jerryskids

Bill Maher talking to the head of FIRE about this. The discussion about the hypocrisy of Harvard and Penn (I'm glad they omitted MIT) was interesting.

Interesting, thanks. Regardless of what happens, the primary outcome of this hearing is a positive one: feel free to sit around criss cross apple sauce and sing about the innocent Palestinians forced to celebrate rape and burning, but if any "mostly peaceful" protests break out on campus which violate the already existing rules for such things, action will be swift.

I wonder if Kornbluth is on the block. She only started in January this past year, which could be good or bad. I'm confident they suck hard on the Arab oil money teet, as they have admitted with China and Russia in the past. But there are also donors like Stephen Schwarzman (Blackstone founder), who gave $350M to form the MIT college of computing. His politics are conservative and his name sounds sorta... ethnic. Also that Dershowitz article that @Strikelinked earlier nailed the problem, at MIT anyway: DEI has taken over like a parasite. I sense that Kornbluth has relied too much on counsel from Melissa Nobles, the MIT Chancellor who comes from a Humanities background, as you'd expect for a tech-focused institution. Her areas of study include: This is the woman spearheading the effort to address antisemitism on campus (and Islamophobia, of course!).

https://sports.yahoo.com/usga-ra-formally-announce-rollback-of-golf-ball-for-all-players-starting-in-2028-162143448.html?.tsrc=1317 I wonder if all of the major ball manufacturers will completely comply. What is to stop them from selling some longer balls to Joe Duffer who just wants to hit the ball farther on his weekend round with drinking buddies? Not to mention the resale market when people stockpile balls. Seems like a nightmare on multiple fronts.

The sea was angry that day, my friends...

We probably shouldn't get dinner together then. The nature of my laryngectomy is such that I often need to suddenly cough through the blow hole in my neck. Since I don't breathe through my nose, irritating smells are not filtered by it. Also, liquid sometime leaks from my esophagus (food pipe) into my air pipe through prosthetic. Both irritants cause me to often insta-cough.

Bobby Bonilla is the one discussed here every July 1st I believe, but there are others with similar deals.

This summarizes what happened at MIT, including the physical disruption and impeding of people. It is from the MIT Free Speech Alliance. The link to Kornbluth's letter, if it works, mentions additional reports of individual targeting and harassment.   Dear MFSA Members and Supporters, As you probably know, the last few weeks have been busy ones at MIT, which like many of its peers has seen protest activity from students and community members supporting both sides of the war between Israel and Hamas. Chants at pro-Palestinian rallies on campus aroused significant anger and fear among members of MIT’s Jewish community, though as we noted in an earlier statement, such chants didn’t, to our knowledge, cross the threshold into unprotected categories of expression such as harassment, threats, or incitement to imminent lawless action or violence. MIT’s strong free speech commitments, including the Statement on Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom MFSA championed, prohibit punishing expression protected due to the offense it causes. If that line wasn’t crossed by the earlier protests, last week a different one was. As has been now widely reported, a pro-Palestinian demonstration occupied the lobby of Building 7 and blocked passage into the Infinite Corridor, disrupting operations throughout the day; adding to the disruption, which drew a contingent of counterprotesters, the protesters used amplified sound. This, as MIT pointed out, was a deliberate violation of the Institute’s guidelines on time, place, and manner, which had been communicated to the whole campus. Some interim sanctions were placed on students who refused to leave, and other investigations remain ongoing. We urge members to read President Sally Kornbluth’s November 14 statement and the accompanying FAQ, which goes into significantly more detail about these events. MFSA supports the right of all MIT students to peacefully protest and demonstrate regardless of their viewpoint, but universities are also within their rights to establish time, place, and manner guidelines for such activity. When such guidelines are fairly written and enforced, they will both protect students’ right to free expression and the university’s ability to maintain operations. And as we note in our statement this week, it is essential that there are consequences when they are ignored: “Universities must make clear that the right to free expression does not confer the right to disrupt classroom, research, and administrative operations, and that refusal to abide by reasonable time, place, and manner guidelines can bring significant sanctions.” We’re continuing to monitor the ever-developing situation at MIT, and how the administration responds. We appreciate that in its statements on the campus tensions MIT is experiencing, the administration has repeatedly emphasized its support for free expression. More so, we appreciate that many of our members have reached out to us to share their opinions and concerns on a conflict that hits close to home for many of us. We’ll surely have more to say on this matter, and always welcome your input.

A few days after reading this post my neighbor asked me to review a medical report. He has colorectal cancer and was tested for biomarkers for immunotherapy; he knows I was on immuno so he thought I might add some insight. Ends up he didn't have the markers for approved therapies, but he did have a marker for two therapies under trial. One of them uses two drugs, one of which is, wait for it... HCQ. I thought of your post and almost said "hey, you have Covid cancer$#@!" but thought better of it. I don't actually believe that, but it seemed funny at the time, inasmuch as a neighbor with ass cancer can be funny.

This has been/is being discussed in the "War in Israel" thread.

Yeah, that's what it is. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/environmental-social-and-governance-esg-criteria.asp

First, I agree with you that poverty vs skin color is the root of many of the problems in the inner city. Does density contribute? Sure. But my daughter lives in Washington Heights on the upper tip of Manhattan, aka Little Dominican Republic. Pretty dense, not a lot of wealth flowing around. Yet the properties are well kept, and the neighborhood seems perfectly safe. I'm reminded of an old adage about a man stranded on an island who prays to God for rescue. A boat comes by but the guy says "thanks but I'm OK, God will save me." Later a helicopter comes, and he says the same. A long time passes and the man says, "God, I've prayed for you to rescue me and you haven't, why not?" And God responds, "I've sent you a boat and a helicopter, what else do you want?!" Money has been poured into schools with no success. Stores eat shoplifting losses until they give up and close. The black inner city culture has a unique problem. Poor Dominicans, or whites in Appalachia, don't have Ibram X Kendi and Ta-Nehisi Coates preaching to them that other people are the cause of all of their problems. With that message comes a tacit message of lack of agency-- that there is nothing you can do to improve yourself while you are being oppressed. This is my problem with the Left's message. It's why I think CRT is counter-productive, and discussions about redlining in the 70s, while helpful in explaining past results, is not particularly useful in solving the problem moving forward.

Any chance this kid is lightning in a bottle? Looks like he'll get a chance with Kirk out, albeit Lawrence is hurt too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsGSUOrVWNo

I explained that I brought up Nigerians because of your incorrect statement that AAs are not "able to" do stuff. And then you said "you people" twice again. Improve infrastructure like... put in grocery stores and other shops? How is that going? In a way you are correct: I don't really give a about them. If we find an example of true systemic racism, let me know and we can address it. Otherwise, the community can get their sh1t in order and prioritize family, education, and personal responsibility, none of which requires more stores to loot or drugs to do. But that's my way of "caring." I don't have the soft bigotry of low expectations like you do, and I treat them like adults in the greatest country in the world.

Wait, are you using 2020 employment statistics to make a point? Did anything else happen in 2020 to impact employment?

Again with the "you people." Since you are lumping me in with your caricature of what a conservative thinks, I'll tell you that there were obviously systemic issues against the American black community for a long time. I believe that those issues have by and large been eliminated, and in many cases are the opposite (favoring blacks). But if items of systemic racism are found today they should be addressed. I suspect they exist in sentencing statistics, for instance. But working on the premise that they are largely eliminated, it's time to move on and identify the current problems. I believe that the inner city black culture, and the soft bigotry of low expectations that come from the Left, are the worst fixable issues facing AAs today.

"We all" is not me, Mr. Holier Than Thou. I responded to your specific comment: Now you are moving the goalposts to say that it is a matter of education and wealth, not skin color. Well, duh. Those are indeed important factors, as are commitments to family and personal responsibility. My point is there is nothing systemically preventing them from living in those communities, it is a matter of other factors. Thanks for agreeing.

I'm serious. To make sure I understand your differentiation, an immigrant Nigerian engineer can live in communities while a 4th generation American black engineer cannot?

I generally support free speech, and do not object to people peacefully protesting for stupid things in safe, approved spaces. This was not the case at MIT however, where they disrupted classes and traffic flow. The protestors violated existing rules for such meetings and met no ramifications.

I would go months on end without posting there, then post for a while. One time I returned and I couldn't log in; instead I got some message like "We chose TNG over you. Mkay bye!!!" In my mind it was from TK, so perhaps the message specifically said it. Anyway, if nothing else, I now understand what happened.

Where are these communities which only let in certain types of blacks?

You often refer to this "vast majority of medical experts," yet you never quote any. Here, I'll quote the Finnish study from the article, which was published in European Psychiatry: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-psychiatry/article/have-the-psychiatric-needs-of-people-seeking-gender-reassignment-changed-as-their-numbers-increase-a-register-study-in-finland/D09F9414F798E0462AF911152E7BF576 Look at that, an actual scientific study! I'll end with the last paragraph of the original article, it sums it up nicely. TL;dr -- you are not helping these confused young people by ignoring their cries for help.

OK, I'm in. I'm generally free other than chunks of Monday and Thursday mornings.

I was talking availability to draft the next two days; when is the draft? If it is next week I'm currently mostly free and can do it.