We’re learning more about Caroline Ellison, Sam Bankman-Fried’s partner in crime. Some of it is kind of cute. She was a math nerd!

The daughter of esteemed economists — her father, Glenn Ellison, is currently the head of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her mother, Sara Fischer Ellison, is an economics department lecturer at the university — she grew up outside of Boston, in a household filled with numbers. While other kids were playing with Lego, Ellison was learning about Bayesian statistics before middle school; one year, rather than write her father a birthday card, she presented him with an economic study of stuffed animal prices at Toys ‘R’ Us. “We definitely got exposed to a lot of economics,” Ellison previously told Forbes in an interview.

A natural mathematician, high school was a laboratory for Ellison’s love of numbers and she competed multiple times in the Math Prize for Girls, the national contest that draws the country’s brightest young minds. But her interests went far beyond math, and as a senior, she received an honorable mention in a linguistics olympiad. She also loved books—her parents read her the first Harry Potter book when she was 3, she said, then she read the second one on her own at age 5. (She has apparently described herself as a Ravenclaw.)

So far, that’s cool — I can’t hold the Harry Potter fandom against her, since lots of people got into that in her youth. But then her biography takes a darker turn.

By the time Ellison arrived at Stanford as a math major in 2012, her professional ambitions were taking shape, and while adjusting to college life, she took to Tumblr to publish her daily musings. The now-deleted blog, called WorldOptimization, is unsigned but a close associate confirmed that it was hers. In it, she wrote that “the sexual revolution was a mistake” and that she believed “women are better suited to being homemakers and rearing children than doing Careers.” She also mused about race science, in one post saying the “genetic differences there are massive” when it comes to Indian people from different provinces and castes — which has become a source of discrimination in Silicon Valley. And at the top of her list of “~cute boy things~” was “controlling most major world governments.”

Oh god. So she wasn’t so bright after all. Just another privileged white person with a battery of misconceptions and a poor understanding of the sciences.

If you ever had any doubts that Shi Huang was a freakin’ racist, behold his latest Twitter admissions.

People have been pushing this racist notion of a “superior race” for centuries, and it’s clearly been an example of motivated reasoning — people trying to justify colonialism and slavery. There is no point to investigating “scientifically” when it’s patently counterfactual. I question whether Shi Huang is a highly qualified geneticist, since he then goes on to justify his claim with a childish caricature of evolutionary theory.

Humans at the top, huh, because they have less random noise. You know, the human genome is full of random noise and garbage and selfish DNA, but bacteria, like E. coli, don’t have introns or massive chunks of repetitive DNA and all the functional genes are packed efficiently and tightly. By the criterion of “noise,” bacteria would be at the top and humans at the bottom. Even by his own fallacious reasoning he’s wrong!

This ‘great chain of being’ model of evolution is so totally 19th century (or older) stuff. No one believes it anymore, except for a lot of ignorant racists.

He’s going to have a tough time getting published in Nature again. Oh well, there’s always Quillette!

This is Rob Finnerty, a newsreader for Newsmax. Nice hair, strong chin, looks like a real Chad.

Also, he’s real mad about something, like a real Chad. He’s mad about the availability of dolls, which is a little off-brand for a Chad…unless he can make it about black people.

“My daughter is just a cute little 6-year-old white girl — we couldn’t find anybody that looked like my daughter,” Finnerty said in the video. “It was—the whole place, it was, like wokeified. How long has this been going on with American Girls? It was somewhat of a bizarre experience.”

“Wokeified”? This word is getting overused by the Right.

Also, he lied. Check out the American Girl store online — there’s a wide range of skin tones available. A TikToker visited the same store shortly after his rant, and found it well-stocked.

Almost immediately, Fidel noticed that the store was brimming with white dolls — not only on display but in boxes stacked high on shelves and in animated videos on the wall.

“The literal first doll that you see when you walk into the store,” Fidel says, zooming in on a smiling white doll with blond pigtails.

Fidel continues to walk around the store, recording the multitude of white dolls on shelves and in boxes. He remarks that, while the store has “thrown in some other races,” a “great portion” of the dolls on display are white.

The Root checked out the story as well.

The Root’s office is located just a few steps from the American Girl store. Our writers and editors pass by it everyday and we can clearly say the store is mostly filled with white dolls.

“Did he stop to think that perhaps all of the white dolls were sold out at the store? Was going on the American Girl website not an option for him? Surely if he did, his panic would’ve subsided,” she wrote. “In the All Dolls section, you must scroll through almost 20 white dolls before you get to a doll of color.

“I also imagine he forgot about the decades that cute, little Black and brown girls could only choose from all-white doll shelves — none of which looked anything like them. Why? Because whiteness was the default.”

You must forgive Chad…I mean, Rob. He’s not a journalist. He doesn’t actually investigate anything. He reads a teleprompter, and looks for things that will inflame his audience of old racists. He didn’t get the job because he’s perceptive, or intelligent, or well-educated, he’s there to look smart on TV. He is what he is, which is the very lowest rung on the information ladder. He’s also not a trustworthy rung, so ignore him.

Research in the UK reveals a decline in the proportion of people employed in creative work. That’s not good.

The proportion of working-class actors, musicians and writers has shrunk by half since the 1970s, new research shows.

Analysis of Office for National Statistics data found that 16.4% of creative workers born between 1953 and 1962 had a working-class background, but that had fallen to just 7.9% for those born four decades later.

I wonder why. The article doesn’t get around to giving a good explanation; there’s one waffling attempt to wave it away by saying that there is a smaller pool of working class people to draw from now, as if everyone is just wealthier now so naturally you’re going to have fewer lower middle class people going into the arts. But then, I’m confused by what they also say:

The finding raises questions about why years of attempts to make the arts more open and diverse have not had more impact – people who grew up in professional families were four times more likely than those with working-class parents to be in creative work, the study found.

But then, if everyone is generally moving up to the professional class, shouldn’t there be a flowering of the arts in the UK? I don’t think we’re getting the full story here. I’d want to know the change in proportion of creatives from the whole population, not just a single class. It makes the story uninterpretable to leave that out.

I would suggest though, that from the American side, part of the story has to be the transformation of education from an endeavor to help people learn more to one that’s all about landing a good job. And that change is driven by the fact that higher ed has become so expensive that it’s pricing itself out of reach of the working class. Even in the 1970s, as a member of a working class family, college was not encouraged — in those years, I could pay for it with part-time and summer work, but it meant delaying getting a good union job in a trade for four years, and that was lost income. Now you go to college, it means racking up $100,000 in debt. You better not major in poetry or literature or dance with that kind of debt hanging over your head! Computers and chemical engineering, on the other hand…

Here’s a teacher having an old, tired, familiar argument with his students…and the students getting the better of him.

It’s not clear what happens between the first and second clip, but context clues suggest the teacher told the students that he used to be racist but had since stopped being racist, in his own opinion. In the next clip, another student says, “So are you trying to say you used to think that?”

“Yes, sometimes,” the teacher said.

The student who asked to go to the bathroom told the teacher, “You said ‘I am racist,’ that means right now,” suggesting that this was not something he had put behind him. The children continued to try to get him to say whether or not he is racist. “So you are a racist,” a student says.

“Damn, how many times do I gotta say it?” the teacher said, adding, “I’m frustrated with this conversation,” after the kids called him out for swearing.

“You guys don’t think that I’ve made peace with all this stuff? You think I’m still walking around prejudiced against people?” the teacher asks. One can assume they probably did.

In the final clip, the teacher explains, “Deep down in my heart, I’m ethnocentric, which means I think my race is the superior one … I think everybody thinks that and they’re just not honest about it.”

The students explain to him that no, not everybody thinks that. The teacher says he believes that “on that level” everybody is racist. The students then tell him that they have lost respect for him, to which he responds to by telling them that they should have more respect for him now, because of how he is honest.

I’ve had that argument applied to me, too. The racist likes to claim that he’s not so bad, because everyone thinks their race/ethnicity is superior. But it’s not true! That’s just projection. I’ve never felt that being white makes me better than anyone else — I admit to sometimes feeling superior to individuals, but that’s just because I too often find myself in the company of creationists, never because of my complexion.

That final claim, that the racist is better because he’s honest about his racism, is just more bullshit.

The teacher is in Texas…no surprise there, although there are bad teachers everywhere. This one isn’t a teacher anymore, at least temporarily — he’s been placed on administrative leave.

Nathan Cofnas is another of those guys who has made an academic career out of racism, and it has paid off! He just got a three year appointment to Cambridge University!

An American academic who has expressed controversial views about racial differences in intelligence has been made an early career fellow in the University’s Philosophy faculty.

In 2019 Nathan Cofnas became embroiled in controversy over an article he wrote, in which he argued that genetic differences in IQ could exist between racial and ethnic groups. In the article Cofnas also said that since “truth is intrinsically valuable”, it is scientists’ duty to uncover it even when controversial.

“Controversial”. “Controversial” is not an adequate criterion for legitimate science. Here, Cofnas is using “controversial” as a substitute for “contradicted by the evidence”. Here’s a much better article that rebuts Cofnas’s nonsense.

With that in mind, we would like to respectfully point out that when racial realism is described only as being “provocative” or “controversial,” that comes disconcertingly close to saying that creationism, anti-vaccination, or climate change skepticism are just scientifically controversial ideas. Like these fringe ideas, racial realism belongs to a group of ideas that insist on their legitimacy in spite of (and not in the absence of) disproving empirical evidence – the quintessential definition of being unscientific. Hence, where the claims made by anti-vaxxers, creationists, climate denialists, and racial realists are, by many, seen as provocative, scientists find it lamentable when these ideas seep into academic journals, where they certainly do not belong.

Unfortunately, some people at Cambridge decided this “controversial” guy deserved a philosophy appointment. I hope they enjoy the controversy that follows!

Kanye West’s poisonous anti-semitism seems to have come home to roost.

Kanye West has responded to being dropped by several major partnerships, including Adidas, CAA, MRC and Balenciaga.

Ari Emanuel. I lost 2 billion dollars in one day. And I’m still alive. This is love speech. I still love you. God still loves you. The money is not who I am. The people is who I am, West wrote on Instagram. The post comes days after Emanuel, CEO of Endeavor, urged companies to stop doing business with West.

He was “worth” $2.5 billion last week, now he’s “worth” half a billion dollars. Was he actually worth that much? Is he worth that much now? Is anyone? This tells me that all those wealthy people are actually much more fragile than they’d like you to think.

Also, a ‘death-to-Jews’ speech is not love speech.

This is actually the kind of letter I like to see.

Dear Chancellor Ericksen and the University of Minnesota Morris community:

Today, I want to extend my sincere apology on behalf of the Board of Regents following Regent Sviggum’s apology yesterday. As you know, last Thursday Regent Sviggum asked a question regarding Morris enrollment. We all bear responsibility for speaking up and condemning the question, whether on Thursday or in our Friday meeting. As the leader of our board, I should have done better and I am not proud of my inaction.

Our Board is committed to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and it is a central anchor of the president’s MPact 2025 strategic plan, which the Board has fully endorsed. We are inspired every day by the diversity of thought, of inquiry, of vision, and of presence that drives our institution forward.

In March of 2023, we will hold the Board of Regents meeting on the Morris campus. With the full Board on campus, we will focus on engaging with the Morris community, including students, faculty, staff, and the broader Morris region.

In addition, I am committing today to provide DEI training to the entire Board of Regents that will help us more fully understand and reaffirm the power that different perspectives bring to our shared success. Diversity is not a challenge, it is a strength that makes our institution—and Morris—one of the most highly regarded universities in the country.

Consistent with the educational mission of our great University, the Board of Regents recognizes that we must acknowledge our failings and learn from them. Hopefully, our sincere efforts to do so will serve as an acknowledgement of our responsibility and commitment as Regents to advance the University’s land grant mission of teaching and service for the benefit of all Minnesotans.

Our mission is your mission. We look forward to meeting with you in March to further discuss the importance of diversity and how we, as a Board, can support you in your efforts, as well as to listen to your stories of the many ways that the Morris campus embraces the University mission and inspires us all.

With thanks,

Ken Powell, Chair
Board of Regents

I think maybe Sviggum was chastised by the board — I don’t think he is well liked.

Although…they’re all coming out to Morris in March? We’ll still be frozen and under the snow, and we don’t have a star chamber quite as intimidating as the one they’ve got in the Twin Cities. Maybe they can meet in my lab, surrounded by spider cages instead.

An interesting/sad fact about COVID death rates: there’s been a demographic reversal. Where before black communities suffered most, now white people are dying off faster.

The Post analysis revealed the changing pattern in covid deaths. At the start of the pandemic, Black people were more than three times as likely to die of covid as their White peers. But as 2020 progressed, the death rates narrowed — but not because fewer Black people were dying. White people began dying at increasingly unimaginable numbers, too, the Post analysis found.

In summer 2021, the nation saw some of the pandemic’s lowest death rates, as vaccines, shoring up the body’s immune response, became widely available.

Then came the delta variant. The virus mutated, able to spread among the vaccinated. As it did, an erosion of trust in government and in medicine — in any institution, really — slowed vaccination rates, stymieing the protection afforded by vaccines against severe illness and death.

After delta’s peak in September 2021, the racial differences in covid deaths started eroding. The Post analysis found that Black deaths declined, while White deaths never eased, increasing slowly but steadily, until the mortality gap flipped. From the end of October through the end of December, White people died at a higher rate than Black people did, The Post found.

Maybe now Republicans will start caring? Nope.

The nature of the virus makes the elderly and people with underlying health conditions — including hypertension, diabetes and obesity, all of which beset Black people at higher rates and earlier in life than White people — particularly vulnerable to severe illness and death.
…
The virus also attacks unvaccinated adults — who polls show are more likely to be Republicans — with a ferocity that puts them at a much higher risk of infection and death.

Of course, the problem is more complicated than that Republicanism is a mark of doom — although I think you could make a case that Republican policies are at the root of wrecking the pandemic response for everyone. There’s a whole array of factors that are killing conservative Americans.

Resilience gave way to fatigue. Holes left by rural hospital closures deepened. Medical mistrust and misinformation raged. Skeptics touted debunked alternatives over proven treatments and prevention. Mask use became a victim of social stigma.

Many Republicans decided they would rather roll the dice with their health than follow public health guidance — even when provided by President Donald Trump, who was booed after saying he had been vaccinated and boosted.

It’s also racism. Deep down, ugly, visceral racism.

Researchers at the University of Georgia found that White people who assumed the pandemic had a disparate effect on communities of color — or were told that it did — had less fear of being infected with the coronavirus, were less likely to express empathy toward vulnerable populations and were less supportive of safety measures, according to an article in Social Science & Medicine.

A growing body of research, outlined in the book “Caste,” by Isabel Wilkerson, shows that even the most anodyne of social exchanges with people of different races, such as glancing at faded yearbook photos, can raise White people’s blood pressure and cortisol levels.

Not all white people, I hope. I’m at a too diverse university, remember.

For some white people, though, it’s all too much, and it’s going to kill them.

As Metzl conducted research for his book in 2016, a 41-year-old uninsured Tennessean named Trevor who was jaundiced and in liver failure told him “I would rather die” than sign up for the ACA. When asked why, Trevor, who was identified by first name only, said: “We don’t need any more government in our lives. And in any case, no way I want my tax dollars paying for Mexicans or welfare queens.”

Oh, Ronald Reagan, you were truly a curse on this country.

Everyone: get vaccinated. Even if you’re a Republican.