When you can't live without bananas

Get email updates of new posts:        (Delivered by FeedBurner)

Thursday, March 20, 2025

Links - 20th March 2025 (2 - Palestine/Middle East Peace)

Meme - Shai Davidai @ShaiDavidai: "A Jewish professor at UCLA received this message from Maher Zamel, a graduate of UPenn (and former chairman of their graduate student association) and previous Deputy School Principal.   This is not how political differences look.  This is pure, unmitigated hate."
"Israel trip in 2013 with your wife? Pictures with IDF? Welcome to our database you Zionist scum bag. Every single one of you filthy Zionists taking part in birthright 'activities while inside the colony will be shamed and prosecuted. We have your info. Good luck you filth. Free Palestine. River to the Sea"

David Collier on X - "Every state in the Middle East is a failed or despotic state. Except one. Israel. Every state has a Muslim majority. Except one. Israel. Islamists want that tiny, democractic, Jewish majority state wiped off the earth. This is what "free Palestine" really means."
The left hate success and strength and love failure and weakness, after all

Jonathan Kay on X - "UPDATE: @BUFABrock, the Brock University Faculty Union, has scheduled a new meeting to debate Gökbörü Sarp Tanyildiz’s motion to target Israel with BDS (helpfully seconded by his own masters-degree supervisor, Nancy Cook). They picked Jan 27—Intl Holocaust Remembrance Day"
Good luck if you choose Ramadan to talk about Islamist Terrorism, even if by random luck that is 30 times more likely

Ryan Rozbiani on X - "When Israel says it is Not an Apartheid, SHOW THEM THIS!"
Corey Walker on X - "Interesting. Do you want to explain *why* the checkpoints are there? They exist because of the Second Intifada and terrorism inflicted upon Israel. It's no different than airport security in the US post-9/11. It's not apartheid, but precautions to protect from terrorism."

Eyal Yakoby on X - "Dearborn, Michigan Imam preaches that trying to kill Jews is a "win-win situation." "It is impossible to lose to a Zionist on the battlefield; either you kill him and he goes to hell, or he kills you and you go to paradise. It's a win-win situation.""

‘Monstrous:’ Sydney home, synagogue targeted in latest attack : r/australian - "Don’t worry folks, they’re just expressing opposition to Zionism .  Ironically showing us why Zionism exists in the first place"
"It’s so interesting that they keep on saying “Jewishness has nothing to do with Israel”, but then Australian synagogues get attacked and they can’t stop talking about Zionists and Israel. Odd."

The cultural appropriation of the keffiyeh | The Spectator - "  Jews have never been popular at universities; the phrase ‘too clever for their own good’ might have been invented for them, with a world population of 0.2 per cent taking a whopping 22 per cent of Nobel prizes. The mediocre spawn of the ruling class once had their flimsy self-respect protected by the university admissions quota system, but there’s no longer this handy way to rule the roost. Is it a coincidence that the thickest and most privileged members of the British student body have fallen into the arms of those who have declared war on the world’s only Jewish nation? (The arms of those who would, coincidentally, kill them for their feminism, their atheism and their LGBTQism given half a chance; but, like I said, they’re not too bright.)... Of course, they follow all the strict rules of virtue-signalling, except for one discrepancy. In an age when putting on a sombrero for 60 seconds during a drunken night out at an all-you-can-eat taco bar can be taken as proof of conquistador-level evil (because ‘cultural appropriation’ is far worse than, say, actually stealing from an intimidated shopkeeper) why do these same students swan around wearing the keffiyeh, the black and white chequered Arabic scarf which has become a symbol of the Palestinian ‘struggle’? Why isn’t this as bad as, say, Kim Kardashian wearing braids?   Palestinians on the internet are split. Some think it’s a cheek; others welcome the advertising for their cause. The most amusing response I found was ‘if you choose to wear this emblem, we see it not as an act of cultural appropriation, but as an open-hearted gesture of unity and support for our culture and cause. You know, wearing a keffiyeh is sort of like sporting a superhero’s cape – there’s a bit of responsibility that comes with it’. Does the ‘responsibility’ of supporting the butchering of infidel babies come with it?  If Western students wearing the keffiyeh is ludicrous, Western women wearing the hijab is grotesque – and has a long and ignoble history. The Hamas government long utilised legions of plain clothes police officers who patrolled public places, including beaches, restaurants and even hair salons to make sure that women were dressed ‘modestly’. One wonders how the soppy students so opposed to ‘slut-shaming’ squared this with their support for the governors of Gaza... In 2009, the journalist Asma al-Ghul had her passport and laptop confiscated by the Hamas Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice security force after she laughed in public. It was somewhat surreal then to see a bunch of alleged feminists gleefully hijabing-up on the various ineffectual marches they held to protest against the democratic election of Donald Trump... the narcissism of the superannuated manic pixie dream girl Laurie Penny – who ceaselessly squeals about Western sexism while giving Islamism a hall-pass – reached fever pitch when she dressed up as a Muslim woman for an afternoon in 2010: ‘I wore an abaya with full headscarf…for the first time since puberty, I felt that people might be seeing the real me, rather than looking at my body.’ What a comfort to the brave young women murdered in Iran for not donning the required shroud this must have been.   Then there were those unspeakably stupid Swedish female MPs – Sweden’s self-declared ‘first feminist government in the world’ – who chose to wear the hijab when they visited Iran in 2017. This must have had the woman-hating imams of mosques worldwide wetting themselves with glee that certain sections of free-born Western women were doing their dirty work for them by willingly taking on the mantle of oppression.  It’s not in any way ‘brave’ to cover up. In a world where the brave women of the online movement My Stealthy Freedom are risking their lives in order to feel the sun on their faces, it’s actually a particularly tone-deaf take on Marie Antoinette playing at milkmaids.  Still, we live in strange days, when a woman wearing hoop earrings can be ‘called out’ for cultural appropriation, while a man appropriating womanhood itself can be hailed as a hero(ine). So it shouldn’t be shocking when free, wealthy Western women use the symbol of the oppression of millions of non-Western women as a style accessory.   The celebrities who grandstand at this form of virtue-signalling are, as usual, the most objectionable, as their privilege is so extreme – even greater than that of posh students...   It’s amusing when the sucking up gets rejected: in Abu Dhabi in 2013, Rihanna posed by the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque wearing a black hijab. But the mosque asked her to leave, stating ‘in the event of behaviour that violates the moral codes of access to the mosque, or other visit regulations – such as taking inappropriate pictures, posing in ways that are improper in the context of sacred place, talking loudly, or eating – the violators are directed in a polite manner that reflects the civilisational and tolerant attributes of Islam’. So much for finding love in a hopeless place!  But the serial offender is Bella Hadid. Daughter of a reality TV star and a multi-millionaire Palestinian businessman, she grew up in Beverly Hills and has appeared 29 times on the cover of Vogue yet is forever jostling for a medal in the victimhood Olympics. More than anything, poor Bella would ‘have loved to grow up and be studying and really being able to practice, just in general being able to live in a Muslim culture.’ Instead Hadid, who is, at least – unlike Khloe Kardashian – a Muslim, posed in Doha wearing an Alaia dress – and a hair-covering. At a lavish dinner at the Museum of Islamic Art she wore a Schiaparelli dress – and a head-covering. At Naomi Campbell’s fashion show, there she was in another Schiaparelli dress – and a hood. Looking at her empty eyes peeking out from under her outfit, one can only hope that those who fetishise the veil will one day realise what it is like to have no choice about wearing the outfit and at last comprehend how precious and fragile freedom – especially female freedom – is. But back to the cruelty of the campuses. At a time when Jewish students feel the need to hide the emblems of their actual culture, there’s something particularly sickening and hypocritical about the adoption of the keffiyeh by rich brats. Until, perhaps, one considers that a lot of the alleged ‘culture’ of Palestine itself looks a bit shaky; everything from the flag they nicked from Jordan in 1964 to the ‘Palestinian cuisine’ drooled over on social media as part of the timeless traditions of this proud people. In the light of which, a boy from Bedales called Barnaby prancing around in a keffiyeh is really quite appropriate."

These anti-Israel student protests lay bare the brazen hypocrisy of the woke Left - "Directly beneath the “peaceful and proud” headline was a photo of a student protester whose face was completely obscured by a big black mask.  Now, I’ve no doubt that this student – who for some reason asked not to be named – is a delightful human being who wouldn’t hurt a fly, not even a wicked Zionist one. I would just say, however, that if I were staging some form of protest, and I wished to show the public that my goals were entirely peaceful, I would probably decide against wearing a big black mask. Otherwise, the public might think that a) I looked a tiny bit intimidating, and b) I was carefully concealing my identity because I intended to commit some kind of crime, possibly a violent one... when Left-wing activists decide to make abrupt changes to the rules they’ve sought to impose upon society, I wish they’d let the rest of us know. Say, by sending out a helpful memo or press release. “ATTENTION ALL CITIZENS. Cultural appropriation is no longer considered a heinous offence against marginalised and oppressed minorities. Instead, it is now considered a noble expression of solidarity with them. Please update your records accordingly.”  Something along those lines. Just as a courtesy. Otherwise, it’s not easy for the rest of us to follow the rules, if we’re no longer sure what they are."

Spanish party leader Ione Belarra says Israel commits genocide in Syria - "Spanish Podemos party leader Ione Belarra claimed on Tuesday that the State of Israel was committing genocide in Syria. “Israel is taking advantage of the instability in Syria to advance its colonial and genocidal plan, bombing several areas, including Damascus,” Belarra wrote on social media. “Virtually no Western media outlets are reporting on it. International inaction in the face of genocide endangers humanity as a whole,” she continued... “Belarra cried because the chemical weapons factory with which her colleague Assad gassed the Syrians has been disabled by Israel, which has also carried out surgical attacks on the Syrian air and naval fleet to prevent it from falling into the hands of jihadists”"
To the left, any war fought by the "West" is "genocide" - genocide just means war

BBC staff urged by union to wear Palestinian flag colours and a keffiyeh - "Jewish members of BBC staff have raised concerns after their colleagues were urged to dress in the colour of the Palestinian flag and wear a keffiyeh as part of a “workplace day of action” for Palestine. The event, which is scheduled for Thursday, has been organised by the umbrella union organisation the Trades Union Congress (TUC) to call for a permanent ceasefire, the cessation of violence in Gaza and the release of all hostages. As part of its recommendations, the TUC has suggested participants could “wear something red, green, black or a Palestinian keffiyeh to visibly show solidarity” to their workplace. The call to action was shared by the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) with its members last week as it condemned the Israeli government’s attacks, which it said have led to the deaths of at least 135 Palestinian journalists since 7 October 2023. “The NUJ is urging branches and chapels to show support on the day and amplify the union’s calls,” it said. But the request has alarmed some Jewish staff at the BBC, who raised concerns that journalists who donned Palestinian-themed clothing risked compromising the broadcaster’s strict impartiality guidelines and upsetting some of their colleagues. One journalist said that they were reconsidering their NUJ membership after the “hypocritical and antisemitic” action. “BBC journalists, who pride themselves on impartiality and who fought to keep their NUJ free of politics, are being encouraged to break the BBC’s editorial guidelines by supporting a political cause,” they added. “It is also a shocking attack on Jews. Where is the day of action to support the journalists being killed by their own governments across the Middle East, including by Hamas? Where is the NUJ support for Russian journalists that are being held behind bars on trumped up charges by Putin’s regime, those dying or working in perilous conditions in Ukraine?”"
If you think the BBC has a left wing/anti-Israel bias, you're just ignorant because reality has a left wing bias/they're really biased against the Palestinians
If you think unions are suspect because the left has hijacked them, you're a far right extremist

Meme - Syrian Girl 🇸🇾 @Partisangirl: "I will never regret any sacrifice I made for my country.   My only regret is I didn’t sacrifice more."
Readers added context they thought people might want to know: "Syrian Girl lives in Australia."

Meme>/a? - "How Palestine would look like if Israel lost in 1948 *Taken over by Jordan and Egypt*"

Canada foils Iranian plot to murder Irwin Cotler - "“After Oct. 7, my wife and I attended the March for Israel in Washington, D.C. When we flew back to Montreal, security asked us not to leave the airport. Security personnel spoke to me and informed me of what has been characterized as imminent and lethal threats, without going into further details,” Cotler said in an interview with JNS earlier this year. The international legal scholar noted at the time that “the community of democracies including Canada does not understand the threat of Iran.”"
Damn Zionists!

Toronto teacher fired after sharing pro-Palestinian views. Now she’s filing a wrongful termination suit : r/canada - "Don’t worry.  I’m sure they feel that the Jews chased out of their homes in Yemen, Iraq, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco and Iran through pogroms, discrimination, and imperialism (of the caliphate variety) since 1948 have an indefinite “right of return.”  What’s that? Crickets"

Canada would arrest Israeli PM if he came to Canada: Trudeau : r/canada - "I ish Trudeau gave a shit about arresting the Iranians who shot down a passenger plane full of Canadians."
"Iran also plotted to kill Irwin Cotler former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada"

This unholy axis of Iranian thugs and Marxist psychopaths is an enemy of Muslims too - "Four Arab countries signed the Abraham Accords, a Trump-era initiative that should have garnered that ex-president, for all his manifold faults, a Nobel Peace Prize (at least in a world where the likes of Barack Obama were deemed worthy of such an honor). Behind the current signatories – the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan – stood the Saudis, without whose tacit agreement no such steps would have been taken, and everyone knew it. Joe Biden and the Democrats had, therefore, an historic and unparalleled opportunity to bring the occasionally-troublesome Saudis formally into the fold soon after they took office, building on the Trump administration’s work. Instead, with miraculous short-sightedness, they alienated them almost immediately, choosing – instead of peace – to deny to the previous President of the United States any honor for his revolutionary breakthrough, one deemed utterly impossible by the blinkered fools who ruled the State Department for decades.  Despite being snubbed so insultingly, and their consequent and justified anger (remember their unwillingness to provide the US with additional oil, when Biden asked, and their recent flirtation with China?) the Saudis had been strongly considering the continuation and extension of the Abrahamic peace process. In consequence, the totalitarian mullahs of Iran – working with Hamas – were driven to desperation, knowing full well that such an agreement would undermine and isolate them fatally. This is the same Iran, by the way, that the Democrats, under Biden, have utterly failed to resist and control, continuing a pattern well-established by the aforementioned Nobel Laureate Obama. All this means, therefore, that the Saudis could have been on side two years ago had Biden seized the opportunity, thereby negating Hamas’s (and Iran’s) primary aim in attacking Israel. Instead, he and his fellow Democrats downplayed the significance of the Trump administration’s cardinal achievement just to score the cheapest (and yet most expensive) of political points.  So here we are again, with Israeli and Palestinian blood once again being unnecessarily spilled. One of the most shocking elements of this entire tragedy is how many in the West, particularly on the radical Left, have been championing a cause devoted to naught but violence. As a psychologist, I view this as a phenomenon facilitated by the power, accessibility and irresponsibility of social media, which allows for toxic traits exhibited by a small minority to propagate and proliferate, with none of the usual real-world consequences.  A particular form of psychopathology has been well-detailed in recent decades:  a combination of Machiavellianism (instrumental manipulativeness and deceit), narcissism (inflated false self-esteem and desire for unearned attention and status), and psychopathy (a malignant mixture of criminal propensity, callousness and parasitism). These are collectively known as the Dark Triad. More recent investigators of the structure of the darkest of temperamental propensities found it necessary to add an extra dimension to the matrix: sadism – positive delight in the suffering of others. So today we have the Dark Tetrad.   Dark Tetrad types fit well into what is known as Cluster B of personality disorders. Those who manifest Cluster B symptomatology have, in addition to their other psychologically and socially dangerous tendencies, the proclivity to claim positive virtue or outright victim status while pursuing their utterly self-serving, grandiose and destructive ends. They lie, cheat, steal, gossip, reputation-savage, brag, claim credit when none is due, and distribute blame to everyone but themselves – all the while pursuing nothing but their own immediate, immature, hedonistic self-gratification, trumpeting their moral virtue and/or brandishing their identity as oppressed innocents.   It is this narrow, and historically ostracised, behaviour that has been encouraged and facilitated in its distribution by contemporary social media. When such individuals organise – and this happens, from time to time – they threaten the integrity of the entire society within which they operate, hoping to light everything aflame and dance, orgiastically, in the ruins. This happened after the French Revolution. It happened in Soviet Russia. It happened in Nazi Germany. It’s happening now, in the West, with the rise of the most demented woke causes.  This warped psychological perspective has an appeal to groups larger than just the core individuals, and in various surreal guises. How else are you to explain the staggeringly incomprehensible spectacle of, for example, ‘Queers for Palestine’ – perhaps the most egregious example of the union of the desire by ‘progressives’ to tear down everything in the West that is worthy, even at the cost of formulating an alliance that would in an instant be suicidal if it ever made itself manifest... There are many Muslims willing to believe conspiratorial narratives – also spread on social media – about Jewish people. Many of these narratives, if one looks at their source, are deliberately spread by the brutal Iranian regime... I would also ask the same Muslims to consider those in the West who have allied themselves with the cause of the Palestinians in the days since the Hamas invasion. Many of those university students and radical professors you see as your allies are Marxists. Remember – the essential and absolute enemy of the communist utopia is the very religious practice you share with your Abrahamic brothers.   Then there’s the increasingly delusional alphabet brigade of the LGBT ‘community’, foolish and blind enough to assume that commonality of hypothetical oppression is enough to unite it, somehow, with the mullahs of Tehran and the gangsters of Hamas. This is useful idiocy on a scale undreamed of by the most extreme of Leninists and Maoists alike."

Toronto teacher fired after sharing pro-Palestinian views. Now she's filing a wrongful termination suit - "The claim says Della Mora was fired without cause after playing a short video on the conflict in her Grade 8 math class and reposting a portion of an Instagram post expressing a pro-Palestinian stance to her personal account."
Brainwashing your students is all part of the job in education, so being fired for that is outrageous
"Accountability culture" only applies to those who oppose the left wing agenda

Meme - "Pali Identity - Created by an Egyptian
Pali Flag - Created by British. Stolen from Jordan
Keffiyah - Stolen from Iraq and Jordan
Land - Borders created by League of Nations. Stolen from Judeans
History - Stolen from Judeans and Philstines
The Name - Taken from the Romans and British"

Eyal Yakoby on X - "Turkey has bombed the Kurds 1031 times in 4 days. You don’t hear any condemnations for Turkey or see our streets rally for the Kurds."
Turkish strikes in Syria cut water to one million people - "“Turkey’s attacks on energy infrastructure have had a devastating impact on civilians,” said Aarif Abraham, a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers, adding: “This could constitute a severe violation of international law.”  Patrick Kroker, an international criminal lawyer at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, said that “the indications that international law was violated here are so strong that they should be investigated by a prosecutorial authority”.  The Turkish government said it “fully respects international law”, adding that the UN’s February 2024 report provided “no substantiating evidence” for its “unfounded allegations”.  It blamed water shortages in the region on climate change and “long-neglected water infrastructure” maintenance there."
Plus, Turkey is a western ally, a democracy and a recipient of Western foreign aid - the usual excuses for bashing Israel

‌Hemdad Mehristani on X - "Kurdish civilians displaced by Turkey and Turkish-backed jihadists. 200,000 Kurds ethnically cleansed in less than four days. Zero condemnations from UN."

Meme - "Know your Anti-Zionist
The Far-Left
Hates Israel simply for being allied with the US
Corroboratesthe idea that Israel is a "white ethnostate"
Unironically thinks North Korea is a totally reasonable country
Western LGBT community
So damn confused
Copes by thinking that Palestine is more liberal than it really is
Doesn't want to talk about why LGBT Palestinians seek asylum in Israel
The Irish
- "we were once occupied too, that's why we support palestine"
- Has no other real arguments
The TikTok kid
- Didn't know what "a Palestine" is before the war didn't go viral
- Supports Palestine only because it's the cool new trend
- Doesn't know which river and which sea, but tells everyone else to "educate themselves"
The Islamic Fundamentalist
- Asserts that Jews have nothing to do with the Land of Israel
- Often openly antisemitic and proud of it
- Supports Palestinians in spirit only, won't actually open borders to save their lives
The Neo-Nazi
- Hates Israel only because it is run by Jews
- Hates Jews, but hates Arabs equally as much
- Joins Pro-Palestinian rallies because they can finally spew hatred without being silenced
The Free Palestine NPC - Will spam "FREE PALESTINE" literally everywhere
- Their entire identity is centered around a country they're not from
- Engages in bot-like behavior, and likely is one
The "As a Jew" Jew
- Thinks they have moral superiority to talk on the subject
- Just wants to be accepted by their non-Jewish peers
- Still bitter that they didn't get on birthright trip"

Eyal Yakoby on X - "DISGUSTING: A British man wrote on social media that he doesn’t want to see Palestinian flags all over the UK. The police then showed up to his house at 4am to arrest him. You can take over the streets of the UK, chant in support of terrorism, but be arrested if you oppose it."

Meme - Nioh Berg @NiohBerg: "Brown native 'Palestinian' surrounded by White Polish settlers from Europe. Make it make sense. *white Palestinian woman surrounded by brown and black Jews*"
This is Ahed Tamimi in a military court in Betunia, in the West Bank

Palestinian teen who hit Israeli soldier to serve eight months in prison - The Globe and Mail - "A teenage Palestinian girl who was filmed kicking and slapping an Israeli soldier in the occupied West Bank accepted a plea deal on Wednesday under which she will be sentenced to eight months in prison, her lawyer said.  Ahed Tamimi, 17, became a hero to Palestinians after the Dec. 15 incident outside her home in the village of Nabi Saleh was streamed live on Facebook by her mother and went viral... Tamimi’s case drew global attention. Amnesty International called her the “Rosa Parks of Palestine,” and the small courtroom was often packed with journalists, diplomats and international observers during hearings.  A group of American cultural figures, including actors Danny Glover and Rosario Dawson and novelist Alice Walker, signed a petition calling for her release and comparing her case to those of “the children of immigrants and communities of colour who face police brutality in the United States.”... “When the European people see my daughter, blonde and blue-eyed, they are shaken, because they saw their children in front of them. It broke the stereotyped image of the Palestinian in the international community,” Tamimi’s father, Bassem Tamimi, told Reuters. The images of Tamimi striking the soldier had also made an impact on Israelis, who debated whether the officer should have hit back. The army said the soldier “acted professionally” by showing restraint but right-wing politicians described his behaviour as humiliating."
TIL Rosa Parks attacked the bus driver. The comparison to "police brutality" in the US is more apt, since usually what happens is a thug attacks the police then pretends to be (or people pretend he is) a victim when the police defend themselves

Israel Defense Forces on X - "Yesterday, IDF soldiers identified a 4-year-old child moving towards a post in the security zone. The boy was returned to Gaza by IDF forces and in coordination with international organizations. In a conversation with the soldiers, the child said that he was sent to the post by the Hamas terrorist organization.  Hamas does not hesitate to use any means to cynically use and exploit civilians and children to advance its terrorism."

Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs

Sandy Petersen on X

How to get your dream project - corporate politicking.

After my successes with Rise of Rome and The Conquerors, I was a shoe-in to do the expansion for Age of Empires 3. But I had a problem. The natural assumption everyone had was that this expansion would be Asian civs. I did not want to do Asian civs because it was stupid - 1600s Japan, India, China & Korea were emphatically not in colonizing moods. And believe it or not, I do care a little about historical verisimilitude. (Mainly because I think it makes the game more fun, but still...)

So what I wanted to do was to turn some of the Native Americans into playable civs. Why? I think Indians are awesome and I wanted to see them as more than the minor allies they were presented as in the original game.

But how could I do this? MicroSoft expected Asians. The suits in charge at Ensemble expected Asians. The other leads on the project expected Asians. And the rest of the non-lead team members expected Asians.

Here's how I went about it. (Oh yeah, if you thought the Warchiefs was dumb then you're a bad person with bad opinions. So there. But you may still find something useful in my tale.) 

First, I had to convince MYSELF that the Natives would be cool. I wanted to give them a new and interesting ability and make them undeniably cool. I worked on this for a while, coming up with the Firepit idea (which lets the Indian villagers dance for special powers) and the Warchief unit, which is way different from the European Scouts because the Warchief can "convert" wild animals on the map to his team which is super-fun. I also decided the three civs would be the Sioux, the Aztecs, and the Iroquois, which would be interestingly different. Later on they changed the name of the Sioux to the Lakota but I want you to know that I actually PHONED the Seven Council Fires and was told in person by native representatives that Sioux was a perfectly good term for them. Though of course Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota also worked. I stuck with Sioux as being more inclusive. (I assume the name was eventually changed because of white men activists, not natives, because it was white Seattle natives who thought it should be Lakota back in the day.)

The Aztecs wouldn't have gunpowder or horses, the Sioux would be heavily cavalry-based, and the Iroquois would be kind of a "high tech" Native civ. Anyway I was an easy sell, because I'd been thinking about this for a while.

Second, I took all the other leads (consisting of the producer, the lead programmer & the lead artist) out to a long business lunch and we hammered out all the details. Basically I proselyted how cool the natives would be, and how much neater a horde of screaming charging Sioux would be than a stand of Mughal archers. And by the end of that (3 hour) lunch I had them all convinced. I'd answered their arguments, presented ideas they liked, and got them on my side. 

Next step - the team. Now that all the leads agreed with me, we met with the team - programmers, designers, and artists first as individual groups then all together and made our case for Indian civs. The artists were the easiest ones to convince, once I started talking about Jaguar Warriors and Lakota lancers, feathers waving in the air. So colorful. The designers were fairly easy too because they liked the challenge it presented. The programmers, always hyper-conservatives, were the toughest, but they fell to our eloquent arguments as well. Everyone was enthusiastic now and loved the Warchief idea.

Now I went to our superiors at the company - the guys who approved our paychecks. And here was the argument I gave them. "The whole team loves the Warchief idea. Surely it's better to put us on a project that we love, rather than one we only reluctantly acquiesce to?" And because the management at Ensemble Studios wasn't a pack of morons, they bought it. They then fought for us against the Microsoft drones (who WERE, of course, a pack of morons) for our team vision.

And in the end, we were victorious in getting my idea approved. But now it all rested on my being able to produce what I'd promised design-wise. Obviously the programmers and artists were capable of making whatever they were asked. It was mainly on me.  

And I succeeded. The first civ I did was the Iroquois, because I felt they were the most like the Europeans. They used gunpowder & horses, etc.

From the first moment they were tried out in the game they were a big hit. I think the main reason everyone loved them was because they were able to produce swarms of little crappy siege weapons (battering rams, etc.) which are of course Real. Fun. Nothing warms the cold black hearts of Age of Empires players like destroying peaceful villages.

Once everyone was playing the Iroquois (and fighting over who got to be them in our playtests), the Warchiefs were In Like Flynn. The whole of Ensemble Studios was bought in. 

A few weeks later I brought in the Aztecs, who THEN became the most popular civ I think because of all the cool specialized warriors - Coyote Runners, Eagle Scouts, Priests, Jaguar Knights, Puma Spearmen, Arrow Knights, Skull Knights, etc. They were just so colorful & cool. And their home city looked awesome because Aztec architecture.

The last civ I created was the Lakota, and everyone was so excited to try them probably they were predisposed to love them on sight. And they were. Having a giant army of cavalry is super fun though of course they had to have anti-pike units as well, which they did because the Sioux had lots of rifles. Plus I gave them invisible units, including the only invisible cavalry unit in the game.

Anyway the Warchiefs was doing great and everyone seemed happy. Until MicroSoft struck back. 

They sent in a team which was whining because in Age of Empires III though we had native americans, they couldn't be wiped out. But in The Warchiefs, if you were playing a native civ, obviously you could be annihilated. Sort of the whole purpose to playing an RTS, right?

But no, the all-white-dude contingent they sent to complain about this terrible injustice was concerned it would send a bad message.

I didn't have to say hardly anything - I'd prepped everyone at Ensemble Studios so well that they fought on my behalf. No one wanted to give up playing the awesome Native civs. And the best part came when to thwart our MS foes, we presented them with the document that THEY HAD SENT US when we first did Age III, in which Native elders from Washington state complained that the natives in Age III COULDN'T BE KILLED. They said, "The natives in Age are not in power of their own destiny. We want them to be their own independent civs and live or die based on their skills and strengths."

Which is of course EXACTLY what we'd done. We had fulfilled, almost to the letter, what the actual Native Americans desired, in a document which MicroSoft had prepared after Age 3 came out. 

So we got to have our way. It probably helped my case that this was in 2005 - Lord knows what it would have been like if this had happened 20 years later.

Someone is probably going to say, "But Sandy, later on you guys DID an Asian expansion for Age 3." Well actually, no. Ensemble Studios didn't do it - BigHugeGames did The Asian Dynasties a year later, and they did a great job. And really, it was the obvious next expansion. I didn't object to doing Asians, but if we were ever going to do Native Americans I stand by the fact we would have had to do it first.

Links - 20th March 2025 (1)

Debris found after object shot down over Lake Huron in 2023 - "The unidentified object was shot down by a U.S. F-16 fighter jet on the afternoon of Feb. 12, 2023, over Lake Huron, which separates Michigan and Ontario. It was the third and final unidentified object(opens in a new tab) blasted out of North America's skies that month following the high-profile Feb. 4, 2023, downing of an apparent Chinese surveillance balloon(opens in a new tab). At the time, the Lake Huron object was described as "octagonal" in structure with strings hanging off of it, and it reportedly "slowly descended" into Canadian waters after being hit by one of two missiles that were fired at it. Officials characterized it as a suspected balloon that did not pose a military threat, but could have interfered with domestic air traffic... A "secret" Royal Canadian Air Force document obtained by CTVNews.ca suggests the Lake Huron object could have been a "weather balloon" launched from a U.S. National Weather Service radar station in Michigan. Iain Boyd is a professor of aerospace engineering and director of the Center for National Security Initiatives at the University of Colorado Boulder. Boyd speculates that the continued lack of information on these cases could be because the U.S. and Canadian governments were embarrassed after shooting down objects that weren't really national security threats."

"Blowing Smoke Up Your Ass" Used to Be Literal - "Back in the late 1700s, however, doctors literally blew smoke up people’s rectums. Believe it or not, it was a general mainstream medical procedure used to, among many other things, resuscitate people who were otherwise presumed dead. In fact, it was such a commonly used resuscitation method for drowning victims particularly, that the equipment used in this procedure was hung alongside certain major waterways, such as along the River Thames (equipment courtesy of the Royal Humane Society). People frequenting waterways were expected to know the location of this equipment similar to modern times concerning the location of defibrillators."

Human smuggler issued new Canadian passport after court ordered surrender of travel document - "The federal government issued a new passport to an admitted human smuggler after he was ordered to surrender the travel document as part of court-imposed release conditions, CBC News has learned. The new passport was discovered in June 2023 by RCMP investigators executing a search warrant at the Montreal home of Thesingarasan Rasiah during a probe targeting an international human smuggling network that Rasiah allegedly headed... At the time, Rasiah was living at home with an electronic ankle bracelet on strict conditions while awaiting sentencing on a February 2023 guilty plea to one count of breaching the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act for his role in the smuggling of a Sri Lankan national from the U.S. into Canada in 2021."

Why can’t we die at home? Expanding home care could reduce the financial and environmental cost of dying in hospital - "even though most patients would rather spend their final days at home, we have difficulty sending them there, because there aren’t enough community care resources to care for them at home."

Ridley Scott explains why emperors in his films are all ‘crazy’ – the answer is in their water - "Ridley Scott has revealed why the emperors in his films all tend to be a bit unstable – turns out it’s all the lead in their water pipes... There may be some truth to Scott’s words, as scientist Jerome Nriagu suggested back in 1983 that the lead in the pipes and tanks caused erratic behaviour and gout among emperors and aristocrats, which he believed triggered the fall of the Roman empire. In addition to physical problems, lead poisioning can also cause behavioural issues, like depression, irritability, and trouble with concentration and memory. He also said that in order to sweeten wine as well as their food, Romans boiled down grapes into syrups, which were also simmered slowly in lead pots or lead-lined copper kettles. While the theory that lead poisoning directly contributed to the fall of the empire has fallen out of favour recently, the presence of high quantities of lead in the food and drink that high-born Romans would have consumed has been confirmed. A team of archaeologists in 2014 also found after measuring lead isotopes in sediments from the Tiber River and Trajanic Harbour, that the piped water Romans drank contained “had 100 times more lead than local spring waters”."

No one knows who owns this Toronto laneway, but neighbours say it's become a dangerous dumping ground - "Frustrated shop owners in Toronto's Yonge and Wellesley area say the city is refusing to pick up mounds of garbage that regularly accumulates in an adjacent laneway because it's private property — even though the laneway's last known owner died more than a century ago. Sara Sadrolhefazi, owner of Nabulu Coffee on St. Joseph Street, says she's spent $5,000 in the year that she's owned the property, hiring contractors to clear garbage left in the laneway behind her shop.

Too many people want to be social-media influencers - "Ask a young person what they would like to do with their life and increasingly often the answer will be to find fame and fortune online. Fully 57% of Gen Zs in America would like to be a social-media influencer, according to Morning Consult, a pollster; 53% describe it as a “reputable career choice”... Yet as the industry has grown, it has also changed. Spoiled for choice, companies have shifted their attention towards influencers creating content for narrower audiences, such as fashion tips for the over 60s or gardening advice for inner-city dwellers, to better target those consumers. Cultivating a small fan base in a niche area may earn hobbyists some extra cash, but it will rarely be enough for them to quit their day job. Those who fantasise about making a living as a social-media star may thus be heading for disappointment. Companies have been increasing the share of their marketing budgets they hand over to influencers. Over the past five years, American firms have roughly tripled their spending on influencer marketing, to $7bn, according to eMarketer, a research firm. In a survey by the Influencer Marketing Hub, another research group, 86% of brands globally said they plan to spend on influencer marketing this year, up from 37% in 2017, when the survey was first conducted. Nearly a quarter intend to spend over 40% of their marketing budget on influencer campaigns. Companies realise that influencers—or “creators”, as many prefer to be called—have become integral to how consumers shop. According to research by Northwestern University and LTK, a platform that connects influencers with brands, nearly three-quarters of Gen Zs in America have relied on influencers to help them choose products to buy. More surprisingly, so have a third of consumers who are boomers or older. Influencers are part of every big campaign nowadays, says Mark Read, the boss of WPP, which owns advertising agencies such as Ogilvy and Mindshare... Goldman Sachs, a bank, estimates that as of last year there were more than 50m influencers globally, and reckons their ranks are swelling by between 10% and 20% annually. The surging supply of influencers has been a boon for companies that use them to sell their products. Celebrity influencers may be helpful for building awareness of a brand or altering how it is perceived by shoppers, but when it comes to persuading people to buy something, marketers look to the long tail of creators with small but engaged groups of followers. Since 2021 the share of spending on influencer marketing in America taken by creators with more than 1m followers has fallen from 15% to 8%; the share taken by those with fewer than 20,000 followers has surged from 20% to 45%... Only 4% of creators earn $100,000 a year or more from the work, according to Goldman Sachs. AI could worsen the situation, as “virtual influencers” begin to crowd social-media feeds: Aitana López, a gamer and fitness guru with pink hair and a face so symmetrical it could only have been generated by a computer, has 330,000 followers on Instagram. The glut of influencers is also making online fame yet more fickle. Even if a post goes viral, that doesn’t mean an influencer’s career is set, says Joe Gagliese, co-founder of Viral Nation, a marketing agency. “If they’re not careful to make the most of that, there is another creator right behind them,” he says. “This industry is extremely volatile,” points out Vanessa Chen, a fashion influencer better known by her Instagram name Vivacious Honey. To diversify her income, she recently launched her own clothing line. Many others have done something similar. There is another problem with the flood of influencers online: consumers are growing weary of all those ads dressed up as entertainment. In a survey last year McKinsey, a consultancy, found that 68% of fashion consumers globally were unhappy with the amount of sponsored content on social media. Influencers first took off because consumers thought of them as “people they could trust”, says Anita Balchandani of McKinsey. To remain influential they need to strike a balance between getting paid and convincing followers they are still “authentic”, one of the industry’s favourite buzzwords. Being popular, it seems, is harder than ever."

Musk shares wild conspiracy as to why Ellen DeGeneres has left the United States - "Musk shared a post with a screenshot of a 2016 X, then Twitter, post from DeGeneres referencing Combs. “’Happy birthday, P Diddy, Puff Daddy, Sean Combs, or as I call him, Cuddle McSnugglestuff,” DeGeneres’s post read. “You don’t need to know why. @iamdiddy.” The original poster shared the screenshot with the caption, “It makes sense why she fled the country after the election.” Musk then re-shared the post, captioning it with the eyebrow-raised emoji."
Left wingers have no sense of humour, which is why they don't recognize jokes

Jack Mintz: Corporate welfare shrinks the economy - "Corporate welfare is one reason for Canada’s poor productivity record. Subsidies kill productivity two ways. If they go to companies with poor profitability, economic growth suffers as workers and capital are tied to sub-par investments. On the other hand, if they go to highly profitable companies, money raised with growth-killing taxes is wasted supporting investments that probably would have taken place anyway. Either way, there is no free lunch. I recently looked at Statistics Canada data on grants and investment tax credits for over 45 industries. Grants and ITCs are only the visible part of the iceberg, unfortunately: data on “forgivable,” low-interest or guaranteed loans, corporate tax rate concessions or land grants aren’t available... Which industries got the most corporate welfare? The top prize goes to air shipping transport manufacturers, with a 53.9 per cent subsidy rate. That’s right: grants plus tax credits came to 53.9 per cent of after-tax profits. Despite that, this sector’s return on equity was a measly 3.4 per cent. Without subsidies it would have been just 1.7 per cent. Runner-up in the subsidy competition is “arts, entertainment, accommodation and food services,” subsidized at the rate of 53.2 per cent, in part reflecting the heavy impact of the pandemic. Again, even with subsidies, the industry’s profitability was generally poor, with an average return on equity of only 5.5 per cent. Third most-subsidized were “religious, grant-writing, civic and related services” — yes, Canada, we subsidize grant-writing — underwritten at a rate of 50 per cent and with a 5.5 per cent rate of return on equity. Agriculture, fishing and forestry had the fourth highest subsidy rate, at 41.7 per cent, and a return on equity of 8.6 per cent. Through history this politically favoured sector has been supported by a vast number of programs, often with the goal of stabilizing producers’ incomes. The best known and most controversial is supply management though it is not included since Canadian consumers, not the federal treasury, bear the cost of high product prices. Another industry with a relatively high subsidy rate is publishing, motion picture, broadcasting and information, at 25.4 per cent. It relies heavily on Canadian-content grants and film tax credits. Computer and electrical equipment manufacturing is subsidized at a subsidy rate of 21.1 per cent; repair, maintenance and personal services at 16.1 per cent; chemical, rubber and fibre manufactures at 12.7 per cent; and professional, scientific and technical services at 10.1 per cent of their profits. Sectors that aren’t subsidized very much are utilities (only 0.6 per cent of whose after-tax profits come from subsidy), real estate (0.8 per cent), and oil and gas (1.0 per cent). Does all this corporate welfare make recipient industries more profitable than others? No. On balance, subsidies went to less profitable firms. The industries that receive more than 10 per cent of their profits in grants and ITCs earned an average return on equity of 7.5 per cent, a third less than the average in nonfinancial industries. A few heavily subsidized industries did have above-average profitability — chemical and rubber manufacturers, professional, scientific and technical services, and repair, maintenance and personal services — but generally profitability was poor in the more subsidized sectors."
Weird. Left wingers keep claiming that oil and gas receive massive subsidies

How big things could get done, even in Canada - "Bent Flyvbjerg, a Danish professor of economic geography specializing in megaprojects, and the Canadian journalist Dan Gardner published How Big Things Get Done. In it they investigate what they coin the “iron law of megaprojects,” which is that such projects routinely come in well over budget, far past projected deadlines and without delivering projected benefits. Unfortunately for taxpayers, the book contains many examples of Canadian megaprojects that have obeyed this “law.” The federal government’s infamous firearms registry, which ended up 590 per cent over budget, is a textbook template for how IT projects can go terribly wrong. The Muskrat Falls hydro project in Newfoundland is a classic demonstration of what happens when a firm with little direct experience is hired to manage a large, complex project. Most famously, the 1976 Montreal Games wins the title for the largest cost overrun in Olympic history, finishing 720 per cent over budget. The authors suggest Montreal’s “Big Owe” stadium “should be considered the unofficial mascot of the modern Olympic Games.” One thing all these Canadian examples have in common is extensive government involvement. Not that governments have learned from their past mistakes. Ottawa’s Phoenix pay system fiasco demonstrates that IT remains a black hole, with the government recently announcing it would finally abandon Phoenix after spending $3.5 billion trying to implement it. Several light-rail projects across the country have also gone off the rails, the poster boy being, appropriately, Ottawa’s, which is years behind schedule and already $2.5 billion over budget. There are several reasons why government projects are chronically prone to failure. One is that politicians, especially late in their career, want a legacy in the form of a monumental tangible project — whether or not it effectively meets a significant public need. You can see this dynamic clearly at work today as the federal government pushes for a prohibitively expensive (probably over $100 billion) high-speed rail connection between Windsor and Quebec City. Meanwhile, Ontario Premier Doug Ford promotes a traffic tunnel underneath Highway 401 between Brampton and Scarborough, while Quebec Premier François Legault revives plans for a third link connecting Quebec City to the south shore of the St. Lawrence. Canada clearly does need more transportation infrastructure, but these grandiose projects are not a cost-effective way of meeting the needs of commuters and shippers. Governments repeatedly deploy a couple of well-worn tricks to help get uneconomic projects built. First, they produce unrealistically low cost estimates. Then they just start digging. As former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown once said, if you make the hole big enough, “there’s no alternative to coming up with the money to fill it in.” This approach preys on the all-too-common mistaken belief that large sunk costs mean scrapping a project “would be interpreted by the public as ‘throwing away’ the billions of dollars already spent.” In fact, ignoring sunk costs is almost the definition of how not to throw good money after bad. Unlike other studies of how major infrastructure projects typically go way over budget, Flyvbjerg and Gardner provide some concrete recommendations on how to manage large projects that respect deadlines and budgets. First, give careful consideration to goals. Airlines can meet the need for fast transport in the Windsor-Quebec corridor without the immense expense of laying hundreds of kilometres of roadbed for high-speed rail. Then follow up detailed planning and preparation with swift execution to minimize costly surprises. In a slogan: “think slow, act fast.” Also: do close accounting of the cost of similar projects in the past and break up large projects into smaller modules so they can be scaled back if they run into trouble. Several oilsands projects built in this country before 2015 showed these principles at work: when severe shortages of labour and materials emerged firms used modularity and phasing of work schedules to create slack."

Young people are embracing conservatism - "One of the most intriguing recent political trends in North America is growing support for conservative parties among young people. Once a reliable source of support for left-leaning politicians like Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau, a rising share of the youth vote is trending towards candidates like Donald Trump and Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre. Young people voting for conservative politicians might be dismissed as just a backlash against failed economic policies but there are indications of a more fundamental shift in which youth embrace at least some conservative values... Faced with a health-care system that is clearly broken, Canadian young people have fewer qualms about involving the private sector than do older generations raised to believe that publicly-provided health care was a fundamental Canadian value. A recent Leger poll published in Le Journal de Quebec found that 44 per cent of Quebeckers 18-34 support private delivery of health-care services, the mirror image of people 55 and over, who oppose it. Meanwhile, today’s young Americans are even more likely than millennials were 20 years ago to identify as having more conservative views than their parents, with the largest shift occurring among young men. Rising support for conservative politicians and ideas among young people reflects several trends. Most obvious is that many reject the radical woke agenda espoused by a small but vocal minority. When confronted with the reality of an economy that is not generating the jobs, incomes and housing they desire, they prioritize results over ideology. That’s especially true for young people who came to Canada for economic reasons. Unfortunately, the importance young people put on results is driving many to question the usefulness of democracy. In his 2023 book The Fourth Turning Is Here, historian Neil Howe cites polls showing one in four young Americans would prefer a dictatorial president unconstrained by Congress, while only one in 10 Americans over 65 agrees. Howe’s analysis is based on the proposition that historical movements occur in cyclical ebbs and flows rather than straight lines. After a career spent studying business cycles, I find this argument intuitively appealing... As economist Hyman Minsky wrote, “Success breeds a disregard of the possibility of failure … Stability leads to instability. The more stable things become and the longer they are stable, the more unstable they will be when the crisis hits.”"

Saudi Arabia carries out more executions of foreigners than ever before - "The high number of executions undercuts statements by Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who told The Atlantic in 2022 that the kingdom had eliminated the death penalty with the exception of murder cases or when an individual posed a threat to many lives. The same year it executed 81 people in one day for terror offences and other violent crimes in what was the largest mass execution in the kingdom’s modern history."

Tardigrades reveal secrets of extreme survival tactics

Aisha Estey: B.C. Conservatives proved to be a force in provincial politics — but there's much work to do - "We knew conservatives in B.C. were looking for a new home. They were looking for a party that prioritized a strong economy, because there can be no affordability without one; a party that believes in true universal access to health care, not access to three-year waiting lists; a party that champions drug-free recovery, rather than perpetuating the cycle of addiction and poverty; and a party that prioritizes the safety of law-abiding citizens... The price of food has jumped nearly 30 per cent , making many staples, such as chicken , more expensive than anywhere else in Canada. A litre of gasoline in B.C. carries not one but two provincial taxes, leading to the highest gas taxes and prices in North America. These burdens make it nearly impossible for working families to get ahead. Carbon taxes have made life unaffordable without producing any of the environmental benefits we were promised by the NDP. We also face a housing crisis. Under Premier David Eby and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Metro Vancouver completed the construction of fewer homes last year than in 2017, while rent and mortgage bills are at or near all-time highs. Young people are finding it difficult to justify staying in B.C. Half of those between the ages of 18 and 34 are seriously thinking of leaving the province . Our province’s addiction crisis is also shameful. After seven years of the NDP, B.C. has Canada’s worst drug problem . The NDP’s policies of handing out free drugs and running government drug dens have not helped our loved ones, they’ve only deepened the cycle of addiction and despair. Don’t be fooled: there is no compassion in perpetuating addiction. British Columbians are crying out for common-sense solutions — to stop handing out free drugs, get people into treatment and bring their loved ones home, drug free... All 44 Conservative MLAs will fight to deliver a common-sense conservative agenda: scrapping the carbon tax; making housing more affordable by fighting to implement policies like the “Rustad Rebate”; ending safe supply and so-called harm reduction, and investing in treatment and rehab instead; removing sexual orientation and gender identity from B.C.’s education system; standing up for our natural resource workers and businesses; and pushing to end the catch-and-release, soft-on-crime policies of Eby’s NDP."
Time to blame conservatives for the damage the left wing governments have caused

ZWAAGSTRA: Lowering teacher education standards will harm students - "Martha Koch, an education professor at the University of Manitoba, publicly claimed that requiring students to complete more undergraduate courses in math “sometimes results in worse teachers in early and middle years mathematics.” This comment is a prime example of the anti-knowledge bias pervading North American education faculties. The last thing faculties of education want is for teachers to be the primary source of knowledge in the classroom. That is why we cannot trust education faculties. Having taken many undergraduate and graduate education courses myself, I can safely say that most of them are worse than useless. In fact, you get stupider because of taking them. Don’t just take my word for it. Ask any teacher how they felt about their Bachelor of Education program. Chances are they will praise their teaching practicum where they worked in real classrooms with real students, but they will dismiss most of their required education courses as useless theories. I shudder to think about prospective teachers taking undergraduate degrees in narrow and esoteric fields such as gender studies and then completing a Bachelor of Education program with courses that promote all the wrong ideas about how students learn. While those teachers will be ready for social justice activism, they won’t have a foggy clue about how to teach real subjects such as math, science, or history."
When the aim is to push the left wing agenda, real knowledge doesn't matter

Frustrated with their small city’s government, residents voted to end it - "Shanaberger said the $30 she paid per year on city taxes — in addition to Hart County and federal taxes — wasn’t improving the area. The roads have potholes, she said, and there are no sidewalks off the city’s main road... Organizing the annual July Fourth event, which included a parade on Route 31W, a local band and fireworks, will be difficult without the city government’s funding, Whitlow said. But Bonnieville Elementary School won’t be impacted much by the change because the county school district owns it, and the city’s fire department will continue operating because it’s run and funded by volunteers. Bonnieville already had been relying on Hart County’s sheriff’s department and the county’s trash and recycling services, said Joe Choate, Hart County’s executive. The county will now be responsible for Bonnieville’s roads, but Choate said he doesn’t expect managing Bonnieville will be a financial burden for the county. However, Hart County isn’t providing lighting. Kentucky Utilities Company, which had worked with the city, sent letters to residents a few weeks ago encouraging them to lease the city’s roughly 74 streetlights for between $8 and $14 each per month, said Chris Whelan, a company spokeswoman. Streetlights will be removed if they’re not paid for, Whelan said. Bowman will pay for the streetlight outside his home, he said, but he worries that Bonnieville’s issues won’t be handled promptly because the county receives more maintenance requests than the city."

Minister calls for probe on why more private pupils get extra time - "27 per cent of pupils at non-selective state schools got extra time, compared with 42 per cent of their privately-educated counterparts."

Library worker who is 6ft2 and 360 pounds sues for $4.6m over ‘trauma’ of having a small desk - "A New York City library worker, who is 6ft 2 inches tall and weighs 360 pounds, is suing his employers for $4.6 million after he was allegedly forced to work at a desk that was too small for him and caused him to suffer serious mental health problems. William Martin claims that not only were his concerns ignored by management at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library (SNFL) but that he was intentionally scheduled to work at the “crampy” desk in order to show him “who was boss.”"

Chris Selley: Ottawa all but invited Alberta to flip the bird to federal laws - "Fundamentally, the Sovereignty Act allows the Alberta government to direct “provincial entities to engage in an act that would be contrary to federal law,” as University of Calgary law professors Martin Olszynski and Nigel Bankes wrote in 2022 . Even if you’re past caring about laws you don’t like — and there’s a lot of that going around — it’s a precedent that some future premier will probably use in a way you really don’t appreciate. Alas, this particular ship set sail from Quebec City long ago. The National Assembly firmly set the “nuts to the Constitution” precedent in 2022 when it unilaterally — and unanimously — passed an amendment to the 1867 Constitution Act excusing MNAs from swearing allegiance to the Canadian monarch. Bill 4 simply read as follows: “Section 128 does not apply to Quebec.” In my view (and the view of every constitutional expert I know of who isn’t a Quebecer), the National Assembly had roughly as much authority to do that as the Alberta legislature has to ignore federal legislation it doesn’t like — which is to say none. The best evidence of this, I have argued in the past, was that Section 128 had not in fact been amended … because a province can’t amend the Constitution on its own. But now, I’m amazed to see, the federal Ministry of Justice has actually updated the online version of the 1867 Constitution Act to reflect the change . Tra-la-la, nothing matters. The monarchy is dumb anyway, right?... For years, it seemed like Ottawa just hoped the other provinces wouldn’t notice as it gave Quebec pretty much everything it wanted, with much (though certainly not universal) agreement from wise-owl Laurentian pundits. But the other provinces did notice. And Ottawa has no answer except that some members of the federation are more equal than others."

Sunday, March 16, 2025

Links - 16th March 2025 (2 - Feminism)

Sydney Sweeney slams 'fake' female empowerment in Hollywood: 'None of it is happening' - "Euphoria star Sydney Sweeney has candidly slammed female empowerment in Hollywood as "fake," claiming it doesn't exist. The music and film industry tends to support such movements publicly across social media and in some productions themselves. However, the 27-year-old actress implied it was all a facade. Sweeney called the "women empowering other women" a "front," calling it "very disheartening to see women tear other women down". In an interview with Vanity Fair, she added: "Especially when women who are successful in other avenues of their industry see younger talent working really hard – hoping to achieve whatever dreams that they may have – and then trying to bash and discredit any work that they’ve done." "This entire industry, all people say is 'Women empowering other women.' None of it’s happening. All of it is fake and a front for all the other s*** that they say behind everyone’s back," Sweeney told the publication."

Meme - Southpauz @SouthpauzArt: "I hope the male loneliness epidemic eats you maga scum alive. I hope you feel a hole in your soul and feel unloved until your dying day. I hope you rot in your deathbed wondering why women looked at you like you had rabies your whole life as your eyes close for the last time."
Shalini Kumar @Shalinikumari5: "i genuinely cant believe men want us to care about them its fucking pitiful"
"As if I needed another reason to hate men"
Kaju freak @ @angel_kaju: "the male loneliness epidemic is 100% deserved"
Weird. We keep being told that feminism is not about hating men

Andy🌪🌹 on X - "making “kill all men” jokes online for years objectively alienated young men and pushed them to the right"
alfonsu.bsky.social 🗡️ on X - "Men after experiencing 0.00001% of the mistreatment that women have systematically suffered since the dawn of time"
Wilfred Reilly on X - "I'm not whining about this, but the idea that there is more crime vs women than men, or more online abuse directed at normal women than guys, is off by almost an order of magnitude.   Men are 5x more likely to be murdered than women, and a huge chunk of the murderers of women are other women. Something like 86% of online negative language targets men or whites. Very core left wing arguments - "It is harder to get hired as a Hispanic liberal female" - are often almost the opposite of reality.   Just saying."
As we all know, women are the primary victims of war

Meme - "Feminism in movies *Wonder Woman*
Feminism in reality *Female Secret Service agent cowering behind Trump during assassination attempt while male agents cover him with their bodies*"

Colin Wright on X - "Get ready for insanity.   This new peer-reviewed paper in the a @SpringerNature  journal, uses "feminist blue posthumanities to reimagine...how brine shrimp are perceived in science, culture, and art."  The paper "introduced the concept of hydrosexuality" to  enrich "feminist blue posthumanities and feminist biology through art-based practices and queer advocacy." Its use of the "hydrosexual perspective challenges settler science by exploring the connections between the reproductive system of brine shrimp and the economy, ecology and culture."   Its analysis "draws inspiration from low trophic theory and Queer Death Studies" to "gradually alter white humans' perceptions and understandings of brine shrimp."  I gotta say, this might dethrone the classic Feminist Glaciology paper for Most Insane Paper Ever. I am convinced that @ConceptualJames , @peterboghossian , and @HelenPluckrose  are behind this!"
Loving the Brine Shrimp: Exploring Queer Feminist Blue Posthumanities to Reimagine the ‘America’s Dead Sea’ | Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics

hoe_math on X - "All of the great evils of our time (woke, feminism, communism, mass migration, gender fuckery) are based on selectively removing the freedom to exclude.
"It is OK for some groups to exclude, but not for others."
Does that sound familiar? Let me refresh your memory:
"My money is my money. His money is our money."
"What's mine is mine; what's yours is ours."
That is what Mattie Watkins unwittingly says to men over and over in this long, complex disaster of a thread of quotes within quotes.  Mattie asks what exclusive spaces men lost. When she is informed, she finds cheap excuses to justify denying that exclusion was ever the rightful choice of the men who created these things.  They were just playing keep-away the whole time! With their spaces! That they made!  She then compares them with exclusive spaces that women lost, like sports teams and locker rooms. She asserts women's right to exclude, but denies it to men.  This is nothing but a classic case of "can dish it out; can't take it."
I am in favor of the freedom to exclude.  If you are not free to exclude whoever you wish from your presence - as an individual or as a group or a business or a religion, whatever, really - then you are not free and you are being wronged.  I rent an apartment. My name is on the lease. I am free to exclude others from living in it. Same with my car. Only I say who drives it.  You have a body. You are free to exclude others from touching it.  If you start a sport league, you should be free to say who cannot be in it. If someone else is telling you who to include, you are being wronged. If the women don't want to share a locker room with males and are forced to, they are being wronged.  Americans used to have a country. We are no longer free to exclude those we do not want to be here. We are being wronged. This country was never intended to be for just whoever.
The remaining implications of the selective removal of the freedom to exclude should be obvious.
Men used to exclude women from many parts of life. Business. Government. Military. Golf. Social clubs.  Feminism has decided that this freedom to exclude is unfair. Men must be forced to allow women to participate in these things.  Now, I'll grant that this makes a good deal of sense in government. Women cannot just go make their own government. The government affects them, and they should be giving input. This doesn't necessarily mean that Congress should be half women, but that's a point for a different day.  But if a man starts a business and doesn't want to hire women... why is that choice yours to take away? Why is it so with clubs, sports, religions?
The military has always been just men. If women want to participate, why don't they make their own military? Like the WNBA but for the Marines?  Why, again, must men yield their right to exclude, when you do not want to do the same?  Where else can you recognize this double standard?   Every stand-up comedian in the 1990s had the same joke about "why is there a Black Entertainment Television channel, but no white one?"  Why indeed?  There are black countries, asian countries, muslim countries... but no country can be called 'white' or 'christian!' That would be bigoted! There are black-only colleges, women's schools, scholarships for more or less every imaginable group except for straight, white, or male.
Mattie, I'm gonna go ahead and guess that you never had a problem with any of that... until it began to affect woman-only spaces. Is that about right?  So when what's ours became yours, that was a good thing, but when what's yours became theirs...  Do you not see that your own monster has turned on you?  "What's mine is mine; what's yours is ours."  Sounds good from one direction only, right?  Welcome to the party, Mattie!"

Natalie Jean Beisner on X - "Ladies, I’m not your sister. We’re not friends unless we’re friends. I don’t automatically have your back. I don’t want to play pretend hand maid’s tale with you or complain about made-up oppression. I’m not going to unquestioningly rise up with you or inherently share your cause. I don’t feel some kind of special bond with you or feel safer with you than I do men just because our genitals look similar. Frankly, when/if the shit ever hits the fan, I’d rather be with the men. Please fuck off with your weird dramatic psycho sisterhood bullshit."

Meme - "To the men who are labeled...
Douchebags: Keep being assertive.
Fuckboys: Keep on exploring your sexuality.
Manchildren: Keep your inner child alive.
Entitled: Keep knowing your worth, King.
Autistic: Keep telling yourself you're literally Ryan Gosling.
Please don't shrink yourself to make people happy. Be yourself, you're wonderful that way.
Ellis Gilbert I His Sigma Grindset"

New research on female video game characters uncovers a surprising twist - "female participants—despite generally disliking highly sexualized characters—were more likely to choose these characters when given the option to play as one... when a character combined high sexualization with high strength, participants perceived her as even more sexualized than characters with high sexualization alone. This outcome indicates that strength cues do not counteract the effects of sexualization; rather, they may amplify it. This pattern aligns with the “fighting fuck-toy” theory, which suggests that strength paired with sex appeal can reinforce objectifying impressions, heightening perceptions of the character as a sexualized object.  The researchers also found that high sexualization was a key factor in perceptions of femininity and character likability. Characters with high sexualization were viewed as more traditionally feminine, yet they were also less liked, particularly by female participants. Strength cues, by contrast, did not independently influence likability, suggesting that the perception of likability may be more influenced by sexualization cues than by physical strength. Interesting gender-based differences emerged in character preferences. Female participants generally disliked highly sexualized characters but were more likely to choose characters with high femininity traits (typically associated with higher sexualization cues) when given a choice. Male participants, on the other hand, gravitated toward characters that were strong yet less sexualized, indicating different gender-based preferences in the interpretation of character traits... "I was surprised to see that in our first study women still selected the most sexualized character when asked which character they would choose to play. It’s important to remember that this character was also rated as the most feminine, so it’s possible that women were just selecting the character they most identified with.”  “However, this finding highlight why this research is so important,” Lynch continued. “If women are conflating sexual appeal with femininity, then can they disassociate those two concepts? And, if entertainment media like video games continue to portray female characters by emphasizing sex appeal, how does that shape expectations of women and women’s value in society?”... Female participants viewed high-strength characters as more competent compared to low-strength characters, while this difference was not significant among male participants... The study, “Examining How Sex Appeal Cues and Strength Cues Influence Impressions of Female Video Game Characters,” was authored by Teresa Lynch, Annie Dooley, and Matthew R. Erxleben."
Once again, what women say they want, what women think they want, and what women really want aren't always the same.
Clearly it's time to blame patriarchy, aka men, because women only have agency when it pushes the left wing agenda, and to rag on men for sexualising video game characters, even though they choose them.
Obviously games have a responsibility to socialise players into having the Correct Opinions and Preferences. Giving people what they want is bad when it obstructs the left wing agenda

Meme - "AITAH For not getting on an elevator with only a woman on it?"
"I have been living in my apartment complex for a few years now and I usually take the elevator when I leave for work during the weekday, most of the time it's just me in it. About two weeks ago, I was about to go into the elevator when I saw a woman, about my age, in it and nobody else. My mom always told me what to do so I don't make women uncomfortable; don't walk behind them on the sidewalk and cross the street, don't approach if they seem to be alone, be aware of their body language, etc. One of these was to never enter an elevator if there is only a woman on it. Seeing as it was just her, I turned to take the stairs. It's only like an extra minute or two of my time, and I usually get to work about ten minutes early anyway. For the rest of the week, when I went to work, it was just her in the elevator, so I just took the stairs. I didn't run into her over the weekend. On Monday the same thing happens, only she is in the elevator and I take the stairs. After that, I just kept to the stairs and stopped trying the elevator. Saturday comes around, and I was leaving for my friends place. When I left the building, the woman and I guess her friend were going in. We didn't exchange words and just walked past each other. I didn't get back until today when I ran into her friend again, and she stopped me. She tells me that I was a dick for making her friend feel bad and that I should apologize. I ask what I did wrong, she says that I was making her feel self- conscious and it was messing with her self-esteem. I told her that I didn't know what she was talking about, and she just started calling me insecure to grow up before walking away. Did I miss something that I'm not aware of?"
Men can never win

Fewer women could be sent to prison as Justice Secretary announces reforms - "The Justice Secretary has announced moves to send fewer women to prison, as she warned jail time “forces” many of them into a “life of crime”.  Shabana Mahmood said a new women’s justice board will be tasked with reducing the number of women going into prison, with the “ultimate ambition” of having fewer women’s prisons.  She added a new strategy will examine early intervention to resolve cases before they go to court, “viable” community alternatives to prison and ways to address concerns over self-harm."... “Self-harm in women’s prisons is eight times higher than the male estates.  “Perhaps worst of all, women’s prisons are hurting mothers and they are breaking homes.” Ms Mahmood said more than 50% of women in jail are mothers, adding: “The damage passes down generations, with three-quarters of children leaving a family home when their mother is sent to jail.”... “For women, prison isn’t working. Rather than encouraging rehabilitation, prison forces women into a life of crime.”"
Feminism is about gender equality, which is why we cannot send women to prison
Weird. I thought the left were very keen on "equity". Turns out "equity" is only important when it benefits "minorities"
Feminists demand that men take an equal role in family life, yet they want to exempt women from prison because of the impact on family life. Ironic
Apparently prison doesn't "force" men into a life of crime

When a man kills a woman the news calls it "a feminicide epidemic" and all the experts on tv call say it's misoginy but when a mother kills her two sons... there is no mention of misandry. : r/MensRights - "Perhaps they should teach women to not murder children /s"

Australia gives its men a slap in the face for International Men's Day. Thanks mate. : r/MensRights - "Its International Men's Day in Australia (Nov 19 2024), and as usual, there is a resounding indifference in the government, media, schools and universities, to the issues experienced by men and boys, and the aspirational theme of "Positive Male Role Models".  An internet search for Australia showed very few mentions of IMD. I found two.  One, in South Australia advertised an International Men's Day dinner organised by the Honourabl Sarah Game MLC (member of the South Australian Legislative Council), to celebrate men and boys and the theme of positive male role models. The dinner was sold out early.  https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/international-mens-day-tickets-918350640487  The other, from a privately run Melbourne "what's on" web page, which reported no events for IMD, and got the IMD theme wrong.  Melbourne thinks the IMD theme is "asking men to be better.. better towards women!", instructing men to "think about yourself, and then think about your mates. Ask yourself, can I do better?"  https://www.onlymelbourne.com.au/international-mens-day  Hoping IMD and positive male role models is celebtrated with more enthusiasm and less gender hatred in your local areas. Australia signing off."

As the workforce behind the Movember brand in Australia passes 51% women, and leading roles are controlled by women, more Movember donations are being redirected to women's issues : r/MensRights

Melissa Chen on X - "A major component of the angst that characterizes much of the modern dynamics between men and women today comes down to the fact that women have demanded equal rights but also wish for preferred treatment.  So what do we have now? We have something called:   “Schrödinger’s Feminist”  Where a woman is simultaneously a victim and empowered  Until something happens and she collapses into one of either states, whichever is politically expedient for her current circumstance.  This is simply untenable, and there will be a conservative backlash."
Ben Bokser בנצי בוקסר on X - "Part of the problem is that modern people think too much in terms of rights and not enough in terms of duties, virtues, & characteristics to cultivate. Gender dynamics could benefit from us appreciating, encouraging, & cultivating these in ourselves & others."
Melissa Chen on X - "This is what the religions and trad cultures got right!!!! Feminism has ensured that any talk about duties and virtues are oppressive"
Fauxmaha on X - "In a discussion on military stuff, I opined that I didn't want women in combat roles. My 20ish daughter called me "sexist".  I told her she was sexist too, and I could prove it.  "Suppose you and your boyfriend are driving somewhere, and you come across a man who looks like me. His car stopped on the side of the road. He is changing a flat tire. Do you tell your boyfriend to stop to help?"  That earned me a somewhat puzzled look, as if she was asking "Why stop?"  "Now, instead of a man who looks like me, suppose it is a woman who looks like your mother. Do you tell your boyfriend to stop?"  She got it immediately."
Melissa Chen on X - "There you go. When feminists assail the concept of norms surrounding chivalry in the name of equality, then you get a world in which no one stops to help a woman stuck on the road shoulder"
David Opsahl on X - "After the incident where a man stopped to help a woman and then she falsely accused him of r*ping her and had his assistance not been wholly recorded on video he would have gone to jail, I absolutely will NOT stop to help a woman."

Teaching sexism during NS, allowing more men to receive alimony among suggestions by WP MPs on how to achieve gender equality
I like how NS is supposed to be a way to push the left wing agenda. Good luck tackling female genital cutting with Shafi'i Islam

A traffic researcher in Germany has called for men to be allowed to obtain a driver’s license only after the age of 26. : r/MensRights - "Wow, the discrimination against men is getting crazier every day. In Germany, a traffic researcher has called to raise the minimum age for obtaining a driver’s license to 26, but only for men. The researcher made headlines with this, and I have seen women on social media actually advocating for it.  The researcher justified this demand by pointing out that young men, on average, cause more major accidents than women and are more likely to exceed the speed limit.  Just imagine if the roles were reversed how loud the feminists would scream. I’ll link one of the articles about it, but beware it’s in German."
"Men also clock more kilometers than women. Some 46 percent of German male drivers drive between 12,000 to 30,000 kilometers (7,460 to 18,640 miles) a year while 60 percent of women drive less than 12,000 kilometers a year.  From this article  So half of the male drivers drive between 12-30k kilometers while not even 40% of women drive MORE than 12k kilometers  I bet that if you compare the accidents per kilometer driven men and women come about the same"

Does Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth hold up? What I think of it now that she’s an anti-masker.
It's telling that Wolf challenging covid hysteria is what prompted the author to relook her seminal work

Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "Mothers are more likely to abuse their children than fathers, more likely to kill them, and boys are more likely to be killed than girls by a parent, according to a 2006 report — the opposite of the media's narrative."
Breaking the Science: 71% of Children Killed by One Parent are Killed by Their Mothers; 60% of Victims are Boys - "The DHHS data shows that of children abused by one parent between 2001 and 2006, 70.6% were abused by their mothers, whereas only 29.4% were abused by their fathers.  And of children who died at the hands of one parent between 2001 and 2006, 70.8% were killed by their mothers, whereas only 29.2% were killed by their fathers.  Furthermore, contrary to media portrayals that leave the viewer with the impression that only girls are ever harmed, boys constituted fully 60% of child fatalities. (Table 4-3, p. 71, Child Maltreatment 2006, http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm06/cm06.pdf, reports that 675 boys died in 2006 as compared to 454 girls).  The pervasive media bias cannot help but influence judges. Thus the newspapers, TV shows, and movies that promote this bias must bear a significant part of the responsibility for child abuse and deaths of children at the hands of violent mothers."
Evil men need to stop harming children. This is literally femicide

Male survivors 'ignored' as their abuse is classified as 'violence against women' - "Male survivors of abuse say they feel "ignored" by the Westminster government because crimes against them are being classified as "violence against women and girls".  For the last 15 years, successive governments have grouped male victims of domestic abuse, rape, stalking and so-called honour-based violence into the same category as female victims, and charities are calling for change.  "Male victims can often feel ignored, negated because we're not even listed and I just think there's something about how important it is to be recognised, to be seen," explained Duncan Craig OBE, founder of We Are Survivors... Recent research by the University of Central Lancashire found that 88% of male survivors believed the government does not care about them, 89% said the policy made it harder for them to get help and 90% were made to feel invisible."
Left wing gaslighting is amazing

Girls Are Losing Ground to Boys Now at School, Test Scores Show - WSJ - "Girls have lost ground in reading, math and science at a troubling rate, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of student test scores across the country. Since 2019, girls’ test scores have dropped sharply, often to the lowest point in decades. Boys’ scores have also fallen during that time, but the decline among girls has been more severe. Boys now consistently outperform girls in math, after being roughly even or slightly ahead in the years before 2020. Girls still tend to perform better in reading, but their scores have dropped closer to boys. The findings suggest that pandemic learning loss hit girls particularly hard in ways that haven’t been addressed by schools."
It's only cause for concern when women are the ones affected
The irony is that this will be blamed on "misogyny" and "sexism", when the covid debacle was the epitome of the female worldview

Gender, Perceived Competence, and Power Displays: Examining Verbal Interruptions in a Group Context - "Both men and women interrupt more when the group is male-dominated"
This doesn't stop feminists blaming men, as usual

Hunter Ash on X - "A progressive is someone who thinks a racist is worse than a rapist."
i/o on X - "When I was in college, long before wokeness, I had a female friend (a leftist and staunch feminist from a very privileged background) who believed that being date raped was worse than being savagely murdered. When I pointed out the flaws in her argument, she ended our friendship.  A year later I heard that she had married a classmate of ours, a really odious rightwing guy with a history of violence and misogyny and an adoration of Pinochet and Franco, who had what I would describe as the most extreme porn addiction I'd ever come across.  I've often wondered whether they're still married."

Jason Ganon on X - "And yet you wonder why he rose to fame? The older generation refuses to see what feminism has done to our culture. This allows types like Andrew Tate to rise to fame and grab the ear of young men. Until you people accept what feminism has done people like Andrew Tate will only take more power."

South Korean man who attacked ‘feminist’ shop worker over short hair jailed for 3 years | South China Morning Post - "A man who assaulted a convenience store worker in South Korea after suspecting she was a feminist due to her short hair has been sentenced to three years in jail, amid anger from activists who denounced the verdict for failing to recognise the case as a hate crime... the intoxicated defendant reportedly told the woman employee: “Since you have short hair, you must be a feminist. I’m a male chauvinist, and I think feminists deserve to be assaulted.” He later punched and kicked her, resulting in multiple injuries, including hearing loss. The accused also used a chair to hit the shopper who attempted to intervene, causing grievous injuries to his shoulder and nose, the court heard. The prosecution had sought a five-year jail term, but the court said psychological evaluation of the man showed he was in an unstable mental state at the time of the incident... “It is regrettable that the court did not see the incident as a hate crime. … If an act of targeting someone out of hate, just because they belong to a specific group, is not considered a hate crime, then what is?” a coalition of women’s rights groups said in a statement on Tuesday following the ruling... This is the latest in a string of misogynistic cases involving women with short, cropped hair in South Korea. In 2021, Olympic gold medallist archer An San, who has short hair, was subjected to an intense cyberbullying campaign for “looking like a feminist”."
Feminists are a protected group, apparently

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Latest posts (which you might not see on this page)

powered by Blogger | WordPress by Newwpthemes