Category: culture

Dominatricks

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I remain mystified. How has NCAA women’s basketball avoided a tsunami of Males Pretending to be Females? That’s MPtbF, for short.

NCAA is an organization that moves tournaments and championship games out of states daring to impede the destruction of women’s sports by trans ‘women’. They are fully committed to this phantasmic policy. They have abandoned any defense against MPtbF who want to play basketball against females in NCAA sanctioned contests.

When will MPtbF start seeking some of the billion dollars in NCAA women’s basketball scholarships?

My puzzlement was not reduced by discovering that the first MPtbF to play women’s basketball in the NCAA won’t be the first, by a longshot, to play at a college. Mission College, Santa Clara, CA had a male playing for their women’s basketball team nearly a decade ago. Under the aegis of the California Community College Athletic Association.

He was 50, so his implied lack of speed and/or stamina could have accounted for his less than stellar first season.

In that 2012-2013 season he wasn’t very good. In 18 games Gabrielle Ludwig never started and averaged 5.9 points, 4.4 rebounds, and just under 11 minutes playing time. He got a lot better in his second season: In 26 games Ludwig started in 23 and averaged 18 points, 20 rebounds, and 28.5 minutes playing time. And “In the 2013-2014 season Gabrielle was voted First Team All-Conference player…”

In the 2013-2014 season not only did some female fail to make the team, another sat on the bench. To indulge Gabrielle Ludwig.

Here’s Ludwig compared to ‘her’ ‘peers’:

That physical difference above is not distorted by the perspective:

Alas, the time when you could get away with the sneer quotes around ‘woman’ is past:
50-year-old transsexual ‘woman’ makes college basketball debut

Central Valley Conference, Commissioner Logan McKechnie said, while Luwdig is tall, his state certification as a female is all that matters. “I don’t think, frankly, fairness enters into it,” he said.

Another commissioner, Dale Murray of the Coast Conference, believes Ludwig is evenly matched with his competitors and “just happens to be a bit taller than everyone else.”

Others question whether a player with Ludwig’s attributes belong in an all-female sport.

One of the people Ludwig faced off against in a recent game described his style as “real physical.”

Ya think? He’d be pretty physical just standing there if you were 5’5″ and 115 pounds.

He was 6’8″ and 220 pounds. A foot taller, and twice the weight of most of his opponents. If it was a typical 18 year old of any sex against a typical 12 year old of any sex, they’d call an administrators meeting to decry bullying and hire another diversity officer.

Fairness, indeed, isn’t a word you could employ. Nor ’embarrassment.’ Nor ‘shame.’ Narcissism? Sure.

There’s a sympathetic USA Today story that indicates Ludwig wanted to play because he loved competitive basketball. I don’t know about you but my definition of competitive includes a large dose of ‘fair’.

Playing against women, in front of spectators, was at least as important to him as a love of the game. He could have played in a pickup league.

I don’t care about Ludwig’s perception of his body, it’s his business. I do care that he, and the state of California, felt he had a right to play basketball against shorter, smaller, weaker opponents – by taking the place of another. He is not a woman physiologically, so his mental state was what was made to matter for his opponents, teammates, and CA taxpayers.

Check out Save Women’s Sports for the physiology point. No amount of testosterone deprivation or surgery could make Ludwig a woman.

hOOPS!

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I don’t want to give anybody ideas here, but I am sorely puzzled by NCAA women’s basketball.

Last Sunday I surfed TV looking for a summary/highlights of the Michigan Wolverines pasting of the Iowa Hawkeyes in the ‘B1G’ men’s football (that sex qualifier may seem redundant, but I await the demand for a women’s football program under Title IX) conference championship game.

I settled on the Big Fourteen Ten network as a likely intelligence source on the assumption they’d be less likely, immediately post-football championship, to be screening reruns of women’s field hockey or some tour of the conference’s campus restaurants.

I was disappointed to find myself watching Michigan State vs Iowa women’s basketball. It was late in the game so I hung around to see if the men’s football news would appear when it was over.

I don’t know if women’s collegiate basketball is just Title IX messing with me, but “throws like a girl” has to take an insult back seat to “shoots like a girl.” I know women who are pretty good softball players, they could play on men’s teams without embarrassment.

None of the women playing basketball for Michigan State or Iowa could spell ‘jockstrap.’ This paucity of talent seemed unlikely to be concentrated in these two presumedly elite teams, so I went straight to the most elite women’s basketball source. Was WNBA talent any better? This video (5 min), admittedly cherry-picked WNBA lowlights, suggests not so much. But it was like watching MSU/IU.

I was led down a rabbit hole of research, since I haven’t watched a pro basketball game featuring either sex in twenty years.

There are ~144 WNBA players (~450 in the NBA), and the top 10% or so of WNBA players are conceivably good enough for limited play in the NBA. This small number explains the collegiate women’s basketball ineptitude. Females, on average, just aren’t very good at basketball. I sympathize. Neither am I.

For example of a player, here’s Elena Delle Donne, a 6’5″, 187 pound power forward and perennial WNBA star. An NBA equivalent might be Kevin Durant (6′ 10″ 240 lbs).

Comparing the NBA and WNBA is not apples to oranges, these are both apples. However, it’s like a Granny Smith vs. a Golden Delicious. The NBA, for example, has a smaller ball to hoop ratio, shorter shot clock, longer 3-point range, a longer game time, longer season, and longer play-offs. I digress. Back to the actual point of this post.

We know why males pretending to be females are not playing women’s football.

But, I asked myself, why aren’t MPtbF playing women’s basketball? The impact would be huge. I can’t figure out why there is no trans assault on NCAA women’s basketball.

Third rate males could change, read ‘destroy overnight’, female basketball. Where are they? MPtbF are ruining track and field, weight lifting, rugby, Mixed Martial Arts, and swimming for female athletes. Why aren’t they eliminating females from women’s basketball competition?

Can it be that women’s basketball is protected somehow by our Universities?

Well, not because it’s a cash cow. NCAA men’s 2019 basketball revenuewas $933,000,000 vs. women’s $266,000. Women’s revenue does not rise to the level of a rounding error. Still, scholarships for each are a billion dollars. There is an approximate total of 4300 scholarships offered in Division I Basketball for Men. There are 5025 scholarships available across women’s Division I basketball. There’s money on the table for MPtbF.

Maybe because basketball is popular enough to have a higher embarrassment profile? Watching men play basketball against women on national television would create much more negative publicity than swim meets of which very few are even aware.

But why would that stop them, and how would they get away with stopping it?

Can there be some aspect of the sport so repellant to MPtbF as to prevent even one from suing over their exclusion?

Anybody have a suggestion? I got nothin’.

Kwanzaa

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This is a public service update.

The first Umoja (Unity) candle was lit by Kwanzaa’s inventor in a lightly attended celebration (family and close comrades) on December 26, 1966.

This time of year there’s always an uptick in searches for information about Kwanzaa. I know this simply from observing the search engine hits on this TOC post: Nguzo Saba The 7 Principles of Blackness

Noting a few of those hits today, I reread that 2008 post. I wasn’t surprised that links have rotted. Most notably the Lansing State Journal article which prompted it, and a reference to The Dartmouth Review. The relevant portions of the LSJ piece are quoted in my post, but the Dartmouth article was the source of much of the Kwanzaa founder’s (Ron Karenga) biographical content.

My Nguzo Saba post hasn’t attracted a comment in a long while, but there are some interesting ones from earlier times should you wish to read it. One of those comments:

So, what the commentor [sic] above me is implying is that, we, as a community or race, need to rely on the white community to survive? You are suggesting that the white community is superior, that they “feed” us, and in todays society that is just wrong, no matter who you are. Nobody is above another just because of the circumstances of their birth.

How times have changed. That commenter had the concept right. But, now it’s a few very vocal, white, snake oil barkers convincing a few black people that unless ‘Black’ is capitalized (and white is NOT) everyone should riot, loot, burn.

And, it should be noted, Ron Karenga thought some people were more admirable than others because of the circumstances of their birth.

IAC there still seems to be Kwanzaa interest, so for latter day internet searchers I unearthed an archive of the Dartmouth article. You should read the whole thing. It’s not long.

I saw a number of things in it that register differently now than they did in 2008. The atavistic tribalism that is BLM has its ‘Roots’ here, and you’ll see predicates for CRT and racialist apologists such as Ibram X. Kendi and Robin D’Angelo.

The 7 Principles, Nguzo Saba, of Ron Karenga’s contrivance are noted in my earlier post. But there are 7 other principles listed in his book The Quotable Karenga. “The sevenfold path of blackness is think black, talk black, act black, create black, buy black, vote black, and live black.”

OK. But define “black.” Right now it’s being done mostly by white people.

That was the challenge to Kendi and, especially, D’Angelo. How can we make more money off this and achieve more privilege than Karenga did?

IAC, here are 2 snippets from that Dartmouth piece:

Initially, Kwanzaa proceeded from Karenga’s hostility toward Western religion, which, he wrote in his 1980 book, Kawaida Theory, “denies and diminishes human worth, capacity, potential and achievement. In Christian and Jewish mythology, humans are born in sin, cursed with mythical ancestors who’ve sinned and brought the wrath of an angry God on every generation’s head.” He similarly opposed belief in God and other “spooks who threaten us if we don’t worship them and demand we turn over our destiny and daily lives.”

In Critical Race Theology, white “humans are born in sin, cursed with mythical ancestors who’ve sinned and brought the wrath of an angry God on every generation’s head.” You might object that the slave owning ancestors are not mythical. Well, for the vast majority of non-black people and at least a large plurality of black people, they are entirely mythical. And those “spooks?” They’re white Progressives.

James Coleman, a former Black Panther, argues, “By only stressing the unity of black people, Kwanzaa separates black people from the rest of Americans. Americans must unify on whatever principles ensure we live in a safe, prosperous, God-loving country, with the race and ethnicity of any American seeking to abide by those principles being of no consequence.”

Yeah. That’s a passé MLK thingy. On his journey to anathema (statue destruction) MLK is now solidly in the objectionable phase. Because to say “All Lives Matter” is racist.

Will Karenga’s fanciful 1960s inventiveness see a revival among the newly faithful? In 2008 it was seen to be in decline.

Does anyone remember that back in the early 1990s, AT&T ran television ads suggesting that blacks call their families during Kwanzaa using their telephone service? That stores stocked Kwanzaa candles and kente clothes? That student unions were festooned with Marcus Garvey’s pan-African flag? In 1995, a local activist triumphantly told The Boston Globe, “We’re at the point now where Kwanzaa has gotten so big that we feel like Santa Claus is really on the way out.”

That short 2008 post from Reason is also worth a read. How has the “culture war is over” prediciton turned out?

I guess we’ll be able to tell based on the number of Kwanzaa candles sold. If anyone can tell.

A Kranzaa resurgence would be a mixed blessing for the black isolationists. By numbers most of the Kwanzaa forelock tuggers to this intensely African theme park are Progressive white women, or Jamaican/East Indian politicians.

Ignore the willfully ignorant ingrates

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Giving thanks to readers of this blog with this worthwhile read:
A Modern-Day Pilgrim From the ‘Land of No’

And check out some of the links at the end. A sample:

Since 1961, the WSJ editorial board has printed two editorials on Thanksgiving. One is a 1620 account of the first Thanksgiving. The second is called “And the Fair Land.” This remains true decades after its first printing:

But we can all remind ourselves that the richness of this country was not born in the resources of the earth, though they be plentiful, but in the men that took its measure. For that reminder is everywhere—in the cities, towns, farms, roads, factories, homes, hospitals, schools that spread everywhere over that wilderness.

We can remind ourselves that for all our social discord we yet remain the longest enduring society of free men governing themselves without benefit of kings or dictators. Being so, we are the marvel and the mystery of the world, for that enduring liberty is no less a blessing than the abundance of the earth.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Mean Mad Man. Wicked Wrathful Woman.

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Joy Reid is an angry, homophobic, MSNBC Progressive propagandist with a laser focus on race… whose show I’ve never seen. I’m aware of her from references I’ve read, though.

Before today’s topic, the latest mention to come to my attention involved her attack on Niki Minaj. Minaj is a popular rapper with 200 million Twitter followers. I looked it up.

Reid attacked Minaj over the latter’s objection to CCP virus vaccination. Plausibly, Reid did this to boost her ratings.
1. Attack someone with 170 times more Twitter followers than your anemic TV audience.
2. Get moar viewers?
3. Profit.

Reid, to Minaj, on The ReidOut (her TV show). Emphasis mine.:

“”For you to use your platform to encourage our community to not protect themselves and save their lives … my God sister, you could do better than that.

… For you to use your platform to put people in the position of dying from a disease they don’t have to die from, oh my God,” Reid continued. “As a fan, as a hip-hop fan and as somebody who is your fan, I am so sad that you did that, sister. Oh my God.”

“Our community” is code. Right?
For: “POC take the vaccination advice of black, female rappers far too seriously for their own good.“?

Minaj tweeted at Reid:

“This is what happens when you’re so thirsty to down another black woman (by the request of the white man), that you didn’t bother to read all my tweets. “My God SISTER do better” imagine getting ur dumb ass on tv a min after a tweet to spread a false narrative about a black woman https://t.co/4UviONyTHy” [can’t guarantee that Twitter link works, Twitter is blocked on my computer.]

Ah, the joys of internecine political warfare. Reid seems to have a propensity for attacking black people who stray off the plantation.

When I saw that Reid was attacking Winsome Sears – a black, legal immigrant, female, and first in all those categories to win office in a state-wide Virginia election – I initially wrote it off to standard operating procedure. But, it wasn’t Reid who drew my attention. That was her guest Michael Eric Dyson: Invited on Reid’s show to call Winsome Sears names, I thought.

I first ran into Dyson when he and Michelle Goldberg debated Jordan Peterson and Steven Fry in the May 2018 Munk Debate. These semi-annual debates are, according to PBS, “Canada’s preeminent forum to discuss the pressing issues of our time.” The debate topic: Be it resolved, what you call political correctness, I call progress… They should have capitalized Progress.

The whole debate is on C-SPAN, and is just short of 2 hours. It is worth watching the whole thing, but… For those unwilling to devote that much time, here’s a 12 minute clip wherein Dyson’s garrulous pretension is on full display. It’s worth a watch just to see how JBP handles being called a “mean, mad, white man”:

Dyson’s MSNBC performance was similar. To spare you watching the whole snake dance, here’s a representative snippet that’s only a 1 minute and 9 seconds:

If you are a follower of Joy Reid, or a masochist – a distinction without a difference AFAICT – the whole 8 minute race bashing festival is here:
Michael Eric Dyson: Winsome Sears Is “White Supremacy By Ventriloquist,” A Black Mouth With White Ideas

In case you’ve interest in others’ opinions of this spiteful man, here are short reviews of each performance from two different black men no longer on Michael Eric Dyson’s Christmas card list. Some interesting insights.

My Reaction: Jordan B Peterson Vs. Michael Eric Dyson MUNK Debate – 8 minutes.

Joy Reid Brings On WOKE Academic To Say Winsome Sears Has ‘Black Face With White Supremacist Tongue’ – 15 minutes

Update 11:58AM, Nov 7, Accidentally published a draft of this. Edited for clarity and flow.

Western Civ: cheap veneer or cruel joke?

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New Zealand COVIDocracy.

Police Bust Gang Members With Car Trunk “Full Of KFC” Takeout Breaching ‘Strict Lockdown’

Yes, “KFC” means the fried chicken. Chick-fil-A is mustering its legal team.

OK, the perps also had $70K in cash and an unspecified number of “empty ounce bags.” But maybe those little bags were for delivering counterfeit Arby Sauce?

The most egregious/hilarious bit is the cops bragging pictures of KFC takeout bags. “Look what we did!” Well, we are looking… wankers.

Street value of the KFC contraband could not be determined because of the “undisclosed quantity of fries.”

There’s a Firesign Theater bit where they mention the police estimate of the street value of some seized ground round, but I can’t find it.

This will have to do:

And dont-cha just love those ‘Hot Buttered Groat Clusters,’ and two tubs of slaw!!

I guess the good news here is that the fascists can’t beat the Colonel.

“This is not a black and white issue,” Tom intoned.

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The title is word play called a ‘Swifty’: A punning relationship between an adverb/adjective and the statement it refers to. This arises from the style in which the Tom Swift juvenile science fiction/adventure books were written up until the 70’s. I haven’t read any later than that. I fear woke erosion of the franchise.

Back to Swifties. A couple examples might clarify the word play:

“I’ve got to fix the car,” said Tom mechanically.
“I love hockey,” said Tom puckishly.

Like me, many elderly (or post elderly) writers, entrepreneurs, scientists, and inventors were inspired by the Tom Swift books: Ray Kurzweil, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Paul Allen, and Bill Gates among them. Steve Wozniak had this to say:

“Another hero was Tom Swift, in the books. What he stood for, the freedom, the scientific knowledge and being an engineer gave him the ability to invent solutions to problems. He’s always been a hero to me. I buy old Tom Swift books now and read them to my own children.”

Here are a few example titles that explain why these books excited these creators:
Tom Swift and His Wireless Message -1911
Tom Swift and His Photo Telephone -1914
Tom Swift and His Giant Magnet -1932
Tom Swift and His Rocket Ship -1954

You can probably put an individual’s name on each of those titular dreams – now real world accomplishments. Several of those names are in the list above.

We owe the authors of the TS books a bit of respect for their effect on the imagination of daring individuals who were young 60 or more years ago. We owe those now rich, formerly young, for much of our current comfort and wealth.

What is inspiring the next generation of Wozniaks is unclear. We’re not going to have Tom Swift. If our teachers unions have their way, our kids are going to be reading Heather Has Two Mommies and Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness.

Speaking of things that can’t happen anymore, it wasn’t long ago that NPR was acknowledging Tom Swift:

“Science fiction hero Tom Swift has amazed children with his incredible inventions since combustion and electricity drove the nation into a new era. These stories captured a cultural love of science and inspired such famous figures as Steve Wozniak and Isaac Asimov — all while predicting new technologies decades in advance.”

Now, that cultural love of science is under attack by ideologues who dismiss the scientific method as racist, by entrepreneurs who virtue signal by selective private censorship, and by so-called scientists who bring science into disrepute in exchange for celebrity. Who wants to grow up to be Ibram X. Kendi, Mark Zuckerberg, or Anthony Fauci?

That story wouldn’t be published today on NPR.

Tom Swift‘s history would be seen as “problematic” now. The TS books of the early 20th century had racist characteristics, and all (of the first 73 – through 1971, at least) celebrate objective, rational, linear thinking; delayed gratification, and self reliance – which the Smithsonian tells us are markers of ‘whiteness.’

It is by no means obvious, to anyone aside from Robin D’Angelo, et. al. that the racial anachronisms of the Tom Swift books affected those inspired by them. Nonetheless, TS books will be cancelled in the U.S. as soon as Ibram and Robin get around to it. Cat in the Hat comes first. Tom Swift is a Fahrenheit 451 candidate to be burned in Canada first…

“Woke social media could remove all trace of my ever having existed!” said Tom unpersonably.

Which brings me to the actual point of this post. What if I told you a private individual and a few others “designed a [CCP virus] vaccine, and contracted a company to manufacture that vaccine in June 2020 for under $5k.” Now, the individual who arranged this is not a Swiftian teenager, he’s got a PhD. But this guy named Josiah Zayner did just that. This amazing feat won’t be inspiring many young people, though. When Zayner started sharing this info he was banned from YouTube for life.

Which is why – combined with corporate-news silence – you probably haven’t heard about it.

Read this whole thing: The Crime of Curiosity. It carries an inspiring call to individual possibility.

bypassing elite institutions, democratizing science, and biological self-determination, or every individual’s right to his or her own body, which includes their DNA — and the right to change it.

And don’t forget why John Galt, an adult version of Tom Swift, started the strike.