#important note: if literally any single one of you tries to harass this individual in literally ANY way

[flagellant]

tagging slurs for people i care about who dont want to see them doesnt make either one of us less of a fag please stop feeding this divisive bullshit discourse and go outside. (with love (genuine))

cool! so you're able to comprehend there's a difference between "sanitizing myself and my space for random strangers' entitlement, leading to enforced silence of my identity" and what you're talking about, yes?

because--and i do genuinely mean this with respect and good intent, because you actually put your name on this and that is something that i will never not respect and take genuinely--you can say this is stated with genuine love all you want, but the fact remains that you are a completely random stranger who i've never seen or spoken to before, demanding me to sanitize myself and my space for your entitlement.

tldr: no, i'm gonna actually keep doing what i'm doing rather than feed into the idea that random strangers telling me to stop using or censor my identity for their sakes will not just lead to bigots going "oh cool so based on this if i word it right i can just make all these queer faggots go shove themselves in a hole/closet and die quietly about it", you know, like TERFs openly admit to doing with the whole queer-is-a-slur thing,

[prorevenge]

Bully me for months? I'll hit you where it hurts the most, literally.

I want to preface this by saying I'm not proud of what I've done here. To the casual observer, what I did might seem like justice, but, really, I wish it didn't have to go as far as it did. I want my story to be a cautionary tale of what happens when bullying isn't taken seriously. I don't want this story to inspire you to do what I did, but as to what happens when people don't make the right choices the first time. Also, TL;DR at the bottom, the quotes aren't exact, and apologies if this seems a little all over the place. It's not easy for me to bring up stories like this, but I felt maybe I'd do some good by sharing it.

For as long as I can remember, I had a habit of bottling up my emotions. My single father is a staunch believer in traditional masculinity, including the idea that men and boys shouldn't cry. By my early to mid teens, I succumbed to this outdated idea, and accepted my fate as a quiet, stoic drone that just took orders, respected authority, and did hard work (especially manual labor.)

Enter my high school, which had a huge problem with bullying. The worst kids by far were the trashy "gangsta" kids (their words, not mine) from the inner city who targeted anybody they considered weaker than them. I was a pretty muscular 15 year old, but that didn't stop them from saying things like "Dude, you're so fat," or "Wassamatta, fattie? Lose your Twinkies on the way over?" In class, it was mostly petty annoyance: taking my pencil, sticking gum in my hair, insults. They got physical when the teachers weren't looking. Tripping me in the hall and pretending it was an accident; slamming my head against the locker, hitting me with footballs or soccer balls and saying a fake "whoops, sorry!" By themselves, it didn't seem that bad, but enough grains of sand add up to a huge pile, and, at that point, I was up to my waist in it.

Of course, the school didn't do anything about it. Teachers would either tell me "I'll take care of it," and then nothing ever changed, or I'd get something stupid like "I didn't see it. There's nothing I can do" or "You know, if I stopped class every time a kid was acting up, we'd never get anything done." Sure, and if a tree falls in the forest, it didn't make a sound because you didn't hear it. My father wasn't any help either. He'd tell me things like "there's gonna be people like that everywhere you go," or "if you're crying about this, you'll never make it in life," basically telling me to go suck it up because there are worse things out there. As a kid, I was hurt by this, but I was 15, so my self-esteem had been run over by a Combine a few times by now. For months, I just kept ignoring and waiting, hoping my teachers would keep their word about dealing with this problem. Sadly, it seemed they'd rather prioritize pep rallies and Career Aptitude Tests than do their job in keeping kids safe.

By around Spring, I'd had enough. By now, my sadness and annoyance had transmuted into boiling rage that I'd been keeping in me for far too long. If nobody was going to fight for me, I'd do it for myself, literally. I devoted the majority of my weekend to prepping for a showdown on Monday.

One of the few good things about my father is that how knowledgeable he is in self-defense. He believed it was important for a man to learn to fight, so he had me take several different kinds of martial art classes. If I was gonna fight a bully, I had to make it a proper fight. I then researched about Krav Maga, a branch of martial arts that's basically a military-style form of self defense, meant to train you how to fight if you were ever in danger "outside the arena." No rules, no balanced teams, no referees; just you and your need for survival. One of the components of Krav Maga is knowing the body's biggest "weak spots," ones that maximize the most amount of pain when hurt. Things like the groin, toes, and eyes were obvious, but you could also hit the knees, solar plexus, and even the spine. Since my classes didn't teach Krav Maga (you had to be 16 at the time,) I watched many online videos, making mental notes of the techniques used. It was almost always the same kid or group of kids that bullied me, so I already knew what they looked like, and, more importantly, where to strike.

On Monday, I waited for the next chance to come for the bullies to attack. To my surprise, they kept quiet for the most part. Maybe this was one of my lucky days where I'd actually get some work done. Then, while I was crunching for an exam during lunch, one of the bullies, a regular, spilled my water all over my textbook, and saying, "Whoops, sorry!" As he and his pals started walking away laughing, I got a good look at the back of the guy's neck. I raised my fist, aiming for the middle where I'd likely hit his spinal column.

WHAM! I knocked the guy over to the ground. That's when all Hell broke lose. His friends tried tackling me away, and I tried remembering to hit all their weak points: eyes, throat, groin, and jaw. It was fairly sloppy attempt at Krav Maga given my inexperience, and the other kids trying to fight back, but it got the effect I wanted. Of course, I didn't come out unscathed. I got punched in the jaw, a bloody nose, a bruise to the forehead, and more than a few kicks in the family jewels. The other kids noticed us fighting, with some going to get a teacher while others watched in a mix of shock and excitement. Eventually, the principal and a few other teachers pulled us apart, and sent us to the office, after our injuries were treated.

The principal talked with us individually while the assistant principal called all our parents. When it was my turn, I explained what happened. At some point, the principal said, "Why didn't you tell the teacher?" At that moment, I just snapped, somehow managing to sound even angrier than when I was fighting a few minutes ago. "I ALREADY TOLD THE DAMNED TEACHERS, LIKE A MILLION FUCKING TIMES, BUT NOBODY WAS DOING SHIT ABOUT IT! NOBODY! YOU TELL ME OVER AND OVER 'I'LL TAKE CARE OF IT, I'LL TAKE CARE OF IT,' BUT NOBODY EVER FUCKING DOES! I WOULDN'T HAVE FELT LIKE I HAD TO DO THIS OF SOMEBODY HERE ACTUALLY DID THEIR DAMNED JOB FOR ONCE!" I got an extra week of suspension for yelling.

Much to my surprise, my father was rather quiet about the whole thing. Normally, my father had the temperament of a dragon, but maybe this whole fight touched his inner "macho man" that made him go easier on me.

On the car ride home, he said calmly, but firmly, "What happened? And tell me the truth." I told him, "They wouldn't stop picking on me, so I defended myself." I waited to hear my father make some snide remark about hurt feelings, but he just said, "Were you in danger?" I paused for a moment, and said, "...Yes." I knew I was exaggerating, but maybe this could open my father's eyes to see how much I was hurting. He was quiet for a minute, and then said, "I can't judge on your situation 'cause I wasn't there, but it's in a boy's nature to be aggressive sometimes, and it sounds like those bullies were just using it for harm. I also know you well enough t'know you wouldn't lay a finger on somebody unless you felt like you had to." I nodded, holding back tears. "Next time you're ever in that kinda danger, call me. Don't wait for the teachers to fail you again. I'll give 'em Hell." I was stunned, and, once I realized what'd just happened, I smiled. That's one of the few redeeming qualities about my father. As toxic and narcissistic as he was, he was an expert on bringing vengeance to those who deserved it.

During my suspension, one of the bullies' parents wanted to press assault charges on me, but my father threatened to counter-sue the school AND the parents for letting the bullying go on for so long. Thankfully, nobody had to go to court as the bullies' credibility sank faster than the Titanic. Once word got around that I fought back to stop the bullying (rather than the strong, quiet guy going psycho,) more kids decided to come forward to the principal about their experience being bullied, too, and how they also went to the teachers for help. This included a few girls who were being sexually harassed by these kids. This was a PR nightmare for the school that left a permanent stain on their reputation among the locals. In the end, the bullies got expelled, some faced charges for sexual harassment, and I got transferred to a different high school. I guess I'm a little proud that I inspired some other troubled kids to come forward, but I really didn't like violence. I'm built for self-defense, but I don't like hurting anybody unless it's to protect those I love. I would've much preferred if teachers actually did their job, and "took care of it" before I had to.

I did get a gift certificate for summer classes in Krav Maga for my Sweet 16. Thankfully, I've never had to use it yet.

TL;DR: Bullies spend months torturing me, and teachers won't do anything, so I researched and imitated an advanced martial arts to bring maximum physical pain to my bullies.

(source) story by (/u/aitacrybaby)

[automatismoateo]

In response to a question in a recent thread where someone asked me to go in-depth, here's a description of my experience in Education and teaching Science in Arkansas and why I finally quit. via /r/atheism

Submitted July 11, 2021 at 11:22PM by paxinfernum (Via reddit https://ift.tt/3ALPxPr) In response to a question in a recent thread where someone asked me to go in-depth, here's a description of my experience in Education and teaching Science in Arkansas and why I finally quit.

The only thing that matters

Here's something you need to understand first. In most rural districts, pretty much any idiot can get hired to a position and stay there as long as they don't piss off parents too much. The people hiring you don't really understand what you teach, and the parents don't understand or care what quality teaching is, but they care if you say something that offends their backward sensibilities. What that effectively means is that your ability to teach and stay on has more to do with being in sync with the community, who are usually racist and batshit paranoid. If you aren't in sync with that, you either have to keep your head down, or you will eventually get harassed into leaving due to vague complaints.

Abusive parenting is normal here

Okay. So starting with my student teaching. The woman I worked under was a total fucking psychopath. She bragged in the teachers' lounge about how she disciplined her daughter and people don't discipline their kids like that now. By discipline, I mean she told a story about how she chased her daughter down a hallway, dragged her by the hair of her head, and spanked her until she was raw. This was part of a story where she was bragging about how well behaved her daughter was due to her parenting.

If you're wondering if anyone pushed back against this, the answer is that they didn't. They were nodding their heads in affirmation. That's the problem with rural schools in a nutshell. The community hires from the community, and the community is backward as shit and filled with people who were raised in abusive conservative fundie homes. The parents, by the way, loved that teacher because she wasn't one of those soft "liberal" teachers. Parents, more than anyone else, wanted us to hit their kids and were always disappointed when they didn't get spanked. Child abuse is a way of life down here.

Teachers who are fearful of knowledge

Okay, so this woman was a science teacher. That's what I trained to teach. Science. I did so because I wasn't just one of those "science is awesome" Sagan-heads. I genuinely cared about teaching science as more than just fun facts, but as a methodology for uncovering the truth. I naively went into the field thinking that's what most science teachers would be like. I kind of hoped that I'd at least find a community of like-minded individuals in this ignorant state.

Over my entire teaching career, I literally never met another science teacher like me who was pro-science and pro-skepticism. They were overwhelmingly either just dumb and teaching rotely, or they were conspiratorial and fearful of science. This is exactly what an Arkansas school board wants out of a science teacher. They know they have to teach science, but they are afraid of science and see it as the most dangerous subject to teach in their little fundagelical minds. So they hire people who are afraid of science.

That crazy woman I trained under? She ranted about drones being used to spy on us. She told the kids GMOs were dangerous, and she told them homeopathic medicines were something she'd researched to help her friend with cancer. She wasn't unique in that regard. Every other science teacher I met in Arkansas was terrified of GMOs and had some conspiracy they wanted to rant about. One teacher's bugaboo was allergies and how he thought more people were getting allergies because of chemicals being put in the water. He brushed it off when I said it was probably due to more sensitive testing. Another teacher told their students the most horrendous and completely inaccurate facts about nuclear energy.

They're not sending us their best people

The point is these people weren't the best and brightest. Often, they weren't even adequate. One guy I worked with became a science teacher because he needed something to teach alongside coaching. He was dumb as a box of rocks and just barely passed his praxis exams after three tries. I know most people weren't going to ace these tests like I did, but the cutoff for a passing score in Arkansas is hilariously low. Yet, when he finally passed, it was only by a single point, and he recounted it to me like it was only by the grace of god.

Another teacher, a math teacher who was probably the worst speller I'd ever met, got certified in Texas, which has a lower standard for math, and he transferred his certification to Arkansas. So he only was able to teach math in Arkansas on a technicality. The way it works is that you only have to be recertified if you let your certification lapse. All that's required to recertify is doing 30 hours of PD per year, and then, every couple of years, you have to do the recertification process. But this idiot was too stupid to do that, and he let his certification expire. So then, he was teaching math without a license because he couldn't pass the Arkansas tests. (You're allowed to teach for so long as long as you're pursuing certification.)

Propaganda and Indoctrination

Half of the teachers I met might as well have been missionaries. It's illegal to push your religion or politics on students, but fuck if anyone will actually enforce that. Actually, let me step back there. Fuck if anyone will actually enforce that unless you're liberal or non-Christian. The state is an unofficial conservative theocracy so if the teacher wants to rant about gays or Jesus, there's very little chance any parent will even bother to complain. (Even liberals around here know they're outnumbered and won't win.) Even if the parent complains to the Principal, they'll only "have a word" with the teacher in question, most likely to have a chummy conversation where they eye roll about the parent and discuss ways they can continue to evangelize more subtly.

Even if the Principal is the type who takes this seriously, the teacher will only get a vague note in their file because no school board around here is going to fire a teacher for proselytizing children. They don't want the school to get burned down by an angry mob of Fox News zombies. Even if it makes it to the state ethics board, I've seen the state ethics board literally do nothing about a counselor who ignored a suicidal student, a teacher who was caught drunk driving, a superintendent who was manipulating the system to siphon more money into the school, and so many other things. The only thing the ethics board actually takes a license away for is cheating on standardized testing (got to keep our corporate donors happy) and actually fucking a student. Even if you bring a teacher up on proselytizing, they'll get a warning and be back in the classroom the next day.

So if you're a kid in a rural school, get ready for your teacher to unsubtly tell you about how Jesus is such an important part of their life or straight-up rant about the Democrats. When I was a student in Arkansas schools, I had teachers tell me: 1) All gay people should be thrown in prison 2) HIV-positive patients should be shipped to an island or burned (it was the 90s) 3) the Jews brought the holocaust on to themselves by rejecting Jesus 4) the teacher was boycotting Levis jeans because they supported gay people. That's just a sampling of shit I heard as a kid in Arkansas from freaking teachers.

While working as a teacher, I knew of teachers who latched onto kids with poor home lives and invited them over to their homes so they could do "prayer studies" with them. The kids went because they were kind to them and offered food. In case you're wondering, they got away with this because it was a husband and wife, so parents allowed it. (I'm just going to say that I'm actually quite certain this was entirely above board sex-wise. I knew the individuals, and while I despised what they were doing, I knew they were entirely sincere.)

Another teacher, a Trump supporter, went into a rant about how they needed to give all the teachers guns to fight off school shooters (because restricting guns in any way was tOtAlItArIaNiSm.) I nodded along because I was smart enough to know disagreeing publicly will get you shunned or harassed. All I could think in my head was "Dude, if they ever give you nutters guns, that's the day I quit. There will be 10 dead kids within a week." On that topic, one teacher I know of grabbed a student by the throat because they were pissed at them, and they didn't lose their job.

The history teacher, the one who wanted us to all have guns was teaching that the Civil War was about tariffs. You heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen. Hundreds of thousands of people went to war over tariffs that were at their lowest point in decades. It had nothing to do with the people they owned and shackled up like a Saw movie. The Civics teacher pushed Trump election conspiracies.

Another teacher, who had a family member who had a terminal illness and was literally only getting their medical treatment paid through Obamacare would go off on rants about Obama and transgender students.

Harassment

At one point, I was harassed by the campus cop. He found out I was in support of BLM, and literally screamed at me. Later, he transitioned to simply refusing to acknowledge my existence. Like, if I said anything to him, he would pretend he couldn't hear me. The dude was fucking insane and filled with hate. I'm pretty sure his domestic situation with his wife was abusive due to things he said. He was so angry and radicalized that it was never the students I worried would be a mass shooter. It was him. I was literally afraid he would come in one day and shoot the place up. He wasn't an oddity though. Every one of our resource officers was racist and unethical. One was running a vaping ring with students. Another took special joy in cracking down on Latino students.

Eventually, I started getting harassment from students though, and that's what led to me leaving. There are two things that led to increasing harassment. First, I had one conservative student who hated me and surmised that I must be a Clinton supporter. I never said that, but because I was one of the few teachers who didn't violate the rules about discussing religion or politics, they guess that I was a liberal atheist. So they started working to get me fired.

The second thing is that the Arkansas standards changed so that teaching evolution became part of my classroom standards. Just so you know, most schools in Arkansas don't actually teach evolution, even though they're supposed to. The way it works is teachers put it last on their things to teach, and oopsie, I just ran out of time at the end of the year. Some teachers know evolution is real, but they don't teach it because the backlash is too much to take. Others don't teach it because they're fundagelicals themselves, so they go along with the informal conspiracy to not teach evolution. I say informal conspiracy because it's not like they all get together in a back room and decide this. It's just the culture and incentives are all there to not teach it.

I actually taught evolution, and while I had always dealt with some degree of negativity, looking back, I have to say that was the point where I started getting a lot more. I can't emphasize enough how brainwashed these kids were. I'm not saying all of them because there were absolutely kids who believed in evolution, but they were in a minority and knew to keep their mouths shut. But it's sort of staggering to try to teach the history of the Earth and have a kid repeatedly try to prove to you that there was a global flood.

How harassment actually works in the real world

This is the thing I want people to understand. Harassment in the real world isn't usually as obvious as in a movie. No one drives by your house and throws a brick through your window. No one calls you up and leaves threatening messages. No one will ever fire you for being liberal or an atheist. Because these people are dumb as fuck, but they're also very clever at being shitty people. They know they can't walk up and say to the school board, "Fire so and so because they're teaching evolution." They know that's illegal technically.

So they just start making up vague complaints. Principals, even ones who were supportive like my last Principal, are reactive. If a parent comes to them to complain about a teacher, they're going to assume the teacher did something wrong and needs to be talked to. So the girl who found out I was a Hillary Clinton supporter suddenly decided I "made her uncomfortable" and "looked her weird." The great thing about these types of innuendos and character assaults is that you don't have to provide any real facts. It's all about how you just don't like that person. Remember that teachers are one of the few professions where you can actually be fired simply because the community doesn't like you.

So that fell flat because, like I said, my Principal was actually decent and understood how flimsy that was. So then, that girls boyfriend made a complaint about how I'd yelled at him in front of all the students. Unfortunately for him, this supposed incident happened while we were in a part of the school with cameras so it was obviously bullshit. However, parents calling in upset is still a big deal so I was told that I should try to be nicer to him in the future and win the parents over.

The point is that it's basically death by a thousand cuts from little gripes and exaggerated concerns. Another student flat-out lied and said I cussed them out in class. I know that some of this was actually instigated by a staff member who didn't like me. So they encourage students to complain about me. At one point, I know they actually set up a kid's parents to lodge a complaint against me. I know this because the language of the complaint was obviously written by them, and when I was having the parent conference, they actually stayed behind work (something they never did) and didn't leave our adjoining rooms until it was over. They apparently wanted to listen in and see how it went. This conservative teacher at various times: told me the wrong place for a meeting, got kids to say they would show up for an after school event and then not show up, convinced an entire group of students to quit a club I was sponsoring, spread rumors about me to parents.

I'm done

The final straw was covid. I tried to stick it out, but the day a kid told me he wasn't going to wear a mask because "Biden isn't the real President" was the point where I decided I was done. This came from teachers too. The biology teacher wore a mask below their nose. The staff refused to stop having potlucks throughout the entire pandemic. Some people can't be saved.

edit: I forgot to mention the English teacher I met while I was doing my student-teacher training. She was forcing her class to write essays on how Obama wasn't a real US Citizen. All throughout my teacher program, I'd been told over and over that you could get fired for talking politics in the classroom, and this bitch was literally forcing kids to write essays about how Obama was a secret Muslim. And nothing was done about it. She could get away with it because Arkansas is so white and racist. To put it into context, the county she was teaching in was 94% white and voted for Trump by 78% in 2020.

[mathewingram]

The misshapen pieces of Google’s disinformation magazine

Note: This is something I originally wrote for the daily newsletter at the Columbia Journalism Review, where I’m the chief digital writer

Jigsaw, a unit of Google previously known as Google Ideas, recently launched a digital magazine called The Current, which aims to “explore today’s digital threats and solutions.” There isn’t much exploring to be found in the inaugural edition, however. It’s mostly a cursory overview of the problem of disinformation, alongside brief descriptions of some tools that Google has used to combat the problem, gussied up with a coat of digital paint, along with two contemporary art pieces that seem only loosely relevant, and an interactive map. It’s a magazine best not read too closely. But I did anyway.

It’s unclear why Jigsaw decided to publish The Current now, but it’s probably not a coincidence that Google—and its parent company, Alphabet—is under pressure from legislators in the US and Europe to take action against misinformation. Founded in 2010 and run by Jared Cohen, a former adviser to Hillary Clinton, Jigsaw says its mandate is to “forecast and confront emerging threats, creating future-defining research and technology to keep our world safer.” The reality is not as bright. Last summer, Vice described Jigsaw as “a toxic mess”; a dozen current and former staffers complained of an environment of mismanagement and poor leadership in an organization that, “despite the breathless headlines it has garnered, has done little to actually make the internet any better.” In one case in 2018, Jigsaw set up a fake political activism site—putting political misinformation out into the world—and then hired a Russian troll factory to attack it.

The Current looks nice, at least. With a toned-down, almost monochromatic color scheme, it looks like a high-end-furniture catalog. It’s also interactive: when a user hovers over text, the mouse arrow turns into a Magic Marker icon and a pop-up window encourages readers to send in comments. But if you click on “send a message,” you see a small box with three choices: “Agree,” “Disagree,” and “Want to know more.” Your ability to weigh in, it turns out, is limited to one of three pre-programmed responses. The text of The Current’s “articles” is organized into snippets not much longer than Netflix promotional descriptions, with links inviting you to “Dive Deeper.” Click a first link, and you go to a page titled “The Problem,” which explains, for instance, that disinformation campaigns are “professional and coordinated—not unlike marketing campaigns.”

A section called Tactics has a series of graphics representing different approaches to spreading disinformation, including “brigading” (an online harassment tactic in which a group launches a coordinated attack on an individual), botnets (coordinated groups of automated accounts), and hacking. Hovering over them brings up explanations so brief as to almost be wrong—for “sock puppets,” the entry says only “online accounts run by someone masquerading as someone else.” A section called Channels has four subsections, including manipulated images, memes, and viral messages. The “Meme” section says that Russian trolls tried to use memes to influence energy markets by protesting a pipeline, a single (bad) example from a vast category of behavior. The audience for this information would presumably be someone who has literally never heard the term “meme.”

To show that at least some of the magazine is based on original Jigsaw research, a section called “Outcomes” includes a quote from a “pseudonymous white nationalist Twitter and Gab user banned from both platforms multiple times for disinformation and trolling, whom Jigsaw interviewed.” His message? That engagement is an important indicator of whether your campaign is working. Hardly an earth-shattering revelation. “Countermeasures” includes tiny text boxes with messages like: “Technology companies have adopted policies that prohibit many deceptive behaviors, such as misrepresenting identity, and enforce these policies through investigative processes.” True, but generally un-enlightening. In all, The Current has the feeling of something Google’s marketing department cooked up in a hurry. If it were a presentation for ninth-grade civics class, it would get high marks. But for something produced by a $900 billion company that purports to have high-minded goals, it’s pretty weak tea. It deserves a C+ at best.

Here’s more on Jigsaw and its new magazine:

A naive chat-bot: The penultimate section of The Current contains two art pieces that seem only tangentially related to disinformation. The first, Baby Faith, is described as a “young and naive web-based chat-bot struggling to learn how to identify human emotion,” and consists of a chat window into which a reader can post responses to questions and get responses from (bad) automated chat software. Baby Faith’s “difficulties in identifying emotion online mirror the challenges of emotionally-driven disinformation campaigns,” the description says. The second is a monologue from The Picture of Dorian Gray that has been adapted as a musical sonnet to “evoke the exhaustion in dealing with social media disinformation.” Clicking on it takes you to a separate website run by the Rhizome art collective, where a crowdsourced chorus sings the piece.

A disinfo map: The final section of The Current is a “disinformation visualizer” that links to campaigns identified by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, a nonprofit that studies disinformation. The fine print notes that Alphabet “does not endorse these research findings or their characterization of disinformation campaigns.” But if Google doesn’t endorse them, why are they featured in its magazine? Each one is a couple paragraphs at most—a few short sentences outlining a disinformation campaign that was run in Ukraine by Russian trolls, for example. In most cases, the text boxes note that the information in them comes from public news reports about the campaigns in question.

Manipulation: At the same time as it launched its new magazine, Jigsaw also launched a tool designed called Assembler that is designed to help journalists and fact-checkers determine whether images have been manipulated to create disinformation. The tool is a collection of several existing techniques for detecting common manipulation methods, such as changing image brightness and using copied pixels to cover something up. It also includes a detector that spots “deepfakes” that use an algorithm called StyleGAN to generate realistic imaginary faces. These detection techniques feed into a master model that tells users how likely it is that an image has been manipulated. 

Other notable stories:

Twitter is experimenting with adding colored labels directly beneath lies and misinformation posted by politicians and public figures, according to a leaked demo obtained by NBC News. Under this model, which Twitter said is just one possible iteration of a new policy aimed at fighting disinformation, misleading information posted by public figures would be corrected directly beneath the tweet by fact-checkers and journalists who are verified on the platform, and possibly other users who will participate in a new “community reports” feature.

According to an email sent to staff, the Los Angeles Times is offering voluntary buyouts less than two years after biotech billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong acquired the paper and promised to turn it around. The California Times, the company that owns the Los Angeles Times, announced buyout packages to employees who have worked at the company for least two years. A”separation plan” that CNN Business reviewed says “employees of California Times and its subsidiaries” are eligible for the buyout. The California Times also owns The San Diego Union-Tribune, the now-defunct Spanish-language Hoy and several small community papers.

Maria Bustillos, CJR’s public editor for MSNBC, writes about the comic-book world of political journalism as portrayed on network TV. “Heroes and villains make for entertaining and digestible television; they simplify a complicated world, and make it less frightening,” she says. “The reduction of political actors to stick figures in a story of Good vs. Evil is a key part of what makes cable news tick.” Author Neil Postman’s contention that television has turned our culture “into one vast arena for show business” is truer than ever, Bustillos writes.

Ross Barkan writes for CJR about what it was like dealing with Mike Bloomberg’s media-relations staff when he was mayor of New York City. “Bloomberg’s press office knew that befriending reporters, or creating the appearance of camaraderie, was crucial to the mission. Off-the-record chats were frequent. So were after-work beers,” he says. “Emails were always answered. As a young reporter at the bottom of the pecking order, I couldn’t claim to belong to the inner ring of these reporter-staff relationships. But I could still feel, in some way, that I knew Bloomberg’s team.”

Sources tell Bloomberg News that Donald Trump’s re-election campaign has purchased the coveted advertising space at the top of the YouTube home page for early November, leading up to voting day. Two people with knowledge of the transaction told the news service that the Trump campaign has bought the top spot on the site, which can cost as much as $1 million per day. The Trump campaign bought the digital real estate nationwide, according to one of the people familiar with the deal, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The father of a reporter who was shot to death on camera in 2015 has filed a complaint against YouTube with the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that the Google-owned video hosting site puts the onus on users to notify it of violent content, and then often doesn’t remove it. The filing calls these practices “deceptively burdensome” and says the site “utterly fails” to follow through on promises to take down content. Reporter Alison Parker was murdered on live television, along with her cameraman, Adam Ward, in 2015 and video of the killing remains on YouTube, according to the complaint.

Political ads are flooding into Hulu, Roku and other digital streaming services because they aren’t subject to the same regulations that cover television networks and cable broadcasters, the Washington Post reports. “Nothing requires these fast-growing digital providers to disclose whom these ads targeted and who viewed them,” the paper says. “The absence of federal transparency rules stands in stark contrast with traditional TV broadcasters, such as ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC, which for decades have been required to maintain limited public files about political ads.”

Long-time media industry executive Peter Winter writes about the lessons that can be learned from the recent bankruptcy filing of the McClatchy newspaper chain. “In business, every threat masks an opportunity that should have been obvious. The Internet offered newspaper companies the rare prospect of product reinvention and economic revival,” says Winter. “But all they could see was a chance to throw away the ink and paper and sell the trucks, the same product delivered at less cost and sold as if the age of targeted and measurable advertising had never arrived.”

In the weeks after the 2016 presidential election, Facebook found dozens of pages that had peddled false news reports ahead of Donald Trump’s surprise victory, according to a report from the Washington Post. Nearly all were based overseas, had financial motives and displayed a clear rightward bent. But in a meeting to decide what to do about it, Joel Kaplan — a former official in the George W. Bush White House who was the head of Facebook’s Washington office — argued that the social network couldn’t take all the pages down because doing so would “disproportionately affect conservatives,” who didn’t see it as fake news.

The New York Times writes about how the new owners of the Big Bend Sentinel newspaper in Marfa, Texas bought the building next door and have turned it into a bar and event space that is attached to the paper’s newsroom. Revenues from the space help subsidize the journalism, according to Maisie Crow and Max Kabat, two transplants from New York who bought the paper last year from previous owners Robert and Rosario Halpern, who published it for 25 years.

The misshapen pieces of Google’s disinformation magazine was originally published on mathewingram.com/work

[akokosblog-blog]

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Falz Moral Instruction Album Review

Falz Moral Instruction album amidst much controversy is released. Falz highly anticipated album was released on the 15th of January 2019 with the hashtag #moralinstruction rolling on social media.

One of the notable figures that greatly influenced Nigerian music is Fela Anikulapo Kuti, professionally known as Fela Kuti, or Fela.

Fela was a talented musician, composer, pioneer of afrobeat and he played multiple instruments.

He was known to be a staunch activist as he stood up for the people and resisted oppression back in his time.

There were multiple cases of him being persecuted for his beliefs and what he stood for.

In a particular instance, he was jailed for 20months but still, he pushed on and stood his ground.

Over time, the music industry in Nigeria has evolved and experienced tremendous progress and changes.

Different artists have contributed to the gallery of music and the number keeps increasing by the hundreds every day.

Many artists have been called Fela because they have tried to emulate Fela as regards his style of music and activism.

Artists like Wizkid, Burnaboy and a host of others have been labeled the new Fela.

So, Folarin Falana, popularly known as “Falz theBahdGuy”, a rapper, released a 9-track album titled Moral Instruction.

Falz extensively and outrightly expressed his dissatisfaction at the state of things in Nigeria.

Falz has always been vocal about the state of things in the country maybe because of the activist blood running in his veins.

Prior to the release of the Moral Instruction album, he released songs like Child of the world, which is a story of a moral upright girl that got corrupted when she got raped by an uncle and eventually, she became a sex worker and ultimately, she changed and became a new person.

Social media went agog when the song was released with different individuals voicing out their opinion.

Falz has always expressed his dislike for girls that place a value on sex and internet fraudsters popularly known as Yahoo-Yahoo boys.

Last year, Falz also released a controversial video, This is Nigeria.

The video depicted the current state of the nation including, the Fulani killings, the snake swallowing 36-million-naira scandal, the sorry state of Nigerian politics, the harassment of citizens by FSARS and a host of other issues in the country.

All these conveniently paved ways for the new album Moral Instruction.

Falz Moral Instruction Album Review

Moral Instruction Album Review – Falz

Falz channeled the spirit of Fela’s activism and this was outrightly visible from the album art as designed by the talented designer, Lemi Ghariokwu who designed many of the cover images for the recordings of Fela.

He teamed up with producers like Sess, Chillz, Willis, and TMXO to create this beautiful body of work. It is important to also note that he sampled some of Fela’s songs in the album.

Each country in the world has an artist or group of artists considered to be the G.O.A.T (not the pepper soup type, G.O.A.T stands for Greatest Of All Time) for that country.

In America, most believe this is Tupac Shakur, while some think Michael Jackson or Elton John should have that title-depending on who you ask; Jamaica has Bob Marley, Ghana is fortunate enough to have a living G.O.A.T in the person of Sarkodie and so on.

In Nigeria however, the greatest artist of all time is without any doubt FELA KUTI.

In a country with divisions in tribe and religion and even subdivisions within the aforementioned groups, it is very surprising that FELA’S title of G.O.A.T goes unchallenged.

To many Nigerians, Fela is a physical embodiment of fearlessness.

He spoke the truth everybody knew but were too scared to speak, he fought for the weak, he challenged the oppressors of Nigeria at the risk of his own personal safety and the safety of his family.

This is why to say an artist is “like Fela” or “is the Fela of our generation” is the highest compliment that can be paid to a Nigerian musician.

Falz theBahdGuy is the latest artist in a long list of artists currently contending for that spot and many feels he has earned it with this new album #moralinstruction.

His album talks about every single thing wrong with Nigeria.

He literally “dragged” the whole country-pastors, church members, politicians, citizens, sex workers, child abusers, everybody in Nigeria was dragged and this is the major reason why the album is on everybody’s lips.

Since everybody was mentioned on that album it means every single Nigerian relates to at least one song on the album with majority of Nigerians relating to all the songs.

Track by Track breakdown of the Fela Moral Instruction Album

Johnny

The first track on the album contains samples of Fela’s song “Johnny just drop”.

TMXO infused a hip hop beat into the afrobeat song. I think Falz used this track to start a chain reaction and set the pace for the remaining tracks.

This song transports the listener back to 1980 with the Fela type of instrumental.

Falz tackles the issue of police brutality by telling a short story about a Nigerian youth – Johnny, who just completed his youth service and was shot when he went out to celebrate with friends.

On the track, Falz talked about the alarming rate of insecurity in Nigeria.

He stated the different levels of insecurity in the country ranging from the cultural and religious killings in different parts of the country.

He questions the lack of punishment for the officers involved in the act and is baffled that the government thinks an apology is enough to sate the bereaved parents of the deceased.

It depicts the savagery and recklessness of the Nigerian police force as different reports of “trigger-happy cops” fill the headlines every day.

He ended the song with the Yoruba words, “if Johnny continues to drop, eyanmelo lo maku, eyanmelo lo maku” which means, how many people will die and how many people will be left.

Follow Follow

This track is based on Fela’s Zombie, and Sess smoothly blended it into a hip-hop groove. This immediately reminds the listener of the popular Fela song “zombie” and the message is very clear.

Fela sang the original song which talks about how soldiers are bound to follow orders.

Falz built on this with how he likened the enslavement of people by social media to people being zombies.

The song addresses people that are ready to do anything for validation, people who don’t have any goals of their own and people who jump on wagons simply because other people are doing it.

Different individuals try to be what they are not and imitate what they see on social media.

He talks about how people have lost their self-identity and caved into peer pressure.

The song emphasizes the craziness and the extent people go, to please other people and also get likes and followers on social media.

Hypocrite

This particular track is one of my favorite tracks on the album. The song started with piano chords which transitioned into a groovy beat.

Falz teamed up with Demmie Vee who delivered a sonorous hook to the verses of the song.

The first verse started out with Falz singing a little bit before he went hardcore and the second verse, the same way.

The song addresses the hypocrisy in the society ranging from the government to the common man.

Falz theBahdGuy in his usual bar spitting nature dissected matters affecting Nigeria (fake pastors, overzealous Muslims, child marriage, pedophiles in the church and politicians that starve their fellow citizens to their purses).

He talked about how people have two faces; the face they put on the outside and the real one.

Talk

This track was released a few days before the album was released and it is also about all the ills in society.

The song slowly progressed in a call and response manner until Falz went on a spree of another marvelous spits of bars.

“Anything I talk make you talk am again”

Addressed the situation of MURIC suing him, stating that they didn’t show up at court.

Falz TheBahdGuy didn’t hold back in this particular track as he rapped about a wide range of things including transactional sex, late payment of salaries by the government and the bad situation of things in Nigeria.

The song ended by him taking responsibility of the words spoken and he said, “na me talk am o”.

Amen

This particular one was built on the track “Coffin for Head of state” by Fela.

Falz has made it clear over and over again that hypocrisy in religion upsets him.

Amen attacks religious leaders that have successfully commercialized religion, he laughs at the irony of religious leaders using the money of their followers to build a university that the followers cannot afford to go to.

This song is a plea to the listener to open his eyes, mind and to think for his/her self.

Brother’s keeper

The family is very precious to Nigerians; Fathers kill for their daughters, sons go to war for their Mothers.

If we thought of all our neighbors as brothers would there still be hate in the country?

Would we still be divided because of ethnic and religious differences? These are the question’s this song is trying to ask.

Falz talks about individuals at different levels not looking out for each other and emphasized what he has been saying on the previous tracks.

He believes love is the answer; if you love your neighbor like your brother you cannot cheat him, you cannot seek to do him harm.

Sess did justice to the track as both the producer and the singer of the hook.

I also love the fact that the backup vocals sound like a choir singing giving the track a very unique vibe.

The song has one message for its listener-be your brother’s keeper.

Paper

What’s money worth? The breaker of tables once again comes with his hammer to do an honest day’s work. 

He condemns parents giving out underage children because of money, he expresses disappointment at ritualists, drug smugglers and politicians who are ready to do anything to get money.

This particular track is an extension of the previous tracks.

In his own words, they commit all these crimes all because of “just paper”.

E no finish

Here he questions the purpose of speaking out about the injustice in the society when the issues that Fela talked about are still not resolved till today.

Fela talked, people applauded him and continued wallowing in their filth.

He tries to let the listener know just how bad the situation is in the country if we are still trying and failing to work out the same problems since independence.

It ended with Lemi Ghariokwu saying few words about the state of things in Nigeria.

After all said and done

In this short poem, Falz theBahdGuy admits that he knows he has no right to throw blame around, admitting his own faults and weaknesses, since he is also a human with flaws of his own.

The track is in form of a poetry rendition.

He believes everybody is guilty – through action or inaction and only by accepting our guilt and striving to be better can we move forward as a country, together.

He finally encouraged people to be conscious and not keep quiet about the happenings in our society.

In conclusion

Falz may have dropped what promises to be the most controversial album of the year but regardless of your opinion about the Falz Moral Instruction album you have to admit that all he said is nothing but the gospel truth.

It’s great to see an artiste devote a whole album to talk about the state of affairs in Nigeria and taking the path of activism and walk in Fela’s footsteps.

Fela has become more than a person. Fela has become more of an ideology and a way of life.

I think anyone that decides to stand for what is right and stare into the face of adversity can be called “A Fela”.

It is safe to say Falz theBahdGuy is “A Fela”.

The greatest criticism of the album is that the lyrics became monotonous at some point but a good message cannot be overheard and we don’t even care about the critics and criticism.

Falz took a stand with this album and I hope he does not deviate from this path.

Written By Leon Chuks and Moyo Oluwatuyi