#fire hose of misinformation

[socialjusticeinamerica]

[republicansaretheproblem]

They were overwhelmed by the orchestrated fire hose of misinformation coming from the neo-Nazi Republicans. That coupled with the intricate and widespread coordination of the Republican Party with far-right propaganda networks, rural evangelical churches, and a massive network of oligarch backed far right political foundations. This makes effective resistance nearly impossible. We can’t let Republicans continue to control the narrative.

[genetinoided]

The last three are just straight misinformation. Flour burns.

...When dispersed very finely into lots of fresh air, which you're not gonna get unless you straight up blow flour at the fire off your hand like fairy dust or something. Flour does not have the explosive power of dynamite. It doesn't even have explosive power. It can't detonate. It burns. You've probably seen the science fair experiment with flour, a candle and a hose. That's the max you'd get, and half the time in that experiment you can see huge lumps of flour fall safely to the floor because it wasn't dispersed by the airflow.

Baking soda is better, sure, but flour would work as well, as long as you don't flail around like a madman. It's not about the CO2 the baking soda releases, that would do fuck all because of the incredibly hot oil and pan creating convection currents that would disperse it immediately. It's about absorbing the fuel, cooling it and preventing it from boiling so that it can't release flammable fumes.

As for the lid. Just think for yourself. What difference does sliding the lid make. Nothing. This is probably just from people putting the lid on and immediately taking it off again expecting the flame to be gone. Put the lid on, take the pot/pan off the stove, leave it. Just leave it. You're not in a rush anymore. The fire's gone. You're in more danger of burning the fuck out of yourself with extremely hot oil trying to clean up the pot than you are anything else.

[faxxmodem]

do you have a twitter queen/king??

i still have an account but every time i open the app it's like taking a fire hose of far-right misinformation to the face so i don't open it very often.

[ear-worthy]

Three Podcasts That Are Ear Worthy: Afghan Star; But We Loved; Risky Business

The three iHeart podcasts recommended all possess a common trait: They all defy conventional wisdom and request that we think differently. In Afghan Star, it's a cultural upheaval. In But We Loved, it's examining gay history. In Risky Business, it's sharpening our critical thinking skills amid a fire hose of daily misinformation.

Afghan Star is hosted by John Legend, and tells the story behind the show that launched a cultural revolution in Afghanistan.

From the fall of the Taliban until its return, the reality competition show Afghan Star spotlighted an Afghanistan that could be: women singing without hijabs, Afghanistan’s first rapper, people of warring ethnic groups hugging and cheering for each other on stage.

Tune in Wednesdays to learn how a ragtag team scrambled to make the show every week, and the dangers they faced in trying to push the country forward.

 In But We Loved, host Jordan Gonsalves exposes us to intimate interviews with LGBTQ+ elders, where he learns about queer history through stories of love and perseverance. As a religious kid growing up in conservative Texas, Gonsalves lacked Queer role models.

Now, as a journalist, he’s searching for the wisdom and belonging he craved when he was coming of age in this new podcast series.  Tune in Wednesdays.

Read my more in-depth review of But We Loved. In Risky Business with Nate Silver and Maria Konnikovat, the hosts challenge listeners to think more critically, logically and systematically about the world. This skill is sorely lacking in today's society.

Nate Silver and Maria Konnikova met playing poker, the ultimate game of optimal, risky decision-making. They became fast friends, spending countless hours chatting (and sometimes disagreeing) about how the sorts of risks that play out in a game like poker are mirrored in our daily lives.

Now, they’re bringing those conversations to their new show. Tune in Thursdays. 

[david-d-levine]

AI is poisoning your brain

I recognize I'm becoming That Guy when it comes to AI, but I just had an interaction with AI that really demonstrates why I think it's a serious problem. I was talking with some folks and the question of "is it a good idea to use salt to put out a kitchen fire?" came up. There was disagreement among the group (my opinion: yes, dumping a pile of salt onto a greasy fire will put it out, whereas water will make it worse, and unlike a fire extinguisher might not make the food completely inedible) so I searched the question on my phone. The suggested post that DuckDuckGo gave me (the one that comes up right under the browser's address bar when you type the question) seemed to confirm my opinion. "Salt can put out a fire, but it’s not a magic bullet. It’s true that salt is an effective fire retardant, but it won’t put out a fire as effectively as a sprinkler system or water from your hose. Salt is just a last resort; if you have other options, you should use them first." So far so good. But as I kept reading I found that the page was wordy, repetitive, and somewhat self-contradictory. I knew it was a badly written clickbait page, but I began to suspect worse. Then I hit this gem: "Salt is used for putting out fires because it has a lot of water in it, which means that when it comes into contact with the flames of a fire, it will cause those flames to extinguish themselves by evaporating water from its own substance (the salt)." That statement is plausible, articulate, and 100% wrong: the hallmarks of AI. This is, to my mind, a particularly egregious example of AI-generated misinformation. For one thing, it's information about fire safety (the URL of the garbage site on which I found it includes the words "fire safety") and misinformation about fire safety has a chance of getting someone killed. But I also noticed something going on in my own mind. Here's the thing: that egregiously wrong sentence means that everything else on the page, including the very reasonable statement that "salt is an okay way of putting out a fire but it should not be your first choice," is suspect. But, having read up to that point with an open and accepting mind, everything on the page above that statement was now in my head. And it's extremely difficult to to go back through your own brain's "recent items" history and delete information which you now realize might not be accurate. So I now know that everything I thought I knew about putting out fires with salt -- which now includes an unknown amount of new information which might or might not be true -- is suspect. My brain has been poisoned by AI-generated crap. And I'm a pretty skeptical guy, and I was deliberately using DuckDuckGo rather than Google (a search engine provided by a company which makes its money from advertising and is now heavily investing in AI) so I had already done one thing to shield myself from misinformation. And still I got bit by AI. I'm mad at myself for falling for it, and even madder at the assholes who put up that page full of misinformation for the sake of maybe getting a few fractional pennies from someone clicking on a sponsored link within it. I hate that in this f'd-up modern world I now need to treat EVERYTHING I read, not just the political news, with deep skepticism. AI is imposing a cognitive burden on everyone and isn't benefitting anyone except the advertisers and those who wish to promulgate misinformation. Feh and double feh.

[iheartvelma]

13th Amendment actually. See Ava Duvernay's documentary 13th for fuller details. Available in full for free on YouTube:

The 14th Amendment establishes many other aspects of the country's legal framework including rights of due process, birthright citizenship, congressional representation, the banning of people who have engaged in treason or insurrection from holding office, but it does not deal with issues of slavery.

The Exceptions Clause in the 13th Amendment is what creates the prison-industrial complex, and there are proposed amendments to remove it, notably the Abolition Amendment currently proposed by Congresswoman Nikema Williams.

A prior version of this got over 193 co-sponsors in the previous Congress, and it's been introduced in parallel in the Senate by Jeff Merkley and Cory Booker.

If you want to get this passed: CALL your representative and senator, leave a message, write them letters and send emails. They need to know that we the public have their back on this.

I will add that while prison labor is inexcusable in an advanced democracy, some of the information circulating out there is incorrect in relation to the state of California, where firefighting service is partly a path towards early release.

Here is a Thread by a former incarcerated firefighter:

Read the whole thing, but some highlights:

Incarcerated firefighters mostly work fighting wildfires, digging trenches and felling trees to create fire breaks, not driving trucks or operating hoses, or doing any of the emergency rescue stuff.

It's a voluntary program, but they have to have a pretty clean record to be eligible for it.

Firefighting shortens their sentences, and in California, expunges their records on release, which is why many sign up for it.

They live in prison camps deployed nearer potential fire risk areas, which can be much more humane places than actual prisons

They are totally eligible to apply for US Forest Service jobs afterwards and CalFire has a program specifically to train them for regular firefighting.

When not fighting fires, they work towards fire prevention and other maintenance work

[crackinwise]

My Dash: Perfectly tailored to me. Everything I love, and things I tolerate because my mutuals I love post new things they're into and I support them. Anything I start to find taxing I can easily filter and never see again. My blood pressure is calm.

My "Posts For You" Page: Notps. Characters and people I hate. Media I will never watch or care about. Misogyny/antifeminism. P*rn. Hypocrites. Double-think. The most misinformed, ignorant, can't-be-bothered-to-google-real-info-for-two-seconds takes I've ever seen in my entire life. Zero options to curate the experience on only THIS social media app in the year 2022. Me always being surprised with new keywords or tags to block I previously didn't have problems with. My blood pressure is like a fire hose.

[mysticalmusicwhispers]

US history US definitely whitewashed but coming from someone that lived like basically down the street from the Confederacy's capital, the Myth of the Lost Cause was most definitely drilled into our heads, and one of our lessons included talking about how racism looks different in the South vs the north (v basic overview but it's still necessary to learn the different ways racism looks and affects people). We also learned about the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, and the ways police attacked the protesters during the Civil Rights Era, such as sicking their dogs on them or having firemen blast them with fire hose, which are powerful and cause a lot of harm. My teachers definitely weren't perfect, and in college, I learned that compared to other towns in the South, my education was fairly unique (and I went to a public school). I was shocked how many people in my class in college were surprised to learn that N*zis had gotten eugenics studies from the US. Whenever I hear people say they didn't learn about that, I first think they're lying, because my state has such a horrible education system compared to other states, yet I learned all this, and it’s only the tip of the iceberg. I hope when it comes to angering comments from your classmates, it comes from them being ignorant but willing to learn. That's also something that got drilled into us that I still try to keep close to heart: The system makes it too easy to stay ignorant, but ignorance can be helped, which is a reason for hope.

ok this is a really late response but:

a) I appreciate you sending in this ask a lot

b) the rant was mostly me just venting without a lot of context/further info so I was speaking out of my ass a little bit

c) thank you for the insight! I'm personally from the North so we unfortunately didn't discuss much about slavery/the Confederacy/the North's implicit role in the slave trade until AP history and most of the curriculum was a lot about the American Revolution before high school US history :\ anyways my faith in the school system is somewhat restored but hmm we still got a long long way to go. We haven't talked about either the syphilis study nor the violent reactions by police to civil rights activists but I think we're covering that soon-ish; all I wish though was that my school taught it earlier instead of only in high school to make sure everyone gets the info at an early age HHHHH also @ how you said your education was quite unique, school non-standardization is... weird to say the least

y e a h about the eugenics; my class just learned about that and I guess it's just. I wish people would stop being surprised that the US has been just as bad as more openly awful governments. like. Caltech recently renamed a building that used to be named after Robert Millikan, a eugenics supporter, and Massachusetts, now a very liberal/progressive state, had a whole legit and supported organization dedicated to figuring out how head size/shape could indicate "social fitness" yet we never learned about this earlier. Anyways this is mostly hatred at the system, not at everyone affected by it.

And yeah, I wasn't necessarily angry at my peers for being shocked, just tired that there's so much misinformation about the skeletons in the US's closet. None of them are bigoted in any way so yeah, as you said, people can keep learning and unlearning things, and that can at least improve things if they don't fix them. all in all, I appreciate you taking the time to send this, anon.

[coffeesuperhero]

in re: my last reblog

Not to be serious on main, but: if you ever come across a piece of American “law” or “policy” on this hellsite or any other social media and you want to know if it is legit, this is an OPEN INVITATION for you to send it my way if you want the sources vetted or a well-informed gut check on it, for free. I try to keep my professional life private but this is part of what I do for a living, so please let me help. I know people reblogging these things are well-intentioned and we are all drinking from a fire hose Niagara fucking Falls in terms of info floating around on this internet, but misinformation about law and policy can literally kill people, white supremacists can be very crafty and hard to see at a glance, and this kind of misinformation sharing represents a serious threat to our rapidly dissolving democracy.  You will receive no shame or judgment for asking me to look at a source for you. It is okay to not know things and it is okay to ask experts to help you out.  

[msbkiwi24]

There is a lot of misinformation with what they actually do. & what this wildfire program actually is.

Honestly it’s idk what the right word is- infantilizing, classist, assumptive- to make the assumption that someone is not prepared to make decisions for themselves. Just because they’re incarcerated.

Yes - the prison system is appalling and dehumanizing and racist. And yes slave labor is legal because of it & that is disgusting.

But - I recommend looking into first hand accounts of what it’s like being in a wildfire fighter & what the programs is. It’s really eye opening.

I found it interesting that they’re not banned from being a fire fighter after they leave the program. Unlike what so many of these social media infographics & think pieces say.

Their record criminal is expunged- their sentence is shortened & they can continue being a fire fighter after or do something else.

& while their pay is very low for what they’re doing. I was surprised to see that they’re actually paid very similar to non incarcerated wildfire fighters. Which often is as low as $12 an hour - but usually is around $15 depending on the budget. And their hours are the same too. 24 hour shifts - with 24 hours of rest during an emergency. Which yes is extreme. But they aren’t made to work those shifts just because they’re incarcerated. Which a lot of those posts we’re seeing on social media make it sound like is happening.

And what they’re doing most of the time is removing brush, clearing out invasive plants, removing dead trees, taking care of the land to prevent fires.

They aren’t trained to use fire hoses or to rescue people as a wildfire fighters- Their job is to prevent fires and contain it with axes, shovels, chainsaws. Just like other wildfire fighters. And it’s very important work.

I would imagine if states re-adopt controlled burns- that these would be the people who would be in charge of it.

And the ones I’ve seen that have talked about it have said they feel proud of being able to help the planet.

I think it’s important to realize misinformation can be spread even about things like this- just like misinformation can be spread about right wing topics. Pay attention to things that make you feel immediately reactionary. You’re not immune to sensationalism

Adding into the discussion of the incarcerated young people fighting fires in California:

I can think of no place worse than prison for emotionally stunting or regressing a person or for dismantling their ability to make good decisions.

You take an adult or child who maybe has exhibited some antisocial behaviors, right? So you remove them from whatever community and support network they have, put enormous financial and logistical barriers between them and any communication with that community. Incarcerate them hours from home in a place not accessible by train or plane with narrow visiting hours that conflict with people's work schedules, and maybe you're fighting to prevent in person visits at all, maybe you got a kickback from a company selling expensive video call visits so people can't even hug their kids when they drive 6 hours on a Wednesday to see them. Get a kickback from a phone service provider that's going to charge extortionate prices for every minute a person spends talking to their loved ones, and if the state passes a law saying you can't do that anymore, pivot and go after the mail. Subvert USPS. Get a kickback from a company that'll give prisoners shitty scans of letters or refuse to deliver it because it was flagged for drug contamination by a machine with a 70% false positive rate, force them instead to send texts at extortionate rates through their proprietary app.

Put them in an environment with a bunch of other people with social issues and force them to compete for resources. Give them no mental healthcare. If they are victimized by other prisoners, punish the victims with solitary confinement. Transfer people around so they can't form meaningful long-term friendships. Tell them that once they get out, it will be illegal for them to talk to any of the people they meet here.

Hire guards who have no qualifications other than a willingness to be a modern day slave overseer or the ignorance to not realize that's what it is, give them complete control over every aspect of other people's lives and tell them those people want to kill them and that any object can be covered in drugs so dangerous that touching them can kill. Allow the guards to traffic drugs into the prison with impunity. Have the guards discourage racial mixing because racial conflict in the prison means the prisoners won't join up against the staff.

You do all of this and you ask if a 20-year-old, who's been in the system since 14, is emotionally mature or psychologically healthy enough to choose to risk their life in exchange for slightly better living arrangements.

You take someone who has probably made some bad decisions, right? And you put them in a place where every detail of every day is decided for them: what they eat, when they eat, when they sleep, where they sleep, what clothes they wear, who they talk to, where they work. Or maybe you give them big decisions that have no right answer. Maybe at the start of the day, you open the cells and they have 10 minutes to decide if they want to be stuck in their cell all day - no shower, no recreation, no library - or go outside and be stuck in genpop all day - no napping, no alone time, no escape if someone is hassling you. You let them decide if they're going to eat breakfast at 3am (because there's too many meal shifts) or sleep in and spend their precious commissary funds on toaster strudel (they have no toaster) or sleep in and not eat even though you're barely giving them 1000 calories a day. You let them start to make decisions about how to spend their day, then you put them on lockdown, take all those decisions away.

You do all this and then you ask if anyone who's spent time in this environment has the decision-making skills to choose to risk their life in exchange for slightly better living arrangements.

All of the incarcerated firefighters in California are 18 or older, and all of them volunteered, but there is no world in which they were adequately prepared to make that decision.

[sciencenewsforstudents]

Some lies are easy to spot. Take that report that First Lady Melania Trump wanted an exorcist to cleanse the White House of Obama-era demons. (Bogus!) Then there was that piece on an Ohio school principal who was arrested for defecating in front of a student assembly. (Also untrue.) Sometimes, however, fiction blends a little too well with fact. For instance, did cops really find a meth lab inside an Alabama Walmart? (Again, no.)

We live in a golden age of misinformation. So anyone scrolling through a slew of stories might easily be fooled. In fact, data show, plenty of us are.

On Twitter, falsehoods spread further and faster than the truth, a March 9 study found. Online bots have been accused of spreading these tall tales. But the study in Science found that people shared more bogus tales than did web bots.

Plenty of fake-news stories moved around the web in the weeks leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, U.S. intelligence officials reported this year. And the most popular of these fake news reports got more Facebook shares, reactions and comments than did truthful news, according to one analysis in BuzzFeed News.

Luca de Alfaro is a computer scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In the old days, he says, “you could not have a person sitting in an attic and generating conspiracy theories at a mass scale.” Then along came the internet, and more recently social media. Now, peddling lies is truly easy — especially as the internet can essentially hide who is behind a post. Consider that group of teens in the European nation of Macedonia, two years ago. They raked in huge sums of cash by writing popular fake news on topics that were popular during the U.S. presidential election. Readers thought those posts had been written by true journalists.

Most web users probably don’t post bunk on purpose. They likely “share” posts they simply didn’t take the time to fact-check. And that’s easy to do if you’re suffering from information overload. Or if you are overworked or tired.

Confirmation bias — already suspecting an issue is true, or not — can make the problem worse. Consider reports from sources you don’t recognize. “It’s likely that people will choose something that conforms to their own thinking,” says Fabiana Zollo. That’s true “even if that information is false,” says this computer scientist. She works in Italy at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Her studies focus on how information circulates within social networks.

Fake news doesn’t just threaten the integrity of elections. It also can erode the trust people place in real news. Lies posing as truth can even threaten lives. False rumors in India, earlier this year, incited lynchings. More than a dozen people died. And the source of those rumors: posts on WhatsApp, a smartphone messaging system.

To help sort fake news from truth, scientists have begun building new computer programs. They sift through online news stories, looking for telltale signs of fake facts or claims. Such a program might consider how an article reads. It might also look at how readers respond to the story on social media. If a computer spied a possible lie, its job would be to alert human fact-checkers. They would then be asked to make any final judgment call.

Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia works at Indiana University in Bloomington. Today’s automatic lie-detection tools are “still in their infancy,” he says. This means there’s still a lot of work to be done before many fact-checking programs are let loose on the internet.

The good news: Research teams around the world are forging ahead. They realize that the internet is a fire hose of facts or purported facts. So human fact-checkers clearly need help. And computers are beginning to step up to the challenge.

[96thdayofrage]

“Tech companies have built a system in which people spread misinformation so much further, so much faster, and in such higher velocities, that fighting it is like bringing a garden hose to a 30-story building that’s on fire,” Donovan said in an interview. “We need updated regulations that would ensure protection for the public interest.”

[tastydregs]

This AI Helps Police Track Social Media. Does It Go Too Far?

Since 2016, civil liberties groups have raised alarms about online surveillance of social media chatter by city officials and police departments. Services like Media Sonar, Social Sentinel, and Geofeedia analyze online conversations, clueing in police and city leaders to what hundreds of thousands of users are saying online.

Zencity, an Israeli data-analysis firm that serves 200 agencies across the US, markets itself as a less invasive alternative, because it offers only aggregate data and forbids targeted surveillance of protests. Cities like Phoenix, New Orleans, and Pittsburgh say they use the service to combat misinformation and gauge public reaction to topics like social distancing enforcement or traffic laws.

Speaking to WIRED, CEO Eyal Feder-Levy describes the service’s built-in privacy safeguards, like redacting personal information, as a new approach to community engagement. Still, local officials who use Zencity describe a variety of new and potentially alarming uses for the tool, which some cities use without a public approval process, often through free trials.

Brandon Talsma, a county supervisor in Jasper County, Iowa, describes 72 intense hours last September that began with a warning from Zencity. His office had been using the tool for only a few months when Zencity’s analysts noticed a sudden increase in social media chatter about Jasper County following news reports of a gruesome killing.

“It had the recipe to turn very ugly.”

Brandon Talsma, county supervisor, Jasper County, Iowa

A 44-year-old Black man living in the city of Grinnell, which is 92 percent white, had been found dead in a ditch, his body wrapped in blankets and set alight. Early news reports fixated on the grim details, and rumors spread that the man had been lynched by Grinnell residents.

“We're a small county; we've got very limited assets and resources,” Talsma said. “It had the recipe to turn very ugly.”

Zencity noted that almost none of the online chatter originated in Iowa. Talsma’s team was afraid the rumors could snowball into the type of misinformation that causes violence. Talsma said the team hadn’t considered the racial optics until Zencity alerted them to the discussion online.

Police say the killing wasn’t racially motivated, and they called a press conference at which Iowa-Nebraska NAACP president Betty Andrews supported that finding. Police have since identified and charged four suspects, three white men and one white woman, in connection with the case.

Zencity creates custom reports for city officials and law enforcement, using machine learning to scan public conversations from social media, messaging boards, local news reports, and 311 calls, promising insights on how residents are responding to a particular topic. Firms like Meltwater and Brandwatch similarly track keyword phrases for corporate clients, but don’t bar users from seeing individual profiles.

This has been a powerful tool for local law enforcement agencies across the country, who are still responding to the nationwide debate on police reform as well as a recent spike in crime in major cities.

“Surveilling the public isn’t engaging the public. It’s the opposite.”

Deb Gross, Pittsburgh City Councillor 

As long as critics are having these discussions on a public channel, Zencity can pick up and produce reports on what they’re saying. It does not have full access to the “fire hose” of everything discussed on Facebook and Twitter, but it continuously runs customized searches of the social media platforms to examine and weigh sentiment.

“If they're going to meet at this location or that location, that's all publicly available information, and it's free for anyone to review,” explains Sheriff Tony Spurlock in Douglas County, Colorado, south of Denver. He says the sheriff’s office has used the tool for roughly a year, signing a $72,000 contract in early 2021. The tool delivers aggregate information and doesn’t identify individual users.

Agencies are warned about prohibited uses, says Feder-Levy. He says the software alerts the company if clients are using the service to target individuals or groups, as has happened elsewhere. In 2016, for example, Baltimore police tracked phrases like #MuslimLivesMatter, #DontShoot, and #PoliceBrutality.

Spurlock says the software proved useful after prosecutors in April concluded two officers were justified in shooting a man last December. Details of the shooting are complex: The man was armed with a knife, but he had struggled for years with bipolar depression and called 911 himself. Dispatch told the officers they were responding to an urgent domestic violence call, but the man’s wife describes the call as a wellness check and claims police fired almost immediately after arriving.

[daniloqp]

This AI helps the police control social media. Does it go too far?

This AI helps the police control social media. Does it go too far?

https://theministerofcapitalism.com/blog/this-ai-helps-the-police-control-social-media-does-it-go-too-far/

Since 2016, civil freedom groups have activated alarms About online surveillance of social media talks by city officials and police departments. Services such as Media Sonar, Social Sentinel and Geofeedia analyze online conversations, making police and city leaders aware of what hundreds of thousands of users say online.

Zencity, an Israeli data analytics company that serves 200 U.S. agencies, is marketed as a less invasive alternative, because it only offers aggregate data and prohibits targeted surveillance of protests. Cities like Phoenix, New Orleans and Pittsburgh say they use the service to combat misinformation and measure public reaction to issues such as enforcing social distancing or traffic laws.

Speaking to WIRED, CEO Eyal Feder-Levy described the service’s integrated privacy guarantees, such as the drafting of personal information, as a new approach to community engagement. However, local officials using Zencity describe a variety of new and potentially alarming uses for the tool, which some cities use without a public approval process, often through free trials.

Brandon Talsma, Jasper County Supervisor, Iowa, described 72 intense hours last September that began with a Zencity warning. His office had only been using the tool for a few months when Zencity analysts noticed a sudden rise in social media talks about Jasper County following news of a horrific murder.

“I had the recipe to come back very ugly.”

Brandon Talsma, Jasper County Supervisor, Iowa

A 44-year-old black man living in the town of Grinnell, 92% white, had been killed in a ditch, his body wrapped in blankets and lit. The first news was focused on the sad details and there was a rumor that the man had been lynched by Grinnell’s neighbors.

“We are a small county; we have very limited resources and resources, “Talsma said.” I had the recipe to come back very ugly. “

Zencity noted that almost no online chat originated in Iowa. Talsma’s team feared the rumors could become the kind of misinformation causes violence. Talsma said the team had not considered racial optics until Zencity alerted them to the online discussion.

Police said the murder had no racial motives and convened a press conference at which the president of the Iowa-Nebraska NAACP Betty Andrews supported this finding. Since then, police have identified and charged four suspects, three white men and a white woman, in connection with the case.

Zencity creates personalized reports for city officials and police authorities machine learning to scan public conversations from social media, message boards, local news, and 311 calls, promising information on how residents respond to a specific topic. Companies like Meltwater and Brandwatch track similar keyword phrases for corporate customers, but don’t stop users from seeing individual profiles.

This has been a powerful tool for local law enforcement agencies across the country, which continue to respond to the nationwide debate on police reform, as well as the recent rise in crime in major cities. .

“Supervising the public is not about attracting the public. It’s the other way around. “

Deb Gross, City of Pittsburgh

As long as critics have these discussions on a public channel, Zencity can collect and produce reports on what they say. He doesn’t have full access to the “fire hose” of everything discussed on Facebook and Twitter, but he continually conducts personalized searches on social media platforms to examine and weigh sentiment.

“If they meet at this location or that location, all of that information is public and free for anyone to review,” says Sheriff Tony Spurlock in Douglas County, Colorado, south of Denver. He says the sheriff’s office has been using the tool for about a year, signing one $ 72,000 contract in early 2021. The tool provides aggregated information and does not identify individual users.

Feder-Levy warns agencies about prohibited uses. According to him, the software warns the company if customers use the service to target individuals or groups, as has happened elsewhere. In 2016, for example, Baltimore police sentences followed by #MuslimLivesMatter, #DontShoot and #PoliceBrutality.

Spurlock says the software came in handy after prosecutors concluded in April that two officers were justified in shooting a man last December. The details of the shooting are complex: the man was armed with a knife, but had been battling bipolar depression for years and called 911 himself. Dispatch told officers he was responding to an urgent call for domestic violence, but the The woman’s wife describes the call as a welfare check and claims police fired her almost immediately after she arrived.

Source link

[giancarlonicoli]

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/june-4-tiananmen-square-massacre-five-truths-still-arent-widely-known

Via The Epoch Times,

Following the sudden death of a beloved political reformer, Hu Yaobang, 200,000 students gathered at Tiananmen Square on April 22, 1989, to await the hearse carrying Hu’s body - but it never arrived. The mass of students were angered, and their burning desire for freedom could be contained no more.

For the next few weeks, Tiananmen Square was occupied by these student protesters, who aimed at making reality their dream of ridding the country of communist tyranny and bringing democratic reform to China. Their non-violent demonstration perhaps brought a glimmer of hope … until the army moved in. Although martial law was declared on May 20 that year, what caused the army to suddenly go on a killing rampage on June 4?

L: Thousands of Chinese gather on June 2, 1989, in Tiananmen Square around “The Goodness of Democracy,” demanding democracy despite martial law in Beijing. (CATHERINE HENRIETTE/AFP via Getty Images). R: “The Goddess of Democracy,” a 10-meter replica of the Statue of Liberty created by students from an art institute to promote the pro-democracy protest against the Chinese government. (TOSHIO SAKAI/AFP via Getty Images)

1. Mass-Murdered by the Chinese Regime

At least 10,454 people were mass-murdered by the Chinese communist regime on Tiananmen Square, according to an unnamed source from the Chinese State Council. The figure is far greater than the “official” fatality count of 200.

On June 4, 1989, students were gunned down in droves and “mown down” by tanks. “APCs (Armored personnel carriers) then ran over bodies time and time again to make ‘pie’ and remains collected by bulldozer. Remains incinerated and then hosed down drains,” reads part of a declassified statement, which was obtained by Alan Donald, Britain’s ambassador to China in 1989.

It’s still unconfirmed how many more were massacred during and after the students’ unarmed protest.

Waving banners, high school students march in Beijing streets near Tiananmen Square on May 25, 1989, during a rally to support the pro-democracy protest against the Chinese regime. (CATHERINE HENRIETTE/AFP via Getty Images)

2. The Ringleader Is Still Alive

In addition to rolling over the students with tanks, the army fired high-explosive shells that expand on impact, also known as dum-dum bullets, (forbidden by the Geneva Convention) to kill the students in the most harm-inflicting way possible.

The question remains—what kind of a human being would order such a brutal mass murder of freedom-seeking civilians?

Former leader of the Chinese Communist Party Jiang Zemin (Feng Li/Getty Images)

Former paramount leader of the party Deng Xiaoping was impressed with Jiang Zemin’s iron-fisted proposition to use the army to crack down on the students, and promoted him from Party Chief of Shanghai to General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party days before the massacre, giving him free rein to do as he liked.

Jiang Zemin, the mastermind behind the massacre, ordered the army to carry out his bloody strategy on June 4. The “gate of heavenly peace” was suddenly turned into hell on Earth.

Taken care of by others, an unidentified foreign journalist (2nd-R) is carried out from the clash site between the army and students on June 4, 1989, near Tiananmen Square. (TOMMY CHENG/AFP via Getty Images)

3. Ruthless Abuse of Power

The Tiananmen Square Massacre was just the start of Jiang’s ruthless abuse of power. He went on to commit the most heinous crimes that couldn’t bear the light of day. In the bloody wake of the massacre, Jiang became Deng’s ideal heir for the next Party Chief, a position Jiang secured in 1993.

Jiang, a Marxist hardliner and ex-senior spy for the KGB’s Far-East Bureau, had only begun to show his true colors with how he dealt with the protesting students and went on to orchestrate even bloodier campaigns. In 1999, Jiang sought to “eradicate” Falun Gong—a popular spiritual practice—after the number of people practicing it rose some 100 million, outnumbering the then 70 million Party members, according to state-run reports at the time.

Falun Gong practitioners doing the group exercise in Guangzhou, China, in 1998. (Minghui)

Under Jiang’s rule, an adroit misinformation campaign inundated China, turning public opinion against Falun Gong by subjecting the spiritual practice to extreme vilification—including the infamous Tiananmen Square “self-immolation” hoax, which successfully deceived the nation—paving the way for Jiang’s next phase: to forcibly “transform” or “eliminate” the meditators who refused to give up the practice.

In response to Jiang’s genocidal policy, believed to have caused a widespread yet unascertainable amount of state-approved killings, including forced organ harvesting, over 209,000 lawsuits have since been filed against Jiang, making him the most sued dictator in history.

Falun Gong practitioners at a rally in front of the Chinese embassy in New York City on July 3, 2015, to support the global effort to sue Jiang Zemin. (Larry Dye/The Epoch Times)

4. Horrifying Accounts Kept Secret

A Blacklock’s Reporter obtained secret telex messages concerning horrifying accounts of what really happened on Tiananmen Square that day via access-to-information laws.

“An old woman knelt in front of soldiers pleading for students; soldiers killed her,” the Canadian embassy in Beijing reported at the time.

Blacklock’s writes: “A boy was seen trying to escape holding a woman with a 2-year old child in a stroller, and was run over by a tank”; “The tank turned around and mashed them up”; “Soldiers fired machine guns until the ammo ran out.”

An unbelievable amount of bullets were fired on civilians at Tiananmen that “they ricocheted inside nearby houses, killing many residents.”

“The embassy described the killings as ‘savage,’” according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

“They are now entering a period of vicious repression during which denunciations and fear of persecution will terrorize the population,” reads another cable obtained.

Chinese onlookers run away as a soldier threatens them with a gun on June 5, 1989, as tanks took position at Beijing’s key intersections next to the diplomatic compound. (CATHERINE HENRIETTE/AFP via Getty Images)

Diplomats added that some 1,000 executions took place following the massacre, but an exact figure is unconfirmed. “It was probably thought that the massacre of a few hundreds or thousands would convince the population not to pursue their protests. It seems to be working,” reads a statement by the diplomats.

The secret British cable, obtained by news website HK01, reveals more detail about the crimes of the 27 Army of Shanxi Province on the day.

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“27 Army ordered to spare no one and shot wounded SMR soldiers. Four wounded girl students begged for their lives but were bayoneted. A 3-year-old girl was injured but her mother was shot as she went to her aid as were six others who tried.”

“A thousand survivors were told they could escape via Zhengyi Lu but were then mown down by specially prepared M/G (machine gun) positions.”

Ailing student hunger strikers from Beijing University receive first aid treatment under a makeshift tent set up on May 17, 1989, at Tiananmen Square as students enter the 5th day of a marathon hunger strike as part of a mass pro-democracy protest against the Chinese government. (CATHERINE HENRIETTE/AFP via Getty Images)

5. “June 4”: A Highly Taboo Subject in China Today

Despite Hong Kong lighting up every evening on June 4 in an annual candlelight vigil to commemorate the victims of the massacre, Chinese mainlanders across the border are without such freedom of speech. Talking about the Tiananmen Square Massacre, or even mentioning “June 4,” or “6.4,” could have one disappear.

In 2007, Zhang Zhongshun, a lecturer from Yantai University, showed his class a video of the massacre he obtained from an overseas website. He was subsequently jailed for three years by Laishan City Court on Feb. 28, 2008.

Tens of thousands of people hold candles during a vigil in Hong Kong on June 4, 2018, to mark the 29th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown in Beijing. (ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP via Getty Images)

“I imagined that the worst case would just be that the university president would criticize me in front of my colleagues in a meeting. I would not have thought that the communist regime would imprison me,” Zhang told The Epoch Times in an interview after his release from the detention.

“Is it illegal even if I include a historical event into my lecture?” he asked.

A student displays a banner with one of the slogans chanted by the crowd of some 200,000 pouring into Tiananmen Square on April 22, 1989, in Beijing in an attempt to participate in the funeral ceremony of former Chinese Communist Party leader and liberal reformer Hu Yaobang. His death in April triggered an unprecedented wave of pro-democracy demonstrations. The April-June 1989 movement was crushed by Chinese troops in June when army tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square June 4, 1989. (CATHERINE HENRIETTE/AFP via Getty Images)

Who’d dare raise this for discussion in China knowing the consequences? This year marks the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Will the current Chinese leaders redress the issue and bring Jiang Zemin to justice for his litany of crimes? Only time will tell.