The original Ghostbusters, not the remake.

Here is an interesting take on the book, White Fragility. The author paints cancel culture's anti-racism as cover for a vicious class war.

White Fragility is the most successful of a slew of recent books functioning as devotional guides in the nuevo religion of anti-racism, all of which leverage pseudoscience and often bankrupt historiography to shore up the belief of the faithful. But the discourse manufactured by Robin DiAngelo, Ibram X. Kendi, Layla F. Saad, and other mainstream anti-racist writers conceals a pernicious idea. Rather than promote racial justice, such books often serve the dual purpose of building solidarity within the predominately white managerial class while justifying its privileges. The current anti-racist discourse is a powerful tool by which the system of inequality refreshes itself.

On this point, the work of Columbia University sociologist Musa al-Gharbi is illuminating. In a recent series of essays, al-Gharbi examines how the anti-racist discourse embraced by the professional-managerial class (i.e. culture-driving elites of the upper quintile) has actually re-entrenched racist behaviors in that very class. [...] This dynamic is so entrenched because it operates to justify the power of white elites over working class white people as well. ... White elites drive the discourse and promote an endlessly broadening definition of racism, which requires education and, more importantly, enculturation to understand. Working class white people who can't keep up with shifting norms are labeled racist by the gatekeepers of those norms, who thereby safeguard their own class privilege.

White progressives' deployment of the scapegoat mechanism against out-group white people (and, often enough, dissenting non-white elites) cloaks privilege under sham virtue, while preserving class inequalities that disproportionately harm black Americans. Thus is racial strife instrumentalized to conceal a class war and its massive casualties.

Yes, your honor. This man has no dick.

According to Worldometers, the global population reached 7.8 billion today, at 10:38 am ET. We could easily reach 8 billion late in 2022 or early in 2023.

In the meantime:

https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-world-is-heading-for-a-population-crisis-but-not-the-one-it-was-expecting-20200720-p55dl1.html

He's drinking from a bowl:

https://twitter.com/LessShot/status/1250194029922435074

Quote:
"There are three principal institutions responsible for estimating the future population of the world. None of them is projecting that it'll just continue to grow and grow indefinitely. And that was the case even before the pandemic struck."

But, like pretty much all articles in past years that said that, the article doesn't explain exactly how or why the global population would start to go into REVERSE. After all, even WWII failed to make that happen between 1939 and 1944. Plus, the falling death rate has kept up with the falling birth rate for the last 50 years or so. While Worldometers claims that the population will start to increase more slowly after 1923, I don't see any evidence of that either. At the current rate, we would reach 10 billion by 2047, if not earlier.

And according to the article, the U.N. claims we'll reach 10.9 billion by 2100 - and THEN we'll start dropping. What in the world makes them think it would take that long to reach 10.9?

"Linguist John McWhorter Says 'White Fragility' Is Condescending Toward Black People"

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/20/892943728/professor-criticizes-book-white-fragility-as-dehumanizing-to-black-people

Excerpt:

...Columbia University professor and linguist John McWhorter, who is Black, echoes that criticism, writing in The Atlantic that the book "openly infantilized Black people" and "simply dehumanized us."

He argues that for "DiAngelo, the whole point is the suffering" of white people, who are "taught that pretty much anything they say or think is racist and thus antithetical to the good."...

Whoops - I meant 1945, of course.

What in the world makes them think it would take that long to reach 10.9?

They're relying on model predictions. Those are only as good as your input data, the assumptions you put into play, and the ability of the programmers to code the conceptual model into a program that can perform the calculations correctly. Lots of moving parts and sharp edges, some of which you won't know until you hit something you didn't expect.

We're going to need a sample of your brain tissue.

...Okay.

How could 2020 get any wo

Never ask.

McWhorter is one of my new favorite public intellectuals. When talking about what he loves most, he's as dry and boring and self-tickled as any gifted lecturer you never liked… But he never gives you the feeling that he's a priss who's dropping into a lower gear on your behalf. He makes his case cleanly.

My favorite line from the movie:

"If we're wrong, then nothing happens. We'll go to jail. Peacefully. Quietly. We'll enjoy it. But if we're right, and we can stop this thing, Lenny, you will have saved the lives of millions of registered voters."

Cynical and sarcastic at the same time.

Sometimes, giving the grieving a refund of the money is the smart play. But this company didn't and threatened to sue. That caused a big backlash. The Streisand Effect in full gear:

Thousands of people joined the online backlash, including former clients and contracted employees who claim their money was stolen by Copper Stallion Media and the man they say is behind the company, Jesse J. Clark.

Since our story, more than thirty couples and photographers across the country have contacted KRDO NewsChannel 13 reporter Julia Donovan over the last week, also saying they lost money to Copper Stallion Media or Clark. The couples say they never received a wedding video, and the photographers claim they never got paid.

https://krdo.com/news/2020/05/29/man-connected-to-copper-stallion-media-pending-investigation-by-nevada-consumer-affairs/

Never underestimate a good soundtrack:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLxG2PpN0u8

"It takes a special kind of ignorant for an author to choose an example that illustrates the mathematical opposite of one’s intended point, but this isn’t uncommon in White Fragility, which may be the dumbest book ever written." ~ Matt Taibbi

Berg Wobble.

When you look at the essentially murderous incompetence of Cuomo and other authorities in NY in response to Wuhan; and when you then see his shimmering neon eagerness to flout his own directives on Covid safety, do you kinda suspect it's part of an incredibly clever Excel-spreadsheet-regression-analysis calculation to harvest the support of 1) illiterate don't-tread-on-me bubba-stooges in the Adirondack holler and b) well-off lefties who almost nakedly affirm that their own life-force is insurmountable while the little people deserve no consideration at all?

(Was that clear? Do you see what I'm getting at?)

Because otherwise, Andrew Cuomo seems unbelievably torpid. Like, 'Remember to *breathe,* Andy!' - torpid.

He's GOT to be evil, because actual stupidity & hypocrisy of his magnitude must have been beaten out of him in grade school. It MUST have been.

He's GOT to be evil, because actual stupidity & hypocrisy of his magnitude must have been beaten out of him in grade school. It MUST have been. ~ Crid at July 23, 2020 5:30 PM

He's part of a political dynasty and, if history has taught us anything, incompetence and hypocrisy are not beaten out of the inheritors of the dynastic mantle. His brother's equally idiotic and his father was a self-righteous prig of the type that only New York politics can breed.

Not evil, just stupid. As they say these elites aren't that elite. And for exactly the reason Conan points out, his rich parents bailed him out of that beating class. To his detriment.

Which goes back to that thread on liberal being against meritocracy. I'm sure Cuomo got the best grades money could buy. Doesn't mean he actually learned anything. No wonder fellows like him are opposed to fair systems.

> rich parents bailed him

He had at least one sibling. Socialization begins in the home.

As Conan pointed out his brother is just as dumb and ill educated. Hell, I wouldn't be shocked if both of them complain about 'the man keeping them down' never noticing they are the man.