trump denying women and children succor and asylum. Meanwhile, other caravans are forming and the potential for a human wave coming toward the U.S. from Central America grows."
Migrant caravan says no to work visas in Mexico heads to U.S. border - "The Mexican government has sent planeloads of police to southern Mexico and warned the caravan its participants were not welcome to traverse Mexico, but authorities have been unable to slow it so far. The caravan has crossed closed borders and pushed past police blockades since departing Honduras in mid-July. It has also inspired additional caravans... Denis Omar Contreras, a caravan coordinator with the migrants-advocacy group Pueblo Sin Fronteras, told USA TODAY that the caravan's goal, Tijuana, offered the participants more employment opportunities... Migrants traveling in the caravan said they want to reach the United States rather than stay in Mexico, where the daily minimum wage is just $4.50... "You can make enough money to eat in Honduras, but not much else""
Are Mexican liberals slamming their government for its brutality?
Mexican Police Block New Migrant Caravan From Guatemala - "Several hundred migrants tried to cross the Suchiate River from Guatemala to Mexico en masse on Monday, but were met by ranks of Mexican federal police who blocked them from entering. The standoff on the riverbank follow a more violent confrontation that occurred on the nearby bridge over the river the night before, when migrants tossed rocks and used sticks against Mexico police... The migrants had gasoline bombs made of soft-drink bottles, and improvised PVC tubes to launch fireworks or other projectiles... Guatemala’s Interior Ministry said the second group had wounded Guatemalan police and used children as human shields... Navarrete Prida said Mexican federal police and immigration agents were attacked with rocks, glass bottles and fireworks when migrants broke through a gate on the Mexican side of the border, but were prevented from entering. Navarrete said some of the attackers carried guns and firebombs"
Caravan Packed With Hundreds Of Convicted Criminals, Gang Members, Feds Say - "A new report from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says that there are hundreds of convicted criminals or known gang members traveling in the migrant caravan that is traveling through Mexico to the U.S. southern border... "Mexican officials have also publicly stated that criminal groups have infiltrated the caravan. We also continue to see individuals from over 20 countries in this flow from countries such as Somalia, India, Haiti, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh"... DHS's report also included an October 29 statement from the Mexican ambassador to the U.S., who described some of the caravan members as "very violent," saying, "Unfortunately, some of the people in the caravan have been very violent against authority, even though they have offered the possibility of entering in compliance with immigration law and refugee status.""
The Caravan Challenges the Integrity of U.S. Borders - "Short of an election-eve exoneration by Robert Mueller, it would be hard to imagine a nicer October surprise for Donald Trump than an attempt by thousands of unauthorized immigrants to force the borders of the United States. It dramatizes every one of his themes, but none more spectacularly than this: his claim that his opponents will not defend the borders of the United States... Organizers seem to hope that the unprecedented mass of the caravan will overawe Mexican and U.S. authorities... The theory behind the caravans—this latest, and its smaller predecessors over the past 15 years—is that Central Americans have valid asylum claims in the United States because of the pervasive underemployment and gang-violence problems in their countries. If that claim is true, that is a claim shared not only by the thousands in the current caravan, but by the millions back home. A 2013 Pew survey found that 58 percent of Salvadorans would move to the United States if they could... Trump’s election owes something to the surge across the U.S.’s southern border in the summer of 2014. Tens of thousands of women and children crossed the border in only a few weeks. Many of those who entered in 2014 remain in the United States to this day, even after their cases have been negatively adjudicated, because they have disregarded their removal orders and vanished into the vast U.S. population of unauthorized immigrants... If liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals will not do"
Migrant caravan: Hundreds reach Tijuana on US border - "The group of 400, which includes LGBTQ migrants, broke away from the larger caravan of 5,000 people in Mexico City.US Defence Secretary James Mattis said he would go to the US-Mexico border on Wednesday, his first visit since thousands of troops were deployed.Larger groups are expected to arrive at the border in the coming days."
Funny, we were told that they were supposed to take months and that Trump's mobilising the military was a cynical election ploy
Migrant caravan update: Violence erupts as migrants pack into Tijuana, Mexico - "about 300 local residents gathered by the encampment to demand the migrants leave the upscale Playas de Tijuana neighborhood and go to the facility.During a confrontation that lasted more than three hours, area residents sang the Mexican national anthem and waved Mexican flags. They chanted “Mexico! Mexico!” each time a bus transporting migrants left the beach for the temporary shelter.
Looks like Mexico has "Nazis" too
Flash - C.American caravan gains speed, more migrants reach border - The buses dropped them off in the town of Navojoa, in the northern state of Sonora, then returned to pick up a second group of 2,000 migrants who had stayed behind... the caravan is moving far more quickly through the dangerous and sparsely populated north than it did through the south and center of the country, thanks to donated transport -- sometimes from local authorities who would rather send the migrants on their way than host them in shelters."
Migrant caravan: Mexico to deport group which stormed US border - "Mexico will deport up to 500 migrants who attempted to storm the US border, according to its interior ministry. The group were rounded up after trying to cross the border "violently" and "illegally"... The ministry added that, "far from helping their objectives", the migrants' actions had violated the legal migration framework and could have led to a "serious incident"... number managed to climb over the first fence. It was as they tried to cross a second, spike-topped wall that officials on the US side began throwing tear gas. An AFP journalist saw the migrants - including mothers and children - trying to protect themselves from the gas, with some crying out that they only wanted to find a work and a better life in the US. Associated Press journalist Chris Sherman said he had seen parents running away with choking toddlers... Mr Trump has deployed about 5,800 troops to the border. He previously described the migrants as an "invasion"."
Mexico must be full of Nazis
Maybe if you bring your children, it's not considered an invasion even if you violently storm a border in a group (needless to say, illegally)
Shouting 'Mexico First,' Hundreds In Tijuana March Against Migrant Caravan - "The message for the migrant caravan was clear from marchers on Sunday in Tijuana, Mexico: We don't want you here. "We want the caravan to go; they are invading us," said Patricia Reyes, a 62-year-old protester, hiding from the sun under an umbrella. "They should have come into Mexico correctly, legally, but they came in like animals."... Demonstrators held signs reading "No illegals," "No to the invasion" and "Mexico First."... "I would dare say that not all of them are migrants," Mayor Juan Manuel Gastélum said last week in an interview with Milenio television, suggesting some members of the caravan were criminal infiltrators. "Sure, there are some good people in the caravan, but many are very bad for the city."
Is it racism if they're all Hispanic?
Tim Pool - "So the migrant caravan rejected an offer of asylum for the most part (about 1300 applied out of around 10,000)
Most refused the job fair in Tijuana
They are now rushing the US border
Videos today show dozens of men rushing the border as many throw stones
DHS reported intel suggested this would happen.
Unions used to oppose illegal immigration because it depresses wages.
The left used to call open borders a right wing conspiracy to bring in unskilled and low wage workers.
Why is it now the left defending this?"
WATCH: MSNBC Reporter Destroys Media's Narrative About Caravan Migrants - "MSNBC reporter Gadi Schwartz busted the media's narrative that the caravan migrants are mostly women and children on Monday while reporting from Tijuana, Mexico. Schwartz appeared on MSNBC's "Live with Velshi & Ruhle" where he reported that one migrant woman that he spoke to "admitted that she had not actually expected to cross and was really participating to protest; she also later stated that her intention was to go to the United States to work, rather than to apply for asylum"... "The truth is, the majority of the people that are in this caravan, especially outside — if we can make our way all the way over there, we’ll show you the majority of them are men""
Kirstjen Nielsen agrees migrants ARE using children as 'human shields' - "A Honduran migrant in the caravan held a sign as he crossed from Guatemala into Mexico reading: 'Donald Trump, we are not criminals, we are workers who want to work'... 'They were chanting, waving a Honduran flag, and throwing rocks at the agents,' Scott said. 'If they were truly asylum seekers, they would have just walked up with their hands up and surrendered. And that did not take place.'... Asylum applicants must persuade American officials that they have a 'credible fear' of returning to their own countries, a task made harder when they wave those nations' flags"
Given that at least one has admitted that he's an economic migrant...
Obama Used Tear Gas At Least 80 Times at Border - "Under the Obama Administration, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) law enforcement officials, including Border Patrol agents, utilized tear gas against migrants at or near the border at least 80 times between FY2012 and early FY2017... Despite media reports to the contrary, CBP officers and agents operating under the Trump Administration responded the same way they did during the Obama Administration when, in 2013, migrants rushed the same stretch of border, Breitbart News’ Neil Munro reported.Democrat congressional leaders and Hollywood activists teamed up to condemn the Trump Administration’s use of force in defending the border but ignored President Obama’s prior, identical response.Pop star Rihanna accused the Trump Administration of “terrorism” for spraying tear gas at the border. Others called for the president’s impeachment over the clash. Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said the migrant caravan members are like the Jews fleeing the Holocaust, while Vermont Senator and possible 2020 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders called President Trump’s use of force “authoritarian.”"
Commentary: Caravan confirms what Trump has been saying for weeks - "On Sunday, hundreds of would-be illegal immigrants gathered at the U.S. border to make a massive contribution to the Trump 2020 re-election campaign. They chanted that they weren't bound by the idea of borders and laws ("We are not criminals! We are international workers!"). They hurled rocks at U.S. Border Patrol agents. They rushed the border itself, cutting holes in fencing and climbing walls. They forced authorities to use tear gas to protect themselves and turn back the mob. The San Ysidro Port of Entry was forced to close for more than five hours.In other words, they confirmed what President Trump has been saying for weeks about the caravan and what it represents. And, like clockwork, the president's progressive opponents have been answering his extreme rhetoric with their own. The video of crowds of caravan participants pushing their way through border fencing or throwing rocks at uniformed Americans is disturbing. Even more disturbing is the fact that the caravan's participants and organizers (like the subtly-named group "People Without Borders") have been telegraphing their plans for weeks. Weeks ago, while media outlets criticized President Trump over the caravan issue and insisting that it posed no threat, actual participants were looking into TV cameras and announcing their intention to cross the U.S. border — no matter what. And now they've tried to do just that. The situation is so bad that Mexico's interior department announced Sunday it will deport around 500 migrants because they ignored Mexican authorities and tried to cross the border "violently" and illegally." Does it now seem so ludicrous to put a few thousand American soldiers at that border?The American Left still thinks so. Tear gas seems like a reasonable police response a rock-throwing mob trying to rush the U.S. border. But Democrats and their media allies immediately tried to portray the U.S. Border Patrol as over-reacting….or worse... Seeking asylum doesn't involve throwing rocks or climbing fences or rushing border stations. And Central America isn't Hitler's Germany or even Assad's Syria. If everyone who lives in poverty and under a dysfunctional government were entitled to asylum in the U.S., our borders would be open to about a billion people... As the Washington Post (no fans of Trump) reported this weekend:"Last month, 23,121 members of 'family units' were arrested along the U.S. southern border, the highest number on record and a 150 percent increase since July." According to the Post, smugglers working with would-be illegal immigrants have essentially weaponized children in their attacks on our borders."Thousands more children are coming in the migrant caravans ... This is happening because Central Americans know they will have a better chance of avoiding deportation, at least temporarily, if they are processed along with children." The Post says smugglers are even lowering their prices when would-be border crosses come with kids. All of which bolsters the views of President Trump and his supporters that America's compassion and rule of law are being used against it, that the bad guys will take advantage of our desire to avoid "harsh" enforcement to get what they want — namely, people inside the U.S., by hook or by crook."
CBS joins the Nazis
Post ID: 1332078825870598334
Links - 29th November 2018 (2)
Anders Carlson-Wee's Use of Black English in The Nation - "while verdicts on statutes of limitations will differ, barely anyone alive recalls seeing a minstrel show in person. It is ever harder to draw a meaningful line of influence from white (and black) men guffawing on stage during the Taft administration and anything being created today. But more to the point, the Black English Carlson-Wee uses is not exaggerated: It is true and ordinary black speech... Whence the outrage among so many against black people depicted accurately speaking in a way that, well, a great many definitely do?... We often say that we want whites to understand black pain, the black experience, black difference. We want them to empathize. But upon achieving this understanding, white artists, as artists, will naturally seek to express it through their creations. Are we to decree that they must not? Would this muzzling of basic human creativity, as well as the fundamental drive to share between cultures, be worth something larger?I’m not sure what that would be, other than a sense of victory in having laid down and enforced the diktat—and the novelty of that would wear off fast. Rather, Carlson-Wee, as a young white man dedicating a poem to a homeless black person’s suffering and trying to get inside her head, would seem to be displaying exactly the kind of empathy that we seek. “Feel it but don’t show it,” we tell him, instead. “Empathize, but block that empathy from your creative impulses, on the pain of hurting us by imitating us without our consent.”... to the extent that any white person’s depiction of Black English of whatever quality or diligence elicits rolling eyes at best and social media witch hunts at worst, we have lost step not only with linguistic science, but also with what most would consider norms of how human groups co-occupy social spaces and learn from one another."
Harry Potter vs. Huckleberry Finn: Why the British Tell Better Children’s Stories Than Americans - "Their history informs fantastical myths and legends, while American tales tend to focus on moral realism."
Jordan Peterson’s people are not who you think they are - "he associates efforts to stamp out what he sees as biologically informed sexual differences with the bogey of ideology and “Mao’s murderous Cultural Revolution.” From their perches in women’s studies departments or in the bureaucracies of equality-minded Scandinavian countries, feminist ideologues want to upend the world. “Their goal is to restructure the patriarchy,” he told podcast host Joe Rogan in 2016. “The patriarchy is Western civilization. And what does restructure mean? That’s easy—it means tear it down.”... “If you don’t want to negotiate a higher salary, that’s your prerogative,” he says. “It’s easy to blame the system about everything.”... “I lived most of my life in the Middle East, in a climate where you’ve got to be careful about what you say,” says D’Sa. “There’s laws around it, there’s societal pressure, and when I came to North America, that wasn’t there to the same degree. But then I saw it growing.”... “A lot of the people are first-generation immigrants who come largely from countries like Iran, and all over the Middle East, China—all first-generation immigrants. But they call us Nazis—like a bunch of Asian, brown Nazis!”... “These guys have been raised with a lot of ‘don’t do this’—don’t be sexist, don’t make women feel uncomfortable. Now they don’t know what to do, so they do nothing.”
Why Is Jordan Peterson So Popular? - "What they were getting from these lectures and discussions, often lengthy and often on arcane subjects, was perhaps the only sustained argument against identity politics they had heard in their lives. That might seem like a small thing, but it’s not. With identity politics off the table, it was possible to talk about all kinds of things—religion, philosophy, history, myth—in a different way. They could have a direct experience with ideas, not one mediated by ideology. All of these young people, without quite realizing it, were joining a huge group of American college students who were pursuing a parallel curriculum, right under the noses of the people who were delivering their official educations... there is no coherent reason for the left’s obliterating and irrational hatred of Jordan Peterson. What, then, accounts for it? It is because the left, while it currently seems ascendant in our houses of culture and art, has in fact entered its decadent late phase, and it is deeply vulnerable. The left is afraid not of Peterson, but of the ideas he promotes, which are completely inconsistent with identity politics of any kind"
Jordan Peterson Rallies Portlandia’s Dissidents - "The 3,000-seat theatre was almost entirely filled—not with angry young white men as I was led to believe by protesters but a diverse crowd that included many women and people of color. This surprised and bothered some of the protesters I spoke to. “All of the women here, I don’t really understand why anybody would support somebody who is—I mean, it’s just disgusting,” said one demonstrator who declined to give her name."
What the left gets wrong about Jordan Peterson | J Oliver Conroy - "When news consumers get around to reading or watching Peterson’s work for themselves, they often find his ideas far less radical than characterized – and feel betrayed by the media and cultural elite’s representation of Peterson. The notion that there is nothing redeemable in Peterson’s message – and the accompanying assumption that any fan of his is beneath contempt – is not only wrong, but represents a rather bleak, zero-sum vision of politics. The left’s most profound message used to be that all human beings deserve dignity and worth, and those who need help should receive it, regardless of their race or gender or class or other characteristic. If that axiom still holds true – these days I’m not always sure – then it applies to many of Peterson’s fans."
Hate on Jordan Peterson all you want, but he's tapping into frustration that feminists shouldn't ignore - "For all his flaws, Peterson is tapping into a very real frustration: More than half a century after the modern feminist revolution began in the 1960s, we have yet to figure out new rules for partnership between men and women... Consider: We have rejected traditional sexist proprieties that forbade coarse language in front of “the ladies,” yet a man can now be fired for telling a crude joke that offends a female co-worker. Calling women “the weaker sex” would be considered shockingly retrograde, yet ambivalent sexual encounters are easily recast as violations of women, with men presumed entirely responsible for ensuring consent. Workplace romances abound, yet flirting could be one step away from someone’s idea of sexual harassment... one of Peterson’s central themes is that men in the modern Western world are in crisis. Crisis or no, there is certainly evidence that many men and boys have been left struggling by the cultural transformations of recent decades... Despite occasional lip service to the idea that feminism can liberate men too from patriarchal confines, most feminist discourse spends far more time bashing men for trivial transgressions... male troubles are met with “What about the menz?” mockery. Just look at the debate about Peterson. British journalist Helen Lewis has jeered that he is viewed as a serious intellectual “because he’s writing for sad young white men — and their problems are, you know, real problems.”... For all its successes, contemporary feminism’s main message to men is not one of equal partnership. Rather, it’s: Repent, abase yourself, and be an obedient feminist ally — and we still won’t trust you. It’s no wonder that Peterson has found an eager audience in this climate. If feminists don’t like his message, they should offer a better one."
Jordan Peterson vs 'New York Times': Vitriol Out of Proportion to the ‘Threat’ - "Rarely in my life have I read a more hostile or vicious takedown of a public figure than last week’s New York Times profile of Canadian author and psychologist Jordan Peterson. Rarely have I witnessed a more bizarre and bad-faith interview of a public figure than journalist Cathy Newman’s January interrogation of Peterson on Britain’s Channel 4 News. Few public figures inspire more vitriol and mockery on Twitter than, you guessed it, Jordan Peterson. And never before have I seen vitriol so out of proportion to the “threat” of the man’s underlying message... when people actually respond to that message, the shock is even more seismic. It’s difficult to overstate the extent to which the Left has long been (and, crucially, felt) culturally ascendant in America’s secular spaces. The academy, pop culture, mainstream media, corporate America — all of these spaces have drunk deeply of the Left’s cultural Kool-Aid, especially when it comes to matters of sex and gender. The holdouts are in the church and synagogue, and their borders are shrinking under relentless cultural assault... It’s not that men (and many women) failed to adjust to the new gender ideologies, it’s that the new gender ideologies too often fail to reckon with our deepest human longings and fail to recognize our fundamental human nature"
The Shocking Truth About Jordan Peterson - "The Times piece brought to its conclusion a dialectic that has increasingly consumed the news media in the age of Twitter. A narrative generated on social media is fed back into the “mainstream” press, and then in turn fed back into Twitter in the form of reporting that appears to confirm the pre-existing narrative... Here is the Achilles’ heel of the campaign to oust Jordan Peterson from the margins of respectable society: You don’t have to outsource your judgment to journalistic authorities in the age of the internet. You can see for yourself... In times of extremism, moderation itself can come to seem the greater enemy to those ideologically possessed, in part because it is the true danger: The public will tend to move toward it by default, and thus the instinctive recourse by those who sense the fragility of their extreme doctrines resort to coercive means to prevail in arguments they would not otherwise win."
Jordan Peterson: Why young men love rock star psychologist - "He’s preaching strength and resilience during a time when victimhood is the primary means of gaining status and respect. Sociologists call this “victimhood culture”, and many argue that we’re currently living in one. In victimhood cultures, respect is given to those who publicise their oppression, victimisation and, ultimately, their lack of responsibility over their lives. Victimhood is, after all, antithetical to responsibility. A victim is someone who isn’t responsible for their state of affairs. Dr Peterson’s response: “Life is an existential catastrophe and a tragedy.” We’re all victims in life. You’re not owed anything because you’re a victim. That’s not the answer."
How awful is Jordan Peterson, anyway? - "he's more like a frontier folk hero – someone who's not afraid to take on the bad guys and battle the forces of disorder and chaos. Many of his beliefs are perfectly unexceptionable – or would have been, until recently. He does not believe that women are systematically oppressed by men, or that Western culture is the source of all the world's ills, or that the idea of gender binaries is a vicious fiction. Only in a world dominated by identity politics would he be demonized as a dangerous reactionary. Still, he drives his critics into a frenzy. His debacle of a debate with Cathy Newman is a good example. She aggressively restated whatever he said to make it sound hateful, inflated and absurd. He kept his cool while she lost hers. She was obviously ill-prepared for his inconvenient barrage of logic and facts."
Cathy Newman’s feminist fans aimed 30 times more violent sexist abuse at Peterson & his supporters than vice-versa - "By now you can’t have missed Cathy Newman’s car crash interview with the amazing Jordan Peterson. Newman was utterly humiliated, throughout and was made to look even more foolish than in her 2016 “interview” of Milo Yiannopoulos, after which we exposed an elected Labour Member of Parliament advocated punching Milo. Ironically, that same MP, Anna Turley, is also the lead figure behind a proposed “social Media Malicious Communications Bill!” Newman and Channel 4 are using the age old feminist tactic of crying “abuse” when they lose a debate... It’s of note that none of the tweets we saw used remotely misogynistic language as claimed by Newman/Channel 4 and the only sexism combined with violence was from journalist Kate Bevan and aimed at Peterson... So, as per the headline, that’s over 30 times more abuse directed at Peterson and his supporters, and of course most of it from a verified Twitter account and its followers. One has to wonder what Channel 4 will be doing about that?"
Children's book: Grandparents must ask for consent before physically touching their grandchildren - "Author Eleanor Morrison said she decided to base the story on a white boy because white boys become privileged white men who have to be taught how to be responsible with their power."
Like forced hugging, forced handshakes violate bodily integrity. Teach kids they don't need to shake hands if they don't want to. Then teach them that if they're socially ostracized it's society's fault and they're being oppressed.
Report: Google Protected Executives Accused of Sexual Misconduct for Years - "“How Google Protected Andy Rubin, the ‘Father of Android’” outlines how the progressive tech giant Google protected three executives that were accused of sexual misconduct for more than a decade. The article notes that Andy Rubin, the creator of the Android mobile operating system, left the company in October and was given a “hero’s farewell” by executives at the company... Even more worrying is the fact that this is not the first time that Google has covered up for an executive accused of sexual misconduct... Notably, former Google and (later parent company) Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt is revealed in the article to have kept his mistress on the payroll as a “company consultant.” Schmidt has been a long-time supporter of Hillary Clinton and even expressed interest in being “head outside advisor” to Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign."
No wonder they removed Don't Be Evil
So much for diversity
University of Michigan Hosts Mandatory Anti-Semitic Lecture Comparing Netanyahu to Hitler - "The University of Michigan hosted speaker Emory Douglas as part of a mandatory lecture series required for the university’s art students, who compared Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler, labeling both “guilty of genocide,” in a presentation students called anti-Semitic."
Harry Potter vs. Huckleberry Finn: Why the British Tell Better Children’s Stories Than Americans - "Their history informs fantastical myths and legends, while American tales tend to focus on moral realism."
Jordan Peterson’s people are not who you think they are - "he associates efforts to stamp out what he sees as biologically informed sexual differences with the bogey of ideology and “Mao’s murderous Cultural Revolution.” From their perches in women’s studies departments or in the bureaucracies of equality-minded Scandinavian countries, feminist ideologues want to upend the world. “Their goal is to restructure the patriarchy,” he told podcast host Joe Rogan in 2016. “The patriarchy is Western civilization. And what does restructure mean? That’s easy—it means tear it down.”... “If you don’t want to negotiate a higher salary, that’s your prerogative,” he says. “It’s easy to blame the system about everything.”... “I lived most of my life in the Middle East, in a climate where you’ve got to be careful about what you say,” says D’Sa. “There’s laws around it, there’s societal pressure, and when I came to North America, that wasn’t there to the same degree. But then I saw it growing.”... “A lot of the people are first-generation immigrants who come largely from countries like Iran, and all over the Middle East, China—all first-generation immigrants. But they call us Nazis—like a bunch of Asian, brown Nazis!”... “These guys have been raised with a lot of ‘don’t do this’—don’t be sexist, don’t make women feel uncomfortable. Now they don’t know what to do, so they do nothing.”
Why Is Jordan Peterson So Popular? - "What they were getting from these lectures and discussions, often lengthy and often on arcane subjects, was perhaps the only sustained argument against identity politics they had heard in their lives. That might seem like a small thing, but it’s not. With identity politics off the table, it was possible to talk about all kinds of things—religion, philosophy, history, myth—in a different way. They could have a direct experience with ideas, not one mediated by ideology. All of these young people, without quite realizing it, were joining a huge group of American college students who were pursuing a parallel curriculum, right under the noses of the people who were delivering their official educations... there is no coherent reason for the left’s obliterating and irrational hatred of Jordan Peterson. What, then, accounts for it? It is because the left, while it currently seems ascendant in our houses of culture and art, has in fact entered its decadent late phase, and it is deeply vulnerable. The left is afraid not of Peterson, but of the ideas he promotes, which are completely inconsistent with identity politics of any kind"
Jordan Peterson Rallies Portlandia’s Dissidents - "The 3,000-seat theatre was almost entirely filled—not with angry young white men as I was led to believe by protesters but a diverse crowd that included many women and people of color. This surprised and bothered some of the protesters I spoke to. “All of the women here, I don’t really understand why anybody would support somebody who is—I mean, it’s just disgusting,” said one demonstrator who declined to give her name."
What the left gets wrong about Jordan Peterson | J Oliver Conroy - "When news consumers get around to reading or watching Peterson’s work for themselves, they often find his ideas far less radical than characterized – and feel betrayed by the media and cultural elite’s representation of Peterson. The notion that there is nothing redeemable in Peterson’s message – and the accompanying assumption that any fan of his is beneath contempt – is not only wrong, but represents a rather bleak, zero-sum vision of politics. The left’s most profound message used to be that all human beings deserve dignity and worth, and those who need help should receive it, regardless of their race or gender or class or other characteristic. If that axiom still holds true – these days I’m not always sure – then it applies to many of Peterson’s fans."
Hate on Jordan Peterson all you want, but he's tapping into frustration that feminists shouldn't ignore - "For all his flaws, Peterson is tapping into a very real frustration: More than half a century after the modern feminist revolution began in the 1960s, we have yet to figure out new rules for partnership between men and women... Consider: We have rejected traditional sexist proprieties that forbade coarse language in front of “the ladies,” yet a man can now be fired for telling a crude joke that offends a female co-worker. Calling women “the weaker sex” would be considered shockingly retrograde, yet ambivalent sexual encounters are easily recast as violations of women, with men presumed entirely responsible for ensuring consent. Workplace romances abound, yet flirting could be one step away from someone’s idea of sexual harassment... one of Peterson’s central themes is that men in the modern Western world are in crisis. Crisis or no, there is certainly evidence that many men and boys have been left struggling by the cultural transformations of recent decades... Despite occasional lip service to the idea that feminism can liberate men too from patriarchal confines, most feminist discourse spends far more time bashing men for trivial transgressions... male troubles are met with “What about the menz?” mockery. Just look at the debate about Peterson. British journalist Helen Lewis has jeered that he is viewed as a serious intellectual “because he’s writing for sad young white men — and their problems are, you know, real problems.”... For all its successes, contemporary feminism’s main message to men is not one of equal partnership. Rather, it’s: Repent, abase yourself, and be an obedient feminist ally — and we still won’t trust you. It’s no wonder that Peterson has found an eager audience in this climate. If feminists don’t like his message, they should offer a better one."
Jordan Peterson vs 'New York Times': Vitriol Out of Proportion to the ‘Threat’ - "Rarely in my life have I read a more hostile or vicious takedown of a public figure than last week’s New York Times profile of Canadian author and psychologist Jordan Peterson. Rarely have I witnessed a more bizarre and bad-faith interview of a public figure than journalist Cathy Newman’s January interrogation of Peterson on Britain’s Channel 4 News. Few public figures inspire more vitriol and mockery on Twitter than, you guessed it, Jordan Peterson. And never before have I seen vitriol so out of proportion to the “threat” of the man’s underlying message... when people actually respond to that message, the shock is even more seismic. It’s difficult to overstate the extent to which the Left has long been (and, crucially, felt) culturally ascendant in America’s secular spaces. The academy, pop culture, mainstream media, corporate America — all of these spaces have drunk deeply of the Left’s cultural Kool-Aid, especially when it comes to matters of sex and gender. The holdouts are in the church and synagogue, and their borders are shrinking under relentless cultural assault... It’s not that men (and many women) failed to adjust to the new gender ideologies, it’s that the new gender ideologies too often fail to reckon with our deepest human longings and fail to recognize our fundamental human nature"
The Shocking Truth About Jordan Peterson - "The Times piece brought to its conclusion a dialectic that has increasingly consumed the news media in the age of Twitter. A narrative generated on social media is fed back into the “mainstream” press, and then in turn fed back into Twitter in the form of reporting that appears to confirm the pre-existing narrative... Here is the Achilles’ heel of the campaign to oust Jordan Peterson from the margins of respectable society: You don’t have to outsource your judgment to journalistic authorities in the age of the internet. You can see for yourself... In times of extremism, moderation itself can come to seem the greater enemy to those ideologically possessed, in part because it is the true danger: The public will tend to move toward it by default, and thus the instinctive recourse by those who sense the fragility of their extreme doctrines resort to coercive means to prevail in arguments they would not otherwise win."
Jordan Peterson: Why young men love rock star psychologist - "He’s preaching strength and resilience during a time when victimhood is the primary means of gaining status and respect. Sociologists call this “victimhood culture”, and many argue that we’re currently living in one. In victimhood cultures, respect is given to those who publicise their oppression, victimisation and, ultimately, their lack of responsibility over their lives. Victimhood is, after all, antithetical to responsibility. A victim is someone who isn’t responsible for their state of affairs. Dr Peterson’s response: “Life is an existential catastrophe and a tragedy.” We’re all victims in life. You’re not owed anything because you’re a victim. That’s not the answer."
How awful is Jordan Peterson, anyway? - "he's more like a frontier folk hero – someone who's not afraid to take on the bad guys and battle the forces of disorder and chaos. Many of his beliefs are perfectly unexceptionable – or would have been, until recently. He does not believe that women are systematically oppressed by men, or that Western culture is the source of all the world's ills, or that the idea of gender binaries is a vicious fiction. Only in a world dominated by identity politics would he be demonized as a dangerous reactionary. Still, he drives his critics into a frenzy. His debacle of a debate with Cathy Newman is a good example. She aggressively restated whatever he said to make it sound hateful, inflated and absurd. He kept his cool while she lost hers. She was obviously ill-prepared for his inconvenient barrage of logic and facts."
Cathy Newman’s feminist fans aimed 30 times more violent sexist abuse at Peterson & his supporters than vice-versa - "By now you can’t have missed Cathy Newman’s car crash interview with the amazing Jordan Peterson. Newman was utterly humiliated, throughout and was made to look even more foolish than in her 2016 “interview” of Milo Yiannopoulos, after which we exposed an elected Labour Member of Parliament advocated punching Milo. Ironically, that same MP, Anna Turley, is also the lead figure behind a proposed “social Media Malicious Communications Bill!” Newman and Channel 4 are using the age old feminist tactic of crying “abuse” when they lose a debate... It’s of note that none of the tweets we saw used remotely misogynistic language as claimed by Newman/Channel 4 and the only sexism combined with violence was from journalist Kate Bevan and aimed at Peterson... So, as per the headline, that’s over 30 times more abuse directed at Peterson and his supporters, and of course most of it from a verified Twitter account and its followers. One has to wonder what Channel 4 will be doing about that?"
Children's book: Grandparents must ask for consent before physically touching their grandchildren - "Author Eleanor Morrison said she decided to base the story on a white boy because white boys become privileged white men who have to be taught how to be responsible with their power."
Like forced hugging, forced handshakes violate bodily integrity. Teach kids they don't need to shake hands if they don't want to. Then teach them that if they're socially ostracized it's society's fault and they're being oppressed.
Report: Google Protected Executives Accused of Sexual Misconduct for Years - "“How Google Protected Andy Rubin, the ‘Father of Android’” outlines how the progressive tech giant Google protected three executives that were accused of sexual misconduct for more than a decade. The article notes that Andy Rubin, the creator of the Android mobile operating system, left the company in October and was given a “hero’s farewell” by executives at the company... Even more worrying is the fact that this is not the first time that Google has covered up for an executive accused of sexual misconduct... Notably, former Google and (later parent company) Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt is revealed in the article to have kept his mistress on the payroll as a “company consultant.” Schmidt has been a long-time supporter of Hillary Clinton and even expressed interest in being “head outside advisor” to Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign."
No wonder they removed Don't Be Evil
So much for diversity
University of Michigan Hosts Mandatory Anti-Semitic Lecture Comparing Netanyahu to Hitler - "The University of Michigan hosted speaker Emory Douglas as part of a mandatory lecture series required for the university’s art students, who compared Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler, labeling both “guilty of genocide,” in a presentation students called anti-Semitic."
Post ID: 8469809448306951579
Standing up for yourself
Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for May 15, 2012 - GoComics
Moe: "Outta my way, Twinky."
Calvin: "A person can't be a doormat unless he allows himself to be one! I refuse to budge!"
Moe: *SHOVE*
Calvin: "Ack! Oof! Ugh!"
Calvin: "I've got to stop reading those dumb advice columns."
Moe: "Outta my way, Twinky."
Calvin: "A person can't be a doormat unless he allows himself to be one! I refuse to budge!"
Moe: *SHOVE*
Calvin: "Ack! Oof! Ugh!"
Calvin: "I've got to stop reading those dumb advice columns."
Post ID: 3960219726136346420
Links - 29th November 2018 (1)
Law Society withdraws guidance on sharia wills - "The Law Society has withdrawn guidance on how to prepare sharia-compliant wills following criticism from solicitors and the justice secretary, Chris Grayling... The National Secular Society welcomed the decision. “This is an important reversal for what had seemed to be the relentless march of sharia to becoming de facto British law,” said its director Keith Porteous Wood. “Until now, politicians and the legal establishment either encouraged this process or spinelessly recoiled from acknowledging what was happening. This is particularly good news for women who fare so badly under sharia law, which is non-democratically determined, non-human rights compliant and a discriminatory code.”... The Law Society document said: “Clients in England and Wales can legally choose to bequeath their assets according to sharia rules, providing the will is signed in accordance with the requirements set out in the Wills Act 1837.” It listed the male and female heirs to an estate, according to sharia law, and explained: “As a general rule, a male heir will inherit twice the amount that a female heir will receive, illegitimate children are not heirs and no heir can inherit via a deceased parent.”"
Trigger Me Timbers - Posts - "Young men of color are joining white supremacist groups. Here's why"
"Damn White Supremacists and their open acceptance of people from all ethnic backgrounds! Wait... what?"
Why Young Men of Color Are Joining White-Supremacist Groups
The definition of white supremacy in the article is very interesting. Orwell might almost be proud
Otto Fong - On a three-person gay relationship: Since Singapore... - "On a three-person gay relationship:
Since Singapore and Malaysia are too backwards to embrace gay marriage soon - much less gay adoption - I urge all gay couples to not rule out the possibility of a three-person relationship."
I'm pretty sure Fong has at some point has dismissed the slippery slope of gay rights/gay marriage as a myth
Antifa Mob takes over Portland streets, directs traffic, harasses drivers - "Over the weekend, there was a vigil in Portland, Oregon for Patrick Kimmons, a black man who was shot by police. Afterwards, members of Antifa blocked streets, directed traffic, and harassed drivers and other people... The car in the second video was seriously damaged"
Are IQ Tests Biased? - "Where one minority group shows lower scores, the differences could be real. This could indicate a poorer educational system (differences in educational opportunities, poverty, neighborhoods, home life…), but this doesn't mean the test is biased. Tests, further, should not be abandoned, as they can be used to assess the impact of interventions, and spot deficiencies in teaching different groups. Further, returning to "judgment calls" would introduce even more bias. When you look at mean score differences between groups on the WISC R, there may be real differences, especially when SES convolutes the data. Some recall studies that African Americans score 15 points lower on IQ tests that Caucasians, but when SES is controlled this drops to 5 points or less. This is to say that being poor or rich may have more of an impact on your IQ and perhaps intelligence (whatever that is) than your ethnicity. Other efforts look at predictive validity. Most IQ tests predict performance on achievement tests very well. But, if achievement tests are biased too, then we would expect high predictive validity and this wouldn't rule out bias. However, some argue that if our culture does value some skills over others, then the test is still an accurate predictor of a person's ability to succeed in our culture. Thus, IQ and achievement tests could be culturally biased and heavily so, but their reflection of the dominant culture's values is desirable. To design truly "culture free" tests would be to design tests that don't measure anything. Other efforts look at construct validity, but the factor structure of the WAIS III holds up with African American, Caucasian, and Hispanic children. Thus, it is measuring the same thing in each child. Now, whether that is what you mean when you say intelligence or not is another question…
To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they're right - "Put simply, Pascal suggests that before disagreeing with someone, first point out the ways in which they’re right. And to effectively persuade someone to change their mind, lead them to discover a counter-point of their own accord. Arthur Markman, psychology professor at The University of Texas at Austin, says both these points hold true."
The Deadly Global War for Sand - "Apart from water and air, humble sand is the natural resource most consumed by human beings. People use more than 40 billion tons of sand and gravel every year. There's so much demand that riverbeds and beaches around the world are being stripped bare. (Desert sand generally doesn't work for construction; shaped by wind rather than water, desert grains are too round to bind together well.) And the amount of sand being mined is increasing exponentially."
Poll Shows Activism Highest Among Nonreligious Democrats - "Religiously unaffiliated voters, who may or may not be associated with other civic institutions, seem most excited about supporting or donating to causes, going to rallies, and expressing opinions online, among other activities. Political engagement may be providing these Americans with a new form of identity. And in turn, they may be helping to solidify the new identity of the Democratic Party... religiously unaffiliated Democrats were more than twice as likely to have attended a rally within the past 12 months compared with their religious peers. During that time, they were significantly more likely to have contacted an elected official or to have donated to a candidate or cause. And nearly half of religiously unaffiliated Democrats said they had bought or boycotted a product for political reasons or posted political opinions online, compared with roughly one-quarter of their religious peers. “Culturally, this is the subgroup of the Democratic Party that feels most at odds with the direction of the country and what the Trump administration is doing,” said Dan Cox, the research director at PRRI. “These secular Democrats also tend to be the most liberal.” Secular Democrats were also much more likely to say they’re angry about what’s going on in the country today: Forty-one percent described themselves this way, compared with 28 percent of religious Democrats. Of all the groups highlighted in the data—divided by race, education, geographic region, and more—secular Democrats were the most likely to say they’re feeling this rage. This may shape the political landscape: “There’s no emotion that’s more linked to activism and engagement than anger,” Cox said... “There’s a sociological story you can tell about this community,” said Eitan Hersh, a political scientist at Tufts who is writing a book on what he calls “political hobbyism.” “This online world of political identity … is basically acting as a replacement for people who maybe a generation or two before would identify as Catholic or as Jewish or as Irish or Italian.”... “You see Democrats who will say on surveys that their most important issues are the environment or racial equality, and they take absolutely no interest in voting in local primaries or local municipal elections, where a lot of those issues are worked out,” Hersh said. “It’s a lot more gratifying to be talking about the Kavanaugh hearing.”"
Aka "Politics as the New Religion for Progressive Democrats" - they indeed are more zealous than their enemies
Lawyer reprimanded, gets additional fine for poem on death penalty - "The Attorney-General had complained that in his poem, Mr Thuraisingam alleged that "million dollar men", including judges, had "turned blind" to a cruel and unjust law, and were more concerned with acquiring financial wealth and material goods."
SPICES IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE - "Satirical fantasy it may be, yet the various visions of Cockayne that survive suggest something of the depth of the medieval fixation with spices. They were objects of extraordinary charm and appeal, so enticing that they did not seem out of place among the pleasures of a dream. It was, moreover, a dream that cooks labored hard to turn into reality, for spices featured as conspicuously in the real-world smoke and grime of the medieval kitchen and hall as they did in the make-believe landscape of Cockayne. Other foodstuffs have at one time or another held a similar grip on the imagination — coffee, tea, sugar, and chocolate — yet all were, in comparison, passing fads. None accumulated a comparable body of myth and lore nor carried quite the same social clout."
Spices and Their Costs in Medieval Europe - "In so far as any spices had any preservative qualities, and really only cinnamon did, spices were not a necessity, because other, far cheaper commodities could preserve foods, meats, especially, far more effectively. Spices thus by definition were not a necessity if such substitutes were available.
i) salt, instead, was the almost universal preservative for meat, fish, butter, etc.; and salt, for bodily requirements as well, was a necessity, which is why so many hard-hearted princes taxed salt to heavily.
ii) Pickling, as mixture of salt brine and vinegar, another form of food preservation for fish especially, and also meats
iii) Salting, smoking, and desiccation another form of preserving.
iv) Perhaps the crucial point is that European consumption of spices rapidly waned long before the coming of refrigeration.
e) Furthermore the concept of necessity, that spices were a necessary food preservative, is inconsistent with the equally common and more correct view that spices represented the cream of the luxury trades. A luxury good, especially whose high price made it generally available only to the rich, cannot be a necessity...
this century was a Golden Age of generally high real wages, high real incomes for much of the lower strata, with very low rents and grain prices, when even the poor could afford to eat much meat... it is not true that spices were required to disguise the natural taste of bad meat: in particular, a large collection of late-medieval French and English recipe books and much other literary evidence on cuisine indicate that for those special feasts when spices were used liberally, both fish and fowl were cooked when perfectly fresh and the meats generally appear to be fresh (after being properly hung)... I present a series of late-medieval English recipes, taken from the previously mentioned collection Pleyn Delit: Medieval Cookery for Modern Cooks, by Hieatt and Butler. They are quite unlike modern English recipes, and surprisingly similar, in many respects, to the Indian recipes just shown"
Singapore has world's fastest walkers - "The most dramatic increases were found in Asia among the fast-growing "tiger" economies. Pedestrians in Singapore were the fastest, walking 30 per cent faster than they did in the early 1990s, and in China, the pace of life in Guangzhou has increased by more than 20 per cent. Copenhagen and Madrid were the fastest European cities, beating Paris and London. And despite its reputation as "the city that never sleeps", New York ranked only eighth in the pace race, behind Dublin and Berlin. A professor of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, Richard Wiseman, who helped conduct the research, used a 1994 study of pedestrians' speed as a comparison and found that on average city dwellers now moved 10 per cent faster."
What My Harvard College Reunion Taught Me About Life - "2. Every classmate who became a teacher or doctor seemed happy with the choice of career.
3. Many lawyers seemed either unhappy or itching for a change, with the exception of those who became law professors. (See No. 2 above.)
4. Nearly every single banker or fund manager wanted to find a way to use accrued wealth to give back (some had concrete plans, some didn’t), and many, at this point, seemed to want to leave Wall Street as soon as possible to take up some sort of art.
5. Speaking of art, those who went into it as a career were mostly happy and often successful, but they had all, in some way, struggled financially.
6. They say money can’t buy happiness, but in an online survey of our class just prior to the reunion, those of us with more of it self-reported a higher level of happiness than those with less.
7. Our strongest desire, in that same pre-reunion class survey—over more sex and more money—was to get more sleep.
10. Those who chose to get divorced seemed happier, post-divorce.
11. Those who got an unwanted divorce seemed unhappier, post-divorce.
12. Many classmates who are in long-lasting marriages said they experienced a turning point, when their early marriage suddenly transformed into a mature relationship. “I’m doing the best I can!” one classmate told me she said to her husband in the middle of a particularly stressful couples’-therapy session. From that moment on, she said, he understood: Her imperfections were not an insult to him, and her actions were not an extension of him. She was her own person, and her imperfections were what made her her. Sometimes people forget this, in the thick of marriage.
13. Nearly all the alumni said they were embarrassed by their younger selves, particularly by how judgmental they used to be.
18. Staying at the house of an old friend, whenever possible, is preferable to spending a night in a hotel. Unless you’re trolling for a new spouse or a one-night stand, as some of my classmates seemed to have been doing, in which case: hotel, hotel, hotel.
21. A life spent drinking too much alcohol shows up, 30 years later, on the face.
22. For the most part, the women fared much better than the men in the looks department.
23. For the most part, the men fared much better than the women—surprise, surprise—in the earning-potential-and-leadership department."
Perhaps 22 and 23 are linked
Large Majorities Dislike Political Correctness - "25 percent of Americans are traditional or devoted conservatives, and their views are far outside the American mainstream. Some 8 percent of Americans are progressive activists, and their views are even less typical. By contrast, the two-thirds of Americans who don’t belong to either extreme constitute an “exhausted majority.” Their members “share a sense of fatigue with our polarized national conversation, a willingness to be flexible in their political viewpoints, and a lack of voice in the national conversation.” Most members of the “exhausted majority,” and then some, dislike political correctness. Among the general population, a full 80 percent believe that “political correctness is a problem in our country.” Even young people are uncomfortable with it, including 74 percent ages 24 to 29, and 79 percent under age 24. On this particular issue, the woke are in a clear minority across all ages. Youth isn’t a good proxy for support of political correctness—and it turns out race isn’t, either. Whites are ever so slightly less likely than average to believe that political correctness is a problem in the country: 79 percent of them share this sentiment. Instead, it is Asians (82 percent), Hispanics (87percent), and American Indians (88 percent) who are most likely to oppose political correctness... Three quarters of African Americans oppose political correctness... If age and race do not predict support for political correctness, what does? Income and education... Among devoted conservatives, 97 percent believe that political correctness is a problem. Among traditional liberals, 61 percent do. Progressive activists are the only group that strongly backs political correctness: Only 30 percent see it as a problem... progressive activists are much more likely to be rich, highly educated—and white. They are nearly twice as likely as the average to make more than $100,000 a year. They are nearly three times as likely to have a postgraduate degree. And while 12 percent of the overall sample in the study is African American, only 3 percent of progressive activists are. With the exception of the small tribe of devoted conservatives, progressive activists are the most racially homogeneous group in the country... nearly half of Latinos argued that “many people nowadays are too sensitive to how Muslims are treated,” while two in five African Americans agreed that “immigration nowadays is bad for America.”... contemporary callout culture merely looks like an excuse to mock the values or ignorance of others... The gap between the progressive perception and the reality of public views on this issue could do damage to the institutions that the woke elite collectively run. A publication whose editors think they represent the views of a majority of Americans when they actually speak to a small minority of the country may eventually see its influence wane and its readership decline. And a political candidate who believes she is speaking for half of the population when she is actually voicing the opinions of one-fifth is likely to lose the next election."
Apparently most Americans are Nazis
It seems progressivism is the true white spuremacy (not just due to race but also income and education)
Trigger Me Timbers - Posts - "Young men of color are joining white supremacist groups. Here's why"
"Damn White Supremacists and their open acceptance of people from all ethnic backgrounds! Wait... what?"
Why Young Men of Color Are Joining White-Supremacist Groups
The definition of white supremacy in the article is very interesting. Orwell might almost be proud
Otto Fong - On a three-person gay relationship: Since Singapore... - "On a three-person gay relationship:
Since Singapore and Malaysia are too backwards to embrace gay marriage soon - much less gay adoption - I urge all gay couples to not rule out the possibility of a three-person relationship."
I'm pretty sure Fong has at some point has dismissed the slippery slope of gay rights/gay marriage as a myth
Antifa Mob takes over Portland streets, directs traffic, harasses drivers - "Over the weekend, there was a vigil in Portland, Oregon for Patrick Kimmons, a black man who was shot by police. Afterwards, members of Antifa blocked streets, directed traffic, and harassed drivers and other people... The car in the second video was seriously damaged"
Are IQ Tests Biased? - "Where one minority group shows lower scores, the differences could be real. This could indicate a poorer educational system (differences in educational opportunities, poverty, neighborhoods, home life…), but this doesn't mean the test is biased. Tests, further, should not be abandoned, as they can be used to assess the impact of interventions, and spot deficiencies in teaching different groups. Further, returning to "judgment calls" would introduce even more bias. When you look at mean score differences between groups on the WISC R, there may be real differences, especially when SES convolutes the data. Some recall studies that African Americans score 15 points lower on IQ tests that Caucasians, but when SES is controlled this drops to 5 points or less. This is to say that being poor or rich may have more of an impact on your IQ and perhaps intelligence (whatever that is) than your ethnicity. Other efforts look at predictive validity. Most IQ tests predict performance on achievement tests very well. But, if achievement tests are biased too, then we would expect high predictive validity and this wouldn't rule out bias. However, some argue that if our culture does value some skills over others, then the test is still an accurate predictor of a person's ability to succeed in our culture. Thus, IQ and achievement tests could be culturally biased and heavily so, but their reflection of the dominant culture's values is desirable. To design truly "culture free" tests would be to design tests that don't measure anything. Other efforts look at construct validity, but the factor structure of the WAIS III holds up with African American, Caucasian, and Hispanic children. Thus, it is measuring the same thing in each child. Now, whether that is what you mean when you say intelligence or not is another question…
To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they're right - "Put simply, Pascal suggests that before disagreeing with someone, first point out the ways in which they’re right. And to effectively persuade someone to change their mind, lead them to discover a counter-point of their own accord. Arthur Markman, psychology professor at The University of Texas at Austin, says both these points hold true."
The Deadly Global War for Sand - "Apart from water and air, humble sand is the natural resource most consumed by human beings. People use more than 40 billion tons of sand and gravel every year. There's so much demand that riverbeds and beaches around the world are being stripped bare. (Desert sand generally doesn't work for construction; shaped by wind rather than water, desert grains are too round to bind together well.) And the amount of sand being mined is increasing exponentially."
Poll Shows Activism Highest Among Nonreligious Democrats - "Religiously unaffiliated voters, who may or may not be associated with other civic institutions, seem most excited about supporting or donating to causes, going to rallies, and expressing opinions online, among other activities. Political engagement may be providing these Americans with a new form of identity. And in turn, they may be helping to solidify the new identity of the Democratic Party... religiously unaffiliated Democrats were more than twice as likely to have attended a rally within the past 12 months compared with their religious peers. During that time, they were significantly more likely to have contacted an elected official or to have donated to a candidate or cause. And nearly half of religiously unaffiliated Democrats said they had bought or boycotted a product for political reasons or posted political opinions online, compared with roughly one-quarter of their religious peers. “Culturally, this is the subgroup of the Democratic Party that feels most at odds with the direction of the country and what the Trump administration is doing,” said Dan Cox, the research director at PRRI. “These secular Democrats also tend to be the most liberal.” Secular Democrats were also much more likely to say they’re angry about what’s going on in the country today: Forty-one percent described themselves this way, compared with 28 percent of religious Democrats. Of all the groups highlighted in the data—divided by race, education, geographic region, and more—secular Democrats were the most likely to say they’re feeling this rage. This may shape the political landscape: “There’s no emotion that’s more linked to activism and engagement than anger,” Cox said... “There’s a sociological story you can tell about this community,” said Eitan Hersh, a political scientist at Tufts who is writing a book on what he calls “political hobbyism.” “This online world of political identity … is basically acting as a replacement for people who maybe a generation or two before would identify as Catholic or as Jewish or as Irish or Italian.”... “You see Democrats who will say on surveys that their most important issues are the environment or racial equality, and they take absolutely no interest in voting in local primaries or local municipal elections, where a lot of those issues are worked out,” Hersh said. “It’s a lot more gratifying to be talking about the Kavanaugh hearing.”"
Aka "Politics as the New Religion for Progressive Democrats" - they indeed are more zealous than their enemies
Lawyer reprimanded, gets additional fine for poem on death penalty - "The Attorney-General had complained that in his poem, Mr Thuraisingam alleged that "million dollar men", including judges, had "turned blind" to a cruel and unjust law, and were more concerned with acquiring financial wealth and material goods."
SPICES IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE - "Satirical fantasy it may be, yet the various visions of Cockayne that survive suggest something of the depth of the medieval fixation with spices. They were objects of extraordinary charm and appeal, so enticing that they did not seem out of place among the pleasures of a dream. It was, moreover, a dream that cooks labored hard to turn into reality, for spices featured as conspicuously in the real-world smoke and grime of the medieval kitchen and hall as they did in the make-believe landscape of Cockayne. Other foodstuffs have at one time or another held a similar grip on the imagination — coffee, tea, sugar, and chocolate — yet all were, in comparison, passing fads. None accumulated a comparable body of myth and lore nor carried quite the same social clout."
Spices and Their Costs in Medieval Europe - "In so far as any spices had any preservative qualities, and really only cinnamon did, spices were not a necessity, because other, far cheaper commodities could preserve foods, meats, especially, far more effectively. Spices thus by definition were not a necessity if such substitutes were available.
i) salt, instead, was the almost universal preservative for meat, fish, butter, etc.; and salt, for bodily requirements as well, was a necessity, which is why so many hard-hearted princes taxed salt to heavily.
ii) Pickling, as mixture of salt brine and vinegar, another form of food preservation for fish especially, and also meats
iii) Salting, smoking, and desiccation another form of preserving.
iv) Perhaps the crucial point is that European consumption of spices rapidly waned long before the coming of refrigeration.
e) Furthermore the concept of necessity, that spices were a necessary food preservative, is inconsistent with the equally common and more correct view that spices represented the cream of the luxury trades. A luxury good, especially whose high price made it generally available only to the rich, cannot be a necessity...
this century was a Golden Age of generally high real wages, high real incomes for much of the lower strata, with very low rents and grain prices, when even the poor could afford to eat much meat... it is not true that spices were required to disguise the natural taste of bad meat: in particular, a large collection of late-medieval French and English recipe books and much other literary evidence on cuisine indicate that for those special feasts when spices were used liberally, both fish and fowl were cooked when perfectly fresh and the meats generally appear to be fresh (after being properly hung)... I present a series of late-medieval English recipes, taken from the previously mentioned collection Pleyn Delit: Medieval Cookery for Modern Cooks, by Hieatt and Butler. They are quite unlike modern English recipes, and surprisingly similar, in many respects, to the Indian recipes just shown"
Singapore has world's fastest walkers - "The most dramatic increases were found in Asia among the fast-growing "tiger" economies. Pedestrians in Singapore were the fastest, walking 30 per cent faster than they did in the early 1990s, and in China, the pace of life in Guangzhou has increased by more than 20 per cent. Copenhagen and Madrid were the fastest European cities, beating Paris and London. And despite its reputation as "the city that never sleeps", New York ranked only eighth in the pace race, behind Dublin and Berlin. A professor of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, Richard Wiseman, who helped conduct the research, used a 1994 study of pedestrians' speed as a comparison and found that on average city dwellers now moved 10 per cent faster."
What My Harvard College Reunion Taught Me About Life - "2. Every classmate who became a teacher or doctor seemed happy with the choice of career.
3. Many lawyers seemed either unhappy or itching for a change, with the exception of those who became law professors. (See No. 2 above.)
4. Nearly every single banker or fund manager wanted to find a way to use accrued wealth to give back (some had concrete plans, some didn’t), and many, at this point, seemed to want to leave Wall Street as soon as possible to take up some sort of art.
5. Speaking of art, those who went into it as a career were mostly happy and often successful, but they had all, in some way, struggled financially.
6. They say money can’t buy happiness, but in an online survey of our class just prior to the reunion, those of us with more of it self-reported a higher level of happiness than those with less.
7. Our strongest desire, in that same pre-reunion class survey—over more sex and more money—was to get more sleep.
10. Those who chose to get divorced seemed happier, post-divorce.
11. Those who got an unwanted divorce seemed unhappier, post-divorce.
12. Many classmates who are in long-lasting marriages said they experienced a turning point, when their early marriage suddenly transformed into a mature relationship. “I’m doing the best I can!” one classmate told me she said to her husband in the middle of a particularly stressful couples’-therapy session. From that moment on, she said, he understood: Her imperfections were not an insult to him, and her actions were not an extension of him. She was her own person, and her imperfections were what made her her. Sometimes people forget this, in the thick of marriage.
13. Nearly all the alumni said they were embarrassed by their younger selves, particularly by how judgmental they used to be.
18. Staying at the house of an old friend, whenever possible, is preferable to spending a night in a hotel. Unless you’re trolling for a new spouse or a one-night stand, as some of my classmates seemed to have been doing, in which case: hotel, hotel, hotel.
21. A life spent drinking too much alcohol shows up, 30 years later, on the face.
22. For the most part, the women fared much better than the men in the looks department.
23. For the most part, the men fared much better than the women—surprise, surprise—in the earning-potential-and-leadership department."
Perhaps 22 and 23 are linked
Large Majorities Dislike Political Correctness - "25 percent of Americans are traditional or devoted conservatives, and their views are far outside the American mainstream. Some 8 percent of Americans are progressive activists, and their views are even less typical. By contrast, the two-thirds of Americans who don’t belong to either extreme constitute an “exhausted majority.” Their members “share a sense of fatigue with our polarized national conversation, a willingness to be flexible in their political viewpoints, and a lack of voice in the national conversation.” Most members of the “exhausted majority,” and then some, dislike political correctness. Among the general population, a full 80 percent believe that “political correctness is a problem in our country.” Even young people are uncomfortable with it, including 74 percent ages 24 to 29, and 79 percent under age 24. On this particular issue, the woke are in a clear minority across all ages. Youth isn’t a good proxy for support of political correctness—and it turns out race isn’t, either. Whites are ever so slightly less likely than average to believe that political correctness is a problem in the country: 79 percent of them share this sentiment. Instead, it is Asians (82 percent), Hispanics (87percent), and American Indians (88 percent) who are most likely to oppose political correctness... Three quarters of African Americans oppose political correctness... If age and race do not predict support for political correctness, what does? Income and education... Among devoted conservatives, 97 percent believe that political correctness is a problem. Among traditional liberals, 61 percent do. Progressive activists are the only group that strongly backs political correctness: Only 30 percent see it as a problem... progressive activists are much more likely to be rich, highly educated—and white. They are nearly twice as likely as the average to make more than $100,000 a year. They are nearly three times as likely to have a postgraduate degree. And while 12 percent of the overall sample in the study is African American, only 3 percent of progressive activists are. With the exception of the small tribe of devoted conservatives, progressive activists are the most racially homogeneous group in the country... nearly half of Latinos argued that “many people nowadays are too sensitive to how Muslims are treated,” while two in five African Americans agreed that “immigration nowadays is bad for America.”... contemporary callout culture merely looks like an excuse to mock the values or ignorance of others... The gap between the progressive perception and the reality of public views on this issue could do damage to the institutions that the woke elite collectively run. A publication whose editors think they represent the views of a majority of Americans when they actually speak to a small minority of the country may eventually see its influence wane and its readership decline. And a political candidate who believes she is speaking for half of the population when she is actually voicing the opinions of one-fifth is likely to lose the next election."
Apparently most Americans are Nazis
It seems progressivism is the true white spuremacy (not just due to race but also income and education)
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