#coleman hughes

[eretzyisrael]

Source

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

If you ask the question, what is unique about this war? What is different about this war than all of our other wars? It's not the civilian death toll. The ratio of combatants to civilians is, I think it's better than the American army's was when we got ISIS out of Mosul. That was like 10,000 civilians dead to kill 4000 ISIS. This is 19,000 civilians dead to kill 13,000. It's not that.

What's unique about this war, unlike every other war that I could think of, is you have an army in Hamas that has perfected the art of embedding itself, enmeshing itself with civilians, so that you cannot hit them without hitting the people around them. Other armies have done this, but none have perfected it to the extent that Hamas has. No army that I know of in military history has had 15 years to build 300 miles of tunnel underneath a city, that they don't use to shelter the civilians, but they use to shelter themselves, so that they can operate right under a kindergarten, right under a mosque.

So, this is a challenge no army has faced. And so that's what makes this war different. And yes, I agree with all of the absolute tragedy and suffering of the Palestinian people, but what creates that is the way Hamas fights.

And either we can say one of two things. We can either say, well, Israel just. Israel doesn't have a clean shot, and so they have to let Hamas get away with it because it's too much to bear. But then we are essentially creating a situation where terrorists have found the perfect solution, which is that you can cross the border, go house to house slaughtering your enemies, and then hide behind your own people, and they can do nothing about it. It's a perfect strategy. Can we live in a world where we allow that to be an acceptable strategy? I don't think so. And it's very ugly to watch. It's heartbreaking. And I completely understand why people don't think the way I think when they see the videos. I completely get it. But I don't think we can actually live in a world where that's allowed to be a strategy.

==

For the true believers, no ratio of civilians to terrorists will ever be acceptable, no matter how low it is compared to every other war ever fought, because it's not actually about the death toll, because the total in the Maghreb insurgency is comparable, but over a much shorter period, and they either don't know or don't care about that. The problem that a "western" country - and particularly Israel - has the audacity to defend itself, and win, against Islamic terrorist barbarians. This is also why they side with the savage Houthis.

[liskantope]

I may as well share my semi-effortful (though rambly) comment on one of Ozy's recent posts criticizing Amanda Shrier on her recent anti-therapy-culture book, as I imagine more people might see or interact with it here than in that comments section. What I'm most interested in here is, what does it mean to experience the emotion of happiness?

I learned of Shrier's existence and her book from seeing her interviewed by Coleman Hughes on his podcast, and I thought throughout that interview Shrier sounded like she was made of good common sense (it helps that I'm already broadly in sympathy with wanting to push back against what we might call "very online therapy culture" which Ozy seems also to be in agreement with), with an exceptional moment here or there: for instance, at some point one of them (I think it was Coleman) seemed to imply that it's good when children are slightly scared of their parents. While there may be some empirical evidence somewhere that children who are slightly scared of their parents stay on the straight-and-narrow and have more positive life/career outcomes or something, this idea still massively creeps me out. But still, overall in conversation, Shrier comes across as reasonable. I think this sequence of posts tearing apart her parenting beliefs as expressed in her book (unless a bunch of these quotes are grossly taken out of context in some way I can't see) show that she's less reasonable "in writing" and that her more deliberate beliefs that she expresses in her work represent a pushback that is righteous initially but goes to an unfortunate far extreme in the other direction. The part of her interview that stuck in my mind the most, actually, was her line about "We used to ask kids such-and-such; now we ask them about their feelings all the time", which wasn't something that had occurred to me before but I was open to where she was coming from. So I find the response to it in the end of this article interesting. I don't say this with much confidence, but I tend to feel more like Shrier on the issue of how often we're actually feeling the emotion of happiness, although I don't think I'm clinically depressed or at all prone to it (although I have a rather negative outlook at the moment about my future prospects and the world in general which may prevent me from feeling much wholehearted happiness, but that goes for a lot of us. I think perhaps a majority of people relate more to Shrier here. Just yesterday or so, I saw a post from a Tumblr mutual saying they haven't had a single actually *pleasant* day in years like they used to in the 2010's, only "good given the worse background situation" days. This seems to relate to the same idea. Maybe due to recent shifts in world events most of us have moved in that direction? I don't know.) I would suggest actually from reading the end of this article that the difference might come not from psychological make-up but from a disagreement over the definition what it means to feel happiness, where Ozy's definition aligns more with what Shrier and I would call "feeling okay".

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

Good conversation about the Israel-Hamas conflict.

[thearbourist]

Coleman Hughes - The End of Race Politics

[travelerofthetimestreams]

The Folly of Progressivism with Nellie Bowles

[thescoopess]

Sunny Hostin to Black author, Coleman Hughes, supporting "colorblind America," says Coleman "used as a pawn by the right." So Rude!

PHOTO: Sunny Hostin, Coleman Hughes/The View ABC Author and podcast host Coleman Hughes was accused by co-host Sunny Hostin on “The View” on Wednesday of being “used as a pawn by the right” about his new book and defense of “colorblindness” in the United States. Coleman, the author of “The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America,” spoke with the co-hosts of “The View” about his…

[nosferdoc]

“In the early 1960s, there was an elite consensus that color-blindness was the goal of race politics. Then the race riots of the late 1960s led politicians and corporations to perform an about-face. They began implementing race-based policies as a hasty and pragmatic response to the riots—much like governments and corporations did in response to the riots of 2020. Today, you can scarcely find a professor in an elite institution who would defend color-blindness.”

[borgialucrezia]

"We had each other. Now, you have Victoria and she will never leave you. Do you know how much I envy you? And how I will miss you?” 

[xiaolanhua]

I like to see you unbound. You are not so much a queen.

Victoria (2016-2019) S01E04: The Clockwork Prince

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Coleman Hughes on the Politics of Race | Real Time with Bill Maher

Bill Maher: So, what's the difference, where do we draw the line here? Fighting racism and your book is fighting the politics of ra-- -Talking about the politics.

Coleman Hughes: Right.

Maher: What's the difference between fighting racism and the politics of racism?

Hughes: Right. So, racism as defined by Martin Luther King, the Civil Rights Movement, judging people on the basis of their race, rather than their character and so forth. That's not what my book is-- is against, uh, fighting. Obviously, we should all fight that. No matter who it's directed at.

What my book is fighting is this ideology that really was born with critical race theory, the adult version of critical race theory in the '70s and '80s and became more popular over the past ten years. That equates Whiteness with evil, equates Blackness with a kind of moral superiority. Stereotypes whole groups of people, says that your race is an essential part of who you are and feels even that children need to be taught this from as young an age as possible because they're-- they're born with the wrong attitude about race and it needs to be sort of hammered out of them, by separating White kids from Black kids, from Hispanic kids. Putting them in different corners of the room, as was done in my Columbia University orientation, some nine years ago. And that the way we're going to get to, you know, the kind of society we want is by focusing more and more on racial identity.

In my book I say, this is nonsense, this is totally against the spirit of-- of the Civil Rights Movement and that actually, the wise principle is that we should try to treat people without regard to race both in our personal lives and in public policy.

Maher: Funny, I mean… that wouldn't have been controversial with any liberal, 30 or 40, 50 years ago. I mean, that is what Martin Luther King said. What-- what color blind society, I mean, I thought we were all after that and then we all weren't, and what changed?

Hughes: Yeah, so, even 20 years ago, it wouldn't have been controversial. I grew up in a liberal town, Montclair, New Jersey, many people probably know it. Diverse town, where, you know, we celebrated Martin Luther King every year, we listened to the famous speech and got goosebumps, as most Americans do and really believed that, uh, and I lived out that dream, in other words, I had friends of every race as a kid and I didn't think of them as belonging to a race, I thought of them by their name and their attributes, right? Around--

Maher: They treated the same way?

Hughes: Yeah. For the most part. Yeah, I mean, there are exceptions, but the exceptions prove the overwhelming rule. So, you know before 2013, you can just look at polling data from Gallup and Pew. The majority of Americans, Black, White and Hispanic believed race relations were good, as late as 2013. And that's the year everything takes a nosedive, so that by 2021, half as many people thought we were in a good place, as thought that in 2013.

So, the question is what happened? Did racism suddenly spike? Well, no, the data is pretty clear on that, racism didn't spike, what happened is that, we all got smartphones and social media, and started seeing unrepresentative video clips of cops, you know, harassing or beating or killing Black Americans and this gave people the misperception that racism was suddenly this widespread problem and it touched off all of these trends that we've now heard about for the past eight years, under various names, wokeness, CRT, DEI, it's all fundamentally from that core change and how information is being shared.

Maher: But there was part of that was good, that we did see these beatings and things go on, because that's what changed it.

Hughes: The one thing I can say is good about it, is before the Black Lives Matter movement in 2013, cops could basically do whatever and not get punished.

Maher: Right.

Hughes: You could, I mean-- it's hard to find even a single example. Uh, you can find isolated ones but mostly cops got away with whatever. So, that's no longer the case and that's the one thing I could credit.

Maher: And they go to jail.

Hughes: Yeah. I mean it-- But on the other hand, it has not-- many people think it just revealed all the racism that's actually out there, that's not true, because if that were true, people would have an accurate assessment, and this has been tested. When you ask very liberal Americans, "How many unarmed Black people do you think are shot by the cops every year?" The answer they gave in 2019 was a thousand, the real number from that year was 12. So, this social media algorithmically boosted content has-- it's not educating us, it's miseducating us.

--

[grigori77]

Reasons to LOVE Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves

It's brand new in cinemas, so there are still plenty who ain't seen it, so if you're among 'em best skip this and just GO SEE IT, it's SO well worth it, genuinely it's one of the best new movies I've seen so far this year. Hope you love it as much as I did!

So, yeah, there you go - SPOILER WARNING, FOLKS!!! If you don't wanna get spoiled, RUN!!!

Still here? Okay, here we go then ...

This really is, UNAPOLOGETICALLY, a comedy. I mean yeah, this is a classic fantasy action adventure in the Willow, Krull or Ladyhawke mold, but it is also very enthusiastically POKING FUN at the classic conventions of the genre ... albeit CLEARLY done with great affection and love for the material, as only the best lampoons can be. So this is more The Princess Bride or Galaxy Quest than Your Highness or Spaceballs ...

Chris Pine is ALWAYS at his best when he's being FUNNY, so he is PERFECT here. Edgin is most definitely a bit of a douchebag, but he's the sweetest, most lovable douchebag you'll ever encounter.

Holga. Literally just EVERYTHING about Holga. She's my favourite character in this, this REALLY IS the best role that Michelle Rodriguez has EVER HAD, if you ask me. She's a total badass, a truly AMAZING FIGHTER, but I love that despite her dour demeanour she's actually quite sweet, gentle and really a great innocent in many ways. She's an absolute cinammon roll and must be protected at all costs.

OH MY GODS!!! All the easter eggs, SO MANY easter eggs ... FAR too many to count throughout, all the references and nods and winks to the game itself, all the spells and races and creatures and stuff ... but I love how the movie NEVER beats you over the head pointing any of it out, it just lets you enjoy it. So the proper fans will get a huge kick out of spotting it all, but casual viewers will just enjoy it as rich worldbuilding colour and flavour.

Seriously though, it's a D&D fan's DREAM!!! Not just the mimic, or the owlbear, or the gelatinous cube! SO MUCH to spot ...

Justice Smith's Simon gets THE CLEVEREST and best introduction in the film, I love the theatre scene, he's SO BAD at this while also simulataneously being really great. Totally sums up this gloriously clunky hot mess of a sorcerer ...

the opening is GENIUS, totally sets the movie up as it means to go on - the parole hearing is a brilliant comedic take on the scene-setting infodump which is brilliantly carried through in the way the movie delivers exposition in a fun way or just lets you absorb it through what's happening in each scene. This is the perfect, TEXTBOOK way to do it.

"That is one pudgy dragon!" LOL

Doric. Just EVERYTHING about Doric. Sophia Lillis' tiefling druid is a wonderful diminutive little action hero, so fiesty and capable. I love her. It's just a shame she's not primary coloured, I'd have loved it even more if she'd been blue, or red ...

The Wildshape Escape! XD Yeah, I love that, that's THE BEST set-piece in the whole movie, definitely, when Doric gets cught out spying and has to shapeshift on the fly to get away, and it all plays out in one immersive single shot that just leaves your heart in your mouth ...

Oh, the Speak With The Dead montage, that is comedy GOLD. Funniest scene in the whole movie. And with added payoff at the end! XD

Rege-Jean Page's Xenk Yendar. Oh boy, that paladin is something else. I love how LITERAL he is, he's like Drax in GOTG but much more intelligent. Y'know when Holga says: "You're not a lot of fun, are you?" to him? She's so wrong. I just wish there was more of him in this ...

The heist! Oh, the heist! So good ... the portal trick, it's great, love the way they did that, and then that HILARIOUS bard illusion distraction - Pine skipping the song like a broken record was just chef's kiss!

That wonderful wibbly-wobbly illusory reality thing whenever Simon tries to atune to the Helm ... wow, that is some spectacularly trippy shit. Granted, twice is fine for terms of pacing, but I could've done with a few more scenes of that, it's fascinating.

Hugh Grant really has just become a MASTER at playing smarmy, slimy duplicitous gits now, hasn't he? Forge is a reprehensible prick and I love it.

I love how they made Bradley Cooper a halfling for his cameo. They're never gonna let him live down the fact that he's now probably best known for playing a two-foot-tall talking racoon so forever after he will be a Short King.

Wow, Daisy Head's Sofina is a CRACKING villain, she's just SO CREEPY!!! I love how coolly menacing she is, a brilliant dark necromantic wizard that just makes your skin crawl. Especially at the end ... IS SHE a lich? Is that what they were doing there?

That whole big action climax, the showdown in the city centre is FIRE!!! It's so amazing, so brilliantly dynamic, with EVEN MORE great easter eggs! Simon and Sofina having an insanely awesome "arm wrestling" bout with Mage Hand versus Earthen Grasp (I think that's the spell, couldn't be sure), oh my gods! So cool ... and then the way they neutralised the threat! Brilliant.

Chloe Coleman's Kira is an absolutely adorable delight, and I think she's ENTIRELY JUSTIFIED in how pissed she is at Edgin for abandoning her. It makes the payoff when they finally make up so much better.

And that resurrection scene at the end? Yeah, sure, I saw that coming a mile off, but it was so well done, and they played it so well, that it was still SUCH a powerful scene even so. Just perfect.

Seriously, they just did this whole thing SO PERFECTLY. It's visually STUNNING, really it just looks AMAZING, and the action sequences are BRILLIANT but always feel entirely necessary for the story, which is how you want to do it. Best of all, though, is THE PACING!!! This is such a quick, breezy film, it just barrels along at a spectacular clip, so it never drags. Mark Kermode is right, even though this is two and a quarter hours long it doesn't FEEL LIKE IT, it feels like a super-trim 90-minute movie.

And it ties everything off nice and neat, too. Sure, there are definitely possibilities for the future, going forward if they make more, but if the movie DOES tank then it's fine, because this really does do a great job about feeling self-contained and telling its own complete story, so if we DON'T get more it won't be too big a disappointment ...

[jewellery-box]

[istanblogs]

Romantic touches without skinship ✨

Atonement (2007)

Pride and Prejudice (2005)

Bright Star (2009)

Anna Karenina (2012)

Bridgerton (2022)

Victoria (2016)

[millerdoc]