shared on Sept. 30ths

Sacred cows barbecued here.

Today's word that socialists use that bugs me as too damn jargony: praxis. But I do understand why they like it. It's pretty. It sounds like a girl's name.

"Bustamante's analysis places Warren's Native American ancestor between six and 10 generations ago, with the report estimating eight generations." If we are generous and assume six generations, her story about her parents having to elope has to be bullshit.

shared on 9/11s

The only consensual sex work is sex work that's done by people who don't have to work for a living.

A think tank is a place where people with similar ideas try to drown independent thinking in a tank.

 If I could conform, I would. Life is much easier with conventional beliefs. #WeDoNotChooseWhoWeAre

Every date on the calendar is associated with a great tragedy. Partisans only pick a few.

The center of Democratic centrists is the center of Wall Street.

shared on Sept 9ths

2018: When you read an account of a flame war, including mine, remember that you're reading a partisan and may be reading a participant. You may even be reading an instigator.

The anti-diversity crowd and the anti-appropriation crowd are natural allies. They both see trees instead of a forest.

Readers, buy my work with confidence. The plots are gluten-free, the dialogue is 100% organic, none of the drafts were tested on animals.

2016: Is "I eat organic" synonymous with "I don't eat poor people's food"?

shared on Sept 8ths

 2019: Walter Mosley Exits ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Writers’ Room After N-Word Complaint “I couldn’t use that word in common parlance, even to express an experience I lived through.” I sympathize. When I was a boy, racists called me niggerlover. Am I supposed to say "N-word lover" now? They were not saying that I loved the "n-word".

2018: If you mock things as vanilla, you're kink-shaming people who like popular things.

People who blame individuals for systemic problems—for not driving more fuel-efficient cars, for not eating organic food—are always bragging about their virtue and often bragging about their money.

2017: Your identity does not make you an expert on anything but yourself, and you may be completely wrong about that.

2016: Remember to question the sites that you trust, because they're the ones that will be most successful in lying to you.

shared on Sept 7ths

Gossip is propaganda, not information. Even the most accurate gossip is filtered through the gossip's beliefs, which include a belief in gossiping.

When people talk about white accents being privileged, they invariably mean the upper class version of those accents. There's no white trash accent privilege or chav accent privilege.

"An armed society is a polite society." -Robert Heinlein
This is why the US is the politest country, and Yemen is the second politest (Some sources say Serbia is second. Maybe Yemen and Serbia should have a shoot out for the title.)

Many people on the left and right refuse to credit discomfiting news until it's announced on a site that's part of their echo chamber.

What riot apologists leave out when they quote King

Riot apologists love quoting this:

“A riot is the language of the unheard.” —Martin Luther King

They leave out this part of the same speech:

“Riots are socially destructive and self-defeating.” — Martin Luther King

King was explaining the cause of riots, not condoning them.

shared on Sept 1sts

2018: In 1960, you could buy 10 comic books or three 35 cent paperback books for about $1, the minimum wage. Today, an hour's work at minimum wage, $7.25, will buy two comics or one paperback.
#WorkingClassTriviaForFans

Appropriation theorists never talk about appropriating from the working class. For example, in the oldest stories, Robin Hood is not a nobleman. He was "a violent yeoman who steals from the dishonest and helps those whom he pleases".
https://www.library.rochester.edu/robbins/robin-hood-chandler

Fred Hampton of the Black Panthers rejected the tactics of black bloc Antifa

The first two minutes show the Weather Underground, aka the Weathermen faction of SDS, rioting during the Days of Rage of 1969. At the end is this:

"We believe that the Weatherman action is anarchistic, opportunistic, individualistic. It's chauvinistic, it's Custeristic. And that's the bad part about it. It's Custeristic in that its leaders take people into situations where the people can be massacred--and they call that a revolution. It's nothing but child's play, it's folly. We think these people may be sincere but they're misguided. They're muddle heads and they're scatterbrains." —Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense

Note that this is before the Weathermen split off from SDS and began setting bombs.