Links - 23rd April 2024 (2 - Women)

Meme - Lyman Stone @lymanstoneky: "Your regular reminder that the opportunity costs of motherhood in America are, when measured by the size of the motherhood income penalty, falling, not rising, and so "opportunity costs" are not reasonable explanation for falling fertility."

Meme - "Hill: There's no International Men's Day because we can't celebrate all the accomplishments of men in one day like we can with women"

Meme - Melian Refugee @escapefrommelos: "women choose one of two paths when they are blessed and burdened by huge fucking yams *Sydney Sweeney exposing cleavage, Billie Eilish concealing hers with frumpy clothing*

McKenna Kindred: Ex-Washington High School Teacher Sobs as She Avoids Jail Time after Sexually Engaging with Student While Husband Was Away - "A former married high school teacher convicted of having sex with an underage student will not face any jail time, despite the victim's mother claiming that the teacher's "predatory behavior" robbed the student of his aspirations. McKenna Kindred sobbed as she apologized to the victim and his family in the courtroom and admitted to the crimes she committed... "I know that this past year has been enormously stressful for all involved.  "As a result of my actions I've lost my career, valuable friendships, freedoms and have let down countless people who placed their trust in me.  "My mental health has also been severely affected by this event. I am deeply ashamed of the pain I have caused.""

What Makes People Attracted to Each Other? - The Atlantic ("Scientifically Proven Sources of Sex Appeal") - "Scads of studies suggest that those of us looking for Mr. or Ms. Right may actually be looking for Mr. Facial Symmetry or Ms. Ideal Waist-to-Hip Ratio (about 0.7 for women). But other research suggests that whether a trait is attractive depends on the type of connection you’re looking for. For example, women in one study found men with facial scars more appealing than other men for short-term relationships, but not for long-term ones. In another study, men with beards had an edge among women seeking long-term relationships—a finding that might give clean-shaven guys with scars an idea about how to turn a one-night stand into something lasting... Should two people seek lasting happiness, they may want to define the relationship, especially if they’re already friends. As any Harry or Sally can tell you, while women often mistake males’ indications of sexual interest for expressions of friendliness, men consistently mistake females’ expressions of friendliness for sexual interest... Those of you playing at home may have noticed that men have more predictable (and physical) definitions of what makes a woman attractive than women do for men. Elsewhere in the “Hey, eyes up here!” school of attraction science, people in one study tended to look at faces if seeking love, and bodies if motivated by sexual desire. In another study, people tended to check out a romantic prospect’s head and chest—while they focused on the legs and feet of someone in the friend zone. If two people can get it together to go out, they are likely to wear red or black, especially common choices on a first date. No wonder: Red makes everyone seem more attractive, both to themselves and to others. What they order matters, too. Researchers have found that a woman is more likely to find a man attractive if she’s eating something that’s spicy rather than sweet. A drink may also help—but only one."

He loves me, he loves me not: The thrill of uncertainty - "the women were more attracted to the men who liked them a lot—much more attracted than they were to men who were lukewarm in their feelings. This isn’t all that surprising, and it lends support to the reciprocity principle. But—and it’s a big but—the women were most attracted to the men whose feelings remained unknown. They found these mystery men even more attractive than men who openly declared their attraction. The scientists call this the “pleasure of uncertainty,” and they also uncovered a hint as to why this dynamic works. Among the questions they asked the women were how often they thought about the different men—how frequently they “popped into their head”—during the time before they made their ratings. The women spent more time musing about the uncertain men than the others, suggesting that having a man in one’s thoughts can increase attractiveness. These women—the ones contemplating a mystery man—were also in a better mood than the women who had been flattered or deflated. The women in this study had no information about the men’s choosiness in general. That is, they didn’t know if the men were uniformly “hard to get” or “easy to get.” So this may be a new version of the “playing hard to get” scenario—creating uncertainty to pique interest. And it may be a version especially suited to the 21st century, simulating the kind of information people often get when they meet on-line. At least at the very start of the e-dating process, mystery may have some benefits."

Meme - Lakita Chandler: "niggas nut faster than they reply"
Yrn Taay: "cause yall pussy better than yall conversation"

Meme - "Ladies: ask your husband if he'd still love you if you got a sex-change. If he says "no" - walk over to your room & start packing your bags"
"ladies, do something unreasonable and drastic with huge impact on both your lives and if he doesn't agree, dump him because you actually want a submissive pet that will validate all you eccentricities"

Anne Hathaway Was Told She'd Have Zero Sex Appeal in Hollywood - "Anne Hathaway revealed in her new Vanity Fair cover story that she was told she had zero sex appeal when she was a young actor just starting out in Hollywood. Not that she ever bought into the claim: “I was like, ‘I’m a Scorpio. I know what I’m like on a Saturday night,’” she said."

Meme - MED GOLD @MedGold: "The 4 Categories of Female Attractiveness
Gorgeous - There is a stunning element to her face and a uniqueness that is striking. There is a mysterious and unconventional allure that is hard to look away from. Kate Moss is Gorgeous.
Beautiful - There is a traditional look to her face combined with a lack of explicit sexuality. Facial symmetry is the most defining factor. Anne Hathaway is Beautiful.
Hot - A face that oozes sexuality. A natural temptress who can bend most men to her will. Full lips and seductive, hypnotic eyes dictate hotness. Hot is synonymous with Sexy. Emily Ratajkowski is Hot.
Pretty - there is a strong element of sweetness. Smile is the strongest factor, which can be described as friendly or even radiating. Pretty is very close to Cute. "The girl next door." Sydney Sweeney is pretty. These categories sometimes overlap."

Meme - "Whats the worst thing someone has ever done to you?"
"I cheated on my ex (it was a one time thing, whatever) and after he found out from a mutual friend his response was to sleep with not one, not two, but all 5 of the girls in my friend group over the course of a month. Needless to say I'm no longer friends with them and I now have trust issues for life."

Meme - "First date should derinitely be public though!"
"True! We both gotta ensure survival!"
"Definitely so! As a standard, I do charge $200 for a date. Charging for dates isn't about devaluing oneself but rather recognizing the worth of one's time and companionship. By setting a price, it communicates a level of respect for oneself and ensures that the time spent together is mutually valued. It also filters out those who may not be serious about the connection, fostering more meaningful and"

Meme - Royce Lopez: "Women need to stop plastic surgery until we figure out what's wrong. Why would you ruin your face like this? This is Erin Moriarty from The Boys...she was already very pretty."
On buccal fat removal

Meme - "DO YOU WANT TO STEP UP & BE A REAL MAN FOR ME & JAMAL? *woman and Orang Utan*
*strips of paper*: "No thanks" "No thanks" "No thanks" "No thanks" "No thanks" "No thanks""

Meme - "I'm turning 40...no relationship, no children, no hope :(
A lot of things in my life have gone well. I have great parents and siblings, have gotten a fantastic education and have a rewarding career. I am active, have hobbies, have traveled and maintain a good relationship with myself.  However, despite my best efforts, I am single and about to turn 40 with basically no relationship prospects in sight. While there is nothing wrong with this, it's just not what I want. I love the domestic side of life and I've always wanted a home, and someone to share it with...maybe kids. Now that I am about to turn 40, I hear the ticking of my bio clock loudly in my ear and I feel this dream fading away. And yet I feel powerless to change this, because it depends on so many outside factors.  I've spent time concentrating on "myself", thinking that it would happen naturally if I followed my passions. I've joined activities and pursued my hobbies and gone out there and met people. I've tried online dating and networking groups. I've tried bars, I've been fixed up, I've fixed myself up...all to no avail. I can meet men, just not the right ones, apparently.  I don't feel that my standards are too high. To be honest, looks are secondary, but I want someone with a professional career (like I have), a good sense of humor, some type of hobbies or passions...who is honest and reliable enough to invest myself in. That's about it.  Right now I'm attracting younger men. Nothing wrong with that, but none have been seeking a relationship on the level I want.  Why is this so hard? I'm funny, smart, objectively cute, am in shape and look younger than my age. What can I do differently? My birthday is approaching and I feel like a door is closing to a room that I've never been allowed to visit."

Meme - "My boyfriend told me to wear a pretty flowy dress and I got mad at him and said "don't tell me how to dress" so I wore cargo pants instead And then this happened
Ladies maybe we dont need to pick a fight every time #proposa..
proposal videos"

The woman on X - "Women will cheat in a relationship and then post "She was a bird, he wanted to cage her 🕊️""

Meme - "I have a question for you."
"Yes I'd cry if you died
Yes I'd still love you if you was a worm
Yes I still love you
No I don't want to break up"
"Thank you"

Meme - "Aita for wearing the “joke” bikini my friend got me?
So it was my birthday couple months ago. Had a party. Got some gifts. My friend “Mandy” for me a “super cute bikini”. I liked it. Said thanks. She had ripped the tags off but whatever.  Anyway. Went to the community pool with my roommate. Wore bikini. Got in the water. Roommate immediately is like uhm girl.... I look and see that this bikini is now kinda see thru.  Haha good joke Mandy.  Anyway, Mandy invited me over to her place to hang out with her and her bf and a few others. Most leave and we’re still hanging out. I’m like hey, what if we get in your hot tub? I go change after them. And meet her bf in the hot tub she’s getting new drinks. I hop in. Immediately, he’s looking at my chest. I pretend I don’t notice and just make small talk. She comes out a few min after. And just looks in shock. Eventually gets in. “Uhh is that the one I bought?” Yeah I love it. I wear it everywhere. Make up some stuff about how I wore it to the beach, some party with lots of guys, etc. and she’s just like “oh”.  We’re in the tub for 20-30. Eventually get out and change. She approached me after and was like. “Uhm I’m sorry thought you’d notice. But it goes kinda see thru”. I’m like yeah I know why’d you buy me a ducking see thru bathing suit? “She’s like it’s a joke. Wait you knew? So you just spent last 30’ flashing my bf on purpose?” I reply I’m just wearing my birthday gift from her.  Anyway. Aita?"

Meme - "Blame online dating and shit like Tinder.
>women use snapchat filters to make themselves look pretty and not fat
>men start chatting with these women because they think they're hot
>they meet up. The man looks no different to his pictures. The women is a fat ugly mess.
>the guy, having spent hours putting in the ground work, and now having spent time meeting this ugly woman, thinks he'll fuck her anyway because he has nothing to lose at this point
>the woman is happy to get fucked because he's out of her league
>the guy fucks her and then goes home because he doesn't wanna stick around with an ugly woman
>the woman thinks all men are pigs because they just want her for sex
>she won't talk to less attractive men because in her mind she just had sex with a good-looking guy, therefore she should be able to get a good-Iooking boyfriend
>she talks to other good-iooking men
>the guy talks to other women who appear good- Iooking, but are actually ugly"

Meme - "George Lucas is worth 5 billion dollars and eating at the food court in the mall. Don't let her tell you Chillis isn't a date"

Meme - Someone's Unmarried Son @BigOukebowski: "I remember I took a babe to see Age of Ultron. Midway through the movie she leaned over and was like "do you want popcorn? I'll go get it if you pay" I said yeah and handed her a $20...Not only did she not come back, she got on Snapchat later and was at Cheesecake Factory"

Meme - christinaaamaral: "Ignoring people staring at you in the gym while filming content is a WORKOUT in itself!"
joeyswoll: "Please don't perpetuate this culture in gyms. You're literally filming yourself for the entire internet to see yet it bothers you that people look in real life? I'm sorry but when you set up a tripod and make a film production out of your workout people are going to look, period. I also just watched your last 3 gym videos and in all 3 you start by pulling your shorts up your a** which has nothing to do with working out."

Korean Girls Describe The Ideal Korean Girl | ASIAN BOSS - YouTube
I like the answers to why Korean girls don't show cleavage

Belvue School head teacher sexually harassed male worker, tribunal hears - "A female head teacher sexually harassed a male teaching assistant by saying he looked “fit” in Speedos, a tribunal heard.  Inappropriate comments made by senior women to younger men have “no place in the modern workplace”, an employment judge ruled after hearing the case of school worker Nikoloz Papashvili.  Mr Papashvili became the subject of staff room “banter” when colleagues laughed at sexual innuendos made by head teacher Shelagh O’Shea, an employment tribunal heard. Mrs O’Shea signed off emails to the teaching assistant with a kiss and said she wanted him to “meet the parents”."

Meme - "Central Arkansas husband link
Public group: 2 members
Becky Fraught invited you...
About: This group is for women who prefer married men. We are a support group and also will share leads on married men to each other and help each other out. Women only and your relationship status is irrelevant, married and taken women are welcome. We do not judge and we do not snitch. If you share anything in this group to men or wives of men you will be banned. Let's have some fun ladies"

Changing fortunes drive young women’s votes left and men’s right - "Young people are increasingly diverging politically, with women becoming more liberal and men more likely to be conservative, researchers have revealed. Two decades ago there was little difference between men and women aged 18 to 29 when asked to place themselves on a scale of one to ten signifying “very liberal” to “very conservative”. But an analysis of 20 wealthy countries carried out by The Economist discovered that by 2020 the gap had grown to 0.75 on the scale. The gap between men and women in Britain was 0.71. The study found that young men in 2020 were only slightly more likely to describe themselves as liberal than as conservative, with a gap of only two percentage points. However, young women were much more likely to lean to the left than the right, with a gap of 27 percentage points. In all the large countries examined by the magazine, young men were more conservative than young women. The gap between the sexes was roughly twice the size of the gap in opinion between people with and without a degree in the same year.  Alice Evans, a senior lecturer in the social science of development at King’s College London, said the change was driven by several social factors. They included a more feminised public culture, economic resentment, social media bubbles and the impact of cultural entrepreneurs. Evans, who is writing a book called The Great Gender Divergence, told The Times: “Rising university enrolment has motivated increased competition. It means that not all men can get to the top — and men care about getting to the top. “We also know that, simultaneously, many young women are choosing to stay single, so it’s also harder for young guys to attract girlfriends. Both of these things, which men really care about, have become so much harder and that is triggering resentment.” That resentment, Evans argued, is causing some young men to harden their attitudes against certain groups, such as women and foreigners.  This can mean they are more likely to turn their support to right-wing parties, have the opinion that women’s rights have gone too far or be attuned to extreme social media personalities such as Andrew Tate. Meanwhile, women continue on in today’s “culturally liberalising” society, where it is more acceptable than ever not to marry or start a family. Researchers at The Economist used the European Social Survey, America’s General Social Survey and the Korean Social Survey to examine 20 rich nations, including the UK. The study found that young men were more anti-feminist than older men, contradicting the popular notion that each generation is more liberal than the previous one.  Figures from the Financial Times in January showed a 25-point gap in the UK between increasingly conservative young men and progressive female contemporaries. Germany showed a 30-point gap, while in Poland last year almost half of men aged 18 to 21 backed the hard-right Confederation party, compared to a sixth of young women. In the United States, women aged 18 to 30 are now 30 percentage points more liberal than their male contemporaries, a gap that took only six years to open up. Evans said that due to Brexit and the unpopularity of the present Conservative government, young men in Britain were less likely to be driven to the extreme right politically. But, she added: “Certainly in other European countries, young men are more likely to turn to the far right.”"
Naturally, the masculine is pathologised, and only the "far right" is an issue, not the far left
Ironically, this admits that not delegitimising the right and banishing it from the public sphere reduces the appeal of the "far right"

Attractive Women Want it All: Good Genes, Economic Investment, Parenting Proclivities, and Emotional Commitment - "The current research tests the hypothesis that women have an evolved mate value calibration adaptation that functions to raise or lower their standards in a long-term mate according to their own mate value. A woman's physical attractiveness is a cardinal component of women's mate value. We correlated observer-assessed physical attractiveness (face, body, and overall) with expressed preferences for four clusters of mate characteristics (N = 214): (1) hypothesized good-gene indicators (e.g., masculinity, sexiness); (2) hypothesized good investment indicators (e.g., potential income); (3) good parenting indicators (e.g., desire for home and children), and (4) good partner indicators (e.g., being a loving partner). Results supported the hypothesis that high mate value women, as indexed by observer-judged physical attractiveness, expressed elevated standards for all four clusters of mate characteristics. Discussion focuses on potential design features of the hypothesized mate-value calibration adaptation, and suggests an important modification of the trade-off model of women's mating. A minority of women—notably those low in mate value who are able to escape male mate guarding and the manifold costs of an exposed infidelity—will pursue a mixed mating strategy, obtaining investment from one man and good genes from an extra-pair copulation partner (as the trade-off model predicts). Since the vast majority of women secure genes and direct benefits from the same man, however, most women will attempt to secure the best combination of all desired qualities from the same man."
Beautiful women have higher standards

we can’t even rest without it being a problem? 😭😭 #ick #icks #redfla... | TikTok - "we can’t even rest without it being a problem? 😭😭 #ick #icks #redflags #redflag #icklist #list #fyp #viral"
Aka "The Ick List: When His Nap Irrationally Annoys Me"

When a woman says “I shouldn’t have to ask him!” #shorts @warriorswaymindset - YouTube
Men need to be psychic and do things exactly when women want - no earlier and no later

LindyMan on X - "One thing you notice in old photos are how unattractive the women were. Even with high status men. There wasn't a "dating market" like how we engage in. It was a circle of people and one knew someone and that was it. It's a woman. She wasn't fat. She knew your family. That was it.   today it's much different."

Meme - "Folsom; California
Tiffany, 33
I'm back on this app after a year ban, don't ask why. I had given up on dating and decided to add more children to my family as a single mom. I've already selected my sperm donor from a licensed sperm bank, and I'm about to go through IVF. I can't get pregnant naturally, so don't ask. I need help with paying for the embryo transfer back into my womb so I decided to start dating again. Only message me if you're trying to have a kid and you're ok with the sperm not being from you."

Richard Hanania on X - "Oklahoma woman convicted of having her husband killed based on overwhelming evidence. She appeals to the Supreme Court, says she should get a new trial because prosecutors slut shamed her over the thong she packed to go to Mexico with her boyfriend after her husband’s death."
Did Prosecutors’ Sex Shaming Help Send Brenda Andrew to Death Row? - The New York Times

Amy on X - "I was not in my "pRimE" in my 20s lmao I was New Age, atomized, struggled to regulate my emotions, had no financial knowledge and couldnt see reality. Along what dimensions are these guys even talking about here? Physical fitness for breeding? Perverts and freaks, freaks I say"
Wilfred Reilly on X - "I am once again noting that wanting to date attractive adults who are at the peak age for humans to have children is not "perversion." Exact opposite, really.   I like both older and younger women, should anyone at all care...but the online world's constant labeling of the most statistically normal behavior as "evil" is a real problem."

I'm too hot to get a date — intimidated men worry that I'll turn them down - "“Fans are shocked at how kind and humble I am when they meet me in real life,” the modest model claimed."
Sure. I'm sure that's why men aren't queuing up for a BBW

Doc  on X - "Tinder is for rookies. Go to Facebook Marketplace and search for wedding dresses. Itll show you recently divorced females in your area. From there you can filter by size."

Billie Eilish Has No Problem With Lil Yachty Rapping About Her Breasts (13 Nov 2023)
Billie Eilish on being sexualised: "Fuck you" (Nov 14 2023)

Meme - "When he promised you a good time but he's rubbing your clit like he's trying to get a stain out of the carpet"

Meme - "When he's not getting the signals so you gotta make it obvious
my HOLE is a lot of FUN!
Featuring the new doughnut holes
Krispy Kreme"

Thinking Critically About Social Justice

From 2018:

Thinking Critically About Social Justice

"The U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) released a memo written by an attorney, Jayme Sophir, which determined that Google did not violate United States federal law when it fired James Damore. Sophir reasoned that references to psychometric literature on sex differences in personality were “discriminatory and constitute sexual harassment,” and on these grounds, Damore’s firing was justified. Following the release of the NLRB memo, a number of scientists on Twitter expressed alarm at the justifications provided within the memo, which appeared to relegate the discussion of sex differences outside the realm of constitutionally protected speech...

Damore, together with another former Google engineer, filed a class action lawsuit against the company alleging an institutionalised culture of harassment towards people with conservative or libertarian political views. Their complaint is eye-opening. Damore and Gudeman lay out in detail the many ways in which this harassment occurs: a pervasive environment of disparaging jokes and demeaning language amongst colleagues; a climate of bullying, mocking, and personal attacks from superiors and others in power; an open endorsement by superiors of bullying (referred to internally as social pecking); an unwillingness by superiors and administrators to act upon threats of violence; the use of incentive programmes to promote and celebrate harassment; a set of training programmes that foment hostility through emotionalised and unnuanced company-endorsed lectures; and a number of other mechanisms that disincentivise or punish political expression, which in Damore and Gudeman’s case eventually led to their dismissals.

Google is far from the only Silicon Valley company where this occurs. A recent survey suggests the vast majority of conservative and libertarian employees at Silicon Valley companies are hesitant of being themselves at work, and that all but the very liberal feel less comfortable expressing their political views in the aftermath of Damore’s very public dismissal. Some of the responses were remarkable. One libertarian respondent claimed there’s a “concerted purge of conservative employees at Apple.” A conservative respondent experienced colleagues openly mocking conservatives and had to sit through “cruel mockery of my home state while others nodded and laughed along.” A Google employee claimed to have lost multiple talented colleagues who resigned rather than continue in “an increasingly extreme, narrow-minded, and regressive environment.”

Silicon Valley has historically had a reputation for being quite libertarian, but it appears to be becoming increasingly intolerant towards conservatives and even libertarians..

A similar trend seems to be taking place in other parts of society as well...

What has caused this rapid cultural shift? Haidt suggests it’s a combination of ideas that have been developing in left-leaning academic fields for a long time with recent societal shifts that have made these ideas more attractive or powerful to university students, including a more hands-on parenting style and the invention of social media. The ideas, as Haidt notes are: “organised around victims of oppression, it’s a vertical metaphor of privileged and oppressor people, and victims. This idea that everything is power.”

The methodology underpinning much of the social justice perspective is known as critical theory, which draws heavily on German philosopher Karl Marx’s notion of ideology...

Theory, they suggested, always serves the interests of certain people; traditional theory, because it is uncritical towards power, automatically serves the powerful, while critical theory, because it unmasks these interests, serves the powerless. All theory is political, they said, and by choosing critical theory over traditional theory one chooses to challenge the status quo, in accordance with Marx’s famous statement: “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”Gradually, critical theorists broadened their attention to other forms of oppression—gender, race, and sexual orientation especially—but the methodology remained the same: to identify the hidden and complex ways in which power and oppression permeate society, and then dismantle them...

There’s something missing from the social justice narrative though, demonstrated by the situation in Silicon Valley and those other fields I mentioned: it doesn’t take into account the power and oppression it exerts itself...

Social justice advocates have created a portrayal of themselves as being outside the flow of power; everyone else is exerting power or being oppressed by it, while they are simply observing it, and any power they do exert is selfless and unoppressive...

Take for instance morality. Marx proposed that a society’s morality serves the interests of its ruling class, while purporting to be universal...

An analogous claim can be made of a social justice society, it seems to me. This is most obvious in parts of society where social justice ideology is strongest. In those parts of society, values like equality, liberation, and cosmopolitanism aren’t just treated as values—organisations of society that different people prefer to different degrees—they’re considered moral. Consequently, conflicting values are considered immoral: people who value a more competitive society, or a smaller government, or a stronger national identity, or a tougher culture, or more traditional family structures, or less immigration aren’t just regarded as having different values; they’re regarded as bad people.

This is especially clear in the context of immigration...

People in these areas are afraid to come home at night and are wondering how things could have changed so quickly, yet no one is allowed to talk about it. And when someone does say something, they are met with a wave of sophisticated terminology backed by academic credentials that they have no way of parsing. All they know is something is wrong, but they’re unable to parse the academic discourse, and so they’re effectively shut down. And as conservatives and libertarians become increasingly scarce in academia, academia becomes more and more a tool of power to oppress their values...

Including values in our power analysis makes it clear there can be no such thing as simply removing power, because it takes power to remove power. Consequently, power doesn’t disappear, it redirects...

This isn’t just theoretical speculation. Some of the most explicitly social justice-oriented societies ever to exist were the communist regimes of the 20^th century, and they were characterised by tremendous oppression of their citizens. Why—when the explicit aim of these regimes was to liberate their citizens from oppression—did the opposite occur? The answer, surely, is that they made the same mistake contemporary social justice advocates make: not including themselves in the power analysis. (Which is especially questionable when you’re the dictator.)

This means they could send millions of political opponents and dissenters to prison camps, have a population living in terror of a secret police ready to pounce on any word deemed subversive, erect walls manned by armed guards to prevent people from leaving, yet consider themselves liberators for having reduced class differences...

The irony of doing a proper power analysis—not the selective power analysis of social justice ideology, but a complete one—is that you end up with something not that far from the Hobbesian view of human nature that formed the foundation of classical liberal thought, and which social justice advocates dislike...

A common theme is that they are critical, while other people accept things as they are. Some writers have even suggested that social justice advocates are the true inheritors of the Socratic approach to philosophy and/or of Enlightenment thinking.

This confuses two types of criticality. It’s certainly true that social justice advocates are highly critical, but this is not what distinguished the Socratic approach or Enlightenment thought from previous traditions. In fact, the most critical people are usually religious people, especially fundamentalist religious people. Why? Because they have an explicit norm, such as The Bible, to which they can compare everything and criticise whatever doesn’t match up. It’s not criticality that distinguishes Socratic and Enlightenment methodology from religious tradition, it’s meta-criticality: the process of continually digging up one’s assumptions and methods and questioning them, potentially indefinitely. In religion, especially fundamentalist religion, certain beliefs are beyond question; they are sacred and must if necessary be taken on faith. This is what Socratic and Enlightenment thought diverged from, regarding nothing as sacred and treating all beliefs and methods as provisional.

There are advantages and disadvantages to this approach, of course. Explicitly declaring one’s own beliefs provisional reduces the force of their criticism of society or other people’s beliefs, which is part of why religions can be so powerful; they offer certainty and their adherents can criticise everything around them with confidence. Social justice ideology is far more like this than like the Socratic or Enlightenment methodology. Its advocates are highly critical of society and other people’s beliefs, but they mostly reject meta-criticality, often going so far as to shut down anyone who criticises their beliefs...

As the failures of the many 20^th century communist regimes showed all too clearly, there are few things more dangerous than trying to dismantle power structures while simultaneously having major gaps in the framework through which power is identified. It’s a recipe for disaster."

Links - 23rd April 2024 (1 - Hamas Attack Oct 2023)

Peter Savodnik on X - "Hamas is now saying Israel has killed 22,000, not 33,000 Gazans -- meaning the combatant to noncombatant ratio in this war is greater than 1:1, which would be a phenomenal, life-saving achievement. Unsurprisingly, legacy media is crickets."
Noam Blum on X - "The one source everyone is using for the Gaza death toll just casually said "oops, we overcounted by 33%." You fools. You utter imbeciles."
The Persian Jewess on X - "Gaza Health Ministry (Hamas) admits Gaza fatalities (civilian and militant) actually number 22,091.   With Israel’s estimate of 13,000 militant deaths, this means only 9,000 Gaza civilians have died.   A civilian casualty ratio of LESS THAN 1:1.   **The average casualty ratio in modern warfare is 9:1  #StandWithIsrael"
The terrorism supporters won't update their numbers, since they rely on lies

FDD on X - ".@adesnik : "The sudden shifts in the ministry’s reporting methods suggest it is scrambling to prevent exposure of its shoddy work. For months, U.S. media have taken for granted that the ministry’s top-line figure for casualties was reliable enough to include in daily updates on the war. Even President Biden has cited its numbers. Now we’re seeing that a third or more of the ministry’s data may be incomplete at best — and fictional at worst.""

Meme - Sole Danni is with Elba Bonia.: "We will NEVER stop sharing. FREE PALESTINE"
"ISRAEL'S WAR IN GAZA AND THE WORLD'S INABILITY TO STOP IT IS A TRAGEDY FOR HUMANKIND AND A DISGRACE FOR CIVILISATION." PRESIDENT OF CHINA"
Lincoln Kirby-bell: "He's responsible for the genocide of the Uighur people and many other cultural minorities within China , not to mention the violent suppression of any dissent from his own people"
Jose Felix: "Posting pro palestinian comments of a guy that has muslim concentration camps makes this post look so smart."
It's hard for terrorism supporters to be more explicit that this is about anti-Semitism and Jew hatred

Laura Powell on X - "A group of Berkeley law students accepted an invitation to dine at the private home of dean Erwin Chemerinsky and his wife, a law professor, then disrupted the event and refused to leave. Bizarrely, this student claims her conduct is protected by the 1st Amendment. Activists are attacking the dean and professor as "white supremacist" and "Zionist.""
i/o on X - "Erwin Chemerinsky, by the way, is the guy who was caught on hidden camera last year bragging that he and Berkeley Law would continue to find ways to evade affirmative action bans. He described how these evasions work in practice. These people all deserve each other."
The Persian Jewess on X - "Imagine being so blinded by antisemitism that you enter the home of the world’s EXPERT on constitutional law, and falsely claim it is your “first amendment right” to spread vicious hate speech.   If she had bothered to attend Erwin Chemerinsky’s lectures, read his textbooks, use his study guides, or review his SUPREME COURT CASES, she would know that the first amendment does NOT apply to a private residence.   Which Chemerinsky politely tells her. Over and over again.  #AntizionismIsAntisemitism"

Thread by @ProfDBernstein on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Let's review the Chemerinsky incident: Student shows up to celebratory graduation dinner at the dean's house with a speaker system, begins political tirade. Dean and wife plead with her to stop, then ask her to leave multiple times, as they have every right to do. She refuses. She is now a trespasser. Wife, instead of calling police, tries to stop disruption by the much more peaceable means of taking trespasser's microphone away. Pro-Hamas progressives: Dean's wife is a violent racist. The pro-Hamas progressive subtext, of course, is that the dean is a "Zionist," ie Jew who doesn't think that Israel should be destroyed and therefore he and his family deserve to be given no quarter, and also have none of the normal rights people have, like stopping trespassers from disrupting events, when confronted about their "Zionism" by a Muslim student."

CAIR National on X - "Our San Francisco Bay Area office @CAIRSFBA today condemned the alleged assault on Malak Afaneh, a Palestinian Muslim University of California Berkeley (@UCBerkeley) law student, by @BerkeleyLaw professor Catherine Fisk. @ZahraBilloo"
Dr. Abdullah Ali on X - "I wish I could support this statement. I’m sorry, but I don’t think you get to play the victim after being invited to someone’s home, asked to leave, stage a protest, and refuse to leave because someone told you you had a 1st amendment right. This doesn’t help Palestinians. It just makes you look unreasonable and disingenuous. Calling it “speaking truth to power” all you want. It’s 100% fruitless."
LAWYERGONEROGUE on X - "The student who harassed chermerinsky is a PFLP terrorist. It is actually a group designated as such on the US foreign terrorist list."
Ofra Haza Stan Account on X - "Aggressively instigating a conflict then crying victim, like your Hamas heroes. Pathetic 🤡"
🇵🇸 🔻 CeasefireNOW 🔻🇵🇸 on X - "i don't understand why was she there harassing elderly Jewish people? is this what muslims do for Ramadan? harass elderly Jewish people at their home?"

Steve McGuire on X - "She showed up at a dinner party to protest with a microphone and now she’s playing the victim and claiming Professor Fisk is a racist:"
Hussain Abdul-Hussain on X - "Never knew one could fit as much nonsense into one clip. She's a law student who does not know that she cannot practice her First Amendment inside a private residence. This should tell you all you need to know about how disturbed Global Intifada mobsters are, how they think that loud noise and racist instigation of white v black and brown are carte blanche for doing whatever they please. If Palestine is going to be in the image of this lady and her tired fallacies, which seems to be certainly the case, then the world is better off without Palestine."

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib on X - "Aside from the embarrassing entitlement/self-righteousness of this Berkeley law student & how ineffective/unhelpful many pro-Palestine activists & students are, the way in which the Arab & Muslim communities are becoming single-issue activists & voters risks permanent alienation & marginalization from broader political & societal discourses, minimizing the possibilities of future coalition building to work on critical issues impacting our country and communities. This impulsively-driven behavior is not only ineffective in highlighting the plight of the Palestinian people in Gaza, but it creates long-term fissures that may never heal."

Marc Zell on X - "Results of the IDF investigation into the killing of the 7 humanitarian workers from the Word Central Kitchen (WCK). Things are not what they seemed to be. ⚠️BREAKING⚠️ IDF has revealed that Hamas PURPOSELY drew fire to the WCK truck.
At around 10 pm, the IDF noticed suspicious activity as the WCK vehicle was joined by a convoy of several other Hamas vehicles. 🔥 Hamas terrorists then climbed ONTO and INTO the WCK truck and FIRED several times indiscriminately into the air to ensure the IDF would see them.   🔥The convoy then split up and entered a hanger, where it became difficult to distinguish between the Hamas vehicles and the WCK vehicle.  🔥IDF attempted to call both the WCK workers and WCK HQ on TWO separate occasions to confirm whether they were with the Hamas convoy but their calls remained unanswered.  🔥When the vehicles left the hangar OVER AN HOUR LATER the IDF drone unit misidentified the WCK vehicle for a vehicle from the Hamas convoy and mistakenly struck.
The IDF has provided their full findings to both WCK and Jose Andres, and are now requiring new stickers for aid vehicles which can be seen via drones even in the dark."

Meme - Sebastian Marinaio: "Hi @chefjoseandres care to explain this picture? You've spent the week accusing Israel targeting @WCKitchen volunteers & now we know Hamas was riding with the vehicles. You also accused Israel of genocide which is an absolute lie. Now YOU can be seen hanging with Hamas. WTF???"

Jake Wallis Simons on X - "David Cameron writes in the Sunday Times that although Israel has called the killings of the aid workers a “grave mistake” and sacked those responsible, there is “no doubt where the blame lies” and “this must never happen again.” Strong words. But when Cameron was prime minister and took us to war in Libya, 13 were mistakenly killed in a NATO airstrike, including an ambulance driver, three nurses and some friendly troops. He didn’t have any strong words then."
QuantumAI on X - "In stark contrast to NATO, which escapes the relentless, granular examination of its military conduct, Israel is held to an impossible standard, expected to execute a war perfectly…  Even when Israel apologises for its mistakes during the conflict - a rarity compared to other countries- it receives no latitude; its every misstep is met with unforgiving scrutiny, leaving no room for the fog of war or human error."

John Hasson on X - "Shot: Biden attacks Israel for accidentally killing 7 civilians in a drone strike
Chaser: Biden’s final act in Afghanistan was an airstrike killing 10 civilians, including 7 children"
Stephen L. Miller on X - "And he has not faced a single journalist who has asked him a single question about this, in an Interview or a press conference."

Dr. Mika Tosca, Chicago professor, apologizes for calling Israelis 'pigs' and 'very bad people' - "Dr. Mika Tosca, a climate scientist and associate professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), issued an apology on her Instagram Wednesday for her incendiary post amid the Israel-Hamas war... Tosca came under fire when she called Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas — the terrorist group that killed about 1,400 people and is believed to be holding around 200 hostages — ”downright evil” and “propaganda.”...   Joseph Massad, a politics and history professor at Columbia University, made headlines when he called Hamas’ attack on Israeli citizens “awesome.”... at Cornell University, associate professor of history Russell Rickford is struggling to save face after he boasted that he was “exhilarated” by the wave of anti-Israeli violence.   On the other side of the divisive issue, Washington University professor Seth Crosby claimed to have been fired because he referred to Israel’s airstrikes in Gaza as “a much-needed cleansing.”  The off-color remark was criticized by Muslim advocacy groups for dehumanizing Palestinians — many of whom have lived in quasi-exile in the Gaza Strip and West Bank for decades."
Is it Islamophobic to call Israeli Muslims pigs and very bad people?
It seems you're not allowed to denounce terrorists. Why are Muslim advocacy groups equating Hamas to all Palestinians?

Stanford teacher suspended for singling out Jewish students - "A Stanford University lecturer has been suspended for allegedly making Jewish students stand in a corner while branding them “colonizers” — while also downplaying the Holocaust and defending murderous Hamas terrorists as “freedom fighters.”...   The lecturer also reportedly justified the slaughter of more than 1,300 Israelis by Hamas terrorists over the weekend, saying it was part of Palestinians’ resistance. The teacher then asked Jewish students to raise their hands, separated them from their belongings and ordered them to stand in a corner, saying that is what Jews were doing to Palestinians...   “He asked how many Jews died in the Holocaust,” said Cohen. When someone said 6 million, “he said, ‘Yes. Only 6 million.’”... The lecturer asked students to say where their ancestors were from, and labeled each a “colonizer” or “colonized” based on their heritage...  the lecturer made no mention of Hamas’ atrocities against Israelis and offered a full-throated defense of the terrorists’ actions.  “He said, ‘Hamas is a legitimate representation of the Palestinian people,'” Greenberg said. “‘They are not a terrorist group. They are freedom fighters. Their actions are legitimate.'”   Cohen, the student leader, said the episode left her feeling “dehumanized.” “It’s like I’m reliving the justification of Nazis 80 years ago on today’s college campus”"

ToI ALERTS on X - "Live update: Dutch Jews record unprecedented number of antisemitic incidents following Oct. 7"
Alex גדעון בן װעלװל on X - "Nothing has radicalized me as much as the knowledge that a Hamas massacre of Jews in Israel had a global response of harassing and beating diaspora Jews."

Scott Adams on X - "Hamas gave Israel no way to win and two ways to lose, so Israel picked the losing path that kills Hamas (and many of their friends and family) first.  "Losing" in this context means spending the Holocaust capital and losing international support to reduce the future risk from Hamas.  You don't have to like what Israel is doing. But it is the only rational path.   The idea of going slow and using precision and ground forces to reduce civilian deaths is impractical because it would take years, and international pressure would squeeze them to resettle civilians before they finished. That would be a complete waste of time.  I assume some of the reported war crimes are real, which is typical for any war.   I no longer support Israel after the ADL came after me. I'm just describing their options.  @netanyahu  @JGreenblattADL"
Deforester Kelly on X - "Proportional warfare only serves the smaller, less capable enemy. It scales warfare into only what THEY can manage and incentivizes them to attack larger, more sophisticated enemies, knowing their full power won't be brought to bear. Asymmetrical warfare is cruel but preferable."
Farmer Bob on X - "What would “retaliating in proportion” mean to you? Should IDF soldiers have dressed as civilians, attacked Gaza, targeted 1200 civilians for the most barbaric murders, rapes, & dismemberment all while recording themselves doing it & calling their mothers to brag about it?"
jrwUTE42 on X - "Usa dropped two atomic bombs bombs because first one was insufficient. People forget proportional response usually means more of your own forces die."
Logic, Reason & Decency on X - "There were a few wars where arabs tried and failed to exterminate the jews. Are you justifying extermination? Or just when arabs do it?"

Jacob Magid on X - "US President Joe Biden has called on Israel to unilaterally agree to a six-to-eight week ceasefire, in an apparent retreat from his administration’s stance that conditioned a truce in Gaza on Hamas releasing some of the hostages it’s holding in the Strip. (1/11)"
Wilfred Reilly on X - "Unilaterally?! The mainstream left position in the USA is stated preference for a Hamas victory."

Toronto demonstrators urged to 'live up to the example' of Hamas - "Even after six months of routine anti-Israel rallies hitting the streets of Toronto, a series of weekend demonstrations featured a notable increase in pro-terror rhetoric and extremist symbology. On Saturday, a child holding a sign reading “Hamas is a Palestinian Resistance Movement” was recorded... The child was flanked by a man using a microphone to address Jewish attendees. “It’s so wonderful to see all the little kids here … ask your parents to give you a history lesson about how they rape and murder children,” he says. The day before, speakers were recorded telling cheering crowds to emulate the example of Gazan or Yemeni terrorist groups. “On October 7, we saw the potential for a Palestine liberated from Zionism by the forces of the resistance,” said Charlotte Kates of Samidoun, a Vancouver-based non-profit with close ties to the People’s Liberation Front for Palestine, a Gazan terror group whose members participated in the October 7 attacks. She urged attendees “to live up to the examples that every fighter in the brigades and every Yemeni marine are showing on a daily basis.” Brigades was likely a reference to Palestinians terrorists fighting Israeli forces in Gaza. The “Yemeni marines” are in reference to Houthis, a Yemeni terror group that has been attacking civilian shipping in the Red Sea for the last several months. Canada, notably, is technically at war with the Houthis, having joined a multinational operation to destroy Houthi missile and drone sites... The occasion for the ramped-up rhetoric was Al Quds Day, a holiday conceived by the Islamic Republic of Iran for the explicit purpose of calling for Israel’s destruction... Al Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem. In Khomeini’s words , Al Quds Day was to be an international day of Islamic solidarity to call for the destruction of the “usurper Israel” and “the victory of the Muslims over the infidels.” For years before the most recent violence of the Israel-Hamas conflict, sparked by the massacres of October 7, Al Quds Day was a reliable source for anti-Israel and pro-terror demonstrations on the streets of Canada’s major cities. Last year’s Al Quds Day demonstrations in Toronto, for instance, featured speakers endorsing “intifada” and repeating the now-familiar “from the river to the sea” chant — a motto explicitly rejecting a “two-state solution” in favour of Israel’s destruction. “Ultimate liberation from the river to the sea under one Palestinian state,” went a 2023 Al Quds Day declaration by Moe Jabri, an organizer with Toronto4Palestine. Only a few months later, Toronto4Palestine would be at the forefront of organizing celebrations of the October 7 massacres. While Toronto police have mostly exercised a hands-off approach to the more than 500 anti-Israel demonstrations that have hit the city since October 7, the police have recently begun to take a harder line against the protests. The Easter weekend saw the rare sight of an anti-Israel demonstration being subjected to crowd control by mounted Toronto police officers. And on Friday, Deputy Chief Lauren Pogue convened a press conference to say that “agitators” within the demonstrations would not be tolerated... the Toronto Police Association, the union that represents rank-and-file Toronto officers, issued a lengthy public statement saying that officers attending these protests “have been threatened with injury or death.”... The statement stood in notable contrast to only four months ago, when the Toronto Police Association defended a decision for officers not to arrest a masked anti-Israel demonstrator within Toronto’s Eaton Centre who was recorded issuing a threat to “put you six feet deep.”"

Authorities push back as anti-Israel blockaders get more radical - "McGill University in Montreal saw widespread class cancellations and building closures as part of an ongoing “Shut Down McGill” campaign organized in part by the campus group Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights. This is the same group that was ordered by university administrators to stop using the word “McGill” in its name after an early October statement in which it openly celebrated Hamas’s taking of Israeli hostages as a “heroic” act. Although anti-Israel demonstrators have staged McGill blockades before — including a February shutdown of a building named for Jewish philanthropist Samuel Bronfman — this one represented an escalation in both scale and aggressiveness... a group of about a dozen activists in keffiyehs can be seen pounding on the locked doors of a classroom and chanting through megaphones, “You can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”... At Western University in London, Ont., a Thursday rally included a speaker naming three specific Jewish students and alumni and urging attendees to report them to campus authorities for alleged Islamophobia and “Palestinian racism.”... council members in Port Moody, B.C., rescinded a relatively routine motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza after they deemed that the council had unintentionally aligned themselves with “a group that has spread hate.” A group known as Free Palestine BC had packed council chambers to push Port Moody to adopt the motion earlier in the week, but council members soon balked at revelations that anyone who spoke against the motion had been barraged by insults and threats encouraged by Free Palestine BC. “I cannot in good conscience agree to send a letter to our federal government on behalf of a group that does not practice what it preaches, and is actively stoking fear, hatred and division in our community,” Coun. Kyla Knowles said in reversing her vote calling for a ceasefire. “I regret not listening to my gut on this one.”"

Richard Marceau: Why we're taking the federal government to court over UNRWA funding - "Canadians do not want their hard-earned money to go to an agency that is supporting Hamas, a terrorist organization under Canadian law . With this application now officially submitted, it would be inappropriate for the Government of Canada to continue to transfer Canadian tax dollars to UNRWA until a decision is rendered... intelligence reports revealed that at least 12 UNRWA employees had connections to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and approximately 10 per cent of UNRWA staff in Gaza have ties to Islamist militant groups. Further confirming this participation, one of the hostages released from Gaza during November’s humanitarian pause revealed that he was held for nearly 50 days in an attic by a UNRWA teacher. UN Watch has documented a multitude of cases of UNRWA staff and teachers indoctrinating Palestinian children to extremist hate by glorifying terrorism , praising Hamas , advocating for the killing of Jews and other abhorrent activities that contravene the values of the United Nations... Given UNRWA’s well-documented links to Hamas, by resuming Canadian funding to UNRWA, the government is in violation of its own anti-terrorism legislation"
Too bad votes from terrorist supporters are too importantMeme - *Bike Fall Meme*
*Hamas*
"Hamas attacks Israel and starts a war"
"Those Israelis are attacking us"

Meme - "Hamas Iron Dome" *kid strapped to metal shield*

Naftali Bennett נפתלי בנט on X - "Israel needs now to live as a Silicon Valley in Sparta.   Part of Israel’s colossal failure of October 7th was a result of complacency.   Your typical Israeli was enjoying life, thinking about work, the next startup and the upcoming vacation.  Wars? Nah..that’s passé.   We got soft.  We lost tolerance to casualties.   We forgot that we’re surrounded by the craziest terror savages on earth: Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizbullah and ISIS.  Physically on our borders (!).    Israel’s a first world economy, GDP per Capita of $58k bordering Nassrallah.   Imagine San Jose neighboring Kabul.   October 7th is as if savages with machetes tore down the screens of The Truman Show and we saw the barbarism hiding behind those tenuous facades.  We realized that our neighbors aren’t Belgium, Canada or Vermont.   We were cruelly reminded that Israel’s existence depends on our being constantly alert, vigilant, strong and very very tough.   At the same time, we must continue to be the StartUp Nation:  innovative, technology savvy, agile and connected to the latest and best stuff going on.   It’s a challenge no other nation faces: To be a Silicon Valley in Sparta.   We will."

Oli London on X - "On October 7th, Palestinian civilians cheered and chanted “Allahu Akbar” after the body of a Jewish person is mutilated, shot and kicked in Gaza. One man gets down on his knees to pray and kiss the ground, thanking God for the massacre."

Meme - Hamas waving fist while standing on rubble of Gaza: "And let that be a lesson to you. Israel!!!"
I got 2 comments accusing me of being a bot. Clearly if you don't support terrorism, you're a bot

Meme - Expectation *Terrorists with Palestinian flag parachuting into Israel*
Reality *Devastated Gaza*"

Meme - Adele Scalia @AdeleScalia: "A Holocaust survivor is coming to speak to my son's grade History class on Monday. Wonderful. What's less than wonderful, though, is the opt out for this lesson because "We understand that all students have different experiences." What does that even mean?"
"We understand that all students have different experiences. If you prefer to opt your child out from participating in this presentation, please email your child's history teacher and they will be provided an alternate assignment. Please email your child's history teacher with any questions that you may have."
Stacey E. Burke @StaceyEBurke: "My kids' school does an grade trip to DC every year for the entire grade. They removed the Holocaust Museum from the schedule permanently because....parents complained."
Clearly we need to crack down on the anti-Semitic "far right"! It's shocking that teachers and schools are accommodating white supremacists!
Ironically, left wingers usually forbid parents to opt out of whatever they want to thrust on kids

Star of David graffitied on Berlin homes in chilling echo of Nazi crimes - "The Star of David has been graffitied on the doors of several homes in Berlin, in a chilling reminder of the persecution Jews suffered under the Nazis. Four cases have been reported to German police in recent days, escalating concerns about the safety of Jewish people in the German capital... The incidents, which are a crime under German law, appear to be an intentional imitation of the antisemitic persecution of Jews during the 1930s when Nazi brownshirts painted the Star of David on the doors and windows of Jewish businesses in an attempt to discourage Britons from shopping there.  It came as one of the country’s top spies warned that Hamas sympathisers could stage terror attacks on Jewish buildings. Hamas supporters may “no longer stop at demonstrating and using hate speech... but may carry out specific attacks against Jewish and Israeli buildings and individuals,” Stephan Kramer, head of domestic intelligence in the state of Thuringia, said. Speaking to Handelsblatt newspaper, Mr Kramer said that the war in Israel could also motivate other Islamist groups to “intensify” their activities, saying that they see “the whole of Germany as the enemy of muslims.”  He said that the protests by pro-Palestinian groups on German streets in the wake of the Hamas terror attacks proved “a new level of escalation and lack of inhibition has obviously been reached in this country as well.”... Meanwhile, Germany’s largest network of mosques has denied that Israel was mentioned in Friday prayers after Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan had reportedly encouraged them to describe Israel as a “rusty dagger” in the heart of the Muslim world.  Ditib, an organisation which runs over 2,000 mosques in Germany and whose imams are on the payroll of the Turkish government, was ordered by Ankara to give a sermon condemning Israel as carrying out “the worst tyranny in history,” according to a report in German newspaper Bild. The sermon was written by Mr Erdogan’s chief cleric and sent out to all mosques under the control of the Turkish state... Despite the Islamist group being listed by the EU as a terror organization since 2003, Berlin only banned public displays of support for Hamas in 2021."
From October

Links - 22nd April 2024 (3)

Meme - Crémieux @cremieuxrecueil: "Daily reminder: Nixon wanted to be the American Messmer, constructing a fleet of 1,000 nuclear plants, making American a clean country from then all the way through to today."
"In 1973, President Nixon seized on the nuclear frenzy with a new program he dubbed "Project Independence". Calling to mind the Manhattan Project, Nixon wanted 1,000 nuclear plants to be built by 2000. Those 1,000 plants would have provided 200% of the U.S's power needs... in 2022. No coal, no wind, no solar, no natural gas, no hydro. No carbon emissions. Just 100-percent- clean, made-in-America nuclear power."

Thread by @cremieuxrecueil on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "The American nuclear industry illustrates negative learning: the costs of plants have increased over time.  But this is not nuclear's fault. Almost everywhere else, the learning rate is positive: costs decline as the industry gains experience building!  🧵  Consider France. The U.S. has really only been experiencing cost overruns since the Three Mile Island incident, and the reason has to do with the industry becoming overregulated as a result of the public outcry that ensued. In general, nuclear cost overruns are driven by indirect costs, like having to hire more safety professionals due to added regulatory burdens.  Those explain 72% of the price hike in the U.S., 1976-87. In a more recent OECD report on nuclear from 2020, it was noted that "indirect cost[s] are the main driver of these cost overruns" and 80% of those indirect costs are attributable to largely unnecessary labor. The regulatory costs levied against nuclear are so extreme that they can make components cost 50 times what they should, like in the case of 75 mm stainless steel gate valves.  The main factor differentiating nuclear and industrial grade? Unnecessary quality certification.  The question is less "Why is nuclear expensive?" and more "Why is nuclear overregulated?"  And the reason isn't clear-cut. It's obvious it's not so simple as saying "ALARA!", since many countries manage positive learning despite sticking to the same philosophy. It's more likely a combination of factors involving activism. Thanks to activism, the U.S. nuclear fleet won't achieve French emission levels because, under the Carter administration, activists managed to get reprocessing banned, tarring nuclear's reputation via the 'waste' issue. In any case, nuclear remains a viable option for cleanly powering the future, and continued research into it is necessary for taking us into the stars.  Moreover, for consumers, it remains beneficial ($!) so long as intermittent forms of generation are, well, intermittent."
In other words, "green" activists complain nuclear is unfeasible because it's too expensive, but they're the ones who made it unnecessarily expensive, and without their nonsense, it'd be cheap

Oliver Milman on X - "The 2021 closure of Indian Point nuclear plant in New York was hailed as a huge win by environmentalists. But there's been a sting in the tail - NY's emissions have since gone up. “This has been a cautionary tale," an expert told me about the clean energy transition"

Meme - "I'm speechless... *long message (speech)*"

How Jurong's S$100 million 12-hectare ancient China theme park fell into ruin in under 10 years - "According to The Straits Times, the opening day saw 5,000 people stream into the ancient city, which eclipsed even the Haw Par Villa Dragon World opening, which saw 4,000 attendees.  The upcoming Chinese New Year was also thematically relevant, leading to another boost for Tang Dynasty City (it was changed from Village to City on Jan. 25, 1992).  The five to 10 years projection to recoup the money even seemed kind of feasible.  Unfortunately, in just seven years, the park, riddled with debt, closed down."

Babble hypothesis shows key factor to becoming a leader - "If you want to become a leader, start yammering. It doesn’t even necessarily matter what you say. New research shows that groups without a leader can find one if somebody starts talking a lot.  This phenomenon, described by the “babble hypothesis” of leadership, depends neither on group member intelligence nor personality. Leaders emerge based on the quantity of speaking, not quality."

Meme - "funny how we know who all these people are, simply by their hair style" *Rick Astley, Eminem, Vanilla Ice, Sydney Sweeney's breasts*

Meme - The Meme Policeman: "Snopes has gotten so pathetic it's now mostly "debunking' satire, these are just from the past week! As I've pointed out in the past, fact checkers shouldn't concern themselves with satire. There's nothing to fact check, they're jokes, made funnier by the simpletons who fall for it."
I remember when the left mocked the right for falling for satire

Meme - Princess Dionysus @madisommelier: "Trying to eat out less this year so now I pretend my apartment is a tiny restaurant
MAISON MADISON
Breakfast
Cinnamon & brown sugar oatmeal
Biscuits with fruit preserves
Blueberry heart waffles
GF pumpkin pancakes
Multigrain buttered toast
Mushroom & spinach quiche
Poached eggs with mini maple sausages
Cereal: frosted mini wheats, captain crunch, lucky charms
Protein shake : strawberry, banana, peanut butter, and chocolate
Lunch
PB & J
Acai bowl
Beef pho
Pigs in a blanket
Latkes with applesauce
'Coney Island' hotdogs
Mini pizzas: cheese, pepperoni
Dinner
Saffron rice with black beans
Argentinian shrimp with shell pasta
Lemon pepper chicken with bowtie pasta
Chicken alfredo with penne pasta
Spaghetti with tomato basil sauce
Kung Pao chicken
Pesto chicken with tri colored rotini
Tikka masala & garlic naan
Butter chicken & garlic naan
Dessert
Brownies with walnuts
Chocolate covered strawberries
Everything but the kitchen sink cookies
Black raspberry chocolate gelato
Strawberries in sweet milk
Chocolate chip dunkers
Apple Tarte
Drinks
Dulce de leche latte
Dirty chai tea latte
Iced green zing tea
Hot tea: earl gray, black, jasmine, etc...
Hot chocolate
Strawberry milk
French pressed fresh coffee"

Meme - "This is the future atheists want *woman kissing another woman while squeezing her breast*"

Meme - "Age 6- I want to be a pilot
Age 12- I want to be a soldier
Age 18- I will try engineering
Age 24- Hey guys, welcome back to my youtube channel."

Meme - Fruit of the Loom @FruitOfThe L...: "Did it hurt? When you realized our logo never had a cornucopia."
Kurz @Kurz_Prime: "Sure....  *photo of Fruit of the Loom T-shirt with cornucopia*"

Meme - Woman: "So, what do you like in a woman?"
Man: "My cock !"

Analysis: China is one of the costliest places to raise a child, and it’s not all about the money - "The report late last month by a Chinese think tank stated that the cost of raising a child in China till the age of 18 is “almost the highest in the world” relative to its GDP per capita...   The report by YuWa Population Research Institute stated that the national average to raise a child in China till the age of 18 is about 538,000 yuan (US$74,600). This includes nanny and childcare fees, money spent on school and educational materials as well as extracurricular activity fees.  That’s around 6.3 times the country’s per capita GDP and “almost the highest in the world”, the report said.  Also highlighted - how China’s rate exceeds other countries such as neighbouring Japan (4.26 times), the United States (4.11 times), France (2.24 times) and Australia (2.08 times). South Korea claimed the top spot, with the cost coming in at 7.79 times the country’s GDP per capita...   As schools vary widely in quality, rural families try to enrol their children in schools in the counties rather than the “lower-quality” village and township schools. At the same time, urban families try to buy expensive apartments near the best schools or pay “school choice fees” to get in, he added.   Professor Stuart Gietel-Basten from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) echoed similar points, categorising “expensive schools” and music lessons under “extra costs”.   “You don’t need to put your kid into an expensive school to have clarinet and oboe lessons, and you don’t need to be in the best childcare or kindergarten...   But raising a child goes beyond the financial burden - there’s also a hefty price paid in time and opportunity cost for parents, particularly mothers, according to the Yuwa institute report as well as analysts.  Dr Zhao cited a government survey done in 2017 that listed the lack of a family caregiver as one of the top three reasons that Chinese women of childbearing age do not want to have another child."

Teaching English to a Frenchman - YouTube

Sabine Hossenfelder: Backreaction: Free will is dead, let’s bury it. - "There are only two types of fundamental laws that appear in contemporary theories. One type is deterministic, which means that the past entirely predicts the future. There is no free will in such a fundamental law because there is no freedom. The other type of law we know appears in quantum mechanics and has an indeterministic component which is random. This randomness cannot be influenced by anything, and in particular it cannot be influenced by you, whatever you think “you” are. There is no free will in such a fundamental law because there is no “will” – there is just some randomness sprinkled over the determinism.  In neither case do you have free will in any meaningful way.  These are the only two options, and all other elaborations on the matter are just verbose distractions. It doesn’t matter if you start talking about chaos (which is deterministic), top-down causation (which doesn’t exist), or insist that we don’t know how consciousness really works (true but irrelevant). It doesn’t change a thing about this very basic observation: there isn’t any known law of nature that lets you meaningfully speak of “free will”.   If you don’t want to believe that, I challenge you to write down any equation for any system that allows for something one could reasonably call free will. You will almost certainly fail. The only thing really you can do to hold on to free will is to wave hands, yell “magic”, and insist that there are systems which are exempt from the laws of nature. And these systems somehow have something to do with human brains.   If you don’t want to believe that, I challenge you to write down any equation for any system that allows for something one could reasonably call free will. You will almost certainly fail. The only thing really you can do to hold on to free will is to wave hands, yell “magic”, and insist that there are systems which are exempt from the laws of nature. And these systems somehow have something to do with human brains.   The only known example for a law that is neither deterministic nor random comes from myself. But it’s a baroque construct meant as proof in principle, not a realistic model that I would know how to combine with the four fundamental interactions. As an aside: The paper was rejected by several journals. Not because anyone found anything wrong with it. No, the philosophy journals complained that it was too much physics, and the physics journals complained that it was too much philosophy. And you wonder why there isn’t much interaction between the two fields.  After plain denial, the somewhat more enlightened way to insist on free will is to redefine what it means... “indeterminism” doesn’t mean “free will”. Indeterminism just means there’s some element of randomness, either because that’s fundamental or because you have willfully ignored information on short distances. But there is still either no “freedom” or no “will”. Just try it...   This conclusion that free will doesn’t exist is so obvious that I can’t help but wonder why it isn’t widely accepted. The reason, I am afraid, is not scientific but political. Denying free will is considered politically incorrect because of a wide-spread myth that free will skepticism erodes the foundation of human civilization... These psychology studies always work the same. The study participants are engaged in some activity in which they receive information, either verbally or in writing, that free will doesn’t exist or is at least limited. After this, their likeliness to conduct “wrongdoing” is tested and compared to a control group. But the information the participants receive is highly misleading. It does not prime them to think they don’t have free will, it instead primes them to think that they are not responsible for their actions. Which is an entirely different thing.  Even if you don’t have free will, you are of course responsible for your actions because “you” – that mass of neurons – are making, possibly bad, decisions. If the outcome of your thinking is socially undesirable because it puts other people at risk, those other people will try to prevent you from more wrongdoing. They will either try to fix you or lock you up. In other words, you will be held responsible. Nothing of this has anything to do with free will. It’s merely a matter of finding a solution to a problem.   The only thing I conclude from these studies is that neither the scientists who conducted the research nor the study participants spent much time thinking about what the absence of free will really means. Yes, I’ve spent far too much time thinking about this.   The reason I am hitting on the free will issue is not that I want to collapse civilization, but that I am afraid the politically correct belief in free will hinders progress on the foundations of physics. Free will of the experimentalist is a relevant ingredient in the interpretation of quantum mechanics. Without free will, Bell’s theorem doesn’t hold, and all we have learned from it goes out the window... Who cares, you might think, buying into the collapse of the wave-function seems a small price to pay compared to the collapse of civilization. On that matter though, I side with Socrates “The unexamined life is not worth living.”"

After canceling booze, Canada is now coming for your coffee - "After the country’s health officials released new guidance that having over two drinks a week can be a health detriment, new research from the University of Toronto says heavy coffee consumption is cause for concern as well. “These findings suggest that heavy coffee intake is associated with increases in the risk of kidney dysfunction among slow metabolizers of caffeine, who genetically comprise approximately half of the population,” an excerpt from the data read, adding that illnesses like hypertension could emerge... “Slow metabolizers are less able to get rid of caffeine efficiently from the body, so, it’s more likely to have adverse effects in the people who can’t get rid of it,” he added. Fortunately, the other half have the genetic makeup to break down coffee’s biggest perk without worry...  researchers from a province at the University of Quebec said that lowering coffee intake could combat climate change due to the reduction in pollution from making a pot"

How Public Health Took Part in Its Own Downfall - The Atlantic - "Many practitioners no longer felt compelled to deal with sticky, sweeping problems such as poverty, inequity, and racial segregation (or to consider their own role in maintaining the status quo). “They didn’t have to think of themselves as activists,” Rosner said. “It was so much easier to identify individual victims of disease and cure them than it was to rebuild a city.”... Public health is now trapped in an unenviable bind. “If it conceives of itself too narrowly, it will be accused of lacking vision … If it conceives of itself too expansively, it will be accused of overreaching,” wrote Lawrence Gostin, of Georgetown University, in 2008. “Public health gains credibility from its adherence to science, and if it strays too far into political advocacy, it may lose the appearance of objectivity,” he argued.  But others assert that public health’s attempts at being apolitical push it further toward irrelevance. In truth, public health is inescapably political, not least because it “has to make decisions in the face of rapidly evolving and contested evidence,” Fairchild told me. That evidence almost never speaks for itself, which means the decisions that arise from it must be grounded in values. Those values, Fairchild said, should include equity and the prevention of harm to others, “but in our history, we lost the ability to claim these ethical principles.”"
Apparently openly pushing a left wing agenda will lead to better results, even if you selectively interpret the data to fit your political biases. But ironically, grievance mongering is one reason for vaccine hesitancy

Meme - "The Internet after fat shaming Lizzo into quitting *Kens from Barbie hand in hand singing*"

FA defends multicoloured cross on England shirt as tribute to 1966 team - "The Football Association has defended the multicoloured St George’s Cross on the back of England’s new shirts, saying it was part of a tribute to the team that won the World Cup in 1966."

Adam Grant on X - "Too many people spend their lives being dutiful descendants instead of good ancestors. The responsibility of each generation is not to please their predecessors. It's to improve things for their offspring. It's more important to make your children proud than your parents proud."
The problem is it is much easier to predict what would make your parents proud than your children. 20 years ago, I doubt anyone predicted trans mania

$86 Billion Eco-Friendly 'Forest City' is Already a Ghost Town - "In a tale that might make you think twice about the phrase “If you build it, they will come,” Malaysia’s Forest City stands as a stark $100 billion testament to ambitions that have, so far, fallen a bit short of reality. Envisioned as an eco-friendly utopia, this coastal city in southern Malaysia was designed to be a bustling metropolis for up to a million people, boasting amenities like a golf course, water park, and an array of dining options. But instead of throngs of residents and tourists, its streets are eerily silent, with only about 1% occupancy in the completed sections.  Launched with great fanfare in 2016 by Chinese property developer Country Garden, the project aimed to transform a chunk of Johor into a futuristic urban haven. Fast forward to the present, and only about 15% of this ambitious city has materialized out of the master plan. So, what gives? Why has this would-be paradise turned into more of a ghost town?  Well, for starters, Forest City’s target market was Chinese buyers looking for a second home in Malaysia. However, despite the allure of living in a brand-new eco-city, the target demographic found the price tag a bit too steep, and local Malaysians weren’t exactly lining up either, finding the cost way out of reach."

Pastor Tells Telethon That Viewers Can 'Speed Up' Jesus' Return Through Donations - "Louisiana Televangelist Jesse Duplantis stirred up criticism after comments made on Victorython, a four-day, live TV event that the pastor hosted... During the recent televised event, Duplantis said that he believes Jesus has not returned yet because people are not donating enough money. "I honestly believe this—the reason why Jesus hasn't come is because people are not giving the way God told them to give," he said in a video clip of the event that has since been circulating online, "when you understand, you can speed up the time."  Duplantis, who owns a private jet, makes note of his multi-millionaire status in the clip as well. In 2018, The Christian Post reported that Duplantis received backlash for seeking donations to go toward the purchase of the $54 million jet. He responded to the criticism by clarifying that he was not asking for monetary donations but rather asking people to join him in believing that God would provide him with the plane. At the time, it was reported by Money that his net worth was estimated at $50 million. The purchase of the jet would not be Duplantis' first, and years prior he and Copeland both said that their private jets went beyond convenience. They allowed the pastors the ability to talk freely about God in flight—something they might be unable to do on a commercial plane... "I really believe this, if people would call this number and put this victory all over the world—every available voice, every available outlet—the Father would say 'Jesus go get em,'" he said during Victorython.  "What is hindering all these things is because people are not doing in the financial realm —because we live in an economic world — what God's called them to do," he continued."

South African woman guilty of abducting baby she raised for 17 years - "A South African woman has been found guilty of kidnapping a newborn baby, raising her for 17 years until her real identity emerged through a remarkable twist of fate last year.  Zephany Nurse was abducted from a hospital in Cape Town in 1997, three days after her birth. Her parents, Morné and Celeste Nurse, never gave up hope of seeing their first-born again and celebrated her birthdays without her.  For those years, Zephany grew up just a couple of miles away with a different name and a different family, never suspecting she was not their real daughter. But in January 2015, her biological sister, Cassidy Nurse, began at the same school. Soon fellow pupils noticed a startling resemblance between them.  Morné Nurse then saw Cassidy and Zephany eating burgers together in McDonald’s, and, struck by the physical similarities, contacted the police. DNA tests confirmed that she was the Nurses’ long-lost daughter and Zephany was placed in the care of social services, while the woman was arrested."

Meme - Raytheon Technologies: "Few people realize the RIM-7 Sea Sparrow is the most environmentally friendly anti-aircraft missile produced anywhere. We're proud of our commitment to a better future for all the children of the world. Do good things. Be greener. With Raytheon"

Meme - "He: French movie or French kiss?
She: ... French fries"

Michael Shermer on X - "Jesus died for our sins. But he was only dead for 3 days. So what did he sacrifice? His weekend. Jesus gave up his weekend for our sins."

Meme - "His hands look like this so that mine can look like this. *Crucifixion* *hand holding Easter Eggs*"

Finland Population (2024) - "The population density in Finland is 18 per Km2"
United States Population (2024) - "The population density in the United States is 37 per Km2"
Many Americans keep claiming that what works in European countries would never work in the US because the population is larger, because clearly economies of scale aren't a thing. Population density is a better argument, but looks like that's not it either

Maine Population 2024 (Demographics, Maps, Graphs) - "Maine Population 2024 1,402,106... According to the most recent ACS, the racial composition of Maine was: White: 92.93%""
Demographics of Finland - Wikipedia - "Finland has a population of over 5.6 million people... As of 2022, Statistics Finland produces statistics... 8.9%, have a first language other than Finnish, Swedish or Sámi."
Many Americans keep claiming that what works in European countries would never work in the US because European countries are small, homogenous ethno states. Misunderstanding of what an ethnostate is aside, many US states are also "small, homogenous ethno states" but don't copy those models.

The West Is Returning the Benin Bronzes. Should It?

The West Is Returning the Benin Bronzes. Should It? - The Atlantic

"The name given to the works—“the Benin bronzes”—attests to their significance. Very few of the pieces are made from bronze. Some are carved from ivory; most are cast in brass. But the two artistic traditions most admired in 19th-century Europe—those of classical Greece and Renaissance Italy—both favored bronze for their statuary. The misnaming mingles respect and condescension: It salutes the pieces’ greatness by misidentifying them to fit European preconceptions...

Even as Western museums hasten to disencumber themselves of their Nigerian holdings, the fate of the artworks returned to Nigeria has abruptly been plunged into uncertainty. ..

I reported on a three-way power struggle within Nigeria that would determine whether and where repatriated Benin artworks would be put on display. That internal power struggle has now been resolved, but not in the way hoped for by the Western museum community. We know who will control the objects that are returned to Nigeria. But we still don’t know what will ultimately become of the returned objects. It seems much less likely, now, that a proper museum for them will be built in Nigeria, or that the public will have much access to them in their land of origin...

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari completed his second term on May 29 of this year. Shortly before he exited office, Buhari issued a decree recognizing the current oba of Benin, Ewuare II—the direct heir of the former ruling family—as the owner of any Benin artworks returned to Nigeria. The oba can decide where the pieces will be displayed, or if they will be displayed at all. The president’s decree explicitly allowed the oba to keep returned pieces in his walled palace compound. The oba has no obligation to show them to anybody. There seems little to stop him from selling them if he wishes, although the Nigerian federal government can impose export controls. The art will be, in almost every sense, the oba’s private property.

President Buhari’s decision rejected the two rival claimants to the pieces. One was Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments, whose director had proposed in January 2022 a Benin museum in Abuja.

The other defeated claimant was the one in which most Western museums and governments had invested their hopes: a group planning to build a world-class museum in Benin City, the former capital of the Benin kingdom and now the capital of Edo State, one of Nigeria’s 36 federal states.

The independent museum project—formally known as the Edo Museum of West African Art—debuted to instant enthusiasm in 2020, heightened by the building design drawn by the British Ghanaian superstar architect David Adjaye. Adjaye’s previous accomplishments include the National Museum of African American History and Culture, in Washington, D.C., whose facade pays homage to the metalworking traditions of West African cultures. (Earlier this month, Adjaye was removed from a number of his projects amid allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault, which he denies.)

Proponents imagined the Edo Museum as more than just a single building. They imagined a large cultural zone where students would study art and where archaeologists would excavate the elaborate walls and moats that had once surrounded the city. An independent board of trustees would ensure the proper management of the museum and the protection of its collection.

The independent museum was politically backed by the dynamic governor of Edo State, Godwin Obaseki, and headed by Phillip Ihenacho, a financier of African energy initiatives. The project responded to deep and long-standing doubts about Nigeria’s government-managed museums. When the country gained independence, in 1960, the British-created museum in Lagos was endowed with hundreds of important art pieces, including some 90 from Benin. More than half of them had been transferred from the collections of the British Museum. Over the next six decades, that collection would dwindle—by how much, nobody seems to know. I counted only about 20 Benin pieces on display during my two visits to the museum in 2021. The Lagos museum building has fallen into ruin, with only intermittent electricity and few visitors.

Benin artworks are both enormously valuable and easily portable. The public market for Benin art has dried up as ownership has become more uncertain. But the British journalist Barnaby Phillips reports that one famous head changed hands in a private sale in 2016 for almost $14 million. Important Benin pieces could easily fit inside a carry-on bag. Meanwhile, Nigerian cultural officials are poorly paid, their salaries sometimes falling months into arrears.

During an audience that he granted me in 2021, the oba of Benin spoke of creating a royal museum in Benin City. The pieces he recovered, he said, would be displayed in a site he selected and in a building he approved. But the oba has many obligations. He supports five wives and many children, maintains his palace in the center of Benin City, and employs a retinue of courtiers and staff. His grant from the state government is not large, and his personal resources are reputed to be not much larger.

Modern museums consume money, a lot of it. The Adjaye-designed museum in Washington, D.C., cost more than $500 million to build. The smaller Chinese-designed and -funded Museum of Black Civilizations, in Dakar, Senegal, cost at least $34 million. Operating costs for any secure, climate-controlled museum run in the millions. In a country where nearly two-thirds of the population live on less than $2 a day, ticket sales won’t do much to cover them.

The Obaseki-Ihenacho-Adjaye group had imagined raising construction funds from international donors and corporations seeking business in Nigeria. Their governance plans were designed to assure foreign funders that the money would be properly used.

Raising international funds for the oba’s concept of a family-owned museum, operating without international oversight, would, however, seem more challenging. The oba has mused about obtaining the necessary funds from the Nigerian government, but Buhari’s statement granting him the art said nothing about this. Buhari instead held the oba “responsible for management of all places” where the objects are kept. The Nigerian government spends almost all of its revenues servicing its immense public debt; state support for a museum owned and overseen by the oba seems unlikely.

But then, perhaps government funding will not be needed. The Benin artworks that are coming into the oba’s possession will make him a wealthy man. Could he sell some of the pieces—to private buyers or museums in, say, the Persian Gulf—to build and operate a private museum in Benin City or meet other needs? The director of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments says no: “The artifacts of course can’t be sold, because in Nigeria it’s forbidden to sell Nigerian antiquities.” But the commission has been outplayed by the oba at every turn of this game, and Nigerian export controls have seldom worked in reality as they are written on paper.

Even if the present oba—who has a strong sense of royal and religious vocation—does not sell, his heirs will someday inherit these assets and face claims and needs of their own. It’s possible that the returned Benin works, having left old homes in Europe, may touch down for only a relatively brief interval in Nigeria before proceeding to new homes elsewhere.

Even as the oba was enjoying his victory over the Obaseki-Ihenacho-Adjaye group and the National Commission for Museums and Monuments, another challenge to his claim was forming, and from an unexpected direction.

The ancient Benin kingdom got the brass for its art by trade. What it most lucratively traded was enslaved human beings. Deadria Farmer-Paellmann is a descendant of some of those enslaved human beings...

In law school, Farmer-Paellmann had studied the slave-selling history of the Benin monarchy. As technology became available to trace genetic ancestry, she researched her own enslaved origins. DNA testing indicated that some of her antecedents lived in areas controlled by the Benin kingdom at its apogee.

As the debate over the Benin artworks intensified, Farmer-Paellmann became progressively more outraged. If it was wrong for Aetna, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wachovia to retain wealth from insuring and financing slave trafficking, why was it right for a royal African family to regain wealth from selling slaves in the first place? The art of the Benin kingdom, Farmer-Paellmann contends, represents the proceeds of a crime against humanity. The oba should not profit from the part his ancestors played in the crime.

In December 2022, as director of the Restitution Study Group, Farmer-Paellmann brought suit in federal court to enjoin the Smithsonian from transferring the artworks...

She was preparing to leave for the Cannes Film Festival to present a film she had made about the slave-trade origins of the Benin artworks, They Belong to All of Us. “It feels like we are being sold all over again,” she wrote to me after we had spoken. “Western politicians and museum directors are grandstanding and preaching morality from the pulpit of decolonisation while completely ignoring that there are Black slave descendants in their own countries whose rights to these objects they have just waived without any thought or care. To be clear: it is not for them to waive our rights. It is not for them to make decisions without having engaged with the descendants of those who gave their lives so that these bronzes could be made.”

While there has never been serious doubt about the Benin kingdom’s complicity in slavery, the details are intensely debated by historians...

In the immediate aftermath of decolonization, many historians were eager to minimize the role of African ruling classes in the transatlantic slave trade. Open a book on the subject, and you will again and again encounter sentences, paragraphs, and whole chapters carefully written in the passive voice: captives without captors, sales without sellers...

The brass had originated in Europe. It had been shipped to Africa by Portuguese merchants to be exchanged with the kings of Benin for plantation-bound human beings.

Farmer-Paellmann argues that the objects resulting from this exchange should be accessible to the descendants of the people enslaved and sold, not only the descendants of the people who did the enslaving and the selling...

Some proponents of repatriation argue that whatever happens next to the Nigerian treasures is nobody’s business but Nigeria’s. The New York Times reporter Alex Marshall recently quoted a spokesperson for the Smithsonian: It was, the spokesperson said, “none of the Smithsonian’s business” what Nigeria did with the Benin pieces. Nigerians can “give them away, sell them, display them … In other words, they can do whatever they want.”

It’s an argument that resonates with many in the West, especially if they do not linger too long over it. It depends on reading “Nigeria” as a single entity, erasing individuality from the story. It’s not going to be “Nigeria” that makes the choice to sell or to display the Benin bronzes. It’s going to be one person and one family, who prevailed in a fierce political contest for control of art assets together worth hundreds of millions of dollars or more. Among those parties fighting for control of the objects, there were few true innocents...

I believe in Western museums and their purposes. I hope someday to see secure and accessible museums spread to places where they are sparse, sharing and swapping collections that each institution views as a trust for the common benefit of all people everywhere.

But there is something else my parents believed, and that may be the most fundamental issue of all here. They believed that African art is world art, fully as much as Chinese Ming vases or European medieval sculpture; that it deserves to be seen, studied, appreciated, and protected on equal terms. Art is often shaded by dark history. The Ming vase in a British museum may have been traded for opium. The medieval sculpture on view in New York may have been pillaged from a ruined monastery by Napoleon’s soldiers. Justice to the past is a strong imperative. But the future also has claims upon the present.

African art suffers from a unique vulnerability to nonartistic agendas—which puts the art at risk in ways that would never be tolerated with the art of China or Europe. In the name of reversing old wrongs, modern decision makers are in danger of committing grave new ones. The Nigerians of tomorrow will not thank us for dissipating their cultural patrimony today."

 

The left hate monarchy - but only if it's white.

Related:

Berlin’s Benin bronze return a ‘fiasco’ as artefacts vanish - "A group of the Benin bronzes that Germany handed back to Nigeria have vanished into a private collection instead of being exhibited in a museum as promised, prompting some observers to describe the restitution as a “fiasco”... Over the past two years various institutions have begun returning the sculptures to Nigeria, as western museums and nations become more open to the idea of giving back looted artefacts. Shortly before Christmas Annalena Baerbock and Claudia Roth, respectively the German foreign and culture ministers, travelled to Abuja, the Nigerian capital, to hand over 23 of the bronzes, on the understanding that they would be shown in a new museum. Germany has also formally transferred ownership of more than a thousand other treasures from Benin to the Nigerian state, although some will remain on loan and others will travel in exhibitions. At the time Baerbock said the bronzes were being returned to where they belong. Instead, the outgoing President Buhari of Nigeria has passed them on to Ewuare II, the Oba, or king, of Benin, who will now determine their fate. This has caused some observers in Germany to ask whether there was any point in restoring the bronzes in the first place. “What politicians thought of as the return of cultural heritage to the ‘Nigerian nation’ has instead turned into a present to a single royal family,” Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin, professor emerita of anthropology at Göttingen University, wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The British Museum and other institutions in London have so far resisted pressure to give up their Benin bronzes. They are likely to take note of this precedent."
Obviously the rest of the Benin Bronzes need to be returned, so Africans can benefit from them being locked up and/or seized, and colonialism was evil. All Africans are the same, so benefiting a Big Man helps all Africans. Contracts are a foreign, evil, white invention, so black people don't need to follow them

(previously posted on 30th November 2023 but moved to this one)
Nigeria Benin Bronzes: Buhari declaration 'blindsides' museum officials - "Nigeria's outgoing president has issued a declaration over the Benin Bronzes that could have significant consequences in the campaign for the return of these great cultural treasures... Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari made a decision which has caused a mixture of delight, concern and confusion.  His declaration of 23 March, made public last month, unequivocally recognises the Oba, or king, of Benin, Ewuare II, as the owner of the famous Benin Bronzes... The Nigerian president's declaration says any repatriated Bronzes must be "handed over to the Oba", who is "responsible for the management of all places" where they will be kept.  This could include the Oba's palace, or anywhere else he and Nigeria's government consider secure... Ewuare II has been given sweeping powers.  These appear to come at the expense of the Nigerian government's National Commission for Museums and Monuments, (NCMM), which has handled many of the negotiations over the return of colonial-looted artefacts... for the NCMM, supposedly in charge of the country's heritage and yet not even mentioned in the president's declaration, this has come as an unwelcome surprise.  "We were blindsided… this is not practical nor compatible with existing Nigerian law [and] it was written by someone who doesn't understand how museums work," one official said... Nigeria's contradictions and fragilities - its many ethnic groups were carelessly thrown together by the British in 1914 - are never far from the surface.  One of the NCMM's concerns is that President Buhari has, inadvertently, undermined the rationale for any national collection.  If the Oba's ownership of the Bronzes moves beyond the theoretical to the practical, does this not mean that every Nigerian traditional ruler or community is in charge of the treasures made by their ancestors?  The NCMM aims to build a Museum of National Unity in the capital, Abuja, which would, presumably, contain objects such as the Benin Bronzes. That ambition could be harder to achieve now.  Oba Ewuare II and his advisers are more focused on local politics... European museums, perhaps understandably, are confused.  The German government, which has taken the lead on the return of Benin Bronzes, says these are internal matters for Nigeria. But some diplomats are worried.  "We negotiated with the Nigerian government to return Bronzes to the NCMM, and signed contracts with the NCMM," says a key German official, "so who are we giving them to?""
If they go missing or are damaged, it will be the fault of white people for taking them in the first place