Tag: Premium

@smarx @x3rames clearly.I made comment on HN I didn’t agree with his employer firing him.
— Adria Richards (@adriarichards) March 19, 2013

Many more readers continue to debate the Adria Richards incident and the broader topic at hand:

Why would Richards have chosen to contact the conference organizers publicly rather than privately?  I’m guessing it’s because she wanted to hold them to their word.  Was she justified in worrying that the code of conduct wouldn’t be enforced?  Yes, if other tech conferences are an indication.  So I can understand why she did it.  Hopefully, PyCon will justify their new ban on tweeting photos of people without permission by continuing to enforce their code of conduct even when complaints are made that don’t identify the rule-breakers publicly.

Another reader:

Why is everyone talking about how Adria Richards got a guy fired? She didn’t. Richards wasn’t his employer or boss; she had no power to fire him or get him fired. His employer did that. She posted a picture and expressed an opinion online. That’s all. Andrew, you do that every single day! Her action may have made people angry or upset but she didn’t do anything wrong. I can’t believe she’s being vilified for this.

Full disclosure: I have worked in tech for more than two decades and I’ve heard more than a few infantile sexual jokes and have always shrugged them off. I’ve never imagined that a joke could get someone fired. I wonder if she was as surprised as I am.

Another makes a connection with the big story of the week:

I just want to point out that decades before Edie Windsor became a pioneer for gay rights, she was also one of the very first female programmers IBM hired. And we know she faced a lot of sexism/sexual harassment there because she said so herself. For example, I’ve seen in various publications the story about her being featured in multiple IBM brochures because the men there liked her rear end. Not really sure where I’m going with this, other than to reiterate that Edie Windsor is a BAMF.

Another circles back to the Richards row:

I don’t know what else there is to be said about this, but one of the things that bothered me most about her conduct is that, although she professes to want to be accepted in this male-dominated field, she took the most hostile way possible to deal with the situation.

I don’t see how some geeky tech guys making a geeky tech joke that was sexual, and not directed at her or any woman, could really be construed as “sexist,” unless any mention of sex is inherently sexist, which, in my opinion, would be a sad state of affairs.  But be that as it may, if she really found it offensive, couldn’t she have just leaned over and asked them, politely, or even not-so-politely, to knock it off?  If they had persisted in making their juvenile jokes at that point, then perhaps their behavior would actually have become an act of hostility toward her, or toward women, if she somehow represents all women.  Then she could have escalated if necessary.

I work a lot with men.  The people I work with most are men.  It has been this way for my entire career.  I am not easily offended, at least not by sexual, even arguably “sexist” jokes.  (I am probably fairly easily offended by criticism of my work, I don’t have a very thick skin.)  But even as someone who is not easily offended, there are times when the guys cross the line, or where I know their comments or conduct would cross the line for most women, and they should know so.  It has become kind of a running joke that I will say “that one’s going in my book,” meaning the book of evidence for my potential sexual harassment or hostile workplace lawsuit.  They know when I say that to back off.  And honestly, after so many years working together, I am usually more direct than that.  Last week, I had sent an e-mail to two men I was working with explaining a case that was helpful.  Less than 24 hours later, one of them sent an e-mail back, attaching the same case, with the same explanation, with no acknowledgment of my prior e-mail.  One man replied to the other’s e-mail and said “wow, that’s really helpful.  Can you send a copy of that?”  I was probably being petty, but I marched into his office, and asked “so do you just ignore my e-mails, or do you ignore all e-mails written by people without penises?  Was the case more helpful when pointed out by someone with a penis?”  He laughed, but more importantly was embarrassed.

We still work in a very sexist world.   But haven’t we come far enough that we can talk to each other about the things that bother us?  Sure, sometimes the power differential between a man and a woman is such that a woman is afraid to speak up directly to the man.  But there is nothing about Adria Richard’s conduct to suggest she was afraid to speak to those men.  She just couldn’t be bothered to give them a chance to do the right thing.

Another recommends that men take action too:

I work for a large organization that was conducting a government-sponsored test of some hardware, with participation by several other large organizations and government representation.  (I’m being deliberately vague about an event that happened several years ago.) Late one day one of the participants representing another organization made some sexist remark in a group of 15 or 20 men. I don’t even remember what it was but it wasn’t the type of thing i was accustomed to hearing in the workplace.  He actually made this remark in the presence of a young female engineer on his own technical team. Except for a couple of our technicians not present during this incident, she was the only woman on the project with perhaps 40 or 50 men, mostly middle-aged or older engineers, scientists, software jocks, and managers.  I was working at a desk, not participating in the conversation, but I turned around, glanced at the young woman to see if she was going to say anything, and seeing that she was silent I said a few words to the effect of “We don’t make comments like that around here. We can get fired if we do.”   Then I went back to my work, and conversation went on.  No fuss, no hassle, no more sexist comments.

The next morning the young lady approached me. Apparently my words had given her the courage to report the sexist remark to her management and the offender had been fired overnight.  She asked if her management could phone me and apologize to me directly, but I politely declined the opportunity.  I don’t know any more about what happened, but I suspect that she used me as an excuse, i.e. “he was offended; we should apologize” was an easier position for her to take than “I was offended; he should apologize”.

I was glad to help her achieve a harassment-free workplace.  And I was offended by the comment, too, although my remark was made in a mild tone and I’m not sure that it was blatantly evident that I was offended.  I was offended not because I’m a woman; I’m a 60-ish man with three children including a young-adult daughter and grandchildren.  I ask myself “what if she were my daughter or grand-daughter, would i want her to have to endure that?” I’m not sorry this jerk got fired but I would have flipped out if the young woman got fired for making a complaint.

It’s the responsibility of every person present to object to sexist remarks, especially those made in the presence of someone likely to take offense.  No woman, no person should be forced to defend herself or to suffer in silence.  No more than we should tolerate racist comments or homophobic comments, or heaven forbid “ageist” comments.  It will stop only if someone speaks up EVERY time it happens.  Furthermore, knowing that someone is on your side can be very important to the victim of that kind of remark.   And if speaking out gets sexist/racist/whatever people fired, “pour encourager les autres” – so be it.

Update from another regarding the second-to-last reader above:

Her anecdote immediately brought to mind a greeting card my wife once received from a friend that pictured a board of directors (with one woman) sitting at the boardroom table with the CEO stating, “That’s an excellent suggestion Ms. Windsor, perhaps one of the men at the table would like to make it?”

(Image sent by a reader, who adds: “I saw variants of this ad running in the old Byte and PC Magazine back in the ’90s. It’s a rather obvious joke.”)

Reviewing Adam Winkler’s 2011 book Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America, David Frum is intrigued by Winkler’s claim that America’s modern gun culture is rooted in the Black Panther movement of the 1960s:

Since [1861], dissident groups have from time to time resorted to armed force against local or national authorities. But these groups, however passionately they believed in their cause, never imagined themselves to be acting lawfully. That’s why the Ku Klux Klan wore hoods, rather than uniforms: they recognized the risk that if identified they would be arrested and prosecuted. They did atrocious things, but they never pretended to a right to do them.

What was new about the Black Panthers was their attempt to organize an armed militia within the law. Although the group did later degenerate into a criminal gang, its early success was gained precisely from its ostentatious compliance with law. As one former Panther would later write, “The sheer audacity of walking onto the California Senate floor with rifles, demanding that Black people have the right to bear arms and the right to self-defense, made me sit back and take a long look at them.”

Remove the overt reference to race, and you have a sentence that could proceed from an NRA militant today.

Waldman tires of marriage equality opponents playing the victim:

I’m more than happy to admit that in certain circles, it’s more acceptable to be gay than to be an evangelical Christian. That’s what Chief Justice Roberts was getting at when he noted during the oral arguments about DOMA that “political figures are falling all over themselves” to endorse gay marriage, and thus gay people don’t qualify as a disfavored minority. But what we’re talking about here isn’t attendance at fashionable Upper West Side parties, it’s discrimination under the law. That’s what makes you a second-class citizen. It’s what gay people live with now, and it’s something that is never, ever going to happen to Christians, no matter how bad some of them may feel when people tell them they’re wrong.

Serwer focuses on marriage equality’s legal opponents:

However the justices rule, what was perhaps most notable in the two days of oral arguments concerning these marriage equality cases is that the lawyers for those opposing gay rights believe their side will ultimately lose this battle—if not in the courts, than in the political realm. Cooper said as much on Tuesday. And on Wednesday Clement essentially said the movement against gay marriage was doomed. Ticking off a series of gay rights victories in various states, he remarked, “The reason there has been a sea change is a combination of political power…But it’s also persuasion. That’s what the democratic process requires. You have to persuade somebody you’re right. You don’t label them a bigot. You don’t label them as motivated by animus. You persuade them you are right. That’s going on across the country.”

He was sort of arguing that were the court to rule against him, it would be piling on. But Clement was also conceding that no matter what happens at the high court, same-sex couples will probably get a fairy tale ending. The question is how long that takes—and whether the Supreme Court assists or impedes the ultimate victory.

Jane Mayer reviews Jess Bravin’s The Terror Courts: Rough Justice at Guantanamo Bay, which focuses on military prosecutor and Marine Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Couch, “whose moral clarity and professional ethics are repeatedly assaulted by the unconstitutional process in which he finds himself participating” and who found that torture had undermined “his ability to try and convict all but the most low-level detainees.” Take the example of Mohamadou Ould Slahi, a detainee who Couch concluded had “the most blood on his hands”:

Slahi, Couch learned, was horribly mistreated. Effeminate and childless, he was subjected to bizarre sexual gambits involving photos of vaginas and fondling of his genitals. When these methods, death threats, and physical abuse didn’t produce results, the military interrogator told him that his mother would be shipped to Guantánamo and gang raped if he did not talk. He was also subjected to a false kidnapping and threatened with worse torture.

Eventually, Slahi confessed incriminating details to his interrogators, but because of the abusive methods through which they were learned, Couch believed the confession was unreliable and inadmissible. Indeed, he no longer believed he could press charges against Slahi at all.

As a Christian and a U.S. military officer, Couch underwent a crisis of conscience. He consulted with his most trusted advisers, read the Convention Against Torture, and then informed his superiors he couldn’t prosecute the case. “What makes you think you’re better than the rest of us around here?” his commander asked him, angrily. “That’s not the issue at all. That’s not the point,” Couch retorted. A week later he sent his boss a memo to be shared with higher-ups, suggesting that the interrogators ought to be prosecuted, and concluding, “I…refuse to participate in this prosecution in any manner.”

After Slahi, Couch was ordered to ask no more questions about detainee treatment. But he persisted, often despite complete obfuscation from both his superiors and other agencies, most particularly the CIA. Despite his superior’s effort to keep the interrogation file from him, Couch discovered that a second important detainee held by the military in Guantánamo, Mohammed al-Qahtani, believed to be the missing twentieth Al Qaeda hijacker, was also so shockingly abused that charges had to be dropped.

How one reader responded to the convictions in Steubenville:

I hope you take this as a serious question and I hope it doesn’t offend you. As a father of two girls something like this happening to one on my daughters always lurked in my mind. Getting drunk, losing control and then God knows what happens. As a father of a son I always prayed that I had raised my son with the proper values and respect for women that didn’t fly out the window in a rush of drunken, drug-induced rush of teenage hormones.

So here is my question: Does something like this happen at gay gatherings or parties? Is there gay rape that goes unreported due to embarrassment and maybe the fact that the victim’s family may not know he or she is gay? Do these horrible incidents have the same frequency of occurrence in the gay culture as straight? Maybe this is something you might devote a thread to. I have never heard the subject discussed.

A 2003 Guardian report provides some perspective on the underreported crime:

Hundreds of men have been attacked after their drinks were spiked with ‘date-rape’ drugs by gangs targeting victims in pubs and clubs across Britain. At least three men are thought to have fallen victim to a gang last month after being approached by an apparently friendly stranger. It is believed their drinks were spiked with the ‘date-rape’ drug GHB before the victims were taken elsewhere and attacked. At least one of the victims was drinking in a mainstream pub when he was targeted, but the others were approached in gay venues.

Graham Rhodes, chief executive of the Roofie Foundation, a charity for victims of drug-rape, said: ‘Men are the victim in 10 to 15 per cent of cases reported to us. That is 730 cases. Nearly always the perpetrator is male and in these cases there is a much higher proportion of gang rape.’ … Rape is often portrayed as a crime against women only and cases are rarely reported by gay men. Keith Cowen, community safety spokesperson for the gay rights charity Outright Scotland, said: ‘This is a huge problem for every one. We spoke to people at sexual health clinics and they are telling us it happens all the time – among heterosexuals and among gay people.

As we promised from the beginning of the new venture, feedback from readers at every stage:

Something clicked for me with the rollout of your monthly payment option. I’ve been reading the Dish for a thousand years and it’s only now that I can treat it the way I treat NPR – something I depend on every day, but pay for every month. There’s something seriously satisfying about doling it out this way, and it turns out it’s not the free tote bag. I don’t know how many others will have this sort of reaction, but it was a sudden and beautiful solution to a problem I didn’t even know I had. And best of all, I can still feel that smug elitism that comes from knowing I’m one of those people paying for what all those freeloaders are getting for free.

The tote bag would help, though. You know. Just saying. If you have one around. Doesn’t have to be nice, I’m just going to use it for groceries. Just putting that out there.

On the full disclosure front, here’s the impact of adding the $1.99 option a month in the last week:

That suggests to me that we made the right call. We’ve shifted the daily revenue from the $1K range to $2K, and new subscribers from around 50 a day to around 100. That will surely go down in time, and may be distorted by a big news week – but it’s encouraging for now. Another reader:

I’d like to see an economist or finance analyst look at your monthly pricing, but my instinct is that you underpriced it by a dollar.

At $1.99, the person is paying just about the suggested subscription price.  Why bother to subscribe – you can graze forever and skip some months etc.  I understand you want to nudge people to start paying, but you need a little more pain.  At $2.99, the person is spending 50% more than a straight subscription, but the price is low enough to get someone to decide he or she might as well pay for the subscription. Those of us who bought subscriptions are also buying into the idea that you need to pay for web content that is high quality, edited, thoughtful etc.  Your pricing should reward the committed, not the grazers (but allow for grazing at a surcharge).

We like the simplicity of $19.99 a year or $1.99 a month (or more if you want to set your own price). Another:

Just read your $1.99 subscription post and it made me wonder if you have an option for us to give monthly/annual gift subscriptions? (I subscribed in February, so I don’t recall if that was an option.) In this day and age when so many of us have way too much stuff and we don’t need one more thing, I have found magazine/newspaper subscriptions to be terrific gifts.

Gifting is definitely in the works. Another:

I think if the Dish really wants to start doing long-form journalism and if you guys really want to be more ambitious you cannot rely on just reader support alone. At this point I would be honestly surprised if you managed to reach 900k by the end of the year. My question is, why don’t you just follow the model of Pandora.com or spotify? Have advertisements for the people who have not subscribed to the blog and none for those who have not subscribed. You’ll generate some revenue and it’s more then fair. The fact is the limit is easy to get around and how many newspapers or magazines have ever been fully supported just by readers? A reader support base is just too unstable to rely upon in the long term.

We have been thinking over that option as well. Another:

Wintery economic conditions, even at the $1.99 level (which I realize with a certain sober fright), have prevented me from joining the “New Model.” As an every day reader and supporter of e journalism with all it’s warts, I fully intend to hand over my money and will do so proudly once my financial outlook seems less dire.

But please STOP saying “this may not work.” As much as I appreciate your candor and humility, I think you often stay the hand with such statements. I wonder if I’m going to be the last dope who pays before the site winds up back on the Beast. Perhaps a little conviction? Burn that bridge. Take off those training wheels.

Or maybe you’d be better off not taking advice from someone who can’t find $1.99 a month to rub together.

Another:

I really don’t mean to show a lack of empathy for anyone out there, but I’m pretty shocked that any significant number of your readers – who in general are well-educated professionals on the average – can’t pony up $20 in cash for your site and need $1.99/month. If that is really the reason many aren’t subscribing, may I just say … budget? Check out www.youneedabudget.com for a great program. There’s no reason people shouldn’t be able to come up with $20 for something they want. We aren’t talking about a huge sum here: we’re talking about the price of 2 movie tickets.

(Full disclosure: I have not subscribed. But not because I can’t find the money, I’m still not convinced it’s worth my money right now. I’m sure there are readers who can’t spare $20, and I feel for them; but I also suspect many can’t find the $20 because they’re bad at managing their cash. Budget, people. Budget.)

(Dish readers’ Gmail profiles pics used with permission)

Here’s a statistic worth pondering:

Over the past 33 years the Civil Administration has allocated less than one percent of state land in the West Bank to Palestinians, compared to 38 percent to settlers, according to the agency’s own documents submitted to the High Court of Justice.

It took a while to get this information from the Jewish state. As usual, Israelis – not American Jews – forced the issue. Meanwhile, AIPAC’s successful strangling of Obama’s attempt at peace-making has borne fruit:

The number of approvals for home construction plans in the settlements leaped in 2012 compared with the two previous years, says the Israeli non-governmental organization Peace Now. Building plans for 6,676 residential units were approved in 2012, the vast majority in settlements east of the fence. This represents a huge increase from 1,607 housing units approved for construction in 2011 and the several hundred housing units approved in 2010.

When you look at the details, all you can do is marvel at how the Greater Israel Lobby can still maintain a straight face and say it wants peace via a two-state solution. They’re world-class bullshitters:

The Civil Administration subsequently provided the court with the following details: 671,000 dunams of state land is still held by the state. Another 400,000 dunams were allocated to the World Zionist Organization. Most of the Jewish settlements, both residences and agricultural land, are on this land.

Another 103,000 dunams of state land were allocated to mobile communications companies and to local governments, mainly for the construction of public buildings.

Utilities such as the Mekorot water company, the Bezek communications company and the Israel Electric Corporation received 160,000 dunams, 12 percent of the total state land in the West Bank.

Palestinians have received a total of 8,600 dunams ‏(2,150 acres‏), or 0.7 percent of state land in the West Bank.

A key exchange between Paul Clement, who is defending DOMA, and Justice Kagan from yesterday:

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The New Yorker has more video from yesterday. Another exchange that DOMA lost:

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My thoughts on yesterday’s oral arguments here.

In the past few years, Buzz Bissinger spent $638,412.97 on high-end clothing, primarily leather products:

I bought at least a dozen items that cost over $5,000 each but did not fit, the hazard of online purchasing, since sizing by high-end retailers is often like Pin the Tail on the Donkey. I bought items I wore once, or never wore at all, the tags still hanging from the collar. Yet I returned very little: The more the closets in the house filled, the more discerning I became, the more expensive the items, the more I got off on what I had amassed.

Fallows calls Bissinger’s article “one of the most subtly skillful and elaborate April Fool’s Day hoaxes anyone has ever pulled off … or one of the most unintentionally embarrassing, you-have-to-turn-away-because-it’s-cruel-to-keep-watching acts of unaware self-humiliation anyone has ever committed.” Dodai Stewart notes how the piece upends gender roles:

“Shop til you drop” is assumed to be the battle cry of giggling gals; for every sneakerhead dude hellbent on acquiring Airforce Ones, there’s a Mariah or Kimora or Imelda Marcos with a truly obsessive collection. But of course men shop. And of course men shop to excess. But drop the phrases “shopaholic” or “shopping addict” in a conversation and the average person will assume said shopper is female.

Alyssa adds:

Bissinger is not wrong to argue that there’s powerful, unexplored territory out there when it comes to men, fashion, and the presentation of their sexuality. He’s just missing the fact that it’s not just his personal style, but powerful business interests, that are going to push that discussion forward—and in ways that he and other men might find as difficult and uncomfortable as women have for years.