yunyun333
7mo ago
that's basically the argument kendi makes - that racist ideas come from racist policy. hell, it's basically the same argument hanania makes in his book - that (anti)racist ideas come from (anti)racist policy (the civil rights act).
yunyun333
7mo ago
Following layoffs, Boston University announces ‘inquiry’ into Ibram Kendi’s Antiracist Center
During the heights of antiracism mania back in June of 2020, Boston University decided to show off their commitment by hiring noted antiracist Ibram Kendi to head their new "Antiracist Center", which raised tens of millions of dollars and included dozens of faculty members. Three years later, after failing to achieve such important objectives as a "Racial Data Tracker", complaints emerged about the center's management of funds and culture. For example, the former "assistant director of narrative" (incredible job title, btw) complained that Kendi was never available and shit didn't get done; he was busy producing important academic work such as a graphic novel, a podcast, and a TV show, and recently returned from several months of leave to tell half of the staff they were being laid off so they could switch to a "fellowship based model". Another professor wondered where grant money, that never seemed to be tied to any expectation of performing research, had gone. This article from the student paper goes into more detail on the allegations.
You have to feel for BU here - after all, the guy won a MacArthur genius grant and wrote a NYT bestseller. There was no way to predict he had no idea how to run an academically rigorous enterprise.
yunyun333
7mo ago
has there been any real research showing that ads being placed next to, say, fbi crime table tweets has any effect on anything?
yunyun333
8mo ago
apparently nobody has come to his defence
the RFEF (spanish football federation) is fully backing him. they even tried to have UEFA (governing body of european football) expel them, kicking out spanish teams from european competitions, in protest of government interference.
yunyun333
8mo ago
there's a first time for everything, but the logan act has existed for 2 centuries and no one has ever been convicted.
yunyun333
8mo ago
how long will it take ukraine to take back those disputed regions, if ever? at some point concessions will probably have to be made on both sides. even if you disagree, these questions are legitimate
yunyun333
8mo ago
And he didn’t just decide to cut service out of his shrewd financial obligations; he had one of those chats and then (allegedly) chained Starlink to the Ukrainian side of the front.
starlink uses geofencing so that russia can only use captured terminals as tables.
yunyun333
8mo ago
tl;dr After initially donating Starlink terminals and providing free internet at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Musk realized that it's actually pretty expensive to keep it on in a warzone, and asked the Pentagon to help pay for it, or he would turn it off. Eventually they hammered out a contract. Also, he proposed a peace plan involving Russia keeping some territory, which was roundly booed.
By all accounts Starlink has been a massive boon to the Ukrainians, since their ability to communicate basically hinges on starlink. But because he wasn't willing to keep providing it for free, he's a pro putin shill and a traitor to the US, and the service should be nationalized. It's not like the US and other governments haven't dragged their feet on providing the best firepower (ATACMS, for example).
Perhaps the counteroffensive grinding to a halt means a new scapegoat is needed.
yunyun333
8mo ago
They put him in conservatorship at 18 instead of adopting. It gave them a bunch of legal rights over him. Sounds a little bad since he was an adult but it did make a formal tie.
the NCAA would have brought the hammer down on them if they didn't. the parents were both Ole Miss alums and didn't hide the fact that they wanted him to go there too. the dad claims that he couldn't legally adopt because Oher was 18, which seems wrong. the biological mom was still hanging around so perhaps that's why. either way, from the book's portrayal, the idea that they had some master plan all along of 'adopting' him so they could help their alma mater seems absurd - he started staying with them before he became a mega highly rated recruit.
The movie I believe portrayed him as a little dumb. His childhood issues probably did limit him. By the time he got to the nfl he scored a 19 on the wonderlich. Which when I’ve looked it up before is like American average IQ and around 100. So not dumb just average.
in the book he's not really 'dumb' so much as lacking a ton of knowledge, and extremely diffident (since he's one of like three black kids in a white private christian school). the position he plays, left tackle, actually scores the highest on the wonderlic relative to other NFL positions, which is pretty cool.
The white savior storyline. I’m curious how much current politics could have soured what was a happy relationship.
if the book was released today everyone would flame the hell out of the mom. she's not 'racist' per se, just kind of clueless at times, but she's acting in good faith trying to help the kid. at one point she's trying to find a baby picture for the senior yearbook, but since the kid's druggie mom and his foster families don't have anything, she just googles a picture of a black baby and uses that.
yunyun333
9mo ago
king von being a serial killer (no, seriously) makes his bragging about killing people 'a serious artform that deals with all aspects of human life, including the negative ones', while jason aldean being a poser who most certainly didn't come from a small town dealing out vigilante justice means his music isn't just crappy country music, it's advocating for white nationalism. he should try collabing with kyle rittenhouse for authenticity next time.
yunyun333
9mo ago
if steve sailer can continue to chug along then hanania will be fine. he probably won't get invited to write any more NYT editorials, but why would, say, musk give a shit when he's already retweeting interracial crime statistics without a care
An interview with historian david garrow, who wrote a pulitzer prize winning biography of MLK and a biography of Obama several years ago. The central theme is how Obama created a fictional history and archetype for himself, exemplified in his own autobiography dreams from my father, which "is as much a work of dreamy literary fiction as it is an attempt to document Obama’s early life... Garrow’s biography of Obama’s early years is filled with such corrections of a historical record that Obama more or less invented himself".
Garrow draws several comparisons between MLK and Obama as two of the most publicized black leaders of the last half century. MLK lived "two separate lives" in public and private - he had problems with alcohol and womanizing, and Garrow recently came under fire for publicizing fbi transcripts that claimed that MLK had stood by while one of his friends committed rape - and he "always believed that he was not essential, that he was accidental" in history, and understood that the media's image of him was a projection outside of himself. With Obama, "There’s an extent of intertwining, there’s an absence of keeping the two selves separate".
Garrow also talked to three of Obama's exes, which of course leads to some hilarious stories:
So I emailed Harvey, said, “Go to the Emory archives.” He’s spent his whole life at Emory, but they won’t let him take pictures. So Harvey has to sit there with a pencil and copy out the graph where Barack writes to Alex about how he repeatedly fantasizes about making love to men.
It's emphasized repeatedly how performatively Obama behaved, with impersonal love letters and a giant pile of journals which Obama showed to Garrow to tell him that he couldn't look at them: "He wants people to believe his story. For me to conclude that dreams from my father was historical fiction—oh god, did that infuriate him... The pose of being a writer is actually one that he prefers in many ways to being a politician". While rereading Obama's memoir, the author realizes that "This is clearly a highly wrought literary work of self-fashioning by a person who is in dialogue with literary sources. Or, to put it another way: I’m watching this guy make himself up."And from when he interviewed Ben Rhodes, one of Obama's top staffers, in 2016, "One of the things that Rhodes was at pains to get across to me was that Obama wrote all of his speeches himself. There was obviously a need or an instruction that had been given that Barack Obama was always to be presented as the author of Barack Obama. And by his instruction, the only book that the speechwriters were to consult was the collected speeches of Abraham Lincoln, because he was the only other president who deserved to be on the same shelf as Obama."
The author's conclusion is that "The best way to understand Barack Obama is that he is a literary creation of Barack Obama, the writer, who authored the novel of his own life and then proceeded to live out this fictional character that he created for himself on the page." they trace this back to Obama's upbringing as someone who was separated from his parents and was shuttled between indonesia and hawaii, contrasting it with MLK who "had the most privileged life a black person could have in america in those years" and a solid understanding of his own identity: "Doc [MLK] has no choice to be black. Barack chooses to be black."
I haven't read either Garrow's book or Obama's autobiography, but these guys make out Obama to be such a fascinating personality that I'll have to give them a read.
yunyun333
9mo ago
Trump indicted with 4 counts over 2020 election
The indictment alleges that shortly after election day, Trump "pursued unlawful means" to subvert the election results.
The first conspiracy charge was handed down due to Trump's alleged use of "dishonesty, fraud, and deceit" to defraud the US.
The second was because of Trump's alleged attempts to "corruptly obstruct" the 6 January congressional proceeding of peaceful transfer of power to President Biden.
The third stems from allegations that Trump conspired against American's right to vote and to have their vote counted.
The other charge - obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding - involves Trump's alleged attempts to obstruct the certification of 2020 electoral results.
yunyun333
9mo ago
this was a meme on /tv/ (my bomb... was used on POCs?), but there's no reason that he would have been particularly aggrieved if it was used on the nazis.
yunyun333
9mo ago
Mandela Goes From Hero to Scapegoat as South Africa Struggles
10 years after his death, attitudes have changed. The party Mr. Mandela led after his release from prison, the African National Congress, is in serious danger of losing its outright majority for the first time since he became president in 1994 in the first free election after the fall of apartheid. Corruption, ineptitude and elitism have tarnished the A.N.C... Faith in the future is collapsing. Seventy percent of South Africans said in 2021 that the country is going in the wrong direction, up from 49 percent in 2010, according to the latest survey published by the country’s Human Sciences Research Council. Only 26 percent said they trusted the government, a huge decline from 2005, when it was 64 percent... The unemployment rate is 46 percent among South Africans aged 15 to 34. Millions more are underemployed, like Mr. Thebe. He studied computer science at the university level, never receiving a degree. The best job he said he could find was selling funeral policies to the staff of the court.
While Mr. Mandela is still lionized around the world, many South Africans, especially young people, believe that he did not do enough to create structural changes that would lift the fortunes of the country’s Black majority. White South Africans still hold a disproportionate share of the nation’s land, and earn three and a half times more than Black people. Mr. Vawda, 17, belongs to a generation that knows Mr. Mandela only as a historical figure in textbooks and films. To him, Mr. Mandela’s fight to end apartheid was admirable. But the huge economic gap between Black and white South Africans will be on his mind when he votes for the first time next year, he said. "He didn’t revolt against white people,” Mr. Vawda said. “I would have taken revenge.”
the truth and reconciliation commission led by mandela chose to pardon many perpetrators of crimes related to apartheid, such as the murderers of amy biehl, an anti-apartheid activist, in order to encourage, well, truth and reconciliation. young south africaners have identified that mandela and his friends didn't go far enough with their silly restorative justice ways - perhaps a nuremberg would have been more appropriate. if you were willing to necklace traitors of your own race, why not the enemy?
yunyun333
9mo ago
they forgot to add a filter for the n word in people's usernames. this is a sign of extreme anti blackness
yunyun333
9mo ago
ai is the headline grabber, but the main issue is how residuals are calculated from streaming shows, plus the fact that most streaming services are bleeding money while traditional tv is dying.
yunyun333
9mo ago
I'm guessing this either an extremely rare occurrence or just a flat out fabrication.
dry humping a guy is pretty tame compared to the horror stories from other sports. junior hockey in particular has hazing rituals that sound like they came from ancient cults.
And it went far beyond a little innocent fun at the expense of the new guy. In Kamloops it was particularly humiliating. Rookies there would regularly and repeatedly have the knobs of hockey sticks covered in heat liniment inserted into their anuses. Toothpicks covered in liniment were inserted into their urethras. They were made to read pornographic magazines and were hazed on whether or not they got erections. Veterans would defecate and force the rookies to throw it at each other. Players would tie a skate lace to the end of a rookie’s penis, throw the lace over a pipe and tie the other end to a pail in which they would toss pucks, allowing the rookie free only after there were 25 pucks in the bucket. In Seattle, Ledlin said the veterans hired out prostitutes and forced the rookies to have sex with them.
or from the nba, shaq proudly recounted how he once spent an entire week shitting in a bucket, then dumped it on a rookie's head.
yunyun333
9mo ago
How corporate America is slashing DEI workers amid backlash to diversity programs
Years after the death of George Floyd shined a spotlight on societal inequities, diversity professionals say some companies are turning their backs on the progress that's been made to address them. DEI positions have been disproportionately hit by layoffs across industries, but particularly at tech companies, which have faced financial challenges as sales slowed from the blistering pace attained during the pandemic.
A LinkedIn study found that chief diversity and inclusion officer positions grew by 168.9% from 2019 to 2022.... Starting in late 2020 -- months after the killing of Floyd set off a racial reckoning -- a host of companies escalated cuts of DEI professionals, a survey of more than 600 companies from data firm Revelio Labs found. Last year, the layoffs accelerated significantly, the study found. One in three DEI professionals lost their roles over a one-year period ending in December, the survey said. Over that period, the study added, non-DEI workers experienced a relatively lower attrition rate of 21%.
At the same time, conservative elected officials such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began to target DEI initiatives. DeSantis last month signed into law a bill that prohibits state or federal spending on DEI programs at public universities in Florida. In February, Abbott's office ordered state agencies to stop using diversity, equity and inclusion programs in hiring, calling them "illegal." And in June, Abbott signed a ban on diversity offices in state-funded higher education institutions.
In addition, several DEI executives at major Hollywood corporations have left in recent weeks. A common theory is that DEI programs are a luxury program, the first to go when businesses look to trim fat. It looks like the diversity industry may simply be seeing its bubble pop, or the court's ruling on affirmative action may encourage further lawsuits focused on the workplace.
yunyun333
10mo ago
marketing for these big companies seems like a billion dollar red queen's race. obviously some advertising needs to exist, but it feels like a massive human inefficiency that there are ads everywhere.
yunyun333
10mo ago
so trying to put up a login window caused them to nuke their servers? very impressive.
yunyun333
10mo ago
has he been fired? they've taken him off promotional material but nothing official.
yunyun333
10mo ago
affirmative action is officially unconstitutional.
The majority opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, which all five of his fellow conservative justices joined in, said that both Harvard’s and UNC’s affirmative action programs “unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points.”
“We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today,” Roberts wrote.
The majority said that the universities’ policies violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
the decision leaves open the ability for universities to consider how an applicant's race affected their life "concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university".
lighthearted cs drama
The grace hopper conference is supposed to be for women and gender minorities. Since they have recruiters there, the job market is tight, and there's no explicit policy against men showing up, men have been showing up. It looks like a lot of people are unhappy about this. The csmajors sub banned discussion of it, but there are still plenty of juicy threads up; in addition to the gender wars, a lot of the guys being international students adds a 'they're taking our jobs' flair to the fire. Since it's basically impossible to gatekeep nonbinary-ness, the challenge for the organizers, if they choose to accept it, is to weed out the men without being accused of being TERFs.
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