Syracuse has already received over 69 inches of snow this December. As our local newspaper helpfully points out, that's enough to cover Justin Bieber.
That's right, over one Bieber of snow has fallen on the City of Syracuse this month.
Oh, it's so on. Your move, Albany.
For those of you who are curious, the snowiest winter on record in Syracuse was 1992-1993, when the city saw just under three Biebers of snow.
Newsflash: It snows a lot in Upstate New York
Morning Thoughts on #mooreandme
[Trigger warning for sexual violence.]
Michael Moore still has not addressed the fact that he blatantly misrepresented the allegations against Julian Assange. My pal Tom Watson pretty well sums it up thus: "The silence of @MMFlint on the #mooreandme controversy is deeply disappointing and frankly, rank anti-feminism."
Moore is no champion of the little guy if "guy" is literal. And he's no progressive if he's not a feminist. You can't claim to be a man of the people if you don't give a flying fuck about half the population.
Oh, but Julian Assange is doing IMPORTANT WORK, he argues. Well, Sady Doyle and I and the other people who are criticizing Moore for rape apologism in defense of a man doing IMPORTANT WORK are doing important work, too. Of course, Julian Assange is doing Very Important Business for "people," while we're just doing boring old ladybusiness.
This entire episode has been a textbook example of a dude auditing the veracity of rape allegations using how much he likes the person accused as the primary basis for his Totally Objective Observations. Which is, truly, one of the most basic forms of rape apologism there is.
"Well, I totes hate rape, and I like Julian Assange, so therefore he cannot be a rapist!"
What's that brand of il(logic) called again...?
Oh right. Bullshit.
#mooreandme
Two-Party System
Spinelessness and Obstructionism: "Senate Democrats abruptly abandoned an omnibus budget bill for the coming year, pushing major spending decisions into the next Congress and giving Republicans immense new leverage to confront President Barack Obama's priorities."
Meanwhile... "Congress at midnight Thursday approved an $801 billion package of tax cuts and $57 billion for extended unemployment insurance. ...Administration officials said Mr. Obama would sign the package into law on Friday."
Barack Obama said he's change the way Washington works. And he has.
It's more broken than ever.
Texting! With Liss and Deeky!
Liss: [sends picture]
Deeky: LOL! Your dog is such a goofball!
Liss: He's the greatest. I love his goofballery to pieces, lol. He's so awesome that I didn't even WANT a dog and I adore him!
Deeky: No shit! You were so wevs about getting a dog. "But Iain really wants one..."
Liss: I know, right? LOL. And now I'm all "Hells yeah I'm goin' to the dog park in the pissing sleet! ANYTHING 4 DUDZ!" What a sucker!
Deeky: Chump!
Liss: LOL! Too true!
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
[Trigger warning for sexual violence and rape apologia.]
Time's really hitting 'em out of the park lately:
Foreign visitors to Stockholm's lively bar scene might be struck by the assertiveness of the nation's women — the typical Swedish female seems to have no qualms about approaching men to start a conversation or initiate a romantic encounter. To Swedish feminists, that confidence is just one part of the country's wider effort to promote women's rights. "The whole society now expects women to be as forward with their sexual will as men. That, after all, is part of achieving gender equality," explains Karine Arakelian, chairwoman of Terrafem, a shelter organization for abused women.I can't decide which part of that I like best: The implication that non-assertive women don't have "the freedom to dictate their sexual encounters," or the implication that assertive women (and, by extension, the feminism that creates them) are responsible for rape.
But despite having the freedom to dictate their sexual encounters, Swedish women face a troubling fact: Sweden has by far the highest incidence of reported rapes in Europe, and one of the lowest conviction rates in the developed world.
[H/T to Amanda Hess, via Twitter.]
Daily Dose o' Cute
My nephew and I took a camera along this morning on one of the dogs' walks.
Me with Sir Doug. Photo by N.
Image description: a black/white/brown tricolor Cavalier King Charles spaniel on a lawn with bushes and a person in the background.
N. with Dexter. Photo by SKM
Image description: A Blenheim (light auburn-and-white) Cavalier King Charles Spaniel held by a person in a turquoise-and-black triangle-patterned sweatshirt.
Of Course
Servicers Downgraded Credit Score of Man who Asked for His Note:
Many homeowners have taken advantage of SEIU's Where's the Note website. It helps you generate letters to your bank to ask for evidence that they hold the mortgage note, or the IOU on the property. Bank servicers have routinely lost the note or never fully had it in their possession through the multiple trades and securitizations, and as a result have fabricated documents when foreclosing on homeowners.If we had a functional legislative branch, there would already be legislation under consideration to prevent this shit from happening. Instead we've got a two-party system in which both parties are racing to see who can capitulate to Corporate America fastest and hardest.
...[Now] several banks, in particular Bank of America, have added negative reports to the credit files of borrowers who ask for their notes. ...SEIU says that this is mostly coming from Bank of America, though a couple have come in from Wells Fargo. ...They knock the credit scores of anyone who even asks for their note, which is basically a copy of the contract a homeowner thought he signed. The goal is silence and intimidation.
The invisible hand belongs not just to a thief, but a bully.
Photo of the Day
Now, it may be just me, but don't Biden and Clinton both look like they have some variation of "STFU." going on in their thoughts? What say you? What would you caption this one?
I Write Letters
To Whom It May Concern:
I don't give a flying fuck how frequently John Boehner cries.
I don't even care if he cries only after he's had a couple glasses of wine. If he's drinking "too much," that's his business, not mine. Crying during speeches and interviews doesn't interfere with his ability to do the job taxpayers are paying him to do.
The guy is evidently deeply moved talking about his country, servicemembers, and his family, and, although I couldn't more profoundly and thoroughly disagree with him about the best way to protect and honor this country, its servicemembers, and its people, and couldn't hold more utterly in contempt his ideas about what the American Dream is and the role BOOTSTRAPS! plays (and privilege doesn't) in achieving his version, I would nonetheless find it unseemly to use my fervent belief that his ideology is garbage as justification to make hay out of what I estimate to be authentic emotion.
And, fuck it. Even it isn't authentic emotion, I'm a feminist. Even though Boehner himself would sneer at my defense of any person's right to express emotion free from gender-based criticism, it doesn't matter. That's not how feminism works.
Cry on, John Boehner. Cry on.
Love,
Liss
P.S. I don't care whether he tans, either. For the record.
Statistics for rape apologists
[Trigger Warning: Rape and rape apologia]
Lesson 1: Harnessing the power of statistics to predict the past
Nate Silver is an influential progressive columnist. He writes about the confluence of statistics and politics. He became a rising star during the last election, and now he writes for the New York Times. Influential guy, totally worth paying attention to.
Anyhow, yesterday he wrote this [TW] column about how Julian Assange was probably set up by the man. Not in the sense that the man made him rape those two women, but in the sense that Silver thinks the man is paying two women to pretend to be raped, what with [TW] all the fun that entails. Silver thinks this is likely the case because he knows some statistics. I also know some statistics.
I'm not an expert on statistics. I've taken three graduate level courses in frequentist statistics (more on that later). I've got a Ph.D. in Ecology (technically Zoology). I've taught ecology (hint: it's mostly statistics +/- lichens and shit). I've also taught college statistics (it also is mostly statistics). Silver studied economics and the statistics of baseball. And that's not me taking a swipe at him-- the statistics of baseball are complicated and meaningful.
Anyhow, one of the nice things about my training is that even though I don't work for the New York Times*, I've got a good sense of what I don't know much about. Things like Bayesian statistics.
So there's basically two statistical posses. There are the frequentists, who are essentially your grandmother's statisticians. As the cool kids say, these are the “unmarked” statisticians. You know, they do "normal" statistics, basically assuming that if you a run an experiment enough times, you'll get the right answer, plus or minus some level of variation.
Then there are the Bayesians. This one guy I knew was a Bayesian. I shared an office with him once. Anyhow, based on that, I'm going to tell you that Silver does an okay job of describing what Bayesian statistics are. As I understand it, Bayesians basically pay a lot of attention to how gaining new information changes your understanding of the statistical validity of a hypothesis.
Anyhow, if you really care about statistics, you're reading the wrong post(s). You should just check out the appropriate Wikipedia entries.
Interestingly enough, Wikipedia points out that fiducial inference also exists, but it's largely the sort of thing assholes use in a desperate attempt to make their Ph.D. theses* relevant, so I'll ignore it completely.
Besides, this post isn't actually about statistics at all.
Anyhow, Silver brings the power of statistics to bear on two important issues:
1) What are you, train-riding lady?
and
2) Did the nice (but potentially “creepy”) man rape those lying women?
I'm going to have to say the answer to question one is a hearty WTF? “Japanese, Caucasian or Mixed Ethnicity?” Aren't there Japanese of mixed ethnicity? And besides, I know “what the fuck am I” is one of my all-time favorite questions to field from strangers. Occupational hazard, I suppose.
In any case, I need Silver to be more specific, and also to stop staring at that poor lady.
Silver was reading about Assange recently. I was just reading an essay by Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins about the search for life on Mars. It's a small world. That's about as much of a non-sequitur as the one Silver's got going on with his train lady. Anyhow, Lewontin and Levins have this great line in there: “Science is necessary because things are different, but that science is only possible because things are the same.”
Aside from those authors' more immediate point about NASA not knowing what it's doing (back in the day, at least :eyeroll:), I think the quote is a pretty nice summation of why scientific inference can be of limited utility, or more to the point, why it's difficult. It's certainly possible (and even worthwhile) to do science, but you need to think long and hard about the assumptions you're making if you're going to have any hope of making any headway.
So, the reason Silver wants to know whether Julian Assange raped those women stems from the dilemma that not all rape allegations are the same.
Okay, let's back up. The reason Silver wants to know whether Julian Assange raped those women probably stems from concern about the importance of WikiLeaks. Or maybe the many issues surrounding the widespread prevalence of rape. Or even interest in the well-being of the women in question. It's probably one, hopefully two of those.
In any case, every rape accusation is unique. We couldn't possibly treat all rape accusations as equivalent, otherwise [TW] nobody would ever get convicted of rape. Not even the vanishingly small number that do now. So we have to investigate each accusation on its own. And sure, there totally are statistics we could use to see the degree to which the Assange cases fit various statistical patterns from all rape cases. Indeed, in order to do statistics we need to assume that the Assange cases are like every other rape case.
There are a couple of problems here:
1. As Silver admits, the Assange cases aren't necessarily typically. Michael Moore doesn't typically [TW] bail alleged rapists out of jail. This could be taken as evidence of Assange's innocence, but it could be taken as evidence that one can't compare the way the Swedish government has handled Assange to the way it has handled other rape suspects.
2. In order to do Silver's faux statistical analysis, you have to assume that courts always convict rapists (and likewise, always acquit innocent defendants). What Silver is really doing is evaluating (er... speculating, well, concern-trolling about) the likelihood that Assange will be convicted, which is most certainly not the same as analyzing the likelihood that he raped one or both of the women in question. Not the same thing at all.
3. In reality, these are two events that have already happened. Either Julian Assange raped one or both of these women, or he didn't. No amount of statistics is going to help us figure out what happened. One thing that might help would be testimony. For example, the testimony of the women. The women who have given the police detailed descriptions of being raped by Assange.
So none of this has anything to do with statistics, let alone Bayesian statistics. Still, both Silver and I got to waste people's time being pretentious. I think he might have even gotten paid* to do so.
In closing, let's look at the ultimate line of Silver's column: “In a world of limited information, the political motivation behind the charges might be the most important clue we have in evaluating their merit.”
WTFOMGJUSTNO. Silver's got his variables all asunder here. When political motivation exists, people pay attention to rape charges. When it's just some dude, nobody really cares. Well, victims, survivors and women might care about the charges, but people who matter typically don't.
Besides, there's a difference between limited information and limited willingness to listen to women. I suspect the relationship between those two isn't what Silver thinks it is.
--
*If anyone's actually at the Times, I can get you my CV. You guys hire whoever, right? Sorry, it's whomever, right? :cough: You guys hire whomever, right? :curtsy:
via: Commenter Allison at Sady's. It's also not a coincidence that a lot of my links come from the Tiger Beatdown post in question.
No. No No No No No No No. NO!!!
Republican Indiana governor and privatization enthusiast Mitch Daniels says he will decide this spring whether he'll run for president.
"I think the decision has to come at the end of this General Assembly session, if not before. No later than that," said Daniels. "In fairness to people from all over the place - many of whom I've only read about before - who like this idea [of Daniels running for president], I owe them some kind of an answer."Indeed. And that answer should be NO!
I've expressed before what a terrible idea making my garbage fart of a governor the nation's president would be, and, listen, this is all you need to know about the guy: He thinks the recent tax deal, which was a fucking gift to wealthy conservatives, was a bad deal for Republicans. Because it extended unemployment benefits to out-of-work USians.
Let us never forget that Mitch Daniels was Bush's budget director, whose enthusiasm for cutting "unnecessary" social spending at the federal level earned him the presidential nickname "The Blade."
Hell to the no.
Discussion Thread: Disability Limitations
In yesterday's thread, "Fat Limitations," in which we discussed what being fat renders one unable to "get away with," because of fat stereotypes, Shaker thlingan requested:
I am really enjoying the opportunity to read this and related threads and further examine my thin privilege, and I was wondering if there might at some point be a "disability limitations" thread, not a thread about the actual disabilities but about how ableism limits what people with disabilities can "get away with". I know I can think of a bunch of social and professional behaviors I can't get away with having severe adult ADHD, and I'd love to share with/support other Shakers with similar experiences and examine my able-bodied privilege as well.So, here is that thread!
One of the things I can't "get away with" is having my PTSD demonstrably triggered. Being a woman, and a feminist woman, and a fat feminist woman, and a fat feminist woman who is a trauma survivor, I have multiple identities that already pique "TOO SENSITIVE!" silencing if I express offense or contempt of certain narratives, images, stereotypes, etc. Adding to that an observable physical response makes me axiomatically discreditable as a serious, rational person in most situations.
Top Chef Open Thread
[Image from last night's episode: Professional chefjudicator Tom Colicchio appears flummoxed by the plate of garbage he's forced to sniff.]
Last night's episode will be precisely batonneted, so if you haven't seen it, and don't want any spoilers, pack your knives and go...
Principles!
The GOP totes has them:
With time running out on the government's authority to spend money, the Senate is expected to vote this week on a $1.1 trillion bill that would settle the issue for the rest of the fiscal year.They've VERY CONCERNED about spending because they are FISCAL CONSERVATIVES and this country has never needed its fiscal conservatives to STAND THEIR GROUND between liberal spendocrats and the treasury more than after those GODDAMN REPUBLICANS ran up the deficit for eight years!
However, conservative Republicans oppose the plan and threaten to obstruct its progress by having it read out loud in the Senate chamber, which could take more than two days.
Again, I ask: How does anyone vote for these people?
Blog Note
This is typically when I do my bi-monthly reminder*, for those who have requested it, to donate to Shakesville.
This month takes on a particular urgency, as my main computer died yesterday. Like, a complete meltdown, good-thing-I-backed-up-recently-because-everything's-fucking-gone implosion. I'm currently eking by on my dodgy laptop, which, until yesterday, was on our list to replace, once we'd recovered from replacing our stove, fridge, and water heater in the span of a month, right before our car started acting up. (No really—is this year fucking over yet?)
Obviously, Shakesville depends on my having a reliable computer, so if you can swing a donation, if you've been meaning to donate but just haven't gotten around to it, now's the time.
Asking for donations** is difficult for me, partly because I've got an innate aversion to asking for anything, and partly because these threads are frequently critical and stressful. But it's also one of the most feminist acts I do here. It's also the only way I am able to manage this community as a safe space, which requires my full-time commitment in addition to our volunteer moderators.
You can donate once by clicking the button in the righthand sidebar, or set up a monthly subscription here.
Let me reiterate, once again, that I don't want anyone to feel obliged to contribute financially, especially if money is tight. Aside from valuing feminist work, the other goal of fundraising is so Iain and I don't have to struggle on behalf of the blog, and I don't want anyone else to struggle themselves in exchange. There is a big enough readership that neither should have to happen.
I also want say thank you, so very much, to each of you who donates or has donated, whether monthly or as a one-off. I am profoundly grateful—and I don't take a single cent for granted. I've not the words to express the depth of my appreciation, besides these: This community couldn't exist without that support, truly. Thank you.
My thanks as well to everyone who contributes to the space in other ways, whether as a regular contributor, a guest contributor, a moderator, a transcriber, or as someone who takes the time to send me the occasional note of support and encouragement. This community couldn't exist without you, either.
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* I know there are people who resent these reminders, but there are also people who appreciate them, so I've now taken to doing them every other month, in the hopes that will make a good compromise.
** Why I ask for donations is explained here.
