I knew this was going to happen, and it's another reason I didn't want to sign up for the ten-mile run I mentioned in my last post. I'm getting sucked in. I ran today for an hour, and I tracked my pace and distance (9:54 per mile for 6.3 miles), and I'm becoming emotionally invested in this race. Now, if I don't perform well, I'm going to be disappointed. I haven't even decided what performing well means yet for me (finishing in under 90 minutes?). But whatever I come up with, if I don't do it, I'll be bummed. And I don't need that type of stress in my life right now. S doesn't understand this. Her attitude is -- who cares? Just run it for fun. You're in decent shape -- you don't even need to train. If she just finishes it, she'll be happy. But I'm too vain to adopt that point of view. I can't make it not matter to me.
If this sounds like a humblebrag (I can't not be motivated!), I sincerely don't mean it to be. It's legitimately the way I am. I care a lot about "dumb" things and not very much about "important" things. I have a Ph.D. in math, and I almost never talk about it or even think about it. (I've been called "Doctor" in an unironic way maybe five times in my life.) I just got a pretty good raise at work, and it didn't elicit more than an emotional "that's nice" from me. On the flip-side, I got some crossword puzzles rejected from the New York Times recently, and it made me feel like a total failure; I said the wrong thing at trivia the other night and stewed about it the rest of the evening and the entire next morning.* On the flip-flip-side, I had another good session at Krav Maga and told S and the kids all about it, even though I knew they couldn't care less.** That's just how my wiring works. I couldn't help it, even if I wanted to, and I don't usually want to, but sometimes I do, and this race is one of those times.
*The worst trivia experience I've ever had happened the very first time I played with my current team. The question was, "What team holds the record for fewest points scored on them in a Super Bowl?" I can name the winners and losers of every Super Bowl ever played, in order -- and cite the correct score of many of them. I know that The Miami Dolphins and Dallas Cowboys played a 24-3 game in Super Bowl VII, so, wanting to impress everybody, I said, "The Dolphins!" with confidence. But it was actually the Cowboys who won, only allowing a single field goal. I knew this, but for some reason, I reversed the teams in my head, and it put me in a foul mood until we played again the next week. I'm still a bit bothered by it, to be honest.
**We were doing a drill where one person starts on the ground and has to get up, and the other person starts on top of them and has to punch them in the face (only about 80% speed, and we have 16-oz. gloves on, so it doesn't really hurt when you get hit, but it's uncomfortable and frustrating). I was whupping my partner -- a big dude -- pretty handily. After class, a guy who was watching, waiting for the next class to start, said to me, "Dude, nice job in there! You were kicking some ass!" If you told me I could either keep my raise or keep that compliment, I would be legitimately torn.
In other news, this Jussie Smollet story is pretty crazy, huh? If his intent was to raise his profile, he certainly did that. I had never heard of the guy before, and now I'm on pins and needles wondering what's going to happen to him. Being charged with a felony seems overly harsh to me -- he had himself beaten up, not somebody else -- but maybe it's not. As Dan Savage pointed out on a recent podcast, he effectively terrorized his own people. A hate crime serves two functions: It directly hurts somebody in a particular community; it scares everybody else in that community. Smollet only physically hurt himself, so the former doesn't really apply, but he very much accomplished the latter. So, I'll defer to black and queer people on this one. If they want the book thrown at him, then I'm okay with that; if they want leniency, then that's what I want too. (This is also how I feel about all this blackface garbage in Virginia, by the way. As best I can tell, most black Virginians don't want Ralph Northam to resign, so I think he shouldn't. I do wish he would have moonwalked though.)
One thing I've been hearing about this Smollet story is that it makes it so that future hate crimes, real ones, will be less likely to be believed now. Is this actually true though? I'm dubious. The people who bring the most attention to false claims like these -- the Fox News, Trump types -- aren't bothered with what's true anyway, so they are changing no matter what. (Remember, Trump still says the Central Park Five are guilty.) Everybody else, I think, understands that there will always be some false claims, and it doesn't mean real crimes don't happen.
On a similar note, I hear a lot of left-center people, saying something to the effect of, "See, this is why we can't make blanket statements like 'Believe victims'. We have to take it on a case-by-case basis." To these people I say: Quit being so literal. That's not how language works. When people say something like "Believe women," they don't mean literally believe everything every woman says in every instance. I have literally never heard anybody advocate for this. "Believe women" is a rhetorical device. It's shorthand -- a pithy aphorism. It's like saying "Don't judge" or "Love thy neighbor."
What people mean when they say "Believe x" is to take seriously and pursue the claims of x, because x is from a historically marginalized group, whose claims have often not been taken seriously and pursued in the past. And, as it happens, this is exactly what happened in the Smollet's case. Everybody took him seriously -- the media reported the story (as they should) and the police took on the case (as they should), and then through earnest investigation it came out he was probably lying about it. The truth came out (as it should). If anything, this Smollet case is a prime example of the "Believe x" model working correctly. But, of course, that's not how it's likely to be perceived.
That's all for today. Until next time...
If this sounds like a humblebrag (I can't not be motivated!), I sincerely don't mean it to be. It's legitimately the way I am. I care a lot about "dumb" things and not very much about "important" things. I have a Ph.D. in math, and I almost never talk about it or even think about it. (I've been called "Doctor" in an unironic way maybe five times in my life.) I just got a pretty good raise at work, and it didn't elicit more than an emotional "that's nice" from me. On the flip-side, I got some crossword puzzles rejected from the New York Times recently, and it made me feel like a total failure; I said the wrong thing at trivia the other night and stewed about it the rest of the evening and the entire next morning.* On the flip-flip-side, I had another good session at Krav Maga and told S and the kids all about it, even though I knew they couldn't care less.** That's just how my wiring works. I couldn't help it, even if I wanted to, and I don't usually want to, but sometimes I do, and this race is one of those times.
*The worst trivia experience I've ever had happened the very first time I played with my current team. The question was, "What team holds the record for fewest points scored on them in a Super Bowl?" I can name the winners and losers of every Super Bowl ever played, in order -- and cite the correct score of many of them. I know that The Miami Dolphins and Dallas Cowboys played a 24-3 game in Super Bowl VII, so, wanting to impress everybody, I said, "The Dolphins!" with confidence. But it was actually the Cowboys who won, only allowing a single field goal. I knew this, but for some reason, I reversed the teams in my head, and it put me in a foul mood until we played again the next week. I'm still a bit bothered by it, to be honest.
**We were doing a drill where one person starts on the ground and has to get up, and the other person starts on top of them and has to punch them in the face (only about 80% speed, and we have 16-oz. gloves on, so it doesn't really hurt when you get hit, but it's uncomfortable and frustrating). I was whupping my partner -- a big dude -- pretty handily. After class, a guy who was watching, waiting for the next class to start, said to me, "Dude, nice job in there! You were kicking some ass!" If you told me I could either keep my raise or keep that compliment, I would be legitimately torn.
In other news, this Jussie Smollet story is pretty crazy, huh? If his intent was to raise his profile, he certainly did that. I had never heard of the guy before, and now I'm on pins and needles wondering what's going to happen to him. Being charged with a felony seems overly harsh to me -- he had himself beaten up, not somebody else -- but maybe it's not. As Dan Savage pointed out on a recent podcast, he effectively terrorized his own people. A hate crime serves two functions: It directly hurts somebody in a particular community; it scares everybody else in that community. Smollet only physically hurt himself, so the former doesn't really apply, but he very much accomplished the latter. So, I'll defer to black and queer people on this one. If they want the book thrown at him, then I'm okay with that; if they want leniency, then that's what I want too. (This is also how I feel about all this blackface garbage in Virginia, by the way. As best I can tell, most black Virginians don't want Ralph Northam to resign, so I think he shouldn't. I do wish he would have moonwalked though.)
One thing I've been hearing about this Smollet story is that it makes it so that future hate crimes, real ones, will be less likely to be believed now. Is this actually true though? I'm dubious. The people who bring the most attention to false claims like these -- the Fox News, Trump types -- aren't bothered with what's true anyway, so they are changing no matter what. (Remember, Trump still says the Central Park Five are guilty.) Everybody else, I think, understands that there will always be some false claims, and it doesn't mean real crimes don't happen.
On a similar note, I hear a lot of left-center people, saying something to the effect of, "See, this is why we can't make blanket statements like 'Believe victims'. We have to take it on a case-by-case basis." To these people I say: Quit being so literal. That's not how language works. When people say something like "Believe women," they don't mean literally believe everything every woman says in every instance. I have literally never heard anybody advocate for this. "Believe women" is a rhetorical device. It's shorthand -- a pithy aphorism. It's like saying "Don't judge" or "Love thy neighbor."
What people mean when they say "Believe x" is to take seriously and pursue the claims of x, because x is from a historically marginalized group, whose claims have often not been taken seriously and pursued in the past. And, as it happens, this is exactly what happened in the Smollet's case. Everybody took him seriously -- the media reported the story (as they should) and the police took on the case (as they should), and then through earnest investigation it came out he was probably lying about it. The truth came out (as it should). If anything, this Smollet case is a prime example of the "Believe x" model working correctly. But, of course, that's not how it's likely to be perceived.
That's all for today. Until next time...
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