According to an impartial expert, many things CAN happen in 2023: https://twitter.com/MedvedevRussiaE/...87338401206273

Interestingly, he doesn't mention a Russian victory.

It's called freedom of speech for a reason....

Medvedev is really channeling his inner Baba Vanga there.

Tom Nichols wrote a hilarious send-up of Medvedev's seriously gaga rant.

https://www.theatlantic.com/newslett...enture/672589/

Maybe someone can identify the drugs he's used.....what is it that can cause such delirium?

Don't forget that he initially put in a bid for Twitter at above the stock price at the time, and also waived due diligence. He then spent a good part of the year trying to get out of the deal. Apart from Twitter, he has already pledged some of his TSLA shares to fund his lifestyle.

I am watching with interest how this plays out. It would be interesting if Musk ended up ruining himself due to self-inflicted margin calls. Though I guess he might end up worth "only" a couple of billion.

Just to help us keep a sense of proportion, eight out of the top ten worldwide Twitter trends today are in the Chinese language.

Edit: Elon Musk has lost a bigger fortune than anyone in history.
That makes Musk the first person ever to lose $200 billion in wealth

Interesting (and maybe a little ironic) thread involving Emily Clarkson. A highly dodgy headline was written about her in the self-same Daily Mail, which used some photos for which permission was not sought nor payment made.

Also, rather eye-rollingly, they try to palm it off as "wholesome"...

Interestingly, Daddio hasn't commented on this one.

intrigued that nobody commented about red pill guru andrew tate being arrested .

Not sure if it's a good or bad sign that people are not aware of who he is.

I wasn't aware of him until I read about his spat with Greta Thunberg on Twitter and then his subsequent arrest.

I've never been a fan of Greta, but she brought that idiot down with a tweet and a pizza box. That was pretty awesome.

As of today

"More than 300 former US Twitter employees have filed demands for arbitration against the company, according to attorneys representing them.
Twitter is also facing four proposed class action lawsuits in the United States related to the layoffs.
43 affected UK employees are prepared to take the issue to an Employment Tribunal"

Probably more law suits to come in other countries.

Academic Freedom Is Not a Matter of Opinion
Students should not decide a college’s curriculum.

By Tom Nichols

https://www.theatlantic.com/newslett...reedom/672713/

Unless you follow academic politics, you might have missed the recent controversy at Hamline University, a small private college in St. Paul, Minnesota. The short version is that a professor named Erika López Prater showed students in her global-art-history class a 14th-century painting depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Aware that many Muslims regard such images as sacrilege, she warned ahead of time that she was going to show the picture and offered to excuse any student who did not want to view it.

Professor López Prater’s contract has not been renewed, and she will not be returning to the classroom. The university strenuously denies that she was fired. Of course, colleges let adjuncts go all the time, often reluctantly. But this, to me, seems like something more.

I began my 35-year teaching career in the late 1980s and was once a tenure-track faculty member at an elite college, where I was one of a handful of registered Republicans among a mostly liberal faculty. I have been denied tenure at one school and granted it at two others. I have been an adjunct, contract faculty (that is, working on a long-term contract but without actual tenure), a department chair, and a tenured full professor. I have led a tenure committee, and I have written tenure and promotion letters for candidates at other schools at the request of their institution. I have been a faculty member in a U.S. government institution, where I had to balance my right to self-expression against important and necessary legal restrictions on politicking in the classroom.

So I think I have a pretty clear idea of what goes on in classrooms. I know what academic freedom means. I think I know what “fired” looks like, and it seems to me that López Prater was fired—a conclusion that seems especially likely in the wake of a highly defensive public letter the school’s president, Fayneese Miller, wrote about the whole business.

After a piece about the controversy appeared in The New York Times, Miller issued a statement in which she decried how Hamline is now “under attack from forces outside our campus.”

Various so-called stakeholders interpreted the incident, as reported in various media, as one of “academic freedom.” The Times went so far as to cite PEN America’s claim that what was happening on our campus was one of the “most egregious violations of academic freedom” it had ever encountered.

It begs the question, “How?”

Allow me to interpret. By “so-called stakeholders,” Miller, I think, means people who believe this issue affects them, but who should buzz off and mind their own business. (And while I’m at it, stakeholders is a bit of jargon that should be banned from education.) About López Prater, Miller said, “The decision not to offer her another class was made at the unit level”—I assume here she means the department in which López Prater worked—”and in no way reflects on her ability to adequately teach the class.” Oh? Then what prompted “the decision at the unit level”?

Miller then lists the impeccably liberal credentials of Hamline as a school, none of which have anything to do with this case. After all of this throat clearing, she gets to the real questions she thinks should have been raised about academic freedom.

First, does your defense of academic freedom infringe upon the rights of students in violation of the very principles you defend? Second, does the claim that academic freedom is sacrosanct, and owes no debt to the traditions, beliefs, and views of students, comprise a privileged reaction?

This makes no sense. The “rights” of students were not jeopardized, and no curriculum owes a “debt” to any student’s “traditions, beliefs, and views.” (Indeed, if you don’t want your traditions, beliefs, or views challenged, then don’t come to a university, at least not to study anything in the humanities or the social sciences.) Miller’s view, it seems, is that academic freedom really only means as much freedom as your most sensitive students can stand, an irresponsible position that puts the university, the classroom, and the careers of scholars in the hands of students who are inexperienced in the subject matter, new to academic life, and, often, still in the throes of adolescence.

This, as I have written elsewhere, is contrary to the very notion of teaching itself. (It is also not anything close to the bedrock 1940 statement on the matter from the American Association of University Professors.) The goal of the university is to create educated and reasoning adults, not to shelter children against the pain of learning that the world is a complicated place. Classes are not a restaurant meal that must be served to students’ specifications; they are not a stand-up act that must make students laugh but never offend them. Miller is leaving the door open for future curricular challenges.

I myself have issued warnings for materials I show in class, notably the gory British nuclear-war movie Threads. I have offered to excuse students who might be disturbed by it, and I would not want someone to interfere with my class on nuclear weapons any more than I would interfere with anyone else’s about art history. There are, to be sure, plenty of times when professors do go off the rails, which is why their performance and syllabi—especially those of untenured faculty and outside adjuncts—are reviewed, in most schools, by a departmental or divisional committee. That doesn’t seem to be what happened here. A student complained, which apparently set in motion several events, including López Prater being summoned by a dean and a Hamline administrator sending an email to campus employees saying that certain actions taken in an online class were “undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful and Islamophobic.”

Noting the school’s traditional Methodist mission that includes doing “all the good you can,” Miller adds, “To do all the good you can means, in part, minimizing harm.” Again, this is risible: The most effective way to avoid harm would be to walk into the classroom and ask the students what they’d like to talk about, let them vote on it, and give a veto to anyone who might be offended by the class’s choice.

Academic freedom is not an open invitation to be a jerk. It is not a license for faculty to harass students or to impose their will on them. But if all it means is that professors keep their jobs only at the sufferance of students, then it means nothing at all.

A significant part of the problem in American universities is the attack on tenure. López Prater was an adjunct—instructors who are far more vulnerable to dismissal at will. But that subject is too big to tackle today; I’ll write more on it here soon.

Elon may come to regret supporting the right.

Karma!

Ironic that in so far as cancelling stuff, interfering in peoples lives and preventing freedom of choice, certain elements of the right take some beating…

Ahh, modern times are good, you only lose your job. Much better than being politely invited to a duel at dawn, orbeing ambushed and shot in the back by rival(s)

https://variety.com/2023/tv/global/j...ed-1235490701/

I wouldn't cry/gloat too much, as I'm sure he'll walk into another job, just like when he was fired by the BBC.

The Sussex's reaction to his apology was the perfect illustration of modern times, rejecting it in full. Apologies count for nothing in cancel culture, despite the demands for them, they're never enough. One is simply best off not apologising and cowing to the mob.

Worth pointing this out to the clowns who like to compare Christianity with wokism. Forgiveness is a cornerstone of Christianity; by cancel culture's very definition there's no room for forgiveness. Explains why wokism is probably less of a religion and more of a cult!

__________________
Thou/Thee

This doesn't read like rejection. It's more like your friends telling me about my drinking....hey it was not only that time, but every time you're near a drink.

Anyway, comparing himself to a PM it's just like Djokovic's dad talking about the martyrdom of Jesus

That's probably because it's usually quite obvious that the only reason someone apologizes is because they were "caught" saying something and were desperately trying to save their reputation afterward. So the only reason they regret saying something is due to the backlash they received for it. But they had already revealed who they truly are by making whatever comment in the first place, and the apology itself has a selfish motive.

It's like if someone was caught using "the N word" to refer to a black person and then tried to apologize and say they're not racist afterward.

The way I see it -- we make judgments all the time in the real world about people's character, whether deliberately or not. I'm not sure why someone should be considered exempt from that simply because they are a celebrity. If I found out that an actor was a white supremacist or a pedophile, I wouldn't be too keen on seeing their films or expressing support for them in any way, shape or form. And I suspect it's the same for directors or the media, etc. in not wanting to show support for them.

Apologies, insults....does cancel culture have to do with any of these?
Cancel culture is for instance when you want to judge the past through the standards of today. Is like trying to erase certain writers or scientists because they were "racist" in a time when everyone else was. Cancel culture is for instance banning "Gone with the wind" because it portrays slavery and the black characters appear in subordinate roles. Etc.

Imagine your son or daughter will read that piece of shit written about you one day.....signed by your innocent Jeremy Clarkson.

Is he a Christian too or what? Perhaps should have considered not hurting people with his words before writing that article than apologising afterwards. Christianity also implies personal responsibility and resisting the urge of hurting others.

Nothing to do with wokism, really, but with common sense and humanity. I would have had more respect for him if he truly apologised by saying something along the line of "I let myself carried away by passion and I was ruthless" than by pretending it didn't happen, it was a joke.