sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
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User ID: 636
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
13d ago
Once you sort groups by similarity, you can draw a rough boundry around them. You can call that category "white" or you can call it "blorgoschmorg" but it will consist mostly of the same people, especially if you ask the sorters to draw boundaries of the same size.
The size of the boundary is exactly what makes it socially constructed.
If you put them next to each other, quite possibly so. Especially relative to other groups.
If you get someone to put two groups close to each other, they'll think of them as close to each other? Is that the claim here?
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
13d ago
what content is the sentence "color is socially constructed" even carrying.
That the assortment of bands of the electromagnetic spectrum into color words is socially constructed.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
13d ago
Nobody is saying that the similarity of colors to each other is socially constructed (or at least I've never heard this claim).
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
13d ago
The precedence defense is confusing considering how many of these cases contradict each other.
If you ask people to sort ethnic groups by how closely related they are to each other, I'm pretty sure it will match the genetic clustering.
Your claim is that "white" is an objective category, not that people's perceptions of ethnic group closeness matches reality (which I find highly dubious to begin with, do you think people think of e.g. native Americans as related to Siberians?)
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
14d ago
I haven't encountered the notion that Indians are an edge case before.
that doesn't mean that they aren't basically capturing real and useful information and describing somewhat natural categories.
Neither is calling it socially constructed. Colors are a great example - the set of colors in English is totally arbitrary. Some languages have more, some less, some as few as two. There's no natural law that there should be exactly 11 basic color terms as English does. Nevertheless, the English words do convey useful information.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
14d ago
Okay, let's see the clustering.
I hope it considers that all Mexicans are white (as a federal court did in in re Rodriguez), that people who are half white and a quarter Japanese and a quarter chinese are not white (in re Knight), Syrians are white (in re Najour), Afghans are white (in re Dolla), Armenians are white (in re Halladjian), Indians are white (United States v. Balsara), Syrians are not white (Ex parte Shahid), Indians are not white (In re Sadar Bhagwab Singh), Afghans are not white (In re Feroz Din), Arabs are white (In re Ahmed Hassan) and that arabs are not white (In re Ahmed Hassan).
If it conflicts with the above in some way, it would seem that the term "white" used in ordinary language and society doesn't always conform to what you might see on a multidimensional genetic chart. That you can define "white" in a way to be defensible via the chart doesn't mean that's how it's always or even typically used. Hence, "socially constructed".
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
14d ago
The steelman of "race is a social construct" is that the usual notion of race doesn't cleave reality at the joints. You say that whites are superior weightlifters (already a dubious claim), but Bulgaria has 13 gold medals in olympic weightlifting and Finland has 1. Yet both Finns and Bulgars are white (don't @ me). The steelman is that the category "white" (or "black" or "Asian") contains a variety of different ethnicities with different characteristics and the way that ethnicities are assorted into broad racial categories is not a fact of nature, it is indeed socially constructed.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
14d ago
It's more like, you heard tenth-hand that there are people wearing burkas in a town you've never visited, and there's somehow no photos of said burkas.
That's before we even get into questions about the base rate of burka wearing vs dog eating.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
14d ago
I'm not sure I see the relevance. Obviously Trump isn't an immortal. Winning the election was not guaranteed, and neither is taking office, and neither is achieving any policy goals or staying in office very long. I only mean that I have seen a lot of introspection from the people who thought Kamala would win on the merits and zero introspection from people who thought that Kamala would win via subterfuge. They have simply moved to bailey.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
14d ago
I'm afraid the best you can expect is the goalposts moving to "the deep state won't let him do anything anyway". (Which, maybe, but why wasn't that the initial line?)
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
14d ago
While black women are as committed as ever to the Democratic party, black men may be edging towards the exit.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
15d ago
Ddhq estimates a 92% chance that the house will be republican, securing a Republican trifecta.
https://decisiondeskhq.com/results/2024/General/US-House/
To the extent that this election is a referendum on Biden's term broadly speaking, the strength of the reaction is almost beyond belief.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
15d ago
IME I'm seeing stuff more like OP than 2rafa, and it's why I expect Trump to win going in to election day. Several of my colleagues are not coming in to work today due to emotional distress.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
15d ago
I doubt they'd do an independent audit just for the sake of proving their launch costs, and I don't expect they'd have another reason to do so.
How long do they have to keep this up before you stop insisting that it's dumping?
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
15d ago
Headlines failed to materialize.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
15d ago
I straight-up don't believe them.
What would it take for you to believe them?
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
15d ago
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
15d ago
As of 01:26 ET, decision desk hq has called the race for Teflon Don.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
16d ago
Yeah, we've got a lot of people unironically advocating for open defection here in the states as well.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
16d ago
Referendum voting is terrible, and often saddles legislatures with impossible choices.
A legislative veto is one thing but rewriting the referendum is just ridiculous.
Legislatures are usually the ones proposing spending related referenda anyway IME, so it's kind of a case of "stop hitting yourself".
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
16d ago
I called it for Trump based on the slightly hysterical attitude here on the best coast, but we can't both be right.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
16d ago
Well, all of Hindu Twitter thinks that all whites are evil racist and are wishing for a Kamala win so that the US gets flooded with migrants and
Curious since the BJP enthusiasts I know personally are pro-Trump and point to his anti immigration stance as one reason why.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
16d ago
I've heard something that went, "well, if an ID costs money and you have to present this ID to vote then technically it's a poll tax and thus violates the 24th amendment",
I can't imagine that this is a serious objection since I expect just about every state offers a no fee ID option for at least some people. But I'd be on board with making IDs free to make this objection go away. States can keep charging for drivers licenses.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
17d ago
Plant based milks are fairly popular and much more successful than meat alternatives.
https://foodinstitute.com/focus/deep-dive-the-state-of-alternative-milk/.
According to the National Consumer Panel, 41% of U.S. households purchased plant-based milk in 2022, with a repeat purchase rate of 76%.
Many people especially in my experience (non vegans, non lactose intolerants) prefer plant milk in coffee over dairy.
Okay, I guess I should have known that there are people making that claim. However, I'm not trying to steelman it because I think it's dumb.
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