Google is infrequentlyfunny.

This is just so strange. And by strange, I mean cowardly.

There's this enormous demographic wave of presumption out there that being a white guy means you're in a club where your path is greased so that difficult things come easily.

But Western Civ, especially in realms of our dearest achievement (medicine, law, warfare, finance etc.), is built on competition. White guys don't go easier on each other because they're white.

Rather it's the case that being a white guy, at least heretofore, has meant that no one wanted to hear you beg for an exception to be made for your substandard work. Haidt has talked about this paradox: It's stoic white men, compelled to adapt instantly to incessant criticisms, who will emerge from these social trends with the strong backs for heavy lifting in life. These guys will make things happen, for themselves at least, without petitioning the market (or the polity) for a more-flattering field of challenge. They know they're on their own, whatever the color of the photo hanging in the lecture hall. Yeah: success is personal. And lonely.

SJW people are convincing themselves that success comes from an environment of attaboys (or attagals) and 'inspiration' rather than an unremitting, pitiless and fundamentally insulting dare from competitors to do better or get out of the way. Childish interpersonal neediness & daydreams are fucking things up. Presumably most Asian cultures are less hospitable to this whining…

Though perhaps we needn't yet worry too much.

The passage quoted in this tweet seems so sensible and fulfilling (of my presumptions) that I've decided to accept it as a sturdily-composed and richly-detailed school of thought rather than reading the damn article to see if there's anything, y'know, to it.

Likely a garbage movie, but I like this.

https://twitter.com/WilliamHPerkins/status/1166089396711514112

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/340164/

Well, that's a sticky wicket.

https://reason.com/2019/08/26/secret-memos-show-the-government-has-been-lying-about-backpage/

For the first time in — well, for the first time ever, I am enjoying Quillette, and look forward to whatever its editors choose to do next.

Limeys take that stuff far too seriously.

Corporate welfare for people who hate America:

Universal to get state money to build road to new Epic Universe park | Exclusive

Ubernews

Driver kidnaps teen girl.

Have we noted yet that Johnson & Johnson just got busted for $576M because, surprise, making opioids more available led to vast addiction numbers?

No big.

Lyftnews

Driver, drunk girl, sexual assault.

Lyftnews, Bay Area Edition

Driver, kidnapping, sexual assault.

It's like a broken record with these guys.

> like a broken record

Dunno about that-- I bet if you compared it to the number of rapes, assaults, thefts and bits of shitty conduct from conventional taxi drivers, you might never hail a cab again. On the other side of the coin, cabbies are said to be at much higher risk for violent death than are policemen, who seemingly compose a great deal of their community goodwill and self-respect from the risks of their job.

…Well, regarding Cabbies… Threat or Menace?, I really have no idea.

But I've been using these services a lot over the last four years because a particular family crisis has made them useful. The low prices may be a fortuitous (for me) illusion from Venture Capital investment.

But I've had six or a dozen drivers who were minority women, young ones, and I'd never had one of those driving my taxi in the previous five and a half decades. They were safer from me than typical cabbies are, because my credit card info and locations and deportment habits were all on file: I wasn't going to make trouble for them, and as it happened, none of them chose to rape or assault me, either.

Anything that brings such people into safe and reliable work has got to be admired. I once had a great exchange with Tressider here about the notion of the shitty job. I say there's no such thing, even if you move to your next position before the ink on your resume has has dried. That's certainly the case here.

…Despite whether, as Big Mac often speculates, the drivers' calculations of the wear and tear on their personal autos are as misbegotten as the profit probabilities of the rideshare companies.

The busted McArdle link:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/uber-and-lyft-are-locked-in-a-price-war-there-are-only-two-ways-out/2019/04/30/1c99e046-6b7c-11e9-8f44-e8d8bb1df986_story.html