🐱 Interesting clickbait, op-eds, fluff pieces and other smaller stories
- Thread starter CatParty
- Start date
CatParty
- Joined
- Feb 10, 2015
Yeah, I just thought it was hilarious. Check out the video of her raining blows on the bitch and her titty flopping out.
- Joined
- Sep 26, 2014
Your copy and paste skills make the article even funnier. Fucking bitch doe, especially when all fountain drinks are one dollar at the moment. Also, that worker probably got more exercise than she gets in a year.Tiny woman picks fight with ham planet at McDonalds:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5994973/McDonalds-worker-beats-customer-free-soda-US.html
'Respect my momma!' Female McDonald's worker body-slams woman customer who threw a milkshake over her and hit her in the face with a tray in fight over free soda
By Chris Pleasance for MailOnline 07:59 EDT 26 Jul 2018, updated 13:10 EDT 26 Jul 2018
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This is a the shocking moment a McDonald's worker was filmed brutally beating a customer after she allegedly tried to fill up a water cup with free soda.
- Fight between McDonald's staff and customer was filmed somewhere in the US
- Brawl apparently started after patron tried to fill up a water cup with free soda
- Manager shut down soda machine, before insults and milkshakes were thrown
- Worker is recorded throwing the customer around and hitting her in the face
The brawl was posted to Facebook and Instagram by Nevada resident Marie Dayag, who said the fight started when the customer tried to put soda in a free water cup.
Dayag wrote: 'The lady asked for a water cup and supervisor shut down the soda machine because she wasn’t letting her get a free soda.'
Shocking moment girl throws milkshake and hits McDonald's staff
Dayag's video shows the two women arguing before the fight breaks out.
While the audio is difficult to hear, the row appears to be over money. At one point the woman behind the counter can be heard saying 'since you can't afford one'.
The customer can also be heard saying 'that's why your a** is behind the f***ing counter' before throwing a French fry across the restaurant.
She can also be heard repeatedly shouting 'fight me' across the restaurant.
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Dayag's Facebook page says she lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, and was born in San Mateo, California. It is not known where the fight took place.
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- Dog training school under investigation after video emerges of trainer hitting crying dog
A second piece of footage shows the fight breaking out after the customer hurls a milkshake at the employee.
As the staff member storms toward her, the customer picks up a metal tray and hits her in the head with it, but she barely notices.
Instead, the worker grabs the customer by the hair and begins raining punches down on her head and face.
Woman throws chips and shouts abuse at McDonald's employee
She then picks her up and throws her over a nearby table as other employees and even a customer runs over to try and break it up.
The pair are eventually separated as another McDonald's worker tries to move the customer away, but the customer then begins fighting her instead.
That restarts the brawl, with the customer beaten in the head and face a second time before the original employee throws her over another table.
At one point the staff member can be heard shouting 'my momma aint dead, you respect my momma,' though it is not clear what this is in reference to.
The customer also picks up a chair and makes as if she is about to hit the employee, but is quickly disarmed having apparently given up all hope of winning.
A few more angry words are exchanged but no more punches are thrown before the footage cuts out.
Latest list of shows banned in China:
- Seiran
- Yamada kun to 7 nin no majo
- Masamune kun no revenge
- Saekano
- Hand Shaker
- Love Stage
- Fuuka
- Akashic Records of Bastard Magic Instructor
- Mikakunin de Shinkoukei
- No Game No Life
- Hanasaku Iroha
- Absolute Duo
- Oshiete! Galko-chan
- Musaigen no Phantom World
- Netoge no Yome wa Onnanoko ja Nai to Omotta?
- Oneechan ga Kita
- Bakuon
- Schwarzesmarken
- Konosuba
- Trinity Seven
- Log Horizon Season 1
- Toradora
- Grenadier
- Zero no Tsukaima Season 1/2/3/4
- Prisma Illya Season 3
- Occultic;Nine
- Toaru Kagaku no Railgun
Following Chinese animation are also affected:
- Beyond the Worlds
- Daobuliaodeta season 2
- One Hundred Thousand Bad Jokes
- Lustime season 1
- Zhai Yao Ji
- Cupid's Chocolates
- Kuili yingxiong
- Zhongguo Jingqi Xiansheng
- Zhongguo Guaitan
- Wuyingxiong Bulianmeng
So, a bunch of romcom and moe series? Surely, this will stop Chinese netizens from bypassing the Great Firewall to fap all day!
- Joined
- Jul 16, 2017
Why Co-Ed Sports Leagues Are Never Really Co-Ed
https://deadspin.com/why-co-ed-sports-leagues-are-never-really-co-ed-1827699592
Sometimes sexism operates in such subtle ways that the experience leaves me wondering whether sexism even occurred at all. When a stranger grabs my ass, sure, I know what’s wrong with that situation. But my experience on my co-ed soccer team never felt like an obvious assault on my personhood. Instead, I gradually became aware of a slow, systemic wearing-away.
It started as a mystery. Why aren’t women playing adult co-ed sports? And why, once they start, do they so often drop out? The mystery actually started as a question to myself, but it was a different question: Am I crazy?, I texted a friend after a particularly frustrating Friday night soccer game a couple of years ago with my co-ed team. Wondering if I’m crazy is part of the experience of being a woman that I have come to accept, and when it came to playing soccer it was no different. As I stalked off the field in Manhattan’s Chinatown, I couldn’t tell if I was making a big deal out of nothing. Was I looking for something to be mad at? Were the guys really not passing to me, or was I just not as open to receive a pass as I thought I had been? Was it just me, or did they really only want the minimum number of women on the field, even though we had plenty of women subs? And why didn’t any of the other women there seem to be angry?
Figures from one multi-sport league show that its nationwide enrollment breakdown is almost exactly two-thirds male and one-third female, but that tells us nothing about actual participation, and, anecdotally, why women are less likely to come to games, and more likely to leave the league altogether.
“There seems to be a trend that women players do not show up for the games as much,” said Laura Lennon, who plays in co-ed soccer in the Philadelphia Sports Leagues. “Our team started out with seven girls and I’ve only seen two of them.”
“Where do these women go?” asked Kelaine Conochan, national marketing director of ZogSports, by far the biggest co-ed league in the country. Her questions were rhetorical, even if I felt like the second was directed at me: “Why do you stop playing?”
I know now that I wasn’t crazy, and I wasn’t alone. “I left every game angry,” Erin Verrier, a former college soccer player told me of her experience playing in a New York co-ed league after graduating. Most, if not all co-ed leagues are set up to render women as second-class athletes.
Co-ed leagues generally require a minimum number of women to be in play at a certain all times. ZogSports’ rules are representative: two out of eight players on a soccer field must be women; in volleyball, two out of six; in softball, every fourth batter needs to be a woman. The assumption here is that to make the teams “even” they need a certain number of women players, which implies that women players aren’t as skilled as men. I’ve played in enough co-ed leagues to know this is untrue.
The other, equally pernicious implication of this rule is that without the gender requirements, women would not get any playing time. “I 100 percent feel like a handicap!” Brittney Chapman told me of her co-ed flag football league in Maine. That league, Casco Bay Sports, goes so far as to dictate how often the ball must be passed to female players. That this rule even exists is a reflection that men find it so troublesome to pass to women that if left to their own instincts, they might play an entire game without letting one touch the ball.
It gets worse. My college friend and former teammate Ruth Bartlett currently plays indoor soccer in San Diego at Let’s Play, a chain of 25 sports complexes around the country. In her co-ed league a goal scored by a woman counts for two points. And “women have unlimited touches on the ball and men get only three,” she told me. “Apparently they made the rules that way because boys weren’t passing to girls enough and were being ball hogs.”
Sadly the overt diminishing of women’s skills by their male teammates or the league rules isn’t really a surprise. What was a revelation was the anger men exhibit during games that are supposed to be just for fun, and the physical aggression with which they play.
For Verrier, the final straw came shortly after she saw an injured woman at her friend’s wedding. “A friend of [the bride] was walking around the wedding with a cane, because she had just torn her ACL in a co-ed soccer league, because a guy fucking tackled her.”
The next week, Verrier was tackled twice in her game, by two different men. “One really knocked me to the ground and really hurt my knee. And I was like, well thank god that hit me at the front of the knee, not the side.” After that, Erin hung up her boots. “I’m not going to risk fucking my body up. It’s sad because I’m probably never going to play soccer again.”
Kelley Quinn broke her foot playing basketball, when a man she was guarding bowled her over while going for a layup. And it wasn’t even an official game. “It was just a scrimmage to determine whether you were in the A league or the B league,” she said. “I couldn’t play all season.”
On any given night, in fields and parks across this city, you can watch men play the most important game of their lives. This would make sense if I were talking about the Yankees, the Mets, NYCFC, even the Brooklyn Cyclones. But we’re talking about adult co-ed social sports leagues. When you play co-ed sports with men, they play so hard you might think that their lives are on the line. What are they battling for? Personal pride, a free T-shirt, to impress their friends?
From my own experience, the stakes always feel higher for the men on the field. Their anger is more palpable, their physicality overly aggressive. They often get verbally pushy with the refs or other players.
“They just take it so seriously,” Verrier told me. “They get angry. They fight with one another. They knock me over and then try to put their hand out.”
“A bunch of our women kept getting thrown around like rag dolls,” said Amanda Giobbi of her former ZogSports basketball team in New York, which she used to co-captain.
“It’s mostly the men that are out of hand,” my male colleague Alex Mason said of his Brooklyn softball teams with both ZogSports and NYC Social. Then, he corrected himself: “I’ve actually only ever seen the men lose their shit.” He opted out of both leagues for that reason. When I asked him why he thought that men couldn’t enjoy a reasonably competitive, low-stakes game without getting so aggressive, he responded with a question of his own: “Have you been on the internet?”
“Women self-select away from jobs where they don’t feel they have the experience,” ZogSports’ Conochan told me, theorizing that women don’t return to sports as adults because they lack confidence. This is an unfair stereotype, which puts the onus on women and ignores the environment they would be entering. Does it support women trying things they might not be amazing at, or is a man on their team going to scream in their face, or never pass them the ball after their first mistake?
So why do men play in co-ed leagues at all, if they don’t want to play with women? This question was best crystallized for me recently by standup comedian Hannah Gadsby, who in her Netflix special Nanette calls out misogyny by posing a question: “If you hate what you desire, do you know what that is?” She then graciously answers her own question: “Fucking tense.”
Quinn quit playing after three seasons of playing in an “open gender” basketball league (where both genders can play, but there are no requirements for getting women into the game). Quinn and her co-captain Giobbi got sick of being on the only team in the league that consistently played women. “I didn’t like that the teams we were playing didn’t think that women would be a good addition to their team,” Quinn said.
They eventually complained to ZogSports about the lack of women in their “open gender” league. ZogSports’ response was to direct them to a women’s three-on-three half-court league, at which point they decided to stop playing with the league altogether.
“I’m not going to pay full price to play half-court basketball, when the other half of the court isn’t even being utilized,” Giobbi explains. “Nobody’s ever going to convince me that the numbers aren’t there because women don’t play these sports. It might be that women have already gotten to adulthood with so much trauma from playing sports with men that they don’t even look into it. Maybe that’s the reason. But it’s not that there are no women in New York who play basketball.”
I’m thinking about anger and where it goes. About how the world has told men that it will readily absorb their anger, whatever outlet they choose: catcalling a woman on the street; shooting up a school; screaming at a ref because if you don’t win this game you don’t know what you’ll do, because you hate your job; spouting hate speech at women on Twitter.
When I get angry I’m supposed to do a sheet mask and write in my gratitude journal.
ZogSports sells co-ed leagues as an escape. “Life is hard, we’re in dark times. Everything is doomsday,” Conochan told me. “But at literally the end of the day how nice is it to put on your sneakers and go outside to kick the ball around?”
And it does sound nice. I wish that it could be that easy. I wish that kicking a ball around was a relief, instead of filling me with a hot rage that sets fire to my stomach. Too many women are forced to accept that playing recreational sports wasn’t a release valve after all, it was just another source of frustration, it became the very thing we sought to remedy.
So, a preliminary answer to the question of where all the women go? Women don’t play co-ed intramural sports because it’s not fun for us. In fact, it sucks.
Melissa Fisch is still playing co-ed soccer in New York, despite the obvious drawbacks. “It’s sexist, but like, most things in this world are sexist.” That’s a depressing thought to me.
Co-ed social sports leagues aren’t really co-ed. They’re men’s leagues, where women are required to be present for the game to happen. I’m not surprised that women stop showing up. They’re too tired for this shit. It took a long time for me to admit that I, too, was tired. Because there is something incredibly gratifying about winning at a men’s game. I liked the feeling of surprising men with my skill, putting the ball in the net, and winning their respect. And men’s games aren’t just limited to social sports league. They’re the internet. The office banter. The boardroom. The whole world is a men’s league. If that doesn’t exhaust you, and you can manage to excel on men’s terms, you’ll be set, because impressing men by their own standards is the only thing that makes you valuable to them.
It started as a mystery. Why aren’t women playing adult co-ed sports? And why, once they start, do they so often drop out? The mystery actually started as a question to myself, but it was a different question: Am I crazy?, I texted a friend after a particularly frustrating Friday night soccer game a couple of years ago with my co-ed team. Wondering if I’m crazy is part of the experience of being a woman that I have come to accept, and when it came to playing soccer it was no different. As I stalked off the field in Manhattan’s Chinatown, I couldn’t tell if I was making a big deal out of nothing. Was I looking for something to be mad at? Were the guys really not passing to me, or was I just not as open to receive a pass as I thought I had been? Was it just me, or did they really only want the minimum number of women on the field, even though we had plenty of women subs? And why didn’t any of the other women there seem to be angry?
Figures from one multi-sport league show that its nationwide enrollment breakdown is almost exactly two-thirds male and one-third female, but that tells us nothing about actual participation, and, anecdotally, why women are less likely to come to games, and more likely to leave the league altogether.
“There seems to be a trend that women players do not show up for the games as much,” said Laura Lennon, who plays in co-ed soccer in the Philadelphia Sports Leagues. “Our team started out with seven girls and I’ve only seen two of them.”
“Where do these women go?” asked Kelaine Conochan, national marketing director of ZogSports, by far the biggest co-ed league in the country. Her questions were rhetorical, even if I felt like the second was directed at me: “Why do you stop playing?”
I know now that I wasn’t crazy, and I wasn’t alone. “I left every game angry,” Erin Verrier, a former college soccer player told me of her experience playing in a New York co-ed league after graduating. Most, if not all co-ed leagues are set up to render women as second-class athletes.
Co-ed leagues generally require a minimum number of women to be in play at a certain all times. ZogSports’ rules are representative: two out of eight players on a soccer field must be women; in volleyball, two out of six; in softball, every fourth batter needs to be a woman. The assumption here is that to make the teams “even” they need a certain number of women players, which implies that women players aren’t as skilled as men. I’ve played in enough co-ed leagues to know this is untrue.
The other, equally pernicious implication of this rule is that without the gender requirements, women would not get any playing time. “I 100 percent feel like a handicap!” Brittney Chapman told me of her co-ed flag football league in Maine. That league, Casco Bay Sports, goes so far as to dictate how often the ball must be passed to female players. That this rule even exists is a reflection that men find it so troublesome to pass to women that if left to their own instincts, they might play an entire game without letting one touch the ball.
It gets worse. My college friend and former teammate Ruth Bartlett currently plays indoor soccer in San Diego at Let’s Play, a chain of 25 sports complexes around the country. In her co-ed league a goal scored by a woman counts for two points. And “women have unlimited touches on the ball and men get only three,” she told me. “Apparently they made the rules that way because boys weren’t passing to girls enough and were being ball hogs.”
Sadly the overt diminishing of women’s skills by their male teammates or the league rules isn’t really a surprise. What was a revelation was the anger men exhibit during games that are supposed to be just for fun, and the physical aggression with which they play.
For Verrier, the final straw came shortly after she saw an injured woman at her friend’s wedding. “A friend of [the bride] was walking around the wedding with a cane, because she had just torn her ACL in a co-ed soccer league, because a guy fucking tackled her.”
The next week, Verrier was tackled twice in her game, by two different men. “One really knocked me to the ground and really hurt my knee. And I was like, well thank god that hit me at the front of the knee, not the side.” After that, Erin hung up her boots. “I’m not going to risk fucking my body up. It’s sad because I’m probably never going to play soccer again.”
Kelley Quinn broke her foot playing basketball, when a man she was guarding bowled her over while going for a layup. And it wasn’t even an official game. “It was just a scrimmage to determine whether you were in the A league or the B league,” she said. “I couldn’t play all season.”
On any given night, in fields and parks across this city, you can watch men play the most important game of their lives. This would make sense if I were talking about the Yankees, the Mets, NYCFC, even the Brooklyn Cyclones. But we’re talking about adult co-ed social sports leagues. When you play co-ed sports with men, they play so hard you might think that their lives are on the line. What are they battling for? Personal pride, a free T-shirt, to impress their friends?
From my own experience, the stakes always feel higher for the men on the field. Their anger is more palpable, their physicality overly aggressive. They often get verbally pushy with the refs or other players.
“They just take it so seriously,” Verrier told me. “They get angry. They fight with one another. They knock me over and then try to put their hand out.”
“A bunch of our women kept getting thrown around like rag dolls,” said Amanda Giobbi of her former ZogSports basketball team in New York, which she used to co-captain.
“It’s mostly the men that are out of hand,” my male colleague Alex Mason said of his Brooklyn softball teams with both ZogSports and NYC Social. Then, he corrected himself: “I’ve actually only ever seen the men lose their shit.” He opted out of both leagues for that reason. When I asked him why he thought that men couldn’t enjoy a reasonably competitive, low-stakes game without getting so aggressive, he responded with a question of his own: “Have you been on the internet?”
“Women self-select away from jobs where they don’t feel they have the experience,” ZogSports’ Conochan told me, theorizing that women don’t return to sports as adults because they lack confidence. This is an unfair stereotype, which puts the onus on women and ignores the environment they would be entering. Does it support women trying things they might not be amazing at, or is a man on their team going to scream in their face, or never pass them the ball after their first mistake?
So why do men play in co-ed leagues at all, if they don’t want to play with women? This question was best crystallized for me recently by standup comedian Hannah Gadsby, who in her Netflix special Nanette calls out misogyny by posing a question: “If you hate what you desire, do you know what that is?” She then graciously answers her own question: “Fucking tense.”
Quinn quit playing after three seasons of playing in an “open gender” basketball league (where both genders can play, but there are no requirements for getting women into the game). Quinn and her co-captain Giobbi got sick of being on the only team in the league that consistently played women. “I didn’t like that the teams we were playing didn’t think that women would be a good addition to their team,” Quinn said.
They eventually complained to ZogSports about the lack of women in their “open gender” league. ZogSports’ response was to direct them to a women’s three-on-three half-court league, at which point they decided to stop playing with the league altogether.
“I’m not going to pay full price to play half-court basketball, when the other half of the court isn’t even being utilized,” Giobbi explains. “Nobody’s ever going to convince me that the numbers aren’t there because women don’t play these sports. It might be that women have already gotten to adulthood with so much trauma from playing sports with men that they don’t even look into it. Maybe that’s the reason. But it’s not that there are no women in New York who play basketball.”
I’m thinking about anger and where it goes. About how the world has told men that it will readily absorb their anger, whatever outlet they choose: catcalling a woman on the street; shooting up a school; screaming at a ref because if you don’t win this game you don’t know what you’ll do, because you hate your job; spouting hate speech at women on Twitter.
When I get angry I’m supposed to do a sheet mask and write in my gratitude journal.
ZogSports sells co-ed leagues as an escape. “Life is hard, we’re in dark times. Everything is doomsday,” Conochan told me. “But at literally the end of the day how nice is it to put on your sneakers and go outside to kick the ball around?”
And it does sound nice. I wish that it could be that easy. I wish that kicking a ball around was a relief, instead of filling me with a hot rage that sets fire to my stomach. Too many women are forced to accept that playing recreational sports wasn’t a release valve after all, it was just another source of frustration, it became the very thing we sought to remedy.
So, a preliminary answer to the question of where all the women go? Women don’t play co-ed intramural sports because it’s not fun for us. In fact, it sucks.
Melissa Fisch is still playing co-ed soccer in New York, despite the obvious drawbacks. “It’s sexist, but like, most things in this world are sexist.” That’s a depressing thought to me.
Co-ed social sports leagues aren’t really co-ed. They’re men’s leagues, where women are required to be present for the game to happen. I’m not surprised that women stop showing up. They’re too tired for this shit. It took a long time for me to admit that I, too, was tired. Because there is something incredibly gratifying about winning at a men’s game. I liked the feeling of surprising men with my skill, putting the ball in the net, and winning their respect. And men’s games aren’t just limited to social sports league. They’re the internet. The office banter. The boardroom. The whole world is a men’s league. If that doesn’t exhaust you, and you can manage to excel on men’s terms, you’ll be set, because impressing men by their own standards is the only thing that makes you valuable to them.
So called sports site (the faggots at Deadspin) bitches about men being too competitive in co-ed sports. Real irritating shit.
- Joined
- Oct 14, 2015
These whiny bitches would be taken out by a group of five year olds from the favelas. Newsflash: guys are competitive! Why are you playing sports if you aren’t there to win? Take a pottery course, or yoga class ffs, and quit bitching that a competition is a competition.
- Joined
- Sep 26, 2014
TFW when $15 billion could pay for most of the wall.
Mark Zuckerberg loses more than $15B in less than a day
Bad day on the stock market? Chances are it doesn’t compare to the losses Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg experienced on Thursday after the social media giant’s shares plunged 19% erasing over $119 billion in market cap in just one day, the most ever for a public company, according to our partners at WSJ Market Data Group.
The losses hit Zuckerberg’s wallet to the tune of about $15 billion through the 387,095,123 Facebook shares (Class A and B shares combined) he owns, according to FactSet.
Before the stock dump, Mark Zuckerberg was the fifth wealthiest American in 2018 – with $71 billion net worth according to the Forbes Billionaires List. Considering Thursday's losses – his net worth slipped down to around $55.9 billion. This would remove Zuckerberg from the top 10 of the list – putting him down to the 11th spot behind Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison.
The mayhem selling, on heavier than normal volume, followed Facebook's disclosure that increased spending in security and privacy would hurt profitability in the coming quarters. Zuckerberg said on Wednesday the company “will continue to invest heavily in security and privacy,” adding that the associated cost would likely hurt profitability in upcoming quarters. Expenses will rise by 50% to 60% this year as Facebook invests in data security, new technology and other initiatives, CFO David Wehner said. This after second-quarter results missed analyst estimates on several metrics including revenue, users and advertising.
Facebook has faced scrutiny since reports surfaced that British data firm Cambridge Analytica had improperly accessed the personal data of up to 87 million users. While the company’s shares fell initially in the aftermath of the data scandal, they regrouped. But on Thursday, it seems the social media giant is paying for the scandal, in one fell swoop.
Facebook made $1.74 per share in the second quarter, versus analysts’ consensus estimate for $1.72. Revenue fell short of expectations, coming in at $13.23 billion versus the $13.36 billion analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting.
Mark Zuckerberg loses more than $15B in less than a day
Bad day on the stock market? Chances are it doesn’t compare to the losses Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg experienced on Thursday after the social media giant’s shares plunged 19% erasing over $119 billion in market cap in just one day, the most ever for a public company, according to our partners at WSJ Market Data Group.
The losses hit Zuckerberg’s wallet to the tune of about $15 billion through the 387,095,123 Facebook shares (Class A and B shares combined) he owns, according to FactSet.
Before the stock dump, Mark Zuckerberg was the fifth wealthiest American in 2018 – with $71 billion net worth according to the Forbes Billionaires List. Considering Thursday's losses – his net worth slipped down to around $55.9 billion. This would remove Zuckerberg from the top 10 of the list – putting him down to the 11th spot behind Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison.
The mayhem selling, on heavier than normal volume, followed Facebook's disclosure that increased spending in security and privacy would hurt profitability in the coming quarters. Zuckerberg said on Wednesday the company “will continue to invest heavily in security and privacy,” adding that the associated cost would likely hurt profitability in upcoming quarters. Expenses will rise by 50% to 60% this year as Facebook invests in data security, new technology and other initiatives, CFO David Wehner said. This after second-quarter results missed analyst estimates on several metrics including revenue, users and advertising.
Facebook has faced scrutiny since reports surfaced that British data firm Cambridge Analytica had improperly accessed the personal data of up to 87 million users. While the company’s shares fell initially in the aftermath of the data scandal, they regrouped. But on Thursday, it seems the social media giant is paying for the scandal, in one fell swoop.
Facebook made $1.74 per share in the second quarter, versus analysts’ consensus estimate for $1.72. Revenue fell short of expectations, coming in at $13.23 billion versus the $13.36 billion analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting.
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2014
While it would be nice to see Facebook go belly-up, I'm not expecting it. This is just delayed reaction to a bunch of shit including Cambridge Analytica, that they'd managed to put off for a while, suddenly all catching up at once and then bandwagon panic. It will probably bounce back in a year or so, though without the ability to pimp out their user data as aggressively, maybe not with the stratospheric growth seen up until now.
People just need to calm the fuck down.
People just need to calm the fuck down.
PS1gamenwatch
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2015
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/dip...-nations-pledge-unity-face-us-china-trade-war
BRICS nations pledge unity in face of US-China trade war
Leaders of biggest emerging economies reaffirm commitment to open world economy amid US tariff threats
PUBLISHED : Friday, 27 July, 2018, 1:07pm
UPDATED : Friday, 27 July, 2018, 2:44pm
24 Jul 2018
Five of the biggest emerging economies on Thursday stood by the multilateral system and vowed to strengthen economic cooperation in the face of US tariff threats and unilateralism. The heads of the BRICS group – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – met in Johannesburg for an annual summit dominated by the risk of a US-led trade war, although leaders did not publicly mention President Donald Trump by name.
“We express concern at the spillover effects of macroeconomic policy measures in some major advanced economies,” they said in joint statement.
“We recognise that the multilateral trading system is facing unprecedented challenges. We underscore the importance of an open world economy.”
Trump has said he is ready to impose tariffs on all US$500 billion of Chinese imports, complaining that China’s trade surplus with the US is due to unfair currency manipulation. Trump has already slapped levies on goods from China worth tens of billions of dollars, as well as tariffs on steel and aluminium from the EU, Canada and Mexico.
“Closer economic cooperation for shared prosperity is the original purpose and priority of BRICS.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who held a controversial meeting with Trump last week, echoed the calls for closer ties among BRICS members and for stronger trade within the group.
“BRICS has a unique place in the global economy – this is the largest market in the world, the joint GDP is 42 per cent of the global GDP and it keeps growing,” Putin said.
“In 2017, the trade with our BRICS countries has grown 30 per cent, and we are aiming at further developing this kind of partnership.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is also attending the summit as the current chair of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and met Putin on the sidelines on Thursday.
“Our bilateral relations are improving certainly,” the Kremlin cited Putin as saying, hailing the two countries’ cooperation on Syria and in economic matters.
Erdogan in turn spoke about “rapidly developing bilateral relations”, according to the Kremlin, which did not elaborate. The BRICS group, comprising more than 40 per cent of the global population, represents some of the biggest emerging economies, but it has struggled to find a unified voice. Analysts say US trade policy could give the group renewed purpose. In Washington, Trump and European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker announced an apparent truce in their trade war after White House talks on Wednesday. The US and the EU will “immediately resolve” their dispute over US steel and aluminium tariffs and subsequent EU counter-measures, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin confirmed on Thursday. The dollar gained against the euro after the announcement, helping to boost euro zone equities. The punishing US metals tariffs had angered Washington’s major trading partners including the EU and sparked retaliation against important American exports, spooking global stock markets. Xi arrived in South Africa for the BRICS summit after visiting Senegal and Rwanda as part of a whistle-stop tour to cement relations with African allies. On Friday, African leaders attending a “BRICS outreach” programme will include Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Joao Lourenco of Angola, Macky Sall of Senegal and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda.
BRICS nations pledge unity in face of US-China trade war
Leaders of biggest emerging economies reaffirm commitment to open world economy amid US tariff threats
PUBLISHED : Friday, 27 July, 2018, 1:07pm
UPDATED : Friday, 27 July, 2018, 2:44pm
24 Jul 2018
Five of the biggest emerging economies on Thursday stood by the multilateral system and vowed to strengthen economic cooperation in the face of US tariff threats and unilateralism. The heads of the BRICS group – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – met in Johannesburg for an annual summit dominated by the risk of a US-led trade war, although leaders did not publicly mention President Donald Trump by name.
“We express concern at the spillover effects of macroeconomic policy measures in some major advanced economies,” they said in joint statement.
“We recognise that the multilateral trading system is facing unprecedented challenges. We underscore the importance of an open world economy.”
Trump has said he is ready to impose tariffs on all US$500 billion of Chinese imports, complaining that China’s trade surplus with the US is due to unfair currency manipulation. Trump has already slapped levies on goods from China worth tens of billions of dollars, as well as tariffs on steel and aluminium from the EU, Canada and Mexico.
“Closer economic cooperation for shared prosperity is the original purpose and priority of BRICS.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who held a controversial meeting with Trump last week, echoed the calls for closer ties among BRICS members and for stronger trade within the group.
“BRICS has a unique place in the global economy – this is the largest market in the world, the joint GDP is 42 per cent of the global GDP and it keeps growing,” Putin said.
“In 2017, the trade with our BRICS countries has grown 30 per cent, and we are aiming at further developing this kind of partnership.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is also attending the summit as the current chair of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and met Putin on the sidelines on Thursday.
“Our bilateral relations are improving certainly,” the Kremlin cited Putin as saying, hailing the two countries’ cooperation on Syria and in economic matters.
Erdogan in turn spoke about “rapidly developing bilateral relations”, according to the Kremlin, which did not elaborate. The BRICS group, comprising more than 40 per cent of the global population, represents some of the biggest emerging economies, but it has struggled to find a unified voice. Analysts say US trade policy could give the group renewed purpose. In Washington, Trump and European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker announced an apparent truce in their trade war after White House talks on Wednesday. The US and the EU will “immediately resolve” their dispute over US steel and aluminium tariffs and subsequent EU counter-measures, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin confirmed on Thursday. The dollar gained against the euro after the announcement, helping to boost euro zone equities. The punishing US metals tariffs had angered Washington’s major trading partners including the EU and sparked retaliation against important American exports, spooking global stock markets. Xi arrived in South Africa for the BRICS summit after visiting Senegal and Rwanda as part of a whistle-stop tour to cement relations with African allies. On Friday, African leaders attending a “BRICS outreach” programme will include Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Joao Lourenco of Angola, Macky Sall of Senegal and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda.
- Joined
- May 20, 2016
Go ahead, SJWs. You've got several Russia allied countries to REEE about now....
Oh, they're PEE OH SEES? Well, that's OK then...
Oh, they're PEE OH SEES? Well, that's OK then...
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2017
I'm sorry. I'm just imaging the amount of BO wafting from the festival grounds and getting a bit nauseous.
In other news, Marilyn Manson cancelled his July 26th Toronto concert, citing "the flu" as the reason. Sure, Brian.
http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/ma...lu-as-reason-for-toronto-concert-cancelation/
Dem comments though.
https://twitter.com/marilynmanson/status/1022966830648840193
Some people aren't buying it and saying it's drugs. Not hard to believe them. The amount of people that constantly buy into his excuses is still pretty sad. The guy's all drugged up, cancelling shows and having meltdowns. It's time to either take a long break or retire. Can't really blame it entirely on age. Alice Cooper still does his stage shows and he's 70. It's terrible lifestyle choices when you're pushing 50 but still think you can act like you're 25 that's doing Manson in. If he dies within the next five years I wouldn't be even remotely surprised. I won't be surprised if it happens sooner than that.
- Joined
- Feb 25, 2013
Mary Berry played drums for Rick Astley at Bestival.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-44991229
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-44991229
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2014
In other news, Marilyn Manson cancelled his July 26th Toronto concert, citing "the flu" as the reason. Sure, Brian.
Sounds like he waited too long to detox from smack and was still sick the day the concert rolled around.
- Joined
- Mar 9, 2014
It's hard watching your idol start turning into a faggot...I'm sorry. I'm just imaging the amount of BO wafting from the festival grounds and getting a bit nauseous.
In other news, Marilyn Manson cancelled his July 26th Toronto concert, citing "the flu" as the reason. Sure, Brian.
http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/ma...lu-as-reason-for-toronto-concert-cancelation/
Dem comments though.
https://twitter.com/marilynmanson/status/1022966830648840193
Some people aren't buying it and saying it's drugs. Not hard to believe them. The amount of people that constantly buy into his excuses is still pretty sad. The guy's all drugged up, cancelling shows and having meltdowns. It's time to either take a long break or retire. Can't really blame it entirely on age. Alice Cooper still does his stage shows and he's 70. It's terrible lifestyle choices when you're pushing 50 but still think you can act like you're 25 that's doing Manson in. If he dies within the next five years I wouldn't be even remotely surprised. I won't be surprised if it happens sooner than that.
- Joined
- May 25, 2015
Archive|Source
“Having a child is like wearing your heart on your sleeve.”
I’ve heard several different versions of this colloquialism and since becoming a mother myself, I can confirm this feeling as true. My natural instinct is to fiercely protect and guard my children from any harm, mental or physical. Acknowledging that my children will not escape experiences of pain in their life often overwhelms me and leaves me feeling anxious.
Yet, in all likelihood, the pain my children will experience will be considered rites of passage: broken bones, friendship woes, first love and first heartbreak, not getting into their dream college.
I don’t pretend to be able to predict the future, so admittedly I have no clue what lives my children will lead. However, my racial and class privilege make my children exempt from many of the worries that parents of color, low-income parents and parents within marginalized populations must face with regards to their children on top of the parental concerns we universally share.
My children will not be racially profiled as they play in our neighborhood.
My children will not fear the police.
My children will see themselves represented in books, media and educational narratives.
I could go on, but the point is the world we live in centers and celebrates my children. As I’ve come to understand this truth and see its far reach in our day-to-day life, I’ve realized something else: When I shield my children from injustice in the name of preserving their innocence, what I’m actually preserving is white supremacy.
Another familiar colloquialism is “let kids be kids.” But of course, not all kids are granted this privilege. Tamir Rice certainly was not afforded this privilege. Trayvon Martin was not afforded this privilege. Dajerria Becton was not afforded this privilege. The Black and brown children racially profiled on my neighborhood listserves are not afforded this privilege.
I want my children to explore, play and enjoy the world around them. I also want them to understand that injustice exists. If I am unwilling to unveil how systems of oppression work, I’m playing into the notion that my children’s innocence is more fragile and more important than other children who do not have the option to have their innocence preserved. White supremacy lives on through this choice.
But your children are only 2 and 4, you might say. True. Good thing there are many actions I can take right now that are both developmentally appropriate and plant the seeds for more in-depth discussions and discourse in the future! Thanks to Raising Race Conscious Children, I’ve been able to identify research-based strategies to talk about race and racism with my children. I’m also currently taking a course called Raising An Advocate that’s helping me think through the ways my various privileges affect my parenting choices.
The first step was to buy books and toys with diverse representation and then use these products to name race openly and honestly. My kids can name their whiteness as well as identify other skin tones as we read books or play games. Both of my children now bring up race proactively, albeit in different ways. My 4-year-old will notice someone’s skin color and make connections to other people in his life that have similar skin tone. My 2-year-old will put her arm beside mine and say “both peachy!”
After the foundation of naming race was set, I began to talk about injustice through the lens of unfairness. These conversations remain short and again, we use books and games to provide context.
For instance, over the summer there was a day of collective action in support of Black Lives Matter following the shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castille. We were on vacation, but I brought several books with us, including Click, Clack, Moo (a hilarious story about barnyard animals who go on strike to achieve improved living conditions) as well as Amazing Grace, (a moving story about a young Black girl who overcomes sexism and racism to land the part of Peter Pan in her classroom play). I used these books to name race and discuss the protests happening around the country.
I said something like, “many people are angry and sad because people with brown and black skin are treated differently by police and that’s not fair. When people protest they are saying, ‘I don’t like that!’ and are working to make change.”
Naming race and naming injustice with my children are direct actions I can take right now to begin to dismantle white supremacy. I no longer want to preserve their innocence as this preserves the status quo.
Recently, I heard a person say the work we do inside our families is the ultimate grassroots organizing. Yes! The choices I make as a parent matter. The anti-racist work I do within the context of my family can affect powerful change.
What’s your take? Are you ready to stop preserving your child’s innocence and start dismantling white supremacy?
This post was originally published on A Striving Parent.
This post has been edited after receiving important feedback from readers. I did not intend to conflate race with poverty, but rather discuss how my racial and class privilege affect my parenting and family. I have removed the sentences I now understand were problematic.
“Having a child is like wearing your heart on your sleeve.”
I’ve heard several different versions of this colloquialism and since becoming a mother myself, I can confirm this feeling as true. My natural instinct is to fiercely protect and guard my children from any harm, mental or physical. Acknowledging that my children will not escape experiences of pain in their life often overwhelms me and leaves me feeling anxious.
Yet, in all likelihood, the pain my children will experience will be considered rites of passage: broken bones, friendship woes, first love and first heartbreak, not getting into their dream college.
I don’t pretend to be able to predict the future, so admittedly I have no clue what lives my children will lead. However, my racial and class privilege make my children exempt from many of the worries that parents of color, low-income parents and parents within marginalized populations must face with regards to their children on top of the parental concerns we universally share.
My children will not be racially profiled as they play in our neighborhood.
My children will not fear the police.
My children will see themselves represented in books, media and educational narratives.
I could go on, but the point is the world we live in centers and celebrates my children. As I’ve come to understand this truth and see its far reach in our day-to-day life, I’ve realized something else: When I shield my children from injustice in the name of preserving their innocence, what I’m actually preserving is white supremacy.
Another familiar colloquialism is “let kids be kids.” But of course, not all kids are granted this privilege. Tamir Rice certainly was not afforded this privilege. Trayvon Martin was not afforded this privilege. Dajerria Becton was not afforded this privilege. The Black and brown children racially profiled on my neighborhood listserves are not afforded this privilege.
I want my children to explore, play and enjoy the world around them. I also want them to understand that injustice exists. If I am unwilling to unveil how systems of oppression work, I’m playing into the notion that my children’s innocence is more fragile and more important than other children who do not have the option to have their innocence preserved. White supremacy lives on through this choice.
But your children are only 2 and 4, you might say. True. Good thing there are many actions I can take right now that are both developmentally appropriate and plant the seeds for more in-depth discussions and discourse in the future! Thanks to Raising Race Conscious Children, I’ve been able to identify research-based strategies to talk about race and racism with my children. I’m also currently taking a course called Raising An Advocate that’s helping me think through the ways my various privileges affect my parenting choices.
The first step was to buy books and toys with diverse representation and then use these products to name race openly and honestly. My kids can name their whiteness as well as identify other skin tones as we read books or play games. Both of my children now bring up race proactively, albeit in different ways. My 4-year-old will notice someone’s skin color and make connections to other people in his life that have similar skin tone. My 2-year-old will put her arm beside mine and say “both peachy!”
After the foundation of naming race was set, I began to talk about injustice through the lens of unfairness. These conversations remain short and again, we use books and games to provide context.
For instance, over the summer there was a day of collective action in support of Black Lives Matter following the shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castille. We were on vacation, but I brought several books with us, including Click, Clack, Moo (a hilarious story about barnyard animals who go on strike to achieve improved living conditions) as well as Amazing Grace, (a moving story about a young Black girl who overcomes sexism and racism to land the part of Peter Pan in her classroom play). I used these books to name race and discuss the protests happening around the country.
I said something like, “many people are angry and sad because people with brown and black skin are treated differently by police and that’s not fair. When people protest they are saying, ‘I don’t like that!’ and are working to make change.”
Naming race and naming injustice with my children are direct actions I can take right now to begin to dismantle white supremacy. I no longer want to preserve their innocence as this preserves the status quo.
Recently, I heard a person say the work we do inside our families is the ultimate grassroots organizing. Yes! The choices I make as a parent matter. The anti-racist work I do within the context of my family can affect powerful change.
What’s your take? Are you ready to stop preserving your child’s innocence and start dismantling white supremacy?
This post was originally published on A Striving Parent.
This post has been edited after receiving important feedback from readers. I did not intend to conflate race with poverty, but rather discuss how my racial and class privilege affect my parenting and family. I have removed the sentences I now understand were problematic.
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Guest
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2017
Shut the fuck up. You should always keep your children innocent.
Red Sun
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2018
yeah i'm sure this is gonna seem like a fantastic idea for about 10 years until "teenage rebellion" happens and you realize you just raised literal (actually literal) nazis
- Joined
- May 27, 2014
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-alt-right-is-taking-over-renaissance-fairs?via=FB_Page&source=TDB
The Alt-Right is Taking Over Renaissance Fairs
The Alt-Right is Taking Over Renaissance Fairs
Ten days before the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville last year, Paul Walsh was telling fellow neo-Nazis how to build and carry shields. “Carrying it like that it will flop around and be a pain in the ass,” Walsh scolded a member of his chat group, who suggested a hands-free shield modification.
How did Walsh know how a shield would work in action? “I do a lot of nerdy LARP [live action role play] shit with shields,” he explained.
He wasn’t kidding. Before Unite the Right, Walsh was an active participant in Dagorhir, a medieval fantasy role-playing game in which players dress as knights or orcs (one of Walsh’s preferred costumes) and bash the hell out of each other with foam swords. Nor was he alone. Since the 19th Century, white supremacists have bought into a fictionalized vision of medieval Europe, which they interpret—incorrectly, according to medieval scholars—as an all-white world. Now, with white supremacist extremism on the rise, those medievalist influences are leaking into the real world, from allegations of neo-Nazism in the LARPing community and the professional sword-fighting realm, to Renaissance Faire-loving bombers and fascist cults who encourage recruits to read Lord of the Rings.
appeared in Old Norse and Celtic societies. Even a seasoned medievalist would have struggled to prove them wrong.
A member of LARPing scene familiar with one of the men carrying a Black Sun shield told The Daily Beast the man had no known connections to the alt-right, that his costume has a historical Germanic theme, and that, in all likelihood, the man didn't know the Black Sun's Nazi tie-in.
The significant overlap between Nazi fans and European history fans has led to a phenomenon medieval scholar Paul Sturtevant calls “Schrödinger’s Medievalism”: “a piece of medieval culture found in the wild that you know has been appropriated as a symbol by right-wing nationalists or racists ... You can’t tell which is it until you get more information—and sometimes doing so is impossible. So, sometimes you are left in the uncomfortable position of having to treat it as both benign and hostile at the same time.”
White supremacists have good reason to turn to medieval culture for validation, Cord Whitaker, an associate professor of English at Wellesley College, told The Daily Beast.
the Anti-Defamation League.
But that Europe didn’t exist outside novels, medievalist Dorothy Kim told The Daily Beast.
“This medieval ‘white utopia’ is entirely false. In fact, the medieval past was multiracial, multifaith, and multicultural,” Kim, an associate professor of English at Brandeis University said, pointing to Indian and African immigration pre-1500, and to recent genetic testing that suggests the earliest known British skeleton had dark skin. “It's rather difficult to find a ‘pure white’ utopia anytime in the pre-modern, let alone ancient historical records,” she said.
None of these findings have done much to deter white supremacists, many of whom still adopt medieval symbols like the Black Sun, which is just historical enough for neo-Nazis to describe it as a Norse symbol when confronted. But come on. When the singer Shakirareleased a gold necklace with a Black Sun pattern (overlaid with the ahistorical inscription “Shakira El Dorado World Tour”), fans and German news outlets quickly noted its similarity to the Nazi symbol, and Shakira’s promotion company pulled the necklace from its store.
If Shakira fans are already wise to popular Nazi symbols, what excuse do amateur European historians have?
“A lot of these symbols are dog whistles,” Ken Mondschein, a history professor and fencing master, told The Daily Beast. His own area of expertise, Historical European Medieval Arts, has its own admirers on the far-right. “For example, a Thor’s Hammer. Someone could simply like the Marvel character Thor and wear it. They could be a non-racist member of Asatru, a neo-heathen movement. Or they could be a white supremacist.”
In Walsh’s case, the answer was white supremacy.
“Despite a self-proclaimed love for 'painting up' before battles (orc players often paint themselves green), Walsh believed whites were superior.”
Walsh, a Michigan man, was a fixture of Dagorhir tournaments, where he LARPed as an orc called Kromkar Da Yooper since at least 2011, the blog Alt-Right Already reported last August. But despite a self-proclaimed love for “painting up” before battles (orc players often paint themselves green), Walsh believed whites were superior. A member of Walsh’s Dagorhir group told Alt-Right Already that members quit over Walsh’s comments defending slavery and white supremacy.
In spring 2017, Walsh joined a different niche social club: the Traditionalist Worker Party, a neo-Nazi movement that imploded less than a year later, after its leader was arrested in a trailer brawl over an intra-family love triangle.
GET THE BEAST IN YOUR INBOX!
“Going to produce some training videos about basic shield line tactics and organization as well, after the TWP event kicks off,” Walsh wrote in an alt-right chat group in April 2017, according to chat logs leaked by the media nonprofit Unicorn Riot. “I know what I’m doing.”
Elsewhere in the logs, Walsh references his roommate pitching in to plan the TWP’s shield wall. That person’s identity is unclear, although at least one of Walsh’s Michigan LARPing friends was at Unite the Right, according to Alt-Right Already. That LARPer, Anthony Overway, roleplayed as a character called Heinz the Barbarian. A person with the username “Heinz-MI” appears repeatedly in chat logs for the TWP and a Unite the Right planning group, where he gives instructions on building shields and forming a shield wall.
The image could almost be funny—members of the self-proclaimed master race studying shields with a medieval orc LARPer!—if not for the TWP’s actions at Unite the Right. Using hard plastic shields as battering rams, the group charged into a crowd of unarmed counter-protesters, shoving them on the pavement and stabbing them with flagpoles.
A lawsuit against a hoard of far-right groups, including the TWP, accuses them of using their shields like weapons. In order to escape litigation, a number of the groups in the lawsuit have agreed not to return to Charlottesville with weapons, including shields.
Meanwhile, other medievalist communities have also struggled with alt-right incursion—and in the case of the Historical European Medieval Arts (HEMA) community, those unwelcome factions have more deadly weapons.
Mondschein, the history professor and HEMA instructor, said the community is overwhelmingly a tolerant one. But over the past several years, he has catalogued a far-right fascination with the field, which includes fencing and dueling with very real, very sharp swords.
“Is anyones else besides me into [HEMA]?” a person with a swastika avatar asked in Iron March, a now-defunct Nazi forum. Mondschein included the post in a presentation at last year’s International Congress on Medieval Studies, where he gave a talk on white supremacist trends in his sport. He also conducted a survey (which, he stresses, is not peer-reviewed) of more than 300 HEMA participants, in which 10 to 15 percent of respondents indicated that they held far-right views.
“Using hard plastic shields as battering rams, the group charged into a crowd of unarmed counter-protesters, shoving them on the pavement and stabbing them with flagpoles.”
Radix Journal, a white supremacist site published by Richard Spencer, has run multiple pieces promoting HEMA, selling it as a more authentic medieval experience than games like Dagorhir. “This ain’t LARPing,” one Radix article reads.
Larry McQuilliams, a Texas man who attempted to destroy Austin’s Mexican Consulate with bullets and bottles of propane in 2014, was described by neighbors as being into “martial arts swords” and Renaissance Faires. McQuilliams, who was killed in a firefight with police after firing more than 100 shots in downtown Austin, was reportedly affiliated with the Phineas Priesthood, a Christian identity hate group that advocates violence against people of color.
And just months ago, the HEMA community erupted in controversy after some of its best-known Swedish fighters were revealed to have liked or shared historical Nazi propaganda, or other racist imagery. In a long statement, the most prominent of the fencers, Axel Pettersson, denounced his old “Nazi jokes” as the product of a dark period in his life, for which he apologized. Pettersson said he was not a white supremacist and had friends of many races, but went on to describe views similar to that of the identitarian movement, warning that immigrants are “replacing” white Swedes, who “have the right to our own country.”
“A lot of people are drawn to HEMA and other medievalist subcultures like the Society for Creative Anachronism because it fits into their overall Identitarian worldview, their ideas of European culture,” Mondschein said of the incident. “Particularly, these people in Sweden who attempted to hide their participation in some white supremacist websites, but if you read their various blogs and writings, you see it that it fits into an overall worldview that romanticizes an imagined homogeneous past.”
In this “imagined past,” as medievalists describe it, historical accuracy often takes a backseat to fantasy.
Neo-Nazis and European nationalists have laid claim to Beowulf, an Old English epic poem about a Norse warrior, which they interpret as a vision of an all-white warrior society. When a charity group produced a low-budget Beowulfadaptation starring a black actor in 2007, they received death threats from self-proclaimed “aryans”. On the recommended reading page of one of its websites, the murderous neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen lists the medievalist fantasy series Lord of the Rings alongside Hitler’s writing and texts that advocate terrorism.
“You often had white southerners after the Civil War imagining themselves as characters in Ivanhoe and holding medieval-style tournaments as public recreation.”
Also on the Atomwaffen-approved reading list are three books by Varg Vikernes, a Norwegian musician who, in between prison and probation stints for murder, church-burning, and inciting racial hatred, has promoted his own brand of pagan white supremacy. Vikernes’ profile picture on his Amazon page shows him wearing a chainmail shirt. He describes himself as being interested in “tabletop role-playing games, HEMA, archaeology, pre-history, pre-Christian European religion and survivalism.”
Historically questionable fiction about medieval Europe has been fueling white supremacist fantasies for the past 150 years, Whitaker, the Wellesley College professor said.
“In the 19th Century, it was largely through medievalizing novels like Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, which was probably the biggest and most well-known example,” he said. “That novel played a big role in racial politics in the mid-19th Century, before, during, and after the Civil War.”
The result, particularly after the Civil War, was its own brand of LARPing.
“You often had white southerners after the Civil War imagining themselves as characters in Ivanhoe and holding medieval-style tournaments as public recreation,” Whitaker said. “This was a way of recuperating their experience in the American Civil War as the medieval experience of Norman versus Franc. That is one instance of a way in which this narrative of an all-white Middle Ages has been important to white supremacy for a long time.”
Much in the way that would-be Confederates leaned on the “imagined past” of medieval England, modern racists have poured millions into an imagined Confederacy. Most of the Confederate flags and statues that dot the U.S.’s southern states did not appear during or immediately after the Civil War, but a century later, during the Civil Rights Movement. Though the statues’ advocates defend them as a symbol of pride and heritage, the construction of new Confederate sites has spiked during racialized conflicts, the Atlantic previously reported.
That LARPing lineage came full circle at Unite the Right, which was initially described as a rally in defense of a Confederate statue in Charlottesville.
Now, with members of their communities marching among fascists at Charlottesville or sharing Nazi pictures, some anti-racist medievalists are fighting back.
“It is safe to say that there are white supremacists and Nazis who are ACTIVELY using Dag as a personal and organizational training ground to give them an edge in premeditated race riots,” one Dagorhir participant wrote on Facebook after Walsh was revealed to have marched at Unite the Right.
Dagorhir Battle Games, the sport’s organizing body, soon banned Walsh from future competitions. But in HEMA, weeding out white supremacy can be more complicated.
“The difficulty is that this idea of aboriginal European martial arts works very well as a dog whistle,” Mondschein said. “It’s very hard to detoxify that. We have people who are interested in this, and we have overt political statements.”
Debates over the sport’s next steps have led to a “real split. I got challenged to a duel with sharp weapons” over his stance, Mondschein said.
Even medievalist academics are torn on how to address their field’s unwanted fanbase on the far-right. The rift turned bitter ahead of this year’s International Conference on Medieval Studies. Kim, the Brandeis professor, had previously called on her colleagues to condemn white supremacy. Some, including a University of Chicago medievalist who contributes to Breitbart, refused, resulting in a flame war against Kim and colleagues, Inside Higher Ed reported.
Whitaker said the recent tensions in his field haven’t surprised him.
“The field propagated this idea, relevant since the 19th Century, of a homogeneously white Middle Ages and attracted people into the field—obviously not everyone, but some people—who thought ‘okay, I can deal with literature or history and not deal with these knotty modern problems of race,’” he said
Kim told The Daily Beast she’s still calling on colleagues to address their field’s white supremacy problem head-on.
“I think academics must counter academic white supremacy by calling it what it is and resisting it,” she said. “In other words, this is not a both-sides debate, this is about genocidal fascism that wants to harm the most vulnerable bodies in our society—Jews, Muslims, women, BIPOC, LGBTQIA, immigrants, refugees, etc.”
As for the white supremacists LARPing alongside non-Nazis, their medieval enthusiast peers want them to drop the foam swords and step into reality.
“In many ways, it’s a reaction to the current state of the world. This is their answer to it, by going back to the imagined past, which is of course futile, because you can’t turn back the clock,” Mondschein said. “You’ve got to learn to live in the world we’re in.”
How did Walsh know how a shield would work in action? “I do a lot of nerdy LARP [live action role play] shit with shields,” he explained.
He wasn’t kidding. Before Unite the Right, Walsh was an active participant in Dagorhir, a medieval fantasy role-playing game in which players dress as knights or orcs (one of Walsh’s preferred costumes) and bash the hell out of each other with foam swords. Nor was he alone. Since the 19th Century, white supremacists have bought into a fictionalized vision of medieval Europe, which they interpret—incorrectly, according to medieval scholars—as an all-white world. Now, with white supremacist extremism on the rise, those medievalist influences are leaking into the real world, from allegations of neo-Nazism in the LARPing community and the professional sword-fighting realm, to Renaissance Faire-loving bombers and fascist cults who encourage recruits to read Lord of the Rings.
appeared in Old Norse and Celtic societies. Even a seasoned medievalist would have struggled to prove them wrong.
A member of LARPing scene familiar with one of the men carrying a Black Sun shield told The Daily Beast the man had no known connections to the alt-right, that his costume has a historical Germanic theme, and that, in all likelihood, the man didn't know the Black Sun's Nazi tie-in.
The significant overlap between Nazi fans and European history fans has led to a phenomenon medieval scholar Paul Sturtevant calls “Schrödinger’s Medievalism”: “a piece of medieval culture found in the wild that you know has been appropriated as a symbol by right-wing nationalists or racists ... You can’t tell which is it until you get more information—and sometimes doing so is impossible. So, sometimes you are left in the uncomfortable position of having to treat it as both benign and hostile at the same time.”
White supremacists have good reason to turn to medieval culture for validation, Cord Whitaker, an associate professor of English at Wellesley College, told The Daily Beast.
the Anti-Defamation League.
But that Europe didn’t exist outside novels, medievalist Dorothy Kim told The Daily Beast.
“This medieval ‘white utopia’ is entirely false. In fact, the medieval past was multiracial, multifaith, and multicultural,” Kim, an associate professor of English at Brandeis University said, pointing to Indian and African immigration pre-1500, and to recent genetic testing that suggests the earliest known British skeleton had dark skin. “It's rather difficult to find a ‘pure white’ utopia anytime in the pre-modern, let alone ancient historical records,” she said.
None of these findings have done much to deter white supremacists, many of whom still adopt medieval symbols like the Black Sun, which is just historical enough for neo-Nazis to describe it as a Norse symbol when confronted. But come on. When the singer Shakirareleased a gold necklace with a Black Sun pattern (overlaid with the ahistorical inscription “Shakira El Dorado World Tour”), fans and German news outlets quickly noted its similarity to the Nazi symbol, and Shakira’s promotion company pulled the necklace from its store.
If Shakira fans are already wise to popular Nazi symbols, what excuse do amateur European historians have?
“A lot of these symbols are dog whistles,” Ken Mondschein, a history professor and fencing master, told The Daily Beast. His own area of expertise, Historical European Medieval Arts, has its own admirers on the far-right. “For example, a Thor’s Hammer. Someone could simply like the Marvel character Thor and wear it. They could be a non-racist member of Asatru, a neo-heathen movement. Or they could be a white supremacist.”
In Walsh’s case, the answer was white supremacy.
“Despite a self-proclaimed love for 'painting up' before battles (orc players often paint themselves green), Walsh believed whites were superior.”
Walsh, a Michigan man, was a fixture of Dagorhir tournaments, where he LARPed as an orc called Kromkar Da Yooper since at least 2011, the blog Alt-Right Already reported last August. But despite a self-proclaimed love for “painting up” before battles (orc players often paint themselves green), Walsh believed whites were superior. A member of Walsh’s Dagorhir group told Alt-Right Already that members quit over Walsh’s comments defending slavery and white supremacy.
In spring 2017, Walsh joined a different niche social club: the Traditionalist Worker Party, a neo-Nazi movement that imploded less than a year later, after its leader was arrested in a trailer brawl over an intra-family love triangle.
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“Going to produce some training videos about basic shield line tactics and organization as well, after the TWP event kicks off,” Walsh wrote in an alt-right chat group in April 2017, according to chat logs leaked by the media nonprofit Unicorn Riot. “I know what I’m doing.”
Elsewhere in the logs, Walsh references his roommate pitching in to plan the TWP’s shield wall. That person’s identity is unclear, although at least one of Walsh’s Michigan LARPing friends was at Unite the Right, according to Alt-Right Already. That LARPer, Anthony Overway, roleplayed as a character called Heinz the Barbarian. A person with the username “Heinz-MI” appears repeatedly in chat logs for the TWP and a Unite the Right planning group, where he gives instructions on building shields and forming a shield wall.
The image could almost be funny—members of the self-proclaimed master race studying shields with a medieval orc LARPer!—if not for the TWP’s actions at Unite the Right. Using hard plastic shields as battering rams, the group charged into a crowd of unarmed counter-protesters, shoving them on the pavement and stabbing them with flagpoles.
A lawsuit against a hoard of far-right groups, including the TWP, accuses them of using their shields like weapons. In order to escape litigation, a number of the groups in the lawsuit have agreed not to return to Charlottesville with weapons, including shields.
Meanwhile, other medievalist communities have also struggled with alt-right incursion—and in the case of the Historical European Medieval Arts (HEMA) community, those unwelcome factions have more deadly weapons.
Mondschein, the history professor and HEMA instructor, said the community is overwhelmingly a tolerant one. But over the past several years, he has catalogued a far-right fascination with the field, which includes fencing and dueling with very real, very sharp swords.
“Is anyones else besides me into [HEMA]?” a person with a swastika avatar asked in Iron March, a now-defunct Nazi forum. Mondschein included the post in a presentation at last year’s International Congress on Medieval Studies, where he gave a talk on white supremacist trends in his sport. He also conducted a survey (which, he stresses, is not peer-reviewed) of more than 300 HEMA participants, in which 10 to 15 percent of respondents indicated that they held far-right views.
“Using hard plastic shields as battering rams, the group charged into a crowd of unarmed counter-protesters, shoving them on the pavement and stabbing them with flagpoles.”
Radix Journal, a white supremacist site published by Richard Spencer, has run multiple pieces promoting HEMA, selling it as a more authentic medieval experience than games like Dagorhir. “This ain’t LARPing,” one Radix article reads.
Larry McQuilliams, a Texas man who attempted to destroy Austin’s Mexican Consulate with bullets and bottles of propane in 2014, was described by neighbors as being into “martial arts swords” and Renaissance Faires. McQuilliams, who was killed in a firefight with police after firing more than 100 shots in downtown Austin, was reportedly affiliated with the Phineas Priesthood, a Christian identity hate group that advocates violence against people of color.
And just months ago, the HEMA community erupted in controversy after some of its best-known Swedish fighters were revealed to have liked or shared historical Nazi propaganda, or other racist imagery. In a long statement, the most prominent of the fencers, Axel Pettersson, denounced his old “Nazi jokes” as the product of a dark period in his life, for which he apologized. Pettersson said he was not a white supremacist and had friends of many races, but went on to describe views similar to that of the identitarian movement, warning that immigrants are “replacing” white Swedes, who “have the right to our own country.”
“A lot of people are drawn to HEMA and other medievalist subcultures like the Society for Creative Anachronism because it fits into their overall Identitarian worldview, their ideas of European culture,” Mondschein said of the incident. “Particularly, these people in Sweden who attempted to hide their participation in some white supremacist websites, but if you read their various blogs and writings, you see it that it fits into an overall worldview that romanticizes an imagined homogeneous past.”
In this “imagined past,” as medievalists describe it, historical accuracy often takes a backseat to fantasy.
Neo-Nazis and European nationalists have laid claim to Beowulf, an Old English epic poem about a Norse warrior, which they interpret as a vision of an all-white warrior society. When a charity group produced a low-budget Beowulfadaptation starring a black actor in 2007, they received death threats from self-proclaimed “aryans”. On the recommended reading page of one of its websites, the murderous neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen lists the medievalist fantasy series Lord of the Rings alongside Hitler’s writing and texts that advocate terrorism.
“You often had white southerners after the Civil War imagining themselves as characters in Ivanhoe and holding medieval-style tournaments as public recreation.”
Also on the Atomwaffen-approved reading list are three books by Varg Vikernes, a Norwegian musician who, in between prison and probation stints for murder, church-burning, and inciting racial hatred, has promoted his own brand of pagan white supremacy. Vikernes’ profile picture on his Amazon page shows him wearing a chainmail shirt. He describes himself as being interested in “tabletop role-playing games, HEMA, archaeology, pre-history, pre-Christian European religion and survivalism.”
Historically questionable fiction about medieval Europe has been fueling white supremacist fantasies for the past 150 years, Whitaker, the Wellesley College professor said.
“In the 19th Century, it was largely through medievalizing novels like Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, which was probably the biggest and most well-known example,” he said. “That novel played a big role in racial politics in the mid-19th Century, before, during, and after the Civil War.”
The result, particularly after the Civil War, was its own brand of LARPing.
“You often had white southerners after the Civil War imagining themselves as characters in Ivanhoe and holding medieval-style tournaments as public recreation,” Whitaker said. “This was a way of recuperating their experience in the American Civil War as the medieval experience of Norman versus Franc. That is one instance of a way in which this narrative of an all-white Middle Ages has been important to white supremacy for a long time.”
Much in the way that would-be Confederates leaned on the “imagined past” of medieval England, modern racists have poured millions into an imagined Confederacy. Most of the Confederate flags and statues that dot the U.S.’s southern states did not appear during or immediately after the Civil War, but a century later, during the Civil Rights Movement. Though the statues’ advocates defend them as a symbol of pride and heritage, the construction of new Confederate sites has spiked during racialized conflicts, the Atlantic previously reported.
That LARPing lineage came full circle at Unite the Right, which was initially described as a rally in defense of a Confederate statue in Charlottesville.
Now, with members of their communities marching among fascists at Charlottesville or sharing Nazi pictures, some anti-racist medievalists are fighting back.
“It is safe to say that there are white supremacists and Nazis who are ACTIVELY using Dag as a personal and organizational training ground to give them an edge in premeditated race riots,” one Dagorhir participant wrote on Facebook after Walsh was revealed to have marched at Unite the Right.
Dagorhir Battle Games, the sport’s organizing body, soon banned Walsh from future competitions. But in HEMA, weeding out white supremacy can be more complicated.
“The difficulty is that this idea of aboriginal European martial arts works very well as a dog whistle,” Mondschein said. “It’s very hard to detoxify that. We have people who are interested in this, and we have overt political statements.”
Debates over the sport’s next steps have led to a “real split. I got challenged to a duel with sharp weapons” over his stance, Mondschein said.
Even medievalist academics are torn on how to address their field’s unwanted fanbase on the far-right. The rift turned bitter ahead of this year’s International Conference on Medieval Studies. Kim, the Brandeis professor, had previously called on her colleagues to condemn white supremacy. Some, including a University of Chicago medievalist who contributes to Breitbart, refused, resulting in a flame war against Kim and colleagues, Inside Higher Ed reported.
Whitaker said the recent tensions in his field haven’t surprised him.
“The field propagated this idea, relevant since the 19th Century, of a homogeneously white Middle Ages and attracted people into the field—obviously not everyone, but some people—who thought ‘okay, I can deal with literature or history and not deal with these knotty modern problems of race,’” he said
Kim told The Daily Beast she’s still calling on colleagues to address their field’s white supremacy problem head-on.
“I think academics must counter academic white supremacy by calling it what it is and resisting it,” she said. “In other words, this is not a both-sides debate, this is about genocidal fascism that wants to harm the most vulnerable bodies in our society—Jews, Muslims, women, BIPOC, LGBTQIA, immigrants, refugees, etc.”
As for the white supremacists LARPing alongside non-Nazis, their medieval enthusiast peers want them to drop the foam swords and step into reality.
“In many ways, it’s a reaction to the current state of the world. This is their answer to it, by going back to the imagined past, which is of course futile, because you can’t turn back the clock,” Mondschein said. “You’ve got to learn to live in the world we’re in.”
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Wouldn't a historically accurate Renaissance fair be alt-right material in nature with people in Knights Templar cosplay yelling "DEUS VULT," and reenacting burning Jews alive and fighting Muslims?
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Nah, that’s before the renaissance. It’s more Italy getting into pissing matches with everybody including itself, and Shakespeare in England.