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- Comply, giving up on their ideals of free speech
- Refuse and face fines and potentially jail time
- Pull out of Hong Kong
Why time is weird in lockdown
Time is weird right now. Feilding Cage found out why:
Think back to when you were asked to stay home to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus. Did that period go by quickly or slowly?
Most New Yorkers, for example, were asked to stay home beginning some time in March, and many seemed to note that April flew by despite the repetitive days.
Craig Callender, a professor of philosophy at the University of California San Diego, explains that we’re making this judgment based on an event recalled from our longer term memory.
“If you think of every salient event as ticks of the clock, there weren’t that many ticks in April so it feels like time went by really fast,” he said.
The full piece has a five simple tests to illustrate how people perceive time. Worth a throw if you’ve found yourself baffled by how slippery the days and hours have seemed lately.
China has been playing the long game. The US, not so much
Patrick Wintour, writing about the brewing cold war between China and the US:
China has been lucky in its enemy. Just as China has courted its allies, Trump has insulted his. Mira Rapp-Hooper, in her new book Shields of the Republic, documents both how Trump has gloried in the destruction of alliances, and the price the US is paying. She concludes: “Trump does not need legally to sever treaty alliances – by treating them as protection rackets for which the protected parties can never pay enough, he obviates them. By embracing adversaries, he challenges the very notion that his allies share threats.” Not surprisingly some Chinese diplomats would welcome Trump’s re-election, and another swing of the wrecking ball he brings to the western alliance.
Yet at the 11th hour there may be a reversal of fortunes, largely caused by China behaving as foolishly as Trump.
TikTok, Douyin, and the “dystopian censorship machine”
The Telegraph received leaked documents about the “dystopian censorship machine” that is Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
Laurence Dodds explains:
One system can use facial recognition to scan live streamers‘ broadcasts and guess their age, reporting them to a human moderator if they appear under 16.
Another checks whether users‘ faces match their state ID cards before letting them stream, automatically excluding foreigners and people from Hong Kong.
Another system assigns streamers, who are expected to uphold “public order and good customs“, a “safety rating“, similar to a “credit score”. If the score dips below a certain level, they are punished automatically.
That’s quite the surveillance system, if it works as described. It’s not hard to imagine how suppressive it could be and how well it’d create cultural hegemony. That’s especially important, given that the platform has an overwhelmingly young audience.
The article goes onto to mention how a live stream was shut down because a British man appeared on camera for a few minutes. “Foreigners without government ‘permission’” aren’t allowed on the platform.
Dodds asked TikTok how much, if any, of this tech is part of their app. The company wouldn’t answer. They’ve been trying to seperate themselves from Douyin for a while now. Dodging these questions isn’t the way to do it.
Meanwhile, speech and text recognition is used to ferret out sins such as “feudal superstition“, defamation of the Communist Party and even ASMR, which is banned because it has become too “pornographic“.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Facebook’s civil rights failure
Facebook hired two civil rights experts – Laura Murphy and Megan Cacace – to write a report on the company’s practices. It went as well as you’d expect.
Judd Legum covered the report for Popular Information:
The report zeroes in on what’s troubling about Facebook’s policies, as articulated by Clegg and Zuckerberg. They do not represent a commitment to free expression. The policies privilege expression of the powerful over all other people. This is not just unfair — it makes it even more challenging to protect civil rights on the platform.
Elevating free expression is a good thing, but it should apply to everyone. When it means that powerful politicians do not have to abide by the same rules that everyone else does, a hierarchy of speech is created that privileges certain voices over less powerful voices. The prioritization of free expression over all other values, such as equality and non-discrimination, is deeply troubling to the Auditors. Mark Zuckerberg’s speech and Nick Clegg’s announcements deeply impacted our civil rights work and added new challenges to reining in voter suppression.
The report recommends Facebook reverse these policies, but it’s a recommendation that Facebook will almost certainly ignore. And with two sets of policies around speech — one for the powerful and one for everyone else — can Facebook ever effectively protect civil rights?
Free speech without safeguards isn’t free speech: it’s the status quo, with all the impediments to free speech (for some) and failures that entails.
Prioritising free expression above all else feels like a simple way to ensure that everyone can speak freely. But it doesn’t work. Not in a world where things like discrimination, bigotry and marginalisation exist. They all, explicitly and implicitly, create an environment where only certain people can speak and even fewer people will be heard.
Memeing law into existence: San Fran introduces the CAREN Act
CNN:
It may soon be illegal to make discriminatory, racially biased 911 calls in San Francisco.
The “CAREN Act” (Caution Against Racially Exploitative Non-Emergencies) was introduced on Tuesday at a San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting by Supervisor Shamann Walton.
The ordinance‘s name is a twist on “Karen,” the name social media gives people making racially biased 911 calls.
Beautiful. I’ve never wanted to be the person who comes up with acronyms for things more.
What would it mean if Facebook and Google left Hong Kong?
Facebook and Google are weighing up their options after a new security law out of Beijing that “mandates police censorship and covert digital surveillance” in Hong Kong came into practice.
They seem to have three options:
TikTok have taken path three. What would it mean if Facebook and Google did the same?
Karen Chiu explains how popular the platforms are for the South China Morning Post (which is owned by Alibaba, a multibillion dollar Chinese tech company):
Facebook, Hong Kong’s most popular social network, has a penetration rate of over 80 per cent, according to the latest available data from Statista. WhatsApp, the top messaging app, trails not far behind at just under 80 per cent.
Instagram comes in at around 60 per cent. On the other hand, the mainland’s unrivalled social king, WeChat, is used by just 54 per cent in Hong Kong.
Tsao said Google, which pulled its search engine out of the mainland in 2010 after the company suffered a major hack, is ubiquitous in Hong Kong.
People in Hong Kong would face a terrible situation if Facebook, Google, and Twitter left the region. There are few viable options for information sharing if China’s Great Firewall arrives in earnest. VPNs would only be so effective: the law applies regardless of where the platform or server is located.
This, of course, is the point. The law put in place by Beijing is about stifling dissent. It’s about controlling information, one way or the other.
Concern over TikTok is “international politics thinly veiled as a data ethics
Samantha Floreani, arguing that consternation over TikTok ignores the reality that other, US-based social media platforms doing the same things TikTok is being criticised for:
This is not to defend TikTok – their data collection, use and disclosure practices are undoubtedly invasive, and present acute privacy and security risks. We should absolutely be thinking critically about how any app handles information, especially those targeted specifically at users under 18. Of course, the context of an app such as this and its links to China should also be considered – we all know China has a deeply concerning record when it comes to respecting people’s privacy or human rights more broadly.
But the data habits of big tech companies should not be framed as an “over there” problem.
[…]
Some of those who recently expressed concern about data harvesting are likely to be bellwether friends. What we’re seeing is international politics thinly veiled as a data ethics issue, without any gumption to actually address the underlying problems that are much, much bigger than TikTok.
If you’re going to use something as a proxy to get after China, pick a better target than TikTok.
“Scream inside your heart”: advice for rollercoasters (and everyday life)
BBC:
Fuji-Q Highland near Tokyo re-opened last month after its virus shutdown.
It asked riders to avoid screaming when they go on its rollercoasters, to minimise spreading droplets, and instead “scream inside your heart”.
Aren’t we all?
iOS 14's widgets bring the Windows Phone dream back to life
Tom Warren, sparking joy in my heart:
Microsoft showed off the future of mobile home screens a decade ago with Windows Phone. The key to the vibrant interface was Live Tiles, animated widgets that felt alive. Nothing has lived up to it ever since.
I’ve always wanted Apple to bring these Live Tiles to the iPhone. Apple’s overhauled iOS 14 home screen finally does that, enabling lively widgets for apps that sit on the home screen. It’s the final addition to the iPhone that I’ve been missing from Windows Phone, 10 years after Microsoft first introduced Live Tiles to the world.
I hadn’t made the connection but I can’t not see the similarities between Windows Phone’s Live Tiles and the widgets in iOS 14. And I love it.
I’m one of the few unabashed fans of Windows Phone that ever existed and Live Tiles were part of why. I don’t think enough apps ever used them to their potential (there weren’t enough apps on Windows Phone period) but I daresay iOS’s home screen widgets will see more uptake and more experimentation. The dream lives on.
In more ways than one: Windows Phone had one home screen and an alphabetical list of all your apps one swipe away. The App Library will be a step towards that.
All I need now is an iPhone with a bit of Nokia-Lumia-800 flair to its hardware design. The iPhone 5 already had that feel to it. You can do it again, Apple.
Spaniards can't stop ruining important artworks
Conservation experts in Spain have called for a tightening of the laws covering restoration work after a copy of a famous painting by the baroque artist Bartolomé Esteban Murillo became the latest in a long line of artworks to suffer a damaging and disfiguring repair.
The case has inevitably resulted in comparisons with the infamous “Monkey Christ” incident eight years ago, when a devout parishioner’s attempt to restore a painting of the scourged Christ on the wall of a church on the outskirts of the north-eastern Spanish town of Borja made headlines around the world.
Parallels have also been drawn with the botched restoration of a 16th-century polychrome statue of Saint George and the dragon in northern Spain that left the warrior saint resembling Tintin or a Playmobil figure.
Once is an accident. Twice is a trend. Thrice is a Netflix series waiting to happen.
Women share stories of sexual assault in the world of video game streaming
Taylor Lorenz has pulled together a Twitter thread filled with allegations of sexual assault in the world of video game streaming:
Dozens of women in the gaming and streaming world are coming forward with allegations of sexual misconduct, harassment, and assault against a slew of top Twitch streamers, YouTubers, gaming/esports influencers, and gaming industry personnel.
Both Twitch and Emmett Shear, Twitch’s CEO, released statements. Shear’s tweet started with the phrase “important conversation” and that always feels like a euphemism.
“Crazy how we keep fucking this up, huh?” wouldn’t be a good look, I guess.
The reality is that Twitch has failed – systematically – to build a healthy platform. Even their Safety Advisory Council was so poorly implemented that it became unsafe for one of its members.
This isn’t a new “important conversation”. It’s one that’s been happening time and time again but, so far, places like Twitch haven’t done anything real about it.
Just ask Justin Wong, a former VP at Twitch, who shared a story about how the company let someone accused of sexual harassment because he was another VP’s uncle and an “important” partner.
Meanwhile, pro-wrestling is confronting sexual assault in its world too. Countless women (and a few men) are sharing stories of assault and harassment and the people who did it and enabled it.
The picture 12 billion years in the making
Caleb Scharf, writing about the end of a journey that began long before our planet was even a thing, in his book Gravity’s engines:
Finally, as if playing their part in some great cosmic tragedy, they are captured within a cylinder that is only 4 feet across, a mere 0.0000000000000000001 percent of the diameter of the Milky Way Galaxy within which it is embedded. Instead of sailing on to infinity, the photons are caught in the high orbit of planet Earth, inside the great Chandra Observatory, where they are coaxed deep into a series of nested tubes of iridium-coated glass. In the next few nanoseconds these ancient photons of X-ray light finally encounter something in the path of their long journey through the cosmos: a piece of meticulously prepared silicon, itself composed of atoms that were forged inside another star, dead for billions of years. The silicon absorbs their energy and, where each photon lands, releases electrons into the microscopic pixels of a camera. Within a few more seconds a voltage automatically switches on, sweeping these electrons off to the side toward a line of electrodes – like a croupier gathering up the chips on a roulette table. Here, after a journey of 12 billion years, the photons are registered as electrical charges and converted into something new. They have become information.
That information is now a picture in a book you can hold. That picture shows “signs of a young and extraordinarily massive black hole”, flanked by “dragonfly wings of light” that are “hundreds of thousands of light-years across” and so bright that they represent “an energy output a trillion times greater than that of our sun”.
Just in case you weren’t feeling particularly small today.
The WNBA is back
After significant discussions with the league’s key stakeholders, including the Women’s National Basketball Players Association (WNBPA), the WNBA today announced elements of plans to return to the court to begin the WNBA 2020 season. The league is finalizing a partnership that would make IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, the Official Home of the 2020 WNBA season highlighted by a competitive schedule of 22 regular-season games followed by a traditional playoff format.
Let’s go.
Minneapolis lawmakers: ‘Our commitment is to end policing as we know it’
Lisa Bender, Minneapolis city council president:
In Minneapolis and in cities across the US, it is clear that our system of policing is not keeping our communities safe. Our efforts at incremental reform have failed, period. Our commitment is to do what’s necessary to keep every single member of our community safe and to tell the truth: that the Minneapolis police are not doing that. Our commitment is to end policing as we know it and to recreate systems of public safety that actually keep us safe.
Amy McQuire: ‘There cannot be 432 victims and no perpetrators’
There cannot be more than 400 black deaths and no justice. There cannot be 432 victims and no perpetrators.
As Gomeroi law scholar and poet Alison Whittaker so astutely said this week, writing for The Conversation: “All of this leaves our public discourse full of blak bodies but curiously empty of people who put them there.”
The mine that ate up a town
Ackland is a town in Queensland, Australia. Over the past 20 years of so, a coal mine has been eating it up piece by piece. The only thing standing between the town and total consumption is one High Court challenge.
In a lot of ways, it’s the story of Australia’s relationship with coal told in miniature. We’re sacrificing our future for our love of coal and that’s deprived a town of its present and past. And the miniature here is a crushing story all on its own.
Rick Morton is the rare journalist who’s both a fantastic writer and a fantastic reporter. His article for the The Saturday Paper [$] tells the story of how the mine encircled Ackland and forced people out one by one through the eyes of the two people left fighting it (despite knowing that nothing they do will bring the town back).
It’s worth a read in its entirety. But the ending in particular is powerful.
[Glenn Beutel] tells a story about a time, around 2010, when he came across an old woman living in a campervan by Acland’s war memorial.
She looked worried, and he asked her what was wrong.
She had come back to town for her dog, she said; he was buried in the bottom corner of the park that Beutel’s parents helped turn into an oasis from the brutal Queensland heat.
She was there to exhume his remains, before the town was dug up entirely.
“So, I got my spade out,” Beutel says, “and we went down.”
Pakistan is managing COVID-19 with mass surveillance
Pakistan is using “a secret surveillance system… otherwise used to track high-value militant targets” to help tackle the COVID-19 pandemic.
Of course, the government isn’t being transparent about how the system is being used. Or when it’ll stop.
Kaukab Tahir Shairani, writing for The Diplomat:
While it remains unclear on how effective the government’s “national security” approach to the virus will be, the move raises eyebrows with regard to privacy and data protection for citizens. Through this technology, authorities are not only monitoring confirmed patients but also potential virus carriers. This indicates that the government is tracking movements and also listening in to private phone conversations to monitor possible symptoms.
Pakistan’s PM has argued parts of the country’s population couldn’t afford an extended lockdown measures. That doesn’t necessarily justify such invasive surveillance.
Especially given Pakistan’s history:
In the past, the Pakistani state has implemented laws that have continued to shrink user autonomy in the digital arena thereby granting authorities excessive powers to curb dissent.
What follows is a long list of reasons for people in Pakistan to be worried about their privacy. Whether or not they’re more worried about COVID-19 is the question, I suppose.
Cities aren’t ‘facing protests’ – they’re taking part in them
Historian Mar Hicks responded to a CNN headline – Cities face an eighth night of protests – with an obvious, but important, question: “Why isn’t the headline just ‘Protests continue for 8th night in many cities’?”
In the process, she explained why the way we talk about these protests matters:
cities aren’t “facing” an 8th night of protests, cities are PARTICIPATING in an 8th night of protests.
how tf can cities “face” something their citizens are actively part of? This headline only works if you 1) consider cities to be buildings not citizens 2) consider cities to be police forces, not citizens, 3) want to paint protestors as implicitly being an outside/foreign presence
makes it sound like the cities are facing an invasion. That only works if yr talking about the invading militarized forces from a tyrannical federal govt-but you’d never say that.
more wht ppl, esp. those who are historians, experts, or have other experience w/dog whistle press language need to loudly call out this nonsense constantly & relentlessly. These headlines matter. They write the 1st draft of history, influence policy, & create lasting narratives.
The protests are a response from people – from cities – rejecting the status quo and demanding better. Because they deserve better. Any headline or reporting that suggests otherwise is part of the problem.
An actual politician: ‘brumby lives matter’
Beverley McArthur, the Liberal Victoria Member for Westen Victoria Region, in an actual speech that someone thought was a good idea:
Mr President, all lives matter.
And brumby lives matter too.
‘They’re not moving. They’re not moving. Oh they got shot.’
This is an update. They’re just having a normal conversation while at least a hundred cops are just staring at ‘em. Oh [the cops] are moving forward, oh they’re moving forward forward. I’m going back inside. They’re not moving. They’re not moving. They’re not — oh they got shot. They got shot. They got shot.