To continue reading for FREE, please sign up.
A free account provides you access to two
articles each month ...
By creating a free account, you are agreeing
to receive updates and special offers from
The Chronicle and our selected partners.
I'm sure it's an interesting article and a fine publication, but I'm not signing up. I have more than enough to read, things that I know are of direct value to me ... I'm not going to sign up so I can read something "on spec".
This is a dilemma I grapple with regularly. People need to be paid for the things of value they produce, but it's hard to me to find things that are valuable, and then pay for them. I do subscribe to things, and I make regular contributions to a few people and organisations, but it creates an echo chamber.
This is a hard problem to solve ... I wish I could see a way to make things better.
Yes, there are ways of getting around the blocks (and thank you for this one) but it still leaves the larger problem unsolved. I'd be happy to pay for things I find valuable, but there's no way to find them easily, and having found them, no way to pay confidently, certain that (a) the money goes to the people dong the work, and (b) you don't then get harassed endlessly.
Ublock Origin + pausing JS (they reset scrolling) does the trick
I agree, it would be nice to have micropayments.
At the same time, if they want to be indexed (which increases their reach) they need to publish the entire article and then try to trick people in the browser with JS.
Thanks for the reply, but you're assuming I know something about using the web console. I effectively know nothing about web technologies.
And to be honest, while it would be nice to know about such things, I really don't have the time to start learning about them. I have no intrinsic interest in them, and the benefits would be minimal. I have other things to stretch me, other things that I want to learn, and other things that I need to learn.
Any browser or extension that has a block javascript button does the trick. It's a nice one click button to have at hand.
Despite some uproar, Brave is still probably the best "it just works" script+cookie+ad blocking browser. Click the shield, click off scripts. There are many less dials to tweak, less things to go wrong or interact poorly than with uBlock/NoScript.
Indeed, that is exactly the "solution" I have deployed in this case.
But you seem to have missed my point. Mostly it's not hard to circumvent the existing paywalls, and mostly it's not hard to sign up blind for things, and certainly you can just close the window and move on.
But I'm not complaining about paywalls, I'm identifying the compound problem of producers wanting payment, readers wanting to be able to pay when they know it's worth it, readers being unwilling to sign up to things without first evaluating them, and all the while enabling readers to find and evaluate that content.
It reminds me of that documentary "The Red Pill" in which an ex-feminist turned into a Men Right's activist after looking at the data.
It's good sign that someone on the school side recognise the damage happening.
Still, she holds ridiculous beliefs that make me think the problem will never be solved by schools who have staff that is uniquely biased in one direction and can't even realise their bias.
How can you even think that "Believe the woman" is a good starting point?
Imagine if the gender were reversed and it was "Believe the man", how outraged would people be?
In our justice system, people are innocent until proven guilty.
Sure, this makes it harder to catch perpetrators but it limits innocent people from being trapped and blackmailed.
It's funny how she criticises people who feel like feminists hate all men and then proceed to do the same thing by saying that MRA groups contribute to a culture of misogyny.
There are surely fringe hateful people in both groups: you can easily find misandrist feminists and misogynist men right's activists.
Yes, the problem is that on the far past, "believe the man" was the unwritten rule, and instead of just abolishing it, people decided that to correct that we should move to a explicit "believe the woman".
It is just another instance of our tendency as a society of over-correcting on sensitive and politically charged issues. Maybe this is a cultural artifact of our heritage of abrahamic religions. Probably this is not the case in a Confucionist heritage like China.
> Yes, the problem is that on the far past, "believe the man" was the unwritten rule
That seems disingenuous at best.
The US system of justice is based on assuming innocence until guilt is proven. That favors anyone who has been accused of anything. Flipping the assumption in only the case where a woman accuses a man undermines the entire system.
> The US system of justice is based on assuming innocence until guilt is proven.
The US system of criminal justice is based on a strong presumption of innocence in court (and the civil system has a much weaker presumption), but those presumption are not intended to apply thr same way to the people who investigate crimes or to institutions who perform non-criminal, including investigatory, functions.
If you apply a strong presumption of innocence to the investigative function, you never investigate and never find evidence.
> Yes, the problem is that on the far past, "believe the man" was the unwritten rule, and instead of just abolishing it, people decided that to correct that we should move to a explicit "believe the woman".
To the extent that that relates to a real problem the problem is that when things become slogans detached from context, they tend to lose critical parts of their meaning.
“Believe women” does not mean “uncritically accept as absolutely true what women say without further investigation of facts”, but to treat women’s accusations as serious and not make sexist assumptions about the probability that an accusation is false because of its nature at the outset.
(In part, the is a reactive effect wherein criticism directed at a deliberate strawman interpretation has, through the forces of oppositional tribal identities, actually generated support for what was initially a strawman in the tribe opposite to the one deploying the strawman.)
It's not "believe the woman", it's "believe the victim". I'm unsurprised that you registered a throwaway to hang all your dirty washing out for the world to see.
Capitalism is on its last legs so it is doing whatever it can to sow divisions. That's what this "overcorrection" is about: taking justified grievances and real social problems (e.g., campus rape, racial injustice) and turning them into political wedges that turn working people against each other. Concern for the actual victims of injustice gets lost in the mudslinging.
The "Red" flavor is Trumpism (braindead white revanchism), the "Blue" flavor is ultra-woke virtue signaling, and they're both corporate-sponsored products designed to prevent working people from realizing that they have more in common-- including a shared justified animosity toward the corporate elite ("bourgeoisie")-- than apart.
I pretty much agree with you, but not because I think that "capitalism" is a thing with agency, or its agents are pursuing this as an explicit strategy. I think unrestrained capitalism progressively optimizes away people's options and choices--the means by which people find identity, fulfilment and meaning. It slowly reduces human meaning and purpose to "net present value".
People who are denied good options will get very creative and specialized in their search for personal meaning, and they aren't going to be fair and balanced in the process.
I like capitalism very much, as a practical economic mechanism. I don't much like it as a governing principle or absolute virtue.
Because they are held accountable through civil liability if they commit harassment, and one manner an institution can commit harassment is by maintaining an environment in which harassment thrives even if harassment isn’t a deliberate choice by institutional officers.
> Shouldn’t the court system and police investigations?
Harassment is a civil offense, so courts are involved but not police, but courts are involved only at the point where the immediately-responsible institutions have allegedly failed; their involvement compels the institutional action, it doesn’t substitute for it.
(Some acts of harassment are also crimes, but that is a separate issue.)
Because in 2017, the Office for Civil Rights at the US Department of Education issued a guidance letter requiring all colleges and universities that accept federal funding (i.e. most US colleges and universities) to adjudicate sexual assault cases under a low standard of proof: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
27 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 65.3 ms ] threadThis is a dilemma I grapple with regularly. People need to be paid for the things of value they produce, but it's hard to me to find things that are valuable, and then pay for them. I do subscribe to things, and I make regular contributions to a few people and organisations, but it creates an echo chamber.
This is a hard problem to solve ... I wish I could see a way to make things better.
I agree, it would be nice to have micropayments.
At the same time, if they want to be indexed (which increases their reach) they need to publish the entire article and then try to trick people in the browser with JS.
And to be honest, while it would be nice to know about such things, I really don't have the time to start learning about them. I have no intrinsic interest in them, and the benefits would be minimal. I have other things to stretch me, other things that I want to learn, and other things that I need to learn.
Despite some uproar, Brave is still probably the best "it just works" script+cookie+ad blocking browser. Click the shield, click off scripts. There are many less dials to tweak, less things to go wrong or interact poorly than with uBlock/NoScript.
This isn’t the solution you want but it is the obvious solution.
Don’t sign up and don’t read it! Don’t use “hacks” and “cheats” to get around paywalls.
But you seem to have missed my point. Mostly it's not hard to circumvent the existing paywalls, and mostly it's not hard to sign up blind for things, and certainly you can just close the window and move on.
But I'm not complaining about paywalls, I'm identifying the compound problem of producers wanting payment, readers wanting to be able to pay when they know it's worth it, readers being unwilling to sign up to things without first evaluating them, and all the while enabling readers to find and evaluate that content.
It's good sign that someone on the school side recognise the damage happening.
Still, she holds ridiculous beliefs that make me think the problem will never be solved by schools who have staff that is uniquely biased in one direction and can't even realise their bias.
How can you even think that "Believe the woman" is a good starting point? Imagine if the gender were reversed and it was "Believe the man", how outraged would people be?
In our justice system, people are innocent until proven guilty.
Sure, this makes it harder to catch perpetrators but it limits innocent people from being trapped and blackmailed.
It's funny how she criticises people who feel like feminists hate all men and then proceed to do the same thing by saying that MRA groups contribute to a culture of misogyny. There are surely fringe hateful people in both groups: you can easily find misandrist feminists and misogynist men right's activists.
It is just another instance of our tendency as a society of over-correcting on sensitive and politically charged issues. Maybe this is a cultural artifact of our heritage of abrahamic religions. Probably this is not the case in a Confucionist heritage like China.
That seems disingenuous at best.
The US system of justice is based on assuming innocence until guilt is proven. That favors anyone who has been accused of anything. Flipping the assumption in only the case where a woman accuses a man undermines the entire system.
The US system of criminal justice is based on a strong presumption of innocence in court (and the civil system has a much weaker presumption), but those presumption are not intended to apply thr same way to the people who investigate crimes or to institutions who perform non-criminal, including investigatory, functions.
If you apply a strong presumption of innocence to the investigative function, you never investigate and never find evidence.
To the extent that that relates to a real problem the problem is that when things become slogans detached from context, they tend to lose critical parts of their meaning.
“Believe women” does not mean “uncritically accept as absolutely true what women say without further investigation of facts”, but to treat women’s accusations as serious and not make sexist assumptions about the probability that an accusation is false because of its nature at the outset.
(In part, the is a reactive effect wherein criticism directed at a deliberate strawman interpretation has, through the forces of oppositional tribal identities, actually generated support for what was initially a strawman in the tribe opposite to the one deploying the strawman.)
It can take a bit of back and forth before the middle ground is reached.
> Supporting those processes was the mantra, “Believe the woman.”
The "Red" flavor is Trumpism (braindead white revanchism), the "Blue" flavor is ultra-woke virtue signaling, and they're both corporate-sponsored products designed to prevent working people from realizing that they have more in common-- including a shared justified animosity toward the corporate elite ("bourgeoisie")-- than apart.
People who are denied good options will get very creative and specialized in their search for personal meaning, and they aren't going to be fair and balanced in the process.
I like capitalism very much, as a practical economic mechanism. I don't much like it as a governing principle or absolute virtue.
Because they are held accountable through civil liability if they commit harassment, and one manner an institution can commit harassment is by maintaining an environment in which harassment thrives even if harassment isn’t a deliberate choice by institutional officers.
> Shouldn’t the court system and police investigations?
Harassment is a civil offense, so courts are involved but not police, but courts are involved only at the point where the immediately-responsible institutions have allegedly failed; their involvement compels the institutional action, it doesn’t substitute for it.
(Some acts of harassment are also crimes, but that is a separate issue.)