In the wake of CNN threatening to out a critic if he does not limit his speech in the future, former federal prosecutor and First Amendment champion Ken White has published an eminently sensible post about the incoherence of the present moment's views on free speech, and on the way that partisanship causes us to apply a double standard that excuses \"our bunch\" and damns the \"other side.\" <\/p>\n
As you'd expect from White, he goes beyond the \"pox on both your houses\" and sets out a course for a consistent and coherent view on free speech, speech with consequences, and taking sides. <\/p>\n
We're not consistent in our arguments about when vivid political speech speech inspires, encourages, or promotes violence. We're quicker to accept that it does when used against our team and quicker to deny it when used on the other team. <\/p>\n
We're not consistent in our moral judgments of ugly speech either. We tend to treat it as harmless venting or trolling or truth-telling if it's on our team and as a reflection of moral evil if it's on the other team. <\/p>\n
We're not consistent in our arguments about whether online abuse and threats directed at people in the news are to be taken seriously or not. We tend to downplay them when employed against the other team and treat them as true threats when used against our team. <\/p>\n
We're not consistent in our arguments about whether calling some individual out by name exposes them to danger. We tend to claim it does when the person supports our team and sneer at the issue when the person supports the other team. <\/p>\n
We're not consistent in our treatment of the significance of behavior by obscure individuals. When some obscure person's online speech gets thrust into the limelight, we tend to treat it as fairly representative if they're on the other team and an obvious non-representative outlier if they are on our team. <\/p>\n
We're hopelessly bad at applying consistent legal principles to evaluate whether speech is legally actionable depending on which team it comes from. <\/p>\n
We're pretty inconsistent in our assessment of what social consequences should flow from ugly speech, with our views of proportionality, decency, and charity diverging widely depending on whether the person at issue is on our team or not. <\/p>\n
CNN, Doxing, And A Few Ways In Which We Are Full of Shit As A Political Culture [Ken White\/Popehat] <\/p>\n
Louisiana Republican congressman Clay Higgins shot video of himself talking about the need for invincible U.S. powerwhile wandering the gas chamber at Auschwitz. In his five-minute ramble, Higgins explains the horrors that took place at the camp, where some 1.1m people, mostly Jews, where murdered by the Nazis during World War II. And that this [] <\/p>\n
Described by the BBC as a stunning attack on a female news anchor as if such a thing were at all unusual for the president of the United States of America, Trumps latest twitter barrage concerns the allegedly bleeding badly facelift of MSNBCs low I.Q. Crazy Mika Brzezinski. Brzezinski tweeted back, to mock Trumps famously [] <\/p>\n
Piers Morgan is a British journalist, pundit and Trumpkin who blew his big break in America and now presents breakfast television when not being nasty to women on Twitter. Here he is on Good Morning Britain getting savagely owned by copresenter Susanna Reid. This moment was just too beautiful for words, @susannareid100 @piersmorgan @CharlotteHawkns pic.twitter.com\/hK2n88nBS4 [] <\/p>\n
Excel, Microsofts venerable spreadsheet program has some seriously powerful capabilities. But unless you know where to look in the maze of menus and toolbars, you probably leave the pivot tables and conditional formatting to your offices Excel guru. If you want to level up your skills and steal the title from the resident guru, take [] <\/p>\n
Entertaining bold changes in your career can feel like an abandonment of what youve worked for thus far, but this fallacious mindset can cost you a lot more in the long run than the time spent at your current gig. Change is constant, and building new skills outside of your typical wheelhouse will do much [] <\/p>\n
Immersive 3D sound is usually only possible with an array of surround-sound speakers, or by using headphones with Binaural audio content. And since most readily-available media is mastered for generic stereo, your Dolby 5.1 setup wont automagically add an extra dimension to your listening experience. But you can still simulate a rich audio environment with [] <\/p>\n
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Debullshitifying the free speech debate about CNN and Trump's alt ... - Boing Boing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the wake of CNN threatening to out a critic if he does not limit his speech in the future, former federal prosecutor and First Amendment champion Ken White has published an eminently sensible post about the incoherence of the present moment's views on free speech, and on the way that partisanship causes us to apply a double standard that excuses \"our bunch\" and damns the \"other side.\" As you'd expect from White, he goes beyond the \"pox on both your houses\" and sets out a course for a consistent and coherent view on free speech, speech with consequences, and taking sides. Continue reading