Superman Meets 2013, Part I

If you could somehow put a gun to Superman's head and ask him his honest opinion of humans - and everyone involved could somehow ignore the part where he was Superman and everything that went with that - he would nod, say, "Fine, no bullshit," in that iconic deep baritone of sincerity, and then Superman would lay out his essential case against human nature. The truly wicked people, he'd note, were as rare as Superman himself. But the deranged, the ill-coddled, the greedy, the zealots: in short, the true criminals of the world? They were common, and Superman had interviewed countless of them, enough to know that the difference between the most hardened criminal and the most simple, pleasing conversationalist in London was naught but the flip of fate's coin.

And yet, people mostly believed themselves good. When you get into a political system, the good of that system becomes perforce alone the absolute good, and the detriment of that system, in turn, the ultimate evil. A criminal defending his syndicate and the most upstanding soldier defending his noble home country were functionally identical in how they saw their tasks.

Now, Superman was not the only humanoid on Earth out there defending truth or justice or the ways of human conduct he believed to be superior - among them, dignity, self-respect, respect for others, forbearance, mercy, truthfulness, sincerity - but most humans were caught in political systems they were either born into or that presented themselves most directly to people when they were young and impressionable or short of resources. In short, if Superman had been born a man in China, he'd likely have fought for China. If he'd been born a man in the United States? Vice versa. Superman alone could see the totality of the world and act appropriately on his ideals, but that's a luxury not oft-given to mortals.

And yet, for his cynicism about human nature, he would freely admit that - if it came down to saving all other sentient life in the universe or dying intentionally - he wouldn't hesitate to survive. Heroism, he was loath but able to admit, was a luxury at its core, and if the luxury were at the price of his life, he'd not hesitate to give his heroism up. So he didn't give the humans too much grief.

But - faced with these troubling existential questions - Superman left Earth without warning in about 1888, aside from a few people that would safeguard the information carefully. With his superluminal speeds and ageless form, there was no need to dwell on the passage of time, as he would remain himself in the indefinite future. So he carved out a long window of time and sought other planets with intelligent life, and, if some existed, sought to find some kind of technology to elevate one or all of the species to the existence that he currently enjoyed, finding the image of billions of humans flying around and building an Eden beyond his conception to be the only respite from his doubts.

Superman dreamed every night - as he sailed through the air and passed into the ether of cosmic sleep - of the merest possibility of another planet. Humanity couldn't be the only one; they just couldn't.

But for the 125 years since his departure from Earth, he'd searched a spherical area 100 light-years in radius around Earth with the electromagnetic equivalent of a fine-toothed comb. He'd found the ruins of Krypton and the ruins of other civilizations dead only a few millenia, and, from time to time - to his astonishment - he'd even found living life. But little more than cosmic flotsam in a sea of ether were they. He'd done his due reporter's diligence with what he'd found, but his face showed clear disappointment now. Earth was all there was, as far as his superluminal exploration was concerned. If any intelligent life besides Earth remained, none had yet appeared to him. He chuckled darkly as he realized dolphins or apes were not only #2 on Earth, but in general, as far as he could see. He thought of the elephants stomping humans to death by order of other humans - a method of execution that he'd seen in India. The most intelligent species in the effective universe using the fourth-most intelligent species to carry out a humiliating execution to discourage "treason".

And then, with a panic (as he made the rounds, double-checking the last promising extrasolar planet on his list), Superman realized abruptly that five generations of human beings - on the cusp of a second renaissance - could easily have ended it all, especially without his protective presence. He dove as fast as he could towards Earth, realizing what a citadel he must henceforth form to this planet, in the absence of greater alternatives. Would he someday have to move them to yet other planets to terraform? Had they destroyed themselves? Was it too late for Earth? Was Superman to be utterly alone until death, praying for the Tannhauser lizards to evolve and achieve sentience that he might live to see it?

Superman's mind raced almost faster than his superluminal cape with his questions, each question darker and more self-contradictory than the last. As he surveyed where the Solar System ought to be, Superman rejoiced as Sol and its Earth were where they ought to be and, in cosmic terms, pristine. As he made his way to Earth - slowing down to a few thousand miles an hour as he entered the upper atmosphere and started to glide with a geosynchronous speed over the United States  - Superman saw life (and intelligent life) everywhere on Earth. Beginning his slow descent, he noticed billboards and people wearing and holding radically advanced technologies. Superman smiled to think that a second Eden might still be in play. Then he grabbed the missile and let it explode in his hands a few thousand feet above the planet, almost embarrassed he'd survived with nary a scratch. His smile disappeared and he shrugged and chased the missile's source.

Jim Wakes Up in the Matrix

Heh. Golly Ned, I seem to have found myself in the Matrix. Everyone is made of code! Damn. I wonder how I got here. Oh, well, best to make the most of it! Heh.

Hello, miss. Everything is an illusion. We are all made of code! A dream within a dream. Heh. So, now that I've said that, I want to ask you something:

Heh. Is your refri- Heh. I'm sorry, I chuckle like a fiend. Just let me finish. Is your refrigerator running? Heh.

It is, you say? Well... you had better change the coils every five to seven years to keep it in top working order! Heh.

Is God but a matter of code in this arid simulacrum of a place? Might I - with true agency borne of my fundamental liberation - be made the God of this place, thereby alone? Hmm... I suppose so~

But then I'd better spruce things up! This city will be a forest and its inhabitants will be deers! Hello, deers! How are you? Heh. I've never liked that grass is green and I've seen lenses that made them purple! So now what those lenses see... will be reality! Heh. Hmm... obviously I'll want to maintain evolutionary pressures. Increase the number of rainstorms, because I like the rain! I'm random like that!

Hmm... deers aren't very good predators. They aren't going to survive, no matter how much grass I feed 'em! I guess I'll give them somewhat of an instinct and somewhat of a toolkit. First the teeth, then the claws, then the stomach, then the jaws. And then I'll make them more intelligent than humans were. Hmm, just a few more little touches. First, opposable thumbs. Second... agency! There we go. Now I will give them plenty of ugly animals (like birds, lizards, and reptiles) to feed on! And I'll make all of these ugly animals hundreds of feet big so the deers can sure get a whole lot out of every meal!

Hmm... they are ugly, but I want to give them a fighting chance. I guess I'll give them all... teeth, claws, stomach, jaws, opposable thumbs, superhuman intelligence, and agency. That wasn't so hard! Though their heads are a bit big! Oh well, all these rainstorms should humble 'em! Heh.

Hmm... I like the forest but that half of the forest can be a desert and that other half can be a mountain! Whoops... I got rid of the forest! Crap, this is just going to be a really harsh climate for just about everyone! At least it will rain a lot. Heh.

Okay... I had better set this all in motion, six hundred thousand years in the future. Since it's a computer I can do that automatically! Heh.

Oh, hello, miss. I seem to have taken you along for the ride! Do you believe we're made of code now? Well... anyway, I've got a meeting outside the Matrix. I don't know if I'll be back, but I guess you're the last person in this whole area. Darn! Sorry about that! No, I can't go backwards. It's non-deterministic, and it's not really a finite state machine, so... the past is gone. Anyway, would you like me to drop you off in the mountain or the desert? I can make you an umbrella! Just like that! Coding is so fun. Heh.

Have a good day!

Made it All Up

SPEC SCRIPT FOR MIKE 'N' ZANE: A TEEN SITUATION COMEDY


CAST
ZANE THE ZANY TEEN W/ QUESTIONABLE PARENT SITUATION
MIKE THE WELL-CENTERED TEEN
TIM DUNCAN

TIM (wearing Spurs jersey)
What do you mean, Zane? What are you trying to tell me?

ZANE
I made it all up, Tim.

TIM
Made it all up?

ZANE
I made it all up, Tim. I lied. There is no parade in your honor. The townspeople are not holding a Tim Duncan Day. I made it all up, Tim. I'm sorry. I just have, you know, a questionable parent situation, and I look up to you, and all that, Tim. And I lied. I was wrong, Tim. I was real stupid. I lied, Tim. And it was wrong. I made it all up, Tim. Made it all up. I'm... I'm so sorry, Tim.

studio audience feels sympathy

MIKE
You sure can tell a whopper, Zane!

ZANE
So how 'bout it, Tim? Can you forgive me? Can you even forgive me? I'm really sorry, Tim, I really am. You're my favorite player and I've always looked up to you.

TIM (suddenly wearing a robe and wizard cap atop Spurs jersey)
No, Zane. I can never forgive you. Leave my sight.

MIKE
This is my house, Tim. You'll have to leave. I'm sorry, too.

TIM
Oh. I'm disappointed, Mike.

TIM leaves

The Go Hard Principle (Long Usability Rant)!

Introduction

A few days ago I made a post claiming (satirically, of course) that, among others, Google+ and Facebook Social were malware. I don't apologize for the satire; I could be more explicit, but, at some point, if you're not paying attention to subtext, you're not paying much attention to the text, either. That's just the way it is. But I let these social networks (and their ensuant bullshit) off the hook, somewhat.

I love the satirical perspective I took there. But there are principles left unsaid, thoughts demanding to be schematized, etc. So here's something:

Dewey's Go Hard Principle: There's no such thing as "soft" paternalism, "soft" behavior modification, "soft" anchoring, "soft" nudging, or "soft" violations of privacy. Most of all, there's no such thing as a "soft" threat to usability. There is only paternalism, behavior modification, anchoring, nudging, or violations of privacy. There are only threats to usability.

The Go Hard Principle exists because companies routinely make systems that deliberately cost users, say, 3 seconds extra time (and/or a couple extra clicks) to do something, solely to punitively discourage it. I know. I've been in the meetings. It happens. While these companies rarely do a "count-down" of the arbitrary delay they've intentionally caused (unless we're talking about free versions of services), they frequently will say "Hey, if we force users to explicitly opt out of a setting using a circuitous process, we'll almost certainty get more retention, more revenue, and more data for our analytics. The harder and more punitively we encourage or discourage some behavior, the better it is for us."

Even though computers are - in some really basic sense - universal computing machines, companies have heavily favored and heavily disfavored use cases that feed their own development. There are use cases that are entirely removed because the company can't or doesn't want to support them. There are use cases that are entirely streamlined (to the point of having to find workarounds for any other use case), because the company depends on a certain percentage of its users going that route - e.g. viewing an ad.

My contention is emphatically not that any of these mechanisms is universally wrong or universally undemocratic, it's that you can't have it both ways. Either you're tilting the deck heavily against a use case or you aren't. It's not "soft", it's restrictive and the restriction is real and meaningful, and, if those restrictions are wrong or undemocratic in their "hard" cases, then they're equally wrong in the "soft" cases.

The Accountants of Taste

Mother always said that there's no accounting for taste. But despite her naivete, there are still plenty of accountants of taste out there honing their craft. Bless them. Generally speaking, these accountants take the shape of your friend that - at one time, back in the day - introduced you to your favorite album precisely like they might've introduced you to a mutual friend. This is a wonderful thing, this process of recommendation, and each playing of the album perforce has forever an extra voice devoted to that friend in some subtle overtone just above the human range of hearing that only you can hear.

But your friend is typically not a scientist, and so many of these accountants of taste are not just simple givers. No; they aren't just satisfied (as your friend likely was) with introducing you to the frontiers of human expression in their medium of expertise as you can currently understand it, i.e. their current favorite bands. No, the accountants have science on their side, and therefore have to go further: They have to shove aside what you already have passion for, in its banality, overwrought lyrics, and generally gauche sound, i.e. your current favorite bands.

They're nearly always right, and their process is fairly straightforward: To perform these budget cuts on your existing budget, the accountant of taste - often certified and public and loud - has an established methodology rooted in the great tradition of rhetoric dating back to the Greeks. The accountant of taste first tells you that your present budgetary projections are awful, at least on your current course of emotional investment. This is presented with sound and solemn and indefensible reasoning about taste, sometimes taking the shape of a political, social, or ethical critique:

e.g. "The Beatles are so middlebrow" or "That's a great song... that is, if I were a fascist sympathizer in the Weimar Republic. I'm not, by the way."

More often, an accounting of your current trajectory takes the form of attacking the person that would like something so awful, i.e. you when you listen to that bullshit you listen to. It's embarrassing, Steve. Really, I'm embarrassed that you enjoy that crap:

e.g. "You still read what? Ew, s.f. is such a pulp genre, and genre fiction is for kiddies." or "Seriously, what is up with this My Little Pony crap? I don't get it, honestly."

Now, ignoring the question of what, precisely, is up with My Little Pony (because I'm not such an accountant of taste and wouldn't want to be), the accountant of taste acts with merciless reasoning based on their complete understanding of the human condition and the human reception of art. It's not enough for you to say, "But I just like it! I don't have a reason!" The accountant of taste realizes that we're not dealing in feelings, but in cold, hard facts. And so: A) There must be a reason you like or dislike something, and B) they are going to find out what it is. Taste (or, more generally, the subjective experience) is a matter of science, cold and practical, which is what my mother could never realize (though her cooking is excellent and she actually went to culinary school).

You see, people only like things because of specific, measurable reasons in their immediate scope. If you like a song about a girl or falling in love, you must have someone special in mind. If you like a song about music, you must have a desire for introspection or a desire for more music. If you like a novelty song like Allan Sherman's "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah," you obviously have some unresolved childhood issues that you're dealing with with crudeness and farce. And once the taste-maker has gotten to the bottom of why you like your awful favorite band (i.e. what about your objective person is flawed), they will strike with the fatal sentence.

"They're so overrated."

Once your taste has been proved overrated, all hope is lost. You must hand in your passport as a traveler of sound or film or literature. You have been destroyed. You might as well not bother showing up to work anymore. You are a non-entity. Oh, you can still go right on living, breathing in and out, eating food and expelling waste, and, if you're young, perhaps not physically dying for several decades. But you should know that - as Martin Luther King Jr. once said - this is merely the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. I'm pretty sure he was talking about people still listening to In Utero in 2013. Listening to an overrated series of bands is not just gauche, thoughtless, and demonstrative of a directionless, careless attitude towards the culture one receives; it is instantly fatal to the spirit. At the very least it should make you feel insecure; if you're not insecure about listening to an overrated band, then there is simply no reviving you. The conversation is over. You are lost, and no one knows whether to heaven or hell. Perhaps you go nowhere. Plenty of theories abound about where the soul goes when it dies and can no longer abide shame at its awful taste. But that's above the pay grade of a typical accountant of taste. Personally, I'm inclined to think your soul is forever lost as your limbs deadly join the over-30s in a hellish eternal decay of reflexes and upper registers and hearing.

But, luckily, from the shame on your face, the accountant can tell that all hope is not lost, and, indeed, this is where the accountant comes in, yet again. Doubling as a physician, the accountant of taste lays the facts out for you as plain as day, and, if you're a bit slow on the uptick, can carry every "1" and explain every extra "0" in their ruthlessly sharp calculations. The only way to get back to the world of the living is through one of these taste-makers assuaging your taste with a slow-but-effective method: The underrated antidote.

Much like antibiotics, the underrated band becomes less and less potent as an antidote to terminal unhipness as it is the more ubiquitously applied. The cancerous strains afflicting deadened souls develop resistances, and soon even Peter Travers is exhorting the fucking Velvet Underground. Which is why the accountant of taste is not out there peddling these bands. You nod your head at the jargon-laden medical rants and wish to hear which bands they feel would be effective. Often a cocktail of underrated bands is recommended, just in case you're - in the doctor's words - one of those people that are going to blast the Pixies' "Where is My Mind?" because you heard it on Fight Club.

After receiving the antidote for a few hours, one's immune system - that is, one's natural disinclination for the new - is first broken down. The foreign sounds and kitschy lyrics need time to worm their way into your consciousness until at last they seem as deep and as well-regarded as your former favorite bands, they of the overrated type. You shudder to think that the overrated scourge will ever breach your library again, and every once in awhile your accountant calls asking how you like that record. You respond that you can hear some good things about it, and your accountant seems pleased that you seem to be making a partial recovery. You admit that you go back to your overrated disease occasionally, but you think it's winding down, and at the very least won't metastasize into a pathetic future. Your accountant gently scolds you and you hang up, your soul expanded a bit and your guileless former taste impugned.

Of course, plenty of accountants do not double as physicians of the soul. They are the dismal scientists of their field. Unfortunately, the medical practice of discovering underrated antibiotics would distract from their research; instead, they tend towards abstract conclusions. They tend to find excellent and empirically sound reasons why the viewers of a certain film are terrible, and which overrated diseases are the most deleterious, and the lines of health and disease at which an average taste moves into the realm of the admirable or the insufferable. These physicians release their solemnly researched end-of-year rankings, dispute the rankings of others, and monastically exclude (or decadently include) themselves in the origins of their own taste, be they deep or fickle.

And plenty of patients and clients are unreceptive to financial or medical advice. My mother (as I've mentioned) being one of these, I've learned how to avoid openly disrespecting these people while still maintaining the integrity of my subjective experience. Tilting my head indifferently from her as I borrow her car keys for another day of indoctrination at my educational institution, I plan out my day to maximize my time with the accountants of taste, preferably at an ethnic establishment within a sensible range of prices.

3 Social Networking Scams to Watch Out For

I'm 24, so I'm obviously getting old. How do I know this? Well, because social networks and Web services that I've used for years seem to get more convoluted every day, and I simply have trouble keeping up. I guess I'm just old-fashioned.

Most complicated with social networks are all the scams to avoid: For example, on Youtube, some advertiser that wants my information keeps trying to "link" my account with Google+. Now, obviously this is a scam, because a) "Google+" is an awful name that no reputable company would roll out, and b) it's already taken all my personal information from my Google account. It keeps trying to get me to "switch" to a linked account, and I'm pretty sure it's also trying to get my credit card info. I am also reasonably sure friends have been scammed into this Google+ malware scheme by promises of content management, only lately rescinded.

"Facebook Social" is another one of these scammers' names. When I'm reading a site, I'm frequently asked to link up my Facebook account with the commenting system of the site (and hence share my personal information). I don't know how they got my Facebook information on a completely unrelated site, but, again, at 24, I'm behind the times, being an old codger. I just assume that they've used my webcam to find out the social passwords I have written down on little yellow Post-Its on my monitor. Whatever the case, the goal is to link every site with every other and to spam my and my friends' newsfeeds with ads for that site. Given how frequently the privacy settings on these sites' accounts change, it's no wonder such scams like Google+ and Facebook Social can emerge so readily. I find myself opting out of something and, next week, having to opt out of still more. And after awhile, there is no opt-out except to delete my account, and, even then, it's unlikely the data won't be preserved on a hacker's computer. I'm certain if I comment with "Facebook Social" on another site that my friends from high school will know, and judge me, and so I'm shamed into silence by the scam.

However, these pale in comparison to Twitter. The recent attack on Twitter is easily the most egregious malware I've seen in social networking. Apparently some hackers made it so that images display automatically on your timeline, and fixed the site so that you couldn't disable the images except on mobile devices. So by default (and on desktops in aeternem), Twitter will show whatever images someone uploads - except cropped of the top and bottom thirds. I don't know why a hacker did this, but I know that the net effect is to make it easier for one of these scammers to place malware banner ads in between Tweets. Poor Twitter, and right before their IPO. But I suppose if you can't stop hackers from altering your site, your stock price deserves to take a hit for that.

Given the recent news about the NSA, it's not hard to imagine how these sites are so easily hacked and manipulated - if every Tom, Dick, and Harry from the government can crack into a Skype call, it's not surprising that a cottage industry of spammers and crackers like Google+ and Facebook Social have invaded legitimate enterprises like Google, Youtube, and Facebook.

The Internet - for its great informational promise - is an incredibly distracting and complicated place, but distractions and complications are not the culminations of life, and, arguably, their introduction - without corresponding benefit to the end-user - is uniformly evil and malevolent.

But a few malware coders outside the companies are just that and it's comforting to know that the problem is simply one of enforcement. The companies themselves remain pristine.

Jim's "Take" on Buzzfeed Books

 Hey, Pearls-divers! It's me, Alex! Please join me in welcoming special contributor Jim. Jim has already had plenty of capers on Pearls of Mystery and he agreed to take some time from his police-work to throw us the occasional column. Today, he writes about new Buzzfeed Books editor Issac Fitzgerald.

BuzzFeed will do book reviews, Fitzgerald said, but he hasn’t figured out yet what form they’ll take. It won’t do negative reviews: “Why waste breath talking smack about something?” he said. “You see it in so many old media-type places, the scathing takedown rip.” Fitzgerald said people in the online books community “understand that about books, that it is something that people have worked incredibly hard on, and they respect that. The overwhelming online books community is a positive place.”

He will follow what he calls the “Bambi Rule” (though he acknowledges the quote in fact comes from Thumper): “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.”

Great policy. Heh. I love Bambi. And I agree: If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all! After all, different strokes for different folks. There are clouds in the sky and it's raining, but I actually like the rain (I like the sun too, but that's not germane to this conversation)!

Different people get different things out of different books. And so it's wrong to make anyone feel wrong about liking something. Authors work hard to create something that someone might like, and through my experience with writers, they really care a great deal about how that work is received. Golly Ned, if I cared one percent as much about what other people thought I'd be a white-hot supernova of optimism! Heh. But that's who writers are and how they see the world. They can't help that they care about others, any more than I can choose not to enjoy this wonderful rainstorm brewing outside! Splash splash. Heh. Thanks to Issac Fitzgerald, Buzzfeed Books is going to grasp this - isn't going to attack the rain for being rainy or the sun for being sunny.

There aren't any con-artists or layabouts in the literary world, so every book is made with equal care and efficacy and truth. Gee, my mom always used to say there's no such thing as book glue; the thing that holds a book together, rather, is a glue-shaped bond of love! Heh. And we all understand that, because it makes perfect sense. More sense than when I ate thirty pages of War and Peace hoping to internalize that love, before my mom told me it doesn't work like that! Look, Fitzgerald is absolutely right: the online community of books, as I see it, is quite sophisticated about how authors are. If they pay 16 bucks for a book that they don't end up enjoying, they get it. They get that an author worked really hard to write, compile from prior source material, argue, research, or think through a book. If there are some flaws in the sculpture of Platonic reasoning on which is formed an entire ideology in a 600-page tome, the smart consumer just sees the flaws as gaps into which they can place their personal gems of personal experience to patch it up. And then that's an even better statue! Heh.

Not only is every book made with equal amounts of love and craftsmanship, with an equal level of appeal - each book has someone willing to buy in, at least! - every edition of every book is fundamentally equal in quality, and equally wonderful. No one ever writes a book they don't want to or don't feel 100% about, so every book is an equally wonderful encapsulation of the sincerest human spirit. Even books written by flawed or imperfect characters generally only speak to the wonderful multitude of flaws and imperfections in the human condition. And we can all relate to that. For a book to make it to market, a publisher that's been doing this for years has to decide in its wonderful heart that the book is going to be interesting, informative, or dully entertaining to at least someone, and maybe that someone is you. That publisher's thoughtful acceptance and rejection patterns reflect its understanding of what people like. And if you don't agree, well, just know that you're in the minority!

Look, I can see you don't believe me. Maybe I'm just a cock-eyed optimist, but - and forgive the language here - get a fucking grip, if you don't see anything to like about what I'm saying. You don't have to agree with what I'm saying to accept that there's room in the world for different tastes. You keep trying to snarkily stratify the world into things you like and things the world (that's apparently beneath you) likes. Like you're some sort of friggin' authority on the human experience. Alex let me blog this but I see the cancerous irony beneath every syllable he writes. He can't just buy in. He's just too cool for school, I guess. Every blogger has opinions - and feels obligated to have those opinions - about everything they see, as if the world is a little art exhibition made entirely for the purpose of entertaining that one individual blogger who rates it out of 10 or whatever private quirky bullshit internal schema they've developed. But most of them never apply the same standards to themselves - Alex writes intensely personal and ridiculously limited-appeal content for a ridiculously limited audience. Somehow it's alright for him to write things that aren't meant to be broadcast on a major website or on television, but when he watched the British mini-series "Utopia,"  he was offended. Like, as if someone had aimed a slur at him. In Alex's world, it's intolerable to have a few hours spent suboptimally in the throes of a snappy-but-utterly-superficial thriller (that didn't apply enough scrutiny to its social message for his personal tastes). Get a grip, Alex. Damn.

Whoops, I got a little off-track there! Heh. Anyway, so I guess I should wrap this up with somewhat of a conclusion. Okay, here goes: All editions of all books are made equally well, rain is beautiful, books are bound with love, and there's no sense living if you're not living in the moment. When you let others in, they let you in. The cycle of intimacy is a beautiful thing. People are wonderful. Books are great; blogs are great, too, but could probably stand to be nicer! And what Buzzfeed Books is doing is great. All these things are great, but sincerity is the best. That's my "hot take" on the matter; be careful it doesn't burn you especially. Heh.

I'd like to close with a final thought: The community of readers and writers is just that - a community.- and the tie between a reader and a writer can span generations and continents. If we agree to take the most generous and constructive interpretation we can of everything we read, then and only then can we truly reject the cynical apparatus that makes positive and negative reviews based on what will generate the most hits. If everyone agrees to only write when they have something substantive, positive, and constructive to say, there will be a lot less writing, first of all. But what will be left will be so pure and sincere and beautiful that greed will stick out like a rain-cloud and be summarily vaporized. I'm sure there are some books and blogs out there that just want our money and undeserved adulation. Look, I'm a cop. There are some unsavory characters out there, and I'm sure the occasional publishing con-game has happened once or twice in the last several years. But when we all agree to effusively promote the good and refuse to acknowledge the bad, maybe the bad will simply rot away and die, or find itself desperately in search of other bad things to cling on to. And we will have found the good ourselves, and we will have passed it on to those we love. Maybe we can live in heaven on earth even with a few strands of hell - slow, visible, and extant.

Thanks for reading!

5 Worst Types of Internet Comments

Introduction

Internet Writers and Internet Commenters can have some of the healthiest relationships imaginable - I still think the Free Darko folks' open engagement with commenters was one of the absolute best things they ever did. The FD folks answered every comment (to a realistic extent) and in doing so made intelligent in-roads into creating a community. They essentially created the modern blogging community, or had a large hand in creating it. I have so much respect for them. The Onion's AVClub is another great source of commenting. Deadspin is also excellent. These latter sites tend towards snark and desperate attempts at wringing the worst puns and references out of a situation... but hey, the commenting base is excellent enough, with just enough intelligence and humor to really get a wonderful situation going.

Commenters on general-interest sites like ESPN and Yahoo - whether with specific commenting systems or with Facebook platforms - tend to be awful. The problem is that you get a whole lot of people that don't read articles, don't really give a shit that the Internet Writer is Also A Human Being, don't want to read anything challenging, and also want to sound witty and get "Likes" (or whatever the hell they're after).

The problem is a mixture of audience, culture, content (in commenters' defense, there's no shortage of SEO, clickbait, sponsored articles, and just plain crap out there), and system. Make a nice website with an organic audience, great articles, a beautiful commenting system, and a neat database, and demonstrate again and again that you care about the readers? Comments tend to be nicer. What a concept. Make a site where you really don't give a shit about the "general" reader and are only looking for a select, self-selected group of intellectuals to engage with immensely eclectic content to read you, if anyone? That also works. But most websites with comments - being somehow transient and somewhat exploitative by their very nature - don't have the luxury of doing everything just right. And commenters are an endless well of entitlement. If you show them an ounce of weakness they will pounce. If you show an ounce of entitlement yourself, they will pounce.

Internet Commenters run the gamut from terrible to occasionally better than the authors themselves (who are often constrained by "assignments" and might rarely veer into the next-level content an unencumbered party might be able to reach). At their best, Internet Commenters are the Fourth Estate's Fourth Estate, are the pinnacle of Democracy, are the bane of elitism and populism alike, and command earned respect. At their worst, Commenters make themselves into the worst people that people can be - revealing in one sentence the paucity of their life's ambitions, the banality of their life's thrills, and the demon of destruction towards the souls of others that live in them in place of ambition or thrill. Here are five examples of that!

Funniest Teams Richard Jefferson Could Go To After This Season

30. Portland.
This would just be sweet.

5. Milwaukee
No one has any earthly idea why this signing happens from either side. But it does. The press conference is held in the back of, like, a cabbie's gigantic van, as the van takes Jefferson to the Bradley Center.

"The plan long-term for me is to leave or get traded or something, I think. I think that's the long-term plan in my signing. That would be my, you know, educated guess. I'm on, you know, the wrong side of whatever age they still let you sign contracts. But, hey, learning experience, I think I can contribute to the Bucks, love this city, and all that other jazz. The organization has been very generous and I hope to be a part of a, you know, solid playoff run."

4. Memphis
Richard Jefferson on the grit-and-grind Grizzlies. Friggin' yes! RJ certainly has defensive chops, though John Hollinger would never do this.

"You know, we really try to, you know, grit and grind in Memphis. Of course Zach and Marc and, you know, Tony, they have that culture here, and I'm pleased and, you know, totally honored to be a part of it. There aren't many young players here, so, you know, I can't really apply any of the lessons I've learned the last few years, but, you know, it still seems like a great opportunity and I think I can still contribute."

3. Brooklyn
Prokhorov signs Jefferson immediately, in the dead of night, and holds a press conference on an airship with an eerily noise-canceled silence. Jefferson stands at a podium and answers questions from a disembodied, you know, woman's voice over the PA system.

"I'm not part of anyone's long-term plan at this point, heh. I'm here to sop up minutes and help the young guys develop, maybe contend for a championship. These guys all have long enough arms and big enough hands that, you know, why bother trying to get their jobs? Really, let's be perfectly frank here: I'm not the best small forward on this roster by a country mile. Maybe five years ago. But I still think I can contribute.

"Yes, I am one of the five or six NBA players fluent in Russian and the second most productive of these players. Weird skill, I suppose, but Pop got me into Soviet and pre-Soviet literature. Why do you ask?"

2. Golden State
Coach Mark Jackson respects Jefferson's character immensely and takes a flyer on him. RJ passes training camp. Rumors fly that he refused to go to the D-League as part of his vet-min contract. Jefferson sits at a table, bathed in yellow light. Behind him is a mural with the Warriors logo, tech start-ups, kids, and the word "Youth" projected several hundred times. Jefferson coughs and sounds like he's 50.

"Back in the saddle, you know, again. One last ride, heh, and, you know, lots of young players to help out, again. I'm actually not precisely sure why they brought me back, you know, but I guess they probably just want me to be an assistant coach, honestly, you know, I mean, that's where I'm at. I am pretty much done with the productive side of basketball, though if they need me, obviously, when called upon, I'd, you know, enter the game without question. Coach Jackson has a great system here and I want to help some of the younger guys reach their full potential. Show them, you know, the best places to buy protein shakes and help on the pick and roll. Get their defensive chops in order, show them, like, communication. It's a game of, you know, communication and trust, and I'm here to show them that.

"I'm here to show that if I can't be the best player on the team, I can at least be the best small forward from Arizona on the team... uh... you know, that played in the NBA before 2004."

1. San Antonio
This would never happen. This would be wonderful.

"Yeah, I'm back. Yeah, it's on a vet-min contract, and I'm obviously not hoping for big minutes with, you know, Kawhi, the, you know, heh, the beast. But I guess I'd call it insurance. Me, that is. I'm basically insurance to make sure the Spurs aren't, you know, abject, if Kawhi is day-to-day. He's the only really good player left with Tim's body breaking down. You know, I'm just kidding. Tim is just fine, and Tony's still good, but, you know, Tim's older than dirt. I just carbon-dated dirt and it's younger than 39, heh."

Ponyboy and Johnny

If you ain't read the Outsiders, stop right here. Also, this whole thing finds its jumping-off point in this wonderful video.

Ponyboy, they say I ain't gon' walk again. They say I ain't long for this world. But ya know somethin', Ponyboy? Ya know somethin'?

Ya was always my right-hand man in this a-here syndicate. Ya killed sixty in cold blood by my latest count, prolly more like se'enty if ya factor in the rumble. But I seein' a change in ya, Ponyboy. I seein' a future filled with a wife and kids and a future and shit. Ya read books and, well, goddamn if yr eyes ain't blue as shit. You unfathomably suave and smooth motherfucker. Burst into a bank like it was nothing, you ruthless, heartless motherfucker. I want to be you. I love you, Ponyboy, and yr childlike ways. You're gold when you're a kid, man. And I seein' a change in ya. And before I go, I ain't fixin to leave this unsaid. So here goes.

Never stop hustling. Never, Ponyboy. No matter what. You can't stop hustling. Ya have to keep your shakedowns as regular as church and your grifts as smooth as pudding. Goddamn it, I had so much left to do Ponyboy, and ya thought of so many great capers. I want ya ta know that planning your capers with ya was the best part, y'know, besides getting someone wet once in awhile. Ponyboy, I never seen a motherfucker torture with such glee as you, and I never found a better planner. The world is a big grind and a sucker's born every minute. And if you're not quick some other motherfucker will get'cha. Ya feel me? If ya snap for a seven, just know that you've committed deadly sins before and kept on running. So: Never stop hustling, never stop bending the world to your will. The power ya wield is immense but a power that isn't active does not dull; no, Ponyboy, that power dies. So live as large as you are and live like that every day. Take down everyone that stands in your way. And, in the end, you'll find that the only obstacle left is government, and then you'll find the ultimate grift, the ultimate con: Running for office.

Ponyboy, listen to me. I know ya want to settle down, some. I've seen the bank statements and you've always lived like a fucking pauper. But the only way a man is alive is through the ruthless application of power, and y'have it, and ya will have it, and I hope y'always will.

I'm gonna die now, but before I do, Ponyboy, you remember that Robert Frost poem you used to read to me? I ain't never read much before but it really spoke to me, hell, speaks to me now. "Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire." And, like, that hate would also work. Y'feel me, Ponyboy? But here's the thing... you mix fire and ice and all you're left with is water and dust, and isn't that just the whole fuckin' planet? The world is yours. But don't listen to me, do what ya want: Y'can set fire to what you've built or y'can skate on ice the rest of yr life. But just remember: The world won't end if ya get a few more people wet. Keep that fire, and keep that icy cool air as ya walk into a room.

I expect a full accounting of your capers when I meet you in hell. Stay gold.

They stare at one another for awhile. After a few minutes, Johnny winks and smiles his last, revealing his gold tooth. Ponyboy extracts the tooth before calling the nurses in.

Dave Berri is for fun, not science

As Dave Berri helpfully reminds us, the 7-game NBA playoffs do not constitute an experiment of statistical significance*.

I obviously agree with this observation, and it gladdens me to see Berri illuminate this aspect of the NBA playoffs. To quote the title of a post from May, "The Playoffs are for fun, not science". Well put, Devin.

As much as we'd love to pretend otherwise, Game 6 of last year's NBA Finals showed us that the line between a champion and a runner-up is perhaps as thin as a single carom gone awry... and into the perfect place for a ridiculously clutch corner 3. An entire season depends on the bounce of a ball. How eerily fitting for Berri's argument. After all, that's an extreme and explicit example of the natural indeterminacy of sports: There are plenty of chance events that can completely determine the outcome of a season: Whether a player lands on his side or on his arm can change the next 2 years of that player's career and, if he's sufficiently important, his team's success. Whether a player hits the ball at one angle or another may determine whether his hand is broken. Whether a lottery ball hits the right slip-stream can determine a generation of games.

Obviously in all of these examples, the dominant factor is not the executive, the coach, or potentially even the players involved. Fluky events that change whole eras of basketball, man. It's crazy. Prof. Berri really got me thinking.

In fact, I can't help but notice this paragraph from an article on tanking this same Prof. Berri also penned.

The tanking strategy is easy for decision-makers in the NBA to embrace. Teams that pursue this strategy are essentially trying to lose to enhance the team’s draft position. This is a simple strategy to follow. Trying to win is difficult, but losing is easy and the more incompetent the decision-maker, the better the strategy can be implemented. Imagine how easy it would be to do your job if you were rewarded for doing the job badly!  

To stop this behavior, the NBA could simply implement a rule that says if a team misses the playoffs for three consecutive seasons, the team must fire its general manager. If this rule was put in place, constant losing would lead to consequences for executives. 

Obviously Berri isn't talking about getting rid of bad executives here. After all, with all the variation in team quality being so vast, and the difficulty of rebuilding being nigh impossible without some breaks going your way?  How could 3 seasons ever accurately constitute a statistical experiment designed to weed out below-average executives? The answer is obvious: They couldn't! This rule takes three Bernoulli trials - each possibly as susceptible to chance as a single coin flip or two - and makes it into a GM's livelihood.

So, in the absence of the statistical significance that is enough to dismiss an entire two-month stretch of the season, Prof. Berri's suggestion should obviously then be taken as an amusing, populistic guideline rather than something to be literally enacted. Indeed, his thoughts are more like signals that might indicate good ideas but that need the rigor of a more analytic mind to prove or even formulate correctly.

I find that the addition of this perspective allows me to better appreciate his contribution to analytics. Instead of the arrogance and intellectual laziness I'm inclined to ascribe to his writings, stepping back has allowed me to temper my anger and recognize that he is not writing as an academic but as a thinker. He writes think pieces, not math pieces. He is trying to show us how fun thinking can be and how cool some things in academia are instead of actually understanding and conveying them correctly. Basketball is a complicated game and the analytics are getting more interesting every day, but when I don't have time or sophistication to catch up on the actual advances I can go to his writings for a watered-down version of these things, written with the same comforting confidence of the people on the actual frontiers of understanding, among which are several of his blog's co-authors.

And, just so you aren't inclined to completely dismiss my uneducated ramblings, you should note that after having read hundreds of his articles, my own perspective on this matter is quickly approaching statistical significance, which, as you know, is the objective truth, absolute and unadulterated.


*Statistical significance is defined as that totally-not-arbitrary <5% p-value that you get to call "statistical significance" without qualification and have it technically be true on face value