Still Working On Automating My Blog

There was a news item recently about Dominos experimenting with driverless pizza delivery. That's interesting, as it's yet another of the common things in our society that will be revolutionized with automation. There are so many things like that, where it's obvious once you think about it that self-driving cars will totally change it, but we just haven't thought it through. I mean, automated ice cream trucks.

Science Fiction author John Scalzi pointed out how this ruins Snow Crash, the Sci-Fi classic who's main character is a pizza deliverer. It's yet another case where we didn't think through how technology would work, imagining this futuristic world with a guy driving his own car. No, he'd be unemployed. That is, unless you believe the Dominos president, who said that the company's 100,000 drivers would take on "different roles" within the company. To put that in perspective, GM employs a little over 200,000 people in total. There's no way they need that many people tossing pizza dough. That is, in the unlikely event that it doesn't also get automated. You have to wonder just how many people a company like Dominos will employ in a few years.

But the thing that stuck out to me was how the whole story was presented as some sort of cutting edge research. The TV version I saw made it sound like Dominos was trying to build their own driverless car so that they could deliver pizza with it. Of course, developing their own self-driving technology would make about as much sense as designing your own car specially for pizza delivery. I'm sure you could make a pizza-optimized car, but no one did that, since the cost would be astronomical compared to just buying a general perpose car. Really, Dominos and all other delivery-based businesses will just use mass-produced self-driving cars.

Sure, there's a bit of work before they perfect automated pizza delivery, since you'll have to have the customer access the pizza themselves. But that's not really on the same level of research. Nor is it particularly newsworthy. Really, this is just Ford doing the self-driving research and development they would be doing anyway, but letting Dominos piggy-back by providing a cute task for their prototype to do. And Dominos gets the publicity when it becomes a news story.

...Do Not Talk About Anything But Fight Club

The last time there was a big, transcendent boxing match, I commented on the weird place boxing has in modern sports. It's usually invisible to the mainstream, but in a big match, it suddenly jumps onto the stage, and everyone acts as though is always been there.

In this case, there's the added narrative of a face-off between the new and old fighting sports, the uncertainty of an unprecedented match-up, and an awkwardly-timely racial undercurrent.

But I'm still surprised by how it's being covered. Granted, sports news has a thankless task of trying to satisfy many people with different tastes. They take advantage of the fact that while different people like different things, most people they like at least one mainstream sports will have at least an abiding interest in other mainstream sports. But smaller sports like boxing present more of a problem. Usually, they just do quick coverage in between other sports. We're going to talk about horse racing for five minutes, but then it's three hours of football. That's why the coverage of this fight is perplexing. It's been Superbowl-style, can't-get-enough coverage. The unstated assumption is that virtually all sports fans are interested in this fight.

I was shocked to see sports channels break away from programming to show live coverage of the press conferences. In non-sports news, that sort of saturation reporting is reserved for massive stories, the kind where they report it non-stop because it would just seem wrong to go to another story. So you report on the same thing, even when all you can show is an interview with some guy who's not saying anything.

It's been more bizarre when you consider that,

• The hype started so long ago. The world press tour was really early, seemingly a misjudgement.
• The match is a new level in boxing's metamorphosis into pro wrestling. The boxers' appearances have been chaotic and profane... wait, there's a word for that now, isn't there? Ah yes, "Trumpian." That's just added to the poor timing; a cascade of childish masculinity might have piqued interest for a week, but it can't really be sustained for a month.
• These contenders aren't really very marketable, outside their sports. Bad boys often sell well in the sports world, but there's a difference between controversial and unlikable.

So in short, we have two cult-following sports clash, each represented by a cartoonist man-child. I can see how that will find a big audience. But what's been a surreal experience is that it's shoved in front of all sports fans, with the assumption we're all in love with it. At least it'll be over soon.

The Men They Couldn't Hang, Stepped To The Mic And Sang

Both Sides Now

There's been a lot of work parsing Trump's unwillingness to single-out the white supremacist groups in Charlottesville.  Most of the focus I've seen is on his administration's long history of playing footsie with the far-right.  But I think that's misguided.  Trump isn't trying to reach out to Neo-Nazis; he's trying to appeal to the people who don't really like the KKK and friends, but are also really uncomfortable with Black Lives Matter and many other activist groups. In short, they don't like people disrupting the status quo .

In A Mirror, Darkly

Trump did his best to establish false-equivalence between heavily armed fascists and those protesting them. Some in the media fell for it, replaying his press conference antics without noting whether his claims were true.  But I think journalists are slowly getting wise.  Or at least, they've started running with the "Trump is nuts" narrative instead of the usual "one side against the other" narrative.

But what really worries me is a relatively small part of the press conference.  Trump didn't merely draw a parallel between the side, but he labeled the counter protesters, giving them the name that seemed the natural counterpart to the so-called "Alt Right." It's a name no one was actually using, and doesn't really make sense, since there isn't really any new force on the left, just the usual groups working harder when fighting the new efforts associated with the Alt Right.

You notice I'm not saying the new name?  That's because I think it's going to be the most dangerous thing to come out of this whole event.  A lot of people are laughing at the name; after all, it's defined as anyone who opposes Nazis, so that would seem to be most of humanity. But the problem is, it's an invitation for false-equivalence.  It invites people to group those countering hate together as though it was one group with its own agenda, rather than what it is: people acting on what most of our society believes in. It makes it sound like they are as much a separate group outside the mainstream as the hat groups themselves are.  In short, it invites the sort of world view I described Trump encouraging in the first section. So I cringe every time I here someone repeat it, even if it is to ridicule it.  It's such a dangerous idea that you shouldn't be giving it any publicity.

Working For The Clampdown

One strange aspect of Charlottesville was the focus of the anger.  Throughout most of my life, whenever bigotry has bubbled to the surface in America, it's generally been pointed at Hispanics, Blacks, or Muslims.  Yes, I know, there's more to it than that, but those are the big targets that you hear about from race-baiting politicians and conservative media.

And yet, when you wade through the ground-level coverage of the hate groups present, they frequently jumped straight to Jews as their hated group of choice.  I really didn't see that coming, since the march was supposedly about a Civil War statue, and their hero in the White House has generally left them alone.  During the campaign, I mentioned that Jews were staying away from Trump, and one explanation given was that they understood that they would inevitably be targeted by the movement.  They sure called that right.

But why are the haters so angry at Jews, despite no coaching from the media or politicians? Recently, an explanation was proposed in the Washington Post: Because they have the privilege to fight back.

Say, remember when "haters" just meant people who were really negative?  Taylor Swift used to sing about them?  Innocent times.

This Used To Be My Playground

There's a dispute going on about how to see Charlottesville. On one side, you have (mostly white) people saying things like "everything has changed" or "this isn't America." On the other side, you have (mostly black) people saying, "this is nothing new."

To some extent, this is a misunderstanding of nuance.  If a person says, "this isn't my America," it's not clear whether they mean, "I refuse to believe this hatred exists here," or, "my vision of this country is a society that's better than this."  The first interpretation is naive and ignorant, while the second is just very idealized rhetoric, and not really a problem.

The trouble is that in recent years, a lot of the most egregious incidents of racism in the U.S. have been disguised within government and corporate policies, hidden in societal norms, or covered over by the justice system.  So activists have gotten used to pointing out that there have long been problems that most of the population just isn't seeing.  That's become enough of an instinctive reaction that even after an incident that seems like a game changer, they're still telling everyone that it wasn't that big of a deal.  I can understand why they would feel that way, but I don't think that's the best message to be putting out there right now.  At a time when white America is finally ready to believe that racism is a problem, you don't want to be telling them that no, it's business as usual.

Many Sides

All week I've been working on a post about the negative reaction to the newly announced TV show Confederate. I was examining the use of dystopia in modern storytelling, and the historical struggles of African-Americans, trying to understand all arguments being made, and agonizing over the subtleties of each perspective. Then the Charlottesville protest happened, as if to say, "fuck subtlety." Fine then.

• Even by the usual standards of the media, it was amazing how long it took to state what actually happened. First it was "violence broke out at a protest, one person was killed." Then it was a car hitting protesters, no mention of intentionality or which side. Then it came out that it was the counter protesters who were hit. Then we find out the car accellerated at the protesters. And finally, we find out that it was Black Lives Matter protesters who were intentionality hit. A massive story that took all day for them to admit.
• The person killed was local paralegal Heather Heyer
• Her death kind of eclipsed the brutal beating of Deandre Harris, whose life was probably saved by fellow protesters.
• There was the bizarre situation in which a hate group from Detroit co-opted the Detroit Red Wings' logo, and the team was forced to issue a condemnation. As many pointed out, they acted quicker and more definitively than Trump.
• Another point not lost on people: This is a University town, and the protesters chose mid-August, the time when there would be the fewest people to confront them.
• Trump hit a new low with the vaguest possible condemnation, implying that the violence came from "many sides." America's Neo-nazis were overjoyed that they didn't get condemned. Dog whistle received.
• By the way, this all started because of talk about removing a statue of Robert E. Lee. It's in the middle of "Emancipation Park."
• It also got lost that two police officers were killed in a helicopter crash on the way there.
• There were plenty of complaints about police inaction, with a mere three arrests (compare that to 30 the first night of Ferguson protests. ) However, it's also hard to blame them given how outgunned the police was compared to some of the militias on hand.
• I didn't even realize that Tiki Torch is a brand, but apparently they didn't appreciate being associated with white nationalism either, and issued their own condemnation. And I'm sure the makers of bland men's clothing will be for ways to distance themselves, now that they're quickly becoming the new white hood. I know the next time I shop for clothes, I'll stop and ask myself, does this make me look like a Nazi?

...And Watch Out For The Cybernewts

If you see a Weeping Turtle, don't blink...oh, go ahead and blink, it's not getting very far anyway.

Where's The Over-Analyzing Emoji?

Since The Emoji Movie is out, I should probably say something about them. And if the reviews are anything to go by, I’d better be quick. I have to admit, I never really liked emojis.

I don't really hate them. A part of me is fascinated by the idea that we could be developing a new interlingual pictogram writing system. And I'm pleasantly surprised at the development of the eggplant emoji; that showed a subtlety I didn't think society was capable of.

But ultimately, I don’t like the inelegance of it. I appreciate things that have a few simple components that can be assembled in a variety of ways, as a challenge to creativity (say, Lego.) I also appreciate things that are so varied and complex that they give rise to virtually endless possibilities and ultimate personalization (say, the Web.) But emojis fall in the anti-sweet-spot between those two possibilities. They're varied enough that they don't really take creativity to use, but limited enough that they can't express individuality.

And before you reach for counter-examples, yes, I know that there are some epic examples of expression through emoji. I saw that tweet where Kyle McLachlan explained the entire plot of Dune in emojis.

🌏💧✋🕋🗡🚀🏜☀️🌡🌶💯🚱⏳🌅🌑😡💉😱😈💀💥🌛🌙🐭💥🚶🏻〰🐛️⌛️👳🙏💥😴🛌😳💥🐛💥👊⚔👑 #dune https://t.co/bXwpdYC8jz

— Kyle MacLachlan (@Kyle_MacLachlan) August 16, 2016

But here's the biggest problem I have with emojis: I miss smileys. I loved their simplicity, the challenge of making punctuation look human. I also appreciated the subtlety: None of the overacting we get from emojis. It was just a humble little facial expression, conveyed with minimalist cuteness by the technological descendant of the "Have a Nice Day" face.

Remember how there was so much concern over not having black faces in emojis? No need to worry about that with smileys. They don’t have enough detail to tell what race/gender they are. The smiley is the only true post-race character. It smiles for all of us.