Thread by @ThHappyHawaiian on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "POV, you’re a 45 year old white male. You just got laid off from your white collar job. Unemployment pays $400 a week, so you don’t sign up because Uber pays $600. Government doesn’t even acknowledge job loss as an issue. You can’t get hired because no one is hiring and even if they are it’s only for DEI candidates. Meanwhile your Uber earnings are dropping because we’re importing unskilled labor at the highest level in history due to illegal immigration. The government gives them preloaded debit cards, free housing, and they work Uber. If you have an issue with any of this you’re racist, and also men are seen as the source of all of society’s problems. The message? Please just stop existing. Unfortunately the message is being received. Societal empathy for this human subgroup’s suffering? Zero, perhaps negative *White, non-Hispanic male suicide rate increasing over the years, when it was already the highest among all groups*...
We use elevated suicide risk as a reason to cater policy directly for the benefit of certain populations. Why is it ignored in this case? If the suicide rate for white males is quite literally 10x that for black females? Isn’t that a societal issue? Notice in the chart the more white and the more male you are the more the societal pressure to off yourself. White females have a suicide rate several multiples of minority females. Above them minority men are even more likely. Then of course white men are truly despised
I had to mute this. The lack of empathy is too real. Human suffering is real, it doesn’t matter the race/gender. The suicide of a hispanic woman is equally as tragic as that of a white man. One is just occurring at 10x the rate of the other, it’s a disparity worth investigating"
Of course, we keep being told that being woke is about having "empathy" even as the woke keep cheering when white men kill themselves
Meme - Ernie Duran: "Dungeon Master: "The troll approaches you and prepares to attack."
Cleric: "I attack him with my mace +1!"
Dungeon Master: (rolls dice) you miss the troll because you're confined to a wheelchair and can reach him." (Roll dice) "The troll kicks you off the wheel chair. (Rolls dice) You try to stand up (rolls dice) but you can't because you're a cripple POS."
Cleric: "Dude! WTF"
Dungeon Master: (rolls dice) "The troll picks up your wheelchair and has...(rolls dice). Caved your head in. Your dead.""
Addendum: The left loves to misunderstand things. One supposed clever response to objections to wheelchairs in D&D: Darth Zara on X: "“Disabled characters don’t have a place in fantasy” literally all of your favorite Sith are disabled! Please go away!", as if the problem is disabled people and not people in wheelchairs being useless in combat
Steve McGuire on X - ""The younger generation seems indifferent to their loss of liberty, mostly because no one has ever taught them it is a thing to be valued." @JamesWHankins1 on the difficulty of recruiting younger faculty to join the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard:"
Hope for Harvard? - "Tacitus at the beginning of his Annals, after brilliantly summarizing all of Roman history in the space of a few paragraphs, ends by providing an answer to a question that must have arisen in the minds of his Roman readers. Why was it that the present generation offered such little resistance to the revolutionary transformation of the republic into a monarchy that Augustus had gradually brought about over the course of three decades? Senators used to stand up for their right to participate in governing the republic; indeed, in the previous century, they had fought a series of civil wars to defend that right. What was different about the present moment? Why did no one care about the end of the republic? Tacitus answered that Augustus had been clever enough to make sure that the workings of government all looked the same. The senate and the popular assemblies still met and magistrates were elected as usual; the courts still passed judgments as before. Augustus controlled everything himself, of course, behind the scenes, but “the younger men had been born after the victory of Actium; most, even of the elder generation, had been born during the civil wars.” Then comes the famous line—few indeed were left who had seen the republic. Whole generations had come and gone, and those alive now simply had no idea how the old republican system had worked in its heyday. Hence, men accepted their slavery without even realizing they had lost their freedom... The passage from Tacitus occurred to me while reading some of the daily deluge of emails I get as a member of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard (CAFH for short)... The goal of these discussions overall is to keep Harvard an institution that helps its students to live flourishing lives and its researchers to contribute to the common good. We members believe that academic freedom is necessary to achieve this, and the pressures to politicize Harvard coming from various bureaucracies on campus are an obstacle to that goal. CAFH’s listserv discussions over the last six months, to me at least, have been invigorating. They have revealed to me that there is no shortage of brilliant people, even some potential leaders, aboard the Good Ship Harvard who could help it reverse course and return to its historic mission, were it possible to summon up the collective will to do so. Many Americans who would like to do something about the woke seizure of major cultural institutions in our country have been forced to confront the following basic issue: (1) Is there any hope of de-politicizing captured institutions, extracting the DEI and Title IX and other bugs that are infecting their operating systems, and returning them to their normal activities? A number of universities now have done just that, and the results I’m sure will be eagerly watched. (2) Or is it better just to toss the old equipment on the junk heap of woke institutions, and build something entirely new, as has been done at the University of Austin in Texas? (3) Or perhaps it would be best to build citadels of academic freedom within politicized institutions, like Stanford’s Hoover Institution, Princeton’s Madison Program, or the University of Florida’s new Hamilton Center? Thanks to the Claudine Gay affair many people have come to the conclusion that Harvard belongs to the second class of institutions that can’t be saved from woke capture. Are they right? Doesn’t the mere existence of CAFH give a reason not to give up yet on Harvard? Since its formation last year, CAFH has signed up 180 members... Only 59 CAFH members come from the one school that teaches undergraduates, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), which has 1,221 faculty members in all. Only 4.8%, in other words, of Harvard’s undergraduate teachers are worried enough about the university’s direction that they are willing to participate in the one forum where questions about university policies can be freely debated. There has been a nasty attempt to paint CAFH as “right-wing,” but this is simply untrue: my educated guess is that the vast majority are registered Democrats, like 88% of Harvard faculty (and 27% of Massachusetts voters), or “Unenrolled” like me (and 63% of state voters). I have personal knowledge of only four registered Republicans in CAFH (Republicans amount to only 8.38% of Massachusetts voters). As I see it, our biggest problem is—you guessed it—few indeed were left who had seen the republic. There aren’t very many younger faculty in CAFH. When trying to recruit more historians for the council from within the History Department, I have gotten more or less the same answer from the younger generation. Their response is, “What’s wrong with the way things are?” Most of my younger colleagues have lived their entire professional lives within DEI and Title IX regimes and have willingly made whatever adjustments were needed to go on with their teaching and to write their books. Going along to get along has worked for them. Whenever ukases have come down from University Hall (the administrative headquarters of FAS) urging us to align our courses and teaching practices to suit radical progressive priorities, few indeed were left who saw any reason to object, especially as the requested alignments were usually accompanied by tasty incentives in the form of grants or time off. In any case, the younger generation, by and large, don’t see anything wrong with having our History offerings interlarded with courses on environmentalism, identity politics, transhumanism, intersectionality, post-colonial theory, and the whole radioactive cargo of the politicized university. So my answer to the first question above is, no, I don’t see any prospects right now for fundamental reform at Harvard. The only way to steer the ship back into port and keep it from leaking more prestige, public support, alumni loyalty, and financial stability is to appoint a strong young president committed to our traditional purposes. The office of the Harvard president constitutionally, at least on paper, has enormous powers; and there is no reason why a strong individual with a steady moral compass would not be able to do what Harvard’s great presidents like Charles William Eliot and James Bryant Conant have done in the past, when their presidencies helped Harvard achieve the goal of the world’s best university. But we will not find such a leader if the same person who was responsible for the disaster of Claudine Gay remains in charge of choosing her successor. That, unfortunately, seems to be exactly what is fated to happen. The Harvard Corporation has shown itself incapable of getting rid of the person or persons who have been responsible for dragging the university’s name in the mud for the last six months and reducing the value of Harvard degrees. A miracle could happen, but one must expect the Corporation’s current disgraceful behavior to continue. History, I suppose, will judge them. Maybe that will be my next book."
Meme - David Algonquin @surplustakes: "King's Cross main concourse this morning:"
"Day 9. Fajr 04:25. Maghrib: 18:16. Hadith of the day: The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said: All the sons of Adam are sinners but the best of the sinners are those who repent often"
Humanists UK on X - "Public train stations should not be urging ‘sinners’ to repent. It is obviously inappropriate and profoundly misjudged to broadcast hadiths or any religious scripture at passengers. We will be writing to the Transport Secretary to outline our concerns."
Benjamin Smith 🇺🇦 on X - "Exactly. A public railway station run by network rail that is tax payer funded should not be displaying religious messages of any kind. It's obviously inappropriate and should be discontinued."
So much for Christians mocking atheists for only criticising Christianity and never other religions, like Islam (this is not the only example of Humanists UK criticising Islam - there was one on blasphemy and another on women and Islam)
Investigation launched by Network Rail into London King's Cross station Ramadan messages - "Commuters were greeted with a series of Islamic verses next to train times at the London station on Tuesday as part of a diversity initiative for the holy festival, which runs from March 10 to April 9 this year. The move, by a suspected “mischief-maker”, sparked criticism and demands from Christians for Bible scriptures to be displayed to mark Easter. Network Rail chiefs have now deleted an electronic display message about “sinners” which quoted the Prophet Mohammed and are investigating why it was shown at the station instead of celebratory Ramadan information... The move was welcomed by some Muslim leaders, with The Islam Channel describing it as “the beauty of Ramadan in unexpected places”... The Rev Dr Ian Paul, associate minister at St Nic’s Nottingham, and a member of the General Synod and the Archbishops’ Council, said: “The posting of the message was clearly a mistake put up by a mischief-maker. “But it does highlight the confused thinking in our own culture about religious belief. On the one hand, there is the approach of treating all religions as equal, and giving them equal space in the marketplace of views. “On the other hand, people are quite happy mocking or insulting Christian belief – but mock Islam and see what happens. Yet our own country’s heritage is not Islamic; it is Christian.” He added: “Our laws are not based on Shariah law, but on the Ten Commandments and the teachings of the Bible. So we should not simply treat all religions as ‘equal’ in relation to our culture, as if their beliefs are simply interchangeable. They are not.”"
Network Rail were cowardly to take down the Ramadan message from King's Cross | Evening Standard (Deeya Sonalkar)
Meme (original headline) - "If you're upset about the Islamic display board message at King's Cross, you're living in the wrong city" - Evening Standard (Deeya Sonalkar)
If you take down an Islamic message, you're cowardly. If you put up a Christian message, you're racist and don't respect minorities
UK station removes Ramadan 'sinners' hadith after backlash - "The displaying of the Hadith, or saying by the Prophet Muhammad, triggered an Islamophobic backlash from right-wing and far-right social media users."
If you don't appreciate public services preaching to you, you're Islamophobic, right wing and far right
Meme - "Black city council: We need red light cameras in those areas where people keep speeding and crashing into each other.
[A few months later]
Antiracist nerd: They put red light camera mostly in black areas. This is systemic racism!"
Samuel Sinyangwe @samswey: "In DC, researchers found that red light cams were systemically concentrated in Black communities, resulting in more tickets for Black drivers. Meanwhile there's no evidence Black drivers differently than anyone else. This is systemic racism."
Drew Bunch O' Numbers @Drew43698320: "(sighs heavily) "As the map below shows, many cameras were placed in areas that have had a large concentration of speed-related crashes" The hilarious thing is, this article is from the same think tank, different author. She even extolled the virtues of speed cameras reducing racial bias by removing the human element! But no, it's got to be systemic RaYclsM to you. Can't be they were simply placed where more speed related accidents occur, it must be that damn majority-black DC Council and its well documented systemic racism rearing its ugly head again. You people are completely and utterly hopeless."
Checking Privilege Checking - The Atlantic - "Use of the term “privilege” has, I’d argue, actually set back the cultural conversation about privilege. It's not just that “privilege,” when used as an accusation, silences. It’s also that it’s made cluelessness a greater crime than inequality. These ubiquitous expressions—“check your privilege” or “your privilege is showing”—ask the accused to own up to privilege, not to do anything about it. There may be a vague, implied hope that privilege checking will lead to efforts to remedy some injustice, but the more direct concern is not coming across as entitled, not offending anyone underprivileged who theoretically might be (but almost certainly isn’t) in the room. Thus we've arrived at “blessed,” but also the “first-world problems” disclaimer. The goal of both is to appear self-aware and grateful, rather than to challenge the unfairness that led to whichever unearned advantage... “Well-versed-in-the-subtle-ways-identity-issues-are-discussed-among-meritocratic-elites privilege is a thing.” It’s not just that commenting online about privilege—or any other topic—suggests leisure time. It’s also that the vocabulary of “privilege” is learned at liberal-arts colleges or in highbrow publications. A certain sort of self-deprecating privilege awareness has become, in effect, upper- or upper-middle-class good manners, maybe even a new form of noblesse oblige, reinforcing class divides. When Fortgang’s classmates admonish him to check his privilege, what they’re really doing is socializing him into the culture of the class he’ll enter as a Princeton graduate. Failure to acknowledge privilege is very gauche, maybe even nouveau riche... the main result of privilege talk is scrappiness one-upmanship among the privileged."
From 2014, on elite signalling (since the point of woke vocabulary is to change so normal people can't keep up, it's no surprise nowadays "privilege" is no longer the mot-du-jour)
Why Kenyans Make Such Great Runners: A Story of Genes and Cultures - The Atlantic - "The first, second, and third-place men were all Kenyan. So were the first, second, and third-place women. It was yet another amazing showing for Kenyan runners, and yet another reason to ask: how? For such a popular, straightforward question, there's less consensus than you might think. Western research on the nature of Kenyan runners, and on successful African athletes in general, is complicated by some particularly thorny racial politics. There's a nasty history, after all, to white scientists evaluating the physical attributes of Africans. But that hesitancy to really study Kenyan runners' success has allowed some probably false, and often culturally reductive, theories to persist. The scientific research hits on some of the most sensitive racial anxieties of Western-African relations, but it's also an amazing story of human biodiversity. The statistics are hard to ignore. This medium-size country of 41 million dominates the world in competitive running. Pick any long-distance race. You'll often find that up to about 70 or 80 percent of its winners since the late 1980s, when East African nutrition and technology started catching up with the West, have been from Kenya... Two separate, European-led studies in a small region in western Kenya, which produces most of the race-winners, found that young men there could, with only a few months training, reliably outperform some of the West's best professional runners. In other words, they appeared to have a physical advantage that is common to their community, making it probably genetic. The studies found significant differences in body mass index and bone structure between the Western pros and the Kenyan amateurs who had bested them. The studied Kenyans had less mass for their height, longer legs, shorter torsos, and more slender limbs. One of the researchers described the Kenyan physical differences as "bird-like," noting that these traits would make them more efficient runners, especially over long distances. Surprisingly, Western popular writing about Kenyans' running success seems to focus less on these genetic distinctions and more on cultural differences. For years, the cultural argument has been that Kenyans become great runners because they often run several miles to and from school every day. But, about a decade ago, someone started asking actual Kenyans if this was true, and it turned out to be a merely a product of Western imaginations: 14 of 20 surveyed Kenyan race-winners said they'd walked or ridden the bus to school, like normal children do. Another cultural argument says they run barefoot, which develops good habits, but if this were true then surely the far more populated countries of South Asia, where living without shoes is also common, would dominate over Kenyans. Another ascribes it to the "simple food" of Kenya, but this again is true of many parts of the world, and Kenya's not-so-great health record suggests the country has not discovered the secret to great nutrition. And there is a cringe-inducing theory, still prevalent, that Kenyans' history as herders means they get practice running as they chase their sheep across the countryside. Another argument notes that many of Kenya's best runners come from the sunny highlands in the Great Rift Valley, which also happens to be the birthplace of homo sapiens. The land there is flat with mild year-round weather, encouraging regular outdoor running. The high elevation -- about 7,000 feet -- could help runners here develop lungs capable of functioning in thinner air. When these runners descend to the relatively low-elevation courses at Boston or Beijing, the thicker atmosphere there would give them, in effect, a sustained oxygen boost. This may help explain why they developed physical traits better suited for running, although it's possible that these features are also due to something called "genetic drift" -- evolution is based on random genetic mutations, after all, so any isolated community will "drift" to certain common traits for no reason other than chance. Still, there are plenty of high places in the world, and neither Swiss nor Nepalese runners have yet made their big debut. And the conventional wisdom among trainers is that, although high altitudes can help develop lung capacity, the best way to do this is by sleeping at high elevation and training at low elevation. These theories seem to say more about how the West sees Kenya than about Kenya itself. But they are deep in the Western understanding. Malcolm Gladwell's ultra-best-seller, Outliers, shows just how deeply ingrained this thinking has become. His chapter on Kenyan runners argues, as one blogger summarized it, "ideal environments + a tremendous amount of hard work and focus on a specific thing = success beyond what most people achieve." World-champions runners, Gladwell says, are idolized in Kenya the way that Americans idolize rock stars... this kind of thinking, though clearly well intentioned, is a kind of condescension in itself. We're so afraid of reducing Africans to their physical attributes that we've ended up reducing them to an outdated stereotype: Cool Runnings, the barefoot village boy who overcame... Most of Kenya's Olympic medal winners come from a single tribe, the Kalenjin, of whom there are only 4.4 million. Sub-Saharan Africans have identified themselves by tribes such as this one for far longer than they've identified by nationality -- a system mostly imposed by the Western colonialism -- so the Kalenjin distinction is not just academic, and the tribe is probably genetically insular enough that common physical traits could inform their athletic success. In 1990, the Copenhagen Muscle Research Center compared post-pubescent schoolboys there to Sweden's famed national track team (before Kenya and a few other African countries began dominating international racing events in the late 1980s, Scandinavians were the most reliable winners). The study found that boys on the high school track team in Iten, Kenya, consistently outperformed the professional Swedish runners. The researchers estimated that the average Kalenjin could outrun 90% of the global population, and that at least 500 amateur high school students in Iten alone could defeat Sweden's greatest professional runner at the 2,000-meter. A 2000 Danish Sports Science Institute investigation reproduced the earlier study"
From 2012
Michael Shermer on X - "In my saga to get someone on my show to discuss systemic racism I continue striking out. The publicist of this book pitched me to have the author on. I accepted. Read book & prepared notes. Author backed out last minute: "she wants to pull back from additional interviews." Sure. Authors of new trade books for the general public just hate telling 100,000 people about their ideas. Why? I don't bite! I'm polite even when disagreeing. I even wrote a book on the subject: The Moral Arc Theists will talk to me Conservatives will talk to me UFOlogists (a few anyway) will talk to me Why won't defenders of systemic racism talk to me?"
The woke can't stand scrutiny. This is why they love their echo chambers, and actively censor others
Catholic Arena on X - "IRELAND Not a single member of the Irish government has wished Christians a Happy Easter on X, or even recognised it."
Irish Foreign Ministry on X - "We wish all those who observe the holy month, a blessed and peaceful Ramadan."
frank maguire on X - "By all means. And Holy period of Lent?"
Naturally, there was nothing for any of the days of Easter
Jack D. Ripper on X - "After my parents divorced my mom moved us to a majority black neighborhood and I had to attend a majority black grade school. It was like a penitentiary and getting home safely was an adventure every day. Couldn't play outside. It was a horrible, desperate nightmare."
i/o on X - "If you're a white kid who has ever lived in a black neighborhood, there's one sentence in this post that will stick out in particular: "Couldn't play outside." I have a story from my own childhood about this, but unfortunately it would disclose too much about my background/identity. Suffice to say: If you're a white kid in a low-income black neighborhood, you will likely lose the ability to have a normal childhood."
Eric on X - "How is this any different than the “lived experienced” arguments we usually hear from left-leaning people? Is it not probable that those who follow you or those you follow’s bad experiences don’t reflect the average white experience in a black neighborhood?"
i/o on X - "The difference is that my own "lived experience" isn't something that I use to inform me when I take a position on an issue. I try to use statistical data. My experience did, however, give me two things I've taken with me:
(1) The hair-trigger nature of black violence sets it apart from all other types of violence I've observed;
(2) If white antiracists (most of who seem to be from privileged backgrounds involving almost no contact with black people) observed what people are really like in low-income black neighborhoods, their romanticism about the "black struggle" would likely diminish or disappear."
DatuuNoon on X - ""The hair-trigger nature of black violence" This stems from genetics. I just watched a youtube video where someone greets another by putting his hand on the other guy's shoulder, and tons of black viewers were commenting how it's a sign of disrespect and they won't tolerate. 🤡"
i/o on X - "There's no direct scientific evidence supporting the claim that race differences in violence are genetic. The "hand on shoulder" thing is a cultural, not genetic, phenomenon."
LBC on X - ""If I had to choose between Christianity and Islam, I'd choose Christianity every single time." Self-proclaimed 'cultural Christian', ＠RichardDawkins, tells @RachelSJohnson he's 'slightly horrified' to hear Ramadan lights were hung on Oxford Street rather than Easter lights."
Stephen Knight 🎙️ on X - "It's hilarious how many people Dawkins has tricked into revealing that they just use the word 'Islamophobia' to mean 'blasphemy', and not bigotry towards Muslims, given there isn't a single instance of bigotry towards people in this clip."
Richard Dawkins once again melts brains with reasonable comments about Islam and being a 'cultural Christian'. - "Dawkins reiterates that he is not a believer in the claims of Christianity, and is “pleased” to see a decline in belief in Christianity. He describes himself as a “cultural Christian” however and says he thinks it would be worse if Islam dominated our culture in place of Christianity. He says he holds this view because he believes Islam to be especially hostile to women and gay rights. He’s also very clear and careful to make the distinction between Islamic ideas and Muslims in general or as a whole. It’s worth pointing out that despite the celebrations from my fellow culture warriors that Dawkins has finally ‘caught up’ and seen the light—the reality is that Richard Dawkins has been open about his ‘cultural Christian’ identity for a long time. Not to mention his criticism of Islam. This interview does not reveal anything new to those of us familiar with his work. What is especially telling however is the amount of people now hurling the accusation of “Islamophobe” in Richard Dawkins’s direction, such as Mehdi Hasan... Richard Dawkins was absolutely right to single out Islam for criticism. Those who are honest in their criticism of religion will have noticed that not all religious ideologies are the same—either due to their doctrinal contents, or the way in which they are practiced and understood in the current day. Some religious ideas really are preferable to others... It was all fun and games patting each other on the back for mocking those crackpot Christian Republicans or sharing Flying Spaghetti Monster memes—but a lot of balls seemed to suddenly fall off when it came to saying anything useful about the bigger threat of global fundamentalist Islam. American atheism has been utterly infected with dogmatic ‘progressive’ cowardice—exemplified by the fact numerous American atheist organisations condemned and cut ties with Richard Dawkins for asking some mild questions about gender self-ID. Online drama aside, this whole discussion about the function of our Christian culture in the modern era does raise some interesting, yet potentially uncomfortable questions for me and my fellow secular atheists. In the past, I had hoped—perhaps naively—that my fellow leftists would fill our cultural ‘god shaped hole’ with a staunch secular liberalism built on enlightenment principles. Instead, what we saw was the emergence of new godless religions. These new ideologies are dogmatic and hostile to science, free expression and women in ways that could give conservative religion a run for its money. A vindictive, authoritarian, godless culture of cancellation was born. And as many of us have previously warned until we were blue in the face, this was always going to have the undesired effect of making Christianity seem more appealing to a whole new generation—as well as inspiring older generations to reconnect with their faith in response to what they perceive to be the replacement of their culture and identity with something far worse... The simple truth is that Christianity had a head start on our culture, and whether you are practicing, non-practicing or a committed anti-theist, the cultural impact of Christianity appears to be here to stay. And whether this is a good or bad thing compared to the alternatives on offer is a perfectly legitimate topic for anyone to grapple with. Despite new “woke” ideology achieving little more than creating a massive PR win for conservative Christianity, we should never be complacent enough to forget how things were when Christianity had the run of it however."