the week's news: 2022-05-08
the week's news: 2022-05-08
you can't say "spy" on the radio ... you can't make gasoline out of thin air by cutting taxes ... you can't fix health care by saying "my opponents are awful"
The theme of the week is disparagement.
Some of you may feel unhappy about this. If you do, our Complaints Manager Alan Lee would love to hear your complaints at alanlee50309🤠gmail.com . Don’t expect much from your emails; Alan Lee has a talent for being wrong … and a separate talent for not checking his email very often.
and now, the week’s news.
Tweet of the Week - after months of sanity, the “web3 is going just great” team finally caved to the pressure. In a follow-up tweet, they quoted BuzzFeed News: “we regret to inform you the slurp juice is racist”. the Newslettr would like to object to this, but after about 5 minutes of uncontrollable laughter decided to just pass it on.
Ohio Senate Primary - on Tuesday, author JD Vance won the Republican primary for Senate in the state of Ohio. Mr. Vance, a prominent associate of venture capitalist Peter Thiel, is something of an enigma. His pugnacious approach to Twitter is hopefully only a artefact of that medium. While the Newslettr would have considered Matt Dolan to be almost certain to win the general election, at this time there is no clear favorite between JD Vance and Tim Ryan.
Vocabulary Lesson - there is a distinction between disparagement and defamation. Disparagement is any negative-themed content, regardless of whether it is true or not. There are no laws against disparagement, especially when you are saying true statements that disparage stupid people who deserve it. Defamation is generally disparaging, but it also implies that the statement is false, generally deliberately and intentionally. Defamation is a crime in most jurisdictions.
The first lesson of disparagement is: always put your disparagement behind a paywall.