Board members say the changes are part of a larger effort to combat racism.

From the schools of San Diego, some “equity” news:  

Students will no longer be graded based on a yearly average, or on how late they turn in assignments. Those are just some of the major grading changes approved this week by California’s second-largest school district… “If we’re actually going to be an anti-racist school district, we have to confront practices like this that have gone on for years and years,” says San Diego Unified School District Vice President Richard Barrera.

The practices being confronted – i.e., excluded from consideration in academic grading – include expectations of “turning work in on time” and norms of “classroom behaviour.” Abandoning such standards is, we learn, an “accountability measure.” On grounds that acknowledging tardiness, misbehaviour and a lack of diligence results in “racial imbalance,” which, in the land of the bedlamites, simply won’t do.

Student School Board Member Zachary Patterson, who is also a junior at University City High School, says while some classmates expressed concerns about grade inflation, overall the feedback from his peers is positive.  

A license to disregard normal deadlines and to be selfishly disruptive, all with academic impunity. Why, it’s convenient and morally improving. Mr Patterson, an eleventh-grader who deploys the word inequities with dutiful enthusiasm, informs us, “Students all across the district are excited about this.”

After Patterson expressed concerns at this week’s meeting, the board will also review potential student disparities stemming from its zero-tolerance disciplinary policy on cheating in the coming weeks.

You see, expecting students to meet basic standards of behaviour, punctuality – and, it seems, probity – is “not fair,” according to SDUSD Vice President Richard Barrera, who adds that the new policy is – and I quote – “an honest reckoning.” An intriguing choice of words.

Update, via Rafi in the comments:

And in other “equity” news. 

In case of emergency, how to move the solar system. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || Little wooden woods. || Gardening gloves of note. || Grounds for divorce, a possible series. || Augmented reality for dogs. || I’m sensing doubt. || Just a few weeks, they said. || Awkward. || Kicking option. || Hokum pays. || Nippy. || “Possibly a chess piece.” || Our betters hate capitalism. || Angry bird. || Critical Drinker reviews The Boys season two. || One bedroom, one bathroom, outstanding view of airport. || About bloody time. || Not untrue. || That’s exactly how I would have done it. || Not as easy as it looks. || The thrill of Marks & Spencer’s Food Hall. || Furnishings of note. || And finally, madam, you must choose quickly.

FIRE report on the fallout of a class on global trade: 

As it has in earlier years, [adjunct professor Richard] Taylor’s instruction focused on early global trade, including trade in silver and potatoes. As part of the class, he also covered the more pernicious aspects of early trade, such as slavery, the abuse of indigenous populations, and the spreading of disease. On his final slide was a discussion prompt: “Do the positives outweigh the negatives?” A lively discussion ensued. One student said slavery could never be justified. According to Taylor, he clarified that no one is justifying slavery and asked students to consider global trade as a whole, including lives lost to disease and lives saved from famine.

None of which proved sufficient to prevent Professor Taylor being removed from his classroom and found guilty of “bias” – without appeal, without reference to any specific violations of policy, and without seeing any evidence of misconduct. Activist students, who seemingly prioritised activism over learning, accused the professor of committing a “heinous crime,” and of posing a “threat to the safety of our BIPOC [black, indigenous and people of colour] community.” For which, they insist, he should be “terminated fully.”

At which point, readers may wish to consider the possibility that “social justice” activism – in this case, waging a spiteful, nakedly dishonest smear campaign in order to destroy a man’s livelihood and thereby feel powerful – is much more exciting than studying, especially if you’re not particularly equipped for academic activity – a demographic from which such activists are very often drawn – and much more likely to gratify any malevolent inclinations.

That left-leaning educators and campus administrators generally pretend that these aren’t the kind of variables to consider when weighing accusations of “bias” – and a somewhat improbable “threat to the safety of our BIPOC community” – says quite a lot about the kind of people they are too, and the kind of environment they inhabit.*

Thom Nickels notes a scandalous development: 

Philadelphia Weekly, one of the city’s most venerable leftist “alternative” newsweeklies, has rocked the local journalism scene with its announcement that, starting next year, it will provide Philly readers with a different kind of alternative: it will change its editorial outlook from hard-liberal to conservative.

And Craig Frisby on what isn’t racism:

Headpool. || Cranky when peckish. || From King Kong to Fleischer’s Superman, animated scenes. || “Pull on string” and other things seen by car mechanics. || The unspanked, a possible series. || Inconvenience of note. || Biometric security using veins. || Brøndby Garden City. || Launching satellites with a giant gun. || Seating solution of note. || The spirit of innovation. || Nommy nommy nom. || Always remove the nails. || Choices have consequences. (h/t, Perry) || Kagoshima. || The creatures who teach your children. || Somewhat related. || This is one of these. || Always remember, someone’s day was worse than yours. || Six dancers, one spinning platform. || And finally, musically, some daddy-daughter time.

Time for an open thread, I think. In which to share links and bicker.

Oh, and over on the shopping channel QVC, the conversation turns to higher matters. 

Time for another visit to the pages of Scary Mommy, a publication for progressive mothers, and where Ms Christine Organ has a problem:

For years, I’ve known that I have trouble sitting still, that I find projects and things to fret over. I need to literally schedule time to binge watch TV, and I multitask like a freaking boss. What I don’t know is how to let my mind and body rest.

You see, leisurely uses of time, including “lounging about on a rainy Saturday afternoon,” are fraught with mental hazards:

When I do something enjoyable – with no other “productive” purpose – I feel guilty… I’ve always thought that this is just how I’m wired (and maybe it is), but there’s something else at play too,

Happily, Ms Organ has fathomed the cause of her agitation and sorrow:

I suffer from internalised capitalism – and you probably do too.

Ms Organ, an “author and storyteller,” and user of Xanax, hints, almost coyly, at her own political leanings:

I’m on the democratic socialist end of the spectrum.

Then teases us some more:

In the UK in the last census, it turned out that people who identified as white British were a minority in 23 out of the 33 boroughs in London. Now, if you were born in the 1960s, say, which isn’t that long ago, this means a total transformation of the capital city of the country you’re in. I suggest that some people deprecate that, some people love it, most people have a very mixed view towards it. But to pretend that it isn’t a very significant change to occur in a lifetime is nonsensical…

There has been a presumption in recent years in Europe to assume that, historically, whenever you shake the great Rubik’s cube of humanity, it always comes out looking something like The Hague – that everything ends up in the sort of peaceful, decent, liberal settlement that you happily have in your own country… I suggest that this is a very serious underestimation of, among other things, ideas that people bring with them, how long it takes to lose them, and particularly the struggle that liberal societies, in the true sense of the term, have about what they do regarding the integration of people who may not want to join the other elements of the society…  

We wish to have justice for people coming; we should have mercy for people fleeing other places; but we also need to have a sense of justice for people in Europe who pay their taxes, who have been decent citizens, and who need to be asked if there are going to be massive societal changes that will take place. Because we’re not petri dishes, we are countries.

Via the comments, Horace Dunn steers us to this debate between Douglas Murray, quoted above, and Flavia Kleiner. Ms Kleiner is a mass-immigration enthusiast and one of Forbes magazine’s “30 under 30,” a list of entrepreneurs, activists, and people of growing influence. She is, we’re assured, “fighting for your rights and better government.”

Readers who watch the video in full will, I think, note a contrast in disposition and approach. Murray is thoughtful, knowledgeable, and curious. He asks questions, listens, and tests his opponent’s assumptions, exploring what they imply. In contrast, Ms Kleiner seems doctrinaire, presumptuous, and morally glib. When Murray replies to some specific claim or conceit, Ms Kleiner seems uninterested in any possible oversight on her part, as if listening to the other person were some achingly tedious chore. Presumably on grounds that anyone who disagrees must be insufficiently liberal and enlightened, i.e., unwilling to pretend all of the things that she pretends, and therefore unworthy. Even when those whose views diverge from her own are a majority of the electorate.

Yes, a chance to throw together your own pile of links and oddities in the comments. I’ll set the ball rolling with a photoshoot of note; some questionable signage; via Perry, what to do in a crisis; a breakthrough in the world of cosmetics; fun with rope; a rationalisation in progress; and a headline that I assumed was a spoof, but isn’t. 

Oh, and because it’s been a while since we’ve had a toilet-related item, flushing difficulties. 

Via Andy Ngo, an offer you can’t refuse:

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker. 

Like lots of women I know, I have anxiety. And, like lots of women I know, my anxiety manifests itself in ways that are unique to me. Namely, my strongest attacks occur in my sleep. 

In the pages of Scary Mommy, a publication all about “empowerment,” Michaela Brown shares a tale of adversity and heroism: 

The other night was particularly rough. I shot up in bed, heart pounding, feeling terrified and not knowing where I was… It took me several minutes to calm my mind and slow my heart rate before I could comfortably lie back down again.

It’s all rather dramatic. One wonders what the cause of such nocturnal torments might be. The coronavirus pandemic is mentioned in passing, along with an allergy-prone son. But these things, it turns out, are manageable and routine, and merely a prelude to the real sleep-shattering trauma.

What’s causing the latest round of panic in my sound-asleep mind?

You may want to clutch the arms of your chair.

My paperwork for my absentee ballot had arrived in the mail that day.

Which is to say,

It’s the election. That’s my primary source of anxiety right now, and I don’t know how to turn it off. Because I’m fucking terrified of Trump winning again. 

Not merely terrified, you understand, but fucking terrified. A fear capable of inducing rhetorical incontinence and a chronic loss of sleep.

And not like the anxiety I felt in 2016—that was nothing compared to these fears. That anxiety barely scratched the surface of what 2020 feels like. 

Once again, it occurs to me that politics really shouldn’t occupy that much space in a person’s life. It isn’t the kind of stuff a life should be filled with, such that it dominates one’s outlook and everyday activity, even one’s dreams. The result is very often a kind of bad mental opera.