[weekly linkdump, somewhat edited from my diigo]
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#twitter
All you need to read on the Cambridge Analytica story
Edit (actually read this instead:
Cloak and Data: The Real Story Behind Cambridge Analytica’s Rise and Fall – “The secretive data firm said it could move the minds of American voters. That wasn’t its real victory.”
Michael Seemann – Donald Trump und die Mär von der Daten-Wunderwaffe – Elsewhere he summed it up like this: “kurz: es ist die falsche aufregung, mit dem falschen adressaten und erreicht genau das falsche. bitte aufhören. danke.” Bit cynical, but right on.
Cambridge Analytica: Was wir über „das größte Datenleck in der Geschichte von Facebook“ wissen – “Donald Trumps Wahlkampf stützte sich unter anderem auf detaillierte Persönlichkeitsprofile von mehr als 50 Millionen Facebook-Nutzern. Dank investigativer Recherchen kommt jetzt ans Licht, wie die verantwortliche Firma Cambridge Analytica an die Daten kam und wie sie arbeitete. Die wichtigsten Fragen und Erkenntnisse zum Skandal im Überblick.” Diligent overview.
Just because Cambridge Analytica tells its customers it can sway elections, it doesn’t follow that they’re any good at it – “So long as we take Cambridge Analytica’s claims at face value, we can say that the problem wasn’t business-as-usual — mass inequality, policies that benefited the richest and whitest among us — it was Robert Mercer’s magical mind-control ray. Likewise the claims of Russian interference: if Russian interference was the problem, then all we have to do is fight off Russian propaganda — no need to purge the Democrats of advocates for the finance industry, mass surveillance, authoritarianism and endless war” Cory on the hype.
#watch,
Digitalisierung – “Frederik Schrader und Tjorben Eckermann berichten informativ und investigativ, diesmal zum Thema “Digitalisierung”.”
Akira100% Pendulum ver.2 – age-restricted? very funny!
Kindergarten Weather Report – “Carden Corts with your weather forecast for March 21, 2018.”
listen and
Solecast w/ Cindy Milstein on Rebellious Mourning – “Todays Solecast is with Cindy Milstein on her new book out on AK Press, Rebellious Mourning. Cindy is a long time anarchist organizer, author and participant in the Institute For Anarchist Studies.”
Euphrates Collection (A Bend in the River + Stereotypes Inc) by Sandhill – “The Euphrates Collection is the quintessential discography from the Iraqi-Canadian trio. Containing both “A Bend in The River” and “Stereotypes incorporated, this 20+ track album collection is the seminal record about Arab Identity in the West, featuring guest appearances by Loe Pesci and several of Narcy’s co-horts. With production fully helmed by Sandhill, and exclusive artwork by Sundus Abdul Hadi.”
#learn
Sorry, Jordan Peterson: rage isn’t a great look for a self-help guru | Nesrine Malik – “Being exposed by someone who is so obviously smarter than him and is therefore immune to his pseudo-intellectual schtick is Jordan Peterson’s Room 101, it’s entitlement Kryptonite. It re-erects the prison walls of his mediocrity and unoriginality.”
Puerto Ricans and Ultrarich “Puertopians” Are Locked in a Pitched Struggle Over How to Remake the Island – “This exodus was first presented as a temporary emergency measure, but it has since become apparent that the depopulation is intended to be permanent. The Puerto Rican governor’s office predicts that over the next five years, the island’s population will experience a “cumulative decline” of nearly 20 percent.” Shock doctrine.
Noam Chomsky on the Populist Groundswell, U.S. Elections, the Future of Humanity, and More – “There’s been nothing like this in history. It’s kind of an outrageous statement, but it happens to be true, that the Republican Party is the most dangerous organization in human history. Nobody, not even the Nazis, was dedicated to destroying the possibility of organized human life.” On the USA under T®ümp opposing climate change agreements.
‘Catastrophe’ as France’s bird population collapses due to pesticides – “Dozens of species have seen their numbers decline, in some cases by two-thirds, because insects they feed on have disappeared” Tip of the iceberg.
Bernie Sanders: Russia and Stormy Daniels distract us from real problem of inequality – “We have to fight Trump every day. But we have to not lose our vision as to where we want to go as a country. We can talk about the disastrous role Russia has played in trying to undermine American democracy. That is enormously important. But we also have to talk about the fact that we have the highest rate of child poverty in any major economy of the world.” All the scandals of this administration seen as a derailing effort.
EXCLUSIVE: ‘Lone DNC Hacker’ Guccifer 2.0 Slipped Up and Revealed He Was a Russian Intelligence Officer – “Robert Mueller’s team has taken over the investigation of Guccifer 2.0, who communicated with (and was defended by) longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone.” His OpSec was never that great.
Releases: Shepard Fairey “March For Our Lives” Posters – “For those planning to join the March For Our Lives march this Saturday, Shepard Fairey (featured) has made some posters available for download (in high res) thru Amplifier and for pick up some thru distribution points.”
craigslist | about | FOSTA – “To the millions of spouses, partners, and couples who met through craigslist, we wish you every happiness!” Aww.
Saudi Crown Prince Boasted That Jared Kushner Was “In His Pocket” – “One of the people MBS told about the discussion with Kushner was UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, according to a source who talks frequently to confidants of the Saudi and Emirati rulers. MBS bragged to the Emirati crown prince and others that Kushner was “in his pocket,” the source told The Intercept.” Raise your hand if you are surprised. No one? Thought so.
Even Pence’s Daughter Bought a Copy of John Oliver’s Gay Bunny Book – “I have bought his book,” Charlotte Pence, the author of the original Bundo book, told the Hill. It doesn’t have to be divisive. I think that everybody can come together over Marlon.” Lol.
If You’re Pissed About Facebook’s Privacy Abuses, You Should Be Four Times As Angry At The Broadband Industry – “So again, it makes perfect sense to be angry with Facebook. But if you’re deleting Facebook to protect your privacy but still happily using your stock, bloatware-laden smartphone on one of these networks, you’re just trying to towel off in a rainstorm. The reality is that apathy to consumer privacy issues is the norm across industries, not the exception, and however bad Facebook’s behavior has been on the privacy front, the telecom industry has been decidedly worse for much, much longer. And whereas you can choose not to use Facebook, a lack of competition means you’re stuck with your snoop-happy ISP.” It’s a systemic problem, stupid.
Plastic eating microbes to the rescue: evolution may be finding a solution to the problem of plastic waste – “Environmental pollution from plastics remains one of the greatest challenges worldwide with the increasing consumption of plastics. We successfully constructed a new superior PET-degrading variant with the determination of a crystal structure of PETase and its degrading molecular mechanism. This novel technology will help further studies to engineer more superior enzymes with high efficiency in degrading. This will be the subject of our team’s ongoing research projects to address the global environmental pollution problem for next generation.” What could possibly go wrong.
1% of subreddits start 74% of conflicts – analyzing Reddit raids in 1.8 billion comments in 36,000 subreddits across 40 months [PDF]
The alt-right is in decline. Has antifascist activism worked? – “Antifascist tactics have led not only to failed events and dwindling cadres but to infighting and blame games in an increasingly fractious far-right movement” The author is way to optimistic, but in tendency correct.
Germany’s Refugee Detectives – “Inside Germany’s high-stakes operation to sort people fleeing death from opportunists and pretenders” Yes and no.
Jordan Peterson & Fascist Mysticism – “Closer examination, however, reveals Peterson’s ageless insights as a typical, if not archetypal, product of our own times: right-wing pieties seductively mythologized for our current lost generations.” I am just about done with these Peterson think pieces.
Extremism pays. That’s why Silicon Valley isn’t shutting it down – “The tech giants’ need for ‘engagement’ to keep revenues flowing means they are loath to stop driving viewers to ever-more unsavoury content” Yeh, duh.
Does playing violent video games cause aggression? A longitudinal intervention study – “Although we used a comprehensive test battery consisting of questionnaires and computerised behavioural tests assessing aggression, impulsivity-related constructs, mood, anxiety, empathy, interpersonal competencies and executive control functions, we did not find relevant negative effects in response to violent video game playing.” yeh, duh.
How a Norwegian comment section turned chaos into order—with a simple quiz – “A WordPress plugin could force users to correctly answer a few multiple-choice questions before the page’s comment field would appear. Once he got to the office, he and fellow staffers spent three hours building the plugin, which Grut reminded the crowd is wholly open source.”
A woman’s final Facebook message before euthanasia: ‘I’m ready for my trip now…’ – “Her death was inevitable, one way or another, but she wanted the right to die with dignity, and she wanted other psychiatric patients to know that they also have a choice. This was her message to the world.”
#oldiebutgoodie
What It Looks Like On The Dark Side of the Web – “Whitney Phillips, an assistant professor at Mercer University, is one of the leading experts on trolls, web culture and ambivalent online behaviors. She has written two books on the topic of trolls, their motivations, and effects.”
Who are Breivik’s fellow travellers? – “The “cultural Marxism” that Breivik blamed for Europe’s Muslim takeover is a conspiracy theory that was born in the US. It contends that a small group of Marxist philosophers associated with the Frankfurt school of critical theory plotted to destroy western civilisation by encouraging multiculturalism, homosexuality and collectivist economic ideas.”
#francais_deutsch_other
Verschwörungstheorien: Symptom für eine tiefe Krise – “Warum sind Verschwörungstheorien erfolgreich? Experten meinen, solche Theorien geben Menschen das Gefühl, einen Wissensvorsprung zu haben. Zudem seien sie ein Symptom für eine tiefe Krise.” Interesting aspect missing, the more and more aggressive ways conspiracy theorists struggle not to be named as such.
AfD und FPÖ: Empörungsmaschinen – “Eine neue Untersuchung bestätigt den Verdacht: Rechtspopulisten profitieren von der Wut, die sie auf Facebook schüren” Take away word: Empörungswettbewerb.
1968, die Linke und die „Arbeiterklasse“ – “„68“ war der politisierte Höhepunkt der Kulturrevolution der 1960er Jahre. Der Linken wird heute vorgeworfen, sie habe damals begonnen, sich nicht mehr für die Arbeiter zu interessieren und betreibe seither nur noch „Identitätspolitik“. Das tönt plausibel. Aber stimmt es denn auch?” Nein!
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