"Sen. Ted Cruz's praise for Nelson Mandela met with criticism by supporters."

"The Texas senator posted a message on his Facebook page saying that Mandela would 'live in history as an inspiration for defenders of liberty,' but some of the comments posted called the former South African leader a 'terrorist, communist, scumbag and murderer.'"

Mobys?

"That's an incredibly annoying song. Why are you playing that?"

I ask, and Meade says: "This is 'A Song To Play Every Time You See A Sexist, Racist, Or Homophobic Comment Online.'"

Me: "I would rather be called a 'fucking cunt' than have to listen to that song."

If you want to hear the chirpy irritatingness that I heard, you'll have to go — warning: it's Upworthy — here.

At the Asphalt Chalk Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

(Your comment will not go up instantly. I need to approve comments, but free speech is encouraged in café posts. I would turn off the moderation function if I knew that the people I've specifically told never to comment again would refrain, but since I happen to know that they won't, this is how we must live now. Sorry to all who miss the old freedoms. I do too!)

ACTUALLY: I'm going to try non-moderation for a little while, starting now and only on today's posts. Let's see if this can work. Obviously, it's an invitation to the haters to drive this thing back into moderation, but if that happens, then the people who've been begging to get back to non-moderation will have had a chance to see what I'm dealing with here. Of course, that chance to see will be transitory, because the people I need to delete will be deleted soon enough.

"One of the reasons the Daily Beast is struggling to attract readers has to be Troll City: the comments which mar the view of the last couple of paragraphs of every article."

"Your writing is pretty good, Beast, but the quality and intelligence of your comments is at the bottom. The nastiness spewing from these red-captioned paragraphs negatively colors your whole enterprise."

Says a comment to a Daily Beast article titled "Hillary for President...of the Universe," subtitled "Sure, Hillary Clinton could run for the White House. But where the world desperately needs a personality like hers is at the helm of a strong global governing body, says Sally Kohn."

"Comments can be bad for science. That's why, here at PopularScience.com, we're shutting them off."

"As the news arm of a 141-year-old science and technology magazine, we are as committed to fostering lively, intellectual debate as we are to spreading the word of science far and wide."

Even a fractious minority wields enough power to skew a reader's perception of a story. A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to "debate" on television. And because comments sections tend to be a grotesque reflection of the media culture surrounding them, the cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science.

"We're all trolls."

Writes Meade (at the Isthmus forum): "This very thread, started by someone who hides behind his troll name, fisticuffs, is an example of spiteful trollery. The question is: do you want to be an affable interesting troll - like Meade - or do you want to be a grumpy old ill-humored boring troll? Like Galoot or fisticuffs."

"I'm outing this because I have a thick skin and, in the end, speculation on the size of..."

"... my vagina doesn't move me half as much as worrying about the next chapter of my book I'm supposed to write."

Professor Mary Beard pushes back the trolls.

ADDED: On scrolling down at the link, there's an offensive photoshop combining a face with female genitalia. I didn't put a NSFW notation because it's small and doesn't look like much of anything from even a slight distance, but commenters are requesting a NSFW. So there.