#Digital Agenda 2023 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

why-animals-do-the-thing · 7 months ago

Text

average United States contains 1000s of pet tigers in backyards" factoid actualy [sic] just statistical error. average person has 0 tigers on property. Activist Georg, who lives the U.S. Capitol & makes up over 10,000 each day, has purposefully been spreading disinformation adn [sic] should not have been counted

I have a big mad today, folks. It's a really frustrating one, because years worth of work has been validated... but the reason for that fucking sucks.

For almost a decade, I've been trying to fact-check the claim that there "are 10,000 to 20,000 pet tigers/big cats in backyards in the United States." I talked to zoo, sanctuary, and private cat people; I looked at legislation, regulation, attack/death/escape incident rates; I read everything I could get my hands on. None of it made sense. None of it lined up. I couldn't find data supporting anything like the population of pet cats being alleged to exist. Some of you might remember the series I published on those findings from 2018 or so under the hashtag #CrouchingTigerHiddenData. I've continued to work on it in the six years since, including publishing a peer reviewed study that counted all the non-pet big cats in the US (because even though they're regulated, apparently nobody bothered to keep track of those either).

I spent years of my life obsessing over that statistic because it was being used to push for new federal legislation that, while well intentioned, contained language that would, and has, created real problems for ethical facilities that have big cats. I wrote a comprehensive - 35 page! - analysis of the issues with the then-current version of the Big Cat Public Safety Act in 2020. When the bill was first introduced to Congress in 2013, a lot of groups promoted it by fear mongering: there's so many pet tigers! they could be hidden around every corner! they could escape and attack you! they could come out of nowhere and eat your children!! Tiger King exposed the masses to the idea of "thousands of abused backyard big cats": as a result the messaging around the bill shifted to being welfare-focused, and the law passed in 2022.

The Big Cat Public Safety Act created a registry, and anyone who owned a private cat and wanted to keep it had to join. If they did, they could keep the animal until it passed, as long as they followed certain strictures (no getting more, no public contact, etc). Don’t register and get caught? Cat is seized and major punishment for you. Registering is therefore highly incentivized. That registry closed in June of 2023, and you can now get that registration data via a Freedom of Information Act request.

Guess how many pet big cats were registered in the whole country?

97.

Not tens of thousands. Not thousands. Not even triple digits. 97.

And that isn't even the right number! Ten USDA licensed facilities registered erroneously. That accounts for 55 of 97 animals. Which leaves us with 42 pet big cats, of all species, in the entire country.

Now, I know that not everyone may have registered. There's probably someone living deep in the woods somewhere with their illegal pet cougar, and there's been at least one random person in Texas arrested for trying to sell a cub since the law passed. But - and here's the big thing - even if there are ten times as many hidden cats than people who registered them - that's nowhere near ten thousand animals. Obviously, I had some questions.

Guess what? Turns out, this is because it was never real. That huge number never had data behind it, wasn't likely to be accurate, and the advocacy groups using that statistic to fearmonger and drive their agenda knew it... and didn't see a problem with that.

Allow me to introduce you to an article published last week.

This article is good. (Full disclose, I'm quoted in it). It's comprehensive and fairly written, and they did their due diligence reporting and fact-checking the piece. They talked to a lot of people on all sides of the story.

But thing that really gets me?

Multiple representatives from major advocacy organizations who worked on the Big Cat Publix Safety Act told the reporter that they knew the statistics they were quoting weren't real. And that they don't care. The end justifies the means, the good guys won over the bad guys, that's just how lobbying works after all. They're so blase about it, it makes my stomach hurt. Let me pull some excerpts from the quotes.

"Whatever the true number, nearly everyone in the debate acknowledges a disparity between the actual census and the figures cited by lawmakers. “The 20,000 number is not real,” said Bill Nimmo, founder of Tigers in America. (...) For his part, Nimmo at Tigers in America sees the exaggerated figure as part of the political process. Prior to the passage of the bill, he said, businesses that exhibited and bred big cats juiced the numbers, too. (...) “I’m not justifying the hyperbolic 20,000,” Nimmo said. “In the world of comparing hyperbole, the good guys won this one.”

"Michelle Sinnott, director and counsel for captive animal law enforcement at the PETA Foundation, emphasized that the law accomplished what it was set out to do. (...) Specific numbers are not what really matter, she said: “Whether there’s one big cat in a private home or whether there’s 10,000 big cats in a private home, the underlying problem of industry is still there.”"

I have no problem with a law ending the private ownership of big cats, and with ending cub petting practices. What I do have a problem with is that these organizations purposefully spread disinformation for years in order to push for it. By their own admission, they repeatedly and intentionally promoted false statistics within Congress. For a decade.

No wonder it never made sense. No wonder no matter where I looked, I couldn't figure out how any of these groups got those numbers, why there was never any data to back any of the claims up, why everything I learned seemed to actively contradict it. It was never real. These people decided the truth didn't matter. They knew they had no proof, couldn't verify their shocking numbers... and they decided that was fine, if it achieved the end they wanted.

So members of the public - probably like you, reading this - and legislators who care about big cats and want to see legislation exist to protect them? They got played, got fed false information through a TV show designed to tug at heartstrings, and it got a law through Congress that's causing real problems for ethical captive big cat management. The 20,000 pet cat number was too sexy - too much of a crisis - for anyone to want to look past it and check that the language of the law wouldn't mess things up up for good zoos and sanctuaries. Whoops! At least the "bad guys" lost, right? (The problems are covered somewhat in the article linked, and I'll go into more details in a future post. You can also read my analysis from 2020, linked up top.)

Now, I know. Something something something facts don't matter this much in our post-truth era, stop caring so much, that's just how politics work, etc. I’m sorry, but no. Absolutely not.

Laws that will impact the welfare of living animals must be crafted carefully, thoughtfully, and precisely in order to ensure they achieve their goals without accidental negative impacts. We have a duty of care to ensure that. And in this case, the law also impacts reservoir populations for critically endangered species! We can't get those back if we mess them up. So maybe, just maybe, if legislators hadn't been so focused on all those alleged pet cats, the bill could have been written narrowly and precisely.

But the minutiae of regulatory impacts aren't sexy, and tiger abuse and TV shows about terrible people are. We all got misled, and now we're here, and the animals in good facilities are already paying for it.

I don't have a conclusion. I'm just mad. The public deserves to know the truth about animal legislation they're voting for, and I hope we all call on our legislators in the future to be far more critical of the data they get fed.

#big cats #tiger king #my research #news #big cat public safety act #animal welfare #big cat welfare #legislation and regulation #vent post #long post #crouchingtigerhiddendata #more on the problems with the bill in the future

7K notes · View notes

mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago

Text

The moral injury of having your work enshittified

This Monday (November 27), I'm appearing at the Toronto Metro Reference Library with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.

On November 29, I'm at NYC's Strand Books with my novel The Lost Cause, a solarpunk tale of hope and danger that Rebecca Solnit called "completely delightful."

This week, I wrote about how the Great Enshittening – in which all the digital services we rely on become unusable, extractive piles of shit – did not result from the decay of the morals of tech company leadership, but rather, from the collapse of the forces that discipline corporate wrongdoing:

https://locusmag.com/2023/11/commentary-by-cory-doctorow-dont-be-evil/

The failure to enforce competition law allowed a few companies to buy out their rivals, or sell goods below cost until their rivals collapsed, or bribe key parts of their supply chain not to allow rivals to participate:

https://www.engadget.com/google-reportedly-pays-apple-36-percent-of-ad-search-revenues-from-safari-191730783.html

The resulting concentration of the tech sector meant that the surviving firms were stupendously wealthy, and cozy enough that they could agree on a common legislative agenda. That regulatory capture has allowed tech companies to violate labor, privacy and consumer protection laws by arguing that the law doesn't apply when you use an app to violate it:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

But the regulatory capture isn't just about preventing regulation: it's also about creating regulation – laws that make it illegal to reverse-engineer, scrape, and otherwise mod, hack or reconfigure existing services to claw back value that has been taken away from users and business customers. This gives rise to Jay Freeman's perfectly named doctrine of "felony contempt of business-model," in which it is illegal to use your own property in ways that anger the shareholders of the company that sold it to you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

Undisciplined by the threat of competition, regulation, or unilateral modification by users, companies are free to enshittify their products. But what does that actually look like? I say that enshittification is always precipitated by a lost argument.

It starts when someone around a board-room table proposes doing something that's bad for users but good for the company. If the company faces the discipline of competition, regulation or self-help measures, then the workers who are disgusted by this course of action can say, "I think doing this would be gross, and what's more, it's going to make the company poorer," and so they win the argument.

But when you take away that discipline, the argument gets reduced to, "Don't do this because it would make me ashamed to work here, even though it will make the company richer." Money talks, bullshit walks. Let the enshittification begin!

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/22/who-wins-the-argument/#corporations-are-people-my-friend

But why do workers care at all? That's where phrases like "don't be evil" come into the picture. Until very recently, tech workers participated in one of history's tightest labor markets, in which multiple companies with gigantic war-chests bid on their labor. Even low-level employees routinely fielded calls from recruiters who dangled offers of higher salaries and larger stock grants if they would jump ship for a company's rival.

Employers built "campuses" filled with lavish perks: massages, sports facilities, daycare, gourmet cafeterias. They offered workers generous benefit packages, including exotic health benefits like having your eggs frozen so you could delay fertility while offsetting the risks normally associated with conceiving at a later age.

But all of this was a transparent ruse: the business-case for free meals, gyms, dry-cleaning, catering and massages was to keep workers at their laptops for 10, 12, or even 16 hours per day. That egg-freezing perk wasn't about helping workers plan their families: it was about thumbing the scales in favor of working through your entire twenties and thirties without taking any parental leave.

In other words, tech employers valued their employees as a means to an end: they wanted to get the best geeks on the payroll and then work them like government mules. The perks and pay weren't the result of comradeship between management and labor: they were the result of the discipline of competition for labor.

This wasn't really a secret, of course. Big Tech workers are split into two camps: blue badges (salaried employees) and green badges (contractors). Whenever there is a slack labor market for a specific job or skill, it is converted from a blue badge job to a green badge job. Green badges don't get the food or the massages or the kombucha. They don't get stock or daycare. They don't get to freeze their eggs. They also work long hours, but they are incentivized by the fear of poverty.

Tech giants went to great lengths to shield blue badges from green badges – at some Google campuses, these workforces actually used different entrances and worked in different facilities or on different floors. Sometimes, green badge working hours would be staggered so that the armies of ragged clickworkers would not be lined up to badge in when their social betters swanned off the luxury bus and into their airy adult kindergartens.

But Big Tech worked hard to convince those blue badges that they were truly valued. Companies hosted regular town halls where employees could ask impertinent questions of their CEOs. They maintained freewheeling internal social media sites where techies could rail against corporate foolishness and make Dilbert references.

And they came up with mottoes.

Apple told its employees it was a sound environmental steward that cared about privacy. Apple also deliberately turned old devices into e-waste by shredding them to ensure that they wouldn't be repaired and compete with new devices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

And even as they were blocking Facebook's surveillance tools, they quietly built their own nonconsensual mass surveillance program and lied to customers about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Facebook told employees they were on a "mission to connect every person in the world," but instead deliberately sowed discontent among its users and trapped them in silos that meant that anyone who left Facebook lost all their friends:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

And Google promised its employees that they would not "be evil" if they worked at Google. For many googlers, that mattered. They wanted to do something good with their lives, and they had a choice about who they would work for. What's more, they did make things that were good. At their high points, Google Maps, Google Mail, and of course, Google Search were incredible.

My own life was totally transformed by Maps: I have very poor spatial sense, need to actually stop and think to tell my right from my left, and I spent more of my life at least a little lost and often very lost. Google Maps is the cognitive prosthesis I needed to become someone who can go anywhere. I'm profoundly grateful to the people who built that service.

There's a name for phenomenon in which you care so much about your job that you endure poor conditions and abuse: it's called "vocational awe," as coined by Fobazi Ettarh:

https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/

Ettarh uses the term to apply to traditionally low-waged workers like librarians, teachers and nurses. In our book Chokepoint Capitalism, Rebecca Giblin and I talked about how it applies to artists and other creative workers, too:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

But vocational awe is also omnipresent in tech. The grandiose claims to be on a mission to make the world a better place are not just puffery – they're a vital means of motivating workers who can easily quit their jobs and find a new one to put in 16-hour days. The massages and kombucha and egg-freezing are not framed as perks, but as logistical supports, provided so that techies on an important mission can pursue a shared social goal without being distracted by their balky, inconvenient meatsuits.

Steve Jobs was a master of instilling vocational awe. He was full of aphorisms like "we're here to make a dent in the universe, otherwise why even be here?" Or his infamous line to John Sculley, whom he lured away from Pepsi: "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?"

Vocational awe cuts both ways. If your workforce actually believes in all that high-minded stuff, if they actually sacrifice their health, family lives and self-care to further the mission, they will defend it. That brings me back to enshittification, and the argument: "If we do this bad thing to the product I work on, it will make me hate myself."

The decline in market discipline for large tech companies has been accompanied by a decline in labor discipline, as the market for technical work grew less and less competitive. Since the dotcom collapse, the ability of tech giants to starve new entrants of market oxygen has shrunk techies' dreams.

Tech workers once dreamed of working for a big, unwieldy firm for a few years before setting out on their own to topple it with a startup. Then, the dream shrank: work for that big, clumsy firm for a few years, then do a fake startup that makes a fake product that is acquihired by your old employer, as an incredibly inefficient and roundabout way to get a raise and a bonus.

Then the dream shrank again: work for a big, ugly firm for life, but get those perks, the massages and the kombucha and the stock options and the gourmet cafeteria and the egg-freezing. Then it shrank again: work for Google for a while, but then get laid off along with 12,000 co-workers, just months after the company does a stock buyback that would cover all those salaries for the next 27 years:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/

Tech workers' power was fundamentally individual. In a tight labor market, tech workers could personally stand up to their bosses. They got "workplace democracy" by mouthing off at town hall meetings. They didn't have a union, and they thought they didn't need one. Of course, they did need one, because there were limits to individual power, even for the most in-demand workers, especially when it came to ghastly, long-running sexual abuse from high-ranking executives:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-harassment-andy-rubin.html

Today, atomized tech workers who are ordered to enshittify the products they take pride in are losing the argument. Workers who put in long hours, missed funerals and school plays and little league games and anniversaries and family vacations are being ordered to flush that sacrifice down the toilet to grind out a few basis points towards a KPI.

It's a form of moral injury, and it's palpable in the first-person accounts of former workers who've exited these large firms or the entire field. The viral "Reflecting on 18 years at Google," written by Ian Hixie, vibrates with it:

https://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1700627373

Hixie describes the sense of mission he brought to his job, the workplace democracy he experienced as employees' views were both solicited and heeded. He describes the positive contributions he was able to make to a commons of technical standards that rippled out beyond Google – and then, he says, "Google's culture eroded":

Decisions went from being made for the benefit of users, to the benefit of Google, to the benefit of whoever was making the decision.

In other words, techies started losing the argument. Layoffs weakened worker power – not just to defend their own interest, but to defend the users interests. Worker power is always about more than workers – think of how the 2019 LA teachers' strike won greenspace for every school, a ban on immigration sweeps of students' parents at the school gates and other community benefits:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

Hixie attributes the changes to a change in leadership, but I respectfully disagree. Hixie points to the original shareholder letter from the Google founders, in which they informed investors contemplating their IPO that they were retaining a controlling interest in the company's governance so that they could ignore their shareholders' priorities in favor of a vision of Google as a positive force in the world:

https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/ipo-letter/

Hixie says that the leadership that succeeded the founders lost sight of this vision – but the whole point of that letter is that the founders never fully ceded control to subsequent executive teams. Yes, those executive teams were accountable to the shareholders, but the largest block of voting shares were retained by the founders.

I don't think the enshittification of Google was due to a change in leadership – I think it was due to a change in discipline, the discipline imposed by competition, regulation and the threat of self-help measures. Take ads: when Google had to contend with one-click adblocker installation, it had to constantly balance the risk of making users so fed up that they googled "how do I block ads?" and then never saw another ad ever again.

But once Google seized the majority of the mobile market, it was able to funnel users into apps, and reverse-engineering an app is a felony (felony contempt of business-model) under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a crime to install an ad-blocker.

And as Google acquired control over the browser market, it was likewise able to reduce the self-help measures available to browser users who found ads sufficiently obnoxious to trigger googling "how do I block ads?" The apotheosis of this is the yearslong campaign to block adblockers in Chrome, which the company has sworn it will finally do this coming June:

https://www.tumblr.com/tevruden/734352367416410112/you-have-until-june-to-dump-chrome

My contention here is not that Google's enshittification was precipitated by a change in personnel via the promotion of managers who have shitty ideas. Google's enshittification was precipitated by a change in discipline, as the negative consequences of heeding those shitty ideas were abolished thanks to monopoly.

This is bad news for people like me, who rely on services like Google Maps as cognitive prostheses. Elizabeth Laraki, one of the original Google Maps designers, has published a scorching critique of the latest GMaps design:

https://twitter.com/elizlaraki/status/1727351922254852182

Laraki calls out numerous enshittificatory design-choices that have left Maps screens covered in "crud" – multiple revenue-maximizing elements that come at the expense of usability, shifting value from users to Google.

What Laraki doesn't say is that these UI elements are auctioned off to merchants, which means that the business that gives Google the most money gets the greatest prominence in Maps, even if it's not the best merchant. That's a recurring motif in enshittified tech platforms, most notoriously Amazon, which makes $31b/year auctioning off top search placement to companies whose products aren't relevant enough to your query to command that position on their own:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

Enshittification begets enshittification. To succeed on Amazon, you must divert funds from product quality to auction placement, which means that the top results are the worst products:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

The exception is searches for Apple products: Apple and Amazon have a cozy arrangement that means that searches for Apple products are a timewarp back to the pre-enshittification Amazon, when the company worried enough about losing your business to heed the employees who objected to sacrificing search quality as part of a merchant extortion racket:

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-gives-apple-special-treatment-while-others-suffer-junk-ads-2023-11

Not every tech worker is a tech bro, in other words. Many workers care deeply about making your life better. But the microeconomics of the boardroom in a monopolized tech sector rewards the worst people and continuously promotes them. Forget the Peter Principle: tech is ruled by the Sam Principle.

As OpenAI went through four CEOs in a single week, lots of commentators remarked on Sam Altman's rise and fall and rise, but I only found one commentator who really had Altman's number. Writing in Today in Tabs, Rusty Foster nailed Altman to the wall:

https://www.todayintabs.com/p/defective-accelerationism

Altman's history goes like this: first, he founded a useless startup that raised $30m, only to be acquired and shuttered. Then Altman got a job running Y Combinator, where he somehow failed at taking huge tranches of equity from "every Stanford dropout with an idea for software to replace something Mommy used to do." After that, he founded OpenAI, a company that he claims to believe presents an existential risk to the entire human risk – which he structured so incompetently that he was then forced out of it.

His reward for this string of farcical, mounting failures? He was put back in charge of the company he mis-structured despite his claimed belief that it will destroy the human race if not properly managed.

Altman's been around for a long time. He founded his startup in 2005. There've always been Sams – of both the Bankman-Fried varietal and the Altman genus – in tech. But they didn't get to run amok. They were disciplined by their competitors, regulators, users and workers. The collapse of competition led to an across-the-board collapse in all of those forms of discipline, revealing the executives for the mediocre sociopaths they always were, and exposing tech workers' vocational awe for the shabby trick it was from the start.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

#pluralistic #moral injury #enshittification #worker power #google #dont be evil #monopoly #sam altman #openai #vocational awe #making a dent in the universe

561 notes · View notes

insanitysilver · 1 year ago

Text

So you have this author.

He has a bunch of projects, sure. Starts his own indie publisher in spring 2017 to start getting them out there. Cool. Good hustle. The problem? One of his projects is the start of a seven-book LOTR fan fiction sequel series.

Fall 2017 - He writes the Tolkien estate asking for rights to publish it. His letters go unanswered. (The Tolkien estate is notoriously litigious and close-fisted with rights.) Undeterred, he keeps plugging along.

April 22, 2019 - He interviews his first beta reader on his indie pub's social media to drum up excitement.

Nov 7, 2019 - He gets a lawyer to ask the Estate for the rights more formally. They say no.

Nov 13, 2019 - The Tolkien estate and Amazon close their $250 mil rights deal on Amazon's upcoming LOTR prequel tv series.

Dec 24, 2019 - Author shows up at Tolkien's grandson's house on christmas eve, and "delivered [his 180k-word manuscript] in-person", including a letter with this line:

"I truly cannot imagine, anyone else alive in the world who is capable of taking the foundation your grandfather wrote and expanding upon it as beautifully and imaginatively as I have." That's a pretty big swing buddy!

Tolkien's grandson mails the manuscript back.

So, he publishes his book anyways.

Sept. 1, 2022 - His book hits the major digital storefronts Sept. 1, 2022. Amazon's LOTR prequel tv series? Also releases Sept. 1, 2022.

He sees some similarities. So what does he do?

April 14, 2023 - He sues the Tolkien estate, the Tolkien trust, Tolkien's grandson, Amazon, and Jeff Bezos himself for $250 million.

June 1, 2023 - The Tolkien trust sues him for copyright infringement right back.

Aug 25, 2023 - Having failed to prove the similarities between the tv show and his book, he loses the first case. (The proposed similarities seem tenuous to me too, but judge for yourself.) He can't sell Tolkien fic ever again. And he has to destroy all the physical copies of his book. And he has to pay their attorney fees. About $134,000.

Dec 14, 2023 - Also failing to prove his work was transformative enough, he loses the second case.

Now, I'm not going to shill for Amazon. US copyright extends 70 years past the death of the creator. That seems to serve corporate interests more than then public imo. If it were up to me, it'd be death + 30 & LOTR would've been public domain in 2003. Author guy could've followed his bliss, and clowning on him now really only serves Amazon's agenda.

But! The lesson here is: while the laws are what they are, if you're going to write fanfiction... literally do anything else but that.

Sources: 'The Tolkien Estate & Amazon Win ‘Lord Of The Rings’ Lawsuits' by Max Goldbart for Deadline.com Opening Complaint, Author v. Bezos Opening Complaint, Author v. Bezos, Attachment #2 Tolkien Trust v. Author, Judgement

#not gonna drop his name or book title bc he's suffered enough #fanfiction #fanfic #lotr #tolkien #rings of power

104 notes · View notes

odinsblog · 10 months ago

Text

Musk reactivated the accounts of Brazilian far-right politicians Carla Zambelli, Gustavo Gayer, and Nikolas Ferreira. Ferreira, a Bolsonaro supporter, openly questioned the security of Brazil’s electronic voting machines, even though he won his local legislative race.

“All of these names have been problematic for years on social media,” says Flora Rebello Arduini, campaign director at the nonprofit advocacy organization Ekō. “They've been pushing for the far-right and election misinformation for ages.”

When Musk purchased Twitter in 2022, later renaming it X, many activists in Brazil worried that he would abuse the platform to push his own agenda, Arduini says. “He has unprecedented broadcasting abilities. He is bullying a supreme court justice of a democratic country, and he is showing he will use all the resources he has available to push for whatever favors his personal opinions or his professional ambitions.”

Under Musk, X has become a haven for the far right and disinformation. After taking over, Musk offered amnesty to users who had been banned from the platform, including right-wing influencer Andrew Tate, who, along with his brother, was indicted in Romania on several charges including with rape and human trafficking in June 2023 (he has denied the allegations). Last month, one of Tate's representatives told the BBC that "they categorically reject all charges."

A 2023 study found that hate speech has increased on the platform under Musk’s leadership. The situation in Brazil is just the latest instance of Musk aligning himself with and platforming dangerous, far-right movements around the world, experts tell WIRED. "It's not about Twitter or Brazil. It's about a strategy from the global far right to overcome democracies and democratic institutions around the world," says Nina Santos, a digital democracy researcher at the Brazilian National Institute of Science & Technology who researches the Brazilian far right. “An opinion from an American billionaire should not count more than a democratic institution.”

This also comes as Brazil has continued working to understand and investigate the lead-up to January 8, 2023, when election-denying insurrectionists who refused to accept right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro’s defeat stormed Brazil’s legislature. The TSE, the country’s election court, is a special judicial body that investigates electoral crimes and is part of the mechanism for overseeing the country’s electoral processes overall. The court has been investigating the dissemination of fake news and disinformation that cast doubt on the country’s elections in the months and years leading up to the storming of the legislature on January 8, 2023. Both Arduini and Santos believe that the accounts Musk is refusing to remove are likely connected to the court’s inquiry.

“A life-and-death struggle recently took place in Brazil for the democratic rule of law and against a coup d'état, which is under investigation by this court in compliance with due legal process,” Luís Roberto Barroso, the president of the federal supreme court, said in a statement about Musk’s comments. “Nonconformity against the prevalence of democracy continues to manifest itself in the criminal exploitation of social networks.”

Santos also worries that Musk is setting a precedent that the far right will be protected and promoted on his platform, regardless of local laws or public opinion. “They are trying to use Brazil as a laboratory on how to interfere in local politics and local businesses,” she says. “They are making the case that their decision is more important than the national decision from a state democratic institution.”

Though Musk has claimed to be a free-speech advocate, and X’s public statement on the takedowns asserts that Brazilians are entitled to free speech, the platform’s application of these principles has been uneven at best. In February, on order of the Indian government, X blocked the accounts Hindutva Watch and the India Hate Lab in India, two US-based nonprofits that track incidents of religiously motivated violence perpetrated by supporters of the country’s right-wing government. A 2023 study from the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard found that X complied with more government takedown requests under Musk’s leadership than it had previously.

In March, X blocked the accounts of several prominent researchers and journalists after they identified a well-known neo-Nazi cartoonist, later changing its own terms of service to justify the decision.

—Elon Musk Is Platforming Far-Right Activists in Brazil

#politics #brazil #elon musk #disinformation #twitter #nikolas ferreira #misinformation #libertarians #fascists #fascism #elon musk is an enemy of democracy #democracy #eugenics musk #apartheid clyde #crypro grifters #techno grifters #crypto bros #election interference #electioneering

75 notes · View notes

betterthanburrow · 2 years ago

Text

2023 Football Schedule - Instagram AU

(Bengals Quarterback! Joe Burrow x Digital Creator! OC)

liked by yourinstagram and 20,210 more users

Bengals: Cooked up something real good. Stay tuned.

📺: Tonight 8 pm | NFLNetwork

view all 1,500 comments

username1: i can’t wait any longer… ANNOUNCE THE SCHEDULE FOR THE SEASON!

username2: undefeated season incoming!!!

username3: WHO DEY NATION IS READY!

liked by joeyb_9 and 55,013 more users

yourinstagram: i’m impatiently waiting for The Benagals’ 2023 football season schedule to be posted!

view all 5,009 comments

CincyProblems: we’re impatiently waiting too…

username1: i’m impatiently waiting for you to drop the hair-care routine… i’m obsessed with your hair!!!!!

username2: 😍😍😍

yourbrother: you’re dating the QB? can’t you just ask him to show you the schedule?!

↳ yourinstagram: i asked him and he said no 😵‍💫

liked by yourinstagram and 55,013 more users

Bengals: Screen time is up, schedule is out 📲

Here’s to everyone who got nothing done at work today.

📺: Schedule Release l NFL Network

view all 19,900 comments

youtube: imma be on DND starting September 10th

username1: BRB buying tickets to all the games

username2: WHO DEY NATION! LET’S GO!

yourinstagram: AAAAAAAAA

liked by yourinstagram and 75, 295 more users

Bengals: This season’s agenda.

📺: Schedule Release l NFL Network

view all 30,013 comments

chido: 🧘🏿‍♂️

oh_thatsmike28: Can’t wait 😤

joeyb_9: 🔥🖤

camjuice5: 🥱

camsample: showtime

swervinirvin_: 😬😬😬

liked by 10,009 users

CincyProblems: Y/FN Y/LN (Joe Burrow’s girlfriend) Instagram Stories from today after the 2023 football schedule was announced!

view all 80,513 comments

username1: i want my future girlfriend to be just as excited for football season to start like Y/N!

username2: that was my reaction as well to seeing that our first game of the season is against the Browns 💀

username3: i just know Y/N and Joe gossip about the schedule after she calmed down from freaking out 😭

liked by yourinstagram and 99,135 more users

Bengals: Us patiently waiting for Sept. 10th

view all 15,069 comments

username1: the wait is too long 😩

username2: joe definitely was the type of kid to pick dandelions in the middle of a football game.

yourinstagram: you spelled impatiently wrong…

liked by yourbrother and 69,013 more users

yourinstagram: just updated my calendar schedule… i’m busy from September 10th until February 11th 🌀

view all 20,505 comments

joeyb_9: i hope you have space on your calendar schedule for your boyfriend?

↳ yourinstagram: i’ll always make space on my calendar schedule for you ☺️

Author’s Note:

i’m publishing this Instagram AU in honor of the upcoming football season starting in a few weeks!

if you have a Instagram AU request, please send the IG AU request to my Inbox and i’ll try to get the requested Instagram AU published as fast as i can!

thank you all for the love and support! 🤍

#Joe Burrow #NFL #CFB #LSU Tigers #Cincinnati Bengals #Joe Burrow Fanfiction #Joe Burrow Fanfic #Joe Burrow Fic #Joe Burrow x Reader #Joe Burrow x OC #Joe Burrow x Y/N #Joe Burrow Instagram #Joe Burrow Instagram AU #NFL Instagram #NFL Instagram AU #Instagram #Instagram AU

184 notes · View notes

allthebrazilianpolitics · 5 months ago

Text

Scholars in support of the Moraes Brazil decision against X

Here is the link, in Portuguese, here is part of a Claude translation:

We, the undersigned, wish to express our deep concern about the ongoing attacks by Big Tech companies and their allies against Brazil’s digital sovereignty. The Brazilian judiciary’s dispute with Elon Musk is just the latest example of a broader effort to restrict the ability of sovereign nations to define a digital development agenda free from the control of mega-corporations based in the United States. At the end of August, the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court banned the X platform from Brazilian cyberspace for failing to comply with court decisions that required the suspension of accounts that instigated right-wing extremists to participate in riots and occupy the Legislative, Judicial, and Governmental palaces on January 8, 2023. Subsequently, President Lula da Silva made clear the Brazilian government’s intention to seek digital independence: to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign entities for data, AI capabilities, and digital infrastructure, as well as to promote the development of local technological ecosystems. In line with these objectives, the Brazilian state also intends to force Big Tech to pay fair taxes, comply with local laws, and be held accountable for the social externalities of their business models, which often promote violence and inequality. These efforts have been met with attacks from the owner of X and right-wing leaders who complain about democracy and freedom of expression. But precisely because digital space lacks internationally and democratically decided regulatory agreements, large technology companies operate as rulers, deciding what should be moderated and what should be promoted on their platforms. Moreover, the X platform and other companies have begun to organize, along with their allies inside and outside the country, to undermine initiatives aimed at Brazil’s technological autonomy. More than a warning to Brazil, their actions send a worrying message to the world: that democratic countries seeking independence from Big Tech domination risk suffering disruptions to their democracies, with some Big Tech companies supporting far-right movements and parties.

#brazil #brazilian politics #politics #twitter #elon musk #alexandre de moraes #supreme federal court #image description in alt #mod nise da silveira

33 notes · View notes

fran-aka-mak · 7 months ago

Text

art development !!

i started doing digital art in 2013 but the template starts at 2015 hehe

[[ template ]]

my essaying about my digital art journey below!!

2015 - i was very immersed in the soul eater community! i kept doing resbangs and making friends, and i love doing AUs, specifically soul & maka centric. this is the HTTYD AU where soul is the dragon!

2016 - yes this is Little Things PH's OCs that i did back in the day! i love their lil guys so much i had to make fanart. this was the art i gave to Ate in person!!

2017 - i drew a lot more pokemon this time ! idk why i didn't draw more of it digitally before. i had too much soul eater brainrot lmao. so i combined them! behold contestshipping x soma AU

2018 - this was the time when i got into K-pop! specifically Monsta X haha, i got more interested in doing fashion, especially for male characters~ (and i had to draw my beloved agenda, somakid)

2019 - my bias from MX, Minhyuk on a whale with Minggom! this was made for an artbook that was sent to him! i hope he got to see this along with my tiny message ;; i delved more into a new tiny chibi art style here

2020 - i drew way too much during this year and it led me to impossibly high standards for my art to this day //sobs. i redrew my Your Lie in April AU fanart and i really think i improved so much….. i went out of my comfort zone to really draw the background and the piano

2021 - genshin brainrot started here !! i was trying to find my style even more, and i love kokomi's color palette. i remember looking at 10x references and combining them into this specific pose in the fanart. i still think to this day this is one of my personal favorite art pieces of all time

2022 - another personal favorite art piece (and something my friend aura and a commissioner personally loved!), i was practicing on drawing men since i wasn't confident, but seeing how this turned out made me want to keep going ❤️

2023 - the latest maka & kid piece that i made! they are so precious to me. i love trying out new poses and dynamics, and i tried changing their outfits a bit more to highlight that i wanna try new fashion stuff ^^; i'd like to say it was a job well done ngl

2024 - and finally, a recent piece that i'm most proud of, and shows a lot of my art style (and i drew the background from scratch!). i redrew an old comic panel from a now discontinued comic, but i feel like i improved so much in terms of rendering, coloring, and anatomy!!

#art improvement #art development #digital art #fan art #0716_2024 #soul eater #little things ph #monsta x #genshin impact #pokemon #how to train your dragon #your lie in april #shigatsu wa kimi no uso

36 notes · View notes

mariacallous · 1 month ago

Text

When Matt Williams founded a research center for the Anti-Defamation League in 2022, he vowed to “ruthlessly and systematically test” what the organization does. Antisemitism was on the rise, and he wanted the Center for Antisemitism Research to scientifically study what could work to stop it.

The creation of the center, he believed, represented an admission that one of the world’s most prominent voices against antisemitism had been operating with little evidence.

“I would go a step further and say the ADL wants to be a serious nonprofit, measured on our social return on investment, but by a lot of measures, we’ve not been doing well,” Williams said in an interview, citing spiking antisemitism, rising extremism and the erosion of democratic norms around the world.

The ADL established the new center amid mounting pressure from funders and trustees, he added. “The level of tolerance for having no solutions is low right now,” Williams said. “Our Board of Trustees is very serious about ruthlessly holding us accountable to whether or not we’re solving the problems that we set out to solve.”

Here’s how the person recently elected as ADL’s board chair put it: “Flagging and monitoring and measuring antisemitism is important, but by itself will not reverse trends towards extremism, bias and radicalism in American or global society,” Nicole Mutchnik said in an email to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Now, with a staff of nine and about 70 affiliated researchers at universities around the country, the research program overseen by Williams is starting to flex its scholarly might. It recently unveiled, for example, the first scientific study in decades that focuses on anti-Jewish discrimination in hiring.

Previous studies by the center showed that antisemitic attitudes are more strongly correlated with conspiratorial beliefs than any other factor. So, now, it has partnered with a team of university researchers to examine whether correcting misinformation can make a difference.

“We’ve found that we have a better shot at reducing antisemitism by teaching people how to deal with misinformation and disinformation than we have with much of the anti-bias work that we’ve done previously,” Williams said. “Thinking of antisemitism as a digital literacy problem as opposed to a civil rights problem is a big change for ADL.”

Alarm about antisemitism in recent years has driven a doubling of donations to the ADL, topping $100 million in 2022, the most recent year for which complete data is available. It has also sparked the creation of dozens of new organizations and initiatives, including some that are directly critical of the ADL’s approach or are trying to fill perceived gaps.

Many, including Bari Weiss, author of “How to Fight Antisemitism,” prescribe embracing Judaism and Jewish pride. Others are looking to tech for solutions. At least one group focuses on naming and shaming alleged antisemites online. Author Dara Horn says the answer lies in deemphasizing the Holocaust and educating the public about living Jews and their culture. Jewish communal organizations have also poured millions of dollars into physical security measures at schools, synagogues and other Jewish institutions.

The Biden administration in 2023 published a plan featuring hundreds of detailed recommendations, many of which are modeled on ADL’s platform. The plan proposes, for example, streamlined hate crime reporting at all levels of law enforcement and more accommodation for Jewish religious observance in the workplace.

On the right, the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther proposes a government crackdown on anti-Israel groups once Donald Trump returns to the White House. Meanwhile, left-wing groups like Diaspora Alliance and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice say that effectively responding to antisemitism requires building solidarity with Palestinians and other groups they view as oppressed.

Even as viewpoints and tactics vary, there’s a consensus in the Jewish community that fighting antisemitism must mean more than sounding the alarm about the issue. As a result, the search for evidence-based solutions, grounded in social science research, is starting to gain traction.

“We need to be moving more research resources into what’s working and what’s not working,” Holly Huffnagle, the U.S. director for combating antisemitism at the American Jewish Committee, said in an interview. “Many of us in the Jewish world are talking about this.”

Huffnagle said the AJC, considered a peer to the ADL in terms of size and legacy, doesn’t currently sponsor academic, peer-reviewed research, but that such a program could transform the work of her organization.

“If we find that our interventions aren’t working we need to be comfortable and competent to move away from what we were doing in the past,” she said. “Do we have information about what’s actually changing hearts and minds?”

To help answer that question, a pair of political scientists specializing in a field they call “deep canvassing” are using a grant from the ADL to research what kinds of narratives about Jews, when presented to people, can be effective at reducing prejudice. The researchers, David Broockman from the University of California, Berkeley and Josh Kalla from Yale University, have previously demonstrated the effectiveness of the technique in the context of bias against transgender people.

For their new study, the researchers made two-minute video clips featuring eight types of narratives about Jews and showed them over the internet to an audience of about 23,000 survey respondents.

Watching all eight narrative types led to a drop in prejudice, but some had a much stronger effect than others. For example, bipartisanship — a video showing both Donald Trump and Joe Biden condemning antisemitism — proved more impactful than a video depicting a fictional Jewish character suffering, but far less impactful than a video that presented the suffering as the result of discrimination.

Another sign of the awakening underway is the spate of new university programs focused on the study of antisemitism. Gratz College, a Jewish institution for higher education in Philadelphia, now offers a master’s degree in the topic. New York University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Toronto have all made recent investments in the field of “antisemitism studies.”

Ayal Feinberg, a political scientist and the creator of the antisemitism master’s degree at Gratz, believes that many more such programs should have been in place long ago. What made the need suddenly apparent to many more people, he said, was the wave of anti-Israel protests and the spike in antisemitism in the United States after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

“Post 10/7, many people in this space were caught with their pants down, and they’re rushing to invest in meaningful interventions that reduce antisemitism,” Feinberg said in an interview. “But those interventions don’t really exist because there hasn’t been a field that has been systematically devoted to developing them.”

As Feinberg, whose quantitative research is sponsored by the ADL’s new center, builds out the field through a dedicated discipline, there’s also a crop of professors from established academic areas such as economics, political science, and sociology who are newly interested in studying antisemitism.

The number of scholars has sharply increased and so has their caliber, according to Williams. He gave the example of Dean Karlan, a prominent economics professor at Northwestern University and former chief economist of the United States Agency for International Development.

“That’s the quality of research we’re getting as a partner nowadays, which frankly, is not what it would have been five or 10 years ago,” Williams said.

The ADL’s sponsorship of individual academics comes amid a contentious time for the group’s relationship with institutions of higher education. As college campuses have become the epicenter of the activist movement seeking to end U.S. military aid to Israel and cast Israeli actions in Gaza as a genocide, the ADL has assertively involved itself in hot-button debates about where to draw the line on free speech. The group says it wants to protect Jewish students from harassment and threatening behavior from pro-Palestinian protests. As part of that mission, it’s been adversarial with universities, accusing administrators of failing to stand up to antisemitism and putting out a contentious “report card” grading schools on their response to it.

But through Williams and his team, the organization has also been trying to better understand what exactly is happening on campuses and why the situation there seems worse than in other contexts. An ADL-sponsored study by a University of California, Irvine professor concluded that increased antisemitism on campus is found where there are fewer allies on campus — and not necessarily where there are more antisemites or where there’s a campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.

“There’s more tacit allowance for antisemitism in public because there are fewer bystanders who are willing or disposed to intervene,” Williams said. “The perceived social cost of it is much lower than elsewhere and that’s more predictive for us than the presence of an SJP on campus.”

Any perceived gaps between ADL’s messaging and its research findings can leave Williams’ program — and scholars it partners with — vulnerable to questioning and criticism. That’s partly the reason that many observers are viewing what he’s doing as daring and risky, even if they are supportive.

“There is a risk of blurring the line between advocacy and scholarship in a moment in which institutional credibility is low and society is very polarized and everything politicized,” said James Loeffler, a historian and the director of the Jewish studies program at Johns Hopkins University. “And then the research won’t be accepted — it will be seen as advancing a political point of view.”

Williams’ own career as a scholar might have gone in a different direction if he weren’t convinced of the pressing danger of recent antisemitism.

He completed his doctoral training as a behavioral social scientist at Stanford University in 2012, and after working on various research projects he ended up at the Orthodox Union. As the largest kosher certification agency in the world, the Orthodox Union generates millions of dollars in revenue, most of which is allocated to charitable causes. Williams crafted a data-driven research program to help the organization spend those funds more impactfully.

He had also long maintained an interest in the study of prejudice, which Williams traces in part to his uncommon family background: His paternal grandfather, a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, married a Sephardic Jewish woman from Morocco.

In 2019 Williams, who grew up in an observant Jewish family in Atlanta and had always been aware of how his background set him apart, encountered data showing that Americans were becoming less tolerant of difference. Two recent events underscored this finding: neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, followed by the deadly attack the following year on Jewish worshippers in Pittsburgh.

After each of those events, the ADL sprung into action, tapping its roster of experts to explain the outbursts of violent antisemitism to the public. But in private conversations Williams was having with the group, one of the world’s most prominent organizations fighting hate and extremism was coming to a realization that would have been awkward to publicly acknowledge: It didn’t understand antisemitism or how to combat it nearly well enough. A new paradigm was needed.

“We were under-resourced when it came to actually thinking about antisemitism,” Williams said. “The ADL had sort of become more of a civil rights organization, and we started, especially after Charlottesville, realizing we need more resources on antisemitism. And the person who hired me was sort of like, ‘It’s bizarre that we don’t have this.’”

That person was Adam Neufeld, ADL’s chief operating officer, who “saw the need to develop new theories of change and test them empirically,” Williams said.

When the Center for Antisemitism Research was launched about two-and-half years ago, the name alone was enough to pique the attention of historians who study antisemitism and American Jewish history. In the initial decades after World War II, American Jewish groups, including the ADL, invested heavily in academic research into the sources of antisemitism.

“There was a sense back then that social science would be able to improve people’s lives — that humanity could be perfected by applying scientific research models to social problems,” said Pamela Nadell, a historian at American University and the author of the forthcoming book, “Antisemitism, an American Tradition.”

With the help of grants from Jewish groups, social psychologists, sociologists, and other scholars investigated how antisemitism was connected to totalitarianism, religion and other forms of racial and ethnic stereotyping. It was an organized attempt to understand the psyche of antisemites.

To that end, the ADL commissioned public opinion research hoping to understand the nature of bias — whether it was correlated, for example, to age or education.

Historians don’t really know why or when exactly the investment in such research ended, in part because the ADL has not yet made its archives especially accessible to scholars, at least compared to groups like the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, and B’nai B’rith International, which have either handed off materials to a library or created their own open repository, in some cases even digitizing large parts of their collections.

According to Williams, the ADL’s research program petered out by the 1980s because the threat of antisemitism was seen as declining. “Most people generally had positive attitudes about Jews, incident rates were – by most accounts – much lower, the clamoring for real, tangible solutions was less,” he said.

At the time in the United States, the older the average person, the more likely they were to have antisemitic attitudes. There was no stronger demographic correlation than that of age and antisemitism, and a 1992 ADL study noted “the steady influx of younger, more tolerant Americans into the adult population” as the main factor driving declining antisemitism since 1964. It almost seemed like the country was aging out of the problem.

By 2014, in Williams’ telling, the kind of intense antisemitism that was thought to belong to the past was rearing its head once again and, eventually, accelerating so much that the ADL needed to revisit its old strategy around social science research.

“I would say that the major distinction is that we’re working on interventions more than describing the phenomenon,” Williams said, comparing his generation to the researchers of the post-World War II boom. “But, also, you can’t really do one without the other. We do stand on their shoulders.”

In responding to a press inquiry from JTA, the head of the ADL rejected the idea that the ADL founded the Center for Antisemitism Research out of a new or reawakened commitment.

“At ADL, we always have sought to ground our work in evidence and to shape our approaches based on research,” the group’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, said in a written response to a series of questions. “We have been tracking antisemitism for decades, measuring attitudes and tracking incidents, and the insights gleaned from this work has helped to inform and shape policies and programs.”

But Greenblatt also acknowledged that recent events are forcing deep changes in the ADL.

“Nothing will ever be the same after 10/7,” he said. “And so, at ADL, it forced us to step back, look in the mirror and ask hard questions about how we reached this point — and what we are going to do differently in response.”

He continued, “In all honesty, I think every Jewish organization should be undertaking this kind of process in light of 10/7. For ADL, that meant taking a beat and examining our policies, evaluating our programs, endeavoring to measure the efficacy of our activities, and making hard decisions based on what we learn. The Center for Antisemitism Research has helped us to do this.”

The ADL’s introspection over the past few years has come amid growing criticism that mainstream approaches to fighting antisemitism aren’t working. And attacks on the ADL have come from both the right and the left.

The right has tended to blame the ADL for being too soft on the pro-Palestinian movement or for getting distracted from its core mission of defending Jews by progressive ideas about race and identity.

The ADL has also been affected by a distrust washing over society of legacy institutions, especially ones perceived by the right as having a left-wing bias. Founded in 2018, an organization called StopAntisemitism has positioned itself as a grassroots alternative to the establishment. Diving head first into the chaotic fray of social media, the group quickly amassed followers whom it sicced on a flurry of targets it accused of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel behavior.

In some regards, the mainstream has shifted to the right when it comes to fighting antisemitism. When Kenneth Marcus and the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law began using aggressive legal tactics to fight antisemitism on college campuses years ago, many Jewish communal leaders rejected his efforts. Nowadays, they are far less likely to tell Marcus that his tactics are counterproductive or that he’s conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism — instead, they are starting to partner with him on lawsuits.

Meanwhile, on the left, the ADL is often accused of caring about antisemitism mostly insofar as it can be used as a weapon for its pro-Israel advocacy. Rooted in the concept of intersectionality, the left argues that all forms of oppression are intertwined and therefore must be resisted in tandem. One result of that thinking is a critical focus on a certain type of rhetoric from the ADL — for example, when Greenblatt morally equated anti-Zionist groups with white supremacists or when he seemed to liken the Palestinian keffiyeh to the Nazi swastika, though he later clarified that he doesn’t think the keffiyeh is a hate symbol.

A group that exemplifies this critique is the Diaspora Alliance, which says that Jewish fears are being exploited for pro-Israel purposes at the expense of democratic norms protecting civil society and free speech. Emma Saltzberg, the group’s U.S. strategic campaigns director and a critic of the ADL, accuses Greenblatt of engaging in rhetoric that often undermines what she sees as the valuable expertise of the organization’s technical staff. She anticipates the same dynamic with the ADL’s new research agenda.

“I think it’s possible for good things to come out of research funded by actors with questionable political agendas,” Saltzberg said in an interview. “At the same time, Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL’s spokesperson and leader, has demonstrated consistent disregard for the organization’s own in-house experts, so academics who associate themselves with the organization do risk damage to their reputation as serious researchers.”

Williams defended Greenblatt, rejecting the notion that his public statements served to undermine the organization’s technical work. Williams said he works with a range of researchers who don’t agree with the ADL on everything and that he doesn’t lose sleep over people whose opposition to the group is intractable. He also said, however, that given how challenging Greenblatt’s job is, there’s always room for the ADL to improve.

“There’s absolutely work that we could do to acknowledge — just to give you one example — the reality that there are a lot of people who take up anti-Israel positions out of a real humanitarian commitment and dedication,” Williams said. “Acknowledge it, and at the same time present the evidence that many people are being hurt in ways that single them out as Jews because of presumed support, let alone overt support, for Israel.”

Williams’ work at ADL has only just begun, but he’s already reached one profound conclusion in the fight against antisemitism.

“The big takeaway,” he said, “is that we can actually reduce it.”

6 notes · View notes

rjzimmerman · 10 months ago

Text

Excerpt from this story from Mother Jones:

The world’s 3,000 billionaires should pay a minimum 2 percent tax on their fast-growing wealth to raise about $313 billion a year for the global fight against poverty, inequality, and global heating, ministers from four leading economies have suggested.

In a sign of growing international support for a levy on the super-rich, Brazil, Germany, South Africa, and Spain say a 2 percent tax would reduce inequality and raise much-needed public funds after the economic shocks of the pandemic, the climate crisis and military conflicts in Europe and the Middle East.

They are calling for more countries to join their campaign, saying the annual sum raised would be enough to cover the estimated cost of damage caused by all of last year’s extreme weather events.

“It is time that the international community gets serious about tackling inequality and financing global public goods,” the ministers say in a Guardian comment piece. “One of the key instruments that governments have for promoting more equality is tax policy. Not only does it have the potential to increase the fiscal space governments have to invest in social protection, education, and climate protection. Designed in a progressive way, it also ensures that everyone in society contributes to the common good in line with their ability to pay. A fair share contribution enhances social welfare.”

Brazil chairs the G20 group of leading developed and developing countries and put a billionaire tax on the agenda at a meeting of finance ministers earlier this year.

The French economist Gabriel Zucman is now fleshing out the technical details of a plan that will again be discussed by the G20 in June. France has indicated support for a wealth tax and Brazil has been encouraged that the US, while not backing a global wealth tax, did not oppose it.

Zucman said: “Billionaires have the lowest effective tax rate of any social group. Having people with the highest ability to pay tax paying the least—I don’t think anybody supports that.”

Research from Oxfam published this year found that the boom in asset prices during and after the Covid pandemic meant billionaires were $3.3 trillion—or 34 percent—wealthier at the end of 2023 than they were in 2020. Meanwhile, a study from the World Bank showed that the pandemic had brought poverty reduction to a halt.

The opinion piece, signed by ministers from two of the largest European economies—Germany and Spain—and two of the largest emerging economies—Brazil and South Africa—claims a levy on the super-rich is a necessary third pillar to complement the negotiations on the taxation of the digital economy and the introduction earlier this year of a minimum corporate tax of 15 percent for multinationals.

“The tax could be designed as a minimum levy equivalent to 2 percent of the wealth of the super-rich. It would not apply to billionaires who already contribute a fair share in income taxes. Those, however, who manage to avoid paying income tax would be obliged to contribute more towards the common good,” the ministers say.

“Persisting loopholes in the system imply that high-net-worth individuals can minimize their income taxes. Global billionaires pay only the equivalent of up to 0.5 percent of their wealth in personal income tax. It is crucial to ensure that our tax systems provide certainty, sufficient revenues, and treat all of our citizens fairly.”

#wealth tax #climate financing

23 notes · View notes

beardedmrbean · 9 months ago

Text

A White history teacher accused a California teachers union of discriminating against him on the basis of his skin color and called the move "disgusting."

Isaac Newman, a teacher in the Elk Grove School District, on Friday filed a federal lawsuit against his local National Education Association affiliate for allegedly violating his Title VII civil rights. The suit alleged that the Elk Grove Education Association formed a seat on its executive board that was only available to candidates of color, meaning Newman wasn't eligible.

"It's disgusting, and that's why I'm suing," he told Fox News Digital in an interview.

"My union barred me from a leadership position simply because of the color of my skin," he said, discussing the suit. "I'm prohibited from running for a leadership position simply because of my race. This kind of racial litmus test is illegal, and it's un-American, and that's why I'm taking them to court."

In 2023, Elk Grove Education Association officials voted to create a "BIPOC At-Large" seat on its executive board, a position limited only to people who "self-identify" as "African American (Black), Native American, Alaska Native, Native Hawai’ian, Pacific Islander, Latino (including Puerto Rican), Asian, Arab, and Middle Eastern," according to the suit.

"Plaintiff Isaac Newman is a white [EGEA] member who wants to run for union office to address the District’s recent adoption of what he believes to be aggressive and unnecessary Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) policies," reads the lawsuit, filed by The Fairness Center, a legal group focused on representing "those hurt by public-sector union officials."

The suit asked the court to "declare the BIPOC Position unlawful" and prevent the union "from creating any similar positions in the future where candidate eligibility is, in whole or in part, based on race."

Newman said the alleged discrimination was "frightening," as was the prevalence of critical race theory in society's culture.

"I'm actually really frightened for my children," he said, "when we look to a future where people are being taught [critical race theory]."

Newman believes that DEI ideology pushes hostile messages that focus on a person's skin color as opposed to their expertise and knowledge.

"The message there is that as a White teacher in a district that is very diverse, my students can't learn from me," he said. "It's abhorrent, and it's flatly wrong."

Newman told Fox News Digital that after disagreeing with the union pushing "aggressive" DEI agendas in the district, he decided to run for an executive seat to challenge the status quo.

"I'm looking to see my district and union back away from this fantastically toxic ideology, back away from DEI and embrace merit and individuality," he said. "I'm hoping to see that other teachers, other people in similar organizations, will stand up."

Newman said he was not alone in his opposition to DEI in school districts.

"Most people who think like me are unwilling to speak up," he said. "There are a lot of teachers [who are silent], and it's not really a conservative or liberal thing."

"There are a lot of teachers who recognize that meritocracy, colorblindness are at the core of good teaching," Newman added. "What's shocking is in these DEI trainings, they actually call out colorblindness and meritocracy as racist myths. And of course, if you're dedicated to that, well, then you're going to have division, and you're going to have mediocrity."

Fox News Digital reached out to the Elk Grove union for comment.

"Teachers’ unions don’t get a pass from laws that prohibit racial discrimination," said Fairness Center President and general counsel Nathan McGrath. "The Civil Rights Act explicitly forbids unions from discriminating based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin and from segregating members based on these attributes."

#nunyas news #welcome to equality #getting sued for discrimination

16 notes · View notes

cannoli-reader · 13 hours ago

Text

Watching the Wheel of Time show, Season 2, episode 7

Originally posted on readandfindout.com on 9/29/2023

This episode is called "Daes Daemar". There is no way these idiots have the comprehension or skill to actually depict anything like the level of political intrigue implied.

1:14 That’s Tar Valon, “20 years ago” according to the caption. What could they possibly think to be showing, comparable to the actually important things that happened there 20 years ago? Because this is clearly not the winter setting of the canonical battles of the Aiel War and Rand’s birth, which even the show portrayed with snow, in their over the top flashback scene last season.

1:22 Moiraine and Siuan relationship bullshit. Why? How is this at all important to the story? Bearing in mind that their relationship was practically non-existent in the main series. It served the sole purpose of explaining why and how Moiraine had such leeway in her unilateral actions concerning the Dragon Reborn and the associated apocalypse. They interacted in one brief part of one book and were representatives of the different faces of the establishment that had to be removed to allow the actual heroes to do their job.

1:39 Now they are not being played by younger or digitally de-aged actresses, which is in line with the insane change that makes Moiraine nearly, if not more than, a generation older than Anvaere, who is played by a 72-year-old actress. Since they are carrying on with that change, by showing that Moiraine & Siuan were middle-aged 20 years ago, instead of just using it for a one-off shock reveal, let’s address it. Because I don’t think the showrunners grasp that the White Tower is Part of the Problem. It’s significant that the Pattern needs to bring in six newbs, totally untainted by the institution and uncompromised by the establishment, in order to save the world. Carrying on with this, the first step of that was putting the search for, and initial contact with, the Dragon Reborn, in the hands of two other brand new sisters, who had no other agendas or encumbrances when the task devolved upon them. And even then, Siuan got captured by the system at the outset. It’s important that they come to all of this relatively uncompromised. Instead, they are going to be anywhere from their sixties up, when Rand was born. Moiraine has older Pike-face in the portrait with a child Anvaere, and Anvaere is old enough to have a fully-grown son. Even if we go as young as 50 for Moiraine's age in this scene, that’s much too far into her Aes Sedai career. Moiraine in the books is 42 when she meets Rand, and nowhere near flexible enough to cope. No way she makes the necessary adjustments to defy the Tower in her fifties, if she learns then that the Dragon has been Reborn.

2:04 What kind of pathetic loser have they replaced Siuan with? First of all, we are not talking about the 22-year-old we meet in New Spring, who in that incarnation was way more mature and realistic. No, if she is a young woman (sorry, Sophie Okonedo, black do crack and I don’t believe you’re 22, despite the excellent job you are doing of selling your character as a callow vapid idiot) of near that age, then Moiraine’s relationship with her is a little problematic. So in the absence of anything else, we have to assume she’s close to Moriaine’s age, which, again, is at least 10 and maybe 20 years older than Anvaere (played by a 72-year-old) who has a grown son. And she can’t see any life outside of the Tower other than the rustic lifestyle in which she was raised. She has spent literal decades as one of the most powerful people in the known world, and done nothing with it, developed no ambitions nor any awareness of the wider world and how it works.

So the most charitable interpretation of Siuan at this point in the timeline is that she is as innocent and uncompromised as her book self (more, actually), but only because she’s an utterly useless idiot!

2:30 What is this career track Moiraine is proposing? The show has established her extreme old age, and presumably extended lifespan of an Aes Sedai, so what does she mean by serving out their time and then retiring? Just be a political advisor for a few years and then spend centuries playing fisherwomen? Or is she talking about a more canonical Aes Sedai career, and looking forward to a happily ever after 200 years from now?

And what does it mean to advise the Daughter-heir of Andor? A. Why does the Daughter-heir need an Aes Sedai advisor, when she has no actual authority, but the Queen of Andor comes with one, and has had an Aes Sedai at her side since before the nation was fully realized? The Daughter-heir is under the Queen, so the queen’s advisor would suffice there. B. ITB, there was no Daughter-heir at this time, nor had been for about seven years, since the last one (Moiraine’s sister-in-law) disappeared. Elayne is more than two years younger than Rand, who should barely be born or still in utero at the moment.

2:44 Don’t tell me we’re getting the Foretelling this far removed from the actual time. Also, remember how you can’t channel if you can’t see? Bet the writers don’t, and are going with one of the most tired clichés of the genre, the blind prophet.

2:59 Why are two Aes Sedai bringing messages to a (presumably, disabled & pensioned off) sister from the Amyrlin Seat? Remember in the books, they were present with Gitara and the Amyrlin, because they were only Accepted. Accepted bring news to the Amyrlin, who in turn, apparently dispatches two full sisters to let some rando know. This Gitara should be an important counselor of the Amyrlin for the Amyrlin to prioritize getting her the news, but that should also require her being close by the Amyrlin. Otherwise, the Amyrlin sending two full sisters with news suggest Gitara has some sort of superior, elevated status. As in nearly every portrayal so far, the show does not understand basic intercourse within hierarchies.

3:20 She is having her Foretelling of an even that took place at basically this same location, during the winter, when there are green trees outside. Which means it cannot be simultaneous. So it is either a Foretelling for the coming winter, or a belated catch-up memo from the Pattern half a year or more late. Remember timelines? A whole Bel Tine ago, Rand was twenty, and this season we got a second Bel Tine, making him 21. And according to the caption, this event is twenty years ago. So Gitara’s Foretelling is late.

3:31 No, actually she says it’s happening now. Where the trees outside this building are green, but everyone is bundled up for the winter and there is snow all around where it is actually happening. And remember, this “now” is only 20 years before a time when the baby in question is 21.

3:41 She says “It burns like the sun,” rather than “he” of the books, because of that ridiculous mystery setup last season.

That’s Hayley Mills! You can totally hear it in her voice, once you know!

4:22 I feel like from Moiraine’s face, they want us to feel bad about that loss of their dream of a bamboo hut. Time to channel me some Barry-O. Sorry show, “You didn’t build that!” It was a puerile dream unworthy of the character who expressed it, and the world is starting to circle the figurative drain. They got more privilege than most, time to get their asses out there and earn it. And that’s just objectively speaking. From what we have seen on the show, we have not been given any reason to care about the relationship between these women, nor Siuan as a person. She showed up to give the most obnoxious, arrogant and high on herself denunciation of Logain, while sentencing him for a crime the show did absolutely no legwork to demonstrate he deserved, and rebuking Liandrin for actions that, as shown in a prior episode, seemed rather necessary and justified by exigent circumstances at the time. Then she and Moiraine abused portal tech that might have been put to a more practical use in finding and transporting the Dragon Reborn, in order to have a sexual tryst, while leaving said Dragon out of pocket, with only a single warder to protect the two different and separated locations where the candidates for the post were chilling. During that tryst they acknowledge that their relationship is forbidden by Tower rules but laugh because they don’t follow the rules. Then Siuan orders Moiraine to drag the kids off to the Eye of the World and figure out which one is the Dragon Reborn by process of literal elimination, and Moiraine utterly fails at keeping any sort of cool during the fake exile ceremony they planned ahead of time for public consumption. In the context of this relationship, these are two very selfish, self-absorbed idiots who risk the fate of the world in order to indulge it. They have not given us any reason whatsoever to care that they can’t have their idyllic happily ever after. A reasonable extrapolation of their mindset from their actions is “Since the imminent apocalypse means our happy retirement together is not guaranteed, we are going to enjoy ourselves here and now, and our mission be damned.”

Remember this whole trend of prestige fantasy screen adaptations started with a movie where a character wished he had not been given the responsibility for the fate of the world, and was told “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide with what to do with the time that is given to us.” What Moiraine and Siuan decided to do was stroke their egos (and each other’s intimate parts) at the expense of their mission.

Remember when the excision of Tom Bombadil was the worst page-to-screen alteration we had to cope with?

I will give props to both Pike and Okonedo for their performances and conveying the feelings necessary to this insipid story with mere facial expressions.

4:53 It was really a kind of statement in the books how Aes Sedai and the Amyrlin Seat had such minimalistic and mundane regalia of office, and otherwise dressed like any other important person, but carried it with dignity and gravitas. These elaborate and ridiculous costumes for the Amyrlin serve the opposite, making her look like a puppet of the office, who has to jump through all sorts of hoops of protocol and ceremony like the King of England or someone similarly useless. I will refrain from speculating about any correlations between the books being written by an American author, whose head of state never wears anything more elaborate than an ordinary citizen might for a sufficiently formal event, whereas the actors are mostly from a culture where not only kings, but even some actual officials with legit power like judges, must parade around in anachronistic costumes.

5:27 Where is this room? It looks like the Amyrlin Seat behind Siuan, but there are Rising Suns on the doors, and I don’t remember Moiraine going to Tar Valon. Are all thrones just these over-elaborate benches?

5:56 So Lan was NOT bonded by Alanna, but Moiraine threatened to let Alanna take the bond without permission. How was that supposed to work? Moiraine is stilled, there is no bond and she has no further say in the matter. Letting Alanna is just not in it for her. Also, there is no bond to take, Alanna would have to bond him on her own. And if he did not want to be bonded by Alanna, and was not bonded, why was he farting around with the Pervert Trio for so long? What about the war with the Shadow that was the most important thing in Lan’s life, of which his bond with Moiraine was merely a means to that end?

6:38 Did Moiraine, at some point, tell Lan that Rand was still alive?

7:09 Now we’re back to ignoring the story to make Rand out to be in the wrong. Rand left the Eye of the World, because Moriaine told him that was it, that was how and where to defeat the Dark One, which he did. It’s only in this season that Moiraine comes to the realization that rather than banish the Dark One, they were tricked into freeing Ishamael. Rand did not run away. He fulfilled the purpose he came for and left, all according to Moiraine. Moriaine facilitated his departure, which makes her complicit in it, and as the vastly more knowledgeable party, responsible. Anything “wrong” in what Rand is doing to this point regarding his duties as the Dragon, is on her.

7:26 What the ever-living fuck does it matter that Siuan comes from humbler beginnings than Rand?

And even supposing it does, what is the dialogue here?

Lan asks why Rand ran away from the Eye, he says to protect the people he loves, Lan calls that ridiculous and says as the Dragon Reborn he has a duty to protect every person in the world (not unlike the duty of a Dai Shan of the Borderlands and the uncrowned last king of Malkier, who spent most of this season doing household chores and being passive aggressive). Then he tells Rand “Listen to me. The Amyrlin’s a smart woman. She’s a good woman. And she comes from humbler beginnings that you.”

So what? What does any of that mean for Rand? How does it change his point that he saw what she did to the Logain? Why do Siuan’s qualities matter at all in that context? The correct answer to Rand’s issue is that what she did to Logain was necessary, that he would have gone mad and caused a lot of harm if it had not been done. And furthermore, it is the Tower law that it be done, which means the brains, character and background of the Amyrlin is irrelevant.

I strongly suspect this is another case of the writers going straight from The Great Hunt and ignoring last season. Because in the books, Siuan was responsible for Logain’s gentling, but on the show, Liandrin did it long before he came to the White Tower. Since this season they wrote Logain sensing Rand’s ability with the Power, they really seem to have forgotten how he was gentled.

Also, Siuan’s brains and goodness join the list of things the writers tell us and keep failing to show us. We know that on her watch a Black sister is operating with impunity in the White Tower, abusing one of the Dragon candidates and a ta’veren, and abducting the three strongest living initiates of the White Tower. We know Siuan was responsible for the ridiculous plan for the Eye of the World which resulted in Ishamael being freed, and was still a better outcome than her own plan to bring all the Two Rivers folk to the Eye and see who does not die.

7:36 Oh, just shut up. Did you face Steppin’s funeral on your feet, you fucking pussy? Did you face the loss of your bond on your feet? The guy who said that in the books had the credibility to say it. Book!Lan was a guy we knew had sacrificed. Book!Lan was a guy who refused to give up the fight against the Shadow even with his whole country long gone. He turned down love because he wanted what was best for the woman in question and could not turn from his duty to give it to her. Show!Lan whines and cries and abets his Aes Sedai’s selfish relationship distractions, he sleeps with the woman before giving her a similar speech and spends months moping before blabbing to the Pervert Trio, whose judgement is suspect at best, whose priorities are insanely hedonistic, and whose loyalty is utterly unproven, and finally running to tattle everything to the Amyrlin. I guess because she’s smart and good and comes from the humblest background ever.

And just like the breakup speech to Nynaeve they cut and pasted from Eye of the World, this line is totally out of context. Lan has not spent months mentoring Rand. He has not been growing close to both him and Nynaeve, that he would be more sympathetic to them. This version clearly isn’t, since his priority here is putting Rand in his place and making sure he understands that place is well below St. Siuan, one of the Writers’ Pet Triumvirate. Lan’s dialogue in this scene is rebuking Rand’s appearance, then his running away from his duties, praising the Amyrlin and then telling him to face whatever comes on his feet. In other words, “Siuan is great, you are not, so you are obliged to accept whatever she does to you.”

7:53 “You’ve been learning sword forms” They don’t even realize that they are highlighting the problem here! Rand listened to Lan, because they built up a relationship as he taught him! Rand easily could tell that Lan’s instructions before meeting the Amyrlin were intended to make him look good and present himself in the best possible light to her. It proved the relationship.

And, by the way, Rand has learned sword forms, from verbal descriptions by a teacher of dubious mental stability, well enough to be recognizable by Lan.

8:16 What is the difference between the coat Rand took off and the one he put on? Why did Lan decide, at this juncture in the conversation, to give him a new one?

8:32 “Go, the Amyrlin awaits.” How? Why, at this point? Lan was just chilling, Rand was pacing, they had an incoherent argument and then all of a sudden, Lan gives him a new coat and sends him in. What determined that time point? Has Siuan just been sitting in there waiting for Lan to decide it’s time?

They’re just going to stick as close to the meeting with the Amyrlin from the books, for no reason, aren’t they?

ITB, the point of the scene was for Rand to learn in the most harsh and shocking way possible that he was the Dragon Reborn and that the worst person possible knew his darkest secret, and to reveal to the readers the backstory of Moiraine’s mission and have Rand’s backstory confirmed. It presented Rand with his mission for the book (which is why it was at the beginning of the book, rather than the last quarter) and gave him a chance to react to these events, to show his mettle to Moiraine, Verin and the Amyrlin. Among other things, it was the account for the readers of the Foretelling of his birth, which we have already seen. Rand knows he is the Dragon Reborn and is under no illusions about keeping his channeling a secret. Especially since he is arguing loudly about both things with Lan in front of White Tower guards. Rand does not have a best friend about to die from an evil dagger, no one knows Nynaeve & Egwene are in Falme, and the pursuit of the stolen Horn of Valere has reached the “far western shore*”, not setting out soon from the same venue where Rand is meeting Siuan. What exactly are they trying to accomplish?

*For the record, the "far western shore" of the Aryth Ocean is in Seanchan. "Shore" is where the water ends, "coast" is where the land ends. The western shore of the Pacific Ocean is in Asia, the eastern shore is the Americas. The Pacific is off the far western coast of the Americas, and the Aryth Ocean is the far western coast of the region in which WoT takes place.

9:57 Ohhh! She wants him to answer truthfully! That is what we needed to know! /sarcasm She more or less told him, “It’s normally a good idea to keep secrets, but you shouldn’t with me. You should answer my questions truthfully.” Why? What’s in it for him?

10:24 Thom?

10:43 Lanfear had a goon knock Mat unconscious and then transported him across the continent before he revived. Okay. How is this going to do anything other than make this most dangerous of the Forsaken look like more of a chump?

Is all the raccoon look the show’s way of tacitly admitting they can’t possibly match the description of Lanfear’s beauty from the books, and so they’re deliberately not trying?

12:16 So, in yet another “put Nyneave in her place moment” (coincidentally, I am sure, buffing the whiter woman at her expense, yet again – but she’s black! Isn’t it great that we have such a strong, leading black female heroine?), is Elayne just going to make insane leaps of logic to succeed?

And when did they try something Nynaeve’s way? Last we saw, at the end of last episode, they had been coopted by Ryma and Basan and were hiding in their rooms. If Nynaeve’s way failed, it was because Basan snatched them, not because of superior Seanchan security or Nynaeve's ability lacking somehow.

12:56 Egwene’s sul’dam is untrained? Why?

13:10 Are we ever getting any explanation for those mouthpieces?

13:19 And we’re out. Back with the Aes Sedai hanging around, no doubt wondering what the hell Siuan is doing in Cairhien on such short notice and bringing even more scrutiny to her secret actions. Like a solo audience with some random dude, with witnesses to the fact of the meeting, if not the substance. In the books, the visit to Fal Dara to retrieve the Horn and incidentally, pick up two new initiates with extraordinary strength provided sufficient reason for Siuan to visit and meet with Rand in a way that looks like a sideline curiosity. Here, it makes Rand into the obvious focus of her sudden journey.

13:22 How are Aes Sedai completely unfamiliar with the Royal Library in Cairhien? That line was just “generic Brown sister statement”. Browns like books, Cairhien has a library, so we will just have a Brown sister comment on the library to fill time.

14:00 We happen to know that there is not a Forsaken in the city, because she is in Falme. Or else is capable of moving from one place to another so fast, except when pursuing Moiriane on horseback that precautions "because she might be present" are pointless. By Alanna’s logic, the Pervert Trio can never again be separated, because Lanfear could, for all intents and purpose, be in any city they are in.

14:14 Okay, the way Ihvon’s head is cocked, he is actually following Tomas. Because he and Maksim outvoted Alanna? So who is actually in charge? The only consistently established fact we have about warders is sex object.

14:35 Is this a secret meeting to show us that Barthanes is a Darkfriend, like ITB, or is Liandrin going to slot Anvaere into Amalisa’s role as her catspaw? Or something new and stupid?

15:11 What have they lost that Lan thinks he will regain by informing Siuan of everything?

16:00 There are thorough and complete Tower records on stilling. There are ironclad sources in the Tower for everything the writers want the audience to know or for Aes Sedai to be able to stipulate as facts, but Darkfriends can purge those same records so that no one knows what the Eye of the World is.

Of course, ITB, they knew very little about stilled women, because it was a topic with which the Aes Sedai were uncomfortable, and because the stilled women themselves avoided Aes Sedai as painful reminders of their loss. All of which told you something about the nature of the Power, about the shortcomings of Aes Sedai and left things open for characters to discover. None of that is convenient for this exposition, so we’re going to chuck it. Next season, if it comes up, stilling will be a topic with convenient lore gaps.

16:09 Moiraine says she never considered committing suicide as most women in her position do in the first year, because she knew that Rand was more important than anything else in the world. But until most of a year had gone by, she did not know he was important, because last season, they thought they won. Moiraine let the guy who is more important than anything, her sole reason to go on living after being stilled, wander off on his own. But even if you stretch to have her realize moments too late after letting him go, that the fight isn't over, it does not explain her pissy games with Lan. Lan’s skills and connections are a huge asset in her mission, especially if she can no longer channel and is cut off from the Tower's resources. She should have been bringing him on it all, not trying to alienate him.

16:24 Now Moiraine says that by telling Siuan, Lan is putting the fate of the world in jeopardy, because Siuan is keeping secrets from Moiraine. Isn’t this the most important thing in the world? Shouldn’t the person who can actually channel and actually holds the status of Aes Sedai, be handling it?

Seriously, who the fuck does she think she is? Even ITB, Moiraine and Siuan had a bit of that quality, but there were reasons that, if not sufficient, provided a basis for their keeping it close to the vest.

16:53 If Siuan was worthy of your time and attention all night, while the Dragon Reborn is hanging out relatively unguarded in a random inn in Tar Valon, then maybe Lan has a bit of a point here.

19:05 See, Rand fell to his knees in an audience with the Amyrlin! It is a totally faithful adaptation of the books! Some idiot shill on Tumblr or YouTube is going to be making either that point, or rationalizing how this is so much more efficient storytelling, because they combine a channeling lesson with the reveal!

20:19 Is Renna going to blow everyone over to show how strong Egwene is, or will she do a moderate explosion and then Egwene will do an even bigger one of her own will, to show how awesome she is?

21:51 Ogier kneel to human rulers now.

22:57 They are having a powerful villain do a mundane task! The contrast! Isn’t this brilliant and original storytelling?!? This is the advantage of a modern adaptation, to bring new ideas to Jordan’s stuffy old dated work.

23:40 “Is this a sex thing or a murder thing? Because either way, I’d prefer you skip the talking.” Best line of the show, and they don’t realize it’s their own bullshit they are calling out.

25:12 Well, we can’t possibly start a winning streak, so from that line we segue into Ishamael having a magic tea from the Age of Legends that allows you to recall your past lives and understand your true self. Writing characterization is hard. Let’s invent magical bullshit to take its place.

26:36 I hope that’s not Bain & Chiad. They were shorter than Aviendha ITB.

27:36 The proper way to do this is to have Aviendha tell Perrin not to interfere. Aviendha is the one he knows, the one he has fought beside and is traveling with. He is, or should be, on her side, against these women he does not know. That would be his reason for intervening when they start beating on her for no explicable reason. So why would he stop because one of the people hitting his companion tells him “Don’t”? Why would he listen to her? What did he think was going to happen when he moved to intervene? That Ginger 1 would back down just because Perrin disapproves? Of course, given that this whole thing was setup through hand-talk, you’d think Aviendha would realize Perrin has no idea what’s going on and give him a heads-up before starting…

28:20 50 seconds of gratuitous beating on a woman, and shots of her bloody face. What a wonderfully feminist show.

30:40 What is the point of that scene? Does Mat’s presumed self-loathing from an emotionally abusive mother, or believing he is genetically programed to follow in the shoes of his delinquent father, inform anything we have seen him say or do this season?

Fuck. This is their shortcut through the Finns, isn’t it? By having Mat recall all his past lives (footage not found) and see his true self, the generalship or whatever else is convenient for their plans will be brought out in him.

34:36 So we’re going with Barthanes the Darkfriend.

35:35 Wow. Really shit security you guys have. It’s one thing for the show to ignore these obvious precautions Liandrin should have taken, by just not having the security breached, because people talk in front of those they should not all the time. Except when it is convenient, there is an eavesdropper.

Is this supposed to be the titular Daes Dae’Mar? I wonder too, if the intention here is to show that no, Anvaere was wrong to rebuke Moiraine, she does not deserve the upper hand over her magnificent sister, because she did not actually restore the family fortunes, it was all Barthanes’ deal with the Dark One that got them back in the high life again, and him engaged to Queen Galldrianellia.

36:10 So that was it? Mat’s vision of all his past lives was just to say he’s his father? What we saw does not track with what we were promised, and was incredibly underwhelming to boot.

38:45 Fun Fact: This guy preening and admiring himself in the dagger is played by Rafe Judkins’ sodomitical concubine, and they spent their 10th anniversary together while filming season 2. He has, “somehow”, appeared in more episodes of the show than Elayne, Leane, Lanfear, Min, Padan Fain, Uno, Igntar, Verin, Elyas, Suroth, Valda, Sheriam, Masema and Siuan. He has appeared in more episodes than his fellow warder, Ihvon, who actually exists in the books!

39:59 Lan and Logain whispering threats at each other! Isn’t this what we dreamed of in a WoT adaptation?

41:35 So the upshot of all of this is that Moiraine is not stilled, she is just shielded. And we are confirming that severed channelers can still see the weaves.

And what is going on with Lan’s bond after all?

42:39 Aviendha somehow screwed up and got Jolien killed, so they had to beat her to restore her honor. This is your public service announcement that all Aiel customs are going to be pulled out of the writers’ asses and don’t you dare expect them to make sense.

Hey, it’s two thirds of the way through the episode, when are we going to see political intrigue?

42:54 Aviendha has just explained why she should not have any obligation to Jolien. She was defending herself, not doing something she should not. The idea that you are supposed to defend others and not yourself is nonsense. You don’t need any understanding of combat to know that dying to protect a comrade being the ironclad rule will quickly result in everyone who follows it going extinct.

43:14 The possibility of a sexual relationship is the most important thing to ascertain about any two new acquaintances. We have established nothing about these two characters, except their names, and not which name belongs to which woman, but we know that one of them is attracted to Perrin and disappointed that he is committed to another, and the other might be gay. And yes, their sexuality came up in their introduction ITB, but it was just to refute the Wondergirls’ assumptions about Aiel Maidens of the Spear, and the point was how rumors are unreliable. That same conversation went on to establish Bain's & Chiad's close friendship that transcended their clans’ blood feud and the effort they made to affirm that relationship in spite of the feud, as well as their issue with large bodies of water, their courage & ingenuity in overcoming it, their loyalty to Aviendha, their purpose for being on the wrong side of the Dragonwall, and certain pertinent-in-the-future details about the Wise Ones. On the show, we get the sexy details aired and the camera zooms back out.

43:32 This shot is so dark that I had no idea they were looking at the ocean and not just more desert until one of the Maidens asked about it. I do not know whether it is the one who is attracted to Perrin, or the one who is not, who asked about the ocean.

44:21 Normal decent people might be wondering why Elayne punched a helpless, restrained captive, but the channeler fangirls are wetting themselves with glee over it. By the way, we did not get Nynaeve figuring out how to work the a’dam against all odds and at great personal danger, ambush a complete pair, free a damane (who actually threw the punch, ITB, because she had a legit grievance), and have clothes and a plan in place to use the newly acquired a’dam to infiltrate the kennels. We did not have Elayne being willing to wear the a’dam to save her friend, and Nynaeve decide that not even for that purpose could she make her do it.

We also do not have the mystery of how the a’dam works, how it should not work on anyone but a mareth damane, and presumably no Egwene figuring out the truth despite her captivity, because the show has not made much of a distinction, if any, about the difference between learning to channel and being born with the ability.

The same segment of rabid Seanchan-haters in the fandom contend, fallaciously, that the Seanchan are hypocrites, especially Tuon, for the whole setup, because they refuse to recognize the difference between the channeling status of sul’dam and mareth damane. These are the petulant children who claim that the later books are unreadable because Mat has civilized conversations with Tuon, and they are the segment this show is generally pandering to.

46:33 Impotent death threats. The classic sign of true strength!

48:26 Moiraine has in no way demonstrated that she knows the difference between right and wrong, she does not even seem to know the difference between right and expedient. At what point, ever, have we seen her forgo an option because it was not morally correct, or made trouble for herself because it was the right thing to do? When she went along with the plan to send ta’veren into a death trap to see who was the Dragon Reborn? When she cheated Domon of his price for the poem?

50:30 Yeah, real quick on the uptake, aren’t you, Verin? All of this about Rand proclaiming himself at Falme has been previously established in the dialogue of this episode, there is no need to make Verin repeat it for the audience.

51:41 They really like showing bald Aes Sedai. Do they consider how this, like so much else, undermines the exoticism and alien appearance of the Seanchan?

52:15 Okay, when Siuan did not deny sending Verin, I figured she realized what was going on, and felt like she had to play along. And so she tells Leane to take over leading this group, saying that Rand can’t be allowed to leave the city. By not denying sending Verin, she is tacitly supporting Verin’s claim, so why is she saying they have to stop Rand?

52:40 Lan is giving a channeling lesson. I thought Sanderson went too far in having non-channelers knowing and speaking of channeling concepts as channelers (or fans) would. There just are no rules anymore.

53:15 He just explained a channeling concept to an Aes Sedai!

53:44 The only person in this group who cannot channel is explaining to, and instructing, the channelers. Go. Fuck. Yourselves.

54:46 Lan failed to discover a forgotten Age of Legends channeling technique because he abandoned his duty. Whut? This whole episode is all about spinning everything to clear Moriaine of all censure or blame. Lan failed to perform a miraculous deduction while Moiraine was passive-aggressively trying to chase him away, because he forgot his duty. Rand ran away from his duty to the world, he was not misled by Moiraine’s inaccurate assessment of last season’s battle. And now Moiraine is in charge and leading Rand to his epic confrontation and proclamation of himself as the Dragon Reborn, it’s not Rand doing this on his own, finding his own way there through things he sees as necessary, and making his own choices. The problem, in the eyes of this show, with Siuan’s revealed plan of the White Tower for Rand is not in caging him to be a weapon instead of a general (newsflash, he’s not supposed to be the general, either), it is in caging him to be a weapon for the Tower, instead of for Moiraine to use!

56:06 Is anyone going to point out that this good, smart woman, from humble origins, is the author of Moiraine’s failure at the Eye of the World last year? That Moiraine went there on blind faith in Siuan, pitted the Dragon against “the Dark One” as directed, only to discover later that it had all been Ishamael’s plan.

56:52 Moiraine will do anything for the Dragon Reborn, except smack down her lover before Siuan can give her a fateful order.

57:53 There’s that ol’ Siuan Sanche ego. We missed you, dumbass.

58:52 Yeah, the flashback goes too far and makes it dumb. It’s worse here, because why are we supposed to be invested in a relationship where one party violated the other’s trust so egregiously? If you want to use that flashback here, a better point would be when Siuan is ordering her to close the Waygate, because that’s the crucial decision point, the breaking of the relationship, the transgression that moves them beyond what they were, with no going back (in theory – I suspect the writers love their WLW too much to let their relationship die altogether). This is just sentimental twaddle when the Dragon Reborn and one of the Forsaken are heading through the Ways to his destiny. Siuan has been in three episodes, and in one of them, she was just riding in a carriage. Do they really expect the audience to care about her, next to the actual plot?

Also, if nothing is more important than the Dragon Reborn, and Moiraine is the only one who can handle him regardless of her actual channeling status, why did she ever let herself be compromised in such a way as swearing that Oath?

59:27 Liars!

I can’t help but notice the lack of anything that could be considered the Game of the Houses in this episode.

#wot on prime #season 2 #timestamp annotations #books vs show

3 notes · View notes