Random Blogging – Page 138

The New Censorship

One of the many causes of increased tribalism and chaos worldwide is the unprecedented nature of the information environment we inhabit. A quote from Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus is instructive–

In the past, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the twenty-first century, censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information.

We are only dimly beginning to understand the nature of the threat posed by the mountains of “information” with which we are inundated. Various organizations are mounting efforts to fight that threat–to increase news literacy and control disinformation– with results that are thus far imperceptible.

The Brookings Institution has engaged in one of those efforts; it has a series on Cybersecurity and Election Interference, and in a recent report, offered four steps to “stop the spread of disinformation.” The linked report begins by making an important point about the actual targets of such disinformation.

The public discussion of disinformation often focuses on targeted candidates, without recognizing that disinformation actually targets voters. In the case of elections, actors both foreign and domestic are trying to influence whether or not you as an individual vote, and for whom to cast your ballot. The effort goes farther than elections: it is about the information on whether to vaccinate children or boycott the NFL. What started with foreign adversaries now includes domestic groups, all fighting for control over what you believe to be true.

The report also recognizes that the preservation of democratic and economic institutions in the digital era will ultimately depend on efforts to control disinformation by government and the various platforms on which it is disseminated. Since the nature of the necessary action is not yet clear–so far as I can tell, we don’t have a clue how to accomplish this– Brookings says that the general public needs to make itself less susceptible, and its report offers four ways to accomplish that.

You’ll forgive me if I am skeptical of the ability/desire of most Americans to follow their advice, but for what it is worth, here are the steps they advocate:

Know your algorithm
Get to know your own social media feed and algorithm, because disinformation targets us based on our online behavior and our biases. Platforms cater information to you based on what you stop to read, engage with, and send to friends. This information is then accessible to advertisers and can be manipulated by those who know how to do so, in order to target you based on your past behavior. The result is we are only seeing information that an algorithm thinks we want to consume, which could be biased and distorted.

Retrain your newsfeed
Once you have gotten to know your algorithm, you can change it to start seeing other points of view. Repeatedly seek out reputable sources of information that typically cater to viewpoints different than your own, and begin to see that information occur in your newsfeed organically.

Scrutinize your news sources
Start consuming information from social media critically. Social media is more than a news digest—it is social, and it is media. We often scroll through passively, absorbing a combination of personal updates from friends and family—and if you are among the two-thirds of Americans who report consuming news on social media—you are passively scrolling through news stories as well. A more critical eye to the information in your feed and being able to look for key indicators of whether or not news is timely and accurate, such as the source and the publication date, is incredibly important.

Consider not sharing
Finally, think before you share. If you think that a “news” article seems too sensational or extreme to be true, it probably is. By not sharing, you are stopping the flow of disinformation and falsehoods from getting across to your friends and network. While the general public cannot be relied upon to solve this problem alone, it is imperative that we start doing our part to stop this phenomenon. It is time to stop waiting for someone to save us from disinformation, and to start saving ourselves.

All good advice. Why do I think the people who most need to follow it, won’t?

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Hooray For The Resistance!

Immediately following the 2016 election, voters across the country organized into units of what they called “the Resistance.” It wasn’t entirely clear just how the members of those groups planned to resist. It still isn’t.

Obviously, most are making efforts to register voters, to encourage turnout, and to spread information about the damage being done by this administration. Naysayers–some of whom post comments to this blog–criticize these efforts as inadequate, although it isn’t always clear what other steps they are proposing.

I have friends who have traveled to the border to assist the humanitarian organizations working there, and I applaud them, but most of us have job and family obligations that prevent us from joining g those efforts. Consequently, there are significant numbers of frustrated citizens who would like to do more to resist this racist and destructive administration, but aren’t sure what actions are available and effective.

Folks in Nashville, Tennessee, have now provided us with one example.

In a Nashville suburb, an ICE agent’a attempt to take a man into custody on Monday morning proved unsuccessful when the man’s neighbors formed a human chain.

An agent for the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to Nashville’s WVTF Channel 5 (a CBS affiliate), attempted to detain the man in Hermitage, Tennessee, which is about ten miles from Downtown Nashville.

The man had entered his van with his son when the agent blocked them in, and neighbors responded by bringing them water and wet rags. After the neighbors formed a human chain, the man and his son were able to escape and enter their home — which the ICE agent was not authorized to enter.

The agent had an administrative warrant, which allows an ICE agent to detain someone but not to remove them from a home or vehicle by force. Unable to detain the man, the ICE agent left.

The incident was broadcast online by the man’s neighbors on Facebook Live.

Time has additional information about the incident.

After a four-hour attempted arrest — during which time the undocumented man and his young son barricaded themselves inside a van parked in front of their home — ICE agents left, and neighbors and activists on the scene created a human chain to allow the family to get indoors.

“At that point it was being extra cautious and letting the family know, look, we got your back, we’re between you and the unknown, and here’s a safe pathway back to your front door,” Tristan Call, a volunteer at Movements Including X(MIX), a collective of young activists who organize for social causes, tells TIME. Call was a part of the human chain.

By the time the attempted arrest was over, dozens of people had showed up to support the undocumented man, including two city councilmen from Nashville. The volunteers showed up as part of a network called ICE Rapid Response to protect undocumented immigrants, just one example of communities throughout the country who have responded to increasing threats of ICE arrests.

Evidently, neighbors who witnessed the attempted arrest sounded the alarm, reaching out to local activist groups, who then informed their networks.

Civil disobedience has a long history in the United States, mostly–albeit not always–for the good.

Episodes like this one–in which neighbors and good people gather to frustrate illegitimate efforts undertaken by their government–give me hope.

The Republicans in the House and Senate who are in thrall to the GOP’s white nationalist base may have been neutered, but the resistance of ordinary Americans, like this episode in (Red) Tennessee, give hope and encouragement to those of us who believe in a very different America than the one to which Trump and his base appeal.

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Can We Define “Great”?

One of the consequences of the fragmented media environment fostered by the Internet has been the development of alternate realities. Americans increasingly get our “news” from sources carefully chosen to confirm our pre-existing biases.

Nowhere is this more apparent than with the divisions over Donald Trump and his slogan “Make America Great Again.”

It’s true, as many historians have pointed out, that the people with whom this slogan resonates tend to have a somewhat selective understanding of America’s history–one that omits the nation’s frequent deviation from its cherished principles. But inaccurate/incomplete history isn’t really the problem. The problem is with their definition of “greatness,” which tends to correspond with straight white male Christian dominance.

My own bias is for the vision of American greatness described by soccer star Megan Rapinoe in a recent article in the Guardian.

The US women’s soccer co-captain Megan Rapinoe has delivered an uncompromising message to Donald Trump, amid ongoing controversy over a possible visit to the White House by the World Cup champions.

Asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper what she would like to say to the American leader, Rapinoe said: “Your message is excluding people. You’re excluding me, you’re excluding people that look like me, you’re excluding people of colour, you’re excluding Americans that maybe support you.”

Rapinoe has been outspoken about LGBT rights as well as racial and gender equality. After the US won the World Cup for a record fourth time on Sunday, Rapinoe called for progress on equal pay for the male and female teams.

In a previous interview with CNN, Rapinoe had said that, should the U.S. team win, they would not go to the “fucking” White House. In the Guardian, she expressed regret for her language, but not for her sentiment.

“I would not go, and every teammate that I’ve talked to explicitly about it would not go,” she said.

“I don’t think anyone on the team has any interest in lending the platform that we’ve worked so hard to build, and the things that we fight for, and the way that we live our life … I don’t think that we want that to be co-opted or corrupted by this administration,” Rapinoe told Cooper.

She added that allowing the White House to “put us on display” didn’t “make sense for us at all”, adding: “There are so many other people that I would rather talk to and have meaningful conversations that could really affect change in Washington than going to the White House.”

The sports star added the US needed to have a “reckoning” with the implications of Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan. “You’re harking back to an era that was not great for everyone – it might have been great for a few people, and maybe America is great for a few people right now, but it’s not great for enough Americans in this world.”

Rapinoe’s definition of greatness–a definition with which I concur–is inclusion.

A great society is one that values all its citizens, a society that rewards people based upon their behavior rather than their identity–a society that encourages and celebrates everyone’s participation and contribution.

Unfortunately, a growing segment of the Internet is fostering a fear of “replacement” in insecure whites.That fear is based upon a definition of “greatness” that frantically opposes inclusion; “greatness” is a country where “people who look like me” are in control. As the linked article reports,

The far right has set off a vicious circle of disinformation by filling the information and communication gap on topics such as demographic change with emotive, speculative and hysterical content instead of facts.

The next election will be a choice between those who define American greatness as inclusion and civic equality and those who believe that “great” means an America that privileges straight white Christians.

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The Cost Of Convenience

Every once in a while, I grudgingly agree with a curmudgeonly rant from my husband.

This particular rant is about bank-by-mail–our ability to authorize payments online and have the bank write the check and send it to the payee. It’s enormously convenient; no need to address envelopes, buy stamps, find a mailbox…

In fact, if there is a signal aspect to life in our digital world, it is the convenience that comes with our networked existence. Amazon visits my front door far more than the milkman used to–and thanks to the Amazon Key, the delivery person deposits whatever the package is in my front hall. If I don’t have time to go to the grocery, I can shop online and have Instacart or a similar service deliver what I need. If I don’t want to cook, but I’m not in the mood to go out, Clustertruck will bring me dinner from my favorite restaurant.

If I need information of virtually any kind, Doctor Google provides it; if I am curious about the status (or political opinions) of a friend or family member, there’s Facebook to fill me in. When my children or grandchildren are traveling, emails reassure me of their safety.

It’s a brave new world–but the old saying is right: there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Amazon, Facebook and Google have made themselves indispensable to most of us–and in return, we provide them with reams of our personal information. They serve us, and we pay for that service with our privacy. Ditto the other convenient services we use.

It’s slightly different–and much more blatant–with the banks.

When my husband goes online to make a payment, the bank immediately deducts the amount of that payment from his account. The bank then produces and mails a check to the recipient. In the “olden days,” the amount of a check would be deducted from one’s account when it “cleared.” That is, the money would come out of your account when payees presented the checks and received their money.

Now, in return for the convenience of online bill paying, the bank has the use of the float– the period of time that elapses between your online direction to pay X and the presentation by X of that check.

(This little trick also makes it incredibly difficult to stop payment; since the money has already been deducted from your account, the bank has a convoluted process that wasn’t there before.)

I hear him grouse about this every time my husband pays a bill, and although I’m willing to chalk it up to the cost of convenience, I know he’s right. It’s just one more clever way that one more business has figured out how to “monetize” the processes that have moved online. And I also know that I’m one of the “marks” who enable it all–I am perfectly willing to trade my information for the convenience of shopping from home. I’m addicted to the ease of accessing any and all information from my laptop.

And I don’t want to hunt for my checkbook and stamps when paying a bill.

I’m the patsy that makes the ripoffs possible.

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Now Paper Straws Are Liberal?

We can wring our hands about the corruption of the Department of Education, or the placement of ideologues on our federal courts, the encouragement of White nationalism, or the abandonment of democratic norms and the rule of law, but even those abominations pale next to the war being waged by Donald Trump and his GOP cult on science and the environment.

A sufficiently motivated populace can eject Trump from the Oval Office, and elect people who will begin the process of repairing our governing institutions and our civic culture. The rejection of science and denial of the existential threat posed by climate change, however, is imposing damage we may never be able to reverse.

It isn’t simply downplaying the extent of the threat, or failing to pursue measures to reverse the damage we now recognize. These troglodytes are actively encouraging behaviors harmful to the environment.

President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign store sells “Make America Great Again” hats, T-shirts, cups, towels and even dog leashes. But one of its newest items might be one of the campaign’s biggest attempt to troll the other side: Trump-branded plastic straws.

According to the campaign store, for $15, those interested can purchase a 10-pack of the red straws with Trump’s name “laser engraved” on them. The new campaign merchandise seems to come as a response to increasing concerned about plastic usage and waste. A video that went viral last year of a marine biologist removing a plastic strawfrom a sea turtle’s nose brought attention to the issue and many communities and businesses have begun to banthe use of plastic straws altogether.

The description of the Trump straws is not subtle about the message the merchandise is meant to send. “Liberal paper straws don’t work. Stand with President Trump and buy your pack of recyclable straws today,” it reads.

Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, tweeted about the new straws on Thursday, saying “Make Straws Great Again.”

Scientists tell us that humans dump eight million metric tons of plastic into our planet’s oceans each year. By 2050, they estimate that plastic will outweigh all of the ocean’s fish. Plastic in the ocean is eventually broken into smaller pieces — known as microplastic — by sun exposure and wave action, and that microplastic can find its way into the food chain.

When plastic does eventually degrade (a process which takes 400 years for most plastic), it releases chemicals that contaminate the sea.

According to Our Last Straw,

Americans use millions of plastic straws a day. Those straws litter our streets, lands, shorelines, and oceans. Plastic drinking straws are among the top 10 contributors to marine debris pollution. They do not biodegrade but break down into smaller microplastics that have made their way into our food chain and the deepest trenches of our oceans. The research and statistics on the impacts of plastic straws across the globe are alarming. News articles are appearing regularly on what plastics do to our environment, our health, as well as efforts and innovations across the globe to eliminate and ban single-use plastics straws.

What about the Trump campaign’s assertion that their (very expensive) straws can be recycled? I know it will shock readers to discover that the claim is yet another lie. As the Washington Post (and a number of other media outlets) reported :

Recycling is very important: It keeps many of our plastic objects from spending hundreds of years causing trouble. Unfortunately, your straws always end up in a landfill.

“Plastic straws and other items smaller than two by two inches, such as plastic utensils, fall through the machinery that sorts our recycling,” says Jonathan Kuhl of the D.C. Department of Public Works. “Because of this, we ask District residents not to put these small items in their recycling bins.” The same is true in most recycling plants around the country.

Name calling and gleeful ignorance. They’ll sure show us dumb “libs” (defined as people who accept science). Their grandchildren don’t need a habitable planet anyway.

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