Wokeness

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Dustin Hertel

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B.A. in Public Policy & Economics, Mount Royal University (Graduated 2021)Jan 8

Why do liberals love wokeness?

I’m going to start with a bit of advice my first Philosophy prof gave us in our intro class. He said, “If you can’t paraphrase somebody else’s position in a way that they would agree with, you don’t understand it, and if you don’t understand it, you can’t debate it.”

I would bet good money that’s the problem you’re having: you don’t really know what one (or either) of these terms means.

If you stop just taking on-board how right wing outlets and pundits represent those words and look at what they actually mean, the answer is pretty obvious.

In short, “woke” means someone is aware of biases and systems in our society that create biases and inequality.

What you call “liberals” (and isn’t actually what that term means) is almost certainly what most people would call “leftists” or “progressives” - a group for whom one of the main shared values is equality/justice.

So now, let’s rephrase your question based on these definitions: “Why would people who care about equality be aware of, and want to fix, systems that create inequality?” …..sounds pretty obvious, right?

"Famous author ripped after trashing the Bible"

The headline  comes from an article is on Fox News (https://www.foxnews.com/media/famous-author-ripped-after-trashing-bible-work-fiction-fertile-ground-for-hypocrisy), but I got it from MSN (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/famous-author-ripped-after-trashing-the-bible-as-a-work-of-fiction-fertile-ground-for-hypocrisy/ar-AA1mViRw) 

From the article:

"Oates declared, "The bible, as you call it, is a work of fiction; or rather, an anthology of fictions. It is not ‘the’ bible for much of the world's population & those who claim it as their own select those verses that appeal to them while ignoring other verses. Fertile ground for hypocrisy."

Various right wing and religious people weighed in.  My own feeling is simple.  Oates is renown as a brilliant author.  Who better to recognize a work of fiction, an anthology based on the variety of styles, and the use of selected quotes for misuse?

I rest my case.

Trust Jealousy/Lenny

Aria Yang's article ("When I get jealous of people, I use that envy as a guidepost. Here's how it led me to quit my prestigious Big Law job" https://www.businessinsider.com/big-law-associate-quit-job-jealousy-career-life-goals-2023-12) puts a neat twist on jealousy. In her case it showed her what she really wanted to do.

It made me think have I been jealous of someone? I remember being envious of a childhood friend who knew when he was only eleven that he wanted to be an electrical engineer. It probably doesn't qualify as  jealousy because I realized all the dedication that went into his success.

He was a good story.  To avoid the draft he got a job in a defense company.  He remarked, "It's amazing:  they're paying me to do this stuff."  He was the living embodiment of the saying, "If you never want to work a day in your life, do something your love."

He'd "steal" parts from work, work on them in his home lab at night, and bring them back to work.

He was kicked out of his college's honors program because he was working at the same time.

Besides the "stealing" the incident which stands out to me was his buying a stereo system which had a hum.  He diagnosed the problem, fixed it with a resister or capacitor, and sent them a bill for his labor. (Memory says it was a McIntosh component.)

Rest in peace Lenny.

"Incompetent dumpster fire"

 The quote in the headline was from a quote from Dawn Beattie, a state committee member in  an article about the Michigan Republican Party.  (https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/20/politics/michigan-gop-financial-turmoil-infighting-invs/index.html).  

My first thought was, is an "incompetent dumpster fire" better or worse than a ""competent dumpster fire"?  (Youth wants to know.)

It is remarkable that Joel Studebaker, the party’s deputy chief of staff, was quoted as saying “We come to the table with almost no political experience and we don’t view that as a bad thing, but it does increase the learning curve in terms of politics.” 

The article makes it appear that the party is riven with factions accusing each other of conspiracies.

My own take is that it makes it more obvious that politics is reflective of a national mental health crisis.

Giulia Cecchettin's Killing Sparks Italian Reckoning Over Femicide

The title is a BBC headline (www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67514334).

Giulia Cecchettin was stabbed to death by a possessive ex-boyfriend, Filippo Turetta . From the article:

"Ms Cecchettin's sister Elena said she had been concerned about his possessiveness, but never imagined he could hurt her.

She pointed to a patriarchal culture of violence and control over women that normalises men's dangerous behaviour.

"Filippo is often described as a monster, but he's not a monster," Elena told Italian media. "A monster is an exception, a person who's outside society, a person for whom society doesn't need to take responsibility.

"Monsters are healthy sons of the patriarchy and rape culture," she added."

Once again I don't understand.  Was it a conscious act, rage, or something for which I have no term?  It doesn't make sense.

The Advance Man - Jerry Bruno

I thought I'd check on the critical reception of Jerry Bruno's "The Advance Man" before submitting a recommendation for a book on politics.  I expected to be writing "Although the critical reception was disappointing, I felt the book was an unvarnished insider's look at politics, with a  Jeff Greenfield polish.  

The first link that came up was The New Yorker story.  The first thing I saw was the typo or was it a scanning error?  I'll see if I can find the microfiche.

Photopea - A Piece of My World Crumbles

For every semester each course gets a new image in our LMS (learning management system).  One course, the gaming course, took a bit more time because I'd program a list of objects to create a pattern, e.g., a list of fish with each fish rotated slightly from the previous one.  The only concern was getting the image cropped and resized.  

For many years, Photopea.com, a free online graphics editor was a quick reliable way to do image editing.  The default file type was PhotoShop's PSD file.  For the minimal needs of me and my students it was fine.  By minimal I mean cropping, magic selection, and exporting an image at different qualities to see the relationship between file size and quality.  Everything else was, as far as I was concerned, a bonus for those who had artistic ability.

When I tried to use Photopea yesterday the app froze, weird things happened when I tried to crop the image.  I loaded the image (left below), used the magic wand to select and then delete the background.  The crop started out fine, but froze when I tried to remove the pixels (right below).

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I thought it might be my computer - it's about 6 years old, but I had the same problem with the laptop which is newer.

In the end I searched for free online graphics editors and eventually found a far from intuitive Total Photo Editor  (freetoolonline.com/photo-editor.html) with which I created the image I needed.

What had been a 10 minute dalliance (the graphics editing being an excuse to listen to music) turned into about 4 hours of frustration.  Sigh.