Woke medicine 2023: racial apartheid is de rigueur again.

You know how I always say the medical journals are not to be trusted, that they are full of shit and act as propaganda organs for the Left? This is why I say it.

Racial Affinity Group Caucusing in Medical Education — A Key Supplement to Antiracism Curricula

April 27, 2023
N Engl J Med 2023; 388:1542-1545
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp2212866

That's the title. Here's the begining:

As academic medicine begins to recognize and examine racism as the root cause of racially disparate health outcomes, we need curricula for training physicians to dismantle the systems that perpetuate these inequities. Since traditional approaches to medical education are themselves founded in inequitable systems, new approaches are essential.

Yes my friends, the existing hospital and medical school "systems" are hopelessly racist and need to be "dismantled." Here's their suggestion to replace everything:

 Racial affinity group caucuses (RAGCs)

Hmm. Interesting bafflegab, what does that mean in English?

Cultivating sacred spaces: a racial affinity group approach to support critical educators of color

ABSTRACT

Despite repeated pleas for diversifying the U.S. teacher force, teachers of color who are committed to social justice are often unsupported and even pushed out via structural, interpersonal, and pedagogical obstacles within the profession. In response to neoliberal, colorblind, and apolitical approaches to teacher development and support, educators and organizers have reclaimed and reframed their pedagogies through critical professional development and grassroots activism to center healing from the impacts of oppression in its myriad forms . The ethnographic case study in this article examines how, over the course of three years, a grassroots racial affinity group became an important space for learning and healing for its members. I explain how the group explicitly centered twelve members' voices, needs, and collective knowledge, and in so doing: (a) collectively cultivated a critical, humanizing, and healing space for their sustainability; and (b) navigated various positions within socially toxic education institutions and organizations. I conclude by discussing how and why critical racial affinity spaces for educators of color are necessary in order to support their personal, political, relational, and pedagogical growth, which has implications on their retention and leadership within the field.

Ohhh, I see. It means this:

1. An official policy of racial segregation formerly practiced in the Republic of South Africa, involving political, legal, and economic discrimination against nonwhites.
2. A policy or practice of separating or segregating groups.
3. The condition of being separated from others; segregation.

Apartheid. Except chaged up to discriminate against Whites.

Capital W on White, by the way, from the article.

Founded on legacies of colonialism and racism, medical education has historically centered White learners and continues to perpetuate structural racism.⁴ Pedagogical approaches often center White learners and ignore the differential impact of content on BIPOC learners (Black, Indigenous, or people of color) with personal experiences of racism that are nuanced and have been informed by interactions and observations over their lifetimes. Immersion in the existing medical education system can therefore be retraumatizing, resulting in imposter syndrome, heightened anxiety, and a reduced sense of belonging. Especially as we seek to recruit more medical students who are BIPOC, we need to recognize this harm and encourage pedagogical approaches that support the needs of BIPOC learners.

RAGCs have been studied in a range of settings, including K–12 education, undergraduate education, and workplace environments, but have not yet been well studied in medical education.^1,3 Some BIPOC people have been socialized to care for the egos of White people, to express their emotions only in ways that are palatable to White audiences, and to tread lightly around "White fragility" (White people's discomfort and defensiveness regarding their legacy of racism and complicity in systems of inequality) in order to maintain their relationships, professional status, and safety.⁵ In a space without White people, BIPOC participants can bring their whole selves, heal from racial trauma together, and identify strategies for addressing structural racism.^1,2,5

 Yeah. Just kick Whitey out of class, and everything will be way better, and all the non-White kids won't have to tread lightly around all that White fragility.

Haven't we seen that before though? I mean, didn't we address this shit in the 1960s? Oh that's right, we did. Equality under the law is a thing in every nation in Western civilization now. Even South Africa.

But these guys say that's not good enough anymore. They don't want to be equal. They want a special deal. They want to make all the White kids and the White teachers go to the White school, so the BIPOC people can... relax? I guess? Because that forcible seperation thing worked out so well in South Africa, you know.

There's a name for this type of thing. I think it starts with an R, or maybe an N. Some guy with this weird mustache started it, I'm trying to think where I've heard it before....

Speed of light violated, spooky action at a distance confirmed.

This is some very interesting news.

The experiment wasn't the first to show that local realism isn't how the Universe works — it's not even the first to do so with qubits. But it's the first to separate the qubits by enough distance to ensure that light isn't fast enough to travel between them while measurements are made. And it did so by cooling a 30-meter-long aluminum wire to just a few milliKelvin. Because the qubits are so easy to control, the experiment provides a new precision to these sorts of measurements.

The Ars Technica article.

So, long story short, quantum entanglement DOES transmit information faster than light.

In practice, this meant giving the entire assembly built to keep the wire cool access to the liquid helium refrigeration systems that housed the qubits at each end—and building a separate refrigeration system at the center point of the 30-meter tube. The system also needed flexible internal connections and exterior supports because the whole thing contracts significantly as it cools down.

Still, it all worked impressively well. Because of the performance of the qubits, the researchers could perform over a million individual trials in only 20 minutes. The resulting correlations ended up being above the limit set by Bell's equations by a staggering 22 standard deviations. Put in different terms, the p value of the result was below 10-108.

The distance traveled by the speed of light in a nanosecond is roughly a foot. Computers easily run at speeds that are measured in nanoseconds, making it possible to see the resulting measurements made of entanglement connecting one chip to the other faster than the speed of light. One chip reacts to the other sooner than light can travel 30 meters. By the look of that 10^-108, a hell of a lot faster.

So there you go, you -can- transmit information faster than the speed of light. Somewhere, Albert must be grumbling about it.

Update: Welcome Small Dead Animals! Thanks for the linkage, Kate!

We're gonna Dieeeeeee!!!

 Reposting this comment I made at According To Hoyt.

Yes, we’re all doomed. All going to die, the end is nigh, hasta la vista, baby. Doom and destruction all over TV, radio, streaming. Films, music, books. Yer gonna die.

Well, unless you listen to Korean pop idols. K-Pop is making HUGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY internationally by being sweet bubbly candy with cute girls and fun dancing that kids can actually -do- while they sing along. Lots of blown kisses and making your hands into heart symbols.

Leaving aside the fan armies and social media dramatics of K-Pop, their business model is to sell entertainment to kids.

No one (that I know of) is doing this in the USA/Britain/Canada right now. The closest you get is Trance, where there’s no singing and you just zone-out while moving your feet. There’s no “Positive Message” in Western music right now, the best you can hope for is “never mind, just drop some molly and dance until you puke.”

Being a geezer I can’t pretend to an encyclopedic knowledge of trendy trends for 2023, but if you look at the -wasteland- of modern entertainment the only shiny spots are in Asia. Japan, Korea, and weirdly, China.

That, my friends, smacks of an Arrangement.

We know for sure, given Sad Puppies, that dead-tree publishing is rigged to favor grimdark grey goo. Books, comics, all the same. Goo.

We know for sure it isn’t selling because bookstores (the few that are still open) are filled with manga now. Western SF/F, one bookcase. Manga, three -aisles- of book cases.

So they are deliberately doing what they KNOW doesn’t work. They know it. For sure. The proof is in the sales numbers. But there they are, persisting. So wtf are they doing?

Well, where else do we see this? Gun control, one example. I know -for sure- it doesn’t work to accomplish the stated purpose of reducing violent crime. Everybody knows it doesn’t work. It is exquisitely obvious that it doesn’t work. But they still do it.

Renewable energy, another example. Windmills and solar can’t supply the electrical grid with reliable power. Everyone knows this. Self evidently, solar doesn’t make power when the sun goes down. Windmills don’t make power when there’s no wind. But what are they doing? Putting up windmills and solar. Which don’t work. For sure.

There are many other examples like recycling, veganism, electric cars, carbon taxes, paper masks for the flu etc. Waste motion, all of it.

So I look at all that, the steady diet of grimdark, the waste of resources, the oppression of individuals at every turn, and it occurs to me I don’t really care any more why they’re doing it. It doesn’t matter why, even if I knew it wouldn’t help.

I’m pretty well done trying to figure out their motivation, and I’m done trying to convince by sweet reason. Where I’m at now is actively subverting their actions by simply saying the truth.

Recycling, sacred cow of Enviros, is a lie. Gun control, sacred cow of the Perennially Concerned and Caring, is a lie. Renewable energy, lie.

Grimdark literature, sacred cow of the Cognoscenti, is worse than a mere lie. It is a mind poison aimed at harming the people who read it.

K-Pop. Manga. Anime. That’s the thing.