This is a great thread, one of the best I’ve seen on Twitter:

Do You Mean it?

The firings for tweets, private conversations, and exposure of anonymous accounts reveals a deep (and false) assumption about how thinking works, and thus a false (and deep) assumption about who we are.

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— Patrick Lee Miller (@Plato4Now) March 12, 2021

“Cancel culture” is a poor name for what’s happening here, but it seems to have stuck. Just like even a small bit of surveillance alters behavior en masse, the idea that some off the cuff, misinterpreted tweet or essay or casual conversation from 10 or 20 years ago might get you fired alters behavior now greatly. How could it not?

Of course, this is the liberal moralist goal, and not some accident. But there is a larger group, who say utterly daft things like, “If you had never said anything untoward, I wouldn’t have to report you to HR and get you fired.” Never mind that the standards about what is “untoward” sometimes change literally week to week, and there is nowhere to consult for what these codes of speech might even be, or when they are due to change yet again.

Thinking requires play, irony, experimentation, adopting voices, poetry as well as prose, “a drop of cruelty.” The moralists cannot see this because quite frankly they do not think. They say words, their mental wheels spin, but the goal is propaganda, not truth.

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— Patrick Lee Miller (@Plato4Now) March 12, 2021

This “they do not think” is something I noticed and wrote about in regards to the recent copyright “debate.” No one was doing or had done an ounce of cogitation about any of it. Many of them even admitted they knew almost nothing about copyright, its implications, history or manifestation, and yet still had lots of feelings about it all.

And that’s what we’ve become: propelled by propaganda-driven feelings above all else, without even the possibility of considering anything deeply and doing what’s best for society. In fact, if you even suggest thinking about something, you are then branded a “rationalist” and are automatically pronounced wrong and oppressive because you are “denying someone’s feelings.”

Is there any coming back from this? I have my doubts.

I Just Want to Touch Someone’s Hot and Sweaty Body Again.

You can tell how exhausted people are with the pandemic and how the tenor of the discourse has changed with seeing things like this in the NYT, which even a few months ago had loads of articles amounting to, “Even post-vaccine, never touch anyone again ever, and if you do, it kills an average of 2.7 grammas per touch.”

Good to see this change.

Floridians are out and about and pandemic restrictions have been lifted. There’s just one problem: The virus never went away.

And multiple pictures of people on the fucking beach — one of the very safest places you can be. Safer than being indoors with anyone. There are just no journalistic standards anymore for veracity or for even portraying some realistic version of the world.

Meanwhile, we popped into a restaurant yesterday to pick up a carryout order and there were maybe 100 people there, packed into close proximity, all talking loudly with no distancing at all and poor ventilation. A superspreader event in progress, it was. Yet have you ever seen any journalistic organization show a photo of something like that related to the pandemic?

Of course not. Think about why for a moment, and then wonder at what other BS the media attempts to sell you as mattering at all.

Infection isn't declining, it's just hitting that pre-spike spot! "Several risks remain on the horizon"!

Someone should do an indepth analysis of media coverage of the pandemic. But how to measure sensation and disaster-mongering?https://t.co/DYEWn3xjTS

— Martin Gurri (@mgurri) March 12, 2021

I’ve seen more than a few stories recently that amounted to, “If absolutely everything about the virus were different, and the variants were the viral equivalent of a spike protein superhero, and vaccines didn’t exist, then there might be a MEGA-SURGE OF DOOOOOOM!”

How do people, organizations, journalists fail so hard? And the thing is, many people listen to them.

Pro tip: if you're ever cold, just tell a straight guy "The Beatles were a boy band" and warm yourself on his anger

— bletchley punk (@alicegoldfuss) March 13, 2021

I think I don’t understand? Or perhaps I know too much history to understand?

The Beatles were the prototypical boy band, the precursor and archetype for all the boy bands to follow. This fact has nothing to do with their music either way, IMO.

Judging people by capitalistically-delineated consumer standards I will never understand, however. Mostly these days I judge someone on how kind they are, and if they are systems thinkers or not. The rest is nearly irrelevant.