Blocked and Reported

After discussing whether Blocked and Reported led directly to the siege on the Capitol, the hosts discuss that strange, terrifying event. They debate whether it can be safely examined in something of a vaccuum, or should be put in the broader context of what appears to be a rise in political violence in the U.S. They also discuss some of the most unhinged responses. Then they talk about Bean Dad. Remember Bean Dad? We yearn for a world in which Bean Dad is the day's most important story on Twitter.Show notes/Links:Arthur Chu is normal: https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1347381484584316929 Clymer backstory (refers to her as male because pre-transition): https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/14/living-by-the-sword/ Hawley book no more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/books/simon-schuster-josh-hawley-b BEAN DAD basic rundown: https://heavy.com/news/john-roderick-bean-dad/ Lit-uh-rull abuse: https://twitter.com/a_queer_ius/status/1345665171390394368 https://twitter.com/timaree_leigh/status/1345623027074142210 Bean Dad's problematic tweets:https://twitter.com/Laura_Nowlin/status/1345831569806733314/photo/1https://twitter.com/flore_rhea/status/1345846499121324032https://twitter.com/CatKnitty/status/1345840464595800064His apology: http://www.johnroderick.com/an-apology This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.blockedandreported.org/subscribe

After reflecting on what a great year 2020 was, except for the many serious hardships Katie endured, the hosts start 2021 with a bang: specifically, a bang that sounds a lot like a racial slur neither of them can say. A white teenager in Virginia didn't get the memo, though -- what should the punishment be, if any? Then Jesse and Katie turn their attention to a story that is rather 'picante': Hilaria Baldwin's attempt at identity-forgery. What an estupido time to be alive!Show notes/Links:The New York Times: A Racial Slur, a Viral Video, and a Reckoning: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/26/us/mimi-groves-jimmy-galligan-racial-slurs.html Reason: The New York Times Helped a Vindictive Teen Destroy a Classmate Who Uttered a Racial Slur When She Was 15 - https://reason.com/2020/12/28/new-york-times-racial-slur-teen-jimmy-galligan-mimi-groves/ The New York Times: The Hilaria Baldwin Story: ‘I’m Living My Life’ - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/30/style/hilaria-baldwin-interview.html Aura Bogado's tweetstorm: https://twitter.com/aurabogado/status/1342554505880064000  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.blockedandreported.org/subscribe

In a very special holiday episode, Jesse relates the story of Hanukkah to Katie, his ignorant Gentile friend, with stunning 100% accuracy. Then Jesse makes a fun announcement and an angry announcement. Then the hosts throw to a lengthy interview they did with Aella (@aella_girl on Twitter), a sex worker, OnlyFans one-percenter, and occasional rationalist provocateur who has lived a very interesting life. They talk about drugs and sex and life and online controversy. Plus, Julie Bindel pops in to raise issues with certain contemporary understandings of sex work.Show notes/Links:Aella on Twitter: @aella_girl Playboy: When Camming Is The Family Business: https://www.playboy.com/read/when-camming-is-the-family-business-1 Grace Lavery's 'response' to Jesse: https://twitter.com/graceelavery/status/1340001379998416903 She admits part of it was wrong but won't retract and then nukes the account she admitted that with: https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1340355044433137667 Oh and Grace threatens to sue Jesse: https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1340073029544636424 James Palmer does not like Jesse but his magazine looks set to do the right thing regardless: https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1342167962803965953  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.blockedandreported.org/subscribe

In a true sign that anything is possible in this crazy universe of ours, the hosts note that there were some errors in the previous episode and explain exactly what they were (to see them explained in written form, check out that episode's show notes). Then they discuss some mental-health-talk from Jesse that rubbed one reader the wrong way and continue on to the show's main event: a major court decision on youth gender dysphoria in England and an incredibly shoddy article in Foreign Policy about it.(Corrections 10:10 pm 12/18/2020: In the course of correcting last week's episode, we managed to introduce not one but two new errors, and just uploaded a new version in which Jesse breaks in twice to explain them. First, Timnit Gebru's PhD is not in computer science, but rather in electrical engineering. This was just plain sloppiness on someone's part, possibly Jéssé's. Second, Gebru started at Google in 2018, not 2019. In this case, our excuse is that both The New York Times and Columbia Journalism Review wrote that she was hired "last year." This is false, and thank you to the Google employee who reached out to correct us and pointed us to a 2018 tweet in which Gebru talks about her early days at Google. Wired has this right.)Show notes/Links:Bell v Tavistock, the ruling at issue: https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Bell-v-Tavistock-Judgment.pdf A High Court Decision in Britain Puts Trans People Everywhere at Risk: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/15/uk-transphobia-transgender-court-ruling-puberty-blockers/ Jesse's newsletter posts on key aspects of this controversy:A Response To Foreign Policy's Deeply Misleading Article, "A High Court Decision in Britain Puts Trans People Everywhere at Risk": https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/a-response-to-foreign-policys-deeply No, desistance hasn't been debunked, and no, there's no evidence it's all that rare:Part: 1 https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/how-science-vs-made-two-gender-dysphoria Part 2: https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/how-science-vs-accidentally-invented  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.blockedandreported.org/subscribe

For thousands of years, a small cabal of middle-aged lesbians known as 'TERFs' has been quietly pulling the strings behind the scenes, dictating the outcomes of major world events. They have one goal, and one goal alone: harming gender-nonconforming people. And unlike other political groups, who express their views with patience, reason, nuance, and logic, and who never harass anyone online, TERFs play dirty -- always. In this episode, Katie and Jesse applaud a brave expose in The Atlantic that finally pulls the curtain back on this dastardly coven of unhinged she-devils.The Atlantic: The Secret Internet Of TERFs - https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/12/reddit-ovarit-the-donald/617320/4W: My Whole Conversation With Kaitlyn Tiffany Of The Atlantic - https://4w.pub/my-whole-conversation-with-kaitlyn-tiffany-for-the-atlantic4W: Fired For Feminism - https://4w.pub/fired-for-feminism/4W: Non-Binary Is the New “Not Like Other Girls,” and it’s Deeply Rooted in Misogyny - https://4w.pub/non-binary-is-the-new-not-like-other-girls-and-its-deeply-rooted-in-misogyny/ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.blockedandreported.org/subscribe

A major blowup at at Google led to the firing or resignation (depending on who you ask) of Timnit Gebru and accusations that the company's social-justice efforts are performative at best. But behind the scenes, some Googlers are telling a different, slightly more complicated story. Who's right? Katie and Jesse bring on Jon Stokes, an Ars Technica founder who is much better connected in the tech world than they are, to help explain this tangled controversy. (Correction: In the original version of this episode we posted for our patrons, our guest, Jon Stokes, wrongly described Timnit Gebru's academic background as being in sociology, with her having also done some work in computer science. That should have been flipped: She has a PhD from the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, but has done plenty of work that intersects with sociology. Jon also said she was educated at M.I.T., but all her degrees are from Stanford. Whenever an error makes it into the final show, that is 100% the fault of hosts, and we apologize. We've snipped out the audio containing the errors and added a link to Gebru's Stanford page to the top of the show notes.)  (More corrections, 12/18/2020: In the original versions of this pocast, both free and patrons-only, Jon also said at approximately 20:40 that Gebru had been at Google since 2016, though he hedged this with an "I think.". She had actually only been at Google since 2019 [YIKES -- actually 2018. Listen to the updated episode for a correction of the correction]. At about 56:30 [free version timestamp], he laid out a storyline, which he presented as informed speculation, in which Jeffrey Dean, head of Google AI, had promised Gebru and some of her allies in 2016 that they could do ethical work. Then, in this telling, Google pivoted to AI, and as a result Gebru and her colleagues' work was seen as a liability and came under more scrutiny. But that storyline doesn’t quite work, as Jon presented it, given that Gebru only arrived at Google in 2019, well after Sundar Pichai announced the company would be “AI first” in 2016. We've snipped out the audio containing these errors and will be discussing all of this episode's errors on the free episode of the podcast set to go live 12/21/2020, and earlier for patrons.)Show notes/Links:Timnit Gebru's background: https://ai.stanford.edu/~tgebru/ Jon Stokes: https://twitter.com/jonst0kes His site, The Prepared: http://www.theprepared.com The New York Times: Google Chief Apologizes for A.I. Researcher’s Dismissal - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/technology/timnit-gebru-google-pichai.html The New York Times: Google Researcher Says She Was Fired Over Paper Highlighting Bias in A.I. - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/technology/google-researcher-timnit-gebru.html Wired: Behind the Paper That Led to a Google Researcher’s Firing - https://www.wired.com/story/behind-paper-led-google-researchers-firing/ Platformer: The withering email that got an ethical AI researcher fired at Google - https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-an-ethical MIT Technology Review: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google. Here’s what it says. - https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/04/1013294/google-ai-ethics-research-paper-forced-out-timnit-gebru/ Twitter: Yann LeCun on the data problem - https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1274782757907030016 Twitter: Gebru disagrees - https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1274808654227619840 (Note: As of 10:45 a.m. on Saturday I'm having trouble finding the throaway Reddit posts we mention, but when I do I'll add those as well. Update: Thanks, John, for posting this in the comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/k77sxz/d_timnit_gebru_and_google_megathread/gepq3u8/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.blockedandreported.org/subscribe

One would not expect an online community devoted to discussion of dragons, vampires, and teenage heroes to be a cesspool of almost unimaginable toxicity. And yet! In this episode, Jesse walks Katie through a recent history of young adult fiction Twitter, aka "YA Twitter," and attempts to explain how it got to be such a Hobbesian hellscape. The latest scandal involves Jessica Cluess, a YA author falsely accused of racism and violent speech, and the opportunistic authors, consultants, and agents rushing to denounce her in as colorful and overwrought a manner as possible.Show notes/Links:Please pre-order Jesse's book, "The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can't Cure Our Social Ills," if you can: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780374239800?aff=macmillan Or on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Quick-Fix-Psychology-Cant-Social/dp/0374239800/ Vulture: The Toxic Drama on YA Twitter - https://www.vulture.com/2017/08/the-toxic-drama-of-ya-twitter.html Tablet: How a Twitter Mob Derailed an Immigrant Female Author’s Budding Career - https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-a-twitter-mob-destroyed-a-young-immigrant-female-authors-budding-career Reason: Teen Fiction Twitter Is Eating Its Young - https://reason.com/2019/05/05/teen-fiction-twitter-is-eating-its-young/ Reason: He Was Part of a Twitter Mob That Attacked Young Adult Novelists. Then It Turned on Him. Now His Book Is Canceled. - https://reason.com/2019/02/28/he-was-part-of-a-twitter-mob-that-attack/ Reason: A Review of a Book That Will Never Be Published, Thanks to the Young Adult Twitter Mob - https://reason.com/2019/03/15/a-review-of-a-book-will-never-be-publish/ Twitter stuff:Jessica Cluess' apology: https://twitter.com/JessCluess/status/1333906316247457794 Brooks Sherman denouncing Cluess but not dropping her: https://twitter.com/byobrooks/status/1333967020258373632 Brooks Sherman denouncing Cluess, amplifying a false rumor about her, and dropping her: https://twitter.com/byobrooks/status/1334685571449556994 Some tweetstorms by Jesse running down some highlights of the craziness:https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1334156650467520513 https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1334356668273070081 https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1334642155437101058 YA Twitter's Victims and Critics Speak Up (four-part series on Singal-Minded):https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/ya-twitters-victims-and-critics-speak https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/ya-twitters-victims-and-critics-speak-855 https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/ya-twitters-victims-and-critics-speak-4b5 https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/ya-twitters-victims-and-critics-speak-c56 Advertisers:dental products! - https://www.getquip.com/barpod bidets! - https://hellotushy.com/barpod  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.blockedandreported.org/subscribe

After a very tense intro during which Jesse berates Katie for not being there when he needed her most, the hosts discuss a Vice News story about staffers at Penguin Random House Canada so overwhelmed by the existence of Jordan Peterson's new book that they broke down crying, and Guardian staffers so overwhelmed by the existence of a debate over certain claims about sex and gender that they drove columnist Suzanne Moore out. Show notes/Links:Vice World News: Penguin Random House Staff Confront Publisher About New Jordan Peterson Book - https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5bv3x/penguin-random-house-staff-confront-publisher-about-new-jordan-peterson-book UnHerd: Why I had to leave The Guardian - https://unherd.com/2020/11/why-i-had-to-leave-the-guardian/The Guardian: Women must have the right to organise. We will not be silenced - https://www.theguardian.com/society/commentisfree/2020/mar/02/women-must-have-the-right-to-organise-we-will-not-be-silencedSuzanne Moore's Substack: https://suzannemoore.substack.com/p/pull-up-a-chairThe Guardian: The Guardian view on the Gender Recognition Act: where rights collide - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/17/the-guardian-view-on-the-gender-recognition-act-where-rights-collide  The Guardian U.S.: Why we take issue with the Guardian’s stance on trans rights in the UK - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/02/guardian-editorial-response-transgender-rights-uk Advertisers:Bidets! http://hellotushy.com/barpod Dental stuff! https://www.getquip.com/barpod HR services for your small business! https://www.bambee.com/blockedandreported  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.blockedandreported.org/subscribe

After the hosts celebrate a major achievement and Jesse goes on a little rant that is Super Political, Katie and Jesse delve into three stories of profound internet nonsense involving privileged white people doing antiracism, a Toronto editor VERY mad about a new broth-joint, and some of Twitter's most neurotic people getting super mad about Barack Obama's college conduct.Show notes/Links:The New York Times: G.O.P.-Led Senate Panel Details Ties Between 2016 Trump Campaign and Russia - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/us/politics/senate-intelligence-russian-interference-report.html The Phinney Neighborhood Association: Anti-racism work updates: Eliminating racist symbolism - https://www.phinneycenter.org/eliminating-racist-symbolism/ blogTO: New Toronto clothing store ditches broth bar after cultural appropriation complaints - https://www.blogto.com/eat_drink/2020/11/toronto-clothing-store-ditches-broth-bar-cultural-appropriation-complaints/ (Update: It's down. Try this cached link: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:p0Tmb1vnPZoJ:https://www.blogto.com/eat_drink/2020/11/toronto-clothing-store-ditches-broth-bar-cultural-appropriation-complaints/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us.)Twitter: "The way Obama writes about women here ... uh. Wow." - https://twitter.com/IBJIYONGI/status/1328900134575480835 Advertising links:http://getquip.com/BARPOD for $15 off dental-product refills with a purchase from the Quip online storehttp://bambee.com/blockedandreported for a free HR-audit for your small business This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.blockedandreported.org/subscribe

After Katie talks about her new dog-testicles-centered newsletter, the hosts discuss the latest events in the ongoing saga of Helen Lewis's voice getting erased by Ubisoft. Now that Rock Paper Shotgun has sacked a 13-year freelancer for the crime of being sympathetic to Lewis in the site's comments section, it's fair to ask: Does it make sense to fire people for expressing majority opinions? (No. No it doesn't.) Then Katie and Jesse discuss an article in New York Magazine about the internal tumult at The New York Times that, like everything else which happens in this crazy world of ours, simply proves the hosts were right all along. Plus: Jesse is triggered by a leaked screenshot from the Times' #diversity slack channel in which he is denounced for wrongthink.Moose Nuggets: https://moosenuggets.substack.com/ Rock Paper Shotgun: Watch Dogs Legion is booting a journalist off its fictional radio - https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/11/06/watch-dogs-legion-is-booting-a-journalist-off-its-fictional-radioTim Stone disagrees in the comments: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/11/06/watch-dogs-legion-is-booting-a-journalist-off-its-fictional-radio/#comment-3120763RPS announces his sacking: https://twitter.com/rockpapershot/status/1326211540689821698New York Magazine: Inside the New York Times' Heated Reckoning With Itself - https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/11/inside-the-new-york-times-heated-reckoning-with-itself.html  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.blockedandreported.org/subscribe