Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for the Week of July 27, 2020OT/LE

submitted by rwkastenBring on the dancing horses from self.CultureWarRoundup

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for the Week of July 27, 2020

Post small CW threads and off-topic posts here. The rules still apply.

What belongs here? Most things that don't belong in their own text posts:

  • "I saw this article, but I don't think it deserves its own thread, or I don't want to do a big summary and discussion of my own, or save it for a weekly round-up dump of my own. I just thought it was neat and wanted to share it."

  • "This is barely CW related (or maybe not CW at all), but I think people here would be very interested to see it, and it doesn't deserve its own thread."

  • "I want to ask the rest of you something, get your feedback, whatever. This doesn't need its own thread."

Please keep in mind werttrew's old guidelines for CW posts:

“Culture war” is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people change their minds regardless of the quality of opposing arguments.

Posting of a link does not necessarily indicate endorsement, nor does it necessarily indicate censure. You are encouraged to post your own links as well. Not all links are necessarily strongly “culture war” and may only be tangentially related to the culture war—I select more for how interesting a link is to me than for how incendiary it might be.

The selection of these links is unquestionably inadequate and inevitably biased. Reply with things that help give a more complete picture of the culture wars than what’s been posted.

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[–]rwkastenBring on the dancing horses[S,M] [score hidden] stickied comment (0 children)

Cross-link to this week's OT/LE on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/CultureWarRoundup/comments/hym642/offtopic_and_loweffort_cw_thread_for_the_week_of/

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

College expels student for 'racist' social media post, then discovers what actually happened

On June 4, the student, who is remaining nameless, was expelled from the school for allegedly putting out a social media post that contained the n-word. The post was put out by an account claiming to be a student at Wesleyan. The same account also made a Halloween-related post featuring a woman in a green “Border Patrol” shirt posing as if she were arresting a man in a sombrero and serape. The photo was captioned “border?...secured. found him, met him & and just had to get a pic."

According to Wesleyan College Alumnae Board of Managers member Jan Lawrence, the board was told that the student provided information proving that a high school photo of the student had been downloaded and reposted by a third party who included the caption.

“On the morning we learned of the information, we launched an investigation and expelled the student that afternoon, giving her the right to appeal as provided in our policies,” college president Vivia Fowler said in an Instagram post.

The student did appeal, and was reinstated after the university found that “the student did not post the racist content.”

“On July 10, the Wesleyan Student-Faculty Judicial Board, comprised of two faculty members, two staff members and two members of student government, ruled in the student’s favor, overturning the expulsion effective immediately," Fowler said.

“The committee considered new information that we learned in the weeks following the student’s expulsion, which called into question the accuracy of the original information. This information shows that the student did not post the racist content in early June while enrolled at Wesleyan.”

[...]

The school then used this opportunity to tout its diversity efforts, assuring the community that “even though” a student was wrongly expelled, “that will not deter us from doing our part to denounce racism and hate.”

“In addition, we will continue our work, particularly over the last few years, of promoting diversity, equity and inclusion. We are proud of our diverse student body,” said Fowler in the same announcement. “We are one of the first higher education institutions to offer trainings and workshops on the harmful impact of white privilege.”

Of course no mention of the possibility that starting an "investigation" in the morning that leads to an expulsion that very afternoon might be jumping the gun a bit, not to mention leaving her little to no time to prepare a defense.

[–]ryeixn 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Private university, student doesn't have much recourse.

If you're going to go to university, go to a public university where you will win your First Amendment lawsuits against idiot administrators.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

AOC called statue of Catholic saint 'white supremacist culture'

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Thursday that she considers a Catholic saint who treated people with leprosy in Hawaii to be an example of “patriarchy and white supremacist culture” and “colonialism.”

AOC made her remarks in a series of posts on her Instagram account and was widely lambasted by Catholics.

The statue in question is of Father Damien, a figure long revered by people in Hawaii for his selflessness and dedication to the leper colony that existed at the time on Molokai island. He dedicated his whole existence to caring for the residents of the colony, eventually also getting the disease and dying from it.

Father Damien built structures, held daily Mass, dug graves, and did whatever he could for the island and its inhabitants until he was too weak from the disease to continue. He was officially canonized by the Church a little while ago in 2009.

In an Instagram video, AOC said “This is what patriarchy and white supremacist culture looks like! It’s not radical or crazy to understand the influence white supremacist culture has historically had in our overall culture & how it impacts the present day” while training the camera on the statue of Father Damien.

Dems continue to be unable to see the irony of being hectored about "white supremacy" by a criollo with a conquistador's surname.

[–]Steve_Huffman 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

Twitter tries to justify why Ayatollah Khamenei’s tweets remain up but Trump’s get censored

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Evolutionary biologist forced out of academia for insisting male and female are not social constructs

But it was his piece earlier this year in The Wall Street Journal that did him in for good:

Even more than other pieces I’d bylined, this one unleashed a tidal wave of online hate—perhaps because we’d pricked the precious conceit that gender ideology saves children instead of harming them. Several Penn State professors publicly denounced the essay as transphobic. Students and faculty complained to my department’s diversity committee that I’d launched “a personal attack on individuals with non-binary gender identity,” and that my presence at PSU “made them feel less comfortable.” …

It was around this time that I was contacted by a biology-department chair at a private liberal arts college in the Midwest. He commended me for my writings, and told me that he’d even used my New Evolution Deniers essay as a basis for discussion in his own classes. But while he and his fellow biology-department faculty would likely support my hiring, he said, the school’s own human-resources department would almost certainly block me as “too risky.” …

Guilt by association is a hallmark of all social panics. And in early March, I received a text message from a close friend and research collaborator who is now an assistant professor at a major research university, informing me that his colleagues had started questioning him about our affiliation. He told me that this sort of thing was happening frequently enough that he felt the need to publicly denounce my views to clear his name. And that’s exactly what he did. Ask yourself what other ideological movements and historical periods we tend to associate with such performative acts. … Later that month, someone again posted “Colin Wright is a Transphobe who supports Race Science” to the EcoEvoJobs board. I contacted the board operator—again—expressing my concerns. This time, I received no response.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Trump Touts ‘Suburban Lifestyle Dream’ After Rescinding Obama-Era Rule Preventing Housing Discrimination

President Trump on Wednesday promised U.S. suburban residents that the value of their homes would not be impacted by crime or the construction of low-income housing after an Obama-era rule designed to limit housing segregation was ended last week, the culmination of years of deregulation effort by Trump and a reported appeal to suburban voters.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

In a recent report from CNN on the new guidelines for cervical cancer screening, the word "woman" is not once mentioned. Neither are the words "female," "vagina," or "uterus."

Yet in 2018, CNN published an article about when men should be tested for prostate cancer. The story begins by saying that "Men between the ages of 55 and 69—particularly those at high-risk for prostate cancer—should talk to their physicians about the pros and cons of prostate cancer screening, according to new guidelines released Tuesday." That story goes on to use the word "men" 27 times.

The guidance from CNN is clear; men exist, and women do not exist. Men can be defined, in part, by the unique composition of their male bodies. Women do not exist. Men have parts of their bodies that are susceptible to cancers that those who are not men do not have to worry about.

Women, on the other hand, do not exist. The parts of bodies that were previously identifiable as female parts are merely their own thing, not part of women.

[–]Steve_Huffman 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Immediately prior to the congressional antitrust hearing YouTube has conspicuously unbanned Alex Jones.

[–]ryeixn 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

That doesn't look like an unban, that appears to be a different account with reuploads.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Patreon has lost their lawsuit against Owen Benjamin fans and will have to pay arbitration fees up front.

Last year, Owen Benjamin was kicked off of Patreon for violating their terms on “hate speech.” Benjamin then encouraged his fans to sue the site, given they had participated in, in legal terms, “tortious interference with a business relationship.”

Patreon’s terms included language that allowed any users of the plaltform to litigate their case individually under California’s JAMS arbitration scheme.

[...]

The formal judgement was revealed on Wednesday, with the ruling being solidly based on previous California legal findings. Patreon will now have to go through arbitration with each of the fans, and will not be able to recoup any of the fees, even if they win the individual cases.

This opens up Patreon to further suits from other creators and fans of creators who had been removed from the platform, such as Carl Benjamin, also known as Sargon of Akkad.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Acting could soon be a hate crime in Scotland

The bill is intended to prevent harm to potential victims of hate crime. But it would criminalise anything deemed likely to ‘stir up hatred’ against people on the basis of their age, religion, gender identity or other protected characteristics – even if it is an actor pretending to be racist, transphobic or bigoted for the purposes of a play.

Get ready for mainstream media products to become even more bland and focus-groupped.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

George Floyd hologram to tour U.S. and replace Confederate statues

A hologram effigy of the 46-year-old Black man killed by a since-fired Minneapolis police officer in May will tour the U.S., traveling roughly along the route of the 1961 Freedom Rides.

A collaboration between the George Floyd Foundation and Change.org, it will stop at five sites in North Carolina, Georgia and other Southern states.

Tuesday night, Floyd’s family will launch the week-long project in Richmond, Va., where the hologram will replace the statue of Robert E. Lee. It’s the first public unveiling of the George Floyd Hologram Memorial Project, organized by Change.org and The George Floyd Foundation.

On Monday his family held a preview of the installation at the Jefferson Davis memorial on Monument Ave., the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. Protesters removed the statue of the former president of the Confederacy in June, the Times-Dispatch noted.

“Since the death of my brother George, his face has been seen all over the world,” Floyd’s brother Rodney Floyd said in a statement from Change.org. “The hologram will allow my brother’s face to be seen as a symbol for change in places where change is needed most.”

How long before the first claim that his face has appeared in someone's toast? (I give it under 6 months.)

[–]Steve_Huffman 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Google has purged Breitbart from it search results.

[–]vorpal_potato 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Not so much a purge as a heavy down-ranking. Which might actually be worse, since it's less blatant but has mostly the same effect.

(Honestly, I'm mostly annoyed that they somehow found the time to down-rank Breitbart but still can't figure out how to get the Pinterest spam out of the image search results.)

[–]Steve_Huffman 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Looks like Twitter is getting in on it too: https://reclaimthenet.org/breitbart-locked-out-of-twitter/

[–]simonp 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

If only we knew someone who works at Google in the censorship department, who could step up and sabotage these things.

That would be really cool, if only

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Trump administration asks FCC to begin Big Tech crackdown

The petition the Commerce Department has now filed with the FCC states that the dominant position of social media represents a challenge to free speech in the US, i.e., to protections stemming from the First Amendment. The FCC, a majority of whose members are Republicans, said it would review the petition carefully.

If Trump’s ideas are accepted, legal protection from lawsuits enjoyed by tech companies acting in poorly defined “good faith” could be brought into question, perhaps allowing users to file lawsuits over censored and removed content.

The petition is here [PDF]. It's over 50 pages, I haven't had a chance to finish, but this is at least more than the nothingburger I expected the EO to be.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Damn white people and their... shuffles deck... surfing!

[–]Steve_Huffman 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

What Cancel Culture Has In Common With Medieval Outlawry

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

If there was any doubt as to which side the media class was on: Associated Press, ABC News On Violent Oakland Riot: ‘Peaceful Demonstration Intensified’

The Associated Press and ABC News manipulated the language even more this weekend when they described setting a federal courthouse on fire, vandalizing a police station, and assaulting of police officers as what happened when a “peaceful demonstration intensified.” Here is the Associated Press write-up:

OAKLAND, Ca. — Protesters in California set fire to a courthouse, damaged a police station and assaulted officers after a peaceful demonstration intensified late Saturday, Oakland police said.

Demonstrators broke windows, spray painted graffiti, shot fireworks and pointed lasers at officers, the Oakland department said on Twitter. Several tweets called for peace and asked organizers to “help us provide safe spaces and safe places for demonstrators.”

Dictionary.com defines “peaceful” as “free from war, strife, commotion, violence, or disorder; not argumentative, quarrelsome, or hostile.” Dictionary.com defines “intensify” as “to make more acute; strengthen or sharpen.”

For a “peaceful” protest to “intensify,” then, would mean that it somehow became even more peaceful. Few people would say that assaulting people, setting buildings on fire, pointing lasers at police officers, vandalizing a police station, or destroying property, suggest the intensification of peace.

[–]tfowler11 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Is there a way to join/subscribe to Culture War Roundup here like you can on Reddit?

[–]GiraffeDetective 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

There should be a button next to the number of readers that says "subscribe", but if you're running an ad-blocker, like I am, you may have to disable it before the button becomes visible.

[–]tfowler11 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thank you.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Two months since the riots, and still no “National Conversation”

The media, in its characteristic insularity and myopia, has instead chosen to pathologically fixate on a constant stream of Culture War inanities that stem loosely from this ongoing “movement” — such as the propriety of various statues and monuments, whether various food brands and sports teams are racist, and whether various micro-celebrities need to be “canceled” for some imagined transgression. They are also beset by the various hyper-moralizing staff revolts within their own elite institutions, leading them to adopt an inordinately “inward” editorial disposition on account of their own neurotic personnel issues. Under these narcissistic conditions, real-world human suffering becomes less of a pressing concern

Journalists, editors, and pundits believe — either consciously or subconsciously, probably some half-scandalous combination of the two — that highlighting the harmful after-effects of these historic nationwide riots would somehow redound to the political benefit of Trump, which to them would be the most disastrous outcome of all. This probably isn’t even correct — Trump is currently seizing every opportunity to shoot himself in the foot all on his own — but the media class is nonetheless mortified to even contemplate the possibility that anything they might do could conceivably “help” him

These same media class members are themselves deeply invested in what they regard as “the movement,” however diffuse and ill-defined this “movement” may be, and they are extremely reluctant to produce any coverage which might reflect poorly on said “movement” and potentially undermine its moral and political legitimacy

I don’t claim to have a complete answer for what explains this dynamic. But what I can do is simply share some of my observations and encounters. Then you can decide for yourself whether there’s been a conspicuous paucity of coverage — and if, say, a “national conversation” is warranted.

Formatting and links from original not preserved.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Retired conservative SDSU professor targeted by effort to revoke his emeritus status

Stuart Hurlbert, a San Diego State University professor emeritus of biology, has come under fire from both a faculty resolution and a petition from the university’s biology graduate student union.

Hurlbert has been an outspoken supporter of immigration restrictions and a critic of universities’ catering to the Black Lives Matter movement.

SDSU’s Biology Graduate Student Association drafted a petition calling for the revocation of Hurlbert’s emeritus status. It currently has over 550 signatures and states that for years the campus biology community “has been plagued by one particular agent of intolerance, SDSU emeritus professor Dr. Stuart Hurlbert.”

The petition was initiated in early June. Next, a resolution was considered by the SDSU University Senate’s Academic Policy and Planning Committee that would allow the senate, provost or president to revoke a professor’s emeritus status if their conduct “causes harm to the University’s reputation.”

The resolution was approved and is now under consideration by other committees within the faculty senate. A full vote of the senate may come this fall.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

From the "but I never thought leopards would eat my face" department: Radio host mocks Trump by claiming Seattle is peaceful, then rioters torched his apartment building.

[–]Steve_Huffman 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

There's a possibility CNN might have already stepped in it re: Sandmann again already.

[–]ProfitMargin 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

They cannot resist the pull to mock, attack those they perceive as their enemies, even when it will cost their employer money. And CNN won't fire them (probability 90%) for costing them money either.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

$1,000,000 bounty offered for a third human gamete

This is not a joke. This is a serious offer to everyone mewling that human biological sex is not binary, or that it is a white colonial construct rather than a biological reality, or that their newfangled queer theory paper has abolished binary sex.

People with disorders of sexual development, often referred to as “intersex,” are in fact male and female, just like everybody else, because they do not produce a third type of human gamete.

Current gender orthodoxy depends entirely on this presupposition that a third, fourth, and even fifth human sex exists, especially when it sets about silencing or shunning women who complain about erasure of their lived experiences in sexed bodies.

However, because science defines reproductive sexes by the existence of differential gametes, no third human sex can exist without first identifying a third gamete associated with that third sex.

Prove that a third gamete exists, and you win ONE MILLION DOLLARS!

Convinced you are a third sex, or that you have proof it exists? The time has come to present your evidence for that third gamete and its role in human reproduction to the world. Doing so will result in the award of ONE MILLION DOLLARS.

I'm sure all those wokescolds who parachute into threads hectoring us that SeX iS a SpEcTrUm SwEeTy are racing to heave their whitepapers over the transom.

[–]the_nybbler 1 insightful - 4 fun1 insightful - 3 fun2 insightful - 4 fun -  (0 children)

The elusive wokocyte.

[–]the_nybbler 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Over in Hell, Hlynka banned a user for this remark

Sounds to me like an excellent reason to hate the roma. They will never change, and have constructed myriad psychological mechanisms to keep change from happening even regardless of how well-intentioned anybode else might be. And of course, the ones who do change... change, and are no longer roma. The rational respones to such groups is to destroy them.

But seriously, what DO you do about such a group? My method would be you treat them the same as anyone else, and either they eventually get a clue or you build more prisons to handle the clueless.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

End the state subsidies that allow them to continue their anti-social behavior.