[stone monkey]

So the tl;dr is:

Latinx mortality rates appear to be an outlier (I personally would hazard an uneducated guess at diet). Whilst there may have been assiduous massaging to make the figures for Black American mortality rates look better than they actually are... for reasons.

[Tsundoku]

Looks like:

https://www.inquirer...g-20200708.html

Is ‘Hamilton’ the next victim of our ruthless new cancel culture? | Opinion
Posted: July 8, 2020 - 3:05 PM
Kay S. Hymowitz, For City Journal

On July 3, Disney gave America a big-ticket birthday gift: the musical Hamilton. After handing over a head-turning $75 million, the company began streaming a filmed version of the Lin-Manuel Miranda Broadway megahit on its Disney+ channel. It could be just what the doctor ordered as an antidote to the nation’s gloomy mood, or it could be the opposite — another cultural touchstone swept up and spit out by the vortex of the Great Awokening.

That second scenario may sound absurd. After all, Hamilton is the beloved masterpiece of the diversity revolution, an ode to the country’s multiracial future and to “immigrants [who] get the job done!” Its cast was almost entirely nonwhite, with one notable exception: a campy, mincing King George III. Miranda himself, son of Puerto Rican parents, played the musical’s namesake hero, Alexander Hamilton.

Audiences were swept up in the mischievous chutzpah of casting black actors as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and the clever rap couplets evoking the thrill of youthful revolution. “Rap is the voice of the people of our generation, and of people of color,” Miranda, winner of a MacArthur “genius” grant, has proclaimed. Hamilton won a Pulitzer Prize, a Grammy, and 16 Tony Awards. The show has grossed well over $500 million. Beyoncé, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Stephen Sondheim, Jay-Z, and a long list of other luminaries number among his fans. On social media, followers were counting the days and minutes until the television event. What could go wrong?

Such is the madness of this Jacobin moment that a 2015 progressive musical now looks quaint — even problematic. Hamilton is a rousingly, unabashedly patriotic work -- “American exceptionalism [set to] hip-hop,” as Terry Teachout put it in his Wall Street Journal review.

Since audiences first jumped to their feet to applaud the show, the history Miranda relied on has been toppled like so many statues. The New York Times has endorsed the view that the nation’s birth celebrated in the play occurred not in 1776 but in 1619, with the arrival of the first enslaved Africans on American shores. Following the curriculum now endorsed by the paper of record, educators are preparing to teach the young that the American Revolution was fought, in part, to protect slavery, and that the revolutionaries Miranda celebrates eventually signed the Constitution, whose main purpose was to codify black people’s enslavement. Can millions of teenagers and their parents continue happily to sing the name of one of the Founding Fathers in good conscience?

Equally problematic for the current moment is Miranda’s embrace of the American dream. “[T]he ten-dollar Founding Father without a father / Got a lot farther by working a lot harder / By being a lot smarter / By being a self-starter,” the cast raps in the opening scene. But every red-blooded progressive knows that the American dream of upward mobility is a myth, designed to blame the poor for their own sorry condition. “[A]nother immigrant, comin’ up from the bottom”? Sounds like fake news — or false consciousness.

That’s the way a number of Black scholars viewed the show from the beginning. Soon after the musical opened, Harvard historian Annette Gordon-Reed listed its sins. Hamilton was no man of the people, she argued; he was an elitist and crypto-monarchist. Nor was he innocent of racism; he bought and sold the enslaved for his in-laws and, though a founder of the Manumission Society, had, at best, a tepid interest in abolition. Moreover, the musical is silent about the fact that George Washington owned enslaved people, an omission that even third graders will have no trouble spotting these days.

The playwright and fellow MacArthur Grant recipient Ishmael Reed has dedicated the last few years to de-platforming the musical, which he compares to the Confederate-nostalgic Gone With the Wind (which has also received calls for cancellation in recent weeks). He believes that the show’s multiracial cast is a con to distract audiences from the brutal reality of American racism. Last year, he staged a play called The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda, in which the ghosts of the enslaved and Native Americans come back to correct the lies of the bewildered Hamilton creator. “I think the corrective would be to close the show,” he has concluded.

Hamilton critics are not limited to old-timers. #CancelHamilton has become a Twitter meme. When Miranda took his musical to Puerto Rico to raise money for the stricken country after Hurricane Maria, students and employees at the University of Puerto Rico, where the production was to be staged, rebelled. “He wants to help the community of Puerto Rico as a whole? He needs to sit down and talk to us and stop coming across as a white savior,” one activist scoffed. And so it is that an ur-progressive, Hispanic rap artist can — and will — be accused of white privilege.

Should Hamilton attract the social-justice mobs now that it is being streamed on cable, skeptics of the woke will be tempted to take pleasure in yet another example of the revolution eating its own. That would be a mistake. Miranda is facing the tragic dilemma familiar to the intuitively moderate man caught in an extreme moment. Recently a group in favor of “change for BIPOC [Black, indigenous, and people of color] theatermakers” has circulated a petition demanding more diversity on Broadway. It has already amassed 80,000 signatures. “We have watched you [the white powers-that-be of Broadway] pretend not to see us,” they write. “We have watched you amplify our voices when we are heralded by the press, but refuse to defend our aesthetic when we are not, allowing our livelihoods to be destroyed by a monolithic and racist critical culture.” Miranda has yet to sign. But the progressive who has spun his considerable talents into capitalist gold faces the choice of signing or losing his Black Lives Matter cred.

Miranda is a unique cultural figure, a magician who made diversity palatable to New Jersey matinee clubs and Midwestern tourists while also enlivening American history for high school kids from the Bronx. His friendly, open demeanor and mild nerdiness — he adores American musical theater — has undoubtedly added to his crossover appeal. For years now, the auteur has been posting “g’morning” and “g’night” tweets, “little pep talks for me and you,” as he puts it, adored by fans for their sweet quirkiness. Last year, he played Bert the Cockney chimney sweep, a role that previously belonged to the old-school actor Dick Van Dyke, in Mary Poppins Returns. Somehow, he manages to be both mensch and resolute progressive. In the days of corporate wokeness, Disney and Miranda seem made for each other.

Unless he gets canceled.

Kay S. Hymowitz is a City Journal contributing editor, the William E. Simon Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and the author of Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys.

Posted: July 8, 2020 - 3:05 PM
Kay S. Hymowitz, For City Journal

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 12 July 2020 - 08:33 AM

[Cyphon]

Cancel culture conversation is irritating. People need to understand that freedom of speech doesnt equate to freedom of platform. Freedom of speech doesnt equate to freedom of consequences. The environment and ability of people to voice their views has radically shifted as social media has opened up the ability for people to voice their thoughts. This cuts both ways for progressives and conservatives. It's just the microphone and power dynamic has been balanced in favour of conservatives, so they have the most to loose.

This post has been edited by Cyphon: 12 July 2020 - 09:53 AM

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

One of the best rebuttals I saw of J K Rowling's original essay was a Youtube response from a couple where one partner is a trans man. And they were one of very few on that side of the debate to open with making it very clear that everyone has a right to say whatever they wish (including JKR), and that abuse is not okay in any circumstances, but "freedom of speech does include the freedom of others to criticise your speech".

Unfortunately, quite a lot of people on the "freedom of speech" side seem to translate as "I don't want to face the consequences of the things I say".

[Tiste Simeon]

I saw the Hamilton stuff and most of you know I'm a huge fan (saw it on London's West End a couple of years ago) and it was stunning!

I think the criticism of it is founded in a good place but in reality (and LMM has said similar stuff himself) it's not possible to cover every angle. It would not be physically possible to try and tackle something like slavery on top of everything else that the show covers. There's only so much you can cram in.

And it does manage to show that he was part of an early abolitionist movement despite not necessarily fighting against slavery.

Yes it doesn't cover everything but surely it's an excellent starting point for this conversation in the mainstream? At the very least it's a step in the right direction.

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

Something not being able to cover every angle =/= the thing being harmful or worth cancelling. That nuance does seem to get lost on some.

I think it being a starting point for a conversation is great - Mr Not a Blacksmith and I ended up going and reading loads about Alexander Hamilton and the period on the back of watching the film on Disney+, because it piqued our interest.

[stone monkey]

Taking my own advice:




I don't agree with him on everything, but I don't agree with anyone on everything. But yeah, he gets it.

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 13 July 2020 - 10:00 AM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Cyphon, on 12 July 2020 - 09:34 AM, said:

People need to understand that freedom of speech doesnt equate to freedom of platform. Freedom of speech doesnt equate to freedom of consequences.

These have become popular talking-points, but it's worth bearing in mind that they're not accurate as stated.

If the government allowed you to speak or publish freely, but with the 'consequence' of going to prison, that would violate the First Amendment. Likewise, if you were allowed to say anything you want, but the government mandated that any publisher or website had to remove your content or else face fines, denial of service, or termination, that would violate the publisher's First Amendment rights.

In US law, freedom of speech does equate to freedom from punitive consequences from the government for the act of speech or the views expressed, with the exception of speech that poses a clear and immediate physical danger (physical threats, incitements to violence, yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater).

However, it's true that, legally, the First Amendment only applies to actions by the government, and by some publicly funded institutions.

But a society in which private individuals and institutions seek to suppress speech or expression can effectively achieve the same end as government censorship (though one could argue that the people don't have as much power as the government, even in a democracy, that is a substantively inaccurate analysis of the power relations, which are complex and multifaceted).
The principle of permitting expression even when it seems to contradict the beliefs or values of the majority of the population (or a vocal and influential enough minority) is particularly important in the sciences and (more arguably) the arts. This freedom is tempered by discursive requirements, and I think most progressive critics of 'cancel culture' agree that some speech (for example, racial slurs) should result in firing and deplatforming. (Take for example this recent essay by a Princeton professor: 'Let me be clear: Racist slurs and clear and documentable bias against someone because of skin color are reprehensible and should lead to disciplinary action, for which there is already a process. But is there anyone who doesn't believe that this committee would be a star chamber with a low bar for cancellation, punishment, suspension, even dismissal?')

https://quillette.co...eton-professor/

Quote

The environment and ability of people to voice their views has radically shifted as social media has opened up the ability for people to voice their thoughts.

It's true that the most extreme deplatforming---trying to prevent any internet server from hosting a discussion board, punching people who speak or dress a certain way---seems to have been mostly reserved for Nazis. In extreme cases, full deplatforming (in the sense of trying to prevent any publication or dissemination) can be justified. Also, it's good to hold institutions like academic journals, newspapers, etc. to high editorial standards, and to threaten to boycott them if those standards are violated. (From what I've read, there was significant editorial malpractice in the publishing of Senator Cotton's NYT op-ed. More generally, the NYT has a terrible history of not fact-checking editorials at all; conservative David Brooks has gotten away with not only cherry-picking from (and misrepresenting the significance of) weak studies, but repeatedly making factual errors, which should not happen in a paper like the NYT. Having a weekly columnist is no excuse for not fact-checking at all.)

Granted, one could argue that, if art exhibits are disrupted by protesters who attempt to physically block people from seeing the art (as has been happening in the United States) or lectures/Q&A are disrupted by protesters who try to drown out the lecturer with shouts (as has also been happening), they could simply move to the internet (though with visual art---particularly sculptures---it's not quite the same; though perhaps VR is the answer?)---and risk being attacked by 'hacktivists'.

The right-wing has been deploying the equivalent of 'cancel culture' for a long time (attempting de facto censorship of the arts and sciences), and progressives have been fighting against it. However, the solution is not to adopt it ourselves to suppress anything which seems to deviate from any aspect of (current) leftist orthodoxy.

'Reza Aslan Reveals How CNN's Jeff Zucker and Trump 'Canceled' Him Over a Tweet

[...] the CNN pundit and host fired off a tweet: "This piece of shit is not just an embarrassment to America and a stain on the presidency. He's an embarrassment to humankind."
He was immediately inundated with emails, texts, and missed calls from producers, CNN execs, and even liberal-celeb acquaintances chastising him for the move. #FireReza and #CNNisISIS began trending on Twitter, as a right-wing mob called for his ouster. At the network's urging, he issued a diplomatic apology—which they accepted. All seemed fine.

And then four days later, without warning, he received notice that his highly rated travel series, Believer, which saw Aslan immerse himself in different religions (from a Hawaiian death cult to getting audited by Scientologists), had been canceled by CNN honcho Jeff Zucker. The move struck Aslan and his crew as odd given the show's popularity, his public apology, and the fact they were set to begin shooting Season 2 in days. Most curious of all was how the man who dropped the hammer, Zucker, is a longtime friend of Trump's who, as president of NBC Entertainment, breathed life into the real estate mogul's dying empire with The Apprentice.'

https://www.thedaily...-tweet?ref=home

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 13 July 2020 - 04:32 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Also worth bearing in mind that 'cancel culture', if embraced across the ideological spectrum, ultimately favors the largest, wealthiest, or (more generally, the most) influential groups. According to polling, there are significantly more 'conservatives' than 'liberals' in the United States:



https://news.gallup....cally-2019.aspx

Embracing mass punitive retaliation (with the intent to suppress deviant expression) as an ethically valid tactic on the whole favors the right-wing (obviously liberals have an advantage in many cities, on many university campuses, many parts of the internet, etc.).

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 13 July 2020 - 05:15 PM

[stone monkey]

Then why do we find the preponderance of objections to it coming from conservatives? Especially as they've never been too terribly concerned about the free speech rights of people who aren't them. I suspect the reason goes back to the unofficial mantra of modern conservatism (especially as it's practiced in the US): "There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

As I've said before, conservatives have always embraced cancel culture. But only when they were the only ones doing the cancelling. As one can easily see from the types of boycotts that particularly get their goat i.e. those done by liberals. The very fact that we even have the word boycott is ample evidence that the so-called cancel culture is nothing new.

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 25 July 2020 - 10:51 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'George R.R. Martin Can Fuck Off Into the Sun, or: The 2020 Hugo Awards Ceremony (RageBlog Edition)

[...] The host for this year's festivities was George R.R. Martin and he spent an awful lot of time talking about John W. Campbell, noted fascist and racist. Pretty sure that between Martin and Bob Silverberg, Campbell (noted fascist and racist!) was mentioned more than the aggregate of the folks being honored. I aged approximately 67 years during Silverberg's segment.

We were treated to tales of how Martin is Just Like Us while he was broadcasting from the movie theater he owns for funsies. I lost count of how many times he mentioned that fandom used to be so much smaller that Worldcon was in a hotel and that there was a banquet with rubbery chicken (no one cares).

Because it's such a goddamn fucking shame that fandom is so much larger and diverse than it was 50 fucking years ago. Because the people nominated for and winning awards aren't exclusively white and male.

[...] Speaking of Jemisin, Martin made the decision to first mention her unprecedented accomplishment of winning the Best Novel three years in a row–no one else of any race or gender has ever accomplished a Best Novel hat trick–and then attempt to undermine it by talking at great length the time Heinlein won three Hugos in nine years,

[...] What I haven't forgotten is this: George R.R. Martin repeatedly mispronounced the names of nominees and, in one case, a publication which was nominated. All the nominees were asked to provide pronunciations for their names in advance. The fact that Martin chose not to use that information is disgusting and racist as fuck, as without exception the names he mispronounced were Black and brown. He mispronounced FIYAH, a publication owned, edited, and written by Black people.

This is thoroughly beyond the pale, especially since those segments were pre-recorded and CoNZealand could have asked him to re-do those segments and pronounce peoples' names correctly. Names are important. They have power.

There was also a whole segment about the Oscar statuette and its crotch. It was gender essentialist and transphobic. It was so gross I don't even want to talk about it to be honest. CoNZealand tweeted a non-apology apology about it to people who were offended. I'm not particularly gender non-conforming, but if that segment made me feel gross and unwelcome, imagine how it made not only the trans and other gender non-conforming nominees feel, but also all those who were watching. It was a gigantic "fuck you, you're not welcome here."

[...] CoNZealand has published an apology, in which they admit mistakes were made–including the decision to "provide an agnostic platform for all the participants, and […] not place restrictions on any speech or presentations." That was a very bad decision. Editing pre-recorded segments for clarity and length is not a restriction or any kind of censorship. It's professional.

[...] Would Martin and Silverberg have felt as free to be gross racist misogynist transphobes if there had been a live audience to contend with? I suspect not.

There was no need for Martin to put all the dolls he has of himself on display or to change his hat in every segment–he clearly put more thought into that schtick than he did into pronouncing people's names (I am never not going to be mad about that).'

https://www.pretty-t...TOW8aD7cD4vfyUY

[edit: Just noticed this addendum by the author:

'Multiple people have pointed out that it wasn’t only BIPOC folks who had their names mispronounced, plenty of white folks did, too. As someone whose name is often mispronounced, I can’t believe I didn’t mention that.

[...] My deepest apologies to Nibedita Sen for misspelling her name. It has been corrected.']

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 01 August 2020 - 06:28 PM

[Aptorian]

That last edit is hilarious.

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

Aptorian, on 01 August 2020 - 06:48 PM, said:

That last edit is hilarious.

Seconded. Throw the author of the post into the Sun!

This post has been edited by Whisperzzzzzzz: 01 August 2020 - 10:55 PM

[Grief]

Azath Vitr (D, on 13 July 2020 - 04:04 PM, said:

Cyphon, on 12 July 2020 - 09:34 AM, said:

People need to understand that freedom of speech doesnt equate to freedom of platform. Freedom of speech doesnt equate to freedom of consequences.

These have become popular talking-points, but it's worth bearing in mind that they're not accurate as stated.

I also think that it cedes quite a lot of power to the platforms which are increasingly replacing public with private space (which itself is becoming increasingly concentrated).

Granted this is a broader trend that is troubling in its own right, but I do think that the people who use this argument from a liberal standpoint might be missing a trick. Do we really want mega-platforms that much leeway about what is allowed on their platform? Is it wrong to think that freedom of platform might become increasingly important as more and more public life de facto takes place there?

I find it quite troubling that a lot of apparently liberal people seem happy with an argument that boils down to "it's fine because it's private companies doing it".

[QuickTidal]

The Hugo’s will NEVER not be a shitshow. Never. No one will ever be pleased, some people are going to be pissed at one aspect or another.

Awards shows are a waste of time and energy to play favorites, and pat each other on the back.

The Hugo’s has become the bellwether of the SFF community tribalism that gets to be a worse cancer every year.

No one will ever enjoy it.

EDIT: To clarify GRRM was a Super moron in this, And I’m not defending
Him in my comment...more a comment on how the Hugo’s court controversy every damned year, from multiple angles and I’ll never understand why ppl bother with them.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 03 August 2020 - 09:07 PM

[Cause]

I didn’t see the Hugo’s but I read a little. I don’t quite get it? The Hugo’s gave love craft an award? However people give GRRM flack for mentioning his literary impact?

So I never knew love craft was a racist or anti-Semite. I just read his Wikipedia page and can’t find a mention of it. Not that I doubt it but surely the error was in giving him the award, not GRRMs for explaining why he deserved it?

Also as troubling a discussion as it’s clear as day that love craft is a literary heavyweight even if hewss a racist. His Cthulhu has inspired derivative fiction for decades. Dresden files, laundry files, hellboy and many others.

I find this quite interesting. I mean we don’t really want to promote the idea that the Nazis has great uniforms, too bad they were commuting Genocide, you can’t just separate the good from the bad but you can’t ignore the impact love craft has had on science fiction.

I actually have no idea what I’m saying here but everything I have read about the Hugo’s so far has just been confusing

[stone monkey]

HP Lovecraft remains one of the most important writers in 20th century fantastic fiction: he was also a racist, anti-semite and misogynist (who, ironically enough, married a Jewish woman). And therefore, as such, he's very problematic.(in much the same way as say Wagner is problematic) He didn't quite invent Cosmic Horror, but without him it would probably have been a very different non-Euclidean, tentactacled, rugose, abomination of a cyclopean, eldritch beast indeed. He's also very important for the affinity group of authors who corresponded with him - Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth and Robert Bloch among them.

If you read his stories you are left with no doubts about his views (all of them awful) on a number of topics. People should read his work, and once past one's initial conclusions of "Wow! He's super racist" and "He obviously never met a sentence of prose that he could resist making more purple", it's easy to see why he is so important.

I'd argue that he probably should have had his posthumous lifetime achievement award decades ago. Giving it now, in the climate we have, and however unwittingly, sends a message imo. And I'm not sure it's a good or welcoming message.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'Here's a good summary of just how racist Lovecraft really was:

His letters overflow with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of an underground Jewry pitting the economic, social, and literary worlds of New York City against "the Aryan race." He warned of "the Jew [who] must be muzzled" because "[he] insidiously degrades [and] Orientalizes [the] robust Aryan civilization." His sympathies with rising fascism were equally transparent. "[Hitler's] vision . . . is romantic and immature," he stated after Hitler became chancellor of Germany. "I know he's a clown but god I like the boy!"

And his contempt for blacks ran even deeper. In his 1912 poem entitled "On the Creation of N[-word]s," the gods, having just designed Man and Beast, create blacks in semi-human form to populate the space in between. Regarding the domestic terrorism of white minorities in the predominantly black Alabama and Mississippi, he excused them for "resorting to extra-legal measures such as lynching and intimidation [because] the legal machinery does not sufficiently protect them." He lamented these sullen tensions as unfortunate, but nevertheless says that "anything is better than the mongrelisation which would mean the hopeless deterioration of a great nation." Miscegenation permeates his letters and stories as his most corporeal fear; he insists that only "pain and disaster [could] come from the mingling of black and white."'

http://www.digitally...aling-with.html

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 04 August 2020 - 03:34 AM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'The Woke Left v. the Alt-Right: A New Study Shows They're More Alike Than Either Side Realizes

A common criticism of the ultra-progressive Left is that its culture warriors now resemble the right-wing ideological enforcers of yore, excommunicating those deemed to have sinned or performed heresies. Indeed, anyone older than 30 or so should have at least a dim memory of the social conservatives who wanted every aspect of American society—from universities, to the media, right down to the content of children's television shows—hewing to the same family-values prayer book, and who led campaigns to censor violent video games, rap music, and edgy Hollywood entertainment.

In 1996, Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole called out Time Warner for publishing hip hop music whose lyrics glamorized violence against police officers. [...] It's the same puritanical spirit that prevailed during the heyday of the Moral Majority, except that it's been marshalled in service of a different faith. And you can hardly blame disaffected progressives, such as Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, for declaring that the "left is now the right" when it comes to smothering cultural and intellectual pluralism.

A new study published in the journal Heliyon [...] examining the link between political attitudes and the so-called three "Dark Triad" personality traits: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. These are traits linked with [...] manipulative, self-centered, and callous behavior. [...] had noticed a change in the university climate. "I wanted to know why these ideas propelled the cultural conversation as much as it seemed… and decided to look into the psychological traits that these ideas manifest from," he told me.

[...] What Moss and O'Connor found is that while right-wing adherents of WI and left-wing adherents of PCA are "thought to reflect opposing ends… of the political spectrum," they actually shared remarkably similar personality characteristics: "Our study indicates that an emerging set of mainstream political attitudes—most notably PCA, WI, are largely being adopted by individuals high in DT [i.e., Dark Triad traits] and entitlement. Individuals high in authoritarianism—regardless of whether [they] hold politically correct or rightwing views—tend to score highly on DT and entitlement. Such individuals therefore are statistically more likely than average to be higher in psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism and entitlement."'

https://quillette.co...-side-realizes/

'Alleged "Sick Hoax" COVID Death Roils Arizona State University

[...] The account holder posted from the perspective of an outspoken bisexual anthropologist at Arizona State University who came from a Hopi Native American background. Her tweets, varyingly about racism and sexism and other discrimination that marginalized people in academia confront, became all the more urgent when they began to document the experience of being sick with COVID-19.

[...] former Vanderbilt University Assistant Professor of Neurology BethAnn McLaughlin tweeted, "Sad to report @Sciencing_Bi died from COVID this evening."

Sciencing_Bi, though by no means a celebrity, had made enough of a splash online that messages of sympathy, grief, and general COVID-19 awareness related to the tragedy poured in from users like Gill. She was joined by Slate staff writer Lili Loofbourow, California State University Northridge biologist Jeremy Yoder, University of New Hampshire cosmologist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, and Johns Hopkins oncologist Tatiana Prowell, among others.

[...] But accusations on Twitter quickly emerged that McLaughlin, award-winning founder of the group MeTooSTEM that takes aim at sexual harassment in the science world, created the @Sciencing_Bi Twitter account herself.

[...] Meanwhile, Arizona's Native American population was hit disproportionally hard by the COVID-19 outbreak as cases spiked throughout June and July.

"My real concern, though," Gill added, "is that someone leveraged racism, sexism, homophobia, and COVID fears for their own personal gain. Any time someone fakes a marginalized identity, it provides fuel for people who don't want social justice movements to succeed."

[...] Perhaps no academic was more effusive in his grief and rage than Terry McGlynn, a biologist at California State University Dominguez Hills, whose tweet amounted to a fiery rebuke of ASU. In a now-deleted post, he wrote, "The death of @Sciencing_Bi is on the hands of those who compelled her to teach in the midst of COVID."

[...] university staff members "have been in touch with several deans and faculty members and no one can identify the account or who might be behind it," and that they "have had no one, such as a family member or friend, report a death to anyone at the university."

[...] As of Monday morning, @Sciencing_Bi and McLaughlin's Twitter account had both been suspended.

[...] all colleges in Arizona switched to remote learning in March, so it's hard to imagine an instructor having taught any classes on campus in April, let alone the "giant seminar" @Sciencing_Bi described.

"Here's something to keep in mind," Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert, professor and head of the department of American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona, and a Hopi himself[...] "There are very few Hopi faculty in the academy, and for the most part we tend to know each other."

"It sounds like a hoax to me," he added. "If so, it's a sick hoax."

Alex Trimble Young, a lecturer in English in ASU's honors college, seemed to bolster that contention. "To the best of my knowledge, no faculty working at ASU matches the profile of @Sciencing_bi that can be derived from her profile and @mclneuro's tweets," he said, referring to McLaughlin's handle. "The Hopi scholarly community is fairly small and tight knit, and ASU generally is very public about celebrating its indigenous scholars."'

[...] McLaughlin had also posted photos of what had appeared to be in-person meetings with @Sciencing_Bi, including an apparent trip to Yosemite together. A tweet from July 2018 includes a photo of a woman in front of water and mountains, and a caption explaining that the photo is, "Where @Sciencing_Bi takes a paddle break to explain all of geology ever."

On the phone, McLaughlin described this as "a photo of me and my daughter rafting." She said she didn't know how the mixup happened.'

https://www.thedaily...ersity?ref=home

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 04 August 2020 - 03:47 AM

[Tsundoku]

Both far ends of the political spectrum (if indeed there are only two) wish to use authoritarianism to propagate and enforce what are essentially opinions.
Not so different, or surprising.

I like to imagine a world without any of them. It's nice and quiet.