Going to be writing a couple pieces on Israel/Hamas this week, starting with this one on cancel culture.

Enjoy.

The Cancel Culture Double Standard

Conservatives have spent much of the last decade (rightly) complaining about wokeness and cancel culture. They say it’s an assault on their free speech rights and a sign of weakness from the left. If the left was truly able to defend their ideals, they wouldn’t need to cancel, they’d just defeat the opposition in the court of public opinion.

It’s a nice argument, but I never brought too much stock into it because when the roles are reversed, conservatives do the exact same thing. They did the same exact thing with Colin Kaepernick, Bud Light, and now Palestine.

In a war that exists very much in the gray, you now have CEOs attempting to blacklist students for their views on Israel and Palestine. And those views are not like Mia Khalifa saying “film horizontal”, but kids regurgitating leftwing groupthink that Israel is to blame for the war.

There was no celebrating dead babies. Or raped women. Or calls for a modern Holocaust. It was simply saying what many pro-Palestinian people think: Israel planted the seeds of violence by oppressing the Palestinians. That’s all.

Is that position so heinous that billionaires should go out of their way to dox, shame, and publicly ensure this group of teenagers can never find a job? Of course it’s not, and it’s a huge shame they are taking this route. Instead of taking this opportunity to teach people that there’s a better way to handle viewpoints you don’t like (beat them in the court of public opinion), these CEOs and other pro-Israel cancellers are setting the example that it’s ok to blacklist people you don’t agree with.

That is a horrible example to set, and an especially disastrous one to set for the afflicted party in this case: the future leaders of the country.

Extras

• Newsom vetoed a ban on caste discrimination in California. Which is good. But he followed it up by signing more internet regulation. Which is bad. And a law mandating that VC firms release the diversity of the founders they are backing. Which is just plain stupid.

• Don’t let people fighting against pornography win; it’s crucial for the First Amendment.

• Surprise surprise, people on weight loss drugs buy less food. What a shocker. Anyway, it’s caught the attention of Walmart.

• Some UK politicians are beginning to fight back against facial recognition. Good.

• Ultrasound neuromodulation, pretty cool stuff here.

• Schools are having a hard time finding qualified computer science teachers, because if you're really good at computer science, why would you want to teach instead of making bank at a tech company? Until pay goes up, you’re just not going to get the cream of the crop choosing teaching as a profession.

• I was thinking about the possibility of getting drafted to fight in Israel, a place I’ve never been and don’t particularly want to die in, and instantly it made sense why people would dodge the Vietnam draft.

• The UAW strikers are winning.

• AI isn’t profitable for Big Tech yet, but this is to be expected. It’s a new technology that is extremely expensive to run. That won’t be the case forever.

• China is beefing up its AI efforts.

• RFK Jr, the independent. I think this is the best thing that could’ve happened for Democrats. He’s going to draw more votes from Trump than Biden.

• The digital afterlife industry is really weird.

• Federal debt is getting reallll close to being unsustainable.

• The campaign against encryption must be defeated at all costs.

• Our landlords are colluding against us. Deep down we all knew this.

• Ivy League athletes make more money than non-athletes. Might sound surprising because of the thought that athletes are stupid, but anyone who actually knows athletes know they are obsessed with money and status, and thus go into careers more likely to result in money and status (i.e. finance).

• Go off, old people.

• The spyware industry is quite lucrative.

• Ring doorbells are the ultimate narc tools.

• Bob Menendez really shouldn’t be a Senator.

• ACT scores are at a 30-year low.

• Support for a third party is at a very high 63%. The two party system just sucks.

• UBI might not be so bad after all.

Until next time, ✌️

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