In the brave new world of campus identity harm, fictitious proper names are just as dangerous as personal pronouns.

[Keaton] Wahlbon is enrolled in Professor Bill Deane’s earth science class. Recently, Deane gave the class a quiz, and one of the questions was, “What is your lab instructor’s name? (if you don’t remember, make something good up).” The lab instructor is a kind of teaching assistant, and indeed, Wahlbon couldn’t remember her name. So he wrote in “Sarah Jackson.”

“I picked a random generic name,” said Wahlbon in an interview with Reason.

What does it mean to “make something good up?” Apparently not “Sarah Jackson” because somewhere, somehow, especially if you get to page 5 of Google, there is an off-chance you will find the name reflecting something that could conceivably, if you squint hard and avoid any use of synapses, be hurtful! And Keaton Wahlbon did exactly that when he made up “something good.”

But “Sarah Jackson” is apparently the name of a pornographic model. When Wahlbon got the quiz back, his answer was marked “inappropriate” and he had received a grade of zero.

“I had no idea it was the name of a nude model,” said Wahlbon.

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Unlike the “discussion” on campus, where no disagreement is tolerated, Steve Woolfolk not only had no problem with pointed questions posed to former Obama administration diplomat Dennis Ross on the propriety of Israeli conduct toward Palestinians, but intervened to prevent the seizure of Jeremy Rothe-Kushel.  For his defense, he took a knee from a cop and is being prosecuted.

The arrests occurred after a provocative question was asked at the question-and-answer period of a May 9 talk by diplomat Dennis Ross. For months, library officials protested that the arrests and charges were a violation of the First Amendment.

Off-duty police were hired as security. Why, exactly, isn’t clear, but the library agreed to allow a sponsoring group to provide security in the event of “danger.” The danger, it turned out, was the security.

The audience member, Jeremy Rothe-Kushel of Lawrence, was standing still and speaking into a microphone when a private guard and off-duty police officers removed him.

Steve Woolfolk, director of public programming for the library, protested the police action and tried to intervene before the entire group left the room and both men were arrested.

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The law protects a woman’s right to breastfeed, not that it helped Savvy Shukla at the time.

Tonight while in Piggly Wiggly with my sister and both my children (the oldest 20mos and the youngest 1month old today) while nursing a Deputy approached me right when I was about to leave and informed that I needed to cover up because someone might find it “offensive”

I repeated the law back to him stating that Georgia state law says I can breastfeed however most comfortable wherever I want as long as I’m authorized to be there.

He then grows flustered and says “No ma’am that’s not the case.” And I said

“No I know what the law says” for him to say:

“You just THINK you know what the law says and if your nipple becomes exposed I really don’t want to have to arrest you or you be arrested for being offensive. This isn’t like the first amendment where you can say something offensive.”

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How hard is it to say he resisted? Not too hard.

Pele Smith is suing the Lorain, Ohio, police. It was a he said/she said case until the release of the video.

The arrest took place while police were investigating drug complaints in Smith’s neighborhood. Continue reading →

The myth was that Henry Ford decided to pay his workers $5 a day when he realized that if they couldn’t afford to buy the cars he was building, he wouldn’t be able to sell cars. It’s not true, but the allure of the myth was undeniable. Without a sufficient population of buyers, sellers can’t sell. The shine of technology has blinded its sycophants to this concept.

At Room for Debate, the New York Times (in its Trump-obsessed way) sought to disprove the claim that the suffering of the middle class had to do with jobs and companies fleeing the nation by noting that the greater threat to middle-class existence was automation.

Globalization and trade agreements have been blamed for costing millions of Americans well-paying jobs. But a far greater force in the gutting of middle-class life in the United States has been automation, which has replaced well-paid workers with robots and digital platforms. The greater efficiency fuels economic growth, produces cheaper products and makes life’s task easier. But in the process, many are left poorer and less secure.

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It was an extremely ambitious effort by FIRE’s executive director, Robert Shibley.  Not only is the current state of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 a total fiasco, but it’s replete with a mythology deliberately spread by a rogue Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights, and adopted by zealous advocates who make up in passion what they lack in integrity and knowledge, so that it’s nearly impossible to discuss intelligently.

Shibley tries to explain this morass in the modern version of a broadside. To provide a full and adequate explanation would require at least a book, if not a few volumes, but then no one would take the time to read it.  And that’s the point, that this needs to be read to have any impact and, for those against whom this law and its mythology are used, they be given access to accurate information in contrast with the spin.

It’s a quick read. For anyone who has paid attention here, the stories and concepts will be familiar, though the choice of anecdotes might seem peculiar. The tale of feminist prof Laura Kipnis, for example, figures prominently, likely because it’s less subject to controversy than some far worse stories.  For those who need concrete anecdotes to make sense of concepts, Shibley does his best to provide context to the law surrounding Title IX and its misuse and abuse. Continue reading →

It happened with a phrase, perhaps as clear a phrase as could be conceived at the time, when usurped from the vocabulary and untethered from its definition. The phrase was “sex discrimination,” and by concerted use, it’s claimed to be ambiguous.  All it required was for people to seize it and use it for their own purposes.

Now it’s Pepe the Frog.

This is Pepe the Frog. He’s a laid-back amphibious dude whose hobbies include hanging out with his roommates, getting stoned, drinking pop, eating pizza and watching TV. He doesn’t get out much and spends the majority of his time slinging outdated ‘90s clapbacks at his fellow dude-bros.

You might be surprised, then, to hear that Pepe was recently designated a “hate symbol” by the Anti-Defamation League. Talk about not chill.

You don’t care about Pepe? Frankly, neither do I. It’s not a meme of any significance in my world, and had this not happened, chances are slim that it would ever be mentioned here. But this isn’t about Pepe the Frog. Not really. Continue reading →

Having started more than a half dozen posts, each of which struck me as obvious and pointless, I decided not to post anything today. I’m disgusted with the level of discourse and refuse to spend the time and energy required to discuss what ought to be obvious to any reasonably intelligent person.

You want to talk about it? Be my guest. Today, I have nothing to say.

Via Awesomely Luvvie.

White people, I’m talking to you. THIS. IS. YOUR. PROBLEM. TO. FIX. Y’all got some work to do, because this system that y’all keep on privileging from, you’ve got to help us dismantle it. Because those of us who are Black and Brown. We have tried. You created this robot, and it is yours to deactivate. My skinfolk don’t have the passcode. This is your monster to slay.

Does this persuade you? Will you change your evil ways because Luvvie told you to?

Whether you love or hate Tennessee lawprof Glenn Reynolds, best known as Instapundit, who has been an unabashed conservative voice on the internets throughout a period when academia was gushing progressivism, there are a few things that can’t be denied. First, that he’s shown the fortitude of speaking against the tide. As a result, Glenn collected a huge following, because not everyone feels compelled to select their own personal pronouns.

Second, he knows social media. He knows its power. He knows its failings. He knows the pretense it instills in its shallow fans that they are passionate advocates when they’re doing nothing more than preaching to their choir or enjoying a cute little circle jerk. Spend enough time online, and establish enough credibility to have people hear what you have to say and you learn things. You can’t help it.

And boy, has Glenn learned things.

SO WHAT I’VE DONE WITH TWITTER is just to log out for now. The robo-tweets of InstaPundit content will continue, at least for a while. I may take down the widget on the sidebar, eventually. I haven’t moved to Gab, and I’m not sure whether I will or not. Basically, there are two problems with Twitter for me. One is that they don’t support their users — they pretty clearly suspend, ban, etc. using a political double standard even though they claim they don’t.

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