Digest, 9/10/2022: Nolita Fairytale
Digest, 9/10/2022: Nolita Fairytale
the sixty-third digest post
I went on national NPR awhile back and debated the SATs once again.
This Week’s Posts
Monday, September 5th - Perhaps There Can Be No Ombudsman
It’s hard to summon the same fire over this rotten industry, these days.
Tuesday, September 6th - They’re Just Going to Start a New Hate Site, Obviously
Kiwi Farms will just be replaced, in time.
Thursday, September 8th - If You're a Living Language Type, Then You Have No Right to Dictate to Traditionalists How They Use Language
My (controversial) take on the use of “literally.”
Friday, September 9th - Nope Should Be Just My Kind of Beautiful Mess, and Yet.... (subscriber only)
A review of Jordan Peele’s latest.
From the Archives
Song of the Week
Non-Garbage Online Reading
Book Recommendation
Top Secret, John Reynolds Gardiner, 1984
Probably the worst thing about this book is its generic title, which would probably make you assume it’s about spies and espionage. (This edition here is matched by an equally generic cover image.) But the book is in fact a sharp and funny story about a young man who, spurned by a closed-minded teacher, attempts to achieve human photosynthesis, changing his diet and behavior so that he too can feed off of the sun the way that plants do. It’s a lot of fun, and is also quietly a meditation on how the world squelches childhood ambition.
NFL Picks of the Week
Ooh baby!
A few more nights like Thursday and I can retire. Looking forward to Sunday, I like the Chicago Bears (+7) at home against the 49ers. I think Chicago is going to be awful this year, and San Francisco has a hell of a roster, but weird things happen on opening weekend and I think Trey Lance has a lot of growing pains coming up for him. I expect Chicago to at least beat the spread.
Season record: 1-0-0
Comment of the Week
There are two issues with trying to "moderate" (read: censor) content:
(1) You pointed out this, but I'll go a step further and suggest that by "banning" these groups, you give them a legitimacy they did not have. People think that "deplatforming" people removes their legitimacy, but it doesn't. Among certain groups, if you're "deplatformed" that simply means that you are exactly what you portray yourself to be: the person that speaks the truth the amorphous they don't want the masses to hear. This is because . . .
(2) Censorship (even if it's given the harmless sounding title of "content moderation") has, no matter how well-intentioned it started out, always been turned on people who are actually speaking the truth the amorphous they don't want the masses to hear. In the case of the US, we started off by "deplatforming" Alex Jones, and the next thing you know we're kicking people off of Twitter for telling the truth about a laptop simply because it was a story that would have destroyed the media's favored presidential candidate and telling the truth everyone knew about masks, lockdowns, and the vaccines regarding COVID. The "truth" could sometimes be as simple as the government collected data that Twitter claimed someone might "misinterpret," which meant "interpret accurately but not in a way we want." And that is why people will default to the side of the moderated and not the moderators. We've seen this pattern endlessly repeated.
As I said, even when well-intentioned (and really, in the US, the intentions have never been anything but self-serving, so they're not even good), "moderation"/censorship will always and without exception be used as a political weapon or a weapon to control the masses for the interests of the elite. And anyone with a brain and any sense of self-preservation should demand that everyone be allowed to speak, no matter how vile what they say is because honestly the bigger threat is the "power of moderation" ending up in the wrong hands. - Lillia Gajewksi
That’s it. See you soon.
I noticed your book was displayed during David Shor's Dem-Fest party. Thought it was funny that the quote from the Intercept reporter attending was "I don't like him."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/style/david-shor-democrats.html
The BLACKPINK video and then "Why Culture Sucks?"... did you put those two next to each other on purpose?