The Grey Tribe

there have been at least three separate people I’ve known whose bedrooms had this vibe: the incredible clashing between different shades of pink, the dark carpet, the messiness, the poor lighting filtering through that dark curtain—I know how it feels being in this room.

I painted my room this exact color in 2008/2009. martha’s organized, but she’s a student and it’s a cramped space—she arranges her shelves the best she can, but her stuff is just stuff and doesn’t perfectly match. when I’m at school I have to dry my laundry in the middle of my room exactly the same way!

yup, that’s what every break room I’ve ever had at work looks like, with the mismatched tupperware and posters and questionably-clean microwave.

sylvia’s house is obviously intended to be coordinated, but with a nonprofessional’s taste. you can see the little pumpkins in the background from halloween, there’s a printed tablecloth at the table, the counters are that realistic mix of cluttered and clean. 

even in a fancy office, we’ve got the ugly fluorescent lighting that’s not really doing anyone favors, the crooked potted plants, the sporadic beige and white walls, the random workplace posters above the printer and trash cans.

people sitting in weird places because there aren’t enough seats around the tv! the cat tower with kitty litter shoved in the corner! the overstuffed table! the slightly-crooked picture frames! this IS the vibe of being stuffed into a too-small room with company over.

When you said "innocent", you could have meant/referred to

journalistic ethics

whether or not he has done it, the case against Luigi is quite weak, and he will probably walk

whether or not he will be found innocent, Luigi didn't do it

#1 is just a no-brainer, but the ethical rules are different for private individuals than for journalism. You don't write in a newspaper that he "is the killer", you say alleged and accused of, unless you are damn sure.

You don't really know about #2. You can say things like "based on the evidence available", but before there has been a trial, it's all speculation. You don't know what will be entered into evidence.

Now #3 is by itself only a conspiracy theory once the trial is over. If you say #3 before the trial, then only #3 AND NOT #2 is a conspiracy theory.

There were so many people who thought others meant #3 (actual innocence) when they meant #1 or #2. There was never all that much disagreement about this. I mean, most of us weren't there, so how would I know about #3? Some people just assumed #3 in bad faith, when somebody else clearly meant #1. And even though I am not a newspaper, I think I can criticise a newspaper for not doing #1 properly, and I can err on the side of caution and say "accused" or "alleged" until there is a verdict.

If somebody published made-up experimental results, even if the results are misleading, dangerous, and were made up out of whole cloth, the threshold for a university to intervene is high.

If you're writing your thesis, your advisor may be as strict or as lenient about methods as he or she wants, but if you have a PhD, it takes a lot for the research integrity people at your university to step in, and even then, they often drag their feet, while the administration fights tooth and claw to keep the thing under wraps or end the investigation as fast as possible. If you are publishing a paper, the peer reviewers might be really tough and unreasonable on you, but once the paper is past peer review, it takes a lot to retract it.

You also see that in the reporting. About half of the reporting, at least here in REDACTED, says "He was just unfairly targeted for his plagiarism because he's black", while the other half says "Former professor Arday, 41, plagiarist, compulsive liar, and impostor found dead by authorities so you know he didn't fake that one, too."

About half the reporting acts af if everybody plagiarises, everybody fakes research, everybody lies on his CV, but these racists made a big deal out of it. That half also leaves out all the made-up stories about playing for Crystal Palace, his snooker career, or his marathons.

Of course Peter Gallagher knows that "dank" is a weed thing. He also knows that "in heat" is a sex thing and that when aliens "probe" someone it's in the anus.

These are words, not things. Heathcliff is a comic about symbols.

You're never going to get a comic where an alien actually probes someone any more than you're going to get a comic where the Man-Eating Giant eats a man. You're just going to get a dozen comics where aliens like the word "probe".

Heathcliff wears the ham helmet because it's the helmet you wear when you eat a ham. You can tell it's that helmet because it says "ham" on it. The helmet's function is determined not by its form but by its label.

summer = beach = sand = desert = mummy and thus there is the Summer Mummy. Because of symbolic associations that do not otherwise cohere.

Robots don't wear clothes but the mere act of labeling them "nude" makes them nude. And once a painting is a nude painting there has to be a fig leaf because a "nude" without a "figleaf" is "indecent".

fun's over

So, this is weird. As far as I can tell, the company responsible for this cable did everything absolutely properly and professionally, and didn’t ever plan to do anything which would disturb the beach at all. There were reasonable concerns about the fact that it’s a beautiful beach and tourist asset which shouldn’t be messed around with, but these were all taken into account at a very early stage in the planning because they were so obvious. Harry Potter fans didn’t cause anything to be changed. The project got permission really quite quickly and has been in operation for a while now.

Likewise, there are vegetarians who just can't bring themselves to eat animals, because animals are cute and you can't say you care about animals and also eat animals. They aren't annoying or philosophical or performative about it, they just don't eat meat.

But as soon as you stop saying "I like hamburger" or "I'm a man. Men eat steak, women eat salad" or "I just want to grill" or "I can't eat a cute bunny" – as soon as you say "foodways" or "indigenous hunting practices" or "utilitarianism" or "lactase persistence", you enter into this weird postmodern mode. Suddenly, a hamburger doesn't only have semiotics, but it is mostly made of semiotics. It's a phase-change from a food to a statement.

In a world where eating a hamburger or a salad or a bland, unseasoned lentil stew has become a statement, it's no wonder that the same posturing has at some point spread to fascists. It is also posturing there, of course. It is performative in the same way as "tradwife" is performative posturing, but "stay-at-home mother" or "home-maker" is not.

Like, the people who engage in "indigenous hunting practices" do not really phrase it like that, I assume. I assume they just hunt.

Before I could even process that, another officer dropped the big surprise: they’d actually been tracking me around town for days via Flock cameras. But they kept losing the trail, so when a camera alerted them that the Range Rover had been spotted turning into Kohl’s that morning, they quickly set up their ambush and waited for me and my wife to walk out of the store and get into the SUV.

[…]

One of the officers pulled out his phone, opened the Flock app, and showed me two photos: a wide shot of the Range Rover going through the intersection and a zoomed-in shot of the New Jersey license plate, which clearly reads 34 10 DTM and says VEHICLE MFR along the bottom. Critically, the number 10 is in a much smaller font than the rest of the tag, which is the non-standard structure New Jersey uses for manufacturer plates.

[…]

The New Jersey plates that were allegedly stolen from the LA dealer were 34 03 DTM, not 34 10 DTM. But when the police report was created and the plate was entered into Flock’s system, it was just recorded as 34 DTM. Just the five large characters, no little number in the middle. And Flock’s AI tech wasn’t registering that non-standard little number when it began picking up the Range Rover around town. It just saw 34 DTM in large type and started alerting the local police.

As we all stood there shaking our heads, including my wife, who was finally allowed to join me, I connected the final dot. A lot of vehicles in JLR’s media fleet have a New Jersey manufacturer plate with the same alphanumeric structure—34 ## DTM—and Officer Ganshyn observed that meant it was now a nationwide issue. Anywhere a police department has a partnership with Flock, any other JLR-owned car with the same plate structure is going to get flagged as stolen. In fact, four other 34 ## DTM cars were being tracked around Minnesota that week, according to Officer Ganshyn. I was just the first one to get nabbed. The only way to stop it would be for the LAPD to correct their initial report and update Flock’s system, which Jaguar Land Rover was now racing to make happen following the phone call.

Still, he warned me to drive straight home, park the Range Rover, and leave it there. If I were to cross into the neighboring town, I’d probably get flagged again and go through this entire ordeal again with a different set of officers. His parting words were ominous: “You’re lucky we’re in Plymouth. If you were in Minneapolis, they definitely would’ve come at you with guns drawn.”