Stories & Opinions Worth Knowing but Maybe Not Quite Threadworthy 7/11

[SVPete]

Ring cameras are racist apparently

https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/07/11/ring-cameras-are-racist-apparently-n563706

WIRED magazine wants you to know that Ring cameras are racist, so you shouldn’t buy them.

Given that I just added 3 new Ring cameras to my setup, I am about to collapse in guilt. Particularly because I live in a neighborhood that is majority Black. The trauma I am inflicting must be grave.
...
But racism never struck me as a problem until I read this article, and given that WIRED’s big problem seems to be that Ring’s feature set includes some unique ways for people to become aware of and fight crime in their neighborhoods, I am pretty sure that my 100% coverage of the outside of my house with Ring cameras is on balance a good thing.

But it also allows Ring owners to send videos they’ve captured with their Ring video doorbell cameras and outdoor security cameras to law enforcement. This is a feature unique to Ring—even Nextdoor removed its Forward to Police feature in 2020, which allowed Nextdoor users to forward their own safety posts to local law enforcement agencies. If a crime has been committed, law enforcement should obtain a warrant to access civilian video footage.

So, Ring cameras are racist because: 1. a burglar or thief caught by it might be black; 2. it allows Ring users to voluntarily send captured video to police without police having to get a warrant.

How soon before race-baiters condemn police dashcams and bodycams as racist for capturing evidence and disproving false accusations against police officers?

[DefiantSix]

...How soon before race-baiters condemn police dashcams and bodycams as racist for capturing evidence and disproving false accusations against police officers?

Considering that the majority of the bodycam and dashcam video I SEE (admitted bias, here) is proving that the accusations against cops are not only substantiated, but wildly underreported; swept under the rug by departments, jurisdiction leaderships and journalists alike, you may be waiting a while for that trend to take off, my friend.

[SVPete]

Cameras often clear police officers falsely accused of misconduct

WRONGFUL ALLEGATIONS AGAINST LAW ENFORCEMENT

Complaints against LAPD rise as body-worn cameras help exonerate officers and prove misconduct

5 Examples of Body Cameras Exonerating Police Officers

Body cam footage clears Ga. officer of false accusation from firefighters

Using body cameras to mitigate false accusations against police

Cleveland case shows how body cameras can help police

DDG search phrase: false report against police proved false by body cam

[Old n Grumpy]

The camera showing the popo be telling the truf when you swear you din do nuffin is definitely racism 

[SVPete]

Attendance Drops Off at First National Jamboree of New, Inclusive Boy Scouts

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/athena-thorne/2023/07/11/attendance-drops-off-at-first-national-jamboree-of-new-inclusive-boy-scouts-n1709353

Anywhere from 2% to 5% of Boy Scouts journey to the quadrennial National Jamboree. At its peak, the BSA hosted 50,960 attendees at the 1964 Jamboree at Valley Forge, Pa., and President Lyndon B. Johnson gave a speech. Attendance waned and waxed over the years, and in 2017, around 40,000 Scouts went to the Jambo at the Summit Bechtel Reserve, a 10,600-acre property in West Virginia that had been donated to BSA. (This year, only 15,000 are expected to attend.)

On one of the final nights of the 2017 campout, the Scouts and leaders convened in Summit Stadium to hear an address by the President of the United States. Trump’s full speech can be seen at the bottom of this article if you have an extra 45 minutes you’re looking to kill. If you watch any of it, you will frequently hear the roar of tens of thousands of young men who are clearly loving the attention from Orange Man Bad.

To put the massive event in perspective, this was when the “The Future is Female” movement was cranking up and boys were being disparaged, slandered, stifled, and tossed aside in favor of prioritizing girls’ prospects in society. Scouting was one of the last existing organizations dedicated exclusively to boys and their particular inclinations, interests, and development for a successful future. So naturally, the organization was under attack.
...
Also following Trump’s appearance at the 2017 Jamboree, many Scouts’ moms, who had been apoplectic since he was elected and couldn’t handle their sons’ enjoyment of the event, wrote screechy, enraged, tear-soaked letters and Facebook comments to BSA National Headquarters, demanding that something be done to atone for the sin of giving the U.S. president a platform

Within days, the BSA and Chief Scout Executive Michael Surbaugh posted apologies. But that was never going to be enough. Mere months later, national Scouting leadership, already under intense pressure from its corporate sponsors to go fully intersectional, removed the final restriction that made the Boy Scouts a unique youth program: the mighty, formerly boys-only BSA announced that girls would be allowed to become Scouts. It was finally time to quash the last remaining bastion of toxic masculinity!

Another version of, "Go woke, ...". The consequences of BSA's choice has been troops sponsored by Mormon churches winding into shutdown and other church-sponsored troops moving over into Trail Life (including my son's former BSA troop).

[SVPete]

Thanks unions! New test scores indicate students aren't making up for pandemic learning loss

https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2023/07/11/thanks-unions-new-test-scores-indicate-students-arent-making-up-for-pandemic-learning-loss-n563828

It has been clear for at least a year now that pandemic learning loss was real and that it was significant for many children. Every few months we get a new set of scores which confirm what we already knew. The gold standard of these tests, the nationwide NAEP scores, were released last month and showed children had been set back to levels not seen in 20-30 years.
...
Today the NY Times has more bad news. Efforts to make up for all of these losses don’t seem to be working. In fact, there’s some evidence struggling kids are backsliding even further.

Despite billions of federal dollars spent to help make up for pandemic-related learning loss, progress in reading and math stalled over the past school year for elementary and middle-school students, according to a new national study released on Tuesday.

The hope was that, by now, students would be learning at an accelerated clip, but that did not happen over the last academic year, according to NWEA, a research organization that analyzed the results of its widely used student assessment tests taken this spring by about 3.5 million public school students in third through eighth grade.

I don't know if the NYT quite realized what they said, but it is readily apparent that government simply throwing $$ at a problem won't solve the problem. In this case, in addition to the $$ already being lavished on edication, the Feds threw in even more $$, without improvement.

[SVPete]

Jewish bakery faces backlash after refusing synagogue's order for pride-themed treats

https://www.christianpost.com/news/jewish-bakery-faces-backlash-for-refusing-lgbt-themed-treats.html

A New Jersey kosher bakery is facing backlash from the local Jewish community after canceling two LGBT-themed orders from a local synagogue requesting rainbow-colored cake and cookies for a Pride Shabbat celebration.

The Congregation B'nai Israel in Millburn celebrates pride month each year, a time in June that holds significance for supporters of the LGBT movement. While the West Orange Bake Shop co-owner Yitzy Mittel fulfilled an order for a similarly-themed cake last year, the task made him uncomfortable, and he declined to make the pride-themed goods this year.

As The Jewish Telegraph Agency reported Thursday, Mittel believes that LGBT symbols are "a celebration of something which is against Torah," adding that he "didn't want to be making that cake."

Instead of creating the pride-themed goods for the synagogue, the bakery owner referred them to another store that would sell them kosher LGBT desserts. Mittel insisted that he provided notification within 24 hours that he had canceled the orders.

[ADsOutburst]

Thanks unions! New test scores indicate students aren't making up for pandemic learning loss

https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2023/07/11/thanks-unions-new-test-scores-indicate-students-arent-making-up-for-pandemic-learning-loss-n563828


I don't know if the NYT quite realized what they said, but it is readily apparent that government simply throwing $$ at a problem won't solve the problem. In this case, in addition to the $$ already being lavished on edication, the Feds threw in even more $$, without improvement.

Something tells me we haven't seen the worst consequences of the pandemic-related educational problems.

[Ptarmigan]

Democrats' crippling whataboutism on Hunter Biden
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/fairness-justice/democrats-crippling-whataboutism-on-hunter-biden

Hunter Biden is constantly being discussed in conservative circles. Whether it be allegations of corruption, stories of far-from-mysterious cocaine in the White House, or children no one wants to acknowledge, we apparently just can’t stop talking about 53-year-old Hunter Biden.

Not only are we supposedly incapable of moving on from poor, innocent Hunter (according to legacy media), our complaints of his ongoing relationship with President Joe Biden are deemed irrelevant, with this label of irrelevance applied to anyone who dares to speak out against the regime.

This applies even to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who recently slammed Joe Biden for refusing to acknowledge his illegitimate grandchild, the product of an affair between Hunter Biden and a then-stripper, in a column titled, “It’s Seven Grandkids, Mr. President.”

Now, The New York Times is hardly known for being a conservative propaganda outlet, yet this didn’t stop the hosts of The View from going on the defense for their chosen false prophet, Joe Biden.

The View defends President Biden ignoring his 7th grandchild.
"It's not [Joe's] baby." -Whoopie
"It's very hard for Joe Biden to be a grandfather to the child if his son is not being a father." - Navarro
Navarro whines that "the right-wing ... has decided to weaponize Hunter..." pic.twitter.com/rI7JHMOTY6

— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) July 10, 2023

Whataboutism runs rampant in the left.