ASK Musings

Bigotry

– In the aftermath of the attacks, the Photoshop-altered image of Mr Jubbal, shown above, was tweeted by user @Bl4ptrep with the caption: “One of the Paris suicide bombers’ photo’s [sic] been released. He posted the photo on twitter shortly before the attack.” Mr Jubbal is a fierce critic of Gamergate, regularly using Twitter to express his opinions, who became a target for the group’s more aggressive members after starting the hashtag #stopgamergate2014. He’s also an advocate for equal rights and a Sikh – which has led to the suggestion by some Gamergater supporters that Mr Jubbal is a terrorist, their reasoning based on a deliberately moronic conflation of Sikhism and Islam.” Gamergate Supporters Are Responsible for the Terrorist Photoshopping of Journalist Veerender Jubbal (via @vicegaming)

Racism

– “I said it was only me and, hands still raised, slowly descended the stairs, focused on one officer’s eyes and on his pistol. I had never looked down the barrel of a gun or at the face of a man with a loaded weapon pointed at me. In his eyes, I saw fear and anger. I had no idea what was happening, but I saw how it would end: I would be dead in the stairwell outside my apartment, because something about me — a 5-foot-7, 125-pound black woman — frightened this man with a gun. I sat down, trying to look even less threatening, trying to de-escalate. I again asked what was going on. I confirmed there were no pets or people inside.” My white neighbor thought I was breaking into my own apartment. Nineteen cops showed up. (via @washingtonpost)

– ““It was just a sea of white faces,” he told ThinkProgress. “A lady kicked me in the stomach. A man kicked me in the chest. They called me n*****, monkey, and they shouted ‘all lives matter’ while they were kicking and punching me. So for all the people who are still confused at this point, they proved what ‘all lives matter’ meant. It means, ‘Shut up, n*****.’”” The Man Beaten And Choked At A Donald Trump Rally Tells His Story (via @thinkprogress)

Refugees

– “It’s important to recognize that this is hardly the first time the West has warily eyed masses of refugees. And while some characterize Muslim arrivals as a supposedly unique threat, the xenophobia of the present carries direct echoes of a very different moment: The years before World War II, when tens of thousands of German Jews were compelled to flee Nazi Germany.” Europe’s fear of Muslim refugees echoes rhetoric of 1930s anti-Semitism (h/t @michaelianblack)

Sexism

– “Fairy Godboss is a resource for job applicants to research other women’s experiences with an employer. Among other things, it helps women determine whether or not gender discrimination is an issue at a company. The New York Post reports that their site is “like Yelp for maternity leave policies, sexual harassment, promotion opportunities, and salary information.”” Now You Can Review How Sexist Your Company Is with ‘Yelp for Women’ Site (h/t @PPact)

Student Protest

– “The true story of college students and mental health has to do with a hollowing out of the United States’ mental-health services, with overtaxed counseling centers, with a fundamental shift in the role that colleges serve, with changes in the composition of the nation’s student body. This is all very, very complicated, and none of it can be fairly summarized as “Kids these days are getting so fragile!”” The Myth of the Ever-More-Fragile College Student (h/t @studentactivism)

– “Framing free speech and political correctness as opposing forces is a false dichotomy intended to derail uncomfortable but necessary conversations, a smokescreen ginned up by the ethically lazy. The fact is, political correctness doesn’t hinder free speech – it expands it. But for marginalised groups, rather than the status quo.” ‘Political correctness’ doesn’t hinder free speech – it expands it (via @TheLindyWest)

Surveillance State

– “But their arguments are conflating the forest—bulk metadata collection—and the trees: access to individual communications about the attack. To understand why that’s the case, start with this tweet from former NSA and DHS official Stewart Baker: “NSA’s 215 program”—and by association the far larger metadata dragnet of which the domestically focused phone-metadata program is just a small part—“was designed to detect a Mumbai/Paris-style attack.” Only it didn’t.” Metadata Surveillance Didn’t Stop the Paris Attacks (h/t @glenngreenwald)