The Wrong Neighbours

In progressive academia, that blueprint of utopia, it appears there’s some unrest: 

Black and Latino student groups at the University of Florida recently protested a plan to house their organisations in one building, saying it would erase and marginalise their black and brown bodies and their cultures at the predominantly white institution.

The university had revealed plans for a U-shaped building that would accommodate both organisations:

The two groups would each get their own wing of the building and simply share a walkway and elevator. 

Sounds swanky.

But members of the Institute of Black Culture and the Institute of Hispanic-Latino Culture expressed fury at the plan.

You see, being so pious, and so very, very special, they mustn’t endure proximity to the wrong level of melanin, what with the risk of contagion and a loss of specialness. A student organiser of the protests, Daniel Clayton, said,

My main complaint to the University administration… is that we are not taken seriously at all. It is not appropriate to dismiss student concerns as being ludicrous.

However, inevitably, university administrators have been cowed by the usual histrionic rumblings and have agreed to build the immensely tolerant groups two entirely separate buildings. And with equal inevitability, the students are now insisting that the new buildings, the cost of which is unclear, should be “visibly distinct from the rest of campus.”

Comments

[David]

Oh, and responding to the suggestion that the protests may have been a tad self-indulgent, Mr Clayton added:

Here’s what I have to say to everyone that says this matter was over-the-top: FUCK YOU.

He then went on to compare his “struggle” for more deluxe office space with that of Martin Luther King and the suffragettes.

[Hal]

. . . . . . They get a building, their own building?!?!?!

[Frenchie77]

“visibly distinct from the rest of campus.”

You mean, like one painted black and the other a dark tan?? Surely they jest!

[Hal]

'k, and aside from that overall reaction of Um . . . . wow. . . .

Sooooo, once upon a time there was Mathematics, and it was good, and it takes the top four floors of the building, and a few other places.

And in time, Mathematics did begat Statistics, and Statistics can be found on the third floor of the building . . .

And in time Mathematics did also begat Computer Science, which one time was somewhere around the fourth floor of the building, and which has since moved a bit past where the electrical engineering people went to, or something like that.

. . . I'm absolutely all for one having one's own area that is completely separate from all others, and I and my neighbors are quite happy with the recent departure of a noted idiot.

. . . But an idea that comes to mind does involve being utterly--and demonstrably so---certain of who one is, following which one just doesn't give a damn who the next person is, the next person will be perfectly content to have the same view . . .

[Ted S., Catskill Mtns., NY, USA]

Cover the façades of the buildings in shower tiles. It's been done.

[Alice]

It is not appropriate to dismiss student concerns as being ludicrous.

He's not really helping his own case.

[ACTOldFart]

Splitters!

[Atempdog]

[T]he students are now insisting that the new buildings, ... should be “visibly distinct from the rest of campus.”

They really couldn't be screaming "Look at me! Look at me!" any louder. I predict a pair of architectural monstrosities that, a few years latter, will be denounced as separating black and brown bodies from a predominantly white campus.

[Mike]

Here’s what I have to say to everyone that says this matter was over-the-top: FUCK YOU.

It's a shame most university administrators don't have the guts to say that back to these snowflakes.

[[+]]

He then went on to compare his “struggle” for more deluxe office space with that of Martin Luther King and the suffragettes.

But if you put them in the same building they'd just be arguing over which group is more oppressed.

[David]

But if you put them in the same building they’d just be arguing over which group is more oppressed.

I wonder exactly how much indulgence it will take - how many absurd demands met, how much bureaucratic prostration and expense - in order to make the students’ claims of victimhood seem untenable even to themselves. I mean, is there an upper limit, a point at which it becomes embarrassing, or does the psychodrama just go on forever?

[David]

Somewhat related and touched on in an earlier thread:

“Bourgeois values can help minorities get ahead,” says law professor.

Cue the outrage bus.

[Hal]

But if you put them in the same building they'd just be arguing over which group is more oppressed.

. . . . Oh, a building isn't needed for merely that.

[Hopp Singg]

Seeing as it's a university and all, I presume these will be smart buildings, yes? With remote control locks?

[Charlie]

They don't want to share a building?

F***ing racists.

[R. Sherman]

Conspicuously absent in this drama are Florida taxpayers, whose money the university administration is charged with spending wisely. And I infer that the complaints solely concerned sharing space and not that the space itself was inadequate to meet the needs of the organizations. As Hal alludes to above, the fact that numerous academic departments undoubtedly share buildings, wings or floors of buildings without incident, yet two "institutes" designed to accommodate students' extra-academic interests fight like cats and dogs, tells you everything you need to know about modern academia. I think professors in Gatorland need to start assigning more homework.

[virgil xenophon]

"...or does the psychodrama just go on forever?"

Apparently David is unfamiliar with the Second Law of Thermodynamics..

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Daniel Clayton, a student member of No La IBCita, told The College Fix via email that the U-building design “erases our own mark on this campus and we get absorbed into ‘the Gator Nation’ without ever feeling a sense of home.”

Maybe it is just me, but perhaps they would have a "sense of home" if they got involved in the larger community rather than self-segregating. The best thing colleges could do for these idiots is prohibit off campus housing, and turn the dorms into squad bay barracks to make everybody live together, and replace the RAs with former Drill Sergeants/Instructors.

Meanwhile, somewhat related in the world of identity politics, some people are never satisfied, and to help ensure you are properly Woke™ and not thinking ungood wrongthought, The Social Justice Wiki. [Warning, some of the worst HTML in the world there.]

[Jonathan]

...should be “visibly distinct from the rest of campus.”

My suggestions:

The new Institute of Hispanic-Latino Culture :

and, of course, the new Institute of Black Culture:

[jabrwok]

So if third time is enemy action, what is it when the same dang thing happens even more often?

*cough*italics*cough*

[Spring Sonata]

https://isteve.blogspot.com/2007/05/educational-edifices.html

In Tom Wolfe's novel I Am Charlotte Simmons, the old aesthete drops in a bombshell of a paragraph cynically summing up what he's learned from his lifetime's obsessions with architecture and status about why we love beautiful buildings. Poor Adam Gellin, the much put-upon undergrad intellectual, has fled from the gay rights rally he was intimidated into attending into the gothic majesty of the Dupont U. library (Dupont is more or less Duke U., which has perhaps the most extravagant architecture of any American college):

"He stood in the lobby, just stood there, looking up at the ceiling and taking in its wonders one by one, as if he had never laid eyes on them before, the vaulted ceiling, all the ribs, the covert way spotlights, floodlights, and wall washers had been added ... It was so calming ... but why? ... He thought of every possible reason except for the real one, which was that the existence of conspicuous consumption one has rightful access to -- as a student had rightful access to the fabulous Dupont Memorial Library -- creates a sense of well-being."

http://takimag.com/article/hogwash_101_steve_sailer/print

Ironically, during this era of hate and violence on America’s campuses, they have never been more opulently landscaped nor more luxuriously outfitted with amenities. A distant relative of mine is in the business of equipping college campuses with elaborate swimming-pool complexes. She visits the most expensive hotels in the world, and then replicates their facilities at state flagship universities.

Despite her best efforts to make old State U. look like a Dubai resort, student activists on her campus denounce the microaggressions they claim to endure and complain that the paradisiacal campus isn’t a safe space.

Yet few seem to be in any hurry to leave. The most strident vitriol spewed about the horrors of their campus climate comes from those most passionate about obtaining a paid sinecure at the university as a diversity commissar.

Competition is fierce among student activists to become a professional diversicrat and thus never have to exit. Early this year at Berkeley, for example, one social justice jihadi (who demanded to be known by the pronoun “they”) stabbed a female gender-studies major who had outhustled him for media attention at a rally he had organized against sexual violence.

Blogger Spotted Toad notes:

Harry Potter’ is a funny fantasy for liberals to cohere around. Going off to a centuries-old boarding school where your mum and dad were Head Boy and Head Girl, where tolerance and broadmindedness consists of admitting that lower-class Muggles can occasionally have the same genetically-mediated gifts as the gentry…where ignorance of the supernatural is a form of willful self-delusion, a pathetic blindness to the real forces that move the world, where all the kids eat Merry Olde England foods like Roast Beef and Kidney Pie and Yorkshire Pudding all the time, all sounds more reactionary than progressive.

He goes on to point out:

But if contemporary liberalism is the ideology of imperial academia, funneled through media and non-profits and governmental agencies but responsible ultimately only to itself, the obsession with ‘Harry Potter’ makes a lot more sense.

[MC]

Not giving me a castle is oppression!

[Dis]

The building for blacks should be a kraal, while they should do an adobe hut for hispanics... Should save on costs!!!

[David]

[Warning, some of the worst HTML in the world there.]

Given the subsequent avalanche of italics, now fixed, I could make some deeply snide remark at this point.

[Rob]

Have you ever seen those indulgent middle-class parents in the supermarket having endless conversations with their toddler children about what they want for dinner? They are everywhere in the UK. This is where shit like this starts - indulging their every fucking whim and once they get to college it is too late - the first brush with the real world and they have a psychotic episode. These people are the future.

[David]

[Warning, some of the worst HTML in the world there.]

Wow. Is the HTML over there actually on fire...?

But isn’t the incompetence and lack of care so wonderfully apt?

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Given the subsequent avalanche of italics, now fixed, I could make some deeply snide remark at this point.

Indeed, and I would deserve it.

I will make a note to myself, though, never to end a comment with an italicized statement, as it will always appear correct in the preview.

I will also now report to the Scold-O-Mat.

[R. Sherman]

...middle-class parents in the supermarket having endless conversations with their toddler children about what they want for dinner...

American humorist Fran Lebowitz once wrote a piece giving advice to teenagers. One of her admonitions was something along the lines of, "Complaining about how oppressive your parents are is bad form. More so when your mouth is full of the standing rib roast they paid for."

[R. Sherman]

I will make a note to myself, though, never to end a comment with an italicized statement...

Sort of like ending a sentence with a preposition. Evidence of bad breeding, what?

As for me, I've been guilty of the rogue italics sin a time or two. Rather than submit to the henchlesbians' discipline, I go into self-imposed exile for the remainder of the comment thread. The fact that the exile is accomplished in a villa overlooking Lake Lucerne is none of your concern.

[David]

Complaining about how oppressive your parents are is bad form. More so when your mouth is full of the standing rib roast they paid for.

It has occurred to me that a wise parent would compile a small but suitably vivid collection of news stories involving real tragedy and hardship – reports involving limb loss, human trafficking, etc., ideally with graphic photos – and file it away on stand-by for the inevitable teenage pouting. It could then be deployed along with a reassurance that, “These people were actually having a terrible time. Alas, not having the latest phone or most radical pair of trainers doesn’t count. You, my beloved child, are merely whiny and obnoxious. Hopefully, this will pass.”

Though I’m not a parent myself and can’t vouch for its effectiveness.

[David]

As for me, I’ve been guilty of the rogue italics sin a time or two.

Don’t think I haven’t noticed.

[ Fondles laminated dossier of overflow italics incidents. ]

[David in Michigan]

Give both groups square brick or stucco sided buildings with no windows on the first floor. Soon all of the first floor walls will be covered with murals of hard working black and hispanic people in vivid colors ..... along with various revolutionary mottos and other graffiti.

Eventually these markings will fade, the paint will peel, and new graffiti will be somewhat lost in the mass of paint. Garbage will accumulate and grass and weeds will grow in the sidewalk. There's your "distinct" buildings.....

[Tim Newman]

Have you ever seen those indulgent middle-class parents in the supermarket having endless conversations with their toddler children about what they want for dinner? They are everywhere in the UK.

Yes.

[David]

From Tim’s article:

A power play has taken place, wills have been tested, and the parents have been found wanting… A lot of modern parents seem unwilling or unable to set boundaries, which involves disciplining the kids.

Absolutely. A phenomenon no doubt exacerbated by single parenthood, especially single motherhood. And as with Tim, it’s all quite alien compared to my own upbringing. I’ve seen the pathetic comedy of the 20-minute supermarket negotiation, and the continual interruptions, and the exquisitely fussy eaters, and the children who demand a certain kind of plate and who rage if they don’t get it. I’ve also seen, first hand, what happens when you’re tasked with child-minding a seedling whose been nurtured in this way.

[WTP]

Conspicuously absent in this drama are Florida taxpayers,

Conspicuously absent from this Florida taxpayer's, and University of Florida alumni's, radar is this story itself. Nothing on the morning TV news nor the drive-time radio. Granted, I don't read the local fishwrap and I have cut back on drive-time radio lately due to tiresome GOPe-loving BS even on the "conservative" stations. One thing for certain, UF proper has seen the last dollar from me. The alumni association is hanging by a thread.

[Sporkatus]

It is not appropriate to dismiss student concerns as being ludicrous.

It rather is, if a review has already revealed them as ludicrous. Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin. Everyone can't determine their own legitimacy, or Emperor Norton really was the head of San Francisco. Actually that may be a bad example.

now insisting that the new buildings, the cost of which is unclear, should be “visibly distinct from the rest of campus."

I attended somewhere that was highly... experimental in its architecture. Part of having a school of architecture on campus. Yet, in each new fanciful (and frankly mad) new design over the years, it was *demanded* that an element be included to harmonize with something else on campus.

Is their desire for a separate (but equal?) enclave an admission against interest, that they realize neither they nor their grievance-mongering actually belong on campus? I daresay.

[Daniel Ream]

You, my beloved child, are merely whiny and obnoxious.

I can't find the pundit now who responded to his preteen daughter's whines of it's not fay-er with "You're growing up white, middle-class and female in the wealthiest, freest nation in the world. You had better hope to hell things don't start getting 'fair' for you."

[R. Sherman]

@Daniel Ream

My youngest will turn 18 in a few weeks. The other night, I handed him his Selective Service registration and we went over it as he filled it out. In the process, I commented that 17 year old Americans are the most free individuals in the history of humanity. Consider: most of them are completely taken care of by their parents with food, shelter, clothing and so forth. They can drive and have access to transportation when they need it and generally when they want it. Their parents function as the grand ATM for gas and burgers and school t-shirts. For those like my son, they have two parents who've been married for thirty years and are concerned and involved in making sure he grows up to be a decent human being.

In short, they have immense privileges with minimal responsibility.

Sadly, most do not realize how lucky they are.

[Triumphant Ape]

The thing that concerns me is the day they graduate and become my co-workers, or my boss, or perhaps even worse running the country.
It's laughable now while they are in college, but just how much of this will be dragged into the real World and forced on the rest of us.

[R. Sherman]

@WTP

Forgive my using the current SJW conversational gambit, but, speaking as a Mizzou alum, I feel your pain.

[Adam]

Anyone remember Quonset huts? They certainly would be distinctive and architecturally different from the rest of the campus. Two upvotes for me!

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Anyone remember Quonset huts?

Too nice, it is Florida, so Southeast Asia Huts are more than adequate, plus the students can enjoy the bonding experience of putting them up themselves. Burn barrel latrines optional subject to local codes.

[WTP]

Yeah, thanks for that RS.

And...seeing this called out in Sporkatus post:

now insisting that the new buildings, the cost of which is unclear, should be “visibly distinct from the rest of campus."

There is a building there, possibly renamed by now but in my day was known as General Purpose Building A (aka GPA), that I think fits the bill. Ugly POS that only a bureaucrat could love, so it is rather distinctively different. Impossible to find one's way around in it. Freshman would disappear in there. I had a theory that D.B. Cooper lived on the top floor. But it definitely sticks out for being a big brick blockhouse. Few windows. I think this would be a perfect location for these groups. Close to the commons area (Plaza of the Americas) where all the freaks and hairys gather. Hardly any windows, so little chance to get offended by what goes on outside. Sure they'll piss and moan about it. But it will work for the rest of us. UF administration does that and they're back in my good graces.

[Daniel Ream]

My alma mater was built when 'brutalism' was en vogue in architecture. They've been planting large trees in front of the buildings for decades.

[sH2]

and, of course, the new Institute of Black Culture:

LOL

[champ]

Finally, a competitor to EverydayFeminism...

https://wearyourvoicemag.com/identities/race/name-iconic-duo-white-feminism-white-liberalism

[David]

Finally, a competitor to EverydayFeminism...

Funny how it always ends with a shakedown. And of course the author of the article links approvingly to this high-minded operation.

[Pogonip]

https://mobile.twitter.com/foldedfish/status/900448330479783940

Captain Kirk drummed out of Nerdvana because guy who played him 50 years ago is guilty of badthink.

[R. Sherman]

@WTP

I spent a substantial chunk of my college time in a place known as the "General Classroom Building" or "GCB" with the same sort of aesthetic. During my last year of graduate teaching, they moved all the grad students there from our offices in an old brick house that had somehow remained unmolested on campus. The worst part about the move was we all had to cram into one small office in an internal hallway with a) no natural light and b) no place to hide the dorm fridge we used to keep our beer. [Insert "frowny face" emoticon here.]

[Darleen]

This deals with the attempt to train RAs -- the students chosen to actually supervise & ride herd on fellow students in dorms.

Fordham University has launched an investigation after students were reduced to tears by the screening of a PragerU video during a Resident Assistant (RA) training on sexual assault.

In an effort to provide “political context” for the issue, Dean Christopher Rodgers showed two separate videos pertaining to sexual assault, the first of which was a trailer for a documentary called “The Hunting Ground,” while the second was a PragerU video disputing the “1-in-5” statistic commonly cited as evidence of a campus rape epidemic

How dare these fragile females have their indoctrinated victimology challenged!

Burn the witch!

[pst314]

So these idiots are demanding their own ghettos.
This will not end well.

[pst314]

Sporkatus: "My suggestions: The new Institute of Hispanic-Latino Culture...and, of course, the new Institute of Black Culture"

Where *did* you find that hilarious Ancient Egyptians picture?

[aelfheld]

How much does it cost to build an outhouse?

Outside of New York City that is.

[jabrwok]

So these idiots are demanding their own ghettos.

I hear there's been some pressure to get the U.S. out of Gitmo. Maybe we could create PoCistan there for them.

[pst314]

"Here’s what I have to say to everyone that says this matter was over-the-top: FUCK YOU."

He's not just a Person of Color. He's a Person of Choler.

[David]

How dare these fragile females have their indoctrinated victimology challenged!

They aren’t so much students as absurdly reactive hysterics. Walking tangles of emotional wreckage. And utterly unfit for a world in which factual correction, even polite disagreement, is always a possibility.

[pst314]

"[Fondles laminated dossier of overflow italics incidents.] "

I had assumed that your white Persian cat would get in the way.

[pst314]

"absurdly reactive hysterics"

Red Guards...of Color.

[Sporkatus]

@pst314: Jonathan's post with speculative fiction Egypt, not mine. I do endorse it, of course.

Might try a reverse image search.

[Jonathan]

Where *did* you find that hilarious Ancient Egyptians picture?

I've got a million:

[pst314]

Hah! Thanks, Jonathan. Does that explain where the Ancient Egyptian Superbeings went to or where they came from?

[Farnsworth M. Muldoon]

Does that explain where the Ancient Egyptian Superbeings went to or where they came from?

A lot of it comes from NoI and Yakub.

[JerryC]

We wuz Kangz!

[Steve E]

Not to rain on your parade Jonathan, but why would the IBC appropriate the architecture of a people with a Euro-Turkish heritage?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4555292/Study-mummies-reveals-Turkish-European.html

[David]

A lot of it comes from NoI and Yakub.

I believe the fashionable term is “cultural appropriation.” Or just eye-widening bonkersness. See also Nuwaubians.

[Farnsworth M. Muldoon]

Or just eye-widening bonkersness. See also Nuwaubians.

I'll see your Nuwaubians and raise you a photograph of King George III (don't try to bamboozle me with the fact that he died before photography was invented), and bump that with the real Shakespeare.

[neal]

To be fair, making it that shape would contain the commons.
I would factor in landscaping and shrubbery, to contain the perfection of that field of battle. Perhaps a maze, or three. Everyone in the moat!

Factor in for slope. One must have drains that can process overflow.

[Keltos]

I am fully on board with their demand for two separate distinct buildings. One additional suggestion is that the university installs locks that lock from the outside so they can stay in their building and leave the rest of us alone.

[Darleen]

hahahaha.... every parent's dream, every offspring's nightmare

[Trevor]

See also Nuwaubians.

Not to overlook The Nation of Gods and Earths, also known as Five-Percenters, and practitioners of 'Supreme Mathematics'. (I became aware of this particular sect when the athlete Queen Quedith Earth Harrison made the US Olympic team. She has 22 siblings or half-siblings, including brother God Goldin Zig Zag Zig Allah Harrison).

Move along, nothing to see here.

[pst314]

"One additional suggestion is that the university installs locks that lock from the outside so they can stay in their building and leave the rest of us alone."
Reminiscent of medieval ghettos, not that these deranged racialists are likely to know anything about that.

[Spiny Norman]

The Nation of Gods and Earths, also known as Five-Percenters...

Oh yeah, them. "Hip-Hop superstar" and ridiculously-overpriced champagne impresario and Obama-pal Jay-Z (or did he change it again?) may not actually be a member, he just likes to wear their garish "bling".

I've often wondered what would happen if the "Five-Percenters" had a ::cough:: meet-up with the "One-Percenters".

[Spiny Norman]

","

[ Place where necessary. ]

[QuintAmpersandJessel]

I wrote about black women and Sims' gynecological tortures 20 years ago. Wearyourvoice writer is way late.

[QuintAmpersandJessel]

Muldoon, that picture site claims Henry VIII was a (black) Moor. Just...what?

[Daniel Ream]

every parent's dream, every offspring's nightmare

I have to admit, I was a bit surprised to learn that person has a B.A. in Neuroscience.

[Hal]

Oh yes: KTVU anchor: 'I experienced hate firsthand' at Berkeley rally

Here's how the conversation went.

And as you're reading this keep in mind that they were yelling at me and their words were filled with venom, anger, hate and intolerance. There's just no other way to describe it. I was stunned.

Them: Hey! No pictures or we'll take your phone!

---Frank William Somerville (born March 19, 1958) is an American journalist.[1] He anchors the five-o'clock, six-o'clock, and ten-o'clock news hours at KTVU in Oakland, California. Somerville has received three Emmy awards at KTVU, including one for best on-camera news anchor.

[Daniel Ream]

Frank William Somerville (born March 19, 1958) is an American journalist.

That article seemed extremely...simple to me. I ran it through some readability tools and confirmed what I suspected:

Readability Consensus
Based on 8 readability formulas, we have scored your text:
Grade Level: 4
Reading Level: easy to read.
Reader's Age: 8-9 yrs. old (Fourth and Fifth graders)

[David]

Frank William Somerville (born March 19, 1958) is an American journalist.

I walked away stunned. I grew up in Berkeley.

I’m reminded of a scene in Friends, where Joey is dimly and very slowly registering some incredibly obvious fact, while a frustrated Chandler shakes his arms about and says, “Get there faster.”

[Jonathan]

... keep in mind that they were yelling at me and their words were filled with venom, anger, hate and intolerance......It was sad to see.

The feeling when you realise commies aren't the good guys:

[MC]

I like that wearyourvoicemag has comments; something Everyday Mentalism misses. Sadly they require facebook. Oh yeah and almost all the comments seem to be from aggrieved loons shouting down those who dare to disagree. A POC has spoken and white people infected with original sin must listen quietly and respectfully to zer deranged, self indulgent wibblings.

[Jonathan]

Not to rain on your parade Jonathan, but why would the IBC appropriate the architecture of a people with a Euro-Turkish heritage?

It's really just memetic warfare, mocking revisionist Afrocentric 'historians' who believe that the Ancient Egyptians were black, contrary to all the available evidence.

[Trevor]

Frank William Somerville (born March 19, 1958) is an American journalist.

Were 'woke' eight-year-olds a thing in the 60s? 'I grew up in Berkeley. I marched in anti-war protests during the sixties.'

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Reader's Age: 8-9 yrs. old (Fourth and Fifth graders)

IOW, pretty advanced for the Bay Area crowd.

I wrote about black women and Sims' gynecological tortures 20 years ago.

Regarding that article, to say it is hyperbolic is charitable. Developing a procedure that had never been done falls in the category of experimental (see below), but other than that slaves likely didn't get a chance to turn down the procedure, it was hardly Mengelian as the author seems to purport. Aseptic procedures were unknown, and even after Semmelweis' observations in 1847. The mark of a surgeon back in the day was how filthy his frock coat was and how quickly a procedure could be performed, not on his results or morbidity and mortality rate.

A spoon ?

William Williams Keen (1837–1932), the first brain surgeon in the United States, used the handles of a teaspoon and tablespoon in his 1882 cranial surgery (Fig. 3).

Retractors developed from that are still in use.

Anaesthesia for anyone was rare due in no small part that dosing was guesswork, and the practice was not widely accepted even in England until Queen Victoria was given it for the birth of Prince Leopold in 1853. It was not until the late 1800s that anything resembling scientific anesthesia was commonplace.

[Sam]

https://wearyourvoicemag.com

Wear your voice? (Wut?)

We ar your voice?

Weary our voice?

[David]

Weary our voice?

Like much of the content, it’s not well thought-out. But it is fascinating, in a dismaying kind of way. “Queer activists are using magic as a resistance,” proclaims one headline. “Healing and communing with our ancestors,” says another. “White mediocrity,” we’re informed, “is violence,” and “all white people are socialised to be racist.” White people have apparently “ruined” the word woke. “Nine steps for cleansing before the lunar eclipse.” Oh and, “Eight witches and healers of colour to follow online.”

As with Everyday Feminism, the tone of which it mirrors almost eerily, it’s obstinately dumb, a mix of pretentious grievance and empty-headed woo. You could think of it as another snapshot of how a ‘progressive’ and identitarian education can deform people, mentally, and make them absurd.

[R. Sherman]

[E]mpty-headed [W]oo.

Band name sorted.

[R. Sherman]

WHY FAT HUMANITY IS NOT GOVERNED BY FUCKABILITY.

Thank goodness we've finally answered that question.

[David]

Author Bio: Sherronda J. Brown is a native North Carolinian with an academic background in Media Studies, Women’s & Gender Studies, and African American & African Diaspora Studies. She is passionate about social justice, black feminisms, and zombies.

She chose… poorly.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Back in the day it was Ho Chi Minh, but times change even if ideology and ignorance don't.

[rjmadden]

an academic background in Media Studies, Women’s & Gender Studies, and African American & African Diaspora Studies

3 swings and 3 misses.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

6 Medicines to Protect Our Communities From Police.

6. Oregano

Oregano keeps trouble-causing folks away. I use it in a yard/stoop herb mix with black pepper, fennel, eucalyptus and salt. You can also carry some in your pockets with a piece of black tourmaline or carry some in your shoes.

Right-O. Carrying around something that looks suspiciously like marijuana is always a good plan to keep police away.

[Squires]

Seems suitable.

[Charlie Suet]

On the subject of afrocentrism, the classicist Mary Lefkowitz' books - which go back to the early nineties - are quite interesting. Many of them relate to the theories of the charlatan Martin Bernal, who claimed that Ancient Greece was colonised by Egypt, but that this fact was obscured by racist Europeans. Naturally Bernal's ideas were taken up the afrocentrists. In opposing them on historical and factual grounds, the (soft-left) Lefkowitz was exposed to (often anti-Semitic) abuse.

Her Wikipedia article talks about one such incident with the ludicrous Yosef A. A. ben-Jochannan here. I remember reading about that incident - which took place in 1993 - and thinking how exotic and strange it was. It seems like it could happen anywhere now.

[SumDumGuy]

Thank goodness we've finally answered that question.

Twenty-five or so years ago I had a friend who only ever dated fat girls. He had two reasons. The first was, as noted in the article, most guys don't go for them so he had his pick. The second was because they treated every time like it might be the last time, and as such were quite willing to please.

I judged him until I realized how much time, energy, and money I spent per partner compared to him.

[David]

3 swings and 3 misses.

Something tells me we may be revisiting this publication at some point in the future. I’m tempted to poke it with a stick right now, but there’s ephemera to compile and I’m halfway through a Sapphire & Steel audio drama.

And I’ll thank you not to judge me.

[R. Sherman]

And I’ll thank you not to judge me.

Easy to ask with the henchlesbian back-up. It's like a Godfather movie around here.

[Governor Squid]

From the SEA Hut construction manual linked upthread: But no matter how easy erection may seem, always read and follow the instructions.

Wise words.

[Trevor]

Mary Lefkowitz

There is video on line of an alleged 'debate' about Black Athena, in which Lefkowitz and a colleague (whose name I can't recall) face Bernal and the comically pretentious old fraud John Henrik Clarke, the professor without a high school diploma, whose opening remarks are to inform us that he debates only his intellectual equals, 'everyone else I teach'. Needless to say, the Lefkowitz side conducts itself with unfailing politeness and scrupulous honesty, no mean achievement in the face of an obviously restless and hostile audience of ignoramuses under the 'moderation' of one Utrice Leid. It's grimly educational - all the grimmer in hindsight knowing that the stupidity is now more widely disseminated and firmly entrenched.

[Jonathan]

Car tries to ram President Trump's motorcade in Springfield, Missouri:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yqa5PUViPo

Weakest assassination attempt ever?

This, apparently, is the creature who did it:

Claimed her 'brakes failed'.