Open Thread and Link Farm, happy robot edition

  1. An Expert on Concentration Camps Says That’s Exactly What the U.S. Is Running at the Border
    “Things can be concentration camps without being Dachau or Auschwitz.”
  2. After two trans migrant women died in ICE detention, Tucker Carlson says trans detainees are treated better than American citizens
  3. Inside the horrors of migrant detention centers – Axios
    “At a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facility in El Paso, Tex. more than 150 migrants were held in a cell meant for just 35 people…”
  4. What’s Actually Causing Infectious Disease Outbreaks in Immigrant Detention Centers? – Pacific Standard
  5. Hitler Was Incompetent and Lazy — and His Nazi Government Was an Absolute Clown Show | Opinion
    People underestimated Hitler, because you don’t have to be competent to do a lot of harm.
  6. Could Oregon Become the First State to Ban Single-Family Zoning? – Willamette Week
    “… allowing smaller dwellings or breaking up single-family homes into multiple units creates more housing and the chance to make housing more affordable in pricey neighborhoods.”
  7. Every NIMBY’s Speech At a Public Hearing – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency
    “I’ve lived in the same house in the Elm Heights neighborhood for the past twenty years, and I just love everything about this town except for the problems that my politics have directly created.”
  8. I’m from a Mexican family. Stop expecting me to eat ‘authentic’ food. – The Washington Post
  9. Why Elizabeth Warren Left The GOP – POLITICO Magazine
    “Warren says the first trip to a bankruptcy court in San Antonio upended her feelings about Law and Economics and the more theoretical, free-market approach she had espoused.”
  10. Incels are now mad about women smiling at them :: We Hunted The Mammoth
    “Now I have been black pilled about female smiles just being another form of teasing.”
  11. A Year After Internet Infamy, Ronaldo Sculptor Gets Another Shot
    The weird thing is, the first sculpture is so much more engaging and interesting than any better-done sculpture could be. But I’m glad he’s gotten another chance; hopefully he’ll get to keep on sculpting.
  12. My Jewish Trek | Jewish Journal
    “‘Gene was anti-Semitic, clearly,’ Nimoy replied as my heart sank.”
  13. Global Implications of FOSTA | Slixa
    “The passage of FOSTA rests on an extensive history of abolitionist attempts to pass legislation that restrict sex work or apply paternalistic narratives to workers.”
  14. Baby Anacondas Born At New England Aquarium — Without Any Male Snakes Involved
  15. Political Cartoonist Not Sure How To Convey That Large Sack In Senator’s Hand Is Full Of Money – The Onion
  16. Report: Google News Does Not Have an Anti-Conservative Bias So Much as a Pro-Credible Source One
    And, unsurprisingly, a pro-gets-a-lot-of-clicks bias. (Conservatives will respond that the measures used to access “credible” are also biased against conservatives.)
  17. Virginia EMT who made racist remarks on podcast loses his job – CNN
    As y’all know, I’m generally against firing people for their off-the-clock political speech. Well, here’s a case where I completely approve of the firing.
  18. The Trade Secret: Firms That Promised High-Tech Ransomware Solutions Almost Always Just Pay the Hackers
    Via Ozy.
  19. Dogs’ Eyes Have Changed Since Humans Befriended Them – The Atlantic
    “For the study, a team at the University of Portsmouth’s Dog Cognition Centre looked at two muscles that work together to widen and open a dog’s eyes, causing them to appear bigger, droopier, and objectively cuter.”
  20. Black Missouri drivers 91% more likely to be stopped, state attorney general finds | PBS NewsHour
  21. The Political and the Principled: A Different Take On Grievance Studies
  22. Many Analysts, One Data Set: Making Transparent How Variations in Analytic Choices Affect Results
    Journal article giving the same data to 29 teams of analysts; the various teams found significantly different results, despite using the same data. “These findings suggest that significant variation in the results of analyses of complex data may be difficult to avoid, even by experts with honest intentions.” Thanks to Harlequin for the link!
  23. The kidnapped Yazidi children who don’t want to be rescued from ISIS – The Washington Post
    What a nightmare.
  24. Animals Are Becoming Nocturnal To Avoid Interacting With Humans
  25. Pleading Guilty to Get Out of Jail – The Appeal
    Too many people have a choice between 1) remaining in jail because they can’t afford bail, or 2) pleading guilty to a misdemeanor in order to get free.
  26. Which is why there are movements to end cash bail. But the politics can be complicated, plus there’s the worry that without cash bail, DAs and judges will try to divert more people into simply being jailed with no bail possible.
  27. D.C. Sex Workers Want Decriminalization—and City Council Members Agree – Reason.com
    The article doesn’t give a sense of how likely the bill is to pass, however. Anyone got a feel for that?
  28. Everyone Got the Dutch Teen ‘Euthanasia’ Story Wrong – Reason.com
    The real story – a complex story of a suffering teen choosing not to eat and her parents choosing to no longer force-feed her – became, in English newspapers, a completely fabricated cautionary tale about euthanasia.

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329 Responses to Open Thread and Link Farm, happy robot edition

  1. 301
    J. Squid says:

    To, once again, torture the analogy until it begs for mercy and says whatever it thinks I want it to say…

    “I’m not responsible for the fact that the army I transported to your doorstep then attacked you.”

    Yeah, I can’t agree with that stance. You’re not responsible for the actions of that army, but you’re sure as hell responsible for them being able to attack me. It’s not like you had no idea they were an army. It’s not like you had no idea that their options for transport were limited. It was an army and you placed profit before people who were not you.

    But, as you say, I don’t think we disagree on the facts. We just disagree on responsibility for what the easily predictable consequences of that action should be.

  2. 302
    Harlequin says:

    To extend the ink and paper analogy: First, it would depend how direct the connection was. (If a paper company is selling directly to a Nazi newspaper, I hold them more accountable than if they’re selling to an office-supply store and the office-supply store is supplying the printer, although I would not say the level of accountability is high in either case.) But second–this is a forum where people glorify and encourage mass murder, in a situation where we have evidence that withdrawing the forum makes people stop engaging. I like talking abstract principles as much as* the next person, but this specific situation is an all-hands-on-deck, whatever-we-can-do crisis. If the only lever we have to stop the metaphorical printing is a metaphorical liberal-leaning ink manufacturer, like, fucking pull that lever.

    I worry, in general, about how much of our electronic infrastructure is run by monopolies or oligopolies. This has the power to influence what ideas are heard and are not heard in very bad ways. (For example: the way credit card processing is a lever to control sexually explicit material in ways that disproportionately harm some minority groups.) But people are dying now, and this situation is so extreme I’m not worried about setting a precedent. Let’s get them off the Internet, and work on breaking up the tech companies in the long term.

    *more accurately: far more than

  3. 303
    Ben Lehman says:

    Re: Cloudflare. It seems to me that there’s a huge difference between assigning blame and taking responsibility.

    I think about this a lot with my publishing. Sometimes of my work has been used to support ideologies I find detestable. So I think a lot, when I write and design, about “how can this be used?” and try to make it so that it’s hard to turn it into a tool of evil. That, to me, is a responsible choice.

    But I would never support anything requiring artists to do that process, or any sort of external judge of that.

  4. 304
    Jeffrey Gandee says:

    J Squid:

    But, as you say, I don’t think we disagree on the facts. We just disagree on responsibility for what the easily predictable consequences of that action should be.

    Why is my analogy tortured when the ACLU also knew the predictable consequences of defending nazis? Seems like a good analogy to me. One difference that might matter to some is that the ACLU is making arguments about legal responsibility and rights, rather than moral responsibility, and many, including myself like to differentiate between the two. There are things I believe are wrong with near 100% certainty that I still would not make illegal.

    Harlequin:

    Let’s get them off the Internet

    What does this entail? Social pressure? I think I’m OK with that.

    Ben:

    It seems to me that there’s a huge difference between assigning blame and taking responsibility.

    I think “taking responsibility” is different from “holding one responsible.” I fear this kind of language is ripe for strategic equivocation, which is why I’m so leery of holding Cloudflare responsible even in part. I’m glad they aren’t providing a service to 8chan, but if they decided not to deny their service to 8chan, I wouldn’t assign them responsibility for 8chan’s content, and especially not for the actions of people inspired by 8chan’s content. I think we’re on some really scary guilt-by-association ground if we do that, with chilling consequences for all of us. But maybe “holding Cloudfare responsible” just means something like “I’d prefer not to do business with a company that also does business with 8chan.” I cant see anything wrong with that.

  5. 305
    J. Squid says:

    Why is my analogy tortured…

    No, no, no! I was the one torturing the analogy until it said what I wanted to hear. Sorry that wasn’t clear, but I have no idea how to be clearer. It’s a shortcoming of mine.

  6. 306
    Jeffrey Gandee says:

    J Squid, rereading your comment, you were perfectly clear, I shouldn’t have taken it personally.

    I’m dying to know, do you think the ACLU is partially responsible for nazi marches, and how does that responsibility shape they way you think about them?

  7. 307
    J. Squid says:

    I’m dying to know, do you think the ACLU is partially responsible for nazi marches, and how does that responsibility shape they way you think about them?

    The ACLU absolutely bears some responsibility for the nazi marches they’ve defended. Otoh, those marches don’t seem as clearly dangerous as forums like 8chan that preserve the anonymity of participants who radicalize and encourage each other to violence. Where those marches exposed the dirtbags who wanted to be nazis, 8chan provides cover and organizing space for the dirtbags who want to be nazis.

    The ACLU was following their mission which, though it has some bad side effects, we generally think of as worthwhile. Cloudflare, otoh, has a mission of making money and only making money for itself. It’s an inherently selfish ethic with no care for the community that enables its existence.

    I see a clear difference in intent of purpose, relationship to society and danger between the two cases. You, I understand, do not.

  8. 308
    Harlequin says:

    What does this entail? Social pressure? I think I’m OK with that.

    No. Full force of the law, social and/or economic pressure on intermediaries, whatever. When it comes to actually inciting murder I’m comfortable with going beyond “social pressure.”

  9. 309
    Jeffrey Gandee says:

    IANAL, but I’m pretty sure US law enforcement can’t do much to 8chan besides subpoena documents and stuff, right? I think they aren’t liable for their content because they are a platform. I also believe that the lack of moderation makes them less, not more liable. I wonder if Ron F is qualified to comment more authoritatively.

    What might work is a not-so-well concealed effort to infiltrate the boards with Feds. You could even use fake accounts to further rumors of fed presence. This could scare some of the worst actors away. The image in my head of an 8chan radical is a man who is paranoid of spooks and black helicopters. The only problem with this is that the FBI might want terrorists to post on 8chan because it could give them leads in some cases, but I imagine that possibility can’t outweigh the damage 8chan is doing, so maybe scaring people off the platform is better.

  10. 310
    Ampersand says:

    This is probably the reason that you and I differ on boycotts. To me, boycotts are one of the few ways we have to constrain the behavior of corporations.

    I don’t disagree with that at all.

    What I object to most, in boycotts, is when they’re proposed as a way to punish people for having differing opinions. I.E., “the CEO of this corporation is pro-life, let’s boycott the corporation.” I especially dislike that when it’s more of the form “the owner of the corner grocery is pro-Trump, so we’re organizing a boycott.”

    On the other hand, I think it makes a lot of sense to use boycotts to pressure a corporation to change a particular policy. I.e., “this corporation has been providing free office space for pro-life orgs, let’s boycott until they stop doing that.”

  11. 311
    Ampersand says:

    So Yang has met the threshold for being included in the September Dem debate. So that makes the lineup Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Andrew Yang.

    I’m hoping that Castro will make it in. The threshold is that a candidate has to have at least 130,000 donors and score at at least 2 percent in four polls; Castro has met the donor threshold, and has polled at 2% in three polls, so he’s pretty close.

    (I’m still hoping Warren will win it, but Castro is my second choice. Plus, Castro’s only 44; the longer he lasts in this race, the better his name recognition will be in future races.)

    Castro’s brother – also a Congressman and Castro’s campaign manager – foolishly tweeted a list of people in his district who had donated the maximum to Trump. This is public info, so technically it isn’t “doxxing,” I’ve seen many people argue. Maybe we need a new word for when someone with a huge following puts negative attention on ordinary citizens they disagree with; maybe “spotlighting”? Whatever it is, I think it’s a bad idea ethically, and it’s also probably hurt his brother’s campaign so it’s not even good tactically.

  12. 312
    J. Squid says:

    … puts negative attention on ordinary citizens they disagree with; maybe…

    People who donate the max (or more) to a politician are not ordinary citizens. They are citizens with enormous wealth and, thus, power. So I will disagree with you on this. It isn’t like the NYT didn’t publicize the names of those who donated to the Clinton Foundation during the 2016 election. I didn’t hear the GOP complaining about how reckless and dangerous that was, so I’m not falling for the hypocritical cries for privacy in this case.

  13. 313
    Eytan Zweig says:

    Amp – can you explain why you think publishing that list was unethical? I don’t get it.

  14. 314
    Ampersand says:

    J: The max to donate to a politician is a thousand dollars, which you’d have to be pretty comfortable to give, but “enormous wealth and power” is a vast exaggeration. I’m pretty sure we both know people who could give that amount, if it were important to them.

    In contrast, the highest donor to the Clinton foundation gave over $25 million, and there were many who gave over a million. And although the Times put the entire database online, and you can search it, in their stories they only spotlighted some wealthy and powerful donors.

    Eytan and J, Jordan Peterson tweeted out links to the Facebook pages of two student activists who were protesting his scheduled appearance at a college.

    Technically, not doxxing: their Facebook pages were public, and they were talking about the protests on their pages. You could even argue that they were public figures, insofar as they had been publicly organizing a protest on their campus.

    But in the normal course of events, Peterson’s million-plus Twitter followers wouldn’t have had those two students’ names and social media shoved under their noses. That’s what I’m calling “spotlighting.”

    Needless to say, the students received lots of harassment from Peterson fans, and one of them took down her Facebook profile.

    That Peterson’s spotlighting would lead to a great deal of harassment of the students was obvious. Peterson is neither so stupid nor so naive that he didn’t know that. What he did was a form of bullying.

    As a general rule (I can think of exceptions), a public figure – be it someone like Jordon Peterson, or be it a congressman – should not use their prominence to shine a negative spotlight on ordinary people who would not, in the normal course of events, be prominent. Especially in the age of social media, it’s almost guaranteed to lead to harassment.

    (Although I also feel the need to point out that the only harassment I KNOW of, in the Castro example, is that a member of Representative Castro’s staff has been subject to racist, misogynistic & fat-hating comments because of the right-wing blowback.)

  15. 315
    Michael says:

    @Ampersand#314
    “J: The max to donate to a politician is a thousand dollars, which you’d have to be pretty comfortable to give, but “enormous wealth and power” is a vast exaggeration. I’m pretty sure we both know people who could give that amount, if it were important to them.”
    According to the Hill, it’s $2,700.00:
    https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/456429-democratic-lawmaker-criticized-for-tweeting-names-of-trump-donors
    A lot but not THAT much.

  16. 316
    Ben Lehman says:

    Barry: In general, do you think that the campaign finance laws that require that donor lists be public are a bad idea? Would you support repealing them?

    I don’t have a pre-determined argument here. I just don’t see a lot of arguments against making political donations public and I’m just really curious about your reasoning.

  17. 317
    Ampersand says:

    According to the Hill, it’s $2,700.00.

    Thanks! I guess I misread whatever website I looked up the limit on.

  18. 318
    Eytan Zweig says:

    Amp – thank you for the explanation. But I think there’s a fundamental difference between what Peterson did and what Castro did, in that Peterson posted links, and Castro posted a list of names and occupations. Facebook links are a form of address, one that one can follow to harass. Names and occupations, without contact information, don’t provide a direct avenue for harassment. Yes, if someone was determined to harass the donors, Castro’s list makes it easier for them. But it doesn’t enable it fully, unlike links.

    If Peterson had just said the names of students that organised the protest, I would have not had a problem with that. If Castro had posted links, home addresses, phone numbers, or other direct contact information, I would consider that unethical. But I don’t have an (ethical) problem with posting lists of names that are public already.

  19. 319
    Ampersand says:

    Ben, I wouldn’t support repealing the disclosure law. I haven’t looked deeply into the issue, but my impression is that the disclosure laws are useful because they let us see if a politician is (for example) receiving an extraordinary number of donations from people in a particular industry.

    So I’m not “against making political donations public,” in the sense of that info being available on government databases for anyone to look at.

    But I also think elected congresspeople should (in general) refrain from calling out ordinary (albeit wealthier than average) citizens by name, whether they got the name from the disclosure database or from somewhere else.

  20. 320
    Michael says:

    According to the New York Times, one of the donors, Justin Herricks, has been getting harassing phone calls, so it looks like Barry’s fears were justified:
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/08/us/politics/castro-trump-donors.html

  21. 321
    Ampersand says:

    Eytan wrote:

    But I think there’s a fundamental difference between what Peterson did and what Castro did, in that Peterson posted links, and Castro posted a list of names and occupations.

    I’m not buying this distinction. With a name, a congressional district (also part of what Rep Castro posted), and a business, it would take me about 30 seconds to find something on most people. It’s a difference of degree, but not of kind. By spotlighting those names, Castro was vastly increasing the chances they’d be harassed.

    If Peterson had just said the names of students that organised the protest, I would have not had a problem with that.

    Because as long as the people viciously harassing students and telling them they should be raped and killed had to google their name combined with the college name first, it’s okay? I’m positive you don’t think that. So I’m bewildered why you think, in this hypothetical, you wouldn’t have a problem with Peterson guaranteeing that would happen by tweeting the names.

    (I do think Peterson’s spotlighting was worse because he provided the links, making it – as you said – more convenient. And also because Peterson’s audience is much larger and I’m pretty sure much more vicious than Rep Castro’s. But it’s still wrong.).

  22. 322
    Eytan Zweig says:

    Amp – fair point. I think that I’ve formed my opinion on this without proper consideration to how common harassment has become as a weapon in political discourse these days. And the fact that Peterson and Castro almost certainly posted names hoping to invite harassment.

  23. 323
    J. Squid says:

    And the fact that Peterson and Castro almost certainly posted names hoping to invite harassment.

    I keep coming back to wondering why the NYT identifying donors to the Clinton Foundation is, seemingly, something that never happened. I don’t remember any outrage about that at the time and it hasn’t, to my knowledge, been a common topic/connection. (I’ve seen it mentioned on one site)

    From where I read, it seems that what I’m hearing is that what Peterson did was really terrible, what Castro did was bad and what the NYT did was just fine. The outrage/anger/opposition feels contrived when the NYT is just never mentioned in these discussions.

  24. 324
    Lauren says:

    Considering the context of the tweet – a mass shooting of latinx people, in a political climate that Trump is constantly worsening with rhetoric about “invaders” while children are kept in cages…I really don’t think the right of people to give Trump money to spread more of his hatred but not be called out for contributing to his vile agenda and the very real consequences it has for peoples lives is an issue I would lose sleep over. Free speach is not speach free from criticism. If political donations are a fom of speach, then that can be critizised. And critizism can be directed at the people making that “speach”. It doesn’t have to be generalized to be ethical. (not even going to get ino all the hypocrats who had no issue with Clinton Donors being named who are screaming for impeachment of Castro now)

    People died and more will almost certainly die in the future because of Trump’s vile, racist agenda. If you want to spend your money to support him, do it knowing that people will call you out. (Also, I wouldn’t want to indirectly contribute to Trump by frequenting the buisness of someone who ill spend the money they make from me to support Trump.)

    Regarding the “is it doxxing”-question, I am pretty sure the definition of doxxing is publishing contact information, not publicly calling someone out by name, Now, “call out culture” has been critizised as well, and I honestly think it often depends on the specifics whether or not a call out is justified. Calling out people for giving money to Trump, who is activly demonizing latinx people and putting their lives in danger, seems justifier to me. If I were a latinx person in San Antonio, I would want to know who to stay away from for my safety.

  25. 325
    Ampersand says:

    J:

    I keep coming back to wondering why the NYT identifying donors to the Clinton Foundation is, seemingly, something that never happened.

    I don’t think I pretended it never happened; I addressed this in comment 314, after you brought it up.

    I don’t remember any outrage about that at the time and it hasn’t, to my knowledge, been a common topic/connection. (I’ve seen it mentioned on one site)

    I see what the Times did – putting public data online – as pretty akin to what the government does with the donor databases. (Which I’m not outraged about). It’s there as a database, sure, but it’s not like they’re putting the names of ordinary citizens in the news stories.

    The only names the NYT spotlighted were names of the genuinely rich and powerful – people or organizations that literally gave millions. I think people and orgs like that are fair game.

  26. 326
    J. Squid says:

    I didn’t say you pretended it never happened. I mean in the general discussion.

    Look, the law of the land is that money is speech. If that’s the case, I can’t see how it’s unethical to highlight the speech that people are making with their donations.

    Side note: To me, $2700 is a sizable contribution. I’ve certainly never come close to that with a single donation, ever. Even for me, that seems like too large a percentage of my safety fund (the one for if things really go wrong). People who can donate $2700 to a campaign are richer and more powerful than I am. And, as the nation goes, I’m pretty rich. But even the temporarily rich – as I am via my job – live on a knife’s edge when all they have (including health insurance) is dependent on the whims of their bosses. I’ve seen it happen to others and, so, I am not prepared to give that much to a single campaign in one go.

  27. 327
    Mandolin says:

    Not everyone prioritizes spending the same way, and I expect we both know people who donate money to various causes “out of proportion” to the income.

    But also there’s a LOT of room on the income ladder before you get to any kind of actual power because the wealth disparities in the culture are nuts.

    Any of the long-time employees at my husband’s old job could have afforded this contribution had they prioritized it. (I know you are frugal, but people aren’t always. I mean, if they can afford new cars every couple years, they can afford this.) They are also all… well, folks. They don’t have to worry about a lot of stuff that for instance Mike and I are worried about now, but they’re nowhere near any levers of power — honestly, I think the group of friends I’m in now probably has more access to levers of power because of extended social networks.

    The amount of money the people who are on top have is massively separate from what almost everyone else has, even the people who are rich. The difference between 5%ers and .1%ers is enormous.

    So, yeah, it may signal they have a fair amount of money. But I don’t think that contribution amount signals that the donors are in a relevant strata.

    (I think my parents may, e.g., and they are a retired school teacher and computer programmer.)

  28. 328
    J. Squid says:

    The difference between 5%ers and .1%ers is enormous.

    I absolutely agree. At the same time, those max donors are important to campaigns and are treated as such. Not to the level of, for example, the Adelsons, but noticeably different than the five, ten or five hundred dollar donors.

    In any case, we’ve decided, as a country, that monetary political contributions are speech and I see no problem with exposing the speech of others. Somebody can go ahead and post every single comment I’ve ever made (that sort of happened once) and I am not ashamed nor afraid of my commentary seeing the light of day. I’ve made that speech in a public forum, same as the max donors.

    Why is it that they should be shielded from transparency but Clinton Foundation donors shouldn’t be? Who’s more likely to suffer harassment, a random GOP donor or a CF donor?

    In any case, opinions clearly differ and I don’t think we’ll convince the other side. But it is nice to get everybody’s reasoning out there.

  29. 329
    Ampersand says:

    Actually, I’d be against “spotlighting” if it were about pure speech instead of money.

    That is, let’s imagine that Trump decided to quote-tweet an ordinary Democrat, saying something political that would get Republicans angry, to say “this is a gross opinion and Sally Q Smith of Omaha should be ashamed.” Or that Bernie did a similar thing to a Republican.

    Neither of those are doxxing. But I’d find both those actions grossly irresponsible and wrong.

    In any case, opinions clearly differ and I don’t think we’ll convince the other side. But it is nice to get everybody’s reasoning out there.

    Agreed!