Author: FLGLcomadmin

Interesting education on where antifa fits in the American political ecosystem.

[from The New Yorker]

In the Streets with Antifa

Trump is vowing to designate the movement as a terrorist organization. But its supporters believe that they are protecting their communities—and that confronting fascists with violence can be justified, Luke Mogelson writes.

It’s not just antitrust. It’s the algorithms that power disinformation and cult behaviors.

[from MIT Technology Review]

Handy reference.

[from Scientific American]

Eight Persistent COVID-19 Myths and Why People Believe Them

From a human-made virus to vaccine conspiracy theories, we rounded up the most insidious false claims about the pandemic

To help understand the underlying mechanisms of surveillance capitalism in general and the topical antitrust lawsuit against Google filed today:

For years I recommended this 2011 TedTalk by mathematician Kevin Slavin about how algorithms shape our world, to graduate students at Northwestern University, when I was invited to be a guest lecturer at the Medill School of Journalism. This may be the most informative and interesting 15 minutes you spend this week in understanding how the world around us works and why The quickest way to find out what the boundaries of reality are is to figure where they break.

How algorithms shape our world

We live in a world run by algorithms, computer programs that make decisions or solve problems for us. In this riveting, funny talk, Kevin Slavin shows how modern algorithms determine stock prices, espionage tactics, even the movies you watch. But, he asks: If we depend on complex algorithms to manag…

‘This shift from targeting infrastructure to targeting the minds of civilians was predictable. Theorists  like Edward Bernays, Hannah Arendt, and Marshall McLuhan saw it coming decades ago. As early as 1970, McLuhan wrote, in Culture is our Business, “World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.” ‘

The Digital Maginot Line

There is a war happening. We are immersed in an evolving, ongoing conflict: an Information World War in which state actors, terrorists, and ideological extremists leverage the social infrastructure…

That piece was actually part 3 of a 4 part blogchain called “The Feed” on RibbonFarm.

Part Four:

Mediating Consent

When theologian Martin Luther debuted his Ninety-five Theses in 16th-century Germany, he triggered a religious Reformation — and also a media revolution. 1630 map of the Maluku Archipelago (Molucca…

Part Two: 

There are bots. Look around.

“There are idiots. Look around.” So said economist Larry Summers in a paper challenging the idea of efficiency in financial markets, a cornerstone of American capitalism. We’ve hit a point where th…

Part One:

Crowds and Technology

If we want journalists to do much better during election coverage–and we do–then we have to do much better as consumers of news. Sharing this guide because what’s right for them is right for us. Either of us fall down, the consequences will be tragic and lasting.

How to cover Election Day and beyond

Americans think about elections wrong; they aren’t only about tallying votes to declare a winner. Elections in a democracy are just as much about convincing the loser that he or she actually lost—and that the process was free, fair, and secure enough that the loser can accept the result as legiti…

Very much starting to appreciate Biden and the effect he’s going to have on the country. 

Joe Biden isn’t doom-scrolling America, and probably you shouldn’t either - Stand Up Republic

We need to avoid the self-fulfilling prophecy of political violence during and after the election.

The more you know. This is really ugly. As people have been saying for years, we need a new national anthem. This one never cut it.

The ugly reason ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ didn’t become our national anthem for a century

Some believe the song, written by slaveholder Francis Scott Key, is racist. Its lyrics were controversial from the start.

“I was naive,” he said. “I was dumb, you know? I shouldn’t have went. I did; I can’t change that, so I just got to move forward. But sitting here just the past few days, that’s all I keep thinking about. I’m like, Jesus, look at the hell I’m going through, the hell I put everybody through. It ain’t worth it. It wasn’t. It really wasn’t.”

[from Washington Post]

How the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally may have spread coronavirus across the Upper Midwest

Within weeks of the gathering that drew nearly half a million bikers, the Dakotas, along with Wyoming, Minnesota and Montana, were leading the nation in new coronavirus infections per capita.

Can’t effectively use one problem to solve for another.

“At the same time that immediate job creation is not the only way to assess stimulus, tons of carbon reduced is not the only way to evaluate the climate effect of spending. That is because government spending is not the key driver of decarbonization. While more government spending is surely needed, any such spending will be dwarfed by the over $70 trillion that the International Energy Agency projects will need to be spent in the energy sector over the next two decades in order to meet the Paris climate agreement’s goals.”

[from Foreign Policy]

The Post-Pandemic Economy Could Be Green and Clean—but Not With These Plans

Well-meaning green stimulus plans fall far short of what’s needed for the climate and the economy.

Institution after institution, the fascists have gutted trust, faith, and competence for their own personal and criminal gain.

[from ProPublica]

Inside the Fall of the CDC

How the world’s greatest public health organization was brought to its knees by a virus, the president and the capitulation of its own leaders, causing damage that could last much longer than the coronavirus.

A well-known intelligence analyst asks a ridiculously simple question: has Russia diverted us with one threat, when the real threat will come from another direction?

“Understanding — or at least learning to identify — the Kremlin’s behavior requires developing a kind of pattern recognition that is cultivated by studying (or living through) past cases and examples. In this last decade or so, I’ve been on the frontlines in multiple countries that were being intensely targeted by the Kremlin, and I’ve had too many opportunities to learn from what we missed until it was too late. It’s a horrible way to learn. The cost is high. It impacts the lives and freedom and security of entire nations. (America is learning a bit about this now, in real time, though we still enjoy long bouts of make-believe about how none of it has really effected us, or really the problem has been us all along, or something.)

Do we really understand what happened in 2016?

Were the Russian cyberattacks on US election systems in 2016 a well-resourced diversion operation meant to overshadow the more significant operations in the information domain? It’s worth discussing.

White people want to see some first hand reactions, try wearing a Black Lives Matter branded theme around a mostly white town, see what comes back at you.  If we can’t walk that walk, we shouldn’t talk that talk. Please say it out loud and be clear as you take it into the real world. 

Very excited to enroll in the online version of Michael Sandel’s “Justice” moral philosophy course at Harvard. This may be the first course of this type I’ve taken since I left college, and after watching the first lecture and participating in the activities, I feel energized in ways I haven’t been for decades. Some of those dusty old books will be coming down from the shelves. Why do we think it’s okay to stop learning in group environments when we leave school?

Justice

This introduction to moral and political philosophy is one of the most popular courses taught at Harvard College.

Needs to be a counter to “the ethic of total retaliation.” about which I post regularly, and maybe Michael Sandel is onto something here, that we could move away, step by step, from the language and concepts and principles and reinforcement of meritocracy. Bit of a communitarianism update from Jean-Jacques Rousseau for the modern age, where progressives could better walk their talk. Very interesting discussion. The analysis about the election near the end is devastating–for Democrats.

[from The New Yorker]

A Political Philosopher on Why Democrats Should Think Differently About Merit

Evan Osnos interviews the political philosopher Michael Sandel, of Harvard University, whose new book, “The Tyranny of Merit,” examines how a bipartisan commitment to meritocracy has undermined ideas of the common good and the dignity of all work.

We’re far past the moment when we can just point to the people who are doing it. They couldn’t be doing it without their base, so we’re also far past the moment when we should hold the supporters accountable too.

I’ve screened my friendships best I can for racists and fascists–there’s a line that’s unforgivable to cross, and I won’t be associated in any way with those people, no matter who they are, no matter how long I’ve known them. I still have friends who have conservative values, who argue against government spending, who are climate deniers, who value their religious beliefs over a woman’s right to choose, but hey, they are not racists and fascists that I know of. Bring the discussion points, and if you have them, the votes. I held the others accountable and took personal responsibility for what’s around me and banished them: dropkicked them to fuckin’ Mars, as a former CEO of a company I used to work for liked to say.

The problem is that there are a lot of those kinds of people still appearing on my social media timelines front and center in the comments of friends who haven’t done the same. It’s a problem because social media is nothing but a network effect–it’s amplification and repetition and oxygen and agency and platform for information and for misinformation, for truth and for lies, for love and for hate, and for people who truly support the democratic republic that is our country and for the fascists and racists who are trying to bring us down to becoming an authoritarian regime. I started blocking those friends of friends, pulled back from it to see if it was maybe me instead of them, and now that I see the effect again, I’m going back to the block button. Was a whole lot happier when I didn’t see what was under the rock.

Here’s one example of why: high school friend, has always been on the right, even the extreme right, but most people I know from high school are still friends with him here because we all grew up together. He’s the kind of guy that shows up immediately on Facebook posts to argue; if you post “hope,” he comes on and says “well what about…” and the conversation immediately changes to the extreme right topic he’s pushing rather than hope. And my friends allow this because, sometimes, they enjoy the quixotic fight to change his mind (they never will), but mostly because they don’t know how far back into the sewer this guy is reaching for his views.

In this case, we only have to look at his Twitter account to see that he follows the most vile racists, fascists and authoritarians available on digital media, and that even his own account is considered toxic by independent services like BotSentinel (see below) that measure for extreme behaviors. So the bottom line is that this guy is a conduit for the worst political and social positions in the world–neo-Nazi organizations, white supremacist organizations, insurgent militias openly calling for civil war–directly to the timelines of my friends who would never consider associating with a person from those groups. Follow the rabbit hole and it gets even worse than what I have described here, all the way back to the Russian military intelligence troll farms that produce the ideas and the content to begin with. He gets a pass though because he often says stuff with an innocent smile and after all, the’s just the guy from town we grew up with.

This has a incredibly corrosive effect on people and their opinions, and further, turns everyone who allows this on their wall to be a megaphone for ideas they would never allow or subscribe to. My friends who still tolerate this from their friends may say that it has no effect on them, and maybe it doesn’t; but one thing I know about social media is, you never know who else is reading silently in the background, and what effect it has on them. Sometimes you only have to follow the ‘share’ path to see how far it goes.

I see this over and over and over again…another friend who allows pandemic misinformation from an executive in the healthcare industry who is likely profiteering off of the government’s inadequate response, plus someone who is clearly in the KKK, both in the same comment thread in the same post. It’s all over the place and it’s very sad that while we bemoan the spread of extremist ideas, we won’t do the very sane and simple things we need to do to stop it. Honestly it’s no different than refusing to put on a mask.

So, I’m back to the block button, level 1, when I see those people pop up in the comments. And in some cases, it may come to a broader unfollow button as well. Step by step until it’s done, because this cannot stand.

Excellent and thoughtful piece on the mistakes we made in 1994. We all talked about and knew the choices, and as usual, money won out. Honestly, what has happened since is simply disgusting and we’re paying a heavy price now.  Parents and teachers should be raising holy hell.

[from Medium OneZero]

The Privatized Internet Is Failing Our Kids

The failure of online schooling highlights a basic flaw in our digital infrastructure: It wasn’t built to supply public goods.

Important and necessary read in our age, outstanding in every way. Will make you smarter, and a better citizen, immediately.

tl;dr: these are just the headlines.

• Recognize that bullshitters are different from liars, and be alert for both.
• Upon encountering a piece of information, in any form, ask, “Who is telling me this? How does he or she know it? What is he or she trying to sell me?”
• Remember that if a data-based claim seems too good to be true, it probably is.
• Use Enrico Fermi’s guesstimation techniques to check the plausibility of data-based claims.
• Watch out for unfair comparisons.
• Remember that correlation doesn’t imply causation.
• Beware of Big Data hubris.
• Know that machines can be racist (or sexist, or otherwise prejudiced).

How to Call B.S. on Big Data: A Practical Guide

Michelle Nijhuis reports on a course at the University of Washington, in Seattle, that teaches students to approach data-backed claims with skepticism.

This is some pretty dense reading, but it clearly outlines some staggering differences in online information behaviors between left- and right-wing audiences.

• right-wingers keep searching for news items until they find something that supports their point of view, regardless of the legitimacy of the source
• right-wingers purposely game the system–cheap algorthim tricks and sophistcated bots–to amplify those sources far beyond real human behavior
• this leads not only to right wing news operations like FoxNews to act as aggregators of manipulated content, but also draws legitimate news organizations into promoting right-leaning content
• much of the original content is generated or introduced in narrow alt-tech right-wing communities like Parler and 4chan, carefully out of sight of moderating influences and where it’s honed for wider distribution.

It’s all in bad faith. People are not being gullible or stupid. They’re going out of their way to cheat and lie and spread hate.

[from Science magazine]

• 

  False equivalencies: Online activism from left to right

  Digital media are critical for contemporary activism—even low-effort “clicktivism” is politically consequential and contributes to offline participation. We argue that in the United States and throughout the industrialized West, left- and right-wing activists use digital and legacy media differently…

We started watching Ken Burns’ documentary on the National Parks and of course ran right into John Muir, the person who did more than anyone else to start the movement towards the creation of “our best idea,” the national parks; was the founder of the Sierra Club; and, it turns out, was a bigoted racist. Very interesting to see how directly and honestly the contemporary custodians deal with the racist foundations of their organization.

‘ The whiteness and privilege of our early membership fed into a very dangerous idea — one that’s still circulating today. It’s the idea that exploring, enjoying, and protecting the outdoors can be separated from human affairs. Such willful ignorance is what allows some people to shut their eyes to the reality that the wild places we love are also the ancestral homelands of Native peoples, forced off their lands in the decades or centuries before they became national parks. It allows them to overlook, too, the fact that only people insulated from systemic racism and brutality can afford to focus solely on preserving wilderness. Black communities, Indigenous communities, and communities of color continue to endure the traumatic burden of fighting for their right to a healthy environment while simultaneously fighting for freedom from discrimination and police violence.

Pulling Down Our Monuments

The Sierra Club is a 128-year-old organization with a complex history, some of which has caused significant and immeasurable harm. As defenders of Black life pull down Confederate monuments across the country, we must also take this moment to reexamine our past and…

“People who perceive themselves as part of the natural ruling class.”

Collaborators are not only judged. With the judgment comes backlash and personal penalty.

Long and excellent article, inescapable conclusions. Have been saying this all along. History echoes.

[from The Atlantic]

History Will Judge the Complicit

Why have Republican leaders abandoned their principles in support of an immoral and dangerous president?

Well, what does it matter that these companies collect and share all this information on me?

[from Harper’s]

The Big Tech Extortion Racket | Harper’s Magazine

How Google, Amazon, and Facebook control our lives

So sorry to say that it looks like the saga of Oregano the Duck, at this establishment at least, has come to an end. Looks like she changed venues for Season 3: after building her nest a week ago, she hasn’t returned, and protocol says she should have started laying eggs in one to three days. No sign of her at all. Maybe there was just too much activity on the balconies and in the drive for her liking. Maybe it was just time to find another place. For those who were new to the story this year, apologies…we thought she was back. We’ll leave you with this photo of chicks hatching from last year, and you can always take a look at Seasons 1 and 2 at hashtag #oreganotheduck on Instagram—hit the recent tab. This is the last daily duck report. Oregano out. 

Still no eggs four days after she prepared her nest, and haven’t seen or heard her in two days. Getting a little concerned that she may have changed venues. Or maybe nature is just taking its time. Or maybe she’s looking for a new boyfriend.

Will post again when there are eggs…if this goes on another few days, we’ll have to assume she’s moved away.

Quacking from the roof at 6:30am, but no eggs today. If she follows last year’s pattern, the first egg will be tomorrow, starting 12 or so consecutive days of eggs with maybe one day off in the middle, then 4 weeks to brood and hatch.

Right on time, she’s back for Season 3–-same exact day as last year. Heard her announce her arrival very early this morning. By the time I went to track her down she had already left, but not before preparing her nest. Should have eggs in a day or two. She’ll need to social distance from the dog this year.

Studio version from Buddy and Julie Miller

Live acoustic version from Buddy Miller and Shawn Colvin

Another acoustic version from the songwriter, Richard Thompson

Took a break and got the facilities primed for the much anticipated return of Oregano the Duck, which can’t come soon enough. Arrival date was April 7 last year. Stay tuned.

Brilliant perspective from someone inside Italy’s hot zone.

“I’ve been telling people my age that we have to let my parents’ generation go. I say that since these people never relinquished their power, we feel like their tragedy is our tragedy. We’re not an independent generation, I declare emphatically. My pep talk resonates well with my receptive and lonely audience of me and me alone. My anguish lifts. I think to myself that these people—these parents—are even cool. They’ve decided that they’re willing to risk being killed in order to avoid being lame. I don’t know if that pun works, but I’m asking you to be generous during this difficult time.”

[from n+1]

Stop Making Points

Francesco Pacifico - Rome Coronavirus Dispatch #1

“There have always been the Nativists, the Know-Nothings, the Klan, the John Birchers, the Knights of the Golden Circle, the Tea Party, the Proud Boys. All the believers in manifest destiny, and the white man’s burden, and a thousand conspiracy theories, going all the way back to Jamestown and Plymouth Colony.

It’s true enough that most white conservatives are not monsters, and that some of them are not bigots—though they have demonstrated no unease whatsoever with the bigotry of their leaders. It’s true that we should go on trying to persuade them, with restraint and respect. Contrary to what every columnist in the country seems to believe, no one I know lives in a “blue bubble.” We have right-wing acquaintances, relatives, even friends, and we listen to what they have to say.

But it’s important to understand that they have been voting the way they have for decades not out of despair or bruised feelings but to get what they want. It does no good to pretend otherwise. A people can be corrupted as well as a man, and our people can be corrupted as much as any other people. Red America is responsible for most of their own problems—and ours—thanks to the policies and the candidates they have supported for decades. But rather than acknowledge any of that they have simply doubled down, foisting upon us this wretched, hollow man, this constant liar who vulgarizes all he touches, who smears and mocks, and who sells himself at every turn, even to foreign dictators. The people, yes—they did this.”

[from Harper’s]

Lovely version of a Celtic ballad by the incomparable Rosanne Cash.

[from Public Radio International (PRI)]

Rosanne Cash bids us farewell

Of all the many guests Kurt has interviewed over 20 years, only one has turned into a life-long friend: singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash.

Cash has appeared on Studio 360 more times than any other guest, dating back to 2004. So she came back one last time to bid the show farewell.

Accompanied by her husband John Leventhal on guitar, she sings the Celtic ballad “The Parting Glass.”

Companies you may have no relationship with can receive information about you and your guests from the camera on the doorbell on your front door. This is in addition to the ability for law enforcement to access your video and employ facial recognition software without your permission (see earlier posts, Feeding the surveillance state from your doorstep, and Ring cameras part 2).

“Facebook, via its Graph API, is alerted when the app is opened and upon device actions such as app deactivation after screen lock due to inactivity. Information delivered to Facebook (even if you don’t have a Facebook account) includes time zone, device model, language preferences, screen resolution, and a unique identifier (anon_id), which persists even when you reset the OS-level advertiser ID.”

[from the EFF]

Ring Doorbell App Packed with Third-Party Trackers

Ring isn't just a product that allows users to surveil their neighbors. The company also uses it to surveil its customers.

Amnesty International makes surveillance capitalism a human rights issue. Download the pdf report.

SURVEILLANCE GIANTS: HOW THE BUSINESS MODEL OF GOOGLE AND FACEBOOK THREATENS HUMAN RIGHTS

Google and Facebook help connect the world and provide crucial services to billions. To participate meaningfully in today’s economy and society, and to realize their human rights, people rely on access to the internet—and to the tools Google and Facebook offer. But Google and Facebook’s platforms come at a systemic cost. The companies' surveillance-based business model is inherently incompatible with the right to privacy and poses a threat to a range of other rights including freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of thought, and the right to equality and non-discrimination.

Excellent update to her amazing book. She is absolutely correct on all of this.

‘Data scientists describe this as the shift from monitoring to actuation, in which a critical mass of knowledge about a machine system enables the remote control of that system. Now people have become targets for remote control, as surveillance capitalists discovered that the most predictive data come from intervening in behavior to tune, herd and modify action in the direction of commercial objectives. This third imperative, “economies of action,” has become an arena of intense experimentation. “We are learning how to write the music,” one scientist said, “and then we let the music make them dance.”.’

[from the New York Times]

You Are Now Remotely Controlled

Surveillance capitalists control the science and the scientists, the secrets and the truth.

You could quibble with the order a bit, but they’ve pretty much got it right.

[from Slate]

The Evil List

Which tech companies are really doing the most harm? Here are the 30 most dangerous, ranked by the people who know.

Totalitarian states are mostly peaceful and well-behaved too. This excellent article reminds us that gun violence can take many forms, including forms that can be passed off as benign. 

“With the streets largely cleared of contrary viewpoints, reporters sopped up simplistic talking points from pro-gun ralliers, then effectively congratulated them for not killing anyone. They then constructed a vague notion of peace—one uncomplicated by trauma or intimidation—and gawked at it. “

[from the Columbia Journalism Review]

Intimidation is a form of violence

EARLIER THIS WEEK more than twenty thousand people, many of them armed, converged on Richmond, Virginia, to protest legislative efforts meant to reduce gun violence.

Happily subscribed to the Criterion Collection’s streaming Criterion Channel. First week watched Federico Fellini’s Amarcord, which I hadn’t seen since it came out in 1973. And tonight, don’t know how I never saw it, Luis Bunuel’s Belle de Jour (1967) with Catherine Deneuve. Netflix-HBO-Prime-DisneyPlus are all fine, but you just can’t find essential, classic world cinema like this anywhere else.

Long, revealing read. 

“If you’re me, scrolling through Instagram, you’re the confidant being whispered to by a face shot from under the chin. You’re the recipient of a holiday card from a family in matching turtlenecks. You’re the magazine subscriber flipping through editorials. You’re the woman standing in front of the screen miming the aerobic movements of your instructor. You’re the mother, adult height, looking down at her child. You’re the lunch companion peering across the table. You’re the customer browsing for deals. You’re the scholar sifting through archives. You’re the fan admiring Beyoncé. You’re the mirror, reflecting the image of the photographer. You’re the photographer, seeing through her eyes. You’re the phone.

Or you’re the voyeur at the window, trying to get a closer look — in which case the villain who enters your private space, not through the window but through the front door, is the ads.”

[from n+1]

My Instagram

We all die immediately of a Brazilian butt lift

Was having dinner with my daughter at Marisol at MCA Chicago last week and got there a little early, enough time to wander into the Water After All exhibit with John Akomfrah’s Vertigo Sea three-screen documentary as the centerpiece. Absolutely stunning. Could only stay for 20 of the 40 minutes, and will make a point to return for the whole thing before the exhibit ends on June 14th.

From an interview with Tate in 2015, the year he produced Vertigo Sea:

“The question of why history matters is connected to why the non-fictive or non-fictions matter. ‘Cause you could tell…and I’m using the two phrases here in metaphoric terms…you know you could tell when a surplus of fiction got into the mix.

You know, so, one of the reasons why um, uh, I was compelled in a way to make Vertigo Sea is because, you know, you’re sitting there, listening to someone referring to quote unquote migrants as cockroaches. And you think, okay, what’s going on here.

How do people migrate from being human beings to cockroaches. What do you have to forget, what’s the process of amnesia that allows the kinds of forgetting that builds into hierarchies in which there are beings and non-beings.”

What happens when we do?

[from The Paris Review]

Inner Climate Change

What happens to my attention span for every hour I spend on social media? What happens to my memory? And what happens to my openness to new ideas?

“Yeah, I know Facebook is evil, but I stay on anyway to share and see pictures of everyone’s kids and stuff.”

Might want to check out who Peter Thiel is, his politics, who he hangs out with, and what he’s been up to.

[from The New York Times]

The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It

A little-known start-up helps law enforcement match photos of unknown people to their online images — and “might lead to a dystopian future or something,” a backer says.

2001 is when I first started to travel there on business. Was last there in 2016, and someday soon need to round out a hat trick on the Austin Statesman Cap10k. The slider in the photos in the link show how incredibly the city has changed in 20 years. 

These photos are taken from the top of the hill on South Congress–you can see the Allens Boots sign on the left in the 2020 shot.

[from Austin Statesman-American]

Fast forward: Austin metro area sees two decades of explosive growth

Take a look back. Take a look forward. Or just take a look around and see how the Austin area is growing.

Even for an area accustomed to doubling in size every two decades, the past 20 years have brought tremendous change and challenge.