Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

Yea it's a disingenuous grift ploy and gross

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC_n2_5EC5Q

The Lilith Fair to IDW pipeline

Can’t imagine why her boss might have 86ed the rapping portion of the festivities.

Any time you start talking about "unverified student allegation of racism," there's a 100% chance you've done some serious racism.

xp - yeah, Smith, in general, is an awkward place with a history of educating privileged white people (like pretty much all the other old NE private colleges) that is trying to foster diversity, cultural equity, anti-racism -- all the things that progressive schools are trying to do. I was actually offered a math scholarship to go there if I had chosen to major in math (I went elsewhere) and I could have been Jodi's classmate! ...

and the thing with the "student allegation of racism" re the other staff member ... it's noteworthy that it's spoken of in a "political correctness gone crazy" way, as opposed to an issue about workers' rights and did that staff member belong to a union with representation and maybe that person was treated unfairly as compared to a higher status employee whose behavior would have been swept under the rug or handled more delicately ... like if she were that focused on the college as a toxic hostile workplace, it would lend more credence to her "sincere concern" if she were speaking about it in a context closer to class politics/labor politics.

There's so much transparent projection in these kinds of statements.

And the more I think about it -- she was an alumna of Smith -- class of 1993 -- how the fuck can she sincerely believe being sensitive to racism, cultural appropriation, and white privilege are newfangled impositions when she was an undergrad at an elite New England college in the 1990s? Was she somehow able to ignore this at the time? Because I remember this era on those campuses and there was a lot of ~discourse~ about these topics. Some of the language and methods have changed/evolved, but not that much! I would be fucking astonished if as a Smith College student in 1992-1993 that the Rodney King incident and the LA riots (which put a lot of steam into student organizing about the racism of campus cops who should sure as fuck be prevented from having guns) and the "conservative lol at ebonics" stuff somehow escaped her notice.

The difference is that there weren't big gofundme bucks to make back then out of performative outrage.

a kind of forgetting seems to be required for the whole PC/snowflakes/cancellation narrative(s) to work, like if you want to go over the same bullshit for decades it’s easier to retain attention if you pretend it’s something new every time- and if normal anti-PC discourse is too obviously associated with right wing bullies these days new terminology helps if you want to do the same old shit without sounding too much like one, while positioning yourself as a victim of some insidious new agenda

at the same time the history isn’t totally forgotten, because (real or imagined or distorted) incidents from the past will be referred to as early examples of this terrible new thing in action. but it’s always still new or at least uniquely bad now

https://reason.com/2021/04/07/microaggressions-uva-student-kieran-bhattacharya-threat/

This seems bad.

And fwiw, I listened to the recording and he seems like he is being more of a dick than the article lets on, but not doing anything that warrants any disciplinary action let alone banning from campus.

It doesn't surprise me at all that a writer for Reason would be unable to recognize when someone is coming off like a dick. That said, this does seem like bullshit and the lawsuit seems merited.

Yeah, I think it would actually have made the article more credible if they had just acknowledged that, but then again he was p much just acting like every libertarian I went to college with so maybe they're deaf to it

I mean I can also def remember being that kind of sexually frustrated, overeager know-it-all mansplaining dork a few times in college, not from a right/libertarian perspective but probably with similar effect.

Baffert: My horse is a victim of cancel culture pic.twitter.com/PgWWtiidAI

— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) May 10, 2021

Cancel Culture Killed My Dog

Cancel Culture is the NAME OF MY DOG

Yooooooo, who’s going to get their philosophy degree from Bari Weiss/Joe Rogan university?

Was sure it would be about the framing of this shit.

pic.twitter.com/GJb8kCc7oj

— Sally Hines (@sally_hines) November 8, 2021

Kathleen Stock is on faculty at the new university, so it all connects: https://www.uaustin.org/

Trying to imagine what these courses will be like. How many different ways can you be daringly racist?

You have to get niche and use ethnic slurs not seen since the 18th century.

What's Latin for "No Refunds"?

Caveat emptor

That time a libertarian I met in China used that as the basis to argue against any regulation or certification of dentists, lmao. (He was ‘Murican of course.)

Isn't that why Rand Paul made up his own medical org for accreditation?

the only thing that could make dentists worse is doing away with licensing. can you imagine. i always think of this https://abc13.com/thom-tillis-hand-washing-restaurants-comments/503061/

“I said I don't have a problem with Starbucks if they choose to opt out of this policy as long as they post a sign that says we don't require our employees to wash their hands after leaving the restroom," Tillis said to audience laughter. "The market will take care of that."

I remember those comments, I call him Poop Hand Thom now

it IS kind of interesting how willing conservatives are to embrace reactive policies like "wait for restaurants to get customers sick/killed, then the market will take care of it", whereas in terms of national security, they are ok with pre-emptively deporting people who just look the wrong way color.

It’s a one-fork flowchart - “is this a benefit to capital? Y/N”

Ah, I wondered if there was talk of the Forbidden Courses University anywhere. Insane grifting from the purportedly cancelled.

If they had the courage of their convictions — or if they had convictions — they'd locate in some libertarian paradise like rural South Dakota. Instead they get to make noise about moving to freedom-loving Texas, while settling in a liberal metropolis full of coffee shops and bike lanes.

Who will be the Aaron Rodgers Chair of Doing Your Own Research?

Second major resignation from a key post at Bari Weiss' unaccredited grifter university since it went public this monthhttps://t.co/QT4gJxYDAj

— Andrés Pertierra (@ASPertierra) November 15, 2021

Will he have to return his gold-plated skull calipers?

Andrew Sullivan was on 60 Minutes this weekend - anybody know if it was a plug for Grifter U., or for Substack "conservatism" more generally?

"calipers" is a fabulous word

but CALPERS is just another cryptic acronym

By mutual & amicable agreement, I'm stepping off the Board of Advisors of U of Austin #UATX, wishing them well. I'm concentrating on Rationality (the book) and Think With Pinker (the BBC radio & podcast series) & won't be speaking on this further. https://t.co/xgo7exT61C

— Steven Pinker (@sapinker) November 15, 2021

Stinker out

he was revealing himself a bit too openly with that one

what is cryptic about CALifornia Public Employees Retirement System? It's not a particularly imaginative acronym

Thanks, sarahell. I never realized it before this moment, but now I see that if you expand CALPERS to show all the words it has abbreviated, suddenly it isn't even remotely cryptic! Anyone can figure it out! I'll try this with other acronyms and see if that trick works with them, too!

Sometimes I get it confused with CLASPERS, because I'm a shark pervert.

I put calpers on my pizza

Skull CALPERS

all I'm saying is that California is a very populous state with a lot of government employees and one of the main reasons people choose to work for the state government is benefits such as a pension, administered by CALPERS, from which they receive immense volumes of correspondence throughout their careers and retirement. This is not to be confused with CALSTERS -- the California State Teachers Employee Retirement System, which is separate.

oh, so that's what you were saying. sorry, that went right over my head. I'll try to pay better attention in the future.

Or CALPIRG, those bright-eyed kids with the card tables.

aiui many exhibits in the Ghislaine trial are shown only to the jury and a lot of stuff is heavily redacted, but I’m just going to wildly speculate that Pinker showed up in one too many photos from Epstein’s private collection

xp - idk to me, a cryptic acronym, is either one where you have no idea how the acronym was derived from the name of the thing, or one where even if you know what the full name is, it is still unclear what the thing actually is or does.

Like compare these in terms of "cryptic-ness"

BUTT - Bouncing Undulating Twerking Tool

vs

BUTT - Bettering Understanding Transitional Talismans