Links - 19th December 2019 (2)

What’s wrong with ‘cultural Marxism’? | Spectator USA - "The Frankfurt School invented the intellectual pestilences now known as Cultural Studies and Media Studies. They called their method Critical Theory or Social Theory. The gist of their interminable argument is that the reason the proles don’t join the revolution is that their thick heads are blunted by capitalist culture and sexual repression. If this sounds familiar, it’s because the New Left took it up, then populated the universities of America with vulgar Frankfurters whose pretentious, chippy warbling, instead of pulling down the boss class, has crushed enrollments in the Humanities, and produced generations of replicant professors who know nothing about their subjects, and not much about Marx and Freud either... Peterson uses ‘cultural Marxism’ as shorthand for left-wing ideology in the Humanities. So does Douglas Kellner, a professional third-generation Frankfurter at UCLA; see Kellner’s potted history of the whole tedious business, ‘Cultural Marxism and Cultural Studies’. And so did the Frankfurt School.The phrase ‘cultural Marxism’ might even precede the Frankfurt School. Marx had applied his ideas to culture; the germ of ‘false consciousness’ theory lurks in Marx’s reflections on the French revolution of 1848 and his report on the Great Exhibition of 1851. The Frankfurters certainly didn’t invent the idea of a comprehensive Marxism of culture, either. The key ideas arose in the aftermath of World War One, from the Hungarian literary critic Georg Lukács, and the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci. It was Gramsci who adopted the dreaded term ‘hegemony’, probably from Lenin, and devised the strategy now known as ‘the long march through the institutions’.The problem is that in the 1980s, a hostile theory of ‘cultural Marxism’ developed on the right, and then spread right over the edge... A neutral and more accurate term would be ‘neo-Marxism’.Let’s face it: ‘cultural Marxism’ hasn’t floated into common parlance among conservatives because they’ve suddenly developed a taste for the cod-Baudelaire musings of Walter Benjamin"

Samsung updates its alarm-clock app with Celebrity Alarm - "Samsung has just released an update for its watch application that honestly cannot leave anyone indifferent. With the function called “Celebrity Alarm”, Samsung wants your favorite artist or celebrity to wake you up in the morning."

China’s Tech Workers Are Pushing Back Against the 996 Schedule - Bloomberg - "The tacit promise for workers in the country’s notoriously relentless tech culture—put in the hours and get rich quick—no longer holds. For years, tech workers in China have accepted a schedule dubbed 996—9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week, plus any overtime required—in return for wealth they’d watched so many before them gain. Many were willing to take meager wages, around $2,000 a month in Hu’s case. They’ve now discovered that such blind loyalty doesn’t always pay off. In March a horde of mostly anonymous Chinese programmers took to the code-sharing community GitHub to protest 996. They compiled a blacklist of companies known for not paying overtime and lodged formal complaints against their employers to local labor watchdogs. Their post went viral, garnering almost a quarter of a million followers... Suji Yan, the 23-year-old founder of Shanghai data privacy firm Dimension, says the younger generation values work-life balance, and he allows his 20-person team to keep flexible hours and work remotely across the globe. He thinks it could take a decade or two to fix China’s intense work culture. With their dreams of getting rich shattered, “programmers have more and more realized that they are just ordinary laborers, ones that belong to the same class as food delivery guys and are as miserable as them”"

Indonesian man impregnates daughter, forces her to sleep with his friend to cover up for him - "When her father found out she was pregnant, he told her to find a boyfriend.This was so someone else could “take responsibility” for the child she was carrying, the Banjarbaru police chief said.However, she failed to find a boyfriend within the next two months."

52% of Israeli Jews agree: African migrants are 'a cancer' - "Fifty-two percent of Jewish Israelis identify with the statement by MK Miri Regev last month that African migrants are “a cancer in the body” of the nation, and over a third condone anti-migrant violence... 33.5 percent of Jews and 23 percent of Arabs identified with recent acts of violence against African migrants perpetrated by demonstrators and residents of South Tel Aviv"

Most Israelis don't want non-Jewish migrants, even if they are highly skilled - "The majority of Israelis don’t support non-Jewish immigration to the country, even when the immigrants are highly trained or have advanced degrees... 51 percent of Israelis oppose high-skilled immigration of foreigners moving to the country with a bachelor’s degree or higher. The Pew poll focused on immigration of those not entitled to Israeli citizenship under the law of return, which applies to anybody with at least one Jewish grandparent. Out of the 12 economically advanced countries surveyed, only Israel and Italy had the majority of the population oppose high-skilled immigration. In contrast, most of the other countries surveyed supported high-skilled immigration. In the US, 78% of the public supports high-skilled immigration. In the United Kingdom, 85% of the population support high-skilled immigration. More than three out of four adults in Sweden, Canada, Germany, and Australia also support high-skilled immigration... Even among people who would like to see overall immigration reduced, half or more of the respondents in all the countries support high-skilled immigration, except for the Netherlands, Israel, and Italy... Despite Israel’s overall opposition to immigration, the country has the highest percentage of immigrants with higher education among the countries surveyed, when including Jewish immigration. Almost half, or 49% of foreign-born adults over age 25 in Israel have a graduate degree, compared to just 35% of the native-born population.That is a similar ratio to the UK, which also has 49% of foreign-born adults with advanced degrees, compared to 37% of native-born adults. In contrast, just 36% of foreign-born adults in the US hold a secondary degree, compared to 40% of the native-born population."

BBC reported only three of 149 terror attacks in Israel in August, says media watchdog - "Between January and August 2019, the BBC News website reported 25.7 percent of the terror attacks against Israel and 80 percent of the resulting fatalities"

Luke Flowers on Twitter - "At my daughter’s school it’s medieval day. Everyone else wore Disney princess dresses or homemade knight costumes. THIS KID marches to his own drum. #plaguedoctor respect"

Tosh Zhang - "Why girls with long hair like to fantasize about cutting their hair short and after they do they be like “I miss my long hair”"

1/1024th Liberty Memes - Posts - "Tanning salons could be targeting gay men by opening in LGBT neighborhoods, putting them at risk of cancer"
"Could it be that market forces are leading tanning salon owners to open salons in LGBT communities? No, clearly those tanning salon owners just want to give cancer to they gayz. Obviously. 🤦‍♂️"
Comments: "So a business opened in an area where the demand for the service it provides is very high. Interesting."
"Now do Planned Parenthoods in minority neighborhoods."
"Supply and demand is too advanced of a concept for journalists. You have to keep it simple."
"If you keep walking in, maybe you brought that cancer upon yourself 🤷🏻"
"Man... who knew that these salons are forcing men to get a tan?"

Gad Saad - "As I explain in my forthcoming book, ALL ROADS LEAD TO BIGOTRY. Too many tanning salons => bigotry; Not enough tanning salons => bigotry. There needs to be the exact same number of tanning salons across all neighborhoods, otherwise bigotry. Back in 2006, I published a paper on the evolutionary roots of sun tanning behavior (with a dermatologist as a coauthor). Clearly, we were bigoted because neither authors was a member of the LBGTQ community."

Gentle_Ezenwanyi on Twitter - "Today I slapped a man and he slapped me back People , this guy legit slapped me back How dare you slap a woman back ? How dare you?"
Feminism!

LPT: When making a sex tape, play Disney music in the background. That way, if it gets leaked online, Disney attorneys will have them all taken down. : LifeProTips

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Monday's business with Dominic O'Connell - "‘I think what businesses faced with uncertainty are attracted by in France are the government's program of structural reform. It's already showing results. But the main reform has been made reforms could list a few: labor market flexibility, lower rates of corporate and personal taxation, reform of the unemployment benefits scheme, root and branch reform of the public sector’
‘Because I think a lot of UK businesses listening to this will be quite cynical, they've heard about French labor market reform before, never quite seems to happen.’
‘Well, actually, it is happening, and it shows up in the figures with unemployment going down. To France today has growth, the highest level of growth within the European Union. So these results are clearly there to be seen and forget about cliches. If you look at reality, France has consistently been one of the great recipients of inward investment. And indeed, foreign companies make up 12 or 13% of our labor force, but they account for a quarter to a third of exports and research and development. So they come to France, for good reason to do highly, high value added tasks and they find a highly trained, highly productive labor force.’
‘What makes the difference? If a big company is thinking of moving a facility to, out of the UK for any reason? What makes the difference between them choosing, say Germany or Ireland or France? Is it tax? Or is it? Is it access to skilled workers? Or is it something else?’
‘I don't think it's moving out of the UK so much. You should think of it as terms of emphasis and balancing risks. When faced with Brexit uncertainty, businesses, I'll take the example of research and development facilities. It's key to those businesses that the be able to attract very highly skilled, multinational staff. The, any restraint on the freedom of movement and labor movement is a source of uncertainty. So they'll look at that. Now, specifically, what they will look for is the quality of labor, the quality of university facilities. Now you talk about tax. Actually, these issues are not all about money. They're about HR, they're about soft issues. Whenever-’
‘You need to have fun, somewhere to put your children to school’
‘Exactly. In my experience as a businessman, whenever you ask someone to move countries, the first question they ask is not about their pay. It's where the kids going to school and where is my significant other, partner, spouse, whatever, going to find a job. And if you move to a city like Paris, well you will find an Italian lycee, a Spanish school and the odds are that your partner in an audit firm, in a major R&D centre or in another highly skilled labor will find a job because we are Europe's other world city.’"

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Private tuition - "More than one in four secondary school pupils has had private tuition to help with exams. So says the Sutton trust, the education charity. Their research suggests that the figure is down from two years ago, but it still seems pretty high, and they're calling for action."
Meanwhile, in East Asia...

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Calling out racism - "[On Naga Munchetty, a BBC journalist, being censured for criticising Trump] 'The issue on which the finding was made was not her responding to that clearly racist comment, or responding personally to what it's like, as a person of colour, to have a remark of that nature directed against yourself. All of us, I'm sure can understand how would feel if we were told that by somebody when we come from an ethnic minority or an immigrant community... the issue is about when she went on further to discuss President Trump himself. What his motivations were for that, and that reached our impartiality requirements, because it says very clearly in our editorial guidelines that our audiences should not be able to tell from the BBC output, the personal opinions of our journalists or news and current affairs presenters on matters of public policy, political or industrial controversy. So the line is not about calling out racist comments, which is perfectly acceptable where things are clearly framed in racist language. It's about how you go on then to discuss the person who made them and make assumptions or remarks about that... In the politics of the present, where we are into politics of name calling, and of insult, and so on, and so forth, I think it's probably unwise of the BBC, to get ourselves into a position where we're calling out people for being liars or being racist, or being this or that'...
‘The worry people have here, I think is quite simply that middle aged white men on a nameless committee have caused embarrassment, a certain degree of professional damage to a woman of colour on the TV, who simply emotionally said, this is how it affects me.’
‘Yeah, and there's nothing wrong with her telling the audience how it affects her. As we've already said, that's not the import of the decision that was made. It's been widely misinterpreted, perhaps willfully misinterpreted in some respects’"
If it's unacceptable to tell people to go back and come back later, does that mean people of colour in the US should never leave the country?
Ironically, liberals say that if you can't do the job you were hired to do (e.g. if you are a healthcare worker who doesn't want to perform abortions) you should be fired. Really, they mean that you shouldn't be able to bring non-liberal convictions onto the job

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Tuesday's business with Dominic O'Connell - "‘In Silicon Valley, there's this very much espoused view of, you know, in order to disrupt industries, in order to really overturn the existing order, you kind of have to push the boundaries and break the rules. So back in the day for, let's say, PayPal, it was just sort of pushing against banking industry regulations. And for Uber, it was essentially systematically going into cities drumming up a lot of demand for these ride hailing services, getting drivers to sort of put their necks on the line and drive in some cases illegally, or at least against the rules, their own cars, and push back against the taxi industry. And take that in one city, and they multiplied it probably, you know, hundreds of times over the entire world and local government wasn't really able to stop them or do anything in time, because it was a real blitzkrieg attack on every city pushing in.
‘Uber went further. And again, your book reminded me of this, and I'd slightly forgotten about it. They had this system called Greyball, which wasn't just breaking the local taxi rules or transportation rules, but going out of their way to dig up information on those local officials who were meant to be enforcing the rules, and find ways to stop them enforcing rules, which is quite incredible’
‘It was a trip... they hired a bunch of ex CIA, NSA, FBI contractors to essentially follow transportation officials and law enforcement officials in different cities. And Greyball was the software tool they came up with to block them from using the app. So once they figured out where these officials were, they could attach this piece of code. If the official was trying to pick up an Uber and then pull the person over and arrest them, they wouldn't be able to even do that. It was really crazy. And some lawyers I spoke to thought it might have been obstruction of justice.’
‘Well, it's obviously obstruction of justice. But if you fast forward to now, nothing much has happened on the back of all that’...
‘They got a new like top dog lawyer from the Justice Department in the US. And he basically settled the numerous investigations from the Department of Justice that were into Uber settled for a couple hundred million dollars, I believe. And a lot of that stuff kind of went away.’"

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Iran's relationship with the West - "We obey the law and we obey court rulings. But what we won't do is link it to the release of a hostage, because if you do that, you then encourage countries like Iran to take hostages in the future when they have another dispute. And Iran is one of the only countries in the world that seeks to settle its diplomatic disputes by hostage taking. And what we need to do now is to come together with all the other countries that are suffering from this problem and say, we are going to act together. And when Iran chooses to take hostages, we're going to make sure that the price is too high. And I think that is the only way that we're going to get Nazanin home."

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Tuesday's business with Dominic O'Connell - "[On Netflix] When people ask where did the idea come from, they're usually looking for that kind of epiphany moment. Newton under the apple tree or something like that. But the reality is that ideas don't spring fully formed. And Netflix was no different. This one actually came from a series of carpools that my co founder Reed Hastings and I were doing over a period of two or three months, when we realized that we were both soon going to be out of a job. One of the ideas we got very excited about was actually video rental by mail. And so rather than rushing home and writing a business plan, or going to the office and doing a PowerPoint presentation, Reed and I went to a used music store and bought a used music CD, and then went a few doors down and bought a little pink gift envelope. We put the CD in the envelope and mailed it to Reed's house in Santa Cruz. And if there ever really was an aha moment in the Netflix story, it probably was the next morning when Reed held up an unbroken CD that had gotten to his house in less than a day for the price of a postage stamp"