MelodicAthlete
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User ID: 1861
MelodicAthlete
10mo ago
Doesn't this ruling mean that White/Asian applicants have a pretty good shot at suing and winning a discrimination lawsuit against a University implementing such a system?
A University needs to get the message to dozens of employees in the applications office but somehow not have any emails/text messages that could come up in discovery.
MelodicAthlete
1yr ago
The jet tracker seems like a security threat by making Elon's whereabouts at any time so easily known by a potential assailant. I'm sure a twitter account could be created that publishes public home ownership information that only tracks prominent journalists. They would be right to feel threatened by this account. Jet tracker and public homeownership information are publicly available but aren't exactly voluntarily given.
Trying to frame this as hypocrisy ("Oh so Mr Free Speech doesn't want crazy people to know where he is at all times?!?!") on the same level of censorship as banning Babylon Bee for misgendering Rachel Levine is eyerolling.
MelodicAthlete
10mo ago
There is going to be a lot of legal scrutiny for any institution that tries to implement the old system by other means. How does a University actually implement this policy without incriminating texts/emails? A University can't have emails to their admissions officers that "being from a black community is hardship wink" or they'll be violating the Civil Rights of other applicants.
MelodicAthlete
6mo ago
The big picture here is that Hamas claimed a hospital was bombed by Israel and 500-800 people were killed. Mainstream outlets, including NYT, ran with that narrative. A hospital was not bombed and I don't think there is a credible estimate on deaths. The downstream effects of this misinformation included widespread anti-Israel demonstrations in the Middle East and cancelled meetings between Arab and Western countries. The NYT faced a lot of backlash over this and isn't exactly a disinterested party. Israel being responsible for the blast would help them save some face.
Let's say the NYT knew everything it knows now. Would "parking lot bombed, 30 people killed" have caused this much ruckus. Instead, ISRAEL BOMBS HOSPITAL is what is anchored in the minds of Middle Easterners.
MelodicAthlete
1yr ago
The story of 70+ people being murdered is of course going to circulate at the time it's happening and not be completely buried. The question is why is it considered literal bar trivia? As mentioned, many of us hadn't heard of the killings at all and have heard of many Dahmer-type serial killers. The obvious reason is the racial angle. Five Klan members killing 70+ black people in the 1970s would still be widely discussed today, but I'm not sure what could convince you of that.
I'm not suggesting a sensational Top Men coverup of the story. It's more mundane than that. People in media will highlight and dwell on stories that conform to their world view and forget or downplay those that counter their worldview.
MelodicAthlete
6mo ago
The mirror here would be mainstream conservatives saying that KKK/Neo-Nazi types are a negligible % of the right. If you're a mainstream conservative, you find these people embarrassing and don't want to be associated with them. It's psychologically easier to pretend they just don't exist rather than acknowledging that a troubling group that votes the same way you do.
A problem here is the disparate treatment in mainstream culture. After Charlottesville, nobody on the right defended the tiki torch people. Media falsely attributed the Fine People quote to Neo-Nazis in an effort to tie them into the broader political right. Contrast that with rediscovered staunch free speech principles and special support groups set up for people literally celebrating terrorism and cheering on Hamas. "Stupid college kids" are a very important group when it comes to mobilization, so in theory it should be easier to albatross the political left with their existence.
MelodicAthlete
11mo ago
Light beer seems like the type of product that you would never switch once you've made a choice. Once you pick Bud Light in your early 20s, you just stick with it for the rest of your life. So it's a choice that people rarely re-examine and the brand benefits a lot from inertia. I don't think conservatives are going to be upset forever about Bud Light, but getting them to switch back seems like it will be an uphill battle.
MelodicAthlete
1yr ago
I have never heard of the Zebra killings before now. I would have expected to hear of 70+ racially motivated serial murders in a "non-historical" manner the same way as I have heard about Dahmer, Ted Bundy, the Unabomber, etc. None of those serial killers had a historical impact that you could point to, yet they all have Netflix specials.
There are ways to shape this into a historical narrative (or counter-narrative):
Why did the public have a growing taste for Tough On Crime policies in the 1970-90s? Why did large swaths of the public support racial profiling or de-facto racial profiling (stop and frisk, etc.) where Civil Rights organizations did not (as documented in the Zebra wiki)? People trash Biden today for Crime Reform in the 90's (strict sentencing, "Superpredators", etc.), but crime was a top issue in politics in this era.
If the NYT (especially with their writers who are very skilled at crafting narratives) repeatedly reminded the public of the Zebra killings, it would be on everybody's mind every time the topic of racial profiling or Criminal Justice Reform came up. Instead it's just deemed "not relevant".
MelodicAthlete
1yr ago
You seem to be shifting the goalposts here, your only point now is this very narrow one where he is throttling an account that can be reasonably perceived as a threat to his personal safety when he said he wouldn't do that earlier. You're not making any broader claim about how he is being a hypocrite about Free Speech? Because the context for why he criticized old twitter management was very different than doxxing/safety threats.
MelodicAthlete
10mo ago
Admissions offices are ideological, I just don't think they're this suicidal. I don't think this decision is some silver bullet, but any "tinkering" that Universities will do will make them targets for lawsuits. Affirmative action will continue in some form, but it's going to be much more marginal as opposed to a heavy thumb on the scale. There is only so much Universities can accomplish without explicitly using race as a criteria.
I'm pretty cynical, but many posters here are taking it too far. If you're opposed to affirmative action, this is a good day not only for the decision but for the embarrassingly bad arguments put up by Harvard, UNC, and the dissenting justices. It's also a wildly unpopular policy, so the public will back up the decision.
MelodicAthlete
1yr ago
The more I think about it, this is actually a great demonstration. Prior twitter management censored political speech surrounding various issues (COVID, trans issues). Current twitter management censors accounts that are threats to personal safety. Which one is gets criticized by the mainstream press?
MelodicAthlete
1yr ago
Democracy in Crisis just means progressives not getting what they want. But why would the Democrats want to stop this? It makes Republicans looks incompetent and signal boosts the embarrassing Gaetz wing of the party. Imagine The Squad pulling this against Pelosi in 2018. Republicans would just laugh.
MelodicAthlete
6mo ago
Saying that it's protected expression is correct in both cases. This is different than celebrating the guy who ran over Heather Heyer, which is the equivalent of what many on the pro-Hamas side ("this is what decolonization looks like" sentiments) did the day after the 10/7 attacks. I'm sure you can find people who supported the Charlottesville driver, and I agree they shouldn't get jobs at big law firms and should be deplatformed from social media.
MelodicAthlete
9mo ago
The progressive hissy fit over the end Affirmative Action continues to be hilarious. A few assorted thoughts:
- The sense I get is that progressives want to take a scalp as revenge for AA being over, but I don't think I've ever seen a widespread effort by conservatives to defend legacy admissions. The primary beneficiaries seem to be a handful of wealthy/connected applicants and the administrations of elite colleges, who get dump trucks of cash and connections to powerful people.
- The top 0.1% getting a significant bump has a marginal effect on overall admissions, and I doubt the beneficiaries skew conservative.
- Turning off a major source of funding for higher education seems like something progressives should avoid doing. Conservatives are already hostile towards higher education due to academia's dominant leftist political orthodoxy. If you believe in the signaling theory of education, then crude cuts to funding are the best first step.
- Similar to (3), ending legacy admits seems to be a good step toward reducing the prestige/social cachet of elite higher education.
- The smartest strategy for conservatives might be to have David French types write op-eds defending legacy admits. This way progressives think we care about it a lot, spend a lot of time and effort ending legacy admits, and removing influence/money from an important liberal institution.
MelodicAthlete
10mo ago
I know these institutions seem like hiveminds, but there has to be some level of actual coordination to pull off affirmative action as it has been practiced. If Universities attempt an end run around the ruling, then the whole admissions process will be open to discovery and one email or whistleblower will blow the whole thing up. I know Middlebury and Harvard PR teams have put out statements to this effect, but I think cooler heads will prevail. University endowments are a big fat target for lawsuits and alumni donors won't appreciate it being ransacked for progressive brownie points. Universities won't be able to operate in the shadows knowing that they will need to meet a strict scrutiny standard for their admissions process.
MelodicAthlete
1yr ago
The incentive structure is not the point. The point is that the person sending the tweet has a good heart.
MelodicAthlete
5mo ago
Based on these notebooks, we're not looking at another Unabomber. "Retarded Angry Kid" seems correct. Extremist rhetoric sometimes trickles down to these types and has tragic results. Various shootings have been done by Alt-Right Retarded Angry Kids in recent years.
MelodicAthlete
6mo ago
Anyway, I'm sure if a Tamir had hit the hospital, Hamas would be parading the pieces through the streets by now.
This is really is the most important piece of evidence. Within minutes of the blast, this was international news. If it had been an Israeli missile, wouldn't Hamas be highly incentivized to allow Western investigators full access to the debris the next day? Have they done anything like this? If instead, they hastily scrubbed the area of any evidence, that points to them being responsible.
MelodicAthlete
10mo ago
Right, and with this decision there will be a lot of pressure for UC to become less enthusiastic about skirting the law because it just takes one admissions officer or dean of whatever to say the quiet part out loud in an email.
MelodicAthlete
10mo ago
Correct. Clinton clearly set up her server to evade FOIA and got kid gloves treatment from the FBI. But she at least played along with the investigation a little bit and could feign some ignorance. Trump was brazenly defiant and they literally have a recording of him breaking the law. All he had to be was 10% less stupid but he couldn't pull that off.
MelodicAthlete
1yr ago
Do you actually have children?
MelodicAthlete
5mo ago
The biggest surprise to me is that it doesn't really mention being discriminated against for being trans.
Steven Crowder released it, so a possibility is that there are 100 pages and he only released the 3 that indicate anti-white and anti-Christian bigotry. Of course all of this can be resolved by making the diaries public.
Also semi-surprising to me is their repeated use of the word "faggot" as an insult.
This makes me believe it's real. If someone forged this to make a trans shooter look bad, an anti-gay slur is the last thing they would think of. It's bizarre and seemingly out of place, which puts it in "schizo ramblings" territory.
MelodicAthlete
6mo ago
What makes you think "hospital workers" will be given the freedom to come up with an authoritative statement that is independent of Hamas' messaging on this? Did Hamas allow 3rd party investigators in to survey the blast, collect shrapnel fragments, etc? If this were an Israeli strike, isn't it in their interest to allow outsiders to investigate the site?
MelodicAthlete
10mo ago
When the complainant is of the wrong color (white or yellow), the courts will interpret these requirements VERY strictly and the cases won't go anywhere.
I don't think this is the case after today. Any lawsuit like this would get national attention and won't get quietly swept under the table. I know progressive judges can go off the rails sometimes, but it's still considered a mark against you if your rulings get overturned by a higher court.
Obviously universities will look to get around this, but I don't see a "poison pill" here:
Roberts: "But, despite the dissent's assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today."
Doesn't this leave universities open to lawsuits if they attempt to racially balance? The 14th amendment has a strict scrutiny standard.
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