David Byrne Turns His Acclaimed Musical American Utopia into a Picture Book for Grown-Ups, with Vivid Illustrations by Maira Kalman

in Art, Books, Current Affairs, Life | December 15th, 2020

What­ev­er your feel­ings about the sen­ti­men­tal, light­heart­ed 1960 Dis­ney film Pollyan­na, or the 1913 nov­el on which it’s based, it’s fair to say that his­to­ry has pro­nounced its own judg­ment, turn­ing the name Pollyan­na into a slur against exces­sive opti­mism, an epi­thet reserved for adults who dis­play the guile­less, out-of-touch naïveté of chil­dren. Pit­ted against Pollyanna’s effer­ves­cence is Aunt Pol­ly, too caught up in her grown-up con­cerns to rec­og­nize, until it’s almost too late, that maybe it’s okay to be hap­py.

Maybe we all have to be a lit­tle like prac­ti­cal Aunt Pol­ly, but do we also have a place for Pollyan­nas? Can that not also be the role of the mod­ern artist? David Byrne hasn’t been wait­ing for per­mis­sion to spread joy in his late career. Con­tra the com­mon wis­dom of most adults, a cou­ple years back Byrne began to gath­er pos­i­tive news sto­ries under the head­ing Rea­sons to Be Cheer­ful, now an online mag­a­zine.

Then, Byrne had the audac­i­ty to call a 2018 album, tour, and Broad­way show Amer­i­can Utopia, and the gall to have Spike Lee direct a con­cert film with the same title, and release it smack in the mid­dle of 2020, a year all of us will be glad to see in hind­sight. Byrne’s two-year endeav­or can be seen as his answer to “Amer­i­can Car­nage,” the grim phrase that began the Trump era.

As if all that weren’t enough, Amer­i­can Utopia is now an “impres­sion­is­tic, sweet­ly illus­trat­ed adult pic­ture book,” as Lily Mey­er writes at NPR, “a sooth­ing and uplift­ing, if some­what neb­u­lous, expe­ri­ence of art.” Work­ing with artist Maira Kalman, Byrne has turned his con­cep­tu­al musi­cal into some­thing like a “book-length poem… filled with charm­ing illus­tra­tions of trees, dancers, and par­ty-hat­ted dogs.”

Byrne’s project is not naive, Maria Popo­va argues at Brain Pick­ings, it’s Whit­manesque, a sal­vo of irre­press­ible opti­mism against “a kind of pes­simistic ahis­tor­i­cal amne­sia” in which we “judge the defi­cien­cies of the present with­out the long vic­to­ry ledger of past and fall into despair.” Amer­i­can Utopia doesn’t artic­u­late this so much as per­form it, either with bare feet and gray suits onstage or the vivid col­ors of Kalman’s draw­ings, “light­ly at odds,” Mey­er notes, “with Byrne’s words, trans­form­ing their plain opti­mism into a more nuanced appeal.”

Amer­i­can Utopia the book, like the musi­cal before it, was writ­ten and drawn before the pan­dem­ic. Do Byrne and Kalman still have rea­sons to be cheer­ful post-COVID? Just last week, they sat down with Isaac Fitzger­ald for Live Talks LA to dis­cuss it. You can see the whole, hour-long con­ver­sa­tion just above. Kalman con­fess­es she’s still in “qui­et shock,” but finds hope in his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive and “incred­i­ble peo­ple out there doing fan­tas­tic things.”

Byrne takes us on one of his fas­ci­nat­ing inves­ti­ga­tions into the his­to­ry of thought, ref­er­enc­ing a the­o­rist named Aby War­burg who saw in the sum total of art a kind “ani­mat­ed life” that con­nects us, past, present, and future, and who remind­ed him, “Yes, there are oth­er ways of think­ing about things!” Per­haps the vision­ary and the Pollyan­naish need not be so far apart. See sev­er­al more of Kalman and Byrne’s beau­ti­ful­ly opti­mistic pages from Amer­i­can Utopia, the book, at Brain Pick­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

David Byrne’s Amer­i­can Utopia: A Sneak Pre­view of Spike Lee’s New Con­cert Film

David Byrne Launch­es Rea­sons to Be Cheer­ful, an Online Mag­a­zine Fea­tur­ing Arti­cles by Byrne, Bri­an Eno & More

David Byrne Curates a Playlist of Great Protest Songs Writ­ten Over the Past 60 Years: Stream Them Online

Watch Life-Affirm­ing Per­for­mances from David Byrne’s New Broad­way Musi­cal Amer­i­can Utopia

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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A Biostatistician Uses Crochet to Visualize the Frightening Infection Rates of the Coronavirus

in Biology, Current Affairs, Health | December 9th, 2020

Chances are you’ve looked at more graphs this past year than you did over the pre­vi­ous decade — not just while work­ing at home, but while scrolling through cas­cades of often-trou­bling quan­ti­ta­tive infor­ma­tion dur­ing your “off” hours as well. This phe­nom­e­non has hard­ly been lim­it­ed to the Amer­i­cans who obsessed over the pre­dic­tions of and returns from their pres­i­den­tial elec­tion last month, an event turned prac­ti­cal­ly into a sideshow by the ongo­ing pan­dem­ic. Around the world, we’ve all want­ed to know: Where did the coro­n­avirus come from? What is it? Where is it going?

Apolo­gies to Paul Gau­guin, who did­n’t even live to see the Span­ish flu of 1918, a time when nobody could have imag­ined instan­ta­neous­ly and wide­ly shar­ing visu­al ren­der­ings of data about that dis­ease. The world of a cen­tu­ry ago may not have had dynam­ic ani­mat­ed maps and charts, updat­ed in real time, but it did have cro­chet. Whether or not it had then occurred to any­one as a viable medi­um for visu­al­iz­ing the spread of dis­ease, it can be con­vinc­ing today. This is demon­strat­ed by Nor­we­gian bio­sta­tis­ti­cian Kathrine Frey Frøs­lie, who in the video above shows us her cro­cheted rep­re­sen­ta­tions of var­i­ous “R num­bers.”

This now much-heard term, Frøs­lie’s explains, “denotes repro­duc­tion. If the R num­ber is one, this means that each infect­ed per­son will on aver­age infect one new per­son dur­ing the course of the dis­ease. If R equals two, each infect­ed per­son will infect two per­sons,” and so on. Her cro­cheted ver­sion of R=1, with a pop­u­la­tion of ten, is small and nar­row — it looks, in oth­er words, entire­ly man­age­able. Such a dis­ease “will always be always present, but the num­ber of infect­ed per­sons will be con­stant.” Her R=0.9, which steadi­ly nar­rows in a way that resem­bles an unfin­ished Christ­mas stock­ing, looks even less threat­en­ing.

Alas, “for the coro­n­avirus, the R is most­ly larg­er than one.” In cro­cheted form, even R=1.1 is pret­ty for­mi­da­ble; when she brings out her R=1.5, “it is evi­dent that we have a prob­lem. Even the cro­chet patch kind of crum­bles.” Then out comes R=2, which must have been quite a project: its ten orig­i­nal infec­tions bloom into 2,560 new cas­es, all rep­re­sent­ed in almost organ­i­cal­ly dense folds of yarn. As for R=2.5, when Frøs­lie even­tu­al­ly gets it hoist­ed onto her lap, you’ll have to see it to believe it. Through­out 2020, of course, many of our at-home hob­bies have grown to mon­strous pro­por­tions — even those tak­en up by med­ical sci­en­tists.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Inter­ac­tive Web Site Tracks the Glob­al Spread of the Coro­n­avirus: Cre­at­ed and Sup­port­ed by Johns Hop­kins

Sim­u­lat­ing an Epi­dem­ic: Using Data to Show How Dis­eases Like COVID-19 Spread

Every­thing You Need To Know About Virus­es: A Quick Visu­al Expla­na­tion of Virus­es in 9 Images

The His­to­ry of the Plague: Every Major Epi­dem­ic in an Ani­mat­ed Map

An Artist Cro­chets a Life-Size, Anatom­i­cal­ly-Cor­rect Skele­ton, Com­plete with Organs

The Beau­ti­ful Math of Coral & Cro­chet

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Watch Sassy Justice, the New Deepfake Satire Show Created by the Makers of South Park

in Comedy, Current Affairs, Technology, YouTube | November 16th, 2020

If any cul­tur­al, polit­i­cal, or tech­no­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non of the past cou­ple of decades has­n’t been lam­pooned by South Park, it prob­a­bly did­n’t hap­pen. But the 21st cen­tu­ry has brought forth so much non­sense that even Trey Park­er and Matt Stone, cre­ators of that at once crude and mul­ti­di­men­sion­al­ly satir­i­cal car­toon show, have had to expand into fea­ture films and even onto Broad­way to ridicule it all. The lat­est project takes the hum­bler but unde­ni­ably more rel­e­vant form of a Youtube series, and one mod­eled on the form of ultra-local tele­vi­sion news. Sassy Jus­tice comes host­ed by anchor Fred Sassy, a flam­boy­ant “con­sumer advo­cate” for the peo­ple of Cheyenne, Wyoming — and one pos­sessed, come to think of it, of an odd­ly famil­iar face.

Fred Sassy is based on Sassy Trump, a cre­ation of voice actor Peter Ser­afi­now­icz. Despite his for­mi­da­ble skills as an impres­sion­ist, the trou­ble Ser­afi­now­icz had nail­ing the sound and man­ner of the cur­rent U.S. Pres­i­dent gave him the idea of dub­bing over real footage of the man with delib­er­ate­ly invent­ed char­ac­ter voic­es. This led to an inter­est in deep­fakes, videos cre­at­ed using dig­i­tal like­ness­es of real peo­ple with­out their actu­al par­tic­i­pa­tion.

The increas­ing­ly con­vinc­ing look of these pro­duc­tions once had a lot of peo­ple spooked, as you’ll recall if you can cast your mind back to 2019. Deep­fakes thus made per­fect sub­ject mat­ter for a Park­er-Stone project, but not long after they began col­lab­o­rat­ing with Ser­afi­now­icz on a deep­fake-sat­u­rat­ed Fred Sassy movie, the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic put an end to pro­duc­tion. From the ash­es of that project ris­es Sassy Jus­tice, which pre­miered last month.

This first episode (with a clip playlist here) also pro­vides a glimpse of the sure­ly enor­mous all-deep­fake cast to come. Uncan­ny ver­sions of Al Gore, Mark Zucker­berg (now a dial­y­sis-cen­ter mag­nate), and Julie Andrews (as com­put­er tech­ni­cian “Lou Xiang,” a ref­er­ence that if you get, you get) all make appear­ances, as do those of White House reg­u­lars Jared Kush­n­er, Ivan­ka Trump, and even Don­ald Trump, on whose voice Ser­afi­now­icz seems to have made progress. But “it’s impos­si­ble for a human to accu­rate­ly mim­ic some­one else’s voice to 100 per­cent,” as Sassy is assured by a Zoom inter­vie­wee, the oft-imi­tat­ed actor Michael Caine — or is it? Less able than ever to tell real from the fake, let alone the deep­fake, “we’re all going to have to trust our gut, that inner voice,” as Sassy advis­es in the episode’s final seg­ment. “It’s all we have now.” But then, all effec­tive satire is a lit­tle fright­en­ing.

via MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Zen Wis­dom of Alan Watts Ani­mat­ed by the Cre­ators of South Park, Trey Park­er and Matt Stone

Amer­i­can His­to­ry: An Off-Kil­ter 1992 Stu­dent Film from South Park Cre­ator Trey Park­er

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Brings to Life Fig­ures from 7 Famous Paint­ings: The Mona Lisa, Birth of Venus & More

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Cre­ates Real­is­tic Pho­tos of Peo­ple, None of Whom Actu­al­ly Exist

Long Before Pho­to­shop, the Sovi­ets Mas­tered the Art of Eras­ing Peo­ple from Pho­tographs — and His­to­ry Too

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Constantly Wrong: Filmmaker Kirby Ferguson Makes the Case Against Conspiracy Theories

in Current Affairs, History, Politics | November 16th, 2020

Dis­cor­dian writer and prankster Robert Anton Wil­son cel­e­brat­ed con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries as decen­tral­ized pow­er incar­nate. “Con­spir­a­cy is just anoth­er name for coali­tion,” he has a char­ac­ter say in The His­tor­i­cal Illu­mi­na­tus Chron­i­cles. Accord­ing to Wil­son, any suf­fi­cient­ly imag­i­na­tive group of peo­ple can make a fic­tion real. Anoth­er state­ment of his sounds more omi­nous, read in the light of how we usu­al­ly think about con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry: “Real­i­ty is what you can get away with.”

When his­to­ri­an Richard Hof­s­tadter diag­nosed what he called “the para­noid style in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics,” he was quick to point out that it pre­dat­ed the “extreme right-wingers” of his time by sev­er­al hun­dred years. Where Wil­son thinks of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry as a shin­ing exam­ple of ratio­nal thought against a con­spir­a­cy of Kings and Popes, Hof­s­tadter saw it as anti-Enlight­en­ment, an extreme reac­tion in the U.S. to Illu­min­ism, “a some­what naive and utopi­an move­ment,” Hof­s­tadter writes dis­mis­sive­ly.

Per­haps the utopi­an and the para­noid style are not so eas­i­ly dis­tin­guish­able, in that they both “promise to deliv­er pow­er­ful insights, promise to trans­form how you see for the bet­ter,” says Kir­by Fer­gu­son, cre­ator of the Every­thing is a Remix Series episode below. But no mat­ter how dark or illu­mi­nat­ed they may be, he sug­gests, all con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries share the com­mon fea­ture of being “con­stant­ly wrong.” Ferguson’s new film series, This is Not a Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry digs deep­er into the “role of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries in Amer­i­can cul­ture,” he writes on his site.

Despite its osten­si­ble sub­ject, the project’s “ulti­mate pur­pose is to intro­duce peo­ple to the realms of sys­tems sci­ence, which is where we can bet­ter under­stand the hid­den forces that shape our lives.” Pro­duced over eight years in an enter­tain­ing “con­spir­a­cy-like style,” the film cham­pi­ons skep­ti­cism and com­plex­i­ty over the cer­tain­ty and pat, closed-cir­cle nar­ra­tives offered by con­spir­acists. Con­spir­a­cy theories—like the innu­mer­able per­mu­ta­tions of the JFK assas­si­na­tion, Chem­trails, or Roswell—are “too much like movies,” he says, to con­tain very much real­i­ty.

Ferguson’s vision of the world resem­bles Wilson’s, who wrote most of his work before the inter­net. Real­i­ty, he says, is a “mas­sive, decen­tral­ized hive of activ­i­ty.” Pow­er and con­trol exist, of course, but there is no man behind the cur­tain, no secret hier­ar­chies. Just bil­lions of peo­ple pulling their own levers to make things hap­pen, cre­at­ing a real­i­ty that is a sum, at any giv­en moment, of all those lever-pulls. Are there no such thing as con­spir­a­cies? “To be sure,” as Michael Par­en­ti argues, “con­spir­a­cy is a legit­i­mate con­cept in law,” and actu­al con­spir­a­cies, like Water­gate or Iran-Con­tra, “are a mat­ter of pub­lic record.”

What dif­fer­en­ti­ates sus­pi­cion about events like these from what Par­en­ti calls “wacko con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries”? Maybe a sec­tion Fer­gu­son left out of his “Con­stant­ly Wrong” episode at the top will illu­mi­nate. A con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, he writes, “is a claim of secret crimes by a hid­den group, and this claim is dri­ven by a com­mu­ni­ty of ama­teurs” who are more eager to believe than to apply crit­i­cal think­ing. Learn more about Ferguson’s new film here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every­thing is a Remix: The Full Series, Explor­ing the Sources of Cre­ativ­i­ty, Released in One Pol­ished HD Video on Its 5th Anniver­sary

Neil Arm­strong Sets Straight an Inter­net Truther Who Accused Him of Fak­ing the Moon Land­ing (2000)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Daugh­ter Vivian Debunks the Age-Old Moon Land­ing Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry

The Paul McCart­ney is Dead Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry, Explained

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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A Virtual Table Read of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Featuring Jennifer Aniston, Morgan Freeman, Shia LaBeouf, Sean Penn, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, John Legend & More

in Comedy, Current Affairs, Film | October 12th, 2020

If you will for­give a gross over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion, there are two kinds of peo­ple in this world:

Those (like me) who, hav­ing seen Fast Times at Ridge­mont High the night before the first day of their senior year of high school, made sure to pack car­rots in their lunch­box­es, and those who were too young to see it in its orig­i­nal release, pos­si­bly because they hadn’t been born yet.

For those of us in the first group, Feel­in’ A‑Live’s #Fast­Times­Live, a vir­tu­al table read of the script for Cameron Crowe’s 1982 semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal teen sex romp, is a bit of a tough sell, even as a fundrais­er for two good caus­es: the COVID-19 relief orga­ni­za­tion CORE and REFORM Alliance, which is ded­i­cat­ed to crim­i­nal jus­tice reform and staunch­ing COVID-19’s spread with­in the incar­cer­at­ed pop­u­la­tion.

It’s kind of a mess.

Pos­si­bly we’re just crab­by from all the Zoom per­for­mances we’ve watched and tak­en part in over the last 6+ months.

Were we sup­posed to be charmed that this live, unre­hearsed per­for­mance fea­tured A‑list movie stars, bum­bling through like reg­u­lar Joes cir­ca April 2020?

Ray Liot­ta, repris­ing the late Ray Wal­ston’s author­i­ty fig­ure, Mr. Hand, is ham­strung by his old school paper script, ensur­ing that most of his lines will be deliv­ered with down­cast eyes.

Julia Roberts, as 15-year-old hero­ine, Sta­cy, is win­some­ly fresh, but out of focus.

Is it this blur­ri­ness of the tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties that caused the pro­duc­tion, orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived of as a fea­ture-length table read, to be re-pack­aged as a sort of high­lights trib­ute?

(Roberts’ com­put­er glitch appears to have been cleared up after orga­niz­er Dane Cook’s first inter­rup­tion to encour­age dona­tions (cur­rent­ly stand­ing at a $2,132, which is par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­ap­point­ing giv­en that the film took in $2,545,674 its open­ing week­end, in 1992.))

Jen­nifer Anis­ton, in the role orig­i­nat­ed by Sev­en­teen mod­el, Phoebe Cates, is pre­dictably fun­ny, and also brings pro­fes­sion­al qual­i­ty make up and light­ing to the pro­ceed­ings, but it’s some­how unjust that her celebri­ty sta­tus excus­es her face-obscur­ing hair­do. Actress­es of her gen­er­a­tion, lack­ing her star pow­er, ply­ing their trade on Zoom are invari­ably ordered to bar­rette up.

The tech­ni­cal prob­lems were not enough to spare us from a reen­act­ment of the film’s most noto­ri­ous scene, in which Stacy’s old­er broth­er, orig­i­nal­ly played by Judge Rein­hold, now brought to life by Anniston’s ex, Brad Pitt, fan­ta­sizes about Cates unclasp­ing her biki­ni top, only to be barged in on enjoy­ing an extreme­ly pri­vate moment by the very object of those fan­tasies.

It’s at the 37 minute mark, FYI.

A fit­ting pun­ish­ment for those of us who, remem­ber­ing the tabloid head­lines, eager­ly focused on Aniston’s face as Pitt was being intro­duced.

It wouldn’t hold a can­dle to the now-prob­lem­at­ic orig­i­nal, if Pitt weren’t blush­ing and Mor­gan Free­man weren’t read­ing the stage direc­tions.

(“Do you want me to use my Lorne Greene sonorous voice or just read like I’m not here?”)

Many view­ers picked up on the play­ers’ seem­ing­ly cool recep­tion of their cast­mate, Method actor, Shia LaBeouf, born four years after the orig­i­nal film’s release. In the role of surfin’ ston­er, Jeff Spi­coli, he was tasked with some very big shoes to fill.

It’s a trib­ute to orig­i­nal Spi­coli, activist Sean Penn’s ver­sa­til­i­ty that he wasn’t for­ev­er type­cast as vari­ants on his star mak­ing role. As the only mem­ber of the orig­i­nal cast in atten­dance (as well as the founder of one of the des­ig­nat­ed char­i­ties), he alone seems to be enjoy­ing the hell out of LaBeouf’s scene steal­ing antics.

Writer Crowe and direc­tor Amy Heck­er­ling dish on his audi­tion at the end of the pro­ceed­ings, and in so doing shed some light on LaBeouf’s eccen­tric­i­ties, and the oth­ers’ wari­ness.

Even though the sto­ry con­flicts, some­what, with the cast­ing director’s rec­ol­lec­tion below, we’re will­ing to take it on faith that LaBeouf’s fel­lows’ fail­ure to clap for him is as much a part of the joke as Pitt’s game use of icon­ic head­gear.

Dane Cook hedged his bets in def­er­ence to those who may not have lived through the peri­od par­o­died by the film:

One more thing, before we start, the big dis­claimer with a cap­i­tal D, a whole lot of beliefs and lan­guage have changed since this came out, so don’t @ us, unless it’s to donate. Remem­ber, it was a cer­tain time and place, and the sen­ti­ments in the script do not reflect the peo­ple read­ing it today. They do reflect the fic­tion­al char­ac­ters from an imag­i­nary school in a total­ly make believe sto­ry, got it?

We get it!

The recast­ing with actors the same age as Jen­nifer Jason Leigh (Sta­cy) and Phoebe Cates remains a bit­ter pill, but per­haps it spares us all com­ments fix­at­ing on the rav­ages of time. Instead, we get to hear about the “time­less” beau­ty of Annis­ton and Roberts.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Delet­ed Scene from Almost Famous: Mom, “Stair­way to Heav­en” is Based on the Lit­er­a­ture of Tolkien

1980s Met­al­head Kids Are Alright: Sci­en­tif­ic Study Shows That They Became Well-Adjust­ed Adults

10 Tips From Bil­ly Wilder on How to Write a Good Screen­play

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Dear Facebook, This is How You’re Breaking Democracy: A Former Facebook Insider Explains How the Platform’s Algorithms Polarize Our Society

in Current Affairs, Life, Technology, TED Talks | October 5th, 2020

Is this what we want? A post-truth world where tox­i­c­i­ty and trib­al­ism trump bridge build­ing and con­sen­sus seek­ing? —Yaël Eisen­stat

It’s an increas­ing­ly famil­iar occur­rence.

A friend you’ve enjoyed recon­nect­ing with in the dig­i­tal realm makes a dra­mat­ic announce­ment on their social media page. They’re delet­ing their Face­book account with­in the next 24 hours, so shoot them a PM with your email if you’d like to stay in touch.

Such deci­sions used to be spurred by the desire to get more done or return to neglect­ed pas­times such as read­ing, paint­ing, and going for long uncon­nect­ed nature walks.

These announce­ments could induce equal parts guilt and anx­i­ety in those of us who depend on social media to get the word out about our low-bud­get cre­ative projects, though being prone to Inter­net addic­tion, we were near­ly as like­ly to be the one mak­ing the announce­ment.

For many, the break was tem­po­rary. More of a social media fast, a chance to reeval­u­ate, rest, recharge, and ulti­mate­ly return.

Legit­i­mate con­cerns were also raised with regard to pri­va­cy. Who’s on the receiv­ing end of all the sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion we’re offer­ing up? What are they doing with it? Is some­one lis­ten­ing in?

But in this elec­tion year, the deci­sion to quit Face­book is apt to be dri­ven by the very real fear that democ­ra­cy as we know it is at stake.

For­mer CIA ana­lyst, for­eign ser­vice offi­cer, and—for six months—Facebook’s Glob­al Head of Elec­tions Integri­ty Ops for polit­i­cal adver­tis­ing, Yaël Eisen­stat, address­es these pre­oc­cu­pa­tions in her TED Talk, “Dear Face­book, This is How You’re Break­ing Democ­ra­cy,” above.

Eisen­stat con­trasts the civil­i­ty of her past face-to-face ”hearts and minds”-based engage­ments with sus­pect­ed ter­ror­ists and anti-West­ern cler­ics to the polar­iza­tion and cul­ture of hatred that Facebook’s algo­rithms foment.

As many users have come to sus­pect, Face­book rewards inflam­ma­to­ry con­tent with ampli­fi­ca­tion. Truth does not fac­tor into the equa­tion, nor does sin­cer­i­ty of mes­sage or mes­sen­ger.

Lies are more engag­ing online than truth. As long as [social media] algo­rithms’ goals are to keep us engaged, they will feed us the poi­son that plays to our worst instincts and human weak­ness­es.

Eisen­stat, who has val­ued the ease with which Face­book allows her to main­tain rela­tion­ships with far-flung friends, found her­self effec­tive­ly demot­ed on her sec­ond day at the social media giant, her title revised, and her access to high lev­el meet­ings revoked. Her hir­ing appears to have been pure­ly orna­men­tal, a pal­lia­tive ruse in response to mount­ing pub­lic con­cern.

As she remarked in an inter­view with The Guardian’s Ian Tuck­er ear­li­er this sum­mer:

They are mak­ing all sorts of reac­tive changes around the mar­gins of the issues, [to sug­gest] that they are tak­ing things seri­ous­ly – such as build­ing an ad library or ver­i­fy­ing that polit­i­cal adver­tis­ers reside in the coun­try in which they adver­tis­ing – things they should have been doing already. But they were nev­er going to make the fun­da­men­tal changes that address the key sys­temic issues that make Face­book ripe for manip­u­la­tion, viral mis­in­for­ma­tion and oth­er ways that the plat­form can be used to affect democ­ra­cy.

In the same inter­view she assert­ed that Facebook’s recent­ly imple­ment­ed over­sight board is lit­tle more than an inter­est­ing the­o­ry that will nev­er result in the total over­haul of its busi­ness mod­el:

First of all, it’s anoth­er exam­ple of Face­book putting respon­si­bil­i­ty on some­one else. The over­sight board does not have any author­i­ty to actu­al­ly address any of the poli­cies that Face­book writes and enforces, or the under­ly­ing sys­temic issues that make the plat­form absolute­ly rife for dis­in­for­ma­tion and all sorts of bad behav­iour and manip­u­la­tion.

The sec­ond issue is: it’s basi­cal­ly an appeal process for con­tent that was already tak­en down. The big­ger ques­tion is the con­tent that remains up. Third, they are not even going to be oper­a­tional until late fall and, for a com­pa­ny that claims to move fast and break things, that’s absurd.

Nine min­utes into her TED Talk, she offers con­crete sug­ges­tions for things the Face­book brass could do if it was tru­ly seri­ous about imple­ment­ing reform:

  • Stop ampli­fy­ing and rec­om­mend­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion and bias-based hatred, no mat­ter who is behind it—from con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists to our cur­rent pres­i­dent.
  • Dis­con­tin­ue per­son­al­iza­tion tech­niques that don’t dif­fer­en­ti­ate between tar­get­ed polit­i­cal con­tent and tar­get­ed ads for ath­let­ic footwear.
  • Retrain algo­rithms to focus on a met­rics beyond what users click or linger on.
  • Imple­ment safe­ty fea­tures that would ensure that sen­si­tive con­tent is reviewed before it is allowed to go viral.

Hope­ful­ly view­ers are not feel­ing maxed out on con­tact­ing their rep­re­sen­ta­tives, as gov­ern­ment enforce­ment is Eisenstat’s only pre­scrip­tion for get­ting Face­book to alter its prod­uct and prof­it mod­el. And that will require sus­tained civic engage­ment.

She sup­ple­ments her TED Talk with rec­om­men­da­tions for arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence engi­neer Guil­laume Chaslot’s insid­er per­spec­tive op-ed “The Tox­ic Poten­tial of YouTube’s Feed­back Loop” and The Fil­ter Bub­ble: How the New Per­son­al­ized Web Is Chang­ing What We Read and How We Think by MoveOn.org’s for­mer Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, Eli Paris­er.

Your clued-in Face­book friends have no doubt already point­ed you to the doc­u­men­tary The Social Dilem­ma, which is now avail­able on Net­flix. Or per­haps to Jaron Lanier’s Ten Argu­ments for Delet­ing Your Social Media Accounts Right Now.

Read the tran­script of Yaël Eisenstat’s TED Talk here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Prob­lem with Face­book: “It’s Keep­ing Things From You”

The Case for Delet­ing Your Social Media Accounts & Doing Valu­able “Deep Work” Instead, Accord­ing to Com­put­er Sci­en­tist Cal New­port

This Is Your Kids’ Brains on Inter­net Algo­rithms: A Chill­ing Case Study Shows What’s Wrong with the Inter­net Today

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Liberal Arts Can Make People Less Susceptible to Authoritarianism, a New Study Finds

in Current Affairs, Politics | September 23rd, 2020

“Cor­re­la­tion does not equal cau­sa­tion” isn’t always a fun thing to say at par­ties, but it is always a good phrase to keep in mind when approach­ing sur­vey data. Does the study real­ly show that? Might it show the oppo­site? Does it con­firm pre-exist­ing bias­es or fail to acknowl­edge valid coun­terev­i­dence? A lit­tle bit of crit­i­cal think­ing can turn away a lot of trou­ble.

I’ll admit, a new study, “The Role of Edu­ca­tion in Tam­ing Author­i­tar­i­an Atti­tudes,” con­firms many of my own bias­es, sug­gest­ing that high­er edu­ca­tion, espe­cial­ly the lib­er­al arts, reduces author­i­tar­i­an atti­tudes around the world. The claim comes from George­town University’s Cen­ter on Edu­ca­tion and the Work­force, which ana­lyzed and aggre­gat­ed data from World Val­ues Sur­veys con­duct­ed between 1994 and 2016. The study takes it for grant­ed that ris­ing author­i­tar­i­an­ism is not a social good, or at least that it pos­es a dis­tinct threat to demo­c­ra­t­ic republics, and it aims to show how “high­er edu­ca­tion can pro­tect democ­ra­cy.”

Authoritarianism—defined as enforc­ing “group con­for­mi­ty and strict alle­giance to author­i­ty at the expense of per­son­al freedoms”—seems vast­ly more preva­lent among those with only a high school edu­ca­tion. “Among col­lege grad­u­ates,” Eliz­a­beth Red­den writes at Inside High­er Ed, “hold­ers of lib­er­al art degrees are less inclined to express author­i­tar­i­an atti­tudes and pref­er­ences com­pared to indi­vid­u­als who hold degrees in busi­ness or sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing and math­e­mat­ics fields.”

The “valu­able bul­wark” of the lib­er­al arts seems more effec­tive in the U.S. than in Europe, per­haps because “Amer­i­can high­er edu­ca­tion places a strong empha­sis on a com­bi­na­tion of spe­cif­ic and gen­er­al edu­ca­tion,” the full report spec­u­lates. “Such gen­er­al edu­ca­tion includes expo­sure to the lib­er­al arts.” The U.S. ranks at a mod­er­ate lev­el of author­i­tar­i­an­ism com­pared to 51 oth­er coun­tries, on par with Chile and Uruguay, with Ger­many rank­ing the least author­i­tar­i­an and India the most—a 6 on a scale of 0–6.

High­er edu­ca­tion also cor­re­lates with high­er eco­nom­ic sta­tus, sug­gest­ing to the study authors that eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty reduces author­i­tar­i­an­ism, which is expressed in atti­tudes about par­ent­ing and in a “fun­da­men­tal ori­en­ta­tion” toward con­trol over auton­o­my.

The full report does go into greater depth, but per­haps it rais­es more ques­tions than it answers, leav­ing the intel­lec­tu­al­ly curi­ous to work through a dense bib­li­og­ra­phy of pop­u­lar and aca­d­e­m­ic sources. There is a sig­nif­i­cant amount of data and evi­dence to sug­gest that study­ing the lib­er­al arts does help peo­ple to imag­ine oth­er per­spec­tives and to appre­ci­ate, rather than fear, dif­fer­ent cul­tures, reli­gions, etc. Lib­er­al arts edu­ca­tion encour­ages crit­i­cal think­ing, read­ing, and writ­ing, and can equip stu­dents with tools they need to dis­tin­guish reportage from pure pro­pa­gan­da.

But we might ask whether these find­ings con­sis­tent­ly obtain under actu­al­ly exist­ing author­i­tar­i­an­ism, which “tends to arise under con­di­tions of threat to social norms or per­son­al secu­ri­ty.” In the 2016 U.S. elec­tion, for exam­ple, the can­di­date espous­ing open­ly author­i­tar­i­an atti­tudes and pref­er­ences, now the cur­rent U.S. pres­i­dent, was elect­ed by a major­i­ty of vot­ers who were well-edu­cat­ed and eco­nom­i­cal­ly secure, sub­se­quent research dis­cov­ered, rather than stereo­typ­i­cal­ly “work­ing class” vot­ers with low lev­els of edu­ca­tion. How do such find­ings fit with the data George­town inter­prets in their report? Is it pos­si­ble that those with high­er edu­ca­tion and social sta­tus learn bet­ter to hide con­trol­ling, intol­er­ant atti­tudes in mixed com­pa­ny?

Learn more at this report sum­ma­ry page here and read and down­load the full report as a PDF here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How a Lib­er­al Arts Edu­ca­tion Helped Derek Black, the God­son of David Duke, Break with the White Nation­al­ist Move­ment

20 Lessons from the 20th Cen­tu­ry About How to Defend Democ­ra­cy from Author­i­tar­i­an­ism, Accord­ing to Yale His­to­ri­an Tim­o­thy Sny­der

Why We Need to Teach Kids Phi­los­o­phy & Safe­guard Soci­ety from Author­i­tar­i­an Con­trol

Crit­i­cal Think­ing: A Free Course

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Favorite Opera Recordings (and Her First Appearance in an Opera)

in Current Affairs, Music, Politics | September 21st, 2020

U.S. Supreme Court jus­tice Ruth Bad­er Ginsburg’s death has thrown an unbear­ably fraught polit­i­cal year into fur­ther dis­ar­ray, a fact that has sad­ly over­shad­owed memo­ri­al­iza­tion of her inspir­ing life and career. Gins­burg was a per­son­al hero for mil­lions of activists and students—from grade school to law school; an icon casu­al­ly iden­ti­fied by her ini­tials by those who felt like they knew her. “For many women, and many girls,” Sheryl Gay Stol­berg writes in a New York Times trib­ute, her loss is “deeply per­son­al.”

How should we remem­ber such a fig­ure at such a time? If you hap­pen to find the news numb­ing, full of ener­vat­ing ran­cor and alarm…. If you want to bring the focus back to the per­son we have lost, might we sug­gest a sound­track? The sug­ges­tions come from Gins­burg her­self, from the art form—opera—closest to her heart. “She was our great­est advo­cate and our great­est spokesper­son,” says Francesca Zam­bel­lo, direc­tor of the Wash­ing­ton Nation­al Opera, “the ide­al attendee… who knows every­thing but is open to inter­pre­ta­tions.”

Ginsburg’s com­mit­ment to the opera spans decades. She and her hus­band Mar­ty were in the audi­ence when Leon­tyne Price made her debut at the Met in 1961. Forty-sev­en years lat­er, the Jus­tice had occa­sion to hon­or Pryce at a 2008 Nation­al Endow­ment for the Arts lun­cheon. Also in atten­dance: Antonin Scalia, Ginsburg’s noto­ri­ous rival. The only thing the two may have agreed on was a pas­sion for the opera. It formed the basis of a frag­ile peace, and the sub­ject of its own opera, Scalia v. Gins­burg, that explores extreme judi­cial dif­fer­ences through “Ver­di, Puc­ci­ni, Christ­mas car­ols, ‘The Star-Span­gled Ban­ner,’ and jazz.”

Scalia v. Gins­berg com­pos­er Der­rick Wang heard the grandios­i­ty of opera when he read the fierce­ly oppos­ing writ­ten opin­ions of the two jus­tices. It’s safe to assume that both were lis­ten­ing to their favorite works while they com­posed. In 2012, Gins­burg gave her list of favorites to Alex Ross at The New York­er, who points to oth­er Gins­burg con­nec­tions to the clas­si­cal world like her son, James Gins­burg, “pro­pri­etor of Cedille Records, an inde­pen­dent clas­si­cal label based in Chica­go.” (Read their state­ment on Ginsburg’s pass­ing here.)

There is far too much to say about Ruth Bad­er Ginsburg’s judi­cial influ­ence, and about the pow­er vac­u­um left behind by her loss. But if we want to under­stand what mat­tered to her most as an indi­vid­ual, we should turn to the music she most loved. “Her life was about under­stand­ing people’s sto­ries,” says Zam­bel­lo. The kinds of cas­es “she made her career of are the stuff of opera.” At the top, see Ginsburg’s first appear­ance onstage, in a non-singing role as the Duchess of Krak­en­thor­pe in the The Daugh­ter of the Reg­i­ment at the Kennedy Cen­ter. Just below, see her list of favorite works, pep­pered with occa­sion­al com­men­tary from the late, beloved R.B.G. her­self. This list orig­i­nal­ly comes from The New York­er. If you have a Spo­ti­fy account, you can stream the music in this 30-hour playlist.

Ver­di, “Aida”; Zin­ka Milanov, Jus­si Björ­ling, Leonard War­ren, Fedo­ra Bar­bi­eri, Boris Christoff, Jonel Per­lea con­duct­ing the Rome Opera Orches­tra and Cho­rus (RCA).

Ver­di, “Otel­lo”; Plá­ci­do Domin­go, Rena­ta Scot­to, Sher­rill Milnes, James Levine con­duct­ing the Nation­al Phil­har­mon­ic and Ambrosian Opera Cho­rus (RCA).

Dvořák, “Rusal­ka”; Renée Flem­ing, Ben Hep­p­n­er, Dolo­ra Zajick, Franz Hawla­ta, Charles Mack­er­ras con­duct­ing the Czech Phil­har­mon­ic and Kühn Mixed Choir (Dec­ca).

Han­del, “Julius Cae­sar”; Nor­man Trei­gle, Bev­er­ly Sills, Mau­reen For­rester, Bev­er­ly Wolff, Julius Rudel con­duct­ing the New York City Opera Orches­tra and Cho­rus (RCA).

Jus­tice Gins­burg com­ments: “Lis­tened to LP record­ing many times. Pro­duc­tion was Julius Rudel’s tri­umph, opened in the State The­atre the year the Met moved to Lin­coln Cen­ter. Met opened with the not at all tri­umphant pro­duc­tion of Barber’s ‘Antony and Cleopa­tra.’ Next, my two best-loved operas.”

Mozart, “Don Gio­van­ni”; Cesare Siepi, Fer­nan­do Core­na, Suzanne Dan­co, Lisa Del­la Casa, Anton Der­mo­ta, Hilde Gue­den, Wal­ter Berry, Kurt Böhme, Josef Krips con­duct­ing the Vien­na Phil­har­mon­ic and Vien­na State Opera Cho­rus (Dec­ca).

Mozart, “The Mar­riage of Figaro”; Samuel Ramey, Lucia Popp, Thomas Allen, Kiri Te Kanawa, Fred­er­i­ca von Stade, Kurt Moll, Robert Tear, Georg Solti con­duct­ing the Lon­don Phil­har­mon­ic and Lon­don Opera Cho­rus (Dec­ca).

Strauss, “Der Rosenkava­lier”; Elis­a­beth Schwarzkopf, Christa Lud­wig, Tere­sa Stich-Ran­dall, Otto Edel­mann, Eber­hard Wächter, Lju­ba Welitsch, Nico­lai Ged­da, Her­bert von Kara­jan con­duct­ing the Phil­har­mo­nia Orches­tra and Cho­rus (EMI).

Tchaikovsky, “Eugene One­gin”; Thomas Allen, Mirella Freni, Neil Shicoff, Anne Sofie von Otter, James Levine con­duct­ing the Dres­den Staatskapelle and Leipzig Radio Cho­rus (DG).

Puc­ci­ni, “Tosca”; Maria Callas, Giuseppe Di Ste­fano, Tito Gob­bi, Vic­tor de Saba­ta con­duct­ing the La Scala orches­tra and cho­rus (EMI).

Menot­ti, “The Medi­um”; Joyce Cas­tle, Patrice Michaels, Lawrence Rapchak con­duct­ing the Chica­go Opera The­atre (Cedille).

Kur­ka, “The Good Sol­dier Schweik”; Jason Collins, Marc Embree, Kel­li Har­ring­ton, Buffy Bag­gott, Alexan­der Platt con­duct­ing the Chica­go Opera The­atre (Cedille).

Jus­tice Gins­burg com­ments: “Glim­mer­glass Opera lat­er mount­ed ‘Schweik’ with per­fect-for-the-part Antho­ny Dean Grif­fey.”

Stravin­sky, “The Rake’s Progress”; Philip Lan­gridge, Samuel Ramey, Cathryn Pope, Stafford Dean, Sarah Walk­er, John Dob­son, Astrid Var­nay, Ric­car­do Chail­ly con­duct­ing the Lon­don Sin­foni­et­ta and Cho­rus (Dec­ca).

Brit­ten, “Bil­ly Budd”; Nathan Gunn, Ian Bostridge, Gidon Saks, Daniel Hard­ing con­duct­ing the Lon­don Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra and Cho­rus (Vir­gin Clas­sics).

Jus­tice Gins­burg com­ments: “Two Lieder record­ings I now and then play when work­ing at home: **Schu­bert, ‘An mein Herz,’ with Matthias Goerne; and songs by Brahms, with Ange­li­ka Kirch­schlager.”

via The New York­er

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Acclaimed Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg Doc­u­men­tary, RBG, Air­ing Tonight on CNN

When Vladimir Nabokov Taught Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg, His Most Famous Stu­dent, To Care Deeply About Writ­ing

The Opera Data­base: Find Scores, Libret­ti & Syn­opses for Thou­sands of Operas Free Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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