May 23, 2018 What’s Good For The Jews? Luke Ford No sacred cows.

What’s Good For The Jews?

Posted on May 23, 2018 by Luke Ford

An Orthodox rabbi friend who’s been studying the Alt Right for a couple of years says to me: “I now notice that all Jewish arguments revolve around what is good for the Jews. More or less secular education? What is good for the Jews. Jews in positions of political power? What is good for the Jews? West bank settlements? What is good for the Jews. These arguments are not about abstract principles of right and wrong. They all boil down to different perspectives on group interests. My job as an Orthodox rabbi is to deepen Jews’ in-group identity. When I hear anti-semites such as Patrick Little and Tanstaafl, I’m now sympathetic to them because they are looking out for the interests of their group as I look out for my group. I never thought I’d be here. It’s weird.”

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Stereotypes Are Usually Accurate

Posted on May 18, 2018 by Luke Ford

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* I wonder if any of my fellow Unzions harbor nasty and unacceptable stereotypes about particular groups of people?

Well, if you do, chances are those stereotypes are accurate.

But, please, don’t take my word for it.

Stereotype accuracy is one of the largest and most replicable effects in all social psychology.

Don’t believe me? Read all about it here and here.

The hilarious part here is that actual research on stereotypes have found that they are true much more often than they are untrue, that they are very useful tools for understanding the world when you have limited information, and that when new information is obtained people cheerfully abandon the stereotype.

* Many years ago, as a first year student at a certain New England Ivy League professional school, the more senior student appointed to be the sort-of residence hall proctor in my part of the residence hall was an gentleman of African American heritage. I therefore assumed he was likely to be below-par academically, due to affirmative action, and an above-average risk for committing criminal mischief, due to ‘that’s how things are’ in the African American community.

I was not entirely shocked, therefore, when he suddenly disappeared from the residence hall mid-year — apparently stripped of his role after being arrested for beating his girlfriend, or something like that.

I must therefore admit that I never gathered enough evidence to validate or disprove the assumption I made about his academic record. Clearly, that makes me a terrible Racist or something.

One of my few black classmates at the same institution turned out to be the marijuana supplier to virtually the entire part of the student body that was into such things, so there’s that as well.

* The problem with trying to convince people that they need to discard their stereotypes is that eventually they get slapped good and hard with reality. So instead of learning to determine which people of a certain group clearly fit the stereotype and who the outliers are, we have too many people in active denial of reality who dismiss the utility of stereotypes and when that gets shattered they end up angry, bewildered, and ashamed.

I grew up going to schools with plenty of class and racial diversity in a large city, so by the time I was an adult I had no illusions about how different groups were likely to act, particularly lower class whites and blacks. In contrast, many of my coworkers – mostly liberals who had grown up in lily-white environments who had been raised to believe ‘we’ are all the same – after several years of living in DC would dispairingly admit after a few beers that they felt like after living there they had become incredibly racist after living up close and personal with the people they had been told were just oppressed versions of themselves. To once again recover their sympathies, they basically had to move back to places where they didn’t have to interact with the people they were supposed to care so much about.

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5 Tips for Recovering Without a 12-Step Program

Posted on May 18, 2018 by Luke Ford

Beth Leipholtz writes:

Here are a few pieces of advice for recovering without a 12-step program.
1. Find your tribe. I can’t stress enough how important it is to find peers who understand the journey you are on and who have been where you are. When you are feeling down or as if your sobriety is in jeopardy, you need to have people you can reach out to and talk it through with. These can be people you know in real life or online. There are so many resources on the internet and on social media for connecting with other people in recovery…
2. Use technology. Embracing technology is incredibly beneficial when it comes to recovery. Simply googling recovery resources turns up many results, including groups to join or blogs to read. There are various smartphone apps that can track your sober time, connect you to other people in recovery, and provide other helpful information. Many even deliver an inspirational quote each day. There are newsletters you can sign up for, readings you can relate to and learn from, chat rooms to talk with other sober people…the list goes on. The internet and technology in general are fantastic resources for those of us in recovery.
3. Have an outlet. It’s important for everyone to have a way to burn off steam, but it’s especially important for those in recovery. Chances are that if you are sober, you probably relied on a substance as a way of letting go, escaping, and as a place to channel negative feelings. In recovery, that is no longer an option. However, there are plenty of healthy outlets to choose from. Two of the ones I have found most helpful are writing and working out.
4. Find another program. Believe it or not, 12-step programs are not the only recovery programs out there for people struggling with substance misuse.
5. Share your story. This has been the best tool for my own recovery. There is something about telling your story to other people — and them telling their story in return — that makes you feel like you are holding one another accountable and sharing in both the successes and the struggles.

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Music Attracts & Repels

Posted on May 18, 2018 by Luke Ford

From comments at Steve Sailer:

* A jazz musician being interviewed on NPR mentioned that he hated Bach. The interviewed affects shock and asks why, and the jazz man’s reasons are redolent of Wagner’s complaints about Mendelssohn: it’s like a tuning-up exercise that goes on for too long, technical specificity without blood. “Ditta ditta da, up here, and then it goes ditta ditta da down there. Why do I need to go up here and then down there?”

* I wonder if this is because of the heavy use of the harpsichord and organ in Baroque music. The harpsichord and organ are kind of unsettling and have an eerie quality to them. They tend to make you uncomfortable unlike the more mellifluous piano of later Classical and Romantic music. Much more solemn. Makes you think of church, funerals, vampires, etc.

* In Kansas City, it was considered scandalous that in certain Westport discos, when too many blacks were seen in the place, they’d play Aerosmith or REO Speedwagon , which was apparently negro repellent, and the blacks would leave as it was considered hokey and undanceable. This made the national news and it was a couple of months after that Aerosmith collaborated with Run-DMC.

* Now that Starbucks has chosen to rebrand itself as America’s public toilet, overtly, they will covertly turn to tactics such as this to remain a safe space for their paying customers.

* Sailer: Mathematicians famously love Bach. It would be interesting to see where on the Asperger’s scale is the optimum for loving Bach.

* Sailer: The NYT covers Mexico somewhat, but I suspect they lose money on it. NYT subscribers would likely rather read more about Israel than more about Mexico.

* On his pocast, Adam Carolla has mentioned, that when he supervised construction, mistakes plummeted when he switched from blaring rock music to classical at a site.

* Companies have all kinds of subtle tricks to scare away troublesome yuffs.

Starbucks: bathrooms locked and only accessible to paying customers + sell expensive products lower class proles consider “gay” and don’t want to be associated with

Chick-fil-a: locate restaurants in middle-class areas so they can recruit “the right people”; demand servers be extra cheery so as to scare away bad attitude “wrong people.”

Pizza joints: take-out, so they don’t have to bother with it

Chinese restaurants: goofy, low-volume Chinese music and televisions tuned to CNN

Wal Mart: “security, scan all aisles” …yeah, those cameras are on all the time, so it’s just a reminder to yuffs that they are being watched…they even have cameras that show you your image at eye-level at the automated register.

+ promote breast cancer awareness, women’s this and that, play classical music, and do all manner of other things that tuff guys consider sissy or gay and don’t want to be associated with (low-class progressives aren’t really that socially progressive, they’re just racists who vote democrat because they hate whitey).

* Sometimes I’m driving and listening to BBC Radio 4, and I hear something particularly objectionable to do with gender, diversity, inclusivity, or how awful white people are, in particular middle-aged English white people like me, and it all gets too much, and I change the station to Radio 3, the classical music channel. All at once I am in a different and much better world of beauty, intricate order and structure combined with ever-changing discovery, and (it seems to me) cheerful tolerance, good humour and magnanimity.

* Mexicans working in the USA like to play their Mexican music wherever they work—nice and loud, and the more the gringos get annoyed, the better they like it.

* If you record a bird-singing with a high fidelity recording and play it back the bird thinks his territory is being invaded and he swoops down to drive off the invader.

* I sometimes listen to classical music on CBC FM, which between 10 am and 2 pm has well-selected classical music with fairly minimal commentary that avoids politics. Unfortunately, every 60 minutes the music stops for a “news” broadcast that is the Two Minute Hate of Orwell’s 1984 come to life, with Donald Trump in the role of Emmanuel Goldstein. I’m not exaggerating — sometimes every one of the four or five news items denounces Trump.

A typical broadcast will go something like, “This is CBC News. Today Donald Trump threatens North American trade agreements. Next, Donald Trump attacks defenceless refugees, causing them to flee to Canada. Moving on, here’s an oppressed African-American talking about the emotional devastation Trump has wrought on her community. In environmental news, the survival clock of the planet is now at one minute to midnight because of Trump’s pandering to primitive coal interests. And lastly, Trump’s boorish behavior has offended sensitive people so badly they’re forming emotional support groups. And that’s the CBC News.” It’s nearly the same thing in French on Radio-Canada Ici Musique from 5 am to 7 am (although not on their really excellent classical program from 8 pm to 10 pm, which doesn’t have news).

* If it’s blacks you’re trying to keep away, and let’s face it, that’s who it is most of the time, heavy metal works quite well too.

Posted in Blacks, Music | Comments Off

The Kebab Shop (5-16-18)

Posted on May 16, 2018 by Luke Ford

MP3.

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Vox Day Vs Jordan Peterson

Posted on May 15, 2018 by Luke Ford

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* Why has Vox Day started to attack Peterson? Is it because he has rational, rather than supernatural, explanations for human behaviour?

* Vox: No, it is not because he has rational explanations for human behavior. It is because I correctly scented the unmistakable aroma of bullshit and sulfur, looked into it, and discovered the following:

1. He’s an intellectual fraud.
2. He is pushing an evil philosophy on the unsuspecting and the unsophisticated.
3. He is NWO.
4. He de-platformed Faith Goldy for her associations, but is connected to John Podesta and the UN.
5. His 12 Laws book should be subtitled “A Beginner’s Guide to Spirit Cooking”

* Peterson actually doesn’t believe what he says. He disinvited Faith Goldy from the college free speech event for appearing as a guest on an ethno-nationalist podcast, while he himself appeared on an ethno-nationalist (Tara McCarthy) podcast.

* Vox Day – in your latest post on Jordan Peterson, you write as follows:

“Anyone who is going [to] tell me that I should not take pride in the tradition that my grandfather established for me, for my brothers, and for my children, can go to Hell. I have nothing but utter contempt for that attitude.”

This is a mistake. It all depends on one’s conception of “pride.” On some understandings of the word, one can only reasonably take pride in one’s own accomplishments – i.e., in things that one has earned, and that do one credit.

So, for example, one cannot reasonably take pride in one’s genetic endowments, since one did nothing to earn or to deserve them. One can only reasonably take pride in what one has chosen to do with ones endowments. Similarly, one cannot reasonably take pride in the accomplishments of one’s ancestors, since, again, one did nothing to earn or to deserve those accomplishments.

One can and should, of course, respect and admire those accomplishments, look up to them as an example, seek to emulate them, and so on. But take “pride” in them? On this view, that’s just to misunderstand the nature of proper pride. This seems to be more or less where Peterson is coming from.

Do you really believe that to think of “pride” in this way is evil and depraved? That just seems kind of crazy.

* Vox, I am a fan of your work, but, with all respect, on this issue you’re coming off as a bit unhinged. JP is arguing, through his massive megaphone, that some people are successful because they’ve earned it. They’ve worked hard, they are smart, they have disciplined themselves. He also argues that western culture should not be dismantled, because it works better than others, it has merit. He disassembles our ideological enemies like no one else today. And he inspires young men to DO SOMETHING. God knows they need that message. Sorry if he doesn’t quote Aristotle enough for you or was on a panel with ideological enemies. But as the kids say, whatever. He is doing good. He is teaching an entire generation to doubt and fear the left.

With all due respect, if you’re asking us fellow travelers on the right to choose between Vox and JP, you might not like the result.

Posted in Jordan Peterson, Vox Day | Comments Off

A Conversation With A Lutheran Pastor

Posted on May 14, 2018 by Luke Ford

MP3.

Posted in Christianity, Judaism | Comments Off

CBC Doco – What’s With The Jews?

Posted on May 14, 2018 by Luke Ford

From the CBC:

Their contribution to humanity is enormous, unique and exceedingly difficult to explain. From Moses to Maimonides, to Mahler, Marx, Freud, Einstein and some 197 Nobel Prize laureates, the stunning social, scientific and artistic accomplishments of the Jews raise an obvious question. How do they do it?
The story of huge overrepresentation at the top is the same wherever you look. How does 1/500th of the world’s population produce so many prominent musicians, architects, lawyers, doctors, journalists, comedians and directors? A third of the medical faculty at Harvard is Jewish, as are nearly 40 per cent of history’s world chess champions.
In 1954, New York State school tests revealed 28 students with IQs over 170. Astonishingly, 24 of them were Jewish.
“The numbers are bizarre. They make no sense at all,” says Montreal rabbi Reuben Poupko. For Harvard professor Steven Pinker “Jewish achievement is obvious; only the explanation is unclear.”
Calling Jewish success “colossal” and “extraordinary,” renowned British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins recently speculated that “something about the cultural tradition of Jews is way, way more sympathetic to science and learning and intellectual pursuits.”
Recent writings focus on wildly speculative hypotheses. Some suggest that Jews have been winnowed for success by pogrom and Holocaust. Others posit that Jews developed their minds in challenging professions after abandoning agriculture in the first Millenium. Still, others see a link between Ashkenazi genetic disorders and high intelligence.
Jewish genius remains a giant elephant in the room, today. “Jewish intellectual superiority is rarely if ever discussed in Jewish publications,” writes author Lewis Regenstein. “To some, these facts are awkward and even embarrassing, feeding stereotypes of ‘crafty’ Jews good at making money and flaunting their superiority to non-Jews.
”A good reason not to make the film? Perhaps. But we take the bolder approach of Prof. Pinker who noted recently: ‘In every age, taboo questions raise our blood pressure and threaten moral panic. But we cannot be afraid to answer them.'”

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Colin Liddell Interview

Posted on May 13, 2018 by Luke Ford

MP3.

Colin has a new book out — Interviews and Obituaries:

From politicians and rock legends to famous artists and terrorists, author Colin Liddell collects together some of his most incisive and frankly oddball interviews and obituaries to build up a rich tapestry of late 20th century life and the start of the new Millennium. Among those included are “Zen pianist” Keith Jarrett, “rock chameleon” David Bowie, atomic bomber Paul Tibbets, sex-mad Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, Beatles legend John Lennon, “supermodel genius” Heidi Klum, “internationla man of mystery” Osama Bin Laden, punk legends John Lydon and Vivienne Westwood, UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, murder victim Nicola Furlong, Iron Maiden’s “Renaissance Man” Bruce Dickinson, Tokyo Rose, Hugh Hefner, and the leader of the Japanese Communist Party.

Colin Liddell is on Twitter. His blog.

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Remembering Adam Parfrey, April 12, 1957–May 10, 2018

Posted on May 13, 2018 by Luke Ford

I will always remember Adam as the guy who took Cathy Seipp’s virginity.

Margo Metroland writes:

Adam Parfrey, the publisher of humor and esoterica who parlayed a 1980s “‘zine” sensibility into a durable niche publishing house, has died at his home in Port Townsend, Washington. He was 61.

His main publishing imprint, Feral House, specialized in topics pertaining to pop culture, far-Right politics, and conspiracy theorizing. Adam built his career on a magpie interest in weird, outré subjects, and he brought a satirical and anarchic sensibility to most of them.

Adam Parfrey was born in New York City, and grew up mainly in Los Angeles. His father, Woodrow Parfrey, was a successful character actor, first on Broadway and in television dramas of the Playhouse 90 sort. His mother, Rosa Ellovich, was a Jewish stage director. In Hollywood, Woodrow worked constantly till he died of a heart attack in 1984, also at age 61. In films (Dirty Harry, Papillon, The Flim-Flam Man) he played a lot of shifty-eyed grifters and grocers. On some television programs he was almost a regular supporting player (five appearances on The Man from U.N.C.L.E., four on Bonanza).

But the role people always asked Adam about was the one in which his father was totally unrecognizable, as he had been made up as an aristocratic orangutan in Planet of the Apes (both the original 1968 film and the 1974 TV show). Adam sometimes accompanied his father to the set.

“What was it like, having an orangutan judge as a father?” people always asked him, according to Adam. And he would reply, “Oh, I just figured everyone’s father did this. Got up, went to work, played an orangutan in the movies.”

After high school, Adam attended the University at California at Santa Cruz, but dropped out before graduation. In New York City he got a job at The Strand bookstore, and with a co-worker, George Petros, created an elegant graphic-arts fanzine, Exit. Briefly he moved to Portland, Oregon, where he became friends with Keith Stimely, former editor of the Journal of Historical Review and aspiring biographer of Francis Parker Yockey. Keith was half-heartedly pursuing a Master’s in history at Portland State, which he soon gave up, along with the Yockey biography. (He wrote a book about desktop publishing instead.) Some years later, Adam passed Keith’s Yockey information to one Kevin Coogan, who turned out a very different sort of biography from the one that Keith Stimely had planned (Dreamer of the Day, Autonomedia, 1999)…

Greg Johnson said of Adam that “he was a pioneer of dissident publishing and an inspiration to my work. Counter-Currents would have been unimaginable without the work he did at Feral House.”

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