What could be worse than flame wars and trolls?
Ohh, nothing major ....
Other than ...
Leading online content management company Disqus announcing it will be selling advertorial content into comments sections. I've already Tweeted to Disqus that it should stand by for flame wars directed at said advertorial and that I support the idea of said flame wars.
If you're a newspaper, or other website, there's a simpler solution, if you've not already done it.
It's called a ...
PAYWALL!
If you're not a newspaper, but call yourself a "media company" (used loosely?) or worse, a "content provider," then prove you believe that what you write about is of value enough to have people subscribe and ...
PAYWALL IT!
If not, stand by for deliberate flaming of you, of Disqus and of advertisers whose content is in the advertorial. Perhaps flaming of all three of you at once.
Ugh.
I take that back; I know what could be even worse.
Facebook selling advertorial into comments on our personal feeds.
April 08, 2014
Eich and Mozilla — SJW overkill or legitimate action?
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| Brendan Eich/Wikipedia photo |
Then, even as Eich was stepping down, senior leaders in promoting gay awareness, starting with Andrew Sullivan, cried foul.Contra the likes of Sully and Tod Robberson of the Dallas Morning News, while Eich has his right to his personal views, activists have a right to protest against Mozilla hiring him as CEO.
Besides, as the Guardian has documented, this is part of a pattern of Eich's, who also made donations to Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul, and to Buchanan back when he was challenging Poppy Bush in the early 1990s.
Another gay activist, whom I certainly respect more than Sullivan in general, Michelangelo Signorile, tells Sully, at least, to get a clue (and drop some pretenses). Another gay activist, John Aravosis, says, please, don't call this personal choice.
He then brings up the issue of, what if Eich had contributed to the KKK? Well, given that Eich contributed to Ron Paul at the time that racist newsletters were going out from his congressional office under his byline as publisher, that's not just a theoretical question.
(And, apologies for saying in a Facebook thread that Aravosis' stance was the same as Sully's.)
Aravosis, in a later post, was worried somewhat, but didn't go into Sully territory. However, he does worry about the likes of Suey Park and Brittany Cooper of #CancelColbert infamy, steering something like this in the ditch. I think he's probably about right on this issue.
Per people who say that inclusiveness should include being inclusive of the refusing-to-be-inclusive, tosh. That's as nonsensical as "the set of all sets which are not members of this set" or similar.
Per people claiming this isn't free speech? Sure it is. It's certainly more that than money is, contra John Roberts. More than that, banding together to threaten boycotts or other actions is explicitly freedom of assembly, the most forgotten of the four freedoms of the First Amendment.
People who know me know that I am by no means in the corner of the "social justice warrior" movement. But, this was more broadly supported than that. And, no, contra Sully, he wasn't being asked to "repent." Actually, Mozilla was asked to repent.
As for the claim that SJWs should now stop using JavaScript because he invented it? Tosh.
I don't stop reading what Harrison Schmitt said about walking on the moon and doing professional geology work during Apollo 17 because we found out 20-plus years later that he's a climate change denier. Red herring.
As for the idea that right-wingers could do similar boycotts?
Well, we already know that Hobby Lobby, wanting a contraceptive exemption from portions of Obamacare, invests in contraceptive makers, and as of yet, I've heard bupkis about any threatened Religious Right boycott of it. It may happen soon enough, but I'll give you 50-50 odds that, other than the fringes, the real fringest, of the Religious Right, there is no such boycott threat.
Related to that, Brian Beutler nails it on wingnuts getting into a fake tizzy on this issue.
My example, even more than his? If conservatives really care about freedom of speech and freedom of assembly (technically, it's NOT freedom of "association") then they can start working to repeal "right to get fired" laws in red and pale-pink states. (It's my blog, and I'll call said laws what they are.) As every liberal, and every honest conservative, knows, "right to get fired" laws are regularly used to stifle free speech at the workplace.
OTOH (April 8): OKCupid's CEO (remember, that's the company that started this all) lives in a partial glass house. Even if Yagan has rethought some of his politics, per the MoJo story, this may have been a PR stunt as much as anything. And so, would-be gay lovers? You've been used like a $2 tool. How's it feel?
On the third hand (April 8) Jamelle Bouie says not so quick on castigating OK Cupid's Sam Yagan as a hypocrite. And, I'll at least halfway agree, since Yagan's was a contribution to a politician and Eich's Prop 8 was to a special-interest cause. With a Congresscritter like Cannon, he may have been pushing a specific piece of legislation Yagan liked. And Eich's longer list of contributions, to me, as noted above, establish a pattern.
Warrning: contains trigger alerts
And, if you're worried about trigger alerts, I guess I should make a trigger alert out of that. And, should probably go "meta" about that, too.
What ... er ... triggered this deep concern of mine?
The photo at left, which is about CuriOdyssey (cute name) and was blogged about by Gnu Atheist leading light Jerry Coyne, to me highlights the Absurdistan in which "trigger alerts" generally dwell. Specifically, the bottom line is what's concerning to me.
In the back of my mind, for some time, I've thought about posting a "trigger alert" of some sort on every blog post I do about the "social justice warriors" movement, most notably its Atheism Plus incarnation. Warning: Atheism Plus blog tag link may trigger light-headed dysintellectualism.
As for Coyne, I don't know how much he, like biologist and Gnu Atheist buddy P.Z. Myers, dips at least a bit into the SJW angle, but this blog post of his gave me a good entree to the subject in general.
That all said, how and why have trigger alerts entered Absurdistan?
Second, they presume that all (sexual abuse, rape, war combat) survivors, if that's the target audience, will react the same to the material at hand. Related to that, amongst the more tribalist of social justice warriors, they assume that all members of the target audience SHOULD react in the same way. And, that's simply not true.
The worst iterations of that way of thought perpetuate stereotypes. And, since SJWs are supposed to be about deflating stereotypes as part of their work, that's another reason for them to stop.
Until we get to that point, though? (That's if we ever do, of course.)
We need more of those "trigger alerts," to finish trivializing the fair degree of trivialization that "Trigger alert" has already been put through. To riff on Paul Harvey? "Stand by for trigger alerts!"
Beyond that, some potential triggers are GOOD, even if gruesome.
Let's take war coverage in the American mainstream media. Photo and video coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have generally been much less graphic than, say, Vietnam. When graphic injuries and death have been displayed, it's always been about American soldiers. Doorknob forbid we show body splatter after a Predator drone hits an innocent Afghan wedding party.
April 07, 2014
Baseball fans, where were you on Aaron-watch 40 years ago?
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| Hank Aaron, April 8, 1974. |
And now, 40 years later, it's time for reminiscing.
First, on the personal side. People under 40 aren't familiar with what sports coverage was like before the proliferation of sports-specific cable channels. WGN, WTBS, and KTLA in Los Angeles were some sort of "superstations," but none of them yet had true nationwide reach.
Growing up in western New Mexico, we got KTLA as part of our basic (there was no premium) cable package, in part because the Albuquerque Dukes were the L.A. Dodgers' AAA farm club. (I still can't get used to the name of the new team, the Albuquerque Isotopes.) So, I heard Vin Scully on Dodgers games, as that was their home TV station. And, on some nights, all the way in Gallup, N.M., this Cards fan could pick up KMOX, a radio superstation, and hear the gravelly voice of Jack Buck calling Redbirds games.
Otherwise, you watched NBC for your national games of the week on Monday night; NBC had junked Saturday baseball and did only Monday night games, until it and ABC split rights in 1976 and NBC moved to Saturdays.
And fortunately for all of us, including the gracious-in-infamy table-setting pitcher, Al Downing, that game was on NBC on Monday night.
And, we get Curt Gowdy, not as gravelly as Buck, but enough. (I'm old enough to remember a fair chunk of Gowdy's broadcasting, and not just MLB. No, he wasn't Vin Scully. But, he wasn't as bad as some people make him out to be.)
I was 10 years old, and already then, an avid baseball fan in general, and Cards' fan above all, then a Dodgers fan of sorts after that.
Listening to different "calls" of the game, I also forgot that the Dodgers actually tried 1986 World Series goat Bill Buckner in the outfield; he was the left fielder who watched the ball go out. (And, he was kind of crappy as a defensive outfielder way back then.) And, Tom House, in the Braves' bullpen, had a magic glove, for a magic moment.
For additional calls? You can hear Scully, since he was the Dodgers' guy, and Milo Hamilton, the Braves' broadcaster, as well as Gowdy:
As for Aaron? As the AP story and many others note, he was relieved rather than jubilant. A boatload of racist hate mail had accumulated ever since he ended 1973 with 713 home runs. The two white fans who ran on the field during his home run trot certainly didn't help his nerves, or the moment in general.
Per this piece:
“If I were a white man, all America would be proud of me,” Aaron was quoted as saying. “But I’m black. You have to be black in America to know how sick some people are. I’ve always thought racism a problem, even with as much progress as America has made.”Sadly, he was right then. Sadly, there's still a fair amount of rightness in those words 40 years later.
It seems 40 years is about right for such reminiscing, as it was for Apollo 11. You knew that everybody was aging enough that waiting until the 50th was too long. But, on the other hand, the 25th might seem too soon. With Apollo, there was the risk of it being triumphalist, coming soon after the downfall of the Soviet Union.
With Aaron, there was the risk that we didn't yet know how hard it might be to pass him. And, speaking of ...
Not only did Aaron become the new home run champion 40 years ago, he still is, in my book.
Sorry, Barry Bonds, you're not. And, Father Time is making sure Alex Rodriguez won't pass either of you. As for you ESPN writers who claim that the "greenies" Aaron may have taken can add just as much to one's batting as the best steroids? Sorry, Jim Bouton has already emphatically said you're wrong.
To his eternal credit ... Bouton not only disagreed, but got it exactly right. Some day, he says in the interview, baseball will have to reckon with years and years of records that will be artificially inflated, distorted beyond all measure, by the effects of a drug that lets you keep working out when the guys next to you – or before you, chronologically – have to drop the barbell. It was Bouton, after all, who had written in the eternal Ball Four that if a pitcher could take a pill that guaranteed him a) 20 wins and b) that he’d die five years sooner, he would’ve swallowed it before you finished that “b)” part.Aaron himself was ... circumspect seven years ago, but it's clear that he's not totally on board with Bonds' claims, either. (And, while it's an overrated stat of the past, Aaron is still the all-time RBI leader.) And, a favorite player of mine, and presumed non-roider? Albert Pujols is likely also to fall short, though he may nick the 700 ticker tape before moving off the field.
And, he's not alone. Per this story, other players, like Ken Singleton, still consider Hank the champ.
It's hard comparing eras, and comparing hypotheticals, too. Would Ruth still be the all-time leader if he hadn't started his career as a pitcher? Would Ted Williams have passed Ruth before Aaron did, if not for three full years, and most of two others, of military duty in two wars? I'll put at least 50-50 odds if not better on a "yes" on that. On the other hand, without playing in The House that Ruth Built and Fenway, would their stats be different? What about Willie Mays missing all of one year and most of another in the military? I'll give you 50-50 on that, too, or near to it. Or Mickey Mantle having good bones and knees? I'll say "possible," while noting we're in a wider territory of hypotheticals now. (That said, Teddy Ballgame had his own bits of fragility; no guaranteeing he would have held up for 22 years.)
Others?
Sadaharu Oh, with his 868 homers and all? He had a nice passing of Aaron, but he never made that claim himself to be the greatest home run masher ever. Josh Gibson? Great player. Did he hit 800 HRs of the wildest of tales or not? Not in official games, to be sure; we do know that his 80-HR season included barnstorming games and more, and even then may be a myth. We do know that it was against outclassed competition, because progenitors of the racists who sent Aaron death threats wouldn't let him play in the major leagues.
Unfortunately, this is all part of the 40 years of reflection, as well. So is the diminishing number of American blacks playing baseball, though it continues to draw Hispanics, including Caribbean blacks and browns, and Asians, and a few Europeans, even. With all that, even if it's not America's game, anymore, it's still all-American in its own way.
Now, if umps would only enforce 20-second pitch counts. That said, the record-setter game, a 7-4 Braves win, clocked at 2:27, while the Cardinals' April 6, 2014 2-1 loss to the Pirates, with about the same amount of pitching changes, but a lower score, came in at 2:29.
Tawdriness and favoritism at the White House
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| Methinks the man on the right is not "objecting" that much. |
But, the "selfie" that Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz took at the White House when the Sox, as reigning World Series champs, visited last week, is a bit upsetting.
The "selfie" idea is getting beaten into the ground in general.
Second, in line with Ellen DeGeneres at the Oscars, we start wondering if Ortiz's photo wasn't necessarily for personal narcissism, but like Ellen, was for commercial capitalism with Samsung.
Third, according to some Olympians, we find out that you ain't supposed to do that.
Ortiz says it wasn't a marketing stunt. OTOH, he's never explained exactly how he wound up being on a leaked roiders' list.
Samsung claims the same. OTOH, they're retweeting the pic, and probably getting more value out of it with its alleged spontaneity.
Samsung hired Ortiz to be its "social media insider" on April 1. Alex Radetsky, president and founder of Radegen Sports Management, the marketing firm that has represented Ortiz for 12 years, told Mashable that the deal doesn't require Ortiz to snap selfies with the President or anyone else. "It certainly was not part of the deal. it was spontaneous on his part," said Radetsky. ...So, color me skeptical.
Since April 1, Ortiz has posted 11 photos on his Twitter feed at the time of this writing. Samsung Mobile US later retweeted the photo as well. A Samsung rep told The Boston Globe that “We were thrilled to see the special, historic moment David Ortiz captured with his Galaxy Note 3 during his White House visit. It was an honor to help him capture such an incredible and genuine moment of joy and excitement. Similar to the selfie Ellen was able to capture during the Oscars, this was an opportunity for David to share the incredible moment with his fans."
Also, per the Olympians, did Ortiz and others get a similar warning? If so, and Ortiz shot anyway, it was premeditated indeed.
So, does Dear Leader cut a cut of the action? If not now, after Jan. 20, 2917, will Samsung cut a check? Even ask him to do a commercial? Or, accept a $100K speaker's fee?
We have this from Ortiz's "spontaneousness" link:
Two days after the photo circulated, White House Spokesman Jay Carney said the White House "objected" to the photo. "I can tell you that as a rule the White House objects to attempts to use the President’s likeness for commercial purposes. And we certainly object in this case," Carney said.Again, call me back about 33 months from now. And, tell us, per the "commercial" objection, if somebody from Samsung didn't even talk to 1600 Pennsylvania in advance.
Some people may call me a cynic rather than a skeptic, but I don't believe the peddled-for-public-consumption story line, nor do I believe nobody collaborated on writing that story line.
Obamacare: What next? And how good is it?
The Columbia Journalism Review has a good round-up of "the current state of affairs" now that we're past the end of the first enrollment period.
It covers what it likely will and will not do. Sorry, fellow liberal friends, the will NOTS included that it likely will NOT significantly reduce the number of uninsureds and it will NOT do much of anything for cost control
Those major issues begin and end with cost control, and cost control throughout our whole healthcare system. As I've blogged before, for example, electronic medical records, so far at least, are more a boon to the companies creating the software than they are to cost control. Chief Roberts ruling that Medicaid expansion couldn't be required will continue to be a drag, no matter how many other fixes are passed. And, when a major newspaper columnist struggles with the paperwork of his private insurer, Obamacare will be a half a solution at best as long as its centered on private insurers in general and US private insurers in particular.
In other words, in reality, CJR isn't telling us a lot of new stuff. And CJR's roundup includes links to a number of mainstream news sites that don't have any tribalism skin in the game, whether Obamiac or Tea Party. This is all straight news, and per the links from my previous blogging, it's not anything that should surprise a thoughtful person.
Between the lines, it's asking us to examine our tribalism of political rooting on this issue. It's asking Obama's defenders how much they really want to defend a neoliberal half solution that like many a "good," may well indeed be the enemy of (and obstructor of) the "better" or "best."
And, it's that issue that goes beyond reading between the lines. A lot of Obamiac and Obamiac lite types still want to say one of two things:
1. It's the best he could have done at the time;
2. It's a foot in the door.
On the first? That's about as right, or as wrong, as the claim that what we finally got on a stimulus package was the best he could have done. Just as he "compromised away the compromise" in advance on stimulus negotiation talks (don't believe the BS that nobody knew the Great Recession was that bad, unless you want to say Obama's whole 2009 economic team was that fucking incompetent)
On the second? To expand on the good being the enemy of the best, this relies on several bad assumptions. The first bad assumption, never made by me, is that neoliberals like Obama want anything other than a market-based solution, or "solution," to our health care problems. The second is that, on top-down changes on health care, we'll have more than one bite at the apple in the next two decades or so. I never fully bought into that one, nor do I buy into a subset of that one, that a bunch of red-state governors will finally see the light on Medicaid expansion. The third is the one that CJR pointed out, the idea that this foot in the door would be transformative, when it's not.
And, I haven't even tackled, in this blog post, the number of mandates and requirements of what actually passed Congress and was signed into law by Dear Leader in 2009 that have since been delayed, with some of them likely to get delayed again. In short, with all the other scare quotes in this piece, to some degree, what we have right now is "Obamacare," not Obamacare. That said, there's no guarantees that the full deal will do much to tackle the primary issue of reining in health care costs. That said, a single payer system likely would not do the same in and of itself.
Obamacare may nip at the edges of the current "culture" of health care. But, it doesn't do a Kuhnian paradigm shift. And THAT is how it's ... not transformative.
Theoretically, we can do better, by basics of logic.
But, in actuality, maybe we can't.
And, if that's the case, we might as well he honest about it, rather than lighting Obamacare birthday candles or something.
It covers what it likely will and will not do. Sorry, fellow liberal friends, the will NOTS included that it likely will NOT significantly reduce the number of uninsureds and it will NOT do much of anything for cost control
Obamacare further bakes in the inequalities that exist in the US healthcare system. The law makes these inqualities more transparent with the different options offered on the exchanges.Note to Obamiacs — Again, this is what you get with a law largely written by and for insurers. Sure, it's "nice" that the House GOP is quietly passing a few tweaks to repair minor issues that Obama's wanted done for some time. But, none of those address major issues.
Those major issues begin and end with cost control, and cost control throughout our whole healthcare system. As I've blogged before, for example, electronic medical records, so far at least, are more a boon to the companies creating the software than they are to cost control. Chief Roberts ruling that Medicaid expansion couldn't be required will continue to be a drag, no matter how many other fixes are passed. And, when a major newspaper columnist struggles with the paperwork of his private insurer, Obamacare will be a half a solution at best as long as its centered on private insurers in general and US private insurers in particular.
In other words, in reality, CJR isn't telling us a lot of new stuff. And CJR's roundup includes links to a number of mainstream news sites that don't have any tribalism skin in the game, whether Obamiac or Tea Party. This is all straight news, and per the links from my previous blogging, it's not anything that should surprise a thoughtful person.
Between the lines, it's asking us to examine our tribalism of political rooting on this issue. It's asking Obama's defenders how much they really want to defend a neoliberal half solution that like many a "good," may well indeed be the enemy of (and obstructor of) the "better" or "best."
And, it's that issue that goes beyond reading between the lines. A lot of Obamiac and Obamiac lite types still want to say one of two things:
1. It's the best he could have done at the time;
2. It's a foot in the door.
On the first? That's about as right, or as wrong, as the claim that what we finally got on a stimulus package was the best he could have done. Just as he "compromised away the compromise" in advance on stimulus negotiation talks (don't believe the BS that nobody knew the Great Recession was that bad, unless you want to say Obama's whole 2009 economic team was that fucking incompetent)
On the second? To expand on the good being the enemy of the best, this relies on several bad assumptions. The first bad assumption, never made by me, is that neoliberals like Obama want anything other than a market-based solution, or "solution," to our health care problems. The second is that, on top-down changes on health care, we'll have more than one bite at the apple in the next two decades or so. I never fully bought into that one, nor do I buy into a subset of that one, that a bunch of red-state governors will finally see the light on Medicaid expansion. The third is the one that CJR pointed out, the idea that this foot in the door would be transformative, when it's not.
And, I haven't even tackled, in this blog post, the number of mandates and requirements of what actually passed Congress and was signed into law by Dear Leader in 2009 that have since been delayed, with some of them likely to get delayed again. In short, with all the other scare quotes in this piece, to some degree, what we have right now is "Obamacare," not Obamacare. That said, there's no guarantees that the full deal will do much to tackle the primary issue of reining in health care costs. That said, a single payer system likely would not do the same in and of itself.
Obamacare may nip at the edges of the current "culture" of health care. But, it doesn't do a Kuhnian paradigm shift. And THAT is how it's ... not transformative.
Theoretically, we can do better, by basics of logic.
But, in actuality, maybe we can't.
And, if that's the case, we might as well he honest about it, rather than lighting Obamacare birthday candles or something.
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