Getting to the bottom of a modern mystery.
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/28/technology/trump-coins.html
What became clear was not just the coin’s unusual origins, but an entire disinformation supply chain that relied on falsehoods and misinformation at nearly every step. Fueling the coin’s success were fake social media accounts that pushed false ads and a fleet of misleading news websites that preyed on partisan discontent.
Putin has something bigger to worry about at home than anything that happens in Ukraine.
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/25/opinion/president-biden-russia-ukraine.html
“An unseasonably rare forest fire has engulfed the Russian tundra as the country faces significant changes from climate change, Interfax reported.” Some 900 acres “are burning despite below-zero temperatures in the Magadan region some 10,000 kilometers east of Moscow. ‘The tundra is usually covered with snow at this time of year, so such fires occur extremely rarely,’ Interfax quoted an unnamed source as saying. Firefighters’ efforts to extinguish the flames are hampered by frozen water reservoirs, Interfax reported. Video posted online shows firefighters working to stamp out the fire with their feet and with tree branches.”
The Fox News host discussed with the White House press secretary how to dissuade the president from pursuing claims of voter fraud, newly disclosed documents show.
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/business/media/sean-hannity-donald-trump-january-6.html
In another exchange included in the letter, Mr. Hannity urged Ms. McEnany to keep the president away from certain advisers. “Key now. No more crazy people,” Mr. Hannity wrote. Ms. McEnany replied: “Yes 100%.”
The lawyer and his clients have made millions by exposing one Wall Street crime after another. But are they changing the industry?
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/24/jordan-thomas-army-of-whistle-blowers
Nicoll, who is an expert on the study of brain slices, told me he was shocked to see Cassava assert that it had tested the effects of its drug on the brains of deceased Alzheimer’s patients which had been frozen and then thawed months, or even years, later. “It’s hard for me to imagine how you could get any life from that tissue,” he said. “I mean, this is wild. It’s zombie science!”
At Trump’s first rally of the year, the former President wasn’t the only person selling a fantasy.
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-southwest/the-outsized-entrepreneurial-world-of-trump-merchandise
The former President made good use of the office’s opportunities for merchandising. The “SHOP” section of Trump’s Web site features hats and T-shirts, as well as stemless wineglasses, plastic straws, playing cards, and Christmas stockings emblazoned with Trump’s name. According to his former campaign manager, by spring of 2019, he’d sold nearly a million red maga hats, priced at forty-five dollars each. But the official wares are supplemented by a parallel economy of ersatz Trump-branded ephemera sold at roadside stands, state-fair booths, strip-mall stores, online marketplaces, and by a caravan of itinerant salespeople who follow him from rally to rally.
Good poker players have always known that they need to maintain a balance between bluffing and playing it straight. Now they can do so perfectly.
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/18/magazine/ai-technology-poker.html
Erik Seidel, a pro who learned the game in the 1980s, told me that if players like Koon traveled back in time just 15 years with today’s knowledge, they would crush the best players of that era. “I think also that all the people in the game would think that they were fish,” Seidel said, using the poker argot for bad players, “There are a lot of really strange plays now that these guys are making that are effective — but if people saw them back in the day, I think that they’d be invited into the game every night.”
Marfa, Texas, is known for its highbrow arts scene. A new gallery is unsettling that image.
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-southwest/when-nfts-invade-an-art-town
“I’m feeling super depressed right now,” the visual artist Magalie Guérin said. “I’m hearing no conversation about criticality. What makes this art?”
With new, less repressive tactics, countries like Serbia, Poland and Hungary are deploying highly effective tools to skew public opinion.
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/17/world/europe/serbia-media-censorship.html
Serbia no longer jails or kills critical journalists, as happened under the rule of Slobodan Milosevic in the 1990s. It now seeks to destroy their credibility and ensure few people see their reports.
U.S. service members and veterans have long insisted that the military’s garbage-disposal fires in war zones made them ill. Why were their claims stonewalled for so long?
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/11/magazine/military-burn-pits.html
A burn pit is exactly what it sounds like: A hole is dug in the ground and filled with trash, including medical waste, vehicles and plastics. Then the whole mess is doused with jet fuel and set on fire. Operated in large part by KBR, the huge contracting firm that was enriched by lucrative wartime contracts, burn pits were a ubiquitous feature of the post-Sept. 11 wars — a primitive disposal method for the tremendous loads of garbage generated by occupying forces.
A year after the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol, the President delivered the speech that he never wanted to give.
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/joe-biden-back-into-the-breach
In unsparing terms rarely uttered by one leader of the United States about another, Biden castigated the man he referred to sixteen times only as “the former President.” Trump, he said, was not just “a former President”—he’s “a defeated former President.” He “created and spread a web of lies” about the 2020 election. He put his “bruised ego” over the Constitution and the country. He and his followers, in attacking the peaceful transfer of power, “held a dagger at the throat of America and American democracy.”
The shooter had already described his deeds and victims in a graphic self-published novel series — just one part of a revealing digital trail.
via bellingcat: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2022/01/06/how-the-denver-shooters-digital-trail-exposes-the-violent-fantasies-of-the-manosphere/
Far-right mass shootings are an increasingly international phenomenon. Although many killers act alone, they manifest similar ideologies through attacks that build on and take inspiration from one another. The Christchurch shooting in 2019 inspired the El Paso and Poway shooters, along with the Hanau shootings and the Norway mosque attack in 2020. And while the Denver shooter did not explicitly mention the perpetrators of those heinous attacks, his ideology bears many of the same characteristic traits.
Four months after the Biden Administration withdrew U.S. troops, more than twenty million Afghans are on the brink of famine.
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/afghanistan-has-become-the-worlds-largest-humanitarian-crisis
The face of a commander from the southern city of Kandahar was so badly burned that his nose was a smooth, flat scar in the center of his face; a black and reddish hue covered his cheeks. His burned knuckles were frozen at right angles, making his hands look like claws. “This victory means so much—we defeated a superpower,” he said. One of his bodyguards was missing a leg. Another, who limped behind him, was missing both his left leg and his left arm. “We are so proud of our fighters,” the commander added.
A new study analyzed nearly 1,500 episodes, showing the extent to which podcasts pushed misinformation about voter fraud.
Mr. Bannon’s show was removed from Spotify in November 2020 after he discussed beheading federal officials, but it remains available on Apple and Google.
In a virtual world full of virtual goods, finance could get weird.
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/money-in-the-metaverse
Listening, I wondered, Could I make this my life? Banking dashboards, cryptocurrency wallets, ledgers and spreadsheets. I tried to imagine myself in a corporate-owned and venture-funded metaverse: a virtual axolotl in a virtual sweater, writing for a virtual magazine in a virtual office, hemorrhaging virtual money.
Why 2021 wasn’t the year we beat the pandemic.
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/03/opinion/covid-vaccines-misinformation.html
Alert readers will have noticed that these Republican claims, in addition to being false, contradict one another in multiple ways. We can ignore Covid thanks to vaccines, which by the way don’t work. Vaccination is a personal choice, but giving people the information they need to make that choice wisely is a vile attack on their dignity. It’s all about freedom and free markets, but this freedom doesn’t include the right of private businesses to protect their own workers and customers.