Thank God for Not the Bee — they read Vox so that we don't have to
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Oh Great. Now Sherlock Holmes is an Example of Toxic Masculinity
(In order to preserve the formatting of the Bee’s article, I’ve only indented the lady scholar’s words, while leaving the Bee’s author Reagan Rose’s within quotation marks)
“Someone wrote an entire think piece examining how Sherlock Holmes' toxic masculinity contributes to the character's appeal.
Let's start at the beginning. This coy little question first drew my eye as it sat man-spreading just under the headline.”
Holmes is often portrayed as unemotional and arrogant — why hasn't this been challenged in modern adaptations?
“But to the bafflement of this author, it seems that some viewers prefer to watch characters with, well, character. And unfortunately, sometimes that requires them to have a personality
To make her point, she talks about the BBC's Sherlock mini-series starring Benedict Cumberbatch and the (far inferior) American show Elementary. Both of which came out about 10 years ago, by the way. Which makes this whole analysis even weirder.
So what exactly is the problem with these shows?”
In both adaptations, Sherlock's brilliance and skills of deduction are unmatched. While I really enjoyed these shows, I was taken aback by Sherlock's rudeness, exasperation, his disparagement of others, his desire to dominate and his latent violence. I saw Sherlock as a toxic man.
“So then the author discovered something truly disturbing. Apparently, this Sherlock Holmes character is based on some books or something! "Not knowing the books, I wondered where this came from, so I began reading them," she writes.”
And 🚨 #Problematic Alert! 🚨, the character in the books is JUST as toxic as the one in the shows which are based on the books!
“So then, of course, we are taken on a magical journey through the history of toxic masculinity, wherein I discovered that there is such a job as ‘masculinity researcher.’ “
Masculinity researchers have defined toxic masculinity as a performance of "traditional" male gender roles exhibited by a tendency to dominate others, a predisposition to violence, and to be emotionally cold and distant. It can also be expressed through highly competitive behaviour, or the desire to be the sole source of information — someone who thinks they are right about everything in every sphere. Men like Donald Trump, for example.
“I'm impressed.
Made it six paragraphs before making it about Donald Trump.”
Holmes is obviously not akin to Trump. To start with, Holmes is a genius, and he hardly exhibits the same level of toxic behaviours that Trump does. But there are elements there.
“What was this article about again?
Oh, quick reminder: Someone wrote this. Then someone read it. Then someone published it.'“
Which is why we need a national health care system?
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Related? “It’s Easy Money”. Nigerian scammer laughs about huge sums stolen from COVID relief program
An astonishing $36 billion has been lost to fraud in pandemic unemployment benefits, the Department of Labor reports. To put this figure in context, the entire unemployment system only paid out about $26 billion in 2019.
That’s right: Bureaucrats lost to fraud more than is usually paid out in an entire year. The $36 billion lost—and that’s just the fraud we know about—amounts to an average of roughly $1,894 lost per current unemployment beneficiary. (What would we think of a private system that lost nearly $2,000 for each customer served?)
These figures alone are horrifying, but a new bombshell interview with one of the countless international scammers getting rich off our relief efforts makes it painfully clear just how carelessly Congress is throwing around our money.
[snip]
As Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises explained, bureaucracy, incompetence, and waste are inherent to government administration by its very nature.
In contrast, private businesses are driven to efficiency by the profit motive. A company-wide system that is broken and bleeding money is, in short order, fixed—or if it cannot be, that company will soon be driven out of business by more efficient competitors. This influences the behavior, not only of the business’s owners, but of its hired managers, and thus all its employees.
“Within a business concern [the management of expenses] can be left without hesitation to the discretion of the responsible local manager,” Mises explained in his book Bureaucracy. “He will not spend more than necessary because it is, as it were, his money; if he wastes the concern's money, he jeopardizes the branch's profit and thereby indirectly hurts his own interests.”
Fundamentally, in private enterprise, everyone involved has skin in the game. So, while mistakes still certainly happen, there’s a strong incentive to correct them and push for as much efficiency as is possible.
In government the opposite is true.
Another fine addition to our Senate
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Mr. “You Can’t Serve Both God and the Military” has an opinion on cops, too
Warnock Campaign Director: He “absolutely” supports defunding the police.
Project Veritas Action went undercover with the campaign for Georgia Senate candidate Raphael Warnock, revealing some duplicity in the radical Democrat’s campaign messaging. While Warnock officially does not support defunding the police, his campaign staff said he “absolutely” would defund “these suckers in blue.”
“So, he avoids using defunding the police, because he knows that the Republicans are gonna try to grab onto it and attack, right?” Derrick Bhole, finance assistant with the Warnock campaign, told an undercover Project Veritas Action journalist. “But in reality, his whole platform with police reform is along the lines of the same people who are saying defund the police.”
“Just not using the same rhetoric, you know,” Bhole added.
Yes, if your house isn't selling in THIS market, it's time to drop the price
/As these three did today:
15 Old Mill Road, which started in April 2018 at $4.795 million, is now asking $3.750. I understand the owners’ reluctance to take a huge cut, because they paid $4.1 for the place in 1999, but this is a tough sell. The listing claims a 1715 heritage, but there’s little to nothing of the original house; certainly, Joshua Reynolds didn’t build a 9-bath, 9,000 square foot house back then, and the subsequent owners have done nothing to add to the original’s charm.
514 Rogues Hill
514 Round Hill Road has also dropped, but not much: from $4.395 to $3.825. 1958 construction, 5,000 square feet, I assume the owners have priced it as though a Round Hill Road address justifies a premium. So far, it hasn’t.
Highland Farm
24 Highland Farm can now be yours for $8.5 million instead of its September price of $11.495. The house has a history of disappointing owners: these two paid $3.350 for it in 2016 after the seller backed off of her 2015 price of $7.795.
Look, a squirrel!
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Focus on what matters — the curriculum.
Note to real estate readers
/The market pretty much shut down the past two weeks, so real estate news has been scant. Ii’s picking up, and reporting on the subject will resume soon. Brief summary of the past year’s activity: sales were up as much as 50%, but there was almost no increase in sale prices. Details to follow.
Better I have no cow than my neighbor have two
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California hospital under fire for distributing vaccine to family members of employees.
Sounds terrible, until you know the rest of the story
“The hospital had planned on vaccinating all of their employees, but a large number of their staff declined and they were sitting on a lot of thawed vaccines,” a woman vaccinated at Southern California Hospital told the Orange County Register. “‘They offered police officers, firefighters and first-responders to get vaccinated and also told employees they could invite four family members.”
The Culver City hospital eventually became inundated with requests from the general public and was forced to revert to only vaccinating frontline workers.
As many as 60% of docnurses and health care workers are refusing the vaccine, and the same politicians who questioned the safety of the medicine because it was developed while Trump was president — looking at you, Newsom, Cuomo, and president-in-waiting Harris — now wonder why.
UPDATE: Another approach”
Compare that to the Washington, D.C., health department, where they’re “explicitly telling providers: If you have vaccine doses that have been thawed and are about to expire, give them to anyone.”
And it isn’t just D.C. where they’re being responsible. Pharmacist Matt Dawson reports that “This is true of every responsible state,” and that his governor, Louisiana’s John Bel Edwards (D), “gave we pharmacists explicit instructions not to waste vaccine.”
Get woke, go broke — I pray
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Google employees unionize to push social agenda
[Union chairmen] Koul and Shaw’s op-ed accuses Google executives of working with repressive governments, profiting from hate group advertisements and ignoring complaints of sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace.
“We joined Alphabet because we wanted to build technology that improves the world. Yet time and again, company leaders have put profits ahead of our concerns,” they said.
So far as I know, these dweebs haven’t complained about getting rich from those profits — I imagine that we’ll hear from then again if their battle against profit succeeds.
The media has moved beyond mere panic-mongering and now is just outright lying
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BBC falsely reports that hospital wards are filled with sick children. But not so.
Prof Calum Semple said that he spoke to colleagues on intensive care units and "not one of them has seen a surge in sick children coming into critical care and we're not hearing of a rise in cases in the wards either."
