Society's ChildS


Light Saber

Jordan Peterson's secret weapon

Jonathon Van Maren
The Bridgehead
Tue, 30 Jan 2018 13:19 UTC
Peterson
As Dr. Jordan B. Peterson trots the globe for the launch of his new book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, it has been immensely amusing for me (and millions of others) to watch progressive media figures invite him into their studios, come out swinging their hatchets, and miss entirely while Peterson looks alternatively bemused and mildly concerned at their comprehension abilities. His now-famous interview with Cathy Newman of Channel 4 has racked up nearly five million views, and some are already referring to it as a definitive defeat in the progressive war against common sense.

What I think is important to note is that a key reason journalists like Newman seem so utterly befuddled by Peterson is that most of them are so trapped in their elitist fishbowls that they cannot fathom that they might be wrong, and that public intellectuals with millions of followers reject most of their flimsy dogmas out of hand. Peterson's interviewers shift between attempting to mischaracterize his positions to demonize him, goggling in mute shock when he calmly dismembers their ill-thought out positions, and attempting to ambush him with various accusations of association with the alt-right.
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Attention

"Trans-age" man claims that he's a six-year-old girl trapped in a man's body

Jonathon Van Maren
The Bridgehead
Tue, 30 Jan 2018 12:24 UTC
Paul
Ideas have consequences-that might be cliché, but it's about time our culture remembered that. The transgender phenomenon, which has already spawned ludicrously serious conversations about whether or not "trans-race" is a thing, with white lady Rachel Dolezal claiming to be black, and "trans-age" having some insist that they are not the age that they actually are. This sort of thing used to be called a "mid-life crisis," but now it means that a Toronto guy named Paul in his fifties actually managed to find "adoptive parents" after abandoning his wife and seven kids-and now lives as a "six-year-old girl" named Stefonknee. And the media treated Paul's delusions with sympathy, if not support:

Stefonknee says her 'adoptive' family, which consists of an older couple and their children and young grandchildren, are completely accepting of her identifying as a little girl. She says she's living as a six-year-old girl because it's something she could never do when was in grade school.

Comment: Man tries to escape child sex assault charges by claiming to be 'trans-age'

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Handcuffs

Transgender beauticians arrested in Indonesia for "teasing", given "manly" and "moral" training amid LGBT crackdown


Channel News Asia
Mon, 29 Jan 2018 17:47 UTC
Indonesia transgender arrested man training
© AFP/CHAIDEER MAHYUDDINOne of two Indonesian men is publicly caned for having gay sex in Aceh in May last year.
Indonesian police forcibly cut the hair of a group of transgender women and made them wear male clothing, authorities said on Monday (Jan 29), amid a crackdown on the LGBT community in the world's biggest Muslim-majority nation.

The incident happened after police raided several beauty salons in conservative Aceh province on Sunday and rounded up a dozen transgender employees over claims they had teased a group of boys.

Police accused the employees of violating the province's religious laws.

Comment: While the West has gone to the other extreme of indoctrinating children about transgenderism and homosexuality - which affects a minute 0.6% of the population - arresting people who are doing no harm (depending on the accusation of "teasing", of course) won't change things. And yet, as the article states, Aceh is the only place where it is illegal to be gay or transgender in the region so those arrested did have other options:

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Family

Stockton, CA, attempts Universal Basic Income experiment after bankruptcy, overspending and decades of failed diversification

Sam Harnett
KQED News
Mon, 22 Jan 2018 12:00 UTC
Stockton universal basic income
© Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesAn aging sign is seen at Stockton City Hall on June 27, 2012
Wage stagnation. Rising housing prices. Loss of middle-class jobs. The looming threat of automation. These are some of the problems facing Stockton and its residents, but the city's mayor, Michael Tubbs, says his city is far from unique.

Stockton is one of many Bay Area cities on the fringe of the wealth accumulating in Silicon Valley and San Francisco. The Central Valley city went bankrupt in 2012, and for decades it has been trying to diversify its agriculture-based economy.

"I feel that as mayor it's my responsibility to do all I could to begin figuring out what's the best way to make sure that folks in our community have a real economic floor," Tubbs said.

Comment: While it may be a worthy experiment in these particularly dire economic times, it does point to some major flaws in our current system that these interventions are required. Because the idea isn't without its potentially serious problems: Automation, economic collapse, basic income slavery: Our dystopic future?

Stockton isn't the only place giving the idea a go:

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X

Italian pro-migration cooperative starts courtship course for migrants to teach them not to beat women for refusing to have a relationship with them

Alessandr
Defend Europa
Fri, 26 Jan 2018 10:06 UTC
Italian migrants
Modena, the cooperative "Red Lion" had the fantastic idea to start a courtship course for migrants, teaching them how to behave with Italian women and how to react to a refusal. We are truly living in surreal times.

Apparently, the people we are welcoming in our continent must be taught not to hurt women in case they refuse to have any kind of relationship with them. The "anti-racist" front in Italy has officially lost its mind. The same cooperative has been aiding "refugees" and migrants for a long time and is proud supporters of multiculturalism. A truly lovely progressive story.

Comment: It seems that no matter where you go in world, feminist ideology that places men at the root of all evil cannot be escaped and is making its way into public policy under the guise of 'diversity'. See also:

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Smoking

Japan gives up on total indoor smoking ban despite coercion ahead of Olympic games in 2020


Kyodo News
Tue, 30 Jan 2018 09:52 UTC
smoking japan
The Japanese government said Tuesday it plans to restrict use of heat-not-burn tobacco products but give up on a total ban on indoor smoking to prevent passive smoking, backpedaling from its initial goal due to industry resistance.

Heat-not-burn tobacco products will be restricted as a user's breath contains nicotine and other substances that can cause cancer, but use of such products will be allowed in specially designated rooms at restaurants where customers will also be able to eat and drink, according to the government plan.


Comment: Smoking tobacco does not cause cancer:


Under the plan drawn up by the health ministry, smoking will be completely banned in hospitals, schools, universities and government offices to protect children and others from secondhand smoking. Minors will be prohibited from entering smoking spaces.

Comment: It's a small victory but the anti-smoking nutjobs don't give up so easily. But to celebrate: Let's All Light Up!

Also See:

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Fire

Massive fire engulfs Taiwan oil refinery after blast


RT
Tue, 30 Jan 2018 04:37 UTC
Taiwan oil refinery fire
© Y & L. VINE / YouTube
A huge inferno raged in Taoyuan City in northwestern Taiwan following an oil refinery blast. The explosion rattled nearby buildings and terrified residents, according to local media.

The blast occurred at the oil refinery in Taoyuan, which belongs to a Taiwan petrochemical company, at 6:42am local time on Monday, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency. Although the site is located in a densely populated area with hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, there were no reported casualties.

Locals heard a series of huge explosions that lasted for up to 10 minutes, with some comparing the sound to a "massive gun firing off for a long time," Taiwan News reports. Others said the blast was like an earthquake, according to Xinhua.

More than 40 firefighters were sent to tackle the blaze, which reportedly affected an area covering 50 square meters. An initial investigation suggests a heating furnace tube ruptured and caused the explosion, despite the refinery having recently undergone annual maintenance.

The incident triggered protests among local residents, who demanded the relocation of the refinery. A number of accidents, including two serious explosions, have occurred at the facility since it opened in the 1970s.

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Arrow Down

Bill Gates planning to genetically engineer a 'super cow'

Matthew Loffhagen
Outer Places
Mon, 29 Jan 2018 18:31 UTC
GMO Cow
© Keith Weller/USDA
In recent years, Bill Gates has started dipping his toes into unusual pools of creativity.

The grand high emperor of Microsoft is already working on a sprawling, futuristic "smart city" to be built in the Arizona desert, but now he has a second project to devote his time to - he's going to engineer the perfect cow.

Bearing in mind his plan to build a desert city, this isn't a terrible idea - ideally, this genetically engineered bovine will be significantly more hardy than our current and inferior livestock, and will be able to produce milk at far higher temperatures.

Of course, Gates' plan isn't really aimed at creating cows to feed his technological utopia (although he probably won't mind if that's a nice side-effect). Instead, Gates is hoping that these cows will help his ongoing humanitarian work in arid parts of the world where famine and pestilence is still affecting the lives of millions.
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USA

The pathologies and underestimation of just how far along the American collapse is

Umair Haque
Eudaimonia
Thu, 25 Jan 2018 00:00 UTC
school shooting
The Strange New Pathologies of the World's First Rich Failed State

You might say, having read some of my recent essays, "Umair! Don't worry! Everything will be fine! It's not that bad!" I would look at you politely, and then say gently, "To tell you the truth, I don't think we're taking collapse nearly seriously enough."

Why? When we take a hard look at US collapse, we see a number of social pathologies on the rise. Not just any kind. Not even troubling, worrying, and dangerous ones. But strange and bizarre ones. Unique ones. Singular and gruesomely weird ones I've never really seen before, and outside of a dystopia written by Dickens and Orwell, nor have you, and neither has history. They suggest that whatever "numbers" we use to represent decline - shrinking real incomes, inequality, and so on - we are in fact grossly underestimating what pundits call the "human toll", but which sensible human beings like you and I should simply think of as the overwhelming despair, rage, and anxiety of living in a collapsing society.

Let me give you just five examples of what I'll call the social pathologies of collapse - strange, weird, and gruesome new diseases, not just ones we don't usually see in healthy societies, but ones that we have never really seen before in any modern society.
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Chart Pie

"Dollar General": The profitable business of selling to the hard-up


The Economist
Thu, 25 Jan 2018 00:00 UTC
Dollar General thrives where low-income families struggle
Dollar General
© Alamy
"THEY want to build one every four miles," says the cashier at Dollar General, a discount shop, in Lewisburg, a small town in the rolling hills of central Tennessee. Situated on a big parking lot, next to a provider of payday loans open 24 hours a day, a supermarket chain called Priceless and Dirt Cheap, another southern chain of discount shops flogging the unsold or returned merchandise of other retailers, the shop is one of three Dollar Generals in Lewisburg. Tennessee is the home state of Dollar General, which in recent years overtook its rivals to become the retailer of choice of low-income Americans, so it has one of the denser statewide networks of shops. Yet with well over 14,000 outlets across America (about the same number as there are McDonald's restaurants) almost 75% of Americans now live within five miles of a Dollar General.

"Over the last five years a new Dollar General opened every four-and-a-half hours," says Garrick Brown at Cushman & Wakefield, a property agent. The chain's profits have risen like a helium balloon since the recession, to more than double those of Macy's, one of the most famous brands in retail, in the past fiscal year. Its market value is a whopping $28bn.

Comment: See also:

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