“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
― Socrates - via Dr Simon Longstaff - Philosophy in the World: The Lesson of Socrates
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” ― William Shakespeare, As You Like It
*"I don't know"
Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo named joint winners of Booker Prize
N.C. Doctor Sentenced for Tax Evasion
One of the downsides of paying too much attention to Federal Tax Crimes is to see people who abuse the privileges that they have received in life. Here is a case of a doctor who had a privileged position. Certainly, he had a good education (he did get in and graduate from medical school) and was ahead, financially and in status, of most Americans.
This doctor, Dr. David Russell, was convicted and sentenced to prison for tax evasion. He got a rather light slap on the wrist (sentenced to 12 months and a day, so that he will get significantly less than 12 months with the good time credit). I just wonder if the minority mechanic down at Joe's Body Shop who did roughly equivalent things would have gotten such a lenient sentence. I won't know that, because it is a counterfactual.
The DOJ Press Release is DOJ Presser
Activists' phones targeted by one of the world's most advanced spyware apps
"Pegasus," developed by Israel-based NSO Group, stalks 2 Moroccan, researchers say....
Via Deep Bloggers
Daniel, Susan and Cristina
News Literacy Project – “The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Facebook plans to exempt satire and opinion content from its fact-checking program. This would mean that posts that contain demonstrably false claims, but which the platform deems to be either satire or opinion, would not be referred to its network of third-party fact-checkers
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” ― William Shakespeare, As You Like It
*"I don't know"
Why Peter Handke’s Nobel Prize Has Made Many People Furious
Social media lit up with outrage when Handke’s win was announced, and criticism came from some (seemingly) surprising quarters. Albania’s acting foreign minister said the award was “an ignoble and shameful act.” PEN America, in an unprecedented move, publicly condemned the Swedish Academy for its choice. What’s the reason for all the anger? It goes back to the post-Yugoslav wars. – Slate
“MIT graduate student Karly Bast shows off a scale model of a bridge designed by Leonardo da Vinci that she and her colleagues used to prove the design’s feasibility.”
One of the downsides of paying too much attention to Federal Tax Crimes is to see people who abuse the privileges that they have received in life. Here is a case of a doctor who had a privileged position. Certainly, he had a good education (he did get in and graduate from medical school) and was ahead, financially and in status, of most Americans.
This doctor, Dr. David Russell, was convicted and sentenced to prison for tax evasion. He got a rather light slap on the wrist (sentenced to 12 months and a day, so that he will get significantly less than 12 months with the good time credit). I just wonder if the minority mechanic down at Joe's Body Shop who did roughly equivalent things would have gotten such a lenient sentence. I won't know that, because it is a counterfactual.
The DOJ Press Release is DOJ Presser
Why venture capital firms need culture expertsWhen Susan Fowler’s 2017 blog post shined a light on Uber’s raucous culture, outlining rampant harassment and sexism, a debate erupted. What role do the deep-pocketed investors behind the company, those who allowed it to scale to monstrous proportions, have in developing and nurturing its culture? Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists themselves wondered aloud, how involved should a venture fund be in early-stage recruiting processes and ensuring a safe environment for employees? If a culture is bad, unsafe, damaging, is it the VC’s fault?
Late-stage venture funds, for the most part, miss the opportunity to deeply impact their portfolio companies’ cultures. When they invest, typically large sums of capital in companies with hundreds of employees and multiple offices, the company’s culture is formed and, as Uber and others have proven, rebuilding culture a decade in is no easy challenge. Early-stage funds, however, the people that write the very first check in startups, have a front-row seat to decisions crucial to defining how a company operates and treats its employees in the long term. These people, if they care to, have the power to help determine key hires and establish company values, norms and behaviors from the get-go.
"Pegasus," developed by Israel-based NSO Group, stalks 2 Moroccan, researchers say....
Fact-checking impeachment is hard to do
It’s
only been a little more than two weeks since U.S. House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi announced
an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. But for
fact-checkers, it feels like a lifetime.
Since
the announcement of the inquiry, which focuses on a phone call between Trump
and the president of Ukraine, misinformation has come from all sides. Online,
social media users have
targeted politicians who speak out against the president with
disinformation. In Washington, politicians from both sides of
the aisle have tried to spin the news to make their respective cases about
impeachment. Trump even
mentioned a conspiracy theory during his call with Ukraine.
So
let’s start with the facts.
It
is a fact that, during the
July phone call, Trump asked President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate
Joe Biden, a top contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020.
It is a fact that Trump had
recently frozen military aid to Ukraine. And it
is a fact that a whistleblower subsequently filed a complaint about
the interaction.
But
if you exclusively read social media or right-wing media outlets, all you hear
about are the Bidens.
While
the impeachment inquiry was unfolding, allegations about the Bidens’ dealings in
Ukraine started
to surface. Biden’s son, Hunter, had previously served on the board of
Ukrainian energy company Burisma, whose owner faced
accusations of money laundering, fraud and tax evasion. Some claim Joe
Biden, as vice president, called for the ouster of a prosecutor investigating
the company to shield his son.
Fact-checkers
have found no evidence to support that claim, as Biden was
not alone in calling for the prosecutor’s removal. But Trump allies
and conspiracists took the kernel of truth and ran with it.
That
was exemplified when Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, went
on ABC News last weekend to talk about the Bidens’ dealings in
Ukraine. He made a slew of unproven, conspiratorial claims in less than 15
minutes. Afterward, Nieman Lab published a story questioning
the value of doing live TV interviews.
Daniel
and Miriam Valverde of (Poynter-owned) PolitiFact fact-checked
statements from the interview. Most of those checks pointed to the
fact that there is simply no evidence to back up what Giuliani claimed on ABC,
particularly the notion that Ukraine colluded with Democrats during the 2016
presidential election.
But
therein lies the problem — there is no evidence. That makes it arguably
harder for fact-checkers to debunk misinformation than for partisans to create
it in the first place, because there is no tangible proof that adjudicates the
claim. And politicians seem to know that.
Writing
for The Washington Post, Abby Ohlheiser articulated this conundrum
especially well — particularly as it relates to the challenge that
fact-checkers and reporters face while covering impeachment.
“Trump,
and many key figures in the pro-Trump Internet, are good at overwhelming their
perceived enemies,” she wrote. “The Impeachment Internet will never just be
about impeachment; it’ll be about impeachment and Joe Biden and the Clintons
and Soros and the media — and random people on Twitter and outrages from years
ago that can still go viral if shared in the right place.”
“It
is an inseparable blend of fact and fiction and anger and fear and lamentation.
It will be hot and exhausting.”
Indeed,
it already is.
. . . technology
- BuzzFeed News uncovered a network of Facebook accounts that sowed propaganda targeting Iran and Qatar. The website found that the accounts, which Facebook has removed, were most likely coordinated by public relations firms in the Middle East and Africa.
- In Argentina, TV channels have started running a “deepfake” video created by the ad agency Fit BBDO and the collaborative fact-checking project Reverso showing presidential candidates in unexpected situations. President Mauricio Macri, who is seeking reelection, for example, appears juggling a soccer ball. Opposition candidate Alberto Fernández is shown “playing” a Jimi Hendrix guitar solo. The point is to draw attention to misinformation and how believable fakes can be.
- After the Trump campaign posted a Facebook ad claiming Biden offered Ukraine $1 billion in aid if it ousted the man investigating the company tied to his son, Biden’s campaign asked Facebook to remove it. Facebook refused.
. . . politics
- Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee have called for new regulations to make political ads more transparent and urged a more forceful public stance by politicians to warn Americans about how misinformation can spread in advance of the 2020 elections.
- Canadian fact-checkers are pleasantly surprised by the small amount of false electoral content being spread on digital platforms during the campaign. Besides some French hoaxes and a few memes that carry misinformation, there hasn’t been a deluge of original false content. Daniela Flamini wrote about it.
- But… people should prepare for “an onslaught of doctored pics” surrounding the revelation that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the past dressed up in blackface and brownface, according to a piece in Nieman Reports from researchers at Harvard. The episode, they write, has created an “information environment ripe for exploitation by partisans and other bad actors seeking to spread confusion, division, and hate.
. . . the future of news
- In one of the first major government actions against misinformation in the U.S., the state of California has banned the distribution of deepfake videos that are intended to damage a politician’s reputation or mislead voters.
- Speaking of deepfakes, Deeptrace, a cybersecurity company based in Europe, found in a census of about 15,000 such videos that 96% were pornographic. It also identified 20 “deepfake creation community websites and forums.”
- BuzzFeed News reported on how political operatives fabricated millions of comments on U.S. government websites to create fake voter outrage. In that same vein, i, a newspaper in the U.K., wrote about how the tactic of “astroturfing” — wherein the sponsors of a message are masked to make it appear authentic — is among the biggest threats to democracy nowadays.
On
Sept. 26, Colombian President Iván Duque posted on Twitter parts
of a report he had presented to United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio
Guterres, during the recent General Assembly meeting in New York. According to
Duque, the document had undeniable proof of what he characterized as “threats
to democracy, security and regional peace” – among them, pictures showing
how Venezuela, under President Nicolás Maduro, was supporting rebels from the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army
(ELN), Colombian leftist guerilla groups.
Once
fact-checkers saw the content tweeted by Duque, they went to work. El
Colombiano newspaper and Agence
France-Presse (both in Spanish) found out that some images were
neither recent nor were the photographs taken in Venezuela, as Colombia’s
report said. At first, Duque tried to minimize the use of the misleading
photos, but on Oct. 1, the chief of intelligence and military
counterintelligence in Colombia stepped
out of office, apologizing.
What
we liked: This
case proves once more that a fact check can have a great impact and even change
the composition of a government. Both AFP and El Colombiano acted swiftly to
debunk the photos in fact checks that are among the most highly visible to date
in Latin America.
- The Associated Press’ 2020 reporting lineup will include a team specifically dedicated to misinformation.
- Misinformation researchers Joan Donovan and danah boyd have a new study on how amplification plays into the practices of news outlets and tech platforms.
- There have been lots of warnings lately about Instagram’s potential to carry misinformation. Here’s a new one from HuffPost.
- Facebook announced this week the expansion of its third-party fact-checking program to 10 additional countries across Africa.
- After Malaysia passed an anti-misinformation law last year, some lawmakers tried to repeal it. That effort failed, but now they’re trying it again.
- Mother Jones wrote about how, during the impeachment inquiry against Trump, fringe platforms like 4chan and conservative outlets have been floating the same conspiratorial talking points.
- First Draft has a new guide for reporters on how to responsibly cover misinformation.
- The Daily Beast found a secret Facebook page run by RealClearPolitics, a political news website in the U.S. The page is filled with right-wing memes and Islamophobic smears.
- Ahead of the United Kingdom’s deadline to reach a deal with the European Union, First Draft has rounded up some of the top false and misleading claims about Brexit.
- Want to learn more about the American impeachment process and how to improve your coverage of the inquiry against Trump? Sign up for today’s one-hour webinar with PolitiFact’s Angie Holan and Louis Jacobson.
News Literacy Project – “The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Facebook plans to exempt satire and opinion content from its fact-checking program. This would mean that posts that contain demonstrably false claims, but which the platform deems to be either satire or opinion, would not be referred to its network of third-party fact-checkers
Forbes: Tax Court Can’t Order IRS To Not Jerk People Around, by Peter J. Reilly:
Jeffrey Davis is my new hero. From the record in Judge Ruwe’s
