Month: January 2021
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A Vast Web of Vengeance – The New York Times
A Vast Web of Vengeance (Published 2021) Outrageous lies destroyed Guy Babcock’s online reputation. When he went hunting for their source, what he discovered was worse than he could have imagined. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/30/technology/change-my-google-results.html The images were the worst: photos taken from his LinkedIn and Facebook pages that had “pedophile” written across them in red type.…
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The Dark Reality Behind Saudi Arabia’s Utopian Dreams – The New York Times
The Dark Reality Behind Saudi Arabia’s Utopian Dreams (Published 2021) Mohammed bin Salman’s absurd plan for the Line — a 106-mile long city with no cars and no roads — comes with a grisly human price. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/magazine/saudi-arabia-neom-the-line.html The film’s final words, spoken as a multicultural parade of faces flickers across the screen, are deliciously…
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Doctor Do-Little – The Drift
Doctor Do-Little There is no one in American government — or perhaps any government — quite like Dr. Anthony Fauci. His position, with its mixture of informal power and public visibility… via The Drift: https://www.thedriftmag.com/the-case-against-fauci/ In July, Fauci was asked whether he regretted originally advising against masks. He replied, astonishingly, “I don’t regret anything I…
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A New History of the Cultural Revolution, Reviewed | The New Yorker
What Are the Cultural Revolution’s Lessons for Our Current Moment? The great question of China’s Maoist experiment now looms over the United States: Why did a powerful society suddenly start destroying itself? via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/02/01/what-are-the-cultural-revolutions-lessons-for-our-current-moment Western intellectuals and artists would have felt much less sympathy for the Devil had they heard about the…
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Who’s Making All Those Scam Calls? – The New York Times
Who’s Making All Those Scam Calls? (Published 2021) Every year, tens of millions of Americans collectively lose billions of dollars to scam callers. Where does the other end of the line lead? Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/magazine/scam-call-centers.html “I’m going to give you the password to unlock your PC because they use the same password every time,” he said.…
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From Navy SEAL to Part of the Angry Mob Outside the Capitol – The New York Times
From Navy SEAL to Part of the Angry Mob Outside the Capitol (Published 2021) The presence in Washington of a longtime member of the Navy SEALs who was trained to identify misinformation reflects the partisan politics that helped lead to the assault. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/us/navy-seal-adam-newbold-capitol.html Mr. Newbold’s worldview is plain from his Facebook account. In a…
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Navalny’s Long-Running Battle with Putin Enters a New Phase | The New Yorker
Navalny’s Long-Running Battle with Putin Enters a New Phase The jailed opposition leader is creating a model of guerrilla political warfare for the digital age. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/navalnys-long-running-battle-with-putin-enters-a-new-phase The story line has a both cinematic and ghoulish arc: the charismatic protest leader poisoned by the secret police manages to miraculously survive. As he…
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Trump Wants Back on Facebook. This Star-Studded Jury Might Let Him. – The New York Times
Trump Wants Back on Facebook. This Star-Studded Jury Might Let Him. (Published 2021) A new kind of corporate supercourt is looking for legitimacy. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/24/business/media/trump-facebook-oversight-board.html “The media played a role of this sort at a certain point in history, as a kind of trusted intermediary, but there are good reasons for it not to play…
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Have We Already Been Visited by Aliens? | The New Yorker
Have We Already Been Visited by Aliens? An eminent astrophysicist argues that signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life have appeared in our skies. What’s the evidence for his extraordinary claim? via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/01/25/have-we-already-been-visited-by-aliens nasa’s ultimate goal for the telescope was to work out a figure known as eta-Earth, or η⊕. This is the average number of rocky,…
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Everything Is Broken – Tablet Magazine
Link: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/everything-is-broken David and I looked at each other, simultaneously realizing that the after-school special we thought we were in was actually a horror movie. If the medical industry was comprehensively broken, as Norman said, and the media was irrevocably broken, as we knew it was … Was everything in America broken? Was education broken?…
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Trump’s useful thugs: how the Republican party offered a home to the Proud Boys | News | The Guardian
Trump’s useful thugs: how the Republican party offered a home to the Proud Boys The long read: Early in Trump’s presidency, emboldened neo-Nazi and fascist groups came out into the open but were met with widespread revulsion. So the tactics of the far right changed, becoming more insidious – and much more successful via the…
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This Site Published Every Face From Parler’s Capitol Riot Videos | WIRED
A Site Published Every Face From Parler’s Capitol Riot Videos Faces of the Riot used open source software to detect, extract, and deduplicate every face from the 827 videos taken from the insurrection on January 6. via WIRED: https://www.wired.com/story/faces-of-the-riot-capitol-insurrection-facial-recognition/ Late last week, a website called Faces of the Riot appeared online, showing nothing but a…
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What You Should Know Before Leaking a Zoom Meeting
What You Should Know Before Leaking a Zoom Meeting At least one leaker has already been exposed. Here’s how to protect yourself or your sources. via The Intercept: https://theintercept.com/2021/01/18/leak-zoom-meeting/ In contrast, the audio watermarks are not readily perceptible to casual listeners, though they are what in watermarking parlance is known as “overt.” That means the fact…
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Fox Settled a Lawsuit Over Its Lies. But It Insisted on One Unusual Condition. – The New York Times
Fox Settled a Lawsuit Over Its Lies. But It Insisted on One Unusual Condition. (Published 2021) Why did the network insist an agreement with the family of a murdered young man remain undisclosed until after the election? Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/business/media/fox-news-seth-rich-settlement.html Fox’s decision to settle with the Rich family came just before its marquee hosts, Lou Dobbs…
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Why Did the Taliban Free an Imprisoned Afghan Police Officer? – The New York Times
She Killed an American in 2012. Why Was She Freed in the Taliban Deal? (Published 2021) The internal debate in Washington over the fate of an Iranian prisoner in Afghanistan illustrates one of the difficult decisions the end of a war brings. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/world/asia/afghanistan-prisoner-exchange-taliban.html As peace negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban continue…
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Trolling the Great Outdoors | The New Yorker
Trolling the Great Outdoors As the wilderness gets overrun, the most hated man in the Rockies finds an audience of emulators and antagonists. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/01/18/trolling-the-great-outdoors “The more hate I got, the more people got behind me, from all over the world,” Lesh said. “These people couldn’t give two fucks about me walking…
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Among the Insurrectionists at the Capitol | The New Yorker
Among the Insurrectionists From 2021: Some of Trump’s supporters had been declaring, at rally after rally, that they would go to violent lengths to keep the President in power, Luke Mogelson writes. A chronicle of an attack foretold. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/01/25/among-the-insurrectionists During Trump’s speech on January 6th, he said, “The media is the biggest…
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The Georgia Dad Who Said That He Wanted to Kill Nancy Pelosi | The New Yorker
The Georgia Dad Who Said That He Wanted to Kill Nancy Pelosi On Facebook, Cleveland Meredith, Jr., parroted The Gateway Pundit, Trump’s Twitter feed, Fox News, and, eventually, QAnon. Then he went to Washington. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/us-journal/the-georgia-dad-who-said-that-he-wanted-to-kill-nancy-pelosi But on his way to Washington Meredith seems to have had car trouble. According to an…