Link Farm and Open Thread, Metal Creatures Edition

  1. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear Moore v. Harper. It’s a grave threat to US democracy. – Vox
    “Moore v. Harper is a grave threat to US democracy, and the fate of that democracy probably comes down to Amy Coney Barrett.”
  2. Democratic Strategies that Don’t Court Disaster | The Forum | David Daley & David Faris
    “How have Democratic leaders been so stolidly resistant to facing up to the true scale of this threat in anything other than fundraising appeals? Regrettably, advancing age and the institutional complacency that often comes with it play a major role here. The members of the Democratic Party’s leadership caste continually yearn for the long-vanished shade of “The Party of Lincoln.” They pine for the camaraderie of Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan and the difference-trimming compromises struck in the Senate cloakroom half a century ago—and by indulging in these clubby reveries before the public, they continue to transmit the message that the GOP is a normal political party, committed to upholding basic constitutional rights, freedoms, and power-sharing norms.”
  3. A New Study Contradicts a Washington Post Poll About How Native Americans View the Redskins’ Name – Washingtonian
    A much cited 2016 poll found that 90% of Native Americans have no objection to naming a football team “Redskins.” But other polls – including a new academic study which fixed some methodological flaws in the WaPo survey – have had radically different findings.
  4. The perception of rhythm in language by Anne Cutler (pdf)
    Short and impressive three-page paper about how we hear words.
  5. The Trouble with Promoting “Joyful” or “Enjoyable” Movement
    “Look, it’s ok to pick something you hate the least, and do the bare minimum you need to do for the benefit you want to get.”
  6. White Parents Rallied to Chase a Black Educator Out of Town. Then, They Followed Her to the Next One. — ProPublica
    They weren’t even doing this in response to what she said – they were pre-emptively getting rid of her because of what she hypothetically might say.
  7. There’s no denying the data: Rent control works | The Hill
    This is interesting; I’ve long had the impression that the case against rent control rested on solid data, but it’s actually much shakier, at least according to this article.
    Josh Hawley, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn seemed to think defining a woman is easy, then they tried do do it – The Washington Post
    “When the reporter asked him whether a woman whose uterus was removed via hysterectomy was still a woman, he appeared uncertain: “Yeah. Well, I don’t know, would they?””
  8. Journalists need to do better when it comes to doing PR for the police. –Parker Malloy
    “Maybe if the police didn’t think they could so consistently get away with horrific acts and utter incompetence, they’d actually do a better job. Maybe if they didn’t have a boatload of legal loopholes they could hide in, they’d actually do a better job. Maybe if they didn’t get written about like action heroes by lazy journalists, they’d actually do a better job. The problem is the lack of police accountability, and journalists should be working to make them more accountable, not less.”
  9. The Risks, Rewards and Possible Ramifications of Geoengineering Earth’s Climate | Science| Smithsonian Magazine
  10. Four myths about testosterone levels and athletics – @KirstiMiller30
  11. Hotel Housing: America’s great forgotten solution to high rents and house prices.
    “While you won’t solve your homeless problem just by building SROs, you can’t solve your homeless problem without them.”
  12. Opinion | There Are 100 People in America With Way Too Much Power – The New York Times (and an alternative link)
    “The idea is to move the locus of policymaking back to the House of Representatives (which I would like to enlarge to at least 600 members), and to make it the most important chamber in the operation of government.”
  13. Mandatory Reporting Is Exactly Not What Victims Need (and an alternative link)
    “She wants to talk to her trusted professor, and yet she cannot do so while maintaining control over her privacy and her life. The policy has taken away her autonomy, her right to consent.”
  14. He Built a Home to Survive a Civil War. Tragedy Found Him Anyway. – The New York Times (And an alternate link.)
    A congressman believed that society is about to collapse and the only safety for him and his family was to have a private bunker. Tragically, he wasn’t the only person to believe that. (CW: murder.)
  15. On Capabilitarianism – by Ozy Brennan – Thing of Things
    In which Ozy explains their “weird contrarian ethical system.”
  16. Text Exchange Shows Clueless Boss Expecting Fired Worker To Keep Helping Out
    A similar (but more extensive) exchange happened between a frequent “Alas” comment-writer and their ex-boss.
  17. The F.D.A.’s Misguided War on Vaping – by Clive Bates
    “The government is putting stricter restrictions on vaping than on smoking. That’s bad for public health.”
  18. The photos are by Ukranian sculptor Igorigo, and are included here with their permission. Check out their Etsy shop!

Posted in Link farms | 3 Comments

Cartoon: Anything to Fix the Housing Crisis!


If you like these cartoons, then you’d probably like my cousin Edna. And if you like my cousin Edna, you’d probably also like her special tuna noodle casserole made with tabasco sauce. And if you like my cousin Edna’s special tuna noodle casserole made with tabasco sauce, then the police are interested in talking with you about an incident on Berlington Circle Avenue last Tuesday, but they say you’re not a suspect and no need to hire a lawyer. But if you do hire a lawyer, cousin Edna knows a guy. And that guy supports these cartoons on Patreon.


There’s this thing I do in my cartoons where, anytime part of me decides to do something to save time, another part of me immediately rush to fill that void.

Like, “this cartoon doesn’t need backgrounds. Not every cartoon needs to have a background. Calvin and Hobbes often didn’t have backgrounds.” (My personal guide to if something can be good cartooning or not is usually “did Calvin and Hobbes do it?”)

…Which led to the decision to not do backgrounds. What a timesaver!

…Which led to the decision to take advantage of the faster drawing time by adding in two more panels, meaning four more figures.


At this moment, I’m actually pleased with the art. I feel like the body language and the inking doesn’t look as stiff and over-controlled as my stuff often does.

(To be clear, I don’t really think my work is unusually stiff and over-controlled, as comics go. But it is stiff and controlled compared to how I’d like it to look.)


I can’t believe that after (mumble mutter) years doing political cartooning, this is the first time I’ve done a cartoon about nimbyism!

The housing crisis hurts, and in the end, the only way of addressing it is to build more housing and make our cities – especially the cities that lots of people want to live in – denser. It’s as simple as that.

But it’s also impossibly complex to implement, because the system in the US for building more housing has so many places where changes can be vetoed. And when most of your life’s savings are tied up in a house – which is the situation many homeowners are in – any change can seem threatening.

(And of course, there’s also racism and classism in the mix. There always is.)


TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has six panels. All the panels show two women, one with spiky hair and one with curly hair, talking to each other. The spiky-haired woman is wearing a red and pink striped v-neck tee shirt, shorts, and sneakers. The curly-haired woman is wearing an orange tank top and a purple skirt with a pattern of large dots.

PANEL 1

Spiky is looking distressed, holding her hands to her head; Curly looks determined, pounding her palm with her fist.

SPIKY: The affordable housing crisis gets worse every year!

CURLY: Let’s fix this – I’ll do anything!

PANEL 2

Spiky is enthusiastic, lifting a pointer finger in the air as she makes a point. Curly turns away, holding up a palm in a dismissive way, looking annoyed.

SPIKY: Our biggest problem is the zoning laws. If we allowed taller buildings with units reserved for low-income–

CURLY: I don’t want to live close to those people!

PANEL 3

Spiky is taken aback, and makes her new point with a lot less confidence in her body language. Curly keeps her back turned to Spiky and crosses her arms.

SPIKY: Um… Let’s at least ban single-family zoning. If people could build “granny apartments”–

CURLY: That could change the “feel” of my neighborhood.

PANEL 4

Spiky clasps her hands in front as she makes a new suggestion, almost looking like she’s begging. Curly has turned back to face Spiky and looks angry, arms akimbo.

SPIKY: If we got rid of minimum lot sizes…

CURLY: Ugh! Houses built close together are ugly!

PANEL 5

Spiky makes another suggestion, looking unhappy, and Curly angrily rejects that suggestion.

SPIKY: How about eliminating parking minimums for new housing?

CURLY: And make parking spaces harder to find? Never!

PANEL 6

The characters are drawn smaller, as if we’re exiting this scene. Now Spiky looks annoyed, and her arms are akimbo. Curly looks cheerful and spreads her palms as if she’s making an obvious point.

SPIKY: So when you said you’d do “anything”…?

CURLY: Anything that doesn’t change anything.


This cartoon on Patreon

Posted in Cartooning & comics | 50 Comments

Does Dieting Work? An exchange of letters with Helen Pluckrose

This is an online debate Helen Pluckrose and I had at the unfortunately defunct website letters.wiki in 2020 and 2021. I’m posting it here for preservation. I’m not sure I got all the formatting right, but I did my best with it.

I haven’t changed the words at all, even where I’d like to.  :-)

Thanks to Helen Pluckrose for her kind permission to reprint her letters here.


Does Dieting Work?
By Barry Deutsch & Helen Pluckrose

5 Letters


Letter 1
By Barry Deutsch
Created 26 May ’20

Dear Helen,

Hi! I’m writing to respond to your open letter, “on Fat Scholarship and Activism.”

A thousand words seems cruelly scant to me, but I’ll do my best.

For space reasons, I won’t dig into our “obesity vs fat” semantic disagreement. I suggest we each use our preferred word, neither making a fuss about the other’s choice. (Ditto for “fat acceptance” vs “fat activism.”)

Part 1: Your charges against the fat acceptance movement.

Your criticisms of fat acceptance are a mix of cherry-picked examples and uncharitable readings.

For instance, you say where fat activism “could oppose discrimination against obese people in the workplace, it goes on about ‘romantic discrimination.’” But the linked article contains only three paragraphs about “romantic discrimination,” a fraction of a much longer piece. (And do you really think cultural components of attraction aren’t worthy of being written about? I can’t agree.)

Your claim that fat acceptance “doesn’t do this kind of work” – meaning opposing things like workplace and medical discrimination – is staggeringly wrong. I could provide a hundred links of scholars and activists addressing those issues, but since time  is limitedhopefully just ten will prove my point.

Your other indictments followed a similar pattern, but with only 1000 words, I must move on!

(This article by Angie Manfredi, aimed at teens, is a non-comprehensive but accurate overview of fat acceptance’s goals. And Yasmin Harker created this useful bibliography of academic works about fat rights and fat discrimination.)

Part 2: Why I’m Generally Anti-Diet

We both want to end stigma and discrimination against fat people. Where we disagree (if I’ve understood correctly) is that you think fat people should try to not be fat, and that fat people are by definition unhealthy.

Accepting for a moment, for argument’s sake, that fat is unhealthy, that doesn’t necessarily lead to the conclusion that most fat people should try not to be fat.

First, I’ll stress that no one is under any obligation to maximize health. Exercise and cooking can take time, space, money, and mental energy which not everyone has. And people can legitimately prioritize other things.

But some fat people do wish to prioritize their health. Shouldn’t those fat people be encouraged to lose weight?

Some should – people with specific, serious conditions that weight loss could help (even if they’d still be fat).

But for 99% of fat people, I’d say not. The evidence is clear that weight-loss plans don’t work for the large majority. Most never lose a significant amount of weight – certainly not enough for a fat person to stop being fat. And usually whatever weight is lost – or more – comes back within five years. This causes mental anguish, because failure to lose weight, or to maintain weight loss, easily turns into self-hatred. If the person tries multiple times (as is common), the physical effects of yo-yo dieting can be very harmful.

Wayne Miller, an exercise science specialist at George Washington University, wrote:

There isn’t even one peer-reviewed controlled clinical study of any intentional weight-loss diet that proves that people can be successful at long-term significant weight loss. No commercial program, clinical program, or research model has been able to demonstrate significant long-term weight loss for more than a small fraction of the participants. Given the potential dangers of weight cycling and repeated failure, it is unscientific and unethical to support the continued use of dieting as an intervention for obesity.

Am I saying fat people who want to be healthier should give up? Absolutely not. I’m saying becoming healthier doesn’t require futile attempts to lose weight.

Please look at this graph. (Source.)

It shows likelihood of mortality as it relates to weight and four other characteristics: fruit and vegetable intake, tobacco use, exercise, and alcohol. These are sometimes called the “healthy habits.”

On the left side of the graph, fat people who practice no “healthy habits” – smoking, no veggies, immoderate drinking, no exercise – have a much higher mortality risk than so-called “normal” weight people with unhealthy habits (although the “normals” have elevated risk too).

On the right end of the graph, fat people who practice all four healthy habits have a mortality risk that’s just barely higher than their thinner counterparts. More importantly, we can see that fat people who practice all four healthy habits benefit enormously, compared to fat people who don’t. (“Normals” benefit enormously from these healthy habits, too.)

Most fat people can’t permanently lose enough weight to stop being fat. But most fat people can eat more veggies, can not smoke, can limit ourselves to one glass of hootch a day, can add moderate exercise to our lives. These things aren’t always easy, but they are all much more achievable, for most fat people, than stopping being fat.

Achievable advice is better than unachievable advice. There’s a positive way forward for most fat people who want to be healthier – one that’s more likely to work, and less likely to encourage self-hatred, than trying to stop being fat.

One final thought: stigma against being fat may be more harmful than fat itself.

These findings suggest the possibility that the stigma associated with being overweight is more harmful than actually being overweight… Growing evidence suggests that weight bias does not work; it leads to greater morbidity and, now, greater mortality.(See also.)

Could we get rid of weight bias while still holding the belief that fat people must lose weight? I doubt it. Reducing stigma could do more for fat people’s health than reducing waistlines.

There’s so much more to say (harms of dieting; benefits of a Health At Every Size approach; how HAES can help with disordered eating; etc), but I’m out of space.

I hope this letter finds you happy, well, and socially distanced someplace very cozy.

Best wishes, Barry


Letter 2
By Helen Pluckrose
Created 26 May ’20

Dear Barry,

Thank you for responding to my open letter.

They are not cherry-picked examples unless you mean that I am picking examples of elements of fat activism that worry me and only criticising them. This is quite a standard practice.

I know that fat activism and fat scholarship can address important issues but this is why it is so frustrating when it focuses on “fatphobic” discourses instead. I learnt about the connection between poverty and obesity and about medical discrimination in the Fat Studies Reader and these are things that could be focused upon empirically. Unfortunately, it spends much more time going on about fatphobia and how science is bad.

I think claims to be ‘anti-diet’ are missing the point and it also encapsulates the misdirection that fat activists frequently engage in.

There are two definitions of the word ‘diet.’ One refers to what someone eats and the other refers to a short-term weight loss plan. I think we can safely assume that we are both in favour of people eating and both against short-term weight loss plans.  Short-term weight loss plans cannot achieve a long-term healthy weight by definition. In the same way a six-week non-smoking plan after which you go back to smoking cannot achieve long-term non-smoking. Nevertheless, the reason the majority of people (worldwide, not in America) are not obese is their diet. Either intuitively or consciously they eat the right amount of calories they need to be neither dangerously underweight or dangerously overweight. The scientist you cite as saying there is no evidence that weight loss plans can achieve long-term weight loss is necessarily right but he seems to be talking to the people who only tried short-term ones and he might get different answers if he asked people who are not overweight why they are not. Some, like my husband (curse him) will doubtless say they don’t have to think about their diet to maintain a healthy weight but others, like most of my friends, will say they do it by watching what they eat.

You urge me to consider that cultural components of  attraction could be worth writing about and I don’t necessarily disagree. I do, however, think we should pay more attention to cultural components of obesity because it kills people.  Even in the countries like mine and yours where obesity has reached epidemic proportions, this was not the case 100 years ago or even 50 years ago. The fact that mass obesity is such a new phenomenon in some countries but still not in others indicates that it is not a biological inevitability but a product of culture. The fact that it is a causal factor for so many diseases and early death means we should try to do something realistic to address this. I agree that simply telling people to eat less and move more is likely to be unhelpful.

I agree that no-one is under any obligation to maximise their health. I have little sympathy with libertarian views that use obesity as an argument against people being required to contribute towards a nationalised healthcare service. My own father was assertive in his decision to smoke and he maintained that he was right to choose a more enjoyable life over a longer one even when he was dying of lung cancer.  I absolutely support him in that although, selfishly, I’d rather he were still alive.

I agree with this:

Achievable advice is better than unachievable advice.

However, I am sceptical of this:

But most fat people can eat more veggies, can not smoke, can limit ourselves to one glass of hootch a day, can add moderate exercise to our lives. These things aren’t always easy, but they are all much more achievable, for most fat people, than stopping being fat.

It seems unlikely to me that people who find it very difficult to refrain from eating too many calories will find it much easier to commit to more vegetables, not smoking, drinking in moderation and exercising. However, I agree that thinking of weight loss in terms of making healthier choices is more likely to be helpful than thinking of it as stopping being fat.

I think you are being defeatist. What the evidence that people find it very difficult to  lose weight and maintain that weight loss suggests is not that obese people should stop trying to lose weight and maintain that weight loss but that the currently advocated ways for doing so are not adequate. We know how people get fat and stay fat. What we are failing to address is why they do so. This is what we need research into on both a social and psychological level. What has changed in society that makes obesity an epidemic right now? Why do so many people find maintaining a healthy weight so difficult psychologically? What will realistically help them overcome this?

Your thesis seems to be: Obesity is unavoidable so we can either continue to have a stigma against obesity and make fat people both fat and miserable or we can get rid of the stigma against obesity so that fat people can be fat and happy.

Mine is: Obesity is a new problem so we know it is avoidable. We can put our efforts into problematising the people addressing obesity as a problem or we can address the problem of obesity while also addressing  discrimination & stigma and not being arseholes to obese people.

Best

Helen

P.S – Yes, I am self-isolating quite comfortably, thank you. My husband has had to take a furlough from work to protect me because I am particularly vulnerable to complications of the coronavirus because I am obese. :-p


Letter 3
By Barry Deutsch
Created 07 Jun ’20

Dear Helen,

Thanks for responding!

Our disagreements are legion but our word count isn’t, so I’ll get right into it.

You’re right, it’s not cherry-picking to criticize specific claims. But it is cherry-picking to treat an unrepresentative example as representative. You cherry-picked several times, such as saying fat acceptance doesn’t address workplace and medical discrimination but instead “goes on about romantic discrimination.”

You deny Dr. Miller’s claim that no “weight loss diet” has been shown to work[*] in a peer-reviewed study, by saying  “diet” means only “short-term” weight loss plans, a distinction not found in any dictionary I checked. As Dr. Miller’s quote said, he was looking at “long-term” weight loss.

No commercial program, clinical program, or research model has been able to demonstrate significant long-term weight loss for more than a small fraction of the participants.

Not a single weight-loss model – including long term approaches – has ever been shown to work in a peer-reviewed controlled clinical study.

There have been hundreds of tries. Anyone with a method scientifically proven to really, permanently work would become a billionaire. And yet, as Mann points out, not a single weight loss plan can even meet Medicare’s standards for effective health treatments.

Reviews of the scientific literature on dieting generally draw two conclusions about diets. First, diets do lead to short-term weight loss. One summary of diet studies from the 1970s to the mid-1990s found that these weight loss programs consistently resulted in participants losing an average of 5%–10% of their weight. Second, these losses are not maintained. As noted in one review, “It is only the rate of weight regain, not the fact of weight regain, that appears open to debate.”

(When Mann says “diet,” she doesn’t mean only short-term plans.)

Weight-loss advocates deny this reality – a finding that’s been in scholarly papers for decades and is unchanged today. They insist that empirical results don’t apply to whatever approach they favor (often called a “lifestyle change”).

Whatever they call it, it’s never been proven to work.

If we can’t acknowledge that, how can we have a real conversation about what fat people should do?

It is irresponsible for society to pressure us to stop being fat, when there’s no effective method for permanently losing even 5-10% of body weight, let alone the much larger amount someone like me would have to lose to stop being fat.

Now consider that weight-loss plans often leave people at higher mortality risk, less happy, and – by the way – fatter than when they began.

Proposing a treatment for being fat that’s more likely to harm patients than work isn’t just irresponsible. It’s cruel. Especially when there’s a better way.

Helen, you were skeptical that fat people could successfully pursue other routes to health, like exercise, not smoking, drinking moderately, and eating their veggies. Even though you were responding to an empirical study that included many fat people who did exactly those things.

(Are fat people especially bad at quitting smoking? This study found no connection between weight and ability to quit smoking; another found fat smokers were better at quitting.)

The truth is, keeping weight off is much harder than eating veggies or moderate exercise. Probably even harder than quitting smoking. Because our brains don’t want us to lose weight. Neuroscientist Sandra Aamodt explains:

The root of the problem is not willpower but neuroscience. Metabolic suppression is one of several powerful tools that the brain uses to keep the body within a certain weight range, called the set point. The range, which varies from person to person, is determined by genes and life experience. When dieters’ weight drops below it, they not only burn fewer calories but also produce more hunger-inducing hormones and find eating more rewarding….If someone starts at 120 pounds and drops to 80, her brain rightfully declares a starvation state of emergency, using every method available to get that weight back up to normal. The same thing happens to someone who starts at 300 pounds and diets down to 200.Even years after losing weight, our brains may still be trying to get us to regain the weight, preserving calories and making us hungrier. That’s why so many dieters gain weight in the end.

Because no comparable brain process keeps us from adding walks and veggies to our lives, most will find those things much easier than permanently losing substantial amounts of weight.

(I want to emphasize to readers, again, that no one’s obligated to maximize their health. And not everyone has the opportunity, unfortunately. A rare thing Helen and I agree on!)

It’s irrelevant to discuss if fat people should lose weight, when there’s no reliable way to make that happen.

You called me a defeatist, but I’m not. Knowing that fat people can be happy and healthy and lead great lives is the polar opposite of defeatism.

Imagine two people in a smelly mud pit behind a wall. On the other side of the wall, a beautiful park. The first says “with enough effort, I can vault this wall like Jackie Chan and be happy on the other side.”And so she tries and tries, always failing, while denying there’s any other way to reach the park.

The second realizes she’s unlikely to ever vault like Jackie Chan. So she walks around the wall instead, and is happy in the park on the other side.

Is the second person the defeatist?

I’m out of space – and there’s so much left unaddressed! Let me know if I skipped anything you especially wanted addressed, and I’ll try to fit it in my next letter.

Hoping this finds you safe and happy,

Barry

[*] I’m using “works” as shorthand for “significant, sustained weight loss for most people.”


Letter 4
By Helen Pluckrose
Created 07 Jun ’20

Dear Barry,

OK, fair enough. I could have phrased that better so it was clear I didn’t mean that they weren’t doing that but that they weren’t sticking to that.

Not a single weight-loss model – including long term approaches – has ever been shown to work in a peer-reviewed controlled clinical study.

I think it means that people who went on short-term diets did not succeed in keeping the weight off afterwards. It simply isn’t possible that people ate fewer calories than they burned and got fat or that got slim and then ate the same number of calories that they burned and got fat. Fat needs to be built or maintained with calories. If it were really true, we’d see evidence of it in areas where food is scarce. There’d be a number of thin people and some who were obese saying “I don’t understand it. I barely eat a thing.”

Anyone with a method scientifically proven to really, permanently work would become a billionaire.

What’s the method that explains why most people aren’t fat? Why aren’t I fat when I eat 2000 calories a day but get fat when I start eating more than that? Surely, the thing that isn’t working is people finding a way they can stick to? That’s not a judgemental thing. I’m not actually a believer in free will. I don’t think people who find they can’t stick to the number of calories they need are lazy or undisciplined. I think it’s really hard for them and medical research should look into making it easier.

Weight-loss advocates deny this reality – a finding that’s been in scholarly papers for decades and is unchanged today.

The first study here talks a lot about how severe the psychological effects of feeling deprived can be and refers to this as being undernourished. However, it clearly says that if people stick to this, it works. “A small minority of patients, able to endure the hunger and emotional hardship of treatment and to sustain their undernutrition for years of maintenance, feel that the sacrifices have been worth the effort.”

The second one clearly says that people gain weight again due to a number of factors and then it says,”Those individuals who do sustain substantial weight loss over time generally must maintain high levels of dietary restraint, physical activity, and self-monitoring behaviors.”  Of course.

The third one looks at obesity as a psychological issue but clearly says that the problem is that weight loss programmes are short-term .  “Weight loss ads and commercials bombard the media, including social media, with diets and other products claiming to result in large amounts of weight loss. There is little focus on long-term maintenance.” Later, it refers to the regaining of weight as ‘recidivism’ which clearly indicates that people have ceased sticking to a diet that will enable them to keep the weight off.

In summary, all three of these papers  acknowledge that when patients do stick to a diet programme long-term, they stay slim long-term. However, nearly all of them find this too difficult and revert to overeating.  They all recommend other measures to minimise the impact of obesity on health than sustaining weight loss which indicates that obesity is a problem for health. There is much to be said for these arguments especially if faced with the realistic option between working with what we’ve got – obesity with health risks minimised – or nagging people to stay on a diet forever when they do not feel they can. The papers also provide some useful information about how yo-yo dieting can affect metabolism and the physiological effects of weightloss which can often function to make weight loss harder so there are some physiological causes of weight plateaus and losing weight becoming harder after some has been lost.

You acknowledge some of the physiological symptoms when you say,

Even years after losing weight, our brains may still be trying to get us to regain the weight, preserving calories and making us hungrier. That’s why so many dieters gain weight in the end.

And you make a plausible argument that doing various things for living a healthier lifestyle could be easier for many people than eating less. It isn’t for me. I have managed to lose weight and keep it off all the times I have not been taking centrally-acting medication but have never been able to give up nicotine, wine or chocolate. Of course, this may indicate that I do not have the same problems that many obese people have.

I think the difference of opinion we are having here is between my view that weight loss and maintenance is physically possible but psychologically hard and so the solution must be psychological. I want more effort going into looking at it psychologically. And environmentally.  I still think research into why there was so much less obesity in our grandparents’ generation and trying to recreate that would be worthwhile. I am not ready to settle for being obese. I have been slim for most of my life and it is so much more comfortable and makes doing almost anything so much easier.

You, on the other hand, think there is a need for acceptance and mitigation of health risks, not because you are being defeatist, but because you’d rather spend your life that way than to keep trying and, statistically, being very likely to keep failing to lose weight. I think that is a perfectly reasonable analysis of the situation and decision to come to. When I say I want more focus on the individual’s psychology in order to find personalised solutions and not rely on formulaic programmes which work physically but not psychologically, I think some people’s psychology might reveal that they want to do what you want to do.

Best

Helen


Letter 5
By Barry Deutsch
Created 02 Feb ’21

Dear Helen,

Of course if someone eats little enough, they will lose weight. And if they keep eating little enough forever – which may require eating even less than when the diet began, as their body attempts to regain the weight – they can keep the weight off.

In this extremely superficial sense, it’s true that all fat people can diet their way to no longer being fat.

But that’s sidestepping the real question: Can a typical human voluntarily reduce food intake enough to cause a large loss of weight, not just for a few months or years, but for a lifetime? Not just in theory, but in practice? Study after study has shown that the overwhelming majority of us cannot.

You don’t deny that this is the case (thank you!), and say medicine should work on changing this. But it’s been working on it, for longer than we’ve been alive, without success. And in the meantime, trying and failing to lose weight (including in the form of multiple weight losses and regains) is harming many people’s mental and physical health.

Unless something in the science changes, the large majority of fat people will never be able to deliberately lose enough weight to stop being fat – and most weight lost, will eventually be regained.

That’s one thing “fat acceptance” means – just accepting that fact.

If there’s one thing I’d like people to take away from what I’ve written here, it’s this: It’s useless to say “fat people should stop being fat” when there’s no pragmatic, safe, and sustainable way to make that actually happen for most fat people.

Since this is my final letter in our exchange, I thought I’d finish up by listing some changes this fat activist wants to happen.

1) I want every fat person to choose for themselves if they want to try dieting their way out of being fat – but without being pressured.

2) But I also want fat people to have full and truthful information before deciding. They should know that – for those fat people who want to work on their health (and not everyone does, or should be expected to) – simple techniques like eating more vegetables and moderate exercise have been proven enormously beneficial, and this is true even if they remain fat.

They should know that the overwhelming majority of fat dieters don’t lose enough weight to stop being fat, and often end up fatter than when they began. They should know that multiple cycles of weight loss and regain are harmful physically and, for many, mentally – and are a far more likely outcome than permanent weight loss. They should know that it’s the body’s natural defenses against weight loss – not being weak-willed or contemptible – that make it effectively impossible for most people to keep large amounts of weight off.

3) Direct anti-fat discrimination and exclusion – from employers and doctors and teachers and engineers and clothing designers and so many others – has to stop.

4) Anti-fat stigma should stop as well, as much as possible. If we’re genuinely concerned about fat people’s health, then this should be a no-brainer; the damage to health from being stigmatized is fairly well documented.

What would ending anti-fat stigma look like? A full answer to that question would require thousands more words. But we could begin by changing the way our major institutions (such as schools, children’s books, television and movies) depict fat people. Ordinary fat people leading ordinary lives would ideally be as common on TV shows as we are in life, while anti-fat stereotypes become much rarer. (To be clear, I’m talking about creating these changes through persuasion and consumer advocacy, not any form of censorship).

5) Probably the hardest part: As a society, we have to stop teaching fat people to loathe ourselves.

Which I think begins with fat acceptance. In fact, all these changes are part of fat acceptance.

Thank you for this exchange. And in particular, thank you for how you’ve engaged this topic with me. It’s been difficult to find anyone who will disagree with me about fat acceptance politely and thoughtfully; abuse and contempt are more common. (Which is, I suspect, one reason most pro-fat people hesitate to get in these discussions.)

In our exchange, you’ve mentioned your own plans to stop being fat. I genuinely wish you nothing but success with that. But whether or not you succeed, I wish you happiness.

Best wishes, Barry

Posted in Fat, fat and more fat | 20 Comments

Cartoon: There’s Never Been a Worse Time for Free Speech


Another collaboration with Becky Hawkins!


If you like these cartoons, you can help make more happen by moving to Portland, Oregon, and specifically into the shed next to my house, and every morning wake up and break into my house and stand over me saying “write! write! draw! draw you scum draw!” over and over, for hours, until I break, and don’t forget to support the Patreon.


Many people have commented that the right-wing freak out over how “CRT” – also known as political correctness, social justice warriors, the “woke,” and so on – is crushing free speech, comes rather suspiciously at a time when speech – while not perfect – is in many ways the freest it’s been in U.S.. history.

It’s just that the biggest gains for free speech have been for women, for lgbt, for racial minorities, etc.. Not that there aren’t still free speech problems there – of course there are – but those problems are a lot less than they used to be. And once those groups and more were freer to speak up, a lot of people (mostly but not only on the right) are feeling threatened.

I do agree that some communities on the left (like some on the right) can be rigid, judgmental and unforgiving, and that’s a problem. People can feel intimidated out of speech. But – even if we count all the right-wing attacks on free speech – the idea that our era is a historical nadir for free speech is beyond ludicrous.


Cartoons that skip through historical eras are some of the most time-consuming for us to create. It takes me a long time to research these things and decide which incidents to include (in this case, I think I found 12 cases that were perfectly on-the-nose for this cartoon and could be distilled down to one panel, and with Becky’s help chose just 6 to be in the cartoon), and then it takes Becky even more time to research all the fashions and environments for each era.

Fortunately, all that time spent on research is actually a lot of fun. Because Becky and I are nerds.


Here’s just a few of the many reference photos Becky used while drawing this strip, along with Becky’s comments:

Becky: “it’s really funny to me that every suffragist article I come across has the quote ‘Well-behaved women rarely make history’ somewhere in it, when that quote originally meant more like “history is full of women we don’t learn about because they weren’t considered important enough to write down.”

Becky: “Photographic reasons for a diverse suffragette panel in 1917.”

(Original Caption) American Suffragette parade in New York City, May 1912. Color Photograph. BPA 2 #6052

Becky: “…and a wearable banner that hasn’t been co-opted by TERFs.”

Becky: “I’m guessing the first version of this photo (above) was hand-tinted? The version below was colorized recently for Time Magazine. I went with the gold banners and pink hat in the cartoon because that panel already had so much blue.”

Becky: “I love the fourth outfit from the right. (I squeezed it into the background of the cartoon as clearly as I could.)”

Becky: “This cartoon has a bunch of very different settings, so I tried to make it look more cohesive by re-using colors from panel to panel. (I briefly thought about giving each panel a different color of monochromatic shading like in this cartoon, but I like how this looks in full color.) Sometimes I looked at the file without the dialogue or line art to see how the colors looked together. Here’s a screenshot I took halfway through the coloring process. I don’t think this counts as a “limited” color palette, but you can see some of the reds, blues, and browns repeating.”


TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has seven panels. Each panel shows a different scene from a different era, with the first panel set in the 1890s, and each subsequent panel set in a later time period, until the final panel which is set in the present day.

PANEL 1

A bright summer day in the 1890s. In the foreground, a Black woman is watching three white men with an aggrieved posture. She’s wearing a blue dress. In the background, a uniformed police officer is talking to two other white men, one in a brown three-piece suit with matching bowler hat, while the other man looks more working-class with a white button-up shirt, no necktie, and suspenders.

Behind the men, we can see the still-smoking ruin of what was once a building.

MAN IN SUIT: We only burned down Ida Wells’ newspaper because she wrote against lynching.

COP: That seems reasonable.

PANEL 2

In the background, we can see a group of suffragettes in 1910s dresses and hats, crowded together and looking calm but nervous.  A couple of them are wearing sashes that read “votes for women.” Most of the suffragettes we see are white, but one is Black and another is Asian. The Asian woman is wearing a traditional Japanese kimono and hairstyle (modeled on Komako Kimura’s outfit and hair photographed at a 1917 suffragette march).

In the foreground, with their backs to us (so facing the women), a couple of cops are talking. One of them is slapping a palm with a billy club.

COP 1: These suffragettes were picketing the White House.

COP 2: Let the beatings begin!

PANEL 3

A wealthy looking couple, dressed in 1920s fashion (her in a blue hat with a red ribbon with flower decoration, and a matching blue jacket with puffy off-white cuffs and neck; him in an off-white suit, a straw boater with a red ribbon, blue necktie and red vest) are looking at the building across the street with some distress.

The building across the street has a sign saying “Apollo Theatre” over a revolving door entrance. A big theatre marquee over the entrances tells us that “The God of Vengeance” is playing, although the words are partly blocked by a word balloon. Another nearby sign says “Times Sq.”

WOMAN: A play with Jewish lesbians kissing?

MAN: Let’s call the police!

PANEL 4

An Asian man sits in a chair, holding up a sheet of paper. So many long horizontal strips have been sliced out of the paper that it’s made as much of holes as it is of paper. He’s wearing a collared blue shirt.

Behind him, an Asian woman leans forward to look over his shoulder. She’s wearing a red skirt and buttoned-up blouse, with a blue sweater over it. The hairstyle and clothing suggest the 1940s.

WOMAN: What’s that?

MAN: Letter from my friend Takashi in the internment camp.

PANEL 5

This panel shows two cops, a postman, and a woman in a dress. In the background, we can see a small but well-kept looking yellow house, with a tree in front and a planter under the front window.

One of the cops is putting the woman into the back seat of a police car. Judging from the woman’s hairstyle and pink, high-collared dress, this is the 1960s.

In the foreground, the postman is talking to the other cop, while pointing backwards with his thumb towards the woman. The cop is taking notes.

POSTMAN: We opened Virginia Prince’s mail and found lesbian love letters and something called “Transvestia Magazine”!

PANEL 6

We are looking at a TV set, on a table. Judging from the make of the TV and the style of the tablecloth under the TV, this is the 1970s.

On the TV a dignified-looking Black man, with white hair styled to be high on top of his head, black round glasses, and wearing a suit and tie, is speaking. (The man is Bayard Rustin.)

RUSTIN: I was arrested in the 1940s for being anti-war… In the 50s for being gay… And in the 60s for protesting Jim Crow.

PANEL 7

A current-day TV studio. Cameras and lights point at two people sitting at a table, one a middle-aged man wearing a gray suit with a blue tie, the other a younger-looking woman with black hair, glasses, and a blue short-sleeved dress. The man is spreading his arms out in an annoyed fashion while speaking, and the woman is pounding a fist on the table in front of her.  “Clap clap clap” sound effects on the bottom right of the panel indicate that the unseen audience is clapping for what the woman is saying.

MAN: Nowadays straight white men can’t say anything without being criticized!

WOMAN: There’s never been a worse time for freedom of speech!

SFX: Clap clap clap clap


This cartoon on Patreon

Posted in Cartooning & comics | Comments Off on Cartoon: There’s Never Been a Worse Time for Free Speech

You Can’t Call Me A Homophobe If I’m Not Afraid


Another collab with Becky Hawkins!


If you like these cartoons, then you’re an exceptionally refined person and people all over the world are clamoring to know you to such an extent that it’s actually become difficult for you to go out in public unless you wear like, a slouch hat and big sunglasses, but that just makes you look like a spy and other spies come up to you and try to exchange briefcases and it’s just awkward and also support the patreon.


This is one of those “frustratingly dense argument I’ve been hearing for decades” cartoons, aka “Barry should really spend less time on Twitter.”

Here’s the particular tweet that directly inspired this cartoon:

I guess I’d call this “argument by paronomasia.” In English words and idioms have meanings which are determined by usage, not by etymology or component parts.

I’m not against etymology, of course. Etymology can be a fascinating history of how words came to be and how they evolved. But they don’t dictate meaning.


Becky agreed to let me show you a couple of the selfies she took as reference for drawing this strip. Enjoy!


TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels. Each panel shows a white man speaking directly to the reader; he has curly orange-ish hair and is wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt,

PANEL 1

MAN: Here’s a newsflash for you stupid lefties! Sometimes words aren’t literally true!

PANEL 2

The man smirks big and makes air quotes with his fingers.

MAN: Like when you call me a “homophobe” or “transphobe” just because I want those people fired from schools!

MAN: Idiot lefties! “Phobia” means “fear” but I’m not literally afraid! lol lol lol!

PANEL 3

He holds up a forefinger to emphasize his point. He’s grinning big.

MAN: You called me “white supremacist” when I said Blacks are genetically stupid…

MAN: But I think Asians are better at math than whites! So I don’t think whites are “supreme.” lolol!

PANEL 4

The man leans closer to the camera, widening his eyes and pursing his lips in a “oooh spooky” expression, while making the “mind blown” gesture with his hands on each side of his head.

MAN: The “big apple” is not a fruit! “Boxing rings” are square! “Hot dogs” aren’t dogs!

MAN: Aren’t you amazed at how clever I am? Is your mind blooown?


This cartoon on Patreon

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Conservative zaniness, right-wingers, etc., Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans and Queer issues, Race, racism and related issues | 5 Comments

Cartoon: Hold, Corporate Miscreant!


If you like these cartoons, you can support them by becoming and engineer and then designing a completely safe house for them to live in which will stand firm despite floods and storms and earthquakes and smoke from the endless nearby forest fires and the inevitable invading zombie hoards, or you could just support my patreon. Either way’s good.


TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels. Each panel shows a scene on a city sidewalk between three people: A labor activist (carrying a “Stop the war on workers” sign), a boss type guy (wearing a suit and tie), and an Uncle Sam-like superhero (wearing the Uncle Sam hat, a big cape, and a stars-and-stripes themed leotard).

PANEL 1

The activist leans back a bit, looking unhappy, as the boss aggressively leans forward to point at her, yelling in her face. A superhero flies down, yelling with an angry expression.

BOSS: Labor organizing? Not in my company! You’re fired!

SUPERHERO: Hold, corporate miscreant!

PANEL 2

The superhero has landed on the sidewalk and is talking to the two people, with a very stern expression. The activist looks happy at this turn of events, and the boss is startled and unhappy.

BOSS: Who are you?

SUPERHERO: I’m the U.S. government! And I’m here because firing people for labvor organizing is illegal! NOW HOLD OUT YOUR HAND!

PANEL 3

A close up panel shows the boss’ hand, held out, palm facing down, and the superhero’s hand, holding a ruler. The superhero hits the back of the boss’ hand gently with the ruler. A very small sound effect says “tap.”

PANEL 4

The superhero, grinning widely, is flying up into the air. The boss, smiling, waves goodbye. The activist frowns and looks at the readers out of the corner of her eye, with a “can you believe this?” expression.

BOSS: Um… Okay, I’ve learned my lesson.

SUPERHERO (loudly): Mission accomplished!


This cartoon on Patreon

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Union Issues | 3 Comments

Cartoon – Ban Treating Meningitis in Kids!


If you’d like me to keep making cartoons like this, the only solution is to wear a clown nose twenty four hours a day two hundred sixty days a year (you get weekends off) while standing on a street corner offering free hugs to every fifth passerby unless the passerby has a dog in which case hug the dog unless the dog looks mean in which case you need to stand on your head on your bed for twelve minutes or you could support my patreon.


About ten years ago, I coincidentally was given rides by two different acquaintances of mine, both trans women, in the same week.

The first ride was from a young woman I’d met online. She chatted about her life as she drove: her political causes, her art, her friends, her college classes. I know her life wasn’t free of troubles – or of transphobia – but I’d describe her as cheerful, even vibrant.

She had started gender affirming treatments, including hormone therapy, as a teenager. Most people who she hadn’t come out to, seeing her, would assume she’s a cis woman.

The second ride, a few days later, from from a woman I knew through my job at a historic church site. She was in her late fifties, and hadn’t begun gender affirming treatments until well into her adulthood. And although her life certainly wasn’t nothing but bleakness, she had to go through struggles my younger friend hadn’t. Many strangers can guess, from seeing her, that she’s trans, and that makes her subject to discrimination and even danger. The measures she needed to alleviate her gender dysphoria – which included non-surgical measures such as vocal training, but also many surgeries – were painful and expensive, meaning that on top of everything else she was being overwhelmed by debt.

There were other large differences in how the world had treated these two trans women – my younger friend’s family had been far more supportive, for example, which makes a huge difference. And of course both of them had many things going on in their lives aside from being trans.

I don’t want to overgeneralize. Not all trans people who transition early have an easy time of it (far from it!), and many trans people who transition later in life have wonderful lives.

So it’s a generalization, but: Getting gender affirmative treatment early – before puberty has taken its full effect – is a way trans people can avoid an enormous amount of psychic pain, physical pain, actual danger, and a mountain of debt.

Deliberately banning young trans people from gender affirmative treatment is incredibly harmful. It’s nothing but cruel. And it’s infuriating and shocking that so many people want to do that kind of harm to young people they’ve never even met.


I do this thing when I’m drawing. “I’ll make things easy on myself – I’ll just draw them talking as they walk through a park.”

But then when I’m actually drawing the cartoon, I’ll tell myself “I don’t want to be lazy. Maybe I should make it a cobblestone path” and “I don’t want to be lazy. I’ll make the last panel a big landscape” and “why not add a bunny?”

But it is fun.

In an attempt to loosen up my lines, instead of inking with a (simulated digital) pen as I usually do, I inked this strip with a (simulated digital) brush. It made a bit of a difference, but not a difference I think anyone but me is likely to notice.  Oh, well, I’ll keep trying.


TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels. Each panel shows the same two women talking as they walk through a hilly park. The lighting is a bit dim.

The first woman has long brown hair, and is wearing a plaid shirt and jeans with rolled-up cuffs. For convenience, we’ll name her “Plaid.” The second woman has short dark hair, and is wearing a tee shirt, a skirt, and black tights. We’ll name her “Skirt.”

PANEL 1

Plaid and Skirt are walking through a park. Plaid is looking a little concerned, and Skirt looks a little angry.

PLAID: I read about a fifteen year old with meningitis. They treated her with steroids, but it made things worse. she ended up wishing she hadn’t taken steroids at all.

SKIRT: Maybe we should have a law banning treating meningitis in minors?

PANEL 2

Plaid, looking a little annoyed, turns her head to speak to Skirt. Skirt looks doubtful, but raises a finger, making a point.

PLAID: What? Of course not! Think of all the kids with meningitis who are helped by being treated.

SKIRT: But some kids recover from meningitis without treatment.

PANEL 3

A closer shot. Plaid looks angry, and Skirt looks distressed, her eyes wide and her hands on her cheeks.

PLAID: But other kids need treatment! What about them?

SKIRT: You’re right! What was I thinking? Banning kids from getting medical help is obviously cruel! And irrational! Even monstrous!

PANEL 4

The “camera” has pulled away to a far-away shot. We can see the (very cartoony) landscape: rolling hills, trees and houses, distant mountains, and large clouds overhead. The two characters have their backs to the camera as they crest the top of a hill.

SKIRT: Unless the kid is trans.


This cartoon on Patreon

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Transsexual and Transgender related issues | 3 Comments

Cartoon – Civil Asset Forfeiture


The subject no one was asking for a cartoon about! And the cartoon, by me and Kevin Moore!


If you like these cartoons, then statistically you’re probably a mobile home designer from Akron whose name starts with a “C.” And you should support the patreon!


That civil forfeiture exists is continually infuriating, and I’ve been meaning to do a cartoon about it for years.

So what is civil forfeiture (aka civil asset forfeiture)? It’s a rule that allows police departments to take away our property – cash, cars, whatever – and use it to buy more tanks or whatever. And they don’t even have to prove we did anything wrong. The non-profit Institute for Justice gives some examples:

In 2019, nursing student and single mother Stephanie Wilson had not one, but two cars seized by the Detroit Police Department, losing the first one forever. That same year, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Transportation Security Administration seized retiree Terry Rolin’s life savings of $82,373 from his daughter as she passed through Pittsburgh International Airport on her way to open a joint bank account for him. Three years earlier and about 1,000 miles away, a sheriff’s deputy in rural Muskogee, Oklahoma, seized more than $53,000 from Eh Wah, the tour manager for a Burmese Christian musical act, during a routine traffic stop; the funds were concert proceeds and donations intended to support Burmese Christian refugees and Thai orphans. None of these victims were convicted of any crime.

Their stories illustrate a nationwide problem: civil forfeiture. Civil forfeiture allows police to seize property on the mere suspicion that it is involved in criminal activity. Prosecutors can then forfeit, or permanently keep, the property without ever charging its owner with a crime.

Many Americans have trouble understanding that the government does this to us. Just take people’s property and upend their lives, without even charging anyone with a crime? Surely that couldn’t happen in American, land of the free, leader of the free world, etc etc..

In our cartoon the joke is based on the people from an unidentified (and, let me be the first to point out, hopefully before y’all point it out to me, unrealistic) past era being incredibly naïve about how 21st century policing works. But really, the two characters from the past are stand-ins for how naïve most present-day Americans (especially, I suspect, white Americans and well-off Americans) are about the police being a benevolent or even heroic institution.

Reason interviewed a married couple – white, educated professionals – whose lives were destroyed by the FBI, when it took almost $1 million from them without ever charging either of them with a crime. One of them said, “It’s completely changed my belief in fairness.”

(Reason is a libertarian magazine that I often disagree with. But civil asset forfeiture is one of those places where my beliefs overlap with libertarian beliefs. Reason has done a lot of good reporting on the subject, if you feel like reading something enraging this morning.)


TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This comic strip has four panels. The first three panels show some sort of historic scene, probably in the old west? There are bandits with guns, and a horse-drawn stagecoach, and cowboy hats, so yeah. Kevin probably did a lot of visual research, but me, I just took extreme liberties with history in order to make the gag work. :-)

Anyhow…

PANEL 1

There are four people in this panel. Two of them are bandits, one holding a gun, the other holding a big knife (or maybe a short sword). Both of them are wearing brown leather boots, vests, and what I think of as cowboy hats. One of them has a big curly mustache.

They are pointing their weapons at a man and a woman. The woman is wearing an anikle-length blue dress with a double row of buttons on the front. The man, who has a huge thick mustache, is wearing a three-piece purple suit and a bowler hat. They have their backs to a horse-drawn stagecoach, and both of them are holding up their hands in the “I surrender, please don’t hurt me” gesture.

BANDIT WITH BIG MUSTACHE: It’s called “highway robbery.” Now give us all your money!

PANEL 2

A shot of the couple who were robbed in panel 1. They are now sitting on the ground, with their backs to a tree. They are in fact tied to the tree, with a long piece of rope wrapped around them and the tree many times. The woman looks distressed, the man just looks sad.

WOMAN: Waylaid! Robbed! How could this happen?

MAN: It’s because our society isn’t advanced enough. But someday, the government will hire thousands of heroes to protect us.

PANEL 3

The “camera” zooms in to a closer shot of them. Although they are still tied to the tree, they now look happy as they gaze into space, thinking of how beautiful the future will be.

MAN: These guardians will be men of the highest character, dedicated to helping ordinary citizens! It’ll be wonderful!

PANEL 4

We have changed time periods, and are now in a modern city.

CAPTION: Centuries later

Despite being centuries later, panel 4 is laid out to be extremely similar to panel 1 – two men are threatening a male and female couple, pointing guns at them. Behind the couple is their car, a red minivan. (I think that’s what it is, I’m terrible at cars). The couple (who look very similar to the couple from panels 1-3, except that they’re in modern clothing) have their hands raised above their heads, the “I surrender” gesture.

The big difference is that the two men threatening the couple are wearing police uniforms.

COP: It’s called “civil forfeiture.” Now give us all your money!


This cartoon on Patreon

Posted in Cartooning & comics, cops, police brutality | 15 Comments

Cancel Culture: It Won’t Stop! (AKA Being Evenhanded the Mainstream Media Way)


If you like these cartoons, you can support them with a long, complicated ritual that involves watching every episode of Buffy several times (remembering always that a show like Buffy has hundreds of creators, not just the asshole showrunner) followed by late-night discussions of if hot dogs on buns are sandwiches or not, and then maybe also support the Patreon.


On March 7 2022, the New York Times gave the royal treatment (including two large photos) to a piece by college senior (and soon to be Reason staff writer) Emma Camp about the problem of self-censorship on college campuses. Camp described her experience speaking in class:

This idea seems acceptable for academic discussion, but to many of my classmates, it was objectionable.

The room felt tense. I saw people shift in their seats. Someone got angry, and then everyone seemed to get angry. After the professor tried to move the discussion along, I still felt uneasy. I became a little less likely to speak up again and a little less trusting of my own thoughts.

I’m sympathetic to Camp’s view – it can be scary and uncomfortable speaking out in class when we know our classmates might disagree. But is this anything that requires a New York Times op-ed piece?

Ten days later, the Times editorial board published another op-ed on the same subject, writing:

For all the tolerance and enlightenment that modern society claims, Americans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country: the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned.

Of course, there is no right to speak “without fear of being shamed or shunned.” That would amount to a right to freedom from criticism, and no one has or should have that right.

Both of those quotes are referred to in this cartoon.

It should be surprising the “paper of record” published two extremely similar cancel-culture-panic pieces in two weeks. But it’s not. I used the New York Times‘ site search function to count up how many opinion page pieces referred to terms like “cancel culture” and “CRT.”

In the last year, the NYTimes opinion pages printed 71 pieces including the phrase “cancel culture,” 28 pieces including “C.R.T.,” and 9 including “book bans.”

Some of the “cancel culture” pieces even concede – in “to be sure” asides buried in the middle – that right wing legal bans are much more dangerous.  So why are they objected to so much less?

Arguably, the three most censored groups in the U.S. are prisoners, sex workers, and undocumented migrants.  As far as I can find, the Times opinion page didn’t run a single piece about censorship of any of these groups in the last year.

In fact, the Times ran more more opinion page pieces about “cancel culture” than about all other free-speech issues combined. Even if “cancel culture” is a real problem, that’s ridiculous. The Times‘ coverage is wildly disproportionate, in a way that strongly favors right-wing narratives and gives many instances of right-wing censorship a free pass. And as far as I can tell, the Times‘ disproportionate coverage is typical of the media as a whole.


TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has five panels.

PANEL 1

This panel shows two news anchors sitting in a TV studio facing the camera. The angle is from the camera’s perspective, as if we were watching them on TV. A circular logo superimposed on the image says “5” (as in channel 5) and a chyron runs across the bottom of the image.

(Chyron this panel says: “Free Speech in Peril! Young people are frightening. They’re coming after you.”)

The anchors are a man and a woman. They are both well-dressed and have professionally styled hair. Both speak to the camera with very serious expressions.

MALE ANCHOR: Tonight on WMSM: the first of our seventeen part series on the horrors of cancel culture!

FEMALE ANCHOR: America has a free speech problem! We’ve lost our long established right to speak without fear of being shamed.

PANEL 2

A close-up on the male anchor. He looks genuinely angry.

(Chyron this panel says: “Prison Censorship is an issue we’re not going to be covering whatsoever.”)

MALE ANCHOR: Especially on college campuses! Surveys show that students sometimes self-censor because they’re afraid of criticism! Something that has never before happened in all of history!

PANEL 3

This panel shows a hand holding a smartphone. On the smartphone screen, we can see the female anchor talking. She also looks angry and intense.

FEMALE ANCHOR: Next up: a college student “saw people shift in their seats” when they disagreed with her! Will left wing assaults on free speech never end?

PANEL 4

This is an unusually narrow panel, less than a third as wide as other panels. The panel shows the male anchor, still talking to the camera, but the figure is tiny. He’s smiling and raising a finger in a “just making a point” manner.

(Chyron this panel: “Tiny Type is rarely re (the word is cut off by the panel edge). Tiny type tiny type tiny type tiny type”)

MALE ANCHOR (small print): To show we’re unbiased, I will briefly mention that the right is writing laws to ban books, stifle teachers and even legalize running over protesters, and those things are also bad. Now back to our story.

PANEL 5

A new scene. Two people are standing; the second of them is holding a tablet, which they’re frantically tapping (sound effect: tap tap tap tap tap tap).

The first person is a black woman wearing what looks like a bowling shirt (meaning I drew a shirt with vertical stripes and it accidently came out as a bowling shirt) and carryign a purse. She has short curly hair. She looks a little concerned as she speaks to the second person.

The second person has long hair, in an unnatural red color, in long spikes and with an undercut. Their left arm is covered with tattoos. They’re frantically tapping the tablet they’re holding (sound effect: tap tap tap tap tap tap), have a panicked expression, and they’re talking loudly.

ANCHOR PERSON (voice coming from tablet): This is what the illiberal left has wrought! we won’t truly have free speech until those on the intolerant left who criticize other’s speech shut up!

FIRST PERSON: Would you mind turning that off?

SECOND PERSON: IT WON’T STOP!


This cartoon on patreon

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Media, Media criticism | 19 Comments

My January Fifteenth Author’s Note

book cover of a person walking down an alley with an umbrella and the following text: January Fifteenth, “Money Changes everything–except people.” Rachel Swirsky, “One of the best speculative writers of the last decade.” –John ScalziJanuary Fifteenth debuts tomorrow! This is my last post before it heads out into the world.

(ICYMI, check out some of my earlier posts about January Fifteenth, including my official announcement, the Debut Sampler, and meeting the characters. Preorders are available through several different online platforms, including Powell’s, Amazon, Indiebound, and Barnes and Noble.)

Here’s the author’s note I wrote for the beginning of the book:

Dear Reader, 

January Fifteenth takes place in a near-future America with a Universal Basic Income (UBI) program. If you’re not  familiar with the term, Universal Basic Income is a policy proposal for the government to provide an annual income to  its citizens. Details vary—like how much that income should be—but every citizen would get it, without condition. 

For me at least, any argument about UBI begins with one question: will it help people? 

Practical assessment follows, of course, but that’s the first thing we have to know. In its ideal form, if everything went  perfectly, would UBI improve people’s lives? I don’t have a definitive answer, although I pose a series of possible  questions and answers in this novella. 

During my research on American UBI proposals, most of the hypotheticals I saw concentrated on the traditional  concerns of the right versus left political axis. Would UBI open new possibilities for society, or encourage a culture of  laziness and dependency? 

I became more curious about other questions. For instance, some people dislike that UBI goes to people of any social  class—so whatever might (some) rich kids do with it? Some people are wary about the ways cults exploit contemporary  welfare programs—what might they do with UBI, and how might others try to stop them? Pervasive, systemic racism  has created an enormous disparity between the assets of Black and white American households—can and should we  brush over that history as if White and Black communities have an equal starting point? Money can help someone  escape an abusive relationship, but would Universal Basic Income change what happens afterward? 

The characters in this book have gone through hard things, from being orphaned to domestic violence to forced  marriage. Many of the scenarios in this book reflect situations that I or people close to me have gone through. Others  evolved through research and talking to people. So many of us have gone through similar tribulations, whether the more  common horrors like casual racism and sexual assault, or the more rarefi ed ones like cult exploitation. These things  impact our lives. They affect our happiness. They certainly affect how and why Universal Basic Income could change our  circumstances. 

Although I hope January Fifteenth is true to the characters and emotions, I can’t claim it’s an accurate prediction. UBI  could play out in lots of ways that are equally, if not more, plausible. For example, in January Fifteenth, the practical side  of running UBI is relatively smooth and easy. As a world-building choice, that allows me to let fiddly details fade into the  background while I focus on the characters. But is it the most likely scenario? Probably not—very few things seem to be  easy. 

Even within the world I set up, there are a ton of possible alternative and conflicting scenarios. I could have happily kept  adding more. In fact, a fifth thread ended up on the cutting room floor during an early draft, when the word count kept  relentlessly increasing.

If I can make any “true” predictions, I suppose they are these: 

  1. Money can make life easier, but it can’t solve everything. 
  2. Adding money to a system with underlying problems won’t fi x those problems on its own. 
  3. After any massive change, some people will be better off, some people will be worse off, and many people will be both better and worse off. 
  4. However the future unfolds, it won’t go according to my values. There will always be outcomes I don’t expect. Some of them will contradict my beliefs about the world. 
  5. I’m definitely wrong about something. 

Rachel Swirsky

image of people walking through a snowy street with the following text: January Fifteenth. A new novella from Tor.com. by Rachel Swirsky. Follow four women through January fifteenth, the day when they get their Universal Basic Income. Hannah, an abused mother on the run with her two sons. Janelle, an activist-turned-reporter raising her orphaned sister. Olivia, a wealthy college student celebrating “Waste Day”. Sarah, a child bride in a fundamentalist cult. Money changes everything—except people. “a fascinating thought experiment” - Caren Gussoff, Locus Magazine

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