Open Thread and Link Farm, Picture I Took Of My Cat Edition
- “I’m not transphobic, but…”: A feminist case against the feminist case against trans inclusivity–Verso
- Jet Li says he rejected The Matrix because he didn’t want his kung fu moves digitally recorded | Abacus
“They could own [my moves] as an intellectual property forever. So I said I couldn’t do that.” Li’s objection makes perfect sense. But it would be amazing, from an archival standpoint, for such a full record of Li’s moves to exist.
- ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES: The Happy Hour For Birds?
Birds who eat fermenting berries off the ground get drunk.
- Donald Trump, Brett Kavanaugh, and the rigging of American politics – Vox
This has become a very central issue to my thinking – that the system is enormously rigged against Democrats, and Republicans are determined to use that advantage to increase that advantage.
- The Good Place: Watch the exact moment that the cast found out about the big Season One twist | EW.com
Thanks to Mandolin for this link. And also for the happy hour for birds link.
- U.S. Law Enforcement Failed to See the Threat of White Nationalism. Now They Don’t Know How to Stop It. – The New York Times
I was particularly struck by the way that Republican members of congress went to bat to protect right-wing domestic terrorists, forcing Homeland Security to withdraw a report on right-wing extremism. A similar report on domestic left-wing extremism was not objected to by anyone.
- Ideas Have Consequences: The Impact of Law and Economics on American Justice
“After attending economics training [at George Mason University], participating judges use more economics language, render more conservative verdicts in economics cases, rule against regulatory agencies more often, and render longer criminal sentences.”
- Even janitors have noncompetes now. Nobody is safe. – The Washington Post
In this particular case, the company dropped it’s lawsuit against its former janitor after it became a news story. Which is nice – but doesn’t alter the larger problem.
- The Mythical Whiteness of Trump Country | Boston Review
A criticism of J.D. Vance’s book, and in particular it’s racial politics.
- Scientist in remote Antarctic outpost stabs colleague who told him endings of books he was reading – Daily Record
- Josh Hastings had a record of misconduct as a Little Rock police officer. Then he shot Bobby Moore. – The Washington Post
This lengthy article by the amazing Radley Balko makes the point that police abuse and even murder isn’t about a few bad apples in the barrel; it’s about the barrel itself being bad.
- Charging ‘Dealers’ with Homicide: Explained – The Appeal
“Caleb Smith ordered online what he thought was Adderall to help him study. His girlfriend asked to try it. She died from an overdose. It turned out the substance was fentanyl. Prosecutors charged Caleb with “drug-induced homicide.” Then he killed himself.”
- Opinion: It’s past time to repeal Oregon’s Jim Crow era jury law
“But that deliberative process breaks down when a majority of jurors can merely ignore the dissenting views of their fellow jurors.” An issue I’ve never given any thought to before.
- Retweets Are Trash – The Atlantic – Medium
“I made a small tweak to my Twitter account that has changed my experience of the platform. It’s calmer. It’s slower. It’s less repetitive, and a little less filled with outrage.” And, related: How to turn off retweets.
- Zinnia Jones on Dating and Transphobia | Noah Berlatsky on Patreon
- Millennials Have Caused U.S. Divorce Rate to Plummet: New Study | PEOPLE.com
Basically, people that in the past would have been likely to marry young and eventually divorce, are now not getting married in the first place, which is predicted to mean a much lower divorce rate.
- FBI Data Shows Plenty Of Vandalism, Little Violence Against U.S. Jews
– The Forward
- Lucy Lawless, In A Greenpeace Action, Belts Out Xena War Cries While Illegally Boarding Oil Ship – TMZ.com
Really, do you need anything more than that headline?
- After a mass shooting: A survivor’s life | The Washington Post
This is a long read, and a deeply unhappy read, but I still recommend it. It’s a portrait of a young woman, and of her mother, whose lives were drastically harmed by a mass shooter.
- Massachusetts has an answer to America’s gun problem – Vox
The right mix of gun laws – particularly but not only the permit-to-purchase system – helps Massachusetts have the lowest rate of gun deaths in the US.
- Unprotected
“An acclaimed American charity said it was saving some of the world’s most vulnerable girls from sexual exploitation. But from the very beginning, girls were being raped.”
A long read, sad and infuriating, about what happened when an American woman started a school for girls in Liberia. A reminder that there’s good reason for people to be suspicious of the white savior mode of charity. (Via).
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Oh lord, drunk birds! My parents used to have a cherry tree outside their bedroom window, and if I stood outside their door at 6 am I could hear the occasional thud of birds hitting the windows, for at least a couple of weeks a year. (Windows with the shades down, by the way.)
Edit: also, your link #4 goes to the image for the article, not the article itself…
Link fixed. Thanks!
this is interesting.
to me she is basically someone saying “please do not look at me like anything other than the person who I am no matter what group I am in, i do not like being put into a group instead of being a person by myself, it hurts me”
and that is pretty common, right? i think everyone in the whole world wants other people to try to give them a chance and to see who they actually are and not look at them like they are just part of a group, whatever group that is.
the real interesting thing is that i think everyone in the whole world, including me, and maybe even her, is not consistent here. i know for sure that I MYSELF want people to see me for who i am and to give me a chance to like me!! and i bet you all do too, right? who would not want that, of course we all do!!
but i also know for sure that i do NOT do that for everyone else i meet. and i do not think anyone really does, right? even though we want it from everyone else, we do not do it on our own. and i also bet that none of us really thinks that is a bad thing.
because it is very hard or maybe impossible for us to always do that. the bigger our world gets, the more that we need to usually use some group things to judge or we cannot get through the day, the world is too big. MAYBE the person who you would like to talk to most out of all the people in the world just so happens to be on the exact opposite side from what you THINK you want for race/sex/gender/ability/privelege/trans/etc. but you can maybe guess that the CHANCES of that are going to be small, that seems okay and fair?
so even though i can understand perfectly well how someone who was trans would be upset that people who were not trans would not want to date them, or even think about dating them, i do not think that is actually wrong or something we should ask people to change.
it seems to me that who you want to be with for sex or love is pretty much the thing where we give people the most possible ability to be picky, right? so if you are going to focus on something and say “people should give everyone the benefit of the doubt and not judge” it seems like a funny place to start with sex/love.
it also makes an interesting question again about “how much is it okay to hide who you are, or lie about it, even if you think someone is making a mistake about you, to try to get them to date you?” which is also interesting because you have to make a difference between “real” attracting to someone and “mistake” attracting to someone, which is very hard to do and maybe impossible?
i do not know the answer to that either!! again i think we almost all do things to get dates at a little, even if it is “pretending to be more okay than we really feel” or “saying some compliments we do not completely mean”. maybe we even do it alot?
my edit does not work, i am sorry. when i say “how much is it okay to hide who you are, or lie about it, even if you think someone is making a mistake about you, to try to get them to date you?”
i do NOT mean that i think trans people are lying, that came out wrong!!! i only meant the mistake part. like if you want to date someone trans and you accidentally think a cis person is trans, it is a mistake because what you think you are doing is not what you are actually doing. or if you want to date someone cis and you accidentally think a trans person is cis, that is a mistake because what you think you are doing is not what you are actually doing.
The first five poems of a book-length sequence I am working on called This Sentence Is A Metaphor For Bridge have been published at The Piltdown Review. I especially like the image they’ve chosen to accompany the poems:
In # 13, it says:
I’ve been on 2 juries in Oregon over the last 10 years and I cannot disagree more. There wasn’t a single person who wasn’t focused on getting unanimous consent. We succeeded in coming to a unanimous guilty verdict in one case – that jury was a failure for other reasons that I will never stop regretting – and had an 11 -1 vote for conviction in the other. In neither case were ideas not challenged and defended. Jurors, in my experience, take their jobs very, very, very seriously.
There may be many other good reasons for this position, but I don’t think this is one of them.
If your goal is simply to maximise the proportion of correct verdicts, I suspect that it will be hard to beat “convict everyone who comes to trial, without bothering with a jury”.
The reason that’s a bad approach is that it’s much more important not to convict innocent people than to convict guilty people, so just maximising the number of correct verdicts won’t result in the best possible outcome.
(Compare with screening programmes for cancer. Telling everyone “you do not have cancer” will be right virtually all the time, but it’s clearly not the most useful approach…)
I don’t think the defence of Jones is justifiable. To deal with his accusation of taking things out of context, her remarks (at least, I think these are the ones he’s talking about) in full are
I think Berlatzky’s paraphrase of this is unduly charitable, and hence unfairly uncharitable to her critics.
Jones is not just inviting people to reconsider, she’s actively condemning those who don’t. And that is really, seriously, not OK.
You have a total, 100% right to be unattracted to, refuse to date, or refuse to sleep with* whoever you feel like, and it is never OK to try to shame people into feeling or pretending to feel attraction, or even into acting on or acknowledging attractions they’re not comfortable with. Yes, Jones pays lip service to this principle, but she actually seriously violates it.
Berlatzky overlooks the number of times Jones uses the word “should”. “Should” implies a moral obligation; saying that people “should” do something is an implicit attack on those who don’t. If you want to try and make yourself attracted to trans women, that’s fine. If you don’t, that’s also fine. If you tell other people that they “should”, that’s not fine at all.
And there’s nothing whatsoever misplaced or inappropriate about a declaration that you have an absolute right not to be with trans women, or any other category of women you choose not to be. There is something misplaced or inappropriate about stating or implying that other people should have the same preference, but that’s not what Jones is talking about.
Jones’s statements here are really awful, and while I can’t comment on whether the level of pushback she got on them was excessive or not without knowing what it was (saying that you would murder a trans woman if she dated you without telling you is clearly not OK), I think they do justify quite a high level of anger and condemnation, and Berlatzky’s defence is disingenuous and rests of deliberately obfuscating the more awful aspects of what she said.
*You also have a total right to be attracted to anyone you feel like, but in some cases you have a moral obligation to conceal that attraction; you have no right to date or sleep with anyone.
I don’t understand what this has to do with the quoted section in your comment. Can you elaborate?
I thought that this was interesting.
The last clause of the quoted section is “… and the odds of incorrect verdicts increases.”.
I’m arguing that a) that’s probably wrong, but b) the fact that it’s wrong isn’t necessarily an argument against demanding unanimity.
Thanks for clarifying, Tatterdemalion1983.
#1 is worth reading even if you’re not interested in the topic, I think – I disagree with quite a lot of it, but it’s an absolute model of how this kind of polemical writing should be done, and deserves a great deal of respect for that.
i thought the jury editorial was not clear about the facts so much, but this article is better, maybe include it in the Ampersand list above? (it is strange because my article links to the same editorial and quotes it as having a lot of helpful explanation which the editorial does not actually have, which is maybe a mistake?)
https://www.innocenceproject.org/oregon-should-abolish-nonunanimous-jury-law/
facts i learned from my linked article and some questions, if anyone can answer:
does anyone know what “most” means here, like do they mean if you list a lot of felonies it is more than 50% of the list? do they mean if you look at a lot of felony jury trials the 10/12 rule is more than 50% of the trials? or something else?
i had no idea any juries were not unanimous so this is all surprising and i would like to know more.
this seems good at least!
this seems really strange to me, and does not make sense because of other things i have read about usa misdemeanor laws not needing a jury. does oregon use 12 person juries for misdemeanor verdicts? i did not think anyone did that.
It is a good thing that this perspective on the US sanctions against Iran is out there.
From The Chronicle of Higher Education: University of Wisconsin System President Reprimands La Crosse Chancellor for Bringing Porn Star to Campus.
And here’s a link to an article in the Journal Sentinel that fleshes the story out further.
As I understand it, Ampersand holds the position that climate change models are getting better and better, and there is absolutely no doubt that drastic, man-made climate change is real. Charles S apparently works in the field and confirms what Ampersand says. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, so please correct any parts that are wrong.
People see graphics like this (unfortunately, the website is in Swedish, but the graphic at the top is in English) and at least have questions:
https://anthropocene.live/2016/11/15/vilken-betydelse-far-paris-avtalet-for-klimatet-pa-lang-sikt-del-3/
The source doesn’t really matter, because each line on that graph can be confirmed by you if you want to do the work. Basically the predictions of all available climate models are shown on the graph (the name of the model is shown in the legend, and each model can be separately researched by you in Google to make sure this graphic is on the up-and-up). They are averaged to produce the thicker black line. The blue squares and black circles are real data.
Surprisingly, a Russian climate model pretty much agrees with the real data, but this model is not really talked about in the press, because its predictions are not dire at all.
I would also like to point out general, verbal climate model forecasts, for instance Al Gore’s dire predictions for 10 years hence that was made 13 years ago.
I’m just curious about what Ampersand and the expert Charles S think about this stuff. Are climate models in line with reality in your opinion? Any evidence on your part showing the results of all of the different climate change models?
Please note: I’m am not trying to be Professor Bossy-Pants here, I honestly have problems believing people (especially those with no background in science at all) who tell me that man-made client change is absolutely, for-sure real and dire things will happen without any concrete evidence. All I am asking for is the grounds on which you believe that. If it is just the steady drumbeat in the media about “97% of climate scientists concur” and the like, that is not really enough.
OK, I found an explanation of this graph and information on it in English:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/11/28/an-assessment-of-the-4th-national-climate-assessment/
I want to stress again that I am not trying to be Professor Bossy-Pants / Know-it-All, I see things like this a lot about climate change, and it strongly conflicts with what people on the left (most of whom seem to have majored in humanities or liberal arts) are emphatically saying. I think Al Gore flunked out of a theology school, but he has no degree in any kind of science, for instance. I have the feeling that anyone with questions is to be shamed and shouted down. I only have questions, I’m not trying to force my opinion through.
Erin,
Can you read Swedish? I can’t. So I can’t say what that figure is trying to show. Can you explain it to me, since you think it is clear disproof of decades of research? The figure doesn’t say what source they are using for mid-troposphere satellite temperatures, can you tell me? Can you tell me how they extracted tropical mid-troposphere values from the models and how they ensured that their method of doing so was valid?
You can claim that provenance doesn’t matter, and that we could go google the individual models and find each individual line, but that’s silly. Provenance and methods matter immensely. For example, there’s a well known source of satellite data that has a flawed methodology for correcting changing biases over time in the satellite temperature data, and that therefore fails to show the rising trend in troposphere temperatures, so if the chart uses that bad data, then no amount of googling will help. Likewise, satellite data can’t be used to estimate temperature at a specific point in the atmosphere, but rather can be used to generate a weighted average over a profile, so the model extraction needs to be done using the correct weighted averaging method over the correct profile. This is particularly important because stratospheric cooling is a result of global warming, so if your vertical profile overlaps both the mid-troposphere and the lower stratosphere, then your result will mix warming and cooling, and if you then do your model extractions from just the mid-troposphere, your model results will show warming. Anyway, maybe none of those problems are present in this figure, but without an explanation of the data sources and the methodology, we’d just be guessing whether the figure has fatal flaws.
Anyway, googling around, my best guess is that the figure is trying to show that the models show a hot-spot in the tropical mid-troposphere, and that one particular treatment of satellite data (and radiosounde data) fails to show this pattern over the long term. If that’s the case, conveniently and predictably, Skeptical Science has an article about that particular denialist myth. The very quick summary: the consensus is that this is a problem with using satellite data for long-term trends (due to the intractable complexity of correctly handling satellite data generated across decades), not a model issue, and that the model prediction of heating in the mid-troposphere is not a specific prediction for anthropogenic global warming, just a basic physics result of heating at the surface, and the heating at the surface (both in the tropics and globally) is very well documented by much more reliable instruments.
This is a basic example of cherry picking: find one data source that possibly contradicts one very small part of global warming predictions, completely ignore the complicated issues with the quality of that one data source, and then trumpet this one weird thing as though it disproved the immense and diverse body of evidence showing that global warming is happening. Serve it with a layer of vitriol and incoherence, and you’ve achieved the standard denialist blog comment! Bonus points for linking to a Swedish language version of the cherry picking, to make it harder to actually respond to.
Now, the next step in the denialist dance would be for you to fail to answer my questions and fail to respond to or acknowledge the response to your claim, and just move on to a different false claim or another cherry picked and misinterpreted data point. Please don’t do that.
But hey, if you don’t actually want to argue the details of satellite temperature processing, here’s a different topic you can try to explain away. An actual hallmark of anthropogenic global warming is the cooling of the stratosphere, and that is sufficiently clear and strong that it is unambiguously visible in the satellite data. Here’s an article about that from another lay source with a nice chart showing global stratospheric cooling in the satellite data. So, Erin, do you believe that stratospheric cooling isn’t happening, or do you deny that it is a clear fingerprint of anthropogenic global warming that was predicted in advance of it being observed? If so, why exactly do you believe those things?
Charles,
I think we cross-posted, because my link to a US / English site is shown above.
I’m not trying to post something and then move onto something else when you refute what I am saying. You haven’t refuted anything, you have said that some data can be flawed etc. As far as Swedish goes, sorry that’s where I start sometimes for information.
What the graph shows is the prediction of each common climate-change model and two instances of real results. If you are an expert in this field (I won’t ask for your thesis topic, for instance), you would be familiar with the climate-change models there. You would be familiar with the source of real data. They seem to strongly conflict, and I am wondering why that is the case.
Edited to add: If I posted the results of a single climate-change model, you would say that some models are faulty (that particular one is faulty), and experts know that. If I post the results of ALL of the relevant current models, you seem to say that detailed information is lacking on each individual study, and input data can be flawed.
If I posted everything on each individual model and an average of all relevant models and all available real data (in a link to a 16,255-page website article) you would, of course, make the claim that I am trying to flood a post with data that no-one has the time to wade through.
Look at the graph, please.
I am saying that I don’t know what is going on, but I don’t believe the almost hysterical assertions of the left on the issue. Looking at that graph doesn’t push me towards belief in what the left is saying.
Everything I have read indicates that models conflict with real data. I am also old enough to remember the scary predictions of global cooling and a cold-entropy death to the earth.
Because of things that I read, for instance the graph and explanation I presented here. Lots more, though. I am not saying I believe anything, though, I am saying I don’t buy the hysteria of the media and the left. I am agnostic on the issue, and I see bullying from the left on the issue. I want to know what reality is. Maybe you are right.
The actual people who are the source of information on global climate change are research scientists. Some of them are on the left, but most are decidedly apolitical. Some of them have become radicalized by the results of their research, but the vast majority prefer to keep their heads down and keep carefully generating the detailed, careful work necessary to understand the climate. That right-wingers have been overwhelmingly captured by fossil fuel industry propaganda efforts reflects badly on the right-wing, and explains why you’re less likely to find right-wingers who actually believe the science.
Looking at the slightly different figure you pointed to in your second comment (can you tell me what’s different about it? There are several critical differences.), the main problem I see with it is that it again uses the satellite data (which has huge, well-known issues with long-term trends) in inexplicable preference to either the land surface temperature record or the ocean-surface temperature record, or the combined global surface temperature record, any of which are of better quality and reliability than the satellite data, and all of which show good agreement with the models. So, again, cherry picking.
Referring to the extreme concern over the forecasted effects of global warming as hysteria is like referring complaining about the passenger in your car shouting at you that there is a truck in you blind spot as you start to change lanes. Yes, sometimes people get a little shouty when they need to get your attention about something that is going to kill you both.
You are old enough to misremember a few headlines about global cooling from the 70s and mistake them for the majority prediction from researchers. Again, go look this up on Skeptical Science and you’ll find a clear explanation of this myth. Curiously, at least some of those few papers that made those headlines that denialists have been reminding you about for decades were actually accurate extrapolations of what the 1960-70 trendlines in aerosol pollution would cause, absent the effects of CO2. We changed the trendlines in aerosol pollution, but not the trendlines in CO2, so we saw only a little (and now decreasing) cooling effect from aerosol pollution. The other aspect that those papers were talking about was increased understanding of the orbital cycles that govern the Ice Ages, which a scale completely different than the scale of anthropogenic global warming. The signature of global warming in the global temperature record didn’t become obvious until the 80s, but it was already predicted in the 1970s based on existing and expected CO2 emissions.
Do you count the World Bank as a left-wing organization? If not, I can point you to their extensive work summarizing the research on global warming and what its effects will be. How about the US military? If they aren’t too left-wing for you, I can probably hunt up their reports on why global warming is a major threat to US national security. What about the Berkeley Earth Institute (I know, it has Berkeley in the name, so it must be left wing!)? They were founded by the Heartland Institute as a denialist front organization, but their independent work duplicated the work of everyone else demonstrating that global warming is very clearly happening.
If everything you’ve read says that models conflict with data, then you need to start reading something other than denialist blogs and right-wing propaganda. The models are well supported by the data, and have been for ages. Global warming was predicted decades ago (indeed, more than a century ago), and what we observe in surface temperature data measured by thousands of individual temperature sensors is basically in agreement with the predicted warming for the level of CO2 emissions we’ve produced. If you actually want reading recommendations, I can hunt some up for you (although going and browsing through skeptical science is probably a good place to start).
You say that the demonstration of stratospheric cooling, as predicted by climate scientists, doesn’t convince you of anything, but you don’t explain what it is about it that doesn’t convince you. Do you understand the argument about why stratospheric cooling is predicted? Do you understand that it is clearly demonstrated? If so, what is it that leaves you unconvinced? Remember, the people you should to be listening to and believing are not the Left or the Right, the people you should be listening to and considering are the research scientists who have spent their lives gradually building up an understanding of what is happening, why it is happening, and what it means.
Okay, then; let me show you some real data that you might not have seen. This chart comes from Skeptical Science’s page discussing a variant of the graph you’re relying on.
The gray lines are the predictions made by various mainstream climate models. The red line is the actual measured ground temperature. As you can see, there’s a pretty close match.
I’d argue that looking at ground temperature makes more sense for a couple of reasons. First of all, as Charles has pointed out, the atmospheric temperature measurements are of questionable accuracy. Second of all, humans live on the ground.
Here’s another chart to look at. The red lines are the measured temperature. The warm-colored lines are from various mainstream climate models. The green lines are IPCC predictions (and are the closest to accurate).
And those blue and purple lines? Those are the predictions made by climate skeptics.
If the standard here is accuracy, shouldn’t we be very much doubting the people who have been the most wrong in their predictions?
A prediction that never had many adherents; the strong majority of scientific papers on this subject in the 1970s predicted global warming. (And they’ve been proven correct).
Charles, you are giving links to “Skeptical Science” (apparently a small group of people who agree with your beliefs and started a website). Then you name a bunch of organizations that allegedly support the proposition that climate change is man-made and will produce dire consequences, with no verification of what you are saying at all. Your only objective argument seems to be that anything opposing your beliefs is “cherry picking”.
According to Wikipedia, here is a partial list of scientists who do not agree with you (seems like kind of a lot, and each individual scientist can be googled):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_who_disagree_with_the_scientific_consensus_on_global_warming
[Extremely long list of scientists, with no original content or argument by Erin apparent from skimming through the list, snipped by moderator. Anyone who wishes to see the list can follow Erin’s link to Wikipedia. Erin, please try not to do posts that basically consist of nothing but monstrously huge quotes of lists, with no arguments. –Amp]
[A bit of Erin’s post, which I mistakenly left in, has now been deleted. See Erin’s follow-up comment for an explanation of why. –Amp]
Sure – summary: lots and lots and lots of scientists do not agree with Charles. As long as we’re doing these arguments by appealing to authority.
In general, I’m starting to see that both sides are kind of wasting our time here. I like arguing, but there’s a point where there are more productive things to do, I guess.
Ampersand, you are also – like Charles – only referring to one website, “Skeptical Science”. Let me guess – they believe that climate change is man-made and that dire results will occur.
As to using ground temperatures, instead of stratospheric temperatures:
Yes, humans live on the ground, but what matters is which temperature pattern will cause the asserted dire results. If stratospheric temperatures are the driver of that, it is irrelevant what ground temperatures are. I’m not saying that’s the case, but I am saying that’s a big logical hole in your argument.
I’m kind of back to “I dunno”. I do know, however, that a handful of people with an agenda who started the website “Skeptical Science” are not necessarily going to turn agnostics into true believers.
Skeptical Science is a website written and run mostly by people with scientific backgrounds, and their posts are typically calmly argued and contain citations to legitimate sources. Your dismissal of any argument that links to Skeptical Science is not justified, and seems like an ad hom.
I’m not sure you understood Charles’ statement here. As I understood it, he was basically asking you if you’d accept either the World Bank, or the US military, or the Berkeley Earth Institute (founded by a climate skeptic think tank) as legitimate sources, and offering to provide you with links if any of those organizations are credible to you.
So let me repeat the question. Would you consider either the World Bank, or the US military, or the BEI to be legitimate sources?
Regarding that list, most of the scientists listed are not climatologists, and there’s nothing to indicate that most of them have any background or expertise in this matter. In contrast, scientists who do have expertise agree that human activity is causing significant warming (depending on the study, 90% and up).
Charles, of course, did not say that. He did say that your specific argument is cherry picking; it does not logically follow that he believes that all arguments he disagrees with are cherry picking.
There is a lot of evidence showing that climate models are broadly accurate. You found one graph (well, to be fair, a couple of variations on the same graph, both by the same scientist), which looks only a couple of measures of atmospheric temperature trends, while you seem to be ignoring a lot of other evidence, such as ground temperatures and ocean temperatures. Is there a logical reason we should be concerned only with the measurements on the graph you linked to, while ignoring all that other evidence? If not, then the claim that your argument is cherry-picking seems fair.
And, as predicted, you are just jumping from denialist myth to denialist myth, without stopping to actually respond substantively as your false claims are rebutted. You are far from the first commenter to think that copy-pasting giant chunks of irrelevant misinformation will be impressive, but I guess it is the best you can think of to make it look like you have something substantial to say. However, for some mysterious reason you decided not to include the beginning of that Wikipedia article:
And yes, Skeptical Science has highly readable short summaries of why each of the denialist myths is wrong, and also consistently links to highly reputable sources and peer-reviewed published literature, so I will keep pointing to them (as well as other sources) as long as you keep bringing up well-trodden fossil fuel industry propaganda as though it were novel or valid arguments. As for my other sources that I mentioned in passing, try Google if you are unwilling to actually ask for more information.
Just a note here: Ampersand edited my post #25, but now it is misleading because he left this in:
… but it is misleading because it is just one of many headers. It makes it look like my entire list that was deleted only involves scientists who question the accuracy of the models. Many other headers introduce scientists who have much stronger beliefs against this.
It would be cool to just delete that misleading header, but if not, people can hopefully read this comment.
Side note: If Charles wants to be funny, he can now say that he doesn’t believe that lots of scientists oppose his views because I have not posted their names.
In addition to my previous comment about Skeptical Science, I’d point out that your link – to wattsupwiththat.com – is to a blog with a very clear “climate skeptic” perspective. Why is linking to a blog with a perspective okay when you do it, but wrong when Charles or I do it?
Charles offered you several other sources, but you refused to say which you’d agree is credible.
I’m not sure you’re fully considering one of Charles’ arguments earlier in this thread. As Charles pointed out,
Global warming is understood to cause stratospheric cooling. That’s not contrary to what scientists say about global warming; it’s evidence that the scientists are correct.
The method of measurement used in the graph you linked to is very likely to be taking samples from both the troposphere (where it’s warming) and the stratosphere (where it’s cooling). It’s not surprising, or a “logical hole,” that the results show a much flatter line than other methods of measuring global temperature. If you measure both a warming and a cooling area, that will mask the warming that’s going on; it does not logically follow that no warming is going on.
My mistake! I’ve now edited out that bit too. Thanks for pointing out my mistake.
What evidence would convince you that global warming, caused primarily by human activity, is actually happening?
Because our arguments are asymmetric. My position is that I am not sure about drastic, man-made climate change, and I think a position that it is 100% true and “deniers” will be shot on sight (OK, I made the last one up) is not a stance that is in line with the amount of information available and … reality. The stance you and Charles are taking is that it is 100% true and deniers will be shot on sight. The arguments for each side will not be symmetric.
It’s kind of like someone saying that he is not sure that God exists, or maybe not exactly in the form taught in the Bible, or Koran, or Talmud, and another person saying that he absolutely exists exactly as taught in the Bible and you better believe or you are going to be tortured (if we’re in the 1300s), or you better believe the Koran or we are going to fly planes into your buildings and kill you.
So when I provide evidence of lots and lots and lots of credible people who do not believe in your position, it bolsters my argument. When I provide evidence of climate-change models *maybe* not being in line with reality, it bolsters my argument of *questioning* whether everything is 100% true. That is different than trying to convince someone of the 100% positive truth of something by pointing to postings of fellow believers.
And maybe the “denier bingo” kind of stuff from that website exists because the questions of agnostics ARE common and ARE common for the reason that they DO tend to throw some doubt on the positions of the true believers.
I’m not sure.
I honestly don’t mean to be flip here, but if you are an agnostic about God (I have no idea what you think about it), what would 100% convince you that God exists? Probably not a whole lot. Even a direct appearance can be faked.
With regard to climate change, I would probably have to drop out of society and solely study all of the science myself for a year. Then I would definitely start leaning one way or the other. But there are just too many people who *have* studied it for a long time who don’t buy it. At least not in the hysterical Al Gore form. So it may just be an open question.
I just came across this link (I know … PJ Media is not exactly “left wing”), but it is interesting to read their reasoning anyway:
https://pjmedia.com/trending/new-u-s-climate-report-a-scientific-embarrassment/
I don’t think all of this opposition is because of propaganda from the fuel-fossile industry. I mean, I REALLY don’t.
You’ve misunderstood my position.
First of all, obviously I’m not calling for everyone who disagrees with me to be executed (and neither was Charles). I realize you were joking, but it’s a joke that insinuates some really nasty things about who I am and what I advocate, and I don’t think the two of us are friendly enough for you to be making those sort of jokes about me.
Second of all, I’m not taking a “100% true” position, which would mean that I don’t believe that any evidence could ever exist that would disprove my view. My position is that the current evidence is extremely, extremely strong that human-caused global warming is a real thing. It is far more likely to be true, than not.
Third, even accepting that I have different burdens than you, it doesn’t reasonably follow that I shouldn’t link to any website which has a view that agrees with mine. For one thing, the mainstream scientific position, in climatology, is that human-caused global warming is real. Your argument would therefore mean that you’re entitled to ignore all evidence and arguments from mainstream climatology. That’s ridiculous. No reasonable debate can proceed from the assumption that Charles and I have to address your evidence (which we have), but you have no obligation at all to address the evidence we bring up.
You demanded that I and Charles account for the graph you linked. We’ve more than done that. But you’ve yet to respond substantively to a single rebuttal of that graph, nor have you addressed either of the graphs I’ve posted, apart from implying that anything found on the Skeptical Science website, no matter how well sourced, should be dismissed. That’s a completely ad hom argument, in that you’re dismissing arguments and evidence based on who is stating them, rather than based on logical rebuttals of the arguments.
You’ve been asked twice what sources you do find acceptable. You simply refuse to answer. Let me ask again: What sources of data do you find acceptable? If there is no source of data that you’d find acceptable, then why should’t I conclude that you’re not amenable to evidence-based discussion at all?
OK, noted. Won’t happen again.
Erin,
What is it you find interesting about the article at that link? Almost everything in that article is either a straight up lie (the most brazen is the opening claim that we’ve seen no warming since 2000, which is absolutely false) or a carefully crafted misleading statement, and it quotes the Heartland Institute as though they were a credible source (rather than one of the main centers of the denialist propaganda effort). I could take it apart piece by piece for you, but I’m not convinced that you’d be willing to learn anything from that.
Actually, I think citing the existence of record cold days in some locations as though it were a disproof of global warming may be the most brazen. Hard to choose, there is so much brazen bullshit in that article.
Charles, I’m not entirely sure of the rules of society, but don’t you only get to be dismissive in a condescending and arrogant way, without any real counter-evidence whatsoever, if you are an expert on the subject?
Just curious (no need to reveal your identity in any way):
(1) Have you ever qualified as an expert in this area, meaning in court or other proceedings?
(2) Have you published papers in this field that have been cited in a substantial way by recognized experts in the field?
(3) Is there any other reason that you would be qualified as an expert in climate change?
Can’t get much more arrogant or condescending or “I’m so much better than you” than that. You aren’t even going to bother telling her why she’s wrong, because it would be like Albert Einstein trying to explain relativity to a child with learning disabilities. Did I get the essence of it?
JTV, Charles and I have provided a lot of counter-evidence and counter-arguments to Erin on this thread, which Erin has not responded to substantively at all. I posted graphs; we posted links to articles with good citations; we directly answered Erin’s questions. Erin responded by ignoring every substantive argument, instead just throwing in a link to a different set of (frankly) nonsensical arguments.
Erin was also very sharp to Charles, which I didn’t call Erin out on, because Charles was being very sharp back and so it seemed kind of fair.
There’s a balance of effort to be considered. It takes me (and, I suspect, Charles) a lot of effort to write substantive responses. It takes Erin no effort to cut and paste a gigantic quote from Wikipedia or to stick in a link. So are Charles and I required to write a big, substantive response, taking an hour or more, to Erin taking 30 seconds to paste in a link? When Erin has already made it clear that 1) they will not be making any substantive response whatsoever, and 2) they will summarily dismiss any link to any website where she thinks the authors of the site believe that human-caused global warming is a real thing?
Also, your premise here:
…seems dubious to me. If someone starts saying that vaccines cause autism, am I really required to be a medical expert in that field before I can dismiss it? What if they’re arguing that the world is flat? Or that the holocaust is a hoax? Or that cigarettes are not linked to cancer?
And how about if I’ve just had an extensive argument with them on the subject, including doing research, linking to evidence, etc, and they’ve responded by not addressing any of the arguments or evidence at all, and by actually saying that their mind is in effect closed and unchangeable on the subject?
And what if they’ve also been just as condescending and rude to me as I was to them?
It’s not unfair to say “I’m not convinced you’d be willing to learn anything from that” from someone who has just said that nothing will change their mind. For you to imply, from that exchange, that Charles considers himself Einstein and Erin a learning-disabled child is ridiculous and insulting.
* * *
This is a blog. It never has been, and never will be, the policy of this blog that comment-writers need to be an accredited courtroom expert (!) or anything else in order to state an opinion. You’re trying to turn a discussion on climate change (as heated as it was) into a discussion of Charles personally.
That is not allowed. Any further comments you make along those lines will lead to you being banned from this thread.
Erin is close-minded and the arguments they’ve linked to are ridiculous and wrong. But at least Erin attempted to be relevant. You have contributed nothing to this
threaddiscussion but insults.Anyway, isn’t Charles essentially an expert in the field? I mean, not one of the top one hundred shiny scientists or anything, but it’s in his wheelhouse.
And she has bad breath too. Why didn’t you add that?
You defend Charle’s right to state his opinion without being an expert (read: not knowing what the hell he’s talking about), but then you simply insult a person who seems to be arguing in good faith or is at least asking questions that are not really being answered.
My point was only that ” ‘Cuz I said so” is somewhat persuasive when an expert says it, but not when a non-expert says it out of simple unearned arrogance. You wouldn’t buy it if Erin behaved like that. Even your favorite Skeptical Science website – biased towards your viewpoint – has a good discussion about the plateau in heating since 1998. There are some good opposing points there if you read the comments. I also see a type of hysteria about trying to force these views on “denialists” from climate change cultists.
Can’t you even contain yourself enough to not be a bully to people?
I’ll check out of this thread myself, thanks. And you can anger-ban me in general for speaking my peace (“punching up” in your terminology) if it makes you feel better.
Ok, that’s pretty hilarious. Thank you, jtv. I needed a light moment this morning.
Yes, we’re all very angry at you. Rawwwwr, you’re scary. Who’s a scary boy? You are! You are! Awwww.
At the risk of getting banned myself, could Ampersand or Charles tell me what all of the tenseness and hostility is about with regard to this subject? I’m not trying to provoke anyone, I’m trying to figure out what the mindset is here.
As one example among many (many, many), Erin writes this:
She’s just trying to lighten things up. I will assert that most reasonable people would see that. Instead of being reasonable or tolerant, Ampersand really writes this (no he isn’t kidding back):
WTF? Sorry, I think it’s bizarre.
And Charles is just head-on full of hostility and condescension with his answers. Instead of just discussing things, or explaining why something may not be accepted in the mainstream of climate science, he (and Ampersand) simply label things “brazen bullshit”, “absolutely false”, “nonsensical arguments” etc., many times with no further explanation. Just downright hostile. And Charles magnanimously decrees that “[he] could take it apart piece by piece for you, but I’m not convinced that you’d be willing to learn anything from that.” She’s got to want to sit at the feet of the master and learn, not be a recalcitrant little child.
Is it that serious a topic? I guess I better look into it if it’s that serious.
Already 5 p.m. where you’re at, I take it? I guess it’s five o’clock somewhere, as the phrase goes.
You did indeed want to risk being banned, and as is usually the case, not over the thing you claimed might get you banned. Decide whether you wish to pursue your course.
I’m about to start swimming. I’ll comment more here later.
But, Zunf – ignoring their most recent comment (the one that was just a link) – are you actually claiming that Charles (not Charlie) and I never responded to Erin’s questions?
Isn’t it: Decide, Little One, whether you shall call wrath upon yourself. I am the Bringer of Doom.
OK, I’ve decided that I can always tell when people feel like they have little power or control in their own life, because when they are given the crumbs of any little bit of power over someone (like banning someone from a stupid message board), they turn into tin-plated dictators with vague threats of harm.
Do what you have to do, you dopey little nothing. I don’t like taking crap from idiots like you or Ampersand. Don’t forget to taunt me from your keyboard after I can no longer respond – Ampersand is really good at that. Coward.
Okaaaaaaay. Let’s call that a wrap. I suggest you find somewhere to comment where you don’t hold your interlocutors in contempt.
(This particular behavior set, including the generic insults at Amp, is generally manifested by someone who has been asked to leave before, and has developed a bizarre obsession.)
I’m bewildered at the “not being an expert” and “not knowing what the hell he’s talking about” being treated as if they were equivalent statements. It’s common for people to have real knowledge of fields that they’re not actual experts at. My dad, for instance, knew a lot about wine – he collected wine, he read wine magazines, he sometimes visited vineyards and wineries – but of course he wasn’t an expert, in the sense that Erin suggested (someone who would be an expert witness in a courtroom). But to claim that he “didn’t know what the hell he’s talking about” if he stated an opinion about wine would be ridiculous.
Do you really think these two things are interchangeable?
Regarding Erin being close-minded, I think Erin herself said so. She said that she couldn’t imagine anything changing her mind, short of her taking a year off from everything to do nothing but study climate science (which, in context, didn’t sound like anything Erin realistically intends to do). She also dismissed information and tables from skepticalscience on the grounds that the site is run by people who believe climate change is real and is caused by human activity – which is to say, the mainstream view held by the large majority of climatologists.
How is that not close-minded?
Can you please just answer these questions without making personal attacks on me?
[*] Actually, Dad WAS an expert witness in court – but about hearing loss, not about wine. But although he clearly knew a lot more about hearing than almost any non-expert – he literally wrote a college textbook on it – I can’t imagine him saying that people either were at his level of expertise, or they knew nothing at all about hearing.
i have a question, maybe charles knows?
say you were alive in 2000. back then you did not have any of the data from 2000-2018 and you did not have any of the changes to any models that i think they have made 2000-2018. all you have is alot of models, i do not know how many but i think probably 20-30? and all of those models made predictions for 2018.
if you did NOT make any changes to the models (you do not “update” the model between 2000 and 2018) and if you only looked at the many predictions back in 2000: how accurate were all the models for 2018? (i mean all of them, not just the best ones, no fair throwing away the ones which were really wrong.)
I was going to comment on that and thought better of it. But, yes, Zunf2’s comments revealed a person who was upset at being banned multiple times, yet would not change their behavior to match the stated moderation policy.
lurker23: Answering your specific question would take more work than I’m interested in doing at the moment, but let me refer you to the answers to a couple closely related ones. We can actually go back much further than 2000. Let’s take model predictions from 1988 as our test case. The answer, to put it simply, is “Yes, the models did a good job” (note, this is a much harder test, as the models had to be simpler to run on 1980’s computers, we knew less about climate science, and we’re forecasting out 30 years instead of just 18; also, this means we’re looking at the famous Hansen model runs, which are easier to find a quick answer about). We can also go back to Arrhenius’s predictions in the 19th century, which are also basically correct (sufficiently correct to say that global warming is a serious threat, although Arrhenius didn’t hypothesize that part).
The other thing to look at is “How well did global warming predictions do compared to denialist predictions?” Quick answer: global warming predictions win consistently.
I’ll also respond to one actually substantive comment that JTV made: the hiatus was a debatable concept in 2012, particularly if you cherry picked 1998 as the starting year, and there’s a Skeptical Science page that discusses the hiatus as a not-completely ridiculous idea that dates from around then, but 2016 blew 1998 out of the water, and 2014-2018 are the 4 hottest years on record, several by a wide margin. In 2012, you could claim that global warming had stopped, and it would require a serious and detailed argument (e.g. that Skeptical Science page) to explain why that wasn’t an accurate way of describing what was happening. In 2018, if you claim that global warming stopped in 2000, you aren’t actually making a serious argument, you are just referencing a once serious argument that has now been disproven by subsequent events. Claiming that global warming stopped in 2000 is a marker that you aren’t paying attention and haven’t been for years (or rather, for that article, that you know that your audience isn’t paying attention).
lurker23: Also, Ampersand already basically answered your question when he posted those graphs from Skeptical Climate. You might find the series of articles Lessons from Past Predictions interesting and instructive, but the single article “How well have models predicted global warming” should also basically answer your question in reasonable detail.
I have a question I am hoping someone will be able to help me with. I was at a meeting on my campus last week and the guy who was chairing it did something that felt to me very Christian and church-oriented. I have not seen it before, however, and so I am curious if my intuition is accurate:
At some point in the meeting when things were getting a little raucous—not necessarily tense, but people were feeling whatever it was they were talking about—he made us all be quiet. Then he had us put our hands in the air—sort of like a “hands up” gesture; then he asked to us shake them, a little bit like jazz hands. Then he had us bring them together, palm to palm, like in prayer, and move them to our laps, with our fingers pointing outward. He then said something about this symbolizing our “holding heart in our hands” or some such thing, and went on about how we had to approach what we were doing with heart, or heart-consciousness, I don’t remember exactly.
Has anyone seen or heard of this? Thanks.
Harvard University recently promulgated a policy that would sanction anyone who belonged to a single-sex organization.
A lawsuit has been brought by members of sororities and fraternities.
Ironic that action by the Harvard faculty and administration that was meant to reduce the influence of all-male organizations on campus turned out to hurt organizations meant to enhance the status of women as well. And given the rather poisonous attitude towards men on college campuses today (at least straight ones) I’d say that those male students’ fear is well founded.
I don’t know, Richard – certainly I’ve see that kind of thing at church meetings (e.g., I was a delegate from my parish for the Episcopal Church Diocese of Chicago’s annual meeting). But when I have it’s normally viewed as trying to incorporate something from non-Christian spiritual practices. And I’ve certainly seen that kind of thing in non-Christian settings. I’ve never seen it as part of a formal Christian service or ritual. Especially in the absence of an invocation of any kind of deity (never mind an explicit reference to any member of the Trinity) I don’t see it as Christian at all. I’d say it was an attempt at calming people down with the use of a generic spiritual ritual.
RJN,
I’ve never seen anything like that at a tense meeting, but I’m curious, Did the ritual calm people down?
It’s interesting that we are talking about one made up emergency (the caravan) right as another made up emergency (child sex trafficking in the US) shows fruit for its pushers. SESTA/FOSTA claims another scalp. Tumblr is banning adult content and what you know, gay people are having their pics flagged even if clothed. Who could have predicted? 🙄
The sex panic whipped up by the anti-porn feminists backing SESTA/FOSTA is having exactly the internet destroying effect it was designed for.
(Disclaimer, yes I know not all feminists. It’s still disconcerting to see the anti porn feminists having enough power to pull this off. I’m noting for readers that aren’t here all the time that Amp has previously linked a number of anti SESTA pieces in the past)
I think it’s probably all because of the Apple store delisting the Tumblr app, and that they could solve the problems without mass prohibition of adult content if they were willing to pay some professional moderators, but they’re not.
I doubt it has anything to do with feminism, anti-or-pro porn
I think the anti-porn right also has sway.
I don’t approve of the Tumblr policy, FTR, nor would most of the feminists I know, but that’s a self-selecting group. That group also would not support the anti-sex-worker legislation that’s been laid down.
I’m not sure anyone is advocating on behalf of sex workers who isn’t a feminist. It seems like “hating sex workers” is mostly just a fun time for the left and the right together.
(I’m not going to respond further on this thread, just because it seems like an off-topic thing, but I’m not uninterested in the conversation.)
Oops I thought I put it on the open thread sorry.
[This and a few previous comments have been moved to the open thread. –Amp]
Thanks, I appreciate you pointing that out.
There’s such a huge overlap between TERFs and anti-porn feminism; the ven diagram is very nearly just a circle. And they’re a minority of feminists, I’m fairly sure, but they do have way too much influence, partly because of their willingness to collaborate with the religious right. It’s very frustrating.
Regarding SESTA/FOSTA and the banning of all pictorial adult content from Tumblr. (From the other thread).
Celeste, you write “I think it’s probably all because of the Apple store delisting the Tumblr app, and that they could solve the problems without mass prohibition of adult content if they were willing to pay some professional moderators, but they’re not.”
This is incorrect to the extent that it lets the anti porn feminists off the hook. There is a direct line between their sex panic over “trafficking”, the changes in the law, and Apple’s delisting. Originally US law said that content platforms couldn’t be held liable for the content if their users put the content up. This was somewhat limited (they had to respond to take down requests/orders in many situations) but in general they were immunized to protect a general notion of free speech.
SESTA/FOSTA was passed in response to a hyped and mostly fake ‘crisis’ of alleged sex trafficking. The main way this was faked was by callling all work “sex trafficking” in statistics, even though the term typically means kidnapped or held against one’s will for sex purposes.
SESTA/FOSTA was pushed by anti-porn feminists, especially Marian Hatcher and her organization to guard. The main thing it did was remove the content neutrality laws for content platforms whenever the police charged them with aiding sex trafficking. Since neither “aiding” nor “sex trafficking” were well defined, this opened up enormous liability for content platforms.
Apple removed tumblr from the App Store BECAUSE of this newly opened up liability. It was perfectly happy to have it before. Your suggestion of moderators doesn’t seem to understand Tumblr’s scope-there are tens of millions of posts every day. Further, their current moderation of just “adult” content proves how ridiculous it is. In the past two days dozens of gay people are rightly complaining that their fully clothed pictures are being flagged as “adult” and thus risking the ban of their accounts because they involve things like two men kissing, or bare chested men wrestling. There is no way they were going to be able to easily screen a tiny handful of allegedly “sex trafficking related” pictures among that torrent of daily use. They were already taking things down when flagged by police, or if obvious when brought to their attention, but asking them to monitor everything is impossible (not to mention undesireable).
Sebastian, could you clarify: Is this (“Apple removed tumblr from the App Store BECAUSE of this newly opened up liability”) something you know as fact (in which case, how do we know it), or an inference from the information we have?
Apple was extremely controlling of anything that might deliver porn through something sold through the App Store. According to this article, the App Store blocked all reddit apps that allowed users to view NSFW flagged content in 2016, long before SESTA/FOSTA, and Steve Jobs commented in 2010 that people who wanted to look at porn could buy Android phones (when the App Store banned 6,000 sexy apps). That last article also notes that Apple’s prudery is both draconian and capricious, which fits with suddenly deciding to ban the tumblr app.
We can infer it two ways. First, it initially allowed Tumblr as an app for years despite the fact that it was well known to be one of the larger hosts of adult content in the world. Second, on September 25, the federal case enjoining the enforcement of FOSTA was dismissed for lack of standing. Third, underage porn was regularly taken down (Tumblr tries to police it when it comes to their attention and has access to an industry registry of known child porn pics that are automatically filtered out and anyone who tries to upload them gets banned) BUT in November a blog was discovered with a large cache of new pics (things not in the registry). This, the first known incident on Tumblr since the dismissal of the lawsuit, thus represents the first time that Apple would have liability from FOSTA. Apple immediately removed tumblr from the App Store (which as of yesterday has not returned). Apple would have standing to sue to stay the enforcement of SESTA/FOSTA if it got hit with a suit, but it almost certainly doesn’t want the press of opposing an “anti-sex trafficking” law.
Short of Apple explicitly saying “we banned it because of SESTA/FOSTA”, this is about as strong a case as I could imagine. The timing is too perfect to be an accident.
Update. I’ve seen some reporting (eg VOX) that Tumblr has been planning this for a while, but that it was triggered now in response to Apple. So it may be that Apple’s response is directly SESTA/FOSTA related, while the overall long term plans of Tumblr are different. According to Vox, Tumblr hopes to monetize the BLM and other social justice groups that have clustered on Tumblr but was afraid to put ads up opposite adult content. So this may be a confluence of problems.
But SESTA/FOSTA liability is definitely going to cause problems for any company that wants to fill in the gap. A newer company is almost definitionaly going to be less able to push back against the government on this. They just won’t have the resources to do anything about it.
Thanks, Charles and Sebastian. The “confluence” explanation seems most likely to me.
To be fair, reason.com style libertarians have been advocating on behalf of sex workers for at least the 20 years I’ve been familiar with Reason magazine. It’s where I first learned about and adopted an anti-criminalization stance. Many of these libertaraians and ex-libertarians moderates may call themselves feminists (cathy young, for one) but many do not, and instead advocate for sex workers through the lens of individualism, agency, and economic freedom.
i am not an artist but i liked reading this article and i sent it to alot of my friends, i think alot of people here will also like it.
https://www.vulture.com/2018/11/jerry-saltz-how-to-be-an-artist.html
Lurker23, did you read Charles’ reply to your question (his reply is comments 55 and 56)? If so, what did you think?
Why Tumblr Banning Adult Content Is a Serious Problem | Nerdist
i am still reading the things he talked about in his reply, so far they seem like they answer alot of what i wanted to know (thanks for the links) but i am not done reading yet so i did not answer.
Because I like to try to understand my own media filter bubble, I’m curious, has anyone encountered a single article in support of Tumblr’s adult content ban? I haven’t even come accross a single person in favor of it yet, and I like to think my media/hot-take diet is diverse.
I have seen a few people in favor of it — mostly coming from a religious right perspective, with a few antis thrown in for good measure.
(I started to try to describe the politics of antis and … 100% failed. It’s deep fandom inside baseball to the point where I can really only see the edges.)
Vox points out in their article that the porn ban was probably largely motivated by how much more difficult it is for Verizon to sell ads on pages that include porn.
And call me cynical, but I suspect that that had much more to do with any decision than anything any feminists, pro or anti porn, had to say.
If I could place a bet, I’d bet on this.
It’s strange the way corporations will sometimes toe a political line, even when there doesn’t seem to be a large number of people calling for said line. I just can’t imagine an enraged Tumblr conservative community that could penalize advertizers, but maybe I have a piss poor imagination.
That’s because the deciding factor here isn’t what the users think is reasonable. It’s what the management at Verizon and the management at the advertisers think is reasonable.
So again, the problem is less “feminism,” and more “capitalism.”
It’s the same way all the porn sites got shut down way back and all the pot dispensaries were cash only for a really long time. Because it doesn’t matter whether or not you want to buy something if the (largely wealthy largely conservative largely male) executives who hold the pursestrings decide you shouldn’t be allowed to.
You’re really underplaying the fact that they were open to unlimited liability with SESTA. That’s still a corporate decision. But it’s very different in character. (And it explains Apples response much better)
The Human Side of the Cubs’ Addison Russell Decision made me cry.
She’s not wrong when she talks about the lifelong emotional pain and how that pain can be brought right back by certain things. Aroldis Chapman and, now, Addison Russell did that for her. Her post did it for me because it gets right to the core of the helplessness.
I mean, yeah, that’s fair. I just feel like you’re overplaying the influence of ‘feminism’ here for ideological reasons. Anti-porn/anti-sex work feminists aren’t the vast majority of feminists these days, and I think you’re conflating the broad anti-porn/anti-sex work bent of much of society with anti-porn/anti-sex work feminism in order to smear ‘feminists’ for something that, at base, is about money.
And yeah, SESTA/FOSTA played in, of course, but even there, I suspect that if you took a poll of feminists, there would be broad opposition to SESTA/FOSTA. When you search “SESTA/FOSTA feminist” on Google, for example, on the first page of results all but one are opposed, including results from Bitch, Bust, and Elle.
First, I’ve been pretty clear in referencing anti-porn feminists which may not be everyone, but they certainly are powerful enough to get a major bill passed which fundamentally cha ged the nature of the Internet. Which leads to the second point: numbers isn’t the same as influence. Stupid libertarians are a tiny fraction of the polity but they have an outsized influence in certain areas, and they gave libertarian ideas a bad name if libertarian oriented people don’t make clear distinctions between us and them. Same with the anti-porn feminists.
Third, has anyone seen this? Facebook is going full bore against sexually oriented talk because of SESTA/FOSTA. This isn’t just nudes, this is TALKING about your sexuality on the platform. Note how many times they say they are worried about a broad concept of “solicitation”—that is directly speaking to their worries about FOSTA.
Universities launch drive to recruit more white males as low numbers give them ‘minority group’ status.
In the U.S. colleges have been quietly practicing affirmative action to help male applicants for years.
Why are they doing so quietly?
It seems there’s quite the negative perception of affirmative action in favour of white people or men. Doesn’t that mean such programs should be widely advertised to counter the problematic public perception?
I’m a guy who dropped out of college to apprentice for a trade. My trade, as well as most of the others are almost entirely composed of males, who like me, decided college wasn’t for them. I often worked in factories moving production lines around and replacing machinery, and these factories are staffed by largely men without a college education.
As women continue to enter the workforce, why should we expect to see equal numbers of men and women at Universities, given that so many men occupy jobs where a degree is worthless?
I doubt it’s a good idea to incentivize more men to go to college, if anything, more men should take a hard look at learning a trade. The pay is excellent, and the work week is actually 40 hours with no need to answer the phone or emails at home. I was making more money than my college educated friends, and getting off work at 3:30 every day, leaving me time to really engage in hobbies, exercise, read, or catch up on chores. If I wanted to make a ton of money to fund a big vacation or buy a new road bike, overtime was often available around holidays and during the summer, but it was never mandatory. Best of all, there’s a shortage of skilled tradesmen, and technological advances won’t be replacing construction workers anytime some- we’ll see AI lawyers before we have robot plumbers.
Women too! edit: and other genders!
I do think that, considering opportunity costs, student loans, and the fact that many people go to college more for the job-training/gatekeeping aspects than the more high-minded aspirations, we encourage more people to go to college than there are students who really benefit from it. (And we probably encourage too many to go to college directly from high school as well.) The problem is that if we said “we should send fewer kids to college”, past experience tells us that too many kids encouraged to go into the trades instead won’t receive that advice based on their actual abilities and interests, but rather things like their skin color and socioeconomic class. I don’t know what a good solution is.
Sure, more women should enter the trades too (and the trades must become less sexist places to work, right now, it’s terrible)- I just don’t think guys should be encouraged to go to school through AA policies.
My main point is that as long as more men than women do choose to work these kinds of jobs, we shouldn’t expect college enrollment to be 50-50.
Yeah, this is a problem. I think the lower social status of blue collar workers makes this worse, and I’m puzzled as to why the status isn’t in-line with the pay.
it is not always bad for poor people to be in trades, because “working
in trades” is a lower chance of losing money. poor people would like to make alot of money of course, who does not want alot of money, but even more they cannot afford to LOSE money.
for example if you can make 25000 per year (that you will not make if you go to college) and if you spend 12500 per year on college then a four year university costs you 150000. those costs are very low, though, real cost is probably higher.
that is a big investment!! you will make it back of course if you get a good job, but that has alot to do with if you can do well, and also get in, and also do the right major. alot of the best jobs like nurse or engineer, you can make close to 50000 when you graduate BUT they are hard to get into and also hard to do well when you are in college, alot of smart people are competing too and poor people do not always have good education in lower schools so they can run into problems. and if poor people do the other kind of degree that is easier to get into and do well, those degrees are not usually the kind where you are going to get a job right away or make alot of money, so they may not make back the investment and may be in trouble.
also there are more and more kids, and there are not more and more colleges. the lower colleges are not always as good at investment and payback and they do not have alot of money to give to poor people. the good colleges are very hard to get into are harder to do well when you go.
Lurker, you’re under-selling it. 25,oo0 is approximately what a 1st year apprentice makes as a plumber or pipefitter in central Ohio. It’s more here in DC. A Journeyman in Ohio will make 60k (about 75k in DC) if he gets 2000 hours in, but many guys get more hours than that, and the OT premium is substantial. I was never one to go after all the OT, but I know guys who did, and they came close to making 100k (this may seem crazy, but when a factory has a shutdown, construction crews are often offered 7 12-hour days if they want, with OT premiums, a paycheck from one of these weeks will be the equivalent of having worked 117 hours)
Electricians and sheet-metal guys make just a tiny bit less. Iron workers make about 2/3 of this. Heavy machinery operators make bank, especially the crane guys. Outside of these trades, most of the other work is going to be non-union, which is a whole different world when it comes to wages as these employers typically pay much more money for the top talent, but then there are prevailing wage laws for public jobs… it’s complicated. I wouldn’t want to support a family as a drywall installer or doing non-finish carpentry. But I can say with certainty that a reasonably smart HS graduate coming out of high school and working in a mechanical trade for a couple of years as a helper will have no trouble getting into an apprenticeship program with a high paying union so long as he or she is drug free, has no arrest record, can pass a motor skills test (it’s not that hard, but some people just don’t have the hand eye skills to work with tools, and they are weeded out here) understands basic mechanics, and can do basic arithmetic like adding fractions in his/her head and multiplication. This young person needs to go to work everyday and school 2 days a week, as attendance is super strict for apprentices, but after 5 years, he or she can work all over the USA making great money, and I can’t stress this enough, the hours are outstanding. When I wasn’t self employed, I could leave work, drive from DC to a Chesapeake Bay beach, kiteboard for a few hours, and get home in time for a dinner on a Tuesday. It’s a good life and whats crazy is, no-one ever told me about as a teenager. It was just assumed I’d go get a degree and become an engineer or something.
I’m really straying from the topic, mostly because I like what I do for a living, but I feel pretty strongly that too many people are being pushed toward degrees. For many reasons, a significant percentage of the guys I work with wouldn’t thrive in a university setting or white collar workplace, and I’m not sure that these cases are always a problem in need of a solution. Some people are going to be happier working under a welding hood all day, swinging a hammer, or working on a trash collection crew and I suspect more of these people are going to be guys, and that’s OK.
Here’s a recent WaPo article about men, women, and the booming blue collar economy. It has some relevant stats:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/blue-collar-men-are-riding-americas-economic-wave-women-not-so-much/2018/10/22/c7879694-d60b-11e8-aeb7-ddcad4a0a54e_story.html?utm_term=.5969e4877fa6
Because this is a feminist blog, I’m gonna digress even more to comment on this quote from the article:
I don’t have a large sample size, but I don’t know of a single women who I shared a job site with who wasn’t harrassed in my presence. This was no rare occurence. The only reasonable take-away was that these women where harassed several times a week, and I’m not talking about any kind of behavior that could fall into an ethical grey are concerning intentions or anything that would fall under the label “microaggression.” It was flagrant and gross. I have so many stories.
But to get back on topic, that article says there are 13,000,000 jobs that pay over 35k and require only a college degree. That’s about 11% of all jobs, and 75% of those are occupied by men. As long as that is the case, I expect less employable men will pursue college degrees, and that seems OK. What’s not OK are the barriers of entry for women into these high paying blue collar jobs, but that seems like a separate problem than the one colleges are trying to solve by giving AA to men, and it definitely requires a different solution, and likely a ton of lawsuits.
that is bad but i do not know if we know how to solve it well, do you think we can? i do not know if they could ever really do a good job at taking alot of people who are working in trades and being very sure that they completely change the ways things work now (like for example making sure that nobody will ever get harassed) and ALSO keeping the trades open to poor people who come from poor cultures and ALSO keeping the good pay and ALSO keeping the trades producing alot for the money. i say that because i have seen alot of people have trouble in college and alot if it is NOT that they are not smart but is more like they do not know how to follow all the rules of the game because they do not grow up with the game.
it would be very interesting to see if they could change that. but i do not think that they can really do it very well. things like law suits work well in places where there are college jobs and maybe in trades where people stay in the same job for alot of years but i am not sure they will work everywhere because they spend alot of time trying to make people follow rules that are sometimes very different from their life.
sometimes i am not sure how the good and bad of that sort of thing would work. it would be interesting to do an experiment and let some companies say “we do not care about harassment here we only care if you are a good plumber” (they say it as an open thing) and other companies say “we will follow harassment law and we also care if you are a good plumber” (they say it as an open thing also).
then most of the the harasser plumbers will go work at the first company so they do not get fired. and people who care will go work at the second company because they do not want to be harassed. and there will be alot less harassment and alot less law suits because it is alot easier to let the harassers go somewhere else (and not go there yourself) than it is to change them or sue them. and people will know which company is which, so they can choose to hire “anyone” company or “no harassers” company if they care, maybe they will hire “no harassers” because they like good people, or maybe they will hire “anyone” because they want to be sure they keep the harassers in their own company away from everyone else, but it would be an interesting experiment.
It’s really bad. After writing that, I remembered that I worked really closely with the housekeeping department at the national gallery of art, and there, the gender ratio was close to 50-50 and the harrassment was constant. There were always several pending EEO investigations within that department and several lawsuits a year. My deapertment, facilities, didn’t have any gender discrimination complaints, but only because we employed zero women (and about 70 men).
I have no idea how to fix this stuff because it seems really hard to predict how cultures will change and what actually changes them. I don’t know what works. I do know that lawsuits light a fire under the ass of management, and then management will adopt zero-tolerance policies with regard to certain behaviors, and I’m definitely OK with that. I myself was assaulted on the job by a bigoted asshole and there was really no amount of mediation or education that would have made me OK working with that guy again.