Mathematics is Oppressive

A painter is a man who paints what he sells; an artist, on the other hand, is a man who sells what he paints. -Pablo Picasso



Went to Garbarino's, my fourth dinner out in a row. I'm up 5 pounds and feel it. The place was really loud but the food--Italian--was good and with affordable options. There is a new breed of waitstaff that looks and acts as if they are embittered, indentured servants. There are a lot of those there.

Roughly one year after the University of Manchester Student Union banned clapping at its events - choosing to instead ask audiences to use 'jazz hands' to show their appreciation for a performance - students at the University of Oxford are working to "replace clapping" because it could "trigger anxiety." Like their peers in Manchester, they will ask audiences to use silent hand-wave motion called "jazz hands". The motion to "mandate the encouragement of silent clapping" successfully passed in a vote taken by the school's Student Union during their first meeting of the new school year.

"Jazz hands" is the British Sign Language movement to express applause. It is considered a "more inclusive" gesture.

Many European languages assign gender to nouns for no reason, with French having female moons and male boats and such. But actually, it’s English that is odd: almost all European languages belong to one family – Indo-European – and of all of them, English is the only one that doesn’t assign genders that way.

Trump told the Columbians that if they did not control their border better he would cut their aid. Was that quid pro quo?

'...college admissions policies can either be based on academic excellence, or they can pursue social justice and diversity goals, but they can’t do both simultaneously. To the extent that colleges like Harvard pursue social justice and artificially engineered diversity goals in admissions, they compromise academic excellence and have to discriminate against Asians to do so. Just like top college football or basketball programs like Clemson or Virginia can either pursue athletic excellence to win national titles, or pursue social justice and diversity goals, but it can’t do both at the same time. If elite, highly competitive college sports programs pursue social justice and engineered diversity to make a top basketball or football team “look more like America” or “look more like the student body on campus,” it could only do so by compromising athletic excellence. Why should participation in elite, highly competitive college sports programs, which are based solely on merit and ability, be any different from participation in elite, highly competitive academic programs at America’s colleges?"--Mac Donald

75% of immigrants integrate into the majoritarian culture over the period of a generation. 
That said, there is a high school in LA that has fifth-generation Hispanic families that do not speak English.

The Big Sky Conference named the University of Montana runner June Eastwood, a biological male who identifies as a transgender woman, the cross-country female athlete of the week. “June Eastwood finished second in a field of 204 runners at the Santa Clara Bronco Invitational,” helping “Montana place seventh as a team,” the conference noted in its announcement Tuesday. Eastwood previously competed on the University of Montana’s men’s team.

Tulsi Gabbard, the last House member still in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, said Thursday she would not seek reelection for her Hawaii seat.
“I believe I can best serve the people of Hawaiʻi and our country as your President and Commander-in-Chief,” she said in an announcement posted on Twitter.
I think she is the most un-political of all the awful candidates. I'm beginning to like her.

“Controlling carbon is a bureaucrat’s dream. If you control carbon, you control life.”--Richard Lindzen

On October 26, 1775, King George III addressed both houses of the British Parliament to discuss growing concern about the rebellion in America, which he viewed as a traitorous action against himself and Great Britain. He began his speech by reading a “Proclamation of Rebellion” and urged Parliament to move quickly to end the revolt and bring order to the colonies. The king spoke of his belief that “many of these unhappy people may still retain their loyalty, and may be too wise not to see the fatal consequence of this usurpation, and wish to resist it, yet the torrent of violence has been strong enough to compel their acquiescence, till a sufficient force shall appear to support them.” With these words, the king gave Parliament his consent to dispatch troops to use against his own subjects, a notion that his colonists believed impossible.

                       Mathematics is Oppressive

We seem to be opening a cultural door where the new standard is that standards are evil. This inherent contradiction seems to offend no one. To coin a new contradiction, we are entering a time of repressive open-mindedness. Nowhere is this more obvious and dangerous than in education, where the groundwork for the social and political future is laid.
The basic problem is the disparity of outcomes. Why do some in a land of equality do better than others? We believe that there is a bell curve for individuals but not for groups. We blamed dumb kids eating lead paint. Despite the extraordinary social advances, we blamed poverty. Now, it's a conspiracy.

Robby Soave writing at Reason on how Seattle public schools will now start teaching that mathematics is oppressive:

The new guidance also includes some extremely political, simplistic talking points that might be popular among activist academics but are in reality somewhat dubious. This is verbatim from the proposal: Students will be able to “identify the inherent inequities of the standardized testing system used to oppress and marginalize people and communities of color,” “explain how math has been used to exploit natural resources,” and “explain how math dictates economic oppression.”

And  in response from John Hinderaker writing at the Power Line blog:

The ability to do math transcends race and other irrelevant factors. Facility at mathematics, earned through many hours of hard labor, has allowed countless Asian-Americans to prosper, to the point where Asian-American incomes are now on average considerably higher than white incomes. Why were all these “people of color” not “oppressed” or “marginalized” by mathematics? Because they did their homework and studied for tests.

So, in a land that loves diversity, we demand conformity of results. A contradiction.