Elsewhere (261)

Further to the recent, eye-widening exchange between Jordan Peterson and Cathy Newman, Conor Friedersdorf on scandalous paraphrasing: 

In the interview, Newman relies on this technique [of perverse rephrasing] to a remarkable extent, making it a useful illustration of a much broader pernicious trend. Peterson was not evasive or unwilling to be clear about his meaning. And Newman’s exaggerated restatements of his views mostly led viewers astray, not closer to the truth… One of the most important things this interview illustrates — one reason it is worth noting at length — is how Newman repeatedly poses as if she is holding a controversialist accountable, when in fact, for the duration of the interview, it is she that is “stirring things up” and “whipping people into a state of anger.”

Fabian Tassano on “critical thinking”: 

It is interesting that the scholars feel able to announce in advance, on behalf of their own students, and the students of other history tutors at Oxford, a decision on whether students will engage with the [Ethics and Empire] project. One might think that the ability to “think critically” would include openness to ideas from heterodox perspectives, as well as the capacity to decide for oneself, independently of one’s tutors, whether a source of information is worthy of consideration. One has to remember, however, that the word “critical” may have a special technical meaning in the context of the humanities.

Via Claire Lehmann, Kerryn Pholi on Aboriginal taboos: 

Those who mourn the demise of Aboriginal culture almost always regard things from the viewpoint of the men, who were indeed dispossessed of their land, and subsequently their traditions and status. Land wasn’t the only item of property they lost, however. They also lost or traded their women to the settlers, and this absorption – along with frontier warfare and disease – rapidly eroded tribal structures and doomed Aboriginal traditions to obsolescence. The settlers arrived with a wealth of goods and a shortage of females, and they were generally less enthusiastic about beating women than was customary in Aboriginal culture… The men lost a lot in the invasion, while the women had little to lose and plenty to gain.

And Joe Katzman on leftism as a never-ending status game: 

Do you have any doubt about the left’s hatred for those who will not stay in their assigned status? Have you noticed their quickness to turn on their own allies? Fail to follow the latest fad, and your status is demoted. Perhaps you’ve noticed that endlessly callous virtue signalling is the identifying badge of our modern try-hard Striver Class. Maybe that’s because American public education is now a 20-year Milgram Experiment, where the meta-message inside political correctness is to override your own judgement, in favour of deliberately-shifting judgements from people with higher status. These aren’t accidents. They’re clues.

Very much related, the second item here. 

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

Comments

[prm]

JP talks about the interview here:

https://youtu.be/TK2-xYyNpYk

[Connor]

Our host has linked to Penthouse. :-)

[David]

Our host has linked to Penthouse. :-)

Heh. I swear I only realised after earmarking the article. Blimey, what are the odds?

[R. Sherman]

Tassano's observations combined with Katzman's thoughts on Leftism as a "positional good," where value comes from scarcity explain the lunacy displayed at "Real Peer Review" often discussed on these pages, not to mention the SJW tendency to mine ever deeper into what constitutes the "problematic" in otherwise rather prosaic human interaction.

[David]

tendency to mine ever deeper into what constitutes the “problematic” in otherwise rather prosaic human interaction.

The theatrical agonising – over everything from barbecues to cupcakes to spellcheck software – is very competitive and presumably exhausting. Perhaps that explains the chronic sourness of those who indulge in it.

[R. Sherman]

I just want to note for the record and in case my lovely, long-suffering wife of 30 years checks the browser history, I read the Pholi link but did not click on the "Girls" tab.

Carry on.

[David]

JP talks about the interview here

The notion of women as faultless, omnicompetent beings who are cruelly oppressed is most vividly undermined by the feminists who advance it.

[Pst314]

they were generally less enthusiastic about beating women than was customary in Aboriginal culture

But, but...I was told that such violence was a product of conquest and oppression by the evil white capitalists. I’m so confused. :-)

[prm]

...and presumably exhausting.

If your views are untethered, and a response to an outward community within which you have to signal your correctness and pieties, it must be a constant strain, looking around to see where the next pitfall is, checking you get the thumbs up and haven't strayed.

In the JP/CN interview you can see that CN is mouthing the pieties regardless of what JP says - she is playing the role for her community - whereas JP's views have been thought through and he is vastly more tethered as a result. I think that's why, when someone is red-pilled, it's usually on one specific truth, but that then leads to another, and another, and the house of cards collapses. Whereas if, for example, it was somehow proved that yes, actually the majority reason for women not being in the FTSE top 100 was a secret patriarchal cabal who deliberately excluded women, JP could update his facts, accept it, condemn it, adjust his other beliefs to accommodate, and move on.

This constant adjustment of the mental gyroscope in reaction to the need for ever more exclusive positional goods must hurt at some level. Not just the constant strain, also the bafflement you must feel if you've always played the game, e.g. as a good feminist, suddenly to find you're a Nazi because of your views on trans. We're back to the Communist flip in WW2, and we have always been at war with Eastasia.

[R. Sherman]

...a secret patriarchal cabal who deliberately excluded women...

We meet at 7:30 PM on the third Wednesday of every month in the Fellowship Hall of St. Luke's Lutheran Church, Benkelman, Nebraska. BYOB. Set-ups provided. (The Patriarchy Ladies' Auxiliary usually provides a pot-luck supper, unless their quilting interferes.)

[Jonathan]

... where the meta-message inside political correctness is to override your own judgement, in favour of deliberately-shifting judgements from people with higher status.

We can always learn from other Cultures.

[Rafi]

The theatrical agonising – over everything from barbecues to cupcakes to spellcheck software – is very competitive and presumably exhausting. Perhaps that explains the chronic sourness of those who indulge in it.

"You're not reading that incorrectly: If someone posts a sign advertising a women's group and colors it pink, then Williams College wants you to report that to the school's anti-bias squad, which will then take all appropriate action."

http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/41007/

#NeurosisIsTheNewBlack

[Sam Duncan]

“Conor Friedersdorf on scandalous paraphrasing”

I was about to draw your attention to that piece myself.

Newman repeatedly poses as if she is holding a controversialist accountable, when in fact, for the duration of the interview, it is she that is “stirring things up” and “whipping people into a state of anger.”

Spot-on. And of course, as we've heard, she's still at it.

I noticed that Friedersdorf's tweet publicizing it calls this “twisting [of] words to make people look like extremist monsters” “a new trend in public discourse”. Oh no, it's not new. Not by a long chalk. Remember Enoch Powell? Or Barry Goldwater? (And if you think either actually was an extremist monster, that just shows how powerful the technique used to be.) It's just that in the internet age, people watching these interviews aren't sitting at home asking themselves, “Is it just me... ?” They're asking other people all over the world and realising that it absolutely isn't.

“they were generally less enthusiastic about beating women than was customary in Aboriginal culture”

No, no. That can't be right. White man bad.

[sH2]

That.

[David]

That.

If you like that, there’s more here. A sort of devil’s dictionary for modern times, and well worth reading.

[TomJ]

Tassano's observations combined with Katzman's thoughts on Leftism as a "positional good," where value comes from scarcity...

I've not heard of this Katzman - is his position similar to Kristian Niemietz's, which I've linked to here before? It'd be interesting to see if this is something economists have cmmented upon independently.

[Alex deWinter]

The theatrical agonising – over everything from barbecues to cupcakes to spellcheck software – is very competitive and presumably exhausting.

Gotta find that pea under all those mattresses or you're not a princess after all.

[Governor Squid]

The theatrical agonising is very competitive and presumably exhausting.

At least in Versailles, the pecking order was well established, and fashions changed at a pace where one had at least a prayer of keeping up. Life in the Clown Quarter today is Versailles at high speed, with each of the inmates vying for their turn at playing Louis XIV and forcing the newest fad on all the courtiers.

Now I'm half-tempted to re-cast Dangerous Liaisons and insert our favorite Clown Quarter All-Stars into appropriate roles...

[Steve E]

One has to remember, however, that the word “critical” may have a special technical meaning in the context of the humanities.

That. And those in the humanities no longer recognize or understand the word as described by Tassano.

[Pogonip]

Dear Penthouse,

I never thought this would happen to me. I was typing away at my blog, found an interesting link, and it serendipitously turned out to be to your fine publication!

The only thing that would improve Penthouse would be a culinary column on blowtorch cooking. I happen to live with an incineratory chef and would be delighted to write such a column.

[Sporkatus]

A Far Side cartoon that may be apposite to the aboriginal culture article:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/45/81/74/458174cf5ac4e41bcc80e0fe0a07f187.jpg
Also, I denounce myself.

[Mags]

Blimey, what are the odds?

Personal growth. :-)

[David Taylor]

With white male homosexuals having already been shifted to the problematic column, it is time for white women to start moving across. http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/news-and-views/news-features/we-need-to-talk-about-the-womens-march-20180123-h0mpvw.html

I think intersectional should be rebranded as fractious, factional, splintered, or exclusionary. I wouldn't care about these people except they get space in the media to spread their nonsense and there is an excess of so called academics who get paid a lot more than I do to produce nothing but harm.

I know someone doing a phd in anthropology who is a fairly conservative white heterosexual male who was a very successful businessman. The very picture of patriarchy. I'd pay to see him defend his thesis against the department. He said he loves the subject, just wishes it was part of a different department.

[David]

Personal growth. :-)

You wish.

[R. Sherman]

From David Taylor's link:

In what may be assumed to have been a warped show of solidarity, someone put a "pink pussy hat" atop the statue of Harriet Tubman, black abolitionist and anti-slavery resistance heroine.

That would be Harriet Tubman, the gun-toting Republican.

[Bruce]

Governor Squid:

"Life in the Clown Quarter today is Versailles at high speed....

More like "Versailles ON speed".

[Col. Milquetoast]

My impression was that Cathy Newman was following the classic progressive technique of creating prepackaged arguments that "destroy" right wing nuts but she didn't bother to try the arguments out on anyone who didn't already agree with her. I regularly see these "if someone says x then destroy them by saying y!" on Facebook. They often involve question begging.

[jabrwok]

On a completely un-related note, Honorable Chinese(?) Woman cooks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoC47do520os_4DBMEFGg4A/videos?disable_polymer=1

[pst314]

The men lost a lot in the invasion, while the women had little to lose and plenty to gain.

Many years ago, when I had more time to browse libraries, I ran across an anthropologist's account of his sojourn with an Amazonian tribe. Rape of unmarried girls was common and accepted. He described the despair on the face of a young girl as she was dragged off into the bushes.

[Spiny Norman]

pst314,

Was that Napoleon Chagnon? Whether he was telling the unvarnished truth or exaggerating (or much worse), his work has been thoroughly denounced as rayciss lying lies by the social justice wing of academic anthropology.

In 2000, the simmering criticisms erupted in public with the release of “Darkness in El Dorado,” by the journalist Patrick Tierney. A true-life jungle horror story redolent with allusions to Conrad, the book charged Chagnon with grave misdeeds: not just fomenting violence but also fabricating data, staging documentary films and, most sensational, participating in a biomedical expedition that may have caused or worsened a measles epidemic that resulted in hundreds of Yanomami deaths. Advance word of the book was enough to plunge anthropology into a global public-relations crisis — a typical headline: “Scientist ‘Killed Amazon Indians to Test Race Theory.’ ” But even today, after thousands of pages of discussion, including a lengthy investigation by the American Anthropological Association (A.A.A.), there is no consensus about what, if anything, Chagnon did wrong.

New York Times Magazine, 2013

[Daniel Ream]

Here in the Dominion of Canada, we had much mau-mauing over the need for an inquiry into why so many indigenous women go missing or end up dead (statistically, they don't any more than white women in the same areas; it's a regional poverty issue).

The inquiry quietly wound down last year when it became impossible to massage the numbers to hide that the reason so many indigenous women go missing or are murdered is indigenous men.

[Hal]

Davos jargon: A crime against the English language?

Systems leadership

According to this article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Systems Leaders "build relationships based on deep listening, and networks of trust and collaboration start to flourish.

"They are so convinced that something can be done that they do not wait for a fully developed plan, thereby freeing others to step ahead and learn by doing". In the real world that's also called "winging it".

[Hector Drummond, Vile Novelist]

>Also, I denounce myself.

Too late, Sporkatus. Your name and misdeeds have already been given to the authorities by me. (Had to save myself somehow.)

[David]

Have you noticed their quickness to turn on their own allies? Fail to follow the latest fad, and your status is demoted.

By way of a timely illustration, pop artiste Taylor Swift has apparently gone from feminist-approved empowered ladyperson to enemy of the revolution. It seems she failed to attend the so-called Women’s March, which is apparently mandatory, and only tweeted her “respect” for those who did. (Quite why one should respect a dumb, narcissistic clown-show of people waving demented placards and mouthing conspiracy theories, and leaving the usual mountain of garbage for someone else to clean up, is another matter.)

I believe the last time this happened was last year, when Ms Swift publicly encouraged her fans to vote, but didn’t specify a candidate. This terrible sin was compounded by her comment: “I don’t think that I know enough yet in life to be telling people who to vote for.”

[David]

And we mustn’t forget this instructive episode. Because the scolding must never end.

[pst314]

pst314, Was that Napoleon Chagnon?

No, although I don't remember who specifically.

[Jonathan]

Professor Bret Weinstein of Evergreen College fame, attended a speech by constitutional lawyer Adam Levine at his old school on the subject of free speech - or rather how to legally prevent free speech. He wasn't impressed:

http://twitter.com/BretWeinstein/status/956090689648984064

via Yeyo

[David]

or rather how to legally prevent free speech.

It reminded me of this:

Deep down, you think that liberty is won once and for all, and this is why you can afford the luxury of disdaining it. You are engaged in a formidable battle, and you behave as though it were a ping pong match.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1980.

[Jonathan]

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a truly great man.

There's this too:

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure,"

Thomas Jefferson.

I just hope we can effect change in the West without having to spill actual blood.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

If you like that, there’s more here. A sort of devil’s dictionary for modern times...

Here also is some help for translating leftist to English.

[Darleen]

The men lost a lot in the invasion, while the women had little to lose and plenty to gain.

"Trump is right .."

What I did witness every day was that women were worked half to death. Wives raised the food and fed their own children, did the heavy labor of walking miles to gather wood for the fire, drew water from the well or public faucet, pounded grain with heavy hand-held pestles, lived in their own huts, and had conjugal visits from their husbands on a rotating basis with their co-wives. Their husbands lazed in the shade of the trees.

Yet family was crucial to people there in a way Americans cannot comprehend.

The Ten Commandments were not disobeyed – they were unknown. The value system was the exact opposite. You were supposed to steal everything you can to give to your own relatives. There are some Westernized Africans who try to rebel against the system. They fail.

We hear a lot about the kleptocratic elites of Africa. The kleptocracy extends through the whole society. My town had a medical clinic donated by international agencies. The medicine was stolen by the medical workers and sold to the local store. If you were sick and didn't have money, drop dead. That was normal.

So here in the States, when we discovered that my 98-year-old father's Muslim health aide from Nigeria had stolen his clothes and wasn't bathing him, I wasn't surprised. It was familiar.

In Senegal, corruption ruled, from top to bottom. Go to the post office, and the clerk would name an outrageous price for a stamp. After paying the bribe, you still didn't know it if it would be mailed or thrown out. That was normal.

One of my most vivid memories was from the clinic. One day, as the wait grew hotter in the 110-degree heat, an old woman two feet from the medical aides – who were chatting in the shade of a mango tree instead of working – collapsed to the ground. They turned their heads so as not to see her and kept talking. She lay there in the dirt. Callousness to the sick was normal.

Americans think it is a universal human instinct to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It's not. It seems natural to us because we live in a Bible-based Judeo-Christian culture.

[pst314]

Adam Levine...on...how to legally prevent free speech

From the link:

"Some ideas, he argued, don't deserve protection. Those are the ones we get to bar."

Levine may not realize it, but he is begging to be subjected to the sorts of totalitarian laws that he espouses.

[pst314]

What I did witness every day was that women were worked half to death

A friend witnessed that in the Middle East: Arab men lounging around while women labored all day at home and in the fields...and were often supervised by little boys whose only function was to watch them and make sure they did not slack off.

[[+]]

Africa is... different.

http://www.desertsun.co.uk/blog/?p=6529

[pst314]

Americans think it is a universal human instinct to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It's not. It seems natural to us because we live in a Bible-based Judeo-Christian culture.

This.

[PiperPaul]

"It seems natural to us because we live in a Bible-based Judeo-Christian culture."

"Revert to the mean" is not just an investor term and "regression toward the mean" is not just a statistical term.

"Mean" can mean many things, I mean.

[Pogonip]

Yes, but do you really mean that?

[Squires]

...his work has been thoroughly denounced as...

In Before the Dawn Nicholas Wade writes a fair bit about the amount of covering-up that goes on in the fields of anthropology and archeology.

One interesting story of a researcher who did not do this goes thus: The man was studying African Bushmen, who never seem able to gather in significant numbers unless some non-Bushman tribe is present to enforce their own rules on behavior. Out of the blue the researcher got it into his head to ask the about half a dozen Bushman males he was sitting with whether any of them had ever killed a man. Nearly all of them responded that they had. Taken aback by this he asked them why they had killed others.

Their answers were all much the same: Because he made me angry!

[Jonathan]

It seems natural to us because we live in a Bible-based Judeo-Christian culture.

Actually it's because we live in countries created by, built by and, up until recently, entirely inhabited by people of Northwest European origin. For which I'm thankful every day.

[pst314]

Africa is... different.

"The renewed efforts of the Niger State police command to rid the state of criminal elements may have started yielding results, following the discovery of a severed head of a few months old baby girl in a polythene [bag]in possession of a young man suspected to be one of the arrow-heads of a syndicate that specialises in using human parts for ritual purposes in parts of the state."

I had been assured by reliable bien pensants that pagans did not do that sort of thing, and that those who said they did were slanderous slandering slanderers.

[Pogonip]

For all your jungle hygiene needs:

http://edgarriceburroughs.com/store/product-category/soaps/

I hope that at some point Jane Goodall got a set for her birthday; long ago she did an interview where she said something to the effect that as a child she pretended to be Mrs. Tarzan and lived in the jungle talking to all the animals “ but the blighter married the wrong Jane,” or words to that effect.

[Monty James]

50 questions to determine the size of your vocabulary:

Online English Vocabulary Size Test

I suppose it relies on some sort of statistical calculation to arrive at the score. Mine was 30,500. I don't know, I don't think I'm so very erudite, verbose, loquacious, or sesquipedalian.

[PiperPaul]

I gotted 29,975 so I is dumberer than Monty.

“Some people have a way with words, and other people...oh, uh, not have way.”

― Steve Martin

[Squires]

30,150. According to that test I am qualified to just make up words as I please. I haven't noticed a shortcoming of vocabulary ever stopping anyone, though.

sesquipedalian

For the sake of the woman in your life, I should hope not.

[David Taylor]

30325 - mostly due to doing the quick crossword I’m guessing. I’m a school dropout so it ain’t education that got me there. Could Monty be our mosted wordy learned contributor?

I keep wondering why people try to spread western values to the Middle East and Africa. It’s pretty obvious they don’t want them. And the ones that do try their best to emigrate I imagine. That’s the only place I take exception with the linked article. Surely some immigrants are keen to adopt western society and get out of the place they’re in. The trick is knowing which ones. There was a recent blowup down here about ‘african’ street gangs which the usual suspects tried to drown with cries of racism. But there are other anecdotes agreeing with the article about immigrants opening shops in regional areas and generally fitting in and coming up in the benefit column.

[Pogonip]

30,150, even though I lowered my own score when my finger accidentally brushed the wrong answer. Darn touch screens.

Mankind will probably end up playing “Global Thermonuclear War” someday because of a touch screen, a sneeze, and no Undo button.

[Alex deWinter]

30,500. I had to guess at one. -goes to look up avulse, which even the spellchecker doesn't recognize-

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

30,325, but some of them have more than one "right" answer depending on colloquial usage, e.g., "deal" - either "sale" as in "I got a great deal", or "plea" as in copping a plea via a deal with the DA.

[WTP]

23,100. I'm an idjit.

OTOH, I was told there would be math.

[WTP]

Missed this part:

Your vocabulary size is equal to that of a 30-year-old successful American businessperson!

Sooo....I kinda was an idjit until I turned 25 or so. Looking at it that way...

[PiperPaul]

Supposedly you're able to find out which words you missed but it doesn't seem to work (or maybe I'm too dense to figure it out).

[Turk Turkleton]

It's time for old poets to have their struggle sessions!

[jabrwok]

I was told there would be math.

No refunds, et sequelae.

[jabrwok]

I was told there would be math.

No refunds, et sequelae.

Drat. Here I was trying to be all erudite and such and I went and interpolated an absent "no".

Double drat. I guess it's the rickety chair for me again:-(.

[jabrwok]

29,800.

:-(

[PiperPaul]

If this has been posted here already I'll have to report for regrooving again.

"Leftism is a status machine"

"People often take public positions in an attempt to increase their social status.

If you’ve been in a corporate setting, or settings with certain friends, I don’t need to offer further examples of this idea. You’ve seen it happen, and you also know that you need to be “reading the room” at all times before you speak and act. Failure costs status. People notice this dynamic, and act accordingly."

[...]

"Do you really think it’s a coincidence that leftism and its “Diversity Pokemon Points” amount to a full caste system?

Do you have any doubt about The left’s hatred for those who will not stay in their assigned status?

Have you noticed their quickness to turn on their own allies? Fail to follow the latest fad, and your status is demoted.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that endlessly callous virtue signaling is the identifying badge of our modern try-hard Striver Class.

Maybe that’s because American public education is now a 20-year Milgram Experiment. Where the meta-message inside political correctness is to override your own judgement, in favor of deliberately-shifting judgements from people with higher status.

These aren’t accidents. They’re clues.

Leftism isn’t a policy machine or an economic machine. Its economic results would tell you that much in a hurry. But the machine keeps running. Which means it must work for something. The correct question is: in what way does it work?"

[jabrwok]

Mother of the Year Award nominee: https://sputniknews.com/europe/201801241061018805-sweden-feminism-sexual-assault/

[pst314]

Jabrwok, do you have a non-Russian source for that?

[Spiny Norman]

pst314,

Do you mean a non-RUSSIAN BOT source.

;-)

[David]

Mother of the Year Award nominee

Assuming events are as reported, it does at least suggest that those feminist pieties, so loudly professed, are not entirely sincere.

[TomJ]

On the fractions nature of identitarianism:

https://www.conservativehome.com/leftwatch/2018/01/labours-internal-battle-over-trans-women-and-all-women-shortlists-suggests-its-strategy-of-identity-politics-is-backfiring.html

Hopefully the revolution will eat itself before it does too much real world damage.

[David]

Karen Straughan has some thoughts on the Jordan Peterson / Cathy Newman interview.

The more you poke and parse, the more it becomes obvious just how dumb and obtuse, how non-reciprocal, and how wilfully dogmatic, Ms Newman’s position is. And by extension, the positions of those who agree with her.

[Rob]

Newman: Let me get this straight. You’re saying that we should organize our societies along the lines of the lobsters?

It was absolutely vital here that Peterson broke his 'relaxed' posture and did a tactical facepalm. It would have gone even more viral than the interview subsequently did. It would be the meme of the century; it would still be played fifty years hence.

In the JP/CN interview you can see that CN is mouthing the pieties regardless of what JP says - she is playing the role for her community

Personally I think she is a bit dim, has a completely closed mind and was lazily going for a "GOTCHA!" moment which could then be edited and gone viral. Alas, the tables were reversed and Peterson "got her" instead. She is now doomed to spend the rest of her life as a meme.

[Rob]

I haven't watched the whole interview. What I had seen was fairly atrocious, but reading that transcript...incredible. You could have got an AI program to simply say "So what you are saying is" and then repeat a number of pre-prepared statements aimed at misrepresenting him.

Presumably she is paid a large sum of money for this. Ironic given that she was complaining about the "gender gap" in pay. She sounds vastly overpaid on that example.

[fnord]

The interview inquisition suggests that the most useful background to have when dealing with SJW's/"journalists" is training in clinical psychology and experience in treating mental and emotional disorders.

Or you could simply apply Occam's Razor and conclude that Newman is just dishonest.

[David]

In search of “woke bae,” or dating, New York feminist style.

[David]

Or you could simply apply Occam’s Razor and conclude that Newman is just dishonest.

She is dishonest, clearly, and rather sly, albeit in a way that lacks finesse. But I think her chosen politics, her worldview, does tend to lead to bad faith. It’s practically a defining attribute.

[David]

Attention, whitey. Know your place.

[jabrwok]

Jabrwok, do you have a non-Russian source for that?

The article links to the alleged source (http://www.friatider.se/mamma-v-grade-anm-la-flyktingbarn-som-sexangrep-hennes-12-riga-dotter) but as I don't read Swedish, I can't corroborate it.

I did a quick spot-check on the sputniknews site to see if it raised any significant flags and didn't see any, but I might have overlooked something.

Sadly, the story itself is all too believable nowadays. I'd like to believe it isn't true, but Europe in general, and Sweden in particular, seem to have gone collectively insane.

[R. Sherman]

Mother of the Year Award nominee

Moloch is always hungry, isn't he?

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Do you mean a non-RUSSIAN BOT source.

#WeAreAllRussianBots

Meanwhile, it appears the "Women's March" can declare a victory, or something.

[David]

Moloch is always hungry, isn’t he?

Why, in certain political circles, it’s almost a theme.

Odd, that.

[pst314]

Sadly, the story itself is all too believable nowadays.

Indeed, which is why I asked for another source: It fits my impressions of what is happening in Sweden, but therefore I distrust my impulse to believe, and Russians do sometimes spread disinformation for their own purposes,

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Heh.

[David]

.

[Pst314]

Do you mean a non-RUSSIAN BOT source

B-O-T-G-I-R-L
Got the whole world searching for their own bot girl.
Out in the crowd, Down in the street,
Got the whole net shaking to that big bot beat.

[R. Sherman]

Why, in certain political circles, it’s almost a theme.

I went back and reread all those old links. For the life of me, I cannot wrap my mind around the fact that some parents would willingly, without a second thought, disadvantage their own children in some misbegotten effort to attain status among their fellows. It's one thing to observe what occurs in inner city slums or the "hollers'" of deepest Appalachia and feel sympathy for people who don't know better. It's another to see people willingly kneecapping their own children for one of those "positional goods" we've discussed. One wonders where Dante would have stuck such parents in his Circles of Hell, if he were writing today.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Oh come on, you laughed too.

Oh well, let's try feminist science and “Research Justice 101: Tools for Feminist Science” instead, because we need, to “...practice a socially just science...”

“Participants will be challenged to apply principles and practices of justice to their own work, interrogating questions such as: Who benefits? Who is harmed? Who is most vulnerable? … And ultimately, who do we do science for, and why?

This learning event is organized by the, and I am not making this up, "UC Santa Cruz’s Science and Justice Research Center", where, I suspect, there is not really anyone "doing" science. Well, perhaps metaphorically doing it in the Biblical sense.

[David]

I went back and reread all those old links.

No refunds, etc.

For the life of me, I cannot wrap my mind around the fact that some parents would willingly, without a second thought, disadvantage their own children in some misbegotten effort to attain status among their fellows.

Vanity is a powerful drug and can skew one’s priorities, as can dogma, as can spite. Prioritising one’s own woke self-image above the wellbeing of others, even one’s own children, isn’t too much of a leap. And I suppose that once your sense of personal virtue - and superiority - depends on such posturing, it may be a hard habit to shake. It’s hard to back-pedal, and any challenge to the façade will be reacted against as a personal affront.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that a lot of the time it’s just in-group signalling – “ban private education!” - and unlikely to be enacted as national policy, so there’s little personal cost attached, and the middle-class lefties who position themselves in this way tend to have the means and contacts to compensate, at least to some extent, should they find themselves obliged to actually live their professed values. The children of Arabella Weir, for instance, are unlikely to face quite the same challenges as a bright prole child at a crappy comprehensive.

[Ten]

I so love how Canadians pronounce out. Why, I could listen to it over and over and over...

https://youtu.be/RhdEbOzcN1U

[pst314]

Got the whole net shaking to that big bot beat

She's a bot girl, she's a bot, she's a bot bot girl.
She's a bot girl, she's a bot, she's a bot bot girl...

[pst314]

No refunds, etc.

Pickled eggs aside, those archives are a treasure trove.

[David]

those archives are a treasure trove.

Something to bear in mind when I do the next fundraiser.

Whaddayamean shameless…?

[prm]

Apropos of various comments around here, here's another 'So you're saying', bleached computer, big red button pretense ( noticed at Althouse https://althouse.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/erykah-badu-expresses-empathy-for.html )

[on Charlottesville]

Trump: "You had people - and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists. They should be condemned totally. You had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. The press has treated them absolutely unfairly."

Press: "You were saying the press has treated white nationalists unfairly?"

Let's call it the 'Newman manoeuvre'.

[Microbillionaire]

I went back and reread all those old links. For the life of me, I cannot wrap my mind around the fact that some parents would willingly, without a second thought, disadvantage their own children in some misbegotten effort to attain status among their fellows. It's one thing to observe what occurs in inner city slums or the "hollers'" of deepest Appalachia and feel sympathy for people who don't know better. It's another to see people willingly kneecapping their own children for one of those "positional goods" we've discussed. One wonders where Dante would have stuck such parents in his Circles of Hell, if he were writing today.

Probably the Ninth (bottommost) Circle, which houses traitors. Specifically, its subdivision Caina, for treason against family.

(Dante's Ninth Circle also has separate areas for those who betrayed their principles, their guests, their lords, their country, etc. At the very centre are Cassius and Brutus for betraying Caesar, and Judas for betraying Jesus.)

[Sam Duncan]

“Karen Straughan has some thoughts on the Jordan Peterson / Cathy Newman interview.”

Within ten minutes of this video going up, Channel 4 had hit me with a copyright takedown. I filed a dispute based on fair use and it's now viewable again, but have lost my monetization privileges on this video for up to 30 days, the fuckers.

Cathy Newman did not interview Jordan Peterson. Cathy Newman has never interviewed Jordan Peterson. Update your records accordingly.

[WTP]

Saw this over at Ace. Can someone explain this sentence to me? As per yesterday's post I'm only about 23/20ths as smart as you people and obviously my language skilllllzzz are causing me problems:

"For men and couples considering the issue of cuckolding, it's important there be honesty, integrity, communication, mutuality and shared values," advised Ley. "I've seen men who try to trick their wives into cuckolding them, and this never, ever ends up well."

https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/25/health/cuckolding-sex-kerner/index.htmlaa

How does a MAN trick his WIFE into cuckholding him?

[WTP]

Heh...that should of course read 23/30ths. But then I am an idjit.

[[+]]

How believing in socialism can make you miserable.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-24/how-believing-socialism-can-make-you-miserable

[WTP]

How believing in socialism can make you miserable.

It would be interesting if we could calculate the cost of socialism to society just based solely on the opportunity costs of loss of productivity from people who have had to dedicate so much (all?) of their lives to refuting the stupidity of socialism for the last 200 years or so. Frédéric Bastiat must be spinning in his grave.