How useful, how apropos, how…right. An online article at the New Yorker on the wrongness of the idea that harassment is part of our glorious heritage of free speech.

It starts with Amanda Todd.

Todd’s suicide is easily analogized to Tyler Clementi’s, mostly because the  public has diagnosed both cases as the result of “cyber-bullying.” Yet, as a  descriptive term, “cyber-bullying” feels deliberately vague. Somewhere in the  midst of the “mob” there is usually at least one person whose cruelty exceeds  the tossing off of a stray insult. In Clementi’s case, the magazine’s Ian Parker   chalked the harasser’s motives up to “shiftiness and bad faith,” the kinds  of things that criminal statutes can’t easily be invoked to cover. But with 

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Almost as if in reply to the “liberal bullies” article, some US publishers say that words matter.

Despite promises to reform their textbooks, the Saudi education system continues to indoctrinate children with hatred and incitement. Seven current and former heads of major publishing houses address the critical importance of words.

The critical importance of words? But aren’t we always being told that words don’t matter? That we “radfems” are just batshit crazy, making all this fuss about mere “werdz” because it’s only fists and sticks that make any difference.

As current and former heads of major American publishing houses, we know the value of words. They inform actions and shape the world views of all, especially children. We are

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The pro-misogyny (yes, misogyny) crowd is passing around an article on “liberal bullying.” Of course they are. The people who stalk a few bloggers day in and day out for a year and a half are “brave heroes” and freedom fighters; the people they stalk relentlessly are liberal bullies.

Still, there’s something to it, at least if the descriptions are accurate.

Increasingly, I’ve started recognizing this kind of behavior for what it is: privilege-checking as a form of internet sport. It’s a kind of trolling, with all the politics I agree with, but motivations and execution that turns my stomach. It’s well-intended (SO well-intended), but when the motivations seem to be less about opening dialogue about the issues, and

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The philosophical primate recommended John Scalzi’s article on Redditt and Brutsch and “free speech” and creepy woman-hating shit, and sure enough.

If someone bleats to you about any of this being a “free speech” issue, you can safely mark them as either ignorant or pernicious — probably ignorant, as the understanding of what “free speech” means in a constitutional sense here in the US is, shall we say, highly constrained in the general population. Additionally and independently, the sort of person who who says “free speech” when they mean “I like doing creepy things to other people without their consent and you can’t stop me so fuck you ha ha ha ha” is pretty clearly a mouth-breathing asshole who

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A guest post by the philosophical primate. Originally a comment on Using anonymity to speak more freely.

Reddit’s terms of service do not in any way guarantee users’ privacy, and anyone who thinks their privacy is protected when using the internet is an idiot anyway. The only privacy that actually *matters* here is the invaded privacy of women and girls having their images exploited without their consent, which is morally reprehensible regardless of its legality. John Scalzi wrote something particularly clear and scathing on this topic yesterday: I encourage all to read it.

The key idea that deserves attention here is that protection of privacy — even anonymity — has a purpose: Whether legally or morally speaking, that purpose … Read the rest

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Damon Poeter at PC mag takes a more rational view than Redditt. (Probably 99% of human beings take a more rational view than Redditt.)

This isn’t very complicated. Posting pictures of people without their knowledge is both an invasion of their privacy and a form of outing them to the Internet. Doing so may be protected speech, but it doesn’t mean it’s good speech, or speech that shouldn’t be shamed from the hilltops as an exercise of one’s own free speech. What’s more, Adrian Chen himself didn’t “do anything illegal” by exposing Michael Brutsch (and yes, Redditors didn’t do anything illegal by blocking Gawker links, etc., etc. — the Ferris Wheel can go round and round, but at some

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Reddit speaks. Reddit says what it’s going to do about stuff like “creepshots.” Nothing, of course.

But Redditt doesn’t admit the nature of the stuff it’s going to do nothing about. Reddit bullshits. Reddit pretends the subject is “distasteful” stuff. That makes Redditt a lying dog.

Social news site Reddit will not censor “distasteful” sections of its website, its chief executive has said.

The site has recently been criticised over sections in which users shared images of, among other things, women photographed without their knowledge.

Yishan Wong told the site’s moderators legal content should not be removed, even if “we find it odious or if we personally condemn it”.

“We stand for free speech… we are not going to ban

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Hilary Mantel won the Booker for the sequel to Wolf Hall. I just got Wolf Hall out of the library a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been reading it, and…

I don’t like it. I not only don’t like it, I also think it’s not very good. I don’t think it’s terrible; I’ve seen far worse; but I don’t think it’s very good. I think it’s padded, the way so much “literary” fiction is padded. I’m increasingly allergic to padded literary fiction.

Plus she has this weird thing where you’re supposed to get that an oddly non-specific “he” in any particular passage is always Cromwell, except the trouble with that is that there are often other “he”s … Read the rest

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Heh heh heh. Jesus has a hermeneuticon. Well of course he does.

Find out what kind at Jesus and Mo.… Read the rest

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Thugs with guns killed a volunteer who was handing out polio vaccine to children under 5 in Baluchistan.

Not much more to say really.

Except this.

Pakistan is one of only three countries where the highly infectious crippling disease remains endemic, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria.

There have been 30 confirmed cases of polio in Pakistan this year according to the government, 22 of them in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

Another day, another bad thing done.… Read the rest

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Kunwar Khuldune Shahid writes in Pakistan Today that it’s stupid to blame the Taliban while defending the ideology behind the Taliban.

Let’s stop carving out quasi religions, or defending ideologies that we’ve all grown up blindly following as the truth. Let’s call a spade a spade instead and realize that at the end of the day as much as you might have a cardiac arrest admitting it, the root cause of religious extremism is: religion – especially in its raw crude form, which again is the only ‘authentic’ form.

Every single religion has a violent streak. Every single one of them orders violence and killing in one form or the other for the ‘non-believers’. One can quote verses from every

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There’s a dead rat outside my door. Ew. I’m hoping a crow will come along and take it away. Or a cat. Or a dog. Or a swat team. Or the National Guard. Or the mayor. Or a wolf. Or a raccoon. Or a bald eagle. Or that neighbor with the very loud voice.… Read the rest

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