I wonder if Zuckerberg ever lies awake at night thinking about the Rohingya. They think about him.

Facebook’s negligence facilitated the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar after the social media network’s algorithms amplified hate speech and the platform failed to take down inflammatory posts, according to legal action launched in the US and the UK.

The platform faces compensation claims worth more than £150bn under the coordinated move on both sides of the Atlantic.

A class action complaint lodged with the northern district court in San Francisco says Facebook was “willing to trade the lives of the Rohingya people for better market penetration in a small country in south-east Asia.”

It adds: “In the end, there was so

… Read the rest

About that “Moms for Liberty” complaint:

A Tennessee chapter of the right-wing group Moms for Liberty has tried to use the state’s new law aimed at banning “critical race theory” in school to ban a book about Martin Luther King Jr.

I have a feeling the “Moms” for liberty are for liberty for themselves but not so much for other people – people who teach history that isn’t all We Have Always Been Awesome, for instance.

Tennessee Republicans earlier this year passed a law in response to the conservative panic about “critical race theory,” barring the teaching of certain concepts in classrooms including “teaching that one race or sex is inherently superior to another; ascribing character traits, values, moral

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on A different story.

Several Sussex colleagues publicly denounced her on social media, although strangely, she says, not to her face. “No peer ever said to me: ‘Look, I really object to what you’re saying and I’d like to discuss it with you.’ They immediately went to Defcon 1: ‘She’s a bigot… arguing for single-sex spaces is like the Jim Crow laws [that historically enforced racial segregation in the American south].’” She remains fascinated by the performative aspects of social media debate. “The important thing is to show your tribe that you have the right morals and you could show that by saying, ‘I’m not with her.’”

Performative indeed. Just like … Read the rest

Live free or die.

Under the bill, New Hampshire teachers who discuss the history of slavery without adding that EVERYONE WAS DOING IT, would be subject to discipline

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) December 4, 2021

Well not free to teach about slavery OBVIOUSLY. Other free. Good free.

The Washington Post last July:

A majority of New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu’s diversity council has quit after he signed new restrictions into law that affect educators as well as public employees.

Language in the state budget Sununu signed in late June implicitly rejects the idea of systemic racism by directly prohibiting teachers and anyone leading diversity training for public employees from saying that any group is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive,

… Read the rest

ALL genders get pregnant, all of them, ALL OF THEM I tell you.

https://twitter.com/sarah__epperson/status/1466253329651015682… Read the rest

Gaby Hinsliff at the Guardian chatted with Kathleen Stock. Some interesting points came up.

“I’m excited in a weird way, excited about my future,” she says. There is relief, too, at escaping what she felt was an “aggressive, intimidating environment” at her workplace of 18 years. Interestingly, while some blamed the Sussex standoff on a generation of students unable to tolerate views they dislike, Stock tells a different story. “Most of the students I encounter are completely open-minded and even if they disagree with me, which I’m sure a lot of them do, they wouldn’t hold it against me as a personal character flaw.” The problem, she says, was her peers.

Who are older, and thus, you might think, … Read the rest

Festive.

https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1467197523127422979

On one level it’s obvious enough: it’s a big fuck you to everyone who doesn’t want to live in a weaponized social world.

Ok, noted, message received, but going beyond that – it’s a very odd piece of iconography. The massive guns don’t harmonize well with the big cheery grins. What are those people so happy about? They’re apparently at war with someone (or perhaps everyone), and that’s not a situation that generally causes people to sit down wreathed in smiles to get a photo taken.

What are all these guns for? Besides “fuck you”? Rep Thomas Massie is a Rep, i.e. a member of the House of Representatives, for a district in Kentucky. Does that translate … Read the rest

They just can’t get it right.

We feel this is positive step in the right direction in identifying and investigating these types of incidents and ensuring that victims voices are heard, and their cases are investigated with the full picture to hand.

Find out more at: https://t.co/2FLA49xSCx pic.twitter.com/Lx3w99xqyi

— West Yorkshire Police (@WestYorksPolice) December 1, 2021

“Misandry” ffs. Have they been hanging out on shock jock Twitter or what? Women get killed by abusive husbands or partners. Women get raped with impunity because the rates of arrest are abysmal, of prosecution worse, of conviction worse again. Women get bullied and assaulted, women have their sports and prizes taken away, women are told to obey or be punished. “Misandry” is not … Read the rest

This was a Facebook post yesterday because it’s just personal and kind of chit-chatty, but actually the subject matter is of broader interest so what the hell, I’m reposting it here. Everybody should know about Chuck Pilling.

For a few years in the late 80s and early 90s I lived in north Seattle, and in my neighborhood lived a guy I knew of from working at the zoo, a self-taught bird man, who had a pond with all kinds of ducks on his property. It was about a 20 minute walk from me and I went there often to admire the ducks and the world he’d made for them. Then I moved, and that was that.

Today I took Cooper … Read the rest

Add billions and egomania and what do you get? Egomaniacal billionaire paying part of the cost for a student dormitory in which most of the rooms have no windows.

The 11-story, 159-foot-tall Munger Hall dormitory was designed by 97-year-old billionaire Charles Munger, who donated $200 million toward the approximately $1.4 billion project under the condition that his designs would be followed exactly.

He’s not an architect. He’s not a designer.

Cramming thousands of students into a residence hall where only 6% of the rooms have windows to some seems like a social experiment, but a similar concept has been executed at the University of Michigan with the Munger Graduate Residences.

Munger Graduate Residences opened in 2015 at the University

… Read the rest

Janice Turner on the UK’s proposed ban on conversion therapy:

That young people were once tortured, raped, drugged and subjected to exorcism-like religious rites to make them heterosexual seems not just abhorrent but absurd. How could our hardwired desires be changed? Indeed, such practices in Britain are now, thankfully, vanishingly rare and, as the consultation states, “physical violence in the name of conversion therapy” is illegal already.

Yet the proposed ban applies to both sexuality and the more nebulous concept of gender identity. This has led to grave concerns, not from social conservatives but liberal, compassionate therapists, some LGBT themselves, who for a decade have noted a drastic rise in young female clients, typically same-sex attracted, mostly with profound

… Read the rest

This is fine, this is healthy. A woman who calls herself a man says radical feminists have no place in abortion rights.

https://twitter.com/KaraMailman/status/1466068896922972160

Men don’t have abortions; men don’t need abortions; men are not the sex that is oppressed and punished precisely because it is the sex that gestates humans.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Sastra on Any observable and consistent pattern?

So which other patterns exist in humans? Name one.

I copied this a while back:

Woman: “ A rich cultural artifact with many cues used to designate that aspect of their identity. Also: A complex, multi-dimensional and highly variable category. There isn’t one definition.” — PZMyers

I suppose we could use that a possible answer, but it’s still not specific. Suspiciously so. Because giving a list of those “cultural cues” would involve things like long hair, dresses, loving shopping and pretending to be shy. He wouldn’t want to imply that, though I don’t see how it could be avoided.

That second sentence looks to me like the transgender version … Read the rest

Urgh. The parents were asked to remove the kid from the school that day and they refused.

The parents of the teenager accused of killing four people in a Michigan high school shooting were taken into custody early Saturday after a manhunt, Detroit police said.

They tried to flee yesterday and it didn’t work out.

The county sheriff has said that James Crumbley purchased the gun used in the violence just days before the school shooting. McDonald said the pair were made aware of disturbing, violent images on the day of the shooting and were urged to get him counseling.

“James and Jennifer Crumbley resisted the idea of their son leaving the school at that time,” she said during a

… Read the rest

People have lost their fucking minds.

Chicago Public Schools just announced new bathroom rules and signage under Title IX.

All Chicago public schools will be required by December 1st to change bathroom signage to gender neutral terminology.

CPS says “all bathrooms are open for use by anyone who feels comfortable.” pic.twitter.com/Q2p878Q3jU

— Marie Oakes (@TheMarieOakes) December 2, 2021

“for anyone who feels comfortable” she says blithely – but of course no girls will “feel comfortable” in that arrangement.

Here is an example of the bathroom signage that will be required in all Chicago public schools by December 1st: pic.twitter.com/P25m3BFnll

— Marie Oakes (@TheMarieOakes) December 2, 2021

Lost their fucking minds.… Read the rest

Trans person explains why you are required to want to have sex with trans people.

So, how did we get here? How did not wanting to have sex with human beings from one community in particular become a legitimate preference?

By “one community in particular” they mean trans people. “Community” can mean anything though. It can mean “particularly smelly unwashed unsavory people.” It can mean rapists, murderers, Trump fans, anything. I think we should be free to not want to have sex with Trump fans or rapists. Hauling in the sacred word “community” doesn’t change that.

The othering of transgender people in sexual contexts is not only in the context of dating or intimacy. It’s systemic and as such

… Read the rest

When biologists clash:

I'm still waiting for the embryologist @pzmyers to clarify whether or not he thinks trans-women are females.

He seems reluctant to answer.

— Peter Morris – Available for C# contract work (@MrPeterLMorris) December 2, 2021

https://twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1466842959962423302

Trans eggs or cis eggs?

https://twitter.com/pzmyers/status/1466844121692180481 https://twitter.com/tryingattimes/status/1466870117988511746

What is amazing is that Emma is having to baby-step-walk a noted rationalist and alleged biologist through 'how do you make babies PZ' because trans ideology eats your fucking brains alive. https://t.co/0Ugw8je1ou

— Dr. Jane Clare Jones (@janeclarejones) December 3, 2021

Yes but what are their pronouns?… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Der Durchwanderer on You don’t get to.

The idea of Schrödinger’s Rapist is a funny old one, at least in its implications for logical consistency. The premises are undoubtedly true, as far as it goes — other things equal, asking a vulnerable person to treat the unknown as benign is asking for them to become a victim of some kind of predator. That is likely the very reason fear evolved in animals in the first place, possibly even in single-celled organisms, for an organism that feels no fear is an organism that will be eaten before its fearful brethren.

One of the things I find interesting about some of those who initially championed the concept … Read the rest

Big protest in Salford:

“We expect the BBC to misrepresent us, we expect the BBC to misunderstand us, we expect the BBC to make factual errors: harm us.”— Trans protesters go to #salford Media City, to rise their voices and speak out of their misrepresentation on news media.https://t.co/2JKWUfr9LC pic.twitter.com/uyHo0AzL9X

— Mel Cionco (@MACionco) December 2, 2021

So a…fly is their mascot? A fly? What, because flies are so unpleasant, especially in large numbers? Because flies are attracted by rot? Because they have iridescent wings?

Anyway they done riz up.… Read the rest

We’re way more like the Axis than we are like the Allies.

The parents of Michigan school shooting suspect Ethan Crumbley have each been charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter connected to the horrific Nov. 30 attack that left four teens dead and seven people injured, including a teacher.

It’s unusual to hold parents of “school shooters” (how lovely that we have a file name for it) responsible; there are reasons.

“Any individual that had the opportunity to stop this tragedy should have done so. The question is what did they know, and when did they know it,” Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said Friday.

McDonald said that on Nov. 21, a teacher at Oxford High observed Ethan

… Read the rest