This week, for Insiders, I ranked the MLB players with the best hitting tools, fielding and throwing tools, and pitching tools. I held my weekly Klawchat on Friday.
For Paste, I reviewed the upcoming boardgame Tak, which was designed based on the fictional depiction of the game in Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles novels.
My last run at the helm of the BBTN podcast for this year came on Monday’s show, with guests Jerry Crasnick and Joe Sheehan.
And now, the links…
- TIME ran a thoughtful piece on how trolls are “ruining” the Internet, looking at why trolls troll and what we might do to combat the inevitable problem.
- I linked to this on Twitter earlier in the week: Mylan hiked EpiPen prices when their competitor shut down production. It’s basic economics, and while I’m very pro-free market, we do have protections against certain monopoly conditions. This is one such case. Mylan’s PR team is on the attack, with this semi-sympathetic portrait of their CEO running in the NY Times, which also ran a more analytical look at why our healthcare system enables this kind of price gouging.
- We’re preparing to fight Zika in south Florida by releasing genetically modified mosquitos into the wild. It’s the right move – doing the same in Africa could save millions of lives – but you can expect a lot of backlash.
- Meanwhile, a new virus appears to break the known ‘rules’ of viral infections by breaking itself into multiple pieces; the virus, which infects mosquitos (seriously, fuck them already), only works in the bugs if several parts of it are present.
- A teenager charged with multiple rapes and suspected of being a serial rapist was given probation by a Judge Thomas Estes because reasons. There’s another movement afoot to remove the judge from the bench, which I support because no one convicted of rape should avoid jail.
- Meanwhile, a 14-year-old girl in Cleveland is in jail and may be charged as an adult for killing her abusive father. The system failed to protect her and her mother, and now she may pay the price for their failures.
- The Canadian Medical Association has called for an end to nonmedical exemptions to childhood vaccinations, which is excellent because there is no good fucking reason on earth not to vaccinate your kids.
- Dr. Donald Henderson, who helped lead the successful effort to eradicate smallpox, died last week at 87. Despite the end of smallpox, he thought efforts to eradicate more quickly-mutating viruses like polio might be futile.
- Tom Scocca’s post mortem on Gawker makes the key point that only money can protect any journalistic outlet from the likes of Peter Thiel. Not the truth, just money.
- Daniel Vaughn reviewed a legit barbecue joint in southern Sweden.
- This New Yorker piece on a very exclusive restaurant in upstate New York is fascinating because it’s a portrait of food, a restaurant, and a chef who might be delusional.
- Some Idaho hot-taker decided to take a few shots at Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Tyson responded with a huge mic-drop in the comments.
- Amateurism is a word fart expelled after wolfing down a nothingburger, says Patrick Hruby in a piece for Vice on the gigantic farce that is the NCAA.
- Also at Vice, on the unconscionable human disaster that was the 2016 Olympics. Everything described therein, including the massive wealth transfers from poor to rich, will continue until cities stop bidding for the games.
- If you’re still stuck in the mindset that there are only two sexes, male and female, read about Olympic champion runner Stella Walsh, who was intersex. She lived as a woman, but after her death (she was murdered in a botched robberty) the coroner discovered that she had underdeveloped male gonads and no uterus due to a chromosomal abnormality. So, I ask Republicans in North Carolina and Mississippi, what bathroom would you have required her to use?
- Why do just 2% of the counties in the United States account for more than half of its death-row inmates? Why do we even execute people, period? Only two countries in the western hemisphere actively use the death penalty, the U.S. and St. Kitts, which I believe has executed one person this century. The story features prosecutor Angela Corey, profiled in a link I posted here last week as perhaps the cruelest DA in the country.
- Two posts on the University of Chicago “no safe spaces/trigger warnings” welcome letter: one that presents the letter with favorable comments, and this dismantling of its words and intent by Grand View University History Professor Kevin Gannon. I don’t think I like the ideas implied by safe spaces, but I speak without experience on that, and, hell, trigger warnings are just common courtesy, aren’t they?
- A rather peculiar research study showed (or claimed to show) that reading literary fiction was better than pop fiction for boosting readers’ emotional skills. You’ll have to read the article to see what exactly they thought it proved and to determine whether you think it proves anything. I’ll be reading literary fiction.
- We’re definitely an HGTV household, but not particularly fans of Flip or Flop. The stars of that show have loaned their likenesses to a real-estate education “seminar” that sure sounds like an old-fashioned scam to me.
A teenager charged with multiple rapes and suspected of being a serial rapist was given probation by a Judge Thomas Estes because reasons. There’s another movement afoot to remove the judge from the bench, which I support because no one convicted of rape should avoid jail.”
I’ve read the article three times and still fail to see where the teen was convicted of rape.
In Massachusetts, a Continuation Without a Finding (CWOF) is somewhat akin to a plea of no contest, where the defendant admits that there is sufficient evidence to support a conviction. The case is then continued for a set period of time, and if after that period there has been no further criminal conduct (or nothing serious or related, at least; it’s up to the judge’s discretion), then the case is dismissed. It’s not a conviction, per se, but if he reoffends or violates his probation, then it can be converted to a conviction. (My knowledge of this process comes from nearly a decade working in public safety in MA, fyi)
I think that’s being a bit semantic. I assume what Keith meant is that nobody charged with rape should have the opportunity to plead down to a no-jail punishment.
I was surprised not to see a link to http://www.theonion.com/article/report-some-dumb-fuck-out-there-probably-wants-his-53563
That is fantastic.
My mother is going to be very upset with me when I forward her that Flip or Flop article.
Wow, I think this was the best links post yet (in terms of links I clicked on to read, which is admittedly a subjective metric).
I don’t think trigger warnings are common courtesy, though. I think content creators, so long as they created their content in good faith, should not have to warn people or preemptively apologize for what they’ve produced. It seems pretty easy to avoid content about whatever triggers you (again, presuming good faith content creation, which might extend to relevant headlines/descriptions).
But are trigger warnings in this context being used by creators or a professor teaching the work? I agree content creators, assuming good faith creation, shouldn’t need to put warnings on their work. But it’s also fair for a professor to put a trigger warning as common courtesy because they couldn’t possibly know every experience of every students’ life. And really how is such a warning any different from the warnings that come up before TV shows about potentially objectionable content?
Sam: But aren’t the warnings before TV shows tied to the ratings? In other words, aren’t they more for parents who might want to screen certain content for their children? Regardless, I don’t think professors should need to supply trigger warnings, either. You’re right in that they don’t know the life experiences of their students. The result, however, should not be a laundry list of possible “trigger warnings” before every assigned reading. (How long before content with [# of trigger warnings] >= X can’t be assigned at all because it violates some poppycock about “safe spaces?”) College students are adults. Adults should deal with the issue and not look to be protected or coddled. The school doesn’t owe them a trigger warning.
Tom: Yes the warnings are tied to ratings, but those ratings are directly tied to the content. I’m all for the idea adults should deal with an issue so long as they have all the information available. If I was teaching a political theory class and wanted to assign something like Mein Kampf, do I not owe my students the simple courtesy of a warning?
Laundry list of trigger warnings, wtf? Only a handful of people (students and faculty) would ever advocate for that. Trigger warnings are there for people to know that they might need to prepare themselves specially for the content and brace themselves for getting through it if it might bring back bad memories or experiences, not to dismiss it the material entirely and allow the student to skip it. There’s also the issue of organic memory, with a growing literature on how trauma can get passed down to subsequent generations. So yes, it is common courtesy for instructors to forewarn their students that the material is brutal and hard to study, unless you just want to jump into talking about things like lynching or the Holocaust or rape or other topics hard to deal with.
I think that Bresha Meadows article to which I linked has a warning about the graphic content it includes. That’s what I meant by such warnings being “common courtesy.” You just include them so people know what’s coming.
Having been around college athletics for most of my life, I never felt that full-scholarship college athletes should be paid. They get a free education and have zero expenses while they are there. However, I also noticed that college athletic departments are filled with an insane number of useless, dweeby administrators making high 5 figure and low 6 figure salaries for doing absolutely nothing useful. If paying the athletes would take money out of the pockets of those morons, then I’m all for it.
I had college professors say things like, “next class we’re going over some things that might be pretty intense and some people might have a hard time with, so be ready.” This was years before “trigger warning” was a common phrase, but it’s basically the same thing and I see it as just common courtesy and something a good teacher would do anyway. I just oppose the idea that a student should be exempt from LEARNING particular material because it might hit home a little too hard. When “trigger warning” means “I’m no longer responsible for the material,” it becomes a problem.
I also had a high school teacher tell the us that next class we were going over some gay rights material, so “if you think you can’t handle that and you need to leave the room or whatever, you can just go hide in your little closet.” So… yeah. I guess it works both ways.
Another perspective on TW’s (with some data too)
https://medium.com/@erikadprice/hey-university-of-chicago-i-am-an-academic-1beda06d692e#.4ngcq1a69
What’s the truth that should have protected Gawker though? Publishing a sex tape is not journalism. They would conveniently slide between gossip blog and ‘journalism’ as it fit them, just like they’d speak on LGBT rights in one post while outing people in others.
The judgement seems too high, but all judgements seem too high, that had nothing to do with Thiel. They get to use him as a bogeyman to excuse their bad behavior. This was a case of two very rich people/organizations in a legal dispute that one side won.
Gawker gay-shamed a no-name corporate executive and enabled/assisted in his blackmail. They started a shame-mob (#HasJustineLandedYet) for a PR person with about 250 followers on Twitter over a tweet she made. of which she was fired for. They posted a video of a random college girl who may have been raped in a bathroom stall and when asked to take it down by her the reply from editor AJ Daulerio was “Blah, blah, blah” and also told the girl it wasn’t a serious matter.
I’m not sure how comfortable I feel about the ability of people like Peter Thiel who have the time and resources to litigate media such as Gawker out of it existence, but much of the problem with Gawker was that it frequently invaded other’s privacy, it cared little, if not reveled, for collateral damage from what it published and, worst of all, it all too often punched down.
The gay-shaming incident was reprehensible, and I thought the Gawker execs who quit when Denton pulled the story down picked the wrong hill on which to die. But I’m afraid the site’s death by lawsuit will lead others to fear to tread the same ground.
I don’t see how what happened to Justine Sacco was a bad thing. Act like a piece of shit human being, don’t be surprised if you experience repercussions (including your PR company firing you) for acting like a piece of shit human being. What’s funny about you even trying to mention that is that marginalized groups face bigotry within the workplace regularly, often with little reprimand, so it’s actually less common for someone to feel the backlash of their statements/actions than it is for them to face consequences. And it’s nowhere in the ballpark of outing an LGBTQ* person.
I’ve kept my mouth shut for two weeks, but my goodness you’re an angry person, Aaron B. Beyond the fact that you turned your venom on me, it seems like there are no gray areas with you. Everyone who does not see things exactly as you do, and live up to your enlightened standards, is a worthless POS.
Justine Sacco’s tweet was unfortunate, and easily open to misinterpretation. But do you have no grasp of context? First of all, it was Twitter, a medium that almost begs to be misunderstood. Second, it was one of several tweets riffing on ethnic stereotypes, South Park-style. Indeed, a careful reading suggests that she was not trying to mock AIDS/black people, but instead white privilege. Third, she was 20 years old. Perhaps you were perfect, even back at that tender age, I know that I did things I regret. Fourth, she apologized profusely. Clearly, she’s no weev or Don Black or David Duke, and yet the mobs focus on people like her, and shrug their collective shoulders at the actual, pernicious racists.
I’m sure you won’t give a second’s consideration to anything I write here, because you’ve already tried and convicted me. But from where I sit, you come dangerously close to the definition of ‘troll’ as laid out in the linked article above. You hurl your slings and arrows from behind the safety of a keyboard, and say things you surely would NEVER say to someone’s face. I mean, you’ve implied you’re an academic. Would you ever approach your dean, or your department chair, or an admin assistant, or a colleague and add a “what the fuck?” to the end of a question, the way you did with the comment above? I am going to guess the answer is “no.”
Now, I shall get ready for the tidal wave of insults that’s coming my direction. You questioned my abilities as a scholar last time; perhaps this time you can go after my parentage? How I treat my dog? The fact that I went to UCLA, and not an Ivy? The possibilities are rich.
Well CB, since you’ve apparently been stalking me for two weeks and have caught me surprise by doing so, I guess I should respond to you, even though I’m still unsure how you got to this point by my initial statements however long ago it was that I would encourage voters in swing states to vote for Clinton to defeat Trump (because, in contrast to what you accuse me of, I’m aware the context is different between swing states and states polling one-sided one way or the other).
I chose my words very carefully, saying that Sacco acted like a piece of shit, not that she was a piece of shit (not that I’d know either way about the latter). I’m fully aware of the context of Sacco’s tweets and went through them again before commenting, and no, it does not matter to me in the slightest that she made a “joke” about British people and bad teeth in the tweet before. For one, ethnic stereotypes do not bemuse me in the slightest, even for white people. Second, your “reading” of the situation and her tweets is quite charitable (to put it nicely; it actually sounds like apologetics, but I won’t get into that), but there was nothing to indicate that she was trying to critique white privilege with that tweet. Even if she was, she completely failed at that and deserves a fair amount of ire, even if she wasn’t working in PR and should have known better at the time, and again, she was making a joke out of the AIDS crisis in Africa, full stop. As a person of color, sorrynotsorry, I have zero tolerance for racial jokes and don’t care one bit if other POC do. In addition, last time I checked, blatant white supremacists like Duke aren’t very employable either, and it’s insulting that you think people online “shrug their collective shoulders at the actual, pernicious racists,” considering how unpopular, say, Donald Trump is, or based on the outrage that occurs whenever a public figure makes racially bigoted statements, or in light of basically all racial justice activism occurring in the present.
I did not judge you before, considering we have had (or had had now) one unkind interaction. At the same time, I can now assuredly say that I’ve met a multitude of people like you, especially in academia, who accuse people of doing the very things you do but are unable or unwilling to face the reality that you’re doing exactly that. You have definitely tried and convicted me in your mind, along with assuming things about me. To answer your question, yes, I have responded with variants of WTF, GTFO, et al, to colleagues with whom I have some sort of friendly rapport in informal settings, typically at a bar or while drinking at someone’s house, when they’ve made egregious statements. Because when people get heated in arguments in informal settings, sometimes that comes out. When commenters create strawmen in their posts or accuse a person or group of doing something that the latter has never done, they deserve to be called out for it. I wouldn’t say WTF to anyone in a formal setting, especially not work-related, but I am operating that the comments here are not a departmental or committee meeting, and nothing has indicated that this is a formal setting.
I’ll conclude by saying your attempt to separate UCLA away from being an elite institution is laughable, considering it’s still a top-tier program for history, as is your belief that I care where you did your education, as if I think that academia is meritocratic and not oftentimes the perpetuation of statuses (that’s a bit of hyperbole but not that far from it). I’m not sure where you get that I was insulting you as a scholar since I did not mention your research at all and was responding to your behavior as a person who identified as a historian, in a thread where you were condescending and rude (e.g. your “big boy pants” remark) to other commenters who for whatever reason could not respectfully disagree with the notion that third-party votes could be a “protest vote.” I did not want people seeing you acting like a dick to that one or two commenters and bring up your profession to reflect poorly on historians as a whole. It seems that you have issues with shades of gray in these comment sections and genuinely understanding what people are arguing, at the very least, along with an odd fixation on me, which itself is also the mark of a troll. So I hope that you actually take a second and examine yourself in this messy exchange, because it might help you come down from this curious frenzy that you’ve worked yourself into. If you’d like to return to civil, or at least reasoned, interactions, then that would be cool, but as of now, this is the end of my interaction with the hostile, trolling you, because most of what you’ve said to me are attacks that make me unable to do anything but make this face:
https://www.110gaming.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2015/02/giphy.gif
I’m afraid I don’t have time to respond comprehensively to such a long rant, particularly when parts of it are barely comprehensible. So, I’ll just say a few things:
1. I am a regular reader of this blog, including the comments section. That is rather far away from being a “stalker,” though I am sure it made you feel very good to hurl that insult at me (In other words: Called it!)
2. You’re right, I shouldn’t have made the big boy pants remark. Maybe, one day, you too will make an error in judgment.
3. It’s remarkable that you presume to attack my reading comprehension, and yet somehow conclude that I tried to “separate UCLA away from being an elite institution.” Did you really read my post and conclude that I was trying to denigrate my alma mater?
4. And finally, let’s just say I am just a tad bit skeptical that your true concern about my previous remarks was that a handful of bog commenters would read them, infer that I am a professional historian, and be left with a permanently warped view of the profession for the rest of their lives.
I’m sure I too could find a snarky gif to post, since that’s such a thoughtful form of discourse. However, I wasn’t even interested enough to take two seconds to click on yours, much less spend a minute or two to discover one of my own.
So … I don’t quite know what to do here, other than to maybe say I’d rather not have a civil war break out in the comments, and that you’re both valued readers who’ve been around here a long time.
Sorry, KLaw. I’ll just ignore his posts from here on out.
WRT trolls, it’s easiest to just leave them be, but super annoyingly hard. I have to say that giving the bored masses (that’s who they are. I guess there’s the dedicated ones, but most are just bored and want to pass time until they have stuff to do) the credit of “ruining” the web is silly.
I think it would be fair to say they’ve damaged the experience on certain sites. I’ve become a relentless muter on Twitter, and still block frequently (just the other day I discovered an old troll whom I’d blocked years ago had created a new account when he said it would be a good day when I stopped breathing). I tried to participate a little on Reddit and found that experience very disappointing. I probably ban someone from my public Facebook page once a week. And I’ve banned a few people here this summer, although at least three of the identities belonged to one person. It becomes a needless task to get rid of these people.