The outrage economy

My Sunday movie was Mrs. Harris goes to Paris. This is a delightful and sweet movie that I enjoyed and recommend. It’s 1957 and Mrs. Ada Harris is a cleaning lady in London. Her husband did not come home from WWII. At the home of one of her upscale clients (one that is slow in paying her) she sees a gown by Christian Dior and is captivated by it. Se decides to save up to buy one for herself. IMDB’s trivia about his movie says 500 pounds in 1957 is about $12,000 in 2022. So a lot of saving to be done (and a few lucky breaks). She figures she’ll fly to Paris, pop into the Christian Dior store, buy the frock, and head home. Two days max. It doesn’t work that way. The gowns are modeled and the upper crust clients resent her being at the showing. And gowns must be fitted, which takes two weeks, well perhaps we can do it in one. That gives her time for her sweet, direct, and unstuffy personality work on those around her. This movie was filmed in 2021 so in the credits were such things as a COVID testing company. The last time I discussed a book was about six weeks ago. This is a long time given the rate at which I usually read books. Six weeks ago I started an issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine. It’s only 200 pages, but it took me five weeks. A big reason is that my eyes were still healing from cataract surgery. There were nights in bed when both my standard glasses (with post-surgery lenses) and drug store readers weren’t working for me. Several nights I gave up after reading only a couple paragraphs. Reading at the table (and in the bathroom) were also a struggle. My vision has improved and the readers work well for reading in bed, at the table, and in the bathroom, when I remember to slip them on. And after I read the magazine I was able to get through a 325 page novel in less than a week. That novel is Him by Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy. The story is of Ryan Wesley or Wes from Boston, and Jamie Canning from San Rafael, California. They met at hockey camp at Lake Placid in middle school and are best friends through high school. Then Wes, infatuated with Jamie, did something he regrets and ghosted his friend. The story opens with Wes and Jamie as seniors in college on opposing teams at the Frozen Four hockey playoffs. Both have offers from professional teams, Wes in Toronto, Jamie in Detroit. Before reporting Jamie returns to Lake Placid as a coach for the hockey camp and Wes decides to join him there. This is another gay love story written by a woman (two in this case). I had heard some women enjoy writing sex scenes between two men. And there are several (and an R rating isn’t strong enough). It is also a story where one, Wes, is definitely gay, and the other, Jamie, isn’t. He has a female friend-with-benefits. So should Wes get involved with a straight guy? Wes is also adamant that he spend his rookie year in Toronto being celibate. He doesn’t want the news of being the first out player in the NHL distracting him from his rookie year. While he may be right about the distraction we know the celibacy thing isn’t going to work. While I enjoyed this one, in spite of the several f-bombs in the first few pages and liberally thereafter, I’m debating whether to get the sequel. Online reviews say the lads would do a whole lot better if they would just talk about their issues. Meteor Blades of Daily Kos discussed about a new peer-reviewed paper soon to be published in Environmental Research Letters. Blades wrote:

For years, natural gas—composed primarily of methane—has been touted as a bridge fuel to a new world of sustainable clean energy, a way to get off coal without waiting for renewables (and many would add nuclear) to fulfill all our electricity needs. This has worked in the United States to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% since 2005, with coal’s share of U.S. electricity generation dropping last year to less than 20%. That’s because burning methane releases on average about half the greenhouse gas emissions of coal. But there’s a big problem. Over 20 years, unburned methane has a global warming potential that is 84 times greater than that of carbon dioxide emitted by burning coal.

A natural source of methane is melting permafrost – and the Arctic is warming 4 times faster than the planet’s average. Human source of methane are agriculture, landfills, leaks from oil wells, and natural gas fracking operations. It takes only a tiny leak for natural gas to be as harmful as coal and fracking sites are notorious for leaking. So the idea that natural gas can serve as a bridge fuel should be rethought and discarded. As for the rest of the fossil fuel industry, no new infrastructure should be built. Clay Bennett posted a cartoon to Kos. It shows a man in a bookstore finding the Farmer’s 2023 Almanac with its weather forecasts in the horror section. I’ve taken one trip on a cruise ship. That was 15 years ago and I went with my parents to Alaska. This seemed the easiest way to see the parts of the state we wanted to see. I knew we would have over 30 meals together so I took a notebook and asked them about their lives. I’m very glad I got that first hand account while I could. We had an enjoyable time and saw some amazing scenery along the way. I haven’t been on a cruise ship since and no desire to do so. The kinds of things the ship offered as entertainment on board – shows, casino, spa, and I don’t remember what else – had little interest for me and there was little to do beyond that. The shore excursions were pleasant, but mostly seemed too regimented (we took some and went on our own at other stops). I’m glad I had that time with my parents, but once was quite enough. That leads to a discussion by Hunter of Kos about the Icon of the Seas, by Royal Carribbean, due to take its first passengers next spring. This cruise ship is huge! It is able to host 5,610 guests (I think the one I was on could hold 2,000). It is too big to permit anything that people take cruise ships for – no spray of the sea 20 stories up, no rolling waves, no way to get anywhere close to the quaint seaside villages. But why would one need a ship this big? Cruise ship designers figured out being on the boat is boring. Between the restaurants, bars, pools, spas, water park, mini golf, arcade, shows, gift shops, and whatever else they have on this ship one wouldn’t need to actually go to port. That sounds like a mall with a hull and lifeboats. Since the future can only be boats bigger than this one and because cruise ships are more polluting than airplane travel...

What's even the point of turning this thing into a boat? We're pretending it's travel? Here's a better suggestion: Build the next generation of cruise ships as oceanfront hotels. Just stick them on the beach in the general vicinity of Miami and instead tow the quaint Caribbean villages to them. ... In fact, we can do even better: We can put multiple cruise ship-sized luxury hotels on one big floating wheel, anywhere in landlocked America. You board from a single entrance, and each evening the wheel slowly spins while you're asleep so that you wake up with a completely new theme park outside your window. Every day brings new sights and new things to do.

Hunter suggests some of those theme parks could be the quaint Caribbean village, a water park, Westworld, Jurassic Park, and Blackjack Lagoon.

We wanted to sail off to new adventures, we got floating germ bombs with gift shops. I don't think we're going to bring back bloodthirsty megafauna, even. We'll just get a stuffed tiger in a cruise ship gift shop after all the wild ones have gone extinct, and it'll cost you $10 to get your picture taken with it.

Charles Jay of the Kos community wrote about California Gov. Gavin Newsom taking on Moms for Liberty. The Moms pushed to elect three conservative people to the board of the Temecula Valley Unified School District. Just after being sworn in they passed a resolution condemning critical race theory, which got them an appearance on Fox and Friends. In May the board reviewed new social studies books for grades 1-5. They rejected the one recommended by the state because the teacher’s supplement, not the actual textbook students see, had a photo and short biography of Harvey Milk, the gay San Francisco supervisor who was assassinated. Board president Joseph Komrosky repeated a now common but false slur when he said, “Why even mention a pedophile?” There is a parent backlash. Politico wrote:

“We don’t want culture wars. We don’t want Fox News appearances,” Alex Douvas, a parent of two kids in the district who previously worked for two Republican congressmembers in Orange County, told the board recently. “Our schools are not ideological battlegrounds. They’re not platforms for religious evangelism. These are institutions for learning and growth.”

Newsom, who is becoming known for taking Democratic ideals on the offense, got involved because refusing to upgrade their social studies curriculum means the district is now in violation of state law. In response Newsom said if the district didn’t lift its ban the state would buy the banned book, send it to the parents and students of the district, and bill the district for violating state law. Mark Sumner of Kos wrote about the outrage economy. He begins with:

We live in a capitalist society that has spent centuries inventing tools to aid in the concentration of wealth. The end result of that evolution is corporations: money-moving engines which remain, to date, the most efficient form of turning the work of thousands—and the needs of millions—into a fat stack of cash for a very, very few. ... Just as late-stage capitalism is engrossed in wiping away every benefit workers gained over centuries of negotiating the relationship between labor and reward, the outrage economy has risen up to guarantee that, no matter the intention, every venture into social media trends toward disaster.

The reason is because social media is a system that rewards those who gain and hold public attention. Prizes range to likes and views, to money, to appearances on Fox News. Reasonable people doing reasonable things is boring. Which leaves ... outrage. One can be outrageously funny, outrageously sweet, outrageously talented, outrageously brilliant, or outrageously vile. To be funny, sweet, talented, or brilliant one must work at it. But anyone can insult others based on race, gender, sexuality, religion, or anything else. “It doesn’t take years of training or research: It just takes a willingness to take joy from causing pain. The more pain, the better.” On many social media platforms this tolerated and it’s profitable. And if it draws outraged replies it increases the payout. And that drags the site down. Sumner wrote this post because Mark Zuckerberg announced that Threads, his competitor to Twitter, will have automated moderation, with settings controlled by the user. That sounds like trolling won’t be banished from the site, just (maybe) banished from your feed. Sumner concludes:

The only thing that can arrest that slide is moderation. That moderation must be done by people who understand the subtleties of meaning, rather than trying to match replies to a set of simplistic rules. But moderation costs money. Good moderation costs a lot of money. And why should Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk want to moderate in the first place? This is the outrage economy. Bring on the outrage.

Burnout is the remnant of a fire

My Sunday movie was Joe Bell. The movie is based on a true story. Joe Bell, played by Mark Wahlberg who was also one of the producers. is the father of Jaden, who is gay. Jaden endures bullying at school. While Joe accepts Jaden, Joe is still concerned with how that might look. He also has a bit of an anger problem. After a bad bullying incident and after it looks like a school official thinks Jaden is much of the problem, Joe decides he needs to walk across America from their home in Idaho and talk about bullying and its harmful effects to anyone who will listen. Scenes of the walk alternate with scenes of life at home before the walk. During the walk Joe talks to high schools and church groups. He has a brief encounter with a redneck in a diner. He visits a gay bar in Salt Lake City. He talks with a sheriff in eastern Colorado whose son is gay. Part of the story is Joe coming to terms with his relationship with Jaden. A non-professional review on IMDB said a film like this that discusses bullying is very much needed. Alas, this film isn’t very good at it. Part of this is because in front of a crowd, such as school assembly, Joe tends to not say very much beyond “bullying is bad.” He is much better talking to one or two people. Big Bird of Sesame Street tweeted that he got is COVID vaccine shot. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas declared that it was “Government propaganda ... for your 5 year old!” Hunter of Daily Kos discussed all that. Cruz isn’t the first to declare Sesame Street is propaganda, though he has a high profile. Sesame Street isn’t the only children’s show targeted as propaganda (I remember the storm around Teletubbies). Big Bird advocated for vaccines back in 1972. And in 1978 Star Wars characters R2-D2 and C-3PO did too. The difference this time is Cruz and other Republicans are declaring vaccines to be bad. They didn’t do that in the 1970s. Have you looked at the propaganda Big Bird and the rest of Sesame Street are teaching kids? Hunter says that includes sharing, compassion, coping with intimidating situations (in ways not including having a fit), and learning letters and numbers.

Sesame Street has taken on subjects like death, like hunger, like homelessness—and it is all slanted, slanted maliciously against Republican lawmakers who have fought like hell to make sure death, hunger, and homelessness are meted out to whatever Americans might deserve such fates. Teach children about going hungry, and they'll grow up to support free school lunch programs. Teach children about homelessness, and they might treat their homeless peers with compassion and respect. ... Republicanism is devoted to pushing falsehoods and fictions out to their base for the sake of stoking whatever fears can be stoked. It is a movement that now rejects election results, rejects medicine, and rejects anything else that comes from “elites” whose expertise contradicts the stories fascist liars would prefer to tell. Big Bird may be taking on Republicanism’s most well-known leaders, but it’s not a fair fight. The bird has them outclassed by a wide margin.

Rebekah Sager of Kos documented the organizations, starting with the Koch group, that are promoting and funding opposition to Critical Race Theory.

These deep pocket groups used Virginia’s non-degreed Karens as the face of CRT (a curriculum that isn’t even taught in their kids’ schools) because these GOP-backed entities knew they could count on their PTA moms who’ve historically been there to fight the good fight against Black and brown people, and this was an issue they could quickly unite them around. ... The GOP has found its dupes again. This time it’s a bunch of racist suburban moms who are fighting a desperate battle against having little Johnny and Karen learn about their violent colonizer history in this nation. Of course, all of this is just smoke and mirrors; once again, the Republican party is using these people and their fear simply to gain power.

In the title for this post Sager says these billionaires who fund this anti-CRT campaign really don’t care about CRT. That may be true because their children won’t be going to these public schools. So, are these billionaires simply using the racism of their base to keep them enraged and engaged and themselves in power? Are these billionaires doing it because they are also racist and glad they can stir up their base to push for racist policies? I think it is both. Stirring up racism to gain and keep power is a supremacist action. Imposing racist policies is also supremacist. I strongly doubt racism isn’t in their thinking. Chitown Kev, in his pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Sudhakar Nuti of STAT.

It’s not like vaunted medical institutions like the one I’m working for don’t know about burnout. They devise all sorts of ways to reverse exhaustion, like free dinner for a week, listening sessions, or a thank-you-for-working-during-the-pandemic Patagonia jacket, imagining my life can be fixed with an opportunity for reflection and another fleece. There’s an underlying assumption in burnout discussions: that it can always be remedied with some notion of self-care. What’s never spoken is that burnout is the remnant of a fire. I’ve never seen a piece of charred wood and thought that some time by itself and some water will restore it to its former state. Burning can cause irreparable damage, and I haven’t heard anyone admit that about becoming burned out.

Joan McCarter of Kos reported the Service Employees International Union, one of North America’s largest – has announced support for expanding the Supreme Court to restore the court’s legitimacy. The reason for their stand is the members of the union “stand in the unique position of being the targets of a long-running, coordinated, and well-funded effort to strip them of their organizing and other rights via federal-court litigation.” Many of its members are also targets of new voter suppression laws. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included the top ten highlights of the recently passed (and soon signed) infrastructure bill. $110B to repair roads and bridges, $65B to get high-speed internet to everyone, funds to upgrade and expand public transportation with cleaner vehicles, $66B for Amtrak, $7.5B for electric vehicle chargers, $55B to upgrade water service and eliminate lead service lines, $65B to upgrade electric infrastructure, $50 for adding resilience to climate change and cyber attacks, $21B to clean up the environment, and $42B to modernize airports, ports, and waterways. Georgia Logothetis, in her pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Paul Krugman of the New York Times on why the nasty guy constantly declared infrastructure week, which never happened.

It wasn’t just incompetence, although that was part of it. The bigger story is that the modern Republican Party is constitutionally incapable — or maybe, given recent behavior, that should be unconstitutionally incapable — of investing in America’s future. And, sad to say, pro-corporate Democrats, whom we really should stop calling “centrists,” have some of the same problems.

The infrastructure bill and the Build Back Better (social infrastructure) bill are no longer linked. A procedural move in the House by what’s being called the Sabotage Squad forced a vote on one while delaying the other. This squad is made up of “centrist” Democrats (the term “squad” was first used to describe a few progressive Dems). This report from before the delinking is by McCarter. There is now fear that the sabotage will continue until there is nothing left of it. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported an NBC News poll that showed in October 2020 84% of Republicans were confident that elections were counted accurately. That was about the same with Democrats. In October 2021 only 41% of Republicans were confident of an accurate tally. That’s a 43 point drop. There was a ten point drop among independents. The change in confidence among Democrats was not reported. Eleveld wrote:

Trump's success in stoking distrust of U.S. elections among his fervent base now poses a domestic terror threat to the country. Earlier this week, a PRRI poll found 30% of Republicans agreed with the idea that "true American patriots might have to resort to violence in order to save our country." The sentiment was particularly high among those who said they believed 2020 was "stolen" from Trump, with 39% of that cohort endorsing potential violence.

David Neiwert of Kos reported that before the election BuzzFeed compiled a list of 13 candidates for various levels of office around the country were present at the Capitol attack. Eight of them won their election. Their wins demonstrate the effectiveness of the conservative campaign of baldface gaslighting – such as claiming the mob were just tourists. The gaslighting campaign will continue. There will be 57 state and local officeholders who attended the attack and will be up for reelection in 2022. Marissa Higgins of Kos reported the Navy has christened a new ship, the USNS Harvey Milk. This is a tanker ship that will refuel aircraft carriers while the big ships are at sea. Yes, this is the Harvey Milk of San Francisco who pushed for LGBT rights, served in the city’s Board of Supervisors, and was murdered in 1978. Prior to that Milk was in the Navy. His career was cut short when his superiors noticed he hung out at a park frequented by gay men. He was given a less than honorable discharge. Higgins wrote:

The decision to name this ship after Milk actually dates back to 2016, when Ray Mabus (who at the time served as Navy secretary) declared that the six new oilers would be named in honor of civil rights advocates. Rep. John Lewis, Lucy Stone, Robert F. Kennedy, Earl Warren, and Sojourner Truth are the others.

Higgins also wrote about an intriguing election results. The seven member City Council of Salt Lake City now has four members who are LGBTQ. Two – Amy Fowler and Chris Wharton – won reelection. Two more – Darin Mano and Alejandro Puy – are new members. Mano is also the first LGBTQ Asian and Puy is the first LGBTQ Latin on the Council. This seems odd because Utah is so conservative. But SLC is a much more progressive place and the state is making progress. Higgins also reported that more than 80 LGBTQ candidates won last week. Once they are sworn in there will be over a thousand queer elected officials in the country. This is huge!

Time to buy postage stamps

The City Council in Saginaw, Mich. voted unanimously to refuse an anti-discrimination ordinance that would protect gay people. One councilman, Dan Fitzpatrick, said he's not comparing gays to Nazis, but gays clamoring for this ordinance are sure acting a lot like the German youth of 1933.



A postage stamp honoring Harvey Milk was unveiled today. Time to stock up. And if you don't know who Milk is, see Sean Penn's movie.

Two big Oscar wins

Two wonderful awards at last night's Oscars, both for the movie Milk. Dustin Lance Black won for Best Original Screenplay and Sean Penn won for Best Actor. Both men gave great acceptance speeches, calling for gay equality.

Once Penn won Best Actor I was sure Milk would not win Best Picture. I was right, it went to Slumdog Millionaire. I haven't seen the winner (yet), though this does not seem to be the repeat of three years ago. That's when many gay people thought that Crash won because too many people couldn't bring themselves to vote for Brokeback Mountain. This year it seems most gay people really do think Slumdog Millionaire deserves the win.

We have loved democracy, even when used against us

In honor of the Oscars, for which Milk was nominated in a few categories, here are a pair of essays about Harvey Milk. The first is by Dustin Lance Black, who wrote the Milk screenplay. He talks about why he wanted to tell Milk's story. That started from a recording of a speech by Milk (featured in the movie). Milk hopes gay kids in Des Moines and San Antonio hear his voice and learns there are options other than suicide and the closet:

. . and then one day that child might open up the paper and it says, “homosexual elected in San Francisco,” and there are two new options. One option is to go to California. . . OR stay in San Antonio and fight.

Black also discusses how it seems that gays, over the last decade or so (under the onslaught from Rove and co.), have become invisible again, waiting for straights to get our rights for us. After the Calif. gay marriage ban, Black, with the help of Cleve Jones (also a character in the movie), wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle:

We have always been willing to serve our country: in our armed forces, even as we were threatened with courts-martial and dishonor; as teachers, even as we were slandered and libeled; as parents and foster parents struggling to support our children; as doctors and nurses caring for patients in a broken health care system; as artists, writers and musicians; as workers in factories and hotels, on farms and in office buildings; we have always served and loved our country.

We have loved our country even as we have been subjected to discrimination, harassment and violence at the hands of our countrymen. We have loved God, even as we were rejected and abandoned by religious leaders, our churches, synagogues and mosques. We have loved democracy, even as we witnessed the ballot box used to deny us our rights.

We have always kept faith with the American people, our neighbors, co-workers, friends and families. But today that faith is tested and we find ourselves at a crossroad in history.

Will we move forward together? Will we affirm that the American dream is alive and real? Will we finally guarantee full equality under the law for all Americans? Or will we surrender to the worst, most divisive appeals to bigotry, ignorance and fear?

Black was delighted to see at one of the post-election rallies that the young people there gave up on their stodgy elders and took matters into their own hands. The youth are saying: We're not going to wait for straights to give us our rights. We're going to stop being invisible and work for our rights ourselves.


The second essay is by Armistead Maupin, who started writing his famous gay-themed Tales of the City about the time Milk was elected. Maupin writes about Milk's last boyfriend, a young man who met Milk only a month before the assassination.

Some things change, some don't

The Affirmations Gay and Lesbian Center in Ferndale had a reception today for Center Partners. I don't know how much one must donate to achieve that status and I'm sure there were many in the room who contribute a lot more than I do. The buffet included hummus, chicken satay, and Thai noodles along with wine, sparkling juice, and usual soft drinks. The program was just a few people who said thanks and this is what your money does.

Since I now try to combine trips when possible I went early enough to take in a movie at the art house in Royal Oak (a couple miles from Ferndale). The movie was Milk, about the political career of Harvey Milk, who became the first openly gay man to win elected office in America when he won a seat on the city board of supervisors of San Francisco in 1977. Sean Penn did a marvelous job as Milk. It was interesting to see how far we've come -- and how much some things have stayed the same. The Right was using the same arguments against us 30 years ago that they are using now. One of the big battles Milk led was against a ballot initiative to ban gays from teaching in public schools. The arguments were about protecting kids from perverts and pedophiles. Sigh. The scene that affected me the most was the sight of 30,000 candles in the march to City Hall the night Milk was assassinated. This movie is worth it.

They vote for us when they know us

To correspond to the opening of the movie Milk, here is a bit of background on Harvey Milk. I didn't know that the legacy of Milk inspired San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom to create the "Winter of Love" in 2004, which led to last May's Calif. Supreme Court ruling for gay marriage and this fall's marriage ban. Milk battled Proposition 6 which would have banned gays from teaching in public schools. He said that voters vote for us when they know us, something that the leaders against the marriage ban didn't learn. Even so, Harvey Milk's legacy lives on.

Though the movie Milk is highly praised, and there is even talk of Oscars, critics have noted that all of the big name actors in this very gay movie are straight. Can't progressive Hollywood find big name gays for these roles? Well, no. All of the A-list actors claim to be straight (though insiders say it isn't so, this article won't spill beans). Reason? Money. There is a perception that moviegoers won't be convinced by a man known to be gay portraying a straight romantic or action lead. Actors aren't willing to risk tens of millions and studios won't risk hundreds of millions per film to verify that isn't true.