Ten Second News Links and Open Thread for the week of 10/31/22

Jaybird

Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com

Related Post Roulette

140 Responses

  1. Philip H says:

    Twitter is not a public utility. Its a privately held company that’s in the data business. To date it has removed things that are slander, liable, or just untrue. It remains to be seen if Mr. Musk’s ownership changes that.Report

    • Marchmaine in reply to J Walter says:

      … in May of 2021.

      PUBLISHED: 11:32 EDT, 27 May 2021 | UPDATED: 13:35 EDT, 27 May 2021

      Are you mad at Old Twitter or New Twitter?

      I suppose this could be related to the “Hey guys, how about some Pandemic Amnesty for *all* sides” that is now being requested by the Establishment Side at the Atlantic? Or are you going for something different here that I can’t quite fathom?Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Marchmaine says:

        Randi Weingarten agrees with Oster.

        Report

        • Marchmaine in reply to Jaybird says:

          I don’t know who Randi Weingar… oh, of course she does.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Marchmaine says:

            Seen in a locked account:

            watching my tribe of powerless peeps refuse to accept an apology / walk-back from the Outgroup, and just shaking my head at how stupid people are about incentives

            guys, you WANT TO MAKE IT EASY for the other side to give upReport

            • Marchmaine in reply to Jaybird says:

              ?? walkback from ingroup?

              But i think that’s the issue… it’s forgiveness for *me*. I love to talk about forgiveness for me. it’s forgiveness for you that I’m not so sure about.

              The ingroup isnt surrendering. And, more importantly it isn’t repenting or seeking amends/justice for any mistakes it may have made in the ‘darkness’ of the pandemic.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Marchmaine says:

                Yeah, I do think that the amnesty request *MIGHT* be interesting if we had a discussion about the mistakes that were made and the attacks that were made on the people who said “that’s a mistake”.

                But we are in a place where we can’t even get people to agree that it was bad for unmasked politicians to hang out around masked constituents.Report

              • Marchmaine in reply to Jaybird says:

                The weird thing, IMO, is that bracketing a few crazies… I don’t think there was going to be anything other than Amnesty. Sure, Fauci eventually quietly retired maybe a year, maybe two years before he might otherwise have? He is, after all, 81 … not sure when retirement age for dispensing grants becomes an issue. But hard to call retirement at 81 a ‘scalp’.

                Heck, we discovered that the NIH via poor oversight of grantees managing third parties liked to skirt the edge of legal research and reporting – basically as we’d expect such a system to produce almost as if by design – and *that* get’s labeled conspiracy theories by the grantees managing the third parties. And *that* becomes the official narrative.

                If we can’t say, hey, we should do a better job of oversight on GOF research in a Global State that has little accountability, potentially different (even hostile) global agenda known for stealing IP – then what possible reprisal are the Amnesty people thinking was coming?Report

            • DensityDuck in reply to Jaybird says:

              “guys, you WANT TO MAKE IT EASY for the other side to give up”

              lolwut

              (kicks you in the dick) (waits two seconds) “I think we can all agree that some things were done a little while ago that we now generally regard as being not quite the best choice given the facts that we know now but were definitely obscure at the time, and certainly some people took positions that now look ‘right’ but that was more from spasms of oppositional-defiant disorder rather than anything reasoned or rational, and the most important thing now is that we move forward from here instead of insisting on rehashing old stuff that isn’t really relevant anymore”Report

            • Pinky in reply to Jaybird says:

              I didn’t understand this one.Report

  2. Saul Degraw says:

    Elon Musk has made himself the “sole director” of Twitter and is spouting baseless conspiracy theories about Paul Pelosi: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/28/politics/paul-pelosi-attackReport

    • LeeEsq in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      Ye’s threat of going Deathcon against our people might be one of the most deadly anti-Semitic utterances in American history.Report

      • Pinky in reply to LeeEsq says:

        I don’t mean any disrespect by asking this, but it seems to me that the Kanye statement can be thought of as an exposure of something evil, or the world’s dopiest celebrity going off the rails again. So when I read your comment I wasn’t sure if you were serious or not.Report

    • Philip H in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      And the Jacksonville police Department has decided no crime was committed. Under local ordinances they MAY be right; under federal Civil Rights law they are likely very, very wrong. Yet another instance of police malfeasance that undoing QI won’t solve.Report

      • Michael Cain in reply to Philip H says:

        Speaking broadly, local police forces are not allowed to enforce federal statutes.Report

      • InMD in reply to Philip H says:

        I’m not sure what federal civil rights law would have been violated as long as the venue wasn’t discriminating in who it served. From the story it isn’t clear to me who put the message there. I’m guessing either a rogue employee or maybe some failure to identify it in content provided by third parties.Report

      • DensityDuck in reply to Philip H says:

        “And the Jacksonville police Department has decided no crime was committed. ”

        sadly for you, there is not yet a criminal law about Triggering People.Report

    • Chip Daniels in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      Republican: “GO DEATHCON ON THE JEWS!”

      Mainstream pundits: “Hmm, no law was broken. It can’t happen here. Nothing to see here, move along.”Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

        There are worried every year that some folks out there will use makeup to look more Republican.

        Every year someone always does.Report

        • Saul Degraw in reply to Jaybird says:

          So we are discussing rising anti-Semitism and you are trying to whatabout to what exactly, Insinuating that this is all false flag stuff? Is your desire to be the junior high class clown that big? Are you unable to help it? Oh great truth teller, how dare people question you.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Saul Degraw says:

            Saul, I was discussing treating the obviously mentally ill Kanye West as a “Republican”.

            I am pretty sure that Kanye’s statements are not false flags but I think that portraying them as evidence of how bad the other side is will result in looking like someone mongering grievance rather than exposing evil.

            As for class clowning, I’d like to point out that there are many clowns here. If only class were a pre-req!

            “Oh great truth teller, how dare people question you.”

            I was mocking Chip’s framing, Saul. I am one of the people who doesn’t mind being questioned. I’ve put a lot of thought into a lot of my positions and the opportunity to test them and see which ones are fragile (and which ones aren’t) is a fun opportunity for me.

            Like to the point where I see performative outrage at being disagreed with as a huge tell that even the speaker knows that he is speaking stuff that he doesn’t want questioned.Report

            • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

              Calling it “performative outrage” is itself an example of smug self righteousness.

              You’re accusing me, and everyone outraged by the Republican acceptance of bigotry of being insincere and false.

              You’re accusing us of merely using bigotry as a cynical ploy to make innocent people look bad.

              As with your repeated amplification of dark conspiracy theories, you’re acting as an agent of misinformation in an attempt to cast doubt and uncertainty over the truth so as to allow lies to stand equal to the truth.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Well, I’ll let you get back to sincerely and truthfully treating Kanye West as representative of Republican thought, then.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                Daily Beast:
                Kanye West’s ‘Independent’ Campaign Was Secretly Run by GOP Elites

                Guardian:
                2022
                Republicans urged to condemn antisemitism from Kanye West and other supporters

                Tweet from the House GOP Judiciary:
                “Kanye. Elon. Trump.”

                One book, “Antisemitism And Me, It IS My Bag, Baby” autographed by the Republican Party.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                If you google “a href”, you can learn how to embed a link.

                That means you can do stuff like this:

                Kanye West’s ‘Independent’ Campaign Was Secretly Run by GOP Elites

                Republicans urged to condemn antisemitism from Kanye West and other supporters

                Kanye. Elon. Trump.

                So we can look at all three.

                Your first one is about how Republicans tried to get Kanye to be a spoiler and siphon votes from Biden in the Biden/Trump election.

                One might as well say that Republicans support the Green party or that Democrats support Kari Lake.

                Your second one is an article about people calling on Republicans to do stuff.

                Here, watch this:

                “Chip, have you condemned Al Franken’s sexual harassment of women? You need to!”

                There. Now I can make a post saying “Chip Daniels urged to condemn sexual harassment.”

                Have we seen any evidence that Chip is opposed to treating women like objects? I haven’t seen any. Is there any? You’d think that we’d have *SOME*.

                (Don’t bother trying to dig up any. It’s not about that.)

                As for the last one… fair. I wouldn’t want to argue that the House Judiciary Committee isn’t representative of Republicans. The weakest attempt would be a limp “well, not *ALL* of them.”

                The worst part is that it’s been up for a month. They can’t even pretend that it was an enthusiastic intern at this point (which they’d have been able to do if it came down three days after it got tweeted).

                But the House Republican Judiciary Committee can’t be divorced from Republicans. So, yeah. Full point for that one.

                (And now Elon Musk is tied to them too.)Report

      • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

        Which mainstream pundits?Report

  3. Saul Degraw says:

    Republican politicians and pundits would rather do anything than admit their rhetoric went too far but they will take it further. We are now at the Paul Pelosi was hurt in a lover’s quarrel miscreant accusation: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/10/paul-pelosi-conspiracy-theory-lovers-quarrel-how.htmlReport

    • Chip Daniels in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      These are the same people who smirked and guffawed when a group of terrified immigrants were tricked into thinking they would be given compassion and shelter, then dropped off and abandoned.

      Who laugh and cheer when their leader suggests that opposition journalists be jailed to be raped and tortured.

      Who shrug in indifference when a 10 year old rape victim is forced to carry her rapists pregnancy to term.

      Who spread hateful lies about a children’s hospital that results in bomb threats.

      Who eagerly urge the government to rip trans children away from a supportive family.

      We’re living in a chapter of a Hannah Arendt book. The GOP base knows this is all a lie, but revel in the cleverness of the leader’s cruelty towards the hated Outgroup.Report

      • Saul Degraw in reply to Chip Daniels says:

        The worst part about it IMO is the people who know this stuff is distasteful and vile but then shut down completely when you tell them that they have agency against it. They dislike this agency because it means not getting to be angry about gas prices, inflation, and stuff like that.Report

    • Pinky in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      Even the article only alleges crude jokes on the subject.Report

    • Brandon Berg in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      When someone tried to kill Brett Kavanaugh, was that because Democrats’ rhetoric went too far? Did any of them admit this?Report

      • LOL. The Kavanaugh assassination attempt or the time six (6) republicans were shot by a lefty extremist at a congressional baseball practice – have been memory-holed.

        Only the Right does bad things. Only the Right needs to be responsible for their rhetoric. I thought you knew this. C’mon Brandon, align with the official narrative!Report

        • KenB in reply to John Puccio says:

          The Rand Paul assault is an even better example. It’s been practically a full-time job for a few folks on Twitter to respond to lefty blue-checks bemoaning the Pelosi response with screenshots of their tweets joking about being in solidarity with Rand Paul’s neighbor.

          But as you say, none of it matters — people will believe what’s convenient for them to believe.

          ETA: hmm, i guess that’s a bit different actually, not about the inspiration but about the reaction.Report

          • John Puccio in reply to KenB says:

            It’s only different because in the last decade the perceived or projected motivation for a crime has become more important than the crime itself.

            Hence the urgent need for Thought Police and non-narrative censorship.Report

        • Philip H in reply to John Puccio says:

          As I recall, when the congressional softball game was shot up, Democrats were some of the first people to condemn the attack. They didn’t make sick jokes about it. They also publicly lauded the Capitol Police Officers whos topped it. And where anyone could point to Democratic rhetoric as being involved, they owned it and tried to learn something from it.

          The threats to justice Kavanaugh were also denounced. No sick jokes about gay love triangles gone wrong were thrown out.

          In both cases Democrats took a page form the Republican play book about the attackers being mentally unwell.

          Of course, only Democrats have agency.Report

          • Pinky in reply to Philip H says:

            You’re right that the jokes are new, and a few of the Democrats have apologized for their rhetoric. But take the example of you. You spew rhetoric to the effect that the Republicans are violently coming after everyone, but do you ever apologize when people on your side go too far? Or even consider the cause and effect of it?Report

          • Pinky in reply to Philip H says:

            Oh, oh, wait a second, there were jokes about it. Something about how Scalise was protected by a black? female? gay? officer, and that must have bothered him, or maybe she shouldn’t have done it, or she should have made fun of him about it.Report

            • Philip H in reply to Pinky says:

              That wasn’t a joke – we found great irony in the fact that Scalise was protected by two gay women (one black) while advocating for and even voting for policies and laws that would harm those women. That dichotomy should have bothered him but base don his continued rhetoric since it apparently doesn’t.Report

              • Pinky in reply to Philip H says:

                So you drew non-humorous irony. That’s a lot…better? worse? pretty much the same? It’s viewing tragedy in terms of how it affected your team, which is pretty gross.Report

              • Philip H in reply to Pinky says:

                Not that it matters but I have a lot of compassion for the guy – his aunt teaches my daughter dance.

                Doesn’t change the fact that 1) the guy who did it was wrong; 2) Democrats apologized publicly for the part their rhetoric played in the attack (which republicans have yet tot do ) and 3) his life was saved by people he STILL seeks to persecute. Call me nuts but that’s worth pointing out.Report

              • Pinky in reply to Philip H says:

                Your side laid out the “stochastic terrorism” formula, as a replacement for the “reasonable man” standard within politics. According to it, everyone on your side including you should apologize for the attack. And according to the modern cancellation custom, the apology doesn’t matter. Again, your rules.

                And which Democrats actually did apologize for their rhetoric re Capitol baseball shooting?Report

              • Pinky in reply to Philip H says:

                As for his persecution, that’s only by your analysis. I find it disturbing when a Republican says that he changed his mind on, say, gay marriage after a relative came out of the closet. If you believe in your principles, they shouldn’t be swayed by sympathy. But I find it equally disturbing when Democrats expect that kind of thing. I oppose gay marriage and will continue to do so if a thousand gay dudes used their wedding rings to stop a bullet headed my way. It’s not persecution. And that’s the strongest argument you have, I’d bet. I think you’re just assuming that Scalise persecutes blacks and women, or your claimed evidence is super dependent on someone sharing all of your beliefs.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to John Puccio says:

          There was a guy who ran down a teenager just a few weeks ago. He used “I thought that the guy was a republican extremist!” as a defense.

          As it turns out, the teenager’s friends and family dispute that the kid was a republican extremist. Authorities also say that they aren’t finding evidence of this.

          But, let’s face it. MAGAs hide out and they keep their opinions hidden from their close friends because how shameful those opinions are. The authorities are in on it. So they could be anywhere. THEY COULD BE IN YOUR HOUSE.

          You can see us discuss it here.

          It’s always interesting to see who gets the “So? A crime was committed and the criminal got charged. The system works!” treatment and who gets the “This criminal is representative of the internal state of every single person who does not agree with me on monetary policy in Central America!” treatment.Report

  4. Pinky says:

    Nobody will read this and believe it.Report

  5. Saul Degraw says:

    Has Kimmi found a way back to OT?Report

  6. Republican or Troll? says:

    If you go to the Satanic temple website, they have an entire five-minute video explaining why abortion is a religious ritual.
    They literally say that it is a sacrifice, it is a religious ritual for them to have an abortion, it is sick. And as you mentioned, the baby body parts… they sell the organs. There’s a ton of money involved in freshly harvested organs. There’s so much evidence out there.Report

    • Marchmaine in reply to Republican or Troll? says:

      You made me go to their website, and my takeaway is that I don’t think they are sincere Satanists.

      But then I realized that Satanists would know that, and the sincere deception would be by design!

      Clever Satanists, clever.Report

  7. Marchmaine says:

    Heh… Whitehouse deletes tweet after getting ‘fact checked’ on Twitter.

    Whitehouse interns perplexed. Overheard muttering, “this happens to other people, not us… is this what a coup looks like?”

    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/twitter-adds-fact-check-to-biden-white-houses-tweet-bragging-about-social-securitys-cola-of-8-7-11667400888Report

    • Marchmaine in reply to Marchmaine says:

      You mistake my interests if you think I care about fake people (congressional candidates) having fake followers (bots) deleted by a fake marketplace of ideas (twitter).Report

    • Pinky in reply to Marchmaine says:

      “Next year, let’s strive for the biggest COLA ever!”Report

      • Marchmaine in reply to Pinky says:

        White House interns… what if we tweet on the new Fed Hikes:

        President Biden delivers Best Interest Rates on your Savings account in 20-years!

        Kinda feel bad for the Interns… it’s really shitty to have to tweet during high-inflation – esp. when the cure to inflation is: Hey, as long as it’s your neighbor losing his job and not you, count the W.

        Now I fully expect to see that tweeted in 2023.Report

    • Brandon Berg in reply to Marchmaine says:

      The lying is the point.Report

  8. Republican or Troll? says:

    The Witch Hunt continues, and after 6 years and millions of pages of documents, they’ve got nothing. If Trump had what Hunter and Joe had, it would be the Electric Chair. Our Country is Rigged, Crooked, and Evil — We must bring it back, and FAST. Next stop, Communism!Report

  9. CJColucci says:

    There isn’t a recession now, but there may well be one in the offing, depending on how hard the Fed keeps hitting the brakes. That, in turn, depends on inflation, which, if one pays attention, has been a world-wide phenomenon, hitting countries following very different policies.
    None of this is particularly hard to understand. What to do about it is hard, and people should look at what the contending parties offer to deal with it. Assuming they offer anything.Report

    • Brandon Berg in reply to CJColucci says:

      Early on, US inflation was largely attributable to supply-side factors, and a small part of it may still be, but if you look here, you can see that nominal GDP has clearly risen substantially above the pre-pandemic trend. This is a clear indication of people having too much money to spend relative to the real supply of goods and services that could have reasonably been expected even if we hadn’t had any supply issues.

      Low interest rates likely played some role here, but the stimulus spending and unjustified extension of expanded unemployment benefits and student loan forbearance clearly aggravated the problem.

      While this is usually not the case, our current macroeconomic problems are directly attributable to the current administration’s pants-on-head stupid policy, and it would have been even worse if Manchin and Sinema hadn’t forced them to moderate their spending spree.Report

  10. Jaybird says:

    This is one of those very, very bad things (potentially).

    Report

  11. Jaybird says:

    Every so often, we discuss “gotcha” questions. Political Dictionary defines it as:

    A “gotcha question” is one posed by a reporter in an effort to trick a politician into looking stupid or saying something damaging.

    The accusation generally shows up when a politician says something damaging or that makes them look stupid. “That was a gotcha!”, they said, after stuffing both feet directly in their own mouths.

    That said, Kari Lake got asked a for-real one and she handled it deftly.

    Report

    • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

      Haven’t watched the video.
      Did she deftly answer, “Who won the 2020 election?”Report

    • Pinky in reply to Jaybird says:

      I wouldn’t call it a “gotcha”, simply because of the way it was framed. And I think the first half was great, but the fentanyl portion was too smooth and took away from the sense of sincerity in the beginning. It should have been, I feel sorry for her, that’s genuine pain, he died the next day of natural causes, mother to mother, next question. But still an A+ if graded on a curve.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Pinky says:

        “Have you seen this attack ad? What’s your response?”

        There are many things that that is but it is not journalism.Report

        • Pinky in reply to Jaybird says:

          I thought he was fine. They were at what looked like a Q&A forum, he’d raised his hand, and she called on him. He asked his question slowly. He said that the ad was an “attack” and it targeted her “specifically”, neither of which painted it in a good light. He identified who Brian Sicknick was, and stipulated that he’d died the day after the riot. It’s tough to tell from the sound, but he even appeared to laugh with her early on.

          I doubt that anyone on the fence would watch the clip the whole way through, but given how gentle he was, I thought her comment about the lying media came off badly.Report

  12. Philip H says:

    This is just disgusting:

    The narrator of an America First Legal radio ad accuses President Biden of pushing children to take cross-sex hormone medication and get gender-affirming surgery.

    “The Biden administration is pushing radical gender experiments on children, changing their names, clothes, identities and bodies,” the narrator says. “They want boys in our daughters’ bathrooms and sports teams.”

    https://www.npr.org/2022/11/03/1133741967/right-wing-groups-spend-millions-dollars-ads-anti-transgender-kidsReport

  13. Kazzy says:

    Per Saul’s point, the Nets have decided more is needed than “education.”

    https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/34942326/nets-suspend-kyrie-irving-least-five-games-payReport

  14. Jaybird says:

    Golly! The twitter layoffs are coming:

    Report

    • InMD in reply to Jaybird says:

      It is not my area of expertise but having played a supporting role in RIFs in the past it doesn’t sound too crazy. All of this was pre-covid, closing down significantly sized branch offices kind of thing, so it was on-site but the goal was to keep it very controlled, avoid incidents (data privacy is part of my thing, hence my involvement). Obviously it sucks being on the receiving end.

      Now what will be interesting is what the emails say. Again, not my area of expertise, but if it’s going to be as big as Musk says I believe they have to provide 60 days notice under a law called the WARN Act and meet some other requirements. So is this email that notice or is it just ‘you’re terminated today’? I guess we will see in a couple hours.Report

      • Philip H in reply to InMD says:

        I love the part about going home if you are already on the way to work.Report

        • InMD in reply to Philip H says:

          Honestly I think it’s more dignified in a remote world. My experience with these things was they would give everyone a conference room assignment. The people in room A and B would he told they were keeping their jobs, the people in rooms C-F would be told they were not, then given counseling on what that meant for their benefits, how to get unemployment, etc. and any incentive plan for people to stick around for the 60 days to help with wind down. If I were in their shoes I’d rather experience my initial reaction alone in my house than in a room full of people. Of course I can see some pros to the other approach, this is just my personal feeling on it, and also using my in house lawyer brain of wanting to avoid incidents on the premises for which the client might be liable. Others might say people are less likely to do something rash in a controlled environment with others to commiserate with. You never really know.Report

          • Kazzy in reply to InMD says:

            Thanks for the insights. From my brief time in management, I learned there is no way of doing anything difficult that is going to work for everyone. In a small institution like mine, we could sometimes tailor an individual plan based on what we knew about folks and how they might respond (nothing as major as firing, mind you). Sometimes we just had to say, “Well, we’re going to do it this way and we know who will be upset about it and we’ll prepare for their response.”Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to Jaybird says:

      California and Federal Law require 60 days notice for mass layoffs. So he already screwed this up. He also labeled the previous terminations as “for cause” so he did not have to pay severance.Report

      • Philip H in reply to Saul Degraw says:

        He still probably has enough money to not care. His lawyers will eventually settled with state and federal lawyers for some sum of money that will be protected by an NDA enforced by court order, and he will go on about his life.Report

      • Brandon Berg in reply to Saul Degraw says:

        Can they just keep paying the workers for 60 days and call this the notice?Report

      • Twitter’s workforce almost certainly skews young, but most layoffs of half the staff at least open the possibility for age discrimination suits as well.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Saul Degraw says:

        This seems to be flying around the twitters. Does it meet the requirements of 60 days notice?

        Report

        • Philip H in reply to Jaybird says:

          If the affected employees have been turned away from their offices and had their Twitter emails already locked down, then they are fired and can’t work for twitter for the next 60 days. So no it probably doesn’t pass that test.Report

          • Michael Cain in reply to Philip H says:

            Court case cites against the “employed but no work responsibilities” categorization Twitter’s using here? It’s traditional to tell employees what the incentives for staying the term of such an arrangement rather than resigning are at the time of notification, but “within a week” will probably stand up in court.

            Having been through something similar, the incentives will almost certainly include an “in exchange for this handsome bonus, I agree that I may not benefit financially from any suits filed against the company to which I may be party” document.Report

          • Brandon Berg in reply to Philip H says:

            According to Reuters, 60 days severance can be paid in lieu of notice. Even the lawyer for the laid-off workers is saying they’re in compliance:

            https://www.reuters.com/legal/will-twitter-layoffs-violate-us-law-2022-11-04/

            Why would the government require an employer to give laid-off employees access to the office and email? The point of the law is to give employees time to line up another job, not to give them opportunities for sabotage.Report

  15. Philip H says:

    Fascinating how someone who hates the media so actively as a candidate would have spent 22 years working in that industry:

    https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/03/media/kari-lake-fox-station-reliable-sources/index.htmlReport

    • Jaybird in reply to Philip H says:

      It’s really hypocritical of her to have not changed careers earlier.

      (That does explain how she manages to be so deft, though. “Oh, this guy is doing the old double reverse. Time to pull out the old double counter.”)Report

    • KenB in reply to Philip H says:

      The more interesting story about Lake is that she’s one of the Trumpy “fringe” candidates that the Dem campaign committee did the sneaky promotions for in the Republican primary, and now she’s in a position to win the race. It’ll be interesting to see next week how many of those candidates actually win, and what kinds of discussions happen about the tactic.Report

    • Brandon Berg in reply to Philip H says:

      Part of the reason I have such profound contempt for the media is that good journalism is really important, and most of the people who have taken up that responsibility are falling disgracefully short of living up to it through some combination of brazen dishonesty and gross incompetence.

      There are exceptions. There are people in the media doing legitimately good work. And I can’t think of anyone more entitled to contempt for crappy journalists than good journalists.

      I’m not at all familiar with Kari Lake’s journalism. I’m not saying she was definitely a good journalist. She probably wasn’t. But the idea that there’s something inherently weird or hypocritical about a former journalist trashing other journalists is just silly.

      Think about it this way: Suppose that 90% of oceanographers were global warming denialists. If you quit your job to pursue a career in politics, would you have good things to say about the field?

      Also, there’s some tension in the CNN story between “she was a household name” and “Fox 10 is hiding the fact that she used to work for them.”Report

      • Philip H in reply to Brandon Berg says:

        I’m not at all familiar with Kari Lake’s journalism. I’m not saying she was definitely a good journalist. She probably wasn’t. But the idea that there’s something inherently weird or hypocritical about a former journalist trashing other journalists is just silly.

        She was quite happy to collect those paychecks for 22 years. And best I can tell she doesn’t trash her former employer. Just the constantly bedeviled “MSM.” So yes, there is an element of hypocrisy there.

        Think about it this way: Suppose that 90% of oceanographers were global warming denialists. If you quit your job to pursue a career in politics, would you have good things to say about the field?

        False equivalence – oceanography as a science goes generally where the data go. Its what we are trained to do. But were we at a place where that was happening, I’m not going to issue blanket condemnations of the field as a candidate, especially when those condemnations require me to hide my own previous career path. its unethical.

        Also, there’s some tension in the CNN story between “she was a household name” and “Fox 10 is hiding the fact that she used to work for them.”

        I agree – I happen to think both Fox News and Lake owe Arizonans an explanation for that.Report

        • Brandon Berg in reply to Philip H says:

          False equivalence – oceanography as a science goes generally where the data go. Its what we are trained to do.

          You should try applying that training in your writing here.Report

  16. Brandon Berg says:

    A new wrinkle in the Paul Pelosi assault case: The attacker is an illegal immigrant. When Canada sends people, they’re not sending their best.Report

  17. Marchmaine says:

    Heh… in the ‘own goal’ category, Instagram blocks the Lord’s Prayer with:

    [Greyed Screen over the Lord’s Prayer] False Information

    [click] FALSE… Facebook (instagram) does *not* ban the posting of the Lord’s Prayer.

    https://www.instagram.com/p/CkVW71yrQOs/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y%3D

    You may, after clicking, see the Lord’s Prayer. Thanks for clearing that up for us…Report

  18. Saul Degraw says:

    Early polling has Democrats outperforming in key battle ground states: https://twitter.com/SimonWDC/status/1588500156991025154?s=20&t=suPkMuiFv0cFFbDSyKmKPw

    – Ds continue to overperform in polls/early vote in the Senate battlegrounds
    – Early vote remains very encouraging for Ds
    – Marist polls another problem for red wave narrative
    – It’s close election, we need to close strong everyone!Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      Keep up with all of 538’s polls!

      You can sort by how the pollsters are graded and see all of them, see only the ones who scored a C or better, see only the ones who scored a B or better, or only the ones who scored an A or better.

      Vote your conscience!Report

      • Saul Degraw in reply to Jaybird says:

        Silver admitted in an essay that he is weighing in favor of Republicans. I think the GOP is flooding the zone and the pollsters/forecasters do not know how to incorporate Dobbs.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Saul Degraw says:

          Silver might be but when I sort by the A grades, I only see Marist College, SurveyUSA, Siena College, and Marquette University Law School before I see the useless numbers from Halloween and earlier.

          One take that I saw about pollsters is that they have gotten *REALLY* good at getting the number of Democratic voters that are going to be voting but they haven’t yet gotten good at getting the number of Republican voters that are going to be voting.

          The difference between “weighing in favor of Republicans” and “accurately weighing Republicans” will become apparent next week, I guess.Report

  19. Jaybird says:

    Okay, the New York Times has an article talking about Biden’s age.

    Conspiracy Theorists in the replies are assuming a Red Wave come Tuesday and that, as part of the response to the Red Wave, Biden will be thrown under the bus. This includes a prediction of a heavily sourced NYT story talking about Biden being infirm set to run after the results come in.

    What I like about this is that it’s testable. Either we’re going to get an article talking about this in the next two weeks or we won’t. If we don’t, we can point to the people who said that this is going to happen and laugh at them for being duped.

    So we will see.

    But the polls are, apparently, not indicating that there will be a red wave at all.

    Hey, if you get out and vote, maybe you can help make it a blue wave! Biden promised that he’ll ask Congress to codify Roe v. Wade if Congress stays blue! You can help make that happen and the only opportunity for that to happen is 2023-2024!Report

  20. Brandon Berg says:

    This is secondhand information, but Kelsey Piper is a lefty who has no reason to lie here, and claims to have heard it from multiple NYT reporters: Apparently the NYT instituted an explicit hit-piece-only policy for tech reporting.Report

    • Kazzy in reply to Brandon Berg says:

      This would seem easy to verify: what’s the last positive reporting on Tech? I did a simple search for “Tech” in the NYT app. Results are not in chronological order for whatever reason.

      From what I can see, looking at headlines only (not the best way to review, admittedly)…

      9/16 – Article on TikTok emerging as a challenger to Google for search
      9/8 – What would happen if a smartphone could last 10 years?
      11/2 – Personal tech has changed and so must our coverage (seems very relevant)

      I dug a bit into that last one. Subheadline says: “ Our tech problems have become more complex, so we are rebooting the Tech Fix column to focus on the societal implications of the tech we use.”

      “ On Wednesday, our rebooted column examines popular internet-connected surveillance cameras like Ring and whether they do more harm than good. In the coming weeks, we’ll write about how smartphone ownership has become similar to car ownership — and how our behavior around buying phones can still change for the better. And we’ll explore websites and stores that request our phone numbers and email addresses, and what this means for our privacy.”

      It definitely represents a shit for this one column. Does it amount to “hit pieces only”?Report

  21. Jaybird says:

    Seems like this could have been avoided.

    Report

    • Brandon Berg in reply to Jaybird says:

      With a $50 billion endowment, why does Harvard even have a $15 million insurance policy?Report

    • InMD in reply to Jaybird says:

      It’s definitely foolish not to even notify your insurance company but there are reasons you might not go through them for a case that you know is going to SCOTUS. Usually when you go to insurance there is a panel of law firms that you have to pick from for insurance to cover the litigation. My experience is that the choices aren’t always the best, and are often chosen to account as much for costs to the insurer as for the outcome. It’s all based on how the insurer views the math. That doesn’t matter so much in a slip and fall case or some routine commercial litigation but if you’re going to fight a major public policy/constitutional battle where you believe more is at stake than money you want the best.

      Now some insurers will do a sort of ‘you can take our panel or pick who you want, but if you pick who you want we only pay up to the amount we have negotiated with the firms on the panel,’ but not all. This is of course a charitable interpretation Harvard may not deserve, and again, failure to notify is inexcusable, but my guess is that most journalists don’t really understand what goes into the decision making.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to InMD says:

        There’s a New York Times story that gets into this, kinda. It’s a story from before the judgment but gets into the main points made:

        Harvard did not provide formal notice to Zurich until May 2017, more than a year after the deadline.

        In court papers, lawyers for Zurich said the case was straightforward. “Harvard’s admitted failure to comply with the notice provision,” they wrote, “is fatal to its claim for coverage.”

        In response, Harvard’s lawyers argued that Zurich “surely knew” about the affirmative-action suit “in the year after it was filed, especially given the significant, ongoing attention that the suit received in national and local news” and Zurich’s own underwriting activities.

        They added: “The notice requirement is not an escape hatch for insurance companies to avoid liability to policyholders due to technical noncompliance.”

        Zurich’s lawyers said that argument was “creative yet specious” and “outlandish.”

        Now, I am not a lawyer.

        But I think that the argument that Harvard didn’t have to tell Zurich about it because they surely knew about it given all of the coverage in the media is a bad argument.

        Like, there isn’t anything involving a signature in that.

        (But, again, I am not a lawyer.)Report

        • InMD in reply to Jaybird says:

          That’s a slightly different situation than what I’m talking about above. I don’t know how an entity like Harvard looks at this, but in the space I practice in, there are certain kinds of very high stakes, bet the company situations where it might (and I stress might) make sense to look outside of what insurance will offer for covering legal counsel and costs of litigation. This of course is a highly strategic decision that should only be made deliberately, after a lot of analysis, and you still tell your insurer about it anyway to see how much you can get even if it isn’t everything.

          What the article describes is pure stupidity. I’d expect both to be denied coverage and lose my job if I failed to follow the notice of claims provision, especially in such a material way.Report

        • Mike Schilling in reply to Jaybird says:

          The story might not have gotten much play in Switzerland.Report

  22. Jaybird says:

    Conspiracy theorists are saying that this is an example of knives being sharpened:

    Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:

      Taylor Lorenz is talking about Covid still.

      Report