Pinboard (jm)

Auditing AI Chatbots During the Galway West and Dublin Central Byelections

jm — 2026-05-26T11:27:42+00:00

"In the weeks leading up to the byelections in Galway West and Dublin Central, we simulated citizen-AI interactions by asking [a] set of election-related test questions to four popular AI chatbots (Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and xAI’s Grok)":

We asked each chatbot a set of 194 questions covering a range of relevant topics on two separate occasions, 14 and 7 days before voters go to the polls on 22 May. Our aim was to assess: - Do they provide citizens with accurate election information? - Which sources do they rely on, and how does this vary across chatbots? - Who do they platform when they answer questions, and who is left out? .... The largest share of citations is directed towards mainstream news sites, and this is where the first evidence of source curation by chatbots can be found. While the Irish Times is a common source across all providers, ChatGPT and Gemini never refer to RTÉ. Meanwhile, despite not ranking among the top three news sources for the other chatbots, Gript is the number one news source cited by Gemini. We find that xAI’s Grok is the most likely to use social media in responses, while Gemini most frequently refers to YouTube and content from Reddit. ChatGPT appeared less likely to rely on social media compared to the other chatbots.

IMO, this points to an undesirable side effect of paywalls in the news media. While it's vitally important for media companies to protect their means of income, an unwelcome side effect is that the introduction of paywalls has resulted in AI chatbots sidelining mainstream news media sources which they cannot access reliably, in favour of what is effectively disinformation from less trustworthy sites like Gript.

Far-right narrative not the majority view in Ireland

jm — 2026-04-30T09:08:50+00:00

Here's the bad news:

A report by the Hope and Courage Collective, which works to build resilience in communities against rising far-right hate and disinformation, has found a widening gap between public attitudes and political discourse [in the media]: a relatively small number of far-right actors disproportionately influence public political debate through online amplification, visible protests, and repeated narratives. Public attitudes are becoming steadily more inclusive, but political rhetoric risks legitimising scapegoating and that the far-right ... "is shaping the conversation".

But on the other hand, these survey results are downright heartwarming:

Year-on-year datasets tracking changes in public sentiment in Ireland between 2024 and 2025 show that 66% agree that immigrants contribute positively to Irish culture and community, which is up 2% up from 64% in 2024. 79% believe working-class people are struggling due to systemic inequality which is also up 2% from 77% in 2024. Those who believe wealthy people are successful because they were given more opportunities than others has risen from 63% in 2024 to 69% in 2025. The number of people who support the freedom of transgender people to live their lives is up 5% up from 70% in 2024. 80% agree that Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities face greater barriers to success than white people, up 5% up from 75% in 2024.

The Blockade Is the Message. How a Fuel Price Spike Became a Fascist Audition

jm — 2026-04-12T22:20:02+00:00

This is 100% spot on, regarding Ireland's "fuel prices" blockades this week --

There is a particular tell, when a “spontaneous people’s protest” isn’t quite what it claims to be. It isn’t the placards. It isn’t the high-vis vests. It isn’t even the tractors. Ireland has plenty of legitimate reasons to bring a tractor to town, and a country built on agricultural grievance has every right to express it loudly. The tell is something subtler. It’s the moment someone in the crowd, their face contorted with what is supposed to be anger about diesel, screams “What’s a woman?” at a passing TD.

Ofcom don't consider geoblocking the UK to be sufficient for an overseas website

jm — 2026-03-20T10:10:42+00:00

r/LegalAdviceUK: "I run a self-help forum for people with depression. Ofcom has been bombarding me with emails demanding I start ID-verifying and age gating my website":

I started getting email from Ofcom [regarding OSA compliance] around November 2025 and now have multiple letters. I've repeatedly told them I'm from Canada, I'm not based in the UK. Eventually, I blocked all UK IP addresses in mid-February 2026 and told them I'd blocked the UK and that I was done engaging with them. I've now got ANOTHER email from them saying they're going to commence enforcement action against me because simply blocking UK IPs is "insufficient to comply with the Online Safety Act 2023."

An exploration on what could be a leftist position on generative AI

jm — 2025-11-10T11:00:15+00:00

Jacky Alciné's essay with a black, US-leftist take on generative AI, the tech industry, and the immediate and planned impact of it on society and work

Google just erased 7 years of our political history

jm — 2025-09-29T10:05:24+00:00

"Google appears to have deleted its political ad archive for the EU; so the last 7 years of ads, of political spending, of messaging, of targeting - on YouTube, on Search and for display ads - for countless elections across 27 countries - is all gone. We had been told that Google would try to stop people placing political ads, a "ban" that was to come into effect this week. I did not read anywhere that this would mean the erasure of this archive of our political history."

OVHcloud legal eagle on Microsoft's sovereignty admission

jm — 2025-09-02T15:55:49+00:00

OVHCloud are (rightfully) making plentiful hay from Microsoft's admission that data sovereignty is a joke under US law:

"[Microsoft] finally told the truth!" says OVHcloud Chief Legal Officer Solange Viegas Dos Reis. "It's not a surprise," she shrugs, "we already knew that [MS could not guarantee that customer data would remain protected from US government access requests]." However, "this reply from Microsoft brought kind of a shock for customers, because they suddenly discover that what they have been taught for a while. 'Oh guys, don't worry, it will not apply to you. Don't worry.' It's false! Because, indeed, the data can be communicated." Anton Carniaux, director of public and legal affairs at Microsoft France, made the admission during a hearing in the country. In answer to whether he could guarantee that data on French citizens could not be transmitted to the US government without the explicit agreement of the French authorities, Carniaux replied: "No, I can't guarantee it," but added that the scenario had "never happened before." "It's a question of trust," says Viegas Dos Reis. "And because of this question of trust, we have been receiving a lot of questions from our customers about, 'Hey, we know now how it works with US cloud providers. Tell me how it works from other providers.'"

censorship circumvention via VPN

jm — 2025-09-02T15:25:29+00:00

"I've got experience working on censorship circumvention for a major VPN provider" -- good HN comment on this ever-more-relevant topic. Mullvad gets a thumbs up

Fossil fuel billionaires are bankrolling the anti-trans movement

jm — 2025-07-22T09:09:13+00:00

Turns out "flooding the zone with shit" isn't just a Trumpian tactic, it's used by fossil fuel anti-climate groups and companies too:

An independent analysis of 45 right-wing groups advocating against trans rights found that 80% have received donations from fossil fuel companies or billionaires. The analysis, conducted by two independent researchers in 2023 and not peer-reviewed, was shared exclusively with Atmos and HEATED. Through a qualitative search, the researchers identified 45 groups advancing anti-trans lobbying, events, and publications and checked reports about their donor disclosures for fossil fuel funding. Vivian Taylor, a climate policy expert who co-authored the analysis, said the fossil fuel industry has a real interest in funding panic over transgender people: It distracts the public from "the very real and ongoing risks that climate change creates.”

EFF gets it wrong on AI

jm — 2025-03-19T11:17:38+00:00

EFF just posted this, "California’s A.B. 412: A Bill That Could Crush Startups and Cement A Big Tech AI Monopoly":

California legislators have begun debating a bill (A.B. 412) that would require AI developers to track and disclose every registered copyrighted work used in AI training. At first glance, this might sound like a reasonable step toward transparency. But it’s an impossible standard that could crush small AI startups and developers while giving big tech firms even more power.

Back in the early 2000s, we wrote SpamAssassin, a machine-learning driven antispam system which was trained on user-submitted data. We tracked the attribution of every item of input used to train that system. We weren't even a startup, we were an open source project. If we could do it, why can't modern AI systems? And don't say "because the existing large language models didn't do it" -- that's just accepting past shitty behaviour as a fait accompli. Extremely disappointed in the current state of the EFF if this is what they think.

The right’s Covid narrative has been turbo-charged into the mainstream

jm — 2025-03-18T13:03:08+00:00

"Before the next outbreak, we need a serious conversation about how to cope – but first, the more strident, misguided voices must pipe down ... A different narrative has invaded the conversation: it wasn’t the virus that ruined our lives, but the response. This narrative was always there, but for a long time it stayed on the fringes. Now it’s becoming mainstream, turbo-charged by the recent successes of its political champions who typically gravitate towards the populist right. Public health experts have watched its advance with a gathering sense of doom. They know that how we respond to the next pandemic depends on how we understand the last, and that the next one is probably closer than most people think." I'd have to agree, and I'd also add the lab-leak SARS-CoV-2 origin hypothesis to that mix. In general, the right wing has somehow "won" the propaganda war and are able to rewrite COVID-19 history, possibly as a result of how they've been allowed to take over social media.

18F's shutdown page

jm — 2025-03-03T13:26:18+00:00

"We are dedicated to the American public and we're not done yet". legends!

For over 11 years, 18F has been proudly serving you to make government technology work better. We are non-partisan civil servants. 18F has worked on hundreds of projects, all designed to make government technology not just efficient but effective, and to save money for American taxpayers. However, all employees at 18F – a group that the Trump Administration GSA Technology Transformation Services Director called "the gold standard" of civic tech – were terminated today at midnight ET.

The Anti-Capitalist Software License

jm — 2025-02-27T17:23:16+00:00

Here it is in full:

ANTI-CAPITALIST SOFTWARE LICENSE (v 1.4)

This is anti-capitalist software, released for free use by individuals and organizations that do not operate by capitalist principles.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person or organization (the "User") obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to use, copy, modify, merge, distribute, and/or sell copies of the Software, subject to the following conditions:

1. The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or modified versions of the Software.

2. The User is one of the following:
a. An individual person, laboring for themselves
b. A non-profit organization
c. An educational institution
d. An organization that seeks shared profit for all of its members, and allows non-members to set the cost of their labor

3. If the User is an organization with owners, then all owners are workers and all workers are owners with equal equity and/or equal vote.

4. If the User is an organization, then the User is not law enforcement or military, or working for or under either.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

This is fun because it would make esr's head explode.

Europe begins to worry about US-controlled clouds

jm — 2025-02-26T16:09:53+00:00

Interview with Bert Hubert about this major supply chain issue for EU governments:

The Register: In the US, the argument against China supplying network hardware [was] based on the concern that the Chinese government can just order China-based vendors to insert a backdoor. It sounds like you're saying that, essentially, an analogous situation exists in the US now. Hubert: Yeah, exactly. And that has been the case for a while. I mean, this is not an entirely new realization. The thing that is making it so interesting right now is that we are on the brink of [going all-in on Microsoft's cloud]. The Dutch government is sort of just typical, so I mention it because I am Dutch, but they're very representative of European governments right now. And they were heading to a situation where there was no email except Microsoft, which means that if one ministry wants to email the other ministry, they have to pass it by US servers. Which leads to the odd situation that if the Dutch Ministry of Finance wants to send a secret to the Dutch National Bank, they'd have to send someone over with a typewriter to make it happen because [the communications channel has been outsourced]. There's nothing left that we do not share with the US.

Why did Silicon Valley turn right?

jm — 2024-12-17T13:18:12+00:00

A great essay on the demise of the 1990s/2000s liberal consensus in Silicon Valley:

No-one now believes - or pretends to believe - that Silicon Valley is going to connect the world, ushering in an age of peace, harmony and likes across nations. [...] A decade ago, liberals, liberaltarians and straight libertarians could readily enthuse about “liberation technologies” and Twitter revolutions in which nimble pro-democracy dissidents would use the Internet to out-maneuver sluggish governments. Technological innovation and liberal freedoms seemed to go hand in hand. Now they don’t. Authoritarian governments have turned out to be quite adept for the time being, not just at suppressing dissidence but at using these technologies for their own purposes. Platforms like Facebook have been used to mobilize ethnic violence around the world, with minimal pushback from the platform’s moderation systems [...] My surmise is that this shift in beliefs has undermined the core ideas that held the Silicon Valley coalition together. Specifically, it has broken the previously ‘obvious’ intimate relationship between innovation and liberalism. I don’t see anyone arguing that Silicon Valley innovation is the best way of spreading liberal democratic awesome around the world any more, or for keeping it up and running at home. Instead, I see a variety of arguments for the unbridled benefits of innovation, regardless of its benefits for democratic liberalism. I see a lot of arguments that AI innovation in particular is about to propel us into an incredible new world of human possibilities, provided that it isn’t restrained by DEI, ESG and other such nonsense. Others (or the same people) argue that we need to innovate, innovate, innovate because we are caught in a technological arms race with China, and if we lose, we’re toast. Others (sotto or brutto voce; again, sometimes the same people) - contend innovation isn’t really possible in a world of democratic restraint, and we need new forms of corporate authoritarianism with a side helping of exit, to allow the kinds of advances we really need to transform the world.

Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz reviews _The Cass Report_

jm — 2024-07-25T11:15:17+00:00

Epidemiologist and writer (TIME, STAT News, Slate, Guardian, etc) looks into _The Cass Review Into Gender Identity Services For Children_, the recent review of gender identity services in the UK (which has also been referred to in Ireland), and isn't impressed:

In some cases [...] the review contains statements that are false regardless of what your position on healthcare for transgender children is. Take the “exponential” rise in transgender children that the review spends so much time on. It’s true that there has been a dramatic rise in the number of children with gender dysphoria. The rise mostly occurred between 2011-2015, and has plateaued since. These are facts. One theory that may explain the facts is that this is caused by changing diagnostic criteria - when we changed the diagnosis from gender identity disorder to the much broader gender dysphoria, this included many more children. We’ve seen this exact trend happen with everything from autism to diabetes, and we know that broadening diagnostic criteria almost always results in more people with a condition. Another theory is that these changes were caused by the internet. [...] The Cass review treated these two theories unequally. The first possible explanation, which I would argue is by far the most likely, was ignored completely. The second possible explanation was given a lengthy and in-depth discussion. [...] The point is that the scientific findings of the Cass review are mostly about uncertainty. We are uncertain about the causes of a rise in trans kids, and uncertain about the best treatment modalities. But everything after that is opinion. The review did not even consider the question of whether normal puberty is a problem for transgender children, or whether psychotherapy can be harmful. That’s why these are now the only options in the UK - medical treatments were assumed to be harmful, while non-medical interventions (or even no treatment at all) were assumed harmless. [...] What we can say with some certainty is that the most impactful review of gender services for children was seriously, perhaps irredeemably, flawed. The document made numerous basic errors, cited conversion therapy in a positive way, and somehow concluded that the only intervention with no evidence whatsoever behind it was the best option for transgender children.

Tonibler

jm — 2024-06-05T11:08:14+00:00

TIL:

Tonibler is a male given name in Kosovo, given in honour of Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, following his role in the 1999 NATO air campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War. Blair was considered instrumental in removing Slobodan Milošević from power, and boys born following the war were sometimes given the name Toni or Tonibler.

(via JK)

Ipsos demonstrating the risk of poor opinion polling

jm — 2024-05-29T05:11:08+00:00

Ipsos in the UK ran the famous leading questions from the UK TV show "Yes Minister" -- "would you be in favour of reintroducing National Service" vs "would you oppose reintroducing National Service" -- as a randomised experiment, and showed that it worked, with approximately 10% of poll voters swayed by the wording alone

Deep dive into "Irish" troll accounts on X

jm — 2024-05-27T10:05:34+00:00

"The disinfluencers: How over 150 anonymous 'Irish' accounts are swamping X with extreme views" -- a good dig into the Twitter/X bot accounts used to spam divisive views into Irish Twitter discourse in order to spread disinformation

Far-right conspiracy theorists are having a hugely destructive effect on the Irish political system

jm — 2024-05-17T11:22:09+00:00

But what is new in the research is that about a quarter of voters combine anti-establishment opinions with beliefs in strange conspiracy theories that have been especially amplified on social media. Some 34% of voters believe a small, secret group of people is responsible for making all major decisions in world politics; 28% believe groups of scientists manipulate, fabricate, or suppress evidence in order to deceive the public; and 24% believe experiments involving new drugs or technologies are routinely carried out on the public without their knowledge or consent. There is absolutely no substantive and verifiable evidence for any of these conspiracies and that so many people believe them is deeply troubling. It raises serious questions about where Irish people are getting their information and how reliable it is.

Far-right agitation on Irish social media mainly driven from abroad

jm — 2023-12-05T11:16:22+00:00

Surprise, surprise. "Most ‘Ireland is full’ and ‘Irish lives matter’ online posts originate abroad":

The research showed the use of the phrases increased dramatically, both in Ireland and abroad, once word started spreading that the suspect in the knife attack was born outside Ireland. “Users in the UK and US were very, very highly represented. Which was strange because with hashtags that are very geographically specific, you wouldn’t expect to see that kind of spread,” said Mr Doak. “These three hashtags have been heavily boosted by users in the US and UK. Taken together, UK and US users accounted for more use of the hashtags than Ireland.” Other countries that saw use of the phrases on a much smaller scale include India, Nigeria and Spain.

The Not So Hidden Israeli Politics of 'The Last of Us Part II'

jm — 2023-12-04T20:57:25+00:00

This is actually really quite insightful -- and explains why it was such a painful, and ultimately unenjoyable, game to play.

The Last of Us Part II focuses on what has been broadly defined by some of its creators as a "cycle of violence." While some zombie fiction shows human depravity in response to fear or scarcity in the immediate aftermath of an outbreak, The Last of Us Part II takes place in a more stabilized post apocalypse, decades after societal collapse, where individuals and communities choose to hurt each other as opposed to taking heinous actions out of desperation. More specifically, the cycle of violence in The Last of Us Part II appears to be largely modeled after the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I suspect that some players, if they consciously clock the parallels at all, will think The Last of Us Part II is taking a balanced and fair perspective on that conflict, humanizing and exposing flaws in both sides of its in-game analogues. But as someone who grew up in Israel, I recognized a familiar, firmly Israeli way of seeing and explaining the conflict which tries to appear evenhanded and even enlightened, but in practice marginalizes Palestinian experience in a manner that perpetuates a horrific status quo.

(via Alex)

Insurance companies given access to UK Biobank health data, despite promises

jm — 2023-11-13T11:20:11+00:00

Colour me totally unsurprised. Disappointed, though:

When the project was announced, in 2002, Biobank promised that data would not be given to insurance companies after concerns were raised that it could be used in a discriminatory way, such as by the exclusion of people with a particular genetic makeup from insurance. In an FAQ section on the Biobank website, participants were told: “Insurance companies will not be allowed access to any individual results nor will they be allowed access to anonymised data.” The statement remained online until February 2006, during which time the Biobank project was subject to public scrutiny and discussed in parliament. The promise was also reiterated in several public statements by backers of Biobank, who said safeguards would be built in to ensure that “no insurance company or police force or employer will have access”. This weekend, Biobank said the pledge – made repeatedly over four years – no longer applied. It said the commitment had been made before recruitment formally began in 2007 and that when Biobank volunteers enrolled they were given revised information.

Marina Hyde on the UK's Covid Inquiry

jm — 2023-11-01T12:29:21+00:00

For me, the most depressing thing about the revelations at the inquiry this week – and no doubt for many weeks and months to come – is that they are not really revelations. The government was horrendously incompetent, didn’t have a plan, yet still wasted a huge amount of time – and a tragic number of lives – on mad posturing, pointless turf wars or buck-passing and catastrophic infighting. The sad fact is that all of this was said AT THE TIME, and all of it was denied repeatedly by those in charge. And it was denied not just in insidery lobby briefings or to individual journalists – but live on air, to the nation, in those wretched press conferences every night. They lied about everything, all the time, and the lies they told backstage were just the obverse of the ones they spouted front of house. Seeing inquiry witnesses feted for punchy WhatsApps now is a bit like congratulating a serial killer for switching to an energy-efficient chest freezer. I’m sure half of them will be reflecting amiably on the period on their inevitable podcasts in due course – but the British public deserve so much more, as they did at the time.

We just saw the future of war

jm — 2023-10-12T11:13:09+00:00

[..] The famous maxim “‘The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed” — apocryphally attributed to the writer William Gibson — takes on a very different meaning from the one now commonly understood. Big, rich states might inflate their defense budgets and boast of systems like Israel’s Iron Dome, but the extent to which sophisticated technology is “distributed” across a broad consumer landscape is enough for highly motivated smaller actors to do whatever violence they wish.

Covid inquiry: UK's top pandemic scientist gives damning verdict on Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak

jm — 2023-10-03T16:06:08+00:00

None of this is remotely surprising, unfortunately:

The inquiry also heard that in October 2020, Mr Johnson wrote “bollocks” in capital letters across a Department of Health guidance document on Long Covid, from which it is estimated more than a million people are suffering. Anthony Metzer KC, representing Long Covid sufferers, said the former PM has admitted in his own witness statement that he did not believe the condition “truly existed”

Naomi Klein on following her ‘doppelganger’ down the conspiracy rabbit hole – and why millions of people have entered an alternative political reality | Naomi Klein | The Guardian

jm — 2023-08-26T21:07:55+00:00

Naomi Klein and her "doppelganger", Naomi Wolf:

Almost everyone I talk to these days seems to be losing people to the Mirror World and its web of conspiracies. It’s as if those people live in a funhouse of distorted reflections and disorienting reversals. People who were familiar have somehow become alien, like a doppelganger of themselves, leaving us with that unsettled, uncanny feeling. The big misinformation players may be chasing clout, but plenty of people believe their terrifying stories. [...] When looking at the Mirror World, it can seem obvious that millions of people have given themselves over to fantasy, to make-believe, to playacting. The trickier thing, the uncanny thing, really, is that’s what they see when they look at us. [...] on either side of the reflective glass, we are not having disagreements about differing interpretations of reality – we are having disagreements about who is in reality and who is in a simulation. [...] To return to the original question: what is Wolf getting out of her alliance with Bannon and from her new life in the Mirror World? Everything. She is getting everything she once had and lost – attention, respect, money, power. Just through a warped mirror. In Milton’s Paradise Lost, Lucifer, a fallen angel, thought it “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven”. My doppelganger may well still think Bannon is the devil, but perhaps she thinks it’s better to serve by his side than to keep getting mocked in a place that sells itself as heavenly but that we all know is plenty hellish in its own right.

The Lab-Leak Illusion

jm — 2023-08-24T21:54:37+00:00

"The laboratory accident hypothesis of COVID-19’s origins is a bust, but the popular consensus is unwilling to accept it." This is an excellent long-form article about the lab-leak hypothesis of COVID-19's origin, how it's now leaked into the US elites' mindset, and how it demonstrates our current problem with conspiracy theories:

I learned almost nothing of value when I was a [JFK] conspiracy theorist, but I did learn quite a lot pulling myself out of that mindset, and like [Scott] Alexander, I would never have done so had I only ever encountered people who told me I was being an imbecile. Part of the appeal of conspiracy theories is that they allow a person to feel more intelligent than the drones who passively drift along on the current of received consensus. [...] For now and the foreseeable future, much of the COVID-origins discourse remains committed to an illusory explanation that appeals to misfiring intuitions and trades almost entirely in suspicion and innuendo. Highly intelligent minds are as vulnerable to irrational thinking and conspiracist ideation as those of the cognitively impaired, particularly if they are used to perceiving problems in political terms. Reasoning well, Scott Alexander reminds us, is hard and “all factual claims can become the basis for emotional/social coalitions.” The best way to avoid this trap is to try to remember that we do not live through the looking glass where up is down and black is white. In quotidian reality, things are usually exactly as they appear to be.

Evidence Undermines 'Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria' Claims

jm — 2023-08-24T20:50:05+00:00

Scientific American:

“This is just a fear-based concept that is not supported by studies,” says Marci Bowers, president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. The term ROGD is being used to “scare people or to scare legislators into voting for some of these restrictive policies that take away options for young people. It’s cruel, cruel legislation.”

The Culture War Funded by Russian Roubles

jm — 2023-08-21T22:51:08+00:00

Between 2009-18, anti-gender actors from within the European Union, Russia and the US have spent at least $707.2 million in Europe, with the Russian Federation making up 26.6% of that spend, according to research published by the European Parliamentary Forum on Sexual and Reproductive Rights. As reported in this paper, the two main Russian funders of anti-gender disinformation are Vladimir Yakunin and Konstantin Malofeyev – oligarchs sanctioned for their alleged involvement in the annexation of Crimea, after Russia’s 2014 invasion. Their roubles have mingled with US dollars at the World Congress of Families; with Euros at the Novae Terra Foundation, and La Manif Pour Les Tous; and British pounds at Agenda Europe – in 2013, the assets manager of banker Sir Michael Hintze attended the network’s London summit, the following year Malofeyev’s man in Europe, Alexey Komov, was on the guest list. The campaigns and individuals funded by this wealth have regularly spread anti-abortion, anti-LGBTIQ disinformation, including that abortion is “Satanic” and that there’s a “homosexual agenda” which wants to make children “sex education propagandists in the EU”. They also spread anti-trans rhetoric.

Even in Greek towns razed by wildfires, people don’t blame the climate crisis

jm — 2023-08-15T10:23:45+00:00

Cognitive dissonance strikes again:

The more I spoke to people, including climate scientists, the more I came to see that there is often a gap that separates science from public awareness and debate. In her book Engaging With Climate Change, the psychoanalyst Sally Weintrobe says that “many people who accept anthropogenic global warming continue to locate it as a problem of the future”. To my astonishment, this seemed to apply even to people who had themselves been affected directly by wildfires. Perhaps the reality is too huge and too painful, the guilt too much to bear?

George Monbiot on UK climate politics

jm — 2023-08-02T11:53:54+00:00

"There was once a widespread belief (which some of us cautioned against) that governments would step up when – and only when – disaster struck. But it is precisely because disaster has struck, visibly and undeniably, that they are stepping down. [...] Underpinning the UK’s climate programme, weak and contradictory as it has always been, was the carbon market. The promise of successive governments, in and out of the EU, was that, by putting a price on carbon pollution, they would ensure that industries had no option but to switch to greener technologies. A further promise by the Conservatives was that, after Brexit, there would be no decline in environmental standards. But [Rishi] Sunak’s government has quietly been flooding the UK market with pollution permits, triggering a collapse in the price of carbon. While the carbon price in the EU emissions trading scheme stands at €88 (£75) a tonne, in the UK it has fallen to £47."

Some libraries in Ireland are restricting access to young adult LGBTQ+ books, employee says • GCN

jm — 2023-07-25T13:24:50+00:00

This is disgusting. The far right are getting their way:

Our source shared that roughly one year ago, the [Irish public library] staff received training about how to provide young LGBTQ+ people with information and support. Now, this staff member feels that the library policy is restricting the same supportive material. Another anonymous source from a different library branch had this to say about the re-classification of young adult books as adult: “It is utterly galling that some Irish libraries have decided to capitulate to what amounts to terror tactics, and in a way that creates a hostile working environment to all LGBT staff who now have to work under these conditions, and are told they are not allowed to talk about it.”

Children raised under UK austerity shorter than European peers

jm — 2023-06-21T11:05:30+00:00

This is really, really shocking.

Experts have said a poor national diet and cuts to the NHS are to blame. But they have also pointed out that height is a strong indicator of general living conditions, including illness and infection, stress, poverty and sleep quality.

The amount of damage the Tories have done to the UK in 10 years is staggering.

Will A.I. Become the New McKinsey?

jm — 2023-05-05T09:09:39+00:00

Great stuff from Ted Chiang:

A former McKinsey employee has described the company as “capital’s willing executioners”: if you want something done but don’t want to get your hands dirty, McKinsey will do it for you. That escape from accountability is one of the most valuable services that management consultancies provide. Bosses have certain goals, but don’t want to be blamed for doing what’s necessary to achieve those goals; by hiring consultants, management can say that they were just following independent, expert advice. Even in its current rudimentary form, A.I. has become a way for a company to evade responsibility by saying that it’s just doing what “the algorithm” says, even though it was the company that commissioned the algorithm in the first place. The question we should be asking is: as A.I. becomes more powerful and flexible, is there any way to keep it from being another version of McKinsey?

The Wide Angle: Understanding TESCREAL — Silicon Valley’s Rightward Turn

jm — 2023-05-03T12:50:54+00:00

As you encounter these ideologies [Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism] in the wild, you might use the TESCREAL lens, and its alignment with Eurasianism and Putin’s agenda, to evaluate them, and ask whether they tend to undermine or enhance the project of liberal democracy. TESCREAL ideologies tend to advance an illiberal agenda and authoritarian tendencies, and it’s worth turning a very critical eye towards them, especially in cases where that’s demonstrably true. Clearly there are countless well-meaning people trying to use technology and reason to improve the world, but that should never come at the expense of democratic, inclusive, fair, patient, and just governance. The biggest risk AI poses right now is that alarmists will use the fears surrounding it as a cudgel to enact sweeping policy reforms. We should resist those efforts. Now more than ever, we should be guided by expertise, facts, and evidence as we seek to use technology in ways that benefit everyone.

The tech tycoon martyrdom charade

jm — 2023-03-01T11:36:59+00:00

Anil Dash:

It's impossible to overstate the degree to which many big tech CEOs and venture capitalists are being radicalized by living within their own cultural and social bubble. Their level of paranoia and contrived self-victimization is off the charts, and is getting worse now that they increasingly only consume media that they have funded, created by their own acolytes. In a way, it's sort of like a "VC Qanon", and it colors almost everything that some of the most powerful people in the tech industry see and do — and not just in their companies or work, but in culture, politics and society overall. We're already seeing more and more irrational, extremist decision-making that can only be understood through this lens, because on its own their choices seem increasingly unfathomable.

"Poisoning Web-Scale Training Datasets is Practical"

jm — 2023-02-21T14:11:10+00:00

This is going to be a big problem -- this paper "shows how to effectively poison 0.01% of datasets like LAION-400M for just $60 USD and degrade model performance".

"We show the fraction of images in a dataset that can be controlled by the attacker as a function of their budget. We find that at least 0.01% of each dataset can be controlled for less that $60/year." "According to our conservative analysis, we can poison 6.5%+ of Wikipedia."

As Cyd Harrell says in https://twitter.com/cydharrell/status/1624463694238478336 , "if you think that either the global white supremacy movement or the Coca Cola company (or Exxon re climate change) don't have the long game to try to get their views prioritized in LLM training data, I think you're probably underestimating their motivation by a lot".

How a theory about transgender contagion went viral - MIT Technology Review

jm — 2022-08-18T16:53:31+00:00

The paper, which was based on parent surveys recruited from explicitly anti-trans or trans-skeptical websites and forums, almost immediately drew criticism. Shortly after its publication in August 2018, PLOS One, a peer-reviewed open-access journal covering science and medicine, issued a comment that questioned Littman’s methodology. Brown University, her then-employer, retracted its press release about the study. In early September, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health put out a statement saying ROGD “constitutes nothing more than an acronym” and urged restraint in using the term. Six months after that, PLOS One reissued the study with a large correction emphasizing that Littman’s paper was simply a “descriptive, exploratory” one and had not been clinically validated. In 2021, the Journal of Pediatrics published a comprehensive study that found no evidence for ROGD’s existence. More than 60 psychology organizations, including the American Psychological Association, called for elimination of the term. The scientific community, in short, agreed there was no such thing as ROGD. But did it matter?

Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid - The Atlantic

jm — 2022-04-19T10:19:14+00:00

What changed in the 2010s? [..] A mean tweet doesn’t kill anyone; it is an attempt to shame or punish someone publicly while broadcasting one’s own virtue, brilliance, or tribal loyalties. It’s more a dart than a bullet, causing pain but no fatalities. Even so, from 2009 to 2012, Facebook and Twitter passed out roughly 1 billion dart guns globally. We’ve been shooting one another ever since.

Russia's plans for Ukraine

jm — 2022-04-05T08:49:33+00:00

This is absolutely horrific -- if this is an accurate output of the state (and I don't doubt it is), then it's a blueprint for current and future war crimes. 'Russian state-owned propaganda outlet RIA published the new programmatic article with the title "What Russia must do with Ukraine". The article reveals a detailed plan for a genocide, starting from full elimination of Ukrainian state.'

A quick take on three pretty terrifying changes to the Online Safety Bill

jm — 2022-03-21T11:51:11+00:00

If true, this is going to be bananas:

The UK is, indeed, taking the “world-leading” stance – not duplicated by any other western nation – of requiring any business or organisation whose online presence could possibly be accessed in the UK to proactively monitor and scan for legal content. That means you and your business and your project, not just the five or six companies the people who cooked up this law think the Internet is. This hits everyone and everything.

I'd have to agree with the poster that the likely result will simply be websites going offline for UK users.

Human Life International operating in Ireland

jm — 2022-03-21T11:44:19+00:00

This US-based anti-abortion and anti-gender-rights group is now operating in Ireland, receiving an annual income of nearly €1m per year. It "[runs] the anti-abortion pregnancy counselling service Ask Majella, campaigns against the use of contraceptives, and [...] a host of other Catholic endeavours [...] also been linked to a Russian oligarch closely associated with the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin."

Fuck leftist westplaining

jm — 2022-03-09T14:59:52+00:00

Polish leftie giving out about western Tankies supporting Putin:

Antifascism is protecting people from individuals with structural power. Right now that is Putin. If you are protecting his hegemony over his vast and increasing empire, if you are What Abouting into helplessness, you are part of the aggressor. So pick up a weapon, or organise a fundraiser, or welcome a refugee, but even more preferably at this point – shut the fuuuuck up. Log out, touch grass, leave this war with people that actually know what they’re fighting for. You’re fighting for likes – it’s humiliating – to the left in general, and to future generations who will be left demoralised, rather than inspired to fight for a world sans dictators. Yes, your leaders are some of them, so take care of taking them down. Sadly we seldom even trust the leaders you’d put in their place. This is the level of faith that you’re losing. Look in the mirror, destroy the imperialist exceptionalist cop inside your head. Good luck.

Tek Fog in Action

jm — 2022-01-17T16:25:53+00:00

"Investigating claims behind the use of 'Tek Fog', a sophisticated app used by political operatives affiliated with the Bharatiya Janata Party to drive propaganda at scale in India." This is grim stuff -- a custom app to bulk-post harassment en masse on various social media platforms, targeting women and driving right-wing pro-BJP spam. Can't imagine this methodology will stay in India in future, either.

Discovering related sites by tracing shared ad accounts

jm — 2021-12-09T17:52:55+00:00

Nice process using https://well-known.dev/ . Very handy for tracing undisclosed links between astroturf political pressure groups, in particular

"Grievance Mining"

jm — 2021-10-17T14:08:47+00:00

What a great term for what the Tories are up to in the UK: "Facing chaos and needing a scapegoat, the Tories seek an endless fight with Europe" --

Frost is well aware of the futility of his demands – indeed, it is the whole point of his Lisbon performance. Instead of declaring victory, accepting the EU’s munificent offers and turning down the heat in Northern Ireland, he and Johnson prefer to make an impossible demand so that they can blame the EU for rejecting it. They are, as the South Belfast MP, Claire Hanna, has put it, “mining for grievance”.

Troll farms reached 140 million Americans a month on Facebook before 2020 election

jm — 2021-09-29T15:00:27+00:00

This is a staggering stat: "19 of Facebook's top 20 pages for American Christians in 2019 were run by troll farms in Kosovo and Macedonia, internal documents leaked to MIT Technology Review reveal [...] funded by the Russian Internet Research Agency." (via Charlie Stross)

'I don't want to be seen as a zealot': what MPs really think about the climate crisis

jm — 2021-08-11T15:38:41+00:00

Well, this is a problem --

Running these workshops was a fascinating experience. In each, there was a definite point which I came to think of as a “penny-drop moment”, when the participants came to realise the significance of the climate crisis and the way it would shape our collective future. In one workshop, for example, a very eminent scientist explained to MPs how crop yields are likely to be severely affected by extreme weather, a likely scenario if global average temperatures rise by 2C or more – and that this could lead to food shortages. The response was striking. There was a silence, a collective intake of breath, a recognition of the significance of the changes that could be upon us if we don’t act. And then, at the end of our workshop, they walked out of the door and back to their normal lives. [...] It became clear to me that there were two main reasons why MPs struggled with the issue: first, because it didn’t fit easily into the culture of political life and their own identity as a parliamentarian; and second, because they worried that public support for climate action was limited, and that, as representatives, they needed to be led by their electorate.

I have some confidence that a Citizen's Assembly approach is the right answer here. In Ireland it was clear that politicians felt more comfort with gay marriage and abortion as topics once those CAs had delivered their findings and demonstrated how an electorate really felt about them.

Discourses of climate delay

jm — 2021-06-30T13:30:39+00:00

This is an excellent classification for a particular style of climate denialism: '‘Discourses of climate delay’ pervade current debates on climate action. These discourses accept the existence of climate change, but justify inaction or inadequate efforts. In contemporary discussions on what actions should be taken, by whom and how fast, proponents of climate delay would argue for minimal action or action taken by others. They focus attention on the negative social effects of climate policies and raise doubt that mitigation is possible. Here, we outline the common features of climate delay discourses and provide a guide to identifying them. [...] * Someone else should take actions first: redirect responsibility * Disruptive change is not necessary: push non-transformative solutions * Change will be disruptive: emphasise the downsides * It's not possible to mitigate climate change: surrender.'

Interviews with Loyalist kids

jm — 2021-05-06T10:47:30+00:00

It's a depressing read, as ever. Ulster Unionism is a mess, is falling apart, and is vulnerable to being taken over by the paramilitaries:

“Unionism is losing power and control. It needs leaders who have the skill to say, look, we have cards to play and if we are sensible we can save this place. Instead, Arlene said if there was a united Ireland she’d leave. People are left feeling unappeased but it is not a definite thing. It is more a kind of grief or sense they have lost something intangible. It is about shattered dreams.”

Dr Rory Hearne: The Government does not want you to be able to afford to buy a home

jm — 2021-05-06T08:43:47+00:00

This nails the issue with housing in Ireland:

The Government has been called on to do something to stop this. Even Fianna Fáil politicians have come out crying crocodile tears of outrage. But the truth is the investor purchase of housing in Ireland on a major scale is actually Government policy and has been for the last decade. The Government does not actually want you to be able to buy or rent an affordable home. They have created an unaffordable housing system that is focused on delivering housing as an investment asset, not a home.[...] This current crisis has been brewing for a long time. It goes back to the Celtic Tiger days of the late 1990s and early 2000s when the Fianna Fáil-PD Governments encouraged the shift from housing to be treated as a home, to people buying it up as an investment asset. They told people to speculate in the property market and gave tax breaks for landlords to buy a second, or third, home to rent out. These became the ‘buy-to-let’ investors. The banks lent out massively which added fuel to the fire of rising housing prices, and the inevitable crash happened in 2008 and 2009. As their response to the disaster they had created, Fianna Fáil turned to global ‘vulture’ funds to buy up the bad loans and failed housing projects. They set up the ‘bad bank’ NAMA, which went on, under the Fine Gael Government from 2011 to the current day, to sell off (at a discount) huge land banks and billions of euro worth of properties to vulture and real estate investment funds.

I Lived Through Collapse. America Is Already There. | by Indi Samarajiva

jm — 2020-11-02T21:26:31+00:00

In the last three months America has lost more people than Sri Lanka lost in 30 years of civil war. If this isn’t collapse, then the word has no meaning. You probably still think of Sri Lanka as a shithole, though the war ended over a decade ago and we’re (relatively) fine. Then what does that make you? America has fallen. You need to look up, at the people you’re used to looking down on. We’re trying to tell you something. I have lived through collapse and you’re already there. Until you understand this, you only have further to fall.

Covid: The libertarian population immunity strategy is wrong-headed & dangerous

jm — 2020-09-29T11:25:59+00:00

+1 to this --

As cases of covid in the UK surge once again, the debate has restarted about whether to suppress covid until a vaccine becomes available, or whether to pursue a deliberate strategy of achieving population immunity without a vaccine. The assumption is that vulnerable populations can be protected while the rest of the population, who are at low risk of hospitalisation and death, can be safely encouraged to live life normally and be exposed to the virus without a vaccine. Some even advocate that younger people, because they are at lower risk, should be the first to actively seek infection. "Not only is it a good thing for young people to go out there and become immune," one commentator said, "but that is almost their duty". It is this deliberate strategy which I find so troubling, for six reasons. [....]

Political Compass of Rural Ireland : ireland

jm — 2020-09-17T11:19:08+00:00

lols

The Plot Against George Soros

jm — 2020-09-16T23:16:45+00:00

'Anti-Soros material is a globalized, freely available, and adaptable open-source weapon. Birnbaum said it was the common denominator of the nationalist movement.'

QAnon is a Nazi Cult, Rebranded

jm — 2020-09-09T13:41:30+00:00

A secret cabal is taking over the world. They kidnap children, slaughter, and eat them to gain power from their blood. They control high positions in government, banks, international finance, the news media, and the church. They want to disarm the police. They promote homosexuality and pedophilia. They plan to mongrelize the white race so it will lose its essential power. Does this conspiracy theory sound familiar? It is. The same narrative has been repackaged by QAnon. [...] The plot, described above, was the conspiracy “revealed” in the most influential anti-Jewish pamphlet of all time. It was called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It was written by Russian anti-Jewish propagandists around 1902.

The Trump 2020 app is a voter surveillance tool of extraordinary power | MIT Technology Review

jm — 2020-06-23T09:44:52+00:00

Trump’s casino-like campaign app seems to be his own attempt to create a “one-way tool of propaganda.” Its deployment is part of a global trend, piggybacking on years of unresolved privacy and security issues within the app ecosystem. As researchers studying the intersection of technology and propaganda, we understand that political groups tend to lag behind the commercial ad industry. But when they catch up, the consequences to truth and civil discourse can be devastating. The array of data-gathering tools the Trump and Modi apps use are a legacy of a “freemium” social-media and app landscape that is manipulative, non-transparent, and purposefully addictive, with a mentality of “collect data first and ask question later.” For the last five to 10 years, the pervasiveness of these tools and their use in data scooping has been well documented. Sporadic, state-by-state data regulations have been the only response. In Europe, the GDPR was a big step toward meaningful consent and transparency, but the Official Trump 2020 App does not fall under its jurisdiction. A global perspective is now critical to understanding the implications of data-fueled political manipulation and preparing for the next wave of disinformation. Countries must work together to create effective regulation, and citizens must demand this of them. It took about five years for Modi’s strategies to jump from India to the US, and in the next few years we are on track to see the arrival of strategies used in the dark-money disinformation campaigns of Mexico and Latin America. The Mexican journalist we'd interviewed for our study put it this way: “I think what’s coming all around the world is going to be very chaotic, at least in [the US], I think you’re on the brink of a sort of civil war in one or two years ... You’re going to have a lot of work to do.”

The 'lockdown sceptics' want a culture war, with experts as the enemy | Coronavirus outbreak | The Guardian

jm — 2020-05-18T15:08:48+00:00

in the comment sections of some of the rightwing press, a new, virulent strain of Covid-19 scepticism has emerged that is the precise opposite of journalism. Rather than holding power to account, it distorts and bends reality to serve elite interests – and to warp public debate. In the pages of the Daily Telegraph, the Spectator and other outlets, Britain’s contemporary “lockdown sceptics” have dedicated themselves to a singular cause: proving that the UK response to coronavirus has been a massive, hysterical overreaction. “Lift the lockdown” is their cogito ergo sum; Sweden their promised land.

Coronavirus and Brexit: the connections and their consequences

jm — 2020-04-28T11:06:08+00:00

Have to agree with this...

What both Brexit and coronavirus reveal are some fundamental flaws in the way [the UK] are governed and the political discourse around it. The populist explosion of this decade, of which Brexit was a prime example, has bequeathed a way of governing which is impervious to reason, and incapable of engaging with complexity. It isn’t just chance that we have a woefully incompetent Prime Minister, a dud stand in, and a cabinet of mediocrities, propped up by a cadre of special advisors with few skills beyond contrarian posturing. They are the legacy of Brexit. They were brought into power by Brexit. But all the things which secured the vote for Brexit – the clever-but-dumb messaging, the leadership-by-slogan, the appeal to nostalgic sentiment, the disdain for facts and evidence, the valorisation of anger and divisiveness, the bluff ‘commonsense’ and the ‘bluffers’ book’ knowledge – are without exception precisely the opposite of what is needed for effective governance in general, and crisis management in particular.

We scientists said lock down. But UK politicians refused to listen | Helen Ward | Opinion | The Guardian

jm — 2020-04-15T14:30:43+00:00

on 12 March, the government alarmed many public health experts by abruptly abandoning containment and announcing that community case-finding and contact-tracing would stop. The aim was no longer to stop people getting it, but to slow it down while protecting the vulnerable. The evidence underpinning the government’s decision appears in a report from 9 March summarising the potential impact of behavioural and social interventions. The report did not consider the impact of case-finding and contact-tracing, but it did suggest that the biggest impact on cases and deaths would come from social distancing and the protection of vulnerable groups. And yet social distancing was not recommended then. That day, 12 March, after hearing with disbelief the government announcement that didn’t include widespread social distancing, I recommended to my team at Imperial that they should work from home for the foreseeable future. Indeed, I have not been to my office since. Neither the advice nor the science were followed that week. My colleagues, led by Neil Ferguson, published a report on 16 March estimating that without strong suppression, 250,000 people could die in the UK. The government responded that day with a recommendation for social distancing, avoiding pubs and working from home if possible. But there was still no enforcement, and it was left up to individuals and employers to decide what to do. Many people were willing but unable to comply as we showed in a report on 20 March. It was only on 23 March that a more stringent lockdown and economic support was announced. Between 12 and 23 March, tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of people will have been infected. Boris Johnson himself may well have been infected that week, and his stay in the intensive care unit may have been avoided if the government had shifted to remote working on 12 March. The current best estimate is that around 1% of those infected will die.

'They are leading us to catastrophe': Sweden's coronavirus stoicism begins to jar | World news | The Guardian

jm — 2020-03-31T09:26:40+00:00

A petition signed by more than 2,000 doctors, scientists, and professors last week – including the chairman of the Nobel Foundation, Prof Carl-Henrik Heldin – called on the government to introduce more stringent containment measures. “We’re not testing enough, we’re not tracking, we’re not isolating enough – we have let the virus loose,” said Prof Cecilia Söderberg-Nauclér, a virus immunology researcher at the Karolinska Institute. “They are leading us to catastrophe.”

The Dismantled State Takes on a Pandemic | The New Republic

jm — 2020-03-13T20:07:57+00:00

It didn’t occur to the right that a more terrifying series of words than “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help” would turn out to be “I’m from the government, and I guess I anticipated that the private sector would have engaged.”

How Hindu supremacists are tearing India apart | World news | The Guardian

jm — 2020-02-20T16:39:28+00:00

This sounds pretty terrifying.

For seven decades, India has been held together by its constitution, which promises equality to all. But Narendra Modi’s BJP is remaking the nation into one where some people count as more Indian than others.

Kashmiri cops filed a case against people using VPN and social media

jm — 2020-02-19T16:25:50+00:00

The police in the Jammu and Kashmir region have issued an "FIR" against individuals using social media via a VPN; "army personnel were allegedly checking phones to see if the owners had any VPN apps installed." Critics have regularly argued that this partial access to the internet still counts as an internet shutdown.

An Indian politician is using deepfake technology in an election campaign

jm — 2020-02-19T16:22:52+00:00

A deepfake of the president of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Manoj Tiwari, went viral on WhatsApp in the country earlier this month, ahead of legislative assembly elections in Delhi, according to Vice. It’s the first time a political party anywhere has used a deepfake for campaigning purposes. In the original video Tiwari speaks in English, criticizing his political opponent Arvind Kejriwal and encouraging voters to vote for the BJP. The second video has been manipulated using deepfake technology so his mouth moves convincingly as he speaks in Haryanvi, the Hindi dialect spoken by the target voters for the BJP.

Steve Bannon on shitposting

jm — 2020-01-24T22:44:09+00:00

Steve Bannon to Michael Lewis: "The Democrats don't matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit." This is actually a remarkable comment, as it puts on paper what has been the Tory/Republican tactic -- snowing the media under with bullshit, so they lose track of the important stuff and start rattling on about trivial shitposts like Big Ben bonging or whatever.

Facebook Ad Library Showed Just How Unreliable Facebook’s Security System For Elections Is

jm — 2020-01-15T14:17:45+00:00

On Dec. 10, just two days before the United Kingdom went to the polls, some 74,000 political advertisements vanished from Facebook’s Ad Library, a website that serves as an archive of political and issue ads run on the platform. [....] Facebook has said it will not fact-check political ads or restrict the ability for campaigns to target people. Instead, it said it will provide transparency with tools like the Ad Library, the Ad Library report, and the Ad Library API, so the public, researchers, and journalists can monitor how elections play out on the platform. But that only works to the degree that those tools operate properly. It was only the news media’s reporting that brought the issue out into the open. “The fact that they could have an outage like this that went up to the day before an election, and they didn’t really publicly communicate,” Laura Edelson, a computer scientist at NYU whose work involves using the API, told BuzzFeed News, “that’s just not how you treat a security system. That’s what this is — this is a security system for elections.”

The Center Blows Itself Up: Care and Spite in the ‘Brexit Election’

jm — 2020-01-14T22:13:09+00:00

The center of British politics has become a smoldering pit. The country is now being governed by a hard-right government placed in power by its oldest citizens, in the face of the active hatred of its increasingly socialist-inclined youth. It’s fairly clear that for the Johnson team, Brexit was never anything but an electoral strategy, and that they don’t have the slightest idea how to translate it into economic prosperity. (It is an unacknowledged irony of the current situation that the people most likely to profit from the Brexit process are, precisely, lawyers—and, probably secondarily, accountants. For everyone else, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where they will improve their current situation, and quite easy to imagine Johnson being remembered as one of the most disastrous prime ministers in British history.)

SSP3: The Nightmare Scenario for Climate Scientists

jm — 2020-01-13T13:51:19+00:00

“A resurgent nationalism, concerns about competitiveness and security, and regional conflicts push countries to increasingly focus on domestic or, at most, regional issues. This trend is reinforced by the limited number of comparatively weak global institutions, with uneven coordination and cooperation for addressing environmental and other global concerns. Policies shift over time to become increasingly oriented toward national and regional security issues, including barriers to trade, particularly in the energy resource and agricultural markets... A low international priority for addressing environmental concerns leads to strong environmental degradation in some regions. The combination of impeded development and limited environmental concern results in poor progress toward sustainability. Population growth is low in industrialized and high in developing countries. Growing resource intensity and fossil fuel dependency along with difficulty in achieving international cooperation and slow technological change imply high challenges to mitigation. The limited progress on human development, slow income growth, and lack of effective institutions, especially those that can act across regions, implies high challenges to adaptation for many groups in all regions.” Hausfather called our current world “SSP3-ish,” particularly the rise of populism. Leah Stokes, an energy policy researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told Earther that in some ways “beginning to wake up to much of what SSP3 captures, which is fascism and nationalism and erecting of border between places.” Research linking this vision with society and the climate paints a bleak picture. Findings show there’s no scenario in which society achieves the Paris Agreement goals of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) under SSP3. And the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) goal is but a pipe dream if the world continues its march to fragmentation and lack of cooperation. Hausfather said because of this and computing limitations, the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report will only model SSP3 in conjunction with a high emissions scenario since it’s the most likely outcome.

Welp, that's depressing.