iOS 15, Humane

Posted on June 10, 2021 by David K.

Apple could help us set conditions for how and when we use certain apps.

This way, we could set boundaries for ourselves, on our own terms.

For example if you’re struggling to use Tinder responsibly, you could create a condition that you can only use the app while FaceTiming with a friend.

Source: iOS 15, Humane

There are some really interesting ideas here. I think Apple could make some hooks in the OS to support a 3rd-party app to implement them.

Comments from the HN thread about this:

And its followup:

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Kinda a big announcement – Joel on Software

Posted on June 4, 2021 by David K.

I took a few stupid years trying to be the CEO of a growing company during which I didn’t have time to code, and when I came back to web programming, after a break of about 10 years, I found Node, React, and other goodies, which are, don’t get me wrong, amazing? Really really great? But I also found that it took approximately the same amount of work to make a CRUD web app as it always has, and that there were some things (like handing a file upload, or centering) that were, shockingly, still just as randomly difficult as they were in VBScript twenty years ago.

Source: Kinda a big announcement – Joel on Software

It’s hard for me to express just how deeply wrong I find this to be, but I suppose that’s because I take it as an almost personal insult. Here’s a smart, driven guy who probably just became a (near) billionaire with the sale of a site devoted to programming Q&A, and yet, in my opinion, he’s completely out of touch with modern web development. I really resent this gaping hole in the collective knowledge of programmers on this planet.

I’ve been using Rails for 15 years now. I’ve used it to make dozens of applications. It is perfectly suited for making CRUD web apps. It was designed from the ground up to do so, and avoid the grunt work of other programming stacks, specifically Java. Unfortunately, Spolsky is not alone of his ignorance about it. I see lots of programmers singing the praises of Javascript, who dismiss Rails, usually because of its convention-over-configuration approach, but nothing can compare to the productivity of using Rails to write a CRUD web application. Nothing. It’s not even close. He’s absolutely right that Node and React offer no advantage over any other legacy option like Java or .NET. I went down the whole Java/Spring/Angular hole for one ill-fated project, and it’s a freakish, byzantine nightmare. The difference between the two stacks is so stark that I have to assume that people who make these kind of comments are completely oblivious to the fact that Rails exists at all.

Take file uploads for instance. Rails has had easily-configured and power capability from several hugely popular gems since (at least) the 3.x days. The stack has had its own implementation since 5.x. Either way, just configure a couple of lines in an initializer, pick a provider, enter your bucket name and API key, and then it’s literally just a few lines of code to add a file attachment to your model.

Spolsky continues to rant:

The biggest problem is that developers of programming tools love to add things and hate to take things away. So things get harder and harder and more and more complex because there are more and more ways to do the same thing, each has pros and cons, and you are likely to spend as much time just figuring out which “rich text editor” to use as you are to implement it.

This is the continuing, enduring beauty of Rails. They continue to add things to the stack, like file uploads, but they do so in a way that makes them optional. If you want them, it’s, like, 3 lines of configuration, and you’re rolling. A rich text editor, as it turns out, is another perfect example. There has been a popular gem to provide the WordPress editor for a long time now, but Rails started shipping a native rich text editor in 6.x, if you want it. I’m using it in a significant way in a production application right now. I added it well after the site was launched, but it was easy, and it’s terrific.

Today we’re pleased to announce that Stack Overflow is joining Prosus. Prosus is an investment and holding company, which means that the most important part of this announcement is that Stack Overflow will continue to operate independently, with the exact same team in place that has been operating it, according to the exact same plan and the exact same business practices. Don’t expect to see major changes or awkward “synergies”. The business of Stack Overflow will continue to focus on Reach and Relevance, and Stack Overflow for Teams. The entire company is staying in place: we just have different owners now.

This is where I get worried. An investment and holding company paying $1.8B to buy a site like Stack Overflow is going to want to recoup its investment, and make more money in the future. In the old days, they used to say that investments needed to start making money in 7 years. I’m not clear that this old rule of thumb still applies, and SO is a private company, so we can’t see a balance sheet, but does anyone think that “SO for Teams” is making $250M a year? Big M&A announcements like this always say the same things about keeping the product the same. Let’s revisit this in a year, and see where we really stand.

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Amazon Faced 75,000 Arbitration Demands. Now It Says: Fine, Sue Us – WSJ

Posted on June 1, 2021 by David K.

Companies have spent more than a decade forcing employees and customers to resolve disputes outside the traditional court system, using secretive arbitration proceedings that typically don’t allow plaintiffs to team up and extract big-money payments akin to a class action.

Now, Amazon. AMZN -0.06% com Inc. is bucking that trend. With no announcement, the company recently changed its terms of service to allow customers to file lawsuits. Already, it faces at least three proposed class actions, including one…

Source: Amazon Faced 75,000 Arbitration Demands. Now It Says: Fine, Sue Us – WSJ

Not even Amazon can afford to keep enough lawyers on hand to continue the arbitration game. They have become a victim of their own size. Hilarious.

Someone on HN dug into the actual court proceedings, and found an epic comment from the judge.

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Barcode Scanner app on Google Play infects 10 million users with one update – Malwarebytes Labs

Posted on June 1, 2021 by David K.

In a single update, a popular barcode scanner app that had been on Google Play for years turned into malware.

Source: Barcode Scanner app on Google Play infects 10 million users with one update – Malwarebytes Labs

“Barcode Scanner” had 4+ stars in 74,000 reviews. Instead of making a statement as to the trustworthiness or usefulness of the application, it became a giant target; a vulnerability to exploit by taking over the application’s distribution, and then putting a trojan into it.

Every significant review system is being gamed to the point of being unusable, and yet stories about not being able to trust them keep being reported as if this were somehow noteworthy. For every one of these stories that rises to a thread on HN, how many other small time vendors are getting screwed by someone who is willing to pay a room full of people in some 3rd-world country to tarnish their competitors’ products?

“Apps” and “algorithms” seem to be driving literally everything about society now. I don’t think this is a good thing, nor do I see the trend reversing. These giant black boxes now control the levers of modern society, and the companies that own them get to hide behind their “terms of service” to avoid any responsibility for the damage being done.

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LinkedIn

Posted on June 1, 2021 by David K.

LinkedIn, as a site, at this point, is at best “weird,” if not downright user hostile. The problem with all of these web 3.0 businesses (because of capitalism in general) is that they keep growing until they absorb everything that touches on their core product, ruining the thing that made them interesting to begin with.

It would seem that someone could take up building what LinkedIn started out to be, before it became “Facebook, FOR BUSINESS!”, and then just let it run, to collect the money from recruiters, and leave it alone. Is it even possible to do? Is there no one who could build a lifestyle business on this idea, and not try to take over the world?

I suppose you’ll tell me that the network effects are already effectively preventing entry into the market, and anyone ruthless enough to punch through that barrier would, by nature, want to try to take over the world. And, even if they didn’t want to, eventually, if successful, someone would throw enough money at them to get them to part with it, and be absorbed by the Borg anyway.

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Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Posted on May 31, 2021 by David K.

Tucked inside the Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996 is one of the most valuable tools for protecting freedom of expression and innovation on the Internet: Section 230.This comes somewhat as a surprise, since the original purpose of the legislation was to restrict free speech on the Internet. The Internet community as a whole objected strongly to the Communications Decency Act, and with EFF’s help, the anti-free speech provisions were struck down by the Supreme Court. But thankfully, CDA 230 remains and in the years since has far outshone the rest of the law.

Source: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act | Electronic Frontier Foundation

I just read a TechDirt article condemning CBS’ 60 Minutes for disinformation regarding Section 230, which led me to the EFF’s page and infographic.

I respect the EFF immensely, but I remain unconvinced.

The EFF claims that if we didn’t have Section 230, places like Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter would effectively be sued out of existence. Or, even if they don’t get sued out of existence, they’ll have to hire an army of people to police the content on their site, the costs of which will drive them out of existence, or which they will pass on to users.

I don’t see what’s so valuable about Reddit, Facebook, or Twitter that these places should be protected like a national treasure. All three are proof positive that allowing every person to virtually open their window and shout their opinions into the virtual street is worth exactly what everyone is paying for the privilege: nothing. It’s just a lot of noise, invective, and ad hominem. And if that were the extent of the societal damage, that would be enough. But all of this noise has fundamentally changed how news organizations like 60 Minutes work. Proper journalism is all but gone. In order to compete, it’s ALL just noise now.

The EFF compares a repeal of Section 230 to government-protecting laws in Thailand or Turkey, but this is every bit as much disinformation as TechDirt claims 60 Minutes is promulgating. Repealing Section 230 would not repeal the First Amendment. People in this country could still say whatever they wanted to about the government, or anything else. Repealing 230 would just hold them personally accountable for it. And I struggle to understand how anyone — given 20 years of ubiquitous internet access and free platforms — can conclude that anonymity and places to scrawl what is effectively digital graffiti has led to some sort of new social utopia. The fabric of society has never been more threadbare, and people shouting at each other, pushing disinformation, and mistreating others online 24×7 is continuing to make the situation worse.

Platforms are being used against us by a variety of bad actors. The companies themselves are using our information against us to manipulate at least our buying behavior, and selling our activity to anyone who wants to buy it. There was some amount of alarm raised when it was discovered that AT&T tapped the overseas fiber optic cables for the NSA, in gross and blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment, but once discovered, Congress just passed a law to make it legal, retroactively. Now the NSA and FBI doesn’t need to track us any more. Literally every company in America which has a web site is helping to collate literally everything we do into a dossier that gets amalgamated and traded by 3rd-party information brokers. Our cell companies and ISP’s merge location tracking into the mix, and the government picks this information up for pennies on the dollar for what it would take for them to collect it themselves.

I don’t like this situation. I think it should stop. I think anything that would put a dent in Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit being able to collate and track everything anyone does on the internet, and sell it to anyone with a checkbook, needs to go away. If repealing Section 230 forces these companies out of business, I say, “Good.” They want to tell me that the costs to deal with content moderation in a Section 230-less world would put them out of business. I call BS.

If Facebook and YouTube can implement real-time scanning of all video being uploaded to their sites, and block or de-monetize anything containing a copyrighted song within seconds, they can write software to scan uploaded content for offensive content too. Will it catch everything? Of course not, but it will get the load down to the point where humans can deal with it.

There are countless stories of how Facebook employs a small army of content moderators to look into uploaded content, and how it pays them very little, and the job of scanning the lower bounds of human depravity is about as grinding a job in the world. But if they can create filters for pornographic content, they can create filters for gore and violence, and, again, stop 90% of it before it ever gets posted.

Don’t tell me it’s impossible. That’s simply not true. It would just cost more. And, again, if it costs so much that it puts them out of business? Well, too bad. If the holy religion of Capitalism says they can’t sustain the business while they make the effort to keep the garbage off their platforms, then I guess the all-powerful force of The Market will have spoken. The world would be better off without those platforms.

I remember an internet that was made of more than 5 web sites, which all just repost content from each other. It was pretty great. People would still be free to host a site, and put whatever they wanted to on it. It couldn’t be any easier, these days, to rent a WordPress site now, and post whatever nonsense you want, like I’m doing right here. You could even still be anonymous if you want. But your site would be responsible for what gets posted. And, if it’s garbage, or it breaks the law, you’re going to get blocked or taken down. As so many people want to point out in discussions of being downvoted for unpopular opinions, The First Amendment doesn’t protect you from being a jerk.

Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Imgur, and Google are all being gamed. As the last two Presidential elections have shown, world powers are influencing the content on these sites, and manipulating our national political discourse. This needs to stop. It seems to me that repealing Section 230 would cause those platforms to get serious about being transparent about where that content comes from, and be held accountable for it. Again, don’t tell me that they can’t. They just don’t want to spend the money to do so. In fact, they’re making money on the spread of such propaganda. Tell me why Americans should put up with these mega-companies making billions providing a platform to be used against us politically? Not just allowing it, but being financially incentivized into providing it? It doesn’t make any sense to me.

In summary, I don’t see how repealing Section 230 hurts any of the scenarios that folks like the EFF say that it does, and it would seem to hold all the right people accountable for the absolute disgrace that social media has become.

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How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism, a New Book by Cory Doctorow | OneZero

Posted on May 31, 2021 by David K.

But Zuboff also claims that surveillance literally robs us of our free will — that when our personal data is mixed with machine learning, it creates a system of persuasion so devastating that we are helpless before it. That is, Facebook uses an algorithm to analyze the data it nonconsensually extracts from your daily life and uses it to customize your feed in ways that get you to buy stuff. It is a mind-control ray out of a 1950s comic book, wielded by mad scientists whose supercomputers guarantee them perp

Source: How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism, a New Book by Cory Doctorow | OneZero

Like Andrew, Cory Doctorow attempts to demystify a complex situation, and succeeds with a precision that only other liberal intellectuals can sympathize with. He mocks the idea that Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Twitter, et. al., can cause us to change our behavior. And, sure, no one from those companies are holding a gun to our heads to get us to press buttons. But these companies are enormously successful in provoking people to commit to decisions they were already considering. So successful, in fact, that — en masse — there is no practical difference between this persuasion and literal mind control. Like Eric Raymond arguing against calling Jeffrey Epstein a “monster,” Cory has lost sight of the forest for the trees. At scale, it is mind control.

This has been critical to the rapid crystallization of recent political movements including Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street as well as less savory players like the far-right white nationalist movements that marched in Charlottesville.

But not “less savory players” like all the Antifa Marxists which destroyed and looted local businesses, and burned down car lots. Noted.

Cory references LBGT stories to support his argument that Big Tech can’t convince you against your personal interest, but you can easily cherry-pick this anecdata. I’ve read several accounts that tell an inverse version of the story: that people came out because peer pressure enticed them, and they later became confused with their lifestyle because it didn’t actually fit who they were. I’m not saying that these cases are the majority. Rather, I bring it up to point out that Cory’s example is incomplete and one-sided, and it actually makes an unintended case against his stated position.

Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism a “rogue capitalism” whose data-hoarding and machine-learning techniques rob us of our free will. … Controlling the results to the world’s search queries means controlling access both to arguments and their rebuttals and, thus, control over much of the world’s beliefs. If our concern is how corporations are foreclosing on our ability to make up our own minds and determine our own futures, the impact of dominance far exceeds the impact of manipulation and should be central to our analysis and any remedies we seek.

Again, Cory references Zuboff’s position, and tries to show that it’s wrong, but, at the end, the net result of the situation is the same. Zuboff says surveillance capitalism robs me of my free will, but if Google black-holes the information I need to chose a non-endorsed answer, how is that any different? Google has robbed me of my ability to choose an alternative as surely as the mocked idea of a “mind control ray.”

It can make it easier to find people who share your sexual identity. And again, it can help you to understand that what you thought was a shameful secret that affected only you was really a widely shared trait, giving you both comfort and the courage to come out to the people in your life.

This is another example of eliding the point which makes me wonder about the entire intent of the article. It would seem to me to be hard to argue that non-binary, non-heterosexual lifestyles are a “widely shared” trait, given that, even by most optimistic estimates, the combined percentage of the population is something like 5%. More likely, I suspect the fact that the number is 10% in San Francisco, pulling the number up from the rest of the country sitting at 1-2%, which gives people steeped in the counter culture a false sense of the numbers.

But monopolies are incompatible with that notion. When you only have one app store, the owner of the store — not the consumer — decides on the range of choices. As Boss Tweed once said, “I don’t care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating.” A monopolized market is an election whose candidates are chosen by the monopolist.

Fantastic point! Now, let’s talk about the duopoly of the RNC and the DNC on American politics…

But it’s not mind control.

But it’s not brainwashing.

But it’s not an existential threat.

Cory argues these things, and then expends 100 pages of writing showing that Facebook and Google are, in fact, all three.

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Get Ready for Your Streaming Services to Merge

Posted on May 31, 2021 by David K.

If Netflix and Disney are the de facto primary services to which subscribers pay a monthly fee to avoid cable, then that leaves little room for other services to squeeze their way in. At some point, the cost of maintaining multiple services will exceed what somebody would otherwise pay for cable, which doesn’t make a lot of economic sense for someone trying to cut the cord. There’s also only so much content that anyone can reasonably watch. Particularly for households on a budget, it makes more sense to subscribe to just a handful of services that provide value than it does to pay a large monthly fee to maintain subscriptions that aren’t being used.

Source: Get Ready for Your Streaming Services to Merge

That’s a load of horse puckey. I was paying for cable TV with the everything-but-premium-channels lineup, and I seem to recall that was something like $80/mo. Since stopping HBO Max, and given that Prime is essentially free (because I’d pay for it for the free shipping alone), I’m only at Netflix, Disney, and Hulu+. Together, that’s about $45, and that’s enough content that I get overwhelmed with choice. Even if you threw in the cost of HBO and Prime, I’d just be where I started, and arguably with a lot more content than just “cable TV.” For DANG sure, it’s a LOT more content that I want to watch.

I don’t mind saying that I always resented the “ESPN tax,” and they way they bundled it so that you basically either have the legally-mandated, minimum, “survivor” cable, or you stop before the premium channel packages, leaving this huge gap open, and essentially forcing you to carry a bunch of channels you could not possibly care less about. I mean, shopping channels? Are you serious? With the internet in every hand in America, how are those even still a thing? So, yeah, I hope cable companies are doing terribly right now, but a buddy of mine was just saying that they’re going to start consolidating these services — and we all know they will — and we’re going to be right back where we started, paying for a bunch of stuff no one cares about to, say, watch the Office, amirite? They can all suck it. I’ll cancel it all before I get roped into another virtual cable company.

I’m pretty sure that Netflix will continue to dominate. They were smart, and got their own production company up and running. Along with their world-class technology stack, they simply don’t need anyone else. Their content is killing it. The Witcher? Cobra Kai? Stranger Things? The Crown? The Queen’s Gambit? Are you serious? They don’t just not need anyone else, they’re setting the pace for custom content. Apple TV has made some great stuff too. The Morning Show? Defending Jacob? They just need more.

What’s fascinating about this situation is how the big 3 are floundering. These cable-package protected companies are going to have to change their mindsets about the content they produce, when it’s not about charging for advertisement airtime in real time for a single viewing. Because, when you make a show that flames out as badly as, say, Lost, you get one round of sales, and that’s it. You’re not going to sell DVD’s or digital seasons of that show, because it’s a turd, and everyone knows it now. It’s gone down the memory hole. Heroes, for NBC, was the same story. Battlestar Galactica, for Sky, was another. Shows with unbelievable starts, which were allowed to be run into the ground by their runners. No, if you want to sell subscriptions to a service based on your content, you have to create content that people are going to want to watch a couple or few times, and that’s going to take better selection of producers, directors, and writers than any of them have right now.

What I can’t fathom is why Disney hired J.J. Abrams for Star Wars Episode VIII, and then acted surprised when he made a continuity-destroying turd that couldn’t be salvaged despite half of Episode IX being used to retcon it. There will be no boxed set of all 9 episodes on DVD, commemorating the canonical Star Wars story, because it fell apart at the end like a tower of Legos. It’s done. They bought their gross in the theaters, and it’s over. No one’s going to buy the DVD’s or the digital library entries, and Disney can’t use it as leverage to sell their service. No, you go get one of the magic guys from the Marvel universe, get him to make The Mandalorian, and you use THAT to sell your service.

(And it does HBO no service to have hitched their wagon to the DC “cinematic universe.” Like the last 3 Star Wars movies, those are 1-shot viewings too.)

When someone sits down to watch something on a service, they’re not just looking for some thing that optimizes for their mood with something they can watch right now — because that’s what’s airing on real-time programming — they’re optimizing to watch something based against everything else on the service. That’s why The Office is still such a hit. Can you even name another NBC show? I would have given you Agents of Shield, but that’s been pulled back into the Disney mothership (and is no longer considered canon). What defines success in streaming services is much different than what has passed for success in over-the-air and cable programming.

I haven’t seen the article about it yet, but the networks are seriously behind the curve, and I don’t even think they’ve realized how far yet. You have to have a complete plan in place. You can’t just start a show, and then get serious about it when the ratings come in. You have to have a finish in mind. For instance, it’s absolutely clear that the Marvel guys had the big picture in mind for their cinematic universe, and the DC guys were just phoning it in. ALL SHOWS have to have a complete plan at the start these days. You can phase it, but you have to have a complete story ready to shoot, or no one will care about it, and you won’t be able to leverage it to sell a service. Just look at the latest example of The Expanse on Amazon Prime. The first couple of seasons had rave reviews, and now it’s flamed out. You can’t run a show like this any more.

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The Two Middle Classes – Quillette

Posted on May 31, 2021 by David K.

The struggle between the two middle classes is not just a matter of wealth and power, but also of retaining the social basis for democracy itself. Without a strong, independent middle class operating outside the control of large institutions, be they tech giants or governments, we may be heading towards a technocratic future, that as one Silicon Valley wag put it, resembles  “feudalism with better marketing.”

Source: The Two Middle Classes – Quillette

I’ve been calling our corporatocracy a modern form of fuedalism for awhile now, which is where this article ends up. However, along the way, it explains the ascendancy of the “clerisy” — a liberal middle class made up of people like college professors and government bureaucrats — which does a good job at explaining the historically-different battle lines of the cultural war we witnessed in the last election. Expanding the thesis: It’s no longer about race, because race is no longer the determinant factor in which sector you work. I think this nails the current political climate, and current social evolutionary stage, much better than my small pull quote and comment would suggest.

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NYTimes Peru N-Word, Part Two: What Happened January 28? | by Donald G. McNeil Jr. | Mar, 2021 | Medium

Posted on May 31, 2021 by David K.

On Monday, February 1 — by coincidence, my birthday — Dean and Carolyn Ryan called me at about 10:30 A.M.My notes of the conversation are sparser than I normally take, but I also recounted it right afterward to a friend, so I think this is accurate.

As I remember it, Dean started off by saying “Donald, you had a great year — you really owned the story of the pandemic….”As soon as I realized he was talking in the past tense, I became tense and started taking notes.

“Donald, I know you,” he went on. “I know you’re not a racist. We’re going ahead with your Pulitzer. We’re writing to the board telling them we looked into this two years ago.”

“But Donald, you’ve lost the newsroom. People are hurt. People are saying they won’t work with you because you didn’t apologize.”

“I did write an apology,” I said. “I sent it to you Friday night. I sent another paragraph on Saturday morning. Didn’t you get it?”

Dean didn’t answer.

“I saw it,” Carolyn said.

“But Donald,” Dean said, “you’ve lost the newsroom. A lot of your colleagues are hurt. A lot of them won’t work with you. Thank you for writing the apology. But we’d like you to consider adding to it that you’re leaving.”

“WHAT?” I said loudly. “ARE YOU KIDDING? You want me to leave after 40-plus years? Over this? You know this is bullshit. You know you looked into it and I didn’t do the things they said I did, I wasn’t some crazy racist, I was just answering the kids’ questions.”

“Donald, you’ve lost the newsroom. People won’t work with you.”

“What are you talking about?” I said. “Since when do we get to choose who we work with?”

“Donald, you’ve had a great year, you’re still up for a Pulitzer.”

“And I’m supposed to what — call in to the ceremony from my retirement home?”

Carolyn stepped in: “Donald, there are other complaints that you made people uncomfortable. X, Y and Z.”

I remember looking at the snow in my garden.

“May I know exactly what X, Y and Z are? And who said I did X, Y and Z? I’m happy to answer anything — but I have to know what I’m being accused of.”

Neither of them responded. To me, it felt like an attempt to intimidate me.

“Let me give you an alternative view of who’s ‘lost the newsroom,’” I said. “I’ve been getting emails and calls from bureaus all over the world saying, “Hang in there, you’re getting screwed.” People are outraged at how I’m being trashed in the press and by the Times. If you fire me over this, you’re going to lose everybody over age 40 at the paper, all the grownups. All your bureau chiefs, all your Washington reporters, all your Pulitzer winners. Especially once they realize how innocuous what I really said was and that you didn’t find it a firing offense in 2019. And they’ll talk to every media columnist in town. The right wing will have a field day.”

“We’re not firing you,” Dean said. “We’re asking you to consider resigning.”

“You’re twisting my arm.”

“We’re not twisting your arm.”

“Just mentioning it, just bringing it up, is twisting my arm. Nobody in 45 years has suggested I resign. Charlotte has threatened to fire me a couple of times, but that’s different. That was always bullshit. But nobody’s ever suggested I resign. I should shut up and get a lawyer. I need a lawyer.”

Dean and Carolyn seemed to pretend to not hear that, either.

“We’re not twisting your arm. We’re asking you to consider it.”

“No. I’m not considering it. I’m not just quitting like this.”

The conversation then trailed to an end, with them saying “consider it” and me saying no.

Source: NYTimes Peru N-Word, Part Two: What Happened January 28? | by Donald G. McNeil Jr. | Mar, 2021 | Medium

I had read about this in bits in pieces. It was good to read about the whole thing from his side.

In the post-modernist society in which we live, no matter how they start, memes have become reality. All this guy did is quote the word back to a person asking a question. But if a viral mob forms over a perceived slight — no matter groundless it may be — you’re done, and there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s no amount of record-straightening, apologizing, or telling people to go pound sand that will make it go away. You will be canceled. The only thing that the mob will accept, by way of peacemaking, is your job, career, and future prospects. They want to see your entire livelihood destroyed. It’s a good thing this guy was already retirement age.

PewDiePie on YouTube used the word in question in an actual offense. He still has 109M subscribers. Those kinds of numbers suggest he is still making 10’s of millions of dollars a year on the platform. This guy got the boot after a 45-prestigious-year career, for a direct quote.

I think he’s right. I think the Times will lose readers over this. Not me, of course. The Times tipped its hand a few years back that this was the path they were going to take. They were heading to become the Paper of Record, but for Wokeness. If they can find enough people to pay for the service of having their political egos massaged, then, hey, “ain’t that America,” and good for them, but don’t pretend that this is anything other than the mirror image of the situation at Fox News or Breitbart.

When I realized this was their direction, I started paying for the WSJ.

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