Google tends to push stories for left-leaning readers, study shows - "Google tends to only feature a handful of news outlets (all with a left-leaning audience) in their Top Stories box — a spot in search results every newsroom is clawing for. The study shows articles from publications with left-wing readers get about five times as many views as those with a right-leaning readership.The researchers from North Western University in Illinois used data from 2017 to test 30 articles for a month, collecting more than 6,300 links... Their audit showed outlets with a left-wing audience had 62.4 per cent of all article views compared to 11.3 per cent from the right. Even when accounting for stories that weren’t rated as having right or left readers, the researchers say the trend is still clear.The monopolization also became more apparent with certain searches. CNN and The New York times racked up three of four article views in a search for “rex tillerson.”... Newsrooms with left-wing readers produce twice as many stories as their counterparts, but Google seems to exaggerate the difference to three times as many stories, which means those articles end up in the Top Stories box more often."
“This Is What Happens To Pretty Girls” - Who are we really staging this for? | Facebook - "I watched Pangdemonium's This Is What Happens To Pretty Girls (TIWHTPG) on the night of Tuesday, 14 May 2019. I left Drama Centre Theatre distressed not just by the content of the show per se, but the means that Pangdemonium adopted to subvert the gross misconceptions that those who think they know "what happens to pretty girls" (which I still find a highly problematic title)... The way TIWHTPG was staged - I felt that the focus was shifted away from empowering survivors to say what they want to say, and towards giving a neutral bird's eye view of what happens in a consentless world. I respect the attempt to not be didactic, and to trust the audience to be independent and mature enough to think critically about what they watched. But when you stage a scene where one character is being forced to give a blowjob to another (this is just one example of the instances of sexual violence portrayed in the play) and follow it up with another intense scene involving victim blaming, without metaframing why sexual violence was portrayed with such realism - what are the implications?... Yes, ending sexual violence is a topic that everyone should think about, and talk about more openly. But to broach the discussion in such a in-your-face manner like in TIWHTPG? Now that I have watched the play, I have misgivings about bringing someone who has little to zero prior engagement with discussions of sexual violence. And I definitely wouldn't bring someone who has survived sexual violence to watch TIWHTPG. No one comes to the theatre to be reminded of the literal hell that they have gone through/are still going through."
Aka "This play is problematic because it doesn't shove the simplistic feminist narrative down the audience's throat. A play on sexual violence should not contain sexual violence, and should be a group therapy session"
White liberals dumb down language with minorities - "Democratic candidates used fewer words related to competence when speaking to minority audiences than they did to mostly white audiences. Meanwhile, the speeches of conservative candidates showed no significant difference... In a separate series of experiments, the researchers asked white participants to select words from a list to draft a hypothetical email to a stranger. Each recipient had been given a stereotypically white or black name — such as "Emily" or "Lakisha" — and the researchers had ranked each word on the list for competence and warmth.The results showed that participants who self-reported liberal views tended to avoid words that could make them look competent when addressing the black recipients, but not white recipients. Again, conservatives showed no significant difference in the language they used to white and black recipients."
Since treating people of different races equally is considered racist, this shows that Republicans are the true racists
The Infantilization of Black America - "We are expected to think, act, and vote as one, and any attempt to step outside the bounds of our pre-determined spectrum of thoughts can lead to summary excommunication. Our diversity pertains to our race, ethnicity, gender orientation, or sexual preference when set against the rest of the American population, but the diversity of opinions, beliefs, and values found among American blacks is seldom acknowledged. Even though the ‘black community’ in America includes immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America, as well as multiracial individuals and descendants of the slave trade, we are often grouped together as one large indistinguishable ideological bloc... Black voters are expected to be Democrats—or at least left-leaning in their politics—not because of their views on this-or-that policy initiative, but because of the perceived racial attitudes of Republicans. But this has resulted in an odd paradox—despite black progressives’ professed hatred for ‘systemically racist’ government and institutions, they continue to trust in and empower those same institutions by voting for policies that strengthen them and their ability to hold sway in our lives. If you believe the government is oppressing you, it is surely counter-productive to demand that it take more of your money, that it institute policies that further criminalize your behavior, or that increase its ability to infringe on your privacy. Well-meaning white progressives, meanwhile, treat black Americans more like the family pet than the family friend, condescending to praise us when we align with their views, and ferally attacking when we don’t... While black Americans have been voting Democrat, the wealth gap between blacks and whites has widened... Of the ten poorest cities in America, nine are run by Democrats. Of the ten cities with the highest levels of unemployment, nine are run by Democrats. Of the ten most dangerous cities in America, eight are run by Democrats. In each case, those affected are disproportionately black, with blacks having higher rates of poverty, lower rates of income, and higher rates of criminality. Despite a dearth of evidence that voting Democrat has an inherently positive impact on life as a black man or woman in America, progressives continue to demonize any attempt by blacks to look for solutions beyond the Democratic echo chamber. The saddest part of this narrative is that liberals seem to think they have little of value to offer black voters besides apologies for past transgressions and a savior complex that promises to police current society’s racial shortcomings. Often the voices screaming the loudest following instances of racial animus or law enforcement misconduct belong to white progressives who have taken it upon themselves to champion causes on behalf of the politically mute or ‘marginalized.’ This embarrassing spectacle sometimes resembles an adult who humors a fractious infant just to reassure it that he is an amiable and unthreatening figure... The monocausal progressive explanation for black disadvantage is dangerous for two reasons. Firstly, it imposes a false conformity that helps ensure alternative hypotheses which might improve understanding of the underlying complexities of racial disparities in America are left unexplored and undiscussed. Secondly, the reflexive imputation of racial bias in situations where alternative explanations for behavior are readily available risks inducing a skeptical fatigue. So, when racism does rear its head, it has already been trivialized and risks being ignored"
Researchers publish U.S. data on police-related injuries - "An estimated 55,400 people were injured as a result of legal police interventions in the U.S. in 2012, a study found.Those interventions accounted for less than half a percent of all arrests that year... Miller had expected higher rates of death and injury during stops or arrests of minorities. “But it turns out, the probability you will be killed or seriously injured if (you are) stopped/arrested by the police is not affected by your race/ethnicity,” he said."
Black lies matter - "You would never know it from the activists, but police shootings are responsible for a lower percentage of black homicide deaths than white and Hispanic homicide deaths. Twelve percent of all whites and Hispanics who die of homicide are killed by police officers, compared to 4 percent of black homicide victims.That disparity is driven by the greatly elevated rates of criminal victimization in the black community. More blacks die each year from homicide, more than 6,000, than homicide victims of all other races combined. Their killers are not the police, and not whites, but other blacks. In Chicago this year through Aug. 30, 2,870 people, mostly black, were shot.If you believed the Black Lives Matter narrative, you would assume that the assailants of those black victims were in large part cops. In fact, the police shot 17 people, most of whom were threatening lethal force, accounting for 0.6 percent of the total... Police critics have never answered the question of what they think non-biased policing data should look like, in light of the vast differences in rates of criminal offending. Blacks commit homicide at eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined. Black males between the ages of 14-17 commit gun homicide at nearly 10 times the rate of white and Hispanic male teens combined... Other research this year shows that blacks are actually shot less than whites by the police.The most sophisticated lab study of police shoot-don't-shoot decisions to date, published this year in Criminology and Public Policy, found that officers were three times less likely to shoot unarmed black suspects than unarmed white suspects and took significantly longer to decide to shoot armed black suspects than armed white suspects.Lead investigator Lois James, from Washington State University, hypothesized that officers were second-guessing themselves when confronting black suspects, due to their awareness of the potential negative repercussions of shooting a black civilian. James' work anticipated a much-discussed working paper by Harvard economist Roland Fryer. He found that police officers in Houston were nearly 24 percent less likely to shoot blacks than whites... an analysis of police use of force by the Center for Policing Equity concluded, consistent with James and Fryer, that whites were disadvantaged compared to blacks when it comes to lethal force. Officers' use of lethal force following an arrest for a violent felony was over twice the rate for white arrestees than for black arrestees... Why, then, the widespread perception that there is a law enforcement war on blacks? Because the mainstream media relentlessly focuses on a handful of police shootings of blacks and ignores police shootings of whites, as well as the crime that brings officers into disproportionate contact with black suspects... In fact, fatal police shootings are rare, no matter the race of the victim... Police officers are far more likely to be killed by a black person than vice versa. Over the past decade, black males comprised 40 percent of all cop killers, though they are 6 percent of the population. That means that an officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer... Officers are routinely surrounded by hostile, jeering crowds when they try to conduct a street investigation or make an arrest. Resistance to arrest is up, officers report. Cops have been repeatedly told by Obama and the media that pedestrian stops and public order enforcement (known as "broken windows policing") are racist. In consequence, they are doing less of those discretionary activities in high-crime minority communities.The result? Violent crime is rising in cities with large black populations... The victims of this politically driven de-policing, what I have called the "Ferguson effect," are overwhelmingly black"
This filmmaker sat down neo-Nazis and jihadists. Here’s what she learned. - "In two documentary films, White Right: Meeting the Enemy and Jihad: A Story of the Others (both of which are currently streaming on Netflix), Khan sits down with white supremacists and jihadists (respectively) and tries to understand what’s really motivating them... it’s really, really easy for everybody involved to hate each other from afar, to judge each other from afar, but it’s much more difficult to hate up close and personal... Part of the reason people subscribe to these movements is that they feel shunned in their lives, in their personal lives or in wider society. These movements are deeply rooted in a sense of victimhood, real or imagined. So if we exclude them, if we shout at them, if we condemn them, that completely feeds into that. And then the monster gets bigger, not smaller... Much of it doesn’t come from hate. It comes from a lot of other basic human needs that are not being met. To be sure, there are political and social and economic factors involved on both sides, but if you dig deep, you find that it’s about much more than that.I tried to understand the core psychological draw of these movements. I found that a sense of belonging or purpose was a major factor... he actually became friends with the pastor of a mostly black church who lived in his apartment complex. The pastor invited him and his fiancée to his church, and Ken basically stood in front of everyone there and said, “I used to be in the Klan, now I’m in a neo-Nazi organization, these are the views I hold ...”And after he was done, people came up to him and hugged him and said, “Look, we detest what you stand for, but it takes a lot of courage for somebody like you to come in here and share what you have shared.”That was the last straw for him, where he realized that the people he hated so deeply are showing him nothing but kindness and compassion and an open heart, and are showing it to him even though he doesn’t deserve it. His whole ideology fell apart... we have to become active citizens and active human beings, and no matter what happens, we cannot afford to give up on each other. That means even people that we disagree with and people that we dislike. In fact, it matters more. It’s easy for me to like you. It’s easy for me to be nice to you because we probably see the world fairly similarly. That’s easy. That’s not when our principles really matter.It matters when you are able to extend it to somebody who might not deserve it, or who you might not like or might not agree with. Otherwise, we become just like them — and, in the process, do their bidding."
Funny, I thought screaming at them and punching "Nazis" was the answer/solution
Deeyah Khan's 'White Right' Shows How to Fight Racism - "anti-racists departed from the conventional wisdom that bigots are best excoriated and shunned (if not punched and kicked); engaged prominent, hard-core racists; and managed through civil interactions to persuade some of them to renounce their beliefs.Khan described similar results from her efforts to combat both jihadism and white-supremacist extremism—an outcome that she didn’t expect.“I’ve had experiences of racism most of my life,” she said. “As a result, I’ve been an anti-racist, anti-fascist campaigner for most of my life. I’ve done everything that you would imagine. I’ve gone to anti-fascist protests. I’ve shouted at these guys. I have flipped them off. I have thrown stuff at them. I’ve done all of that. And none of that really did anything.”Judging and condemning jihadists and white supremacists “feels great,” she declared, but yields little"
Saturday, July 13, 2019
The Morality of Hypocrisy
BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, The Morality of Hypocrisy
"[On being a libertarian] ‘I'm saying you're overregulating and taking away my freedom of choice. *You* are the one who has low standards, low standard of freedom and respect for civil liberties.’
‘Would you, would you like, the same applies to your kids as well?’
‘Obviously not. There are no libertarian fathers of teenage daughters. I can tell you that… if you want to ask about my hypocrisy, they better not be listening tonight.’...
‘There is an issue here with using hypocrisy as the sole element of how we judge somebody. In the political world, one of the things that we should look further, it's not just motive. It's not just attitude. It's not just what people say. It's what they actually managed to achieve. And in that respect, Michael Gove has an excellent record. In fact, if this whole drugs business wouldn't come up, he would be very much one of the front runners.
If you look at results, if you look at what people actually achieve, then you have to say to yourself, well, we don't necessarily want saints as our politicians. We just had a saint, she didn't achieve anything. That's not great. You know, I'm perfectly happy to have somebody who does more than just run through a field of wheat, if it means that what we actually get at the end is a well governed country’...
‘Is it quite hypocritical to accuse people of hypocrisy?’
‘I think it is, because we're all hypocrites. And the reason why from a psychological perspective we enjoy accusing other people of hypocrisy is because we get to project our own conflict onto them and say, that's the hypocrite over there. It's not me’
‘Misdirection’...
‘If you're going into politics, and you're a normal human being with all our normal hypocrisies, it seems that completely different rules apply to politicians. It’s, it's like, perhaps that’s why we get terrible politicians’
‘In a sense. I mean, there's an analogy I was thinking of just before, which is, if you found a really good cardiologist, and you found out they were a smoker, you might be a little bit offended that a cardiologist was a smoker. But if they're a great cardiologist, you still might want them to work on your heart. If however, you found out that the director of a smoking cessation charity was a smoker, you'd have a very different opinion of that, because they're, they’re so much more involved in that role.’...
‘Which in your view, is the greater problem, the hypocrisy or the deed?’...
‘I think neither is necessarily a deal breaker. You know, it's not it's not the end of the world. I think if someone has tried a Class A drug, I don’t think it means they should not be in public life. And I think an element of hypocrisy is on one hand necessary, that a politician has to uphold the law. If you're a public servant, you have to be seen to be upholding the public rules. So I think there's an inevitable hypocrisy and the word comes from the Greek of playing a role. And, you know, that's what public servants do, they have to pretend to be a bit purer than they are. And if we’re grown up, we'll see that that's, you know, part of life’...
'Hypocrisy might actually be useful to us. Because if we were to simply like Paul, rewrite all the laws so that we could live honestly, we might have no law whatsoever'...
'The fact that we've become so obsessed with this idea of hypocrisy. It's the one thing, and you know, we talked to the psychotherapist and he said, look, we're all bloody hypocrites, all of us are. And so how come it's this thing that's now, it Paul’s [sp?] stains, it’s the great gotcha in our media culture? And that's because we probably haven't got anything else. You know, we don't believe in any of the other stuff. And that’s essentially, rather terrifying’
‘In his words, the only peg you can hang people on’
‘That's extraordinary, not character, not morality, not what's right and wrong. Just hypocrisy.’...
‘That's part of where Donald Trump comes in. Everything leads back to Donald Trump inevitably. It's very difficult to explain why conservative evangelicals voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, and he breaks every single one of their rules about character... people make excuses for the people that agree with and they see him as their weapon. And in a weird way, his lack of character is a good thing, because it suggests transparency. So in an odd way, he is not hypocritical and as much as you know what he's guilty of, and he smirks, and he admits to it, and therefore he is a legitimate weapon, because he's, he's their guy, he's their hypocrite’"
"[On being a libertarian] ‘I'm saying you're overregulating and taking away my freedom of choice. *You* are the one who has low standards, low standard of freedom and respect for civil liberties.’
‘Would you, would you like, the same applies to your kids as well?’
‘Obviously not. There are no libertarian fathers of teenage daughters. I can tell you that… if you want to ask about my hypocrisy, they better not be listening tonight.’...
‘There is an issue here with using hypocrisy as the sole element of how we judge somebody. In the political world, one of the things that we should look further, it's not just motive. It's not just attitude. It's not just what people say. It's what they actually managed to achieve. And in that respect, Michael Gove has an excellent record. In fact, if this whole drugs business wouldn't come up, he would be very much one of the front runners.
If you look at results, if you look at what people actually achieve, then you have to say to yourself, well, we don't necessarily want saints as our politicians. We just had a saint, she didn't achieve anything. That's not great. You know, I'm perfectly happy to have somebody who does more than just run through a field of wheat, if it means that what we actually get at the end is a well governed country’...
‘Is it quite hypocritical to accuse people of hypocrisy?’
‘I think it is, because we're all hypocrites. And the reason why from a psychological perspective we enjoy accusing other people of hypocrisy is because we get to project our own conflict onto them and say, that's the hypocrite over there. It's not me’
‘Misdirection’...
‘If you're going into politics, and you're a normal human being with all our normal hypocrisies, it seems that completely different rules apply to politicians. It’s, it's like, perhaps that’s why we get terrible politicians’
‘In a sense. I mean, there's an analogy I was thinking of just before, which is, if you found a really good cardiologist, and you found out they were a smoker, you might be a little bit offended that a cardiologist was a smoker. But if they're a great cardiologist, you still might want them to work on your heart. If however, you found out that the director of a smoking cessation charity was a smoker, you'd have a very different opinion of that, because they're, they’re so much more involved in that role.’...
‘Which in your view, is the greater problem, the hypocrisy or the deed?’...
‘I think neither is necessarily a deal breaker. You know, it's not it's not the end of the world. I think if someone has tried a Class A drug, I don’t think it means they should not be in public life. And I think an element of hypocrisy is on one hand necessary, that a politician has to uphold the law. If you're a public servant, you have to be seen to be upholding the public rules. So I think there's an inevitable hypocrisy and the word comes from the Greek of playing a role. And, you know, that's what public servants do, they have to pretend to be a bit purer than they are. And if we’re grown up, we'll see that that's, you know, part of life’...
'Hypocrisy might actually be useful to us. Because if we were to simply like Paul, rewrite all the laws so that we could live honestly, we might have no law whatsoever'...
'The fact that we've become so obsessed with this idea of hypocrisy. It's the one thing, and you know, we talked to the psychotherapist and he said, look, we're all bloody hypocrites, all of us are. And so how come it's this thing that's now, it Paul’s [sp?] stains, it’s the great gotcha in our media culture? And that's because we probably haven't got anything else. You know, we don't believe in any of the other stuff. And that’s essentially, rather terrifying’
‘In his words, the only peg you can hang people on’
‘That's extraordinary, not character, not morality, not what's right and wrong. Just hypocrisy.’...
‘That's part of where Donald Trump comes in. Everything leads back to Donald Trump inevitably. It's very difficult to explain why conservative evangelicals voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, and he breaks every single one of their rules about character... people make excuses for the people that agree with and they see him as their weapon. And in a weird way, his lack of character is a good thing, because it suggests transparency. So in an odd way, he is not hypocritical and as much as you know what he's guilty of, and he smirks, and he admits to it, and therefore he is a legitimate weapon, because he's, he's their guy, he's their hypocrite’"
Links - 13th July 2019 (2) (The Extremism of the Democrats in the US)
The Second Debate Went Badly for Democrats - "In a single evening, Harris endorsed abolishing private health insurance and offering taxpayer-funded health care to unauthorized immigrants, and opposed the deportation of unauthorized immigrants who have not committed criminal offenses. “A mother who pays a coyote to transport her child,” she began one sentence, but instead of warning against human trafficking, she ended by insisting that the mother and child be allowed to stay. Harris committed herself to a left-wing base-rallying strategy in ways she will not easily escape—in a party whose left-wing base is quite a tiny portion of America as a whole. The third and final weakness of the night was the unwillingness and inability of any of the candidates—except, quietly, Biden—to defend their party’s most important domestic reform since the Lyndon Johnson administration: Obamacare. The Affordable Care Act was passed when Democrats held a 60-seat majority in the Senate. If you believe it’s a shabby, pitiful, unworthy half measure, then other than magic wishing pills, there’s no strategy for you ever to enact anything you will regard as successful. And denouncing it in those terms is an indictment of the last president, the one who, to this day, remains a talismanic name among the voters these candidates most need to mobilize. Things may change by November 2020, but in the summer of 2019, polls show an American electorate that is more content with its own personal situation than at any time since the second Clinton administration. President Trump has not (yet) been able to capitalize on that satisfaction, because so many voters are repelled by him personally. But there is little appetite in this country for big radical reforms such as stripping people of their existing private-sector health insurance. There will be even less appetite when the next administration tries to finance that reform by raising taxes, as the candidates last night acknowledged they will have to do. Democrats won on Obamacare. They beat back almost a decade of Republican efforts to repeal it. But they won’t accept success as an answer, and so they won’t allow their party the moral and political rewards of success. They are competing for the support of the angry voters they read on Twitter—overlooking the many millions of people uniquely available to the non-incumbent party in what should be a pro-incumbent cycle."
Ocasio-Cortez Suggests Pelosi Is Targeting Her Because Pelosi Is Racist - "Pelosi has repeatedly mocked Ocasio-Cortez and the other three far-left freshmen House Democrats"
The Democratic Electorate on Twitter Is Not the Actual Democratic Electorate - The New York Times - "Perhaps the most telling poll of the Democratic primary season hasn’t been about the Democratic primary at all — but about the fallout from a 35-year-old racist photo on a yearbook page. Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia was pummeled on social media after the revelation, and virtually every Democratic presidential candidate demanded his resignation.Yet the majority of ordinary Democrats in Virginia said Mr. Northam should remain in office, according to a Washington Post/Schar School poll a week later. And black Democrats were likelier than white ones to say Mr. Northam should remain.Today’s Democratic Party is increasingly perceived as dominated by its “woke” left wing. But the views of Democrats on social media often bear little resemblance to those of the wider Democratic electorate. The outspoken group of Democratic-leaning voters on social media is outnumbered, roughly 2 to 1, by the more moderate, more diverse and less educated group of Democrats who typically don’t post political content online, according to data from the Hidden Tribes Project. This latter group has the numbers to decide the Democratic presidential nomination in favor of a relatively moderate establishment favorite, as it has often done in the past.
Democrats who do not post political content to social media sites are more likely to …
Identify themselves as moderates or conservatives
Say political correctness is a problem in the U.S.
Say they don’t follow the news much
Be African-American...
recent polls show that a majority of Democrats would rather see the party become more moderate than move leftward, even as progressives clamor for a Green New Deal or Medicare for all.
Democrats who post political content on social media are more likely to ...
Have a college degree
Be white
Say they have become more liberal in their lifetime
Say they have attended a protest in the last year
Say they have donated to a political organization in the last year...
The candidates of the progressive left, whether Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, speak with moral clarity. The strongest traditional liberal candidates, despite their pragmatic streak, speak with hopeful idealism, stemming from their relatively optimistic view of the country’s capacity to compromise, reform and change. Barack Obama took that tack in 2008, and Beto O’Rourke and Cory Booker might hope to in 2020.In recent decades, most of the candidates who have found their core strength among the party’s ideologically consistent, left-liberal activist base have lost. Gary Hart, Jerry Brown, Jesse Jackson, Howard Dean and Mr. Sanders all fell short against candidates of the party’s establishment, like Walter Mondale, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton. The establishment candidates won the nomination by counting on the rest of the party’s voters.The rest of the party is easy to miss. Not only is it less active on social media, but it is also under-represented in the well-educated, urban enclaves where journalists roam. It is under-represented in the Northern blue states and districts where most Democratic politicians win elections... it would also be a mistake to assume that outrage on social media means outrage throughout the broader electorate. And it would be a mistake to assume that more moderate Democrats are out of step with the party’s electorate"
Aka why Trump will win in 2020
Tim Murtaugh on Twitter - "Democrats running for president have officially lost it. Beto & Castro strongly imply that the Betsy Ross flag is a symbol of hatred. Do the rest of the Dems agree? Pictured here, of course, is the notorious flag prominently featured at President Obama's 2nd inauguration."
MATTHEWS: Republican slippery slope warnings bear out as Democrats target memorials to founding figures - "In the aftermath of the June 2015 mass murders of nine black churchgoers at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., by a crazed racist white man who flew the Confederate flag as inspiration, a national debate raged on public displays of memorials related to the Confederacy... The slippery slope-warners were right. As Confederate reminders are disappearing from the public landscape with regularity and little fanfare, the left has indeed moved on to their next targets.The week before Nike’s decision, the San Francisco School Board voted to paint over an 83-year-old George Washington mural displayed at George Washington High School. In addition to Washington, the mural also depicts a dead Indian and black slaves. Even art historians on the left are upset over the move, which was made over fears that the images were triggering to students.Movements are also underway in other states to cover up or otherwise remove similar murals. Some have been vandalized. Just a few days after the San Francisco School Board’s vote, Virginia’s Charlottesville City Council voted to stop observing former President Thomas Jefferson’s birthday as a paid holiday. “Thomas Jefferson is the R. Kelly of the American Enlightenment,” said one University of Virginia professor.Jefferson was the university’s founder.Christopher Columbus, though not a founding father, is also a target of the left’s ire. “Columbus Day” is now “Indigenous Peoples Day” in many cities throughout the U.S. The late President George H.W. Bush is also not a founding father, but students at the historically black Hampton University and at least one Democratic Congressman want a recently unveiled statue of him removed.In a recent piece, my writing colleague Susie Moore made probably one of the best cases for leaving monuments and murals the way they are, arguing they should be used as teachable moments instead.“History isn’t utopian and historical figures, including our founding fathers, aren’t demi-gods. They were ‘men, no more no less.’ The current trend to willfully erase them and their deeds — both good and bad — by removing markers and symbols referencing them is probably well-intentioned in most instances, but so very ill-conceived. It lets the perfect be not just the enemy of the good but swallow it whole,” Moore wrote.She concluded by saying that we “should remember them. We should honor their accomplishments and learn from their mistakes.”"
So much for the slippery slope being a paranoid conservative myth
Obama’s DHS Secretary: Democrat Immigration Plans ‘Tantamount To Declaring Publicly That We Have Open Borders’ - "As Democrat presidential candidates declare they would decriminalize illegal immigration, former members of President Barack Obama’s administration — who have firsthand knowledge of the issue — are urging caution... “That is unworkable, unwise and does not have the support of a majority of American people or the Congress, and if we had such a policy, instead of 100,000 apprehensions a month, it will be multiples of that.”Johnson also pushed back on Democrat outrage over detention centers and the notion that President Donald Trump is putting kids in “cages.” “Chain link barriers, partitions, fences, cages -- whatever you want to call them -- were not invented on January 2017," Johnson said, according to Fox News. He also said that the “cages” were created because of a mass influx of immigration for which the government was unprepared. He said the illegal immigrants would be held for up to 72 hours before being transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services. “During that 72 hour period, when you have something that is a multiple -- like four times of what you're accustomed to in the existing infrastructure, you've got to find places quickly to put kids," he said. He added that the alternative was releasing them to “the streets.”Johnson is not alone in this criticism of Democrats. At the end of June, Obama’s former head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Thomas Homan, also defended Trump from claims that he was behind the cages. “During that 72 hour period, when you have something that is a multiple -- like four times of what you're accustomed to in the existing infrastructure, you've got to find places quickly to put kids," he said. He added that the alternative was releasing them to “the streets.”Johnson is not alone in this criticism of Democrats. At the end of June, Obama’s former head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Thomas Homan, also defended Trump from claims that he was behind the cages. “I’ve been to that facility, where they talk about cages. That facility was built under President Obama under (Homeland Security) Secretary Jeh Johnson. I was there because I was there when it was built,” Homan said."
Every Democrat At The Debate Said They Would Extend Health Care To Undocumented Immigrants - "“All Democrats just raised their hands for giving millions of illegal aliens unlimited health care. How about taking care of American Citizens first!?” Trump tweeted.The support from these presidential candidates is a departure from current law"
Andrew Quackson on Twitter - "if Democrats want to give free healthcare to immigrants, why don't they deport them to Mexico where healthcare is guaranteed in the Mexican Constitution?"
The Insanity of Democrats Attacking Pete Buttigieg—for Not Being Gay Enough - "The fact that the press and political class are even taking Buttigieg’s candidacy seriously is a historic first. An openly gay candidate has never qualified for a presidential debate, let alone become president (the jury is still out on James Buchanan, but whatever his orientation, he wasn’t leading any Pride parades in 1857).Yet some liberal voices are now discounting Buttigieg’s sexual orientation (“still a white man”), or at least diminishing the historic discrimination gays have faced as compared with women and people of color (“most of the time gender and race are way heavier burdens than sexual orientation in the professional and political environment,” and “there was a time when it was illegal for us to marry interracially, women and POC could not even own property but a gay white man could”). For those critics, his race and gender negate the little credit they accord him for being gay. All of this seems like an attempt to write Buttigieg off as “just another white guy,” standing in the way of more diverse candidates. It’s the Oppression Olympics at its worst: In a battle to prove that one community is more discriminated against than another, we tear each other apart rather than unite in common cause. The arguments against Buttigieg fall roughly into four categories. The first is that Buttigieg acts too straight to have any gay cred... Buttigieg’s critics also allege that being gay isn’t important to him... There’s also the suggestion that being white and male trumps the fact that Buttigieg is gay... Mayor Pete has touched a chord with many Democrats because he’s an amazing candidate with a compelling personal story. He’s a millennial war veteran (who served in Afghanistan under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy), speaks seven languages, is a Rhodes Scholar, and has an almost Mr. Rogers-like demeanor that’s as calming as it is captivating. Maybe he’s so popular because he’s just that good"
The reality of intersectionality
Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts - "The Slate author below analyzes his candidacy through an intersectional lens - race, gender, sexual preference, etc. She also weighs his relative purity in each identity category and how he compares to other candidates. It’s a bit weird to watch how she measures his relative membership in various identitarian tribes with little attention paid to public policy and leadership style"
Democrats Tolerated Anti-Semitism, and Now They Can’t Control It - "Quite unlike the GOP’s experience, though, Democrats have encountered fierce resistance to this assault on the bigotry that lingers within their ranks... A watered-down resolution condemning anti-Jewish prejudice within the Congress was apparently the only thing that could still pass the House with united Democratic support. But even this failed to satisfy Omar’s progressive allies. Following what was described as a bitter internal debate, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer revealed that the resolution had been put on hold indefinitely... Liberal partisans know exactly what Democrats are doing here. Indeed, they explained why generic condemnations of hatred in the face of discrete episodes of bigotry entirely missed the point amid the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. “All lives matter,” was the response from those who were discomfited by the movement’s focus on excessive uses of force by police against African-Americans. Of course, all lives do matter, those on the left observed, but to insist upon such language in the face of specific episodes of bias targeting distinct demographics is obtuse. The effort isn’t to restore common bonds, but to diminish the validity of the Black Lives Matter movement’s grievance. Today, as Democratic House leadership calculates precisely how forcefully to condemn anti-Semitic sentiments within its ranks without alienating anti-Semites, a full-scale rebellion is brewing. Rep. Rashida Tlaib called the effort to condemn anti-Semitism “unprecedented” and questioned Pelosi’s judgment. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez insisted that Pelosi’s resolution was “hurtful” and that there should be similar votes condemning all manner of bigotries ranging from xenophobia, to homophobia, to “anti-blackness.” Pelosi is a “typical white feminist upholding the patriarchy doing the dirty work of powerful white men,” wrote Women’s March co-chair Linda Sarsour. These are not nobodies. These are core figures in the Democratic coalition, individuals who are now or were only recently some of the party’s most visible new faces. It isn’t just the activist wing that has effectively sided with Omar in this fight. The New York Times claimed that Omar’s attack on the Israeli lobbying group AIPAC raised important questions about the influence Zionists and Jews wield. The Washington Post suggested that Pelosi would invite a prolonged internecine debate over America’s policy toward Israel by unequivocally condemning anti-Jewish bigotry. These are not fringe institutions expressing the concerns of a marginal constituency. It was only one month ago that the Democratic Party was united in disgust after Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam admitted to appearing in photographs as a younger man in blackface"
Democrats' 'Sudden' Hard-Left Turn Has Been Years In The Making - "Sure, today's Democrats and their allies in the big media talk about the "extreme right" and "ultra right" Republican Party. They call rank and file Republicans racists and nazis.But, as numerous studies and polls confirm, it's the Democratic Party that has moved far left — while the Republican Party has more or less remained where it was... Pew's methodology was simple. Starting in 1994, they asked Democrats and Republicans where they stood on 10 key issues, ranging from welfare and racial discrimination, to defense and immigration.The results were stark and unequivocal.As we reported in October of 2017, "The results show that while the Republican center moved only slightly to the right over the past 23 years, the center of the Democratic part shifted far to the left."Likewise, a 2015 academic study by scholars at the University of Oregon, Princeton University and the University of Houston, found that state Democratic parties since the late 1990s have "become more liberal." But the Republicans, again, haven't moved ideologically much at all.There is a deeper history to this, of course. In 1972, the Democratic Convention was hijacked by far-left supporters and delegates for progressive peace candidate George McGovern. Since then, the Democratic Party has been drifting more or less continually to the left... Ronald Reagan, himself once a proud Democrat, said it best: "I didn't leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party left me.""
What the Midterms Showed About Progressive Candidates - "Almost every candidate in whom Democrats at the national level invested emotional energy—Beto O’Rourke in Texas, Andrew Gillum in Florida, Stacey Abrams in Georgia—appears to have lost. Almost every detested Republican appears to have survived: Devin Nunes, Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, even Duncan Hunter, a California Republican under indictment... There is no progressive majority in America. There is no progressive plurality in America. And there certainly is no progressive Electoral College coalition in America... In past “flip the House” elections—2010, 2006, 1994—the party of the president suffered large-to-calamitous drops in vote total as compared with the previous presidential election... In 2018, however, Republicans dropped only 20 percent of their votes cast as compared with 2016"
Progressivism Is Radicalizing the Democratic Party - "For most of his career, Sanders—who identified as an independent but who caucused with Democrats—was treated like a curiosity and even a bit of a crazy uncle by Democrats, who considered the label socialist to be a smear.No more.The most prominent socialist in America, Sanders has gained a following... Among the freshman class of House Democrats, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—now the second-most-famous democratic socialist in America—is the unquestioned star among the base. According to Dan Balz of The Washington Post, Ocasio-Cortez is “the titular leader of a progressive grass-roots movement pushing the party to the left.” (The mere mention of her name elicits spontaneous applause on programs like The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.)Another prominent member of the freshman class of House Democrats, Ilhan Omar, recently dismissed former President Barack Obama—who not that long ago defined the progressive wing of the Democratic Party—as too right-wing... On every front, the Democratic Party is moving left, and the power of the left can be seen in the fact that even Democrats who oppose some of these policies are wary of attacking them. When it comes to challenging the progressive wing, Democratic candidates act as if they are walking on eggshells... This embrace of radical progressivism and its colossal price tag is almost certainly going to hurt Democrats politically—most of their gains in 2018 were in suburban districts, among voters who tend to recoil at radicalism of any kind—and it could be politically disastrous... The trend is toward growing hostility to free markets and capitalism, in many cases to the point of barely contained contempt for it and for the wealthy... Democrats want to focus their attention on the flaws and corruptions of Donald Trump, and they have a lot to work with. But you won’t become a saint through other people’s sins, Anton Chekhov said, and the Democratic Party will not become a responsible governing party because of the faults of President Trump."
Far-left candidates did poorly in the Democratic primaries - The centre can hold - "the party has moved leftward a bit. The same Pew Research Centre study found that 28% of partisans described themselves as liberal in 2000, compared with 46% in 2017. The candidates have moved, too. The Economist’s analysis of a measure of candidate ideology, developed by Adam Bonica of Stanford University, finds that the average Democratic primary-winner in 2018 is indeed more liberal than in 2016 (see chart). Democratic candidates are also more scattered over the ideological spectrum than they have been in recent years. A higher share are either extremely liberal or atypically moderate compared with previous cycles. Data from Third Way, a centre-left think-tank, show that candidates endorsed by the progressive groups Our Revolution and Justice Democrats won their primaries no more than 37% of the time. Most of those victories came in places Republicans are almost certain to win. On the other hand, candidates belonging to the moderate New Democrat Coalition or those endorsed by the party establishment won 71 of their 78 primaries. Jim Kessler of Third Way says that voters were looking for fresh faces, not necessarily for liberal ones. A statistical analysis of Mr Bonica’s ideological scores reveals that the leftward drift of the Democratic Party has not resulted in primary voters placing much weight on left-wing ideology. Voters were more inclined to reward women, incumbents and candidates who seemed a good fit for their districts."
Here’s Why Some Progressives Are Tearing Each Other Apart - "If the conservative Ancestral Story is anchored in ancient theologies like those in the Bible and Quran, and the Social Liberal Story is rooted in Enlightenment philosophy, the Structural Oppression Story is grounded in a neo-Marxist analysis of society known as Critical Theory, most often applied as Critical Race Theory or Critical Gender Theory...
Has a questionable accusation of sexual harassment cost a man his job or reputation? Remember how many others got away with it.
When each of us is seen as representative of a group of people, restitution and retribution don’t necessarily have to accrue to the actual victims or oppressors. Ideally, yes. But when that is not possible, another member of their tribe may do. Like conservative Christians, adherents of oppression narrative sometimes believe—or act as if—one man can atone for the sins of another... Neither religious faith nor subjective experience is accountable. Both are untouchable from the standpoint of the scientific method, which—because humans are so prone to confirmatory thinking—has been called “what we know about how not to fool ourselves.” In the absence of a shared agreement about epistemology—how we decide what’s real—we have no means of converging on a shared set of facts."
Maybe if those opposing modern liberalism called it Critical Theory instead of Cultural Marxism it would be harder for liberals to dismiss them. But the lack of the M word would mobilise fewer people
Obama’s Speech on the State of American Democracy: Full Text - "sometimes I get into arguments with progressive friends about what the current political movement requires. There are well-meaning folks, passionate about social justice, who think that things have gotten so bad and the lines so starkly drawn that we have to fight fire with fire... eroding our civic institutions, and our civic trusts, and making people angrier, and yelling at each other, and making people cynical about government, that always works better for those who don’t believe in the power of collective action... we believe that in order to move this country forward, to actually solve problems and make people’s lives better, we need a well-functioning government. We need our civic institutions to work. We need cooperation among people of different political persuasions. And to make that work, we have to restore our faith in democracy. You have to bring people together, not tear them apart. We need majorities in Congress and state legislatures who are serious about governing and want to bring about real change and improvements in people’s lives. And we won’t win people over by calling them names or dismissing entire chunks of the country as racist or sexist or homophobic. When I say bring people together, I mean all of our people. This whole notion that has sprung up recently about Democrats need to choose between trying to appeal to white working-class voters or voters of color and women and LGBT Americans, that’s nonsense. I don’t buy that. I got votes from every demographic. We won because we reached out to everybody and competing everywhere and by fighting for every vote, and that’s what we’ve got to do in this election and every election after that. And we can’t do that if we immediately disregard what others have to say from the start, because they are not like us, because they are white or they’re black or a man or a woman, or they’re gay or they’re straight. If we think that somehow there is no way they can understand how I’m feeling, and therefore don’t have any standing to speak on certain matters, because we’re only defined by certain characteristics. That doesn’t work if you want a healthy democracy. We can’t do that if we traffic in absolutes when it comes to policy."
Antifa can go after Obama next
Ocasio-Cortez Suggests Pelosi Is Targeting Her Because Pelosi Is Racist - "Pelosi has repeatedly mocked Ocasio-Cortez and the other three far-left freshmen House Democrats"
The Democratic Electorate on Twitter Is Not the Actual Democratic Electorate - The New York Times - "Perhaps the most telling poll of the Democratic primary season hasn’t been about the Democratic primary at all — but about the fallout from a 35-year-old racist photo on a yearbook page. Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia was pummeled on social media after the revelation, and virtually every Democratic presidential candidate demanded his resignation.Yet the majority of ordinary Democrats in Virginia said Mr. Northam should remain in office, according to a Washington Post/Schar School poll a week later. And black Democrats were likelier than white ones to say Mr. Northam should remain.Today’s Democratic Party is increasingly perceived as dominated by its “woke” left wing. But the views of Democrats on social media often bear little resemblance to those of the wider Democratic electorate. The outspoken group of Democratic-leaning voters on social media is outnumbered, roughly 2 to 1, by the more moderate, more diverse and less educated group of Democrats who typically don’t post political content online, according to data from the Hidden Tribes Project. This latter group has the numbers to decide the Democratic presidential nomination in favor of a relatively moderate establishment favorite, as it has often done in the past.
Democrats who do not post political content to social media sites are more likely to …
Identify themselves as moderates or conservatives
Say political correctness is a problem in the U.S.
Say they don’t follow the news much
Be African-American...
recent polls show that a majority of Democrats would rather see the party become more moderate than move leftward, even as progressives clamor for a Green New Deal or Medicare for all.
Democrats who post political content on social media are more likely to ...
Have a college degree
Be white
Say they have become more liberal in their lifetime
Say they have attended a protest in the last year
Say they have donated to a political organization in the last year...
The candidates of the progressive left, whether Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, speak with moral clarity. The strongest traditional liberal candidates, despite their pragmatic streak, speak with hopeful idealism, stemming from their relatively optimistic view of the country’s capacity to compromise, reform and change. Barack Obama took that tack in 2008, and Beto O’Rourke and Cory Booker might hope to in 2020.In recent decades, most of the candidates who have found their core strength among the party’s ideologically consistent, left-liberal activist base have lost. Gary Hart, Jerry Brown, Jesse Jackson, Howard Dean and Mr. Sanders all fell short against candidates of the party’s establishment, like Walter Mondale, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton. The establishment candidates won the nomination by counting on the rest of the party’s voters.The rest of the party is easy to miss. Not only is it less active on social media, but it is also under-represented in the well-educated, urban enclaves where journalists roam. It is under-represented in the Northern blue states and districts where most Democratic politicians win elections... it would also be a mistake to assume that outrage on social media means outrage throughout the broader electorate. And it would be a mistake to assume that more moderate Democrats are out of step with the party’s electorate"
Aka why Trump will win in 2020
Tim Murtaugh on Twitter - "Democrats running for president have officially lost it. Beto & Castro strongly imply that the Betsy Ross flag is a symbol of hatred. Do the rest of the Dems agree? Pictured here, of course, is the notorious flag prominently featured at President Obama's 2nd inauguration."
MATTHEWS: Republican slippery slope warnings bear out as Democrats target memorials to founding figures - "In the aftermath of the June 2015 mass murders of nine black churchgoers at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., by a crazed racist white man who flew the Confederate flag as inspiration, a national debate raged on public displays of memorials related to the Confederacy... The slippery slope-warners were right. As Confederate reminders are disappearing from the public landscape with regularity and little fanfare, the left has indeed moved on to their next targets.The week before Nike’s decision, the San Francisco School Board voted to paint over an 83-year-old George Washington mural displayed at George Washington High School. In addition to Washington, the mural also depicts a dead Indian and black slaves. Even art historians on the left are upset over the move, which was made over fears that the images were triggering to students.Movements are also underway in other states to cover up or otherwise remove similar murals. Some have been vandalized. Just a few days after the San Francisco School Board’s vote, Virginia’s Charlottesville City Council voted to stop observing former President Thomas Jefferson’s birthday as a paid holiday. “Thomas Jefferson is the R. Kelly of the American Enlightenment,” said one University of Virginia professor.Jefferson was the university’s founder.Christopher Columbus, though not a founding father, is also a target of the left’s ire. “Columbus Day” is now “Indigenous Peoples Day” in many cities throughout the U.S. The late President George H.W. Bush is also not a founding father, but students at the historically black Hampton University and at least one Democratic Congressman want a recently unveiled statue of him removed.In a recent piece, my writing colleague Susie Moore made probably one of the best cases for leaving monuments and murals the way they are, arguing they should be used as teachable moments instead.“History isn’t utopian and historical figures, including our founding fathers, aren’t demi-gods. They were ‘men, no more no less.’ The current trend to willfully erase them and their deeds — both good and bad — by removing markers and symbols referencing them is probably well-intentioned in most instances, but so very ill-conceived. It lets the perfect be not just the enemy of the good but swallow it whole,” Moore wrote.She concluded by saying that we “should remember them. We should honor their accomplishments and learn from their mistakes.”"
So much for the slippery slope being a paranoid conservative myth
Obama’s DHS Secretary: Democrat Immigration Plans ‘Tantamount To Declaring Publicly That We Have Open Borders’ - "As Democrat presidential candidates declare they would decriminalize illegal immigration, former members of President Barack Obama’s administration — who have firsthand knowledge of the issue — are urging caution... “That is unworkable, unwise and does not have the support of a majority of American people or the Congress, and if we had such a policy, instead of 100,000 apprehensions a month, it will be multiples of that.”Johnson also pushed back on Democrat outrage over detention centers and the notion that President Donald Trump is putting kids in “cages.” “Chain link barriers, partitions, fences, cages -- whatever you want to call them -- were not invented on January 2017," Johnson said, according to Fox News. He also said that the “cages” were created because of a mass influx of immigration for which the government was unprepared. He said the illegal immigrants would be held for up to 72 hours before being transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services. “During that 72 hour period, when you have something that is a multiple -- like four times of what you're accustomed to in the existing infrastructure, you've got to find places quickly to put kids," he said. He added that the alternative was releasing them to “the streets.”Johnson is not alone in this criticism of Democrats. At the end of June, Obama’s former head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Thomas Homan, also defended Trump from claims that he was behind the cages. “During that 72 hour period, when you have something that is a multiple -- like four times of what you're accustomed to in the existing infrastructure, you've got to find places quickly to put kids," he said. He added that the alternative was releasing them to “the streets.”Johnson is not alone in this criticism of Democrats. At the end of June, Obama’s former head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Thomas Homan, also defended Trump from claims that he was behind the cages. “I’ve been to that facility, where they talk about cages. That facility was built under President Obama under (Homeland Security) Secretary Jeh Johnson. I was there because I was there when it was built,” Homan said."
Every Democrat At The Debate Said They Would Extend Health Care To Undocumented Immigrants - "“All Democrats just raised their hands for giving millions of illegal aliens unlimited health care. How about taking care of American Citizens first!?” Trump tweeted.The support from these presidential candidates is a departure from current law"
Andrew Quackson on Twitter - "if Democrats want to give free healthcare to immigrants, why don't they deport them to Mexico where healthcare is guaranteed in the Mexican Constitution?"
The Insanity of Democrats Attacking Pete Buttigieg—for Not Being Gay Enough - "The fact that the press and political class are even taking Buttigieg’s candidacy seriously is a historic first. An openly gay candidate has never qualified for a presidential debate, let alone become president (the jury is still out on James Buchanan, but whatever his orientation, he wasn’t leading any Pride parades in 1857).Yet some liberal voices are now discounting Buttigieg’s sexual orientation (“still a white man”), or at least diminishing the historic discrimination gays have faced as compared with women and people of color (“most of the time gender and race are way heavier burdens than sexual orientation in the professional and political environment,” and “there was a time when it was illegal for us to marry interracially, women and POC could not even own property but a gay white man could”). For those critics, his race and gender negate the little credit they accord him for being gay. All of this seems like an attempt to write Buttigieg off as “just another white guy,” standing in the way of more diverse candidates. It’s the Oppression Olympics at its worst: In a battle to prove that one community is more discriminated against than another, we tear each other apart rather than unite in common cause. The arguments against Buttigieg fall roughly into four categories. The first is that Buttigieg acts too straight to have any gay cred... Buttigieg’s critics also allege that being gay isn’t important to him... There’s also the suggestion that being white and male trumps the fact that Buttigieg is gay... Mayor Pete has touched a chord with many Democrats because he’s an amazing candidate with a compelling personal story. He’s a millennial war veteran (who served in Afghanistan under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy), speaks seven languages, is a Rhodes Scholar, and has an almost Mr. Rogers-like demeanor that’s as calming as it is captivating. Maybe he’s so popular because he’s just that good"
The reality of intersectionality
Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts - "The Slate author below analyzes his candidacy through an intersectional lens - race, gender, sexual preference, etc. She also weighs his relative purity in each identity category and how he compares to other candidates. It’s a bit weird to watch how she measures his relative membership in various identitarian tribes with little attention paid to public policy and leadership style"
Democrats Tolerated Anti-Semitism, and Now They Can’t Control It - "Quite unlike the GOP’s experience, though, Democrats have encountered fierce resistance to this assault on the bigotry that lingers within their ranks... A watered-down resolution condemning anti-Jewish prejudice within the Congress was apparently the only thing that could still pass the House with united Democratic support. But even this failed to satisfy Omar’s progressive allies. Following what was described as a bitter internal debate, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer revealed that the resolution had been put on hold indefinitely... Liberal partisans know exactly what Democrats are doing here. Indeed, they explained why generic condemnations of hatred in the face of discrete episodes of bigotry entirely missed the point amid the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. “All lives matter,” was the response from those who were discomfited by the movement’s focus on excessive uses of force by police against African-Americans. Of course, all lives do matter, those on the left observed, but to insist upon such language in the face of specific episodes of bias targeting distinct demographics is obtuse. The effort isn’t to restore common bonds, but to diminish the validity of the Black Lives Matter movement’s grievance. Today, as Democratic House leadership calculates precisely how forcefully to condemn anti-Semitic sentiments within its ranks without alienating anti-Semites, a full-scale rebellion is brewing. Rep. Rashida Tlaib called the effort to condemn anti-Semitism “unprecedented” and questioned Pelosi’s judgment. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez insisted that Pelosi’s resolution was “hurtful” and that there should be similar votes condemning all manner of bigotries ranging from xenophobia, to homophobia, to “anti-blackness.” Pelosi is a “typical white feminist upholding the patriarchy doing the dirty work of powerful white men,” wrote Women’s March co-chair Linda Sarsour. These are not nobodies. These are core figures in the Democratic coalition, individuals who are now or were only recently some of the party’s most visible new faces. It isn’t just the activist wing that has effectively sided with Omar in this fight. The New York Times claimed that Omar’s attack on the Israeli lobbying group AIPAC raised important questions about the influence Zionists and Jews wield. The Washington Post suggested that Pelosi would invite a prolonged internecine debate over America’s policy toward Israel by unequivocally condemning anti-Jewish bigotry. These are not fringe institutions expressing the concerns of a marginal constituency. It was only one month ago that the Democratic Party was united in disgust after Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam admitted to appearing in photographs as a younger man in blackface"
Democrats' 'Sudden' Hard-Left Turn Has Been Years In The Making - "Sure, today's Democrats and their allies in the big media talk about the "extreme right" and "ultra right" Republican Party. They call rank and file Republicans racists and nazis.But, as numerous studies and polls confirm, it's the Democratic Party that has moved far left — while the Republican Party has more or less remained where it was... Pew's methodology was simple. Starting in 1994, they asked Democrats and Republicans where they stood on 10 key issues, ranging from welfare and racial discrimination, to defense and immigration.The results were stark and unequivocal.As we reported in October of 2017, "The results show that while the Republican center moved only slightly to the right over the past 23 years, the center of the Democratic part shifted far to the left."Likewise, a 2015 academic study by scholars at the University of Oregon, Princeton University and the University of Houston, found that state Democratic parties since the late 1990s have "become more liberal." But the Republicans, again, haven't moved ideologically much at all.There is a deeper history to this, of course. In 1972, the Democratic Convention was hijacked by far-left supporters and delegates for progressive peace candidate George McGovern. Since then, the Democratic Party has been drifting more or less continually to the left... Ronald Reagan, himself once a proud Democrat, said it best: "I didn't leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party left me.""
What the Midterms Showed About Progressive Candidates - "Almost every candidate in whom Democrats at the national level invested emotional energy—Beto O’Rourke in Texas, Andrew Gillum in Florida, Stacey Abrams in Georgia—appears to have lost. Almost every detested Republican appears to have survived: Devin Nunes, Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, even Duncan Hunter, a California Republican under indictment... There is no progressive majority in America. There is no progressive plurality in America. And there certainly is no progressive Electoral College coalition in America... In past “flip the House” elections—2010, 2006, 1994—the party of the president suffered large-to-calamitous drops in vote total as compared with the previous presidential election... In 2018, however, Republicans dropped only 20 percent of their votes cast as compared with 2016"
Progressivism Is Radicalizing the Democratic Party - "For most of his career, Sanders—who identified as an independent but who caucused with Democrats—was treated like a curiosity and even a bit of a crazy uncle by Democrats, who considered the label socialist to be a smear.No more.The most prominent socialist in America, Sanders has gained a following... Among the freshman class of House Democrats, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—now the second-most-famous democratic socialist in America—is the unquestioned star among the base. According to Dan Balz of The Washington Post, Ocasio-Cortez is “the titular leader of a progressive grass-roots movement pushing the party to the left.” (The mere mention of her name elicits spontaneous applause on programs like The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.)Another prominent member of the freshman class of House Democrats, Ilhan Omar, recently dismissed former President Barack Obama—who not that long ago defined the progressive wing of the Democratic Party—as too right-wing... On every front, the Democratic Party is moving left, and the power of the left can be seen in the fact that even Democrats who oppose some of these policies are wary of attacking them. When it comes to challenging the progressive wing, Democratic candidates act as if they are walking on eggshells... This embrace of radical progressivism and its colossal price tag is almost certainly going to hurt Democrats politically—most of their gains in 2018 were in suburban districts, among voters who tend to recoil at radicalism of any kind—and it could be politically disastrous... The trend is toward growing hostility to free markets and capitalism, in many cases to the point of barely contained contempt for it and for the wealthy... Democrats want to focus their attention on the flaws and corruptions of Donald Trump, and they have a lot to work with. But you won’t become a saint through other people’s sins, Anton Chekhov said, and the Democratic Party will not become a responsible governing party because of the faults of President Trump."
Far-left candidates did poorly in the Democratic primaries - The centre can hold - "the party has moved leftward a bit. The same Pew Research Centre study found that 28% of partisans described themselves as liberal in 2000, compared with 46% in 2017. The candidates have moved, too. The Economist’s analysis of a measure of candidate ideology, developed by Adam Bonica of Stanford University, finds that the average Democratic primary-winner in 2018 is indeed more liberal than in 2016 (see chart). Democratic candidates are also more scattered over the ideological spectrum than they have been in recent years. A higher share are either extremely liberal or atypically moderate compared with previous cycles. Data from Third Way, a centre-left think-tank, show that candidates endorsed by the progressive groups Our Revolution and Justice Democrats won their primaries no more than 37% of the time. Most of those victories came in places Republicans are almost certain to win. On the other hand, candidates belonging to the moderate New Democrat Coalition or those endorsed by the party establishment won 71 of their 78 primaries. Jim Kessler of Third Way says that voters were looking for fresh faces, not necessarily for liberal ones. A statistical analysis of Mr Bonica’s ideological scores reveals that the leftward drift of the Democratic Party has not resulted in primary voters placing much weight on left-wing ideology. Voters were more inclined to reward women, incumbents and candidates who seemed a good fit for their districts."
Here’s Why Some Progressives Are Tearing Each Other Apart - "If the conservative Ancestral Story is anchored in ancient theologies like those in the Bible and Quran, and the Social Liberal Story is rooted in Enlightenment philosophy, the Structural Oppression Story is grounded in a neo-Marxist analysis of society known as Critical Theory, most often applied as Critical Race Theory or Critical Gender Theory...
Has a questionable accusation of sexual harassment cost a man his job or reputation? Remember how many others got away with it.
When each of us is seen as representative of a group of people, restitution and retribution don’t necessarily have to accrue to the actual victims or oppressors. Ideally, yes. But when that is not possible, another member of their tribe may do. Like conservative Christians, adherents of oppression narrative sometimes believe—or act as if—one man can atone for the sins of another... Neither religious faith nor subjective experience is accountable. Both are untouchable from the standpoint of the scientific method, which—because humans are so prone to confirmatory thinking—has been called “what we know about how not to fool ourselves.” In the absence of a shared agreement about epistemology—how we decide what’s real—we have no means of converging on a shared set of facts."
Maybe if those opposing modern liberalism called it Critical Theory instead of Cultural Marxism it would be harder for liberals to dismiss them. But the lack of the M word would mobilise fewer people
Obama’s Speech on the State of American Democracy: Full Text - "sometimes I get into arguments with progressive friends about what the current political movement requires. There are well-meaning folks, passionate about social justice, who think that things have gotten so bad and the lines so starkly drawn that we have to fight fire with fire... eroding our civic institutions, and our civic trusts, and making people angrier, and yelling at each other, and making people cynical about government, that always works better for those who don’t believe in the power of collective action... we believe that in order to move this country forward, to actually solve problems and make people’s lives better, we need a well-functioning government. We need our civic institutions to work. We need cooperation among people of different political persuasions. And to make that work, we have to restore our faith in democracy. You have to bring people together, not tear them apart. We need majorities in Congress and state legislatures who are serious about governing and want to bring about real change and improvements in people’s lives. And we won’t win people over by calling them names or dismissing entire chunks of the country as racist or sexist or homophobic. When I say bring people together, I mean all of our people. This whole notion that has sprung up recently about Democrats need to choose between trying to appeal to white working-class voters or voters of color and women and LGBT Americans, that’s nonsense. I don’t buy that. I got votes from every demographic. We won because we reached out to everybody and competing everywhere and by fighting for every vote, and that’s what we’ve got to do in this election and every election after that. And we can’t do that if we immediately disregard what others have to say from the start, because they are not like us, because they are white or they’re black or a man or a woman, or they’re gay or they’re straight. If we think that somehow there is no way they can understand how I’m feeling, and therefore don’t have any standing to speak on certain matters, because we’re only defined by certain characteristics. That doesn’t work if you want a healthy democracy. We can’t do that if we traffic in absolutes when it comes to policy."
Antifa can go after Obama next
Moral Purity
BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, Moral Purity
"[On declining corporate money because the company has done something wrong] One of the advantages, though, of taking money from corporations is that you don't have to be reliant upon state funding, you don't have to be reliant upon public funding. So it gives you actually much more independence and freedom to introduce things that are perhaps unpopular, experimental. That maybe the state wouldn't like.
And actually, you know, with state money, you can also challenge your sponsors. So, flexibility, freedom, experimentation, that's what this money brings. And I would also say that, I just don't think this is something that the public support. You know, museums and galleries, figures are just out. You've got millions and millions of people going every single year, they can go for free because of this money. And I think this is really something that is down to a few individuals, and really the crisis of confidence of arts organizations.
[On the National Portrait Gallery dropping a £1 million grant from the Sackler family] I think Michael was right that these people are spineless now, and the National Portrait Gallery has created a real problem for itself in the future...
I think what we're seeing with the Man Booker, and with the National Portrait Gallery at the dropping the cycle, I think we are in serious danger of losing support for the Arts in this country and internationally. I think the arts are being relentlessly politicized, it's not just over sponsorship, it’s associated with things like Cecil Rhodes, it’s cultural appropriation.
It’s a very dangerous time for the arts and given that they are the bedrock of civilized society, they create empathy and curiosity. They allow that to happen, we should be very, very worried... they are self censoring, not to say anything that might offend these, this minority group of people that are standing outside with the placards, they are self censoring. And in fact, the art should be the absolute opposite, which is open, experimental and prepared to say the unthinkable, say the unthinkable and be controversial...
‘I know people who are opposed to big sugar, they say it's the new tobacco. I know people who are against salt, they say it's going to threaten people's lives. I mean, is there any corporate sponsorship that you think should be allowed?’
‘Yes... Artists, scientists, key stakeholders are raising specific ethical questions about specific industries to look beyond a red line. So there is a consensus… the artists themselves. Last year 48 scientists begged to complain to the Science Museum saying you shouldn't be partnering with the fossil fuel industry’...
‘One of the biggest stakeholders is the public, who will be denied access to a huge number of museums. So I wanted to ask you about state funding... do you think that's clean money?’
‘I think state funding is much better and much more effective. And there are two key reasons’
‘But you know, the state puts lots of onus, lots of strings on that money. And also it's, you know, the state that went to war in Iraq, that's done all sorts of things, got blood on its hands, blah dee blah’
‘The company that has, the companies that have benefited from the invasion of Iraq has, again been the fossil fuel industry, but on the state funding point, just to be clear, is that’
‘You don't mind the army, it’s just the fuel company you don’t like, that’s hilarious’
‘So just to return to the state funding point, the large corporate sponsors are the ones currently determining where the distribution of funding goes. Now, if we actually took a stronger stance on tax, and taxed them effectively, made sure that they don't sort of shift money offshore. If we stop subsidizing and giving tax breaks.’
‘So state money, which is made up of the taxes of the corporates that you don't like, is all right, that's classic. So if they pay their taxes, and they come from fossil fuel companies, they're going to be the state funding though. Surely there's no such thing as clean money’
‘Those companies focus on the top institutions in order to launder their reputations. And we've got small museums and galleries across the country but facing the threat of closure, and they are not looking to support those smaller museums and galleries’...
‘What is it about the left that makes them more puritanical than the right then?’
‘Well, I don't know. I suppose that they think that they’re the goodies, don't they? If I was always to think of the Star Wars metaphor, you know, Jedi vs Sith and if you ask them who they are, they would definitely think that they are the Jedi, you know, it's a sense of being on the side of right and certainly at this point in my life. It wasn't always like this. Like when I was at university the left weren’t as censorious as they are now but now they've got this kind of elevated sense of moral purpose’...
‘There’s nothing wrong with having a sense of moral purpose though is there?’
‘Well, not if it gets in the way of my sense of moral purpose and my desire to have a cooked breakfast… I just don't like people telling me what to do Giles. That's what I've realized, a lot of material at the moment is coming from the fact of whether it's the EU, whether it's government, whether it's people on Twitter, I just don't like people telling me what to do. I mean, you look at today, there was the news about these cars where you literally can't drive faster than 70 miles an hour, we've been infantilized’...
‘Purity and disgust that, is that associated with the right, very strongly associated with the right’
‘Well it was when I was younger, right, it was all Mary Whitehouse trying to you know, get things banned on TV and swearing and stuff but now the thing that probably offend people more on television is the food rather than the nudity. And that is a massive shift, isn't it in the space of about 20 years’...
‘Is there a danger that moral grandstanding for political reasons then deprives, you know, in this instance, millions of people, free access to museums and galleries are kind of unexpected, unintended consequences?’
‘I think that actually, you know, looking at the morality of it, and for instance, refusing money for certain things, actually forces us to change the way that we operate. So if, for instance, you know, museums are currently reliant on, you know, oil companies, on people who, perhaps, earn money in kind of, you know, like non moral ways, then we can look at different ways to fund them. And you know, you can have a different economics that puts more money from government into museums.’
‘Well, I think that was what we were saying before that state funding of arts has been complained about by lots of artists, because they interfere in terms of artistic freedom. So I suppose that thing is that one gesture, and then suddenly, there's no Sackler money, and then that's actually going to have a very big impact’...
It's really really interesting, the grammar of this conversation, because when we like something, we call it moral, and we don't like something, we call it moralizing. Now, actually, the difference between moral and moralizing is not entirely clear to me. Is that actually moralizing contains an element of the moral and the other way around. And the idea that you can pull these things apart, that there is a really nasty thing called moralizing and there's a terribly good thing called moral, actually they bleed into each other...
The characteristics of a witch hunt are the hue and cry, and that is achieved through social media. But the first thing is that somebody points the finger without proof, without evidence, and that sets the hue and cry going, and that's precisely what we’re seeing"
Tax money is unlimited!
"[On declining corporate money because the company has done something wrong] One of the advantages, though, of taking money from corporations is that you don't have to be reliant upon state funding, you don't have to be reliant upon public funding. So it gives you actually much more independence and freedom to introduce things that are perhaps unpopular, experimental. That maybe the state wouldn't like.
And actually, you know, with state money, you can also challenge your sponsors. So, flexibility, freedom, experimentation, that's what this money brings. And I would also say that, I just don't think this is something that the public support. You know, museums and galleries, figures are just out. You've got millions and millions of people going every single year, they can go for free because of this money. And I think this is really something that is down to a few individuals, and really the crisis of confidence of arts organizations.
[On the National Portrait Gallery dropping a £1 million grant from the Sackler family] I think Michael was right that these people are spineless now, and the National Portrait Gallery has created a real problem for itself in the future...
I think what we're seeing with the Man Booker, and with the National Portrait Gallery at the dropping the cycle, I think we are in serious danger of losing support for the Arts in this country and internationally. I think the arts are being relentlessly politicized, it's not just over sponsorship, it’s associated with things like Cecil Rhodes, it’s cultural appropriation.
It’s a very dangerous time for the arts and given that they are the bedrock of civilized society, they create empathy and curiosity. They allow that to happen, we should be very, very worried... they are self censoring, not to say anything that might offend these, this minority group of people that are standing outside with the placards, they are self censoring. And in fact, the art should be the absolute opposite, which is open, experimental and prepared to say the unthinkable, say the unthinkable and be controversial...
‘I know people who are opposed to big sugar, they say it's the new tobacco. I know people who are against salt, they say it's going to threaten people's lives. I mean, is there any corporate sponsorship that you think should be allowed?’
‘Yes... Artists, scientists, key stakeholders are raising specific ethical questions about specific industries to look beyond a red line. So there is a consensus… the artists themselves. Last year 48 scientists begged to complain to the Science Museum saying you shouldn't be partnering with the fossil fuel industry’...
‘One of the biggest stakeholders is the public, who will be denied access to a huge number of museums. So I wanted to ask you about state funding... do you think that's clean money?’
‘I think state funding is much better and much more effective. And there are two key reasons’
‘But you know, the state puts lots of onus, lots of strings on that money. And also it's, you know, the state that went to war in Iraq, that's done all sorts of things, got blood on its hands, blah dee blah’
‘The company that has, the companies that have benefited from the invasion of Iraq has, again been the fossil fuel industry, but on the state funding point, just to be clear, is that’
‘You don't mind the army, it’s just the fuel company you don’t like, that’s hilarious’
‘So just to return to the state funding point, the large corporate sponsors are the ones currently determining where the distribution of funding goes. Now, if we actually took a stronger stance on tax, and taxed them effectively, made sure that they don't sort of shift money offshore. If we stop subsidizing and giving tax breaks.’
‘So state money, which is made up of the taxes of the corporates that you don't like, is all right, that's classic. So if they pay their taxes, and they come from fossil fuel companies, they're going to be the state funding though. Surely there's no such thing as clean money’
‘Those companies focus on the top institutions in order to launder their reputations. And we've got small museums and galleries across the country but facing the threat of closure, and they are not looking to support those smaller museums and galleries’...
‘What is it about the left that makes them more puritanical than the right then?’
‘Well, I don't know. I suppose that they think that they’re the goodies, don't they? If I was always to think of the Star Wars metaphor, you know, Jedi vs Sith and if you ask them who they are, they would definitely think that they are the Jedi, you know, it's a sense of being on the side of right and certainly at this point in my life. It wasn't always like this. Like when I was at university the left weren’t as censorious as they are now but now they've got this kind of elevated sense of moral purpose’...
‘There’s nothing wrong with having a sense of moral purpose though is there?’
‘Well, not if it gets in the way of my sense of moral purpose and my desire to have a cooked breakfast… I just don't like people telling me what to do Giles. That's what I've realized, a lot of material at the moment is coming from the fact of whether it's the EU, whether it's government, whether it's people on Twitter, I just don't like people telling me what to do. I mean, you look at today, there was the news about these cars where you literally can't drive faster than 70 miles an hour, we've been infantilized’...
‘Purity and disgust that, is that associated with the right, very strongly associated with the right’
‘Well it was when I was younger, right, it was all Mary Whitehouse trying to you know, get things banned on TV and swearing and stuff but now the thing that probably offend people more on television is the food rather than the nudity. And that is a massive shift, isn't it in the space of about 20 years’...
‘Is there a danger that moral grandstanding for political reasons then deprives, you know, in this instance, millions of people, free access to museums and galleries are kind of unexpected, unintended consequences?’
‘I think that actually, you know, looking at the morality of it, and for instance, refusing money for certain things, actually forces us to change the way that we operate. So if, for instance, you know, museums are currently reliant on, you know, oil companies, on people who, perhaps, earn money in kind of, you know, like non moral ways, then we can look at different ways to fund them. And you know, you can have a different economics that puts more money from government into museums.’
‘Well, I think that was what we were saying before that state funding of arts has been complained about by lots of artists, because they interfere in terms of artistic freedom. So I suppose that thing is that one gesture, and then suddenly, there's no Sackler money, and then that's actually going to have a very big impact’...
It's really really interesting, the grammar of this conversation, because when we like something, we call it moral, and we don't like something, we call it moralizing. Now, actually, the difference between moral and moralizing is not entirely clear to me. Is that actually moralizing contains an element of the moral and the other way around. And the idea that you can pull these things apart, that there is a really nasty thing called moralizing and there's a terribly good thing called moral, actually they bleed into each other...
The characteristics of a witch hunt are the hue and cry, and that is achieved through social media. But the first thing is that somebody points the finger without proof, without evidence, and that sets the hue and cry going, and that's precisely what we’re seeing"
Tax money is unlimited!
Links - 13th July 2019 (1)
She was falsely accused of being racist in a video that went viral. Then some on the internet came to her rescue - "Just about every week we see the same story. Someone takes a jittery smartphone video of a white person caught in the act of doing something that's labeled racist. An army of online commentators mobilizes. The video goes viral. And the person in the video is publicly shamed, often losing a job or being ostracized by the community. His or her name becomes a hashtag for hate.The circulation of these racist outrage videos is so common that they've become the online version of background noise. The social scientist Eugenia Siapera says they often trigger "ambient digital racism" -- racially toxic online posts from ordinary people that are so commonplace they no longer shock... Chipotle fired Moran after the video went viral. Soon after that, she would be vindicated. But while the internet mob moved on, she hasn't. "Life is really difficult," she said. "Everything has changed."She talks as if she's experiencing some digitally induced form of post-traumatic stress disorder. Mood swings, anxiety -- she sometimes recoils when someone tries to take a smartphone video or picture of her...
There were three factors at play that made her story so disturbing -- one of which offers at least some hope.
Reason 1: The power of confirmation bias... The incident was framed as a white person's humiliation of black men, but Moran is Mexican-American. Still, many people kept identifying her as white as her story spread... caution doesn't get you clicks on the internet. Why pause to see if a sensational video is true when you can quickly post it and get attention with a snarky comment?
Reason 2: The power of internet mob justice... rage has become the fuel of online discourse. Critics accuse President Trump of normalizing racism by referring to Mexican immigrants as "rapists" and African nations as "shithole" countries. But Moran discovered that some people on the left can be just as vicious when they denounce racism... truth is unimportant in online shame culture, Kain wrote, because"whoever is most outraged wins."... "always the shaming circumvents due process, precedes true justice, and serves mainly to inflate the sense of self-importance and egos of its progenitors."...
Reason 3: All you need is one person with a question... Moran's reputation was salvaged by a stranger. He decided to ask a question no one else seemed to ask after watching the video...
When a crime is committed, someone is supposed to pay. But where is justice for me?She has received no apologies from any member of the internet mob that stalked her.No contrition from the anonymous commentators who branded her a racist, called her names and threatened her safety.She knows she's not the only one who's been falsely labeled a racist."
Pakistan vet charged with blasphemy over medicine 'wrapped in religious text' - "A Hindu veterinary doctor in south-east Pakistan has been charged under the country's strict blasphemy laws after allegedly selling medicine wrapped in paper bearing Islamic religious text.An angry crowd set fire to his clinic near Mirpur Khas, Sindh province, and other Hindu-owned shops were looted.The vet said his use of the paper, apparently torn from an Islamic studies school textbook, was a mistake."
Somehow this sort of thing gets less attention than more minor incidents in India
Yiqin Fu on Twitter - "A Germany-based Chinese programmer said he and some friends have identified 100k porn actresses from around the world, cross-referencing faces in porn videos with social media profile pictures. The goal is to help others check whether their girlfriends ever acted in those films"
DIY Facial Recognition for Porn Is a Dystopian Disaster - ""This is horrendous and a pitch-perfect example of how these systems, globally, enable male dominance," Soraya Chemaly, author of Rage Becomes Her, tweeted on Tuesday about the alleged project. "Surveillance, impersonation, extortion, misinformation all happen to women first and then move to the public sphere, where, once men are affected, it starts to get attention." Whether the Weibo user’s claims are trustworthy or not is beside the point, now that experts in feminist studies and machine learning have decried this project as algorithmically-targeted harassment"
Being against female hypoagency means you're misogynistic
Man Restoring a Classic Synthesizer Goes On a 9-Hour Acid Trip After Accidentally Touching LSD-Covered Knob
Home Ministry to retain religion on MyKad - "The government will not remove one’s religious status on the identity card, Home Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said today.He said the government has yet to conduct any findings on the suggestion to remove one’s religious status on the MyKad.A Muslim’s faith is printed as “Islam” on the physical card, but the religious status of non-Muslims is not printed on the document, even though it is kept in the National Registration Department’s database."
Muslim registries are Islamophobic. Therefore Malaysia is Islamophobic
40% of India's MPs face criminal charges, including rape and murder: Study - "None of the 185 lawmakers from the previous Parliament who faced criminal cases was convicted. Many have returned for a new term.Firebrand Hindu nationalist Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, a newly elected BJP MP, faces a terrorism charge over a 2008 attack near a mosque that killed six people. She denies the charges and says she was framed by a previous Congress government.Parties often brush off charges against their candidates by saying they were victims of political vendettas."
Japanese spas feel the heat over 'tap water and bath salts' scandal - "The japanese swear by their therapeutic benefits, but the nation's hot springs have been hit by scandal after some were found to consist of nothing more than warm tap water laced with bath salts.Owners of traditional springs spend millions of yen every year pumping geo-thermally heated water to the surface, but some operators have discovered that it is cheaper to set up outdoor spas - known as onsen - in places where no natural spring exists.Under the 1948 Hot Spring Law, anyone who can harness a water source with a temperature of 25C or above can set up an onsen, no matter what the mineral content of the water. And, with the number of such spas doubling in the past 40 years, business has become increasingly cut-throat... Spas that have to pump up water, expensively, from far below the surface have taken to recycling water that has already been used by previous customers, in order to cut costs. That has led to problems such as germs proliferating - seven people died of legionnaires' disease in Miyazaki in 2002. Now the environment ministry is to require owners to give a chemical analysis of their waters to customers, who pay up to yen20,000 (£95) for an overnight stay in a traditional inn with a shared spa."
From 2007
Parents sue, saying Harrisburg police violated rights of 15-year-old killed when he crashed stolen car after chase - pennlive.com - "The parents of a 15-year-old Harrisburg boy who was killed when the stolen car he was driving crashed into a tree during a chase by city police has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city.Waleska Santiago and Jaime Winston claim the pursuit that killed their son Kobe Santiago in November was “reckless, dangerous and unreasonable” and should not even have been initiated by an officer... Kobe’s parents claim the pursuit violated a “clandestine” city police policy that bars officers from engaging in chases in cases that don’t involve “forcible felonies,” such as robberies and assaults. Through sources, PennLive confirmed such a policy exists."
I'm surprised they're not claiming law enforcement is racist
Video of Wendy's employee taking bubble bath in restaurant sink goes viral - "A Wendy’s employee was captured on video taking a bubble bath in the kitchen restaurant, a gag that got him fired... Yahoo Lifestyle contacted the woman who filmed the bath and her coworker for comment. A Wendy’s employee wrote on Facebook, “He was off the clock and the ‘repulsive’ incident was two minutes long. People have done it before and the only reason it’s a problem now is because old people have access to Facebook.”... Haley Leach, the woman who posted the Facebook video writing, “I don’t suggest anyone eating at the Milton Wendy’s again” did not return Yahoo Lifestyle’s inquiry.According to The Daytona Beach News-Journal, Leach wrote, “The actions in the video were appalling and I felt like the public had the right to know...”"
Maybe an online mob will try to get Leach fired for racism
While you're sleeping, your iPhone stays busy harvesting data - "You might assume you can count on Apple to sweat all the privacy details. After all, it touted in a recent ad: "What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone."... iPhone apps I discovered tracking me by passing information to third parties - just while I was asleep - include Microsoft OneDrive, Intuit's Mint, Nike, Spotify, The Washington Post and IBM's The Weather Channel. One app, the crime-alert service Citizen, shared personally identifiable information, in violation of its published privacy policy. And your iPhone doesn't feed data trackers only while you sleep. In a single week, I encountered over 5,400 trackers, mostly in apps, not including the incessant Yelp traffic. According to privacy firm Disconnect, which helped test my iPhone, those unwanted trackers would have spewed out 1.5 gigabytes of data over the span of a month. That's half of an entire basic wireless service plan from AT&T... Citizen, the app for location-based crime reports, published that it wouldn't share "your name or other personally identifying information". Yet when I ran my test, I found it repeatedly sent my phone number, e-mail and exact GPS coordinates to the tracker Amplitude."
ISIS Lays Down Arms After Katy Perry's Impassioned Plea To 'Like, Just Co-Exist' | The Babylon Bee - "Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, released a statement Wednesday confirming that ISIS would be immediately surrendering its fight to establish a powerful caliphate after viewing an interview in which pop singer Katy Perry said, “The greatest thing we can do just unite and love on each other and like, no barriers, no borders, like, we all need to just co-exist.” The powerful statement which single-handedly dismantled ISIS came shortly after a terrorist attack on civilians in Manchester killed 22 people, and led the reclusive head of ISIS to hold an emergency press conference declaring the group’s jihad finished... al-Baghdadi further confirmed that a recent advertisement in which Kendall Jenner offered a group of riot police a Pepsi was also influential in his decision to immediately cease their murderous reign of terror and lead ISIS down a path of peace."
It's Easier To Get Good Pizza In New York Than In Most of Italy - "most pizzerias across non-Naples parts of Italy only serve pizza—and not very good pizza, at that—because tourists demand it. Depending where you go, a pizza in Milan or Rome can be fundamentally different from Neapolitan pizza, and is often made with low-quality ingredients, and by pizzaioli that have no idea what they're doing other than topping a simple crust with some form of tomato sauce and cheese... The dirty little secret about Italian cuisine is that it's highly regional, and that the only place where you can find great pizza pretty much anywhere consistently is in Naples... You know where there are a lot of Neapolitans outside of Naples? That's right—New York City. In fact, America's first pizzeria was opened by a Neapolitan, and New York-style pizza was directly inspired by Neapolitan pizza."
Only Half Of Your Friends Actually Like You - "half of the people you consider a friend probably don’t feel the same about you... Robin Dunbar, a British anthropologist, led a study that found we only have room to cultivate a limited number of relationships — approximately 150 relationships, max, and only about five close friends."
There were three factors at play that made her story so disturbing -- one of which offers at least some hope.
Reason 1: The power of confirmation bias... The incident was framed as a white person's humiliation of black men, but Moran is Mexican-American. Still, many people kept identifying her as white as her story spread... caution doesn't get you clicks on the internet. Why pause to see if a sensational video is true when you can quickly post it and get attention with a snarky comment?
Reason 2: The power of internet mob justice... rage has become the fuel of online discourse. Critics accuse President Trump of normalizing racism by referring to Mexican immigrants as "rapists" and African nations as "shithole" countries. But Moran discovered that some people on the left can be just as vicious when they denounce racism... truth is unimportant in online shame culture, Kain wrote, because"whoever is most outraged wins."... "always the shaming circumvents due process, precedes true justice, and serves mainly to inflate the sense of self-importance and egos of its progenitors."...
Reason 3: All you need is one person with a question... Moran's reputation was salvaged by a stranger. He decided to ask a question no one else seemed to ask after watching the video...
When a crime is committed, someone is supposed to pay. But where is justice for me?She has received no apologies from any member of the internet mob that stalked her.No contrition from the anonymous commentators who branded her a racist, called her names and threatened her safety.She knows she's not the only one who's been falsely labeled a racist."
Pakistan vet charged with blasphemy over medicine 'wrapped in religious text' - "A Hindu veterinary doctor in south-east Pakistan has been charged under the country's strict blasphemy laws after allegedly selling medicine wrapped in paper bearing Islamic religious text.An angry crowd set fire to his clinic near Mirpur Khas, Sindh province, and other Hindu-owned shops were looted.The vet said his use of the paper, apparently torn from an Islamic studies school textbook, was a mistake."
Somehow this sort of thing gets less attention than more minor incidents in India
Yiqin Fu on Twitter - "A Germany-based Chinese programmer said he and some friends have identified 100k porn actresses from around the world, cross-referencing faces in porn videos with social media profile pictures. The goal is to help others check whether their girlfriends ever acted in those films"
DIY Facial Recognition for Porn Is a Dystopian Disaster - ""This is horrendous and a pitch-perfect example of how these systems, globally, enable male dominance," Soraya Chemaly, author of Rage Becomes Her, tweeted on Tuesday about the alleged project. "Surveillance, impersonation, extortion, misinformation all happen to women first and then move to the public sphere, where, once men are affected, it starts to get attention." Whether the Weibo user’s claims are trustworthy or not is beside the point, now that experts in feminist studies and machine learning have decried this project as algorithmically-targeted harassment"
Being against female hypoagency means you're misogynistic
Man Restoring a Classic Synthesizer Goes On a 9-Hour Acid Trip After Accidentally Touching LSD-Covered Knob
Home Ministry to retain religion on MyKad - "The government will not remove one’s religious status on the identity card, Home Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said today.He said the government has yet to conduct any findings on the suggestion to remove one’s religious status on the MyKad.A Muslim’s faith is printed as “Islam” on the physical card, but the religious status of non-Muslims is not printed on the document, even though it is kept in the National Registration Department’s database."
Muslim registries are Islamophobic. Therefore Malaysia is Islamophobic
40% of India's MPs face criminal charges, including rape and murder: Study - "None of the 185 lawmakers from the previous Parliament who faced criminal cases was convicted. Many have returned for a new term.Firebrand Hindu nationalist Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, a newly elected BJP MP, faces a terrorism charge over a 2008 attack near a mosque that killed six people. She denies the charges and says she was framed by a previous Congress government.Parties often brush off charges against their candidates by saying they were victims of political vendettas."
Japanese spas feel the heat over 'tap water and bath salts' scandal - "The japanese swear by their therapeutic benefits, but the nation's hot springs have been hit by scandal after some were found to consist of nothing more than warm tap water laced with bath salts.Owners of traditional springs spend millions of yen every year pumping geo-thermally heated water to the surface, but some operators have discovered that it is cheaper to set up outdoor spas - known as onsen - in places where no natural spring exists.Under the 1948 Hot Spring Law, anyone who can harness a water source with a temperature of 25C or above can set up an onsen, no matter what the mineral content of the water. And, with the number of such spas doubling in the past 40 years, business has become increasingly cut-throat... Spas that have to pump up water, expensively, from far below the surface have taken to recycling water that has already been used by previous customers, in order to cut costs. That has led to problems such as germs proliferating - seven people died of legionnaires' disease in Miyazaki in 2002. Now the environment ministry is to require owners to give a chemical analysis of their waters to customers, who pay up to yen20,000 (£95) for an overnight stay in a traditional inn with a shared spa."
From 2007
Parents sue, saying Harrisburg police violated rights of 15-year-old killed when he crashed stolen car after chase - pennlive.com - "The parents of a 15-year-old Harrisburg boy who was killed when the stolen car he was driving crashed into a tree during a chase by city police has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city.Waleska Santiago and Jaime Winston claim the pursuit that killed their son Kobe Santiago in November was “reckless, dangerous and unreasonable” and should not even have been initiated by an officer... Kobe’s parents claim the pursuit violated a “clandestine” city police policy that bars officers from engaging in chases in cases that don’t involve “forcible felonies,” such as robberies and assaults. Through sources, PennLive confirmed such a policy exists."
I'm surprised they're not claiming law enforcement is racist
Video of Wendy's employee taking bubble bath in restaurant sink goes viral - "A Wendy’s employee was captured on video taking a bubble bath in the kitchen restaurant, a gag that got him fired... Yahoo Lifestyle contacted the woman who filmed the bath and her coworker for comment. A Wendy’s employee wrote on Facebook, “He was off the clock and the ‘repulsive’ incident was two minutes long. People have done it before and the only reason it’s a problem now is because old people have access to Facebook.”... Haley Leach, the woman who posted the Facebook video writing, “I don’t suggest anyone eating at the Milton Wendy’s again” did not return Yahoo Lifestyle’s inquiry.According to The Daytona Beach News-Journal, Leach wrote, “The actions in the video were appalling and I felt like the public had the right to know...”"
Maybe an online mob will try to get Leach fired for racism
While you're sleeping, your iPhone stays busy harvesting data - "You might assume you can count on Apple to sweat all the privacy details. After all, it touted in a recent ad: "What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone."... iPhone apps I discovered tracking me by passing information to third parties - just while I was asleep - include Microsoft OneDrive, Intuit's Mint, Nike, Spotify, The Washington Post and IBM's The Weather Channel. One app, the crime-alert service Citizen, shared personally identifiable information, in violation of its published privacy policy. And your iPhone doesn't feed data trackers only while you sleep. In a single week, I encountered over 5,400 trackers, mostly in apps, not including the incessant Yelp traffic. According to privacy firm Disconnect, which helped test my iPhone, those unwanted trackers would have spewed out 1.5 gigabytes of data over the span of a month. That's half of an entire basic wireless service plan from AT&T... Citizen, the app for location-based crime reports, published that it wouldn't share "your name or other personally identifying information". Yet when I ran my test, I found it repeatedly sent my phone number, e-mail and exact GPS coordinates to the tracker Amplitude."
ISIS Lays Down Arms After Katy Perry's Impassioned Plea To 'Like, Just Co-Exist' | The Babylon Bee - "Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, released a statement Wednesday confirming that ISIS would be immediately surrendering its fight to establish a powerful caliphate after viewing an interview in which pop singer Katy Perry said, “The greatest thing we can do just unite and love on each other and like, no barriers, no borders, like, we all need to just co-exist.” The powerful statement which single-handedly dismantled ISIS came shortly after a terrorist attack on civilians in Manchester killed 22 people, and led the reclusive head of ISIS to hold an emergency press conference declaring the group’s jihad finished... al-Baghdadi further confirmed that a recent advertisement in which Kendall Jenner offered a group of riot police a Pepsi was also influential in his decision to immediately cease their murderous reign of terror and lead ISIS down a path of peace."
It's Easier To Get Good Pizza In New York Than In Most of Italy - "most pizzerias across non-Naples parts of Italy only serve pizza—and not very good pizza, at that—because tourists demand it. Depending where you go, a pizza in Milan or Rome can be fundamentally different from Neapolitan pizza, and is often made with low-quality ingredients, and by pizzaioli that have no idea what they're doing other than topping a simple crust with some form of tomato sauce and cheese... The dirty little secret about Italian cuisine is that it's highly regional, and that the only place where you can find great pizza pretty much anywhere consistently is in Naples... You know where there are a lot of Neapolitans outside of Naples? That's right—New York City. In fact, America's first pizzeria was opened by a Neapolitan, and New York-style pizza was directly inspired by Neapolitan pizza."
Only Half Of Your Friends Actually Like You - "half of the people you consider a friend probably don’t feel the same about you... Robin Dunbar, a British anthropologist, led a study that found we only have room to cultivate a limited number of relationships — approximately 150 relationships, max, and only about five close friends."
Tuesday, July 09, 2019
Links - 9th July 2019 (2)
Davina Sparks Case: Can a Witness Wear a Veil? - "The Constitution guarantees public trial by jury, affords defendants an opportunity to confront witnesses testifying against them, and protects the free exercise of religion.What happens when those rights are in conflict?... How relatively embarrassing, intimidating, or traumatizing is it to compel a veil-wearing Muslim to expose her face?"
— look. i don’t think my stretch marks are... - "look. i don’t think my stretch marks are beautiful. i don’t think they’re tiger stripes or natural tattooos. i don’t think my acne is beautiful. i don’t think the bags under my eyes are beautiful. i just think they’re human. and i don’t think i have to be beautiful all of the time in order to be accepted and loved and sucessful. i don’t think every small detail of my outer appearence needs to be translated into prettiness."
Do Singaporean Women Only Take their Husband's Last Name When It Sounds Special? - "“I feel like Singaporean women tend to take on their husband’s surname after marriage if their husband is ang moh.”... another chimes in that everyone who has taken on their husband’s surname or adopted a double-barrel surname seems to have a Caucasian husband. There is a glaring lack of mention about interracial marriages not involving Caucasian men or men with Caucasian sounding surnames"
Keep dogs away from Muslims, signs posted in Pitt Meadows off-leash park say - "The city of Pitt Meadows is removing unsanctioned signs posted in one of its off-leash dog parks asking owners to keep their canines away from Muslim people.A number of flyers were recently posted in Hoffman Park asking dog owners to keep their pets leashed."Many Muslims live in this area and dogs are considered filthy in Islam. Please keep your dogs on a leash and away from the Muslims who live in this community," the flyers read.
Why Does Islam Teach Hatred of Dogs? - "A Muslim taxi-driver in England, one Abandi Kassim, was recently fined for refusing to take on a blind passenger’s seeing-eye dog because, as Kassim claimed: “For me, it’s about my religion.”There have been many such cases in the U.S., the UK, and Canada of Muslims refusing to pick up fares with seeing-eye dogs. Many of the Somali taxi drivers who made up three-quarters of the 900 taxi drivers at the Minneapolis airport refused to pick up blind passengers because of their dogs. When forced to do so, some of them simply quit... Dogs are to be killed, according to Muhammad, with the only exception made for those that are used for hunting or to guard a herd of cattle... It was easy to distinguish the Christians, and to prevent fraternizing between Muslims and Christians. Christians had paintings, icons, and statues in their homes -- the very things which, according to the hadith of Bukhari, the angel Gabriel said would prevent him from entering a house. That led to Muhammad to command the same for his followers... dogs are revered in Zoroastrianism.The conquest by the Muslim Arabs of the Sasanian Empire (Persia) by 651 made the Muslims masters of the Persian Zorostrians. And just as the Muslims could use Muhammad’s ban on “pictures” to distinguish themselves from the Christians they conquered, a similar ban on dogs would help Muslims to distinguish themselves from the Zoroastrians they conquered"
Muslim countries have highest rates of suicide, murder, rape and mental health problems - "Suicide, murder, rape and mental health conditions are skyrocketing in a stretch of Muslim-majority countries from Morocco to Pakistan, many of which have been wracked by violence and conflict.A major study covering data from the last 25 years shows soaring rates of death by suicide or at the hands of others. In 2015 alone, the last year for which data was used, around 30,000 people committed suicide, while 35,000 were murdered. The figures do not include deaths in places which are at war, such as Syria and Iraq, and represent increases of 100 per cent and 152 per cent respectively since 1990.The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME)"
Stronger than aluminum, a heavily altered wood cools passively - " the wood has some properties that could make it extremely useful as cladding, covering the exterior of a building. While most of the cellulose fibers are aligned along the grain of the wood, that alignment is very rough—there's plenty of variability in their orientation. That means light that strikes the processed wood will bounce around within a dense mesh of cellulose fibers, scattering widely in the process. The end result is a material that looks remarkably white, in the same way a sugar cube looks white even though each sugar crystal in it is transparent.As a result, the material is really bad at absorbing sunlight, and thus it doesn't capture the heat in the same way regular wood does.But it gets better. The sugars in cellulose are effective emitters of infrared radiation, and they do so in two areas of the spectrum where none of our atmospheric gases is able to reabsorb it. The end result is that, if the treated wood absorbs some of the heat of a structure, wood can radiate it away so that it leaves the planet entirely. And the wood is able to do so even while it's being blasted by direct sunlight... covering an apartment building with the treated wood could save about 35 percent of the energy used for cooling. In a dense urban setting, that number goes up to over half. Plus, it also has the strength to handle some of the internal structure of the building. And while forestry can create environmental issues, it is certainly possible to manage it in a way that is sustainable."
'Aquaman' Has No Business Being This Good - "Aquaman is a hilariously dense, intensely nerdy, and sublimely silly project, one where discussions of oceanic parliamentary law exist alongside a giant octopus playing the drums... Aquaman serves as further evidence that the DC Universe can thrive if it embraces the grander sincerity of its godlike heroes rather than trying to ground them in the real world. Yes, Momoa knows how to have a good time amid all the underwater special effects and encyclopedic world-building. There’s plenty of humor and fun to be found in a film where Dolph Lundgren rides a giant seahorse into battle. But Aquaman works because it isn’t laughing at itself—it’s both joyously whimsical and confident in its own seaworthiness."
Seeing Superman Increases Altruism
Fat–Carb Combo Is a Potent One–Two Punch - "foods high in both carbs and fats tickle the brain’s reward circuits more so than snacks that showcase just one or the other... 'Modern processed foods like french fries, donuts, hamburgers and even yogurts contain high levels of fat and carbohydrate. In contrast, foods high in fat and carbohydrate are very rare, if they ever existed at all, in the natural food environment. So we wondered, if fat and carbohydrate both release dopamine, might it be the case that their simultaneous consumption produces a superadditive response, resulting in foods that are more reinforcing, calorie for calorie?'"
Primate Conflicts Play Out in the Operating Room - "conflict in the OR surged when male surgeons' teams were mostly male; or when female surgeons were with mostly female teams. "It would be a no-brainer if we found that all females were cooperative, but that's not what we found."Instead, the highest levels of cooperation occurred when a female surgeon had a male surgical team, and vice versa—perhaps, Jones says, because those mixed teams avoided male–male or female–female conflict. In fact previous studies in primates--both human and non-human--have shown that competition is strongest between individuals of the same gender"
The Crusades Were a Reasonable Response to Unchecked Islamic Aggression - "People who believe the Crusades were somehow "bad" inevitably are completely and unforgivably ignorant of both Christian and Moslem histories, let alone the infamous and barbaric treatment of Christians under invading Moslem armies in Spain, Portugal and France between AD 711-1492... By the time the Crusades had started in AD 1099, invading Moslem armies had slaughtered countless thousands of Christians in the Levant, the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Portugal, France and Italy. A full 90% of Christian territory had been unjustly invaded and annexed. And under the lash of their "peaceful" Moslems overlords, Christians were enslaved, raped, forced to pay the extortionist tax known as the jizya"
Ariana Grande sued for S$68,000 – for using photos of herself - "Ariana Grande is being sued by a photographer, who claims that she used two of his photographs on Instagram without permission.Robert Barbera has sued the megastar for copyright infringement and is seeking damages to the tune of US$25,000 (S$34,000) per photo or all the profits she made from the photographs."
Speech2Face: Neural Network Predicts the Face Behind a Voice - "In a paper published recently, researchers from MIT’s Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have proposed a method for learning a face from audio recordings of that person speaking.The goal of the project was to investigate how much information about a person’s looks can be inferred from the way they speak"
"Stereotypes"
Fast Walkers Live Average Of 20 Years Longer Than Slow Walkers, Study Finds - "After researching a pool of almost 500,000 people, the study found that fast walkers lived an average of 20 years longer than their slow-paced counterparts... Experts say it boils down to fast walking is an indication of better physical fitness, regardless of weight or even height for that matter."
Faster walkers more likely to live longer - "middle-aged people who reported that they are slow walkers were at higher risk of heart-related disease compared to the general population. The study, which also used data from the UK Biobank, showed that slow walkers were twice as likely to have a heart-related death as fast walkers, even when other risk factors such as smoking and body mass index were taken into account."
Captain Marvel steals a Motorcycle Extended Scene - CAPTAIN MARVEL (2019) Movie Clip - YouTube
This is very telling about how feminists think - speech you don't like should be met with violence. The original scene was already silly enough
Comments: "Yes. The new face of the MCU is a 'hero' who hurts, threatens and steals from people for being rude to her. Are we sure she's not a villain?"
"Do she does the exact same thing as the first terminator and someone thought "Yup that's what a hero would do.""
"This scene is referencing the motorcycle bar scene in Terminator 2, but it's a very poor imitation. It works in T2 because Arnold is an amoral character at the beginning and literally has no concept that killing is wrong until John teaches him. His only guiding principles are to protect and follow the orders of John Connor. And even then, Arnold only responded after being assaulted himself. This is someone playing bully because they're stronger than their victim and can get away with it, while also pretending to be the good guy. She not only assaults and robs this guy over being a cocky jackass, but also robs innocent store owners and almost causes a car accident."
""Oh my god, he flirted with me! I'm going to break his hand and steal the motorcycle.""
Martin Luther King Jr ‘watched and laughed’ as woman was raped, secret FBI recordings allege - "J Edgar Hoover, the bureau’s notorious director, believed the material gathered by his agents in the Sixties exposed the civil rights leader as a “notorious liar” and “one of the lowest characters in the country”.It included a tape which, according to an FBI summary, recorded King laughing and offering “advice” as a fellow Baptist minister “forcibly raped” a woman... Michael Mosbacher, the acting editor of Standpoint magazine, which is publishing Mr Garrow’s article about the files, said the files reveal MLK as “the Harvey Weinstein of the civil rights movement”... “The group met in his room and discussed which women among the parishioners would be suitable for natural or unnatural sex acts.“When one of the women protested that she did not approve of this, the Baptist minister immediately and forcibly raped her.”A handwritten memo, probably added by the FBI’s head of intelligence operations, adds: “King looked on, laughed and offered advice.”"
Does intersectionality mean you should release this and villify him, or bury it and praise him?
Jack Ma Alibaba when you’re rich whatever the fck you say is wisdom
— look. i don’t think my stretch marks are... - "look. i don’t think my stretch marks are beautiful. i don’t think they’re tiger stripes or natural tattooos. i don’t think my acne is beautiful. i don’t think the bags under my eyes are beautiful. i just think they’re human. and i don’t think i have to be beautiful all of the time in order to be accepted and loved and sucessful. i don’t think every small detail of my outer appearence needs to be translated into prettiness."
Do Singaporean Women Only Take their Husband's Last Name When It Sounds Special? - "“I feel like Singaporean women tend to take on their husband’s surname after marriage if their husband is ang moh.”... another chimes in that everyone who has taken on their husband’s surname or adopted a double-barrel surname seems to have a Caucasian husband. There is a glaring lack of mention about interracial marriages not involving Caucasian men or men with Caucasian sounding surnames"
Keep dogs away from Muslims, signs posted in Pitt Meadows off-leash park say - "The city of Pitt Meadows is removing unsanctioned signs posted in one of its off-leash dog parks asking owners to keep their canines away from Muslim people.A number of flyers were recently posted in Hoffman Park asking dog owners to keep their pets leashed."Many Muslims live in this area and dogs are considered filthy in Islam. Please keep your dogs on a leash and away from the Muslims who live in this community," the flyers read.
Why Does Islam Teach Hatred of Dogs? - "A Muslim taxi-driver in England, one Abandi Kassim, was recently fined for refusing to take on a blind passenger’s seeing-eye dog because, as Kassim claimed: “For me, it’s about my religion.”There have been many such cases in the U.S., the UK, and Canada of Muslims refusing to pick up fares with seeing-eye dogs. Many of the Somali taxi drivers who made up three-quarters of the 900 taxi drivers at the Minneapolis airport refused to pick up blind passengers because of their dogs. When forced to do so, some of them simply quit... Dogs are to be killed, according to Muhammad, with the only exception made for those that are used for hunting or to guard a herd of cattle... It was easy to distinguish the Christians, and to prevent fraternizing between Muslims and Christians. Christians had paintings, icons, and statues in their homes -- the very things which, according to the hadith of Bukhari, the angel Gabriel said would prevent him from entering a house. That led to Muhammad to command the same for his followers... dogs are revered in Zoroastrianism.The conquest by the Muslim Arabs of the Sasanian Empire (Persia) by 651 made the Muslims masters of the Persian Zorostrians. And just as the Muslims could use Muhammad’s ban on “pictures” to distinguish themselves from the Christians they conquered, a similar ban on dogs would help Muslims to distinguish themselves from the Zoroastrians they conquered"
Muslim countries have highest rates of suicide, murder, rape and mental health problems - "Suicide, murder, rape and mental health conditions are skyrocketing in a stretch of Muslim-majority countries from Morocco to Pakistan, many of which have been wracked by violence and conflict.A major study covering data from the last 25 years shows soaring rates of death by suicide or at the hands of others. In 2015 alone, the last year for which data was used, around 30,000 people committed suicide, while 35,000 were murdered. The figures do not include deaths in places which are at war, such as Syria and Iraq, and represent increases of 100 per cent and 152 per cent respectively since 1990.The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME)"
Stronger than aluminum, a heavily altered wood cools passively - " the wood has some properties that could make it extremely useful as cladding, covering the exterior of a building. While most of the cellulose fibers are aligned along the grain of the wood, that alignment is very rough—there's plenty of variability in their orientation. That means light that strikes the processed wood will bounce around within a dense mesh of cellulose fibers, scattering widely in the process. The end result is a material that looks remarkably white, in the same way a sugar cube looks white even though each sugar crystal in it is transparent.As a result, the material is really bad at absorbing sunlight, and thus it doesn't capture the heat in the same way regular wood does.But it gets better. The sugars in cellulose are effective emitters of infrared radiation, and they do so in two areas of the spectrum where none of our atmospheric gases is able to reabsorb it. The end result is that, if the treated wood absorbs some of the heat of a structure, wood can radiate it away so that it leaves the planet entirely. And the wood is able to do so even while it's being blasted by direct sunlight... covering an apartment building with the treated wood could save about 35 percent of the energy used for cooling. In a dense urban setting, that number goes up to over half. Plus, it also has the strength to handle some of the internal structure of the building. And while forestry can create environmental issues, it is certainly possible to manage it in a way that is sustainable."
'Aquaman' Has No Business Being This Good - "Aquaman is a hilariously dense, intensely nerdy, and sublimely silly project, one where discussions of oceanic parliamentary law exist alongside a giant octopus playing the drums... Aquaman serves as further evidence that the DC Universe can thrive if it embraces the grander sincerity of its godlike heroes rather than trying to ground them in the real world. Yes, Momoa knows how to have a good time amid all the underwater special effects and encyclopedic world-building. There’s plenty of humor and fun to be found in a film where Dolph Lundgren rides a giant seahorse into battle. But Aquaman works because it isn’t laughing at itself—it’s both joyously whimsical and confident in its own seaworthiness."
Seeing Superman Increases Altruism
Fat–Carb Combo Is a Potent One–Two Punch - "foods high in both carbs and fats tickle the brain’s reward circuits more so than snacks that showcase just one or the other... 'Modern processed foods like french fries, donuts, hamburgers and even yogurts contain high levels of fat and carbohydrate. In contrast, foods high in fat and carbohydrate are very rare, if they ever existed at all, in the natural food environment. So we wondered, if fat and carbohydrate both release dopamine, might it be the case that their simultaneous consumption produces a superadditive response, resulting in foods that are more reinforcing, calorie for calorie?'"
Primate Conflicts Play Out in the Operating Room - "conflict in the OR surged when male surgeons' teams were mostly male; or when female surgeons were with mostly female teams. "It would be a no-brainer if we found that all females were cooperative, but that's not what we found."Instead, the highest levels of cooperation occurred when a female surgeon had a male surgical team, and vice versa—perhaps, Jones says, because those mixed teams avoided male–male or female–female conflict. In fact previous studies in primates--both human and non-human--have shown that competition is strongest between individuals of the same gender"
The Crusades Were a Reasonable Response to Unchecked Islamic Aggression - "People who believe the Crusades were somehow "bad" inevitably are completely and unforgivably ignorant of both Christian and Moslem histories, let alone the infamous and barbaric treatment of Christians under invading Moslem armies in Spain, Portugal and France between AD 711-1492... By the time the Crusades had started in AD 1099, invading Moslem armies had slaughtered countless thousands of Christians in the Levant, the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Portugal, France and Italy. A full 90% of Christian territory had been unjustly invaded and annexed. And under the lash of their "peaceful" Moslems overlords, Christians were enslaved, raped, forced to pay the extortionist tax known as the jizya"
Ariana Grande sued for S$68,000 – for using photos of herself - "Ariana Grande is being sued by a photographer, who claims that she used two of his photographs on Instagram without permission.Robert Barbera has sued the megastar for copyright infringement and is seeking damages to the tune of US$25,000 (S$34,000) per photo or all the profits she made from the photographs."
Speech2Face: Neural Network Predicts the Face Behind a Voice - "In a paper published recently, researchers from MIT’s Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have proposed a method for learning a face from audio recordings of that person speaking.The goal of the project was to investigate how much information about a person’s looks can be inferred from the way they speak"
"Stereotypes"
Fast Walkers Live Average Of 20 Years Longer Than Slow Walkers, Study Finds - "After researching a pool of almost 500,000 people, the study found that fast walkers lived an average of 20 years longer than their slow-paced counterparts... Experts say it boils down to fast walking is an indication of better physical fitness, regardless of weight or even height for that matter."
Faster walkers more likely to live longer - "middle-aged people who reported that they are slow walkers were at higher risk of heart-related disease compared to the general population. The study, which also used data from the UK Biobank, showed that slow walkers were twice as likely to have a heart-related death as fast walkers, even when other risk factors such as smoking and body mass index were taken into account."
Captain Marvel steals a Motorcycle Extended Scene - CAPTAIN MARVEL (2019) Movie Clip - YouTube
This is very telling about how feminists think - speech you don't like should be met with violence. The original scene was already silly enough
Comments: "Yes. The new face of the MCU is a 'hero' who hurts, threatens and steals from people for being rude to her. Are we sure she's not a villain?"
"Do she does the exact same thing as the first terminator and someone thought "Yup that's what a hero would do.""
"This scene is referencing the motorcycle bar scene in Terminator 2, but it's a very poor imitation. It works in T2 because Arnold is an amoral character at the beginning and literally has no concept that killing is wrong until John teaches him. His only guiding principles are to protect and follow the orders of John Connor. And even then, Arnold only responded after being assaulted himself. This is someone playing bully because they're stronger than their victim and can get away with it, while also pretending to be the good guy. She not only assaults and robs this guy over being a cocky jackass, but also robs innocent store owners and almost causes a car accident."
""Oh my god, he flirted with me! I'm going to break his hand and steal the motorcycle.""
Martin Luther King Jr ‘watched and laughed’ as woman was raped, secret FBI recordings allege - "J Edgar Hoover, the bureau’s notorious director, believed the material gathered by his agents in the Sixties exposed the civil rights leader as a “notorious liar” and “one of the lowest characters in the country”.It included a tape which, according to an FBI summary, recorded King laughing and offering “advice” as a fellow Baptist minister “forcibly raped” a woman... Michael Mosbacher, the acting editor of Standpoint magazine, which is publishing Mr Garrow’s article about the files, said the files reveal MLK as “the Harvey Weinstein of the civil rights movement”... “The group met in his room and discussed which women among the parishioners would be suitable for natural or unnatural sex acts.“When one of the women protested that she did not approve of this, the Baptist minister immediately and forcibly raped her.”A handwritten memo, probably added by the FBI’s head of intelligence operations, adds: “King looked on, laughed and offered advice.”"
Does intersectionality mean you should release this and villify him, or bury it and praise him?
Jack Ma Alibaba when you’re rich whatever the fck you say is wisdom
Communal meals in the face of dietary requirements
"Zakaria Zainal is with Aqilah Zailan and Azmin Zalnal.
Edit: My friend raised this and it cuts right to the issue. Only in Singapore, people can eat enormous amounts of food and be comfortable with one person (that minority, or someone different than them) in the room not indulging the same way. And sadly, this is the place we live in today.
-
So this is what it means to live in cosmopolitan, multiracial Singapore.
“But you can eat it right? Just a little bit is ok right?"
Your face does not give anything away. But everyone looks at you and hope you say yes. And be less of an inconvenience to others.
It‘s just a team lunch you say. But it's something your boss and others are keen to eat. And that one person who can't because of dietary requirements is given an afterthought, a small compensation, a "lucky you still have something to eat" plastic filled rice with a small side of protein and veggies. You dine surrounded by raucous colleagues wolfing down plate after plate of food in that team lunch.
"Sorry you had to watch others eat Haram food."
-
This is not the first time. My sister, my father and my father-in-law who work in big, reputable companies but merely become an afterthought when it comes to these team bonding sessions or the dreaded annual dinner and dance. The act of looking alter your employees' dietary preference in a thoughtful manner does not go a long way— it is the bare minimum.
We seemingly celebrate diversity but not when it is inconvenient to do so.
Next time you wanna eat somewhere fancy with your team, let us know so that we can excuse ourselves. We don't need it. But you certainly do.
If you have a painful story of these so-called team lunches or dinners, please comment below.
Caption: My sister's packet meal during a team lunch while at Paradise Group of Restaurants. Even better, signing an indemnity form due to HALALISM."
If one strict vegan works in a team of 20 and a company of 100, all team and company events and meals must be 100% vegan.
Or if it's a Jain, then the food options are even more limited.
Links - 9th July 2019 (1)
More minors offering sex online: Lawyers - "An underage girl was so desperate for male companionship and validation that she advertised in online sex forums for boyfriends.Apart from having sex with them, she would also shower them with gifts and monetary favours... Lawyer Gloria James-Civetta told TNP that she now handles 12 to 18 cases a year of underage commercial sex after a steady rise of such cases over the years."
Underaged girls nowadays can afford to have sugar babies?
Man who punched women when they refused sex gets jail - "Abdul Rahman A Karim, 35, met two of the three women on online classifieds site Locanto, where they had advertised their sexual services.One of the women was an 18-year-old student who had posted an advertisement on Locanto in July last year, saying she was selling her virginity to the highest bidder as she was "really in need of cash".The girl, whose identity is protected by gag order, was contacted by Abdul Rahman, who offered her S$5,000.They met at Aljunied MRT Station on the evening of Aug 20 last year and went to a hotel.After showering, the girl asked Abdul Rahman to pay her the S$5,000 before having sex, but the man refused, saying he would pay her after.He kissed her but the girl pushed him away. Abdul Rahman then punched her on her head, before grabbing her and swinging her towards the bed.Abdul Rahman covered her mouth with a hand before punching her head three to four times.She also refused a demand from him for oral sex, pushing him away and screaming for help. By this time, she was naked as her towel had fallen off during the assault... He had met another woman on Locanto in November 2017. He agreed to pay the 21-year-old pub singer S$800 for two sessions of sex, and they met later that month at a void deck.Abdul Rahman claimed that he had forgotten to bring the money and asked the woman to meet him at a place he claimed was his home.At a staircase landing, Abdul Rahman began kissing and touching the woman, but she pushed him away and demanded the cash first.They began arguing about the money and Abdul Rahman punched the woman's face and stomach, while the woman hit him twice in his back and shouted for help.After punching the woman four to five times in the head, Abdul Rahman fled and she called the police... The third victim was a 32-year-old jobless woman Abdul Rahman met on a mobile application.They met at a hotel on the night of Jan 10 last year. However, after Abdul Rahman kissed the woman, she changed her mind about having sex with him and said she wanted to go home.This upset Abdul Rahman, who began arguing with her. As the woman tried to leave, he punched her in her ribs and body.He also hit her on the jaw when she reached for the phone to call reception and report the assault.The pair had "a quick session of intercourse" before Abdul Rahman left the room and the woman called the police.""
Interestingly the sentence for 3 attacks (and 1 incident that sounds rapey) is much less than for sex with a 15 year old
"I Now Understand How Nelson Mandela Felt" - "The permanent suspension only lasted for a day, but the experience was traumatic and lasting. I now understand how Nelson Mandela felt. If anything, my ordeal was even more damaging. Mandela may have had to endure 27 years of incarceration, but at least his male privilege protected him from ever having to put up with mansplaining, or being subject to wolf-whistling by grubby proles on a building site... Unfortunately, those who fight for the progressive cause are continually bombarded by alt-right trolls who like to engage in a form of harassment known as “debate.” Only a few days before my suspension, a misogynist referred to me as “shrill and humourless.” As I was quick to point out, humour is a patriarchal construct. This is why it has been so gratifying to see the success of our current wave of feminist comedians, those brave women who are subverting the genre by ensuring that it doesn’t make anyone laugh... In my absence from Twitter, I took the opportunity to spend some time at a resort in Val d’Isère, where I could relax and contemplate my oppression. I even managed to write a book which I have entitled Woke: A Guide to Social Justice. I did want to call it My Struggle, but that title was already taken apparently.I am a healer, a weaver of dreams. I have been put on this earth to defend minorities and fight for social justice. My work is not about ego. It is so much bigger than me. So please make sure you spread the word about my new book so that as many copies as possible can be sold."
17 years’ jail for man who raped underage girl at staircase landing - "Tee began to send sexually explicit messages to the teen, asking if she wanted to have sex with him. She declined.He then asked her for intimate photos and when she did not oblige, he pestered her.She eventually gave in to his requests and sent him six photographs, some of which were photos of her topless.He threatened to disseminate her photos when she did not comply with his request to send more of such photos."
It's so easy to get girls to send you nude photos?
One day after announcing wage gap plan, report shows men are paid more than women in Kamala Harris' office - "Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) may have wanted to check the books in her own office before announcing her strict plan to end the "wage gap" if she becomes president... If a company can't meet the threshold of justification for their wage differences, they will face massive fines - a point Harris bragged about repeatedly... The penalties outlined by Harris' team include a fine of 1% of the company's profits for every 1% of a "wage gap" that exists. Harris' plan would force companies to reveal the "total pay and total compensation gap that exists between men and women, regardless of job titles, experience, and performance."
Companies would just not hire women. Then she'd force companies to hire women. So they'd close down (or stay small)
Why America Can’t Solve Homelessness - "Just four years ago, Utah was the poster child for a new approach to homelessness, a solution so simple you could sum it up in five words: Just give homeless people homes.In 2005, the state and its capital started providing no-strings-attached apartments to the “chronically” homeless — people who had lived on the streets for at least a year and suffered from mental illness, substance abuse or a physical disability. Over the next 10 years, Utah built hundreds of housing units, hired dozens of social workers ― and reduced chronic homelessness by 91 percent... While Salt Lake City targeted a small subset of the homeless population, the overall problem got worse. Between 2005 and 2015, while the number of drug-addicted and mentally ill homeless people fell dramatically, the number of people sleeping in the city’s emergency shelter more than doubled. Since then, unsheltered homelessness has continued to rise. According to 2018 figures, the majority of unhoused families and single adults in Salt Lake City are experiencing homelessness for the first time. “People thought that if we built a few hundred housing units we’d be out of the woods forever,” said Glenn Bailey, the executive director of Crossroads Urban Center, a Salt Lake City food bank. “But if you don’t change the reasons people become homeless in the first place, you’re just going to have more people on the streets.”... In 2012, researchers found that a $100 increase in monthly rent in big cities was associated with a 15 percent rise in homelessness. The effect was even stronger in smaller cities... While city residents consistently tell pollsters that they support homeless services in principle, specific proposals to build shelters or expand services face vociferous local opposition. “The biggest hindrance to solving homelessness is that city residents keep demanding the least effective policies,” said Sara Rankin, the director of the Homeless Rights Advocacy Project at Seattle University School of Law. The evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that punishing homeless people makes it harder for them to find housing and get work. Nonetheless, the most common demands from urban voters are for politicians to increase arrests, close down soup kitchens and impose entry requirements and drug tests in shelters. "
College suspends young mother for posing with gun at gun range. She’s suing. - "The college, which is part of the St. Johns County School District, suspended Dallas after another student reported a Facebook photo of her and her fiance “holding legally purchased and lawfully possessed firearms at a gun range in Palatka”"
Convert a photo of data into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet in a snap
Health Impact of Fasting in Saudi Arabia during Ramadan: Association with Disturbed Circadian Rhythm and Metabolic and Sleeping Patterns - "Modern Ramadan practices in Saudi Arabia, which are associated with evening hypercortisolism, are also characterized by altered adipokines patterns, and an abolished hsCRP circadian rhythm, all likely to increase cardiometabolic risk."
College Students Aren't Checking Out Books - "When Yale recently decided to relocate three-quarters of the books in its undergraduate library to create more study space, the students loudly protested... A sit-in, or rather a “browse-in,” was held in Bass Library to show the administration how college students still value the presence of books. Eventually the number of volumes that would remain was expanded, at the cost of reducing the number of proposed additional seats in a busy central location... Buried in a slide deck about circulation statistics from Yale’s library was an unsettling fact: There has been a 64 percent decline in the number of books checked out by undergraduates from Bass Library over the past decade. Yale’s experience is not at all unique—indeed, it is commonplace. University libraries across the country, and around the world, are seeing steady, and in many cases precipitous, declines in the use of the books on their shelves... College students at UVA checked out 238,000 books during the school year a decade ago; last year, that number had shrunk to just 60,000... At the same time that books increasingly lie dormant, library spaces themselves remain vibrant—Snell Library at Northeastern now receives well over 2 million visits a year—as retreats for focused study and dynamic collaboration, and as sites of an ever wider array of activities and forms of knowledge creation and expression, including, but also well beyond, the printed word. It should come as no surprise that library leadership, in moments of dispassionate assessment often augmented by hearing from students who have trouble finding seats during busy periods, would seek to rezone areas occupied by stacks for more individual and group work. Yet it often does come as an unwelcome surprise to many, especially those with a powerful emotional attachment to what libraries should look like and be... academics often approach books like “sous-chefs gutting a fish.”With the rapidly growing number of books available online, that mode of slicing and dicing has largely become digital. Where students or faculty once pulled volumes off the shelf to scan a table of contents or index, grasp a thesis by reading an introduction, check a reference, or trace a footnote, today they consult the library’s swiftly expanding ebook collection (our library’s ebook collection has multiplied tenfold over the past decade), Google Books, or Amazon’s Look Inside... today’s undergraduates have read fewer books before they arrive on campus than in prior decades, and just placing students in an environment with more books is unlikely to turn that around. (The time to acquire the reading bug is much earlier than freshman year.) And while correlation does not equal causation, it is all too conspicuous that we reached Peak Book in universities just before the iPhone came out... we should beware the peril of books as glorified wallpaper. The value of books, after all, is what lies beneath their covers, as lovely as those covers may be."
Virtue signalling!
What Can Prewar Germany Teach Us About Social-Media Regulation? - "State control over radio had been intended to defend democracy. It unintentionally laid the groundwork for the Nazi propaganda machine... As the Weimar Republic became more and more politically unstable, Bredow and others pushed through reforms in 1926 and 1932 that mandated direct state supervision of radio content. Bredow believed that increased state direction would prevent Weimar democracy from failing.Ironically, this effort played right into the Nazis’ hands, and meant that the Nazis could seize immediate control over radio content when they came to power"
Everyone loves censorship when they are in power
Presumably the liberal answer is to regulate social media so tightly that "Nazis" never come to power
Why Do Employers Lowball Creatives? A New Study Has Answers - "On one hand, passion for one's work can lead to greater satisfaction. But the researchers' new paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, "Understanding Contemporary Forms of Exploitation: Attributions of Passion Serve to Legitimize the Poor Treatment of Workers," lays bare the unique ways passionate workers can be taken advantage of in a culture that encourages us to find our life's calling at work.Through eight different studies with over 2,400 participants, researchers discovered that people find it more acceptable for managers to ask passionate workers to work extra hours without additional pay, sacrifice sleep and family time, and take on demeaning tasks outside of their job descriptions."
If non-pecuniary rewards should not be considered, should we pay hardship pay to compensate for onerous jobs?
Can the Census Ask About Citizenship?
Somehow this article manages to ignore the question of whether the non-citizen population should be counted in allocating political representatives. Presumably the liberal answer is yes, since they live in the country and deserve representation too
The article also manages to not mention the three fifths compromise applying to slaves and Native Americans and how this might be linked to citizenship not mattering for political representation
Underaged girls nowadays can afford to have sugar babies?
Man who punched women when they refused sex gets jail - "Abdul Rahman A Karim, 35, met two of the three women on online classifieds site Locanto, where they had advertised their sexual services.One of the women was an 18-year-old student who had posted an advertisement on Locanto in July last year, saying she was selling her virginity to the highest bidder as she was "really in need of cash".The girl, whose identity is protected by gag order, was contacted by Abdul Rahman, who offered her S$5,000.They met at Aljunied MRT Station on the evening of Aug 20 last year and went to a hotel.After showering, the girl asked Abdul Rahman to pay her the S$5,000 before having sex, but the man refused, saying he would pay her after.He kissed her but the girl pushed him away. Abdul Rahman then punched her on her head, before grabbing her and swinging her towards the bed.Abdul Rahman covered her mouth with a hand before punching her head three to four times.She also refused a demand from him for oral sex, pushing him away and screaming for help. By this time, she was naked as her towel had fallen off during the assault... He had met another woman on Locanto in November 2017. He agreed to pay the 21-year-old pub singer S$800 for two sessions of sex, and they met later that month at a void deck.Abdul Rahman claimed that he had forgotten to bring the money and asked the woman to meet him at a place he claimed was his home.At a staircase landing, Abdul Rahman began kissing and touching the woman, but she pushed him away and demanded the cash first.They began arguing about the money and Abdul Rahman punched the woman's face and stomach, while the woman hit him twice in his back and shouted for help.After punching the woman four to five times in the head, Abdul Rahman fled and she called the police... The third victim was a 32-year-old jobless woman Abdul Rahman met on a mobile application.They met at a hotel on the night of Jan 10 last year. However, after Abdul Rahman kissed the woman, she changed her mind about having sex with him and said she wanted to go home.This upset Abdul Rahman, who began arguing with her. As the woman tried to leave, he punched her in her ribs and body.He also hit her on the jaw when she reached for the phone to call reception and report the assault.The pair had "a quick session of intercourse" before Abdul Rahman left the room and the woman called the police.""
Interestingly the sentence for 3 attacks (and 1 incident that sounds rapey) is much less than for sex with a 15 year old
"I Now Understand How Nelson Mandela Felt" - "The permanent suspension only lasted for a day, but the experience was traumatic and lasting. I now understand how Nelson Mandela felt. If anything, my ordeal was even more damaging. Mandela may have had to endure 27 years of incarceration, but at least his male privilege protected him from ever having to put up with mansplaining, or being subject to wolf-whistling by grubby proles on a building site... Unfortunately, those who fight for the progressive cause are continually bombarded by alt-right trolls who like to engage in a form of harassment known as “debate.” Only a few days before my suspension, a misogynist referred to me as “shrill and humourless.” As I was quick to point out, humour is a patriarchal construct. This is why it has been so gratifying to see the success of our current wave of feminist comedians, those brave women who are subverting the genre by ensuring that it doesn’t make anyone laugh... In my absence from Twitter, I took the opportunity to spend some time at a resort in Val d’Isère, where I could relax and contemplate my oppression. I even managed to write a book which I have entitled Woke: A Guide to Social Justice. I did want to call it My Struggle, but that title was already taken apparently.I am a healer, a weaver of dreams. I have been put on this earth to defend minorities and fight for social justice. My work is not about ego. It is so much bigger than me. So please make sure you spread the word about my new book so that as many copies as possible can be sold."
17 years’ jail for man who raped underage girl at staircase landing - "Tee began to send sexually explicit messages to the teen, asking if she wanted to have sex with him. She declined.He then asked her for intimate photos and when she did not oblige, he pestered her.She eventually gave in to his requests and sent him six photographs, some of which were photos of her topless.He threatened to disseminate her photos when she did not comply with his request to send more of such photos."
It's so easy to get girls to send you nude photos?
One day after announcing wage gap plan, report shows men are paid more than women in Kamala Harris' office - "Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) may have wanted to check the books in her own office before announcing her strict plan to end the "wage gap" if she becomes president... If a company can't meet the threshold of justification for their wage differences, they will face massive fines - a point Harris bragged about repeatedly... The penalties outlined by Harris' team include a fine of 1% of the company's profits for every 1% of a "wage gap" that exists. Harris' plan would force companies to reveal the "total pay and total compensation gap that exists between men and women, regardless of job titles, experience, and performance."
Companies would just not hire women. Then she'd force companies to hire women. So they'd close down (or stay small)
Why America Can’t Solve Homelessness - "Just four years ago, Utah was the poster child for a new approach to homelessness, a solution so simple you could sum it up in five words: Just give homeless people homes.In 2005, the state and its capital started providing no-strings-attached apartments to the “chronically” homeless — people who had lived on the streets for at least a year and suffered from mental illness, substance abuse or a physical disability. Over the next 10 years, Utah built hundreds of housing units, hired dozens of social workers ― and reduced chronic homelessness by 91 percent... While Salt Lake City targeted a small subset of the homeless population, the overall problem got worse. Between 2005 and 2015, while the number of drug-addicted and mentally ill homeless people fell dramatically, the number of people sleeping in the city’s emergency shelter more than doubled. Since then, unsheltered homelessness has continued to rise. According to 2018 figures, the majority of unhoused families and single adults in Salt Lake City are experiencing homelessness for the first time. “People thought that if we built a few hundred housing units we’d be out of the woods forever,” said Glenn Bailey, the executive director of Crossroads Urban Center, a Salt Lake City food bank. “But if you don’t change the reasons people become homeless in the first place, you’re just going to have more people on the streets.”... In 2012, researchers found that a $100 increase in monthly rent in big cities was associated with a 15 percent rise in homelessness. The effect was even stronger in smaller cities... While city residents consistently tell pollsters that they support homeless services in principle, specific proposals to build shelters or expand services face vociferous local opposition. “The biggest hindrance to solving homelessness is that city residents keep demanding the least effective policies,” said Sara Rankin, the director of the Homeless Rights Advocacy Project at Seattle University School of Law. The evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that punishing homeless people makes it harder for them to find housing and get work. Nonetheless, the most common demands from urban voters are for politicians to increase arrests, close down soup kitchens and impose entry requirements and drug tests in shelters. "
College suspends young mother for posing with gun at gun range. She’s suing. - "The college, which is part of the St. Johns County School District, suspended Dallas after another student reported a Facebook photo of her and her fiance “holding legally purchased and lawfully possessed firearms at a gun range in Palatka”"
Convert a photo of data into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet in a snap
Health Impact of Fasting in Saudi Arabia during Ramadan: Association with Disturbed Circadian Rhythm and Metabolic and Sleeping Patterns - "Modern Ramadan practices in Saudi Arabia, which are associated with evening hypercortisolism, are also characterized by altered adipokines patterns, and an abolished hsCRP circadian rhythm, all likely to increase cardiometabolic risk."
College Students Aren't Checking Out Books - "When Yale recently decided to relocate three-quarters of the books in its undergraduate library to create more study space, the students loudly protested... A sit-in, or rather a “browse-in,” was held in Bass Library to show the administration how college students still value the presence of books. Eventually the number of volumes that would remain was expanded, at the cost of reducing the number of proposed additional seats in a busy central location... Buried in a slide deck about circulation statistics from Yale’s library was an unsettling fact: There has been a 64 percent decline in the number of books checked out by undergraduates from Bass Library over the past decade. Yale’s experience is not at all unique—indeed, it is commonplace. University libraries across the country, and around the world, are seeing steady, and in many cases precipitous, declines in the use of the books on their shelves... College students at UVA checked out 238,000 books during the school year a decade ago; last year, that number had shrunk to just 60,000... At the same time that books increasingly lie dormant, library spaces themselves remain vibrant—Snell Library at Northeastern now receives well over 2 million visits a year—as retreats for focused study and dynamic collaboration, and as sites of an ever wider array of activities and forms of knowledge creation and expression, including, but also well beyond, the printed word. It should come as no surprise that library leadership, in moments of dispassionate assessment often augmented by hearing from students who have trouble finding seats during busy periods, would seek to rezone areas occupied by stacks for more individual and group work. Yet it often does come as an unwelcome surprise to many, especially those with a powerful emotional attachment to what libraries should look like and be... academics often approach books like “sous-chefs gutting a fish.”With the rapidly growing number of books available online, that mode of slicing and dicing has largely become digital. Where students or faculty once pulled volumes off the shelf to scan a table of contents or index, grasp a thesis by reading an introduction, check a reference, or trace a footnote, today they consult the library’s swiftly expanding ebook collection (our library’s ebook collection has multiplied tenfold over the past decade), Google Books, or Amazon’s Look Inside... today’s undergraduates have read fewer books before they arrive on campus than in prior decades, and just placing students in an environment with more books is unlikely to turn that around. (The time to acquire the reading bug is much earlier than freshman year.) And while correlation does not equal causation, it is all too conspicuous that we reached Peak Book in universities just before the iPhone came out... we should beware the peril of books as glorified wallpaper. The value of books, after all, is what lies beneath their covers, as lovely as those covers may be."
Virtue signalling!
What Can Prewar Germany Teach Us About Social-Media Regulation? - "State control over radio had been intended to defend democracy. It unintentionally laid the groundwork for the Nazi propaganda machine... As the Weimar Republic became more and more politically unstable, Bredow and others pushed through reforms in 1926 and 1932 that mandated direct state supervision of radio content. Bredow believed that increased state direction would prevent Weimar democracy from failing.Ironically, this effort played right into the Nazis’ hands, and meant that the Nazis could seize immediate control over radio content when they came to power"
Everyone loves censorship when they are in power
Presumably the liberal answer is to regulate social media so tightly that "Nazis" never come to power
Why Do Employers Lowball Creatives? A New Study Has Answers - "On one hand, passion for one's work can lead to greater satisfaction. But the researchers' new paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, "Understanding Contemporary Forms of Exploitation: Attributions of Passion Serve to Legitimize the Poor Treatment of Workers," lays bare the unique ways passionate workers can be taken advantage of in a culture that encourages us to find our life's calling at work.Through eight different studies with over 2,400 participants, researchers discovered that people find it more acceptable for managers to ask passionate workers to work extra hours without additional pay, sacrifice sleep and family time, and take on demeaning tasks outside of their job descriptions."
If non-pecuniary rewards should not be considered, should we pay hardship pay to compensate for onerous jobs?
Can the Census Ask About Citizenship?
Somehow this article manages to ignore the question of whether the non-citizen population should be counted in allocating political representatives. Presumably the liberal answer is yes, since they live in the country and deserve representation too
The article also manages to not mention the three fifths compromise applying to slaves and Native Americans and how this might be linked to citizenship not mattering for political representation