The News Thread

[The Ozzman]

The return of Varg: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/satanist-teenager-burns-down-historic-13079705

 

[Dak]

It is mere conjecture on my part, but that video looked to me like a man who wanted to use a firearm. He was clearly there to confront people, and has a handgun at his side in case things escalate. People who decide to CC should not be provoking strangers. Besides, this man may have shot the only married black man currently living in America

I'm assuming they aren't married since they had different last names and the woman called him a "partner".

I'm not a person who confronts people over most assholish behavior, but it's a pretty lefty thing to do when in the current climate (at least what they consider assholish). They just do it in a mob instead alone with a gun.

 

[viewerfromnihil]

Here's a bone for you, feminist killers:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/13/nyregion/sexual-harassment-nyu-female-professor.html

Read it this morning, but had to get to work. I'm gonna keep my response short because I've got DC rush hour traffic to beat, thus I won't be providing links to everything I'll mention, It's all quite a short google search away though.

First of all, NYU was right in suspending Ronell. Regardless of whether or not she was under the impression of consent, she was in a position of power, Reitman was pigeon-holed in right from the start, and it continued until he finished his studies. Totally unacceptable. I know that consensual relationships do sometimes happen between advisers and doctoral students, but I will always side against the person in the position of power if the impression of consent becomes ambiguous. I find any argument that Reitman is somehow doing this to reap some sort of benefit to be preposterous. The academic world is small enough, and it's way too easy to get black balled in the humanities if some sort of stain gets put on your name.

The leak of the letter strikes me as a bit of a hit job. The guy who leaked it certainly doesn't hide his disdain and opposition for theorists and feminists, and the letter itself just strikes me oddly, riddled with inconsistent language and what not. Butler released a brief statement saying something along the lines of it not being the final version that was submitted and keeping it at that, another scholar on the list denied signing it, and Zizek seemed to double down on the letter's charges against Reitman. It's not pretty, and the anti-intellectuals are certainly licking their chops over this. It'll be interesting to see what comes of this.

 

[rms]

Mr. Reitman is gay and is now married to a man; Professor Ronell is a lesbian.

 

[Einherjar86]

Here's a bone for you, feminist killers:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/13/nyregion/sexual-harassment-nyu-female-professor.html

Read it this morning, but had to get to work. I'm gonna keep my response short because I've got DC rush hour traffic to beat, thus I won't be providing links to everything I'll mention, It's all quite a short google search away though.

First of all, NYU was right in suspending Ronell. Regardless of whether or not she was under the impression of consent, she was in a position of power, Reitman was pigeon-holed in right from the start, and it continued until he finished his studies. Totally unacceptable. I know that consensual relationships do sometimes happen between advisers and doctoral students, but I will always side against the person in the position of power if the impression of consent becomes ambiguous. I find any argument that Reitman is somehow doing this to reap some sort of benefit to be preposterous. The academic world is small enough, and it's way too easy to get black balled in the humanities if some sort of stain gets put on your name.

The leak of the letter strikes me as a bit of a hit job. The guy who leaked it certainly doesn't hide his disdain and opposition for theorists and feminists, and the letter itself just strikes me oddly, riddled with inconsistent language and what not. Butler released a brief statement saying something along the lines of it not being the final version that was submitted and keeping it at that, another scholar on the list denied signing it, and Zizek seemed to double down on the letter's charges against Reitman. It's not pretty, and the anti-intellectuals are certainly licking their chops over this. It'll be interesting to see what comes of this.

Thanks for sharing this.

I think you've said it best, it comes down to the amount of power a professor holds over a student; and I'd also like to say that this tends to be a bigger issue for grad students than undergrads. Grad students are often viewed more as equals by the faculty, but this simply isn't the case; and grad students rely on the good graces of their faculty advisors and instructors. It may have seemed totally consensual, but how can you judge when grad students perhaps feel that they have to perform consent or else risk their standing with a professor?

I'm of the opinion that faculty should never pursue relationships like this as long as students are dependent on their professional support.

 

[CiG]

Few thoughts:

• #MeToo is rapidly becoming a joke.
• Feminists are hypocrites, imagine my shock.
• The victim put his career before his physical and mental safety, as well as potentially putting other men (and women I guess) at risk by not saying something about this woman at the time it was happening.
• This is another story that is helping to set a dangerous standard wherein you can have consensual sexual relations with someone while at the same time in your head it's nonconsensual and the other person is basically a rapist and they don't know it. Creepy stuff.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

We all know if it had been a black guy who got pushed by a white guy and he shot him in retaliation, we'd have next to nothing to say. And for the record, I'd be on the black guy's side.

tbh I'm pretty sure a black guy shooting someone for being shoved would go to jail too. Are there a lot of examples of self-defense being claimed in response to a shove in a public area? There was a case a few years ago in Florida where a fight broke out at some club (mostly/all black people), a black veteran with a valid CCW retrieved his gun, he tried to defuse the situation without brandishing but was then assaulted (punched once but not pummeled on the ground). He pulled out his gun and shot the assaulter, and was sentenced to 20 years for manslaughter iirc.

 

[CiG]

tbh I'm pretty sure a black guy shooting someone for being shoved would go to jail too.

I didn't say anything to the contrary.

There was a case a few years ago in Florida where a fight broke out at some club (mostly/all black people), a black veteran with a valid CCW retrieved his gun, he tried to defuse the situation without brandishing but was then assaulted (punched once but not pummeled on the ground). He pulled out his gun and shot the assaulter, and was sentenced to 20 years for manslaughter iirc.

Disgusting.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Don't understand what you meant by "we'd have next to nothing to say" then, but aight

 

[CiG]

I meant that it wouldn't be on anybody in the GMD's radar, especially not Ein's. Bringing this story up was just toddler-tier race-baiting.

 

[Einherjar86]

When black people shoot white people they get arrested and charged for it. What more is there to say?

Anyway, bigger and more interesting news:

https://www.vox.com/2018/8/15/17683022/elizabeth-warren-accountable-capitalism-corporations

The conceit tying together Warren’s ideas is that if corporations are going to have the legal rights of persons, they should be expected to act like decent citizens who uphold their fair share of the social contract and not act like sociopaths whose sole obligation is profitability — as is currently conventional in American business thinking.

Warren wants to create an Office of Corporate Citizenship inside the Department of Commerce and require any corporation with revenue over $1 billion — only a few thousand companies, but a large share of overall employment and economic activity — to obtain a federal charter of corporate citizenship.

The charter tells company directors to consider the interests of all relevant stakeholders — shareholders, but also customers, employees, and the communities in which the company operates — when making decisions. That could concretely shift the outcome of some shareholder lawsuits but is aimed more broadly at shifting American business culture out of its current shareholders-first framework and back toward something more like the broad ethic of social responsibility that took hold during WWII and continued for several decades.

Business executives, like everyone else, want to have good reputations and be regarded as good people but, when pressed about topics of social concern, frequently fall back on the idea that their first obligation is to do what’s right for shareholders. A new charter would remove that crutch, and leave executives accountable as human beings for the rights and wrongs of their own decisions.

More concretely, citizen corporations would be required to allow their workers to elect 40 percent of the membership of their board of directors.

Warren also tacks on a couple of more modest ideas. One is to limit corporate executives’ ability to sell shares of stock that they receive as pay — requiring that such shares be held for at least five years after they were received, and at least three years after a share buyback. The aim is to disincentivize stock-based compensation in general as well as the use of share buybacks as a tactic for executives to maximize their one pay.

The other proposal is to require corporate political activity to be authorized specifically by both 75 percent of shareholders and 75 percent of board members (some of whom would be worker representatives under the full bill), to ensure that corporate political activity truly represents a consensus among stakeholders, rather than C-suite class solidarity.

I don't know how to feel about this because it's outside my expertise, but the article doesn't make it sound objectionable in any way I can see. Additionally, I think it's pretty clear that Warren's less interested in socialism than in installing a broader degree of corporate accountability within a socioeconomic environment that includes not just shareholders, but employees and their families.

 

[The Ozzman]

not act like sociopaths whose sole obligation is profitability — as is currently conventional in American business thinking.

Milton Friedman is rolling in his grave

The charter tells company directors to consider the interests of all relevant stakeholders — shareholders, but also customers, employees, and the communities in which the company operates — when making decisions.

I mean, okay, but chances are the executives will still act in the interest of shareholders regardless of this. While some companies could go to a mutual holding company structure, that takes an immense amount of funds sources out of the equation.

 

[CiG]

When black people shoot white people they get arrested and charged for it. What more is there to say?

Same with the reverse. Big fucking whoop mate.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

What's the point in dis-incentivizing stock-based compensation? Do CEOs need less reason to be concerned of the valuation of their stocks? Clearly, WW2 with its price-controls, product shortages, and massive taxes was the highlight of American excellence. State control over business to a greater extent than modern-day China or any Eurozone nation is what I want. We need more macroeconomics in our government and less microeconomics.

Elizabeth Warren is a horrible human being and I'd vote for Hillary Clinton over her any day.

 

[Dak]

I'm somewhat on the fence about some of those proposals. It's important to remember that "profits" in the actuarial sense under modern taxation law don't reflect profits as used in common parlance. Some of the problems on the business side (as opposed to the monetary policy or financial side, for instance) come from manipulation of profit reports that do not necessarily reflect value production, one way or the other. The focus on share prices seems to be a good place to invoke Goodhart's law: "Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes." which was reformulated as "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

Amazon famously "failed to turn a profit" for years. Would anyone at this point argue it was being poorly run? The myopia about share prices may have been helpful in the 80s to overcome the foundering economy at the time, but at this point it appears to be "too much of a good thing". The same with the tying of shares to CEO compensation. The theory was that good stewardship raises shareprices, which increases the incentive for good CEO performance. Unfortunately, good stewardship has come to simply mean "increase share prices" in the short term, which creates perverse incentives for CEO mismanagement when looking at the long view.

None of this is a defense of Warren as a person, but she can't hold a candle to Clinton's terribleness.

 

[Einherjar86]

My wife shared the article with me. She said she's not opposed to some of the proposals (although she hadn't finished reading when she sent me the article), which speaks volumes to me because she's been very critical of Warren in the past. Warren actually came to speak at her company and my wife found her to be--for lack of a better word--ignorant as to how large corporations with multinational affiliates actually operate.

 

[rms]

Same with the reverse. Big fucking whoop mate.

not as true (or as expedient as blacks would like), but something like 30% of murders are "solved" so this whole thing is always horseshit anyways

 

[Einherjar86]

not as true (or as expedient as blacks would like), but something like 30% of murders are "solved" so this whole thing is always horseshit anyways

There are some interesting racial dynamics at play in Stand Your Ground, but more so for victims than perpetrators. That is, studies show that SYG perpetrators are treated basically the same whether they're black or white; but when it comes to victims, the stats are a bit different. Basically, if the victim in a SYG case is black, the shooter is more likely to win the case than if the victim is white.

Obviously this isn't implying that every case features one black and one white person, but those numbers do still tell a story. If a black person kills another black person, it would appear he's as likely to get off as a white person who kills a black person (specifics of each case aside). But apparently this isn't the case if a white person is the victim, which could suggest that prosecutors expend less energy/resources for black victims than they do white victims.

 

[rms]

these sample sizes have to be tiny. syg as a subset of murders, and then racial demographics with syg cases. I can't imagine that list of cases is even near 100. whites kill whites like 80% of the time too. and the states in which SYG is a law is so small as well

 

[Dak]

Low base rates create all sorts of issues when trying to make sense of the existing statistics.....other than to present that the incidents have a low base rate.