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The man teaching cops to kill
How does a police force normalising killing? They learn to kill. Here’s Radley Balko, writing about David Grossman – “one of the most prolific police trainers” in the US – in 2017:
Grossman’s classes teach officers to be less hesitant to use lethal force, urge them to be willing to do it more quickly and teach them how to adopt the mentality of a warrior.
In the class recorded for “Do Not Resist,” Grossman at one point tells his students that the sex they have after they kill another human being will be the best sex of their lives. The room chuckles. But he’s clearly serious. “Both partners are very invested in some very intense sex,” he says. “There’s not a whole lot of perks that come with this job. You find one, relax and enjoy it.”
And this isn’t an isolated class:
This is the guy who has trained more U.S. police officers than anyone else. The guy who, more than anyone else, has instructed cops on what mind-set they should bring to their jobs.
Lao lao, Laos's very own moonshine
I’m not much of a drinker but I’d give lao lao a (very trepidatious) try. It’s made in households around Laos and usually sits at 120 to 150 proof. So, you know, sip carefully.
Erin Smith’s fantastic newsletter Dari Mulut ke Mulut has more:
Yet in a way, lao lao represents the real Laos. Every tourist in this country will at some point encounter Beer Lao. But lao lao is the currency of the private Lao world. It’s the drink of intimate friends who’ve known each other since school, of mechanics kicking back after work, of villagers toasting a special occasion.
Beer Lao may be Laos’ most famous beverage, but lao lao is the cheapest and the most consumed. It is a lucky falang who’s invited into someone’s home to join a bunch of smiling guests and pass around a glass of the family brew — which may be infused with anything from olives and wood to snakes, bees or lizards.
The upshot is that if you’ve lived in Laos for a little while, you may not love lao lao, but you know it when you see it.
Gregg Popovich: ‘The System Has to Change’
Gregg Popovich, coach of the San Antonio Spurs, on the protests happening across the US after police murdered George Floyd:
The thing that strikes me is that we all see this police violence and racism, and we’ve seen it all before, but nothing changes. That’s why these protests have been so explosive. But without leadership and an understanding of what the problem is, there will never be change. And white Americans have avoided reckoning with this problem forever, because it’s been our privilege to be able to avoid it. That also has to change.
And on Donald Trump:
He’s not just divisive. He’s a destroyer. To be in his presence makes you die. He will eat you alive for his own purposes. I’m appalled that we have a leader who can’t say ‘black lives matter.’ That’s why he hides in the White House basement. He is a coward. He creates a situation and runs away like a grade-schooler. Actually, I think it’s best to ignore him. There is nothing he can do to make this better because of who he is: a deranged idiot.
“He’s not just divisive. He’s a destroyer. To be in his presence makes you die.” That’s an incredible three sentences.
These three are more important, though:
Again, we need change. The system has to change. I’m willing to do my part.
Everyone, no matter who or were you are, needs to decide what it means and what it looks like to do their part. That’s not limited to the United States: every country has their own battle.
Australia has its problems. Our Indigenous population is so systematically disadvantaged that a 46,000-year-old sacred site can be demolished by a mining company without their blinking an eye. We can know about the disgusting number of Indigenous deaths in custody for decades and barely do a thing about it.
The problem is racism. It’s built into our society. It’s everywhere. We all – everyone one of us – need to do something about it.
“The guy is drunk! But there he goes!”
Speaking of Kevin Harlan, his call of a drunk guy running onto the field during a Monday Night Football game is perfect.
Now he takes off his shirt. He’s running down the middle by the fifty. He’s at the thirty. He’s bare-chested and banging his chest – now he runs the opposite way!
You don’t get much better than this.
LeBron James had no regard for human life twelve years ago
The best call in sports, from one of the best to ever sit behind the mic.
(And don’t forget the Kobe original.)
Bookwork Adventures is gone and there no words
John Walker, eulogising a classic:
There’s been a murder. And no one seems to have noticed. One of my favourite ever games, released during the peak of PopCap’s glory days, is simply gone. Not just no longer on sale, but seemingly erased from history, from the current timeline. Bookworm Adventures (and it’s sequel), the adorable word-spelling combat game, has been Shazammed right out of existence.
I spent hours playing Bookworm games. If I could get it on a platform, I did – iOS included – and give it a spin. It was relaxing: no time limits, no microtransactions. Just a little worm and some words.
The world is a little bit darker today.
Improv comedians are suffering because of COVID-19
Ryan Broderick in his great newsletter Garbage Day, writing about the plight of improv comedians (and a truly batshit meme):
This comes from my friend Billy. He dropped it into a group chat I’m in and said, “Ryan, can you please use your weirdo knowledge and explain this to me?” Apparently, a guy he knows from improv shared it on Facebook. Quick aside: It seems like improv comedians are being affected particularly hard by COVID-19. I heard about a disastrous Zoom call my friend was on recently where like 50 improv comedians all went one by one through the grid doing bits at each other. Truly grim stuff.
The ”this” in question? A drawing of Shrek and Fiona angrily watching doctors steal sauce from the knees of a anti-5G protester.
There’s a lot going on here.
John Gruber on the state of iPhone and Android CPU Performance
John Gruber with the shot:
But one gets the feeling that if these performance tables were turned, you’d hear a lot more about the relative benchmarks of Android vs. iOS devices from Android-focused websites than we do now. Because it’s not just that Apple’s new $400 iPhone SE offers faster performance than any Android phone money can buy, but that the two-and-a-half-year-old iPhone 8 has better single-threaded performance than any Android phone today — and the iPhone 8 was the phone Apple discontinued for the new $400 iPhone SE. Apple discontinued an iPhone that, if it were an Android phone, would be the fastest in single-threaded performance on the market today.
And on the flip side, what do you get for $400 in Androidtown? Amazon sells the Motorola Moto Z4 for $500. Let’s just spot the Android side $100. The Moto Z4’s single-threaded Geekbench 5 score is about 500. That falls short of an iPhone 6S, a phone from 2015.
And the chaser:
What makes our actual situation unprecedented in personal computing history isn’t that one company has maintained a decade-long CPU performance edge over the rest of the industry, but that that one company is keeping those chips exclusively for its own devices.
A guy tried to buy nudes with Animal Crossing money (in a Facebook group his fiancé was also in)
Sasha Rei Thorne on Twitter:
Hello children, here’s the story of how I accidentally fucked up a marriage today in an Animal Crossing fb group.
The internet is a gift.
Mastering tech as an expression of power
Jess Hill, writing about power in her fantastic book on domestic abuse See what you made me do:
The capacity to show power and control is the standard by which men are measured: whether it’s their ability to master technology, run vast business empires, dominate discussion, rob a bank, or exhibit physical and emotional mastery. How and what they control doesn’t matter, so long as the create the impression of being in control.
And when this control is threatened, men lash out.
Amazing how one paragraph can say so much about the kinds of anger and abuse you can see in nerd communities. And why Silicon Valley loves stoic philosophy so much.
Facebook has chosen growth over safety too many times
Julia Carrie Wong, writing for The Guardian:
The social network is now officially available in 111 languages. The rules that govern what users can or cannot post on the site – on crucial issues ranging from hate speech and incitement, to violence to health misinformation and self-harm – had only been translated into 41 languages as of April 2019, according to an investigation by Reuters. The company’s 15,000 content moderators were fluent in just about 50 languages, and the company’s much-vaunted automated tools that are supposed to detect dangerous content only worked in about 30.
Facebook is choosing growth over safety.
Nothing says “we care about moderation” like expanding into an area, translating your site, but not bothering to translate your moderation policy or having moderators on hand who can read the languages being used on your network.
Two quick reminders, drawn from Wong’s article:
First, Facebook has been implicated in ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. And the anti-Muslim riots in Sri Lanka. In both cases, language barriers were a problem.
And second, Facebook has seen $69 billion in net profit since 2010.
Facebook has expanded into areas – some of which are volatile – that it doesn’t understand without providing the tools needed to moderate whatever’s posted.
This isn’t just an oversight. It’s a choice. It’s an denial of responsibility. And it’s a failure to protect people.
Sending confetti is the superior way to text
Sending texts with confetti is, when ranked among this entire list, a superior way to converse. It takes your “okays” from just okay to Extremely Happy to Be Here. Finally texting a belated-birthday greeting to that friend who’s birthday you couldn’t find because it was saved in a voice note? Confetti! All’s forgiven. Want to convey irony but in a fun way? Confetti. There’s a satisfying haptic “pop” for both the sender and the recipient, which is 80% the reason I employ it. You don’t really have to say anything so long as you say it with confetti. Best part of all? No clean-up required.
The screen effects – confetti among them – are an unsung highlight of iMessage.
Echo gets a lot of play in my group chats. Nothing expresses a genuine desire to do something like dozens of thumbs-up emojis bouncing around your screen.
It’s a genuinely joyful feature. And there aren’t enough of those going around.
Netflix softens their viewership metrics, which doesn't seem insecure at all
Netflix’s metrics, which are not verified by a third party and are not comparable to Nielsen’s average total audience measurement, previously counted an account that watched 70 percent of an episode or film as a viewer. Now, it will count anyone who “chose to watch and did watch at least 2 minutes” of a title as a viewer. Per Netflix, it is “long enough to indicate the choice was intentional” but more accurately shows popularity than the 70 percent threshold, which may have negatively impacted longer projects.
Netflix said that viewership numbers are now about 35 percent higher on average than under the previous measurement system. For example, the documentary Our Planet had 45 million member household viewers under the new measurement system, compared with 33 million under the previous metric.
Surprise: when you dramatically lower what counts as a viewer, you have more viewers.
It may turn out that this change more accurately captures viewing patterns on Netflix. Longer projects, as the said, will also benefit. And they’ll no doubt continue to track completion rates for their recommendation engine.
But changing what you consider a view – and dramatically inflating viewership numbers in the process – right after the successful launch of a new competitor doesn’t exactly seem like the move of a confident market leader.
Megan Mackay summed it up well on Twitter:
remember when facebook’s video metrics were set up to be so badly skewed that an entire industry pivoted to prioritize facebook video, only to have the floor collapse underneath them because their strategies were based off of bad numbers? anyway, everything looks fine here
My thoughts exactly.
Nepal introduces jail terms for "offensive" social posts
Rotjita Adhikari, reporting for The Guardian:
Jail terms of up to five years could be imposed on people in Nepal who post “offensive” comment on social media sites, including Facebook and Instagram in the latest move by the government to crack down on dissent.
The information technology bill, introduced at the end of December, imposes fines of up to 1.5m rupees (about $13,000) for anyone posting content deemed to promote hate crime or ridicule. It would apply to all social networking sites.
Nepal is a democratic country, by the way. Their government claims the change is because their “society is going out of control”.
On one hand, it’s a “you have bigger problems” situation. On the other hand, we know the damage unchecked social media can do in places with those bigger problems.
That’s not to excuse or justify the decision. It’s not a good one.
It’ll also be an interesting test for social platforms. The EU have said that Facebook can be forced to remove illegal content. Will the Nepalese Government try to push for the same?
It’s easy to dismiss this as a fringe case when you’re sitting in a Western country. But a lot of people in democratic governments will be paying close attention to these bills become law.
The lives lost due to Kashmir's internet blackout
Hannah Ellis-Petersen and an anonymous local correspondent, reporting on the internet blackout imposed on Kashmir by the Indian Government for The Guardian:
In Kashmir, where mountainous terrain and archaic road networks mean travel can often take days, patients suffering from cardiac emergencies often don’t have access to specialist doctors or major hospitals in time. But through a volunteer network, 1,200 doctors across the region were connected to each other through four groups on WhatsApp, the instant internet messaging app, where they shared reports of cardio emergencies and sought instant diagnosis.
Over the 500 days it was running, the group operated round the clock and analysed 38,700 ECGs, handled 19,395 cases and administered thrombolysis 778 times to clear blocked veins. That was until 5 August, when an indefinite internet suspension was imposed upon the region.
The economy has been devastated, people have left the region to find work, and, based on the above, it’s likely others have died. Unfortunately, there’s no sign of things changing any time soon.
The environmental destruction of the Australian bushfires
Bianca Hall and Peter Hannam, reporting on a leaked report on the ecological damage caused by bushfires in Victoria, for The Age:
It says more than 40 per cent of the Victorian habitats of the sooty owl, diamond python, long-footed potoroo, long-nosed bandicoot and brush-tailed rock-wallaby have already been wiped out.
An estimated 25 per cent of the sooty owl population has been killed.
It warned that 31 per cent of the state’s rainforests had already gone up in flames, as well as 24 per cent of wet or damp forests, and 34 per cent of lowland forests.
Of 104 parks managed by Parks Victoria, 34 were entirely burnt out including the Alfred National Park in Cann River and the Lind National Park between Cann River and Orbost.
It’ll take over 100 years for wet and damp forests to recover from the fires. But they won’t have the chance – another fire will come through long before then.
As Professor David Lindenmayers, a conservation biologist, says in the article: “They just collapse into something different.”
Meanwhile: the forestry industry has just called for those same native forests to be opened up for logging. Because of course they have.
The governments turning off the internet
Michael Safi, reporting for The Guardian:
Since India’s first recorded use of the tactic, six times in 2012, it has become the world’s undisputed leader, accounting for 134 internet shutdowns last year, around 68% of the global total. This week, it broke the record for the longest continuous outage for any democracy: 137 days and counting in the restive region of Kashmir.
The shutdown in Kashmir has had disastrous – and obvious – consequences for businesses, hospitals, and schools.
Governments are now shutting off the internet to quell protests. But some of them got a taste for it through slightly more noble means:
Governments justify the curb on the freedom to communicate by citing public order. And it is clear that the hyper-speed with which information – true or otherwise – travels online is creating problems. In 2018, India struggled to contain rumours of child kidnappers on the loose that travelled faster and more widely than authorities could track, whipping up mobs who lynched at least 30 people across the country.
A few months before, Sri Lanka’s government blocked social media to curb the spread of hateful posts that were helping to spark deadly anti-Muslim riots. “The whole country could have been burning in hours,” the country’s information minister at the time said.
But, as Safi notes, the tactics people approve of in fringe cases often come for them elsewhere. And others notice: Russia and Iran are both planning their own “sovereign” internet that can be walled off from world at large without losing functionality altogether.
It’s easy to think these things only happen elsewhere – to other people – but it’s worth paying attention to. Why wouldn’t governments try to get a little extra power where they can?
It reminds me of this quote from Virginia Eubanks’s book Automating Inequality. She spoke to someone about how poor people, women in particular, were often test subjects for surveillance technology and this person said something that’s stuck with me:
You should pay attention to what happens to us. You’re next.
Bird mimics fire engine sirens as Australia burns
Australia is facing some of the most devastating fires the country has ever seen. People are relocating in numbers never seen before. Ten people have died since Christmas Day. A fire tornado flipped a fire truck. The chassis of another truck was melted. Children and families are hiding out on lakes. More than 4 million hectares of land and 900+ homes have been destroyed. Koalas and other animals are screaming in pain from burns.
And now magpies are imitating the sounds of fire engine sirens.
Meanwhile, Australia’s political leadership are taking holidays, ignoring expert advice, and generally doing nothing of any use. It’s a failure of leadership at the worst possible time and there are few signs things will get better any time soon.
Machine learning and the art of under-paying people to fix your problems
Can Duruk, writing about what things like “machine learning” often mean:
There’s another interesting angle here, and that’s about how so much of technology is not really technology, but just a bunch of people working really hard… I do wonder, often, how much into the common consciousness it has dissipated that much of “AI” and “Machine Learning” tools are many, many thousands of people doing the work that appears to be done by machines.
Benedict Evans has a good handle on this; how ML manifests in real life is not some omniscient, clairvoyant being but rather an ability to summon a million interns at will. You can’t, yet at least, make AI look at a photo and be able to tell you something a human cannot, but you can make it look at a million pictures.
But, I guess, you can’t even do that really, so you call up [Google’s largest content moderation contractor] Accenture, so they spin up a lot of workers.
When the machines can’t fix your moderation failures, send a bunch of under-paid, under-resourced people in to fix your failures.