The fierce intensity of small town politics

Carmel-by-the-Sea is very small upscale town near where I live, where Clint Eastwood and Brad Pitt own homes and rich people own vacation homes. It is a quirky place that has some very strange laws that derive from its early history when it was incorporated in 1916 as a place for artists of various kinds.

One of the many quirks is that the houses have no street numbers, a topic I wrote about a few years ago, looking into the history of that issue. Currently homes are identified by specifying ““Lincoln Street 3 southeast of Fifth Avenue” or other formulations. Any measure to introduce street number arouses fierce opposition from some residents, even though they seem to be in the minority.
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The bizarro world of Trumpian economics

Trump has released his big tariffs plan and most observers are stunned, not just by the size and scope of the tariffs ,but also by the bizarre reasoning that has been given for the numbers

It is clear from the reasoning given for the sizes of the tariffs that Trump sees things in very simplistic terms. He thinks that the US should have a trade surplus with every other country and that if it has a deficit, that must be because those countries are engaging in unfair trade and should be punished accordingly. That is how he arrived at his tariff numbers.
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Wisconsin and Florida elections

There were three major elections yesterday, two for congressional seats in Florida and one for a state supreme court justice in Wisconsin. The Florida seats were vacated by the resignations of Matt Gaetz and Michael Waltz. Gaetz, a controversial figure accused of having sex with underage girls as well as using drugs, did not resign because of that but because, incredibly, Trump had nominated him for the position of attorney general. But when even some Republicans viewed his nomination unfavorably, he withdrew it.

Waltz resigned because Trump appointed him as national security advisor, where he has recently been criticized for allegedly including the editor of The Atlantic magazine in a high-security chat group over the unsecured commercial channel Signal. It turned out that this was not the only unsecured group chat Waltz had created to discuss sensitive information, having created 20 more on Signal. He seems sloppy and incompetent to say the least.
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The myth of universal body standards

When you go to a doctor, whether for a routine checkup or because of a specific concern, you will usually undergo a series of tests that will give values for a variety of biological markers. Your measures will then be compared with standard benchmarks to see if you fall outside the norm, and if you do, that will be perceived as a problem to be addressed. Implicit in this methodology is that there is a ‘universal patient’ whose biometric markers represent the norm that everyone should aspire to. But where do these norms come from? How valid are they? To what extent should they be used to diagnose and treat people?

When my older daughter was a baby, she was exceptionally chubby. But as she approached her first birthday, she rapidly became skinny, so much so that people had difficulty recognizing the infant in the photograph of her that was on the sideboard (taken at around six months) with the toddler now running around the house. In the regular doctor’s visits, her weight was always on the very low end of the standardized height-weight charts. But her pediatrician, who was an older man, did not seem concerned and so neither were we.
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Blog comments policy

At the beginning of every month, I will repost my comments policy for those who started visiting this site the previous month.

As long time readers know, I used to moderate the comments with a very light hand, assuming that mature adults would know how to behave in a public space. It took outright hate speech targeting marginalized groups to cause me to ban people, and that happened very rarely. But I got increasingly irritated by the tedious and hostile exchanges among a few commenters that tended to fill up the comment thread with repeated posts about petty or off-topic issues. We sometimes had absurdly repetitive exchanges seemingly based on the childish belief that having the last word means that you have won the argument or with increasingly angry posts sprinkled with puerile justifications like “They started it!”

So here is one rule: No one will be able to make more than three comments in response to any blog post. Violation of that rule will result in banning.

But I also want to address a couple of deeper concerns for which a solution cannot be quantified but will require me to exercise my judgment.

The main other issue is the hostility that is sometimes expressed, often triggered by the most trivial of things. An email sent to me privately by a long-time lurker brought home to me how people might be hesitant to join in the conversation here, even if they have something to say, out of fear that something that they write, however well-intentioned, will be seized upon and responded to in a hostile manner by some of the most egregious offenders.

It is well known that the comments sections on the internet can be a cesspool. I had hoped that the people who come to this site would be different, leading to more mature exchanges. But I was clearly too sanguine. People should remember that this is a blog, not a journal or magazine. There are no copy editors, proof readers, and fact checkers. In such a casual atmosphere, people (and that includes me) will often inadvertently be less than precise or accurate in what they say and people should respond appropriately. If the error is trivial but the meaning is clear, the error should be ignored. If the meaning is not clear, clarification can be politely asked for. If it is a genuine error, a correction can be politely made. This courteous behavior should be obvious but clearly it isn’t for some people. So here is another rule: If I think people are being consistently rude or condescending or insulting (and I do not mean just abusive language but also the tone), I will ban the person.

For me, and I suspect for the other bloggers on this network, the rewards of blogging lie in creating space for a community of people to exchange ideas and views on a variety of topics. But that is pleasurable only if people post comments that are polite and respectful towards others, even while disagreeing. Some time ago, I wrote a post that a good philosophy of life is “Don’t be a jerk”. That would be a good rule to keep in mind when posting comments as well. There is absolutely no call for anyone to be rude or sneering or condescending towards others. Almost all the commenters on this blog contribute positively and it is a pleasure to read their contributions and interact with them. It is a very few who think that a sneering, condescending, or abrasively argumentative tone is appropriate. My patience has been worn thin by some of their comments in the past. So here is the third rule: If I think, for any reason whatsoever, that someone is behaving like a jerk, I will ban them. I am in no mood to argue about this. I will not make any public announcement about who is banned. They will simply find that they can no longer post comments.

So I would suggest that in future commenters think carefully before they post anything, taking into account what they say and how often they say something. They should try to put themselves in the shoes of the person they are arguing with and think about how they might feel if their comment had been directed at them. They should also think about how their comments might look to others. It surprises me that people do not realize how badly this kind of behavior reflects on themselves.

Readers may have noticed that there are no ads on any of the blogs on this network. Nobody is making any money at all. In fact, it is a money sink and PZ Myers pays for the costs of the servers out of his Patreon account that you can contribute to if you would like to support the network. The bloggers here blog because they want to create spaces for conversations on issues that they care about. ‘Clicks’ have no monetary value. That means that I do not care how many people come to the site.

I realize that these guidelines are somewhat vague. So a good rule of thumb would be: If in doubt as to whether to post something because it might violate these boundaries, that is a good sign to not post it. I will be the sole judge of whether the boundary has been crossed.

I want to make it perfectly clear that I have zero tolerance for people who try to find ways to subvert the guidelines such as, for example, skirting the three comment limit by continuing it on another thread. I also reserve the right to make exceptions to the rules at any time, if I feel it is warranted. These decisions will be solely mine and will be final. There will be no discussion, debate, or appeal. If anyone objects because they think that I am being arbitrary, they are of course free to leave and never return.