Week of September 13th, 2020

Hi,

We talked yesterday. It's been a hell of a week. I hope you're doing well.

College COVID Recap

We have some marginally better news here. It seems that the growth is definitely not exponential for now, so something seems to be working. Recall that we're on a delay, so we're seeing the results of the actions we took about two weeks ago. We'll see how stable this is, but I pretty much have all the doubts I did last week. I fully expect another spike unless everything goes remote. It may well have already happened and just needs to show up in our test results. It's news like this that makes people feel safe, and I don't feel that my peers are treating the situation with nearly enough gravity.

 

The really good news is the update to the testing policy. They are finally implementing a mandatory random testing policy for all students in town on or off-campus. This is exactly what I was arguing for immediately after move-in. It'll go a long way in giving us the information we need and catching breakouts earlier. They didn't say anything about the scale of this testing, but I hope they're going big. About a thousand tests in the last week is just not enough in a deadly pandemic. There are some idiots whining about this policy who apparently just want the school president to solve Coronavirus without anyone having to do anything. Some folks are scared to go on campus to get tested. Obviously, I hope all this is successful. It's taking longer than I predicted for everything to get shut down, so maybe I was wrong. We'll see.

Election Recap

Because apparently just about anybody can claim a month, it's Hispanic Heritage Month. This brought Joe Biden to an event in Florida where he spoke immediately after Luis Fonsi, who sang “Despacito.” So, Biden took the stage and played “Despacito” from his smartphone into the mic to the whole audience as his opener for a speech about Hispanic heritage. It's a wonderful, hilarious moment, and you owe it to yourself to watch the clip if you haven't seen it. Some folks are mad at Biden for pandering and whatnot, but I'm trying to enjoy what I can. As you might imagine, a lot of people made edited versions with different music. It's since been deleted, but the President tweeted an edited video in which Biden played “Fuck the Police” without clearly stating that it was a joke, and Twitter had a field day, etc, etc. This stuff is getting kind of rote if you ask me.

Here's an unbelievable clip of President Trump gloating about his COVID performance.

Obviously, we've already talked about the most important political happening this year and probably one of the most important of this presidency. Justice Ginsburg died yesterday from pancreatic cancer. This was her fifth battle with cancer. The truth is that she should have resigned under President Obama, and, really, I wish she had. I can only imagine that she didn't because she wasn't able to foresee a President Trump on the horizon, a deadly error I think most of us made. Now we have this situation. I want to clarify something we discussed briefly yesterday. I absolutely still hold that it was proper for a Republican Senate to delay the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland and that it would be proper for that same Senate to affirm a nomination in Justice Ginsburg's place. The Constitution and other founding documents couldn't be clearer about this: Confirmation is a political process. If the Senate couldn't deny appointments at will, they wouldn't be part of the process. The real difference between now and historical confirmations is the still-active nuclear option requiring only 51 votes instead of 60, something I generally oppose. There are 53 Republican Senators, so Trump is going to be able to make an appointment. The real problem here isn't the political process, but the rhetoric that Republican Senators used in 2016 to justify blocking Garland. They all said so much stupid shit that should be held against them if they try to fill the seat before the election. Here's Senator Graham explicitly telling people to use his words against him in this kind of situation. And here's Senator Cruz making up an 80-year precedent as if that means anything. Of course Senator Cruz has already called for President Trump to fill the seat. Their angle seems to be that at the end of the Obama administration, the American people had elected a Conservative Senate as a referendum on President Obama who was leaving office anyway whereas Trump is in his first term with a Republican Senate backing him up. Obviously, that's not what the GOP was saying in 2016, but besides dealing yet another wound to our political spirit, it doesn't really matter. And this reasoning is total BS since the Senate isn't supposed to represent “the will of the people,” but, again, it doesn't really matter. It's all just empty rhetoric. Senate Majority Leader McConnell uses this reasoning in his official statement. They're going to fill the seat. These people are snakes. At least Senator Murkowski is sticking by the 2016 precedent.

Since the GOP is signalling that they're going to fill the seat, the natural question is, “With whom?” The betting markets say Judge Amy Coney Barrett. The betting markets are fucking stupid. It's not going to be her. We don't actually have to search far for a firm answer. Perhaps the Trump administration knew something we didn't. Just ten days ago, it published a list of Supreme Court candidates President Trump would consider were a seat to open up. Unsurprisingly, Judge Barrett is not on that list. Let's look at who is. When this list was being shared around last evening, many were particularly startled by the inclusions of Senators Cruz and Cotton. I don't think either will be nominated. First, Senator Cotton is seen as a fascist by a huge swath of Americans for the “Send in the Troops” op-ed and not without good reason. Most of Trump's court picks have been fairly moderate despite all the hullabaloo, and I think the Trump Administration is wise enough to know that nominating someone seen as a right-wing radical in Justice Ginsburg's place would give too much ammunition to the other side. I eliminate Senator Cruz by similar reasoning. Senator Cruz is well-known enough that a lot of Americans already hate his guts. And I suspect that despite their current alliance, President Trump still holds a grudge against the guy and doesn't like the idea of handing him an elevated life-long position.

No, Trump's going to try to get what he wants while stirring the pot as little as possible. I predict that Trump is going to make his most liberal appointment yet while not going too far to anger his base. I think anyone else on that list is a real possibility, but I also predict that President Trump will nominate a woman. Justice Ginsburg will be remembered as a feminist hero. Keeping that seat female is probably the best tactic. I also think it's most likely that the President will pick a judge. So, if I'm going to wager a guess, I'd keep an eye out for Judges Bridget Bade, Barbara Lagoa, Martha Pacold, and Sarah Pitlyk. We'll have to see what happens.

Everything Else

If you already thought Alexa and other smart home devices were terrifying, prepare yourself for Amazon Echo for landlords. Not only can Bezos listen to everything you say, now your landlord can drop in so long as you haven't set the device to “not disturb.”Basically the landlord can drop in and initiate a 2-way conversation at any time as opposed to, you know, making a phone call. You can pay rent through the thing, too, so now Bezos can listen in on that.

Here's Alex Jones talking directly to a vaccine telling it to give black children Polio in a ridiculous voice.

JK Rowling cannot stop with the TERF shit. Apparently her latest book is about a cis male serial killer who dresses as a woman to murder people. I really don't understand what motivates these TERFs. It seems like her distaste for trans women is almost pathological. Why can't they shut the fuck up and stop being terrible. In particular, Conservatives defending her out of some misguided sense of unity are morons.

As a short update to the Cuties business from last week, here's a deranged review from a guy who can't stop perving over the film's pre-teen stars. I understand that the film criticizes the sexual exploitation of children, but this video perfectly explains why that backfired horribly. Netflix is still hosting child pornography. I'm honestly impressed this pedo has the balls to keep this up on YouTube with comments enabled and everything. I'm kind of hoping he's just doing it for attention.

Finally, here's a really bizarre story about South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnzborg. Apparently, he struck and killed a guy on a rural road while driving his car a long way away from his home coming back from some event. He states that he thought the guy was a deer (since humans famously look just like deer) and called 911 to report the accident. Whether this 911 call ever took place hasn't been confirmed. He said he looked around with his phone but couldn't find what he'd hit in the dark. He called Sheriff Mike Volek over who assessed the damage to the vehicle and also apparently just didn't see the body. Since his car was wrecked, he borrowed the sheriff's personal vehicle to get home.

A.G. Ravnzborg's wrecked car

The next day he returned with his chief of staff to return the sheriff's vehicle. He stopped at the accident site, saw the body lying in plain sight on the shoulder of the road. Despite the purported 911 call, the site hadn't been investigated at all. Apparently, he and Sheriff Volek are just really bad lookers. A.G. Ravnzborg reported the finding not by calling 911 immediately, but by driving all the way to Sheriff Volek's house and telling him. Then, despite being involved in the incident, the two returned to the scene and investigated it themselves with Volek promising to lead the investigation. A.G. Ravnzborg has gotten eight traffic tickets in the last four years. This story is sketchy as all hell and I'm going to try to keep up with it.

Thanks,

Jacob Morris

Week of September 6th, 2020

Hi,

I didn't send one of these last week since I was at home for the long weekend and my time was pretty occupied. It's a shame, too. I could have written a damn essay on Kyle Rittenhouse alone and just be getting started. I don't have nearly as much stuff this week. I'm back in the school grind, but I think my hardest semester is behind me now, and since I already have a job, I'm really just trying not to drop the ball. So it's been pretty chill up here, at least compared to previous semesters.

College COVID Recap

Pessimism wins again; we are fucked. If you'll bear with me, I think it's a good idea to peruse the information, since I think my school serves as a microcosm for all kinds of chaos happening all over the country. After the explosion of cases, they switched to daily updates, so I have a lot more information to work with here.

The number of positive tests since move-in is currently making its way toward 1000. By itself, that's a worrying number, and it has nowhere to go but up, though fortunately the growth doesn't currently look exponential. Also, it's now very obvious that this growth is happening internally rather than being brought in from outside. Far more tests were conducted before three weeks ago than after, since everyone moving into on-campus housing had to get tested, but only a handful of those tests were positive. After that date, there have been far fewer tests, but the number of cases has exploded. My understanding is that the university is now testing people if they feel sick, were exposed to someone who tested positive, were out of town, or who requested a test for some other reason. Of course, the university has a limited ability to perform contact tracing, so they can't really lock down everyone who's been exposed to someone who just tested positive, and most people who are positive haven't gotten test results yet. Luke, the point is that someone is going to die, and it will have been fully preventable. Obviously the dipshit freshmen who don't care about the health of their peers are terrible, but the blame for this falls squarely on administrators who had the resources to predict this possibility.

The school is scrambling, and I don't know how long they'll keep this up before they send us all home. This week, they unceremoniously kicked everyone out of one of the residence halls to make room for more isolation space. No one had any indication this was a possibility, so I can't imagine this was part of the plan. I believe they're moving a number of these kids into a nearby hotel, so have fun walking to class, I guess.

All the primary schools in town have shut down, so you have to imagine that it won't be too long until we meet the same end. Maybe they'll hold out to the tuition refund deadline of October 15th. Hopefully nobody's dead by then. Many students have now been suspended for misconduct, but it's probably not enough.

I've been going pretty hard on the administration in this message, but I don't really believe most of the conspiracies. I think they genuinely thought that students would be more adept at slowing spread and didn't anticipate many of the problems that have arisen. But others are going much harder. Many are pretty much calling the university president a killer. I've seen some socially-distanced protesters about. I think a lot of folks really believe that the administration fully anticipated what has happened and did it anyway to make more money. So tensions are pretty high.

Apocalypse Recap

I think it's not a bad idea to start grouping together all the new apocalyptic events since they just keep coming. I'm sure you've seen it, but California's on fire and the whole west coast is red now.

It'd be a cool aesthetic if it weren't so terrifying.

Someone cut together a Blade Runner video from unedited footage. One of my professors who is teaching remotely from the west coast literally got evacuated from his apartment during a lecture when burning ash started raining down from the sky. At this stage of the apocalypse, why the fuck not? God have mercy on us. One thing I should point out is that this was not caused by a gender reveal party gone wrong, no matter how much Twitter wishes it were. Yes, pyrotechnics at one ridiculous gender reveal party did cause one of the earlier fires, but if it were just that, it wouldn't have gotten like this.

From CNN. The El Dorado gender-reveal fire.

No, most of them were caused by a big dry lightning storm. No tragic irony was involved. It was just God smiting us the good old fashioned way. Okay, there may still be a bit of tragic irony here. We'll be seeing red skies more frequently as the planet gets hotter.

The other apocalyptic thing I saw this week was the Governor of South Dakota Kristi Noem, a Republican, is currently using millions of dollars of federal Coronavirus relief aid to fund a marketing campaign for tourism. South Dakota has the second-highest number of new cases per capita of the US states. I'm so fucking done.

Everything Else

I could make this whole email about Shoe0nHead and Chris Ray Gun, but I'm going to try not to. In case you don't know who I'm talking about (though I'm sure you do to at least some degree) they're both left-leaning semi-political YouTubers who gained notoriety from making fun of “SJWs” in the #GamerGate era. They both followed a similar trajectory. They always avoided getting into “save the west” territory and were more focused on comedy. And they're both pretty funny. You'll recall I sent you Shoe's “Hell World” video when the George Floyd protests took off. These two have been through the ringer the last two weeks like you wouldn't believe. It starts when Shoe starts hanging out with leftist streamer Vaush and starts evolving and discussing her leftist political views, particularly on her Twitter. Since her fans are pretty politically diverse, quite a lot of them weren't happy about this. These guys could get so ridiculous that there's now a novelty account dedicated to right-wing Shoe0nHead simps. Chris Ray Gun was also a guest on one of his streams. To be clear, I didn't like any of this either. Vaush is a complete dumbass and a complete commie. He's very polite to people and has an inviting “anti-woke” vibe, but he's really competing for dumbest “Internet leftist,” and there's some tough competition for that title. I also think there's a fighting chance that he's a nonce.

I don't think that he's a good person to be aligning oneself with. But whatever, Shoe0nHead can talk to whomever she pleases. I'm not going to do the whole guilt by association charade.

But then Shoe went on a 24-hour trans rights stream hosted by The Serfs which was probably a mistake given all the commie guests. There's been a number of these trans rights megastreams and they seem to inevitably get out of hand. This one definitely did. After Shoe had left the stream, a bunch of LARPers started discussing what would be done with all the cops after the violent communist revolution. It's cringe. After this stream, her ex-friend fellow “anti-sjw” right-wing YouTuber Sargon of Akkad made a pearl-clutching video attacking Shoe in pretty ridiculous fashion. As evidence that the people she was spending time with were no good, he included a clip of one of the other guests engaging in the “what to do with all the former cops” discourse. But Sargon's single-digit-IQ fans thought that the person talking in the clip was Shoe, and have gone after her aggressively, and then after Chris for defending her among other things. There's this raging mob of people attacking them as communists or concern-trolling about their tragic descent into left-wing politics. Also there's a lot of simps.

But that's hardly the end of it. That'd be too easy. Now that they're trying to engage more in left-wing online politics (well, mostly Shoe. Chris tends to get shit by extension), they're getting scrutinized by the insufferable people in that circle. So while one mob is running around calling them both communists 24/7, an entirely separate group is running around calling them Nazis 24/7 for participating in #GamerGate to purity test leftists who dare speak to them. Chris Ray Gun is a Nazi and a communist at the same time. There was even a group of leftists literally body-shaming Shoe using some kind of pretzel logic.

I can't remember the last time I saw anyone get hammered this hard from the far right and the far left at the same time by no real fault of their own. It has been incredible to watch.

Moving on, The Daily Beast has now published the “more female drone pilots” meme unironically. It really reads like satire. “She kills people from 7,850 miles away.”

In a strange government overreach, Naples has imposed a mandatory DNA registry for all dogs so that they can determine what dog owners don't pick up their dog's shit. You have to imagine that it'd be cheaper to just hire people to clean it up. No, government, you may not have my dog's blood. Jesus Christ.

Okay, finally I want to talk about the movie Cuties, recently released on Netflix. Unlike other people criticizing this film and Netflix's decision to host it, I will not be posting child pornography in this email, so if you really want confirmation that what I say is true, you can look it up on your own or follow a few of the links here. If you haven't heard of Cuties, that's probably a pretty frightening introduction. But it is a fitting one. Cuties is a French film by female director Maïmouna Doucouré about a Muslim girl who winds up split between her conservative upbringing and dance culture when she joins a dance troupe composed exclusively of 11 to 13 year-old girls. Crucially, those are the ages of the actresses. The characters are young kids, they're played by young kids, and they look like young kids. When the film was first released, it was not controversial. It premiered at Sundance to acclaim. The stated purpose of the film is to criticize the hypersexualization of young girls in online culture. Here's the movie's American poster.

But this is not the original poster on Netflix. I will not show you the original poster on Netflix because I consider it to be pornographic. As you might imagine, that poster sparked controversy. Netflix apologized and changed it. I thought that it probably wasn't a good reflection of the film since no one involved in the project had a say in the Netflix marketing, and I was hoping that this controversy would be the end of the Cuties discourse. Then the movie came out. Obviously, I have not watched this movie. I have seen clips. I have seen enough. I don't give a fuck about the artistic intent. These are real kids, and this movie is a pedophile's dream come true. It's hard for me to demonstrate this without showing it, so if you'd really like to have this proven to you, I'd recommend you watch PaymoneyWubby's video about it. But I wouldn't watch it with anyone else in the room. And then I'd probably throw my laptop into a fire when I was done watching and wash my eyes out with dish soap. I don't know if I have a favorite way to criticize the hypersexualization of young women, but it's definitely not filming extended close-up sequences of real scantily-clad 11-year-olds twerking and putting it up on Netflix for all to see. Remember, Netflix has vehemently defended this film.

You'd think people would be able to criticize this regardless of political views, but unfortunately that isn't the case. The outrage has been almost entirely from the right. Conservatives have rightly called out how negative changes in our culture regarding sex positivity have made this kind of soft-core child pornography appear acceptable. This is a case where I agree with the conservative view with zero reservations. Of course, there were also a number of QAnon folks who jumped on this train to call out their elite pedophile cults and whatnot, but that was a minority. It was mostly conservatives being 100% correct and concerned parents cancelling their Netflix accounts. There were a few call-outs across the aisle, but very few. Notably, Congresswoman Gabbard used the #CancelNetflix hashtag.

This resulted in some weird shit. Please try to remember that Congresswoman Gabbard is a Social Democrat at the far left of the Democratic party.

But many people on the left have been defending this filth. Here's an article from The Verge which epitomizes the trope “conservatives pounce.” If your reaction to the obvious sexual exploitation of young kids is to go after Republicans for being too mad about it, you're pretty sick. This isn't about a “harassment campaign” against a “female POC filmmaker.” It's a campaign against the normalization of child pornography. And if rejecting this film makes me a prude or a pearl-clutcher, I'll gladly accept the title.

I think the world might be ending,

Jacob Morris

Week of August 23rd, 2020

I'm back, I think. I feel like I've woken up from a summer-long slumber and am now something approximating a real person again. Please lmk if these bore you or anything. I just find it to be a fun enough Saturday activity. I haven't done this is a damn long time, so forgive me if this is a clonker.

College COVID Update

I have a feeling this might be a running segment, though it probably won't be this long again until everything goes to shit. I have no faith in this institution to not become a hotbed of filth and disease. They've created harsher penalties for violating rules while on campus, but I don't think it's going to help. Most people are fine of course. I'd estimate that maybe 10% of people are a little lax on social distancing and 3% absolutely do not give a shit (of course that will skew toward freshmen who all live in dorms), but that's more than enough for hell to break loose. I've heard some real horror stories already

I've seen people celebrate this since there are fewer than 30 recorded cases in the first week. I'm old enough to remember a time when the White House celebrated double-digit COVID cases in the United States. This is definitely enough for things to go bad. I'm expecting a new update tomorrow, so it's a betting game to see what number 21 will turn into. That's secondary to the main betting game for this semester which is “How many weeks until they put everything online?”

The way this shook out, I have 3 classroom sessions a week, and I'm not too worried about those since they're so regulated that transmission chances are pretty damn low, despite the few horror stories we've seen.

Next week, there's a virtual event to introduce new students to our clubs so I'll be representing the atheists *tips fedora* and the filmmakers... who are really trying to figure out what to do. I'm really glad I wasn't the one elected president. Well, I can get around to finalizing some edits we never finished, and I suppose our film-making can get a little experimental. It depends on how many people actually want to attend a club introduction event over Zoom, really.

Since I don't need my laptop for any of my in-person classes, I have it set up under my desk sitting on its screen so it can ventilate hooked up to a monitor I got recently. Fortunately, I'm no longer craning my head to look at a small, old 720p monitor sitting on top of a fridge. Having a decently large screen and a mechanical keyboard is honestly a game-changer. I don't know how I survived for so long making big software projects on a laptop. I of course have my mic hooked up, and I also figured out how to use my phone as a webcam. My point is I probably have the absolute best Zoom setup in the university. I have contrast-y lighting on my face, I have an XLR mic with a pop filter in the shot and sound great. I have a pretty nice phone camera that's held up with a little stand I bought, so I'm in the left third of the shot a little below the camera's line of sight. And I do a little bit of set dressing too. Everyone else has a shitty laptop camera looking up at his or her chin and sounds like they're talking through the garbage disposal. It's a very silly thing to take pride in, but I gotta keep Zoom school life interesting somehow.

Thank God I have my full-time offer. I would not want to be going through the recruiting process this year.

Election Update

Well we just had the DNC and the RNC, so now's the right time to re-engage with politics, I guess. I wish I were writing emails during the height of the BLM protests, but political conventions it is. I won't say much about the DNC since that wasn't this week. It was boring as hell, and we all noticed that nearly every candidate except for Congresswoman Gabbard was invited to the convention. Andrew Yang jokingly mispronouncing Vice President Pence's name was extreme cringe, and Bill Clinton was invited for some reason, even though nearly everyone agrees he's probably a rapist at this point. That's really about it. I don't know if you watched the RNC, but on the other hand, that shit was insane. The Republican Party has become something really unsettling, and I think you'd have to be blind to not see it. The whole event was identity politics (some variant of “I'm a black Republican”), there was no policy to speak of (there isn't even a party platform anymore), and everyone fucking worshiped President Trump like he was God. I've watched RNCs before. It was not always like this. The party is transparently becoming more authoritarian with just a touch of lip service to the Tea Party holdouts, though there are very few of those left. I'm particularly disappointed in people like Senators Cruz, Rubio, and particularly Paul. I believed them when they said they thought Trump was unfit for office in 2015. Now they've all changed their tune even as Trump continues to degrade in office. For these people, it was never about principles, just political expediency, and though I still love Mitt Romney and a few others, I have to accept that I no longer really have any connection to the Republican party. I'm an unwitting Democrat. Cringe.

But if you could look past how terrifying it was, the RNC was pretty entertaining. They went all in on the patriotism vibes. Not a frame was missing an American flag. It actually got to the point of ridiculousness. Every speech ended with the exact same camera move as the speaker stood there awkwardly. People kept calling Joe Biden a Marxist. There were some fantastic speakers. I cannot believe they invited these people. It was wonderful.

I mean, every responsible gun owner knows these people suck, but I guess that doesn't matter anymore. I cheered when they showed up on screen. They also had the smirking MAGA kid.

I saw some people whining about him being relevant. I have zero sympathy for those people. The fact that a smiling boy in a MAGA hat was a news story is absurd. They really tried to destroy this kid's life. Not only that, they basically got the whole school closed down. Under different circumstances, that could easily have been the Academy. The lad did nothing wrong. Still, it's pretty funny that he was invited to discuss being “cancelled.”

If you missed Kimberly Guilfoyle's speech, you owe it to yourself to watch it. It's particularly insane, and I think it's a pretty clear representation of what lies underneath the 2020 MAGA energy. It's my favorite speech of the whole convention. “Stand for an American president who believes in you who loves this country and will fight for her. President Trump is the leader who will rebuild the promise of America and ensure that every citizen can realize their American dream. Ladies and gentlemen, leaders and fighters for freedom, liberty, and the American dream, the best is yet to come!”

The last thing I want to discuss here is Madison Cawthorn, the 25-year-old paraplegic running for Congress. It was particularly strange that he thought James Madison, his “favorite founding father,” signed the declaration of independence. But he's definitely going places. I think everyone who watched the RNC is going to remember who he is, if only for the “standing for the flag” stunt. It was strange to watch, but his speech was pretty much what I expected. What I didn't expect was the reaction of the Twitter Gays™ and a few others.

And apparently there's a whole group of dudes thirsting about him on Instagram. And just looking at his posts, it's not hard to figure out why. I swear this guy has to know he's thirst trapping for the gays. There are a lot of posts like this one.

I mean he is hot. Objectively. Using science. Apparently, they've been at this for a while.

I discovered this by typing “Madison Cawthorn” into Twitter search and the first suggestion was “Madison Cawthorn gay.” Congrats, Cawthorn, you've made it.

Moving on from the RNC, the next event we have to look forward to is the debate, but there's a chance it might not happen. This week, Speaker Pelosi suggested that Biden shouldn't participate in the debate, and honestly, it makes a lot of sense for him. I don't think I've updated you on this, but my prediction changed months ago. COVID fucked up Trump's chances for re-election. I think your average American is pretty pissed off about the whole thing. So I predict that Biden will win the election. The only real opportunity President Trump has to change that is the debates, where I don't think I have to tell you he is favored to win. There's absolutely nothing Biden has to gain from the debate, and at this point, I wouldn't be totally shocked if he manages to make it magically disappear. I'm certainly not celebrating this. Getting rid of our debates—as unproductive as they are—and not replacing them with something better would be damaging to our republic, and I really hope Biden doesn't follow Speaker Pelosi's suggestion. Plus, I really want to watch the debate. I don't have much else to look forward to politically.

Everything Else

I don't really have anything to say about this, but I have to mention the death of Chadwick Boseman, the actor who played Black Panther, at the age of 43. Apparently, he was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2016 and kept it private. Most of the movies he's most well-known for he did while undergoing chemotherapy, all while keeping himself in superhero shape.

Notch quit Twitter this week after a strange conversation with Mark Brown who runs the Game Maker's Toolkit YouTube channel which I follow and whose Patreon I support. I think this deal was probably for the best. It's pretty funny that Notch took such offence to complaining about President Trump re-election ads. Does anyone like those?

The only other thing I have this week is what happened to Jerry Falwell Jr. I don't know how much you know, so I'll try to tell the full story of what's gone down. In case you don't know Jerry Fallwel Jr. was the notorious president of Liberty University (which by the way, my father recommended that I attend despite knowing that I was secular) after his father. He's worth somewhere in the ballpark of $100 million. As I'm sure you know, Liberty U has some pretty strict “morality” rules violations of which can get you expelled. These include not drinking, wearing long pants, and abstaining from sex outside of marriage, even outside of the university. Well, turns out Falwell couldn't quite live up to these expectations. More specifically, Jerry Falwell Jr is a cuck. He and his wife were staying at Fontainebleau Miami Beach luxury hotel when they met 20-year-old pool boy Giancarlo Granda.

Granda and Becki Falwell had a sexual relationship. We first learned about this when Jerry Falwell Jr. published a statement to the Washington Examiner stating that his wife's former lover from an affair which he was unaware of at the time had been trying to extort their family. In this statement, he squarely places the blame for the relationship on his wife. He's the good guy. She's the bad guy. I think you can see where this is going.

Well, interestingly enough, Falwell started a business with this 20-year-old pool boy he met on vacation. With Falwell family money, Granda and Falwell's son Jerry Falwell III started a business together, the Alton Hostel (sometimes referred to as the Miami Hostel). This place was not exactly in accordance with Liberty University's Christian values, I'll just say. There was an attached liquor store, advertisements and affiliations with strip clubs, and a hopping LGBT crowd. It's a safe haven for every vice. A place with a sign on the front door reading NO SOLICITING FUNDRAISING POLITICS SALESMEN RELIGION. No religion in a Falwell establishment is strange. Even stranger is that the Hostel was built on land owned by Liberty University, I shit you not. Granda claims that he was not trying to blackmail the Falwells, he was only trying to dissolve their business partnership and sell his 25% stake in the Hostel back to the Falwells.

Granda has a different story to tell about his relationship with Becki Falwell. He claims that Jerry Falwell Jr. was fully aware of the relationship, actually soliciting the relationship, and well, enjoying it from the corner of the room or through video cameras. “He was aware from day one of our relationship and he did, in fact, watch,” says Granda. He claims this relationship continued for seven years, ending about a year ago. Though much of the proof has not been made public, Reuters claims that Granda was able to prove his claims through text messages, screenshots, and audio recordings. “She invited me to their hotel room. They offered me an equity partnership in a property venture. They brought me on multiple trips and vacations, including to their family farm in Virginia and as recently as last year, participated in video calls where Mrs. Falwell was naked and Jerry was watching.” If this really is true, and it certainly appears to be, it says a lot about Falwell's character, not only that he would violate the strict rules he forces students to abide by, but that when met with conflict, his first impulse was to throw his wife under the bus as some kind of whore. What a piece of shit.

Obviously, due to this and a few other things, such as this questionable photo taken with a woman who is not Becki Falwell:

(he claimed the drink he's holding was, and I quote, “black water”), he was forced to resign from Liberty University... or was he? He first took an “indefinite leave of absence.” Then Liberty basically said Falwell had been fired, which Falwell adamantly denied. But then not long after everything became official and this cretin was out. I'm pretty glad I didn't go to Liberty University. This story is absolutely ridiculous, and I have only scratched the very surface. Someone could write a whole book about the rise and fall of Jerry Falwell Jr. There are so many names involved and so many suspicious connections. It just feels pretty good watching this guy who has made so many people's lives worse fall apart by his own hand.

That's all I have. If I write an email next week, I doubt it will be this long. Again let me know if you don't want to read these; I just find it fun to put a recap together. Hope you're doing well.

Thanks,

Jacob Morris

A Childhood Nightmare

In my dream, I was a young asparagus. To be specific, I was Junior from Veggietales, a Christian children's show with vegetable protagonists which I watched quite a bit at that age. I was with Laura Carrot, we were outside and it was dark—pitch dark. But it was not night. Laura gestured up at the sun directly above us, in whatever way a baby carrot can gesture at all, and said, “Look, Jacob, the sun's gone purple.” And it had. The sun, hanging large and lifeless, glowed a dim violet, but seemed to cast no light on the neighborhood at all. It was the middle of summer, and it was cold out. Something was very wrong. “Yeah, we should probably get inside,” I responded. “There's a church right across the street. That might be unlocked.” We crossed the empty street, and hopped our vegetable bodies through the ornate double doors.

Warm air blasted from the foyer. The low murmur of grown-up voices filled the room—serious voices. “Come in,” someone said. “Close that door,” said another. We did. And when the door shut, I was no longer Junior. I was myself, in all my four-limbed glory. And my carrot companion was now Audra, my friend from kindergarten. I was relieved to see all these people here. They were all talking about what was going on. I knew they'd figure out what to do. Maybe this would all just pass. “It's just an eclipse,” I heard a man saying. “The sun can be purple during an eclipse. It'll pass.” But if it was to pass, it wasn't happening quickly. And all the grown-ups were talking on and on about astronomical phenomena, leaving Audra and I with nothing to do. So, she and I explored a bit. There wasn't a ton to look at in the foyer or the hallway. All we found were some poorly colored-in pictures hung up on the walls of Noah leading animals to the arc—leading them somewhere safe to hide away before the storm came. I wanted to look out the at the sky again, but we couldn't find a single window.

Then we made our way into the sanctuary. Its atmosphere was drastically different. This place was older than the church surrounding it. It fulfilled the promise of the ornate door we'd entered. A giant cross stood dimly lit behind the pulpit and the rows of yellow wooden pews. It was empty except for two older women drinking coffee near the back. But what caught my eye most were the beautiful stained-glass windows along the walls. I crept toward one of them, a depiction of Mary holding a baby Jesus. I nearly put my eye to a purple tile, but I realized that wouldn't do, and shifted to a light yellow one. And I was delighted by what I saw. It was bright outside. The sun was yellow, and the sky was blue again. I could see people swimming in a public pool. It was a normal summer day again.

I shouted the news to Audra and the ladies in the back. “It's good to go outside again!” I yelled. I was proud of myself for making such an important discovery. The adults had no idea because the foyer had no windows, and they hadn't wanted to open the doors. I ran out of the sanctuary. “It's good to go outside again! I looked out of the stained glass windows in the sanctuary, and it was bright out, and people are swimming!” The adults liked the sound of that, and we all raced outside to make the most of the rest of this strange summer day. But it had not been good to go outside again. It was still cold. The sky was still dark. The sun was still purple, and it seemed like it had gotten bigger. There was a strange high-pitched sound in the distance. Someone turned around and grabbed the door. It had been locked behind us. All the adults looked at me. Some of them ran off. Audra did. That's not possible, I thought.

I walked to the side of the sanctuary, and saw it. A small CRT television was set up on a schoolroom desk right outside the stained-glass portrait of Mary. It was connected to an orange extension cable that seemed to stretch away into forever. I turned the TV toward me, and I saw a man jumping into a swimming pool on a nice summer's day playing back on a loop. I stepped back in horror. I tripped in doing so, but this was not the result of fear. The ground had begun to shake, and I realized then that the sound in the distance was a medley of screams. It was getting closer.

Most of the adults from the church had already dispersed, running away from wherever they each judged the sound to be coming from. But I held my ground and looked toward it. The ground shook. Thud. Thud. Thud. Those were footsteps. And then, from the dark, it emerged. It was a towering, gelatinous purple monster, covered in dark spots. It must have been 100 feet tall. It looked precisely like the Fib from Veggietales, but I knew for certain that it was a different monster. It was pulling down power lines, smashing cars, stomping houses, and down the road was a crowd of terrified people running toward me. But I couldn't run. I was frozen watching the destruction. Every time it stepped, the street would tremor, and some of the people would fall and be trampled. It was hard to stay on my feet just watching, but I couldn't look away. Then I saw my mother, running, terrified, and I ran all the way home

The house was empty. My whole family must have been out there running from that thing. I saw the sun again through the living room window and quickly shut the curtain. I locked the front door. But what if they come back? I thought. What if they come back, and they don't have their keys? What if I lock them out like I did with the people at the church? I unlocked the door and ran into the basement. There weren't any windows there. I would just have to wait until someone found me, if that would ever even happen. I sat in the bean-bag chair at the other side of the ping pong table and cried and cried. Then I heard a click. The front door was opening. I wanted to yell, but I didn't hear any voices. All I heard were footsteps--quiet, gentle footsteps. I saw a shadow in the basement stairwell, descending. “Hello?” I said in a whisper. There was no answer. Then I saw it.

The monster had descended my stairwell. It was person-sized now, but it was the same monster. It was calm. “Hi, Junior,” it said in a friendly voice. I gasped. I shrunk into the beanbag chair. “Hey, what gives?” it said. It picked up a ping pong paddle and began to bounce the ball. “Do you want to play some table tennis?” it asked.

“No,” I whispered, drawing my knees to my chest.

“Come on, play ping pong with me.” And though its voice was calm and polite, I knew this was a command. So I rose up, shaking, and grabbed the other paddle.

“I'll serve,” it said And we played. It knew that I knew what it had done to my family, and I knew that I could never stop playing so long as it wanted me to. First, it wanted to destroy the neighborhood. Now it wanted to play five billion consecutive rounds of ping pong against this one kindergartner and nothing in this world could stop it from taking what it wanted. So we played ping pong forever.

Cyber Ethics is Unique

This post was originally written for an assignment under a different name.

Cyber technology suggests a unique convergence between person and tool which must be understood before such an entity exists. Personhood is a fundamental feature of all ethical systems. We morally act by distinguishing what entities are people and considering how what we wish to do corresponds with their rights, our responsibilities to them, their utility, et cetera, depending on the moral framework we use. We do this with the expectation that these entities can rationally respect our personhood in the same way in return. Additionally, a person can own, use, and create objects for its own purposes. These objects can be broadly classified as tools. Failure to distinguish between person and tool has led to what we understand as some of the greatest moral atrocities in history. Cyber ethics is unique (CEIU) solely because it tangibly threatens an unprecedented convergence between these classes of moral objects.

Existing ethical systems are sufficiently robust to address most issues raised by cyber technology which do not involve these kinds of entities. As an example, consider intellectual property, a field undeniably challenged by cyber technologies. Computers enable swift copying and distributing of information and unmask intellectual property as non-rivalrous. However, this does not prove the CEIU hypothesis. In reality, information has always been non-rivalrous in some sense and not perfectly analogous to other kinds of property, a difference which society’s conception of copyright fails to perfectly account for. Digital computing exacerbates this issue. Fundamentally, this fails to demonstrate unique cyber ethics because the endeavor to understand data as property exists within the “gated domain” of intellectual property. Reasoning within this domain must ensure that data as property makes sense regardless of how technology, real or hypothetical, can interface with that data. The field of intellectual property could only evidence unique cyber ethics if cyber technologies fundamentally altered one or more of the axioms upon which the concept of intellectual property is built, exempli gratia if it were impossible to reproduce information before the advent of computing. Many candidates for demonstrating the CEIU hypothesis fail in this way, such as the impact of computing on accessibility or professional responsibility.

There is a more substantial candidate adjacent to the convergence between person and tool which fails by similar but more subtle reasoning. One can argue that there has been a convergence between tools and moral agents in a very limited sense of the term. There is an incongruity in how responsibility is assigned for these independent decisions made by autonomous systems. If an autonomous system is found to exhibit a racial bias due to its training data, the system may be condemned for a racist action while those who designed the system may be condemned for an irresponsible action. Even if the developers are responsible for the action, they are not responsible in the same way, suggesting that the system is a synthetic moral agent. This may seem novel, but like non-rivalrous property, synthetic moral agents are not actually unique to computing. This can be observed in bureaucracy, a type of system which can make specific decisions independently of the intentions or values of any specific person within. Cyber technology’s ability to generate synthetic moral agents does not suggest CEIU but that ethical concepts within the gated domains of tool use and extended responsibility have been made more important by computing and may now need closer inspection.

Cyber technology might fundamentally challenge the axioms of one of these gated domains, but there’s a deeper and clearer reason that cyber ethics is unique: it introduces the possibility of synthetic people. A possible counterargument is that the set of entities considered to be people has expanded over the course of human history. However, synthetic people differ categorically. First, synthetic people are created by the minds of other people, a property which usually classifies objects as tools in the general sense. Second, dehumanized groups in history were always demonstrably people whose rights were willfully denied whereas machines today are not. A class of objects transitioning from non-person to person is absolutely unprecedented in human history. Unlike synthetic moral agents which challenge concepts regarding tools and responsibility, synthetic people challenge foundational axioms for these domains and others. They destroy the concepts of man being his own end and the creation of man being for his own use. They break society’s ability to unambiguously distinguish people from non-people. They challenge people’s ability to determine their responsibilities to or the rights of other entities. To those who use moral systems predicated on subjective experience, they shatter the ability to determine what entities actually have subjective experiences. The major ethical systems we have today are unprepared to resolve these novel entities unique to cyber technology.

Synthetic people do not exist. They might never exist. It is not yet known whether cyber technologies could create them. Whether one thinks that it is likely cyber technology will create these entities isn’t relevant to demonstrating that cyber ethics is unique. But our knowledge of computing today demands that we rationally acknowledge the possibility that synthetic persons could emerge from the field. Though humanity has imagined creating a being in its own image throughout history, cyber technologies have uniquely made this a real possibility. We must be prepared to ethically interact with constructed entities which demonstrate an ability to act to their own ends and a capability to rationally understand us as people before such entities exist. The possibility of synthetic people demonstrates that computing represents a unique and unprecedented challenge to ethics we must take seriously.

Week of April 5th, 2020

Happy Easter!

I didn’t send anything last week because I didn’t have anything to say. I think these emails work when the news can be escaped, or at least not fully felt. It can be funny to watch a man rant and rave about things which don’t have immediate effects on him or the reader, but the same format is exhausting in the middle of a global crisis. These messages are cynical by design, but I don’t think that really works any more. People in power saying something dumb was funny. Now it’s scary. It’s no longer interesting to be angry. Everyone is angry. And I think I’ve really said my piece on COVID-19. You know my perspective. So I’m going to dial that back and let this newsletter find a new identity. At least, I’m going to try before I shoot the thing in the head. I’d ask what’s new, but if you’re anything like me, the answer is basically nothing. My parents keep telling Evan and I to journal to remember this strange time. I think they’re right, and I think that if I can make it entertaining (which believe it or not I always try to do), this can be my version of that—though, if you read far enough, there will be links, I promise. I usually try to avoid telling you too much about what’s happening in my life in these because I enjoy the tradition of catching up in person and having a whole lot to say, but in nationwide social isolation, it’s probably a mistake to delay social interaction, and I hope that I hear from you sometime. I’ll be happy once I get to see a human being not in my immediate family. It’s been a while. I’ve been blazing through audiobooks I get from the digital library when I exercise, and I just checked out Atlas Shrugged for purely educational reasons—regardless of its moral depravity, it’s got to be one of the most influential novels in our modern politics—but if I leave quarantine wearing a fedora, you’ll know why, and I give complete authority to shoot me on sight.

I don’t know if you knew this, but Evan has gotten very into Harry Potter—a bit late, I know. He read all the books in a feverish frenzy at the behest of his GF, and now is watching through all the movies. And since I want to know what he’s thinking about, I, too, am watching through the movies. As you know, for the most part, my interests have been esoteric or wacky and often both. I know that I’m not really interested in every facet of the zeitgeist, and I’m okay with that. But sometimes it really sucks to be out of the loop, particularly when you don’t instead belong to some particular subculture and are just a bit pop-culturally alienated, particularly when you cannot manage to convince yourself that your taste makes you better than other people. That’s why I try to keep up with the MCU more-or-less for example. So I don’t resent an opportunity to be culturally edified (if that’s what this is) after having totally missed the craze. After all, I watched Avatar: The Last Airbender, a praised piece of children’s media, as an adult, and I loved it. But so far, all I can really think is how much Harry Potter really isn’t for me, which isn’t a complaint. I’m a 20-year-old man. I doubt there was any stage of my life when I would have gotten into this, and that’s kind of nice in a way. When I watched Avatar, all I could think was that a theoretical remembered child version of myself was missing out on this shit.

But all this has inspired Evan to write a novel, and I don’t mean that in the way that I frequently get inspired to write a novel. No, Evan’s actually writing one and at an absurd rate of speed. I think he’s bored of being stuck here, and he’s writing something like 5000 finished words a day after classes like it’s no big deal. It’s wild. It’s not his first attempt to do so either, but he’s taking this project much more seriously. Despite his odd penchant for reading children’s literature, he’s a pretty great reader, so I’m very curious to read it. For some reason, I think Evan could be a competent fiction writer, despite his abysmal AP Lang essays. Actually, maybe it’ll be good because of his terrible essays. I’ve always been a strong essayist and a terrible fiction writer. My characters are uncomplicated walking talking ideas who ramble at one another. Perhaps Evan has some untapped grasp on actual human behavior. If it’s really good, perhaps I can read it the way I consume Harry Potter media. “Hmm… I can see how this could be enjoyed by someone.”

As a side note, when I was a young lad, I was forbidden from reading those books due to witchcraft, even though I never really expressed interest, so I think it’s funny that my parents have loosened up. Eh, Evan can have a little witchcraft, as a treat.

For the most part, my college friends have disappeared from my life as if we never knew one another. I think this is a preview to what it will be like to graduate. All my friends, even those I have been with for years now, have been friends for a time, and I think they’ll vanish in the blink of an eye. It’s depressing to think about maybe, but it’s okay. It’s certainly not unique. The exception to that is my atheist club. I can’t type those two words and not laugh at myself. We’ve been meeting weekly on Zoom. I can’t say no because it’s gotten to the point where that’s really my only social interaction for the week. But they know my boisterous, irreverent personality, and I have to try to deliver that while also not being too loud or saying things which may offend overhearing family members. Because if I piss off my parents, where am I going to go? We’re all stuck in the house. I’m not sure how successful I’ve been, but I’m going to talk too loud on a call and out myself to my whole family. It’s a matter of time lol. When something happens, I’ll be sure to document the drama for your entertainment.

Okay, I do have one piece of actually personal news, which I have withheld until this point to avoid seeming self-aggrandizing—a hopeless pursuit which I can’t quite seem to give up. If you don’t make it this far, I guess that backfired, but since you’re reading this, you did make it this far, so I suppose I had nothing to worry about. I got offered a job, sorta. The summer internship at the company I CO-OPed with which I’d already lined up has put me on a special project. I’ll be working remotely—which is convenient since it seems that remote work would be necessary anyway—on a research project for a top-secret lab on which I would be the only developer. I can’t say a ton about the nature of the project, but it involves a lot of programming, math, and physics, so I’m pretty nervous. But, by agreeing to take on the project, they intend to take me on full-time once I graduate so long as I don’t fuck up catastrophically. Well, I looked up their office to figure how much they would probably offer me. The numbers are no joke.

Okay, here are links. Don’t be upset if I can’t bring myself to dial up my outrage at this point.

We need to do something about Medium. If you’ve read my previous emails, you know that it has been an utter misinformation crisis, and there have been more, this one posing as an academic study. I like the idea of people being able to publish their stories for the world to see, but I think Medium as is might be a mistake. To the untrained eye, medium posts really do look like news articles, and their writers really do like to pretend to be journalists. When people watch YouTube videos, it’s impossible to ignore that you’re just watching some guy say something, and those can still be dangerous. But I don’t think there exists any user-content platform which assigns more apparent legitimacy to its unqualified posters than Medium, and I refuse to give the website empty praise for free speech. A Medium Corp. needs to figure out a more responsible way to present articles written with no editorial oversight.

Senator Sanders dropped out, though only after waiting long enough to assemble crowds in Wisconsin after their Supreme Court decided that it was necessary that people vote in person because they are unable to adapt and care more about internal politics than human life oh goddamn it I got mad again my bad back to Senator Sanders. The tears online are overwhelming. People are not okay. Honestly, I don’t have much new stuff to say. The Presidential Election has utterly disappeared from the national consciousness. For kicks and giggles, I’ll hold to my original prediction, but I really have no idea how things shake out from here. President Trump is currently trying to recruit Senator Sanders supporters, and I find it rather amusing. I don’t think this is the most likely outcome, but if President Trump is re-elected after this, I think there is a chance that he will try to move toward socialized healthcare with a nationalist aesthetic. Patriot Care, if you will. I predict an upcoming Social Nationalist movement in the United States which will have to perpetually say, “Um, no, we’re not National Socialists. We’re Zi-nas, not Na-zis.”

In many areas, policing has gotten wildly overzealous, as totalitarians jump at any opportunity to throw people in jail, the last place you want to be during a pandemic. These pro-life sidewalk counselors followed all the rules and got arrested. There was a father who was arrested for being with his son in an empty baseball field. There are a lot of examples. Forgive me for not finding all of them.

In a weird turn for brand Twitter, Steak-Umm posted a long, insightful thread about propaganda.

President Trump has a new racist ad! Of his ads, this one is the most racist yet, which is really saying something. He accuses Joe Biden for being soft on China by being friendly with American Governor Gary Locke, who is Asian-American, suggesting that he a Chinese national. I’m not joking. This commercial doesn’t even pretend to be anything other than racist. It’s actually horrifying. Now is a good time to remember that Joe Biden was publicly skeptical of China’s response before President Trump. This is a great breakdown of why the ad is such vile bullshit.

Ken White made a great thread about how much of a clown Matt Walsh is.

Finally, our President discusses how Coronavirus brilliantly outsmarted our antibiotics by being a virus.

I hope you’re hanging in there, and I’d love to hear what’s going on.

Thanks,
Jacob Morris