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mekka okereke :verified:

Some of y'all are still confused as to why it seems that Silicon Valley billionaires are "turning to Trump." That's because you don't listen to Black people, you disrespect poor white people, and you ignore obvious statistics that have been staring you in the face for decades.

Silicon. Valley. Billionaires. Have. Always. Supported. Trump.

Not because they like the tax breaks. Because they are more likely to be racist, and racism is the greatest predictor of Trump support.

1/N

mekka okereke :verified:

There's a statistical lie that the US tells itself:

"Poor white people are more racist than rich white people!"

This is objectively, demonstrably, false. It's been shown over and over. But we still cling to it. We use lies like: "college educated white people are less likely to vote GOP!"

First of all there's not a 1:1 correlation between racism and GOP. Second, business owners are richer than employees, and most US business owners *didn't* go to college.

2/N

mekka okereke :verified:

This is not good. A thing that gives me hope:

Iran has the *capability* to strike Israel in under 15 minutes. Iran has anti-ship drones that are almost impossible to shoot down. Iran could have shot first and stayed silent and then claimed responsibility hours later.

Iran *chose* to do a strike that provided hours of early warning. Iran used drones that are relatively easy to shoot down. Iran announced that they were retaliating before they did so.

mekka okereke :verified:

Before the inevitable questions of "Whose side am I on anyway?!"

I'm on team Palestinian children, Israeli children, Iranian children, and Yemeni children. I'm on team children. Because that's who gets hurt most in war, whether that's open war, proxy war, or anything in between.

Anyone hoping for escalation, on any part of this conflict, hasn't thought things through. At all.

mekka okereke :verified:

♥️♥️♥️Shoutout to the staff of the hotel I stayed at for expertly de-escalating a Karen situation!

♥️♥️♥️And shoutout to the white hotel guests that stuck around to make sure that hotel security heard exactly what she was trying to do. My favorite comment: "Wow! A Karen situation in real life! I've only ever seen these online! This is surreal! What is she thinking?"

End result, yours truly did not get kicked out of the hotel for no reason, and feels slightly better about the state of the world.

Show previous comments
Ben Rosengart

@mekkaokereke Sorry that happened, glad you got a good outcome.

Callalily

@mekkaokereke
Sorry to hear that happened to you. But glad that the other guests in line told the truth of situation to security. It's really sad that people act like that. Good to hear that security kicked her out.

mekka okereke :verified:

🤔

1) There are Instagram accounts posting content today that would prompt many Mastodon admins to defederate immediately.

2) Those accounts are not being moderated by Instagram. User reports are closed without action. So their Threads version of those accounts will likely also not be moderated.

3) So many Mastodon admins will defederate from Threads shortly after federation.

So I'm not sure why folks are spending so much time debating whether defederating before the inevitable harm is bad?

George Lund

@mekkaokereke there are so many people - and importantly organisations - on there, that if/when it federates, I'd view it as probably too big to defederate. Silencing so many people because of the actions of a few, or because of inadequate regulation of their megacorp owner, seems like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

ShadSterling

@mekkaokereke until Facebook actually implements ActivityPub, any consideration of [de]federation is pointless. If and when their posts become available, it’s fine to treat them the same as any other instance, which would result in most instances defederating them for failing to moderate harmful posts. Giving all this attention to their stated intent just means there’s less attention left for better things

mekka okereke :verified:

🧔🏼‍♂️"No one watches women's sports! If the little girls want to earn as much as manly men, they should get their numbers up! That's just like, economics man!"

But also...

Women's basketball viewership is growing faster than men's basketball, and the most viewed women's game on ESPN this year has *higher* viewership than the most viewed men's basketball game.

kare11.com/article/news/local/

All the excuses are falling away. Just like we said that they would.

🧔🏼‍♂️"No one watches women's sports! If the little girls want to earn as much as manly men, they should get their numbers up! That's just like, economics man!"

But also...

Women's basketball viewership is growing faster than men's basketball, and the most viewed women's game on ESPN this year has *higher* viewership than the most viewed men's basketball game.

mekka okereke :verified:

🧔🏼‍♂️"Well, pro basketball is about dunks! Very few women can dunk! If we lowered the rims, more people would watch women's basketball!"

🤦🏿‍♂️No. We just covered that more people are watching women's basketball anyway.

And the highest paid NBA player, who also just signed the biggest NBA player endorsement deal in history, is Steph Curry. Steph rarely dunks.🤷🏿‍♂️

Just watch the South Carolina vs Iowa highlights. Caitlin Clark is a generational talent. NBA players are fans.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=tfh_CFs4

🧔🏼‍♂️"Well, pro basketball is about dunks! Very few women can dunk! If we lowered the rims, more people would watch women's basketball!"

🤦🏿‍♂️No. We just covered that more people are watching women's basketball anyway.

And the highest paid NBA player, who also just signed the biggest NBA player endorsement deal in history, is Steph Curry. Steph rarely dunks.🤷🏿‍♂️

mekka okereke :verified:

@adamgreenfield

Again, I question the assumption that "VC" is bad, because by assets under management, the vast majority of VC money is controlled by Alt-Right, openly anti-democratic, anti-social, hyper capitalist, fascist adjacent men. These dudes make horrific, near genocidal decisions in everything they do.

The bad part of "nazi bank" is nazi, not bank. We need banks.

So I won't know if VC is bad until Eg, Black women get more than *checks notes* half of 1% of all VC assets to manage.

mekka okereke :verified:

@adamgreenfield
If you squint at the definition of venture capital, then the National Science Foundation, is a publicly owned Venture Capital firm.🙂🙃

VC tries to claim credit for inventing the Covid vaccine, but that's a lie. The Moderna vaccine was made possible because of high risk, low potential for success, research into mRNA vaccines. That research was paid for by an NSF grant won by a Black woman, Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett. She led the "Moderna" mRNA team.

She couldn't have raised VC.🤷🏿‍♂️

@adamgreenfield
If you squint at the definition of venture capital, then the National Science Foundation, is a publicly owned Venture Capital firm.🙂🙃

VC tries to claim credit for inventing the Covid vaccine, but that's a lie. The Moderna vaccine was made possible because of high risk, low potential for success, research into mRNA vaccines. That research was paid for by an NSF grant won by a Black woman, Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett. She led the "Moderna" mRNA team.

22

@mekkaokereke I returned to this thread after reading Nova’s thread about racism and capitalism’s intertwined history and I’d love to know more about your interpretation of that relationship, whenever.

The above magnificent toot makes it clear that your views on capitalism are more nuanced than many anti-capitalists on here (if I may be forgiven for generalizing, they’d uniformly see banks and money as problematic), that capitalism is bad when it abets racism (and misogyny and xenophobia and homophobia), but it’s unclear what a capitalism without those would look like. Am I oversimplifying your position or totally on the wrong track here?

(Well, we do have the existence proof of the Nordic market-socialist states that combine a vigorous capitalism with a rigorous regulatory arm and social safety net.)

@mekkaokereke I returned to this thread after reading Nova’s thread about racism and capitalism’s intertwined history and I’d love to know more about your interpretation of that relationship, whenever.

The above magnificent toot makes it clear that your views on capitalism are more nuanced than many anti-capitalists on here (if I may be forgiven for generalizing, they’d uniformly see banks and money as problematic), that capitalism is bad when it abets racism (and misogyny and xenophobia and homophobia),...

mekka okereke :verified:

Happy #BlackHistoryMonth !

I hope to get to Black history soon, but I'm still working through white US history. There's so much of it!

Q: Why are Black people in the US so much more likely to die in traffic accidents than white people? Are Black folk more likely to drive under the influence of alcohol or drugs (DUI)? Is it street racing? Are y'all just bad drivers?

A: Hmm. I'm stumped! No one knows the answer to why this happens! Just kidding. It's racism. It's always racism.

#BlackMastodon

mekka okereke :verified:

A big portion of US traffic deaths are "SUV vs anything." "Anything" can be a smaller car, a cyclist, or a pedestrian.

Because of the systemically racist way that US infrastructure has been built, "SUV vs pedestrian" strikes are disproportionately likely to involve a white driver and Black child pedestrian. White SUVs drive in places where Black kids walk.

This affects people of all colors, but the most dangerous way to be a pedestrian in the US *by far*, is to be a Black child aged 4 to 15.

mekka okereke :verified:

Happy #BlackHistoryMonth !

I'm still not talking about Black history. I'm still talking about white US history.

Q: Why do Black kids not do well in school? Is it because their dads are uninvolved and uncaring parents? Bill Cosby and Herschel Walker told me that, and they are good and wise men that we should listen to! It's Black dads' fault! Boo Black men!

A: No. Black kids only do poorly in school *in extremely racist countries.*

#BlackMastodon

mekka okereke :verified:

Black dads are *more* involved in both early childhood activities like bathing and diapering, and school aged activities. From the CDC:

A larger percentage of Black dads
(41%) had helped their coresidential children with homework every day in
the last 4 weeks compared with
white (28%) dads.

Only 30% of white dads take their own kids to activities every day, vs 42% of Black dads.

71% of white dads talk with their kids about their day, vs 79% of Black dads.

Etc, etc.

Black dads are *more* involved in both early childhood activities like bathing and diapering, and school aged activities. From the CDC:

A larger percentage of Black dads
(41%) had helped their coresidential children with homework every day in
the last 4 weeks compared with
white (28%) dads.

Only 30% of white dads take their own kids to activities every day, vs 42% of Black dads.

mekka okereke :verified:

Happy #BlackHistoryMonth !

Not ready to talk about Black History. Still talking about white US history.

Q: Why are Black neighborhoods so often high crime neighborhoods? Must be a lawless people! Violent! Thieves! Predators!

A: There is no such thing as a "high crime neighborhood." The whole concept is entirely made up based on our notion of what we consider a crime.

You may be thinking:🤔 Wait... What?! Not true! A high crime neighborhood has more drug use and sales, theft, and even murder!

mekka okereke :verified:

But let's dig into that and unpack the racism a little.

Drugs are easiest to understand. At this point everyone should know that white Americans do more drugs than Black Americans. They also do more hard drugs. We don't consider Drs. offices to be high crime, and yet, opioids.

Black neighborhoods only seem like they have more drug use, because of how we've decided to define crimes around drug use, and how we choose to enforce.

mekka okereke :verified:

Citizens! *Puts on steel toed boots* I urge you to remain calm at this moment! *loads rubber bullets into launcher* violence is not the answer! *Hangs night stick from belt* We grieve with your community! *Pulls reflective visor down on helmet* Peace is what this moment calls for *climbs into tank* The great MLK Jr said and I quote: I love police, and they are our friends! *diesel engine roars* So obey, comply, and remember we are in this together! *Tear gas launcher slowly points towards crowd*

mekka okereke :verified:

Are we ready to talk about how police dressing in riot gear and acting, well, like cops, makes crowds more likely to riot? No? OK then. Proceed.

themarshallproject.org/2020/06

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