Saturday, June 08, 2024

Links - 8th June 2024 (2 - General Wokeness)

Meme - Jonathan Kay @jonkay: "This woman is a perfect symbol of everything voters hate about elite Cdn hypocrisy. Makes half a million dollars a year to run a network no one watches, whose content hectors everyone about the same white privilege she radiates like a neon sign"
"FIRST READING: In tense appearance, CBC president once again asserts bonuses don't exist"

Meme - THOMAS @TommyinPA: "Actual group photo of DSA St. Louis. What's missing in this picture?"
i/o @eyeslasho: "Given that the city is 45% black, the answer to the question is: Black people.  Another possible answer: Physically-fit attractive people"

Meme - Richard Hanania @RichardHanania: "Leftists getting confused because they're supposed to love Arabs now but they notice many look white which is automatically bad."
Real Jory Micah @jorymicah: "I'm supposed to believe this man's ancestors are from the Middle East?" *Adam Sandler*

Meme - Wilfred Reilly @wil_da_beast630: "In mainstream, up-middle class life, we have gotten so used to ritualistically criticizing "forward castes" that many citizens legitimately do not know how much they contribute to society. On a recent general knowledge test, 99% of my student-aged respondents knew who Malcolm X was, but only 18% could identify the Wright Brothers (the figure for Calvin Coolidge was 6%). One hears questions like: "Pop culture is Black culture. What have white MEN ever really done?"   Just to clarify: limiting this only the the very modern era, about 79% of all major U.S. inventions have only a male inventor, while 12-13% have a female inventor. 71% of inventors are "white alone," even with Asians and West Africans in the mix, and looking only at today.   Actual "ism" abuse is bad. Women gave birth to all of the inventors. I'm more than glad to see humans of all the various different varieties as rough equals. Blah blah blah. But, it just really isn't true that bisexual Black and Native women "built this society," and the current leadership clade somehow unfairly stole it from them."
"Inventor Gender - Total All Time
U: 8.40% F: 12.80% M: 78.80%"
Wilfred Reilly @wil_da_beast630: ""All time" in the graphic is like 1980 to 2023, btw - it's the era when PatentsView has been up and running."
The cope is that all this was stolen from women, because left wingers can come up with a few examples of past "stolen" inventions with their very generous "reading" of history

US lawsuit challenges Southwest Air's free ticket program for Hispanic students - "The lawsuit alleged that the program violated Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, a Civil War-era law that bars racial bias in contracting. It also claimed the program violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination in federally funded programs or activities. Federal funding Southwest received during the COVID-19 pandemic means the airline can be sued under that statute, according to the complaint."
Since left wingers claim that receiving even $1 of government money means schools must follow laws binding public education...

Congratulations, academia, you've gone and radicalized the students - "It’s no small task to hijack a whole system of education to achieve a political end, but Canadian academics — “critical race scholars,” “decolonial theorists” and the like — seem to have accomplished it. Congratulations are in order. Once believed to be underdogs doomed to a life of underemployment and student debt, these scholarly activists have created a red guard of radicalized students willing to march in the street calling for intefadeh. Ideological entrepreneurs in progressive academia (most of academia) embraced the theories of Kimberlé Crenshaw, a Columbia University professor of critical legal studies who came up with the idea that identity is the root cause of disadvantage. They then applied the work of academics like Ibram X. Kendi, who discovered the solution to oppression: “anti-racism,” or the levelling of the social justice scales by discriminating against the privileged. The takeaway: those who are considered to be privileged colonizers deserve whatever anti-oppressive resistance comes their way. Emerging from this nebula of social justice was a groundbreaking line of work: diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Activist-scholars shepherded in their own research institutes and grants, anointing their work with the oil of legitimacy. Some places, like Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson) transformed their curriculums to spread the good word of decolonization to more willing students. Others dug deeper into the theology: the University of Alberta’s Canada Research Chair in Feminism and Intersectionality, for example, came up with an “anti-racism lab,” a pillar of ideological reinforcement. One publication by a lab member, “Whiteness and damage in the education classroom,” explained how white people needed to take extra care to prevent their racial energies from contaminating the learning environment. Liberal arts, indeed. Houses of ideological expertise don’t just provide jobs to the activist-scholar class — they’re also a source of moral guidance. In the wake of the Israel-Hamas war, for example, the gender studies department of Queen’s University made sure to issue a statement of solidarity for “Palestine” condemning “the erasure of trans and queer Palestinians” and acknowledging how the “settler colonial structure of Turtle Island perpetuates Islamophobia and antisemitism.” Elsewhere, academics have organized “teach-ins,” in which credentialed people in just about any field find ways to put forth their expert opinions on the Israel-Hamas war. The University of Winnipeg’s English department, disinterested in actual literature, has organized a panel on “imperialism, settler-colonialism and decolonization,” which will include the attendance of radical scholars like Ghada Sasa, who played down the role of Hamas in the Oct. 7 massacre and attributed killings of Israeli citizens to the Israeli military. Similarly, an advisory panel to the president of Brock University, along with the school’s social justice research institute, will soon host a panel discussion on “Palestine” and “decolonization.” The work of DEI can net quite a bit of money and status. Take Western University, which is currently looking to hire an assistant dean in DEI and decolonization for its law program. But for those who don’t fit the qualifications, there is plenty more missionary work to be done: campus workshops on microaggressions and anti-oppression toolboxes won’t run themselves, and these new DEI administrators need people to dig up the anti-oppression pedagogy du jour. But just as most peewee hockey kids don’t end up in the National Hockey League, most social-justice-crusading students won’t end up becoming chief diversity officer of Corposoft. They sure as hell will try, though, and will happily play foot soldier to the cause if it means a chance at status. It’s now plain as day that activist-scholars have succeeded in assembling a high-volume social justice warrior pipeline. The bulk of the politically-active student body broadly supports ideas like “anti-colonial resistance” and “decolonization,” which means they’re happy to throw their support behind the anti-Israel, pro-Palestine movement — even in the immediate aftermath of a terrorist attack by a group of mass rapists who support the latter... Students, dutifully applying the lessons from their teachers, have taken up the cause of anti-colonial resistance. Their moral compasses are calibrated to side with whichever side of a conflict can be said to be suffering from oppression. It doesn’t matter that Hamas raped and murdered children on Oct. 7, brutally ending what had been a ceasefire; what matters is that Hamas is on the side of the Palestinians, and the Palestinians are greater victims of oppression. It’s all good fun to create a generation of zealous students enamored with the idea of progress, but the professors who led the change should be mindful that radical student movements tend to end poorly for educators — the Chinese Red Guards of 1966 and the Hitler Youth of the 1930s being prime examples. If far-left educators maintain control of their student-to-social-justice-warrior pipeline, they could be in for a nasty surprise. Lucky for them, western education has a habit of curbing revolutionary movements before they get out of hand. Let’s hope this history repeats itself."

Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "At the peak of America's moral panic about racism and "white supremacy," racial discrimination complaints were at a  30-year low."
"Annual EEOC Charges (Race Discrimination)"

Meme - NPC: "The Industrial Revolution only happened in America and Britain because of slavery."
Normal person: "Then why didn't it happen in Spain? They had more slaves, a larger empire, and a head start in the New World. Also. Brazil, which imported more slaves and kept the institution for several decades longer. And why did far more industrialization happen in the US northern states while the south stagnated? How come Canada, Australia, and New Zealand industrialized without slavery? Come to think of it, why didn't the Roman Empire industrialize thousands of years ago?"
NPC: *upset*

Meme - Mike Pesca @pescami: "CAP the Center for American Progress could have titled this chart many things. They went with "drastically wide racial disparities for past 2 decades".  It's part of a story titled "New Poverty and Food Insecurity Data Illustrate Persistent Racial Inequities".  But a better, more relevant- to-today title would be "Hispanic poverty halved, Black Poverty decreased by over 40%, since early 1990s. " (White poverty barely budged)"
"The official poverty rate shows drastically wide racial disparities for the past two decades"
Left wingers would rather everyone stays poor if there're no racial disparities

Meme - Carl @HistoryBoomer: "As @JoyceCarolOates  says (more politely), what the hell does this have to do with science?!?  @sciam  has fallen prey to becoming a progressive Twitter mouthpiece. You know what position they'll take before they take it, and you know I'll have nothing to do with actual science. 🤯"
Joyce Carol Oates: "Scientific American, once subscribed-to by high school students, of which I was one, seems to have deteriorated into something other than a journal about science & new discoveries; covering issues of the sort written about constantly, nonstop, opinionated commentary on trending subjects."
Scientific American @sciam: "Media coverage of university students speaking up against the war in Gaza, just like coverage of other protest movements, has fallen prey to some serious weaknesses"

Meme - El Magnifico @ @MagnificoIX: "This is what they sent me last year when my subscription lapsed."
"Dear Reader,
Thanks so much for supporting our work and sticking with us and other sources of reliable information during the COVID pandemic. Your subscription promotes trustworthy, deeply researched, expert-driven reporting about many other fast-moving and fascinating fields of study: space, quantum physics, the immune system, misinformation, social justice, cancer, the brain, evolution and endless other subjects. I hope that you still value and enjoy our work. To show our appreciation we want to offer you a 20% discount to resubscribe to Scientific American.
Best wishes,
Laura Helmuth
Editor-in-Chief
Scientific American"
Robbo @meinungschef1: "Social justice and Quantum Physics.   Hmmmmmmmmmmm  They better be some massive Torah Scholars if they’re gonna push that flex out. And even then…"

'Out-of-control woke leftism and cancel culture' in US is a threat to FRANCE, French politicians say - "They are arguing that American ideas on race, gender, post-colonialism – especially those coming from U.S. universities – are undermining French society and are an attack on French heritage... The debate came to a head this week after the new director of the Paris Opera, Alexander Neef, released a 66-page report on diversity at the company in which he vowed to diversify staff and to ban blackface.  It came after five black members of the ballet company circulated an open letter among the Paris Opera's 1,800 employees last summer, calling for greater diversity.  Neef was targeted for the decision by far-right leader Marine le Pen and by French newspaper Le Monde which said he 'soaked up American culture for 10 years' while he worked in Toronto. This month also saw the publication of a book by social scientists Stéphane Beaud and Gérard Noiriel in which they claimed that race is a 'bulldozer' that destroys other subjects. They added to the New York Times that they did not believe race should not be studied as an academic subject in France, as the secular government does not recognize it... Some French intellects have also argued that American universities are to blame for giving justification to acts of terrorism carried out by Muslims.  After three Islamist terror attacks last fall, Education minister Blanquer accused the universities of being complicit.  He was supported in an open letter from 100 prominent scholars that blasted social theories 'transferred from North American campuses'.  One of the signatories, Gilles Kepel, argued that American influence led to 'a sort of prohibition in universities to think about the phenomenon of political Islam in the name of a leftist ideology that considers it the religion of the underprivileged.'  Historian Pierre-André Taguieff argued in the same way that the 'American-style black question' was a 'totally artificial importation' to France.  He said that it was all driven by 'hatred of the West, as a white civilization'.  'The common agenda of these enemies of European civilization can be summed up in three words: decolonize, demasculate, de-Europeanize,' Taguieff said.  'Straight white male — that's the culprit to condemn and the enemy to eliminate.'... Macron's intervention was welcomed by academics including sociologist Nathalie Heinich.  'I was pleasantly astonished,' she told the Times.  Last month she established an organization that fights against 'decolonialism and identity politics'.  The group has written warnings against 'American-inspired social theories' in many major French publications and has spoken out against 'cancel culture' at French universities.  'It was a series of incidents that was extremely traumatic to our community and that all fell under what is called cancel culture,' Heinich said."

Supreme Court Justice Alito’s Beach House Displayed ‘Appeal to Heaven’ Flag - The New York Times
Bonchie on X - "The same people who tell you chants of "globalize the intifada" and "from the river to the sea" are fine want you to believe a pine tree flag is a deeply disturbing and disqualifying insurrectionist symbol."
We are still told that left wingers don't hate their countries

Greg Price on X - "You know that extremely controversial Appeal to Heaven flag that’s been the subject of media smears against Justice Alito? It also flew outside of San Francisco’s Civic Center for decades. Until last weekend when it was mysteriously removed."
San Francisco Chronicle on X - "San Francisco removed the controversial “Appeal to Heaven” flag from Civic Center Plaza after it had flown there since 1964. City parks officials quietly took down the Civic Center flag over the weekend"

Thread by @wokal_distance on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Dictionaries/wikipedia altering definitions and articles so leftists can win arguments A Thread🧵 In 7 days since the Alito flag story broke the wikipedia entry for the Pine Tree flag was edited 206 times (pic 1) In the 8 months prior the article was edited 22 times (pic 2) @Cernovich gives us another fine example here. Wikipedia redefining "recession" to help Democrats out, and then locking the page to make it more difficult to fix👇 When Republicans nominated Amy Coney-Barret for the Supreme court the left changed the meaning of "court-packing" and dictionary .com went along with it. in order to try to make republicans look bad Speaking of Amy Coney-Barret... When Amy Coney-Barret used the term "preference" while discussing sexual orientation the left pretended that "preference" was offensive, and Merriam-Webster changed the definition in order to make that lie stick👇 The transgender activists got merriam-webster the change the definition of the word "female" to include "gender identity" (pic 1) when that was nowhere to found as recently as 2019 (pic 2) Of course changing the meaning of the word "female" in order to help trans activists also means changing the meaning of the word "girl" to help trans activists (H/T@libsoftiktok) And of course changing the meaning of the word "girl" to try to make the left look correct...means changing the meaning of the word "boy" to try to make the left look correct👇 We also find "vox" celebrating the fact Merriam-Webster changed the definition of racism to include purely "systemic oppression." The left wanted to redefine the word "racism" according to woke ideology so they did, got the dictionary to play along, and the media celebrated it A long time ago @chadfelixg pointed out that google changed the definition of the word bigot in order to go along with leftist ideology: The left did not like us pointing out their use of "cultural marxism" (a term found in academic literature to refer to marxist cultural analysis) so they changed the meaning of that word to be an anti-semitic conspiracy theory... and wikipedia went along with it.👇 The left did not like non-white voting for Trump...so they changed the definition of "whiteness" to include black, brown, and hispanic people. The dictionary didn't go along with this...but the washington post sure did. What you are seeing in all these cases is an example of narrative warfare. Specifically, it is a form of discursive/dialectical warfare that seeks to try to win a social and political conflict by altering, changing, and shaping the meaning of the terms and concepts in play... Dialectical leftists, including woke activists, postmodernists, post-structuralists, Social Justice Warriors, etc, attempt to ratchet the discourse to the left by reinterpreting and redefining all the terms and concepts in play. They do this by changing the definitions of terms, altering the meaning of symbols, challenging the rules of debate and trying to control the terms of engagement. What I have shown in this thread is various attempts at altering the meaning of the words and concepts. Te way this works is that by endlessly changing, theorizing, and engineering discourse, they can endlessly reinterpret and redefine all of the ideas and concepts in play. And if you can control the meaning of all the terms and concepts in play, you can control the debate. The dialectical leftist does no try to discover the truth, the dialectical leftist seeks to make the conversation proceed according to the terms of debate and rules of engagement that accept the fundamental assumptions and priors of the dialectical left. Woke activists are attempting to use their control over the institutions that make a record of the meaning of terms and concepts in play, (that is the dictionaries and public encyclopedias) in order to be able to define all the terms according to woke ideology. Words matter because the meaning of the terms in play determine how issues are framed and the conceptual ground on which the debate is going to be had. If the left can arbitrarily redefine the terms in play, they control the conceptual ground that battle is fought on. Very few people on the conservative side understand the degree to which the language matters. @ChoooCole understands, and that is why she reframed the detransition debate so that she is a *Girl* (harmed by gender ideology) and not a "detransitioner". Because@ChoooCole understands how the language and the discourse function, she was able to spot the fact woke activists were trying to hijack, reframe and redefine the term "detransitioner." So Chloe was able to cut them off by reframing the debate... To focus on the fact she's a *girl* who was *harmed * by *gender ideology* In doing this she makes sure woke activists can't normalize what happened to her by making "detransition" an new identity on a "gender journey" that includes "gender affirming care" See how it works? The battle over meaning and language is no small matter. If one group can unilaterally and arbitrarily define the meaning of the words and the terms of the debate, then that group can control the entire narrative for all of society and get whatever they want. What you see in the examples in this thread is woke activists using their control over institutions that officially record the meaning of terms and concepts to try and validate and legitimize their attempts to change the meaning of the words, concepts and symbols in play. You have to understand the game that is being played here in order to stop it. The woke redefinitions and reframes only work if they can get everyone to accept the legitimacy of their redefinitions and reframes, so you can't let them go unchallenged when they redefine terms. If you can mount a strong enough challenge to what they are doing and help people to see the game the woke activists are playing with words, people will reject the woke definitions and will default back to the normal, everyday, original, meaning of words. This is the game. You can't let woke activists control the discourse, you have to fight back and contest the meaning of the terms in play and rules of debate. If woke activists will beat you at the language game, they can linguistically rig the debate so that they win. Don't let them."

Meme - ᐱ ᑎ ᑐ ᒋ ᕮ ᒍ @Andr3jH: "neoliberalism has gone so far that we have outsourced white supremacy to people called "abhishek bhardwaj""
Abhishek Bhardwaj: "Moscow looks worthy of Travel too, they don't have immigrant problems like in Europe."

Should Art Be a Battleground for Social Justice? - The New York Times - "My questioning Rae’s believability appalled one of my tablemates enough to rise in angry defense of the show. “This is about her life,” he said of Rae. “She worked hard to get this show made, and it’s her story. So you can’t just say you don’t believe it.” Here we were, two black men having it out about how to critique a black woman’s art. On one hand, he was right. Rae had labored to get a serious company to whisk her comedy — and her black face and body — from the internet to television. She succeeded, and people rejoiced. I was eating corn soup next to one of those people.  Implicit in his rebuttal was pride in the righting of a wrong. Even in this so-called golden age of TV, with its proliferations of nonwhite people, queer folks and women, some of whom are running productions, a comedy by and built around black women remains anomalous. So “Insecure” might be too rare to dislike.   On the other hand, where does that leave someone who dislikes it? My tablemate insisted that who and what the show represents are more important than whether the show works for me. We couldn’t have that argument because that argument was a luxury. My wish for entertainment was an affront to the show’s right to exist; its being morally good superseded any imperative for it to be creatively better... We have language that helps do the sorting. A person who insults, harasses or much, much worse is “problematic,” and certain “problematic” people, and their work, gets “canceled.”... People you love but who’ve misstepped are “problematic faves”... The people who know who’s who, what’s what and when’s when are “woke.” They tend not to be black, because black people are born woke; the trick for them is to stay that way.  The nomenclature is supposed to make the moral sorting expedient. The “hot or not” lists of yore have, more direly, become “O.K./Not O.K.”... That leads to something farcical like the Grammys’ rumored prophylactic shunning of the popular white musician Ed Sheeran from the three biggest award categories, lest he triumph over Kendrick Lamar or Childish Gambino and cause a firestorm of upset. It leads to the Oscars now being more a moral purity contest in addition to an artistic sporting event. At awards shows, the nominated works have become referendums on the moral state of the business; their quality has become secondary. Maybe the ratings are down because no one’s seen the movies and the broadcasts are too political. But maybe it’s because no one wants to watch an industry prosecute itself.   No event captures this anxious confusion of activism and criticism better than the time a group of artists descended upon the Whitney Museum during last year’s biennial and demanded, in a protest letter, for the destruction of a painting that morally offended them. Their issue wasn’t only with the painting but with the painter. Dana Schutz’s “Open Casket” depicted Emmett Till in a whirring rictus of earth tones. It’s a vague, unsure, respectfully deferential work, different from Schutz’s bigger, more dazzlingly audacious stuff. One problem, according to the protesters, was that Schutz, as a white woman, had no business painting this young black martyr. This was not, the letter argued, her story.   The writer Zadie Smith spent the latter part of a rich, enfolding critical essay saying she failed to see what the protesters saw. She, too, found the inciting work underwhelming. But some readers got fixated first on Smith’s being biracial, which, they argued, would make it implausible for her to relate to their protest, then on her use of the word “quadroons” in a hypothetical description of her children. Certain corners of Twitter erupted, both to shake their heads at Smith and to tsk her defenders. At least on the topic of “Open Casket,” Zadie Smith — and her text — had been canceled. As far as her critics were concerned, she’d made a moral typo. But shouldn’t her puzzlement stand? A disagreement over one piece of culture points to where our discourse has arrived when it comes to talking about all culture — at a roiling impasse. The conversations are exasperated, the verdicts swift, conclusive and seemingly absolute. The goal is to protect and condemn work, not for its quality, per se, but for its values. Is this art or artist, this character, this joke bad for women, gays, trans people, nonwhites? Are the casts diverse enough? Is this museum show inclusive of enough different kinds of artists? Does the race of the curators correspond with the subject of the show or collection? Increasingly, these questions stand in for a discussion of the art itself... The past two years are a disorienting inversion of the previous 30. The culture wars, as they came to be known in the 1980s and 1990s, were less existential and more ideological. The moralizers tended to be white people from politics and the church...   The animating crisis of that era was sex — from the paranoia, shame and judgment during the AIDS epidemic to the national cataclysm of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. The animating crisis of this era is power... So we wind up with safer art and discourse that provokes and disturbs and shocks less. It gives us culture whose artistic value has been replaced by moral judgment and leaves us with monocriticism. This might indeed be a kind of social justice. But it also robs us of what is messy and tense and chaotic and extrajudicial about art. It validates life while making work and conversations about that work kind of dull.
From 2018. If you don't unconditionally praise something made by a "minority", you're a bad person

Opinion | Is a Helen Keller Obsession Holding Disabled People Back? - The New York Times - "The extremes of disabled representation that we usually find in mainstream media — superhuman disabled people on the one hand, pitiful creatures in need of a cure on the other — are created, almost exclusively, by nondisabled people for nondisabled people. This perhaps explains why they are so redundant and out of touch with our experience. It would be laughable if those images did not translate directly into discrimination in the workplace, in the medical establishment, in our creative institutions. I and other blind writers experience this in both obvious and subtle ways. For instance, we often hear from editors and other decision makers, “Oh, we like this work, but we just published a blind author.” Culturally speaking, it reinforces the idea that we can have only one blind person at a time in the room."
When you have identity politics, you don't have space for too many people from each group, because tons of groups demand "representation" and will destroy you if they don't get it

For Better, for Worse, for Free Branding Work? - The New York Times - "I am a Gen X A.P.I. woman who has a reasonably successful career in an industry dominated by white men and, more specifically, white male archetypes of leadership. I now manage — and, happily, mentor — a wonderful 20-something A.P.I. woman, who is as thoughtful as she is ambitious. I give her a healthy amount of supportive feedback on the substance of her work. However, I would like to give her some feedback on style issues — upspeak, business writing tone, etc. — that I think will help her advance in this industry. Frankly, these are all issues that I’ve navigated myself. However, I recognize that giving her such advice will only reinforce the kind of patriarchal nonsense that I hope her generation will face less. Should I just focus my feedback on substance?"
"I’ve worked at a nonprofit for almost a decade. Nearly a third of the work force identifies as gay or lesbian, including its leadership and my boss. I’m a cis, bisexual woman in a non-monogamous relationship with a straight man who is my primary partner. For a variety of reasons, I’ve been assumed to be straight at work. The longer this has gone on, the more conflicted I’ve felt about coming out at work. I’ve had negative experiences where revealing my bisexuality and non-monogamy made me feel like my personal life was up for grabs as entertainment. As a straight-passing person, I haven’t dealt with the same challenges as some of my colleagues, most of whom are a generation or two older than I am. Have I waited too long? Do I have to also reveal that we have an open relationship that allows me to date women in order to be perceived as “legitimately” queer?"

The Relative Age Effect

"Anywhere in which age cutoffs arbitrarily divide kids into different groups a situation will be generated in which some are older than others—sometimes significantly. The most obvious example of this is in school. When a state dictates that a kindergarten entrant be “five years old before September 1,” that kindergarten class is going to be composed of kids whose ages span as much as a year. A child born on August 31 will be 364 days younger than one born on September 1, even though both will belong in the same class.

At that early age, one additional year of life is no small thing. The oldest kids in the kindergarten class could have as much as 20 percent more experience here on planet Earth, not to mention the accompanying physical growth, than the youngest kids in the same class. Teachers and school systems, however, apply the same set of expectations for all kids in that class, regardless of the month of their birth. They’re taught the same lessons, evaluated by the same metrics, and expected to behave the same way...

As with influenza, there should be no obvious biological differences in the risk of ADHD based simply on a child’s birthday. So we could group kids by their birth month and assume that they were counterfactual to each other; that is, what happened to the group of kids born in August is what would have happened to the kids born in September had they been born in August, and vice versa. If we saw differences in ADHD rates between kids born in one month versus the other, we could deduce that they were the result of external factors, and not some biologically inherent feature...

Here’s what we found: in states with a September 1 cutoff, kids born in August had a 34 percent higher rate of ADHD diagnosis and treatment than those in the same class born in September of the previous year...

There are other ways the relative age effect can manifest itself in our health. A study from the U.K. showed that the youngest kids in a school class year were not only more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD and intellectual disability but also more likely to be diagnosed with depression. A review of data in Alberta, Canada, from 1979 to 1992 showed that among individuals under twenty who committed suicide, a disproportionate share (55.3 percent) were in the younger half of their school class. A study in Norway, meanwhile, found that being young for your grade was associated with increased probability of teenage pregnancy.

The relative age effect has been shown to affect classroom outcomes beyond a child’s health. In a study of children in England with a school entry cutoff of September 1, researchers found that standardized test scores were consistently lower for boys and girls born in August compared with their older, September-born peers. The size of the effect, which they called the “August birth penalty,” was most pronounced in the youngest kids they studied, the five-year-olds, though it was present as old as age eighteen. After accounting for other potential factors (such as when other kids in a given class were born, when in the school year kids entered their class, or whether kids switched schools), the researchers came to the conclusion that “the major reason why August-born children perform significantly worse than September-born children in the Key Stage tests is simply that they are almost a year younger when they sit [for] them.”...

Compared with September-born kids, the August-born kids were also more likely to be diagnosed with behavioral, cognitive, or physical disabilities, and more likely to be in remedial reading or math courses. August-born kids were less likely to be enrolled in programs for gifted students, less likely to be enrolled in advanced reading or math courses, less likely to be enrolled in Advanced Placement courses, and less likely to graduate from high school on the standard schedule. By and large, the effects remained even after controlling for gender, race, and maternal level of education."

--- Random Acts of Medicine: The Hidden Forces That Sway Doctors, Impact Patients, and Shape Our Health / Anupam B. Jena & Christopher Worsham

Links - 8th June 2024 (1 - Migrants)

Refugee Abthar Al-Athmany charged with rape of girl at Parramatta's Meriton Suites - "The Iraqi refugee accused of forcing a 15-year-old girl to strip naked before raping her repeatedly under cold water has been granted bail. Abthar Bassam Talib Al-Athmany, 19, and an unnamed 17-year-old boy allegedly abused the teenage girl for several hours at the Parramatta Meriton Suites on August 27, 2023... The girl was allegedly threatened with a kitchen knife and told to strip naked before she was forced to perform sexual acts while being filmed... Police will allege she was blindfolded with her own t-shirt and raped repeatedly by the two men in the shower recess while under cold running water. The court heard the two men allegedly used the teenager to advertise prostitution and drugs by posting two photos on her personal Instagram page. She had thought she was picking up a friend's phone from the hotel when she was allegedly lured there by a male associate. The men are accused of holding a second woman captive and forcing her to take her clothes off when she arrived at the room to check on the girl... Al-Athmany spent three months behind bars before he was granted bail by a judge in the NSW Supreme Court late last year. In a letter provided to the court in support of his bail application, his father, Bassam Alothmani, said he had been bullied at multiple Sydney schools. He said his family had settled in Sydney's western suburbs after fleeing conflict in Gaza and Syria - where many of their relatives had been killed. Mr Alothmani said his son suffered from depression and anxiety but that he was a 'kind-hearted and family-oriented man'. Justice Richard Button granted strict conditional bail with a $30,000 surety despite prosecutors arguing he was a significant risk to the community."

President Joe Biden calls Japan and India 'xenophobic' nations that do not welcome immigrants - "President Joe Biden has called Japan and India “xenophobic” countries that do not welcome immigrants, lumping the two with adversaries China and Russia as he tried to explain their economic circumstances and contrasted the four with the U.S. on immigration."
If other countries are ruined too, yours won't look so bad by comparison

Dane on X- "The Irish have lost their minds. Ireland's National Police Force is advertising in PAKISTAN for applications to join their 'team'.   I'm just happy they thought this one through, like issues of non-Irish men, with literally nothing in common to the culture, policing Irish men... almost sounds like an occupation, but can't be because the government says that's a wild conspiracy theory.  😳"
Odin on X - "There has been a very strong Marxist tendency among the Irish, and these are the consequences. The Irish mentality has for too long been mired in ‘supporting the underdog’, and this has morphed into being replaced on their own island."

Muslim immigrant stabs 70-year-old man to death minutes after stabbing flatmate for converting to Christianity in UK: report - "A 45-year-old Moroccan asylum seeker has been accused of murdering a 70-year-old British man in Hartlepool, a quaint seaside town about 30 miles south of Newcastle.   Ahmed Ali Adil allegedly plunged a knife into the heart of Terence Carney last October, killing him just minutes after stabbing his flatmate, Javed Nouri, nearly to death while he slept... Mohammed Karimi, who shared the flat with Adil and Nouri, said there was "blood everywhere" after the former allegedly stabbed the latter while shouting "Allahu Akbar." Nouri, he explained, had recently converted to Christianity, a decision which caused tension between the two... The killing was captured on CCTV footage, in which Carney can be heard begging Adil to stop stabbing him. Adil, on the other hand, shouted in Arabic and praised Allah.  Adil was eventually tracked down by police and taken into custody. Throughout his trial, which is still ongoing, he has maintained his innocence. According to Judge Cheema-Grubb, the jury is being asked to consider his mental state at the time of the attacks.  As the Northern Echo reports, police were made aware of Adil long before the killing by residents who were concerned about his behavior and tendency to carry a knife in the communal property of his housing complex."
It's all the fault of Islamophobia. The solution is to ban and criminalise Muslims converting out of Islam
Weird. The left tell us that all violent Muslims are terrorists, and that only violent white people have mental health issues

Bill Melugin on X - "EXCLUSIVE: Internal DHS data reveals the 45+ U.S. cities that hundreds of thousands of migrants have flown into via the Biden administration's controversial "CHNV" mass parole program. The data was obtained by @HomelandGOP  via a subpoena to DHS, and was provided to @FoxNews . The DHS data shows that during an 8 month stretch from January through August 2023, roughly 200,000 migrants flew into the U.S. via the program, with 80% of them, (161,562) arriving in the state of Florida in four cities: Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, & Tampa.  The top 15 cities migrants flew into, & the numbers during this 8 month window, are below...  DHS also revealed in the subpoena response that as of October 2023, there was a backlog about 1.6 million applicants waiting for DHS approval to fly to the U.S. via the parole program.   In response to the DHS data revealing Florida received the overwhelming majority of migrant flights during the 8 month window, FL. Gov. @RonDeSantis 's office provided FOX the following statement:  "Biden's parole program is unlawful, and constitutes an abuse of constitutional authority. Florida is currently suing Biden to shut it down, and we believe that we will prevail." - @JeremyRedfernFL , DeSantis' Press Secretary.  DHS also wrote in the subpoena response that "All individuals paroled into the United States are, by definition, inadmissible, including those paroled under the CHNV processes."
Congressman @RepMarkGreen , Chairman of @HomelandGOP , told FOX in response:  "What they're essentially saying is that the laws passed by Congress have said that these people are inadmissible, and so they created a program to try to get around those laws. The thing is, they don't have the authority to create such a program. By their own admission, they're breaking the law."
Reminder: The CHNV parole program, created by the Biden admin in January 2023, allows up to 30,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, & Venezuela to bypass the southern border entirely, and fly into the U.S. directly from foreign countries for a two year humanitarian parole grant if they have a sponsor in the U.S., and are vetted/approved for travel. The flights are commercial, and are not funded by taxpayers. The program recipient or their sponsor pays for it, and the parole grant allows the recipient to apply to work. The Biden admin considers the program a "lawful pathway", and the migrants flying into the U.S. via the program are not included in the southern border numbers.  According to CBP data, at least 404,000 migrants have flown into the U.S. via the CHNV parole program since it first began:
154,000 Haitians 95,000 Venezuelans 84,000 Cubans 69,000 Nicaraguans
So far, legal challenges to this controversial parole program have failed in court... Critics say the program essentially waves a magic wand to mass import hundreds of thousands of otherwise inadmissible migrants into the US, with the likelihood of them ever leaving or being deported if they stay past the permitted parole grant being remarkably low."
DHS docs reveal where paroled migrants under controversial Biden flight program are landing

Dane on X - "Muslim says openly to a reporter, Muslims are all one, and we are here for one thing, Jihad.   "We have armies, we have tanks, we have soldiers, what are my Muslim brothers waiting for, jihad has responsibility on you"  Assimilate?  They were never intended to assimilate, work, or provide anything of benefit to The United Kingdom. They were brought in to destroy the middle class White man just like every 3rd world nation is flooding The States.  In the US it's hordes from every country on the globe, all unvetted, all given complete autonomy, all ready to kiII, rape, and thieve at a moments notice. All being paid for by YOU, how f'd up is that?  And who keeps letting them into The States? Who?"
Time to arrest him for perpetuating Islamophobic stereotypes!

ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ 🇧🇹🇹🇩 on X - "Lee Kuan Yew on Immigration as a solution to Declining Birth Rates
“Singaporeans have strong reservations about admitting immigrants, but we arrive at this option almost by process of elimination.  It is natural for us to feel uncomfortable with those who look, sound or behave differently from us. I like to see familiar faces. But are we reproducing ourselves?  Do we face up to reality and accept that some immigrants are necessary, or do we simply allow Singapore to shrink, age and lose vitality?  There are three limits to the immigration approach.  First, they have to come at a pace that is politically digestible or there will be a significant backlash from the population, which would be counterproductive.  Second, even if Singaporeans were to eventually increase their threshold of tolerance, there is still a level beyond which more immigration would be undesirable.  If the number is large enough, they may even be able to force changes onto the local culture. To be fair, some of these changes may be positive ones. But if we allow ourselves to reach that point, then we would have no control over which parts of the immigrant culture we want to incorporate.  For instance, new immigrants may come from a country which is more mono-ethnic and be unused to living with others from different races. The social attitudes they come with may, unconsciously, not fit in well with the social norms and practices in Singapore, and may lead to friction. We need to guard against such attitudes, which may inappropriately encroach on our way of life.  Finally, empirical evidence tells us that immigrants do not boost our fertility rates because they have as few children as Singaporeans do.  They replace the young adults that we are short of, but do not have enough children to replace themselves. Each generation of immigrants, therefore, represents not a permanent fix to the underlying problem, but temporary relief. A never-ending stream of immigrants is required.”

“I cannot solve the problem and I have given up. I have given up the job to another generation of leaders. Hopefully, they or their successors will eventually find a way out”
Speaking in 2013"

i/o on X - "Government: We compiled some data.
Politician: Great. I'm going to disseminate these data and use them to support my public position on immigration-related issues.
Government: Wait, we didn't say you could do that.
Politician: But that's what I do with the economic and housing and other data you compile, and you've never told me before that I couldn't use those data in my official duties. So why can't I do the same with these data?
Government:
Politician: Well?
Government: You seem racist. See you in court."
The Free Speech Union on X - "Right-wing German politician Marie-Thérèse Kaiser has been convicted for publishing official government statistics showing foreigners are represented in half of all gang rape cases, in response to news that Afghan migrants would be moved to her district."
Dr Jordan B Peterson on X - "Remember when the Venezuelan government made it illegal for physicians to report death by starvation? I do."
Young AfD politician convicted after publishing gang rape statistics in connection with Afghan migration - "violent crime has climbed to its highest level since 2009, the number of foreign suspects of violent crimes has increased by 14.4 per cent compared to 2022, and the overwhelming majority of victims of all crimes, 75 per cent, are now German citizens... she announced a raft of measures she described as “instruments of rule of law to protect our democracy,” but that critics fear will chill free expression while serving the ulterior motive of reigning in the AfD’s growing popularity in the run up to next year’s German federal election.  One such measure is to freeze the bank accounts of those found to have donated money to any group the government declares to be “far-right.” “No one who donates to a right-wing extremist party should remain undetected,” she explained, adding: “Those who mock the state must deal with a strong state.”"
Since official government statistics are "incitement to hatred", they need to shut down the statistical office
Clearly, if you criticise the state, you are a dangerous extremist who must be punished and silenced
Going after those who talk about how bad rape is - this must be the "rape culture" that feminists keep going on about

Right-Wing Feminist Arrested for Denouncing Immigration and Violence Against Women - "A young woman was arrested in the eastern French city of Besançon and taken into custody for holding up a sign calling for the deportation of foreign rapists. She faces up to a year in prison. Her lawyer has stated that she intends to lodge a complaint for “infringement of personal freedom.”  During Besançon’s carnival on Saturday, April 6th, two young women, one of them a 19-year-old, held up signs in the street reading: “Violeurs étrangers dehors” and “Libérez-nous de l’immigration” (“Foreign Rapists Away”, and “Free us from immigration”). On one of the facades of the Grande Rue, one of Besançon’s main thoroughfares, they also unfurled a banner pointing out that “46 women could have been spared if the OQTFs (Obligation de Quitter le Territoire Français for Obligation to Leave French Territory) had been applied in 2023”. They both belong to the feminist identity group Némésis, which regularly denounces the increase in violence against women due to the massive influx of immigrants who do not respect the rules of Western society with regard to women...        In her defence, Alice Cordier points out that Marlène Schiappa, former Secretary of State for Gender Equality during Emmanuel Macron’s first presidential term, was in favour of deporting foreign rapists: one of the “concrete solutions” that the collective wants to take up and propose."

Gad Saad on X - "Noble immigrants: Please, please, please, please, please. Let us in. We want a better life. Give us a chance.
The West: Ok, come in. Make yourself at home.
Noble immigrants (once in): We curse you, your ancestors, and your descendants. Your society is vile, evil, disgusting, and diseased. We hate you and your laws. we hate your freedoms. We will feverishly work to turn this society identical to the one we escaped from.
The West: That's beautiful. Let's increase immigration from such societies because we are the kindest and most empathetic people ever."

Kat Kanada on X - "New city councillor in Leeds shouting the war cry "Allahu Akbar" proves that for these people immigration is a form of jihad. Don't say people like Tommy Robinson and @GadSaad didn't try to warn the West. ⚠️⚠️⚠️"

Denver migrants sent Mayor Mike Johnston list of 13 demands as they refused to clear encampment, move into shelter - "Migrants in Denver on Monday submitted a list of 13 demands that they say the city must meet before they leave their packed encampment and head into shelters.  The group refused to budge until their extensive list, which includes access to a free immigration lawyer and fresh cooking ingredients, is met as they battle with Denver Human Services... The group’s top demand was that they “cook their own food with fresh, culturally appropriate ingredients provided by the City instead of premade meals — rice, chicken, flour, oil, butter, tomatoes, onions, etc. … Also people will not be punished for bringing in & eating outside food,” messages shared with the outlet said... No more verbal or physical or mental abuse will be permitted from the staff, including no sheriff sleeping inside & monitoring 24/7 — we are not criminals & won’t be treated as such."
Clearly, they're desperate and need help in the form of capitulation to all their demands, or the city will be forcing them to be unsheltered
When fights break out in the shelter due to lack of monitoring, it'll be the City's fault for not giving them enough money

RadioGenoa on X - "This is Germany in 2024 where Islamists want an Islamic caliphate and Sharia law. Is this Europe where you want to raise your children?"
Only far right Islamophobes oppose an Islamic caliphate and Sharia law. Time to arrest all those protesting this
The chanting and repeating of slogans resembles what left wingers do a lot. Telling.

Darya Safai MP on X - "Look at this rally in Germany. This is what things are like in Europe today.  Many Iranians who fled Islamists in Iran and went to live in Germany write on their social media:  "We fled the Islamists and came to Germany to be allowed to live. Where should our children flee to now?"  These Islamists want to destroy Western civilisation and rule the world.  They say "la ilaha illa Allah, al kholafa vaadollah", meaning "No god but Allah, the caliphate is his promise ".   By this they mean that Allah will fulfil His promises in the world through His soldiers, these Islamists.   They proclaim during the rally that the a caliphate is the solution.  The world needs to wake up before this gets out of hand. #islamisation"

Not the Bee on X - "🚨 Every single Democrat in the House just voted for illegal immigrants to count towards representation in Congress and the Electoral College"
National Conservative on X - "Now it is completely out in the open and a matter of public record. One of our political parties has an agenda of using illegal aliens to undermine our democratic process and artificially inflate their number of seats in Congress."
Wilfred Reilly on X - "So, OK- this is an obvious answer to: "Why would the Dems, however amoral, want more illegals in the country?""

Elon Musk on X - "The goal of citizenship for all illegals is very clearly stated by the leader of the Senate. For some reason, a lot of people still think this is some crazy conspiracy theory!"
"This is not happening, and it's good that it is"

RadioGenoa on X - "This is a dramatic situation in Rome Termini station where undocumented "asylum seekers" attack Romans and tourists. A situation completely out of control. Giorgia Meloni promised us mass deportations but she didn't do it. We need to restore order and discipline."

Hamas Atrocities on X - "A must watch! Muslims in the west will "tolerate" non-muslims only until they are strong enough to tell you in your face: "worshipping anything other than Allah is not PERMISSABLE""
Yasmine Mohammed 🦋 ياسمين محمد on X - "This is what I’ve been saying. Now listen to it from the horse’s mouth. They will tolerate the useful idiots until they are not useful anymore. Once they reach the ‘critical mass’ he describes, then they will dispense with the niceties and turn on their idiot allies in the same way that the Islamic Republic of Iran turned on the left by imprisoning and killing communists/socialists/liberals as soon as they got power."

RadioGenoa on X - ""Stop, you can't pass, we have to pray to Allah!" France is lost."

RadioGenoa on X - "In Cologne, Germany, there are approximately 50 mosques, why do Muslim immigrants occupy and pray in the streets? In our opinion, Islam is not a religion but a political party that wants to conquer, and unfortunately in many European cities they are succeeding very quickly. There will be a rude awakening. Europe must not be Islamized."

RadioGenoa on X - "“Asylum seeker" explains perfectly to us what is happening in Europe and America: “French natives work for me, they are my slaves! I receive €600 from RSA, €300 from local mission, €350 from APL and social workers pay me for electricity and gas!” We have become their slaves."

Dane on X - "Germany: Refugee from Congo rapes his own mom.  A Congolese refugee, previously described by the German press as a success story for integration, has been jailed for nine years after being convicted of beating and raping his own mother.  Moise Lohombo, 30, was sentenced by the Wiesbaden District Court for an offense the judge claimed was so cruel he told the court he thought he had misread the case file.  The migrant was found to have committed the crime in an apartment he shared with his mother shortly after being released from prison for a drug-related offense.  Upon the return home of his mother, he threatened her with a knife and told her he would kill her if she refused him sex. In a desperate plea, his mother offered him money for a prostitute instead, but he refused.  The victim was so severely beaten during the attack that investigators found blood spatter all over the apartment. After the rape, Lohombo reportedly apologized to his mother and called her an ambulance before fleeing.  His mother was transported to the hospital with serious injuries including bleeding on the brain. She was also heavily impacted psychologically by the attack and told nurses she was worried her son may have impregnated her."

New Dutch government will aim to 'opt out' of EU asylum rules - "the four-party coalition says it will aim for the "strictest-ever asylum regime" with stronger border controls and harsher rules for asylum seekers who arrive in the Netherlands. "An opt out clause for European asylum and migration policies will be submitted as soon as possible to the European Commission," the coalition says in its pact. Wilders said the plan would make the Netherlands less attractive for asylum seekers, adding that "people in Africa and the Middle East will start thinking they might be better off elsewhere"... The Dutch coalition parties said labour migration would also be curbed, and admittance of foreign students to Dutch universities will become stricter... On climate change, the coalition said it would stick to internationally agreed goals, but would not add any national restrictions on planet-warming emissions. Offshore gas production in the North Sea would be increased, while the government would continue with plans to build four nuclear reactors in the coming decade."

Mark G Simpson 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 on X - "I’ve had a great time in Iceland 🇮🇸
- It’s safe
- No litter
- Locals are incredibly hospitable
- Pride in their unique culture
- No riffraff
All achieved without mass migration, pandering to the woke mob or EU membership. There’s a lot we can learn"
i/o on X - "Take a look at the Community Note. It neglects to mention the type of immigrant that Iceland gets — which is what explains the lack of what the OP describes as "riff-raff".
Top nations of origin of immigrants: Poland, Denmark, Lithuania, US, Romania, Philippines, Germany, Sweden, Latvia, UK.
Missing: Somalis, Syrians, Afghans, sub-Saharans, Moroccans, Pakistanis, and other usual suspects."

ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ 🇧🇹🇹🇩 on X - "LOCALS RIOT AFTER PAKISTANI ‘GROOMING GANG’ MOLESTS GIRL (in Kyrgyzstan) “You can’t just let them get away with something so obscene. Pakistani migrants arrive in your country (Kyrgyzstan) and start molesting children and you do nothing? It’s unacceptable (in Kyrgyzstan)”"
Damn racism!

David Atherton on X - "Among the Muslim community are low levels of employment & high levels of welfare dependency. A whistleblower & follower of mine at the DWP lays the scandal bare.  "Hi David, I'm just reading your post regarding the ONS & Muslim unemployment. Those who dispute this need to come & work a day in a city job centre.   "At the moment, we're seeing customers who've been migrated to Universal Credit from Tax Credits. In these Muslim families, the women do not work & have not been expected to under HMRC.   UC is different, & they are expected to work. However, what chance is there to find work for a woman who doesn't speak English & has never worked a day in her life?   "I interviewed 3 women yesterday. A total of 42 years they have collectively lived in the UK. Neither had worked 1 day nor contributed £1 into the 🇬🇧 economy. Their husbands worked & earned under £20,000 pa.   "They've been subsidised for 42 years by the taxpayer. Subsidised by taxpayers, & there is nothing I can do about it as the likelihood of them finding employment is slim 🇬🇧.""
The solution to low birth rates meaning the welfare state can't be supported is to bring in even more net drains on it. Clearly the solution is for the heartless Tories to end austerity and increase social funding

Meme - Joyce @JoycesWake: "Pretty sure my ancestors didn't survive an Ice Age, engage in civil wars, endure famines, defend invasions, conquer oceans, cure their sick, produce marvels of engineering, and pass their inheritance to me just so l can hand it to African boat men with iPhones and sob stories."

Meme - "WHO ARE WE?"
"IMMIGRANTS IN THE WEST"
"WHY ARE WE HERE?"
"WE ESCAPED SHITTY COUNTRIES."
"WHAT DO WE WANT?"
"TO TURN WEST INTO THE SHITTY COUNTRIES WE ESCAPED FROM"

Meme - "Who wants Shariah Law?" *crowd raises hands and is excited*
"Who wants to live in Afghanistan?" *crowd lowers hands and is dejected*
"Who wants to live in the infidel West?" *crowd raises hands and is excited*

Friday, June 07, 2024

Links - 7th June 2024 (2)

Thread by @KirkegaardEmil on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Private market fans are usually a fan of private education. The trouble is that educational outcomes are mostly just genetics, so there isn't much room for improvement. One way to study this is to look at school voucher randomized trials.  This meta-analysis shows that they don't do anything for reading or math ability in the West. The results for non-Western countries are larger, but not very trustworthy due to rampant scientific misconduct in those countries. Shrug tier.  Private education probably preferable on other grounds, but not for actual learning outcomes.
The Participant Effects of Private School Vouchers Across the Globe: A Meta-Analytic and Systematic Review
Reminders about rampant scientific dishonesty outside the West. Randomized trials from outside the West very often have fraudulent or impossible data."

Thread by @bendreyfuss on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - " Hollywood doesn’t want you to know this but if we invented dinosaurs and they turned on us I actually don’t think it would be very hard to kill all of them. One regiment of the Oregon national guard or whatever could kill a million dinosaurs with minimal loss of life. There are anti-aircraft rifles that can take down, uh, aircrafts. Those rifles would kill the T Rex. Dinosaurs don’t even have opposable thumbs. The president does not need congressional authorization to kill all the dinosaurs. Congress can hold as many hearings as it wants but unless they pass a law protecting the dinosaurs, the dinos die.  By the time this gets to the Supreme Court the case will be moot because every dinosaur will have a bullet in its skull. You wouldn’t even the need the government to kill them because the second we got a push alert about these dinosaurs going rogue millions of people would get in their cars to go shoot the dinosaurs themselves. First we let the Houthis knock us around, now we’re quaking in fear over some dumbass dinosaurs? What’s next? Hiding under our beds because of Estonia? Or geese? America owns the moon, ok? We own it. We are strong and god-like. Decline is a choice."

Michael Shellenberger on X - "Democrats Demand Global Crackdown On Human Rights, Including Mine, To Save Democracy.  House members at yesterday’s Congressional hearing supported the Brazilian government’s demand for censorship
Going into yesterday’s Congressional hearing on Brazil’s crackdown on free speech, I expected Democrats would at least express some amount of concern for what is happening in that country.   It’s not just that Brazil’s President Lula is seeking to impose Cuban-style speech restrictions on the largest economy in Latin America, complete with secret thought police.   It isn’t just that Brazil’s Supreme Court is demanding that every major social media platform permanently ban independent journalists and politicians.   It’s also that the Brazilian government is poised to file criminal charges against an American citizen, the author of this article, for publishing entirely accurate and legal information in the form of the Twitter Files - Brazil, last month.   After all, at one heated Congressional hearing on censorship, Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY) at least complimented my choice of necktie.   Surely a Democrat would have the decency to say something even mealy-mouthed, e.g., “While I vehemently disagree with your views on the environment and homelessness, I don’t think that what the Brazilian government is right, either to its own people or to me, an American citizen and journalist….”  That didn’t happen.   Instead of raising even a peep about the politicians and journalists being arrested, thrown in prison, and having their bank accounts frozen, Rep. Susan Wild (D-PA), the Democratic ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations, defended, at length, Brazil’s turn toward authoritarianism as necessary to saving democracy in that country.   Wild’s remarks were followed by Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-CA), who attacked the witnesses, who included a Brazilian journalist, the CEO of a social media company, and me, for having allegedly spread disinformation about Brazil’s government to destabilize its democracy, and used McCarthyite line of questioning to support the Brazilian government’s anticipated criminal case against me.   “Mr. Shellenberger,” she said to me yes or no? Is it true that you have repeatedly published false information that defamed public figures who are dedicated to combating disinformation?”"

Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum Fan Film Back Online After Warner Bros. Takedown - "The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum fan film has appeared back online after Warner Bros. issued a copyright strike against the 15 year old video a day after announcing a film of the same name. Available to watch on YouTube again, The Hunt for Gollum was initially removed because it "[contained] content from Warner Bros. Entertainment who [had] blocked it on copyright grounds." But the fan film remained offline for less than 24 hours.

Did You Know Super Mario Was Named After Landlord of Warehouse Nintendo Had Rented? - "In 1993, he gave one brief interview to the Seattle Times, a first-ever press statement by him. He said he was “still waiting for the royalty checks” for his name being used by Nintendo."

Meme - "This graph kills me every time I see it
how to read roman numerals Search term
super bowl Search term *correlation*"

charity genius 🇵🇸 on X - "Bring back those 1950s housewife drugs that get you so high you start putting ham in Jello and having sex with mailmen"

Meme - "Our first date was at Subway and then 9 months later Boom a lil 6 inch *baby wrapped in Subway wrapping paper*"

Storm family, dog reunite 18 months later - "When Chuck and Elicia James ventured to their local animal shelter to adopt a dog, they expected to meet a new member of their family. Instead they found themselves reunited with their long lost canine.  The James’ had not seen Reckless, a brown and white terrier-pitbull mix, since he went missing over a year and a half ago during Superstorm Sandy. They had lost their beloved pup after the fence in their Keansburg, New Jersey, home was mangled during the storm... Rosenthal said the James’ story really emphasizes the importance of getting your pet microchipped. Microchipping is a process in which an animal is implanted with a rice-sized chip that is used to identify him or her."

Meme - "IF YOU SAW A CHILD DROWNING IN A RIVER, BUT YOU COULDN'T SAVE HIM WITHOUT MUSSING YOUR CLOTHES... WOULD YOU DO IT ANYWAY?"
"NO! NEVER! I'VE READ THE PETER SINGER BOOK WHERE HE POSES THAT EXAMPLE! THE MOMENT I SAVE THAT KID, IN ORDER To BE CONSISTENT I GOTTA TREAT EVERY KID EVERYWHERE WITH THE SAME IMPARTIAL DECENCY! CAN YOU IMAGINE THE PRICE TAG?! ITS NOT SUSTAINABLE! SURE, IF I'D NEVER READ SINGER, THE KID WOULD BE WORTH SAVING. BUT NOW? DROWN! DROWN, YOU LITTLE BASTARD!"
"I''D HATE TO SEE WHAT YOU DO IN A RUNAWAY TROLLEY."
"KILL THE CROWD. FEWER WITNESSES."
Fetishising moral consistency (a stronger form of this is to denounce those who are imperfectly good as hypocrites) means that it's better to be evil than good, or that it's not good to have moral ideals or aspirations

Meme - "When last night's one night stand won't leave so u have to call in the experts
HOE REMOVAL SERVICE
TE 65678426"

Radicalised teen shot dead by cops outside a Willetton Bunnings during stabbing rampage is unmasked - as terrifying footage emerges of the school boy blowing up a toilet - "The radicalised teenager who was shot dead by police outside a Bunnings has been unmasked as shocking footage emerges of him blowing up a school toilet.   The teenager, 16, stabbed a 30-year-old man in the back and threatened police with the same 30cm knife outside the store at Willetton, in Perth's south, on Saturday.   Just moments before the attack, he texted multiple people saying he was 'going on the path of jihad tonight for the sake of Allah'."

angery foosh 🐟 on X - "every time I go to a coffee shop I think about the time last summer when I asked for a latte with oat milk and the poor lad behind the counter somehow managed to say with a straight face "sir am sorry a cannae make a latte withoot milk""

Group of the Lithuanian military “disappeared” into the local forests - "NATO exercises have resulted in a resonant disappearance –  a group of the Lithuanian military “disappeared” into the local forests.  Five soldiers serving in a reconnaissance unit were declared missing during a military exercise on February 4–6. Believing the drill was still in progress, they evaded all forces sent to find them.  Lithuanian Military spokesperson Laimis Bratikas told that during a graduation exam for reconaissance troops in central Lithuania, five soldiers – including conscripts – serving in the Žemaitija Motorised Infantry Brigade were declared missing after failing to show up at a pre-defined location.  The military decided “to initiate a search for the soldiers, suspecting that something unplanned had happened,” said Bratikas.  Unfortunately, thinking the exercise was still on, the ‘missing’ soldiers evaded capture by trained dogs and at one point, a helicopter.  They “moved in a forest avoiding contact and without being detected” for 24 hours, said Bratikas. “Military scout training is special, as they are prepped to accomplish their task by staying undetected – in this case, they acted that way until the very end.”  Their ‘survival’ performance was rated exemplary, he added."

Pizzeria's 'Now hiring: non-stupid people' ad sparks backlash - "A restaurant burned by unreliable workers has bluntly advertised what they’re looking for with an ad that reads: “Now hiring: non-stupid people.”    Santino’s Pizzeria hung the all-caps banner outside its Columbus, Ohio, storefront a few months ago in jest, according to local news outlet WSYX, but it’s just now raising eyebrows after a customer posted a photo of it on social media."
Employers discriminating against the lazy and the stupid are bad people

The Theory of Interstellar Trade - "I did not think that Paul Krugman was still writing academic papers. Nor have I seen any evidence in the last decade that he still has any sense of humor. Consequently, I was surprised to see an article written by him entitled “The Theory of Interstellar Trade,” published recently in the journal Economic Inquiry. Here is the abstract of the paper:
This article extends interplanetary trade theory to an interstellar setting. It is chiefly concerned with the following question: how should interest charges on goods in transit be computed when the goods travel at close to the speed of light? This is a problem because the time taken in transit will appear less to an observer traveling with the goods than to a stationary observer. A solution is derived from economic theory, and two useless but true theorems are proved.
A quick look at the acknowledgments, however, clears things up. The original manuscript was written in July 1978, when Krugman was an active researcher and being a curmudgeon wasn’t part of his professional identity."

Colin Wright on X - "The @WSJ reports on science publisher @WileyGlobal shuttering 19 journals for rampant fraud. In the past 2 years, they've been forced to retract over 11,300 papers. The incentive structure of science journals and academia is not aligned with truth-seeking."
Why don't Science Deniers Trust the Science?!

Eitan Fischberger on X - "🚨 EXCLUSIVE from @campusreform : Northwestern alumni demand university terminate agreement with Al Jazeera in Qatar.  The university entered into a “collaboration” with Al Jazeera to partner on research and training in the media and news industries.  But in a brief compiled by alumni affiliated with the Coalition Against Anti-Semitism at Northwestern (CAAN) and sent to @EdWorkforceCmte  ahead of its hearing with Northwestern President Michael Schill on May 23, the alumni argue that Northwestern’s relationship with Al Jazeera potentially violates U.S. law and national security interests under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act.  Read the full letter (remainder in next post):"

Breaking911 on X - "HARRIS: "We have to know that sometimes people will open the door for you and leave it open. Sometimes they won't, and then you need to kick that fuckin’ door down.""
i/o on X - "In 1974, transcripts of Nixon's secret Oval Office tapes were released. Swear words were redacted and replaced with the phrase "expletive deleted" to shield Americans from the language.  Ordinary people were astonished that a US president regularly used foul language such as "goddamn" and "son of a bitch."   Now the f-bomb can be casually dropped by a vice president in a public setting without fear of significant controversy. The culture continues its coarsening."

Richard Hanania on X - "In the 1990s, prosecutors in California would exclude Jews from juries because they tended to have sympathy for black murders. Now the murderers may get new trials. I really hope Jews have learned some lessons about who their friends are since that time. I forgive you. Because someone wrote down "Jew," families of victims are being contacted and told that they're going to have to go through new trials. The family of a nine year old boy killed are bracing themselves as leftists consider his murderer the real victim."

Bill Gates Office Has a Periodic Table With Samples of Each Chemical : r/interestingasfuck

Why didn’t Elrond engage Isildur in battle if he knew that Sauron would return eventually and it would save countless future lives? - Quora - "“Gee, the Ring is right here (maybe Isildur is even holding it already), maybe I’ll kill the leader of Men and end the Last Alliance of Elves and Men.” thought Elrond. “But he is my brother, a Child of Iluvatar just as I am. He is kin, a nephew many generations removed, son and Faithful heir to my brother Elros, the first King of Numenor. Wasn’t the Kinslaying the last error of Feanor and the Noldor that lead to their banishment?”  Elrond didn’t do this because he is wise, not mad like Sauron or Smeagol."

Meme - "Who said greek tragedies were not funny???"
AN ORESTEIA
Slave: "You won't kill me?"
Orestes: "Go"
Slave: "Fabulous."
Orestes: "Unless I reconsider"
Slave: "Not fabulous."

Meme - Orc: "I WONDER How I TASTE..."
Human girl: "I CAN HELP with THat!"
*Orc cringing as he imagines girl kissing him*
*Girl imagining giving orc a blowjob*

Meme - "You can go up to people irl and ask them for rumors like in oblivion and theyll actually respond"
"did this shit in 2015 when I went to the pnw and that shit was literally fucking oblivion. I walked into a beer bar and asked some dude "what rumors have you heard?" and he told me about a dude who went missing hiking to a nearby volcano like what the fuck"

Meme - "No guy has all 5:
Fast replies
Intelligence
Good personality
Loyalty
A bed frame"

Meme - "IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS THEN YOU'RE PROBABLY TOO YOUNG FOR THIS PAGE *Neopolitan ice cream tub with 2 fingers in pink strawberry ice cream, 1 finger in brown chocolate ice cream*"

"Planet of the Apes" actors say they are "Team Ape" because humans are bad for the environment and start wars: "I dislike humans a lot" - "Two of the actors in the newest installment of the Planet of the Apes series, Freya Allan and Owen Teague, told the press that they understood why monkeys would take over and that the world might be better off without people... Freya Allen sums up her entire worldview nicely in one sentence: 'I dislike humans a lot.'
Anti-humanism is at the heart of leftism. That's why they're the cult of death. The cult of dehumanization. The cult of nature worship. The cult of climate apocalypse."
More on the misanthropy of environmentalism

Meet the falconer who earns $20,000 a month - "The job: Falconry-based abatement. "We use trained falcons, hawks and owls as security guards to protect areas where pest birds congregate," said Alina Blankenship, 52. She leverages the predator-prey relationship that is hardwired into birds to avoid their predators, to deter gulls, starlings, Canada geese, pigeons, sparrows and other fowl. Unlike scarecrows or loud noises, "the birds will never acclimate to that." Her clients include airfields, stadiums, wharves, cities, golf courses and dams where opportunistic birds catch fish. In Oregon, she works with many agriculture companies, such as vineyards, which often sit in the migration paths of starlings that gather in groups of tens of thousands and can decimate a crop in minutes. "It's like a mob rush at a grocery store," Blankenship said."

A prince's university fees paid by £200 million taxpayer-funded scheme - "More than £200million of taxpayers' cash has been spent on fully-funded scholarships to foreign students in the past four years... They are available to 'outstanding emerging leaders' from across the world to pursue one-year master's degrees in Britain. But many recipients appear capable of paying their own way - with even a Prince from Lesotho among the distinguished Chevening alumni... scholars have been able to attend events including a 'fully immersive wellbeing art workshop' and a visit to Brighton to 'celebrate diversity'. They have also been invited to have afternoon tea on a London bus and visit the Harry Potter studios in Hertfordshire - all for free. The Foreign Office insists that the scheme generates more economic benefit than it costs, adding that it enhances British influence abroad... former Tory minister David Jones said that while the scholarships are a 'good way of cultivating soft power', they should be given to 'deserving people' who cannot afford to study in the UK otherwise."

Meme - "Welcome, sir, to my shop of curiosities."
"Yeah, can I get that monkey's paw?"
"He he he... Choose your wishes carefully..."
"Oh, I don't want any wishes. One extra large bottle of lube, please"

Meme - "My wife: We should tile the kitchen backsplash.
Me: Say no more. I got the perfect idea. *skulls*"

Meme - "Check out this preserved kitten in a buttplug"
"have you ever heard of secrets"

Meme - "Michael Alice 21
Don't mind us, just a father daughter scrolling Tinder
She, Alice, 21
He, Michael, 40
We are up for a 3xsome or anything casual."

Meme - *Asian guy with fishing rod*
*White girl in fish costume*

Is There an Optimal Driving Speed that Saves Gas—and Money? - "There should be some optimal driving speed at which the total cost (gasoline plus missed work) is minimized. This minimum cost will depend on the fuel efficiency of your car and how much you earn per hour."

Meme - "TOM HOLLAND. 'Romeo & Juliet' Costar... FACING RACIAL ABUSE ONLINE
datboikhei: "She just looks like an ugly dude. If you think it's because she's black, you're the racist one.""

Meme - "Uh, Juliet has a mustache."
"Tom Holland and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers are the new "Romeo & Juliet'"

Meme - "Tom Holland and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers As Romeo and Juliet first look photos
*Spider-man vs Predator*"

Meme - *Tom Holland and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers*
*Gender-swapped Tom Holland and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers*

Meme - "Who is the more complex Superman villain?
Lex Luthor
Antithesis to Superman's abilities and ideologies
Egotistical and insecure
Could save the world but too consumed by selfishness.
Pessimistic and cynical of humanity.
Darkseid
Wants to solve his math homework."

High steaks society: who are the 12% of people consuming half of all beef in the US? - "Beef production is a huge climate crisis driver, and a new study says only a small percentage of the country does most of the eating"
88% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy, says Utah scientist. Here's what to do about it - ""For the first time in history, we had a government telling us what to eat," said Bikman. "Encouraging us to eat far more refined carbs, and much less healthy fats and proteins, and our weight and health have only suffered for it."... Bikman shares research showing that more than half of adult Americans are already insulin resistant, which is growing rapidly throughout the world."

Meme - *sex toys dumped in open outside dumpster*

Meme - "I don't live with my parents
I have sex 2-3 times a day
I have lots of free time so I read books and go to the gym daily
I don't need a job to live
Can't wait to get out of jail"

Meme - Meghan McCain @MeghanMcCain: "sexism and attacks. I refuse to be a part of this type of hate and bullying and I am honored to now have this platform to help change things"
Meghan McCain @MeghanMcCain: "NO PEACE, BITCH"
Kari Lake @KariLake: "Hi Meghan, As mothers, (both with two kiddos) I'm know we both agree that our children's future is too important to let it slip away over pas..."

Teenager explains why he chose to pay $6,300 a year to live permanently on trains - "Lasse Stolley, from Germany, decided to up sticks and move onboard the country's national trains nearly two years ago... However, off the teenager went, armed with just a rucksack, to live onboard trains while also carrying out his job of programming smartphones. Well, Stolley is able to travel on so many trains as a result of joining a discount subscription programme called the BahnCard 100 - offered by Germany's national railway company Deutsche Bahn.  When he first started living onboard trains, Stolley purchased the annual second-class youth ticket which cost $2,800... The teenager reflects he 'could rent an apartment' but questions 'why' he would do that when he has 'so many friends everywhere' to go and visit and isn't 'lonely'."

Drinking Water / Chinese Style / Responses to outcomes

My 3 most bizarre iFunny blocks yet:


"DRINKING WATER BUT NOT SUITABLE FOR EUROPEAN STOMACH"


"In Chinese new year, shall we dress chinese style? Do you agree."
"OK"
next day...
*Girl in Cheongsam with high slits and white gloves* *Girl in Communist uniform with Little Red Book*


[On the Trump conviction] "Notice how we didn't burn down any cities last night because we didn't like an outcome.

Instead we raised the man $52.8 million in 24 hours.

We are not the same"

Links - 7th June 2024 (1 - Diversity)

Matching students and schools by religion improves academic outcomes—Dr. Catherine Ruth Pakaluk explains why - "The paper of course is “A Good Fit: How Matching Students and Schools by Religion Improves Academic Outcomes”"
This actually follows on from left wing claims about representation, diversity and why segregation is needed (and seems more robust than their claims). But they hate Christianity, so they're not going to want Christian schools to exist

Meme - James Kirkpatrick @VDAREJamesK: "Once you start inserting the tokens and affirmative action characters into a franchise, it doesn't make anyone happy. They are so forgettable that even the journalists, activists, and pronoun people demanding them forget about them almost instantly."
Geekdaddy @Geekdaddy75: "Sorry, Commander Iden Versio. They've forgotten you."
"Kay Vess is set to become the first female to lead a full Star Wars game, which is long overdue for a franchise almost 50 years old."
Iden Versio: "BITCH WHAT"

Dane on X - "The University of Rhode Island announced plans to remove two murals depicting World War II veterans because they were deemed to be predominately white and lacking diversity, according to complaints from students. This is how it should have gone:
Them: That's racist
Me (the Dean): GFY and while you're doing that pack your bags, you're gone."
🗼$SigSal 🐍🪵 on X - "@UltraDane "Ethnic minorities in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II comprised about 13% of all military service members." So out of 100 people, 87 were white, is that too many. -They're just non-stop attempting to delete/change American(white) history. https://t.co/L8Ua9m8o3Y"
Ethnic minorities in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II - Wikipedia - "A considerable number of groups legally defined as white could still be considered ethnic minorities at the time, particularly those from Southern or Eastern Europe."

Meme - "r/college, 3 yr. ago
No cap, I feel bad for white males trying to get internships
USA
 I myself identify as 'Hispanic' more than anything else, with an average GPA I am getting a response to about 1/7 of my applications to engineering internships. It doesn't mean that all of them have gone too far however I am at least getting the first interview / phone call / assessment.  My girlfriend, Asian Hispanic engineering student, has like a 3.3 GPA and she gets a response to like 1/5 of her applications. Same situation as me, many of them are interview once and never hear back kinda deal but we both are looking at potential offers with more than one company.  Two of my roommates are white males studying engineering, they both have above a 3.0 GPA and only one of them has even had an interview. They've both been applying to internships for ~3 months, each one has applied to at least 100 positions (even with a cover letter) and they aren't getting the same attention as me and my girlfriend. Our resumes / work experience are pretty much the same give or take .1 or .2 on the GPA and maybe a specific tech elective.  Has anyone else noticed this?  They were asking us for help but we really don't notice anything different about what they are doing and their qualifications. As strange as it sounds, I've even sat down with one and watched him apply to ~4 positions, the way he does it is exactly how I would do it. Not like would expect differently but I thought maybe I would see."
And this was around 2021

Community managers at @warhammer have started blocking X accounts mocking or questioning the retcon of 40k Custodes. : r/KotakuInAction
Meme - "BUT I THINK IT IS TIME YOU PLAY ALONG WITH EVERYONE. NOW REPEAT AFTER me, THERE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN FEMALE CUSTODIANS."

Meme - Skrotar @Skrotar: "What lore was changed? Quote anywhere the lore prevents females from being custodes. I'll wait."
Based Aragorn @basedaragorn: "God loves you too
It is known that all Custodians begin their lives as the infant sons of the noble houses of Terra. It is a mark of incredible prestige to surrender one's child to this most glorious of callings I within the Imperium, and many notable clans amongst the Terran aristocracy have willingly given up almost entire generations of newborn sons to earn it."

Meme - "Nobody has an issue with Sisters of Battle; Sisters of Silence, women in the Guard, Tau, Eldar, Necrons and Inquisition. Almost every faction that even have genders have women in them. Maybe GW should try fleshing out one of the all female factions more instead of retconning one of the two all male factions."
"I see, the issue is clearly that you hate women. l am very intelligent."

Breast cancer surgeons must submit DEI statement for UC Davis job - "Applicants for a job as a surgical oncologist must submit a “Statement of Contributions to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” to be considered at the University of California Davis... while a DEI statement is mandatory, a “Statement of Teaching” and “Statement of Research” both are listed as optional under the job application instructions.   A former associate dean at the University of Pennsylvania medical school criticized the requirement.  “The key to being a good surgical oncologist is having vast knowledge about how to treat cancer,” Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, chairman of Do No Harm, told The Fix via a media statement.  “That and a strong ethical sense should be the only requirements,” he said. “A surgical oncologist’s political ideas are irrelevant to his or her ability to treat patients.” “There is no evidence that DEI adherence does anything to improve medical care,” he said. “There is a great deal of concern that adherence to DEI lead to divisiveness and mistrust on the part of patients.”  The requirement may also be illegal according to a former deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Education.  “It is already a mistake and likely First Amendment violation for UC Davis to have mandatory diversity statements for faculty and staff applicants,” Adam Kissel, senior fellow at the Cardinal Institute, told The Fix via email. “It’s even more of a mistake to hire a worse surgeon over a better one because of what’s in a diversity statement.”  “Patients are being harmed by scaring them into thinking that there is systemic racism in healthcare,” Kissel said. “This mistaken ideology leads some patients to avoid needed care. DEI in medicine probably costs many black lives.”  He said patients “should trust UC Davis less because of its use of diversity statements.”   “Patients should seek providers whose priority is to save lives rather than engage in social engineering,” Kissel said, a point shared by Dr. Goldfarb.  Other universities have adopted DEI requirements for cancer care.  For example, San Diego State University’s job listing in 2022 for a cancer biologist also required a DEI statement, as reported by City Journal.  Goldfarb told The Fix DEI can “lead to divisiveness and distress on the part of patients of their physicians, then medical care will suffer.”  “Also, if adherence to DEI means that less capable individuals are recruited, medical care will suffer.”"
Weird. I thought DEI was about making sure qualified minorities got the job, and that it's not political (even though you need to swear a political oath to get the job).

Richard Hanania on X - "Federal government suing convenience store Sheetz, saying criminal background checks violate the Civil Rights Act. The company responds we love diversity and inclusion, so please don’t sue us. You think every random business started spouting the exact same nonsense by choice?
Government admits no evidence of an intent to discriminate.  Blacks failed the background check 14.5% of the time, multiracial 13.5%, Native Americans 13%, and whites 8%.  That’s it. That’s the entire lawsuit."
It's racist to not hire ex-cons. Is it racist not to hire the stupid and the lazy?

The federal government is spending millions on equity, diversity, and inclusion research - "I completed a review of how the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)—a major federal granting agency at the intersection of government and academia—has implemented EDI. It may not be a perfect proxy for the post-secondary sector as a whole but SSHRC’s policies and programs provide a useful empirical window into these broader debates.   What did my analysis find? As SSHRC declares its mission to “create a culture where embedding equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) considerations into all aspects of research is second nature”, it’s beginning to face its own institutional challenges.  The evidence that I discovered shows an institution in a tug of war between two versions of equity, diversity, and inclusion: the “soft” EDI of what we’ve historically seen as affirmative action and the “hard” EDI of new critical social justice activism. How SSHRC and other granting agencies manage this tension will determine the future quality of Canadian research... It might seem obvious that the two EDI-focused grants produced so many recipients with explicitly activist titles (63 percent compared with 9 percent of traditional grants). Yet it didn’t need to be this way. Examples of non-activist titles of Race, Gender, and Diversity Initiative recipients included “Understanding Race and Racism in Immigration Detention” and “Open-Access Education Resources in Deaf Education Electronic Books as Pedagogy and Curriculum.” One can study marginalized communities without engaging in social justice activism.   However, most of the EDI-focused grants awarded left no doubt as to the type of research that would be undertaken...   If the federal government wants universities to keep the public’s trust, it should avoid any future activist-themed grants and ensure that granting agencies eschew social justice priorities. Federal granting agencies using taxpayer dollars should be explicit that their primary commitment is to promote excellence via the creation and dissemination of objective, falsifiable research knowledge. The university is supposed to function as a system of knowledge production. Policies that openly tie research to activist political ends threaten to undermine that very system"

Thread by @cremieuxrecueil on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Does diversity make teams work better?  Apparently not!  A new, comprehensive preregistered meta-analysis found that, whether the diversity was demographic, cognitive, or occupational, its relationship with performance was near-zero. These authors were very thorough  Just take a look at the meta-analytic estimates. These are in terms of correlations, and they are corrected for attenuation  These effect sizes are significant due to the large number of studies, but they are very low, even after blowing them up. You may ask yourself: are there hidden moderators?  The answer looks to be 'probably not.' Team longevity, industry sector, performance measures, power distance, year or country of study, task complexity, team interdependence, etc.  None of it really mattered.  Here's longevity... Using these disattenuated effects, if you selected from two groups you expected to have comparable performance otherwise, but one was more diverse, you'd make the 'correct' (higher-performing) decision in 51% of cases (vs. 50%). That assumes there really hasn't been any bias in what gets published. If there has been, you might want to adjust your estimate downwards towards zero, or upwards if you think the literature was rigged the other way. The paper paints an unsupportive picture of the idea that diversity on its own makes teams more performant.  I recommend giving it a read."
The previous literature on diversity has similar results

Meme - "Disney announces remake of 101 Dalmatians *all black dogs*"

Meme - *Black Einstein* "K = FC^2"

Thread by @aaronsibarium on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "NEW: Harvard has tapped an ex-McKinsey consultant who has criticized meritocracy, argued for explicit diversity targets in C-suits, and published shoddy research on the so-called business case for diversity to help select the university’s next president. 🧵  Vivian Hunt, who in 2015 co-authored McKinsey’s influential paper, "Why diversity matters,” has been appointed to lead the Harvard Board of Overseers, the head of which has historically sat on Harvard’s presidential search committees. The overseers can also veto presidential appointments with a majority vote.  The system means that Hunt—who has argued that meritocracy "isn’t good enough"—will likely play a major role in picking former Harvard president Claudine Gay’s successor. Her appointment comes amid plummeting donations and a major drop in applications to the Ivy League school, which has been at the center of a debate about diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in higher education. Critics of those programs say Hunt’s selection is a red flag as Harvard gears up to find a permanent replacement for Gay—a major champion of DEI—who resigned in January amid allegations of plagiarism. "Vivian Hunt leading the search for the next president of Harvard perfectly encapsulates the rot in higher education and corporate America," said Will Hild, the executive director of Consumers’ Research, a nonprofit that has led a campaign against DEI in the business world. "If Harvard was serious about rebuilding their floundering reputation, Hunt would be the last person chosen to lead this search." Hunt has been a driving force behind the proliferation of DEI initiatives. Her 2015 paper has been cited by countless companies and institutions, including the Pentagon, to justify their diversity programs, even as more recent research has challenged her findings. A study in Econ Journal Watch this March found that diversity has no effect on company returns and that Hunt’s results don’t replicate. The findings were a major rebuke of Hunt, who has spent nearly a decade making the business case for diversity—and against meritocracy. She has argued that a "meritocratic" policy of "treating people evenly isn’t good enough" because it "allows the bias that is in our systems … to perpetuate."  "You have to proactively stand for an antiracism environment," she said in a 2020 interview, "to positively include people who have been historically excluded." Hunt’s appointment is likely to raise questions about whether Harvard has learned any lessons from Gay, who was hired through one of the shortest presidential searches in Harvard history—one that did not include a review of her scholarly record. Gay stepped down after accusations of plagiarism compounded the fallout from her disastrous congressional testimony in December, when she equivocated about whether calls for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s code of conduct. Her downfall fueled the perception that she had been hired because, as J.D. Vance put it, "she checked a box." The decision to elevate Hunt could portend more box-checking as the school seeks to manage alumni unhappy with their alma mater’s priorities, including those around DEI. In a write-in campaign to join the Board of Overseers, which advises the Harvard Corporation and has a veto over its members, former Facebook executive Sam Lessin said that "academic excellence" should be the university’s "only goal." The message resonated: Though Lessin didn’t make it onto the ballot for board elections, he did secure 2,901 nominations from alumni—the most in the history of Overseers write-in campaigns. "The Overseers are a critical check and balance on making sure that we have the right leadership across the board," Lessin told the Harvard Crimson in an interview. "They haven’t taken that role seriously enough in modern times.""
David Bernstein on X - ""She has argued that a 'meritocratic' policy of 'treating people evenly isn’t good enough' because it 'allows the bias that is in our systems … to perpetuate.'"  One can argue about that philosophically, but "treating people evenly" based on race, sex, ethnicity, etc happens to be the law, and it is kind of outrageous for Harvard to appoint as chair of its Board of Overseers someone who argues for flouting civil rights law."

Meme - "really a gamer of your tatents playing 90's games"
"it's a DEI free life"

Meme - "If youre in the Steam forums and you look at the profiles of all of the people asking for LGBT to be added youll notice that pretty much every one of them dont even have the game in their Steam library. Thats how sad and pathetic these people are."
Those demanding diversity aren't the paying customers

Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "Hispanics and blacks — together about 1/3 of the US population — contribute next to nothing to innovation. They are rewarded for this underperformance with preferential treatment in STEM hiring, university admissions, and placement in fellowships and various specialty programs."
Sean Last @Sean__Last: "Paper estimates that 96.5% of US inventors were either White or Asian as of 2016. Down slightly from 97.8% in 2000."
The cope is that patents are unrelated to innovation, or that black and hispanic inventions are being stolen by white people

Companies told to give two in five board seats to women - "Public companies with too few women on their boards will be forced to explain themselves to the City of London under new proposals meant to boost diversity, amid claims the top table of corporate Britain remains “very male and white”.  Those with fewer than two out of five female directors will be required to provide an annual statement to investors on why they have fallen short.  At least one of the key board positions of chairman, chief executive, finance director or senior independent director should also be held by a woman under the “comply or explain” rules, the Financial Conduct Authority said.  Further proposed changes to the listings regime would require companies to have at least one director from an ethnic minority background.  However the City watchdog could face accusations of hypocrisy as it fails to hit some of these benchmarks itself, given only a third of its board is female and all are non-executive directors... Santander has decided that bankers will get bigger bonuses for hiring more women and ethnic minority staff from 2022, and more lenders are expected to follow after the FCA told the banks that it regulates that bonuses should be tied to diversity targets... Andrew Bailey is under fresh pressure to reform the Bank of England after an internal report last week found that "unconscious bias" and "microaggressions" were holding back ethnic minority staff."
From 2021. Left wingers still deny that there're quotas and pretend that "diversity" is about not discriminating against "minorities" and getting the widest possible talent pool

The Cascading Complexity Of Diversity - "does the [New York Times] staff reflect the demographics of New York City as a whole?... It draws overwhelmingly from the college educated, who account for only 37 percent of New Yorkers, leaving more than 60 percent of the city completed unreflected in the staffing. It cannot include the nearly 19 percent of New Yorkers in poverty, because a NYT salary would end that. It would also have to restrict itself to the literate, and, according to Literacy New York, 25 percent of people in Manhattan “lack basic prose literary skills” along with 37 percent in Brooklyn and 41 percent in the Bronx. And obviously, it cannot reflect the 14 percent of New Yorkers who are of retirement age, or the 21 percent who have yet to reach 18. For that matter, I have no idea what the median age of a NYT employee is — but I bet it isn’t the same as all of New York City. Around 10 percent of staffers would have to be Republicans (and if the paper of record nationally were to reflect the country as a whole, and not just NYC, around 40 percent would have to be). Some 6 percent of the newsroom would also have to be Haredi or Orthodox Jews — a community you rarely hear about in diversity debates, but one horribly hit by a hate crime surge. 48 percent of NYT employees would have to agree that religion is “very important” in their lives; and 33 percent would be Catholic. And the logic of these demographic quotas is that if a group begins to exceed its quota — say Jews, 13 percent — a Jewish journalist would have to retire for any new one to be hired. Taking this proposal seriously, then, really does require explicit use of race in hiring, which is illegal, which is why the News Guild tweet and memo might end up causing some trouble if the policy is enforced. And all this leaves the category of “white” completely without nuance. We have no idea whether “white” people are Irish or Italian or Russian or Polish or Canadians in origin. Similarly, we do not know if “black” means African immigrants, or native black New Yorkers, or people from the Caribbean. 37 percent of New Yorkers are foreign-born. How does the Guild propose to mirror that? Ditto where staffers live in NYC. How many are from Staten Island, for example, or the Bronx, two places of extremely different ethnic populations? These categories, in other words, are incredibly crude if the goal really is to reflect the actual demographics of New York City. But it isn’t, of course.  My point is that any attempt to make a specific institution entirely representative of the demographics of its location will founder on the sheer complexity of America’s demographic story and the nature of the institution itself. Journalism, for example, is not a profession sought by most people; it’s self-selecting for curious, trouble-making, querulous assholes who enjoy engaging with others and tracking down the truth (at least it used to be). There’s no reason this skillset or attitude will be spread evenly across populations. It seems, for example, that disproportionate numbers of Jews are drawn to it, from a culture of high literacy, intellectualism, and social activism. So why on earth shouldn’t they be over-represented?   And that’s true of other institutions too: are we to police Broadway to make sure that gays constitute only 4 percent of the employees? Or, say, nursing, to ensure that the sex balance is 50-50? Or a construction company for gender parity? Or a bike messenger company’s staff to be reflective of the age demographics of the city? Just take publishing — an industry not far off what the New York Times does. 74 percent of its employees are women. Should there be a hiring freeze until the men catch up? The more you think about it, the more absurdly utopian the Kendi project turns out to be. That’s because its core assumption is that any demographic discrepancies between a profession or institution and its locale are entirely a function of oppression. That’s how Kendi explains racial inequality in America, and specifically denies any alternative explanation. So how is it that a white supremacist country has whites earning considerably less on average than Asian-Americans? How does Kendi explain the fact that the most successful minority group in America are Indian-Americans — with a median income nearly twice that of the national median? Here’s a partial list of the national origins of US citizens whose median earnings are higher than that of white people in America: Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Pakistani, Iranian, Lebanese, Sri Lankan, Armenian, Hmong, Vietnamese. One group earning less: British-American. You can argue that these groups are immigrants and self-selecting for those with higher IQs, education, motivation, and drive. It’s true. But notice that this argument cannot be deployed under the Kendi test: any inequality is a result of racism, remember?... America is also a much more hopeful place than the woke left would have you believe — a country with a nearly unique mix of races, religions, and identities, in which whites are just one part of a kaleidoscopic whole, and not the most successful. And for all those reasons, attempting to categorize people in the crudest racial terms, and social engineering them into a just society where every institution looks like every other one, is such a nightmare waiting to happen. It’s a brutal, toxic, racist template being imposed on a dazzling varied and constantly shifting country.  But of course, this explicit reintroduction of crude racism under the guise of antiracism is already happening. How many institutions will it tear apart, and how much racial resentment will it foment, before it’s done?"
There is only a duty to reflect the population when that helps "minorities"

ALLISON: Schools shouldn’t sacrifice student performance to vague notions of ‘equity’ - "highly equitable and inclusive schools — with declining PISA scores, as is currently the case in Canada — do a disservice to students and society at large. Why? Because higher test scores translate into greater “knowledge capital” — that is, the full body of knowledge available to an economy — and boost economic growth (and, incidentally, the tax revenues that fund our schools). Indeed, the goal should be equitable access to a quality education. And the most realistic and meaningful way to measure student progress is through PISA tests, which every three years assess the performance of 15-year-olds worldwide in core subjects of math, science and reading rather than the limited curriculum objectives used in provincial testing, which can only show progress or decline within individual school systems. In today’s world, where competition is truly global, we must know how our students and schools perform compared to their peers in other countries, especially the “Asian Tigers” of Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan whose rapidly growing economies have been driven by rising PISA scores.Obviously, countries with higher test scores can teach other countries how to improve — although there are limits and some traps here. Attempting to cut and paste Singapore’s or Korea’s much more meritocratic systems of highly competitive student assessment and selection would be impractical and impolitic in Canada. Even so, policymakers should consider reinstating more meaningful meritocratic norms in Canadian schools to encourage and recognize academic achievement. Nothing succeeds like success, except recognized and rewarded success. Closer to home, other provinces could benefit from considering why Quebec is such a stellar performer in math and why Alberta has the highest overall PISA test score average of all provinces. But fair warning , recent attempts at school improvement in Canada show that top-down one-size-fits-all changes — including extending compulsory attendance, reducing average class size and tinkering with course content — have had little positive effect on student performance, although they may please teacher unions. If policymakers want to achieve more equitable success for more students, they should introduce more flexibility, school autonomy and choice into our top-heavy centrally regulated school systems. In this respect it may be no accident that the three highest performing, mid-spending provincial K-12 education systems (Alberta, Quebec and Ontario) offer relatively high levels of school choice, although of quite different kinds."
You can only redistribute when you have enough excess to seize. But you can always find kulaks to scapegoat
No wonder the left wingers hate Alberta so much

End Wokeness on X - "New York just announced a historic $2.3 billion tax-funded grant to fix up the JFK International Airport. This grant, signed off by Governor Katy Hochul, is exclusively for non-White or women-owned businesses. "This is FOR US, and made BY US"
"You gotta have equity in these projects"  Rep. Gregory Meeks admits that the entire project to fix JFK Airport is built on DEI:"
I still see left wingers pretending that equity is equality

Meme - End Wokeness @EndWokeness: "NEW: Maine Governor Mills just signed an executive order to make the construction industry more inclusive for women.  Government grants will be distributed to companies to incentivize hiring female construction workers.     She believes the construction industry is dominated by men due to sexist barriers."
i/o @eyeslasho: "Men do society's most dangerous jobs, and then get blamed for the fact that they do these jobs."
"Top 20 Most Dangerous US Occupations and Percent Male, 2016
Fatal Injury Rate per 100,000 workers: 10.0-135.9
Percent Male: 75.2% (outlier)-99.9%
All US Workers, All Occupations: 3.6 per 100,000 workers
All US Workplace Fatalities: 92.5% male"
Moke @Moke1966758: "A year from now. "Why are woman dying on construction sites? Answer: Trump""

puzzled on X - "Now wait for the change in construction and increase in price. Security measures will multiply, extra breaks, permission to refuse jobs, hand over the heavy work to the men but demand equal pay, demand enclosures at 20 degree C for work areas, flowers in common rooms. Etc etc"
John Tang on X - "The women aren't going to do dangerous jobs they'll put them as traffic watch or sign holder."

Peachy Keenan on X - "Prayers up for the rich white lib private school parents who spent the last 12 years paying $70K/yr full price private--where they subsidized the DEI admits who got free rides--but they never complained because that would be racist.  But the joke's on them: the DEI kids got into the top schools their own kids didn't, despite lower scores.  Right now, thousands of wealthy liberal parents are staring into space, slowly realizing their million$ investment in private helped dumber kids steal their own kids spot at their alma mater--and their kid's heading to Tufts or UNC.   This is what reparations feels like, enjoy!"