And it should not be possible for any company to simultaneously own any part of the infrastructure (directly or indirectly), and any content that it carries.
This is the solution that I advocate. A lot of the problems stem from the ISPs seeing the Internet as a threat to their cable TV profits. This makes them try to leverage their Internet monopolies to prop up their cable TV service (by hurting any competing service that uses the Internet - such as Netflix). If Comcast, for example, were broken up into "Comcast ISP" and "Comcast TV", then "Comcast ISP" would have less financial incentive to charge Netflix more just because they're cutting into Comcast TV's profits.
And even where Google did try to set up a competing ISP, the established ISPs fought tooth and nail to keep them out. Not only did they use lobbying/bought-and-paid-for politicians, but they would sue Google in court and try to tie up the cases. Had it been a smaller company and not Google, the new ISP would have been bankrupted before they even began.
Even the Title 2 was the ISPs' own fault. The FCC used Title 1 first - which essentially led to a useless joke of a regulation. The ISPs didn't even want that and sued to stop it. The courts demanded that the FCC use Title 2 instead - which they did. Had the ISPs just shut their mouths, they could have paid lip service to Net Neutrality while jumping through tons of loopholes to abuse their monopoly positions.
I'll agree that, in an ideal world, we wouldn't need Net Neutrality regulations. We were actually doing fine without them until AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre looked at Netflix and other Internet companies making money and said "hey, these companies are getting a free ride. They don't pay us therefore they must be getting free Internet access. If they're profiting off our customers, we want a cut." Of course, Netflix and others DO pay for bandwidth - they just were paying different companies and not AT&T. AT&T (and then other ISPs) threatened to slow down any service unless they paid them for the privilege of reaching their customers. Meanwhile, they still charged the customers for the privilege of reaching the Internet.
Of course, part of this was directed at the rapidly expanding Internet Video field. The big ISPs saw Netflix and others as threats to their Cable TV offerings. They couldn't compete with Cable TV so they decided to use their ISP monopolies to slow down Internet Video. Either the Internet companies paid up (profit for the ISPs) or they were slowed down (which the ISPs hoped would lead to people leaving them for cable TV - and more profits).
The FCC responded to these ISP threats (and some actions) with Net Neutrality. At first, it was a watered down, essentially useless Net Neutrality but the ISPs sued to stop even that. The court rulings basically forced the FCC to enact stronger regulations which actually provided protections.
At every turn, the ISPs were the ones necessitating Net Neutrality because they want the freedom to abuse their monopolies to increase their profits and stop any competitors.
ISPs are definitely monopolies. At best, for some, duopolies (cable ISP and teleco ISP). In my area, I have Charter for wired, high-speed Internet. I have no other options. If Charter started blocking sites or slowing them down arbitrarily, I could gripe about it, but my choices would be to either cancel my service (tough to do for a web developer) or continue paying them. My situation is the same as most Americans - with some people being lucky enough to have a second choice.
I'd also add that no Network Neutrality gives cable ISPs the ability to leverage their ISP monopolies to protect their cable TV systems from competition. Suppose Comcast required all Internet Video providers to pay them in order for their sites to be usable. If they didn't pay, customers could still access the services, but at speeds so slow as to render the service unusable. Of course, the fees would get passed to the consumers in the form of increased prices. (If Netflix has to pay EVERY ISP to keep their service usable, they'd be all but forced to raise their prices.) Meanwhile, Comcast's own video service won't need to pay these fees and will be able to keep their prices lower*.
A lot of Net Neutrality can be summed up as the ISPs whining: "Those Internet Video companies are taking customers away from us! We need to be able to stop it even if it means abusing our monopoly!"
* Well, as low as cable TV gets, which means a big dose of "under the fold" fees that you only discover after you sign up for cable TV and introductory rates that look good until your promotional period ends and your rates jump up significantly.
Same here. I'd go into the library, take out a big stack of books, and then return next week to return them and take out another big stack. The library has changed a lot for the better since I was a child. One of my local libraries even has a maker space with two 3D printers. You can go there, load something from Thingiverse (or your own 3D model that you made) and print it out. If your print is going to last past closing, they'll hold it for you to pick up the next day they're open. I wouldn't be able to afford a 3D printer on my own, but using the library's one I can introduce my boys to the technology.
We often "rent" videos from our local library. We don't pay anything for them (apart from our local tax dollars which I consider well spent on the library system and any late fees) but I guess you could consider them rentals. Yes, there is often a wait, but my library has an app to manage requests between library branches and renewals which makes it very easy. I'm currently on the waiting list for Spider-Man: Homecoming when a copy is freed up - and I'm the first person in the request queue - the copy will be sent to my library of choice and I'll be notified to come pick it up.
And, I'd note that the government intervention was only needed because of the greed of the big ISPs. Before Net Neutrality was a government regulation, it was the unwritten law of the land. If you ran an ISP, you treated two video packets the same regardless if one came from Netflix and the other came from some tiny, obscure site.
Then, the big ISPs saw the Internet companies making a ton of money and got greedy. They wanted some of that and decided to get it, not by innovating, but by charging on both ends. They wanted to charge people for access to Netflix and then charge Netflix for access to their users. If the users didn't pay, Netflix would be blocked. If Netflix didn't pay, the users would find their connections to Netflix so slow as to be unusable. (They termed Netflix as having a "free ride" on their networks despite Netflix paying for their own bandwidth.)
Ideally, I wouldn't want government involved, but then again, ideally there would be enough players in the ISP market to keep network neutrality alive organically. As it stands now, a few greedy companies are abusing their monopolies to get more money at the expense of consumers and Internet competitors of the ISPs.
I agree that no censorship can be a double-edged sword. I'll post in Reddit a lot. One of the good things is that there are subreddits for all opinions so "deplorables" can go to their own subreddit instead of flooding the ones I frequent. The bad thing is that this results in an echo chamber where everyone you interact with agrees with you (both on my side and on the side of the "deplorables"). It's almost a no-win situation: If you moderate too much, you create an echo chamber and punish people for their opinions, but if you don't moderate enough, members with radical opinions might drive away moderate members who don't want to deal with constantly replying to crazy or infantile opinions. It's a narrow path to follow and it's nearly impossible to get right all the time.
Further, it supposes that having Autism means there's something "wrong" with you. "He said something I don't agree with or something unpopular, therefore let's blame Autism. While we're at it, let's look at everyone with Autism as suspect for this in the future,"
This happened after the Sandy Hook shooting where reports surfaced that the shooter had Autism and the news media went on a "Does Autism Cause Shootings" frenzy. The answer? No, it doesn't. People with Autism are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it. However, the "Autism causes a shooting" angle was too juicy for some and it kept popping up over and over.
This is so true. My son and I are both on the spectrum and both have trouble lying. He will try to lie, but is horrible at it and crumbles on even the most basic questioning. Personally, I find lying extremely hard to do. I can do it if it's a small lie like "No, honey, I didn't buy you a birthday present" when I really did and am keeping it as a surprise, they're fine. If it's something bigger like trading in a car for a new one and I think the old car's transmission is shot, the truth will come blurting out before I can stop it. (Yes, this happened and yes I suspect it affected my trade-in value.) Over the years, I've learned how to tell white lies to not hurt people's feelings needlessly, but big lying is always a huge challenge for me.
I'm sick of autism/Asperger Syndrome being used as an excuse for people being a jerk. People who have autism are not inherently mean or arrogant, in fact most of them are the complete opposite. When talking to someone who has a disorder on the Autism spectrum, they aren't being rude, they're shit scared and the further along the spectrum they are, the worse it gets. Put simply, they are very slow to trust. Once you get past that they tend to be kind and gentle people, sure there are a few arseholes, same as any type of person but not as many as people think.
Very good summary. (In fact, the "slow to trust" is a real issue for my son in school right now with teachers/aides.) I'd just like to add one thing. Often, people think that those on the Autism spectrum are suffering from (among other things) a lack of empathy. The real issue is that they often suffer from an over-abundance of empathy. They might not realize that what they are saying is hurtful, but once they are told that it was, they will be horrified that they'd cause that much hurt. In fact, given the chance to hurt someone and lack of understanding of social rules, often the simpler path for those on the Autism spectrum is to not socialize at all. This is then misinterpreted as lack of caring about others or lack of need to socialize when it's just the lesser of two evils for them.
As always, every person on the Autism spectrum is different. ("If you've met one person with Autism, you've met one person with Autism" is the common saying.) Still, frequently those on the "outside" misinterpret what someone who is autistic intends by their actions/words.
The same is true of (legal) software download sites. My company's web filter blocks them all and that might be a good thing for 95% of employees. However, as an IT professional, I might need something from one of those sites. Then I find that it's blocked and take 10 times as long finding a workaround (non-blocked equivalent software or a way around the block) than I would have taken if I just downloaded the software and fixed the issue.
You think a group of kids following someone around and taunting them is a "microaggression"? A microaggression is "brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color."
These kids weren't just shouting one insult as they passed by me one or two times in the halls. They would follow me no matter where I went. If I tried to lose them in the crowd, they'd stick with me and taunt me for trying to get away. When they didn't follow me, they would go to my next class (which meant they needed to know my schedule) and would block my entry (letting other kids through). While I tried to push past them, they'd verbally abuse me more. They would do this EVERY day between EVERY class for three and a half years. That's classic bullying behavior, not saying something that was insulting to me without realizing it. For all their "we were just having fun" claims after the fact, they KNEW they were targeting me for abuse and actively engaged in this behavior.
Your bullying story sounds very familiar to me. Only mine wasn't a workplace one, but back in junior high school. I had a kid I was friendly with until one day when he started stabbing me in the back - literally, using a sharpened pencil. Then he'd blow spitballs at me. After a few weeks of abuse, he'd apologize and say that some kid told him I had said something mean about him. We'd be best friends again for awhile and he'd repeat his abusive behavior. Then he'd apologize again and - stupid me, I'd forgive him. This happened for far too many times before I realized that this kid wasn't my friend.
It's sad that some people take behavior that is horrible in middle school and continue to do it in the workplace while adding some more horrid twists. When you encounter someone like that, it's best to get them out of your life as quickly as possible.
Bullying, at least the schoolyard kind, has also spiked because of social media. When I was in high school, I was bullied mercilessly. A group of kids would follow me around taunting me and blocking my entrance to class. Individually, they would leave me alone, but in groups they got brave. This might not seem like much, but repeat this after every class. Every day. For three and a half years. I was getting paranoid to the point that I thought anyone who laughed was laughing at me. I never contemplated suicide or lashing out with mass violence, but had things tipped one way or another I can, in hindsight, see how it could have led there. (A friend of mine finally talked to them and they claimed they didn't realize what they were doing was hurting me because they were "just having fun.") The one solace I had during this time was that I would be left alone once I stepped off the bus and entered my house. The bullies couldn't reach me there. I was safe.
Fast forward to today. My son is entering high school. If he were to encounter a similar bullying group, the bullies could "follow him home" via social media. They could taunt him online or, if he's not on social media (which he isn't yet), they could set up fake pages purporting to be him and posting messages intended to embarrass him. Bullies today can wipe away any safe space that a bullying victim has and make their torment 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. This means the bullying victim can reach the "lash out violently" or "kill themselves" point much quicker - especially if the taunting includes the bullies "having fun" by telling their victim to kill themselves.
Then there's the higher prevalence of reporting bullying. When I was in high school, my options to respond to my bullying were "shut up and take it" or "punch the bullies." They outnumbered me so I figured that fighting them would only wind up, at worst, with me beaten up and taunted for it or, at best, sent to the principals office (and taunted for that). So I kept quiet and took the abuse. Today, bullying is recognized much more as an issue and more outreach is done to let victims know they have a third option of telling an adult who can handle the situation.
I'll agree that the idea of "microaggressions" is garbage, but that isn't the only source for the spike in the rate of bullying.
There was one person in my company who I didn't report directly to, but who would publicly and loudly berate his staff whenever they did anything wrong. Messed up in any way? He'd loudly yell at you so that everyone could hear. I always dreaded when I had to deal with him out of fear of getting the treatment despite not reporting to him. I'd define that as a toxic work environment. Screw ups happen and sometimes an employee needs to be taken to task for it. But doing it as loudly and publicly as you can shows either a lack of basic empathy or a lack of caring about your employees.
Three books? I've only published one so far. (The "Ghost Thief" one linked to below.) I'm currently writing the second book/sequel. I have plans for a third book as well as a completely different series (targeted at kids), but nothing else published. It's possible there are other "Jason Levine"s out there that have published other books - it's a pretty common name.
In all seriousness, when it comes to conversion, Judaism is the exact opposite of evangelical Christianity. Where evangelicals will go out and try to convert all non-believers, Jews push potential converts away. (This comes from the story of Ruth where Naomi was heading back to Israel after the death of her sons. Her non-Israelite daughters-in-law wanted to come but she refused three times. One daughter-in-law returned to her parents, but Ruth persisted and stayed with Naomi.) We will turn potential converts away three times before accepting them. Once accepted as a potential convert, you must then go through intensive study sessions. This weeds out those who aren't serious about converting. At the end of the conversion, any males who are converting need to be circumcised - or have blood drawn if they're already circumcised. (To forestall a side argument: I'm well aware that many people oppose circumcision. I'm just mentioning it here as a fact of current Jewish practice - not a value judgement of "this is the right thing to do.") Women just get dunked in a ritual bath.
We have a general rule of no shopping in the mall after the second week of November (sometimes earlier). The crowds are just too much to deal with when we can just load Amazon.com, order things, and have them delivered in 2 days instead.
I'm Jewish and our "Christmas" celebration is seeing the latest Star Wars movie and then going out for Chinese food. Much better than any red-suited home invader any day!
Not to mention available stock and buying other items not on your list. "I'm going to the store to get $100 off this TV. Oh, wait, there were only 5 in stock and I was the 10th person. I guess I'll buy this other TV instead since it says it's $50 off. Oh and might as well grab these things also."
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This is the solution that I advocate. A lot of the problems stem from the ISPs seeing the Internet as a threat to their cable TV profits. This makes them try to leverage their Internet monopolies to prop up their cable TV service (by hurting any competing service that uses the Internet - such as Netflix). If Comcast, for example, were broken up into "Comcast ISP" and "Comcast TV", then "Comcast ISP" would have less financial incentive to charge Netflix more just because they're cutting into Comcast TV's profits.
And even where Google did try to set up a competing ISP, the established ISPs fought tooth and nail to keep them out. Not only did they use lobbying/bought-and-paid-for politicians, but they would sue Google in court and try to tie up the cases. Had it been a smaller company and not Google, the new ISP would have been bankrupted before they even began.
Even the Title 2 was the ISPs' own fault. The FCC used Title 1 first - which essentially led to a useless joke of a regulation. The ISPs didn't even want that and sued to stop it. The courts demanded that the FCC use Title 2 instead - which they did. Had the ISPs just shut their mouths, they could have paid lip service to Net Neutrality while jumping through tons of loopholes to abuse their monopoly positions.
I'll agree that, in an ideal world, we wouldn't need Net Neutrality regulations. We were actually doing fine without them until AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre looked at Netflix and other Internet companies making money and said "hey, these companies are getting a free ride. They don't pay us therefore they must be getting free Internet access. If they're profiting off our customers, we want a cut." Of course, Netflix and others DO pay for bandwidth - they just were paying different companies and not AT&T. AT&T (and then other ISPs) threatened to slow down any service unless they paid them for the privilege of reaching their customers. Meanwhile, they still charged the customers for the privilege of reaching the Internet.
Of course, part of this was directed at the rapidly expanding Internet Video field. The big ISPs saw Netflix and others as threats to their Cable TV offerings. They couldn't compete with Cable TV so they decided to use their ISP monopolies to slow down Internet Video. Either the Internet companies paid up (profit for the ISPs) or they were slowed down (which the ISPs hoped would lead to people leaving them for cable TV - and more profits).
The FCC responded to these ISP threats (and some actions) with Net Neutrality. At first, it was a watered down, essentially useless Net Neutrality but the ISPs sued to stop even that. The court rulings basically forced the FCC to enact stronger regulations which actually provided protections.
At every turn, the ISPs were the ones necessitating Net Neutrality because they want the freedom to abuse their monopolies to increase their profits and stop any competitors.
ISPs are definitely monopolies. At best, for some, duopolies (cable ISP and teleco ISP). In my area, I have Charter for wired, high-speed Internet. I have no other options. If Charter started blocking sites or slowing them down arbitrarily, I could gripe about it, but my choices would be to either cancel my service (tough to do for a web developer) or continue paying them. My situation is the same as most Americans - with some people being lucky enough to have a second choice.
I'd also add that no Network Neutrality gives cable ISPs the ability to leverage their ISP monopolies to protect their cable TV systems from competition. Suppose Comcast required all Internet Video providers to pay them in order for their sites to be usable. If they didn't pay, customers could still access the services, but at speeds so slow as to render the service unusable. Of course, the fees would get passed to the consumers in the form of increased prices. (If Netflix has to pay EVERY ISP to keep their service usable, they'd be all but forced to raise their prices.) Meanwhile, Comcast's own video service won't need to pay these fees and will be able to keep their prices lower*.
A lot of Net Neutrality can be summed up as the ISPs whining: "Those Internet Video companies are taking customers away from us! We need to be able to stop it even if it means abusing our monopoly!"
* Well, as low as cable TV gets, which means a big dose of "under the fold" fees that you only discover after you sign up for cable TV and introductory rates that look good until your promotional period ends and your rates jump up significantly.
Are any of those people old school enough to also be The People Who Brought You Microsoft Bob?
Same here. I'd go into the library, take out a big stack of books, and then return next week to return them and take out another big stack. The library has changed a lot for the better since I was a child. One of my local libraries even has a maker space with two 3D printers. You can go there, load something from Thingiverse (or your own 3D model that you made) and print it out. If your print is going to last past closing, they'll hold it for you to pick up the next day they're open. I wouldn't be able to afford a 3D printer on my own, but using the library's one I can introduce my boys to the technology.
We often "rent" videos from our local library. We don't pay anything for them (apart from our local tax dollars which I consider well spent on the library system and any late fees) but I guess you could consider them rentals. Yes, there is often a wait, but my library has an app to manage requests between library branches and renewals which makes it very easy. I'm currently on the waiting list for Spider-Man: Homecoming when a copy is freed up - and I'm the first person in the request queue - the copy will be sent to my library of choice and I'll be notified to come pick it up.
And, I'd note that the government intervention was only needed because of the greed of the big ISPs. Before Net Neutrality was a government regulation, it was the unwritten law of the land. If you ran an ISP, you treated two video packets the same regardless if one came from Netflix and the other came from some tiny, obscure site.
Then, the big ISPs saw the Internet companies making a ton of money and got greedy. They wanted some of that and decided to get it, not by innovating, but by charging on both ends. They wanted to charge people for access to Netflix and then charge Netflix for access to their users. If the users didn't pay, Netflix would be blocked. If Netflix didn't pay, the users would find their connections to Netflix so slow as to be unusable. (They termed Netflix as having a "free ride" on their networks despite Netflix paying for their own bandwidth.)
Ideally, I wouldn't want government involved, but then again, ideally there would be enough players in the ISP market to keep network neutrality alive organically. As it stands now, a few greedy companies are abusing their monopolies to get more money at the expense of consumers and Internet competitors of the ISPs.
Obligatory Willy Wonka (talking calmly): No. Please. Stop.
I agree that no censorship can be a double-edged sword. I'll post in Reddit a lot. One of the good things is that there are subreddits for all opinions so "deplorables" can go to their own subreddit instead of flooding the ones I frequent. The bad thing is that this results in an echo chamber where everyone you interact with agrees with you (both on my side and on the side of the "deplorables"). It's almost a no-win situation: If you moderate too much, you create an echo chamber and punish people for their opinions, but if you don't moderate enough, members with radical opinions might drive away moderate members who don't want to deal with constantly replying to crazy or infantile opinions. It's a narrow path to follow and it's nearly impossible to get right all the time.
Further, it supposes that having Autism means there's something "wrong" with you. "He said something I don't agree with or something unpopular, therefore let's blame Autism. While we're at it, let's look at everyone with Autism as suspect for this in the future,"
This happened after the Sandy Hook shooting where reports surfaced that the shooter had Autism and the news media went on a "Does Autism Cause Shootings" frenzy. The answer? No, it doesn't. People with Autism are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it. However, the "Autism causes a shooting" angle was too juicy for some and it kept popping up over and over.
This is so true. My son and I are both on the spectrum and both have trouble lying. He will try to lie, but is horrible at it and crumbles on even the most basic questioning. Personally, I find lying extremely hard to do. I can do it if it's a small lie like "No, honey, I didn't buy you a birthday present" when I really did and am keeping it as a surprise, they're fine. If it's something bigger like trading in a car for a new one and I think the old car's transmission is shot, the truth will come blurting out before I can stop it. (Yes, this happened and yes I suspect it affected my trade-in value.) Over the years, I've learned how to tell white lies to not hurt people's feelings needlessly, but big lying is always a huge challenge for me.
Very good summary. (In fact, the "slow to trust" is a real issue for my son in school right now with teachers/aides.) I'd just like to add one thing. Often, people think that those on the Autism spectrum are suffering from (among other things) a lack of empathy. The real issue is that they often suffer from an over-abundance of empathy. They might not realize that what they are saying is hurtful, but once they are told that it was, they will be horrified that they'd cause that much hurt. In fact, given the chance to hurt someone and lack of understanding of social rules, often the simpler path for those on the Autism spectrum is to not socialize at all. This is then misinterpreted as lack of caring about others or lack of need to socialize when it's just the lesser of two evils for them.
As always, every person on the Autism spectrum is different. ("If you've met one person with Autism, you've met one person with Autism" is the common saying.) Still, frequently those on the "outside" misinterpret what someone who is autistic intends by their actions/words.
The same is true of (legal) software download sites. My company's web filter blocks them all and that might be a good thing for 95% of employees. However, as an IT professional, I might need something from one of those sites. Then I find that it's blocked and take 10 times as long finding a workaround (non-blocked equivalent software or a way around the block) than I would have taken if I just downloaded the software and fixed the issue.
You think a group of kids following someone around and taunting them is a "microaggression"? A microaggression is "brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color."
These kids weren't just shouting one insult as they passed by me one or two times in the halls. They would follow me no matter where I went. If I tried to lose them in the crowd, they'd stick with me and taunt me for trying to get away. When they didn't follow me, they would go to my next class (which meant they needed to know my schedule) and would block my entry (letting other kids through). While I tried to push past them, they'd verbally abuse me more. They would do this EVERY day between EVERY class for three and a half years. That's classic bullying behavior, not saying something that was insulting to me without realizing it. For all their "we were just having fun" claims after the fact, they KNEW they were targeting me for abuse and actively engaged in this behavior.
Your bullying story sounds very familiar to me. Only mine wasn't a workplace one, but back in junior high school. I had a kid I was friendly with until one day when he started stabbing me in the back - literally, using a sharpened pencil. Then he'd blow spitballs at me. After a few weeks of abuse, he'd apologize and say that some kid told him I had said something mean about him. We'd be best friends again for awhile and he'd repeat his abusive behavior. Then he'd apologize again and - stupid me, I'd forgive him. This happened for far too many times before I realized that this kid wasn't my friend.
It's sad that some people take behavior that is horrible in middle school and continue to do it in the workplace while adding some more horrid twists. When you encounter someone like that, it's best to get them out of your life as quickly as possible.
Bullying, at least the schoolyard kind, has also spiked because of social media. When I was in high school, I was bullied mercilessly. A group of kids would follow me around taunting me and blocking my entrance to class. Individually, they would leave me alone, but in groups they got brave. This might not seem like much, but repeat this after every class. Every day. For three and a half years. I was getting paranoid to the point that I thought anyone who laughed was laughing at me. I never contemplated suicide or lashing out with mass violence, but had things tipped one way or another I can, in hindsight, see how it could have led there. (A friend of mine finally talked to them and they claimed they didn't realize what they were doing was hurting me because they were "just having fun.") The one solace I had during this time was that I would be left alone once I stepped off the bus and entered my house. The bullies couldn't reach me there. I was safe.
Fast forward to today. My son is entering high school. If he were to encounter a similar bullying group, the bullies could "follow him home" via social media. They could taunt him online or, if he's not on social media (which he isn't yet), they could set up fake pages purporting to be him and posting messages intended to embarrass him. Bullies today can wipe away any safe space that a bullying victim has and make their torment 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. This means the bullying victim can reach the "lash out violently" or "kill themselves" point much quicker - especially if the taunting includes the bullies "having fun" by telling their victim to kill themselves.
Then there's the higher prevalence of reporting bullying. When I was in high school, my options to respond to my bullying were "shut up and take it" or "punch the bullies." They outnumbered me so I figured that fighting them would only wind up, at worst, with me beaten up and taunted for it or, at best, sent to the principals office (and taunted for that). So I kept quiet and took the abuse. Today, bullying is recognized much more as an issue and more outreach is done to let victims know they have a third option of telling an adult who can handle the situation.
I'll agree that the idea of "microaggressions" is garbage, but that isn't the only source for the spike in the rate of bullying.
There was one person in my company who I didn't report directly to, but who would publicly and loudly berate his staff whenever they did anything wrong. Messed up in any way? He'd loudly yell at you so that everyone could hear. I always dreaded when I had to deal with him out of fear of getting the treatment despite not reporting to him. I'd define that as a toxic work environment. Screw ups happen and sometimes an employee needs to be taken to task for it. But doing it as loudly and publicly as you can shows either a lack of basic empathy or a lack of caring about your employees.
Three books? I've only published one so far. (The "Ghost Thief" one linked to below.) I'm currently writing the second book/sequel. I have plans for a third book as well as a completely different series (targeted at kids), but nothing else published. It's possible there are other "Jason Levine"s out there that have published other books - it's a pretty common name.
In all seriousness, when it comes to conversion, Judaism is the exact opposite of evangelical Christianity. Where evangelicals will go out and try to convert all non-believers, Jews push potential converts away. (This comes from the story of Ruth where Naomi was heading back to Israel after the death of her sons. Her non-Israelite daughters-in-law wanted to come but she refused three times. One daughter-in-law returned to her parents, but Ruth persisted and stayed with Naomi.) We will turn potential converts away three times before accepting them. Once accepted as a potential convert, you must then go through intensive study sessions. This weeds out those who aren't serious about converting. At the end of the conversion, any males who are converting need to be circumcised - or have blood drawn if they're already circumcised. (To forestall a side argument: I'm well aware that many people oppose circumcision. I'm just mentioning it here as a fact of current Jewish practice - not a value judgement of "this is the right thing to do.") Women just get dunked in a ritual bath.
We have a general rule of no shopping in the mall after the second week of November (sometimes earlier). The crowds are just too much to deal with when we can just load Amazon.com, order things, and have them delivered in 2 days instead.
I'm Jewish and our "Christmas" celebration is seeing the latest Star Wars movie and then going out for Chinese food. Much better than any red-suited home invader any day!
Not to mention available stock and buying other items not on your list. "I'm going to the store to get $100 off this TV. Oh, wait, there were only 5 in stock and I was the 10th person. I guess I'll buy this other TV instead since it says it's $50 off. Oh and might as well grab these things also."