TheLeviathan
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Everything posted by TheLeviathan
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Good thing no one said that. Baseball is concerned about their demographics and about the sport getting a rep for being slow and dull. And they should be. Those aren't things you wear like a badge of honor if you want to stay relevant. -
I didn't say the number of people playing currently, I said the people watching on TV. That article is rich with a lot of information, none of it particularly encouraging for baseball's long term health. And you can bet MLB knows it too. So you're welcome to your nostalgia, but my love for the game tends to make me favor it's success over nostalgia. Heavy-handed nostalgia could suffocate the game to death and we might eventually be nostalgic for the days when baseball was relevant.
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You may not take interest in it, but baseball is. And I believe rightly so. RB listed a number of concerning demographic trends that baseball is also likely taking stock of. This is not a problem you address after the situation has become a red alert. It's wise to try and get well ahead of the issue, because if the symptoms manifest as a full blown disease, it'll be hard to ever recover. The symptoms are different, but boxing would be a cautionary tale.
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There's a thread with poll numbers on it. There are actually a number of alarming trends in baseball. Like, for example, the vast majority of people that watch baseball today will likely be dead by the year 2040. And virtually all of them are white. You should check out the thread and look into things a bit, it might explain why baseball is taking the matter so seriously. I think showing an effort to fix this is a good thing. Too often, baseball players seem to give no care at all to how much they are dragging things out. spycake's post seems to indicate they have more than doubled their lollygagging between pitches in just 30 years. We should be looking to reverse that for the health of the sport.
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Baseball is going to romanticize itself into oblivion. Some of these changes are of the same kind of necessity as switching from radio broadcasts to cable TV. At some point, the status of society, fan interest, and technology necessitates willingness to change.
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I'm glad it only took two pages for some acknowledgement that...gee, interactions aren't "simple". That inevitably grey areas will arise that threaten the momentum of the movement if handled poorly. If only someone had been trying to point that out.....Alas. In any case...of course nuance doesn't change the point....but it might change our tactics a bit. That's the thing you and others appear to continue to miss. There is some need for defintions and what-not, but largely people agree on the "what". It's the "how" that matters. "How" is what changes zeal into results and we need results from this movement. And that is where it is vital to be clear and nuanced before you get people abandoning the movement before it accomplishes anything other than a few tarnished careers. I'm not sure what happened to Aziz Ansari Sunday night in many circles is the best way to have this conversation. He shouldn't be plastered all over every news site as having been accused of sexual assault. His actions are a reflection of a paradigm in need of changing, but (quite frankly) so are her actions. (Or lack thereof) We need to change the idea that men need to push and women are playing hard to get. We need women to be able to speak up and speak out and for men to hear that and respect it. But all parts of that are vital. That conversation is a tough, sensitive one that will buck long established cultural norms. Humiliating a couple men over it as a tactic to achieve that doesn't help. And the fissures that will be created (enflamed is probably a better description) in the wake of moments like this will be far more likely to kill this movement than anything else.
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The chatter online about this is really going strong. I think this was a provocative take. A similar one from Vox.
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Absolutely, we need to change the idea that you "keep pushing" as Ansari did. That's been pretty engrained for awhile in our interactions. Men need to be less pushy and put the brakes on more often. Men and women do what Aziz did, but the difference is men are more comfortable stopping unwanted advances by women of this sort, but not the reverse. I think it's also deeply, deeply unfair for this to be characterized as an "assault" as it is being done in all the headlines. Aziz is guilty of being boorish or a pig, but he did not assault this person. I think it's important for the survival of the MeToo movement to draw a sharp distinction here or it may be a death nail.
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Atlantic article on Aziz Ansari.
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The bullpen is often a numbers game, it's nice to be on the right side of that, but you're right that there is going to be quite a crunch for roster spots. I don't see how Rogers and Hildy are left off unless they implode this spring, but I guess we'll see what happens.
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This team can afford 150M if they are actually serious.
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Good move, good terms.
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T-Wolves Regular Season Thread
TheLeviathan replied to Pardon My Dinger's topic in Minnesota Timberwolves Talk
I can't imagine the price on Lou Williams at this point. But he'd sure be a nice fit. -
T-Wolves Regular Season Thread
TheLeviathan replied to Pardon My Dinger's topic in Minnesota Timberwolves Talk
Sounds like they're primed to dash all hopes with a loss to the Knicks tonight! Seriously though....who are we targeting to help this bench? Ilyasova makes perfect sense right? If not, who else do you go after? -
It is so tone deaf to the reality of how people deal with one another it will be brushed off as a farce or a fad. It will be so onerous, so unwilling to compromise, and so reluctant to include context that it will be viewed as an irrational overreach. And, I'd suggest, we're already well down that road unfortunately. And a genuine opportunity will have fallen to the way side in favor of righteous indignation. In the mean time, a real issue, with real need of change, will blow in the wind. Or worse....if you decide to socially eviscerate every poor soul who makes an unwitting mistake...you'll engender more than just indifference. You'll strengthen the resolve of your opponents and you'll give them legitimacy to stand on. Our political system is at a constant impasse, incapable of achieving real successes, in part because of our inability to include nuance in our discussions. Nuance allows for debate and discussion. It acknowledges that we agree on something (the overall goal) but we're working together towards a good solution. Instead, so many have taken up the mantle of some kind of "purity" on every damn issue. You're either all in, in a certain way, or you're a dirty, miserable (fill in whatever derogatory right/left term you like). Meanwhile, while those who attack anyone who doesn't pass their purity test....nothing gets done. Perhaps if nuance was more welcome, so too would discussion and compromise. But I'm not holding my breath.
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I don't disagree with you, I'm not advocating official actions aren't taken. We need official actions by businesses and the justice system. But there is also a larger call for more unofficial actions and it's to that call that I was responding. We should be careful to take a nuanced approach to that. Not every inappropriate interaction rises to the levels we're talking about and it's important to remember how complex our interactions can be. There are layers of emotions, thoughts, intent, and other things at work. I liken it a lot to the wave of "anti-bullying" that happened 5-6 years back. It's a more than worthy cause that absolutely needed attention, but in our zeal to combat that problem we start crying "bully" at everything. It's taken years of work to try and stem that tide in school systems. Did good things come out of it? Absolutely. Did a ton of confusion and hysteria lead to a really problematic situation in schools? hell yes. And it lingers today. It took schools fighting upstream against a lot of criticism to convince parents and others that not every fight, or instance where someone is called stupid rises to bullying. Schools laid out better policies and criteria (nuanced) and fought for them against criticism. I get that some are too hurt personally to be anything but over-zealous. I get that. But for those of us taht can be more measured, we need to be. It's how the best solutions arise. And I'm interested in the best solutions, because sexual assault and harassment need to end. We can be better and we need to be. I'm not an "ends justify the means" guy though. If the ends matter enough - we need to find the means to do it without compromising other values.
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I'd feel better about it if they, you know, talked to each other about it maybe, possibly happening.
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Who said it was? That's your strawman. Perhaps you'll stop knocking it down now? Someone literally pushed back against that not 15 posts ago. Which has led to your ongoing series of strawmen. "Official" approaches to this issue have been largely ineffective, which is in part what has evoked this response. Yes, they offer punitive measures but they are slow, difficult, and don't really solve problems. Someone found officially guilty of sexual harassment in the work place just takes their terrible behavior to the next stop. Nothing changes. Social media has proven to be far more effective. But like anything powerful, it's ability to be constructive vs. destructive is in the hands of the user. (or users in this case, which perhaps makes it even more dangerous, much less the element of anonymity) Social media is not known for it's propensity to consider context and situational, case-by-case information, yet we are driving the change through that medium. Hence my post. And I'll repeat my original caution - we have to be careful not to blur lines and keep perspective. Habits won't change by eviscerating people - unofficially or officially. Habits change through re-education and pushing people to better themselves. Not destroying them. It also doesn't help to zealously pile on to anyone who wants a nuanced position on this. One would think liberals, of all walks of people, would have learned a few lessons lately about the danger of aggressive group think.
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I'm not worried about company policies. They have far less bite than social media. Awkward people cannot "get up to speed" if one offense leads to their cultural/social evisceration. Again, we should be careful not to blur lines when we talk about these things. Real change will happen with nuance, re-education, and a dedicated effort to become better, not with zeal to sound like we're on the right side.
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In your zeal to line up with your tribe you removed all context from the discussion. I didn't parse them. Carole did. I basically said "word-choice, intent, relationship (and many other factors) matter" and we shouldn't blur the lines between all interactions so we lose sight of that. Carole then responded that many men masquerade behind those very same things in order to harass and assault. And they do. What she said isn't false. And neither is what I said - sometimes awkward is a ruse, sometimes it's just plain awkward. Sometimes "Nice dress today Rita" is a compliment. Sometimes it's a masquerade for some creep. What's the solution for this mish-mash? Outlaw awkwardness? Script conversations? Are people allowed to make mistakes? I don't deny Carole's point at all, that's a true thing. But why is that a rebuttal to what I said? What are we supposed to do with it? Shame the awkward? Who is in charge of educating people on reading social ques? I made the point that not every interaction where one party feels offended, or that something inappropriate was done, is an example of something (like harassment or assault) that we should eviscerate the person for. Many of those interactions are simply mistakes, personality conflicts, etc.. The mistakes that happen all the time when humans interact with each other. We can't get better at our interactions if every clumsy or poor interaction is treated as some heinous act. Human interactions are complicated. They are not simple. Can you work to avoid the line? Absolutely. Do you cross it with some people with absolutely no ill intent to do so? Absolutely. Then we apologize for it, work to be better about it, and move on. But if we don't allow people to recognize some of these issues are just mistakes, help them atone, and improve.....what the hell is the point of this?
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That's my point. That it's rarely "simple". I'm not talking about formal sexual harassment proceedings in a court or a company. Please read context. This conversation started when Carole responded to my suggestion that sometimes interactions are not meant to cause harm, but stem from a host of human reasons from being awkward, to emotional, to stupid, to drunk, to misreading signals, to just plain poor phrasing. We shouldn't blur all interactions where one party feels something inappropriate happened into one big pile that we tar, feather, and banish. None of those reasons make the person inherently awful. And few of us would be safe from condemnation if such a standard was leveled against us all. Nick, in an effort to prove how easy it is to avoid being inappropriate used one of the most common masquerades in the workplace to make a sexual comment come off as a compliment. Should we tar, feather, and banish Nick? Probably not. I'd vote no, but I'm the one trying to have nuance here, so I'm not sure I get a vote. Yes, many creeps masquerade their comments behind awkwardness. They also masquerade them behind compliments. Figuring out whether someone is a creep or just had a bad moment is important. Otherwise all we'll generate out of this is confusion, when we should be striving to act better as human beings. (And especially as men)
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Not really. How many links would you like from feminists decrying the male tendency to comment on their appearance at work? If you do a few quick google searches you'll see I literally have dozens of them at my disposal. Do I think it's "sexual harassment" in every instance. Probably not. Do I think it toes an awfully fuzzy line between appropriate and inappropriate? Hell yes. Which goes against this bizarre notion of how "simple" the distinctions are. To put it in Carole's terms: "I like your dress/pants/blouse" is frequently nothing more than a masquerade.
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Alcohol is an unfortunate part of this equation as well. That's not an excuse, just a reality. We keep trying to simplify this, but that's really naive IMO. If the bar for being tarred, feathered, and banished to some island is to have, at any point just one time, said something taken as inappropriate.....few of us will survive such a test. We have all looked the other way when someone said it too, which doesn't seem much better. Or we ourselves have done it through some combination of stupidity, awkwardness, drunkeness, poor phrasing, poor taste, misread signals, or any number of other things that happen. Humans are complicated beings and when you throw in the complications of sex, emotion, language, office politics, being young, being poorly parented, or any other number of factors.....well, I think I feel safe saying this isn't "simple". That isn't to say we shrug our shoulders and move on. Far from it, it's precisely because it's so complicated that it will take extra time and effort to improve. Pretending it's simple only makes solving it more cumbersome. And, as I said at the beginning, it isn't the blurring that what was said wasn't wrong. It can be wrong, but that person who is wrong for being awkward deserves a different response than the person who forces you to have sex with them to keep your job. That can't be blurred and frequently is in this conversation.
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Well...it has on college campuses. I would encourage you to read that author's entire series. I think some of the lessons we can take away from that well-intentioned, but misguided attempt to be "tough on sexual assault" are illuminating to this conversation. I have been in and around enough relationships to know that things are rarely simple when we mix flawed human beings, emotions, and sex. It's worth keeping in mind as we discuss this because we should make sure we don't blur lines between abhorrent sexual assault and some awkward schmuck who tries and fails at a pick-up line.
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Earlier you had brought up the college campus rules and we should be careful about those. They demand continuous consent, which opens the door to the possibility that consent can be given and later regretted. Which is a weird grey zone and it does happen. This author has a rather interesting series on the matter, and I think many of the concerns she raises are applicable in some of the "me too" cases. Whether you agree or not, they seem to be worth considering. We like to pretend that these matters are clear cut - and on many of them they are - but any time two humans interact there are a lot of possibilities for confusion or misunderstanding. It's in the nature of our interactions unfortunately. We should strive to be better, but we also have to be realistic in our hindsight.
