#because every 3 weeks there was some new shooter in the headlines and I found myself not wanting to be exploitative

[street-corner-felines]

Zero Day Director commentary - With actor Andre Keuck

[devinclaire]

Aquarius Full Moon Report For Week of August 12th

The week starts off with an intense, but centering tone. We’ve all been tasked with taking responsibility in some area in our lives this year. Every month in 2019 we’ve been given just the right frequency of energy to make a small change, that will lead to a big change by the end of the year.

Monday, August 12th is the day this month to make a conscious shift that aligns you closer to your purpose. By the beginning of 2020 there will be something about you that you wouldn’t even recognize about yourself a year ago. Don’t fret if it feels like you’re preparing for something but things are stalling. In October it will feel like the drawbridge has been lowered and the cavalry is riding out for battle. Until then, your prepare.

Amidst the rebuilding of some part of our lives, we are met with a new 8 cycle of love on Tuesday, August 13th. This ends a 4 year cycle, and an 8 year cycle of love and abundance in your life. What have you grown out of and are ready for a new chapter to begin? Emit the frequency you want to receive from the world, Venus and the Sun will be happy to match it.

The Aquarius Full Moon shines bright with visionary zeal on the night of Wednesday, August 14th, and comes to complete fullness on the morning of Thursday, August 15th. If you didn’t have a sense of what was to come, you’re filled with a sense of vision now. It will become very clear what manifests a creatively fulfilling future for you, and what doesn’t. With the image of what you want your future to be, release to the wind and the stars what is stalling you from your hopes and dreams. Come September, the dream energy is going to be hot, and you don’t want anything holding you back.

Keep an ear out for surprising things coming out of the mouths of children. They may have some insight that hadn’t occurred to you before. This month and next month are filled with a lot of electric energy. Get ahead of it, and choose to be shocking rather than having someone else shock you.

By the weekend, choose to take action in refining the details. Polish it until it shines. You’re feeling good about taking a detailed task on, the energy of Mercury Retrograde is completely gone, and things are feeling less scrambled. Focus in and enjoy.

Monday, August 12th

Moon in Capricorn, goes void at 3:11 pm

Tuesday, August 13th

Moon goes into Aquarius at 8:35 am PDT

Wednesday, August 14th

Moon in Aquarius

Thursday, August 15th

Full Moon in Aquarius, goes void at 6:02 pm, goes into Pisces at 8:49 pm

Friday, August 16th

Moon in Pisces

Saturday, August 17th

Moon in Pisces goes void at 3:34 pm

Sunday, August 18th

Moon goes into Aries at 9:33 am

We’re going to start doing something a little different with the weekly forecast. I’m going to add a current events section to talk about the news of the day.

While I used to do this in the monthly New Moon Social Club e-mail, there’s plenty of news to write about things weekly. Also, the New Moon horoscopes I send out for the social club (also available for purchase on Amazon) are so detailed, I believe they can stand on their own :)

Remember, the personal is political. I’m grateful we’re all taking responsibility for the energy we emit and receive in the world by paying attention to astrology!

Jeffrey Epstein

At the time that guards found Jeffery Epstein dead in his jail cell there were a couple of things to note astrologically. One is that this is a chart controlled by people in power. There’s so much Leo energy on the ascendant of this chart, that it’s a chart ruled by leaders who consider themselves royalty. Also the highest point in the chart is the asteroid Vesta who is named for the goddess worshiped at the hearth of Roman households and today represents groups of women in astrology.

As Jupiter stations to go direct we can expect big things to take place when it comes to justice, fortune, and living on the edge. Jeffrey epstein’s suicide is a good example of things taking place in the news representing the shifting energy.

El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio

For the El Paso shooting it’s sad to see that the Moon had come into connection with the South Node , a point in the chart that holds heavy energy, and can symbolize endings. The Moon was next to the asteroid Vesta, who represents the hearth and groups- symbolize the people who were getting their shopping done. Based on where the Moon was positioned, exactly opposite Neptune, and next to many planets in the sign of Leo indicates that the shooter was deluded into thinking that he was a warrior going on a mission for a king.

The second shooting in Ohio took place during a void Moon. This is significant because usually things of note don’t take place during void Moons. The only time when things transpire during this energy is when a project is being completed. The shooter in Ohio felt very connected to the shooter in Texas, and felt the need to “finish the job” during the void Moon.

Abolish ICE

Again, the placement of the secretive, spying Scorpio Moon seemed to aid with this operation. Whatever sign the Moon is in can tell us a lot about what will transpire over those two and a half days. In this chart the North Node in Cancer plays a prominent role showing that separating families is not a symptom of these operations, but a strategic tactic. This also indicates that the solution to this emergency will be through mothers and children.

Hong Kong protests

Keep a close eye on what unfurls during the protests in Hong Kong this week. The protests began at the beginning of Jupiter Retrograde, and with Jupiter Retrograde ending expect news to come from the streets. There will also be news the first week of November.

bughead

Let’s finish on a happy note. Mercury Retrograde isn’t all doom and gloom, sometimes it can be perfect timing.

My husband and I love watching Riverdale (we’re those people who watch it on Netflix so we’re always a season behind and bemoaning that we have to wait until the next summer to catch up). During Mercury Retrograde last month my husband informed me that Cole Sprouse and Lili Reinhart had broken up. “Don’t worry, it’s Mercury Retrograde any ‘definite’ action doesn’t last long. They’ll get get back together in August,” I said.

My husband gave me side eye, as he does when I make such proclamations. A few days ago, my husband read me a new headline from his phone, “Bughead is back on,” he said, and then he gave me that look he gives me when my astrology is right on the mark.

Enjoy that the final leftover energies of Mercury Retrograde are behind us this week!

[ad360com]

8Chan - Moving the Goalposts and the Streisand Effect

The objective is "division,"deflection, distraction. Know this. Moving the goalposts: A common metaphor for moving the focus of an argument to another position (usually after being found out). I contend that MSM and their digital arms are no longer reporters, are not sources of truth, neither are they impartial observers. Those who use media channels to beat them to "real" information" are an existential threat to them. The Streisand Effect: "The Streisand effect is a phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet. It is an example of psychological reactance, wherein once people are aware that some information is being kept from them, their motivation to access and spread it is increased."https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect Reactance is an unpleasant motivational arousal (reaction) to offers, persons, rules, or regulations that threaten or eliminate specific behavioral freedoms. Reactance occurs when a person feels that someone or something is taking away their choices or limiting the range of alternatives.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactance_(psychology) They want to control the outcomes. They need time to "setup" their bullshit. That is their key vulnerability. They are slow and cannot react to events as they occur. that is why they have talking points (to regroup around).  That is why you see the mismatch in what they say and what is actually occurring in real time. The only way to stop this is to ban "free speech"or close access to those you want to hide.  This has happened and is happening, ...deplatforming, censorship, shadowbanning, check Project Veritas for more ...https://twitter.com/JamesOKeefeIII

A couple of important things, MSM wants to keep the charade moving along: paper of record, "reporter,"source, editor, publisher, story, news, etc., are all important terms.  Ever heard of operation mockingbird? What is it, why does it exist? In recent days they started with the idea that Orange Man (a person of color) was "responsible" for the two public mass shootings through his "racist" speech. Without proof these entities labelled this Orange Man a "white" supremacist moving the goalpost into the KKK zone (and we all know who they are, you clowns). No proof of anything, just rollin along with their nonsense. Take a look Mr. Lemon giving a stellar rendition below... Or Mr. Best here in high falsetto... Let's begin a short walk through recent events. I published this a few days ago: "Every media outlet jumping up and down pointing the finger at one man. Orange man bad." I alleged that if we dug deeper than the headline we'd find out things are quite different to the headline. 180° different, but that when this information would come to light, they'd hide it and shift focus. They did, moving away as quickly as possible from the people killed in Dayton, keeping it political and divisive, constantly shape-shifting, blaming and labeling. Initial post - http://www.ad360.co/we-knew Topics covered: more than 3-4 shooters (El Paso) - still to be effectively denied? Antifa meetup to be held in El Paso - they flip flopped on this one Shooter's social media pages changed - nobody interested Shooter's father, therapy and C_A mind control - nobody interested 8Chan as the source of the "manifesto" - the first platform to be de-platformed! Was this what they were actually after? Kill innocents to stop the flow of information. D politicians all on message, Twitter shills on message, all marching in lockstep too early. Now you can't walk it back. Time is up. The ruse has been uncovered. Remember the clock is running down.  Too many people know, they simply don't have the ability to keep covering their tracks. This one will be links to other people's work... This one is excellent, it efficiently digs into the "alleged" mind control angle - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3BzCcXWBQs

You'll see how Bryan Crusius (father of "alleged shooter") is connected to Colin Ross (Spook) via Timberlawn, both interested in "therapy." Ross also appears to be able to skip out court appearances in both Canada and the US. "My previous post: A guy travels 600 miles to shoot up a Walmart.  Odd wouldn't you think? Wears ear defenders and changes his pants half way through? Has all the classic false flag attributes; father a therapist (check) with CIA connections, white loner who suddenly goes online an builds a weak presence (check), drops a "manifesto" note beforehand (very a la mode), changing his social media profiles and political affiliation while in the act of committing murder or while in police custody? witness say three to four people dressed in black? Does anybody fact check these people? Is anything held up to scrutiny?"  

when I say alleged shooter above please not that the MO in most of these false flags is to have the "shooter" as a patsy. If you think about it, the ony use for this person is to be so out of it they cannot produce a coherent recollection of what happened. If, as stated by multiple witnesses, there were more shooters involved then the patsy (in El Paso) is a deflection device. These guys are pawns too (that makes it a bit sick). There is also the fact that this shooter was not adept with firearms and managed to kill 20 people with a 30 round mag in an AK 47. Not the most easy thing to do, as some have noted. https://nypost.com/2019/08/05/el-paso-shooter-went-to-walmart-because-he-was-hungry-authorities   This one by the same producer develops more background on the Dayton shooter - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkH4D0ltwg0

We know already that the Dayton shooter was left leaning, a bit sick and twisted and had nothing to do with Trump (strange he picked the same weekend as the El Paso shooter to do his work - coincidence, surely, surely). We know already that the Dayton shooter was left leaning, a bit sick and twisted and had nothing to do with Trump (strange he picked the same weekend as the El Paso shooter to do his work - coincidence, surely, surely). Gilroy shooter -  https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1158823322454331392 Further push for violence in Portland on 17th -  https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1158590052374462464 This happened in Springfield (Aug 8th): https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/08/exclusive-photos-armed-man-with-rifle-handgun-100-rounds-of-ammo-and-body-armor-stopped-and-arrested-by-firefighter-outside-springfield-mo-walmart

Note the clothing choices, note the location, note the timing; lot's of coincidences? Why is Walmart important? https://www.dhs.gov/blog/2010/12/06/dhs-and-walmart-partners-promoting-if-you-see-something-say-something-campaign

"Earlier this month (2011), DHS unveiled a new terror alert system that will hijack social networking sites as one way of informing people of terrorist threat updates. “The new, two-tiered system will provide alerts that are more specific to the threat and even recommend certain actions or suggest that people look for specific suspicious behavior, she said. They also may be limited to a particular audience — such as law enforcement — rather than broadcast to the general public, and also will have a specified end date,” reported Information Week Government. In December, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano  announced the expansion of the Department’s national “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign to hundreds of Walmart stores across the country — launching a new partnership between DHS and Walmart to help the American public play an active role in informing on each other. Thousands of Wamart stores will have telescreens pumping out government propaganda." https://www.globalresearch.ca/obama-launches-total-takeover-of-media-system/23150 How were police so quick to the scene in Dayton and in such numbers?   This quote is interesting: "Think about what connecting Alex Jones to the Lt. Gov means and add "baselessly" in terms of propaganda (minus plus minus equals plus) Toxic conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick both attempted to baselessly connect a mass shooting that targeted Latinos to upcoming anti-facism protests. " https://www.mediamatters.org/alex-jones/tx-lt-gov-dan-patrick-nearly-indistinguishable-alex-jones-el-paso-white-nationalist-mass You might note that other outlets went on the offensive against what the called "right wing fake news" (links in my previous post). Washington Post, Bezos and the C_A, all full speed ahead against something which "doesn't exist?"

Add that post to these posts...

And this (https://twitter.com/JuliansRum/status/1158919312779952130)

Thirteen thousand people respond? C'mon. I know you're not that stupid. Orange Man Good (OMG). They're in panic. Why are they in panic... This week there were plenty of reasons to change the news cycle; Epstein ( Wexner creating distance), Franklin Square FD wanting to reopen 911, Nunes being full given access, Coates dropping out as NSI Director, declass coming, Mueller, Cummings and Baltimore under the spotlight (caught in a sting, reportedly), Congresswoman Omar (my brother's keeper), Nadler (Lord Farquuad), Schiff (c'mon, this guy?), Pelosi (district in ruins, homeless issues, water, etc.) talking about continuing to go after Trump https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1155315616171155456, Wiener's laptop and those dead NY cops, Uranium , Wikileaks gets right to publish, Bruce Ohr , Capital One and Amazon, Tulsi Gabbard getting the "treatment," Democratic Debate Debacle, Demicrap Booker wants to shut Trump rallies down :), Big Tech EO   https://twitter.com/katierogers/status/1159192574650998794, and there is more ...it gets so much worse. Wouldn't you be squealing like a trapped rat too? Read the full article

[gibsongirlselections]

Will New Yorkers Get Desperate Enough To Vote for Trump?

With elderly Caucasian Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate, November 3 will be less about the rise of progressive politics than the noise of the last four years would have you believe. But while the shine of AOC and her ilk winds down, progressive thought will find at least a petri dish to fester in during a Biden administration, and perhaps even a second media wind if Trump wins.

Since it’s not going away, seeing what would happen if progressives escape the lab and go viral is important. For that case study, we’ll look to COVID-laced New York.

COVID is supposed to be, finally, Trump’s white whale, the thing that will bring him down after he wriggled out from under the Russians and the Ukrainians and Stormy Daniels. Not enough ventilators! Not enough tests! Mass graves in Central Park! And it is all Trump’s fault. (See the headline: “Donald Trump is the Most Successful Bio-Terrorist in Human History.”) That set the stage for Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio to craft a response far more political than medical. New York today is a laboratory for what happens when progressive ideology displaces reality.

But first a quick reality check: For every death in this global epidemic, it is critical to remember the virus did not strike masses down in the streets like the Black Plague, and did not create hideous sores like the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s that tore through this city. It is unlikely to infect a third of the world’s population like the Spanish Flu. An overwhelming number of those infected today never even know they have COVID, surprised by an antibody test months later. Most infected people do not pass on the virus. On July 12, New York had zero virus deaths for the first time since the pandemic started. But keeping the emphasis on “cases” and not conclusions keeps the fear alive.

But enough of reality; we’re talking progressivism here. Lockdown has left New York economically devastated, mired in “the worst economic calamity since the 1970s, when it nearly went bankrupt,” according to the New York Times. The unemployment rate nears 20 percent, a figure not seen since the Great Depression (during the 2008 recession it was about 10 percent). The newly unemployed strain food banks and soup kitchens. Policy described as a “pause” in March morphed into a semi-permanent state to keep things bad ahead of the election. While de Blasio authorized nail salons to reopen, he’s kept the city’s core sectors, the stuff that symbolizes New York—Broadway, tourism, conventions, restaurants, hotels, and museums—shut, sacrifices to The Cause. Look what Trump wrought!

So people are leaving. More than 10,000 Manhattan apartments were listed for rent in June, an 85 percent increase over last year. The super wealthy neighborhoods have seen 40 percent migration out, the biggest outward migration from the once economically strongest neighborhoods in midtown and the Upper East Side. Enough rich New Yorkers have left that it is affecting the census. The situation mirrors the outflow of the 1970s which decimated the tax base and led to landlords torching buildings to collect the insurance because they could not collect rent.

So it matters that 25 percent of New York tenants have not paid their rent since March. Those overdue payments left 39 percent of landlords unable to pay property taxes. A new NY law prohibiting landlords from evicting tenants facing pandemic-related financial hardships may help on the micro level while contributing to the destruction of the greater economy, which of course will eventually devastate everyone. Progressive zeal created an economic tide to sink all boats.

The mayor who threw his city out of work also banned large gatherings through September. He did however say Black Lives Matter protests would be allowed, claiming “the demonstrators’ calls for social justice were too important to stop.” The mayor himself, maskless, took time off to help paint “Black Lives Matter” on Fifth Avenue in front of Trump Tower. The central thoroughfare in Manhattan was then closed to traffic to let the paint dry. Some are more equal than others; the mayor criticized Trump for putting politics first in his coronavirus response.

De Blasio is also allowing an “occupation” to continue at City Hall, where a mix of activists and homeless (attracted by donated food) live in makeshift tents. It stinks, a throbbing health-hazard island of human feces and drugs and food scraps even before you get to the COVID part. The city allows them even as, until recently, it sent goons to chase unwoke citizens in twos and threes from playgrounds. A woman at the occupation asked my preferred pronouns while behind her a half-naked homeless man screamed. A few cops stood in front of a graffitied courthouse and laughed. Maybe they just like graffiti; it too is back across New York.

So what else are the cops up to? A former police commissioner criticized city and state leaders for abandoning the police (de Blasio pushed through a $1.5 billion cut to the NYPD on BLM demand) and for helping create a “crime virus” to go along with the coronavirus. Amid defunding elite NYPD units in spite of a 205 percent rise in shootings this year (one of the most recent shootings was a one-year-old caught in gang crossfire), so many NYPD officers are seeking retirement the department has been forced to slow-walk applications to get out. The state legislature meanwhile is proposing a new law to hold cops (not the city, as it is now) personally liable for events on duty even as New York City made the use of certain restraints by cops a criminal act.

De Blasio and Cuomo found ways to put more criminals on the streets. New York state recently eliminated bail for many crimes, claiming alongside BLM it was unfair to POC without resources to pay. Adding to the criminal population, Mayor de Blasio supported the release of some 2,500 prisoners due to concerns over the spread of the coronavirus. At least 250 of those released have been re-arrested 450 times, meaning some have been re-arrested more than once. Since they cannot be held for bail, most are returned to the street under Governor Cuomo’s fairness policy.

The next battleground will be the schools. With only weeks to go in summer, the mayor announced the nation’s largest public school system will reopen with an unspecified mix of in-person and online classes. Teachers say crucial questions about how schools will stay clean, keep students healthy, and run active shooter drills while maintaining social distancing have not been answered. There have been no directives on how to handle online classes, no published best practices, not much of anything. Quality of education, like quality of life, is not on the agenda.

One certainty is New York’s students will have fewer options—26 Catholic schools will not reopen due to low enrollment and financial issues. That affects more than religion. Many of those schools represent the only neighborhood alternative to the failing public system. Closures will drive middle class flight.

And there’s always something more. With indoor restaurant dining prohibited, many places are setting up sidewalk tents. In addition to adding to the Hooverville atmosphere, all that food has brought out the rats, who are attacking patrons.

There is no sense we will ever end this. It’s easy to criticize places that have moved too fast, but they had the right underlying idea: we can’t live like this forever. People need to work, not just for money (though they need the money) but to have purpose. So much of what has been done in the name of justice feels more like punishment—suck on this bigots—racial score-settling under the guise of progressive social justice.

A lot of us are just sitting around like the Joad family, waiting for something to happen. The thing is, we’re not sure what we are waiting for. The lockdown was, we were told, to flatten the virus curve. We did that. COVID hospitalizations and actual deaths in NYC are at their lowest levels since March. But the lockdown is still here and nobody seems to know when to declare victory—is the end point zero new cases before we can re-open Broadway? A vaccine? We just wait, the days violent, hot, and liquid. De Blasio and Cuomo are waiting, too, but for November 3 to free us. No need for a continuing crisis after Biden wins.

But maybe the New York case study will serve as a different turning point in the election. Imagine enough purple voters who look at New York and become frightened of what the Left will do with power in Washington. They want to work. They want their kids in school. They might just vote for Trump.

Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, Hooper’s War: A Novel of WWII Japan, and Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the 99 Percent.

The post Will New Yorkers Get Desperate Enough To Vote for Trump? appeared first on The American Conservative.

[jodyedgarus]

How Denver Got Better On Defense Without Changing Its Roster

The signings and trades of the NBA’s entertaining offseason help us figure out how we feel about a team’s chances of contending for a title the following season. But focusing on splashy roster moves — DeMarcus Cousins to Golden State, Kyrie Irving asking to leave a team that made three NBA Finals in a row — can blind us to other improvements a team can make.

That’s part of what makes the Denver Nuggets so compelling this year. The team played little to no defense last season and missed the playoffs. A few months later, the Nuggets rank among the stingiest groups in the league, have won seven straight and lead the West standings. And they’ve done this with virtually the same group of players from last year.

While a combination of secondary factors helps explain the turnaround, it makes sense to begin with the most eye-popping change in Denver: the Nuggets’ suddenly stifling defense.

“It’s our identity,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone told reporters last week after his group held LeBron James and the Lakers to just 85 points. “Let’s be honest, our first three years to be in the bottom five of defense every year, for me, it’s embarrassing. When you’re known, ‘Hey, he’s a defensive coach,’ and three years running, you’re bottom five. I have pride. We all have pride.”

And they should be proud for the time being. Denver, which was 25th on defense while surrendering 111 points per 100 plays last season, has jumped 21 spots, all the way up to No. 4 on that end, now allowing 105.5 points per 100 plays. And again: This reversal has taken place despite the fact that the vast majority of the Nuggets’ minutes this season — 99 percent, in fact — have been logged by players who were also on Denver’s roster last season.

The San Antonio Spurs became a lockdown team after they drafted Tim Duncan. The Boston Celtics were dominant on D after they traded for Kevin Garnett. But no team has ever improved by as much as this Denver defense has while keeping the cast virtually1 the same.

Denver didn’t have to change its squad to dominate on D

Biggest one-year improvements in defensive efficiency, and the share of minutes played by returning players, since the 1976 NBA-ABA merger

Opp. pts/100 poss. relative to league avg. Team Season % Ret. MP Previous season Value Change Spurs 1997-98 59% -5.7 +5.7 +11.4 Celtics 2007-08 50 -0.4 +8.6 +9.0 Bucks 2014-15 67 -5.2 +3.4 +8.6 Bobcats 2013-14 64 -5.7 +2.8 +8.5 Lakers 1999-00 69 -2.1 +5.8 +7.9 Nets 2001-02 41 -2.5 +5.0 +7.5 Pistons 1995-96 68 -4.7 +2.5 +7.2 Nuggets 2018-19 99 -2.3 +4.7 +7.1 Raptors 2006-07 37 -6.5 +0.5 +6.9 Hawks 1993-94 71 -2.2 +4.6 +6.8

Positive values mean the defense was better (e.g., allowed fewer points); negative values mean it was worse.

Source: Basketball-Reference.com

A lot of that relative improvement2 stems from a schematic change in how the Nuggets — specifically, Nikola Jokic — defend pick-and-roll scenarios. The team was shredded in screen-roll action last season, ranking third worst in the league in defensive efficiency when facing such plays, according to data from Second Spectrum. Fast-forward to now, though, and Denver is tied for third best against the pick-and-roll,3 largely because of how Jokic negotiates the plays differently.

Jokic is arguably the most well-rounded center in the NBA from an offensive standpoint, but with lackluster quickness, he has often found himself in no-man’s land: playing just far back enough to routinely give ball handlers wide-open jumpers but just far up enough to give speedsters the runway necessary to finish at the basket before he can get in position to block their shots.

This season, though, he’s made a concerted effort to play farther up on pick-and-roll ball handlers in hopes of forcing them into making quicker decisions. Yes, guards and forwards will often still be much more explosive than he is and will beat him to the cup at times, but with improved communication and more decisive action on Jokic’s part, Denver is better able to protect the rim when Jokic isn’t in position to make a play.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/NugsDefense.mp4

The Nuggets are using “soft” coverage — in which the man guarding the screener doesn’t come up and truly engage the ball handler — on pick and rolls about 13 percent less than last year when Jokic is on the court, according to Second Spectrum. Opposing jump-shooters last season, having plenty of space, overperformed their expected effective field-goal percentage4 by more than 4 points when Jokic was the nearest defender — a sign that he may not have been playing up far enough to affect their shots. This season, though, opponents are shooting jumpers more than 5 points worse than their expected effective field-goal rates.

Similarly, the Serbian center — who ranked among the NBA’s bottom five rim protectors in both 2016-17 and 2017-185 — this year ranks smack-dab in the middle of the league’s rim protectors in how often he forces close-range misses when serving as the nearest defender. In other words, he’s been more than serviceable this season.6

Of course, it’s fair to question the sustainability of this strategy with Jokic and Denver’s torrid defense as a whole. After all, the Nuggets allow a relatively high number of looks from the short corners and have been somewhat unscathed in that their opponents have hit a below-league-average mark from those spots, and on wide-open triples in general, to this point. In fact, if you look back at Denver’s struggles in early November, when it dropped four contests in a row, teams hit better than 54 percent of their completely open looks from deep. (On some level, this has long been one of the things that Denver sacrifices in hopes of aiding Jokic in the paint. Other defenders, often assuming the 7-footer won’t hold up in coverage, provide help away from their defensive assignments, and in doing so, they run the risk of giving up an open jumper.)

Still, there are more reasons to believe in Denver than there are reasons not to. Despite having battled one of the NBA’s toughest schedules so far, the club — with Western Conference wins over the second-place Thunder, third-place Clippers, fourth-place Warriors, fifth-place Lakers and seventh-place Blazers — the Nuggets have beaten almost everyone in the West’s crowded playoff race. Denver has also knocked off Toronto, sitting in first in the East, on the road.

Other sources of optimism: Paul Millsap, after missing 44 games last year, is logging a career-high true-shooting percentage at age 33. Guard Monte Morris, who played in only three games as a rookie last season but now sees 24 minutes a night, is unbelievably sure-handed and owns the NBA’s best assist-to-turnover ratio by a country mile.7 Malone took the necessary step of inserting Swiss Army knife Juancho Hernangomez into the starting five when it became apparent that opponents were flat-out ignoring Torrey Craig because of his inability to shoot from outside.

Denver is one of the youngest teams in the league, but it leads the NBA in rebounding percentage, is tied for second in assist percentage and has managed to stay atop the standings without Will Barton, its top bench scorer, who should be back from injury in the coming weeks. The Nuggets’ defense has been the headline this season, but they still possess a top-10 offense, and Jokic — already one of the better passing bigs of all-time — has only continued to blossom on that end since bursting onto the scene.

It’s still somewhat early, yes. But if Denver’s defense is here to stay, the Nuggets have enough things going for them in just about every other facet of the game not only to make the playoffs for the first time under this regime, but also to do some real damage once they get there.

Neil Paine contributed research.

Check out our latest NBA predictions.

from News About Sports https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-denver-got-better-on-defense-without-changing-its-roster/

[trendingnewsb]

5 Real World Problems That Are Straight Out Of Black Mirror

The future! Rocket ships, lasers, robots — it is truly a far-flung, fantastical place. Except, uh … we have all those things right now, and have for some time. The future isn’t some vague, to-be-determined period of existence; it’s literally tomorrow. So today, humanity has to address issues that would have been inconceivable a few paltry years ago. And frankly, some of this stuff still kind of sounds like someone got stoned and then tried to pitch a Black Mirror episode.

5

Fitbits Are Giving Away Military Intelligence

Nowadays it’s routine for people to wear a fitness tracker, but by allowing our data to be shared, we’re also allowing our habits to be shared. That normally shouldn’t be problematic, unless your spouse is learning that your weekly jog takes you straight to the strip club … or you’re exercising on a classified military installation.

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Thanks to a map that shows the jogging habits of the 27 million people who use Fitbits and the like, we can see splotches of activity in otherwise dark areas, like Iraq and Syria. Some of those splotches are known American military sites full of exercising soldiers, and some, by extrapolation, are sites that the military would rather keep unknown. One journalist saw a lot of exercise activity on a Somalian beach that was suspected to be home to a CIA base. Someone else spotted a suspected missile site in Yemen, and a web of bases in Afghanistan were also revealed.

StravaYet another example of why we at Cracked continue to condemn exercise in all its forms.

By analyzing the data, you could theoretically figure out patrol and supply convoy routes, and make educated guesses as to where on these bases soldiers eat, sleep, etc. That’s a lot of useful information for someone planning an attack. You could also track individuals, potentially important ones. One researcher claimed they tracked a French soldier’s entire overseas deployment and subsequent return home.

This wasn’t an evil ploy by a terrorist cell in league with Big Fitness; you can turn that data tracking off. It’s just that no one even thought about it until someone finally pointed out that it was a huge security issue. American rules for fitness trackers in the military are now being “refined,” which we assume is PR speak for “Goddammit, turn that shit off.” But it’s only a matter of time until another seemingly innocuous technology accidentally gives away state secrets.

4

Space Commercialization Might Contaminate Planets

Elon Musk set a new precedent when he launched a car into space, and not only for tacky egotism. The rules about what corporations can and can’t do in space are essentially nonexistent, because the government’s authority ends somewhere around the thermosphere. Governments, however, have legal responsibilities listed in the Outer Space Treaty — one of the few things America and the Soviet Union agreed on. Most of the world has signed as well, and in addition to promising not to put nukes on the Moon or claim all of Jupiter for the proud people of Denmark, adherents agree not to send Earth germs to other planets like the interplanetary version of coughing on the guy next to you at the movie theater.

That sounds a bit silly, but there’s a real point: If Earth microbes accidentally end up on other planets and moons, it becomes impossible for scientists to tell if their “discovery” of life on Io is native, or if it originated from someone sneezing in a Tesla factory. So NASA and other government space agencies follow a strict anti-contamination protocol. American Mars rovers, for example, had all of their parts heated to 230 degrees before launch, and they are routinely sterilized with alcohol. Even if your mission is only to orbit a planet (or swing by one), you have to prove that the odds of an accidental crash landing are equivalent to that of winning a fair-sized lottery.

Kim Shiflett/NASA“Like, Powerball odds. No Pick 3 crap.”

In theory, governments are also responsible for ensuring that any corporations within their borders follow the same rules. But once you move beyond launching satellites into Earth’s orbit, the government’s ability to enforce the law is about equal to your ability to enforce a responsible bedtime on yourself. Maybe that flying Tesla was carefully sterilized, or maybe Musk went out of his way to fart it up before launch. We don’t know. And as more and more corporations talk about going to the Moon and Mars, we may have a germ problem.

There’s also the issue of debris. While we like to think of space as a pristine void, the Solar System is starting to resemble a freshman’s dorm room. Space missions are supposed to be as clean as possible, and a mission to another planet should either purposely burn up in the atmosphere or land when it’s done. Musk’s car was heading toward Mars, where plans for it were sort of a vague shrug. It could have eventually broken up and left debris around the planet, or it could have infected the surface. But instead, it went off-course toward the asteroid belt … where it could also very well hit something and break up. Worst-case scenario, we end up with a bunch of junk floating around that could take out a future mission. Even if his car never hits anything, Musk still broke bold new ground in space litter.

3

Moderators Have To Watch All The Heinous Garbage That Gets Posted On Social Media

Try to imagine the worst job possible. Sewage sampler? Elephant masturbator? How about social media moderator? It sounds like a joke at first: “Facebook has moderators? Then explain all the crap I see every day!” Then you learn that their job is mostly to filter out pornography, and it sounds awesome. Aren’t you supposed to get paid to do what you love?

But then you learn about the truly awful shit that moderators see as they cruise through a thousand flagged posts an hour, and you want to give them all hugs and raises. Child pornography, bestiality, hate speech, extreme violence … if you can imagine something awful, someone has put it online. Specific examples included a man’s testicles getting crushed, a boy getting his legs mangled by a truck, someone getting hit by a train, a man shooting himself in the head, suicide bombings, a man hurting and possibly killing small birds by having sex with them, and a woman whose body had been blown in two. Imagine dealing with images like that for 40 hours a week. It’s like playing roulette, except the closest you get to winning are shots of consenting genitals smashing together.

Imagine being forced to watch Logan Paul videos and considering that a good day.

Over 100,000 people trawl through e-trash to keep Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and other major sites (relatively) safe to use. And you can’t click away the moment you can tell a video is getting nasty — you have to verify that the content is real, and learn as much as possible so you can try to destroy it at its source. And while you will become somewhat numb, dealing with the worst of what humanity has to offer day after day can haunt you. Turnover is high, and there are few resources for moderators who need counseling. Which, shit, has to be all of them, right?

2

Facebook’s Fake News Problem Is A Feature, Not A Bug

Despite the fact that you probably took at least one break from reading this to check your Facebook feed, we still think of the site primarily as a vehicle for vacation photos where the worst thing that could happen is getting into a bitter argument with some friends about how to pronounce “GIF.” We’re all too smart to get suckered into politics, right?

But Facebook’s politics come after you. Ten million users saw “Russian-linked” ads placed during the 2016 election, mostly focused on big, controversial issues like immigration and gun control. Facebook also admitted that they placed about $100,000 in ads from “inauthentic accounts.” The issue isn’t ads spamming “Vote for Clinton / Trump / X’algax, Destroyer of Souls!” Everyone already saw those a million times; they’d sway no one. The problem is that they spread stories like “FBI AGENT SUSPECTED IN HILLARY EMAIL LEAKS FOUND DEAD IN APPARENT MURDER-SUICIDE,” which linked to a fake newspaper, quoting a man that doesn’t exist, who lives in a town that doesn’t exist (they spelled the town’s name wrong).

The Denver PostAt this point, we’re starting to doubt the existence of Denver too.

If you see that stuff in your feed, wedged in between a cat video and your friend’s new spaghetti sauce recipe, you don’t click through to verify it. So it weasels into your brain as something you vaguely remember that may or may not be true.

Facebook has also become a playground for trolls, regardless of whether they have a political agenda or just want to watch the e-world burn. If you can think back to the Las Vegas shooting (before all those other shootings removed it from the headlines), a slew of hoaxes spread from the moment the news broke. Some people invented fake dead and missing victims solely to see how many likes they could get. Others claimed that the shooter was still active, invented fake perpetrators, assigned nonexistent motivations to the shooter, or claimed that he was a Democrat, a left-wing activist, or a recent convert to Islam (in reality, if the shooter had any political motives, he took them to his grave).

It’s the cruelest and most devious form of misinformation, because it’s hard to keep your bullshit detector functioning when you’re in shock. Maybe some of those moderators could get a well-deserved break from the animal torture to focus on this crap instead?

1

Someone Could Steal Your Face And Make Porn

We have the technology to swap someone’s face onto someone else’s face in a video. That’s fun if we’re putting Nicholas Cage into Raiders Of The Lost Ark …

… but it’s a problem if someone is making it appear that a person said or did something they didn’t really do. And that problem gains an extra level of creepiness when someone’s face is slapped into a porn video. All it takes is some training, some raw footage of the subject, and a few spare hours. And if you’re the sort of person inclined to make fake porn, you’ve probably got a lot of time on your hand.

Reddit had an entire community dedicated to this “hobby,” until it was shut down, but that only made enthusiasts migrate elsewhere. Called “deepfakes,” after the Reddit user who pioneered the practice, they started editing the faces of celebrities onto preexisting porn. Some of the fakes ended up on porn sites being pitched to viewers as real, because porn is now a genre of fake news.

While it’s unlikely that anyone would believe Taylor Swift was suddenly so hard up for money that she appeared on FuckBrothers.biz, it’s still an ethically off-putting mess. It’s not limited to the living. Someone made a video “starring” a young Carrie Fisher. And it’s not limited to celebrities, either. Anyone armed with a scraper can pull photos from Facebook and Instagram, combine them with any of several search engines that look for porn stars by facial recognition, and make a fairly convincing video of anyone doing pretty much anything. Reddit users were making videos of their friends, co-workers, classmates, and exes. They were “only” for private use, but what happens when someone wants to manufacture revenge porn? So there you go: We’re reaching a point in history where we can’t even trust our pornography. And then what’s left to believe in?

Mark is on Twitter and has a book.

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[newstfionline]

For Two Months, I Got My News From Print Newspapers. Here’s What I Learned.

Farhad Manjoo, NY Times, March 7, 2018

I first got news of the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., via an alert on my watch. Even though I had turned off news notifications months ago, the biggest news still somehow finds a way to slip through.

But for much of the next 24 hours after that alert, I heard almost nothing about the shooting.

There was a lot I was glad to miss. For instance, I didn’t see the false claims--possibly amplified by propaganda bots--that the killer was a leftist, an anarchist, a member of ISIS and perhaps just one of multiple shooters. I missed the Fox News report tying him to Syrian resistance groups even before his name had been released. I also didn’t see the claim by Senator Bernie Sanders and other liberals on Twitter that the massacre had been the 18th school shooting of the year, which wasn’t true.

Instead, the day after the shooting, a friendly person I’ve never met dropped off three newspapers at my front door. That morning, I spent maybe 40 minutes poring over the horror of the shooting and a million other things the newspapers had to tell me.

Not only had I spent less time with the story than if I had followed along as it unfolded online, I was better informed, too. Because I had avoided the innocent mistakes--and the more malicious misdirection--that had pervaded the first hours after the shooting, my first experience of the news was an accurate account of the actual events of the day.

This has been my life for nearly two months. In January, after the breaking-newsiest year in recent memory, I decided to travel back in time. I turned off my digital news notifications, unplugged from Twitter and other social networks, and subscribed to home delivery of three print newspapers--The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and my local paper, The San Francisco Chronicle--plus a weekly newsmagazine, The Economist.

I have spent most days since then getting the news mainly from print, though my self-imposed asceticism allowed for podcasts, email newsletters and long-form nonfiction (books and magazine articles). Basically, I was trying to slow-jam the news--I still wanted to be informed, but was looking to formats that prized depth and accuracy over speed.

It has been life changing. Turning off the buzzing breaking-news machine I carry in my pocket was like unshackling myself from a monster who had me on speed dial, always ready to break into my day with half-baked bulletins.

Now I am not just less anxious and less addicted to the news, I am more widely informed (though there are some blind spots). And I’m embarrassed about how much free time I have--in two months, I managed to read half a dozen books, took up pottery and (I think) became a more attentive husband and father.

Most of all, I realized my personal role as a consumer of news in our broken digital news environment.

We have spent much of the past few years discovering that the digitization of news is ruining how we collectively process information. Technology allows us to burrow into echo chambers, exacerbating misinformation and polarization and softening up society for propaganda. With artificial intelligence making audio and video as easy to fake as text, we’re entering a hall-of-mirrors dystopia, what some are calling an “information apocalypse.” And we’re all looking to the government and to Facebook for a fix.

But don’t you and I also have a part to play? Getting news only from print newspapers may be extreme and probably not for everyone. But the experiment taught me several lessons about the pitfalls of digital news and how to avoid them.

I distilled those lessons into three short instructions, the way the writer Michael Pollan once boiled down nutrition advice: Get news. Not too quickly. Avoid social.

Get news. I know what you’re thinking: Listening to a Times writer extol the virtues of print is like taking breakfast suggestions from Count Chocula. You may also wonder if I am preaching to the choir; doesn’t everyone reading this story already appreciate print?

Probably not. The Times has about 3.6 million paying subscribers, but about three-quarters of them pay for just the digital version. During the 2016 election, fewer than 3 percent of Americans cited print as their most important source of campaign news; for people under 30, print was their least important source.

I’m nearly 40, but I’m no different. Though I have closely followed the news since I was a kid, I always liked my news on a screen, available at the touch of a button. Even with this experiment, I found much to hate about print. The pages are too big, the type too small, the ink too messy, and compared with a smartphone, a newspaper is more of a hassle to consult on the go.

Print also presents a narrower mix of ideas than you find online. You can’t get BuzzFeed or Complex or Slate in print. In California, you can’t even get The Washington Post in print. And print is expensive. Outside New York, after introductory discounts, seven-day home delivery of The Times will set you back $81 a month. In a year, that’s about the price of Apple’s best iPhone.

What do you get for all that dough? News. That sounds obvious until you try it--and you realize how much of what you get online isn’t quite news, and more like a never-ending stream of commentary, one that does more to distort your understanding of the world than illuminate it.

I noticed this first with the deal Democrats made to end the government shutdown late in January. On the Jan. 23 front pages, the deal was presented straight: “Shutdown Ends, Setting Up Clash Over ‘Dreamers,’” ran The Times’s headline on the news story, which appeared alongside an analysis piece that presented the political calculations surrounding the deal.

Many of the opinions in that analysis could be found on Twitter and Facebook. What was different was the emphasis. Online, commentary preceded facts. If you were following the shutdown on social networks, you most likely would have seen lots of politicians and pundits taking stock of the deal before seeing details of the actual news.

This is common online. On social networks, every news story comes to you predigested. People don’t just post stories--they post their takes on stories, often quoting key parts of a story to underscore how it proves them right, so readers are never required to delve into the story to come up with their own view.

There’s nothing wrong with getting lots of shades of opinion. And reading just the paper can be a lonely experience; there were many times I felt in the dark about what the online hordes thought about the news.

Still, the prominence of commentary over news online and on cable news feels backward, and dangerously so. It is exactly our fealty to the crowd--to what other people are saying about the news, rather than the news itself--that makes us susceptible to misinformation.

Not too quickly. It’s been clear that breaking news has been broken since at least 2013, when a wild week of conspiracy theories followed the Boston Marathon bombing. As I argued then, technology had caused the break.

Real life is slow; it takes professionals time to figure out what happened, and how it fits into context. Technology is fast. Smartphones and social networks are giving us facts about the news much faster than we can make sense of them, letting speculation and misinformation fill the gap.

It has only gotten worse. As news organizations evolved to a digital landscape dominated by apps and social platforms, they felt more pressure to push news out faster. Now, after something breaks, we’re all buzzed with the alert, often before most of the facts are in. So you’re driven online not just to find out what happened, but really to figure it out.

This was the surprise blessing of the newspaper. I was getting news a day old, but in the delay between when the news happened and when it showed up on my front door, hundreds of experienced professionals had done the hard work for me.

Now I was left with the simple, disconnected and ritualistic experience of reading the news, mostly free from the cognitive load of wondering whether the thing I was reading was possibly a blatant lie.

Another surprise was a sensation of time slowing down. One weird aspect of the past few years is how a “tornado of news-making has scrambled Americans’ grasp of time and memory,” as my colleague Matt Flegenheimer put it last year. By providing a daily digest of the news, the newspaper alleviates this sense. Sure, there’s still a lot of news--but when you read it once a day, the world feels contained and comprehensible rather than a blur of headlines lost on a phone’s lock screen.

You don’t need to read a print newspaper to get this; you can create your own news ritual by looking at a news app once a day, or reading morning newsletters, or listening to a daily news podcast. What’s important is choosing a medium that highlights deep stories over quickly breaking ones.

And, more important, you can turn off news notifications. They distract and feed into a constant sense of fragmentary paranoia about the world. They are also unnecessary. If something really big happens, you will find out.

Avoid social. This is the most important rule of all. After reading newspapers for a few weeks, I began to see it wasn’t newspapers that were so great, but social media that was so bad.

Just about every problem we battle in understanding the news today--and every one we will battle tomorrow--is exacerbated by plugging into the social-media herd. The built-in incentives on Twitter and Facebook reward speed over depth, hot takes over facts and seasoned propagandists over well-meaning analyzers of news.

You don’t have to read a print newspaper to get a better relationship with the news. But, for goodness’ sake, please stop getting your news mainly from Twitter and Facebook. In the long run, you and everyone else will be better off.

[trendingnewsb]

5 Real World Problems That Are Straight Out Of Black Mirror

The future! Rocket ships, lasers, robots — it is truly a far-flung, fantastical place. Except, uh … we have all those things right now, and have for some time. The future isn’t some vague, to-be-determined period of existence; it’s literally tomorrow. So today, humanity has to address issues that would have been inconceivable a few paltry years ago. And frankly, some of this stuff still kind of sounds like someone got stoned and then tried to pitch a Black Mirror episode.

5

Fitbits Are Giving Away Military Intelligence

Nowadays it’s routine for people to wear a fitness tracker, but by allowing our data to be shared, we’re also allowing our habits to be shared. That normally shouldn’t be problematic, unless your spouse is learning that your weekly jog takes you straight to the strip club … or you’re exercising on a classified military installation.

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Thanks to a map that shows the jogging habits of the 27 million people who use Fitbits and the like, we can see splotches of activity in otherwise dark areas, like Iraq and Syria. Some of those splotches are known American military sites full of exercising soldiers, and some, by extrapolation, are sites that the military would rather keep unknown. One journalist saw a lot of exercise activity on a Somalian beach that was suspected to be home to a CIA base. Someone else spotted a suspected missile site in Yemen, and a web of bases in Afghanistan were also revealed.

StravaYet another example of why we at Cracked continue to condemn exercise in all its forms.

By analyzing the data, you could theoretically figure out patrol and supply convoy routes, and make educated guesses as to where on these bases soldiers eat, sleep, etc. That’s a lot of useful information for someone planning an attack. You could also track individuals, potentially important ones. One researcher claimed they tracked a French soldier’s entire overseas deployment and subsequent return home.

This wasn’t an evil ploy by a terrorist cell in league with Big Fitness; you can turn that data tracking off. It’s just that no one even thought about it until someone finally pointed out that it was a huge security issue. American rules for fitness trackers in the military are now being “refined,” which we assume is PR speak for “Goddammit, turn that shit off.” But it’s only a matter of time until another seemingly innocuous technology accidentally gives away state secrets.

4

Space Commercialization Might Contaminate Planets

Elon Musk set a new precedent when he launched a car into space, and not only for tacky egotism. The rules about what corporations can and can’t do in space are essentially nonexistent, because the government’s authority ends somewhere around the thermosphere. Governments, however, have legal responsibilities listed in the Outer Space Treaty — one of the few things America and the Soviet Union agreed on. Most of the world has signed as well, and in addition to promising not to put nukes on the Moon or claim all of Jupiter for the proud people of Denmark, adherents agree not to send Earth germs to other planets like the interplanetary version of coughing on the guy next to you at the movie theater.

That sounds a bit silly, but there’s a real point: If Earth microbes accidentally end up on other planets and moons, it becomes impossible for scientists to tell if their “discovery” of life on Io is native, or if it originated from someone sneezing in a Tesla factory. So NASA and other government space agencies follow a strict anti-contamination protocol. American Mars rovers, for example, had all of their parts heated to 230 degrees before launch, and they are routinely sterilized with alcohol. Even if your mission is only to orbit a planet (or swing by one), you have to prove that the odds of an accidental crash landing are equivalent to that of winning a fair-sized lottery.

Kim Shiflett/NASA“Like, Powerball odds. No Pick 3 crap.”

In theory, governments are also responsible for ensuring that any corporations within their borders follow the same rules. But once you move beyond launching satellites into Earth’s orbit, the government’s ability to enforce the law is about equal to your ability to enforce a responsible bedtime on yourself. Maybe that flying Tesla was carefully sterilized, or maybe Musk went out of his way to fart it up before launch. We don’t know. And as more and more corporations talk about going to the Moon and Mars, we may have a germ problem.

There’s also the issue of debris. While we like to think of space as a pristine void, the Solar System is starting to resemble a freshman’s dorm room. Space missions are supposed to be as clean as possible, and a mission to another planet should either purposely burn up in the atmosphere or land when it’s done. Musk’s car was heading toward Mars, where plans for it were sort of a vague shrug. It could have eventually broken up and left debris around the planet, or it could have infected the surface. But instead, it went off-course toward the asteroid belt … where it could also very well hit something and break up. Worst-case scenario, we end up with a bunch of junk floating around that could take out a future mission. Even if his car never hits anything, Musk still broke bold new ground in space litter.

3

Moderators Have To Watch All The Heinous Garbage That Gets Posted On Social Media

Try to imagine the worst job possible. Sewage sampler? Elephant masturbator? How about social media moderator? It sounds like a joke at first: “Facebook has moderators? Then explain all the crap I see every day!” Then you learn that their job is mostly to filter out pornography, and it sounds awesome. Aren’t you supposed to get paid to do what you love?

But then you learn about the truly awful shit that moderators see as they cruise through a thousand flagged posts an hour, and you want to give them all hugs and raises. Child pornography, bestiality, hate speech, extreme violence … if you can imagine something awful, someone has put it online. Specific examples included a man’s testicles getting crushed, a boy getting his legs mangled by a truck, someone getting hit by a train, a man shooting himself in the head, suicide bombings, a man hurting and possibly killing small birds by having sex with them, and a woman whose body had been blown in two. Imagine dealing with images like that for 40 hours a week. It’s like playing roulette, except the closest you get to winning are shots of consenting genitals smashing together.

Imagine being forced to watch Logan Paul videos and considering that a good day.

Over 100,000 people trawl through e-trash to keep Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and other major sites (relatively) safe to use. And you can’t click away the moment you can tell a video is getting nasty — you have to verify that the content is real, and learn as much as possible so you can try to destroy it at its source. And while you will become somewhat numb, dealing with the worst of what humanity has to offer day after day can haunt you. Turnover is high, and there are few resources for moderators who need counseling. Which, shit, has to be all of them, right?

2

Facebook’s Fake News Problem Is A Feature, Not A Bug

Despite the fact that you probably took at least one break from reading this to check your Facebook feed, we still think of the site primarily as a vehicle for vacation photos where the worst thing that could happen is getting into a bitter argument with some friends about how to pronounce “GIF.” We’re all too smart to get suckered into politics, right?

But Facebook’s politics come after you. Ten million users saw “Russian-linked” ads placed during the 2016 election, mostly focused on big, controversial issues like immigration and gun control. Facebook also admitted that they placed about $100,000 in ads from “inauthentic accounts.” The issue isn’t ads spamming “Vote for Clinton / Trump / X’algax, Destroyer of Souls!” Everyone already saw those a million times; they’d sway no one. The problem is that they spread stories like “FBI AGENT SUSPECTED IN HILLARY EMAIL LEAKS FOUND DEAD IN APPARENT MURDER-SUICIDE,” which linked to a fake newspaper, quoting a man that doesn’t exist, who lives in a town that doesn’t exist (they spelled the town’s name wrong).

The Denver PostAt this point, we’re starting to doubt the existence of Denver too.

If you see that stuff in your feed, wedged in between a cat video and your friend’s new spaghetti sauce recipe, you don’t click through to verify it. So it weasels into your brain as something you vaguely remember that may or may not be true.

Facebook has also become a playground for trolls, regardless of whether they have a political agenda or just want to watch the e-world burn. If you can think back to the Las Vegas shooting (before all those other shootings removed it from the headlines), a slew of hoaxes spread from the moment the news broke. Some people invented fake dead and missing victims solely to see how many likes they could get. Others claimed that the shooter was still active, invented fake perpetrators, assigned nonexistent motivations to the shooter, or claimed that he was a Democrat, a left-wing activist, or a recent convert to Islam (in reality, if the shooter had any political motives, he took them to his grave).

It’s the cruelest and most devious form of misinformation, because it’s hard to keep your bullshit detector functioning when you’re in shock. Maybe some of those moderators could get a well-deserved break from the animal torture to focus on this crap instead?

1

Someone Could Steal Your Face And Make Porn

We have the technology to swap someone’s face onto someone else’s face in a video. That’s fun if we’re putting Nicholas Cage into Raiders Of The Lost Ark …

… but it’s a problem if someone is making it appear that a person said or did something they didn’t really do. And that problem gains an extra level of creepiness when someone’s face is slapped into a porn video. All it takes is some training, some raw footage of the subject, and a few spare hours. And if you’re the sort of person inclined to make fake porn, you’ve probably got a lot of time on your hand.

Reddit had an entire community dedicated to this “hobby,” until it was shut down, but that only made enthusiasts migrate elsewhere. Called “deepfakes,” after the Reddit user who pioneered the practice, they started editing the faces of celebrities onto preexisting porn. Some of the fakes ended up on porn sites being pitched to viewers as real, because porn is now a genre of fake news.

While it’s unlikely that anyone would believe Taylor Swift was suddenly so hard up for money that she appeared on FuckBrothers.biz, it’s still an ethically off-putting mess. It’s not limited to the living. Someone made a video “starring” a young Carrie Fisher. And it’s not limited to celebrities, either. Anyone armed with a scraper can pull photos from Facebook and Instagram, combine them with any of several search engines that look for porn stars by facial recognition, and make a fairly convincing video of anyone doing pretty much anything. Reddit users were making videos of their friends, co-workers, classmates, and exes. They were “only” for private use, but what happens when someone wants to manufacture revenge porn? So there you go: We’re reaching a point in history where we can’t even trust our pornography. And then what’s left to believe in?

Mark is on Twitter and has a book.

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