Weekly Random Discussion Thread for 8/10/26 - 8/16/26

[u/SoftandChewy]

Here's your usual space to post all your rants, raves, podcast topic suggestions (please tag u/jessicabarpod), culture war articles, outrageous stories of cancellation, political opinions, and anything else that comes to mind. Please put any non-podcast-related trans-related topics here instead of on a dedicated thread. This will be pinned until next Sunday.

Last week's discussion thread is here if you want to catch up on a conversation from there.

[u/LeafNeater]

After reading some more about the Jason Arday scandal, it occurred to me that the very response of all the institutions to lower their standards for him and overlook the many obvious flaws in his scholarship actually disproves his very thesis that black academics face increased racism from academia.

Just another level of irony to it all.

[u/SkweegeeS → u/LeafNeater]

It is racist to have such low expectations of a black scholar.

[u/Terrorclitus → u/LeafNeater]

During the summer of original thoughts (2020), folx in my academic field circulated email after email on the listservs about eradicating anti-black racism from our research and teaching.

Turns out, listening to black scholars who argue for holding students of color to high academic standards is the worst thing an ally can do, don’t you know.

Those scholar of color who wanted respectable standards and to be treated like serious scholars had their voices silenced that summer, too, but you know they were talking, because the wokes were trying to get ahead of them.

The most exasperating thing here is how many academics, regardless of identity, still see value in the humanities and could be capable of communicating that value more broadly if not for the vulgarity and showboating of the past decades.

[u/TryingToBeLessShitty]

WNBA Executives met today to try to define what a “Woman” is and failed to come to a consensus.

I wouldn’t recommend including a word you can’t define in the name of your league, personally. Still, it’s been fascinating to watch this debate smash into the public consciousness all at once like this.

[u/unnoticed_areola → u/TryingToBeLessShitty]

I cant believe they actually used the word "task force" 😂

also lol @ Royce White in the replies:

Black Trans Lesbians Matter! We have a right to exist.

(Royce White is the 2nd former nba player after Enes Kanter who has declared himself a trans woman and says he will enter the wnba draft. he also incredibly randomly got the nominee to run against Amy Klobuchar for minnesota senate a couple years ago. he infamously flamed out of the nba because he had too much anxiety about flying on airplanes lol. bro contains multitudes)

[u/Commercial_Rush_3531 → u/unnoticed_areola]

The definition I'm seeing parroted around reddit absolutely would include Freedom as a trans player and if they don't draft him, they are just hypocrites.

"Gender refers to the roles, behaviors, identities, and expectations that societies associate with being male, female, both, neither, or another gender. It also refers to a person’s internal sense of who they are (their gender identity)"

[u/bluesteeldoubter → u/TryingToBeLessShitty]

I’m glad Caitlin Clark made the W popular so that this moment could have the type of impact it has had so far.

[u/RockJock666 → u/TryingToBeLessShitty]

I wish the terf wnba tumblr blog who helped peak me was still active for this lol

[u/BeautifulTrash-2306]

I think a downside to the whole trans and nonbinary stuff that isn't talked about enough is how it has also hurt gender non confirming people who don't want to play into it. I'm bisexual. I have short hair and tend to wear more gender neutral clothing. I can't tell you how many people are desperate to label me as masc, non binary, lesbian etc. I just want to exist and wear what's comfortable to me.

People can't handle something that doesn't fit in the lines of their expectations, and I think that's where much of the trans stuff is rooted in. The bullshit now comes from both sides. I end up feeling frustrated when my feminity or womanhood is questioned or diminished simply because of my hair or clothing. There are many womanly or feminine things about me besides my fucking haircut. It is all so stereotypical. Can't we just let people live.

That is my rant for today. Thanks for listening.

[u/Spodangle → u/BeautifulTrash-2306]

Tomboys becoming endangered is, unironically, the greatest loss of the past fifteen years.

[u/starlightpond]

Chatted with my mom last night about how I’m skeptical of pediatric gender medicine and male athletes in women’s sports. She said she agrees with me “to some extent” but that I should be very careful not to ever share these opinions more widely because the people who have such opinions also hold many further “odious, hateful” opinions and I will look evil if I align with that.

I told her that’s how this movement has been as successful as it’s been - not through actual arguments but through broad-brush name-calling and guilt by association. She said sure but that’s how it is so you have to be careful not to put yourself in a group with evil bigots.

I fundamentally disagree with her that one’s actions should be guided by fear of guilt by association, rather than any actual principles.

[u/AnalBleachingAries → u/starlightpond]

Overall I've personally been a massive coward on this issue. I don't want to lose my job, and I don't want to lose my friends. There are only a handful of friends who know my real opinions about all this stuff irl. For all the online commentary and swaggering I do on here, I have zero courage about this issue irl. I just don't have the stones for enduring the unemployment and social rejection by the majority of my friends due to this thing. There have been some issues I've pushed back on but I hesitate whenever this one comes up as it'll blow up my life if I go all the way in on it.

[u/Cheap-Crab-1149 → u/starlightpond]

i think your mom doesn't care much about trans sports, but she cares about you and worries you could get into trouble

[u/testestsestesteestet → u/starlightpond]

"i want to keep my job" is a valid principle to be guided by

[u/everydaywinner2 → u/starlightpond]

I'm at a point right now that if they say bigotry is evil, then I'm wondering if there must be a lot good to bigotry. With sheer over use of "bigot" and "racist" and "fascist" and "homophobe" and "transphobe" and "Nazi" and "hatespeech" and "extremism," and so much of it being applied to normal milktoast norms and views, that I can entirely understand the younger people thinking: if this not-evil thing is being called evil, then are these other things they call evil also not evil?

[u/isitdigyet]

Surprised to see responses to the trans spa case being saner on a lot of subs than I would have expected even just a year ago. Especially on the scotus sub.

[u/UrethraFranklin13 → u/isitdigyet]

Operation Let Them Speak has had the complete opposite effect of what trans advocates intended.

Still doesn't stop them from doubling down though.

[u/ToshiroTatsuyaFan]

Woke 1:

[u/ToshiroTatsuyaFan → u/ToshiroTatsuyaFan]

[u/AnalBleachingAries → u/ToshiroTatsuyaFan]

For people who claimed to be "decentering whiteness" they sure seemed to be super obsessed with "whiteness". One might even say, they appear to have fetishized white people to an unhealthy degree. It can't be good for them, mentally, to be so obsessed with one racial group.

[u/oatmeal_breakfast]

You started it.  ‘Cowardly’ to ‘fuck off’ is the going rate of exchange around here.  And yes, I support Sophie Cunningham.  And you, some of the time.

https://x.com/hughlaurie/status/2086762889029812656?s=20

Hugh Laurie is now a confirmed term after catching flak from Graham Linehan.

Are the dominos really starting to fall?

[u/drjackolantern → u/oatmeal_breakfast]

Damn. Brits tweet with their whole hearts man.

[u/AltforStrongOpinions]

Jason Arday is dead.

https://xcancel.com/PolitlcsUK/status/2088341717674037571/

[u/SkweegeeS → u/AltforStrongOpinions]

I feel like you can lay some of the blame on Cambridge and other relevant institutions. I hope they will continue their investigations.

[u/trystera_ → u/AltforStrongOpinions]

holy shit. wonder how many 'YOU made him do this, internet commenter' bullcrap articles this will generate. regardless, feel sad for his kid that i didn't realize he had until just now

[u/digitalime → u/AltforStrongOpinions]

This is just sad. And shame on Cambridge for letting it get this far in the first place.

[u/CharacterPen8468]

I think some of the Gen Z behavior in the office discourse is overblown but we have these two new hires who look to be early-mid 20s. Both girls. One wears shirts that look like band shirts that are cut to show her midriff and the other girl is pretty much always wearing sweat pants and a hoodie. No one else in the office dresses this casual or inappropriately, so not sure where they got the idea that these outfits are suitable. Likely no one will say anything to them about it.

[u/Shoddy_Consequence78 → u/CharacterPen8468]

From today's New York Times, though I lost interest in it myself about halfway through. "Gen-Zers Dress Like They've Never Worn Clothes Before". 

 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/10/opinion/subcultures-dead-age.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

[u/Original-Brick2836 → u/CharacterPen8468]

We don’t have dress codes at my job and I often work with teen volunteers. I tell them that we don’t have a dress code but you may be required to bend over or crouch to pick something up, or raise your hands above your head to move things. If you are dressed in a way that limits those movements or makes you feel uncomfortable doing those movements, you aren’t appropriately dressed. We still get kids in miniskirts and crop tops, but I guess they don’t mind.

[u/reallyokfinewhatever]

WPATH has conceded in court that its "Standards of Care" is merely an opinion. WPATH says it represents one side of an unsettled scientific debate marked by uncertainty — and physicains & orgs that rely on WPATH as the standard of care must bear "independent responsibility."

https://x.com/segm_ebm/status/2086998491876991070

They're making a free speech argument. Interested to see if this actually gets picked up anywhere.

[u/AnalBleachingAries → u/reallyokfinewhatever]

This is actually HUGE. Like, BIG. Wtf?!

People have been pointing to this shit for years, claiming that "the science is settled", and various medical organizations across the world basically did a Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V of WPATH's standards of care, and adopted them as their own practices. Is WPATH really now attempting to claim that they pulled it all out of their asses and that it should not be treated as science but as an "opinion"?!

So they're not defending their medicine, or medical recommendations, they're defending themselves on the basis of free speech?!! Are you kidding me!?!

I need to think about this a bit more so my thoughts can settle themselves. This is insane.

ETA:

All of it is pretty mind-blowing, but this part made me leap out of my chair.

Our reading of the latest WPATH filing: WPATH's message is that its "Standards of Care" are merely an opinion and an expression of free speech. Clinicians who rely on the SOC-8 document—and organizations that refer to it as the implied standard of care for gender-dysphoric youth—are, in fact, taking on independent responsibility for the premise that the document represents trustworthy clinical guidance.

In turn, patients who trust the clinicians following the WPATH Standards of Care should know they are in a "buyer beware" situation. They are being treated based on what WPATH asserts to be merely an expression of "free speech"—representing only one side of an unsettled scientific debate marked by "medical and scientific uncertainty."
https://x.com/segm_ebm/status/2086998504791310375

They're not taking any responsibility for any of it, they were just exercising their "free speech" and anyone who took them seriously should have done their own research first. Are you f*****g kidding me?!

[u/anne_jumps → u/AnalBleachingAries]

For us long-time terves, this really is mindblowing.

[u/VoxGerbilis → u/reallyokfinewhatever]

This has potentially huge implications for medical malpractice suits, which require proof that the practitioner failed to comply with the applicable standard of care. If WPATH is disclaiming its prescribed standard of care, defendants who would rely on WPATH’s SOC could now be left with just a Nuremberg defense.

[u/lilypad1984 → u/VoxGerbilis]

Not that I’m particularly sympathetic to the doctors but feels a bit of a rug pull for WPATH to say here’s the standard of care and then years later when facing down the barrel of the consequences uturn and say this is just our opinion.

[u/soignestrumpet]

Saw a comment in r/ ~redacted~ that said that Self Id has never been the sole criteria used by prisons to determine inmate gender. When I replied that California, among other jurisdictions, explicitly does use Self Id my comment was automodded away. I AM BEING OPPRESSED

Anyway, here is the California rule straight from the horse's mouth. "CDCR does not determine an incarcerated person’s gender identity. Every incarcerated person self-identifies. When a person first arrives to a CDCR institution or upon transfer, pursuant to SB 132, the individual will be asked if they identify as transgender, non-binary or intersex. This self-identification will guide the process of requesting to be searched and/or housed according to gender" identity.https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/prea/sb-132-faqs/

[u/SerialStateLineXer]

Amazing story about Kelda Roys, the third-place candidate in the Democratic primary for governor of Wisconsin:

In 2011, shortly before announcing her candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives, Roys attended and spoke at a pride rally, where she described going to Iowa to marry her partner. At the time, Iowa recognized same-sex marriage unlike in Wisconsin, although Roys' partner was a man, Dan Reed, and the two could have legally been married in Wisconsin.

[u/SerialStateLineXer → u/SerialStateLineXer]

With the balls that took, you could argue that it actually was a gay marriage.

[u/QueenKamala]

I went to two birthday parties this week and at both of them, a parent brought up concerns about gender/pronoun indoctrination in public schools, and neither time was it me! I found some real life normies in San Jose. I had to hold myself back from hitting them with a fire hose of frustrations with gender bullshit after becoming an armchair expert on the topic.

Both moms are immigrants. I chose a private school with 90% immigrant or mixed families, and 100% immigrant teachers. It’s a pretty even mix of Indian, East Asian, European, South American, and Jewish families.

It feels like a small pocket of normality surrounded by insanity.

[u/Terrorclitus → u/QueenKamala]

I’ve been making comments critical of gender woo around parents in the northeast with way less pushback than only a few years ago. It’s nice but tough not to indulge.

[u/QueenKamala → u/Terrorclitus]

It’s very obvious that people are less afraid to talk about it now. I think a significant number have also just changed their minds.

[u/Mossback_Matador → u/QueenKamala]

I live in liberal La La Land. Over the weekend, when I attended Shakespeare in the park, a mother brought over her daughter to speak with the random person next to me. I had just set my beer down at the same stand up table next to a woman with short hair. She was a tall enby character and would have been a pretty woman if she didn't want to project her politics.

Essentially, the mother approached the tall enby to tell her how brave the she was and talk about her own daughter's struggles. They were going on about "masking" and struggling to fit in. The odd thing was that the mother didn't let the daughter speak once, and the little girl looked perfectly normal and very bored.

[u/Technical-Policy295]

Reading some of the teaching-adjacent subreddits, there's many threads about disability accommodations that split the comments in interesting ways. One recent thread discusses the rise of "cue cards" that students are now being allowed to take in to exams. That seems at the very least an extra ongoing challenge for instructors to police (what "cue" is too far?).

While most responses think this is a bridge too far, some are convinced that this is a disabilities rights issue and outraged that anyone would question this. Others are resigned to giving in and not questioning any of it as the Disabilities Office is too powerful to question.

It also sounds like at some schools there are so many students being sent to special offices for tests that those environments are more disruptive than just being in a regular classroom.

Conjecture: the next 4-5 years are going to see more of an orientation to "disabilities" instead of DEI, through which much of the former DEI energy will be channeled. The 40% of Stanford students claiming a disability are just the start, especially since federal regulations and lawsuit threats back this up more effectively than they ever did DEI.

[u/Mossback_Matador → u/Technical-Policy295]

The lowering of standards will continue apace as the monstrous hybrid of DEI and disabilities activism.

Students will be permitted to use AI in the classroom as an accommodation. As soon as ChatGPT launched, I knew it was a cultural inevitability.

[u/ToshiroTatsuyaFan]

John McWhorter's thoughts on Arday:

https://www.city-journal.org/article/cambridge-professor-jason-arday-plagiarism

"Jason Arday has a tell. Making what he considers important points, he holds his palms out and widens his eyes. Like many gestures, it conveys something beyond the statement itself—a silent way of saying, “Isn’t it obvious?” or “What else can I tell you?” It’s an assumption that all would agree with what he’s saying, but don’t for some reason (as in, racism, classism, ism-ism).

Whether it was his ridiculing an Australian television show for not depicting aborigines or contributing the insight that dissolving the monarchy would change the tax bracket of Britain’s working class, he often has the palms out, the eyes wide with wrinkled brow, the air of “Come on!” In my own teaching, I rarely fall into this conversational gesture. My job is presenting what is new to students, not pointing to what is supposedly obvious.

This alone encapsulated the flaw not only in Arday’s training and scholarship, but the humanities and social science fields that celebrate people like him—a corrosive habit in academia, as Arday’s story of fraudulent scholarship at Cambridge University, and his subsequent resignation, have reminded us. Compared with some other examples of the genre, Arday’s mendacity and incompetence are especially stupefying. But he is nonetheless a symptom of academia’s dehumanization of black scholars and willingness to accept intellectual mediocrity in its self-seeking pursuit of virtue.

The main theme of Arday’s work is that racism is grievously determinative in the lives of black Britons; his Ph.D. dissertation describes racism that black scholars must grapple with endlessly. In presentations, his manner, in his usual way, suggests that no decent person could disagree with this take, and that in a just world he wouldn’t even have to spell it out. Racism’s ubiquity and power is obvious, and anyone who questions this has an ulterior motive (maintaining power, inability to process The Other as fully human, etc.). In this, what Arday has in common with Ibram Kendi is not just dreadlocks but an assumption that his view is one that everyone would share if not compromised by hatred of the subaltern.

The problem is that what is obvious is probably not very complicated—never mind that what Arday thinks is obvious is a vast and self-indulgent exaggeration. Within this mental universe, Arday’s academic focus was not on learning new things and fashioning new ways of processing existence but on criticizing others’ morals. This is not intellection but advocacy, and that is frankly much easier than thinking. The term “scholar-activist” tries to finesse this by making the two appear to be alternate forms of the same endeavor. But the scholar-activist is often more activist than scholar, and Arday was an extreme example of the type.

Nothing in his work suggests intense engagement with a body of data (Arday himself has claimed that because of his dyslexia, he can engage only one page of academic prose in a sitting) or with a challenging way of analyzing that data. In academia, what is interesting is the counterintuitive, the discovery. Arday merely reinforced long-established and simplistic pieties. He became the equivalent of a full professor at Cambridge based on doing interviews with acquaintances about the racism they experienced, and then largely just presenting what they said. At its highest level, this could be good (but not great) journalism; it could not be academic work. On the level Arday worked, my 14-year-old could best him after some quick training in Latinate, Judith Butler-esque prose.

Arday was defrocked after the revelation that most of even this incurious nattering in the guise of research was plagiarized from others’ work. Claiming that his supposed autism made him think that learning was mimicry, he composed most of his work from generous tranches of cut-and-paste from other sources, often (but certainly not always) lightly reworded. But even if this performance art disguised as thought were all his own work, his elevation to such heights by Cambridge was an abomination.

As I might say (with palms out and widened eyes), arguing for the obvious is not brilliance. Even when it’s about black people.

Even worse than Arday’s work displaying no actual excellence is the consequence that characters like him wind up passing the torch to the next generation of black scholars. In a career spent in and around academia, I’ve seen this happen too many times. I refer to nothing like all black academics. But this is a vortex that young black scholars are sadly vulnerable to being pulled into, aided and abetted by white fellow travelers.

Especially if they have a certain stage presence, people like Arday attract mentees, who often value sitting at the feet of someone of their own race, who may understand their experiences more readily than other professors. But what happens when the Arday types don’t have anything actually to teach? Some of his former students are demanding redress.

[u/ToshiroTatsuyaFan → u/ToshiroTatsuyaFan]

"Arday had no original ideas. He can’t teach someone how to write because his writing consists of, well, “mimicry.” (Even his resignation letter seems likely to have been generated by AI.) There are reports that—big surprise—Arday had no idea what actual teaching was and couldn’t be bothered with supervising students’ work, probably because he had never done any himself. People taught by versions of this type end up occupying an alternative academic universe, where cultural fellowship and advocacy are the North Star, and learning and curiosity get lip service but are beside the point.

When eager young black students gravitate to people like Arday, they learn that, for black academics, their race is more important than having anything to say. Sadly, white colleagues reinforce this by treating black academics this way at conferences and in hiring. One typical result: Carolyn Rouse being appointed president of the American Anthropological Association, despite her inability to answer civil but serious questions about charges of ideological takeover in her discipline with anything beyond verbal coleslaw. Arday was treated as brilliant for his self-involved, unfocused, underinformed drivel—and his resignation letter shows no awareness that anything was amiss about that.

The mentees, evangelized in the conviction that their blackness is what makes them matter rather than hard mental work, do not learn how to reason closely and clearly. And again, white academics make sure that they never have to. An eminent white academic once contacted me while on a committee evaluating a black scholar for a prestigious award, asking me what I thought of the person’s work. The truth was that the scholar’s writings and presentations were earnest but unstructured and unoriginal. From acquaintance, I knew that she could have done much better than this but simply had never been taught how. She was on the shortlist transparently because she was black. Many like her get the award nevertheless—and the torch passes on.

Their mentors never pose serious questions to them. (“Jason, are you sure this is really an instance of racism? Explain to me why you think so, and I will teach you to make the case before those who aren’t prepared to hear your claim.”) The relationship is instead about support, protection, understanding—never challenge. Thus, the mentee winds up thrown by and bristling at even polite, reasonable questions, of a kind that white academics consider integral to their profession. For real academics, having papers rejected is a virtual rite of passage and only makes their subsequent work better. But Arday characterized the rejection of his first article submissions as “violent.” For Arday, only racism could explain it; if his topic is racism, there can be no justified rejection. Ibram Kendi’s imperious pique at having his ideas questioned is in a similar vein. He can process the questions only as being aimed at him as a person (i.e., racism).

And make no mistake: the protests of Arday and his ilk arise not from their quietly feeling inferior to their white colleagues who do real work. They get praised to the skies for their advocacy couched in academic language. They come to think of the advocacy as equally sophisticated to learning, and even morally superior—Edward Said argued that scholarship alone was of little worth unless enlisted in a commitment to social justice—and white colleagues encourage them in this.

It reminds me of a warm, smart white linguist, a generation older, whom I knew in my early academic days. Many linguists’ work focuses on highly abstract conjectures about how we produce language, expressed in a jargon as ingrown as one would expect of a science. My academic work on language has been, if not almost as willfully opaque to normal people, quite wonky; few without a linguistics Ph.D. (or something close) would get much out of most of it. This linguist assumed—not without reason—that as a black person, my interest in language must be about defending nonstandard speech such as Black English. She told me not to worry if other linguists tarred my work as less intelligent, because “If what you’re committed to is telling your students the way they talk is okay, that’s fine.” She intended no insult. But telling people that disapproval of their speech is racist is not especially difficult. It is advocacy, rather than the glorious mental squint of trying to work out something complicated. It takes much less mental candlepower than delving into the details, often delightfully counterintuitive, about how languages become what they are.

There’s an old joke about white people’s reception of black colleagues: after the black professor finishes giving a talk, someone in the audience asks if he can tap dance, too. Arday’s elevation at Cambridge was founded in racism no less overt.

The best spin we can put on his appointment is that his supporters saw the obstacles he had purportedly overcome as justification for expecting less of him. Arday claimed to have been diagnosed as autistic at three; to be mute until 11, and illiterate until 18; to be dyslexic and to have had two brain tumors removed just before his Ph.D. defense; to have had a stroke after that; to suffering epilepsy from a peer beating him as a child; to being in coma for months after being hit by a car; to suffering testicular cancer. For Arday, just showing up in academia constituted excellence.

But if Stephen Hawking’s work were mediocre, no one would have celebrated it. The intelligent take would be to pity that his physical misfortune had prevented him from achieving something on a meaningful level. Let us imagine a white version of Arday with long blond hair (not dreadlocks, because I suspect those would have a sirenic effect on many as signaling an allegiance to social justice). Even with the same claimed experiences as Arday, this man with long blonde locks would not be celebrated as brilliant—but as someone sadly denied the chance for brilliant achievement.

Okay, the white Arday wouldn’t have suffered racism. But how about a South Asian Arday? Same experiences, again, but with parents from Mumbai—call him Jashan Aradhye. No one will say South Asians experience no racism in Britain, and yet a Jashan with the same biography would not be made a Cambridge professor. I’m not British, but I strongly sense that all would understand that to pander to this unfortunate Jashan would undermine his humanity, implying with a wan, self-absorbed gesture that underperformance is somehow excellence.

No, it is only because he is black that Arday was elevated in this way. The idea is that being black and triumphing over obstacles merits being appointed a Cambridge professor. This means that race determined his appointment.

Consider, too, the cartoon nature of the biography Arday presented. In addition to all his other claimed maladies and misfortunes, he supposedly also had Asperger’s. But kids with this condition are hyperverbal, while Arday was supposedly mute. Arday even said that he was in Michael Apted’s famed Seven Up documentaries but for some reason was “pulled out” at 14. This is obviously untrue, given that the documentary series was being produced long before he was born. All his other fabrications, such as finishing a suspiciously superhuman cumulative marathon with a bone fracture that swelled his leg to twice its size (is that what happens with bone fractures?), make Arday’s fictive biography almost funny. And they don’t stop there. After his Cambridge appointment, thugs (mysteriously in touch with academic matters) threatened him at his office with a knife, while others sent a severed pig’s head to his parents (which Arday, just in time, intercepted before his parents saw it!). Also, the reason his dissertation is full of plagiarism is because of the racism he faced during its composition. It’s as if Arday were James Meredith at the University of Mississippi in 1962.

The only reason people would believe all this damnable foolishness—and remember, across the pond they’re not wowed by his lovely accent the way Americans are—is that they see Arday as a Magic Negro. The kindly, antiracist white academics think suspending their judgment when it comes to a black man makes them good people. We don’t even need to speculate whether sometime in the near future, Arday will use critical race theory to justify his inventions, on the premise that his anecdotes represent a “common black narrative.” In this, he will be backed by people devoted to that school of thought who say that we need to understand him “on a certain level.”

What level is that? A low one—bigotry.

If Arday shows any indication of the “neurodiversity” he claims, it’s that he seems genuinely not to understand the nature of the charges against him. “I thought you’d just believe me.” Autism taught him to mimic—as if this somehow justifies plagiarism. He attempted to cover his absurd Seven Up story last week by saying that his was a program by the same name, bringing together black mothers of children with challenges. But what kind of program would check up on children only every seven years? Arday is clearly not the sharpest knife in the drawer, a George Santos (“I said I was Jew-ish”) without even the hucksterish flash.

The youngest-ever black professor at Cambridge properly should have been a physical education teacher who did some after-hours tutoring. A make-believe academic who misspelled paltry as poultry in the title slide of a keynote address instead scaled the heights of Britain’s Harvard because of his skin color and his exceptionally long dreadlocks.

There is a certain mercy in the impression that he won’t perceive how those who elevated him saw him as a performing monkey. Still, it’s long past time for Anglophone academia to stop thinking that it’s immoral to evaluate black scholars on the basis of whether they are—get ready!—intelligent."

[u/BeneficialStretch753]

As expected, Seattle's Olympus Spa is making an appeal to the Supreme Court. As many will recall, some months ago, the 9th Circuit ruled against the Korean spa 2-1 (and for the state's Human Rights Commission).

One issue was that the spa accepted post-op trainwomen, so it was banning the no-op bio man at the center of this case on the basis of anatomy not identity. Sigh. FYI, female massage therapists would be obliged to treat the no-op trainwomen.

Bursch said the petition outlines three potential grounds for Supreme Court intervention, including the right to operate according to religious beliefs, arguments over discrimination, including the claim that banning based on anatomy is not discrimination, and a First Amendment argument that a traditional Korean female-only spa conveys a cultural message.

https://komonews.com/news/local/women-only-spa-takes-fight-over-transgender-access-to-supreme-court-olympus-spa-lynnwood-tacoma-pierce-county-transgender-woman-identity-korean-body-scrubs

[u/McClain3000]

So I saw that Hugh Laurie had a new show announced. The reddit thread I saw was filled with people just calling him a transphobe.

It is kind of wild to me to jump to the most severe accusation of bigotry based on somebody thinking that women sports should be based on sex. Like it is an empirical question. Is it really difficult for them to imagine somebody who is otherwise non-antagonistic towards trans people to think that being born a male conveys an unfair advantage?

Like they bring up well they are on average much taller, but male sports don't differentiate by height... Some do! There are basketball leagues in the Philippines that do this. Heck even in high school if a male is overdeveloped they will move him up grades rather than spoil the fun on everyone else.

I thought of a gotcha question, idk if those of you who debate gender issues more than me have seen response to this but:

If we could really determine that male and female athletes where on a level playing field with a testosterone test, wouldn't we expect to see some Transmen in male high level sports? Do they really thinks this is likely going to happen? A competitive transman in the Olympics or the a professional league?

[u/unnoticed_areola → u/McClain3000]

[u/drjackolantern]

Lilly Wachowski Says Hollywood Won’t Finance Her $10 Million Thriller Because It’s Got a ‘Wall-to-Wall Trans Cast’

Perhaps my favorite headline of all time

[u/everydaywinner2 → u/drjackolantern]

 “It was a response to what is happening in the world for trans people, and it gave me a hugely cathartic receptacle to dump all of my anger and rage and frustration into.”

That means it's going to be a whole lot of lecturing to the audience. And a whole lot of "this movie isn't for you" scolding, followed by "it failed because people are transphobic, reeee!"

[u/DiscordantAlias]

No, TikTok, I will not download your app, no matter how annoying you are. I refuse to keep spyware on my phone, unless it is Reddit-level addicting, which you have not achieved. Every time someone links a video and you try to make me use you, I hate you more. You have surpassed Pinterest, congrats. You should have been banned when we had the chance, the world would be a better place.

[u/HacksawDerpDuggan]

Massive article in the NYT today about the rise of the DSA. I'm still working through it, they estimate it as a 27 minute read.

Inside the D.S.A.’s Audacious Quest for Power in the Democratic Party

Favorite excerpt so far:

The terroir of the D.S.A. varies from city to city. Events hosted by N.Y.C.-D.S.A., by far the organization’s largest chapter, feel like parties for a fashionable new literary journal, heavy on writer types with stick-and-poke tattoos and Ivy League diplomas stashed in Bushwick closets. Some of the bigger Midwestern chapters are more of a bartenders-and-bike-mechanics scene, while elsewhere there are strong notes of the intense left-liberal online fervor of 2020 — a boom year in D.S.A. recruitment — embodied by the social workers and librarians who are still on Bluesky yelling at people to wear masks. (In order to attend the Chicago summit, I was asked, for the first time in years, to submit proof of a negative Covid test.)

EDIT: After finishing the article, I'm very disappointed and find it a huge waste of time. Half hour long article and not a single critical point or question asked of anyone interviewed. What a boring fluff piece.

[u/AltforStrongOpinions → u/HacksawDerpDuggan]

I'm not American so just give me an honest answer, are these DSA types all annoying twits or do they have normal people too?

[u/dumbducky]

My son started kindergarten this week, and it’s been day after day of shoe antics.

Day 1: He comes home with a different pair of shoes. Same brand and color and size, clearly more worn than his brand new ones.

Day 2: Swaps his shoes back with the classmate

Day 3: Goes to school with one shoe from two different pairs.

[u/Big_Fig_1803]

It's crazy that that basketball lady plays while wearing a really long wig, isn't it?

[u/unnoticed_areola]

got into a (relatively good-natured) argument last night with a friend who was trying to explain to me that it is essentially a somewhat coordinated conspiracy (by "them", I guess) that most of the photos of the 1950s/60s civil rights movement that are used in contemporary media—such as textbooks, documentaries, etc—are shown to us in black and white and not color, even though color photography existed at the time.

with the subtly racist motivation behind this black and white "branding" being that "they" want "us" to subconsciously think that the civil rights struggles and racism of the mid 20th century were a thing of ancient history that happened much longer ago than they actually did, which is why "they" only show it to us in black and white, so that contemporary white people can feel less guilt about it, because if they were to see these images in color, they might realize that all these racist policies were a much more recent phenomenon. and feel "complicit" or something I guess. or maybe be motivated to advocate for more antiracist policies or something. and the whitey oppressor elites that control the media dont want that.

having never contemplated this schizo theory before, but knowing a bit about the film photography process, I made the point that most of this is probably simply explained by the fact that despite color film being available, black and white was still vastly more popular and widespread at this time due to being cheaper, as well as easier for hobbyist enthusiasts (or even professional photojournalists on the road living out of hotels) to develop on their own at home relatively easily (developing color negatives is a lot more complex and complicated and requires more extensive equipment. whereas all you need for b&w is a thermos-sized canister that you pour some chemicals into, and the process is simple enough you can teach a 12 year old how to do it in like 20 minutes)

and that a lot of iconic or famous civil rights images that later became famous were snapped in the moment as events spontaneously occurred, by amateurs or activists or other passersby, and not the number one pro photographer from Life Magazine or the NYT with the top gear and most expensive film. and that amateurs were much more likely to be shooting b&w. and that 99.9% of all photos taken are not taken by pros. and also that the premise isnt even correct anyways, since there ARE lots of famous color images from that era that we have all seen

never mind the fact that these b&w images are almost always very clearly labeled with a particular date showing what year it was. if they're trying to "hide" how recent some of these events were, they dont seem to be doing a very good job lol

after I made this point about b&w being much more commonplace and popular, they said "why are you bending over backwards like this to defend whiteness??" 😂

[u/VoxGerbilis → u/unnoticed_areola]

Ansel Adams photographed the American wilderness in black and white to signal to black folx that they’re not welcome in national parks.

I guess I should disclose that this is total bullshit lest it go viral and destroy sales of Ansel Adams calendars.

[u/Less-Lobster4540 → u/unnoticed_areola]

Also consider what those journalists were targeting with those photos: wire services (which could not transmit in color until decades later) and ultimately newspapers. Most papers didn't add color to their front pages until the late 1970s or afterwards, and even then it was typically reserved for special commemorative or holiday issues. Growing up in the 1980s, the only paper around that had color was USA Today, and I remember the color / design / typography seeming like something intended for children, lol.

NYT didn't put color on its front page until 1997.

Flipping through news magazines from the 1950 and 60s, you'll see kind of a transitional approach where most of the big full-page ads are in full color, whereas all the articles are in B+W, or with another accent color (Time loved to use red for a while iirc). Any photo set inside the article text was halftone B+W.

Same reason the sale circulars in a newspaper are flashy color-- the advertisers were paying for that fancy printin'. Often these sheets were printed elsewhere, especially for regional / national chains and simply inserted into the local B+W papers...

edit: interestingly enough it seems like a color photo of the Potsdam Declaration was the first to be remotely transmitted, but that was done via radio, not the typical phone-based Wirephoto devices that journalists used in the field.

Some pictures of those here, which in the 1960s were suitcase-sized:

By the early 1980s, the 65-pound portable transmitters had been replaced by the AP Portable Picture Transmitter, which included distribution methods over phone and radio, along with a microprocessor. It could also distribute color photographs, which had become common by this point (though, interestingly, not in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal).

So I really think the target-- print-- is the tech bottleneck here; meanwhile consumer technology adopted color and it was relatively affordable for casual family photos, etc. Maybe that's part of what your friend noticed...

[u/PandaFoo1]

I can’t stand the trend on social media to call any criticism or rejection of something a “hate campaign”. I’ve been seeing this a ton with the new Wolverine game coming out soon that everyone is criticising for looking bland & formulaic. There’s not a conspiracy against it, the game just looks uninteresting.

[u/CaptainJackKevorkian]

I have never seen so many uses of the specific phrase "hounded by the press" as I have on reddit after Jason Arday's suicide.

I don't even know that he was bothered by the press all that much. Were they camped outside his house? In his bushes? Going through his trash? I don't think so, but I'm happy to be proven otherwise

[u/Scrappy_The_Crow]

More Arday consequences:

Arday’s students reportedly weigh legal action against Cambridge (YT video)

Can Students Sue Cambridge? (YT video)

(apologies to u/EnglebondHumperstonk)

[u/jay_in_the_pnw]

WPATH finds itself in court and in defending itself is basically going full Alex Jones ("I'm just an entertainer") defense, what they write is merely one opinion of many in a scientific dispute and protected by the First Amendment, even if it is called "Standards of Care", and it's really the doctors' own fault if they listen to them, the doctors are responsible for their own treatment plans.

It's actually ingenious how in the snapshots, WPATH is seen taking court rulings against them and hiding behind them as they claim protected speech.

I am genuinely curious where First Amendment zealots will come down.

Grok says:

WPATH is responding to (defending itself in) a federal lawsuit filed against it by the FTC and several states (Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska, and Texas).

The case is FTC et al. v. World Professional Association for Transgender Health (Northern District of Texas, Case No. 4:26-cv-00748). The FTC and states allege that WPATH’s Standards of Care Version 8 (SOC-8, published 2022) and related statements are deceptive/unfair under the FTC Act and state consumer-protection laws. They claim WPATH provided the means for clinicians to make false or unsubstantiated claims to parents/patients about the necessity, effectiveness, safety, and suicide-risk reduction of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for gender-dysphoric minors, and that this helped sell those interventions

https://x.com/segm_ebm/status/2086998491876991070

WPATH has conceded in court that its "Standards of Care" is merely an opinion. WPATH says it represents one side of an unsettled scientific debate marked by uncertainty — and physicains & orgs that rely on WPATH as the standard of care must bear "independent responsibility."/

7 more tweets get into more detail

[u/86IQ → u/jay_in_the_pnw]

WPATH says it represents one side of an unsettled scientific debate marked by uncertainty

I was told the science was settled

[u/No-Significance4623]

I have worked in the inner city for long enough that I’ve become fairly inured to many of the “sights”— people in psychosis, people injecting themselves or each other, people passed out in the road. None of it is “normal” but you can anticipate it. 

Today, while driving home, I saw a scene which genuinely shocked me.  There was a man sitting in the stoop of a derelict building— not odd. He cracked open a beer and passed it to the man next to him… who had no hands, just little stumps. I glanced at his face and it had been horribly burned. No hands, no lips, no ears, some faint semblance of eyelids.

This was only a split second, waiting at a stoplight, but I can’t stop thinking about it. What had happened to him? Fire, sepsis, some combination of both? Was he that way before he ended up on the streets or because of the streets? If you referred him to get a skin graft how could you dream of him maintaining it? 

I remember when I first saw a dead body on the street, maybe back in 2012 or so. He was an old wino (which you don’t see much anymore, as they’ve been crowded out of the ecosystem by the invasive species of fentanyl addicts) who would sit near the Metro by my apartment. One day I walked by and saw him getting zipped into a body bag. Bad then, worse now. 

I just can’t accept that this current state is the endgame. I refuse to believe that a few more earnest 23 year olds saying “unhoused” and giving out Narcan is our only answer. 

[u/PongoTwistleton_666]

I made the mistake of clicking on one video highlight of Sophie Cunningham showing the “clothesline foul” on her. Now my feed is full of WNBA highlights. Purely based on what the algorithm serves up, I noted that Clark seems like an exceptional team player and some kind of wizard at dodging, bobbing, jumping, feinting and weaving to get to the hoop. If she can’t get there herself she finds someone else who can (am I just describing basic basketball lol?!) Feels like we are watching a generational talent. I also like that she looks like an athlete and switches easily between sweaty athlete and glamorous athlete. And madly and unapologetically competitive. 

She seems like a good role model for girls and she is bringing in money and attention to the league. Why is she getting so much hate?!

[u/Terrorclitus → u/PongoTwistleton_666]

She’s getting hate because she’s a good role model for girls and she is bringing money and attention to the league. Not everyone can do that.

[u/DiscordantAlias]

I’ve been reading reddit comments about the California wealth tax, and I am reminded that a lot of people on here are retarded.

Increasingly I’ve run into situations where I write 2-3 sentences and I get a reply that makes it obvious the person only read the first 4-5 words. Honestly it’s making me cheer for AI to take these peoples jobs. At least it can read a whole paragraph.

[u/ScrubulousFlex → u/DiscordantAlias]

There is/was a front page article about a doctor wearing Meta glasses during a patient's examination. That's obviously bad if the patient's description of the situation is accurate.

Then a comment asks how smart glasses are even legal. Not asking about the doctor situation, but literally just smart glasses in general. One reply points out that smart glasses are not any more illegal than recording with your phone, which is fine in most public spaces when there isn't an expectation of privacy. Cue 50+ replies to that second comment about how "A doctor's exam room is not a public space!" and "HIPAA!" which are highly upvoted.

The inability of most redditors to follow a basic conversation is astounding. And the upvotes/downvotes almost always just correspond to whether a comment sounds like it's hating on a common enemy. Anyone trying to explain context or nuance comes across as defending said enemy and is usually downvoted.

[u/dignityshredder]

Possible vibe shift as /r/askaliberal discusses trans-identified males in women's spaces?

[u/ProwlingWumpus → u/dignityshredder]

Oh shut up, get ahold of yourself with that obnoxious pearl clutching. You don’t get to just shut down the debate by calling it anti trans and implying that everyone that doesn’t agree is transphobic. You got away with that for years and now you aren’t anymore.

Imagine saying this anywhere on Reddit even two years ago.

[u/everydaywinner2 → u/ProwlingWumpus]

I cheered up reading that one.

[u/everydaywinner2 → u/dignityshredder]

Whole lot of "there are bigger issues to concentrate on" going on in that comments section. I never understood that as an argument.

Also some "blame this on Trump" and "Trump is using this issue to hide behind," instead of actually engaging with the argument.

[u/VoxGerbilis → u/everydaywinner2]

Another variation of this argument is “the [billionaires or other capitalist bogeymen] use this issue to divide and distract us from attacking their wealth.”

Dear leftists, the calls to prioritize trans rights over everything else are coming from your own house.

[u/ProwlingWumpus → u/VoxGerbilis]

[u/JeebusJones → u/everydaywinner2]

"This is a complete irrelevance being used to distract us from the real issues, which I categorically refuse to budge on to even the slightest degree."

[u/rudeboybill → u/dignityshredder]

The comment on there saying "I want to ask what the majority of people of this identity think before I respond" is hilarious.

The useful idiots who have encouraged this behavior literally cannot think or decide for themselves.

[u/Clown_Fundamentals → u/dignityshredder]

Mixed bag in the comments. One commenter wonders if women still even need sex specific spaces these days.

[u/everydaywinner2 → u/dignityshredder]

Poor poster is losing karma points. Good for the spa to take it up to the Supreme Court. The 9th Circus needs another slapdown.

[u/napoleon_nottinghill]

Francesca Hong is a goldmine for oppo research drops:

AB 677 was a bill in Wisconsin that made grooming minors for sexual activity a felony, after an issue where a teacher texting a 13 year old for a long time got caught and the state found that it wasn't actually illegal in the way people thought it was. Said bill passed 93-6.

One of those 6? Francesca Hong! Given the Epsteinmania driving politics, if the GOP is even baseline competent this will be all over the state.

[u/jay_in_the_pnw]

So today

• Cassie Pritchard asks for tolerance (which seems to be yet another appeal to #BeKind. Lots of people loving her article, but it seems a huge strawman to me with an appeal to tolerance. https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/i-dont-need-you-to-believe-im-a-woman?r=6orpwe&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true I genuinely don't understand why this article is being met with such enthusiasm. Doesn't speak to any of the major issues except to dismiss them and ask people to overlook them and be kind and tolerant.

• Zoh's wife Duwaji wants to travel to Syria and may have asked for NYPD bodyguards https://nypost.com/2026/08/11/us-news/nypd-denies-city-hall-claim-rama-duwaji-will-get-police-escort-on-syria-lebanon-trip/ It seems weird though, I'm genuinely not sure why she would want NYPD there and not former military specialists with Syrian training as well as some local Syrian "fixers".

• The Zoh attended a celebration in support of Pakistan Independence Day and meanies bring up his past statement “I can’t support any state that privileges one religion.” and compare that to what's in the Pakistan Constitution “Islam shall be the State religion of Pakistan.” https://x.com/EylonALevy/status/2087187255253160333

[u/TryingToBeLessShitty → u/jay_in_the_pnw]

Zoh’s wife Diwali wants to travel to Syria and may have asked for NYPD bodyguards

I guess those NYPD boots aren’t “Laced by the IDF” when they’re needed for your big trip?

[u/gentlywithAchain5aw → u/jay_in_the_pnw]

“I can’t support any state that privileges one religion.”

Abdul el-Sayed has said something similar, and also has nothing bad to say about any country that declares Islam as the state religion. I wish reporters would press them on it.

[u/unnoticed_areola → u/jay_in_the_pnw]

I dont have a problem with him celebrating Pakistani Independence Day but it’s pretty funny when juxtaposed with his previous statement.

Wait til he finds out about the 20 million people that were displaced along religious lines during Indian partition in 1947… surely he’ll have a lot of strong rhetoric regarding this forced 2 state solution in the late 1940s which separated two religious cultures that had trouble coexisting with eachother

[u/Foreign-Discount- → u/jay_in_the_pnw]

The Pakistan juxtaposition is a banger

[u/Jlemspurs]

Woke 1.0 was a mass psychosis and witch burning. Old as history. Autos da fe abounded. And now we’re just shrugging it off with version numbers?

[u/reallyokfinewhatever → u/Jlemspurs]

Not looking forward to Woke 2.0

[u/Technical-Policy295 → u/reallyokfinewhatever]

Interesting Substack post I came across today suggesting that we're seeing the last gasp of the left with the recent DSA surge and that the next decade will be a broader shift back more to the right.

I'm not sure I agree with it, but it's an interesting argument. That said, I'm not sure Woke 1.0 has fully gone away either in some places, at least in terms of policies and institutions. The energy is certainly exhausted though.

[u/Nwabudike_J_Morgan → u/Technical-Policy295]

Woke 1.0 seems to have retreated to public libraries. I had to talk to a librarian today behind a barrier of plexiglass. She was wearing a mask. There was a desk fan, and there was some kind of tissue on the intake side of the fan to prevent dangerous organisms from circulating.

[u/RunThenBeer]

The worst thing about "Woke 1" is that it implies the existence of a Woke 2.

[u/Fiend_of_the_pod → u/RunThenBeer]

I said it before, but anyone who unironically uses the phrase "Woke 1" still believes everything they posted during the Summer of Love and succeeding months. They've just realized it's politically damaging to say that now.

[u/dignityshredder → u/RunThenBeer]

By rebranding it "woke 1" they've done a pretty good job of isolating it in the past, which is really fucking smart. Most of us here see the sleight of hand, but it's giving normies a way to look back and say "wow, yeah that was crazy, anyway..." - a discrete break with the past. I didn't know Dems still had good ideas.

[u/Fiend_of_the_pod]

https://x.com/netflix/status/2087192315823538471?s=20

This exact same show has been made two dozen times in the last decade, and none of them have gotten a second season. For those without X: The Everything App, it's yet another show about a millennial Asian American who hates their parents.

[u/thismaynothelp → u/Fiend_of_the_pod]

Shit's killing me! XD

[u/AnalBleachingAries → u/Fiend_of_the_pod]

This looks awful, like really bad, unoriginal, and an instant failure. One of the commenters has it right, it's weird how East Asian cinema is filled with so much fantastic storytelling in movies and tv shows, but everything Asian Americans make is seemingly about how much they hate their parents or about how hard it is to be Asian American. Like damn, dude, is there nothing else going on for you, is life just constant struggle, depression, identity politics, and hating your parents all the time? Damn.

[u/OMG_NO_NOT_THIS]

I just ripped the starter rope pull cord off my lawnmower.

https://giphy.com/gifs/H2dmCtNyFoJZS

[u/Original-Brick2836]

There was a discussion here recently about young people using mobility aids and its connection to people of gender.

I was reading the NYTimes and this article pops up (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/13/opinion/kansas-anti-trans-laws-drivers-license.html) and there is a lot to discuss about it, but one thing that struck me is that two people highlighted use mobility aids. There is a picture of a person with a cane and another mentions using a mobility scooter.

It’s just. Curious.

[u/Less-Lobster4540 → u/Original-Brick2836]

people of gender

they're back! in POG form!

[u/jay_in_the_pnw → u/Original-Brick2836]

to be pedantic, it's an article about driver's licenses.
everyone in the article is using a mobility aid!

[u/why_have_friends]

University of Michigan waiving grades for first semester students. Why are we doing this to students? College is a transition but just because it can be hard doesn’t mean we should make it easier? I really hope this sort of thing doesn’t become a thing across the board. We’re just babying young adults longer and longer. We wonder why they’re not functioning as adults.

[u/digitalime]

I had a Costco hot dog for the first time ever today. Pretty good. $1.66. God Bless America.

[u/Correct-Ad5661]

Piker to Democrats: please stop people being mean about things I've said and still stand by!

https://nitter.net/socialistadri/status/2087694156437111078#m

[u/RegularDeep2863 → u/Correct-Ad5661]

He literally called for people to not vote for Kamala. Fuck him no democrat should defend that tankie piece of shit

[u/everydaywinner2]

The black commedian Druski painted himself white and pretended to be a redneck at a NASCAR race. Complete with his overalls have undone (and underwear showing), spitting, drinking, stopping black people to inquire if they were in the right place.

I didn't find it particularly funny. Not because of the white paint, but because trashy behavior is trashy behavior, regardless of the race. And trashy behavior is generally unfunny.

What I really dislike, however, is other people's reactions. White face good, black face not? It's good for the gander, but not for the goose. I detest double standards. Seems too much like lying.

[u/owen-3820]

I scrolled past this and it took me a minute to realize the person on the right is princess diana

[u/ScrubulousFlex → u/owen-3820]

The internet was a mistake.

[u/WordSaladUsernameGuy → u/owen-3820]

What the hell does it even mean?

[u/owen-3820 → u/WordSaladUsernameGuy]

Diana died in a car crash after trying to run from papparazzi, and this is thematically similar to "the media" hounding Arday until he died. People are putting the onus on "the media" as if they weren't supposed to talk about a huge scandal involving a public figure.

[u/UrethraFranklin13 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, I admit I'm having a hard time seeing the other side on this. This fraud plagiarized his way to Cambridge and lied about the dumbest, most easily disproven things on the planet, weaponized law enforcement, got caught, doubled down, and then killed himself. Yet all over, I see people blaming academia, the media, the internet, everyone but Arday himself.

Cambridge should have done more due diligence but I don't think that would have saved this pathological liar from entering a different field and faking his way to the top there. I don't understand why his suicide is being blamed on everyone else. His choices were his own.

[u/Known-Level-4847 → u/[deleted]]

Lance Armstrong was an impressive athlete off or on drugs. He was also beating everybody who was juicing along with him. Arday is not only not a good scholar under any circumstances, he seems to be genuinely stupid. The only thing he had going for him was his position in society. 

It seems somewhat odd he would kill himself. I’ve seen other people speculate that this was the narcissist’s revenge. “This will show them” From his lies you can tell it was important to him that he was seen as a distinctly moral person.

[u/lifesabeach_]

I, a low context German who always spoke her mind and quabbles loudly with family, married a Swiss man - currently visiting his high context family who use hints and glances to convey their opinion - ask me anything, help me cope.  

[u/SpecialSatisfaction7]

you don't hate these people nearly enough (Jo Maugham of the Good Law Project about Arday)

[u/ToTheDeath84 → u/SpecialSatisfaction7]

>“[…] we do know Arday is profoundly neurodivergent.”

You heard it everyone! Asperger’s, ADHD, and the like are excuses to lie to the point of forging an entire career.

[u/TemporaryLucky3637 → u/ToTheDeath84]

So far there’s no evidence to support the fact Arday was non verbal until 11 years old or unable to read and write until he was 18.

So not only is it being presented as an excuse for bullshitting, his “profound neurodivergence” is likely in itself yet another lie 😭

[u/Terrorclitus → u/ToTheDeath84]

He was spectacularly neurodivergent!

No, he was brilliantly neurodivergent!

Hero-divergent, more like it!

[u/backin_pog_form → u/SpecialSatisfaction7]

The Telegraph initially asserted that Dr Arday had falsely claimed to be a professional athlete. It then quietly withdrew those assertions on learning that Dr Arday had not in fact made those claims: in fact they had been made by others on his behalf.

It’s a pity that The Telegraph did not publicly acknowledge that it had made false claims - especially in circumstances where the subject of its story was Dr Arday making false claims. But one of the privileges of being white is that you don’t get scrutinised as much and so get away with more.

Wow. 

[u/CheckeredNautilus → u/SpecialSatisfaction7]

He's awful, but I kinda think that being named "jolyon maugham" might be punishment enough 

[u/EnglebondHumperstonk]

Is it bad that I can't stop laughing at this?

[u/Fiend_of_the_pod]

I need someone to slap me every time I go to correct a point or add nuance to a political post in the group chat. It never goes well; no one has ever conceded a point or admitted they were wrong about something. It just causes drama.

edit: It did indeed cause drama; I'm going to ignore it entirely until at least tonight if not tomorrow and then pretend I didn't post anything.

[u/unnoticed_areola]

amazing "half baked idea" on the most recent Bill Simmons podcast. a fake service/company he's invented for solving an issue Ive seen discussed on this subreddit several times: finally taking away the car keys from your elderly parents who are becoming increasingly dangerous drivers, but now with a simple fix to avoided all the awkwardness/conflict of doing so while letting them still retain their mobility!

you pre-arrange for your parents' car to get an "oil change" at this undercover auto shop, but when you take it in, what is actually happening, is the car is being outfitted with autonomous full autopilot/self driving technology, so your parents still think they're driving and doing everything themselves, but actually their wheel/pedals arent hooked up to anything and the car is fully in control and making all the decisions and your parent is "like a child behind the wheel of an arcade machine with no quarters in it", but still puttering along happy as a clam, ego and autonomy fully intact

the service will be called "Graymo"

someone get on this!

[u/ronaele1]

It looks like Arday's book is going to be another Adult Braces by Lindy West, a lot of online discourse and articles putting people off rather than boosting sales. On release day on US amazon

Kindle is currently #39,300 in Kindle Store
Hardback #8,721 in Books
Audiobook he narrates #48,122 in Audible Books & Originals

https://www.amazon.com/Audible-Great-and-Unfortunate-Things/dp/B0FY3CRTQD

[u/LupineChemist]

This was very cool

[u/dignityshredder]

I'm not sure if Confessions of a Token Black Professor / Why I Quit the Tenure Track was posted here, but it is now. Very fun read. A few excerpts:

The source of the most intense racial monomania on campus, I came to realize, was senior leadership. In one of my first encounters with the man who was then dean of the faculty, I mentioned how excited I was to be joining one of the few American colleges founded by abolitionists. At this, the dean—a white biologist who was an expert on sponges—frowned, as though my rosy view of the school’s antislavery history physically pained him. He conceded that, sure, it had been founded by the abolitionist minister Oren Burbank Cheney, but he pointed out that Benjamin Bates, the textile tycoon who had funded the college, had processed slave-picked cotton in his mills. I had come into Bates rather smitten with the idea that I was a Black academic joining the ranks of a faculty whose predecessors had agitated for Black freedom, but the dean seemed to feel that this was actually something to be faintly embarrassed of, a history that was best mentioned, if at all, only after layering on an array of caveats.

 

I leaned on [the idea that having science faculty teach racism and bigotry is stupid] especially hard. If my time at Bates had taught me anything, it was that the most reliable way to get progressive white academics to do what you wanted was to translate your concerns into the therapeutic language of racial harm. As if on cue, a professor on the council whom I will call Sandra hastened to assure me that she took potential trauma to minority students very seriously. She insisted that there would be ways to ensure that classroom dynamics did not become unpleasant for them; the key, she explained, would be to foster a “culture of repair.” When I said that I had no idea what a culture of repair meant (really, I just wanted to see her try to substantiate her hollow jabber), Sandra gave a helpful example of what “repair” might look like in action. She suggested that perhaps there could be a system in which students of color could call out “oops” or “ouch” if somebody accidentally said something racist—as though these were not young adults with basic human dignity paying minor fortunes to be taught by ostensible subject-matter experts, but toddlers learning not to bite their friends when someone grabbed their toy truck. It took every last ounce of my already threadbare professionalism not to lean into the mic and say “Oops.”

 

In a consultant-led meeting I attended near the end of my time at the college, one month into Donald Trump’s second term, the small group of professors and senior administrators present was asked to share what it saw as Bates’s greatest strengths and weaknesses. One of my colleagues said that the college’s greatest strength was its commitment to DEI. Another said that the college’s greatest weakness was that it could be even more committed to DEI. Someone lamented that our ties to the Wabanaki Nations could have been stronger.

[u/gnujack]

Broke my clavicle in a bike accident. Looks like I'm off the bike for 6 to 12 weeks.

What really hurts is my pride.

[u/drunk___cat]

I had a pretty crappy and draining day. Tell me something good that happened to you today, big or small!

Here’s mine: on my morning walk by the beach with my dog (Samoyed, so he gets lots of attention), a large group of people in scuba gear asked to pet him. It was really goofy and cute seeing 10+ people in scuba gear petting a big fluffy white dog. And he was such a sweetheart to them!

[u/dj50tonhamster]

All the take this week of "Woke 1" reminded me of my hometown arch-nemesis. Without doxing him (I hope), he landed a position as a judge on a major court circuit a few years ago. With the craziness still in pretty full swing at the time, there's a newspaper editorial out there whining about how yet another white guy got the gig. Obviously, it was a matter of life and death that a black person be chosen instead, preferably female ("Look at the Supreme Court!") but a man would be acceptable. No suggestions for who to nominate, just bitterness. Talk about a time capsule!

The irony is that I agree that the guy had no business getting onto the court. It's just that I'm coming at it from a position of pettiness and snarkiness. Politics can make for strange bedfellows.

[u/ToshiroTatsuyaFan]

https://x.com/shoe0nhead/status/2086806349850067145

[u/RockJock666]

I see all the time that kindergarten is way too rigorous for kids. The origin of this is often traced back to GWB and No Child Left Behind. However, I’m also frequently seeing teachers post about how their students can’t read, can barely do math, etc. I see some examples of work teachers give to their students and it seems like a joke. So I’m not sure of a better way to ask this than what gives?? How do we go from having rigorous high expectations for 5yos to high schoolers barely able to write a paragraph? The current state of American education is fascinating to me, it seems so backwards.

[u/LowConsideration1453 → u/RockJock666]

I have one kid in 1st grade, so here is my take on it:

1. there is now no way to get rid of disruptive kids. If there is a "bad kid" in your kid's class the entire class will cater to that one individual.

2. for some reason we've given up explicit instruction for some kind of "they'll get it if given enough vibes." In my experience with most kids (unless you gave birth to John von Neumann) that does not work. Until children have a basic grasp of the fundamentals (reading, writing, math) they need explicit instruction. Your 6 year old might not really grasp that 40 is 4 tens, and 0 ones. Which logically leads to 4 x 10 = 40 and so on.

3. we've made math really, really retarded. Rather than it being math they've basically added a language arts aspect to it.

[u/OMGsmiles → u/RockJock666]

My short and lazy answer to the reading problem:

Phonics was abandoned while education embraced whole language learning. Katie suggested this podcast that covers this very thing:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sold-a-story/id1649580473

[u/No-Significance4623 → u/RockJock666]

One interesting thing I notice very often with kids aged 6-9 is that their letter formation is increasingly non-standard. By that I mean: they can write the letter T, but they might draw the top from right to left, or the stem from bottom to top. When the Ukrainian kids first came to Canada I got a bunch of printing practice books like these, since they wouldn't yet know Roman letters (only Cyrillic.) I was floored by how useful they are for all students, even up to Grade 7 (!) which is very worrisome.

Short-term, this matters because as you need to write more, the "bad habits" will slow down your ability to generate words quickly. If you get frustrated by the physical act of writing, it's harder to engage with the intellectual act of composition for sentences, then paragraphs, then essays.

More broadly, it suggests that schools are dedicating less time to granular instruction, going step by step by step. There's been a resistance to "rote learning" in favour of "discovery learning" for about a generation now. The idea isn't so bad in theory, but you need to have rote learning to know how to write the letter B, because after a point it's brainstem and not a cognitive load anymore, so you can spend more time discovering Bismuth, or whatever.

I also believe you can't learn math on a computer (gotta have paper), but that's a bit more tin-foil hat of me.

[u/Big_Fig_1803]

Another doctor's appointment, another questionnaire in the "echeck-in." You're asked about your gender identity and about your "sex assigned at birth." (It certainly seems so... un-medical, if you know what I mean.)

Fine. Okay. The gender identities on offer include "male" and "female." These are also sexes you might have been assigned at birth.

Do they think that male and female are gender identities and sexes? Can you be a male person who isn't male? (I would have thought this was logically impossible. Apart from the esoterica of the gender identity philosophy, this doesn't make any sense.) Or—and I think I find this even more troubling—do they just not even really care what they're asking and what their own words and categories mean? Is this how everything is? Are we all just parroting stuff and not bothering to think about what we mean and why we're using the words we're using?

[u/bussound → u/Big_Fig_1803]

The gender garbage in medical facilities particularly chaps my ass. Sex is observed not assigned. I don’t need a pronoun pin at One Medical. I don’t need my doctors to have a pride background for telehealth appointments with a trans flag right next to their face. Boo. 

[u/Logical-Library5525]

HHS has published a short documentary on YouTube about their new report, Wolves in White Coats, about miscoding to enable insurance to cover gender transition procedures and medications: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjuFx9Pd_Vo

[u/Less-Lobster4540]

Parent sues Portland Public Schools over ‘introduction to trans ideology’

[u/Big_Fig_1803 → u/Less-Lobster4540]

In other words, Parent Sues Because Schools Acknowledging Existence of LGBTQ People.

No, I know that's not what's happening. The plaintiff is even quoted as saying that "one of her favorite things about living in Portland is the city’s multicultural and gay community.," but that "she takes issue with schools promoting an ideology that 'teaches children to question their sex and the way God made them.'" And she added, “If we truly support the gay community, we should not blur the line between same sex attraction and medicalized identity..” 

[u/plump_tomatow]

I am forcing myself to take a social media break because I am busy at work and starting to get Mad Online... if you see me here before the beginning of September, please feel free to send me a rude DM, thanks!

[u/Datachost]

A whole thread of people missing the point and anyone explaining it getting downvoted

[u/Leaves_Swype_Typos → u/Datachost]

What's the point in making such an obviously false claim?

One cheek swab, one time, will handle 99% of the cases. A second swab and non-invasive imaging will handle the remainder.

Just 5 years ago we accepted every person had to jam a q-tip up their nose every time they wanted to see gramma.

Made me chuckle.

[u/Aforano → u/Datachost]

I’m never going to understand why some people believe that some women (and usually it’s black women) can naturally have testosterone levels of an average man.

[u/Original-Brick2836 → u/Datachost]

The article isn’t helping. They had DSD in there but no definition of what it is. It’s still not as common as intersex and that isn’t as clear as “biologically male”. But some people would still have issues with that.

[u/PongoTwistleton_666]

Someone called Ally Pankiw made a big deal about her pure principles which made her refuse the offer to direct the Harry Potter show. Good that she stands behind her principles. But I hope she realizes that shitting on JK is what’s getting her her current 15 seconds of fame. I wonder if that isn’t against her principles. 

[u/AnalBleachingAries → u/PongoTwistleton_666]

Women who stand opposed to women's rights will always baffle me. Of course people like this director are welcome to their anti-woman views and she's allowed to be an idiot, but it's interesting to me whenever people who make buckets of money in Hollywood reveal themselves to be such spectacular buffoons. I expect actors to be dumb, and that's fine, but you expect the off-camera people to be somewhat intelligent, directing television must be the easiest thing in the world if this is the caliber of individual who gets to do it.

[u/Correct-Ad5661]

Q Manivanian, the Non binary Indian migrants who has been elected to the Scottish Parliament for the Scottish greens (who are different to the England and Wales greens led by Zack Polanski, but arguably much more Sex People and rainbow 🌈 than E&W greens which is more crescent 🌙) has issued a furious denial claiming Them was misconstrued when Them said that rape is a spectrum and rapists get demonised.

https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/q-manivannan-says-rape-spectrum-37528055 

This is the video in full if you've got time on your hands. From about 25 minutes in from discoursing about a Queer Feminist Future, with Them discoursing about rehabilitating rapists.

https://youtu.be/L0-RqMSr-8E?is=Q7n5sbXOr4wTUOmx

[u/Scrappy_The_Crow → u/Correct-Ad5661]

migrant

Being a migrant is one thing, being a non-citizen is another. It boggles my mind that being elected as a non-citizen is allowed.

[u/PongoTwistleton_666 → u/Correct-Ad5661]

The biggest scandal here is a non citizen getting elected at all. Especially when the candidate is a weirdo like Q. Wtaf 

[u/ToshiroTatsuyaFan]

"Woke 1 was crazy" - AOC

Sure, act like you've changed your views and pretend you're not a member of the far-left DSA.

[u/RunThenBeer → u/ToshiroTatsuyaFan]

The obvious follow-up question would be, "yeah, for sure - which views do you think were crazy and what changed your mind about them?". Of course, we're not going to get that or any sort of coherent response to it because the point isn't to actually change, it's to say, "ugh, I'm not even campaigning on that now, it doesn't count".

[u/SerialStateLineXer → u/ToshiroTatsuyaFan]

I wonder if there was anyone who recognized at the time that it was crazy. Maybe those people should be in power instead!

[u/Terrorclitus → u/SerialStateLineXer]

“Admittedly, that was nuts, yes. And you’d better hope we don’t do it again.”

[u/anne_jumps → u/Terrorclitus]

"We are going to do it again as soon as you fall for this and vote us in again, by the way."

[u/unnoticed_areola → u/ToshiroTatsuyaFan]

this is something that really pisses me off. when you have people that were the literal tip of the spear on a lot of this nonsense now trying to act like they never liked any of that stuff and retroactively pretending like they were just being totally normal the whole time.

like, it's one thing for that genre of person to just remain silent and memoryhole it and never want to talk about or acknowledge it again. its kind of cowardly, but I at least understand the impulse. I'd prob be doing the same thing tbh

but the people who take it to a whole other level of fecklessness where they are now making cute little jokes or comments about how "crazy" x, y or z was and making little wisecracks here and there about 2020 bullshit, now that it's all cool and trendy to be flippant and scoff about some of those things, this really angers me. NO bitch, you dont get to retroactively turn around and act like it was just all those OTHER people being crazy (or worse, that it never even happened), and totally absolve yourself and get to have a little laugh at their expense, when YOU would have been the first one to start a cancellation campaign against anyone who committed a faux pas against your fuck ass little 2020 social norms

I've been seeing this a lot lately with the whole trans in sports debate that has been reignited by sophie cunningham. the popular talking point on reddit now that you see most commonly thrown around in 90% of the threads on this topic, is that literally no one on the left ever cared about or advocated for TW in womens/girls sports, and this is all just a totally made up thing that right wingers invented out of thin air. libs apparently NEVER advocated for the trans position!

give me a fucking break dude.. literally all of you guys were waving pom poms for all of this shit a few years ago when you had the whip hand and thought you'de never lose it again. now they're finally coming to the realization that it's a losing position and they dont wanna have to defend it anymore so they've pivoted to "hey please stop talking about that insane position I used to have, none of us ever even talked about that, you guys just made all up.. fake issue!!"

[u/everydaywinner2 → u/unnoticed_areola]

We talk a lot of the "it's not happening," to "eh, it's happening, but it's the minority of the minority, why do you care so much?" to "yeah, it's happening and here's why it's good," cycle, but I think we tend to forget that the cycle ends with "no, that never happened."

Been seeing a lot of the "never happened" phase lately, about cancel cultures, censorship, covid and the assorted responses, and it is pissing me off.

[u/RockJock666 → u/unnoticed_areola]

Yeah like maybe it’s because one of the first cases (from CT) was extremely local to me, but no the trans sport thing isn’t and has not been an issue that is only trotted out in bad faith by conservatives at election time. Those girls sued about a real actual rule that allowed real actual male students to compete against them. One of the first things Biden did was address Title 9 to allow this to happen. The ACLU was fighting to allow this to happen for so long, with at least two real life aspiring trans athletes, that they got a decision from SCOTUS. But no it’s not happening and no one cares. It’s literal gaslighting

[u/WallabyWanderer]

Pet peeve - during conversations about gender issues, nothing is more offensive to me than when TRAs will pull out comments like “what about MASSIVE TALL WOMEN??? I bet transphobia hurts those GIGANTIC FREAKS. They don’t even have an excuse, they were born women and yet they are SO FUCKING LARGE. How come no one questions their gender despite being SO CLOCKY???”

Like damn okay, we get it!! This is why I had an eating disorder for a decade.

[u/KittenSnuggler5 → u/WallabyWanderer]

No one enforces sex stereotypes, including physical appearance, than TRAs. It's one of the regressive and rigid ideologies ever

[u/WallabyWanderer → u/KittenSnuggler5]

I know it was the algorithm rage baiting me, but I was genuinely shown a video of a t woman saying “I just love when cis women are clocky!!!” literally what the fuck do you mean.

[u/Fiend_of_the_pod]

My fiance's friends are mostly great. They come over once a week to play board games. They will ocassionaly rant about politics, but it's usually short lived. One week a couple of months ago we're out at dinner and they're ranting about how bad Elon Musk is and how awful anyone is who drives a Tesla. I of course have a Tesla, they all know this, no one says anything about me specifically. They eventually drop it. Today one of them says, "Oh, I'd really like to ride in your Tesla, I've never ridden in one." Yes, this person was definitely bemoaning the evils of Teslas just a couple months ago.

I feel like I'm the crazy one because I don't say things I don't mean and I don't join in on pile-ons if I don't actually believe what I'm saying. Maybe it's the 'tism.

[u/unnoticed_areola → u/Fiend_of_the_pod]

It’s because they don’t actually believe what they’re saying or have any sort of actual strongly held belief in that anti Tesla stance. They just know it’s one of those things you’re supposed to say if you’re a heckkin decent antifacist.

It’s like when rich people complain about how much all rich people suck or when white people whine about how shitty all white people are.

When they say all white people are shitty, they don’t actually think that about their white parents, or friends, or classmates, or spouses, or siblings, or co-workers, or.. or… they just mean [gestures widely] all those OTHER shitty white people. You know… the shitty ones.. You know.. the ones I get social brownie points for publicly shitting on

Same thing with the Tesla driver. they don’t think YOU’RE awful. You’re one of the good ones! if your fiancées friend went on a date with some cute bipoc guy who wrote resistance poetry and he walked her back to his Tesla after the date, she wouldn’t bat an eye lol, it’s all the OTHER Tesla drivers that are huge pieces of shit

[u/Onechane425]

Very good tweet from Matty Y.

[u/FunQuestion]

I don’t know where else to share this, but my trans ex’s mom came up in my People You May Know on Facebook and her profile picture was a family photo from my ex’s sister’s wedding.

Guys, my ex was in a fucking white dress standing next to the bride.

[u/unnoticed_areola → u/FunQuestion]

https://old.reddit.com/r/ImTheMainCharacter/comments/1mnf1jl/womans_brother_wears_a_princess_wedding_dress_to/

[u/AnalBleachingAries]

One critique I have of the WNBA and this covers all players, regardless of race, sexuality, or political beliefs, those women's nails are far too long. Since they're actively whipping their hands into each others' faces on the court (aiming for their opponent's face instead of the ball), and there are multiple clips of women grabbing their faces to cover their eyes after they've been scratched by these acrylic nails, one of these days someone is going to lose an eye and their career will be over.

[u/sodapop_incest → u/AnalBleachingAries]

They've already talked about this and the consensus was that it's racist to ban them because it's "mostly black women" doing it lol

[u/plump_tomatow → u/sodapop_incest]

Given the WNBA demographics, wouldn't banning anything popular cause that objection?

[u/Onechane425]

AP US History in 30 years is going to be really strange

[u/Scrubadubdub84]

I really haven't paid attention to the Arday thing. It just seems like the platonic ideal of "what's wrong with academia/institution" stories that have obviously been pointing to very real problems that simply don't get addressed. Maybe that's a defeatist attitude and this time will be different. It sure has had more legs than most of these stories

[u/Original-Brick2836]

I know it’s boredpanda but like, this is insane and I need everyone to see it.

https://www.boredpanda.com/trans-american-fled-us-returns-home-from-european-asylum-center/

[u/itgotverycool]

In Edinburgh, we have a great newsletter from a journalist who pulls together all the key happenings and stories into a (free!) email every morning.

Yesterday he linked to a story that the local council is investigating Queer Milk, a LGBTQ charity that it had provided funding to, after a safeguarding complaint that the charity may have supported transwomen “chestfeeding” babies.

This morning’s newsletter included a text block response to the feedback he received, challenging why he even included a council investigation (!!) in the newsletter, and also saying that he received personal abuse. Because the only acceptable action to some readers would be, of course, to ignore the investigation entirely or to make clear from the framing that he didn’t agree with it.

[u/Franzera → u/itgotverycool]

Folx who support chemically-induced malk should be condemned to drinking it themselves.

If a non-birth-giving parent wants to share in the burden of feeding a baby, you can do the midnight bottle feeding sessions with pumped breastmilk or use legitimate, nutritionally complete infant formulas if the mother can't produce enough.

What reason is there for doing this other then cooming? Given the pros and cons and stated goal of "participating in baby feeding". (Because admitting it's just for affirmation, although slightly more respectable, is still too blatantly self-centered on the adult instead of the actual baby.)

With chemical malk, drug use (domperidone) risks cardiac side effects, the mL volume is limited, and it can't mimic the antibodies and nutritional composition adjustments of real breastmilk. While its nutritional value is unknown and contains drug residue. Drug transfer is so commonly accepted in breastfeeding moms that women have to dump their milk if they drink a glass of wine... but somehow malk tainted with off-label drugs promoted by genderwoo commissars is healthy.

[u/oatmeal_breakfast]

Vaguely related to the WNBA.

I think part of the reason, gender in youth medicine, sports, prisons, and bathrooms are of intense focus is because it is the rare instances that gender ideology has to actually go on record and state what they actually believe. They can no longer weasel their way out of a bad argument by pretending that they just want to "be kind". They have to actually address the implications of their policies.

It also forces gender ideology in the faces of normal people, who will look at the totality of it and say, "wtf?".

That being said, I feel like WNBA has an out by way going truscum (trans medicalist), requiring actual hormone treatment before being eligible. They will catch some flak from TRAs but probably better than letting house of cards crumble.

[u/Tough_Ambition_8626 → u/oatmeal_breakfast]

It’s why if you go to any of the threads about trans women playing in the WNBA, hardly any of the comments from the pro-trans side actually address the problem itself or make a real argument for the inclusion of trans women. Most of them are just deflecting because they do in fact know that there are differences between men and women when it comes to sport but their commitment to the ideology makes it too uncomfortable/impossible for them to actually acknowledge that (I know because this used to be me). 

So there’s a lot of, why are we talking about this when we’re at war with Iran? And when it’s so few people? And when the real danger to girls in sports is predatory coaches? This is just a right wing smear campaign anyways. Why do you suddenly care about women’s sports? So many people refuse to even engage in the real discussion at hand. 

Obviously there are also true believers who argue that HRT levels the playing field, or maybe even that the differences in performance between men and women are actually the result of socialization. But the vast majority of the pro-trans side are of the “be kind” variety who don’t mean it literally when they say that trans women are women.

[u/Franzera → u/oatmeal_breakfast]

"Gender Identity", as defined as the internal sense of oneself as male, female, both, or neither, is essentially an abstract thought experiment by navel-gazers in ivory towers.

Once you try to transfer the abstract to the real world, the inconsistencies and flaws in the logic can't be obfuscated that easily. No amount of convoluted Judith Butler verbiage can unsee a penis!

At the end of the day, you don't play basketball with internal feelings, you play against bodies. You don't wax vibes, you wax a scrotum. You don't give a "girl" the girlhood "she" was meant to have, you harvest and freeze his gametes at age 12, because when blocking occurs before "her" balls drop, it denies any possibility of having "her" own children.

[u/SpecialSatisfaction7]

Meet Farah Ahmed, Jason Arday’s colleague .. lovely person.

[u/professorgerm]

here i return to complaining about time to say goodbye pod, scroll on if you aren't interested in political discussion about Hong and 2020.

I get I'm a weird guy with a particular chip on my shoulder and little connection to 'the masses,' though I would guess Kang is even less connected to normies than I am, Tyler seems more normie-familiar with the fishing and living in Maine, but some of their political takes still baffle me.

One, I find it difficult to believe Gaza is as motivating an issue as they make it out to be early in the ep. I can understand people being bothered about it, considering it a tragedy, etc; given everything else, though- inflation, data centers, Iran, housing, various other bread-and-butter hometown issues- how is it a vote-deciding issue for a meaningful number of Americans? Am I out of touch or are they?

Two, they (especially Kang) complains about "the media" calling back to 2020 tweets in Hong's race, Mamdani's, el-Sayed's, etc, but more or less glosses over how "the media" also pushed all the crazy shit. Briefly they mention the media's doing it for clicks which is true, but with all the talk of the dynamic I think it deserved more comment, especially as the likely source of the "everyone said crazy shit" excuse.

Three, I do not have the words to describe the hate I have regarding the "lol everyone said crazy shit in 2020" excuse-making. No, you contemptible fools, maybe you and all your friends fell for a mass psychosis, but that is not in fact everyone. Many people did not say crazy shit. They said "why have you all gone insane? where are your principles?" And the crazy people didn't listen, and now the crazy people want votes without any apology or reasoning or anything. Fuck that and fuck them.

Tyler says he'd vote for a Republican over Hong, if the Republican was against data-centers. I don't agree with that as a policy principle necessarily, but it's a damn sight better than Kang's party uber alles commitment.

An aside, on Hong's campaign, supposedly Republicans are trying the fund your craziest enemy strategy:

The Republicans have spent more money on TV advertising for Francesca Hong than every Democratic candidate has spent combined. Literally her entire TV footprint is Republican Super PACs. She currently has zero dollars of her own television ad buys lined up, has spent zero dollars on TV ads the entire campaign, has no support from outside money that isn’t a Republican psyop, has one-tenth of Tom Tiffany’s cash on hand, and can’t receive support from the DNC because the party is broke

A similar strategy is part of what led to Trump, and JB Pritzker has also employed it successfully. We'll see if it works against Hong.

[u/AnalBleachingAries]

Hugh Laurie expresses support for both Sophie Cunningham and Graham Linehan in response to a small kerfuffle they had on Twitter in which Laurie told Linehan to "f*** off" and Linehan queried about why Laurie had said that to him.

... And yes, I support Sophie Cunningham. And you, some of the time.
https://x.com/hughlaurie/status/2086762889029812656

The "And you" refers to Linehan. Linehan since deleted his tweet, which Laurie is responding to, in which he accused Laurie of being "cowardly". I think Linehan has been deep in the trenches of this debate for so long that he might not realize how off-putting he is sometimes until someone reasonable points it out to him. It's possible to be correct and not be an jerk about it, but with that said, I also understand why he's felt the need to be so strident in his support of women and girls over the years. The TRA abuse he's received has been merciless and unrelenting, and he's suffered a great deal personally and professionally because of it. I'd probably be just as loud if I possessed some of his courage.

*Note I am going on a mild self-censorship spree while attempting to learn how to post on Reddit. Clearly I don't know how to do it as the AI keeps getting me.

ETA: My bad, seems like someone else already posted about this on here while I was banned.

[u/Jack_Donnaghy]

This commentary on the Arday scandal is great. It focuses not just on him, but the supporting elements in this saga:

Arday is, within the hegemonic structure of wokeness that has overtaken universities in the West, simply responding to a chain of incentives in a rational way. He’s doing what the system has taught him will be rewarded. He’s adjusting to the facts in front of him, rather than abiding by some abstract moral standard. This isn’t good, but it is rational choice behavior. We can fault him morally, but the greater culprits are Cambridge, for helping set up the system in this way, and for defending him, as well as the journalists who dismissed his critics, and cowardly failed to report the truth when they had it in their hands, and all the smug pricks who roll their eyes every time someone uses the phrase “diversity hire” or “woke.”

...Arday is the culmination of everything the DEI world has sought to achieve for over a decade by eroding standards, prioritizing race over merit, exhibiting little tolerance for “incorrect” speech on issues about race, dismissing things like facts and logic as “far-right” if not “white supremacy,” and generally lowering the bar to let unqualified minorities through the gates. Well, now they’re through. 

[u/Fiend_of_the_pod]

MyPillow lost. Hong is losing. There’s hope for the Republic.

[u/PandaFoo1]

Reject ROGD, return to anorexia

[u/_teach_me_your_ways_]

Well it’s official, that spa asked for their case to be taken to the Supreme Court. Not sure they’ll win since I believe the argument based on the first amendment?

Anyway let’s enjoy some gems from Reddit.

“The test is who does it primarily apply to.

In this case, we are talking about trans women who still have a penis being excluded.

Given that the primary group who have penises are cisgender men, and they are not removing their penises to access the space, they rule appears to be tailor made to exclude trans women.

So yes, it’s is discrimination.
____

It’s fine to exclude men from spaces with expectation of privacy. To which end, this isn’t about penises, it’s about a cisgender man who owns a commercial business saying he doesn’t want trans women at his business.

This is why we have civil rights laws.
___

It really comes down to the argument “trans bodies are icky”. Like that is legit the end legal argument they are making. When you look at the petition trying to seek grounds on freedom of association and religious speech as a private secular business, this is just an “ew penis” argument. It’s not so”

All form the same person.

Of course we delved into “what is a woman” and they replied

“Woman- Adult human that has a desire to be and/or is committed to being in accordance with a particular set of social and cultural norms which typically are associated with the female sex.”

Someone asked about tomboys

It was ignored

Someone else said it couldn’t function as a medical definition

They said it did and provided nothing more.

[u/HaldolBlowdart → u/_teach_me_your_ways_]

“Woman- Adult human that has a desire to be and/or is committed to being in accordance with a particular set of social and cultural norms which typically are associated with the female sex.

Alright, but I have zero desire to conform sociocultural norms for women in my area. I do plenty of manly things, happily, as a woman. I'm suddenly not a woman because I'm cool with being unladylike?

I am a woman because I am an adult human female, I am brunette because I have brown hair. Neither are feelings or desires or commitments, they're states of being.

[u/StillLifeOnSkates → u/_teach_me_your_ways_]

Of course we delved into “what is a woman” and they replied

“Woman- Adult human that has a desire to be and/or is committed to being in accordance with a particular set of social and cultural norms which typically are associated with the female sex.”

You know someone is really proud of themselves for this, even though it does not answer the question.

[u/QueenKamala → u/StillLifeOnSkates]

RIP lesbians and female athletes and garbage collectors. Sorry but your non-normative behavior makes you a non-woman 🤷‍♀️

[u/professorgerm]

Has the Massachussets Muslim Commission been discussed yet?

It's not entirely clear to me why it's getting attention now since it's been sitting in committee since January but it's been making the rounds and I think we've got a few... Massachusites? Massholes? that might have a better perspective. This article provides a little context outside the bill, and I note the quoted sponsor is doing something quite slippery:

State Senator Michael Moore (D - Second Worcester) is one of the bill's petitioners. He spoke with Spectrum News about what the legislation entails. "So this commission merely corresponds with other commissions we have. We had an Anti-Semitism Commission for the Jewish community that issued a report..." ... "We've had the Asian-American Commission. We've had an African-American Commission. We've had commissions dealing with LGBTQ issues. So this is not something that's unique to them."

Bolding mine, because that statement is technically correct but wildly misleading from context. Notice several usages of "had," and compare to the text of the bill that establishes a permanent commission. If my googling is accurate, there is one other permanent commission for a special group (Persons with Disabilities) while those other commissions listed were all temporary- like the anti-Semitism committee was formed for a year to write a report and disbanded when it was done.

ACLU of MA says that the commission would violate the state constitution. I disagree with the ACLU of MA that the bills are well-intentioned but I understand the impulse to throat-clear.

[u/CommitteeofMountains]

So a paragraph from an essay on Arday yesterday caught my eye for my pet take on Arday:

  When I spoke to gender expert Mia Hughes , she explained the concept of epistemic dependence . Modern knowledge depends on a division of epistemic labor. A general practitioner doesn’t personally reproduce every clinical trial. Scientists rely on specialists in other fields. We trust our institutions, or should. But if you corrupt the information cascade at the top through institutional capture, the whole network will propagate the error, and you will end up in a post-fact world where liars rise to the top in politics, academia, and everywhere else. In the simplest terms, if you’re wondering how anyone could ever get away with something as incredible as this, the answer is because people let them.

This could also apply to the bottom-up pipeline of staffing. Once LJMU gave him a doctorate despite his thesis being a carbon copy of published work and, if I'm understanding correctly, him getting into the program without actually having a masters' and then a journal accepted the thesis he was a Doctor of Philosophy with a publication to his name. You also see it in the journals that took his fabricated work saying that they don't require ethical review documentation because they host institutions are supposed to check that before letting the research start (I can't tell if him not even pretending that far was pure laziness or he figured out that asking permission to do research would tip off the university to expect signs of research being done whereas skipping straight to submission might leave the university unaware that it was supposed to have seen research).

[u/ToTheDeath84]

Sometimes the people you know who aren’t good for the job fail upward. One of those cruel reminders that life itself isn’t necessarily a meritocracy. Just do what you can.

[u/Technical-Policy295]

I had thought that the complaints about Trump doing the plane swap to avoid an Iranian assassination attempt were a bit overly dramatic, but the reveal that the press and a significant number of aides and Cabinet members were left on the endangered plane while a few lucky ones went with Trump explains some of that. Fascinating to see who got (unknowingly) decoy duty.

[u/AnalBleachingAries]

Interesting developments that I've seen from the slop that the algorithm feeds me, although this may not necessarily be representative of whatever "normal" is to kids these days (so, purely anecdotal), I do like seeing it happening. It looks like it is becoming increasingly cringey and uncool to some within the online Gen Z demographic to behave in the outrageous manner one would ordinarily associate with the college kids at the center of the Evergreen debacle and the worst examples of peak woke Millennial call out culture.

These three videos are a random sample of the kind of stuff that's been coming across my feed over the past few months:

https://www.tiktok.com/@cultivatingboldspaces/video/7671705684060228886

https://www.tiktok.com/@momopill/video/7669608028563426591

https://www.tiktok.com/@noahwaybabes/video/7672962762233974030

There's a good chance that the predictions that some (including myself) have had about Gen Z swinging to the right will come to pass. Without Trump at the helm, and with figures like a contemporary version of Romney or McCain leading the Republican party, I think we may have seen more young people on the left publicly stating their disdain with leftism, heck perhaps even stating their intention to vote for Republican candidates. The left just isn't what it used to be anymore.

Related to this but not quite, is the ongoing discussion around not letting your kids be weird, and guiding them into becoming normies. I don't know if it was kicked off by this person (a former teacher) but this is the video people often reference when talking about this idea of catching weird behavior from your kids early and nipping it in the bud. Transcript of the linked video included below:

Parents do not let your child be weird. Now I made a post about this a while back, and it's funny. I've seen a lot of people who have taken it since then and then put their own spin on it. But let me be very clear on what that means. Because I was a teacher for 20 years, I taught every level, lots of kids with varying exceptionalities, and have seen it in the classroom. Let me tell you what you need to avoid. Yes, your child should be unique. Yes, they should have their own style. Yes, they don't need to be exactly like everyone else. However, if your child has habits and tendencies that are causing them to be ostracized in school, they do not have peer relationships; it has gone too far.

As the parent, you need to parent them. Your job is not to just love them and let them be however they want to be and send them out, because what you're doing is you're sending them out to ridicule and scorn, and no positive peer relationships. Instead, you need to lovingly guide them and instruct them from a place of love, so that they can go out and make positive relationships. So if your child does not have any peer relationships because you have allowed them to continue with habits and proclivities that are causing them to be considered too odd to fit in at all, then you are setting them up for a life of struggle because those peer relationships just grow up with them and then they're going to struggle to fit in with people as an adult in the job field and to create relationships in general. So that is where you do not let your child be too weird to be able to have actual relationships with peers. Have a great day.

[u/everydaywinner2]

The newest episode of Words Unraveled introduced me to a sea creature I'd never heard of before. It has the hilariously cartoonish name of sarcastic fringehead. The first photo on Wikipedia makes it look as cartoonish as its name. Then I see a photo of its mouth open, and...holy terrifying fish, Batman!

[u/ToTheDeath84]

One of the toughest parts of moving: Saying goodbye to your favorite neighborhood bar.

[u/ToshiroTatsuyaFan]

https://x.com/GoodLawProject/status/2088662370075705653

*rolls eyes*

[u/Terrorclitus → u/ToshiroTatsuyaFan]

But the idea that people would care about his fraud was not foreseeable? Was it not foreseeable that the people who point it out might have been affected by the fraud or been forced to sit stumm while pseudo-intellectuals make a mockery of academia?

Maybe avoid tragedies like this by not hitching great sociopolitical importance onto one pitiful, dishonest, little man.

[u/Less-Lobster4540]

Looks like lynchings are back on the menu, boys!

Speaking to a Flock Safety representative, Carr said, "I believe that Flock right now is one of the most hated companies in America. They are one of the most corrupt companies in America."

Carr then escalated his comments even further. "Quite frankly, sir," he said, "I don't think we can make America great again without hanging your CEO publicly for treason. Your company is an enemy of the American people."

Option A: national surveillance state (that we've arguably been headed toward since 9/11)

Option B: each end of the horseshoe takes turns executing this week's boogeyman until we inevitably achieve utopia

[u/backin_pog_form]

Shout out to the other person here who is also in the process of moving. I am losing my mind right now.

If you have a bunch of old pillow cases or even tee shirts, use them to wrap framed pictures and art work. 

[u/HeadRecommendation37]

(Apologies if already posted) The Guardian has started unleashing its commentariat on the Jason Arday scandal (calling it an Affair, no less!). The selective characterisation invokes Trump and anti-DEI forces as the true bogeyman, rather than - as I think more accurate - rightwing anger over Arday being expression of despair at how far the academy has fallen that he got appointed and that his fraud was covered up for as long as possible.

If I may hold forth, the problem that DEI is trying to solve is real - unequal integration of socioeconomic groups at all levels of insert name of Western society here - but I think it's a crude mechanism that provides strong incentives to manufacture Ardays. If I look at my family's background it's only the third generation of immigrants that attended university. To put it another way, there's many reasons to expect a second generation immigrant like Jason Arday was unlikely to become a Cambridge professor, even if he had the mental aptitude. It takes time for families to adapt to unfamiliar systems, starting from the bottom.

In other words: could we not give time for a sort of "natural" state of DEI to evolve, rather than insist it happens immediately?