I’m not going to say anything bad about Scott Adams. Most of these cultural figures make no sense at all to me, anyway, since I march to the tune of my own kettle of fish. I mean, Dilbert was funny… sometimes. Though maybe that had to do with the fact I was never cube-farmed.
I’m going to say up front and no mistake that he should not have been cancelled for saying what he did. Turn it around. If he were calling for “safe spaces” for black people, it would essentially be the same thing, and he’d be lionized.
What I’m going to say is that Rasmussen has been mighty funny recently. (I have nothing against DeSantis. He’s okay for a career politician. He’s head and shoulders about the current clown show. But you know, I live in the hinterlands not in Florida, and I talk to real people, including my plumbers and people who mow the lawn, and you know what? DeSantis isn’t — even with the entire Trump DeSantis death match in the news — even a bump on their recognition. The answer to DeSantis is “who?” and maybe for the more politically aware “Oh, yeah, the guy in Florida.” Meanwhile, you drive any distance out of a major city and farmers have HANDPAINTED billboards for Trump lining their land. They took time off whatever to do those. So when Rasmussen reported that DeSantis was way up above Trump for 2024, I rolled my eyes hard. He is. If you talk to the right commentariat, because even those who ended up supporting Trump were embarrassed by him. He’s so “crass” and “populist”. But the real people? DeSantis is Jeb!) And therefore, I’m going to roll to disbelieve on the whole 47% of black people don’t think it’s okay to be white.
First of all, polls are always bizarre. Even back when they were (or were treated as) trustworthy, to figure out if they meant what you think they meant, you’d have to do a deep dive not just into internals: who was polled, when, how were the polls administered, if phone, how were the phone number collected, etc. etc. etc. but into things that are a lot harder to quantify like “What tone of voice did your pollster use?” and did they express some kind of reaction (even just changes in breathing) to previous answers?
Humans are social apes. We not only respond to social signs we don’t even know exist — like a barely perceptible change in breathing from the other person, over the phone — but we want the person we’re talking to to like us. Even oddkins like me. We, without even knowing we’re doing it, (again) will change the tone of our answers or even our not carefully considered opinions to fit in with the crowd. This makes sense because the defiantly pink dyed monkeys left no descendants, not even us.
So, you know, when a poll touts that 47% of black people in America have problems with “it’s okay to be white” I roll to disbelieve. I roll to disbelieve pretty hard in fact.
Particularly since the statement itself is clear as mud. For whom is it okay to be white? People born white, or people of other races? And what is meant by “be white”. I mean, if I stay strictly out of the sun, I can have a pale color approximating my husband’s but why more olive. So, I’m a little pale green olive. Unripe maybe. OTOH get a touch of the sun, or be healthy, and the neighbors start asking what race I am. (Not actually a joke. Sigh. And they all look puzzled at “Human, probably.”) So, Is it okay for me to be white in appearance? Oh, heck no. The one time I came closest I was so severely hypothyroidal I was dying.
Is it okay for black people (or other races) to “be white” in actions? Well, it depends on what is meant by that. I mean, we’ve heard that white peepo are responsible for everything from global warming to the heartbreak of psoriasis, so a lot of people will say “no.” Instinctively. (Again) Without thinking.
Or did they interpret it as “it’s okay for me — personally — to act white” and was their answer “Heck, no, my brother in law will kill me, alas.”
So, you see, without knowing a lot of things we don’t know, including how the voice of the interviewer (if it was via voice. I really have no time to poke, though I’m sure my commenters will) and its tones, I can’t say if that poll is valid. This goes double for online polls which are so ridiculously gameable it’s not funny.
What I do know is that for the last ten years or so, it has been a project of the left to create an apartheid state. They sell it to people of color as “safe” and have apparently to moving to selling it to whites as “get away from them.”
Let’s face it, the left is the side of eugenics. They never change (see them being upset we’re not aborting all “defectives.”) Of course they don’t like our large, fractious, multi-racial intermarrying society. And of course they want to separate the races and imaginary races. (Latin isn’t a race. It’s a culture, really. Yes, we generally can tan, but that’s not the point. I have more in common in terms of upbringing with a person from Cuba than with one from England, and that’s the only point. Of course, people grow and change and culture can be superseded on the individual level. (it just hurts like a bugger. And weird traces remain. Like the chinelo-chancla. I must teach this magic to DIL and almost DIL should they spawn.).)
Anyway, the left wants us separated, because it’s easy to manipulate separate groups that separate due to visible differences. This allows them to use one group as a threat against the other and operate in the environment of irrational hatred they prefer.
So, getting that conclusion from the poll, even if the poll is accurate? It’s stupid. It’s not racist. It doesn’t make the person cancellable. It makes the person a conventional thinker, which to be fair, is how one makes lots of money with a comic strip. By appealing to a bucketload of people. Which is easier if you think along the same lines as most people. (This has nothing to do with IQ. I have reason to think Scott Adams qualifies for Mensa. It’s more the personality and lines of your thought. Also note it’s me saying he’s conventional. I think in inverted, upsidown, abolished tangents. So it doesn’t mean much in general.)
If that poll is 100% accurate, I have another solution. And it is far more upsetting the left. (Trust me on this.)
I suggest we stop talking about race. No race anything in polls. As a category, it stops existing. You don’t get better or more poorly treated because of your race. So you can tan? Good for you. From now on we consider it the same as having blonde or brown hair. It’s there, but it doesn’t mean much of anything. And then we see where that leads.
For one, it’s FAR more accurate to reality. Most American blacks, unless of recent (Like last couple of generations) African ancestry are basically Caucasian. I laughed my ass off at Angela Davis finding out she’s “white” and everyone being shocked. I mean, seriously people, that bitch is lighter than 80% of my cousins, and has fewer African features than I do. Of course she’s mostly white. Except in her head… No, wait, her head is also 100% white, being filled with the excreta of Marxism, put out by that white male, Marx.
And you know, the other day Biden said the quiet part aloud when he said he was “on the side” of Blacks, because he liked being on the winning side. That wasn’t just Biden being Biden. The idiots have a whole mythology in which the “global South” wins, because it has so many more people, and so, white people are a thing of the past and….
Only very pale Anglo Saxons can look at the world and decide that white people are a tiny minority. This is because they’re considering anyone who tans another race.
Funny thing is that they don’t consider themselves other races. I mean, they might think their nationality is a race. (Most of the world does.) BUT if you ask them, most of them will tell you they’re white. In Africa this gets outright funny. For instance, Obama’s paternal side considered themselves Arabs, not black. Think about it.
And yeah, some of it is actual for real racism. It’s the taking “white culture” i.e. the Western Civilization that is still dominant, despite the termites within it as “being white” and people wanting to be that. But some of it is because race doesn’t make a heck of a lot of sense. Put me on a beach for a month, give me a perm, and I look way more “black” than Angela Davis. (not that I have more black genes than she does. at the 16% contribution from Congo, I’d say we’re about equal.) Because looks aren’t the thing.
While there are some genetics associated with times and places and isolated populations — for instance I berserk, thank you the 2% Scandinavian (Norwegian, specifically.) — that doesn’t necessarily show in looks. According to my 23andme I have a never end of cousins on mom’s side who look like stereotypical California blonds. We share the same genes (a portion of them) but you’d never guess it.
More importantly in the US most of us are some vague light tan. “Black” people — and note there’s a lot of Angela Davis’ — are 15%. Trying to incite a race war means you want black people to die. Which, to be honest, would also be standard Democrat SOP.
So race defined by skin color and features so vague you know them when you see them, is a ridiculous way to mete out benefits or punishment. And it’s absolutely of no interest to a rational, civilized nation.
It is, however, a great, arbitrary way to enforce division which favors Marxists. Hence the left’s unclean love with it.
If any poll seems to favor that I roll to disbelieve.
And my prescription for ending racial hatred remains the same: Stop talking about it.
Every person of every race is descended from slaves and slavers, from rapists and raped, from murderers and murdered, from Lords and peasants, from idiots and geniuses, from monsters and saints.
We’re all humans. Ultimately that’s the best and the worst we can say for all of us.
Any person of good will, working to preserve civilization and beat back the gnawing worm of Marxist is my brother and sister. And I couldn’t care less how well or badly you tan.
According To Hoyt 
I wouldn’t put much credit in the poll that Scott Adams cited because (like you) I think more and more polls are run just to generate the answer that the pollsters require. What does concern me, though – is the number of horrific abuses committed by feral gangs or individuals of color against perfect strangers. Kids and teachers attacked in schools, people knocked-out with one punch, robbed, car-jacked, semi-organized mobs looting stores, and all-hands-brawls at amusement parks and fast-food outlets because a person of color is unhappy with their order. News reports of such incidents come thick and fast – and one can readily come to the same conclusion that John Derbyshire and Scott Adams have come to.
That’s because the schools indoctrinate kids who can tan with racism. OUTRIGHT racism. And an history of supposed abuses the white people are just waiting to commit against them because they can tan.
Yes, those crimes are horrific. Any teacher contributing by teaching this bs should be whipped.
And they try to defend actual racism by claiming that you can’t be racist if you’re not in power. Which somehow translates to “has white skin”, by assumptions they never actually specify. E.g., they’d claim that President Obama, while he was president, wasn’t in a position of power.
They need to be called out on that nonsense. (Not to use a stronger word). Every time. Point out that they’re trying to claim something isn’t racism, based on the color of the person’s skin. Make them verbalize their unspoken assumptions (black people, even the president of the US, are never in positions of power) so that people will laugh at them.
Darn it, out of time. I’d love to write more but I have to go.
Common sense needs to be spoken far more often. I would like for common sense to become actually common again.
I would also like for the government to shrink by no less than 95%. My likes to have might be a tad ludicrous, But I still like them.
If they’re ludicrous, they still match mine.
absolutely this.
My response to that is: You have two groups. Call them “A” and “B”. If a member of Group A says bad things members of group “B”, they have their livelihood destroyed. If a member of group “B” says bad things about member of group “A”, they are lauded.
Which group, then, has the power?
My response is no verbal response, since it’s not about reason, it’s about rationalizing. It’s about getting a justification to loot all you can out of a sinking ship – or a ship that you think or feel is sinking – while you can.
And it’s about the pleasure felt by the child spies in Orwell’s 1984, when they realize they can make the adults around them jump and dance by accusing them of something, or baiting them into saying something, like the kids who asked the principal if they could play rap songs during games. The principal says ‘no’ because the songs have slurs in them. “What slurs?” the kids say. The principal says one and the kids – who have been covertly recording the conversation – promptly put a three-second clip on social media and watch the media and the NAACP and possibly the government descend in a feeding frenzy on those who dared try and teach and discipline them.
A few struggle sessions later and the school board and superintendent promptly institute ‘sensitively training’ and new curricula – provided by approved political sources of course – and another hold-out is conquered.
And the kids – white and black – have great fun.
Remember Alinsky’s rule 6!
“The principal says one and the kids – who have been covertly recording the conversation – promptly put a three-second clip on social media and watch the media and the NAACP and possibly the government descend in a feeding frenzy on those who dared try and teach and discipline them.”
Which is why we have to seriously consider recording ourselves whenever we are around other people. And pretty soon, you won’t even have to actually say it; deepfake tech is getting good enough that anything you need to have said or done can be produced on demand.
You sweet summer child…you think context actually matters?
Probably not, but evidence might. And if evidence doesn’t, the logical response is to never meet with anyone. Stay with your own tribe. And preferably with your own henchmen.
Not a Good Thing.
It also rather unfortunately removes honest educators (believe it or not, there are still some of those left!) and cedes the battlefield to the enemy.
“you think context actually matters?”
If you have no weapons, there is no battlefield. Only a slaughterhouse.
PS: the reality you describe is part of the reason I’m as pessimistic as I am.
I wouldn’t be. It’s all part of the elite echo chamber, not in any way at the street level.
I don’t even think the kids really believe it themselves, or at least only half-believe it, but if they see they can get a reaction of this scale, then enough of them do it just for kicks.
Accusing a teacher or administrator of racism is getting to be the new “pull the fire alarm” or “do a phony bomb threat to get the day off and see the cops and firemen show up,” but with none of the reprecussions for the perpetrators.
If you have to live in Clown World, might as well honk a horn now and then, and at least you can be the only spraying the seltzer water rather than getting a faceful.
“Weapon” is not a thing you have.
“Weapon” is what one chooses to be.
Things suitable for violence can be acquired. From the enemy, for example. But if one isn’t a weapon, a machine-gun and 1000 round are just ballast.
Sure. They fight dirty. Fight back dirtier. Study them. Learn their vulnerabilities. Exploit them. Most of them can’t handle mockery. Laugh. They are a small group of large-mouth bass-tards. Never mistake noise for size, or for tough.
First, decide you win. Then decide you never quit. The rest follows from that.
There are no dangerous weapons. There are only dangerous men. — RAH
And women. I can’t claim to have killed the president of Paraguay with a fork, but some day at a con, I’ll entertain conversation on “Bizarre things that became useful weapons.”…. 😛
Not just the weaponized umbrella.
In Girl Genius, Agatha once clocked a foe with a book titled, “The Use of Found Objects as Weapons.”
I’ve used dictionaries
” A warrior uses what is closest to hand. There is no shame in this.” Mako in the Chuck Norris movie “An Eye for an Eye.”
We are constantly surrounded by deadly weapons. Hammers, axes and saws. Pitchforks and screwdrivers. Baseball bats, hat pins and frying pans. Extension cords. Plastic bags, for Pete’s sake. Cars and trucks. Shovels and rakes and implements of destruction!
Some dingbat is going to ask my main character if he’s terrified of living with the other main character because she’s got super-advanced weapons built right into her body.
“Why? If somebody wants to kill, almost anything can be used as a weapon. Having better weapons doesn’t make someone more likely to kill.”
———————————
Count Vordarian: “What? You’re a Betan! You can’t do—“
When they made the “new” rules about what you can carry on planes (I think it was 2003) Dad mentioned that if he carried a book onto the plane he could kill people with the pages. ANYTHING can be a weapon, given the opportunity and the right mindset.
Not to mention, pencils, pens, magazines, belts, hands, feet and teeth. And “legal” canes – no concealed blade, unweighted, made of blackthorn, hickory, or numerous others. “Lethal”, as noted, is in the mind.
Leverage: “Did you just kill a guy with an appetizer?” “Maybe”
🙂
My response is predicated on the idea that Internet Argument is a spectator sport. The idiot I’m arguing with is not the one I’m trying to convince.
Rule One: Hang the Alinskies FIRST. Put heads on pikes. Make examples.
But ox crude that way.
That’s only crude if the heads are upwind.
That depends. Upwind of where?
I can think of some places that deserve to be downwind of a bunch of rotting heads…
Upwind of me. Or, I suppose, of you. 🙂
Upwind of the White House, IRS headquarters or wherever the DNC happens to be meeting would not be crude, only appropriate.
Two problems with this plan:
1. Surely they deserve to have heads launched at their location.
2. If those groups still exist, someone forgot to order enough pikes.
Point(s) taken, although not all of the listed groups are Alinski clones. Probably no more than 85-90%.
Hard to carry a concealable pike.
Hey, a Minbari fighting pike collapses to a cylinder about the size of a flashlight. 😛
Cool. Order me one and I’ll reimburse you whenever I get it.
Assuming I’m still alive and on this Earth at that point.
Uh, just thought of something. This is the Sarah (with an “S” and an “H”) Hoyt universe, right? I thought the Minbari only existed in the future Cera Hoyt universe?
Power over others is always proximal. So: it doesn’t matter if you’re a rich X race or group individual, who hires and fires Y group working in your factory… if your car breaks down and you’re on your own and a group of 10 Y group happens to be on the scene… whether you have power over them in the factory, makes no damn difference in remote bushland. They may treat you with kindness and help you, or take you out and beat you or kill you. But your ‘power’ in factory counts for nothing, just as their power in remote bush counts for nothing in the factory.
Thought experiment:
Archie, a white guy, is terribly prejudiced against black people.
His neighbor George, a black guy, is terribly prejudiced against white people.
Archie is the racist, right? Because “racism is prejudice plus power” and whites by default “have all the power”. [tongue firmly in cheek]
Now put them both on a plane and fly them to Wakanda, where there are only token white people and blacks have all the power.
Does George become a racist the second he steps off the plane? Does Archie stop?
Discuss.
Nope. Archie is still a racist because Colonialism. And yes, I have had this discussion. If you manage to get a rational response out of the individual in question, then it becomes a matter of dates. Archie is still a racist because his ancestors kept slaves more recently than George’s did. Point out (and by this time the individual is usually backing away because Blasphemy) that Archie HAS no slave holding ancestors and you go right back to his skin color.
Colonialism is why I specified the fictional Wakanda. The Central African Republic (only lightly colonized) or Ethiopia (briefly conquered but not really colonized at all) would do for real world examples.
Doesn’t matter. The discussion follows the same pattern. Colonialism is a good scapegoat, because by lib thought there are no countries that were not affected. Rather like global warming, or cooling, or climate change, or whatever they’re calling it this week. Everyone is affected (even other planets, gasp!), therefore any arguments against it are automatic blasphemy.
Africans have kept slaves just as — and more — recently than anyone white too.
Yes. They are Still keeping slaves, in areas of the African continent. Granted most areas aren’t but only because few can keep themselves fed and watered (without help), let alone slaves.
snorts Slavery is alive and well in Africa, and the slave markets in Yemen are doing booming business, same as ever. They get lots of free stock from people sold a dream that if they get to Europe, they can live richer than they can dream on public handouts… the people they pay to transport them frequently cull the best human stock and divert it to the slave market, and only the refuse gets to the other side of the Med.
The middle east is full of “guest workers” that have no passports – whether they were suckered in on job offers and then got their passport confiscated when they arrived, or bought in the slave markets, or kidnapped to order (we’ve lost a few sailors on shore leave – it’s dangerous to be a young, stacked, fit blonde or redhead in many supposedly safe European ports in the Med).
And that’s before we even go from Southwest Asia to Southeast Asia, where in addition to ignoring the outright slavery in the ‘stans and the poorly hidden, relatively recently outlawed slavery in India, we get to China’s concentration camps full of slave labour, where having Hepatitis is a life-saver because it means you don’t get rolled up and sent to medical when a willing buyer matches your organs…
I know America loves to slap an euphemism on it and turn a blind eye, but whether you’re talking “artisanal miners” in Africa (ignore the warlord’s underboss with an AK standing guard over his child slaves while you’re doing the interview, you western journalists), “guest workers”, or “political prisoners”…
Slavery is doing very well across most of the world.
Your other mistake? Thinking that African people are too poor and desperate to reliably feed themselves, and therefore wouldn’t have slaves. Slave owners in the third world don’t worry about keeping their slaves healthy and fed – they only worry about how much they can get out of them, and where they’ll get replacements. Staying fed and watered is the slave’s problem. Before you protest it can’t be so…. look up the food chain. 80% of food aid to Africa is stolen and sold on the market. Who’s doing the stealing? Who has the food, and the weapons, and the power? Congratulations, you found the slave owners. Stop staring at the kid dying in the gutter, and look up long enough to see the mercedes benz driving by with two outriding hiluxes with eight guys with AK’s and a DShK in the back of each. ‘Cause I guarantee you, if you’re looking at starvation, there’s a warlord, even if they’re a “democratically elected leader” somewhere nearby.
All I can go is based on what is shown on the news. Not
exactlya world traveler. I know it is a false front, at best. I “know” slaver exists world wide, even illegally in the states. But what I “know” is not anywhere proof. Thank you for expanding.Wakanda didn’t help any other African tribes or nations. Does that make them racist?
No, just ultra-nationalists.
There you go, trying LOGIC. You racist.
/grin
I’d be happy with removing their teaching license and a few years incarceration. Should they be? Yep. The path to get there might be long, but if we keep making the steps…
It should definitely be done, but who’s going to do it?
When I worked across the Southwest and my skin shade was as dark or darker then most of the folks I met there was a movement that claimed to be African.
When they got too annoying I’d ask to which tribe they belonged.
They never had an answer, and asking them which tribes were at war currently resulted in nothing but confusion.
This was a few years after my exchange student buddy got collected by the State Department till they could determine whether his parents had survived in Idi Amin’s Uganda. Lance was the blackest man I’d ever seen and a good companion against the dead average challenges of High School in a country town. I traded him one of my guitars… he still owes me a thumb piano
“You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve,” said Aslan. “And that is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content.”
– Prince Caspian
Also, flyby c4c.
Whoosh
… and I forgot to check the box even with that one. I need to be more careful with the ‘Post Comment’ button.
The Reader thinks that 3 failures to check the comment box is you flying by and going ‘don’t look back’.
okay, you buzzed the blog’s roof. A little gentler, next time?
Apologies, your highness. I’ll be a little more careful in future. 😉
Negative, Ghostrider. The pattern is full.
Someone lost that lovin feeling….
I’ll stick with the more covert lurking, myself. Run silent, run deep…
I tried that for a while, and apparently people were worried. So I’m going with more visible appearances at this point, even if I do have to dodge dragons and similar to do so.
And hey, more maneuvering practice! It’ll come in handy should the cyberspace war every truly begin. (What was that saying? “Drills are bloodless combat, and combat’s a bloody drill.”)
You don’t have to buzz the blog every day. Just sticking your head up once a week or so would be enough.
To some degree it depends on what a person’s normal habits are. I was used to you showing up once every week or two for a writing prompt, so I started worrying when I noticed you’d been gone for almost a month. With Fox, on the other hand, I’m used to her being here almost every day so I’ll notice if she’s gone for 3 days running (although, lately she’s been skipping days a bit more often I think).
This.
Am.
Have teen, and the baby– who has been sure he’s teething since about two weeks after birth– is now getting FIVE TEETH AT ONCE.
Plus, the kids and my husband have a dog. And it takes more work to make sure they are taking care of the dog than to do it myself, but from this hill I will not retreat. :grins:
So a lot of very used up spoons.
Heh. Can’t blame you for being busy, then. 🙂
Just let us know you’re alive every once in a while.
Aye aye.
Okay, who let the new girl have an avatar with wings?
She did. We’re a group of individualists….
Right, so what you individualists need is some standards, and organization, and a leader, and rigidly enforced social ostracism based on arbitrarily shifting norms.
Otherwise just anyone might fly by unannounced, upsetting the strategic balance we’ve maintained with the Piscine Triad of Carp, Mackerel, and Halibut. Next thing you know, everyone’s got The Fish, and what will the people in Seattle think of that?
(hangs up a ‘Fish Fry Free Zone’ sign and retreats to the fall trout shelter)
No. Also. Here’s my middle fingers.
Look, she needs to learn to be like the rest of us individualists so she fits in better. 😛
There is this. We should give her the list of individualist-approved uniforms.
YOU CAN’T CARP ME. I OWN THIS PLACE
Yep. “They say I can’t be a nonconformist because I’m not like the other nonconformists.”
When you’re a goth, you have to dress in black to express your individuality just like all the other goths…
Don’t let TxRed hear that. Her Goths roam the color spectrum. 😎
I should have written, “when you become a goth”. I’ve been a goth for so long I can wear khaki chinos to a goth picnic, or all white to the goth club and nobody cares.
Sigh.
“A sheep-like herd of independent thinkers.”
Oh, but the goths know it’s a HUGE pain to truly match blacks.
(And that is a NOT a “race” [pfui!] dating joke.)
And to truly match them you have to … go out in the sunlight!!! [vampire hiss]
Don’t forget the Off-Tuna for music-related puns. 😀
I sense folks around here being about to build a tacitourniquet.
Ox is not slow this morning.
I used to carry a tourniquet, but I’ve taken it out of circulation.
AARGGGHHHH!!!
So would repeated rounds of The Quiet Game be a tacitournament?
“Hello, Speedy Carp Delivery service? I’d like to place an order”
As I understand them:
Standards – don’t try to order anyone around, and expect to be shouted down very quickly if you state something inaccurate
Organization – pick whatever title you please, just adhere by the above standards
Leader – our Beautiful But Evil Space Princess, whose spirit animal is Sam Vimes
Social Ostracism – this includes RACISM. Look, it’s in the word! Therefore, as good little well-behaved citizens, we shall not be doing that. Aren’t you proud of us?
Ostra, of the ism family. Rac, while technically an ism, is in an entirely different genus, let alone species.
The Reader thinks the tracking subsystem of the surface to air carp delivery system may need to updated with one of these. https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/2865134/long-range-discrimination-radar-reshapes-adversaries-calculus-for-attacks-again/
The Reader also suggests that ours be powered with a nuclear reactor. Diesel generators are stupid when the radar requires north of 20 MW.
blinks
You do know that you can get 20MW diesel gennies, right? Even up into the 50-60 range. Fairly pricery, at 10 mil a pop new and up. Used are possible, for values of “used.” Job sites way out in the boonies (or the desert), well, big ones tend to bring their own power.
If you’ve got the scratch to spring for mini nook reactors, a big diesel ain’t that bad.
The Reader notes that the location of the actual LRDR system is here (https://www.google.com/maps/place/Clear+Space+Force+Station/@64.2650426,-151.7264203,7z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x5132b71a9ad592d9:0xa1c6500ace7aed33!8m2!3d64.2912117!4d-149.1595115!16zL20vMDYycTlx?hl=en&authuser=0) and that the 20 MW is only to run the radar and is required 24/7.
When the Great Big Defense Contractor the Reader worked for was competing for LRDR (we lost BTW) several of us thought the nuclear reactor would be a much better solution than tankers of diesel running toward $15 / gallon with transportation costs.
The Army’s SL-1 reactor was intended for remote Distant Early Radar sites.
Testing revealed an …. unfortunate … design flaw.
If one withdraws the center control rod too far and too abruptly, the core goes “prompt” critical (versus human-controllable “decay” critical.) With great gusto it did.
And the mishandling occurs as in, “If it’s stuck, yank it harder.”
Modern designs include n inherent stop of such reactions. If power output exceeds intended maximum, the physics stop the chain reaction.
But soldier-proof is a contradiction. Infantry could break a tungsten bowling ball. When Earth’s sun goes nova, I have no doubt it will involve some bored E-2 saying
“oops”.
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/berrios1/ Geech!
This is what I Learned Today. Not that such a thing would be possible, but that it had happened.
Did you know that your maintenance supervisor is likely to complain when you put in ‘operator error’ for how the malfunction occurs? ‘But Sarge, he reported “Does not work in OFF position”‘
Or Top giving a gimlet eye to an E4 who says, “I didn’t do it”
“We have no idea how, but one of the crowbars was pregnant!”
I was an E-2 once.
Once.
….how many times did you make E-4?
Once, going up. Was afraid I wasn’t going to keep it after getting Art 15’ed pulling security augmentee duty with two other full time SPs. Fortunately, that was tossed out when they decided we were all suffering from CO poisoning from a leaking exhaust. As in unconscious, nearly purple faces, and when we were pulled into the fresh air, indescribably nasty headaches.
Glad you survived.
One of my uncles made it three times, so I had to ask.
Speaking of alternate realities:
https://notthebee.com/article/someone-had-ai-draw-every-president-but-theyre-all-cool-and-they-all-sport-a-mullet-
LOL
They’re a lot of fun, though Biden never looked that cool in his life. Reagan came out well, and Eisenhower has to be seen to be believed. They gave Ike a Mohawk. A short Mohawk. He looks like an albino velociraptor.
My first thought on the Biden one when I saw it…
“Is that Dog the Bounty Hunter?”
When the 101st Airbornne jumped at Normandy, they wore “Mowhawk” haircuts. So there is president….
But the biker mutant in “The Road Warrior” did it best.
I think Taft programmed computers when I was in high school.
Taft looks like people I know… who live in Cincinnati… and might be related to Taft….
Hmm. I’m sensing some kind of logical connection here.
“I know whom I have believed…”
And “On Edge” is worth the price of the anthology.
>
Which, I would think, would be the very definition of “populist”.
The left hates the fact that we intermarry like fuzzy happy bunnies. Back in my family history there was a rogue son who married an Irish girl. The family were Germans and this was an absolute outrage. I’m more Irish than German now, with a healthy sprinkling of English and Polish.
We Americans all intermarried and kinda forgot about these so-called differences. We were well on our way to forgetting about differences overall, when Obama came along. That creepy Marxist set about trying to destroy everything. What a shame.
A large part of American culture is mixing everything up. The melting pot is the ideal. It’s not, as the racists imply, a means of imposing “white culture” on everyone else. It’s a way of absorbing others into the culture, and incorporating those parts of the cultures of the newcomers that would make the existing culture better.
Can’t have that, though. The race hustlers might have to actually work for a living if they couldn’t peddle their nonsense saying otherwise.
Well, mixing it up and also breaking things up.
My ancestors went to the main German Catholic parish in town… until they stomped off and helped found a totally new German Catholic parish, about a mile away in the opposite direction… and about two miles from their house.
Stomp stomp stomp stomp. The farther away you can stomp, the more satisfaction in it.
My fraternal grandparents were never happy that my Dad, a good Polish man, married…
An Irishwoman…
The HORROR!
FRATERNAL Grandparents? I think you typed something by accident. LOL
Not quite relevant, but I can’t resist:
For those who want to decipher the mess, Wiki to the rescue:
en dot wikipedia dot org/wiki/I%27m_My_Own_Grandpa
I prefer the Futurama version.
“Choke on that, causality!”
OK, I’m not as smart as I thought…
I was thinking “OK, maternal would be Mom’s side of the family, so fraternal must be Dad’s”
I think it’s a bit late to edit the post…
Mater – mother
Pater – father
Filius -son
Filia – daughter
Frater – brother
Soror – sister
We borrow lots from things that can be traced back to Latin roots. Mater/pater are still used in British English. My folks were still using those when I was a wee one, though we’re long past the time when my family was English. Well, Scots-Irish nobility, but sort of English in the backwards way that island does things.
Latin is well worth studying in its own right. I believe it leads to a greater understanding and appreciation for our own language to know where the ideas that our words represent came from linguistically.
LOLOLOL. I get it. Sorry, It’s hilarious.
Well, if the Romans had just gotten going with Grimm’s Law, instead of waiting on the Germans to do it, you would have been right!
“Faternal,” I guess….
I’m fine with being laughed at!
Well, if they were not fraternizing, how…..
(Grin)
You’re a bad man.
(Singing badly)
No one knows what it’s like,
To be the Bad Man….
Family wreaths are much easier to write
Back around 1900 mine seemed ok with it.
Polish married Irish, the next generation then married polish who then married English/Welsh (dad).
Better than marrying [hushed tone of doom] a Protestant. Back then. Or marrying a different kind of Protestant, in some parts of the world/country. (When a mixed marriage is marrying a member of a different sub-group of a sub-group of Calvinists … wow.)
And according to my DNA test, I am as much African American (as in Sub-Saharan) as Elizabeth Warren is Native American.
The slave markets of medieval Dublin have a lot to answer for.
Although it’s usually people in remote African jungles who are full of early medieval Scottish or Saxon/Angle/Jute DNA.
It goes back a ways.
Letter III of Letters from an American Farmer, written ca. 1770-1778, published 1782
Also, the primordial Left was passing anti-miscegenation laws back around 1690-1700, so there was miscegenation back then to be anti to.
First of all, polls are always bizarre. Even back when they were (or were treated as) trustworthy, to figure out if they meant what you think they meant, you’d have to do a deep dive not just into internals: who was polled, when, how were the polls administered, if phone, how were the phone number collected, etc. etc. etc. but into things that are a lot harder to quantify like “What tone of voice did your pollster use?” and did they express some kind of reaction (even just changes in breathing) to previous answers?
A fairly new trick I’ve noticed is reporting only how many people took the survey, not how many answered the question. They may note that refused-to-answer or answer-didn’t-fit isn’t listed…usually in the footnotes.
And the spicy questions are the ones that people tend to not answer. And then there’s folks who just got pissed at the call and hung up…..
Another new-ish trick is combining two different survey groups– for example, that “This many unmarried female Americans under thirty say they’re single, but bigger percent of unmarried male Americans under thirty say they’re single” poll was… I from memory, 1/5 drawn from a selected-for-alternative-sexuality sample group associated with a dating app, to avoid under-sampling LGBTQ…something, I don’t remember the exact reasoning, just that it made me raise my eyebrows.
(I’d been looking if they gave a definition in the question, because I know too many guys who would say they’re single, when their girlfriend would say she’s dating steady.)
Then they apply their Secret Sauce to figure out what the REAL answer is, by all the demographics!
…of course, when you chop things into demographics and then alter the proportions, that means you would need a bigger survey because your sample size now has to be big enough in each little slice….
Or (guilty of) never answers the unknown number to begin with …
Or who troll. This is how you get those survey results where some horrifying percentage of the population supposedly believe that Winston Churchill was a fictional character, and that the US Civil War was fought in the 1930s in response to the election of President Ben Franklin.
“Would you tell us your password? We’ll give you a candy bar.”
“Sure, it’s $MadeUpOnTheSpotNonsense.”
“People are willing to reveal their passwords for candy bars.”
No, your test was punked by Joe Average, because YOU are that stupid.
The (in)famous one that proved that gun ownership had dropped. They polled people in Illinois. One of the early questions was “Are there any firearms in your house?”
That may be one of the two worst polls I know of, in terms of methodology and subject pool chosen. (Readers’ Digest poll in the 1930s that proved that FDR would not be elected being the second one.)
Ah, but if only it had been correct…
If someone gives me a survey on where chocolate milk comes from, there’s about a 75% chance I’m saying brown cows.
Because it is a stupid question that is wasting my time.
There was a scientist who called it a conspiracy theory to notice that his claim that right-wingers were more conspiracy theorists than leftists turned TWO anonymous responses who claimed to believe everything.
I’m not quite sure what that sentence says.
The only reason right-wingers seem more prone to ‘conspiracy theories’ is because left-wingers continue to call them ‘conspiracy theories’ long after they’ve been proven true.
Everything the Left told us was true has turned out to be lies. Everything the Left told us were lies are turning out to be true.
He tried to prove it by an anonymous survey online, with lizardman sort of conspiracies. He was trolled.
The third rule of propaganda, no this isn’t an exaggeration, is use surveys to condition your population.
The rules of propaganda, yes this was an actual book title, was first written by Alexander Kooft, we are certain this isn’t his actual name, since he does say so on page one, around the last end of the 19th century. Some of his rules haven’t changed since.
I’m a guy that enjoys stats… go ahead squint in my direction. Its fine. In spite of the cliché you’ve heard that you can say anything with stats, the answer is, no, but it does work as great cammo for deception, and you can get confused as hell with stats, especially if you didn’t have anyone trained to construct that survey in the first place. How vague do you want that question to be? How accurate do you want that survey to be? Slants, a phrase that reflects when the media is being paid to construct a particular narrative, thrives on mass decimination of a false narrative, which is another rule of propaganda. So, by and large if someone says survey, I too get suspicious.
I get suspicious when I hear the word “democratic.” The founders disagreed with the notion for good reasons that I find remain valid today. Especially so if the “democratic” has the word “people’s” before, after, or in the recent vicinity of it.
Chances are, when you see it, somebody somewhere is getting screwed. Or dead. Exploited, definitely. Lied to, absolutely.
If a country has any combination of “people’s” “democratic” and “republic” in its name, you know it’s Communist. And woe to the people whose country’s name contains all three.
Republic – you might be okay.
Democracy – probably chaos.
Democratic Republic – you are oppressed. The taste of boot leather is familiar to you.
People’s Democratic Republic – you are oppressed, starving, and half of everybody you knew are dead.
“Our Democracy,” – the democracy run by wannabe elites and their cronies for their own benefit.
Sounds rather retro-feudal when you think of it that way, doesn’t it? If the shoe fits…
When the phrase “our democracy” is used, remember that the “t” is silent.
That is, “democratcy”.
Stats have their uses… especially when you can use them to extrapolate information that the people who collected the stats hadn’t intended in the first place. Interesting tid-bits can slip through the cracks if you keep your eyes open.
There’s a US government survey, can’t recall the name right now, but every so often it surveys women about their sexual & reproductive history. How many partners, how many children born alive, miscarried, aborted… Some of the questions include details that let you tease things out of that survey the original surveyors probably didn’t think of. Such as how, if a woman marries the first man she ever slept with (whether or not the sleeping together was before or after the wedding — survey didn’t ask date first slept with so can’t extract “virgin at wedding” from that survey data), there’s an eighty-plus percent chance they’ll still be married five years later. (It was not clear whether the 20% that aren’t still married five years later means 20% divorce rate, or if that 20% includes the people who had only been married 0-4 years at the time the survey was taken). But if the woman has slept with at least one other man before her husband, the still-married-five-years-later rate drops to about 50%. (Again, this conflates women who left previous boyfriends, woman whose previous boyfriends left them, women whose first marriage ended in widowhood, and so on).
Point is, this government survey was focused mostly on children and what can be done to improve the chances of healthy pregnancy & delivery. But it had enough questions in there that you could tease out “Hey, those traditionally-minded Christians were actually right about waiting for marriage being the best idea” from the data.
A really going point to use for people who may not be religious (or who are anti-religious) when talking about not living together before marriage is that people who sleep together to “make up” after arguments haven’t learned to solve anything. So when (not if, when) the sex isn’t as good, they don’t have any true problem-solving strategies in their toolbox, so problems don’t get solved, become huge, and blow up the relationship.
IOW, living together usually ends with making out or sleeping together when you’re tense, without bothering to actually dig into why you’re having an issue. It’s too easy a fix and it doesn’t actually fix anything.
Back when, a blogger named Holly (not someone who commented here, and the individual is no longer goes by Holly) had a list of “reasons people give for staying in a bad relationship.” One of them was “Yes, he hits me/insults me when he gets mad, but the make up sex is so great!” As you say, that’s not solving the problem. (The entire list was dreadfully familiar to anyone who knows anything about how abusers operate, alas. But it was useful as a learning tool or to help people realize that maybe they need to get out of that relationship ASAP.)
Adrenaline junkies find people who don’t hit them intolerably cold and distant. Besides, they don’t feel ALIVE with such people.
I don’t remember where I read it, but the maxim “Don’t go to bed until you’ve worked out the issue (or resolved the argument)” has stood us in good stead for almost 60 years. Maybe dragging ass the next day from lack of sleep 🙂 , but no lingering issues.
A lot of those surveys that are “Well, actually nobody really believes Obviously True Tning” strike me as trying to push “Disbelieve Obviously True Thing, because peer pressure.”
One of these days I need to get the time together to organize the history of “race” as it stands today, before the censors get to the first sources. Because it is as it always has been smoke and mirrors. There are no races, save humans in all our myriad forms and colors.
While phenotype is interesting and can lead to some fascinating places (ancestry, etc), the way it is used today is not and never has been properly scientific. It is purely a political tool. And I mean that in the dirtiest, vilest way possible.
The people that Scott Adams- and really, any rational person- want to stay away from are a culture, not a race. That culture is criminal and dangerous. You don’t have to have a pasty pale epidermis to want to avoid that sort. Just have to have a few brain cells knockin’ together in yer noggin’.
Unfortunately, using certain words – words that the troublemakers themselves use to refer to their culture (and they even often include the word culture!) – will get you blasted as a racist, even if you aren’t referring to the troublemakers in question.
I’m old enough now that my give a crap button is well and truly busted on that point. And given the history in question…
Well, give you an idea, the concept originated in the 16th century. Going from there, it could refer to anything from a vintage of wines to people working a certain occupation to a particular generation. Later on (17th) it began to bend to mean something more like a nationality.
By the 18th the meaning led to mean something like ethnicity- something which cultural anthropologists and historians still squabble about (and one more prayer of thanks that I went with the dead side rather than cultural!).
The more common meaning came about sometime in postwar America. Post ACW, to be precise. Think that will have some cringe for the woke? You betcha.
There’s a lot of dirty, bloody history in that word, race. Worse than merely hurty-words history. And the way it has been used to divide and prejudice is nothing more than artificial limitations. Black, white, yellow, we are all of us human. That alone means something.
The psychological hobbles that come with thinking about “race” have done naught but harm. They are a cultural poison.
When I talk about “discrimination” in class, I point out that I don’t discriminate based on color, but I do on age and sex. If I see a group of young males coming towards me, breaking things and threatening people, I get the heck out of there. To date I have not had a single person disagree with my analysis or action.
You are so right.
If you saw two groups of young males coming down the street towards you, and the ones on one side of the street were blacks wearing shirts, ties, slacks, and carrying Bibles, and the ones on the other side of the street were white and were wearing droopy jeans and sideways ball caps and rhinestone dollar signs as necklaces, which side of the street would you choose to walk on?
It’s not color. It’s culture.
Yep. It’s why I advise the young men, stop being concerned about being black, brown, yellow, or white. Worry about being a man. That’ll take you farther and keep you on the right path.
Particularly since an individual can control the signals they give off through clothing, demeanor, and behavior. Sex and skin tone are immutable, but costume isn’t.
And unfortunately, “Sex and skin tone are immutable” will get you blasted as a multiplicity of “-phobic” and “-ist” if you say it in many public venues. To today’s moonbats neither is true; you are whatever you prefer and both are mutable, biology notwithstanding.
I know… sigh
Not right. They’re very sure skin color is immutable. Race, one of the least genetically definable characteristics,they think is immutable. Sex, on the other hand….
It depends (not a comment on Brandon’s “protection”). Apparently if one declares oneself to be black (or at least, non-white) it’s a REEEEEE!!! to challenge the claim, just as it is to challenge gender fantasies. Or at least it was as late as 2020; that may have changed, but it doesn’t look that way.
Which is why my suggestion for establishing “diversity” has been via simple decree by the people involved.
Still not true. Look at Dolezal and a dozen others “outed’ and hounded out of public life.
You can’t declare race. Only “gender.”
Fauxcahontas did. IIRC the mob responses to contradictions of her claim to be “Native American” were fairly strong, although I don’t know if anyone was “cancelled” because of them. You’re right that Wokie outrage is far more severe, and happens far more often, regarding challenges about gender, but gender dysphoria/fantasy also happens far more often than spurious claims about “race”.
Ah, but that’s different. That’s a “Democrat “elected” person privilege.”
🙂 OK, point.
See Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America.
From the Amazon blurbs:
“The racial categories that the schools use are completely bonkers, an arbitrary mess mostly left over from the work of federal bureaucrats in the 1970s that can’t withstand the slightest scrutiny. The administrators who rely on these categories are beholden to senseless and unscientific distinctions—they aren’t even competent or rational racialists. Justice Samuel Alito raised this issue in the arguments, pretty clearly relying on the work of George Mason University professor David Bernstein, who eviscerated the categories in an amicus brief and has written a book on their origin and implications, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America.”
— National Review
Added my wishlist; thanks!
When I copy edit social science articles, one of the things I do is look at the percentages and figure out if they actually add up to 100.00. You’d be surprised how often they don’t. And then I write a polite query . . .
Yeah, it’s something I check when I glance at polls. If the total is more than 99 but less than 100, then I chalk it up to rounding issues. Anything other than that, though, means that something is missing.
I think I heard that generic polls (if there is such a thing) of attitudes about race relations started trending negative around 2014 (during our last Marxist President’s term.) Most of us plain don’t care about race, but it’s hard to keep it out of your head when it’s harped on 24×7. You’re right, Sarah – shutting up about it would be best.
Yep, my race is “human”. Most of my ancestry is northern European (English, Irish, German, maybe French), but just like Fauxcahontas there’s a family tradition that a great-grandmother or two were American Indians. Unlike her, I’ve never tried to make that 1/16th (or less) into something to insist on.
Race should only be important if we ever run into extraterrestrial beings, and then only to the point that it needs to be known to avoid accidentally killing someone. Until that time, we’re all human and should stop trying to pretend otherwise.
“Race” is still meaningless in that context. “Species” would be. Correct about accidental killing, though – you do need to know that the huge disgusting slug you found in your back yard this morning is actually the (pre-metamorphosis) progeny of your neighbor.
Sorry about that, I was looking for my dog. Huge disgusting slug’s pretty harsh, though.
Maybe I should join that gym.
LOL. From one who’s trying to get his bellybutton to arrive with the rest of me…
I like my gym. I just wish there were fewer svelt, sporty people there. They make me look bad. (Although, the outfits for the Retro Aerobics class . . . I had no idea you could still find sparkly leg warmers and that style of leotard and tights.)
my rule for responding to something ludicrous is to respond back with something equally ludicrous … so my response to that poll would be similar to Mr. Adams response … (although to be fair, I used to live in the center of Harlem … the operative words being “used to” … and my “experience” with black racism may be unique to me …)
Eh. It’s a cultural thing. There may be regional differences, but I believe that there are common themes that run through it, and it is primarily an urban enclave thing. I’ve seen it in larger cities in the South.
But then, I have memories of old black families that took pride in their heritage. They were staunch Christians, had strong family units, worked hard and honorably, and were adamantly against handouts or charity of any kind.
The Democrats of old did their damndest to stomp out any and all evidence of that heritage. Nowadays, it’s thug culture that dominates the urban centers. That sort of uncivilized behavior is of help to no honest man or woman.
Ignorance is servility.
I’ve related this anecdote here before, but it applies again: My paternal grandmother, born 1905 and raised in flyspeck towns in Jim Crow Arkansas, once told me in the mid-70s sometime that back in Arkansas she had way more respect for the “colored” folks, because they worked hard and tried to better themselves, than she did for the poor white trash [sic] who just laid about and drank and raised hell.
I had a classmate when I was in college the first time who, apropos of Ted Turner, observed, “You don’ have to be poor to be white trash, and you sure don’ have to be black to be a n-gg-r.” We agreed that ol’ Ted was certainly one and was edging toward the other.
““Human, probably.””
Without a signed certificate from the Lord Patrician of the City? No wonder they looked confused.
I suppose it’s possible that they are trying to convince white people (however one defines that) that blacks are as much of a threat to whites as they’ve convinced the feral blacks that whites are a threat to them.
After all, it’s harder to get a race war going if one side won’t play and the other … isn’t actually numerous enough to do much damage.
As far as “It’s okay to be white”… I suspect it’s more aimed at young white men who have (allegedly) been told all their lives that they are responsible for every evil in the world from the beginning of time and should just die. Your lack of melanin and everything that other people ascribe to it isn’t your fault, and it’s not an intrinsically bad thing, IOW.
But it’s enough of a cypher that one can project any number of meaning onto it. As demonstrated by the panic it sends university administrators into when someone posts flyers of it on campuses.
I appreciate the genius of a phrase that anodyne, that can cause leftists to freak out so much.
I know who “It’s okay to be white” was aimed at. I just question its use in a poll
commissioned by the professional race baiters to determine their level of support …
A college buddy from the Republic of South Africa, upon being called “black” by an American pointed out politely that he was “colored”, not “black”. He then got out his passport to prove it. Then proceeded to lecture the gathering crowd that the USA had almost no “blacks”, but instead mostly “colored”. Etc.
Folks got seriously wrapped around an axle over it. They got lectured on “race” by an expert.
He went on to make folks look really foolish for wallowing in a belief system designed to keep them servile, which is why he departed “Sud Effricah” for a non-racial USA.
It was… educational.
“It’s okay to be white” is usually seen as a racist dog whistle, so I can believe the OP poll result. Just like “Black Lives Matter”, anodyne in its literal meaning, has the power to make most people on the right twitch.
If the poll had asked “do you believe there’s anything intrinsically wrong with being a white person” or used any other form of words instead of “okay to be white”, I’m pretty sure the percentage opposed would have been much lower.
some persons are playing for a race war
some persons are extremely frustrated that they’ve been trying to in incite a race war, and it has gotten them nowhere
Something like 13-15% identifies as black or African-American. That has been stable a long time.
White, I forget, 60-70%?
Partly, the left is motivated by some twenty or so years ago modeling work that suggested that the white population was declining. Population forecasting is apparently a bit garbage. Population measurement can even be pretty suspect.
Internal wars, civil wars, suck. Mass murders also suck. Sometimes both are feasible.
When you are recruiting people from sub-population X to massacre, genocide, mass murder or exterminate sub-population Y, you have the job of persuading your potential fighters. Which is partly a matter of what risks and costs they will experience doing the killing work. Which is why propaganda campaigns against Y are so often fundamental, if you can distort the way your fighters evaluate costs and benefits, you may be able to afford to pay them for the blood they pay in doing the killings.
20% is a fraction that might sound doable. But, there are around 40 million blacks in America, and very few people have successfully killed that many people. A mass murder of that scale or greater would be very difficult, even in the most advantageous circumstances.
This is America, and the circumstances are not advantageous. 1. Few potential targets that you can really count on being soft targets, unarmed. 2. How much can you trust the population that you are not trying to kill to do nothing while you service your target list? 3. How many people can you find who would like the odds of working for you?
The necessary elements of confidence, insanity, and murderousness still seem to be relatively rare, there are pretty much no fighters available.
Lots of the people accustomed to routine violence and good judgement are cops, veterans, or military. These people can be extremely cynical, and may feel that their other races colleagues are much more ‘their people’ than some of the crazies who happen to have the same skin color. If someone tries to start a mass murder, there is a risk of cops and veterans coming in hard on behalf of the other side.
Relatively fewer people are feeling particularly fat, stupid, and happy right now.
I repeat, the circumstances are not advantageous for anyone to carry out mass murder.
All sorts of folks are poking Americans with a stick, asking for a boog.
By and large, it seems like most Americans have responded by holding to calm, and refusing to act on the provocation. Their thinking was not as the malicious jerks expected.
Of blacks, it may be only the African-American studies majors, or even fewer, who are race war nutters.
White race war nutters also seem to be pretty rare.
modeling work that suggested that the white population was declining
I am given to understand that Americans of Latin heritage identify as white after a couple generations. My next-door neighbor with the Mexican mother basically presents as white, and has occasionally taken to task the Latino immigrant neighbors on the other side for acting like they’re in the old country, not America.
Blacks, on the other hand, seem to adhere to the old One Drop Rule. I’ve known some exceptions who identified as mixed race, neither black nor white, but it’s definitely been the exception. I suspect that if Chicano Studies (that’s what it was called when I was in college in the ’80s) were as big as Black Studies, there would be more One Droppism on the Latino side as well.
I never have quite understood why my beautiful granddaughters should automatically be considered black. (At best 50%, and that’s only considering their parents.)
“and very few people have successfully killed that many people. ”
Bob, the only thing I would change about your analysis is your victory condition. Many of the “race war crazies” on all sides would be satisfied with withdrawal of the “other”, either to their “ancestral homeland” overseas or a designated “homeland” here.
It won’t work, but it’s an “intermediate” step that allows people to duck the “kill them all” question.
A LOT of Hispanics identify themselves as “white” on census questions about race, then add in Hispanic/Mexican-American/whatever for ethnicity.
Indeed.
Among my neighbors – including the next-door neighbor, whom I have been on close-to-kin terms for more than twenty-five years – are a scattering of those of the African-American ethnic grouping., Who are proud, hardworking citizens, good neighbors, raising strong children … yes, they are “black” – but they hold no truck with the urban thug culture, as it is – and I deeply suspect, must be an embarrassment to them, although they’ve never said as much to us. We’ve watched Miss Irene’s grandsons grow up, from grade-school age to young men working responsible jobs, going their own way, buying their own cars and houses and marrying responsibly. If they had ever been tempted to go ghetto-thug, Miss Irene would have taken over the beating when their parents got tired.
But the ghetto-thug class … ordinary citizens have already gotten real tired of their destructive antics. Real, real tired. Patience is on the verge of running out, and when it does, the spectacle won’t be pretty.
I’m alright with “Well, mostly (or even kinda) human”… I am also fine “non-human” but when it gets to “inhuman” well, there’s apt to be Trouble. Oddly, the most inhuman there is, is… human? You folks are SO very confusing!
Given the number of race-and-grievance-mongers who make a big whoop-de-do about it and are so zealous to correct the second order effects of past evils that have been abolished that they go around committing bigger ones in the present, I’m coming around to the opinion that questions about race on that appear every time you sign up for something are no longer an innocent question. I’m tired of answering them, especially if the entity asking doesn’t have a legitimate need to know. The Federal government, in particular, doesn’t need to know. What are they going to do with that information?
So, I’m turning cranky in my old age.
“Lie to pollsters. If their model can’t account for people lying, how can it be accurate?”
Half joking. While I was job hunting, I neglected to fill out the (government mandated? There was language to that effect on some of the applications) wherever possible.
“Help us make $site more inclusive.” I am, by ignoring your demographics garbage.
A lot of surveys have added “decline to answer” and to lists for age, sex/gender, and
raceskin pigment. For the latter two, they’ve also added “other”. I’ve been tempted to select “other” and write in “NOYFB”.“Race” – Choose “Other”; neatly print “Human”
“Gender Assigned” – Cross out “Assigned” and neatly print “Observed”; check box for actual biological sex
Opinions and fantasies don’t belong on official forms, especially medical forms.
I understand. Difficult to do when on computer. Even the medical stuff is on computer these days.
Point, although the forms with an “Other” checkbox usually allow data entry. For the ones which don’t, simply check “Other” and let the idiots figure it out. And leave the “Gender” field blank. If they complain say you were distracted at the time of birth and have no idea what some unobservant clerk put on the birth certificate.
Sarah, OT, but WPDE has started randomly spewing old comments across e-mail notifications again. So far it ranges back to early December.
Oh, and I’m not White. I’m “Mocha Ice”.
Race?
No I don’t race. I have MS, I can barely walk nevermind race.
Race?
Pluresy Pony in the fifth, to show.
Notary Sojack!
“Not talking about race is the ultimate huwhite supremacist tactic!”
Also white supremacy? Apparently, showing up on time, math, work ethic, proper grammar and diction, clean living, and more. We should get more people to be wyt supperamancess if it’s that great.
/sarc.
Everything the lazy sloths on the left hate is white supremacy. Weird how that works, right?
Which reminds me of this favorite web comic, “Yes, well, legibility and correct punctuation might not be ‘street’…“
So help me, I’d buy him a pouch of his choice of tobacco, for that.
Priceless; thanks!
The slur “acting white” directed toward high achieving minorities by their demographic has been around for quite a while. Mid 70s to my certain knowledge.
“Oreo!” “Apple!” (Red on the outside) “Banana!” (Yellow on the outside, although that one’s vanishing like snow in the Sahara.)
“Oreo” replaced “Uncle Tom”.
The problem now is that Oreo’s are now multi-colored; have been for a long time. So for the kids and young adults these days – how is that an insult? I mean my favorite is chocolate centered and vanilla outside. If an insult has to be explained, then it ceases to be an insult.
In the last few years, the goto insult seems to be moving back to “Uncle Tom”, although “coon” is also heard quite a bit.
Our favorite bar/pub/saloon has neon signs as decoration. One: Harriett Beecher Stowe Republican club. (HBS was raised here.)
In case they bring it back and you have use of the information…
The ‘key lime’ filling of key lime Oreos and wasabi are the same shade of green, or close enough. No, I haven’t. (Yet.)
Pretty much everything it takes to be a productive member of a cooperative society, going back at least to Babylon. I guess the Babylonians were White Supremacists.
LOL. Yeah. I’ve heard that.
“Danggit, we’ve got a leak! Who talked about our brilliant no-talking plan?”
“Our what?”
“Exactly. Wait. Shut up!”
— Denis Leary.
Which reminds me of this Bob Newhart bit:
Race stuff was always pretty stupid but the last decade it’s been Scientology levels of stupid. And now that I think about it, comparisons to an idiotic, greedy, control freak cult are pretty appropriate.
…that might be a little unfair to Scientology, in fact. At least people can escape Scientology.
Do we know where L-Ron’s ghost is right now? Because I see modern politics and sometimes wonder if he’s still creating evil cults from the great beyond.
Probably working with Gregor MacGregor to pull a fast one on Odin.
According to Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in ‘Inferno’ he’s sealed inside a magnificent coffin in an equally grandiose mausoleum. Muffled screams and scratching sounds from inside imply that he’s not entirely satisfied with his Eternal Reward.
That’s Dante’s original punishment for heresy. Except in Dante, the mausoleum is heated red-hot…
I really should read Inferno again. The last time I read it was forty years ago and I was too young and inexperienced to recognize a lot of the references.
Parke Godwin in ‘Waiting for the Galactic Bus’ has him spending the afterlife as an answering machine.
OK, now I have to re-read both of them. My “to read” list is not getting shorter… 😦
(Although I did manage to read “Bowl of Red” and “Storm Front” this week; so many series, so little time.)
c4c
Scott Adams, uh huh.
Did y’all know the government of your northern neighbor and biggest trading partner was installed by the communist Chinese?
Yes indeed. You know those super honest, super secure elections Canadians like to brag about so much? Yeah, not that secure.
They don’t jigger the voting though. No need. They just -buy- politicians from all three parties. Yep, not only Liberals, but also conservatives and the NDPee as well. Donations, you know. Very racist to object. How dare you.
But what’s the media in a lather about? Scott Adams. Squirrel!
“Did y’all know the government of your northern neighbor and biggest trading partner was installed by the communist Chinese?”
THAT makes you special? We have Zhou Biden Serene Vice Roi to Winnie the Xi.
But the guy appointed by the Manchurian Candidate assured Canadians that all is well.
uh uh
Do polls have “Hung up/Refused to Answer”? Because I don’t think I’m being represented by them at all…
Golf Foxtrot Yankee is always an option, even if it’s not on the list. 😛
Scott Adams is a professional troll. He’s very good at it. He’s also spent Twitter time debunking the various, “Trump said X!” hoaxes and generally defending Trump. That may help explain the viciousness of the current attack.
Usually because Trump said ‘W X Y Z” and the internet lynch mobs screamed “Trump said X! REEEEEE!!”
Hey Sarah, did you ever decide what service to use to replace your old Paypal donation link?
Now that we seem to have working email I’m ready to send you that LP guest post we talked about. I just need to set up a donation account and stick the link in, but I need to pick a service myself and haven’t looked into what’s good yet.
Not yet. I am considering Kofi though I heard reports they’re linked to paypal. sorry. I’ve been…. a little busy.
I should probably crowdsource this.
Anybody got recommendations? I want something that’s resistant to cancel culture. I’ve heard good things about Subscribe Star and am leaning in that direction.
I don’t know if it would fit your purposes, but GiveSendGo has a pretty good track record of ignoring the mob.
So I’ve heard, but aren’t they more for one-shot fundraisers? I’m talking about a permanent donation link.
If they’re good for those as well, I might give them a look.
I was curious, and glanced through their FAQ – it does seem geared to campaigns, but doesn’t do the Kickstarter style 100% or nothing. Looks like they will disable campaigns after 90 days of no activity, but can re-enable. Might be work if you’re expecting infrequent donations.
That doesn’t quite sound like what I’m looking for here, but I’ll keep it in mind.
Thanks for the suggestion.
I think you can have a permanent fund raiser up.
Hmm… SubscribeStar might not be an option after all. Turns out you can’t withdraw money from them unless you have at least 5 subscribers. I don’t WANT to deal with subscriptions (at least not right away). I just want a donation button that isn’t tied to PayPal or a woke company.
Just remembered – our makerspace has donations through Stripe. Not sure how we set that up, though.
How is Stripe on cancel culture?
Apparently Stripe cancelled the Trump campaign account after J6, so they’re unreliable too. Damn it.
Anyone got any other recommendations?
Exactly, Sarah. It’s just more leftist insanity.
Scott Adams has a bit where he assumes that whatever is presented is true and then attempts to follow the logic. I suspect that this was one of those times. “If A, then B” is how a logical statement works. You assume A is true, then try to decide if B must be true based on that assumption. Even if A is ridiculous. I haven’t listened to him much but I remember him making a lot of disclaimers at the beginning of each of these discussions. I wonder if he has stopped making the disclaimers since he figures his audience already knows this. Or if the disclaimers were “conveniently” left out of the clips put out by the outrage mob.
Is anyone else having trouble with Instapundit right now? I’m trying to read Sarah’s night DJ posts but I can’t scroll down past her 6:00 am “Powder Keg” comment.
Never mind, it just cleared up.
Weird.
Apparently we have a redesign. I haven’t looked yet.
I want to be hopeful, ‘It’s okay to be white.’ Is actually rather lukewarm. If a black friend said ‘ It’s okay to be black.’ To me in certain tones and situations, I would be coming back with a response like ‘what do you mean, it’s awesome to be black.’
So I can hope that some of the respondents maybe felt the statement was damming with faint praise, and that white folks should have better self confidence, and less insecurity about the color of their skin.