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Friday, July 14, 2023

Time to give up on identity politics: It's dragging the progressive agenda down

From 2017:

Time to give up on identity politics: It's dragging the progressive agenda down

"Long before the 2016 election, 15 years ago in fact, I predicted the kind of white identitarian politics that eventually came to fruition in the last election. It had seemed to me inevitable, from the beginning, that white nationalism would arise as a necessary outgrowth if liberals kept up with their identity politics obsession, and that is precisely where we find ourselves.

Identity politics always felt like snake oil to me...

Although identity politics had been in the air for a couple of decades already, it was when I was in college, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, that it really began to take off. The Cold War had just ended and capitalism, recharged as neoliberalism, needed a new ideological apparatus to keep things moving toward further concentration of power. What was at hand were the ashes of the 1960s liberation movements, all of which were at a loss as to where to go next. From this leftover hodgepodge, over time a sharply defined ideology emerged, which we can see today in the contemporary form of identity politics — complete with “intersectionality” and other terms of art.  

My generation was the last to have escaped the full brunt of this pernicious ideology. We grew up believing that human difference was not biological but primarily intellectual. We didn’t treat racial, sexual or other differences as inevitable, defined in stone, but fluid realities to be worked around. In fact, it was an insult, if you came of age in that time, to have to commit to a particular identity. Wasn’t that the antithesis of the American idea? How could reinvention take place if you took your spot along a particular identity and stuck with it all your life? Life would be so boring, so predictable, so deadly...

those who are in their 20s and 30s today have not known any other ideological order. Identity politics — the brand of communalism it flows from, i.e., multiculturalism, and the brand of expression it leads to, i.e., political correctness — is existentially unassailable for the young. They know no other means of self-understanding, artistic expression or personal solidarity. They can only be organized around this principle. They see the world strictly through this framework, not through some Enlightenment perspective of universal human rights irrespective of one’s biological identity. The trendy concept of “white privilege,” unmoored from class conditions, exemplifies this simplistic tendency...

It’s not surprising that both Sachs and Summers went on to rebrand themselves as progressives of a sort, with help from the compliant media, because if neoliberals can say the correct things about race and gender, then their economic positions do not matter...

identity politics, wherever it has manifested, has been absolutely devastating to the cause of liberty.

1. It privileges culture, instead of politics...

Obama was immune to liberal criticism, because he fit the identity politics matrix so perfectly. He may have ruthlessly deported millions of people, kept in place and strengthened the entire extra-constitutional surveillance apparatus, and escalated illegal drone attacks and assassinations, but the color of his skin provided immunity from real criticism.

2. Not only politics, but economics is taken out of the equation...

Liberals seem to be trying to cure racism at the metaphysical level — in people’s hearts and souls — instead of limiting politics to where it should be limited, i.e., the arena of democratic policymaking...

It is because identity politics has garnered so much attention that political reform, which needs to be ongoing and consistent, has stalled for nearly 30 years...

I find the “we can do both” argument a cop-out. I have never known anyone whom I consider typical of the identity politics strain of activism — i.e., engaging in call-out culture for various racial, sexual and cultural offenses — also be engaged with such fights as the preservation of privacy and anonymity, the end to the surveillance state and the dominance of the intelligence agencies, or economic redistribution on a meaningful scale, not just limited to the populist idea of the living wage.

The identitarians, if pressed to the wall on this, will say that these emphases are not exclusive, but in reality they never do it, because there is no mental space left to pursue classical economic issues... Identity politics, it should be noted, is not an outsider’s movement; it is the ultimate insider’s game...

3. Identity politics always breeds its equal and opposite reaction.

4. Identity politics is not winnable... 

This is because liberals are rhetorically dedicated to pursuing a goal which can never be realized in practice, i.e., the complete self-realization of each identity. This should be evident across many different dimensions. The more a particular group becomes validated in the broader culture’s eyes, the less it feels satisfied with the recognition, and the more it feels it needs more of that rush of acknowledgment and credit based on identity alone. There is no end to it...

5. It leads to spectacle, rather than legislative accomplishment...

Identity politics was conceived and executed from the beginning as a movement of depoliticization. Feminism has become severed from class considerations, so that for the most part it has become a reflection of what liberal identitarians themselves like to call “white privilege.” Feminism, like the other identity politics of the moment, is cut off from solidarity with the rest of the world, or if it deals with the rest of the world can only do so on terms that must not invalidate the American version of identity politics...

identity politics — in all the forms it has shown up, from various localized nationalisms to more ambitious fascism — desires its adherents to present themselves in the most regressive, atavistic, primitive form possible. The kind of political communication identity politics thrives on is based on maximizing emotionalism and minimizing rationality. Therefore, the idea of law that arises when identity politics engenders a reaction is one that severs the natural bonds of community across differences (which is the most ironic yet predictable result of identity politics) and makes of the law an inhuman abstraction.

This depoliticization has gone on so long now, about 30 years, that breaking out of it is inconceivable, since the discourse to do so is no longer accessible. For anyone trained to think outside the confines of identity politics, those who operate within its principles — which manifests, for example, in call-out culture (or at least it did before Trump) — seem incomprehensible, and vice versa. We are different generations divided by unfathomable gaps, and there is no way to bridge them. The situation is like the indoctrination in Soviet Russia in the 1930s, so that only an economic catastrophe that lays waste to everything, resulting from imperial misadventures, can possibly break the logjam. Short of that, we are committed to the dire nihilism of identity politics for the duration of the imperial game."

 

Links - 14th July 2023 (1 - California)

Thread by @michelletandler on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Here is what confuses me about San Francisco.  We have the most liberal, left-wing government & population in the country.  We have a $13B budget.  And we have 8,000 people sleeping in the rain this week.  Can someone please explain this to me?
What do progressives stand for, exactly?  I thought it was about making things more fair.  About standing up for the little guy.  About human rights, equality (equity?), compassion.  San Francisco (to me) looks like the least compassionate city on the planet.
The slums of Mumbai look cleaner than the streets of downtown SF... what I see in SF - if this what Progressive stands for - I want the opposite. The words used here: "harm reduction", "housing first", "criminal justice", "social justice", "equity" -- they don't align with what I'm seeing at all. Our strategy might as well be called "harm increased", "housing last", "victim injustice", "social injustice", "unfairness"...
 I'm starting to develop a seriously dark view of the Progressive politicians in charge of our town.  They have absolute power - act like a regime, and talk often of how "broken" the system is.  Are the homeless their foot soldiers? Mascots? Mercenaries? You have to wonder, with the funds we have as a city, state & nation - is this situation... on purpose?  We saw what SF was capable of when pandemic hit. We had testing sites up in days. Hotels converted into shelter. Funds flowing.  Yet here we are...
Is this nefarious? Progressives tend to blame Republicans for almost everything.  Yet here we are - not a Republican in sight - and I think we may be the most deranged city on the planet.  Nowhere is there such inequality. I have never seen destitution at this scale...
We are in crisis.  And - yes, we voted for this. We know. We probably have more "Black Lives Matter" signs up than any city in the nation.  40% of our homeless people are Black.  Do their lives matter...?  Or is this just about virtue signaling and moral grandstanding?...
I'd also like to know why the loudest voices right now against changing our approach are all white progressive women.  We have Kate Chatfield from the DA's office, Jennifer Friedenbach from COH, Hilary Ronen of D8.  All yelling about defunding the police.  What is this about? Meanwhile our Mayor, who grew up in the projects of SF - and our Chief of Police (@SFPDChief) - two of the most thoughtful, kind & pragmatic people in SF - are asking for funds & help.  And they are getting shouted down as racists?  This is nuts!...
San Franciscans believe they are righteous because they pledge allegiance to the righteous tribe - Democrats.  They believe they are moral because they believe in higher taxes.  They believe they are virtuous because they believe in big Government. I am just so confused.  If Progressives believe in big government then why aren't they doing the bare minimum - the minimum that even F.A. Hayek spoke of in "The Road to Serfdom" in 1944?  He is a famous Libertarian, and believed in providing food, shelter & clothing
So what is going on here? Is this all due to tribalism?  Are San Franciscans so desperate to fit in, that they blindly follow the liberal/left-wing causes - even when they make no sense?  The book Hate, Inc. suggests as such...
I get messages almost daily from ppl who say they are afraid to speak up for fear of professional ramifications.  Some say they are even afraid to like my tweets.  I'm afraid to ask questions about the vaccine on Twitter...  What kind of "freedom" do we stand for out here?
 In college I studied totalitarian governments and how they came to power.  The similarities I see to many elements of society today are harrowing.  The cancel culture, the "wrongthink", the adulation of "experts", the cultishness towards "science", the blind support by party. We're more worked up over gerrymandering than we are about people dying in our streets.  My friends in SF read article after article about Trump - and don't even know who their supervisor is.  Since when did local politics become so "pedestrian" so as to not warrant attention?
 I've been critiqued for showcasing SF's problems - told that I'm "fueling" the "Fox News Narrative."  Accused of using "Trump-like" messaging to rile people up.  Am I traitorous for drawing attention to our issues?  Is my critique of Progressives unwarranted? I've been tweeting about SF for about two years now.  For a long time people kept asking me what my "goal" was. That question died down a while ago. Perhaps it's become clear?  In case it isn't - my goal is to inspire civic engagement & interest in local politics. My goal is to draw attention to San Francisco's government, issues & policies - because I think we can do better.  This is my hometown. I think it's a very special place.  San Francisco used to mean something. It stood for something. I was proud to be from here. But today I feel ashamed...
What does it look like to study the other side? To challenge your beliefs? Why have I never learned about the case for gun rights? Or about the values of Islam?  What are the arguments against abortion? Why do so many people not want to take the vaccine?  Why am I not allowed to ask these questions without being accused of "doing harm"?"

Meme - "Look at this mural in the occupied West Sank! Actually this is next to the freeway on ramp in San Francisco"

California Task Force for Reparations Considers $640 Billion in Payments - Bloomberg - "California is moving closer to determining what eligible Black residents are owed for generations of discriminatory practices, a key step toward potentially becoming the largest US jurisdiction to pay out billions of dollars in reparations. The California Reparations Task Force will meet over the next two days in Sacramento to assess how reparations should be distributed, which could include direct payments and investments in education, health care and homeownership for Black communities... California’s task force has yet to say who would pay these sums. After years of budget surpluses, the state’s financial fortunes are turning, with a projected $22.5 billion budget deficit. The technology sector is laying off workers, stock market declines are hurting the incomes of top earners who pay a large share of taxes, and the state already has some of the highest taxes in the nation... Some California cities, including Los Angeles, have started their own reparations task forces outside of the state effort. In San Francisco, one notable proposal involves a $5 million lump-sum payment to each eligible Black resident."
The gravy train will never stop. Good luck to taxpayers, who will continue to be excoriated as racists who aren't doing enough

Bruce’s Beach Was a Reparations Model. Then the Family Sold It. - The New York Times - "On a bright day last summer, Anthony Bruce stood on a patch of grassy land perched on the Pacific Ocean. As deep blue waves gently dissolved onto the shoreline behind him, the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder handed Mr. Bruce a document transferring this piece of oceanfront property to his family — 95 years after they lost it.  Anthony Bruce raised the deed above his head in celebration. “It was shocking,” he said.  The moment was the culmination of a nearly hundred-year battle for restitution. Anthony’s great-great-grandparents, Charles and Willa Bruce, were Black entrepreneurs who purchased the land and built a thriving business there, until the government seized it... Then, in January, the heirs to Bruce’s Beach announced that they were selling the land back to Los Angeles County for $20 million.  The Bruces’ decision to sell has stirred fresh debate about the goals and methods of reparations, just as those efforts have been gaining traction at universities and local governments.  Activists who had helped the Bruces secure the land, and other observers, were disappointed that the family decided not to hold onto it and try to reclaim the vision of their ancestors... The Bruce family themselves have grappled with whether the return of the land was truly reparations... In 1924, the city of Manhattan Beach decided to use eminent domain powers to condemn and seize the Bruce property — and those of other Black families. Officials claimed that the city needed the land for a park, but the Black landowners said the seizure was motivated by racial animus. Willa and Charles surrendered their property in 1927 and spent years fighting the condemnation in court before settling for a $14,500 sale price, or the equivalent of around $254,000 in today’s dollars... Though the property was once again legally theirs, they could not develop it under existing zoning restrictions, and it might take years of litigation to overcome that obstacle. Family members initially agreed to lease the land to Los Angeles County for $413,000 a year while they decided what to do.  “We wanted to keep the property,” said Derrick Bruce, who is 65. But he added, “We thought it would be a long and arduous journey.” He said he could not imagine learning to become a developer and a contractor at this stage of his life.  “We had to be able to come to a decision that was acceptable to everyone in the family,” he said. “And so it just didn’t seem practical that we could keep the land and not have to drastically change all of our lives.”"
In another 95 years they can sue to get possession of the property again, claiming that they were forced to sell, and then sell it back again

Woman accidentally runs over and kills man trying to steal her catalytic converter - "This story comes just a week after one of the most noticeable vehicles in the US was targeted by catalytic converter thieves.  Yes, the iconic Oscar Mayer Wienermobile was hit by thieves on 9 February while it was sitting stationary in the car park of Sonesta Suites on Paradise Road in Las Vegas."

Airbnb 'squatter' checks out of Palm Springs condo - "After an arduous two months, Cory Tschogl finally has her condo back. Maksym Pashanin, who attracted nation media attention about a month ago when he quite publicly refused to leave Tschogl's apartment in north Palm Springs that he rented via the Airbnb vacation rental listing site, has left the apartment in the Palm Springs Villas gated community.  Tschogl confirmed Wednesday afternoon, that Pashanin has left her condo, without incident. The apartment has no apparent damages, she said after a walk-through... The case called attention to California's generous renter protections, which can be abused.  Because Pashanin had been in the home for 30 days, the "squatter" — as he was referred to in numerous media reports and online chatter — was protected under California tenant law, which requires a landlord to pay a relocation fee to tenants they wish to evict."

Pee-repellent paint aims to halt public urination - The Globe and Mail - "Public urination has gotten so bad in San Francisco that the city has painted nine walls with a repellent paint that makes pee spray back on the offender.  It's the latest effort to address a chronic problem in a city where the public works director calls himself Mr. Clean: Walls are coated with a clear, liquid repellent material that goes on much like paint. Hit with urine, it splashes back on a person's shoes and pants... Signs hanging above some walls read: "Hold it! This wall is not a public restroom. Please respect San Francisco and seek relief in an appropriate place."

'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco - "Frustrated by high failure rates in eighth-grade algebra, San Francisco Unified decided in 2015 to delay algebra till ninth grade and place low, average and high achievers in the same classes. The goal was to improve achievement for black and Hispanic students, preparing more for advanced math. That didn't happen, concludes a study by a team of Stanford professors. "Large ethnoracial gaps in advanced math course-taking . . . did not change."...  A proposed new California math framework encourages other districts to copy San Francisco's math reforms, for which the district claimed success... Test data from 2015 to 2019 shows that racial "achievement gaps have widened," wrote Tom Loveless last year. The district "is headed in the wrong direction on equity." Black and Hispanic 11th-graders in San Francisco earned "appalling" scores on the state math test, "about the same as or lower than the typical fifth-grader" in the state.    The district had bragged that algebra failure rates had dropped. Families for San Francisco, a parent group, analyzed the data: Failure rates dropped after the district dropped the end-of-course exam.   "Algebra for none" made it harder for achievers to succeed without helping low achievers... Families face a "nightmare of workarounds" to get their high-achieving children on track for advanced math... "Families with resources turn to fee-required online algebra 1 courses in eighth grade, outside the public school system, or enroll their kids in private schools," they write. Those who can't afford it must take a compression class that combines advanced algebra and pre-calculus or take a year of double math to get on track for AP Calculus.  The district "will take credit for my granddaughter’s mathematical success as proof their policies work," one of the authors writes. "In reality, this took two of her summers and nearly $2,000."  A group of parents have filed a lawsuit against San Francisco Unified charging the math policy violates state law by denying access to advanced math to disadvantaged students"
Clearly the solution is to ban private tutors

Faced with soaring Ds and Fs, schools are ditching the old way of grading - "“It was literally inequitable,” he said. “As a teacher you get frustrated because what you signed up for was for students to learn. And it just ended up being a conversation about points all the time.”... The changes Moreno embraced are part of a growing trend in which educators are moving away from traditional point-driven grading systems, aiming to close large academic gaps among racial, ethnic and economic groups. The trend was accelerated by the pandemic and school closures that caused troubling increases in Ds and Fs across the country and by calls to examine the role of institutionalized racism in schools in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd by a police officer.  Los Angeles and San Diego Unified — the state’s two largest school districts, with some 660,000 students combined — have recently directed teachers to base academic grades on whether students have learned what was expected of them during a course — and not penalize them for behavior, work habits and missed deadlines... Traditional grading has often been used to "justify and to provide unequal educational opportunities based on a student’s race or class," said a letter sent by Yoshimoto-Towery and Pedro A. Garcia, senior executive director of the division of instruction, to principals last month.  "By continuing to use century-old grading practices, we inadvertently perpetuate achievement and opportunity gaps, rewarding our most privileged students and punishing those who are not," their letter said, quoting educational grading consultant Joe Feldman... West Contra Costa Unified, which is majority Latino, issued a memo encouraging secondary teachers to give students a five-day grace period to turn in work and eliminate zeroes in grade books.  Placer Union High School District, where a majority of students are white, has directed teachers to base grades on "valid evidence of a student's content knowledge and not...on evidence that is likely to be influenced by a teacher's implicit bias nor reflect a student's circumstances."... The district's guidance says academic grades should not be based on attendance, including unexcused absences, late work, engagement or behavior, which can be reflected in separate "citizenship" or "work habits" marks that do not count toward a student's GPA.  Students earning Ds and Fs should also have the opportunity to take an incomplete grade in order to have extra time to improve their grade or retake the course for a better grade or credit recovery."
The point of grading is literally to be inequitable, based on merit
In the workplace, if you miss a deadline or behave badly, just claim you're a victim of racism
Of course we'll still pretend that school closures were necessary for public health
"When you can't set the bar any lower, you remove the bar."

Whole Foods workers at shuttered San Francisco store witnessed knife attacks, a deadly fentanyl overdose, customers trying to defecate on the floor, and other chaos, report says - "Whole Foods' recently closed flagship store in San Francisco was the site of thefts, assaults, and a deadly overdose in the 13 months it was open.  The New York Times reported on Sunday that the store was the scene of hundreds of calls to emergency services and 14 arrests, according to police reports. Last September, a man died due to an overdose of fentanyl and methamphetamine... Visitors to the store also threatened security guards with knives and, in one case, sprayed employees with foam from a fire extinguisher, according to the Times. In another case, a customer tried to "defecate on the floor"... Thefts were also common, with patrons stealing alcohol, food from the hot bar, and even hundreds of hand baskets meant to be used while shopping in the store... Whole Foods closed the store last month, just over a year after it opened. While the grocer did not specifically cite crime, it did say that it closed the store "to ensure the safety of our team members."  The store was located on Market Street, one of the busiest roads in downtown San Francisco. It was meant to be part of a revitalization of the area... Bill Scott, San Francisco's police chief, told the Times that his department sent plain-clothes police officers to the Whole Foods store in an effort to limit crime before it closed.  Other retail chains in San Francisco and other large cities have closed locations, citing crime or safety."

California couple arrested after they 'left bikes in their yard to lure thieves, only to beat them' - "A California couple has been arrested for a string of assaults tied to a baiting scheme where they would allegedly beat would-be bike thieves with bats.   Corey Curnutt, 25, and 29-year-old Savannah Grillot were detained... the assault were shared onto YouTube by the couple."
When the police cannot act, people take the law into their own hands

A $15.8 million mistake: Why S.F. can’t pay its teachers on time - "Charles Sylvester has been a special-education teacher for over 20 years in San Francisco Unified School District. He’s seen plenty of ups and downs during that time, but in 2023 he encountered a career first.  The district misreported his taxes. Thousands of dollars of payments were effectively missing.  “Are you kidding me?” Sylvester said was his reaction when he saw his returns...   In 2022, the school district transitioned from a 17-year-old payroll system to a new system dubbed EMPowerSF. Almost immediately, hundreds of employees reported payroll issues.  Over a year later, those issues still persist, despite the district spending over $30 million on the new system. That’s almost $10,000 per teacher."

CNN reporter reveals her crew was robbed in San Francisco while covering city's rampant crime: 'Ridiculous' - "Lah wrote their hired security guard "tried to grab the crooks" but ended up taking a photo of the license plate of their getaway car... Lah warned travelers in the what she was told by a TSA officer, "if you fly out of Oakland, know the gas stations are being hit around the airport. Teams here in Oakland say passengers show up crying bc their bags are all stolen, all in seconds.""

San Franciscans line up at board meeting to sing and shout their support for a reparations plan - "San Francisco residents lined up at a city board meeting last night to share their full-throated support of a wide-eyed reparations plan that would award every black resident $5million, wipe their personal debt, guarantee $97,000 incomes for 250 years and $1 homes.   But no one at the emotional meeting - where residents burst into song and begged to be made 'whole' - asked  how the struggling, debt-addled city might pay for it... Many say they are owed not just for the time their ancestors were enslaved, but also for generations afterwards, because African Americans have been incarcerated at disproportionately higher rates than white Americans.   The proposals put forward in San Francisco last night are among some of the most generous to be heard to date... Some said they were shocked at critics, who said it was financially ruinous.  'Those of my constituents who lost their minds about this proposal, it's not something we're doing or we would do for other people.   'It's something we would do for our future, for everybody's collective future,' said Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, whose district includes the heavily LGBTQ Castro neighborhood... Even supporters of the plan, like Melgar, admit they have not worked out how to fund it - but insist that does not make it unreasonable... In 2020, California became the first state to form a reparations task force and is still struggling to put a price tag on what is owed... Critics of the plan say the payouts make no sense in a state and city that never enslaved black people, and taxpayers who were never slave owners should not have to pay money to people who were not enslaved."

Journalist Goes On Quest To Debunk Blue City’s Bad Reputation, Instead Writes About It ‘Spiraling’ Out Of Control - "A journalist and San Francisco resident set out to debunk the frequent stories portraying the city as dangerous and largely abandoned, but her investigation led her to write a piece revealing how the city is “spiraling” out of control.  Elizabeth Weil detailed the crime, homelessness and human misery on display in San Francisco compared to the city’s pre-pandemic prosperity in a Wednesday article in New York Magazine. Her story included an apology to her fellow San Francisco residents for contributing to the barrage of stories about the city’s collapse... San Francisco has seen an explosion in homelessness which worsened considerably during the pandemic; its homeless population ballooned from 12,249 to 19,086 between 2016 and 2020, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, citing city government data. The city has also struggled with rampant crime, open drug use and brazen organized shoplifting which has forced many retailers in the city to close up shop.  The tech industry the city was once known for has made massive layoffs and drastically cut back on office space in San Francisco since 2020, and among tech CEOs, “everyone with brains” has left, Weil wrote. CashApp founder Bob Lee had moved to Miami, but was stabbed to death while visiting San Francisco in April. The mass exodus of workers from city centers and the ensuing collapse of downtowns was dubbed a “doom loop” by NYU finance professor Arpit Gupta, according to NY Magazine, and San Francisco may be seeing the worst loop: while cell phone activity in downtown New York is 75% of what it was pre-pandemic, it’s only 32% in San Francisco.  As workers have abandoned downtown San Francisco, crime and rampant homelessness have emerged, and the city no longer has an eye towards fixing its problems, according to Weil. A security guard told Weil the high end stores he worked for did not want him to attempt to stop shoplifters, described “junkies” roaming the streets and their bodies rotting in plain view and said one store he worked for asked him to refer to a man he removed from the premises for smoking fentanyl as “an unhoused guest.”   Weil also described frequent run-ins with homeless people, many of whom struggle with substance abuse and mental problems, who would behave erratically and scream obscenities on public transportation.   “The social contract had ruptured, and we’d ceased to believe we could fix it. The city often seemed to operate like an incompetent parent, confusing compassion and permissiveness, unable to maintain boundaries, producing the exact opposite result of what it claimed to want,” Weil wrote."

L.A. Spent $7,500 on a Prototype Bus Shade That Doesn't Shade Anything - "When the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) officials held a celebratory press conference last week for a pilot bus shelter design, Twitter users and bloggers began doing what the bus shelter could not: casting shade. Commenters were quick to note that the thin, perforated "La Sombrita" structure would do little to keep the single person that would be able to stand underneath it out of the sun. Its minimal benefits in terms of light and shade are outweighed by both the pilot's costs of at least $7,500 per shelter and $200,000 for the full program (which was funded by a private grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation). The fact that there were more officials there to celebrate La Sombrita than could fit beneath it was an illustration of the out-of-proportion ratio of bureaucratic input to infrastructure output.  In response, both LADOT and Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI)—the nonprofit that designed the shelter—argued that their paltry La Sombrita designs needed to be narrow in order to slide through the cracks of the bureaucratic process that prevents the construction of larger, more adequate structures.  Anything that touched the sidewalk or was wide enough to actually shade people required input from many additional government departments.   "Typical bus shelters often cost $50k or more and require coordination among 8 departments. La Sombrita (in its most expensive, prototype form) costs approximately 15% of the price of a typical bus shelter and can be installed in 30 minutes or less," wrote KDI on Twitter...   Public agencies fail to coordinate with each other and have become too reliant on nonprofits and consultants to get anything done. Too many departments, stakeholders, and layers of government have a say in new projects, which slows things down even more.  What is needed then is deeper structural reforms that will shore up "state capacity" by streamlining processes, centralizing decision making, making greater use of off-the-shelf designs, widening sidewalks to create more space for shelters, and more.  Some of these are good ideas. They're all hard to implement.   Layers of process and inefficiency persist because interest groups, whether that's individual politicians, bureaucratic agencies, or nongovernmental contractors and consultants, benefit from them. Being able to say "no" is a valuable commodity that no one wants to give up for free.  The day after LADOT celebrated La Sombrita, California Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed a series of reforms to California's environmental review law, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which strangles both public and private projects in red tape.  CEQA's problems are well-known and widely acknowledged... The problem is that the La Sombrita shelters, even as a marginal solution, are laughably inadequate. It's hard to see how they improve on a bad status quo at all.  Instead of relying on these quick fixes or waiting for the political system to reform itself, perhaps Los Angeles bus riders should take individual initiative and provide their own shelter and light."
I saw people bashing the government wasting taxpayers' money, but this is not paid for by that

California Bill Would Require Occupational Licenses for Porn Actors, Strippers, Cam Girls - "police in Florida have conducted sting operations on handymen as part of their enforcement of that state's contractor licensing laws.  As Reason's Elizabeth Nolan Brown has covered extensively, sex workers have plenty of reasons to be apprehensive about the expansion of the regulatory state.  It's true also that regulatory seeds, once planted, tend to grow. It's conceivable that the bill's current two-hour training requirement could be expanded to become more onerous over time."
From 2020

Who counts as a real Dem in S.F.? Infighting on left hits new lows - "are she and her political allies really Democrats — or are they Republicans playing pretend? This is the ludicrous question that has emerged in San Francisco where many liberal leaders have chosen to embrace zero-sum politics rather than a shared opportunity to fix the city’s biggest problems... party members rebuffed them over a host of ill-defined concerns: They invited Supervisor Joel Engardio, a leader in last year’s school board recall movement, to an event! Their members include some well-off families! They say they’re Democrats, but what if they’re actually closeted Republicans? What if Republicans are funneling dark money into their bank accounts? In the most out-of-nowhere chatter of all, some party members speculated that the club co-founders are racist.  “My mouth was agape,” Wang said, expressing a shock shared by many San Franciscans these days over the meanness in local politics and the political orthodoxy in some progressive circles... San Francisco politics have long been toxic, but the blue-vs.-blue infighting has grown particularly nasty in recent years. Too often, debate jumps from what would be a small disagreement anywhere else to, “You’re a Republican-backed, Trump-supporting monster!” Common ground has been ceded to groundless accusations...   “It’s that ‘You can’t sit with us’ mentality that makes me very uncomfortable with the state of San Francisco politics,” Li said.  “It’s very, ‘You’re not even allowed in.’ It’s very ‘Mean Girls.’ ”...  the DCCC Queen Bees told Wang and her fellow Wannabes that the party suspects they’re DINOs (Democrats in Name Only), secretly funded by Republicans and perhaps even racist.  Based on what? Turns out, not much.  Before the chartering discussion began, the DCCC heard public comment — and two people opposed the charter. Brandee Marckmann, who staunchly opposed the school board recall, said DCCC members should think twice because the Westside Family Democratic Club invited Engardio to one of its events.   “I know a Republican when I see one,” Marckmann said of Engardio and the club founders, all Democrats.  Tenant activist Jordan Davis also opposed the charter, saying the word “family” is “a common dog whistle on the right,” that the club would be a funnel for Republican dark money and that the club wants to turn San Francisco into a “bland-ass gated community.”   “F– you, Westside Family Democratic Club!” Davis shouted into the computer screen. “I yield my time! F– you!”  In a normal city, these comments wouldn’t be enough to undo a club’s chances. But soon, DCCC members were grilling Gupta, who defended the club over Zoom. The harsh questioning transpired remarkably like the infamous 2021 school board meeting in which the commissioners wouldn’t let a gay dad volunteer on a parent council with lots of empty seats and nobody else wanting to fill them — because he’s white.  In this case, the DCCC asked Gupta about the club members’ income levels, racial backgrounds, sexual orientations and gender identities. They asked for the members’ positions on the school board recall and building market-rate housing. They asked why they used the word family in their club name. They asked whether the club members are really Democrats, whether they’re secretly taking money from Republicans and whether they’re racist.  Gupta, looking shell-shocked, gamely tried to answer their questions, but acknowledged he hadn’t quizzed all the club’s members on details like how they voted in a recall 15 months ago."
The leftist firing squad at work again
"Dog whistles" are just hallucinations conjured up against people you don't like

Wednesday, July 12, 2023

Links - 12th July 2023 (2 - General Wokeness)

Please Just Fucking Tell Me What Term I Am Allowed to Use for the Sweeping Social and Political Changes You Demand - "You know personally I’ve been achingly specific about my critiques of social justice politics, but fine - no woke, it’s a “dogwhistle” for racism. (The term “dogwhistle” is a way for people to simply impute attitudes you don’t hold onto you, to make it easier to dismiss criticism, for the record.) But the same people say there’s no such thing as political correctness, and they also say identity politics is a bigoted term. So I’m kind of at a loss. Also, they propose sweeping changes to K-12 curricula, but you can’t call it CRT, even though the curricular documents specifically reference CRT, and if you do you’re an idiot and also you’re a racist cryptofascist. Also nobody (nobody!) ever advocated for defunding the police, and if they did it didn’t actually mean defunding the police. Seems to be a real resistance to simple, comprehensible terms around here... If you ask these people, are you part of a social revolution?, they’ll loudly tell you yes! Yes they are! They’re going to shake society at its very foundations. Well, OK then -what do I call your movement? You reject every name that organically develops! I’ll use the name you pick, but you have to actually pick one. You can’t just bitch on Twitter every time someone tries to describe your political cohort, which again you yourself say intends to change the world. Name yourself or you will be named. The basic stance of the social justice set, for a long time now, has been that they are 100% exempt from ordinary politics. BlackLivesMatter proponents have spent a year and a half acting as though their demand for justice is so transcendently, obviously correct that they don’t have to care about politics. When someone like David Shor gently says that they in fact do have to care about politics, and points out that they’ve accomplished nothing, they attack him rather than do the work of making their positions popular. Well, sooner or later, guys, you have to actually give a shit about what people who aren’t a part of your movement think. Sorry."
"This is happening, and it's good that it is". As the left knows from 1984, their instruction manual, when you control language you control thought
Liberal politics is about virtue signalling to other liberals, so it's no surprise they don't care about persuasion

Keywords: defining wokeness, define woke, define wokeness, definition of woke, definition of wokeness

‘We’re Coming For Your Children’ chant at NYC Drag March elicits outrage, but activists say it’s taken out of context - "In the 21-second clip, circulated by a right-wing web streamer channel, dozens of people march in the streets and are clearly heard chanting, “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re not going shopping.” But one voice that is louder than the crowd — it’s not clear whose, or whether the speaker was a member of the LGBTQ community — is heard saying at least twice, “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children.”... Griffin said he chanted obscene things in the past, like “Kill, kill, kill, we’re coming to kill the mayor,” and joked about pubic hair and sex toys during marches... The “coming for your children” chant has been used for years at Pride events, according to longtime march attendees and gay rights activists, who said it’s one of many provocative expressions used to regain control of slurs against LGBTQ people. And in this case, they said, right-wing activists are jumping on a single video to weaponize an out-of-context remark to further stigmatize the queer community... According to multiple Drag March regulars, the “coming for your children” variation has been used before. Last year, Gothamist reported, people at the Drag March chanted, “Ten percent is not enough: Groom! Groom! Groom!”... Photos of this year’s march show on social media people with signs reading “Groom Cisies” and “Trans, Your greatest fear, your biggest fantasy.”"
"This is not happening, and it's good that it is, and it's your fault for being a bigot for noticing"
The liberal copes I've seen range from this being fake (since the liberal media are almost all ignoring this) to this being satire to this being a minority/one person

Opinion | Why I’m Not a Liberal Catholic - The New York Times - "To my mind, what serious Catholics should be looking for in this era of unsettlement is a synthesis, a viewpoint that makes sense of change in the church but also maintains the deep continuity with the Catholic past that’s essential if the church is what it claims to be — an institution founded by God, entrusted with history’s most important revelation. This is what Benedict XVI, especially as Joseph Ratzinger, was always searching for: As Matthew Walther argued in The Times earlier this year, the German pope was never a traditionalist but rather someone who wanted 20th-century reforms and the deep tradition to be compatible, to belong to the same story and the same institution. On current evidence we can say his work was incomplete, but his goal — for liberalization and tradition to make sense in light of each other — is one that any serious Catholic school of thought should share. An initial problem with liberal Catholicism, then, is that in the Francis era it has often ceased to make sense in light of itself. When suddenly invested with real power within the church, the liberal tendency has often betrayed its own core insights, trading longstanding arguments about the limits of ecclesiastical authority for a papal positivism that cheers the raw exercise of power as long as liberal ends are served. Instead of defenses of pluralism and principled dissent, we now get reports of papal critics being dismissed or forced into resignations, complaints about the presumptions of conservative laypeople from the liberal academic guild and liberal praise for a progressive pope’s “steely” determination in dealing with the threat of a traditionalist “church within a church.”... as experienced today, in the battles of the Francis era, the liberal tendency doesn’t seem open to secular or liberal or non-Catholic arguments as much it seems to be steered, and therefore defined, by the demands of an increasingly post-Christian culture. Put another way, it’s perpetually difficult to distinguish the specifically Catholic aspect of the liberal Catholic program — meaning the thing that distinguishes its agenda from a generic post-Sexual Revolution progressivism, the things it wants to do that don’t all just converge on making the church more like a friendly secular N.G.O... the tacit presupposition is always that Catholicism needs adaptation or replacement wherever it falls afoul of progressive moral consensus, with the focus on specific issues a strategic rather than substantive narrowing of those ambitions... the decline of belief and practice, rather than resilience or revival, in the Christian churches that have gone farthest with the liberal program is one of the most salient facts of contemporary religious history in both America and Europe... If liberal forms of Catholicism claimed to be comfortable as a remnant out of step with the spirit of the age, then diminished numbers wouldn’t necessarily demand a self-critique. But again, liberals are the ones most likely to insist that the signs of the times should compel the church to shift in their direction, as an alternative to marginalization or extinction"

On Distrusting The Left - "France is a country where Catholicism is evaporating — except for the Trads... In the US, perhaps the church that has taken the lead on all things progressive is the Episcopal Church (TEC)... The more woke TEC becomes, the more people abandon it — or, to put it another way, the less able it is to attract modern people, even as the broader society liberalizes... This is a church that does not have enough priests to fill the pulpits of its dying parishes, yet its leadership is still worried about an insufficient number of non-white clergy in its ranks. This reminds me of the kind of angst that gripped newspaper industry leaders around twenty years ago, when I was working in a newsroom. I would see the regular dispatches from the American Society of Newspaper Editors, which regularly lamented the failure of their initiatives to meaningfully increase the number of racial minorities working within newsrooms — this, at the same time that newspaper readership was cratering. As a leadership class, they could not let go of the idea that increased “diversity” (as they define it) was the secret to reviving a dying industry. Facts and logic rarely penetrated the iron-hard will to believe. So too with liberal clergy... Most church people have had the experience of liberals within arguing that they only want “diversity,” or to achieve modest goals like “tolerance” for their favored factions within the whole — only to become intolerant and authoritarian once they achieve power. Those conservative Methodist laymen who voted to remain with the national United Methodist Church are going to be in for a rude shock when they discover, as they surely will in the next few years, how all that talk of the value of diversity and loyalty from their Remainer co-religionists was merely a tactic... liberal Catholicism in power has betrayed itself, and vindicates the warnings of conservatives that the liberals were only appealing to liberal principles for the sake of disarming conservative opposition... We have lived through seeing the Left utterly repudiate its Civil Rights era, MLK-derived principles on race, in favor of straight-up anti-white racism. In other words, it has gone from being liberal to being illiberally progressive. But nothing illustrates this more than LGBT activism, and what the LGBT movement has done with its power... ‘We’re Coming For Your Children’... I searched Google News for any mention of this. The only thing that turned up was this piece from the Narrative-Enforcers (that is, the Mainstream Media, in this case, ABC) which put forth the line that LGBT people have never been at greater risk than they are today. Believe me, if that were remotely true, you would not have an LGBT crowd marching through a major city chanting, “We’re here, we’re queer, and we’re coming for your children.” The media lie, utterly and contemptibly, about this issue. We still do not have the manifesto that the trans person Audrey Hale left, presumably to explain why she massacred Christians, including schoolchildren. We probably won’t get it, either, unless it is pried from the hands of the authorities, who, I believe, are sitting on it to protect the Narrative. Now that they are in power, LGBTs and their Democratic Party allies (Team Biden, especially) are turning totalitarian... The Democratic Party is all in. So is virtually every major American institution, including the US military, law, medicine, sports, and, of course, academia and media, where it all began. Had you said back in 2003 that within twenty years, this is where we would be, you would have been roundly denounced as a bigot and an alarmist trying to scare people about a non-existent threat. Yet here we are. Legitimizing pedophilia is next — count on it... Those who would insist that they only mean the minds of children are, at best, useful idiots for those who want something more sinister. And even if they are coming only for the minds of kids, that’s still evil. Children should not be made to fear and loathe their own bodies. Children should not be forced to confront all the “secrets” of the adult sexual world... This is the Soft Totalitarianism I warned you about in Live Not By Lies! This is what the Left has become today. Don’t try to say, “But not the entire Left!” Yeah, but so what? Most of the Left in Russia on New Year’s Eve, 1917, was not Bolshevik … but they lacked the foresight, the courage, or the ability to stand up to the Bolsheviks... Sen. Rick Santorum was widely mocked for saying in 2005 that if we have gay marriage, what’s next, the legitimation of man-on-dog sex? It was easy to make fun of his vulgar remark. But when you have ideologically captured public schools recommending to middle schoolers searching out films where men costumed as ponies screw, Santorum’s line is not quite as mockable, is it?... If desire itself is self-justifying, then who are you to say that this person’s desire is wrong? The existence of those Canadian sex-ed cards, which teach kids about sex acts so vile that animals don’t even do them, largely vindicates Santorum... Do you honestly believe that a culture that grants a child agency for determining something as fundamental as changing their sex is going to be able to uphold prohibitions against pedophilia? The whole spectrum of queer grooming behaviors is there to sexualize children and prepare them for the simulacrum of consent. Do you think this is evil? I do. And I also can see with my own eyes that liberalism cannot save us from this. The language and the resources of liberalism have been captured by the radicals. Liberalism is used as a cover to anesthetize the potential opposition, and paralyze them. I’ve said many times here, and I’ll say it again, that I prefer to live in a liberal democratic society. But if you look at nearly every polity ruled with no opposition by the Left — think major US cities — you see crime, racism, dysfunction, and depravity rampant. And if you look at US institutions captured by the cultural Left, you see the Queering of The Imperial Hegemon in its late stages. Left-wing power-holders despise principled anti-woke liberals. It’s very hard for these despised liberals to grasp this, but they had better... The reason I believe that Viktor Orban is a model for emerging US conservatism is that unlike most leaders in the GOP, Orban has read liberalism correctly. He understands that its commitment to philosophical liberalism is a mask, and he also understands that it advances illiberal leftism under cover of thoroughly captured civil society institutions. Orban roots his politics in that reality. Orban lives in the real world. He knows that to preserve the normative liberalism we have now requires a commitment to ante-liberal principles that appear illiberal... what we call “liberalism” today is not really liberalism, and it is both a failure, and a trap, because the so-called “liberals” — really radicals in liberal clothing — keep moving the goalposts. A liberal democratic society can only hold if it has a vital center. Left-liberalism in power has obliterated the center. It does not want to live and let live; it demands capitulation. It demands our children — at minimum, that we deliver them to have their minds colonized to reject their families, their history, their religion, and any aspect of their identities not controlled by left ideology."

Higher Ground on Twitter - "Where Title IX once protected students from sex-based discrimination by schools, it's now used to police perceptions of student behavior toward other students re: sexual orientation/gender identity. The implications are enormous. Welcome to the sexuality surveillance state, kids"

If you hate the culture wars, blame liberals - "Since roughly the year 2000, according to survey data, Democrats have moved significantly to the left on most hot button social issues while Republicans have moved only slightly right... It is not conservatives who have turned American politics into a culture war battle. It is liberals. And this shouldn't come as a surprise: Almost by definition, liberals are the ones pushing for change while conservatives are merely responding to whatever liberals do. More specifically, progressives have been bragging publicly about pushing the Democratic Party leftward since at least 2004—and they've succeeded... Our election victory in 2020 was razor thin even though (a) the economy sucked, (b) we were in the middle of a pandemic, (c) voters had had four years to see just what Donald Trump was really like, and (d) our candidate was bland, amiable, white, male Joe Biden. This should scare the hell out of liberals...
'Over the last four years, white liberals have become a larger and larger share of the Democratic Party....And since white voters are sorting on ideology more than nonwhite voters, we’ve ended up in a situation where white liberals are more left wing than Black and Hispanic Democrats on pretty much every issue: taxes, health care, policing, and even on racial issues or various measures of “racial resentment.” So as white liberals increasingly define the party’s image and messaging, that’s going to turn off nonwhite conservative Democrats and push them against us... Black conservatives and Hispanic conservatives don’t actually buy into a lot of these intellectual theories of racism. They often have a very different conception of how to help the Black or Hispanic community than liberals do. And I don’t think we can buy our way out of this trade-off. Most voters are not liberals'"

LA Stage Alliance Disbands After Awards Ceremony Blunder - The New York Times - "The awards ceremony, streamed online last week, showed a picture of a different Asian-American actress when announcing her category. And it mispronounced her name. Lee laughed, reflecting a lifetime of trying to be a good sport. But her boyfriend grabbed a screenshot, and posted it on social media, and he was not the only one. The reaction was swift, and furious, as long-simmering frustration over the functioning of the LA Stage Alliance, which administers the awards, combusted with the pain and anger of an Asian-American community devastated by a wave of anti-Asian violence. Forty-six theaters resigned from the alliance — about a third of its members. And on Monday, the organization, which for nearly a half-century had been the main coalition for a sprawling theatrical ecosystem in the nation’s second largest city, announced that it was disbanding... The LA Stage Alliance was a nonprofit, dating back to 1975, that sought to support theater in Los Angeles"
From 2021. 不攻自破

Essex police deny Braverman rebuked them over pub seizure of golliwog dolls - "Essex police have denied being rebuked by Suella Braverman for seizing a collection of golliwog dolls that were on display in a pub. Officers from the force took several dolls from the White Hart Inn in Grays, Essex, last week as part of an investigation into an alleged hate crime reported in February.... The pub’s owner, Benice Ryley, said she has displayed the collection of about 30 dolls, donated by her late aunt and customers, in the pub for nearly 10 years. She told the PA Media: “They’re my childhood history, it’s a part of our inheritance. I can’t see any harm. I don’t know how they can find it offensive.” Ryley’s husband, Chris, is set to be questioned when he returns from abroad in May."
Vandals hurl a brick through window of pub embroiled in race row over the display of golliwog dolls - "Benice Ryley, 61, said she was left shaken when a brick was hurled through the window of The White Hart Inn in Gray's, Essex at about 12.40am on Sunday... Mrs Ryley hit back at allegations of racism, saying the pub frequently hosts Indian weddings, and said she does not understand how people could be offended by the dolls. She added: 'If they don't like it, they don't have to come through the door.' 'As far as we are aware we are not breaking any laws by displaying them. It took six officers to come and remove a shelf full of dollies. What a waste of taxpayers' money"
White Hart Inn: Pub in Essex that displayed golly dolls closes after backlash and supplier boycott - "Heineken and Carlsberg had since told the pub to stop serving its lager, while maintenance company Innserve refused to continue working on site. The pub had also been banned from being considered for any awards by the Campaign for Real Ales (Camra) and the group said it would not be included in its Good Beer Guide “while these discriminatory dolls continue to be on display”. Landlady Benice Ryley and her husband Chris said this week she had decided, after 17 years running the pub, to retire to Turkey and shut the doors... “Young people these days don’t understand from years ago where do the gollys originate from. It’s such a shame. “It’s my collection. They are antiques some of them and I want them back. This is my life now that they have ruined. We have a stigma about our name now and our pub.” She blamed someone on Reddit for “starting it all again”, adding: “I had them as children, my auntie bought me some. [Customers] have bought me the dolls and it started from there.”"
Clearly vandalism is "resistance" against "racism"

Vancouver Police Department announces official changes to handcuffing policy - "The Vancouver Police Department announced that it has officially updated its handcuffing policy, requiring officers to take into account a person's age, ethnicity, and the seriousness of an alleged incident prior to applying handcuffs."
Apparently different handcuffing rules based on race is not structural racism

Meme - The Meme Policeman: "Literally back to back posts." Green New Deal: "In my experience, the right is always asking "what about me?" Whereas the left asks what about them? And that, In a nutshell, is why I will always lean to the left"
"I can't pay no doctor bill. But whitey's on the moon - Gil Scott-Heron"

Gender Bias in Science or Biased Claims of Gender Bias? - "AAAS hosted a conference in April, 2016, which presentation after presentation by famous, influential, and prestigious scientists argued for the power and prevalence of implicit gender biases in peer review. Yet not a shred of evidence of implicit bias in peer review was actually presented. Just read this report – you can see for yourselves that there was ample evidence of gaps, but none that bias accounted for those gaps... Dr. Carnes’ own research produced a result exactly opposite to the one that she was promoting at the AAAS Conference! Women were held to lower, not higher, standards than men to warrant praise... rather than being an idiosyncratic outlier, this sort of thing is commonplace, when scientists allow their political agendas to drive their claims about science -- in general, but also specifically, with respect to explanations for gender gaps in STEM."
From 2017

Gender Bias in Science? - "If one wishes to reach a knee-jerk conclusion that “gap=discrimination” then, by far, the most extreme discrimination in the social sciences and humanities is not gender bias, and is not even race bias – it is political bias (because Republicans and conservatives are far more vastly under-represented in almost any social science field than are women or ethnic minorities). However, all gaps – race, gender, political, or any other – are simply correlations. And as any intro psych student knows, you cannot infer any particular causal mechanism (in this case, discrimination) produces any particular correlation (in these cases, gaps), without direct evidence showing such causal relationships...
Lloyd (1990), in an experiment holding manuscript content exactly identical and manipulating only the gender of the author, found that male faculty were unbiased in their evaluations of papers by male and female authors, whereas female faculty were biased in favor of female authors. This of course produces a net bias in favor of female authors.
Veldkamp et al (2017) surveyed scientists, and found that, whereas men viewed men and women as equally intelligent, rational and objective, women were biased in favor of women, viewing women as more intelligent, rational, and objective than men. Although this is not a study of peer review, it is disturbingly consistent with Lloyd’s (1990) findings, which was a study of peer review.
A study of German sociologists (Lutter & Schroder, 2014) found that women were 1.4 times more likely than men to get tenure, and needed 23-44% fewer publications to do so.
Like Lloyd (1990), found that male academics evaluated men’s and women’s productivity in academia as comparable, but women viewed women’s productivity more positively than they viewed men’s...
Unfortunately, the quickest way to improve the pace of scientific self-correction would be to increase the mortality rate among scientists"

California moves to provide surrogates to gay male couples in the name of 'fertility equality' - "California Bill SB 729 seeks to redefine "infertility" to be a status, as opposed to a medical condition. Changing the definition to "a person’s inability to reproduce either as an individual or with their partner without medical intervention" would classify gay men as infertile. The bill, which passed the Senate last month, would require insurance companies to cover in-vitro fertilization procedures. With the change in definition, this would also include forcing the firms to cover surrogacy for gay males."

Canadian MDs consider denying fertility treatments to obese women - The Globe and Mail - "Some studies find obese women face higher risks of medical complications while trying to become pregnant through in-vitro fertilization (IVF). The science is not certain and some believe a ban would be tantamount to discrimination, yet a growing number of fertility doctors worldwide already bar treatment based on a woman's Body Mass Index. "We've had many angry patients say to us, 'This is discriminatory' and I say, 'Yes, it is' But I still won't do it," said Arthur Leader, co-founder of the Ottawa Fertility Centre. The facility where he works will not treat women with a Body Mass Index (a measurement of weight relative to height) of more than 35. A BMI of 30 meets the clinical definition of obese. "A patient doesn't have the right to make a choice that's going to be harmful to them," he said... Research has shown women who are severely overweight require higher doses of fertility drugs to spur ovulation – increasing the risk of side effects. As well, obese women face a greater risk of developing high blood pressure, which can trigger strokes, and gestational diabetes, which can pose risks to mother and baby. While these risks during pregnancy apply to obese women even if they conceive naturally, Carl Laskin, president of the CFAS, believes fertility doctors have a responsibility to address them if a woman wants to conceive with medical help... For Dr. Leader, a major concern is that the "conscious sedation" used on patients while retrieving their eggs could disrupt breathing, but inserting a breathing tube into a patient who is morbidly obese is tricky and risky – "the patient could choke.""
From 2011. Today, the doctors wouldn't be able to say that (even if the policy remains)

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Lewis Hamilton’s Today programme - "‘I'm not educated enough also. You know, growing up in UK, not, you learn about white history. Simple as that, I never learned about black history. I never learned about where my family of, from, I knew my family from Grenada but my dad hadn't really taking me through the history books of where my granddad's roots started, where my grandparents, great grandparents were from...
There is an attitude in some people, not everybody, but some people that to talk about the bad side of British history and the violence is to somehow talk the country down, that it is almost treasonous. And my argument always is, you know, Britain, is a wonderful country. But like every country that’s ever existed, it did some good, and it did some bad. And if we only focus on the good, we, we delude ourselves’...
‘Cassius Clay, Mohammed Ahmed, refused to take the American army oath. He maintains that his religion won't allow him to kill people of his own colour in Vietnam.’...
'People have changed, not just athletes in the game have changed, but people generally have changed. When you look at 2016, a national survey in America found that just 20% of people supported athlete activism, just 20% of people thought that the sports organizations themselves should support athlete activism. When you look at the Nielsen survey that came out this year, 70% of people in America now support athlete activism. So it's become a very different environment. One where, from one where in 2016 when Kaepernick took the knee, he lost his career, that was it for him. He was, he was constructively dismissed from sport to now where LeBron James, other athletes out there, including Lewis are able to make a difference. And in fact, it enhances their profile.'"
There isn't enough time to teach all of British history - but the history of the whole world needs to be taught, so everyone can learn "their" history
Ironically, I've never seen anyone denying the negative aspects of British history. Instead, what I always see is the opposite: whenever someone talks about the positive aspects of it, leftists get very upset and claim that it is whitewashing and want to obsess once more about all the evil that Britain did
Yellow and black people have the same colour?

BBC Radio 4 - Today, The Today Debate: Policing and us - how can we fix it? - "'The processes and procedures within the Metropolitan Police are disproportionately more likely to be racist. Misconduct, recruitment and so on and then finally I've found and again you know we found it's evidenced and accepted to some degree by colleagues in the police that certainly black people in London are overpoliced by you know such an extent: the use of force, the use of taser, the use of custody is just off the barometer and can only be about skin color'...
‘Organizations need to understand when they are systemically. institutionally, whichever word you want to use, disproportionately biased. You are 81% more likely to be the subject of misconduct in the metropolitan police if your skin color is black. I mean that is just off the barometer’"
When you beg the question, you can prove anything
On the one hand, we are told that misconduct in the Metropolitan Police is a huge problem and the police are misbehaving but on the other hand we are told that the misconduct process is fatally flawed and that it unfairly victimises minorities. Curious.

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, The Today Debate: Do we need a Monarchy? - "‘I was looking at polling today from YouGov on a whole range of uh attitudes towards different members of the royal family and institution of the monarchy and actually attitudes between ethnic minorities and the white population were almost exactly aligned. You could, there were a few percentage points difference in here and there’...
‘In terms of the actual material benefit it would bring to the British people to get rid of the spending on the monarchy, it's absolutely trivial in the great scheme of, of suspending it, so it's 0.01% of public spending, something like that is spent on the monarchy’
‘I don't think it's true on a breadline’
‘No it is trivial because if you, if you’
‘Not to live on a bread line I don't think so’
‘Yes it is actually because of, you need you need to make it different to living on the bread, and you really need to give sort of 20 30% of of of public spending to be distributed that way, not 0.01%. But the other thing is you wouldn't succeed in doing it if you got rid of it because look at what happens in other countries, look at France. France got rid of its king, killed its king and it's never really been able to quite work out what to do about that ever since and it's very divided on this subject even now. That it's not going to bring back the monarchy and so what you have is a president who aspires to collect the character of monarchy around him and he lives in great grandeur and but he's also, unfortunately because he's an elected president he can't rise above it all. So he's actually very controversial, not a very unifying figure and France is a constant, uh history of him. It’s had about four revolutions since the French revolutions and five republics and um another monarchy and and um it doesn't solve it and it doesn't solve the problem of magnificence, the problems of money. Um it just recurs in a different form’"

Sotong Meme

I got annoyed enough by the Taiwan Term-Malaysia Sotong Meme to look up all the terms:


台湾 - 马来西亚
章鱼 - Sotong
花枝 - Sotong
乌贼 - Cuttlefish
透抽 - Swordtip squid
小卷 - Pencil squid
目斗 - Cuttlefish

 

Translation:

Taiwan - Malaysia
章鱼 (Octopus) - Sotong
花枝 (Golden Cuttlefish) - Sotong
乌贼 (Cuttlefish) - Sotong
透抽 (Swordtip squid) - Sotong
小卷 (Pencil squid) - Sotong
目斗 (Cuttlefish) - Sotong

Bonus: 鱿鱼 = Squid in Mandarin. No prizes for guessing the term in Malaysia.

Links - 12th July 2023 (1)

Was Cameron Robbins killed by a SHARK after he jumped off cruise ship? - "Cameron Robbins, 18, jumped off the Blackbeard's Revenge sunset cruise ship while celebrating his high school graduation near Athol Island, in the Bahamas last Wednesday. The search for the missing teen was called off two days later.  Footage shows Robbins swimming in the water as a life preserver is thrown out to him and classmates tell him to grab on. But the teenager seems to be fixated on a shadowy shape which appears in the water and immediately begins swimming away. The video has sparked speculation online that Robbins may have met his end after a shark went after him. People have claimed they can clearly see a shark in the video.  Providing an update yesterday, Royal Bahamas Defense Force (RBDF) Commodore Raymond King confirmed that the area where Robbins went overboard is 'really shark infested.'... The Bahamas is home to highly aggressive sharks including tiger and bull sharks.   Witnesses claimed Robbins was acting on a dare when he jumped overboard at 11.30pm from the Blackbeard's Revenge sunset cruise ship."

Meme - "UnlimitedErections.com. We "GET IT" Up...It "STAYS" Up!!!"

Meme - Knight: "Hey! Putrid maggot! FOUL BEAST! RELEASE THE PRINCESS OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES!"
Dragon: *snarl*
Princess: "WHAT DOES HE LOOK LIKE?"
Dragon: "Old... nasty, very rude and full of himself. I don't know, I don't think so..."
Princess: *declines*
Dragon: *breathes fire* "YOU FOOL! I SEE YOUR HEART, THERE IS NOTHING THERE BUT LUST FOR GOLD AND GLORY! LET THE WHOLE KINGDOM KNOW! ONLY A YOUNG, PURE-HEARTED ADVENTURER WOULD BE CAPABLE OF TAKING THE PRINCESS AWAY FROM ME!!!"
Dragon: "Here's hoping, Betty"
Princess: "Thanks, Wendy"

Do We Live in a Simulation? Chances Are about 50–50 - Scientific American - "For Owhadi, the most promising way to look for potential paradoxes created by such computing shortcuts is through quantum physics experiments. Quantum systems can exist in a superposition of states, and this superposition is described by a mathematical abstraction called the wave function. In standard quantum mechanics, the act of observation causes this wave function to randomly collapse to one of many possible states. Physicists are divided over whether the process of collapse is something real or just reflects a change in our knowledge about the system. “If it is just a pure simulation, there is no collapse,” Owhadi says. “Everything is decided when you look at it. The rest is just simulation, like when you’re playing these video games.”...   Kipping, despite his own study, worries that further work on the simulation hypothesis is on thin ice. “It’s arguably not testable as to whether we live in a simulation or not,” he says. “If it’s not falsifiable, then how can you claim it’s really science?”  For him, there is a more obvious answer: Occam’s razor, which says that in the absence of other evidence, the simplest explanation is more likely to be correct. The simulation hypothesis is elaborate, presuming realities nested upon realities, as well as simulated entities that can never tell that they are inside a simulation. “Because it is such an overly complicated, elaborate model in the first place, by Occam’s razor, it really should be disfavored, compared to the simple natural explanation,” Kipping says."

Marcus McDilda - Wikipedia - "Lieutenant Marcus McDilda was an American P-51 fighter pilot who was shot down over Osaka and captured by the Japanese on 8 August 1945, two days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima... McDilda, who knew nothing about the atomic bomb nor the Manhattan Project, initially admitted that he knew nothing about the atomic bombs, but, after a Japanese officer threatened to kill him, McDilda "confessed" that the U.S. had 100 atomic bombs that would be dropped on Tokyo and Kyoto, the only Japanese cities he knew the names of, within "the next few days""

Koran row imam suggested Muslims could be punished for celebrating Christmas - "An imam involved in the row over a damaged Koran that led to a 14-year-old schoolboy receiving death threats, spoke about punishing Muslims for celebrating Christmas, The Telegraph can reveal.   Imam Hafiz Muhammad Mateen Anwar, of the Jamia Masjid Swafia mosque in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, warned worshippers not to wish others a merry Christmas, described homosexuality as “barbaric” and music as “toxic”, and also made sectarian remarks about more liberal followers of Islam.  The revelations came just days after he hosted a community meeting at the mosque alongside police and council leaders with the mother of an autistic Year 10 schoolboy who pleaded for forgiveness for her son after he brought a Koran into Kettlethorpe High School as a forfeit for losing a Call of Duty video game... Imam Anwar appeared on a panel with Chief Insp Andy Thornton and Insp Glen Costello of West Yorkshire Police, two teachers and the boy’s mother, where he told the meeting: “When it comes to the honour of the Koran we will stand and defend the honour of the Koran no matter what it takes.”  However, sources alarmed at what they described as “a session for ritual humiliation and threatening language” have now shared with The Telegraph evidence that they said showed the imam had preached “harsh social separatism”. Experts have also criticised the police for failing to do their “due diligence” in researching the imam’s comments. The evidence bundle reveals that in a sermon three days before Christmas last year, Imam Anwar said that in an Islamic state, Muslims would be punished for taking part in the festivities of another religion. “It is very important who you conform to, whose lifestyle you adopt,” he said. “If you conform to them you are becoming part of them.” Quoting a Muslim scholar, he added: “The one who conforms with the disbelievers on the days of their celebrations should be given "tazir", a punishment... Anyone from the religion of Islam, claims to follow Islam, anyone who begins to take part in the celebration of disbelievers, that person should be punished.”  He said that he lived in the UK, where there was not Sharia law, but said: “What I’m trying to explain to you is how important these scholars took the subject of copying the disbelievers, of following their celebrations. One who congratulates a non-believer on the day of their celebration is also to be punished.” Imam Anwar said that Christmas was not religious and told the congregation not to take part in Christian traditions, saying: “The disbelievers, in reality we can’t really call them Christians anymore because they don’t even follow the actual religion of Christianity. Christmas is a festivity, there is no link to it with religion. Having a family meal is perfectly fine, feed people, spread peace, but to call it a Christmas dinner on Christmas Day, don’t go snapping away [on] Instagram to show people that you are multicultural. Who are you trying to impress?”  He added that Muslims “should have no link with Christmas trees or Christmas lights either” and said that those who rarely gave food to neighbours but did so on Christmas Day were “acknowledging their celebration”, saying: “You are not permitted to do that.” Imam Anwar also said that parents should not allow children to sit on Santa’s lap, not to be part of nativity shows... In another sermon, he urged Muslims to remember hatred, saying: “Your love and your hate should be for the sake of Allah.” In a similar talk he used the word “rafidhis” for Shia Muslims, a derogatory term meaning rejectors and popular with hardline scholars, and also criticised “closet Shias” for “destroying our aqeedah [creed]”.  He has also described music as “toxic” saying it “messes with your mind” and urged Muslims not to listen to it. He also described “the rise of homosexuality” as “barbaric”... “If these words are damaging for Imam Anwar and Swafia Mosque, they raise very troubling questions about West Yorkshire Police, two of whose officers were seen chumming up to the mosque in videos that have circulated worldwide... Home Secretary Suella Braverman is set to launch a crackdown on police needlessly recording non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs) such as those used by police in the wake of the row over the Koran.  She will also tell police to remove from their records any such incidents that do not meet that strict threshold to prevent them showing up in future enhanced police checks... the College of Policing, the police professional standards body, changed its guidance to stop officers recording incidents that do not amount to a crime and fail to meet the criminal threshold.  Despite this, West Yorkshire Police officers recorded what happened at the school as an NCHI."

Video: Only Store Not Looted in South African Shopping Mall is the Book Shop - "  After showing electronics and clothing stores that have been completely cleaned out, the video cuts to a book shop that looks totally pristine.  “The bookstore is completely untouched, this is ridiculous, I’m not even making this up,” the woman remarks...   As Chris Menahan documents, citizen vigilante groups have now formed in huge numbers to fight off looters who have been running rampage for days...   The bedlam began after supporters of Jacob Zuma reacted with rampant criminality to the former president’s arrest for corruption."

Racial implications of the narcissistic personality inventory reinterpreting popular depictions of narcissism trends - "Table 1 shows that young people, males, African Americans, and, to a lesser extent, other minorities have higher prevalence of lifetime NPD than do older people, females, and non-Hispanic whites, respectively. African Americans’ narcissism scores averaged 2.3 times higher than for whites. Hispanic, Native, and Asian Americans also scored higher than whites. Poorer respondents (those with household incomes below $35,000 per year) also showed higher NPD prevalence than wealthier ones (not shown)."

Racial differences in narcissistic tendencies - "Black individuals have been found to report the highest levels of self-esteem of any racial group in the United States. The purpose of the present research was to examine whether Black individuals also report higher levels of narcissism than White individuals. Study 1 (N = 367) found that Black individuals reported higher levels of narcissism than White individuals even when controlling for gender, self-esteem level, and socially desirable response tendencies. Study 2 (N = 967) and Study 3 (N = 315) found similar results such that Black individuals reported higher levels of narcissism than White individuals on the narcissism measures that captured less pathological facets of this construct. Study 3 also included indicators of psychological adjustment and found that the pathological aspects of narcissism were more strongly associated with maladjustment for Black individuals than for White individuals. The implications of these results for understanding the Black self-esteem advantage are discussed."

There is No Benefit to Having Self-Esteem. Here's What Children Should Be Learning, Instead. - " According to Roy F. Baumeister et al.'s 2003 meta-analysis, Does High Self-Esteem Cause Better Performance, Interpersonal Success, Happiness or Healthier Lifestyles,  No. There is no relationship between high self-worth and achievement.   In fact, high self-regard is commonly found in narcissists, bullies and sociopaths. People with high, unwarranted self-esteem often have an inflated sense of popularity and likability. They get hostile when criticized or rejected. They alienate others...  parents and teachers should explicitly teach children to self-regulate. This is almost the opposite of teaching self-esteem"

STREAM COOL GIRL on Twitter - "Honestly you’re never gonna convince me that my trauma made me stronger. Most of the behavior I learned to protect myself has been detrimental to many of my relationships and the process of unlearning it seems impossible."

Punggol Temporary Bus Interchange - Wikipedia - "Punggol Temporary Bus Interchange is a temporary bus interchange in Punggol New Town, Singapore, located adjacent to the Punggol MRT/LRT station. It was built to allow for easy dismantling when the site is redeveloped as part of a major commercial development when Punggol New Town is more developed. The bus interchange was officially opened on 30 November 2003."
20 years!

Meme - Erik Shipt: "I just saw how a girl pees for the first time. It's kind of disgusting , I don't even know how to explain it, It's nothing like how a boy pees , Which is completely normal. But basically there's this gaping hole that comes out but it also sort of takes shape of like a ancient water snake , And then she just like pushes down on the area above it, And then it starts just going insane and pulsating , like a Human gasping for air almost. Idk man, It's insane.."

Walgreens debuts new 'anti-theft' store with just two aisles where customers shop for themselves - "A Chicago branch of Walgreens has been redesigned with just two aisles where customers may shop for themselves, the rest must be done via a kiosk.  The new 'anti-theft' store at at 2 East Roosevelt in downtown Chicago will trust shoppers to pick up 'essentials' for themselves in the two free aisles, but everything else must be ordered and picked up via a counter... One shopper told WBBM Newsradio their experience was positive: 'It is nice that, for the essentials, you no longer have to call security to get them to open the glass case.'... The National Retail Federation said that the scourge of shoplifting - which grew worse during the pandemic - cost the industry almost $100billion in 2022.   Recent videos of brazen shoplifters have gone viral online, as residents become increasingly frustrated about rising crime. Surveillance footage shows a gang of crooks wearing masks wheeling shopping carts loaded with valuable products out of a Home Depot store in New York.   Another clip showed shoplifters loading up duffel bags and backpacks with perfumes and colognes from a Ross store in Colorado.  One Ross Dress for Less manager has said that thieves are targeting her Colorado store up to four times a day.  Footage captured at the location shows a number of thieves storming through the store filling bags with items before casually leaving...  'It's company policy; we're not allowed to touch them, follow them or we are putting our job in jeopardy.  'We don't even intimidate them at this point -- they just come in here, get what they want, then they leave.  'We can't touch them, can't grab anything from their hands, can't put ourselves in jeopardy.'"

Thread by @wesyang on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "`We take for granted a high degree of implicit trust to enable the world as we know it.  We allowed that trust, which obtained for the entire history of the United States, to unravel in three years.  That trust unraveled because a dysfunctional memeplex warped the minds of those entrusted to sustain the complex web of social obligation that makes daily life livable. What has unraveled will not be rebuilt easily or perhaps at all. Idea viruses have consequences"

One-Minute Time Machine - The Short Film that (probably) helped Rick & Morty win an Emmy - YouTube

Surprising number of people in Forbes 30 under 30 list have run into trouble with the law - "Caroline Ellison, the former co-CEO of Alameda Research, pleaded guilty to seven criminal charges carrying a maximum sentence of 110 years in prison. The guilty plea arrived exactly one year after Ellison was named to Forbes’ annual 30 under 30 list.  Ellison was charged alongside Zixiao Wang, the former Chief Technology Officer of FTX Trading Ltd., for their roles in defrauding investors in the crypto trading platform.  That same month Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX founder, was arrested and extradited from the Bahamas to the U.S. on charges that included wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering. Like Ellison, Bankman-Fried was named to the 2021 Forbes 30 under 30 list, where he described himself as an “effective altruist.”   Bankman-Fried was also on the cover of the “ Forbes 400 ” issue that same year.   Other notable names to make the annual list only to end up with criminal charges include “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli, who made the 2012 list and became infamous three years later for upping the price of a single pill of prescription medication Daraprim from US$13.50 to $750 . Shkreli was later sentenced to seven years in prison for securities fraud.  More recently, tech CEO Charlie Javice was named to the list in 2019 for her work on Frank, a financial aid startup for students. On the back of its success, including reportedly serving 5 million students, Frank was acquired by JPMorgan Chase in 2021 for $175 million .  Earlier this month, Javice was charged by the U.S. Department of Justice for “falsely and dramatically inflating the number of customers of her company, Frank, in order to fraudulently induce J.P. Morgan Chase.”...   “The Forbes 30 Under 30 have collectively raised $5.3B in funding,” he tweeted earlier this month . “The Forbes 30 Under 30 have also been arrested for frauds and scams worth over $18.5B. Incredible track record.”...   In addition to the 30 under list, Forbes also hosts an annual 30 Under 30 Summit. In 2015, one of the headline speakers was Elizabeth Holmes, the founder and former CEO of health technology company Theranos. Last November, Holmes was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison for defrauding investors.   The problem isn’t exactly Forbes, writes The Guardian columnist Arwa Mahdawi but “the vision of success that we’ve been sold and the fetishizing of youth.”  “The pressure can lead certain ambitious people to take shortcuts”"

Woman with $12,000 library fines goes viral on TikTok after hoarding books for years - "A woman has been left with fines of nearly $12,000 in library fines after checking out books from the library for her dissertation years in advance and then hoarding them at home...   One TikTok user named historyhan, a PhD student in Medieval History, was left mortified when she got an email from her library claiming that she owed $11,900 after losing 119 books. However, Hannah hadn’t actually lost the books, she was hoarding them in her home until she’d finished her dissertation...   “As it stands, your library account has $11,900 owed for 119 lost books,” the email read. “It becomes “lost” in our system after 30 days overdue. Lost books incur a flat rate of $100.”... One person commented: “You mean to tell me that I cannot steal books they intended me to borrow? Unbelievable.”  Hannah replied to the comment: “They’re not stolen, they’re still in use.”"

The Dangerous Lure of Political Violence - "protesters recently built a guillotine. No necks were harmed that night; it wasn't fully functional. But they did it in front of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' house, and the message was clear: While we aren't going to do violence to you personally right now, we want you to know that we think capitalist billionaires like you are so terrible that some violence may, in fact, be justified. Another iteration of the guillotine had popped up a couple of weeks earlier in front of the White House, with similar implications for the president and his allies... The best-case scenario is that what we are seeing in the streets is essentially LARPing...   Like the guillotinesmiths of Kalorama, the lefty protesters of Seattle and Portland—dressed in activist goth chic and ostentatiously practicing maneuvers with shields—are looking to trigger disgust and panic in those who disagree with their aims or tactics, and boy is it working. The same is true of the Unite the Right marchers who turned up in Charlottesville three years ago and later in the Pacific Northwest to provoke fear and intimidate their opponents while wearing matching polo shirts and wielding tiki torches.  "So far, this revolutionary playacting has been more annoying than terrifying," Cathy Young writes in this month's cover story, an account of the events leading up to France's Reign of Terror with an eye toward the parallels to the present day (page 18). "It's about trolling, not killing, the enemy. But it still signals an embrace of bloodthirsty rhetoric—and of ideological homage to one of history's bloodier leftist dictatorships."  There are reasons to believe the situation in American cities could take a more deadly turn, however. For one thing, it did in Charlottesville, when counterprotester Heather Heyer was killed. And it already has in Portland, where Reason contributor Nancy Rommelmann has covered the monthslong conflict between the antifa "black bloc" and the various right-leaning factions that oppose it...   The more extreme someone's political views, the more likely they are to believe violence is justified to achieve them. Among those who identify as "very liberal," 26 percent said there would be "a great deal" of justification for violence if the Democratic candidate loses the presidency. Among the "very conservative," that figure is 16 percent if the Republican candidate loses... polarization seems to be directly connected to dehumanization... Recall that one of this spring's most outrageous instances of cancel culture at work was indirectly about the question of tolerance for political violence as well: A Civis Analytics researcher lost his job after tweeting out an academic study by Princeton's Omar Wasow about how violent protesters may undermine the electoral goals of their allies. He was accused of "concern trolling" and "minimizing black grief and rage" and subsequently fired in what appeared to be a direct response to the tweet. Not only are people more willing to condone violence across the board, but at the extremes some are also less willing to even entertain talk about why such violence might be a bad idea.  There is one additional complicating factor here: The meaning of the word violence is in flux. Speech is increasingly described as violence. Sometimes silence is also violence, especially in conversations about race. In certain circles, conversely, it's now up for debate whether property destruction counts as violence, with activists pushing back on the idea that the damage to homes and businesses in the wake of this summer's Black Lives Matter protests should be taken into consideration at all.   It's a mistake to conflate bad tweets with revolutionary violence, but it is worth pointing out that in the waning days of the election season, Bhaskar Sunkara, a co-founder of the aptly named Jacobin magazine, tweeted: "I think killing little Romanov children was justified. But it's not surprising why these views are controversial given most people's ethical and moral frameworks.""

Today Facebook decide that it is appropriate to show me Shopee ads of 3d-printed male chastity device : SingaporeRaw

Vancouver rodents celebrate rat poison ban with massive street party - "One possible explanation for this west coast rodent explosion is that the province recently banned the use of second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides – rat poison – after concerns that local wildlife, including owls, were falling sick or dying after eating dead rats.  The permanent ban came into effect on Jan. 21, following an 18-month temporary ban. “Essential” services such as hospitals and food production facilities are exempt but need to hire a licensed pest control company, draw up a pest-management plan, and record use of poison.  Meanwhile, New York City has stepped up its own war on rats by announcing its first-ever “rat czar,” Kathleen Corradi, a former teacher whose official title is “citywide director of rodent mitigation.” She previously oversaw rat mitigation efforts in the city’s public schools...   Mayor Eric Adams, who has often expressed a deep hatred for rats, posted the job last year, seeking someone “somewhat bloodthirsty” with a “general aura of badassery,” and offering an annual salary between US$120,000 and US$170,000.  The size of the city’s rat population is unknown. A 2014 study put the figure at around 2 million, or one for every four residents. New York recently edged out Los Angeles for the second-place ranking of America’s rattiest cities , with Chicago topping the list."

Ducklings swim in a line behind their mother to reduce drag and propel themselves forwards - "The findings not only shed light on duckling behaviour, but could also help to revolutionise shipping"

What’s The Difference Between Oranges, Mandarins, Satsumas, Clementines, Tangerines? - "Oranges are second in size to the grapefruit. This citrus fruit has a thick skin, is round in shape, and has a tart flavor. Mandarins are a type of orange and the overarching category that Tangerines, Clementines, and Satsumas fall into. They are generally smaller and sweeter than oranges, a little flatter in shape, and they and have a thinner, looser skin that makes them easier to peel. Tangerines are a specific type of mandarin orange. They are a bright orange color, slightly tougher skins, and their flavor is a little less sweet and a bit more tart. Clementines are the smallest type of mandarin orange. They are super sweet, seedless, and have red-orange skins that are smooth and shiny. The mandarins you see in grocery stores called Cuties and Sweeties are Clementines. They are easier to peel than tangerines, but not as easy to peel as Satsumas. Satsuma Mandarins are a specific type of mandarin orange, originating in Japan more than 700 years ago. They are a lighter orange, sweet, juicy, and seedless. They are also the easiest variety to peel. The most tender, easily damaged type of mandarin, Satsuma mandarin oranges are harder to find fresh in stores."

One Company’s Trick to Getting 95,000 Hours Back? Canceling Meetings - WSJ - "When Reynolds American Inc. was preparing to update staff on its restructuring plans in January, it scrapped plans for a 90-minute town hall meeting. Instead, it posted a 10-minute video for employees to watch... Since announcing a temporary purge of some kinds of meetings in early January, Shopify has deleted 12,000 events from staffers’ calendars, freeing up some 95,000 hours... Long-winded and excessive confabs have long been the bane of worklife. In the past, employers have tried standing meetings and even walk-and-talks to make the gatherings shorter and more productive... Shopify canceled recurring group meetings, banned most Wednesday meetings and now requires that gatherings with 50 or more people happen only in a 6-hour window on Thursdays... One result of all those extra meetings? More work at night... "The worst kind of meeting is where you’re there for no particular reason,” said Brian Frye, a professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law and a visiting professor at Tulane Law School. In academia, he said, “you’re often expected to be there but you don’t have any interest in what’s taking place or any contribution to make. Everyone complains about it but the complainers are as bad offenders as everyone else.”"

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