Yoel Roth, PhD used to be in charge of the trust and safety team at Twitter. This is a must-read article to better understand how the far right is attacking anyone who wants to guard against disinformation being shared on social media. Consequently, the link above is a gift 🎁 link, so anyone can read the entire article, even if they do not subscribe to the NY Times.

Below are some excerpts:

When I worked at Twitter, I led the team that placed a fact-checking label on one of Donald Trump’s tweets for the first time. Following the violence of Jan. 6, I helped make the call to ban his account from Twitter altogether. Nothing prepared me for what would happen next. Backed by fans on social media, Mr. Trump publicly attacked me. Two years later, following his acquisition of Twitter and after I resigned my role as the company’s head of trust and safety, Elon Musk added fuel to the fire. I’ve lived with armed guards outside my home and have had to upend my family, go into hiding for months and repeatedly move. This isn’t a story I relish revisiting. But I’ve learned that what happened to me wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t just personal vindictiveness or “cancel culture.” It was a strategy — one that affects not just targeted individuals like me, but all of us, as it is rapidly changing what we see online. Private individuals — from academic researchers to employees of tech companies — are increasingly the targets of lawsuits, congressional hearings and vicious online attacks. These efforts, staged largely by the right, are having their desired effect: Universities are cutting back on efforts to quantify abusive and misleading information spreading online. Social media companies are shying away from making the kind of difficult decisions my team did when we intervened against Mr. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. Platforms had finally begun taking these risks seriously only after the 2016 election. Now, faced with the prospect of disproportionate attacks on their employees, companies seem increasingly reluctant to make controversial decisions, letting misinformation and abuse fester in order to avoid provoking public retaliation.

I encourage you to use the gift link above and read the entire article. It is worth your time.

...Practitioners of Palestinian embroidery, mostly in women’s collectives, are keeping the tradition alive, preserving old stitch techniques along with Palestinian history. The thobe is one of the most important and recognizable symbols of Palestinian identity as well as a link to a deeply contested land. Women’s tradition of embroidering their own thobes became widespread across the Middle East starting in the ninth century, said Hanan Munayyer, a Palestinian American who wrote the book “Traditional Palestinian Costume: Origins and Evolution.”

...As the handicraft evolves, its practitioners see it in the context of history. “This is not the old heritage,” [Halima Fareed, member of the Surif Women’s Cooperative] said as she sewed the edges of a multicolored pillowcase. “It is our heritage, but it has been modernized.” The director of the cooperative, Taghrid Hudoosh, 55, nodded. “We are a continuation of our heritage,” she said.

Republicans celebrate their successful deception of voters

“The idea that I’m biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me, given my own personal background.”

--Christopher Wray, FBI Director

"Good for [FBI Director Christopher Wray]. But here’s what’s especially insane, absurd and ludicrous: No matter how many refutations Wray and others provide, Republicans are persuading people to believe their lies — and they are proud of the deception."

--Dana Milbank, opinion columnist for The Washington Post

Dana Milbank knocks it out of the ballpark in describing how House Republicans are convincing many people that the FBI is targeting "conservatives," despite refutations by people like lifelong Republican FBI Director Christopher Wray. This is an important summary of all the conspiracy theories that the GOP flung at Wray during their "inquisition" of him. Consequently, the above link is a gift link 🎁so you can read the entire column, even if you do not subscribe to The Washington Post.

After looking at the Wray interrogation, Milbank also discusses the GOP clown show that was a hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. 

In addition, Milbank goes on to talk about how Gal Luft, the "star 'whistleblower' behind the allegations of corruption against President Biden and his family, was indicted on a charge of acting as an illegal arms broker and an unregistered agent for China."

Finally, Milbank talks about all the conspiratorially based amendments the GOP have added to the National Defense Authorization Act.

Below are some excerpts from his column:

An honest man visited the House of lies this week. He did not like what he found there. “Insane.” “Absurd.” “Ludicrous.” Those are the actual words FBI Director Christopher Wray used to describe House Republicans’ crackpot conspiracy theories. “The American people fully understand,” Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) informed Wray at Wednesday’s hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, “… that you have personally worked to weaponize the FBI against conservatives.” Right. Hageman, the election denier who ousted Liz Cheney in a primary, would have you believe that Wray — senior political appointee in the George W. Bush Justice Department, clerk to a noted conservative judge, contributor to the Federalist Society, Donald Trump-appointed head of the FBI — is part of a conspiracy to persecute conservatives. “The idea that I’m biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me, given my own personal background,” he replied. [...] Good for him. But here’s what’s especially insane, absurd and ludicrous: No matter how many refutations Wray and others provide, Republicans are persuading people to believe their lies — and they are proud of the deception. Johnson, the leadoff questioner at Wednesday’s hearing, told Wray about a recent NBC News poll, in which “only 37 percent of registered voters now view the FBI positively,” down from 52 percent in 2018. “That’s a serious decline in the people’s faith, and it’s on your watch,” he told Wray.

"At the heart of the fantasy is the notion that, by wearing the right clothes the right way, we can bring the way we look into deeper harmony with the way we wish we looked."

"Why are Pants so Big (Again)?"

Gosh, I enjoyed this essay so much. It's funny and insightful. I have a body that feels impossible to put pants on in any comfortable or flattering way, and I'm a late trend adopter, but even I could tell that skinny pants and jeans had sailed away sometime in the past few years. I own so many different cuts and styles and brands of jeans now, but I finally donated the last of my skinny jeans. It's so freeing to be willing to wear stupid-looking pants, which is essentially the thesis of this essay.

Miles of prairie stretched out across the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in southern Oklahoma, acre after acre of brush, grasses and hearty vegetation creeping toward the low-range granite mountains rising in the distance. Like in much of Oklahoma, the road is flat here, but the speed limit remains 30 mph. That’s because of the bison.

They appeared seemingly out of nowhere: dozens of massive animals lumbering up the shoulder of the road to cross to the fresh vegetation on the other side. The herd moved slowly, their soft, bovine eyes barely registering the stopped cars awaiting their passage. They quickly set to work mowing down the fresh springtime grass.

The bison’s quiet munching does more than nourish their bodies — it’s one of many things they do to nurture their entire ecosystem, one that is increasingly under threat from climate change. Grazing bison shaving down acres of vegetation leave more than dung behind: Their aggressive chewing spurs growth of nutritious new plant shoots, and their natural behaviors — the microhabitats they create by rolling in the ground, the many birds that forged symbiotic relationships with them — trickle down the food chain. Once bordering on extinction, bison now serve as a great provider for their ecosystems, standing as an example of the ways in which animal conservation and ecological protection can work in tandem.

“Buffalo is the original climate regulator,” said Troy Heinert, a member of the Sicangu Lakota (Rosebud Sioux) tribe and executive director of the InterTribal Buffalo Council, a coalition working to restore the animal on tribal lands. “Just by how they use the grass, how they graze, how their hoofs are designed, the way they move. They did this job for us when we allowed them to be buffalo.”

Tribes are leading the effort to bring back the bison, Heinert says, which in turn allows for the return of other native grasses, animals and insects — all of which will “help fight this changing climate.”

This is a gift link.

As big a fan as I am, I've never seen this and it is in fact hilarious! David Prowse was amazing but hearing Darth with an accent is awesome. Thanks for the gift @witch-of-the-west-country

That the Editorial Board of the premier U.S. newspaper of record is finally warning about Donald Trump is significant. As such, this is a gift 🎁 link so that those who want to read the entire editorial can do so, even if they don't subscribe to The New York Times. Below are some excerpts:

As president, [Trump] wielded power carelessly and often cruelly and put his ego and his personal needs above the interests of his country. Now, as he campaigns again, his worst impulses remain as strong as ever — encouraging violence and lawlessness, exploiting fear and hate for political gain, undermining the rule of law and the Constitution, applauding dictators — and are escalating as he tries to regain power. He plots retribution, intent on eluding the institutional, legal and bureaucratic restraints that put limits on him in his first term. Our purpose at the start of the new year, therefore, is to sound a warning. Mr. Trump does not offer voters anything resembling a normal option of Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, big government or small. He confronts America with a far more fateful choice: between the continuance of the United States as a nation dedicated to “the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” and a man who has proudly shown open disdain for the law and the protections and ideals of the Constitution. [...] It is instructive in the aftermath of that administration to listen to the judgments of some of these officials on the president they served. John Kelly, a chief of staff to Mr. Trump, called him the “most flawed person I’ve ever met,” someone who could not understand why Americans admired those who sacrificed their lives in combat. Bill Barr, who served as attorney general, and Mark Esper, a former defense secretary, both said Mr. Trump repeatedly put his own interests over those of the country. Even the most loyal and conservative of them all, Vice President Mike Pence, who made the stand that helped provoke Mr. Trump and his followers to insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, saw through the man: “On that day, President Trump also demanded that I choose between him and the Constitution,” he said.

[See more under the cut.]

There will not be people like these in the White House should Mr. Trump be re-elected. The former president has no interest in being restrained, and he has surrounded himself with people who want to institutionalize the MAGA doctrine. According to reporting by the Times reporters Maggie Haberman, Charlie Savage and Jonathan Swan, Mr. Trump and his ideological allies have been planning for a second Trump term for many months already. Under the name Project 2025, one coalition of right-wing organizations has produced a thick handbook and recruited thousands of potential appointees in preparation for an all-out assault on the structures of American government and the democratic institutions that acted as checks on Mr. Trump’s power. [...] Mr. Trump has made clear his conviction that only “losers” accept legal, institutional or even constitutional constraints. He has promised vengeance against his political opponents, whom he has called “vermin” and threatened with execution. This is particularly disturbing at a time of heightened concern about political violence, with threats increasing against elected officials of both parties. He has repeatedly demonstrated a deep disdain for the First Amendment and the basic principles of democracy, chief among them the right to freely express peaceful dissent from those in power without fear of retaliation, and he has made no secret of his readiness to expand the powers of the presidency, including the deployment of the military and the Justice Department, to have his way. [...] Re-electing Mr. Trump would present serious dangers to our Republic and to the world. This is a time not to sit out but instead to re-engage. We appeal to Americans to set aside their political differences, grievances and party affiliations and to contemplate — as families, as parishes, as councils and clubs and as individuals — the real magnitude of the choice they will make in November.

I encourage people to use the above gift link and read the entire article.

[edited]

Rest in peace

I love that James Cameron could have just handwaved this forever but finally said “You know what? I’m James Cameron, I have armies of science nerds and stunt people at my disposal, let’s settle this.”

https://wapo.st/3YBXhzo

In the years since the director’s 1997 film “Titanic” captured hearts around the world with the fictional story of two lovers aboard the infamous steamship, fans have wondered: Could Jack and Rose have survived together if they’d both squeezed atop the makeshift raft in the freezing cold waters? // The director recently revealed that he has commissioned a study that shows only one of the darling duo in “Titanic” could have survived, he said in an interview with the Toronto Sun. The study, which used stunt people and hypothermia experts to re-create the film’s tragic, oft-challenged scene, will be unveiled in a February 2023 National Geographic special around the time a remastered version of the blockbuster movie is scheduled to release.

Every time I read an article by Eric Kim, I fall just a little bit more in love with him.

really fascinating article. You should read it

Loved this. Matisse is one of my fave artists and this is basically why I got a Matisse cutout-inspired tattoo.

Well this sucks