Links - 27th February 2020 (2)

Teacher Accused Of Assaulting Student For Wearing 'Women For Trump' Pin - "A 16-year-old Michigan high school student told police she was assaulted by a teacher who tore a “Women for Trump” pin off of her shirt.Sadie Earegood told police the incident occurred on Dec. 5 when a media technology teacher, Paul Kato, approached her during a class at Mason High School"
Love Trumps Hate. Where Love means beating up Trump supporters

Mike Webster's answer to Can someone stay illegally in Canada by overstaying the visa? - Quora - "Nope. If you did, you could not work, you could not go to school, could not rent a place to live, could not open a bank account, could not get a driver’s license, could not access healthcare, could not access any government supports or services, you could not even get a library card. When (not if, when) you caught, and it could be as simply as getting stopped for jaywalking, you will be arrested, detained in custody, deported from Canada and banned for 5 years from coming back. After the ban expired, you would stand almost no chance of getting another visa to return to Canada and Canada would share that information with countries such as the US, the UK, Australia and New Zealand and you would stand almost no chance of entering any of those countries either. Don’t even think about it."
Apparently US liberals don't know about the 'fascism' that takes place to the north

Jeremy Hymes-Balsley's answer to Does Canada actually deport illegal immigrants? I know someone who overstayed on a visitor visa and it is over five years now. Does immigration actually follow up on anyone who just overstayed their time? - Quora - "Two nice Canadian Border Service Agency men will show up, possibly with Royal Canadian Mounted Patrol escort, to kindly and politely ask you to come with them. They have an airplane they want to put you on, and it is heading to your country. There’s not much you can do, because one way or another, you’re getting on that plane.Canada is a friendly place, for sure, but when you overstay your visa, you invite Canada to become far less friendly to you. Please don’t do this. In fact, don’t do it anywhere. The US is in the condition it is because people decided they were too good to follow our rules. This empowered a very angry, bitter, and hateful segment of our society, which thrived in the already cut-throat US culture. Canada is the US’s nicer ‘twin’. I’d hate for you and others like you to empower the nasty people up there who are counterparts to our nasties here."

Richard Houle's answer to I applied for a green card to the United States and was approved in November 2015. Why is this taking so long? It's been four years and next year five. - Quora - "4 years is just the beginning. You should readThe Visa Bulletin, it will give you a hint about how long the queue is and an approximate wait time there is. If you applied today, (November 2019), the wait line is between 12 years and 21 years long, depending on your country of birth. So in your particular case, you might still have 8 to 17 years to wait.The reason why it is so slow is the way the system works. There are 23,400 green cards emitted per year in that particular category. And there are approximately 200,000 people that applied before you, waiting like you. Within a category, it works with a first come, first serve philosophy."

Steven Haddock's answer to Is it uncomfortable to live in Toronto because of the snow? - Quora - "Snow isn’t the issue... Toronto is the slush capital of Canada. In normal parts of the country, snow pretty much stays frozen for the whole winter. If it melts, it melts slowly or all at once. In Calgary, it’s either -15 or +15 so you either have “snow” or “water”. In Vancouver, snow is followed by heavy rain. In Toronto, it’s either -2 or +2 and you get light rain in winter so - slush.Slush fills the sewers in Toronto and clogs them. It can turn underpasses into lakes in short order. Unlike water, where gauging depth is easy, a slush puddle could be 2cm deep or 15cm deep"

The execution of Pofma | Bertha Harian - "So the fake news law has been invoked four times, each as insipid as the next. I had thought the first few salvos would be clear-cut examples of what is true or false, something that we can all get behind. Also, I had thought it would be about false statements that will rattle society to its foundations.But no...   I would have thought the G would be savvy enough to point out fake news that no one can argue against, such as fake photographs of collapsed buildings or a bomb explosion somewhere in Singapore take never took place – at least for the initial cases. Even a health scare that some food item is tainted would have made it into my books. Instead, the four correction directives are more akin to the G’s usual “right of reply” – but backed by law. Recall that the Newspaper and Printing Presses Act was amended in the 80s to compel foreign publications to run the G’s side of the story to any of its offending or erroneous articles – on pain of circulation restrictions and blanked-out advertisements. They had to run the replies in full.  The strategy was about hitting the media in the pocket. The late Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew was upfront and honest about his intentions.  Pofma, however, has been portrayed as a necessary weapon to protect the public from fake news purveyors . We were fed information about how misinformation had led to some really terrible outcomes in other countries.  And then we have these four limp/lame cases targeted at opposition politicians and parties… it is important for the G to be scrupulous in its use of Pofma – lest more cynicism builds up over the “real” reason for its use and we begin to behave like the people who ignored The Boy who cried Wolf."

Am i doing this right? : Tinder - "Call me june because i'll alwayscome after May"
"I hope you like single mothers"
"They are my favourite kind"
"I actually don't have any kids I have no idea why I said that"
"Im actually not a fuck boy i dontknow why i opened that way"
"I'm not a fuck girl either but if I get my heart broken I'll fuck your best friend"
"Jokes on you i dont have friends"
"My ex had feelings for my Aunty our whole relationship"
"Your aunty must be smoking"

Dank Star Wars Memes Cantina - "My pussy when you talk about Star Wars *cactus in desert*"

wizengamos - "[Harry Potter] very neatly describes the way liberals see the world and political struggle. Lots of people complain about the anti-climactic ending, but really I don’t think it could any other way [sic]. I’d like to imagine that there’s some alternate universe where Rowling actually believed in something and Harry was actually built up as the anti-Voldemort he was only hinted as being in the beginning of the books. Where he’s opposes [sic] all the many injustices of the wizarding world and determines to change their frequently backwards, insular, contradictory society for the better... But that would require a Harry that believed in something, and since Rowling is a liberal centrist Blairite that doesn’t really believe in anything, Harry lives in a world drought [sic] with conflict and injustice: a stratified class society, slavery of sentient magic creatures, the absurd charade the wizarding world puts up to enforce their own self-segregation, a corrupted and bureaucracy-choked government, rampant racism, so on and so forth. But Harry is little more than a passive observer for most of it, only the racism really bothers him (and then, really only racism against half-bloods). In fact, when Hermione stands up against the slavery of elves, she’s treated as some kind of ridiculous Soapbox Sadie. For opposing chattel slavery. In the end, the biggest force for change is Voldemort and Harry and friends only ever fight for the preservation and reproduction of the status quo. The very height of Harry’s dreams is to join the aurors, a sort of wizard FBI and the ultimate defenders of the wizarding status quo. Harry doesn’t even beat Voldemort, Voldemort accidentally kills himself because he violated some obscure technicality that causes one of his spells to bounce back at him. And this is really the struggle of liberals, they live in a world fraught with conflict, but aren’t particularly bothered by any of it except those bit that threaten multicultural pluralism. They see change, and the force behind that change, as a wholly negative phenomenon. Even then, they can only act within the legal and ideological framework of their society"

The University’s New Loyalty Oath - WSJ - "Seventy years ago the University of California introduced a loyalty oath, requiring employees to swear they were “not a member of the Communist Party.” After a contentious period in which 31 faculty were fired for refusing to sign, the requirement was reconsidered. An eventual consequence was the current Standing Order of the Regents 101.1(d): “No political test shall ever be considered in the appointment and promotion of any faculty member or employee.” This is a statement of principle. No one will be denied a position at the University of California based on political beliefs. No communist, no conservative, no progressive, no liberal.Now the university appears to be abandoning this principle. In the past few years “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” statements, in which applicants for faculty positions profess their commitment to these social goals, have become required on eight UC campuses and at colleges across the country... I have become increasingly uneasy with the use of DEI statements in faculty hiring. This spring the university issued guidelines instructing each campus to develop and use a scoring system, called a “rubric,” for applicants’ diversity statements. No longer will faculty hiring committees use their own judgment about how best to create a diverse and inclusive environment in their fields.  Instead, each candidate’s commitment to diversity will be assigned points. To score well, candidates must subscribe to a particular political ideology, one based on treating people not as unique individuals but as representatives of their gender and ethnic identities. A rubric from the Berkeley campus, singled out because it is available online, specifies that job applicants who describe “only activities that are already the expectation of Berkeley faculty (mentoring, treating all students the same regardless of background, etc)” will score poorly (1 or 2 points out of 5). A low score in this or other areas will disqualify a candidate. This system specifically excludes those who believe in a tenet of classical liberalism: that each person should be treated as a unique individual, not as a representative of an identity group. Rather than helping achieve inclusion, these DEI rubrics act as a filter for those with nonconforming views. Earlier this year, I was invited to submit an essay to the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, the most widely read journal in mathematics. I decided to express my view that these required statements have become political litmus tests, and that this should worry us all. My submission provoked an intense controversy—confirming that this has become a dangerously politicized issue. Social media posts called my views disgusting, condemned the American Mathematical Society for publishing the essay, and called for my public shaming. Mathematicians were urged to steer their students away from studying at UC Davis, where I teach, and to contact the university to question my fitness as chair of the math department. A letter misrepresenting my views attracted hundreds of signatures... I received more than 150 emails, overwhelmingly supportive, many from leading mathematicians in the U.S. and overseas. Some recalled similar required statements in Soviet bloc countries, which they encountered earlier in their careers. Some pointed out that the diversity statements tend to be formulaic, with many candidates coached on how to write them, and that the content often emphasizes ideology over accomplishments. Others noted that the statements disadvantage foreign applicants and candidates from low-income groups, who may not have opportunities to participate in voluntary activities that demonstrate a commitment to diversity. Many emails contained a disturbing theme, typified by this line from one of them: “Some day I, too, hope to speak out on this issue, but it is simply too dangerous at present.” This is a frightening sentiment to hear in academia"
So SJWism has infected mathematics too
Liberals will continue to claim that it's a myth that they are threatening academic freedom

Study: STEM profs should give easier grades in order to draw more women into the field - "the researchers, examining administrative and course data from the University of Kentucky’s archives from 2012, found that students both spent more time on STEM courses every week—about an hour—and that they also got lower grades in STEM classes than in others. Notably, the authors determined that women in the sample data, though possessing higher grades overall than the men, were underrepresented in STEM classes. Their contention? That “harsher grading policies in STEM courses disproportionately affect women”... The proposed solution to draw more women into STEM, Higher Ed reports, would be to “[require] the same mean grade across classes,” in effect grading on a curve...
'Grading along a curve — any curve — is itself a controversial idea. Some professors say it’s bad pedagogical practice. And it’s hard to see how to get professors across fields to agree on a grading scheme without an administrative directive to do so. That, in turn, would likely spark concerns about academic freedom, as teaching, including grading, is widely understood to be the domain of the faculty.'"

Opinion | The Tyranny of the 63 Million - The New York Times - "Again and again, histrionic Republican congressmen equated hatred of the president with hatred of themselves and hatred of the sacred 63 million... We face the horror of Trump because the structure of American democracy gives disproportionate power to a declining demographic group passionately convinced of its right to rule"
It's ironic that in other contexts, liberals are so obsessed with protecting the "minority"
I guess the talk of "deplorables" and "flyover" country were imaginary
As usual, the Facebook comments betray a profound ignorance about basic civics