You should watch this whole video, in which Lukianoff shines. The presidency of FIRE has given him a nuanced eye for the ironies of the social justice snowflake.

Also, within my heart, by the exchanges of that video, Gladwell establishes for himself a new and perhaps bulletproof identity as a sluggish twerp.

He makes Haidt seem crisp and steely.

!

Ah, it's the ol' swap-a-doodle!

Greenwald is a twitching, rudderless ship of goofy, but it's good that someone said this.

Because reasons.

Some people feel that sarcasm is merely childish, perhaps because its exercise is often rote... But even then.

Nice piece on the corrupted religion of modern social judgement:

[w]hen it comes to Northam, it is not really the man’s sins that are at issue—since if that were the basis of judgment, he would be excused many times over thanks to the decades of professional excellence and public service that followed his university years. Rather, what is being impugned is Northam’s very soul. For one of the dominant ersatz-religious conceits of our age is that, when it comes to race, we all are marked by either purity or corruption—that is, in the language of old-timey religion, we are either heretics or believers, asleep or woke, lost or saved. And every tweet we write, every word we utter, every yearbook photo we publish shall be taken as part of the evidentiary record by which we shall be judged.

Sorry, that piece is

Punishing the Crime vs. Blacklisting the Soul, written by Jonathan Kay.

QR in China.

Death everywhere.

Serious request for a show of hands—

Have/had you ever heard of The 2038 problem?

✓ Choose one:

☐ Yes

☐ No

Ever get the feeling there's someone watching you at the grocery store. Perhaps there is.

Female to male transgenders find out that "male privilege" isn't all that.

https://youtu.be/rQmJ44qcQlU

The 2038 problem?

Yes. I was curious if moving to a 64 bit counter would work, and it will roll over in ~292 billion years or so. But that introduces large swaths of incompatibilities, so it isn't as simple as recompiling your code.

It is a rather thorny problem and I don't think any one has a good solution.

Ever get the feeling there's someone watching you at the grocery store. Perhaps there is.

There are no curses in Entish, Elvish, or the tongues of Men for this treachery.

Why Trump’s wrong to focus on ending AIDS

https://nypost.com/2019/02/08/why-trumps-wrong-to-focus-on-ending-aids/

...You should watch this whole video, in which Lukianoff shines...

I was at that event. The one that didn't shine was Gladwell, but I'll let you judge for yourself.

Lick me.

Warmby— Thanks for saying so.

This morning I was five paragraphs into a critique of Gladwell before saying to Hell with it, but I couldn't be less impressed with him here.

His books are okay. He's written about some interesting things. His podcast had some interesting stories, but it seemed like he wanted nothing more in life than to ape the production techniques of a 2nd-year public radio employee in Sioux Falls.

Worst part is here: He smirkingly says "we" did all these terrible things to women and minorities, and everyone in the building just sits there and takes it, as if "we" actually had. When the others affirm their agreement to his point, he dismisses their (sincere) response as his own favorite (dissembling) tactic.

Throughout the evening, his body language is gawkingly, portentously casual.

He  speaks   with   long   pauses
while  searching       sluggishly
for             short   words…

Gladwell's guests on the stage were more patient than I'd have been.

Again, I was never a great fan, but this video has diminished an already unflattering appraisal.