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Friday, November 24, 2023

Links - 24th November 2023 (1 - General Wokeness)

M&M’s Pulls ‘Spokescandies’ After Supposed Controversy : ‘Sales Dipped After Going Woke’ - “The green M&M’s got her boots back but apparently is now a lesbian, maybe, and there is also a plus-sized, obese purple M&M’s”

A&W Root Beer Mocks M&M’s Woke Decision To Pause Use Of ‘Spokescandies’ - "“America, let’s talk,” A&W said in its statement. “Since 1963, Rooty the Great Root Bear has been our beloved spokesbear. We knew people would notice because he’s literally a 6-foot tall bear wearing an orange sweater. But now we get it – even a mascot’s lack of pants can be polarizing.” “Therefore, we have decided that Rooty will wear jeans going forward,” the statement continued. “Not to worry though: he will remain our official spokesbear. After all, he is un-bear-ably cute and im-paw-ssible to replace. We are confident Rooty will continue to champion good food & good times for many years to come…now in denim.”"

Meme - Soyjak: ">as a white person,
>it's almost as if
>maybe, just maybe
>bigotry
>oh hey
>folks
>losing all faith in humanity
>i'm literally shaking rn
>ding, ding, ding!
>oh boy
>let's unpack this
>friendo
>it's called being a decent human being
>i literally can't even
>YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE
>oof
>oh sweet summer child...
>Yikes
>who hurt you
>PoC
>y'all
>you do realize
>:)
>this! so much this!
>problematic
>just shut up and listen
>YAAAASS QUEEN SLAY
>toxic
>let that sink in
>oh, sweetie...
>wholesome
>Wow... just wow."
SJW vocabulary

Sia Kordestani on X - "I am Iranian, and I'm sick and tired of Western progressives implying that only Westerners are capable of colonialism, slavery and evil acts. That type of thinking actively hurts non-Westerners seeking freedom under autocratic regimes."
David Cohen on X - "It’s the narcissism of the Western left: everything has to revolve around their resentment of their own civilization; nobody else’s suffering matters."
G.G. Geist | The Potter's Philosophy on X - "Here's why: Western progressives are rebelling against Christianity. Nothing else matters to them."

i/o on X - "Slavery in the Ottoman Empire lasted over 500 years (as much as 20% of the empire's population was enslaved), primarily enslaved Europeans, preceded slavery in America, and continued into the 20th century. No one in modern Turkey feels the slightest twinge of guilt about it. Why?  Because it's long over and everyone has moved on. Only the West subjects itself to collective neurotic guilt about things that happened centuries before. It's a pathology that's unprecedented in human history."
Voices Of Our Youth SA on X - "Nobody thinks they can get anything out of Turkey by bringing up slavery or any other bad behaviour. If Turkey went on an apology tour with a $20 trillion economy, I'm willing to bet claims would come flooding in."
NPCliberator on X - "It’s all a narrative to take power via moral virtue. Facts and history don’t matter to these people unless it benefits them"
Quick on X - "If not for white westerners slavery would still be as wide spread as it was for 99% of human history. I could go on but it’s just all so tiring."

Is Self-Censorship Taking Over Universities? - WSJ - "Too many college classes foster ideological groupthink rather than the free exchange of ideas. It’s unfortunate that many students are afraid to share their opinions because they’re scared their peers may lash out at them. Yet this is also a rather normal part of teen and young-adult life: the desire for validation and the need to fit in among one’s peers. Extremely vocal, intolerant factions of students exist, but the truth is that many students are content to leave politics out of their social lives.  What’s more of a problem is the overt politics of university administrators and some professors. The adults in charge should be pushing their students to confront different ideas. Instead, many administrators attempt to comfort and shield students from exposure to differing points of view. This hinders a student’s critical thinking. Ironically, it also makes students less inclusive and empathetic. They grow certain that what they believe must be right, since this is what they’re being told by the adults in charge. Anyone who thinks differently must be crazy.  The end result is that students who aren’t as progressive censor themselves—and not necessarily out of fear. Rather, students realize it would simply be futile to speak out in an institution that actively opposes their views as if it were an undebatable fact."
"I’m a freshman at the University of Chicago, a school second on the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s ranking of campuses for greatest protection of free speech. The school is so committed to free speech that the Special Collections Research Center has a standing exhibit about censorship.  Yet even here, in one of the least hostile environments, I have to pause and consider quite carefully what I share with others. It’s not that I don’t believe in my ideas or the free exchange of them. I am capable of both challenging others and being challenged.  But collegiate education now is less about ideas than it is about identities"
"Anyone who has dissenting opinions on such cultural issues as abortion, Covid or Israel knows that self-censorship is rampant on campus. One of my friends received a low grade on an essay about systemic racism in which he raised questions of lack of strong male role models and educational attainment. When he wrote the next essay with a liberal point of view and citations of liberal media source, he received a grade a full letter higher.  I’ve faced a lot of criticism and backlash by peers and faculty for being a black student with center-right views. I’ve been screamed at by peers on campus for defending capitalism and suggesting that high abortion rates harm the black community. I was called an Uncle Tom for questioning the effectiveness of the tactics of Black Lives Matter. My professors often assume that because of my ethnicity I must hold left-wing views on racial issues and have sought my opinion on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion initiatives. I often find myself staying silent and nodding along to avoid conflict with the people around me. I actually like many of these people, and to prevent losing friendship and relationships, I keep my true opinions to myself."
"As an undergraduate attending a university in California, I have experienced college censorship. Almost every class I’ve taken has been tainted with liberal talking points from leftist professors who are not afraid to share their radical beliefs. When completing my assignments, I pretend to be a liberal in fear of receiving backlash and a bad grade.  It has even become a game to me. I can type out my liberal responses on a surface level, since they don’t take any critical-thinking skills anyway. All I have to do is include the word “racism,” and the assignment is good to go.  Being at such a woke school has also resulted in self-censoring of my views even with my closest friends. That I hold conservative values would get me cancelled by my peers. I am passionate about my conservative beliefs but don’t want to lose the friends I love because of them. While censoring my views has often made me feel I’m not being true to myself, I unfortunately feel it is necessary."

Fanfare then fallout at BU antiracist research center - "The center was recently propelled again into the national spotlight after Kendi laid off more than half its staff, 19 of 36 employees, on Sept. 13, prompting questions and accusations about mismanagement and spending. A vocal handful of the center’s ex-employees went public with scathing claims about Kendi’s leadership style and academic record and the center’s work culture and employee turnover... Boston University is itself in transition and reportedly struggling with some of the very challenges the center was designed to address. The university’s DEI work has come under some criticism after several employees of color have left or been forced out, and a student movement to rename a campus building has been stymied. A few students, faculty and former staff members have accused the university of not being genuinely committed to DEI and say the center’s prominence has made the institution appear more committed to its stated values of inclusion and equity than it actually is. Meanwhile, Melissa L. Gilliam, the university’s first Black and first female president, is poised to take office next summer."

How Ibram X. Kendi Broke Boston University - WSJ - "The debacle that is Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research is about far more than its founder, Ibram X. Kendi. It is about a university, caught up in cultural hysteria, subordinating itself to ideology.  After suddenly laying off over half his employees last week and with his center producing almost nothing since its founding, Mr. Kendi is now facing an investigation and harsh criticism from numerous colleagues complaining of financial mismanagement, dysfunctional leadership, and failure to honor obligations attached to its millions in grant money.  Such an outcome was entirely predictable. In June 2020, the university hired Mr. Kendi, created and endowed his center, and canceled all “classes, meetings, and events” for a quasi-religious “Day of Collective Engagement” on “Racism and Antiracism, Our Realities and Our Roles,” during which Mr. Kendi and his colleagues were treated as sages. They denounced voter-identification laws as “an expressly antiblack form of state violence,” claimed Ronald Reagan flooded “black communities with crack cocaine,” and declared that every black person was “literally George Floyd.” One speaker said that decades ago “literal uprising and rebellion in the streets” forced the creation of black-studies programs in universities nationwide, and now was the time to revolutionize the “whole institution” and make antiracism central to every discipline and a requirement for all faculty hiring.  That summer many BU departments published Kendi-ist “antiracist” statements limiting academic freedom and subordinating inquiry to his ideology... In the English department’s playwriting program, all syllabi would have to “assign 50% diverse-identifying and marginalized writers,” and any “material or scholarship . . . from a White or Eurocentric lineage” could be taught only “through an actively anti-racist lens.” They even published hiring quotas based on race: “We commit to . . . hiring at least 50% BIPOC”—an acronym for black, indigenous or people of color—“artists by 2023.” I had recently earned tenure and was serving as a member of BU’s Faculty Council and as chairman of its Academic Freedom Committee. By fall 2020, I was hearing from faculty—all progressives—who were disturbed by what was unfolding in their departments on campus but terrified to speak up. They had seen colleagues face major professional damage for falsely being denounced as racist. I tried to help, but the Academic Freedom Committee had no real power. We could only ask the senior administration to act. It did nothing.  Activist faculty weren’t the only ones transforming BU into an officially Kendi-ist institution. The push was coming from the university’s highest levels... A dean claimed the administration would examine not only policies and practices but even ideas—and not only for racism but for whatever might “facilitate racism.”  I pointed out in the meeting that “any notion of ‘antiracism’ presupposes a definition of ‘racism.’ Beyond civil-rights law and common sense, what counts as ‘racism’ is essentially contested and reflective of competing ethical and political views.” I said it sounded as if the university was officially endorsing Mr. Kendi’s views. I asked if his notion of “racism” would guide the BU task force, and I noted that his view that every disparate outcome is caused by and constitutes racism is controversial and rejected by conservatives such as the economist Glenn Loury and progressives such as the Black Marxist Adolph Reed Jr. and my former teacher Cornel West.  Mr. Brown didn’t answer me directly. Immediately, several deans came after me in the chat. I was clearly uninformed and confused; now wasn’t the time for “intellectual debate.” They implied I might not actually oppose racism.  I wrote a letter to BU’s president that afternoon, stressing that beyond the problems with Mr. Kendi’s vision, the more fundamental issue concerned betraying the university’s research and teaching mission by making any ideology institutional orthodoxy. Nothing changed. Even now, BU is insisting it will “absolutely not” step back from its commitment to Mr. Kendi’s antiracism.  Mr. Kendi deserves some blame for the scandal, but the real culprit is institutional and cultural. It’s still unfolding and is far bigger than BU. In 2020, countless universities behaved as BU did. And to this day at universities everywhere, activist faculty and administrators are still quietly working to institutionalize Mr. Kendi’s vision. They have made embracing “diversity, equity and inclusion” a criterion for hiring and tenure, have rewritten disciplinary standards to privilege antiracist ideology, and are discerning ways to circumvent the Supreme Court’s affirmative-action ruling. Most of those now attacking Mr. Kendi at BU don’t object to his vision. They embrace it. They don’t oppose its establishment in universities. That’s their goal. Their anger isn’t with his ideology’s intellectual and ethical poverty but with his personal failure to use the money and power given to him to institutionalize their vision across American universities, politics and culture.  Whether driven by moral hysteria, cynical careerism or fear of being labeled racist, this violation of scholarly ideals and liberal principles betrays the norms necessary for intellectual life and human flourishing. It courts disaster, at this moment especially, that universities can’t afford."

Meme - Radio Free Amanda @c...: "WRONG BURNER ACCOUNT LINDA"
Yasha Levine @yashalevine: "Gotta say most of these Stop Anti-Asian Hate protests are kinda sad. They don't address the central issue: the bipartisan War on China. That's because aside from a few small pockets, my weaponized immigrant peers support American imperialism"
Linda Watkins @finleymorgan14: "I get that the neoliberal attacks on China have increased the hate factor but I'm a black guy and I'm telling you right now Asians don't like us and we don't like them. They are so condescending towards us whenever we have to deal with them."

In Diversity Push, Target Offers New Black Paraplegic Santa Ornament - "Okay, I understand black Santa, so don't get me for racism here, but yo, why does he have to be paraplegic?  Yes, this is a real tree ornament being sold by Target."

Does Maltreatment in Childhood Affect Sexual Orientation in Adulthood? - "Epidemiological studies find a positive association between physical and sexual abuse, neglect, and witnessing violence in childhood and same-sex sexuality in adulthood, but studies directly assessing the association between these diverse types of maltreatment and sexuality cannot disentangle the causal direction because the sequencing of maltreatment and emerging sexuality is difficult to ascertain. Nascent same-sex orientation may increase risk of maltreatment; alternatively, maltreatment may shape sexual orientation. Our study used instrumental variable models based on family characteristics that predict maltreatment but are not plausibly influenced by sexual orientation (e.g., having a stepparent) as natural experiments to investigate whether maltreatment might increase the likelihood of same-sex sexuality in a nationally representative sample (n = 34,653). In instrumental variable models, history of sexual abuse predicted increased prevalence of same-sex attraction by 2.0 percentage points (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.4, 2.5), any same-sex partners by 1.4 percentage points (95% CI = 1.0, 1.9), and same-sex identity by 0.7 percentage points (95% CI = 0.4, 0.9). Effects of sexual abuse on men’s sexual orientation were substantially larger than on women’s. Effects of non-sexual maltreatment were significant only for men and women’s sexual identity and women’s same-sex partners. While point estimates suggest much of the association between maltreatment and sexual orientation may be due to the effects of maltreatment on sexual orientation, confidence intervals were wide. Our results suggest that causal relationships driving the association between sexual orientation and childhood abuse may be bidirectional, may differ by type of abuse, and may differ by sex. Better understanding of this potentially complex causal structure is critical to developing targeted strategies to reduce sexual orientation disparities in exposure to abuse."
Time to force this article to be retracted, since we all know people are born this way, and it's a homophobic lie that child abuse makes one more likely to be gay

City of Calgary drops bylaw charge on 'private conversation' concerning the '1 Million March 4 Children' - "City of Calgary officials have withdrawn charges against two men who allegedly made an unknown passenger 'uncomfortable' with their conversation.  While en route to the "1 Million March 4 Children" in September, the two men allegedly contravened a Calgary Transit bylaw prohibiting activity that would "interfere with the comfort, convenience or quiet use and enjoyment of the transit system of any reasonable person."  They had a "private conversation on the C-train with a like-minded passenger" while travelling to the march in a nearly empty train car, according to The Democracy Fund (TDF)... each side took a strong stance — people supporting the march described it as a protest of the "indoctrination" and "sexualization" of children in schools, while "detractors" called it "hateful."  Ultimately, an unknown passenger overheard the two men conversing and reported it to local law enforcement. When they departed the train car, Calgary police detained them, handcuffing one of the men while they confirmed his identity... the nonprofit continues to take exception with similar bylaws that punish controversial private communications not deemed criminal, including the City of London’s Graphic Image Delivery By-law and Calgary’s Safe & Inclusive Access By-law.  "TDF is concerned about the emergence of bylaws that punish private communications that are controversial but not criminal," it said, citing the Graphic Image Delivery By-law, which relies on the "health, safety and well-being of persons" to regulate the delivery of "graphic images" to residential properties in the city. It defines "graphic image" as "an image or photograph showing or purporting to show a fetus or any part of a fetus." Honner considered the "narrow definition" of "graphic image" problematic, which "begs the question of whether council is trying to restrict pro-life expression."  "Why else would only images of fetuses, no matter how benign, be restricted?" he said.   TDF cited other Canadian municipalities with "restrictive speech by-laws," including Edmonton and Waterloo. "Both cities recently passed almost identical by-laws regulating private communications on certain municipal property," they said.  "While these by-laws purport to protect people against human rights discrimination, they go further than that.""
Saying something a liberal overhears that he disagrees with is violence

Meme - "I SuPPorT FREE SPEECH, JusT NOT HATE SPEECH."
"I SUPPORT PHYSICS , JUST NOT GRAVITY."

Across the US, White Neighborhoods Have More Greenery, Fewer Dilapidated Buildings, Fewer Multi-Family Homes
Equity means white neighbourhoods need to be destroyed

ZUBY: on X - "You can be in favour of something, but opposed to it being mandatory. You can be against something, but not in favour of it being banned. Smart people understand this."

Liberals are more emotion-driven than conservatives - "In line with previous scientific knowledge on the relative rigidity of rightist ideological beliefs, the first three studies illustrate that induced emotions have a greater influence on leftists' positions than on rightists' positions, even though the experimental manipulations affected levels of emotion similarly for all participants. Even the third study, in which a negative emotion was induced, led to changes in policy support only among leftists, as was the case with empathy in the first two studies... Jewish-Israeli leftists' policy support was more related to both empathy and anger than rightists'"
Liberal ideology is driven by emotion, so

Virginia Commonwealth U. Student Body President: 'I Hate White People So Much Its Not Even Funny' - "The student body president of Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) was discovered posting extreme, racist, and violent rhetoric on social media, which included advocating for the targeted killings of law enforcement. In one post to social media, the “transgender & non-binary” leader of VCU’s student government wrote: “i hate white people so much its not even funny.”  “Ur reminder to advocate for the [killing] of [kops],” tweeted VCU student body president Taylor Marie Maloney in March, from the now-suspended Twitter account, @okrasocialist...   In another tweet, the student body president celebrated the killing of a Capitol Police officer.  “love this we need more of this,” Maloney wrote in response to a tweet from the Associated Press, which read, “A Capitol Police officer was killed after a car rammed into law enforcement at security barricade. A second officer was injured, police say.”  On the day of the Derek Chauvin verdict, Maloney took to Twitter to proclaim that she hoped “that man” would be acquitted, so that rioters can “burn this bitch to the ground.”  “i hope that man walks so we can burn this bitch to the ground,” the student body president tweeted.  A few days later, Maloney tweeted, “riot riot riot,” and “loot loot loot.”  “i hate white people so much its not even funny,” Maloney added in a follow-up tweet.  Maloney has also taken to social media to defend the two teenagers who were charged in the fatal carjacking of Uber Eats driver Mohammad Anwar last month, tweeting, in part, “im sorry but a world where 13/15 year olds feel like they have to carjack is fucked up enough.”   The student body president also recently called for the burning of city buses in Richmond, Virginia, tweeting, “when richmond gonna fry up another grtc bus? when are we gonna see some action again? i thought yall was anarchists.”  Last summer, Maloney was arrested for trespassing in Monroe Park in Richmond, Virginia, while protesting, according to a report by the Commonwealth Times. At the time of her arrest, Maloney was president-elect of VCU’s student government association.  Earlier this month, Maloney was championed by the ACLU of Virginia for being “the first openly transgender & non-binary person to do so at a major public institution,” and for allegedly “making a huge impact on their campus while also being an advocate in their community.”"
VCU Student Harassed After Right-Wing Media Reports Anti-Police Views - "Gastañaga also questions the intentions of the author behind the Post Millennial article. “We need to ask why a Canadian news company whose mission is to ‘report Canadian news events’ is interested in the political views and personal information of a U.S. college student,” she said."
Weird. We keep being told no one hates white people
I like how "accountability" is only in one direction, and you're a bad person for criticising the woke the same way the woke criticise others: power relations means never having to say you're sorry. And criticising the press is good when it's a "right wing" publication

Hot debate in India: is ‘curry’ a racist hangover from British colonialism and should the word be cancelled? - "Indian-American food blogger Chaheti Bansal, 27, has triggered a debate on social media after calling for the word “curry” to be cancelled because of its association with “British colonialism” and its failure to capture the essence of complex Indian dishes. In her online cooking show Rooted In Spice, which has gained over 3.6 million views, the California-based cook started raging – while demonstrating how to make gatte ki sabji, a popular curry-style gram flour-based dish from India’s desert state of Rajasthan – that the term “curry” had been misused by “white people” to name any dish made on the Asian subcontinent. “Like there’s a saying that the food in India changes every 100km and yet we’re still using this umbrella term popularised by white people who couldn’t be bothered to learn the actual names of our dishes,” Bansal said in an interview with NBC News... “Does anyone think of colonialism when ordering a curry? Not really,” said one Twitter user.  “How the word ‘curry’ – a generic term for a dish with a gravy – across Asia can be construed as racist I have no clue. I work with Indians and Sri Lankans and they have just laughed out loud when I told them,” said another...  Vivek Rana, the executive chef of New Delhi’s The Claridges Hotel, said taking umbrage with the word “curry” was oversensitive.  Italians, he said, did not react to how non-Italians used the word “pasta” as a catch-all phrase for dough or pastry of different shapes used in Italian cooking, even though Italians would always use specific names such as tagliatelle or spaghetti. “Similarly, Spanish tapas is also an umbrella term covering myriad small dishes with individual names. Grouping them together is wrong but it is not racist,” said Rana. The debate, he said, was much ado over nothing as the Indian culinary lexicon did not have the word “curry”. “Even in our restaurants, we do have a few dishes where we use the word such as in Malabar prawn curry or chicken green curry etc. But while doing so, I’m still not an advocate of free usage of that word for all gravy dishes. But I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the term is racist, though it does show ignorance on the user’s part while also failing to capture the true complexity and diversity of the dish.”  Rana said the word “curry” became popularised after India became independent in 1947... Other chefs said there was such a wide variety of such dishes that even many Indians weren’t aware of the entire repertoire. “In West Bengal, for instance, curries are called ‘jhol’. Then there’s ‘salan’ or ‘korma’ signifying fiery non-veg mutton or chicken dishes from Awadh or Hyderabad. Then there’s Kashmiri ‘roghan josh’ [a mutton dish] or Kerala’s ‘meen moilee’ [a fish dish],” explained Amit Wadhera, executive chef at The Park Hotel... Kakkar claimed that most Asian dishes – be it katsu curry from Japan, laksa from Singapore and Malaysia or Burmese See-pyan – traced their provenance to India."
Basically white people aren't easily offended when it comes to their culture. Ironically, this disproves the point of that meme about making fun of white men because they're not easily offended (which is intended to be ironic)

The relationship between health and political ideology begins in childhood - "We investigate whether childhood health status influences adult political ideology and whether health at subsequent life-stages, adolescent personality traits, or adolescent academic aptitude mediate this relationship. Using a national longitudinal cohort sample, we found that better health among children under age 10 was positively related to conservative political ideology among adults over age 64. Children with excellent health compared to very poor health were 16 percentage points more likely to report having a conservative political ideology in adulthood. Children with excellent health compared to very poor health were 13 percentage points less likely to report having a liberal political ideology in adulthood. Adults who had excellent health as children were 30 percentage points more likely to report conservative ideology than liberal ideology. However, the difference in ideological position for adults who had very poor childhood health was negligible. That is, the health and ideology relationship is being driven by those who were healthier early in life, after controlling for family income and material wealth. No evidence was found for mediation by adolescent heath, adult heath, adolescent personality traits, or adolescent academic aptitude. The magnitude of the coefficient for childhood health was substantively and statistically equivalent across race and sex. We discuss the possibility that, instead of being mediated, childhood health may actually be a mediator bridging social, environmental, and policy contexts with political ideology. We also discuss the potential of social policy to influence health, which influences ideology (and voting participation), which eventually circles back to influence social policy. It is important to understand the nexus of political life and population health since disparities in voice and power can exacerbate health disparities."

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