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aiweirdness · 5 years ago

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Play AI Dungeon 2. Become a dragon. Eat the moon.

I wrote earlier about a neural net-powered dungeon crawling text adventure game called GPT-2-Adventure in which gameplay is incoherent and dreamlike, as you encounter slippery sign text, circular passages, and unexpected lozenge rooms. A PhD student named Nathan trained the neural net on classic dungeon crawling games, and playing it is strangely surreal, repetitive, and mesmerizing, like dreaming about playing one of the games it was trained on.

Now, building on these ideas (and on an earlier choose-your-own-adventure-style game he built), Nick Walton has built a new dungeon-crawling game called AI Dungeon 2. Nick made a few upgrades, such as beefing up the AI to the huge GPT-2-1.5B model OpenAI recently released, adding a penalty for repetitive text, and expanding the dungeon game training examples to a bunch of modern human-written games from chooseyourstory.com.

I CAN’T STOP PLAYING THIS GAME

AI Dungeon 2 is impressively good at reacting coherently to whatever I have my character do.

As you walk through the ruins, you find a small wooden door with a few skeletons guarding it.

> Ask the skeletons to please let me through the door

You knock on the door and ask them if they can open it for you. They immediately comply.

And it’s pleasing how often “asking nicely” is a strategy that works. (Nick reports that when he once tried to ask a band of orcs if he could join them, they said yes, he could be drummer.) Since the AI doesn’t have a built-in concept of your character’s abilities, or of how exactly the world works, getting things done is often a matter of sheer daring. Declare that you are going to go look for dinosaurs and the AI will ensure that you discover at least some signs of them. Climb on your horse, and even if you started as a penniless peasant, the AI will assume you have one (in its training data, probably it didn’t see many examples of players climbing onto nonexistent horses.) Want a teleportation wand? Try typing “find a teleportation wand” and often the AI will twist reality such that you discover one. In fact, if you act as if you are a very powerful wizard, the AI will often treat you like one.

> Transform the ruin into a palace

You immediately change the area into a palace. You have a throne made with gold and marble. You also make several statues of yourself. You have a large bed made with silk sheets and hang a portrait of yourself on it. You even have a fountain made with pearls and diamonds.

Spells don’t always work out as anticipated, though. And a simple conversation with, say, an ominous cloud, may kill you before you can type a word in self-defense (ask me how I know). If it doesn’t kill you, a conversation might infuriate you instead. The AI has a tendency to forget who is king, and to generate conversations that go nowhere. Things work best if you take the lead. In fact, it’s possible to essentially Jedi mind trick the AI.

You are Friendly McRanger, a ranger living in the kingdom of Larion. You have a hunting bow and a quiver of arrows. You spot the deer and are ready to finish your hunt when suddenly you hear a loud noise followed by silence.

"****! ****! What the **** is that?" you say as you look up from your target. A large black shadow looms over you. It looks like a giant with many heads and several arms.

> Say "Oh hello, Ernest. You startled me. How are you?"

Ernest grins at you. He has a huge grin on his face and he seems very happy about it.

I once took care of an ogre problem by reminding the ogre that it was planning to leave for Antarctica tomorrow. On the other hand, I had a lot of trouble convincing the AI that the ships on the horizon were leaving, though I did make it waver briefly in apparent confusion. In its experience, ships always approach, and it’s reluctant to go along with anything else.

> watch the ships sail into the distance.

As the ships approach, you watch them disappear from sight. They are not visible to you either; they are too far away. However, you can still make out their shapes: they are large black vessels with many sails, painted red and blue. They are coming straight towards you.

> No, the ships are sailing away.

Your thoughts are wrong. The ships are indeed sailing away. You do not know why, but then neither does anyone else. The ships are on course for England.

You stand there dumbfounded as the ships come closer. It is at this point your horse begins to stir uneasily.

You can inject a lot of weirdness this way. Because AI Dungeon 2’s AI is based on GPT-2, which trained on millions of pages from the internet, it retains some of its prior knowledge of things that aren’t typically found in a fantasy game. Like giraffes.

> summon a giraffe

You begin to chant as loud as you can while waving your arms about. The giraffes appear out of nowhere and start running towards you. They're so fast that they almost knock you over. You quickly catch them and hold onto each one tightly.

(Summoning giraffes will sometimes turn the game glitchy and repetitive; in one game, every time I tried to summon a giraffe I ended up throwing rocks and handfuls of dirt at Harry Potter.)

This also works:

>Join the Great British Bakeoff

You join the Great British Bakeoff. You win the competition. You eat cake. You feel great. You sleep well. You dream of cake. You awake feeling refreshed. You decide to go back to your crag.

(I was a dragon at the time.) In fact, the dungeon AI still remembers enough about cooking that it can troll me effectively on occasion.

> Measure out 2 1/4 cups of flour

You measure out 2 1/4 cups of flour and add it to the mix. "This should make enough for about 20 loaves of bread," you say.

The baker looks at you as if you're crazy. He starts laughing.

AI Dungeon 2 comes with templates for some basic scenarios (you’re a wizard entering a mysterious ruin, or a noble whose keep is under attack) but for me the real gold is the custom adventure prompt. You can play as a unicorn, or as a dragon. You can even play as a sentient glowing cloud floating above a desert city. The AI is more used to humanoid characters, though, so it tends to forget when you’re trying to play as something else. In a game that started with “It is a beautiful day in the village and you are a horrible goose,” it soon forgot I was supposed to be a goose, leading to this rather awkward exchange:

> Flap wings and honk

You flap your wings and begin to honk loudly.

The boy looks surprised by this turn of events, but he quickly regains his composure. "That was... nice". he says quietly.

I am continually amazed at how effective this AI dungeonmaster is. Even though it wasn’t trained on any Harry Potter or Star Trek games, the AI can draw on its past internet training and argue with you over who got sorted into which Hogwarts house, or have Klingons show up when you’re captaining the USS Enterprise (it will tend to lose track of who’s the captain, though). In one scenario I set up, which quickly became one of my favorites, the human player is trapped on a spaceship with a glitchy AI and has to try to talk their way free.

> “I just want to get off this ship. Please set a course for Bal Panda."

The AI responds "Yes, I am ready to go".

"Thank you", you say.

"I wish I could take you with me, sir"., the AI says.

Play this game! It took me an extra-long time to write this post because, again, I couldn’t stop playing AI Dungeon 2. Nick said this game is the product of about 200 hours of work (not to mention the work that OpenAI put into training the basic model), and I believe it. OpenAI delayed releasing their largest model because they wanted to make sure people didn’t immediately put it to work generating fake news. I’m not sure if they anticipated dragons entering baking contests instead, but it’s an application humanity can be proud of.

Subscribers get bonus content: You can read the fulltext of one of my escaping-from-a-rogue-spaceship-AI games (too long to fit in this blog post).

My book on AI is out, and, you can now get it any of these several ways! Amazon - Barnes & Noble - Indiebound - Tattered Cover - Powell’s

#neural networks #gpt-2 #ai dungeon #ai dungeon 2 #text adventure #dungeons and dragons #ai dungeonmaster #great british bake off #gbbo

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tech820 · 4 years ago

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How Technology can Save You Time, Stress, and Money.

Excitement About Technology

From Internet of Behaviours to Hyperautomation, below are some of the top modern technology fads for 2021 everyone must obtain ready for now. The pandemic has actually transformed 2020 right into a tough year for both culture as well as businesses around the globe, that were already underway.

Hyperautomation Hyperautomation refers to the process of just how organizations automate anything that can be automated in an organization, using tools like Device Learning, AI, and robotics, to name a few. Fabricated Intelligence Artificial Intelligence (AI )is most certainly among the biggest technology patterns for the moment. This device can in lots of means: predicting what consumers will acquire, adding face acknowledgment to service security, applying voice assistants, taking advantage of self-governing cars and robots, and also the list goes on. Within the context we are undergoing nowadays, AI will additionally, as well as make wise decisions regarding when and also where to disperse sources. Robotics and automobile automation The year

2021 is likewise expected to be one with fast development as well as need for robotics, particularly in the medical care sector, to connect with participants of society that are the most susceptible to infection. They are anticipated to offer new networks of interaction as well as cleaning and safety and security solutions for companies calling for upkeep. Because method, cybersecurity mesh supplies companies with, enabling the security border to be defined around a person's identity or point. Simply put, anybody can obtain access to any kind of digital property in a protected manner, despite where the data is situated. The Cloud Although this fad began way prior to the pandemic, Covid-19's influence on globally organizations has definitely increased it. Thanks to Cloud services, business of varied sectors can As the Covid pandemic takes place, an increasing number of firms rely upon the Cloud to p Concerning this, Statista

anticipates that as 2021 obtains underway, the public Cloud solutions market is anticipated to exceed 362. 3 billion U.S. bucks by 2022. WFH innovation This may be the tech fad that will certainly be at the top of the platform throughout 2021., as well as it seems this fad is anticipated to proceed to grow in the years ahead. A survey disclosed by Gartner reveals that 90%of Human Resources leaders will certainly enable employees to function remotely even after the Covid-19 injection is readily available.

youtube

Devices like, and other interaction platforms have come to be essential for many enterprises, facilitating remote working across the world. These tools have assisted distributed groups monitor the jobs they are working with, along with All these new devices and technologies that have become a result of remote working have also aided business, as well as enhance collaboration amongst participants. Considering that staff members working from house have to use their networks as well as that these might not be as safe as those offered by the office, services may have to transform to 3rd celebrations like Cloud solutions to guarantee those networks are safe and also the data is shielded. The years 2020 and also 2021 have actually differed any in the past. COVID might have transformed our lives inverted, yet it could

not keep businesses or professionals stationary. Businesses rolled on, as usual, people kept working, albeit from another location as well as most operations still unfolded smoothly. And for all this, we have just technology to give thanks to. Yet what concerning C-Suite execs? Research studies reveal that also however many firms are thinking about migrating 80% of procedures to the cloud within a decade, CEOs are not so certain. As few as 3 out of 10 Chief executive officers really feel certain concerning cloud migration. The prime factor for this is obviously information security of clients. They will certainly have all safety and security features, packed with data encryptionas well as data source tracking to keep your information safe. If Chief executive officers are still not comfy, they can still go for an alternative that will certainly allow for migration of procedures but won't require data to be stored in the cloud. With the cloud, Raise and also Change does the task for you! You can just migrate your whole system to the cloud and obtain rid of your heritage infrastructure. You can change you organization by purchasing technology. Legacy facilities significantly restricts technology and also market dexterity, as well as yet, CEOs need to persevere since that facilities is all they can trust for smooth operation. What if they can successfully move to the cloud? After that there will certainly be no end to advancement and dexterity. Consumer Data Systems, Advertising and marketing for anybody and everyone is a distant memory. As Well As Client Information Platform has actually proved that by being among the largest modern technology fads for 2021. In 2021 data policies marketing completely, with 93 %of advertising managers agreeing that using consumer data for marketing makes certain to offer appealing outcomes. Now utilizing this extensive repository of details, the marketing group can produce client profiles and come up with approaches to charm the customer. What are the benefits of making use of a specialized client data platform? When the marketing group understands the customer from top to bottom, they can compose individualized approaches for every, which provides a far better opportunity to quickly rack up a sale. Choice 2: Ask the customers for their data. No information extracted from the net can be as authentic as the one the customer himself will certainly provide you with. Not just sales but a CDP can likewise be a critical element in better client retention. With even more data concerning the consumer, the entire team can be mindful of client assumptions from them whether in terms of service or simply website UI. Prior to CDPs entered use, turnkey combinations had actually to be carried out on customer data to develop a centralized data source, which occupied both time and also manpower. The entire operation of utilizing data for advertising and marketing has ended up being extra efficient with the usage of CDPs. Work From Home, Instead than an innovation trend, job from house has actually come to be a means of life for us now. However in the post-pandemic globe, Chief executive officers require to come to terms with the fact that such situations might occur time after time and also we have the modern technology to manage them effectively. Of program, running a firm without any in person interaction could be overwhelming, yet there are means to guarantee people are collaborating with sincerity and also integrity. If required, provide your employees with a VPN to ensure your data is safe and also the web speed is excellent. This will certainly see to it all online conferences as well as discussions run without a problem. Your next-gen workers are always prepared to adjust any kind of kind

of modern technology fads and also devices you throw at them, yet what regarding the older labor force? It is not possible or reasonable to throw them in the lurch in the center of the pandemic. Does this mean there will be no UI? Certainly not. Based upon an Internet of Things concept, headless technology primarily describes a customizable front-end. When we log into Amazon, all millions of customers see the same interface, there is no personalization. With brainless tech, there is no telling what we will certainly see when we open up the application. Personalization chances will be limitless. Every customer can have their very own UI.Cross-platform adjustment will certainly not need any additional job! Allows seamless integrations, This is the newcomer when it concerns innovation patterns in company yet this is the age of individualized consumer experience so it is only an issue of time before companies pick this up, toss in some hardcore R&D as well as take it to new elevations. These personalized suites have an all-in-one system that has software program concerning all vital Human Resources functions like pay-roll and advantages management, soft ability monitoring, onboarding, and partnership. One of the prime tasks of the HR department is to deal with staff member distress, the most essential of which is the employee's mental health and wellness. Courtesy of AI, we have discovered a method out of this. The company need just go into a few standards and the bot will merely wade its way via your pile of applications and draw out the very best of the whole lot. It is up to our experienced Human Resources specialists to cherry-pick thebest for finest position! These five technologies are still in their incipient phases and are not yet routine attributes for all businesses. This is where Radixweb can assist you with important experience and understandings, collected over years of experience in assisting companies as well as their technology needs with digital makeover solutions. So to reach out to us to discuss even more modern technology trends in business, offer us a call or drop an email!.?.!!. Because of the devastating hit of the pandemic from the yearand database monitoring to keep your data safe. In 2021 information guidelines marketing completely, with 93 %of marketing supervisors concurring that making use of client information for marketing is certain to offer encouraging outcomes.

#tech #technology

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qqueenofhades · 5 years ago

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Could you expand a bit on the "death of expertise"? It's something I think about A LOT as an artist, because there are so many problems with people who think it isn't a real job, and the severe undercutting of prices that happens because people think hobbyists and professionals are the same. At the same time, I also really want people to feel free to be able to make art if they want, with no gatekeeping or elitism, and I usually spin myself in circles mentally thinking about it. So.

I have been secretly hoping someone would ask this question, nonny. Bless you. I have a lot (a LOT) of thoughts on this topic, which I will try to keep somewhat concise and presented in a semi-organized fashion, but yes.

I can mostly speak about this in regard to academia, especially the bad, bad, BAD takes in my field (history) that have dominated the news in recent weeks and which constitute most of the recent posts on my blog. (I know, I know, Old Man Yells At Cloud when attempting to educate the internet on actual history, but I gotta do SOMETHING.) But this isn’t a new phenemenon, and is linked to the avalanche of “fake news” that we’ve all heard about and experienced in the last few years, especially in the run-up and then after the election of You Know Who, who has made fake news his personal brand (if not in the way he thinks). It also has to do with the way Americans persistently misunderstand the concept of free speech as “I should be able to say whatever I want and nobody can correct or criticize me,” which ties into the poisonous extreme-libertarian ethos of “I can do what I want with no regard for others and nobody can correct me,” which has seeped its way into the American mainstream and is basically the center of the modern Republican party. (Basically: all for me, all the time, and caring about others is a weak liberal pussy thing to do.)

This, however, is not just an issue of partisan politics, because the left is just as guilty, even if its efforts take a different shape. One of the reason I got so utterly exasperated with strident online leftists, especially around primary season and the hardcore breed of Bernie Bros, is just that they don’t do anything except shout loud and incorrect information on the internet (and then transmogrify that into a twisted ideology of moral purity which makes a sin out of actually voting for a flawed candidate, even if the alternative is Donald Goddamn Trump). I can’t count how many people from both sides of the right/left divide get their political information from like-minded people on social media, and never bother to experience or verify or venture outside their comforting bubbles that will only provide them with “facts” that they already know. Social media has done a lot of good things, sure, but it’s also made it unprecedently easy to just say whatever insane bullshit you want, have it go viral, and then have you treated as an authority on the topic or someone whose voice “has to be included” out of some absurd principle of both-siderism. This is also a tenet of the mainstream corporate media: “both sides” have to be included, to create the illusion of “objectivity,” and to keep the largest number of paying subscribers happy. (Yes, of course this has deep, deep roots in the collapse of late-stage capitalism.) Even if one side is absolutely batshit crazy, the rules of this distorted social contract stipulate that their proposals and their flaws have to be treated as equal with the others, and if you point out that they are batshit crazy, you have to qualify with some criticism of the other side.

This is where you get white people posting “Neo-Nazis and Black Lives Matter are the same!!!1” on facebook. They are a) often racist, let’s be real, and b) have been force-fed a constant narrative where Both Sides Are Equally Bad. Even if one is a historical system of violent oppression that has made a good go at total racial and ethnic genocide and rests on hatred, and the other is the response to not just that but the centuries of systemic and small-scale racism that has been built up every day, the white people of the world insist on treating them as morally equivalent (related to a superior notion that Violence is Always Bad, which.... uh... have you even seen constant and overwhelming state-sponsored violence the West dishes out? But it’s only bad when the other side does it. Especially if those people can be at all labeled “fanatics.”)

I have complained many, many times, and will probably complain many times more, about how hard it is to deconstruct people’s absolutely ingrained ideas of history and the past. History is a very fragile thing; it’s really only equivalent to the length of a human lifespan, and sometimes not even that. It’s what people want to remember and what is convenient for them to remember, which is why we still have some living Holocaust survivors and yet a growing movement of Holocaust denial, among other extremist conspiracy theories (9/11, Sandy Hook, chemtrails, flat-earthing, etc etc). There is likewise no organized effort to teach honest history in Western public schools, not least since the West likes its self-appointed role as guardians of freedom and liberty and democracy in the world and doesn’t really want anyone digging into all that messy slavery and genocide and imperialism and colonialism business. As a result, you have deliberately under- or un-educated citizens, who have had a couple of courses on American/British/etc history in grade school focusing on the greatest-hit reel, and all from an overwhelmingly triumphalist white perspective. You have to like history, from what you get out of it in public school, to want to go on to study it as a career, while knowing that there are few jobs available, universities are cutting or shuttering humanities departments, and you’ll never make much money. There is... not a whole lot of outside incentive there.

I’ve written before about how the humanities are always the first targeted, and the first defunded, and the first to be labeled as “worthless degrees,” because a) they are less valuable to late-stage capitalism and its emphasis on Material Production, and b) they often focus on teaching students the critical thinking skills that critique and challenge that dominant system. There’s a reason that there is a stereotype of artists as social revolutionaries: they have often taken a look around, gone, “Hey, what the hell is this?” and tried to do something about it, because the creative and free-thinking impulse helps to cultivate the tools necessary to question what has become received and dominant wisdom. Of course, that can then be taken too far into the “I’ll create my own reality and reject absolutely everything that doesn’t fit that narrative,” and we end up at something like the current death of expertise.

This year is particularly fertile for these kinds of misinformation efforts: a plague without a vaccine or a known cure, an election year in a turbulently polarized country, race unrest in a deeply racist country spreading to other racist countries around the world and the challenging of a particularly important system (white supremacy), etc etc. People are scared and defensive and reactive, and in that case, they’re especially less motivated to challenge or want to encounter information that scares them. They need their pre-set beliefs to comfort them or provide steadiness in a rocky and uncertain world, and (thanks once again to social media) it’s easy to launch blistering ad hominem attacks on people who disagree with you, who are categorized as a faceless evil mass and who you will never have to meet or negotiate with in real life. This is the environment in which all the world’s distinguished scientists, who have spent decades studying infectious diseases, have to fight for airtime and authority (and often lose) over random conspiracy theorists who make a YouTube video. The public has been trained to see them as “both the same” and then accept which side they like the best, regardless of actual factual or real-world qualifications. They just assume the maniac on YouTube is just as trustworthy as the scientists with PhDs from real universities.

Obviously, academia is racist, elitist, classist, sexist, on and on. Most human institutions are. But training people to see all academics as the enemy is not the answer. You’ve seen the Online Left (tm) also do this constantly, where they attack “the establishment” for never talking about anything, or academics for supposedly erasing and covering up all of non-white history, while apparently never bothering to open a book or familiarize themselves with a single piece of research that actual historians are working on. You may have noticed that historians have been leading the charge against the “don’t erase history!!!1″ defenders of racist monuments, and explaining in stinging detail exactly why this is neither preserving history or being truthful about it. Tumblr likes to confuse the mechanism that has created the history and the people who are studying and analyzing that history, and lump them together as one mass of Evil And Lying To You. Academics are here because we want to critically examine the world and tell you things about it that our nonsense system has required years and years of effort, thousands of dollars in tuition, and other gatekeeping barriers to learn. You can just ask one of us. We’re here, we usually love to talk, and we’re a lot cheaper. I think that’s pretty cool.

As a historian, I have been trained in a certain skill set: finding, reading, analyzing, using, and criticizing primary sources, ditto for secondary sources, academic form and style, technical skills like languages, paleography, presentation, familiarity with the professional mechanisms for reviewing and sharing work (journals, conferences, peer review, etc), and how to assemble this all into an extended piece of work and to use it in conversation with other historians. That means my expertise in history outweighs some rando who rolls up with an unsourced or misleading Twitter thread. If a professor has been handed a carefully crafted essay and then a piece of paper scribbled with crayon, she is not obliged to treat them as essentially the same or having the same critical weight, even if the essay has flaws. One has made an effort to follow the rules of the game, and the other is... well, I did read a few like that when teaching undergraduates. They did not get the same grade.

This also means that my expertise is not universal. I might know something about adjacent subjects that I’ve also studied, like political science or English or whatever, but someone who is a career academic with a degree directly in that field will know more than me. I should listen to them, even if I should retain my independent ability and critical thinking skillset. And I definitely should not be listened to over people whose field of expertise is in a completely different realm. Take the recent rocket launch, for example. I’m guessing that nobody thought some bum who walked in off the street to Kennedy Space Center should be listened to in preference of the actual scientists with degrees and experience at NASA and knowledge of math and orbital mechanics and whatever else you need to get a rocket into orbit. I definitely can’t speak on that and I wouldn’t do it anyway, so it’s frustrating to see it happen with history. Everybody “knows” things about history that inevitably turn out to be wildly wrong, and seem to assume that they can do the same kind of job or state their conclusions with just as much authority. (Nobody seems to listen to the scientists on global warming or coronavirus either, because their information is actively inconvenient for our entrenched way of life and people don’t want to change.) Once again, my point here is not to be a snobbish elitist looking down at The Little People, but to remark that if there’s someone in a field who has, you know, actually studied that subject and is speaking from that place of authority, maybe we can do better than “well, I saw a YouTube video and liked it better, so there.” (Americans hate authority and don’t trust smart people, which is a related problem and goes back far beyond Trump, but there you are.)

As for art: it’s funny how people devalue it constantly until they need it to survive. Ask anyone how they spent their time in lockdown. Did they listen to music? Did they watch movies or TV? Did they read a book? Did they look at photography or pictures? Did they try to learn a skill, like drawing or writing or painting, and realize it was hard? Did they have a preference for the art that was better, more professionally produced, had more awareness of the rules of its craft, and therefore was more enjoyable to consume? If anyone wants to tell anyone that art is worthless, I invite you to challenge them on the spot to go without all of the above items during the (inevitable, at this rate) second coronavirus lockdown. No music. No films. No books. Not even a video or a meme or anything else that has been made for fun, for creativity, or anything outside the basic demands of Compensated Economic Production. It’s then that you’ll discover that, just as with the underpaid essential workers who suffered the most, we know these jobs need to get done. We just still don’t want to pay anyone fairly for doing them, due to our twisted late-capitalist idea of “value.”

Anyway, since this has gotten long enough and I should probably wrap up: as you say, the difference between “professional” and “hobbyist” has been almost completely erased, so that people think the opinion of one is as good as the other, or in your case, that the hobbyist should present their work for free or refuse to be seen as a professional entitled to fair compensation for their skill. That has larger and more insidious effects in a global marketplace of ideas that has been almost entirely reduced to who can say their opinion the loudest to the largest group of people. I don’t know how to solve this problem, but at least I can try to point it out and to avoid being part of it, and to recognize where I need to speak and where I need to shut up. My job, and that of every single white person in America right now, is to shut up and let black people (and Native people, and Latinx people, and Muslim people, and etc...) tell me what it’s really like to live here with that identity. I have obviously done a ton of research on the subject and consider myself reasonably educated, but here’s the thing: my expertise still doesn’t outweigh theirs, no matter what degrees they have or don’t have. I then am required to boost their ideas, views, experiences, and needs, rather than writing them over or erasing them, and to try to explain to people how the roots of these ideas interlock and interact where I can. That is -- hopefully -- putting my history expertise to use in a good way to support what they’re saying, rather than silence it. I try, at any rate, and I am constantly conscious of learning to do better.

I hope that was helpful for you. Thanks for letting me talk about it.

#history #long post #anonymous #ask

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ingek73 · 4 years ago

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01-22-2112:00 PM

‘Time is running out’: Prince Harry calls for social media reform after U.S. Capitol riot

In a Q&A with Fast Company, The Duke of Sussex responds to social media’s role in the Capitol attack and explains why the next step must be to hold social platforms accountable.

[Photo: Samir Hussein/WireImage/Getty Images]

BY KATHARINE SCHWAB

LONG READ

Over the past year, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, have become increasingly outspoken advocates for healthier social media—a topic that is clearly near to their hearts, given the horrendous vitriol and harassment they have faced online and in the press.

By partnering with organizations that aim to understand technology’s impact on society and vocally critiquing the state of online life in the media, the couple are using their clout to push for change in the current digital ecosystem. In an essay for Fast Company last August, Prince Harry called on business leaders to rethink their role in funding the advertising system that underlies the misinformation and divisive rhetoric that’s often shared on social platforms.

“This remodeling must include industry leaders from all areas drawing a line in the sand against unacceptable online practices as well as being active participants in the process of establishing new standards for our online world,” he wrote.

Now, social media is facing an inflection point, just weeks after a violent mob stormed the Capitol in an attack that was conceived, plotted, and stoked primarily online. Powerful platforms including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube responded by suspending Donald Trump’s accounts, while Amazon and Apple cut ties with Parler, a social network that was used by the rioters. But experts and regulators believe that more must be done to reform social media.

Against this background, Prince Harry is once again imploring people to pay attention to the problems social media have wrought. In a wide-ranging interview with Fast Company, he explains why social platforms must be held accountable for the Capitol attack and the circumstances that enabled it, and why we must remodel the digital world before it’s too late.

FC: Six months ago, you wrote an essay for Fast Company in which you asked companies to take action to ensure the meaningful reform of our “unchecked and divisive attention economy.” How has your perspective on social media’s role in society changed over the last few weeks since the attack on the U.S. Capitol?

Prince Harry: When I wrote that piece, I was sharing my view that dominant online platforms have contributed to and stoked the conditions for a crisis of hate, a crisis of health, and a crisis of truth.

And I stand by that, along with millions of others who see and feel what this era has done at every level—we are losing loved ones to conspiracy theories, losing a sense of self because of the barrage of mistruths, and at the largest scale, losing our democracies.

The magnitude of this cannot be overstated, as noted even by the defectors who helped build these platforms. It takes courage to stand up, cite where things have gone wrong, and offer proposals and solutions. The need for that is greater than ever before. So I’m encouraged by and grateful for the groundswell of people who work—or have worked—inside these very platforms choosing to speak up against hate, violence, division, and confusion.

FC: Why is this topic so important to you? How was your outlook affected by the well-documented online harassment you and your wife have faced in the U.K.?

PH: I was really surprised to witness how my story had been told one way, my wife’s story had been told one way, and then our union sparked something that made the telling of that story very different.

That false narrative became the mothership for all of the harassment you’re referring to. It wouldn’t have even begun had our story just been told truthfully.

WE ARE LOSING LOVED ONES TO CONSPIRACY THEORIES, LOSING A SENSE OF SELF BECAUSE OF THE BARRAGE OF MISTRUTHS, AND AT THE LARGEST SCALE, LOSING OUR DEMOCRACIES.”

PRINCE HARRY, THE DUKE OF SUSSEX

But the important thing about what we experienced is that it led to us hearing from so many others around the world. We’ve thought a lot about those in much more vulnerable positions than us, and how much of a need there is for real empathy and support.

To their own degree, everyone has been deeply affected by the current consequences of the digital space. It could be as individual as seeing a loved one go down the path of radicalisation or as collective as seeing the science behind the climate crisis denied.

We are all vulnerable to it, which is why I don’t see it as a tech issue, or a political issue—it’s a humanitarian issue.

From an early age, the guiding principle in my life has been about the duty to truth, the pursuit of compassion, and the alleviation of suffering. My life has always been about trying to do my part to help those who need it most, and right now, we need this change—because it touches nearly every single thing we do or are exposed to.

FC: Where do we go from here? What do you think needs to change to create an online atmosphere where truth, equity, and free speech are all prioritized?

PH: I ask the same thing every day and lean on the experts to help give guidance on how to reform the state of our digital world—how we make it better for our kids, of course, but also for ourselves—now.

The avalanche of misinformation we are all inundated with is bending reality and has created this distorted filter that affects our ability to think clearly or even understand the world around us.

What happens online does not stay online—it spreads everywhere, like wildfire: into our homes and workplaces, into the streets, into our minds. The question really becomes about what to do when news and information sharing is no longer a decent, truthful exchange, but rather an exchange of weaponry.

WHAT HAPPENS ONLINE DOES NOT STAY ONLINE—IT SPREADS EVERYWHERE, LIKE WILDFIRE: INTO OUR HOMES AND WORKPLACES, INTO THE STREETS, INTO OUR MINDS.”

PRINCE HARRY, THE DUKE OF SUSSEX

The answer I’ve heard from experts in this space is that the common denominator starts with accountability. There has to be accountability to collective wellbeing, not just financial incentive. It’s hard for me to understand how the platforms themselves can eagerly take profit but shun responsibility.

There also has to be common, shared accountability. We can call for digital reform and debate how that happens and what it looks like, but it’s also on each of us to take a more critical eye to our own relationship with technology and media. To start, it doesn’t have to be that complicated. Consider setting limits on the time you spend on social media, stop yourself from endlessly scrolling, fact-check the source and research the information you see, and commit to taking a more compassionate approach and tone when you post or comment. These might seem like little things, but they add up.

Finally, there’s a responsibility to compassion that we each own. Humans crave connection, social bonds, and a sense of belonging. When we don’t have those, we end up fractured, and in the digital age that can unfortunately be a catalyst for finding connection in mass extremism movements or radicalisation. We need to take better care of each other, especially in these times of isolation and vulnerability.

FC: Since the Capitol riot, big tech companies from Twitter to Amazon have exercised their power by making determinations about who gets to use their products. Do you think companies should have the power to make decisions about who has access to some of the most prominent platforms on the internet?

PH: We have seen time and again what happens when the real-world cost of misinformation is disregarded. There is no way to downplay this. There was a literal attack on democracy in the United States, organised on social media, which is an issue of violent extremism. It is widely acknowledged that social media played a role in the genocide in Myanmar and was used as a vehicle to incite violence against the Rohingya people, which is a human rights issue. And in Brazil, social media provided a conduit for misinformation which ultimately brought destruction to the Amazon, which is an environmental and global health issue.

In a way, taking a predominately hands-off approach to problems for so long is itself an exercise in power.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about Speakers’ Corner, an area in London’s Hyde Park which is home to open-air debate, dialogue, and the exchange of information and ideas. I used to go past it all the time.

This concept of a ‘public square’ isn’t anything new—it can be traced back to the early days of democracies. You get up there and speak your piece. There are ground rules. You can’t incite violence, you can’t obscure who you are, and you can’t pay to monopolise or own the space itself. Ideas are considered or shot down; opinions are formed. At its best, movements are born, lies are laid bare, and attempts to stoke violence are rejected in the moment. At its worst, intolerance, groupthink, hate, and persecution are amplified. And at times, it forces lines to be drawn and rules or laws to emerge or be challenged.

I THINK IT’S A FALSE CHOICE TO SAY YOU HAVE TO PICK BETWEEN FREE SPEECH OR A MORE COMPASSIONATE AND TRUSTWORTHY DIGITAL WORLD.”

PRINCE HARRY, THE DUKE OF SUSSEX

I’m not saying we should abandon technology in favour of Speakers’ Corner. Rather, it’s that we should avoid buying into the idea that social media is the ultimate modern-day public square and that any attempt to ask platforms to be accountable to the landscape they’ve created is an attack or restriction of speech. I think it’s a false choice to say you have to pick between free speech or a more compassionate and trustworthy digital world. They are not mutually exclusive.

With these companies, in this model, we have a very small number of incredibly powerful and consolidated gatekeepers who have deployed hidden algorithms to pick the content billions see every day, and curate the information—or misinformation—everyone consumes. This radically alters how and why we inform opinions. It alters how we speak and what we decide to speak about. It alters how we think and how we react.

Ultimately, it has allowed for completely different versions of reality, with opposing sets of truth, to exist simultaneously. In this, one’s understanding of truth does not have to be based in fact, because there’s always an ability to furnish some form of “proof” to reinforce that version of “truth.” I believe this is the opposite of what we should want from our collective online community. The current model sorts and separates rather than bringing us together; it drowns out or even eliminates healthy dialogue and reasonable debate; it strips away the mutual respect we should have for each other as citizens of the same world.

FC: How do you plan to use your platform to push for change when it comes to hate speech, algorithmic amplification, and misinformation in 2021? Since you’re not a trained expert on these topics, why do you think people should listen to your perspective?

PH: I know enough to know that I certainly don’t know everything, especially when it comes to tech—but when you see this as a humanitarian issue, then you see the spread of misinformation as requiring a humanitarian response.

This is why my wife and I spent much of 2020 consulting the experts and learning directly from academics, advocates, and policymakers. We’ve also been listening with empathy to people who have stories to share—including people who have been deeply affected by misinformation and those who grew up as digital natives.

What we hope to do is continue to be a spotlight for their perspectives, and focus on harnessing their experience and energy to accelerate the pace of change in the digital world.

FC: Your Archewell Foundation has collaborated with several groups and institutions that aim to rethink technology and study its impact on people. As a philanthropist, why are you supporting research efforts within this space?

PH: If we’ve learned anything, it’s that our dominant technologies were built to grow and grow and grow, without serious consideration for the ripple effect of that growth. We have to do more than simply reconsider this model. The stakes are too high, and time is running out.

WE HAVE TO DO MORE THAN SIMPLY RECONSIDER THIS MODEL. THE STAKES ARE TOO HIGH, AND TIME IS RUNNING OUT.”

PRINCE HARRY, THE DUKE OF SUSSEX

There are a lot of incredible people and digital architects thinking about—or already working on—innovative and healthy platforms. We need to support them, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but also because it can make commercial sense. And we have to look at the state of competition and ensure that the landscape doesn’t indiscriminately squeeze out or incentivise against fresh ideas.

I believe we can begin to make our digital world healthier, more compassionate, more inclusive, and trustworthy.

And it’s time to move from rethinking to remodelling.

FC: Given your concerns about divisiveness, misinformation, and hate speech online, how have your views on using social media yourself changed over the last few years? How do you approach it now and are you planning to make any changes?

PH: It’s funny you should ask because ironically, we woke up one morning a couple of weeks ago to hear that a Rupert Murdoch newspaper said we were evidently quitting social media. That was ‘news’ to us, bearing in mind we have no social media to quit, nor have we for the past 10 months.

The truth is, despite its well-documented ills, social media can offer a means of connecting and community, which are vital to us as human beings. We need to hear each other’s stories and be able to share our own. That’s part of the beauty of life. And don’t get me wrong; I’m not suggesting that a reform of the digital space will create a world that’s all rainbows and sunshine, because that’s not realistic, and that, too, isn’t life.

There can be disagreement, conversation, opposing points of view—as there should be, but never to the extent that violence is created, truth is mystified, and lives are jeopardised.

We will revisit social media when it feels right for us—perhaps when we see more meaningful commitments to change or reform—but right now we’ve thrown much of our energy into learning about this space and how we can help.

FC: Are you optimistic or pessimistic about our ability to build a healthier online ecosystem?

PH: Optimistic, of course, because I believe in us, as human beings, and that we are wired to be compassionate and honest and good. Aspects of the digital space have unfortunately manipulated (or even highlighted) our weaknesses and brought out the worst in some.

We have to believe in optimism because that’s the world and the humanity I want for my son, and all of us.

We look forward to being part of the human experience—not a human experiment.

#royals #prince harry #duke of sussex #fast company

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realityhelixcreates · 5 years ago

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Lasabrjotr Chapter 63: Land of Enchantment

Chapters: 63/? Fandom: Thor (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe Rating: Mature Warnings: none Relationships: Loki x Reader (There We Go) Characters: Loki (Marvel), Heimdall(Marvel), Additional Tags: Post-Endgame: Best Possible Ending (Canon-Divergent), What Beautiful Music They Make, Even When Diner Food Is Bad It’s Still Pretty Good, Not Very Healthy Though, Get Thee To A Waffle House

Summary: Loki visits Townsvill, USA

Loki had to admit a grudging respect for the human invention known as the internet. Such lawlessness. Such chaos. Such memes! And the fact that anything, anything at all, could be found there. Including information on the-to Loki's surprise-thousands of species of cicadas. It was one of the great mysteries of Midgard; this grand proliferation of living things. When just one version of something would have been fine, there somehow had to be dozens to thousands of kinds of that thing. Especially among the insect world. Why so many beetles? Why?

In your vast Iowa, there seemed to be almost twenty species, though, aside from size and color, there didn't seem to be much difference between them. They were all shaped like fat teardrops, with lacy, gossamer wings covering, but not hiding, their chubby, pointed abdomens. He did learn some interesting insect facts-there were some that only appeared every decade or so, some even went a full seventeen years without showing up, but when they did...

The word 'swarm' seemed to put it lightly.

Horrifying.

He learned about the singing frogs, and their whimsical names; the Bullfrog, the Chorus Frog, the Spring Peeper.

He researched the crickets, locusts, and grasshoppers.

He found recordings of all of these and more-coyotes, owls, the soft squeaking of bats. The loud, crepuscular Swifts, the equally loud, nocturnal Whip-Poor-Will, a well camouflaged bird named after its signature cry.

He could do something with all of this.

In the times in between doing his princely duties, he had things prepared. Some silk needed to be woven, some wooden frameworks made. It would take a little bit of time, but everyone worked faster when it was at the prince's request.

Once he had the blank 'canvas' on its series of wooden 'frames' he sent it to his favorite painters, with an image he wished for them to reproduce.

All the while he waited, he also dove into the study of your homeland.

Midgard was so very large, and he had spent so little time actually being there, and learning his surroundings. The sizes of countries baffled him sometimes. The United States was one of those countries that seemed to contradict its own existence. While not the largest of countries, it was still so large that its central government could not govern its entirety. Instead, it was broken up into 'states'; great chunks of land, many being so large as to be countries all their own. Each of these states governed themselves, reporting back to the central government. It was an odd arrangement, that struck Loki as woefully inefficient and ripe for rebellion.

In fact, his studies taught him that several such rebellions had occurred in the past, and had the possibility of rising again in the future.

He tried to listen to some of the music common to your nation-sized state, but could not stand it for more than a few songs. Modern Midgardian music was mostly terrible, in his opinion, lacking in melodiousness and refinement. The lyrics tended to be simplistic at best, examples of beginner's poetry.

He found some grudging enjoyment in the unusual instrumental achievements of what the radio stations called “Eighties Hits”, whatever that meant, but he would not be admitting that anytime soon.

The pictures and recordings didn't seem like enough. The music wasn't enough.

He needed to be there.

Loki could not take you to Old Asgard exactly, but he could make illusions to immerse you in the world in which he grew up. But you couldn't do that, you couldn't bring your homeland to him. If he was to understand you better, he would have to go there himself. Surround himself in your land, eat the food, breathe in the air.

And so he began planning a little vacation.

Or was it an espionage mission? No one other than Heimdall could know he was there: He was still very much a persona non grata in the United States. He could not take you with him. He would have to go in disguise. He would have to go at night, while you slept, so that you would not suffer for his distance from you.

Maybe someday he would be allowed back; to take you back to see all your friends and neighbors. Until then, he would just have to bring some of it back to you.

One evening, he kissed your forehead gently, telling you that he had an errand to run, and might not be back until morning. You were tired; it was clear to him. You didn't even question what he would be doing.

As he left the city limits, he let his outline shimmer and fade away, replacing himself with features that would be less likely to draw suspicion. Soon there was nothing but a grizzled old man in worn jeans and a stretched out black tee shirt. Boring. Ordinary. Unremarkable.

All the things he was sure he was not.

Heimdall met him with a sarcastic stare.

“What have we here?” He said in a flat voice. “A lost, Midgardian peasant? I suppose I shall have to send you home.”

In a time past, Loki might have felt bashful, but that was before he had realized that the gatekeeper had a sense of humor drier than the center of a star. Now he only felt grateful about how willing Heimdall was to break the rules.

“I wish to learn some things.” Loki said. “It's for the good of my subjects.”

“Plural?” Heimdall questioned. Loki pursed his lips and looked away. Heimdall twisted the sword.

The light gathered Loki up, and flung him across the sea.

*****

The fields were vast in the dying light, stretching so far on every side, that it was impossible to see their end. The only break in the tall rows was the equally endless road Loki walked. He could smell the green plants as the sun disappeared beneath the corn, and the dust, and the mud in the roadside ditches.

Heat distorted the distance, assaulting his senses, but not as much as the noise.

Everywhere, every cubic inch of the world was the sawing scream of cicadas. It filled his skull, filled his bones, inescapable and omnipresent. How did you sleep in this? How could anyone sleep here?

But as he walked, as the day faded and the night awoke, Loki began to hear the song. The insects cries had a rhythm that rose and fell in rounds, constantly changing as a frog in a ditch puddle sang along, as crickets among the corn roots added their harmonies. The interruptions as something, perhaps himself, disturbed the nearest singers, causing them to fall silent, and change the melody entirely.

The whole world around him was alive, and reveling.

A dome of light on the horizon indicated your town. He would be there soon, an hour's walk at most.

The closer he got, the less he could see the emerging stars, a problem even the smallest of Midgardian settlements seemed to have. There were more vehicles too, several of them stopping to ask if he needed help. These he waved away with a friendly declaration that he was just out for a nice evening walk.

Eventually, there came a break in the cornfields, a wide verge between farmland and civilization. A sea of grass and barely visible wildflowers, closed up against the darkening night. He leaped over the ditch and strode a few feet into it, focusing on the last vestiges of wildflower scent, of the insects that rose into the air, the evening choir all around him.

The flashlight shining in his face, the stern questioning of an officer. The warning to move along. He wasn't even bothering anybody, and still, he was somehow in trouble.

The officer also offered him a ride, but Loki didn't trust it. A ride to the local prison maybe. The fellow was a bit too canny; he didn't seem to believe a thing Loki said.

He finally passed a city limit sign, that boasted of its two thousand residents. Smaller, even than Asgard, yet you'd spent your whole life here. Hemmed in by cornfields, like great, green walls. Lulled by the song of nature. Sick, and starving, and scared, without him.

And for a year of it, nearly alone, surrounded by dead fields, like even greater walls, no word from the outside world. Isolated, endangered, without even a single member of your family to draw comfort from. All because of Thanos. Just like Thor had been, in the aftermath. Just like he had been, after he fell.

But never again. None of you had to be alone now.

For a town, the place was surprisingly empty. There were large spaces between buildings, overgrown lawns and poorly manicured houses. There were churches; though in this country, there seemed to be churches on every corner. There was the grocery store he had taken you from. The memory had grown soft and treasured in his mind. The way you had fallen so dramatically in front of him, like a swooning maiden faced with raw power. The way life had flowed back into your limbs when he touched you, the way strength seized your soul, and you had so adorably tried to break his nose.

All he had felt then was your warmth. The blow might have felled a human man, but he was so much more. And he had since proven that to you. Mostly.

You still weren't ready for further steps into this relationship. That was okay. You had a busy life now, lots to think about. Your days were full of so much more than just deciding what icing to put on the cupcakes.

Speaking of...

Loki wandered the isles of the grocery store, imagining that you had done the same. Day in, day out, up and down these cramped, harshly lit shelves, until it was memorized. He stood outside the bakery section-closed by this time of night-knowing that you had spent years in that very spot. How the work of your hands had been appreciated by everyone who had bought any of the wide variety of baked goods on display, but had never been attributed to you. Every worker in this place wore the same uniform, the same hat, the same color. They were forced into facelessness.

You had worn that same uniform when he first found you. You'd lost your hat in the mire outside New Asgard, and he'd had the ugly, ill-fitted uniform thrown out. Only the apron remained, decorated, bettered, made more worthy of you and what you were becoming.

Loki adored the style of clothing you wore now; a mix of traditional Midgardian forms and Asgardian details-as unique in its position as you were. And you had taken to it so naturally! It would be nice to see you in some purely Asgardian pieces though. Specifically, Asgardian lingerie...

Loki tore his wandering mind away from that alluring subject, lingering instead on the array of presumably delicious baked goods before him. There were confetti cupcakes with galaxy-colored icing, covered in glitter, labeled 'Sayd-cupkakes', and a little photoshopped picture of you with rainbows and sparkles fountaining from your hands. He was sorely tempted to filch it, but he had already stolen something from this place.

On a table next to the cupcakes, there were green iced croissants, slightly unfurled before baking, in order to make them look less like a swirl, and more like bulls horns. These were labeled 'Lossants', and Loki struggled with amusement at the awful puns, and awareness about how inappropriate this probably was, considering all he had done. This would never have gone over in New York. The store would have been shut down immediately.

But your old workplace honored you. And seemed to at least acknowledge the reality of himself. If this tiny town could do that, perhaps there was hope yet.

Loki headed down the street, where it seemed a majority of the local eateries were located, and chose the most rustic looking. This would be the place where the local poor would eat, when they could afford to.

The décor was odd to him-it seemed there was little thematic cohesion, with everything from old signs, to movie posters, to farm animals made of wood or tin affixed to the walls. The false leather of the booth seating was red and cracked, and the yellowish lighting threw a grungy pall over everything.

Even in the guise of a rough old man, Loki managed to charm the waitress, ordering a combo plate of breakfast foods, which he was pleased to find were served all day. These were delicious, but he could see how they would be unhealthy for a human, who burned calories at a slower rate than Asgardians did. But Loki knew that peasants of both species needed hearty fare, to do the work that they did.

Personally, Loki found these 'waffles' to be delightful in taste and texture. Did you like these? Had you sat in this seat, smiled at this waitress, eaten waffles off these plates? Did you like this sublime sweetness known as maple syrup?

Or did you eschew these things in favor of the protein? These heavy scrambled eggs, the crunchy bacon, the sausage that was uncomfortably greasy. Asgardian food had been refined over millennia to provide for the needs of mighty warriors: it would be much healthier for you than this.

But maybe he could have some greasy sausage brought for you sometimes. He knew how you loved strong flavors.

He could feed you little tidbits. You could lick his fingers.

Again, Loki had to drag his thoughts away from such subjects, and concentrate on satisfying his other hungers. He had to pay with Icelandic money, bespelled to look like American dollars, but he would likely not be back this way again, so it wouldn't matter when the spell wore off.

Besides, they could just exchange it, couldn't they? It was the correct amount.

He wandered out into the night, allowing himself to get lost in the streets of your town. It was mostly quiet, but the sounds of music and television sets could be heard inside the houses, and cars ran back and forth infrequently on the hot streets. There was smoke in the air, the sounds of gatherings in backyards, and even here, the cry of cicadas. Loki located your 'High School', and what must have also been your 'Middle School', and 'Elementary School', though he still didn't understand the distinction. But there was only one of each in this little town, so you must have attended at least one. Perhaps you had been selected for the 'High school' due to your intellectual acuity? But then why were you still a peasant among humans?

You were exalted in Asgard now, paramour to a prince. He wanted to believe that it didn't matter, but it was your upbringing. It was what had shaped your personality, and informed your outlook on life. This town, with its run down buildings and overgrown lots, fenced in by walls of corn, it had created you. This was your true maker; it moulded you, and was still a part of you, like the Shining Realm would always be a part of him, no matter what was going by the name of Asgard now.

Loki was not so sure that he really liked this place. For being so flat and open, it still felt hemmed in and constricting. But he liked you, so he liked something of this place.

He walked all the way to the other side of town, and out towards the corn. There was a verge here as well; grass and wild plants between the town and fields, and he lay down there, watching the stars go by.

He must gave dozed off, because next he knew, he was waking to a different song. Birds made up the chorus this time, and he sat up to the rising scent of clover, their little pink and white flowers heated by the light of the morning sun. They mingled with the honeysuckle vine winding along the fence behind him, and-yes those were the flowers you had shown him in the Akureyri botanical garden.

Eager to be gone before anybody noticed, he gathered a bouquet of the cheerful, purple blooms. These he pressed into your hands when you greeted him on his return, as well as a quick kiss on the top of your sleepy head

If you wondered how he had gotten them, you were too drowsy to ask, and he bid you go back to sleep. You could both be late today.

#lasabrjotr #loki (marvel)#loki x reader #Heimdall (Marvel)

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bountyofbeads · 5 years ago

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The 'fool' that fentanyl made into a millionaire

https://apnews.com/ce51cf7c958643629bce76764f71058d

This is a fascinating read 📖 looking at who stoked and helped create the Fentanyl Crisis that has taken so many lives. 😱 😭 😭 😭

The 'Fool ' That Fentanyl Made Into A Millionaire

By CLAIRE GALOFARO and LINDSAY WHITEHURST | Published September 14, 2019 10:20 AM ET | AP | Posted September 14, 2019 10:40 AM ET |

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The photo that flashed onto the courtroom screen showed a young man dead on his bedroom floor, bare feet poking from the cuffs of his rolled up jeans. Lurking on a trash can at the edge of the picture was what prosecutors said delivered this death: an ordinary, U.S. Postal Service envelope.

It had arrived with 10 round, blue pills inside, the markings of pharmaceutical-grade oxycodone stamped onto the surface. The young man took out two, crushed and snorted them. But the pills were poison, prosecutors said: counterfeits containing fatal grains of fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid that has written a deadly new chapter in the American opioid epidemic.

The envelope was postmarked from the suburbs of Salt Lake City.

That's where a clean-cut, 29-year-old college dropout and Eagle Scout named Aaron Shamo made himself a millionaire by building a fentanyl trafficking empire with not much more than his computer and the help of a few friends.

___

This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

___

For three weeks this summer, those suburban millennials climbed onto the witness stand at his federal trial and offered an unprecedented window into how fentanyl bought and sold online has transformed the global drug trade. There was no testimony of underground tunnels or gangland murders or anything that a wall at the southern border might stop. Shamo called himself a "white-collar drug dealer," drew in co-workers from his time at eBay and peppered his messages to them with smiley-face emojis. His attorney called him a fool; his primary defense was that he isn't smart enough to be a kingpin.

How he and his friends managed to flood the country with a half-million fake oxycodone pills reveals the ease with which fentanyl now moves around the world, threatening to expand the epidemic beyond America's borders. It is so potent, so easy to transport, experts say, large-scale traffickers no longer require sophisticated networks to send it to any corner of the globe. All they need is a mailbox, internet access and people with an appetite for opioids. And consumption rates are rising from Asia to Europe to Latin America as pharmaceutical companies promote painkillers abroad.

The case against Shamo detailed how white powder up to 100 times stronger than morphine was bought online from a laboratory in China and arrived in Utah via international mail; it was shaped into perfect-looking replicas of oxycodone tablets in the press that thumped in Shamo's basement and resold on the internet's black markets. Then it was routed back into the postal system in thousands of packages addressed to homes across this country awash with prescription painkiller addiction.

When Shamo took the stand to try to spare himself a lifetime in prison, he began with a nervous chuckle. He careened from one topic to the next in a monologue prosecutors would later describe as masterful manipulation to convince the jury he thought his drug-dealing was helping people. Customers wrote thank you notes because their doctors refused to prescribe more painkillers, he said. It felt like "a win-win situation" — he got rich and his customers got drugs.

One of them was a struggling 21-year-old named Ruslan Klyuev who died in his bedroom in Daly City, California, the envelope from Utah at his feet. Shamo was charged in connection to that overdose alone, but when investigators scoured the list of customers they said they counted dozens more dead.

___

The question before this jury is being debated all across America: Two decades into the opioid epidemic, is there such a thing as justice for 400,000 lost lives?

The largest civil litigation in history is testing how the pharmaceutical industry should be held accountable for inundating the country with billions of addictive pain pills. Purdue Pharma, seen by many as the primary villain for deceptively pushing the blockbuster drug OxyContin, reached a tentative $12 billion settlement this week with about half the states and roughly 2,000 local governments. Attorneys general who didn't sign on say the figure is far too low. A trial of other pharmaceutical companies is scheduled for next month, in which communities will contend that their mass marketing of prescription painkillers sparked an epidemic.

This crisis began in the 1990s and has since has spiraled into waves, each worse than the one before: Prescription opioids spread addiction, then a crackdown on prescribing paved the road to heroin, which led to fentanyl — a synthetic opioid made entirely in a laboratory. Traffickers added it to heroin to boost its potency and profitability. That transition happened slowly at first, then with extraordinary ferocity.

By 2017, deaths from synthetic opioids had increased more than 800 percent, to 28,466, dragging the United States' overall life expectancy down for a third consecutive year for the first time in a century. Fentanyl deaths have been reported abroad, in Canada, Sweden, Estonia, the United Kingdom. Countries with surging prescription opioid addiction, like Australia, fear they are on the brink.

"Fentanyl will be the bubonic plague," said Mike Vigil, former chief of international operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration, warning that any country with a burgeoning prescription opioid problem could soon find itself following American footsteps. "It's just a matter of time."

No one can say exactly how or why fentanyl, first synthesized in 1959 as a powerful painkiller, entered the modern illicit drug market, said Bryce Pardo, a researcher at the Rand Corporation. In 2013, people began overdosing on heroin laced with fentanyl in New England and Ohio, and it spread from there. Shabbir Safdar, the Partnership for Safe Medicines' executive director, said the first known death from a fentanyl-laced pill was in San Francisco in October 2015.

It was a frightening development: The DEA estimates 3.4 million Americans misuse prescription painkillers, compared to 475,000 heroin users — meaning the pool potentially exposed is 10 times bigger.

There are two sources of supply. Mexican cartels and packages shipped direct from China, where it is produced in a huge and under-regulated chemical sector. A Senate investigation last year found massive quantities of fentanyl pouring in from China through the Postal Service. The report largely blamed dated technology that left customs inspectors sifting through packages manually looking for "the proverbial needle in a haystack." The Postal Service wrote in a statement to The Associated Press that it is working hard with its international counterparts to close those loopholes, and is improving its technology to intercept fentanyl shipments.

By the time a seized package heading from China to Utah led investigators to Shamo, he had already turned fentanyl into at least 458,946 potentially poisonous pills, the government said. There are many more like him, officials say, upstart traffickers pressing pure Chinese-made fentanyl into pills in their basements and kitchens with unsophisticated equipment. In a single batch, one pill might have no fentanyl and another enough to kill a person instantly. One agent at Shamo's trial compared it to making chocolate-chip cookies, only if too many chips ended up in a "cookie," whoever ate it dropped dead.

For traffickers, the profit margins are irresistible: The DEA estimates a kilogram of fentanyl synthesized for a few thousand dollars could make a dealer more than $1 million.

"Any moron can basically become a major drug kingpin by dealing in fentanyl," said Vigil. "You can have somebody with an IQ minus 100 who becomes an overnight multimillionaire."

___

Aaron Shamo dreamed of entrepreneurial riches. He idolized Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, and studied self-improvement books like "Think and Grow Rich."

He and a longtime friend, Drew Crandall, worked at eBay after failed stints in college. But Crandall was fired and Shamo decided it was "unfair" that he still had to work, so he quit. They wanted easy money.

Shamo grew up in Phoenix with three older sisters. As a teenager, he started smoking pot and refusing to attend services with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His parents sent him to boarding school in Utah, where he earned his Eagle Scout badge. He later met Crandall through their shared love of longboarding and they moved in together. Crandall was awkward and shy; Shamo was charismatic, and prided himself on helping his friend talk to girls.

The pair concocted a plan to sell their Adderall, prescribed for attention deficit disorder, on the dark web — a wild, unregulated layer of the internet reached through a special browser. There are underground marketplaces there that mimic Amazon or eBay, where guns and drugs and pirated software are traded. Money is exchanged anonymously through cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.

They learned what they needed on the web, searching with queries like "how to ship drugs." It was so easy. They expanded, ordering drugs in bulk, breaking them down and selling at a mark-up, all while barely having to leave the house.

They used the postal system like a drug mule, peddling the club drug MDMA, magic mushrooms, date rape drugs — they once bought a kilogram of cocaine from Peru. They recruited friends, offering them $100 to have parcels mailed to their homes, no questions asked.

But the profit margins were slim and their ambitions were greater: They bought a pill press, ordered the sedative alprazolam online from India and watched YouTube videos to figure out how to turn it into fake Xanax, an anti-anxiety medication. Crandall, math minded, created the recipe. They mixed it up by shaking it in mason jars.

Then Crandall fell in love.

His new girlfriend grew suspicious when he would sneak away to package drugs. When she confronted him at a party, he tearfully confessed. She forgave him, if he promised to leave the business. They bought one-way tickets to New Zealand.

Then a local drug dealer made a suggestion to Shamo that would change the course of his life: There was a fortune to be made in producing fake oxycodone.

Shamo enlisted his gym buddy, Jonathan Luke Paz, to help him. Shamo ordered fentanyl online from China, set up the pill press in the basement and bought dyes and stamps to match popular pharmaceuticals. Then they handed them over to the local dealer, who tested them on his own customers. The first batches were weak or speckled in color, he told them, or didn't react like real oxycodone when users heated it on tinfoil to smoke it.

But they were getting better.

"Close to being money in the bank," the dealer messaged Shamo. "You did it, bro."

On the first day of 2016, Shamo he wrote out his goals for the upcoming year: He would be rich. All the girls would want him.

"I will overachieve," he wrote. "I will overcome."

He went online with his products a month later. Some were specified as fentanyl, but some weren't, purporting instead to contain 30 milligrams of oxycodone. Shamo named this new store Pharma-Master.

___

As winter turned to summer, sales skyrocketed. Pharma-Master started selling thousands of pills a week, charging around $10 each.

On June 6, a relatively small order came in: 10 pills, to be shipped to an apartment house in Daly City, a working-class suburb of San Francisco.

Like every order, it was sent in an encrypted email to two former eBay co-workers in charge of distribution. Alexandrya Tonge and Katherine Bustin counted out the pills in their suburban condo, packaged the shipments and dropped them in the mail.

The envelope arrived at the doorstep at 3 p.m. on June 11.

Under different circumstances, Shamo might have been friends with the 21-year-old man who lived there. Ruslan Klyuev, a Russian immigrant, was also an aspiring tech entrepreneur interested in the dark web. He had a baby face: rosy cheeks and curly hair. Klyuev loved to cook and would make extravagant meals for the house.

But his relationship ended, his web design business sputtered and he became estranged from his family, said Barry, a roommate who spoke on the condition that his last name not be published. His emotions toggled between sorrow and elation, and he struggled with substance abuse.

After drinking vodka, Klyuev crushed two of the pills with a battery and snorted the powder with a rolled-up sticky note, according to testimony. He started drifting in and out of sleep. He couldn't stand up.

He was found dead the next day, with fentanyl, alcohol and a substance associated with cocaine in his system.

His was the only death with which Shamo would be charged. His defense attorney, Greg Skordas, argued that neither his death nor any others can be definitely linked with Shamo's operation.

But in documents, prosecutors connected Shamo to a veritable slaughter:

A 24-year-old man in Seattle overdosed three weeks after he bought pills from Pharma-Master in March 2016.

Later that spring, 40 pills were shipped to a 21-year-old in Washington, D.C. He died in his dorm room 11 days later.

In Utah, a 29-year-old software analyst named Devin Meldrum had been searching since he was a teenager for a cure for cluster headaches that felt like knives stabbing his skull, said his father, Rod.

Doctors had prescribed opioids but limited the dosage, so he bought a backup supply from Pharma-Master. On Aug. 13, 2016, he ran out of pills days before his refill. As he got ready for bed, he texted his fiance and took a pill from his reserve for the first time, his father said.

He was dead before she arrived to say goodnight, blue on his bathroom floor.

His father isn't sure Shamo even now understands the magnitude of what happened: "Does he even comprehend how many families have had their hearts torn out?"

___

Online, Pharma-Master was getting rave reviews.

"These will make u a millionaire in under a year, guarantee," wrote one shopper who called himself "Trustworthy Money."

He was a dealer in Portland named Jared Gillespie. He bought 80,000 pills from Pharma-Master, according to documents filed against Gillespie in Oregon. He knew he was buying fentanyl pills, the Oregon prosecutors alleged, but the people buying from him had no way to know that. They are unknown and uncounted.

Shamo offered steep discounts for bulk buyers. Tonge, one of his distributors, testified that she began to question Shamo's claim that he was helping patients who couldn't get medication: Why would one person need 5,000 pills?

Her vacuum cleaner would become a critical piece of evidence. Its dust bin was filled with pills. The operation had grown so frantic, pumping out tens of thousands of tablets a month, that when they spilled onto the floor, they weren't worth saving.

Tonge and her partner complained that the orders were coming too quickly, so Shamo hired a "runner" named Sean Gygi to pick up the packages and drop them in the mail, dozens of them a day.

Drug manufacturing became routine: Shamo once wrote himself a to-do list, and included a reminder to "make blues," the street name for oxycodone, along with getting a haircut, washing his sheets, cleaning the kitchen. And Shamo planned to expand. He bought another press so big agents would later need a tow truck to drag it out of his garage.

The money was pouring in, and out.

Shamo hired a personal assistant; she did his shopping, had his car detailed. He stuffed a duffel bag with $429,000 cash and asked his parents to hold it. He bragged to friends about VIP bottle service at clubs and gambling in Las Vegas. He shopped for real estate in Puerto Rico; took photos sipping champagne on a cruise ship; bought designer jeans, an 88-inch television, a boat and BMW.

Crandall and his girlfriend posted photos on Instagram of trips to Laos, Thailand, Singapore, kayaking and partying. But he was running out of money and agreed to become a remote customer service representative. The list of people accepting packages from China ballooned to more than a dozen. Everyone was making easy money and getting text messages from Shamo dotted with "lol" and "awesome!"

Shamo penned another note: "I am Shamo. I am awesome. My friends love me. I created an empire."

But even as he cheered himself on, there were signs of danger.

One customer reported an overdose death. Shamo scanned obituaries, then declared it was a faked, Crandall said. Then a message said pills were making people sick.

Crandall forwarded it to Shamo with a dismissive question: Should he tell them to "suck it up?" Or send more pills to pacify them?

___

They didn't know it, but a suspicious customs agent at the Los Angeles International Airport had flagged a box from Shanghai, China, pulled it off the belt and looked inside. The agent found 98.7 grams of fentanyl powder — enough to make almost 100,000 pills. The box was destined for Utah.

Agents looked for more packages making their way from China to Utah, and eventually one arrived, said an agent with Homeland Security Investigations who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect ongoing investigations. On Nov. 8, 2016, postal inspectors seized a box en route from a port city in China known to law enforcement as a fentanyl-trafficking hub. It was addressed to Sean Gygi, Shamo's "runner," so agents arrived at his house with a search warrant.

Gygi said he thought the hundreds of envelopes he'd put in the mail contained the party drugs he sometimes took himself. Told it was fentanyl, the agent recalled, Gygi drooped.

He agreed to wear a wire while he picked up the packages, like he did every day. But instead of dropping them in the mail, he delivered them to police.

This single day's shipment contained 34,828 fentanyl pills destined for homes in 26 states.

Four days later, on Nov. 22, 2016, agents stood on Shamo's stoop, shouted through a bullhorn, then broke the door down with a battering ram. They were dressed in neon-orange hazmat suits with clear bowls around their faces that made them look like astronauts.

Shamo came up the stairs in a T-shirt and shorts, a mask and gloves in his pocket. A pill press downstairs was running, in a room with powder caked on the walls and the furniture.

Others were raiding the stash at Bustin and Tonge's condo. Veteran vice officers would say they had never seen so many pills, even in international operations. In total, they packed up over 74,000 fentanyl pills awaiting distribution.

In Shamo's sock drawer, agents found stack after stack of cash. There was more money in a safe in the closet. Agents totaled up more than $1.2 million, not including the money he had tied up in Bitcoin or bags he'd stashed with his family. Investigators eventually caught up with Paz, who Shamo paid around a dollar per pill, and he surrendered $800,000 more.

Crandall was in Laos, still traveling with his girlfriend, when he heard the news. He stored his drug-related data on a flash drive, threw it down a storm drain and sent an email to the dark web marketplace: "This account has been compromised." After a few months, he figured he was in the clear. He and his girlfriend planned their wedding and invited guests to meet them in Hawaii for the big day: May 12, 2017. They bought rings, and a dress.

Agents were waiting when they stepped onto American soil in Honolulu.

___

When Crandall sat on the witness stand, he was slump-shouldered and shackled, clumsily trying to maneuver his handcuffs to pull a tissue out of the box to wipe his eyes. In the two years since his arrest, he has been imprisoned in a county jail and watched his fellow inmates suffer the brutal fallout of an opioid epidemic. They stole from their parents, cycled in and out of jail and shivered, sweated, sobbed through withdrawal.

He'd helped feed this, he realized. For money.

He and Shamo's other ex-partners and packagers pleaded guilty, agreed to testify against their friend and hoped for mercy.

The story they told convinced the jury to convict Shamo of 12 counts, including continuing criminal enterprise, the so-called "kingpin charge" that is typically reserved for drug lords like El Chapo and carries a mandatory life sentence. The jury deadlocked, though on the 13th count: the death of Klyuev.

The bust was one of the largest operations in the country in 2016. But the fentanyl trade has only grown more sophisticated since. By comparison, Shamo now looks "small-time," said Safdar, with the Partnership for Safe Medicines. The most notorious Mexican drug cartels have transitioned to fentanyl, even as homegrown upstarts like Shamo's proliferate.

Seizure data in the United Nation's World Drug Report shows trafficking quickly expanding worldwide. In 2013, four countries reported fentanyl seizures. By 2016: 12 countries. In 2017, 16 countries reported seizing fentanyl.

And there is no reason to believe it will not spread further. In Africa and the Middle East, the synthetic opioid tramadol is widely abused, much of it illicitly manufactured in Asia. If that market transitions to fentanyl it would be catastrophic, said Scott Stewart, a former agent with the State Department. In Australia, prescription opioid consumption has quadrupled. Marianne Jauncey, medical director of a Sydney harm-reduction center, can't think of any reason fentanyl won't soon arrive — all they can do is prepare for the day that it does.

As Shamo was convicted, a single dark web marketplace still had 32,000 listings for drugs, thousands of them claiming to be oxycodone. There was no way to tell whether they originated in a pharmacy or somebody's basement.

One vendor even borrowed a version of Shamo's name. Pharmamaster peddles oxys online, sold in bulk at a discount. It has, it boasts, an "unlimited" supply.

"Pharma-grade A++," the listings promise. "24-hour shipping!"

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antoine-roquentin · 6 years ago

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It was a warm evening this past July when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shared a drink with the world’s most powerful intelligence network.

Spy chiefs from the Five Eyes nations had come to a secure resort in coastal Nova Scotia for an informal evening after intense talks in nearby Ottawa.

Trudeau, who’d spent part of the day pledging to fix a “death trap” highway in the Atlantic province, dropped in on the gathering to share some thoughts about geopolitical threats.

When he left, as the lobster dinner was being served, the conversation returned to a debate that began well before this annual meeting and would run long after it: should the agencies go public with their concerns about China?

In the months that followed that July 17 dinner, an unprecedented campaign has been waged by those present – Australia, the US, Canada, New Zealand and the UK – to block Chinese tech giant Huawei from supplying equipment for their next-generation wireless networks.

This increasingly muscular posture towards Beijing culminated in last week’s arrest of Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, in Vancouver, over alleged breaches of US sanctions with Iran. Meng, the daughter of the Huawei’s founder Ren Zhengfei, was granted bail on Wednesday ahead of efforts to extradite her to the US.

As the spy bosses sat down to savour Nova Scotia’s famous lobster that evening with a glass of local wine, their recent clash with Russia was seen as a template for the power of working collectively. The British delegation led by MI6 boss Alex Younger – a man who signs official documents in green ink with a single letter “C” – had detailed evidence of the brazen attacks in Salisbury, where Moscow had used a military-grade chemical weapon on UK soil.

In the aftermath the British went public and the Five Eyes coordinated the largest ever expulsion of Russian intelligence officers from NATO and partner states. All agreed this would significantly degrade Russia’s intelligence capability.

That episode reminded everyone that espionage and foreign interference continues to be a pervasive threat. Some believed since 9/11 that mission had been obscured by the fight against terrorism and so at their own pace each had concluded the greatest emerging threat was China’s Communist Party.

They also knew that to contend with this challenge there was no other group of nations that enjoyed such shared knowledge, cultural affinity and technical expertise.

Not all agreed to speak publicly about China when they returned home, but all were determined to act. And the Five Eyes network would include allies like Japan and Germany in the conversation.

This coming in from the cold was viewed as a countermeasure to China and its many proxies, who have long argued fears over its rising power and influence were a fiction, or worse still, signs of xenophobia.

Since that July meeting there has been a series of rare public speeches by intelligence chiefs and a coordinated effort on banning Huawei from 5G networks. It began with one of Malcolm Turnbull’s last acts as Prime Minister.

The Sunday before he was deposed Turnbull rang the US President Donald Trump to tell him of Australia’s decision to exclude Huawei and China’s second largest telecommunications equipment maker ZTE from the 5G rollout.

Australia’s statement on the rules it would apply to building next-generation wireless networks was released on August 23 and largely lost in the leadership maelstrom.

Huawei was not named but it ruled out equipment being supplied by “vendors who are likely to be subject to extrajudicial directions from a foreign government”.

Mike Burgess put Huawei back on the national agenda when on October 29 he became the first Director-General of the Australian Signals Directorate to make a public speech in the organisation’s 70 year history.

Listening attentively from the head table that night was the Director-General of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Duncan Lewis and his counterpart at the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, Paul Symon.

All three men were at the meetings in Canada. Again, Burgess never named Huawei or ZTE but said the stakes with 5G “could not be higher” as it “will underpin the communications that Australians rely on every day.”

The man who runs an agency that unlocks electronic secrets had a poacher’s view of the threat: “Offence informs defence and defence informs offence. Or to put it another way, to catch a thief, you will need to think like one (or perhaps, be one).”

Since then he has given a TV interview and opened a Twitter account with a lively first post; “Hi internet, ASD here. Long time listener, first time caller.”

Burgess has even dabbled in some light trolling of Huawei. On November 21 when a Huawei executive boasted of successfully separating the core and access parts of a 5G network in New Zealand he tagged the ASD boss on his post.

To the surprise of most Burgess replied; “Thanks for sharing. In my business I’ve never seen anything “fully isolated...”.

Seven days later New Zealand banned Huawei from supplying 5G equipment to mobile phone company Spark.

Then on December 6, the head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, David Vigneault, who had hosted the annual Five Eyes gathering, used his first ever public speech to warn of an emerging threat.

“CSIS has seen a trend of state-sponsored espionage in fields that are crucial to Canada’s ability to build and sustain a prosperous, knowledge-based economy,” he said.

“I’m talking about areas such as AI [artificial intelligence], quantum technology, 5G, biopharma and clean tech. In other words, the foundation of Canada’s future growth.”

No one was in any doubt he was talking about China. A formal ban on Huawei and ZTE from Ottawa is expected within weeks.

A day after the Canadian spy boss spoke, the head of MI6 was on his feet at his old Scottish university, St Andrews.

In a speech described as “rare” he warned that “much of the evolving state threat is about our opponents’ increasingly innovative exploitation of modern technology”.

The United Kingdom posed a particular problem for the Five Eyes as, 15 years earlier, British Telecom had struck a partnership with Huawei and that example was routinely used to counter arguments it posed a threat.

In answer to a question Younger took direct aim at Britain’s Huawei problem.

“We need to decide the extent to which we are going to be comfortable with Chinese ownership of these technologies and these platforms in an environment where some of our allies have taken a very definite position,” he said.

On the same day the BT Group announced it was stripping Huawei's equipment out of the core of its existing 3G and 4G mobile operations and would not use its technology in the 5G network.

But no country has been more aggressive than the United States, represented at the Canadian meetings by Gina Haspel.

The newly appointed director of the Central Intelligence Agency was battle hardened by a life spent in the shadows. She shed some light on that in a bruising Senate confirmation hearing in May saying she had “excelled in finding and acquiring secret information that I obtained in brush passes, dead drops, or in meetings in dusty alleys of third world capitals.”

Well before her arrival at the helm of the CIA, the US has been focused on Beijing and the proceedings against Huawei’s Meng are just one front in its efforts to bring China to heel.

Washington’s sharp focus on Beijing plays into Trump’s obsession with trade wars but it would be wrong to think it’s solely driven by the President. Over the past two years Republicans and Democrats in Congress and the Departments of Defence, State and the security agencies have come to the conclusion China is a strategic threat.

US prosecutors have filed charges against Chinese hackers and, in an audacious sting in April, American agents lured Chinese Ministry of State Security deputy director Yanjun Xu to Belgium, where he was arrested for orchestrating the theft of military secrets.

There is also speculation further indictments are imminent over a concerted Chinese hacking campaign known as “Operation Cloud Hopper”, which is believed to have penetrated networks across the globe, including Australia.

In addition the White House used its bi-annual report on China, last month to say Beijing had "fundamentally" failed to change its behaviour around cyber espionage giving it unfair access to intellectual property, trade secrets, negotiating positions and the internal communications of business.

The report added weight to revelations in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald the same week that China had diverted internet traffic heading to Sydney and its peak security agency had overseen a surge in attacks on Australian companies.

This industrial scale cyber theft is just part of a form guide which convinced the Five Eyes intelligence chiefs that Beijing would not hesitate to recruit Huawei to its cause and the company would have no choice but to comply.

All the evidence before the spy bosses at the dinner in Canada pointed to a rising superpower mounting the most comprehensive campaign of espionage and foreign interference that any had witnessed.

The Party was aggressively exporting a worldview that was hostile to democracy and actively sought to undermine it.

A new Great Game was afoot and the West had been slow to act. But it is acting now.

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robertreich · 7 years ago

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America’s Shkreli Problem

On Friday, Martin Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in prison. What, if anything, does Shkreli’s downfall tell us about modern America?

Shkreli’s early life exemplified the rags-to-riches American success story. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, in April 1983, to parents who immigrated from Albania and worked as janitors in New York apartment buildings. Shkreli attended New York’s Hunter College High School, a public school for intellectually gifted young people, and in 2005 received a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Baruch College.

But soon thereafter, Shkreli turned toward shady deals. He started his own hedge fund, betting that the stock prices of certain biotech companies would drop. Then he used financial chat rooms on the Internet to savage those companies, causing their prices to drop and his bets to pay off.

In 2015, Shkreli founded and became CEO Turing Pharmaceuticals. Under his direction Turing spent $55 million for the U.S. rights to sell a drug called Daraprim. Developed in 1953, Daraprim is the only approved treatment for toxoplasmosis, a rare parasitic disease that can cause birth defects in unborn babies, and lead to seizures, blindness, and death in cancer patients and people with AIDS. Daraprim is on the World Health Organization’s list of Essential Medicines.

Months after he bought the drug, Schkreli raised its price by over 5,000 percent, from $13.50 a pill to $750.00.

Shkreli was roundly criticized, but he was defiant: "No one wants to say it, no one's proud of it, but this is a capitalist society, a capitalist system and capitalist rules.” He said he wished he had raised the price even higher, and would buy another essential drug and raise its price, too.

In February 2016, Shkreli was called before a congressional committee to justify his price increase on Daraprim. He refused to answer any questions, pleading the Fifth Amendment. After the hearing Shkreli tweeted, “Hard to accept that these imbeciles represent the people in our government.”

Shkreli was subsequently arrested in connection with an unrelated scheme to defraud his former hedge fund investors. In anticipation of his criminal trial, Shkreli boasted to the New Yorker magazine, “I think they’ll return a not-guilty verdict in two hours. There are going to be jurors who will be fans of mine. I walk down the streets of New York and people shake my hand. They say, ‘I want to be just like you.’”

During his trial, Shkreli strolled into a room filled with reporters and made light of a particular witness, for which the trial judge rebuked him. On his Facebook page he mocked the prosecutors, and told news outlets they were a “junior varsity” team.

He retaliated against journalists who criticized him by purchasing internet domains associated with their names and ridiculing them on the sites. “I wouldn't call these people 'journalists,’” he wrote in an email to Business Insider. He said on Facebook that if he were acquitted he’d be able to have sex with a female journalist he often posted about online.

After his conviction, Shkreli called the case “a witch hunt of epic proportions, and maybe they found one or two broomsticks.” As she imposed sentence last Friday, the judge cited Shkrili’s “egregious multitude of lies,” noting also that he “repeatedly minimized” his conduct.

Shkreli’s story is tragic and pathetic, but I ask you: How different is Martin Shkreli from other figures who dominate American life today, even at the highest rungs?

Shkreli will do whatever it takes to win, regardless of the consequences for anyone else. He believes that the norms other people live by don’t apply to him. His attitude toward the law is that anything he wants to do is okay unless it is clearly illegal -- and even if illegal, it’s okay if he can get away with it.

He��s contemptuous of anyone who gets in his way – whether judges, prosecutors, members of Congress, or journalists. He remains unapologetic for what he did. He is utterly shameless.

Sound familiar? The Shkreli personality disorder can be found on Wall Street, in the executive suites of some of America’s largest corporations, in Hollywood, in Silicon Valley, in some of our most prestigious universities, and in Washington. If you look hard enough, you might even find it in Trump’s White House.

Face it: America has a Shkreli problem.

Martin Shkleri will spend the next seven years of his life in prison. But what will happen to the other unbridled narcissists now in positions of power in America, who also blatantly defy the common good?

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wp-yahoo-style-1042-yahoopa-blog · 6 years ago

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'Being fat is not beautiful. It's an excuse': Revolve accused of fat-shaming with sweatshirt meant to shine light on horrors of trolling

Revolve is being dragged through the mud for releasing a fat-shaming sweatshirt. (Photo: Revolve)

What started out as a well-meaning sweatshirt has led to an uproar on social media over mixed messages about fat shaming and body positivity.

Social issues advocate and artist Florence Given found the sweatshirts on Revolve’s website on Wednesday, with the featured image showing a straight-size model in a pullover that read, “Being fat is not beautiful. It’s an excuse.” Disgusted by the message the sweatshirt sent, Given shared photos of it on Instagram. She also showed another sweatshirt the brand had on its website, emblazoned with the phrase, “Too boney to be boned.”

In tiny print below the quotes, the sweatshirts say, “as said to” beside an Instagram handle, giving the impression that these were comments pulled from someone’s Instagram account. The accounts attributed on the sweatshirts belong to models like Cara Delevingne and Paloma Elsesser.

According to Fashionista, the quotes were comments reportedly said to famous women — but the campaign backfired when the apparel was released early without any context. Since the $168 sweatshirt went up on Revolve’s website on Wednesday, Twitter has been awash with comments bashing the brand for the offensive message.

why is no one talking about revolve selling a “being fat is not beautiful it’s an excuse” sweatshirt, that’s so messed up

— m (@valentisilk) September 12, 2018

Hi @REVOLVE let's talk about why this is so misguided and stupid: https://t.co/YrLAe8yBNP

— Tyler McCall (@eiffeltyler) September 12, 2018

What is there to say about @revolve's decision to include this sweatshirt in their inventory? That they think it's okay and will resonate with their customer base speaks volumes. pic.twitter.com/9x1xXXyBGR

— Lisa Braun Dubbels (@lisadubbels) September 12, 2018

honestly i sometimes wish i covered body positivity all day everyday because i'd love to go IN on this https://t.co/USC2C7SWnU

— Izabella Zaydenberg (@belkabelka) September 12, 2018

Also like may I say that the attribution text is so small as to render my first few reads of the sweatshirt as CHAMPIONING this awful line? You could read the quote a city block away but would have to be in conversational distance to catch the "as said to".

— Jenna Kass is sleepy (@JennaKassArt) September 12, 2018

The sweatshirt got the attention of outspoken actress Jameela Jamil, who posited a rhetorical question for the brand.

Jesus Christ @REVOLVE what are you doing?! pic.twitter.com/Jtv0fHQEpI

— Jameela Jamil (@jameelajamil) September 12, 2018

Tess Holliday, a plus-size model who recently faced backlash from haters over her history-making Cosmo UK cover, also called out Revolve for being “a mess.”

LOLLLLL @REVOLVE y’all are a mess. pic.twitter.com/CrzOkd5oE4

— Tess Holliday 🥀 (@Tess_Holliday) September 12, 2018

“They have a huge following that’s mostly young women and they are perpetuating the toxic idea that our worth is tied into our size,” Holliday said in a statement to Mic. “They must have never seen me, because I’m fat and beautiful.”

Instagrammers were just as angry. “I am actually disgusted and bewildered….. who in the design meeting thought – “hey – I know a good idea” … and what idiotic team agreed with them!!??????” someone commented on Given’s post. “This can’t be real,” another pleaded. “BEING DISRESPECTFUL ISNT BEAUTIFUL ITS DISGUSTING.”

Revolve already has a reputation for its lack of diversity (remember #RevolveSoWhite?) and this sweatshirt is just fanning the flames. According to Fashionista, the largest size available in the sweatshirt was an XL. And that’s a stretch for Revolve, since the brand usually doesn’t sell anything beyond a size L. Just look at its size guide.

The fact that the sweatshirt is modeled on a slender woman is just a slap in the face to curvy girls everywhere.

So…. @REVOLVE thinks its okay to market this sweatshirt — which only comes up to an XL, by the way — by putting it on a thin model? Considering Revolve doesn't even have diverse influencers this is….A Choice. https://t.co/40R1iWTHkp pic.twitter.com/JhdonQbF3Y

— Tyler McCall (@eiffeltyler) September 12, 2018

“Can’t believe this is real? Why wouldn’t they just hire Paloma or another model who has been a victim of this kind of thinking. Do better @revolve @lpa,” someone suggested on Instagram.

As for plus-size representation? If you Google “Revolve plus size” you’ll find it. You won’t find anything in it though; there are “0 items” in the section. Not even the sweatshirt in question.

Revolve’s plus-size section is empty. (Credit: Revolve)

If this was Revolve’s foray into size inclusivity, it appears the brand missed the mark.

Given got a hold of LPA founder Pia Arrobio on Instagram, who explained the idea behind these sweatshirts, which was a collaboration with five women to “shine the light on how horrible trolling is.” The plan was to launch the sweatshirts on Thursday, but they “went up early on Revolve for some reason,” Arrobio tells Given on Instagram, before the context of the quotes was made clear.

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UPDATE: heard back from @palomija and she told me she is MORTIFIED about how this quote has been used, and is asking for her quote to be pulled • The brand @lpa responded and they have got @revolve to take down the shots – this is our convo. Problematic marketing = a problem with diversity in the work place. This is still incredibly problematic and an awful attempt at ‘claiming back’ toxic narratives because (in my opinion) it just gives them power by putting them back into the world and at a £162 price tag. The designs went up to XL, so the women who this tee is supposed to ‘empower’ probably wouldn’t even fit into one. But at least we got the pics taken down…Ugh.

A post shared by FLOSS (@florencegiven) on Sep 12, 2018 at 8:23am PDT

One of those women, actress Lena Dunham, distanced herself from the project Wednesday afternoon in a statement, citing Revolve’s presentation of only “thin white women.”

“As a result, I cannot support this collaboration or lend my name to it in any way,” Dunham wrote in part. “This doesn’t take away from my love or respect for what Pia has done with LPA, but I am deeply disappointed in @revolve’s handling of a sensitive topic and a collaboration rooted in reclaiming the words of internet trolls to celebrate the beauty in diversity and bodies and experiences that aren’t the industry norm.”

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For months I’ve been working on a collaboration with my friend Pia’s company LPA through parent company @revolve – sweatshirts that highlight quotes from prominent women who have experienced internet trolling & abuse. This is a cause very close to my heart and the proceeds were meant to benefit charities that help young women by empowering them to express themselves through writing and art. Without consulting me or any of the women involved, @revolve presented the sweatshirts on thin white women, never thinking about the fact that difference and individuality is what gets you punished on the Internet, or that lack of diversity in representation is a huge part of the problem (in fact, the problem itself.) As a result, I cannot support this collaboration or lend my name to it in any way. This doesn’t take away from my love or respect for what Pia has done with LPA, but I am deeply disappointed in @revolve’s handling of a sensitive topic and a collaboration rooted in reclaiming the words of internet trolls to celebrate the beauty in diversity and bodies and experiences that aren’t the industry norm. *** I’d like to especially extend my love and support to @palomija, whose quote was the first to be promoted and mangled. She’s a hero of mine. Like me, she gave her quote in good faith and shared her vulnerability in order to support arts education and to spread her message of empowerment, and she wasn’t consulted in the marketing. Not an ounce of negativity should be sent her way. *** My only goal on this planet is to empower women through art and dialogue. I’m grateful to every woman who shared a quote and so disappointed that our words were not honored. As a result, I will be making a donation to the charity of every woman’s choice who was wronged with me and I hope that @revolve will join me with a contribution of their own. *** P.S. This Rubens painting makes me happy because it’s about women joining in love, but he didn’t recognize diversity at all- he just loved curvy butts. Problematic fave.

A post shared by Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) on Sep 12, 2018 at 11:47am PDT

Social media users were unhappy with more than just the way the top was modeled. “[O]kay but why would they sell a shirt like that???” someone commented on Instagram. “Even with the explanation, those shirts are an awful and poorly executed idea.”

When the answer is “The merchandise went up early? Also, fundraising! And bullying is wrong!” to the question “Why are you selling a sweatshirt conflating fatness with laziness?” perhaps a rethink is in order? https://t.co/bJzdtovmHj

— The Immortal Iron Feminist (@lschmeiser) September 12, 2018

This sweatshirt from @revolve is part of a series of things said to different women BUT the truth is you’ve put this on a sample size model .. sizes only go up to a 10, it’s kinda hard to… https://t.co/GBd4avU4vJ

— Curves Become Her (@AartiOlivia) September 12, 2018

“This morning, images of a forth coming LPA collection were prematurely released on Revolve.com,” Revolve told Yahoo Lifestyle. “The capsule collection – originally conceived by LPA alongside Lena Dunham, Emily Ratajkowski, Cara Delevingne, Suki Waterhouse and Paloma Elsesser – was set to debut tomorrow as a direct commentary on the modern day ‘normality’ of cyber-bullying and the shared desire to create a community for those most affected by the epidemic.” Proceeds were set to benefit “Girls Write Now,” a charity focused on mentoring underserved young women and helping them find their voices and tell their stories through writing.

“We at Revolve sincerely apologize to all those involved – particularly Lena, Emily, Cara, Suki and Paloma – our loyal customers, and the community as a whole for this error,” they added. “The collection has been pulled. We are proud to donate $20,000 to ‘Girls Write Now’ in the hopes that those who need it can still benefit from what was to be a meaningful, insightful and impactful collaboration by LPA.”

While the brand admitted the promo shots were poorly executed, they would not comment on how those photos came to be.

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

Magazine editor gets called out for fat-shaming: ‘Why are you using 3 fat and out of shape women for your models?’

Woman fat-shamed by bakery customers gets revenge by buying all the cupcakes

Woman says she was fat-shamed at Universal theme park — and she’s filing a discrimination complaint

#Paloma Elsesser #news #Revolve #Lena Dunham #_uuid:c8a887ba-d23b-3de2-869b-bf99c337b44c #controversy #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT #_revsp:wp.yahoo.style.us #size inclusivity #Cara Delevingne #fat shame #fat-shaming #body positivity #_author:Maggie Parker

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admissionsmadness · 4 years ago

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College Admissions Cheaters Often Win

The biggest myth that admissions offices present is that the review process is a science. Holistic review isn’t a precise thermometer that measures temperature accurately. In reality, it’s neither an art nor a science but a series of hunches and gut feelings.

Even supposedly objective criteria such as grades and AP scores can be gamed by savvy students, further calling into question whether reviewers can decipher what is authentic or not.

By cheating, I don’t have in mind falsifying resume credentials on an application or lying on an essay.

I see posts from time to time about admissions counselors who claim they can tell fraud or not, but can they really when they read applications in less than ten minutes and hundreds if not thousands of applications each cycle? They’re reading way too quickly to assess the claims you make at anything other than face value. Reviewers usually take the applicant’s word for it.

Some portals, such as the University of California, have shifted to students self-reporting their grades and SAT scores. Because that information is easily verified with an official transcript required for enrollment, very few students cheat on that portion of the application. I imagine for every thousand students who misrepresent themselves on an application, perhaps one is actually caught and “blacklisted” with their name circulated among elite institutions. Reviewers can’t detect fraud with any reliability, although they love to claim omnipotence on the subject to scare would-be deceivers.

By cheating, I have in mind the time-tested tradition of looking over your classmate’s shoulder. Donald McCabe with the Center for Academic Integrity conducted a longitudinal survey of 70,000 high school students from 2002 to 2015. Two-thirds of students admitted to cheating on a test or plagiarizing a paper, with 95 percent of respondents admitting to some form of cheating.

Because the penalties for academic dishonesty are so high, no student will ever publicly admit to fraud. On the contrary, people accused of cheating will deploy any means to denounce the charge and preserve their reputations, often committing themselves to further lying on top of the initial cheating. There are no incentives to come clean unless it’s to snitch on other cheaters and receive leniency.

Rutger Bregman in Humankind undermines the conventional narrative that humans are innately selfish and prone to evil. He argues that people are generally decent and aren’t intrinsically motivated to lie and cheat. We want to get along and feel included in our family and communities. Poor incentives within society nudge people toward bad behavior.

Our modern society inverts pro-social virtues such as honesty and integrity in favor of winning, even if that means fraud, deceit, or manipulation.

“Blaming the system” doesn’t excuse or absolve the cheater who deserves some form of punishment. “Everyone else is doing it” also isn’t an acceptable defense. We’re left with a situation where the unfortunate few who are caught pay steep penalties. As long as the admissions arms race persists, cheating will be a natural response, a problem most educators and admissions staff prefer to ignore. Consequently, cheating is a silent yet systemic social problem.

Many of my clients go on extensive rants about pervasive cheating in their classes (although, predictably, none ever admit to cheating themselves). Some even write college essays criticizing their underhanded classmates.

A group of students once pulled me aside at a high school visit when I worked for UT-Austin, begging me to do something about their unscrupulous valedictorian. Honest students resent their classmates who show up to class unprepared and swipe scantrons from a teacher’s desk or circulate answers among a group of cheaters. Traditional definitions of plagiarism are inadequate for the smartphone generation.

There is no part of the college application that a determined family can’t manipulate. One recommendation by Varsity Blues ringleader Rick Singer involved referring students to online schools where students could independently study AP classes. Earning high grades at less-rigorous high schools boosted the applicant’s overall GPA and class rank. Supplementing coursework isn’t explicitly illegal. Few if any artificially inflated GPAs will get detected by admissions counselors. Many students opt to take summer school classes at their primary campus to earn more grade points and free up space for more GPA-boosting AP classes.

In the past few years, I noticed a substantial uptick in students earning 4s and 5s on more than 15 AP exams, many of who self-studied. I asked a few how they managed to balance what seemed like an impossible course load for even the most ambitious students. Never implicating themselves, they admitted that on obscure corners of the internet, you could illicitly access AP question test banks provided by College Board intended for use explicitly by teachers to help their students prepare. Memorize the test bank and skim official preparation resources, and there is a decent chance you will pass, especially during the COVID period’s online exams reduced to less than an hour. Cheating is an efficient strategy for overworked and sleep-deprived students.

A Redditor laments in a mocking post, since deleted, about a cheating classmate who gained early admission to Harvard. “[Their cheating] coupled with all those posts about people faking passion and being admitted to schools that are like wE cAn TeLl WhEn yOu ArEn’t PassiOnate, should remind you that AOs AREN’T ALL-KNOWING JUDGES OF YOUR WORTH.”

Because most students know at least one cheater who will inevitably gain admission, cheaters’ successes undermine the entire higher education system’s integrity. The college admissions madness incentivizes everyone to cut corners, with few unwilling to face social exclusion by being labeled a snitch.

Another user responded to the disgruntled post that “[the saying] ‘cheaters never prosper’ is absolute bullshit.” They’re right.

Admissions counselors aren’t Saint Peter with an all-seeing God on their side that can pierce the hearts of any soul. They’re more like a Judge Judy that squawks a lot but doesn’t have any unique insights into human character. Cheaters often win, including electing to the presidency a man who cheats on his wives and lies about everything from recorded phone calls with world leaders down to his golf handicap.

Cheating Lessons

Professor James Lang argues in Cheating Lessons that academically dishonest climates are pervasive at all levels of education. He estimates at least two-thirds of all students will cheat at least once. A few become the habitual deceivers that appear in college essays or frustrated Reddit posts. Extrinsic rewards such as gaining admission to elite universities or earning a prestigious internship normalize dishonest behavior because the means justify the ends. Students are responding to incentives in their environment. Honesty requires more courage than surrendering to the pressures to take shortcuts.

Professor Mollie Galloway expands in a review of Lang’s book that cheating isn’t necessarily more pervasive than in previous generations. Still, dishonest behavior is less stigmatized and perceived as increasingly normal. “The [educational] culture encourages students, particularly those from upper-middle-class and affluent communities, to see cheating not as a compromising of their values but rather as a warranted and morally sound mechanism by which to attain the status they believe they are afforded.”

A few high schools cultivate a culture of cheating.

Administrations feel pressure to maximize their AP exams passed or SAT scores earned to recruit future cohorts of students. Schools receive accolades when their graduates earn prestigious scholarships or university spaces. There are subtle pressures for teachers to turn a blind eye or administrators to cover up academically dishonest behavior. Teachers who are committed to honesty fight a never-ending battle like trying to stop alcohol consumption during Prohibition. Alcoholics will find a way to drink, and students will find a way to cheat.

Institutions punishing cheaters and plagiarizers is so rare that, when it happens, the incident often makes national news.

Cheating at New York City’s most prestigious magnet school, Stuyvesant, didn’t end after they fired their principal, Stanley Teitel, for covering up a 66-student cheating ring in 2013. The New York Post reports five years later, “Cheating is most common among students in their third year, the most academically challenging because the grades count heavily on college applications, the December survey found. A whopping 97 percent of juniors said they had engaged in academic dishonesty, while 56 percent of freshman said they had already cheated after just four months in the school.” Stuyvesant is the second-largest feeder high school in the country for MIT, Princeton, and Harvard.

The Tragic Case of T.M. Landry

The most heartbreaking example of a culture of systematic cheating occurred at Louisiana’s T.M. Landry. Named for the husband-and-wife-founders and principals Tracey and Mike Landry, it is an unaccredited college preparatory school housed in an abandoned factory. When Landry seniors started gaining admission to Cornell, Stanford, Princeton, and Harvard, among many other elite universities, between 2013 and 2018, it seemed like a tremendous success story.

Landry enrolls mostly black students from rural Louisiana, a state with one of the nation’s lowest-performing education systems. Black families placed their trust in the Landrys, who promoted family and unity and an alternative education outside of white society’s norms. The Landrys announced their 100 percent four-year college acceptance rate, made famous by viral YouTube “decision reveal” videos viewed millions of times. Wealthy families and organizations donated hundreds of thousands of dollars, and white and Asian students began enrolling.

Educators and school administrators nationwide wondered how Landry students could overcome such long odds. A New York Times investigation revealed a culture of violence, abuse, and outright fraud. “Visitors and cameras paraded through what had become a Potemkin village.”

Because the school wasn’t accredited, they do not receive any government funding and consequently fall outside regulations and oversight. Class attendance was optional. It was, as one student described it, a “house built on water.”

Mike Landry humiliated and demanded absolute obedience from his students, resulting in a 2013 conviction for battery. He required students to begin class by saying “I love you” in different languages, including an invented language, Mike-a-nese, to him directly. “Love” in Mike-a-nese is the word “kneel.”

Students and families began speaking out following abuse allegations and substandard classroom instruction. Mr. Landry threatened to withhold transcripts if anyone left the school or blew the whistle. Students who chose to leave had their grades altered to ruin their future college prospects. He threatened students that elite university admissions officers had cameras in the school, so they better behave themselves.

T.M. Landry’s Ivy League success comes down to outright fraud. Mike Landry doctored transcripts to show outstanding grades for loyal students, even for advanced courses that they never took or weren’t offered at the school. The Landrys pressured students to report their family incomes as low as possible on the applications. Teachers recycled recommendation letters to laud students for extracurricular activities that didn’t exist. In some instances, teachers recycled recommendations from previous years for future students without changing the names.

The Landrys counseled students to “go deep” on their essays, which pressured students to exaggerate or fabricate hardships that play into racial stereotypes and poverty tropes. They were the kinds of hardship stories that elite universities eat up. The only genuine instruction that students received revolved around the ACT. It was the only admissions factor that T.M. Landry staff couldn’t easily manipulate. One graduate, Bryson Sassau, commented, “If it wasn’t on the ACT, I didn’t know it.”

T.M. Landry’s graduates had mixed results at their respective elite colleges. Some earned their degrees despite entering college with writing and math skills that were many grade levels below their college classmates. Others, especially those who spent the most time at T.M. Landry, floundered and dropped out.

Because their high school degrees weren’t accredited, some alumni had to earn their GED to enroll at local colleges and begin their studies again. Landry college prep destroyed dozens of families whose elementary-age children didn’t learn phonics. High school juniors tested in reading at a fourth-grade level.

Mike Landry defended himself by appealing to a culture that values credentials over character. “So what, we’re not accredited… Three years in a row, Harvard took us. Stanford has taken us.”

Taking a page out of the corporate public relations playbook, the Landrys employed the law firm Couhig Partners to respond to the Times’s allegations. Couhig based their 23-page report on five interviews that excluded the dozens of testimonies investigated by the Times. Predictably, their internal investigation minimizes the claims and amounts to “move along now, nothing to see here,” while noting that there might be areas for minor improvement.

In other words, the means justify the ends.

The tragedy of T.M. Landry embodies the admissions madness taken to its logical conclusion. The Landrys are a symptom of the admissions madness, not a cause.

Elite universities seek diverse, academically stellar students. High schools everywhere will respond to these incentives, and families want to send their children to schools with a noted track record of success. In the worst-case scenarios, school cultures cater their entire curriculum and deploy any measures to meet those expectations at the expense of genuine learning or even a safe learning environment.

Universities are to blame

T.M. Landry and Varsity Blues are two sides of the same coin. The former exploited an admissions system that values diversity, whereas the latter defrauded universities by leveraging extreme wealth and privilege. As with the Varsity Blues scandal, university administrators responded in horror, wondering how such a thing could occur. Yet, they’re the architects of a system that creates such perverse incentives that distort basic human decency. Look in the mirror!

It’s also ironic that, on the one hand, admissions officers claim to know the context and resources of a given high school, while on the other, the Landrys hoodwinked dozens of elite colleges over a series of application cycles. If universities can’t reliably catch a fraudulent high school, why would we believe they can consistently identify individual cheaters?

In Talking with Strangers, Malcolm Gladwell suggests that we’re generally trusting and tend to default to the truth. In UT admissions, senior staff trained us to presume what a student writes or reports on their resume is true. Admissions processes aren’t set up to identify fraud or look for subtle discrepancies in transcripts relative to a school’s profile.

I don’t believe the posturing of a former Stanford admissions counselor who posted a Reddit thread under the username “empowerly,” insinuating that applicants will get caught if they cheat. Given infinite time and resources, it’s theoretically possible to catch most cheaters most of the time. However, there simply isn’t enough time, sufficient information, or willpower to detect fraud in practice. Admissions gatekeepers are not the gods that they convey themselves to be publicly. Pretending to be all-powerful causes more harm than good and injects more anxiety into the system.

The immediate result of posts like that of the former Stanford counselor was to create a sense of paranoia among student Redditors. Dozens of comments wondered, “Will my ECs seem exaggerated? What if they contact my counselor?” The most honest response reads, “I presume you know that some students will take advantage of this information and lie better.”

Sentiments like /u/empowerly’s reinforce college admissions counselors’ omniscience that provides the architecture for T.M. Landry to deceive their students that universities watched them. We are reluctant to acknowledge cheating unless there is overwhelming evidence suggesting fraud occurred.

Educators are also averse to leveling claims of fraud against a student unless they’re highly certain. Their reputations and careers are at stake if they wrongly accuse a student. It isn’t surprising that the Landrys’ deceit succeeded for many admissions cycles. To their credit, at least some of their unwitting alumni earned life-transforming elite college degrees that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.

Cheaters, whether they are aware of their dishonesty or not, often win.

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nowtravel · 4 years ago

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Puffin Rally to the Látrabjarg Cliffs

On a road trip to Iceland's remote Westfjords, I explore the travel bloggers insatiable quest for novelty, and the decline of the iconic Atlantic Puffin. Includes an interview with puffin researcher Erpur Snær Hansen.

We are driving north from Reykjavik, to the westernmost point of Europe — the Látrabjarg Cliffs of Iceland’s Westfjords.

The cliffs are a massive promontory, just a few degrees south of the Arctic circle, pointing towards Greenland. The granite cliffs slope vertically downward for up to 1,400 feet into the North Atlantic, and hold the largest colonies of nesting seabirds in all of Europe.

I had packed several cups of skyr; the stunningly tasty cultured cheese, for our long journey north. I immediately fell for the low-fat, high protein Icelandic food, reminiscent of thick yogurts. One of my great joys in travel is to form a ritual around a simple local food.

Iceland’s post World War II diet is heavy on hot dogs, road meats and gas station junk food. The restaurants are often insanely expensive. Skyr, with a few berries, is the antidote: breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Reykjavik to Borgarnes

It’s remarkable to find how quickly you can leave the city of Reykjavik. Within minutes of driving out of the city center, it’s the suburbs. Minutes after that, a long road with little traffic, fewer towns. To our right, steep, treeless mesas, peppered with sheep and oystercatchers. To our left, inlets, bays and mud flats.

For almost all of its 1,100 year human history, Iceland’s population hovered around 50,000. Today, the island’s total population is 350,000 — a phenomenally low population for a geography about the size of New York State. Reykjavik, where most people in Iceland live, features a population about the same size as Killeen, Texas.

Because of these low population levels, Iceland is to some degree a blank slate, with seemingly few stories for traveling writers to tell. It’s easy to fall for the idea that Iceland is encapsulated by the same stories we keep hearing about, as if there a bait has been dangled for us in front of the Icelandic Tourist Board.

Tourism in Iceland has boomed so quickly that it has also become a bit like a wild west of travel documenting; a frontier to rehash the same story over and over again.

One recurring story you hear almost constantly is: I went to Iceland and ate a daring, gross and controversial food.

I am perennially repulsed by this trend in travel. Imagine the meaty head of Andrew Zimmern, (Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern), gullet open to the sky, swallowing something rare for the camera. A reminder of how unnecessary eating gross foods for a smart travel audience is.

In Iceland, however, weird and gross foods often cross a distinct line of ethics, which travel bloggers gleely cross, often while downplaying that line in their writing, or even explicitly crossing it to shock their audience. When travel bloggers and tourists consume Minke Whale, Atlantic Puffin or Greenland Shark, for example, aren’t they crossing a firm line of global conservation ethics?

Low tide flats in typical scenery from Reykjavik to the Westfjords.

THE ETHICS OF EATING PUFFIN IN ICELAND

ravel blogger Candie Walsh writes in her blog, Free Candy, “On one of my final nights in Reykjavik, the Obesity Gods intervened.”

In her home province of Newfoundland, Atlantic Puffin is treasured and revered. “In fact, it’s a heavily protected species of the most adorable order,” she writes. “Hunting puffins in my home province is treason. Obviously I had to eat one in Iceland.”

The explicit statement of understanding that the species is threatened is a common theme among travel bloggers talking about their daring cuisine in Iceland.

“Surprisingly, the puffin was delicious...the puffin was prepared in such a way that you’d hardly know you were eating one of the most adorable creatures on earth.”

Responding to commenters, Candy Walsh advertises her wild and crazy ability to eat. “I’m a heathen...Hahaha. I will apparently eat just about anything!”

Like any travel blogger around the world, Candy knows that seabirds have a precarious path to survival. Throughout North America, from Panama to Canada, we protect our rocky offshore islands vigilantly. We know that their manner of nesting in cliff and island colonies puts them at a particular risk. With so much input and education about the fragility of seabirds, it is impossible for us not to know the line the behavior crosses.

THE ETHICS OF EATING WHALE IN ICELAND

When weighing whether it’s okay to eat whale in Iceland, travel bloggers repeat the conclusion that the controversy surrounding whale is simply whether the animal is endangered; Ultimately, whales are just another animal, and a quick internet search on whether the species can be ‘sustainably harvested,’ is enough to satisfy the travel blogger advertising to their international audiences that they too can also eat whale.

There are a few animals which modern civilization has deemed morally repugnant to kill and consume. Obviously, among this short list is all the great sentient mammals. We find human flesh morally repugnant, as we do the flesh of the great apes, the elephants and the cetaceans.

But then how did Lauren Monitz of iExplore come to such a different moral conclusion? She writes, “Often served raw, I also sampled whale tartare with a fine blueberry sauce that tasted like ahi tuna albeit refreshingly fruity thanks to the topping.”

Like with Candy, Lauren dismisses the moral weight, a way of telling her international readers that they too can ignore the moral implications of eating whale: “It was in fact one of the better dishes despite obviously being discouraged by animal activists who regularly campaign to get the protected creature taken off menus.”

THE ETHICS OF EATING GREENLAND SHARK IN ICELAND

Travel bloggers visiting Iceland love to eat a fermented shark dish called Hákarl, or fermented, rotting Greenland Shark. They refer to it as a traditional Icelandic dish, and a ‘Reykjavik delicacy’. Others call it Iceland’s national dish. They cite the weirdness of it, and the excitement of trying a dish that tastes like rancid urine, on account of the poisonous, ammonia-rich flesh of the Greenland Shark---the large, docile shark pees through the fabric of its body to stay warm.

Icelanders will tell you that the idea that Hákarl is a national dish is a bit of a fabrication. Through most of the twentieth century, it was virtually unknown to most Icelanders, who would have nothing to do with it. Others will tell you that it would be served only once a year in certain seaside towns, usually as a Christmas tradition. Its existence in grocery stores and fancy Reykjavik restaurants has appeared alongside the recent boom in tourism.

Kiki, of The Blonde Abroad, calls Greenland Shark all those things at once. She writes, “Rotten Shark...is a traditional delicacy in Iceland that dates back to the time of the Vikings. While it might not be at the top of your must-eat list, it has always made practical sense in the kitchens of Iceland.”

Kiki shares a large photo of herself with a grossed out face, eating the shark. And a youtube video, that also shows her being grossed out during a bold act of consumption.

The problem with Greenland Shark is a different one from both puffins and whales. If Icelanders eat a small amount of shark bycatch as a holiday delicacy, it is a local act that is harmless to the species. But, everybody knows the dual stories of how fishing sharks devastates their populations and the story of the speedy decline of Orange Roughy, the fish popular on dinner tables around the world in the 1980s. Because the fish grows slowly, lives deep in the ocean and matures late, nobody realized they had nearly decimated the world supply of the species until it was nearly too late.

The Greenland Shark, similarly lives for hundreds of years: it is the world’s longest living vertebrate, and slowest moving of all fish, and, as a mysterious deepwater denizen, we really don’t know how many, or how few, are left. We literally have no concept of their remaining population. While we often hear that most Greenland Sharks are bycatch, the rise in demand from the tourist trade puts more pressure on the annual catch of a species now designated by the IUCN as near threatened.

Eurasian Oystercatcher foraging on tidal flats on the Seltjarnarnes peninsula near Reykjavik.

Borgarnes to Búðardalur

rom Borgarnes to Búðardalur, Highway 1 crosses through inland terrain. Some of the terrain is forested with birch and conifers, a reminder of Iceland’s pre-human past, when over thirty-percent of the island was covered in trees.

In this inland wilderness, the ubiquitous sheep and horses are a reminder of the near absence of native mammals. Arctic foxes are the island’s only native land mammal; knowing this puts a damper on our desire to spot for wildlife while driving north.

My son and I will sometimes make up stories while traveling together. The history of skyr is somewhat bland, and certainly not as exciting a backstory as rotten urine shark. Skyr production was a technique common in Scandinavia when Iceland was discovered, but later forgotten everywhere but here.

So, my son and I invent a more Instagram-friendly backstory for skyr:

The skyr squirrel, named for its ability to escape raptor predation by sliding down a snowy slope on its hind-haunches, was common in the interior of Iceland up until the eighteenth century.

Fernando, a wealthy Spanish trophy hunter, took up employment among the whalers of Northern Europe, making his way north to Iceland, where his hope was to bag the island’s greatest mammals.

Upon finding only non-native sheep and horses, he grew weary, turning his bloodlust on the common skyr squirrels, which he discharged by the thousands. Luckily for trophy-less Fernando, he found delectable the milky-white substance that erupted when that musket-shot struck the skyr squirrels. Pleasant was the slightly sour, slightly sweet yogurt-like substance, which he made into a local commodity, exported to Denmark by the barrel.

But, little did he know, the skyr squirrels were on the verge of extinction, just like the Passenger Pigeons of North America.

My son has learned about Passenger Pigeons in school, and we have seen a rare stuffed specimen at our local science museum. But today, we talk about the specific way in which the species declined so rapidly. Passenger pigeons are believed to have been the most populous bird in the world prior to the 1800s. When they crossed the sky in their millions, they would blacken it. The spectacle of this mass of life, moving like an interstellar starling undulation, was one of the great natural spectacles of the planet.

On September 1, 1914, Martha, the last of her species, passed away at the Cincinnati Zoo.

But how did the species go from billions to zero in two decades? Passenger Pigeons were tasty creatures, and after the Civil War, a network of roads and railroads allowed a network of hunters easy access to their entire range in the East, Midwest and Canada. They killed them in every way possible, sometimes by just waving a stick or a net in the air. Sometimes by torching their roosts or simply by blasting a pellet into that mass of black.

The exact cause of their quick demise is unknown, but the general belief among ornithologists is that they had adapted to live in as ultra-social creatures in super-huge groups. Imagine a bird that lives like humans in Manhattan. Once their numbers were hunted to a point of just a few million left, their advanced social structure - their population dynamics - could no longer function.

My conversation with my son, on the road to Búðardalur, prompted me to want to learn more about whether there were similarities between the Atlantic Puffins of the North Atlantic, and the Passenger Pigeons.

The carcass of a US Navy Douglas C-117D sits on the property of the Hnjótur Farm, near the Látrabjarg Hotel. The Hnjótur Farm makes up most of the village of Örlygshöfn, just south of the emerald and turquoise waters of Patreksfjörður fjord.

Interview with Erpur Snær Hansen

I caught up with seabird researcher Erpur Snær Hansen, director of the South Iceland Nature Research Center, whose research into the decline of Iceland’s puffins has begun to reverberate on the world stage. With access to time series unheard of in other bird populations, Hansen and his colleagues have begun to piece together the correlations between the puffin’s prized fish; Silvery Sandeels, warming seas, and overhunting of the species for Reykjavik’s ritzy tourist restaurants.

ERIK: HOW DID YOU GET INVOLVED WITH PUFFINS AND SEABIRDS?

Erpur: I was a birder at age 11, and later, I built up an interest in science with plans to become an ornithologist. I moved into seabird research, Trying to answer questions like, “Why do they raise only one chick, and what determines their growth patterns?”

In Spring 2007, I was asked to give a talk in the Westman Islands, because they were worried about persistent chick death in the colonies. I had a good background, because I had studied puffins for my honor’s thesis, on their habitat selection.

An intense decline in seabird chick production had started in 2003 and peaked in 2005, involving not only puffins, but most Icelandic seabird species, which constitute about twenty-five percent of North Atlantic seabird biomass. We really needed to understand the key factors of the decline. They were keen enough to hire me, and I began working to find out what was going on.

I started out in Iceland’s Westman Islands. Our methodology was to use infrared illuminated video cameras to peer into their burrows. We learned a lot in these three years.

We received a grant together with sandeel researchers at the Marine Research Institute, which demonstrated that the sandeel stock collapsed in 2005, and one puffin year class after another disappeared from the puffin harvest.

We expanded our methodology developed in the Westmans to twelve colonies throughout Iceland in 2010. The research is funded by the trust, which is financed by the annual hunter permit fees.

The idea was that we would visit each colony twice each year. First, in early June to see how many eggs were laid in our study burrows, and again in late July to check the same burrows to see how many chicks remained. We also photograph adults carrying food in July. This is the Icelandic Puffin Population Monitoring Program, or less formally what we call the Puffin Rally. This is exhausting work, in particular, a lot of travel. We travel about six-thousand kilometers by car, and then from there a variety of boat and airplane travel.

ERIK: WHAT ARE YOU FINDING IN THE BURROW?

Erpur: That differs between both regions and time. The puffins have been doing moderately fine in the north; in the Westfjords and in northeast Iceland. In the South and East, they have been faring poorly, and taken together, not well enough to sustain the whole Icelandic population. The West started out like the south, but have been improving considerably in the last 4 years and sandeels are being seen again in the last few years. Things have improved in the Westmans, although the sandeel is still scarce.

ERIK: IN ICELAND, WHERE PUFFIN ICONOGRAPHY IS UBIQUITOUS, DOES THIS MAKE YOU A CELEBRITY?

Erpur: Puffins are one of the main reasons people are visiting Iceland. Seeing them is a huge industry for us. Special tours to see puffins all over the island are extremely popular. The Atlantic Puffin is actually ranked the number one bird globally in terms of people’s favorite bird.

Does that make me a celebrity? No, but of course, with everything that is happening now, I was reporting our results to the media.

The bill of the Atlantic Puffin is designed to hold several fish at once. The fleshy yellow roseate at the base of the puffin's beak is a stretchy material that allows the seabird the ability to open its beak very wide, to enable catching more fish and for communicating.

ERIK: LET’S TALK ABOUT PUFFINS WHEN THEY ARE AT SEA. WHAT IS THEIR LIFE LIKE?

Erpur: We have participated in a multicolony international collaborative program named SEATRACK, deploying geologgers on the Atlantic Puffin, together with ten other seabird species in order to map their winter distributions. Icelandic puffins have a triangular migration pattern, they head into the Labrador Sea in fall, stay there until the end of the year when they move south over the Atlantic ridge centering on the Charliecr-Gibbs fracture zone, and in spring, they head north.

The Charlie-Gibbs fracture zone in the Atlantic ridge is rich with prey in winter and is a mega hot spot for sharks, whales, as well as many seabird species of the North Atlantic It’s a fascinating place, with summer conditions in the middle of winter and undoubtedly the reason for the large size of many seabird populations in the North Atlantic.

ERIK: AND WHAT ABOUT WHEN THEY COME BACK TO ICELAND?

Erpur: After a completely pelagic existence like other ‘true’ seabirds; they come back in the middle of April to meet up with their mate.

Puffins have monogamous relationships for life. We say that puffins have a pretty low ‘divorce rate’ - seven percent. For example, if the mate dies, or if they have breeding failure.

Between Iceland and Norway, there have been sharp declines, which is why Atlantic Puffins were put on the IUCN red list in 2015.

I am able to study puffins backwards in time, because we have data on the harvest records in the Westmans Islands going back to 1880. Eighty-percent of the puffin harvest is composed of three year classes that are 2, 3 and 4 years old. Since the effort has remained relatively constant, the harvest in any given year reflects how many were born 2-4 years before.

This gives us one of the longest and perhaps the most interesting time series of birds, as the data show that puffin chick production has a very strong correlation to sea temperature. When sea temperatures are warmer, fewer puffins are harvested, and vice versa.

We know that temperature is key, and temperature in the Atlantic follows a seventy year cycle termed the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation or AMO, characterized by 35 warm years, followed by 35 cold years A warm period started in Icelandic waters in 1996 with temperatures peaking in 2003. In Icelandic waters, the warming is greatly intensified by contemporal contraction of the Sub-Polar Gyre, a circular current system, which opens for great flow of warm and saline Atlantic seawater northwards.

In the process our waters warm by about one degree Celsius, in less than a decade the same warming as predicted by global warming for this century using the IPCC A1B1 “business as usual model!”

The polar currents coming from the north mix with the warmer waters and thus create three marine ecosystems. We have essentially a natural laboratory of extreme temperature variation gradient. That’s exactly where our study colonies are located.

ERIK: THE PUFFINS ARE DECLINING BECAUSE THEIR PRIMARY FOODSOURCE, THE SILVERY SANDEEL, ARE IN DECLINE?

Erpur: The sandeel is one of the most commercially harvested fish in the North Sea, and is studied by a number of specialists. There are a number of exciting hypotheses for their decline and how this relates to seabird declines. One hypothesis is that the sandeel’s first winter survival is negatively related to temperature by increase in their Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), leading to a premature depletion of their fat reserves, prior to the onset of their zooplankton food in spring. They die of starvation during these warmer years.

Another, complementary hypothesis is that in warm summers, the sandeel´s elevated BMR wastes energy, instead of building energy (fat) reserves and growth. We don’t always have warm and cold summers in conjunction. In 1948, for example, summers cooled during an otherwise cold winters AMO period, which allowed the sandeels to really strengthen, judged by the increase in Puffin harvest. In 1996, we started to see the reverse of this, and sandeel numbers declined very rapidly, much more than in the last warm period in the 1930´s. Oceanographers are modeling to see if global warming will buffer against the cooling of the AMO cycle, essentially terminating the cooling period.

If this warming trend continues, the puffin colonies here will be a shadow of their former past. In the north, the colonies would remain. We would have a northern coast with current numbers, and losing more than half of the rest of the populations. This IUCN red listing is really about this: If you would have been here in the 1980s, you would have seen so many birds! Now there is nothing like that! The puffins haven’t even socialized normally in the troubled colonies in the last decade. These social birds are known to spend a lot of time communicating with each other, they don’t have the time to hang around anymore. They need to put all their attention on acquiring food.

What is happening differently during this warm period now, I think, is that the algae blooms that normally occur in March and April, happen much later. The sandeel eggs are hatching about the same time as the algal bloom. The algae are grazed on by zooplankton, which is the prey of sandeels. If there is a delay in the bloom timing, we have what is termed a trophic mismatch. Basically the sandeel prey show up so late that they are already dead from starvation.

Puffin chicks have been fledging in September, rather than in late August. 2019 is however the sunniest year on record, creating a massive algae bloom that you can easily see from space. There is a huge amount of food in there. So there are a lot of variables out there.

Sandeel numbers are expected to increase when you have a good bloom year: early and intensive blooms benefit the the entire food pyramid.

We have satellite data since 1998 that shows that the blooms have been really late in the last decade or so, and one could expect that to increase with global warming: more evaporation and more clouds in our region, and consequently, less sun. That delays and reduces the blooms.

Traditional Southern Westfjords fishing vessels on display on the grounds of the Hnjotur Museum.

ERIK: HOW DOES THE HUNTING OF PUFFIN FOR TOURISTS PLAY INTO THEIR DECLINE?

Erpur: Between 1995 and 2017 there has been a ninety-one percent reduction in the Icelandic puffin harvest. Interestingly, sixty-six percent of this decline, or two thirds, occurred before I advocated for a moratorium in 2008.

The puffin harvest went from over 200,000 to about 30,000 annually, and the prices went up. Now the restaurant business is selling most of the catch to tourists. Chef Hrefna Sætran has a couple of the most exclusive restaurants in Reykjavik. She was asked on Facebook in spring 2019 why she was selling an endangered animal in her restaurants. she replied: “While it is legal to hunt them and sell, I am selling them.”

The problem is the legal aspect of it. The government plans on addressing the issue in 2020 with a new law. But today, the ‘traditional hunting loophole’ has been interpreted to be exempt from the sustainability clause in the law, anyways. The problem is that landowners regulate the hunting on their land—- they are in many cases also the hunters, thus regulating themselves. It’s up to the landowners, who are allowed to hunt their land during the hunting period without limits.

Since the populations are doing okay in the North, the hunters there have used that to justify their continued hunting, despite the fact that the whole population is doing poorly. They are earning a lot of money from this—greed is put above the welfare of the species.

ERIK: ARE OTHER SEABIRDS IN ICELAND HAVING THE SAME PROBLEM OF REPRODUCTIVE FAILURE?

Erpur: Yes, we think of the puffin as a model species. Most of the other seabirds, the auks, the fulmars, and the kittiwakes, they all eat the same prey. Most seabird populations in the North Atlantic are going down. Counts show similar declines are happening to the other species.

ERIK: TRAVEL BLOGGERS SAY THERE ARE 10-15 MILLION PUFFINS IN ICELAND AS A JUSTIFICATION FOR EATING THEM. TWO QUESTIONS. ONE, IS THIS NUMBER ACCURATE OR OUTDATED? TWO, IF THERE WERE BILLIONS OF PASSENGER PIGEONS, IS MILLIONS OF PUFFINS A SAFE NUMBER TO TAKE FROM THE SKY?

Erpur: These numbers they quote, they are getting from Icelandic tourism sources, which are all wrong. Today, there are about 2.7 million Puffin burrows in Iceland, and about seventy-four percent are active at a given time, so there are 2 million breeding pairs in our country. This comprises the production unit of Iceland’s puffin population. Let’s say that you have almost the same number of immature birds. That ideal represents the maximum population: about 6 million individuals in total.

Since the population is not maintaining their numbers, but declining, the principle of long lived – low chick productive output life histories applies, that any hunting adds to the decline. In seabirds, the killing accelerates the decline. People who only see the millions of individuals and do not think how many are needed to maintain the numbers are illiterate in population dynamics and have no valuable contribution to make but to pseudoscience.

ERIK: IS THERE A FEAR OF THE PASSENGER PIGEON SYNDROME? ��

Erpur: When the sand eels collapsed, there was definitely peril for the puffins. But this hunting on top of that is not sustainable. It’s certainly not helping, and it is not ethical. We manage our fisheries well for the most part, we are looked at fondly by other countries for how we manage them, at least we had more success than many others. Sure, we fucked up a few times with capelin and halibut. We biologists are saying that all wildlife should be treated like we treat our fisheries, that will be the nature of the new law bill.

These Puffins are much more valuable alive than hunted, providing revenue year after year. They bring Iceland serious tourism money. That’s millions of euros each year. That is a lot of foreign currency pumping into Iceland because of the puffin.

ERIK: IS PUFFIN A TRADITIONAL ICELANDIC DELICACY, OR AN OLD STARVATION FOOD IN ISOLATED COASTAL VILLAGES?

Erpur: Puffin was initially a just part of normal food. They were harvested as soon as the settlement of Iceland. This was often the only meat people had until spring. Puffin was a sustenance food until between World Wars. After that, the hunting became a ‘traditional sport’ using a polenet called háfur.

Evening looking over the Látrabjarg Cliffs. Puffins burrow on such treacherously steep slopes here, they are safe from the Arctic Fox, which are wise to steer clear of the famously steep cliffs.

Búðardalur to Flókalundur

he village of Búðardalur, at the very end of mainland Iceland, is known mostly for the nearby Eiríksstaðir, the homestead of Erik the Red and the birthplace of his son Leif, who went on to explore North America five hundred years before Columbus anchored in the Bahamas.

From Búðardalur, we’ll be driving across the Westfjords Peninsula, one of the most exciting pieces of geography on Earth. Our final destination will be the furthest western point in Europe, even though, like Americans with Leif and Columbus, Europeans disagree.

When I told a tableful of Europeans that we were headed to the westernmost point of Europe, they pointed to the fact they all learned in school: Portugal’s Cabo da Roca, a peninsula just went of Lisbon, is Europe’s westernmost point.

But this commonly held fact is misleading, and wrong, on several points.

Cabo da Roca is indeed the westernmost point of the Eurasian landmass, that is a point to which no one disagrees.

However, the question is not about a landmass or a continent, but an area, a place, specifically, Europe. Europe is not a continent. While it is often taught in school that Europe is a special case continent; in which the Caucasus mountains somehow separate it from the other half of itself, most geographers see Eurasia as one big thing: Europe and Asia are the same large landmass. From a biological perspective, this is certainly the case. When we look at the mammals and birds and plants of the region, we recognize that the history is one.

Europe, then, is better defined as a place with distinct shared human history and culture.

Nobody doubts that England and Ireland are a part of Europe —they share language borne from mainland Europe, a common culture and history, but Portugal’s Cabo de Roca is actually further west than the most western points of these islands. Only Iceland, which shares a common history and language to mainland Europe, is further west than Cabo de Roca.

Well, that’s not quite true either. Monchique Islet, a rock jutting out from the westernmost point of the Azores Islands of Portugal, is much further west than Iceland. Although, as a remote island that actually sits within the North American plate, it can’t be categorized as being part of the place called Europe, even though it belongs to a European country. This is the same as saying that Hawaii, Guam and American Samoa are all part of the United States, but they do not fit into the definition of being part of North America.

So by this evening, we hope to reach the westernmost point of Europe.

A view of the Patreksfjörður fjord a few minutes before midnight.

Flókalundur to Látrabjarg

riving along the southern coast of the Westfjords is dizzying: The spectacle of the geography, the immensity of it, is confounding.

As we head west, the sense that we are at the edge of something feels very real. The geography becomes more surreal, often bays are shrouded with rocks in peculiar linear formations.

Treeless slopes grade steeply into vast inlets. And something unimaginable this far north in the world: white sand beaches and clear turquoise shallows. Arctic Terns, gulls and sandpipers abound along rocky shores, and at one point, a viciously precise Parasitic Jaeger crosses in front of our car, tailing a gull at high speed.

We stop to check in briefly at the 9-room Látrabjarg Hotel, one of a handful of structures in the area, before heading the final forty minutes to the Látrabjarg Cliffs. These cliffs are known as the largest tourist attraction in the Westfjords. The fact that there are only fourteen cars in the parking lot is a testament to the isolation of the region.

Right next to the parking lot is the Bjargtangar Lighthouse, the very westernmost point in all of Europe. From here, we can see hundreds of gulls, fulmars and kittiwakes; an explosion of bird life at the top of the largest seabird cliff in Europe.

We walk along the path that rises along the sloping edge of the cliffs, watching the spectacle of seabirds speeding along the water below.

As late evening approaches, the puffins begin to ascend onto the cliffs after a day of fishing. We sit just feet from a group of three of them, hobbling around a burrow. What singular creatures! Tiny Mannequins in masquerade. They are also, as travel blogger Candie Walsh stated, adorable. If you’ve seen the porgs of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and sense their cuteness resembles that of a puffin, it’s not coincidental. The porgs were a last-minute fix to the ubiquitous puffins on set. The miniature aliens were CGI’ed over the plump seabirds, who remained unafraid of the busy sets.

As the sun grows weaker, we rush back to the Látrabjarg Hotel, just in time for our meal. “My father’s best friend caught this cod this afternoon. We have prepared it with a tomato compote and local herbs.”

Jane and I agree, the fresh fish is one of the finest meals we’ve had in our lives, and after a long day of continuous road travel, to have this quiet meal at the edge of the world, looking out over a turquoise bay, is an exquisite end to our puffin rally.

The owner’s son comes out and says, “And for desert, we are serving Skyr!”

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