Weekend Vibes [DOT 2/3/24]

2/3/24 MegMegMcGee 18

Hi all! Got any good weekend plans?

Ummm

New York man given 25 years for killing student mistakenly on his property
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/01/kevin-monahan-sentence

Stonks!

Reddit seeking a valuation of up to $6.5 billion in IPO
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/01/reddit-seeking-a-valuation-of-up-to-6point5-billion-in-ipo.html

Sprots!

The Missouri governor shortens the DWI prison sentence of former Chiefs assistant coach Britt Reid
https://apnews.com/article/kansas-city-chiefs-britt-reid-commutation-parson-17630ef04030c056270b7993814e6aed

RIP

Have a great day!

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18 Comments

  1. …been side-eyeing that reddit IPO for a bit, now…makes sense & all…& there’s probably people that deserve to get paid somewhere in that chain…but reddit’s a bit like wikipedia or early youtube or what used to be twitter…more or less explicitly the bulk of the content/value is in the volunteer component it doesn’t feel like anyone ought to get to coin it in off…so…it feels like post-IPO it’s at best another facebook…& the enshittening continues apace?

    …maybe I’m just bitter about the way that operated at the kinja:G/O microcosm level…but…it’s hard not to feel like in that version of the have-hammer-see-nails equation I/we aren’t the nail(s)…& I can’t say as I like that part much?

  2. today i learnt plumbing is how to piss me off

    stupid migrating leak

    anyways…took 3 hours of increasingly creative profanity….and some minor flooding

    but the toilet is now fixed

    i’ll probably stop twitching in an hour or two

  5. This is what I hate about failkids of rich/famous people. Even when they get in actual shit and maybe just maybe they learn something from their mistakes some asskissing jagoff like the Missouri governor pulls his multiple DWI/brain damaging kid causing ass out of the fire and the cycle of oblivious privilege continues.

  6. The fiasco at the NY Times over their Gaza reporting keeps getting worse:

    The union representing New York Times employees accused the company Friday of targeting employees with Middle Eastern or North African backgrounds in a weeks-long investigation into leaks from its newsroom regarding the paper’s coverage of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/03/01/nytimes-leak-investigation-guild-intercept-hamas/

    (By former G/O reporter Laura Wagner)

    To be clear, this is management screwup piled on management screwup.

    1) The use of freelancers is standard in the business, and when they have real qualifications, that’s often appropriate. But this mess started with some editor signing off on a reporter using a non-journalist, non-expert rando do a lot of his work on a highly dubious story about supposed atrocities in Gaza, and the editor just let it all through without verfication. That’s the starting management mistake.

    2) To be clear, mistakes happen at newspapers. There’s a ton of time pressure, and reporting in violent regions creates another set of problems. The standards of journalism recognize this, which is why there is a long established process for accepting complaints about coverage, evaluating them, and issuing formal corrections.

    Times management made things worse by stonewalling this process.

    3) Large news organizations are not monoliths. Often one set of reporters will overlap with another. At the Times, the podcast The Daily had uncovered contradictory information to the original coverage and was putting together new coverage.

    But because Times management had stonewalled a correction, they now decided they needed to stuff The Daily too.

    4) At this point, as former Times public editor Margaret Sullivan noted, it would be proper for a public editor to step in and examine the issues and write up findings. Except the Sulzbergers eliminated the position, first announcing that they would rely on the online community to let reporters know of problems, only to later penalize reporters for interacting with online communities.

    5) Not only had Times management decided to let its initial problem get much worse by blocking fixes, they reacted to leaks of their screwups in the dumbest possible way – by launching an internal enforcement effort spearheaded by a leak investigation.

    There are superficial ironic issues, of course. One irony is the Times is a news organization which publishes leaks every single day. Another is that the editors and execs who launched the crackdown almost certainly have been leakers themselves at some point in their career. There is zero chance they have always followed company policy to a T.

    But even worse, this kind of crackdown has corrosive effects on the longterm effectiveness of an organization, especially a news organization. Reporters have to feel free to chase stories which don’t agree with management’s perspectives. And the kinds of gossipy leaks that kicked all of this off are at the heart of what reporters do. They trade and share information, and effective management has to be willing to take its lumps and move on.

    Except the more they stonewalled earlier, the worse they looked at this stage – more of the snowball effect.

    6) And now, the investigation seems to be crossing lines on things like race and national origin. It probably wasn’t by original overt design, but when something starts with bias and other outlets for addressing the bias are blocked, the issue grows in step with management’s denial.

    This is a ridiculous situation. Management started off with a mistake that could have been fixed early by following standard practices, but has made things worse every step along the way trying to deny they ever messed up.

    And the looming problem is that there are inevitably going to be more mistakes, and the more management follows this path, the more they will add up. And past mistakes and past refusals to issue corrections, like politics editor Carolyn Ryan refusing to openly address wrong reporting that Hilary Clinton was facing criminal investigation, are going to be reopened.

    They’ll probably end up jacking a few low level employees and cracking down on dissent in the short term. But this isn’t a vice principal dealing with a few second graders throwing fish sticks in the lunch room. AG Sulzberger, Joe Kahn, Carolyn Ryan, Kathleen Kingsbury and Patrick Healy are in way over their heads.

  7. I’m very glad to see the Monahan verdict. As I posted back then, we’re seeing increasing numbers of gun-humpers who are looking for opportunities to murder people. This asshole is a sociopath who demonstrated zero remorse and absolutely would shoot more people. Looks like the judge agrees.

    “I think it’s important for people to know that it’s not OK to shoot people and have them killed for turning down your driveway,” the judge, Adam Michelini, said.

    Apart from the wider deterrent effect, Michelini said it was important that Monahan remain behind bars rather than be free to harm more people.

  9. Migrant crime wave turns out to be migrant safety wave:

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trumps-claims-migrant-crime-wave-are-not-supported-national-data-rcna140896

    Trump’s claims of a migrant crime wave are not supported by national data
    An NBC News review of available 2024 crime data shows overall crime levels dropping in cities that have received the most migrants.

    The article points out how much national polling is skewed by right wing certainty in their wrong opinion, but doesn’t mention that right wing media is endlessly jamming the story in their faces.

    But this has become an issue for the establishment political press like inflation where anecdote and right wing vibes are all that matter. I can only wait for some Peter Baker type to repeat his egg price gaffe in this area. Trump shot down the bipartisan Senate deal because he sensed the hacks don’t care what is actually happening on immigration as long as it keeps their fixed storylines going.

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