nezukobestneko

[nezukobestneko]

Jury nullification. Pass it on.

[nezukobestneko]

I kinda like Brett's plan here, feels like a win win to me.

[nezukobestneko]

By: Helen Lewis

Published: Feb 27, 2022

Three years ago, the psychiatrist Kirsten Müller-Vahl began to notice something unusual about the newest patients at her clinic in Hannover, Germany. A typical Tourette’s patient is a boy who develops slow, mild motor tics—blinking or grimacing—at about age 5 to 7, followed later by simple vocalizations such as coughing. Only about one in 10 patients progress to the disorder’s most famous symptom—coprolalia, which involves shouting obscene or socially unacceptable words. Even then, most patients utter only half a dozen swear words, on repeat.

But these new patients were different. They were older, for a start—teenagers—and about half of them were girls. Their tics had arrived suddenly, explosively, and were extreme; some were shouting more than 100 different obscenities. This last symptom in particular struck Müller-Vahl as odd. “Even in extremely severely affected [Tourette’s] patients, they try to hide their coprolalia,” she told me. The teenagers she was now seeing did not. She had the impression, she said, that “they want to demonstrate that they suffer from these symptoms.” Even more strangely, many of her new patients were prone to involuntary outbursts of exactly the same phrase: Du bist hässlich. “You are ugly.”

Müller-Vahl, a professor of psychiatry at Hannover Medical School and the chair of the European Society for the Study of Tourette Syndrome, was not the only one puzzled by this phenomenon. The global community of Tourette’s researchers is tight-knit, and as they talked it became clear that a shift in patients and symptoms was happening all over the world, at the same time. Before the pandemic, 2 to 3 percent of pediatric patients at the Johns Hopkins University Tourette’s Center, in Baltimore, had acute-onset tic-like behaviors, but that rose last year to 10 to 20 percent, according to The Wall Street Journal. Texas Children’s Hospital reported seeing approximately 60 teenagers with sudden tics between March 2020 and the autumn of 2021, compared with just one or two a year before that.

At an online conference last October, doctors in Canada, France, the United Kingdom, and Hungary pooled their knowledge. They had all seen an increase in patients with this unusual form of tic disorder. One teenager came from the Pacific archipelago of New Caledonia, which France once used as a penal colony; another came from the tiny South Atlantic island of St. Helena, to which Britain sent Napoleon for his final exile. “Very remote locations,” Andreas Hartmann, a consultant neurologist at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, told me via email. “Yet accessible to TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.”

Four months before the clinic in Hannover saw its first new-style patient, a 20-year-old German man named Jan Zimmermann had launched a YouTube channel called Gewitter im Kopf, or “Thunderstorm in the Head.” That’s how he describes living with his socially inappropriate, visually arresting symptoms: blurting out obscene words, throwing food, trying to nibble his friend Tim. In the past, he has set off fire alarms, pulled the emergency brake on the train, and once asked a cross-eyed HR manager, “Is the wall more interesting than me?”

Zimmermann now has 2 million YouTube followers and a bespoke app that allows users to download his “best tics” as sound files. On his merchandise page, you can buy hoodies, mugs, and a 25-euro doormat emblazoned with one of his most common sayings: Du bist heute besonders hässlich, or “You are particularly ugly today”—nearly the same phrase that kept coming out of Müller-Vahl’s patients.

Zimmermann calls his symptoms “Gisela” to suggest that they have a will of their own. Last May, he threatened legal action against an activist who called him a Nazi after he released a baking video in which he said, “In the oven, give my regards to Anne Frank.” (In Germany, where Holocaust denial and Hitler salutes are illegal, this was a particularly shocking thing to broadcast on the internet.) His lawyers suggested that, because Zimmermann himself faced marginalization, calling him a Nazi was absurd. And he could not be held responsible for the offense caused: After all, Gisela made him do it.

Zimmermann’s behavior seems to have influenced his viewers’ own tics. In a forthcoming study of 32 of her new-style patients, Müller-Vahl found that 63 percent threw food, and that the most common vocalizations were swear words such as arschloch (“asshole”) and fick dich (“fuck you”). Some parroted other phrases of Zimmermann’s, such as pommes (“fries”) or fliegende haie (“flying sharks”). But when her team began to question the teenagers in front of their parents, many denied watching Zimmermann’s YouTube videos.

Tammy Hedderly, a neurologist at the Evelina London Children’s Hospital, sometimes calls her new-style tic patients “Evies.” These girls “present thumping their chest, shouting beans, and falling to their knees,” she told the virtual conference. The nickname comes from a 21-year-old British influencer named Evie Meg Field, also known as @thistrippyhippie, who has 14.2 million followers on TikTok and nearly 800,000 on Instagram. Field has published a book called My Nonidentical Twin: What I’d Like You to Know About Living With Tourette’s.

Field’s signature tic—saying beans—is what alerted the British researcher Tara Murphy that the Tourette’s patient she saw on remote St. Helena must have been influenced by the internet. At the October conference, Murphy described how “LM,” a 16-year-old born and raised on the island, had tics from an early age but suddenly developed much more florid symptoms in early 2021: clicking, whistling, and saying beans. In other words, LM was an “Evie.”

Field herself has acknowledged her strange power. On September 25, she posted a video of herself looking sheepish with the caption: “me watching 95% of ppl with tics/tourette’s say the ‘beans’ tic knowing i’m the original source.” But Field and Zimmerman, who did not respond to requests for comment, are only two among dozens of “Tourette’s influencers” with large fan bases online. According to TikTok, videos tagged #tourettes have been viewed more than 5 billion times.

The unexpectedly wide appeal of these videos is surely bound up with transgression and the old-fashioned desire to rubberneck, mixed up with a backlash against “normies”—the neurotypical—and a proud assertion of the right to be different. The essence of coprolalia is violating social conventions, and watching those with Tourette’s shout and swear is just as compelling as watching an edgy comedian say the allegedly unsayable.

The teenagers who watch the #tourettes videos also find community, acceptance, sympathy, and validation. Less wholesomely, they find proof that the more eye-catching, disruptive, or rude the creator’s tics are, the more viral they go.

Katie krautwurst was a high-school cheerleader in Le Roy, New York, when the twitching began. In October 2011, she woke up from a nap and started to spasm. A few weeks later, her friend Thera Sanchez, also a cheerleader, began to experience the same symptoms. More and more girls followed: shaking, stammering, fainting, unable to control their arms as they flailed around their bodies. Eventually, at least 18 people in LeRoy—including one boy and a 36-year-old woman—were affected.

“Parents wept as their daughters stuttered at the dinner table,” The New York Times Magazine recounted months later. “Teachers shut their classroom doors when they heard a din of outbursts, one cry triggering another, sending the increasingly familiar sounds ricocheting through the halls. Within a few months, as the camera crews continued to descend, the community barely seemed to recognize itself.” The health authorities in Le Roy looked for a physical explanation: Was the town’s water contaminated? Its soil? Erin Brockovich—yes, that Erin Brockovich—appeared in town, ready to bust open a scandalous cover-up of industrial pollution. The New York State Department of Health tried to reassure parents at a public meeting that no such cover-up existed. Katie, Thera, and their mothers appeared on NBC’s Today show, the girls shaking and spasming, which drew nationwide attention to their cause. The segment portrayed the tics as a sudden interruption in otherwise contented lives. “When these started,” Thera said, “I was fine. I was perfectly fine. I felt good about everything. I was on honor roll.” She just woke up one day, she said, and the symptoms began.

The next day, however, the fever began to break. David Lichter, a Buffalo doctor who had treated several of the Le Roy girls, went public and revealed his diagnosis: conversion disorder, a now-outdated Freudian term for when psychological stress manifests as physical symptoms. Global experts began taking an interest in the case. “They were not all happy cheerleaders, living the American dream; they just weren’t,” Simon Wessely, a psychiatry professor at King’s College London with a long-standing interest in contested illnesses, told me. Later coverage filled in some important history: The week before Katie’s tics started, her mother, Beth, had had brain surgery. Thera, it emerged, had a difficult relationship with some members of her family. Another girl reported that she had a violent father.

Wessely, who is also an epidemiologist, described what happened in Le Roy as “a fairly standard incident of contagious tics.” When the girls went on television, he said, many specialist doctors saw them and began voicing their skepticism on social media. “Neurologists,” Wessely added, “often don’t bother with euphemisms: ‘They’re hysterical. That is not any known movement disorder in science.’” Eventually, the diagnosis of a mass psychogenic illness began to gain credence. Lichter’s main contribution to the debate, he told me by email recently, was to advise local news outlets—amid “a strong push from family members and other activists to find the ‘true’ cause of the problem”—that media attention was aggravating the outbreak.

Keep reading

[nezukobestneko]

I lol’d.

[nezukobestneko]

... why am I just now realizing this

So you know how vestiges and quirks getting imprinted in other quirks work? Yea.

So OFA was created by a transfer of quirks via AFO, which according to the beforementioned lore would actually mean OFA contains a vestige of AFO himself.

I've said before that he might be what's behind the door locked by Izuku's yet to be unlocked quirks, and that Izuku might accidentally give AFO the upper hand by freeing the vestige and reestablishing the connection between them.

But since OFA manifests all the other quirks of the vestiges inhabiting it, that would technically mean AFO is imprinted in OFA and Izuku could gain access to it.

This puts Izuku and everyone involved in a situation that's simultaneously the best and worst.

I can totally see him unlocking the 2nd's quirk, thinking he just turned the tide of the battle, only to accidentally unleash the AFO inside him and essentially be forced to deal with the same thing as Tomura, with AFO trying to turn him into another puppet and possibly attacking the vestiges, with Yoichi within his reach.

Then I guess he could fight back and eventually gain access to his copy of AFO and pull an ATLA on AFO and Tomura's AFOs (bonus points if Tomura helps him and makes the decision to let AFO be taken from him so he can be free again)

But I wouldn't be surprised if pulling this off also ended with him getting sick or dying of quirk overload afterwards because god damn that's 3 whole AFOs

[nezukobestneko]

Turning Red was absolutely adorable 😭💕

–

💫Commission Info | 🌿Instagram | 🐤Twitter | 🌷Artstation 

[nezukobestneko]

[nezukobestneko]

“Prayer never changes the laws of nature.”

– Dan Barker

No believer ever got from prayer anything they couldn’t have gotten without it. And they all know you’re not to ask for the latter.

[nezukobestneko]

Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults, with Dr. Lyell Asher. Includes:

Introduction: Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults

Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 1) 1965-75: The Decisive Decade

Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 2): College Administrators

Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 3): Administrator Training

Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 4): University of Delaware Re-Education

Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 5): Mainstreaming Microaggressions

Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 6): Yale's Halloween Hustle

Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 7): Why Authoritarians Love "Intention vs. Impact"

Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 8): Ed Schools: Weak Academics & Woke Politics

Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 9): From Justice to Social Justice

Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 10): Social Justice Illiteracy

Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 11): The Knowledge Gap

Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 12): The Reading Debacle

Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 13): How Ed Schools Won

Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 14): Things You Can Do: Higher Ed

Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 15): Things You Can Do: K-12 Schools

==

Introductory article: Dr. Lyell Asher: Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults

The series doesn’t of course tell the whole story of higher education’s descent into Woke orthodoxy—it couldn’t. But it does connect a few of the most important phases in that descent to a 100-year history of so-called “progressive”—but in effect, regressive—pedagogical theory in the nation’s k-12 teacher training schools. Despite the great work of writers and researchers like James Koerner, Diane Ravitch, Rita Kramer, John Taylor Gatto, and E.D. Hirsch, to name just a few, that history is largely unknown—not only to the public at large, but to college faculty as well.

At least where faculty are concerned, it’s unlikely that knowing that history and its disastrous consequences for minority and low-income students especially, would dampen their willingness to allow, and often encourage, the abandonment of the fundamental academic values on which their own disciplines have been built. However much the professoriate may identify with the principled freedom of Galileo and Darwin, it does so only in retrospect, after the dust has settled and the victors have been announced. In the moment, it always follows the example of the Church.

But that’s an old story. As I believe Christopher Hitchens once said (I’ve been unable to verify my memory), “There is no more cowardly creature on god’s green earth than a professor with tenure.”

==

This is a rather stunning expose of the current dysfunction in US higher education. It explains that the problem and corruption goes back longer than you think, and isn't with academics like you might suspect.

Dr. Lyell Asher traces the current assault on free speech and academic freedom and integrity back from its origins over 100 years ago, through K-12 education today, and its source in the low standards and ideological pseudoscience of the diploma mills known as America's Schools of Education.

A domain so corrupt that it refuses to even teach kids how to read correctly on purely ideological grounds. The same domain that insists that it alone holds the solutions to the gaps in educational equity... gaps that it created in the first place.

What becomes clear is that the US has everything it needs to fix its educational woes - the studies, the science, the statistics, the reports, the effective, tested pedagogies, everything.

It can fix its problems, but for quasi-theological reasons, it just won't.

All up, it's over an hour in length, but very compelling.

[nezukobestneko]

God of the already possible.

Funny how no believers actually do any better, have better survival rates, or are more successful than non-believers or believers of any other religion. Almost like it doesn’t care to show its chosen and favorite people any more regard than anyone else. Are they not the True™ Chosen® ones? Or is it not there at all?

[nezukobestneko]

Or when they talk about the supposed science that supposedly proves their god supposedly exists and made everything. With magic.

[nezukobestneko]

“I held Carl’s Hand as he died and I looked at him and he smiled and I said ‘Goodbye, Carl.’ And he said 'Goodbye, Ann.’ And he closed his eyes and he died. We knew as we said those words we were never going to see one another again, and it was okay. It was very sad. But it was okay.”

– Carl Sagan’s wife, Ann Druyan

The myth of an afterlife makes death, and the prelude before it, trivial.

[nezukobestneko]

https://quranx.com/Hadith/Bukhari/USC-MSA/Volume-4/Book-54/Hadith-448/

Narrated Abu Talha:

I heard Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) saying; “Angels (of Mercy) do not enter a house wherein there is a dog or a picture of a living creature (a human being or an animal).

https://quranx.com/Hadith/Bukhari/USC-MSA/Volume-4/Book-54/Hadith-450/

Narrated Salim’s father:

Once Gabriel promised the Prophet (that he would visit him, but Gabriel did not come) and later on he said, "We, angels, do not enter a house which contains a picture or a dog.”

https://quranx.com/Hadith/Muslim/USC-MSA/Book-24/Hadith-5277/

Abu Huraira reported Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) as saying:

Angels do not accompany the travellers who have with them a dog and a bell.

https://quranx.com/Hadith/Muslim/USC-MSA/Book-24/Hadith-5248/

Maimuna reported that one morning Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) was silent with grief. Maimuna said:

Allah’s Messenger, I find a change in your mood today. Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) said: Gabriel had promised me that he would meet me tonight, but he did not meet me. By Allah, he never broke his promises, and Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) spent the day in this sad (mood). Then it occurred to him that there had been a puppy under their cot. He commanded and it was turned out. He then took some water in his hand and sprinkled it at that place. When it was evening Gabriel met him and he said to him: you promised me that you would meet me the previous night. He said: Yes, but we do not enter a house in which there is a dog or a picture. Then on that very morning he commanded the killing of the dogs until he announced that the dog kept for the orchards should also be killed, but he spared the dog meant for the protection of extensive fields (or big gardens).

https://quranx.com/Hadith/Bukhari/USC-MSA/Volume-1/Book-9/Hadith-490/

Narrated `Aisha:

The things which annul the prayers were mentioned before me. They said, “Prayer is annulled by a dog, a donkey and a woman (if they pass in front of the praying people).” I said, “You have made us (i.e. women) dogs. I saw the Prophet (ﷺ) praying while I used to lie in my bed between him and the Qibla. Whenever I was in need of something, I would slip away. for I disliked to face him.”

https://quranx.com/Hadith/Bukhari/USC-MSA/Volume-1/Book-9/Hadith-493/

Narrated `Aisha:

The things which annul prayer were mentioned before me (and those were): a dog, a donkey and a woman. I said, “You have compared us (women) to donkeys and dogs. By Allah! I saw the Prophet (ﷺ) praying while I used to lie in (my) bed between him and the Qibla. Whenever I was in need of something, I disliked to sit and trouble the Prophet. So, I would slip away by the side of his feet.”

https://quranx.com/Hadith/Muslim/USC-MSA/Book-4/Hadith-1032

Abu Dharr reported:

The Messenger of ‘Allah (ﷺ) said: When any one of you stands for prayer and there is a thing before him equal to the back of the saddle that covers him and in case there is not before him (a thing) equal to the back of the saddle, his prayer would be cut off by (passing of an) ass, woman, and black Dog. I said: O Abu Dharr, what feature is there in a black dog which distinguish it from the red dog and the yellow dog? He said: O, son of my brother, I asked the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) as you are asking me, and he said: The black dog is a devil.

https://quranx.com/Hadith/IbnMajah/DarusSalam/Volume-2/Book-5/Hadith-952

It was narrated from ‘Abdullah bin Samit from Abu Dharr, that the Prophet (ﷺ) said:

“The prayer is severed by a woman, a donkey, and a black dog, if there is not something like the handle of a saddle in front of a man.” I (‘Abdullah) said: “What is wrong with a black dog and not a red one?” He (Abu Dharr) said: ‘I asked the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) the same question, and he said: “The black dog is a Shaitan (satan).”

You need know nothing else about Islam in order to reject it.

Dogs not gods.

Every.

Time.

[nezukobestneko]

"Reason doesn’t work when arguing with ideologically unreasonable people."

By: Erec Smith

Published: Mar 15, 2022

After watching the Showtime documentary “Everything’s Gonna Be All White,” I experienced an emotion I didn’t expect. I expected anger at the ignorance I had already noticed in the show’s trailer. I expected sadness at how far backward we have moved regarding race relations in this country. I even expected confusion, since that is a typical response to the fallacious reasoning of contemporary social justice activism. But surprisingly, what I felt most saliently was embarrassment—embarrassment for the speakers in this series who thought they were showing the world their strength when they really displayed their weakness, and thought they were expressing empowerment when they were inadvertently confessing severe insecurity. I felt embarrassed for Showtime for believing the opinions expressed in the show were “the POC POV,” and not the immature ramblings of people with the mental and emotional intelligence of first-graders.

Missteps abound in this documentary. The first episode alone examines extremists—those who stormed the Capitol building on January 6, those still upset about the Civil War and those who call the cops on Black individuals for innocuous reasons such as having a cookout—and presents them as an accurate representation of all white people. One commentator insists that the slur “Karen,” denoting an egregiously judgmental white woman who frequently targets Black people with her hypercritical vitriol, applies not just to some white women, but to all white women. The false idea that there is an epidemic of white-on-Black homicide courses through the show, most absurdly through musings that take place in lieu of the serious discussion the topic of racism demands.

To be fair, ridiculous ideas come from across the political spectrum. From QAnon to “Jewish Space Lasers,” the right is not without its own absurdities. However, as a member of academia, I see ridiculousness of the woke progressive variety infiltrating liberal arts education in a variety of disciplines, including my field of rhetoric. Christian Smith, in an essay titled “Higher Ed is Drowning in BS,” states that ridiculousness correlates with the “crisis of faith in truth, reality, reason, evidence, argument, civility, and our common humanity” in academia and, by extension, society at large. Smith continues to insist that “the accumulated effects of all the academic BS are contributing to this country’s disastrous political condition and, ultimately, putting at risk the very viability and character of decent civilization.” I couldn’t agree more, hence my focus on this specific type of ridiculousness.

Regarding the ridiculousness cultivated and distributed by those whom John McWhorter calls “third-wave anti-racists” (TWAs), my driving question is this: Why do we take such ridiculous ideas seriously? Even if the people harboring those ideas can persuade large numbers of people who do not know better, why are the people who do know better tolerating such ideas? Why are they suffering such fools as seriously as they do? Why don’t they respond accordingly? Why don’t they ridicule ridiculous ideas?

Why Ridicule Is a Useful Tool

The Cambridge online dictionary defines “ridiculous” as “stupid or unreasonable and deserving to be laughed at.” The first half of this definition, “stupid and unreasonable,” can be applied to much of the progressive left because they, themselves, dismiss reason as a sufficient way of knowing. According to Judith Katz, a scholar whose “Aspects and Assumptions of White Culture” was featured temporarily on the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s website and is embraced by the aforementioned TWAs, the following concepts are inherently white and, therefore, racist when expected from people of color: delayed gratification; planning for the future; objective, rational and linear thinking; the scientific method; the concept of cause and effect; decision-making, etc. All these concepts can be placed under the general category of reason, a fact that needs no explanation for reasonable readers.

This indictment of reason explains much unreason among TWAs, but the more important observation is this: Reasoning with ideologically unreasonable people may be a fool’s errand. Reason and rationality, or at least a shared respect for them, is key to effective and productive communication. However, if people refuse to abide by reason and rationality—going so far as to call them tools of oppression—two responses present themselves.

The first is to walk away from the situation. Why waste time getting nowhere? Instead, go find the people who respect and do their best to implement reason and rationality. Even if I lose an argument with a reasonable and rational person, I am better for it. In fact, if I am victorious in my debate I may benefit from acquiring a new affective strategy or strengthening my already strong understanding of the subject at hand. When someone refuses the mere courtesy of a short conversation or even a short answer to an innocuous question—like “That’s an interesting point. Can you elaborate?”—carrying on may be wasted effort.

Unfortunately, this evasive strategy may not work with many social justice activists. Walking away enables them to perpetuate their ideas unimpeded and would be playing right into their hands. What’s more, people don’t get to see what dissent can look like in these situations; those who cannot speak up or are still unsure of their understanding of TWA logic may need clarification and validation they will not get if would-be dissenters walk away. But that may not be the only consequence of evasion. When you walk away from many TWAs, they follow, sometimes with insults, inane guilt trips and various kinds of threats. They may even figure out where you live, inform the most rabid among their ranks and observe the consequences. Clearly, it is not wise to turn your back on them. It would seem, then, that walking away isn’t always an option.

The other option happens to be the second half of our operational definition of ridiculous: Laugh at ridiculousness as it deserves to be laughed at. The importance of laughing at the new wielders of cultural power—TWAs—is described well by Simon Critchley in his book “On Humour”: “By laughing at power, we expose its contingency, we realize that what appeared to be fixed and oppressive is in fact the emperor’s new clothes, and just the sort of thing that should be mocked and ridiculed.” By study and observation we can see that the TWAs’ emperor is clearly in the buff; mocking and ridiculing, as did the little boy who pointed out the emperor’s birthday suit, may be the truthful but humorous way to get the point across.

One may ask, “But isn’t ridicule hypocritical? Wouldn’t a reliance on ridicule turn us into the very monsters we are trying to slay?” No, because the TWA counterpart to ridicule is not a different variation of ridicule; it is degradation.

Ridicule vs. Degradation

One may also think that ridiculing TWAs is a “fighting fire with fire” strategy that can only make things worse. However, this isn’t fighting fire with fire; it’s fighting degradation with ridicule. The best operational definition of degradation comes from the field of sociology. In the 1950s, Harold Garfinkel described “status degradation” as “[a]ny communicative work between persons, whereby the public identity of an actor is transformed into something looked on as lower in the local scheme of social types.” This “communicative work” is meant to cause the loss of dignity for the object of degradation and a mix of schadenfreude and fear among onlookers. The ultimate point of such degradation is to silence people; they can no longer claim status or respect.

Ridicule, by contrast, makes a strong case for the utter silliness of the other person’s beliefs and behaviors, but the person’s status as a whole is not eradicated. Ridicule is not degradation; it is an inducement of discomfiture, so the terms are not synonymous. In “Humiliation: Its Nature and Consequences,” psychologists Walter Torres and Raymond Bergner explain this difference. Using “humiliation” as a synonym of degradation, they write:

In embarrassment, a person discovers such things as that his zipper is open, that there has been spinach between his teeth during a just completed conversation, or that a gossipy comment has been overheard by its target. Such persons are caught out of face, in minor violations of social decorum or conduct. However, in these and other embarrassing situations, their status to make status bids or claims is not rejected. In humiliation, it is.

So, to ridicule is to weaken credibility and respectability in a particular context, not to completely destroy those things, along with a person’s status, in all contexts.

Lastly, unlike degradation, which has little concern for logic or truth, ridicule as I am defining it is backed by logic and truth. It is not enough to insult someone; one must insult someone while thoroughly explaining why the insult is warranted, and that explanation must be fortified by logic and facts. Although TWAs have little respect for logic and facts, ridicule coupled with explanation can go a long way for those listening in: the ones who do not yet know what to make of the absurdities they are hearing; those who notice and lament the absurdities but feel alone in their views; and, especially, those who may believe that they only find these ideas ridiculous because they are missing something and have yet to hear the right arguments or read the right books. This strategy is akin to the open letter in journalism; one seems to be talking to a particular person or group, but the true audience is much larger.

By extension, unlike those who degrade, those who ridicule welcome a response; they want a continuing dialogue and are happy to have their ideas scrutinized by a person who appreciates logic and empirical information. So, ridiculers welcome the ridicule of their own ideas as well, as long as they are given the opportunity to respond. Ultimately, the object of one’s ridicule can still maintain his or her humanity. The purpose of degradation, however, is to eradicate that humanity.

The Roots of Degradation

The degradation strategy is clearer when we trace the illogic of third-wave anti-racism to its Marxist source. Marx and Lenin insisted that anyone with opposing thoughts to theirs simply could not be tolerated. Antonio Gramsci went so far as to turn the Marxist notion of class warfare into ideological warfare; i.e., your socioeconomic status matters less than your ideological status. To be bourgeois was to evade revolutionary mindsets, and such evaders had to be degraded at best, eliminated at worst.

The Frankfurt School, a group of Marxists responsible for creating the school of thought that would eventually give birth to critical race theory, similarly believed that those deemed bourgeois could not be tolerated. Frankfurt School member Herbert Marcuse, in an essay titled “Repressive Tolerance,” insists that the only way to bring about a revolution that would uplift the downtrodden is to have absolutely no tolerance for those who oppose the revolution. Although Marcuse referred to this anti-revolutionary group as conservative, that term now encompasses all those who do not think all-out revolution is the only way to peace and equality in the 21st century, regardless of political identification.

Critical race theory and, to a larger extent, critical social justice come out of this Marxist mindset of intolerance. If this intolerance is taken to its logical conclusion, one can understand why activists influenced by these theories either refuse to talk to dissenters or work to degrade them. In lieu of show trials and gulags, today we have degradation ceremonies and “cancellations” in the form of firings, Twitter mobbings and other kinds of exclusion. Critical race theory’s origins in Marxist thought should not be dismissed as an interesting historical fact; it is a frightening present fact. Although what is going on in America today can be called a kind of “soft” Marxism, it shares the same “hard” goal as Marxism proper: societal revolution through the collapse of American hegemony. If this revolution results in societal collapse, the TWAs will have achieved their goal.

This goal—complete revolution—explains much behavior among current social justice activists, especially the demonization of values such as reason, dialogue and free speech. If you want a revolution, the last thing you want to do is engage in logical and reasonable discussion with those with whom you disagree. In fact, being illogical and unreasonable is a much better way to bring about chaos. These activists want to negate common sense and ignore any empirical evidence that weakens their arguments.

Effective Ridicule

So what do we do about TWAs, especially since their apparent lack of reason is arguably not inadvertent, but a purposeful tactic of disruption? We have to show them that we know their illogic is purposeful, we do not fear them and their accusations will not land. We have to show them, in no uncertain terms, that we are not taking them seriously. Because walking away won’t always do the trick, we must ridicule. We must ridicule their ridiculousness, and we must do it consistently.

Fortunately, the efforts to ridicule such ridiculousness have already begun. Andrew Doyle, under the pseudonym Titania McGrath, wrote “Wokeness: A Guide to Social Justice,” a parody of TWAs’ sentiments. Winthrop Rosenberg’s satirical book of speculative fiction, titled “Anti-Racist vs. Colorblind 2064: Woke Wars,” displays social justice activism’s illogical conclusions regarding diversity, equity and inclusion. “Anticlownist Baby: A Radical Activist Children’s Book for Anticlownism Education,” written by Doctor Zews (another pseudonym), is a direct dig at anti-racist leader Ibram X. Kendi’s children’s book, “Antiracist Baby.” For people who’d rather watch TV than read, there is Bill Maher’s litany of satirical “woke” movie warnings.

The “grievance studies” hoax may best illustrate the power of ridicule. Authors James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose and Peter Boghossian decided to send purposefully absurd essays to scholarly journals to see if these journals would take them seriously enough to publish. Seven essays were accepted, including an “argument for men self-penetrating with dildos to reduce transphobia. An ethnography of men who attend ‘breastaurants’ like Hooters. Research on rape culture among the dogs at Portland dog parks.” This ridiculing of identity-based scholarship dealt a strong blow to a progressively left-wing academia and exposed third-wave anti-racism in academia for the danger it is. Ridicule works; it dismisses woke behavior and talking points without playing into TWAs’ hands. We simply cannot take such activists seriously, and it has to be blatantly clear that we will not take them seriously.

Lastly, as stated briefly above, we must open ourselves up to ridicule as well. No one is perfect, and when we wander into absurd thoughts, we should be thankful for those who point them out to us, lest we devolve into the very same ludicrous miasma we’re combatting. Socrates compared those who would challenge him as touchstones, referring to the material used to test the integrity of gold. In “Gorgias,” Socrates says to his interlocutor, Callicles, “If my soul, Callicles, were made of gold, should I not rejoice to discover one of those stones with which they test gold, and the very best possible one to which I might bring my soul; and if the stone and I agreed in approving of her training, then I should know that I was in a satisfactory state, and that no other test was needed by me.”

Therefore, Socrates implores Callicles to pull no punches: “Do not then desist from advising me, now that you have begun, until I have learned clearly what this is which I am to practice, and how I may acquire it. And if you find me assenting to your words, and hereafter not doing that to which I assented, call me ‘dolt,’ and deem me unworthy of receiving further instruction” (emphasis mine). Socrates insists that Callicles and others call him out as a “dolt” when he seems to be acting like one. Socrates would rather be ridiculed—while afforded the opportunity to defend himself and converse further—than to be ignored or silenced. Thus, we should not fear ridicule or refrain from the self-awareness that allows us to discover our own fallacious reasoning.

Ridicule Ridiculous Ideas

Although ridicule is not degradation, and although its effects pale in comparison to the effects cultural Marxism would have on society, some of you may be doubting the use of ridicule to cope with and battle third-wave activism. If you share this feeling, know that woke ideas and tactics are ridiculous whether we point it out or not:

Calling science, delayed gratification, hard work and punctuality inherently white concepts and, therefore, racist to expect from Black people is ridiculous.

Saying that Black and white kids do math differently and, therefore, should be taught differently is ridiculous.

Saying that someone’s insistence that he is not racist is proof that he is racist is ridiculous.

Saying someone should be canceled for pointing out facts and empirical research that don’t align with a preferred narrative is ridiculous.

Saying that lived experience always overpowers empirical evidence is ridiculous.

To quote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Rod Dreher, “Live not by lies.” Saying that woke tactics aren’t ridiculous is a lie, and not saying that they are ridiculous is a lie by omission. Explicitly exposing their ridiculousness is really just an expression of the obvious. Lastly, remember that ridicule and degradation are not the same, and while the latter is unacceptable, the former is fair game.

Of course, throughout all this we still need to be fair. Not all people we would label as social justice activists deserve ridicule. Some commentators in the aforementioned Showtime documentary are thoughtful and realistic and deserve to be taken seriously. Some activists and scholars are not only sincere in wanting to end racism and do right by the minorities damaged by it; they are also actually willing to talk to those who disagree on how best to accomplish that. However, for the cartoonishly intolerant, ridicule may be the most effective rule of engagement. The ridiculous ones are the unreachable ones, the ones who have jettisoned reason and see dialogue as an inherent evil. Since they have rejected reason, the only remaining tactic is ridicule.

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Been saying this for years: the ridiculous deserves ridicule. By definition.

[nezukobestneko]

What I’ve learned over time from the tales of ex-Muslims is that in devout, strict Muslim homes, it’s extremely common that the mother is one of the worst of them all. Her husband might be head of the household, but it’s her duty to prepare and teach her daughter for what is to come, and she will use him as her blunt weapon.

The mother that she should be able to rely upon, who knows what’s going on, knows what’s being demanded, who should be coming to her defence, actively betrays and works against her daughter. The mother is the one putting hijab on her. The mother is the one dressing her for the marriage that has been arranged for her. The mother summons the father when the daughter is not sufficiently submissive, devout or pure. The mother hisses that she prays death for her daughter for leaving or removing hijab.

Everything that happens to the daughter isn’t in spite of the mother, it’s because of the mother.

[nezukobestneko]

This meme is actually a Xian meme, where believing in yourself is a bad thing.

Of course, the problem is that a quick peruse of the Pinterest boards and Facebook pages of the people who post this, under such tags as “spiritual” and “inspiration” to signal their piety and humility, makes it clear that the bible they believe in is a bible of their own interpretation.

Which is still the same thing.

When you press them for how they can know their interpretation is correct, they’ll say something like how their god is good so it couldn’t mean the bad thing.

Which is still the same thing.

Or that they have faith about what it means.

Which is still the same thing.

“No man ever believers that the Bible means what it says:

He is always convinced that it says what he means.”

– George Bernard Shaw

Xian morality is as secular, evolved and subjective as anyone else’s. The only difference is they sign their god’s name on their own work, call it “god’s will” and claim to be humble.

[nezukobestneko]