Links - 12th August 2021 (2)

Alec Baldwin's wife Hilaria gets exposed for faking Spanish accent, blames media. - "Below is a video of Hilaria on Good Morning America speaking with a Spanish accent… and pretending to not know how to pronounce "cucumber" in English."

Alec Baldwin makes fun of immigrant for calling Hilaria out on accent - "Alec Baldwin mocked a Venezuelan immigrant who called his wife's hypocrisy and fake accent out on Twitter."

Facebook - "The unique thing about America is that no other nation in history is so thoroughly despised by its own elite class."
There's also the UK and Germany

Teaching a 2-year-old to be anti-racist - "My 2-Year-Old Doesn’t Seem to Care About Being Anti-Racist. Have we screwed up somehow?"
The same people complain about religion as child indoctrination and child abuse

Shitlords United - Posts | Facebook - "What if I believe I'm invalid as s person because I am not lgbt+ or poc?"
"Please do not blame minority communities for your suicidal thoughts. When you talk like this, you come across as trying to pass off your privilege as the fault of the oppressed."
"This is the effect wokeism has on vulnerable people.First screenshot: Blue is an autistic white man who has attempted suicide due to being taught he is a monster due to his skin color. Later in the thread, he filmed himself in some kind of meltdown over it, hitting himself in the head. He believes he doesn’t deserve to live.The second screenshot is how an admin responded.When someone is constantly told that they are inherently harmful and oppressive and complicit in horrible things for simply being born, it can warp one’s self-worth. Throw autism into the mix and you’ve got this situation. I truly hope he gets help and reverses the brainwashing."

National child abuse inquiry refused to probe sex-grooming scandals over fears of looking racist - "The national inquiry into child abuse was 'scared of being called racist' and refused to investigate some of Britain's most notorious sex-grooming scandals... Key witnesses were also barred from giving evidence"

Why do liberals have such low expectations for black people like me, asks BIM AFOLAMI MP - "I found myself described as a 'black boy' who, because I went to Oxford (a 'posh uni'), and 'live in an expensive village', was somebody whose 'life bears no bloody resemblance to black kids growing up in the inner city'.My comments on racial issues were dismissed because I lack the 'self-awareness to see he is being used'. I am described as 'a traitor to his race and to his colour' because I am a Conservative MP.You might think that this patronising and racist nonsense might had been written by the English Defence League, or perhaps by fragments of the hard Left. Yet these comments came from a local Liberal Democrat activist in my constituency. According to Facebook, her post was seen by at least half a dozen current or former Lib Dem councillors and candidates in the area, including their Hitchin and Harpenden parliamentary spokesman. None of them objected or criticised what she had to say.And since then, she has been described by the Lib Dem party's parliamentary spokesman as someone who finds 'racism utterly abhorrent in all its forms'. Hmmm.Politicians such as myself have thick skins and we take the rough with the smooth. However, others not in the public eye must also deal with this patronising nonsense disguised as liberalism. Are black men not supposed to be allowed to attend top schools, live in nice villages, or support whatever political party they wish? Or is the only way of being authentically black to live in the 'inner city'?It is such regressive attitudes, notably prevalent among sections of the 'progressive' Left, which is one of the principal racist barriers holding back so many black people in this country. The sad truth is that black people will not be able to fully thrive until conceited liberals of this sort stop trying to keep us in 'our place'... Many on the Left proclaim racial equality in public and virtue-signal for Black Lives Matter, yet actually do not seem to want individual black people to have the right to choose their own destiny.And, of course, when minorities do talk about their experience of racism, they must ensure it fits the agenda of this band of anti-racists. During the summer, we had the shameless spectacle of 32 Labour MPs dismissing Home Secretary Priti Patel's experience of racism as 'gaslighting' – discounting her evidence as manipulative and dishonest. When people of colour do not toe the line the Left wants them to take, they face racist condemnation...  you have politicians such as Lib Dem MP Wera Hobhouse effectively telling people from minority backgrounds they will only be able to enter Parliament if we have all-BAME shortlists.Quotas and shortlists say to young people of colour that they cannot succeed unless white candidates are taken out of the way. They allow everybody else to look at successful BAME politicians and say: 'You are only there because of your race.'"
As Biden said, 'Poor Kids Are Just as Bright' as White Kids

Meme - "Some parents are proud of their boys for wearing makeup and girls clothes because they're "expressing themselves". My son wore this shirt to school. He was told to take it off or get a suspension. I'm proud of my boy for standing his ground and serving his suspension."
"Don't ***k with me *snake*"

Toilet only for disabled elderly pregnant children : CrappyDesign

Family Reheats Last Meal Cooked By Mum Before Death, Reminds Us To Cherish Our Loved Ones - "When our loved ones pass away, it’s only natural for us to hold on to things that remind us of them.For one family in Japan who lost their mum, that ‘item’ was a meal she had cooked before suffering a fatal stroke. After her passing, the family decided to place the meal in the freezer to preserve it. In 2018, 5 years after her passing, the family decided to reheat the meal she cooked prior to her demise... The food was sent to a lab to certify it was indeed safe for consumption. Fortunately, it was — provided the meat was cooked above 100°C and eaten in small portions. A chef was subsequently engaged to ‘restore’ the food while preserving its original flavours. Given the long period that had passed, the dish was rock-solid when removed from the freezer. But with the chef’s skills, the food was successfully ‘revived’ and presented like a restaurant-quality dish, with green garnish on the side."

Gad Saad - Posts | Facebook - "Transcript of my latest SAAD TRUTH clip.
Critical thinking in 2020:
You question the idea that men can menstruate: Transphobe.
You question the idea that open borders are a good idea: Racist.
You question the idea of defunding the police: Racist.
You question the idea that women could have nine-inch penises: Transphobe.
You question the idea that there are no evolved sex differences between the sexes: Sexist & transphobe.
You question the idea that all religions are equally violent: Islamophobe.
You question the idea that all cultures are equal: Racist.
You question the idea that all Trump voters are racist: Racist.
You question the idea that the world will end next Tuesday because of climate change: Science-denier and possibly White nationalist.
You question the idea that the lockdown is necessary but mass protests do not spread the COVID virus: Racist and science-denier.
You question the idea of equality of outcomes: White supremacist.
You question the DIE religion (diversity, equity, and inclusion): White nationalist.
[In today's free society, we tell you what to think.  Failure to abide implies that you are a sexist, racist, transphobic, Islamophobic, white supremacist science-denier.  Don't be that person.  Obey.]"

Swiss police investigate boy, 8, over toy banknotes - "Swiss police have investigated an eight-year-old boy after he allegedly asked whether he could use a toy banknote in a village shop.The fake euro note was Chinese joss paper “spirit money” – used as symbolic burnt offerings at funerals to ensure the dead have a happy afterlife... The unnamed boy was not charged with any offence but his name will reportedly be on police records until May 2032... Even though the note was clearly identified as pretend money, shop staff felt obliged to call the police. “It is our policy; we were instructed to do so by the headquarters in Winterthur”... The brothers had mug shots taken, said the BaZ.And their house was searched for further toy money: three 50-euro notes, two 20-euro notes, five 10-euro notes and three five-euro notes were seized on the grounds of preventing crime"

Philosopher Kings in Blue? - "While once upon a time (say two centuries ago) the U.S. system looked more like a minimal state, today it looks more like a police state. Maybe not as bad a police state as the old Soviet Union, but still, a police state. This transformation is detailed in William Stuntz’ excellent book The Collapse of American Criminal Justice. Some key changes:
    We’ve added a lot more laws, so many that we don’t understand most, and regularly violate many.
    We’ve cut the use of juries and also many legal defenses, which previously helped evade guilty verdicts.
    Rise of big cities means county-set laws are set by folks different from those suffer, cause most crime.
    States, who set prison budgets but don’t control conviction rates, greatly increased prison budgets.
    Legal trial complexity & cost has risen greatly, and is now beyond what most can afford.
    Plea bargaining is now allowed, which strongly pushes people to plead guilty, even when they aren’t.
    The new doctrine of qualified immunity protects government officials from many lawsuits.
    Most complaints about police have long been investigated by the same agency that employs them.
    The rise in civil servant unions, especially police unions.
    Surveillance, tracking, and info collection has in many ways become much cheaper.
(Some of these changes resulted from courts seeking to encourage big moral movements, such as those against slavery, alcohol, drugs, prostitution, polygamy, and gambling.)
The net effect of all this is that police can, if they so choose, target most anyone for punishment. That is, for most any target, police can relatively cheaply find a rule the target violated, pressure others to testify against the target, and then finally pressure the target to plead guilty. And police collectively have a lot of discretion in how they use this power. (The rich and politically well-connected may of course be able to discourage such use of power against themselves)... This is the context in which I’d like you to consider current complaints about police mistreatment of detainees. Police must make difficult and context-dependent tradeoffs between how carefully to avoid hurting detainees, and how aggressively to discourage them from defiance or escape."

come for the monsters, stay for the cannibalism - "The least realistic thing about the Lord of the Rings is that a team got together for a group project, decided everything in one meeting, and their plan worked."
"The group abandoned the original plan halfway up Caradhras, split up several times, some group members started looking into different projects, found new partners and ended up doing something else, the original plan was abandoned early on, and the project was salvaged at the last moment by the one group member that didn’t get sidetracked. Sounds like a pretty astute description of teamwork to me"

Kendall Jenner faces accusations of cultural appropriation after announcing tequila brand - "Kendall Jenner is being accused of cultural appropriation and “exploiting Mexican culture” after she unveiled her new tequila brand, 818 Tequila."
Only Mexicans are allowed to sell tequila Lottie אדירה on Twitter - "Racists are mad about a Queen of England being portrayed by a beautiful, talented Black actor in a historical drama. Why is whiteness so fragile?"
"You're good with a black actor playing Anne Frank, right? How about a remake of Schindler's List that features exclusively black actors?"
"Why don't you just go ahead and write "I hate Jews" instead, it's a lot quicker"
But since liberals consider Jews to be white, this makes perfet sense

Guy Debord Funk❍ pøP ️⃤ on Twitter - "Instead of critically examining the way categories are constructed historically, seeking to abolish them-- intersectionality is a heuristic that reifies, conflates difference all along a flat plane, where you are to be quantified, measured, & indexed by worth of your standpoint.
Blackness isn't even existent here, it's physical melanin measured in relation to whiteness and everyone in between black and whiteness is just "different shades"
Sorry gay men, the asexuals have pushed you aside...
This ideology is not a tool to help understand how various forms of oppression "intersect" but actually seeks to make them collide at an intersection rather than moving forward together."

Right-wing authoritarians aren't very funny: RWA, personality, and creative humor production
This study didn't bother to see whether it was due to being right wing, authoritarian or something else. For all we know, left wing libertarians aren't funny either

Paul Embery on Twitter - "I'm as 'political' as they come. But when you try to politicise every occasion and event - football matches, New Year fireworks, BBC sitcoms - with the same messages, you will test the patience of the people you are trying to win over. People don't like protracted moral lectures."

Elizabeth Olsen isn't happy her boobs are on show in Avengers costume - "'you look at where it started in the comic books and it was a leotard and a headband so…oh, it’s horrible, it’s so horrible,’ she added. ‘So at least they know that’s not cool. But then they made Wonder Woman, you know? And that’s what she’s in."
Ironically she insisted on the original costume being in Wandavision

On Lee Kuan Yew's Crocodile Tears (Redux)

Toh Chin Chye:

"He was crying. I don’t understand him at all. On one hand, he worked so hard for merger. Having gotten the cupful, he shattered it. And then cried over it.

He held two successive press conferences, and in which both he cried. On the third morning I went to work, and saw the press boys again. I asked Lee Wei Ching, his press secretary, “Why are they hanging around here?” Another press conference! I told Lee Wei Ching, “You ought to tell the Prime Minister to go to Changi and take a rest. Call the press conference off! Another crying bout, and the people of Singapore will think the government is on its knees."

 

British declassified document:

""He emphasised seriousness of the occasion and threatened "punitive" measures against any newspaper which printed pictures of him smiling."

Goh Keng Swee:

           Melanie Chew: When did you feel that Malaysia was going to break up? Was it a surprise to                   you?

Dr Goh: Now I am going to let you into what has been a state secret up to now. This is a file, which I call Albatross.

In the early days there were a lot of discussions about changing the terms of Malaysia by the Prime Minister, Rajaratnam, and Toh Chin Chye. It got nowhere. They discussed all types of projects. Was Singapore to be part of Malaysia, but with special powers, or with no connection with Malaysia?

Now on the 20th of July 1965, I met Tun Razak and Dr Ismail. Now this is the 20th July 1965. I persuaded him that the only way out was for Singapore to secede, completely.

(reading) “It should be done quickly, and before we get more involved in the Solidarity Convention.” As you know, Rajaratnam and Toh Chin Chye were involved in the Solidarity Convention. “Malaysia for the Malaysians,” that was the cry, right?

Melanie Chew: This Solidarity Convention, you felt, would be very dangerous?

Dr Goh: No, not dangerous. I said, “You want to get Singapore out, and it must be done very quickly. And very quietly, and presented as a fait accompli.”

It must be kept away from the British. The British had their own policy. They wanted us to be inside Malaysia. And, they would have never agreed to Singapore leaving Malaysia. Now, the details, I won’t discuss with you.

          Melanie Chew: How did Tun Razak and Dr Ismail react?

           Dr Goh: Oh, they themselves were in agreement with the idea [of Dr Goh’s proposal to get                   Singapore out quickly]. In fact, they had themselves come to the conclusion that Singapore must            get out. The question was, how to get Singapore out?...

           Melanie Chew: What was his view? Did he himself want Singapore out?

           Dr Goh: I had better not say.

           Melanie Chew: So the secession of Singapore was well planned by you and Tun Razak! It was                not foisted on Singapore!

            Dr Goh: No, it was not.

            (There followed a long silence during which he slowly leafed through the secret file, Albatross.             Then he shut the file, and resumed his narrative.)

            --- Leaders Of Singapore / Melanie Chew

Addendum: Also, via Secret documents reveal extent of negotiations for Separation: Lee and friends were "excited" about independence, looked at it as "an escape" and called it "most attractive", and looked forward to "political stability with economic expansion, and autonomy in Singapore without interference from KL" - all this a few (?) months before independence. Since Singapore's independence from Malaysia had been discussed for over half a year, it being presented as sudden and a fait accompli just testifies to the success of the PR campaign.

All these add on to Tunku Abdul Rahman's account ("I don't know why Mr Lee acted like that . . . He was quite pleased about it"), which corroborates the claim that the crying was staged.

Addendum: Related - Toh Chin Chye - "He was crying. I don't understand him at all."

Links - 12th August 2021 (1)

Introduction - The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Conspiracy - by Daniel Pipes - "Just a few minutes' political chat with a sophisticated Middle Easterner makes it clear how much he interprets great public issues through the prism of conspiracy theories. Whereas Westerners see a Syrian government long in conflict with Israel, he perceives Damascus as having surreptitiously worked hand in glove with the Jewish state since the 1960s. In his view, the Western powers built up Saddam Husayn, connived with him to put on Desert Storm, and provided him with the weapons to stay in power after his defeat. Ruhollah Khomeini may have appeared vitriolically anti-Western, but Middle Eastern interlocutors claim this ayatollah faithfully served his British (or American) masters right up to his death. And so forth.However wrong-headed they may be, these views have great consequence. Indeed, whoever hopes to understand the Middle East must recognize the distorting lens of conspiracy theories, understand them, make allowance for them, and perhaps even plan around them. Conspiracism provides a key to understanding the political culture of the Middle East. It spawns its own discourse, complete in itself and virtually immune to rational argument. It suffuses life, from the most private family conversations to the highest and most public levels of politics. It helps explain much of what would otherwise seem illogical or implausible, including the region's record of political extremism and volatility, its culture of violence, and its poor record of modernization. The conspiratorial mentality also extends beyond the region, skewing both the way outsiders see the Middle East and spurring conspiracism in other parts of the world. In sum, conspiracism constitutes one of the region's most distinctive political features. Ignore this phenomenon, "almost universal in the Middle East," and some of the most important features of the Arab and Iranian bodies politic remain elusive. Analyzing the region without taking the hidden hand into account is comparable to studying the American economy without Wall Street or Soviet politics without Marxism-Leninism... Part IV asks why conspiracy theories have proliferated in the Middle East. Noting the virtual absence of conspiracy theories in the region during premodern times, I conclude that they represent a modern phenomenon and have flourished only in the twentieth century. They spread due to four main causes: the worldly decline of Muslims, the influence of European thought, the plethora of actual conspiracies, and the specific nature of Middle Eastern politics, especially its pan-movements and its autocracy... Oddly, Westerners tend to study their own attitudes toward the Middle East much more than the reverse. Bernard Lewis, the renowned historian, observes that "Far less attention has been given to the origins and development of Middle Eastern attitudes toward the West, though these are of at least equal importance in determining relations between the two. In the absence of the rather Western habits of self-analysis and self-criticism, they may even be of greater importance."... Westerners often dismiss what Arabs and Iranians say and write, implying that they indulge in rhetoric for its own sake. Saddam Husayn's speech on 17 July 1990 threatening force against Kuwait, for example, prompted Don Kerr of the International Institute for Strategic Studies to declare that "Arabic rhetoric always is colorful, so it's natural in the region for people to discount what they are hearing"; just two weeks later, Saddam's forces invaded Kuwait. Dismissing what Middle Easterners say constitutes a shameless caricature, an act suggesting little imagination and much ethnocentrism. Middle Easterners do not just bandy words about; far more often, these bespeak sincere beliefs."
Given that Muslims outside the Middle East love conspiracy theories too...

Titania McGrath on Twitter - "So far today I’ve got a woman fired for claiming that sex is binary, shouted abuse at an old man collecting money for the British Legion, dog-piled people on Twitter for disagreeing with me and burned some books by Dr Seuss. It’s SO exhausting being on the right side of history."

Democrats Demand Stimulus Bill Include Reparations For Transgender Native Americans Affected By Climate Change | The Babylon Bee - "Democratic lawmakers are blocking the stimulus bill proposed in Congress, slamming their Republican colleagues for refusing to include reparations for transgender Native Americans affected by climate change."

OccupyDemocratsLogic on Twitter - Stephen King on Kayleigh McEnany: "Enjoy your next job as a cocktail waitress in Tampa."
"The people who feign revulsion at jokes about AOC being a bartender...."

Erik Grzela on Twitter - "It's ironic how if you interrupt Harris, you are womanplasting but if you tell a harvard law graduate that her next job is a cocktail waitress ... you are toast of the left"

Love Jihad? Tanishq jewellery pulls down ad on Hindu-Muslim couple amid social media outrage - "Tanishq has reportedly pulled down a jewellery ad that celebrated an interfaith couple amid some on social media accusing the brand of promoting 'love jihad'.The 45-second ad showed a baby shower thrown for a Hindu bride by her Muslim in-laws... Love jihad is an islamophobic conspiracy theory that holds that Muslim men make women of other religions fall in love with them and later marry them to promote conversion"
If they want to promote inter-religious love, why not have a Hindu man and a Muslim woman?

BMW driver given speeding fine at 75 times standard rate after giving middle finger to camera - "The 26-year-old was caught doing 81 kilometres an hour in a 70 zone in Kulmbach, Bavaria.The normal punishment? A very manageable 20 euro fine ($32 AUD). However, a split-second decision to give the middle finger to the speed camera saw that fine thrown out the window.Oberfranken Police decided they wanted to remind the driver of the importance of good manners.So rather than the 20 euro fine, they suspended his licence for one month and slapped him with a 1500 euro fine ($2627 AUD) at the Kulmbach district court"

Kay Lee, trendsetter of hawkers selling recipes, now down to original store - "Kay Lee Roast Meat Joint has been long known for their roasted meats — fatty char siew, crispy roast pork and roast duck. However, that was not why they made the headlines in 2012.Instead, it was because the original owners, Ha Wai Kay and Betty Kong, wanted to sell their recipe and premises for $3.5 million. They made the front pages again in 2014, this time because they managed to find a buyer and sold their business for $4 million to electronics firm Aztech Group, whose chairman took just 10 minutes to seal the deal. At the point of the deal, it was reported that 10 Kay Lee restaurants would be rolled out over the next two years... This turn of events is unexpected given the plans Aztech had shared with The Straits Times about how it would properly plan everything from the operations and marketing to sales and procurement back in 2014. This included hiring food scientists, to learn and document Kay Lee's secret recipes, and experienced industry veteran Sam Ng, who has overseen Chinese restaurant operations in major Singapore hotels.Since making the acquisition of Kay Lee, Aztech Group has delisted from the Singapore Exchange in 2017.Former owners Ha and Kong were also convicted in 2016 and sentenced to four weeks' jail each for tax evasion. They were also fined $164,751.45 per person"

Child Murder by Mothers: A Critical Analysis of the Current State of Knowledge and a Research Agenda - "Among children under age 5 years in the United States who were murdered in the last quarter of the 20th century,61% were killed by their own parents: 30% were killed by their mothers, and 31% by their fathers "
Clearly this means that it's sexist to send women to prison, as feminists say since women are only ever victims

Child murder by mothers: patterns and prevention - "The term neonaticide was coined by Resnick to describe murder of an infant within the first 24 hours of life. Almost all neonaticides are committed by mothers... Infanticide laws often reduce the penalty for mothers who kill their children up to one year of age, based on the principle that a woman who commits infanticide does so because "the balance of her mind is disturbed by reason of her not having fully recovered from the effect of giving birth to the child". The British Infanticide Act of 1922 (amended in 1938) allows mothers to be charged with manslaughter rather than murder if they are suffering from a mental disturbance. The law was originally based on the outdated concept of lactational insanity, but the public's desire to excuse sympathetic women caused reluctance to alter the law after lactational insanity was discredited. Women convicted of infanticide often receive probation and referral to mental health treatment rather than incarceration... The majority of nations that have infanticide laws have followed the British precedent and decrease the penalty for mothers killing children under one year old... In practice, however, women convicted of infanticide in England sometimes do not have significant mental illness as technically required by the law . Opponents of infanticide laws point out that fathers are granted far less leniency. A father who is equally psychotically depressed as a mother, who kills his 10-month-old child in an altruistic psychotic belief with an associated suicide attempt, should not be treated differently than a similarly situated mother. Some feminists criticize the infanticide laws for "pathologizing childbirth". They believe that making this exception for women denies them the same capacity for self-governance attributed to men. Furthermore, it is illogical that a mother who in the throes of postpartum psychosis killed her newborn and her two-year-old should be charged with infanticide/manslaughter for the homicide of the newborn and murder for the homicide of the two-yearold. If the U.S. had an infanticide law, Andrea Yates would not have qualified, because in addition to her infant she killed her four older children. An acutely psychotic mother who killed her 13 month old child would not qualify for the infanticide law in England though a mother who battered her 11 month old child might."

WATCH: Bodycam footage shows there's more to the story of that Native American man who got tazed by park rangers - "Another example of why you shouldn't jump to conclusions when you see an out of context video clip. So you probably already saw this video of a Native American man screaming while being tazed by a park ranger.The story was that Darrell House and his sister were hiking off-trail at the Petroglyph National Monument in New Mexico when they were accosted by this aggressive park ranger, who ends up ruthlessly tazing House... the bodycam footage came out, and it shows a whole different side of the story. You see the full context leading up to the confrontation. You see House resisting and being obnoxious for a full seven minutes, repeatedly ignoring the officer and trying to walk away, and being warned over and over again that he'd be tazed if he didn't comply.And you see the park ranger, who has been dragged through the mud on social media over this, being almost absurdly polite and kind from the start.He's literally begging the guy to just please comply before he escalates to using the tazer... In this case, the narrative was "all law enforcement officers are bad." And when you mix that in with the fact that this guy was Native American and visiting a historical Native American site, it just looked horrible.But when you consider how much unrest and idiocy has been spawned by narratives propped up by incomplete stories and out of context video clips, you'd think we'd have learned by now to be a little slower to speak until we have the full story."

Meme - "Flowerypowery 4 @littlecutejessy This can't be real. Is this a fucking joke? Most disgusting racist thing i've ever seen in my life"
"Montenegro"

Pachycephalosaurus: Jurassic World’s ‘racist’ dinosaur - "How can a dinosaur be racist? It’s due to their appearance in the blockbuster Jurassic World.
From what I’ve seen, the dinosaurs in Jurassic World are equal-opportunity devourers.
True, but early on in the film, after some pachycephalosauruses have escaped their sector, a character utters the line: “The pachys are out of containment.”
So what? It sounds as if she’s saying: “The Pakis are out of containment.”"
Why people don't trust the press anymore

James Lindsay, increasingly relevant on Twitter - "How Wokeness creates a national security threat.
US math ed: "And if we can have that kind of debate around history, certainly we can have it in math classrooms. Asking, When might 2+2 not equal 4 is a great exercise to have with learners. Understanding that, in most math classrooms, the western (white) world has been centered is important. Working to bring other perspectives from other cultures into all classrooms...equally important. 2+2=4 2+2=5 I can hold onto both those tensions and...surprise...still teach kids math."
Chinese math ed: *complicated shit*"

Loanshark in S'pore transfers S$200 to man who didn't ask for loan because business is not good - "A 62-year-old man in Singapore became a victim of loanshark harassment even though he had not taken out any loans. The man received a deposit of S$200 in his bank account from the loanshark, who claimed that it was a loan and told him to repay it on time... This happened after he sought a S$7,600 personal loan from a bank, which said that it would get back to him.The day after his visit to the bank, he received a call from the loanshark, who claimed to be a bank employee and asked for his personal details, including his bank account details, which he disclosed... He then returned the S$200 back to the sender, and even closed the bank account involved, hoping that this would be the end of the matter.However, this did not deter the loanshark, and the man soon became the target of loan solicitation.A photo by SMDN appears to show a WhatsApp conversation between the man and the loanshark, with the loanshark offering a S$500 loan at a "good good rate", and a claim that the offeror was being "scold very jialat" for having no customers.The offer was promptly rejected by the man, however, which drew a response of three crying emojis. The loanshark's pleading messages then saw a drastic change in tone.A photo of a gate splashed with red paint was circulated on Facebook, along with a message asking for the man to repay a loan within 24 hours.While the man was not named in the post, some of his personal information was included.The post was accompanied with a threat to set his house on fire if he did not comply, even though he had already transferred back the S$200 that was sent to him."

𝕷𝖎𝖘𝖆 𝕯𝖚𝕭𝖔𝖎𝖘 on Twitter - "when i got my first gyno exam as a teenager, the gynecologist asked me what I wanted to do for a career. I said I wanted to be an artist. Then while checking my cervix she said- “i wanted to be a muppeteer”."

Links - 10th August 2021 (2)

DNA discovery reveals relatives of ancient Egyptians - "Publishing its findings in Nature Communications, the study concluded that preserved remains found in Abusir-el Meleq, Middle Egypt, were closest genetic relatives of Neolithic and Bronze Age populations from the Near East, Anatolia and Eastern Mediterranean Europeans.Modern Egyptians, by comparison, share much more DNA with sub-Saharan populations."
Clearly, this means that any artefacts which have ever been found on the territory of modern day Egypt belong to it. If a Roman coin minted in Britain and owned by a Dalmatian merchant found in Egyptian waters because the Greek ship it was on happened to be shipwrecked there happened to be brought back to France by Napoleon's army, this is clearly stealing their heritage from the Egyptian people

Texas power outage: Why natural gas went down during the winter storm -  "It’s estimated that about 80% of the grid’s capacity, or 67 gigawatts, could be generated by natural gas, coal and some nuclear power. Only 7% of ERCOT’s forecasted winter capacity, or 6 gigawatts, was expected to come from various wind power sources across the state. Woodfin said Tuesday that 16 gigawatts of renewable energy generation, mostly wind generation, are offline and that 30 gigawatts of thermal sources, which include gas, coal and nuclear energy, are offline."
This perfectly shows how unreliable renewable energy is. Despite being less than 10% of thermal energy's contribution to grid capacity, it is just over half of the thermal energy's generation that is offline

How much do state dinners cost, and are they worth the expense? - The Washington Post - "CBS News published the costs of President Obama’s first five state dinners, given from 2009 to 2011. On the low end was a 2011 dinner for South Korean president Lee Myung-Bak, which cost $203,053, according to CBS. News reports indicated there were about 200 guests, which put the per-head cost at about $1,000. The most expensive dinner reported by CBS was a 2009 event for the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. It cost $572,187, according to CBS. That was more than $1,700 per head"

Trump’s company billed the government at least $2.5 million. Here are the key charges. - The Washington Post - "When Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago in April 2017, Trump hosted a formal dinner at the club — and, over dessert, told Xi that the United States had fired missiles into Syria, he said. Trump later said the dessert was: “The most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever seen.”Trump’s club later charged the government more than $7,000 for the 30-person dinner, including charges for wine, floral arrangements and decorative potted palm trees. The bill appears to include Trump’s own meal."
Apparently saving the taxpayer money, possibly by losing money, is a bad thing.

Trump's trips versus Obama's: When vacations cost millions - "Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said... about Trump's travels so far? "It's a rather obvious use of taxpayer resources for seemingly unnecessary purposes."
Some people were bashing Judicial Watch and claiming they were right wing and had double standards. Oops

Trudeau’s pre-recession period marked by weak economic numbers - "Back in 2015, the Trudeau Liberals ran on—and in some ways, were elected on—a promise that their dramatic changes in fiscal and regulatory policies including higher government spending financed by borrowing and higher taxes and a more interventionist approach to regulating the economy would result in a stronger, more prosperous country. As noted in our new study, however, there’s now sufficient evidence that not only did Canada’s economy not improve but indeed our economic performance during the 2016 to 2019 period (prior to the COVID recession) is the weakest of the last five comparable periods."

Who Forgot to Invite Chun-Li to the Mortal Kombat? - "being the astute film critic that I am I immediately clocked a glaring error in the film. Where in all the realms is Chun-Li? If there is a battle for the fate of Earth then don’t we need all of the greatest warriors gathered, which would include Chun-Li and her spinning bird kick that can knock a man’s head clean off? Sounds like a pretty big plot hole to me that the ultimate street fight is supposed to be won by a ragtag team helmed by Sonya Blade, no offense to the Sonya stans...
Update, 4:39 p.m.: Jezebel has discovered the answer to our question about Chun Li’s erasure, and it is that Chun Li is not part of the Mortal Kombat megaverse. Wow!"
Addendum: "This is why we need mansplaining"

Kyle Mann, boop/bop/beep on Twitter - [On the above] "This is why we need mansplaining"
Mansplaining: when a man tells a woman she is wrong (or disagrees with her

Report: Mansplaining Down But Woman Confusion Up | The Babylon Bee - "In great news for everyone, studies have shown that a campaign against mansplaining has had great results, with mansplaining now at a historic low. In unrelated bad news, though, there’s been a marked increase in women being extremely confused."

Facebook - "Recent posts from #freefromhijab are currently hidden because the community has reported some content that may not meet Instagram's community  guidelines"
"Just leave us alone. You abuse us, insult us, attack us with acid, imprison us, and kill us for not wearing hijab. And we’re not even allowed to complain about that? We can’t even open our mouths to peacefully protest once a year online? We can’t celebrate the amazing women across the planet who defy your primitive and misogynistic rules? Leave. Us. Alone. #FreeFromHijab #NoHijabDay #HijabIsRapeCulture"
Islamophobia!

Meme - "Mexican Food Made by Americans: TACO BELL
American Food Made by Mexicans: *crazy burger*"

Thread by @patron_sailor on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "If we're talking about "decolonizing astrology" then we could start with the project of problematizing the heteronormative gender binary that pervades much of contemporary astrology — but I don't know if y'all are ready for it
There are unexamined colonialist ideas that are considered integral to so many astrologies that currently practiced. If you practice so-called evolutionary astrology, for instance, are you ready to unpack its legacy of 19th & 20th C. orientalism?
Bet it's a lot harder than we imagine. Decolonizing astrology won't be about whether we, as astrologers, have the right intentions signalled with the proper vocabulary. Rather: whether our astrologies contain & replicate oppressive structures, and if so, how to dismantle them.
Incidentally, I think it also requires us to be more reflexive in discourse about the plurality of astrologies, rather than speaking of a singular "astrology" without consideration for what that singularity elides and erases
As a parting shot I'll just say that if your astrology posits that sex is a signification of the 8th House then it's perpetuating some fucked-up repressive attitudes imported from the dominant culture — and if you care about liberation, maybe you should think about that"
Social Justice ruins everything. But since astrology is crap anyway...

The party of seatbelts and bike helmets wants to make it illegal to own a bulletproof vest

Facebook - "Logic, Empathy, Honesty:
The victory of the Liberal party in Australia has further proven a point that was first demonstrated by Trump and later by Brexit. When you demonize people on the right, call them racist and incite violence against them, you empower them. Not only this, but polls will consistently show the right wing parties lagging behind. The win is a surprise only to those on the left that haven't realized how useless these polls have become, because no one who believes they will be ostracized or, even attacked, for stating their political views, is going to go out of their way to tell pollsters their intention. The right wing is going to continue to lag behind in the polls but win-out in elections for as long as the left wing continues it's campaign of harassment, shame and incitement. If we are to restore a healthy, balanced democracy, we must learn to discuss things without name calling and intimidation."

This year belongs to the Quiet Australians - "Exit polling indicates Labor was the preferred party of the educated professional classes, but not for the workers, the people in whose name it is supposed to exist...   This year, bushfires have come to divide Australians. That climate change might increase the likelihood and severity of bushfires has the ring of truthiness to it and warrants investigation.  Yet at this stage it is little more than a hunch without a firm empirical foundation. It may remain so, given the challenge of finding a reliable historical measure.  Bushfire season used to bring Australia together, inspiring private donations for its victims. Today it has become a burning stake by which to identify witches.  The inane question ‘do you accept that bushfires are proof of climate change?’ has become the stock-standard gotcha question for politicians and even fire chiefs appearing on the ABC.  Morrison has become the prime suspect, hauled before this tainted jury as the man we must blame for the smouldering undergrowth and destroyed homes.  Morrison’s ‘inaction’ on climate change may be the stated charge, but like President Trump’s impeachment, we suspect his real crime is his refusal to tip his hat to his accusers’ wokish nonsense."

At Australian Ballot Boxes, the Left’s Empathy Deficit Came Home to Roost - "  Picture a dinner party where half the guests are university graduates with prestigious white-collar jobs, with the other half consisting of people who are trade workers, barmaids, cleaners and labourers. While one side of the table trades racy jokes and uninhibited banter, the other half tut-tuts this “problematic” discourse.  These two groups both represent traditional constituencies of mainstream centre-left parties—including the Labour Party in the UK, the Democrats in the United States, and the NDP in Canada. Yet they have increasingly divergent attitudes and interests—even if champagne socialists paper over these differences with airy slogans about allyship and solidarity.  Progressive politicians like to assume that, on election day at least, blue-collar workers and urban progressives will bridge their differences, and make common cause to support leftist economic policies. This assumption might once have been warranted. But it certainly isn’t now—in large part because the intellectuals, activists and media pundits who present the most visible face of modern leftism are the same people openly attacking the values and cultural tastes of working and middle-class voters. And thanks to social media (and the caustic news-media culture that social media has encouraged and normalized), these attacks are no longer confined to dinner-party titterings and university lecture halls. Brigid Delaney, a senior writer for Guardian Australia, responded to Saturday’s election result with a column about how Australia has shown itself to be “rotten.” One well-known Australian feminist and op-ed writer, Clementine Ford, has been fond of Tweeting sentiments such as “All men are scum and must die.” Former Australian Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane, who also has served as a high-profile newspaper columnist, argues that even many mainstream political positions—such as expressing concern about the Chinese government’s rising regional influence—are a smokescreen for racism.   In an interview conducted on Sunday morning, Deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek opined that if only her party had more time to explain to the various groups how much they’d all benefit from Labor’s plans, Australians would have realized how fortunate they’d be with a Labor government, and Shorten would’ve become Prime Minister. Such attitudes are patronizing, for they implicitly serve to place blame at the feet of voters, who apparently are too ignorant to know what’s good for them.  What the election actually shows us is that the so-called quiet Australians, whether they are tradies (to use the Australian term) in Penrith, retirees in Bundaberg, or small business owners in Newcastle, are tired of incessant scolding from their purported superiors. Condescension isn’t a good look for a political movement... the modern progressive left has lost touch with the fact that what ordinary people want from their government is a spirit of respect, dignity and hope for the future. While the fetish for hectoring and moral puritanism has become popular in rarefied corners of arts and academia, it is deeply off-putting to voters whose sense of self extends beyond cultish ideological tribalism... progressives seem to imagine that it can be dispelled, as if by a magic spell, simply by incanting the right hash tags or bleating mantras about anti-racism."

How ‘equity’ ideology plunged South Africa into inequality and chaos

How ‘equity’ ideology plunged South Africa into inequality and chaos

"As South Africa erupted into chaos, my thoughts turned to the United States — a great country brought low by the same toxic and demented racial politics that set afire my homeland last week.

As I write, shell-shocked South Africans are trying to muster a response to an orgy of arson and looting. Cargo vessels are being turned away from some of our largest harbors, because it’s too dangerous to unload them. Hundreds of thousands face hunger thanks to the destruction of warehouses and disruption of food-supply chains. Tens of thousands of jobs and small businesses have been destroyed; the property damage is incalculable. 

Former President Jacob Zuma’s refusal to be held accountable for corruption triggered this mayhem. Rather than face the prospect of imprisonment and disgrace, he seems to have attempted a preemptive coup against his successor.

But this is just part of the picture. The overarching truth is that an idea pushed South Africa to the brink. You guys know this idea, because it animates the sermons of critical race theorists trying to force you to take the knee and atone for your supposed sins. I am going to call it the Beautiful Idea, because it is beautiful in a way — but also dangerous. 

The Beautiful Idea holds that all humans are born with identical gifts and should turn out to be clones of one another in a just society. Conversely, any situation in which disparity survives is in itself proof of injustice. This is the line promoted by CRT pundit Ibram X. Kendi, who blames all racial disparities on racist policies.

But what policies is he talking about? Kendi is reluctant to be drawn on this score, and with good reason: He can’t name the policies, because they don’t exist anymore. In your country, all discriminatory laws have been repealed, all forms of overt racism outlawed and replaced by laws that enforce preferential black access to jobs, housing and college admissions.

So Kendi must insist that an invisible miasma of “systemic racism” infects white people and propels them to act in ways so subtly racist that most of them aren’t even aware they’re sick until it is pointed out to them by diversity consultants. 

Once upon a time, South African revolutionaries would have laughed at this sort of thing. Until the mid-1980s, the aims of our freedom struggle were the eradication of capitalism and the creation of a classless society where equity would be enforced at gunpoint by commissars. But the Soviet Union collapsed just as the African National Congress started its rise to power, forcing our new leaders to embrace economic policies of the neoliberal variety. 

This didn’t set well with the hard left, which openly reviled President Thabo Mbeki (1999-2008) as a sellout. To mollify them, Mbeki set about building a black middle and upper class that would reap the fruits of neoliberalism and thank him for it. 

The object of this new game was not to destroy capitalism, but to force it to open its doors to aspirant blacks. Starting in l999, Mbeki’s government enacted a phalanx of American-sounding laws intended to eradicate racial disparities of the sort that exercise Kendi. The old revolutionary songs were dusted off at rallies, but somewhere along the line, the Beautiful Idea replaced socialism as our ideological lodestar. 

At the turn of the new millennium, Mbeki let it be known that he was displeased by the national rugby team’s slow progress towards full racial representation. Athletic failure, he suggested, was preferable to lack of full representation. Equity before victory.

At least initially, Mbeki’s scheme worked fairly well. Some blacks became billionaires. Many others joined the white suburban elite and sent their kids to private schools. Transformation of the civil service spurred the growth of a new black middle class, generally commanding salaries far higher than in the private economy.

But in the longer term, the economic consequences were devastating. In addition to paying taxes at Scandinavian levels, South African corporations were required to cede large ownership stakes to black partners, whether or not they brought anything to the table besides black skin and connections in high places  

Firms were also required to meet racial quotas in hiring and ensure that management was racially representative, meaning roughly 88 percent black. Tendering for government business became increasingly pointless, because contracts were invariably awarded to black-owned firms, even if their prices were double, triple or tenfold.

Investment dried up. Brains drained. The economy stagnated, causing unemployment to surge to 11.4 million today, from 3.3 million in l994. The upshot: utter misery for the underclass, doomed to sit in tin shacks, half-starved, watching the black elite grow fat on the pickings of equity laws and rampant corruption.

 

This was an especially bitter experience for young black people, 63 percent of whom are now jobless, too broke even for booze and drugs to dull the pain. Last week, it proved easy for Zuma and his acolytes to tempt them onto the streets with the promise of loot.

And so we come to the moral of this story. It’s a warning about the practical consequences of ideas like those propounded by Kendi and CRT superstar Robin DiAngelo, who in the name of “equity” maintains it is racist to talk of work ethic or to expect all workers to show up on time, regardless of race.

It is exactly these values that have brought South Africa to its knees. We created a society where nothing was expected of blacks save “blackness.” Honor and diligence were not demanded of government appointees. Sloth was tolerated. Failures and corruption went unpunished. Blind pursuit of equity began to achieve its opposite: a staggering equality gap among blacks themselves, with a fortunate few benefitting hugely and the masses sinking into abject misery.

Most black South Africans recognize this. By 2021, only 3 percent of them cited racism as a serious problem, according to a survey by the Institute of Race Relations. The same survey found that 83 percent of black South Africans were in full or partial agreement with the following statement: “Politicians are talking about racism to excuse their own failures.”

Which brings us to the slender silver lining in this dark story. Many black South Africans who oppose this lawlessness were out in force last week, manning roadblocks to keep the mobs away from their homes and businesses.

I can hear their voices on the radio, clamoring for change. By the sound of it, they want a country where human outcomes are determined by the content of one’s character, not by pigmentation or friends in the ruling party. Martin Luther King would appreciate their message. Kendi & Co. wouldn’t."

 

 

Melissa Chen:

"To anyone who thinks that CRT is just an obscure “academic field” or “American history,” here is a stark reminder of where it all leads to.

Political unrest and ethnic strife culminated in rioting, looting and violence in parts of South Africa in the last few weeks. So much was destroyed, looted, burned. The breakdown of law and social order induced vigilante mobs to mobilize and protect their own neighborhoods. Car Indians took over the role of Rooftop Koreans in the LA Riots on the streets of Durban.

 

Although government policies in South Africa (legally mandated discrimination in employment and access to opportunities for advancement) are not strictly referred to as CRT, they are undergirded by the same foundational ideas - those of race essentialism and collective guilt.

 

We have ample evidence of how this plays out. It is a civilizational threat."

 

 

This won't stop the gaslighting or credulous people believing the media that CRT is just "teaching history"

Links - 10th August 2021 (1)

Only in the Philippines: Ace Hardware selling baseball bats as self-defense weapons : Philippines

Titania McGrath on Twitter - "The police are so bigoted that even their horses are homophobic. #EqualityNotEquinity"

If Tough Anti-Drug Laws Are 'Racist,' Blame Black Leaders - "In the '80s and '90s, many black leaders supported tough anti-drug laws. Facing an inner-city explosion of gang activity, violent crime and a crack epidemic, black politicians pressured Congress to pass these laws.The Rev. George McMurray was pastor of Harlem's Mother A.M.E. Zion Church in the '70s, a time when New York City faced a major heroin epidemic. He favored life sentences for convicted drug dealers. "When you send a few men to prison for life, someone's going to pass the word down, 'It's not too good over here,'" McMurray said. "So instead of robbery and selling dope, (they'll think) 'I want to go to school and live a good life.'"When President Ronald Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 into law — the law that punished crack cocaine dealers far more harshly than powder cocaine dealers — Harlem's Rep. Charlie Rangel stood right behind Reagan. Crack dealers, many of whom were black, got harsher sentences than those who dealt powder cocaine, many of whom were white. And Congressional Black Caucus members pushed Reagan to create the Office of National Drug Control Policy.Then came the massive 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which included longer sentences for first-time offenders. An influential group of black pastors wrote to the Congressional Black Caucus, "While we do not agree with every provision in the crime bill, we do believe and emphatically support the bill's goal to save our communities, and most importantly, our children." The black mayor of Baltimore, Kurt Schmoke, said: "I believe the crime bill ... is part of the answer, and the crime bill should be supported by us. We do need to send a signal throughout our communities that certain types of activities will not be tolerated, that people will be held accountable and that if there is evil manifested by actions taken by individuals who choose to prey upon our residents that that evil will be responded to quickly and correctly."The majority of the Congressional Black Caucus supported Congress' final bill... President Donald Trump challenged the kneeling NFL players to give him names of those who have been "unfairly treated" by our criminal justice system. He promised to set up a process to review their cases and either pardon them or commute their sentences.It's a heck of an offer and should be a no-brainer. Given Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players' assertions of institutional/systemic/structural racism, Trump should soon be deluged with names of worthy candidates. If, as alleged, cops bust blacks for reasons of "racial profiling" and if, as alleged, blacks are wrongfully convicted and sentenced, how can the NFL players turn down Trump's offer?"

I've always loved fried chicken. But the racism surrounding it shamed me - "Growing up as a black kid in England’s white West Country, a car trip east to the busier, more exciting parts of the country meant one thing: KFC on the way back... The cheap chicken shops, fronted with happy cartoon chickens, were always concentrated in poorer areas, ones with a bigger black population. I’d muse that if only someone opened a shop serving southern fried chicken, but using free-range birds, they would make a killing.And so it came to pass.Shops serving “ethical” fried chicken started popping up all over the place, selling an experience marketed as superior to the neon-lit shops serving food in red-and-yellow cardboard boxes. They boasted about the happy lives their chickens enjoyed, and how they honoured them with 24-hour buttermilk baths and shiny, homemade glazes.There was almost always a boneless option, too, presumably catering to an audience for whom the skeleton is an unwelcome reminder that what they were eating was once alive. That’s not to say the chicken was not good. Sometimes, it was. But there was always something so far removed from the dish’s origins. It lacked soul.In the end, I, too, would make a living out of fried chicken, but not southern fried. It was karaage, the Japanese iteration, made with boneless (I know) and skinless chicken thighs marinated in soy sauce, mirin, ginger and garlic... Karaage sat comfortably because I perceived in it a refinement I overlooked in its deep south counterpart. It contained ingredients I could source only in specialist shops. And, ultimately, it was Japanese, from the same nation of sushi and sashimi, of culinary refinement and gastronomic precision.Back then, I was not even conscious of the racist baggage fried chicken came with in the US. But it was seeping into my subconscious, and I felt it.As with most things, what happens in the US winds its way over to the UK. Including, it turns out, racist tropes. In my day job as a writer on a national newspaper – my supper clubs then were still a hobby – I sat next to someone who would often crack the same joke when I stood up to go for lunch. “What you getting?” he’d grin. “Fried chicken?”... Historically, chickens held special importance for enslaved black Americans, being the only livestock they were allowed to keep. Black domestic workers would cook fried chicken for their masters and, later, their employers. And then, after emancipation, women known as “waiter carriers” would hawk trays of fried chicken and biscuits to travellers through open windows as their trains stopped in stations.But while these black cooks and homemakers effectively invented what would become known as southern food, their contribution was erased. The white folk took the credit for its creation, while black people were mocked and parodied merely as greedy consumers. It’s one of the most outrageous examples of cultural theft.The racist 1915 film The Birth of a Nation, widely touted as the first blockbuster, attempted to paint black people as aggressive, disorganised and untrustworthy... while the US was trying to unpick the racist issues surrounding fried chicken, the UK’s Conservative government was stoking the flames. The Home Office’s decision to put anti-knife crime messages on fried chicken boxes perpetuated yet more racist stereotypes about knife crime and chicken shop customers.It all feeds into that same shame. During a recent podcast recording, I was asked what my final supper would be. As I said “fried chicken”, I couldn’t help hearing an imagined, knowing, “Of course!” in response."
Should we sanction black people who perpetuate "harmful stereotypes"?
Sounds like the author is projecting his issues onto other people, as well as jettisoning his Caribbean heritage to roleplay as an African American.
Apparently asking an avowed lover of fried chicken if he's going to get fried chicken for lunch is racist

Seoul anti-suicide initiative backfires, deaths increase by more than six times

Why Do French and Italian Tomatoes Taste So Damn Good? - "The combination of tomatoes and olive oil is my favorite breakfast—just sliced tomato on toast with a pinch of salt and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. It’s what I ate every single morning on a recent two-week trip to France and Italy.I would do the same more often at home in North America, but it’s not the same experience. Tomatoes here just don’t have nearly the same flavor as their European counterparts. Ask anyone that has tried European tomatoes and you will find a very consistent response: They are heaven. And once you have tasted European tomatoes, it’s hard to go back... Europeans insist on taste first and foremost, whereas North American growers have succumbed to market pressure for bigger, perfectly shaped fruit. Harry Klee, a horticulture professor at the University of Florida, told Julia Belluz, of Vox, that industrial tomatoes “have been bred for yield, production, disease resistance. The growers are not paid for flavor — they are paid for yield. So the breeders have given them this stuff that produces a lot of fruit but that doesn’t have any flavor.”On my recent trip, I met a French chef named Benjamin, who confirmed Klee’s conclusion. He took me shopping at a local farmers market, where I saw the difference. The tomatoes had erratic shapes and many had small black blemishes—imperfections I easily forgave the moment I tasted them.In North America, we want tomatoes all year, and not just during local growing seasons. As such, tomatoes are grown far away and shipped before they fully ripen. They lack the sugar and water content of fully ripened tomatoes. Additionally, our consumers have been conditioned to demand aesthetic perfection, perfectly shaped fruit and vegetables, without blemishes, and without considering flavor."

Mahyar Tousi on Twitter - "These lefties managed to call me a curry munching Indian and an Arab terrorist while defending their anti-racism campaign all at the same time in Twitter thread Talk about multitasking.
FACT CHECK: I’m a British freedom lover from south London with a Persian background."

Facebook - "To say that sometimes the woke left "overreaches" is a euphemism. What's present on the woke left right now is a set of systematically authoritarian practices for thought policing. These practices are ideologically grounded and viciously defended against criticism. They are the tip of an authoritarian iceberg of beliefs and attitudes.It took me a long time to understand this as I was initially blindsided by the authoritarian left while in the atheist "freethinkers" movement. I just thought that my fellow atheists, who I assumed shared my rationalist and liberal values because of all the talk about critical thinking and freedom of religion, were just overzealous when they behaved like bullies. I figured if I just pointed out how this behavior was inconsistent with our commitment to freedom of conscience and freedom of thought that they would understand. I was met with ideological justifications for authoritarian approaches to discourse over and over again.Spending years deep in the social justice movement and a year or two immersed with socialists on Facebook when I was supporting Bernie, I came to realize that the authoritarian left of old, the one that wound up responsible for communist atrocities the world over, is back with a vengeance. There is an entire worldview motivating the active silencing efforts, the purges, the public humiliations, the censorship, the hostility to debate, the ANTIFA instigated violence and rioting, the demonization of everyone to the right of AOC as a fascist, the vigorous attempt to politicize every institution, the dehumanization of people guilty of privilege, the cultish demand that people sever family ties over politics, the hostility to private property, and the demands for loyalty oaths and for submission, etc., etc..There are some just causes the left is rightly upset about. But the authoritarians on the left are increasingly dangerous to free conscience in America. The left controls almost the entirety of elite media, elite academia, and Hollywood and the young maoist cultural revolutionaries are only getting more and more aggressive and effective in demanding that these institutions become purer and purer. This portends a chilling era for freedom of conscience."

Mizzes Vanity on Twitter/a> - ""To find out who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to disagree with or criticize." ~ Voltaire
Someone who can get you fired from your job just for disagreeing with them is neither oppressed nor a victim. ~Yeyo"

Facebook - ""Go find the eggs!"
*Alien in Easter Bunny cotume*"

kelly on Twitter - "when you need to kill me during the race war i will forgive you. you’re just doing what needs to be done"
When a white person hates white people so much

Google is really annoyed you're using Microsoft Edge - "Google, from its very beginning, thought it was so clever. It's never really stopped thinking that. And when it discovers competition -- from what it deems an unworthy source -- Google can become irritable... this Edge was smooth and sprightly. Which could be something to do with the fact that it's based on Google's Chromium platform. Google seemed miffed that Microsoft had created a functioning browser. It told users Edge isn't secure. Which is odd coming from a company that's just been sued for allegedly tracking users' private browsing activity... when users suddenly log on to their Gmail accounts from a new device -- via the strange browser that is the new Edge -- they get the standard security alert email message.But a large part of it is now a slightly stroppy suggestion that they should use Chrome instead.It reads: "Make the most out of Windows 10 with the Chrome browser. Chrome is a fast, simple, and secure browser, built for the modern Web."Does this mean that Edge is a slow, complicated and insecure browser, built for Caxton's paper klaxon?... When you're the market leader, it's best not to acknowledge your lesser rivals. True, Google doesn't specifically mention Edge here. Yet the fact that it feels so needy -- this is a security alert, after all -- as to remind any GMail-loving Edge users that Chrome exists shows more than a hint of insecurity."

ian bremmer on Twitter - "I am stunned at how many people believe “rural working class whites” = racist and that it’s acceptable to mock the entire group accordingly. This from people that would never consider making such generalizations about blacks or hispanics or muslims. This. Has. To. Stop."
White people are the only people it is good (let alone acceptable) to be racist too

Meme - "LOLLLLLLLLL YOU HAVE NEVER FUCKED A PRETTY GIRL. E V E R"
"Could be said about any dude who ever fucked you lol"
"Why are you so full of hate for people you don’t even know?"

MOFA: Joint Communique of the Government of Japan and the Government of the People's Republic of China - "The Government of the People's Republic of China declares that in the interest of the friendship between the Chinese and the Japanese peoples, it renounces its demand for war reparation from Japan... The two Governments confirm that, in conformity with the foregoing principles and the principles of the Charter of the United Nations, Japan and China shall in their mutual relations settle all disputes by peaceful means and shall refrain from the use or threat of force."
From 1972
So much for all the Chinese bashing Japan on reparations. They can blame Mao Zedong
Also so much for China refraining from the use or threat of force

Tessica Brown Gets Gorilla Glue Out of Hair, Video of Surgery - "Tessica took up Bev Hills plastic surgeon Dr. Michael Obeng on his offer to perform the $12,500 procedure for free"

Tessica Brown Donating $20k of GoFundMe Haul to Reconstructive Surgery Org - "Tessica plans to keep $1,000 of the GFM cash to pay for the emergency room visit she made in Louisiana before flying to the West Coast ... according to her manager. She also incurred travel expenses.That's not to say she really needs much of it anymore -- we're told Tessica's made a small fortune lately by hawking merch related to her experience, and she's doing just fine."

Another TikToker Has Put Gorilla Glue In Their Hair Despite Warnings - "Tessica Brown made headlines recently when she used Gorilla Glue spray to set her hair, causing it to get stuck for more than a month, but her situation did little to prevent Avani Reyes from gluing her own hair... She set up a GoFundMe page so people could ‘help with [her] Gorilla Glue situation’, saying she might undergo surgery to remove the substance... In the wake of a plea for help to her followers, Reyes later announced that she’d received enough donations to fund a surgery to remove the glue. One generous person donated $3,000, after which Reyes responded to say thank you."
When you incentivise stupidity, you get more of it

The Gorilla Glue Saga, Laid Edges and the Trauma of Black Beauty Standards - "For a group that deals with the pressures of racism, sexism, classism, and heterosexism, beauty standards in the community are deeply rooted in oppression in the past and present.Never being able to come close enough to the Eurocentric ideals of beauty, including white skin, straight hair and slim features, Black aesthetics are constantly undervalued. Even in online dating, the Black community faces racial discrimination and Black women were rated “less attractive” than women of other races in an OKCupid study from 2014."
Minorities are like children and have no agency

Links - 3rd August 2021 (2) (China's 'peaceful' rise)

How China locked down internally for COVID-19, but pushed foreign travel - "There is new evidence to show that China locked down all domestic traffic internally by end January 2020 but pushed to open foreign travel till end March. Data from Tom Tom traffic index, a traffic location site that covers 416 cities across 57 countries show that as a result of this strategy, China, intentionally or otherwise, was able to lockdown its cities unknown to the world. While this reduced the spread of the Corona virus within China, China’s aggressive foreign travel policy lead to a virus explosion worldwide... On January 22 at a meeting to decide the measures to be taken, WHO was not able warn the world of the severity of COVID-19 apparently because of resistance from Beijing. (WHO referred to it as “divergent views”)... China’s vice-minister of foreign affairs Qin Gang met Italy’s ambassador to China Luca Ferrari in Beijing following the flight ban. “Italy’s decision to stop flights without contacting China in advance caused great inconvenience to citizens of both countries. Many Chinese are still stranded in Italy,” the foreign ministry said on its website the following day. The U.S. issued a travel advisory against China travel on the 2nd of February but did not ban all services. While Chinese authorities limited domestic flights from Wuhan to other Chinese cities like Beijing and Shanghai in an effort to contain the outbreak in January, it urged international carriers to maintain their flying schedules... While implementing a total domestic lockdown in February, China kept assuring the world that the situation was not serious and fully under control. China kept on the facade of hiding the severity of the virus attack till mid March"
So much for the "conspiracy" that China infected the world on purpose

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Investigating Nigeria's protest shootings - "‘We’re in the northern Frontier Province of Inner Mongolia, which borders the country of Mongolia, because parents have been protesting outside schools and withholding their children from class. This follows the government order to reduce the number of classes taught in the Mongolian language in favor of Mandarin. Ethnic Mongolians now make up less than 20% of the population in this region, and only half of them speak their own language. The fear has been that if you reduce teaching in Mongolian, it could even further erode the level of Mongolian proficiency in the province. Some activists have gone further and said that this is a deliberate move by Beijing to hasten the assimilation of Mongolians into the dominant Han Chinese culture. The authorities however, argue that these concerns have been completely overblown. They say it's only a few subjects which will now switch over to Chinese’
First, they came for the Tibetans...

Kimchi wars: South Korean academic takes spat with China to new level with tart ad in New York Times - "A renowned South Koreanacademic activist has taken the simmering row with Chinaover which country invented kimchi to a new level – by placing an advertisement in The New York Times promoting it as a purely Korean culinary offering.Seo Kyoung-duk, a professor at Sungshin University in Seoul who specialises in publicity, said he launched the campaign announcing Kimchi as an “iconic food of Korea and its culture”, as acknowledged by Unesco, “in order to let all the peoples in the world know clearly that kimchi belongs to Koreans, pure and simple”... Seo said he felt compelled to place the ad in response to China taking credit for being the origin of the fermented vegetable dish, whose popularity is gaining worldwide... Beijing recently won certification from the International Organization for Standardisation (ISO) for pao cai, a pickled vegetable dish from Sichuan province in southwestern China, an achievement Global Times, a tabloid affiliated with Communist Party mouthpiece People‘s Daily, reported as “an international standard for the kimchi industry led by China”. That claim was refuted by the ISO, which clarified that the certification was for pao cai, not kimchi. Pao cai is a typical Chinese pickled vegetable dish, but differs from kimchi in its preparation method and ingredients used... A kimchi-making video uploaded by Chinese internet culinary sensation Li Ziqi with the hashtag #ChineseFood also added fuel to the flare-up online, with critics saying the 19-minute video insulted Korean culture.Meanwhile, China has pulled the plug on a South Korean social media influencer after she added a thumbs-up emoji to comments online criticising China for claiming to be the origin of kimchi and ssam, a pork-and-vegetables wrap.The influencer, nicknamed Hamzy, was kicked off Chinese microblogging site Weibo and video-sharing website Bilibili, with all her postings erased... The Shanghai-based company Suxian Advertising, which runs Hamzy‘s video accounts and her online shop on the e-commerce site Taobao, also said it planned to terminate its contract with her, shut down her online shop and delete her videos... kimchi is not the only Korean cultural item China claims as its own, noting that Korea‘s flowing traditional robe, the Hanbok, and its ancient solo opera form Pansori are also said by many Chinese people to have their origins in the mainland. He attributed the seeming cultural appropriation to nationalist envy. “Chinese people may feel threatened by the rise of K-pop, including boy band group BTS, K-drama and K-films such as the Oscar-winner Parasite, as Asian culture was almost synonymous with Chinese culture in the past”... “If China ends up alienating many Koreans over kimchi, it would satisfy Chinese people‘s nationalistic ego for a moment but it would not be helpful for China’s ling-term national interests”"

Dangers Of Building Ultra Patriotism As Chinese Claim Vladivostok As Haishenwai - "The Russian Embassy to China posted a video on Weibo on July 2 – the date of the anniversary, resulting in a wave of abuse from Chinese social media users across various platforms who claimed that the territory of Primorsky Krai of which Vladivostok is the administrative capital, historically belonged to China... The CPC has long encouraged a form of patriotism among its citizens as most nations do. The difficulty comes when China is faced with its own colonial past – and when that rubs up against today’s Communist Party"

Germany ends China honeymoon with new Indo-Pacific strategy - "After years of shaping its Asian strategy around China, Germany has made a sharp break and will focus instead on stronger partnerships with democracies in the region such as Japan and South Korea to promote the rule of law.The shift comes as part of a rising sense of alarm throughout Europe about economic dependence on China and the country's track record on human rights... economic growth has not opened the Chinese market as hoped. German companies operating there have been forced to hand over technology by China's government. Negotiations for an investment treaty between the European Union and China to address such issues have stalled, fueling concerns about becoming too economically dependent on Beijing... Europe as a whole appears to be reevaluating its ties to China. The European Union in 2019 labeled China a "strategic competitor," highlighting its trade and technological rivalry with the Asian giant. A shift toward a more sober strategy on Beijing has occurred, said Patrick Koellner at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies... The U.K. and France also have begun freezing Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technology out of their 5G networks"

Hillel Neuer on Twitter - "Ahead of the election, some businesses in the US are boarding up their store windows fearing post-election unrest. This kind of unrest is usually complication of elections in poor countries, but people are worried it may appear in the US. The US is in degradation." "you don't even have elections"

China Has Built a Massive Global Database for Hybrid Warfare, International Media Reports - "A major international media investigation has revealed that a technology firm linked to the Chinese Communist Party has created and mined a global database of 2.4 million individuals – many of them political leaders, scientists, journalists and others in positions of influence – based on their online presence in order to monitor them and their networks... AFR notes that out of the 35,000 Australians, the database refers to 656 as “special interest” or “politically exposed” – terms whose exact meaning remains unknown. The special tags suggest that the database was mostly likely designed to be used by the Chinese government for clandestine targeting of individuals for various intelligence operations. The database also includes names of 52,000 Americans, along with nationals from the U.K., Canada, Indonesia, Malaysia and even Papua New Guinea, AFR reports. It also notes that in one instance the database was used to monitor “the career progression of a U.S. naval officer” who was “flagged as a future commander of a nuclear aircraft carrier.” This suggests that the database was created for predictive analytics of the kind used by social media giants."
Project Insight!

Calls for UK ban on all Chinese data firms after leak reveals 40,000 Britons in intelligence files - "No Chinese company dealing with data should be allowed to operate in the UK, a senior Conservative MP has said, following revelations that a firm has collected intelligence on 40,000 people in Britain.Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, said all Chinese internet and data companies should be ejected from the UK to protect British citizens' cyber security... “Given grave concerns about the ability of the Chinese state to obtain data held by Chinese companies, it stands to reason that we should be wary of allowing any such companies to operate in the UK.""

How Chinese Officials Hijacked My Company - WSJ - "The deal was a sham. It was a trap designed to secure my intellectual property, then use intimidation tactics and lies to nullify the agreement and seize control... the joint venture applied for 510 Chinese patents for my designs, technologies, trade secrets and engineering developments. Most of the patent filings didn’t even list me as the inventor. With many of these Chinese patents approved, Rugao was ready to take over the joint venture and steal the intellectual property. Rugao is now claiming the initial valuation of my contributions was based on false information. But the city government itself requested, verified and accepted the valuation, picking at the outset three separate firms to conduct independent appraisals. The government never contested any of what these reviews found. In the past three months, Rugao has demanded the valuation companies say their findings were based on false information.You could ask Grace Yin Xu about this—if you could find her. Grace is a Chinese national who serves as the director of corporate affairs for Jiangsu Saleen. In the early stages of the deal Grace was a liaison between the joint venture and the valuation firms. Chinese law enforcement recently instructed Grace to say that my business partner provided false information and embezzled money. She refused to lie. She entered a government building in Rugao on the morning of June 22 and hasn’t been heard from since. Rugao law enforcement also detained Frank Sterzer, our vice president of manufacturing, for intimidation on June 29. Frank, a German citizen, was released after six hours with no explanation for the detention after he managed to contact the German Embassy using a cellphone the police forgot to confiscate... China’s aggressive theft of intellectual property is well documented. In a 2019 survey of the CNBC Global CFO Council, 1 in 5 North American corporations said China had stolen their intellectual property within the past year. By one estimate this stealing costs the American economy $600 billion annually.China can no longer go unchecked... The U.S. should also deny thieves access to banking systems and require the Securities and Exchange Commission to judge whether a company’s use of stolen intellectual property is a material condition that should be publicly reported. In addition to blocking such goods from the U.S. market, Congress should pass legislation to block banks, investment companies and other financial institutions and stock exchanges from using asset valuation reports prepared by any Chinese asset valuation firms. These reports are easily manipulated by the Chinese government.Such measures may not be enough to protect my 40 years of work and the brand I have built. But it isn’t too late for other American entrepreneurs whose livelihoods are at stake. Congress, and the Trump administration should send a clear message to China: If you want to be in the race, play by the rules."
The perils of doing business in China

Facebook - "I am mortified by this news.  Had no idea that the Chinese intelligence apparatus was using SINGAPOREANS to SPY here in the United States? Turns out that Dickson Yeo happens to be a Facebook friend of mine. And here is the news of his conviction by the Department of Justice for spying on behalf of the Chinese... According to court documents, he was recruited in 2015 by China intelligence operatives on a visit to Beijing where he gave a presentation on the political situation in South-east Asia. He continued to meet them during his various trips to China over the next few years, and regularly received special treatment when entering China. His Chinese handlers asked him to get non-public information about the US Commerce Department, artificial intelligence, and the US-China trade war, even instructing him to create a fake consulting company in 2018. Yeo eventually moved to Washington DC where he attended multiple events at think-tanks to network and recruit more people to write reports... While examples of how the Chinese Communist Party exploits the openness of American society abound, this time, it's clear that they are also using FOREIGN nationals (in this case, Singaporean) of Chinese descent.  Seriously this is not the first time I caught a Chinese spy lurking among my friends. Another was a friend who was in the MIT network."

Twitter removes China US embassy post saying Uighur women no longer 'baby-making machines' - "The post linked to an article by state mouthpiece China Daily, and said: “Study shows that in the process of eradicating extremism, the minds of Uygur women in Xinjiang were emancipated and gender equality and reproductive health were promoted, making them no longer baby-making machines. They are more confident and independent.”... An extensive investigation by Associated Press found authorities subjected hundreds of thousands of Uighur women to pregnancy checks, and forced intrauterine devices, sterilisation and abortion. The AP found birthrates collapsed by more than 60% between 2015 and 2018 in the mostly Uighur regions of Hotan and Kashgar, compared with a fall of 4.2% nationwide. The AP said its findings were on based on government statistics, state documents and interviews with 30 ex-detainees, family members and a former detention camp instructor... In September one Uighur woman, Sidik, told the Guardian she was coerced into having an IUD at the age of 47, and being sterilised three years later. She said a text message – seen by the Guardian – came from authorities and told her: “Do not gamble with your life, don’t even try.”"
China knows how to mobilise wokeness for its benefit

The Pros and Cons of Reparations

The Pros and Cons of Reparations (Ep. 427) - Freakonomics Freakonomics

"$14 trillion may strike you as an unrealistic amount of money. It represents nearly 70 percent of a full year of U.S. G.D.P.

    HAMILTON: The arguments that are typically made are, “Can the government afford it?” The last financial crisis is indicative of our ability to generate resources. It was something in the order of $700 billion that was passed by Congress to address the last Great Recession...

Here’s how Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell put it: “I don’t think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago for whom none of us currently living are responsible is a good idea.”

HAMILTON: Other critiques about reparations include, “Well, won’t it be divisive? Won’t you be creating further divisions between Blacks and whites by making the point that you’re giving a handout to Blacks?” Well, if reparations is done correctly, we would have that reconciliation.

For Hamilton, reparations being done “correctly” begins with an acknowledgment of why they are necessary.

HAMILTON: Clear-throated, full acknowledgment of the atrocities that have taken place and the fact that these were atrocities that were committed with the will of the government, the complicity of the government, and sometimes actions of the government.

But also:

HAMILTON: We would need a moral shift in our American ethos in order to enact reparations. The fact that we don’t have it now isn’t reason not to do it. It’s even more reason to do it, because we need to cleanse our soul. We need to have a more perfect union. Not only because it will lead to greater equity, prosperity, and perhaps defuse some of the cleavages that exist in America today between us versus them. It is the right thing to do. It is the just, moral-compass thing to do. That in and of itself should be reason to do it...

LOURY: The basic fact is that whites have more wealth than Blacks, however you measure. Now, partly that’s a consequence of history and partly that’s a consequence of ongoing dynamics. People inherit wealth from their forebears, from their parents, and so on. So, part of that is a reflection of the past, but part of it is also a reflection of what’s going on in terms of the creation of wealth. A lot of people will have created the wealth that they possess through years of effort and entrepreneurship and so on.

Stephan DUBNER: So, if you have that complication to deal with, right, which is that it’s not all a consequence of history, how do you start thinking about the smartest ways to shave that Black-white gap in America today?

LOURY: First of all, I would question whether or not that’s the right objective, okay? The issues that should concern us, I think, are largely issues that transcend the racial categorization. I would be thinking about people without wealth. I wouldn’t be thinking about people who are Black without wealth. There’s looking backwards and there’s looking forwards. So, we can look backward as many have done and attempt to calculate and calibrate what were the impact of redlining, of Jim Crow segregation, of slavery, of the failure to distribute 40 acres and a mule to the freedmen and so on, and we could try to do an estimate of what would wealth be but for that historical thing. But the other thing is looking forward. Wealth is a stock. Income is a flow. So, the stock evolves over time under influence from the flow. We can shift wealth around at a point in time. But we may not change the steady-state wealth holdings if we don’t deal with the flow. So, that’s why I want to say the creation of wealth deserves to be a part of this conversation. Because, thinking simplistically, but I think the arithmetic works out, if I don’t change the flows, I’m going to end up back in the same situation after a while, no matter what I do...

LOURY: I’ll just tell you one. The year is 1982. I’m in the faculty club at Harvard University. I’m a newly tenured professor of economics and John Kenneth Galbraith — the great John Kenneth Galbraith — is engaged in a conversation in the faculty club. Do you know that he extends his hand to shake without turning his head to look me in the eye? He continued his conversation and he had his hand out like this for me to shake it. And I couldn’t believe what was happening to me...

DUBNER: So, when you hear someone use the phrase “systemic racism” — a phrase we’ve been hearing much more lately in the U.S. — your response to that phrase is what?

LOURY: I think you’re playing with words and avoiding the hard work of trying to discover complex historical causal chains. It’s a slogan. It’s a bludgeon. You’re saying, “Be for motherhood and apple pie.” Who’s not against “systemic racism”? But if it explains everything, well, then at the end of the day, it doesn’t explain anything at all, does it?... let’s take the issue of school discipline. Suppose we were to discover on examination that the racial disparity in the rate of kids being suspended from school disfavored African-Americans, and we were to attribute that fact to systemic racism. But in fact, what might be happening in the schools is that for a variety of complicated social and historical, economic, and political reasons, the African-American kids on average are showing up with patterns of behavior that are disproportionately disruptive and that reflects itself in their being suspended at a higher rate.Now, of course, it might be racism. It might be that the school discipline system is systemically biased, but it might not be. And the difference between those two states of the world where racism explains everything or where complex social and historical processes are at work is the difference between solving the problem and not solving it...

Some of the problem has its roots in the dynamics internal to the African-American community, which we are responsible ourselves to address. And this is very difficult territory because it feels like blaming the victim to a lot of people. You know, if I observe that — take the cops and the problem that we have in the cities with order maintenance and profiling. So, this has now become kind of a trope. I mean, it’s now argued without any second thought. “You profiled me. That was racist.” I’m Black. I’ve got a Ph.D. from M.I.T. I’m a middle-class person, but I walk into a department store and I notice that the security person has his eye on me. I feel put upon...

I’m an economist and we believe in statistical decision theory as a reasonable model of how it is that uninformed individuals act under incomplete information. And one of the things that they do is they correlate unknown things with the known things and they use statistical frequencies. And the bottom line is my race is correlated with the behavior that they can’t observe. And so, they use my race’s information. I don’t know how you stop people from doing that.I think you can legislate against it. You can administer against it. But at the end of the day, there’s something very cognitively fundamental about that, and it’s something that would affect the behavior of everybody, regardless of their race. Anyway, that’s a digression by way of saying if two-thirds of the kids born to a Black woman are born to a woman without her husband, and if amongst African-American adolescent males, I observe a high frequency of behavioral maladaptation, of aggression, of whatever, am I entitled at all to consider the possibility that the nature of African-American family dynamics might have a role to play in the behavior problems of some male adolescents, which then reflects itself in a lot of this drama that we see between the cops and African-American men on the streets of these cities?...

Read what’s going on in Chicago on a daily basis. It’s not letting white people off the hook or America off the hook for its historical crimes to observe that some of the stuff that’s holding us back is within our reach to be able to deal with and really can’t be effectively dealt with in any other way.The indirect argument — “I’ll solve the problem of violence on the South Side of Chicago with more social spending, with more money for the schools, with more social workers, with midnight basketball, with whatever” — I don’t think the evidence is very strong that I can get all the way to where I want to go in that way. That’s the kind of thing that I’ve been feeling the need to call to people’s attention, that we African-Americans have some responsibility for how it is that we raise our children and organize our communities and so forth. I think that should be a part of the discussion...

DUBNER: I appreciate that you bring up the fact that it’s difficult to even talk about in certain circles. And in fact, if you weren’t Black, you probably wouldn’t have brought up that point, am I right?

LOURY: Yeah, well, I’m not “not Black.” I am Black. Therefore, I don’t know what I would have done. But I expect that you would not have brought up that point or many others who are not Black, and I don’t blame them because nothing but grief would come of it...

When we get into the racial-redistribution business, we really need to be careful about the business that we’re getting into. Because we are going to create precedents in our law and in our politics that may be difficult to live with. And in particular, this idea of deciding who’s a descendant of slaves entitled to benefit. Think about the West Indian immigrants. They’re Black. I’m talking about people who came from Jamaica, Barbados, and stuff. Think about the West African immigrants. They’re Black. I’m not talking about the guy that got off the boat or the plane. I’m talking about his son or his granddaughter. Now, we’re going to cut them out, you know? I mean, what about the mixed-parentage person — they have to identify as Black? So, now we leave it up to a subjective? This kind of thing, it is — and I don’t mean this pejoratively, I really don’t — but it smacks of a South Africa kind of classification scheme. We don’t want that in America, I would say. Not only is the 14th Amendment a problem here, believe me, it’s not only going to be Clarence Thomas who objects to this kind of business for the U.S. government. We don’t want it for our politics. We don’t want it for the health of our society, I would say."

Liberal logic: the government can afford to shell out a huge amount of money to prevent the country collapsing, therefore it can afford to shell out an even bigger amount of money to pander to identity politics even though we know these people will never be satisfied and will keep demanding more resources

The previous episode mentioned Germany's reparations after World War II, but doesn't note that despite Germany doing more than anyone else has ever done (and arguably could be expected to do), people today are still guilting them about World War II - proving that calls for reparations will never stop no matter how much you debase yourself and how much money you give away

If an academic is absent-minded in the presence of a black person, this must be racism!!!