Inside the once tranquil Swedish village at war with migrants

'The village integration works badly because people don't want immigrants in the village. This is no longer a happy community, it's divided and is not a pleasant place to live.'

Filipino Entrepreneur Creates Revolutionary Lamp That Runs on Saltwater

“Just imagine, if we’re able to power a whole island using ocean water. That’s what we’re trying to aim for.”

College Students Say Remembering 9/11 Is Offensive to Muslims

Of course, it’s not just Muslim students’ whose feelings are zealously guarded by the new regime of campus censors. Students at university after university are demanding the right to turn campus spaces—even public spaces—into “safe” spaces: zones of total emotional and intellectual coddling. What’s more, these students assert that administrators are required to enforce these safe spaces, even at the expense of free speech.

How creative sparks help humans make new tools

In the model, certain knowledge can be concentrated in a subset of a population, such as medicine men and medicine women. This concentration of knowledge subsequently leads to increased susceptibility to the loss of this knowledge.

Nature: An Antidote to Crime and Isolation

Weinstein explains that contact with nature accounts for five percent of the variance, or variation, in crimes rates between areas. That’s a significant amount, considering that previous research has shown that socio-economic deprivation (which is basically a fancy way of saying poverty) also accounts for five percent of the variance in crime rates.

The Pilgrims Were Definitely Not Like Modern-Day Refugees

If you have any liberal relatives or friends coming over for your Thursday feast, they’re going to relish the chance to tell everyone that the Pilgrims were refugees too — and hope that statement decimates all opposing view points.

Israeli Colonel Caught with IS Pants Down

It’s becoming increasingly clear that at least a faction in the Obama Administration has played a very dirty behind-the-scenes role in supporting IS in order to advance the removal of Syrian President Bashar al Assad and pave the way for what inevitably would be a Libya-style chaos and destruction which would make the present Syrian refugee crisis in Europe a mere warmup by comparison.

Brain structure may be root of apathy

As far as we know, this is the first time that anyone has found a biological basis for apathy in healthy people. It doesn’t account for apathy in everyone but by giving us more information about the brain processes underlying normal motivation, it helps us understand better how we might find a treatment for those pathological conditions of extreme apathy.

Columbia Student Claims To Be Traumatized By Reading About White People

This isn’t the first time students have complained about the mental anguish of studying the Western canon. Last spring, four students published an editorial for the Spectator complaining that a student was triggered by having to read Ovid, and proposed replacing his offensive works with those of Toni Morrison.

Betrayals of trust helped the rapid spread of human species around the world

Active colonisations of and through hazardous terrain are difficult to explain through immediate pragmatic choices. But they become easier to explain through the rise of the strong motivations to harm others even at one's own expense which widespread emotional commitments bring.

Rude Behavior Spreads Like a Disease

Collectively, the data from Foulk and colleagues highlight the dangers of low-intensity negative behaviors, even those that are merely witnessed rather than personally experienced. With negative behaviors, the witness becomes the perpetrator, just as the person who touches a doorknob recently handled by a flu sufferer can themselves get sick and infect others. No conscious intent is necessary, and the contagion may last for days. Unfortunately, unlike the flu, there currently is no known inoculation for this contagion.

Are Good Doctors Bad for Your Health?

It is surprising how uncomfortable some physicians get when you ask these questions. No one likes to be second-guessed or have to justify their decisions. But studies show that when patients are systematically given information about benefits and risks they tend to consent to fewer interventions and feel more informed about their decisions.

Scuffles as pro-refugee demo in Paris defies protest ban

Local police notified the organizer that if the rally wasn’t canceled, they could face up to six months in prison. However, the warning was issued in vain.

Saudi Arabia Sentences Poet to Death for “Renouncing Islam”

Isn’t it cute that one of the U.S. government’s closest allies has a “morality police.” Where are the Hollywood celebs when it comes to the Saudis? Crickets, as usual.

Eyes Wide Open at the Protest

Few observers outside of the protesters’ inner circle will deny the horror of the worst bits of their behavior and speech. Their march through the library was an intentional exercise in every disgraceful behavior they claim to endure themselves, from insults and physical force, to racial barbs tossed out with disgust. But in the view of many sympathetic commentators, their brutal tactics could never overshadow the basic justice of their cause. For seemingly every overzealous protest, you can find a thinkpiece on the web that argues just this point.

One fifth of young adults think fish fingers actually are the fingers of fish

More than a fifth of mothers and fathers (22 per cent) admit they have lied to their children about the origin of some food because they didn’t know the answer.

Skepticism on the couch

A Skeptic encountering evidence of the paranormal is like the stereotypical woman in a movie farce who discovers a spider in her hair. Does she pause to calmly assess the situation? No, she starts batting wildly at her head, screaming, "Get it off me!" In this state of mind, even the most intelligent and knowledgeable person will be hard pressed to think logically. Panic makes anyone stupid.

People unlikely to change their mind, even when facts contradict their views

To keep from making erroneous conclusions, Gruca used a ‘control group’ in his research – in this case a separate group of people trading in markets, who weren’t asked to explain the logic behind their forecasts. With the explanation effect missing, it was found the respondents adjusted their opinions according to the new information presented much more readily.

A letter to friends

Learned and freethinking gentlemen,

Sorry I haven't been in touch.  I took some time away from Maddingcrowdbook in order to hear myself think.  The herd found me anyway.  Even in the mountains I can hear them move.

Here's something of where I've uncomfortably been for the last few months.  I promise I'm not coming from a place of racism, sexism, or (worst of all) conservatism, but--

~~~

I read Kevin MacDonald's The Culture of Critique.  He suggests that evolutionary psychology can clarify the unconscious motivations of certain ideologues, with a certain persistent tribal identification, who assert that healthy Western cultural norms are secretly pathological.

There are good historical reasons for Jews to have led the argument in favour of multiculturalism, and against European ethnic hegemony. 

This means that there actually is an internal coherence and logic to my education in the denigration of Western civilisation (post-structuralism, deconstruction, critical theory, et cetera).  It's not just that it was frustratingly mystical and pretentious; it was wrong, and it was wrong for reasons.

A little psychology and history applied to my lessons makes them appear less like a misanthropic shit test.  This recasts my failure to engage in the bad faith performance necessary for my final papers.  Of course I couldn't get my Honours!  The field of cultural studies wasn't honourable! 

The reasons for that are understandable, and not at all a conscious conspiracy by scheming Jews to undermine our culture, but the whole tenor of my studies is rendered suddenly comprehensible by this transgressive observation--that a significant portion of the people I read in university were Jewish atheists who believed in the moral exceptionalism of the Jewish people.

~~~

So I've just read in MacDonald's book--about academic theory--that immigration policies in the West were changed in the 60s and 70s against popular sentiment, and not by elected politicians, but by government officials responding to lobby groups.  Canada quietly abandoned a policy of favouring immigration from the cultures that constituted it because that's what it had to do to play ball with the UN.  It was not a democratic decision.

All of this is swirling around my head, when the biggest migration since the last world war breaks into the news, and browbeaten Swedes and Germans scramble to welcome refugees who have crossed half a dozen safe countries to get there.  What am I to make of this?

~~~

More conscious of the origins of intersectional grievance politics, I take a closer look at the works of people who got degrees like mine, but actually believed them.  Gamergate, Shirtgate, Elevatorgate; each time the media just repeated what professional victims said about the oppressive patriarchy.  That kind of talk is grounded in opaque poetical political philosophising, not any kind of science.

They have not one, but two Jewish prophets: Marx and Freud.  It's inevitable that the oppressed female proletariat will throw off the shackles of those bourgeois boys with all their unfair power.  It's clear that white people repress how hateful and unbalanced they really are (just like all men want to fuck their mothers) and your vehement denials really just prove how deeply true it is.

This is old stuff, adapted and polished for a new age, but people live and breathe it as gospel truth -- and they know the god they don't believe in is on their side.

~~~

Where have I heard this before?  But of course!

This is the "ressentiment" of slave morality.  Nietzsche was talking about Judaism by way of Christianity, but the psychological calculus tracks perfectly.

Resentment of the powerful leads to a reversal of values whereby the weak and powerless turn their lack of power into a virtue.  Where the nobles before called the things that were not great "bad," the slaves now call the things that are great "evil."  Where "goodness" before was a sense of strength and health and the power to effect one's will in the world, "goodness" in slave morality glorifies being a victim.

Nietzsche was writing about Social Justice Warriors in the fucking 1880s!

~~~

In the service of this narrative of oppression, regressive progressives have abandoned any pretense of classically liberal values.  The academy and the wider public discourse have become actively hostile to the free expression of ideas, to say nothing of facts and reason.  What passes for moral and rational is frequently a barrage of ad hominem, ab absurdo, straw man, and reductio ad Hitlerum arguments.

People think that repeating the received dogma is what constitutes thinking.  How can I be surprised?  Other than the philosophy courses I took, that was the measure of success in my seminars.

Universities are not about reading widely and learning how to assess information, the media is not about objectively reporting the facts and showing all sides, politics is not about defending the interests of the people and the land, and the agora, the marketplace of ideas, has been reduced to the exchange of instinctive feelings, recycled reasons, and decadent distractions.  2500 years of intellectual, political, scientific, and moral development have earned us the privilege of not simply neglecting those gifts, but denying their value. 

Franz Boas said that cultures are relative and can't be compared, which our radicals have taken to mean that only our culture can be criticised, and certainly not praised.  And why bother cultivating an elevated sense of possibility, if nothing we could ever accomplish would be any better than savagery?

Maybe the epidemics of mental illness and addiction and suicide in our society have something to do with the consequences of not honouring our ancestors (something codified as a religious rite by some cultures, but perhaps developing from a naïve psychological instinct for health).  We're the culture that chose to end institutional sexism, to end the most obvious forms of colonialism, to end legal slavery, and instead of pride for our self-overcoming, we accept the blame for inventing these injustices, reversing our accomplishments into a listless and demented ethnomasochism.

~~~

And then...

Those people didn't choose to bomb Syria.  They didn't colonise Algeria.  They didn't deserve it.  So why are some people--my father, for one--seemingly more interested in understanding and defending the motivations of jihadists than in deploring a dangerous ideology?

No amount of cultural relativism makes it not wrong.  Of course we shouldn't meddle with other regions.  Of course our nations have done terrible things in our name.  It's still wrong.  There's no moral equivalency that can absolve terrorism.  It's wrong without the need for a song and dance to lend context and nuance.  That's my culture.

If the people who value liberty, equality and fraternity can be gunned down for peacefully enjoying their way of life, and they shrug and say they probably deserved it, what competition can we hope to muster against a theocratic religion still in its petulant teenage years?

~~~

In Missouri, where the president of the state university was forced to resign after someone made a swastika out of poo, activists began using the hashtag #FuckParis, because those Parisians don't understand the institutional oppression of a townie driving by and shouting the n-word.

In Peterborough, the city where I got my schooling in what turned out to be cultural Marxism, someone set fire to the only mosque. 

Information is Everywhere and Everywhere We are Ignorant

All the resources of this societal form — from primary schooling to telecommunications — are marshaled in this great learning project: to undermine our self-reliance and know-how. Everything is to be provided for us; everything is to be thought for us; everything is decided for us; everything is packaged to amuse us to death. We are being returned to the pre-enlightenment state of Kant’s “self-incurred immaturity.”

Metaphysics Is Prior to Science

The difficulty with using raw scientific evidence, untethered from a valid metaphysical framework, is that it gives free reign to ideological bias. In that sense our metaphysical framework -- whether explicit or implicit -- is analogous to train tracks, where the trains are our scientific investigations, and the destination is the truth. Our scientific investigations are restricted to the tracks that the trains run on, and if we are to understand the truth of our science we must understand the tracks that constrain our work. If our metaphysical framework is materialistic, the destination of our inquiries will always be materialistic -- we can do no other.

The Anti-Migrant Video Going Viral Across Europe

Although the main thrust of the film is to goad native Europeans against mass migration and the negative effects of multiculturalism, the film also paradoxically takes a swipe at one European minority group who stand to lose almost the most from mass Muslim immigration.

Florida boy, 9, threatened with sexual harassment charges for writing love note

"I like you," the Tampa fourth grader in the Hillsborough County Public Schools district wrote inside a heart drawing. "I like your hair because it is not sloppy. I like your eyes because they sparkle like diamonds."

Syngenta Now Patenting Natural Foods with No GM Biotechnology

There is nothing about this process that is proprietary to Syngenta. It has been used by farmers for millennia through the simple observation of their crops. Certain strains of plants are known to adapt to the region in which they are grown over time. It has been happening for millennia.

Mizzou student body president admits to spreading false rumor KKK was on campus

Head, who had previously claimed he was called the “n-word” from a passing pickup truck — one of the actions that led to the school’s president, Tim Wolfe, resigning on Monday — was at it again on Tuesday.

This time, he took to social media to warn students about the KKK being on campus.

Quitting Facebook could turn your frown upside down, study says

There can also be positive benefits from Facebook and social media, but I think the real thing to always be aware of is the effect it has on our perception of reality. This constant flow of great news we see on Facebook only represents the top 10 percent of things that happen to other people. It shouldn’t be used as the background for evaluating our own lives.

Politician Calls For “Compulsory Labor” to Force Germans to Service Migrants

Meanwhile, as Breitbart reports, Germany’s Interior Minister recently, “announced his intention to drop educational standards in the country to help migrants get into school or find a training place.”

50,000 Nationalists March in Poland

This march was, in strong contrast to far-leftist street demonstrations, completely peaceful and ended without incident.

The More Robots We Bring into Society, the More We're Forced to Behave Like Them

This scenario is still a very long way off, and it’s tenable that our home appliances already force a certain kind of robotic regularity on us anyway. Nevertheless, if such corporations as Toyota do bring us to the stage where personal robots and AI are a daily fixture in our routines, we will have to tread carefully, since this encroachment would amount to our robotization.

WHO Soon To Classify Aging As A Disease

Doctors are usually the most inclined to consider states of being as diseases. Laypeople are the least inclined, and nurses and legislators are in between. The willingness to pay for treatment from public funds is very strongly correlated with the perception of disease.

Study links narcissism and psychopathy to career success

Earlier studies of the Dark Triad qualities suggest these negative traits often overlap with positive traits associated with career climbing, like extraversion, curiosity, and self-esteem, while other research links Machiavellian tendencies with the ability to seduce and captivate bosses, as well as intimidate co-workers

Does Creativity Make You Happy?

The concept of flow points to two happiness factors that have enhanced human life for thousands of years via the arts. One is the capacity to find joy in creativity through the pleasure of invention and exploration. This capacity is based in evolutionary biology to ensure survival of individuals and communities through innovation. The other is the ability to get pleasure and relaxation from creating useful, yet aesthetic objects; this is a form of rejuvenation that is not only practical, but also health-enhancing.

Internet Trolls Attack Anyone Resisting Vaccine Party Line

But rather than take umbrage, those at whom such vitriol is aimed should feel comforted by Socrates’ memorable adage, “When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.”

Armistice Day 97 Years On

There was a moral case made that expected the best of people. War wasn’t opposed merely on economic grounds or because it might kill people from our own country. It was opposed as mass murder, as no less barbaric than dueling as a means of settling individuals’ disputes.

Europe: Welcome to a United Police State

This leads to a situation in which you might be reported to the police for being critical of Islam, or the so-called refugee issue, when making entries on Facebook or commenting under online articles, through the monitoring of these entries by different ‘pro-democracy foundations’.

Bizarre clog-wearing Hitler cult on rise in rural Germany

Barbara said: "They brought us over eggs and goat's milk. But soon we became suspicious.  

"The man with a tattoo of an imperial eagle, the man who wore a Nazi helmet when riding his motorbike."  

Mr Jahn added: "Our neighbours were widely accepted as good and helpful citizens and could spread almost undisturbed their supermen propaganda."

‘White Privilege’ Now Means the Privilege to be Fired for Being White

“I am talking about the growing minority of students who believe they have a right to be free from being offended. If we don’t reverse this dangerous trend in our society there will soon be a majority of young people who will need to walk around in plastic bubble suits to protect them in the event that they come into contact with a dissenting viewpoint. That mentality is unworthy of an American. It’s hardly worthy of a Frenchman.”

Five Leaders Challenging Western Imperialism Through Diplomacy, Persuasion And Public Pressure

From widely divergent origins and diverse ideological backgrounds, five political leaders have set a new agenda for dealing with war and peace, equality and inequality, security and terrorism and environmental protection. Except for Jeremy Corbyn, who in any case will probably be rendered impotent by his own party’s elite, none of these progressive leaders’ ideologies is derived from the secular left.

Does religion make kids less generous?

"A common-sense notion is that religiosity has a positive association with self-control and moral behaviors," Decety said. "This view is unfortunately so deeply embedded that individuals who are not religious can be considered morally suspect. In the United States, for instance, non-religious individuals have little chance to be elected to a high political office, and those who identify as agnostic and atheist are considered to be less trustworthy and more likely to be amoral or even immoral. Thus, it is generally admitted that religion shapes people's moral judgments and prosocial behavior, but the relation between religiosity and morality is actually a contentious one, and not always positive."

Understanding the Shocking Suicide Rate of US Vets

The crux of the matter is that going to war, which can be regarded as committing a state-sanctioned murder, increases criminal violence in the non-combat environment. And this fact shifts our attention directly to the problem of war, not to the problem of which fraction of returning troops to offer a "modicum of reorientation into nonviolent life."

Slain spirit medium's lottery numbers 'too accurate'

As a medium, he had predicted winning three-digit numbers for both the Oct 1 and Oct 16 draws. Many punters had won money on the underground lottery betting on numbers based on his forecasts. Several underground lottery operators had suffered huge losses as a result. Possibly they had been angry enough to hire gunmen to kill him, Pol Lt Col Praphan said.

‘Richard Wagner Square’ To Be Renamed ‘Refugees Welcome Square’ In Snub To German Patriots

Renaming squares and streets is an emerging cultural battleground in Europe, as leftist groups on city government boards seek to erase cultural histories and inconvenient reminders as soon as they seize power. Breitbart London reported on two such examples in July where Spanish authorities insulted the memories of right-wing figures by renaming their squares after LGBT-lobby campaigners.

More Things That Are Now “Racist”: Thor, Heavy Metal Music, Viking Cosplay

“Folk metal serves as a comfortable leisure space for those that have lost power in recent decades: the white European, working class men who have faced challenges to their assumed privileges from women, globalisation, immigration and postmodernity. However, at the same time it should not be easily dismissed in this way, and I believe it remains central to the idea of heavy metal as a form of leisure that makes masculinity and whiteness the norm.”

Real-Life Paranormal Experiences Are Nothing Like the Movies

“If you ring a bell, that frequency will set off another, but it’s not going to set off anything unless you ring it," he said. "A classic example of this would be telling ghost stories. People may be sitting at a campfire having fun, but once they shift into the frequency of telling the story, it becomes scary. The mind shifts, and the veil thins. They have created a frequency that attracts that energy. It’s synergistic.”

Youth Turn Out in Large Numbers for NPI’s Rainbow Racist Gathering

Dickson claimed African Americans could “be given Manhattan” describing his version of a Balkanization of America. Spencer spouted some anti-Semitism himself, before trying to retract it, stating, “The Jews exist precisely because they were apart, precisely because they had, maybe you could say, a bit of paranoia about trying to stay away -- please don’t quote paranoia.”

Romanian witches to cast anti-government spell

The Queen witch Bratara Buzea said she would lead a chorus in casting a spell using a concoction of cat excrement and a dead dog. "They want to take the country out of this crisis using us? They should get us out of the crisis because they brought us into it," she said.

Ban Ki-moon condemns US position on Syria, endorses Putin

Suckers in the West fall for the Western aristocracies' line that Putin and not Obama is wrong on this and is the cause of the dragged-out Syrian war. Such fools don't even ask themselves whether in this dispute it is Obama, or instead Putin, who is supporting the most basic democratic principle of self-rule by the people. But the average individual is that manipulable: so manipulable as to think that black is white, and white is black; that good is bad, and bad is good. Totally manipulable.

Migrant crisis pushing Germany towards ‘anarchy and civil war’

"The person who wants to send them to Berlin is Mr. Dreier. He is the district head of Landshut, a town close to Munich. Usually he does not have the power, but we are not living in usual times. What we are now looking at is more and more Germany sliding towards anarchy. In this situation I think less and less is determined by law, more and more is determined by who acts. And the person who acts in fact has the power. So if he sends ... refugees to Berlin, he sends them!"

White middle-aged people in US dying quicker than in any other developed nation

In some sort of nightmarish fashion, organ damage was combined with rising depression, inability to relate to others and various other forms of pain – bringing with them often an inability to work. The authors even found a strict rising correlation between the number of people reporting mental illness and the number reporting that they had difficulty in socializing with others.

Sci-Fi’s Hugo Awards and the Battle for Pop Culture’s Soul

So you might be asking yourself: Isn’t there room for everybody under the science fiction tent? You guys over there can keep reading hard military sci-fi where the physics of deceleration from 0.5c is a plot point. And you guys over here can read about a transgendered person with dark skin and epicanthic folds pondering the existential implications of sex with an AI.

Sorry, Social Justice Warriors: Political Correctness Has Peaked

Increasingly, Social Justice Warriors seem to win only on the turf they already control. And so they’ve begun to turn to the behavior best calculated to end their cultural dominance, behavior that makes even their fellow liberals miserable. Liberal comedians won’t perform on college campuses, liberals disrupt liberal campaign events, liberals insult movies by liberal directors for failing to comply with impossible-to-meet liberal gender standards, and liberal professors now live in fear of their liberal students.

Ontario High School: Halloween Costume Can’t Appropriate Your Own Culture

Although Sewerynek wanted to dress up as part of what he deems his own culture, the school stated the reason for rejecting Sewerynek’s costume was still because “culture is not a costume.”