An assessment of my cruel neutrality.

Yesterday, I asked "If Election Day were tomorrow, who would Althouse vote for? Who should she vote for?" I took a poll, with 9 combinations and 3 possible votes: Trump, Harris, and the ever-popular "no one."

What I really wanted to see was how I was perceived, that is, what level of neutrality or cover I'm pulling off. The second question gave me some ability to account for bias.

Here are the results:

You, the commenters, talked a lot yesterday about that A.G. Sulzberger column blaming Trump for efforts around the world to censor the press.

I gave you a gift link to read the whole thing in what was my first post of the day: "A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, has an opinion piece in The Washington Post: 'How the quiet war against press freedom could come to America.'"

It was a long piece, and I really did have a lot to say about it myself, but I didn't want to get dragged down dissecting what was so infuriatingly wrong about it. So I appreciated the active comments section.

The #1 thing I didn't say but wanted to say was that contrary to Sulzberger's perverted argument, criticizing the press is not censorship. Criticizing the press is more speech. Trump has been criticizing the press. It is Trump's antagonists who have pursued censorship, for many reasons, including his criticism of the press.

I'm prompted to revisit yesterday's post because I see that Glenn Reynolds is linking to it this morning. He says:

"Then the Comments section of your blog became taken over by a far-Right cabal which was just as offputting as any conceivable Far Left gang of assholes might have become."

I received this email from Todd Grimson which begins with a compliment about this post that I put up yesterday and continues with some less-than-complimentary stuff:

Exceptional piece. I liked your blog early on, then became annoyed when it seemed like you kept taking shots at novels and fiction in general -- as this was/is my chosen field, the highest calling in my view, where I excel. I thought you were perhaps demonstrating some misgivings about how the writing of blogs might be viewed in the future (where, as Criswell reminds us at the beginning of PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, we all shall one day reside); also, listening to some actor's performance on an audiobook does not equal the actual reading experience, end of fucking story (to invoke TRAINSPOTTING's Irvine Welsh). 

Then the Comments section of your blog became taken over by a far-Right cabal which was just as offputting as any conceivable Far Left gang of assholes might have become. You came to realize this, it seems, but it took you a long time. 

I brought your attention recently to the Netflix series based on my book just as a friendly gesture and I suppose because of the friendly feeling engendered by years of reading your blog. The show has become a phenomenon.

Grimson gave me permission to publish that. The Nexflix show is "Brand New Cherry Flavor":

And here's Criswell: 

A "cabal" is "A small body of persons engaged in secret or private machination or intrigue; a junto, clique, côterie, party, faction" (OED). So have at it, cabalists.

At the Sunrise Café...

 ... the sun rises on the first café since Easter. 

Easter began a new approach to comments for reasons discussed in this post and in the comments there.

Today, I began what I called "A new era of comments on this blog." Everything is still moderated and I'm maintaining the stricter standards, but you can write the comments in the comments box. With that change, I'm able to do an open thread at the end of the day again — a "café" post.

I'm continuing the tradition of putting up a photograph of the sunrise, part of my ritual of running to witness the arrival of the new day.

Today, is also the arrival of a new season, as I mark the seasons. I put the solstice/equinox in the center of the season and count out 6.5 weeks in either direction. Today, we begin the approach to the fall equinox. I love the seasons of more equal balance between light and darkness, and that's what's starting today. 

Enjoy the café. You can talk about anything, but to make it through moderation, it will need to be something I think readers will enjoy.

Artisanal comments.

A reader, John Henry, emails:

I was a prolific commenter, probably too prolific, previously. I was really upset when you stopped allowing comments. But now that I am getting over my withdrawal symptoms, I am kind of liking it, especially now that you are bringing back curated, artisanal, commenting via email.

"Could you clarify the purpose of this kind of post?"

David emails:

Your blog post today: about a NYT article contained: 

• A pull quote from the article
• A link to the article 
• No content from you. 

Since you disabled comments on your blog, I have been trying to understand how you view the blog's purpose.

This particular post, which contained no original content from you, is the kind of thing you used to post in order to elicit discussion. But because that is no longer possible, I do not understand your intent. Do you now see yourself as an unpaid advertiser for the NYT? I hardly think they need your support, and simply reposting NYT content seems pretty weak.

Could you clarify the purpose of this kind of post? Maybe a post explaining it would be helpful.

My emailed response:

"Could you clarify the purpose of this kind of post?"

No. 

Think your own thoughts.

ADDED: I hope you remember that I got rid of the comments because of a round-the-clock problem with some very destructive trolls. I could not handle the work. Otherwise, I'd have left the comments on. But there is a type of comment I feel much better off without, and that is people who'd say — over and over — things like: Why do you read the NYT? She's still reading the NYT. What do you expect, it's the NYT? When are you going to stop reading the NYT?

ALSO: Why did David think I had to explain my purpose when elsewhere he assumed he knew my purpose? He wrote, "This... is the kind of thing you used to post in order to elicit discussion." If you could read my mind then, why not read my mind now? A lateral-thinking guess is that he was never really interested in my purpose only in whether my posts worked the way he liked. If a post prompts people to comment, then it also prompts people to think, and each person's thinking takes place whether they get to share their thoughts in writing or not. That's why I said "Think your own thoughts." 

Do you get better thoughts if you have to do your own thinking and cannot immediately scan other people's instant reactions? 

Here's another idea: Read the post out loud to your companion and have a conversation about it in your real-life space. That's something we here at Meadhouse do all the time.  

AND: "That's something we here at Meadhouse do all the time." It's also something people did in the old days, when there was only one copy of the paper newspaper. I remember my paternal grandfather, Pop, reading the paper in his living room, mostly silently, but now and then reading something out loud. You can still do that!  

Why I put AdSense ads back on the blog — self-defense.

Last October, after years of taking offense at Google for sending me email telling me I had offensive material on this blog, I discontinued my participation in Google Adsense. That is, I opted out of using advertising to monetize this blog. At the time, I wrote: 

I'm tired of checking to see what's supposedly a violation. I get so many of these and they're often posts that are nothing but a quote from a commentator in the NYT. But to see that the review didn't okay these pages... it's just mind-bending. I can't waste my energy dealing with this bullshit. In every case, I'm told that I've violated their policy with "Dangerous or derogatory content," which I find insulting. Here are recent posts that have been found in violation of that policy — even after review... 

Click through to see what I'd written, but suffice it to say that there was nothing that could possibly be considered "dangerous" or "derogatory." I said:

How did these articles get flagged? By robots or by opponents of this blog? What kind of review does Google have that would reinforce the idea that this is "Dangerous or derogatory content"?! Review by robots or by opponents of this blog? I can't imagine an unbiased human being finding all — or any — of these posts to have "Dangerous or derogatory content." It could be that I'm getting flagged for crap in the comments.... 

I'm not dealing with it any more. So enjoy ad-free Althouse.

Well, I am going to deal with it now and in the future.  I just turned AdSense ads back on. At least, Google was nice enough to offer me cake....

... yeah, Google, your AI did a nice job of knowing what I like. Cake. I like cake. But it's not yummy cake that has me coming back. And it's not the income from the ads. I realized I can use AdSense in self-defense. Google has the power to delete this blog. Whatever force caused those exasperating notifications is still out there, exerting pressure, whether I'm getting notifications or not.

As I noted in that October post, "It could be that I'm getting flagged for crap in the comments." In the comments there, Yancey Ward said: 

It isn't your content that is getting flagged, Ms. Althouse, it is what we commenters are saying - they are flagging the separate blog post which contains all of the comments at the end. You just have too many of us deplorables.

I'm pretty sure that's what happened, and I gave up ads because it seemed like too much work to go searching for what might be the problem in the comments. But the mechanism for reporting abuse to Google remains. This presents a risk to me, and I think the risk has increased in the past week. So I want those notifications. I'm worried not only that Google will overdo its censorship but also that haters of this blog — of the comments section of this blog — will come in here with pseudonyms and write violent threats and racist crap for the purpose of drawing censorship down upon me. 

There are various ways to deal with the problem of commenters who are here to hurt me, and some of them are too labor intensive. Some of them would diminish (or destroy) the flow of the comments. The comments at their best are phenomenal, and I'm very happy with the good commenters and have greatly appreciated their company these last 17 years. (Bloggiversary #17 is tomorrow.) But one thing I can do is to put the ads back up and then use the notifications to identify the comment threads that have something Google sees as a problem. Then it's a limited task to look for what needs to be deleted.

I delete comments without prodding from Google when I see threats of violence. I delete comments with the "n-word." I probably have a standard that's close to what Google is identifying, so I'm going to accept the help from Google now. I can't read every comment on every post — there are close to 4 million comments on this blog — but I can comb through the comments sections on posts where I get a Google notification. Google is getting vigilant about material that I don't want either — and, of course, I don't want a festering problem that I cannot see and that is undermining the existence of this blog. 

And that's why there are ads on this blog.

Would the person named Yin who is trying to comment, please try again?

We have tried to put through your comments, but they are not appearing. We are worried that there's some kind of censorship happening that is not coming from us. We will look for you and make a screen shot next time we see you!

It's time to play "Was that racist?"

I'm getting email from an outraged reader who's on my case for not censoring the following comment, which appeared on yesterday's post about a NYT article titled, "Protests Draw Shoulder-to-Shoulder Crowds After Months of Virus Isolation." Out of discretion, I will refrain from naming the commenter, who said:

I'm sayin right out now. Like the 60s, the bulk of the "protesters" are lookin for a hook up. Nothin like a meaningful virtue signal to fire up the hormones. Mostly lookin for that Hot Monkey Love the libs all crave.

Was that racist?

IN THE COMMENTS: Leslie Graves said:

Is it safe to assume that they thought this because of the reference to "hot monkey love"?

I looked it up on Urban Dictionary, where the meaning is given as "To engage in hot serious sex. To go at it with the prowless [sic] of a monkey. In that you actually make each other wanna make noises similar to that of a screaming monkey."

Urban Dictionary doesn't represent this as having racial overtones.

The person also might have thought that claiming that hormones and the desire to hook up are actually what is causing folks (some of whom are people of color) to flood into the streets, as opposed to a high-minded desire to protest the killing, and that saying that is insulting to those people of color in a racist way.

I will say that back in the 60s, whenever there was an anti-war protest in nearby Madison, it was very common for the old folks to offer commentary suggesting that the main reason for those students (virtually all of whom were white) to flood into the streets was to get some action. So, that's how I read the comment.

MadisonMan said:

Why run to the teacher, so to speak, over something like this? If you find something in the comments racist enough to email the host, why isn't racist enough to comment on directly?

Some people don't want to engage in open debate. They want censorship. The person who emailed me said: "I don’t subscribe to the Zuckerberg view" and wanted to attribute it to me for not "filtering" it out. I get something like 1,000 comments a day and, though I delay them in moderation to squelch known trolls, I can't possibly read them all and think about what they mean. In any case, I do subscribe to the Zuckerberg view.

ADDED: Is Gilda Radner racist?



Is Maureen Dowd?

"To better understand Locals, think of it as an intersection of Patreon, YouTube, and social media, or as Rubin calls it, 'digital homes for creators.'"

"To participate, content creators with some established following buy into Locals, which works with them to develop a website or app — depending upon needs and objectives — allowing each creator to operate their own personal website and community of followers and crowd-funders. Each creator determines his own rules of conduct for his community and monetary threshold for access. For instance, Rubin’s rules for his site are essentially don’t do anything illegal and don’t be a trolling jerk, and his subscription cost for community buy-in is a $3 minimum. Chronological content feeds can function as video receptacles, a creator messaging feed, and a social engagement tool for subscribers, among other things...."

I'm reading this piece in The Federalist from last December: "Dave Rubin Launches Creator Hub ‘Locals’ To Counter Big Tech: ‘Small Is The New Big’/Nearly a year after leaving Patreon, Rubin says his new tech company Locals is the solution, taking power from online behemoths and placing it into the hands of individual creators."

I've heard of this place because Scott Adams talks about it on his podcast. He's moving his work onto it, and I'd like to take a look. I'd probably subscribe, but I need to look at it first! I get this far:



I'm not going to join something I can't see at all.

I started looking at that yesterday as I was contemplating moving my own work onto this site or something like it. I'm not considering closing this blog, just ending the comments here and having a parallel blog with commenting on the same posts. I'd work on various extras (podcasting, etc.).  Anyway, I think the commenting community could flourish without the need for burdensome and annoying moderation.

But with Locals, I cannot even get to the point where I can see what I would be using. I created an account over there but it didn't get me to a place where I could get a feel for writing in that format! It's just not user-friendly enough for me to get started.

And even as I'm contemplating moving my own work into a membership format, I'm feeling my own unwillingness to join anything. I couldn't bring myself to click to "join" the Scott Adams "community," even though I really wanted to see what it looks like, and I'm willing to speak openly about it here. It's not as though I'm a secret consumer of Scott Adams material. I just resist joining. And I'm not drawn in by the idea of being in a "community."

ADDED: I see that I wrote "I think the commenting community could flourish" and then "And I'm not drawn in by the idea of being in a 'community.'" Is that inconsistent? Not really, I don't comment on other blogs, and I don't look for in-person opportunities to comment on various issues. This blog exists and has persisted as a daily activity for 16 years because I'm not the community type.

I thought I hadn't used the tag "the [blank] community" in many years...

... as I was adding it to that last post, "We have a fat population, so why don’t we have a community?"

But after publishing the post and clicking on the tag — "the [blank] community" — I saw that I'd used it 3 times in the last 2 years. Something about "the nice community of woke people." The notion that Amy Klobuchar gets mad about the use of "community" in press releases. And something about "the BDSM community" (who the hell was "Schneiderman" that I blogged about him without a first name?).

Before that, though, you have to go all the way back to Fall 2008 to find the tag. It flourished that season. There are 4 posts. One of the 4 posts is about about the loner community (and refers back to 2 other posts about the loner community):

"I'm here on the internet and I can't find any communities for loners."

"... I'm so deeply put-off of people from my grueling experiences with extroverts and socialites. So, I'd like to get a chance to talk to my own kind a little. I know there are a lot of people who feel the same way as me... but I can't find a message board for them."

That's a new comment on a post from last August. Perhaps you'd like to respond to the commenter, whose name is Autonomous. I'll redirect him/her to this post, so use this comments section.

Oddly, I've joked twice on this blog about "the loner community": here and here.

In the comments there, Freeman Hunt says:

I guess I'm weird around here. I'm definitely extroverted. Not in the social butterfly, small talk, loud sense--I don't like boring conversation and some of this social butterfly talk seems to imply that--but I definitely enjoy the company of people. I like people, all kinds of people, a lot. Call me crazy.

In fact, I've always hoped that there will someday be a nationwide Althouse get together. You people interest me. :)

That was responded to by Meade (whom I would meet in real life 2 months later):

I like Freeman's idea but wouldn't it be a riot if we all got together only to find out that in person we all rub each other the wrong way because in person we're all just a bunch of loud annoying energy-sapping attention-seeking opinionated extraverts who do nothing but talk over each other?

For a disquisition on whether the spelling is "extrovert" or "extravert," go here.

The original "the [blank] community" post was from the first year of the blog, 2004. I took issue with the term "the sniper community."

Oops!

You know that I recently returned from a cross-country road trip.



Who knows what a long strange trip can do to your mind? I don't know all the things, but about an hour ago, 3 days after returning home, I noticed one thing.

I'd completely forgotten about the older-than-one-day comments that sit around in my "awaiting moderation" file! I'm not sure what jogged my memory, but I suddenly remembered. I think it was the ridiculous spam that was getting published in today's posts. Yes, that made me think about the moderation function.

There were hundreds of comments just sitting there, some fretting that they were doing something wrong and getting rejected. I'm really sorry. When you forget, you forget. Moderation is something that happens when I remember. I generally do it often throughout the day, but when traveling, I don't sit with my computer too much, and I don't go into the sort of idle mode where I poke around for more things to do.

I apologize! I genuinely value your comments. I was reading new comments as I traveled, but I really did lose track of the day-old-and-older comments that came in.

The photograph of the tree that symbolizes my twisted-up travel-mind is from the Realization Point trail near Boulder.

At the Rattatz Café...

... go ahead and talk about whatever you like.

I hope you get a glimpse of the Super Worm Moon. It's too overcast for us here at Meadhouse, but we did get a good look at this morning's moonset, so that almost counts.

Please remember to use the Althouse Portal to Amazon when you're purchasing your various worldly goods. The portal link is always there in the sidebar.

Thanks to all who've gotten into the swing of the new comments policy, which puts everything through moderation and has worked really well from our end, cutting out trolls, thread hijacks, and the dreaded "back and forth."

Thanks for adapting to the new comments policy!

It's working out great from my perspective.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, here's where I hammered it out last night. I gave 4 reasons for the change, and I am already seeing 4 corresponding aspects of improvement. Thanks for adapting, and I hope you enjoy the benefits and accept the slight lag time.

There's new text above the comment composition window that explains — in case you don't already know — that all comments go through moderation now.

I'm thinking about a new commenting experience.

I'm not starting it yet, but I may do it soon, perhaps only — at least at first — as an experiment. UPDATE: The experiment has begun!

The idea is for all comments to go into moderation. I'll regard the comments submitted to moderation as private messages to me, and I'll only publish comments I think readers would generally enjoy reading — comments that are interesting, original, well-written, and responsive to the post.

I don't write anything in the posts that I don't think is new and worth reading. Sometimes I "front-page" comments that seem especially valuable, so this new approach to comments would be much more like front-paging, with lesser comments simply not published at all. I would still read the comments, but I wouldn't impose them on readers.

Why am I thinking of doing this?

1. There are many excellent comments, but they can get buried amongst lesser comments. With fewer comments and a guarantee that these are all chosen comments, the reader experience in the comments will be far superior. Right now, I know there are many readers who won't even look at the comments because the overall quality is too low. So, first, I want a better reader experience. You won't have to go searching for what's good.

2. When there are already a lot of comments, you might not want to take the trouble to write a comment that might actually be excellent. Who will read you? This hesitation will be especially strong where there are a lot of lesser comments or a high concentration of low-quality comments. I imagine that some of the best stuff is never written at all. In the new comments experience, you might show up hours after the post has gone up and see maybe a line of 10 really good comments. You might feel strongly motivated to contribute. What you write will be read.

3. Of course, I might not choose your comment for publication at all, but you'll know you're competing to hit my standard and that I'll at least read it. You'll see what does get published, so you'll have a chance to learn what it takes. I'm optimistic that the quality of comments will improve as commenters see what I'm saying is good. There are lots of ways to be good, and I'll be continually showing you examples.

4. It might make me better. If it doesn't, I can change back any time I want.

You might wonder what will happen to the cafés. What I can do, with the limited options Blogger gives me, is turn moderation off at the end of the day when I put up the café, and then you can write and interact spontaneously. That will also end the moderation for the other posts of that day, but I'll simply go through those posts the next morning and use deletion to get the effect I'd worked on for the day.

Doesn't this sound like a lot of trouble for me (and Meade)? We already spend a great deal of time reading comments. The idea is to use our comments-reading time to better effect. We love reading the comments. I have a way of reading and writing that flows very well for me, and I would really miss having comments. But I want better comments!

The new commenting experience has not yet begun. This is a post where you can talk about it and see your comments immediately. Feel free to try to talk me out of this. But aren't you interested in seeing what would happen?

IN THE COMMENTS: mccullough said...

I’m ready for my close-up.

Going to bring my A-game.

traditionalguy said...

Do it! We have a long way to go to reach Althousehood,but we have to start somewhere. And we might surprise you.

Will snarky baseball comments still make the grade?

CJinPA said...

More than most bloggers, you sometimes encourage readers to consider specific ideas before commenting on certain posts. It’s clear the quality of discussion generated by your writing means a lot to you. I make a conscious effort to post an original idea when I comment. I’m not always successful. This should be a worthwhile experiment. The big question: How many will stick around if their comments are never published, and what will that say about their (our) motivation for coming here?

stevew said...

Sounds like a lot of work for you and Meade, but also that you are ready, willing, and able to do that work.

I think is sounds like a fine idea, and would significantly improve the quality of the comments here. I'm one of those that doesn't come as often to the comment section lately as I once did; partly because of volume and partly because too many comments have been in the category of personal attacks.

Not sure if any of my comments will rise to level of fitting through your new filter - often I'm coming to the party after it is well underway and so don't have much to offer other than agreement with ideas already expressed - but it would be fun to try to win you over. I expect that I would spend more time thinking and composing, rather than just dashing off whatever comes into my head.

Try it for a while, you can see if it works and if you are really interested in doing the moderation work.

Kent said...

Brilliant! think it has great potential, less for limiting the dross (which is more easily done just by not reading comments) as for enhancing the gold; improving on something you've said or adding perspective you find useful. Does it carry the danger of enhancing an echo chamber? Of course. But every blog author does that by deciding what questions to tackle or how to frame them. The best antidotes are rival blogs but nothing you do with comments will limit that. Moreover, as you pointed out, it also gives commenters more incentive to add something you might find worthwhile and more assurance they won't be trolled.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Will it be possible to come to some sort of arrangement with Meade to get our comment in, maybe as a recruited athlete?

Baelzar said...

You seem like you'd be a fair moderator. Give it a try.

Lyle Sanford, RMT said...

1) - A huge thank you for managing to write this post not using the - beaten lifeless through overuse - word "curate".
2) - I feel I should read all the comments before making one of my own, so sometimes I just move on when there are a lot.
3) - Whatever you do, the effort you put into making this blog so special makes me feel better about the world.

MayBee said...

I have low self esteem and always assume ideas like this are intended to keep me from babbling so much. So we'll see what I dare to do. I felt the same way about caller id....maybe nobody would ever answer my phone calls if they know its me? But after a few years, I got used to it.

The Last Dragon Slayer said...

I think there is a risk of you being accused of censorship and favoritism. Althouse is already unfairly accused of things. However, the person who perceives that they are being unfairly censored will never have the chance to air their grievance publicly. They might go away in a huff, I suppose, but if they are the ones who are so likely to be accusatory of Althouse and her motives, maybe that is just fine.

I disagree with Althouse on a number of points, but I find her to be quite fair in addressing issues and letting people speak and disagree. She only asks that you back it up. I totally back that approach, so I have little fear that the comments will begin to slant only toward her point of view. I think Althouse knows that the value in the blog is the debate, and censorship would kill the goose. I expect she even finds us right-wing commenters interesting, if nothing else.

Banning people is very hard to do. I've had several "personas" on this blog it is is very easy to create a new one every day if I wanted. How can she ban someone determined to be a pest?

I don't like up-voting. To be honest, I trust Althouse to be more balanced than the general audience (not saying that any given member is less honest.) Thus, with up-voting, we will get more censorship in a way since contrary views my get down-voted based on point of view rather than quality. I think Althouse will filter for quality and relevance, not point of view.

I do hope she will let the tangentials through. The old Spatula was very entertaining even if not right on topic. There have been other colorful commenters that might not always advance a debate, but they were fun to read. But then, I think this is a reaction more toward to personal attack and back and forth bickering than it is for anything else, so I still see it as low risk to the quality of the commentary.

Phil 3:14 said...

Is it possible to create a parallel comment section for those who don't make the grade so that we can wallow in our mediocrity, pettiness and name calling.

I mean, without that, is life even worth living?...

Just know that as I disappear beyond the boundary of acceptable comments I will be standing outside, face pressed against the glass shivering and hungry but somehow still warmed by the wit and humor of my bettors.

(PS, are these better comments? .....oh please, please, PLEASE DON'T MAKE ME GO!! I'LL DO BETTER, I KNOW I CAN DO BETTER.)

Meade said...

Phil, you have a typo on "bettors."

"Ann has taken note of our travails here in the Madison school district because it resonates nationally."

"Madison is by no means the only town in thrall to identity politics and its culture of victimhood. But we’ve got an especially toxic case," writes David Blaska (who's running for the school board here in Madison).

As of this writing 24 hours later, Ann’s post had generated 149 comments. We excerpt from that commentary here....

Go to the link to see which Althouse commenters got front-paged chez Dave.

Talk in the Raturday Night Café and the Google search it inspired.

Click to enlarge and clarify...



Here's a link to last night's café.

"Marriage is the death of hope" brings up webpages that purport to quote Woody Allen. I'm dubious.

"Marriage is the death of romance" gets me to some boring relationship advice plus the assertion that it's the translation of a Chinese proverb:

I'm dubious. It used to be very common to hear characters on TV (often in ads) say "Ancient Chinese wisdom" (in a fake Chinese accent) followed by something in the form of a proverb (almost always a manifestly fake proverb).

"Marriage is the death of love" gets me to boring relationship advice, some more groping after a Chinese proverb, and a review of a play about Maynard Jackson, "the first African-American mayor of a major U.S. city, elected in Atlanta in 1973":

[Playwright Pearl Cleage has a] sagacious way with words, and epigrammatic pearls like "There's no greater cynic than a failed romantic" (a variation on George Carlin’s "Scratch a cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist"). Later, when Evey recalls an epiphany of self-discovery in Paris, she tells J.P., "Marriage is the death of love."

Ha ha. Scratch me, I'm a failed cynic.

Have you thought about Maynard Jackson recently? Did you know he fought Muhammad Ali?

“The only thing that really worries me is what happens if I hit him, for his sake and for mine as well,” [Mayor] Jackson said.

“[He] will not land one punch in one round, and if he dreamed it, he better wake up and apologize!” Ali responded....

But Jackson won with a technical knockout:

“Those trunks he had saved him because he had them too high.,” Ali told reporters. “I couldn’t hit him low because you’re not supposed to hit below the belt. He came with the trunks up to his breast, therefore I couldn’t hit him in the effective spots ‘cause he’s so big, he’s like a balloon, and if you hit him he’ll bust.”

Google is ending Google+... and if you have been using Google+ for comments, not only is it no longer usable. Your old comments will no longer appear!

This notice from Google appeared on my Blogger dashboard today:

Following the announcement of Google+ API deprecation scheduled for March 2019, a number of changes will be made to Blogger’s Google+ integration on 4 February 2019...

That was yesterday.

Google+ Comments: Support for Google+ comments will be turned down, and all blogs using Google+ comments will be reverted back to using Blogger comments. Unfortunately, comments posted as Google+ comments cannot be migrated to Blogger and will no longer appear on your blog.

Who has been using Google+ comments? I wonder how many old comments I'm losing!

If you want to find old comments that have disappeared, try archive.org. Feel free to cut and paste the text of old comments into new comments on old posts. Comments on old posts need to pass through moderation, but that means I will see them in my email. I'm eager to help anyone who has been affected by the demise of Google+. 

Perhaps some day, I'll get the announcement that Google is ending Blogger, and my entire blog will be undisplayed, and there's nothing I can do about it. All I can think is — there's still archive.org. And don't advise me to extract my blog from Blogger and put it somewhere else. Many years ago, the blog became too large to be exportable using the Blogger software. I'm too deeply intertwined with Google ever to break free. It's like my own human body. Either I can be in here, or I will die.

ADDED: From last November:

After the termination of Google Plus, Blogger users are also becoming apprehensive about their position on the platform. However, Google sets the record straight by stating that they don’t plan to close their free blogging service anytime soon.... Soraya Lambrechts, a spokesperson from Blogger clearly replied that the company has no plans to sunset its blogging platform....

Although Google has a long history of killing its products, the current statement shows that the tech giant will continue the Blogger site.... Apparently, Google doesn't want to disappoint bloggers yet.

Yet!

"I was surprised by how much interest there’s been from centrist politicians, who are desperate for a coherent narrative to defend centrist liberalism, cosmopolitanism, open society..."

"... from the threats both by populists and by the hard left. I think there is a hunger for a coherent worldview that isn’t just the status quo, the un-Trumpism. We can do better than that. We ought to use reason and science to enhance human well-being.... We can set up institutions that result in greater rationality than any of us is capable of individually, like peer review, like free speech, like a free press, like empirical testing — norms and institutions that make us collectively more rational than any of us is individually.... One answer is to make people aware of [irrationality], because I think most people are not. Then once one has that understanding, to try to depoliticize issues as much as possible. I do try to disassociate empirical issues from political baggage."

Said Steven Pinker, quoted in the NYT last November in "Steven Pinker Thinks the Future Is Looking Bright/The Harvard psychologist says he is no starry-eyed optimist. It’s just that the data don’t lie." The "interest" he's talking about is in his book "Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress."

I found that this morning because I was searching the NYT for the phrase "hard left" after encountering a reference to the "hard right" in a NYT article about Ginni Thomas ("President Trump met last week with a delegation of hard-right activists led by Ginni Thomas") and seeing a barrage of comments objecting to the term. It raises the question whether the NYT will say "hard left" at the same degree of deviation from the center that causes it to say "hard right." I haven't systematically counted, but I think "hard right" is much more common, and "hard left" is most likely to come up in references to other countries (notably Venezuela) or in quotes, but I did find some examples of "hard left" in news articles, such as "Rally by White Nationalists Was Over Almost Before It Began" (from last August):

The alt-right movement, never very well unified, has been particularly rived by infighting and schisms in the last year. Members have been outed by both online activists and mainstream media outlets, causing some to lose their jobs. The left’s ability to turn out counterprotesters has also been a factor, from the hard-left activists threatening violence against far-right street protesters, to center-left citizens who have been vocal, and explicit, in expressing their disgust and scorn.

And "There Is a Revolution on the Left. Democrats Are Bracing." (from last July):

Some national Democrats remain skeptical that voters are focused on specific policy demands of the kind Mr. El-Sayed and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez have championed. Former Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland, a left-of-center Democrat who ran for president in 2016, suggested the party wants “new leaders and fresh ideas” more than hard-left ideology.

Isn't the hard left more of a problem for Democrats than the hard right is a problem for Republicans? If so, I would expect the NYT to help the Democrats stay in the zone of electable leftish moderation.

And I love the Steven Pinker stuff. But he's not a political candidate (indeed that quote came after he rejected the idea of his running for office). I'd like a candidate for President who would talk like that. Howard?

The Althouse Bloggiversary: Today marks 15 years of blogging (and without a single missed day).

I'm delighted to be still here, a blogger on Planet Earth, where I wake up every day able and genuinely excited to write a few more sentences. It's a strange way of life, but it's what I do.

Thanks to all of you who stop by to read and to get whatever value you might find here, including the chance to write a few sentences of your own.

And thanks especially to Meade, who's been with me 2/3 of the way through these 15 years.