I think I'm having one of the biggest aha moments I've had all year, which is that in many ways folks who belong to the "woke" left & those who belong to the "reactionary" right want the same things; & in this context, I mean it not as a critique, but an opportunity for hope.

Ladies and gents I sense a thread coming along. ;)

If you ignore the toxic impulse some folks on the left have to label certain things as "whiteness," what they claim to want is to actually create the conditions that fight against alienation and isolation.

If you look at some of the documents floating around in DEI circles, they define "equitable cultures" as those that value "interdependence & collaboration," "seeing discomfort as growth," & "seventh generation thinking" which is a philosophy that comes from the Iroquois tribe.

If you boil down much of it (& again, view the weird "whiteness" piece as a bug & not a feature), what is actually being requested is a deviation from the factory-oriented/central planning styles of work and a more communal oriented way of work life.

Overheard in a Newcastle cafe, two very despondent students, clearly not long arrived in the city: “I might as well just go home. What is the point in being here? I told my Mum last night, I just feel so lonely. Wish I’d taken a gap year.” The other nodded, in sad agreement.

More cafe conversations-a woman who has recently gone back to work and is now facing down the barrel of imminent unemployment again with the hospitality shutdown which is prob coming here: “I was so buzzing to get back to work. I can’t believe it’s back. Don’t know what I’ll do.”

A local bar owner who has popped in for a coffee: “up to now we’ve just about been making enough money on Saturday to survive and make it through the rest of the week. Depends what the government does. But we’re on the edge.”

And the cafe owner, been here 19 years: “things had been a bit better but this week trade has fallen off a cliff. I came in yesterday and the day before and I just closed because there was no point. Whatever they announce I’m praying it isn’t for long or they extend furlough.”

This cafe btw is a cracker, when I lived in Newcastle came all the time. If you’re ever in the area (restrictions permitting) @QuayIngredient is where you need to go.

A short reflection on the connection between personal psychology and "conspiracy theory."

(Image by Manfred Antranias Zimmer from Pixabay
https://t.co/JdaHUam549)

This article is a perfect example of how the obsessive anti-trans cult recruit unsuspecting women into their ideology under the guise of “feminism” and a narrative of “woman as victim”.

It’s deeply insidious, manipulative gaslighting...

Let’s pick it apart...

Thread/

To understand the article, you need to know the context.

Stella O’Malley is a well known anti-trans campaigner. She fronted the “Trans Kids: It’s Time To Talk” documentary in 2018, which was just one big dump on trans kids, and has been a committed transphobe ever since...

As a result of Stella, and her ‘gender critical’ cohorts, relentless, obsessive, and often deeply offensive campaigning against trans people and their equality, she has received push-back and criticism.

MUCH of that criticism has come from trans-inclusive cis women like me...

However, Stella and her trans-hostile ‘gender critical’ cult (which are predominantly privileged, white, cis women) constantly ignore the MANY cis women speaking out against them and in support of trans rights - in favour of claiming they’re being “silenced” by “misogynistic men”

This is where the first insidious dig comes in...

When Stella talks about “men” here, what she’s actually referring to is trans women’. When she mentions “women” - This is a particularly nasty dogwhistle that transphobes use to put down trans women in plain sight...

A man's greatest gift to a woman is her femininity, or perhaps more accurately stated - the safety and freedom to embrace her femininity, to connect with the purity and innocence of her inner child, warm and loving with all the grace, charm and happiness that entails.

The "strong independent woman" will never know this joy, for it is only a man who can give this gift to a woman, she can never realise it for herself by herself.

Women are not at their best when they're alone, they're at their best with a strong but loving and competent man.

Every woman's quest in a relationship with her man is to find her way home, to rediscover and connect with the sweet parts of herself she thought she'd lost

And she can only do this by completely surrendering herself to him.

Of course, such a man must be worthy or she'll suffer

And that's why submission to a man is not weak, but in fact, an act of supreme bravery for the feminine.

To put one's fate in another's hands, and trust that it will not be violated.

That she chose correctly, and he is not only a competent man, but a good man.

SHOW DAUGHTER.

Here's the best argument for expanding & thereby repairing the Supreme Court. Over the past 2 decades, starting with Bush v. Gore, the court's conservative majority has pursued an aggressive agenda to keep Republicans in power & Republicans in turn appointed conservative justices

This has skewed our political system & improperly increased the number of conservative justices. Those justices have skewed the system to preserve GOP control in Tuesday's Census decision, Citizens United & Shelby County v. Holder (overturning Sec. 5 of the Voting Rights Act) AND

in Gill v. Whitford (upholds outrageous GOP gerrymandering in Wisconsin) and in cases upholding strict voter ID laws & other partisan GOP maneuvers.

There's a strong argument that the GOP has improperly gotten three SCOTUS seats that should have gone to Democratic appointees.

Bush v. Gore was essentially a 5-4 judicial coup that awarded the presidency to George W. Bush. Bush appointed two justices (Roberts & Alito) & if Gore had been president for Bush's two terms, those vacancies would have been filled by Democratic appointees

Republicans stole a seat by not considering Merrick Garland. So there's a strong case that GOP presidents filled 3 vacancies that Democrats should have filled. This created today's 5-4 conservative majority when there'd be a 7-2 liberal majority if Democrats filled those seats.

This is a memo to white folks who have gotten activated to fight for social justice over the last four years, as part of resisting the agenda of the current administration:

The work isn't over. We're glad you're here, and we need you to keep showing up.

1/x Thread.

Imagine a world in which every shooting by police of an unarmed Black person was met with the energy and urgency of the 2017 Women's March or the airport protests after the Muslim Ban was announced.

Imagine people mobilizing every time a state wanted to pass draconian abortion restrictions the way they did when the Affordable Care Act was up for a repeal in 2018.

Imagine the canvassing, the text banking, the GOTV work that has happened in 2018 and 2020 happening every single time, for every single election. Imagine what might be possible.

Imagine the outcry and passion for immigrant rights, for just immigration laws that has happened over the last few years continuing to happen, in an ongoing way, until every last person yearning to breathe free is safe.

“Jim Crow” originated from the name of a black character from early- and mid- 19th century American theater. Crows are black birds, and “Crow” was the surname of a stock fictional black character, who was almost always played onstage by a white man, wearing blackface makeup.

Due to the prevalence of this character, "Jim Crow" became a derogatory term for people of African descent. From the late 1800s, the name came to signify the social and legal segregation of black Americans from white —a synonym for racial segregation, particularly in the South.

The laws were created by white southerners to enforce racial segregation across the South from the 1870s to the 1960s. Under the system, “whites only” and “colored” signs proliferated across the South at water fountains, restrooms, bus waiting areas, theaters, pools, and schools.

Laws made this segregation possible. In 1896, the Supreme Court declared Jim Crow segregation legal in the Plessy v. Ferguson decision. The Court ruled that “separate but equal” accommodations African Americans were permitted under the U.S. Constitution.

There was also a subtler, social dimension which required that blacks demonstrate subservience and inferiority to whites at all times. A black man who succeeded in business might find his shop burned to the ground by white lunatics.

1. "How Much of Gen Z Will Be Unmarried at 40?" *More than 40%*, according to one new demographic projection. If true, would be catastrophic for American family life, fertility, & economic inequality.

@RAVerBruggen on that new @UMich study: https://t.co/tIFOkf30Xl @FamStudies

Stop saying "defund the police."

Poll after poll after poll is clear. The public supports funding social services that fill some roles police currently have, but they DON'T support defunding the police.

I don't care if you think those are the same thing. Voters don't.

There are neighborhoods in some cities where police are actually *underfunded* for their essential roles, and response times are low for people reporting crimes, accidents, etc.

Police nonresponse hurts POC as much as police brutality. Defund activists have no answer for this.

"BuT wE dOn'T lItErAlLy MeAn GeT rId Of ThE pOlIcE!"

Then find a new damn slogan, because at least some of the people chanting it with you do, in fact, literally mean that.

"Defunding" the police is an intellectual coward's way out for leftists who are "woke" to the point of being sleep-deprived.

They don't want to grapple with the reality of crime and how systemic racism has put POC in the way of social harm that ensures they *need* police.

I'm totally with you on decriminalizing a broad litany of social problems and diverting money to programs that address these noncriminally, from housing to drug treatment.

But not all crime is fixable this way. What social program is going to end DUI? Domestic violence? Rape?

Let's talk about the space-tampon story. OK, so this is a story confirmed by Sally Ride and Kathy Sullivan, where a male engineer asks if 100 tampons is good for one week, and she politely tells him he can go a lot lower. Very often repeated, and true so far as it goes. BUT

In an interview by Weitekamp with Rhea Seddon, the only MD among the women in that class, she said she was actually consulted on the decision! She said they ended up with a big number out of concern about microgravity effects and due to the NASA approach to redundancy.

Microgravity concerns were not unreasonable. In Sally Ride's biography by Sherr, she discusses how the first woman who actually had to use the tampons in space had issues with "capillary action." Space is horrible.

Anyway, so, the story Ride and Sullivan tell is true (and funny!) but there's some missing context. I am not a historian, and certainly not a historian on this topic, but I have read a lot of books. A plausible sequence goes like this:

1) Seddon is consulted as the lady MD.
2) Due to unknowns, gives a high number
3) NASA management doubles that number, out of abundance of caution
4) A kit with infinity tampons goes to the other women, delivered by some (happily never identified) male tech

A thread on how several muslim countries work hard on fighting extremism and MB, meanwhile infiltrated media work hard on whitewashing islamistic terrorism and MB.
Note: this is NOT about being against muslims. This is about seperating criminal activity from religion. 🕊️

#SaudiArabia According to a review by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education @IMPACT_SE positive changes have been occurring in Saudi Arabia’s educational curriculum since 2016. Changes that have been accelerated in the 2020-21 curriculum👇

1⃣ A Hadith, which teaches that war between Jews and Muslims (in which Muslims will kill the Jews) is inevitable. “Historically, this Hadith has considerably influenced antisemitic attitudes in the Muslim world, so its removal from the 2020 Saudi textbooks is hugely significant"

2⃣ A text describing the evil means utilized by “Zionist forces,” such as money, women and drugs, lending to the promotion of common antisemitic tropes - removed

3⃣ A text describing that Jews have no religious-historical rights since they refused to accept Mohammed - removed

There’s a reason why they coined the term “couch potato”. Excessive TV watching turns you into a potato in time. Research has shown that when you are watching TV, your higher brain regions shut down, and activities shift to the lower brain regions. Your lower brain is set in a

“fight or flight” response mode. In the long run, your higher brain regions experience atrophy due to lack of usage. There have been studies that TV viewing among children leads to lower attention and poorer brain development. TV is like a tune in station, a place where you’re

completely cut off from reality and falsely presented news/ideologies about real world (media/movies)

Watching Netflix series on your laptop all day is no different. Movies/series subconsciously programme the brain by presenting it with a false perception of reality. This is

dangerous because it can warp the very reality you live in. Yes, i use movie clips and tv shows as content, but mostly for information purposes to show you the kind of programming used and what it means.

Watch documentaries on YouTube/Vimeo about real shit. Spend your time

loading your brain with useful knowledge instead of junk thats designed to programme your thoughts. All media, including movies, newspapers, the news, magazines etc, are all owned by just a few corporate entities. This means only a few corporations control the narrative. The

Historians agree that corruption was a pandemic in European life and politics in the 1800s, and that since then, corruption has generally declined along with economic growth and prosperity. What can Africans learn from this?

From the outset, when reading the very scarce literature on Western corruption it is clear that the decline of corruption largely corresponds with sociopolitical change and most importantly ECONOMIC GROWTH

Two main reasons are given for reduction in corruption: 1. SUSTAINED GROWTH which results in more entrepreneurship & productive investment

2. A PROSPERING ECONOMY that can afford to pay civil servants well, improving overall living standards, reducing motivation for corruption

There is very limited historical literature on corruption in Europe which often gives the impression that this is/was never really a major problem. Not so, for e.g for centuries England, was described as “shot through with corruption and venality”, just like the rest of Europe...

This period of rampant corruption in the West was at a time when Europe was at it's poorest economically. Even with the plunder and looting of the rest of the world, Europe would occasionally fall into hard times, and at this time, corruption would increase accordingly