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Feb 8 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Santa Barbara is insanely beautiful
Image
This is the view from literally some random UCSB parking lot. How is it that any Californian teen who can get in here chooses not to go? Despite the weird mascot etc. Image
This is very embarrassing but I thought it was the banana slugs, which is actually UCSC.

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More from @jessesingal

Jesse Singal Profile picture
Feb 5
Todd GItlin died. He was a giant and I haven't read enough of his stuff, but the book of his I did read recently, "The Twilight of Common Dreams," really helped me put some recent culture-war stuff in perspective

amazon.com/Twilight-Commo…
2/ Actually wanted to see if his publisher would let me republish the first chapter in my newsletter (book's almost 30 years old), but never heard back. My last email to him was thanking him for it. (To be clear I don't think we met in person ever -- were just listerv-mates.) Image
3/ Good obit

nytimes.com/2022/02/05/us/…
Read 4 tweets
Jesse Singal Profile picture
Feb 2
1/ I think a HUGE amount depends on whether @KBAndersen is right about this. If I had to guess the internet has actually not converted massive numbers of people to beliefs they wouldn't have held otherwise -- I bet the effect is at the margins. Very difficult thing to prove. Image
2/ The reason I think this is that our beliefs tend to be rather overdetermined. Most of us are anchored very tightly in place, cognitively, by our social/familial/religious/political/cultural ties. We don't get batted around much by information or argumentation.
3/ At the very least, any theoretical account of why this might be true would have to grapple with the fact that the internet also offers a huge amount of genuinely helpful fact-checking that likely gets people on the off ramp AWAY from Crazyville
Read 4 tweets
Jesse Singal Profile picture
Feb 1
1/ This dude said in his godawful Matthew Shepard episode of You're Wrong About that people who care about the actual truth of what happened in situations like that killing or Michael Brown's (regarding whether he had his hands up) are missing the point because concerns with the Image
2/ actual facts could distract people from Deeper Truths and/or provide succor to political conservatives. He is on record saying that whether we should fact-check or fight misinformation depends wholly on who benefits from a given claim. The high horse is unwarranted.
3/ Hobbes' argument is structured similarly to Jeet's. It turns out that yes, *technically* plenty of people in our tribe also spread misinformation but you see we've decided that that's not as bad for [reasons], so there shouldn't be a clampdown.

Read 5 tweets
Jesse Singal Profile picture
Jan 26
1/Deleting this tweet because a few people thought it was unfair and I don't have the bandwidth to fully defend it at the moment (which means I shouldn't have tweeted it!). But briefly: I am not saying these critics are the same as SJG, but the style/tactic is very, very similar.
2/ Harden bends over backward to explain why what she's saying isn't "genetic determinism," right down to getting into the philosophical weeds of what we mean by causation, explaining how different worlds/cultural structures would cause the same genes to lead to totally different
3/ outcomes, etc. etc. To read her book and then say she is "nudging the reader towards genetic determinism" is, imo, dishonest, and the same cheap style of argument that's been endemic for decades: you deal not with the text, but with what someone *could* be saying, or how
Read 4 tweets
Jesse Singal Profile picture
Jan 21
1/ A lot of journalists thought what happened to @pescami was incredibly fucked up but couldn't or wouldn't say so because they were afraid it would harm them professionally. It was VERY fucked up. The circular-firing-squad dynamic going on in journalism right now is incredibly
2/ shitty and it's insane to me anyone could deny that it's a problem. There's a lot of cowardice afoot, particularly among older editors and writers who have felt the ground shuft under them and who would be truly fucked if they ever lose their jobs, which allows them to be
3/ steamrolled by younger, angrier writers and editors who use social justice as cover for opportunism and score-settling. Being at the center of one of these shitstorms sucks and I'm glad @pescami came through it okay. As a reader/listener, you should make your opinions on this
Read 6 tweets
Jesse Singal Profile picture
Jan 20
Very interesting situation. Scientific American ran a ridiculously bad column denouncing E.O. Wilson on very flimsy, caricature-of-social-justice grounds. A bunch of scientists signed an eloquent/effective debunking. Then they found out one of their co-signatories was Problematic
2/Folks should understand that given the climate of everything right now, Hoekstra and Moreau almost certainly were on the receiving end of countless DMs, emails, etc. telling them that they were doing unspeakable harm to marginalized people by signing the letter. Stuff's insane.
3/ It's easy to say "Ha! Under such circumstances *I* wouldn't fold!" But that's not really how social pressure works in reality. Remember that the exact same thing happened with people pulling their names off the Harper's letter.
Read 5 tweets

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