You’re Reading The Comments, Right?
Where, for instance, pst314 and Mr Muldoon point us to an “analysis” piece in Scientific American, in which we’re urged to fret about “the violence Black men experience in [American] football,” and in which we’re told that the physicality of the sport “disproportionately affects black men.” This is framed in the article so as to imply some systemic racial wrongdoing – “anti-Black practices” that are “inescapable” – rather than, say, being an unremarkable reflection of the sport’s demographics, in which, at professional levels, black players are a majority.
Or to put it another, no less scientific, way – the risk of injury while playing a contact sport disproportionately affects those who actually play it.
No evidence is offered, at all, to establish that injuries are more frequent among black players compared to their white peers – which is pretty much the article’s premise – or to support the conceit that any such disparity, should it exist, must be driven by racism. And yet we’re told, with an air of satisfaction,
Albeit a plantation with fan mail, lucrative endorsements, and an average salary of around $2.7 million.
And so, the approved line of thinking seems to be that if a sport doesn’t have whatever is deemed a representative proportion of minority participants, this must be construed, and denounced, as damning evidence of racism, regardless of the actual factors involved, including the preferences and priorities of said minorities. And if a sport comes to be dominated by a racial minority, at least at elite levels, this too must be construed, and denounced, as damning evidence of racism.
The author of the piece, Tracie Canada, is a “socio-cultural anthropologist whose ethnographic research uses sport to theorize race, kinship and care, gender, and the performing body.” Ms Canada, an assistant professor at Duke University, should perhaps be thanked for reminding us that in order to propagate a woke premise, and thereby grift, one may have to avoid thinking about fairly obvious things.
Likewise, when you’re the editor-in-chief of Scientific American:
An editor-in-chief whose thought process seems to be:
I paraphrase, of course. But not, I think, unfairly.*
The steep downward trajectory of said publication has been mentioned here before.
*Added via the comments.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
we’re urged to fret about “the violence Black men experience in football,” and in which we’re told that the physicality of the sport “disproportionately affects black men.”
For the same reason that the phenomenon of police officers shooting violent thugs “disproportionately affects black men.”
It never occurred to me in my youth that Scientific American would ever go Nazi.
LOL.
Helmuth is a disgrace to journalism. And that’s a low bar.
Ms Helmuth, formerly of Slate, does seem to delight in scorning those who dare to correct her or to offer critical feedback. As I said in an earlier thread,
She’s a piece of work.
1. Identify a respected institution.
2. kill it.
3. gut it.
4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.
— David Burge
It never occurred to me in my youth that Scientific American would ever go Nazi.
See the 1941 essay “Who Goes Nazi?” by Dorothy Thompson.
“Mr. B has risen beyond his real abilities…he has done lots of other things for money. His code is not his own…He fits easily into whatever pattern is successful…Nazism as a minority movement would not attract him. As a movement likely to attain power, it would.”
and
“Mr. C is a brilliant and embittered intellectual…he is a very dangerous man. Were he primitive and brutal he would be a criminal—a murderer. But he is subtle and cruel. He would rise high in a Nazi regime. It would need men just like him—intellectual and ruthless.”
There is a lot of overlap in a Venn Diagram of “who goes Nazi” and “who goes Communist”. In fact, it is mostly overlap.
…a “socio-cultural anthropologist whose ethnographic research…”
Therein lies one of the most tiresome things about all this sort of nonsense from the Woke™ crowd, the central conceit that anything they do is any form of “research” other than a modern day searching of the card files for articles that support their pre-conceived notions.
A clown-shoe scholar endorsed by a clown-shoe editor. One whose thought process seems to be: “People are laughing at me and pointing out the errors that I didn’t spot, despite it being my job, therefore they are bad people, and therefore I am correct, and morally unassailable, and no further reflection is required.”
I paraphrase, but barely.
Therein lies one of the most tiresome things about all this sort of nonsense from the Woke™ crowd, the central conceit that anything they do is any form of “research” other than a modern day searching of the card files for articles that support their pre-conceived notions.
Indeed, indeed. It has been pointed out that “woke” scholarship is almost entirely lies and distortions, and that it looks like scholarship only because they all cite each other in their footnotes. A circle-jerk of lies.
A clown-shoe scholar endorsed by a clown-shoe editor.
A lot of these clowns do not have the IQ or knowledge to be real scholars.
And deep down, they know it.
The rest can do real scholarship but prefer to propagandize for their evil ideology.
One whose thought process seems to be: “People are laughing at me and pointing out the errors…
Speaking of which, Ms. Canada has protected her Twit account for unfathomable reasons.
Meanwhile, Scholarship™: “Anti-Blackness in American Football.” Guest lecture, Black in Blue: The Duke Sports & Race Project, Duke University.
Again, 70% – anti-blackness, you’re doing it wrong.
In the article the author actually acknowledges that she is unaware of any statistics showing black players are injured at a higher rate than white players. I know the age we live in but it is still so weird.to see this published as scientific journalism.
The thinking, such as it is, seems to be that if a sport doesn’t have whatever is deemed a representative proportion of minority participants, this must be construed, and denounced, as damning evidence of racism, regardless of the actual factors involved, including the preferences and priorities of said minorities.
And if a sport comes to be dominated by a racial minority, at least at elite levels, this too must be construed, and denounced, as damning evidence of racism.
To give another US example, many riots are premised on disproportionate murder of black men by cops. However, per encounter with police, a white suspect is slightly more likely to be killed. The vast majority of cop shootings occur when the suspect aims a gun at them. In interviews, the Left and blacks estimate the number shot as 10 to 100 times higher than actual.
Sure, run your mouth with your “feelings” and stoke racial hatred, nothing could go wrong.
Blame the patriarchy.
The vast majority of cop shootings occur when the suspect aims a gun at them. In interviews, the Left and blacks estimate the number shot as 10 to 100 times higher than actual.
Not to mention the pathological thinking behind “he dindu nuffin”.
Keys and some cash in one, phone in the other. Never the twain, etc.
It’s my understanding that the ladies keep their crap in a bag of some sort, or possibly pushed between their breasts. I’m a little sketchy on the details.
The eagerness of Scientific American and other journals to destroy their credibility is a wonder to behold.
Speaking of conceits…
Well if it is according to academia I guess there can be no argument, but I’d like to get some input from diabetics, hypertensives, and amputees before it is carved into the tablets.
Always keep in mind that fascism/nazism are ‘right wing’ only within the context of socialism.
As I said over on Insty regarding this, you can see the scientific rigor in the considerable time taken between Hamlin’s collapse and the publishing of this scientific sciencey science article. Research must have taken seconds…minutes perhaps. Stunning. Likely brave too.
This trend was helped along greatly by the “professional manager phenomenon”, i.e., the concept that it was a good idea to put into authority people who knew nothing to little of the core operations of the organization. You know, project manager-types with MBAs who attend a lot of meetings, count things with spreadsheets and have high status and remuneration.
As was Ms. Thompson herself to some degree (edited…. I was thinking of Dorothy Parker…damn getting old sucks). I get this Thompson piece quite mixed up with Hannah Arendt’s piece on the banality of evil called…I believe…The Banality Evil. In the process of cross checking my memory, I ran across this quote from her:
Was not aware of that one and yet at the same time it’s something I’ve understood since about the 8th grade. Why are such things so hard for “intellectuals” or even many “conservatives” to see? Add this to my points about the dangers of a society consuming too much fiction.
Seems to be a good yet poorly executed point. I didn’t get it entirely at first myself but I think the idea is that girls only make use of the camera, texting, social media, and voice aspects of a phone whereas for boys it’s a multipurpose tool.
It’s my understanding that the ladies keep their crap in a bag of some sort, or possibly pushed between their breasts. I’m a little sketchy on the details.
When I was younger maybe.
It’s my understanding that the ladies keep their crap in a bag of some sort, or possibly pushed between their breasts. I’m a little sketchy on the details.
As far back as the 70’s I would encounter complaints that women’s jeans had tiny pockets because of sexism. The leftist complainers never considered the idea that manufacturers make what women want to buy, and that women put less of a priority on roomy pockets than on details that maximize styling.
That’s just one more data point in my “Marxists are stupid, lying asswipes” thesis.
Seems to be a good yet poorly executed point. I didn’t get it entirely at first myself but I think the idea is that girls only make use of the camera, texting, social media, and voice aspects of a phone whereas for boys it’s a multipurpose tool.
No, I think the point is not about how boys vs girls use cellphones but rather that boys carry lots more of stuff in their pockets. (And how many times have you watched a woman fumble in her purse for keys, where a boy would just quickly grab his keys from his pocket?)
the risk of injury while playing a contact sport disproportionately affects those who actually play it.
13% of football players account for 52% of all injuries?
Well, wallet and keys, yes. But I’ve never carried a diesel locomotive nor Portugal, including its outlying archipelagos in my pockets. But I’m kinda weird about what I keep in my pockets.
A lot of these clowns do not have the IQ or knowledge to be real scholars.
And deep down, they know it.
It’s entirely the same phenomenon as HR, marketing and project management filling up with women with no discernable skills who resent the actually productive – and overwhelmingly male – employees.
I’ve said it before: the 19th amendment was a mistake.
“annnnnd the replies to any tweet about systemic racism prove the existence of sytemic racism”
As the Church Lady would say, “How convenient.”
“obesity” hurts feelings: the two biggest predictors of mortality during covid were/are being over 80 and obesity. To avoid hurting feelings the media kept saying “pre-existing conditions” to include obesity without ever letting people know that fact. Obesity kills in this case even without diabetes, so obese people went happily on their way unaware of their risk. Just like they won’t describe the current rapist in your neighborhood because he is black, so you don’t know your danger.
Girls and pockets. Obviously retailers can only sell what women buy. Why no pockets? Because women want to show off their butts and nice legs. In the US currently women are walking about in yoga pants or leggings that are as revealing as a coat of paint. No room for pockets in those. I am not complaining you understand…except for the bruises from walking into things.
Perhaps beating an old dead horse here but the IQ thing is IMNSHO greatly exaggerated as a factor in these matters. Much, much more important is discipline, the ability to tolerate and self enforce discipline which itself is a factor of curiosity.
On a similar offshoot of IQ…so the boys (mostly boys still I presume) at Google are hard at work doing all sorts of newy fancy googley stuff, yet some of this simplest things get f’d up. For example…
Went down a rabbit hole due to curiosity regarding Google location tracking…Then on a side issue of wanting to change, just for a little while, my default search engine to Qwant. Futz around on the specific settings screen, trying to figure out htf to add a new search engine option to the list…not for the search bar specifically mind you, but in general. Click the little “Add” button at the bottom only to discover that my new item did not get added to the list of search engine options but to the category below. Yet that was the first “Add” button on the screen. Try anyway. No. No no no no no…OK..Nothing changed. OK, so how about I edit an existing search engine entry to change from Bing’s URL,etc. to Qwant? OK..now select that Qwant as my default….now reload Chrome and….Bing has now become my default/open tab search engine.
How do they f something like this up? It’s so bloody simple, relative to everything else that they do. These are not low-IQ people. But they do lack the discipline to do their jobs correctly and to thoroughly test their shit before it goes out to the world. We’re not getting stupider, we’re getting lazier and resentful of having to address our flaws. Hence back around to the response from the SA editor to the criticisms.
Well, kinda. The question I ponder is are yoga pants a blessing or a curse? Unfortunately the curse thing seems to have more traction in my local experience.
…currently women are walking about in yoga pants or leggings that are as revealing as a coat of paint.
To your point, during my four-and-a-half hour wait at the passport office last week a young woman came in to pickup her passport. I had to do a triple take. She was wearing, what can only be described as nude-colored, leggings. They were so tight that, indeed, nothing was left to the imagination.
That.
Heh. I see what you did there. But the word disproportionately does seem to be used quite freely, as a reflex, as if that were where the thinking should stop. Indeed, must stop.
Perhaps we can expect an article by Ms Canada, published by Ms Helmuth, in which professional hockey is denounced as systemically racist too, a hotbed of anti-white sentiment, on grounds that the players being injured tend to have pale skin. Or does that seem unlikely?
But they do lack the discipline to do their jobs correctly and to thoroughly test their shit before it goes out to the world. We’re not getting stupider, we’re getting lazier
I agree to a certain extent. But that’s just half of the issue. We’ve been an all carrot/no stick culture for too long. Most people don’t exercise self-discipline via natural inclination just as good-to-excellent musicians are ‘born that way’. It’s a learned trait that needs to be instilled early and regularly practiced.
The measure twice, cut once mantra of building, sewing, etc, is reality beating you about the head & shoulders when you eff-up “X” because you were too lazy & thought you could ignore the requirements “this time” and now you’re out of time, money and possibly even future gigs.
There are few consequences to using consumers as beta testers for software. Consumers fuss, shake their fists but will stick with X as ‘bugs are worked out’. And that template has moved into a lot of other trades and professions. Just getting work done around the house, you are in the position of ‘trust but verify’ even the most mundane of jobs. Pay for 2 coats of paint? Better show up after the first one to make sure they do the 2nd and check, too, if they got all the areas contracted for.
Honor in doing a job correctly is just not ‘a thing’ anymore. There are few, if any, consequences to effing up.
To add to the anecdata, I just looked in my purse. Wallet, makeup, pens, coupons, pocketknife, flashlight. No Latinate countries.
They were so tight that, indeed, nothing was left to the imagination.
Think, then, of the alternative – saggy-bottomed tights.
She was wearing, what can only be described as nude-colored, leggings. They were so tight that, indeed, nothing was left to the imagination.
And yet she and many other women would dishonestly claim that she did not dress with the intention of making an explicit sexual display and that the visibility of a camel’s digit was unintentional. I wonder what happened to all the liars I used to know.
Perhaps beating an old dead horse here but the IQ thing is IMNSHO greatly exaggerated as a factor in these matters. Much, much more important is discipline
I agree that it is exaggerated, although I remain unsure how much. Certainly a person with slightly lower natural gifts but who is more conscientious will, in the long run, do better. On the other hand, there are rough yardsticks for IQ’s needed to do various sorts of jobs–higher IQ needed to be a software engineer than a coder, or to be a research scientist than an instructor.
Other attributes, too: I strongly suspect that part of Isaac Asimov’s intellectual reputation was due to his phenomenal memory which served him well in school and career. But he admitted more than once in his autobiography that he was a mediocre research chemist. (He remarked, during a dispute with his department head, that while on the one hand he was a mediocre research chemist, he greatly benefited Boston University by being a superior lecturer and science writer.)
Edit: “and Boston University didn’t need yet another mediocre scientist”.
Think, then, of the alternative – saggy-bottomed tights.
There is a happy medium. When I say nothing was left to the imagination, you could see the tendons and divots in her knee as if there were nothing there. And pst314 is correct, a camel’s digit was on full display and in great detail. I’m quite sure she had a piercing. Each of her buttock cheeks was lovingingly lifted and separated from the other, again as if she were wearing nothing. (I had a lot of time on my hands waiting for my passport). In her case she was young and physically attractive, but it seems a good number of women who dress like this are vomit inducing.
“God invented spandex but the Devil put it on fat chicks”
Never a truer phrase invented (by myself far back in less p.c. days obviously)
Mind you these days, it would also apply to men of the awful road cycling MAMIL clan and probably trans-gagas too.
Then on a side issue of wanting to change, just for a little while, my default search engine to Qwant
What you’re missing is that that isn’t incompetence, it’s by design. Embedded ads in the search pages are how Google and others make money. They want it to be as difficult as possible for you to change it without making it too obvious that’s what they’re doing.
I mean, UX design is also a holocaust, but in this specific case it’s intentional.
Nobody here games, I don’t think, but D&D nerds everywhere are melting down over the fact that the company that makes D&D has actually started acting like a company.
But I’ve never carried [..] Portugal, including its outlying archipelagos in my pockets
Well, how else are you supposed to establish trade routes to India?
But I’ve never carried [..] Portugal, including its outlying archipelagos in my pockets
Well, how else are you supposed to establish trade routes to India?
If the trade route to India goes through Daniel Ream’s pants then I’m staying home, dammit.