Ben Shapiro on facts versus feelings: 

If the political goal is to alleviate feelings of discrimination, no end point can ever be reached so long as a disproportionate number of black people end up in prison. And a disproportionate number of black people end up in prison not because of discrimination in the criminal-justice system, but because a disproportionate number of black people commit crimes… Crediting the unjustified feeling that there is pervasive bias in the criminal-justice system means making evidence secondary to perceptions. In the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Mo., a large majority of black Americans felt that Officer Darren Wilson was guilty of murder in August 2015. They were wrong. But according to our political leaders, such feelings ought to be granted the patina of legitimacy. This isn’t leadership. It’s moral cowardice.

It’s also, quite often, arrogance and vanity. 

Thomas Sowell on egregious media bias and the war on cops: 

To the race hustlers, black lives don’t really matter nearly as much as their chance to get publicity, power, money, votes or whatever else serves their own interests. The mainstream media play a large, and largely irresponsible, role in the creation and maintenance of a poisonous racial atmosphere that has claimed the lives of policemen around the country. That same poisoned atmosphere has claimed the lives of even more blacks, who have been victims of violence by thugs and criminals who have had fewer restrictions as the police have pulled back, or have been pulled back, under political pressure. The media provide the publicity on which career race hustlers thrive. It is a symbiotic relationship, in which turmoil in the streets gives the media something exciting to attract viewers. In return, the media give those behind this turmoil millions of dollars’ worth of free publicity to spread their poison.

Part 2 here. Heather Mac Donald’s book The War On Cops, which is recommended by Sowell, can be purchased here (Amazon UK) and here (Amazon US).

Speaking of media bias: 

This is apparently the current state of American journalism. The newspaper printed a fact, but that fact was unacceptable based on the demographics of the people who might potentially see it.

And Franklin Einspruch on why sport remains hugely popular while art is in decline: 

Baseball hasn’t spent a hundred years smashing its own conventions. Baseball players don’t endeavour to turn hitting into a critique of late capitalism. Baseball doesn’t call upon fans to comprehend discussion full of coinages by PhD students trying to impress their dissertation committees, or implicitly punish them for having bourgeois values. Audiences instinctively and rightly hate this kind of pretentiousness.

Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

BBC Radio 4 veers into Alan Partridge territory: 

Can you ever trust a gorilla with a child?

Answers on a postcard, please.

Via Bobby in the comments, Michael Wolff on the visions and follies of former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger: 

If selling had been part of his job description, Rusbridger, who never met a pound he had to earn that didn’t disgust him in some visceral way, would have been disqualified long ago. Indeed, his early enthusiasm for the internet – and a continuing principle of faith for him – was that it was free. The corollary, that free had to be supported by advertising, was one of those cause-and-effects that it was Rusbridger’s unique gift to be able to wholly ignore… Having made a personal and moral commitment to free – both as a political principle and as a way to advance the scope of the Guardian’s message – he was confronted, and confounded, by the reality that he had no way to monetise his business.

Readers may recall the Guardian’s short-lived brand expansion into the world of trendy Shoreditch coffee shops, which the paper styled as “the future of open journalism,” a supposedly “data-driven” hub of Fair Trade beverages and online journalistic collaboration, and which was opened without Wi-Fi. 

Blake Neff on destroying children’s futures in the name of “social justice”: 

While the traits listed [being rigorous and punctual, speaking grammatical English] may simply be regarded as positive traits for success in the modern world, Dr Heather Hackman described them as traits chosen and emphasised to favour whites to the detriment of non-white groups, who are forced to assimilate ‘white’ traits such as good discipline and goal orientation or else be left behind. Hackman’s solution, then, is to train teachers to move away from all these aspects of ‘white privilege’ in education. She routinely touted the benefits of collective assessments (measuring student learning at the class level instead of determining whether each student knows the material), as well as eliminating all school grades entirely.

I share the above in case any readers had assumed that Dr Caprice Hollins, who dismisses foresight, diligence and punctuality as “white values,” must be a one-off absurdity. Alas, no.

In other Earth-rumbling news,

Twitter is struggling. Its disappointing financial results, mass layoffs and declining user experience show things aren’t well for the little blue bird. And now this: the replacement of the beloved “fav” star with a heart.

Dark days.

The hearts are the final straw: it’s time to nationalise Twitter.

Yes, it’s the Guardian. How did you guess? Specifically, the musings of Mr Osman Faruqi, a “Sydney-based writer and activist” who wants someone else – apparently, taxpayers on the other side of the world – to pay for his leisure activities.

It’s infrastructure for basic communication, which is why people are so upset over the change to hearts: imagine if, instead of saying “OK” on the phone to a relative stranger, you were forced to say “I love you.” It’s that basic.

Such are the horrors facing today’s Twitter user. It’s New Coke all over again.

So how do you monetise an intangible combination of excitement and trepidation sparked by the overwhelming awe of talking to the whole world?

Or perhaps more likely, a vanishingly tiny part of it. With almost half of “users” having never sent a Tweet, and the overwhelming majority of those who have boasting fewer than 200 followers, with the majority of their tweets, around 70%, attracting no acknowledgment whatsoever. However, the stakes are high and according to Mr Faruqi, “casual social interaction,” which is good, is “anathema to the desire for profit,” which is bad, obviously. This is, after all, the Guardian. And as Twitter’s modishness is, it seems, fading, it therefore must be nationalised and paid for by the taxpayer. To keep it hip and happening, and to prevent more icon changes. Until the next thing comes along. And then, presumably, we must nationalise that too.

On Twitter, Mr Faruqi is currently struggling with the news that many readers had assumed his article was “taking the piss.” Apparently, this failure to appreciate his seriousness and insight merely “shows how right-wing our political debate has become.”

Update, via the comments:

Janice Fiamengo on feminist narratives and unmentioned history: 

After 1832, about one in five men had the right to vote. Almost half of adult males, though, were still not eligible to vote when they accepted the call to fight and die for their country in the First World War. It wasn’t until 1918 that the right to vote was extended, not only to women – which of course we hear a great deal about – but to all men. So how can this be – that this part of the story is almost completely unknown? How come when we celebrate the extension of the franchise to women, we don’t talk about its extension to poor and working class men?

Via sk60, Jonathan Foreman on the Tim Hunt “sexism” drama and the dishonesty and malevolence of certain key players: 

The most generous interpretation of Connie St Louis’s bizarre behaviour is that she was too intellectually limited to recognise irony that was somehow obvious to an audience composed mostly of people who spoke English as a second language. A leak of the unedited version of her “Stop Defending Tim Hunt” piece for the Guardian is so garbled and incoherent that this actually seems plausible, though it also makes you wonder how and why she came to be teaching journalism even at a third-rate institution like London’s City University.

And Peter Hasson on ‘progressive’ educators and predetermined conclusions: 

Multiple professors at Washington State University have explicitly told students their grades will suffer if they use terms such as “illegal alien,” “male,” and “female,” or if they fail to “defer” to non-white students. According to the syllabus for Selena Lester Breikss’ “Women & Popular Culture” class, students risk a failing grade if they use any common descriptors that Breikss considers “oppressive and hateful language.” […] Students taking Professor Rebecca Fowler’s “Introduction to Comparative Ethnic Studies” course will see their grades suffer if they use the term “illegal alien” in their assigned writing.[…] White students in Professor John Streamas’s “Introduction to Multicultural Literature” class are expected to “defer” to non-white students, among other community guidelines, if they want “to do well in this class.”

Imagine what such ‘thinkers’ might do if granted real power. 

Feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. It’s what these posts are for.