Massively uninterested in anything following the phrase “his personal demons” unless it involves a bunch of wacky demon minions that follow this guy around.
“His personal demons, Laila, Kovi, and Jiala, all battled for his affection - sometimes leaving a trail of destruction in their wake!”
- back cover, Super Love Love Demon Battle!
Anyway, before I miss out on the other discourse going on: Piper Harron has basically said that universities need to fire white mathematicians, because WOC have no chance to be hired to do math otherwise.
Problematic?
Or super problematic?
No. Woke.
I understand now that you’ve rediscovered the 13th amendment everything looks like a nail, but murder isn’t a status crime like vagrancy, some pretext to reincarnate slavery as convict leasing. We were always going to punish murder (traditionally, by hanging).
And against the complaint that even fixed-term sentences don’t come with an exit plan these days, “ease out your last few years doing off-campus catering around the most powerful people in the state” doesn’t strike me as rank barbarity tbh
The real issue isn’t the amount of suffering by inmates performing janitorial work, but creating a system in which there is a reward for incarceration other than lowering the crime rates. You get what you pay for, after all.
@cromulentenough
FWIW, i’m someone born in the UK but with background in bangladesh, and i get annoyed when other asians ask me ‘where are you FROM from’ after i tell them i’m from london the first time. It’s not just a white thing.
“But I’ve always lived in the UK,” he said, “never anyway else. I’ve not even set foot outside the British Isles.”
“Yes,” said the man, “but where are you FROM”
The man’s face opened, revealing several strange, glossy, robotic orbs. Beams of various colours and intensities swept over the questioned man’s body.
“HAPLO GROUP 2A, PRIMARY GENETIC DENSITY,” the robot man said in the middle of the restaurant.
A hush fell over the guests at the dining tables as the robot’s face slowly closed, synthetic skin seamlessly fusing to hide the cold mechanical components underneath.
“So anyhow,” said the robot man, “how about Liverpool vs. Manchester United?”
I guess one of the symptoms of this “identity confusion“ is that asking “Where are you from - originally? What are you?“ is sometimes considered a micro-aggression, and sometimes people identify strongly with that place, and sometimes people from the Old Country ask you “Where are you from?“ in exactly the same way, but it can’t be a micro-aggression in that case.
Is it a grave insult to order a pizza in Italian when it turns out the waiter is Greek? Is it a grave insult to order a pizza in Italian when *you* are Italian? Is it an insult to ask somebody for directions in Mandarin because that person *looks* Chinese? Does it matter if you are a Mandarin native speaker? Does it matter if you’re a Cantonese native speaker? Does it matter if this happens in the US, or in France, and you don’t speak French?
Does it matter if your family was forced to renounce their heritage in one of the World Wars or by Stalinist resettlement?
If you try hard to keep your identity and culture alive, you will have an answer ready to “Where are you from?“.
Treating “Where are you from, originally?“ as a kind of slight enforces the mainstream US categorisation into back, white, brown, Asian, Latin American, native American.
Sometimes, the question is where *in China* are you from? What place exactly? Are you from the same place *I* am from?
what is your ethnoracial heritage? wait, just spit into this test tube and I’ll send it to 23andme myself.
For what it’s worth, Americans always want me to really specifically say where I’m from, even if they have never heard of the place, and are most satisfied with my answer if I also give the distance to the next NATO base that has marines on it.
Americans also really specifically tell me what state they are from, what the chief export of that state is, and the distance from their home town to the state capital.
My point was that these “microagressions“ are only microagressions if you ask them as a member of the wrong ethnic group. There is something there that gibes me pause. But if you assume we are all members of one nationality, without any subcultural divisions, that is a microagression as well.
Identity politics claims that ethno-cultural divisions are fundamental to our identities, at least until a white person asks about them to understand a person’s identity better, at which point the ethno-cultural divisions become a socially constructed tool of oppression and marginalisation.
I can answer this: it’s polite to ask an African person where they are from, it’s a microaggression to ask an African American person where they are from.
It’s polite to ask where in China a Chinese person is from, it’s a microaggression to ask a Chinese American person where in China they are from, or (worse) where in Asia they are from, or (even worse) where in the world they are from.
What, you can’t tell if someone is Chinese or Chinese American just by looking?
“Where are you from?”
California.
“No, I mean where are you from?”
Pasadena.
“No, what are you?”
see also:
“What are you mixed with?”
When it goes away from “hey, what’s up, are you traveling, fellow human” to “how can I categorize you” is where people start to see a clear problem.
Like, look there are tons of blonde-haired, blue-eyed 8th generation American people who are happy to natter on about the small Dutch village and French provincial town where Gran-gran-gran-mere and UberGrosOpa lived until the war brought them together, but asking someone to bring out that story upon first introduction is a bit rude, especially when the answer is “well my family has been here for four hundred years but we lose the thread somewhere in the middle passage” or “we’ve only been here two generations and fled from an oppressive regime” or “I’m not telling you because I’m not actually from here and I don’t know if you’re an ICE agent who’s going to follow me home and deport my parents.”
Seems like the kindest question is “so do you live/work/go to school around here?” for light chatter, but you’ve gotta be a level four friend to unlock someone’s backstory whether it’s tragic or mundane.
Also this sort of thing comes up a lot after people hear an “exotic” name or if someone isn’t easily slotted into a stereotypical category, which intensifies its interpretation as a microaggression - Janey from Omaha likely doesn’t get asked where she’s from as much as Zuelma from East LA does. The vast majority of people I know who interpret “where are you from” as a microaggression only do so after experiencing another microaggression (a long assessing stare or a comment on the strangeness of their clothes, hair, or *loudly* commenting on an accent).
Most people I know don’t see “where are you from” as an irritation, it’s the “where are you *really* from” that’s read as hostile.
[I work with a man who has a really hard-to-pronounce-for-the-unpracticed name, even though he’s the owner of the company and I’m fielding calls from cold-call vendors I hear “wow, I’m not even going to try to say that right - where is Boss from?” about 2-3 times a week. Montrose. He’s from Montrose.]
Aaaaaaalso the question of when it’s appropriate to use Spanish [or insert applicable language] is somewhat fraught. Another man I work with is the son of immigrants, has dark skin, and has a name that reads as Mexican, but his parents never allowed him to learn Spanish or speak Spanish with them because they though it would make it hard for him to get a job or would get him in trouble at school. As an adult he speaks only rudimentary Spanish and each time it comes up he insists that he doesn’t speak Spanish and is embarrassed by his poor command of the language. It’s difficult for him to talk to his parents because their command of English isn’t very strong. So when someone speaks Spanish to him he A) gets reminded of all that history and B) has to explain to the Spanish speaker that he doesn’t speak the language, and I’ve seen people call him a liar or stuck up for not speaking Spanish. No one speaking Spanish to him knows all that history and is bringing up that strain for the sake of being mean, but fuck I can’t blame him for getting worn out by it coming up on a regular basis. If I, a white woman, speak Spanish to a Latinx person am I making the assumption that they can’t speak English or am I trying to be accommodating and accept the fact that I live in an area with a dozen languages in use and a wide array of cultures sharing space? Am I being rude by asking them to tolerate my poor Spanish or polite by making the attempt? Both. Neither. It’s complicated.
Different people have different ideas about what’s rude, and I think that may be a better context to set that in. Is is rude to ask someone where they’re from? Probably not the first time, but it is rude to stare at someone then ask where they’re from.
The post was motivated partly by South Asian exchange students in $REDACTED ordering curry in Hindi and asking where the waiter is from when he does not understand.
Everybody immediately assumes the asker is white. Kind of my point here.
My dad has a co-worker who married a son of an Italian immigrant. The other day he (the father-in-law born in Italy) came to the shop and my dad used it as an opportunity to practise his Italian.
Turns out the co-worker took it as a slight. She had never learned to speak Italian.
This is also part of the more indirect costs of multiculturalism. A dozen different cultures, cultures mixing and flowing but simultaneously being prohibited from mixing and flowing because it’s “appropriative”…
You don’t just get 12 scales of what’s polite and impolite behavior. You get somewhere between 12 scales and one scale for every person in the area.
It was said some study found that above a certain level, diversity imposed a higher cost due to all the needs to overcome communication and negotiation barriers, effectively wasting what could have been productive time for insufficient gains. I wish I cold find it.
You realize when you cut out the beginning of the post like this it’s practically impossible to tell what you’re responding to? In this case, your point stands alone, but it’s still mildly irritating.
Huh. I was trying to do my readers a service by not cluttering their dashes so much with long posts that they’d already read 90% of.
I guess one of the symptoms of this “identity confusion“ is that asking “Where are you from - originally? What are you?“ is sometimes considered a micro-aggression, and sometimes people identify strongly with that place, and sometimes people from the Old Country ask you “Where are you from?“ in exactly the same way, but it can’t be a micro-aggression in that case.
Is it a grave insult to order a pizza in Italian when it turns out the waiter is Greek? Is it a grave insult to order a pizza in Italian when *you* are Italian? Is it an insult to ask somebody for directions in Mandarin because that person *looks* Chinese? Does it matter if you are a Mandarin native speaker? Does it matter if you’re a Cantonese native speaker? Does it matter if this happens in the US, or in France, and you don’t speak French?
Does it matter if your family was forced to renounce their heritage in one of the World Wars or by Stalinist resettlement?
If you try hard to keep your identity and culture alive, you will have an answer ready to “Where are you from?“.
Treating “Where are you from, originally?“ as a kind of slight enforces the mainstream US categorisation into back, white, brown, Asian, Latin American, native American.
Sometimes, the question is where *in China* are you from? What place exactly? Are you from the same place *I* am from?
what is your ethnoracial heritage? wait, just spit into this test tube and I’ll send it to 23andme myself.
For what it’s worth, Americans always want me to really specifically say where I’m from, even if they have never heard of the place, and are most satisfied with my answer if I also give the distance to the next NATO base that has marines on it.
Americans also really specifically tell me what state they are from, what the chief export of that state is, and the distance from their home town to the state capital.
My point was that these “microagressions“ are only microagressions if you ask them as a member of the wrong ethnic group. There is something there that gibes me pause. But if you assume we are all members of one nationality, without any subcultural divisions, that is a microagression as well.
Identity politics claims that ethno-cultural divisions are fundamental to our identities, at least until a white person asks about them to understand a person’s identity better, at which point the ethno-cultural divisions become a socially constructed tool of oppression and marginalisation.
I can answer this: it’s polite to ask an African person where they are from, it’s a microaggression to ask an African American person where they are from.
It’s polite to ask where in China a Chinese person is from, it’s a microaggression to ask a Chinese American person where in China they are from, or (worse) where in Asia they are from, or (even worse) where in the world they are from.
What, you can’t tell if someone is Chinese or Chinese American just by looking?
> in which Augmented Reality Zuckerbook™ simultaneously clears up nation of origin, allowing users to instantly disambiguate whether it is polite to ask where someone is from according to their appearance and Zuckerbook™ profile, while simultaneously showing the entire life history of every user hovering above their heads, making the entire line of questioning irrelevant
But also your Chinese-American grandparents will tell you where you are from and tell you how important it is to not forget that and always get it right and point to it on the map. They also never want to go back because that place was a hellhole and they’re so glad they made it out of the cultural revolution alive.
God Bless the United States of America, friend.
The effect wears off over generations, until it becomes a “well your great great grandfather was German” but you don’t speak a word of German and the most that’s left of unified German ethnic experiences in your life is some hollow copy of Oktoberfest.
(Right now I’m trying to figure out if East Asians are the next group that will be absorbed by America’s homogeneous Generic White Identity, if it will be some other group instead, or if some other path will happen.)
I mean if we’re even going to entertain the idea of minimum ages for shit like voting and serving office we should have to consider maximum ages too.
Disagree. Children can’t vote because 1) biologically incapable of making good decisions yet 2) parents are legally allowed to punish them for voting incorrectly.
Voting because of old age can only be a problem because of stuff like dementia, and then you’d have to disenfranchise all people who are not mentally capable of voting.
what’s currently being done if is a person is mentally incapable of voting, a handler votes for them, which is okay because handlers will probably trend towards voting for candidates that help people who are mentally incapable
we need to encourage more people to vote not disenfranchise them
I’m saying the opposite. Since we won’t consider maximum ages, why are we considering minimum ones? Just let children vote. “Biologically incapable of making good choices” is exactly the same argument for taking away the vote from old people with dementia or the mentally ill.
So what you’re saying here is just a roundabout way of suggesting we should disenfranchise the literally demented and the mentally ill.
And of course, taking your other reply into account, I, too, value the power of soft authoritarian technocratic dictatorship.
Unless, of course, you are suggesting that because some limits are not present due to the dangers in imposing them, other limits which already exist and aren’t particularly dangerous to enforce should not exist?
Might I suggest that the lack of wide support for this policy by a group which consists entirely of people who were once teenagers might not be quite the same thing as the other two examples?
I have no idea what you’re talking about. Why are rationalists so impenetrable?
I’m saying let children vote.
This person seems anything but rational. I’d say start with giving working minors the right to vote because they pay an income tax
“Rationalists” is more of an anthropological label, and one I don’t claim for myself, in part because most of them believe in Open Borders or something similar, but I’m an unironic Nationalist.
Anyhow, I give a more direct/accessible and serious reply later in the thread.
Although the irony that what I said is less impenetrable than certain philosophers or schools is not lost on me. I can provide a close reading if you’d like.
Oh, and I’m not actually a time-travelling supervillain. My blog description does convey real information about my positions, but it isn’t literal.
mitigatedchaos asked:
garmbreak1 answered:
THE PAST MUST BE DESTROYED
You bastard! The original Garmbreak owed me money!
Gargh. This is almost as bad as that time the Democratic Republic of Belgium collapsed and my entire artisanal clickbait smuggling network became worthless overnight.
Well that’s friggin’ 800 SAF pesos down the drain.
I guess one of the symptoms of this “identity confusion“ is that asking “Where are you from - originally? What are you?“ is sometimes considered a micro-aggression, and sometimes people identify strongly with that place, and sometimes people from the Old Country ask you “Where are you from?“ in exactly the same way, but it can’t be a micro-aggression in that case.
Is it a grave insult to order a pizza in Italian when it turns out the waiter is Greek? Is it a grave insult to order a pizza in Italian when *you* are Italian? Is it an insult to ask somebody for directions in Mandarin because that person *looks* Chinese? Does it matter if you are a Mandarin native speaker? Does it matter if you’re a Cantonese native speaker? Does it matter if this happens in the US, or in France, and you don’t speak French?
Does it matter if your family was forced to renounce their heritage in one of the World Wars or by Stalinist resettlement?
If you try hard to keep your identity and culture alive, you will have an answer ready to “Where are you from?“.
Treating “Where are you from, originally?“ as a kind of slight enforces the mainstream US categorisation into back, white, brown, Asian, Latin American, native American.
Sometimes, the question is where *in China* are you from? What place exactly? Are you from the same place *I* am from?
what is your ethnoracial heritage? wait, just spit into this test tube and I’ll send it to 23andme myself.
For what it’s worth, Americans always want me to really specifically say where I’m from, even if they have never heard of the place, and are most satisfied with my answer if I also give the distance to the next NATO base that has marines on it.
Americans also really specifically tell me what state they are from, what the chief export of that state is, and the distance from their home town to the state capital.
My point was that these “microagressions“ are only microagressions if you ask them as a member of the wrong ethnic group. There is something there that gibes me pause. But if you assume we are all members of one nationality, without any subcultural divisions, that is a microagression as well.
Identity politics claims that ethno-cultural divisions are fundamental to our identities, at least until a white person asks about them to understand a person’s identity better, at which point the ethno-cultural divisions become a socially constructed tool of oppression and marginalisation.
I can answer this: it’s polite to ask an African person where they are from, it’s a microaggression to ask an African American person where they are from.
It’s polite to ask where in China a Chinese person is from, it’s a microaggression to ask a Chinese American person where in China they are from, or (worse) where in Asia they are from, or (even worse) where in the world they are from.
What, you can’t tell if someone is Chinese or Chinese American just by looking?
> in which Augmented Reality Zuckerbook™ simultaneously clears up nation of origin, allowing users to instantly disambiguate whether it is polite to ask where someone is from according to their appearance and Zuckerbook™ profile, while simultaneously showing the entire life history of every user hovering above their heads, making the entire line of questioning irrelevant
