1. There were compelling reasons to abandon Friendster and MySpace at their peaks; frustrating performance, bugs, spam, bad UIs, visual nonsense, etc. Facebook seems to be scaling quite gracefully and they seem to constantly improve rather than frustrate.
2. My main issue with Facebook would be privacy, but I find it highly unlikely that, in the long run,  Google+ or any other ad-supported social network will be a better steward of our personal information. That train goes in one direction.
3. Establishing yet another silo of social network identities will cost us a huge amount of collective time.
4. Since Google+ “circles” nearly remove all social cost from forming weak relationships (“just dump them in acquaintances”) we could be talking about a lot more time spent managing relationships. Circles may be the killer feature that we later really regret embracing.
5. Prominent Google+ notifications appear at the top of all Google tools, and I couldn’t find a way to hide them without, say, keeping a separate account. With social networks being brilliant delivery mechanisms for dopamine; offering that hit while in Gmail, Docs, Calendar, and Search is going to be a disaster for a lot of people’s productivity.

It gets better: Page 1 | Page 2

Here’s a sample from comments on a recent story of abusive teacher behavior (I have friends who suffered under this teacher):

• “Entitled brats and their parents. Sums up what’s wrong with society these days.”
• “It’s called tough love and some kids need it!”
• “It sounds like a Teacher who [...] demands things of her students that society & her students don’t understand anymore to be good things, like desire, discipline and dedication.”
• “I was so blessed to have an English Teacher like [the accused] in my high school years.”
• “If those students, parents and Teachers are whining, it’s because they probably are not centered in the truth.”
• “God did give [the teacher] the gift of Prophecy, which is what a Teacher has, essentially. They use their skills of the past & present & help students chart their future, teaching them with encouragement and teaching them skills, laws and rules to guide their lives.”
• “Kids just have it too easy and have no discipline.”
• “It is the insidiousness of the permissive parents where the problem begins, not in the classroom”
• “I’m not buying into this. A tough teacher is always a target for weak children and their weaker parents.”

The perception among these commenters seems to be that individuals in certain professions are “blessed” and incapable of wrong-doing; that any claim against them must be invalid and/or made by errant individuals who are actually somehow responsible for the occurrence. They’re unwilling to accept the simple fact that people in all roles and professions, even “good” people, can do bad things.

The same kinds of comments appear when a police officer is reported to have committed abuse or misconduct, or when someone receives an unusually harsh sentence for a malum prohibitum crime. E.g. “[the abuse victim] probably disrespected the officer and got what he deserved”, “We’re coddling criminals”, “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time”, etc.

I like to label this group “The Authoritariate”, but psychologists already have a designation with three associated traits:

1. Authoritarian submission — a high degree of submissiveness to the authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate in the society in which one lives.
2. Authoritarian aggression — a general aggressiveness directed against deviants, outgroups, and other people that are perceived to be targets according to established authorities.
3. Conventionalism — a high degree of adherence to the traditions and social norms that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities, and a belief that others in one’s society should also be required to adhere to these norms

The research section is fascinating and tends to show what one could already infer from the wealth of comments on YouTube and other sites:

• “[They] are more likely to make incorrect inferences from evidence and to hold contradictory ideas [and to] uncritically accept insufficient evidence that supports their beliefs, and they are less likely to acknowledge their own limitations.”
• They don’t value social equality; are prejudiced against racial and ethnic minorities, and homosexuals.
• They’re highly nationalistic, and willing to suspend constitutional guarantees of liberty, and accept covert governmental activities such as illegal wiretaps.
• They don’t value personal freedom and diversity, and obtain personal satisfaction from punishing criminals and deviants
• “They seek dominance over others by being competitive and destructive instead of cooperative. In a study by Altemeyer, 68 authoritarians played a three hour simulation of the Earth’s future entitled the Global change game. Unlike a comparison game played by individuals with low RWA scores, which resulted in world peace and widespread international cooperation, the simulation by authoritarians became highly militarized and eventually entered the stage of nuclear war. By the end of the high RWA game, the entire population of the earth was declared dead.”

Aside: In the case of Ms. Whipple, it’s completely possible that she, in some aspects, is an effective instructor, and some of her incidents may fall under the classification “tough, but fair”, but the collection of evidence does not look good. Apparently the cumulative effects of her verbally and psychologically abusive and unpredictable behavior led to a classroom dominated by fear and lack of respect for her personally. I.e. a terrible learning environment. It’s certainly not a good sign for the school system that she’s been repeatedly returned to the classroom.

• There’s no way to download this “downloadable part,” as it’s advertised. You must install an Adobe Air application, which downloads the video.
• There was nothing in the checkout process to let me know I needed to install Air first. The only link to “download instructions” (who would think they need to read this?) was on the “add to cart” page. Once most people have checked out they’ll have to run to Google what an .air file is.
• The app isn’t digitally signed, so the publisher reads “unknown” and it asks for “unrestricted” access to my system. Does not inspire trust.
• You can only watch the video via the app! So no fancy controls you might want while, say, watching a skateboarding part.
• Considering I downloaded 150MB for a 5 minute video, the quality is astoundingly bad. See the horizontal lines in the screenshot? They’re a constant distraction and it all looks even worse at full screen. Every video on the The Berrics site looks better than this. Like most Rodney and Daewon parts, the filming is just not exciting, but it’s forgivable.
• Since I downloaded it on my wife’s PC last night, the download link in my account is already “expired”, so I can’t install it on mine.

The pic is actually from a copy I found immediately on Vimeo, highlighting the absurdity of this level of copy control. Lesson: Only paying customers have to deal with DRM nonsense.

Update: 5 days later, the video no longer plays.

I’m all for freedom of speech and have no desire to legislate disgusting views like this off the radio, but more rational people need to pay attention to what hosts like Hunt/Savage/Levin are broadcasting in their community, and be willing to let local stations and their advertisers know when these hosts step over the line.

Update: BTW, Hunt’s brilliant argument—sexual behaviors that might create life are better than ones that don’t—would imply that incest, sex with young girls, and rape would all be preferable to gay sex, hetero sex using contraceptives, and masturbation. If you’ve ever enjoyed sex without intent to conceive, here’s to the Constitution for stopping big thinkers like Hunt from using the government against you.

Your jetpacks have arrived!

• higher taxes for everyone
• spending cuts, including the military
• bailouts for state/local safety nets that ease real human suffering, not select industries
• finding and migrating to foreign aid measures that actually work
• renegotiating way-above-market public pensions inked during the golden bubble years
• forcing big banks to cramdown city/county debts that arose due to fraud
• downsizing the massively expensive and world-leading incarceration industrial complex, perhaps by depoliticizing the CJS
• reducing barriers to starting up new businesses, especially rent seeking at the local/state level
• stimulating the wedding industry by ensuring the freedom of everyone to marry

Now who in Congress is up for all that?

The proposed site is “for people who play musical instruments. On-topic questions will be about technique, practice, theory, composition, and repertoire.” KeyMinor already serves this purpose, it’s just not known about.

I’d add a comment to the proposal but I see no way to; I probably don’t have sufficient reputation points.