Quotulatiousness

April 16, 2025

The “medicalization” or “syndromization” of aspects of the normal human condition

Filed under: Health, Media, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

On his Substack, Freddie deBoer wonders why we can’t be honest about the rise of bespoke “mental disorders” that look remarkably like typical human reaction to stimuli:

I just found a cost-free way to farm sympathy and attention 😊

I will never not be fascinated by those issues or arguments or perspectives that are studiously ignored by the media generally and the New York Times in particular. I’ve whinged about this many times when it comes to education, as the NYT is simply not going to consider the notion that different individual people have fundamentally different levels of academic potential in its pages, not even in an attempt to rebut the idea. I suppose that notion is just too challenging to the elite meritocratic liberalism that the Times epitomizes; the idea that we are all ultimately capable of achieving academic and professional greatness flatters the high-achievers who read and write the paper, and the “anyone can be anything” ethos is pleasant and unchallenging. It’s also destructive, which is the point. Bad ideas grow like weeds in the shade, or whatever the saying is. Disability issues are another place where the Grey Lady is very picky about what ideas to consider, and as usual they set the rhythm for many other publications.

This weekend the Times released a long piece looking at the ever-escalating rates of ADHD diagnoses and what exactly they tell us. What’s in the piece is fine — of course, the ADHD activist class doesn’t like it — but what’s remarkable is what isn’t in it. Once again, there’s just about zero consideration of ADHD as a social contagion, any recognition that there is now a vast and deeply annoying ADHD culture online that acts as a kind of evangelical movement for a neurodevelopment disorder. There are millions of people on ADHD TikTok and ADHD Tumblr and ADHD Twitter. There’s a vast universe of facile memes, dubious statistics, and self-flattering nostrums about ADHD floating around out there, and increasingly they’re penetrating into broader internet culture. (I am genuinely unaware of a subculture that is more directly and shamelessly self-celebrating than the online ADHD community, and I’ve read the comments at LessWrong.) Unsurprisingly, a big subsidiary industry has sprung up, with all kinds of products and services for sale, books and apparel and tchotchkes and conferences and boutique forms of therapy and exclusive members-only Discords … Whether neurodevelopmental disorders should have merch is an open question. What’s not subject to questioning is that this is happening. Five minutes of cursory searching would reveal the remarkable scope of online ADHD culture.

And yet the piece’s author, Paul Tough, is just about totally silent on this glaring reality. I find it genuinely bizarre. In a long and rambling (in a good way) piece where he kicks the various rocks of ADHD and asks good-faith questions about how diagnostic rules and social perception of the disorder influence medical practice, he still somehow fails to ever refer to the large, influential, and growing online movement that has raised the profile of the disorder even beyond its prior notoriety and in doing so injected a ton of money into the equation. You can dismiss that community as an online sideshow if you choose, but of course the online world has become profoundly influential on real life, and in other contexts neither the New York Times specifically nor the elite media generally has any problem acknowledging that fact. Why not here?

This tendency extends beyond ADHD. Recently Holden Thorp, editor in chief of the prestigious journal Science, wrote an essay for the NYT that explores the rise of autism diagnoses, which have expanded at truly ludicrous rates. To the extent that it’s referenced at all, the idea of social contagion is dismissed without argument. A couple years ago the Times published a piece by Azeen Ghorayshi about the absurd case of Tourette’s spreading (or “spreading”) among too-online adolescent girls via TikTok; though Ghorayshi is admirably clear that those young women did not in fact have Tourette’s, her piece is also slavishly, almost comically sympathetic to them, never bothering to suggest that maybe these were just bored teenagers who engaged in a frivolous and offensive bit of minstrelsy. (Imagine, judging teenagers for doing something stupid!) The idea that anyone could ever have unserious and wrongheaded motivations for adopting a disability seems to be one of those stories that the New York Times absolutely refuses to tell.

But why? People make up fake illnesses all the time, both consciously and unconsciously. Factitious disorders are real; we have references to what we might now call psychosomatic illnesses that stretch back to antiquity. Munchausen by internet is real. Hypochondria, factitious illness, Munchausen’s, the worried well … these have represented a major challenge for psychiatry for as long as the field has been formalized and integrated into the larger medical project. Why does no one ever talk about this stuff in our stuffy elite publications? Why do so many people in our media dance and shuffle rather than ask direct questions like “How many of these diagnoses are fundamentally faulty?” Why can’t anyone point out that saying you have a medical disorder is a shortcut to getting sympathy and attention, and that human beings crave sympathy and attention the way they crave water and air? We’ve lived through something like a “vibe shift,” and previously-unchallengeable social justice pieties are increasingly challenged, in good ways and bad. Yet under the broad umbrella of disability rhetoric, it’s always 2018, with both traditional and social media operating under a cloud of fear of giving offense. As I’ve said many times, the number of people who privately agree with me about all this is legion. The number who are willing to say so publicly are very few indeed. Nobody wants to paint that target on their back, I suppose. But why do these issues make people feel like targets at all?

The Korean War Week 43 – Truman Dismisses MacArthur! – April 15, 1951

Filed under: Asia, China, History, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 15 Apr 2025

It’s finally happened, President Harry Truman has relieved Douglas MacArthur of command. If you’ve followed us lately you’ll know the why, but today you’ll see then how, when, and where. But the fight in the field goes on- this week fighting for control of the Hwacheon Reservoir.
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Government freezes the bank account of a PPC candidate, gives no reasons

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The federal government had the banks freeze the accounts of a large number of Freedom Convoy supporters back in 2022 … without any legal justification. The courts failed to act in protection of ordinary Canadians so the feds are at it again, in this case freezing the bank account of a PPC candidate in the current election:

I still hadn’t completely given up on the country, and with an election pending, I saw one last opportunity to fight for change, and to force some conversations that had been suppressed in my progressive Vancouver East riding. Last month, I decided to run as a Canadian Member of Parliament, and began to publicize my decision to run for the People’s Party of Canada (PPC) — the only party truly committed to fighting for freedom and women’s sex-based rights.

My candidacy was confirmed officially on Tuesday. That same day, I tried to access my bank account and could not. I contacted my bank, Vancity, and was informed the account had been frozen as per direction from the government. I had accessed my account just two days prior, so the timing was clear. I had not been informed of this freezing by anyone — not the bank, not the government. No one attempted to contact me. I was completely blindsided.

When I contacted my bank they refused to give me any information beyond the fact they were following government orders, and they gave me a number and name to contact. I called the number, and got a voicemail saying the employee was on vacation all week. So basically this guy froze my bank account and immediately went on vacation.

His voicemail offered another extension to call, which I did. No one answered, so I left a message. I called again later that day and left another message. No one returned my call, so I called back the next day and left another message. Still no one returned my call. The following day I called again and received a message saying I could not get through on account of “technical difficulties”. I tried calling a general number, and asked the woman on the other end of the phone if she could please refer me to someone who could provide me with information about why my bank account was frozen. She told me, “I can’t give you any information unless you give me more information about what’s going on,” to which I responded, “I have no information, that’s why I’m calling you: to get information”. We went back and forth like this for a while until I asked her if she was retarded and then said, “What exactly is your job — what is it you are being paid to do with the tax dollars of Canadians”. She explained her job was to refer people who called to the appropriate departments, numbers, and individuals. “Ok,” I said. “Then can you please refer me to someone who can explain to me what is going on with my bank account.” She said “No,” and I hung up.

It has now been a week since my bank account was frozen and I have received zero communication or information from the government.

I had a flight booked back to Canada today, which I cancelled, because if my bank account is frozen I can’t operate in the country and because I am very concerned about what awaits me upon arrival. I decided it wasn’t worth the risk of persecution or attempted prosecution so will not be returning to Canada, despite my original intention to come back to campaign.

I am completely appalled that this is how the Canadian government treats its citizens, accountability-free. It is unacceptable and reprehensible to freeze the bank accounts of Canadians, leaving them potentially starving, homeless, and unable to survive — EVER, never mind without contacting them, communicating with them, or providing them with any information.

I cannot help but note that the timing of all this is incredibly sketchy, and so my suspicion is that I am being targeted for political reasons, and that the government is attempting to find an excuse to criminalize me, as well as to punish me generally on account of my continued criticisms of the ruling Liberal party.

It also worth noting that the freezing of my bank account at this precise moment constitutes election interference, as I am now prevented from returning to Canada to campaign in my riding.

I knew things were bad in Canada — they have been moving in a terrifying direction for years, and yet far too many Canadians refuse to take their heads out of the sand and see that they are living under an increasingly authoritarian, punitive, evil government, never mind push back against this tyranny.

Canadians are mere weeks away from having their rights and freedoms completely disappeared, yet many remain in hysterics about Donald Trump and an electric vehicle company owned by an American man who has zero impact on the lives of regular Canadians.

I am lucky to have a platform where I can speak up about these things — many Canadians don’t, and the government will therefore easily get away with doing whatever they like to their citizens, accountability-free, knowing most regular Canadians are left without recourse.

This government is sick. Things are not fine. Things are very bad. And if Canadians don’t wake up now, en masse, things will undoubtedly get worse.

Food in the Japanese-American Internment Camps of World War 2

Filed under: Food, History, Japan, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 3 Dec 2024

Tuna noodle casserole made with spaghetti, and rice with canned apricots for dessert

City/Region: Topaz War Relocation Center, Utah
Time Period: 1943

In 1942, anyone of Japanese ancestry in the United States was forcibly sent to live in incarceration camps. Food was often in the form of leftover military rations that was augmented by crops grown by the people living in the camps, but there were also canteens that sold food and sundries. These items were great luxuries as the Japanese Americans living in the camps made only about 1/5 of a typical wage and included things like Ovaltine, apple juice, and canned tuna.

This recipe, from a newspaper printed in the Topaz War Relocation Center, makes a tasty, if basic, tuna noodle casserole. I would add more of the paprika, or really some more spices in general, but I really like the lightly crunchy texture of the bread crumbs and the celery.

If you’d like to serve this forth with dessert, as I did, then you simply need some cooked white rice and some canned apricots with syrup.
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QotD: Coffee

Filed under: Humour, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Is it a bad sign if, instead of calmly removing the lid from the can of coffee in the morning, you claw at it sort of like a rabid animal?

Not that I know anyone who does that.

[…]

One of the commenters asked “Canned coffee?”, to which Steve made the obvious response: “I am not a coffee connoisseur. After all, we are talking about medicine, not a beverage.”

Steve H., “Caffeine and Socialism”, Hog On Ice, 2005-08-05.

April 15, 2025

What is it with the progressives’ love for (some) brutal murderers?

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

I’ve managed to avoid watching any of the interview, but Taylor Lorenz was on CNN, where utter inhumanity is apparently the flavour of the month for all right-thinking progressives:

Former New York Times and Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz, speaking about accused killer Luigi Mangione on CNN MisinfoNation with Donnie O’Sullivan:

    To see these millionaire media pundits on TV clutching their pearls about someone stanning a murderer when this is the United States of America. As if we don’t lionize criminals … There’s a huge disconnect between the narratives and the angles that mainstream media pushes and what the American public feels … You’re going to see women especially that feel like, “Oh my God”, right? Like, “Here’s this man who’s revolutionary, who’s famous, who’s handsome, who is young, who’s smart”. He’s a person that seems like this morally good man, which is hard to find.

I know Lorenz is a human bug-zapper whose purpose is luring people to doom by drawing them to the glow of the impossibly stupid online utterance, but even by her standards this is nuts. For one thing, Lorenz is a leading advocate for dumbed-all-the-way-down media like her “beloved” Vine, which featured six-second-max videos. If someone handed her a hardcover book, she’d be a serious threat to bite it. Her invoking Flannery O’Connor and A Good Man is Hard to Find in the context of Luigi Mangione is high comedy. Regarding America “stanning” murderers because “we give them Netflix shows,” which does she mean? Americans may be fascinated by O.J. and Bundy and Phil Spector, but we don’t gush cartoon hearts at them over cable, we watch them in lurid docudramas.

As Jim Treacher puts it:

The thing I like most about journalism is the moral authority.

Journos are better human beings than the rest of us — morally, ethically, and intellectually — and they’re not shy about saying so. Their views are the correct views, after all. Their political opinions are the North Star. And if you disagree with anything they know to be true about the world, you’re the enemy and they don’t care what happens to you.

Hell, if you’re on their literal hit list, they’ll openly laugh and swoon over anyone who hurts you. If you don’t believe it, just watch the following clip from a cable news network.

Dramatis Personae:

  • Donie O’Sullivan is a “senior correspondent” for CNN.
  • Taylor Lorenz is a reporter who has worked for the New York Times and the Washington Post.
  • Luigi Mangione, the heir to a wealthy Baltimore family, shot a health insurance executive named Brian Thompson in the back as he was walking to work in Manhattan.

And now, here are O’Sullivan and Lorenz celebrating the murder on national television.

How the UN Plan Tore Palestine Apart – W2W 20 – 1948 Q2

Filed under: Britain, History, Middle East, Military — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost History
Published 13 Apr 2025

In 1948, the British departure from Palestine plunges the region into chaos. Amid bombings, massacres, and forced displacements, a brutal civil war escalates into the Arab-Israeli conflict, reshaping the Middle East forever. As Israel declares independence, Arab armies invade, and atrocities on both sides deepen hatred and tragedy. Can either side emerge victorious, or has the cycle of violence become unstoppable?
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Learning from history can be helpful … if you learn the correct lessons

Filed under: Economics, Government, History, Technology, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Tim Worstall explains why Donald Trump and his advisors pointing to the historical experience of high tariffs after the US civil war fails to take into account all the technological changes that happened during that time:

Trump and his economics team clearly believe that tariffs work (at least for certain values of “work”)

Post US Civil War tariffs rose strongly. Doubled and in some cases more than that. It’s also true that the US economy expanded remarkably in that period. Went from the exploitative frontier (and slave) economy to the world’s richest manufacturing one in fact. So, yay for tariffs, obviously.

Except US trade kept increasing over this period. So, tariffs were not reducing imports. Or rather, the total level of imports did not fall because tariffs even as tariffs obviously had an effect upon limiting imports — without tariffs there would have been more.

So, what happened here? The answer is the ocean going steamship.

Tariffs are only one barrier to trade, one cost of trade. Paperwork is another, local standards a third, the theft by rapacious dockside unions a fourth and, obviously enough, the cost of transport a fifth. And we can go on — the cost of information flow a sixth and soon enough we’ll be Richard Murphy shouting eleventhly.

The ocean going steamship reduced the total costs of trade by more than the tariffs raised it. Therefore trade carried on increasing.

Now forward a century, the 1970s and following. We’re told that there’s been some grand policy turn to free trade. That everyone decided to gut the rich world of real manly jobs and ship them off to sweating coolies who could be paid peanuts. The GATT, WTO, just proof of the contention and look, look, they lowered tariffs!

But the container ship (which did for those rapacious dockside unions in most places other than the US), the jet liner, the telephone and now the internet have lowered all those other costs of trade massively. The total costs of trade have dropped massively whatever we could have, should have, done about tariffs. Global trade was going to expand by multiples whatever GATT or WTO did that is.

Which is why these tariffs now have to be so large and bigly. Because to get back to that 1970s – let alone 1870s — it’s necessary to raise total costs of trade to where they were, not just tariffs.

Daniel Defense H9: The Hudson Reborn and Completely Reengineered

Filed under: Business, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 16 Dec 2024

In 2017, Hudson released a new pistol that was the darling of the firearms industry. It purported to offer a radically low bore axis and 1911-style trigger in a striker-fired system that would be fast and simple to use.

In 2019, Hudson went bankrupt, out of money and having started to scavenge parts off returned pistols to fix other customers’ broken guns. It was an ignominious end to a product with such potential.

About that same time, Daniel Defense was looking for a way to expand their catalog into the pistol market. They saw Hudson, and it looked like the perfect opportunity to pick up a good design that seemed to have been the victim of management and cash flow problems. So DD bought up the patents and other aspects of the H9 pistol … but when they got a close look at the gun they realized, belatedly, that the whole thing needed to be redesigned.

In the years since, Daniel Defense has been fixing the H9. The fire control system remains fundamentally the same, but with no interchangeable parts — and now actually drop-safe. The exotic forward-mounted unlocking cams on the barrel are gone now, and the accessory rail is moved up enough to allow reasonable use of lights and lasers. The frame is aluminum and shortened for better concealment. The recoil spring system is much stronger, and the slide stop redesigned to prevent the breakages that plagued the original Hudson. Every part of the magazine has been changed, to fit the same 15 rounds into a shorter body and prevent over insertion. The slide is now cut for optics, with four different adapter plates to fit all the common footprints.

Shooting the new H9 side by side with the original Hudson, I think Daniel Defense has kept all the qualities of the design while fixing a lot of the problems it had. The gun does indeed have a lot less muzzle rise than more conventional designs, and the trigger feels quite nice. This is not a Grand Master’s IPSC gun and it is not a subcompact pocket gun. It is a jack of all trades piece that can be carried as well as any service pistol (better than most, thanks to its quite narrow construction) and can hold its own in a variety of competition venues as well.
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QotD: PhD delusions of (universal) competence

Filed under: Education, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

My guess – and this is only a guess – is that it’s part of their comprehensive delusion of competence. Just as your Basic College Girl assumes that her 1100 (or whatever slightly-above-average is now) SAT score makes her a genius without portfolio, so those with PhDs assume that their sheepskin is proof that they can master any subject they put their minds to. It’s not that rude mechanicals like plumbers and whatnot are doing something they can’t; they’re doing something they shouldn’t have to, by virtue of their superior intellects and social standing (that the same people who assume trade labor is for dirty, sweaty, smelly proles are also the most vocal champions of The Working Class™ is so ironic, Alanis Morissette must be weeping salty tears of joy right now, is infuriating but irrelevant).

And the delusion of competence is truly a thing to behold. They expend enormous effort in maintaining it. Just as the “gender is just a social construction” feminist somehow retains her belief in this every time she has to call the stock boy over to help her lift the can of economy-sized kitty litter, so the other eggheads shrug it off when they have to call in tradesmen to perform the simplest household maintenance. I think I’ve told this story before, but it’s worth repeating as an illustration:

Back in grad school, I was invited to a back-to-school shindig at the Department Chair’s house. She made sure to tell us that the only toilet in the house (she lived in a breathtakingly restored Victorian; it must’ve cost close to a million all in) wouldn’t work unless you followed the elaborate five-step process she and her “domestic partner” had worked out over months of trial and error. Said process was helpfully taped on the tank lid for us. They were on the plumber’s list, she said, but it would be a while (“you know how those people are,” wasn’t stated outright, but very clearly, sneeringly implied).

I had few beers, the inevitable happened, and so I meandered upstairs to throw a whiz. After zipping up, I followed the elaborate handle-jiggling procedure … and, well, look, y’all, I’m far closer to those helpless eggheads than I am to Mr. Fix-it. I have ten thumbs, and thank god I never had to do one of those “spatial rotation” tasks for real back in grade school, or they’d have stuck me on the short bus. But even I know when a toilet float bobber is stuck. So I lifted the lid, turned the little screw, flushed twice more to double-check my handiwork, and went back downstairs to report my success …

They looked at me like I’d just contracted leprosy, y’all. Instead of being happy that I’d saved them a lot of effort, not to mention a fair amount of money, they were disgusted. I mean, I’d done a menial’s job. With my hands. On the one hand, I suppose it was proof that people with PhDs can master very, very, very basic plumbing. But on the other … eeeeewwww. I was a class traitor!

Severian, “Gettin’ Jiggy in College Town”, Founding Questions, 2021-10-08.

April 14, 2025

Huế: Battle for the Heart of Vietnam

Filed under: Asia, History, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Army University Press
Published 22 Nov 2024

The Battle of Huế is known for urban combat, destruction, and anguish. The city of Huế mattered to all the combatant forces. The city and its people paid the price. Interviews with noted subject matter experts Drs. Pierre Asselin, Gregory Daddis, James Willbanks, and Cpt. Wyatt Harper are augmented with archival audio and film, and detailed maps. This documentary places the Battle of Huế within the context of Hanoi’s 1968 Tet Offensive. How North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and the United States perceived the Vietnam War in 1967 and 1968 are central to this documentary. Covered are the key moments of the battle — including the People’s Armed Forces of Vietnam (PAVN) and People’s Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF) planning and assault on Hue. The responses of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), Vietnam Marine Corps (VNMC), the United States Marine Corps (USMC), and the U.S. Army (USA) are addressed to offer insight into an informative example of urban warfare.

0:02:39 – Why the Tet Offensive
0:10:53 – Why Huế
0:15:53 – Military Decision Making Process | Doctrine
0:26:51 – Warfighting Function | Doctrine
0:27:59 – Paralysis by analysis | Doctrine
0:33:15 – Courses of action | Doctrine
0:38:22 – Weather and operations | Doctrine
0:40:52 – Huế Massacre
0:41:18 – My Lai
0:46:05 – Huế and Modern Warfare

QotD: Pax Americana replaces Pax Britannica

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, Quotations, USA, WW1, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Britain […] inherited responsibility for a century of the “Pax Britannica” by the simple expedient of being the strongest economy standing after the Napoleonic Wars. (The United States – the only potentially economically healthy rival post the devestation of Europe – having shot itself in the foot by joining in briefly on Napoleon’s “anti-British coalition” movement in 1812, and having its trade smashed and most of its ports and the capital reduced to smoking ruins as a result. Bad timing.)

The British government spent most of the next century being dragged – reluctantly – into being arbitrators of conflicts they wanted nothing to do with. Finishing with being stuck with the Great War, and then responsibility for some of the most hopeless basket-case states handed over to “Mandate Powers” by the Versailles peace … as one British minister presciently pointed out, no one wanted Palestine, and it would be nothing but a disaster for whoever gets stuck with it … (Fortunately for the US, their Congress repudiated Wilson’s ridiculous League of Nations before the plan to lumber the US with the Mandate for places like Georgia – the Russian bit on the Black Sea that is! – could be put through.)

It is unsurprising that the British taxpayer spent the next 50 years trying to get out of international police-keeping obligations. With the sole exception of reluctantly agreeing to fight against the expansionary dictatorships in World War Two, British taxpayers voted for disarmament and de-colonisation whenever they could. (Abandoning some states – particularly in Africa – that might eventually have developed into safe and secure states, way before they were ready for independence … much to the cost of world peace and security since …)

The United States has had a similar experience more recently. Having inherited responsibility for maybe 50 years of the “Pax Americana” by the simple expedient of being the strongest economy standing after the Second World War. (Their only potential rival being the British Commonwealth of Nations — who between them had 5 of the next 10 biggest and healthiest post-war economies — being more than happy to let the dumb Americans have a go at being world policemen for a time, and see how they liked being blamed by everyone else for absolutely everything.)

The Americans discovered pretty quickly that the things they had been complaining about the British doing for the last 200 years were exactly what they had now signed up for, and finding even quicker that their taxpayers simply weren’t willing to carry the can, and take the blame, for very long at all.

Arguably the US’s fun with being world policeman was already pretty much over after Korea, and certainly after Vietnam. It is notable that the first Gulf War was NOT paid for by the US taxpayer … the US troops turned up but only if Saudi Arabia and Europe paid for them to do so (and preferably with a British Division on one flank, Australian warships on the other, and NATO fighters overhead …) none of this “we will carry the can and our taxpayers will just cope” crap for post-Vietnam American taxpayers.

Nigel Davies, “Types of Empires: Security, Conquest, and Trade”, rethinking history, 2020-05-02.

April 13, 2025

Gender is a social construct … or isn’t a social construct [confused screaming]

Filed under: Media, Politics, Sports, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Is it a good thing or a bad thing that some female athletes choose not to compete against transgendered athletes? Yes. No. Answer unclear, ask again later:

Feminist and gender ideologies have always appealed to women (and continue to appeal) with the promise that women are strong and should be applauded for competing with and winning against men. Any woman who does so is almost automatically granted elevated status in our culture, praised for her guts, stamina, and even “balls”. Women who “break [gender] barriers” enter a special pantheon of heroines. Cartoons and action-movies are filled with super-athletic females who successfully battle all manner of male antagonists.

Feminists were, for a long time, extremely enthusiastic about this view of things. It was radical feminist Kate Millett, author of feminism’s bible Sexual Politics (1970), who praised sexologist John Money for experiments allegedly showing that gender had little or nothing to do with biological sex. She declared approvingly that “In the absence of complete evidence, I agree in general with Money and the Hampsons who show in their large series of intersexed patients that gender role is determined by postnatal forces, regardless of the anatomy and physiology of the external genitalia” (p. 30).

Many other feminists similarly emphasized gender’s social character and declared transgenderism a form of sexual liberation for women, with feminist writer Jacqueline Rose pronouncing in an essay for The New Statesman that “The gender binary is false” and that “Challenging the binary by transitioning becomes one of the most imaginative leaps in modern society”.

Feminist sociologists Judith Lorber and Patricia Martin argued extensively in “The Socially Constructed Body” (see especially the gob-smacking pp. 258-261) that women would at last pass men in many traditional sports when they truly believed they could, for “If members of society are told repeatedly that women’s bodily limitations prevent them from doing sports as well as men, they come to believe it […]”. Lorber and Martin lamented that opportunities were so rare for men and women to compete directly with one another (strongly implying that the patriarchy kept men and women apart so that women couldn’t judge for themselves), and they looked forward to a feminist future in which women could at last demonstrate their true physical capabilities.

From the first, the machinery of this kind of celebration backed men into an impossible corner. Most men have always known that women are not as strong as they; few men want to compete against a woman in sport or elsewhere. Yet no man dared gainsay the right of any woman to show herself equal to or better than a man if she could, whatever the context. If a man refused to compete with a woman, to welcome her into his club, to hire her into his firm, to respect her in any athletic endeavor — then he was a Neanderthal and a misogynist who should be shamed, shouted down, and immediately dismissed from his job.

But a man who competes with a woman, or treats her as he would treat a man, is often in trouble too, as we are seeing now. Yes, a woman was just as good as a man, our culture has insisted, but always and only on the woman’s terms. Sometimes the woman did not wish to be treated as an equal or a competitor, and that too was her right. Men had no say in the matter.

Over the years, there have been cases in which women didn’t like the culture men had created in their places of business; didn’t like male jokes, male camaraderie, male means of competition, or male methods of evaluation. Some women felt harassed, disrespected, held to an unreasonable standard, judged too harshly, given inadequate mentoring, singled out, left too much alone, treated cruelly, looked down upon, forced to behave in ways they didn’t prefer.

In general, women like competing against men and getting praise for it, but they don’t like losing to men.

Some women have turned in fury on the men who took the feminists at their word, preposterously claiming, as did “gender critical” (i.e. anti-trans) feminist journalist and former academic Helen Joyce in her Quillette essay “The New Patriarchy: How Trans Radicalism Hurts Women, Children, and Trans People Themselves” (2018), that trans women exemplify the latest form of the patriarchy that seeks to subjugate women, usurping their bodies and silencing their voices.

Many men, keen to avoid the gender wars they’d never wanted to fight in the first place, have felt understandably flummoxed and on the defensive. Which is it? Are women equal to men in all areas of endeavor, or not? Should women be kept out of direct competitions, or encouraged to show their mettle? Should men champion male-female sameness, or respect male-female difference?

In some once-exclusively-male areas, elaborate protocols have had to be worked out to protect women from feeling as if they have been beaten by men, while also protecting them from the knowledge that they were being protected.

The Most Pointless Battle of WW1? – Passchendaele 1917

Filed under: Australia, Britain, Cancon, France, Germany, History, Military, WW1 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The Great War
Published 11 Apr 2025

For more than three long months in 1917, Allied and German soldiers fought tooth and nail over a battlefield churned into a sea of sucking mud and shellholes by the guns. Hundreds of thousands were killed and wounded, some of them drowning in the soupy ground — for Allied gains of just a few kilometers. So why did the Battle of Passchendaele happen at all, and was it the most pointless battle of the First World War? (more…)

They really are trying to shut down “wrong” speech on the internet

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Government, Law, Liberty, Media, Politics, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

I’ve always been a huge fan of free speech, which has been under continuous and escalating threat by many governments both in person and online. A side-note in the ongoing Canadian federal election has been Liberal leader Mark Carney’s commitment to addressing “online harm” as he defines it:

At a campaign rally in Hamilton, Ontario, Liberal leader Mark Carney unveiled what can only be described as a coordinated assault on digital freedom in Canada. Behind the slogans, applause lines, and empty rhetoric about unity, one portion of Carney’s remarks stood out for its implications: a bold, unapologetic commitment to controlling online speech under the guise of “safety” and “misinformation”.

    We announced a series of measures with respect to online harm … a sea of misogyny, anti-Semitism, hatred, conspiracy theories — the sort of pollution that’s online that washes over our virtual borders from the United States.

He then made clear his intention to act:

    My government, if we are elected, will be taking action on those American giants who come across [our] border.

The former central banker, who now postures as a man of the people, made it clear that if the Liberals are re-elected, the federal government will intensify efforts to regulate what Canadians are allowed to see, say, and share online. His language was deliberate. Carney condemned what he called a “sea of misogyny, anti-Semitism, hatred, conspiracy theories” polluting Canada’s internet space — language borrowed directly from the Trudeau-era playbook. But this wasn’t just a moral denunciation. It was a legislative preview.

Carney spoke of a future Liberal government taking “action on those American giants who come across our borders”. Translation: he wants to bring Big Tech platforms under federal control, or at least force them to play the role of speech enforcers for the Canadian state. He blamed the United States for exporting “hate” into Canada, reinforcing the bizarre Liberal narrative that the greatest threat to national unity isn’t foreign actors like the CCP or radical Islamists — it’s Facebook memes and American podcasts.

But the most revealing moment came when Carney linked online speech directly to violence. He asserted that digital “pollution” affects how Canadians behave in real life, specifically pointing to conjugal violence, antisemitism, and drug abuse. This is how the ground is prepared for censorship: first by tying speech to harm, then by criminalizing what the state deems harmful.

What Carney didn’t say is just as important. He made no distinction between actual criminal incitement and political dissent. He offered no assurance that free expression — a right enshrined in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms — would be respected. He provided no definition of what constitutes a “conspiracy theory” or who gets to make that determination. Under this framework, any criticism of government policy, of global institutions, or of the new technocratic order could be flagged, throttled, and punished.

And that’s the point.

Mark Carney isn’t interested in dialogue. He wants obedience. He doesn’t trust Canadians to discern truth from fiction. He believes it’s the job of government — his government — to curate the national conversation, to protect citizens from wrongthink, to act as referee over what is and isn’t acceptable discourse. In short, he wants Ottawa to become the Ministry of Truth.

In Britain, their equivalent to Canada’s “online harms” legislation has induced Bitchute to discontinue service to users in the UK:

A READER alerted us to this statement posted on the Bitchute homepage, visible to geolocated UK users:

    After careful review and ongoing evaluation of the regulatory landscape in the United Kingdom, we regret to inform you that BitChute will be discontinuing its video sharing service for UK residents.

    The introduction of the UK Online Safety Act of 2023 has brought about significant changes in the regulatory framework governing online content and community interactions. Notably, the Act contains sweeping provisions and onerous corrective measures with respect to content moderation and enforcement. In particular, the broad enforcement powers granted to the regulator of communication services, Ofcom, have raised concerns regarding the open-ended and unpredictable nature of regulatory compliance for our platform.

    The BitChute platform has always operated on principles of freedom of speech, expression and association, and strived to foster an open and inclusive environment for content creators and audiences alike. However, the evolving regulatory pressures — including strict enforcement mechanisms and potential liabilities — have created an operational landscape in which continuing to serve the UK market exposes our company to unacceptable legal and compliance risks. Despite our best efforts to navigate these challenges, the uncertainty surrounding the OSA’s enforcement by Ofcom and its far-reaching implications leaves us no viable alternative but to cease normal operations in the UK.

    Therefore, effective immediately, BitChute platform users in the UK will no longer be available to view content produced by any other BitChute user. Because the OSA’s primary concern is that members of the public will view content deemed unsafe, however, we will permit UK BitChute users to continue to post content. The significant change will be that this UK user-posted content will not be viewable by any other UK user, but will be visible to other users outside of the UK. Users outside the UK may comment on that content, which the creator will continue to be able to read, delete, block, reply and flag. Users outside the UK may share UK-user produced content to other users outside of the UK as normal. In other words, for users in the UK, including content creators, the BitChute platform is no longer a user-to-UK user video sharing service.

This is the exactly the kind of consequence we at TCW feared a result of the overly restrictive and poorly written Online Safety Act 2023, which has now come into force.

The way the technology works is that websites can use a geolocation service to analyse the IP address your internet service provider has given your service, and use this to determine where you are. Google does this to tailor ads to you, Amazon does this to get you the most convenient version of their website.

Now Bitchute are using this service to protect themselves from the UK Government’s overreach.

The good news: there is a way round this.

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