HinesSight

Oregon pulls out a nail-biter over North Carolina in Holiday Bowl

After Oregon lost to Oregon State in the last game of the regular season, dooming Oregon's chance to play USC for the Pac-12 championship and potentially earn a Rose Bowl berth, going to the Holiday Bowl in San Diego struck me as a crappy consolation prize.

And for most of today's game against North Carolina in the Holiday Bowl, that assessment seemed right-on. I was totally prepared for Oregon to lose, end up 9-4 on the season, and look forward to better times next year, since this season would have ended in a disappointing fashion.

Then the fourth quarter happened. Bo Nix, Oregon's quarterback, played great, even though he didn't appear to be 100% after suffering a leg injury near the end of the regular season. Oregon scored two touchdowns in the fourth quarter, knotting the score at 27-27 with less than 30 seconds remaining.

The extra point seemed anticlimactic. But Camden Lewis pulled his kick to the left, hitting the upright with an audible "clunk," momentarily causing gasps from Oregon fans like me. Which turned to sighs of relief when the ball bounced off the upright and through the goal posts.

Whew: 28-27 Oregon. Drake Maye, the talented North Carolina quarterback, still had 19 seconds left to pull out a win. Thankfully, his pass into the end zone with one second left was knocked down by Oregon players.

It turned out that the Holiday Bowl was highly entertaining. That would have been the case no matter which team won. I'm just glad that it was Oregon. And that Bo Nix has decided to return for another year of being the Oregon quarterback. 

I'm now quite confident that diet affects how easily I can insert a urinary catheter

A bit over six months ago I theorized in a blog post, "Diet could play a role when having a problem inserting a urinary catheter." 

I asked my urologist if he thought diet could play a role in the difficulty I sometimes have inserting a catheter. His answer: "Maybe." Not very helpful, as that left it to me to figure out my own answer. 

After a lot of experimenting with different foods (I'm a health-minded 73 year old vegetarian), I'm pretty confident that yes, at least for me, diet does affect how easy it is for me to insert a catheter into my bladder.

I seem to have found that "gassy" foods are bad for my catheterizing. I'm not sure of this, but it makes some sense, since the prostate and colon are close together, and in men a catheter has to pass through the prostate on the way to the bladder. Thus a distended intestine could affect the passage of a catheter.

Now I'm even more confident that this is the case.

I'm not saying that my experience is common, since as I noted in that first post, some Googling revealed that basically the only foods people using intermittent self-catheterization are told to be cautious about is caffeine/coffee and alcoholic beverages, since these are bladder irritants.

In August of this year I learned that my 50 year-old daughter has been diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome. That got me to thinking that maybe my digestion issues could be described with that rather catch-all term.

My daughter was having stomach pain, though, while my primary problem was diarrhea in the mid to late afternoon. That indicated to me that certain foods probably were causing the loose bowel movements, since it didn't happen all the time.

So I started to study the FODMAP diet, downloading the FODMAP app for my iPhone developed by Monash University. I cut quite a few foods out of my diet: soy milk, apples, applesauce, oats, tomatoes, broccoli, pizza, soft cheese -- basically everything that the FODMAP app said could be bothersome.

I've been sticking with this FODMAP diet for several months. It could be a coincidence, but I've been having fewer problems with inserting a catheter five times a day now. It feels to me that as my digestive tract has calmed down, so has the difficulty I used to have getting a urinary catheter into my bladder.

Obviously I'm not conducting a scientific experiment. This is just my personal experience. I wanted to share it in the hope that perhaps some other catheter user would find that experience helpful, or at least interesting, to them.

After Oregon's great ice storm of 2021, I'm glad the 2022 version was milder

If I didn't know what post-traumatic stress felt like before, I sure do now. Because as soon as I heard that a significant freezing rain event was headed our way, I couldn't get thoughts and feelings of the Great Ice Storm of February 2021 out of my mind.

Along with hundreds of thousands of other Oregonians, our home got about 5/8 of an inch of ice in that horrendous weather disaster. We lost lots of trees, including two big branches from an ancient white oak.

And our electricity was out for 12 days. Not fun, obviously. 

It's difficult to forecast freezing rain, since it requires a special atmospheric setup: a layer of warm air that melts frozen precipitation, which then freezes when it hits cold surfaces. I'd seen estimates that the Salem area, where we live, could get as much as four-tenths of an inch of ice from freezing rain.

Not as much as in 2021, but enough to cause problems with falling limbs/trees and power outages. So foe days I doom scrolled my iPhone's weather apps, along with perusing the National Weather Service web site for our location and the weather news on Portland TV stations.

In the end, we only got a few tenths of an inch of ice. Maybe that doesn't seem like a lot. Believe me, it is. Our driveway in rural south Salem became a solid sheet of ice, impossible to walk or drive on, even with my Subaru Crosstrek and its winter tires.

That dark dot in the driveway is a stuffed wolf. More about that in a bit. Above is a photo of the upper part of our driveway, where I'd parked the Subaru close to Lake Drive. This is what just a little bit of freezing rain can produce: virtually impassible roads.

Also, very difficult to walk on walkways, like the one leading to our front door. Take one step on the walkway without temporary cleats on shoes and you'll be on your butt. I know, because that almost happened to me this morning.

Freezing rain isn't nearly as attractive as snow. It gave our yard a sort of snow-like feel, but it's easy to walk on snow. You can play in it. You can throw it. With freezing rain, you struggle to deal with it. It's the nastiest form of winter precipitation.

Still, since our electricity didn't go off -- my biggest worry with this 2022 ice storm -- I was in a pretty buoyant mood this afternoon. So I did engage with the ice on our driveway in a playful fashion. 

My scientific quest was to determine what would slide furthest: a shoe, a banana, or a stuffed wolf? After the experiment, I then attempted to rescue the wolf from the middle of the driveway, which didn't go so well, as shown in the video. Nonetheless, I await my senior citizen scientist award.

The video shows the lighter side of white ice. Black ice is scarier, being clear, so a roadway can look fine when it really isn't. I wrote about this in "Black ice story in New Yorker brings back some slippery memories."

I'm hoping that a story in the most recent issue of The New Yorker, "Black Ice, Near-Death, and Transcendence on I-91," will make people more aware of the dangers of black ice, and also reassure people like me who live in areas that don't get a lot of snow, but do regularly get black ice, that we aren't winter weenies.

Our 2022 Christmas Letter has a theme of falling (not in love, on the ground)

Given our age, somewhere between 40 and 100, like almost equidistant, it becomes more difficult with every passing year to find a Christmas Letter theme that doesn't sound like it was written by a couple as old as we are.

So in 2022 I embraced my inner geezer and chose to write about our unexciting senior citizen lives. A central theme is falling. But there's also a paragraph about our dog, Mooka. Something for everyone! Well, assuming you're somehow interested in the things we are.

If this Christmas letter doesn't push a Wow button for you, click here for a compilation of our letters going back to 2005. I've shared the 2022 letter in both PDF and JPEG formats.
Download 2022 Christmas Letter PDF

Oregon State football, thanks for a great season

It felt wonderful to watch Oregon State play Florida in today's Las Vegas Bowl and have the most worrisome part of the game be whether the Beavers would hold the Gators scoreless, thereby ending Florida's NCAA-record 435 game scoring streak.

I was rooting for this to happen, but Florida kicked a 40 yard field goal with 37 seconds left. Oh, well, that was about the only thing that didn't go right in Oregon State's 30-3 victory. A missed extra point was no big deal.

I've got to admit that early in this year's football season I was more of an Oregon fan. But with every Oregon State game that I watched, I came away increasingly impressed with the character and style of the team.

Sure, Oregon has snazzier uniforms, and when playing well, a more exciting style. Oregon State, though, gradually won me over with its solid blue collar approach to the game of football. Not super flashy. Just tough hard-nosed play with fewer mistakes than the more mercurial Ducks.

Jonathan Smith is an impressive coach of the Beavers. I wondered what was up when Tristan Gebbia replaced Ben Gulbranson at quarterback early on in the game when the score was only 7-0. But an Oregonian story explained this move.

Gulbranson has become a culture setter in Corvallis, and I’m not sure what is more important to the Beavers program than culture.

Don’t forget that on Saturday, Smith pulled Gulbranson for the Beavers’ third and fourth series, with his team leading only 7-0, to give senior Tristan Gebbia a meaningful opportunity to play before his career ended.

Two years ago, Gebbia was the Beavers’ starter. He shredded his hamstring on the goal line against Oregon, then spent the next two years working back from injury. His teammates voted him captain three consecutive years, despite the injury.

“It was more than a tip-of-the-cap,” Smith said. “If he wasn’t close to Ben, we wouldn’t have put him out there. We’re trying to win the game.”

But that’s the kind of program Smith is running.

I don’t know how many other coaches are pulling their starting quarterback after he had just executed a 65-yard touchdown drive, as Gulbranson did in the first quarter, just to take a look at a backup who had barely played in 24 months.

“I look at his influence of being a captain on this team,” Smith said, “guys really rallying around him. The way he continued to support Ben.”

Smith rewards players who are about the right things. Who buy into the program and are selfless.

Really refreshing. Smith is a class act as a coach, as are his players. His team's 10-3 record this year is testament to his steady approach to building a quality program.

I recall that Gebbia entered the game on the last play, a quarterback knee-down as time expired. The post-game video showed Gebbia trying to hand the game ball to Gulbranson, who was named the Most Valuable Player of the game.

Gulbranson shook his head and left the ball with Gebbia. That image will stick in my mind. It personified the selflessness mentioned in the Oregonian story. In this age of big egos among many athletes. the Oregon State football team is a welcome exception thanks to the example of their coach.

Elon Musk's Twitter antics are hurting Tesla's image

Until Elon Musk bought Twitter and started acting like a right-wing maniac, I had a favorable opinion of Musk. Sure, he had some annoying quirks. That comes with being one of the richest people on the planet.

But overall I viewed Musk as an eccentric genius who was doing good things for the world. He made Tesla into a great company, jumpstarting the electric car revolution sorely needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

And his SpaceX company has made great strides in developing innovative advances in rockets, including booster stages that can land themselves and be reused. SpaceX also is responsible for getting my wife and I out of internet hell, a.k.a. dismally slow CenturyLink DSL, when we were able to become beta testers for Starlink satellite internet, which has worked great for us.

Now, though, I'm seeing Musk very differently. What really pushed me over the edge from like to dislike was this recent tweet of his about Dr. Fauci, who I respect greatly.

It's incredibly dumb for Musk to be so blatant about his extreme political views. I follow him on Twitter. These days Musk sounds more like a QAnon crazy person than a CEO. 

Look: I realize that corporate CEOs tend to be politically conservative. But usually CEOs don't throw those views in the face of current and prospective customers. I love my Subaru Crosstrek. I have no idea who the CEO of Subaru is, and obviously also am clueless about what this person's political persuasion is.

That's the smart thing for a CEO to do. You don't want to antagonize a big share of your customer base by trashing their politics. Yet this is what Elon Musk is glorying in doing, and it's hurting the image of Tesla among those who buy a big share of Tesla cars: Democrats.

It used to be cool to drive a Tesla. Now I see a Tesla and think, "There goes someone who helped Musk buy Twitter and say that Dr. Fauci should be prosecuted." I may end up owing a Tesla someday. However, there are ever-increasing choices in electric cars. I'd rather that my money not go to benefit Elon Musk, so I'll look more closely now at other brands.

(The situation is different with Starlink, since we have no other choice for high-speed internet out here in the "wilds" of rural south Salem, a mere six miles from the city limits of Oregon's capital.)

I found quite a few stories about how Tesla's image is going downhill now that Musk is preoccupied with kissing up to right-wingers on Twitter. Here's some examples, along with excerpts from the stories.

Tesla's approval rating sinks into negative territory, survey finds
Tesla’s approval rating has fallen fast, according to one survey. Yes, like politicians, automobile makers have approval ratings.

...The electric-car maker started 2022 with a net-positive score of 5.9%, then peaked in May at 6.7%. In early November, it fell to a negative -1.4% reading.

YouGov found a political divide in the numbers. As the Wall Street Journal explains, “self-described liberals now view Tesla more negatively than conservatives, though conservatives also have a negative view of the brand on average.”

What changed to influence opinions so radically? Tesla CEO Elon Musk famously bought the social network Twitter at the end of October and has been a prominent figure in the news for reshaping its operations.

Elon Musk is about to learn that liberals -- not his new deplorable pals -- buy Teslas
I drive a Tesla. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sometimes it feels like a third of people around me drive Teslas. I see lots of Teslas in New York City, Austin, and Seattle. I don’t see many of them in Alabama, or the Florida Panhandle or mid-Pennsylvania or Idaho, or anywhere else that’s mostly conservative. 

Yet Elon Musk has decided to literally destroy his personal brand—and Tesla’s along with it—in his bizarro turn toward the QAnon dark side. As I’ve been saying for a while (on Twitter), this was never going to end well for Tesla.

...Looking at where electric vehicles are registered in Texas, just 10.12% are registered outside of the state’s four big liberal centers: Dallas-Fort Worth (35.75%), Houston (23.45%), Austin (21%), and San Antonio (9.68%). The vast Texas conservative hinterlands have little interest in Musk’s product. Woke California buys 42% of all electric vehicles—the vast majority in its urban liberal centers—while making up just 12% of the country’s population. 

Tesla is becoming a partisan brand, says survey
Tesla is becoming a partisan brand – losing the support of Democrats and gaining support from Republicans, according to a survey.

Leaders of large companies selling consumer products, like automakers and tech companies, generally refrain from showing direct support to any political party, especially in the US.

Due to the polarizing nature of politics in the US and its two-party system, it’s better to stay away from definitive statements of support one way or the other since you risk alienating large parts of the population.

That’s why it was so surprising to see Elon Musk tell his over 100 million followers on Twitter to vote Republican during the midterm elections last month and going as far as calling the Democratic Party the “party of hate.”

Regardless of your political affiliation, from a business standpoint as the leader of a company selling consumer products, it was a questionable move, and the impact is starting to be felt.

A survey from Morning Consult reported by the Wall Street Journal has been tracking changes in opinion about Tesla from people with different political affiliations. It shows that the number of Democrats with a positive view of Tesla has been tracking significantly down, while it’s up for self-described Republicans:

Tesla’s net favorability among self-described Democrats in the U.S. fell to an average of 10.4% this month through Nov. 27, down from an average of 24.8% in October, according to Morning Consult. It rose to 26.5% from 20% among self-described Republicans during the same period.

Jordan Marlatt, tech analyst at Morning Consult, went as far as saying that Tesla is becoming a partisan brand:

It seems like Tesla is on its way to becoming a partisan brand.

Salem City Club examines struggles of local journalism

Today's Salem City Club program featured two local journalists, Les Zaitz, editor of the Salem Reporter, and Dick Hughes, who used to be the editorial page editor for the Statesman Journal and now is a freelance journalist.

The title of the program was "The Truth -- An Endangered Species?" But since journalists deal in the truth, and local journalism is struggling, Zaitz and Hughes made clear that the question really is whether local newspapers and other news sources are endangered.

Hughes started off by sharing some disturbing statistics. (Hopefully I've got them mostly right, since I'm just a blogger with terrible handwriting who now has to try to read his scribbled notes.)

Fifty-six percent of people say they aren't willing to pay for online news. Since 2005 a quarter of the nation's newspapers have been lost. Oregon has lost a lot; I recall it was a third. The Statesman Journal recently laid off education reporter Natalie Pate, having cut newsroom staffing by two-thirds. The pages of the Statesman Journal are laid out in Phoenix, Arizona. The Statesman Journal is printed elsewhere, which helps explain why our daily newspaper contains news that is mostly a day late.

Zaitz began his remarks by saying, "We're all in trouble. Any questions?" Thankfully, he expanded on that conclusion. 

Zaitz noted that media are a check on government power. When government controls information, it controls the people. Sadly, though, only 34% of the public trusts the media, with 38% not trusting the media.

There's a political divide here. Seventy percent of Democrats have some trust, while five-sixths of Republicans don't trust the media. Gosh, I wonder how they came to that conclusion. Methinks it has a lot to do with the guy Biden defeated in 2020.

Another reason this number is so low, Zaitz theorized, is that cable networks have betrayed America. Their mission is to present our country as being in a constant state of crisis, as that keeps people returning for their latest dose of gotcha journalism, which is always looking for scandals and corruption.

Zaitz sees the New York Times and Washington Post as contributing in their own way to the downfall of journalism, since he considers that opinions enter into their news stories. I subscribe to both the Times and Post, and sort of see what he's getting at, but I find that the line between a reporter engaging in wise analysis (good) and biased opinionating (bad) to be blurry.

There are fewer journalists than ever in this country, Zaitz said. That means fewer editors also, and reporters need to work with editors for a quality product. This is one reason journalists are making more mistakes now. 

Since journalists believe in truth, accuracy, and fairness, mistakes bother them. Journalists should be transparent, admitting to mistakes when they occur. Zaitz urged people to let a reporter know if they got something wrong. 

In the question and answer period, Zaitz and Hughes agreed that it's a problem when Google, Facebook, and other internet news sources borrow stories from newspapers and other media without paying for them. 

Zaitz noted in response to a question about the Salem Reporter's effort to get documents from the City of Salem about a payment made under suspicious circumstances to a retiring police department employee that charging an exorbitant amount for public records is almost the same as denying the request.

I asked a question of Hughes about why the Statesman Journal did away with the opinion section completely, even though seemingly that section would largely write itself through letters to the editor and guest opinions.

Hughes said that the newspaper's reasoning could have been that people don't want to be told what to think, though this strikes me as an exceedingly lame excuse, given that no one is forced to read opinion pieces, just as my wife never reads the sports section.

I find the lack of an opinion section to be a huge loss for the Statesman Journal. I still pay $10 a month for an online subscription, since 33 cents a day seems about all the Statesman Journal is worth these days.

As Hughes said in response to another question about reading things you disagree with, sometimes you agree with what you read on an editorial page and sometimes what you read makes your blood boil. Which is as it should be.

But not in Salem, since neither the Statesman Journal nor the Salem Reporter has an opinion section. That's one reason why I have an online subscription to the Oregonian.

A core message of Zaitz and Hughes is that when it comes to news, basically you get what you pay for. Journalists can't work for free. I'm pleased to pay for a subscription to the Salem Reporter because it does a good job with local news. I'm less pleased to pay for an online subscription to the Statesman Journal, because it falters with local news.

So whenever possible, pay for the news you're getting. If everyone comes to think that they should be able to get news for free from the internet, that really will be the death knell for local journalism.

Saffron Supply Company lives on in new location

A few days ago the Salem Reporter had a story about demolition beginning on the building that used to house the Saffron Supply Company and Union Gospel Mission. 

That saddened me. At the time I'd forgotten that Saffron Supply wasn't going out of business, but had moved to 1450 Front Street NE. Indeed, the Saffron Supply web site now shows their new location. 

That makes me happy. 

I first started going to Saffron Supply after my wife and I moved in 1990 to a house in rural south Salem. It needed a lot of work, including drainage from the gutter down spouts. 

That required multiple trips to Saffron Supply, where the helpful staff pointed me to the flexible plastic pipe, both perforated and non-perforated, plus connectors, that I needed to accomplish my rainwater flow improvement job.

This photo I found on the Saffron Supply Facebook page of their old location captures the wonderful spirit of this pleasantly old-fashioned hardware store. 

In 2004, soon after I started this blog, I wrote about a plumbing-related visit to Saffron Supply in "I'm the king of the world!" I called it that because my handyman skills are limited, so when I'm able to accomplish a repair, I get excited!

This is how the post started out. 

King of the world, that’s who I am all right, in my own mind at least (where it counts). For I have replaced a rusted-out leaking drain on our laundry room sink, notwithstanding my normally plumbing-challenged handyman skills. There was something tremendously fulfilling about successfully dismantling the decrepit parts and installing the fresh new parts, adding the dollop of plumber’s putty, tightening the, um, whatever-you-call-its that needed to be tightened, turning on the water, and hearing the water run down the drain with nary a drip.

The list of those I’d like to thank for enabling me to achieve this marvelous accomplishment is short: the great guys at Saffron Supply in downtown Salem, that’s the beginning and end of it. This is the sort of place that can’t be allowed to disappear in the shadow of all the Lowes, Home Depots, and the like. I shamefully admit that I have a fondness for the bright lights, neatly stocked shelves, and cheerful employees at the Lowe’s store here in Salem.

But when you don’t know much about plumbing, and are carrying a plastic bag filled with a bunch of dirty, broken plumbing parts that no longer are plumbing for you, a place like Saffron Supply is where you want to be. It looks like it hasn’t changed much in decades. Wooden bins are filled with mysterious plumbing and electrical parts. When you pay, a pad is pulled out and you get a handwritten paper receipt. No women were in evidence, either staff or customers. I was careful not to wear a batik shirt last Wednesday, knowing that I would be entering the plain denim world of Saffron Supply.

Like a real man, I forthrightly admitted my ignorance right off the bat. I held up my bag of parts and said, “Whatever all this stuff is, it isn’t working any more.” I then made a concise plea for help, making sure that I threw in the phrase “plumbing-challenged” several times. The Saffron guy then took over. He walked over to one of the wooden bins, pulled out a shiny new thing-a-ma-bob and said, “This is what you used to have.” Wow! So that’s what it used to look like thirty-three years ago when our house was built! He then grabbed various other connectors, seals, and what not, and put together a perfect replica of the drain that used to drain before it stopped draining.

So thank you, Saffron Supply, for staying in business. The helpful expertise of your staff is what Salem needed in the past, needs now, and will need in the future. Your history is impressive. Wow, since 1910, 112 years. Here's a screenshot from the Saffron Supply web site. 

I love Twitter. Elon Musk, not so much.

When people ask if I'm going to cancel my Twitter account now that Elon Musk is in charge of the company, I say, Absolutely not. Then I explain why.

I love Twitter. It's one of the first things I check on my iPhone when I wake up in the morning. It's one of the last things I check before I go to bed. 

But I rarely use Twitter directly. I use a third-party app (Tweetbot) that collects tweets from the individuals and organizations that I follow, then presents them in a clean easy-to-use format.

I never see tweets from anyone I don't follow. I never see ads.

All I see is topical, interesting, provocative content from a wide range of knowledgeable commentators, mostly liberal in their politics. I also get tweets from organizations, including the Portland office of the National Weather Service, TripCheck (problems on Oregon highways), and the Kyiv Independent for up-to-date news about the Ukraine War.

Twitter is a marvelous way to keep informed on just about any subject that you're interested in. When economic news breaks, like a fresh inflation report, Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman shares tweets in my feed about how he sees that news.

I could give many more examples of why I adore Twitter. Now, I realize that people who use Twitter itself, not a third-party application, probably encounter more annoyances, such as ads.

But for me Twitter is very similar to Facebook. Apart from ads on Facebook, I don't see content from anybody that I don't choose to follow. So the argument that I should give up on Twitter because some Twitter users engage in hate speech or misinformation makes no sense to me.

The same thing happens on Facebook. Or any other social media platform. Since I don't follow people on Twitter who engage in hate speech or misinformation, I never encounter tweets with those qualities.

Well, with a few exceptions. When Donald Trump was on Twitter, I followed him off-and-on just to keep up on the crap he was tweeting about. It's easy to unfollow people and organizations, so when Trump got too annoying, I'd ditch him. Then I'd follow him again when I felt like it.

Since I'm a happy Space X Starlink satellite internet customer (was fortunate to be a beta tester of the service, which works great for us), I've followed Elon Musk on Twitter for quite a while. He's always been quirky, along with brilliant.

After buying Twitter, Musk has become irritating in many of his tweets, but I still follow him for the entertainment value. 

There's been a lot of discussion among the people and organizations I follow about whether they should stick with Twitter or migrate to a different platform. Most are staying put, for pretty much the same reasons I am. 

I have to admit, though, that Elon Musk runs the risk of ruining Twitter.

His politics seems to have tilted decidedly rightward. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. However, if Musk persists in allowing Twitter to be a haven for bigots, racists, and militant extremists, I worry that Twitter could enter a death spiral as advertisers jump ship and Musk's investment stops being financially viable.

What's perplexing is how someone as obviously intelligent as Elon Musk can be so ignorant about basic facts. Like the nature of the First Amendment and freedom of speech. 

Recently Musk got pissed off at Apple for suspending the company's advertising on Twitter. He viewed that action as anti-free speech, whereas actually it was very much in line with free speech. As an excellent story by David French in The Atlantic says, the First Amendment only speaks about government, not private actors.

Here's an excerpt from Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson don't understand the First Amendment. If you aren't familiar with the reference to "Twitter files," this relates to today's release of internal Twitter communications regarding a New York Post story about Hunter Biden's laptop.

The First Amendment regulates government conduct. It does not regulate private actors. The text of the amendment itself says that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” That restraint on Congress has since been extended to apply to the U.S. government at all levels—local, state, and federal.

Activists have tried to argue that large social-media companies essentially function as the government, citing a line of cases that treat private parties as government actors when the private parties perform functions that are “traditionally and exclusively governmental.” Examples include running elections, private prisons, and so-called company towns.

But, as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently explained, “hosting speech on a private platform … is hardly ‘an activity that only governmental entities have traditionally performed.’” Social-media companies are not the government.

This means the First Amendment protects Twitter, the Biden campaign team, and the Democratic National Committee. The “TWITTER FILES” released so far do not describe a violation of the First Amendment. Instead, they detail the exercise of First Amendment rights by independent, private actors.

One can certainly agree or disagree with the way in which they exercised those rights. Twitter’s decision to delete pornographic pictures of Hunter Biden was entirely justified and appropriate. Its actions to suppress the New York Post story about Hunter’s laptop were far less defensible. But they were Twitter’s decisions to make, and no amount of misguided rhetoric can transform a Twitter story into a government scandal.