Taking a principled approach means that sometimes you support a person in one respect while being severely critical in another. I supported Harvard president Claudine Gay when she said that calls for genocide don’t categorically qualify as harassment. But now there’s evidence that she’s a repeat plagiarist, and that demands strong criticism if she is.
Update: Claudine Gay has resigned as president of Harvard University. See also the new paragraph at the end of this post.
Plagiarism consists of using someone else’s words or ideas and passing them off as original work. If you cite the source, it isn’t plagiarism (though it might be a copyright violation if you use too much). Sometimes it’s tricky to identify. Two people can have the same idea independently. Words can stick in your mind, leading you to use them without being aware that you’re lifting them from another author. Sometimes there’s just one good way to say something.
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A lot of people have lately been complaining that Substack has only narrow restrictions on the content it allows. Some aren’t just complaining but are leaving the platform. The issue is “racist or bigoted speech”, and in some cases, “explicitly Nazi” material.
It wouldn’t bother me if Substack had somewhat broader restrictions on content, but it’s a dangerous path to go down, and I’m sure they know it. Deciding whether something violates content restrictions is often tricky, and sites with lots of user-generated content rely on software and people under time pressure to decide. They generate a lot of false positives. On pre-Musk Twitter, I was suspended for making a joke about the health hazards of Krispy Kreme, for recommending a sharp blade to separate uncut book pages, and for objecting to an endorsement of mass murder. The innocent were punished more severely than the guilty, since reinstatement required admitting to a violation of the rules.
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“One down. Two to go. This forced resignation of the president of @Penn is the bare minimum of what is required.”
That’s the kind of language you might expect from the Minister of Truth in a socialist dictatorship. It’s from Elise Stefanik, a Congresswoman from New York. The offense for which Stefanik and many others are seeking to remove three university presidents is the failure to regard advocacy of genocide unconditionally as harassment.
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According to a Des Moines Register article, fourteen state attorneys general have accused the New York Times, the Associated Press, CNN, and Reuters of serious crimes. The accusations appear highly dubious. The claim is that these news organizations have paid freelance reporters who have ties to Hamas and have thereby committed the crime of “material support for terrorism.”
A Fox News article corroborates the main points and adds some details. I don’t consider Fox News a very reliable source, but when a news outlet makes the people it generally supports look bad, it’s more credible, and the Fox News article has a bit more nuance than the Register article.
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The term “gaslighting” has become popular on social media. “To gaslight” means — or at least once meant — to manipulate people to make them think they’re insane. Today the word often serves as an all-purpose tool for attacking someone who says you’re wrong.
A Time article discusses the stretching of several psychological terms, including gaslighting:
Perhaps the most often misconstrued word of the past few years, “gaslighting” has been widely adopted as a way to describe any act that’s insensitive, a lie, or simply a difference of opinion.
Mastodon was supposed to be the answer to many social media problems. Instead of being one site under the control of one group of people, it’s many independent instances. If administrators on one became troublesome, you could move to another. You could find an instance that reflected your values and had the kind of people you like. It’s become something different.
Eugen Rochko, the founder of Mastodon, recently boasted:
I’d like to get it out there that the onboarding experience changed a fair bit this year. We don’t force people to choose a server anymore, so getting started shouldn’t be any more complicated than on any other site.
In the strict sense, no one was ever forced to choose a server. As far as I know, no court has ever ordered anyone to get a Mastodon account. But everyone who uses Mastodon has to choose one, and that hasn’t changed. It’s just that people now are herded into the big servers and have to make an extra effort to pick any of the others. That’s a step backward, toward monolithic social media.
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Does US federal law mandate a “kill switch” for alcohol-impaired drivers in cars made in the future? According to several fact checkers, no. However, an article by Jon Miltimore for FEE shows that it does.
The issue isn’t one of what the law contains, but of terminology. In claiming there is no kill-switch mandate, USA Today refers to the very text that mandates it:
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When researching and writing material about China, you have to be aware of the Chinese government’s disinformation efforts. People who speak out against it are apt to be the targets of systematic insults and character assassination. If you’re operating on a small level, you probably won’t be bothered. Even though my articles on boycotting the Chengdu Worldcon did well in the search engines, I’ve received only one clear threat with a Chinese connection.
CNN has reported on “the world’s largest known online disinformation operation”:
The Chinese government has built up the world’s largest known online disinformation operation and is using it to harass US residents, politicians, and businesses—at times threatening its targets with violence. …
The onslaught of attacks – often of a vile and deeply personal nature – is part of a well-organized, increasingly brazen Chinese government intimidation campaign targeting people in the United States, documents show.
Just a couple more items from Chengdu Worldcon reports.
Chris M. Barkley, writing on his experience on an “Ask a US Fan” panel, reported: “Also, knowing that whatever was said at this panel would probably be reviewed by either Communist Party officials or members of the security services, I had planned in advance to make a point of saying that I was not a foreign policy expert nor was I there to criticize the government or policies of the People’s Republic of China.”
On a more positive note, there was a table for Tibetan science fiction. The report says, “The entire convention was not planned like a free and easygoing party, but more like a well-regulated exhibition. After all, the fan area was located in the lobby on the first floor, in a corner space.” I’m sure any mention of China’s conquest of Tibet was carefully avoided or rewritten as “liberation,” but given the convention’s general bleakness, giving space at all to Tibetan SF is something.
Lukianenko remained officially a Guest of Honor, though he never showed up. I haven’t seen any explanation for his absence. Normally, when a GoH doesn’t show, the concom will say something, even it’s a vague “personal reasons.” This wasn’t a normal Worldcon, though. However, his writing appears in a tie-in book that also has stories by Sawyer and Liu.