Stupid people of the week

Woman involved in shooting with police released from custody

A woman who exchanged gunfire with police on Friday, January 13, in downtown St. Louis, was released from custody.

She was arrested after allegedly saying she was going to shoot up the social security office, then shooting at officers from inside her van. According to our partners at KMOX, Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner did not make the decision to release the woman.

A spokesperson from her office shared that detainees must be released after 24 hours if police do not present evidence. KMOX reported that it’s not clear if St. Louis Police have applied for charges against the woman.

FOX 2 will update this story with more information as it becomes available.

Source; FOX 2

Stop Using ‘Culturally Sensitive Words’ Like ‘Aloha’, ‘Shalom’

Greetings such as “aloha” and “shalom” are “culturally sensitive” and their use could “come off as mockery,” according to a recent USA Today piece demanding people “consider the cultural implications” before using such terms.

In an essay published in USA Today on Friday, titled “Is it time to stop saying ‘aloha’ and other culturally sensitive words out of context?” reporter David Oliver argues, “just because you can say something doesn’t mean it’s always appropriate.”

Claiming that “aloha” has a “deeper meaning” than just hello or goodbye, the author states, “If you’re not Hawaiian and you say it, it could come off as mockery.”

“The use of certain words requires education, knowledge and the foresight to understand when they should – or shouldn’t – come out of your mouth,” he adds.

According to Oliver, using the greetings “hola” or “shalom” with a “fake, exaggerated accent” when conversing with a Spanish or Hebrew speaker is problematic, while “saying ‘ni hao’ to someone Asian American who isn’t Chinese” could be “both othering and a microaggression.”

More at the source; Breitbart

Colorado College Astrophysics Prof Claims the Study of Space Is Racist, Sexist

Colorado College astrophysics professor Natalie Gosnell says her field is engrossed in “white supremacy” and sexism, adding that language used to describe the cosmos is “very violent and hyper-masculine.”

Gosnell, who is dismayed over society separating “math” and “creativity” into two categories, says dichotomizing these two characteristics is rooted in systemic racism and sexism, according to a report by Colorado College News.

“As an astrophysicist, I’m a product of institutions that are steeped in systemic racism and white supremacy,” Gosnell told the student newspaper.

“The tenets of white supremacy that show up [in physics] of individualism and exceptionalism and perfectionism… it’s either-or thinking, and there’s no subtlety, there’s no gray area,” the professor added. “All of this manifests in the way that we think about our research, and what counts as good research, what counts as important research?”

Colorado College News concurred, adding that “most of Gosnell’s career has been dictated by the hyper-masculine world of astrophysics.”

When a star transfers its mass to an orbiting star, for example, this process is discussed “through a violent, hyper-masculine lens,” the student newspaper said, noting that the phenomenon has been referred to as a “Vampire star” or “Cannibal star,” with Gosnell adding that these stars are also viewed as the “bad boys” of the universe.

“I think because science and art have been so separated, and there’s — systemic issues within science, the metaphors that are often chosen [to discuss science] are very violent and hyper-masculine,” the professor said.

Gosnell added that in 2010, when she was featured on the Discovery channel’s How the Universe Works, she “totally played into [the hyper-masculine stereotypes] while talking about her research on the mass-transfer phenomenon.

“I totally played into [the hyper-masculine stereotypes], because, ooh, snazzy. I get to be on the Discovery Channel,” she said. “Of course, like, the price was too high.”

“It felt like I was masquerading, essentially, as what an astrophysicist was supposed to be like,” Gosnell added.

Source; Breitbart

Norwegian government funds research to find out if white paint is racist

Is white paint racist? Norway’s University of Bergen is exploring that question, asking how the aesthetic of white paint helped the nation contribute to white supremacy and helped “[make] the world whiter.”

“Whiteness is not only a cultural and societal condition tied to skin color, privileges, and systematic exclusion, but materialize everywhere around us,” a rundown of the study read.

“Although Norway is not a conventional colonial power, this project will show how the country has played a globally leading role in establishing white as a superior color,” it said. “Until now, however, this story has been lesser known to scholars and the public.”

The study on whiteness and paint, dubbed NorWhite, observes the Norwegian-developed paint pigment titanium white through “historical, aesthetic, and critical” lenses to determine how the development of the color contributed to “social transformation” as well as how the innovation led to “planetary consequences.”

“Currently the Norwegian innovation TiO2 [titanium dioxide] is present in literally every part of modern life … The primary research question is: What are the cultural and aesthetic changes instigated by titanium white and TiO2 surfaces — and how can both the material in itself and these changes be conceptualized and made visible?” the description asks.

The Research Council of Norway, a government agency, is funding the study by University of Bergen associate professor and historian Ingrid Halland through a grant of 12 million Norwegian Krone (about $1.2 million US) to explore the paint color’s historical legacy, its origins in Norway, and features images of several of the nation’s buildings plastered in the color.

“The overall objective of NorWhite is to critically and visually investigate the cultural and aesthetic preconditions of a complex and unexplored part of Norwegian technology and innovation history that has — as this project claims — made the world whiter,” the description concluded.

The study is also sponsored by two of the major companies that contributed to titanium white paint’s prevalence in the country — Titania A/S, which extracts ore for use in titanium-based products, and Kronos Titan, which produces the titanium dioxide pigment.

The study cites that titanium dioxide is a part of everyday life, including in food, paper, tattoos, synthetic textiles, cosmetics and more in addition to altering the country’s architectural aesthetic through a brighter, more opaque color, and research aims to dissect the historical development that “revolutionized the color industry” with an “absolute white” color.

The University of Bergen study is only the latest example of higher education making “whiteness” a focus.

In the United States last year, Los Angeles Public Schools enforced the idea that “merit” and “individualism” were concepts originating from “whiteness” and must be questioned.

Fox News Digital obtained documents from government watchdog group Judicial Watch last year indicating the United States Military Academy at West Point was also among the institutions taking hits at “whiteness” last year with its critical race theory-based curriculum.

Source; NY Post

Category: "Teh Stoopid", Crime, Police