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To live freely in writing...
Since when did it become expected that we hate our opponents? Maybe it's because politics has devolved into "lesser of two evils" voting where you vote for the candidate you hate the least.
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) November 3, 2023
That made me notice that I hadn't heard much about effective altruism lately (but isn't it always hard to notice what is not being said?).
I went looking for recent SBF stories that talked about effective altruism. Hard to find anything — that is, I found the absence of talk — but I did find this at CoinDesk: "Sam Bankman-Fried Demonstrates Ineffective Altruism at Its Worst/The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
That sounds like it's going to be the he-did-it-wrong "bleat" that the Metafilter commenter was predicting, but it's not:
Sam Bankman-Fried, the tousle-haired mogul who founded the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, was convicted on Thursday of all seven charges of fraud and conspiracy after a monthlong trial that laid bare the hubris and risk-taking across the crypto industry. These charges carry a maximum sentence of 110 years....
The jury of nine men and three women began deliberating at 3:15 p.m. and was out for a little over four hours including dinner.
The American Ornithological Society, the organization responsible for standardizing English bird names across the Americas, announced on Wednesday that it would rename all species honoring people.... The organization’s decision is a response to pressure from birders to redress the recognition of historical figures with racist or colonial pasts....
— Out of Context Human Race (@NoContextHumans) November 1, 2023Why are we doing handouts anyway? To show what human beings are like? If you answer the door and dispense the handout personally, you can maintain a system of one portion per person, and you might even get a smile or a thank you. If you put out a big bowl of multiple portions because you don't want to monitor the process and impose single portions, then people will serve their own interests and take all they want. You knew that. The kids who took it all also knew that if they didn't take it all, the next group of kids would take it all. It's a state of nature without supervision and enforcement. Don't pretend you trusted people and you had some sort of admirable "hope" that now I'm supposed to feel bad got crushed. No, you lazy bastard. Answer the damned door next time. Or have the courage to turn off the porch light and huddle in a back room and celebrate the end of the holiday you no longer believe in.
I ran into that on "Twitter" today and found it funny enough to watch twice. Then I read some of the replies and can see that not everyone gets it: "What a dishonest video. Do better"/"Crappy cuts. But feel good in your demonizing."Jordan Peterson cooking pic.twitter.com/p8mXfgR0Z4
— Watcher66 🇨🇦 (@Watcher66547q) October 27, 2023
[Possible candidate Scott] Mayer echoes Johnson’s thinking. “We really don’t want a bloody primary,” he told NBC News. “But it’s a free country,” he added....
Said Leif Ristroph, an NYU math professor, quoted in "Did Nature Have a Hand in the Formation of the Great Sphinx?" (NYU).
What’s sad is that now you expect a follow-up story saying how the thief is going to press charges and a judge would likely award him damages.
— David Karim (@davidkarim) October 30, 2023
"In a way, this was no anomaly. 'Friends' has been a weekly fixture among the 10 most-watched series or movies on the streaming service.... [A] show that was born in the 1990s and seemed completely of-its-time (no cellphones, a coffee shop with cushy couches as a main setting) seemed to have new appeal among teenagers and 20-somethings. 'The one-sentence pitch is: It’s about that time in your life when your friends are your family,' David Crane, one of the show’s creators, once said...."
The NYT reports.
One post called Jewish students “rats” and said, “If you see a Jewish ‘person’ on campus follow them home and slit their throats.” Another post was titled “gonna shoot up 104 west,” an apparent reference to Cornell’s kosher and multicultural dining room....
Wrote Matthew Perry, quoted in "Matthew Perry Revealed Before His Death Why He Never Watched Friends/ The actor — who died aged 54 on Saturday — last year shared why he could not watch himself as Chandler Bing on the iconic sitcom" (People).
And here's an interview from last year, when he was promoting his memoir. He says he couldn't watch the show, because he'd be looking at himself and seeing what substance he was struggling with....
A caption for one of many interesting and poignant photographs at "Wisconsin couple has tens of thousands of old phones — and nobody to buy them" (Wisconsin State Journal).