I did not know the minimum wage for jobs where tipping is common is $2.13. That is not a living wage — heck, the standard minimum wage is not a living wage. So why do we allow this? Here’s a video explainer.

That explains a lot, like why European countries tend not to have a tradition of tipping, while this country with its legacy of slavery does.

The appropriate response is not to refuse to tip — it’s to demand changes to the law to require that business owners pay their employees a fair salary. Don’t deprive already abused workers now.

I was worried that I’d get a bunch of entitled commenters bragging about how they never tip, like in that scene from Reservoir Dogs. But it could be worse. It could be much, much worse. Here’s the first comment in that YouTube video.

The Depths of Gehenna

Another Bigoted African pissing all over Whites..The Time has come…Deport ALL Africans back to the Jungle where they belong..They are Not fit to associate with Humans..

Don’t be that guy, either. Jeez, but YouTube commenters are the slimy blobs bobbing in the sewer.

Watch these cackling nitwits trash a bookstore.

The weird thing is, this bookstore is in London, and they’re chanting Trump! Trump! Trump!

The organizer of this intrusion, Luke Nash-Jones, had a plan: act normal and ask them for a couple of awkward books. I guess that’s what passes for normal among a crowd of ninnies, or as they call themselves, Anglo Celtic traditionalists. As for the awkward books…

He exclaimed oh my god as he shows the camera a copy of “The Jewish Question”, by Abram Leon.

He accused the shopworker of being a Jew hater, despite his attempts to explain the book was a posthumously published study of the historic roots of anti-Semitism written by a man who died in a concentration camp.

The lesson I’ve learned is that ignorant, hateful people all around the world look up to Donald Trump as their hero. He truly is an international man of our times.

I thought the Right was supposed to be against political correctness and excessive sensitivity? But it seems they are quite happy to wax indignant about tone when it’s their skin being pricked. The latest incident is that the NY Times hired Sarah Jeong, a liberal leaning writer of Korean descent who has mocked the fragile fee-fees of white people. We’re supposed to set aside our concern about bigotry when a white writer uses the N-word, or when another white male writer announces that women who get an abortion deserve the death penalty, but poking fun at the privileged position of white people…oh my god, this is unforgivable racism.

Right now on the internet you can find lots of people clutching their pearls and quoting old tweets by Jeong — whole litanies of strung-together excerpts making a kind of poetry of laughter at white sensitivity. It’s entertaining because these articles are making Jeong’s point for her: that an awful lot of white people have achieved eminence while not actually earning it, and they’re terribly touchy about it.

Speaking of aggrieved privileged white men granted a voice far above their talent, of course Andrew Sullivan has contributed to the genre. Oh, Mr Sullivan, if only you weren’t quite so predictable and trite…

Is the newest member of the New York Times editorial board, Sarah Jeong, a racist?

From one perspective — that commonly held by people outside the confines of the political left — she obviously is. A series of tweets from 2013 to 2015 reveal a vicious hatred of an entire group of people based only on their skin color. If that sounds harsh, let’s review a few, shall we? “White men are bullshit,” is one. A succinct vent, at least. But notice she’s not in any way attacking specific white men for some particular failing, just all white men for, well, existing. Or this series of ruminations: “have you ever tried to figure out all the things that white people are allowed to do that aren’t cultural appropriation. there’s literally nothing. like skiing, maybe, and also golf. white people aren’t even allowed to have polo. did you know that. like don’t you just feel bad? why can’t we give white people a break. lacrosse isn’t for white people either. it must be so boring to be white.” Or this: “basically i’m just imagining waking up white every morning with a terrible existential dread that i have no culture.” I can’t say I’m offended by this — it’s even mildly amusing, if a little bonkers. (Has she read, say, any Shakespeare or Emily Dickinson?) But it does reveal a worldview in which white people — all of them — are cultural parasites and contemptibly dull.

A little more disturbing is what you might call “eliminationist” rhetoric — language that wishes an entire race could be wiped off the face of the earth: “#cancelwhitepeople.” Or: “White people have stopped breeding. you’ll all go extinct soon. that was my plan all along.” One simple rule I have about describing groups of human beings is that I try not to use a term that equates them with animals. Jeong apparently has no problem doing so. Speaking of animals, here’s another gem: “Dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.” Or you could describe an entire race as subhuman: “Are white people genetically disposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins.” And then there’s this simple expression of the pleasure that comes with hatred: “oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.” I love that completely meretricious “old” to demean them still further. And that actual feeling: joy at cruelty!

Poor Andrew, so innocent, so naive, so trusting. No, I wouldn’t call that “eliminationist” rhetoric. David Neiwert has a good working definition of the term, and has a great many horrifying examples. Jeong doesn’t even come close. Ribbing the people in power is a perfectly reasonable tactic, especially when it’s clear it’s not a serious proposal — and no, laughing at people who complain that other people are outbreeding them, or calling them groveling goblins who must live underground, isn’t eliminationist. It’s kind of rude, at worst, and as someone pale enough to burn beneath incandescent lights, that comment does sting a little bit, because it bears a bit of truth in it.

But Sullivan should have avoided quoting her, because this one is a little too harsh: “Dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.” It’s true of me, I’ll concede, but you know who it fits perfectly? Andrew Sullivan. And there he goes, pissing on the internet again.

Perhaps you’ve seen this video. A man follows a black person to his home, hurls racist insults at him, all while driving a van with his company’s name and phone number blazoned on the side. Just the stupidity hurts, but it’s the racism that makes it far, far worse.

ALL HANDS ON DECK.

"I just want to let you know what a nigger you are." -Jeffrey Whitman, owner of Uriahs Heating, Cooling, & Refrigeration in Columbus, OH

Jeffrey Whitman, in his own company vehicle, chased a Black man all the way to his home to repeatedly call him a nigger. pic.twitter.com/BMh3bHHBCS

— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) July 25, 2018

Afterwards, the driver, Jeff Whitman (I think he dropped the “e” that belongs after the “t” in his name) was totally unapologetic. Calling someone the N-word?

“I don’t know if it makes it right or wrong all I can say is I grew up with it and not a big deal for me,” said the man in the van.

I guess that makes it all right. He was brought up as a racist, so no problem if he says racist things.

Unfortunately for him, his business is getting wrecked by a flood of negative reviews on social media, and the Better Business Bureau is suspending his accreditation. Whoops. Words have consequences. Now he’s ruined…but he still doesn’t understand what he did wrong.

“I’m out of business, I’m completely out, I’m done, I’ll never work in Columbus again,” Whitman said. “This has completely and thoroughly ruined my life.”

“I just don’t understand the intensity of the hate,” said the man who drove two miles out of his way to verbally abuse a complete stranger based on the color of his skin.

I just sort of feel like saying…your feelings don’t matter, snowflake. Nobody owes you a living. The free market has spoken. Suck it up, bucko.

Except that feelings do matter, and what wrecked your business was that you thought your bigotry against people was justified, and that what you really need to learn is some empathy for other human beings. It’s ignorance that killed Uriahs Heating, Cooling, and Refrigeration.

Just show them this video.

If you don’t have any racist friends, just read the comments (don’t read the comments, ever).

When I’ve visited London (or New York, or any cosmopolitan city), I’ve always enjoyed the diversity — it’s a good thing. I’m also happy when everyone can feel like their wonderfully complicated place is home. There are plenty of white people in London who also feel it is their home — why should they also have this sense of exclusivity? We can all be home. If someone else feels at home in your city, that doesn’t mean you can’t also feel at home.

If you think “home” has to be a place where the only residents have the same complexion that you do, that means you’re a racist. It’s a pretty easy test.

A 15 year old Honduran girl escapes from a detention center, and hides on your property. You discover her; she’s distraught and terrified, and does not want to go back to that horrible place. What do you do?

A) Continue to shelter her.

B) Contact an immigration aid society, or an immigration lawyer, and try to get her some help.

C) Rat her out to the police.

I think I’d try some combination of A & B; do what I can then, but try to find a better informed and capable source to provide better help. But that’s not what Frank Gonzalez did! He first called Nora Sandigo, a member of a non-profit that helps immigrants, but then he apparently had a better idea.

Before Sandigo could get there, police vans began circling the shop’s parking lot. Gonzalez said nobody from the shop called the police, but he eventually flagged down an officer and pointed to where the girl had hidden.

So his answer was C. I think he just failed the course.

Shall we learn some more about Frank?

“She said, ‘Please don’t punish me, don’t touch me, don’t hold my hand,’” he said. “They put handcuffs on her, but not like a criminal, like a human being.”

How do you handcuff someone like a human being, but not like a criminal? Frank doesn’t seem very bright here. He’s making non-excuses.

But wait, it gets worse.

Gonzalez, who came to the United States from Cuba in 1971 with his family, said he supports the Trump administration’s tough stance on border security but disagrees with separating families.

“People who want to come here, and work for the American Dream, they should get papers and follow the rules,” Gonzalez said. “But it breaks my heart to see mothers and fathers divided from their children. Families should be together all the time.”

Still, he says he supports Trump’s general immigration policy, adding, “Let’s make America great again.”

So he was an illegal immigrant himself, but was gifted with sanctuary just because of American anti-Cuba policies. And he’s unable to see the similarities in his past situation to a Honduran family fleeing their country for a better life. He’s the personification of Republican “I got mine, screw you” attitudes.

And then he has the gall to give us a goddamn MAGA to justify his actions.

Fuck you, Frank, you moral leper. You just failed Humanity 101.

These two Canadians are in Australia now, preaching racism together. It’s kind of damning that Southern would want to be associated with raving loon Molyneux, and that Molyneux would want to be associated with slimy dirtbag Southern, but I guess they were made for each other.

Southern did her usual schtick of seeking out what she calls “no-go zones” to show how racist they are, as if she thinks racism is a bad thing. So she walks into an area with a high proportion of Muslims with camera and sound guy in tow, making a little bit of a spectacle of herself, and notices how suspiciously people are looking at her (surprise!) and that some people are yelling in Arabic (oh my god), and starts to head down a street to a mosque to stir up some real juicy footage. She’s stopped by a policeman, who tells her no: he knows that she’s there to provoke trouble, so he tells her that she may not go there. He also informs her that local white people have no trouble coexisting in this neighborhood — making it clear that the problem isn’t with respectful citizens, it’s specifically with her and her actions.

So she declares that this Australian neighborhood is under Sharia law. She knows nothing.

Molyneux was no better. He spoke to a packed house of cheering Aussies and delivered blatant racism against Australian aboriginal culture. There’s also some epic irony.

I want you you remember that great evils were halted with the advent of whites to Australia as great evils were halted with the advent of whites to South Africa

I don’t like the idea of racial pride” Molyneux says after talking about how amazing it was when whites came to Australia

We in the west have extended ethics beyond the in group. That’s why we have human rights, that’s why we ended slavery, that’s why we extended rights to minority group’s. We are the only culture to have done that. Other cultures are not Universalist but we are.

Oh, well. I guess it should be reassuring that the US doesn’t have a monopoly on evil wankers. Canada and Australia have got them, too.

Freethoughtblogs uses Cloudflare protection — we need it because every once in a while, some jerk targets us with a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, and the worst jerks are the ones who try to shut down free speech in the name of free speech. Unfortunately, as I’ve recently learned, Cloudflare isn’t necessarily one of the good guys — they also shelter various contemptible hate groups, like incels. Follow the link if you want to see examples of violent threats against women and other groups, since I don’t feel like quoting that crap today.

I do appreciate their insistence on remaining neutral on content, though. Who knows who would be shut down if they didn’t explicitly avoid judging the servers they defend?

Civil liberties organization Electronic Frontier Foundation released a poignant statement in the aftermath of the Charlottesville violence, highlighting the trouble with selective censorship: “All fair-minded people must stand against the hateful violence and aggression that seems to be growing across our country. But we must also recognize that on the internet, any tactic used now to silence neo-Nazis will soon be used against others, including people whose opinions we agree with” such as the Black Lives Matter movement, it said.

So sure, if that’s all this was about, I’d agree that staying out of the fight would be a fair and reasonable way to maintain the integrity of the service. But there is also the idea that you shouldn’t be allowed to shout “fire!” in a crowded theater, and some of these sites are inciting violence and murder. It also seems fair to me that there are some limits — that you ought to be able to express unpopular opinions, but are limited in encouraging dangerous activities.

Other companies place these reasonable restrictions on their users.

Private internet companies can reserve the right to terminate a client’s website if its users post content that violates their terms of service, as many did with The Daily Stormer. GoDaddy, for example, does not allow its clients to use their sites in a manner that “promotes, encourages or engages in terrorism, violence against people, animals, or property,” or for “morally objectionable activities.”

Cloudflare, of course, is also free to set such terms, but has argued that it has no business regulating content because it is a security and delivery network, not a host provider.

OK, “morally objectionable activities” is unacceptably vague — there are people who would say that being gay, or skipping church, are morally objectionable. But saying that a client can’t use your service to promote terrorism or violence is a specific and reasonable constraint. We already have that requirement here at FtB, and we’ve invoked it against bloggers here in the past. If Cloudflare had that kind of provision in their terms of service, we’d sign it without hesitation, and we’d be enforcing it here as well as by our hosting service.

We aren’t even close to what is represented by the clients using Cloudflare, though. Follow the link: it’s people advocating mass murder, torture, and rape. These are mobs whipping each other up into ever more furious hate, and there are multiple examples of readers of those sorts of sites taking action and killing people.

Unfortunately, Cloudflare is so ubiquitous it now has an effective monopoly (they also do a really good job of protecting web sites). Does anyone know of any equally capable alternatives?