vxbush 6/3/2022 6:14:05 AM

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buzzsawmonkey 6/3/2022 7:05:14 AM

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Reminder:

The gay-rights movement exists to destroy the First Amendment without having to repeal it.. It is the gay-rights movement that has created, and popularized, the following distortions of political speech:

1) The invention of "hate speech." There is no such thing as "hate speech." The very term is a truncation of the term "hateful speech"---and the truncation is significant. Nobody denies that some speech can be "hateful," or express hateful ideas, but the traditional response to "hateful" speech has always been more speech---i.e., engaging with the hateful ideas expressed to show how and why they are hateful, to defeat them in the marketplace of ideas.

"Hate speech," by contrast, is a term used to place ideas outside the realm of engagement---to avoid engagement instead of confronting the offending idea. While the terms appear superficially similar, "hateful speech" is an invitation to engagement, debate, and free thought; "hate speech" is a term used to disengage and suppress opposing viewpoints. The gay-rights movement has used and popularized the term "hate speech" for over 40 years.

2) The false equation of speech with violence. "Baiting," as in "red-baiting," was a common term fifty years ago. It referred to the practice of accusing someone (often accurately) of being a Leftist. "Gay-baiting," derived from "red-baiting," was the similar practice of accusing someone of being homosexual. The gay-rights movement used to decry "gay-bashing"---the once-common practice of people (often gangs of teens) randomly physically attacking persons they believed to be homosexual. About 40 years ago, however, the gay-rights movement began to conflate "-baiting" and "-bashing"---i.e., the movement began to refer to those who verbally disagreed with its political goals of the moment as "bashing" the movement. This subtle substitution of a term denoting physical violence for a term denoting political opposition has since become widespread across the political spectrum, so much so that it is now routine to hear people in the news describe someone who disagrees as "bashing" the person they disagree with.

3) The invention of the "-ophobia" locution. The "-ophobia" locution, as in "homophobia," was invented by the gay-rights movement as an "I'm-rubber-you're-glue" retort to the psychiatric establishment; "You say we're "sick?" You're sick!" It is ironic that the Islamists have adopted this locution ("Islamophobia") along with much of the rest of the gay-rights movement playbook, without objection by the gay-rights movement---even though the Islamists would surely slay the adherents of the gay-rights movement were they to gain sufficient political power.

4) Blurring the distinction between civil rights and "human rights." The gay-rights movement has never been a civil-rights movement; it has always been a "human rights" movement. Civil rights under the Constitution are rights held by the individual against the government, to prevent or provide redress against government overreach; "human rights" are invariably demands by an aggrieved group for some form of government preference or largesse on the basis of membership in the aggrieved group.

The gay-rights movement has been actively working to blur the distinction between civil rights and "human rights" since at least the Anita Bryant controversy of the late 1970s. The reason the movement fought so hard to obtain same-sex marriage is that this provided the movement with its first toehold in civil rights law---and therefore provided the movement with a siege platform from which it could attack other elements of the First Amendment.

5) Distortion of the concept of "discrimination." "Discrimination" is not illegal---indeed, discrimination, the making of distinctions, is a necessary element of day-to-day existence. Invidious discrimination is something that the law addresses---e.g., distinctions that are based solely on race, religion, or national origin. Even these distinctions may be permissible, if it can be shown that they are done to further a "compelling state interest," but that is a very high bar of proof to meet.

Current discourse, however, has degraded "invidious discrimination" to the point where the mere invocation of "discrimination" is considered proof of evil. This is a linguistic and legal distortion akin to the distortion of "hateful speech" to "hate speech." This debasement of the political language may also be laid at the doorstep of the gay-rights movement.

Occasional Reader 6/3/2022 7:52:57 AM

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Dem tweets that have aged worse than Kelly McGillis (part eleventy of a series):

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/06/02/is-this-the-most-horribly-aged-tweet-ever-n1602867

JCM 6/3/2022 8:21:26 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 3:

Lies, damn lies and statistics.

doppelganglander 6/3/2022 8:42:20 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 3:

That's an example my old stats professor would have loved. His lecture on how to lie with statistics was so popular, lots of non-students attended. The whole course was great - he used gambling to illustrate probability - but that lecture was probably the most significant hour of my formal education. 

Occasional Reader 6/3/2022 9:46:54 AM

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Occasional Reader 6/3/2022 9:49:38 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 6:

oh, he’s also going to fight “white supremacy“. Of course. Big problem here in DC. Sometimes I can’t sleep at night because of the glare from all the burning crosses.

Occasional Reader 6/3/2022 9:51:37 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 6:

and just to explain the last part of that post; that is to say, when asked about voting, all he talks about is voting for the Democratic primary. He doesn’t even mention the general election.

JCM 6/3/2022 10:06:11 AM

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King County Regional Homeless Authority OKs budget with eye on safe lots for RVs

Oh, you need RV lots....

What about all those RV parks you IJITS ZONED OUT OF EXISTENCE? 'cause RV lots were eyesores, and didn't have the tax revenue levels you like?

Morons.

buzzsawmonkey 6/3/2022 10:22:58 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 6:

I note that he also alludes, in the course of the blather cascade, to something that sounds very much like the "Freelance Isn't Free Act" which NYC passed a few years ago and a version of which is apparently now crawling its way through the legislature in Albany.  

I sat in on a CLE program yesterday about this law, and frankly it seems to be largely duplicative of existing remedies---but with its very own new bureaucracy!

Kosh's Shadow 6/3/2022 10:27:14 AM

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In #6 Occasional Reader said: Here’s an interview with one of the Democrats running for DC Attorney General. he flat out says that he’s going to use the job in order to “re-distribute“ “resources“. And also, to fight “hate“. not one word about the explosion in crime in the city. But he’s going to redistribute wealth, and be the thought police.

After all, the criminals are "re-distributing resources", right? 

Occasional Reader 6/3/2022 12:28:50 PM

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In #10 buzzsawmonkey said: I note that he also alludes, in the course of the blather cascade, to something that sounds very much like the "Freelance Isn't Free Act"

I missed that part.  What is the substance of it?

vxbush 6/3/2022 1:36:43 PM

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Sigh. Spent all day trying to find some code I wrote six months ago, and for the life of me I can't find it. So I get to rewrite it all again. Winning!

buzzsawmonkey 6/3/2022 1:42:05 PM

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In #12 Occasional Reader said: I missed that part.  What is the substance of it?

When he talks---very briefly---about "freelance workers" and "independent contractors" getting what they're entitled to. 

I should mention here that my old organization, and a lot of its traditional allied organizations, in NYC are all giddy about the prospect of the "Freelance Isn't Free Act" ("FIFA") getting enacted at the state, not merely the self-destructive city, level.  

At the (Zoom) CLE I attended the other day, I asked the speakers blatherers how this law would, on a practical basis, enhance the protections already in existence via small-claims court ($5000 recovery limit), timely copyright registration, etc., etc.; how did the addition of a layer of Office of Labor Protection (I may have the name slightly wrong) bureaucrats improve/streamline the process of getting paid?  No answer.  When they started yapping about how this as-of-yesterday-not-yet-passed-law "forbids retaliation and blacklisting," I typed in a query based on the fact that some decades ago, when I was drawing for the New York Times, they stiffed me on some $350---a significant sum in those days, given that the monthly rent on my Soho slum apartment was $200.   The Times never said they didn't owe me the money; they merely said they didn't want to pay it.  My feeling was that if it was important enough for them to gyp me out of, it was important enough for me to go after; I finally made it up to the office of the High Art Director Over All Other Art Directors, who asked me what they owed me; when I told him, he cut me a check, and I didn't work for the Times for ten years plus---not until an old friend of mine got into a position of authority there.   Blacklisting?  Retaliation?  Of course.  Provable? Not so much.  I asked the program blatherers how this Fabulous New Law could/would counteract that, and they deleted my question.

Kosh's Shadow 6/3/2022 1:55:31 PM

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Reply to vxbush in 13:

If you remember any of its contents, grep to the rescue! (On Linux and Windows Subsystem for Linux) 

I use it via WSL more than Windows' find tool.

Arcane Unix names, but at least grep = Global Regular Expression Parser - is more explanatory than another text processing Unix tool, awk, named after its authors - Aho, Weinberger, and Kernighan

Although I've found that grep works best when searching subdirectories when used with find. from the top level directory, 

find . -name '*.cpp' -exec grep -H  foo '{}' \;

will search down from the current directory and report all C++ source files that contain "foo"

Kosh's Shadow 6/3/2022 2:00:41 PM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 14:

Same with age discrimination. Everyone knows it exists in employment, but hard to prove.

Or bringing in cheap labor on H1b visas by claiming they can't find someone who meets their job requirements. But they don't have to show the person they brought in DOES meet those requirements. I am sure I've had interviews so they could say they interviewed Americans and couldn't find someone. 

Note that when .NET was out maybe 2 years, there were job descriptions requiring 5 years of experience with it. I doubt they hired people from Microsoft who worked on it before release.

vxbush 6/3/2022 2:13:25 PM

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In #15 Kosh's Shadow said: If you remember any of its contents, grep to the rescue! (On Linux and Windows Subsystem for Linux) 

Oh, trust me. I tried that. Apple has a somewhat okay search function, but the BBEdit text editor can do multiple file searches using regular expression syntax. So I did that on several code snippets and variables names and function names I know I had right, and they didn't show up anywhere on this machine. I clearly either deleted them accidentally or never saved the file. 

buzzsawmonkey 6/3/2022 2:13:47 PM

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In #16 Kosh's Shadow said: Same with age discrimination. Everyone knows it exists in employment, but hard to prove.

My late friend, dumped by the City of New York by the racist Chinese incompetent who was elected to head her office, applied for job after job after job after job, finally realizing she was being "interviewed" merely to fulfill EEOC requirements, and not for an actual position.

Kosh's Shadow 6/3/2022 2:22:54 PM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 18:

The only reason I am working is because as a Federally funded location, they are careful to meet all the anti-discrimination rules lest they get into trouble because someone wants to cause trouble.

So they do discriminate, based on ability. I note the previous group had someone in a motorized wheelchair who could barely use his hands; used an on screen keyboard and software that could detect where he was looking. He was good at his job, but probably would not have been hired anywhere else. The government does get their money's worth from him.

Also, they not only have to justify the person they select, but explain why the other candidates were rejected. I believe "cheated on the coding test" was one reason.

buzzsawmonkey 6/3/2022 2:32:50 PM

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In #19 Kosh's Shadow said: So they do discriminate, based on ability.

I was told that there were so many Jews involved in the Manhattan Project not merely because they were the best physicists, but because they were all eager for work because private industry would not hire them.  

My father's college roommate went on a job interview that been set up by one of their profs; the interviewer called the roommate a "Jewboy" a couple of times too many, and the roommate told the interviewer to go f*ck himself and walked out.  The prof who'd set up the interview was furious at the student, since he'd gone out on a limb merely by recommending a Jew in the first place.

Kosh's Shadow 6/3/2022 2:32:57 PM

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My most recent job search, I ignored positions that were clearly to reject someone and bring in H1b candidates. I was getting enough activity for unemployment, and I'm less than 2 weeks from being able to collect full Social Security. I'd rather wait, and I'm glad I have the position, but I wasn't going to waste my time.

Previously, one financial place in Boston interviewed me for a Python position. I've use Python, but it has not been my primary computer language. They gave me a coding test, and then rejected me because I did not format the comments well enough. The code worked and worked efficiently; I wrote idiomatic Python, not C++ code structures in Python*; they had to find some nitpick to reject me. If I had taken the time to format they comments well, they would have found some other reason to reject me. I was interviewed because they thought I wouldn't be as good at Python as I am.

*I used list comprehensions, not explicit loops

Kosh's Shadow 6/3/2022 2:35:54 PM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 20:

Similarly, I don't think I've worked many places where I saw Jews wearing kippot, but did at the lab.

At DEC, I have my thoughts about who might have screwed up my career there (not that the company lasted much longer) because he and his cronies were into conspiracy theories, largely about the Kennedy assassination, but conspiracy nuts often blame the joooos.

I also note I could not get interviews at another company he worked for despite fitting the positions well.

buzzsawmonkey 6/3/2022 2:43:43 PM

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In #22 Kosh's Shadow said: I don't think I've worked many places where I saw Jews wearing kippot

Well, if you want to be discreet, kippot under your hat...

Kosh's Shadow 6/3/2022 3:02:37 PM

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In #23 buzzsawmonkey said: Well, if you want to be discreet, kippot under your hat...

You tallit like it is

buzzsawmonkey 6/3/2022 3:17:02 PM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 24:

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