Links - 2nd April 2022 (2)

Georgia man arrested again over fight involving pork chop - "Terry Ball, 29, of Athens, was arrested last Wednesday for allegedly violating a family violence bond order after police say he became enraged because someone ate his pork chop, leaving him to eat noodles.  In late February, Ball was arrested for allegedly hurling a pork chop at his 60-year-old mother and physically assaulting her because she failed to buy him cigarettes."

‘There could be snakes’: planes mothballed by Covid prepare to fly again - "Earlier this year the European Union Aviation Safety Agency warned of an “alarming trend in the number of reports of unreliable speed and altitude indications during the first flight(s) following the aircraft leaving storage, caused by contaminated air data systems”.  Planes were forced to halt takeoffs or turn back because of “foreign objects” such as insect nests in pitot static systems, pressure-sensitive equipment which provides critical air data information such as airspeed."

San Francisco street plagued by lost self driving cars - "As many as 50 Waymo vehicles turn up at the end of 15th Avenue in the Richmond District each day, making multi-point turns to get out of the narrow street.  The vehicles. which each carry sophisticated computer equipment, appear confused by the abrupt end of the street, and neighbours say their continual presence is becoming a nuisance... Neighbours reported Waymo cars were turning up every five minutes on Tuesday, clogging the street as many residents work from home."

ADL on Twitter - "There is a distinct difference between criminal doxing, a common tactic of white supremacists & others to facilitate the stalking and terrorizing of targets, and the important reporting of extremists & hateful activity. Our laws must clearly reflect that." Basically doxing is good when the left approves of it, since anyone who disagrees with a leftist is a "white supremacist" and/or "extremist"

Milkman hailed as hero - "A milkman was hailed a hero last week after saving the lives of eight people by putting out a raging fire with 320 pints of milk.  35-year-old Steve Leech was named Hero Milkman of the Millennium after dousing the blaze in a shop in Cornwall, saving the lives of people in flats above... “It was hard work opening all those bottles as they have tamper-proof lids. It was even harder trying to explain to my boss where all the milk had gone.”"

Meme - Heather Flowers At H..: "been getting into defying god recently. i've been growing plants in my apartment without any dirt. this is my onion, baja blast"

$12,500 electric vehicle incentive survives Biden's updated 'Build Back Better' proposal
Some people claim that "Sounds like car lots are about to add $12,500 to sticker price on EV’s". By that logic tax cuts (which these people love) are bad and redundant too, since prices will just go up by the same amount

Meme - “Why Are Humans The Only Creatures That Drink Milk As Adults?”
Bear: "Well, it's easy for you. You have supermarkets and stuff."
Bear: "Hey Mary, can suck some milk from your titties?"
Mary: "Fuck off, pervert!"
"You see?"

marla cruz on Twitter - "One time a 70yo Iranian man came into the club for his birthday and told me that strippers go to heaven bc people who live to bring others joy are children of God."

Durham student union ‘training undergraduates in sex work’ - "The University of Durham has come under fire for supporting the provision of training for students working in the sex industry.  Universities minister Michelle Donelan said the Russell Group institution was ‘legitimising a dangerous industry’ after Durham’s student union offered two courses on the subject.  One Zoom session, which was fully booked and took place last night, was advertised as an ‘interactive course that explores the challenges student sex workers can face’.  A previous hour-long class took place on November 5."

Meme - "I love watching ladybugs. They're so calm and peaceful."
"MEANWHILE...
DIE APHID SCUM!
RARRR!!!
Save yourselves!
Run for your lives!"

Meme - Commie: "Capitalism is immoral because you have to work or you starve!"
"He who does not work shall not eat - Vladimir Lenin"
Commie: *stunned*

Understanding the evolution of nocturnal mammals by studying their extinct relatives - "Humans are diurnal. We sleep at night and are active during the day. (That isn’t to say that I feel particularly diurnal most mornings, given that my alarm has to make it through a few snooze cycles to wake me up and coffee is the only thing keeping me from napping under my desk at work.) Most mammals, though, don’t share our ostensible predilection for daylight; only 20% of mammal species are diurnal like us. Of our mammalian relatives, nearly 70% are nocturnal. The rest are crepuscular (active at dawn and dusk) or cathemeral (active during both day and night).

A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society? | WIRED - "On March 6, 1995, WIRED’s executive editor and resident techno-optimist Kevin Kelly went to the Greenwich Village apartment of the author Kirkpatrick Sale. Kelly had asked Sale for an interview. But he planned an ambush... Sale believed society was on the verge of collapse. That wasn’t entirely bad, he argued. He hoped the few surviving humans would band together in small, tribal-style clusters. They wouldn’t be just off the grid. There would be no grid. Which was dandy, as far as Sale was concerned... In the final pages of his Luddite book, Sale had predicted society would collapse “within not more than a few decades.” Kelly, who saw technology as an enriching force, believed the opposite—that society would flourish. Baiting his trap, Kelly asked just when Sale thought this might happen. Sale was a bit taken aback—he’d never put a date on it. Finally, he blurted out 2020. It seemed like a good round number. Kelly then asked how, in a quarter century, one might determine whether Sale was right. Sale extemporaneously cited three factors: an economic disaster that would render the dollar worthless, causing a depression worse than the one in 1930; a rebellion of the poor against the monied; and a significant number of environmental catastrophes. “Would you be willing to bet on your view?” Kelly asked. “Sure,” Sale said. Then Kelly sprung his trap. He had come to Sale’s apartment with a $1,000 check drawn on his joint account with his wife. Now he handed it to his startled interview subject. “I bet you $1,000 that in the year 2020, we’re not even close to the kind of disaster you describe,” he said. Sale barely had $1,000 in his bank account. But he figured that if he lost, a thousand bucks would be worth much less in 2020 anyway. He agreed. Kelly suggested they both send their checks for safekeeping to William Patrick, the editor who had handled both Sale’s Luddite book and Kelly’s recent tome on robots and artificial life; Sale agreed. “Oh, boy,” Kelly said after Sale wrote out the check. “This is easy money.”... Sales’ Collapse of 2020 book, which came out last January, includes an untimely concession. The very fact that his book exists, he wrote, is the equivalent of tossing his cards face down on the table: If society had in fact collapsed, there would be no books, self-published or not... Sale believes more than ever that society is basically crumbling—the process is just not far enough along to drive us from apartment blocks to huts. The collapse, he says, is “not like a building imploding and falling down, but like a slow avalanche that destroys and kills everything in its path, until it finally buries the whole village forever.” Kelly wrote to Sale on New Year’s Day, instructing him to direct the $1,000 to Heifer International, a nonprofit that gives away breeding pairs of animals. Sale puzzled him by replying, “I didn’t lose the bet.” Kelly assumed he hadn’t seen Patrick’s decision, and he had the editor resend it. But Sale had read it—and rejected it... Kelly is infuriated. “This was a gentleman’s bet, and he can only be classified as a cad,” he says. Kelly warns Sale that history will recall him as a man who doesn’t honor his word. But Sale doesn’t believe that there will be a history. For Kirkpatrick Sale, collapse is now, and all bets are off."

Meme - Average Dad @Average Dad1" "My wife teaches high school math and half of her time is spent just making sure that none of the math problems she gives to the kids end up with an answer of 69 or 420"

— pigcatapult - "Nobody ever explains why glancing at a solar eclipse is any different from glancing at the sun."
"the sun gets a critical multiplier on its damage when its hp is low"
"Your pupils contract in response to visible light, but not all of the sun’s light is visible. During an eclipse, your pupils widen because it’s dark, but there’s an outer layer around the sun that mostly only puts out light that’s not visible to us, but that can still damage your retinas. Thus, looking at an eclipse makes your pupils open up like it’s dark, which lets more of the invisible damage beams in.
The sun doesn’t get a critical multiplier on its damage when HP is low. Equipping the moon gives the sun a bonus to backstab."

DISNEY ENDS SHOWS AFTER HAWK ATTACKS - "Call it the circle of life -- hungry hawks swooping in and devouring the pigeons released in a flourish at shows and weddings throughout Disney World. The pigeons, used in shows such as Cinderella's Surprise Celebration at the Magic Kingdom and Beauty and the Beast at Disney-MGM Studios, became sitting ducks when red-tailed hawks figured out they could count on an easy meal at the same time every day. Disturbed by the thought of sending the birds to almost certain death, Disney this week stopped releasing the homing pigeons -- ending a tradition that began about 30 years ago."

Militant from Seattle's 'autonomous zone' sentenced for attempted attack on Trump supporters in Florida | The Post Millennial - "Daniel Alan Baker, a US Army veteran turned Syrian militia member, who attempted to rally far-left activists to surround pro-Trump protesters with guns at the Florida state Capitol in January, was sentenced last week to 44 months in jail followed by three years of federal supervision."

Signal >> Blog >> The Instagram ads Facebook won't show you - "Facebook’s own tools have the potential to divulge what is otherwise unseen. It’s already possible to catch fragments of these truths in the ads you’re shown; they are glimmers that reflect the world of a surveilling stranger who knows you. We wanted to use those same tools to directly highlight how most technology works. We wanted to buy some Instagram ads. We created a multi-variant targeted ad designed to show you the personal data that Facebook collects about you and sells access to. The ad would simply display some of the information collected about the viewer which the advertising platform uses. Facebook was not into that idea. Facebook is more than willing to sell visibility into people’s lives, unless it’s to tell people about how their data is being used. Being transparent about how ads use people’s data is apparently enough to get banned; in Facebook’s world, the only acceptable usage is to hide what you’re doing from your audience."

Teachers' grades biased to more 'agreeable' pupils, claim psychologists - "An international study found a 10% advantage in teachers' grades for those seen as being likeable, compared with results in anonymous exams... those with personality traits seen as more positive - such as more sociable, well-behaved and "agreeable" - received a boost in teachers' grades, which were not then borne out by performance in anonymous exams. Teachers also seemed to be more sympathetic in grading towards students who were stressed or anxious, showing more "leniency" in grades for those seen as more "emotionally fragile". This pattern worked against those who were perceived as having more negative, anti-social or annoying traits... The study, also involving academics in Russia and Italy, found no clear pattern between personality types and actual performance in exams. But the evidence suggested "teacher ratings might reflect some conscious or unconscious biases", said the psychologist Dr Papageorgiou. This is a higher profile issue in the UK this summer - with teachers' grades playing an important part, along with other assessments, in deciding results for exams cancelled by the pandemic."

Meme - "Jennifer Goodwin Rand: If you're involved in PragerU l've lost all respect for you
Mike Rowe: The part that fascinates me, Jennifer, is the part where you assume your respect is something I might be craving. What happened exactly, to give you the impression that people you've never met might care about having your respect?"

Belgium is looking for 5,000 lorry drivers to prevent empty shelves
It's all the fault of Brexit! Belgium should not have left the EU

The picture that shows why Brexit is not to blame for Britain's shortages - "Standing on the Pacific coast in California, a casual observer might find themselves thinking America had just severed close ties with its biggest trading partners. Outside Los Angeles and Long Beach - the country's two biggest ports - a queue of container ships stretches to the horizon, waiting to dock and offload their wares. But this clear evidence of a supply chain crisis has nothing to do with any Brexit-style rupture. Instead, it has been caused by global chaos as ports struggle to recover from Covid shutdowns and the world struggles with a massive shortage of lorry drivers. The turmoil in America is linked directly to disruption in Britain which critics here are keen to blame on our departure from the European Union - despite clear evidence of the same issues not just in LA, but across the Continent as well."
Of course, the shortages in the US are Trump's fault

Dr. Eli David on Twitter - "2% of Elon Musk's wealth could solve world hunger, says director of UN food scarcity organization "
"Fact check:
🔹 2% of @elonmusk's wealth is $6B
🔹 In 2020 the UN World Food Program (WFP) raised $8.4B. How come it didn't "solve world hunger"?"

UN to Elon Musk: Here's that $6 billion plan to fight world hunger - "The director of the United Nations' World Food Programme laid out a plan to spend $6.6 billion to combat world hunger — a direct response to a back-and-forth with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who claimed he would sell Tesla stock to fund a plan if the WFP could describe "exactly how" it would work."
Cheeky slippage from "solve" to "fight". It's easy to "fight" anything since you don't need to win

Facebook - "Relook need to hand GEP results to pupils in class"
"Very soon, we won’t even give out book prizes etc because some kids will feel bad. Shouldn’t it be up to us to teach children to rejoice in the success of other people?"

Meme - "*2 Joker cosplayers* You want to know the difference? I'm a classically trained performer with 20 years of theater experience, who understands lighting and makeup and costuming. Also I'm wearing a $100 purple suit and a $70 purple trench coat and this guy is wearing something from Spirit Halloween.
It's really sad that some of you are so stupid you can't put two and two together and figure out which one's me, either that or you're just being facetious which is a waste of my time and blocking you is a way better option than giving you a monologue about why you're a ***"

Meme - Socialist: "There seems to be a mistake. I planned on being a neuro-queer video game streamer for the cause!"
Gulag Guard: "Dig the fucking hole!"

Out-of-work Aussies turn down roles on island paradise with free rent - "The dream jobs are being offered by Discovery Parks in some of Australia's most sought-after locations. Destinations include Byron Bay and Forster in northern New South Wales, Rottnest Island in Western Australia, and Lake Bonney in South Australia... The company has even offered to pay for interstate applicants to quarantine in hotels. 'I've been running this business for 17 years and I've never seen a shortage like this,'... 'Usually we have people from overseas filling these roles, but with the pandemic, Australians just aren't applying.' Mr Wilckens explained that while he believes the JobSeeker and JobKeeper welfare benefits were a 'fantastic' way to help people during business closures, but added 'we need to be encouraging people back into the work force'. 'We've got free accommodation across most of our network, and some are in regional places like Byron and Rottnest, subsidies on food, and then subsidies on ferries and transport as well.'"

Carjacking victims told to pay DC tickets racked up by the criminals who took their car - "Carjackers put a gun to 73-year-old Doug Nelson’s head as he arrived home a little after midnight... The criminals went on a dangerous joyride, often exceeding 70 mph in 30 mph zones, triggering speed cameras half a dozen times... Because of the outstanding tickets, the Nelsons can't get tags, which means they haven't been able to drive their car for six months, complicating everything for these two front-line workers from getting to work, to the grocery store, and to their grandkids."

Chinatown's Mid-Autumn Light-Up Had Awkward Phrases, 10 Ornaments Taken Down - "Chinatown’s Mid-Autumn Festival Light-Up Has Non-Traditional Words, Accused Of Polluting Chinese Culture... this sign carries the words “亮亮堂堂”, which translates roughly to “bright and dignified” – apparently not traditionally used for the Mid-Autumn Festival. Below, there’s a sign reading “国家欢乐”, which means “joy for the country” – a nice sentiment, but perhaps more appropriate for National Day? Then there’s this sign, which reads “皓月闪烁”. That translates nonsensically into “the bright moon twinkles”... the correct phrase is “皓月当空，星光闪烁” (Bright moon is in the sky, stars are twinkling). Another questionable sign is this one, which says “月到是秋分外明”, or “the moon is especially bright in autumn”. According to an outraged netizen, it’s actually part of a couplet, which should read: “人逢喜事精神爽，月到中秋分外明”."

Medicinal maggots make comeback amid mounting superbug threat - "The use of live maggots to clean wounds is undergoing a renaissance in the NHS amid mounting concerns about the threat of antibiotic resistance... The maggots eat away the rotten flesh, containing and killing off the infection. “Maggots are viewed as an agent of decay, when in fact they’re brilliant little creatures… and work incredibly well in wounds with resistant infections”... The maggots don’t have teeth, but instead excrete enzymes which break down dead tissue and turn it into a “soup that they then drink” through the polyester pouch, said Prof Nigam. The larvae’s saliva then acts as a natural disinfectant, but mounting evidence has shown it also aids the healing process... experts believe free range larval therapy has “immense potential” to transform treatment of wounds in lower resource settings – especially war zones and humanitarian crises, where access to medical supplies is more limited and it is common to die or lose a limb from a secondary infection after even a simple procedure."

Super-sperm: Indonesian child protection official says women can get pregnant from swimming in a pool with men - "Indonesians are calling for the resignation of an official who made quite a splash in the country by saying that women can get pregnant by swimming in a pool with men. Yes. Let that sink in. She’s a commissioner for KPAI (The Commission for the Protection of Indonesian Children) and a college professor, by the way... Sitti also went on to say that, in the US, women who killed people but were going through PMS were acquitted of their crimes"
Too bad liberals won't be able to make sexist comments about her ignorance. Actually, since she's brown and presumably Muslim...

How a lenient NYC judge left a reputed gangbanger free to allegedly kill an innocent dad - "A reputed teenage gang member with three gun busts in four months had his bail reduced by a Bronx judge — allowing him to get out of jail and allegedly fire a random shot that killed an innocent father of two... Alberto Ramirez, 16, was arrested Monday in the slaying of Eric Velasquez, 34, who was struck by a stray bullet that the teen allegedly shot blindly into a crowd while on a rival gang’s turf, law enforcement sources said. He has pleaded not guilty. Ramirez was locked up on $75,000 bail when acting Supreme Court Justice Denis Boyle lowered the amount to $10,000 cash or $25,000 bond over prosecution objections... His family bailed him out a few weeks later, a spokeswoman for DA Darcel Clark said — putting him back on the streets... “How many bites of the apple does someone get before someone gets killed? In this case, it was three”... Boyle is no stranger to rulings that led to disastrous results. Last year, the jurist came under fire for his decision to release Jordon Benjamin, a 16-year-old boy charged with manslaughter who allegedly went on to slash a young woman across her abdomen — only to be released by Boyle again. And in 1999, Boyle signed off on a deal that let a homeless man live in a shelter and attend therapy sessions while awaiting sentencing in an attempted sex attack in the Bronx — during which time, authorities later said, he went on a spree of sex attacks in Manhattan."

A dirty secret: you can only be a writer if you can afford it - "I’m not sure how or if I’d still be a writer without the help of other people’s money. I have zero undergrad debt. Of my three years of grad school, two of them were funded through a teaching fellowship; my parents helped pay for the first. The last two years my stipend barely covered the childcare I needed to travel uptown three days a week to teach and go to class and my husband’s job is what kept us afloat... Other versions of this story that I know from other people: a down payment from a grandpa on a brownstone; monthly parental stipends; a partner who works at a startup; a partner who’s a corporate lawyer; a wealthy former boss who got attached and agreed to pay their grad school off... On Instagram and Twitter there are writers who “write full time” also. They post pictures of their desk or their pens and talk about “process”. Maybe, two years ago, they sold a quiet literary novel to an independent press. For my students, for all the people I see out there, trying to break in or through and watching, envious, I want to attach to these statements and these Instagram posts, a caveat that says the writing isn’t what is keeping this person safe and clothed and fed. According to a 2018 Author’s Guild Study the median income of all published authors for all writing related activity was $6,080 in 2017, down from $10,500 in 2009; while the median income for all published authors based solely on book-related activities went from $3,900 to $3,100, down 21%. Roughly 25% of authors earned $0 in income in 2017. I would argue that there is nothing more sustaining to long-term creative work than time and space – these things cost money – and the fact that some people have access to it for reasons that are often outside of their control continues to create an ecosystem in which the tenor of the voices that we hear from most often remains similar. It is no wonder, I say often to students, that so much of the canon is about rich white people. Who else, after all, has the time and space to finish a book. Who else, after all, as the book is coming out, has the time and space and money to promote and publicize that book? There are ramifications, I think, of no one mentioning the source of this freedom when they have it. There is the perpetuation of an illusion that makes an unsustainable life choice appear sustainable, that makes the specific achievements of particular individuals seem more remunerative than they actually are... When students ask me for advice with regard to how to “make it as a writer”, I tell them to get a job that also gives them time and space somehow to write; I tell them find a job that, if they still have it 10 years from now, it wouldn’t make them sad... To be a writer is a choice, after all, and I continue to make it. But perpetuating the delusion that the choice is not impossibly risky, precarity-inducing, only hurts the participants’ ability to reconsider the various shapes their lives might take in service of sustaining it and them. It allows a system that cannot sustain most of the producers of its products to continue to pretend it can."

Ben Rhodes on Twitter - "The new illegitimate 5-4 SCOTUS majority overturning a policy to put more lives in danger."
If liberals disagree with it, it's illegitimate

Meme - "Life expectancy, 1961 to 2019
Fall of Communism: 1990 - Rapid Increase
Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria"
"Capitalism has failed"

Erika Slover's answer to Was Elsa really supposed to be the villain of Frozen? - Quora - "Yes—and they were fairly far along with this concept as well. Here’s some of Disney’s concept art of evil Elsa... the character Hans was never meant to be the “villain.” He was the prince charming character that was intended to be everything a prince charming is supposed to be. Handsome, gentle, has an animated horse pet—a genuinely likable guy. The twist was that, despite Anna’s affection for him, he turns out not to be “the one.” After all, sometimes—just like in reality—the seemingly perfect person isn’t a good match for you. This would have allowed Anna to make a decision between Hans and Kristoff which would have shown personal growth as she chooses between what she “THINKS” she wants, and what she “REALLY” wants in a relationship. However, there was a drastic change that caused the whole movie to be re-arranged practically last-minute. This caused a bit of a delay in the movie’s release as well. They chose to make Elsa a non-villain and (terrified at the idea of not having an evil villain) threw together Hans as the villain instead. The problem with this? Whether because of budget or time restraints (or both), they chose to recycle clips of Hans from before he was a villain and put them in the movie. This created some curious plot-holes that made the story not entirely up to Disney’s usual standard. That’s why Hans has such an innocent feel toward the beginning of the movie. That’s also why his friendly, loyal horse only appears in the one scene with the boat. This also likely explains the puzzling fact as to why in the world the BEST and most PROFOUND quote from the entire movie is actually uttered by Hans—the new “villain.” He tells Elsa something that actually saves her from making a terrible, irreversible mistake: “Don’t be the monster they fear you are!”... So what caused this hasty change in villains? This song… Yep. “Let it Go” was the song that re-wrote the entire Frozen movie. The song was written for villain Elsa at first (you can almost see traces of it in lyrics like: “No right, no wrong, no rules for me!”). But, upon recording it and hearing what it sounded like, they felt that the song was too empowering to be given to a villain character. So, they quickly began re-working the script... he’s a very flat villain and, because he was introduced so close to the climax as the bad guy, there’s little to no room for development. He goes from good to evil in a flash, and his motives are cliche and breezed over at best. The Hans at the beginning of the movie is so drastically different from the one at the end that even fans online try and rationalize it with dreaded fan-theories like: “does he have multiple personalities? Is he under a curse? Was he framed?” etc. It’s easy for Anna to say she “chooses” Kristoff when the other guy is an attempted murderer... Just saying… Not much of a choice."

willwilkinson.eth 🌐 on Twitter - "Why is it "kill baby Hitler" rather than "make Hitler's mom fall in love with YOU" or "kidnap Hitler's grandpa and strand him in Nepal just before he meets Hitler's grandma"? People lacking in imagination should not have time machines."

The 'XKCD' Science-Paper Meme Nails Academic Publishing - The Atlantic - ""Many papers serve no purpose, advance no agenda, may not be correct, make no sense, and are poorly read. But they are required for promotion"... The results from one experiment get sliced up into a dozen papers, statistics are massaged to produce more interesting results, and conclusions become exaggerated. The most prolific authors have found a way to publish more than one scientific paper a week. Those who can’t keep up might hire a paper mill to do (or fake) the work on their behalf... “COVID publications appear to be representative of the literature at large: a few really important papers and a whole bunch of stuff that isn’t or shouldn’t be read”"

Job Vacancies Is At A Record High While Job Vacancy To Unemployed Ratio Has Increased From 0.75 To 0.96. Here’s What The Statistics Is Telling Us About Singapore’s Employment Market - "Foreign Labour Has Come To A Standstill And Some Industries Cannot Find Workers"

Reintroduction of Tasmanian devils to Australian island wipes out entire population of little penguins - "The carnivorous mammals, which are endangered, were put on Maria Island, in 2012 in an effort to boost their numbers. But their arrival has wreaked havoc among the bird population and wiped out little penguins, according to BirdLife Tasmania... A group of at least 28 Tasmanian devils was sent to the island, east of Tasmania, in 2012 and 2013 and the animals have been thriving ever since. A paper published in the Biological Conservation journal last year said the devils “eliminated” colonies of shearwater, a medium-sized sea bird in the petrel family."

A ‘Thrilling’ Mission to Get the Swedish to Change Overnight - "“Thrilling” is the word repeatedly used by Jan Ramqvist to describe how he felt about participating in a nationwide mission to get all Swedish motorists and cyclists to change the habits of a lifetime and begin driving on the right-hand side of the road for the first time... The day was officially known as Högertrafikomläggningen (right-hand traffic diversion) or simply Dagen H (H-Day). Its mission was to put Sweden on the same path as the rest of its continental European neighbours, most of which had long followed the global trend to drive cars on the right. As well as hoping to boost the country’s international reputation, the Swedish government had grown increasingly concerned about safety, with the number of registered vehicles on the roads shooting up from 862,992 a decade earlier to a figure of 1,976,248 recorded by Statistics Sweden at the time of H-Day. Sweden’s population was around 7.8 million. Despite driving on the left, many Swedes already owned cars with the steering wheel on the left-hand side of the vehicle, since many bought from abroad and major Swedish car manufacturers such as Volvo had chosen to follow the trend. However, there were concerns that this was a factor in rising numbers of fatal road traffic accidents, up from 595 in 1950 to 1,313 in 1966, alongside an increased frequency of collisions around Sweden’s borders with Denmark, Norway and Finland... All but essential traffic was banned from the roads... On paper, it didn’t look easy: in a public referendum in 1955, 83 percent of voters had actually been against the switch."

Why I Switched to Mozilla Firefox From Chrome and You Should Too - "The biggest draw for me was, of course, the fact that Mozilla Firefox can finally go toe-to-toe with Google Chrome on the performance front, and often manages to edge it out as well... in addition to being fast, Firefox is resource-efficient, unlike most of its peers. I don’t have to think twice before firing up yet another tab. It’s rare that I’m forced to close an existing tab to make room for a new one. On Firefox, my 2015 MacBook Pro’s fans don’t blast past my noise-canceling headphones, which happened fairly regularly on Chrome as it pushed my laptop’s fans to their helicopter-like limits to keep things running... Privacy is the centerpiece of most of Mozilla’s efforts and the Firefox browser is no different. Its Enhanced Tracking Protection framework keeps your identity safe by blocking trackers and cookies that otherwise follow you around the internet and collect sensitive information you probably didn’t even know you were giving up. On top of that, Firefox can warn if a website is covertly mining cryptocurrency in the background... What really clinched the switch to Mozilla Firefox was the fact that it’s the only cross-platform browser that’s not running Google’s open-source Chromium platform. Microsoft’s Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi — each of these browsers run on Chromium, accelerating Google’s dominance over the web even when you’re not directly using a Chrome user. Firefox, on the other hand, is powered by Mozilla’s in-house Gecko engine that’s not dependent on Chromium in any way."

Meme - "A sinkhole roughly the size of six to seven washing machines has closed the northbound lanes of State Line Road near100th Street in Kansas City, Missouri."
"Americans will measure with anything but the metric system"
Weird how Americans claim that Imperial is so intuitive and practical compared to metric but keep using weird units of measurement, while in other countries they just use the actual measurements

Does Head Start work? The debate over the Head Start Impact Study, explained - "Decades-spanning longitudinal studies of experimental preschool programs like HighScope/Perry Preschool and Abecedarian find those who participated in these early childhood educational interventions persist in education, have higher earnings and commit fewer crimes than the control group... Natural experiments of the effects of Head Start show that Head Start causes better health, educational, and economic outcomes over the long term as a consequence of participation... New research by Chloe Gibbs and Andrew Barr find intergenerational effects of Head Start"
Someone claimed that the head start impact assessment showed that nurture had 0 effect

Explaining leftist school indoctrination

Thread by @JoshDaws on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App:

""Don't make me tap the sign.
It's not rocket science guys. They're just evil and want to diddle kids"

I'm seeing a lot of people on the right share this meme. While it may be a strong satirical response to those who get lost in nuance, it fundamentally fails to recognize why the left wants to talk to your kids about sexuality. Let's connect some dots. 🧵

The left doesn't want to diddle kids. They want to create little revolutionaries. To do that they need to sever the bond between students and the parents they believe are raising their children to be hateful bigots.

In order to sever the bond between parents and their children, the left is using a two-pronged approach. Critical Race Theory and radical gender ideology (properly known as Queer Theory) are not two unrelated sets of ideas. They are two parts of the same strategy. 

CRT is usually the first set of ideas to be introduced. This is often enough to radicalize racial minorities, but it's merely step one for white (or white adjacent) students.

CRT instills in these students a negative self-identity as they're taught to believe they're recipients of enormous privilege that was stolen from others and that they are complicit in historic and ongoing injustice. In child terms, they're taught to believe they're bad.

Apart from the shame and guilt, this also gives them a worldview at odds with the one their parents grew up with and are trying to pass on to their kids. Step one is complete.

Once CRT is done tearing down these kids and leaving them with a negative self-identity, Queer Theory (QT) is introduced and offers them a wide assortment of positive self-identities to choose from.

Instead of living with the shame and guilt of being a member of the oppressive dominant culture, these students can be celebrated for coming out as gender nonbinary or pansexual.

In an instant, these kids can trade their negative self-identity and all the accompanying guilt and shame of being an "oppressor" for a positive self-identity as a much-venerated "oppressed" minority.

At this point, the left desperately wants this new identity to stay at school so it has time to be cemented before the parents find out. In the guise of helping these students, schools withhold this information about their child's new identity from mom and dad.

Once the parents do find out about their child's new identity it's firmly in place and an adversarial relationship between the child and parents has been manufactured. It takes extraordinarily deft parenting to repair the relationship once it has reached this stage.

The parents' tendency will be to overreact and push the child further into the arms of the woke radicals who now have the little revolutionary they wanted from the beginning. The bond between parents and child has been severed ending the perpetuation of hate and bigotry.

The left is determined to replicate this process in as many families as they can using whatever means at their disposal. It's not about diddling kids. It's about capturing the minds of impressionable children. 

Unfortunately, this creates environments where actual predators can thrive. When young children are isolated from their parents, encouraged to adopt different beliefs, and keep secrets from their parents, they are made easy targets for abusers.

"But my school has Christian teachers and a Christian principal. They couldn't possibly have this agenda." Aha. This is where we turn to @joe_rigney and connect another dot.

Hear me loud and clear on this. Most teachers love the kids in their classrooms and want only the best for them. They have had their empathy *for* these students weaponized *against* them by leftist activists promoting educational programs that sound nice and caring.

Highly empathetic teachers are being used to promote this agenda unaware of its insidious purpose. An example: I recently saw a teacher at a Christian school announce that she would no longer be using the words "mom", "dad", or "parents" in her classroom.

Her reason? She had just read a paper on the importance of making kids from non-traditional families feel included. She suggested replacing "Donuts with Dads" with "Bagels with Buds" or something of the such.

This sounds like a very considerate thing to do for kids who might feel different because they don't have a dad or live with their grandparents, but its purpose is to subtly chip away at the very idea of the normative nuclear family (a stated goal of the BLM organization.)

Christians who think that we can embrace the ideas from CRT and reject radical gender ideology need to realize how the former is used to prepare kids to accept the latter.

These are your kids we're talking about. The left wants them. They would love to sever your bond with them. They think your appeals to childhood innocence are an attempt to force heteronormativity on them. Seriously. They write papers on it. It's not a secret agenda.

@ConceptualJames has recorded a three-part series walking through this entire agenda by looking at primary sources. I highly recommend all parents invest the time to listen to them.

The meme I opened this 🧵 with is an easy response to the insanity we're seeing today, but it's not a great explanation. We should take the time to help people see how nice-sounding programs are being used in the classroom to create little activists and put kids in danger."

 

Ideally he should provide some accessible examples (not buried in a 1+ hr podcast). The left will just deny & pivot, but it would be good for neutral third parties to see examples of what he is talking about:

'CRT Teaches My Daughter Her Mother Is Evil': Father Gives Testimony Before School Board

Leaked documents show how teachers recruit students, form gay and transgender clubs in schools

Facebook - "My wife was chatting with another soccer mom who told her that in her daughter’s class, there are 8 girls. Five of the girls have declared that they are gay, LGBTQ, pansexual, or transgender. The daughter who is straight was told that it must suck for her to be straight."

Links - 2nd April 2022 (1 - George Floyd Unrest)

Meme - "The left: "I don't celebrate Columbus Day because I don't celebrate criminals"
Also the left: *George Floyd shrines*"
So much for him not being celebrated as a hero

Everywhere Statues Are Torn Down By The Mob, People Are Next - "The World War II Memorial to America’s actual anti-fascists was spray-painted, along with the Lincoln Memorial. A northern abolitionist boycotted in the South was splashed with blood-red paint and had a noose hung around his neck.  A relief of heroic black Union soldiers was vandalized, the hero of the Union Army was torn from his slab, and a monument to three black victims of racial violence was defiled. A statue of Saint Junípero Serra was pulled down days later, with one supporter calling for his bones to be dug up and desecrated.  Sacred religious statues depicting Christ as light-skinned “are a form of white supremacy… Tear them down,” race-baiting activist Shaun King wrote Monday afternoon. “All murals and stained glass windows of white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends should also come down.”  On Friday, a statue of a Confederate soldier was strung up and hanged from a lamppost in a ghastly warning of things to come. Policemen and reporters have been attacked, while mayors and journalists have defended the riots as “mostly peaceful.” When an historic church across from the White House was set ablaze, its leader welcomed the mob and decried the president. She was joined in her outreach by Washington’s Catholic archbishop, and the mayor named the street after the mob. Monday night as I write, her church has been freshly defaced and the mob has declared the mayor’s street their “autonomous zone.”...   “Does anybody here know what happened to the people who did not get on board with the French Revolution?” a member of the mob shouted into a megaphone a week prior.  “Chopped!” the mob chanted its violent response.   A society that believes in itself builds monuments, a sick society does not, and a dying society watches as they are torn down. While Roman kings, French monks, American Tories, and Russian tsarists were unable to defeat the revolutions that first tore down their symbols, today in the United States we are simply unwilling."

NYC commission votes unanimously to move Thomas Jefferson statue from City Council chambers at City Hall (2021)
Statues of Washington, Jefferson Aren't 'Next,' But It's Complicated, Historians Say (2017) - "Is the president right about the impending threat to the founders? Historians who spoke to NBC News said such fears are slightly misplaced and that Trump is championing a murky interpretation of history... “The president can raise the slippery slope, but it’s a false slippery slope,” said Kevin Levin, a Boston-based historian who specializes in American Civil War history."
If Trump accurately predicts the future, it is a murky interpretation of history
The "myth" of the slippery slope strikes again!

Meme - "Narrator: the slave trade was abolished in the US in 1808, when Jefferson was POTUS. He actively promoted the bill."
"Pointing this out won't make leftists want to save his statue. They hate him because he was a straight white male. Nothing more."

Did Black lives matter to Abraham Lincoln? It's complicated - CNN
First, they came for the Confederate Generals...
A civilisation that ceases to believe in itself is destined to collapse

William Pitt statue in Edinburgh could be removed despite him branding slavery 'curse of mankind' - "Britain’s youngest ever Prime Minister, and a friend of abolitionist William Wilberforce, is listed in consultation documents in a section covering those “involved in sustaining the slavery-based economy and preventing the abolition of the slave trade”...   If the public backs the removal of statues linked to slavery and colonialism, monuments to figures including David Livingstone, the missionary, and David Hume, the philosopher, could ultimately be purged by the city’s councillors... the Bute House residence of Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister, could also be subject to council action because former residents were slave owners. The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh has been cited for receiving historical donations from slaveholders, while churches and schools have also been linked to the slave trade in consulation documents.  Thoroughfares such as Queen Street have been brought into the consultation because five slave owners once lived on the road...   But Robert Poll, the founder of the campaign group Save Our Statues, has criticised the work, saying: “This is what happens when Edinburgh Council hands editorial control of the city’s history to a secretive cabal of activists operating beyond public scrutiny. They feed mollifying words to the press, while secretly plotting to remove the city’s heritage.”  He added: “We’re no longer talking about slave traders. We’re talking about Pitt, one of our greatest Prime Ministers and national hero who led us against Napoleon.  “This shows the reach, and the folly, of this monomaniacal brand of revisionism, where we’re only permitted to view history filtered through the single lens of slavery.”"

George Floyd Riots Caused Record-Setting $2 Billion in Damage, New Report Says. Here’s Why the True Cost Is Even Higher - "reporting from Axios reveals that the total insured property losses incurred during the George Floyd riots will come in at $1 billion to $2 billion... “[This will] eclips[e] the record set in Los Angeles in 1992 after the acquittal of the police officers who brutalized Rodney King.”... not all the damages were insured... 75 percent of US businesses are under-insured and about 40 percent of small businesses have no insurance at all. Their untold millions in losses don’t show up in the $2 billion figure.  So, too, insurance doesn’t account for the personal pain and suffering caused by rioting. For example, what about the more than 15 people who died during the unrest? Their lives and their families’ pain don’t get counted in any insurance company’s budgetary analysis. Nor does the pain of those such as an elderly businessman punched in the face while his store was ransacked in Kenosha, Wisconsin manifest itself in total reports on insurance compensation. Moreover, looking at mere insurance totals fails to factor in the lost sales revenue and unpaid labor that businesses victimized by rioters face.  And that’s all without even considering the long-term economic impact rioting has on a community. We must also remember that riots leave a lasting shadow on a city that haunts its economy for decades. The afflicted areas face higher insurance rates, lower property values, higher prices, reduced tax revenue, and decreased economic opportunity... One study of the 1992 Los Angeles riots concluded that not only did the destruction cause $1 billion in initial property damage, over time it led to an economic decline of $3.8 billion in sales activity and at least $125 million in tax revenue.  Moreover, a 2005 study examining similar riots in the 1960s found ‘negative, persistent, and economically significant effects of riots on the value of black-owned housing’ to the degree of ‘a 10 percent decline in the total value of black-owned property in cities.’ And seeing as the new reporting shows that the George Floyd riots were more destructive than the riots in either of the above periods, we can reasonably expect that the long-term economic consequences will be more severe as well."
Liberals will just blame the damage of the riots on "racism" and demand even more insanity

Matt Walsh on Twitter - "Former "Parks and Recreation" actor charged with vandalizing George Floyd statue"
"But I’ve been reliably informed that vandalism and destruction of property are valid and beautiful tributes to George Floyd’s memory"

'Riot Control Simulator' Game Will Let You Suppress Riots 'At All Costs' With Water Cannons, Tanks - "  The game has attracted some attention from left-wing activists who claim the game is “racist’ because it is under development at the same time as violent Black Lives Matter riots threaten to engulf the United States in real life.  However, none of the marketing or promotional materials for the game seem to indicate any influence from political ideology, and the gameplay is set in an apparently oppressive dictatorship."
Weird, yet liberals get very upset when one talks about the George Floyd Riots. The lady doth protest too much, methinks

WATCH: BLM Activist Asks When People 'Ready to Get Blood on Their Hands?' - "An activist speaking at Black Lives Matter Plaza asked how long before “people are really ready to get blood on their hands” to make change happen. His call to action came during a “Jail Killer Cops” rally in Washington, DC, on Friday evening.  “Voting is not gonna bring us this (change),” Rahim B., a 21-year-old activist, said during a “Jail Killer Cops” rally held Friday night in the nation’s capital. “We voted in the new president, Joe Biden, but I told folks straight up — Joe Biden ain’t gonna do nothing for us because Joe Biden was in office as the vice-president when the Black Lives Matter movement started and ain’t nothing changed.”"
More proof BLM is peaceful

Abe Lincoln’s Warning About the Perils of Mob Rule - "“Whenever the vicious portion of population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands,” Lincoln said, “and burn churches, ravage and rob provision-stores, throw printing presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure, and with impunity; depend on it, this government cannot last.”...   It’s now all too common to read stories of activists showing up at the homes of elected officials at night, and either implicitly or explicitly threatening them and their families. It is still disturbing, but no longer surprising, to see videos clips of private citizens and innocent bystanders being bullied, and in some cases assaulted, by “protesters” in the streets of America’s cities.     Equally as unforgiving is the digital mob, which descends upon its prey with a vengeance for real or perceived transgressions, some current and some decades old. These keyboard warriors destroy careers, reputations, and livelihoods. It is capricious, devoid of grace or forgiveness, and responds only to submission.   Although our country is rife with tribalism, recognizing and condemning the mob should not be, cannot be, a partisan exercise. Peaceful protests are a foundational right of our democratic republic. Mob violence is the antithesis of it. It cannot be excused, whatever the underlying motivation, as a benign byproduct of protests that were -- as the media kept describing them last summer -- “mostly peaceful.” That phrase is an oxymoron, as this country’s moral leaders have always known. Mobs are fueled by passions that arise out of a sense of grievance, and modern elected leaders from both parties and the media have spent years stoking those passions, not lowering them."

Meme - "Son, it's time for the talk. WHEN YOU'RE APPROACHED BY A POLICE OFFICER, FOLLOW ALL THEIR ORDERS. KEEP YOUR HANDS WHERE THEY CAN BE SEEN, ALWAYS,ANSWER WITH SIR/MA'AM. NEVER ARGUE BACK. NEVER RESIST ARRESTS" - white father
"" - black son

Watch: This vid showing police saving a woman’s life shows how fast things go from zero to 60 in the line of duty - "One moment the home is empty and the officers asking the woman if her significant other has taken his handgun with him. The next minute, the dude jumps them from behind and starts firing.  The two officers were both injured but managed to take the attacker down. Without them around, there's little doubt the woman would have left in a body bag... As we watch the next officer-involved shooting on social media, let's remember how fast these force-on-force scenarios play out, and how courageous these officers have to be to go to work each day."

Asheville, North Carolina, Approves Reparations for Black Residents - The New York Times - "The city, Asheville, N.C., will provide funding to programs geared toward increasing homeownership and business and career opportunities for Black residents as part of a reparations initiative... some said the reparations initiative by city leaders in Asheville did not go far enough. And others panned it outright."
Good luck to them. This will never end. As we can see it's already emboldened grievance mongers

Black Americans who will get $25,000 each as part of $10million in reparations from city say it's not enough - "SOME black Americans living in Evanston, Illinois, who will be given $25,000 each as part of the city's $10million reparations program don't think it's enough."

A Tale of Two Kennedy Brothers on Reparations - "When did the civil rights movement go off the rails?  The answer is when proponents went from justly demanding equal rights to unjustly demanding equal results. As to exactly when this occurred, that’s more difficult to answer. But consider statements, made five years apart, from the Kennedy brothers, John F. and Robert F... 'We are too mixed, this society of ours, to begin to divide ourselves on the basis of race or color'... National Urban League Executive Director Whitney Young proposed a 10-year “domestic Marshall Plan” for Blacks to make up for past discrimination. His board of directors opposed it. The president of the Pittsburgh Urban League chapter said the public would ask: “What in blazes are these guys up to? They tell us for years that we must buy (nondiscrimination) and then they say, ‘It isn’t what we want.'”

After Reparations Study Suggests $151 Million for Each African American, Experts Say Money Alone Isn't Enough - "Another estimate, based upon wealth disparity, is around $14 trillion. Robert Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, suggested this sum, which would amount to around $350,000 each for the estimated 40 million African Americans in the United States, giving them an amount signifying the wealth disparity between African Americans and white Americans."
Clearly the only reason for wealth disparity is slavery. Just like anti-Asian discrimination is why Asians are as wealthy as white people
Apparently fighting the bloodiest war in US history wasn't enough
When do Jews get reparations from black people for being slaves in Egypt (since many blacks claim the Ancient Egyptians were black)

The Votes of Black Americans Should Count Twice
Equality means abolishing one man one vote

My Testimony on Reparations - "our desire to fix the past compromises our ability to fix the present. Think about what we’re doing today. We’re spending our time debating a bill that mentions slavery 25 times but incarceration only once, in an era with zero black slaves but nearly a million black prisoners—a bill that doesn’t mention homicide once, at a time when the Center for Disease Control reports homicide as the number one cause of death for young black men... Black people don’t need another apology. We need safer neighborhoods and better schools. We need a less punitive criminal justice system. We need affordable health care. And none of these things can be achieved through reparations for slavery.   Nearly everyone close to me told me not to testify today. They said that even though I’ve only ever voted for Democrats, I’d be perceived as a Republican—and therefore hated by half the country. Others told me that distancing myself from Republicans would end up angering the other half of the country. And the sad truth is that they were both right. That’s how suspicious we’ve become of one another. That’s how divided we are as a nation.  If we were to pay reparations today, we would only divide the country further, making it harder to build the political coalitions required to solve the problems facing black people today; we would insult many black Americans by putting a price on the suffering of their ancestors; and we would turn the relationship between black Americans and white Americans from a coalition into a transaction—from a union between citizens into a lawsuit between plaintiffs and defendants.   What we should do is pay reparations to black Americans who actually grew up under Jim Crow and were directly harmed by second-class citizenship—people like my Grandparents.  But paying reparations to all descendants of slaves is a mistake. Take me for example. I was born three decades after Jim Crow ended into a privileged household in the suburbs. I attend an Ivy League school. Yet I’m also descended from slaves who worked on Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello plantation. So reparations for slavery would allocate federal resources to me but not to an American with the wrong ancestry—even if that person is living paycheck to paycheck and working multiple jobs to support a family. You might call that justice. I call it justice for the dead at the price of justice for the living... Reparations, by definition, are only given to victims. So the moment you give me reparations, you’ve made me into a victim without my consent. Not just that: you’ve made one-third of black Americans—who consistently poll against reparations—into victims without their consent, and black Americans have fought too long for the right to define themselves to be spoken for in such a condescending manner."

Matt Walsh on Twitter - "Earlier this week, gang members in Chicago had a shootout in the middle of the street and none of them were charged with a crime. Today, a black school shooter is released on bail less than a day after shooting four people. Tell me again who has the systemic privilege?
"But Dylan Roof was given Burger King!!!" Yeah they fed him as they were legally required. Now he's on death row. Name a white mass shooter who got out on bail a day later. Bet you can't."

Meme - "Kyle Rittenhouse: shoots three criminals in self defense - bait $2 million and no lawyers will represent him
Timothy Simpkins: brings a gun to school, shoots 4 people including a teacher - bail and released in less than 24 hours"

Meme - "SIMPKINS
SHOOTS 4 IN A SCHOOL
FREED WITHIN 24HRS
BAIL $75k
RITTENHOUSE
SHOOTS 3 IN SELF DEFENSE
2+ MONTHS IN JAIL
BAIL $2M"
White privilege!

Mike Sington on Twitter - "“He’s home that quick.” Where’s the remorse? Teenage Arlington Texas school shooter Timothy Simpkins parties at home with his family, while his victims remain in the hospital. He walked free in one day after being released on $75K bond. Oh, and let’s put it on Instagram with 🥰."

Meme - Erica @SchittHead0422: "They're already making excuses for the shooter "he got in a fight with someone". Okay, but who chooses to shoot people? White males are a problem #TexasShooter
Oh fuck. He's a POC..."

Meme - "We are looking for a shooting suspect in today’s incident at @mansfieldisd Timberview School. Please call 911 if you know the whereabouts of 18-year old Timothy George Simpkins who may be driving a 2018 Silver Dodge Charger with license plate PFY-6260."
"he's just a baby"
"Baby boy just ruined his life"
"OMG, this baby!!"

Suspected school shooter bullied for being wealthy, family says - "“He was scared, he was afraid,” Carol Harrison-Lafayette said at a press conference outside the family’s home. “It wasn’t just one person that would attack him and bully him, taking his money, harassing him because he had more things than maybe others. It takes us all to stand together against this bullying. It could have been a situation where he took the other turn and decided to commit suicide.”"

Meme - "you're white. Why did u think it was ok to say anything, especially this ?"
"you're right! I meant it about the queen. will delete."
"Awww purrrr. And Black Lives what, Maggie?"
"Black Lives Matter."
When you're in a cult
It's racist to disagree with black people

Facebook - "Steve Locke wrote: "This is what I wore to work today. On my way to get a burrito before work, I was detained by the police... “We had someone matching your description just try to break into a woman’s house.” “You fit the description,” the officer said. “Black male, knit hat, puffy coat.  Do you have identification.” “It’s in my wallet.  May I reach into my pocket and get my wallet?” “Yeah.” I handed him my license.  I told him it did not have my current address.  He walked over to a police car.  The other cop, taller, wearing sunglasses, told me that I fit the description of someone who broke into a woman’s house.  Right down to the knit cap... “For the record,” I said to the second cop, “I’m not a criminal.  I’m a college professor.”  I was wearing my faculty ID around my neck, clearly visible with my photo. “You fit the description so we just have to check it out.”  The first cop returned and handed me my license. “We have the victim and we need her to take a look at you to see if you are the person.” It was at this moment that I knew that I was probably going to die.  I am not being dramatic when I say this.  I was not going to get into a police car.  I was not going to present myself to some victim.  I was not going let someone tell the cops that I was not guilty when I already told them that I had nothing to do with any robbery.  I was not going to let them take me anywhere because if they did, the chance I was going to be accused of something I did not do rose exponentially.  I knew this in my heart.  I was not going anywhere with these cops and I was not going to let some white woman decide whether or not I was a criminal, especially after I told them that I was not a criminal.  This meant that I was going to resist arrest.  This meant that I was not going to let the police put their hands on me. If you are wondering why people don’t go with the police, I hope this explains it for you... “Thanks for cooperating,” the second cop said. “This is probably nothing, but it’s our job and you do fit the description.  5′ 11″, black male.  One-hundred-and-sixty pounds, but you’re a little more than that.  Knit hat.”... “I’m Detective Cardoza.  I appreciate your cooperation.” I said nothing... The cops thanked me for my cooperation.  I nodded and turned to go. “Sorry for screwing up your lunch break,” the second cop said... I thought about the fact my word counted for nothing, they didn’t believe that I wasn’t a criminal.  They had to find out.  My word was not enough for them. My ID was not enough for them"
Apparently this is meant to make the police look bad but they behaved in an exemplary manner - very polite and even apologetic. Of course liberals will keep pretending that blacks get shot every time there's a traffic stop. Maybe the intended moral is that black people should never be questioned by the police, even if the police behave perfectly
This is also a great example of liberal self-inflicted psychic harm that comes about from buying into their own hysteria (they will blame "racism" rather than their own delusions, of course). And of course if he had resisted arrest and/or attacked the cops, liberals would be making him out to be a hero
From when I shared this pre-BLM: "Chief: so it really was the first guy you questioned?

Sgt: yes sir!
Chief: good work Sgt! Where’s the guy now?
Sgt: uh... we let him go sir.
Chief: what?!
Sgt: no worries sir! We have a photo of him, and his address.
Chief: why’d you let him go?
Sgt: well he showed us his ID and car keys. So we knew he worked where he claimed, and that he definitely drove a car! Seemed legit.
Online people: *in agreement* what exceptional police work!"
It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent be questioned by the police
Even according to the account of someone who obviously is inclined to view everything through racial lenses, the police behaved exceptionally"

BLM leader Hawk Newsome threatens 'riots' after sit-down with Eric Adams - "A Black Lives Matter leader vowed there’ll be “riots,” “fire” and “bloodshed” if Mayor-elect Eric Adams follows through with his promise to bring back plainclothes anti-crime cops to battle New York’s surge in violent crimes. New York BLM co-founder Hawk Newsome debated the plan for a return to tougher policing with Adams during a contentious sit-down at Brooklyn Borough Hall...   The controversial BLM leader took credit for Adams’ election, claiming his movement allowed him to “achieve power.”...   Adams told leaders that as the city’s second black mayor, he was the person best equipped to bring meaningful socioeconomic and educational change to the community."
Clear proof that BLM is not pro-crime
So much for electing a black person

Someone Put Up A "White Lives Matter" Sign In CA And The City Slammed It As "Racist" And Said They're "Disgusted By This Despicable Act Of Vandalism" - "Somebody put up a banner in Union City, California that said "White Lives Matter" ... and the city thinks it's a really, really big deal... Is that really such a horrific thing to say, especially after the BLM movement along with all its radical social and political implications has been shoved down our collective throat for the past year? After huge crowds chanting "black lives matter" literally burned cities to the ground, terrorized citizens, and were responsible for dozens of deaths?"
Weird. We are told that "Black Lives Matter" doesn't mean "Only Black Lives Matter". Maybe the only lives that don't matter are white ones

Meme - "It doesn't matter that George Floyd put a gun to a pregnant woman's stomach in the past. It doesn't matter that Rayshard Brooks was abusive. Their past is irrelevant and this is just baseless shaming. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm trying to get someone fired, expelled, doxed, and their entire life ruined for an offensive joke they made on twitter 6 years ago."

Matt Walsh on Twitter - "A 16-year-old girl is trying to stab someone to death with a kitchen knife. A 13-year-old boy is out at 3 AM shooting at passing cars. You think the police are causing this problem? How about parenting your kids? Have you thought of that solution?"

Chicago police may soon need supervisor's OK to chase suspects on foot: mayor - "Police officers in Chicago may soon require permission from a supervisor before pursuing a suspect on foot, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said... Police methods have faced new scrutiny recently following the release last week of video footage from the March 29 police shooting death of 13-year-old Adam Toledo... City Alderman Brian Hopkins told FOX 32 that city police already need a superior’s permission to launch a vehicle chase for a suspect... a suspect on foot could be long gone in the time it would take an officer to get the required approval... police are seeing more vehicles flee from officers because suspects know about the permission policy."

Jim Jordan: Republicans Condemn Violence While Democrats Pay Bail - "Jordan said the Democrats have not been consistent, which is why they are so “fired up” about opposing the amendment from the Republicans that would prevent police agencies from being defunded by refusing to grant money to local governments which do so."

Leader of BLM paramilitary group indicted by Kentucky jury for allegedly pointing rifle at police | The Post Millennial - "57-year old John "Grandmaster Jay" Johnson, the leader of the Atlanta-based "Not F*cking Around Coalition," a BLM paramilitary group, was indicted Monday on five counts of wanton endangerment in Jefferson County, Kentucky... A protest was going on, of which Johnson was a part of, where he allegedly aimed his rifle at law enforcement agents at the time, including several Louisville police officers, as well as a Secret Service agent and an FBI agent.  Because a federal officer was involved, Johnson is also facing a federal charge in addition to these new state charges...   The Not F*cking Around Coalition had appeared in numbers on Sept. 4 to protest the police-involved death of Breonna Taylor, the Courier-Journal reported.  A man suspected of shooting a Daytona Beach officer in the head was captured in June after a multi-agency manhunt found the alleged gunman on three-acre property affiliated with the the black nationalist paramilitary organization. Flash bangs, rifle plates, body armor, two rifles, two handguns, and several boxes of ammunition were located in the tree house where Othal Wallace, 29, was hiding. A large arsenal of weapons was also discovered in the main residence."
Liberals will claim this is "proof" that the police are racist since they don't charge white people for carrying weapons in public, pretending that that's the same as pointing weapons at people, and ignoring all the black people who carry weapons in public and are unmolested

The Washington Post's 'Toy Weapons' vs. Cops - "On Monday, April 19, Edgar Luis Tirado went on a one-man crime spree -- important details of which are not recorded in the Washington Post’s often cited "Fatal Force" database of killings by police.  Other accounts, though, were clear about the threat Tirado presented. The 28-year-old Texan, who suffered from bipolar disorder, started small, stealing from a Fiesta Mart in Far North Dallas early in the afternoon. When store workers tried to stop him, he produced a black revolver, pointed it at them, and then ran.  The next police heard of Tirado, it was nearly 4 P.M. He was in a school parking lot, wielding the handgun in an attempted carjacking. When police caught up with him half an hour later, he reached for the gun, which he had in the back of his pants, and leveled it at officers. The police held their fire, and Tirado fled.  Half an hour later, the man robbed a CVS drugstore, threatening the store manager with his pistol. When the police next caught up with Tirado, he ran across multiple lanes of traffic, dodging cars and leaping over concrete barriers before turning and again aiming his revolver at police. This time, officers shot and killed him.  But the Post’s “Fatal Force” tally notes Tirado’s death simply: He was “a 28-year-old Hispanic man with a toy weapon.” One might be forgiven for thinking, from that description – “a toy weapon” -- that Tirado had an orange plastic water gun or some other obvious plaything. But Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia explained at a press conference that Tirado had in hand a “replica handgun,” a fake “that looked exactly like a revolver.” It wasn’t just police who thought Tirado had a real revolver; the grocery and drug store employees who found themselves on the business end of Tirado’s fake gun believed it to be the real deal.  So why does the Post’s seminal database for researchers on police violence, begun in 2015, call it a “toy weapon” when even the short wire report it carried on the killing notes it was a “replica handgun”?  RealClearInvestigations reached out to the Post’s “Fatal Force” team for comment or explanation, but got no response.   “Using the word ‘toy’ is a bit deceiving,” says Patrick Burke, the executive director of the Washington DC Police Foundation. “These are made to look like lethal weapons, and often an officer doesn’t have the time to distinguish whether it is real or fake."  The paper didn’t always fail to distinguish between fake guns and toy guns. When it was two years into the Fatal Force project, which won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 2016, the Post reported that 86 people in its tally had been killed by police while brandishing weapons that “looked real” but weren’t. Many had been carrying BB guns, others had pellet guns or replica weapons. The Post labeled only two as carrying “toy” guns... Since the beginning of 2020, its “Fatal Force" database has described 34 of those shot by police as wielding “toy” weapons, differing from the outside local reports referenced as sources, which make clear that all but three of those weapons were realistic-looking fake guns, including replicas, BB guns, and pellet guns. The three outliers were also not toys per se, but other objects that looked like guns.   “Most if not all of these items are not toys,” said Alan Kaufman, a senior vice president at the Toy Association. Instead, they are “non-powder guns” such as BB, pellet, airsoft, and paint guns. “These items very often look much like powder guns, often intentionally,” Kaufman says. He emphasizes “these items are definitely not toys.”  The distinction would likely be readily evident to shoppers perusing Amazon.com – whose founder, Jeff Bezos, owns the Washington Post. It sells toy guns as well as many replica pellet and BB guns, including revolvers nearly identical to the gun used by Tirado. But in the Post database, when it comes to most cases involving BB guns and the like, readers are left with the impression police regularly shoot suspects armed with nothing more threatening than a child’s plaything."
When you need to farm outrage

Thomas E. Ricks on Twitter - "In fact, my presumption is that anyone tweeting that American cities burned last summer is either working for the Russians or a dumbass dupe of them."
Replies: "So I wonder who you're working for if you tell people that remembering the reality of the left's recent history of horrific deadly violence means you're a foreign operative ..."
"Your duplicity won’t work. Some of us have eyes, a functioning brain, and a memory that goes back further than 10 minutes. *photos, including infamous "fiery but mostly peaceful protests" headline with burning city in background*"
"Idk man this look like a fire to me *church parking lot with "Black Lives Matter" sign on fire*
"People literally flipped a cop car, pooped on it and then proceeded to set in on fire. Right in front of my home."
"Washington DC 2020 *buildings on fire*"
"I heard several blm supporters make the argument that if even if 95% of cops are good, the 5% of cops that are bad make the rest bad by not stopping them, does that not go for protestors too? Or do they get special exemptions from guilt by association?"
"Weird, the mayor in my city instituted a curfew due to burning buildings and rioting. Maybe I’m remembering that wrong"
"Russians? Seriously? You guys should really pick a new foil."
"As others have commented, I also lived and shopped in the burned cities and, yeah, they looked pretty burned up to me. Gaslighting at it's finest."
Naturally, it's a blue check mark

‘What Are We Going To Have Left In Our Community?’ Aldermen React with Panic, Sorrow to Unrest - "As unrest swept the city Sunday, aldermen pleaded with Mayor Lori Lightfoot to help them protect their communities from roving bands of criminals clashing with police and looting businesses. WTTW News obtained a recording of an online conference call held by the mayor’s office to brief all 50 aldermen on the city’s response to the unrest touched off by the death of George Floyd in the custody of Minneapolis police... “It’s like, what are we going to have left in our community?” Harris asks her colleagues before answering herself. “Nothing.” The Chicago City Council’s Black Caucus criticized Lightfoot’s decision to use 375 members of the Illinois National Guard to block off the Loop and the central business district starting Sunday morning, making business corridors on the South and West sides an “easy target” for looters and criminals because they “did not have the same level of protection.”... Lightfoot said a crowd of 30-40 people gathered outside a clothing store near 111th Street and Michigan Avenue as a “dude with a sledgehammer” broke into the store to allow it to be looted. “I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen s--t like this before, not in Chicago”... Lightfoot vowed to launch a “Herculean effort” to convince businesses to rebuild and reopen. Lightfoot said she had no choice but to shut down the CTA after reports buses were being “commandeered” by “anarchists.” Dowell asked Lightfoot to use the National Guard to protect grocery stores and pharmacies, but the mayor said “they are not a magic tool, they are the military.” In other cities, National Guard troops have made things worse, “not better,” Lightfoot said. Ald. Derrick Curtis (18th) said he had called 911 to report looting, and got no answer. Rich Guidice, the director of the Office of Emergency Management and Communications, acknowledged that the system was overwhelmed. “There are no easy answers here,” Lightfoot said. Organized groups of criminals were responsible for the majority of looting in Chicago, prompting nearly 65,000 calls to the city’s emergency operations center... “My ward is a s--t show,” Sadlowski-Garza said, adding that cop cars and banks were burned. “They are shooting at the police.” Sadlowski-Garza began to cry... Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th Ward) demanded that Lightfoot develop a plan to stabilize Chicago’s neighborhoods for five days, calling his Southwest Side ward “a virtual war zone” where gang members armed with AK-47’s were threatening to shoot black people. The call came to a screeching halt when Lightfoot declined to address the substance of Lopez’s remarks, and Lopez demanded that she respond. Lightfoot told Lopez he was “100% full of s--t.” “Well, f--k you then”... Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson (11th Ward) told Lightfoot he was worried that the looters would attack homes where many people have guns and concealed carry weapons. Ald. Ed Burke (14th Ward) said he was concerned that residents would take matters into their own hands and become vigilantes. “This is far worse than it was in 1968,” said Burke, who was elected to the City Council in 1969."
Weird how "mostly peaceful protests" overwhelmed Chicago

Links - 31st March 2022 (2 - General Wokeness)

Death by affirmative action: race quotas in medicine - "Affirmation action is used in admission to medical schools, i.e. they practice race quotas in favor of less intelligent races, in particular blacks and hispanics, and discriminate against whites and especially (East) Asians.
Affirmation action results in less intelligent people getting into schools.
Less intelligent people tend to drop out more, so we expect and do see higher drop out rates among blacks.
Even with differential drop-out rates by race, affirmative action results in less intelligent people graduating and eventually practicing medicine.
Less intelligent people have worse job performance in every job type. This is especially the case for highly complex jobs such as being a doctor which results ultimately in patient suffering including untimely death.
Thus, bringing it all together, affirmation action for race results in less intelligent blacks and hispanics being admitted to medical schools, and when they don’t drop out, they end up practicing medicine, and in doing so, they do a worse job than white and Asian people would have done, thereby killing people by incompetence...
Ample data exists about this... From a public health perspective, affirmative action probably mostly kills blacks and Hispanics. People prefer to befriend and date others who are the same race, and this ethno-centrism also applies to patient’s choice of physicians. As such, the incompetent black and Hispanic physicians are mostly treating and thus harming black and Hispanic patients, who would have been better off with a white or Asian doctor."

Medical School: Who gets in and why - "Harry* is a bright and social 18-year-old who was always passionate about becoming a doctor. He was brought up in a well-off home by professional parents but family issues meant life was no bed of roses.  He completed the first year health science course at the University of Otago last year with an A+ average grade and also managed a top score in the required University Clinical Aptitude Test (UCAT). He was “absolutely gutted” and so were his parents when he was not accepted into Otago Medical School.  Incredibly, his academic results were not good enough. His disappointment was not helped by students with far lower grades and poorer UCAT results being accepted under special categories including Māori and Pasifika, rural and low socioeconomic.  Harry, of European descent, was not alone in his disappointment. Other European and Asian students faced similar setbacks. At least one family has threatened legal action... In order to apply under the refugee sub-category, candidates for admission must have either been granted refugee status in New Zealand, or have parents/primary guardian(s) who have been granted refugee status...  During his first presidential campaign, Barack Obama, said his two daughters “who have had a pretty good deal” should not benefit from affirmative action, particularly when they were competing with poor white students.     Some claim the system is open to abuse by wealthy students with a distant relative who is Māori or Pasifika. .   "These kids are attending private schools and are being allowed into medical school without achieving like the others must. It is not achieving the aims of helping Māori,” says one parent.   Another parent asked if patients were better served by doctors who were "empathetic and more academic" regardless of ethnicity... Doctors who belong to a rural or ethnic minority are more likely to serve those communities and provide the care that is “not like the care provided by others”...  He doesn’t accept that students being admitted under the Māori or Pasifika sub-categories, who look European and have suffered none of the deprivations of low socioeconomic Māori or Pasifika, should not be allowed to take advantage of the easier route into medical school...  He finds the allegation that European-looking students from well-off homes with slight Māori or Pacific ancestry are rorting the system hard to get a handle on.  ‘You're conjuring up a phenomenon that encapsulates a world view that I would like to deconstruct.”  He says Māori and Pacific students have a different socio-economic profile to general entry students although it is true the research in 2016 showed little movement in admitting more students from lower decile schools"
If patients do better when the doctor is of their ethnicity, should white patients be allowed to ask for white doctors?

Black GP admits falsely accusing dead man's son of calling him the N-word - "A black GP who was struck off for failing to spot cancer in a patient has admitted to falsely accusing the man's son of racial abuse in an attempt to save his career.  Robert Jenyo, 53, falsely claimed he was called a 'f***ing n****r' and told to 'give way for white doctors to work' after he was sued for negligence and investigated by the General Medical Council in 2015... It later emerged that Jenyo had altered some of Patient A's medical notes following his death... Ceri Widdett, for the GMC, said Jenyo still has a 'limited understanding of what went wrong' and has shown 'limited remorse regarding his false allegations of racism.'"

Sex workers say incel campaign to report them to IRS won’t work
Weird. Liberals are always very keen for people to pay taxes. But making sex workers do so is wrong, apparently

Federal judge calls on faculty to fight back against the ‘new alliance of activists and administrators’ - "José Cabranes has never let his service on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stop him from warning the public about alarming trends in higher education.  Five years ago the former trustee and general counsel at Yale University signed a letter demanding that the nation’s trustees tackle political correctness run amok on campus, saying it undermines “the free exchange of ideas.”  Two years ago he wrote in The Washington Post that progressives were bringing Cold War-style censorship to higher education with their administrative demands on faculty to put social justice over free inquiry."

Higher Education’s Enemy Within - WSJ - "American higher education seems to be in a permanent state of crisis. Almost monthly, a federal court has occasion to reprimand some college or university for improperly chilling speech, even as some students continue to complain that campuses are too friendly to the wrong kind of speakers. Many institutions have cut back on faculty hiring, even as the cost of tuition grows. Two basic, and mutually reinforcing, phenomena are behind the chaos on campus.  First, colleges and universities have subordinated their historic mission of free inquiry to a new pursuit of social justice. Consider the remarkable evolution of Yale’s mission statement. For decades the university said its purpose was “to create, preserve, and disseminate knowledge.” The language was banal enough, but nevertheless on the money. In 2016, however, Yale’s president announced a new mission statement, which no longer mentions knowledge. Instead, Yale is now officially “committed to improving the world” and educating “aspiring leaders”—not only through research, but also through “practice.”   Second, American colleges and universities have been overwhelmed by a dangerous alliance of academic bureaucrats and student activists committed to imposing the latest social-justice diktats. This alliance has displaced the traditional governors of the university—the faculty. Indeed, nonfaculty administrators and activists are driving some of the most dangerous developments in university life, including the erosion of the due-process rights of faculty and students, efforts to regulate the “permissible limits” of classroom discussion, and the condemnation of unwelcome ideas as “hate speech.”... Too many in higher education are unwilling or unable to maintain a distinction that lies at the core of the liberal democratic project, and at the center of the West’s intellectual tradition: the distinction between inquiry and action, speech and conduct.  At one time, not so long ago, it was obvious that colleges and universities were the embodiment of this distinction, dedicated above all to serious reflection. Their purpose was to instruct students in methods and habits of free inquiry. It was equally clear what universities were not. They were not places to absorb and enforce “correct” answers to our unsettled social, cultural, moral or economic debates.   Maintaining that distinction between inquiry and action has always been crucial to academic freedom. It is difficult, after all, to obtain the truth while you are being bludgeoned into submission.  But today that distinction has been blurred, with nonfaculty administrators doing the blurring. Gone is the approach that I took for granted when I was one such administrator. As the legal adviser to three Yale presidents, I was pleased to think that my job was largely to protect our faculty from undue risks, so that the university could fulfill its core mission as a place of inquiry.  But now the ambitions of university staff are much greater. They seek to achieve diversity, inclusion and equity—defined, ever vaguely, on their terms. And so the nonfaculty staff—who, unlike the faculty, are dedicated to doing rather than deliberating—set the tone on campus. A similar conceptual confusion has facilitated the rise of today’s student activists.  It may surprise you to learn that the faculty plays almost no role in the admissions process at most universities. Instead, that process has been handed to specialized “admissions departments.”... Admissions “professionals” are less interested in traditional academic criteria, such as scholastic talent and intellectual openness, than they are in flashier virtues such as “activism,” “leadership” or “overcoming adversity.” Students now arrive on campus having been instructed to promote themselves as “social entrepreneurs” or “change makers.” It has become common for applicants to claim to have “founded,” at 17, some shiny-sounding nonprofit devoted to beneficent acts.  The contemporary admissions process thus reflects and advances a transformation of the university from a place of thought to an instrument of social action. Is it any wonder that students go searching for windmills at which to tilt?   As the new species of bureaucrats and student activists have come to dominate the university, they have reshaped it in their image. Wherever possible, they have sought to muddle the distinction between intellectual deliberation and political action—thus making certain thoughts, like certain deeds, into crimes.  What can be done to counteract these baleful developments? We must look to the faculty itself, which can still exercise substantial influence, even if only in self-defense. The faculty, besieged though it is, must reassert its historic centrality in the university and stand ready to protect the search for truth. If it fails to do so, faculty members have only themselves to blame for their disempowerment.  But the faculty needs help. Trustees and alumni have a role to play. Trustees can start by recalling their considerable legal authority... Alumni must also become wiser in their philanthropy. At big-name institutions, bureaucratic bloat is made possible by immense endowments and endless fundraising campaigns. For too long, the exchange has been simple: Donors provide funds and, in return, they receive recognition—but little influence.  This should come to an end. Donors should decline to provide single-lump gifts. Instead, donors should provide annual support for specific programs—but only as long as certain criteria are met."

LNER slammed for apologising after staff said 'good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls' - "A train operator has come under fire after it apologised over a complaint from a non-binary passenger because the conductor greeted customers by saying 'good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls.'  London North Eastern Railway said in response to the complaint on Twitter that 'train managers should not be using language like this' before promising to take action.   The non-binary passenger, who goes by the Twitter name Laurence and uses the pronouns they and them, also states they represent the Rail, Maritime and Transport trade union... 'I was sat with Laurence when this tweet was sent. Both of us are non-binary and we were both alarmed and uncomfortable by the lack of inclusion.'"
Next up, the furries will complain that they're not being addressed when a greeting is directed at humans or people

Does the word 'ladies' make you feel unsafe? - "It clearly doesn’t take much for these students to feel unsafe, and they are far from alone in this. Indeed, references to feeling unsafe have increased significantly over recent decades across society. This can be seen by looking at the Nexis database of news publications. The phrase ‘feels unsafe’ rose from 341 uses between 1970 and 1980 to 44,440 uses between 1990 and 2000. In January 2021 alone there were 9,698 references to feeling unsafe.   The declaration of feeling unsafe has an important performative dimension. It justifies a demand that something must be done. In the case of the Wolfson students, it justified their demand for an apology from the photographer and it allowed them to dictate what language is and is not acceptable on campus.  As I explain in my book, How Fear Works: Culture of Fear in the Twenty-First Century, safety is more highly valued than almost anything else in the Anglo-American world today. Safety has acquired the status of a moral good that trumps other values, especially freedom... The official advice issued by universities explicitly assumes that young people lack the moral or emotional resources to cope with life. Instead, it treats them like confused children. Take Cardiff University’s ‘Personal Safety Guide’. ‘Alcohol can severely affect your decision-making skills’, it says, ‘and so it is really important to put safety measures in place before heading out’. Here nightclubs and bars are treated as a menacing, perilous landscape to be navigated only by those who have ‘put safety measures in place’... In effect, this culture invites members of the campus community to feel unsafe. Young people have been encouraged to regard themselves as vulnerable. They are warned against dealing with challenges on their own. At the same time, declaring you feel ‘unsafe’ has become a means to get attention, assistance and action taken against something or someone you dislike."
When life is too good, people invent bullshit to get upset about
Safetyism explains covid hysteria very well too

Ditch ‘ladies and gentlemen’ and you lose values - "British Airways is dropping “ladies and gentlemen” from its announcements in a bid for inclusion, which is a pity because one of the reasons I’m a loyal BA customer is that even as flights have become over-packed and uncomfortable, I always appreciated their veneer of old world charm. For those of us terrified of flying, this stuff matters... “Ladies and gentlemen” also denotes respect (there’s a reason why they don’t say “fasten your seat belts, lads and lasses”). Refined language – words chosen carefully – implies that rather than bodies in seats, packed in like sardines for the sake of profit, we are individuals with personalities whose sex has been noted and, yes, flattered. As I argue in my new book, Whatever Happened to Tradition?, out this Thursday (and I advise you to buy it before the reviews), traditional approaches to the genders assign them dignity and moral qualities. We speak of feminine grace, for instance, or masculine courage. The title of lady or gentlemen is not just shorthand but aspirational... things have moved to a dangerous stage when corporations seek to improve their customers rather than the other way around (I’m not saying BA are there yet but other brands definitely are), and the goal of serving a community switches to reshaping it.  Control language and you control meaning. Ditch ladies and gentlemen and the attendant values go with them: we become selfish, rude passengers pushing to get off the plane first, quite happy to shove an old lady out of the way to do it."

Drop the ‘woke’ posing and stick to your day job, companies told - "Businesses should avoid wading in on political and social issues, almost half of Britons believe, according to major research which dismisses “wokeism” as a “fringe” movement.  A survey found that 45 per cent of people think businesses should avoid taking political positions or expressing political views on controversial topics.  Offered a selection of 10 possible ways that businesses could be “good corporate citizens”, only 9 per cent of respondents said that the most important was to “speak out on important social issues that matter in Britain today”.  The research, conducted for the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) think tank, amounts to one of the most comprehensive surveys to date of issues that underlie wokeism and “cancel culture” in Britain... 28 per cent of respondents overall, including 53 per cent of 18-29 year olds, had stopped talking to someone, whether in person or online, because of something political that they had said... Only 10 per cent said that firms should take political positions or clearly express their political or social views on controversial topics, while a further 45 per cent said that they should “sometimes” and on other occasions should not... The issue selected by the fewest people as an issue on which companies should take a lead was LGBTQ rights, which was chosen by 8 per cent of people, including 11 per cent of Labour voters and 5 per cent of Conservative voters... “I think that the combination of populism and wokeism will lead you to a winter of discontent as bad as what we saw in 1979.”"

A Third Grader Drew a Rocket That Looked Like a Penis. She Was Handcuffed and Removed From School. - "After a Florida teacher mistook a third grader’s drawing of a person hugging a rocket for male genitalia, police seized the child for an involuntary psychiatric examination and threw her into the back of a squad car... At least 1,216 kids were “Baker Acted” in the Palm Beach County School District between the 2016 school year and 2020 school year, according to the lawsuit. As a result, hundreds were removed from their classrooms each year, handcuffed, and driven away by police employed by the school district."
What happens when you have zero tolerance policies to avoid charges of "racism"

Rod Dreher on Twitter - "In Finland, @PaiviRasanen, a physician, MP, and Lutheran, is about to go on trial for hate crimes? Her offense? Posting a Bible verse critical of homosexuality. Learn more about her case, and crucially, *donate* to her defense"

LGBTQ history curriculum will now be taught in Illinois schools - "The organization said some topics that will be added to the new curriculum include the nation’s first gay rights organization, the Society for Human Rights, being formed in 1924 in Chicago, and Sally Ride, the first US woman in space, who was a lesbian.  “One of the best ways to overcome intolerance is through education and exposure to different people and viewpoints,” State Sen. Heather Steans, who also sponsored the bill, said in a statement on her website earlier this year. “An inclusive curriculum will not only teach an accurate version of history but also promote acceptance of the LGBTQ community.”...   “It is my hope that teaching students about the valuable contributions LGBTQ individuals have made throughout history will create a safer environment with fewer incidents of harassment,” Steans said. “LGBTQ children and teenagers will also be able to gain new role models who share life experiences with them.”"
This is a pretty naked acknowledgement that they're not teaching objective history, but are politicising the subject. As the saying goes, learning history shouldn't always make you feel proud. But then, this only applies to "straight cis white male" history - if learning "minority" history makes you feel bad, that's oppression

New York City Council Candidate Quinn Mootz Claims Upper West Side "Too White, Too Jewish" - "Quinn Mootz, the Campaign Manager for an Upper West Side candidate for the City Council is causing outrage for saying the neighborhood is too white — and Jewish... “Jews are not POC [People of Color] for just being jewish. sorry,” Mootz tweeted, using the handle “Quinn Mootz says Hot Girls Hate The Filibuster.”... Mootz also also lambasted “sh–ty people” who refer to “homeless people as zombies and think anyone to the left of you is too woke. You f–king moron.” Neighborhood critics slammed Mootz — who happens to be white and Jewish — for what they saw as a swipe at Jews.  Her remarks also drew unfavorable coverage in the Jewish Press."
The left only cares about anti-semitism when they can use that to shit on white people

Jews Wonder About Response To Antisemitism Following Israel-Gaza Conflict - "As usual, he was wearing his yarmulke, or skullcap. When he turned a corner, he realized that a couple of teenagers had started to follow him, spewing antisemitic insults. "It took me about halfway down the block to realize that the thing that they were commenting on was they kept saying, 'Yarmulke': 'I want to take that yarmulke. I want to hit him in his head and take that yarmulke. That Jewish baby killer,' " Zeldin recalled. Zeldin's harassers ultimately peeled off, but the fact that they used the term "baby killer" gave him a jolt. "Calling Jews 'baby killers'? That's the blood libel. That's a thing that was happening in medieval Europe," he said, referring to the age-old, antisemitic lie that accused Jews of murdering Christian children to use their blood in rituals. Zeldin, who writes a column for The Forward, a Jewish publication devoted to news and progressive thought, notes that "baby killer" invective has gained traction — propagated widely on social media — in response to last month's military conflict between Israel and Hamas, which left dozens of Palestinian children among the dead. During nearly two weeks of fighting, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) tracked a 75% spike in antisemitic incidents in the U.S., including brazen assaults, vandalism, harassment and hate speech... Zeldin has heard from many Jews who feel they've been abandoned by people whom they would expect to be their allies. "It's definitely a moment of frustration," he said. "A lot of the messaging that Jews have gotten over the last four years ... is you've got to show up. You have to be an ally. You have to speak up for others. And I think a lot of Jews, myself included, very much took that to heart," marching in support of women's and immigrant rights, as well as the Black Lives Matter movement. But recently, he said, reciprocity has been hard to find. "I don't think that the general population, and progressives included among that, have a good understanding of what they're looking at when antisemitic violence doesn't have a swastika attached to it"... people find it easier to see and condemn antisemitism when it involves white supremacists... when anti-Jewish hate is less glaring or gets twisted up with Middle East geopolitics, "folks struggle to identify it and to understand that it is a severe problem."... So, what explains the reluctance? The British writer and comedian David Baddiel, who is Jewish, offers an answer in a recently published book titled Jews Don't Count. It's aimed specifically at the progressive left. "I think progressives find it very hard to see Jews as victims"... He attributes this aversion to the myth that Jews are rich, powerful and privileged — an antisemitic trope in itself that has also come down through history. "And the problem is that if you have any trace of that in your consciousness," he said, "and trust me, a lot of people on the left do, then it's hard to think of Jews as being inside that circle of people you need to protect, because the Jews are not in need of protection." Or, as he put it in his book, Jews find themselves pushed outside of the "sacred circle" that the "progressive modern left [is] prepared to go into battle for." The key, Baddiel argues, is that antisemitism has to be understood as racism. It has very little to do with religion. "Because no racist asks whether you keep kosher before they set light to your house," he said. "I am an atheist. It would not have given me a free pass out of Auschwitz. It would also be irrelevant to any white supremacist wanting to kill me.""
Clearly just Anti-Zionism. Presumably liberals will just blame Israel for this
Is it a myth and anti-white to say that white people are rich, powerful and privileged?

Ontario program to help train women, other groups for trucking jobs - "The Ontario government is investing $600,000 in a skills training project in the Waterloo region to prepare 30 women and individuals from underrepresented groups for careers in the trucking industry"
Too bad it's more important to have certain groups do the job than to really get people to do the job

College Student Aces Final By Just Answering 'Racism!' To Every Question | The Babylon Bee - "In addition to accepting "racist!" as the answer to every question on every test, the professor said she will offer extra credit for sending threatening letters or doxxing conservatives.  "We have to do this so our students will feel safe""

Jazz Monè 🤎✨ on Twitter - "A black woman is speaking. Listen and learn"
"It’s costs $0.00 to retweet & support a Black woman owned brand! ✊🏾✨"
There used to be words to describe those who thought certain races and a certain sex were smarter

Meme - "Dark Skin Women: Dariel Nelson: "Beautiful dark chocolate Gorgeous Goddess Kween . in beauty . much love .cute fine pretty . extermely sexyyy . know matter what ."
Brittany Marie McDaniel: "stop comparing Black women to food. They are women. Not snacks to satisfy your appetite. Settle the fuck down."
Jonathan Ostrander: "shut up, cupcake."

Meme - The internet
@hashtagyungriri: "Because even words, like "picnic" was reduced from the phrase "pick-a-nigger" when they would PICK a random black man to lynch for family meal entertainment and I always new that word didn't sit right with me"
The Great Negro @jiggyjayy2: "Yall: "not everything is about race*
Also y'all: cant name anything in american society that does not have racist or anti-black origins*"
Why do Americans make up this sort of nonsense?

Meme - Asymptomatic Andromeda Strain @mea_maxima: "The PsyOps is so Ninja they've got 18-28 year olds thinking they're all hipster radicals, while literally doing whatever the government, media and corporations tell them."

TV Personality in Korea Sparks Debate Over Using Blackface, Doing 'Slant-eye' - "Television personality Sam Okyere’s criticism of South Korean students dressed as the dancing pallbearers in Ghana backfired after social media users pointed out that he did a slant-eye gesture on TV in 2015.  The 29-year-old Ghanaian TV personality expressed outrage last week after a picture of students from Uijeongbu High School dressed up as the Ghana Dancing Pallbearers surfaced online... he did a slant-eye gesture in an episode of JTBC’s “Abnormal Summit” in 2015 when he participated in the Ugly Face Competition."

Meme - Todd Shannon: ""Elevating black voices" is a scam and a lie. They only want to elevate progressive black voices."
"Shouldn't media be all over a black woman who immigrated from Jamaica. served in the Marines, has a Masters degree, ran a homeless women's shelter, raised 3 kids, and is now running to be the highest ranking minority woman gov't official in Virginia history? Winsome Sears:"

Meme - Jemele Hill @jemele...: "It's not the messaging, folks. This country simply loves white supremacy."
Foster @foster type: "Two of the three winners in Virginia are replacing white guys who wore blackface. The third winner is a black woman."

Twitter Users Mock 'White Supremacy' Take Over VA Election - "Winsome Sears became the first woman of color to win the race for lieutenant governor, while Jason Miyares was elected the first Latino attorney general. Both are Republicans.  The criticism from liberals of the results in Virginia is no doubt a response to a central theme of Youngkin’s campaign: education, especially amid a backlash from parents against schools over critical race theory.  Atlantic writer Jemele Hill had a similar takeaway from election night. “It’s not the messaging, folks. This country simply loves white supremacy”... “Racism still works in Virginia,” tweeted former Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean."
White supremacy is anything opposing the liberal agenda

Randi Marshall on Twitter - "I can't put into words the stunning turn of politics happening on Long Island tonight. Republicans are leading in all major races. County Exec, District Atty, County Clerk, County Comptroller, N. Hempstead, Oyster Bay and Hempstead town supervisors, and several key leg races..."

Ethio-American Development Council (EADC) on Twitter - "Congratulations, Governor Elect @GlennYoungkin! There's no doubt the 100K Ethiopian & Eritreans in Virginia helped deliver an unexpected win for the GOP. For many, they've voted Red for the 1st time. Unless Dems change course, they could lose the Ethiopian vote for a generation."

Parents horrified by controversial book ‘Gender Queer’ - ‘it’s child pornography’ - "Maia Kobabe, author of the book, is a cartoonist who identifies as queer, nonbinary, and asexual. Kobabe uses the pronouns e/em/eir and is a graduate of California College of the Arts. Amid the controversy, Kobabe maintains that “queer kids need queer stories.” The “Gender Queer” publisher has also spoken out in support of Kobabe’s works."

Andrew Follett on Twitter - "That's also not the worst scene in dispute here. The graphic novel “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe and the novel “Lawn Boy” by Jonathan Evison were kept in schools by Terry. They explictly describe pedophilia with a 4th grader positively."
Kelsey Bolar (Harkness) on Twitter - "Here are three more images from “Gender Queer,” a book that’s available to young teenagers in Virginia school libraries, but deemed too “explicit” to show via an ad on Virginia TV."
Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 on Twitter - "Here is the full spread of the “beloved” and “award winning” books that “racist” Virginia parents want out of their kids schools. Vote McAuliffe if you want more of this. Vote Youngkin if you don’t. It’s as simple as that."
Ian Prior on Twitter - "This book is in the library at my kids' elementary school in #LoudounCounty ELEMENTARY. SCHOOL. School board? Superintendent? Buckle. Up. Get ready for another gear." (Twitter isn't letting this tweet be shown when quoted)
Damn Republicans trying to "ban books"!

Ethnic minority Britons live longer than their white counterparts, study finds - "Britons from ethnic minorities live longer than their white counterparts and are less likely to die from cancer, government data suggests.  The Office of National Statistics (ONS) published data which show that white and mixed-race Britons had a lower life expectancy at birth than all other ethnic groups, and members of the Asian, Bangladeshi and black African communities generally lived the longest."
The power of white supremacy

'Gone With the Wind' Hits No. 1 on Amazon Best-Sellers Chart After HBO Max Drops Movie

Student receives praise for bogus paper on how milk is a ‘colonizer’ of coffee - "A college student in Sweden recently decided to take a class on critical race theory as a joke, and then added to the fun by turning in a hoax paper.  Arvid Haag signed up for “Critical Whiteness Perspectives on Nordic Culture” at Stockholm University because, he said, “local pandemic grant rules had equipped him and other students with an unexpected financial aid windfall.”  Haag thought he’d “get something fun” out of the “harmless” and “absurd” class, but he soon realized many of his peers took the “American-born ideology” seriously. Arvid bided his time, occasionally offering some “critical” comments here and there, but saved the best for last: an essay titled “Black and White Drinks,” described as “an account of what had happened from the early 20th century in the struggle between coffee and milk.”  According to Fria Tider, Haag related “how the marketing of the coffee has been characterized by highlighting ‘black and exotic elements’ of the drink. When it comes to milk, it has instead been ‘the local and white’ that has been emphasized.”... Haag (left) admitted he did not read “most of the books or blog posts he cited,” nor even knew what “critical whiteness perspectives” meant. Nevertheless, the instructor gave him a “B” for the paper, noting it was an “exciting topic” with “creative thinking.” He even suggested Haag expand upon his thoughts in a longer essay.  The instructor’s only criticism was that the paper “did not have exact source references [for the] photos.”  “[The joke] must have gone over his head”"

Short-Shaming - "Why is discrimination against the short considered not only tolerable, but also amusing? In an era constantly on the lookout for prejudices to denounce, this obvious one gets a pass.  The main reason our culture doesn’t denounce short-shaming is highly revealing about the essential nature of wokeness...   Dukakis was widely made fun of during the 1988 campaign for driving a tank while short, even though armored personnel tend to be small men so that they’ll fit in their cramped cockpits...   It’s striking that height prejudice isn’t demonized today, even though it has disparate impact on immigrant ethnicities. The federal government conducts the ongoing NHANES study of the sizes of Americans for the use of the apparel industry. In 2016, the average white man was almost 5’10” tall, compared with a little under 5’7″ for Hispanic and Asian men. So height discrimination benefits whites.  However, most concerns in the U.S. about racial inequality focus upon blacks versus whites, and black men, at a little over 5’9″, are almost as tall as white men. (There may even be more very tall black men due to greater height variation among blacks, although black domination of the NBA is less due to height than to longer arms and greater leaping ability on average.)   Height varies for reasons of nature (genes) and nurture (such as childhood nutrition). But the implications of that tautological statement haven’t always been thought through...   An awareness of heightism first emerged in the early 1970s. The word “sexism” first appeared in print in 1968, and “heightism” naturally followed in 1971.  On the other hand, enthusiasm for deploring heightism has largely faded.  Why is heightism barely a term in 2019? Because it is more often women discriminating against men over height than men discriminating against women...   Our culture has increasingly lost interest in general principles and instead thinks, like Stalin, in terms of “Who? Whom?” Punching down at short men is fine these days because they are men, and thus are assumed to deserve to be whomed."

Stephen L. Miller on Twitter - "ANALYSIS: Despite 50 years of federal oversight under the landmark Fair Housing Act of 1968, housing segregation persists in America's largest cities and urban centers."
"Who has been in charge of most of those cities since the late 60s? Buddy you're in for a surprise."