Distinguished eng @ Twitter. Ex-Google, Humu. Queer radical Jew. Dedicated to ethics in our field. He/Him.
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Jul 26, 2018 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
This is something I've been expecting for a while, but not quite so suddenly and sharply: privacy is becoming enough of an issue that people are questioning its violation as a business model. washingtonpost.com/technology/201…
Interesting contrast: FB lost 19% of its value (!!!) after its earnings call, but Google jumped a percent after its call just a few days earlier. I think this means people are recognizing a difference in the two companies' approaches.
Jul 21, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Little thing I wish: that the EU would codify its directives and regulations the way the USC does. Having to read and reconcile a pile of individual laws is a lot of work for no benefit.
This tweet brought to you by reading directives 2000/78/EC, 2000/43/EC, and 2006/54/EC, and realizing they're almost verbatim identical and if they were codified would have amounted to trivial edits on a single shared piece of text.
Jul 19, 2018 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
There's a really good interview here, where @karaswisher asks Zuckerberg all the right questions. I can't say that I'm satisfied with his answers, though. They feel superficial, not because he's dodging the question, but because he hasn't really grappled with it.
Good thought exercise: Imagine what Facebook would be like if its founder had been a Black woman from an otherwise similar background. How would its priorities have been different? What would "connecting people" have meant?
Jul 17, 2018 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
OK, unusual note tonight: this is for the people I know now or previously in the US intelligence community, and for the people I don't know there who have been doing their best under impossible circumstances.
You didn't get shit upon by your country today. You got shit upon by a Russian asset, whose job it is to shit on the US intelligence community.
Jul 16, 2018 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
This thread captures something significant I hadn't noticed - and which is especially creepy as an Israeli, knowing what sorts of people use this language. Generally, they are the sort of people you want to encounter at a distance, and through a scope.
They tend to have a very *vivid* idea about Biblical prophecies and want to bring them about, typically via some kind of plot that involves killing a whole lot of people.
These people tend to love Israel, in much the way that fishermen love fish.
Jul 16, 2018 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
This is an incredibly bizarre statement, given that Cohen met with Kremlin agents in late August 2016 in Prague to arrange payment for the precise things listed in this indictment. (Steele 135, 136, 166.2)
And given that on 27 Jul 2016, the people indicted started to attack Clinton's email system within hours of being publicly asked to do so by Trump. (Indictment para 22)
Jul 10, 2018 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
A subtle thing about @markzabaro's second point: If your company has power disparities large enough that "punching up" becomes reasonable, then you have a different problem. 1/
Why? "Punching up" is a way to poke holes in power when that power is entirely asymmetric, and the resulting relationship between people, if it exists at all, is parasocial: influence and knowledge flow asymmetrically.
If you don't understand the full significance of what the Trump regime is doing to immigrants: it's looking for more excuses to mark *anyone* as deportable, and to eliminate the need for due process when it does so.
Reading through the lines: this means that HHS has decided that they will interpret the court's order as "get all 3,000 children off your books, by whichever means."
Jul 6, 2018 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
BTW, if people are wondering why I care so much about trans issues: (apart from "oh yeah, people, we should be good to them") let me tell you a story.
Long ago, when I was in grad school, a lot of my friends suffered from major depression. I had suffered from it as well, although not as badly as some of my friends.
And among this group was a trans man, who was suffering pretty hard from depression.
Jul 6, 2018 • 36 tweets • 6 min read
Short version: the study that claimed that 80% of trans kids would "desist" in their transness if pushed hard never to mention it was an unethical sham.
thinkprogress.org/scholars-disma…
The basic way this "desistance therapy" works is to put extreme pressure on the child until they no longer say they're trans. It counts "success" as the child's silence, not the child's health.
Jul 6, 2018 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
So, deliberately losing records of families, transporting people thousands of miles, and using inter-agency lack of communication to ensure children *can't* be reunited with their parents? Yup, that's exactly what happened.
HHS's description of the court's 30-day deadline to return children to their parents (14 days for children under 5) as "extreme" only highlights the department's prior malfeasance.
This article's description of Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren as candidates ideal for activating the Democratic Party base just highlights how poorly the Atlantic (and its ilk) understand what's going on politically.
Kamala Harris is an ex-AG, and an establishment centrist's idea of who "those young people" might actually like. These are all candidates that sound reassuring to people who view the party future as trying to please "moderate" Trumpists as being a "not-scary left."
Jul 3, 2018 • 14 tweets • 2 min read
Content warning: torture of children.
In Virginia, in one of the jails used to warehouse immigrant children (not the ones stolen by ICE, other ones) treatment of children accused of being MS-13 members is a replay of Abu Ghraib.
I'm seeing almost all of the named acts of torture identified at Abu Ghraib listed here - only waterboarding is missing, but it's compensated with more broken bones.
Jul 2, 2018 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
If you're wondering: "odeon" is an old word for theater; a "nickel-odeon" was the kind of machine you'd drop a nickel into and peer in to see a film strip. Popular in the very early days of moving film.
As movie theaters with projectors arose, these became less popular, and started to get a sleazy reputation - much like "penny dreadfuls" and "three-penny opera." Today, you'll mostly see them in fairly old-fashioned peep shows.
Jul 2, 2018 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Take a close look at what Ron Paul tweeted. When you hear people say "Cultural Marxism," this is what they're dog-whistling.
If you're wondering what the picture means: the idea is that Black, Latinx, and Asian people are sub-human monsters, and the Jews are manipulating them in order to infiltrate and destroy the white race - which he identifies with America.
Jul 2, 2018 • 23 tweets • 5 min read
Since it's a quiet Sunday evening and my allergy headache is finally passing, I thought it would be a good time to talk a bit about the discussion of "Universal Basic Income" and "Job Guarantees," and some things that have been churning in my head about them. 1/
This is going to be a Twitter ramble (not really a rant) rather than an article because my ideas are still in a pretty early stage, and I'm quite likely to be wrong about several things. But it's good to explore some of these ideas publicly, hear feedback, and think more.
Jul 1, 2018 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
Lumumba (in the DRC), Mossadegh (in Iran), dozens more: the US and UK orchestrated coups around the world against leaders who threatened to take control of national resources away from foreign companies. Each of these left massive destruction in the countries.
Don't forget that Khomeini only took power in Iran after a popular revolution overthrew the brutal regime of the Shah - the regime that the US and UK installed and maintained after overthrowing Mossadegh. Boy, that one turned out great.
Jul 1, 2018 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
A wonderful discovery that brings up so many memories and thoughts.
To grow up male and not straight in the 80's and 90's was very different from either the time before or the time after. Homosexuality was no longer illegal in much of the US — but AIDS loomed over absolutely everything.
Jun 24, 2018 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Ever since 9/11, US Presidents have claimed the right to kill anyone they deem a terrorist, on the battlefield or off, based on secret intelligence. Now a US citizen says he's on the "kill list" and wants to get off - and it's before the courts.
theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
He has good reason to suspect that he's on such a list, having narrowly escaped five US airstrikes in the recent past. He's a journalist covering Syria, and believes he was wrongly labeled a terrorist and added to the kill list by a system named, I shit you not, SKYNET.
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If you're wondering why women have to be told how to dress in order to protect them, you may have caught on to something a bit suspect about this kind of law.
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