October 20, 2016
Kaleidoscopic, nutso BBC doc challenges the algorithmization of media and the fantasies it has convinced us are real. “We have retreated into a simplified, and often completely fake version of the world. But because it is all around us we accept it as normal.” / BBC
If online identities allow us to migrate towards media that don’t challenge our views, perhaps the physical world offers a better shot at fostering civil discourse. We need “third places,” neither work nor home, where people of different backgrounds share space—as in pubs, promenades, town squares, and coffeeshops. / k-state.edu
Online social networks privilege information from “friends,” and elevate that information to the position of trusted source. According to Edelman, a PR firm that has conducted an exhaustive review of how influence works in the social age, that crowds out previously conventional sources of wisdom like experts and academics. “Two of the top three most-frequently used sources of news and information are now peer-driven media, where content is shaped by the search preferences of other users, or directly curated by friends or family.” / edelman.com
Cracked can usually be counted on for liberal viewpoints and hearty laughs, but their executive editor soberly recasts America’s partisan divide as one between the city and the country. / cracked.com
“Twitter has colonized my mind. Almost every day for just under a decade, I have checked the site, have tweeted, retweeted, been subtweeted. My mental map is the frontier surrendered, and Twitter is the empire. To become occupied by a social network is to internalize its gaze. It is to forever carry a doubled view of both your own mind and the platform’s.” J.J. Gould, editor at TheAtlantic.com, once told me he had the internet in his head. Per this essay, he wasn’t totally wrong. We’ve internalized social networks, injecting their biases and limitations into our personalities—and our civil discourse. / Real Life
“The old influence hierarchy has been shattered, replaced by a new mosaic of influence in which social media play a growing role.” Last January, MIT Media Lab unleashed social learning machines onto the web to understand who influences the election. It holds up pretty well today. / MIT Media Lab
538’s podcast lays out the problem inherent when, if you ask someone if they feel well-informed, they say “yes.” / FiveThirtyEight
“Vermont, and the rest of America, will not get a handle on the opiate and heroin addiction crisis until we confront head-on the source of the problem: FDA-approved opiates that are handed out like candy,” said Governor Shumlin. / timesargus.com
Because sometimes we like to read across the aisle:
“Eight Times Liberals Claimed An Election Was Stolen Or Rigged” / thefederalist.com
Computer scientists have come up with an algorithm that can fairly divide a cake among any number of people. / Quanta
The world’s highly skilled immigrants are increasingly living in just four nations: the US, UK, Canada, and Australia (research here). / The Wall Street Journal, papers.nber.org
As risk factors go, “ethnic minority rule is one of the strongest predictors of some kind of state failure.” See also: The Economist on Ethiopia’s recent slide toward chaos. / chrisblattman.com, The Economist
“Imperfect though Trump may be, the argument goes, he has all the right enemies.” Long interesting Sam Tanenhaus article on “the rise of the reactionary” and changing schools within right-wing thought. / The New Yorker
Last night’s debate aired on three channels in Iran, in Farsi, Arabic, and English. / Slate
Bloomberg parodies other magazines for its “Year Ahead” issue. Creative director Rob Vargas explains his exercise in cliché: “We decided to execute very, very bad facsimiles of existing publications that cover each topic, simply because we thought it would be funny.” / Bloomberg Businessweek, It’s Nice That
“I was sitting with a gigantic liter bottle of Kingfisher Beer, an Indian brew, when a drunk Indian man put his arm around my shoulder, offering consolation. He slurred that they could best us in cricket, but could never best us in beer. ‘I’ve had your Murree,’ he said. ‘It beats the crap out of this.’” Meet Murree Brewery, Pakistan’s only major alcohol producer and a balm for tense Indian-Pakistani relations. / Roads and Kingdoms
The Pumpkin Spice machine is merciless, sweeping the most unsuspecting products under its bizarre—allegedly racist—influence: sneakers, coconut milk, KFC chicken, hummus, sushi, chapstick, eye shadow, nail polish, pizza, White Russians, McDonalds Japan french fries, negronis (in a pumpkin), and more. / theglobeandmail.com, Eater, ibtimes.com, Chicago Tribune, cosmopolitan.com, Forbes, marieclaire.com, elleuk.com, thrillist.com, Mashable, urbandaddy.com
In a new paper in Science, researchers conclude that several traits in humans—including lactose tolerance, hair and eye color, and parts of the immune system, as well as height—have evolved within the last 2,000 years. / whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com
See also: “Young people decide whether they’ve had enough to drink the same way the cruise control on a car ‘decides’ whether to accelerate or hit the brakes.” / newswise.com
“By using face recognition to scan the faces on 26 states’ driver’s license and ID photos, police and the FBI have basically enrolled half of all adults in a massive virtual line-up.” Half of American adults are in a face-recognition database, according to a Georgetown University study. / Ars Technica
While in China, Duterte broke up with the US. / yahoo.com