Interesting Links for 19-07-2020

[andrewducker]

This is a lovely story of a guy who kept pushing himself, even when he thought he wasn't good enough.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1284184707110809600.html
(tags:food inspiration cooking )

Richard Feynman Explains how fire works

(tags:fire sun explanations RichardFeynman video )

Hackers Tell the Story of the Twitter Attack From the Inside

(tags:hacking twitter )

What Accounts For High Coronavirus Positivity Rates Among Florida Kids?

(tags:children virus pandemic viaEatSoylentGreen )

When physics simulations go wrong

(tags:physics simulation video )

How The Guardian helped transphobes. (Which is why they're getting no money from me)

(tags:guardian bigotry LGBT transgender )

How Newton came to publish his laws of gravity

(tags:history mathematics physics space gravity )

24 Warrior Women Of Different Body Types

(tags:women art )

'No DSS' letting bans ruled unlawful

(tags:welfare housing law GoodNews )

Comments

[cmcmck]

The Guardian has been doing this for years.

What's surprising is how long it's taken liberal people to wake up to what they are doing. :o(

[andrewducker]

I'm glad that it's finally become more unaccceptable for them to do it.

[mountainkiss]

I am going to make my usual protest against not supporting the Guardian. That's not because I excuse their views on transphobia, which I think are unconscionable. It's because this is a pattern of behaviour among liberals that I believe is profoundly counterproductive. The wider context is that conservatives do not apply this standard of perfection to one another; they save their firepower for those on the left, rather than turning it on one another. This, more than anything else, is what skews the balance of power towards the right, again and again.

I think people on the left need to ask themselves: do I truly believe that the world is better off without the Guardian? If the answer is genuinely yes, that's one thing. But it's not going to be replaced by a left wing organ with higher standards that never makes mistakes. It's going to be replaced by The Times; that's where its readers will go.

[andrewducker]

If they'd published racist articles which fraudulently made things worse for Jews world you still be telling me that I should support them anyway?

Because while they're spreading bigotry I will absolutely not, ever, support them. If they burn to the ground I will support whoever comes along who might replace them. I pay the NY Times. I pay the Independent. The Guardian can go bust.

[mountainkiss]

It would depend on the ratio of this to other coverage, and the wider context in which they existed. See argument above.

[andrewducker]

I'm afraid I'd view people paying to support a newspaper which published anti-Semitism as being evil.

Edit: Particularly in a society where the majority were against it. As they are with transphobia.

Second edit: For clarity, that's "committing an evil act" not "being a person who is overall evil".

[mountainkiss]

In that case I think you view me as being evil. I've just quadrupled my subscription to the Guardian on reading about its problems. I don't think it is unproblematic - and I have also written to it about its policies towards transphobia on more than one occasion - but I am absolutely clear in my mind that the world is better with it than without it.

I genuinely think, as I think we've talked about before, that the standards set by those on the left for others on that side are the single biggest contributor to the continued dominance of the right despite their being both incompetent and increasingly out of step with the views of the majority. There are scientific reasons for it; see the work of Jonathan Haidt. I notice the tendency towards it in myself and have to fight it hard. But it was very clear to me, reading the discourse on the left before the election in December 2019, that there would be a substantial Conservative victory, and I think a lot of people on the left need to search their soul as to their part in that. Your mileage may differ.

[andrewducker]

It really really does. There are things I will compromise on, but human rights are not one of them, particularly when there are alternatives.

[theandrewhickey]

The problem here is you're talking about "others on that side".
I'm on the side of trans people being allowed to live their lives in peace.
The Guardian is on the side of them being legislated out of existence.
That's not the same side. They're on the same side as the Conservatives and the fascists when it comes to the lives of my friends, and I stand by my friends.

[mountainkiss]

I think it likely that the consequence of the loss of the Guardian would ultimately be far more damaging to the trans community (and others who are not represented by a right-wing government) than its continued existence. But views on this legitimately differ.

[calimac]

So do you think that supporting people who do evil because they're otherwise "on your side" is a good thing?

In the US, we see the tactical moves you describe. Evangelicals, for instance, support DT despite his total lack of support for evangelical morality. And yes, that helps him win. But what is it doing in the long run? It's disgusting everyone else and discrediting the evangelical movement. Turning back to the UK, if transphobia becomes "the voice of the Left," it discredits the Left. You really want to support that?

[mountainkiss]

I can't say this many more different ways than I have done.

First, what I want is what's ultimately going to get the best outcome for the most people, including in particular the most disadvantaged. My personal belief is that this is the continued existence of the Guardian, which I do not regard as forever fixed in its editorial policy.

Second, I don't think the Guardian's trans policy is good, but I don't think it's its only or a typical policy. Overall, I regard its journalism as a net good. There are potentially (though not certainly; this is hypothetical) things it could do that I would regard as so unforgivable that I'd no longer wish it to exist and come to regard its destruction as a better outcome than its redemption, but I am currently a very long way from that place.

Third, I think the best way I've expressed this is in my first comment on the topic: I passionately believe that people on the left are best served by saving their firepower for the other side. I think the argument that the Guardian is on the side of the Conservatives is not supported by the vast majority of its writing. The reason that Conservatives win again and again is that they can, ultimately, band together and prioritise their shared agenda over their differences. It shames me deeply that the left cannot do that, and I regard it as one of the primary reasons that it rarely holds power.

[andrewducker]

It is *the Guardian* which is attacking it's own side. Trans people didn't start this. *The Guardian* attacked people.

Yes, we should save our attacks for our own side. And once The Guardian starts doing this, it will be an actual positive force and not a negative one.

But once you accept bigots on your side then you drive away good people. And then if you want power then you need more bigots to make up the numbers.

If you want to fix this then you need to start with the people who are attacking minorities while claiming to be on the progressive side.

[andrewducker]

Your approach seems to be to say "Minorities, unquestioningly support people who are oppressing you, because other people will oppress you worse."

And I just can't see that working. The only way it's going to work is if anti-Conservative people *stop oppressing each other*.

[calimac]

You have indeed said it as clearly as you can. Your answer to my questions is "yes." "Saving firepower for the other side" means for you violating your principles for tactical gains which you do not accept are temporary and illusory. You don't realize that the Guardian has gone over to the other side. At least as far as trans issues are concerned, and I'm not going to look my trans friends in the face and say that's of no concern to me. The fact that one agrees with the Guardian on some issues is meaningless. There are issues on which we agree with the Times, with Boris, and even DT. (DT says infrastructure is one of the US's most urgent problems, and I couldn't agree more. I just don't think he's going to do anything about it. And I don't think the Guardian is going to do any good on liberal causes so long as they remain nakedly transphobic.)

[mountainkiss]

I do see and understand your argument, but to me, mine is stronger. I just keep reading your and Andy's comments and again and again having the same thought: "...and this is why the worst government in history has an 80 seat majority".

I think it's fine to disagree on this. People can and should act according to their own conscience and beliefs and will inevitably draw lines in different places. Ideally it would be better to be able to have a higher quality of conversation around it, but maybe this just can't be the medium for that. I think there are probably diminishing returns in continuing to argue, so I thank you for your openness and will pause here.

[andrewducker]

Edit: deleted. I think there's a useful discussion to be had. But probably one that starts over.

[mountainkiss]

That is a long way from what I meant to imply! Thank you for saying this; it enables me to clarify. If anything, I mean, the opposite: that Labour party members were so focused on their own definition of "purity" (not a word I'd choose, but it'll do) that they turned on other factions with different definitions and standards (see e.g. this conversation), at the expense of building coalitions and creating shared narratives that could have made them electable.

To be fair, I do not think there is only one reason why there is an 80 seat majority.

[andrewducker]

I agree that different groups built different factions, and refused to work together. But I'm not sure that this is what caused the issue.

There were just very different priorities. Labour refused to make it the "EU Election" because (a) they are about more than that and (b) they weren't united in the subject and wanted to attract voters from all sides. This meant they couldn't agree any kind of even informal pact based around "Well, we all support the EU". Because they didn't.

I agree that Labour party infighting really didn't help.

But I think that a lot of the issue there was down to things like The Guardian spending the previous couple of years being anti-Corbyn. Because fundamentally you can't tell the voters to vote differently - and the post election articles seemed to show that a lot of Northern people had decided that Corbyn wasn't someone they trusted to run the country. And they valued that more than they valued getting the Conservatives out.

So I do wish that Labour had been willing to be a pro-EU party, and that the Guardian had been willing to be a pro-Corbyn newspaper. Both of those would definitely have helped. As would, I agree, Labour MPs not talking down their leadership regularly.

But I don't see how any of that has me supporting bigotry. The range of reasonable differences we need to support has edges. And bigotry that *the nation as a whole does not support* is definitely beyond that range. It doesn't make the left any more electable. It does the reverse.

[mountainkiss]

I think it is fine for us to disagree on this.

[mountainkiss]

Happy for you to delete any of my comments if you'd prefer.

[andrewducker]

Nope. All fine.

And I've replied to your reply because I thought we'd found a useful point of discussion which might produce a bit more light.

[mountainkiss]

I didn't feel that the tone was sufficiently different from previous to have any different outcome.

[andrewducker]

Ah well.

[calimac]

Very well, but I trust you will not complain if I have an additional final comment of my own, which is that I think the Tory victory occurred for the exact opposite reason, that it was for the opposition failing to define itself rather than failing to embrace the contradictions. Surely what hurt Labour most was its failure to expunge anti-Semitism and its failure to define its position on Brexit.

[mountainkiss]

I think you need to embrace the contradictions first in order to define yourself successfully with any chance of being electoral. Otherwise the set of people who agree with you will always be too small.

[calimac]

No. You don't want to embrace the contradictions, you want to find a larger and more healing unity above those contradictions. But you can't heal anything by finding common cause with anti-Semites and transphobes, any more than the US Republicans can by embracing neo-Confederates.

[mountainkiss]

I really don't think we're going to get any further with this.

[calimac]

If you think that embracing transphobes is the way to go (how do you feel about anti-Semites?), then we certainly aren't. Especially because doing so is going to, as we have amply demonstrated here, going to generate exactly the enervating arguments with people who actually have a sense of morality that you say you're trying to prevent by eliding one.