#for the record these colors are arbitrary and meaningless.

[thorne1435]

Pink is the girl color... Blue is the boy color...

[lalafoxtrot]

Black Designers Matter

Black Designers Matter - magicTCG

I couldn’t find the original article posted on Tumblr, only Reddit, original linked above, contents are below. I did not write any of this, but I agree vehemently and want to share it to the MTG and artist community on Tumblr.

BLACK DESIGNERS MATTER

Wizards of the Coast and the community claim to support black people, but WOTC has never hired a black designer. Content creators and the community at large have a responsibility to apply pressure to WOTC to hire black designers as soon as possible.

Wizards of the Coast presents itself as a progressive company, even though its record of support for black people is appalling. Wotc has made several posts in support of black lives matter in recent times. Mark Rosewater has linked to articles on how to campaign for Black People, and Gavin Verhey has asked for people to signal boost black mtg content creators. If WOTC is so committed to black rights, why have they never made inroads into the black community like this until the nation was literally on fire? Wotc marched in a pride parade as a matter of course, they made a Women's Day secret lair (starring all white and white-passing women) in black history month and they publicly talk about being inclusive, yet political action for black people required extreme circumstances.

WOTC has created over 200 product releases, each with design and development teams. This amounts to thousands of design opportunities over the company's 27-year history. Out of these ZERO have been black people. When asked, WOTC has claimed to want to correct these issues but for years we have seen no change. In 2016, WOTC hired activist Monique Jones, as a consultant to design the planeswalker Kaya, as the creative team had no black women on it. Even though this was a problem they said they “hoped” to deal with “in the future,” years later no changes have been shown. They didn’t even hire Monique or any other consultant when they made Vivien Reid and Aminatou, who are also black women. In 2017, I asked Mark Rosewater about the lack of diversity in WOTC R&D and he said they are “working to solve” it. In 2019, I asked Shivam Bhatt, the highest-profile person of color in the MTG community, to publicly take WOTC to task for their failings in diversity. He said he had spoken with them about it and that WOTC had a “Wizards of Color” program to deal with this. Wizards has paid lip service to their lack of diversity but given no results.

The MTG Community at large is just as culpable as Wizards in this matter. A company’s ultimate interest is its bottom line and WotC has shown to be very receptive to community demands when they make them. The outcry from the community got Damnation reprinted, undid the shorter standard rotation, gave white card draw, and got an apology for the War of the Spark Novel. When the community makes a demand, hard enough WOTC listens, and yet the community at large has been apathetic if not hostile to the idea that WOTC R&D is woefully undiverse.

The MTG community created huge uproars over not supporting pro players, preemptive uproar over WOTC should they be forced to take a stand on Hong Kong, Companions, the Amonkhet Masterpieces, Standard bannings, legacy bannings, (Top got a frickin SIGN at WotC HQ), card prices, issues with the story, Bi-Erasure, card foilings, fetchland reprints, damnation reprints, Magic Duels being shut down with no compensation, great designer search questions, removal being weak, masters sets sucking, masters set being removed, masters sets coming back with a huge markup, and countless other issues. Yet every time I have brought up WOTC not hiring a SINGLE black designer despite 27 years and literally thousands of openings the response is silence at best if not outright antagonism. “Who cares?” “What IS meaningless is knowing that behind the curtains there are 2 black women... instead of four white people” “What does it matter?” “Qualified white people applied and were hired. Wizards didn't go out of their way to conform to your arbitrary diversity requirements.” “Oh yeah, you’re so oppressed you get your own month.” These are real responses that I’ve gotten from the community and they aren't outliers.

I literally begged the Professor of Tolarian Community College to do an episode on this and/or bring on a black guest to bring this up, and people just told me to shut up. The only major positive feedback I’ve gotten was in the Circlejerk Reddit of all things. The community funds WotC, and what they pressure the company about leads to results. By sweeping their horrible record with black people under the rug while fawning over them for being inclusive, they enable this problem to go on. The big-name content creators like u/ProfessorSTAFF and Pleasant Kenobi, who are overwhelmingly white, do huge long-form essays on countless topics, including political ones, yet never bring WOTC to task on this, and a community gets to consider itself progressive while either ignoring the few people who bring this issue up or coming down on them with the fury of Rush Limbaugh. It was only under extreme political pressure brought about by the current protests and a scathing open letter by Zaiem Beg that content creators spoke out at all. If it takes a man being choked to death on national TV and a letter elaborating on publicly accessible information for someone to say anything, I question your commitment to the cause. The Professor has long heralded himself as someone willing to critique wizards despite potential influence from the company, and he has proven that to be true, except for when it comes to black people.

Wizards needs to hire black designers as soon as possible. The MTG community at large needs to make this an issue on the scale of other campaigns they have made against WOTC such as the price gouging of collector's items and the bi-erasure of Chandra Nalaar. Majority white content creators such as The Professor and Pleasant Kenobi need to use their platforms to raise up black voices and pressure WOTC and the community to make social change. And all of the above need to stop paying lip service and performative gestures towards Black Lives Matter while they continue to disregard black people in their own spaces. The community has mobilized in the past to get changes made to the game, we must now mobilize to get changes made to the game designers. Contact public-facing figures like Mark Rosewater, Gavin Verhey, and Aaron Forsythe on twitter and Tumblr. Write about the lack of black creators at WOTC in customer service surveys, request content creators to do videos and articles about the subject, use the massive power of the magic community for good. Please.

TLDR: Demand Wizards of the Coast Hire Black Writers and Artists and Demand Content Creators to do the Same.

[Edit: It has been brought to my attention that I was in error to refer to Narset as "white-passing" in the Secret Lair Woman's Day, while there is a discussion to be held about colorism in media, the line in question was not properly constructed. It is left here as an admission of the mistake. Apologies.]

[thesinglesjukebox]

LUKAS GRAHAM - LOVE SOMEONE [1.50] After three songs covered here, their combined score has now reached [4.09]...

Will Rivitz: The epsilon-delta definition of a limit is, in layman's terms, generally as follows: if one plugs a number x into a function, that function's limit as x approaches some other number a is L if, no matter what arbitrarily small number ε you can come up with, you can find some x near a such that x plugged into the function is within ε of L. This is somewhat confusing, so a non-math example to illustrate: Let x be a band, and let the a that x approaches be Lukas Graham (for notation's sake, we'll call it the Graham limit). We find that the limit L of the function f(x), as x approaches a, is in fact negative infinity. To understand why this is, consider any arbitrary ε, and we find that no matter how low f(ε), the Graham limit allows for a lower f(x). For example, if we set ε fairly low, at, say, Five For Fighting, we find that a lower f(x) is possible. If we set ε even lower, at, for example, Meghan Trainor, we find that a lower f(x) is still achievable. In this sense, "Love Someone" is an effectively didactic example, as it uses an almost unimaginably low ε -- Train, in this case --- and demonstrates that the Graham limit is lower still. Math is wonderful, isn't it? [0]

Andy Hutchins: The exchange rate on Lukas Graham members to Jason Mraz is 3:1, in case you have interest in playing what I'm sure is the booming market for sub-Sheeran wedding dreck. (Play a song that includes the sniffing refrain "You've probably never loved someone like I do" at your wedding at your own peril.) [1]

Julian Axelrod: As long as dads are having first dances at their second weddings, Lukas Graham will have a career. [3]

Alfred Soto: Well, isn't he the hateful little shit: she should learn to love like he does. It's not Graham Cracker's first time stepping on a rake. Ed Sheeran is Otis Redding. [1]

Katherine St Asaph: Justin Bieber's "Love Yourself" is not improved by 50,000 times more singing. [1]

Jonathan Bradley: Imagine I had just fallen head-over-heels for someone. You know, right in the mushy marshes of new affection. A time in which I had been so disarmed by this new presence in my life that I grasped for sincerity and earnestness to account for it; a time when hearing such sentiments drawn with careless and vague strokes would make them seem nonetheless truthful and important. Even at such a time, I think that I would find Lukas Forchhammer's quivering soul tenor to be impossibly, intolerably weedy. [2]

Nicholas Donohoue: I could revert to my hate mindset and be a pedantic, over-intensive jerk, but the only thing that needs said is Lukas Graham should refrain from long, high notes. [3]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Jason Mraz-type schlock that's too boring to hate passionately. Since the music's too boilerplate, the lyrics come through with some solipsistic narcissism. Terrible, but easy to laugh at, which makes it a little less terrible. [2]

Taylor Alatorre: All three of Lukas Graham's self-titled albums feature the same painting of a nude woman on their cover but with a different color palette, like a lazier, hornier version of Weezer. The painting, entitled Damen med flaskerne (Lady with the Bottles), is Lars Helweg's depiction of Swedish-Italian actress Anita Ekberg, best known for her starring role in La Dolce Vita. Painted in 1992 but based on a 1956 Playboy photograph, it's become a minor cultural touchstone in Denmark; the hard rock band September also used the artwork for their 1995 album Many a Little. The original resides in Copenhagen's Cafe Wilder, which Lukas Graham's lead singer often visited as a child. He says the album art is intended as a tribute to his childhood, as well as a representation of the band's music: "naked and beautiful." Each of these facts is more interesting than anything found in this song, which devalues love by implying that yours isn't genuine unless you can squeeze a saccharine pseudo-devotional out of it. [2]

Alex Clifton: Is this the worst song Lukas Graham have ever recorded? No. That's either "7 Years," "Strip No More," or their newest single, which is an anti-suicide ballad (?) that involves the line "my stage show can light up the clouds," because somehow it has to have the self-aggrandizing turn that most Lukas Graham songs have. It depends on the day which song I hate more. But "Love Someone" is insipid and boring and clichéd and bad. It's like if the sappiest Jason Mraz song (also incidentally named "Love Someone") had a baby with Ed Sheeran's "Perfect" and a guy with less charisma than Pat Monahan tried to reassure you his Hefty bag of love is real. It's meaningless. It's supposed to be tender and kind but I can't get past the fact that this is the guy who once sang "HOW COME YOU DON'T STRIP NO MOOOOOOOOORE" so goddamn enthusiastically. Moreover, this song made me realize why I specifically hate Lukas Graham: they commit the sin of believing they're the only people in the world who have ever experienced feelings. "You'll probably never love someone like I do," Lukas Forchhammer sings, and in that moment I know he believes every word he says. It's the same story they've told with every other song: my emotion is the strongest and the worst and the most bad and the most valid, and you'll never understand. Lukas Graham have long left a bad taste in my mouth and this song makes me hate them more, to the point where it's a personal insult that Lukas Graham keeps releasing music. If they really loved someone other than themselves, they'd leave us alone. [0]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

[protagonisms]

Spark

"We're glad to have you back, Dr. Olson!"

"Thanks," replied the old man flatly as he slowly strode down the hallway, his eyes fixed on the large metal door at the end.

The nervous technician walking next to him grew increasingly somber. "Y-you should know, sir... we haven't recorded any organic expression from him since you left. He may not-" she stopped as abruptly as Dr. Olson's gait. The old man wearily glanced at the technician with no discernable change in expression or tone. "May not what?" he asked.

"H-he may not... be there."

"What do you mean? Has his brain stopped?"

"Well, no..." the technician looked away, searching for the right euphemisms. "But every neural pattern we've seen for the last six years has been, well... algorithmic."

"You've stopped drugging him?" the old man squinted a bit, his face showing a hint of amusement.

"Artificial methods of inducing variation are now completely ineffective. If you recall on your last visit-"

"I remember," interrupted Dr. Olson cheerfully. "He told me they were working less and less. Even then, you guys were practical bathing his whole brain with those super-entheogens, ha!" the old man gave a wry chuckle before resuming his walk.

"Right... " the technician approached the large console beside the door and rested the back of her hand in a small round hole. The top of the hole descended onto his hand and softly pressed around it for several seconds while she stared into a retinal scanner. A short beep signaled the loud CLANG before the large metal door slowly swung away from the pair. Upon entering, the technician quickly turned left and walked through another door, while the old man slowly approached his friend, and sat down in a chair a few feet away.

He faced the general figure of a person lying in a bed but appeared to be built into the bed more than lying in it. The figure's arms were both covered by a smooth plastic structure. Where the left hand should be was a jarringly different dark metal box with many wires and small hoses running from it, and around the right hand was an amalgam of wires, pipes, and subtly moving mechanical parts. The top of the bed seems like it has swollen upwards and swallowed the legs. The torso seemed to sprout abruptly from the bed, which itself showed only patches of skin among a patchwork of metal and plastic of different types and colors, with a few wires running from the front neatly around the sides and up behind the shoulders to join with the thick bundle of wires and hoses that were fixed to the large structure around the figure's head.

An expressionless dark-skinned old man's face stared back at Dr. Olson from a mostly synthetic head and neck, whirring and clicking with steadily increasing intensity upon matching eyes with the visitor.

Dr. Olson broke eyes with his friend and slowly looked at the equipment around him. His eyes rested on a shiny new part of the chest piece. "So," he smirked, "your lungs FINALLY gave out did they? Must've been all that smoking!" he laughed a dry, raspy laugh.

The whirring peaked and abruptly stopped, as the face surrounded by metal blinked and abruptly broke out into a smile. "Just solved another problem with my existence, is all" said a low, tinny voice that carried far more inflection than seemed consistent with a completely still head and shoulders. There was no expression of movement at all besides the very lively facial muscles.

"Oh... and you're head is now totally fixed too, huh? And your voice... is your face the only part left of your body with active skeletal muscles? And what's that new sound?" Dr. Olson leaned forward, tilting his ear toward the face.

The tinny voice chuckled. "My new left eye, can you tell? Can't really stop the clicking yet without sacrificing acuity. The sucker's gotta be making tiny movements all the time to satisfy my occipital lobe." The face made a frowning expression that looked it would accompany a shrug. "I've still got plenty most of the way down my arms and, part of my legs. Don't really remember what it's like to articulate limbs, though. And I do miss moving my head, but I finally cracked the neural feedback for the lungs and diaphragm! I thought the cortex would be tough to crack, but the medulla and pons are finicky litte shits, ha ha ha!" the tinny voice's laughter widened Dr. Olson's smile. "Glad to see you're still around, Roh."

"Why wouldn't I be?" asked Roh, still chortling. "You think I'd bother making all this if I was just gonna go quietly? Ha!" he laughed louder.

Dr. Olson's simle faded slowly as his expression grew somber. "Annie said that you might not be anymore... that the variation in your neural patterns have flatlined."

"ha... what... flatlined?" the jovial mood slowly left Roh's voice. "For how long?"

"Well... since my last visit, six years ago..." said Dr. Olson, looking intensely at his old friend's face.

"Six years, huh?" the tinny voice went quiet for several moments. A nearby room that was already filled with commotion suddenly erupted with excitement that was undetectable from this chamber. The whirring sound coming from the giant mass of machinery around Roh's slowly faded below Dr. Olson's perception.

"You know..." finally said Roh, glancing sadly around at nothing particular, "I don't mean to disregard Annie or any of the others... but it's all always so routine and mundane... there's never anything new, so I just use my digital parts. I'm still here, can't you tell?" The question didn't sound rhetorical.

Dr. Olson nodded. "Yeah, yeah, you're clearly here RIGHT NOW, but... when I leave? I suspect that whatever of your brain that I'm stimulating with my presence-"

"Not your presence" Roh cut him off. "At least not anymore. They tried convincing me you were here and even made a pretty good voice synthesizer, but I saw through them faster and faster until they stopped trying."

"Okay, my interaction then. I must say I'm a little flattered, but still... think about what they're seeing. Biologically, it's like you just rose from the dead to talk to me."

Roh's lips curled into a wry smile. "I mean, my brain never stopped firing, did it?"

"Hey, you made the rules yourself. If your brain patterns become totally deterministic, then call your Time of Death."

"And yet here we are," Roh replied slowly, as though to feel the weight of each word.

"Really, though, Roh... are you gonna be here the next time I come by?"

Roh gave a tinny scoff, then frowned at the sound of it before replying "I already answered that question, but..." his voice trailed off, the playfulness aprubtly ending. "...to be honest, I think I feel it coming. Sure, I could probably work out a way to detect whatever chaotic patterns are left in me but... I feel it. The gap between 'me' and 'not me' in my own head is widening. Maybe that's why I've apparently been away for so long. Most of the cortex of my brain is now directly affected by or outputting to a digital interface. I can feel the line in my thoughts, where the computer picks the thought up and it becomes clear, vivid, strong, like ultraviolet-bright neon lights. Rigid, explicit ideas with no... substance. No meaning. There's nothing inside any of it, nothing to FEEL when an idea is delivered to me from the computer. The gap is so wide now... I program more and more thought processes into the digital interface so there's less and less for me to do, but... I guess that's it, isn't it? Just slowly fading away..." Roh's voice trailed off into sadness as he closed his eyes.

After a long pause, Dr. Olson asked "What do humans look like, for a machine?"

"What?" the tinny voice sounded confused.

"I remember you once said the best use of plugging a computer into your brain was to try and describe things from a computer's perspective. How you could now see the 'shape of data'. If you can see it even more clearly now, maybe you can answer it this time around: what do humans look like, as data?"

"As data? Humans..." the whirring returned as Roh closed his eyes with a look of deep concentration. The face slowly went completely as blank as before Dr. Olson entered the room before the eyes snapped back open and a slow smile crept across Roh's face. "to the digital part of my mind, Humans look... like fire."

"Fire?" asked Dr. Olson, smiling. "How?"

"Well, fire is just thermal energy that radiates in frequencies that the human eye can detect. It's an arbitrary term for data, but a very specific one for organic experience. Fire is just thermal energy that can be seen, heard, and felt... and it changes chemical properties. Fire provided all light in the world until we found a way to apply fire to create light with electricity, only after forging materials with fire. From the perspective of data... humans are like fire. There is nothing in the entire data universe that did not start from human intention. Whenever there's a collection of data that can't be interpreted as any known type of structure, apply humans like heat and either some method of interpretation will emerge or the data will burn away into entropy, or rather... I think the concept of entropy is kind of inverted in this metaphor." Roh laughed before continuing. "Data without any kind of structure will very likely become permanently un-interpretable if human attention is not applied often enough, or after too long. Data that grows cold becomes meaningless. Systems can come back to it and draw patterns that weren't seen before, but without human interpretation at some level, it will always be rendered obsolete in favor of whatever has human attention."

"Fascinating," replied Dr. Olson, enraptured. "Why?"

"Because while machines can interpret visual data, they cannot see." Dr. Olson widened his eyes as he could've sworn he saw Roh's left eye literally flash from the inside. "They can parse audio information or acoustic pulses, but cannot hear. Excellent questions, though. Thank you.""

Dr. Olson nodded thoughtfully. "Okay then, wise guy," he smiled. "How about this one?" He cleared his throat.

"What do YOU look like?"

Roh closed his eyes, and the whirring sound rose again.

[backstorywithdanalewis]

Back Story with Dana Lewis on the Science of Hate Link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1016881/8209054

Matt Williams: (00:00) Constantly asked the question. Is it more hateful now than ever before? Um, obviously it's a very difficult question to answer because you, you need to be able to measure these things. And it's actually quite hard to measure. In fact, uh, most countries across the planet, pretty bad measuring hate the UK is exceptional at it. Um, which makes us look terribly hateful on paper, but ultimately it's important, right? When you go in and start trying to break down where the hell does it come from? Absolutely. So, you know, we've got a hate crime rates, 10 times out of the U S Dana Lewis - Host : (00:33) Hi everyone. And welcome to backstory. I'm Dana Lewis, inland hate crimes are at record levels at scenes Asians attack, black Americans, victimized women. What on earth motivates someone to lash out at a person or their property in a school, on the street in the workplace, just because they have different skin color or a different accent or come from a different part of the country or the world is hatred hardwired into our brains, or is it learned? Prejudice is certainly instinctive dating back thousands of years. Why does the internet foster and spread hate? Did an American president help set the conditions for division and hatred? The FBI said in 2019 hate crimes in the United States Rose to their highest level among large American cities, New York city had the largest increase in reported hate crimes against Asians. Last year, according to the analysis of police data by the center of the California state university, San Bernardino, there were 28 such incidents in 2020, up from three in 2019, according to New York police department data on this backstory, we talked to the author of the science of hate and talk through the tipping point at the intersection of prejudice and hate traversing the globe and reaching back through time and a modern philosophers guide to understanding our prejudices and balancing our brain to steer away from hating anyone. Dana Lewis - Host : (02:08) Public discourse needs a recalibration. Dana Lewis - Host : (02:17) All right, professor Matt Williams has just written a book called the science of hate and he joins me now from, I believe you're in Cardiff Wales. Nice to meet you. I mean, let, let me give you a little better introduction. Um, because you're a professor of criminology at Cardiff university, you've conducted, you know, a lifetime of research on crime and speech, uh, the ethics of artificial intelligence and cyber crime. You've advised, uh, research on the, the UK home office, the ministry of justice, uh, Commonwealth and development office, the us department of justice and Google among others. And you also something called the hate lab, which I want to talk to you about a multi-million pound global hub for data and insight to monitor encounter online, hate speech and crime. And you've conducted the largest dedicated study of hate victimization in the UK. So how does it feel first of all, to be one of the foremost experts on hatred? I mean, it's, it's a pretty dark, Matt Williams: (03:21) It does. I feel exhausted after that long. I really done all that. Yes. Um, so thank you for that, that, that the introduction, um, that, that red light, my CV right there. Dana Lewis - Host : (03:34) Well, it's, it's important because it wasn't just some book that you decided to ride. I mean, this you've spent a career in this and you've probably decided, you know, I should put it together in between, uh, you know, I put some pages together and put it together in a book, but it's, it's important that it wasn't, uh, you know, you didn't write something about dogs and cats and then went on to the science of hatred. This has been a life's work. Right. So it's really worth listening to you. Matt Williams: (03:59) It has, yes. I mean, it, it it's been about 20 years, so at least, you know, hopefully a quarter of a lifetime. Um, and it's, it's been a lot of intensive sort of scientific, uh, sort of discoveries of my own work, but also reviewing other people's work. And it, I guess it stems from my victimization, um, as a young man who just finished his degree in sociology back in the late 1990s and to celebrate the, the, the, the end of the degree, I, I kind of went to London, celebrate, we pair up with friends, I should say. And, um, we were stepping out of a bar, um, and I was jumped by three young men. Um, I fell to the floor. I had a split lip. Um, wasn't entirely sure why that happened at the time, but as they were moving away from me, uh, one of them SPASS out a homophobic slip, and it became very clear to me then the bed Toms me because of the bar I was in, which was actually a gay bar. And I was a victim of a hate crime in that, in that very moment. First time it ever happened to me, I'd never had any kind of experience on that before up to that point. And it really stuck with me. I was going to become a journalist at that point. I was going to go on to do a master's in journalism. Um, Dana Lewis - Host : (05:12) So there's something positive in, in everything. And even if it was a terrible assault, at least you, you chose a wiser fee. Matt Williams: (05:18) Maybe it, maybe you could tell me, uh, but ultimately, you know, the, the nagging feeling I had in my mind, why did these three men target me in this way? What was it? Would they hate something about me? You know, was it, was it, was it my homosexuality that they, they hated so much that they felt like they had to seek me out, you know, and attack me. It was opportunity because, you know, you could tell that they had targeted that Bob, because then you can kinds of fantastic. Um, and ultimately that just kind of preoccupied my mind, it's such a long time. So how did you, how did you learn not to hate because out of that, one would think you were, you would have been gone from being a victim, to somebody being pretty angry yourself. That's a really good point. Uh, and it's some, sometimes the reactions you hate is, is the same attitude, emotion directed back at the perpetrator. Matt Williams: (06:11) Uh, we see that happen all the time we see with ISIS attack is terror attacks in the UK. We ended up, we ended up seeing lots of spikes in hate around the country because, uh, the individuals that feel targeted by the attack, it it's hackle, Western, Western ideals, et cetera, by ISIS. Um, is it direct, tack on their identity? And in turn, they go into the streets and attack people who look like the perpetrators, they got at the same kind of skin, they're possibly the same kind of dress. And they're taking their frustrations out on people who they think are like the attackers. So there's this part of weird cyclical process where hate, can breed more hate than it's kind of a cyclical. They call it a cyclical radicalization process sometimes. And you're seeing it now as far right. Attacks on mosques, for example, uh, but other kinds of attacks by the far right. Even down to the individual level, but I personally didn't hate, but I was angry. I was upset. Um, it was really destabilizing. I was anxious for a time. Sometimes I think the anxiety has never left me. I think I may have had a, of sort of PTSD like symptoms maybe, um, stemming from it. And it really did mess with my head for quite some time, so much so that I abandoned, wanted to become a journalist and then decided, Dana Lewis - Host : (07:29) So you've written this pretty incredible a book that I've spent the last couple of days, reading about learning, not to hate and how to fight hatred. So I thought maybe we could change the title of your book, but obviously I'm a journalist. I'm not very good at marketing. So I probably wouldn't sell as well. The question is, is hate hardwired or is it learned? And it, it seems to me, it's a bit of both. I would have said, it's just learned, but after flipping through your book, I mean, there are some chemical reactions. We have that hardwire to some extent prejudice, uh, which then can, if you fuel it, the wrong way becomes hatred. Matt Williams: (08:12) Yeah. Well, put it this way. When, when I was trying to figure out the difference between me as a victim and my perpetrators, I wanted there to be something concrete that explained the difference between me and them. Um, it w it would be what would've been comforting to me to have known that somehow there was something in their wiring that was fundamentally, uh, alien to me in some way. Uh, but what I found on that journey that trends are your journey of figuring out the science behind it all is in fact, there's, we have more in common than what separates us, you know, and what we have in common actually includes our, our biological wiring and our neurological wiring. So you're, you're correct in stating that there are elements to our biology and our neuro, uh, chemistry that, that prepare us to hate, but we aren't born hating. Matt Williams: (09:02) We do learn, Hey, we have to learn to hate, but when we're born, where were we born with the pizza base, if you like, and that pizza base essentially includes a predisposition to like people like ourselves, what that like ourselves is depends. It can be white and black can be straight or gay. It can be male or female, but it can also be fans of a certain kind of TV program goes as another, or it can be fans of a certain kind of pop star versus another, that grouping is arbitrary. And it entirely depends on the context, but whatever that group, it might be, be it race, sexual orientation, gender, or anything, uh, actually quite frivolous. We have a predisposition to liking people in, in those groups that we occupy it's called the, uh, the minimal group paradigm. It was designed by a psychologist called Henry Townsville. And ultimately you can be arbitrarily put into a group that's completely meaningless and still favor that group in terms of splitting resources between two Dana Lewis - Host : (10:04) It's, how you navigate safety. There's some situation, a very crude way of what journalists refer to a situational awareness, which has been passed onto us from security people that surround us, um, learning to see maybe a threat coming. Um, but it doesn't mean you hate no it's so that's, we got on the road until it poses a threat. Matt Williams: (10:30) So it's an evolved mechanism. You're right. It's an evolved mechanism. There's one reason why out of, out of, out of, so, out of how many species that were on the planet at any one point in time where the only human species, uh, in existence, right? So there are lots of species that didn't make it. Um, we made it and that's because we are expert threatened detectors. We, as homosapiens are threatened detecting machines, um, we needed that threat detection mechanism to survive. And that fact detection mechanism works best in groups. Groups allow you to cooperate, and they allow you to know who to trust. And when you are faced by a threat, that group bonding ensures that you don't get people fleeing and running away to save their own lives. They actually stay to fight for the group. So ultimately this sort of preference for the in-group is an innate characteristic, but it doesn't necessarily then mean that everybody who has this, which is everybody is hateful. We do have the capacity to hate. We all have the internal wiring, the pizza base, as I described the capacity to hate, but for it to get towards hatred, you need to add all those toppings on. And all those toppings come from media, parents, socialization, experiencing loss in life, uh, accelerating events like terror attacks all the way through to AI and the internet. And I call those in the book, the accelerants. Dana Lewis - Host : (11:57) And there's a lot, I mean, there's a lot in your book that, unfortunately, we're not going to have time to go into about the internet, but it's one of the, one of the reasons I wanted to interview with you because do an interview with you because it is driving so much of what sticking place. So here's one of the paragraphs in your book at the beginning, I think the current rate of the breakdown in social relations across the world is arresting. It is no coincidence that the storing hate crime figures are found in countries where the extreme right is rising. The trend is fueled by the internet revolution and its corruption by mass individuals, the far right and state actors, which is important because in your book, you talked about the fact that there are millions of tweets driven by Matt Williams: (12:42) States right now. Absolutely. And this is, this is the, the uniqueness of the situation, which we face. I'm constantly asked the question. Is it more hateful now than ever before? Um, obviously it's very difficult question to answer because you, you need to be able to measure these things. And it's actually quite hard to measure heat. In fact, um, most countries across the planet are pretty bad. Measuring hate. The UK is exceptional assets, um, which makes us look terribly hateful on paper, but ultimately we just Dana Lewis - Host : (13:12) It's important, right? When you go in and start trying to break down where the hell does it come from? Matt Williams: (13:16) Absolutely. So, you know, we've got a hate crime rate, 10 times out of the U S which is hard to believe given the differences in populations and the nature of division in those countries. Um, ultimately yes, accounting is, is, is, is a fool's errand in some ways, because you're never going to capture the true amount of hate. Why is that? Dana Lewis - Host : (13:34) I mean, I, and I understand the hate lab takes a look at a lot of this traffic on the, on the digital space, but why is the UK 10 times what the us is? I didn't, I didn't realize that Matt Williams: (13:44) Primarily because, uh, we've had a lot of legislation come in and since around 1998, um, which specifically recognizes certain forms of hate crime against, uh, uh, uh, for race, for sexual orientation, for disabilities, uh, transgender identity and so on. Um, what that's allowed us to do is record it, um, from relatively early on compared to some other countries. But the definition of it is particularly interesting. It's called a victim-centered definition, which means if a victim or a witness fields they've been targeted because of their identity, then ultimately it must be recorded as such, you know, the police can't come in and say, well, I don't think this is a hate crime because it's not up to them. Now that creates an interesting dilemma because let's say, say, uh, last year we had 106,000 hate crimes recorded in the UK compared to the U S is 7,300, which sounds crazy. Um, but over the 1,106,000, only around about 10% of those got to the crown prosecution service and got taken through to the courts. And only around 78% of those eventually got prosecuted for hate crime. So we've got like 5% of that, 106,000 actually get successfully prosecuted. And that's partly because we allow victims to say, they feel they've been attacked by hate boy when it comes to the evidence very often it might be lacking. So they may not be a verifiable evidence that, that, Dana Lewis - Host : (15:17) And in fact, most countries don't even have, they don't even defy defined crimes as hate crimes. They don't even attempt that legislation, right? Matt Williams: (15:25) Oh, Japan doesn't even bother, you know, so interestingly Japan thinks it's a relatively homogenous, uh, ethnically homogenous country, but it's not, it's actually quite diverse. And because of this, this, this strange insistence by, by their government, that it's a, it's a very relatively harmonious on the margin there's culture that they don't need hate crime legislation, um, which is a peculiar position to actually take. But ultimately, yeah, I mean, most countries do something, uh, but there's a lot left over that actually don't record a hate crime at all. Um, Dana Lewis - Host : (16:00) Record hate crime in terms of, I think it's important to record it because then you're able to deal with it. You're able to track it. You're able to understand the phenomenon that's taking place in your society, but is it important to prosecute it as hate crime? Matt Williams: (16:16) I think so. I mean, I mean, legislation, when it's introduced, it does more than just kind of the practical legal stuff. It, it communicates to your population that the state standards are this kind of behavior. It's a communication tool as well as a practical tool. So when a hate crime law comes into power, I mean, we've got the, we've got as agenda means being discussed in parliament currently. Um, and there's a reason to follow that. Um, ultimately what it's communicating though to women is that we will not tolerate this kind of behavior anymore as a state. And we recognized the finishes problem of, uh, sort of anti anti women rhetoric, uh, sexism, et cetera, as it permeates through society. So ultimately it's a communication tool as well as something that might actually be useful in a court of law. Now, if we do end up legislating for gender based hate crime, my suspicion is we won't have that many cases before the courts with our son, but we won't have that many because I dare say the, the, the bar that they'll introduce will be quite high as it is for most hate crimes, actually. Matt Williams: (17:27) And so what you're left wondering, well, what's the point in doing this? And very often it is, it is this communication device. It's going to say we won't stand for this anymore and we will actually legislate against it. But when it comes to, you know, does it have teeth, most take college station, doesn't have teeth. And, and only in the extreme cases of the acts of mass murder and terrorism, do we, do we see, uh, the hate crime legislation being used was full of fat. So in the U S for example, um, the big difference in numbers is mainly because the police don't record it as well. In certain States, they don't return their, their, their statistics to the FBI when they're asked to, um, and ultimately people don't report their cases to the police. We don't perceive maybe that they'd been a victim of fate, or they think it's a lost cause what's the point in reporting it because the police were a racist organization. Anyway, I'm just going to get secondary victimization. If I go to the cops and say, I've just been attacked because of the color of my skin. So there's other reasons behind why those numbers are lower and they do exist for the UK too. But the main reason is that the victim centered definition, Dana Lewis - Host : (18:30) I've been scrolling through my notes from your book. And I can't find what I wanted to find, but tell me if I got the wrong impression that even when you define it, even when you call it out, um, sometimes you will see more of it, not less of it Matt Williams: (18:46) In terms of reporting, or do you mean in terms of, uh, just, uh, me and you seeing something on the streets, and I'm saying something about it Dana Lewis - Host : (18:53) In terms of reporting it, I guess, and trying to fight it online as well. Matt Williams: (18:57) So, I mean, obviously if you, if you have a recording mechanisms in place, you're going to see more in the statistics. Ultimately there's, there's three ways in which this happens either you have an increased amount of perpetration, and sometimes if you legislate against a certain kind of activity that can actually frustrate people who have prejudices. So if you legislate against, uh, gender-based hate crime, you may find those with extreme attitudes towards women actually perpetrating more hate crimes. Dana Lewis - Host : (19:30) Those of us with a tolerant mindset can become more liberal when challenged by hate speech. And those of us within tolerant mindset can become more conservative when challenged by counter hate speech. Matt Williams: (19:43) Yes, yes. So ultimately it kind of builds on what I was just saying there. And ultimately what that essentially means is that when we call that out online, or we call it out on the street or in the pub, for example, wherever it may be, individuals can react in a relatively negative way. They, they're not going to change their minds immediately, unless they're, unless they're kind of escalating towards a more extreme position, when you might call them, you might call those individuals, you know, they haven't made up their mind yet whether or not to go down the dark path of, of the far right. And, and so they're vulnerable to intervention, but if you get somebody who's pretty entrenched in their beliefs, um, and you know, to be, to speak about this kind of stuff in public and online, potentially you have to be pretty much on that sort of way towards radicalization to some extent then, because you've invested so much in that belief. Matt Williams: (20:36) And because your in group now consists of a lot of people that share those same thoughts to have that challenge is actually quite destabilizing. So your first to that is defend my position, defend my moral standpoint, my viewpoint defend my fellow, my fellow in group, in a sense. So that initial kind of kind of speech can actually generate more hate speech as they tried to defend their position, but over time, and, and it being used potentially in ways that might undermine that, that process. For example, if it's, if it appears to be one of their own saying it to them, it can start to make them question their beliefs. So if they're white male, um, if another white male challenges them, that that can have a greater effect than if it's a black female challenging them, for example. So if so, if it's someone from their in-group telling them they're wrong, then they, they do tend to think twice. Matt Williams: (21:31) And this is, this is a really interesting finding in, in terms of terrorism. Uh, the best way to talk down a terrorist is not to get the, the negotiator from, from the local police service or whatever it might be to talking to donors to get one of their own, to talk them down. So it's to get somebody who is like them, who has maybe being a terrorist in the past to actually come onto the scene to try and talk them down. If you're in that situation, that's the only way really that's the only effective way you can kind of talk someone out of that position. Dana Lewis - Host : (22:00) That's complicated. Isn't it? When, when you, when you start getting into the white supremacy online, or, you know, trying to get people out of Q Anon, um, complicated analysis found according to your book that the 2016 election of Donald Trump was associated with one of the greatest increases in hate crimes in recent American history. Why is that because of his comments, like the China flu and, you know, white supremacist rallies saying they're all good people, and is it because of his rhetoric or, or was he feeding off something else that was larger than himself? Even? Matt Williams: (22:37) So the interesting thing about, about when Trump came to the presidency in 2016, during his presidency on average, Americans became more tolerant of immigrants, believe it or not. So if you were to measure across the whole of the state and were random sample, the findings suggested an increased, increased level of tolerance. So what we're talking about here is a particular pockets of Americans that are, I would call this activated by Trump's. So these are individuals who have prejudices already, um, and Trump allows them to release their prejudices for periods of time. He is saying, it's okay to feel how you feel. You may be frustrated because you've lost a job. You may be frustrated because you've lost your home. You maybe it's a straight too, because at the same time that happens, lots of immigrants have come into your town and cities, they have jobs and homes. Matt Williams: (23:30) You feel somehow that they are to blame, and I'm not telling you you're allowed to feel like that I'm the most powerful man in the world. So as soon as that toxic mix comes together, certain individuals feel like they can start releasing those frustrations to hate speech and potentially attacks on the ground. So the, the evidence suggests and there's, most of this research has been done by economists. So they, they, they, they actually control for a dizzying array of variables we're looking at, and they try to, they try to, they're trying to find reasons to explain it other than Trump, before going direct, but trying to prove the Trump was, was the blame. And so they try to try to disprove the hypothesis, you know, with, with all these various measures. But what they found in the final model was that they couldn't rule out the role of Trump and his ascendance, the white house, and to make it even more convincing, they actually tied, you know, almost week by week, every time he mentioned something anti-Muslim or anti Hispanic, there was a corresponding increase in hate crimes on the ground. Matt Williams: (24:34) And they introduced this really interesting, uh, control instrument, uh, which was, you know, when did he go golfing? Because when he's golfing, he doesn't tweet that often. So ultimately what they're saying is every time he goes golfing, actually we we've, we ended up finding the hate crimes actually going down. Uh, and so it was an interesting moving, but ultimately, yeah, I mean, we, we've also found the same with Brexit, um, and the effect that had to be UK, um, and it clearly had the determining role. It wasn't just more people reporting it. Wasn't just people, uh, are the police recording it better? There were people, the more people on the streets perpetrating, how do you feel about COVID Dana Lewis - Host : (25:14) Walk down and now time spent online feeding into, you know, this explosion of hatred online, because people are just getting drawn down these little rabbit holes and spending a heck of a lot more time. Matt Williams: (25:29) Absolutely. Well, as a criminologist, this was like some great global experiment for us in some ways, because in no, that period in history, have we had the opportunity to study a social phenomenon like crime and lock everyone in their homes for three months to see what happens. You know, it was actually an interesting opportunity for science acknowledging the horror of COVID and the deaths that have occurred across the planet, obviously. Um, but at the same time, it, it, it, it, we turned our attention to what other effects it was having beyond illness. Um, we did see crimes on the streets go down quite a bit. So burglary theft, the kinds of crimes you'd expect to go down, went down, people weren't coming into contact with offenders or their property. Wasn't coming into contact with offenders and people weren't leaving their home. So they will no homes to verbal, but conversely, we saw this great crime displacement. So instead of the great crime drop that we expected crime was displaced online. So instead of, uh, burglaries and thefts, we saw a massive hike in frauds, but also a significant increase in online hate speech. Dana Lewis - Host : (26:39) And what about now, suddenly people are coming out more, are you worried that that displacement, um, was, was kind of, you know, like the boiling pot that, that somebody tried to keep the lid on and suddenly now in Atlanta, you know, we see eight people shot in, in these massage parlors in less than a week later in Boulder, Colorado, um, the shooting in the supermarket of 10 people. And it seems like it's suddenly has exploded this violence certainly in America. Matt Williams: (27:11) Well, those two examples, obviously they, they, they may have happened anyway, but, um, we did see it the end of the first lockdown on the UK, an incredibly large spike in race, hate crimes on the streets. So it looks, if you look at the graph, it actually looks like a lockdown ends. And then we get a massive, significant spike in racing on the streets. Now it's hard to say if that was frustrations, we also have black lives matter. Don't forget, uh, during the end of lockdown, the first lockdown in the UK, which could have, uh, influenced that spike. But ultimately it does, there is a story to tell there potentially about frustrations that were, uh, being, being vented online and mental health yeah. And mental health. And then, and then it expanding onto the streets. So for example, we, we found a 650% increase in anti-Chinese, uh, tweets, uh, after Trump first used the term, the Chinese virus back last March, um, astonishing rise. I mean, some of the things we're saying were truly horrific. Dana Lewis - Host : (28:17) I mean, the assaults that have taken place on the streets. Matt Williams: (28:21) Absolutely. So it seems like what's been happening online, uh, during lockdown is now manifesting on the streets. And, you know, ultimately I hate crimes occur because of a perception of threat. Usually, as we talked about earlier on, so ultimately there are two kinds of threats. You've got your realistic threat, which is the economic fat potentially, and then symbolic threat, which is a threat to culture and identity. Um, COVID-19 like other kinds of threats as a health threat, but ultimately it's a health threat, uh, which has been weaponized and racialized by people like Donald Trump. Um, combining those two things together, results in this overall sense of anxiety and fear by some people on the only way they can vent dime-sized interference by targeting in this case, Chinese people. Dana Lewis - Host : (29:10) I want to talk to you about just before I let you go. Some of the solutions that you talk about in the book, because I mean, while you do lead us through a lot of dark corners of hatred, there are, you know, there is some light at the end where you talk about possible solutions, but the biggest problem thirsting for the largest solution, again comes back to digital media right now. And I'm struck by some of the studies that you present in there, some of the numbers, um, it it's, it's depressing how prevalent hate is, um, and how difficult with these bots that, you know, give us our echo chambers of, of what they think we might want to hear to engage us more, uh, for longer periods of time in the end, you know, PR dish out more hate and more hate. And, uh, th that's it's, it doesn't seem like there's a heck of a lot of good news right now about what's happening by the big tech companies to try and reign this in. Matt Williams: (30:13) I mean, Facebook tells us they removed 81 million, uh, hateful tweets last year, um, mostly by automated automated methods and moderation. Um, that, that is almost 10 times what they were moving four years ago. Um, so they use that probably a fraction of what's on there Dana Lewis - Host : (30:32) To the point that as you even note in the book members of Facebook that were assigned to curate some of this bad material, I mean, had to be treated for PTSD and in the ensuite Facebook and had an out of court settlement. I mean, it's that it's that it's a toilet. It is that bad. What people have to even professionals engaged in trying to monitor that and curate the nasty stuff off them. Matt Williams: (30:56) So I think, I think Facebook's kind of transparency reports and the other companies do this too, or an attempt to disarm the problem in a way and indicate to us that they're doing something, but they're not doing enough. As you said on Facebook, this will be over a billion posts every day, Twitter there's over 500 million tweets a day. Um, God knows how many YouTube posts that are in terms of comments and so on. Even though hate, it's a small fraction of all the communication, maybe 1%, but even 1% of 5 billion is too much to even comprehend. But ultimately the internet is the accelerant of hate that I think separates now for when I was attacked 20 years ago. Ultimately, what we're saying is, is hate on steroids. If you're kids being weaponized in some ways, uh, as you said, state actors are in the game of dividing us. Um, it's, it, it makes sense in a way to divide the population to distract them Dana Lewis - Host : (32:03) Reason, we'd better get a handle on this because it's, you know, democracies Matt Williams: (32:07) A hundred percent. I mean, the bot issue is quite separate in some ways from the alone sort of Wolf individuals spreading the bot stuff really does need to be tackled by Facebook, Twitter, and so on and so forth. They really have to tackle that themselves. It's really something that we can't, we can't do much about that's problem that can be solved, but it will take, uh, Facebook and Twitter to do that. They have removed a lot of accounts by the Russian internet research agency and, and some by China and some of the middle East. Uh, but they've got to keep on top of that. Um, I think, I think the election meddling scandal obviously sped things up in terms of dealing with interference from state actors, and that we're seeing a more coordinated response by Facebook and Twitter, but they could go further. But for me, um, it's not, we can't let Facebook and Twitter, the big tech giants Mark their own homework anymore. We've allowed them to grade their own homework for far too long. They tell us they're doing really well, but what's happening in society would say something quite different. So ultimately we need civil society responses to this. We need to actually become more responsible as citizens. And for example, become what I call hate crime or hate speech, uh, online first responders. Dana Lewis - Host : (33:28) No, you know, I'm just, I'm just looking at the, the end of the book where you talk about that, because that struck me in a very personal way, because I've covered as I was a crime reporter. And that's where I started my career in Toronto. And I covered the war, you know, uh, extradition of one of the, the first Nazi war criminals in Canada and, and the stories of, of Jews who had been locked in, in, uh, in, in those camps and had lost loved ones. And this whole idea that you become hate incident, first responders, when we see it, you have to call it out. And I tell my kids that it's like, you don't, you don't even giggle in an embarrassed way when somebody uses a certain word to describe a race or religion or an ethnic group, you call it out and say, I don't, I don't stand for that. And I don't accept that. Matt Williams: (34:18) Absolutely. And you know, if we were in, um, a pub, a bar and you heard someone say something, um, to another person because of their race or their, or their sexual orientation or their agenda, you call it out. I mean, in most situations I've been in people actually call that stuff out increasingly, um, maybe 20 years ago it would be, it would be ignored, but increasingly people do call it up. So we're no longer being these kind of, um, inactive bystanders we are now. So we take an active role in establishing around this, what the codes of decency are. You know, this is, this is the pub I come to and it's my local. And you don't say that in this park, you're not welcoming with those opinions. Why aren't we doing that on Facebook? Why aren't we doing that on social media, Twitter, et cetera. Matt Williams: (35:09) I think, I think some people do, man. I think some people do I do. I think some people do and ultimately we all need to be engaging more readily, you know, and I think I'm trying to think where where's the online space that I would look to see where this kind of self-governance actually works quite well. And there's not many of them, but one of them that does seem to come across to me that works quite well is Wikipedia. So if you think about Wikipedia is a self-governing system, um, you know, it doesn't work for profits. It relies on people like me and you for its success. Um, ultimately if we govern it, we have standards around what is acceptable and what is not on, on Wikipedia. If false information ends up being uploaded, it's removed within minutes. Usually, um, this disinformation doesn't stay up there for long, ultimately because we are policing it. We have this kind of virtual volunteer police service that kind of check on stuff on a regular basis to make sure that it's fact checking, correct. It's got a source. Why can't we use a similar kind of responsibility as similar kind of system to police Facebook and Twitter, et cetera. It works for Wikipedia and other digital comments, but why aren't we seeing unfold on, on, on social media and what generally, Dana Lewis - Host : (36:33) You also talk a little about conscious effort to manage yourself. You know, when you see somebody different from you, um, it can take the form of prejudice or hatred, and you have to be conscious of what, of how you're thinking about a particular person, uh, and then manage that. Matt Williams: (36:50) Absolutely. We, we are all prejudiced. I mean, even the most woke of us to use a term that's quite popular currently, even the most, most of us are still prejudiced in ways that we don't fully appreciate or understand, Oh, this is prejudice, not against, um, you know, things like race and sexual orientation. It can be things like age, alternative subcultures, uh, it can be anything. And we have a particular viewpoint stored away in our brains that we access when we need to access them. And usually that's fine frequently, but these are, these are often crude bits of information. There are bits of information that we've stored from childhood, et cetera, from exposure to culture, but also exposure to our peers and our parents and so on and so forth because our brains are not, they're marvelous, but they're not that great at processing all the information out there in the world, they create mental shortcuts and mental shortcuts. So what I want get us through the day, it's how we navigate the world around us. But the problem with mental shortcuts is that ultimately they fail us in terms of trying to understand other cultures as completely as we should. And the only way to get around that actually from, from my experience is to engage with people different from us. But when you, Dana Lewis - Host : (38:07) I find it difficult socially, I mean, not socially, but on social media, because I have to say there was a moment on social media where I just kind of, because I don't want to be surrounded by people who hate that. I purged a lot of my social media in terms of certain political group, um, that I thought was stirring hatred and was denying free vote and democracy. And so I kind of purged a lot of that out of my, because I just thought I didn't want to have that in my social circle at the same time, you know, I was trying to tell myself sometimes what you have, you know, you have to listen to why they think that way, and you have to try to understand how they got there. Uh, but it's hard work. Matt Williams: (38:54) What you, what you did though, is exactly what everyone else tends to do. So ultimately when you're exposed to all viewpoints, you kind of recoil in horror Dana Lewis - Host : (39:04) Depends how alternative they are. Right. I mean, I, it's just not somebody had a different political view, but I mean, if it's really like a hatred, uh, view or in any way smells of sexism or racism. Yeah. I mean, I'll, I'll push the unfriend unfriend button in a second. Matt Williams: (39:19) Absolutely. And, and that's a natural reaction. They might do the same to you. You know, anyone who was overly liberal, they might be, I can't listen to that stuff anymore. Experiments have shown every time we are exposed to these really alternative viewpoints, we get more entrenched in our own. Um, so, you know, bursting your filter bubble. Isn't as straightforward as we might like to think, right. Just being exposed to alternative viewpoints actually doesn't achieve much, certainly online. So when does that leave us? Well, I've spent the last Dana Lewis - Host : (39:48) Let's end with that, but I think that's really important because it does this just get a tighter and more vicious circle or tell me where you see some, some light at the end of the tunnel in the science of hate, which is which as I said, could be entitled learning, not to hate. Matt Williams: (40:07) Absolutely. I do have faith in humanity as a, as a, as a scientist. So even though I spend most of my time looking at the darkest parts of human behavior, um, I am quite an optimistic guy. So that says something right. I, you know, that's not my personality, I don't think, but ultimately Dana Lewis - Host : (40:25) It probably is your personal gain. Matt Williams: (40:28) You know, I spent 20 years trying to figure out why it was attacked that day. And at the end of the book, I say, do you know what? I've got more in common with the guys that attack me than what separates us? You know, there are things that happened to them that, that my experience diverges with, but ultimately had, I experienced some of the stuff that they had. I could be committing the hate act instead of researching hatred. And it's, it's all about the experiences that people go through. And once you understand that it's a deeply human experience, what the haters do and what the people who challenged the haters do, then you understand that there is capacity for change. And I think ultimately, um, as, as, as a human race, we get it right most of the time. And I believe in the wisdom of the crowd, I believe that, you know, when we see hate speech online, there's more people that attack it than support it usually. Matt Williams: (41:24) Um, and that's the really bad stuff. Um, but ultimately when it comes down to it, I think being encouraged to challenge your own preconceptions of other groups, and that includes other political groups who may disagree with being challenged, to think like them put yourselves in their shoes, truly understand where their frustrations come from, et cetera. It humanizes them in a way that we might otherwise not, not regularly do, but also helps us understand where their, their process is coming from. And ultimately, I think once you understand it, which is what I've been trying to do, you can start to challenge it in more nuanced ways. Dana Lewis - Host : (41:59) Yes. I mean the, but there are limitations, right? I mean, if you were talking about, if you were talking about Nazi Germany in the late thirties and forties, I mean that, that tolerance has its limitation, where at a certain point you have to reject them Matt Williams: (42:15) Egypt. You do. And I think we, we categorize sort of hate profiles. Um, so we have kind of the mission offenders, the ones you're talking about that these make it, their life's goal to hate. Um, they, they engage in what I call the pull behavior. They pull people towards them to attack an extremities. So that's kind of the higher end of the hate spectrum. If you like the others engage in what I call push behaviors, they push people away instead of pulling them towards to harm. And this push away, there's more kind of like a deep prejudice potentially, um, going right down to like prejudice. I mean, to be a retaliatory or defensive haters. So they, they retaliate against what they perceive as an attack on themselves or their group. All they defend in terms of, if someone invades that territory and they feel threatened by that they, they defend that territory. And these, these haters don't tend to be full-timers and part-timers, they've got other things to do with their lives and what they tend to be are the ones that you can actually change their minds, the mission haters, very difficult to change their minds. You see it happen, but not as often, Dana Lewis - Host : (43:26) Are you worried? And I don't mean to cut you off, but are you worried about the mission haters being pushed to new and fringe platforms rather than being called out on mainstream platforms as is now happening in America? Matt Williams: (43:40) Absolutely. Well, most of, most of our research five years ago was on Twitter, um, because it was all happening. So all the hates seem to be there. Uh, but he got his act together, introduced hate speech policies, um, started to reject people. Um, they've kind of been displaced. Um, they've gone to other platforms they've gone to parlor before we shut down. They'd gone to gab for CHAM, uh, bits you'd telegram. And so you've got these internet backwaters now where all this kind of murkiness is, is kind of going on and you've just got like-minded people around you. You've got anyone challenging your thoughts and you just, it's this kind of radicalization rabbit Warren, as you, as you said yourself earlier. So what we see is just a moving of the somewhere else, and it's not really addressing the problem on Twitter, Twitter, just though we'd rather not have these folks on our platform. Matt Williams: (44:38) Um, so let's just, let's just ban them instead. A more progressive, uh, solution would be let's deal with this issue by somehow engaging with these individuals to see where these frustrations are coming from. But of course it's not Twitter's responsibility to do that. Um, so they did the kind of thing that made most sense economically for them. But yeah, the one good thing about maybe a project for the heat lab, maybe. Yeah. Maybe, but one of the, one of the things that is done is really pushed them all into one place. So we now know where to look. We know where to look. We know where to look on telegram on pitch shoot and so on and so forth. They're all in one place. So ultimately you get this kind of sustained level of intolerance on these platforms on Twitter. It used to go up and down ebb and flow and flow around events and so on. Matt Williams: (45:25) But now on, on bit shoots and for channel, et cetera, it's a constant level of hates and it's pretty high. Um, and, and I did, it does worry me because the finishing schools for the mission haters, they, they tend to be these spaces where, you know, you can be radicalized in under 90 days and who knows how many other far-right terrorists are going to emerge from these sites. I know for a fact that, you know, uh, Twitter and Facebook are very, very quick to remove all ISIS terrorist, propaganda off their sites, a great success story, in fact, but they're not as being proactive as proactive. And certainly they're, the more fringe sites are not doing very little when it comes to this kind of radicalization. So it is a very one-sided, it seems in terms of what they're capable of doing and what they're willing to Dana Lewis - Host : (46:18) There were not very good on white supremacy is what you were trying to say. Matt Williams: (46:21) That's pretty much what I'm saying. Dana Lewis - Host : (46:23) All right, professor Matt Williams, um, and the author of science of hate and, uh, Matt, great to talk to you. And I, I think it's a really important book to understand your own prejudices and how you process them and rebalanced them. And, and then also even, you know, even how I talked, I was talking to my kids about hate and where we get these ideas from. And, uh, it's, it's well worth reading and, you know, better you than me spending my career learning about it. I think it's heavy lifting, but great job. Thank you very much. All right. Todd Mei is a professor of philosophy and he's been on backstory before and we welcome him back. Hi Todd. Hi Dana. Thank you for having me. So I, uh, just so people know you, I mean, you're very experienced and you've taught at Kent university and then now you're in the U S helping businesses make a difference with respect to their vision values, ethos, and culture. Um, and, uh, are you engaging with business lot right now Dana Lewis - Host : (47:30) Or is it difficult? Prof Todd Mei: (47:31) It's very difficult. Obviously businesses have other concerns, um, with respect to their own success and viability, uh, during the pandemic and with different kinds of economic constraints. I do have one client I'm working closely with that takes, uh, personal development of its employees very seriously. So that's been fun and I'm trying to roll out a new project with them. That's based on a kind of podcast type of interview, uh, for the employees to see where they are, how they're progressing to get a better sense of their life as a story that they can reflect on. So I'll see, Dana Lewis - Host : (48:01) Think businesses now as they're emerging, as they're emerging from lockdowns and from, you know, I mean, lockdowns, as we talked about just before we started this interview, that there are a lot different than the United States, depending on where you are in a different times, they've been stricter, but in general, people have had to work from home and they've been, you know, not, not able to socialize and not be part of the normal workplace fabric. So how do you advise businesses to bring people back into those kinds of corporate structures? Um, even if it's hard to do it physically. Prof Todd Mei: (48:40) Yeah. So if any kind of physical meetings precluded, then obviously everyone has heard of zoom fatigue. And if the only way to keep employees on the same page with one another is through a zoom meeting, the companies really have to change the, the fabric and the spirit of a zoom meeting, and often having an external moderator to introduce certain kinds of questions or exercises helps out quite a bit. And sometimes those exercises can be slightly related to work. Sometimes have nothing to do with work whatsoever. They can be tune building exercises, or they can be simple puzzle exercises such as, uh, what was your favorite film when you were a child and would you still like it today? If you had to watch it again, and that generates a discussion and co-workers get to see employees in a different way. And what's key to these kinds of exercises is not just the kind of water cooling exercise that's talked about, but also the visibility of employees with one another, making sure that when an individual worker is doing his or her own tasks, uh, the other coworkers are visible, not just in terms of being a coworker, but in terms of a safe, psychological space of having a open door, someone to go to if something's gone wrong, or there's a question. Prof Todd Mei: (49:50) So those, uh, external exercises or those externally facilitated exercises can help build that kind of that trust and comradery amongst a group Dana Lewis - Host : (49:59) Corporation I'd want to have taught me in there. So, especially now, I mean, people are spending so much time, um, isolated and on the internet. Um, and philosophically, do you have kind of a, a Bible for people, maybe a short one where you say, you know, this is how you balance your head when you're going on social, because you, you can't dive too deep in that pool without also coming to the surface, taking a big breath and stepping back from it. Prof Todd Mei: (50:36) Yes, I think what's key is identifying safe, psychological spaces and knowing what kind of communities you're engaging with. So you have to have those kinds of social media communities, communities where at issue is not going to be something political or potentially upsetting. It's going to be something you're interested in from, in terms of a sport or hobbies. So for example, I love wind surfing and the two wind surfing groups I belong to on Facebook are absolutely positive encouraging. Uh, and people are sharing their experiences and everyone's talking about different wind surfing conditions, uh, sharing advice and so forth. And then of course, if people want to engage with political discussions, especially on Twitter or Facebook, it's very important to remember that most people are just reacting as opposed to considering what's being said. So, for example, I wrote a recent blog on the issue of slavery reparation in the United States, which is a hot topic. Prof Todd Mei: (51:26) And I introduced the notion that there are different kinds of justice as we can speak about. So it's not just reparation the other ways of going about recognizing what's the harmful effects that have, that have resulted from slavery. And the threads on Facebook were very interesting. I think maybe one person, uh, by virtue of their comment showed evidence that they had read the blog. Everyone else was just weighing in on what they thought was good or bad. And that was it. And so I think one has to recognize when those are, those are the statements and just really divorce oneself from that, and try not to get emotionally attached to them. Dana Lewis - Host : (51:56) Philosophically, how do you look at hatred, um, in the workplace? It, it probably is more difficult to identify. Uh, how do you look at hatred online? How do you look at hatred on the street? I mean, they're all extensions of one another. Prof Todd Mei: (52:14) Yeah. So the, uh, there's no agreement amongst philosophers, of course. But one way of looking at hatred is kind of in a very neutral way. So hatred is just described as an effective orientation of the person. So a mood emotion, or a feeling, and that that orientation can be virtuous or vicious. So for example, if I have a hatred of bigotry or a hatred of misogyny, we would see that as a good thing, because we would be sensitive to those situations where somebody was being disadvantaged by the actions or words of another, when hatred becomes directed for the wrong reasons, then that's when it becomes problematic. And so philosophers are trying a lot of philosophies have different approaches. My own approach comes from within a branch of philosophy called hermeneutics, which is interested in the art of understanding and interpretation, dialogue, and texts. And what the hermeneutic philosophers like to do is isolate what it is that problematizes hatred or problem with ties is the, uh, emotional orientation of the person. Prof Todd Mei: (53:14) So in other words, something's coming in or interfering or intervening before the emotion is taking effect and directing that emotion in the wrong way, for whatever reasons, there might be good or bad reasons. And these philosophers talk about prejudice, not prejudice in a pejorative sense of being a bad bias, but prejudice as a cognitive or existential, uh, aspect of a person. So you have, uh, hate as an emotion and you have prejudice as a cognitive orientation. And what they mean by that is everyone has prejudice. Everyone has a particular way of understanding the world, which one's inherited through one's family, one's history when Colt one's culture. And there are certain prejudices that we're aware of and certain ones that we're not, but these prejudices are what allow us to have traction on the world. They provide the window or the Vista by which we can relate to others. And the issue for hermeneutics Speaker 6: (54:03) Is sometimes a very narrow window, unfortunately, Prof Todd Mei: (54:06) That's right. And so the issue is being able to have a method or a way to identify when a prejudice is vicious, and also to be aware of the fact that there are prejudices you will not be aware of, and you may never be aware of. And those, I think a lot of people know by now in terms of cognitive biases, those things are just operative. Um, and it takes a lot for us to recognize that, Speaker 6: (54:29) Like, what would be an example of like a real life example of that, Prof Todd Mei: (54:32) Of a cognitive biases, there's simple ones in which, um, if you go through cognitive bias training, they show you various slides, which seem like, uh, visual illusions, but your brain will want to make things look familiar to you. So you might see shapes, and you might think that all the shapes are the same size that they're showing you. And in fact, one's bigger than the other, but your brain is trying to make that scene look familiar. Now in, in a social context, what will happen is that, um, your brain will try to cope with what's unfamiliar. And this is the big problem with prejudice and hatred, and so wants to make things fit. And so you might just be having an interview with another person who might be of a different gender, race, or religion, whatever it might be, and you just block out or don't notice the differences. Prof Todd Mei: (55:14) And so you treat them, uh, in a way that you think you ought to treat them as the same kind of person, which could be good or bad. Uh, and I just saw a recent, uh, show, uh, the view where they had an, uh, an AI professor talking about how there can be prejudice within AI programs, where, uh, someone who's white might be programming, automatic cars, self-driving cars, and they don't, uh, they don't look at the program to make sure that it takes into account. People have darker colored skin. So when the car is driving around, it may not notice people have dark skin and may cause an accident, but it wouldn't be a good thing. Now, it wouldn't be a good thing. So the idea is recognizing that prejudices can be hidden. And then when you, when you encounter something unfamiliar, that is when a prejudice is going to be most active, because you're going to try to find a way to either accommodate what's unfamiliar or create a distance with what's unfamiliar. And so those are the moments where there can be a lot of misunderstanding on this reading of what the person is doing or what it, what an object is. And that's when you can get emotions that can exacerbate the situation. If you can't quite understand what's unfamiliar, that could emerge in terms of irritation or just because Dana Lewis - Host : (56:24) It's unfamiliar, it doesn't mean it should be a threat. You shouldn't necessarily process it as a threat, right? I mean, situational awareness might alert you to something that is different, but that doesn't mean that you should automatically put that in the threat file and then react with prejudice, react eventually with anger and maybe physical anchor Prof Todd Mei: (56:44) That's right. And there are different techniques, props self-help techniques that one can cultivate to help with that. But if you look at a lot of indigenous cultures, they actually have certain ethical practices or techniques to help with this. And if you look at just the Abrahamic phase, so, uh, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, one of their main tenants is the tenant of hospitality. And this, if you view it from the, from the perspective of what's unfamiliar, I know religion goes both ways, but if you look at the, if you look at the hospitality is a virtue, then you can see the way which if it's cultivated in the right way, when one encounters a stranger, or indeed in certain tales, the enemy, or the person with one with whom one doesn't get along with, then if hospitality comes first, one must admit them into the personal space or the house and treat them as a guest. And those are the kinds of things that are very interesting. If cultures can look into their own historical resources and maybe find ways in which they can bring this to the fore of how to cope with encounter and identify things that are unfamiliar and not push them aside, but find productive and constructive ways of engaging with them. I think we'd be a lot better off. Dana Lewis - Host : (57:50) How do you take that into a real life situation? Like on social media where, you know, maybe hospitality might be not excluding that person or deleting that person, but maybe including them in conversation or in your social group. Um, even if you're unsure exactly who they are or what they represent. But I mean, th the idea is just kind of being open, right. And not, and, and, and being curious about other people, is that it? Prof Todd Mei: (58:22) Yes. And I don't think social media is very good at cultivating that in its current form and it conceals it. So I think what we have to have regardless is a stronger foundation that stands outside is not connected to social media. And these are the things, everyday conversation and stories. There are two ways that come to mind. One is learning different ways of listening and engaging with people. And this often works best in person because in person you're accountable, you're face to face. I mean, that's very difficult right now in the pandemic, but, um, it's something I think that provides a good measure. And, um, it's something that a lot in negotiators and psychologists talk about. And so when one's engaged in one of these conversations that matters, uh, perhaps one can switch to this mode of, instead of offering a reaction or response where one tries to convince the other side that they're wrong, or that, that oneself is right to simply engage in the mode of listening and asking questions, as opposed to asserting of view or judgements. Prof Todd Mei: (59:23) And through those questions, they can be critical of course, but they should be constructive. The idea is that you don't come to the decision who's right or wrong. The aim is not to find out who's right or wrong, the aims to find some kind of common ground. And if you think about when negotiators, you very skilled negotiators that are the two parties are coming to opposite ends, skilled negotiators, won't come out and start arguing the other party down. They will try to figure out what exactly the other party's position is to ask questions, to see where they can actually meet up. And once they can meet up, then things can, then things can move forward. The other cultural, the other cultural resource there's of course are our positive constructive narratives. And, uh, the, uh, professor Richard Keirney who's at Boston college runs this thing called, um, I forgot the name now it's, it's not Facebook, but it's a pro it's. Prof Todd Mei: (01:00:13) It's, uh, it's a project where he has people from different groups, often at risk groups telling their stories. And through those stories, the idea is hopefully that they find some common ground and, um, he was giving a talk the other day. And he, he talked about this phrase. I think a lot of people know it's called the chance in arm. And it's a very interesting one, but it's comes from an historical incident. And I think it's around the 15 hundreds or the 15th century. And there's two, uh, families. I think it's the Fitzgeralds and the butlers are, may be wrong on that. But these two families absolutely hate each other. And, uh, one of the families pulls up inside of a, uh, farm or some kind of a building and they won't come out and the feed is continuing. And one person from the other side basically comes over and puts his arm through a hole in the wall to the other party and says, look, I'm putting my arm through. We can continue fighting if that's what you want to do, you can chop my arm off. If not, you can shake my hand. And so those kinds of stories are interesting. They provide a resource and of course Dana Lewis - Host : (01:01:14) She never told us the ending man Prof Todd Mei: (01:01:17) Piece, but not only as a narrative source, but also symbolic source, that if here's a story where you can possibly relate some kind of instance, you're in, and that might allow you to come up with your own symbolic gesture with another person. And it may even that symbolic gesture may just be being silent and listening to them. But so it'll depend on the context as you're describing, but if we can be aware of these kinds of resources and that we have to respond in a very dynamic way to the challenges and unfamiliar Terri unfamiliarity, is that present themselves to us. I think we'd be a much more capable and engaging with other people. And then hopefully that will have a knock on effect, a positive one with how we engage with people in social media. Dana Lewis - Host : (01:01:56) Yeah. And to understand reality, sometimes you just got to shut up. And the, you know, when I was a crime reporter, they used to do, I used to sit in courtrooms where the judge would charge the jury where they would instruct the jury. And the first thing that they would tell a jury is at the beginning of, you know, these are murder trial. Some of them that would last three and four months, don't say a word in the jury room about what you think, because you express your opinion. You actually close yourself to a lot of information and it becomes an exercise sometimes in your ego. Um, and you, you miss a lot of value and maybe that's what social media has become. And I'm sorry to keep taking you back to social media. But I mean, a lot of our discourse in the public square has migrated onto the internet. And that's what that is become. It's kind of like, you know, you need to say something, you need to have an opinion, otherwise, why are you tweeting? Or why are you expressing yourself? But actually you don't have to do you, you can ask questions on there and you can be open to other people and ask them why they feel a certain way. And you can actually, you can actually explore rather than draw borders on them. Prof Todd Mei: (01:03:05) That's right. And always be aware that most social media encourages reaction as opposed to consideration and deliberation. Um, and I think if one's aware of that, one will be a little bit more hesitant just to click the like or dislike button, and also be aware that there is social media is good for some things, and maybe it can be a conduit to more, uh, to healthier communities of discussion that occur offline or in online in some other form than just simply tweeting. Or Dana Lewis - Host : (01:03:33) Do you think that prejudice is growing? Do you think that hatred is growing in, in parallel with that, or as an offshoot of that? Prof Todd Mei: (01:03:41) I do my own perception of it is that it is, and I'm not sure how accurate it is because of course, whenever there's an incident involving hate, um, there's, uh, you know, it becomes a big issue. It becomes representative of the state of affair, but of a nation or a culture. And of course everyone cannot, but help reacting to it and re some reactions are very measured. Uh, some very considered make good points and some not. And I think, um, what can only really help the situation is some kind of education or self-education and about the resources and techniques, uh, about how to ask and listen. And I think that's the only way out of it, whether it comes through family education or whether universities really focus on the liberal arts side. I know I've mentioned this before in a previous interview, but focusing on, on civics and virtues, not not saying this is how you have to be, but introducing civics and virtues as a topic that students can study as a historical artifact and will never go to university, then there can be other for I'm. Prof Todd Mei: (01:04:44) This is I'm, I I'm really progressive minded and people can go to vocational schools or they can pursue a job which doesn't require university education, but it would be a wonderful world in which you had different layers or stratifications of free education. So, uh, and there'll be incentives wrapped up with it. There'll be different ways to teach things like philosophy and the arts that are embedded or engaged with a practical sewer. So if you're a mechanic or if you're, if you're a veterinary surgeon, or if you're a shoe cobbler, there'd be ways there are many creative ways where you can introduce different topics to people. And all it provides, all that's necessary is, is to have the education and provide the incentives for people to go out there and meet other people. And if they can meet other people from different walks of life in these courses, you have a much healthier, much more capable society because you already, you already overcome one, an enormous hurdle. And that is you've already started to meet other people who have similar interests. And there is a forum now for discussing these kinds of interests or even disagreements. And that is in the, in the classroom Dana Lewis - Host : (01:05:49) Last word to you on, on prejudicial behavior. Is that something that you obviously feel that that's the key building blocks in leading towards hatred? Do you confront a prejudice? Do you engage prejudice? Do you, how strongly do you speak out against it or how, you know, whether you're in the workplace or wherever, what, what do you think you have to do with it philosophically? Prof Todd Mei: (01:06:15) I think I, I think it's always situational. I think the, the regular, the ideal is to always be strong and stand out and speak against it. One has to assess to what extent that's putting oneself at risk. Uh, so I do think one has to be courageous and also very, uh, savvy or clever in terms of how to deal with the prejudice. Obviously, if you're in a crowd and you're putting yourself or others at risk, um, you know, my experience is if I've been the target of prejudice, usually it's my friends who feel the most offended, not me, and they're willing to stick the stick, their necks out. So there's always other, there's always things to consider. There are many different ways to tackle it, um, whether it's in the workplace, through human resource channels or EDI. Um, but I really do think if, if there were an array or diversity of education, levels of education provided that would already take away a lot of the hurdles and obstacles that we face today, Dana Lewis - Host : (01:07:08) Does this get personal Todd? Because I assume you have an Asian background. Yes. Right now in America. I mean, we are experiencing, you know, this horrible incident that just, uh, took place in Atlanta, the, the, the assaults on Asians because of COVID-19 and some of the comments that were traced to the former president, Donald Trump about the China virus. And I mean, there, there has been a real backlash, um, on Asian-Americans. And so, you know, it's, it's one thing to talk about hatred in a philosophical way in a classroom, but, you know, you you're, you probably think about it on the street there as well, and it becomes personal. Prof Todd Mei: (01:07:49) Yes, it does. And, um, I have to admit that, uh, here I am speaking as a philosopher, but certainly in personal situations I've reacted, um, differently than I thought or than I ought to have. I've often related when I teach ethics, often relate personal stories to my students. And, uh, there was one time where basically, um, I had to engage in some very aggressive self-defensive behavior because I was being targeted. Um, this was back in Britain, believe it or not at a train station at night. And, um, I D I just felt like I couldn't walk away, but I felt like there was a way I was gonna deal with this and it ended up working and it actually ended up promoting discussion at the end as opposed to fighting. And I was very surprised cause I thought, um, this is not going to end very well. And, um, and I'm very much aware of it in today's climate. Um, obviously as a Chinese and Japanese background, and I've always prepared myself mentally for some kind of confrontation, but hopefully it cooler heads prevail. And, um, it just depends how you can assess yourself in the situation and whether there's actually harm or danger, uh, that's imminent in that situation. But I think the best thing is to try and find other channels to deal with this directly and indirectly, uh, through communication as opposed to direct action. Dana Lewis - Host : (01:09:02) Well, thanks for sharing that. And, uh, you've got lots of really great ideas about sort of how to, how to approach hatred. Some of it, some of, some of that hatred, not always so overt, but you may sense it's there, but, um, you know, stop Asian hatred is a great hashtag in the last, in the last month, but in general, you know, the philosophy of, uh, being open and listening to people. I mean, I really think you're right. We are losing that in public discourse and that's, that's dangerous. And you made that point in another interview and you've touched on it again today. So thank you for that. Thank you, Todd. Great to talk to you. Dana Lewis - Host : (01:09:41) Thank you. And that's our backstory on the science of hate and hopefully by understanding what makes people hate. We understand how better to fight hatred. Please subscribe the backstory with Dana Lewis podcast and share this. And also my newsletter, Dana Lewis . sub stack.com. Thanks for listening. And I'll talk to you again.

[edge-lorde]

me trying to study for the GRE: the written word is just a convenient way to record spoken language. in turn, spoken language cannot be understood without context. all words are arbitrary and only given meaning by humans, who can change the meaning of any given word at any time. if everyone started saying that the color of the sky was “green” rather than “blue,” the meanings of these words would change, no matter what is written in a dictionary. this is why perscriptivism is an inadequate way of viewing language and meaning. this book cannot tell me that “nonplussed” means “surprised and confused” because in some dialects it can used to mean the complete opposite of that definition. language is constantly evolving and dictionaries are meaningless. 

My sister, attempting to tutor me: what a very helpful worldview. 

[megabrocklesner1world-blog]

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15 TO WATCH/5 SPORTS TECH/POWER OF SPORTS 5: RICK HORROW’S TOP SPORTS/BIZ/TECH/PHILANTHROPY ISSUES FOR THE WEEK OF AUGUST 6

with Jamie Swimmer & Jesse Leeds Grant

With the 2018 PGA Championship returning to St. Louis for the first time in 26 years, the event is expected to generate $102 million for Missouri’s economy, according to the PGA of America. That number is right in line with recent previous economic impacts of the PGA Championship: $100 million at Quail Hollow in Charlotte last year, $100 million at Baltusrol in New Jersey in 2016, and $102 million at Whistling Straits in Kohler, Wisconsin in 2015. According to the National Golf Foundation, the total size of Missouri’s total golf economic impact in 2010 was $1.7 billion with a direct golf economy of $888.6 million. This includes supporting 21,000 jobs and $485.1 million in annual wage income. There are a total of 320 golf facilities in Missouri. And a study by TEConomy Partners found that golf is an $84 billion industry, up 22% in the last five years, and impacts nearly two million jobs while supporting $58.7 billion in annual wage income. After his WGC-Firestone win on Sunday, all eyes will be on Justin Thomas in St. Louis this week, as Thomas attempts to defend his PGA Championship title and join Tiger Woods as the only players to win back-to-back in stroke play. (A few eyeballs may be on Tiger, too.)

A number too big to keep under your hat. The PGA Championship begins this week at Bellerive Country Club in St. Louis, and PGA Senior Director of Merchandising and Licensing Mike Quirk believes that hat sales at the merchandise shop "could hit 100,000 over 10 days." Said Quirk, "I’d be lying if I didn’t say we’re hoping it will be the best PGA Championship ever." According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, crowds in the merchandise tent are "expected to be so large that 50 cash registers will be open on peak days." Measuring 360 feet by 130 feet, the space is a "sensory overload of colored golf apparel and unexpected merchandise, almost all of which is available only in the store." Slowly but surely, all of golf’s other Majors have emulated The Masters by providing exclusive merchandise on-site that’s not available on-line nor merchandised elsewhere. And in an age in which paperless tickets are becoming the norm, exclusive logoed merchandise will eventually be a sports fan’s only way of visually boasting “I was there.” Expect the pricing to keep pace.

WGC event marks PGA Tour's exit from Akron. The WGC-Bridgestone Invitational concluded on Sunday at Firestone Country Club, and according to the Akron Beacon-Journal, players "expressed sadness that Akron will no longer hold a PGA Tour tournament after hosting one for 65 years." Tiger Woods, who won the event eight times (but finished tied for 31st on Sunday), would "surely lobby the PGA Tour to return" to Firestone after the event heads to Memphis next year. But even Woods said that he "doesn’t know how feasible that is." Bridgestone has "committed to sponsor the Senior Players Championship for four years" at Firestone starting in July 2019. Even if the tour could find a sponsor after the four-year Senior Players run, many issues would need to be hammered out. Boosting tourism in the region, the Pro Football Hall of Fame game and enshrinement in nearby Canton was estimated to draw 700,000 people who “participated in related events" over the weekend; the WGC-Bridgestone was "expected to attract about 85,000.” The Hall of Fame induction ceremony itself drew a record 22,205 fans, encouraging numbers for the NFL as preseason matchups begin in earnest this week.

Elsewhere in Ohio, Buckeye players and fans await the fate of Head Coach Urban Meyer, following accusations that Meyer was aware of domestic violence claims made against assistant coach Zach Smith but took no action. Meyer was immediately placed on administrative leave by Ohio State University as it launched an investigation. Meanwhile, Ohio-based restaurant chain Bob Evans suspended the partnership it had just signed with Meyer, and removed all related content from its stores and website pending Ohio State’s investigation. The company last week had announced the new endorsement deal, "showcasing images of Meyer wearing a Bob Evans jacket and holding a branded coffee mug." On Thursday, the Buckeyes were ranked third in USA Today’s preseason Amway Coaches Poll – a fairly meaningless evaluation until play actually starts, but nonetheless the Buckeyes’ high ranking will place the program under even more scrutiny. Not expected to be affected: the school’s lucrative deals with Fanatics and Nike, worth $97 million and $252 million respectively.

Power of Sports, presented by Group1001, profiles college football teams and notable coaches’ efforts off the field to make a difference in the community. This month’s episode includes a one-on-one interview with University of Alabama Head Coach Nick Saban. In the interview, Saban discusses his philanthropic initiatives, including working with wife Terry as part of Nick’s Kids Foundation. Saban, who was inspired to lead the foundation based on his father’s example, says, “There’s not much that we do that can make us feel better than when we help someone else.” The organization supports local youth by promoting their education through juvenile delinquent centers, first-generation scholarships, community centers in church communities, and more. The episode also highlights University of Nebraska – Lincoln’s former head coach, Tom Osborne, and his TeamMates, a school-based mentoring program that supports kids by pairing mentors and mentees as they connect over the course of the academic year. Texas A&M, University of Oklahoma, Auburn, and University of Illinois are also featured. As college teams return to camp to prepare for the season ahead, it’s rewarding to be able to report uplifting stories in the midst of the usual scandals, controversies, and trash talk.

Vienna, a landlocked city not known for its beaches, turned into a huge beach party this past weekend as it hosted the A1 Major Vienna presented by Swatch. According to the Beach Major Series, the tournament was held on the iconic Danube Island in the middle of the city, where 8,000 fans packed into Red Bull Beach Arena to watch the action on the main stage and thousands more roamed the tournament grounds, partaking in the festivities. The spectacle was unlike anything American sports fans are accustomed to – the majority of the seats in Red Bull Beach Arena were free for fans, upbeat music was blasted in between each point, and each set was followed by a dance break. Most of the fans showed up to Danube Island in proper beach attire, basking in the sun and taking advantage of the water hoses that sprayed the masses in the stands to help keep cool. The $600,000 purse provided proper incentive for all competing teams, though the Austrian duos had the boost of a raucous home crowd. Norway’s Anders Mol and Christian Sørum had double reason to celebrate their superb A1 Major Vienna presented by Swatch victory – the gold medal lifted the Vikings to the top of the world rankings.

With the NFL preseason officially upon us following the Chicago Bears and Baltimore Ravens kicking off the 2018 Hall of Fame Game in Canton, the league’s financial state remains sound. According to the Forbes, despite a few years of low ratings and problems with concussions and player safety, the NFL continues to boom from a financial perspective. Following the 2017 season, the combined values of all 32 NFL franchises amounted to an incredible $80.705 billion. That number alone is greater than the GDP of hundreds of countries – the NFL franchises together would rank 66th in the world in terms of nominal GDP, just behind Ethiopia and ahead of Kenya, Syria, and Guatemala. Franchise values keep rising too, as exemplified by former Pittsburgh Steelers investor David Tepper’s recent $2.2 billion purchase of the Carolina Panthers. While everything continues to look rosy from a financial perspective, the NFL is hoping to win back a chunk of its former fan base that left in recent years amid the ongoing anthem dilemma and player safety concerns, among other issues.

On the heels of the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize sports betting in all 50 states, the NBA has become the first major American sports league to sign an official gaming partner. According to SportsBusiness Journal, the NBA signed a multiyear sponsorship with MGM Resorts International, reportedly worth more than $25 million over three years. As the league’s official gaming partner, MGM will be given access to “official league data for use in betting,” though the NBA will still retain the rights to license its data to other gaming operations, which seems likely to happen. The deal also includes rights to the WNBA. The deal struck by Commissioner Adam Silver was done in a fashion to give the league flexibility going forward in the rapidly emerging and evolving space. “Rather than re-litigating the integrity fee, which is still being hotly discussed state by state, it was about finding an approach unique to us where we both feel we’re being fairly treated,” said Silver. For MGM, getting the NBA’s data was crucial. “I know the value of data,” said MGM Resorts Chairman and CEO Jim Murren. “To be able to have the official NBA data for sports bettors around the world is very valuable. I was willing to, and I’ve paid for that.” The gaming partner ice is broken – expect other American pro leagues to look very, very closely at similar deals.

The NBA’s free agency bonanza of 2016 feels like longer than two years ago when you consider the amount of money spent during the 2018 window. According to the Wall Street Journal, the annual salaries for NBA players have been a “reflection of something far more arbitrary” than pure talent over the past three years, with roll players and solid, non-superstar talents earning incredible and unprecedented sums of money. That care-free spending trend has calmed down as of late though, with the market cooling last year and remaining “chilly this year.” Last summer, the total amount spent by teams during free agency dropped to about $2.4 billion from over $3.5 billion and is now at roughly $1.7 billion this year. Players took smaller deals earlier in the summer as opposed to years past, trying to “grab whatever money was available before it disappeared.” In addition to the size of contracts decreasing over the past three years, teams have shown their desire to hedge their bets by inking players to shorter contracts. Whereas the average contract lasted 2.3 years back in 2016, the average length now sits at only 1.9 years.

10.The Pittsburgh Pirates, traditionally a team that focuses more on its bottom line than short-term success, shocked MLB by making two major moves before the trade deadline. According to TribLive.com, the Pirates acquired pitchers Chris Archer and Keone Kela in moves that “not only signaled their intention to compete for a playoff berth but a departure from their penny-pinching ways of seasons past.” Heading into the 2018 season, the Pirates had MLB’s fourth-smallest payroll, with a total payroll of $90,700,529, far below the Boston Red Sox’ $227,817,373 total payroll. Traditionally a team that looks to build for the future by investing in young prospects and trading away star players – just as they did in January when they shipped pitcher Gerrit Cole and outfielder Andrew McCutchen – this move has left “Pittsburgh buzzing about baseball on the final day of July.” Archer, the former Rays pitcher, was largely considered the “biggest star traded” before the deadline. Look for the Pirates to try and steal some thunder from the Steelers and Penguins come fall.

Oak View Group executives remain confident that Seattle’s push to land NBA and NHL teams will ultimately come down to the arena. According to the Seattle Times, KeyArena’s estimated $700 million in upgrades are meant to make the iconic venue a “top-third revenue producer for both the NHL and NBA.” The way that the arena is being renovated, with dedicated locker rooms for three teams, including the WNBA Storm, will add another 50,000 square feet to the arena, expanding the walls outward while preserving the existing roof. Construction is expected to being no later than early November so that the project can be completed by October, 2020 “in time for that year’s NHL season opener.” The seating capacity at KeyArena will be expanded for both sports expected to be played there, jumping several hundred up to 17,400 for NHL and 18,600 for NBA games. Seattle is a proven hoops town, so those 18,000+ seats shouldn’t be hard to sell out – in year one, anyway.

12.The NCAA Commission on College Basketball, chaired by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, has recommended that new, regulated summer camps should replace a number of shoe brand-sponsored tournaments. According to JohnWallStreet, the Commission believes that these shoe-sponsored tournaments, mostly on the AAU circuit, have largely led to what has now become a full-blown scandal with FBI involvement across college hoops. By replacing some of these tournaments across the country, the new camps would hopefully mitigate some of the influence that such preeminent shoe companies as Nike, Adidas, and Under Armour have over young players. The new regional summer camps would be run by USA Basketball and “supersede (in terms of talent/coaches attending) existing tournaments.” A vote will take place within the next 30 days based on the Commission of College Basketball’s final recommendations and, if approved, “the changes could be implemented in time for summer 2019.” The payola shoe, it appears, is no longer on the other foot.

13.Cristiano Ronaldo’s recent shocking move to Juventus is not only expected to pay dividends for the Italian giants, but for all Serie A clubs. According to The Sun, the Portuguese international’s arrival in Turin has prompted clubs around Italy to significantly raise ticket prices for home matches against the Old Lady. Some clubs have gone as far as raising prices by an astounding 600%. No other club has gone to the extreme that Parma has to capitalize on the Ronaldo craze. Tuttosport reported that the club, which declared bankruptcy in 2015 and has been forced to work its way up through the lower leagues of Italian soccer, “appears keen to take advantage” of its return to Serie A in conjunction with Ronaldo’s presence. The average price for a seat in the North End at Parma’s stadium costs merely $29.10, but those same seats are now being priced at $207.86 when Juventus comes to town. For perspective, an average season ticket for Parma last year was $220.

14.The Oakland A’s continue to struggle to find a new stadium location, facing opposition from local political groups everywhere they turn. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the A’s current location of choice, Port of Oakland’s Howard Terminal near Jack London Square, is now being protested by a group identifying itself as “Project Oakland’s Shoreline Economy.” The anonymously-run group has posted a flyer outlining a list “of drawbacks to the proposed move, including severe tragic impact to nearby warehouses and neighborhoods and the hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded infrastructure that will be needed.” This type of local opposition is very similar to what negated the A’s chances of building a ballpark next to Laney College near downtown Oakland, the team’s initial first choice. The club has tried to renovate its current home, the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, to make it more fan-friendly, but a new stadium is still badly needed.

15.Since being given the green light to start MLS play in a few years, Nashville bid organizers still need to figure out their stadium situation. According to the Nashville Tennessean, under a deal proposed by Nashville Mayor David Briley, local club owners would be forced to pay the city $200,000 annually over 30 years “to lease land at the fairgrounds for a private mixed-use development next to a new stadium.” Financial terms for this deal were previously undisclosed. That $200,000 annually would eventually equate to at least $6 million over the deal’s lifetime – a significant cash windfall for the booming city. The club would still retain all of the parking revenue generated by MLS games, though the deal calls for the team to “split proceeds from non-soccer events at the stadium with the fairgrounds.” Further, Mayor Briley’s Communications Director Michael Cass confirmed that if the fairgrounds’ piece of revenue comes out to more than $200,000 in any given year then the “fairgrounds will get that larger amount instead of the base rent.” As lucrative as an MLS team is poised to be for local franchise owners, bringing a team to Nashville seems poised to provide a financial boost for the city as well.

Tech Top 5

Social fitness platform Strava has launched a new subscription model. The athlete’s social media site – which currently sees 25 activities uploaded every second and 15.3 million every week – is striving to offer much more than just being a platform to deliver the 3 billion kudos thrown around between riders and runners each year. The packages on offer are geared towards “Training,” “Analysis,” and “Safety” – though there’s nothing stopping you from opting in to all three, and Premium members will be able to continue enjoying the features they already have at the same price. “Summit Packs are designed to better tailor and personalize our features to members’ needs. Whether your goal is returning from injury or training for your first marathon, Summit Packs provide the performance tools you need along the way,” says James Quarles, CEO of Strava. The packages come under the umbrella title “Summit” services with charges from $3.25 a month.

Levy Restaurants, Miso Robotics, and the Dodgers have begun a soft launch of a robotic chef at Dodger Stadium. The AI-powered robot called Flippy will cook fried food such as chicken tenders, nuggets, and tater tots at the ballpark, bringing the technology into service after months of planning and development by the three entities. The robot uses a combination of cameras, AI, thermal scanners, and lasers to conduct kitchen tasks and is designed in part to shift human workers away from more dangerous, repetitive tasks such as working a deep fryer and into other roles. The robot is also aimed at improving fan wait times and creating more consistent food quality. Levy Restaurants’ E15 analytics subsidiary, which is leading the robotics project, intends to follow up the Dodger Stadium installation with another at Staples Center later this year. “As we get up and running in L.A. with this, I would anticipate the acceleration of this technology across the industry to really increase,” E15 President Jaime Faulkner said.

Bleacher Report Live reveals pricing and plans for Champions League coverage. Turner Sports has unveiled coverage plans and pricing details for its inaugural coverage of European soccer’s UEFA Champions League and Europa League, with the majority of games to be offered behind a pay wall on the company’s new B/R Live OTT platform. Starting with the UEFA Super Cup on August 15, Turner susbidiary TNT will carry just 46 Champions League matches, with all remaining fixtures to be shown on B/R Live. In addition, the streaming service will be the only place to watch almost every Europa League game, with the final of the second-tier competition being the only fixture available on TNT. With a subscription to the streaming service, you’ll have access to more than 340 live Champions League and Europa League games per season, including everything from the Group Stage through to the finals. B/R Live also streams select matches from the Scottish Premiership, Belgium Jupiler League, Polish Cup, and Swiss Cup.

Oakland A’s introduce innovative season ticket program. The Oakland A's will no longer offer season tickets in the traditional format and will introduce A's Access, a new membership program for the 2019 season, the club has announced. A's Access provides all members general admission access to every 2019 regular season home game, a reserved seat plan, and significant benefits that are exclusive to members. "To better meet the evolving needs of our fans, we are changing our approach to membership. This flexible model is designed to serve both fans who want a more traditional reserved seat plan and those who desire a more flexible and social experience," said A's COO Chris Giles. Access Members will receive 50% off concessions, 25% off merchandise, and parking benefits, as well as an allotment of seat upgrade credits for games not included in their reserved ticket plan. A's Access will also include a flexible new payment plan, a 12-month option that auto renews each year. Fans who purchase 2019 A's Access this season will have the first opportunity to purchase 2018 postseason tickets, including a "Pay As We Play" option.

Genius Sports plans expansion after acquisition by Apax Partners.  Apax Funds announced a definitive agreement to acquire Genius Sports Group, a global leader in sports data technology. The stake was acquired from founders, management, funds advised by Three Hills Capital Partners, and other minority shareholders. The transaction is expected to close in Q3 2018. Founded in 2000 and headquartered in London, Genius Sports Group is a market leader in the high-growth sports data, sports media, and regulated sports betting sectors, specializing in the capture and distribution of real-time data. The company’s software is used by over 300 sporting bodies around the world to collect and distribute in-game statistics. It also offers a full suite of services to enable the likes of Major League Baseball, the English Premier League, and the PGA Tour to identify, combat, and prevent betting-related corruption. Through Betgenius, its sports betting division, the group’s technology is also used by over 150 licensed sportsbook operators in regulated markets around the world to maximize performance across their betting platforms, trading, and customer engagement systems.

Power of Sports 5

LeBron James opens school, offers free uniforms, meals, and bikes. LeBron James Family Foundation and Akron Public Schools (APS) announced a partnership to design a new Akron public school, called the I PROMISE School. While committees of local leaders, educators, parents, and experts are currently forming that will determine many of the logistics of the new school, the proposed vision for the I PROMISE School is an expansion of APS curriculum with a STEM, hands-on, problem-based, learning focus infused with LJFF’s “We Are Family” philosophy. “This school is so important to me because our vision is to create a place for the kids in Akron who need it most – those that could fall through the cracks if we don’t do something,” James said in a statement prior to the opening of the school. “We’ve learned over the years what works and what motivates them, and now we can bring all of that together in one place along with the right resources and experts. If we get to them early enough, we can hopefully keep them on the right track to a bigger and brighter future for themselves and their families.” By 2022, the school will have about 1,000 students in first through eighth grades. President Trump, take note.

Derrick Rose launches college scholarship fund. Minnesota Timberwolves guard Derrick Rose announced he has started a college scholarship program, which will award more than $400,000 in tuition money. The Rose Scholars program will focus on students who are “civically minded and demonstrate a willingness to lead.” “I hope to provide students a path to college that was not previously available to them, I am proud to continue to help children pursue higher education as a means to better themselves and their communities,” said Rose. He added that one grand prize winner can win up to $200,000, and two other winners can win up to $20,000 each. The program is open to high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors.

Sidney Crosby donates $50,000 to Special Olympics. Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby donated $50,000 to Special Olympics Canada, just days before the beginning of the 2018 Summer Games in Antigonish. Crosby and fellow Cole Harbour native Nathan MacKinnon donated their 2015 IIHF World Championship earnings to the Cole Harbour Hockey Association as well. Crosby also donated another $50,000 last year to KidSport Nova Scotia to help get more kids off the sidelines and into the hockey game. Crosby has also made contributions to Halifax’s IWK Health Centre and Sport Nova Scotia. In honor of his on and off ice achievements, Crosby received the number one all-time athlete award by the Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame.

Dodgers break ground on 50th Dreamfield. Fifteen years ago, the Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation and its partners constructed the first Dodgers Dreamfield in an effort to increase baseball and softball access for young athletes in underserved communities throughout the Los Angeles area. Last week, the program came full circle with the groundbreaking ceremony for a milestone 50th Dreamfield at Algin Sutton Recreation Center, home of the very first Dreamfield in 2003. "In 2003, we made a promise to the city of Los Angeles that we would build these 50 fields, and today is really a celebration," said Nichol Whiteman, executive director of the Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation. "It's really special to be able to provide these places, these positive recreational spaces, to children in underserved communities." The latest Dreamfield is a $300,000 baseball and softball playing field that is partially funded by donations from the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, the Tyler Development Corporation, the LA84 Foundation, and Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig. Since 2003, more than $10 million has been invested in the Dodgers Dreamfield program.

Austen Everett charity receives donation. Seattle-based Austen Everett Foundation has received $25,600 from Rain City Capital, a bridge money lender located in Kirkland, Washington, to further their work empowering kids fighting cancer through the strength and support of professional and collegiate athletic teams nationwide. The Austen Everett Foundation was founded in 2012 by Everett, a Seattle native who was diagnosed with cancer during her junior year at the University of Miami. As the goalkeeper for the Miami Hurricanes, she recognized the support her team provided during her most difficult times. That began her dream to provide that same empowerment to all kids fighting cancer. At Austen Everett Foundation events, kids with cancer are named honorary team captains and matched up with supportive sports teams. "Those values fought for in competition bloom effortlessly in those fighting for their lives," said Everett, who lost her fight to cancer in 2012. Since her passing, Everett's mother, June Leahy, has carried on the foundation.