BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Bret Easton Ellis on censorship - "‘You never shied away obviously from writing stuff that offends some people and and in The Shards you've, there is graphic stuff there that probably some people will be offended by again. Where are we in the modern world on the, on the right of people to write stuff that is offensive to others, and I'm thinking about that in the context of a debate we're having in Britain at the moment about the internet and the extent to which the internet needs to be governed and regulated and stuff that is offensive but not necessarily illegal is kept away from, from people. Are we, are you interested in that debate? Do you see us reaching any kind of conclusions?’
‘Oh, I am the, I am the wrong person to ask about this, because I find nothing offensive. I don't even know what hate speech is. Quite honestly I don't know what that is. That's something that someone made up somewhere. I don't have any boundaries in terms of language and in terms of what people say. In terms of what people say in a free you know in a supposedly free society, I think you should be allowed to say whatever you want and that's just how it is. I'm a writer, what else am I supposed to say? That there are boundaries within how I can express myself within the pages of a novel? That's just so beyond my realm of thinking that I really don't quite know where to go with it’
‘I mean I suppose the question then is do you have a right as a novelist that perhaps ordinary people who aren't novelists, who aren't artists don't have?’
‘I actually grew up in a generation that liked to be offended. So I come from a very different place. Gen X was the freest generation. We were looking to be offended and to be shocked and we liked it. So we're living now in this kind of regulated, you know authoritarian seeming society that says you can't say this, you can't say this, you can't write this. We have you know triggering editors of publishing houses. So I understand that people are tying themselves up in knots about the internet and what you can say or can't say. I like what Elon Musk is doing I think we need more disruptors, you know? Disruptors are good for this society right now... it's so funny to see how the press turns against [Elon Musk]. It's almost like a skit. You know, we're living in a simulacrum and it's almost like a joke. The Narrative is preordained’"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, BBC mistaken in Lineker decision, says former director general - "‘I started by asking him whether he thought Gary Lineker's original tweet in which he invoked 1930s Germany was, acceptable’
‘I don't know what you mean by acceptable. It was acceptable to Gary Lineker and we live in a world of freedom of speech and therefore yes’...
‘If you start applying these rules to us, these rules that have never been applied to us, then we're down a slippery slope and I do think the BBC has made a mistake here’"
Weird. The left used to claim that anyone who makes inappropriate Nazi/Holocaust comparisons needs to be un-personed
Strange. We are told the slippery slope is a fallacy
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Ngozi Fulani: Palace race incident was ‘abuse’ - "‘A conversation at a Buckingham Palace reception that began with: where are you from?, ended with a guest a black woman Ngozi Fulani founder of the charity Sister Space feeling violated. She said she'd been asked what part of Africa she was from and where her people really came from. Lady Susan Hussey who's 83 and worked for the late Queen for decades as well as now for the Queen Consort has resigned... this is her trying to make me, really denounce my British citizenship… you ask me where I'm from and and I tell you, from here. Yeah but where are you really from?’
‘Do you think she would have known, she did say the words, where, where are you really from?’
‘She said it more than once and then where are your people from?... I'm in a room full of of women who have experienced domestic abuse... I have to really question how this can happen in in a space that's supposed to to protect women against all kinds of violence. So it's not, although it's not physical violence, it is an abuse’"
Being asked where you're from is "abuse" - when you're in a room with women who have really experienced domestic abuse. But of course the problem is "white fragility"
Poverty and Violent Crime Don’t Go Hand in Hand | City Journal - "Many analysts, along with the general public, believe that poverty is a major, if not the major, cause of crime. But a new study from a Columbia University research group should remind us of something that history has consistently shown: that the relationship between poverty and crime is far from predictable or consistent. The Columbia study revealed the startling news that nearly one-quarter (23 percent) of New York City’s Asian population was impoverished, a proportion exceeding that of the city’s black population (19 percent). This was surprising, given the widespread perception that Asians are among the nation’s more affluent social groups. But the study contains an even more startling aspect: in New York City, Asians’ relatively high poverty rate is accompanied by exceptionally low crime rates. This undercuts the common belief that poverty and crime go hand in hand. Asians had consistently low arrest rates for violent crime—usually lower than their proportion of the population, lower than those of blacks and Hispanics, and in one category (assault), even lower than that of whites, who, as a group, are far less often impoverished... “Throughout American history, different social groups have engaged in different amounts of violent crime, and no consistent relationship between the extent of a group’s socioeconomic disadvantage and its level of violence is evident.” When it comes to violent crime—murder, assault, robbery, and the like—history tells a complicated story. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, impoverished Jewish, Polish, and German immigrants had relatively low crime rates, while disadvantaged Italian, Mexican, and Irish entrants committed violent crime at high rates. This crime/adversity mismatch also seems to be a global phenomenon. In Great Britain, for instance, a criminologist observed that “all of the minority groups with elevated rates of crime or incarceration are socially and economically disadvantaged, but some disadvantaged ethnic minority groups do not have elevated rates of offending.” There, too, it was the case that Asians were more disadvantaged than blacks, but the latter had much higher offending rates... crimes of violence are usually motivated by quarrels, personal grudges, perceived insults, and similar interpersonal conflicts, not by economic necessity. Consequently, a decline in one’s financial condition is not likely to cause violent criminal behavior. This explains why an economic recession or depression does not invariably produce a crime spike. In the second half of the 1930s, for instance, violent crime declined, even though the country experienced some of the worst years of the Great Depression. Likewise, during the Great Recession of 2007–2009, when the economy tanked, crime fell."
Damn structural racism, meaning that Asians are privileged by the criminal justice system more than whites!
Poor white kids are less likely to go to prison than rich black kids - The Washington Post - "About 2.7 percent of the poorest white young people — those whose household wealth was in the poorest 10th of the distribution in 1985, when they were between 20 and 28 years old — ultimately went to prison. In the next 10th, 3.1 percent ultimately went to prison... About 10 percent of affluent black youths in 1985 would eventually go to prison. Only the very wealthiest black youth — those whose household wealth in 1985 exceeded $69,000 in 2012 dollars — had a better chance of avoiding prison than the poorest white youth"
Of course, the only reason can be racial bias
Elon Musk BBC interview: 'You just lied! Elon Musk calls out BBC reporter during interview after he claims rise in hate speech on Twitter - "Twitter CEO Elon Musk called out a reporter during a surprise interview that took place at the microblogging platform’s office recently. In an in-depth BBC interview, Musk was questioned about the rise of hate speech on Twitter, to which the billionaire asked the journalist to mention one such incident that he must have come across on Twitter... When asked to mention any incident or an example of hate speech on Twitter, the journalist, visibly fumbling, said he doesn’t “actually use that feed anymore” because he doesn’t particularly like it... After Musk asked the journalist to describe what he means by hateful content to better understand his question, the interviewer said: "The content that (would solicit a reaction) may include something that is slightly racist or slightly sexist, those kinds of things." “So you think if something is slightly sexist, it should be banned,” Musk asked. “No, I am not saying anything,” the BBC journalist quickly pointed out. At this point in the interview, which goes on for almost an hour, we can see the confusion on Musk’s face while the journalist looks towards the crew members behind the Twitter CEO, probably for a lead to escape the knot. To diffuse the situation and move on to the next question, the journalist clarifies that his feed has got slightly more hateful content. "Hang on a second, you said you have seen more hateful content but you can't name a single example, not even one?" Musk questioned. However, the journalist then goes on to say that he is not sure whether he has used the feed on Twitter in the last 3 or 4 weeks, but he has been using the platform for six months since Musk took over the company. "But then how do you see the hateful content?" the Twitter CEO continued, pointing out that at some point he must come across some tweet with hateful content and all he is asking for is one example, which the reporter doesn’t seem to have. "Then I say sir that you don't know what you are talking about... because you cannot give me a single example of hateful content, not even one tweet. You claimed that hateful content is high. That is false, you just lied," Musk said. To back his claim, the reporter said that many organisation say that kind of (hateful) content is on the rise (on Twitter), whether it is on his personal feed or not, and whenever there is a strategic dialogue on the matter in the UK, people say the same. But Musk stood his ground. "Look, people will say all sorts of nonsense. I am literally asking for a single example and you can't give one. You literally said you experienced more hateful content and then couldn't name a single example. That's absurd," the Tesla chief said."
Meme - "I am antiracist
Her friends: *white people*
I am racist
His friends: *minorities*"
Meme - *collapsing civilisation*
Liberal: "But how does this affect you PERSONALLY??"
‘Frightening:’ New Report Reveals Entrenched Antisemitic Attitudes in Austria - "A new report on antisemitic attitudes in Austria commissioned by that country’s parliament has revealed what the head of the Jewish community called “frightening” levels of anti-Jewish hostility within the general population, particularly among immigrant communities from a Middle Eastern background... The report was based on a survey of 2,000 Austrian citizens over the age of 16 at the end of 2022. A further survey of 1,000 individuals from Turkish and Arabic-speaking backgrounds was also conducted, revealing that antisemitism in this sector of the population is even more pronounced... Asked whether they believed that accounts of the Holocaust had been “exaggerated,” 11 percent of respondents answered affirmatively — a figure that rocketed to 40 percent when the same question was posed to those from a Middle Eastern background. The report also revealed that more than a third of respondents — 36 percent — believed that Jews exploited the memory of the Holocaust for their own advantage, while 19 percent agreed with the statement, “It is not just coincidence that the Jews have been persecuted so often in their history; they are at least partly to blame for it.” Among the immigrant communities, the latter view was endorsed by 40 percent of those surveyed. Similarly, a third of respondents confessed that they were “tired” of discussing the Holocaust, with more than 50 per cent of those from an immigrant background expressing agreement. When asked whether Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians was any different from the Nazi persecution of the Jews, 62 percent of immigrant respondents replied that it wasn’t. The same question was answered similarly by more than a third of respondents from an Austrian background... Sobotka emphasized that antisemitism was a problem on both the political right and left, as well as among swathes of the Muslim community. “It becomes visible on the edges: on the right-wing edges we have seen it for decades,” he said. “We didn’t pay attention to the left fringes for a long time, now we clearly see it as anti-Israelism and anti-Zionism; and in a third form, we see it in those people who have come to us for reasons of migration, because they come from countries where antisemitism or anti-Jewish attitudes count as a kind of reason of state.”"
Damn far right!
Schools Are Ditching Homework, Deadlines in Favor of ‘Equitable Grading’ - WSJ - "Las Vegas high-school English teacher Laura Jeanne Penrod initially thought the grading changes at her school district made sense. Under the overhaul, students are given more chances to prove they have mastered a subject without being held to arbitrary deadlines, in recognition of challenges some children have outside school. Soon after the system was introduced, however, Ms. Penrod said her 11th-grade honors students realized the new rules minimized the importance of homework to their final grades, leading many to forgo the brainstorming and rough drafts required ahead of writing a persuasive essay. Some didn’t turn in the essay at all, knowing they could redo it later. “They’re relying on children having intrinsic motivation, and that is the furthest thing from the truth for this age group,” said Ms. Penrod, a teacher for 17 years... Equitable grading can take different forms, but the systems aim to measure whether a student knows the classroom material by the end of a term without penalties for behavior, which, under the theory, can introduce bias. Homework is typically played down and students are given multiple opportunities to complete tests and assignments... In Las Vegas, some teachers and students say the changes have led to gaming the system and a lack of accountability. “If you go to a job in real life, you can’t pick and choose what tasks you want to do and only do the quote big ones,” said Alyson Henderson, a high-school English teacher there. Lessons drag on now, she said, because students can turn in work until right before grades are due. “We’re really setting students up for a false sense of reality”... Extra credit is banned—no more points for bringing in school supplies—as is grading for behavior, which includes habits such as attendance. The scale starts at 49% or 50% rather than zero, meant to keep a student’s grade from sinking so low from a few missed assignments that they feel they can’t recover and give up. Samuel Hwang, a senior at Ed W. Clark High School in Las Vegas, has spoken out against the grading changes, saying they provide incentives for poor work habits. A straight-A student headed to the University of Chicago next year, Samuel said even classmates in honors and Advanced Placement classes are prone to skip class now unless there is an exam. Las Vegas high-school student Samuel Hwang, shown with his twin sister, Grace, says the grading changes take away incentives to attend class. “There’s an apathy that pervades the entire classroom”"
Liberals hate homework and think children all love to learn and if they don't, it's the fault of the system, so they won't see any problems
Meme - "PEACH: *Princess Peach*
NETFLIX ADAPTATION: *Bearded Woman*
DISNEY ADAPTATION: *Fat Black Woman*"
Meme - "I had to get up and check this on my home computer because I couldn't believe it. They made a background for the guy who designed some apartments in Mexico City, for Montreal's first neurosurgeon, there's a background on PI DAY, but nothing on the most important holiday for Christians. Sure it's a minor thing, but it says of lot."
"Powerful: Google Leaves Homepage Empty In Honor Of Jesus's Empty Tomb"
It's a myth that they hate Christians, of course
Meme - "Me: *makes a racial joke*
White girls: actually you cant say that its offensive
Minorities: no actually we find that quite funny
White girls: I said we offended today"
Bisexual and Nonbinary Person Comes Out As Polyamorous - "At 32, I've been an out-and-proud bisexual for over half my life. When I came out as a teenager in Alabama in the mid-2000s, I didn't yet know that it would be a lifelong process and that I'd have to come out dozens of times in the decades to come — first as bisexual, then as nonbinary, and later as polyamorous. I, like so many queer people, have to come out anew with each new friend we meet. To some of the people in my life, being bisexual is great, being nonbinary is fine, and being polyamorous is OK — as long as I'm not dating a man. I broke that last rule recently, and it cost me a handful of people I once considered friends... I wasn't prepared for the biphobia. I didn't understand why these people — my friends who were part of the LGBTQ community themselves — couldn't see that my dating a man didn't negate my past relationships with women, didn't mean I wasn't attracted to women, and didn't prevent me from dating women now or again in the future. These "friends" didn't ask if my new boyfriend was cisgender or transgender — or ask any questions about him at all — before deciding I'd made a mistake... I'm talking about the friends who reacted with disbelief, shock, disappointment, and anger. It was as if my dating a man was an insult to their own queerness — as if I'd somehow let them down by being less gay than they'd hoped."
Heterophobia is definitely not a thing
I find it interesting she calls this biphobia - even though when she was originally bi, she apparently didn't face hostility. Probably because admitting that it's heterophobia goes against the narrative
Robert Sepehr on Twitter - "DNA results of Takabuti, the famous 2,600 year old ancient Egyptian mummy on display at the Ulster Museum, show that her DNA is more genetically similar to Europeans rather than modern Egyptian populations. DNA results Published in Nature Communications"
Who’s Responsible for Bad Reporting on Mummies? - "several Egyptologists and archaeologists publicly called for an ethical review of mummy research. Archaeologist David Wengrow of University College London focused on a central point: there was no indication of any peer review of the Takabuti research, either of its scientific claims or its ethics, which is especially notable considering that it involved work on human remains... Proving the European ancestry of ancient Egyptians — particularly of Egyptian royalty — has been a running goal of research on mummies for some 200 years. A century or two ago it was determined by measuring skulls and comparing physical features; now it is done through ancient DNA (aDNA). Throughout all of this, the methods have been scientifically questionable. Problems with aDNA studies are legion: small sample sizes, broad claims made from individual data points, and (not surprisingly) contradictory results. The failures of past race science should give researchers pause in the present, to consider that our current assumptions might also be flawed and troubled. And researchers should stop and ask why this question of European ancestry continues to be such a focus of primarily European research on mummies. After 200 years, the public would be forgiven for thinking that researchers really want ancient Egyptians to have been European, or even that researchers think Africans would not have been capable of producing the great monuments of the Egyptian past."
Considering that it got published in Nature Communications later that year, this looks especially silly. And the We Wuz Kangz squad must be ignored, it seems (this is not the first or only study looking at the DNA of Ancient Egyptians)
Court Sides With Girls Who Sued Over School’s Skirt Requirement - The New York Times - "A North Carolina charter school violated female students’ constitutional rights by requiring that they wear skirts, a federal court ruled this week, in a case that weighed whether a privately operated institution should be subject to similar rules as public schools run by local school boards. The 10-to-6 ruling on Tuesday from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va., said that the dress code at the Charter Day School in Leland, N.C., “blatantly perpetuates harmful gender stereotypes.” The decision said the school “has imposed the skirts requirement with the express purpose of telegraphing to children that girls are ‘fragile,’ require protection by boys and warrant different treatment than male students, stereotypes with potentially devastating consequences for young girls.”... In 2019, Judge Malcolm J. Howard of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina struck down the uniform policy as unconstitutional, saying the skirts requirement “causes the girls to suffer a burden the boys do not, simply because they are female.”... it must follow the same guidelines as public schools, which are prohibited from enacting discriminatory dress codes. While the court settled the question of whether Charter Day’s dress code violated the 14th Amendment, a district court will reconsider whether it also violates Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination, at a later date. Galen Sherwin, a senior staff lawyer at the A.C.L.U.’s Women’s Rights Project who represented the plaintiffs, said even though the ruling was limited to North Carolina, she believes that it could have broader implications for dress codes elsewhere."
How soon till any gender distinctions are illegal?
Meme - awkward_the_turtle" "This post is now locked because fragile white racists have invaded and they smell bad. Why is it that white people always smell like a box of expired Werthers Originals? I dont get it. You all bathe, right? Do you use the same weird brand of soap?"
WatchPeopleDieinside-ModTeam: "Racism, sexism, general bigotry, personal attacks, threats/ advocation of violence, and lewd descriptions are all grounds for immediate bans. Do not respond to incivility with more incivility."
The batshit awkwardturtle powermod seething about being removed as mod for saying white people stink lol : ShitPoliticsSays - "Just look at the people in that thread complaining he got removed lol"
Liberals will claim that this shows white fragility and backlash from calling out racism
Meme - Dave Hurt @iamdavehurt: "Them: "Define woke"
Me: "Define woman"
Them: "No"
Me: "That's woke""
Meme - "I IDENTIFY AS AN ATTACK HELICOPTER."
"HAHA"
"RIGHT- WINGERS ONLY HAVE ONE JOKE!"
"BUT TWO GENDERS!"
"TWO JOKES!"
"MA'AM, THIS ISN'T A KITCHEN."
"THREE JOKES!"
"C'MON, WE'VE NEVER HURT You... UNLIKE YOUR UNCLE"
"FOUR JOKES!"
"CHILL, DON'T GO 41%"
"FIVE JOKES"
*Mirror*
"SIX JOKES"
Why we QUIT as Historical Advisors on Barbarians II (GER SUBS/deutsche Untertitel) - YouTube - "I gotta say it's bad... very bad... So the reason we're doing what we do is that we're trying to help those productions to capture the essence of a certain period in human history, the historical circumstances and the problems the people probably had to face during their lifetime and therefore which motivations drove them to do what they did. So if the costumes aren't quite right, well pity, it will annoy me for sure and a bunch of other nerds but I won't cry a river about it. If historical events are slightly changed shortened or compressed in order to tell a story that's compatible with what a modern audience might be expecting, in the end still okay... is the reason that the makers of Barbarians 2 are publicly telling for changing historical facts so much. Because apparently they wanted to change the historical base so much because during the darker parts of german history the story of Arminius and the battle in Teutoburg forest was heavily abused for nationalist propaganda purposes, which is absolutely true. No arguing there, except it was not only the Nazi-regime who instrumentalized history to support their narrative of a "superior aryan race" or german people, it was also the propaganda during the German Empire founded in 1871. In order to unify those people from all those many different german states all across Central Europe, that preceeded this Empire, and turn them against their neighbours, mainly Italy and France as a common enemy, a national myth was created claiming: "german and germanic people have always belonged together and have always been superior to their neighbors". In this narrative the story of Arminius fulfills the role as some sort of "founding myth" of some sort of a "proto-german national state" and the beginning of modern day germany, which is a pile of absolute bull crap in case anyone needed to hear this now. The unification of the tribes under Arminius was a one-time phenomenon to kick Varus's ass this one time, at least that's how the tribes saw it. And Arminius himself was killed, murdered by his own kin, while trying to permanently establish his claim to power over those tribes. Because there was no common interest and because there was no common identity between them and because the tribes did not feel like they belonged together on a larger scale than clan structures."
Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦 on Twitter - ""There is absolutely nothing wrong with a parent deciding a certain book is not right for her child. There is a colossal problem with a parent deciding that, therefore, no child should be allowed to read that book." -- @JodiPicoult"
No one has the right to say that porn is not suitable for schools. Also I love how liberals pretend that just because something is not in a school/public library, it is inaccessible. And good luck if you don't want your kid to read a book that's on the curriculum
Meme - "Welcome to New Jersey
NEW JERSEY TURNPIKE
WE DON'T BAN BOOKS HERE"
New Jersey lawmakers want schools to stop teaching ‘Huckleberry Finn’ - "Two African-American members of the state Assembly have introduced a non-binding resolution calling on school districts in New Jersey to remove “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn“ — widely acclaimed as one of America’s greatest literary works — from their curricula... in 1996 the book was temporarily removed from the curriculum in Cherry Hill"
Some N.J. schools under siege from those trying to get books on race, LGBTQ+ pulled from shelves - "Examples of attempts to ban books that have taken place in New Jersey include: In Lower Township, there was an effort to get the book “Black and White” by Paul Volponi removed from Charles Sandman Consolidated School. Those who spoke against the book argued the book’s use of explicit language and racial slurs was inappropriate for students."
