Early Experiments In Teleportation

Have at it, me hearties.
Can we do the whole thread in *pirate voice*? ARRR.

ARRRR.

“If you are serving as a mentor to an underrepresented minority student and are not a minority, be open about your own positionality and identity, your awareness of your privilege and how you navigate it,” writes [Northeastern University’s Amanda] Cornwall. “Be vulnerable. I don’t pretend my struggles are the same as those of my students or that I know what it is like to grow up as a minority in a society of structural inequality and institutionalised racism,” she continues.

It occurs to me that if someone is prone to neurotic agonising and elaborate racial hang-ups, and pretentious blathering about “positionality” and “navigating [white] privilege,” and inevitably, “social justice,” then they’re probably ill-suited to mentoring students and not much use to anyone. Had I children, I wouldn’t want Ms Cornwall near them in any position of influence.
And invoking Robin DiAngelo, as Ms Cornwall does, proudly and approvingly, is in no way reassuring.

“Related”
https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1219466921332105218

They say that as if it is a bad thing…

Nothing that Fox said on Question Time was at all controversial. He suggested that the Labour party leader might be selected on merit and he suggested that Britain is not a racist country. Both these sentiments are held by the majority of the public. Yet so dominant have the minority-opinion pushers become that many people are persuaded that it would not just be career-damaging but socially fatal to say anything to the contrary. Even when that thing is the truth.

Douglas Murray, here.

“Our betters”
https://youtu.be/ImH8AjZrEcY

They really thought tweeting this rubbish would make them look good:
https://twitter.com/PinkNews/status/1219649504502276097

… a reflex, a compulsion. An ideological tic.
Yes, yes, it is, probably news to all those workers who were in the Wartburg, Trabant, Lada, ZiL, and Moskovich factories.
However, for all your fashion needs to bash the fash and other assorted Nazis like taxi drivers, Ian Miles Cheong notes a sale in progress.
Not swanky enough ? A mere 3,590 metric dollars will get you this anarchy leather jacket that pairs nicely with 540 metric dollar anarchy karate socks.

…he’d lose his job for that
No, he is a Mayor of Color, speaking truth to power, or something like that.

It’s worrisome enough that there are so many who believe that speaking the truth would be socially fatal; what really scares me is how many believe it should.
The former encourages/drives the latter.
how many words each side has rendered meaningless
Kinda how we got from the word ‘African’ being somewhat disparaging when used in context/reference to American blacks to ‘African American’. ‘Colored’ got thrown out for ‘Negro’, ‘Negro replaced with ‘Black’, and now the preferred term being ‘African American’ even when applied to people who aren’t even American…and even some who have no modern-era association with Africa. ‘Youth’ was also somewhat popular with local TV news for a while. See also ‘Cripple’/’Handicapped’/’Physically Challenged’ etc. I don’t think my mother never got over losing the word ‘gay’. But that’s a whole other thing.

If we could shorten “Americans”, we would.
‘Murkans* or Yanks, neither of which are offensive from foreigners unless they are trying to claim the latter is meaning one is from north (spit) of The Line of Mason and Dixon.
*(From the NSM – ‘Nited States of ‘Murka – as a hoser friend of mine used to say)

1920’s? My dad used ‘Jap’ all the time. I did as well, even when I had an ethnically Japanese roommate. My 21st birthday my buddy and I told him it was family tradition to kill a Jap on your 21st birthday. Nobody cried about it, though usage by then was kinda like talking about ‘smoking grass’ or saying ‘groovy’. I usually say ‘Japanese’ now but it feels kinda stupid in certain contexts. I can say ‘Brit’ of ‘Scott’ or even ‘Canuk’. Hell, that’s what they call one of their hockey teams.

I am informed by The Times that there is such a thing as woke coke.

We’re Britons, actually
Well, I didn’t vote for you.

Mesh shirt alert
Um, if you insist.
But who gets to fly the jet?

Oooooh, UFO. Gerry Anderson’s best work.
With groovy title music, as I recall.
As a wee seedling, I owned a toy SHADO mobile and an Interceptor. With its one big plastic missile, on which the fate of the Earth would often depend.

I owned a toy SHADO mobile and an Interceptor. With its one big plastic missile
Wow, me too. Though then for many more years I owned an Interceptor without its one big plastic missile 🙁
I also laboured under the sad misconception that one day “all these toys will be worth something”.
They weren’t.

then for many more years I owned an Interceptor without its one big plastic missile
A common, and emotionally scarring, experience.
Do Britons find “Brits” offensive?
Unless one were determined, I shouldn’t think so.

But the ONE missile thing used to fascinate me.
It wasn’t the most compelling tactical decision. Though I did like the use of a fake film studio as a cover for the UFO-busting operation.
I’m now mentally humming the bloody theme tune.

picturing/remembering Lt. Ellis getting dressed.
And there goes me, down the rabbit hole.

WTP wrote, ” ‘Colored’ got thrown out for ‘Negro’, ‘Negro replaced with ‘Black’, and now the preferred term being ‘African American’ even when applied to people who aren’t even American…and even some who have no modern-era association with Africa. ”
Steven Pinker dubbed this the “euphemism treadmill”, an excellent turn of phrase.
Note: “Negro” also replaced the n-word. “Afro-American” was between “Negro” and “Black” but was dropped because “Afro” was used for the hairstyle.

Funny thing about “Briton” is that you only ever hear it on the news, in the context of, e.g. “Mud slide in Bolivia, three Britons hurt.”
I find Brit preferable to limey/pommie bastard, but I’m pretty thick skinned.
But I see I’ve upset dear Daniel, so I’ll shut up now.

‘the African-American South African leader’
Which itself being a form of linguistic colonialism. AIUI, unless something recent changed…it’s ever so hard to keep up on these things, the South African proper general term for people of Bantu/Xhosa/whatever similar groups is…ahem…’Black’.
Note: “Negro” also replaced the n-word.
Well, not really. The n-word derived from Negro. Negro of course deriving from the Spanish/Portuguese/Latin-based words for…ahem…’Black’. Not that long ago (like when I was in school…ok, long ago) anthropologists had three main categories for the human race, Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid. Though not sure where Native Americans and Native Australians fit in there. I think they were considered Mongoloid. Bah. Is a hot dog a sammich…etc.

Please remember me as fondly as you can.
You’ll be happy to hear that the moral realignment lounger has just been reupholstered.

It was overdue, frankly. The stains just wouldn’t sponge out.

Now you are in real trouble…
Yeah, it’s also recently become associated with the male-ist part of the male anatomy. I learned this whilst talking with millennials at lunch one day. Not that either one of us knew what the other was talking about. We all just knowingly smiled at a reference to what someone was eating. I think I was the only one who understood the meaning you just linked to. The millennials made comments such that perhaps I needed to look the word up again as they certainly didn’t seem to be using it in the context that I understood it. Then the conversation made sense again. Somewhat mildly amusing which I’m planning to keep to myself until perhaps it becomes useful.

I remember hearing a supposedly professional, and doubtless highly remunerated, newsreader describe Nelson Mandela as ‘the African-American South African leader’.
. . . . . I don’t remember the fellow’s name, and googlemancy is not coming up with a reliable result, but some years back I either read or watched a black British comedian doing an entire comedy bit on labels . . .
[Definite paraphrase]
People keep talking about African Americans, that’s perfectly fine if it fits, but that’s not me. Do not call me African American, I am black. I am not African, I have never been to Africa. I was born in London, I grew up in London, my home is London. I am not American, I am English!!!
[/Definite paraphrase]