When the Big Lie Meets Big Data – Scientific American Blog Network.
This one’s in Scientific American. In the conclusion:
Cognizant of the Pandora’s box that data scientists have opened, the scholarly journal Big Data has issued a call for papers for a future issue devoted to “Computational Propaganda.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage
Part two of the info once been seeing about Cambridge Analytics and the election. Post one looked like conspiracy theory. This one’s in the Guardian.
I’ll have to find part one again and post the link.
Dems: opposing the Supreme Court nominee is the wrong fight. He’s qualified. Opposing him because of the Merrick Garland opposition last year is dumb. That fight’s over; we lost.
New arrests at Standing Rock.
Rob Keller, spokesman for the Morton County sheriff’s office, told the Guardian Wednesday night that it was too soon to say what charges were being filed.
(I didn’t realize you could be arrested while it was too soon to say what charges were being filed)
via Over 70 arrested at Standing Rock as Dakota Access aims to finish pipeline | US news | The Guardian.
The troll in the white house has summarily halted the granting of visas to visitors and immigrants from a selection of primarily Muslim countries for a period of 120 days, an illegal prohibition under the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965. The Act was passed explicitly to prevent the Federal government from instituting immigration policy on the basis of nationality and other broad classifications, in response to the widely-acknowledged abuse of such restrictions over the course of the 20th century.
In the same document, he’s:
This was signed and went into effect on Holocaust Remembrance Day: http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/28/14419146/trump-muslim-refugee-ban-holocaust-remembrance-day-jews.
“First they came for the Somalis and the Iranians, and I did nothing. Then …” We have laws against profiling for a reason, because they violate the presumption of innocence and, like gill-netting, sweep up and penalize large groups of people to catch the few bad actors. If we categorize all Somalis as potential terrorists, should we not categorize other classes the same way? What about Arabs and Africans of European citizenship? What about Europeans in general? Most violent acts are committed by men. Should we therefore only allow entry to the US by women? It would certainly lower the probability of a violent act.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, in response, we (men and women of conscience, world-wide) all boycotted international travel to (or returning to) the US for 120 days? All business travel, all vacation travel, cancelled in solidarity with those who are now unfairly denied entry to the US? I wonder if the prospect of the heads of multinationals screaming at him as business grinds to a halt would cause him to reconsider, or would he just double down on the fight as he has so successfully with other issues in the past six months?
We’re all happily pointing and laughing at the President’s absurdities over the past week: crowd sizes, press secretary harrumphing, twitter ejaculations. We’re patting each other on the back for the feel-good march we participated in over the weekend.
The real work’s being done in the Congress. What have they been up to this last week? What bills have come out of committee ready for vote without a reading? What policy has been made, but not announced?
This is misdirection, not entertainment. We’re not winning here, people. Let’s pay attention.
You ever see that great movie with Al Pacino, where he plays a low-end lawyer who takes on the big corporation? I remember walking out of that movie as a teenager feeling really pumped up about serious, moral people doing good in the face of maybe irresistible pressure.
That’s what I felt like after watching this. Fantastic documentary. What makes the Times go, as an organization. Admittedly, lots of footage of David Carr, who turns out to be hugely photogenic and quotable on camera, so that doesn’t hurt.
With all this miasma floating around about the death of fact, “fake news” (propaganda, why doesn’t anyone use the term of art?), limiting press access to the government, new media … the clear theme of the movie is: real journalism matters.
I might start referring to myself as the Vulgar Mechanick (sic) I’m not a composer any more, and I’ve never been an engineer.
The Vulgar Mechanic and His Magical Oven – Issue 12: Feedback – Nautilus.