"The happiest place on earth"

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

Saturday, March 05, 2022

Links - 5th March 2022 (2 - Feminism)

Claudia Goldin: What’s “Greedy Work” and Why Is It a Problem? - Freakonomics - "She spent almost 50 years researching the experience of women in the labor market...
LEVITT: You are probably the world’s leading expert on the experience of women in the U.S. labor market... If you had to take the full gap — and how much of that overall gender gap is coming because men and women have selected different occupations?
GOLDIN: From the calculations that I’ve done it’s about, I don’t know, between 25 and 30 percent. So, it’s much, much smaller than you would have thought...
LEVITT: So, what does explain the remaining two-thirds of the gender wage gap, if it’s not different choices of professions?
GOLDIN: So, it’s really driven almost entirely by this notion of greedy work and hours... if you double the hours, you more than double the hourly wage. And we see that, for example, in work that I’ve done on lawyers. You can see that lawyers working in firms that have much longer hours also have richer clients. And in addition, the penalty that we identify for any time out is enormously large. So, M.B.A. women and M.B.A. men, both of them take a huge hit if they take time off. But it may not be number of hours, it may be which hours. So, you might work, let’s say 50 hours a week, and someone else might work 50, but they’re on call. They’re on call at night. They’re on call on the weekends. If the supervisor says, “Jump,” they jump. And that seems to be another way of defining greedy work. So, they’re getting more per hour, not because they’re putting in necessarily more hours, they’re putting in particular hours.
LEVITT: And always outside of their control —
GOLDIN: That’s right. Outside of their control. Or they controlled the fact that they decided that they were going to work a somewhat inflexible schedule.
LEVITT: And another piece of greedy work I would imagine is travel — business travel — where you’re just told, “Oh, you have to be in Atlanta at 3 p.m. on the 24th.” And you just go to Atlanta and you don’t say, “Oh, no, I actually can’t because I don’t have childcare,” — you just show up in Atlanta.
GOLDIN: Yeah. And Atlanta’s close. Tokyo is much farther.
LEVITT: And what about discrimination? What amount does that account for?
GOLDIN: There are people who’ve come up with evidence that could account for maybe 20 percent of the difference. But if someone has their point to make, they’re going to emphasize that it accounts for more than perhaps someone else might. I don’t think we have hard, hard evidence on that, but we have a very good sense that women move into parts of the occupation that give them the flexibility and they pay for it.
LEVITT: Let’s say you had a magic bullet that could immediately wipe out gender-based discrimination in labor markets. My reading of your research is you don’t think that would matter very much. That’s not really at the heart of why women and men are earning differently.
GOLDIN: Yeah. I think it matters in the sense that it would make people feel better...
LEVITT: So, I want to give a little quiz to my listeners. Okay listeners, two questions. Question No. 1: in what year do you think the University of Chicago Department of Economics first gave tenure to a female professor? Okay. So, take a minute and think about that. And then Question Two: in what year did the Harvard department of economics first grant tenure to a female economist? If your guesses are locked in, then I want to see how Claudia does in this quiz. So, Claudia, let’s start with the U. of C. When was a woman first tenured in the economics department there?
GOLDIN: I believe it was Hazel Kyrk. I think it was like 1924.
LEVITT: Okay. 1924. Okay. So, how about Harvard — renowned for its thought leadership and progressive values? When was the first woman granted tenure in economics there?
GOLDIN: 1990.
LEVITT: And who would that be?
GOLDIN: Me...
LEVITT: Economists believe in markets?
GOLDIN: Yes. Historians believe more in power relations. That doesn’t mean that we don’t believe in some power relations, but most importantly, we believe in markets. And by and large, for most historians, this is a form of dark magic. We are sorcerers. For them, there are people and people engage in power relationships. That is the essence of the difference. I bring to history — to my understanding of history — this notion of the market. Of course, we know the market works, but the market is in the vapors. You can’t touch it. You can’t feel it. You can’t read it. You can’t find it in an archive why the price changed. The other big difference is that we want causality and this change in history, we can think of it as when Bob Fogel wrote his book on the railroads and how that set history on fire, because he took the writings of historians who said, “The railroads were essential to American economic growth,” — that simple statement — And he turned it around as a logical statement. And he said, “Therefore, what you’re saying is if not the railroads then not economic growth. So, I will remove all the railroads. And I will show you that there would have been economic growth because everything is marginal. Even something as large as the railroads, I can make into a marginal decision.”"
Another expert for liberals, especially feminists, to ignore since they want to perpetuate their myth of oppression

Meme - ruby x @rs1602xx: "feminism out the window when war breaks out btw "
RS @xxoorita: "im sorry but if happens my feminism has left the chat fri would rather stay in the kitchen, feed my family & get cheated on"
Giselle @giselle_romani3: "My feminists days will be over as soon as a war starts. Us ladies are staying home doing the cooking and cleaning where we belong."
kayweenie @ohnokaylee: "women are meant to be in the kitchen cooking. women are meant to do housework and take care of the children. don't be silly. modern society is really pushing extra work on women, when the only goal is to have children and care for them and their husbands. women don't go to war"
Feminism is a phenomenon of late capitalism. When real trouble comes along, it is irrelevant

BDM🦅 on Twitter - "I find it very abusive to put pressure on men to provide us with a life we cannot provide for ourselves as women. As much as women are not rehabilitation centres for badly raised men, Men are not poverty eradication plans for lazy women."
Reply: "I look forward to a future when this is a valid argument. I don’t think it’s valid right now when we’ve only just begun to undo the damage of systematic oppression of women, lack of access to education, glass ceilings, unfair pay scales, lack of respect and even unsafe workplaces" Just as the Party needs power because the Revolution is not safe, but the Revolution will never be safe, so too will grievance mongers never admit if/when their claims of oppression are no longer valid

Meme - "It's degrading to ruin your body for a man's children."
"MyFreeCams Niceguy69 tipped 10,000 tokens: Please stick a dozen eggs in your anus. Thanks princess :)"

Mayor Bowser receives backlash on auto theft tweet days after deadly carjacking - "Mayor Bower's Twitter account released a short video on tips to prevent auto thefts.  "Auto theft is a crime of opportunity""
Car theft culture strikes again!

Milo Yiannopoulos Australia visit: Why speaker is a threat to the outrage industry - "some feminist activists are Yiannopoulos’s equals in the obnoxiousness stakes, although they enjoy greater freedom to exercise that right. “I felt sick at the thought of something male growing inside me,” wrote teacher and Daily Life columnist Polly Dunning last year as she reflected on her pregnancy. “How will I raise a son who respects me the way a daughter would?” Well for starters, how about not detesting him because of his gender?  “Toxic masculinity makes it sound like there is some other kind,” wrote Fairfax columnist, journalism academic and co-founder of feminist movement ‘Destroy the Joint’ Jenna Price last year.  “When our first daughter was born my husband and I made a family rule: no man would ever babysit our children,” wrote Daily Life columnist Kasey Edwards in February. “No exceptions. This includes male relatives and friends.”  “I know it’s sexist,” wrote journalist and feminist activist Tracey Spicer in 2014. “But I don’t want my kids sitting next to a man on a plane.” According to her website, she is “renowned for the courage of her convictions, passion for social justice, and commitment to equality.”  And who could forget Daily Life and Fairfax columnist Clementine Ford, who has a habit of publicly disparaging fellow women who question her brand of feminism? On ABC television this year she brazenly labelled Daily-Telegraph columnist Miranda Devine a “c**t”. Her abuse also involves racist sneers. “No matter how hard she tries, she’ll never be a white man,” tweeted Ford in 2015 in reference to Herald-Sun columnist and Iranian immigrant Rita Panahi. Despite this, Fairfax continues to feature Ford. Yet only this week The Age criticised Yiannopoulos, “a self-proclaimed troll … who uses outrageous claims, racist slurs and vilification to provoke a response.” His supporters, proclaimed the editorial, are “merely gormless twits being used by a stupid narcissist. They themselves are being trolled, but fail to see the irony.” Oh the irony.  As Yiannopoulos cheerfully acknowledges, his provocative assertions are designed to expose the hypocrisy of the tolerance police. For those who make a living out of the outrage industry, he represents a real threat to their sustainability. And for those automatons who believe an individual’s philosophy is defined by their race, gender and sexuality, they are experiencing a ‘Does not compute’ meltdown, triggered by Yiannopoulos.  The only thing that could dissolve Milo is the milk of human kindness. But his most virulent critics wouldn’t know what that was, even if they were swimming in it."

saira rao on Twitter - "White women adore Nancy Pelosi. Nancy Pelosi is white feminism. White feminism is white supremacy."

Homer. The Odyssey – Bryn Mawr Classical Review - "Wilson has put gender at the center of her interpretation of the poem, arguing that she avoids falling into the misogynistic traps that ensnared earlier male translators, who were unwilling or unable to showcase Odysseus’ ambiguous traits or to check their own disdain of female characters, in particular the female slaves slaughtered by Telemachus. She thus presents herself as a different kind of translator, one who not only engages with the Greek text, but who also corrects the misconceptions and prejudices of her predecessors, and she often presents her choices in moral terms: “in my version of the hanging of the slave women, I aim to invite genuine empathy rather than an objectifying thrill; while other translators call their death “piteous” or “pitiful,” in my version we glimpse their pain, not the feeling of a spectator: it is “an agony” (86). Wilson translates ὅπως οἴκτιστα θάνοιεν (literally “so they would die in the most pitiful way,” 22.473) with “to make their death an agony.” Wilson implies that other translators objectified the women with their word choices, but the superlative adverb οἴκτιστα does mean “most pitifully.” The word is used just a few times in the poem, always to describe deaths that are horrifying. This is how Agamemnon describes his own murder (ὣς θάνον οἰκτίστῳ θανάτῳ 11.413; repeated by Achilles describing Agamemnon’s death at 24.35), and Odysseus remembers watching his men being grabbed by Scylla as “the most pitiful thing” his eyes ever looked on 12.258-9. Wilson captures that moment beautifully with “the most heartrending sight I saw / in all the time I suffered on the sea” (Eurylochus also describes death by starvation as “most pitiful” at 12.343, while Eurykleia invites Penelope to kill her with a “most pitiful” death at 23.80). After reading Wilson’s eloquent case for naming slaves slaves, I was also surprised to see the word “girls” repeated seven times in the space of thirty-five lines or so where the Greek text describes them as women (γυναῖκες) twice and slaves (δμῳαί) three times. Is “girls” also meant to make the women more sympathetic by emphasizing their youth? Wilson captures the “agony” of the killing of the slaves, but in the process she loses the thread that connects the deaths of the women to those of Odysseus’ men and Agamemnon, a series of deaths that invite questions about those responsible for them and the role of pity in what is often a pitiless poem.Many have commented on Wilson’s now well-known move to translate the epithet πολύτροπος in the first line of the poem with the adjective “complicated.” Like “lord of lies” for πολύμητις, Odysseus’ other common epithet, “complicated” zooms in on the potentially negative aspect of the word. This is useful in accentuating the hero’s ambiguity, something that is deeply imbedded in the Greek language, and so crucial to the proem. But there is also a danger in losing that very ambiguity: the cleverly alliterative “lord of lies” works well at the beginning of Odyssey 9, reminding us of Odysseus’ skill at deceiving just before Odysseus starts recounting his adventures, but metis cannot be equated only with skill at lying: like polytropos, polymetis implies a kind of complexity that contains both negative and positive elements. Wilson brings out the potentially negative aspects of these epithets (and the hero), but in so doing, she also does some of the interpretative work that the original—along with some translations—lets its audience do for themselves."

Women, Men and Interruptions: A Critical Review - "Within the language and gender literature one of the findings most widely cited as well established is that men interrupt women more than women interrupt men... This chapter will show that a review of studies appearing between 1965 and 1991 and dealing with gender differences in the use of interruptions does not support this conclusion; most research has found no significant difference between the genders in number of interruptions initiated, in either cross-sex or same-sex interaction"

Milla Jovovich: 'I had sex with sleazy older men but don't call me a victim' - "Milla Jovovich was hit on by “sleazy older guys” when she was younger but will never call herself a #MeToo victim.  The Resident Evil star admits she did get together with some older suitors as she was starting out as a model, but she doesn’t hold any “anger” towards the situation or the people involved, because she was “having fun and experiencing different people.”"

Cardi B explains why she 'drugged and robbed' men - "Cardi B has defended herself after a video resurfaced of her saying she drugged and robbed men who wanted to have sex with her while she worked as a stripper before finding fame... The Grammy-winner also pointed out that there are rappers who "glorify murder, violence, drugs and robbing"."
Presumably it is worse to speak positively about crimes in a hypothetical context than to actually do them
Strange how liberal never criticise rap, but are so against "rape culture"

Joakim Gomez on Twitter - "I really don’t want to pull the gender card here but if it were a male artiste who said this...he would most DEFINITELY be cancelled by social sentiment. What’s going to happen now? Is this okurr? #SurvivingCardiB"

The Screen - Posts | Facebook - "Trump: *talks about consensually touching women's vaginas*
Feminists: OMFG HE'S A RAPIST IMPEACH HIM THIS IS PATRIARCHY AND RAPE CULTURE REEE
Cardi B: *talks about drugging, robbing and probably raping countless men*
Feminists: SO EMPOWERING! STUNNING! BRAVE! AMAZING!
Feminists are such damn hypocrites."

Why Ivanka Trump’s new haircut should make us very afraid | Ivanka Trump | The Guardian - Arwa Mahdawi, 18 Sep 2019
The uproar over AOC's hair is a reminder that women can't win under the patriarchy | Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez | The Guardian - Arwa Mahdawi, 12 Oct 2019
Being a political hack means you have a short term memory and know your sympathisers do too

Meme - "Wow. I don't know how to respond to what you just said, so I'll just call you an incel because having sex is the only unit of value I understand."
It is telling that feminists use this insult on men so much

WNBA crossroads: league looks to cut losses, hire president - "The WNBA says it has lost significant money the last 22 years, including $12 million last season."
Clearly this means WNBA players need to be paid as much as NBA players. And if you shut the WNBA, this will be structural violence against women

Study suggests that men and women actually prefer not to split household and childcare tasks equally - "women enjoyed childcare tasks more than men did and also reported a greater desire for responsibility for these tasks compared to men... As the researchers emphasize, not one childcare task was rated more enjoyable by men than women... Gender differences were again revealed when it came to household tasks. Among both samples, men enjoyed tasks to do with outdoor labor and home maintenance more than women did. Women preferred cleaning, food prep, family scheduling, and home decorating. Moreover, this pattern mirrored the way the participants wanted these tasks to be divided — women tended to prefer men to take care of home maintenance tasks and men preferred women to take care of home decorating tasks. The participants were also asked to indicate along a scale whether they would prefer to be the breadwinner within a partnership, the homemaker, or to share these roles equally. Across both samples, although 56% of men and 56% of women chose the egalitarian option, 36% of women chose a response closer toward homemaker and 35% of men chose a response closer toward breadwinner. The researchers say that while the gender disparity in family roles is typically viewed as a burden on women, their study suggests that the situation is more nuanced than that. Unequal role sharing might not signal unfair treatment or cause resentment among couples"

The More Chores A Husband Does, The More Likely The Marriage Will End In Divorce - "Couples may be better off living in a "traditional" household where women do all the housework if they want to stay together, according to a report from the Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Science... the correlation could be because couples are happier when they have clearly-defined roles in the relationship where people aren't stepping on each other's toes"

The Husband’s Job Is the Best Predictor of Divorce - "Despite the myths you might have heard, half of American first marriages don’t end in divorce. In reality, about a third do, down from the divorce surge of the 1970s and 1980s, though second and third marriages are much more vulnerable. Recent marriages are doing particularly well thus far: Just 15 percent of the Americans who tied the knot since 2000 have decided to get it undone within the first eight years of marriage.  The predictors of divorce, however, remain mysterious. But in a new study published in the American Sociological Review, Harvard sociologist Alexandra Achen Killewald has found that the things that increase the probability of divorce — as they relate to work, at least — have changed over the past couple decades. It turns out that the amount of money that either the husband or wife makes isn’t that important: For contemporary couples, the biggest determinant is whether the husband is working full-time...   Particularly, the money you’re bringing in is less important to your marriage stability than the unpaid or paid work that you do. This is because of the “symbolic content” that work carries for people"

Research shows that women are more likely to get divorced shortly after a promotion - and that's not always a bad thing - "married women were twice as likely to divorce three years after a CEO-level promotion when compared to male colleagues. Additionally, researchers examined three decades of worker records in the public sector and found women elected to public office were almost twice as likely to divorce following a successful election. Female physicians, members of law enforcement, and clergy who earned major promotions also followed the trend."
Of course, the article blames the men, because women have no agency, despite being the ones who initiate divorces
Feminists love divorce after all

Being rich may increase your odds of divorce

Divorce and the 'Silver Bullet' - "In the back rooms of the sausage factories where divorce is made, the silver bullet is an open secret. Some unscrupulous divorce lawyers even recommend it to their clients. False allegations may be employed by either parent, but, given the prevailing winds of culture, the gun is far more often in the hand of a woman. Such a claim might be controversial to some, but not among many lawyers working within the system. “It’s almost as if the Constitution is suspended in family court,” says Melissa Isaak, a veteran family lawyer in the state of Alabama who heads a firm that specializes in defending men embroiled in contested divorce. “People don’t understand that in the family law arena, domestic violence is used as a tool. Essentially the silver bullet is the best way to destroy your opponent and win the game…and women use this far more than men, in my experience.”... The data indicate that women are as likely as or more likely than men to introduce violence into a relationship. For example, recent surveys have found that an equal percentage of men and women reported being the victim of partner violence in the past year. Uni-directional violence is directed at men 70 percent of the time. Mothers kill their children at about the same rate as fathers... In the US, for example, mothers initiate divorce 69 percent of the time (for educated women it’s 90 percent) and wind up with custody of the children at least 82.5 percent of the time. There is also growing gender symmetry in finances. Today more than 66 percent of US families are dual income, and the woman makes more than her spouse in 37 percent of families. Additionally, proper scrutiny of the wage gap shows that it has closed to the point of being negligible. Yet, despite this financial parity, fathers continue to pay more than 85 percent of child support, and when mothers are ordered to pay, they fail to do so more often. The no-fault divorce laws that swept through most of Western society in the 1970s and ‘80s made divorce much easier and fairer for women. But these laws had another effect. Today, an estimated one in three American kids live without their biological father in the home. In 1960, eight percent of children lived in a home with only their biological mother and today more than 23 percent do. These numbers raise an interesting question: Does this level of fatherlessness matter? The answer is indisputably that it does... At a time when modern fathers are bombarded by messages about the deeply corrosive effects of “toxic masculinity,” they are confronted with a family law system rife with outdated gender ideas every bit as sexist as those faced by women in other arenas, past and present; a system that sometimes seems downright hostile to their efforts to be active and effective dads. Many fathers now gaze upon the growing excesses of the #MeToo movement on college campuses and in corporate boardrooms and wonder why no one listened as they sounded the alarm about the weaponization of #believewomen in the family courts. Similarly, while journalists rightly alert us to policies like the American immigration laws causing the split of a few hundred migrating families at the country’s southern border and urge us to empathize with the psychological trauma of parent-child separation, there seems to be much less interest in family laws doing the same to hundreds of thousands of parents and children as a matter of course... American men kill themselves almost 4 times more than women in regular circumstance. But fathers who have become ensnared in the divorce system kill themselves eight times more"

William Costello on Twitter - "The "not all men but we don't know which men" discourse seems a bit morally bankrupt to me. It appears to justify prejudice. We quickly recognise this if we apply it to any other group judged by the extreme actions of a minority."

Gender-neutral daughter wants pink: parenting advice from Care and Feeding. - "We’re Raising Our Daughter Gender-Neutral, but She Only Wants Pink Dresses Where did we mess up?...
[My husband] gets annoyed when dresses get tangled while climbing a rock or running and says that dresses and accessories aren’t suitable for doing most things. I appreciate his commitment to raising our daughter without gender stereotypes"
"It often seems to be the case that eschewing “traditional gender norms” involves identifying things that are coded as girly or feminine as bad... I think you’re missing the blatant sexism in “dresses and accessories aren’t suitable for doing most things.” I wear dresses and accessories nearly every day, as do millions of people of varying gender identities across the globe; I assure you, we do “most things” with ease.It seems to be that the goal for shielding a child from gendered clothing and activities would be to allow them to define their identity without having it assigned to them by their parents and society at large. But the “gender-neutral” clothing you have selected has led to your daughter being misgendered for a reason, and that’s because what we consider “neutral” in terms of gender often defaults to a masculine norm. “Boys clothes” are for everyone. “Girls clothes” are for girls. Additionally, there are many games and activities that can be played in dresses and even heels, so that these “girly” clothes are considered impractical suggests that the “gender-neutral” things you are choosing for your daughter to do may also fall along the lines of what would usually be labeled “boy stuff.” Is masculinity more neutral than femininity? Also, you’re worried that trying to direct her away from pink princess dresses will only make her like them more, but what’s the big deal if she does? Are you of the opinion that tulle skirts are inextricable from a damsel-in-distress worldview? Is this just fear that your daughter will have starkly different interests from you guys?... To free her from dress-wearing as an obligation is noble; to code dresses as some sort of deplorable relic of a time gone by is just out of step with reality. Without saying it intentionally, it seems as though your version of gender-neutral is casting a negative light on traditional femininity"
When liberals say "gender neutral", they don't mean "gender neutral" but have a rigid idea of what is proper
This speaks to feminist misogyny, since they always use men as the benchmark

Secret Facebook Bad Girls Advice brags domestic violence - "The posts show women discussing domestic violence situations in detail after one member asked the other women what the most violent act committed against their partner was... One woman admitted to hitting her partner with her car 'all because it was Halloween and I felt bad that I didn't buy lollies for the kids'.Another member also admitted to ramming her partner with a car.'Hit him with my car then made him pay for the damage,' she said.Her comment was praised by other members who claimed it was their 'favourite'... The confronting conversation was shared on Thursday by domestic violence support group the Black Ribbon Foundation Australia.'And people wonder why we have a problem in this country,' it said.'Ask yourself, had it been female victims being spoken about, would they have been so blasé?'"
The Duluth Model means that they're all really victims

Meme - "Looks like the guy next to me on the plane is a manspreader in recovery"
" have never seen a well mannered man on a plane - enjoy!"
"Actually people with Tourettes and epilepsy wear those to stop themselves from kicking people when they have episodes. You're literally making fun of a disabled person because you looked at this guy and all you could see was "male" and you fucking HAD to make it about you"

Statistics Canada on Twitter - "In 2018, 9.8% of female Internet users aged 15 and older reported that they had been victims of incidents over the Internet, such as #bullying and #harassment (compared with 10.7% of male users). Do your part and say #NoToBullying! #PinkShirtDay"
Feminist logic: if men suffer more from a certain phenomenon than women, that just shows that women are victims and we live in a structurally sexist society
No one cares about online harassment against men, even though it's more common than online harassment against women. If men are harassed more often than women, it's because they deserve it

Meme - "ARE YOu a FEMINIST?"
"No"
"THEN YOU'RE a MISOGYNIST! FEMINISM IS ABOUT EQUALITY!"
"ARE You a MEN'S RIGHTS ACTIVIST?"
"NO "
"THEN BY YOuR LoGIC I COULD CALL You a MISANDRIST"
"OH MY FUCKING GOD FUCK OFF You EVIL FUCKING BIGOTED SEXIST PIG!!"

5-Yr-Old Boy With Autism Charged With "Sexual Activities" | Will Be Recorded As Sex Offender For Rest Of Life - "A five-year-old boy with autism was reportedly put on a record as a sex offender after hugging his classmate. Nathan, who attends East Ridge Elementary in Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA, was allegedly accused by teachers of ‘overstepping’ a boundary."
What the feminist hysteria about "sexual assault" leads to

Was what Jenny McCarthy did to Justin Bieber sexual assault? - The Globe and Mail - "If you missed it, check out this video of Jenny McCarthy mauling a hapless Justin Bieber at the American Music Awards Sunday night.Note the horrified expression on poor Bieber's face, as he struggles out of the model-comedian's grasp while she repeatedly kisses his neck and grabs his buttocks."I couldn't help it, he was just so delicious," McCarthy says.In a backstage interview with Access Hollywood, McCarthy, 40, further explained that "emotions … took over" and her attack on the 18-year-old pop star was all part of living out "a cougar fantasy maybe."Yikes. What's worth noting about this incident is the kind of reaction it has generated.Performer Pitbull suggested to Access Hollywood that Bieber should count himself lucky to be groped. "I wish Jenny McCarthy would have touched me like that," he said.Some online commenters echoed the sentiment, even going so far as to question Bieber's sexuality because he did not appear to enjoy it... Consider, for instance, if the roles were reversed and a 40-year-old male celebrity groped an 18-year-old starlet, and blamed it on "emotions" taking over. Surely that wouldn't fly."

The physical attractiveness of a male sexual "harasser" substantially determines if the experience is enjoyable or traumatic, according to women : PurplePillDebate - "Fairchild (2010) conducted an online survey on perceptions of sexual harassment (possibly as far as sexual assault) incidents of (N = 1,277) relatively young (mean age 28.11) women... the primary factors that determined how enjoyable or traumatic women found the experience to be were:
Physical Attractiveness: More attractive men most significantly increased women's enjoyment of the "harassment."
Age: Similar or younger age in relation to the participant increased women's enjoyment of the "harassment."
Race: Different race of the man made women more likely to rate it as traumatic.
Only 46% of women indicated that sexual harassment could not be made enjoyable. Therefore, it can be inferred that to the majority (54%) of women, sexual harassment could be made enjoyable, under the correct conditions."
The difference between flirting and sexual harassment is how attractive you are
Keywords: Sexual harassment can be pleasurable, Sexual harassment can be enjoyable, Sexual harassment is subjective, find sexual harassment pleasurable, find sexual harassment enjoyable

Meme - "Body Shaming is wrong and unacceptable"
"Gun Owners have Small Dicks"
Of course, what feminists mean is that body shaming *women* is wrong and unacceptable (till they meet a non-feminist woman)

Shitlords United - Posts | Facebook - "I'm still annoyed that Miss, Ms., & Mrs. exists.  Women are literally conditioned to broadcast their fuckability. It's on every legal document. Can't even sign for something online without checking one of those damn boxes.  I want to know why"
"Do these people not know what Ms. means? It’s the feminine equivalent to Mr., created by second wave feminists as a title that didn’t reflect marital status. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a modern feminist say this sort of thing."

Killer mother has 8½ years cut from her 'excessive' original jail term - "A mother who killed her three youngest children when she deliberately drove her car into a lake has had more than eight years cut from her original prison sentence following the latest legal challenge.Akon Guode repeatedly circled Lake Gladman in Wyndham Vale on April 8, 2015 before driving into the water with four of her children in the car. Four-year-old twins Madit and Hangar and 16-month-old Bol all drowned, while their older sister, then aged five, was rescued by passers-by"
Since feminists say we shouldn't send women to jail, any jail term is excessive

Mobs Of Women Protest Nation's Logging Companies For Equal Work | The Babylon Bee - "An overwhelming 99.1% of workers doing dangerous logging work are men! This is outrageous!"

Amber Heard charges $33k to give talks on domestic violence - "The Harry Walker Agency listed the "Aquaman" star as an "actress, activist, and humanitarian" who is a "Women's Rights Ambassador, ACLU, and Champion of the UN Human Rights Office." She is "an outspoken advocate for women's rights and for the civil rights of survivors of all gender-based violence around the world.""
SPOING!
Women are always victims. Even when they're guilty

Sam on Twitter - "It’s 2020, people constantly try to chat shit about Men’s mental health and try to tell men to speak up against their abusers. Yet one of the most known Men in the world just spoke up against his abuser and essentially lost his career. Fuck Amber Heard. #JusticeForJohnnyDepp"

Nick on Twitter - "Slap the word “insecurity” on anything that men don’t like & the internet will eat it up. Don’t wanna date a woman that sleeps around? Don’t want a woman that dresses a certain way? Ur masculinity is 'fragile'. It's like men can't have preferences without it being an insecurity"

Women-only professorships 'not discriminating against men', says Mitchell O'Connor - "THE CREATION OF female-only professorships in Irish third-level institutions is “not discriminating against men”, the Minister of State for Higher Education has said.   45 female-only additional professor positions were announced"
Sexism is gender equality
So given that fewer men get degrees...

Meme - "I feel like part of the issue is the idea that men are meant to be resilient. This surprised me: men commit suicide at a 3:1 to women, which is crazy 'cause it's better to be a dude
you get paid more, you get male privilege. You've got the patriarchy on your side. You don't menstruate!! lt's good! It's really good! Up until the age of 8 or 9, boys cry the same amount as girls and then they are taught to stop. They're not allowed anymore.
And it's ridiculous! and this fear of looking weak, or looking feminine or looking gay is stopping men from talking about their feelings.
And then they kill themselves"
Of course, the possibility that a key tenet of the religion - that men have it better - is false is not considered

Observations - 5th March 2022

Some people got upset when I asked if a guy fucking a FTM is gay

It looks like they think that it is gay for a man to fuck both a MTF and a FTM. Presumably that would apply the other way around too - it is gay for a woman to fuck both a MTF and a FTM

So straightness is presumably defined as fucking someone of the other sex who also identifies as the other sex

But then, I'm sure if the FTM stops identifying as a guy, they will still think it's gay to fuck it

So gender norms almost surely come into it too

As a friend commented, don't fuck flat girls unless they are very pretty, or you'll feel gay

 

Since many Americans love Imperial units so much and claim units divisible by 12 or 16 are superior to those divisible by 10 (i.e. metric), they should abandon base 10 for all their numbers and move to base 12 or 16

"In the end, I think the terrorists have won.They have driven Americans so mad with fear that they have effectively destroyed themselves. The US of 2001 has long ago ceased to exist. It is not recognisable today."

Whoever came up with the date format YYYY-DD-MM needs to be spanked

I drove around Northern Upstate New York for a few hours. The roads were Malaysian quality. Actually, Penang had better roads. Their excuse will be that harsh weather destroys the roads, but Canadian roads are of much better quality, and Californian roads are bad too


China-related topics probably make many ethnic Chinese emotional in a way that other political topics don't, because it touches on their identity. A deeper complication might be why the Chinese Communist Party is identified with, rather than a more abstract notion of Chineseness and/or China. This might have something to do with the conflation between Party, State and Nation (which has parallels in Singapore) and says something about the lack of modernity in Chinese political thought (or at least not modernity in the Western sense)

If you pay politicians poorly, most politicians will be rich people

With traditional religions you know there's little or no point arguing with people, and people have been socialised to backoff when it comes to the touchy topic of religion (with politics and sex, the issue is just of them being contentious - in principle one is thought to be able to change one's mind about the former, and in the latter discomfort or offence doesn't typically result from disagreement but being obscene). But with secular religions it's harder to realise you're bumping up against faith positions and threatening people's identities, so things can get a lot more fraught
 

 

"Hitler wasn't a white supremacist. He was a Nordic supremacist who believed that white Slavic peoples were subhuman"

"Many of the most enthusiastic opponents of Jews are leftist Jews, especially those seeking attention by trashing Jews “as a Jew.” Gilad Atzmon, Norm Finkelstein, Peter Beinart, the list goes on and on...
The biggest misconception that alt-right has about Jews is that they want borders “for thee but not for me (israel)”. What they simply don’t understand is that leftist Jews also oppose Israel, and many want a one-state solution turning Israel into the 24th ar*b m*slim country in the ME."

"They say liberals love humanity but hate humans. Conservatives hate humanity but love humans." 

 


"Some of our leaders and the media (looking at you, Vox) have peddled this notion that fear of Islamic terrorism is akin to fear of shark attacks - highly irrational and just an exercise in hysterics.

President Barack Obama has said that "terrorism takes far fewer lives in America than handguns, car accidents and falls in bathtubs," which is an attempt at rationalizing and calming the fears and anxiety of the nation. This game of statistical equivalence smacks of denial and is particularly concerning to me because of the failure to distinguish intent."

"I honestly think it will take a nuclear attack before these people take the threat seriously"

"Eventually a group of true believers will get a hold of a nuclear device, and such people will finally understand the world they live in and promptly shut the fuck up."

"I really don't think they will shut up; they will just mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I wish I was completely joking."



"the Nazis did everything they could to wipe Poland from the map as a political entity.

They didn't do this in Norway or Belgium, for example, where the Nazis at least maintained the basic machinery of a coherent state.

Poland on the other hand wasn't occupied so much as erased. And it's worth noting the Jews propotionately fared far worse in Eastern Europe, where the Nazis sought to eradicate those states, than they did in Western Europe.

A Belgian or French Jew was still nominally Belgian or French. A Polish Jew was literally an unperson."

 

Me: Well I guess A imagines that blocking me after grossly mischaracterising what I said proves that he won the argument

It's telling that his "mental health" is so fragile that someone pointing out his bad logic hurts it

B: It's always a sure sign your burn was sick. lol

Me: as [C] says, nowadays blocking a person says more about the blocker than the blockee 



"Indians are very good at complaining"

"i find tt they are very quick to pull out the "oppressed minority" card. i worked as a promoter, selling beer at a booth. some indians asked for extra free gifts while buying fewer products. when i refused, wat happened? im a racist, apparently  
i worked as a credit card promoter. one indian woman asked me the requirements so i just rattled off the list of documents. she was so offended she threatened to call the police on me. why? according to her, i had displeased her by not immediately assuming tt she alr held multiple credit cards   i noticed tt no other race wld ask for special treatment, not the chinese, not the angmohs, just the indians
and when they dun get special treatment, YOU are the racist  

they like to say "why? is it because im indian?"
idk how to reply"

Links - 5th March 2022 (1 - Covid-19)

Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts | Facebook - "Another disturbing story that highlights our society’s creeping authoritarianism.  Moderna operated for ten years without any profit, living off of investor’s money and hope that the company could produce groundbreaking drugs. That investment paid off when Moderna was able to create the most effective vaccine against Covid; its first product. Since then the company has cracked to set up manufacturing and distribution capabilities from scratch. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been saved by Moderna and its vaccine.  Now the politicians, wanting something for nothing, are threatening the company to produce and distribute millions of vaccines without any profit. The politicians, who are spending trillions as if they can just print the money, aren’t offering to fund their demands at market value.  Meanwhile Moderna has vaccines in testing for the flu and RSV. A MRNA flu vaccine could be produced much quicker than current flu vaccine technology, wouldn’t have the egg allergy problem, and would also be more effective. Millions more would be saved if these vaccines work and it’s funded by the profits of the Covid vaccine.  Government’s compelling private companies to produce products without profit kills investors desire to fund these startups. It’s one of the problems of fascism, though fascists usually allow a company to retain some profit for fulfilling the desires of the state."

Brumby on Twitter - "This poll confirms my suspicion that lockdowns are only supported by white liberal assholes. The problem is such demographic is largely in control of COVID policy. 57% of voters believe that lockdowns did more harm than good. The only category %lt;50% (at 37%) is white Dems."

Media Ignores 90% Coronavirus Death Collapse In Country
From Mid-2020. If it bleeds it leads

Frustrated Benoit Paire tests positive for COVID-19 again | Toronto Sun - "“Hello, my name is Benoit Paire and for the 250th time I am positive for COVID,” the frustrated Frenchman said on Twitter."
Clearly society needs to be shut down forever

Pro-trucker docs push to end COVID mandates | Toronto Sun - "Dr. Byram Bridle, Dr. Paul Alexander, and Dr. Roger Hodkinson have invited federal senior health officials, including Dr. Theresa Tam and Dr. Howard Njoo,  a health discussion.   Bridle wants to see the evidence used by federal officials in the decision to lock down the country during COVID-19...   “Since the beginning of this declared pandemic, Canadian experts in immunology, virology, epidemiology, evidence-based medicine, academic science, and clinical medicine have been asking to have a public debate regarding the science that has been used by public health to justify the restrictions and mandates.  “Given that the government claims we are in a state of emergency, we feel this discussion needs to be expedited and brought before the Canadian public...   The invitation comes at a time when other countries, such as the U.K., are dropping their COVID mandates.  The letter notes that Canada’s national media outlets are invited to the event, which will be livestreamed."

Weekend protests raise further questions about Toronto police vaccine stance - "Of all the videos tweeted during this weekend's tensions, none are more damning than a clip showing the aftermath of a police officer removing a protester, telling protesters that he "didn't want to" remove her and that the police are "neutral" and "right down the middle" on the matter."
To the left, if you are neutral you are biased. And when the police deal with their protests the same way, they get very upset and claim they're being brutalised

WARMINGTON: Protests OK. Why not shooting baskets in parks? | Toronto Sun - "It’s difficult to explain the need for locking churches in Ontario, taking down basketball nets, prohibiting live music, and closing schools, patios, and golf courses when thousands piled into a closed municipal square to chant, sing, wave flags and set off fireworks.  Many were not wearing masks and social distancing protocols appeared non-existent."
From May 2021

The Real Pandemic Was a Nursing Home Problem - "the New York Times reported that 54,000 deaths due to COVID-19 — 43% of all deaths in the United States — occurred in nursing home residents and workers... despite driving the U.S. economy into an artificial depression, destroying tens of thousands of businesses and the lives of millions of citizens, and elevating rates of domestic violence, divorce, substance abuse, and suicide, US government policies failed to protect the most vulnerable segment of the population: individuals in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities."

Coronavirus Lays Bare Poor Conditions in Canada’s Nursing Homes - WSJ

Israeli study offers strongest proof yet of vitamin D’s power to fight COVID - "Israel scientists say they have gathered the most convincing evidence to date that increased vitamin D levels can help COVID-19 patients reduce the risk of serious illness or death.  Researchers from Bar Ilan University and the Galilee Medical Center say that the vitamin has such a strong impact on disease severity that they can predict how people would fare if infected based on nothing more than their ages and vitamin D levels.  Lacking vitamin D significantly increases danger levels, they concluded in newly peer-reviewed research published Thursday in the journal PLOS One... “We checked a range of timeframes, and found that wherever you look over the two years before infection, the correlation between vitamin D and disease severity is extremely strong”"
Damn "misinformation"! This study needs to be retracted and anyone mentioning it banned from the internet because they are literally killing people Of course this has nothing to do with the "structural racism" that means black and brown people are more likely to have severe covid

Singapore, Hong Kong left behind as global travel rebounds, Government & Economy - THE BUSINESS TIMES - "The marquee transit hubs of Hong Kong and Singapore are being shunned as travellers seek to avoid weeks in hotel isolation on arrival or a raft of testing swabs. Airlines, which before the pandemic operated about 30,000 flights a month to the 2 Asian gateways, have slashed that number to just 4,514 in February, according to aviation data company Cirium... The uneven air-travel rebound is likely to continue for the rest of 2022 as countries in Europe and North and South America continue to reopen and Asian restrictions put off travellers...   “The 2-speed recovery is very evident,” he said. “A significant level of intra-Asia traffic touches China and with borders there likely to remain closed to international arrivals through late 2022, the recovery in Asia will inevitably be slower than other regions.”   Within Europe, flying will surpass 75 per cent of pre-pandemic levels next month, according to Cirium data from airline schedules. Inside the US, the figure will be 86 per cent.   Asia’s Covid curbs are choking the flow of visitors to the countries that need them most. Australia’s Jetstar recently delayed a resumption of flights to Bali from Melbourne and Sydney, citing the island’s 5-day quarantine requirement for vaccinated arrivals. “We look forward to flying into Bali when quarantine restrictions ease further,” said Jetstar, which is owned by Qantas Airways.  Thailand this month resumed quarantine-free tourism for vaccinated travellers. But the programme’s requirements for multiple tests, registration, and a certain baseline of insurance cover have drawn criticism. Thailand expects less than 10 million foreign visitors this year, down from 40 million before the virus... The number of scheduled flights into all of Asia from outside the region this month is a little more than half the total before the pandemic"

Who should get Covid-19 booster shots next in Singapore? - "Thousands of older people around the world have begun receiving Covid-19 booster shots to further protect them against infection and severe illness - especially as immunity has been shown to wane over time.  But should healthy young adults be next in line? While the jury is still out on that subject, some local scientists believe that the risks may currently outweigh the benefits...   For those with weakened immune systems, the data is clear. As they tend to produce fewer antibodies than healthy people after vaccination, a third shot is recommended.  The same logic applies to the elderly, who are also believed to have a lower immune response to the vaccine - although the scientific evidence for this proposition is less strong, said Professor Ooi Eng Eong of Duke-NUS Medical School's Programme in Emerging Infectious Diseases. He believes there is "no harm" in booster shots for this group, but cautioned against administering these jabs to younger adults, who tend to react more strongly.  "Already, the second dose gives quite a lot of side-effects," he said. "I'm not sure what a third dose is going to do."  The experts added that Singapore's eventual decision on whether to extend booster shots to most of the population will depend on what it hopes to achieve through vaccination.  If the goal is to keep people out of hospital, the standard two doses will sufficiently protect most people against severe disease, noted Associate Professor Hsu Li Yang, an infectious diseases expert at the National University of Singapore's Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health. But if Singapore wants to prevent infection altogether, it will have to make sure most people have high levels of antibodies. Doing so, however, comes with its drawbacks...   Is it possible to give booster shots every few months, in order to keep antibody levels high?  No, Prof Ooi said. "Keeping the immune system activated and seeing the same antigen has its price. The price is that the immune system can sometimes think that you are trying to educate it to tolerate this. That becomes a disaster."  This is similar to how food allergies can be treated by gradually exposing a person to increasingly larger amounts of the trigger food, until the body is completely desensitised to it.  In this case, however, the virus can wreak havoc if the immune system does not recognise it as a threat."
Of course, Singapore then extended covid apartheid to those without boosters

Austria to Repeal Almost All 'Corona Apartheid' Rules Targeting Unvaxxed - "In what amounts to a seismic u-turn in policy, Austria is to relax all ‘Corona Apartheid’ rules targetting the nation’s unvaccinated, despite having previously promised to keep unjabbed individuals under perpetual lockdown.  Austria’s coalition government has announced that the vast majority of lockdown measures in place in the country — including the almost all “Corona Apartheid” restrictions specifically targeting the nation’s unvaccinated — are to be scrapped from March 5... While Austria had already returned limited freedoms to the nation’s unvaccinated earlier in the year, this announcement marks a significant u-turn on the nation’s approach to dealing with unvaccinated individuals.  However, despite these relaxations, authorities still seem to remain adamant about its continued regime of forced vaccination.  Vaccination against the Chinese Coronavirus has been mandatory for all over-18s within the country since February 5, though the use of penalties — including fines of up to €3,600 — has yet to come into effect...   This reassurance that the rules are to be constantly reexamined comes hot on the heels of a report by Kronen Zeitung which claimed that the forced vax rules currently in place have not had a positive effect on vaccine uptake in the nation’s capital of Vienna.  According to the publication’s report — which was based off data received from a government official — there has been  “no mandatory vaccination effect – and if there is, then rather in the other direction”, with figures trending slightly downwards since the implementation of the measure."

Did the Commission take into account Pfizer’s history? - "Pfizer have been convicted a number of times in the United States for falsification of data, corruption and paying kickbacks. In 2016, the company was also fined GBP 84.2 million in the UK for overcharging for its epilepsy drug. And in 1996, Pfizer was accused of causing the death of 11 children in Nigeria and physiological damage to many others by testing an antibiotic on them. Wikileaks revealed in 2010 that Pfizer had sought evidence of corruption against the Nigerian Justice Minister to force him to drop the prosecution.  In the negotiations, did the Commission take into account Pfizer’s history and methods?"

Suspicions grow that nanoparticles in Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine trigger rare allergic reactions - "PEG has never been used before in an approved vaccine, but it is found in many drugs that have occasionally triggered anaphylaxis—a potentially life-threatening reaction that can cause rashes, a plummeting blood pressure, shortness of breath, and a fast heartbeat...   Pfizer's and Moderna's clinical trials of the vaccines, which involved tens of thousands of people, did not find serious adverse events caused by the vaccine. But both studies excluded people with a history of allergies to components of the COVID-19 vaccines; Pfizer also excluded those who previously had a severe adverse reaction from any vaccine. People with previous allergic reactions to food or drugs were not excluded, but may have been underrepresented.   The two vaccines both contain mRNA wrapped in lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) that help carry it to human cells but also act as an adjuvant, a vaccine ingredient that bolsters the immune response. The LNPs are "PEGylated"—chemically attached to PEG molecules that cover the outside of the particles and increase their stability and life span. PEGs are also used in everyday products such as toothpaste and shampoo as thickeners, solvents, softeners, and moisture carriers, and they've been used as a laxative for decades. An increasing number of biopharmaceuticals include PEGylated compounds as well.  PEGs were long thought to be biologically inert, but a growing body of evidence suggests they are not. As much as 72% of people have at least some antibodies against PEGs"

Emily Zanotti on Twitter - "How could Colbert lose to Gutfeld in the ratings with an act like this??"
"I would like to get unvaccinated now"
This is serious cringe. And they mock the right as "cultists"

Pfizer Gang Is Pfinished - The Atlantic - "In April, Nicholas was stoked to have gotten Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, the “status vaccine,” which was also the vaccine for “hot people,” and the vaccine that got a person conditionless admission to the “Pfizer Gang.” He made a new forum on Reddit—r/pfizergang, obviously—where people like him could engage in celebration and memes and funny jokes about how Pfizer was better than Moderna, but not make jokes containing misinformation, because Moderna is actually very good also, and everyone should get vaccinated. There was to be no anti-vaccine discussion whatsoever, and why would there be?... As the mood turned nationwide, the fun of r/pfizergang, too, would crumble. Things got so bad among the vaxxed elite, in fact, that on July 26, Nicholas felt he had no choice but to shut his forum down. “I wanted to create a social pressure where it was like, These people in Pfizer Gang seem like they’re having a lot of fun,” he said, and then that fun would inspire other people to get vaccinated. “That was the goal. And when that failed, I failed.”... “I’m genuinely concerned that there may have been people who ended up not getting the vaccine because of this subreddit,” he said. “I already have to, like, come to terms with that.”"
Of course, these are the people who mock others as cultists

Pfizer Won the Vaccine Race. Was There a Downside? - The Atlantic - "Compared with Moderna’s competing shot, Pfizer’s vaccine seems to induce half the amount of virus-fighting antibodies, and is associated with nearly twice as many breakthrough infections, according to two recent studies. Pfizer’s shots remain highly protective against hospitalization, but the latest numbers from the CDC suggest that their effectiveness has dropped from 87 percent to 80 percent during the Delta wave, while that of Moderna’s shots remains in the 90s."
From October 2021. The moral panic over breakthrough infections (and it being used to force boosters on everyone) is interesting since we are still being gaslit that the vaccines are not and never were meant to prevent infection

‘Smile Again’ Denmark Abolishes ALL Domestic COVID Restrictions - "Denmark has announced that it will be abolishing all domestic COVID restrictions currently in place, with the PM saying that the country could ‘smile again’.  Following in the footsteps of England, Ireland, and the Netherlands, Denmark has announced that it will soon be dramatically pulling back on COVID restrictions within the country.  However, unlike these three European nations which are keeping some measures in place while pulling others back, Denmark is planning on scrapping all of its domestic restrictions from February 1...   Meanwhile, mask mandates for the likes of public transport will be scrapped in their entirety, along with limits on the numbers allowed in retail outlets...   The PM noted that while it may appear “strange and paradoxical” that the government chose to loosen restrictions at a time when case numbers are at record highs, the nation’s health minister affirmed that those numbers do not pose a significant threat... Denmark’s abolition of restrictions targeting the Chinese Coronavirus comes as a sea change against lockdown measures takes hold across Europe.  Many countries in Europe have pulled back on harsh COVID rules in recent days, with more and more opting to dump hardline measures, such as vaccine passes and mandatory mask-wearing.  Of those who loosened restrictions, England was the first mover, with Boris Johnson announcing an end to mask mandates across the country last Wednesday as part of the nation’s return to so-called “Plan A” measures.  Ireland quickly followed suit, with the nation’s Prime Minister (Taoiseach) Micheál Martin announcing on Friday an end to the nation’s domestic system of vaccine passes effective from 6 am the following day.  Northern Ireland, Scotland, and the Netherlands have all also loosened lockdown rules since Johnson’s announcement.  Even nations such as France and Austria, which both continue to put extreme pressure on unjabbed individuals within their borders, have begun relaxing some rules."

Denmark Decided COVID Isn't a Critical Threat - The Atlantic - "its infection rate is currently higher than every other country’s in the world—except one: the South Pacific archipelago nation of Palau. “If you are following Denmark’s infection numbers, this seems like a very, very strange thing to do,” Michael Bang Petersen, a Danish researcher who led a global survey of COVID attitudes and advises the Danish government, told me. But Petersen defends the decision. Because of falling ICU admissions and shorter hospital stays, he said, COVID is no longer a socially critical sickness in Denmark... Petersen and I talked about Denmark’s decision, how the country maintains the trust of the public during confusing times, why it’s smart to announce an expiration date for COVID restrictions, and why so many in Denmark are strongly pro-vaccine but also strongly anti–vaccine mandate... from a purely epidemic perspective, it might have made sense to extend Denmark’s restrictions another two weeks to ensure that we are on the other side of the Omicron peak. But that decision would have come with cost too. Waiting is not free...
Thompson: What’s been the international reaction to this decision?
Petersen: The reaction has been confusion or disbelief. And I can understand that. If you are following Denmark’s infection numbers, this seems like a very, very strange thing to do. But that is why it’s so important to understand what’s happening in our hospital wards, and all the data coming in from our excellent hospital-data infrastructure shows that this is not a critical threat anymore... it is rare to have severe cases of long COVID. Most people can expect to have only short-term loss of smell and taste, for example... I think the government built a lot of trust with the public by making all pandemic restrictions temporary and then lifting them when circumstances changed.
Thompson: My last question for you is about vaccine mandates. I was struck by Søren Brostrøm, the director general of Denmark’s Health Authority, saying, “I do not believe in imposed vaccine mandates. It’s a pharmaceutical intervention with possible side effects. I think if you push too much, you will have a reaction. Action generates reaction, especially with vaccines.” In the U.S., it’s less common to find people who are strongly pro-vaccine but also loudly anti–vaccine mandate. How common is this view in Denmark?
Petersen: In Denmark, people are in favor of vaccines, with more than 81 percent of adults doubly vaccinated, but also very opposed to vaccine mandates. There are no political parties in Parliament that are loudly advocating for vaccine mandates. When the legal framework for pandemic restrictions was formulated, there was a big discussion about vaccine mandates, but that provision was ultimately taken out. I think this is partly related to the fact that our vaccine coverage is so high, so people might feel less of a need to force people to be vaccinated. But also, research suggests that vaccine mandates might enhance what makes people anti-vaccine in the first place, like distrust of authorities and feeling like they’re being forced to do something that’s bad for them."
Covid hystericists will be very upset Denmark isn't "following the science" and is being "reckless"

COVID-19 vaccines: Denmark sees no reason to give more

Denmark: Anti-lockdown activists to march in Copenhagen Dec. 18
Of course, the narrative is that this had nothing to do with the lifting of restrictions. Weird how usually ignoring dissent is seen as a bad thing - of a government being elitist, out of touch, or ignoring minorities

Carl Benjamin - Posts | Facebook - "The Labour Party leadership flaunted the lockdown rules, too. None of these people are following the rules they demand you follow."
Meme - "Dinner for the many, not the few"
Keir Starmer enjoys beer with Labour workers despite lockdown rules banning indoor social gatherings

Meme - Michael Hiltzik: "Column: Trump's plotting for a pre- election vaccine will kill people"
Michael Hiltzik @hiltzikm: "Column: Mocking anti-vaxxers' deaths is ghoulish, yes - but necessary"

Colin Wright on Twitter - "The demonization of people with any degree of vaccine hesitancy to those who simply oppose vaccine mandates as "anti-vaxxers" has resulted in people adopting a "be more of a COVID hawk than anybody in the room" rule of thumb in order to avoid being labeled "anti-vax" themselves."

South Korea to start giving fourth doses of Covid-19 vaccine by month-end
Next up, the fifth

Colorado State University threatens to arrest unvaccinated students | The Post Millennial - "CSU alleged that unvaccinated students pose a threat to the safety and well-being of the University community... Colorado State University's current COVID-19 requirements are among the strictest in the nation, despite the university having a high-vaccination rate. 87.5 percent of students recieved the COVID-19 vaccine, while 84.9 percent of faculty members received the doses; a threshold that is often considered to be herd immunity, according to the WHO."
We are still being told that the vaccines were never meant to stop transmission

COVID-19: Clinical trials need to shift focus of treatments, says B.C. researcher | Vancouver Sun - "Mills’ group, however, conducted the largest trial to show that ivermectin is not an effective treatment for COVID alone. Unfortunately, those promoting ivermectin as a treatment are doing so blindly, Mills said, while critics dismiss the treatment unscientifically as a “horse dewormer,” when it has plenty of uses in humans.  “It’s a fantastic drug for conditions like river blindness and parasitic infections,” Mills said.  And the reason he doesn’t believe ivermectin should be completely dismissed is because “we don’t understand the role of parasite co-infection during COVID,” Mills said, including places where there are a lot of parasitic infections that end up in the lungs of patients.  “If you’re genuinely treating those (parasite) infections, you probably are having an effect on the COVID outcomes”...   As for fluvoxamine, TOGETHER COVID found that 30 per cent of patients in a placebo-controlled study avoided hospitalization after treatment, versus 10 per cent in the placebo group, indicating its effectiveness."

Ivermectin shows ‘antiviral effect’ against COVID, Japanese company says - "Jpanese trading and pharmaceuticals company Kowa Co Ltd (7807.T) on Monday said that anti-parasite drug ivermectin showed an "antiviral effect" against Omicron and other coronavirus variants in joint non-clinical research."

Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted To Know - "This is from ivmmeta.com, part of a sprawling empire of big professional-looking sites promoting unorthodox coronavirus treatments. I have no idea who runs it - they’ve very reasonably kept their identity secret - but my hat is off to them. Each of these study names links to a discussion page which extracts key outcomes and offers links to html and pdf versions of the full text. These same people have another 35 ivermectin studies with different inclusion criteria, subanalyses by every variable under the sun, responses and counterresponses to everyone who disagrees with them about every study, and they’ve done this for twenty-nine other controversial COVID treatments. Putting aside the question of accuracy and grading only on presentation and scale, this is the most impressive act of science communication I have ever seen. The WHO and CDC get billions of dollars in funding and neither of them has been able to communicate their perspective anywhere near as effectively. Even an atheist can appreciate a cathedral, and even an ivermectin skeptic should be able to appreciate this website... Mainstream medicine has reacted with slogans like “believe Science”. I don’t know if those kinds of slogans ever help, but they’re especially unhelpful here. A quick look at ivermectin supporters shows their problem is they believed Science too much. They have a very reasonable-sounding belief, which is that if dozens of studies all say a drug works really well, then it probably works really well. When they see dozens of studies saying a drug works really well, and the elites saying “no don’t take it!”, their extremely natural conclusion is that it works really well but the elites are covering it up.  Sometimes these people even have a specific theory for why elites are covering up ivermectin, like that pharma companies want you to use more expensive patented drugs instead. This theory is extremely plausible... So “believe experts”? That would have been better advice in this case. But the experts have beclowned themselves again and again throughout this pandemic, from the first stirrings of “anyone who worries about coronavirus reaching the US is dog-whistling anti-Chinese racism”, to the Surgeon-General tweeting “Don’t wear a face mask”, to government campaigns focusing entirely on hand-washing (HEPA filters? What are those?) Not only would a recommendation to trust experts be misleading, I don’t even think you could make it work. People would notice how often the experts were wrong, and your public awareness campaign would come to naught. But also: one of the data detectives who exposed some fraudulent ivermectin papers was a medical student, which puts him somewhere between pond scum and hookworms on the Medical Establishment Totem Pole. Some of the people whose studies he helped sink were distinguished Professors of Medicine and heads of Health Institutes. If anyone interprets “trust experts” as “mere medical students must not publicly challenge heads of Health Institutes”, then we’ve accidentally thrown the fundamental principle of science out with the bathwater. But Pierre Kory, spiritual leader of the Ivermectin Jihad, is a distinguished critical care doctor. What heuristic tells us “Medical students should be allowed to publicly challenge heads of Health Institutes” but not “Distinguished critical care doctors should be allowed to publicly challenge the CDC”?  Then what about “believe statisticians”? I’ve never heard anyone propose this before, but re-centering the mystique of scientific-expertise in study-analyzers and study-aggregators rather than object-level scientists is…one way you could go, I guess."

Joe Rogan's COVID Treatment: Ivermectin Concerned CNN, Angering Host - "“Bro, do I have to sue CNN?” he said. “They’re making shit up! They keep saying I’m taking horse dewormer. I literally got it from a doctor. It’s an American company. They won the Nobel Prize in 2015 for use in human beings and CNN is saying I’m taking horse dewormer. They must know that’s a lie.” "CNN was saying I’m a distributor of misinformation""

Woman en route to Iceland isolates four hours in plane washroom after testing positive mid-flight - "Marisa Fotieo... was on her way to a European vacation with her brother and father when she developed a sore throat on the first leg of her Dec. 20 flight and, having packed several rapid tests, went to the airplane washroom to see whether she had COVID."

Struggling to book a PCR test? Here’s how to get one for $159 | The Star - "Palliative care physician Naheed Dosani said while the price of private PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests is an issue, the broader problem is the inequity of some people being able to pay for quicker access to potentially life-saving health care."
Apparently a PCR test for a low risk individual is "potentially life-saving health care". Clearly governments need to offer free, unlimited PCR testing for everyone, even the asymptomatic, or this is unjust. And overconsumption of healthcare is clearly a myth

Why coronavirus hits men harder: sex hormones offer clues - "preliminary observations from Spain suggest that a disproportionate number of men with male pattern baldness—which is linked to a powerful androgen—end up in hospitals with COVID-19... patients on androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT)—drugs that slash levels of testosterone—were only one-quarter as likely to contract COVID-19 as men with prostate cancer not on ADT, they reported in the Annals of Oncology (see table, below). Men on ADT were also less likely to be hospitalized and to die, although numbers were small."
The crowd who are very keen on tackling sex-based disparities (which are always due to "sexism") don't care about men

Past vaccine disasters show why rushing a Covid-19 vaccine now would be 'colossally stupid' - CNN - "Vaccine experts are warning the federal government against rushing out a coronavirus vaccine before testing has shown it's both safe and effective. Decades of history show why they're right. Their concern that the FDA may be moving too quickly heightened when FDA Commissioner Dr. Steven Hahn told the Financial Times that his agency could consider an emergency use authorization (EUA) for a Covid-19 vaccine before late stage clinical trials are complete if the data show strong enough evidence it would protect people... In 1976, scientists predicted a pandemic of a new strain of influenza called swine flu. More than 40 years later, some historians call it "flu epidemic that never was."... "Ford was being cajoled to put forward a vaccine that was hastily put together. When you have a brand new strain situation like that, they had to do it on the fly," Kinch said. Ford made the decision to make the immunization compulsory. The government launched the program in about seven months and 40 million people got vaccinated against swine flu, according to the CDC. That vaccination campaign was later linked to cases of a neurological disorder called Guillain-Barre syndrome, which can develop after an infection or, rarely, after vaccination with a live vaccine... Markel said people's mistrust of the system makes the idea that the FDA would rush this process before late stage clinical trials are complete "colossally stupid." "This is one of the most ridiculous things I've heard this administration say," Markel said. "All it takes is one bad side effect to basically botch a vaccine program that we desperately need against this virus. It's a prescription for disaster." FDA Commissioner Hahn said that the vaccine decision will be based on data, not politics, but Kinch shares Markel's concern. "This could do substantial damage," Kinch said. Kinch, who is a patient in one of the vaccine trials himself, said the clinical trial process needs to be followed to the end. A too-early EUA for a vaccine could cause a "nightmare scenario," for a few reasons.  One, the vaccine may not be safe. Two, if it is not safe, people will lose faith in vaccines. Three, if a vaccine doesn't offer complete protection, people will have a false sense of security and increase their risk. Four, if a substandard vaccine gets an EUA, a better vaccine may never get approval, because people would be reluctant to enroll in trials and risk getting a placebo instead of a vaccine. "People are going to die unnecessarily if we take chances with this," Kinch said. "We've got to get this right.""
Time to shut CNN down for "misinformation"

Friday, March 04, 2022

Links - 4th March 2022 (2 - General Wokeness)

M&M Characters Are Becoming ‘Inclusive’ - "The green M&M character will lose her peach-colored legs and stiletto boots in favor of white legs and sneakers after criticism that the character was sexualized. Mars said it wanted the green M&M to be “better represented to reflect confidence and empowerment, as a strong female, and known for much more than her boots.”  The brown M&M will have her heels lowered to a “professional height.” In a Q&A on the company’s website for each character, her character says she is “not bossy, just the boss.”  Meanwhile, the green and brown M&Ms will no longer have a rivalry but will now be “together throwing shine and not shade.” The anxious orange M&M, who Mars says is “one of the most relatable characters with Gen-Z, the most anxious generation,” previously had his shoes untied, but will now have them tied.  The red M&M, an outspoken character sometimes interpreted as bullying the other M&Ms, will start being more kind to his fellow candy characters."

Mars, Nestlé and Hershey to face child slavery lawsuit in US
Wokewashing strikes again

M&Ms Introduces New Trans Character Who Identifies As A Skittle | The Babylon Bee - "The new character, named Quinn, is an M&M that wears an "S" because they haven't had letter reassignment surgery yet. On the inside, Quinn has the same chocolate taste because it isn't able to change anything but its outward appearance.  "We just want to let the trans community know that M&M supports you and wants your money!" said the Mars CEO.  The LGBTQ+ community took to Twitter to ask why there isn't a Latinx M&M. "Do better," tweeted user @ihatemyself."

Colorado State University Sign Directs Students 'Affected By a Free Speech Event' To Seek Help - "Colorado State University wants students to know that if they are "affected by a free speech event," they are not alone. There are resources available. They can get help. That's according to a sign spotted on campus by a coordinator for Turning Point USA, a conservative student group. The university confirmed that the sign is real. It reads: "If you (or someone you know) are affected by a free speech event on campus, here are some resources…" The resources in question are phone numbers and websites for the Dean of Students, Office of Equal Opportunity, CSU Health Network Counseling, Ombuds (for CSU employees), Multicultural Counseling, Employee Assistance Program, Vice President of Inclusive Excellence, Victim's Assistance Hotline, Bias Reporting hotline, and several others.  Those last two provide means for aggrieved students to summon the campus authorities to investigate their alleged mistreatment. CSU's bias reporting form asks that submissions include identifying details—including identification number, phone number, and residence hall—about the perpetrator so that school officials can track them down...   By suggesting that one student exercising free speech rights should prompt another student to fill out a bias incident report, the university is undermining public confidence in its commitment to the principles of the First Amendment—principles that CSU, as a public institution, is bound to follow."

Meme - knife @knifequeer: "You ever think about how "incest is bad because inbreeding leads to deformed children" is a really ableist take? like idk maybe arguing that people with disabilities shouldn't be born isn't the gotcha people think it is"

Stray on Twitter - "Hot Take: ADD, Autism, and ADHD are only "disorders" under capitalism. Otherwise they are neurodivergence: different needs, thinking and working styles and sensory issues than neurotypical people. They are only problems due to our hierarchies and modes of production"

christoph on Twitter - "It's clear from the video that the attackers are people of colour. @ing  the cops in any scenario says a lot about a person's politics imo, but in this one – given what we know about how PREVENT and stop and search are used to terrorise Black & brown people – it's appalling."
"If you’re a person of colour you should just be allowed to attack people"

Maus banned: The real reason to be worried about the Tennessee decision. - "A Tennessee school board recently voted to pull the Pulitzer Prize–winning graphic novel Maus and its cat-and-mouse retelling of the Holocaust from the school curriculum. The school board members cited violence, nudity (in humanoid mouse caricatures), and profanity as the reasons...  it’s not a right-left phenomena. There are many ways the left challenges books, but some don’t see challenges the same way. There was a TERF [trans-exclusionary] book that showed up, and I watched people argue that libraries shouldn’t buy it, saying it spread lies. So the way I look at it, all sides see certain knowledge as lies... What I worry about is that before this new kerfuffle happened, there was a lot of talk in progressive circles about banning hate speech from online platforms. What we see with Maus is why those are such dangerous positions to take. When you say this person shouldn’t be allowed to speak because I find their rhetoric hateful or harmful, there’s no saying that won’t turn back around on you. Of course, you might see your position as rational, but that’s just not where we are in our society. Our society is based on white supremacy—do you really want the current Supreme Court to decide what is hate speech or not?"
Liberal logic: if a book is not in a curriculum, it's banned. By that logic, virtually all books in the world are banned
At least this interviewee isn't that partisan

'Maus' rises to top of Amazon's bestseller list after Tennessee ban - "“Maus” was going to be the “anchor” text for a module on the Holocaust which also included interviews from Holocaust survivors, articles from the BBC, The Los Angeles Times and The Guardian, as well as excerpts from other books as teaching material, according to the school board’s meeting minutes.     But the school board voted to drop the book and replace it with another text due to the eight curse words used in the book and the drawing of a naked woman in one panel. The woman depicted is Spiegelman’s own mother, who committed suicide in 1968. The NAACP and the Anti-Defamation League have taken issue with the book’s removal from the curriculum stating that the move “serves no purpose other than to rob the next generation of the generation of knowledge.”... "Banning the book 'Maus' about the Holocaust is another way to censor the history of a group of people. When will this stop! We will continue to let our elected officials know how disappointed we are in their actions.”"
Liberal logic: replacing one book on the Holocaust with another, and retaining the whole module on the Holocaust, means you're banning teaching kids about the Holocaust
Many articles claim the nudity is about mice. Guess the writers were too quick to jump onto the outrage bandwagon

Lawson Clarke on Twitter - "FUN FACT: Kids who read Maus don’t grow into adults who constantly compare minor inconveniences to the Holocaust."
Gingerswappingresponse - Posts | Facebook - "These ppl really gonna pretend they didn’t call Trump Hitler every day"

Meme - "BANNED BOOKS ARE THE BEST. *Maus*"
"AGREED! *Expedient Homemade Firearms by Philip Luty*"

Love What Matters - ""It wasn’t possible to sign 3 parents on the birth certificate. At the moment, polygamy is illegal. We needed to step out of the shadows and do the coming out. Thanks to him, we stopped hiding.”  #LoveWhatMatters"
The "myth" of the slippery slope strikes again

Grieving Mom Has Twins With Dead Son's Sperm to Get Her Boy 'Back' - "After Rajashree Patil lost her adult son to cancer, this grieving mom realized that this didn't have to be the end for her boy. The 49-year-old from India hatched a plan to "reincarnate" her dead child by using his sperm for artificial insemination. Now, she is officially the proud mom (or technically, grandma) of newborn twins... 49-year-old Rajashree wasn't a candidate for IVF. Instead, a 35-year-old relative offered to be a surrogate and she was inseminated with an anonymous egg donor's fertilized eggs... Rajashree also only wants to be known as mom and not grandma to these little ones"

To help gay son, 61-year-old woman gives birth to own grandchild - "A 61-year-old woman serving as the gestational surrogate for her son and his husband gave birth to her own granddaughter last week... After her son, Matthew Eledge, and his husband, Elliot Dougherty, decided to expand their family, Dougherty’s sister, Lea Yribe, offered to donate her eggs. The couple planned to find another surrogate to deliver the child, but they found the process confusing and weren’t completely confident about navigating in vitro fertilization as gay men."

Meme - "Is The Filibuster Racist? An Important Flowchart
Is the filibuster benefitting Democrats or Republicans right now?
Democrats - The filibuster is an essential safeguard of democracy and must be protected at all costs
Republicans - Oh no! The filibuster is RACIST!"

Facebook - "There are hardly any synagogues in that area of Texas, but hundreds of churches everywhere.  Which is to say that the motives of British citizen Malik Faisal Akram in choosing that particular house of worship to hold hostage - in exchange for the release of a convicted terrorist - are still a mystery, and we may never fully understand why.  "
Comments: "Revenge for the revolutionary war obviously"
"We had our own freak stabbing involving a rabbi occur locally last year. Just goes to show these random events can occur anywhere and we shouldn't jump to conclusions."
"First they came for the Jews and I denounced islamophobia. Then they came for the Asians and I pretended it was because Trump blamed Asian Americans for covid even though he didn't."

Meme - @BlackKnight10k I Smoked OAN: "These fukcing Nazis never stop"
"FBI identifies the deceased suspect who took hostages at a Texas synagogue as 44-year-old British citizen Malik Faisal Akram"

FBI Says They Still Haven’t Found A Motive For 9/11 | The Babylon Bee - "FBI agents are also looking into the mysterious reasons why the entire country hates the FBI, but say they may be 10-15 years away from any clear answers. "We're pretty sure it has something to do with white supremacy""

Crystal Marie Fleming on Twitter - "The problem at NPR is white supremacy. That so few are saying this explicitly is telling, indeed."
Embracing wokeness only leads to your own destruction

Multiverse of Shitposting: The Branched Timeline | Marvel already started casting non-Puertorican actors to play Boris in the MCU | Facebook - "Marvel already started casting non-Puertorican actors to play Boris in the MCU.  **Mind you I think this is good casting but they should be giving opportunities to smaller minorities."
Intersectionality!

Meme - "Condoms That Change Color In Contact with STD Win Tech
That explains why the gay pride symbol is a rainbow."

ред ґрин алианс on Twitter - "Thinking about the tik tok I saw about how anyone whos done cocaine has been an active participant in the murder of south american people and therefore has no right whatsoever to enjoy disney's "Encanto""

Being Classically Liberal - Posts | Facebook - "The formula for a large chunk arguments from the left nowadays seem to be: *Thing I don’t like* is/has a history of *racism, sexism, misogyny, etc.* The reciprocal of this sort of mindless argument is the left’s newfound insistence that whatever policy they want is also somehow a “racial justice” issue. Rep. Ayanna Presley recently argued that abolishing student loan debt would be a “racial justice issue” – despite the fact that the primary beneficiaries of student debt forgiveness would be upper class whites."

A Declaration of Independence by a Princeton Professor - "a group of signatories now in the hundreds published a “Faculty Letter” to the president and other senior administrators at Princeton University.This letter begins with the following blunt sentence: “Anti-Blackness is foundational to America.”... there are dozens of proposals that, if implemented, would lead to civil war on campus and erode even further public confidence in how elite institutions of higher education operate. Some examples: “Reward the invisible work done by faculty of color with course relief and summer salary” and “Faculty of color hired at the junior level should be guaranteed one additional semester of sabbatical” and “Provide additional human resources for the support of junior faculty of color.” Let’s leave aside who qualifies as “of color,” though this is not a trivial point. It boggles my mind that anyone would advocate giving people—extraordinarily privileged people already, let me point out: Princeton professors—extra perks for no reason other than their pigmentation... Innumerable sensible people have commented on the impossibility that anyone can pass the Purity Test. Someone who passes today will not pass tomorrow. “Acknowledge, credit, and incentivize anti-racist student activism. Such acknowledgment should, at a minimum, take the form of reparative action, beginning with a formal public University apology to the members of the Black Justice League and their allies.” The Black Justice League, which was active on campus from 2014 until 2016, was a small local terrorist organization that made life miserable for the many (including the many black students) who did not agree with its members’ demands. Recently I watched an “Instagram Live” of one of its alumni leaders, who—emboldened by recent events and egged on by over 200 supporters who were baying for blood—presided over what was effectively a Struggle Session against one of his former classmates. It was one of the most evil things I have ever witnessed, and I do not say this lightly. “Constitute a committee composed entirely of faculty that would oversee the investigation and discipline of racist behaviors, incidents, research, and publication on the part of faculty… Guidelines on what counts as racist behavior, incidents, research, and publication will be authored by a faculty committee for incorporation into the [usual] set of rules and procedures.” This scares me more than anything else: For colleagues to police one another’s research and publications in this way would be outrageous. Let me be clear: Racist slurs and clear and documentable bias against someone because of skin color are reprehensible and should lead to disciplinary action, for which there is already a process. But is there anyone who doesn’t believe that this committee would be a star chamber with a low bar for cancellation, punishment, suspension, even dismissal?... I defy any of my colleagues to argue persuasively that defunding campus police is a good idea, even at idyllic Princeton. I defy anyone who signed that letter, directly or indirectly, to send his or her children to a college or university without campus security. Fantasizing that you can do without the police is the height of arrogant privilege."
Anti-racism means if you oppose racial discrimination, you're racist

Princeton’s Proposed Academic Code leaves no Room for Truth - - "the move was spearheaded by Professor Jenny Greene, director of Princeton’s Prison Teaching Initiative. The article referred to hopes “that this political moment may yield substantive change at the University.” It then quoted Professor Greene saying, “You have to seize these moments and try to get as much thinking and resources and changes as you can and then know that you’re still going to have lots and lots of longer term work to do.”In other words – never let a good crisis go to waste... the Classics Department administrators charged that Professor Katz’s words drew upon “a long history of language used in this country to incite racial and specifically anti-Black violence. The use of such language is abhorrent at this moment of national reckoning with the continuing legacy of systemic racism and violence, and it has heedlessly put our Black colleagues, students, and alums at serious risk.” How could the musings of a Classics professor represent a “serious risk” to anyone? Is he recruiting an army of followers to pelt the demonstrators with copies of Plato, Ovid and Aristotle? Professor Katz’s threat was that he used reason and evidence to expose fallacies. His declaration conforms to the long tradition of inquiry into the nature of the good, true and beautiful that long defined universities.Since the turbulent sixties, however, this inquiry was confused with license to say or do anything. Academics abandoned and even attacked the idea of objective truth, along with goodness and beauty. They objected to objective truth because it would limit their ability to disseminate “new” truths. The leftist professors peddled the idea of “academic freedom” as a means to protect their “right” to say whatever they wanted in their classrooms. Their pleas for academic freedom were always a sham. They only defended the freedom to teach their ideas... Now, the left has abandoned even the veneer of academic freedom. In the current university, no idea is so ridiculous that it cannot be entertained. If misguided men claim to be women, dogs or whatever, they must be taken seriously... Princeton’s President Eisgruber might rest easy for now. He has shown the leftists sipping Chablis in the faculty dining room that they can count on him. However, he should not get too comfortable. Even if he complies with every syllable in that 4,122 word “letter,” there will be a new round of more radical demands. If he refuses them anything, the radicals will turn on him. Then, the anti-racist faculty “Committee of Public Safety” will park their guillotine on his lawn. It will not be a pretty picture."

The Ideological Corruption of Science - WSJ - "In the 1980s, when I was a young professor of physics and astronomy at Yale, deconstructionism was in vogue in the English Department. We in the science departments would scoff at the lack of objective intellectual standards in the humanities, epitomized by a movement that argued against the existence of objective truth itself, arguing that all such claims to knowledge were tainted by ideological biases due to race, sex or economic dominance. It could never happen in the hard sciences, except perhaps under dictatorships, such as the Nazi condemnation of “Jewish” science, or the Stalinist campaign against genetics led by Trofim Lysenko, in which literally thousands of mainstream geneticists were dismissed in the effort to suppress any opposition to the prevailing political view of the state.Or so we thought. In recent years, and especially since the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, academic science leaders have adopted wholesale the language of dominance and oppression previously restricted to “cultural studies” journals to guide their disciplines, to censor dissenting views, to remove faculty from leadership positions if their research is claimed by opponents to support systemic oppression. In June, the American Physical Society (APS), which represents 55,000 physicists world-wide, endorsed a “strike for black lives” to “shut down STEM” in academia. It closed its office—not to protest police violence or racism, but to “commit to eradicating systemic racism and discrimination, especially in academia, and science,” stating that “physics is not an exception” to the suffocating effects of racism in American life. While racism in our society is real, no data were given to support this claim of systemic racism in science, and I have argued elsewhere that there are strong reasons to think that this claim is spurious. The APS wasn’t alone. National laboratories and university science departments joined the one-day strike. The pre-eminent science journal Nature, which disseminates what it views as the most important science stories in a daily newsletter, featured an article titled “Ten simple rules for building an anti-racist lab.”At Michigan State University, one group used the strike to organize and coordinate a protest campaign against the vice president for research, physicist Stephen Hsu, whose crimes included doing research on computational genomics to study how human genetics might be related to cognitive ability—something that to the protesters smacked of eugenics. He was also accused of supporting psychology research at MSU on the statistics of police shootings that didn’t clearly support claims of racial bias. Within a week, the university president forced Mr. Hsu to resign... When scientific and academic leaders give official imprimatur to unverified claims, or issue blanket condemnations of peer-reviewed research or whole fields that may be unpopular, it has ripple effects throughout the field. It can shut down discussion and result in self-censorship. Shortly after Mr. Hsu resigned, the authors of the psychology study asked the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science to retract their paper—not because of flaws in their statistical analysis, but because of what they called the “misuse” of their article by journalists who argued that it countered the prevailing view that police forces are racist. They later amended the retraction request to claim, conveniently, that it “had nothing to do with political considerations, ‘mob’ pressure, threats to the authors, or distaste for the political views of people citing the work approvingly.” As a cosmologist, I can say that if we retracted all the papers in cosmology that we felt were misrepresented by journalists, there would hardly be any papers left. Actual censorship is also occurring. A distinguished chemist in Canada argued in favor of merit-based science and against hiring practices that aim at equality of outcome if they result “in discrimination against the most meritorious candidates.” For that he was censured by his university provost, his published review article on research and education in organic synthesis was removed from the journal website, and two editors involved in accepting it were suspended... A group of linguistics students initiated a public petition asking that the psychologist Steven Pinker be stripped of his position as a Linguistics Society of America Fellow for such offenses as tweeting a New York Times article they disapproved of. As ideological encroachment corrupts scientific institutions, one might wonder why more scientists aren’t defending the hard sciences from this intrusion. The answer is that many academics are afraid, and for good reason. They are hesitant to disagree with scientific leadership groups, and they see what has happened to scientists who do. They see how researchers lose funding if they can’t justify how their research programs will explicitly combat claimed systemic racism or sexism, a requirement for scientific proposals now being applied by granting agencies. Whenever science has been corrupted by falling prey to ideology, scientific progress suffers. This was the case in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union—and in the U.S. in the 19th century when racist views dominated biology, and during the McCarthy era, when prominent scientists like Robert Oppenheimer were ostracized for their political views. To stem the slide, scientific leaders, scientific societies and senior academic administrators must publicly stand up not only for free speech in science, but for quality, independent of political doctrine and divorced from the demands of political factions"

WATCH: Tucker Plays Lemon’s Comments From 2013 On Black Community That’d Get Him ‘Fired Immediately’ Now - "Carlson highlighted comments from this week in which Lemon suggested that “black lives matter” does not mean “all black lives matter,” stating that the movement is not “all-encompassing” and specifically does not focus on black-on-black violence, as well as comments in which he mocked reports about the rising crime rates in major U.S. cities. Carlson then played comments from Lemon in 2013 addressing issues in the black community... In the 2013 CNN clip, Lemon said:
More than 72 percent of children in the African-American community are born out of wedlock, that means absent fathers. And the studies show that a lack of a male role model is an express train right to prison, and the cycle continues. So please, black folks, as I said, if this doesn’t apply to you, I’m not talking to you. Pay attention to and think about what has been presented in recent history as acceptable behavior. Pay close attention to the hip-hop and rap culture that many of you embrace, a culture that glorifies everything I just mentioned. Thug and reprehensible behavior, a culture that is making a lot of people rich, just not you and it’s not going to."

Dr. NadineSTANCING Thornhill Ed.D (she/her) on Twitter - "To my well-intentioned white friends. Here's a harsh truth I need you to accept: Some Black folks will never be okay with you. And if you truly care about righting racial injustice, you have to fight for us anyway. White people, white culture, and white institutions have demoralized, dehumanized, tortured, and killed Black folks for generations.Your systems have left us trapped in an abusive relationship for literal centuries."
To be an "ally" is to simp for people who will always have contempt for you based on how you were born. Eventually the supply of self-flagellating progressives will run out

James Lindsay - Posts - "Majority Taxes — Toward Antiracist Allyship in Medicine"
"Wherein the NEJM publishes a black doctor (chief resident of psychiatry at UCLA actually) basically mocking a white suicidal teenager at the beginning of a sustained argument that "majority taxes" should apply in medicine and beyond."
The irony is that the white teenager had spray painted "BLM" and had been cited by the police. The truth that white people need to realise is that no matter how good allies they are, they're still white and so will always be despised by other liberals

Black Like Me - Wikipedia
"I read this in grade school. It was part of our school curriculum in Grade 8. The whole class read it. Good book.A story of a white dude who wore blackface and went around pretending he was black was once public school curriculum and I cant remember people thinking it was inappropriate or that what the author did was wrong. In fact; this book was considered Anti-racist and progressive.You all know what the response would be in 2020 if a white guy did this.Have progressive left politics and a cultural obsession with anti-racism made race relations worse or better?"

Black and White discrimination in the United States: Evidence from an archive of survey experiment studies - "This study reports results from a new analysis of 17 survey experiment studies that permitted assessment of racial discrimination, drawn from the archives of the Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences. For White participants (n=10 435), pooled results did not detect a net discrimination for or against White targets, but, for Black participants (n=2781), pooled results indicated the presence of a small-to-moderate net discrimination in favor of Black targets; inferences were the same for the subset of studies that had a political candidate target and the subset of studies that had a worker or job applicant target. These results have implications for understanding racial discrimination in the United States, and, given that some of the studies have never been fully reported on in a journal or academic book, the results also suggest the need for preregistration to reduce or eliminate publication bias in racial discrimination studies."
"Structural racism" indeed!

Mark Lutchman 🇺🇸 on Twitter - "Know why bi-racial adults identify with their black lineage & not their white? Because there's no benefit of being white, no privilege. *Kaepernick*"

Thread by @wokal_distance - "Woke teachers are ruining education.
This elementary teacher, who doesn't know when America was founded, says she teaches her students about leftist protesting and activism but refuses to teach the actual curriculum.
a thread about how we got here:
Here's another elementary school teacher saying she sees teaching as a political act and that social justice (AKA: wokeness) is the foundation of ALL learning ...
Why do teachers like her think this?
It's because professors of education in the universities and colleges of education (where teachers are trained) think what goes on in the classroom is all about politics, and have been claiming that teaching is a political act
In "The Critical Turn in Education" Isaac gottesman, explains how leftist brought marxism into universities and radicalized the field of education in the 70's (pic 1) and then brought in Postmodern feminist ideas and critical race theory in the 80's and 90's. (pic 2)
Teachers who should be teaching kids to read, write, and count, are being told to teach children Marxism, Postmodern feminism, and Critical Race Theory. which is why teaching resources constantly talk about diversity, race, and whiteness...even for teaching MATH
This all started with Paulo Freire, a Brazilian Marxist who said the purpose of education is to teach people how they are being oppressed using Marxist political theory. Having politically awareness inline with Marxist theory was what he called "critical consciousness."...
just in case you think that these guys are just a coupe of fringe lunatics, let me show you this:
One way to measure academic influence is with citations (the number of times your work gets mentioned by other academics). The more citations, the greater the influence.
So, lets compare Giroux and Freire to other famous Scholars for context
Jordan Peterson has 13,381
Isaac Newton has 27,143
Albert Einstein has 131,459
Richard Dawkins has 88,079
Charles Darwin Has 184,507
Meanwhile Paulo Freire has....𝟜𝟙𝟙,𝟡𝟠𝟘
You are reading that correctly: The Marxist who said the primary goal of teaching is to bring radical left wing politics into elementary school classrooms has more citations then Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin COMBINED.
Don't worry it gets worse...
that is how you get the creation of a college textbook that has as it's goal teaching Social justice (AKA, wokeness) during Math class.
Don't worry, it gets even worse then that
Christopher Dubbs wrote a paper where he suggests, and I'm not kidding, teaching grade 5 kids to challenge the structure of marriage by appealing to race, gender, and sexuality. He also thinks "queering" math (making math queer) can provide kids with an alternative reality.
That's the environment our elementary school teachers are being trained in. This is why we have teachers who won't teach the proper curriculum, instead substituting their own curriculum and teach children to be left wing activists rather then the date of America's founding"
"give us a child till he's seven and we'll have him for life" doesn't just work for the Jesuits"
Maybe "minorities" are doing badly in school in Anglo countries because they learn this kind of shit in school, but whites learn proper stuff on their own time

In defence of liberalism: resisting a new era of intolerance | The Spectator - "What we are seeing is nothing more or less than the death of the liberal ideal.Of course ‘liberalism’ was always a broadly defined term; a definition made only vaguer by Americans making it synonymous with ‘left-wing’. But in the truest political sense it encapsulates most of the foundations of our political order... well-meaning people have poured almost a million pounds into the coffers of Black Lives Matter UK in the belief that they are helping a movement that will help black people. In fact they have funded a deeply radical movement. On its own fundraising page, BLM UK describes its aims as: ‘to dismantle imperialism, capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and the state structures.’ So as well as dismantling a nonexistent menace (‘imperialism’) it intends to bring down the economy and completely alter relations between the sexes (negatively characterised as ‘patriarchy’). This is not liberalism, but far-left radicalism of a kind that has become very familiar of late. Some people watching events of recent days will have been surprised by how far and fast such sentiments have run. By the sight of a mob in Bristol tearing down a statue and then jumping on it. By a Labour MP saying: ‘I celebrate these acts of resistance. We need a movement that will tear down systemic racism.’ By the ranks of British police who could find no way to respond to this behaviour other than (in a newly invented act of faith) to ‘take the knee’ before it. And then there is the media, which has chosen to provide cover for such violence and purge from their ranks not just people who dissent from it but, in the case of the New York Times a few days ago, anyone who helps publish someone who dissents. As one of the last liberals left at that newspaper, Bari Weiss, explained it last week, the over-forties in the news business (like so many others) imagined that the people coming up under them shared their liberal worldview. Then they discovered that these young people believed in ‘safetyism’ over liberalism, and ‘the right of people to feel emotionally and psychologically safe’ over ‘what were considered core liberal values, like free speech’. Actually the divide is even bigger than that, and now encompasses nearly everything. Where the liberal mind is inquiring, the woke mind is dogmatic. Where the liberal mind is capable of humility, the woke mind is capable of none. Where the liberal mind is able to forgive, the woke mind believes that to have erred just once is cause enough to be ‘cancelled’. And while the liberal mind inherited the idea of loving your neighbour, the woke mind positively itches to cast the first stone. Readers of The Spectator have known this was coming. When this magazine first wrote about the Stepford Students, it was asked why we take this so seriously — surely the students would grow up? And they did: but they didn’t change. The virtue-signalling of large corporations — the growing legions of diversity officers and ‘implicit bias training’ — was also written off as the silliness of the corporate world. When we described the mandatory requirement in government to prove a ‘commitment to diversity’ in order to be eligible for any public appointment, it was greeted with the same dismissal. As the American journalist Andrew Sullivan (himself now seemingly muzzled, if not cancelled) put it two years ago: ‘We all live on campus now.’ Step by step, the UK came to have a public and private sector dedicated to the implementation of views which are barely distinguishable from those of the protestors who took to the streets in the past week or two. It’s an ethic which demands that our society play a set of impossible, unwinnable games of identity and ‘privilege’ that not only subvert but end any idea of tolerance. All of this emanates from those who come out of university educated to loathe our society, believing it to be characterised by the oppression of certain groups by other groups: a shameful history and a shameful present. Today these people head into professions where their language of aggressive superiority (‘Educate yourself’) is used to intimidate their elders, force every-one to agree with their point of view and otherwise make themselves unsackable... After the weekend’s vandalism against London monuments, the capital’s Mayor, Sadiq Khan, announced that his ‘Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm’ would sit in judgment on all racist statues in the capital. Within hours, the Museum of London had already brought in the cranes to remove an errant statue on West India Quay.In such ways has the free exchange of ideas about our past and present been replaced by a series of demands and assertions that demand everyone else’s compliance. ‘Silence is violence’ is one favoured line, meaning that if you do not agree with the radicals, you are perpetrating an act of violence. Naturally this assertion comes from the same people who have spent a lot of time asserting that words (such as ‘mis-gendering’ someone) are violence. While the violence of the past few days is not violence... Dr King gave a speech titled ‘Where do we go from here?’ in which he said: ‘Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout, “White Power!”, when nobody will shout, “Black Power!”, but everybody will talk about God’s power and human power.’The people who have come after Dr King have spent years busily inverting that dream. In the name of black agency they try to deny white people agency. In the name of assailing white supremacy they end up by asserting black supremacy. And in order to make up for the sufferings of people who are no longer alive they demand vast wealth transfers today based on racial grouping. It is hard to imagine a more divisive programme, all carried out in the name of anti-racism. What they are actually doing is busily re-racialising our societies. Which is how you come to the situation where a cabinet minister is quizzed on Sky News about the precise ethno-racial composition of the British cabinet and certain ‘anti-racists’ can be found on social media noting with disapproval the number of people of Asian descent in the cabinet."

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

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

powered by Blogger | WordPress by Newwpthemes