This is the episode where I express my awe at the work of Maggie Nelson.
Montel Williams threw an elbow at a priest who assaulted him, and his parents immediately quit the Catholic Church & he never had to go again. What is it called when parents express this kind of supreme faith in their children?
After being bused to a newly integrated school, where he was taunted and savaged by a racist teacher for a single misspelling, Williams resolved to “not let anyone define him” and joined the Marines. Was this individualism sufficiently antiracist?
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Listening to audiobook of yet another academic bestseller warning of the apocalypse caused by the internet, esp. “cybertrolls.” I feel like warnings to Victorian women abt “licentiousness” & “bad men” in the city were more specific. Seriously what internet are they talking about
How is this science? There are upsetting provocateurs in some precincts of computer networks and thus our brains are broken and the world is over — I get trolled a lot & I probably encounter one troll/week
Blowing past random subway small talk like “we are all in filter bubbles” or “echo chambers” without evidence of then then some false precision about the rise in “anxiety” based on lab studies in the social sciences and voila tons of funding
Years ago a Mac shop dude recommended software called RAM Doubler to boost my RAM.
My computer failed & I went back a months later. What? he said in disbelief. You’re running RAM Doubler?! We call that RAM TROUBLER! 😂 Everyone howled with laughter.
The argument here is that Tom Cotton has emerged as a hero of democracy so the “left” should be ashamed of condemning his “Send in the Troops” op-ed in June of 2020. thedailybeast.com/how-tom-cotton…
But maybe the blowback that piece got had a salubrious effect.
It brought on the moral crisis at the NYT that led to the excellent reworking of the op-ed page, and it inspired the rise of so many righteous, well-capitalized voices who believe they are fighting illiberalism.
And maybe the “cancelation” of June, 2020, *didn’t* actually goad Cotton to more extreme positions (“don’t call them racists they’ll just get more racist!”) but made him rethink those positions.