How serious are we about addressing climate change? On the one hand, world leaders, save China and Russia, are meeting in Glasgow to make promises for the future they are unable to keep. On the other hand, a climate scientist was disinvited from speaking at MIT, not because he didn’t have great scholarly value on this matter of grave world importance, but because of his views on diversity and inclusion.

What are those views that have made him such a pariah, so hated, such a threat of harm to marginalized people that he could not possibly be tolerated? University of Chicago professor Dorian Abbot explains. Continue reading →

Prefatory note: Someone apparently had a rotten couple of weeks at the National School Board Association. My hacker contact “BlueDragon72” passed along this copy of a draft apology letter the NSBA planned to send to parents. After reading it you’ll see why they changed things.—CLS

Dear Parents:

By now you’ve probably heard about a troubling letter sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland by someone from our offices equating parents attending school board meetings with domestic terrorists. This letter also said “hate crimes” were being perpetrated by parents attending school board meetings. Continue reading →

It’s a slog to read because of its tediously pretentious language, but Dahlia Lithwick’s latest effort at Slate is to argue that giving “racists,” by which she means those people that everybody she knows believes are racists so no reason to belabor the point, a fair trial proves that the legal system exists to protect white supremacy.

Each of these three trials rests on the knife’s edge of an existential, real-time American conversation about race and violence—one that touches on ongoing debates about policing, guns, hate crimes, and vigilantism. But as each of the three cases progress to trial, each also reveals how every legal decision—indeed every twist and turn of legal language itself—rests on ideas about neutrality, due process, and fairness, and how these ideas always seem to buckle when confronted by real questions about race. We are asking the justice system to solve intractable racial justice problems that no other institution—not politics, not the media, and not academia—can resolve. No wonder these choices being made in courtrooms about language and law and competing claims of victimhood are going so poorly.

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When the push for transgender inclusion was about bathrooms, the discussion that ensued was about bathrooms, as if that was the start and end of the issue. Even then, there were other issues at play, locker rooms, showers, dorm and hotel rooms, that didn’t catch the level of interest of bathrooms. That meant people talked about stalls where people did their business, and what was the big deal, really?

The problem was never bathrooms, even if locker rooms, showers and dorms didn’t fit as nicely into the “no biggie” paradigm. Some women raised the issue of privacy, of a safe space for women, and for young girls, to clean and dress without seeing a penis, and without someone with a penis seeing them naked. The “social construct” argument was created in part to overcome the cognitive dissonance of this situation. It was a fight about nothing, about something society invented that didn’t really exist. Continue reading →

Outrage struck again, which would ordinarily make this a day like any other, but this time it was over rulings in limine by Kenosha County Circuit Court Judge Bruce Schroeder in advance of the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse.

The motion asks that the defense “be prohibited from referring to Joseph Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber or Gaige Grosskreutz* as ‘rioters,’ ‘looters,’ ‘arsonists’ or any other pejorative term. Much like this court prohibits the state from referring to anyone as a “victim,’ these terms prejudice the status of these individuals.”

The motion also asks that all parties in the case refer to Rittenhouse, the witnesses and the men shot “formally by their last names.” Throughout the case, supporters of Rittenhouse have typically referred to him as Kyle, emphasizing his youth.

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Zuck owns Facebook. Jack owns Twitter. Biden is president. At Reason, Robby Soave argues that the war over Section 230, reining in disinformation, hate speech, harassment and whatever other ills come at you through the ether, is really about the big question: Who should be in charge of the web?

Note as well that bowing to the Vietnamese government’s demand for greater censorship is being treated as a bad thing by some of the same outlets that are shaming Facebook for not bowing to the U.S. government’s request for greater censorship. The site’s failure to take down extremism, hate speech, and misinformation related to U.S. presidential elections and the COVID-19 pandemic is considered a grave moral failing. U.S. senators scream at Facebook for doing the bidding of other governments while engaged in the very act of trying to compel Facebook to do the bidding of the U.S. Senate. Continue reading →

There is nothing wrong with acknowledging that the land beneath our feet, upon which our homes stand and where our children play once belonged to others. Whether that’s the horror of colonization or the normal trend of humanity as reflected in how peoples have rise and fall is a different matter. Were the people from whom the last colonizers took the land the rightful “owners,” or did their ancestors take it from their predecessors? Does it matter? It does if you work at the Toronto Zoo. Continue reading →

As happens occasionally, I scroll through the usual suspects to see what strikes my interest and to which I think something else needs to be said. Today was one of those interesting days when all I found was more of the same, more culture war battles over issues beaten to death and more predictions of legal doom that have yet to happen but are carefully worded to put the fear of disaster into the hearts of those with more fear than knowledge.

I didn’t feel like playing today. There was nothing new or interesting, and I prefer not to repeat myself if there is no nuance that raises some variation on a theme. I started to write a post this morning, and after getting about three paragraphs in, realized that it was nothing new, had nowhere to go and offered nothing of even arguable insight. Continue reading →

I’m not sure that Wesley Yang’s point about why LGBT+ has a plus on the end is correct, that it’s not just a shorthand to include the recent invention of 31 flavors of gender, as opposed to an invitation to add new gender labels. There is a penchant for creating labels, and rules that define them, for the sort of stuff that has always been but didn’t need a label before. Even the New York Post has gotten into the deal, explaining the meaning of “fluid bonding” between “demisexuals,” or as others might call it, unprotected sex with someone you love.

“Fluid bonding” — the act of intentionally sharing bodily juices with a sexual partner — is purportedly becoming a popular practice in bedrooms across the nation.

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It would seem too obvious to mention that different colleges, different majors, are going to attract different students and produce different outcomes. Preston Cooper calculated the Return on Investment for 30,000 bachelor’s degrees. This may thrill you or not, but it’s a valuable tool, even if anyone’s personal experience doesn’t match it. When  you’re about to invest a lot of time and money, at least have a working understanding of what to expect when you come out on the other end.

To the extent you can get it, you get to choose. Choose wisely. Continue reading →