Greg Brown

I've never played the Bethesda RPGs, but they seem like they're full of stuff that'll tickle my completist urges: a big open world with lots of different playstyles and tons of stuff to collect. But to my surprise, after starting Oblivion the experience has been totally sour and I’m not sure if it’s my fault, the game’s fault, or just the situation.

Klein’s argument commits the same error that Obama has since the beginning of his presidency—the delusion that the answer is somewhere in the middle, and that both sides can be convinced to agree. Granted, rejecting this is a tough blow, and embracing this idea of moderation is what led Obama to victory in the 2008 primary (along with charisma, having opposed the invasion of Iraq, etc.). But once elected, he was inescapably wedded to this idea, even if it meant shying away from hard truths and disappointing everyone.

Klein has no such limitations, theoretically, which is why it’s frustrating to see him embrace the same premise. But we can imagine a counterfactual, where Obama DOES speak out about Ferguson, about the unjust and unjustified police crackdown, and how it all fits into the continuing marginalization of the black community. How is this world different from our own

Klein claims that Obama will polarize opinion around the ongoing crackdown. We’ll grant him that—but we shouldn’t be deluded that the opinion isn’t polarized already. It’s pretty easy to see the parallel reactions on Twitter, with liberals posting copiously about the nightly police brutalities, and conservatives seizing on every report of looting, as well as every “wrong” Michael Brown ever committed. Would Obama speaking out really make things that much worse? Do we have any hope of closing this gap if he doesn’t speak out?

Klein’s argument also smacks of the simple consequentialism that wonks are wedded to—we should choose the policies that make x go up because x is good, and make y go down because y is bad. Political polarization is a prima facie bad, therefore we should choose the decision that reduces polarization. But, does this actually result in a better outcome in the end? Is it helping the people of Ferguson?

And what about a world where we instead made our decisions based on deontology—not contingent on consequences, but instead because decisions treat people as an end in themselves (or whatever criteria you want to use). Or if you’re not willing to go that far, a kind of sophisticated consequentialism where we recognize the utility of a reputation for truth-telling (or to use the example I was taught in college, a friend who you know does things for you as a friend and not because it’ll maximize utility). Granted, sophisticated consequentialism usually doesn’t come up in Intro to Philosophy classes in college, but it’s not rocket science either.

I just sent a letter to Jim Franklin, CEO of SendGrid, as invited to on his blog. I figured it would be worth also sharing online, just so others can better understand why his actions were categorically wrong.

Confused? Catch up by reading the original event, follow-up, and the most recent turn.

Hi Jim,

I was saddened to hear of your recent actions following the PyCon events on Sunday, principally you terminating Adria Richards. Quite simply, the two stated causes for termination—dividing the community and "public shaming"—are flimsy reasons at best, and totally ignore the real experience of women in the tech industry.

As a male, I won't pretend any special knowledge about the harassment and pressure those women face on a daily basis. I imagine you're getting a fusillade of anecdotes, statistics, and other damning information in your inbox as I write. However, I think I can speak to the online behaviors I've seen, both in this case and in previous ones.

Simply put, what you call "public shaming" is an important community role in recognizing troubling behavior and talking through its consequences. I'll take those attendees' behavior on good faith, that they didn't mean anything exclusionary to women by their behavior. But that is a large part of the problem, that we engage in these kinds of behaviors without recognizing their consequences.

Public dialogues are how we talk through these issues, and educate others about why we find them disturbing. Twitter particularly is important because there are several strong, supportive feminist communities. It's why I'm sharing this letter online with others right after I send it, in fact.

But why call them out specifically? Because, quite frankly, all too often these kinds of things are swept under the rug. The picture didn't personally identify the culprits and didn't ask that they be terminated for their actions, only showing that misogynists look just like everyone else. And if the community did go to far in getting them terminated, that is in no way a reflection on Adria herself.

As for dividing the community, I'm amazed that you would even try to make this argument. Take a look at some of the online dialogue criticizing Adria's reaction—are you seriously concerned about losing the business of virulent misogynists? The same people who are DDOSing your service and trying to get her fired are the ones that you don't want as your banner customers.

More importantly, you're sending a chilling message to all your current employees as well as other women working in the tech industry: speak up about wrongful actions, and you'll lose your livelihood. Again, you don't want to be a part of that shameful tradition of intimidating women in male-dominated workplaces.

Even if you still disagreed with her actions after considering all that, you could have pointed out to her detractors that the tweet came from her personal account, and didn't relate to her professional role at SendGrid. (I think that argument's pretty dubious given her interest in ensuring a welcoming developer community, but let's play this out.) At that point, it was not necessarily a SendGrid issue.

But now that you've terminated her, now that you've lashed SendGrid to one side in a fight that you've admitted divides the community, now there's no question that your company's involved—and on the wrong side. You can still reinstate Adria Richards, and admit that it was an overreaction from DDOS and other pressure. Or, you can cast your lot with the misogynists and hope that your morals net enough proceeds as you sell them in front of millions. The choice is still yours to make.

Books and Beer Episode 6 The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

We're back! After a long break, we discuss Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. Does it hold up ten years later?

We've moved across the country—from Chicago to Raleigh—and an happy side-effect is that the podcast should now sound a lot better. Our lives finally slowed down enough that we could coordinate our reading again, and will start producing episodes again at a decent clip.

Books Mentioned:

The Corrections and Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Everything is more expensive. Everything. This one I'd actually been warned about in advance, but it still shocked me how much it was true. And since it's based off weight more than production costs, it's the cheap stuff that kills you since it's all bumped up by the same amount. I bought cereal and a 12-pack of coke at the grocery store, and my bill came to $17.

The roads are curiously good for two reasons: no winters, and very few trucks (with 0 semi-trailer trucks). The former means essentially 0 potholes or cracks in the road, and the latter means whatever wear happens to the roads happens much more slowly.

I started writing a grumpy post about Penny Arcade's Kickstarter this morning, reconsidered it, and then ended up saying essentially the same things on another forum tonight—so I thought I'd post it here as well with a dorky title!

The thing that worries me about the PA kickstarter is how it's essentially ditching the "project" requirement of Kickstarter—and Kickstarter approving it because they're getting a 5% slice of what's bound to be a big project.

Kickstarter is already in this weird place where they've cultivated the idea of it as a pre-order QVC, but without any of the protections you have when dealing with any other merchant. They've created this expectation at their peril, because eventually one of these projects is going to blow up and damage their reputation.

Now, on top of that, you have PA's venture which seems to skim by on being a project just by virtue of having an arbitrary end-point of one year (something that I imagine was added in their back-and-forth with Kickstarter to get it approved, along with some of the ancillary stuff). And while they're promising some additional content if several beyond-the-requirement funding figures are met, they're tacked-on and not the core concern of the project: removing ads.

A good way to ask yourself whether this qualifies as a "project" under the Kickstarter guidelines is to ask if anything would not be created if they didn't breach the number they're asking for; as PA admits themselves on the Kickstarter page, "things stay how they are now." And all the ancillary add-ons are ancillary: the clear thrust of the project is in simply removing ads— and an empty ad slot doesn't count under any conventional idea of something that's "created".