Big Dumb Sex

30 March 2023

An inscription on a wall in San Francisco’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial reading, “No. No, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until ‘justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.’ Washington, D.C., 1963

Just us.

Fair warning: Tonight’s post is all reaction, no research. And the essence of it, yes, is about a former president on the verge of being indicted. But I’m not sure that this is the best option right now. It feels, however, like we’re desperate for any sort of accountability, so we’ll take this win, even if it’s not the high point of honoring the democracy we all thought we learned about in school.

For a lot of people, actions have very few consequences. Privilege and access and money all lead to avoiding almost all repercussions for the people who have it and the choices they make. Even as we travel around this part of Florida, you can almost see the disdain for some rules, and a strict adherence to others. Want to fly a Pride flag? Absolutely not because the H.O.A limits which flags can be flown. Need to double park “just for a second” to run in and grab a few items at Publix? Nobody will mind because they all know me. And the enforcement of which rules apply to which people is constantly compounded by the darkness of  people’s pigment (despite the fact that most of the homeowners around here haven’t met the right amount of sunscreen in decades).

So, I’m not sold on the fact that our former Commander-in-Chief is going to see any real ramifications for what he decided to do years and years ago. And, honestly, I’d much rather him face much more severe punishment for the crimes against our Republic. I don’t want these hush money payments to get swept under the rug, but at the same time, these aren’t the charges I really want to stick. He tried to subvert the peaceful transition of power. If we can’t hold him accountable for that, then all those platitudes we learned in school mean about as much as those yearbook promises we made to “K.I.T. over the summer”. 

We are finding out, more and more, the pledges we always relied on to hold our society together are only as good as the people who are willing to keep them. If those people turn out to be untrustworthy, scurrilous, self-interested, profiteers, then the rest of us are left shaking our heads and wondering how we get our democracy back. I know it’s easy to say voting is important, but it’s become much more than that. The extremists aren’t coming, they’re here. And they are actively taking freedoms away from our most marginalized. It’s time to start getting a lot more vocal about holding people to the promises we were tested on in school. Otherwise, we’ll be spending the next few decades hoping one of these narcissists gets caught with their pants down, because — apparently — that’s the only kind of treachery we’re unwilling to tolerate.

See you tomorrow?

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Author  Stephen Fox

She’s a Politician

28 March 2023

Our daughter, standing at the end of a long aisle of library books, making notes on a piece of paper.

Aisle read these.

It’s late as I start this tonight. And we’ve been traveling all day. So this will be pretty short. But I didn’t want this day to end without extolling the virtues of libraries. Even in a state like Florida.

On our way from one set of grandparents to the other, we wanted to stop at a favorite spot for lunch. On the way, we made a detour at the Volusia County Public Library. And I have to say, it was almost like being in one of those amusement parks this state is so known for. 

We got to help create a space-themed, community pixel art project, go on a scavenger hunt, enter a spaceship-naming contest, grab a handful of books and puzzles in the very inexpensive book sale, get new library cards for the entire family, pick out a free beaded keychain craft kit to make, and get so much help, care, and information from the many, many librarians working there today. All in a state that is taking books out of classrooms. 

The contrast between the people so willingly trying to fill our heads with so much knowledge and information while the elected officials in this state fearfully cower from any information which may be new or uncomfortable to them was really quite stark. It almost makes you want to move down here and force every single one of these closed-minded officials to spend just one hour in a public library their tax dollars help fund. Maybe they’d learn a thing or two.

See you tomorrow?

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Author  Stephen Fox

Nazi Driver

22 March 2023

A laptop covered in stickers supporting trans and gay rights, including ones reading: #LoveIsLove, @TwitterOpen, #IllGoWithYou, and #LGBTQIA.

HAshtag activism.

There’s no way around it tonight; I’m pissed. As we prepare to head to Florida to see family for Spring Break, I read that the governor there is planning to do even more to add to the stress and anxiety of some of the most marginalized people in his state. And it’s part of a growing, troubling trend around the nation.

People much more knowledgeable than I have been tracking the restrictions on people’s bodies which are moving through state houses across the country. Whether it’s limiting access to reproductive medicine or dictating who gets to have what kind of health care, we are quickly moving toward a reality where we don’t get to decide who is a human and who is a subject of the state. 

And, as I told some online friends earlier tonight, I feel helpless. Sure, I donated to causes and bought some t-shirts to wear while we’re in the Sunshine State, but what more can a person like me, who lives in a place which respects and protects an individual’s right to make the choices for themselves they deem appropriate, do to make the changes necessary to let a person live as they want to live? I don’t really know. So, I’m asking here. Because it’s the platform I have. 

But I feel like I need to do more. We all need to do more. When bathroom bans were proposed in Indiana in 2015, CEOs like Salesforce’s Marc Benioff pressured other corporate giants to band together to prevent the laws from staying in place. It happened in Georgia and North Carolina, too. But where are they now? How come our corporate titans haven’t spoken out now? When Disney tried to stand up for its employees, nobody stood with them. Why? What has changed in the years since? Except for everything. 

Like I mentioned briefly in last night’s post, we have fundamentally failed to protect the least of us when we had the opportunity. And the assaults on them are getting more pronounced. I ask, again, what are we to do? I honestly don’t know where to start. Pressure politicians? Sure. Push corporations to speak out? Hell yes. Support candidates who will repeal these backwards laws. Obviously. But without a unified coalition, speaking as one, we are going to be a bunch of tiny little voices shouting at a jet engine. 

Whether you know it or not, someone in your life is scared about what’s happening. It might even be you. I know I’m afraid, and none of these laws put any direct restrictions on my body. Yet. I cannot emphasize this enough: Those of us with privilege need to be using it. Now. Tonight. Do something right this second to make this better. It could be sharing your own rant-y blog post like this. Posting a note about protecting people to your professional network on LinkedIn. Tweeting (gawdforbid) your opposition to laws like this out to your followers, if you still have an audience there. But enough is enough. Our silence is complicity to the current and future marginalization of an already at-risk population. If you care about people — all people — now’s the time to show it. 

See you tomorrow?

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Author  Stephen Fox

H.I.V. Baby

21 March 2023

Hundreds of circular post-vaccine stickers, showing wait times before being able to leave, all stuck onto a display just outside the vaccination center doors in San Francisco’s Moscone Center.

Earlier tonight, I was watching an episode of American Masters about Dr. Anthony Fauci. It was a retrospective of his career, looking back not just at his role in recent years fighting the spread of COVID-19, but his earlier work during the start of the AIDS epidemic as well. It was a lucky coincidence for a couple of reasons. The first, and easy reason to explain is the fact that the title of today’s post was one of the Soundgarden song titles I had no idea how I was going to work into these. But the other reason is because I’ve been thinking about how and why we make the choices we make in the face of pandemics. The only conclusion I’ve come to is that, like a lot of our other choices here in the United States, it comes down to power and influence. 

If we look at the start of both the AIDS and COVID-19 outbreaks, it seems like we didn’t take them seriously until they started entering our personal lives. And if you didn’t have someone close to you who was sick, from either of these, you had the luxury to almost ignore them. Or worse, blame people who were sick. We do this a lot, I feel like, and not just with epidemics. 

Look at what’s happening to our banking system. In the last few weeks, a certain demographic of people in the U.S. basically caused institutions to fail based on nothing more than their emotions. But where was all this manic energy to save people’s money in 2008? Back then, it would have been just as prudent — and probably less expensive — to pay off the home mortgage loans for people who were being steamrolled by banks deemed “too big to fail” which were packaging and repackaging their homes and hopes for generational wealth in insipid schemes to pad the billions they were already making. 

Over and over, we elect and reelect leaders who make decisions for the median demographic of their constituent population. We repeatedly ignore the marginalized in our communities, despite the overwhelming evidence that when we invest in those who are most in need, everyone ends up doing better. Just look at the work of Judy Heumann. But there’s no immediate profit in helping people. No financial gain in investing in teachers and school staff and students. No dividend in weening people off drugs. No cash in rehabilitating criminals. But when we don’t, these underserved students aren’t prepared for the work ahead of them. Those who are addicted pull services and resources away from other city needs. And our incarcerated population is left with few choices outside of shackles, if we ever even let them out. 

Watching the Fauci story was just a reminder of what a missed opportunity these last few years have been. We could have made better choices. Selected more compassionate leaders. Rethought what and who is important. But instead, we’re back where we started. And heading in the wrong direction. If we’re not going to learn our lessons after 2020, then will we ever?

See you tomorrow?

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Author  Stephen Fox

Gun

15 February 2023

Bronze Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd sculpture, called “Non-Violence,” an oversized Colt Python .357 Magnum revolver painted green, white, and red, its muzzle tied in a knot, sits outside the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town, South Africa.

Knot one more.

Tonight’s post is going to stray a bit from our regularly scheduled programming. Well, let’s be honest: It’s going to stray a lot a bit. And be very ranty. And political. And probably enraging. Because right now, I’m all those things. 

This year is a mere 46 days old, and we’ve already suffered 71 mass shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive which defines a mass shooting as “FOUR or more shot and/or killed in a single event [incident], at the same general time and location  not including the shooter.” The latest one to crack the news cycle was a high-profile disturbance on the Michigan State campus. You can look up the details on your own, if you must. What I want to focus on is the response from politicians.

We’re way past the “don’t politicize” stage at this point. If we waited for a set amount of days to allow for grieving and remembrance before we start talking about practical and political solutions, we’d never talk about them. Seventy-one mass shooting in 46 days‽  When would we find the time? So, instead, I’m carving out the time right now. With a nod to Swift, here’s my “Gun Violence Political Response Modest Proposal”.

After past shootings and deaths, lawmakers from around the country, especially those representing the districts where the shooting occurred, predictably issue statements of sadness and sympathy and, occasionally, personal grief. Rarely, they say exactly what so many of us feel

And with inspiration from Michigan State House Majority Whip, Ranjeev Puri, I came up with this idea: Elected politicians have a quota for issuing “thoughts and prayers”. 

From now on, after each election, our legislators have a finite amount of times they get to offer their “thoughts and prayers” for victims of mass shootings. And we’re not playing around with those trying to get around the limit by instead using “deepest sympathies” or sending “heartfelt condolences” or even trying “prayers and thoughts”. If your office issues a sympathetic statement after a mass shooting, you’ve used up one of your allotted Condolence Counts™. Let’s say we start with a dozen for each of them. I mean, goodgawd, that already seems like 11 too many. 

“But Stephen,” you may be protesting, “how are they going to get through the year with only a 12?” I’m glad you asked. If our lawmakers run out, or just need more, they have to earn them. They can get one additional Condolence Count™ awarded any time a gun control law they sponsor gets enacted. They can’t just add their name to a bill, though; it has to get signed into law. That means they have to lobby for it. And bargain with their colleagues. And do all the bullshit horse trading they do every day they’re in session now to pass all those bills their favorite donors or close ALEC allies ask for. They want to send more “thoughts and prayers”? They better get to work!

It’s past time we did something about guns in this country. It’s the leading cause of death for American children, furchrissakes! 

For more than 60 years, motor vehicle crashes were the leading cause of injury-related death among young people. Beginning in 2017, however, firearm-related injuries took their place to become the most common cause of death from injury.

And that’s just deaths for people under 18. But it’s obvious we don’t really care about kids. Not after Parkland. Or Sutherland Springs. Or Umpqua. Or Marysville Pilchuck. Or UCSB.  Santa Monica. Or Virginia Tech. Or Oikos. Or Northern Illinois. Or West Nickel Mines. Or Red Lake. Or Columbine. Or Sandy Hook. And these are just the school shootings I put together in a Tweet from November of 2017 — I don’t have the stomach to add the ones which have happened since.

So, if we don’t care about kids, what about veterans? Do you know how many veterans take their own life every day? A report released in September of last year put that number at 17. And 71% of those did it with a firearm. That’s 4,418 gun deaths in 2020 that may have been avoided if we did something about the easy access to guns. 

I could go on, but my blood pressure can’t take much more of this tonight. I will leave you with one more anecdote, though. Years ago, just before the 2016 election, I was discussing the Second Amendment with a friend of mine who owned guns. In his view, it’s his Constitutional right to bear arms. And he’s right. It is. But I asked him if it’s worth the price. He didn’t really understand the question. So, I asked again, but more pointedly, “How many dead kids are acceptable to you so that you can exercise this right to keep and bear arms?” We haven’t talked much since. But looking at that question today, we know: 10,186. That’s how many kids died of firearm-related injuries in 2020. That’s just one cost of gun ownership. To ask the same question Michigan State students are asking, how many more?


If you’re having thoughts of suicide, please know that there is help. You can call or text the nationwide Suicide & Crisis Lifeline number, 988, or start a chat at 988lifeline.org, anytime. 

If you’re looking to do more about preventing gun violence, I recommend getting involved with one of more of these groups:

The Alliance for Gun Responsibility
Brady
Everytown for Gun Safety Action
Giffords
The Gun Safety Alliance
March for Our Lives
Moms Demand Action 
Sandy Hook Promise

See you tomorrow?

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Author  Stephen Fox

Overfloater

07 February 2023

An old light blue notebook with a large white sticker with black lettering reading “Truth” sits on a desk.

Truth telling.

As I type these words tonight, I’m sitting in front of the TV watching the State of the Union address. That’s one way of essentially saying I’m a bit distracted. So tonight, I’ll just tell you a brief story.

Back in 2002, after my disastrous first attempt at managing a team, I was looking for a new role. Coincidentally, a family friend had decided to run for office. Since I had just spent more than six years producing stories for a state-wide news agency (some of them award winning!), it was a good time to try out the other end of the press release tango. So, I volunteered to do some earned media work for the campaign during the primary. This mainly meant that I was in charge of returning the calls that the Communications Director didn’t want to return. 

Slowly, but surely, though, I saw needs which were going unmet. Need a database of news radio station contacts? I can put one together. Need to create a template for recurring press events? I can put one together. Need to collect all of our standard answers to recurring policy questions? I can put one together. I didn’t know it then, but I was already learning how to be a content strategist.

As the days’ work melded into nights, I realized I was working more than I was sleeping. And I loved it. There’s something about the belief in a candidate that allows you to power past any idea of an eight-hour day. For a long time, I was pretty sure that was what was motivating me the entire time. But now, as I’ve gotten farther in what I can now call a career, I get to look back at the jobs I’ve held and the ones I’ve loved to see how and why they are different. And with more than two decades of perspective, I think the theme running through the ones I loved is what we’re now calling content strategy. 

Finding the right thing to say, to the right people and at the right time, has been the only common thread in each of the jobs that I look back on fondly. And, even at Twitter, where during my initial interview I was asked to define content strategy for the hiring manager, being able to explain when, why, and how to inform people has always been a part of what I love about this work. I’ll tell you the same thing I told him: 

“Content strategy is, essentially, big-picture thinking about every little detail.”

And I can’t wait to do it all over again.

See you tomorrow?

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My Wave

06 January 2023

A sign inside the San Francisco’s Moscone Center reading, “Injection of Hope. Thank you for doing your part to fight COVID 19”.

The audacity of hope.

Hope is an unbelievably powerful thing. And even though I type those words just moments before Speaker-elect McCarthy addresses the 118th Congress, it was not a foregone conclusion for most of the night. No, last night’s far-fetched idea didn’t come to fruition, but the fact that tonight’s conclusion was in doubt for hours and hours meant that anything was still possible. And those unknowns should give us hope, even though often, it gives me anxiety.

I try hard to control as much as I can. If you look at the last few entries here, you’ll see that theme come up over and over. Whether it’s preparing for terrible weather or making career plans, I try my best to avoid pitfalls and do the best I can with what we know. But if COVID-19 has shown me anything, it’s that you can’t prepare for what you had no idea was possible.

So, tonight as I watch the unpredictable crash up against the predictable, on the anniversary of an unexpected coup attempt, I am here to tell you that you never know what any new day can bring. That each is full of opportunity to be and do better. And even as I type that idea, I know I am trying hard to suppress the fear that those unknowns are just as probable to bring peril as they are to bring peace. 

As this first week of the year draws to a close, I hope each unknown brings you more peace than peril. And some rest. 

See you tomorrow?

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Circle of Power

05 January 2023

A white patch with red stitching reading, “Vote for Pedro”.

Vote early and often.

First a caveat: I think I understand the rules for voting on the Speaker of the House. The following fever-dream scenario only works if I have an accurate understanding of them. If you know better, please enlighten me. And with that, let’s go.

Last night, I had one of those “ideas that come to you in the middle of the night and keep you from falling back asleep” moments that I just couldn’t get out of my head for the rest of the day while watching the vote for Speaker on C-SPAN. I noticed that most of the members in the House, whether negotiating or voting or just generally creeping people out, are doing so without masks on. After everyone has gathered for the holidays. And traveled from their home states. And been confined in the same chamber for hours on end, day after day. Taking into account the latest COVID-19 infection rates in DC, it’s safe to assume that of the 434 currently voting members, 52 will probably test positive in the next day or two. 

Now, let’s get another few caveats out of the way: The first is that all the members are testing regularly. I honestly don’t think we can assume that, but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, shall we? Second, let’s also assume that if a member or Representative-elect does test positive, they’ll do the right thing and stay away from the House chamber. Again, I hope that we can trust them on this, but it’s hard to take some of them at their word. Lastly, let’s make a conservative estimate about infection rates, cutting it in half to 6%. That means that of the 434 voting members, 26 will have positive tests.

With all this in mind, we’ll keep going. My understanding of the House rules is that a Speaker needs a majority of the votes cast. So, as the House stands today with 434 votes, the nominee needs 50% plus one [(434 ÷ 2) + 1 = 218] votes to win. Which also explains why, despite continually getting a plurality of the votes (212 to 202, for most of the 11 rounds of voting), Hakeem Jeffries also falls short of the threshold for the majority of votes. 

Here’s where the fever dream starts to really kick in. Going back to the COVID positivity rates, and assuming it hits both Democrats and Republicans in equal measures, that means 13 people from each party would have positive tests and would be unable to vote. In this scenario, that would leave 199 Democrats and 209 Republicans to vote for Speaker, making the total number of votes 408, lowering the majority needed to 205. And, extending the positivity rate to the 20 holdouts, that means at least 1, but probably 2 of the never-McCarthy voters would be unable to continue casting their protest votes. That scenario would play out in vote totals something like this:

Hakeem Jeffries 199
Kevin McCarthy 191
Other nominees 18

As you can see, this means there’s still no majority for Speaker. But I don’t think that’s the end of the story. It means that the Democrats are only a handful of votes from winning the Speaker’s vote. And if we make another leap and assume “Those least likely to worry about getting covid (Republicans) have been those most likely to get covid,” then we might also speculate that positivity rates for the House might hit Republicans in a slightly higher percentage than Democrats. And if it‘s only by 1 or 2% more, that could be all it takes for my fever dream to become a reality.   

Now, I want to be clear here: I don’t think that this is going to happen. But I watched a lot of the West Wing marathon on HLN over the holidays, and I have a feeling that some Sorkin may have gotten into me. But these numbers are very possible. And also, very unlikely. Nevertheless, I’ll keep watching each and every vote, running the numbers to see if everyone is still voting (did you notice the last few votes were cast by only 432 members?), wondering how many members are going to keep showing up, repeating the same process over and over until a majority prevails.

See you tomorrow?

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A Thousand Days Before 

08 December 2022

A collection of Bill McBride for Florida Governor 2002 stickers and paraphernalia.

Ride with McBride.

This is probably going to be a short post tonight, mainly because I’m in anticipation mode. The World Cup quarterfinals quick off in the morning, and the waiting around has me reminiscing about a past life where I worked so hard, of so long, to then just wait for the results: the 2002 Florida gubernatorial election.

I joined the McBride campaign in August of that year, a couple of months before the primary. The favorite was former U.S. Attorney General, Janet Reno. She had a professional staff. She had money. And, obviously, name recognition. We were doomed. But we worked every angle we had, relying on our candidate’s local charms, to win votes one by one. And in those two months, we cobbled together enough support to come out ahead. After a recount, of course.

But for all that work — spending every waking second talking to reporters, setting up rallies, rearranging travel plans at the last second — on Election Day, there was basically nothing to do but wait. And wait. And wait. Thankfully, I had taken on the task of setting up our election night party, so there were details to finalize and speeches to revise. But mostly, we waited. And watched the election totals trickle in. And wait. 

I’m anxiously excited for the next matches to kick off. But at the same time, I don’t want this tournament to end. The unpredictability has been remarkable. And the joy in the underdogs’ faces with each positive result is powering me through the oddity of having to watch this problematic Cup in the winter. So, I wait. And hope it never ends.

See you tomorrow?

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The Day I Tried to Live

06 December 2022

A sticker made from of a shaking drawing attempt to create the Twitter logo.

Today felt very fragmented. It reminded me of reading Tweets for hours at a time, constantly context shifting. It’s been a while since I felt like this. And I’m not a fan. Let’s start with the number of items on my mind. There are a lot. And when I get like this, I need an outlet. But first, a story: 

During my senior year in college, my best friend and I won a trip to Mexico. One of the many memorable things that we came back with was the concept of worry dolls. As I remember the explanation, when you have something you’re worried about, you whisper it to one of these small, woven figures, place it in its box under a pillow, and then get a good night’s sleep. Ideally, in the morning, the doll did the worrying for you while you got some sound sleep. 

If you’ll allow, I’m going to spend a few minutes using these paragraphs as today’s worry dolls, in the hopes that leaving them here will help with my discomfort. 

In an homage to a recurring theme here, let’s start with Twitter. The news there keeps getting worse. And more surreal. All while I have this nagging burden to help as many people as possible find new roles, especially people in The States on visas

Let’s move on to my current role. We had what’s been termed as a “lift and shift” reorganization, meaning they took my entire org, from Director all the way down, and placed it under a different leadership team. It’s left me feeling unsettled, both literally and figuratively, while I wait for a better understanding of new goals and priorities while staring at an unfinished 2022 to-do list. 

Now, to politics. As I type these words, results in the Georgia senatorial run-off election are looking good for Senator Warnock’s re-election. But even as I breathe a sigh of relief, I see a gathering storm on the horizon in the form of the 2024 election. It’s like we’re always holding our breath, on constant alert. And I just want to come up for air.

Then, there are the self-imposed expectations that the holidays bring. I know this is an area where I can do a lot of work in relief on my own, but I keep putting pressure on myself to overdeliver, probably overcompensating for my perceived shortcomings as a father and husband by over-purchasing gifts. Nothing is sufficient, and everything falls short. Not to mention the cost of absolutely everything is way higher than we budgeted. 

And that brings us to the bigger, uncontrollable items, which I’ll just list because I can’t even fathom where to start finding solutions for them (which is probably why they vex me in my sleep). There’s the probably-pending doom from climate change. And the dire economic outlook for the upcoming one, maybe two, years. Oh, and the fact that hundreds are still dying every day from a pandemic which is much worse than people care to admit. And the fact that those health outcomes are, in part, due to the racial disparities so rampant in our healthcare system (more aptly characterized as our insurance empire). 

Unfortunately, I think I could keep listing items for another hour, or so, but I do want to let these worry ’graphs get to work so that I can get some sleep. I hope my worrying out loud doesn’t add to your own list, but if it did, please find some worry dolls of your own, and take care of yourself tonight. 

See you tomorrow?

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No Wrong, No Right

29 November 2022

Twitter error page reading, “Something is technically wrong.”

Writing wrongs.

Fair warning: I have no idea how long this post is going to be tonight. I have a very ranty idea in my head, and a self-imposed deadline to get this out before midnight, so depending on how quickly the thoughts come, and how much or how little editing I do on these paragraphs, the length and conclusion of this post is, at this point, totally unknown. And, coincidentally, that unpredictability pairs very well with what I want to think out loud about this evening. Strap in, and let’s go for a ride.

See, as you probably know, I’ve been watching the World Cup. I always watch, even in this problematic year. I can’t help it. It is my favorite sporting event. By far. It’s why I have traveled to six of them. The reason I bring it up is because I want to tie it to another one of my passions: politics. And this year, more than most, recent results have shown that we put too much faith in “experts” when really they’re just pundits. And I’ve been wondering why.

Let’s start with The Beautiful Game. This tournament, more than most, has been rife with upsets. And not just little surprises. These are big, foundation-shaking stunners. I mentioned in a previous post about Argentina’s loss to Saudi Arabia. That’s still probably the most monumental one. Since then, however, we’ve seen favorites like Germany, Belgium, and South Korea fall to “underdogs.” I mean Japan surprised Germany, and then gets a proper shock themselves from Costa Rica. This tournament has been bananas.

Next, let’s look at the recent mid-term elections. There are a number of reasons why we’re still trying to figure out how, and who, got so many predictions wrong, but one of the underreported aspects of all the horse-race election coverage is accountability. See, when talking heads tell you what they think is going to happen, and then the exact opposite thing occurs, do we hear from them less? No. And why not? Because they’re not measured by how many predictions they get right. They’re rewarded for how many eyeballs watched them make the call in the first place. We’ve incentivized the attention instead of the accuracy. And that can be said for a lot of the news industry these days. 

But if we go deeper and ask why these predictions are so wrong so often, we uncover another flaw in the way our news is presented to us: familiarity. The same people go to the same parties and hear the same stories from the same faces. These get repeated over and over enough to become conventional wisdom. And then we get spoonful after spoonful of it fed to us each election cycle, again and again. 

To combat this, though, some outlets partake in mid-western diner tourism, thinking if they find enough anecdotal, contrarian opinions, they’ve presented “both sides” of an argument. What we really need, though, are facts. And we’re just not that good at finding and presenting those in a way where people will actually pay attention. Instead, we get “roundtables.” And “expert opinions.” And polling (for a great look at polls, take a listen to this episode of “Planet Money”). But all of this is just the same handfuls of people talking about what’s familiar to them, with those also familiar to them, rather than really getting out and discovering what they actually know and what they don’t. Then, we wake up the day after election day to “surprises” and “upsets” and “stunners.” While all these uncertain outcomes make these great spectacles, we need to ask ourselves — whether they’re World Cup Matches or election results — why we’re aghast at these outcomes.  

If we consider these legitimate upsets, we first have to put faith in the systems we rely on for our conventional wisdom in the first place. And, as we’ve seen over and over vividly illustrated in these last few years, our existing systems have — to put it mildly — some blindspots. 

Now, I want to be careful here and not go down the “do your own research” rabbit hole. That’s definitely not what I’m saying. What I’m trying to point out is that there is a place for experts, and there is a place for opinions. But we need to do a better job at separating, scrutinizing, and evaluating them. Let’s go back to The Cup for a moment. When these pre-game talking heads tell you that a team is ranked #1 in the world, do you know what that’s based on? I sure didn’t. And I watch this stuff like my life depends on it. So, what goes into a FIFA World ranking? Well, I “did my own research” and here’s a part of the explanation, according to FIFA themselves: 

The points which are added or subtracted are partially determined by the relative strength of the two opponents, including the logical expectation that teams higher in the ranking should fare better against teams lower in the ranking.

The “logical expectation”‽ Whose, the kleptocrats in FIFA; give me a break! As detailed in FIFA’s own documentation, one portion of the points formula is the “expected result of the match” and that expectation is based on the “difference in ratings of the two playing teams”. Let’s break that down for a second: The formula for the ranking includes a variable for the expected winner which is based on … wait for it … the rankings of the two teams playing against each other. That’s like asking the inventor of the pencil what the best writing implement is. It’s turtles all the way down.

To digress a bit, (I know, this entire post feels like a series of digressions, but please hang with me for a bit more) one of the ways people talk about Twitter is to position it as a global town square. I’ve always had trouble with that for a number of reasons, but let’s assume for a moment that it is. Or was (we don’t have time for a digression within a digression). In this global town square, you’re not going to listen to everyone talking all at once. Even if you wanted to, you can’t. So you pick and choose the conversations you want to be part of. You self-select. You start your own. And then, all of a sudden, you’ve gone from being able to be part of any and every conversation on the globe to a select few where you either feel comfortable or confident. Which probably just reaffirms what you already believe. Think about it, how many times was your mind changed based on something you saw in a Tweet? I bet it’s very few. But you definitely Liked and Retweeted the opinions you agreed with, right? Or added an endorsement to those who put your thoughts more eloquently than you ever could. I know I’ve done that. Many times. So maybe because I did it, I assume you did it, too? See, confirmation bias!

We create these bubbles for ourselves, convinced that we know best. But the confirmation bias is moving us to a place where we are placing so much faith in names that we know that we fail to recognize when we actually have no idea about something. Mainly because we want so desperately to believe it ourselves. But that conviction doesn’t make it true, does it? I don’t really have any great solution for this. I wish I did. I guess I just offer some advice: Be as curious as you are skeptical. Including about all you’ve just read here. Almost everything I think I know I learned from a source I trusted. But I’m old enough to understand that what I learned a few years ago may be outdated. Or too myopic. Or just plain misremembered. Experts have their place. As do lived experiences. And if you put enough of those together, you get just enough information to be comfortable. But I’ve never learned anything new from my comfort zone. Here’s to getting a little more uncomfortable.

See you tomorrow?

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Author  Stephen Fox

Searching with My Good Eye Closed

08 November 2022

Stuck on elections.

Tonight, as I sit watching election results roll in, I am feeling an unfamiliar feeling: hope. I don’t think everything is going to change for the better, and I know that we still have a lot of problems in this country, but I see that there is a way for everyday Americans to use their voices to keep this republic. 

And that brings me back to Twitter. I used to get almost all my breaking news from Twitter. But in recent days, I’ve been trying to find new ways to get the same instant updates for both stories I wanted to follow, but also push notifications about events that were happening all over the world. This week, though, it’s pretty obvious that even if I wanted to use The Bird App like I used to, it’s no longer up for the task.

In past elections, I would typically get push notifications from news apps and Twitter within moments (pun intended) of each other. Tonight, I didn’t get any from Twitter. And that made me so, so sad. The reasons for this are obvious, and it reinforces the mourning I’ve been going through for the loss of the service I’ve come to rely so heavily on for my day-to-day news consumption. 

Rethinking how I get my news — and whether or not there’s really a need to find out about events the minute they happen rather than a few hours later — will be a journey that I’m reluctantly going to have to start. Maybe I’ve already taken some tentative steps tonight; I ended up watching TV!

My news consumption hierarchy tended to be Twitter, podcasts, news apps, public radio, and occasionally TV. Without Twitter in that top spot, I’m worried that I’ll be less informed. But even as I type that, I can rationalize that as most likely untrue. I won’t be less informed, I just won’t be as quickly informed. But first hasn’t always been factual. Maybe I actually need some distance between the instance a breaking alert hits my phone and the time it takes for trained journalists to create stories which will put that alert into proper context before I form an opinion about it.

Could the loss of Twitter actually make me better informed? Maybe. I’m reminded of a post I wrote years ago about how the Boston Marathon bombings played out in Tweets. Context that day would have been greatly appreciated. That probably holds true every day. 

I’m starting to like these posts as forcing functions to question some of the assumptions I had before I started putting them into words. Thanks for, once again, letting me think out loud.

See you tomorrow?

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Author  Stephen Fox