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NY Times on the tyranny of low expectations, inadvertantly

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media March 6, 2013 4 Comments

The US Senate, briefly not beating one another with sticks

The US Senate, commendably not beating one another with sticks

Until there is a Pulitzer for Most Depressing Paragraph In a News Story, we will have to collect nominees ourselves. From this morning’s report on the regular order on the federal budget:

The so-called regular order on the federal budget still holds little promise of resolving the long-term federal debt or partisan divide. But it will look more like a typical bit of Congressional business and less like a deadline-driven manufactured crisis. With the automatic cuts in the “sequestration” having begun to take effect—and the two parties unable to find an alternative that each can accept—no new immediate conflict looms.

No immediate conflict looms! Let freedom ring, you guys.

Scientists measure awesome power of internet comments

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media March 5, 2013 20 Comments

Nerds

I’m going to present two claims, and you can decide for yourself which is more compelling:

Differentiation of species occurred over millions of years through natural selection of hereditary traits.
Differentiation of species occurred over millions of years through natural selection of hereditary traits, you prick.

The second one just sounds truer, doesn’t it? That is the odd finding of this study, helpfully summarized by one of the authors in last weekend’s New York Times. First of all, I think we’re all glad that there is a Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, and it is printed. Second, the study focused specifically on online comments sections, finding that comments which contained epithets, profanity and ad hominem attacks affected readers’ viewpoints more powerfully than equivalent comments without those attacks. Civilization is doomed.

The problem of determining whether you, yourself, are an asshole

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas March 4, 2013 19 Comments

A good fence

If you read the comments on last Monday’s post, you will find a message from my neighbor [redacted], who is evidently moving out. First of all, welcome [redacted]; you have expanded my readership by 16%. Second of all, after reading said message, I realize that I am a weird hermit who is completely unreasonable in my expectations for quiet. No, wait—I still think I am a normal person. It is an agile interpretation that decides my “imperious pounding” on the floor is the problem when the stereo unavoidably comes on at 3am. The floor, by the way, is [redacted]’s ceiling. Again we encounter the problem of others.

Friday links! Good with the bad edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links March 1, 2013 2 Comments

Elitist sumbitch never ate an ice cream cone in his life.

God never closes a door without opening a window. He sublets, so he doesn’t much care about heating bills or whatever, but he paid all the rent up front. You have to take the good with the bad. Whether it’s the spiny exterior of a delicious cactus or the two hours of Gerard Butler you have to sit through before the end of a Gerard Butler movie, nothing worthwhile comes without its price. Today is Friday, a necessary last push before the sweet, sweet weekend, and news is mixed. Won’t you go from toothpaste to orange juice with me?

Other pre-commitment devices that didn’t work on Congress

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government February 28, 2013 2 Comments

Should not have eaten all that turtle food.

Should not have eaten all those minnows

It’s semi-official: sequestration has failed. The actual mechanism is going to function just fine; come tomorrow, $85 billion in domestic and military spending cuts that nobody likes will automatically go into place, because Congress could not obey their own pre-commitment device. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Sequestration was supposed to be so awful that it would force Democrats and Republicans to agree on alternative deficit reduction strategies. Instead, after months of arguing and temporizing, our legislators have set themselves to the hard work of accepting that sequestration isn’t so bad after all. Congress is like a man who ties a string around his finger to remember to buy insulin and, after several months, loses circulation and has his finger amputated. Here are some other pre-commitment devices that didn’t work on Congress.