I’ll Just Leave This Here, I Think
She’s tired of catering to your feelings.
You see, when you appear to be female, and sound female, and are objectively female, and you visit a restaurant with a group of women, and the stranger taking your order fails to pre-emptively ask, as one does, whether anyone present has serious mental health issues, and instead simply says, “Hi, ladies”… Well, clearly, this is an outrage.
Update, via the comments:
Nikw211 adds,
I am not responsible for the state of someone else’s mental health. This is not because I lack compassion, but because anyone who makes the state of their confidence and sanity dependent on random strangers is going to be forever disappointed. It would be like bursting into tears every time you buy a lottery ticket and find your numbers didn’t come up.
It does seem an unpromising path to contentment. As noted here recently,
This, I think, is what makes trans activism different from that of other groups with which transgender people are often equated. Someone being gay, for instance, doesn’t generally entail a demand that everyone else either hallucinate or pretend to hallucinate. Which is to say, trans activism often includes a belief that the rest of us should pretend that the physical reality we can see is somehow not the case. And unsurprisingly, people may object to being told that they should lie on demand.
A concession that would leave those so inclined at the mercy of any poseur, or prankster, or unpleasable neurotic.
Some will likewise not welcome being told to indulge, wholesale, a bundle of phenomena that includes not only actual gender dysphoria, whether the result of neurological anomalies or childhood molestation, but also autogynephilia, serious personality disorders, and assorted exhibitionist and unsavoury compulsions. The expectation seems to be that we should take these different phenomena, with very different moral connotations, as being one and the same thing, and then defer to them. Which is asking rather more than can readily be agreed to.
Update 2:
Our Queen of Sorrow says,
Every time I go to the grocery store and ignore being called ‘miss’ or ‘ma’am’… it’s not okay.
And so, one has to wonder what the imagined solution is, the one to which we aren’t made privy. Are checkout staff everywhere supposed to ignore the obvious fact that Arthur is female, and presents herself as female, with female clothing and hair? Should checkout staff and waitresses, and everyone working in retail, everywhere, somehow just know to pretend that Arthur is something she isn’t? Do checkout staff and waitresses really have the time and wherewithal to fathom and indulge every single customer’s psychological quirks in advance of any interaction, even a routine greeting? Exactly how much of this lady’s psychological dissonance should be foisted on everyone else?
And would such an accommodation set us on a path we want to be travelling down? Pretending can lead to some strange terrain.
In person, I’m generally polite by default and don’t go out of my way to needlessly put a kink in someone else’s day. I’ve had perfectly civil chats with people who regard themselves as trans or gender-non-conforming or whatever. Nobody got upset. But what is being asked – or demanded – is not a small thing, not in its implications. Some insist that not indulging psychodrama is a violation of human rights and a basis for severe legal consequences. One might think that coercively eroding the probity of other people, demanding that they lie and pretend to hallucinate, is a pretty bad thing too. At best, a recipe for grim farce.
But there we are.
Update 3, via the comments, more fits of unrealism:
When you’ve been severely educated.
Being precocious, we’re told, is just “white supremacy” and therefore something to atone for.
Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
I’m confused. Is she (?) supposed to be female? Male? Something else?
The hashtag #transmascnonbinary is deployed, along with the pronouns “they/them.”
So, good luck to all the waiters and waitresses out there.
If you poke through the lady’s videos, you’ll find the obligatory menu of mental health issues, self-harm, medication mishaps, and shockingly original politics.
#transmascnonbinary
It’s as if this sort of thing was designed to cause confusion and thus increase the opportunity for outrage….
Meanwhile, in “equity” news:
Also, “behaviours, attitude, [and] tardiness” will no longer be permitted to have bearing on grades. Because indulging misbehaviour and classroom disruption, and surly attitudes, and a chronic disregard for doing things on time – and by extension, a disregard for others – can only improve the life chances of minority students.
… you’ll find the obligatory menu of mental health issues …
The other day I saw someone make a case for why we should all add a set of preferred pronouns to email signatures, social media profiles and so on.
The suggestion was that while it would involve next to no effort at all on your part to do so, it would mean a huge amount to trans, non-binary and, now, presumably also transmascnon-binary people.
This is because, apparently, they live in continual fear and anxiety of a misgendering that will capsize their confidence in their own self image, casting them into a deep despair.
Unfortunately, no amount dressing this up can disguise the fact that it’s complete and utter bollocks.
Firstly, I am not responsible for the state of someone else’s mental health.
This is not because I lack compassion but because anyone who makes the state of their confidence and sanity dependent on random strangers is going to be forever disappointed.
It would be like bursting into tears every time you buy a lottery ticket and find your numbers didn’t come up.
Yes, it would be nice to win that jackpot of millions that would transform your life forever after, but if you pin all your happiness on that number coming up you are an absolute idiot.
And the situation would not be likely to improve dramatically through buying 20 tickets, 40, 100, even 500 tickets every week.
You’d just end up even more miserable and broke to boot.
Even if every social media service made it a requirement for users to display pronouns in their profiles so that literally everyone included them, people such as this young woman would be forced to realise that it makes absolutely no difference to their fragile grip on reality.
Secondly, many of us, probably all of us to some degree, occasionally find ourselves wishing we were taller, or better looking (not you, David, obviously), or wittier and so on. We may even ponder how our life might have been different had that been the case.
And literally everyone has known at least one time in their life what it is like to put on an outfit or try out a new look that you think is going to truly impress friends and strangers alike only to find yourself an object of ridicule.
There are only two options in such cases – you find the confidence in your own sense of avant-garde brilliance and dismiss the tittering smirks of the peasants or you go home and change your outfit to something slightly less gauche.
There is no third option. At least, not a successful one that would somehow force everyone to see you as you saw yourself in that outfit or with that hairstyle.
Thirdly, since antisemitism is on the rise around the world would she be willing, I wonder, to do her part and show solidarity with this historically oppressed minority by adding the flag of Israel and/or the Star of David in her profiles to show solidarity?
I mean, it’s a small gesture that costs her nothing yet would mean a lot to people feeling exposed and vulnerable right now.
Right?
(“What do you mean you ‘don’t want to’? Are you some kind of Nazi? You are, aren’t you? Only a Nazi would be afraid to put the flag of Israel in their profile. It’s a classic sign of the covert antisemite.”)
Well, quite.
Recently we were offered the chance to clear up our pronouns for the organisational phone directory. I opted for Your/His Excellency. Apparently the HR department has no sense of humour, the entry now reads first name, last name with no pronoun listed at all. Presumably the option of career advancement is now off the table too.
Firstly, I am not responsible for the state of someone else’s mental health.
Also, people by and large don’t appreciate expectations that they should ignore the evidence of their own eyes and actively pretend things to the contrary – which is to say, lie – and do it on demand, thereby leaving themselves open to any prankster, or bedlamite, or unpleasable neurotic, or sadistic opportunist in search of leverage.
Some will likewise not welcome being told to indulge, wholesale, a bundle of phenomena that includes not only actual gender dysphoria, whether the result of neurological anomalies or childhood molestation, but also autogynephilia, serious personality disorders, and assorted opportunist and unsavoury compulsions. The expectation seems to be that we should take these different phenomena, with very different moral connotations, as being one and the same thing, and then defer to them.
Which is asking rather more than can readily be agreed to.
There’s a somewhat jealous complaint about the scathing anti-woke response to Twitter’s “Libs of TikTok” from an otherwise-sensible YouTuber.
Since I do not possess accounts for commentary in any of those illiberal spaces I leave my ripost here:
1. These are not children. In fact most of the ones I’ve seen are teachers of children. Or rather “teachers” of children.
2. The creatures in these videos are mostly lecturing or instructing their audience on how they think we should behave. They therefore deserve any pushback they get.
3. Indulging the demands of the mentally ill is harmful to all involved.
people by and large don’t appreciate expectations that they should ignore the evidence of their own eyes and actively pretend things to the contrary – which is to say, lie
Apparently an issue resolved, not altogether elegantly mind you, by senior members of the Labour Party in the UK, including its “leader”.
Still, while most eyes were on Starmer it was Emily Thornberry that caught my eye:
“It is factually inaccurate [because] there are men who have cervixes”
Remember, this is a woman who previously wrote off an entire town, Rochester, as a cesspit of nimbyist racism based on nothing more than seeing an England flag hanging from a house window.
The mind boggles.
…they live in continual fear and anxiety of a misgendering that will capsize their confidence in their own self image, casting them into a deep despair.
Perfectly said, same with Brobdingnagian set who demand everyone else believe they are beautiful and/or the picture of health. Instead of demanding a simple folie à deux, though, they demand a folie imposée involving the entire monde.
Why a nigh subatomic (but loudmouthed) subset of the population is being pandered to by corporations and politicians remains a mystery – it is not as if they are going to change the bottom line or sway an election by their sheer numbers*.
*(Offer not valid in San Francisco or Portland)
The expectation seems to be that we should take these different phenomena, with very different moral connotations, as being one and the same thing, and then defer to them.
Which is asking rather more than can readily be agreed to.
That.
actively pretend things to contrary – which is to say, lie
Check out this prick
That.
Well, it’s another example of how being woke entails the suspension of critical judgement or any sense of realism. In order to affirm, indiscriminately, one has to become quite stupid, certainly credulous, or at least give the appearance of such.
Speaking of @libsoftiktok…
When you’ve been severely educated.
You see, being precocious is “white supremacy.”
Check out this prick
Another folie à douche, “You weren’t gifted in school, just white”.
SNAP!
Who knew it took three minutes to get electrons over to Blighty?
Meanwhile, a question, and another history lesson.
The “violence” of front gardens:
https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1444509079536295937
Some hope for the future.
“A huge deal” for the LSMFT☼≥ community.
“A huge deal” for the LSMFT☼≥ community.
The only shocking aspect is that Playboy is still a thing. I’d assumed it had withered into irrelevance, having been rendered obsolete.
Which, on reflection, may explain the decision above.
the LSMFT☼≥ community
Hmmm.
LSMFT Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco (advertising slogan)
LSMFT Loose Straps Means Floppy Tits
LSMFT Let’s Stop, My Finger’s Tired
LSMFT Loose Suspenders Mean Falling Trousers
LSMFT Low Self esteem Means Friction and Trouble
LSMFT Lord Save Me from Trump (political slogan)
LSMFT Liposclerosing Myxofibrous Tumor
LSMFT Laboratory Sector for Making Folks Tiny (Fantastic Voyage)
LSMFT Lord Save Me from Truman
Dunno, I think the LMFAO community might be the better term?
Playboy is still a thing. I’d assumed it had withered into irrelevance,
Snortworthy, that is.
“The other day I saw someone make a case for why we should all add a set of preferred pronouns to email signatures, social media profiles and so on.”
You saw someone attempt to make such a case.
“The suggestion was that while it would involve next to no effort at all on your part to do so, it would mean a huge amount to trans, non-binary and, now, presumably also transmascnon-binary people.”
Sure, it would involve little effort. But it would also “mean a huge amount” to me: it would mean complicity in madness; both the personal madness of those who claim to have their “own” pronouns, and the collective megalomania of their enablers attempting to overturn ancient societal norms.
Remember when the Left claimed to care – oh, so deeply – about society? Of course it was always a lie, since they don’t know what the word means. But now they stand for those who openly reject it.
“Who knew it took three minutes to get electrons over to Blighty?”
The BBC assures me it’s something to do with Brexit.
“LSMFT Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco”
LS/MFT! Yes, Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco. So round, so firm, so fully-packed; so free and easy on the draw… and remember: quality of product is essential to continuing success.
Sorry. Been listening to too many old Jack Benny shows. I’ll say one thing for those mid-century ad-men: they might have been wordy, but the stuff sticks in your head.
So round, so firm, so fully-packed;
If anyone’s getting aroused by this thread, I’m fetching the spray bottle.
So round, so firm, so fully-packed;
Methinks he references the Playboy centrefold.
I’ll get my hat.
Oh God, my hair’s on fire!
White privilege = not being at fault when a dumb bint rear-ends you at a traffic light.
This is indeed a real phenomenon, to my personal knowledge: “Person of color” causes a traffic accident and then screams “racism!” when they realize this will affect their police record and insurance.
and teachers also will not be able to assign a grade lower than 50 percent to any student
White Bear Lake, Minnesota, where all of the children are above 50%.
That’s an interesting tack, given that “holistic” assessment has up to now been the progressive way to work around the perceived elitism or racial malice of evaluating students blindly based on purely academic criteria. A student who was struggling with the material might be graded generously as long as he turned up in class and made a sincere effort, especially if the teacher knew he was having trouble at home.
Being autonomously goal-directed, not sweating the small stuff, goofing off and then cramming for the final evaluation, those are things that academically competent middle class students can get away with. For struggling students, and students whose home life gives them no structure or schedule, the process of learning is turning up in class and handing in homework on time.
A ten day window after the test to encourage retakes – how about a ten day window before the test to notify students that there’s a test coming up that they should revise for? Or a hundred day window before the ten day window to teach the material that’s on the test?
Or if ten day windows are so successful in increasing students’ grades, let’s systematize it. Give the kids a fake test a couple of weeks before the real one, to shock them into a ten-day-window reaction. Structure your entire academic year as a sequence of ten day windows, and they’ll all be A students by January.
But I suspect that this is nothing to do with students, that an instruction has gone out to teachers that if they value their job, the make-up test will just happen to have the questions that the if-at-first-you-don’t-succeed students have been drilled on.
Curious. I find myself tired of catering to her & other’s derangement.
That’s an interesting tack, given that “holistic” assessment has up to now been the progressive way to work around the perceived elitism or racial malice of evaluating students blindly based on purely academic criteria.
A key reason for this is that the old progressive policies did not quickly result in the equal outcomes that the left desired. The required the left to come up with new policies to achieve those results, regardless of how fraudulent were the policies or how deranged the underlying theories.
Why a nigh subatomic (but loudmouthed) subset of the population is being pandered to by corporations and politicians remains a mystery
It’s no mystery. I’ve explained it here time and time again and likely will until my last dying breath. They are pandered to because they speak up. They make other people uncomfortable. They will continue to do so and continue to be successful doing so until other people, large groups of other people, speak up and do it in such a way that makes the corporations and politicians uncomfortable. Pages and pages, books even, can be written using logic and reason (see virtually every comment above, on this blog in general, on virtually every other conservative-ish blog) to “refute” them. It DOES NOT MATTER how reasoned and rational your argument. You might as well be fighting a grizzly bear by shouting at it. And further more at some point, and some say we’re well past it, words will be useless and the only answer will be violence. Severe violence with all the irrationality, chaos, and random misery that goes along with it. Because people are afraid to speak up. Someone might call them a name.
“They will continue to do so and continue to be successful doing so until other people…speak up and [make them uncomfortable].”
Agreed. There is no upside to catering to bad people.
Oh no, I buggered up the html. Sorry, David.
Oh no, I buggered up the html.
[ Sends urchin down to cellar to retrieve barrel of hamster urine. ]
Back in the late 70s or 80s, there was a scandal at the U. of Ga. Teachers were passing football players and even having nonexistent classes for them. The president knew. He lost his job. Ah, the good old days.
the equal outcomes that the left desired
I see no evidence of this desire. I see a great deal of talk about it, much performance, many theatrics. But not once have I seen a leftist take the obviously equalising step of giving up their job, their holiday, their house, their bank balance to someone more deserving.
Why it’s almost as if all they want to do is tell other people how (not) to live, and feel good about it!
[ Sends urchin down to cellar to retrieve barrel of hamster urine. ]
[Whines]: But I also fixed it!
But I also fixed it!
[ From the cellar, footsteps, sloshing. ]
[ hastily dons emergency rain gear ]
I see no evidence of this desire.
I was talking especially about equality of outcomes in education: Black poverty and under-achievement in education were assumed to be due to current and past racial discrimination, and that the elimination of those injustices would quickly lead to great improvements, much as historical waves of immigrants from Europe started out poor due to lack of education and acculturation but rapidly progressed as their children learned English, graduated from school, etc.
The first round of reforms, starting in the 1940’s, involved the elimination of legal and institutional discrimination–underfunded schools, exclusion from programs for more promising students, etc. Consider, for example, the New York City public school system, where anonymously administered tests were used to assess student aptitude and preparedness: Those who did well, regardless of race and religion and wealth could attend the elite high schools. Those policies were established by progressive-minded politicians and educators who genuinely wanted all students to have the opportunity to fully achieve according to their natural endowments. (Thomas Sowell, among many others, has written about this.) The same thing was going on in New York’s elite private schools.
Those policy changes did make a difference, but as I recall* liberals were impatient for more rapid change. Hence “affirmative action”, aka racial quotas for college admission and so on. Those quotas did not help underachieving students because instead of catching up they stayed behind or even fell further behind. I have read that this was behind some of the campus unrest in the sixties, in which poorly performing black students lashed out. Other foolish progressive polices included a vastly expanded welfare program, failure to discipline misbehaving students, and so on. These policies led to disastrous outcomes, but the left did not then rethink their policies and assumptions–instead, they searched for ever more silly explanations for the failures, and demanded ever more absurd policies.
* As I recall from my reading: I was too young in the 1960’s to have an adult understanding of all that was happening.
But of course: Elite vegan restaurant in New York has secret dining room serving meat to elite clientele.
pst314: you touch on this but affirmative action in college meant that good black students who might have succeeded in a state school instead were admitted to top universities where they failed. The left seems determined to destroy those they claim to want to help. It doesn’t matter about collateral damage if you have good intentions, apparently.
Here is a unique piece of legislation aimed at inseminators*, which seems a bit racist with just a hint of Stasi.
Meanwhile, a problem in Northern Ireland**.
*(Equity at last! No more men and women, just vagina owners and inseminators)
**(These two items may or may not be related, that is an exercise left to the student.)
“Teachers were passing football players and even having nonexistent classes for them. The president knew. He lost his job. Ah, the good old days.”
My dad attended U. Michigan from 1931-1934. He told me that athletes were advised to take Astronomy 101 from Professor Losch. The story was she awarded three grades: A for athletes, B for boys, and C for coeds (women). Astronomy was known as an easy pass at the lower undergrad level.
One of those athletes in that era was Gerald R. Ford – Michigan football star, later elevated (not elected) President of the US after Nixon resigned.
A is for ambition.
affirmative action in college meant that good black students who might have succeeded in a state school instead were admitted to top universities where they failed.
Exactly my point. A disgraceful policy. And it was justified with dishonest hand-waving.
It doesn’t matter about collateral damage if you have good intentions, apparently.
Leftist ideology drives out clear thinking, has a rhetorical toolkit to explain away any failure, prioritizes adherence to the ideology over the real-world consequences, and values abstract “people” over actual individual human beings.
With regard to those liberals who genuinely desired an end to poverty through the elimination of artificial barriers: To steal a literary quote, they have been driven mad by the death of egalitarianism and will embrace any lie in order to hold on to that dream.
(Whether or not large racial differences in education and achievement can be eliminated remains unproven: The left’s destructive policies have vandalized our culture for over a half century. It is possible that Thomas Sowell is correct and the elimination of harmful policies will eventually lead to the elimination of large disparities. It is also possible that Charles Murray is correct and significant disparities in outcome will remain due to significant inherited differences in cognitive ability.)
“Given the label “gifted” only because white….”
“Gifted” was the guy in my High School who afterwards entered MIT as a second semester Freshman and graduated in 3 years with a BsC in chemistry and two Masters degrees – in chemical engineering and math.
only because he was white.
“gifted” means white: I am sure the 2 guys in my high school who tested with IQ over 160 did so with the assistance of their whiteness….somehow.
Gifted programs, like special ed for the learning or physically disabled, never take from basic education. These are “extra” programs that actually add $$ to the gubmint skool budget.
Little Miss Nosering can’t be bothered with facts when there is White Supremacy to seize for virtue-signally points.
I am sure the 2 guys in my high school who tested with IQ over 160 did so with the assistance of their whiteness….somehow.
It is a Well Known Fact™ that IQ tests are racist AF*.
*(Anyone scoring over one or more SD to the right and not a yte is either Asian [honorary yte for these purposes] or suffering from internalized whiteness)
Little Miss Nosering can’t be bothered with facts when there is White Supremacy to seize for virtue-signally points.
Little Miss Nosering – aka Miss “Unpack That!” – has, however, mastered the condescending, self-satisfied tone expected of her caste. And hey, that’s what matters. Her social-class signalling isn’t dependent on knowing routine facts, or stringing together thoughts in a realistic manner. She just needs to mouth the incantations.
Trinity College professor of sociology states being white is “anti-human”.
A doctrine of racial supremacy, in which the German race was entitled to conquer and enslave, already thrived in German academia by the time of World War I. Hitler merely took it to the next level.
This sort of racist thinking now pervades academia in America and the UK. The parallels to Nazi ideology are clear to anyone with eyes see. I am not sure what fraction of American blacks and American academics would willingly implement a new Gulag, but it is not tiny.
“a new gulag”?
How about a new Rwanda?
“How about a new Rwanda?” I know a lot of people from India, Iran, Iraq, China, Japan and I have bad news for the genocide-minded—none of them view themselves as “brown” or “POC” nor are they invested in BLM politics. Same with most mexicans (etc). Their majority is not a majority when you consider this.
I know a lot of people from India, Iran, Iraq, China, Japan–none of them view themselves as “brown” or “POC” nor are they invested in BLM politics.
But how many of such immigrants are leftists? Any increase in the population of leftists is a danger. BLM is merely the latest manufactured cause.
I know a lot of people from India, Iran, Iraq, China, Japan–none of them view themselves as “brown” or “POC” nor are they invested in BLM politics.
“Not invested in” might be an understatement. 🙂
Back in the summer of 2020, during the peak of the riots, I think I posted a link here to a video of a black woman ranting into her cell phone about all the Arab store owners (“A-rabs, the fake-ass Ramadan muthafuckas”) who were defending their shops with firearms: She felt that they had no right to do so, because black people are entitled to riot and loot whenever they wish. This sort of barbaric attitude does not win friends.
(The above link may not work in the future, because Facebook and Twitter repeatedly removed that video for violating “community standards”.)
They are pandered to because they speak up
No, that isn’t it. Again, there just aren’t enough of them. There are lots of microscopic groups out there that are just as vocal; I once worked with a chemtrails conspiracy theorist who’d been politely asked by the RCMP to stop writing letters to his MP asking him to investigate the issue.
As I’ve said before, all woke posturing is women competing for status within the herd, or men trying to exploit women competing for status within the herd.
The Catholic church figured out how to channel female competition into charity[1], and that maneuver has been hijacked, Iowahawk-style, by the woke left. The twentieth century is filled with middle-class white women Caring Very Deeply about Very Unfortunate People that aren’t anywhere near them, from victims of the demon rum to distended-belly Ethiopian orphans to AIDS patients. Whether all that caring actually helps anyone is irrelevant.
Corporations pander to women because women control the vast majority of consumer spending. Politicians pander to women because they’re more homogeneous in their voting preferences and more easily convinced to follow a strong alpha demagogue.
[1] Before someone decides to show off just how immensely clever they are by pointing out that Saved! is about Baptist evangelicals, let me note that the Catholic church got there first by about a thousand years.
Again, there just aren’t enough of them.
Oh yes there are. There are enough of them to get the job done. They and their “allies”. They speak up, they shame, etc. A vocal minority trumps a silent majority. Your chemtrail friend just doesn’t have a critical mass of sufficient allies like the other groups do. Tie chemtrails to BLM or Antifa or trannyism and the corporate scum will pander to chemtrails as well. As will every coworker, friend, and relative on the left or #NeverTrump “right” once the chemtrail cause is appropriately aligned.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! [deep breath] Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! [pant, pant… stop, I can’t breathe!]
Heheheh!
“The twentieth century is filled with middle-class white women Caring Very Deeply about Very Unfortunate People that aren’t anywhere near them, from victims of the demon rum to distended-belly Ethiopian orphans to AIDS patients. Whether all that caring actually helps anyone is irrelevant.”
In Bleak House, Dickens identified this as “Telescopic philanthropy”. Back in the 1850s.
–Bad News
WTP: I agree. Daniel Ream: You are mistaken. I’m sure that some people are merely panding to women but the problem is almost entirely due to leftists taking control of institutions.
stop, I can’t breathe
This particular error (messed up BGP setting) has also brought down entire Azure regions and a fair portion of Google’s public DNS infrastructure within the last year. I do this for a living, and despite “DevOps” and “configuration as code” being all the rage, the truth is that even the biggest, wealthiest web-based companies half-ass this stuff all the time.
There are enough of them to get the job done. They and their “allies”
That’s exactly what I said, WTP.
black people are entitled to riot and loot whenever they wish.
Note that “thug” is a term of praise, not condemnation, among ghetto blacks.
black people are entitled to riot and loot whenever they wish.
Because Attorney General Merrick Garland is too busy with America’s real terrorists
ccscientist:
Was it a giant high school, or did you go to a ‘gifted’ / ‘magnet’ school?
IQ distribution (by construction) is approximately normal, with a mean of 100 and StDev of 15. An IQ of 160 (4 sigmas) or better is expected once in (slightly over) 31,500 students, unless pre-selected – and even at that, it implies that the population they are selected from is ~32,000. I grew up in a reasonably sized suburb, but we had nowhere near a 32K student population, even taking (say) all the senior grades together. To get two would be extraordinary.
Exaggerating to make a point on the internet… well, that’s not nearly so extraordinary, is it?
Garland’s Gulags.
In other madness, tonight I googled a past employer’s name, figuring it might be a faster way of finding his Facebook page than that site’s own shitty search function. The man in question is as level-headed a human being as I have ever known, yet I can’t say I was really surprised to discover the results were a long list of headlines aimed at smearing him.
Look up Adam Newbold.
These are the times we are living in.
Take notes, there will be a quiz!
http://politicalhat.com/2021/10/04/genderfae-or-genderfloret/
Actually, I rather liked this guy. He’s not sour like most Wokesters. Seems a pleasant sort.
the problem is almost entirely due to leftists taking control of institutions
Institutions like, say, K-12 education and the HR/marketing departments of large corporations?
Cancel culture is just high school mean girls. You know this. Every other post on this blog confirms it.
Exaggerating to make a point on the internet… well, that’s not nearly so extraordinary, is it?
I’ll not dispute your numbers; however general distribution does not rule out clustering.
I went to a high school of only about 2K kids – but one of my friends left it partway into 11th grade to attend M.I.T. on full scholarship in late 1970. I haven’t any idea what his IQ tested at, but it certainly was well above 100.
To get two would be extraordinary.
Assuming the odds of a >160 IQ is 1 in 32,000, there are approximately 27,000 high schools in the U.S. serving approximately 15 million high school students. Which gives an average of something over 500 pupils per school, though Darleen attended a school of 2000 students.
Let’s assume students are equally distributed between schools (which they aren’t), that the gifted students are evenly distributed about the population (which they aren’t), evenly distributed amongst schools (which they aren’t) and that the probability of additional gifted students is independent (which it isn’t)
The the U.S. high school population will yield about 500 “gifted” students distributed between 27000 schools.
The odds of a school having no gifteds are [(26999/27000)^500] ~ 0.9817 – about 26504.6 schools.
The odds of a school having precisely 1 gifted are [500*((1/27000)*(26999/27000)^499)] ~ 0.018 – about 490.8 schools.
Giving about 5 U.S. schools with 2 or more gifteds.
Your definition of extraordinary may vary.
She’s tired of catering to your feelings.
Lefties project.
Lefties project.
Well, the oblivious inversion does catch the eye.
Our Queen of Sorrow says,
And so, you have to wonder what the imagined solution is, the one to which we aren’t made privy. Are checkout staff everywhere supposed to ignore the obvious fact that ‘Arthur’ is female, and presents herself as female, with female clothing and hair? Should checkout staff and waitresses, and everyone working in retail, everywhere, somehow just know to pretend that ‘Arthur’ is something she isn’t? Do checkout staff and waitresses really have the time and wherewithal to fathom and indulge every single customer’s psychological quirks in advance of any interaction, even a routine greeting? Exactly how much of this lady’s psychological dissonance should be foisted on everyone else?
And would such an accommodation, this grandiose concession, set us on a path we want to be travelling down?
I’m kind of fascinated by that ‘you weren’t really gifted’ video. It’s an example of what I call ‘giving yourself over to an ideology’.
I mean, you might think that it’s sensible to direct some resources to children with particular talents and abilities, ensuring that the various diverse talents of different kids are able to grow to their full potential, right? It’s common sense.
The TikToker doesn’t even try to refute this common sense position. What she does do is roll off a bunch of leftist slogans with practised ease. It’s kinda dazzling – but it’s all a distraction.
I mean, rhetorically, there’s something amazing about it. She might believe it. Or it might be an act. You don’t know! But there’s certainly an element of acting involved, and she does the acting very well. It almost distracts your attention from the fundamental bullshittyness of her position.
Ideology warps your brain, your mind, and your soul. It’s no good, kids!
I mean, rhetorically, there’s something amazing about it.
Again, I think of these things as woke incantations. It’s a kind of status magic. The unrealism, incoherence and lack of probity are largely beside the point, at least from the perspective of the person doing the mouthing. These things aren’t said in good faith or to withstand scrutiny. Think of these creatures as archetypal Mean Girls loudly picking on a classmate with the wrong bag or unfashionable shoes, in the hope of boosting or defending their own in-group status. Only swap out the gratuitous nastiness about shoes for gratuitous nastiness about being precocious, or male, or white. Or just not being up to speed on this season’s woke fashions.
As a general rule, that’s the guts of the game, the basic dynamic.
And so, you have to wonder what the imagined solution is
Some kind of identifying mark or symbol affixed to their clothing I presume?
Or a nice hat?
I mean, rhetorically, there’s something amazing about it.
See also, wokeness as a positional good.
And so, you have to wonder what the imagined solution is
In the later decades of the Soviet Union–you know, the reformed, post-Stalin USSR that American liberals had so much sympathy for–professors and engineers would be fired from their jobs and would be assigned to stoke coal-fired furnaces in office and apartment buildings. Sound a bit familiar?
If you can stomach the cringe-inducing smug awfulness of Gloria Allred, the following exchange is revealing:
Rubin: “What lies under every progressive is a really, er sort of hysterical authoritarian.”
Allred: “Well that’s a sexist statement.”
Exactly why is that a sexist statement you might ask? Why because Allred is a woman. And any statement critical of an opinion or a position automatically becomes sexist when the person possessing that opinion or espousing that position is a woman.
Lefties project, you see.
Giving about 5 U.S. schools with 2 or more gifteds.
The other thing to consider is that giftedness does run in families. It is quite possible (and it happened in my very small high school), that there are two people with IQs over 160 from the same family.
“IQ distribution (by construction) is approximately normal, with a mean of 100 and StDev of 15. An IQ of 160 (4 sigmas) or better is expected once in (slightly over) 31,500 students, unless pre-selected”
The comment reminds me of the adage about getting a bridge hand and saying that because the odds of getting this particular bridge hand are so astronomically low, that I could not possible have this hand. Normal random distribution aside, given the large number of schools and subsets of students – is it possible to have 2 high IQ individuals? Of course. No need to doubt the story. In a reverse example: what are the odds that a school would have 2 mass murderers ? Yet we had Columbine.
is it possible to have 2 high IQ individuals? Of course. No need to doubt the story.
Example: I know two highly accomplished scientists who grew up on a small farm.
The odds thing is interesting. Yes the odds are low, but yes it still means it happened somewhere. It’s somewhat akin, though kind of in reverse…kind of…to the Monty Hall problem.
In the example of my high school, one guy had 160 IQ (scored #1 in state math olympiad) and the other 180+ (they could not really measure it). One grade apart. Not asian. I knew them both well. Neither turned out that well professionally. In the extreme tails of a distribution stats are only a guide.
But my point is that the woke seem to believe that whiteness will somehow enable you to score high on an IQ test, when that is a nonsense opinion.
I think I’m about as old as Darleen, and in my school days the typical school psychologist administered an IQ test where the scale topped out around 140, with everything above the threshold simply labeled “SMRT”. (Sorta like the nautical charts with “HERE BE DRAGONS” in the margins.)
I wouldn’t be surprised if the shrink just used “160” as shorthand for any student who performed extraordinarily well.
Subatomic physics will give one a whole new appreciation for long odds. Nothing like initiating two hundred billion collisions in an attempt to catch thirty events with your detectors…
what are the odds that a school would have 2 mass murderers ?
Well I can do that too, but the school “mass murder” statistics from the US are completely buried in hysterical disinformation. There’s an Education Week assessment of about 25 shootings per year. Then there’s Statista which has around 3 “active” shooter and between 20 to 100 “not active” shooter incidents a year, whatever they are.
Let’s go with 25. That would give us 500 since 2000, which using my calculations above would suggest about 5 schools experiencing 2 or more of these “shootings” since 2000.
If all schools were identical (which they aren’t) and murderous students randomly distributed (which they won’t be).
Obviously the fact of two murderers working together isn’t random at all and couldn’t be evaluated this way.
Heh. What G. Squid said. I was also suspicious that the numbers might have been rounded in such a way. The only IQ test I ever took was in 7th or 8th grade and they refused to tell us what our scores were. Because reasons. It would not surprise me that ballpark figures might be used or even altered in some manner. Whether this might be to protect the smart people or the dumb ones is an exercise left to the student.
It’s somewhat akin, though kind of in reverse…kind of…to the Monty Hall problem.
I suspect you’re thinking of the Birthday Problem which has a surprising answer because of the number of ways in which a likely birthday match accumulates with group size.
The Monty Hall Problem, though even more fascinating, is the one with the three doors and the goat.
My brother and I both tested >160 and were only a grade apart in age, so we were almost always at the same school. As Darleen and Karl have noted, clustering happens. There’s nothing extraordinary about it.
There’s also nothing extraordinary about a mean-spirited hot take turning out to be a full-on sprint onto a rake. No matter how tasty ankles look, it’s generally best not to run around trying to bite them.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the shrink just used “160” as shorthand for any student who performed extraordinarily well.
Having gone through a couple of “gifted child” programs in the 1980s-1990s, my observations are as follows:
* IQ tests on minor children are not reliable indicators of anything, as intelligence quotient is defined as “mental age/chronological age”. The small numbers involved and the high variability of child development means that a precocious child can score off the charts as a young teenager and settle down to a perfectly normal (pun intended) score by adulthood.
* Gifted programs are largely bullshit, or at least they were in my district. None of the “gifted” programs I went through taught me much of anything, and did not even serve to “keep the bright kids from getting bored and underperforming on tests”. One kid in my “gifted” classes got college-level math texts from a relative that he worked through on his own time. Said kid went on to become a moderately well-known software engineer at Microsoft/Facebook. The rest of us went on to be reasonably successful but not notable people.
* I scored IQ 132 at 15 years old and was one of the “slow” kids in the gifted program, which comprised over a dozen students in a school of ~1700. No, the gifted kids are not at all randomly distributed and invested parents will work to get their kids into a school with a reputation for supporting gifted kids. It’s actually less likely that you’ll have only one gifted kid in a large high school; you’ll either have none or many because they’re all getting concentrated in the schools with “gifted” programs.
XX chromosome=Female
XY chromosome=Male
Wanna deny science?
https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/mit-abandons-its-mission-and-me
You’re going to have to speak up and speak out eventually. Why kick the can down the road to the point where you will only have made it even harder on yourself?
In passing, even M.I.T. has ceased to be a real university.
I suspect you’re thinking of the Birthday Problem
Actually more of a mashup of the two. The Monty Hall aspect being the “prior knowledge” factor.
Speaking of MIT, remember this?
This is the standard, apparently. What gets deemed good enough.
SNAP!
Again!
Heh. Darleen missed it by -> <- that much.
Dorian Abbot (from the links above): “I argued for the importance of treating each person as an individual worthy of dignity and respect.”
Fucking Racist!
WTP quotes Bari Weiss about campus intolerance and urges everyone to speak up. Note that Bari and spouse were forced out of the uni. The risk is real.