@Jerm @AcidOverride You can link the Patreon page directly to Discord, and automatically assign a Patreon role to anyone with an active pledge

Has anyone here read The Bell Curve?

It's long 😂 It's an 800-page book published in 1994 which tries to describe the class structure in American society. Mostly it argues that intelligence is a major predictor of just about everything (income, occupation, family structure, criminal activity)

Racists, eugenicists and edgelords frequently cite the parts (out of context, obviously) about the IQ differences between race groups. Most recently, there was a guy given a 5-minute interview on NPR (Jason Kessler iirc) who quoted the book.

I just got ahold of a copy and I'm scanning through it

I'm reading it because of this

The US media has lost their collective shit because NPR (public radio) gave a "platform" to this guy

7 minutes: https://www.npr.org/2018/08/10/637390626/a-year-after-charlottesville-unite-the-right-rally-will-be-held-in-d-c

The core of the freakout was when Kessler quoted some of the results from The Bell Curve. Apparently, that was enough to issue trigger warnings before the broadcast and set the media landscape on fire

Nah, make it Christopher Walken

🐮 🔔

@Ros If you get stuck on a complicated topic, let me know. One of my favourite pastimes is figuring out complicated ideas 👍

It's not work if you enjoy it 😉

Official snack of the revolution

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE1kA0Jy0Xg

Behind the scenes on a live Chinese product for mass surveillance - image and object classification, including matches against a (mock) police database.

https://twitter.com/mynameisjerm/status/1028665093146505216

What we really need are photos - for people to go to these farms and small towns, photo-document the life they're living, and share that out

Make the cost of EWC visible in real terms - houses, families, children

https://cdn.24.co.za/files/Cms/General/d/6887/7bb0f3f93c5048c2a6bc053524c30ac6.jpg

Any proof of that @Robzombie ? Did people take photos or something? It's worth sharing on social media

http://www.nsap.org.za/

Any thoughts?

I mean technically

That's not wrong

😂

Registering a new political party requires 500 registered voters and a token registration fee

Contesting an election is a different story.

The IEC requires a deposit, the amount varying based on how many wards, municipalities and metros you target

To contest everything in SA will require a deposit of around R480'000

If you win, your deposit's refunded. If not, tough luck.

A single metro should be about R30k

Those prices are from the 2016 elections, but I haven't seen any announcements about a big change to these policies yet

A lot of smaller parties are unhappy about these costs, obviously

You can establish a brand, governance structure, constitution, and the operational framework long before you actually register at the IEC

And you can use that structure to fundraise

You'll probably get better ROI on using seed money to market and solicit further donations

@Jerm I prefer not to use my real name in these forums, but yes, I'm already a patron

I was Patron #25 I think

https://twitter.com/MulderCorn/status/1031538349742415872

Ouch

This MiWay thing is going sideways fast

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/20/entertainment/asia-argento-alleged-assault-settlement/index.html

oof

That feeling when the leader of your anti-sexual-assault moral crusade paid 380k to cover up her sexual activities with a 17-year old

It's been a bad week for #MeToo 😂

twitter is much easier

https://omny.fm/shows/mid-morning-show-702/an-exchange-on-white-privilege-and-apartheid-histo

😂

So Eusebius gives 3 examples of why white privilege is still a thing:

> Single-digit unemployment
> Less likely to be discriminated against when trying to find a home
> Presumption of competence when looking for a new job

(Before he shat all over the call, tbh, I have to agree with Stephanie.)

In all 3 examples he's applying identity politics, and defining white people by their race group, and not their individual situation

It doesn't help an unemployed person to tell them "unemployment is so low in your group, you should be grateful". If they're unemployed, then to them, they're 100% unemployed and group stats don't change that.

Discrimination when finding a home: I've seen this in action myself, and it's still a real thing, but it's not nearly as widespread. The discrimination against white-owned businesses for government work is far more prevalent, far more damaging, and Matt called that out correctly.

Same with the presumption of competence. That's an inter-individual thing - you and the employer. Everybody taking a risk will want some assurance that their bet is not just money down the drain, and that shows in hiring practices. Black employers will prefer black employees that look/sound/speak/think like them. That's not a privilege thing, that's just how people operate.

And then at 11:10 Stephanie loses the plot by telling the army-conscripted guy he didn't suffer

The real issue is that people try using social media platforms as extensions of real-world conversations, when they really should be thinking more like publishers and brands

I don't know what possessed Adam to make that video, but there was really no reason to do it, and then to upload it

If he thought about the impact of his words for more than half a second he might have cut that piece out, and we'd not even know his name

No, it's common sense

It's one word. Just don't say the word.

You can say a thousand other words that mean the same thing

That's impossible nowadays @Tom_Servo

Anyone who doesn't like you for any reason will label you racist

And you can't control what people say about you, but you *can* control what you say

Don't feed the trolls

Put it this way: As a white person, you get to keep your job, your family, your wealth (most of it, depending on how EWC goes), your culture and your identity, if you agree to just not use this one very specific word that 40 million people have decided is a word they don't want to hear

I mean, I'm fine with that

It's really the smallest possible concession to make, deciding to *not* use a racial slur

Even "negro" has some background to it (it's latin for "black", and you can argue on those lines it's not really a slur)

But "kaffir" never meant anything good

So just stop using it. Less space in your brain, less drama in your life

So why didn't the k-word die with Mandela then?

There were 10 years of things going relatively well in SA, for most people

"Things are going badly now so I want to hang on to this word" ... why? What does it help?

Is it like Super Mario where every time you say it a coin falls from the sky? 😂

Or are you going to argue that the k-word is part of your culture/identity that is being eroded?

If we stop setting bags of shit on fire, yes, it'll help

So then say that and move on

Most of these mobs are just trolls. They're here to get a rise out of people - to make them upset and say even more stupid shit

Never

It's literally never going to be addressed. Not in our lifetimes.

That, unfortunately, is the game we're in. We didn't get to pick the rules, but we *do* get to choose how we respond.

It's not a one-time thing though

For as long as there are people walking around who will do stupid shit, other people have to be around to deal with the mess

There will be another 20 Adams in the next year, specially leading up to elections when the twitter mobs will do whatever they can to make noise

Yeah we could do with less of that @AcidOverride

Those aren't all the same thing

Refusing to say the k-word is not like giving the keys to your house to someone