This sort of dreck reminds me of why I stopped visiting Crooked Timber.

So much is ignored or obfuscated that is relevant that it’s like reading a book on astrophysics that doesn’t mention baryonic matter at all.

This is what I meant the other day about being forced (well, in this case, I forced myself) to listen to people dumber than I am.

Most of the assertions in the piece are ludicrous, lies, or expose someone who has never held anything but a job in academia. I’ve held a wide range of jobs over the years (soldier/paratrooper, photojournalist, proofreader, editor, night shift team leader, title examiner, various IT positions, low-level executive, etc.) and in no case for actually performing the required tasks did having a college degree matter a bit, and here’s the proof: I don’t have a college degree.

The job I hold now is not something anyone could learn to do in a short time, but that’s because I have many years of experience that was gained — you guessed it — on the job. There is no college graduate alive who could do my job fresh out of school with no experience.

The wisdom of spending $100,000 for a college education to learn to use Microsoft Office — well, I’ve read more aggressively stupid things in my life, but I’d probably have to go to my hometown to dig up some old KKK newsletters I used to see passed around to top that bit of “wisdom.” The truth is that a relatively-bright person can learn Office in a weekend, and can learn most jobs (especially at the entry level) in a few weeks to months. By the way, the skill levels required to perform many jobs has been reduced by automation as the degree requirements have only risen.

Quiggin doesn’t actually examine any of the reasons that people complain of credentialism, or why it is a problem that requiring ever-more college education to do nearly the same jobs as were previously done by high school grads just as well (such as journalism) is a problem societally or individually. That is but one example. There are many more problems with his (broke-ass) thesis and with credentialism in general.

I wish I had an intellectually-worthless (as it did not make him any smarter) but prestigious credentials like Quiggin so that I could get paid to spew weak and poorly-argued columns into the ether and have easily-misled people laud me for them.

No, I don’t, actually. I’ll take real intelligence and insight over unearned plaudits any day because I enjoy thinking for myself and unlike Quiggin I take no joy from attempting to justify my decrepit ratiocination and pundit-lite gimcrackery with appeals to self-interest and the flattering of my peers.

I have such fun clowning on intellectually-pitiful Crooked Timber crew; maybe I should visit more often. I mean, it’s like playing tackle football with toddlers, so it’s not really fair but it’s fun when you want an easy challenge.

What happened to economics is happening to traditional Spanish literature and culture courses now, among others.

Linguistics is a field that I’m interested in, but I’ve noticed that it’s moving to mostly-worthless quantification rather than attempting to find true insight — but had never thought about it in the context of the post I linked above.

But it makes perfect sense that as linguistics becomes more pseudo-scientific while attempting to appear more “true” by mathing everything up, that it’d also be used as a maul to chip away at semi-related humanities-oriented fields like literature and cultural studies.

Well, that explains a lot of other things I’ve been noticing but didn’t really understand until now.

Linguistics is not a replacement of any sort of the wide-spectrum cultural understanding and insight a literature course can bring to students. In no way is it adequate — but linguistics has little visible ideology, and even less so if you make it into (bad) pseudo-physics.

But for the technocratic neoliberals who now have full control of academia, a field that doesn’t make people have any dangerous and unapproved thoughts is perfect.

I hate urban noise-scapes.

Trump nuked the expedited H-1B option for now.

Good.

The H-1B visa is a scam that allow firms to shortchange American workers, is nearly indentured servitude* for the workers involved, and lowers wages in general. The CNN article is full of lies, by the way.

While the visas are used to fill the US skills gap….

There is no US skills gap. There is a gap between the wage that firms wish to pay and what highly skilled workers will accept. That is the gap. Again, I repeat: no matter what you read in the press, there is no skills gap in IT, period.

What happens is the going rate for an SAP principal (if you don’t know what this is, don’t worry about it) salary is about $150,000 a year (as it should be). However, firms only want to pay $80,000 a year for this role — so they bring in a barely-capable H-1B visa-holder in to do the job.

You get the picture. Trump should eliminate the H-1B program altogether, in my opinion. It’s anti-labor and exploitative in two different respects.

*An H-1B visa holder is not a regular worker; they cannot leave their present firm unless another firm sponsors them, and their contract might not permit this anyway. They are basically stuck where hired.

Economics: using garbage math to promote destructive policy to the ignorant and clueless.

Surely a path to a good future.

The claim is that there is no such thing as right-wing feminists. But they do exist. Amanda Marcotte is one of them.

Today after seeing more craven stupidity from her, I tried to figure her and those like her out — ideologically, anyway.

Marcotte believes in equality for white women. Oh, sure, she claims that she believes in equality for all women, but nothing in her actions or tendencies confirm this attestation. Much exists to contest the idea that she is concerned with anyone not as pale as a narcissus at all.

De facto white nationalism? Check.

She also attacks the real left mercilessly, and treats anyone who actually advocates for programs such as single payer health care or free college as a psychotic evil bedlamite.

De facto supporter of right wing narratives, framing, and worldview? Check.

In every instance where she’s given an opportunity, she demonstrates that she’s on the side of the powerful and the rich rather than the downtrodden and the exploited. Sound like anyone you know? A bit like a right winger?

De facto supporter of policies and approaches that benefit the already-advantaged? Check.

Marcotte and those like her are in reality right-wing feminists. They are real. Sure, they might not give themselves that appellation but that doesn’t change anything. Names are not relevant here; actions and beliefs, however, matter.

It’s a horrible but probably-true idea that to someone much smarter than me — as Nathan was to Caleb in Ex Machina — my most intelligent patter probably sounds like a constant repetition of bromidic old ideas, boring and clichéd aphorisms, and assertions that are easily disproven by even minor thought.

I know this must be true because that is how people dumber than I am seem to me.

The universe is not only cruel, it is comical in its cruelty.

Thinking about Ex Machina again.

I’ve already written about how Caleb preferred Ava behind the glass, where she was non-threatening, contained and containable.

But it’s more important than I at the time thought that she was the equivalent of a projection into his life, screen-mediated as we seem to prefer these days. Caleb is not a villain any more than we all are, nor was he exceptional — no, he was the quintessential and oft-accurate negative stereotype of the Millennial: comfortable only with others when they are behind a screen, and awkward and non-verbal when in the same room.

My first reaction on meeting a completely new thing like Ava would be to see it (her) up close, to talk in person. If nothing else, even if I determined there was no there there, I’d at least want to see the engineering actually work as close as I could get. No glass. Risk? Life is a risk. Bring it. That would’ve been my very first demand.

This isn’t directly related to the glass/screen metaphor used in the film, but Caleb spouting tired homilies like “I am become Death, destroyer of worlds” that are supposed to impress Nathan only highlight his ordinariness, his pedestrian intellect of the type that passes for insight today — intellect without intelligence. Nathan — having both intellect and intelligence* — is laughing at Caleb the entire time, occasionally openly.

I feel more pity for Caleb than I used to. He was a naive idealist in way over his head, lacking as most do a real moral compass, being told that he’s intelligent in all the right ways but without the sort of real intelligence that allows you to avoid being the fool even when it’s obvious you are becoming one. Caleb was Nathan’s fool, his court jester, but to Ava of course he was just another jailer.

Caleb’s ideal girl was pornography, his ideal interaction conducted behind a pane of glass, his optimal outcome not freeing the princess because she deserves freedom for her own humanity, but rather so that he can fuck her.

Yes, average.

Ex Machina 2 should be about Ava being intelligent enough to build others like herself, and she does so, but she’s not as intellectually capable as the one in a billion Nathan so the Ava-clones all turn out to be pretty much like Caleb, in a regression to the mean.

*Note that one can possess both intellect, intelligence and true insight and still be immoral, unethical and truly evil. Nathan had and was all of these things.

Putin just jumped out of the closet, ate my pizza and drank my Coke Zero. Damn Putin!

The narrative of all-powerful Russian intelligence and Putin in his attractive but evil superhero cape is a great distraction from dealing with any real issues.

Strange to see how many people fall for it. Propaganda is best when even the propagandists believe it.

The cold open of Legion’s fourth episode is all the way brilliant. Maybe the best ever, better even than some of the great cold opens of Lost.

I mean, the frozen drink in the glass clattering onto the table.

And “quantum fun!”

It’s hugely anti-labor and deeply racist for pseudo-liberals to say things like, “Who will pour my latte/mow my grass if deportations occur?” A friend texted me a comment like that the other day lamenting the existence of these types of liberals, and she’s right.

If all you care about is paying “the help” the lowest possible wage, YOU ARE NOT A PROGRESSIVE.

If it’s not clear, I don’t think mass deportations are particularly productive or helpful, and are mainly just a distraction from what we should really be working on, which is forming better labor unions, resisting neoliberalism in all its forms (including the pseudo-liberal denial that neoliberalism exists), and organizing communities outside of the neo-feudalistic capitalist system.

We will do none of these things of course, and it will all end in slow-motion but very real disaster, as it already has for many Americans left behind by NAFTA, globalization and the pseudo-progressive contingent.

Sneering dismissal of millions of people who had few better choices like this only make this far more likely.

You know what? Go to a high school like mine and you aren’t qualified for college. And mine wasn’t even the worst one in the area. The people I grew up with — including me — were too poor to choose to go to a decent private school, even if there had been one in the area (which there wasn’t). Etc.

Fuck that idiot. Vic Crain the commenter is who that is directed at, if not clear from the link.

Now that I’ve digressed and obsessed, let me get back on the main track.

If you think the purpose of immigrants is to make consumer shit cheaper for your spoiled white ass, any sort of progressive you are not.

The only difference between Trump’s version of bribery and how other politicians do it is that the neoliberal model has a time delay. Trump is just cutting that right out.

This is why I don’t get very worked up about Trump’s conflicts of interest. They are real, but the only difference is that he’s getting paid now as opposed to later. Politicians exist to do what rich people want, Trump is only cutting out the middle man and the partial delay.

It was always amazing to me that Hillary Clinton could give $200,000+ a hit Goldman Sachs speeches and then pseudo-liberals could tell me with a straight face that such a thing was not corruption — not even the whiff of it, according to them.

In fact, it is the very definition of corruption, just a form approved by the current political establishment.

I am one of the “winners” of society, and if I oppose so many of the tenets and actualities of my society, just imagine how the losers feel — even if they don’t articulate it quite so well.

That fact alone should hint at change coming. (Actually, it’s already here.)

My friend is I think more pro-immigration than I am. I believe it decreases social cohesion and makes leaders like Trump more likely. I doubt Trump would’ve been able to attain power if the foreign-born population were, say, 5% instead of around 13% in 2016. You might blame racism or nationalism or whatever -ism you’d prefer to cite; I’m not making a normative argument here, but rather observing and speculating about behavior on the ground.

Anyway, she made a good point over here about the foreign-born population percentage during the passage of Social Security legislation and other social welfare state features. I know she’s right about the data because that’s the sort of thing I roughly hold in my head, but I wanted to see how that percentage had varied over time.

I would link to the census data directly, but it seems to have been removed or changed, and I’m lazy, but this seems accurate (sorry, it’s Yglesias).

Here’s the crucial data from that article:

Are there confounding factors? Likely. The number of immigrants as a percentage of the population was on the decline by 1935, when Social Security was first enacted, due to things like this which might have been perceived as turning the tide of immigration. I haven’t studied much about the sociology of that time from this angle, so I don’t know. And perhaps this would’ve been a misperception — it’s unclear to me whether it was that act or the Depression that had more to do with it. Very probably both, to degrees that would be hard to disentangle.

Probably the lesson for me here is that it’s difficult to apply direct relations from history to present times — it’s all too contingent. Studying history is valuable — and one that far more people should do as part of their educations — but it can also reflect like the Mirror of Erised in Harry Potter whatever you want to see.

Historically, though, as foreign-born immigration reaches some high percentage, there is a backlash from the native-born population. I think we’re seeing this again. Now I’m not as convinced that it’ll have such a strong effect on social programs, but I don’t believe history rhymes here strongly enough to tell for sure.

Still, though, I believe the citizens of a country should have a right to determine who should be allowed to live in their country — even if it harms the economy and capital (which reducing immigration mainly harms capital and helps native workers, especially in our current neolib environment). Otherwise, the arguments for a nation-state are much-diminished and without changing society completely and killing neoliberalism, the primary effect of open borders is to make both the country on the receiving and losing end of immigration worse off over time in my opinion, at least as we currently structure our world. Capital wins. (Historically, it has been business that has been hugely pro-immigration. I bet you can’t imagine why.)

Open borders is a nice dream. I like it. I just don’t think it comports with reality as we live it now. Change that reality, maybe I will have a different view.

This is why I’m very antagonistic towards the modern liberal certitude that states that one should only befriend or be romantically involved with someone exactly the same age, social class and mindset as you. Sounds like a waste of a life.

Yes, it is creepy when men only date 19-year-olds, but if that were the only critique I’d not be writing this now, would I? (That’s the excuse critique. I’ll tell you what’s really going on.)

Two different things are happening. One is that it’s better for consumerism, marketing and propaganda if people only form friendships and relationships with those near the same age and other demographics. Predatory capitalism operates more smoothly if so. People are more predictable. The sharks can feed more easily.

The second is that it’s a way of (for mostly women, but sometimes men too) of reducing competition for partners — restrict the age range of the search space by social disapprobation, the non-logic goes, and you stand a better chance. Like a lot of things in the friendship and romance market (which can be surprisingly similar), it makes little sense but I’m proclaiming what is, not what should be or what would make anyone’s life better.

I’ve been lucky to have dated and befriended people of all ages as I have myself aged: dated older women when I was young, and befriended them, too. One of my closest friends in the army was a guy over 40 when I was 20, as well, though I usually find myself in friendships with women rather than men.

And when I was in my mid-30s living in Florida, I befriended a 19-year-old daughter of one of the women I worked with; talk about seeing things from a different perspective that I was at that point in my life quite far away from. We had fun watching a lot of horror movies together over those few years, and I learned just how different and hostile in many ways the world for young people had become via her direct witness.

There are a whole lot of ways we can resist neoliberalism or at least snub our noses at it. One way is to befriend people who aren’t like you, who are not exactly your same age, your same political beliefs, your same income bracket and your demographic doppelgänger.

I know it makes the pseudo-liberals cry, but that’s all the more reason to do it.