Interesting Links for 13-11-2022

[andrewducker]

1. A material normally only found in meteorites has now been made artificially, and may solve our issues with some rare earth metals

(tags:materials meteor space technology viaSwampers )

2. German transphobe also a Holocaust denier

(tags:Holocaust transgender Germany viaSwampers LGBT )

3. Iran Votes to Execute Protesters (there are 15,000 in prison right now)

(tags:Iran protest death_penalty OhForFucksSake )

4. English people encounter pizza for the first time

(tags:pizza history )

5. Discovery of bronze statue rewrites Italy's Etruscan-Roman history

(tags:history archeology Italy )

6. Why do so few women excel at maths? Sexism, of course

(tags:sexism women mathematics )

7. Major ad firm Omnicom recommends clients pause Twitter ad spend (clients include Apple and McDonalds, and 5,000 more)

(tags:Twitter advertising Doom )

8. How "Wordle editor" became a real job at The New York Times

(tags:games language )

Comments

[simont]

4. A friend of mine used to have (may still have) a recipe book from around the '40s which had a section on pizza, with the subheading "(Italian Tomato Pie)".

[cmcmck]

I recall as a kid reading imported US comics which always referred to 'pizza pie'.

Having Italian (Umbrian) ancestry, this used to plain puzzle me! :o)

[channelpenguin]

Yup. My parents also used to say that when I was young but not for decades now

[calimac]

4) I've had pizza in England, several times at different places, and it was uniformly vile. (Can't speak to Scotland.) It appears you have to go to Italy to get good pizza. (Or America, where the pizza is unlike Italian but can also be very good.)

[alithea]

I am not vastly experienced in Scottish pizza but I can say that I've never had a take away pizza in Scotland that was a patch on either American or Italian pizza. You can buy some nice stone baked pizzas in supermarkets to cook at home these days though, which are at least nice rather than vile (which is also my experience of the likes of Dominoes).

[anef]

I like Zizzi's pizzas, to the extent that I will actually order one in preference to other things on the menu. My Italian class went there for a meal once and I believe my Italian teacher thought they were reasonable.

[jducoeur]

There's really no single concept of American Pizza at this point. There's a lot of old-fashioned neighborhood pizza (much of which is kind of terrible), and many home-grown styles like Detroit Pizza or Chicago Deep Dish that are weird but delightful when made well, but variations of Italian varieties are pretty common at this point, including some places that make solidly good Neapolitan-style. (Albeit less often with an authentically Italian selection of toppings.)

[calimac]

This is why I said "American pizza can be very good." There's lots of really lousy American pizza, especially from major chains, which tend to specialize in "crackers with melted cheese on top." But there is also lots of truly awesome American pizza out there, and I'm talking basic New York-style pizza, which is related to Neapolitan but not the same thing, and leaving out things like Chicago deep-dish, which is really a different dish derived from pizza. I've never had trouble finding good stuff anywhere in the US west coast or northeast, which is where I've done most of my pizza-eating.

[jducoeur]

Right -- my point is mainly that sometimes (although by no means always) it is Italian-style. (This is a thing for me mainly because my favorite weeknight restaurant does very good Neapolitan pizza, and I have it often.)

[cmcmck]

2. Well.....being a trans woman of Latvian Jewish descent what can I say?.........

[wildeabandon]

2. I would not characterise saying that the Nazi's didn't target trans people as Holocaust denial, nor do I think that's how the term is commonly understood.

[andrewducker]

Thw only way I can see that that's true is if you follow a very limited definition of the Holocaust that doesn't include the Roma, LGBT people, and others who were rounded up. And I don't believe that that's the common conception of it nowadays. Certainly the Jewish experience tends to be centered, but I don't believe it's generally considered exclusive.

[wildeabandon]

When I hear someone described as a Holocaust denier, I understand it to mean that they're claiming that it didn't happen, or at the very least was far less serious or extensive than is generally believed.

Claiming that trans people weren't targeted may be factually wrong, and may even be morally wrong to some extent, but it is not remotely equivalent to denying genocide, and suggesting that it is makes me feel uncomfortably like a pawn.

[andrewducker]

It's denying that some aspect of it happened. Which, if nothing else, would make it less extensive, surely?

[wildeabandon]

No. Murdering six million Jews is not less extensive than murdering six million Jews and a handful of trans gentiles in any significant way.

[andrewducker]

I have to say I'm appalled, we've very glad that the law agreed with me.

[andrewducker]

I've been going round and round on this for the past hour, and getting more and more furious about it.

How on earth is it not denying part of the Holocaust to say that it a group wasn't deliberately targetted for extermination, because that group was smaller?

Are you really saying "Hey, there weren't many of group X, so it's fine to say that they weren't targetted?" In what world is that anything even close to not morally reprehensible?

Chunks of my family died during the Holocaust. I'm Jewish, and large chunks of my mother's side are just gone. I toured chunks of Poland and the Czech Republic looking for records with my father and uncle. I am *totally* on board with the idea that Jews were the central part of it.

But saying that it's okay to discount the attempted genocide of any group is wrong. It's just morally hideous.

[wildeabandon]

Ah. I think I better understand the crux of our disagreement now, but I'm not sure that it's going to help.

The thing is that I don't think that there was a systematic attempt to exterminate trans people. I think that individual trans people were targeted for being visibly queer, rather than for their transness qua transness. And that was bad, and claiming that it didn't happen is bad, but it isn't the same as trying to discount an attempted genocide, and that distinction matters.

[liv]

That's not actually the case. The infamous book burning specifically destroyed the papers and records of the institute that was providing medical and pyschological support for women who wanted to medically transition. Yes, some Nazi theorists incorrectly regarded trans women as "gay men", but we don't have to accept Nazi definitions. There was an active campaign to murder trans people and destroy their culture and their institutions. To deny that is Holocaust denial, plain and simple. It wasn't incidental, it was the heart of the Nazi project almost on a level with, and deeply intertwined with, hating Jews.

If you're not aware this it is because Holocaust education is extremely terrible and because the Allied countries, which were also homophobic and transphobic for most of the second half of the 20th century, actively suppressed this history. Read this, it is scholarly and well-referenced, and extremely horrific but I'm not apologizing for that:
https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4188-the-eradication-of-talmudic-abstractions-anti-semitism-transmisogyny-and-the-national-socialist-project

[andrewducker]

Thank you!

[wildeabandon]

Thank you. I stand corrected.

andrewducker - I'm sorry. I was arguing based on an incorrect understanding, and I allowed my discomfort at being (as I thought) unjustifiably included in a victimised group to distract me from the need to make sure I know what I'm talking about before spouting off. I'll try to do better.

[andrewducker]

Thank you. I'm sorry I got prematurely angry - I thought I'd identified the source of our disagreement, when I hadn't, and took it badly. Thank you to Liv for coming to the rescue, and to you for remaining polite!

[danieldwilliam]

but we don't have to accept Nazi definitions

Very much this.

[dewline]

And I remember reading and hearing that a lot of others got rounded up...which is also horrific.

[hairyears]

The key context, here, isn't the entirely unsurprising discovery that a transphobe has Nazi views.

It's that prosecutors in Germany are doing this.

There are certain expressions of support for National Socialism that are *not* free speech in Germany, and Holocaust Denial is one of them.

It hasn't been prosecuted in this context before.

And prosecutions under this particular law carry a huge weight in German public opinion.

I don't think that this significance is communicated in the article, but why would it be? The target audience is immersed in it, no-one even needs to say that it's important, nor why.

...And we, as outsiders, see the detailed arguments - which the German public are following very closely indeed - without realising that the context is more important than the detail.

[hairyears]

(1) is kinda disappointing as an article: it has a lot to say about rare-earth metals, which this particular meteoric metal isn't...

...And next-to nothing about tetrataenite, which is *fascinating*, and the actual subject of the article.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrataenite

[andrewducker]

Thank you, that was interesting!

2

[danieldwilliam]

I'm asking this question with my lawyer's hat on, has Marie-Luise Vollbrecht actually been convicted of Holocaust Denial? The article mentions a couple of times denial of Nazi crimes. Which might be what we call in English Holocaust Denial or might be something similar to but different from Holocaust Denial?

Anyway, perhaps a distinction without a difference. I was mulling over the distinction between genocide and persecuting people because of their sexuality or how they experience gender or their politics and then was reminded of the times I studied Nazi jurisprudence during Jurisprudence and then Civil Liberties classes. It was mostly gibberish designed to put a veneer on the Nazi's main creed that they were going to kill some people because they didn't like them and they could and also because the Nazis had become powerful by telling one group of people it was entirely the fault of some other groups of people that they were having a difficult time and they couldn't back of out of that once they were in charge.

Also reminded of the words of AJP Taylor I think - you have to remember that they were mad.

So I'm not 100% convinced that delving in to the intentions of the Nazis when thinking about their crimes is helpful.

(My mum and I had been having a slow conversation about Natural Law and the differences between crimes against humanity and crimes against peace and war crimes. Sadly she was a German Legal Postivist about this sort of thing. There's no helping some people.)

Re: 2

[andrewducker]

"has Marie-Luise Vollbrecht actually been convicted of Holocaust Denial"

No. She was *called* a Holocaust denier, asked a court to say that they weren't allowed to call her that, and the court said "They can totally call you that, because you are one".

This is not the same as being found guilty of Holocaust Denial. But now that a court has said that she is one, it's entirely possible that the justice system is taking note and she will be. Or that they might decide that the balance of evidence is good enough for individuals to call her one, but not good enough for the state to charge her as one.

I think that in any large group, once you start telling people that X is to blame, and then enough of them join because of your stated hatred of X, then the group probably counts as being an X-hating group.

Also, if you're willing to send people off to the gas chambers for being X because it furthers your goals, then you're treating them as effectively sub-human, and thus can probably be justifiably called X-hating, even if your actual feelings are stark indifference to their fate.

I'd be delighted to understand more about your loathing of legal positivism :-)

Re: 2

[danieldwilliam]

(1) Ah, there may be a distinction going on here between civil defamation (or the German equivalent) and the German criminal code. Perhaps a case of "If you say these sorts of things that *might* not actually make you a Holocaust Denier but it associates you closely enough with that sort of remark and that sort of person that your reputation hasn't suffered if someone actually calls you a Holocaust Denier.

(2a) "I think that in any large group, once you start telling people that X is to blame, and then enough of them join because of your stated hatred of X, then the group probably counts as being an X-hating group."

I agree.

(2b) "
Also, if you're willing to send people off to the gas chambers for being X because it furthers your goals, then you're treating them as effectively sub-human, and thus can probably be justifiably called X-hating, even if your actual feelings are stark indifference to their fate."

I also agree. I also think that if you are sending lots of people (or groups of people to be mass murdered is pretty secondary to your reasons for being an X-hating or Y-hating organisation.

(3) Specifically German Legal Positivism, mostly because it divorces the study of law from the law's grounding as a useful tool for human society and as something either grounded in morality (or at least shared systems of ethics) or designed to advance morality in society. It is similar to my concerns about how economics as a science behaves - cut away from the actual humans and humanity in the system.

I think you can establish some objective moral positions in a *human* society. Even you can't, I still think it is legitimate to say that a commonly shared moral position has some legitimacy especially when it is linked to some genuine improvements in utility. I am both a strong form and weak form Natural Lawyer. I also think that law is a tool that helps humans live in dense, complex urban environments and therefore contributes to our material and cultural richness. I also think that law has a role in actively shaping our morality and our ethics. We can agree that we *ought* to do more X and less Y and then make laws that support us in achieving that goal.

So my gripe with German Legal Positivism is that it sees the law as an abstract thing and not as a human tool for humans to use.

Re: 2

[andrewducker]

(3) Ah, gotcha. I think that there is definitely space to say "The law is frequently implemented as a system with no connection to morality, and as a purely mechanical process" - as part of studying how law is done. But in that case you also need to examine things like jury nullification, and the options that the judges and juries have to say "No, screw this, we're doing the right thing", and how they operate as escape hatches in the system.

The idea that law is wholly a system that can merely operate as a set of rules was, I hoped, made to look very foolish when AI/"logical rules system" approaches to law failed utterly in the 80s, and also when postmodern approaches to language made it clear that language/logic/reality all inhabit different levels of abstraction and cannot perfectly map onto each other.

Re: 2

[danieldwilliam]

Jury nullification is why I'm an American Legal Realist. Even in a system without juries and one with quite technocratic and positivist judges you can't get away from the impact of how those judges actually behave or how the legal system and society as a whole decides which cases to bring forward.

I do think there is a role for studying law in the abstract. I think any properly constituted legal system ought to have a great deal of internally consistent logic in it and be amenable to prediction. You can be a useful legal technician without knowing why a particular law is the law. But a legal system isn't dealing in spherical cows *and* I object to the notion that one *ought* to separate the law from its function in human society.

(And some of the same thinking informs my scepticism about block-chain as a contractual or monetary tool - some of this stuff is very messy *and* the legitimacy of decisions might actually rest on them being made by a human. )

Re: 2

[andrewducker]

I dated a very smart legal academic once, and she did an awesome job of correcting my spherical cow thinking about law!

I agree that predictable law is good - if you can't make a good stab at telling both whether you are breaking the law, and how close you are to a legal grey area then it makes life vastly more risky. But yeah, law is a tool for making society better, and we need to keep that in mind.

Re: 2

[danieldwilliam]

On reflection I am cross at myself for missing the Scots Law / Latin pun of spherical causa

Condictio causa data causa non secuta being a type of legal action one can raise in Scots Law and known - at least in my Unjustified Enrichment class as the Condictio Cows and Ducks and Cows and Sheep.

Re: 2

[andrewducker]

I rather like that!

Discovery of bronze statue rewrites Italy's Etruscan-Roman history

[anef]

Well, no, it doesn't. Current thinking is that Etruscan culture merged into Roman culture, with the Romans adopting many of the Etruscans' customs and practices, from how they built their temples, foretold the future (through augury) and possibly even gladiatorial games. A number of Roman family names were of Etruscan origin.
So the idea that Roman and Etruscan gods were worshipped together is completely unsurprising.

[jducoeur]

3 - I'm behind on the news, so perhaps events have passed me by, but a cynical part of me looks at this as a ploy so that Khamenei can show how magnanimous he is by ordering that their executions be commuted in exchange for, oh, a mere ten-year prison sentence...