Daily Archives: July 5, 2017

Google’s fine said to be only the start as EU probes progress – The Mercury News

Posted: July 5, 2017 at 11:03 pm

By Aiofe White and Stephanie Bodoni

Google could see more fines from European Union antitrust regulators this year as probes into its AdSense advertising service and Android mobile-phone software near their end, three people familiar with the cases said just a week after the company was hit with a record penalty for its shopping-search services.

Both are at advanced stages, though the Android case may not be concluded until later this year, according to one of the people, who all spoke on condition of anonymity.

Alphabets Google is the EUs highest-profile antitrust target, with probes on three fronts occupying regulators for as long as seven years. EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager has called 2017 her G year during which she would seek to nail decisions against the search-engine giant. European politicians have urged the EU to sanction Google or even break it up while U.S. critics claim regulators are unfairly targeting successful American firms.

Reuters reported earlier that regulators are seeking expert advice in the Android investigation to check their case, a sign that they may be trying to test possible flaws in the case before moving toward a final decision.

The European Commission and Google both declined to comment.

High Stakes

Vestager has set high stakes for Google to comply with an EU order accompanying last months 2.4 billion-euro ($2.7 billion) penalty. Shes warned of additional fines if it wont stop systematically favoring its own price-comparison-shopping service in its general search results. Google has until late August to make changes that satisfy the EU. Shes also threatened further probes on travel or map services.

Google has strongly criticized the Android case, saying the EU is putting at risk its strategy of giving away mobile-phone software which lowers costs for customers. The company says the strict conditions it sets on apps ensure that Android phones and software work smoothly together. The EU said last year that Googles restrictive contracts unfairly require phone makers to install Google apps. Regulators also raised concerns about how telecom operators are paid to put Google search on devices.

The company was also accused last year of hindering competition for online ads over its AdSense for Search Product. The EU criticized unfair restrictions in contracts for placing ads on websites including retailers, telecommunications operators and newspapers. The company prevented customers from accepting rival search ads from 2006 and maintained restrictions on how competitors ads were displayed when it altered contracts in 2009.

Fines arent inevitable. Companies can placate regulators by offering changes that resolve antitrust issues. Google attempted to strike such a settlement for the shopping search case in 2012 but ran into opposition from rivals who protested at paying to appear in Googles promoted shopping ads at the top of the search screen.

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transhumanism | social and philosophical movement …

Posted: at 11:02 pm

social and philosophical movement

Transhumanism, social and philosophical movement devoted to promoting the research and development of robust human-enhancement technologies. Such technologies would augment or increase human sensory reception, emotive ability, or cognitive capacity as well as radically improve human health and extend human life spans. Such modifications resulting from the addition of biological or physical technologies would be more or less permanent and integrated into the human body.

The term transhumanism was originally coined by English biologist and philosopher Julian Huxley in his 1957 essay of the same name. Huxley refered principally to improving the human condition through social and cultural change, but the essay and the name have been adopted as seminal by the transhumanism movement, which emphasizes material technology. Huxley held that, although humanity had naturally evolved, it was now possible for social institutions to supplant evolution in refining and improving the species. The ethos of Huxleys essayif not its lettercan be located in transhumanisms commitment to assuming the work of evolution, but through technology rather than society.

The movements adherents tend to be libertarian and employed in high technology or in academia. Its principal proponents have been prominent technologists like American computer scientist and futurist Ray Kurzweil and scientists like Austrian-born Canadian computer scientist and roboticist Hans Moravec and American nanotechnology researcher Eric Drexler, with the addition of a small but influential contingent of thinkers such as American philosopher James Hughes and Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom. The movement has evolved since its beginnings as a loose association of groups dedicated to extropianism (a philosophy devoted to the transcendence of human limits). Transhumanism is principally divided between adherents of two visions of post-humanityone in which technological and genetic improvements have created a distinct species of radically enhanced humans and the other in which greater-than-human machine intelligence emerges.

The membership of the transhumanist movement tends to split in an additional way. One prominent strain of transhumanism argues that social and cultural institutionsincluding national and international governmental organizationswill be largely irrelevant to the trajectory of technological development. Market forces and the nature of technological progress will drive humanity to approximately the same end point regardless of social and cultural influences. That end point is often referred to as the singularity, a metaphor drawn from astrophysics and referring to the point of hyperdense material at the centre of a black hole which generates its intense gravitational pull. Among transhumanists, the singularity is understood as the point at which artificial intelligence surpasses that of humanity, which will allow the convergence of human and machine consciousness. That convergence will herald the increase in human consciousness, physical strength, emotional well-being, and overall health and greatly extend the length of human lifetimes.

The second strain of transhumanism holds a contrasting view, that social institutions (such as religion, traditional notions of marriage and child rearing, and Western perspectives of freedom) not only can influence the trajectory of technological development but could ultimately retard or halt it. Bostrom and American philosopher David Pearce founded the World Transhumanist Association in 1998 as a nonprofit organization dedicated to working with those social institutions to promote and guide the development of human-enhancement technologies and to combat those social forces seemingly dedicated to halting such technological progress.

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Claude Speeed is the trance-inspired ambient nomad documenting Berlin’s rave sadness – FACT

Posted: at 10:59 pm

FACT Rated is our series digging into the sounds and stories of the most vital breaking artists around right now. This week, Scottish producer Claude Speeed tells John Twells how his new album Infinity Ultra emerged from the moments before and after hedonism.

IN SHORT NAME:CLAUDE SPEEED FROM:EDINBURGH MUST-HEAR: MY SKELETON (LUCKYME, 2014) FOR FANS OF:TIM HECKER, KONX-OM-PAX, LORENZO SENNI

If you were looking closely at LuckyMe post-rock band American Mens 2010 debut Cool World, youd have noticed a track named after Grand Theft Auto 2 protagonist Claude Speed. It was around this time that the bands Stuart Turner decided to adopt the moniker for himself (adding an extra e) and begin penning what would become Infinity Ultra, his second solo album.

Id been making a lot of stuff I enjoyed listening to, but would sound dumb if it had drums on it, and the drummers were really good, he explains. It felt a bit ridiculous to say to them OK theres gonna be a lot of tracks where you dont have to do anything at all. So I felt like I needed some other outlet for that kind of music.

For one reason or another, however, Turners initial solo experiments were shelved when he quit his day job as a corporate lawyer in 2012 and traveled to Asia, with his modest studio setup for company. A MacBook Air and a pair of headphones, along with a field recorder, provided the backbone of debut album My Skeleton, which acted as a kind of travelogue for Turner, documenting his trip. In contrast, Infinity Ultra is a set of tracks the producer has collecting for years.

The first track is legitimately the first Claude Speeed track. I wrote that in 2011 and havent really changed it since then, he tells me. I realized at some point that Id done all these other tracks that I was really into, but they werent consistent with each other so they wouldnt make a record. Eventually, Turner played the tracks together and had a lightbulb moment this was the album hed been trying to desperately to make. It had been right there all along. Not very conceptual, he laughs. But thats what happened.

When I make music, it tends to be fairly sad music in the end.

Instead of focusing on a specific concept, with Infinity Ultra, Turner has allowed his life experiences over the last few years seep into the music as they happened. So while the album started life in Edinburgh, much of it has been colored by his move to Berlin, where hes been based for about five years. The syrupy ambience and near-devotional qualities of My Skeleton are still present, just about, but theres a vivid dancefloor glow thats hard not to attribute to Germanys de facto capital of club culture.

I think thats something to do with the rave sadness of Berlin, Turner says, pensively. Especially when I first arrived, I went to parties really more than I should have and was out a lot, and the music I made was really sad, even though I was having a lot of fun. Hes not talking about a comedown either (when he made the move, he was straight-edge), but the absence of hedonism: a level of calm thats hard to describe as anything but sad. I was partied out, like a character in a film. And you see that a lot, and that influences the sound. Thats what Im interested in. For someone else it might express itself in terms of really dark techno, but thats not my thing, so thats not the way it comes out.

Its really not. Infinity Ultra is woozy and cinematic, especially on VHS-warped opener BCCCC, pulling in influence from trance (Ambien Rave, Fifth Fortress), noise (Super 800 NYC) and post-rock (Enter the Zone) as the album develops. It might be informed by Berlin, but Turner doesnt make dance music his tracks are vignettes, hinged on memory and melancholy. Im not a sad person, he assures me. But I feel if Im being honest when I make music, it tends to be fairly sad music in the end. And I like listening to sad music as well.

Infinity Ultra is out on July 14 via Planet Mu.

John Twells is on Twitter

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Is the Washington Metro Brutalist? (part 2) – HuffPost

Posted: at 10:59 pm

The label may be limiting how we see the design of the capital subway stations.

Larry Levine/WMATA

The Washington Metros form, structure, and space surely relate much more to these historical models than they do to Brutalism. The vault geometry is reminiscent of the structural virtuosity in Antonio Gaudis catenary arches and vaults, and the coffers are shaped to be as efficient as possible with material and reduce the weight of the structure, a technique possibly influenced by the experimentation of Buckminster Fuller and Frei Otto, both widely known in the 1960s. By contrast, buildings characterized as Brutalist often are over-structured, because the rationalism of the early European approach morphed into idiosyncratic sculptural expression in the USa battered bunker aesthetic of fortress-like piles of gray concrete, according to the Boston Globe. Louis Kahn bashed what he called the muscular posturing of most Brutalism, which the authors of Heroic call more Marlboro man than Mad Men.

In this view of Brutalism, it was fascinated with weighty massiveness, while Weeses Metro is all lightness and lift, an effect that is evident even in his earliest concept sketches (which, incidentally, indicate no particular material or structure). The airy and spacious design, as the AIA described it in 2014, is markedly different from canonical Brutalist structures, which have more spatial complexity. The clarity of the Metros centering makes the space navigable and understandable (AIA), while at the Boston City Hall and especially the Rudolph building at Yale, space continually pivots, forcing diagonal views and paths, shifting perspectives to create a sense of movement and mystery. While some point to repetition of a single elementsay, Metros waffle-shaped ceilings as a typical attribute of Brutalism, this doesnt apply to many of the most noted examples, including the Rudolph, the Pei, or the exterior of Gordon Bunshafts Hirsshorn Museum, also in DC.

At most, the Washington Metro has a peripheral affiliation with Brutalism, mainly due to its material and age. Yet, the stations have been described as landmarks of Brutalist design and emblematic of all the rules of Brutalist architecture, and Hurley insists, The Washington Metro is not a minor work of Brutalism. If it is such a major example, why did no one identify it as such until recently? Zachary Schrag, author of The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro (2006), tells me that in his research he did not encounter the word in relation to the Metro in any formal architectural publication from the 1960s til his book was published. Online, I can find little or no evidence of the term applied to the Metro until the past decade, over 30 years after the first station opened and 40 years after it was designed.

Various

In 2007, the Metro appeared in Americas Favorite Architecture, the AIAs survey of the 150 most popular buildings in the US. While the AIA makes no mention of Brutalism, Wikipedias entry on the survey identifies the Metro as Brutalist, and its page on Weese calls it the only brutalist design to win a place on the list. I cant determine the dates and authors of these references, but otherwise I have found virtually no online references prior to 2009, when a few commenters began to use the appellation. One of the earliest instances occurred that summer in Greater Greater Washingtonby none other than Matt Johnson, the same planner who kicked off the paint controversy this year: Metro is widely known for its soaring, brutalist vaults (8/24/09). (Capitalization comes and goes with the word.) References practically exploded in 2010, and by the time it received the Twenty-five Year Award in 2014, the label had become fairly commonat least among a particular cadre of critics, editors, and journalists. To this day, with relatively few exceptions the identified writers who apply the term to the Metro apparently include only a small group of Washington-area residents: notably Johnson, Capps, Hurley, Madsen, Dan Reed in the Washingtonian, Michelle Goldchain in Curbed, and Katie Gerfen, who in her 2014 coverage of the AIA award for Architect magazine mentions the Metros signature Brutalist vaults, although the AIA itself did not use that designation.

What accounts for the prolonged delay, even among these writers? According to Google Ngram, which tracks words and phrases in print sources through the year 2008, use of the term Brutalism climbed steadily from 1950 to 1970, flatlined in the 70s and 80s, had a resurgence in the 90s, and peeked around 1997 (incidentally, the year Paul Rudolph died). In the past decade, the number of books published on Brutalism appears to exceed the total number published at any point before. As mid-century concrete buildings began reaching middle age, and many, including DCs Third Church of Christ, Scientist, were being razed, preservationists took notice. As more and more examples of classic Brutalism face demolition by neglect, Madsen has said about his Brutalist Washington Map, we hope that putting these examples of D.C.'s Brutalist architecture on the map will foster public appreciation that ensures their longevity. Schrag observes, If you want to get people to value a concrete bunker, you need to articulate its particular worth, and identifying it with a particular brand of modern architecture is one way to do that.

Whatever the reason for the resurgence, as Brutalism was on the rise, the Washington Metro also was getting more attention, making the AIA 150 list in 2007 and receiving the 25-Year Award in 2014. The following year brought a flurry of media attention on the preservation of Brutalist buildings. Over the past decade, the coincidence of general interest in the movement and specific interest in the Metro brought the two together, and the project retroactively got a new label, half a century after the fact.

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But does the shoe fit? Pasnik and Grimley demur: I dont think were in the position to evaluate the Metro and its classification, suggesting that even some experts on Brutalism dont immediately see an obvious alignment. Bruegmann is more decisive: Certainly the Metro is not a good example of the Brutalist style [as it was understood in the 60s and 70s]. It did not come out of the same mindset as, say, Rudolph's building at Yale. Susan Piedmont-Palladino, Director of the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center (WAAC) and a curator at the National Building Museum (NBM) in DC, agrees: I don't put Metro in the Brutalist category. Simply being made of concrete isn't sufficient to be labelled Brutalist. She has lectured widely on Brutalism, and her 2010 NBM event arguably helped spur local interest.

Piedmont-Palladino sees the style as less Classical and more Gothic: You want structure? I'll show you structure! The British critic John Ruskin affectionately called Gothic architecture rude and wild, she says. I would argue that's a pretty good description of Brutalist architecture. Weeses metro design is anything but rude and wild. Even before the first station was completed, Bruegmann recounts, the Washington Post hailed its serene kind of beauty.

Art-historical shorthands can be helpful to guide us toward prevailing views of a work, but the best works invariably resist pigeonholing because they transcend particular movements or styles. As the late architect Michael Graves remarked, labels have the negative value of making smaller boundaries. During the 60s, when Brutalism was emergent, Walter Gropius complained about the irrepressible urge of critics to classify contemporary movements [by] putting each neatly in a coffin with a style label on it. In a 2013 essay, Pasnik and Grimley write that the reduction of Brutalism to a stylistic label exclusively associated with concrete has made it a rhetorical catastrophe.

During the paint debate this Spring, the US Commission on Fine Arts (CFA), which helped develop the Metro system, sent a letter to WMATA to express concern. It emphasized the majestic quality of the Metro stations, now considered a masterpiece of modern design and some of the most important civic spaces in Washington. The DC chapter of the AIA sent a similar letter. Neither mentions Brutalism, which remains an historical trend with many detractors that is vaguely defined at best and for which the Metro is not a perfect example.

Champions of Weeses design might be more effective in appealing for better upkeep if they portray it in the most expansive terms possible, as do the CFA, the national AIA, and the local AIA. As one of the 150 most popular structures in the country and one of fewer than 50 buildings to win the Twenty-five Year Award, the Washington Metro is so much bigger than Brutalism.

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General Soleimani: Support for oppressed people increases Iran’s power – Ahlul Bayt News Agency: Providing Shia News (press release)

Posted: at 10:59 pm

(AhlulBayt News Agency) - The fact even admitted by Iran's enemies that the country's power has increased ten times more than before is indicative of Tehran's policy and rationalism as well as its support for the oppressed people of the region, said IRGC senior commander Major-General Qasem Soleimani.

Speaking in a local gathering, Soleimani, the Quds Force commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), said the clear example of the increase of Irans power in the region is that images of Father of the Islamic Revolution the late Imam Khomeini and Irans current Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei are presented in all regional countries.

He described the cause of Palestine as a pivotal issue for the region saying that certain Arab states were against establishment of the International Quds Day.

The International Quds Day was initiated by the late Imam Khomeini after the Islamic Revolution as an opportunity for world Muslims and non-Muslims to express their support for the cause of Palestine and their hatred towards atrocities of the Zionist Regime against the defenseless people of Palestine.

The innocent people of Palestinian are surrounded by a number of their friends and also certain Islamic countries.

Designating the International Quds Day was one of the masterworks made by Imam Khomeini, Soleimani said noting that the event has brought more and more dignity for the Islamic Iran.

Noting that the terrorist group of ISIS was created by Takfiri terrorists to establish a so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Levant aiming at ruining the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The commander underscored that those who sponsored the Takfiri terrorists were trying to fan the flames of insecurity but they have finally failed to bring the Iranian nation to its knees through numerous acts of aggression.

Thanks to Irans global defense from the innocent Iraqi and Syrian people, Soleimani noted the Islamic Republic of Iran is considered as the most beloved country across the globe.

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CNN in odd role as censor: Network threatens free speech over Trump wrestling video – USA TODAY

Posted: at 10:58 pm

Jonathan Turley, Opinion Columnist Published 4:03 p.m. ET July 5, 2017 | Updated 6:14 p.m. ET July 5, 2017

CNN has been accused of blackmailing the man who created a meme of President Donald Trump tackling CNN by threatening to reveal his identity. USA TODAY

President Trumps video tweet on July 2, 2017.(Photo: Twitter, @realDonaldTrump)

CNN has reported that it has confirmed the identity of the creator of the controversial videothat shows President Trumptaking down someone with the CNN logo for a head. Like many, I was highly critical of the president for reposting the video on his Twitter account. That wasboth irresponsible and unpresidential.

What is curious is that CNN has withheld the creator'sidentity while making a thinly veiled threat that it will release his name if he posts anything CNN finds disturbing or offensive. That is an odd role for a news organization. The newsmedia do not usually put citizens on probation forexercising theirfree speech.

CNN announced that it had identified the Reddit user HanA**holeSolo who first shared the video that Trump reposted with the hashtags #FraudNewsCNN and #FNN. CNN said the man also posted images with racist and anti-Semitic imagery. Heissued a long apology and removed all of the images.

"I am not the person that the media portrays me to be in real life.I was trolling and posting things to get a reaction from the subs on Reddit and never meant any of the hateful things I said in those posts, he wrote. He said hewas engaging in what he thought was satire or trolling fun on Reddit.

Like the poster, I ama fan of Reddit, which is known for its open forum and varied viewpoints. It is often caustic and funny. At times, it is offensive and disturbing. However, it is a genuine and largely uninhibited forum for free expression.

No, Trump's wrestling tweet doesn't 'incite violence'

Yes, Donald Trump and other presidents can be charged with obstruction

The Trump videoby the Reddit user was a typical satire on contemporary political events. It is not even clear whetherit was meant as a celebration or a criticism of Trump. It simply swapped out the face of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) CEO Vince McMahon with the CNN gif.

It was the exercise of free speech. It was also news. While posting such a video on Reddit is not surprising or noteworthy, it took on an entirely new character when Trump reposted it. He haswaged an intense war against the news media and CNN in particular. That makes the original poster'sidentity newsworthy.

CNN, however, stated that it has decided to withhold hisname for now. He is a private citizen, the network said, who apologized, took down the offending posts and said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media. In addition, he said his statement could serve as an example to others not to do the same.

CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.

The last statement is particularly jarring. It sounds like CNN is putting a citizen on a type of media probationary status threatening to reveal his name if it deems any posting as constituting ugly behavior. It puts a news organization in the position of monitoring free speech and deciding whether to ruin someone if he crosses some ill-defined line with CNN. It is the antithesis of what a news organization is supposed to be about.

CNN caved to Trump. It should have stood by its reporters.

POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media

If the mans name is news, CNN can choose to publish it or not publish it. In reality, he is news only because his videotape was snatched from obscurity and paraded to the world by the president of the United States. It is the Internet equivalent of being hit by lightning. If the man posts an anti-media comment or gif, will CNN then declare it news and post his name? It is not clear how long this probationary period will run, let alone the standard for distinguishing between free speech and ugly speech.

Nor is there a clear rationale behind a media probationary status. Journalists will often withhold the names of sexual assault victims or minors. However, they don'tthreaten to reveal those names if they fall to meet the news organizations' expectations or standards in future conduct. Indeed, even when juries reject sexual assault claims, CNN continues to protect thenames.

In this case, CNN is behaving like a media censor. The president arbitrarily selected this man and his gif. Now CNN appears willing to arbitrarily punish him.

It is the threat of future disclosure that is so concerning and dangerous.News is not supposed to be a weapon to be brandished to induce good conduct by organizations like CNN. Free speech and free press go hand in hand. Indeed, many reporters are protected more under the former right than the latter in legal controversies. Once a news organization becomes the manager of free speech, it becomes a menace to the free press.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors. Follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.

You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @USATOpinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.

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Stanley: Is the President an enemy of free speech or merely exercising it in a way that liberals dislike? – CNN

Posted: at 10:58 pm

Last week, President Trump tweeted a video of himself wrestling a man to the floor, the man's head digitally replaced with the CNN logo. CNN tracked down the Reddit user who created the video, and also asked him about other posts of his that consisted of racist, Islamophobic, and anti-Semitic language and imagery. HanA**holeSolo, as the user is known, apologized profusely, insisted that he loves "people of all races, creeds and origins," and insisted that the video wasn't intended to incite violence against the media. The President, on the other hand, did not say "sorry." He tweeted: "My use of social media is not Presidential - it's MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL. Make America Great Again!" Parties on each side of this saga could legitimately say they're taking a stand for free speech. CNN is defending the freedom of the press against a President who has sometimes appeared to threaten it. Conservatives charge CNN with being thin-skinned, but I've reported on Trump rallies where the audience has been moved to send up a chant of "CNN sucks," and where the anger at the so-called mainstream media nearly boiled over into outright intimidation. When the President of a democracy tweets a video of himself beating up a media organization, isn't that an implicit threat against the free press?

HanA**holeSolo's creation is classic Trumpery: it shows the President figuratively wrestling the media to the ground, yes, but with a dash of self-aware humor that the left is oddly tone-deaf to.

Does Trump really think he has the physique of a pro wrestler? Or that his tweets are witty ripostes worthy of Downton Abbey? No. He's a troll on a cosmic scale, and sometimes liberals would do well to ignore the one-liners he bashes out on his phone and focus on what he's doing in his day job.

So, which is it? Is the President an enemy of free speech or merely exercising it in a way that liberals dislike? Personal experience has taught me that the line between these two things is vanishingly thin.

Down the years, I've had it all thrown at me: anti-Semitism, accusations of being a racist, homophobia, accusations of homophobia, cartoons of me in a gas oven, etc. I've said some bad things myself -- never that bad, I want to emphasize -- and feel guilty for having contributed my own small portion to this moral mudslide.

But if I might pretend to be completely innocent for a moment, then I have a couple of observations to make. One is that women always get it worst. Another is that people are happy to turn a blind eye to abuse when they agree with it politically. Liberals can give offense but they never take it lightly.

A third is that the cost of being bad online is rising. Reputations can be ruined by a nasty tweet, or even a tweet that just wasn't well phrased or was unfairly misinterpreted. Generosity is dying; it's rare to be given the benefit of the doubt. Social media is starting to become a strange mix of the abrasive and the censorious, of which the CNN wrestling story is a rather good illustration.

My sympathy, however, does lie with CNN -- for one simple reason. Online abuse is killing the appeal of public service. Any sane, ethical young person would see the ugliness of modern politics and journalism and conclude they want no part of public life. The President is encouraging that.

Horrible things have been said about Trump, true. He could argue that he's simply fighting back, yes. But fighting fire with fire inevitably leads to more fire, and while I'm sympathetic towards some of Trump's agenda, I look upon the state of politics in this era with despair. It is not unreasonable for journalists to say "enough is enough."

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Free speech is muffled by an unwillingness to listen – News & Observer

Posted: at 10:58 pm


News & Observer
Free speech is muffled by an unwillingness to listen
News & Observer
After a century of building free speech rights into our laws and culture, Americans are backing away from one of the country's defining principles. In high schools across the country, teachers say they stay away from hot topics such as immigration and ...

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Debullshitifying the free speech debate about CNN and Trump’s alt-right wrestling GIF – Boing Boing

Posted: at 10:58 pm

In the wake of CNN threatening to out a critic if he does not limit his speech in the future, former federal prosecutor and First Amendment champion Ken White has published an eminently sensible post about the incoherence of the present moment's views on free speech, and on the way that partisanship causes us to apply a double standard that excuses "our bunch" and damns the "other side."

As you'd expect from White, he goes beyond the "pox on both your houses" and sets out a course for a consistent and coherent view on free speech, speech with consequences, and taking sides.

We're not consistent in our arguments about when vivid political speech speech inspires, encourages, or promotes violence. We're quicker to accept that it does when used against our team and quicker to deny it when used on the other team.

We're not consistent in our moral judgments of ugly speech either. We tend to treat it as harmless venting or trolling or truth-telling if it's on our team and as a reflection of moral evil if it's on the other team.

We're not consistent in our arguments about whether online abuse and threats directed at people in the news are to be taken seriously or not. We tend to downplay them when employed against the other team and treat them as true threats when used against our team.

We're not consistent in our arguments about whether calling some individual out by name exposes them to danger. We tend to claim it does when the person supports our team and sneer at the issue when the person supports the other team.

We're not consistent in our treatment of the significance of behavior by obscure individuals. When some obscure person's online speech gets thrust into the limelight, we tend to treat it as fairly representative if they're on the other team and an obvious non-representative outlier if they are on our team.

We're hopelessly bad at applying consistent legal principles to evaluate whether speech is legally actionable depending on which team it comes from.

We're pretty inconsistent in our assessment of what social consequences should flow from ugly speech, with our views of proportionality, decency, and charity diverging widely depending on whether the person at issue is on our team or not.

CNN, Doxing, And A Few Ways In Which We Are Full of Shit As A Political Culture [Ken White/Popehat]

Louisiana Republican congressman Clay Higgins shot video of himself talking about the need for invincible U.S. powerwhile wandering the gas chamber at Auschwitz. In his five-minute ramble, Higgins explains the horrors that took place at the camp, where some 1.1m people, mostly Jews, where murdered by the Nazis during World War II. And that this []

Described by the BBC as a stunning attack on a female news anchor as if such a thing were at all unusual for the president of the United States of America, Trumps latest twitter barrage concerns the allegedly bleeding badly facelift of MSNBCs low I.Q. Crazy Mika Brzezinski. Brzezinski tweeted back, to mock Trumps famously []

Piers Morgan is a British journalist, pundit and Trumpkin who blew his big break in America and now presents breakfast television when not being nasty to women on Twitter. Here he is on Good Morning Britain getting savagely owned by copresenter Susanna Reid. This moment was just too beautiful for words, @susannareid100 @piersmorgan @CharlotteHawkns pic.twitter.com/hK2n88nBS4 []

Entertaining bold changes in your career can feel like an abandonment of what youve worked for thus far, but this fallacious mindset can cost you a lot more in the long run than the time spent at your current gig. Change is constant, and building new skills outside of your typical wheelhouse will do much []

Immersive 3D sound is usually only possible with an array of surround-sound speakers, or by using headphones with Binaural audio content. And since most readily-available media is mastered for generic stereo, your Dolby 5.1 setup wont automagically add an extra dimension to your listening experience. But you can still simulate a rich audio environment with []

If big-game bow hunting sounds a little too intense for your delicate sensibilities, or you want to start building your kids archery proficiency early, this Real Action Crossbow Set is a fairly convincing replica of the real thing.The toy bow fires suction-cup tipped bolts up to 20 feet, so you can work on your marksmanship []

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Debullshitifying the free speech debate about CNN and Trump's alt-right wrestling GIF - Boing Boing

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A State Steps Up to Protect Campus Free Speech – National Review

Posted: at 10:57 pm

Campus leftists have so tramped upon freedom of speech that a legislative reaction was inevitable. A model bill, the Campus Free Speech Act, has been drafted and introduced in quite a few state legislatures this year. One state is North Carolina. The bill has passed both the House and Senate and now sits on Governor Coopers desk. I dont know whether he will sign it or not. The state has a lot of rabid progressives who helped elect Cooper in last falls nail-biter election and they might persuade him to veto the bill on the grounds that it interferes with what they view as their terrain the UNC system.

One reason why the campus Left opposed the bill is that it requires that state colleges and universities adhere to institutional neutrality. Thats a crucial feature argues Jay Schalin in todays Martin Center article.

While individual administrators and faculty members should naturally be free to take any position on political issues, the institutions should not take sides. Schalin provides several examples. When colleges insist that faculty members and applicants submit diversity statements, that amounts to an official position that only if you are willing to declare your support for a set of extremely debatable notions are you fit to teach there. Another example is the Climate Leadership Statement that many college presidents have signed. It means that the school has taken sides in the argument over climate change. That could silence faculty members who disagree but dont want to jeopardize their jobs.

Schalin concludes, With the Free Speech Act, the North Carolina legislature has provided some powerful safeguards against future politicization of the states colleges and universities, and it deserves great praise for securing those protections. Of course, more needs to be done, so it should not rest on this years laurels but continue to improve the academic atmosphere in the states higher education institutions for the benefit of all North Carolinians. Thats right, and if the campus leftists cant stand operating under rules that protect free speech and depoliticize academe, they are free to leave.

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A State Steps Up to Protect Campus Free Speech - National Review

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