RSSThis particular story actually doesn’t seem super-complicated: On the one side is the highly educated, woke, mentally ill white female (but I repeat myself), and on the other side are the Latin church people who are presumably more or less normal, as human beings go.
• Replies: @James J. O'Meara@BenjaminL
Well, other than the whole "worshiping a virgin who gave birth to God and became Queen of the Angels but we're not at all idolaters" bit.Replies: @Hibernian
the Latin church people who are presumably more or less normal, as human beings go.
- June 22, 2022 at 5:58 pm GMT • 100 Words
Outstanding as usual – the only thing missing is a list of the most prominent examples. As a loyal iSteve reader, I feel like there are dozens of highly prominent MtFs who fall into this category. It would would be useful to have a list assembled as supporting evidence to strengthen the case, as an appendix to the main argument.
- @ArclightNearly all public art commissioned in the last 50 years is totally awful, regardless of location and purpose.Replies: @BenjaminL
Occasionally something good happens:
https://www.city-journal.org/rodney-cook-jr-atlanta-project-seeks-to-reinvigorate-american-civic-art
Catesby Leigh and City Journal do their best to encourage non-awful art.
Keep in mind that the author, Berlatsky, is not just a run-of-the-mill leftist, but a seriously disturbed individual:
- May 23, 2022 at 3:24 am GMT • 100 Words
There’s apparently a legendary “AIDS thread” on another right-wing discussion forum that frequently gets referenced on Twitter….
As best as I can tell, for many young right-wingers, reading this thread was a major turning point in learning that The Narrative is built on lies. I think the thread has a lot of details about Gay Culture that are normally censored by The Narrative.
• Replies: @thomasblair@BenjaminLwould you be so kind as to share it?Replies: @Dream, @Chrisnonymous@BenjaminLDo tell...Replies: @Cutter, @Big Sexy@BenjaminLCould you drop a link to this?, @Almost Missouri@BenjaminL, @AnotherDad
There's also that documentary about gays deliberately spreading HIV:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oN4w8e432_oFrom the description:
for many young right-wingers, reading this thread was a major turning point in learning that The Narrative is built on lies. I think the thread has a lot of details about Gay Culture that are normally censored by The Narrative.
As many men in the community become condom weary, and some even consciously desire HIV infection, disturbing new trends of risky behavior have pushed the rate of new infections back into a rapid rise, all to the mantra of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
Using Internet sites for promotion and connection, a community of barebackers (those who have sex without a condom) is flourishing. This includes bug chasers who host conversion parties where men actively seek the gift of HIV infection.
Doug, a central character of the film, is a bright, articulate young man who moved from the Midwest to San Francisco in search of a gay community. He became a bug chaser and actively sought the gift of HIV infection. When Doug became infected with the virus, he felt a sense of belonging to a community. He is now dealing with the unexpected severity of his illness.
Also featured in the documentary is noted psychoanalyst and community activist Walt Odets, MD, author of In the Shadow of the Epidemic. Dr.Odets examines the loss, grief and anxiety experienced by HIV negative men living with the AIDS epidemic, and he speaks out about why prevention has failed and what needs to be done.
@BenjaminL
I can't speak for young right-wingers. But I can tell you that watching this unfold in the early 80s, was both extremely annoying and enlightening about the scale of lying and blame shifting the media would do.
As best as I can tell, for many young right-wingers, reading this thread was a major turning point in learning that The Narrative is built on lies.
I was a physics guy, not bio guy. But the b.s. the media spouted was just obvious nonsense from basic logic and back of the envelope math.I had not yet clarified my concept of "minoritarianism" back then, but I did recognize the core dynamic that minority misbehavior was being excused and could not be dealt with precisely because they were a minority hence "the good guys". And, of course, the tedious moral preening from good thinkers. Everything you see now--was there then with homos and AIDS. And suffice it to say, my reaction to that toxic nonsense was very visceral--and much the same as you see from me now. - May 12, 2022 at 2:31 pm GMT • 100 Words
One can argue that Venice belongs to Greater Byzantium — or at least that it did belong, during the first part of its history. San Marco can be counted as a Byzantine church.
Venice is not far from Ravenna, where the Byzantines erected some magnificent buildings (e.g. San Vitale, AD 547) despite the general late antique – early medieval decline.
Along with sending the Greek Christian intelligentsia off to Italy, the Ottomans were impressed enough by Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (unquestionably the greatest building of the Dark Ages, AD 536) to build many beautiful mosques over the later centuries.As late as the 18th-century Ottoman Baroque period, you can still see some of Hagia Sophia influence:
• Replies: @Jack D@BenjaminLOttoman Baroque was directly influenced by later European styles. In the case of the Nuruosmaniye Mosque that you show, the architect and many of the craftsmen are believed to have been Christian., @Mr. Grey
You can see that while it has a similar central domes, the Hagia Sophia has none of the neo-classical style Roman cornices and decorative elements found in the Nuruosmaniye. Although a lot of the glop on the outside of the Hagia Sophia was added later by the Ottomans (the original is basically the pinkish structure in the middle), even Justinian's original was built in the Byzantine style, where they no longer cared for the classical order.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Hagia_Sophia_Mars_2013.jpg@BenjaminLVenice was part of the Roman Empire. Once Justinian reconquered Italy in the 6th century, it remained part of the Roman Empire, gradually gaining its independence as Constantinople grew too weak to exercise authority over it a few centuries later. But they were still "Romans" who ruled their own republic until Napoleon. So it is different from the rest of Western Europe, in that it except for the brief Ostrogothic Kingdom before Justinian's reconquest, it was never ruled by Germanic kings. - May 2, 2022 at 8:07 pm GMT • 200 Words
This theme is also discussed in NS Lyons’s lengthy and extremely depressing post on why wokeness is going to be around for a while (search for “Ford Foundation” and follow the horrifying links).
https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/no-the-revolution-isnt-over
The Ford Foundation is also a great example of how the foundations often run riot well beyond even the intentions of their donors. Henry Ford II went to his grave lamenting the family had ever set theirs up in the first place, describing it as “a fiasco from my point of view from day one,” having “got out of control” because, “I didn’t have enough confidence in myself at that stage to push and scream and yell and tell them to go fuck themselves, you know, which I should have done… we can get thrown out or we can go broke; but those people, they’ve got nobody to answer to.”
- @Philip NealApril 26, 2022 at 5:25 am GMT • 100 Words@BenjaminLWell worth reading, particularly about "low information" voters and the many people who still get their news from television. Most of them had barely heard of Eric Zemmour.
"Nixon can't have won. Nobody I know voted for Nixon." (Yes, I know it was said as a joke.)Replies: @BenjaminLLemoine argued two points that seem underappreciated by American rightists:
* The Le Pen “brand” is so toxic that even the kind of Deplorable Frenchman who wants to deport all the immigrants and their kids will say, “I’m not voting for Le Pen, what am I, a Nazi?”
* Le Pen Inc. is apparently run by grifters who care only about keeping the gravy train going, and not at all about France.
Interviewed by Richard Hanania, Philippe Lemoine has a very informative breakdown of the situation:
https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/the-politics-of-race-and-class-in?s=r
• Thanks: Rob• Replies: @Philip Neal@BenjaminLWell worth reading, particularly about "low information" voters and the many people who still get their news from television. Most of them had barely heard of Eric Zemmour.
"Nixon can't have won. Nobody I know voted for Nixon." (Yes, I know it was said as a joke.)Replies: @BenjaminL- @The Germ Theory of DiseaseApril 12, 2022 at 2:41 am GMT • 100 WordsWhat a narrow, short-sighted, self-absorbed conception of history Baldwin and his confreres have.Recall what Marlowe says, while sitting on board a yacht in the Thames, contemplating London at the start of "Heart of Darkness"... "This too has been one of the dark places on the earth." Every place was once a village full of primitives. Everybody has ancestors who were slaves. What does anyone suppose Vercingetorix said to Caesar? "Hey, can I touch your hair?" btw, Haroun al-Rashid's Baghdad was so splendid largely because his buddies had conquered one of the oldest and most advanced civilizations in the world, not because of some sort of Yemeni genius for architecture. Meanwhile, Chartres Cathedral was built in a relative civilizational backwater. Go figure. A while ago I was reading Burton Watson's excellent translation of Su Tung-p'o. In other words, I was reading poetry that was written over a thousand years ago, in a country and a language which at the time were the cultural and political center of half the world, which had been translated into a language which did not even really exist yet at the time Su wrote but then arguably surpassed him, while sitting on a continent he could not imagine even existed, using a technology which the Chinese had invented and then basically abandoned. The Sung very nearly invented something like what we'd call Modernism, but then chickened out, probably out of deference to the richness of their past. Baldwin could have tried inventing a movement a little bit more serious than Complainism, but then nothing is more soothing than outraged moral superiority.Replies: @BenjaminL
The Chinese are on their way (back) up to the top after the century of humiliation, and get to watch the West imploding with self-destructive Wokeness.
Yet, rather than a smug aloofness about their 5000 years of civilization, the Chinese often seem very touchy about being disrespected by the West. I guess resentment is very easy to come by, and/ or the West really is that impressive, even in its present pitiable state.
• Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease@BenjaminL"Yet, rather than a smug aloofness about their 5000 years of civilization,", @Achmed E. Newman
Fair points. I'd simply point out that for 4,500 years, smug aloofness about their overwhelming superiority was Chinese standard operating procedure towards *everybody*, and it was probably this miscalculation that helped get them into so much trouble when the gunboats started showing up.
A mistake, I presume, that they don't intend to make twice.@BenjaminL
Benjamin, they are humiliating themselves in a different way right now, with this latest re-attempt at Common Cold Zero. The may yet implode in their own way.Thank you, Generic American, for those couple of videos. My China source had given me a run-down on the Shanghai Orwellian Totalitarianism going on right now - see the latest on Peak Stupidity.To Ron Unz, the Chinese governments' non-haphazard handling of the Kung Flu was a model for the world. It's hard to get people to say they were wrong sometimes.In the meantime, I think* I and my boy got that Kung Flu for the last week and a half. I can't smell much. I still went to my job. It's the common cold, bro..* We're not positive. That is, we're not positive we got it, as we ain't about to waste time going to the drugstore for tests.
The Chinese are on their way (back) up to the top after the century of humiliation..
- @Art Decothe descendants of Harun al-Rashid, caliph of Baghdad when northern Europe was in the dark ages.
He ruled during the Carolingian period in Europe. Europe was not in a dark age then.Replies: @BenjaminL, @AldenBut northern Europe, beyond the borders of the Carolingian empire, was still in a dark age. The last Lithuanians weren’t Christianized until the 14th century.
• Replies: @anon@BenjaminLYou say it as though adopting a bastardized version of Judaism was some sort of a sign of enlightement. The Lithuanians did not see the "benefit" of being christianized by a bunch of grubby teutonic knights, the way Latvians and Estonians had been. Given that around that time the Grand Duchy of Lithuania encompassed much of the territory of present-day Belarus and Ukraine, in addition to ethnic Lithuanian and some other Baltic tribes' lands, and was one of the largest states in Europe, they were doing OK without the wisdom of Yehoshua. The infighting and betrayal of the elites (Lithuanian dukes and kings) led to the adoption of christianity as a matter of expediency. - April 3, 2022 at 12:16 pm GMT • 100 Words
Tyler Cowen interviewed the author of this book. Worlds colliding!
https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/ashley-mears/
COWEN: If someone called me “bridge and tunnel,” what would that be referring to?
MEARS: Okay, ouch. Manhattan being an island, it’s the term that denotes somebody who’s seen as not having enough money or cultural competency to make it to live in Manhattan, so they have to travel by bridge or tunnel from Brooklyn or from Staten Island to come in. And they try to get into the door, and the door person quickly recognizes that this is an outsider, and they don’t belong.
COWEN: I am, in fact, from New Jersey. What is it about me that they would see as the giveaway?
MEARS: About you in particular? I demur on that question
• Replies: @ic1000@BenjaminL> Tyler Cowen interviewed the author of this book. Worlds colliding!, @bomag
Beat me to it! For those hesitant to invest in an hour's listen to Cowen's podcast, here's a Marginal Revolution link to his summary of the conversation.
BTW Ashley Mears parlayed her modeling experience into an academic career. She comes across as a down-to-earth and sensible sociologist, something I had thought was a contradiction in terms.Replies: @bomag@BenjaminLImmigrant bad!, @Nicholas Stix
LOL!@BenjaminL"cultural competency"
That's pc garbage. There's no such thing. There are, simply, diversity trainers who get paid huge sums to promote lies about affirmative action groups, and who force normal Whites to submit to their lies.
So much for Mears being down to Earth.
As for the black bouncers at "hot" clubs. When I came home from West Germany in 1985, I lived in Brooklyn for the first nine years, but my social life revolved around Manhattan. I don't know about expensive clubs, but I would pass by whatever were considered the hot clubs of the moment at night, but never try to enter. Each such club had a huge, black bouncer, and a long velvet rope line of people hoping to get in. I learned--though fortunately, never firsthand--that the bouncers lived to refuse entry to, and thereby humiliate Whites who didn't look "cool," whatever that meant.
Well, I knew that, whatever "cool" was, I wasn't it. So, I never tried to get into one of those clubs. I was also getting to learn about the world of academia, in which ritual humiliation also plays a huge role. (I had seen very little of that as an undergrad from 1976-1980.) - @Days of Broken Arrows@Meretricious...or they're "Instagram models." Or "influencers." That's a thing now.
Something tells me these types populate the bottle-service clubs.Replies: @BenjaminLThe website “Tag the Sponsor” attempts to prove that many so-called “Instagram models” with no visible means of support (i.e. no actual modeling contract) and a highly expensive lifestyle are merely selling themselves to perverted Gulf Arabs.
- @Rupert PupkinApril 3, 2022 at 12:02 pm GMT • 100 Wordsi remember back when i was young and alive in NYC in the 80s/90s there were a few men i knew who almost seemed to have a tic that required them to constantly say 'model.'
and if they introduced you to a new date or told a story about her, the word 'model' made its appearance within seconds, and then stayed in every sentence...it didn't matter if she were a hand model, Sears model, or a 7ft kazhakstani who spoke no english, they just needed you to know they were dating a MODEL!
i guess it is a status marker for insecure men, but from what i could tell the hottest chicks were always drug dealer molls, who were much sexier than a 6ft stick figure w no T&A plus w/ a dangerous edge.
(personally i think i went out with 1 or 2 but they tended to be very money-conscious w zero personality nor any ability to converse and im not into skinny teen boy bods.)Replies: @BenjaminLCandace Bushnell, the original “Sex & the City” columnist, dubbed these men ‘modelizers.’
https://observer.com/2007/06/meet-the-guys-who-bed-models/
But not all modelizers are so high-profile. In Manhattan, just being rich can be enough. Take George and his partner, Charlie. On any given night of the week, George and Charlie are taking a group of models, sometimes up to 12, out to dinner. George and Charlie could be Middle European or even Middle Eastern, but in truth they’re from New Jersey. They’re in the import-export business, and though neither is 30 yet, they’re each worth a few million.
• Replies: @njguy73@BenjaminLIn the second episode of Sex and the City, Miranda finds out that her boyfriend is a modelizer, and he's dating her because his friends asked him to get a girlfriend who actually has a brain. She asks him, "What am I, your intellectual beard?" - @Diversity HereticI once attended a lecture at the German Embassy in Washington DC in which the lecturer said that it's difficult to overestimate the prestige that German culture had in the United States before World War I. IIRC, he said that the University of Minnesota had six chairs in the German department. And it all evaporated in six months in 1917. Although we associate German immigration in northern cities such as Chicago and Milwaukee, a surprising number of Germans settled in Texas and northern Mexico and I wonder whether there was a similar phenomenon in those communities. Steve's right; Germans seem to do urban living better than the English.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @Mike Tre, @BenjaminL, @AceDeuce, @anonymouseperson
The Texas Hill Country is home to the first Union monument on Confederate soil, erected in 1866 in honor of German Texans killed for refusing to sign a Confederate loyalty oath.
• Replies: @Alden@BenjaminLI learn new things everyday in UNZ. Thank you. I knew about German Texans but had no idea they were on the union side during the civil war.Replies: @Anonymous - @Reg Cæsar@BenjaminL
Where I lived in New York, we would rarely say dibs, and never, ever, ever first dibs. (Are there second dibs?) My Upper Midwest neighbors use this construction, and it's even more annoying than pop.Replies: @BenjaminL
Not sure if this was already posted, but New York State is literally following the Sailer Strategy of giving convicted drug dealers first dibs at legal cannabis licenses.
Interesting. Pretty sure that ‘first dibs’ was common in 1980s-era Bay Area California, which had a lot of Upper Midwesterners among its early settlers (themselves descended from earlier New Englanders), including my people. Not sure where they picked it up though.
- March 18, 2022 at 4:54 pm GMT • 500 Words
Not sure if this was already posted, but New York State is literally following the Sailer Strategy of giving convicted drug dealers first dibs at legal cannabis licenses. The entire article is pure Sailer gold:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/09/nyregion/marijuana-sellers-licenses-hochul.html
New Yorkers With Marijuana Convictions Will Get First Retail Licenses
Officials intend to reserve the first 100 or more retail licenses to sell marijuana in New York for people who have been convicted of related offenses, or their relatives.
• Replies: @Rob@BenjaminLLol. They are doing everything they can to make sure rolling out legal weed is a clusterfunk. Maybe give the next thousand licenses to people who’ve just declared bankruptcy?, @Jim Don Bob
I know lots of “entrepreneurs will be smoking blunts in front of cops to try to get a marijuana license quickly before they are out.
But, a thousand licenses could be a tiny fraction.@BenjaminLDamn! I guess I missed the boat by not getting busted years ago when I did indulge. Of course, I am White so I still wouldn't have a chance against all these deserving POCs., @Charon@BenjaminL, @Reg Cæsar
You don't even have to be a convicted criminal to get extra gibs now! Just have one in your extended family! And who doesn't have that? Wypipos, that's who. So F them!Also, notice the phrase "or more."
Officials intend to reserve the first 100 or more retail licenses to sell marijuana in New York for people who have been convicted of related offenses, or their relatives.
Lionel Hutz voice.
“They might not have all that bank account and paperwork and lawyers that a real estate person would want to deal with,” Ms. Krueger said.
Thanks for quoting the story, for those of us who refuse to give the NYT our clicks.@BenjaminL, @The Anti-Gnostic
Where I lived in New York, we would rarely say dibs, and never, ever, ever first dibs. (Are there second dibs?) My Upper Midwest neighbors use this construction, and it's even more annoying than pop.Replies: @BenjaminL
Not sure if this was already posted, but New York State is literally following the Sailer Strategy of giving convicted drug dealers first dibs at legal cannabis licenses.
@BenjaminLBlacks are prone to schizophrenia; in fact, one commenter here relayed an apocryphal statement from a psychiatrist friend wondering if all blacks weren't on a spectrum of schizophrenia. Considering that marijuana is a potent hallucinogen that psychiatrists warn their schizophrenic patients not to use, and considering black issues with impulse control and physical violence, I'm not convinced encouraging blacks to smoke marijuana is a good idea. My opinion is influenced by several decades of experiencing crazy homeless black men in Atlanta.Replies: @Buzz Mohawk - March 16, 2022 at 6:09 pm GMT • 100 Words
When Aeroflot loses your suitcase…
https://granta.com/who-killed-tolstoy/
On the day of my flight to Moscow, I was late to the airport. Check-in was already closed. Although I was eventually let onto the plane, my suitcase was not, and it subsequently vanished altogether from the Aeroflot informational system. Air travel is like death: everything is taken from you….
Every morning I called Aeroflot to ask about my suitcase. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ sighed the clerk. ‘Yes, I have your request right here. Address: Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy’s house. When we find the suitcase we will send it to you. In the meantime, are you familiar with our Russian phrase resignation of the soul?’
- @Steve SailerJanuary 28, 2022 at 12:41 pm GMT • 100 Words@AnonymousJeopardy applications aren't a meritocracy, it takes applicants who it thinks will be best for its ratings. When Jeopardy holds try-outs (in my day), it puts those who pass on a waiting list for the next 52 weeks and says don't call us, we'll you (and we're not promising we'll call you ever). I didn't get called for 11 months and only got called after the January 18, 1994 L.A. earthquake. I'm guessing some out-of-towners dropped out, or I would never have been called.Replies: @Alrenous, @BenjaminL, @Anonymous
I tried out for a different, extremely minor quiz show once. They filtered the throng with a first-pass exam that was extremely easy – almost everyone here would have aced it. Still, that eliminated about half the crowd.
Then, when I made it to the actual show, the actual questions were extremely easy – I aced them, as would have almost all the iSteve commenters. But the other contestants didn’t. Now, looking back, I have a much greater appreciation for the difference between internet nerds, and the average American who can’t name the chief justice of the Supreme court when approached in the street by Jay Leno.
- January 27, 2022 at 11:38 pm GMT • 200 Words
Classic comment from “Theodora” at Heartiste:
https://heartiste.org/2017/06/16/the-difference-between-fat-men-and-fat-chicks/
I think that one big difference between female obesity and male obesity is this: while the health and aesthetics problems are common to both sexes, female obesity is totalitarian. Fat men don’t demand to be called Big Beautiful Boys. They don’t lie themselves that they are voluptuous, gorgeous and curvy. They don’t want to change the standards of beauty existing since the beginning of humanity. They don’t shame and bully thin people (“eat a sandwich!:), they don’t ask to vanity change the sizes of clothes, they don’t ask to erase the word “fat” from public conversations. Fat men usually deal with their problems individually and in silence, while fat women want to change society, dictionaries, standards, reality and human nature to ease the burden of their fatness, acting as true Stalinists in the process.
That’s why the female obesity epidemic is more dangerous than a matter of health and aesthetics, and an affront not only to Beauty, but also to Truth, and well-deserving of the Shiv.
• Replies: @prosa123@BenjaminLI think that one big difference between female obesity and male obesity is this: while the health and aesthetics problems are common to both sexes, female obesity is totalitarian.
Health issues aren't the same. Women tend to pack on extra pounds on their hips and rear ends, and as long as not too extreme it isn't usually a major medical risk. Men usually add extra weight on their abdomens, where it can present significant health dangers. - January 23, 2022 at 3:48 am GMT • 100 Words
Handel did this in 24 days. I wonder what any of these people could accomplish in 24 days. Wiki:
“The music for Messiah was completed in 24 days of swift composition. Having received Jennens’s text some time after 10 July 1741, Handel began work on it on 22 August. His records show that he had completed Part I in outline by 28 August, Part II by 6 September and Part III by 12 September, followed by two days of “filling up” to produce the finished work on 14 September.”
- @Ian SmithJanuary 19, 2022 at 10:03 pm GMT • 100 Words@SafeNowThe only painting I’ve seen in black Africa from before the 20th century are from Ethiopia.https://allaboutethio.com/images/paintings.jpgNot exactly Rembrandt or Velazquez but it’s something.The only sub-Saharan art that made any impression on me are the Benin bronzes.Replies: @BenjaminL, @Mike Tre
Ethiopia is really part of the Greater Mediterranean, and its art history in the early medieval years is not that different from parts of Europe that were somewhat in the boonies compared to Greece and Rome (say, Saxony or Visigothic Spain).
Medieval Ethiopian Christian Art is recognizably related to Byzantine art etc. There is a lot of good information on it at the Met. Museum.
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/acet/hd_acet.htm
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ethi/hd_ethi.htmOn the other hand, Greg Cochran posted this when Tyler Cowen asked if Ethiopia will be the next China:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41965919?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
• Thanks: Ian Smith - @BenjaminLDecember 24, 2021 at 6:27 am GMT • 100 WordsDidion had a lot of female haters, from Pauline Kael and Barbara Grizzuti Harrison on down. They largely find her to be a snob:http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/103/didion-per-harrison.htmlhttps://www.theawl.com/2011/10/the-cordial-enmity-of-joan-didion-and-pauline-kael/https://popula.com/2018/10/15/the-center-held-just-fine/I'm ambivalent -- snobbery is unappealing, but Didion's California is a lot better than what succeeded it. I also think her observational skills and prose style were more impressive than her analytical mind.It's also funny that the haters insist that Didion was "Upper Upper class," despite not being all that wealthy and working for a living. Perhaps Old Palo Altan can enlighten us as to where the Didions stand in the California class hierarchy.All the most-liked comments on the NYT obituary insist that all her haters are male chauvinist pigs who don't want to see a woman get her due credit.Replies: @Colin Wright, @Anon
‘I’m ambivalent — snobbery is unappealing, but Didion’s California is a lot better than what succeeded it. I also think her observational skills and prose style were more impressive than her analytical mind…’
I don’t see her as a snob. She was from about one social tier above mine — but that’s just the way it was. She neither hid it nor saw in it some form of superiority. I have no problem with someone who honestly tells us what they see. She did that.
• Agree: BenjaminL - December 24, 2021 at 6:08 am GMT • 100 Words
Didion had a lot of female haters, from Pauline Kael and Barbara Grizzuti Harrison on down. They largely find her to be a snob:
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/103/didion-per-harrison.html
https://www.theawl.com/2011/10/the-cordial-enmity-of-joan-didion-and-pauline-kael/
https://popula.com/2018/10/15/the-center-held-just-fine/
I’m ambivalent — snobbery is unappealing, but Didion’s California is a lot better than what succeeded it. I also think her observational skills and prose style were more impressive than her analytical mind.
It’s also funny that the haters insist that Didion was “Upper Upper class,” despite not being all that wealthy and working for a living. Perhaps Old Palo Altan can enlighten us as to where the Didions stand in the California class hierarchy.
All the most-liked comments on the NYT obituary insist that all her haters are male chauvinist pigs who don’t want to see a woman get her due credit.
• Replies: @Colin Wright@BenjaminL'I’m ambivalent — snobbery is unappealing, but Didion’s California is a lot better than what succeeded it. I also think her observational skills and prose style were more impressive than her analytical mind...', @Anon
I don't see her as a snob. She was from about one social tier above mine -- but that's just the way it was. She neither hid it nor saw in it some form of superiority. I have no problem with someone who honestly tells us what they see. She did that.@BenjaminLI've never thought much of her prose, and I've always thought most of what she wrote was trivial. She seemed concerned only with things that would be of interest to someone living in a New York high-rise. She was parochial and had a narrow viewpoint in a very New York way.Replies: @Muggles, @Colin Wright - @R.G. CamaraSaddest part (for many PUA guys, as I was once one) is how, in retrospect, the 60's could have only happened in a pre-1965 immigration world living off the prosperity and safety of America post-ww2 combined with first-blush feminism's "sexual openness" push and a population of young, slim, attractive, scantily-dressed white women who were far more feminine and less slutty than later generations, regardless of how many partners a girl racked up during that time. In other words, the 60's could only happen once. It is not a wonder so many old hippie dudes lionize the period and never stopped living in it. As Dennis Miller joked once, you could be a hairy awkward dude who hadn't washed in a week and living on the streets and some hot 21 year old midwestern blond would come up to you and ask, "Nice sandals. Wanna fuck?"But if you missed it, you missed it forever. It's really not a wonder Quentin Tarantino made such an idealized picture out of it, having missed the era himself by being a child.Replies: @BenjaminL, @AndrewR, @New Dealer
The current version of sexual liberation sounds a lot worse:
- @Alfa158December 7, 2021 at 11:15 pm GMT • 100 WordsThere was a minor kerfuffle on Twitter a little while back when a progressive couple boasted that they made a practice of scouring Little Libraries in their town and throwing away any books they regarded as being right wing or Christian.
In our Whitopia these libraries are as common as “in this house we believe…” yard signs. In fact I can see one set by looking out my front window. There is competition to make these libraries as nice as possible with siding, glass paned windows and doors, gables, real shingles, multiple stories, beautiful paint jobs etc. I feel like competing by making one that has a cappuccino machine inside, an old comfy couch on the sidewalk next to it, and a sign advertising free wi-fi. Let’s see anyone top that.Replies: @res, @Jack D, @BenjaminLI often think about how to cope in these situations. I wonder how it would go over to put out books that are fairly highbrow, and also quite reactionary, e.g. Brideshead Revisited; Family and Civilization; Chesterton; De Maistre; Joseph Burnham; Christopher Lasch; Philip Rieff.
Are the progs literate enough to realize that these books threaten them?
• Replies: @John Johnson@BenjaminLI often think about how to cope in these situations. I wonder how it would go over to put out books that are fairly highbrow, and also quite reactionary, e.g. Brideshead Revisited; Family and Civilization; Chesterton; De Maistre; Joseph Burnham; Christopher Lasch; Philip Rieff.Are the progs literate enough to realize that these books threaten them?Liberals are much more pop culture minded than they like to admit. If you went to a liberal party and started talking about classic books they would look at you like an asshole. They are sensitive and would take that as some sort of challenge. They don't want their views to be challenged. They want Trevor Noah to tell them that Republicans are stupid. Liberals like the ideas of many things and are not really concerned with results or even carrying these ideas through. They like the idea of little libraries and they like the idea of reading the books that are in them. They may even pick them up and take them home. These are all great ideas and then they go home and watch Trevor Noah before getting f-ked by their conservative boyfriend. - December 4, 2021 at 3:21 pm GMT • 100 Words
In the 1950s, Turf wars in rapidly Diversifying upper upper Manhattan (i.e. Washington Heights) resulted in a Puerto Rican gang murdering an Irish teenager, that made big news:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0096144209351107
The New Deal liberals were very incentivized to suppress any race-war aspects of this, and so they did.
- December 3, 2021 at 1:13 pm GMT • 100 Words
Semi-tangent: a truly astonishing merger of “”data science”” with relativist postmodernism:
Some woke “quant” types did a massive amount of work to prove that predictive AI …. predicts more crimes in black neighborhoods than in white neighborhoods — and that this IN ITSELF counts as “bias.”
They used to try to hand-wave away higher black crime rates as white people’s fault – no more. The entire piece studiously avoids even mentioning any actual crime rates.
We used to think “woke postmodernism can’t ruin the quantitative fields” — no more. This is what it looks like.
The whole piece is like a clown world version of Run Unz’s article on race and crime — triumphantly pointing to higher crime rates in black neighborhoods as… proof of racist AI!!
• Thanks: John Regan• Replies: @Anonymous@BenjaminLA few good quotes from that ludicrous article:
and
We asked MacDonald whether he was concerned about the race and income disparities. He didn’t address those questions directly but rather said the software mirrored reported crime rates “to help direct scarce police resources to protect the neighborhoods most at risk of victimization.” The company has long held the position that because the software doesn’t include race or other demographic information in its analysis, that “eliminates the possibility for privacy or civil rights violations seen with other intelligence-led or predictive policing models.”
IOW, the software is even more accurate that humans at predicting where crime will occur, and this is somehow a problem.
The study authors developed a potential tweak to the algorithm that they said resulted in a more even distribution of crime predictions. But they found its predictions were less in line with later crime reports, making it less accurate than the original algorithm, although still “potentially more accurate” than human predictions.
- November 17, 2021 at 3:00 pm GMT • 200 Words
At least in Texas, the top schools appear to be not only exurban, but very affluent. Westlake and Southlake are among the very wealthiest communities in their respective metro areas.
Southlake is probably the second-wealthiest town in the DFW metro area, and the wealthiest (Highland Park) isn’t on that list but has produced plenty of NFL stars.
Since every town in Texas is football-crazy, presumably having affluent parents provides all sorts of advantages to the teams (beyond just football-craziness).
A lot of public high schools in Texas have very large enrollments (4000+ or even 5000+) which should help field a strong football team, and yet, there appears to only be a limited correlation between school size and football ranking, probably for the usual unspeakable HBD reasons.
https://www.maxpreps.com/rankings/football/1/state/texas.htm
In the DFW area, Duncanville, Lewisville, Skyline, Allen and Prosper are all over 4000 enrollment (Allen is over 5000) and yet, only two of those five make it into the Maxpreps TX top 25 list.
There also appears to be some correlation, but only a limited correlation, between football ranking and football budget. A good number of Texas towns spend $50million plus on huge high-school football stadia (probably a good proxy for overall football budget), and yet, only a few of those show up on the top-25 list.
- October 28, 2021 at 4:10 pm GMT • 100 Words
This Twitter thread earnestly argues that it is wrong for lesbians to turn down ex-men because that is “discrimination.”
Of course, by the exact same logic, it is wrong for lesbians to turn down actual men. That, too, is “discrimination.”
The entire courtship process would fall apart if no one could exercise their powers of discrimination.
https://twitter.com/PurpleCar/status/1453342549624643586?s=20
- October 23, 2021 at 11:32 am GMT • 100 Words
The feminization of discourse is a huge deal. I think it is a big part of why so many men are so turned off of so many institutions — they can sense the feminization and say: no thanks.
Even without a byline, you can tell within a few sentences whether an author is masculine or feminine.
It’s a big part of why so much official discourse feels so fake: all about feelings and niceties and euphemisms. Men say: no thanks, we need the blunt truth. Hence the appeal of truth tellers. I wonder what the M/F breakdown of readers here is? 95/5?
• Agree: Dr. X• Replies: @guest007@BenjaminLWomen would counter that men, instead of focusing on blunt truth, spend most of their time BSing on a topic they know little about. See President Trump for a good example., @Achmed E. Newman@BenjaminL, @ginger bread man
95/4 now since Rosie stopped having conversations with us.
I wonder what the M/F breakdown of readers here is? 95/5?
.
(Her opinions on most issues were pretty aligned with mine, but apparently nobody, even on a 95/5 m/f ratio thread can say anything that puts women in a bad light vs. men.)Replies: @Anon, @Curle, @Reg Cæsar@BenjaminLI asked this a while back - https://www.unz.com/isteve/survey-time/#comment-4784642, @Coemgen@BenjaminLAh, we're mostly graying slashdotters.
The ancient by www standards slashdot poll for "my gender is" produced these results:
My Gender Is
Male ...................................48543 votes / 82%
Female .................................3307 votes / 5%
Somewhere in the Middle....7181 votes / 12%
........................................... 59031 total votes.
https://slashdot.org/poll/406/my-gender-is
plus ca change ... - @pirelliOctober 20, 2021 at 1:38 pm GMT • 100 WordsThe reader comments on this article are almost uniformly pro deportation of the Haitians (and the few that aren’t are mostly expressing shock that the vast majority of NYT commenters have turned so Trumpish on this issue).
Top 3 comments below:
1. “Biden better learn to ignore these activists. If he thinks the larger American population will tolerate millions being welcomed illegally or abusing the asylum system he has another thing coming.“
2. “To a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To a civil rights activist, everything looks like the worst atrocity ever.
I’m not a civil rights activist. I don’t see anything wrong with ‘the images from Del Rio.’
People try to break our laws and come into America without authorization. The Border Patrol’s job is to keep them out, which is not an easy job. I see them doing their job.”
3. “Here's a scenario: someone lost their job and is being hunted by a criminal cartel. They want to hide in your house, and in fact stay there forever. They tell you they will do some odd jobs that you don't want or cannot do yourself. They say that when they get a new job they will contribute to your mortgage payment.
Maybe it's a good deal for you.
If you are a proponent of legal controlled immigration, you would sit them down, ask them a bunch of questions and do a background check to you know whom you are dealing with.
What it seems progressives want in this scenario is for this person to have the absolute right to storm through your door, make themselves comfortable on the couch, maybe make the above offer, maybe not. If you call the police, in their eyes, you are the oppressor.
Ask yourself which scenario you would abide in your home?”Replies: @BenjaminL, @lavoisierI noticed that too; thanks for pointing that out.
Washington Watcher’s recent column also notes that EU leaders have mostly come to their senses on the ‘refugee’ issue as well — especially France, where the top four presidential candidates are all running on varying degrees of immigration restriction.
Perhaps many US/EU voters have common-sense views on the issue but don’t want to vote for a Trump / Le Pen figure because of the “ick factor.”
Is the tide turning??
• Replies: @Redmen@BenjaminLThe next election isn't for more than 3 years. I think most unhypnotized folks will have gotten over the "ick factor" by 2024. The MSM will attempt to keep the anti-Trump fires burning, but there will be vastly diminishing returns on their propaganda.
Trump has deflected 2 impeachments by Congress in a year and lost a close (and highly questionable) national election. With his sinking popularity and diminishing mental capacity, Biden cannot be the next candidate for the Dems. It remains to be seen who can emerge from a party with no appealing figures. - @Sick of Orcs
Certainly not blaming all Jews, but at the heart of each radical movement (and ADL, SPLC, NAACP(!!!) ACLU) you will find boxes of bagel crumbs.Replies: @BenjaminL
But because basically the same people are in charge of the culture today as in the late 1960s.
• Replies: @Reg Cæsar@BenjaminLLolita? Is Humbert on staff as well?
https://i2.wp.com/fullcirclecinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/james-mason-and-sue-lyon-in-lolita-1962-album-e1560661719795.jpg Just for the record — I always check on this out of curiosity — this is one of those stories where the NYT reader-commenters, to judge by the “most-liked” comments, are definitely not buying The Narrative.
Entertaining / horrifying thread of unverifiable Afghan refugee stories:
• Replies: @Jack D@BenjaminLHe was a moderate, having been spoiled by life in the West. A REAL Afghan doesn't really give any consideration to what women like any more that he considers what his goats prefer., @Alden@BenjaminLThe MEN OF UNZ should welcome the Afghan Muslim men to America. Some of the MEN OF UNZ have the same hatred and contempt for women that Afghan Muslim men do. For the same reason homosexuality and other psychology sexual and personal problems., @CCZ
The gay men of America should welcome the Afghans too. All those macho dominant homosexuals.@BenjaminL"I've Worked with Refugees for Decades. Europe's Afghan Crime Wave Is Mind-Boggling.
Afghans stand out among the refugees committing crimes in Austria and elsewhere. Why?"
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/ive-worked-refugees-decades-europes-afghan-crime-wave-mind-21506?page=0%2C1‘Yes, like the beleaguered pop star, who shaved her head in 2007, I took clippers to my own head. Too many headaches, too little sleep — I had to flee myself, my relationships, my hair.
There it is again…
- August 6, 2021 at 6:26 pm GMT • 200 Words
Interestingly, Whitlock uses exactly the same metaphor (car accident and rehab) as Amy Wax, to describe black responsibility.
Whitlock:
Let’s say white people pitted us against each other. Let’s say it started in slavery. No problem. I agree it happened. I also think it’s insanely foolish to expect white people to fix it. It’s not going to happen. It’s no different from a man breaking your leg in a fight and expecting him to do the rehabilitation. Only you can do the rehab.
Wax, reviewed by John McWhorter:
https://newrepublic.com/article/76403/what-hopeWax appeals to a parable in which a pedestrian is run over by a truck and must learn to walk again. The truck driver pays the pedestrian’s medical bills, but the only way the pedestrian will walk again is through his own efforts. The pedestrian may insist that the driver do more, that justice has not occurred until the driver has himself made the pedestrian learn to walk again. But the sad fact is that justice, under this analysis, is impossible. The legal theory about remedies, Wax points out, grapples with this inconvenience—and the history of the descendants of African slaves, no matter how horrific, cannot upend its implacable logic. As she puts it, “That blacks did not, in an important sense, cause their current predicament does not preclude charging them with alleviating it if nothing else will work.”
- August 5, 2021 at 6:25 am GMT • 200 Words
Semi-off-topic: Some prime Narrative Management going on in the NYT here, catnip for the Sailersphere. Emphasis added?
Why India Struggles to Win Olympic Gold
By Hannah Beech and Shalini Venugopal Bhagat
Published Aug. 4, 2021
Updated Aug. 5, 2021, 12:02 a.m. ET….In recent years, the country’s most powerful crop of Olympians has come from a narrow neck of land in northeastern India, where ethnic minorities live in the shadow of the Himalayas…. Because of their ethnicity, people there often face discrimination….Mary Kom, a light-flyweight boxer from Manipur who captured bronze at the 2012 Games in London, said she has long faced prejudice from Hindu nationalists who say that as a Christian, she is somehow not truly Indian. There are also racist whispers, some not so quiet, that people from the Himalayan foothills are more martial than others in India and that’s why they make good boxers….“Manipuri people, we have a fighting spirit, especially women,” said Kom, who grew up rationing meals to save money for a pair of sneakers
• Replies: @JohnnyWalker123@BenjaminLEast Asians are the athletic&military elite of the Subcontinent., @Steve Sailer
Look at the Gurkhas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8pIJglsYUE
Out of India's 4 medals, 2 were won by people with an Asian phenotype.Replies: @Anon@BenjaminLThanks. - @Gary in GramercyJuly 29, 2021 at 8:03 pm GMT • 200 Words@peterike"South Asians are much more like Jews, and really, really like having their name on the building."
I don't know about dot Indians, but you're definitely right about my people. HaShem undoubtedly has a wry sense of humor, since we can resist neither a sale nor a "naming opportunity."Replies: @BenjaminLThis came up when commenters discussed Steve’s review of Colin Quinn’s book:
Go to a cultural center anywhere in the country, no matter where, and even if there are no Jews it’s the Maurice and Florence Rosenthal Center for Art of Wyoming, the Herman and Lillian Tannenbaum Historical Museum of NASCAR of Rural Arkansas.
Actual example:
The Benjamin and Marian Schuster Performing Arts Center is located in Dayton, Ohio and was built in 2003 to serve as Dayton’s key performance arts center. Architect Cesar Pelli created a world-class 2,300-seat theatre that has fiber optic lights in the dome ceiling that depict the Dayton sky as it appeared on the eve before the Wright brothers’ first flight, December 16, 1903. The Winter Garden houses exotic palm trees and a cafe with a large glass-enclosed wall that overlooks downtown Dayton.
Since its opening, the Schuster Center has hosted a number of top plays, including Wicked, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Beauty and the Beast.
- June 10, 2021 at 2:06 pm GMT • 100 Words
As soon as I looked up “Dotbusters” on Wikipedia, I knew it would provide more ammunition for the fight against malevolent WASP American settler colonialism:
“Later that month, a group of youths attacked Navroze Mody, an Indian man of Parsi (Zoroastrian) origin, into a coma, after he had left the Gold Coast Café with his friend. Mody died four days later. The four convicted of the attack were Luis Acevedo, Ralph Gonzalez and Luis Padilla, who were convicted of aggravated assault; and William Acevedo, who was convicted of simple assault.”
• LOL: Patrick in SC, AndrewR - @Jack DJune 8, 2021 at 9:38 pm GMT • 100 WordsNY Times has an interesting article about the ACLU:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html
There's a real generational conflict between old style liberals who believe in defending free speech regardless of who is speaking and new style Leftists who think that is stupid. Obviously, the important thing is for Leftism to prevail - the Revolution is more important than the Constitution. Civil liberties are only useful insofar as they can be used to advance the cause of Leftism and have little value in and of themselves.
And it's not just free speech. It's ALL constitutional rights, such as protections for the accused. Protections for the accused are good if the accused is a good person, a person of color, but they are bad if the accused is a white male. (The new Leftists tend to be female and/or POC and are apparently not bright enough to understand that if a ruling or law weakens protections for say evil white males then it also weakens them for everyone else. Or else they figure that they are going to be in control of the process from now on so there's no need to worry about having to protect people of color - they will protect them thru control of the prosecutorial and judicial process whereas a powerful state is good because the state can then use its power to suppress Nazis.)
It's hilarious that the ACLU is tweeting in favor of state or administrative power - due process is unfair - making the people in power prove their case is unfair to the needs of the People. Maybe it's time to bring back lynching. As long as those being lynched this time are white males there's nothing wrong with it.Replies: @BenjaminL
In 2018, the Trump administration proposed revamping Obama-era regulations on Title IX, which sets guidelines for investigations of sexual harassment and assault on campuses. It strengthened protections for the accused.
The A.C.L.U. tweet in response to the news was scathing: This “promotes an unfair process, inappropriately favoring the accused.”
Because the A.C.L.U. has championed the due process rights of the accused for 100 years, the tweet came as a surprise. It turned out a staff member at the A.C.L.U.’s women’s rights project had typed and clicked “send.”That excellent ACLU article is — unsurprisingly — by Michael Powell, who has fearlessly made a specialty of gently questioning the Woke Narrative from within the walls of the NYT.
He has to be extremely subtle to avoid cancellation, but I fear that they will catch up with him and defenestrate him sooner or later.
Steve posted about his Smith College article here
https://www.unz.com/isteve/open-season-on-townies/
And I have to repost this quotation — from my comment on Steve’s post on Powell’s article on Racist Musicology — about how Powell’s temerity has earned him a special editing process, in an effort to preemptively avoid Woke blow-ups:
Gideon Lewis-Kraus has an interesting article on the New Yorker on the subject:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/10/how-the-pentagon-started-taking-ufos-seriously/amp
- @Old PrudeMay 19, 2021 at 9:08 pm GMT • 200 Words@DesideriusBeing the middle of a binge of reading classics, then watching the movies immediately after: War and Peace, Count of Monte Cristo, Three Musketeers, Gone With the Wind... It is glaring how diminished the movies are to the richness of the books, especially as regards the psychology of the characters. The movies are just flat vignettes.
If there is a collapse of reading, which is surely true, how does that lack of depth and detail and the lack of discussion of interplay of characters' deep motivations effect the behavior and thoughts of the modern middle aged and young? Shallowness?Replies: @Desiderius, @BenjaminL, @Anon, @Reg CæsarThat sounds a bit like the view of notorious evil genius Scott Rudin, as expressed in 1993:
https://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/26/magazine/hollywood-at-a-fever-pitch.html
Good books make bad movies. Good books operate according to literary, not cinematic, principles. But a good movie idea often comes out of a bad book. I hear Rudin tell a writer that a book is precious, but the script is great. “The script made me cry,” he says. “The book made me want an insulin injection.” Movies are simply montage, pieces of kinetic trickery that create the illusion of action. “They’re all about cuts.” They are dead things, especially compared to theater, which is alive. A play can’t leave the room it’s in. It must recreate the world every night in a black box with living people. “It’s conjuring as much as anything. A movie to me is like watching a rerun of a ball game.”
Highly relevant and worth reading:
Angela Nagle, “How the Libs Owned Us All”
https://angelanagle.substack.com/p/how-the-libs-owned-us-all
The Establishment is really good at coopting the appealing ideas of its challengers, thus it is able to remain the Establishment.
- @CatdogMay 13, 2021 at 8:22 pm GMT • 100 Words@BenjaminLLooked these guys up. Not a decent artist in the bunch, including the YTs.
I hope that this is a sign of a return to classical realist sensibilities.Replies: @BenjaminLBingo. If art is just social convention all the way down, then why not go with the Trend Du Jour?
If there are any art collectors who want to support black artists while simultaneously upholding traditional values, they could look into Henry Ossawa Tanner:
• Agree: mc23• Replies: @Alden@BenjaminLTop picture is very derivative of Chardin. Great picture. Look at the wall wonderful. I really like the fact that even though it’s a modest house it’s a real dining table with a table cloth instead of uncomfortable stools at a kitchen counter. Or maybe it’s a work bench covered with a table cloth for meals. I’d like it more if the people were White. Presumably both parents are at work and grandpa’s teaching the kid good morals and manners These are virtuous hard working blacks striving for middle class values., @Dissident
Just love the boat with a blue background. Maybe they’re sneaking out at night to rob someone’s lobster or crab pots. Very very decorative on lemon yellow walls. Or in a room with dark pink orchids.@BenjaminLNice paintings.
~ ~ ~
The Japanese woodcuts reminded me of this:
https://treadway-fws-images.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/website/auctions/items/large/3992073_1.jpg
Will Barnet (American, 1911-2012) Summer, 1986 - May 13, 2021 at 1:21 pm GMT • 200 Words
It would be easy to think this is all posturing. But another NYT story, by the same extremely Woke lady reporter, gives one pause.
Apparently, rich art collectors are at the moment more eager to spend millions of dollars on Artists of Color than those of pallor. That suggests they really believe in what they’re doing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/13/arts/design/auction-sothebys-basquiat-christies.html
The only clues that the world had changed over the past year was that the focus seemed to have shifted from the usual blue-chip art market darlings to artists of color, several of whom — Jordan Casteel, Mickalene Thomas and Rashid Johnson — set high prices for their works at auction…… By contrast, the energy seemed to drain from the rooms when it came to the more conventional contemporary market stars. At Christie’s, for example, paintings by Gerhard Richter, Christopher Wool and Richard Prince sold to their backers without any competition…..Still unclear is whether the current interest in artists of color will last. But for two nights this week, it felt as if a new world was in the offing, one in which work by a Ghanaian painter like Amoako Boafo could sell for twice the high estimate — and a longtime auctioneer would have to beg the crowd to “keep those eyes awake” as they bid on Marc Chagall.
• Replies: @Almost Missouri@BenjaminLSo ... sell Chagall, buy black velvet?, @Matttt@BenjaminLWork by black, sorry Black, artists is highly overvalued and work by more established artists is undervalued? Sounds like a money launderer's, sorry art collector's, dream., @Catdog@BenjaminLLooked these guys up. Not a decent artist in the bunch, including the YTs.
I hope that this is a sign of a return to classical realist sensibilities.Replies: @BenjaminL - May 12, 2021 at 7:24 pm GMT • 100 Words
Patricia Lockwood’s LRB attack on Updike is a good specimen of the feminist zeitgeist. She gives him his due, but ultimately it comes down to who-whom.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n19/patricia-lockwood/malfunctioning-sex-robot
More basic question is: could a heterosexual male author even get published today without bending the knee? Interesting thoughts by Alex Perez, a based male author:
https://im1776.com/2021/04/27/the-new-literary-bad-boys/
For WASP culture before the fall, John P. Marquand is a good prequel to Updike:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/05/-martini-age-victorian/302954/
I’m sure that slumberj and Old Palo Altan have some thoughts there.
• Replies: @slumber_j@BenjaminL
Then there's always Louis Auchincloss, with whom I once rode an elevator down from a Manhattan gathering at the immense 120 East End duplex of a cousin of his and family friend of mine. He was quite old by then but radiated sharpness and good cheer. I couldn't summon the will to greet him, so we descended in silence. Anyway, he's very good on all that stuff.
For WASP culture before the fall, John P. Marquand is a good prequel to Updike
Being in his presence reminded me of the day years before when I'd met some niece of his or whatever she was to him, who was about my age. This was in Dublin, NH, where I was spending the weekend with a friend from college. As Miss Auchincloss approached the house from her car, she was walking past these enormous rhododendrons which were blooming their heads off. "Bitchin' rhodos," she said, which seemed to me about the preppiest thing ever uttered. - @JMcG@BenjaminLRod Dreher stays far, far away from the quickly proliferating third rails in the national conversation. I used to read him fairly often, but he hasn’t had anything interesting to say in years and years as near as I can tell. He mostly seems to promote his latest book, which I understand.
I don’t think Substack could find much reason to drop him as he’s so anodyne.Replies: @BenjaminLMaybe so…. There are plenty of progs who absolutely loathe Rod, but still.
My main point is that Steve could do both — blog and Substack — if he wanted to, not just either-or.
• Agree: JMcG - April 22, 2021 at 2:35 am GMT • 100 Words
Rod Dreher has both a (free) blog at TAC, and a (paid) Substack.
The blog is for culture-warring, and the Substack is for more inspirational arts & culture stuff.
Steve, like Rod, is prolific enough to maintain both at once, if he wants to give it a try.
For example, Steve could move the (less political & less cancellable?) movie reviews, music commentary & golf criticism to Substack and see how much that brings in, while maintaining the political commentary on Unz.
• Replies: @JMcG@BenjaminLRod Dreher stays far, far away from the quickly proliferating third rails in the national conversation. I used to read him fairly often, but he hasn’t had anything interesting to say in years and years as near as I can tell. He mostly seems to promote his latest book, which I understand.
I don’t think Substack could find much reason to drop him as he’s so anodyne.Replies: @BenjaminL - @Desiderius
This is an example of the "uncanny ubiquity" problem at the heart of the legitimacy crisis. Institutions, movements, policy packages, research programs, whathaveyou used to feature admissions against interest, sops to the losers, minority reports, meaningful peer reviews, election observers, and the like even if only to throw would be watchdogs off the scent. Now all of that's out the window. What happened?Womenhttps://twitter.com/AliceFromQueens/status/1378377502750515206?s=20Famously Hitler's biggest supporters and Stalin's biggest putative beneficiaries (if you've ever met any Soviet nostalgics they never fail to mention the "elevated" status of women in the Soviet State), nice ladies, white and otherwise, have a whole different set of legitimacy criteria from men.The result is sociological Tacoma Narrows Bridges all over the place and a markedly more fragile society, not to mention civilization, with poor decision making one of the least of the problems.Replies: @El Dato, @Altai, @Reg Cæsar, @TWS, @BenjaminL, @Hamlet's Ghost
only insurrectionists have Doubts
This is a good piece that puts the 2005 Larry Summers brouhaha as a key turning point in moving toward Female Discourse and away from facts and logic.
• Replies: @Steve Sailer@BenjaminLI wrote four articles in 2005 about the Larry Summers brouhaha. It seemed like a turning point at the time.Replies: @RichardTaylor, @Inquiring Mind@BenjaminLIf certain things are genetic, is Larry Summers an uncle to James Damore? - @Paperback WriterThis brings back fond memories:
https://apnews.com/article/5abc246360c9bdead52c88cce1af1382Replies: @BenjaminLWhat are the chances, indeed?
- February 16, 2021 at 4:06 pm GMT • 600 Words
Note that this NYT article is actually fairly objective and tries to present both sides. That’s because it is written by Michael Powell, one of the vanishingly few NYT writers who is quietly not completely on board with the Revolution.
If you follow Powell on Twitter, you’ll see that he is a quiet skeptic of The Narrative. I hope this comment doesn’t get him cancelled.
Another NYT dissident, Nellie Bowles, just announced that she is going on leave from the paper to convert to Judaism out of love for her partner, fellow badthinker Bari Weiss.
Here’s how the NYT is trying to handle its internal dissidents (emphasis added):
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/11/inside-the-new-york-times-heated-reckoning-with-itself.html
• Replies: @Bardon Kaldian@BenjaminL, @Jack D
Huh?
Another NYT dissident, Nellie Bowles, just announced that she is going on leave from the paper to convert to Judaism out of love for her partner, fellow badthinker Bari Weiss.
These two are.... women. Evidently, my mind still belongs to the 19th C ....@BenjaminLBen Smith, author of the not entirely unsympathetic to McNeil article "Why the Morality Plays Inside The Times Won’t Stop" discussed a couple of posts ago, is also mentioned as belong to the Menshevik faction. I expect that in time the Gang of Three will be purged. Bowles is already "on leave" and I would not be surprised if Powell and Smith leave pretty soon. The Gleichschaltung of an important (perhaps THE most important) propaganda organ of the Cathedral must be complete and all of the stragglers must be rounded up and dealt with appropriately. It's one thing to have critics outside of the organization - these are mere pipsqueaks whose cries can be ignored. But to have enemies within the gates is intolerable. Keep in mind that the bullet to the brain phase of the Revolution has not begun yet. Even Trotsky was permitted to sail into exile as late as 1929. Powell and Smith will, like McNeil, be eased toward the door with a generous "severance package", etc. The NYT has some scruples about trying to appear in some way to be “””fair”””.
But the lower-brow Woke lumpenintelligentsia just go full-on Hate Whitey
• Replies: @YetAnotherAnon@BenjaminL"I want justice for anti-Asian violence, but not at the expense of the people actually committing it"
That's not justice, that's smacking your wife or kids because the boss gave you a hard time at work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE7EjC86BHc
"It is the way of the world, Baldrick — the abused always kick downwards. I am annoyed, and so I kick the cat… the cat pounces on the mouse, and, finally the mouse – bites you on the behind. You are the last in God's great chain, unless you can find an earwig to victimise".
- February 8, 2021 at 1:34 pm GMT • 100 Words
Darwin’s interest in beetles as recorded in his diary — including an account of tasting one and being squirted with acrid beetle juice — has been incorporated into an oratorio by Richard Einhorn:
“A taste for collecting beetles is some indication of future success in life.”
• Replies: @J.Ross@BenjaminLhttp://homeinteriordesignthemes.com/royal-palace-ceiling-comprised-of-over-a-million-jewel-beetles/
https://postimg.cc/MXNbjXd1 - @IHTGNovember 3, 2020 at 2:01 pm GMT • 100 Words
Vermeule?Replies: @slumber_j, @benjaminl, @Roger
Which Harvard professor donated to Trump?
Trump appointed Vermeule to the Administrative Conference of the United States, so it could be…
Vermeule’s take is interesting: The Deep State is good, as long as it’s right-wing, and also there should be unlimited immigration of Catholics.
It could also be James Hankins.
Harvey Mansfield has a non-zero chance of being NeverTrump. On the other hand, he could be radicalized by now, now that he’s experienced Cancellation.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/4/30/editorial-mansfield-politics-disinvitation/
But, the best bet is David Kane, the Government instructor who’s been defenstrated for inviting Charles Murray to speak on campus, and for “””””racist””””” blog posts:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/10/1/editorial-fire-david-kane/
- @AnonymousJuly 9, 2020 at 8:39 pm GMT • 200 Words@Jack D
Was the category Harvard Lampoon? The answer was Colin Jost (below: Jost is white guy on left)
How many of our entertainers will be known in a century? I don’t even know half of them now. The other day on Jeopardy there was a question about someone on SNL and the name drew a total blank with me. I didn’t have even a glimmer of recognition.
https://media.popculture.com/2019/12/snl-weekend-update-colin-jost-michael-che-saturday-night-live-nb-20076708-640x320.jpeg
Not funny. Typical boring snarky unfunny political “humor”. I only started hearing/knowing about him when he was attacking Trump (how edgy).Replies: @benjaminlHey, Colin Jost has a new book out. Let’s see how his new book is covered in the NYT… Oh wow, guess what, it looks like drawing invidious inferences based on someone’s racial identity and facial physiognomy is OK now. Who knew?
But Jost knows many viewers believe he has coasted on his annoyingly clean-cut looks that, despite his underlying earnestness, can give him an air of insincerity….
As he writes in his memoir, “Some of you think you know me, but you’re actually just thinking of the villain from an ’80s movie who tries to steal the hero’s girlfriend by challenging him to a ski race.” (In acknowledgment of this, he titled the book “A Very Punchable Face.”)..
What has succeeded for them, Che said, are recurring bits like the one where they read jokes sight-unseen that they have written for each other (and which Che often writes to make Jost sound racist).
“I guess if you look at Colin and you don’t know him, if someone told you that he was a racist, you’d be like, yeah, maybe,” Che said. “He couldn’t be further from it, which is why it’s so funny.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/books/colin-jost-a-very-punchable-face-snl-weekend-update.html
• Replies: @HammerJack@benjaminlPrejudice based on what someone looks like is the very worst thing in the world, unless they're a white male. In which case it's only natural. - July 9, 2020 at 8:35 pm GMT • 100 Words
https://books.google.com/books?id=OPCTHC5AAbwC&pg=PA152#v=onepage&q&f=false
Wikipedia links to this book’s discussion of the vogue for multiethnic songs in that era, including “It’s Tough When Izzy Rosenstein Loves Genevieve Malone” (1910), “My Yiddisha Colleen” (1911), “Yidisha Luck and Irisha Love” (1911), “Moysha Machree” (1916), “There’s a Little Bit of Irish in Sadie Cohen” (1916) and “Kosher Kitty Kelly” (1926).
The footnote there is to William H. A. Williams, Twas Only an Irishman’s Dream: The Image of Ireland and the Irish in American Popular Song Lyrics, 1800-1920.
• Replies: @kaganovitch@benjaminlAbie's Irish Rose was a famous play on this theme. It was made into a movie two or three times. Let’s check in and see what the Respectable Paper of Record has to say about this production….
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/06/30/movies/hamilton-review-disney-plus.amp.html
“Jonathan Groff channels the essential, irreducible whiteness of King George III.”
Yep, sounds about right.
- July 4, 2020 at 1:58 pm GMT • 100 Words
Raymond Wolters, in his books about desegregation of schools, has some Real Talk.
I remember reading the “lauded” book, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, by “eminent” historian Thomas Sugrue, and being stunned that he never actually discussed crime, only the (presumably irrational) fears of crime. That was a big turning point in my realization that the Respectable People are very willing to straight-up lie on behalf of their cause.
VDare, discussing Paul Kersey’s book on Detroit, describes the transition between 1943 (last white-on-black riot in Detroit) and 1967 (white flight after black-on-white riot).
https://vdare.com/posts/we-almost-saved-detroit-the-crime-crackdown-of-1961
https://vdare.com/articles/learn-whitey-learn-paul-kersey-s-escape-from-detroit - @The Last Real Calvinist@Steve SailerWell, maybe you're batting .500 on that, Steve.Jesus definitely wasn't nice. Reducing the Incarnation of the second person of the Trinity to a 'nice guy' who doesn't put the fear of God into anybody is the biggest mistake the Church has made in the past 50 years. But John Lennon?Replies: @benjaminl
I remember when the Wimpy Liberal Christians got upset at some of Trump’s “dehumanizing language,” and some wags pointed out that Jesus called people dogs, swine and vipers.
Good times…
• Replies: @Reg Cæsar@benjaminl
True, but He (pbuH) didn't tell us to slay them. That fellow came later.
I remember when the Wimpy Liberal Christians got upset at some of Trump’s “dehumanizing language,” and some wags pointed out that Jesus called people dogs, swine and vipers.
- @ArclightI think one of the biggest disconnects between white elites (either higher income/higher education or prestige jobs in media/academia) and society is that they do not understand just how big of a cognitive and behavior gap there is between themselves and the bottom 30% of society. Along with that, they are largely insulated from interacting with them because they don't live, work, or play in the same places, and underestimate just how many people fall into this bucket.
Thus, they are usually pretty ignorant about hatestats - they assume the vast majority of the diverse live and think like they do, only they have smaller paychecks because of societal oppression. Many of these whites did not grow up going to diverse urban schools, have never lived in a neighborhood where the overwhelming majority of residents were of a different race and and lower economic/educational background, or supervise similar people in their daily jobs. Those that do have these experiences tend to be much more realistic about things, but that's a minority of the woke whites.Replies: @benjaminl, @vhrmYup, that was my experience
Growing up in nice suburban SuperZIP = nice, pleasant, socially approved opinions on race
Couple of years in the not-completely-gentrified big city = race realist
• Replies: @Arclight@benjaminlWhen I was young I worked in DC for a Dem congressman, and all of my white coworkers had the socially-approved opinions you reference. Within a couple of years, I had more than a few that would admit after a couple of drinks that living in DC made them think racist thoughts and they couldn't wait to move to the burbs and get away from all the lower class blacks.
I was fortunate (in a way) get a taste of things early in life - I lived in a large city and switched from a pretty monochromatic private school to a highly vibrant city public school. I then went to college in another city where the campus was surrounded by more vibrant diversity, and then lived in DC and knew what I was getting myself into. The benefit of all this - particularly my public school experience - is that I learned early on not to try to be friendly and agreeable in the hopes you wouldn't get picked on (it just means you are a mark) and while you shouldn't go out of your way to show you aren't going to be pushed around, carry yourself with absolutely no hint of deference. And lastly, do not for any reason involve yourself in settling their affairs, no matter what you witness.Replies: @David In TN Who but Steve Sailer ever heard of, much less remembers in a timely fashion, the anti-Chinese riots on Guadalcanal in 2006? Steve, do you have a photographic memory? This blog is a national treasure.
• Replies: @Chrisnonymous@benjaminlHe probably owns affected real estate. He's all about real estate.Replies: @Simon Tugmutton, @AnotherDad@benjaminl, @Altai
No one has ever accused the melanesians of being geniuses.
Reminds me of the anti-Chinese riots on Guadalcanal in 2006. After a night of looting, the locals showed up the next afternoon at their favorite stores, which they had just trashed and burned down, to buy their evening dinner. They were much befuddled by the fact that the stores no longer existed.
But i'm totally on board with their irritation at and desire to pitch out a middle man minority like the overseas Chinese.
The problem, of course, is that you have to be ready to do the job yourself.
This is why the best approach is *never let the middle man minority in*. Build it yourself. And in the process you build the skills and capability. (And longer term your population undergoes selection for the traits to do it yourself.)
Destruction of capability by middle man parasites has affected American blacks as well. Under segregation they had a lot more capability in their community--running their own shops and businesses right up to their own doctors and lawyers at the top. Of course, their capability wasn't at the level that whites or various middle man groups have. But it was theirs. More money was staying in their community and there were middle class roles--and role models--and an actual Negro community.
But with less segregation this capability has declined. First with Jews moving in on them. Then with "integration" and now the immigration deluge black business has been wiped out. Koreans and Chinese, Indians and Pakis and the odd middle easterner running most all the shops and stores in black neighborhoods. Any money blacks get ... exits their community and builds nice homes for foreigners far away. Why wouldn't they want to riot? ... the shit ain't theirs!
Diversity is our strength!Replies: @Art Deco, @International Jew, @Pincher Martin, @Anonymous@benjaminlWherever the Chinese (Particularly Southern, Fujianese) go in the Pacific sooner or later somebody's gunna want to kill them. Been happening since the Spanish and Dutch first started to attract them to trade outposts in the 15th/16th century. Every few years the Spanish typically would just kill them all. Then things would quiet down and more Chinese would come to replace them.
It's a fascinating cycle.- June 2, 2020 at 4:24 pm GMT • 100 Words
It’s not just antifa — there’s a whole class of youth celebrities who seem to look aggressively and intentionally ugly: hideous ‘grilles’ on their teeth, awful facial tattoos, horrible complexions from never going outside — just an overall look of ill health.
I’m thinking of Tekashi Six Nine, Billie Eilish and Post Malone, but I’m sure there are better examples.
The whole look just screams: poor nutrition and poor exercise habits.
How does this make sense in an Evo psych way?
• Agree: jim jones• Replies: @Christopher Paul@benjaminl, @SomeoneOutHere
And that fat flute-playing rapper. I can't be bothered to look up her name.Replies: @Muggles
I’m thinking of Tekashi Six Nine, Billie Eilish and Post Malone
@benjaminlIn Eilish's case,mudsharking would also be a factor.Every photo on her Instagram is of her wallowing with thugs.Replies: @BenKenobi, @SomeoneOutHere@benjaminlIn Eilish's case,m u d s h a r k i n g would also be a factor., @Anonymous@benjaminlPost Malone's whole schtick is that he is a rich and famous rapper who looks and acts like a normal bro. - @Daniel Chieh@JimBI've actually known antifa. In my experience, the men are often your typical criminal dead enders(white hispanic in one case) with mental issues including genuine retardation - a prize catch for them would be a physically large, mentally childish boyman. The girls are typically white or overwhelmingly white mixes, usually from broken families or runaways; there's a weird harem/sex orgy setup at times. Often underage.Its very much a dark hippie setup tbh, but with mysterious benefactors. For its participants, it is an often exciting life filled with a sense of "justice" and larger than life characters with easy drug access.In a way, it is innately "Western" with its ideals of "rebellion" and "freedom." Nobody asks many questions about the mystery benefactors.Replies: @Daniel Chieh, @JimB, @Almost Missouri, @benjaminl, @wren, @Anonymous, @Jake, @Corn, @Truth, @Kibernetika, @J.Ross
That sounds somewhat like the image of the Manson Family as portrayed in Helter Skelter and in Tarantino’s movie. Perhaps more downscale.
• Replies: @Daniel Chieh@benjaminlIf you remember the "right wing safety squads" awhile ago, that was antifa home bases being popped. - May 27, 2020 at 6:36 pm GMT • 100 Words
I punched the average figures in the column into a BMI calculator for a handy method of comparison:
Asian women: 24.5
white women: 28.9
white men: 29.1
black men: 29.2
Hspanic women: 32.0
black women: 32.5Looks about right. I wouldn’t be surprised if class makes an even bigger difference than race, on average. Coastal elites are well-known for making cruel remarks about the horrific levels of obesity then encounter, on the rare occasions when they have to deplane in flyover country.
It’s quite sad. I’d like for my fellow Americans to be less obese, and thus healthier and more attractive to the opposite sex–for their own good. Unfortunately, it’s hard to express that sentiment without coming across as a Bloombergian soda-ban snob.
• Replies: @OFWHAP@benjaminlUnfortunately I am starting to notice increasing levels of obesity among well-off people on the west coast. - May 25, 2020 at 3:12 pm GMT • 100 Words
Steve, if you haven’t already, you should post about Carle Zimmerman’s *Family and Civilization.* These problems go way way back in history (I.e. the decline of Rome & replacement by pholoprogenitive Celts and Germans).
The Baby Boom was a false dawn for familism. U.S. coastal elites were already atomistic individualists by 1800. Ben Franklin noticed this.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Speech_of_Polly_Baker
It was the Catholics and Lutherans who really filled up the country.The difference between Israel & the U.S. is more than just good policy vs. bad policy. It is about a deep existential-metaphysical belief in being part of something larger than oneself. More:
https://isi.org/intercollegiate-review/how-families-contribute-to-the-rise-and-fall-of-civilizations/
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/repository/evolution-individualism-and-the-end-of-the-family/• Replies: @kaganovitch@benjaminlThe difference between Israel & the U.S. is more than just good policy vs. bad policy. It is about a deep existential-metaphysical belief in being part of something larger than oneself. More:
Civilizational self confidence is the sine qua non of a healthy birthrate, all else is commentary. This is the true damage of the 1619 project and its ilk, they sap the self confidence of the nation. Destroying the self regard and self confidence of a civilization is the worst sort of civilizational subversion and is almost invariably fatal. - May 18, 2020 at 9:21 pm GMT • 100 Words
Off-topic:
Based on his complete ripoff of Steve’s Takimag column, we can add Gerard Baker of the WSJ to the ever-lengthening list of MSM figures who read, but do not cite, Steve Sailer:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-often-distorted-reality-of-hate-crime-in-america-11589562033
Of course, the Usual Suspects on Twitter are not happy about this at all.
• Thanks: Dieter Kief• Replies: @Reg Cæsar@benjaminlIs Baker still with the Financial Times as well? Then two markets would be exposed to distilled Steve.Steve also wrote something years ago for Lehman Brothers' scion David Goodhart's Prospect. At the time, Goodhart was married to another top FT columnist, Lucy Kellaway, also a refreshing fount of common sense.
Speaking of the Sceptered Isle, this picture is the polar opposite of common sense:
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/936/cpsprodpb/9da9/production/_102216304_xxxxxo1920x1920greg17.jpgOops-- BBC won't link pics here. But the top row of these Google hits should display The Worst Onesie Ever.Crap-- Google won't, either. Just ask them to find "greg owen prep baby".
If you are unfamiliar with the purpose of PrEP, grab an air sickness bag and Auntie shall tell you:https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-44606711 - @PiltdownManMay 12, 2020 at 3:31 am GMT • 300 Wordshttps://www.mirrorandhammerfilms.com/
https://i.imgur.com/Af75ha8.jpgReplies: @OscarWildeLoveChild, @bomag, @benjaminl
Who I Am
Kum-Kum Bhavnani
Professor by day. Filmmaker by night.
I am a university professor by day and a filmmaker by night. I fuse my scholarship with social justice through the combined lenses of the movie camera and critical research. I was born in India, grew up in London and arrived as a professor at UC Santa Barbara in 1991. I am active in efforts to create social justice and a more livable planet through anti-racism, feminism and movements that foster greater economic equality.UCSB students are able to enjoy the fruits of Professor Bhavnani’s deep wisdom at the bargain cost to California taxpayers of $290,000 per year.
https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?a=university-of-california&q=bhavnani&y=
https://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/kum-kum-bhavnani
Kum-Kum Bhavnani is Distinguished Professor of Sociology. Her research interest lie within development, feminist and cultural studies. She has published a number of books and articles including Talking Politics (1991, Cambridge University Press), Shifting Identities Shifting Racisms (Sage 1994: co-edited with An Phoenix), Feminism and ‘Race’ (2001, Oxford University Press) and Feminist Futures (Zed 2003: co-edited with Johan Foran and Priya Kurian). In 2006 she completed a feature documentary film, The Shape of Water (narrated by Susan Sarandon (http://www.theshapeofwatermovie.com) which spans three continents and was filmed over four years. Her next research documentary, also narrated by Susan Sarandon, premiered in 2012. Nothing Like Chocolate(http://nothinglikechocolate.com) narrates the story of an anarchist chocolate maker living in the rainforests of Grenada who creates world-renowned chocolate sustainably and ethically. Her 2014 documentary, Lutah (https://vimeo.com/87403939), focuses on an independent Santa Barbara-based architect, Lutah Maria Riggs, who, among other spaces, designed the Lobero Theater and the Vedanta Temple. In 2018, she premiered We Are Galapagos, a research documentary focused on the people in the Galapagos who work on innovative ways to save their islands, the wildlife and the planet. You Think you Can’t Dance? premiered in February 2019. This short research documentary examined how and why ballroom dancing has become a significant pastime in the 21st century. She is presently working on her next documentary, Science for Nuns/Monks, (working title: funded by the John Templeton Foundation) which examines how and why Tibetan Buddhist monastics are learning astrophysics and neuro psychology alongside their study of Buddhist sutras.
• Thanks: Currier House• Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease@benjaminl"Kum-Kum Bhavnani is Distinguished Professor of Sociology."
I don't know which fragment is funnier: 'Kum-Kum Bhavnani is distinguished' or the fact that they used "distinguished" and "sociology" in the same sentence.
There is a tragic aspect to all this though: this foreign bint gets to professionally practice her well-paid douchebaggery in Santa freakin' Barbara, the pleasantest place on Earth, when that slot could have rightfully been given to some American douchebag. That is just one more nice American "better life" given away for no reason, to be lived instead by some foreigner with no claim to it. God isn't making any more endowed chairs in Santa Barbara, there is no reason to give them away to foreigners. - @TwinkieMay 7, 2020 at 6:21 pm GMT • 100 Words@Dave Pinsen
False dichotomy.
a lazy genius than not get one from a diligent grind.
I’ve known a number of geniuses in my life, including an accomplished physicist, and they all work extremely hard (most of them rather maniacally).Replies: @Desiderius, @Jack D, @Desiderius, @benjaminlLeonardo Da Vinci had a terrible time finishing things, or getting things done. He left many notebooks, in proportion to products.
On the other hand, Bernini and Rubens were both highly effective managers of large studios, with many assistance, multiplying the effect of their own hard work many times over.
- @AnonymousMay 3, 2020 at 2:00 am GMT • 200 Words@AnonPrinceton and Dartmouth have never been regarded as the most academically rigorous Ivies. Princeton traditionally was considered the socially snobbiest Ivy, while Dartmouth was the most fraternity life and drinking focused Ivy.
As far as academic rigor goes, that's mainly a function of the particular courses and majors students take. Pre-med and STEM courses are generally going to be competitive and rigorous at any of the Ivies, more so than, say, a History degree from Harvard.Replies: @Jack D, @benjaminlIt’s true that there’s a lot of indefensible BS in the humanities. And it’s true that grade inflation makes it possible for dummies to skate by in verbal fields, more so than in quantitative fields.
But there is such a thing as rigor in the humanities, and to the extent that it exists, the Ivy League is not the worst place to find it. Ivy League undergrad history majors, like John G. Roberts, Jr., Harvard ’76, will do a lot of reading primary sources, learn languages, and write papers like “The Utopian Conservative: A study of Continuity and Change in the Thought of Daniel Webster” (60pp.) and “Old and New Liberalism: The British Liberal Party’s Approach to the Social Problem, 1906-1914” (166pp.)
http://hnn.us/articles/13328.html
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/13401By contrast, at many lesser universities (outside the Honors Colleges and suchlike), it’s possible to get through the undergraduate curriculum by reading mostly textbooks (vs. primary sources), without doing work in other languages, and without writing original theses of any length.
Source: personal observations at a variety of universities
- @Jack DMay 3, 2020 at 12:56 am GMT • 100 Words@Prester JohnIt’s STEM curriculum rivals its neighbor down the road, MIT,
Boy did you drink the Harvard Kool Aid.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA
#1
in
Best Engineering Schools
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA
#22
in
Best Engineering Schools
https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-engineering-schools/eng-rankingsReplies: @scrivener3, @res, @benjaminlThat’s just the “E” in STEM. Depending on the science, Harvard is right up there with MIT, or close behind.
https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/mathematics-rankings
https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/physics-rankings
https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/chemistry-rankings
https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/biological-sciences-rankingsAnd if you look at the level of undergrad achievement, e.g. how the top of the class performs in the Putnam Mathematics Competition, Harvard is right up there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lowell_Putnam_Mathematical_Competition
- @AnonymousMay 3, 2020 at 12:47 am GMT • 100 Words@syonreduxConnecticut is technically a part of New England, but New Haven and that part of Connecticut is really part of the NYC Tri-State area. New Haven is like an hour from NYC.Replies: @benjaminl
There are a lot of blog posts on the boundary between Red Sox fans and Yankee fans (the latter, basically wherever Metro North goes).
Connecticut is split between the two, but New Haven is definitely Yankee country.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/24/upshot/facebook-baseball-map.html#9,43.912,-73.978
On the other hand, the eastern edge of upstate New York, along Lake Champlain opposite Vermont, is still Red Sox country.
- @SimpleSongMay 3, 2020 at 12:37 am GMT • 100 WordsYale has been on the wrong end of a couple of trends which I think explains its relative decline.Circa 1900 they had a pretty incredible historical track record at what we would now call STEM, arguably the best in the nation. J.W. Gibbs, one of the greatest American pure scientists, had been a professor there for his whole career, and a number of illustrious 19th century inventors (Eli Whitney, Samuel Morse) had been affiliated with the college (undergrad alums, if I remember correctly.) Mark Twain used "Connecticut Yankee" as a byword for mechanical ingenuity, among other attributes.Despite having a very illustrious history in STEM, a significant portion of the administration viewed engineering as too vocational in nature and the relatively thriving Engineering college (the Sheffield School) was slowly starved, then pretty much disbanded and absorbed by the rest of the University.In contrast to this, Princeton built up the Institute for Advanced Study with Einstein et al., Stanford and MIT pushed engineering coupled with entrepreneurship (and defense); Harvard and other places at least didn't go backward in their STEM capabilities. So essentially Yale got left behind due to, frankly, snootiness about what was and was not worthy of study.Yale is also stuck in New Haven which would be a charming New England town except that it is majority Black. So it ends up with lots of big city dysfunction without big city amenities. It's not like they grew cotton in New Haven--I think there were some political decisions along the way that resulted in essentially the entire black population of CT ending up in New Haven and Hartford.Culturally, it has gone from being thought of as a very WASPy, masculine university, to a very feminine, highly Jewish university over the last 100 years or so. Most famous scholar in the 19th century was J.W. Gibbs, in the 20th century, Harold Bloom. As the Sheffield School withered and died, Yale Law School became the most prestigious in the nation. Not making a value judgment, that's just how it is.Replies: @Art Deco, @Anon, @syonredux, @Oo-ee-oo-ah-ah-ting-tang-walla-walla-bing-bang, @benjaminl
Harvard also had a ‘separate but unequal’ scientific school, like Yale’s Sheff: the Lawrence Scientific School, which eventually, like the Sheffield, was more closely integrated with the ‘real’ undergraduate college. Harvard tried to acquire MIT five or six times, I believe.
I wonder if being so closely linked to Wall Street — literally at the other end of the commuter rail — meant that Yale could be complacent and happy with more verbal-literary education, and never felt the need to build up STEM.
I think a lot of the black folks in New Haven came to work in industry e.g. the Winchester rifle factory. I believe the few other industrialized towns in Connecticut, e.g. Bridgeport, also have black populations.
Now the cooking, cleaning, maintenance, etc. staff of Yale is mostly black.
- @ArclightAh yes...the "I drove through a couple of neighborhoods in a rental car and actually spoke to a few of the natives" ghetto tour that allows for piercing insights. I have multiple acquaintances who work for NFPs or academia who have done the same thing and then blame systemic forces for the plight if the downtrodden.
In the other hand, I also know a number of people who manage low income housing projects. They have a very different take on things, but no NYT writer would have to balls to publish what they say.Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @benjaminlHeather Mac Donald is virtually the only “mainstream” type writer who goes and talks to people like those housing project managers. They’re quite frank about what really ails the downtrodden communities.
- @guest007Ot put things in perspective, Compton High School is 83.5% Latino and is 55% male (very high for a non-magnet public high school).
Whereas David Jordan High School in Watts in 84.4% Latino and 51% female. Comparing to a Alliance Cindy & Bill Simon Technology Academy High School in Watts that is 91% Latino and 50% female.
In looking at the data for LAUSD, are there really many black students around in Los Angeles?Replies: @Steve Sailer, @benjaminl, @AldenSchooldigger.com lists 151 public high schools in the city of Los Angeles, of which:
8 are majority-black
100+ are majority-Hispanic
1 (one) is majority white (New West Charter in West L.A.)
0 are majority-Asian (the highest being Rise Kohyang High in Koreatown at 38% Asian)• Replies: @danand@benjaminl
Benjaminl, not the case in Nor-Cal:
"0 are majority-Asian (the highest being Rise Kohyang High in Koreatown at 38% Asian)"
Mission San Jose High students routinely find themselves ranked either runner up or highest for average SAT scores in California. Likely the result of unnatural selection.
https://flic.kr/p/2iVtxLE - April 11, 2020 at 12:04 am GMT • 100 Words
Congratulations, Mr. Unz.
Regarding the list of comparable websites, you might want to add The American Mind, created by the Claremont Institute.
It appears to be walking a delicate line: published by a recognized, “established” nonprofit foundation, it nevertheless also publishes pseudonymous Tweeters such as “Zero HP Lovecraft,” “Peachy Keenan,” “Elijah Del Medigo,” “Second City Bureaucrat,” “Spotted Toad,” and “L0m3z.”
Like your website, TAM appears to recognize that the old distinctions between “mainstream” and “fringe” are no longer operative.
Meanwhile, Quillettte, also a fairly non-establishment webzine created with zero institutional support, is publishing the likes of James Hankins and Christopher Caldwell. The old establishment is absolutely continuing to lose its monopoly.
• Replies: @oneworld@benjaminlRegarding "The American Mind" (with its not too subtle nod to Allan Bloom) and the Claremont Institute, it is dominated by Straussian/Neocons who are a very far cry in outlook from the Unz Review. Their thinking is already very much part of the mainstream "conservative" media and well represented in the views of the Republican and Democratic establishments and official Washington. - @Jack D@GeorgeNot a lot of W. Virginians can afford to jet off to Italy for ski vacations.
Not a lot of Chinese immigrants attracted to W. Virginia's less than dynamic economy.Replies: @Paleo Liberal, @benjaminlNever fear, West Virginia is still home to Chinese-born virtue-signallers in positions of power:
• Replies: @RebelWriter@benjaminlLet me file that under "Things that never happened.", @The Wild Geese Howard@benjaminlThey didn't have these issues in the good old days because they knew how to manage their hysterical women:https://cvltnation.com/vibrators-cured-hysteria-victorian-age/Half our culture's problems are the absolutely enormous amounts of frustrated, misdirected, and unsatisfied male and female thirst out there. - March 4, 2020 at 9:07 pm GMT • 100 Words
Speaking of flats/apartments in London — Bertrand Russell gave the newly married and “desperately poor” T. S. Eliot a spare room in his (two-bedroom) flat in 1915.
https://mulpress.mcmaster.ca/russelljournal/article/download/1552/1578
Hard to imagine in 2020: 1. The intellectual heirs of Russell and Eliot getting along well enough to be friends. 2. Elite ruling-class intellectuals living in a mere two-bedrooms — one of which is shared with a married couple!Basil Stag Hare is a memorable character in Brian Jacques’s Redwall series of boys’ books. I assume that this Basil represents an English ‘type,’ but don’t know enough to be sure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redwall - March 4, 2020 at 4:27 pm GMT • 200 Words
I’m hoping that Steve will write something about the impressive displays of Crimestop and Herculean efforts of mental jiu-jitsu that are currently being deployed by the Woke in order to fulfill the Prime Directive, which is:
Thou Shalt Not Criticize Persons of Colour.
e.g.
It’s clear that Bernie’s vote base is among Hispanics. His Redistributive Socialism is a winner in CA and TX among Hispanics, as Steve has pointed out. But all the establishment Dems in a panic about socialism are not allowed to point out that lots of Hispanic immigration means lots of votes for socialism. They have to square the circle that Immigration is Good, and Socialism is Bad, without acknowledging that with enough Immigration, you get Socialism.
It’s also clear that the Woke Elite would have loved anybody but “shirtless Trans-Am driver” Biden. They would have much preferred Warren (woke White College Women), Buttigieg/Bloomberg (woke elite technocrats), Kamala Harris/Cory Booker/Julian Castro (woke ID-politics POC), or Bernie (woke activists). Unfortunately, the dreams of the Woke have been dashed by black voters in South Carolina, and then more generally. But you absolutely cannot criticize or blame black people for their voting choices, or any of their choices, so the woke have to point the finger of blame anywhere but at the black electorate for the failure of the Wokest candidates.
• Replies: @Jack D@benjaminlIt doesn't matter what the Woke Elite want because there's not enough of them to drive a Democrat primary. Most white men, especially in the South, have fled to the Republican Party. There are not enough Democrat Wine Aunts with grad degrees to elect Liz Warren. The Woke have to bow to the reality that the Black church ladies are not on board with socialists or gays, etc. and you are not going to win a Democrat primary in the South without them. Of course you are not allowed to "blame" blacks for this (or for anything) but you have to bow to the reality of it. If they could figure out a way to blame Trump for the way that blacks vote they would and who knows maybe Rachel Maddow is working on an elaborate rationalization right now.Replies: @Yojimbo/Zatoichi, @Bill Jones@benjaminlYup.
At the end of the day, The Woke need The Broke.Replies: @Reg Cæsar - February 25, 2020 at 5:44 pm GMT • 100 Words
Off-topic:
Another NYT article — this one about Preferred Pronoun Placards at Harvard — in which the most-upvoted comments have a distinctly “When the Saxon Began to Hate” flavor.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/us/gender-pronouns-college.html
“I’m sorry, I’m a liberal and I hate Trump, but this is ridiculous and this is why Trump wins” Etc.
- @Jack DFebruary 24, 2020 at 5:11 pm GMT • 300 Words@Achmed E. NewmanA lot of what goes on in China is based on the fact that they have a (corrupt) Fascist government and don't trust their own people (for good reason). So private security guards are illegal. Everything within the state, nothing without the state, as the old Fascist motto goes. If you want a security guard for your business, you have to hire one from the "militia" (this is also a source of revenue for local government). But they don't want a lot of ill trained people carrying guns around so the militia are unarmed. In practice, this means you get some joker to stand at your building's gate but instead of paying him minimum wage you have to hire him from local government at a markup. But generally speaking you are correct that on a day to day basis government is a lot less heavy handed than in America. In the US if you have a business there are all sorts of "inspectors" constantly coming around to fine and harass you over safety violations, labor law violations, racial discrimination, environmental laws, etc., etc., etc. and you don't get that in China. There are not armies of nasty black ladies paid to make your life miserable. On the other hand, the local government probably has equity in the local factory or even owns it outright - it is not in their economic interest to harass you constantly and treat you as the enemy. BTW, strongly recommend watching the documentary "American Factory" about a Chinese glass making billionaire who converts an ex-GM factory in Ohio into an auto glass factory. It's not just government that's the problem in the US - it's the workforce, especially one that was trained by the UAW to regard their employer as the enemy and your job as an opportunity to do as little work as possible. There are not a lot of beat cops because there is not a lot of violent crime. The Chinese would like to get the best of you in some negotiated business transaction - sell you a fake watch or something. Just grabbing your purse and running off is not sporting - no challenge in it. And if they catch you, there is a long list of crimes for which the death penalty applies and they actually execute people so there is a strong deterrent effect.Once you forget all about the idea of China as a "Communist" country and think of it as a kind of Mafia state then it all makes sense. The Mafia is not anti-business. They don't hate it when you are successful - they just want a "taste" of the action. Bernie type socialists are not happy until everyone is equally poor and miserable.I've actually had some pretty good croissant in Shanghai. There are chains that specialize in French pastry. But their traditional pastries kind of suck to Western taste buds - bean paste is not my idea of a tasty filling.Replies: @benjaminl, @Achmed E. Newman
I haven’t seen either of these two movies (only the associated meme *), but I bet “American Factory” would make an interesting comparison with “Empire of Dust,” in which the Chinese businessman goes to Congo:
https://filmmakermagazine.com/35197-empire-of-dust-an-interview-with-bram-van-paesschen/
Filmmaker: Your film depicts many racist exchanges between the Chinese and the Congolese. It makes you wonder how they’re able to co-exist and, to some extent, get work done.
Van Paesschen: I must say that there are other countries investing in the country—Canada, the United States, Australia and South Africa are some of the main players. They are quite crude and racist too, but they hide it. They make these partnerships with NGOs and pretend they care about human rights, but they really don’t like it. The Chinese are honest. So in a way, what should one appreciate more? The honesty or the hypocritical stance of the Western companies? [The Chinese] don’t care about human rights and they’re honest about it. “We don’t care. We’re here to do our job. And we’re here to invest in the country.”
* the meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/its-all-so-tiresome
The Chinese workers are dissatisfied with the lack of communication among the native workers, which they see as essential for productivity. At one point in the documentary, the workers miscount when loading a truck and are missing materials upon arrival. Lao Yang is told by a worker that he cannot contact the “gravel guy” because the guy rarely answers his phone in the morning. Lao Yang replies that it’s already past 12:00 PM. The phrase “It’s all so tiresome” is spoken by a frustrated Lao Yang in reaction to his experience working with the Africans.
• Agree: Liza - February 20, 2020 at 3:12 pm GMT • 400 Words
Dallas sells itself as having willed its way into existence through sheer chutzpah, despite having no inherent geographical reason for existence. The Trinity was never a navigable river (the chutzpah couldn’t quite make that happen). Dallas:
* convinced the railroads to come through town
* convinced the State Fair to settle in town
* convinced the Federal Reserve to locate in townThus it’s the Business Center of the Southwest which couldn’t have been predicted in 1900.
But most importantly (they say), Dallas and Fort Worth put aside their long-standing rivalry long enough to build D-FW Airport, which is the main reason for its success in the last decades with corporate relocations.
Corporations who are looking for:
* lower cost of living thus lower payroll costs (e.g. South/ Sunbelt / Sand States)
* no state income tax for the executives (Texas & Florida)
* several flights a day to the branch offices anywhere in the U.S. in under four hours (Dallas or Chicago)?Find Dallas to be of the few places that satisfies all of those criteria.
Neither Austin nor Oklahoma City was in the running to build another DFW airport decades ago, and even less so now.
On top of being beautiful, Austin is also of course a College / Government town, thus Very Progressive and thus very attractive to tech companies who need someplace to put their SJW employees (who are better paid and not as concerned about Austin’s higher housing costs, as compared to the cubicle drones in Dallas-Fort Worth).
Oklahoma is more firmly Red than the Texas metros, thus more attractive to Middle American Radicals, but less dominated by the Elite / Minority coalition than, say, Dallas.
Dallas doesn’t have the humidity & hurricanes of Houston, though of course the summers are bad, along with hail, tornadoes, etc., and of course lacks natural beauty. But for the corporations and white collar workers who want Cheap Land, Low Taxes, Good Schools, etc. it ticks all the boxes.
Frisco, Tex., as Steve has pointed out, is the high point of all this (at the moment), as the Republican Base settles there to raise kids.
However, as Steve has also pointed out, the Vibrant Diversity which has already taken over the inner-ring suburbs e.g. Grand Prairie, Irving, Garland, Mesquite, Cedar Hill, etc., will eventually come for Frisco etc. too. It’s just a matter of time. But all that churn is good for the real estate business.
Just Google “Inclusive Communities Project” for the Soros-type, Fed-supported NGO whose lawsuits ensure that every single suburban Whitopia in Texas is going to get the Diversity that it has coming… good and hard.
• Replies: @Reg Cæsar@benjaminl, @Okie44
Why is an airport way out in the boonies a feature, rather than a bug? Southwest took over Love Field in Dallas, and were so successful that Congress, thanks to Jim Wright, passed a law greatly restricting flights from Love, so the new DFW wouldn't be shamed.
But most importantly (they say), Dallas and Fort Worth put aside their long-standing rivalry long enough to build D-FW Airport, which is the main reason for its success in the last decades with corporate relocations.
La Guardia and Newark-- Newark!-- are more popular than the wetland-destroying distant JFK. Haneda is where Delta (which inherited Northwest's Asian dominance) now lands in Tokyo, not Narita.
Denver plowed Stapleton under rather than let it compete with the new airport halfway to Kansas. Who in his right mind would choose Dulles over Reagan, which is on the Metro? Heck, even BWI is more convenient to DC.
People like the convenience of their old airports, even if they're somewhat run down. Minneapolis and St Paul, which, unlike Dallas and Ft Worth actually touch-- there is no in-between in which to build-- decided to build their new airport on top of the old one. Smart move.
They scotched plans to build in Hastings, nearly in Wisconsin. Any suburb would be too far from one city or the other, sparking jealousy.Replies: @Joe Stalin, @Achmed E. Newman, @Forbes, @The Wild Geese Howard, @B36, @AnotherDad@benjaminlI live in south central Oklahoma, near Oklahoma City, and when DFW airport opened in 1973, as an international hub airport, I remember it did seem like a kind of signal event, and it was a big part of what helped create the sense that “the metroplex” was on it’s way up, that it was a place that would grow and thrive., @Desiderius
OKC has been helped a lot over the years by the presence of Tinker Air Force Base, which has provided a lot of good jobs due to other Air Force maintenance bases being consolidated into over the last 30 years or so.@benjaminlMy sister flipped her first house in Frisco to some Dot Indians establishing an exclusive enclave over a decade ago, nearly doubling her money. Dot Indians are a helluva lot more diverse than American blacks whose families have been here for centuries. - February 18, 2020 at 9:26 pm GMT • 100 Words
When are they going to Cancel the Textbooks?
https://quillette.com/2019/06/05/superior-the-return-of-race-science-a-review/
Psychometricians do not dispute the existence of a 10-15 point IQ gap between black and white Americans; they only debate its causes. Consider what some experts have written in mainstream textbooks:
Nicholas Mackintosh: “It should be acknowledged, then, without further ado that there is a difference in average IQ between blacks and whites in the USA and Britain.”
Nathan Brody: “There is a 1-standard deviation difference in IQ between the black and white population of the U.S. The black population of the U.S. scores 1 standard deviation lower than the white population on various tests of intelligence.”
Earl Hunt: “There is some variation in the results, but not a great deal. The African American means [on intelligence tests] are about 1 standard deviation unit […] below the White means.” - @Jenner Ickham ErricanFebruary 18, 2020 at 7:29 pm GMT • 300 Words@RebelWriter
Indeed.
The New Englanders, particularly the Puritans, viewed their founding as the beginning of what became the United States, born with a different vision than that financial venture going on in the Mid-Atlantic and Southern colonies. Calvinists through and through, they believed they were ordained by God, predestined to settle in North America. It didn’t matter who got here first, America didn’t begin until they arrived. These views pre-dated the Civil War by about 200 years, or from the very beginnings of New England.
https://live.staticflickr.com/3214/3151975794_fa7f6cb101_z.jpgReplies: @benjaminlhttps://www.thenation.com/article/archive/puritans-as-a-city-on-a-hill-daniel-rodgers/
For more than 200 years the work lay in manuscript, until the Massachusetts Historical Society published it in 1838, in a collection of documents in which it was preceded by a few poems just a cut above doggerel and followed by a short history of the US Postal Service.
- February 14, 2020 at 3:17 pm GMT • 100 Words
This Twitter thread makes a visual case for Modernism e.g. Mies Van Der Rohe
https://twitter.com/logosnaut/status/1225926455718182913
However, the core problem is that ‘beautiful photograph’ does not equal ‘good building.’
A photograph can’t really tell you:
* is the building compatible with the physical scale of human beings?
* what about light, shade, temperature, climate?
* what happens when it gets old, or needs cleaning, or breaks, or is less than 100% pristine?
* can you actually use it for the intended purpose?@wrathofgnon on Twitter is great at exploring the actual realities of what makes a good building, as opposed to the zoomy fantasies in architects’ heads.
By contrast, here in the NYT is an enthusiastic piece on architecture strictly as a matter of “lusty fantasies”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/arts/design/Lequeu-Morgan-Library.html• Thanks: Alan Mercer• Replies: @Lot@benjaminlThat link didn’t work, but this might:, @Kratoklastes
https://twitter.com/logosnaut/status/1225926455718182913
I don’t need to be convinced the first wave of modern architecture is good. But this wasn’t too great an argument. Lots of B&W pics, interior shots of hallways and atriums, and water features. Hard to screw that up.@benjaminl
This is a characteristic of a very large amount of 'architecture' - even in older buildings. Get past the presentation layer, and it is really obvious that whoever designed it was never going use it, or to be responsible for maintaining it (and especially not cleaning it).
* what about light, shade, temperature, climate?
* what happens when it gets old, or needs cleaning, or breaks, or is less than 100% pristine?
* can you actually use it for the intended purpose?
Inspired by George Clarke's accented pronunciation, I refer to it as "Orc-itecture" (the mangling of the built environment by tax-eating pretentious fuckbags).
In the battle between low-quality dwelling construction (where a brand-new home has a 'tinny' feel - like you could pull it apart with a flat-head screwdriver) and pretentious, overpriced brainfarts produced by "architects", I know which side I'm on... "little boxes on a hillside" might all be made of ticky-tacky; they may all look quite the same; but they're generally fit for purpose and use the available space efficiently (i.e., in furtherance of the purpose).
By contrast, I have honestly never seen an architect-designed building where the guy doing the 'UX' wasn't sacrificing functionality in order to make some hackneyed bullshit self-promoting point.
In modern buildings, it's some freshman-philosophy bullshit (about 'subverting the dominant paradigm', usually)... in history it was just about doing power-projection for the patron (usually government).
Fuck both of those things, with one caveat: so long as the money is made with no reliance on artificial monopoly or oligopoly, people can do what they like with their own money. Grand country houses can be wasteful-of-space and costly to maintain but if its their own money, honestly made, then go for it.
Government buildings, on the other hand, should all be concrete cubes with 9-foot ceilings and no ornamentation: government is inefficient enough already without spending extra money on fripperies to embiggen the reputation of some pretentious prick.
That said: my guess is that people who make their money without recourse to artificial monopoly power, are probably not prone to being that wasteful.
The genuinely self-made rich guys I know (private-sector traders who started with their own stake and never took other people's money), all bought slightly-dilapidated gentilhommières, or small châteaux, or little hameaux - you can get any of those in the French, Spanish or Italian countryside, with orchards, vineyards and a view, for a few hundred grand. A million bucks and you've got something like this little maison de maître (currently on at €1.155m, but trust me: this will eventually sell for €650k. The Perigord is beautiful: my 2nd-favourite pied-à-terre is just down the road in Sarlat-le-Canéda).
https://d2ysowi61wn2ij.cloudfront.net/images/83629/cache/800x600_2d4f58c038fbbc860deba0b0f34f2d84.JPG
Yes, it was almost certainly designed by a pretentious (French) tosspot - which is why it has those 'missile launchers' - but some other dickhead paid that tosspot pre-Revolutionary prices to have those installed.
Anyhow... my views on "Orc-itecture" is why I am encouraged to absent myself from coffee get-togethers when The Lovely's uncle Ken is in town - worse than an architect, he's now a Professor of Architecture, infecting the minds of gullible young folk.
He literally sputtered wine at one lunch (a decade ago) where I laid out my dislike of all the 'major' buildings in every town in Australia - regardless of what they look like, they were always owned by charlatans (government and organised religion) or firms with government-mandated oligopoly power (banks), and were the 'architectural' equivalent of ...
Fortunately we were drinking white (it was summer).
"A supermodel with gonorrhoea: the underlying 'bad' more than outweighs the outward appearance. Difference is: gonorrhoea can be remedied.."
I went on to say something like
Bad front-end has consequences, but the front-end dickheads are seldom brought to account.
"In your game - 'big ticket' buildings and what-not - it's the structural engineers who should be the rockstars... almost nobody knows who those guys are, but I bet you do because without them things break badly. They're equivalent of the guys who maintain the back-end of the web. The front end is embroidery. Architecture is front-end for buildings."
The Grenfell Tower fire (in London) was 100% 'front end': the cladding that caught fire was part of the embroidery, not part of the structure. Nigel Whitbread - the pretentious fuckwit who designed it - is not in jail. If the failure at Grenfell had been an engineering (structural) failure, the person responsible would never work again. Great piece but I’m not sure Matt Y coined the term “awokening.”
It’s here in the headline tag of this John McWhorter piece from a year before Matt’s piece (i.e. 2018)
https://www.the-american-interest.com/2018/05/24/atonement-as-activism/
Stripped Classicism is underrated.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stripped_Classicism
A modern style that still bears some relationship to humanism and history.
• Agree: Laurence Whelk• Replies: @syonredux@benjaminl
When done well, it has a kind of austere beauty.....
Stripped Classicism is underrated.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stripped_Classicism
A modern style that still bears some relationship to humanism and history.
http://blog.adeccousa.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Marriner_S._Eccles_Federal_Reserve_Board_Building-1024x568.jpg- February 5, 2020 at 4:52 am GMT • 100 Words
Is there something weird about the first three hyperlinks in the article? (“Dark days on Wall Street”…”turned down a chance to work on Wall Street”…)
Geogeghan has a good article in the New Republic about how 2020 Dems are totally disconnected from the working class in e.g. Chicago
https://newrepublic.com/article/156000/educated-fools-democrats-misunderstand-politics-social-class
• Thanks: notsaying Interview with John Miller of National Review:
- @Jack DJanuary 17, 2020 at 11:53 pm GMT • 100 Words@donvonburg
It really has to be severe in order to swing the needle. Unless you grossly abuse the child (to the extent that would or should attract the attention of the child protection authorities) you're not going to change his IQ that much. If you are just ordinary dumb people and treat the kid reasonably well in dumb people fashion the kid will be whatever he was meant to be. Adopted children resemble their birth family in IQ more closely than they resemble the families that raises them.
the final outcome can be swung wildly by nurture. Ashkenazi Jews adopted at birth by sub saharan Africans and malnurtured severely might be brought down greatly in their raw IQ,
This cuts both ways. My wife sees the flip side of this a lot in her educational testing practice, where rich smart people adopt a kid from a Romanian orphanage or similar and despite having all the best schools and other advantages, the kid is not that bright (and comes under a lot of pressure from his adoptive family who have unrealistically high expectation that the kid is going to be a cardiologist or something like his adoptive dad who comes from 3 generations of doctors). Everyone ends up unhappy because if your kid from the Main Line ends up being a plumber instead of going Ivy then you lose face, despite the fact that the kid is not Ivy material and no amount of tutoring, etc. is going to make him into one.
In a way this should be reassuring to parents in that your parenting has less to do with the way that your kid turns out than genetics. But anyone who has two or more children who turn out to be quite different despite being raised in the same home by the same parents already knows that.Replies: @benjaminlI knew a family that did this. The WASP / Ashkenazi parents were 100 % pure uncut Blue State Ivy League progressives.
They had one biological child, and one child adopted from a “developing” country. Both kids had the most exquisite, elaborate nurture you could wish for.
The biological kid went right to Harvard-Yale-Princeton and a “prestige” career and the adopted kid is a dropout who consorts with lowlifes.
Really makes you a believer in heredity.
• Replies: @Jim Don Bob@benjaminlMy cousin and his wife adopted a 3 year old from Russia, did EVERYTHING for her, and she is still a little off when you look at her, but wildly entitled. I suspect fetal alcohol damage. She is so unpleasant to be around that I have limited my visits with my cousin. - @Ron UnzDecember 25, 2019 at 7:19 pm GMT • 100 Words@Hail
First, I must strongly emphasize that although this is my own website, I'm busy with my own work so that I only rarely read the various comment-threads around here. Given that they total close to 150,000 words per day, I'd obviously have absolutely no time for anything else. And although many years ago I used to spend lots of time on the iSteve threads, these days I probably glance at much less than 1% of them.
Many have remarked on the quality of Steve Sailer’s commentariat (iSteve blog), and I would echo them. Is there a consistently better commentariat anywhere else here?
What has gone right at iSteve? I don’t have the answer but would love to hear what others think; posing the question might be helpful. I am sure someone has the answer(s)....
I don’t know how to institutionalize the success of the Sailer comment-section but I hope the thoughts in this comment are useful in some way.
But the very few times I gone there, I've really been rather disappointed. The discussions seemed rather superficial, basically a gaggle of rightwingers mildly smirking at some of the total lunacies of our current society. I got the sense that it was filled with what the younger Alt-Righters ridicule as "Boomer Cons," generating an edgier version of the 1995 National Review, which I never regarded as a worthwhile magazine. There's nothing wrong with such threads, but I personally don't find them very interesting or useful.
But since I've only glanced at maybe 0.3% of those threads, my sampling is minuscule. Perhaps you could point me to a few iSteve threads that you consider particularly valuable.Replies: @Ron Unz, @Art, @Saggy, @benjaminl, @CharonIn my humble opinion, the value of the iSteve comments lies less in specific threads, than in the presence of a certain few commenters whose perspectives could hardly be found anywhere else.
I gratefully take advantage of the “Commenters to Follow” feature to keep abreast of their latest musings, without having to follow any particular thread:
Alfa158
AnotherGuessModel
arclight
Auntie Analogue
candid_observer
Crawfurdmuir
dearieme
Hunsdon
Jack D
Jenner Ickham Errican
Old Palo Altan
PV van der Byl
SimplePseudonymicHandle
slumber_j
vinteuil
whorefinder - @John Burns, Gettysburg PartisanDecember 16, 2019 at 6:23 pm GMT • 200 Words@AltaiIncidentally, Wexner channeled a lot of his money into the sports teams at Ohio State. We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars.
Good thing I already hated Ohio State.Replies: @benjaminlOhio State, eh?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ohio_State_University_abuse_scandal
By 1979, Athletics Department officials knew that Strauss conducted unusually prolonged genital examinations on male athletes, and that athletics staff were not permitted to be present during these examinations. In addition, Strauss was known to shower alongside male students at Larkins Hall, a behavior which was unique among team physicians to Strauss.[1]:2 Between 1979 and 1996, multiple students complained about Strauss’s excessive and unnecessary genital examinations, but no action was taken by OSU until January 1996, when he was placed on administrative leave in response to patient complaints.[1]:2–3
Larkins Hall, which served OSU as its Physical Education facility and Natatorium, was perceived as a sexualized environment, and multiple witnesses reported that voyeurism and public sex acts occurred there from the early 1980s to the late 1990s.[1]:163[6] 30 wrestlers and gymnasts reported voyeurs were routinely present at Larkins Hall in the locker room, shower, and sauna areas, ranging from college age to approximately 60 years old; the “leering” voyeurs would ogle student-athletes that were using the facilities and some would masturbate.[1]:166–167 Strauss was counted among the voyeurs; former OSU students stated that Strauss would shower among athletes multiple times per day or stare into the shower while seated on a stool.[7] In addition, peepholes were found in bathroom stalls and shower walls.[1]:166–167 The building was completed in 1932, named for retired OSU Athletic Director Dick Larkins in 1976, expanded in 1977, and demolished in 2005.[1]:165–166[8][9][10]
- @syonreduxPosted this on the Parasite review, but it also fits here:
"Do Americans Still Have Class Accents?"
Depends. In places like the South, NYC, and New England, the General American accent is a status marker, a sign that the speaker is of middle class+ origins. When I was living in Boston, I noticed how people in certain “prolish” occupations (cops, service industry, etc) all had classic Boston accents (“Pahhk the cahh in Hahhvahhd yahhd”). Lawyers, MDs, and bank employees, in contrast, all spoke GA.
Obviously, GA as a signal of status doesn’t really work in places like the Midwest and the West Coast, where the majority of the Anglo-Whites speak with GA accents. There, class is more a matter of good grammar and clear diction.
Pre-’45, things were different. Back then, there were elite local accents:tidewater Southern, Boston Brahmin, etc.But those accents have largely died out.Replies: @Charles Erwin Wilson, @tr, @Anonymous, @S. Anonyia, @Lot, @Sam Coulton, @Monsieur le Baron, @The Alarmist, @benjaminlI’ve noticed definite regional differences between Ivy Leaguer-type upper middle class whites on the West Coast and the East Coast.
Neither group has the “prole” regional accent, and yet, regional differences remain.
• Replies: @syonredux@benjaminl
Some differences that I've noticed:
I’ve noticed definite regional differences between Ivy Leaguer-type upper middle class whites on the West Coast and the East Coast.
West Coast: Horrible tends to be pronounced like "whore-ible," whereas the East Coast favors "haw-ribble." San Francisco/Bay area is an exception, as people there usually pronounce it in the East Coast fashion (I grew up in the Bay Area, and that's the pronunciation that I use).
West Coast: Vase tends to be pronounced with the "a" sound in base, whereas the East Coast favors "vahz."
Uptalk: More common on the West Coast. - @Houston 1992October 29, 2019 at 12:24 am GMT • 100 Words@SvevladI think that German and Dutch have accent differences across classes, but I agree with your point that many CE societies and Russiam don’t vary by class.Replies: @GermanReader2, @benjaminl
As an American visiting parts of Germany and Italy, it certainly seemed to me that the working class people there seemed to have more pronounced regional accents, whereas the educated class spoke a more “standardized” national tongue.
(Just the same as in the various regions of the U.S.A., of course)
Semi-Off-Topic:
The Mexican baseball league is pursuing a kind of reverse ‘Birth Tourism’ by flooding the league with foreign yanqui ringers who may happen to have a drop or two of Mexican ancestry (James Russell, Logan Watkins, Chris Carter, Beau Amaral)
I’m sure it’s no big deal…
https://twitter.com/ClaireBearLovez/status/1174784811308703744
Off-topic: A couple of moderately skeptical takes on the recent National Conservatism conference in DC
https://jacobitemag.com/2019/07/09/nationalism-qua-nationalism/
https://thefederalist.com/2019/07/22/not-national-conservatism-weve-looking/- July 19, 2019 at 11:06 pm GMT • 100 Words
Off-topic: “Magic Dirt” spotted in New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/arts/trump-nationalism-tucker-carlson.html
She defended President Trump’s vulgar comment last year disparaging immigration from certain countries, to laughter and applause. And she dismissed the idea that immigrants somehow became American simply by living here, which Ms. Wax (borrowing a term used by white nationalists and self-described “race realists”) mocked as the “magic dirt” argument.
There’s no reason that “people who come here will quickly come to think, live and act just like us.” she said. Immigration policy, she said, should take into account “cultural compatibility.”
“In effect,” she said, this “means taking the position that our country will be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites.”
• Replies: @Shermy@benjaminlReminds me of a comment made here by a junior high history teacher a while back.He said he was giving his student's a lecture about demographics, remarking that by 2030, the majority of American citizen's would be brown.From the back of the class a Latino kid said, "ohhh, that ain’t good!"The teacher asked him how he could say something like that, since the student was Latino.Kid says "because I know my own people.", @TheMediumIsTheMassage@benjaminl"Conservative thinkers are trying to bring intellectual coherence to the Trumpian moment under the banner of nationalism. But can it be cleansed of its darker currents?"
How come no one asks this question about outlets like the New York Times trying to bring "intellectual coherence" to far left ideologies, considering the millions of victims communism produced?Replies: @JudgeSmails - @Alden@Days of Broken ArrowsGraduation for every race but Whites. The Whites go to an unspecified graduation. Here’s how Cornell got its first segregated dorm.
When Cornell got its first affirmative action black women they were placed in the freshman dorms with the other women All they did was whine and complain that the other women were mean to them
So the school set up a separate black women’s dorm maybe 1974? It was one of those old wooden buildings a bit off campus.
Wouldn’t you know it, but the Cornell university branch of the Klu Klux Klan set fire to the porch.
The alumni magazine was hysterical about it. My Mom, being a liberal believed the black students tale. I told her the blacks probably set the fire themselves. She ignored my words of wisdom.
The mind of a liberal is an empty sink. Put in the plug turn on the faucet and fill it with the latest falsehoods. Pull out the plug the sink emptied and repeat with the latest falsehoods.Replies: @benjaminlA new history of the 1969 Cornell student takeover
https://quillette.com/2019/06/25/the-fog-of-youth-the-cornell-student-takeover-50-years-on/
• Replies: @Alden@benjaminlYes, thanks I read the link. Liberals are just repeating their tried and true formula from 50 years ago. It’s like entertainment revivals, same movie different actors s Off-topic: Californian Joel Kotkin writes about “what the tech oligarchs have in mind for us”
https://quillette.com/2019/06/19/what-do-the-oligarchs-have-in-mind-for-us/
I must say that an immigration moratorium–though undoubtedly necessary–hardly seems to be a sufficient response to this impending dystopia.
• Replies: @95Theses@benjaminlThat’s definitely a worthwhile read – and yet I noted nowhere in that article does Kotkin himself even mention immigration. In fact, Kotkin has been a long time proponent of open immigration. Maybe he’s seeing the light, but it seems more to me that it just doesn’t register with him that he has contributed to the mess we are now – and have been – witnessing in California and across the continent.
Consider this piece on Kotkin by the late, great, Lawrence Auster:
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/022238.html
Of course, you’re right that a moratorium is a necessary but not sufficient response ... it’s also going to require expulsion.
https://vdare.com/articles/san-bernardino-the-answer-is-an-immigration-moratorium-and-muslim-expulsion
https://vdare.com/posts/london-the-answer-is-still-an-immigration-moratorium-and-muslim-expulsionReplies: @Forbes
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