These days, just a retired guy who likes to hike.
My own high school debate days are decades in the past. From that perspective, though, the fact that you can easily look up the judges’ biases, and so prepare for them, is a huge advance that we would never have even dreamed of. To me that seems like explicitly addressing biases in a useful way.
I’d be interested in a more serious analysis that went through all 47,000+ paradigms and categorized biases so some non-anecdotal conclusions could be drawn. That would take a lot more time and money than picking out a few instances that the writer knows about.
And yes, if an alternative ends up being liked better by debate coaches, people will go in that direction. It’s entirely possible that debate competition will end up being as fragmented as national politics.
The article here takes a bit stronger stance than “losing debates because of tweets”:
The NSDA has allowed hundreds of judges with explicit left-wing bias to infiltrate the organization. These judges proudly display their ideological leanings in statements—or “paradigms”—on a public database maintained by the NSDA called Tabroom, where they declare that debaters who argue in favor of capitalism, or Israel, or the police, will lose the rounds they’re judging.
The article calls out five judges for being biased. The NSDA site shows 47,168 paradigms. So, while there may be an issue, there doesn’t seem to be much proof here. It could equally well be that the author is cherry-picking instances that fit his ideology.
Clearly someone needs to figure out how to get an old Furby to interact with a new Furby.
(Of course, someone has already done ChatGPT + Furby)
Their web site is down, but their Github account is currently still available, with 3D printing files and software for their microlab.
So many, many choices.
I think my all-time dumbest came when I was about 22, so it doesn’t fit here. In my teens…probably driving drunk at speeds up to 100mph on the mountain roads up above Pasadena with the headlights off at night.
Yep, I get it. Effectively block ads and javascript and it doesn’t much matter what a site wants to do. I skip the few that have actually effective paywalls (as opposed to just putting a div over content on the page - as far as I’m concerned, if it’s downloaded to my computer, I am allowed to read it). Of course, the sites that load up on ads tend to be pretty low-quality content anyhow.
I usually eat breakfast around 5AM, and this holds me until lunch at 11AM.
Pretty sure I’m not in the mainstream.
This is why I use DuckDuckGo instead of Google, and Firefox with a few selected extensions that ensure I almost never see an ad. I would be shocked if Google enabled any long-term ad-free experience.
In addition to making it easier to find authentic perspectives, we’re also improving how we rank results in Search overall, with a greater focus on content with unique expertise and experience. Last year, we launched the helpful content system to show more content made for people, and less content made to attract clicks. In the coming months, we’ll roll out an update to this system that more deeply understands content created from a personal or expert point of view, allowing us to rank more of this useful information on Search.
That seems like just a step in the inevitable AI arms race.
Well, most of my work was programming books, so honestly a 5 year copyright term would have been plenty. But the internet put most of those publishers out of business anyhow.
Outside of my own special case, I don’t have really strong opinions on the term.
As a published author, I’m glad copyright existed. Without it, none of my publishers would have been in business and I would have had to find some other income source. But I think the default should be “public domain” rather than “copyright”, and I’m skeptical of allowing corporations to own the copyright to individuals’ works.
Horrifying. And a splinter of the movement apparently led by men. It’s easy to promote consequences that you’re protected from by your lack of a uterus.
Assuming innovation, it seems like there would still be a need for some way for producers to inform potential consumers. I’d love to see advertising move from “create demand” to “provide information”. Not at all sure how that might come about though.
Meanwhile, I personally get by just fine with blocking as many ads as possible, which is almost all of them, and going out and searching when I need information. But that probably doesn’t scale to busier people.
Why, just today the notably left-wing Supreme Court upheld speech restrictions on speech encouraging immigration.
And then get hired at 10x her Senate salary by one of the corporations she represented.
A few more details in the Oregonian make it even more clear that this is not an anti-drug ordinance. The tipoff is that they’re adding it to an existing public alcohol consumption ordinance, so selective enforcement is clearly the name of the game.
Also it appears that the county sheriff and the DA are not necessarily on board with this approach.
Not too surprising. This is the same city that recently made it illegal to camp between 8AM and 8PM, effectively outlawing being homeless with possessions (and probably violating federal court rulings).
It’s not just about the information though, is it? Web forums can offer a sense of community that his preferred alternative (long-form Medium articles with comments) just can’t match, in my experience.
This sort of nonsense is the best reason to vote for the Democrat presidential & senatorial candidates, no matter how odious they are. Someone is going to nominate and confirm 3 or 4 Supreme Court justices in the next decade, and if we let that be the Republicans, we can look forward to a whole court full of Alitos.
And just like DEI teams, ethics teams will be easy to cut back on if a company runs into economic trouble.