Sometimes I wonder what are the fundamental differences between these states and Iran or Afghanistan except that their imaginary friend is slightly different.
The West has made Iran out to be some backwater bogeyman when it is actually quite developed and in some areas progressive compared to our other allies in the region.
Rick Steve's Iran was a great watch that everyone should check out.
There's a lot of misunderstanding in the West about Iranians, or as we call ourselves "Persians." (I suppose to avoid the negative "Islamic" connotation..) Despite how the country is portrayed, the people themselves tend to be pro Western, educated, and fairly liberal.
So the unfortunate reality is that the government is highly repressive. It tightly controls communication and enforces a strict theocratic system that doesn’t reflect the will of much of the population.
If you're curious about what Iranian society is all about, look at the photos before the 1979 revolution. That change wasn't long ago, it was just a generation back. My parents lived through it. Many from that time believed they were rising up for democracy, not realizing what would replace the Shah was something even more authoritarian. My own father admits they were misled and now actively curses the regime and himself.. the peak being burning the US embassy because they were told it's a foreign spy command center..
What's especially tragic is that Iran today has a very young population, many of whom strongly oppose the current regime. But peaceful change feels unlikely, look up what happened anytime people took to the streets. And if the government were to collapse without a clear path forward, there's a real risk of something even worse filling the vacuum.
That said, there are reasons for hope. During the most recent uprising, the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement, women led the charge, and the government was forced to back down somewhat after international outcry. Since then, many women have continued to defy mandatory hijab laws, walking around without head coverings despite the real risks of arrest or violence. It’s incredibly brave, and it speaks to a deep, ongoing resistance that’s hard to suppress:
Yes but it’s also other things, including a symbol of diplomatic relations with the country which owns the embassy. Burning it down because it’s a spy center is possibly disregarding what else it represents to the detriment of the those who destroyed it.
In jurisdictions with better access to abortion people choose to abort the kind of "doesn't stand a chance" pregnancies that people in jurisdictions who can't access abortion wind up giving birth to only for them to die shortly thereafter.
Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't both jurisdictions equally averse to abortion? Sure, you'd find a few exceptions here and there but both countries have banned abortion? Both places have banned abortion where the mother's life may be in danger. Iran additionally allows abortions in cases where the fetus suffers from a major medical condition (genetic defects like Down's Syndrome don't count) which doesn't let the future child live a viable life.
The charitable interpretation is that this isn't real science. If you have gender studies papers like the fake "Human Reactions to Rape Culture and Queer Performativity in Urban Dog Parks in Portland, Oregon" that showed dog parks were "rape-condoning spaces" where canine interactions reflected human rape culture and systemic oppression. They get through the system even though they are obviously satire. And yes, it was peer reviewed and even recognized as a significant contribution to feminist geography during the journal's anniversary celebration before the hoax was revealed
There were always things we considered science that are no longer considered science or harmful (blood letting, lobotomy, race science, etc)
While I also consider most of sociology and its ilk to be unscientific, and the rest to be only tenuously scientific, we all know that the real reason behind this order is not so charitable. Those in power don't care about science, they simply dislike what's written in those papers.
I would add that when you actually started to read and listen to what actual sociologists say and do ... it was nothing like what random math graduate mussing on HN thinks it is. The popular approach here of cherry picking two small studies and running wild with them was not all that much a thing.
Instead there was way more care about making conclusions, a lot of nuance and conditional statements (this study says so under those conditions and another one opposes sort of thing). But, what certain people here actually hate the most are results that are fairly consistent and were reproduced to death.
Yes, as practiced, as well as in principle, sociology is less scientific than physics.
Some systems- human social behavior being one of them- are simply not amenable to modern science because the systems have far too many uncontrolled variables, and the ability to create hypotheses which can't be falsified (because running the experiments would be impossible, unethical, or ambiguous) is far larger.
Science is a methodology. Science is applied equally in both disciplines. That one field has more uncontrolled variables does not make it less scientific.
Yes, they are. A lot of sociology and its surrounding fields is just talk. Idle speculation. The rather small empirical part is riddled with methodological errors. There are now people trying to build more detailed, computational models, but that is a slow process, and the more realistic the model, the more often it will be wrong.
It can be both. If they believe there is some harmful effect on this particular pseudo science about grievance politics that's driving social contagion and self harm, then they believe it should be removed, at least from places like libraries.
You'll see the same thing with race science. I reject it not because I'm well versed on how it's not rigorous enough, although it may be, but I think it's on its face because incredibly harmful.
Your example is a hoax article. It was not written by people you criticize. They never used it as an argument by them either.
Also, given development last few years, it turned out grievance studies were pretty correct about misogyny in society and about where rather large part of conservative population wants to go. Overall, they actually diagnosed things pretty accurately.
The uncharitable interpretation is that these theories are intentionally harmful and trying to push a particularly nefarious ideology for political gain.
The charitable interpretation is that this isn't real science.
> Also in Iran there's more female engineers than men. It's quite unlike Taliban ruled Afghanistan.
Also in Iran if you happened to be male & gay and get caught you have the choice between the death penalty and getting a forced "sex re-assignement" surgery.
> So, not unlike every single protestant country 30 years ago.
This is a straight out lie and you know it. 30 years ago was 1995.
But nice try rooting for a bloody dictatorship like Iran, led by people stuck in a 7th century mindset, allegedly the paragon of "progress" according to some here...
Considering Islam, Christianity, and Catholicism are brothers of the book, not much difference really. Fantasy has too much influence in their politics.
There are absolutely people on the US right who want to re-ban homosexuality; one of the bloody _supreme court justices_ has already signalled a willingness to re-examine Lawrence v Texas.
Mississippi is one of the 14 states where homosexuality was only legalised by Lawrence v Texas in 2003.
I don't think you're aware of America's own shameful history of criminalizing homosexuality, how recently that was still happening, and how some of the people currently wielding Federal power want to go back to it.
> If rule of law and due process are arbitrarily ignored then the only real difference is time.
Due process isn't a part of any religion afaik. And "rule of law" in Christianity and Islam is "suffer not a witch to live" and stuff like that. Not good.
> Given enough time all can degenerate.
"Degenerate" is a strange word in this context. Islam started as an imperialist death cult. Any movement towards liberalism and sanity is not something I'd call "degenerate". Christianity is hard to pin down where it started because it started small and without power. As soon as it got real power it turned evil real fast.
Despite how bad a few modern Islamist societies may be, it is very wrong to write sentences like "Islam started as an imperialist death cult", like they would be true and universally applicable.
While after conversion to Islam the Arabs had a few centuries of great territorial expansion, when they have conquered not only their neighbors in Asia, but also the North of Africa and a part of the Iberian Peninsula, this was the standard behavior at that time for any population that was strong enough to be able to do this. It does not make the Arabs more "imperialist" than any other of their contemporaneous nations, e.g. when compared with Charlemagne.
Moreover, for many centuries, until relatively recently, most conflicts in Islamic countries, such as the Turkish Empire, were more likely to be settled by judges according to the law and without making discrimination based on religion, nationality or wealth, than in the contemporaneous European countries, where the enforcement of the laws was frequently arbitrary and biased.
The Europeans who have lived in countries occupied by Islamic Turks or Arabs have survived many centuries without losing their religion or traditions, in contrast with what happened with those that have been occupied by European empires, like the Russian Empire (or its Soviet descendant) or by the Austrian Empire (or its Austria-Hungary successor), where complete denationalization has frequently happened, due to intense discrimination.
Anti-scientific interpretations of the Islamic religion rules have prevailed only many centuries after its appearance. Only then claims like "there is no need to read any books but the Holy Book, as it contains all truth that has to be known by humans" began to have supporters and enforcers. Moreover, taking into consideration the recent history, the US citizens are the last who should be mocking this kind of ideas, because many of them appear to think in the same way.
> Despite how bad a few modern Islamist societies may be, it is very wrong to write sentences like "Islam started as an imperialist death cult", like they would be true and universally applicable.
I said "started" didn't I? I think the historical record is very clear. I meant during the time of the founder.
The founder may have had an "imperialist" mindset, where he dreamed to succeed to convert everybody to follow his rules, but in this respect there was no difference between him and any European king or noble, or the Pope, or the Patriarch of Jerusalem, or any Chinese emperor or any successful ruler from any part of the world, at that time.
So you cannot single out Islam as a special religion from this point of view. At most it can be said that all monotheistic religions are structured to support imperialism, because they replace the previous multitude of gods, all of which had their specific jobs, at which they could not be supplanted by others, by a single all-powerful God who knows everything and who can do anything, and this structure of the celestial realm is supposed to be mirrored on Earth, where there must also be a single all-powerful ruler, whom everybody must obey without questioning.
The greatest conquest during the time of the founder ...
In December 629, after eight years of intermittent fighting with Meccan tribes, Muhammad gathered an army of 10,000 Muslim converts and marched on the city of Mecca. The conquest went largely uncontested, and Muhammad seized the city with minimal casualties.
I don’t mean to say Islam is perfect, very little is, but it does have a lot of due process and it hardly started as a death cult…
I’d spend some time researching due process in shariah and try to remember that in many ways Islam was highly innovative for its era in combining a legal code with its religion in a very integral manner. Now later Islam in particular othoman Islam was indeed somewhat warped and coupled with an expansionist empire, kinda like Christianity, and is another game altogether.
I appreciate your effort to reign in some reality here to show how privileged Americans are, but the word of the day is "trajectory" and it's aiming right at bottom right now.
>The slight difference is the difference between throwing gays off of tall buildings and complaining about them getting married.
no necessarily gays. Different societies may treat as non-humans different groups of people. US has just threw several hundreds of people into a black hole of prison in El Salvador. Considering the prison conditions even in US and how even US was openly waterboarding people multiple times (180 times for one guy), one can imagine what may be happening to the people in that prison in El Salvador (read on the El Salvador death squads, and the current regime there basically continues the same behavior). A fall from a tall building may be a mercy in that context. And i guess we'd never know how many of those guys will come out, if ever, of there alive.
Perhaps safer there than being put into American prisons. American prisons are run by the inmates. Inmate rape, gang related violence and murder are normalized and tolerated by the states and corporations that operate the prison system. Salvadoran prisons seem tightly controlled and well staffed. Perhaps they have economies of scale though?
What to know about CECOT, El Salvador's mega-prison for [alleged] gang members
CECOT prisoners do not receive visits and are never allowed outdoors. The prison does not offer workshops or educational programs to prepare them to return to society after their sentences.
The prison's dining halls, break rooms, gym and board games are for guards.
[ the human rights organization ] Cristosal reported last year that at least 261 people had died in El Salvador's prisons during the gang crackdown. The group and others have cited cases of abuse, torture and lack of medical attention.
.. the government has shown CECOT prisoners in boxer shorts marching into common areas and made to sit nearly atop each other. Cells lack enough bunks for everyone.
i can only conclude that you're either from US, Canada or Western Europe and somehow don't know, even in this age of global information, what a prison outside of the Western world is. And if you add that in case like El Salvador they intentionally make it "tough". There is a reason another "tough" guy - Duterte - has recently been delivered to ICC for the crimes against humanity. Because that is what "tough" means in those places.
Driving them to a remote rural area to rob, pistol-whip, torture, tie to a split-rail fence, and leaving them to die, so brutally that their face was covered in blood except for where the tears washed it away, happened in America.
And the people who would do that kind of thing again are absolutely THRILLED and EMPOWERED about the current administration's policies towards gay and trans people.
And it's happening much more often now thanks to Trump's Stochastic Terrorism, aimed at his lunatic cult of MAGA followers who are every bit as fanatical and delusional and vengeful and armed to the teeth as any religious imperialist death cult.
>Nordquist, originally from Minnesota, travelled to New York in September to meet his online girlfriend and was staying at Patty's Lodge motel in Canandaigua.
>New York authorities have charged five individuals for the brutal torture and killing of a 24-year-old transgender man, whose body was dumped in an empty field after going through weeks of abuse.
>Sam Nordquist was subjected to relentless physical and psychological torture, according to court documents. He was punched, kicked, beaten with sticks, dog toys, ropes, canes, belts, and even assaulted with a table leg and a broomstick for weeks before succumbing to his injuries.
>Nordquist, originally from Minnesota, travelled to New York in September to meet his online girlfriend and was staying at Patty's Lodge motel in Canandaigua, about 30 minutes from Rochester. His family raised concerns after losing contact with him.
>Police launched a missing persons investigation on February 9, and on Thursday, they uncovered a "deeply disturbing pattern of abuse" at the motel, according to New York State Police Captain Kelly Swift.
>"In my 20-year law enforcement career, this is one of the most horrific crimes I have ever investigated," Ms Swift said at a press conference.
Like clockwork, and unwittingly proving my point, a bigoted neanderthal homophobic troll crawls out from under its rock, cowardly creates new single purpose account, and mendaciously dumps a huge steaming pile of bullshit, which gets immediately downvoted and flagged by the community as it deserves (so I have to grudgingly vouch for it to respond), then it crawls back under its rock forever, afraid and unable to counter the objective truth and cited quotes and evidence that completely undermines its discredited homophobic propaganda.
TL;DR: The “Matthew Shepard was a meth dealer” claim comes from a widely discredited book, The Book of Matt, which has been publicly dismantled by journalists, LGBTQ+ advocates, and law enforcement alike for poor sourcing, manipulated quotes, and self-aggrandizing revisionism. Here’s the evidence:
----
According to Wikipedia, summarizing Alyssa Rosenberg’s critique, and citing evidence:
>Culture critic Alyssa Rosenberg criticized the book for being poorly sourced, stating: "by not distinguishing which quotations are manufactured from recollections, which are paraphrases recounted by sources, and which were spoken directly to him", and countered most of the major aspects of the book. [10] For example, she disputed claims about Shepard's alleged drug dealing, as most of the sources remained suspect or otherwise unsubstantiated. "Jimenez never qualifies how credible the sources are, or validates their closeness to Shepard, or evaluates the potential motivations for their accounts", she wrote. [10]
>Some police officials interviewed after Jimenez's book's publication disputed certain claims made in the book. Dave O'Malley, the Laramie police commander over the investigations division at the time of Shepard's murder, said Jimenez's claim that Shepard was "a methamphetamine kingpin is almost humorous. Someone that would buy into that certainly would believe almost anything they read." Other police, such as the officer who found the murder weapon, believed it was a drug-related killing. [11]
>Rob Debree, lead sheriff's investigator at the time, said the book contains "factual errors and lies", and deemed Jimenez's claim that Shepard was a drug dealer "truly laughable". [12]
----
[10] "'The Book Of Matt' Doesn't Prove Anything, Other Than The Size Of Stephen Jimenez's Ego"
>“Jimenez compounds the problem by not distinguishing which quotations are manufactured from recollections, which are paraphrases recounted by sources, and which were spoken directly to him.”
>“Either Jimenez appears to be regularly and substantially manipulating quotations, or he’s using a practice that accidentally but substantially undermines his own credibility.”
>“Jimenez quotes Cal Rerucha... the ellipses turning the quotation incoherent.”
Weak, Unsubstantiated Claims:
>“Jimenez will make a statement like, ‘there are also many reasons to believe that the six ounces Haselhuhn had bragged about and the six ounces Matthew was slated to deliver... were one and the same,’ and then wander off... before laying out those reasons and presenting the evidence that might render them credible.”
>“When he does bother to source... it’s with interviews with people who say things like ‘It’s a fact,’ when asked ‘How do you know this?’”
>“Jimenez never qualifies how credible the sources are, or validates their closeness to Shepard, or evaluates the potential motivations for their accounts.”
Leaps of Logic and Missing Evidence:
>“The sourcing gets particularly weak when Jimenez tries to make the leap... from suggesting that Shepard used methamphetamine to suggesting that he was dealing on a large scale.”
>“Given the available evidence, it comes across as demanding a laughable level of trust.”
>“Is Jimenez relying on the testimony of long-term meth users...? Is he talking to dealers who might want to make themselves seem like more significant players than they are?”
Dubious Motive and Narcissism:
>“The real subject of The Book Of Matt, or at least the place where Jimenez’s reportorial detail and emotional energy seem to be most focused, is Jimenez himself.”
>“Jimenez desperately wants to be seen as a brave social commentator and reporter... Instead... he comes across like an outdated gossip.”
>“Without an actual drug syndicate to offer us as proof, he’s trying to distract us with breakfast food and hotel bookings.”
Self-Aggrandizement and Political Posturing:
>“Jimenez sets himself up as a victim... When the Times Magazine kills the story... he says ‘I surmised that the story’s politically sensitive content was the problem.’”
>“When a gay rights activist questions Jimenez’s project... Jimenez responds by harping on his own gay rights record.”
Final Verdict:
>“Jimenez may still believe that he’s telling some sort of brave truth about Matthew Shepard. But it’s clear that... the only person he ends up exposing is himself.”
----
[11] "The truth behind America's most famous gay-hate murder"
Casper Star Tribune Editorial (Matthew's hometown paper):
>"From the beginning there have been those who want to ignore the sadistic homophobic motives of Shepard’s attackers and instead insist the matter was a drug deal gone bad."
>"An award Jimenez had recently received for his book 'deserves rejection'."
Contradictory Evidence from Law Enforcement:
>While one former officer (Flint Waters) speculates about a drug motive and praises the book, other law enforcement officials and the court case itself never substantiate the claim. Importantly, the book relies on speculative commentary, not formal investigative findings.
Bindel paraphrasing in The Guardian:
>“The police did not investigate the killers’ relationship to the gay community.”
>"Matthew’s drug abuse, and the fact that he knew one of his killers prior to the attack, was never explored in court."
>"Neither was the rumour that the killers knew that he had access to a shipment of crystal meth..."
These absences from the legal proceedings weaken the claim that they were central motives.
Skepticism from LGBTQ+ Advocates and Journalists:
>"Jimenez has been accused of being a revisionist, a criticism usually reserved for extreme rightwing ideologues that deny the Holocaust, and labelled a homophobe."
>"The Advocate... published a piece entitled: 'Why I’m Not Reading the ‘Trutherism’ About Matt Shepard’."
>"Wypijewski thinks the reason some sections of the gay community are so angry... is obvious: 'Jimenez has taken away their angel... The people shaping the news require a very simple story – they have to be angels and villains.’"
Narrative Issues and Lack of Substantiated Evidence:
>"This does not make the perfect poster boy for the gay-rights movement,” says Jimenez. “Which is a big part of the reason my book has been so trashed."
This reflects self-pity and martyrdom rather than engagement with factual rebuttals.
>"Although McKinney has never acknowledged that he knew Matthew, Jimenez found a dozen sources that had seen them together."
>Yet these sources are not validated, and McKinney continues to deny the relationship, making the book’s central premise heavily disputed.
>“Attempts now to rewrite the story of this hate crime appear to be based on untrustworthy sources, factual errors, rumors, and innuendo rather than the actual evidence gathered by law enforcement and presented in a court of law.”
— Jason Marsden, Executive Director
>“We do not respond to innuendo, rumor or conspiracy theories. Instead we remain committed to honoring Matthew's memory, and refuse to be intimidated by those who seek to tarnish it.”
Jason Marsden (Shepard’s friend and journalist):
Though Jimenez quoted him from an earlier interview, Marsden later disputes being represented accurately:
>“I was not afforded an opportunity to review any of that interview material before [the book] was published. I can't tell you if I said that or not... I don't recall the context of that interview nine years ago...”
>“If [Jimenez] is asserting that I agree with his theory of the case, that is not true,”
— Marsden, who also stated he never knew Shepard to use meth.
Dave O'Malley (Lead Laramie police investigator):
>“I have a myriad of issues with the idea that meth was involved, including the allegations about Shepard.”
>“As for Shepard being 'a methamphetamine kingpin, that in itself, is almost humorous. Someone that would buy into that certainly would believe almost anything they read.”
>“I thought the only good thing about [the book] was I didn't have to pay to buy it.”
Rob DeBree (Lead sheriff's investigator):
>“Not once did [Jimenez] ever speak with me,” and “he didn’t try.”
— Jimenez claims he did attempt, but this is disputed.
>“The book includes 'factual errors and lies,' including a statement about someone shooting through Rerucha's window.”
>“The notion that Shepard was a drug dealer was 'truly laughable.'”
Jason Tangeman (McKinney’s defense attorney):
>“I don't have to be told what happened. I know what happened.”
— Dismisses the need to read the book or other media portrayals.
>“I told [Jimenez] I didn’t know of any evidence to support [a drug deal theory].”
Wyatt Skaggs (Henderson’s attorney):
>“[Jimenez was] a reporter who doesn't know very much about the case.”
— After reading about half the book, declined to comment further.
The point is your 'question' was really a claim/assertion, and you know it. It doesn't make sense as a question in context otherwise. The claim/assertion has no basis in fact.
Thankfully the title is slightly clickbaity. The research isn't actually being deleted at source - it is just no longer being offered by these libraries.
I disagree. Extensive compilations of other scientific research are research themselves.
I can't help but feel like this is the start of a modern equivalent of what happened to the Institut für Sexualwissenschaf, now masked by procedure and law.
It is very curious that the ususally extremely loud "free speech" crowd from the US is so silent when the free speech violations happen now.
Banning literal words and then deleting research based on those words? If you needed a sign that you're well on your way into authotarianism, it doesn't get a lot clearer than that.
If you are for free speech only it it is for your side, you are not for free spech. In fact, I believe if you uncritically tow any party line, you gave up on critical thinking.
>If you are for free speech only it it is for your side, you are not for free spech. In fact, I believe if you uncritically tow any party line, you gave up on critical thinking.
Oh boy, oh boy. I'm so exited to be the bearer of bad news here!!
The people who believe in free speech as a matter of principal, not as a means to another political end are saying things like "fucking called it" and "told ya so" and making memes about how the demographics who are currently pissed off about this should have listened to them in years past and not lent political will to equally ham fisted stupidity that paved the way to this.
Which is basically the same thing that A LOT of single issue communities are saying right about now.
There certainly are people in the US who are very concerned with free speech, and they're generally outraged by stuff like this. When the likes of Elon Musk go on about 'free speech', though, they actually mean ideologically correct speech.
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition. There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
This headline is incredibly misleading to the point of being an inflammatory lie.
MLC (https://www.mlc.lib.ms.us/) is a state body that helps library systems in the state with govt money. They have a tool called MAGNOLIA that gives public libraries, community colleges, and k12 schools access to scholarly databases like ebscohost. This article says that MAGNOLIA no longer provides access to those collections. Larger universities in the state don't use MAGNOLIA as they have (and pay for) their own access.
No research is being deleted. Mississippi doesn't have the power to delete research in ebscohost. They're using a feature provided by ebscohost to exclude access to those collections. This is literally 2 bit flips in a database.
However, if you have concerns about the material included in MAGNOLIA, you can request a review of the material on the MLC website: https://www.mlc.lib.ms.us/review/
I think a lot of gender studies and race studies in the US is either bogus, or makes the problem worse. But removing it from being searched also makes it harder to debunk, which is stupid in a totally different way.
I haven't made up my thinking about this yet. I think first there is the principal question. Is a library deleting content always a violation of free speech? And I think the answer to that question is no. A library comes with an expectation of quality, so they must do do content curation, keeping quality content in and low-quality content out. Those who are not judged to meet the bar are not silenced, they have other options for getting their opinions and material out.
But the harder question is whether this particular material was unfairly singled out or not. If the library is unfairly suppressing quality research then that would be a bad thing. I think what would help me understand the situation in that respect is if someone posted examples of high quality research that was deleted but arguably shouldn't have been.
Libraries cannot and should not perform such a task. External bodies like peer reviews are meant to assess quality and only if reputation of a publication has plummeted because of it, libraries should intervene and pull the content.
The harder (rhetorical) question is, if any solid quality assessment had been made by the executive.
As a European I feel like I have a lot of safety and guarantees.
I also have children and I obviously worry a great deal about what the world will look like when they grow up.
Whatever is happening at the moment has been set in motion in the past 15 years in this slow tectonic movement towards a likely repetition of past history. In that context there seems to be a huge information /misinformation/propaganda/psy ops operation happen under our feet.
The wake up call for me was during the past US presidential campaign. I heard in my social circle (three separate) under 25 yr old males (all raised and living in social-democratic Central Europe) repeating tiktok/instagram talking points, about how Trump "...will be good for 'the economy' ".
In light of past interesting discussion in HN, I ask the question:
How can we as citizens contribute to counter this? And how can governance / intelligence counter act something that now appears unstoppable and entrenched?
"The economy" in the US does not mean "jobs" or "the general public" or "the middle class" or "workers" or "people who live in your town/city/region" or "the general public's savings/ standard-of-living". It means "the stock holdings and assets of the top ~20(-40)% richest".
The top 10% of Americans held 93% * of all stocks, while the bottom 50% only 1%, as of 1/2024. (* It was only 70% back in 2019 [2]. That's a huge 5-year change.)
(In 3Q/2024, the bottom 50% of households held $4.8T real estate assets + just $0.3T stocks. The top 1%, by comparison, held over $16T stocks + $6T real estate assets.)
[0]: Scott Galloway (Prof G) keeps talking about this distribution of wealth and why it's structurally dangerous to the US.
Does this account for defined benefit plan pension fund holdings, especially taxpayer funded DB pensions? Does it also allocate to individuals the equity held in accounts like state 529 plans, 401k, HSA, 403b, and other types of tax advantaged accounts? Or, for example, Norway’s sovereign fund?
Seems like a non trivial task to divvy up the beneficial ownership of equities. Plus, I would expect older people to have more savings, so there would need to be a normalization for age, presumably.
> The DFAs integrate two data products produced by the Federal Reserve Board: the Financial Accounts of the United States, which provide quarterly data on aggregate balance sheets of major sectors of the U.S. economy, and the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), which provides comprehensive triennial microdata on the assets and liabilities of a representative sample of U.S. households.
Diving more into this data seems time intensive, so I guess I’ll just take the Fed’s word for it.
Yes AFAIK the Fed data includes people's retirement plans. People's retirement plans issue them a statement; I don't see why we need to divvy up the estimated beneficial ownership.
(Defined Benefit pensions are pretty rare in the US; in March 2023, only 15% of private industry workers had access to a defined benefit pension plan, and only 11% participated in such plans; mostly govt and local workers. Hence, the Fed data averages are deceptive; ~85% of people have no DB, 15% or fewer. So if they graphed those two separate subpopulations, we'd see more representative numbers for people who spent most of their working lives working for govt + everyone else.)
(Why would you expect US Fed data on US residents to have anything to do with Norway’s sovereign fund? There are comparatively few Norwegians in the US and even fewer retirees living in the US who spent most of their life working in Norway; approximate as zero.)
Yes, obviously older people have more savings, things compound. Also their retirement plans may have historically had more generous provisions/matches. And they got to invest in previous boom cycles. And historically real-estate tended to go up not down, most of the time.
> Why would you expect US Fed data on US residents to have anything to do with Norway’s sovereign fund?
It is unclear if 93% of all stocks owned by Americans are owned by the richest 10% of Americans, or if 93% of all stocks traded in the US are owned by the richest 10% of Americans.
The defined benefit plan beneficial ownership is actually more so all taxpayers (since most are government employees), since they are on the hook for the benefits of the equity investments don’t live up to the expected returns. This would impact everyone via higher taxes, although exactly who and how much is up to politics.
I guess my point is the whole of society kind of has its eggs in the public equities basket.
*shrug, You sleep with dogs, you wake up with fleas. You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Be the change you want to see in the world etc etc. This is an age-old issue, what to do about shitty people in your support group.
As a citizen, your best bet is to educate yourself cultivate good judgment and speak the truth so you get the respect and trust of your circle. So that even people that disagree with you still take your opinion seriously. And realize that people have always believed in bullshit so you need to be realistic in your ambitions and be patient rather than upset when someone is wrong.
TIL a Mississippi based media organization can't even properly say "library stopped offering access to academic research" in the title, instead using words that are complete nonsense "delete research".
I don't know whether the reporting or the news itself is more disappointing.
It sounds like they are deleting the special collections metadata that categorize and index the raw research, which took time to curate. I see your point but also see how someone’s research is being deleted, or at least censored.
“Cancel culture” was a marketing term by people who were simultaneously trying to ban books and restrict speech, we shouldn’t take it at face value when all it ever meant was that right-wing speakers should be free from social consequences.
Which specific people? If you look at most of the cases people mention, the person in question either did not lose their livelihood or did so instead due to serious misconduct. This is why it’s important to define the term so you’re not inadvertently contributing to some sexual harassers’ legal strategy.
Is your anecdotal attack on "cancel culture" more then just biased and veiled defense of literature censorship? Why would a rational being turn away from the OP and respond with such?
I for one can see similarities between the canceling and the censoring mob.
I’d say it’s your own bias that sees it as an attack on cancel culture, as opposed to a commentary on the sad state of extremism and intolerance that leads us into hard-left then hard-right swings (and back and forth).
You do realize that Fahrenheit 451 is literally set in the US ?
If you’re seriously not aware how close to gleefully indulging in book-burning business certain US states have been and still are, K have some news for you.
Sometimes I wonder what are the fundamental differences between these states and Iran or Afghanistan except that their imaginary friend is slightly different.
Shitting on less developed areas of the world is one of Hacker News's favorite guilty pleasures. Let me try to assist.
Maternal mortality rate in Iran in 2020: 22/100,000 live births [1]
Maternal mortality rate in Mississippi in 2018-2022: 39.1/100,000 live births [2]
Infant mortality rate in Iran in 2022: 10.35/1,000 live births [3]
Infant mortality rate in Mississippi in 2022: 9.11/1,000 live births [4]
[1] https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240068759
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/maternal-mortality/data.htm
[3] https://www.who.int/data/gho/indicator-metadata-registry/imr...
[4] https://www.cdc.gov/maternal-infant-health/infant-mortality/
The West has made Iran out to be some backwater bogeyman when it is actually quite developed and in some areas progressive compared to our other allies in the region.
Rick Steve's Iran was a great watch that everyone should check out.
There's a lot of misunderstanding in the West about Iranians, or as we call ourselves "Persians." (I suppose to avoid the negative "Islamic" connotation..) Despite how the country is portrayed, the people themselves tend to be pro Western, educated, and fairly liberal.
So the unfortunate reality is that the government is highly repressive. It tightly controls communication and enforces a strict theocratic system that doesn’t reflect the will of much of the population.
If you're curious about what Iranian society is all about, look at the photos before the 1979 revolution. That change wasn't long ago, it was just a generation back. My parents lived through it. Many from that time believed they were rising up for democracy, not realizing what would replace the Shah was something even more authoritarian. My own father admits they were misled and now actively curses the regime and himself.. the peak being burning the US embassy because they were told it's a foreign spy command center..
What's especially tragic is that Iran today has a very young population, many of whom strongly oppose the current regime. But peaceful change feels unlikely, look up what happened anytime people took to the streets. And if the government were to collapse without a clear path forward, there's a real risk of something even worse filling the vacuum.
That said, there are reasons for hope. During the most recent uprising, the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement, women led the charge, and the government was forced to back down somewhat after international outcry. Since then, many women have continued to defy mandatory hijab laws, walking around without head coverings despite the real risks of arrest or violence. It’s incredibly brave, and it speaks to a deep, ongoing resistance that’s hard to suppress:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman,_Life,_Freedom_movement
> it's a foreign spy command center..
I mean… it is
Yes but it’s also other things, including a symbol of diplomatic relations with the country which owns the embassy. Burning it down because it’s a spy center is possibly disregarding what else it represents to the detriment of the those who destroyed it.
Boasting that Iran has similar birth-related mortality rates to Mississippi is ... I don't know what you're trying to prove, actually.
Mississippi is one of the worst states in the US for maternity health; the US is one of the worst countries in the developed world for the same.
The comment you're responding to implied that Mississippi was comparable to Iran, and you rebutted that... the data supports that claim.
Nitpick: You need to account for abortion access when comparing infant mortality across jurisdictions.
No, you don't.
In jurisdictions with better access to abortion people choose to abort the kind of "doesn't stand a chance" pregnancies that people in jurisdictions who can't access abortion wind up giving birth to only for them to die shortly thereafter.
Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't both jurisdictions equally averse to abortion? Sure, you'd find a few exceptions here and there but both countries have banned abortion? Both places have banned abortion where the mother's life may be in danger. Iran additionally allows abortions in cases where the fetus suffers from a major medical condition (genetic defects like Down's Syndrome don't count) which doesn't let the future child live a viable life.
The stats are from 2018-2022.
Mississippi's laws only changed to roughly mirror Iran's in mid 2022 following the supreme court ruling.
The charitable interpretation is that this isn't real science. If you have gender studies papers like the fake "Human Reactions to Rape Culture and Queer Performativity in Urban Dog Parks in Portland, Oregon" that showed dog parks were "rape-condoning spaces" where canine interactions reflected human rape culture and systemic oppression. They get through the system even though they are obviously satire. And yes, it was peer reviewed and even recognized as a significant contribution to feminist geography during the journal's anniversary celebration before the hoax was revealed
There were always things we considered science that are no longer considered science or harmful (blood letting, lobotomy, race science, etc)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair
While I also consider most of sociology and its ilk to be unscientific, and the rest to be only tenuously scientific, we all know that the real reason behind this order is not so charitable. Those in power don't care about science, they simply dislike what's written in those papers.
I would add that when you actually started to read and listen to what actual sociologists say and do ... it was nothing like what random math graduate mussing on HN thinks it is. The popular approach here of cherry picking two small studies and running wild with them was not all that much a thing.
Instead there was way more care about making conclusions, a lot of nuance and conditional statements (this study says so under those conditions and another one opposes sort of thing). But, what certain people here actually hate the most are results that are fairly consistent and were reproduced to death.
> While I also consider most of sociology and its ilk to be unscientific, and the rest to be only tenuously scientific,
They are not any less scientific than, say, physics just because they have a harder time observing and modeling things.
> not any less scientific
In theory, no. In practice, yes. One doesn't even need to make a subtle case about all the ways it's gone wrong. Just say "Reproducibility Crisis".
Yes, as practiced, as well as in principle, sociology is less scientific than physics.
Some systems- human social behavior being one of them- are simply not amenable to modern science because the systems have far too many uncontrolled variables, and the ability to create hypotheses which can't be falsified (because running the experiments would be impossible, unethical, or ambiguous) is far larger.
Science is a methodology. Science is applied equally in both disciplines. That one field has more uncontrolled variables does not make it less scientific.
I have not seen evidence that the methodology of science is applied routinely in sociological research.
And you have, first hand, in every other field?
Yes, they are. A lot of sociology and its surrounding fields is just talk. Idle speculation. The rather small empirical part is riddled with methodological errors. There are now people trying to build more detailed, computational models, but that is a slow process, and the more realistic the model, the more often it will be wrong.
It can be both. If they believe there is some harmful effect on this particular pseudo science about grievance politics that's driving social contagion and self harm, then they believe it should be removed, at least from places like libraries.
You'll see the same thing with race science. I reject it not because I'm well versed on how it's not rigorous enough, although it may be, but I think it's on its face because incredibly harmful.
Your example is a hoax article. It was not written by people you criticize. They never used it as an argument by them either.
Also, given development last few years, it turned out grievance studies were pretty correct about misogyny in society and about where rather large part of conservative population wants to go. Overall, they actually diagnosed things pretty accurately.
> The charitable interpretation is that this isn't real science.
That doesn’t sound charitable at all.
The uncharitable interpretation is that these theories are intentionally harmful and trying to push a particularly nefarious ideology for political gain.
The charitable interpretation is that this isn't real science.
That's still not charitable.
They're in NATO so they're good guys™.
Also in Iran there's more female engineers than men. It's quite unlike Taliban ruled Afghanistan.
> Also in Iran there's more female engineers than men. It's quite unlike Taliban ruled Afghanistan.
Also in Iran if you happened to be male & gay and get caught you have the choice between the death penalty and getting a forced "sex re-assignement" surgery.
So, not unlike every single protestant country 30 years ago.
> So, not unlike every single protestant country 30 years ago.
This is a straight out lie and you know it. 30 years ago was 1995.
But nice try rooting for a bloody dictatorship like Iran, led by people stuck in a 7th century mindset, allegedly the paragon of "progress" according to some here...
Sorry, USA! USA! USA! Also a dictatorship, also violating human rights. But for some reason acceptable.
Gay sex in saunas in Sweden is allowed since 2004. That's 20 years ago.
Iran is the gifted kid that should've left the hood but didn't of the middle east.
Considering Islam, Christianity, and Catholicism are brothers of the book, not much difference really. Fantasy has too much influence in their politics.
The slight difference is the difference between throwing gays off of tall buildings and complaining about them getting married.
There are absolutely people on the US right who want to re-ban homosexuality; one of the bloody _supreme court justices_ has already signalled a willingness to re-examine Lawrence v Texas.
Mississippi is one of the 14 states where homosexuality was only legalised by Lawrence v Texas in 2003.
Making it illegal is very different from throwing people off tall buildings.
I don't think you're aware of America's own shameful history of criminalizing homosexuality, how recently that was still happening, and how some of the people currently wielding Federal power want to go back to it.
If rule of law and due process are arbitrarily ignored then the only real difference is time.
Given enough time all can degenerate.
> If rule of law and due process are arbitrarily ignored then the only real difference is time.
Due process isn't a part of any religion afaik. And "rule of law" in Christianity and Islam is "suffer not a witch to live" and stuff like that. Not good.
> Given enough time all can degenerate.
"Degenerate" is a strange word in this context. Islam started as an imperialist death cult. Any movement towards liberalism and sanity is not something I'd call "degenerate". Christianity is hard to pin down where it started because it started small and without power. As soon as it got real power it turned evil real fast.
Despite how bad a few modern Islamist societies may be, it is very wrong to write sentences like "Islam started as an imperialist death cult", like they would be true and universally applicable.
While after conversion to Islam the Arabs had a few centuries of great territorial expansion, when they have conquered not only their neighbors in Asia, but also the North of Africa and a part of the Iberian Peninsula, this was the standard behavior at that time for any population that was strong enough to be able to do this. It does not make the Arabs more "imperialist" than any other of their contemporaneous nations, e.g. when compared with Charlemagne.
Moreover, for many centuries, until relatively recently, most conflicts in Islamic countries, such as the Turkish Empire, were more likely to be settled by judges according to the law and without making discrimination based on religion, nationality or wealth, than in the contemporaneous European countries, where the enforcement of the laws was frequently arbitrary and biased.
The Europeans who have lived in countries occupied by Islamic Turks or Arabs have survived many centuries without losing their religion or traditions, in contrast with what happened with those that have been occupied by European empires, like the Russian Empire (or its Soviet descendant) or by the Austrian Empire (or its Austria-Hungary successor), where complete denationalization has frequently happened, due to intense discrimination.
Anti-scientific interpretations of the Islamic religion rules have prevailed only many centuries after its appearance. Only then claims like "there is no need to read any books but the Holy Book, as it contains all truth that has to be known by humans" began to have supporters and enforcers. Moreover, taking into consideration the recent history, the US citizens are the last who should be mocking this kind of ideas, because many of them appear to think in the same way.
> Despite how bad a few modern Islamist societies may be, it is very wrong to write sentences like "Islam started as an imperialist death cult", like they would be true and universally applicable.
I said "started" didn't I? I think the historical record is very clear. I meant during the time of the founder.
The founder may have had an "imperialist" mindset, where he dreamed to succeed to convert everybody to follow his rules, but in this respect there was no difference between him and any European king or noble, or the Pope, or the Patriarch of Jerusalem, or any Chinese emperor or any successful ruler from any part of the world, at that time.
So you cannot single out Islam as a special religion from this point of view. At most it can be said that all monotheistic religions are structured to support imperialism, because they replace the previous multitude of gods, all of which had their specific jobs, at which they could not be supplanted by others, by a single all-powerful God who knows everything and who can do anything, and this structure of the celestial realm is supposed to be mirrored on Earth, where there must also be a single all-powerful ruler, whom everybody must obey without questioning.
The greatest conquest during the time of the founder ...
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquest_of_Meccahardly sounds like the work of an "an imperialist death cult"
Islam did start that way, and over the centuries it has been moderated by Muslims who proved themselves much better people than the founder.
I don’t mean to say Islam is perfect, very little is, but it does have a lot of due process and it hardly started as a death cult… I’d spend some time researching due process in shariah and try to remember that in many ways Islam was highly innovative for its era in combining a legal code with its religion in a very integral manner. Now later Islam in particular othoman Islam was indeed somewhat warped and coupled with an expansionist empire, kinda like Christianity, and is another game altogether.
Due process is selective in the US.
Current deportations sans due process aside, have a look at recent history in Mississippi:
‘Lynchings in Mississippi never stopped’ (2021) - https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/08/08/modern-day-...
I appreciate your effort to reign in some reality here to show how privileged Americans are, but the word of the day is "trajectory" and it's aiming right at bottom right now.
>The slight difference is the difference between throwing gays off of tall buildings and complaining about them getting married.
no necessarily gays. Different societies may treat as non-humans different groups of people. US has just threw several hundreds of people into a black hole of prison in El Salvador. Considering the prison conditions even in US and how even US was openly waterboarding people multiple times (180 times for one guy), one can imagine what may be happening to the people in that prison in El Salvador (read on the El Salvador death squads, and the current regime there basically continues the same behavior). A fall from a tall building may be a mercy in that context. And i guess we'd never know how many of those guys will come out, if ever, of there alive.
Perhaps safer there than being put into American prisons. American prisons are run by the inmates. Inmate rape, gang related violence and murder are normalized and tolerated by the states and corporations that operate the prison system. Salvadoran prisons seem tightly controlled and well staffed. Perhaps they have economies of scale though?
What to know about CECOT, El Salvador's mega-prison for [alleged] gang members
~ https://www.npr.org/2025/03/17/g-s1-54206/el-salvador-mega-p...i can only conclude that you're either from US, Canada or Western Europe and somehow don't know, even in this age of global information, what a prison outside of the Western world is. And if you add that in case like El Salvador they intentionally make it "tough". There is a reason another "tough" guy - Duterte - has recently been delivered to ICC for the crimes against humanity. Because that is what "tough" means in those places.
Driving them to a remote rural area to rob, pistol-whip, torture, tie to a split-rail fence, and leaving them to die, so brutally that their face was covered in blood except for where the tears washed it away, happened in America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard
And the people who would do that kind of thing again are absolutely THRILLED and EMPOWERED about the current administration's policies towards gay and trans people.
And it's happening much more often now thanks to Trump's Stochastic Terrorism, aimed at his lunatic cult of MAGA followers who are every bit as fanatical and delusional and vengeful and armed to the teeth as any religious imperialist death cult.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_terrorism
Beaten With Belts, Sticks: Transgender Man Tortured For Weeks Before Murder:
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/beaten-with-belts-sticks-tra...
>Nordquist, originally from Minnesota, travelled to New York in September to meet his online girlfriend and was staying at Patty's Lodge motel in Canandaigua.
>New York authorities have charged five individuals for the brutal torture and killing of a 24-year-old transgender man, whose body was dumped in an empty field after going through weeks of abuse.
>Sam Nordquist was subjected to relentless physical and psychological torture, according to court documents. He was punched, kicked, beaten with sticks, dog toys, ropes, canes, belts, and even assaulted with a table leg and a broomstick for weeks before succumbing to his injuries.
>Nordquist, originally from Minnesota, travelled to New York in September to meet his online girlfriend and was staying at Patty's Lodge motel in Canandaigua, about 30 minutes from Rochester. His family raised concerns after losing contact with him.
>Police launched a missing persons investigation on February 9, and on Thursday, they uncovered a "deeply disturbing pattern of abuse" at the motel, according to New York State Police Captain Kelly Swift.
>"In my 20-year law enforcement career, this is one of the most horrific crimes I have ever investigated," Ms Swift said at a press conference.
The real story of Matthew Shepard is more complex than the false story that has been popularized:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/26/the-truth-behi...
Shepard was a meth dealer and he was in a sexual relationship with the man who killed him.
Like clockwork, and unwittingly proving my point, a bigoted neanderthal homophobic troll crawls out from under its rock, cowardly creates new single purpose account, and mendaciously dumps a huge steaming pile of bullshit, which gets immediately downvoted and flagged by the community as it deserves (so I have to grudgingly vouch for it to respond), then it crawls back under its rock forever, afraid and unable to counter the objective truth and cited quotes and evidence that completely undermines its discredited homophobic propaganda.
TL;DR: The “Matthew Shepard was a meth dealer” claim comes from a widely discredited book, The Book of Matt, which has been publicly dismantled by journalists, LGBTQ+ advocates, and law enforcement alike for poor sourcing, manipulated quotes, and self-aggrandizing revisionism. Here’s the evidence:
----
According to Wikipedia, summarizing Alyssa Rosenberg’s critique, and citing evidence:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Matt
>Culture critic Alyssa Rosenberg criticized the book for being poorly sourced, stating: "by not distinguishing which quotations are manufactured from recollections, which are paraphrases recounted by sources, and which were spoken directly to him", and countered most of the major aspects of the book. [10] For example, she disputed claims about Shepard's alleged drug dealing, as most of the sources remained suspect or otherwise unsubstantiated. "Jimenez never qualifies how credible the sources are, or validates their closeness to Shepard, or evaluates the potential motivations for their accounts", she wrote. [10]
>Some police officials interviewed after Jimenez's book's publication disputed certain claims made in the book. Dave O'Malley, the Laramie police commander over the investigations division at the time of Shepard's murder, said Jimenez's claim that Shepard was "a methamphetamine kingpin is almost humorous. Someone that would buy into that certainly would believe almost anything they read." Other police, such as the officer who found the murder weapon, believed it was a drug-related killing. [11]
>Rob Debree, lead sheriff's investigator at the time, said the book contains "factual errors and lies", and deemed Jimenez's claim that Shepard was a drug dealer "truly laughable". [12]
----
[10] "'The Book Of Matt' Doesn't Prove Anything, Other Than The Size Of Stephen Jimenez's Ego"
https://archive.thinkprogress.org/the-book-of-matt-doesn-t-p...
Manipulated and Unreliable Quotations:
>“Jimenez compounds the problem by not distinguishing which quotations are manufactured from recollections, which are paraphrases recounted by sources, and which were spoken directly to him.”
>“Either Jimenez appears to be regularly and substantially manipulating quotations, or he’s using a practice that accidentally but substantially undermines his own credibility.”
>“Jimenez quotes Cal Rerucha... the ellipses turning the quotation incoherent.”
Weak, Unsubstantiated Claims:
>“Jimenez will make a statement like, ‘there are also many reasons to believe that the six ounces Haselhuhn had bragged about and the six ounces Matthew was slated to deliver... were one and the same,’ and then wander off... before laying out those reasons and presenting the evidence that might render them credible.”
>“When he does bother to source... it’s with interviews with people who say things like ‘It’s a fact,’ when asked ‘How do you know this?’”
>“Jimenez never qualifies how credible the sources are, or validates their closeness to Shepard, or evaluates the potential motivations for their accounts.”
Leaps of Logic and Missing Evidence:
>“The sourcing gets particularly weak when Jimenez tries to make the leap... from suggesting that Shepard used methamphetamine to suggesting that he was dealing on a large scale.”
>“Given the available evidence, it comes across as demanding a laughable level of trust.”
>“Is Jimenez relying on the testimony of long-term meth users...? Is he talking to dealers who might want to make themselves seem like more significant players than they are?”
Dubious Motive and Narcissism:
>“The real subject of The Book Of Matt, or at least the place where Jimenez’s reportorial detail and emotional energy seem to be most focused, is Jimenez himself.”
>“Jimenez desperately wants to be seen as a brave social commentator and reporter... Instead... he comes across like an outdated gossip.”
>“Without an actual drug syndicate to offer us as proof, he’s trying to distract us with breakfast food and hotel bookings.”
Self-Aggrandizement and Political Posturing:
>“Jimenez sets himself up as a victim... When the Times Magazine kills the story... he says ‘I surmised that the story’s politically sensitive content was the problem.’”
>“When a gay rights activist questions Jimenez’s project... Jimenez responds by harping on his own gay rights record.”
Final Verdict:
>“Jimenez may still believe that he’s telling some sort of brave truth about Matthew Shepard. But it’s clear that... the only person he ends up exposing is himself.”
----
[11] "The truth behind America's most famous gay-hate murder"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/26/the-truth-behi...
Casper Star Tribune Editorial (Matthew's hometown paper):
>"From the beginning there have been those who want to ignore the sadistic homophobic motives of Shepard’s attackers and instead insist the matter was a drug deal gone bad."
>"An award Jimenez had recently received for his book 'deserves rejection'."
Contradictory Evidence from Law Enforcement:
>While one former officer (Flint Waters) speculates about a drug motive and praises the book, other law enforcement officials and the court case itself never substantiate the claim. Importantly, the book relies on speculative commentary, not formal investigative findings.
Bindel paraphrasing in The Guardian:
>“The police did not investigate the killers’ relationship to the gay community.”
>"Matthew’s drug abuse, and the fact that he knew one of his killers prior to the attack, was never explored in court."
>"Neither was the rumour that the killers knew that he had access to a shipment of crystal meth..."
These absences from the legal proceedings weaken the claim that they were central motives.
Skepticism from LGBTQ+ Advocates and Journalists:
>"Jimenez has been accused of being a revisionist, a criticism usually reserved for extreme rightwing ideologues that deny the Holocaust, and labelled a homophobe."
>"The Advocate... published a piece entitled: 'Why I’m Not Reading the ‘Trutherism’ About Matt Shepard’."
>"Wypijewski thinks the reason some sections of the gay community are so angry... is obvious: 'Jimenez has taken away their angel... The people shaping the news require a very simple story – they have to be angels and villains.’"
Narrative Issues and Lack of Substantiated Evidence:
>"This does not make the perfect poster boy for the gay-rights movement,” says Jimenez. “Which is a big part of the reason my book has been so trashed."
This reflects self-pity and martyrdom rather than engagement with factual rebuttals.
>"Although McKinney has never acknowledged that he knew Matthew, Jimenez found a dozen sources that had seen them together."
>Yet these sources are not validated, and McKinney continues to deny the relationship, making the book’s central premise heavily disputed.
----
[12] "Shepard book stirs controversy"
https://web.archive.org/web/20200916144405/https://www.ebar....
Matthew Shepard Foundation:
>“Attempts now to rewrite the story of this hate crime appear to be based on untrustworthy sources, factual errors, rumors, and innuendo rather than the actual evidence gathered by law enforcement and presented in a court of law.” — Jason Marsden, Executive Director
>“We do not respond to innuendo, rumor or conspiracy theories. Instead we remain committed to honoring Matthew's memory, and refuse to be intimidated by those who seek to tarnish it.”
Jason Marsden (Shepard’s friend and journalist):
Though Jimenez quoted him from an earlier interview, Marsden later disputes being represented accurately:
>“I was not afforded an opportunity to review any of that interview material before [the book] was published. I can't tell you if I said that or not... I don't recall the context of that interview nine years ago...”
>“If [Jimenez] is asserting that I agree with his theory of the case, that is not true,” — Marsden, who also stated he never knew Shepard to use meth.
Dave O'Malley (Lead Laramie police investigator):
>“I have a myriad of issues with the idea that meth was involved, including the allegations about Shepard.”
>“As for Shepard being 'a methamphetamine kingpin, that in itself, is almost humorous. Someone that would buy into that certainly would believe almost anything they read.”
>“I thought the only good thing about [the book] was I didn't have to pay to buy it.”
Rob DeBree (Lead sheriff's investigator):
>“Not once did [Jimenez] ever speak with me,” and “he didn’t try.” — Jimenez claims he did attempt, but this is disputed.
>“The book includes 'factual errors and lies,' including a statement about someone shooting through Rerucha's window.”
>“The notion that Shepard was a drug dealer was 'truly laughable.'”
Jason Tangeman (McKinney’s defense attorney):
>“I don't have to be told what happened. I know what happened.” — Dismisses the need to read the book or other media portrayals.
>“I told [Jimenez] I didn’t know of any evidence to support [a drug deal theory].”
Wyatt Skaggs (Henderson’s attorney):
>“[Jimenez was] a reporter who doesn't know very much about the case.” — After reading about half the book, declined to comment further.
----
I always find it sad when racist Americans can only imagine their own country's decline by comparing it to those countries they persecute.
Is it really so "racist" when many of these countries truly have fundamental issues with regards to human rights?
GP never said "Iranians" or "Afghans", the issues are specific to the countries themselves.
[flagged]
> While USA upholds all of the human rights?
Only you are claiming that.
I'm not claiming anything. The point of question marks is to ask questions.
Your question carries an implied claim. Otherwise, why are you asking it?
To get an answer. Why are you replying if you have no intention of answering?
The point is your 'question' was really a claim/assertion, and you know it. It doesn't make sense as a question in context otherwise. The claim/assertion has no basis in fact.
[flagged]
[dead]
Thankfully the title is slightly clickbaity. The research isn't actually being deleted at source - it is just no longer being offered by these libraries.
That's the EXACT digital equivalent of book-burning: deleting the copies of the data.
It's the exact digital equivalent of saying "it's not available at this library but you can buy it yourself or get access through another source"
Y'all give Mississippi too much credit if you think they hold the only copy of gender studies and race relations academic research.
I disagree. Extensive compilations of other scientific research are research themselves.
I can't help but feel like this is the start of a modern equivalent of what happened to the Institut für Sexualwissenschaf, now masked by procedure and law.
There’s no possible interpretation of the title where that makes sense.
”Just”
It is very curious that the ususally extremely loud "free speech" crowd from the US is so silent when the free speech violations happen now.
Banning literal words and then deleting research based on those words? If you needed a sign that you're well on your way into authotarianism, it doesn't get a lot clearer than that.
If you are for free speech only it it is for your side, you are not for free spech. In fact, I believe if you uncritically tow any party line, you gave up on critical thinking.
>If you are for free speech only it it is for your side, you are not for free spech. In fact, I believe if you uncritically tow any party line, you gave up on critical thinking.
Oh boy, oh boy. I'm so exited to be the bearer of bad news here!!
The people who believe in free speech as a matter of principal, not as a means to another political end are saying things like "fucking called it" and "told ya so" and making memes about how the demographics who are currently pissed off about this should have listened to them in years past and not lent political will to equally ham fisted stupidity that paved the way to this.
Which is basically the same thing that A LOT of single issue communities are saying right about now.
There certainly are people in the US who are very concerned with free speech, and they're generally outraged by stuff like this. When the likes of Elon Musk go on about 'free speech', though, they actually mean ideologically correct speech.
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition. There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
This headline is incredibly misleading to the point of being an inflammatory lie.
MLC (https://www.mlc.lib.ms.us/) is a state body that helps library systems in the state with govt money. They have a tool called MAGNOLIA that gives public libraries, community colleges, and k12 schools access to scholarly databases like ebscohost. This article says that MAGNOLIA no longer provides access to those collections. Larger universities in the state don't use MAGNOLIA as they have (and pay for) their own access.
No research is being deleted. Mississippi doesn't have the power to delete research in ebscohost. They're using a feature provided by ebscohost to exclude access to those collections. This is literally 2 bit flips in a database.
https://connect.ebsco.com/s/article/Content-in-EBSCOhost-Dat...
However, if you have concerns about the material included in MAGNOLIA, you can request a review of the material on the MLC website: https://www.mlc.lib.ms.us/review/
I think a lot of gender studies and race studies in the US is either bogus, or makes the problem worse. But removing it from being searched also makes it harder to debunk, which is stupid in a totally different way.
No need to waste time debunking when the base just believes what they’re told, even in the face of constant contradictory personal experience.
I haven't made up my thinking about this yet. I think first there is the principal question. Is a library deleting content always a violation of free speech? And I think the answer to that question is no. A library comes with an expectation of quality, so they must do do content curation, keeping quality content in and low-quality content out. Those who are not judged to meet the bar are not silenced, they have other options for getting their opinions and material out.
But the harder question is whether this particular material was unfairly singled out or not. If the library is unfairly suppressing quality research then that would be a bad thing. I think what would help me understand the situation in that respect is if someone posted examples of high quality research that was deleted but arguably shouldn't have been.
Libraries cannot and should not perform such a task. External bodies like peer reviews are meant to assess quality and only if reputation of a publication has plummeted because of it, libraries should intervene and pull the content.
The harder (rhetorical) question is, if any solid quality assessment had been made by the executive.
Double-plus-ungood.
As a European I feel like I have a lot of safety and guarantees.
I also have children and I obviously worry a great deal about what the world will look like when they grow up.
Whatever is happening at the moment has been set in motion in the past 15 years in this slow tectonic movement towards a likely repetition of past history. In that context there seems to be a huge information /misinformation/propaganda/psy ops operation happen under our feet.
The wake up call for me was during the past US presidential campaign. I heard in my social circle (three separate) under 25 yr old males (all raised and living in social-democratic Central Europe) repeating tiktok/instagram talking points, about how Trump "...will be good for 'the economy' ".
In light of past interesting discussion in HN, I ask the question:
How can we as citizens contribute to counter this? And how can governance / intelligence counter act something that now appears unstoppable and entrenched?
> "...will be good for 'the economy' "
"The economy" in the US does not mean "jobs" or "the general public" or "the middle class" or "workers" or "people who live in your town/city/region" or "the general public's savings/ standard-of-living". It means "the stock holdings and assets of the top ~20(-40)% richest".
The top 10% of Americans held 93% * of all stocks, while the bottom 50% only 1%, as of 1/2024. (* It was only 70% back in 2019 [2]. That's a huge 5-year change.)
(In 3Q/2024, the bottom 50% of households held $4.8T real estate assets + just $0.3T stocks. The top 1%, by comparison, held over $16T stocks + $6T real estate assets.)
[0]: Scott Galloway (Prof G) keeps talking about this distribution of wealth and why it's structurally dangerous to the US.
[1]: "The Richest 1 Percent Own a Greater Share of the Stock Market Than Ever Before" (1/2024) https://inequality.org/article/stock-ownership-concentration...
[2]: Here's an older USAFacts on 2019 Fed data: https://usafacts.org/articles/what-percentage-of-americans-o...
Does this account for defined benefit plan pension fund holdings, especially taxpayer funded DB pensions? Does it also allocate to individuals the equity held in accounts like state 529 plans, 401k, HSA, 403b, and other types of tax advantaged accounts? Or, for example, Norway’s sovereign fund?
Seems like a non trivial task to divvy up the beneficial ownership of equities. Plus, I would expect older people to have more savings, so there would need to be a normalization for age, presumably.
Edit: Looks like the source is here:
https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/index...
> The DFAs integrate two data products produced by the Federal Reserve Board: the Financial Accounts of the United States, which provide quarterly data on aggregate balance sheets of major sectors of the U.S. economy, and the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), which provides comprehensive triennial microdata on the assets and liabilities of a representative sample of U.S. households.
Diving more into this data seems time intensive, so I guess I’ll just take the Fed’s word for it.
Yes AFAIK the Fed data includes people's retirement plans. People's retirement plans issue them a statement; I don't see why we need to divvy up the estimated beneficial ownership.
(Defined Benefit pensions are pretty rare in the US; in March 2023, only 15% of private industry workers had access to a defined benefit pension plan, and only 11% participated in such plans; mostly govt and local workers. Hence, the Fed data averages are deceptive; ~85% of people have no DB, 15% or fewer. So if they graphed those two separate subpopulations, we'd see more representative numbers for people who spent most of their working lives working for govt + everyone else.)
(Why would you expect US Fed data on US residents to have anything to do with Norway’s sovereign fund? There are comparatively few Norwegians in the US and even fewer retirees living in the US who spent most of their life working in Norway; approximate as zero.)
Yes, obviously older people have more savings, things compound. Also their retirement plans may have historically had more generous provisions/matches. And they got to invest in previous boom cycles. And historically real-estate tended to go up not down, most of the time.
> Why would you expect US Fed data on US residents to have anything to do with Norway’s sovereign fund?
It is unclear if 93% of all stocks owned by Americans are owned by the richest 10% of Americans, or if 93% of all stocks traded in the US are owned by the richest 10% of Americans.
The defined benefit plan beneficial ownership is actually more so all taxpayers (since most are government employees), since they are on the hook for the benefits of the equity investments don’t live up to the expected returns. This would impact everyone via higher taxes, although exactly who and how much is up to politics.
I guess my point is the whole of society kind of has its eggs in the public equities basket.
I'd start by getting a better social circle. I have zero patience for white supremacy. I fired a lot of friends over the past decade.
On a less immediate note, issues of greed are likely countered by generosity, so volunteering is good. Read what every religion has to say about that.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43559605
*shrug, You sleep with dogs, you wake up with fleas. You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Be the change you want to see in the world etc etc. This is an age-old issue, what to do about shitty people in your support group.
> about how Trump "...will be good for 'the economy' ".
I wonder how they're taking the current economic news...
As a citizen, your best bet is to educate yourself cultivate good judgment and speak the truth so you get the respect and trust of your circle. So that even people that disagree with you still take your opinion seriously. And realize that people have always believed in bullshit so you need to be realistic in your ambitions and be patient rather than upset when someone is wrong.
TIL a Mississippi based media organization can't even properly say "library stopped offering access to academic research" in the title, instead using words that are complete nonsense "delete research".
I don't know whether the reporting or the news itself is more disappointing.
It sounds like they are deleting the special collections metadata that categorize and index the raw research, which took time to curate. I see your point but also see how someone’s research is being deleted, or at least censored.
No deletion is happening. They're simply not providing access through a tool they provide. The collection is still available outside of that tool.
Nothing like swinging between extremes: We go from DEI & cancel culture; to hiding research and pretending
“Cancel culture” was a marketing term by people who were simultaneously trying to ban books and restrict speech, we shouldn’t take it at face value when all it ever meant was that right-wing speakers should be free from social consequences.
And this reaction is different how, exactly?
Banning books or attacking their authors livelihood makes it harder for people to be exposed to their ideas.
Criticism does not.
Okay, but “cancel culture” included people losing their livelihoods.
This wasn’t just a marketing term nor just criticism.
Both have the outcome of muzzling speech that one doesn’t like.
Neither are okay.
Which specific people? If you look at most of the cases people mention, the person in question either did not lose their livelihood or did so instead due to serious misconduct. This is why it’s important to define the term so you’re not inadvertently contributing to some sexual harassers’ legal strategy.
If your definition and mine doesn’t agree, for loss of livelihood or serious misconduct then would agree there’s no point in discussing further?
But three that comes to mind are Brendan Eich: Mozilla is far poorer for what happened.
Peter Vlaming is another https://adfmedialegalfiles.blob.core.windows.net/files/Vlami...
Finally, Katie Herzog https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/02/style/what-is-cancel-cult...
Is your anecdotal attack on "cancel culture" more then just biased and veiled defense of literature censorship? Why would a rational being turn away from the OP and respond with such?
I for one can see similarities between the canceling and the censoring mob.
I’d say it’s your own bias that sees it as an attack on cancel culture, as opposed to a commentary on the sad state of extremism and intolerance that leads us into hard-left then hard-right swings (and back and forth).
Who would've believed that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451 would become real. And in the US of all places.
I mean, I'm pretty sure Ray Bradbury would have.
You do realize that Fahrenheit 451 is literally set in the US ?
If you’re seriously not aware how close to gleefully indulging in book-burning business certain US states have been and still are, K have some news for you.