This image, of a black man as the President of the United States, was barely imaginable by most of us ten years ago. Colin Powell,* maybe. Jesse Jackson, not really. But Powell (fairly) considered the cost to his family, and the very real risk to his life.
This guy Obama made history, and his electoral success broke a barrier. And I think that’s good. Whether you like his politics or not.
– P
* First African American US Secretary of State. http://www.biography.com/people/colin-powell-9445708
Journalist Anita McNaught (pic: via NZ Herald)
From one of the most thoughtful and illuminating* ‘Twelve Questions’ columns I’ve read …
NZ Herald: Knowing what you know now about the media, would you still want to be a journalist if you were starting out in 2012?
Anita McNaught: It has changed, but with a few reservations I love the way it has evolved. I value the expansion of input sources, citizen journalism, blogging and Twitter. I am so excited by what technology can offer as tools to tell stories and verify claims – satellites; smaller, simpler cameras; smart phones; Wi-Fi. But journalism is still too much a corporate commodity. And it’s hard now for journalists to openly question – let alone oppose – those who ultimately pay their salaries. Climate change is a much bigger story than Al Qaeda. The world economic crisis is the greatest unfolding investigative story ever still to be completely told. People are living in a criminal system masquerading as “free market economics”. But is the corporate media equipped to tackle this?
Read Twelve Questions with Anita McNaught at the NZ Herald website.
– P
* in stark contrast to a local politician whose opaque responses recently (‘Q: Why do you think you polarise people? A: I have very clear views.) struck me as … lacking in that regard. See: Twelve Questions with Judith Collins.
These notes (by Nat Torkington @gnat — available as google doc here) are from discussion/part of Judge David Harvey‘s presentation at Nethui underway now in Auckland. They directly touch on some of the recent discussion we’ve had on the topic of online free speech and harassment.
[Harvey:] This session looking at bad behaviour online. Law Commission said that existing law does address bad behaviour. First question: what do we understand by “bad behaviour” and what extent are we prepared to see restriction on free speech and expression online? Look at the harms that are occurring and take it from there.
Audience: Back in the days of Usenet, online forums, every other community that existed online, common practice that community established its own standards. I have a problem with this because I see a lot of abuse of the idea of “bad behaviour” to be anything from disagreeing with someone. I see it misapplied liberally these days. Not in favour of harassment, but allowed to have a personal opinion.
Harvey: If you used Usenet, you’ll recall there was some robust discussion.
Audience: That’s where “trolling” came from At that point does community enforcement and banning users become a civil issue?
Harvey: You’re suggesting online communities should regulate themselves?
Audience: At what point does say “get out” not enough, become a case for the legal system?
Harvey: Will avoid the second part, go to the first part and ask for some views. Within an environment, a community such as Usenet, that could be fine. But the problem that we’re getting is people setting up web pages that can be used for abuse, going beyond defamation, very hurtful. Bloggers using blogs as means of causing other people distress. People using Twitter and FB as means of upsetting people. Twitter and FaceBook may be examples of your community, but what about blogs and webpages, what community will regulate those? [Audience: ah, yes!] We are looking at a whole range of protocols across the Internet.
Audience: I had a question (relating to publications and books) … … … the difference between hurtful speech and things that are causing people distress. What are facts for one person can be distressing for another. Do we have a definition for what is required? Is it sufficient that something causes someone distress?
Harvey: The answer to your question is yes, and indeed it can be true. It comes under the umbrella of the Harassment act. At the moment there’s a two-stage test: there’s something that’s hurtful to me, and I’m disturbed by it. You might say “what? He’s disturbed by it? That’s nothing”. You must look at it from my subjective point of view. Then you must have an objective test: is it reasonable for a person in my circumstances to see it that way. There are circumstances when the truth has given offence. …
Have a read of his notes thanks to @gnat
There’s quite a bit of discussion about ‘take-down’ orders as a remedy (or not) and Russell Brown shares the idea that moderating ‘defamatory or offensive’ content in a comment stream or [annotating] ‘invalid materials’ is worthwhile.
In my own case, I sometimes add a note that an assertion is being questioned or disputed by the relevant party. It’s not ideal, but a sort of half-way house when something is beyond the scope of this blog to determine the objective ‘truth’ and discussion about it seems reasonable.
—
It seems eventually a video of Judge Harvey’s presentation will be available — here for instance: http://www.r2.co.nz/20120711/recordings.htm
– P
PS This thought in the notes, from blogger/propagandist David Farrar (I think), echoes my own philosophical approach to ‘derogatory’ comment about me sitting on the web:
If [the] commission made a finding of fact [about false information published on the web], media would link to it and it’d be high rank on Google. I think the best way to fight bad information is to put out more good information.
Yeah, agreed. As I said to Sarah recently about the tweebs trying to mess with my reputation:
My own approach was to just keep blogging good stuff and let the search engines eventually work out what was irrelevant.
That’s sort of where I was heading, too, with the ideas in ‘The curse of hypervigilance‘. Try to keep things in perspective in the ‘wild west’ of cyberspace.
talkingpointsmemo.com (click)
From Josh Marshall at talkingpointsmemo.com. He calls it ‘chutzpam’.
I call it bleurgh!
In other words, the estimable businessmen and women at realinsurance.com.au have been paying SEO companies to spam the comment sections of sites around the globe. But now Google’s new search algorithms are making that legacy spam really damaging. So now they’re sending out cease and desist notices to the victims of their earlier spamming demanding that they search their archives and remove their spam.
Crikey! “shameless and awful” sounds about right.
The company is Australian, apparently. Remind you of anyone?
– P
via John Gruber daringfireball.net
Reviving memories of Edie Brickell got me thinking about her, how happy she seemed, and how she seemed to disappear after marrying Paul Simon.
Here’s a line from a Jan 2011 AP interview ‘Edie Brickell releases records full of joy‘ talking about how her long-awaited 2011 CDs, the eponymous “Edie Brickell” and “The Gaddabouts”. Both had been in the works for a decade and both were received as “joyous“, each with a really positive vibe, despite some tragedy occurring in her circle of concern.
[…] Was that positive vibe by design?
Brickell: It’s just an evolution of spirit and consciousness, I think. In my late 20s, I thought, “Wow, things are fine for me. Why do I write sad songs? Why am I melancholy?” And I realized that I had emotional habits from my youth. … I think you get stuck in those emotional habits. If you don’t express a lot of joy early on, I don’t think you know how to later. [emphasis added]
Wow. That idea about getting stuck in emotional habits strikes me as worth letting in — and contemplating. (As in asking: ‘How do I do that?’)
It resonates with me, given also what we’ve been discussing here, in parts: Disengaging from destructive, hurtful situations and actions that perpetuate conflict.
Good thought.
Someone I love popped this up on her Facebook wall recently and I saw it tonight:
Nice. I would have written ‘respect yourself enough to …’ But still nice.
– P
I had this Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians album Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars virtually on permanent rotate in my car’s cassette player (!!) when it came out. Along with Chuck Girard’s Written on the Wind, Paul Clark’s Hand to the Plow and Vangelis’ Chariots of Fire. Good times.
Fantastic music.
Dedicated to Cally.
– P
pic: Bob Biess - click
I tend towards no censorship beyond filtering spam (thank you Akismet) and throwing out the garbage. Recently scrubone and I had a wee interchange over his desire to call someone ‘crazy’ and I’ve filtered a few other rants just ‘cos. No big deal. Those people are welcome to comment — as is anyone — if they bring some value. Some of Jacqueline and Cally’s comments, among others, can be pretty brusque but, well, OK. We’re adults.
In the spirit of the excellent terms and conditions of the gay dating website that someone subscribed this blog to (see ‘Some useful cyber citizen guidelines‘), here’s another dose of thoughtfulness considering internet comments:
From www.aranyilaci.neobase.hu‘s guide to the Slashcomments moderation system (1):
What is a Good Comment? A Bad Comment?
- Good Comments are insightful. You read them and are better off having read them. They add new information to a discussion. They are clear, hopefully well written, or maybe amusing. These are the gems we’re looking for, and they deserve to be promoted.
- Average Comments might be slightly offtopic, but still might be worth reading. They might be redundant. They might be a ‘Me Too’ article. They might say something painfully obvious. They don’t detract from the discussion, but they don’t necessarily significantly add to it. They are the comments that require the most attention from the moderators, and they also represent the bulk of the comments. (Score: 0-1)
- Bad Comments are flamebait. Bad comments have nothing to do with the article they are attached to. They call someone names. They ridicule someone for having a different opinion without backing it up with anything more tangible than strong words. Bad comments are repeats of something said 15 times already making it quite apparent that the writer didn’t read the previous comments. They use foul language. They are hard to read or just don’t make any sense. They detract from the article they are attached to.
What do the choices in the moderation drop-down boxes mean?
- Offtopic — A comment which has nothing to do with the story it’s linked to is Offtopic.
- Flamebait — Flamebait refers to comments whose sole purpose is to insult and enrage. If someone is not-so-subtly picking a fight (racial insults are a dead giveaway), it’s Flamebait.
- Troll — A Troll is similar to Flamebait, but slightly more refined. This is a prank comment intended to provoke indignant (or just confused) responses. A Troll might mix up vital facts or otherwise distort reality, to make other readers react with helpful “corrections.” Trolling is the online equivalent of intentionally dialing wrong numbers just to waste other people’s time.
When I gently pointed to what some might call errors in this notice I was assured the threat of being shot on the premises was what was intended.
Really.
– P
image: cover of Hallucination - Famous Stranger (visualcrack.info - click)
Like most people (I think), I find it interesting, at times fascinating, to speculate about WHY people do and say what they do … WHY they might express views that they hold in the way they do … and WHY they enter into discussions or debates (and sometimes flame wars) on the internet.
But I’ve learned it’s pretty futile.
Futile? Yep. Because reliably identifying people’s motivations for anything is an all-but-impossible task at the best of times — even if it seems obvious, and, perhaps surprisingly, even if they tell you what they think is driving their actions.
I described in another context (see ‘When propaganda turns into ‘demonizing’ …‘
Targeting individuals is always tricky. Motivations are near-impossible to divine. ‘Sympathies’ even more so. There’s usually a whole lot of hallucination going on.
or here when discussing what psychology calls the fundamental attribution error in a context of ‘I know why you’re being so mean’:
Essentially, the fundamental attribution error involves placing a heavy emphasis on internal personality characteristics to explain someone’s behaviour in a given situation, rather than thinking about external situational factors.
Amateur psychologists are everywhere — quick to offer a ‘diagnosis’ like ‘That b*tch is crazy’ or the more academic ‘Judging by his pattern of behaviour, he appears to be a sociopath … with narcissistic personality disorder. And a compulsive liar’.
Wearing a mask: Aggressive, anonymous comment makes me ponder. (image: AP - click)
I got to thinking about this again because I’ve recently expressed disrespect for an anonymous blogger’s published comments. (For a change. Ha!) This anonymous blogger is someone with whom I sense I might agree about all number of other matters, and whose company I might enjoy.
My lack of respect for his actions (leading me to label him ‘nasty’) is on the basis of his willingness to repeatedly denigrate someone: insulting them and describing them as ‘crazy’ on the basis of their written remarks. His anonymous condemnation of this person (who blogs in their own name) and his on-going aggressive treatment of them is, in my view, largely an expression of tribalism.
See what I’m doing there? Projecting. It’s natural to reinforce previously held beliefs by filtering or constructing arguments that ‘fit the thesis’. (Yes, it’s shallow, I know, but we all fall into that trap.)
We homo sapiens can be (at least partially) defined by our co-operative traits: our tendency to form bands, teams, communities and societies. The ‘shadow’ of that, sadly, is our terrible practice of ‘us and them’-ness. Continue reading →
Rachel Maddow. (image Huffington Post)
“Yesterday was like a four-star show, I was totally into it,” she says. “Today and Monday – like, blaagh. Like, doesn’t get any worse. I’ve been doing this for four years! Why do I still have one-star shows? It’s me – failure.”
I ask her why she is so hard on herself. “My reaction to that is to say, ‘Oh, another bad thing about myself is that I’ve allowed you to see that I’m hard on myself,'” she says. “The fact that you’re seeing me sweat is like, ‘Ah, well, I’m failing on that, too.'”
Maddow suffers, she says, from “cyclical” depression. “One of the manifestations of depression for me is that I lose my will. And I thereby lose my ability to focus. I don’t think I’ll ever have the day-to-day consistency in my performance that something like This American Life has. If I’m not depressed and I’m on and I can focus and I can think through something hard and without interruption and without existential emptiness that comes from depression, that gives me – not mania. But I exalt. I exalt in not being depressed.” …
This stuff is real and don’t let anybody tell you it ain’t.
People who suffer from depression achieve results through it (like in through dense fog, or pea soup), in spite of it, sometimes defying it. But they’re not necessarily good company to us (non-sufferers) or to themselves during the process.
As I said to a commenter at the weekend: ‘Let’s cut each other some slack.’ Huh?
– P
pic: Martin Biskoping via flickr (Creative Commons license - click)
Barrister Carl Gardner, writing at Head of Legal blog:
… All in all, I think the [UK] Supreme Court made quite a hash of the Assange case. I’m not the only critic, either – Tiina Pajuste at the CJICL Blog argues that they were wrong to bring in the notorious Vienna Convention point at all […] and Cameron Miles argues with her in the same place that the Supreme Court’s use of the Vienna Convention was flawed.
A fascinating read, especially for its canvassing of ‘spy fiction’ ideas, like smuggling him out in an Ecuadorian diplomatic bag, or appointing him to a UN delegate role …
… the fact that British officials couldn’t lawfully open a diplomatic bag containing Assange does not mean an airline is obliged to carry it. Given the complex legal issues here, I wouldn’t blame any carrier at the moment from refusing to take an Ecuadorian crate big enough to contain a man. And even if they did, I wouldn’t fancy being sealed into a crate for a long flight to South America, perhaps via Madrid. The diplomatic bag idea really is best left to fiction.
More realistic would be the possibility of appointing Assange as a “diplomatic courier” with the task of taking a diplomatic bag (containing a few blank papers perhaps, or a thank-you note to President Rafael Correa).
– P
via Cassie Findlay
I spotted this statement from Susan Benn on behalf of the Julian Assange Defence Fund over the weekend, which makes some good points about the challenge the Swedish and British authorities (surely) must be having trying to maintain the pretense that they’re treating Julian Assange as they would any other ‘person of interest’. The ludicrous absurdity of their positions would be funny if it wasn’t so deadly serious.
Something that *is* funny is the cop with the flattened visor marching back and forth in the background — promenading, I think — for the sake of the cameras? And the tourists who join him for picture-taking. People are odd. (All of us, I mean.)
Press Association video, via The Guardian
– P
Return to Wormwood
My return to Wormwood was a long one. Twice I lost my way, the first time, along a short corridor: I discovered it catty-cornered within a small alcove against the wall at the far end of the building.
The corridor, lined with a sack-like material that I believed to be scrim, was long with two turns, one to the right, and the other to the left. Scrim is an old-fashioned wall covering, once used during the early twentieth and late nineteenth centuries as a base onto which wallpaper is adhered. I only mention the scrim here because of what happened later, when I retraced my steps.
The same strange process that lit the ballrooms was also present here, but I found it more disconcerting in the narrow space than in that of the vastness of the ballrooms. The light in the corridor seemed to stretch and distort the narrow space, giving it the appearance of a much longer and much wider area, than it really was.
The corridor led me to a bedroom. Continue reading →
image: downwardspiralintothevortex.blogspot.co.nz/ (click)
Recent angst-ridden discussion about comments published on the internet have reminded me of a conclusion I reached when I was myself the subject of scurrilous anonymous comment: It can bloody hurt. But some of the pain is, sadly, self-inflicted.
We’ve seen again and again how anonymity seems to loosen people’s grip on civility. Some of the foulest things are written by people hiding behind ‘handles’ … or bloggers who maintain a nom-de-plume or alter-ego/secret identity.
It’s natural to feel offended and hurt by what you perceive as ‘attacks’ from others. Somehow, that offence is multiplied when your accuser/libeler does it from behind a mask.
But here’s the thing I want to get to: Mostly, the rest of the world really doesn’t give a rat’s arse what other people, especially anonymous people, spit on you. Seriously.
As Eleanor Roosevelt is credited with saying (I always thought it was Oscar Wilde):
“You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.”
Speaking from my own personal experience, I would sometimes feel wounded by reading misleading statements, abuse and innuendo published about me. Remember, Lemony Snickett’s distinction about reading bad news…
“It is much, much worse to receive bad news through the written word than by somebody simply telling you, and I’m sure you’ll understand why. When somebody simply tells you bad news, you hear it once, and that’s the end of it. But when bad news is written down, whether in a letter or a newspaper or on your arm in felt tip pen, each time you read it, you feel as if you are receiving the news again and again.”
Lies and nasty comments published on internet forums would sometimes seem to ‘shriek’ at me. Demanding my attention, it seemed. I know from others the ‘Oh my, what are they saying now?’ thing can also be unsettling. (That aspect doesn’t worry me too much.)
But remember this:
Continue reading →
