Elsewhere (289)
Via Darleen, Mary Hudson on the dirty secrets of ‘progressive’ public education:
There was an ethos of hostile resistance. Those who wanted to learn were prevented from doing so. Anyone who “cooperated with the system” was bullied. No homework was done. Students said they couldn’t do it because if textbooks were found in their backpacks, the offending students would be beaten up… I tried everything imaginable to overcome student resistance. Nothing worked. At one point I rearranged the seating to enable the students who wanted to engage to come to the front of the classroom. The principal was informed, and I was reprimanded. This was “discriminatory.”
Somewhat related, this, this, and the third item here.
Jonah Goldberg on the immorality of “social justice”:
Among the myriad problems with this worldview is that individual circumstances are boiled away… Vast abstract categories of human beings are swept up into notions of collective guilt — or victimhood… Traditionally, a person is only supposed to be responsible for the wrongs he or she committed against a specific person. If Person A does something terrible entirely unbeknownst to Person B, it is unjust to hold Person B accountable solely because of the colour of his skin. It’s even more grotesque to hold Person B accountable for the things done by Person A if Person A lived 300 years ago.
Andy Meek on a modern vice:
Robocallers and spam callers are getting quite good at masking their identity. They do this partly by “spoofing” local numbers, making it seem like a legitimate local number is calling to increase the likelihood that you’ll answer. That’s the reason, according to [caller-ID app] Hiya, that around 9 percent of spam calls a month actually get answered by phone owners even though they don’t recognise the number calling. Nine percent might not sound like much, until you consider the fact that 26.3 billion robocalls were made to American phones in 2018. That’s up 46 percent from 2017’s total of 18 billion.
And via Ace, some news from the world of powerlifting, an activity we don’t often cover here:
USA Powerlifting has issued a ruling prohibiting male to female transgender athletes from competing against women to ensure fairness in the competition of “strength sports such as powerlifting.” The organisation stated that athletes who transitioned from men to women have an unfair advantage over their female counterparts due to natural anatomic privileges, including more developed muscle structure which cannot be eliminated by hormone therapy and medical reduction of testosterone.
Needless to say, not everyone is happy about this development. Indeed, we’re told, unequivocally, that the policy is actually driven by “racism, white supremacy,” and “fatphobia.”
As usual, feel free to share your links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
Glad this came up, what is it with Hawaii and Spam?
It goes back to WWII, fresh meat was hard to get to the islands, but Spam was not an issue because it requires no refrigeration and has a half life between that of plutonium and a Hostess Twinkie™. This is not a photoshop, it is a Spam aisle of a store in Kailua (town on the windward side of Oahu). Because it was the most readily available meat, the locals incorporated it into traditional recipes, and invented new ones.
Hawaii is also one of the few places you can find every type of Spam, so you can have many flavors of Spam musubi.
I learned about spam as a young child in my first…ahem…reader. Was probably the first word I learned to read…
http://sadsack.org/SSyanktop3.htm
Time flies.
Have to say I never call back any number I don’t know. My view is all the people I want to contact me already have my number, and appear as that on screen. I ignore the unknowns, though of course I do realise I may be missing that long-awaited call from some young Hollywood actress — yes, I still use that word — inviting me at no cost to share her place for the up-coming Oscars.
Sometimes one has to make a sacrifice.
Time flies.
Go Gators!
Speaking of which, how’s Charlie’s brother’s finger?
Go Gators!
I’m assuming the drugs have worn off by now.
“So, how can one direct a collimated beam of kooks through a gender spectrometer?”
Some preparation is required.
I’m assuming the drugs have worn off by now.
Well the drugs certainly have but I fear the liver damage from all that beer and Jack Daniels may still be with me. Oh, you meant the kid…never mind.
For insight into the lack of insight at ABC7NEWS, you can’t beat using their search tool for ‘invasion’.
It’s rather like me complaining that people aren’t generally impressed when I defeat small children in arm-wrestling competitions.
Steven Crowder pitted his producer, Not Gay Jared and one of his writers, Courtney the powerlifter, against each other in an arm wrestling match.
The results were exactly as you might expect. At one point she has both hands and her entire core leaning on Jared’s forearm and she’s only barely moving him.
The results were exactly as you might expect.
Heh. I hadn’t seen that.
And again, there’s something rather odd about woke-lings and feminists arguing for a change of rules in women’s sports, the likely result of which would be female athletes almost always coming second to a biological man.
there’s something rather odd about woke-lings and feminists arguing for a change of rules in women’s sports, the likely result of which would be female athletes almost always coming second to a biological man.
Not really. As has been noted they were running out of things that they could (legitimately) bitch about. Especially things that they could get people to pay them to bitch about. Once these new rules are set, they’ll have new grist for future articles.
The results were exactly as you might expect.
To push for transgender inclusion in heavily strength-dependent sports, like powerlifting, results in absurdity. It’s a “there-are-four-lights” moment. Which doesn’t seem likely to further the wider cause of transgender acceptance.
LA Times: Denied combat roles, Army women battle men in cage fighting
Opening paragraph with badass babe, looking convincing so far: Army Staff Sgt. Jackelyn Walker is snapping left jabs at Pfc. Greg Langarica’s head. She doesn’t like his smirk.
Do you have two tens for a five? Quiet and seemingly frail at 116 pounds, she seemed out of place among male fighters with bulging biceps. But she won her first few fights, which by luck of the draw were all against other women.
Biology is sexist: A few hours later, Chesser was in the stands, glowering. “We don’t have instant adrenaline like males do,” she said.
Badass babe wins consolation prize: She was carried out on a stretcher, her eyes rolled back in her head. “I wanted to be the first female champion on the base,” she said after she was released from the base hospital. “We can be just as tough as the guys. We can do it.” Langarica was magnanimous in victory. He hadn’t beaten a woman, he said. “It was a warrior.“
running out of things they could legitimately hitch about
Reminds me, where do yo-mama-so-fat jokes come on the Schedule of Intersectional Impermissibility?
Mater tua tam obesa est ut cum Romae est, urbs habet octo colles
“It was a warrior.”
Yeah. I wanna say It was a thing that never happened.
Psychotherapist holds forth on whether one should date a feminist, (because I haven’t been criticising feminism enough recently). It’s a treat.
“It was a warrior.”
The patriarchy is about to destroy the Masai; but never fear feminism will come to the rescue and, without turning Masai culture on its head (other than completely redefining the role of women), will save the day. Does she even read her own work?
Psychotherapist holds forth on whether one should date a feminist…
The non-14:45 version: No.
For anyone who needs elaboration, “No fekking way, not even with yours.”
Given the misery that Phone spammers cause, and the clientele of this site, I am disappointed that this hasn’t been shared yet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXVJ4JQ3SUw
Telephone scammer caught when he targeted the only person to lead both the FBI and the CIA
Given the misery that Phone spammers cause, and the clientele of this site, I am disappointed that this hasn’t been shared yet:
“What were you saying during the bee?”
“The lease expired and there was nothing the British could do about it.”
Not entirely true. They could have given all the Hong Kongese full British passports (as the Portuguese did in Goa) which would have pissed the Chinese off no end. However, they didn’t want a load of dynamic, right wing entrepreneurs coming to their socialist dystopia, so they didn’t.
To push for transgender inclusion in heavily strength-dependent sports, like powerlifting, results in absurdity. It’s a “there-are-four-lights” moment. Which doesn’t seem likely to further the wider cause of transgender acceptance.
That.
That.
Well, it seems to me that the cause of transgender acceptance requires a certain amount of polite pretending, of not acknowledging certain details, in the name of courtesy. To then push for creating situations in which such pretending becomes vividly ludicrous, seems unwise, indeed insulting to everyone involved. It becomes a kind of gaslighting.
[ Added: ]
It’s one thing to ask for polite acceptance – say, on the street or in the workplace – of someone with gender dysphoria. I’ve no wish to be gratuitously hostile to people with a condition that strikes me as tragic and hellish. It’s something else, however, to create a situation in which the dissonance is so glaring, so impossible to ignore, that the expected politeness becomes an absurd affirmation – an obvious, outright lie – and a corruption of the participants. As when being expected to agree that bone density and muscle mass are somehow irrelevant to powerlifting, or that a six-foot six-adult male has no unfair physical advantages over teenage girls during a game of basketball.
They could have given all the Hong Kongese full British passports
In which case they still would not have held Hong Kong.
Yes, that would have pissed the Chinese off. No, it would not have been helpful to Britain. Spite is no way to run a country.
“requires a certain amount of polite pretending, of not acknowledging certain details”
Maybe it’s conditioning for the future socialist utopia where everyone but a select few will be worse off than before – lots of pretending would be required!
Meanwhile, (speaking of polite pretending) in the world of art…
RTWT…
Because working in an elitist pretend-museum is just like working on the line building Detroit rolling iron, the New Museum pussy hat brigades and soy boys voted to join up with the United Auto Workers.
Wow. That is a lot of vacuous handwaving—the “article” that is.
Fortunately one can get Google to be useful and go look for actual information.
One does quickly find The New Museum’s Staff Is Pushing to Unionize—and Top Leadership Is Not at All Happy About It
Got it.
So, without any of that useless posturing, what is actually happening is that a group of people who shuffle more paperwork than iron are wishing to join another group of people who also shuffle more paperwork than iron.
Well, yes, that does beg the question of Um, shuffling paper, and the United Auto Workers?!?!?!!!!!
‘k, fine, a bit more Googlemancy.
Which gives us a very easy parallel from elsewhere: Just as NCOs are considered the backbone of the military, between the strictly enlisted and the officers—and never mind which enlisted, being they infantry or POGs—so the unions are basically doing pretty much the the same thing.
Meh.
Absolute, entirely, dog bites man.
Translating hysterical shrieking into actual news is why I tend to skim through rather a variety of headlines when picking out what is actually going on.
Doing such rather simplifies bypassing one individual writer choosing to signal piety rather than report news.
Okay, Hal. So a bunch of museum workers being represented by the autoworkers isn’t absurd at all, because it’s happened elsewhere. You’ve totally persuaded me on this one!
Oh, and thanks again for letting me know about Google, and about military roles, and about the purpose of labor unions, not to mention enlightening me about the phrase “dog bites man,” which I swear to God I’d never run across in forty-odd years of reading. To be quite honest, I don’t know what we thick rubes would do if we didn’t have you to explain basic concepts to us!
While we’re at it — I was looking for a long-winded, circular way of redefining “conservative” so that I would be the only one on Earth who qualified for the label. Do you have any links to material that might help me with this quest?
one individual writer choosing to signal piety rather than report news.
I don’t even know where to begin…
I don’t even know where to begin…
The best place to begin is by ignoring, but I did find a Venn diagram of union goons (A) and NCOs (B).
So a bunch of museum workers being represented by the autoworkers isn’t absurd at all, because it’s happened elsewhere.
Apparently . . . I was wondering about the details m’self, so I looked it up.
From there, Ehn, I could see arguments on the union’s part for just staying with the UAW name over time, it is a known identity, rather than having to file all the paperwork all over the place for changing the name to Honking Big Union or something of the sort . . .
I did find a Venn diagram of union goons (A) and NCOs (B).
They don’t promise you a rose garden.
Chester Draws
Spite is no way to run a country.
Spite is exactly how Britain is run. From the treatment of former colonies, the treatment of Gurkhas, to the treatment of those who wish to leave the EU.
the dirty secrets of ‘progressive’ public education
‘Related’…
“To adopt as official policy the elimination of objective performance standards, as Gonzales counsels and the report ratifies, would bring an end to formal teacher evaluations. It would eliminate all the other benchmarks that parents, taxpayers, and the general public traditionally use to hold officials accountable for schools that don’t educate.”
https://www.city-journal.org/de-blasio-school-integration-task-force
Go Gators!
Go Noles…er…please do something…um…damnit I hate football
[sobs pathetically]