Outside the Beltway

Thursday Tabs

It’s the least I can do—and the most.

James Joyner
16

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I’ve got an early and long workday ahead of me, so likely no time for real blogging.

Some pieces worth a look:

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: “What I Think About LeBron Breaking My NBA Scoring Record” – An eloquent passing of the torch from a basketball legend who has moved on with his life.

Joshua Benton: “Google now wants to answer your questions without links and with AI. Where does that leave publishers?” – Probably more interesting to me as a content creator than to the general reader but it has implications fo the latter as well. If there’s no incentive to create the content, it won’t be created.

Megan McArdle: “Why eggs are cheaper than you think” – I didn’t realize it was McArdle’s piece when I read it yesterday. But it’s an interesting look at the rapidly-changing economics of the food industry.

BuzzFeed: “MrBeast Built A YouTube Empire On Being Mr. Nice Guy, But His Stunt Helping 1,000 Blind People Divided Viewers, Who Called It ‘Demonic’” – I only clicked because my kids like his channel. It’s a look into the weirdness of Internet culture, “charity porn,” and even whether curing blindness is a worthwhile goal.

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16 responses to “Thursday Tabs”

  1. Stormy Dragon Avatar
    Stormy Dragon

    The problem with the “no link search” is that without the links to verify trustworthiness of the source(s), I’m unlikely to believe google’s response

    4
  2. steve Avatar
    steve

    Kareem piece very good. He is an underrated writer.

    Steve

    3
  3. Jen Avatar
    Jen

    @Stormy Dragon: It looks like most of the answers AI is able to produce right now are either pretty fact-based (like the maths problem), or will lead to links (the red-blouses for sale at Macy’s question).

    It will be interesting to see how this evolves. Some of my writing is for companies that have SEO strategies that depend on well-researched articles. I can’t imagine Google giving up on advertising revenue, which is dependent on driving traffic to sites.

  4. CSK Avatar
    CSK

    When I think of large eggs selling for 99 cents a dozen in my neck of the woods a few years ago, it’s hard to buy (ahem) McCardle’s argument.

  5. Jay L Gischer Avatar
    Jay L Gischer

    I’m not a huge fan of Mr. Beast. I first heard of him, though, from other You Tubers I watch talk about he helped them with this or that advice. I’ve watched a couple videos and they aren’t for me.

    Nevertheless, the current outcry just brings to mind: “Haters gotta hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.”

    I mean he says, “I don’t even understand why curable blindness is a thing. Why don’t governments get on this!” Most of the critics seem to be on the left. Why not use that as an opportunity to talk about improvements to health care?

  6. MarkedMan Avatar
    MarkedMan

    @Jay L Gischer:

    Most of the critics seem to be on the left.

    I think ”seem to be” is the operative phrase here. There are perpetually aggrieved people looking to be offended and sometimes their pretense is based on things they heard on the right hand side of the dial and sometimes on the left. It doesn’t make them “right” or “left” themselves in any meaningful way.

    7
  7. Jay L Gischer Avatar
    Jay L Gischer

    @MarkedMan: I’m not throwing shade at “the left”, just at people who get really binary about stuff. Kind of like you’re saying.

    But the critiques of Mr. Beast are “he said something homophobic once” (probably a variant of “that’s so gay” at a guess), “he’s berated his employees”, and “he admires Elon Musk”. The piece was at BuzzFeed.

    Another thing we see on the internet is guilt by association. If someone who shares some political beliefs does something obnoxious or difficult or wrong, then all their ideas are wrong, and anyone who shares them is wrong, too. Sooooo binary. It looks like shame is in there somewhere, whether or not it is deserved.

    1
  8. BugManDan Avatar
    BugManDan

    @Stormy Dragon: Also, the links/citations on the original page is often more useful than the original itself. Especially in areas that aren’t “popular”.

    1
  9. Gustopher Avatar
    Gustopher

    @Jay L Gischer: The article complains that Mr. Beast sees “disability as something to be solved” as if that’s a bad thing.

    Another huge problem: MrBeast’s video seems to regard disability as something that needs to be solved. He doesn’t say in the video or in any of his subsequent public statements whether he consulted with the video’s subjects about how they felt to have their disability treated as a problem. That’s something that’s been argued over in the days since the video was uploaded.

    I get that the dude is tacky, but he seems so much more normal than the disability enthusiasts who criticize him.

    If you wanna see a microcosm of how the ableist mindset pervades society writ large, check out the replies to Mr. Beast’s tweet on disabled people being ROIs.

    They essentially say disabilities are a failure of the human condition and thus require eradication.

    Notice how the language makes it seem like Mr. Beast is putting blind people in gas chambers. That’s not an accident. What the hell is wrong with people? They fetishize the disabled and leap to their defense against all threats real or imagined, but mostly just the imagined ones.

    Of all the Lefty McLefterson hot takes of accusation that exist, the cries of ableism have the highest stupid-shit/genuine-grievance ratio. I hate those people with the same burning passion that Michael Reynolds hates the Latinx enthusiasts.

    (It is, however, fun to rile them up against the “ban all cars” crowd on Twitter — they really are just a perfect pairing)

    4
  10. Gustopher Avatar
    Gustopher

    @Stormy Dragon:

    The problem with the “no link search” is that without the links to verify trustworthiness of the source(s), I’m unlikely to believe google’s response

    That’s not nearly as much of a problem as the people who will believe google’s response.

    2
  11. Stormy Dragon Avatar
    Stormy Dragon

    @Gustopher:

    I think there’s a middle ground between the two extremes. The problem with the Mr. Beast attitude is that it basically puts all the responsibility on the disabled person to “fix themselves” to be functional in society and if they fail to do so, then they’re to blame for any difficulties encounter. It’s okay to think that society has a responsibility to accommodate the capabilities of everyone who lives in it without going to the “therefore nothing should ever be done to treat disability” extreme at the other end.

    It can become sort of like the people who spend all their time railing about family breakdown and things like that in discussions of poverty to focus the problem on individual situations rather than addressing the systemic problems that create poverty.

    I’m glad there’s 1,000 less visually disabled people, but reducing the number of visually disabled people in the US from 7,675,600 to 7,674,600 doesn’t really significantly address the needs of that community.

    3
  12. gVOR08 Avatar
    gVOR08

    @Gustopher: Or refuse to believe it, demanding the liberal bias be corrected. At Marginal Revolution Tyler Cowen has had a big running thing about ChatGPT and AI generally. Commenters have bitched about liberal bias. For which see this Reason article. I commented at MR quoting Steven Colbert on the subject of facts and liberal bias. I expected a load of pushback, but got almost nothing. I forgot they don’t understand humor.

    2
  13. Gustopher Avatar
    Gustopher

    @Stormy Dragon:

    The problem with the Mr. Beast attitude is that it basically puts all the responsibility on the disabled person to “fix themselves” to be functional in society and if they fail to do so, then they’re to blame for any difficulties encounter.

    I’m not sure I am following — in fact I am drawing the exact opposite from the story.

    I think the Mr. Beast episode clearly showed that disabled people cannot “fix themselves”, and need someone else to step up and help them.

    In this case, a tacky man doing something for a limited number that the government should be doing at scale. (Tacky men are no substitute for accessible medical infrastructure, as Mr. Beast himself acknowledges)

    3
  14. Gustopher Avatar
    Gustopher

    @Jay L Gischer:

    But the critiques of Mr. Beast are “he said something homophobic once” (probably a variant of “that’s so gay” at a guess)

    Cure 1,000 blind people and you should get to use a slur today (one slur, once), and should certainly be forgiven for shit five years ago.

    Dude is pretty young, and a lot can happen in five years.

    Hmm. Given how many white men really want to use the n-word, if we (some nebulous “we”, not just the government, but society at large) were to be selling n-word indulgences, I think we could fund a lot of programs that help people. And if we could convert it to energy…

    1
  15. Jay L Gischer Avatar
    Jay L Gischer

    You know, the critique of Mr. Beast as “tacky” is spot on. He’s tacky. He’s crass. He would probably agree.

    It turns out I have a close friendship with crass. Many of my favored relatives had an intimate association with crass, and it informed their very active sense of humor considerably. But yes, he is tacky, and he is crass, and I get it if that bothers someone.

  16. Jay L Gischer Avatar
    Jay L Gischer

    @Gustopher:

    Cure 1,000 blind people and you should get to use a slur today (one slur, once), and should certainly be forgiven for shit five years ago.

    Ok, I get what you are saying and I am lined up with that sentiment. I wonder if there’s a way to do this so it isn’t such an … equation? Not to mention a binary? I mean, if I knew him and he said “that’s so gay” in front of me, I wouldn’t like it, and I would try to have a discussion with him about it. I wouldn’t shun him over it, though.

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