Tag Archives: internet

The Super-Rich Tech Elite Is Just Fine With Big Government

by SwenDaneit Posted on May 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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Gregory Ferenstein, in the course of arguing that super-rich donors are about equally split between Democrats and Republicans (although the Republicans donate more in absolute dollars), points out that the super rich in Silicon Valley are almost exclusively Democrats. Why?

I think the more likely explanation is that the nation’s new industrial titans are pro-government.

Google, Facebook, and most Internet titans are fueled by government projects: the Internet began in a defense department lab, public universities educate a skilled workforce and environmental policies benefit high tech green industries. The CEO of Uber, Travis Kalanick, is a fan of Obamacare, which helps his entrepreneurial drivers keep their health insurance as they transition between jobs.

In other words, the Democratic party is good for emerging industries and billionaires recognize it. Donald Trump is a candidate known to go after major figures in tech; a trend that may further the Democrats friendship with new industrial titans.

Perhaps more importantly, I’ve argued that the modern emerging workforce of Silicon Valley, urbanized professionals, and “gig economy” laborers all represent an entirely new political demographic redefining the Democratic party to be more about education, research and entrepreneurship, and less about regulations and labor unions.

There’s something to this, but I suspect culture has a lot more to do with it. Most of these folks have spent their lives marinating in social liberalism, and being situated in the Bay Area just adds to that. So they start out with a visceral loathing of conservative social policies that pushes them in the direction of the Democratic Party. From there, tribalism does most of the additional work: once you’ve chosen a team, you tend to adopt all of the team’s views.

Beyond that, yes, I imagine that tech zillionaires are more than normally aware of how much they rely on government: for basic research, for standards setting, for regulation that protects them from getting crushed by old-school dinosaurs, and so forth. And let’s be honest: most of the really rich ones have their wealth tied up almost entirely in capital gains, which doesn’t get taxed much anyway. So endorsing candidates who happen to favor higher tax rates on ordinary income (which they probably won’t get anyway) doesn’t really cost them much.

For most folks in Silicon Valley, even the super rich, there’s very little personal cost to supporting Democrats. Combine that with an almost instinctive revulsion at both troglodyte Republican policies and the Fox News base of the party, and there just aren’t going to be many Republican supporters in this crowd.

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The Super-Rich Tech Elite Is Just Fine With Big Government

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After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

by Myrna Posted on May 2, 2016

Contestants lost hundreds of pounds during Season 8, but gained them back. A study of their struggles helps explain why so many people fail to keep off the weight they lose. Excerpt from –  After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight ; ; ;

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After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

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Will Twitter Soon Be Overrun With Silicon Trolls?

by Hildred15C Posted on April 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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Hugh Hancock muses today about the remarkable effectiveness of efforts to turn Microsoft’s (now) infamous Tay chatbot into an asshole. It didn’t take much. Mostly the people who did it were just having a laugh, and Tay took it from there. It turns out that being an asshole is a pretty easy thing to emulate.

So what does this mean for the future? Not the far future, mind you, but next year. Hancock has an unnerving answer:

Everyone Can Have Their Own Twitter Mob

Right now, if you want to have someone attacked by a horde of angry strangers, you need to be a celebrity. That’s a real problem on Twitter and Facebook both, with a few users in particular becoming well-known for abusing their power to send their fans after people with whom they disagree.

But remember, the Internet’s about democratising power, and this is the latest frontier. With a trollbot and some planning, this power will soon be accessible to anyone.

There’s a further twist, too: the bots will get better. Attacking someone on the Internet is a task eminently suited to deep learning. Give the bots a large corpus of starter insults and a win condition, and let them do what trolls do — find the most effective, most unpleasant ways to attack someone online. No matter how impervious you think you are to abuse, a swarm of learning robots can probably find your weak spot.

There are some details to be worked out, of course, like setting up all the accounts your trollbot would need. Hancock addresses that. He figures the bots will be pretty good at this stuff too.

The unnerving part of this is that although Hancock is writing in a chatty tone, this is all very plausible. And for something like Twitter, where a bot doesn’t need much intelligence to fit right in, it’s a pretty serious near-term possibility.

So what happens? Behind Door 1, Twitter becomes an abattoir of filth and verbal war. Only the bravest dare enter. Behind Door 2, Twitter mobs become so frequent that no one cares about them anymore. Even the most sensitive among us just shrug them off. Behind Door 3, it all becomes a tedious war between semi-intelligent trollbots and semi-intelligent trollbot filters. It’s just Act II of the online production that began with email spam.

On the bright side, this might put actual trolls out of commission. How can they compete? And what will they do with all their newfound free time?

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Will Twitter Soon Be Overrun With Silicon Trolls?

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Ted Cruz’s Daughter Schools Him on Taylor Swift

by ElsieGiltner Posted on April 14, 2016

Mother Jones

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The CNN Town Hall with Ted Cruz and his family on Wednesday night began with host Anderson Cooper talking to the candidate about the usual political subjects, including his thoughts about GOP front-runner Donald Trumps’ vocal opposition to the current system of gathering delegates in advance of the Republican National Convention. Cruz said Trump is acting like a “union boss thug” by threatening delegates and noted that he’s only complaining about the process because recently he has lost several key primaries. “In the last three weeks there have been 11 elections in 4 states. And we have beaten Donald in all of 11 of them,” Cruz said. “He’s unhappy about that.”

When Heidi Cruz joined her husband on stage and audience members came to the mic, the questions moved from the political to the personal: What was their first date? (A dinner when the two were working on the Bush campaign in 2000). What did she think was his “most annoying” quality? (His iPhone). Cruz also told the audience that he loves movies, but his wife isn’t interested in them, and after The Princess Bride, his favorite movies are The Godfather series, including The Godfather Part III.

But the real highlight of the evening came when Cruz’s two young daughters, dressed in identical yellow dresses, were asked who they would first want to invite to visit the White House. Caroline, whose eighth birthday is on Thursday, and five-year-old Catherine, were shy about naming their favorite pop star, but their mother Heidi answered for them: “The girls would love to have their first guest be Taylor Swift,” she said.

The girls may not have had much to say on the Cruz vs. Trump delegate fight, but they weighed in on a different kind of “Bad Blood” (#sorrynotsorry). The whole family exchange was pretty adorable.

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Ted Cruz’s Daughter Schools Him on Taylor Swift

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Law School Named After Scalia Deals With Awkward Acronym

by RooseveltKeeney Posted on April 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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RIP #ASSLaw. RIP #ASSoL.

Last week, George Mason University announced that it was renaming its law school in honor of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Henceforth, students would attend the Antonin Scalia School of Law or, as the internet quickly (and gleefully) pointed out, ASSLaw—or ASSoL

It didn’t take long for the school to tweak the name. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Antonin Scalia School of Law at George Mason University” will be the official name, but the school’s website and promotional materials will refer to the Antonin Scalia Law School. Take that, snarky acronym-mongers!

The decision to rename the school came after it received two major donations: an anonymous donor, who requested the name change to commemorate Scalia, gave $20 million, and the Charles Koch Foundation gave $10 million.

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Law School Named After Scalia Deals With Awkward Acronym

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America’s Rash of School Shooting and Bomb Threats Continues

by ClaribelOwx Posted on February 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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School officials sent home nearly 2,000 students after receiving a bomb threat at McLean High School in northern Virginia at approximately 8:00 a.m. Monday morning. The Washington Post reports:

The 10th largest school district in the country, Fairfax County schools face nearly daily threats. Security officials have said that threats come in frequently through the Internet and social media and that they investigate about 100 cases a year.

Earlier this year, fake bomb threats closed schools in six states, and in 2015 a threat forced school officials in Los Angeles to cancel classes for the second largest school system in the country.

Schools throughout the nation have been facing a rash of shooting and bomb threats. One study suggests that such threats are on the rise. In February 2015, Kenneth Trump, the president of the National School Safety and Security Services, released a study that reviewed 812 threats reported in the media from the first half of the 2014-15 school year. Threats had risen 158 percent since the first time he conducted the study in the previous year.

However, there is no comprehensive national data on school threats, and no mandate for schools or law enforcement to track them, so it’s diffucult to discern if the problem is in fact a rising trend. Meanwhile, also on Monday four students were reported injured in a school shooting in Ohio. Read more about the ongoing wave of threats to schools in our recent explainer here.

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America’s Rash of School Shooting and Bomb Threats Continues

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Someone Is Trying to Freak Out New Hampshire’s Undecided Voters

by JeannetteDme Posted on February 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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Some voters in New Hampshire opened their mailboxes today to find an envelope stamped in red with “important taxpayer information enclosed.” Inside was a letter featuring an official-looking seal that listed not only the recipients’ voting records, but those of their neighbors.

“WHAT IF YOUR FRIENDS, YOUR NEIGHBORS, AND YOUR COMMUNITY KNEW WHETHER YOU VOTED?” the mailer asked. “We’re sending this mailing to you, some of your friends, neighbors, colleagues at work and community members to make them aware of who does and does not vote.”

A mailer circulated to New Hampshire voters today by a mysterious group

The mailer listed the recipient’s name, his or her record of voting in the last few elections, and the names, addresses, and voting records of nine neighbors. Mother Jones was shown two copies of the mailer, one sent to a registered independent voter in Manchester and the other to a registered Democrat; complaints about this mailer began popping up on the internet this afternoon.

The mailer is very similar to one circulated by Ted Cruz’s campaign to undecided Iowa voters just days before the caucuses. Cruz’s controversial mailer warned of “voting violations” and listed what it said was the voting records of the recipient and his or her neighbors, although the voting data appeared to be incorrect if not made up entirely. (At least one of the New Hampshire mailers featured false voting-record data, according to the recipient.)

Unlike the Iowa mailer, which prominently listed the Cruz campaign as its source, there is no indication who sent the New Hampshire letter. In small print at the bottom of the letter a disclaimer notes that it is “Paid for by Public Policy Matters,” a group that has no obvious web presence. If the New Hampshire mailers are not from Cruz, it’s possible that someone wants to remind New Hampshire’s coveted independent voters of Cruz’s Iowa stunt.

Update: Ted Cruz’s spokesman, Rick Tyler, told Mother Jones that the Cruz campaign did not send the mailers. “All of our mail has a Paid for by Cruz for President disclaimer. Not ours,” Tyler emailed.

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Someone Is Trying to Freak Out New Hampshire’s Undecided Voters

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As W.H.O. Deems Zika a Global Emergency, a Look at the World’s Failed Mosquito Policies

by Myrna Posted on February 1, 2016

Areas stricken in Zika virus outbreak were once free of the mosquito that carries this and other dangerous diseases. Source –  As W.H.O. Deems Zika a Global Emergency, a Look at the World’s Failed Mosquito Policies ; ; ;

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As W.H.O. Deems Zika a Global Emergency, a Look at the World’s Failed Mosquito Policies

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As W.H.O. Weighs Zika as Global Emergency, a Look at the World’s Failed Mosquito Policies

by Myrna Posted on February 1, 2016

Areas stricken in Zika virus outbreak were once free of the mosquito that carries this and other dangerous diseases. Excerpt from:  As W.H.O. Weighs Zika as Global Emergency, a Look at the World’s Failed Mosquito Policies ; ; ;

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As W.H.O. Weighs Zika as Global Emergency, a Look at the World’s Failed Mosquito Policies

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Here’s Obama’s New Plan to Tighten Gun Laws

by LizzieStaton Posted on January 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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As expected, President Barack Obama will announce a series of gun-related executive actions Tuesday meant to expand background checks on firearm purchases and step up federal enforcement of existing gun laws.

One executive action would clarify existing law that anyone “engaged in the business of selling firearms”—including at gun shows and online—must be licensed and conduct background checks on gun purchasers. The White House’s fact sheet explains:

…it doesn’t matter where you conduct your business—from a store, at gun shows, or over the Internet: If you’re in the business of selling firearms, you must get a license and conduct background checks. Background checks have been shown to keep guns out of the wrong hands, but too many gun sales—particularly online and at gun shows—occur without basic background checks.

But as my colleague Mark Follman wrote Monday, that clarification won’t be enough: “Expanding background checks through a broader interpretation of current federal law still won’t close the so-called gun show loophole; hundreds of thousands of firearms will continue to be bought and sold with minimal regulation, both online and in person. Only an act of Congress could change that comprehensively.”

Other executive actions include:

A $500 million investment in mental-health services.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tabacco, Firearms, and Explosives will announce a rule requiring background checks for people who purchase weapons through a trust or corporation. (The White House’s earlier efforts to close this loophole through executive action hit a roadblock nearly two years ago, when ATF officials delayed publishing the rule after facing opposition from industry groups, including the National Rifle Association.)
The White House will request funding for 200 new ATF agents and investigators to enforce existing gun laws.
The ATF will require licensed dealers who ship guns to notify law enforcement if their guns are lost or stolen.
The FBI will hire more than 230 examiners to process background checks in an overhauled system.

Obama’s announcement comes days before he hosts a town hall meeting on guns Thursday night. The move is expected to garner pushback from opponents, especially those in a divided Congress who blocked legislation three years ago to close the so-called gun show loophole. House Speaker Paul Ryan has already warned that the president’s actions was a “dangerous level of executive overreach.”

“This is not going to solve every violent crime in this country. It’s not going to prevent every mass shooting. It’s not going to keep every gun out of the hands of a criminal,” Obama told reporters on Monday. “It will potentially save lives in this country and spare families the pain of these extraordinary loss.”

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Here’s Obama’s New Plan to Tighten Gun Laws

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