Links - 17th January 2020 (1)

Take Two Aspirin and Call Me by My Pronouns - WSJ - "During my term as associate dean of curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school, I was chastised by a faculty member for not including a program on climate change in the course of study... Why have medical schools become a target for inculcating social policy when the stated purpose of medical education since Hippocrates has been to develop individuals who know how to cure patients?A new wave of educational specialists is increasingly influencing medical education. They emphasize “social justice” that relates to health care only tangentially. This approach is the result of a progressive mind-set that abhors hierarchy of any kind and the social elitism associated with the medical profession in particular... teaching these issues is coming at the expense of rigorous training in medical science. The prospect of this “new,” politicized medical education should worry all Americans... The zeitgeist of sociology and social work have become the driving force in medical education. The goal of today’s educators is to produce legions of primary care physicians who engage in what is termed “population health.”This fits perfectly with the current administrator-rich, policy-heavy, form-over-function approach at every level of American education. Theories of learning with virtually no experimental basis for their impact on society and professions now prevail. Students are taught in the tradition of educational theorist Étienne Wenger, who emphasized “communal learning” rather than individual mastery of crucial information.Where will all this lead? Medical school bureaucracies have become bloated, as they have in every other sphere of education. Curricula will increasingly focus on climate change, social inequities, gun violence, bias and other progressive causes only tangentially related to treating illness. And so will many of your doctors in coming years.Meanwhile, oncologists, cardiologists, surgeons and other medical specialists are in short supply. The specialists who are produced must master more crucial material even though less and less of their medical-school education is devoted to basic scientific knowledge. If this country needs more gun control and climate change activists, medical schools are not the right place to produce them."
Social justice ruins everything

An Activist Educator Says That Teaching Is Political - "The tweet Sarah was referring to was posted by Jed Dearybury and read:“New teachers, I’m sorry if we veteran educators have misguided you about the profession. It’s not about cute classrooms & trendy ideas. It’s political. It’s advocacy. It’s the front line of battle for the future of our nation. Go no further if you’re not ready.”Related Dearybury tweets included: “If your definition of teacher leadership doesn’t include actively being a voice for marginalized students, it’s past time to rewrite your philosophy.”And, “If the reason you don’t like to speak up on social justice issues on social media is because this account is your ‘professional educator’ account, Guess what... professional educators should be advocating for social justice because students are counting you to do so.”... parents are not sending their children to school to be indoctrinated by politically correct teachers. They’re not sending their kids to discover the definition of gender queer. Or to hear a revisionist retelling of American history. Or to understand the evils of toxic masculinity. Or to master the intricacies of intersectionality.They’re sending their kids to learn to read and write and do math. To get a grasp of geography and science and world literature. To learn about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln (without speculating on their sexuality – yes, there are gay activists who want to claim both of them as gay!).Second, the educational industry has no business pressuring teachers or students or parents to conform to its leftist ideologies.Really now, why on earth should the NEA take a public stance on abortion, for example? What does this have to do with the so-called three R’s?The NEA even has an LGBTQ+ caucus, which, “in order to eliminate institutional discrimination and homophobia, monitors and participates in the development of NEA policies and activities, provides resources and fosters better communication among educators, students, and communities.”NEA insiders have told me that, for many years now, groups like this have been so deeply entrenched in the NEA that any who dare resist their goals are quickly blocked and marginalized. (You can be assured that it doesn’t take much to be branded “homophobic” or “transphobic” in these circles.)"
If teachers are proclaiming that they are trying to indoctrinate children into liberal ideology, is it still a paranoid right wing conspiracy theory to believe so?

Outraged California Parents Mobilize Over New Sex-Ed Program - "The framework recommends grade-specific classroom discussion topics, for example:
    Kindergarten through grade three: gender identity
    Grades four through six: sexual feelings, including masturbation
    Grades seven through eight: consent to have sex and sexual abuse
    Grades nine through 12: contraception, including advice for LGBTQ students
The new sex education curriculum teaches children as young as kindergarteners about gender identity issues and talks explicitly with high school students about sex acts including bondage, oral sex and anal penetration. Friedrichs warned about a game 11-year-olds play as part of the curriculum called "A Talk with Tanisha" when students "talk about sexual interests and discuss experiments with bisexuality"... her daughter's school had condom relay races for 10 to 11-year-old girls and, in front of boys, were taught how to put a condom on a model of an adult male"

Meme - ""Hey, it would be nice if we used this stereotype less""
"Mexican here, chinga tu madre. Don't try to speak for us, we Mexicans love this stuff and like seeing our culture in media. Pendeja."
"to those of you SJWs who got upset ‘bout Mario's mariachi costume"
Naturally, she blocked him. So much for empowering "minority" voices

From 'Schitt's Creek' to 'Batwoman,' LGBTQ characters on U.S. TV are at an all-time high - "Last year, GLAAD called on the broadcast networks to have 10 percent of its regular characters on prime-time scripted series identify as LGBTQ by 2020. According to its 2019-20 "Where We Are on TV" report, the networks more than exceeded that goal.Of the 879 regular characters scheduled to appear this season, 90, or 10.2 percent, are LGBTQ. This is the highest percentage GLAAD has found in the 15 years it has kept such a count...  "It's especially exciting to see the number of trans men on TV more than double this year, which last year's report really pushed television networks to do, and to see that for the first time, LGBTQ women outnumber LGBTQ men on broadcast."... There are also nine characters with HIV/AIDS on broadcast television, an increase from the seven characters counted last year... GLAAD also found that only 26 percent of LGBTQ characters on television identify as bisexual+ — a number that is not reflective of their presence, given bisexual+ people compose the majority of the LGBTQ community.  Another gap in representation includes LGBTQ characters with disabilities...  there is only one asexual character across all platforms — Todd Chavez on Netflix's "BoJack Horseman" — which is a drop from two asexual characters on television last year.This year GLAAD is calling for 20 percent of characters on prime-time scripted broadcast series be LGBTQ by 2020, and for half of all LGBTQ characters on every platform be people of color within the next two years."
How come "representation" means they exceed their proportion of the population?
How much can you divide a population?

Germany's Online Crackdowns Have Inspired Russia, Venezuela, and Other Undemocratic Countries - "The German government has responded to a recent spate of right-wing extremist violence with a commitment to enact tough new measures against online hate speech. These would expand Germany’s existing efforts along these lines—but seemingly without any consideration of the pernicious effects they’ve already had around the world. As our new report shows, Germany’s ongoing crackdown on online speech has been closely watched, and copied, by authoritarian governments eager to curb political dissent... Since the adoption of the new German law, at least 13 countries—in addition to the European Commission—have adopted or proposed models of intermediary liability broadly similar to the act’s matrix. According to Freedom House’s 2019 assessment of freedom on the internet, four of those countries are ranked as being “not free” (Venezuela, Vietnam, Russia and Belarus, Honduras is not surveyed but is ranked as “not free” on press freedom), five are ranked “partly free” (Kenya, India, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines), and only three are ranked “free” (France, the United Kingdom, and Australia). With the exception of India, Kenya, Vietnam, and Australia, all these countries—as well as the European Commission—have explicitly referred to the Network Enforcement Act as an inspiration or justification for their models of intermediary liability... Kremlin representatives argued that false information “is regulated fairly harshly in many countries of the world including Europe. It is therefore of course necessary to do it in our country too.” This is a clear example of how Germany’s internet law provides cover for authoritarian states attempting to restrict online content... Several of the laws or proposals we identified, including in the U.K. and India, don’t merely rely on a notification and takedown regime. They establish a “duty of care” requiring intermediaries to actively police and preventively remove illegal or undesirable content. Such a step may encourage automated moderation or filtering of user content through artificial intelligence and upload filters. This essentially poses the risk of reintroducing government-mandated prepublication censorship enforced by private tech companies. In the 18th and 19th centuries, European censors lost the struggle to keep up with clandestine publications and increasingly sophisticated printing presses. Consequently, pre-publication censorship all but died in the second half of the 19th century, only to be revamped and revitalized by totalitarianism in the 20th century. But in the digital age, censorship may ultimately be able to search and destroy undesirable content at a scale previously unimaginable."

Evergreen prof who berated white colleagues resigns - "The Evergreen State College professor who was caught on camera screaming at her white colleagues has elected to resign, according to an internal announcement.“I am writing to let you know that our faculty colleague Naima Lowe has elected to resign her position at the College,” Provost Jennifer Drake wrote Monday in an email to faculty and administrators, praising Lowe for her work teaching “feminist and queer theory, race, and decolonial studies.”... Lowe appears to be upset with the lack of diversity work her colleagues were engaged in, yelling that “the Equity Council handed you a way to do this easily” in front of a small crowd that had gathered.“You are now these motherf***ers that we’re pushing against. You can’t see your way out of your own ass,” Lowe goes on to tell her colleagues, adding that the student protesters “are literally asking for the same s**t students have been asking for since the 70’s.” In another video from 2015, which surfaced amidst the recent turmoil at Evergreen, Lowe can be heard condemning white gays and the white middle class at the Capital City Pride festival in Olympia, Washington.“White supremacy...lives and breathes within every single white person standing here right now. I refuse to shut my mouth and let white people set this agenda,” she yelled, claiming that “the white gays, the white middle class assimilationist motherf***ing gays, took over the [gay] movement with their assimilationist goals.” Lowe had also been threatening to sue Evergreen State as recently as November"

'He had it coming': California man's joke vanity license plate backfires badly - "What started as an earnest dad joke — or a misfired attempt to go incognito — ended in $12,049 in traffic fines for information security researcher Joseph Tartaro. A presenter at this year's DEF CON — a Las Vegas-based conference assembling thousands of hackers and techies each year — Tartaro shared his seemingly clever idea for a vanity license plate. Mulling over a few career-related puns, he finally settled on one that read, "NULL."In many programming languages, the term indicates a nonexistent data value.To finish off the prank, he would also get another custom plate for his wife's car that read "VOID," so that their driveway could be "NULL and VOID." If he dodged a parking ticket or two, or at the very least, caused some confusion for the DMV system — well, that wasn't his problem... a flurry of citations came. Dozens of them, from Fresno to Rancho Cucamonga. Thousands of dollars in fines in the amounts of $37, $60, $74, and $80 monopolized his mailbox."

Dogs can tell if you're untrustworthy - "Once a dog has decided a person is unreliable, it stops following the cues they give... The study highlights that dogs like things to be predictable, says John Bradshaw of the University of Bristol in the UK, who was not involved with the research.As soon as events in their lives become irregular they will look for alternative things to do.And if they consistently don't know what's going to happen next they can get stressed, aggressive or fearful, he adds. "Dogs whose owners are inconsistent to them often have behavioural disorders."

Internal documents: Swedish technical university cancels positions if male applicant found most competent » - "As a male candidate you are welcome to apply for a position as Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Engineering at Lund University. However, internal documents tell another story: the faculty only provides the necessary funding for the position if a woman is to receive it. If a male applicant is about to get the position, the appointment is canceled. Then the department can make a new attempt to get a woman by advertising a new position, and so on. One of the faculty’s researchers has reported the obviously discriminatory scheme to the Equality Ombudsman, who is now investigating the case. At the Faculty of Engineering at Lund University (LTH) it is seen as a concern that there are so few female professors. The proportion of female professors in 2006-2016 has increased from 11.8% to 15.5%, but the distribution over different areas is very varied, according to an internal policy document. Women who have become professors have mainly become so through promotion.This is far from the Swedish government’s goal that as many women as men should be recruited as professors by the year 2030, which is not a minor intervention in university autonomy.In the case of LTH, it could be argued that women generally are not particularly interested in many of its research areas. A measure of actual interest is the proportion of beginner students in the various programs. According to current governmental statistics, the proportion of female beginners in electronics, computer technology and automation is 15%, which reflects the proportion of female professors in those fields. In other higher education areas, the inverse relationship prevails. At Sweden’s largest departments in gender studies, the female students represent an overwhelming majority, and there is only one male professor—in all the departments combined. But LTH and Lund University, like all public authorities, have to abide by government policy. To oppose political authority with rational arguments based on empirical evidence is thus futile... LTH has come up with an intricate scheme for how to employ more women without discriminating against male applicants, which is a bit like squaring a circle... The idea is to “improve the recruitment base” of women for senior teaching appointments (Assistant and Full and Professors) by hiring four female Assistant Professors, a tenure track position, per year for four years, where the main funding comes centrally from LTH. But according to Swedish law, positions have to be publicly advertised—with the risk that they go to more competent men... the department, together with the recruitment committee, writes a targeted call that fits the favorite female candidate(s)... This is not the first time Swedish universities attempt to “promote equality” by discriminating against male applicants. A survey conducted a few years ago by an independent NGO found that most universities had introduced special “merit funding” for qualifying as a professor that only women could apply for. This, too, resulted in a complaint to the Equality Ombudsman, who took the case to the Swedish Labour Court. The Ombudsman won the case and the court decided that the reported university must compensate the victim"
What feminist "equality" looks like

MAKE WOMEN WOMEN AGAIN - Posts - """Trump's sexual boasts have "shaken me to my core"" - M. Obama
"Beyonce could not be a better role model for my girls" - M. Obama *picture of Beyonce twerking*"