An engineer at Google went around a 10 page memo on his opinion about life inside Google.

I read it.

The down and dirty points the guy made, seem to me to be:

1. Google loves diversity as long as it isn’t diversity of opinion, it is one giant Leftist echo chamber.
2. Anybody who isn’t a hard Leftist is harangued into submission to the hard Leftist.
3. If engineering (and STEM in general) is never at perfect demographic parity in terms of gender or ethnicity, that’s perfectly OK.
4. Stop pushing the diversity thing all the time because No 3.

I started down the STEM path in 2001 when I went to college.  My entire adult life I have been beat over the head with the “we need parity of *insert identity group here* in STEM.

The author of the Google memo, from best I can find online is in his late 20’s, so probably has an experience close to mine.

I saw boy and girls enter engineering and both boys and girls flunk out.  I’ve had good male and female professors.  In my experience, women and minorities who want to become engineers (and are capable of passing the classes) do.  Those who don’t, don’t.

What gets me, is that I have been beat over the head with the notion that the reason not as many women or minorities want to go into engineering is because white males are awful, sexist, racist, people who are mean spirited and drive everyone who isn’t like them away.

OK, they don’t say it exactly like that, but I can’t tell you how many diversity/sensitivity training seminars I’ve been in where the lack of parity is blamed on “microaggression.”

Dental hygienists make on average $70K a year and are 97% women.  How come I never hear about the need for parity in dental hygienists and the microaggressions keeping men out of such a high paying field.

Or why 97% of kindergarten teachers are women.

Or why 98% of mechanics and heavy equipment operators are men.

Many days being an engineer is being a mechanic with math.  Maybe that doesn’t appeal to a wide range of women.

But NO.  The reason aerospace engineering isn’t 50/50 male/female is because the men in the field are just fucking awful sexist pigs in need of reeducation.

Maybe, just maybe, this poor Google memo guy was sick and tired of hearing the same thing over and over again.  That he’s a terrible, sexist, piece of shit and the evidence of that is the fact more than half of his co-workers have dicks.

Best Life is an online luxury lifestyle magazine for men, that was originally a print magazine that was a spin off from Men’s Health.

So… I’m bored, browsing the internet at one does during a time of boredom, when I get linked to this listicle in Best Life, 40 Items Every Man Over 40 Should Have in His Home.

OK, I thought.  Let’s see the list, I wonder what I have at the ripe old age of 34.

Some of these items were reasonable.

OK.  This isn’t bad.  A have a nice collection of Waterman fountain pens.  I hate ball points.  This is sort of upscale lifestyle advice.

Sure, there is a lot a good cast iron skillet can do.  Not my favorite for the stove top (unless you have a gas range) but invaluable for the grill.

This one is 100% yes.  A good chef’s knife is an investment.  A good cutting board to go along with it is just as necessary.

Some on the list gave me pause…

Why?  This is why god and Leon Leonwood Bean invented the duck boot.  A shitty old sneaker isn’t what you want to wear when the dog has to go out at 2:00 am in January in Chicago.

But I was getting the sneaking suspicion this was really a list for superurban* hipsters who aren’t quite sure what being a man really means.  They don’t just need a listicle.  They need an upbringing.

What the fuck kind of man doesn’t own tools?  Seriously?  I get not being able to do a big repair but without a pliers and a screw driver, how does someone change a toilet seat or assemble a Jagenpultz from Ikea?

WD-40 is a basic food group.  That and duck tape.

OK.  Now I’m getting mad.  If you don’t have a pair of pliers, screw driver, WD-40, and duck tape, go to the store and buy them, right fucking now.  If you don’t you have forfeited the right to have fuzz on your peaches.

This and This…

Those are not items you buy.  Those are items that you happen to have.  Having to include them on the list means you never thought to do work before.  This is the evolution of the trucker hat.  It is a status symbol to other hipsters.

Seriously?  I’m going to punch the first fucking hipster I see.  No knife should ever be rusty.  Ever.  It means you don’t know how to take care of your tools.  No knife should ever be dull.  If you have a knife (and you should) and it’s rusty and dull, go to the trash chute at your fancy condo, pull out your knife, set it on the ground, and toss yourself down the trash chute into the dumpster.

A rusty knife is not for “street cred.”  It’s a tool you fucking hipster.

Sure, some are more bad ass than others (Hell Yes) but it’s still a tool to be respected.

Holy shit.  Only a luxury lifestyle magazine can take something so indispensable to everyday life and simultaneously misunderstand it and turn it into a pointless (literally) ironic status symbol.

This is a listicle from an online magazine for non-men who have never lifted a finger to do labor more strenuous than the scroll button on a mouse, have no idea how the world really works, and are happy to pay the 18% man tax at the feminist vegan cafe.

Moms Demand Action posted a Fox News piece on their Facebook page, that couldn’t make the state of National Concealed Carry any clearer.

It’s New York and California (and a few other Blue places) that are holding this up.

The followers of MDA rushed to prove this in the comments.

Yeah, why should New York give full faith and credit to lesser states on gun laws?

How dare the law abiding gun culture of the Deep South and Midwest be respected by the Coastal Elite.

You can feel the condescension drip out of these people in the way they object to bringing the full promise of Heller, McDonald, and Moore v. Madigan to fruition.

If national CCW is passed (and the GOP better pass it after screwing the pooch on Obamacare) I wonder what these states will do?  These are of course the same areas the call the rest of us racist for objecting to when they wantonly violate immigration laws.

A feminist vegan cafe in Australia is fighting the Patriarchy and gender pay gap by charging men an 18% gratuity and giving women seating priority.

Supposedly, none of the men who have been charged the “tax” have complained.

I don’t believe that.

Let’s be honest here, none of the “male shaped persons” who have gone to eat at a feminist vegan cafe are in any way men.

I caught this story over at Twitchy.

It links to this story at the Daily Breeze: Taking aim: gophers in cross hairs at Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes.

Seems that a grounds keeper was shooting at gophers.  Given the look of the rifle in the pictures, it is my educated guess that it is a break action pellet gun.  The way the barrel flares out past the forend of the stock is the giveaway.

The legality of doing this in California is dubious, even with a pellet gun, so there might be some problems for the grounds keeper in the future.

Being associated with a Trump golf course, the internet had to opine.

Yes, yes, we get it.  Trump is evil, hunting is evil, Trump and his family must like killing innocent woodland critters because they are evil sadists.

Welcome to an understanding of nature and economics when all you have been exposed to is Disney movies.

According to the Daily Breeze article, Trump has invested over $250 million into that course.

Gophers and other burrowing animals can wreck a golf course.  Traditional methods of dealing with these types of animals is to bait and poison them.  That can be effective, but the most common gopher bait is Strychnine, which can cause secondary poisoning.  Repellents are less effective.

Let me tell you about prairie dogs in South Dakota.  They are a nuisance animal of the highest order.  A prairie dog town can ruin grazing land.  The dogs dig burrows.  If a cow puts a foot in a dog hole, it can break a leg.  Then you have to shoot the cow.

Prairie dogs also spread bubonic plague and other diseases.

So ranchers deal with the dogs by letting people shoot them.  No issues with laying poison to be eaten by other animals.

I’m not a hunter, I don’t like to do it, but I have no issue what-so-ever with shooting nuisance animals.  They spread disease and ruin property values.

Letting a grounds keeper end a gopher or ground squirrel with a .177 projectile at 1,000 fps is humane and economical.

Do these people really care if a Trump golf course loses revenue because it has a pest problem?

What if people had to get laid off because the reduced revenue?

What if a golfer twisted an ankle stepping in a gopher hole?

Nope, because shooting animals is bad and done by evil people.

What else would you expect from the same people who saw a video of disease infected vermin showing no fear of people and turned it into a folk hero?

Let Trump build a Golf Course in the South.  When we get invaded with giant nuisance animals, we deal with them with suppressed 22s.

Politico came out with an article on the Miller/Acosta spat, The Ugly History of Stephen Miller’s ‘Cosmopolitan’ Epithet.

Of course, Politico has it go back to Soviet Anti-Semitism and therefore Miller is a white supremacist, QED so it Trump, yada yada yada…

Politico hits the nail on the head when it comes to defining the connotation of ‘Cosmopolitan.’

So what is a “cosmopolitan”? It’s a cousin to “elitist,” but with a more sinister undertone. It’s a way of branding people or movements that are unmoored to the traditions and beliefs of a nation, and identify more with like-minded people regardless of their nationality. (In this sense, the revolutionary pamphleteer Thomas Paine might have been an early American cosmopolitan, when he declared: “The world is my country; all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”). In the eyes of their foes, “cosmopolitans” tend to cluster in the universities, the arts and in urban centers, where familiarity with diversity makes for a high comfort level with “untraditional” ideas and lives.

For a nationalist, these are fighting words. Your country is your country; your fellow citizens are your brethren; and your country’s traditions—religious and otherwise— should be yours. A nation whose people—especially influential people—develop other ties undermine national strength, and must be repudiated.

That’s 110% right, fuckers.  The problem is Politico is Cosmopolitan so embraces that attitude rather than see why it upsets nationalistic conservatives.

Here is sort of the stereotypical idea of a cosmopolitan person:

A moneyed individual.  Perhaps a famous professor or a progressive businessman.  He likes to go to fancy cafes for wine bars and sit and drink and wax philosophical with other like minded, wealthy, progressives with the sort of self righteous hubris that only the erudite progressive can have.  He feels a closeness to other like minded, wealthy, progressives and could/does feel at home at a fancy cafe or wine bar in New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Rome, etc.  He is a citizen of the world.

So far Politico and I agree.

The problem is, he doesn’t feel at home in Indiana, Nebraska, Texas, or Alabama.  He feels no connection to the denizens of the Rust Belt, Bible Belt, Bread Basket, or Great Plains.  He is an insufferable prick who believes his erudite, progressive, education makes him superior – both morally and intellectually – to the salt-of-the-earth hard working Americans.  He doesn’t understand people outside his bubble, and doesn’t want to.

If that was it, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.  Let him stay in his bubble.  They don’t.  Self assured in their superiority, they want to craft laws and policy that feels good for wealthy, progressives in New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Rome, etc., but what works for the jet-setting Cosmopolitan doesn’t work for the guy with the pickup truck and no passport in Middle America.  Mr. Cosmo is more than happy to sell out the interests of his fellow citizens, who he is (even if he doesn’t realize it or like it) tied to economically, for a bubble of international elitists.

When the elite from New York or San Francisco cares more about the policy option of another wealthy elite from London or Paris than the opinion of the farmer in Nebraska or the factor worker in Indiana, you get problems and resentment.

This is what Politco wants to ignore.

When the Acostas of the US want an immigration policy that makes the Acostas of London and Paris applaud, but hurts the Joe Sixpack trying to make a living in Western Pennsylvania or Ohio, it’s not unreasonable to tell the Acostas to sit down and shut up because they are being cosmopolitan jackasses.

I don’t believe that Miller was blowing an Anti-Semitic dog whistle.

He was reminding Acosta that we just suffered eight years of Cosmopolitan Obama, who crafted policy based on what his peers in Europe would think about it rather than how Middle America would benefit from it, and Trump wasn’t going to do that shit anymore.

If Acosta wants to live in his Comopolitan bubble, with his head shoulder deep up his own ass, sipping fine wine through an enema bag, let him.  As long as he stays there.  The moment he wants to make national policy fit his view from inside his colon on 5th Avenue, he deserves to be called out.

Over at the Moms Demand Action Facebook page, I caught this.

A trans woman was murdered in Atlanta.

The response from the MDA comment peanut gallery was predicable.

It’s all Trump’s and the NRA’s fault.

Some of the comments makes me wonder if these people can read.

Not past the headline apparently.  If they did they’d of read:

It is not currently clear what the motive was behind Dangerfield’s murder and whether or not she was targeted because she is transgender.

“At this time we don’t have anything that’s telling us that, but we’re not ruling out any possible motive,” Patterson said.

No evidence it was a hate crime.

The victim was shot at the South Hampton Estates in College Park, GA.  College Park is a city, surrounded by Atlanta, which was listed as a murder capital in 2016.  College Park is a high crime area just outside Hartsfield-Jackson airport.

So right now what we are looking at as a person shot in a high crime neighborhood of a high crime city.

The article ends with this statement:

Thus far, at least 16 transgender people have been murdered in the United States alone this year.

Wow, that has to be…. I don’t know.

According to GLAAD “2016 was the deadliest year on record for transgender people” with a total of 21 trans people murdered.

In 2014, the CDC reports 15,872 people were the victims of homicides.

In 2015, the number was 15,696.

2016 is supposed to have a increase in murders.  The numbers are not available yet, but lets make a conservative estimate of 15,500 to 16,000.

That means of 21 murders is between 0.131% and 0.135% of all homicides.

The transgender population of America is roughly 1.4 million or 0.6%.

Going by those figures, trans people are underrepresented in homicides.

GLAAD noted that half of the 21 trans victims are people of color.  According to the FBI, in 2015, 53.1% of murder victims were black and 2.8% were “other” races, putting the “POC” category at 55.9% of murder victims.

Trans homicides are proportional by race to the general population.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not excusing any of these murders.  16,000 murders is way too many.  It is the identity politics nature of the coverage that is upsetting.

“OMG, it is a massacre of trans people and it’s all Trump’s fault!!!”  Even when the numbers don’t support that.  The narrative has to be maintained and Moms Demand Action is going to do everything to push the narrative.