Hello and welcome back to “Pie ponders”, in which Pie – that is me, for those who are well… slow – raises questions on various topics of great importance. Today, we talk about social constructs and their role in the world. The usual disclaimers apply, this is not an academic opinion (for whatever those are worth) cause the internet is full of them. It is just some random musing.
First things first… What do you mean, social constructs? Well a social construct means, conveniently, whatever you need it to mean to suit your argument. I will analyze but a minor aspect of this vast topic, in my typical way of doing such things. But let’s start by giving The Grandfather of All Knowledge, Wikipedia, and a quick quote
A social construct or construction concerns the meaning, notion, or connotation placed on an object or event by a society, and adopted by the inhabitants of that society with respect to how they view or deal with the object or event.[citation needed] In that respect, a social construct as an idea would be widely accepted as natural by the society.
A major focus of social constructionism is to uncover the ways in which individuals and groups participate in the construction of their perceived social reality. It involves looking at the ways social phenomena are developed, institutionalized, known, and made into tradition by humans.
Social constructs seem, in my experience, to have a more prominent role in the discourse of the more progressive part of the political mess. This is part of a fairly straight forward strategy: declare things they do not like as being social constructs imposed by some sort of oppressive structure and decide those things can be changed at will, to suit whatever social justice goals. I want to try to have a quick look at this claim and all the activism it underlies.
There are two ways, in my view off course, to address social construct. The wrong way, which comes from the frankly ridiculous purely social constructionist / blank slate view of humanity, and the correct way, by looking at human history and how social contracts appeared and evolved.
In past posts I have briefly mentioned the nature vs nurture debate of the individual human – with my view that it is combination of both and the boundary is blurry at this time (time is a social construct). Nature can have two components human nature, which was built by millions of years of evolution, and non-human environment which shapes the underlying human material. As a side note, I have always found the blank slate view on the left curious, given those people mock the religious for not believing in evolution, but somehow think that evolution created a total blank slate human. It is awful silly.
Now… to address the concept of social constructs. To a point, and depending on definitions, everything is a social construct in human interaction. Humans are, after all, social being and they have enough intelligence and self-awareness to go beyond pure nature and instinct, this is what makes humans human.
A good number of social constructs have their origin in some biological / environmental factor or other and have evolved slowly over the years. They are old and similar in many civilizations, some of which evolved independently throughout history. So how did they come to be? Chance? The social construct fairy? For others, the “social” element is stronger, especially when the origin is let us say murky. I would give, as an example of this, various rituals and superstitions and taboos born out of the general human fear of the unknown and of the supernatural. They can take a wide variety of forms from the same deep roots.
Many social changes came after technological changes, which took humans further from nature and, as such, less constrained by pure biology. Social constructs of the hunter gatherer pack may have existed for many years until the first village came to be. Those villages had their social constructs until the town, the city, the kingdom, the empire made their way. Social constructs, for the most part, did not change suddenly and randomly. And while they were shaped by various humans – especially ones in position of influence – to suit their wishes, this was a slow process and, for most cases, not in any way designed or planned in advance.
Off course, there being a lot of variables, there were differences between various cultures. Some of this influenced by environment, some by small random divergences which accumulated over many years. But you can also find plenty in common.
The more technology and economy evolved, the more population grew – all interlinked things – the more humans moved away from the pure natural world. Humans began to shape the world as the world shaped them. Societies and forms of organization became more complex, and social constructs kept pace, to the point that some have very little purely biological origin, or better said very little t
hat can be easily discerned.
There is no underlying patriarchy permeating human society and molding social constructs to oppress women by imposing purely social gender roles, as your friendly neighborhood feminist may tell you. There are, however, patriarchal organizations of human society, that being a different thing. It is not like men secretly got together in 11345 BC and held a council in which they decided to start oppressing the wymminz and formulated a plan to that effect. Off course, no one with half a brain actually suggests this, but the interwebz are vast and much derp exists. Most of the gender roles had some of their roots in biology and were slowly shaped – for better or worse – over the years.
It is, off course, absolutely true that social organizations throughout human history had oppressive elements, sometimes fewer, sometimes more, depending. But while this is true, it is, in isolation, meaningless. There are oppressive elements, so what? If you do not understand them properly, you will not be able to fix them. And ignoring biology and environment stops that understanding in its tracks.
One can say religion in general has roots in human biology, while acknowledging that the different forms of many religions have less of a direct root in nature. But many of those religions started as basic animism and were molded by a developing humanity over many thousands of years to reach the current state where any random Sci-Fi writer can start his own cult.
The fact that something may be a social construct does not mean it is necessarily bad or that needs be changed or that it does not have a serious reason for existing, this is something that needs proving. It does not mean it does not have strong roots in nature and environment. It does not mean it can be changed at will and, if it can be change, maybe not to whatever idealistic view some have. There may be many ramifications and secondary effects. A lot of social constructs are well established, old, powerful and difficult to alter. On the other side of things, this does not necessarily mean one should give up on change, just that one needs be very careful with it. Change what to what how and can we have a metric of a successful change?
Many things exist for a reason and you cannot just tear them down and replace them with nothing. You can rebuild some from the ground up, but not all at once. A revolutionary approach to social change rarely works. To use a meaningless analogy – if the pillars to a building need repair, you do not knock them down all at once.
And in the end, if what you are trying to build strays too much from human nature as constrained by the current environment, you will fail. Fortunately, in such cases, you need never admit failure because it was not the concept that failed, but just that the wrong people were involved, there was a vast conspiracy against them, and yes some eggs may have been broken but that does not mean you give up, you try again even harder.
I was going to write more about it but I decided to keep it short. Brevity is the soul of Pie. To leave one last though to illustrate the point, we can agree big boobs – broadly speaking, thicc-ness in general – and large penises are pure social constructs, while on the other hand, the NBA being better than MLB is simply objective reality. Discuss.
Comments
174 responses to “Glib is a social construct”
Don’t tell me what to do.
you said that the last time
Well, you keep ending the articles trying to tell me what to do about it.
Maybe you shouldn’t tell him not to tell you what to do. Slaver.
Are you going to tell me what to do now too? *wipes up frothing insanity*
I don’t have the energy to get apoplectic right now. I’m going to drift towards melancholy.
Insanity is a helluva thing.
No kidding. They are both equally shitty
Hear! Hear!
So on a guess, 20 years until basketball evolves into another form of rugby?
Or we raise the hoop another 10 feet and take the game back from the circus freaks
Hey! It’s been hard for the bearded lady to get work since the trans activists started making trouble.
Will that stop the players from carrying the ball? Has traveling gotten up to three full steps and a pivot yet?
I thought they just completely abolished traveling and carrying from the rules.
I thought the compromise was it was okay if the player holding the ball was picked up and carried by another player, since they were not themselves taking the steps.
Problem: I like this rule a lot, but it gets us back into circus freak territory.
Damn.
So just a bunch of Blood Bowl goblin teams?
I would probably watch a game or two of that.
There is no sport that can’t be improved by chainsaws hanging from the top of the cage.
“Will that stop the players from carrying the ball? Has traveling gotten up to three full steps and a pivot yet?”
Only for the elites. For the other 90% of players it’s whatever the referees think looked awkward.
Not really his fault, but one reason I really don’t like Jordan. He was the first guy who got to play by totally different rules.
Back in the day, the refs were tougher on Chamberlain than other players so he wouldn’t dominate quite so badly – now they let the “stars” do whatever they want.
That started with Bird, Johnson, James Worthy, and Isiah Thomas, not Jordan. NBA circa 79-80 became “How I learned to stop worrying and love elitism.”
I swear it got a lot worse when Jordan showed up.
Now – I’ve never heard of most these guys.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ua8luxfu3mI
Such an insane statement is hard to digest.
MLB has the same rules now as ever. The only really disturbing trend I see is the tiny new parks – it makes doubles and triples unlikely.
As noted above, the NBA has decided to simply ignore the rules on carrys and travels. Makes the game hard to watch when all I see are players constantly breaking the rules.
And to all the people who thought the 3-point line was a mistake in 1979 – you were right. The game has devolved into 1-on-1 isolations (made possible without traveling and carry rules) and long-range jump-shots. The low-post game is gone. So are big Centers who can block shots and rebound. I find it completely unwatchable even though I was a huge fan in the 80’s.
Baseball is a leisurely outdoor (ideally) game periodically punctuated by moments of excitement. Basketball is a (supposedly) fast-paced game constantly interrupted by fouls and free throws. Also, basketball needs to bring back the shorter, tighter shorts from the ’70s.
One of the unintended consequences of the 3-point line is the death of the transition game. It took a generation until players came up who were just long-range shooters.
Notice how the Lakers used to run the break every chance they got – everyone on the team filling a lane and running, even after opponents’ baskets. I hated them, but they were a machine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so8R3NTbnEw
Also, basketball needs to bring back the shorter, tighter shorts from the ’70s.
Gender Traitor in another life
The low post game is gone because they allow zone defense again. The NBA was so much better when the zone was illegal but too many stupid people couldn’t understand the illegal defense (and illegal isolation offense) rules.
I strongly disagree. In this, progressives are just the other side of the coin to traditionalist conservatives, whose entire raison d’être is to defend their chosen social constructs from any sort of alteration or deviation. It’s just that the progressives are at least more honest in identifying these traditions as social constructs; whereas, traditionalists operate under the assumption that they are reflections of the unchangeable laws of the universe.
Where do natural rights fit in?
well the concept of natural rights is a sort of intellectual creation not pure biology
Under which framework: progressive, traditionalist, or liberal?
Liberal or traditionalist. They don’t seem to be recognized in the progressive world. It seems that natural rights fall somewhere outside of social construct philosophically, but the fact that people refuse to acknowledge them suggests otherwise.
Well, at the risk of sounding Glib, the traditionalist stance seems to be “Cuz God said so,” which makes sense if you view the Godhead as the fount from which all reality stems. The liberal view has some overlap with the traditionalist stance in that they both agree that natural rights are those rights which can be deduced through reason that are prerequisite for a human’s continued existence. Where the liberal differs from the traditionalist in that the liberal is content to be agnostic as to the origin of the universal premises that can be deduced (or even induced).
It’s just that the progressives are at least more honest in identifying these traditions as social constructs – yes I sort of meant the phrase social construct or identifying things as such not the actual concept, but was not clear about that.
I would also add that this is where the liberal tradition differs from both the progressives and traditionalists in that it follows the sage words of 孔夫子 in that it seeks to ‘accept the new, while respecting the old.’
No squiggly marks
Just disable spellchecker. The squiggles should vanish.
I’m not sure I follow that.
Social constructs can be picked and chosen, accepted and discarded at will. Whether you fellow man is happy with the constructs you accept and discard in another matter.
The issue I begin with is that there are certain natural laws (rather than natural “rights”) that progressives seem to think they can redefine as social constructs which undermines their entire argument. For example, defining “mathematics” as a social construct (of white patriarchy, no less) when it is no such thing makes the whole conversation of social constructs a waste of one’s time.
Progressives believe that, yes. And to a certain extent, liberals do as well. Not everyone agrees however. Peterson’s 12 Rules of Conservatism argues that accepted “tradition” represents those social constructs that stood the test of time, in that they have proven themselves ‘evolutionary fit’, in a sense. Thus, one should be inherently wary of discarding them without long and serious thought as one cannot always predict the consequences from doing such.
Thus, one should be inherently wary of discarding them without long and serious thought as one cannot always predict the consequences from doing such. – i sort of tried to say something along the lines of not inherently wary that may be to hmmm…. conservative … but careful how you go about it
Thomas Sowell said it better:
Indeed. That having been said, tradition can just as much represent the distilled cognitive biases of millions, which is why I believe they shouldn’t be accepted uncritically.
Agreed, I was commenting solely on the aesthetics of quotes expressing the sentiment, not on my feelings tried the sentiment itself. Sowell is a world class word smith.
Sowell’s quote seems like a distilled crib of chesterton:
. In short, the democratic faith is this: that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves — the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young, the laws of the state. This is democracy; and in this I have always believed…
But there is one thing that I have never from my youth up been able to understand. I have never been able to understand where people got the idea that democracy was in some way opposed to tradition. It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time. It is trusting to a consensus of common human voices rather than to some isolated or arbitrary record. The man who quotes some German historian against the tradition of the Catholic Church, for instance, is strictly appealing to aristocracy. He is appealing to the superiority of one expert against the awful authority of a mob. It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more respectfully than a book of history. The legend is generally made by the majority of people in the village, who are sane. The book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad. Those who urge against tradition that men in the past were ignorant may go and urge it at the Carlton Club, along with the statement that voters in the slums are ignorant. It will not do for us. If we attach great importance to the opinion of ordinary men in great unanimity when we are dealing with daily matters, there is no reason why we should disregard it when we are dealing with history or fable. Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father.
Chesterton is an acknowledged influence on Sowell, so that’s not surprising.
I didn’t realize that. Cool to know!
I like the cut of your jib. You said everything I would have wanted to say here.
If I could just add one thing, some people have an underlying assumption that “social construct” is isomorphic to “arbitrary.” Some people think it is not. Where one falls on this is highly influential on how they see the world, and the changes they would want to see.
So “social construct” is just a fancy way to say “common knowledge” — those ideas that most people agree with.
Edit button (a missing social construct) those ideas that some group of people agree with.
I am opposed to letting commenters memory-hole their own remarks at any time.
If there could be a short window of correction, such as before a comment got replied to, that would be acceptable.
All the best commenting system have a time limit of editing that allows you to correct quick errors but not overhaul a post.
WHYCOME U WANT UNEMPLOY EDIT FAIRY?
If she is unemployed, would the Edit Fairy need to find other ways to make money?
Asking for a friend.
Just don’t offer to give her a massage.
Without clicking, is this a link to the Patriots?
Bob Kraft feels hurt..
I am opposed to letting commenters memory-hole their own remarks at any time.
Agreed.
If there could be a short window of correction,
Just long enough to think “shit” and quickly type what you really meant.
I would be happy with 30 seconds to correct typos
Okay but how do I delete someone else’s post
In a way yes
So “social construct” is just a fancy way to say “common knowledge”
I prefer “consensual hallucination”.
“Conventional wisdom” is correct until it isn’t. Then it is replace by new conventional wisdom.
I would think concepts that have a base unit in Planck units aren’t a social construct.
“Planck units”
How many Evans is that?
Sounds patriarchical to me.
“The fact that something may be a social construct does not mean it is necessarily bad or that needs be changed or that it does not have a serious reason for existing, this is something that needs proving. It does not mean it does not have strong roots in nature and environment.”
Sort of like hours. The day being 24 hours is a social construct. The time it takes for the Earth to make one revolution is not. No need to change it.
Constructs based on reality/facts are good. Those based on arbitrary shit Marx wrote, are really, really, bad?
Actually, this is a good definition that separates science from “science”- if it is transportable across cultures and species, it’s science. If it involves anything that could even vaguely be termed a social construct, it’s “science.” Since c is a universal constant, time is very much not a social construct. The way time is expressed very much is a social construct.
Well, there’s something underlying the concept that’s not a social construct, but is “time” itself the thing underlying the concept? Or the concept?
While the Newton’s Flaming Laser Sword-type view of science is appealing, I argue that for everyday science it is aspirational and not realistic. As in your example, because scientists are human, they often need to translate the universal constants of the universe (its “machine code”) to those social constructs we call models ( “higher-level language”) in order to understand them conceptually and manipulate them. At the risk of mansplaning, the periodic table is based on atomic number, but you know better than I do that Mendeleev’s scheme is not the only possible formulation of the table. But does that make Mendeleev’s table non-scientific? I don’t think so. I posit that science is the formulation of social constructs, designed to help us understand the natural world better, through the systematic collection and analysis of empirical data. A scientific social construct is better known as a “model” or “theory”, and because they are constructs, they can be improved and adapted as more data comes in to support its predictive power or not.
Alder admits, however, that “While the Newtonian insistence on ensuring that any statement is testable by observation … undoubtedly cuts out the crap, it also seems to cut out almost everything else as well”, as it prevents one from taking a position on topics such as politics or religion.
He is wrong. It prevents one from taking a scientific position on politics or religion.
I would wager that Alder thinks that only scientific positions are valid, thus it is foolish to take a position otherwise.
I think Alder was criticizing that view, not supporting it.
Kinda sorta. In everyday life it is not so useful, but “there are, of course, a lot of pre-Newtonian philosophers around. People like Searle and my little visitor would no doubt accuse us Newtonians of neglecting the study of vitally important matters such as ethics and the nature of mind. Newtonians simply reply that we have little constructive to say about these matters because we don’t understand them, so we shut up.” This reads to me as quite libertarian. You’ll notice that progressives are always trying to justify their social engineering through appeal to “science”. We could use a bit more of NFLS in our politics and religion.
Again, to be fair, Alder isn’t arguing for autism. The full context of his quote is:
I think I sort of agree with some of that… hmmmm
A periodic table is just one way to present data, as you observe, so yes, it’s a social construct. Nonetheless, no matter how your society structures things, the weight of a carbon atom will be 12 times the weight of a hydrogen atom. The time it takes for a photon to transit the diameter of a nucleon will be the same whether I measure it or an inhabitant of Epsilon Eridani measures it- the construct comes in how we assign numerals and units to that time.
Epsilon Eridani is a shithole though
I was looking up sci-fi stories and Epsilon Eridani. The most interesting is that is the location of Babylon 5.
But I also think that there are fundamental things that just are.
I don’t disagree. What I’m saying is that an integral part of science is how we conceptualize and classify that data. As with the recent decision to reconceptualize the kilogram via the Planck constant, as we gain more knowledge, we closer and closer to viewing the universe through “God’s eyes”. That having been said, I am leery of unwittingly disabusing the importance of hypothesis and modeling from the scientific endeavor in what I will call a “naive” methodological naturalism. It doesn’t take away from science, in my opinion, to acknowledge that a great many of its concepts are, by definition, a social construct. The previous kilogram bar was a social construct in that it was inherently quantified arbitrarily. As I said before, I believe what separates science from non-science is how these constructs are formulated with the eventual goal of finding a model is a natural and universal description. In my experience certain fields of science, cosmology comes immediately to mind, tend to be more comfortable with accepting how much of what they do is conceptualized as social construct than others.
The previous kilogram bar was a social construct in that it was inherently quantified arbitrarily.
The kilogram itself is undoubtedly a social construct, of which the official bar was only a physical representation. I don’t know that the bar itself was a social construct, unless we are using that term to describe everything physical made by man.
*goes back to flyspecking 8 page definitions section in affiliation agreement*
Fair enough. My point was particularly about the physical characteristics of the bar, which were arbitrarily decided.
The bar itself is just a bar. The decision to say, “The mass of this bar is defined as 1 kilogram exactly” is a social construct.
Its not often at all that I can score a cheap pedantic point on HM. That’s probably the first time.
*struts around office*
Although, I should have said “The idea of the kilogram itself”.
*dejectedly redlines successive versions of definitions section*
See that bird? It’s a brown-throated thrush, but in Germany it’s called a halzenfugel, and in Chinese they call it a chung ling and even if you know all those names for it, you still know nothing about the bird. You only know something about people; what they call the bird. Now that thrush sings, and teaches its young to fly, and flies so many miles away during the summer across the country, and nobody knows how it finds its way… I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.
-Richard Feynman
Right. The question hinges on do we need to name something first before we can know it? Indeed, a large part of biology would seem to the outside as splitting hairs over what are the particular characteristics that fall under a particular species name – but such work is integral to how biologists understand the natural world. Because of this there is still a wide-ranging and spirited debate over using the framework of cladisitics vs. phenetics for taxonomical classification. Because biology very rarely studies organisms at the individual level, before one can know anything about the brown-throated thrush, you have to define just what is meant by that term. What separates T. atrogularis from T. ruficollis? Without that quantification, how can you employ the scientific method? Now, of course, much of science is collecting data in order to know enough to formulate these distinctions – but these experiments often have a priori frameworks in place to classify the data.
do we need to name something first before we can know it?
Ahh, the Rumpelstiltskin argument.
Perhaps the question is, what does it mean (if anything) to know something if you have no language to express what you know?
If I can make experimentally correct predictions, I think it doesn’t matter (except socially) if I can’t articulate the process.
Human cognition predates syntax.
Have you never understood a concept but not had words for it, heard someone else describe it, and then realized that those were the exact words for the concept?
I knew what metacognition was for a decade before the first time I heard the term metacognition. I don’t think that’s particularly unique to myself.
When my kid has an upset tummy, I tell him to think about it and understand it. I ask him to describe it and he can’t. Then I give him a list of possible words (stabby, squeeze, waves, poopy etc) and he immediately latches onto the right word.
“spirited debate over using the framework of cladisitics vs. phenetics for taxonomical classification”
Cladistics is correct. Debate over.
“flyspecking” – STOLEN.
I though Richard Feynman was no longer an appropriate person to quote being sexist and all.
While language and names and things change that is not the essence of science. It is secondary. unu plus unu egal doi.
To my mind, successful “social constructs” are just the results of the marketplace of ideas playing out and settling to an optimum solution. The problem with progs, as you stated, is that their constructs are diametrically opposed to human nature, yet they continue trying to force them into practice. Yes, they’ll keep trying. Yes, the body count will rise. However, it will never be successful because it’s trying to reverse gravity. It can’t be done.
And big boobs are definitely not a social construct; they, along with their superiority, are objective truth independent of any human meddling.
their constructs are diametrically opposed to human nature, yet they continue trying to force them into practice – but they win the marketplace of ideas…
By closing the marketplace and shooting the other vendors.
a win is a win
OT: Didn’t know this movie existed before yesterday. Not going to see it.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/liberals-outraged-over-green-book-win-say-the-film-supports-trump/
But it’s rather amusing that a movie ostensibly about racial reconciliation is somehow an homage to Trump; who is apparently the biggest racist to ever walk the face of the Earth.
I never hear about Oscar movies until the Oscars. I’m not going to see it either.
There’s a good reason for that. The Motion Picture Academy is made up of Actors and Directors. They nominate films and then vote on the winners. The film tastes of Actors and Directors differ greatly from that of the general audience. Note their perpetual lament that their pet projects are poison at the box offices.
Not always. Sometimes obvious Oscar-bait like that Queen movie is successful. *shrugs*
I never said it was impossible to have crossover appeal, I was expositing on why so many Oscar films are unknown to the populace at large.
https://slate.com/culture/2019/02/green-book-best-picture-oscar-win-driving-miss-daisy.html
And Green Book was just progressive enough, on a superficial level, for voters to feel like they were making a statement about racial equality, while they were actual endorsing a story whose moral is that if only black people were exceptional enough, even the most diehard white racist would eventually come around.
. . . .
None of this is even to mention the fact that Green Book’s road to victory started with its white star uttering the N-word, plowed through backlash from its subject’s family, cruised along with the revelation that its director used to flash his co-workers as a joke, and then still somehow picked up speed after, later that same day, Twitter users unearthed its screenwriter’s old pro-Trump, anti-Muslim tweets.
A comment in response to the last paragraph:
Apparently, not all Slate commenters are woke.
the supposed gay, secular, liberal agenda of Hollywood
“supposed”
None of this is even to mention the fact that Green Book’s road to victory started with its white star uttering the N-word, plowed through backlash from its subject’s family, cruised along with the revelation that its director used to flash his co-workers as a joke, and then still somehow picked up speed after, later that same day, Twitter users unearthed its screenwriter’s old pro-Trump, anti-Muslim tweets.
there i was thinking best picture meant it was a really good movie. i didn’t realize all that unrelated bullshit was a factor.
Seems like this is often a way to take over the language by saying that common definitions are a social construct which of course they are. All language is. Words are just labels we put on things to help us communicate. But so what. Changing the label will not change what underlying “thing” is. Changing definitions may make someone feel better but it doesn’t change reality. I know the topic covers more than just semantics (preferences, morality, etc), but a lot of it does seem to be geared toward semantics which seems to me to be a silly thing to argue about.
Uffda! The worse thing about Sunny Minnesoda is how soft we are on crime.
A story (with video) about Minnesoda deputies turning loose a gang of known miscreants
The one talking head who even attempts to talk about the truth (‘not very bright’) gets mocked by her cohosts.
Throw me a lefse. Bam! Damn, man, not that hard
My question is, did it knock any sense into her.
https://www.nbc4i.com/news/u-s-world/florida-man-arrested-for-throwing-cookie-at-girlfriend/1808610220
The next fake SJW controversy is here. Some ugly chick says Trump gave her a big kiss.
The funny part – she went to an attorney, who referred her to a therapist.
If there is one thing we know about Trump is that he has a “type”. She is definitely not his type.
Oddly, I don’t see Stormy Daniels and Melania Trump as being very much like each other. Physically, at least.
Unless his type is “not recently pregnant with my child.”
What year was the affari, and what did ‘Stormy’ look like at the time? I seem to recall this was one of those items dredged from the past, and a few decades wears heavily on a porn star.
They’re both quite busty.
I’d note that Stormy looks more like Ivana and Marla.
They both have fake boobs.
Trump seems like he comes from the intellectual school of “if I can touch em, they ain’t fake.”
It’s odd that he marries the foreigners and has affairs with the Americans (Marla being the outlier.)
Of course, someone like him, I don’t see why he gets married at all. By the time they start whining about marriage, just buy yourself a younger model.
He has a family business and wants to keep it going?
That’s when you pick from among your bastards and legitimize one.
that doesn’t always work out great
You can’t raise the bastards together.
Barron is superfluous at best. He already had four kids. And Ivana gave him the only useful one.
The foreigners don’t make a fuss about the prenup.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona
Maybe get a new job?
Exactly grow a pair or find a new job.
Apparently the “trauma” would be more tolerable if the company forked over a bigger salary.
There is no underlying patriarchy permeating human society and molding social constructs to oppress women by imposing purely social gender roles, as your friendly neighborhood feminist may tell you.
Funny you should mention this. I have watched some really bad (like, wretchedly awful) movies recently. Why? Pffft.
One of them was called Sumuru. I don’t recall ever watching Amazon Women on the Moon, so I cannot say if this was a straightout remake of it, but holy cow was it bad. Women warriors run the show. Men are merely strong backs. I like women. I like strong women who are in control of their lives, who don’t loll around on the fainting couch waiting for Prince Charming to come rescue them from the dragons of day to day drudgery. But I gotta say, Tigrrrl! Warrior Princesses are just gutbustingly funny. Alarmingly beautiful women running around in outfits that make Vargas pinup girl outfits look demure, shaking spears and swords while grunting and shouting like thirteen year old boys? Sorry, not buying it.
Putting poison in your gruel? Sneaking up on you while you’re asleep, to slip the old ceremonial blade between your ribs? That’s a little more believable.
Alarmingly beautiful women running around in outfits that make Vargas pinup girl outfits look demure
*adds to watchlist*
Exactly. Thanks to home entertainment I can decide to make it a silent movie if need be.
There is a certain propriety and delicacy about murder we should adhere to, I agree.
Kanly!
Wait, is the cat you use for butting suspended from a frame and milked for antidotes?
Are you saying I should have been catbutted?
*folds hand over vial hanging from necklace*
No I am accusing Swiss of being Vladimir Harkonnen, or Piotr Devrees
One of the reasons I like Game of Thrones is that it steers well clear of waif fu bullshit. The female knight is freakishly large for a woman, Arya is an assassin not a soldier, Cersei has lots of goons, including a freakishly large zombie killing machine following her around, and Danereys rides around on a dragon.
That, and a hot witch that births killing shadows.
-1 Black Widow
And they still went further with the knight-chick than Martin did in the book. She never fought the Hound in the book and probably wouldn’t have fared that well.
Eh, in the books Brienne is basically a freak. Her first appearance Catlyn is watching her fight Loras and she’s portrayed as being freakishly large and strong, absolutely manhandling Loras. Coupled with her physical description, I always imagined her as having some kind of glandular thing. Basically, she’s Andrea the Giant.
Yep. This is how Martin imagines her:
Yeah the issue with casting Brienne is that you need an actual actress. The Mountain is played by professional strongman Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson and all he really does is yell and murder people, and now he doesn’t even yell anymore. But Brienne has to be an actual good actress, and there’s not that many, if any, that fit the physical description.
>Putting poison in your gruel? Sneaking up on you while you’re asleep, to slip the old ceremonial blade between your ribs?
Why you no include “raising your illegitimate product of incestuous depredation for 18 years and then arranging him to raise an army and go to war with you?”
Morgan Le Fay, is that you?
Actually, I’m just a man that loves a good cigar, a good rubber monster suit, my fully automatic mini-14 and, in particular, when a plan comes together.
No, that’s George Peppard.
Dershowitz thinks that Catholic kid’s libel suit against WaPo has a decent chance.
i’m guessing WaPo et al are shitting their pants. and if they’re not, then they’re in denial.
IANAL or anything, but if I was on the jury, all I would need to see is some kind of email from an editor saying something along the lines of “fuck if it’s true or not, just run the story, it’s not like they can win in court.”
I admit I’m baised, I would not be able to give WaPo the proper benefit of the doubt.
Techdirt disagrees. They go heavily on the Free Speech side of things though.
I’ve seen internet lawyers arguing both sides. So lets wait and see.
Yep, and if it winds up as a settlement, both sides can claim they were right.
Why do people think that “government can’t censor your speech” means “say anything you want, regardless of harm it may cause, and there can be no repercussions”?
The Techdirt article points out that the complaint that was filled didn’t list examples of the defamation, and the Post would most likely be protected because they were reporting opinions based on the initial (edited) video release.
The complaint needs to read that they negligently did not attempt to find the full video or watched it and then ignored it.
The WaPo staffers were actively sharing/disseminating the truncated video before producing the libellous articles. And since the students were not public figures if not for the libel, their negligence in not looking at (or ignoring) the contextual video is sufficient.
the Post would most likely be protected because they were reporting opinions
Its remarkable how difficult it is to distinguish between a statement of fact and an opinion.
“Those boys were harassing that Native American elder.” Fact, or opinion?
Or, in SPLC’s case: “X is a white supremacist”. Fact, or opinion?
I always wondered (but not enough to look) if the SPLC ever had any kind of objective criteria for calling someone or some group a hate group. I wonder if that would change the answer.
I could see how, if the last page of a report says “We categorize a group as a hate group if a leader is documented saying XYZ or doing ABC” that could be treated differently than the SPLC basically saying “Oh they nasty.”
I’d rather use a better example than SPLC.
I thought of bond rating agencies. Fitch, S&P, etc. One could debate whether they were objective or subjective, but the whole thing became moot once regulators started “blessing” a few of them as standard-bearers. The market may have made them de facto standard-bearers, but the market is still able to react nimbly if a good competitor comes along or if one starts peddling its influence to the point of distortion.
God forbid an organization like SPLC become a blessed standard-bearer of anything even though that seems to be the end game of its leaders.
Heh, you know they’ve at least entertained that idea if not been quite so brazen as to ask for it.
That’s not “going heavily on Free Speech” then, that’s “there wasn’t libel”. If they’re calling that a free speech argument, it’s just more evidence that people don’t argue clearly any more.
I was speaking in general terms about the bias of Techdirt, not specifically about this one article. My apologies for being unclear.
No worries – it’s not like I clicked the link or anything 😉
here’s what the WaPo said:
A Native American man steadily beats his drum at the tail end of Friday’s Indigenous Peoples March while singing a song of unity urging participants to “be strong” against the ravages of colonialism that include police brutality, poor access to health care and the ill effects of climate change on reservations.
Surrounding him are a throng of young, mostly white teenage boys, several wearing “Make America Great Again” caps. One stood about a foot from the drummer’s face wearing a relentless smirk.
the Native American was singing a song of unity. the white kid was wearing a relentless smirk. no “he said” preface.
and the full hour video was available on youtube a day later, yet the WaPo kept going with the grievance narrative for several more days worth of stories.
Dershowitz thinks that Catholic kid’s libel suit against WaPo has a decent chance.
i’m guessing WaPo et al are shitting their pants. and if they’re not, then they’re in denial.
If that’s true I suspect Bezos has his headsman sharpening the axe. I can’t wait.
Fred Hiatt.. pack your shit.
JFC, I hate my putative co-workers – all-hands meeting going in the other window, with public questions shown under the video.
Half the questions are “why isn’t my role treated like the most important thing / why do we care about sales so much?”, along with a big pile of identity bullshit (“why aren’t I being promoted instead of that white dude with years of industry experience who’s been here for a decade?”)
why do we care about sales so much?
Because it’s nice to have customers?
i sorry you work with terrible people. what’s the stock ticker for your company?
/calls up broker “Sal, get ready to short…”
I don’t, really – it’s just a minority of the thousands of employees who have ridiculous expectations. Probably half of those are just semi-recent grads who have never had another job. The other half are just the perpetually aggrieved.
The rest of us just get to work.