Implicit Bias Training

Image by John Hain from Pixabay 

This is: A weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids and my great-grandkids — the Stickies — to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — A Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering. Viewing with a tablet or a monitor is highly recommended for maximum enjoyment.  

About

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlereader  

"Racism must be continually identified, analyzed and challenged; no one is ever done." -Robin DiAngelo, Ph.D. — Critical and Racial Justice Educator

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders),

I'm retired so if my luck holds I won't be subjected to Implicit Bias training. 

Not from an awokened employer, or an employer who must pretend to be, so as to avoid being turned over to the Intersectional Inquisition by an unhappy customer or a crafty competitor, 

Or worst of all, 

A mob of enlightened employees still fresh from a successful recent indoctrination by a college, university, or even high school. 

Phew. 

To be completely candid, even if I were still working I might dodge this particular bullet as my white privilege apparently got lost in the mail. 

The biologically female half of the Billary, sociologist Hillary Clinton, took it upon herself to enlighten the masses and make them aware of this social pathology (from which no shortage of Citizens of the Republic suffer) and invented a name for those poor souls in its grip, the deluded Deplorables. 

These are the same people that Barack Obama, being a better politician, called the Bitter Clingers, a slightly less offensive term. Seeking a comment, I was able to get him on the phone for a minute when, feeling zany, he was personally answering calls made to the landline of his $12,000,000 vacay cottage in Martha's Vineyard.

He politely explained that he didn't really have time to talk just then as "some bigwig from Netflix" was on the other line about an "issue" with the Netflix children's show that he and Michelle's production company, Higher Ground, put together called Waffles and Mochi to teach people how to eat properly.

{You made that up!} 

No, I didn't, Dana, it's really called Waffles and Mochi. 

Sorry, where was I?  Oh yeah, I imagine/hope that the very last Citizens of the Republic that will be subject to Implicit Bias Training (IBT) — which, I understand, ain't cheap — will be the working stiffs who get their hands dirty while earning their daily bread and/or who can't do their jobs sitting in front of a computer while wearing no pants. And it's not just the cost. 

Any employer of Deplorables with a clue understands that his/her/their help, regardless of what identity boxes they check (or are stuffed into by "experts"), will see through the scam and that any given he/she/they would find IBT as ridiculous as an ancient forklift safety video ported from film to a current video format. 

Although everyone enjoys watching that dude drive his forklift off of a loading dock, time is better served by getting back to the floor, the line, the machine, the dock, the truck, etc., ASAP.

{Scam!?!}

Yeah, Dana, scam. Although I must admit I'm a bit jealous. It's an extremely lucrative scam that I don't think causes much personal damage. If I had a relevant degree I could cash in and I might even be able to justify perpetrating it to myself, from a moral perspective I mean.

But then again, the boss, be it a corporate weenie, or just a mere small business owner that survived last year's peaceful protests and has hung on by his/her/their fingernails through the Wuflu plague might take its effects on morale and productivity personally.    

Scam? 

Yup. 

As any more or less grownup with a pulse is aware, everyone on the planet Earth has biases, they're one of the reasons Mother Nature hasn't been able to delete us (so far...). 

Gorg know hunting and gathering in dark bad. Big, bad, hungry animals see better in dark than Gorg, eat Gorg. Gorg no hunt in dark, even when Gorg have munchies. Gorg keep eye out for animals allatime. Bias maybe keep Gorg alive. 

In 1998 Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji, social psychologists, unleashed the Implicit Association Test (IAT) on the world. Now it can be proved scientifically which racists are hiding in the woodpile of your seemingly respectable firm/gummit agency/school/etceterool. 

A multi-million buck business is born. 

Now you can hire experts to flush out all the racists in your organization and retrain, heal, or fire them before the Inquisitional Inquisition comes knocking on your door.

Greenwald and Banaji published a best-selling book, Blindspot, in 2013 and shared their groundbreaking findings with the world. In 2015 they wrote a paper debunking their own test. If you'd like to find out exactly why there's a ton of relevant articles available online including this one.  

  

The bad news is that the test isn't reliably indicative of anything. The worse news is (unless you're one of the scam artists) is that the industry it created continues to thrive.

Addendum: On a related note... 

You may have heard that in 2015 a group of scientists calling themselves The Open Source Collaboration claimed that the results of better than half of the results of 100 Psych studies they looked into couldn't be replicated. A "replication crisis" hit the headlines. 

In 2016, four PhDs, two from Harvard, looked into this study of studies and said it was bonkercockie. That it was riddled with errors and there was no replication crisis. 

In late 2016, an article in the Atlantic reported on another, extensive study of studies that debunked the debunkers... at least I think so. I read the article two or three times and I'm not exactly sure.

But I don't even have an associate degree so, grain of salt gentlereaders, grain of salt.  

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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Cultural Marxism and Wikipedia

From a concept to a conspiracy  

Image by diema from Pixabay

This is: A weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids and my great-grandkids — the Stickies — to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — A Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering. Viewing with a tablet or a monitor is highly recommended for maximum enjoyment.  

About

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlereader  

"There is not Communism or Marxism, but representative democracy and social justice in a well-planned economy."  -Fidel Castro

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders),

Cultural Marxism, at least according to the very first hit returned when I recently googled the phrase, is a conspiracy theory. To be specific, Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory - Wikipedia, was what popped up.

Now, I link to Wikipedia entries regularly; I love the concept of Wikipedia.   

An attempted compendium of all knowledge compiled, edited, and updated by volunteers that is in a constant state of flux because we're all floating upon, swimming in, or living on the shores of the ever-rising Information Ocean is an interesting and worthy experiment. 

BIG BUT. 

Wikipedia is by nature and definition bound to be controversial. But it's easy to make the case that given the danger of being caught in an information tsunami and the limits of traditional encyclopedias that something new is called for.

However, if Wikipedia is the answer to taming the dissonance-inducing Dizzinformation Age that we're trying to cope with, even those young enough to take it for granted and who find it slightly less disorienting than the rest of us, it's got a ways to go. 

In spite of that, and knowing that its entries on specific people are notoriously unreliable, I donated a few bucks here and there because I regularly use it and I wished to support the experiment. I'm personally aware of the fact that good writing is hard work and that a lack of material support in any creative endeavor is hard on the heart.  

Unfortunately, Wikipedia has awokened. That is to say, has adopted the set of fundamental precepts of a secular religion, Wokism. Wokism, like any religion, filters everything through its dogma and ideology and is a religion I don't care to support either financially or rhetorically. 

I'm not going to expand on those precepts in this particular column, I'm merely going to provide an example that illustrates my point.

{So far this sounds a bit highfalutin for the likes of you.} 

Sad but true, Dana. Let's hope it doesn't last.   

Long story short, there is no hooge, mind-numbing philosophical tome titled Cultural Marxism. The phrase is more of a reaction to various forms of Wokism, often critical in nature, but/and means different things to different people.

{But/and?}

Lowfalutin enough for ya?

However, Cultural Marxism, according to Wokepedia, is officially a far-right conspiracy theory. Now, given its open-ended meaning, I'm certain there's no shortage of far-right wackadoos espousing their version of it.

However, more than a few H. sapiens, including this one, define the term in a way that we consider to be both rational and reasonable. Given that there's no mention of this/us in the Wikipedia entry, I can't help but wonder if deliberately presenting a one-sided view of a multidimensional concept is where the actual conspiracy lies.    

{Well, I'll probably regret this but I'll bite, how do you define Cultural Marxism?}

Well, it's complicated but...

[Ah geez...]

But, quite simply I'd say it neatly sums up the fact Wokeness is merely a version of Marxism in which the fundamental precept, the bourgeoisie v. the proletariat, has been replaced by the Pasty Patriarchical Hegemonistic Euroimpirialists v. everyone else. 

Or, as one Jermister defines it in the urbanDICTIONARY, "Cultural Marxism is a term used to describe the idea that our society is best interpreted as being a power struggle between different identity groups or cultures (women, men, gay, straight, black, white)."  

Jermister adds that "Cultural Marxists hunt relentlessly to find things to be offended about, and claim to speak on behalf of all oppressed groups, though most of the time cultural marxists are rich, privileged, upper and middle class white college women with multicolored hair."

Pat Condell, a fellow certified crank, provides my personally favorite explanation in the following video, The Curse of Cultural Marxism. Favorite line: "Progressive is a kind of mutation from liberal, like a cancerous growth on the liberal ethos."

America is in trouble. A country made up of people of other cultures from all over the world needs to more or less agree on a "mission statement" at the macro level and ground rules at the micro level to avoid disintegration.

I don't know how to resolve the situation but I do know that the uncompromising (and unforgiving) nature of one-sided Wokism isn't helping.   

Addendum: The power of the Goog

If you're anything like me, a geezer/geezerette who "came up" in a different world and/or having an actual life that takes place more in meatspace than cyberspace, you may find it's easy to forget the ephemeral nature of searching for knowledge via the Goog.

It's not just that like everything published in cyberspace it's subject to endless tinkering in real-time by writers and algorithmites. Worse yet is that the Goog and its ilk can, and do, present information designed by head shrinkers with dubious ethics to manipulate "users" for fun, profit, and fidelity to the church dogma.   

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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Printer Ink

A random randomnesses column

What do printer ink, videos, usage data, and soft ice cream have in common?

Image by Magnascan from Pixabay

This is: A weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids and my great-grandkids — the Stickies — to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — A Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering. Viewing with a tablet or a monitor is highly recommended for maximum enjoyment.  

About

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlereader  

"It's called a pen. It's like a printer, hooked straight to my brain." -Dale Dauten

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders),

I don't for a fact know that it's true, but I'm told that if you buy printer ink for your printer manufactured by the same firm that made your printer that the tiny bit of ink contained in a given cartridge costs more than gold.

Personally, I buy my replacement cartridges from obscure Chinese firms via Amazon that are manufactured by slaves and save so much money that I'm inclined to believe the gold story is true. 

{Wait-wait-wait. Slaves? You don't know that for a fact, right?}   

Well, technically speaking, Dana, no, I don't.

{I'm shock-ed that you would be so irresponsible as to...} 

But given the fact that Emperor Xi Dada has rounded up a million or so Uyghurs who are reportedly living and working in concentration camps/reeducation centers (po-tay-toe/po-tah-toe)...

And, that according to an article from the New York Times, are linked to the supply chains of manufactures of All-American brands like Nike, Coca-Cola, Adidas, Calvin Klein, Campbell Soup Company, Costco, H&M, Patagonia, Tommy Hilfiger, et al., 

I'm willing to go out on a limb given that my wild-eyed libertarian side thinks that anyone living in a country run by a dicktater is a slave. But let's move on. 

{I know that you think you're clever but...}

It's a very enlightening article, I can't recommend it enough.

As a former successful small business owner...

{You owned an ice cream truck for a while, had to find a job to get ya through the winter, and the word successful should be modified by the word moderately.}

I confess I actually sorta/ kinda admire the perfectly legal strategery of giving printers away at cost and then generating a highly profitable, long-lasting revenue stream via ink sales. My um, modest adventure as a greedy capitalist taught me that turning a profit in a country lousy with competitors, gummit regulators, and taxes at every level ain't easy.  

I keep encountering videos and articles lately that have taught me/reminded me of profitable variations of the printer ink strategery.    

For example: 

When you buy an ebook or a video from Lord Jeffry's retail arm, Amazon, you don't actually own it. In the fine print, it says that you've bought a license to view the content, which Amazon may delete whenever it feels like it. And, you don't own the usage data that you generate when you shop at Amazon.com.

{Usage data?}

How long you were on the site, what you looked at, what you clicked on, etceteron. 

As everybody (well, hopefully, most bodies) knows by now, that data is sliced and diced and sold to the highest bidder so that targeted advertising can stalk you around the internet. 

As I've pointed out, repeatedly in some form or fashion, we should be paid for our data. Redistributing other people's money is an article of faith for the Wokies. Doesn't social justice require that the gajillionaire Oligarchs — whose citadels are staffed by woke, progressive minions — give the proletariat a taste?  

Ever wonder why the soft-serve "ice cream" machines (better living through chemistry) at Mcdonald's don't seem to be working half the time?

Well, I don't/didn't but I recently came upon a video, while mindlessly scrolling through YouTube videos, that explains the phenomenon in detail. Being a cutting-edge, multimedia sort of columnist, here ya go:

Bottom line: The machines are made by a company called Taylor. Taylor makes a particular ice cream machine, that till a few years ago, had to be used by all McDonald's franchisees. They stop working regularly and generate obscure error codes that mean nothing to users.  

To get the machine back online ya have to call in an expensive Taylor repairman repairperson. Taylor brags that 25% of its revenue comes from servicing machines. 

McDonald's has reacted to software sold by a third party that makes it much easier for a user to solve problems themselves by announcing that using it can void the machine's warranty. However, new software from McDs/Taylor is on the way! 

It's being developed by a company that's owned by the same company that owns Taylor.  

A person that's more cynical than me might suspect that McDonald's has found a way to make more money by pretending to sell pseudo ice cream than actually selling it.

Addendum: On a related note... 

There's a non-profit, repair.org that, well: "Our goal is to advocate for repair-friendly policies, regulations, statutes, and standards at the national, state, and local levels."

That is to say, there's an organization that's fighting to get laws passed that will not only give ya the right to open your complicated gizmo to try and fix it yourself without violating the warranty, they also want documentation to be made available by the manufacturer to help you out.

Manufacturers, understandably, are worried about giving away trade secrets. However, the fact that they turn a hefty profit by preventing you from fixing your own gizmos has led to some full-fledged kerfuffles.

Fine arts majors deeply in debt to Uncle Sugar take note, here's a nonprofit you could try to hook up with that might actually do some good while still keeping you from having to working directly with Deplorables.

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down to share this column or access previous ones. If you enjoy my work and the fact I don't run adverts or sell things, please consider buying me a coffee via PayPal or plastic.    

Feel free to comment/like/follow/cancel/troll me on Cranky's Facebook page. I post my newest column there on Saturdays and interesting stuff on other days.