Elsewhere (239)
Uri Harris on the ideological hegemony of the social sciences:
[In a survey of the political preferences of social psychologists,] there were almost as many people who chose the furthest possible point to the left as there were who chose all the conservative points, the centre-point and the most moderate left-of-centre point combined… People that freely self-identify as far-left in the abstract, in other words irrespective of specific political issues, seem to me to be signalling something: that they are committed to an ideology. The fact that such a large portion of the most influential people in academic social psychology do so suggests that this ideology is entrenched in their field.
Which in turn suggests that what they’re actually doing may not in fact be science.
Franklin Einspruch on free speech and the prattle of Lindy West:
West possesses a mysterious gift of psychic progressivism that lets her see into the hearts of men and unearth the real intentions behind their stated ones. Or so it would seem. These men are only pretending to care about freedom of speech, for example. They really want to harass marginalised people for having opinions… “They’re weaponising free speech to maintain their cultural dominance,” she says, obsequiously quoting Anita Sarkeesian, another psychic progressive. That flushing noise you hear is the sound of productive dialogue disappearing into the rhetorical toilet. Identitarians like West have never grasped that it is impossible to found a good-faith discussion on bad-faith premises such as these… The irony of [West’s] essay is that its main point – that all this defence of free speech is really about deflecting criticism – is coming out of a camp of left-identitarianism that spent much of the last decade answering criticism with charges of bigotry.
When not deliberately knocking sleeping passengers with her in-flight luggage and boasting about it in articles for feminist publications, and then complaining that no-one wants to sit next to her on a plane, Ms West, a “fat activist,” shares videos of herself eating biscuits.
And Ace’s CBD on the obliviousness of the protesting class:
At the Impeach Trump March in Chicago 7/2/17, a group of protesters applaud a speech comprised almost entirely of Adolf Hitler quotes given by Shad Daley. This was 20 seconds after saying they need to fight fascism. After the speech, the organising member of refusefascism.org was desperate to get Shad more involved.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
I clicked and it was like stepping into a right hook of ignorance.
You’d think that being trans would be a big enough hill to climb, a big enough challenge to one’s sanity, without compounding the situation with dogmatic unrealism.
You’d think that being trans would be a big enough hill to climb, a big enough challenge to one’s sanity, without compounding the situation with dogmatic unrealism.
Isn’t being trans demonstrating significant dogmatic unrealism?
Hey, whoa, what’s all this scurrilous slander about bollocks and the Queen’s tongue?
…a right hook of ignorance…
Indeed.
Redheads are <2% of the total population, or somewhere past 2σ, so yes, anything but black, blond, or brown is by definition an outlier. It is hard to take someone seriously when he can't get the fundamentals right. Regardless, this lays the whole fallacy out:
Right – there are allegedly an infinite number of genders, women can have johnsons (or the obverse), but the ultimate goal is to become one of the two real sexes, just not the factory equipped one. It remains a mystery to me how these people can walk around thinking all these contradictions make sense.
It remains a mystery to me how these people can walk around thinking all these contradictions make sense.
Only sanity requires consistency.
“Riley J. Dennis” should have just bowed to reality; he’ll never make a convincing female.
Also, I identify as a 6-foot, hundred-pound, 22-year-old supermodel.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/opinion/how-we-are-ruining-america.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fdavid-brooks&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection
This scribbling decrying Christofacists and home-schooling is bad enough I would suspect parody … then we get to about the author
Accompanying picture about what you’d expect. o_O
I need to remember to cast my Hugo votes. Laurie Penny is up for one.
Here’s what the folks at Merriam-Webster have to say
I’m sensing tension in the room. It could kick off at any moment.
[ Reaches under bar, fingers revolver. ]
Way too subtle. Need shotgun.
So one of the finalists for Ru-Paul’s Drag Race is a fellow transitioning to be a woman…so why can’t a biological woman enter the Drag Race?
Wordness to the turdness
What’s Miss Brooksie, the NYT’s token “conservative”, sniveling about now?
What’s Miss Brooksie, the NYT’s token “conservative”, sniveling about now?
Our Miss Brooks pity-lunched with a ‘friend’ who only had a high school diploma and was frightened by the sandwich menu in a gourmet shoppe…
How white of him.
As mockable as the sandwich shop incident is, I actually think Brooks has a point. Upper class cultural signifiers are used as a barrier, and perhaps one that offers plausible deniability to the those policing it.
As mockable as the sandwich shop incident is, I actually think Brooks has a point.
Rod Dreher has some thoughts on that here.
…I actually think Brooks has a point.
Brooks lives in DC, so perhaps to that lot of self-isolated nitwits it has been culturally appropriated and turned into “gourmet” sandwiches because for them it is exotic, but go to Bensonhurst in Brooklyn and you’ll trip over pork stores and delis selling the stuff. If you grew up anywhere in any east coast city except near Central Park, it is basic working class food – it goes in subs (grinders, hoagies, or pick your favorite regional name), pizzas, or if you are in New Orleans, muffulettas.
For that matter, here in South Flyoverlandia, where Brooks* would never deign tread, in a town with the same population as about four square blocks of Manhattan, I can get the fixings at the local grocery, and I also know that in the DC area one can get then at local groceries, so unless this “friend” just dropped in from a fishing village in the Northwest Territories, his story is utter bollocks.
If the “friend” is real, I would bet real money the reason she bolted is that she didn’t want to be in a place filled with as many pretentious snots as Brooks, even though the only other people who “only” had high school diplomas were the guys making the damn sandwiches.
(* Brooks only has a Bachelor of Arts degree, which might explain his delusions of adequacy and sucking up to the cool kids in DC)
If the “friend” is real, I would bet real money the reason she bolted is that she didn’t want to be in a place filled with as many pretentious snots as Brooks
Yep, especially the real part. Odd to me that this has kicked up as much dust as it has but then again, no surprise. It’s the class thing that their consciousness centers around. What he seems to want to “woke” his readers about is how such people of such high airs needs to be awares that people with only a high school degree (and who says “high school degree”?) are not worldly like himself and his readers. Though I don’t believe he states this explicitly, what I think he’s trying to get across is the idea that all or most such people are that way and that care should be taken to avoid putting such people in such situations. Based solely on their class/station in life.
Personally, I have never been to a formal black tie dinner. Were I to be invited and attend one, I’m sure I would be uncomfortable. Especially at first. What would be far more insulting to me, would not be the supposed concern of “upper class cultural signifiers” that I was visibly uncomfortable, but that such discomfort was beyond my simpleton capacity to adapt and learn from. That would be the true insult. And that is what I perceive in our Miss Brooks’ little dissertation. Which again smells to me like something that only happened in xer head.
What he seems to want to “woke” his readers about is how such people of such high airs needs to be awares that people with only a high school degree (and who says “high school degree”?) are not worldly like himself and his readers.
Exactly, that and how the benighted need to be guided and minded by their self-perceived betters.
…what I think he’s trying to get across is the idea that all or most such people are that way and that care should be taken to avoid putting such people in such situations.
You give him too much credit, this is the guy who thought Obama was the greatest thing since canned beer because of the crease in his pants, he is just a snob, but with no particular reason to be one, other than the desire to be perceived as an “elite”.
Meanwhile, here in South Flyoverlandia…
with ingredients like Velveeta and Miracle Whip. While she was frozen in mesmerized horror, I stole $80 from her purse.
Heh.
Wait. I don’t know what Velveeta is. Should I feel class anxiety?
I don’t know what Velveeta is
It’s kinda like Cheez Whiz. That help ya any?
It’s kinda like Cheez Whiz.
You’re making no sense.
Should I feel class anxiety?
One will always feel class anxiety, tovarich, until the proletariat realize their true place under their Glorious Leaders.
Velveeta, though, may not have made it across the pond outside of a PX/BX/NEX, so you get a pass for this one. It is a cheese like product that has as its most redeeming feature the fact that as it melts it doesn’t turn into lumps and oils, so it is a good base for sauces for things like mac and cheese, and cheese dips. It is also cheap and comes in 2lb blocks, so even college students working on gender studies degrees can afford it.
You’re making no sense.
Velveeta brick, has to be melted:
Cheez Whiz, basically spreadable Velveeta, but with extra flavor from mustard and Worcestershire sauce built in:
Now you’re just screaming.
Now you’re just screaming.
Think of it as the American equivalent of Marmite…
Meanwhile, back to Our Miss Brooks, it seems our new friend Miss Anderson finds herself in a similar pickle with her father:
We’ll skip over the part about “crafting arguments” when GIGO is in play, but, by golly, she has three degrees and is a writer, so how dare a guy with maybe only one think differently and reject her silliness. Poor old sod probably thinks there are only two sexes.
I don’t know how to combat this.
I don’t know how to combat this.
Oops, that was a Miss Anderson quote…
I don’t know how to combat this.
At that level, vanity is impervious.
I don’t know how to combat this.
As standard subjective conversation/debate it is virtually impossible. However, and not sure how to do it in the specific context you describe, but I try to pull the conversation into a domain that has a discrete, objective answer. Possibly an event to occur in the near future or an objective fact, something numerical, that can be referenced from an objective, reliable source (heh…harder and harder to find those). Then propose a wager. What I find is that most such people retreat either to the whimpy “I don’t gamble” BS or they start equivocating on their original statements. Writers, philosophers, preachers/priests, and other blue noses are inclined to wilt. Or they stop talking to you entirely. Either way, it’s win-win.
I don’t know how to combat this.
Point of clarification, that was Miss Anderson claiming she couldn’t “combat” the fact that her father isn’t buying her social science genuine frontier gibberish, because he is evidently not swayed by the might and majesty of her three degrees in Useless Studies and online rantings.
Ah….missed the correction. My bad. Fortunately I have some left over Cheez Whiz with which to salve my self-inflictions. I try to keep some handy in case they choose to do an ad hoc Super Bowl or sumpin.
Velveeta is a “processed cheese product.” Just think of all the marvelous ways they’re using plastics nowadays.
It makes a genderfluid otherkin non-objectifyingly self-esteeemed to be a soldier!
There’s no VELVEETA over there?!?!! How do you poor souls make cheese dip?
Ultra-simple cheese dip: 1 2-lb block of Velveeta, I can Ro-Tel tomatoes, 2 cans Hormel Turkey Chili. Use a crockpot liner because Velveeta turns to plastic when it cools.
Cheez Whiz makes great (if sloppy) cheeseburgers.
I KNEW professional Islamic apologist Karen Armstrong was a liar! In her “memoir,” “Through The Narrow Gate,” her family goes to visit her at the convent on which she has inflicted herself, and they have what sounds like Velveeta but she calls Cheez Whiz; apparently she got the two products mixed up. And now we learn you don’t even have Velveeta in England!
Well, there IS such a thing as Fox Geezer Syndrome–my mom had them on 12 hours a day until she became too senile to follow them–but “Fox Geezer Syndrome” does not equal “Miss(?) Anderson is right about everything.”
How’s the summer weather in merry old England? Here in the deplorable flyover US A, it’s hot and humid, around 90 degrees F.
It makes a genderfluid otherkin non-objectifyingly self-esteeemed to be a soldier!
Sing Along!
Echoing from commentary from a bit back . . .
—And the original comments . . .