I won't comment on whether dark comedy is good or bad, or right or wrong. But I kind of doubt your point that truly edgy and subversive comedy is anti-racist etc. These are mainstream liberal values. You have other commenters lining up to agree with you and pat you on the back. You may be right, but you're not…

You make a lot of good points. In Ricky's defence I think we all have inconsistencies and contradict ourselves, particularly when joking around. Humour often involves playing on the element of surprise, including the surprise of breaching moral conventions. I know I do this, and I enjoy comedians who do it. I…

If you're saying that nobody finds rape jokes funny, I'm sorry, many prominent comedians— some of them avowed feminists- joke about rape in one way or another. It is possible to joke about a topic without dismissing its gravity; we joke about death after all. Maybe your point is that joking about rape will…

It's a list of things people want to do in life, which you reframe as a 'list of death items' again to make this silly self-righteous point seem less strained.

I'm willing to guess there's a subculture of perverts in Japan who fetishize this.

I completely disagree that missing this strained connection between bucket lists and mortality amounts to a 'serious indifference' to lives. It is absurd for writers at Gawker to be getting on their high horse over this abstract connection, insinuating that they have greater sensitivity to this tragedy than people who…

people who are pretending to be offended by this need to fuck off and get a life

To most people, 'bucket list' is not a morbid term. You really have to strain to be offended by this.

Very interesting article. I'm trying to understand (your restatement of) Hwang and Sampson's research in a way that isn't circular. They find that gentrifiers tend to occupy neighbourhoods that meet a 40% threshold of whites. "But why do whites only seem to gentrify partly-white neighborhoods?" You explain, "A…

Sorry, the logic of releasing beta versions makes sense for iOS, it does not make sense for products like this where the consequences are so much more severe. Regulators would not allow mass sale of unproven cars or planes in our day and age.

Yes, it hasn't occurred to anyone that rape is simply wrong. If only that idea could somehow be broadcast, the problem of date rape would disappear. We should popularize a simple slogan. Something like, 'no means no'?

Agreed. Really the interesting question is how SNL manages to be so unfunny. They recruit new talent on a rolling basis, ostensibly from the leading sketch troupes, at a time when live comedy is experiencing a renaissance. Why has SNL's quality not risen? For one thing, you get the unmistakable impression that…

I think a key impact of this polarization, under-emphasized in your excellent article, is its feedback effect on media standards. Safe in the knowledge that its op-eds will be passed around among hawkish Zionists, the Times of Israel has been willing to publish things that contain glaring factual errors, or views…

I know, right? <- Another completely vacuous phrase that irritates me.

This makes sense to me. One of my pet peeves is trolls in comment sections, beginning their comment with, 'Um...' I read it as an attempt at false humility - like the commenter is this humble non-confrontational type, reluctantly chiming in as the voice of common sense.

I recently made your point re. the complexity/uncertainty around sexual consent, only to be harangued by "feminists" accusing me of being a rape apologist, asking what part of 'no means no' I don't understand. I suspect if he'd followed your advice from the outset, people would be attacking him from a different…

If Louis CK and others are right, it may be that individual competitiveness (e.g., standardized testing) works to the detriment of collective performance.

Re. America falling behind: there's no necessary correlation between aggregate competition at the level of countries and competition at the level of individuals. It may be that America's internal culture of competitiveness only worsens its international performance - e.g., by fostering 'teach the test' mentality in…

more importantly, we seriously need to retire this 'Umm...' thing. insufferable.

No, I noticed that - 8 second response time from the approach of the dog. Most parents I know hover over their toddlers when they're riding a bike near a road, because 8 seconds is plenty of time to roll onto the road and get hit. Yet most parents I know do not have surveillance cameras. Just strikes me as an odd…