Archive for 2019
April 13, 2019
DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: Disney Chief Bob Iger Calls for Civil Discourse, Warns “Hitler Would Have Loved Social Media.”
The Disney chief, for his part, asserted, “Hitler would have loved social media,” suggesting that it is “constantly validating our convictions and amplifying our deepest fears” and “makes it far too easy to deny our shared humanity.” He emphasized that “it is possible to argue policy without attacking people” and that “we have to change how we talk to each other” before suggesting, “Maybe we should just start by reconnecting with those friends and family members that we haven’t spoken to since the 2016 election.”
Despite the ongoing efforts of the management of Twitter and Facebook, it is still possible to (more or less) freely exchange ideas there. In contrast to the notion that “Hitler would have loved social media,” in reality:
With the beginning of the Second World War in 1939, many new laws and prohibitions were established in Nazi Germany, forcing the population to decide whether to obey the Nazi regime or to risk being declared “criminals”. One of those new laws introduced on 1 September 1939, the first day of the German Invasion of Poland, concerned the “extraordinary radio-measures act” (German: Verordnung über außerordentliche Rundfunkmaßnahmen). This law prohibited deliberate listening to any foreign radio station under threat of penal servitude. Likewise all non-governmental radio transmissions were banned and all critical equipment of German amateur radio operators were seized by the Reichspost authorities.
If only Bob had an entire news division at his disposal to inform him of these things.
DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE AND THE WOKE OLYMPICS: What I Learned When I Enrolled In A Race, Gender, And Oppression Studies Class.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Enraged Students at Christian Taylor University Left ‘Physically Shaking’ after Mike Pence Chosen for Graduation Speech.
Straight out Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure.
CHUCK NORRIS DOESN’T CARRY A GLOCK. GLOCK CARRIES A CHUCK NORRIS. Chuck Norris Named Glock Spokesman.
ANN ALTHOUSE ON THE CLEVERNESS OF TRUMP’S “SANCTUARY CITY” TROLLING:
I think Gessen is seeing that the responses to Trump are reinforcing what he’s saying, that it’s bad to have a sudden big influx of economically needy immigrants. Trump wins if he gets the sanctuary city proponents to show that they were just posing as immigrant friendly. He called their bluff. Why did they fold so quickly? They should have kept bluffing: Bring them here! They are welcome!
I think that’s what Gessen is really saying, but she’s kind of hiding it, because she’s part of the bluff. She thinks Trump is bluffing too. If Trump won’t really dump the immigrants in San Francisco and those other virtue-signaling places, then they can continue to virtue-signal, and they should, so he doesn’t win.
I don’t know why anyone would think that Trump is bluffing here.
UGH: As Ebola Cases Rise in Congo, the W.H.O. Declines to Issue Emergency Declaration. “While expressing “deep concern” about the number of increasing cases in parts of Congo, and the potential risk of the disease spreading to neighboring countries, the W.H.O. said the epidemic did not meet the criteria for declaring an international public health emergency.”
WORD OF THE WEEK IS “NIMBY”: Forget the Categorical Imperative for a second. If I save a drowning person in hopes of getting a big reward, is she no less saved? It seems to me that the hubbub about Trump’s sanctuary plan is simply “we don’t like his motives.” This is the worst NIMBY I’ve seen since Ted Kennedy blocked wind energy farms off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard.
It’s more than a masterstroke of trolling by Trump, it’s actually a lesson in “be careful what you ask for.” But NIMBY is old chapeau for the faux-liberals. There is no more solidly Democrat neighborhood than the People’s Republic of the Upper West Side. Yet, when the beloved “diversity” (virtuous!) was proposed for THEIR schools, these Hillarybots went markedly Galt: Said one parent: “You’re talking about telling an 11-year-old, ‘You worked your butt off and you didn’t get that, what you needed and wanted.”
I simply cannot help but be reminded of this Christopher Guest classic:
JOURNALISM: Woman Who Media Claims Created Black Hole Image Contributed 0.26% of Code; The media may have been overzealous giving Bouman in giving sole credit for the discovery. “According to data provided publicly by GitHub, Bouman made 2,410 contributions to the over 900,000 lines of code required to create the first-of-its-kind black hole image, or 0.26 per cent. Bouman’s contributions also occurred toward the end of the work on the code. In contrast, contributor Andrew Chael wrote over 850,000 lines of code.”
To her credit, her credit-sharing response was appropriately honest.
ILHAN OMAR’S ISLAMOPHOBIA DODGE:
In her speech to CAIR, Omar claimed that the group had been founded after 9/11 in order to defend Muslims against a backlash after the attacks. This is patently false. CAIR was founded in 1994 as a political front for the Holy Land Foundation, a group that raised funds for the Hamas terror group that was eventually shut down by the Treasury Department. Her support for CAIR is consistent with her backing for the anti-Semitic BDS movement.
But the broader point to be made here is the way the effort to shift the discussion about 9/11 from a seminal moment in the long struggle against Islamist terror to a mere excuse to discriminate against Muslims is now being used to downplay Omar’s anti-Semitism. . . .
While all forms of bias are despicable, the backlash narrative was, as I noted in 2010, a successful effort to “redirect, redefine and rewrite the unambiguous meaning of an unambiguous event” in order to defame the United States. But it’s now being weaponized again to portray an unapologetic anti-Semite like Omar as a victim. The point of this campaign is to protect her and all others who seek to delegitimize Jews and supporters of Israel with an impenetrable cloak of immunity that belongs to victims.
Decent persons—Jewish and non-Jewish, Republican or Democrat—cannot allow this big lie to stand unopposed.
Read the whole thing.
NEW SOCIALIST “IT GIRL” CONTINUES TO PAY DIVIDENDS: Ocasio-Cortez Appears On ‘The Price Is Right,’ Guesses Everything Is Free.
It’s the Babylon Bee, so it’s satire — or is it?
THE CLIMBDOWN BEGINS: Yale Law School offers vague ‘accommodation’ to Christian groups after banning them.
IF YOU WANT YOUR DATA TO BE SECURE FROM HACKERS, KEEP IT ON PAPER. Hackers publish personal data on thousands of U.S. police and FBI agents. I wonder if this is part of the Assange payback scheme.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Suspect in Michael Knowles UMKC assault identified, faces multiple charges.
DESPERATELY SEEKING MOOTNESS: New York City Changes Firearms Transport Policy Before SCOTUS Review. They know they’re going to lose, and hope to make this case go away.