Hey All:
Been getting some interesting feedback on some of the new, totally unmarketable stuff I’ve been sharing with my e-mail list (basically monthly-ish emails; join here), so I thought I’d share another:
Enjoy! If you happen dig it, please do pass the link around. As ever, if you’ve got something to say, I’m interested in hearing it.
This is an enlightening read about how Brexit played out so “counter-intuitively” (from the perspective of progressive United Staters), as well as an informative glimpse into the somewhat icky complexity of the EU (for example, I previously had not appreciated the extremely pro-business and anti-labor implications of EU policy).
But that’s not why I’m sharing. I’m sharing because this article inadvertently lays out pretty clearly how Donald Trump will end up getting elected:
Democracy is premised on the idea that there’s a range of things to vote for, and you vote for the one you like. If there isn’t a range, it fails (and turnout plummets). …
A problem is that the so-called “debates” that have been going on all refer to something monolithic called “immigrants”, and in the unitary sense intended there’s no such thing; arguments like “immigrants is good” vs “immigrants is bad” just aren’t talking about the same people. What you’re talking about is the comfortable articulate middle-class world, which is a million miles away from 20 blokes forced to sleep in a damp garden shed in between picking cabbages, being charged half their pitiful wage for “rent” and “transport” and being used to undercut guys from Boston or Spalding (who would have worked, but not like this). Similar things apply across our wrecked manufacturing base (aka almost everything north of Cambridge). Everyone in this system is getting screwed except the scumbags running it. And even worse is the system which facilitates and encourages it.
There is a huge and growing disconnection between happy middle-class life in urban centres and this kind of thing down at the dirty end — they’re different planets, different universes. … The referendum was swung by a huge slab of population who are being taken for granted and ignored in precisely this “you don’t count” manner.
…
Lots of people don’t do that; they have the intuitions but can’t articulate them, so they hang the feel of it on anything they can find, eg “foreigners”. If you demonstrate to them that what they’re saying is wrong, they just look uncomfortable and shift ground, because it was never about that in the first place. Just because they can’t articulate, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem or that they should be ignored; they’re humans with real, immediate problems. Yes, a very few will be impossible neurotic bigots at a deep psychological level, but the majority are simply trying to say something and can’t manage it. The happy middle-class urban world tends to mock this or be sanctimonious about it in a PC way (“racists!”); I find this cruel and disgusting.
Please check out the whole thing—it reads quicker than the author warns: “I want to stop something exploitative, divisive and dishonest” — conversation with a Leaver, by Oliver Humapge and his dad
“Shots were fired”
Ah yes, the mysterious shots that materialized out of thin air. https://t.co/qwxKNvqrdC
— Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) July 7, 2016
What with the news being what it’s been this last year or so, I’ve been thinking a lot about grammatical constructions (like the one Bouie highlights here)—which abruptly reminded me of this article I read a couple years ago by Arika Okrent: “Four Changes to English So Subtle We Hardly Notice They’re Happening.”
It’s pretty noticeable that words like “shall” and “ought” are on the way out, but “will,” “should,” and “can” are doing just fine. There are other members of this helping verb club though, and they have been on a steep climb this century. “Going to,” “have to,” “need to,” and “want to” cover some of the same meaning territory as the other modal verbs. They first took hold in casual speech and have enjoyed a big increase in print in recent decades.
(FYI: Okrent also wrote a really neat book on created languages that includes a healthy section in Klingon. The whole thing is fascinating.)
I’m pretty interested in the rhetorical (and psycho-social) significance of “will/should/can” vs. “going to/have to/need to/want to.” E.g., If I say “I will drive,” I’m both stating what will happen in the future, and implying my ownership of the act. I’m gonna drive, and I wanna drive. “Should” both softens the likelihood (evidenced in the fact that you can tag “—but probably won’t” onto the statement without sounding totally nuts) and softens the commitment (implying that I can do it, but likely would rather not). “Can” is neutral with intent (I can do it, but I’m cool with letting someone else do it), and likelihood (since I’m obviously leaving it open for someone who’d rather drive to speak up).
Meanwhile, the “going/have/need/want to” forms seem to shift the question away from the likelihood of who shall do what, and more to the emotional timbre of the doing of the thing. “I want to drive” clearly speaks to my intent to drive, and “I have to drive” clearly communicates I’d probably rather not (or, in the least, attribute the fact that I’ll do it to external factors). “Need to drive” says that I want to do it—and shall do it—but likely for reasons I attribute to being outside myself (including, for example, a deep craving to drive, which I’ve now framed as being outside my control). Finally, “I’m going to drive” is sorta the most fantastic of all, since it has two opposite meanings that can only be clarified through context, tone, or body language: If I say “I’m going to drive,” either I’m super gung ho to drive, or I feel totally forced into it.
Yeah, this is all subtle. In the end, we all get that someone is gonna fucking drive, so who cares about the damned shades of meaning, Dave? Does it really matter much, or is it just word nerd trivia?
Yes, it matters. The little things have a fantastic power to totally deflect the big ones, just like a lone shirt button can deflect a bullet. We all agree that the difference between getting bullseyed right in the heart to meaningfully different from taking a bullet painfully—but far from fatally—into the meaty shoulder.
Likewise, the ways that small changes in language shift our inquiry are big.
For example, consider:
Language activists point out that the way we as a society refer to sexual assault uses passive voice[1] to blame the victim, with devastating effect. We say, “She was raped” instead of “He raped her” or “Someone raped her.” By doing this, we make the recipient of the action the subject of the sentence, and thus the focus of our questions: What was she wearing? How much did she drink? Where was she going and why was she going there?
If you make the perpetrator the subject of the sentence, then he is also the focus of our inquiry—which is sort of entirely proper, right? Seeing as how he’s the one on trial. This is one of the few instances where I think we can all strongly advocate for a man totally being the focus of a situation that’s 50/50 male/female.
When I raise this, folks usually fire back in one of two ways:
I call double bullshit here. First, on any given day, if I search Google News for “rape” I’ll tend to find an article on the first page of returns that is both 1) about a crime that has already been completely litigated and guilt found (sometimes decades ago) and 2) continues to use the passive voice. As for how the writer chooses to focus our compassion: If that’s your intent, then it is not working; try something new.
The passive voice does it again. https://t.co/sAgbldiBm0
— David Erik Nelson (@SquiDaveo) July 7, 2016
I’m not saying that journos are conspiring with the patriarchy to subjected whoever; I think these tendencies—like almost every linguistic choice we make from moment to moment—are entirely unconscious. In the case of the rapist-less rape and those magic materializing bullets from the head of this post, I imagine these tortuous grammatically constructions arise from a combination of overabundant caution (we don’t want to speak beyond what we know), and a desperate, unstated need to distance ourselves from the awfulness of this world—to, in effect, deny that any humans were involved in creating these miseries, because to do so is to begin to suspect that we, too, might play some part in this.
And, in an entirely predictable irony, in trying to avoid giving offense and making ourselves uncomfortable, we create new and potent miseries out of thin air.
Continue reading ““GOING TO, HAVE TO, NEED TO, WANT TO”—The Little Things That Matter a Lot”
Just a reminder that this is a thing, and your brain is basically a bunch of bullshit neurons playing telephone.
(See also: “Wikipedia: Flashed Face Distortion Effect” and “io9: An explanation for why your peripheral vision is completely borked“)
So, about a year ago I wrote about Trump for the first time: “Listen: If We Don’t Start Taking Trump Seriously, He Will be President #FACT #NotJoking”
I still think much of what is in that post is true, but realize that I’d failed to comprehend the scope of our national fuck-up. Back in August 2015, I was seeing this as something liberals were messing up, by not taking Trump seriously and at face value. It never dawned on me that it was all of us—left, right, center, and nutbag—who were botching this. Yeah, even his supporters—even the worst among them, the vicious racists, the violent thugs—have it wrong, ’cause I think Trump is probably right about himself: He isn’t racist. Yes, he’s almost certainly a White Supremacist (in that his default and unexamined worldview privileges a White perspective in the same way as the sighted privilege the visual spectrum), but he really isn’t racist, per se, because a racist really does truly believe something—albeit something gross and erroneous.
I honestly don’t think Trump believes anything: He is an absolute empty vessel, the final fantastic, horrific, awful expression of American post-modernism: A perfect surface with no substance, a mirror-less mirror.
Is he a great negotiator? No.
Is a great businessman? No.
Is a statesman of any stripe? No.
Is he even a politician, in any conventional sense of the word? No.
But he is possibly the greatest salesman this country has ever known, in part because he has perfected the sales process beyond the need for any product at all.
That said, there is something I’ve begun to question about that year-old post: How do prevent this mercurial, bellicose, void human-mask from entering the Oval Office. Last August I counseled Compassion and Reason—and while I stick with Compassion (’cause I always do), I think Reason is useless here, because his sales process is crafted to short circuit and judo-throw reason. Reason is the obstacle that Trump’s method is custom designed to overcome (for real; go read the Sales Playbook! Many sections are devoted to jujitsu-spinning hesitation and reasonable objection into signing on the line which is dotted).
So while I counsel Compassion for Trump supporters, I also counsel Contempt—not for the voter, but for the Skinsuit with Hair Plugs himself. Make Trump the object of dismissal, scorn, and visceral disgust. Take the shine off his product-less product—make it not only not worth the money, but not worth the time or attention.
He is a Ding-Dong dropped on a fresh, warm dog turd.
He is a mouthful of maggots on a sunny day.
He is the smear at the bottom of a commercial kitchen trash can.
Not a president, not a candidate, not even a man; let him be the strange, nihilistic object he has made of himself, a solipsistic point in a one-dimensional Universe, convinced he is a God.
Later, on November 9, he will be deserving of our compassion; he can be a man again, and rejoin humanity.
But until then . . .
Hard to believe it’s just 217 days until a rectal polyp with many vendettas, zero regrets, is inaugurated President of the United States.🇺🇸🔥
— David Erik Nelson (@SquiDaveo) June 17, 2016
I wanna start with an apology: Based on a very brief hot-take published in Slate, I posted this quip:
Um…this is totally run-of-the-mill sales material. Not saying it’s not sleazy, just saying it’s not that special. https://t.co/43OC4yCqds
— David Erik Nelson (@SquiDaveo) June 3, 2016
After seeing the these two Jon Oliver episodes (vol 1 and vol 2), I finally dug into the 2010 Trump University Playbook in earnest (as opposed to just re-reading the same nibblets everyone was passing around). And you know what? This playbook is special.
Since the Slate excerpts were chosen for the lulz, not the insight, all I saw was what was there: Standard-issue sales training materials, with the genre-mandated jankety English and flop-sweat sheen of Glengarry Glen Ross bravado. If you have experience with consumer-oriented sales (i.e., “B2C”—that’s “business to consumer”, generally contrasted to “B2B,” which is “business to business”), none of this is that unusual. And so that’s what I tweeted.
But, of course, I was looking at it as someone who’s worked in sales, studied the psychology of selling, written sales copy, and slogged through a lot of terrible sales material and ethically questionable sales advice. After digging into the playbook with my “Normal Human” eyes on, I’m seeing the ickiness much more clearly. That fantastic, revelatory ickiness.
Give these materials a gander, esp. the “Sales Playbook” section starting around pg. 96. Read it, and get a sense of what a steep disadvantage you are at, as a normal human thrust into a professional sales situation (e.g., buying a car, sitting down with a “financial advisor,” being dragged to court, being interrogated).
This is, in fact, a pretty tight textbook on the dark arts of high-pressure sales/persuasion situations where there is a built-in power differential that favors the seller.
Frankly, if Trump U really wanted to give students value, then screw real estate investing; they should have handed out copies of this. “Here’s how we suckered you; go forth and sucker others!”
Maybe not worth $995, but certainly worth more than nothing.
RECOMMENDED READING: 2010 Trump University Playbook
Hey gents: Ever wanted to do sex stuff to a cannibal ghost’s face? Well, guess what? NOW YOU CAN!
I don’t wanna come off as a prude or anything, but I think that there’s maybe absolutely nothing not wrong with this, from it’s name—which starts with “sexbaby“(!!!), and then somehow manages to get worse—to the use of colors and shapes, to the reviews, distressingly low price, and the fact that this is in stock and “Fulfilled by Amazon” (thus conjuring the image of untold ranks of shelves in a Tennessee warehouse, holding uncountable numbers of cartons, each containing boxes upon boxes of individually packaged artificial ghostbaby sexmaws. With teeth.)
I present to you the “Sexbaby Silicone Realistic Mouth with Tongue and Teeth“
“Sexbaby Silicone Realistic Mouth with Tongue and Teeth“?!?
“Sexbaby silicone realistic mouth with tongue and teeth.”
Sexbaby
silicone and realistic
tongue and teeth
🙁
Continue reading “Gaaaaaah! #Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah #NSFW 🙁 *UPDATED!!!*”
Hey All:
Continuing to experiment with both interactive fiction and consistent self-promotion—and you are the benificieries there-of! Please enjoy this lil interactive story:
“Brights” or In the Midst of Darkness, Light Persists
(a brief tale of uncertain moral)
If you dig it, please do pass the link around. And, as ever, I’m eager for feedback as I feel my way forward in this format. Sock it to me!
Thanks!
Under normal circumstances I don’t link stuff posted on Medium, because I’m wickedly biased against what overwhelmingly seems to be a bloviation platform for painfully self-unaware “meritocrats” who were born on third base and think they batted a triple.
James Marks is not one of those guys. I’ve used his print shop for t-shirts, buttons, and stickers since just about the beginning, and watched them steadily grow via pluck and vigilance. I would take business advice from this t-shirt making vegan over most any other cat on Medium.
“On time” is begging to be late. The solution comes down to what I’m coiningReliance on Luck, or RoL for short. The best people have near-zero RoL: that shit will not fly while they’re on the job. But as you get lower down the chain of competence, RoL goes up.
These commandments that Marks gives you today are to be written on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you rise up. Bind them as symbols on your arm and bind them on your forehead. Inscribe them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. And it shall come to pass if you surely listen to these commandments with all your heart and all your soul, your customers and clients will give you money and will return tenfold, and you will eat and you will be satisfied. Amen.
If you use LinkedIn, then your email and LinkedIn password have probably been compromised. If you reuse the same password across several sites, then you are likely a total sitting duck waiting to get exploited. Go change passwords NOW!
This breach seems to have gotten less press than usual, even though it’s liable to have a broader impact on folks, so I want to make sure it’s on everyone’s radar:
An enormous hack of LinkedIn accounts has surfaced (details). Crackers snagged ~164mil login credentials; since the passwords were stored as a unsalted hashes (i.e. “not securely”), the vast majority of these passwords were cracked.
I took the liberty of checking a couple friend/client email addresses while I checked mine (using this tool), and found that most of the emails I checked were included in the hack (as was I). LinkedIn hasn’t proactively informed anyone I’ve contacted about this. So, I’m spreading the word.
The immediate problem is losing control of your LinkedIn account (which, let’s be real, doesn’t necessarily mean much for most people). The bigger problem is that many folks reuse the same password on many sites. If the email:password you used on LinkedIn is the same as the one you used on Twitter or Facebook or Gmail, then those accounts are now also up for grabs. While a LinkedIn account may be of limited value to criminals, a Twitter or Gmail account can be much more useful, and a bank or credit card account—let’s not dwell on it. Did you start changing passwords yet? Go change passwords NOW.
Passwords are inherently crappy. It’s just a fact of life. Consider upping your security in two ways:
Sorry to be your bad news bear today; I hope you all get green bars and nonetheless CHANGE YOUR PASSWORDS, GET A PASSWORD MANAGER, AND START USING 2FA WHENEVER YOU CAN!!!