It’s pretty straightforward. If you’re an elite, Ivy institution whose brand is all about mingling with “future leaders” and the ruling class of tomorrow, the rise of poor and working-class Asian children of immigrants who’ve been absolutely crushing the SATs presents a big problem. If something like half of an incoming class is composed of these students, it makes it difficult for admissions offices to include enough children of the current (largely white) elite, who will go on to be in influential positions in politics, media, finance, etc. in the next generation (and will be donors, influential alumni, etc.). This is not only *not* about admitting more poor black and brown kids, it’s about keeping the “merely” bright kids of laundromat and bodega owners from diluting the social capital of the Ivy league “experience.” It is deeply classist on an axis that is also, alas, racist. It is also about keeping elite college presidents from having to testify in front of the Supreme Court (reputation management – like stock price – being the obsessive goal of any executive board or body).
yeah…. like it just occurred to me, harvard discriminates against asians seems true because of how asians seem to disproportionately get rejected for “bad personality” or whatever… but President Xi’s daughter went to harvard, and I’m sure her chances of admission were better than others with similar test scores. So maybe the admisions ppl were using asian names as a heuristic, which would be racial discrimination, but it does seem plausible, as the comment suggests, that the purpose of this is as a proxy for wealth/influence of the family
I wonder how these considerations figure into the long-standing Republican project to end racial preferences in university admissions. Like on the one hand, the Republicans is the party of the elite (captains of industry etc), but on the other hand I guess they are generally unhappy with the current institutions of elite production. Maybe it’s a winning move to just wreck some random havoc, and hope that whatever state things settle down in afterwards will be more favorable?
this is basically exactly what Jewish quotas were about back in the day
Don’t let anybody tell you that quibbling about canon is an artefact of the modern culture of authorship. We have surviving letters from Ancient Greek poets yelling at each other about whether including this or that legendary hero among the crew of the Argo would cause mythological continuity problems. You are participating in a proud and storied tradition.
God, a “high-powered women are stepping back from the rat race” article, you used to see these all the time but I can’t recall one in ages! These were like 30% of Faludi’s Backlash in their own right.
For the record, “eradicate transgenderism” is roughly the same sort of thing as “abolish whiteness.”
In fact, I’d wager that “eradicate transgenderism” was inspired by “abolish whiteness.” Someone watched the dumb justifications for “abolish whiteness” and decided they didn’t want to miss out on the fun of “I’m not touching you!” eliminationist rhetoric.
Fuck, man, imagine if instead of “The Day of the Rake,” some guy rolled up on you like “we’re going to disestablish Canadians.”
“the problem of transsexualism would best be served by morally mandating it out of existence” – Janice Raymond, 1979
whatever take any of you may struggle to make sense of this with, some central european guy in probably 1905 already explained this exact phenomenon based on clinical material with patients, this is why everyone should get into psychoanalysis
only the very occasional YouTuber will acknowledge that “sometimes people just do weird shit for no reason” is the most likely explanation for the MAJORITY of famous “mysteries” including extremely disturbing or creepy stuff like apparent crime scene photos. that big SOS sign in the woods made of logs? that’s something someone, even a normal person, spends a few days doing for no reason because it’s fun, never thinking of the potential negative downstream effects and then if they hear it became a problem later?? the majority of normal people will NEVER admit to it because they don’t want to get yelled at. it’s impossible to prove that’s what happened but it’s a strong, strong contender
other stuff i think is usually or often just stuff people did for no reason or for reasons so esoteric they are functionally meaningless: most paleolithic art. most runic inscriptions. many henges of various kinds. most large scale modern day art mysteries including the Toynbee tiles. the guy who made a huge throne in a storage locker out of candy wrapper foil. Henry darger’s work but in a complicated way i can’t really explain. DEFINITELY the voynich manuscript like i take one look at that thing and immediately think “a weird guy had a nice time on this project for his own personal amusement” like that is the vibe absolutely.
call this Gauger’s Razor: until the artist admits to or can be proven to have been doing something intentionally, assume they were just fucking around
if you look at a list of discovered inscriptions (on Wikipedia or one of the online rune databases) the majority of runic inscriptions are shit like “comb” scratched into a comb. in fact the most recent inscription discovered appears to be someone doing the equivalent of loopily practicing their own signature on a big rock, complete with just deciding to stack up the B rune in multiple locations on the boulder for no reason (not a bindrune or mirror rune, just someone who thought BBB looked cooler than B). the runic inscriptions that are curses, grave markers, etc, are significantly in the minority
A few years ago, archeologists discovered a previously undocumented standing stone assembly in a field in Scotland. Later, it was discovered that it was actually built in the 90s by a bored farmer, who did such an exceptional job replicating the regional style as to fool trained archeologists, and then never told anyone about it for thirty years.
I mean the pyramids were fundamentally some fucks stacking up blocks in a way they thought looked cool
My recent online hauls include several varieties of incense, exotic furnishings, ceramics, and both textile carpets and animal-skin rugs, I feel like I’m engaging in Trade at a primal level
So is there an Iron Age Pervert? Are women who dye/shave their hair the Sea Peoples? Or does “Bronze age” just mean “really old?”
I think his book should really be called Early Twentieth-Century Mindset. All the stuff about evolution being false, life as the inherently wise energy channeling itself into the high and low races, the essence of femininity being unthinking submissiveness, …, none of it would look out of place in Europe in 1910. (Reading it is kind of encouraging because it shows we have made some progress in the last century: back then someone could be considered a major intellectual over this kind of material, but nowadays it only makes you a meme on twitter.)
The Athenian philosopher Plato (lived c. 429 – c. 347 BCE) has the speaker Phaidros in his dialogue The Symposion say that Achilles and Patroklos were lovers. Contrary to Aischylos, however, Phaidros insists that Achilles was the eromenos and Patroklos was the erastes. Here is what Phaidros says, as translated by Benjamin Jowett:
“Very different was the reward of the true love of Achilles towards his lover Patroklos—his lover and not his love (the notion that Patroklos was the beloved one is a foolish error into which Aischylos has fallen, for Achilles was surely the fairer of the two, fairer also than all the other heroes; and, as Homer informs us, he was still beardless, and younger far). And greatly as the gods honour the virtue of love, still the return of love on the part of the beloved to the lover is more admired and valued and rewarded by them, for the lover is more divine; because he is inspired by God.”
very happy to learn that the ancient Greeks also had seme-uke discourse
Not everyone in classical Athens, however, agreed with the view that Achilles and Patroklos were lovers. Notably, the writer Xenophon (lived c. 430 – 354 BCE) wrote a response to Plato’s Symposion in which he makes the speaker Socrates specifically argue that Achilles and Patroklos were not lovers. Here is what Xenophon portrays Socrates as saying, as translated by Hugh Tredennick:
“Besides, Nikeratos, Homer has made Achilles exact his famous vengeance for Patroklos not because Patroklos was his lover, but because he was his friend and was killed. Also, Orestes and Pylades, and Theseus and Peirithous, and many others among the greatest heroes are celebrated in song for having jointly performed the greatest and noblest exploits, not because they slept together, but out of mutual admiration.”
I know some people hate comparing ancient writing to modern fandom but come on
The Athenian orator Aischines (lived 389 – 314 BCE) says in his oration Against Timarchos that, although Homer does not explicitly describe Achilles and Patroklos as lovers in the Iliad, the poet clearly knew and intended for educated audiences to understand that they were lovers. Aischines declares, as translated by Konstantinos Kapparis:
“First I will talk about Homer, whom we count among the oldest and wisest poets. Although he has mentioned Achilles and Patroklos many times, he hides their love and the name of their relationship because he believes that the abundance of their affection will make this clear to the educated members of the audience.”
I’m crying this is like one to one what modern ship discourse is like
The fact that Aischines could treat it as axiomatic that Achilles and Patroklos were in a homosexual relationship in a speech that was meant to be delivered in front of an Athenian jury clearly demonstrates that, by the time Aischines was writing in the late fourth century BCE, this must have been a fairly widely accepted interpretation.
excuse me WHAT
the seme/uke discourse is eternal and inescapable. yaoi forever
Who was talking about how “hiking” is framed as emphasizing the strenuous journey over just chilling in nature? The thing is chill weed hackey sack hippies are only half the outdoorsy lifestyle heritage, when you think of who would have come up with the idea of recreationally crossing mountain passes with backpacks and camping gear in search of new vistas you realize there’s a strong premodern military/colonial angle to it, the Scouting Movement starting as Scramble for Africa cosplay as bildungsroman
Doing a bit of decorating and wondering, to what extent am I even supposed to have ashtrays anymore? I’m not particularly expected to have spittoons or antimacassars.
They’re small and ornamental.
Yeah, and then how do I balance their ornamental value catching eyes on an otherwise empty horizontal surface vs. utility catching ash in proximity to places smoking people might want to occupy? Should I have some deployed for every obvious place to settle? In reserve, like drink coasters?
Do you want people proactively smoking cigarettes in your house? Because if I see an ashtray in someone’s house, I’m assuming they smoke, and are okay with others smoking, which is not appealing. If you really want to accommodate smokers, you could leave one on the deck. you’re better off with painted rocks or candy bowls for decoration.
…yeah, kinda, both my parents smoked and so the smell, ritual, and accoutrements all resonate as home to me, and in making provision for it I’m connecting my home to an older world that I was just old enough to experience in person
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