While I don't think the NYT had a strong reason to reveal Scott's real name, it's absurd to say that newspapers shouldn't "reveal someone's real identity against that person's wishes" in the general case.
As the saying goes, journalism means printing things that certain people don't want published, and everything else is PR. Journalists are supposed to reveal things against the subject's wishes.
IANAL, but my understanding is that it's extremely difficult to successfully sue someone for libel in the US, mainly due to all the First Amendment issues that come with letting the courts adjudicate what can and can't be said.
Professionally-trained journalists are very aware of libel concerns and are taught to stay within the law. The NYT's journalistic standards may have taken a nosedive in recent years but I'm sure they can still afford good enough lawyers to avoid getting sued over a hit piece, even one as sloppy as this.
Much of this behavior becomes a lot easier to understand when you realise that "wokeism" is a religion. I don't mean that ironically. John McWhorter is currently serialising a book on this topic on his own Substack, and he's far from the only person to make the observation.
I'm stealing this point from Twitter, but Africa is the most diverse continent on Earth - culturally, linguistically, even genetically. There are 250 ethnic groups within Nigeria alone, most of which have little in the way of shared language or culture, and had even less before colonists drew a circle around them and insisted they were a single nation. How on Earth does it make sense to say that all black people have a shared culture, especially if you simultaneously insist that white people don't?
You may find this philosophy bizarre, and I agree, but it's important to understand that it doesn't come from nowhere; it's been brewing in academia for decades and is spreading into the mainstream at alarming speed. I highly recommend learning more about "critical race theory" if you want to understand why what many now call "neoracism" is gaining so much traction within our elite institutions.
> I'm skeptical it's an actual takeover per se, and not the older generation being completely blindsided by the force with which the younger generation(s) release their demands.
This. The change is coming from the bottom up, and internal reports from the NYT and elsewhere usually suggest that when there's another "woke" controversy it's generally the young being pitted against the old.
There's been an enormous cultural shift at our elite colleges in the last five to ten years, and the inquisitors of the new religion have by now had several years to graduate and enter the institutions. This trend is going to continue - we're only just getting started.
I'm not OP, but I find it easier to read a 50k word book than 10k blog article. The latter had better be really good (and many of Scott's are) if I'm going to make it to the end.
It's probably something about the nature of reading on a screen, on a device that's capable of fifty zillion other things at the press of a button. When I'm reading a book, there's only the book. Less willpower is required to maintain my focus.
Long blog posts are much easier to read if I send them to my Kindle, but I rarely bother.
> I don’t want to accuse the New York Times of lying about me, exactly, but if they were truthful, it was in the same way as that famous movie review which describes the Wizard of Oz as: “Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.”
I laughed out loud at this paragraph, and it's such a perfect example of why I love Scott's writing.
At the end of the day, whatever slimey hatchet jobs the NYT chooses to run, Scott's still an enormously influential, successful and respected figure, and most of the hacks who write these terrible hit pieces or support them can only dream of gaining 1% of the admiration Scott's earned. Envy's a cruel mistress, and if the price to pay for success is that bitter haters take misjudged pot shots at you which achieve little except to reveal their own securities... well, I haven't achieved enough success myself to know for certain that the price is worth paying, but I'd pick Scott's life over Cade Metz's any day of the week.
Keep up the good work, Scott. You're doing great things, you matter, and you're winning - three things that can't be said for Cade Metz.
Fun fact: the Pioneer space probes included a plaque with some information about Earth and humanity, for the benefit of any extraterrestrial being that might find it one day, but the drawings of a naked man and woman didn't include any detail in the woman's pubic area (imagine a Barbie doll) because this was considered too obscene, apparently even for an alien:
Someone once remarked to me that "you can understand a lot about the US by remembering it was founded by people whose religious beliefs were too crazy for 17th-century Europe."
To give one (admittedly not conclusive) datapoint: almost all US Presidents have been taller than the average American male, many of them exceptionally slow (Lincoln was 6'4"!), and the effect has become more pronounced in the modern era (height was less of an advantage in the days when there was no TV or photography so voters had less of an idea what you looked like.)
Also, the taller presidential candidate is statistically more likely to win the election: "In the thirty-one presidential elections between 1900 and 2020, twenty of the winning candidates have been taller than their opponents, while nine have been shorter, and two were the same height. On average the winner was 1.1 inches (2.8 cm) taller than the loser."
Wait, it's possible to look significantly more attractive through willpower alone? I dress okay and am not a total slob but I've never considered myself anything more than average-looking, and I've certainly never been told that I'm hot or that I should consider a career in modelling.
What tricks can I apply to make myself as gorgeous as Elon Musk?
Agreed. I can't remember the details but I was listening to a podcast lately (Sam Harris maybe?) where the guest was talking about an example of an ML-driven system that was being used to determine whether or not to approve mortgage applications, and upon closer inspection it turned out to be latching onto some data that gave clues as to the applicant's race and using that in its decision.
You can guess the outcome: the software re-invented redlining.