Archive for April 2019
Judaism is the world’s whitest major religion
Christianity is thought of as being a white religion, but if you look at the actual data on who practices Christianity, it doesn’t look so white.
While yes, the United States has the largest Christian population, a pretty large percentage of U.S. Christians are black and Latino. After the United States, the countries with the largest Christian populations, in declining order, are Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines and Nigeria. None of those countries are very white.
So surprisingly, Judaism is actually the world’s whitest major religion. Of the three major Jewish ethnicities, Ashkenazi are very white, the Sephardic are as dark as Spanish and Italians, and the Mizrahi are of similar ethnicity as Jesus, the founder of Christianity, would have been.
I say “major religion,” because the minor religion of Asatru is definitely whiter the Judaism.
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Pew agrees, even in the U.S., Judaism is whiter than any other religion: https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/racial-and-ethnic-composition/
Alan Dershowitz to protest NY Times
Finally, there is some good news. One traditional anti-Semitic trope is that “the Jews control the media.” People who peddle this nonsense often point to the New York Times, which is, in fact, published by a prominent Jewish family, the Sulzbergers. Anyone who reads the New York Times will immediately see the lie in this bigoted claim: Yes, the New York Times has long been controlled by a Jewish family. But this Jewish family is far from being supportive of Jewish values, the nation-state of the Jewish people or Jewish sensibilities. If anything, it has used its Jewishness as an excuse to say about Jews and do to Jews what no mainstream newspaper, not owned by Jews, would ever do.
Joe Biden soaring in the polls
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/
Wow! Looks like I was totally wrong when I predicted that Bernie would win the nomination.
The only thing that can stop Joe Biden is himself. There’s still a decent possibility of that happening.
Reddit thread on John T. Earnest
How can a guy, a person whose friends called ‘Johnny’, who got accepted into Yale (but did not attend), who masterfully played a Pirates of the Caribbean medley on the piano at the school talent show do such a thing? From what I gathered from words of hearsay and observation, Earnest was smart. He was so incredibly smart that he took no notes in his AP Chemistry and AP Physics (probably others as well) classes whilst listening to music, with both hands shoved into his jean pockets, and still managed to ace every exam and quiz with little effort. He was well-accomplished in other spheres of his high school career. He swam for the varsity swim and dive team and won the school talent show at least once for his skill on the keys. He was also very quiet. Teachers would be taken aback upon hearing his voice for the first time.
More about him being extremely quiet, but the huge shocker is that he was accepted to Yale but instead was living at home and majoring in nursing at a local bottom-tier state school?
Was he deemed not emotionally ready to leave home?
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Something about this strikes me as familiar. Was there another shooter who was accepted to an Ivy but didn’t attend?
Game of Thrones, S08E03
Of course there are spoilers, but I don’t think that knowing the ending makes the episode that much worse, but if you haven’t watched it yet, then read ahead at your own risk.
Poway shooter still a mystery
Normally, by this time, there’s some story in which someone who knew the shooter from school has something to say, either good (I can’t believe he could do that) or bad (he always seemed sort of creepy) but there is complete silence. Perhaps no one knew him? Did he have a personality disorder that prevented him from having any friends?
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Gerrit Groenewold, a member of the church, told The Daily Beast on Sunday that Earnest was the quietest of his family, so quiet that Groenewold grew concerned. “I noticed that he was quiet and just wanted to have contact,” he said. “It’s not good if someone is that quiet. He needs to be part of the community, to let them know what is going on.”
Extreme shyness, like Elliott Rodger?
The San Diego shooting
Like all other shootings, I expect that the shooter is some sort of loser. Don’t be fooled by the fact that he was in college. Just because someone is attending college doesn’t mean they aren’t a loser.
Here is a clue from the San Diego Union-Tribune:
“I don’t have enough words to say how lovely (the family is),” she said in a phone interview Saturday afternoon. Daubert only met the younger Earnest at faculty gatherings but described him as “charming, really impressive, and so sweet and nice.”
Game experts tell us that nice guys finish last, they can’t get girlfriends, obviously this is another example of beta-male rage. Alpha males are never “sweet.”
Also, the shooter has a manifesto allegedly about how the Jews control the media and usual anti-Semitic tropes like that. But instead of killing an actual person who controls the media, he shoots some prole religious Jews at an orthodox synagogue, the kind of Jews who vote Republican and barely have any control over their own lives.
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Daily Mail article has pictures of the shooter. Nothing strikes me as being especially loserish, and there’s a picture where he’s with two blonde girls who have nice figures, but the newspaper has protected the girls’ identity by obscuring their faces.
Embryo space colonization at Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embryo_space_colonization
Looks like other people independently came up with the same idea.
The Orville, season 2 finale, “The Road Not Taken”
This episode is better if you don’t know anything about it before watching it, so go watch it before reading any further.
Lion of the Blogosphere 