Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the cancelled-comments dept
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is aerinai responding to the notion that it should be no big deal for foreign students to go home and take their classes remotely:
If you are assuming that the person is from Canada, this will probably work... for a majority of the other countries out here they will need to deal with:
Latency - Trying to communicate over long distances; especially from far away countries (India, China, Australia, etc) is killer
Timezones -- Hope you don't mind them also having to get up at 2AM when they have a 2PM class
Bandwidth -- Some places like island nations are bandwidth capped due to Satellite being their only options
Firewalls -- Russia and China block access to lots of services -- same with India. Good luck watching that You Tube when Russia arbitrarily bans it...
Content Restrictions -- I can't imagine taking an LGBTQ Studies class in Russia or China...
So, that is my short list off the top of my head why this plan isn't tenable in a lot of cases...
In second place, it's mvario with a comment about one of the surprising-to-many signatories of the infamous Harper's letter:
I mostly have respected Chomsky, but that was tainted a bit with his support for Shiva Ayyadurai and his claim to have invented email. Now I question Chomsky's support of anything.
Since that letter dominated the comments this week, for editor's choice on the insightful side we've got a pair of additional responses to our post about it. First, it's Stephen T. Stone with a good summary of the main issue:
None of the people who signed that letter have any real expectation of being “cancelled”, in the sense that they will be “silenced”. They have too much wealth and sociopolitical sway to face such a consequence. The people who signed that letter interpret criticism — of any kind — as censorship and attach it to the recent “cancel culture” catchphrase so they can take jabs at leftists.
But “cancel culture” isn’t about rich celebrities and powerful politicians. True “cancel culture” is about the marginalized voices who end up shut out of jobs, opportunities, and even online culture because of harassment. It’s not about J.K. Rowling; it’s about a trans person forced to quit Twitter because of harassment they received over the faintest criticism of Rowling and her transphobia. When the people who signed that letter worry more about the silencing of those voices and less about receiving criticism, I’ll care more about what they have to say vis-á-vis censorship and “cancel culture”.
Next, it's Glenn Fleishman with a long comment adding plenty of good additional thoughts:
Harper’s fired its editor over speech among other issues
I agree almost entirely with what you wrote, Mike, and I've tweeted far too excessively about it.
But two points worth adding.
First, many of the people who have signed this letter (a letter to whom, by the way?) have engaged in actual chilling speech, punching down people less powerful, including trying to get freelancers fired from gigs, staff writers removed, and professors censured or fired or contracts not renewed. I am hoping someone creates a definitive list, because it's rather long, and particularly among people who are centrist or right-of-center against liberal and progressive speakers, as well as in particular against anyone who speaks in favor of Palestinians or an independent Palestinian state.
Second, Harper’s fired James Marcus in 2018 for what he alleges (and, having known James years ago and heard stuff around the edges of this, I believe) is being fired when he objected to the assignment of a story effectively trying to cancel “cancel culture” to Katie Roiphe, which ultimately ran in the publication. It was assigned over his protests and then he was fired. There's a lot more detail about the story, the author (long a contrarian/problematic one of the David Brooks/Bari Weiss school), and the fallout.
One other point on amplification. Mike notes:
Then comes the list of examples -- none linked, none with details.
This is one of the key problems with the essay. Read quickly, it's rather bland, not well written, and has an unclear audience. Who should take action? It's a pretty anodyne poor expression of urging more free speech, but not really, as Mike analyzed. At least two signers have already said they regret signing or that they didn't sign what was published (Boylan this morning).
However, if you analyze the short list provided, each corresponds to specific well-known incidents, or sometimes covers multiple ones. Buruma and Bennet, for instance, are both editors who were fired—because of their job performance, even though Buruma made it out to be a political hit job. (He ran a cover story that was a non-fact-checked essay by Jian Ghomeshi, who faced several credible accusations of sexual assault over decades, some of which were not upheld in court.) But the owners of the publication, the New York Review of Books, reportedly fired him because of how he managed assigning and running the story over staff objections, and he admitted to Isaac Chotiner later that he really didn't know much about Ghomeshi at all, confirming the judgment. Bennet was fired because he didn't do his job: he reportedly told the NYT publisher he hadn't read (at least the final version) of the Tom Cotton Op-Ed, even as he publicly defended it as if he had.
The inclusion of transphobic writers who have faced public backlash, with the notable top of marquee billionaire JK Rowling, also muddies what precisely is the speech that they want no consequences for.
I'd argue if the letter included specific examples, a majority of signers wouldn't have signed it. Malcolm Gladwell very glibly tweeted today that he signed because he disagreed with the opinions of many other signatories. Great reasoning, dude.
Over on the funny side, our first place winner is Anomylous responding to the foreign student issue with some thoughts on necessary education:
A solution
Perhaps colleges and universities could offer a single free, attendance mandatory class on public health and safety, for all foreign and domestic students. It could cover topics like washing your hands, not touching your face, wearing a face mask to prevent the spread of disease when you are sick and need to go out, or when its flue season doing the same all the time, etc. Maybe they could even name it Furtherance of Universal Intensive Corona Evasion.
In second place, it's That One Guy with a jab at the Harper's letter:
They just wouldn't stop barking...
It was the strangest thing, I was reading the article and every time I got to the quoted parts the dogs in the surrounding neighborhood started going nuts, like some loud noise that I couldn't hear was just blasting in their ears.
For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with our final comment about the Harper's letter (this week at least...) from Thad, who chimed in later with a new, relevant development:
Oh noes, more cancel culture: Tucker Carlson's top writer resigns after secretly posting racist and sexist remarks in online forum
Actually, I'll be honest, this one kind of baffles me. Getting fired from Tucker Carlson's show for being racist seems kind of like getting fired from NASCAR for getting a speeding ticket.
Finally, to change the topic entirely, we've got Bobvious with an extremely, delightfully nerdy joke about Intel's trademark-inspired move to ditch the numbered processors and call the 586 the Pentium:
You mean the Intel 585.9999047318529 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug
That's all for this week, folks!
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ANON-MYLOUS Mike T_T
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Mike?
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This made me laugh.
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One of the reasons people go to college is to meet people, its a social experience, you meet people of various races and from different places. Half of what you learn is not taught in a classroom.
Why would a foreign student pay 1000,s to attend class, s from a laptop 1000,s of miles away.
Many subjects taught in American schools are blocked in China and Russia, eg lgbt rights, etc
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Colleges turning out twisted left sickos since the 80's
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Said the guy without an education beyond high or perhaps middle school.
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"Colleges turning out twisted left sickos since the 80's"
You had anything more coherent than "fuck getting book learnt!" to say or was it just the usual alt-right diatribe advocating we rid ourselves of the last 300 years worth of science and progress?
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I find his type amusing. They get as far as understanding that educated people don't tend to agree with their ideas, but then veer off into "liberal conspiracy" territory rather than wonder why you have to be uneducated to agree with them.
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What understanding? Their politics is faith based. In a faith based system, other people are either true believers or evil unbelievers.
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Doubly so when you realize where they're spouting their gibberish.
It took very many colleges and "twisted left sickos" to develop all of this tech.
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No, it took God's grace to bestow onto us all of this tech. And to make us marvel more at his greatness, he does it through faithless scum not even recognising his greatness but thinking science has anything to do with it and building cell towers of Babylon in their hubris.
Something like that. Add or take electrosmog.
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Trump loves the poorly educated. Here's why.
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Solution?
With other countries doing better then we are, dont you think thats abit, ridiculous? china, Japan, and a few others have been doing it Longer then the USA even considered it.
But there is a larger consideration..
WE HAVE NEVER KILLED A VIRUS. its not possible.
We can DELAY the spread, slow it down.. We can isolate those that need to be, isolated. But as soon, as 1 person Coughs/sneezes/.../...
We are going to have problems. Its Hay-fever, its a cold, its the Flu, its my cigarettes.
You want to work or go to school, wear a mask, OR if you DO have something,,,,,WEAR A MASK.
The best part of all of this? Is showing how CORPORATE Medical handles things.. And we wont get the whole truth, as Many have been fired for even mentioning the problems..Even in China.
Our big problem is the Older folk with few in family. GO FIND YOUR GRAND PARENTS. HELP THEM..
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I understand.
It takes time to write the truly great screeds, so if you want published, you have to write them in advance and post them where they are at least a little on-topic.
But sometimes, sometimes there's no appropriate post for days on end. And you can only keep so many of them around, because they go off if you leave them in the crisper too long.
But surely there are other blogs every bit as worthy of your time and effort as we are.
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Breaking my 8-year streak of not commenting to say leave ECA alone!!! There was nothing inflammatory, extremist, offensive or incorrect in the post you replied to... unless you're a professional copy editor or English professor.
ECA you da best keep being real
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A Solution
When I was in the Ph.D. program, my university required that all students who had finished their coursework take one "dissertation research" course each semester until they graduated. It was not free, however. They just wanted more money until we graduated. So, there is history of a one-off course.
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So Tucker Carlson fires a closet racist from his show's staff, and somehow that makes him racist, too?
If Don Lemon fired a closet racist he found on his show's staff, would that make him a racist, too?
I'll keep a look out for the cognitive dissonance of those who say "no"...
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Wow did you ever miss the point of that comment. Like look up in the night sky way way way above you're head.
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Hey, not all NASCAR team owners and execs exceed the speed limit on our nations roads!
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True. Some may be too inebriated to accomplish this successfully.
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No, all the racism Tucker Carlson espouses on his show makes him racist.
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And what would those be?
Be specific in your direct quotes of him and include dates of those exact quotes.
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Here you go: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Tucker+Carlson+racist
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