Clownish 25 Year Old Man Charts His Fame And "Girlhood"

dailymail |  Childcare experts are expressing alarm over transgender TikToker Dylan Mulvaney’s popularity bump after her White House debut, saying social media is driving a spike in teens seeking sex-change procedures.

Clinicians say Mulvaney’s sit-down time with President Joe Biden has raised the social media sensation’s profile, extending her reach and likely influencing teenage fans who may themselves be questioning their own gender identity.

Mulvaney’s TikTok following grew to 8.4 million after her White House appearance, and while she is entitled to share her experiences online, experts told DailyMail.com that online influencers like her in part drive an alarming uptick in teen transitioning.

dailymail |   'A lot of the initial deals were tailored to my queerness and to my transness,' she told The Creators newsletter last month.

'For some of these major corporations, I was actually their first trans creator. It's exciting to make money to support myself since I lost my job, and to have my transition surgeries be covered too.'

Her agency, CAA, did not answer DailyMail.com's interview request.

Mulvaney's ascent has not been without hiccups. Her appearance on Ulta Beauty last month led to controversy and calls to boycott the cosmetics firm. Critics called her 'misogynistic' for 'appropriating' womanhood.

Likewise, a post about Tampax feminine hygiene products left some viewers shocked and confused. Two replied: 'Is this a joke?' She is frequently bashed for referring to the vagina as a 'Barbie pouch'.

She has gained a massive following on TikTok as she documents her transition to a transgender female — originally identifying as 'nonbinary' but telling followers in March that she was a girl.

Mulvaney interviewed Biden last month as part of a panel of six progressive activists for NowThis News. In the interview, the Democrat vowed to protect 'gender-affirming care,' saying states should not limit access to transgender treatments.

 

Nothing Says "Family-Friendly" Like Being Censored By An Ugly Dude In Misapplied Make-Up

theatlantic  |  Everyone I spoke with believes that the very future of how the internet works is at stake. Accordingly, this case is likely to head to the Supreme Court. Part of this fiasco touches on the debate around Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which, despite its political-lightning-rod status, makes it extremely clear that websites have editorial control. “Section 230 tells platforms, ‘You’re not the author of what people on your platform put up, but that doesn’t mean you can’t clean up your own yard and get rid of stuff you don’t like.’ That has served the internet very well,” Dan Novack, a First Amendment attorney, told me. In effect, it allows websites that host third-party content to determine whether they want a family-friendly community or an edgy and chaotic one. This, Masnick argued, is what makes the internet useful, and Section 230 has “set up the ground rules in which all manner of experimentation happens online,” even if it’s also responsible for quite a bit of the internet’s toxicity too.

But the full editorial control that Section 230 protects isn’t just a boon for giants such as Facebook and YouTube. Take spam: Every online community—from large platforms to niche forums—has the freedom to build the environment that makes sense to them, and part of that freedom is deciding how to deal with bad actors (for example, bot accounts that spam you with offers for natural male enhancement). Keller suggested that the law may have a carve-out for spam—which is often filtered because of the way it’s disseminated, not because of its viewpoint (though this gets complicated with spammy political emails). But one way to look at content moderation is as a constant battle for online communities, where bad actors are always a step ahead. The Texas law would kneecap platforms’ abilities to respond to a dynamic threat.

“It says, ‘Hey, the government can decide how you deal with content and how you decide what community you want to build or who gets to be a part of that community and how you can deal with your bad actors,’” Masnick said. “Which sounds fundamentally like a totally different idea of the internet.”

“A lot of people envision the First Amendment in this affirmative way, where it is about your right to say what you want to say,” Novack told me. “But the First Amendment is just as much about protecting your right to be silent. And it’s not just about speech but things adjacent to your speech—like what content you want to be associated or not associated with. This law and the conservative support of it shreds those notions into ribbons.”

The implications are terrifying and made all the worse by the language of Judge Oldham’s ruling. Perhaps the best example of this brazen obtuseness is Oldham’s argument about “the Platforms’ obsession with terrorists and Nazis,” concerns that he suggests are “fanciful” and “hypothetical.” Of course, such concerns are not hypothetical; they’re a central issue for any large-scale platform’s content-moderation team. In 2015, for example, the Brookings Institution issued a 68-page report titled “The ISIS Twitter census” mapping the network of terrorist supporters flooding the platform. The report found that in 2014, there were at least 46,000 ISIS accounts on Twitter posting graphic violent content and using the platform to recruit and collect intelligence for the Islamic State.

When Fraudulent AssClowns Battle - Only Pissants Get Hurt...,

forummag  |  “Wokeness is a problem and everyone knows it,” James Carville, the political strategist often credited with Clinton’s 1992 victory (and, let’s be honest, not much else), whinged to Vox last year, 100 days into Joe Biden’s presidency. “It’s hard to talk to anybody today—and I talk to lots of people in the Democratic Party—who doesn’t say this. But they don’t want to say it out loud.”

If someone makes up an identity grounded in nothing but subjective feeling and a state recognizes it as constituting a protected class, subjective reality becomes immune to challenge and the ultimate political contest becomes to control what feelings are recognized by the state

— Wesley Yang (@wesyang) July 9, 2022

The statement is immediately self-contradictory, sure—it’s hard to talk to anyone who doesn’t say this, but not out loud? But it’s already setting the stage for a year of recriminations and preemptive blame-shifting for what is widely expected to be a midterm bloodbath for the ruling Democratic party. The political scientist Ruy Teixera—co-author of a best-selling Bush-era book on how demographic change would lead inexorably to permanent Democratic dominance—now peddles a newsletter where he moans about “the Democratic Left’s adamant refusal to base its political approach on the actually-existing opinions and values of actually-existing American voters,” as if “the Democratic Left” has been the determinant of what a government led by Joe Biden—again, that Joe Biden, the one who is president—has managed to accomplish, or not accomplish, over the last year.

In lengthy Twitter threads and ugly Substack newsletters, consultants and would-be consultants tell the gerontocratic and eternally triangulating leadership of the Democratic Party that the real problem is that the kids who work for them are too “woke.” Despite “everyone” knowing it’s a problem, “wokeness” is a poorly defined concept. “Woke” was once a Black slang term for being politically aware (specifically, being aware—sometimes in a comically exaggerated way—of the myriad methods the white establishment has of punishing politically active Black people). It now serves, in the popular political discourse, the exact same function as the term “PC” did for Marshall and From in 1993. “PC” stood for “political correctness,” which, after the fall of the Soviet Union and prior to 9/11, was, in the eyes of the white commentariat, the single greatest threat faced by the United States. (A few years ago Moira Weigel observed that the term “political correctness” hardly appeared in print at all prior to 1990. As she notes, in 1992, a database of U.S. magazine and newspaper articles turned up 2,800 references.) The point of each term, as deployed by these men, is to euphemize a euphemism: “special interests.”

“African Americans, women, white farmers, and, especially, organized labor,” is how Geismer describes the New Democrat conception of “special interests.” The big idea of the New Democrats was that denying all of these annoying groups any material gains would please the White Suburban Voter, who had emerged from all the social upheavals of 1960s and beyond as the Main Character of American Politics. What is remarkable, more than three decades later, is how little anyone has learned.

“WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ,” huffed a recent tantalizing subhead in Politico’s “West Wing Playbook” tipsheet. Was it some previously undisclosed intelligence operation? A newly declassified Kennedy assassination document? No. It was a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Republican Senator Mitt Romney calling on the White House to “ditch its woke advisers.”

“White House chief of staff RON KLAIN may have taken this a bit personally,” Playbook’s authors wrote. He “retweeted our own SAM STEIN, who quipped that White House deputy chief of staff BRUCE REED was the ‘embodiment of woke’ (Reed is objectively un-woke. In fact, the woke don’t like him).” I do not mean this as a cheap gotcha point, but all of the capitalized names in this dispatch are white men, and at no point do the keen analysts behind  Politico’s West Wing Playbook define what they think the term “woke” means.” At a certain point, though, you have to ask:. What does “wokeness” mean, to you, to Democratic centers of power and (last and probably least) to Politico?

Back in George W. Bush’s second term, Jonathan Schwarz articulated what he called the “Iron Law of Institutions.” It goes: “the people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution ‘fail’ while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to ‘succeed’ if that requires them to lose power within the institution.” Schwarz  meant to universalize it, but I think he nailed something very specific about how the Democratic Party works, and I think Al From and Will Marshall ought to agree.

The long-standing fight over who runs our nation’s left-of-center party has featured multiple linguistic evolutions but otherwise remained strikingly static. For my entire life, white moderates have been complaining about how difficult the people on the side of multiracial democracy are making it for them to win their idealized suburban voters.

Woke Imperium: Identity Politics Co-opted By Neoconservatism To Justify Empire

 

peacediplomacy | The advocates of American primacy within the United States foreign policy establishment historically rely on prevailing ideological trends of the time to justify interventionism abroad. The new ‘woke’ face of American hegemony and projects of empire is designed to project the U.S. as an international moral police rather than a conventional great power—and the result is neo-imperialism with a moral face.

• This is an iterative and systemic process with an internal logic, not one controlled by a global cabal: when the older rationalizations for primacy, hegemony, and interventionism appear antiquated or are no longer persuasive, a new rationale that better reflects the ruling class norms of the era is adopted as a substitute. This is because the new schema is useful for the maintenance of the existing system of power.

• The rise of a ‘woke’ activist-driven, social justice-oriented politics—particularly among the members of academia, media, and the professional managerial class—has provided the latest ideological justification for interventionism, and it has become readily adopted by the U.S. foreign policy establishment. These groups now have an even greater level of symbiotic relationship with state actors.

• Professional selection and advancement under these conditions require elite signaling of loyalty to ‘progressive’ universalism as the trending state-sanctioned ideology, which further fuels the push towards interventionism. This combination of factors encourages a new institutional and elite consensus around trending shibboleths.

• The emerging hegemonic posture and its moral imperialism are at odds with a sober and realistic appraisal of U.S. interests on the world stage, as they create untenable, maximalist, and utopian goals that clash with the concrete realities on which U.S. grand strategy must be based.

• The liberal Atlanticist tendency to push moralism and social engineering globally has immense potential to create backlash in foreign, especially non-Western, societies that will come to identify the West as a whole with niche, late-modern progressive ideals—thus motivating new forms of anti-Westernism.

Read the full paper at the download link.

DOWNLOAD PDF

 

Is It The Food That's Causing Digestive Traffic Jams?

mashable |  In the last few years, corporations have been trying to capitalize on Pride month — usually by adorning rainbow logos and releasing rainbow merchandise. This year, however, Pride campaigns are cranking up the sexual innuendo (all while conservatives are calling us "groomers," but I digress). Burger King Austria, for example, released their "Pride Whopper" featuring burgers with either two "top" buns or two "bottom" buns.

How did we go from delivering dinner to anal sex??

— Love Right (@Blacktallbig) June 9, 2022

Food delivery app Postmates is now taking it a step further with Eat With Pride, a first-ever "bottom-friendly" menu. 

“Bottoming” pic.twitter.com/BM4TNJaUic

— Soya (@Soya112233) June 9, 2022

Postmates partnered with anal surgeon and sexual health and wellness expert Dr. Evan Goldstein to develop a menu for those who want to be penetrated during anal sex without mess.

"If you're a top, it seems like you can eat whatever you want," says the ad narrator, comedian Rob Anderson. "But if you're a bottom, you're expected to starve? Not this Pride!" The tops are portrayed as eggplants and bottoms as peaches, of course.

👋 pic.twitter.com/kH5xejvs3T

— GuessWho (@AmicaIncongnita) June 9, 2022

The ad goes on to list some foods that a bottom should avoid in the day before sex — like whole grains, cauliflower, and legumes — that contain insoluble fiber. This means they can't dissolve in water, and are harder to flush out...if you catch my drift. Instead, Postmates and Dr. Goldstein recommend foods with soluble fiber and protein, such as white rice, citrus, and fish, as these digest easily and slowly. The menu will offer "bottom-friendly" dishes from restaurants in New York and Los Angeles.

 

Bye Felicia!

WaPo  |  Felicia Sonmez, a reporter on the national staff at The Washington Post whose criticism of colleagues and the newspaper on social media in recent days drew widespread attention, was dismissed by the paper Thursday, according to a termination letter.

Kris Coratti Kelly, a Post spokesperson, declined to comment, saying, “We do not discuss personnel matters.” Executive Editor Sally Buzbee also declined to comment on the termination, which was first reported by the Daily Beast.

Reached by phone, Sonmez said, “I have no comment at this time.”

Sonmez, who worked for The Post from 2010 to 2013 before rejoining the newspaper in 2018, was scheduled to play a key role Thursday night in reporting on the House select committee’s televised hearing on the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to a Post editor involved with the coverage.

But in a Thursday afternoon termination letter first reported by the New York Times and viewed by a Post reporter, The Post told Sonmez that she was fired “for misconduct that includes insubordination, maligning your co-workers online and violating The Post’s standards on workplace collegiality and inclusivity.”

Sonmez on Friday used her Twitter account to call attention to a colleague, David Weigel, for retweeting a sexist joke.

“Fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed!” Sonmez tweeted in response.

She also complained about Weigel’s retweet on an internal message board.

Weigel apologized for the retweet and deleted it from his account. The Post subsequently suspended him without pay for a month for violating its social media policies. (The Post did not confirm Weigel’s suspension, citing the privacy applied to personnel decisions.) In the ensuing days, Sonmez continued to use her Twitter account to focus on the incident, retweeting criticism of Weigel and contending that Post management enforces social media policies inequitably.

Over the weekend, Jose A. Del Real, another Post reporter, asked Sonmez to cease her criticisms, tweeting, “Felicia, we all mess up from time to time. Engaging in repeated and targeted public harassment of a colleague is neither a good look nor is it particularly effective. It turns the language of inclusivity into clout chasing and bullying.”

Felicia Sonmez Stirred Up A Wokestorm At The Bezos Post

vanityfair | The Post’s guild responded Tuesday to the disputes playing out online. “Guild leadership has tried hard to run our union in a way that centers kindness, respect, fairness, and empathy while holding people and institutions we care about accountable. It’s our hope that all Washington Post employees keep that in mind when one of us makes a mistake and we are tasked with being part of the accountability process,” Katie Mettler, who has been cochair of the Post Guild for more than three years, told me. “In the last few years, hundreds of guild members—often led by women and people of color—have worked relentlessly and thoughtfully together to advocate for more fair and inclusive systems at the Post.” She added, “We are doing the work to hold all our institutions and ourselves to a high standard, and we will keep doing that work in ways big and small, public and private.”

In the past, Sonmez has had widespread support in the newsroom; hundreds of colleagues signed a letter on her behalf in 2020, after Baron suspended her for tweeting an article detailing a rape allegation against NBA legend Kobe Bryant shortly after his death. (A “newsroom revolt” is how this publication described it at the time.) Soon after the paper’s guild sent that letter to management, she was reinstated. But since then, there have been multiple instances of Sonmez calling out the paper publicly—and she has done so internally in response to a staff email as well.

About two weeks ago, Gold, the National editor, sent out an email urging colleagues to “take time to assess how you are doing” and “seek help if you need to talk to someone” in the wake of the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde and the anniversary of George Floyd’s murder. “Just a reminder that I was punished after I told an editor that I had to take a walk around the block after reading a difficult story,” Sonmez replied—to the entire National staff—according to emails reviewed by Vanity Fair. One reporter noted that Sonmez has said both publicly and privately that she’s still at the Post because she wants to help fix things. “Discouraging reporters at the Post from seeking help they need—that’s actively being part of the problem,” they told me. “This idea that she’s fighting for sexism and gender, while that might have felt true at some point, now just rings disingenuous, even for people who want to give her the benefit of the doubt.” 

On Thursday, after the initial publication of this article, Sonmez responded on Twitter: “I stand by what I wrote in that email. In 2018, I was punished after I told my editors I needed to take a walk around the block after reading a difficult story. Other colleagues have been punished for their trauma far more recently, but their stories aren’t mine to tell. I’m not ‘discouraging reporters at the Post from seeking help they need.’ Far from it. The Washington Post’s own actions are doing that. I care deeply about my colleagues, and I want this institution to provide support for all employees. Right now, the Post is a place where many of us fear our trauma will be used against us, based on the company’s past actions.”

The thrust of Sonmez’s critique over the past few days has been about how the Post holds different journalists to different standards, and what message that sends about the Post’s values. Sonmez tweeted Sunday that Del Real had “publicly attacked” her for highlighting Weigel’s sexist retweet, writing, “When women stand up for themselves, some people respond with even more vitriol.” In another tweet in the thread, she dismissed the idea that objecting to sexism was “clout chasing”—Del Real’s words—and tagged Buzbee and Gold to ask if the paper agreed with her. On Monday and Tuesday, she was once again urging management, via Twitter, to intervene. 

“Working at a huge news organization—the Post, The New York Times, CNN—is like living in a big city where there are always emergencies,” one staffer said. An embarrassing correction for the Styles desk might be a fire; a story the Times beats the Post on, a flood. “As a colleague, you probably should be trying to help fund the fire department or city services and make it a better place to live; at worst, you’re not paying your taxes,” they continued. “And then you have Felicia, who is essentially pouring gasoline on every fire and inviting people to watch.”

Sonmez responded Thursday on Twitter: “To borrow an analogy, working at a big news organization is like living in a big city. Emergencies like corrections come up every day. That’s normal. Are sexist or racist tweets ‘normal’ emergencies? Is the denigration of a class of people a ‘normal’ emergency? Or are those things a sign of deeper problems within a newsroom rife with unequal treatment?”

military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex

consortiumnews  |  Every silicon fragment in the valley connects Facebook as a direct extension of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)’s LifeLog project, a Pentagon attempt to “build a database tracking a person’s entire existence.” Facebook launched its website exactly on the same day – Feb. 4, 2004 – that DARPA and the Pentagon shuttered LifeLog.

No explanation by DARPA was ever provided. The MIT’s David Karger, at the time, remarked, “I am sure that such research will continue to be funded under some other title. I can’t imagine DARPA ‘dropping out’ of such a key research area.”

Of course a smokin’ gun directly connecting Facebook to DARPA will never be allowed to surface. But occasionally some key players speak out, such as Douglas Gage, none other than LifeLog’s conceptualizer: “Facebook is the real face of pseudo-LifeLog at this point (…) We have ended up providing the same kind of detailed personal information to advertisers and data brokers and without arousing the kind of opposition that LifeLog provoked.”

So Facebook has absolutely nothing to do with journalism. Not to mention pontificating over a journalist’s work, or assuming it’s entitled to cancel him or her. Facebook is an “ecosystem” built to sell private data at a huge profit, offering a public service as a private enterprise, but most of all sharing the accumulated data of its billions of users with the U.S. national security state.

The resulting algorithmic stupidity, also shared by Twitter – incapable of recognizing nuance, metaphor, irony, critical thinking – is perfectly integrated into what former C.I.A. analyst Ray McGovern brilliantly coined as the MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex).

In the U.S., at least the odd expert on monopoly power identified this neo-Orwellian push as accelerating “the collapse of journalism and democracy.”

Facebook “fact-checking professional journalists” does not even qualify as pathetic. Otherwise Facebook – and not analysts like McGovern – would have debunked Russiagate. It would not routinely cancel Palestinian journalists and analysts. It would not disable the account of University of Tehran professor Mohammad Marandi – who was actually born in the U.S.

I received quite a few messages stating that being canceled by Facebook – and now by Twitter – is a badge of honor. Well, everything is impermanent (Buddhism) and everything flows (Daoism). So being deleted – twice – by an algorithm qualifies at best as a cosmic joke.

I Do Not Now And Never Have Owned A Single Apple Product....,

foxnews  |  A recent software update for Apple's iPhones includes a "pregnant man" emoji as well as a number of other gender neutral cartoons.

Apple rolled out the update in mid-March according to the Wall Street Journal, adding the pregnant emoji, as well as a gender neutral "person with crown" emoji to go alongside the king and queen cartoons. Apple also added 35 other emojis. 

Apple first rolled out the pregnant man and "pregnant person" emoji in January as part of an optional update, but it came to all users with the iOS 15.4 update.

The decision to roll out the new emoji was met with criticism and mockery from many conservatives. Fox News Host Greg Gutfield praised the emoji as a step toward acceptance for men with ‘beer guts.’

"Yes, thank God finally, it's here. A beer gut emoji has arrived to Apple iPhones with its latest voluntary update," he wrote.  "This new emoji comes in five different skin tones, so someone with a massive beer gut can be any shade that he, she or they want."

The Week The Trans Spell Was Broken

unherd |  Not very long ago, the fear of being denounced as a transphobe meant that doubts about extreme gender ideology were confined to private WhatsApp groups and quiet conversations among friends. This is very much no longer the case. Two weeks ago, the Times’s chief sports writer, Matt Dickinson, wrote on Twitter, “Are we really talking about fairness in sport in the transgender debate – or fear and prejudice?”

“Fairness” replied hundreds of women, including some from his own paper. The only replies agreeing with Dickinson were from other male sports writers, insisting that the way the trans women athletes had been treated was “horrendous and disgusting” (John Cross, Daily Mirror ) and “awful” (Martyn Ziegler, The Times) It’s sweet how males always stick together, isn’t it?

Gender ideologues complain that this shift in public tolerance is merely a conservative backlash against trans rights, but they are wrong. What we are seeing is the inevitable result of trans activists – and, most of all, Stonewall – pushing far beyond civil rights for trans people and insisting instead on unpopular and unworkable policies, such as trans women in sport, child transition and any open acknowledgement of female biology.

This third issue caused the Labour Party to have one of its regular internal breakdowns, as its politicians – and leader – became unable to answer the question, what is a woman? And not only could they not answer the question, they couldn’t think of a way to not answer the question, hemming and hawing about it being a “gotcha” question. Yes, it is, interviewers replied, and what we’re trying to get is an answer that a three-year old could provide. Last month, Angela Rayner came up with a solution: “I think we should be taking it off social media and taking it away from commentators,” she intoned solemnly. Ah yes, censorship from the left. That always plays so well! Oddly, only a month earlier Rayner had been loudly insisting that the next leader of the Labour party will be a woman. Presumably that kind of woman-chat is permitted by Rayner, just not what a woman actually is.

The Tories have certainly not been spared from all this. On 30 March, at 2:48am, the Tory MP Jamie Wallis posted on Twitter to say that he’d been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and would like to be trans. Suddenly, his long history of dodginess – from running companies that attracted more than 800 complaints, to being affiliated with a sugar daddy website, to fleeing the site of a car crash – was instantly forgotten and his honesty and courage were trumpeted to parliament’s rafters by, among others, the Prime Minister. It was strikingly reminiscent of that time, in 2015, when Glamour magazine named Caitlyn Jenner Woman of the Year, two months after she was involved in a car accident in which a woman, Kim Howe, died. The district attorney ruled there wasn’t enough evidence to convict Jenner, but Glamour decided they had all the evidence they needed to cite her as the year’s best woman. At least Caitlyn bothered to make an effort: in the sobering light of day, Wallis tweeted, “I remain the same person I was yesterday, and so will continue to use he/him/his pronouns.” So no change at all, then, other than the identity of being trans. Or wanting to be, anyway.

 

Fat, Ugly, Non-Binary "Chief People Officers" Now Dominate Western Public Discourse...,

yahoo  |  Daniil Medvedev, the Russian player currently sitting at No. 1 in the ATP rankings, may not be allowed to play at Wimbledon unless he denounces Russian president Vladimir Putin.

That was the situation outlined during a meeting at British Parliament on Tuesday, where sports minister Nigel Huddleston confirmed discussions were taking place to prevent supporters of Putin from entering the world's oldest tennis tournament amid Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Russia's tennis teams have already been thrown out of the Davis and Billie Jean King Cup, but Huddleston indicated the government wanted sanctions to go further.

From The Telegraph:

Giving evidence to the Digital, Culture, Media & Sport select committee, Huddleston said: “It needs to go beyond that. We need some potential assurance that they are not supporters of Vladimir Putin and we are considering what requirements we may need to try and get some assurances along those lines.”

Asked whether individual Russian and Belarusian athletes wanting to come to the UK would be required to “denounce” Putin’s invasion, Huddleston said the details were still being discussed, including with other countries.

He added: “It would be better if we can decide some broad global consensus on this.”

Such an action would affect Medvedev and any other Russian and Belarusian tennis players, who are currently not allowed to play under their national flags while the Ukrainian invasion continues. There are currently four Russian players in the ATP top 30, while the WTA has three Russians and two Belarusians in its top 30.

The world of sports has seen an overwhelming and potentially unprecedented wave of bans against Russia's teams and athletes since the country's military made its move across the Ukrainian border. That has included suspensions from international competition in hockey, soccer, figure skating and many more, as well organizations removing events and business from the country and governments freezing Putin allies' assets.

Has Justin Trudeau's Over Reach Triggered A Run On Canadian Banks?

dcweekly  |  Now tonight reports coming on of Canada show that there is something going on with the banks.

What the hell is happening to Canada’s banks right now? pic.twitter.com/NRjPWlG0GE

What the hell is happening to Canada’s banks right now? pic.twitter.com/NRjPWlG0GE

— James Melville (@JamesMelville) February 16, 2022

This ‘run’ may be related to the state’s actions according to some guesses.

Bank run starting . If you threaten to take people’s money a lot of them get worried and take their money out. Banks don’t like seeing a lot of money go out, so they ‘go down’ to stop the run. Only <2% of the money is paper and coins, the rest is just digits on a screen.

Bank run starting 😜. If you threaten to take people's money a lot of them get worried and take their money out. Banks don't like seeing a lot of money go out, so they 'go down' to stop the run. Only <2% of the money is paper and coins, the rest is just digits on a screen.

— Jabba (@JamesAB999) February 16, 2022

RBC reported that things should be ok by now.

I got the same response. I was hung up on when I tried to call customer service.

— itsmace_ (@ThizzWashington) February 16, 2022

We really don’t know what was the cause or what is really going on at this time. 

Fist tap Dale.

The First DNC Attack On Joe Rogan Came In 2020

CNN  |  Bernie Sanders is facing a backlash from some Democrats after his campaign trumpeted an endorsement from comedian Joe Rogan, a popular podcast and YouTube talk show host with a history of making racist, homophobic and transphobic comments.

The Sanders campaign touted the endorsement in a tweet on Thursday afternoon, featuring a clip of Rogan's supportive remarks. 

 

"I think I'll probably vote for Bernie. Him as a human being, when I was hanging out with him, I believe in him, I like him, I like him a lot," Rogan said on an earlier episode of his show.

 

"What Bernie stands for is a guy -- look, you could dig up dirt on every single human being that's ever existed if you catch them in their worst moment and you magnify those moments and you cut out everything else and you only display those worst moments. That said, you can't find very many with Bernie. He's been insanely consistent his entire life. He's basically been saying the same thing, been for the same thing his whole life. And that in and of itself is a very powerful structure to operate from."

Rogan, a libertarian-leaning broadcaster with a public persona in the mold of Howard Stern, is a divisive figure who has said the N-word on his show and in 2013 questioned -- using offensive language -- whether a transgender MMA fighter should be able to compete against other women. 

 

"If you want to be a woman in the bedroom and, you know, you want to play house and all of that other sh-t and you feel like you have, your body is really a woman's body trapped inside a man's frame and so you got a operation, that's all good in the hood," Rogan said. "But you can't fight chicks.". 

 

The decision to highlight Rogan's support has divided opinion among Democrats and activists, particularly online, where it has sparked a heated debate over whether Sanders should have aligned himself with Rogan in any form or context. 

 

Sanders' strategic targeting of young, unaffiliated and working class voters often takes him to places, and onto platforms -- like Twitch -- that most Democratic candidates rarely venture. But that practice, when it brings a figure like Rogan into the political spotlight, also carries the risk of alienating parts of a liberal base that, especially in the Trump era, has become increasingly cautious about the company it keeps -- and what that signals to marginalized communities. 

 

On Saturday, the progressive group MoveOn called on Sanders "to apologize and stop elevating this endorsement."

 

"It's one thing for Joe Rogan to endorse a candidate," MoveOn said in a tweet from its official account. "It's another for @BernieSanders' campaign to produce a video bolstering the endorsement of someone known for promoting transphobia, homophobia, Islamophobia, racism and misogyny."

Let’s be clear: Transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time. There is no room for compromise when it comes to basic human rights.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 25, 2020

 

Less than an hour later, former Vice President Joe Biden appeared to enter the fray.

 

"Let's be clear: Transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time," Biden tweeted. "There is no room for compromise when it comes to basic human rights."

Gregory Bateson: Schismogenesis

downwithtyranny  |  Wokeness, “a term referring to awareness of issues that concern social justice and racial equality,” is everywhere these days. What is going on? The CIA going woke? The Pinkertons, long-time nemesis of labor unions, flying the Rainbow Pride flag? Raytheon pushing critical race theory? Has the U.S. Left finally triumphed over their foes? No, in fact, progressives are circling the drain (Medicare for All is going nowhere, the minimum wage remains $7.25/hr, unions are on the verge of extinction, impotent Twitter protestations by Bernie notwithstanding) but so are their woke-boosting corporate foes. Why and how is this so? The explanation has its roots in 1) the state-sponsored battle against civil unrest U.S that began in the 1960s. and 2) intellectual concepts discovered by polymath thinker Gregory Bateson.

The U.S. during the 1960’s suffered an eruption of domestic rebellion, ranging from the civil rights movement and the feminist revolution to organized labor and the anti-war movement. Strangely enough, most of the leaders in these movements were assassinated (RFK, MLK, Malcolm X) or died under mysterious circumstances (Walter Reuther). Was it enough for the ruling elite that the leaders of these movements were dead (neutralized)? I contend that it was not and that the elites embarked on an additional strategy: capture of the movements to 1) prevent a resurgence of rebellion against the ruling elites and 2) prevent cross alliances between the various rebel factions, a reason theorized by some to explain the death of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, who was trying to unite the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, and the organized labor movement at the time of his death. From feminism, where a movement leader (Gloria Steinem) has been revealed to have worked for the CIA, to civil rights, where Black Lives Matters is subsidized by the Ford Foundation to the tune of $100 million, to organized labor, where the AFL-CIO provided assistance to various U.S. government regime change efforts, these movements are infested with corporate and state actors. Meanwhile, concrete measures of material progress, such as increased wages for the working class, universal healthcare, and support for organized labor remain curiously out of reach.

 

There is a name for this highly effective signal jamming by government and corporate elites: maintaining the schismogenesis.

 

Schismogenesis means the beginning of the breakdown of a relationship or a system. Gregory Bateson, a scientific polymath, actively conducting research from the 1930s throughout the 1970s, in a wide array of fields including anthropology, semiotics, cybernetics, linguistics, and biology, first developed it while observing the social interactions of a New Guinean tribe called the Iatmul. Interestingly enough, Bateson later weaponized the idea of schismogenesis and deliberately sowed divisions while working for the OSS, the precursor to the CIA. This perpetuation of division, schismogenesis, is what I contend all of these woke corporations and government agencies are actively engaged in.

 

The explosion in wokeness launched in the years immediately following the Occupy rebellion of the Left and the Tea Party rebellion of the Right. Very curious timing indeed. Absent in all of these modern woke campaigns, of course, are the aforementioned measures that actually represent material improvements for the working class nor any mention of the menace of war and imperialism Even now, divisive and unpopular concepts like Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality, launched from academia by upper class elites, are being touted by woke corporations and labor unions. Against this goliath force, it looks like progressives are doomed. Ironically, it looks like the woke propagators may have created a tool that will also insure their own demise. Why? This explanation relies on another of Gregory Bateson’s concepts: the double bind.

Metaverse Already Distorted To Accomodate An Infinitesimally Small Slice Of The Mentally Ill

technologyreview |  Last week, Meta (the umbrella company formerly known as Facebook) opened up access to its virtual-reality social media platform, Horizon Worlds. Early descriptions of the platform make it seem fun and wholesome, drawing comparisons to Minecraft. In Horizon Worlds, up to 20 avatars can get together at a time to explore, hang out, and build within the virtual space.

But not everything has been warm and fuzzy. According to Meta, on November 26, a beta tester reported something deeply troubling: she had been groped by a stranger on Horizon Worlds. On December 1, Meta revealed that she’d posted her experience in the Horizon Worlds beta testing group on Facebook.

Meta’s internal review of the incident found that the beta tester should have used a tool called “Safe Zone” that’s part of a suite of safety features built into Horizon Worlds. Safe Zone is a protective bubble users can activate when feeling threatened. Within it, no one can touch them, talk to them, or interact in any way until they signal that they would like the Safe Zone lifted.

Vivek Sharma, the vice president of Horizon, called the groping incident “absolutely unfortunate,” telling The Verge, “That’s good feedback still for us because I want to make [the blocking feature] trivially easy and findable.”

It’s not the first time a user has been groped in VR—nor, unfortunately, will it be the last. But the incident shows that until companies work out how to protect participants, the metaverse can never be a safe place.

“There I was, being virtually groped”

When Aaron Stanton heard about the incident at Meta, he was transported to October 2016. That was when a gamer, Jordan Belamire, penned an open letter on Medium describing being groped in Quivr, a game Stanton co-designed in which players, equipped with bow and arrows, shoot zombies.

In the letter, Belamire described entering a multiplayer mode, where all characters were exactly the same save for their voices. “In between a wave of zombies and demons to shoot down, I was hanging out next to BigBro442, waiting for our next attack. Suddenly, BigBro442’s disembodied helmet faced me dead-on. His floating hand approached my body, and he started to virtually rub my chest. ‘Stop!’ I cried … This goaded him on, and even when I turned away from him, he chased me around, making grabbing and pinching motions near my chest. Emboldened, he even shoved his hand toward my virtual crotch and began rubbing.

“There I was, being virtually groped in a snowy fortress with my brother-in-law and husband watching.”

Stanton and his cofounder, Jonathan Schenker, immediately responded with an apology and an in-game fix. Avatars would be able to stretch their arms into a V gesture, which would automatically push any offenders away.

Stanton, who today leads the VR Institute for Health and Exercise, says Quivr didn’t track data about that feature, “nor do I think it was used much.” But Stanton thinks about Belamire often and wonders if he could have done more in 2016 to prevent the incident that occurred in Horizon Worlds a few weeks ago. “There’s so much more to be done here,” he says. “No one should ever have to flee from a VR experience to escape feeling powerless.”

VR sexual harassment is sexual harassment, full stop

A recent review of the events around Belamire’s experience published in the journal for the Digital Games Research Association found that “many online responses to this incident were dismissive of Belamire’s experience and, at times, abusive and misogynistic … readers from all perspectives grappled with understanding this act given the virtual and playful context it occurred in.” Belamire faded from view, and I was unable to find her online.

A constant topic of debate on message boards after Belamire’s Medium article was whether or not what she had experienced was actually groping if her body wasn’t physically touched.

“I think people should keep in mind that sexual harassment has never had to be a physical thing,” says Jesse Fox, an associate professor at Ohio State University who researches the social implications of virtual reality. “It can be verbal, and yes, it can be a virtual experience as well.

 

MIT Davos Weasel Dick Misleadership Strikes Again....,

 

MIT | To the members of the MIT community,

 

You may have heard about a situation centered on our Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) regarding an invited speaker, Professor Dorian Abbot.

 

In a recent letter to the faculty, Provost Marty Schmidt lays out the facts, some of which have not come through clearly in the media and on social media. I encourage you to read his letter. You will also find thorough coverage in The Tech.

 

The controversy around this situation has caused great distress for many members of our community, in many quarters. It has also uncovered significant differences within the Institute on several issues.

 

I would like to reflect on what happened and set us on a path forward. But let me address the human questions first.

 

To the members of the EAPS community: I am deeply disturbed that as a direct result of this situation, many of you – students, postdocs, faculty and young alumni – have suffered a tide of online targeting and hate mail from outside MIT. This conduct is reprehensible and utterly unacceptable. For members of the MIT community, where we value treating one another with decency and respect, this feels especially jarring.

 

I encourage anyone who is subjected to harassing or threatening behavior or language to reach out for support and guidance to the Institute Discrimination and Harassment Response (IDHR) office.

 

I also want to express my tremendous respect for Professor Rob van der Hilst, department head in EAPS, who faced a difficult situation. I know Rob as a person of the highest integrity and character. We are fortunate to have his leadership in EAPS. In this case, when Rob concluded, after consulting broadly, that EAPS could not host an effective public outreach event centered around Professor Abbot, he chose to extend instead an invitation for an on-campus lecture; Rob took this step deliberately to preserve the opportunity for free dialogue and open scientific exchange.

 

Professor Abbot is a distinguished scientist who remains welcome to speak on the MIT campus, and he has been working with EAPS to confirm the event details.

 

Nevertheless, there is no doubt that this matter has caused many people inside and outside our community to question the Institute’s commitment to free expression. Some report feeling that certain topics are now off limits at MIT. I have heard these concerns directly from faculty colleagues, alumni and others who care deeply about the Institute.

 

Let me say clearly what I have observed through more than 40 years at MIT:

 

Freedom of expression is a fundamental value of the Institute.

 

I believe that, as an institution of higher learning, we must ensure that different points of view – even views that some or all of us may reject – are allowed to be heard and debated at MIT. Open dialogue is how we make each other wiser and smarter.

 

This commitment to free expression can carry a human cost. The speech of those we strongly disagree with can anger us. It can disgust us. It can even make members of our own community feel unwelcome and illegitimate on our campus or in their field of study.

 

I am convinced that, as an institution, we must be prepared to endure such painful outcomes as the price of protecting free expression – the principle is that important.

 

I am equally certain, however, that when members of our community must bear the cost of other people’s free expression, they deserve our understanding and support. We need to ensure that they, too, have the opportunity to express their own views.

White People Can Joke About Things Black People Can't...,

zora |  Dave Chapelle addressed the primarily white attempts to cancel Black celebrities for offending the LGBTQ community, even as White pockets in those communities "punch down" at Black people. That being said, Dave Chapelle made some pretty shocking statements about sex and gender politics. For example, "Sex is assigned at birth" and "Gender refers to how someone self-identifies." So, in that respect, I think it's wrong for the trans community to insist that he is inherently transphobic in identifying these distinctions (which we use in the medical community). It’s not our differences that are problematic — it’s the way people treat us for them that is problematic. These accusations only close the door to a conversation we need to have.

All I ask of your community, with all humility: Will you please stop punching down on my people? (Dave Chapelle)

White people often refer to Black people as racist for talking about race, and it seems that now White people are calling Dave Chapelle transphobic for discussing the trans community. Yet, he never made a statement diminishing their lives, their worth in the community, or their plight. People need to wake up and realize we can't live in a race-neutral society just because folks don't want to talk about race, and we can't live in a gender-neutral society because folks feel uneasy about the conversation. Instead, we need to embrace our differences and fight against the ignorant messaging out there.

I can’t help but see the irony here because as a Millenial, I’m old enough to remember when White people made a movie called “Team America” in which the characters sang the song “Everybody Has Aids.” At the time, no one accused them of being homophobic which is why I raised an eye-brow when DaBaby’s statements about HIV/AIDS were automatically assumed homophobic.

Society is shifting and I believe it’s doing so for the better. But, I’m seeing a lot of ignorance being labeled as cruelty and that actually serves to diminish the point that marginalized folks are making. In other words, “don’t cry wolf because when the real hateful person comes along, everyone will tune out.” They will be effectively desensitized to the violence that we experience for being Black, gay, disabled, or just different.

America is an odd show to watch. Somehow, White people can joke about things Black people can't. When we do it, we're homophobic, and when they do it, everyone laughs. I think that there is a double standard here, and that's what Dave Chapelle was trying to bring to the forefront. Too bad the loudest voices on this issue want us to believe that Dave Chapelle hates gay people.

Chapelle can joke about Whiteness, Blackness, conservativism, progressivism, poverty, crime, but not the gay community. That makes no sense to me. So, while many people are jumping on the bandwagon to cancel or punish Dave Chapelle, I'm not on board because he never said anything hateful about the community. He only exposed his bias towards heteronormativity, which could provide an opportunity for his continued education and growth. Sadly, White folks are just out to cancel him.

Roxanne Gay Isn't Relevant To Any Black Person I've Ever Met (Or Would Care To Meet)

NYTimes |  Mr. Chappelle spends much of “The Closer,” his latest comedy special for Netflix, cleverly deflecting criticism. The set is a 72-minute display of the comedian’s own brittleness. The self-proclaimed “GOAT” (greatest of all time) of stand-up delivers five or six lucid moments of brilliance, surrounded by a joyless tirade of incoherent and seething rage, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia.

If there is brilliance in “The Closer,” it’s that Mr. Chappelle makes obvious but elegant rhetorical moves that frame any objections to his work as unreasonable. He’s just being “brutally honest.” He’s just saying the quiet part out loud. He’s just stating “facts.” He’s just making us think. But when an entire comedy set is designed as a series of strategic moves to say whatever you want and insulate yourself from valid criticism, I’m not sure you’re really making comedy.

Throughout the special, Mr. Chappelle is singularly fixated on the L.G.B.T.Q. community, as he has been in recent years. He reaches for every low-hanging piece of fruit and munches on it gratuitously. Many of Mr. Chappelle’s rants are extraordinarily dated, the kind of comedy you might expect from a conservative boomer, agog at the idea of homosexuality. At times, his voice lowers to a hoarse whisper, preparing us for a grand stroke of wisdom — but it never comes. Every once in a while, he remarks that, oh, boy, he’s in trouble now, like a mischievous little boy who just can’t help himself.

Somewhere, buried in the nonsense, is an interesting and accurate observation about the white gay community conveniently being able to claim whiteness at will. There’s a compelling observation about the relatively significant progress the L.G.B.T.Q. community has made, while progress toward racial equity has been much slower. But in these formulations, there are no gay Black people. Mr. Chappelle pits people from different marginalized groups against one another, callously suggesting that trans people are performing the gender equivalent of blackface.

In the next breath, Mr. Chappelle says something about how a Black gay person would never exhibit the behaviors to which he objects, an assertion many would dispute. The poet Saeed Jones, for example, wrote in GQ that watching “The Closer” felt like a betrayal: “I felt like I’d just been stabbed by someone I once admired and now he was demanding that I stop bleeding.”

Later in the show, Mr. Chappelle offers rambling thoughts on feminism using a Webster’s Dictionary definition, further exemplifying how limited his reading is. He makes a tired, tired joke about how he thought “feminist” meant “frumpy dyke” — and hey, I get it. If I were on his radar, he would consider me a frumpy dyke, or worse. (Some may consider that estimation accurate. Fortunately my wife doesn’t.) Then in another of those rare moments of lucidity, Mr. Chappelle talks about mainstream feminism’s historical racism. Just when you’re thinking he is going to right the ship, he starts ranting incoherently about #MeToo. I couldn’t tell you what his point was there.

This is a faded simulacrum of the once-great comedian, who now uses his significant platform to air grievances against the great many people he holds in contempt, while deftly avoiding any accountability. If we don’t like his routine, the message is, we are the problem, not him.