The Bluestocking, vol 303: Chaos voters

all dynasties ultimately devolve from William the Conqueror to Chucky 3

Happy Friday!

Programming note: There will be no Bluestocking next weekend. To tide you over, here is Page 94 discussing the National Trust’s nudist beach.

Helen

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AMY SANDERSON/ZUMA WIRE VIA AP

How AI Is Changing Gymnastics Judging (MIT Review)

Consider the switch ring leap, an iconic skill on floor and beam in which a gymnast leaps into a split position with the back leg bent and the head thrown back. It’s notorious for being downgraded in the difficulty score. That’s because judges are especially strict with it—according to the Code of Points, for the move to get full credit, the upper back must be in an arch and the head released. The legs must reach a 180-degree split. The front leg must be horizontal and the back leg bent, with the back foot reaching the crown of the head or higher. All this happens, and is judged, in under a second. Human errors are inevitable.

At the 2023 World Championships, [the Judging Support System] was able to correct just these kinds of errors.

I did always wonder how gymnastics judges were able to process all the nuances of a routine so fast, and it turns out they can’t. But while AI judging support might reduce some errors, might it introduce others? (I also like the idea that internet writing is now often optimised to be read by a machine, ie Google’s crawlers, which makes it less appealing to humans. Might something similar happen to gymnastics if athletes are trying to please AI judges rather than people?)

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Ted Johnson sits for a portrait at his home in Bedford, N.H., on Jan. 20, 2024. | Photos by Jamie Kelter Davis for POLITICO

The New Hampshire Primary in One Voter (Politico)

[Ted] Johnson started talking about “Russia-gate” and “Biden’s scandals” and Hunter Biden. What, I wondered, did Hunter Biden have to do with Nikki Haley? “She’s not going to hold anybody accountable for what they’ve done,” Johnson told me. “People need to be held accountable. That’s why you’ve got to break the system to fix the system,” he said. “Because it’s a zero-sum game right now. And to be honest with you, the Democrats are genius. They did anything they could do to win and gain power, even if they lie, cheat, steal. … What they’re doing is they’re destroying the country. Who could bring it back?” He answered his own question: “Trump’s the only one.”

“Nikki said — she said it — ‘We’re moving on,’ forget the past and what she called the chaos. Trump’s the chaos creator. But I don’t see her holding any of this accountable. I see her getting back in line, being a party swamp creature, continuing business as usual, but not holding all this mess that I see accountable. And I think a lot of people think like that.”

Further evidence of the existence of “chaos voters” powering support for Donald Trump. This guy was a two-time Barack Obama voter, and then a Nikki Haley voter, and now he’s a Trumper. This is not—and I don’t mean to be rude—someone who is voting on the basis of policy or even ideology per se.

I promise I will write this up as a proper article at some point!

Chaser: “Every revolution in history started as the brainfart of twenty-something underemployed pamphleteers in cheap cafés. No longer.” Will Lloyd on radicalised pensioners (Times, £)

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Quick Links

1. Here is the video of me talking to Hannah Barnes about evidence-based reporting of difficult topics: in her case, the Tavistock and Portland Trust, and its gender medicine service for minors (YouTube).

2. Padraig Reidy joins Henry Oliver in being unimpressed with Wifedom, Anna Funder’s semi-imagined book about Eileen Orwell (What Fresh Hell).

3. Rob Ford is just as baffled as I am by Sunak attaching so much importance to “stop the boats” when that is clearly an impossible promise (The Swingometer).

4. “I have probably worked with hundreds of pundits over the last 10 years and the laziest and most bone idle and least interested are not the females.” Jake Humphrey on why he stopped being a football pundit. Spoiler: football fans give themselves licence to be wankers (The Athletic).

5. “It’s a great newspaper … run by a second-rate company overseen by a third-rate dynasty. All dynasties ultimately devolve from William the Conqueror to Chucky 3. But there hasn’t been a really big mess for a couple of years now, so maybe they’re growing up.” Donald McNeil Jr is just as sore as James Bennet about being ousted from the New York Times in 2020, but much sassier. And more succinct (Airmail).

See you next time!