Are you ready for this week’s absurdity? Here’s our Friday roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, risks to your prosperity… and on occasion, inspiring poetic justice.
Art museum curator cancelled for not abandoning “white male artists”
Gary Garrels was the Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
After giving a presentation on the importance of diversity in art, he ended by saying, “don’t worry, we will continue to collect white male artists.”
His word choice may be curious, but his entire point was that diversity should include everyone… and that means white, male artists too.
He had mentioned at another point that specifically excluding white artists would be reverse discrimination.
But this egregious sin was enough to elicit a Change.org petition from his co-workers calling for his ouster.
The petition claimed that Gary may be “deliberately racist.” It also claimed his use of the term “reverse discrimination” is “white supremacist and racist language.”
Gary bowed to the mob, and resigned.
Somehow, this petition did not violate Change.org’s policy against using petitions to bully.
Click here to read the full story.
Florida motorcycle crash victim “died of Covid”
Sadly, a man from Florida who crashed his motorcycle succumbed to Covid-19.
At least, that was according to the Florida Health Department.
Florida initially counted the motorcycle death as one of those rare cases where a 20-something year old died of Covid.
This came to light during a press conference with a local health official.
When reporters asked if any of the young victims had any underlying conditions, the health official said, “The first one didn’t have any. He died in a motorcycle accident.”
He added, “But you could actually argue that it could have been the Covid-19 that caused him to crash.”
After the media picked up the story, the state corrected the data.
But it makes you wonder– how much can you trust the official statistics?
Click here to read the full story.
22 peer-reviewed scholarly articles on Covid-19 have been retracted
Speaking of official statistics being wrong, a lot of the official information has turned out to be wrong too.
Wear a mask, shut down your business, swear off social contact, and remain in your home cowering in fear. That is the most scientific way to beat Covid-19, according to many news outlets and rabid peers.
But scientific journals aren’t so sure about the facts on Covid-19.
A website called Retraction Watch keeps track of papers and studies withdrawn from scholarly and scientific journals.
So far, it has counted 22 peer-reviewed scientific papers and experiments on Covid-19 that were originally published, but later had to be retracted for various reasons.
For instance, one study found that coronavirus infects t-cells, but later realized the methodology was wrong, and the virus does not invade t-cells, like HIV.
Another retracted study said coronavirus could spread 15 feet through the air via water droplets.
Several of the retracted studies were from China. And that only adds to the confusion. Were they retracted for faulty science? Or were the results accurate, but the Chinese government forced a retraction in order to placate their narrative?
The point is, science is doing the best it can. They’re breaking new ground every day. But there’s still a tremendous amount of uncertainty about Covid. Even when they reach conclusions, they sometimes later find out that their conclusions were wrong.
Yet despite this uncertainty, politicians have no trouble shutting down the global economy and trampling over individual freedoms.
Click here to read the full story.
Grocery giant bows to 17-year old Twitter mobster
Oh what a glorious cultural revolution comrades! When any teenage girl with internet access can do her part to strike the root of prejudice in our society.
This time the victim of the Twitter mob is Trader Joe’s, a grocery chain known for its quirkiness.
Trader Joe’s liked to have a little fun with branding its culinary offerings from around the world.
For instance, the store sells Mexican food under “Trader José,” Chinese food under “Trader Ming,” Italian food under “Trader Giotto” and so on.
But one teenage tyrant, a 17 year old girl, found this offensive. So she started a petition– once again Change.org helped facilitate this important social reform.
The petition claims that using variations of Joe in branding foreign foods “belies a narrative of exoticism that perpetuates harmful stereotypes…”
“The Trader Joe’s branding is racist because it exoticizes other cultures – it presents “Joe” as the default “normal” and the other characters falling outside of it.”
The petition, now signed by a mob of almost 5,000 random internet users, also took issue with the inspiration for the original Trader Joe’s store.
The founder read an apparently racist book, and rode an apparently racist Disney ride, which together gave him the idea for his clearly racist business of selling food products from around the world.
Trader Joe’s quickly yielded to the Twitter mobsters, saying although the names were “rooted in a lighthearted attempt at inclusiveness, we recognize that it may now have the opposite effect.”
