The Great SSP Canada Cancel Culture & Wokeism Thread

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by wave46

It is fun to watch the elite play each side like fiddles. They're not dumb - they know how the game is played. Bonus: if you can get the idiots fighting each other, you walk away with their wallets. Why does one think Trump's signature policy was a big tax cut for corporations and the upper class?

100% agree. But their games can still have unintended consequences. It's not impossible for the fire you thought was contained in the barn to spread to the house, and the rest of the neighbourhood.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by wave46

Is it true though? Are there really that many "woke" people ready to actually storm the Bastille? Or is it mostly noise and fury (er, Tweets and angst) signifying nothing?
.

Perhaps not a Bastille-style revolution, but certainly they are making inroads in the government, institutional, media and academic milieus.

[kool maudit]

I think it's important to remember that we are likely headed into a period of capital-H History and that passions are very high across all sorts of groups.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

I think it's important to remember that we are likely headed into a period of capital-H History and that passions are very high across all sorts of groups.

The last time the world felt this way for me was when the USSR and the Iron Curtain collapsed in the late 80s and early 90s.

But it was different. It was happening on TV for most of us, and the prospect of significant change on the home front was very remote. I actually ended up in the post-Communist world pretty soon thereafter, but that was just me.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Perhaps not a Bastille-style revolution, but certainly they are making inroads in the government, institutional, media and academic milieus.

In the last 5 years it's become really palpable outside academia or government. Diversity metrics, mandatory training and revamping HR departments to really prioritize hiring minorities or marginalized groups has become policy in a lot of companies.

A friend of mine at a private company was recently taken to task for not having enough women speakers or speakers of colour in a panel he was organizing for a conference. Without getting into too many details, his industry is one that is maybe 70/30 male/female and probably still >50% white at the university student level, and the panelists were expected to be dinstinguished professionals in that field. So even if you forced universities to graduate women and minorities at rates that were proportional to their representation in the population, you shouldn't have been eligible to be on the panel for another 10 years. I think he overcame this by organizing a "women and minorities in X" event at the same conference.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

In the last 5 years it's become really palpable outside academia or government. Diversity metrics, mandatory training and revamping HR departments to really prioritize hiring minorities or marginalized groups has become policy in a lot of companies.

A friend of mine at a private company was recently taken to task for not having enough women speakers or speakers of colour in a panel he was organizing for a conference. Without getting into too many details, his industry is one that is maybe 70/30 male/female and probably still >50% white at the university student level, and the panelists were expected to be dinstinguished professionals in that field. So even if you forced universities to graduate women and minorities at rates that were proportional to their representation in the population, you shouldn't have been eligible to be on the panel for another 10 years. I think he overcame this by organizing a "women and minorities in X" event at the same conference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxvVk-r9ut8

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I think it's worth mentioning that this isn't the New England Journal of Medicine taking a position on the matter. It's just a paper or study among many that are published in the journal. Though obviously if they agree to publish it it's because they consider it worthwhile and not a tin-foil-hat thing.

As everyone probably knows this is the most prestigious medical publication in the world, along with The Lancet from the UK.

The Lancet:

https://twitter.com/LancetGH/status/1356612903999258624

[p_xavier]

La Presse editors are definitely not in the woke bandwagon. Great editorial on the harrasment done by the queer wokes.

https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/2...e-par-un-n.php

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by p_xavier

La Presse editors are definitely not in the woke bandwagon. Breat editorial on the harrasment done by the queer wokes.

https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/2...e-par-un-n.php

Yes very good.

They get slammed by the anti-woke crowd for being too woke but they are fairly balanced. Even if they have many very woke writers.

Journal de Montréal also is not 100% anti-woke in spite of allegations to that effect.

Our media is ok.

[esquire]

Master bedrooms are out.

Why realtors no longer use the term master bedroom

WINNIPEG -- Say goodbye to the term master bedroom as the Canadian real estate industry looks to modernize its language and remove potentially racist undertones.

Changes to real estate language looks to address racism by changing the word master to primary when describing bedrooms.

According to the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), the term master and its relationship to slavery and male centricity has caused concern.

“Words have power and the definitions of words change over time. We feel this adjustment in language is appropriate when describing the primary bedroom of a home,” said Patrick Pichette, vice president of REALTOR.ca in an online post.

The CREA said the decision to remove the word was made after feedback from members, boards and associations across the country. It follows a July 2020 recommendation by the Real Estate Standards Organization (RESO).

“Concerns about potentially derogatory connotations have caused some groups to push to change the ‘master’ terms. While use of this terminology by real estate professionals has been reviewed and cleared of discriminatory violations by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, consumer and professional concerns have remained, prompting some marketplaces to use alternatives,” said Sam DeBord, CEO of RESO in the recommendation.

The terminology changes were put in effect on the REALTOR.ca listing service on Oct. 7, 2020.

Crystal Hollas, senior vice president and chief privacy officer of the Winnipeg Real Estate Board, said the change reflects a national move to update language and align with industry best practices.

Since launching the change, the CREA said it hasn’t received any feedback from realtors or consumers.

https://winnipeg.ctvnews.ca/why-real...room-1.5297916

[p_xavier]

I guess I'll need another word for my sex dungeon as dungeon may cause trauma.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Acajack

The last time the world felt this way for me was when the USSR and the Iron Curtain collapsed in the late 80s and early 90s.
.

Thinking about this more, but 1995 also felt this way with the Quebec referendum.

Though it was on a much smaller localized scale.

Sorta like the difference between your house being on fire versus the entire city (including your house) being on fire.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Thinking about this more, but 1995 also felt this way with the Quebec referendum.

Though it was on a much smaller localized scale.

Sorta like the difference between your house being on fire versus the entire city (including your house) being on fire.

Yeah, the waves on the sea look pretty high right now (to use a different analogy)... it feels like you don't really know how it's going to turn out. Will the storm fade away or will your vessel start taking on water?

[Andy6]

On September 12, 2001 we would have been astonished to learn that, twenty years later, we would be saying that the world hadn't seemed to be falling apart at any point between the 1990s and 2020!

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Andy6

On September 12, 2001 we would have been astonished to learn that, twenty years later, we would be saying that the world hadn't seemed to be falling apart at any point between the 1990s and 2020!

I'm still not that old yet but I'm old enough to remember multiple distinct periods of apocalyptic predictions, including the tail end of some predictions that were contradicted by the later ones.

We went from the (over)-population bomb to the aging (under)-population bomb. The climate is either going to cool or warm, but both are bad (so many Climate Stagnation Deniers!). Capitalism has always been "late stage" (I think that one might go back to Marx and Engels?).

The climate End Times people have had to update their dates like the Jehovah's Witnesses. It's like that saying about how economists have predicted 12 of the last 3 recessions. St. Alexandria of Ocasio-Cortez said 12 years a few years back and I was just listening to the Extinction Rebellion guy in the UK talk in similar terms about a new date, plus he was complaining about decades of inaction. Why isn't he selling his farm and living out his final days on a tropical island somewhere?

I think our society, for whatever reason, has a bias toward viewing negative predictions as "wiser" on average than positive predictions. This partly explains the strange race to the bottom with ultra-negative and ultra-conservative covid experts. And how some non-experts can take on an expert-like halo effect by promoting doom and gloom predictions.

[wave46]

Originally Posted by esquire

Yeah, the waves on the sea look pretty high right now (to use a different analogy)... it feels like you don't really know how it's going to turn out. Will the storm fade away or will your vessel start taking on water?

It's weirdly more diffuse today, if anything.

The people are angry, but it's not a laser focus on one thing.

Pivotal moments in history coalesced around certain dates. November 9, 1989. October 30, 1995. September 11, 2001. They were either culminations of events coming to a head, or discrete events that changed the narrative hugely.

I have a suspicion the sea of change is demographics related. The power balance is shifting away from the Boomers towards the young. Raging against the dying of the light, to borrow a line from Dylan Thomas. From a culturally homogeneous West to a more heterogeneous mix. I get the distinct sense we are on the flip side of a late '60s vibe - 1968 was one of the most politically charged years on a number of fronts. The anger was everywhere and nowhere.

[JHikka]

We didn't have doomscrolling for any of these previous pivotal dates. Imagine things like Twitter and social media on 9/11 or during either of Quebec's referendums. Things probably would have seemed much worse if you were able to see everything at the time as it played out.

Originally Posted by wave46

I have a suspicion the sea of change is demographics related. The power balance is shifting away from the Boomers towards the young. Raging against the dying of the light, to borrow a line from Dylan Thomas.

It's certainly evident in this thread.

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by someone123

I'm still not that old yet but I'm old enough to remember multiple distinct periods of apocalyptic predictions, including the tail end of some predictions that were contradicted by the later ones.

We went from the (over)-population bomb to the aging (under)-population bomb. The climate is either going to cool or warm, but both are bad (so many Climate Stagnation Deniers!). Capitalism has always been "late stage" (I think that one might go back to Marx and Engels?).

In my day it was nuclear war. "The Morning After", "Mutual Assured Destruction" (or "MAD"), "Nuclear Winter", the Doomsday Clock being at X minutes before midnight, etc. There were also the "Silent Spring" of pesticides (DDT was going to kill us), the New Ice Age was on its way and gasoline would soon be at $50 per gallon or whatever it was going to be. None of this means that something won't, in fact, destroy us but it does suggest that we're pretty terrible at predicting what exactly it will be.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Andy6

In my day it was the nuclear winter. "The Morning After", "Mutual Assured Destruction" (or "MAD"), the Doomsday Clock being at X minutes before midnight, etc. There were also the "Silent Spring" of pesticides (DDT was going to kill us), the New Ice Age was on its way and gasoline would soon be at $50 per gallon or whatever it was going to be. None of this means that something won't, in fact, destroy us but it does suggest that we're pretty terrible at predicting what exactly it will be.

There's a plausible argument that the individual mean risk of death by asteroid is about on par with plane crashes, because while major asteroid strikes are much less likely than plane crashes, they can easily kill all humans while the plane crashes only kill a few hundred.

I believe we underinvest in "tail" or "black swan" events as a whole but that society tends to fixate on specific risks at specific times, and often doesn't respond effectively. Right now the obsession is covid. It is not a fake problem at all but it's taking up all of the oxygen and it's hard to argue for a sense of balance.

I also think there is a bias toward "suffering" or imposing costs to fix perceived problems. There's a kind of "no pain, no gain" political principle that keeps resurfacing. It has something to do with puritanism or piety.

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by JHikka

We didn't have doomscrolling for any of these previous pivotal dates. Imagine things like Twitter and social media on 9/11 or during either of Quebec's referendums. Things probably would have seemed much worse if you were able to see everything at the time as it played out.

I remember trying to follow 9/11 online from my desk at work but the Internet was overloaded so TV was the only option until they evacuated all the buildings downtown just before lunchtime. It was the last big pre-Internet event.

It may be that Twitter and social media are consuming so much of people's energy that there is little left over for doing things in real life, including things like fighting independence battles.