Quotulatiousness

May 25, 2020

The Problem With Civil War Reenactors

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

Atun-Shei Films
Published 6 Feb 2019

A former Gettysburg tour guide and confirmed farb talks smack about folks who take the hobby way too seriously.

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Thoreau would clearly support ending mandatory lockdowns

Filed under: Government, History, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In an article discussing civil disobedience in the face of unreasonable government action, Lawrence W. Reed recalls the opinions of noted civil disobedience supporter Henry David Thoreau:

Daguerreotype of Thoreau in 1856 by B. D. Maxham.
Image via Wikimedia Commons.

History is full of stories of people who practiced peaceful resistance in defense of sound principles in the face of official stupidity and oppression. Sometimes it has been the best way, if not the only one, to get bad policies changed.

One hundred and seventy years ago, a famous American figure wrote,

    Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.

That figure was Henry David Thoreau. Born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1817, he was an eminent philosopher, poet and essayist. His best-known works are his book Walden: Life in the Woods and his essay, “Civil Disobedience”. The latter proved influential far beyond his time and place, shaping the thoughts and actions of eminent dissidents the world over. As we ponder the civil disobedience rising in reaction to coronavirus policies, now is a perfect time to give Thoreau’s essay another look. Toward that end, I offer some excerpts below.

One last thing before I do that: I want readers to know that, speaking strictly for myself, I endorse the re-opening of houses of worship (and many other things, for that matter), whether the government officially allows it or not. If that perspective makes life a little uncomfortable for the power-hungry at this time, so be it. The additional articles listed below reflect my reasoning.

Now, to Henry David Thoreau:

  • “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison…, the only house in a slave state in which a free man can abide with honor.”
  • “If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go; perchance it will wear smooth — certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.”
  • “I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject.”
  • “If a thousand [citizens] were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.”
  • “The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.”
  • “I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.”

Thanks for listening. See you in church

May 24, 2020

Zuby on why Joe Biden’s “you ain’t black” comment is one of the most racist things said by any US politician recently

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

I’d embed all the tweets here, but the page loading speed would be monumentally slow, so here’s the initial tweet and I’ve scraped the text from the rest and put it in blockquotes:

Every black person is aware of the power and pain of being considered an ‘outsider’ within one’s own ‘race’.

This happens everywhere, but it is a common phenomenon particularly amongst Black Americans, due to history and culture. (2/14)

—

You are probably familiar with terms like ‘Uncle Tom’, ‘coon’, ‘house n*gga’, ‘coconut’, ‘Bounty’ and ‘race traitor’.

These slurs are used to demean black people by stripping them of their ‘Blackness’. (3/14)

—

ALL black conservatives, libertarians, centrists, or even moderate liberals have been on the receiving end of at least one of these slurs.

Usually levied by another black person, but occasionally by a particularly bold ‘woke white progressive’ type. (4/14)

—

This form of ostracisation is particularly painful for Black Americans. Who are largely disconnected from their African roots due to the horrors of slavery.

As a substitute, many cling to a fuzzy concept of ‘Blackness’. For the sake of identity and community. (5/14)

—

So, to be considered ‘not black’ is like being an outcast of a community that often already feels alienated… (6/14)

—

I am not American and I do not speak on behalf of anybody but myself. These are my own thoughts.

My name is Nzubechukwu and my heritage is of the Igbo tribe in Anambra state in Nigeria 🇳🇬

So NOBODY can take my ‘Blackness’ from me! They will look foolish trying! (7/14)

—

Most Black Americans don’t have this SOLID sense of heritage.

People (of all colours) know this and weaponise it against them to prevent individuals from stepping out of the ‘groupthink’.

Anyone who is perceived to go ‘against’ ‘The Black Community’ must be punished. (8/14)

—

Left-wing politicians, activists and professional race hustlers have used this psychological warfare to keep black people ‘in check’ and voting for them for many decades.

It’s demeaning, discriminatory, and it strips black people of our agency. (9/14)

—

So, when Biden suggested that ‘you ain’t Black’ if you consider voting for Trump instead of him, he exposed a much deeper form of racism.

The sense of ‘ownership’ of Black people. Unearned allegiance and entitlement.

It was a vile statement… (10/14)

—

But it was also honest. Because that’s how a lot of these politicians and ‘progressives’ really feel about black people.

Like they own us. (11/14)

—

If you were born black, then you will die black. There is no such thing as being ‘politically black’. This is nonsense designed to CONTROL you and keep you needy.

NOBODY can take away your ‘Blackness’. Your ‘Black Card’ is your birthright. Regardless of who you vote for. (12/14)

—

I would never dream of telling anyone who they must vote for, based on their skin colour nor genitalia.

That would be extremely arrogant, condescending and discriminatory.

Be VERY suspicious of anybody who talks like that. They want to control your mind. (13/14)

—

That is all. I hope you enjoyed my TED talk.

Much love. 👊🏾

Zuby
#ImStillBlack

H/T to Darleen for posting the link to David Thompson’s blog.

May 22, 2020

When raising tax rates reduces total tax revenue

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

In the Continental Telegraph, Tim Worstall explains that the US tax system is already drawing too much in tax and any hope of increasing the total revenue will hinge on reducing the tax rate:

It is often stated that the rate [the Laffer Curve peak rate] discovered here is 75 to 80%. This is not so – that could be the rate if only we entirely and wholly changed the taxation system in a mass of highly undesirable ways. If we remain with roughly what we’ve got in structure and intent then the peak of the Laffer Curve is 54%. That is not income tax, that is taxes upon income. That means we add together all Federal and State taxes upon income, including “employer paid” portions of Social Security, Medicaid, special amounts for this and that and so on and on. Anyone even vaguely familiar with the US taxation system will note that top earners are, already in many states, paying this or more.

There is something else though. The Laffer Curve is not about taxes upon high earners. It is about taxes upon income. It’s true that there will be slight differences in what the peak rate on lower incomes should be, or what the peak of the curve is there. The income effect will be higher than the substitution at lower incomes than it is at higher. We don’t know how much so let’s just stick with what we’ve got – 54%.

At which point:

    The U.S. has a plethora of federal and state tax and benefit programs, each with its own work incentives and disincentives. This paper uses the Fiscal Analyzer (TFA) to assess how these policies, in unison, impact work incentives. TFA is a life-cycle, consumption-smoothing program that incorporates household borrowing constraints and all major federal and state fiscal policies. We use TFA in conjunction with the 2016 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances to calculate Americans’ remaining lifetime marginal net tax rates. Our findings are striking. One in four low-wage workers face marginal net tax rates above 70 percent, effectively locking them into poverty.

This includes the withdrawal of welfare benefits as income rises – as it should – and so is compatible with the Universal Credit idea that the peak tax and withdrawal rate should be 60%. Or is it 66%?

As we can see that rate is hugely above the Laffer Curve peak. It should, therefore, be lower.

It’s possible to extend the taper. Withdraw benefits at slower rates as income rises. This is, however, hugely, vastlylily, expensive. So it’s not going to happen to any significant degree and if it does then it will be financed by reducing the overall amount of benefit being paid. Which would mean taking money off the truly low income in order to soften the blow to the marginally low income – not the way we want to be doing things.

The only other way to do this is to reduce the taxation of the income of those low income folks. This has been done, a bit, by the Trump tax reforms and the much larger personal deduction. A further bite could be taken by FICA taxation only applying to the income above the personal deduction, not from dollar $1 of income as now. In fact that would be the simplest manner of at least beginning to get to grips with this problem. FICA only starts at $12,000 a year or so. Or even, if all are to be sensible, starting income tax and FICA only at the poverty line, currently $14,000 or so a year for a single adult.

May 21, 2020

The Milk Dud’s (final?) flip-flop

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

Walking political liability Andrew “The Milk Dud” Scheer managed to bring himself to the attention of the media yet again for his decision to backtrack on renouncing his American citizenship … did Justin need him to take the heat off for another Trudeau blunder?

Andrew Scheer, paid tool of Big Dairy and dual citizen of Canada and the United States, chugs some milk during a Press Gallery speech in 2017.
Screencapture from a CTV video uploaded to YouTube.

I don’t suppose Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer’s flip-flop on renouncing his U.S. citizenship will be of interest very long, but I have parting shots to take about it. In backtracking on his original intention to give up the United States of America, Scheer showed an awareness that there is at least one position in Canadian government, that of prime minister, which requires going the extra mile to avoid the appearance of divided or compromised allegiance. I am being careful not to say “loyalty,” which, unlike allegiance, might be regarded as a purely private matter.

It is a good thing that Scheer recognizes the importance of these issues. But he made a big deal about the disavowal being a “personal decision” during the 2019 election. What’s changed now, he says, is that he will never be prime minister. So he is now free to be an American, which, by definition, is the freest goldurn thing you can be.

But: “I’ll never be prime minister” seems like a hell of a thing for the leader of the Opposition, which Scheer still is until August at the earliest, to say. Our House of Commons is in a hung state. No party commands a majority. The Conservatives (who would want us to remember that they led in the 2019 popular vote) chose not to have an interim leader in Scheer’s place while permanent successors were sized up. The Liberals don’t have anything like a binding supply-and-confidence agreement with any other party. The country is in the grip of epidemic disease.

When the behind-the-scenes Liberal-friendly Quebec dairy folks selected Scheer as their preferred patsy to “lead” the “Conservative” party, they chose very well indeed. Scheer might as well be wearing a Washington Generals jersey from now on.

Tank Chats #70 Sherman M4A4 | The Tank Museum

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, USA, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Tank Museum
Published 23 Mar 2019

In Tank Chat #70, David Fletcher talks through the Sherman M4A4. The M4A4 is a relatively new addition to The Tank Museum, which is on long term loan.

Used and loved by the British, find out what makes this tank different from other types of Sherman in The Tank Museum.

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May 19, 2020

The Karenist coup

Filed under: Government, Health, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

L. Neil Smith on our current self-inflicted plight:

We find ourselves here, in this particular time and this particular place in the history of our republic, because of a 239-year-old oversight made by the Founding Fathers, in that the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution, commonly known as the Bill of Rights (the name itself is a mistake), contain no penalty clause for those — politicians, bureaucrats, policemen — who violate them. I’m not entirely sure it was accidental, but, as a result, they are violated daily, hourly, as a matter of course, and this Corona Virus farce — many others come to mind — is simply the most recent and most preposterous example.

(The name itself is an error because this document is not a mere list of privileges that the government generously lets the people exercise. Quite the opposite, it is a list of things that the government is absolutely forbidden to do It should have been called the “Bill of Limits”. And if the Founders, who had just fought and won a desperate, bloody war against the world’s most brutal and rapacious super-power, hadn’t meant them to be absolute, then why — for all you “living document” idiots out there — would they have even bothered to write them down?)

All over this bruised and battered country, a flock of mean, moronic, petty tyrants have issued illegal orders to those they clearly regard as the peasantry: stay home, avoid your fellow human beings, and above all, shut down the Machinery of Freedom which we know as capitalism. If it’s ever allowed to start up again, it must strictly be on terms that are essentially Marxist in character. No mere individual can ever again scratch his ass without written government approval and permission. In effect, the left has the revolution — as usual, achieved by somebody else — it has wanted for 180 years, since the days of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.

What’s more, many otherwise decent and intelligent folks are out there begging for their rulers to let them be free again. I find that repulsive and unAmerican. And to those boobies (including Sean Hannity and Joy Behar) blubbering about patriots bring their weapons to demonstrations, listen up: the Founders meant the government to be intimidated by the people, you hapless buffoons.

My bottom line, here, is that, in the short run, we must free ourselves — now — from what we have to call Faucism. Scientific pleaders like the dictatorial doctor must be made painfully aware that when their pronouncements have clear political and economic consequences, their protests of innocence sound a bit too much like “I was just following orders”.

May 18, 2020

QotD: Science, evidence and “cognitive creationism”

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

I wrote about this problem in one of my Scientific American monthly columns recently, noting that both the Right and the Left distort science in the service of their ideology. On the Right we see the denial of evolution, vaccinations, stem cell research, and global warming. On the Left we see the distortion or denial of GMOs, nuclear power, genetic engineering, and evolutionary psychology, the latter of which I have called “cognitive creationism” for its endorsement of a blank slate model of the mind in which natural selection only operated on humans from the neck down.

What can we do about this problem? First, we must acknowledge that for most issues most conservatives and liberals are pro-science. Recent surveys show that over 90 percent of both Republicans and Democrats in the U.S., for example, agreed that “science and technology give more opportunities” and that “science makes our lives better.” In other words, anti-science attitudes are formed in very narrow cognitive windows — those in which science appears to oppose certain political or religious views. Knowledge of a subject helps a little. For example, those who know more about climate science are slightly more likely to accept that global warming is real and human-caused than those who know less on the subject. But that modest effect is not only erased when political ideology is factored in, it has an opposite effect on one end of the political spectrum. For Republicans, the more knowledge they have about climate science the less likely they are to accept the theory of anthropogenic global warming (while Democrats’ confidence goes up).

In another Scientific American column I wrote about this “backfire” effect, in which the more information you give someone that contradicts a cherished belief, the less likely they are to change their mind; in fact, they double-down on the belief. But this only applies to important political, religious, or ideological beliefs.

If you don’t have a dog in the fight then the facts can change your mind. But the cognitive dissonance created by facts counter to beliefs by which you define yourself will almost always be resolved by spin-doctoring the facts, not by changing your mind. Thus, when I engage in debate or conversation with creationists, for example, I don’t give them the choice between Darwin and Jesus, because I know who’s going to lose that one. Instead, I try to convince them that evolution was God’s way of creation, just like people in Newton’s time and after came to believe that gravity was God’s way of creating solar systems. I don’t believe that myself, of course, but the point is to get people to embrace science, not to win an argument. With climate deniers, I know from research and personal experience that when they hear “global warming” they think “anti-capitalism,” “anti-freedom,” “anti-American way of life.” So I take that off the table by showing them how investing in green technology is going to be one of the most lucrative enterprises in the history of capitalism. I call this the Elon Musk Model.

Michael Shermer, interviewed by Claire Lehmann, “The Skeptical Optimist: Interview with Michael Shermer”, Quillette, 2018-02-24.

May 16, 2020

Remy: “Surfin’ USA” (Beach Boys Lockdown Parody)

Filed under: Government, Health, Humour, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

ReasonTV
Published 15 May 2020

Remy discovers the dangers of exercising alone.

Written and performed by Remy. Music tracks, mastering, and background vocals by Ben Karlstrom. Video produced by Meredith and Austin Bragg.

LYRICS:
If you go out on the ocean
Across the USA
And you’re wearing a swim shirt
‘Cuz of your scrawny weight (it’s for the sun, I swear)

Well, uh, you just might notice
The police in your wake
Cuz it’s illegal to be surfing
In the USA

They’re catching them out paddle boarding
Letting their children play
While they’re releasing this guy
A logical checkmate

You’re out in nature alone now
No one in six-foot range?
Well it’s illegal to be surfing
In the USA

If only you had flashed some children
It’d be your release date!
But you’re going to jail for surfing
In the USA

You’ve been distancing for months now
To keep the spread rate down
The only places you’ve been going
Are where there are no crowds

You’re making sacrifices
For your community
Now put your hands on your head because you are surfing
In the USA

He’s helping the flattening the curve now
He’s exercising alone
Rocking a super baggy swim shirt
To hide his muscle tone (I said it’s for the sun)

If only you had flashed some children
It’d be your release date!
But you’re going to jail for surfing
In the USA

The Wuhan Coronavirus, the excuse for an emergency without end

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Health, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Mark Steyn on the seven-hundred-and-fifty-third day of our captivity:

Emergency without end is the staple of almost every futuristic dystopia — and that’s true for real life, too. So Americans shuffle shoeless through the airports for twenty years while their governments negotiate with the very organization that enabled those attacks — the Taliban — to restore them to power. Is a culture that cannot see off goatherds with fertilizer really going to rouse itself to decouple from a global superpower that supplies everything from its crappy “These Colors Don’t Run” T-shirts to its surgical masks and pharmacy medications?

~For my own part, I have been reading ancient accounts from Occupied France and Vichy for tips on finding workarounds for restraints on the citizenry. As wily and innovative as the French Resistance were, I wonder if their efforts would even be possible in an age when cheap Chinese-made drones can hover unseen and monitor every conversation.

[…]

Even without governors terrorizing those tavern-keepers or hairdressers who defy them, the lockdown has exaggerated the contradictions: The state wants open borders for “migrants” but a security perimeter around the homes of its citizens. Maybe the absurdities become so obvious that there is widespread rejection of them. Or maybe, one by one, the poor put-upon over-surveilled citizenry take a cue from their undocumented non-brethren. Perhaps I should just mug an illegal immigrant and steal his fake ID…

~The emergency is already feeling permanent. It starts with the social norms: Dr Fauci tells us the handshake is gone for good. That’s not a small loss. I don’t care for the suggested replacements, like the lame-o hand-on-heart gesture. I bow from the neck to the Queen — and just last year I did so to her Canadian vicereine, Mme Payette. Her Excellency then stepped forward and gave me a hug. But I don’t suppose she’s doing that anymore…

People ask me why I haven’t been on TV lately. Well, I mainly like going on TV to behave like a person who’s on TV. So, if you notice, on the “Fox & Friends” live-audience shows, I come bounding in like Tigger and do a lot of gladhanding with those on the aisle (including the odd hug), and then I give Steve and Brian manly handshakes and do a little light kissy-kissy with Ainsley. And all that — the basic language of telly for seventy years — is gone, apparently forever.

[…]

The WHO, the Beijing public relations firm whose pronouncements the BBC, The New York Times et al insist on taking as gospel, now says Covid-19 is here to stay — like HIV. With HIV, it wasn’t that difficult to avoid catching it, because it required the exchange of bodily fluids, which is a fairly intense and specific degree of intimacy. With Covid, we are rolling a protective condom down over every routine social intercourse.

A contributor at the Continental Telegraph explains why he no longer supports the lockdown:

First, it turns out that the drastic steps we were taking were based on one model. That no one outside the team using it was allowed to review. We were even told that we couldn’t check the coding because it was so old & patched together that it’s too hard to follow. That’s like saying you can’t check the brakes because you won’t be able to see all the duct tape and Velcro we’re using. Further, we’re told that this software doesn’t provide the same results from one run to the next.

Next, I heard about Dr. Ferguson’s history of wildly overestimating the fatalities from mad cow disease and bird flu (50k compared to <200, 200 million versus <500 respectively). Also, the CDC’s estimate of Ebola deaths in Sierra Leone (1.4 million compared to 8k). And let’s not forget the U.S. Public Health Service’s overshoot on the number of AIDS infections in 1993 (450k versus 17k). At this point I gave more thought to the issue of modeling – prior to retiring I was an actuary and modeling was what I did for a living. A few points about how modeling works: The more complex a system is, the more difficult it is to build a good model. And, more importantly, the more difficult it becomes to test your model and confirm that it accurately mirrors the real world. And this looks like one of the most complex systems to model I’ve ever heard of. How can you test this against reality? I don’t think you can. You can run simulations and confirm it looks like you expected, but that doesn’t mean the virus behaves like your model. Another point about modeling is that the results are extremely dependent on the assumptions you’re using. And in this case two critical assumptions are how infectious the virus is and how lethal it is. We still have a poor understanding of these variables months after we started Lockdown. Then a lot of us noticed that the goal shifted from “flattening the curve” to avoid a catastrophic overflow at hospitals to Lockdown until “fill in the blank” (in some states a vaccine, in others no deaths for 14 days, etc.). And the lockdown rules are inconsistent and illogical – in Michigan you can’t buy plant seeds but you can buy lottery tickets. To add insult to injury, many of the people with their foot on our necks violate the rules (the mayors of Chicago and New York, Dr. Ferguson, etc.). I’m stunned and angry at how little attention the human costs of the Lockdown receive. We know that this will lead to increased suicides, homicides and drug overdoses. Let’s not forget more child abuse, domestic violence, depression, drug and alcohol abuse, the list of miseries goes on a very, very long way (I may write up an article just on this, the Lockdown harpies should have to admit to all the harm they’re so enthusiastically spreading).

How It’s Made – Utility Poles

Filed under: Technology, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 02:00

How Its Made
Published 12 Jul 2016

How It’s Made season 26
Utility Poles

May 13, 2020

Tank Chats #69 Ram Mark II | The Tank Museum

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, USA, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Tank Museum
Published 15 Mar 2019

David Fletcher talks about the WW2 Ram Mark II tank, built by Canada during the Second World War.

It was based upon the American Medium M3 (Lee) and many components were supplied by the United States.

Support the work of The Tank Museum on Patreon: ► https://www.patreon.com/tankmuseum

Visit The Tank Museum SHOP: ► https://tankmuseumshop.org/
Twitter: ► https://twitter.com/TankMuseum
Tiger Tank Blog: ► http://blog.tiger-tank.com/
Tank 100 First World War Centenary Blog: ► http://tank100.com/ #tankmuseum #tanks #tankchats

May 11, 2020

QotD: Certainty is liberation

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

My last semester of college was a total blowoff. I already had enough credits to graduate at the end of the previous term, but I figured that since I was on scholarship, I might as well use the remaining time to really lock down a job. One fell into my lap over the break, but it was too late to withdraw my registration and file for graduation. And that wasn’t all. My GPA was such that I could’ve failed every single class in that final semester and still graduated. And finally, the job was all the way across the country …

In short, absolutely nothing I did, or didn’t do, that final semester meant anything at all. I was as responsibility-free as an “adult” human can ever hope to get.

This had some interesting consequences. I got laid a lot more, for one thing — sorry about the crudity, but it’s a great illustration of the principle. The principle being: “When you truly don’t care, you project this invincible vibe that attracts people.” My friends were all shocked — not just about the getting laid part, but the fact that my whole personality seemed to change. I am not, as you might imagine, the most outgoing, happy-go-lucky guy, but that semester I was.

I mean, why not? I’d hit on varsity cheerleaders and sorority goddesses. I turned in wildly counter-intuitive assignments, just to see what would happen. I signed up for Intro to Conversational Chinese. Totally bombed it, but seriously, why not? I’ve always wanted to know if I have a knack for languages (turns out I don’t), and that was the hardest one in the course catalog. So long as I stayed alive and out of jail, I could do whatever the hell I wanted … so I did.

The lesson I drew from this: Certainty is liberation. It’s bliss. I still had anxieties, of course — e.g. how was I going to do in my new life, all the way across the continent? — but in my current context, I had no worries at all. I was King of the Dorm, because, quite simply, I could afford to be. I had three hots and a cot, endless free time, and a give-a-damn meter stuck on zero.

If I were quicker on the uptake, I’d have identified that instant as my turn to the Shitlord side of the Force. What in god’s name am I doing, hitting on the homecoming queen? Doesn’t matter. She could blow me off so viciously that dudes three blocks over would wince and cover themselves,* and I couldn’t care less. Why not shoot for the moon? If I win, I’m a dorm legend; if I fail, I’m still a dorm legend for having the balls to try it. In two months, I’ll be a thousand miles away and nobody will care about either of us.

*She didn’t. She didn’t go out with me, of course, but she was very nice and gracious, as most truly pretty girls are. Another valuable lesson learned.

Severian, “The Emotion is the Tell”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2020-01-24.

May 10, 2020

QotD: “Shirtstorm” and other forms of systematic patriarchal oppression of women

Filed under: Media, Politics, Quotations, Space, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Shirtstorm was more of the same. Rose Eveleth, Vagina Vigilante, might not know much about probes or comets, or have much interest in them. One gets a feeling in her mind aerospace is that icky thing that sweaty, nerdy boys do. So, forced to cover it (or snatching it up as a prize assignment) for her paper, she paid attention to the one important thing in the world: herself. And since she’s female, she projected her prejudices onto all other females, and decided women everywhere would be put off science by a man’s shirt decorated with “space pinups.” A shirt made by a woman. A shirt worn amid a team whose leader was a woman who saw nothing wrong with it. But Vagina Vigilante was on the job! One gets the feeling she didn’t do very well at science, and now she had a REASON. It was the sexism of the field, manifest in a shirt.

Which totally justified making a rocket scientist cry on the day of his greatest triumph. After all, people like him had ruined her life, right?

But it gets worse than that – there was an entire campus filled with supposedly educated (ah!) women terrorized by the statue of a sleep walking man.

And then there’s the ever-elastic definition of “sexual assault” which – I’m not making this up – can now be ratcheted down to “Looked at me in a way that made me feel uncomfortable” or, for that matter “failed to sexually assault me.” Oh, sorry, that last was the definition of racism. Some Palestinian woman looked at rape statistics and found that Israeli women are raped by Palestinian men in much higher numbers than Palestinian women are raped by Israeli men, and immediately concluded this is because Israelis are racist. It beggars the mind.

Another thing that beggars the mind is the progressive image of women as great warriors. You know, in all the movies and half the books (often without supernatural explanation) a 90 lb chick can beat 300 lb men. And women were always great fighters throughout the ages. And, and, and …

And yet, women are peaceful – peaceful, d*mn it. This is why “peaceful planet of women” is a trope on TV tropes. Not just a trope, but a dead horse one.

Attempts to square that circle have included the explanation that women are only violent because patriarchy. There needs be nothing else said because in this context, and with apologies to the ponies, Patriarchy Is Magic. Honorable mention on trying to square the circle must go to Law and Order‘s attempted episode on Gamer Gate where the game the woman designer had written was about Peaceful Amazon Warriors.

Sarah Hoyt, “Give Me My Smelling Salts, Ho! A Blast From The Past From April 2015”, According to Hoyt, 2020-01-22.

May 9, 2020

History Summarized: The Meiji Restoration

Filed under: Economics, Government, History, Humour, Japan, Military, USA, WW1, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 8 May 2020

Japan may well have the record for World’s Speediest Industrialization, but how did they accomplish so much so fast without falling victim to Europe’s favorite 19th century pastime of “Colonization”? And how did Japan build up a Pan-Asian empire so darn quickly? All that and more in this deep-dive into the Meiji Restoration!

SOURCES & Further Reading:
Modern Japan: A Very Short Introduction by Goto-Jones.
The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War by Paine.
Bushido: The Soul of Japan by Nitobe.

THAT WACKY POLITICAL CARTOON: “Japan Makes Her Debut Under Columbia’s Auspicies” https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services…

This video was edited by Sophia Ricciardi AKA “Indigo”. https://www.sophiakricci.com/

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