…it’s not just texas that likes to produce…tailored text books

A new textbook — churned out in just four months and touted as the first state effort to unify teaching of the subject since the Soviet era — echoes Kremlin propaganda justifying the war in Ukraine, the latest stage of a drive to shape the worldview of a new generation.

The book will be used by history teachers across the country, including in Russian occupied Ukrainian territories, to teach students in their final year of high school about the period from 1945.  

They will read that the Kremlin’s “special military operation” is unifying society against an “ultranationalist” neighbor and its Western backers, who are to blame for instigating the conflict. Russian soldiers are profiled as heroes, with no mention of civilian casualties or war crime accusations. And it’s all in line with the country’s past, which has some of its harshest chapters presented in a softer light.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/putins-push-rewrite-russian-history-favor-war-ukraine

…bias is…a hell of a thing?

The social media company formerly known as Twitter has been accused in a revised civil US lawsuit of helping Saudi Arabia commit grave human rights abuses against its users, including by disclosing confidential user data at the request of Saudi authorities at a much higher rate than it has for the US, UK, or Canada.

The lawsuit was brought last May against X, as Twitter is now known, by Areej al-Sadhan, the sister of a Saudi aid worker who was forcibly disappeared and then later sentenced to 20 years in jail.

It centers on the events surrounding the infiltration of the California company by three Saudi agents, two who were posing as Twitter employees in 2014 and 2015, which ultimately led to the arrest of al-Sadhan’s brother, Abdulrahman, and the exposure of the identity of thousands of anonymous Twitter users, some of whom were later reportedly detained and tortured as part of the government’s crackdown on dissent.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/04/twitter-saudi-arabia-human-rights-abuses

…which, sure…was before…you know…the attempt to remake the platform in the image of its ruling asshole

The tech mogul posted his stance on free speech and antisemitism seemingly out of the blue on his verified account Monday afternoon. When asked by a user who was questioning his stance, Musk alleged that the ADL has been “trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing it & me of being anti-Semitic.”

“If this continues, we will have no choice but to file a defamation suit against, ironically, the ‘Anti-Defamation’ League,” Musk wrote. “If they lose the defamation suit, we will insist that they drop the the “anti” part of their name, since obviously …”

…what’s obvious apparently shifts based on who’s looking

Musk also noted that X’s advertising revenue remains down by 60% in the U.S. and alleged that advertisers have told the social media platform that pressure from the ADL is part of that decision.
[…]
X filed a lawsuit last month against a nonprofit organization that monitors hate speech and disinformation. He accused Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) of orchestrating a “scare campaign to drive away advertisers from the X platform,” according to the suit filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
[…]
The ADL also posted a report in March accusing the platform of failing to take action against hate speech. The group’s ADL Center for Technology and Society found that only 28 percent of posts flagged for antisemitic content were taken down or sanctioned.

“While we have no way to actually verify if the company is de-amplifying antisemitic content, we have found that Twitter is failing to take down tweets that clearly violate hateful conduct policies,” the report said.
[…]
A study from Montclair State University last year showed a spike in hate speech on the platform the day after Musk took over the company in October. The terms studied included vulgar and hostile terms for individuals based on race, as well as other protected classes.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/elon-musk-blames-adl-lost-revenue-says-anti-semitism-kind

…everybody’s doing it

Fake news and state-backed disinformation are fuelling Chinese anger at Japan over its release of treated wastewater from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant.
[…]
Fake or misattributed videos have claimed sea life is turning up dead on beaches, that there have been mass protests, and that a Japanese official who drank treated water from Fukushima at a 2011 press conference had died. Some examples collated by an Australian-based China analyst, Han Yang, on X, formerly known as Twitter, included footage of a rally in South Korea reported by Chinese state media as being in Japan, and fake news about a Japanese politician apparently suggesting Chinese visitors should be made to eat shellfish from Fukushima.
[…]
A study by the UK-based data analysis firm Logically found there were high volumes of state media reports and paid advertisements in multiple languages about the risk posed by the wastewater. It found unique posts about the topic on social media, by Chinese state media, officials and influencers, peaked at more than 3,500 in July, with some garnering more than a million views each.

“China’s coordinated campaign amplifies climate change misinformation and health misinformation around wastewater release,” said Logically. “Logically identified similar coordinated campaigns with the Ohio train derailment in February 2023 where pro-China influencers cautioned its citizens not to consume ‘contaminated’ products from Ohio.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/04/state-backed-disinformation-fuelling-anger-in-china-over-fukushima-wastewater-japan

…but…as I recall being asked a time or two as a kid…if everyone else jumped off a cliff?

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accuses the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) of orchestrating a “scare campaign to drive away advertisers from the X platform” by publishing research reports claiming that the social media service failed to take action against hateful posts. The service is owned by the technology mogul Elon Musk.

In the filing, lawyers for X. Corp alleged that the CCDH carried out “a series of unlawful acts designed to improperly gain access to protected X Corp. data, needed by CCDH so that it could cherry-pick from the hundreds of millions of posts made each day on X and falsely claim it had statistical support showing the platform is overwhelmed with harmful content.”

The complaint specifically accuses the nonprofit group of breach of contract, violating federal computer fraud law, intentional interference with contractual relations and inducing breach of contract. The company’s lawyers made a demand for a jury trial.

…for people who like to think they wield the gavel for the court of public opinion…the other courts sure do seem like a well they can’t keep away from

Musk has drawn fierce scrutiny since buying Twitter last year. Top hate speech watchdog groups and activists have blasted him for loosening restrictions on what can be posted on the platform, and business analysts have raised eyebrows at his seemingly erratic and impulsive decision-making.
[…]
Musk has also claimed that hate speech on the platform was shrinking. In a tweet on Nov. 23, Musk wrote that “hate speech impressions” were down by one-third and posted a graph — apparently drawn from internal data — showing a downward trend.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/elon-musks-x-corp-sues-nonprofit-group-tracks-hate-speech

…when they say there are lies, damn lies & statistics…they don’t generally mean all in a single graph…but it’s a brave new world we’re living in

Facebook, Instagram and TikTok have tried to keep a tight lid on sexualized content in recent years, banning nudity outright in almost all cases, kicking off sex workers and even cracking down on some artists and educators who speak frankly about sexual health and safety. 

But a new kind of sexualized content has lately been getting through their moderation systems: ads for scantily clad and dirty-talking chatbots, powered by what their creators say is artificial intelligence. 

…as it happens just the other day I wound up watching a film in which the premise was that a “real” AI bootstrapped itself together in the process of someone trying to build…bait for child predators…which throws in an extra layer or two of moral calculus…but…I dunno…I guess I get the feeling that despite the #teamnoone aspect…or maybe because of it…people might be inclined to look past this stuff without giving due weight to the concepts it serves as proof of?

NBC News found 35 app developers running sexually explicit ads on apps owned by Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. The app developers were running more than 1,000 ads in all, many of them easily discoverable and viewable on Meta’s online library of ads, which the public has access to. 

There were 14 app developers running hundreds more sexually provocative AI ads on TikTok, NBC News found. Some, but not all, were the same ads that appeared on Meta. It wasn’t clear, though, how many of them were seen in the U.S., because TikTok’s ads library provides transparency only for ads that appear in Europe. TikTok’s ad policies prohibit ads that “display or promote the use of prohibited adult products or services.”
[…]
The marketing push is part of an AI gold rush, in which app developers — most of them based abroad — are mining customers who are interested in sexual or romantic connections with custom digital characters. It’s part of a larger movement to capitalize on a surge of interest in AI, following the popularity of tech startup OpenAI’s ChatGPT product, which reset expectations for what AI chatbots were capable of. 

…it was always going to happen…in a bunch of ways “the algorithm” has been serving up imaginary subjects for objectification almost since its inception…but…even if life is truly stranger than fiction…I can assure you that there is ample fiction that covers the spread on this…&…it does not paint us in a positive light, let’s say

“Sex workers are not allowed to make money off their image, but some tech bro who is creating a similar AI image is,” said Carolina Are, a research fellow at Northumbria University and the Centre for Digital Citizens in the United Kingdom. 

The ads usually promote sexualized female characters. Are said she believes that reflects a gender-based slant — social media platforms freely allow sex-related ads only if the intended audience is men. The ad libraries from Meta and TikTok don’t always record the rejected or removed ads, so it’s hard to tell what ads have been moderated by the platforms, but searches for terms relating to virtual girlfriends, in general, yield a higher number of results than searches for terms relating to virtual boyfriends. 

…I dunno…I don’t necessarily recommend thinking about this stuff…but…if you do…& you’re old enough to remember the dawn of video games…you might recall a lot fo fuss about something called leisure suit larry…but, compared to the market further east…that is the tip of a veritable iceberg of stuff that provides interaction with women who aren’t women…&…I’m not saying that’s how you get incels…but…it certainly doesn’t seem like the cure?

Similar ads appear in the Apple and Google app stores, NBC News found, although the extent of advertising there isn’t known because those companies don’t disclose everyone who buys ads. App store ads and social media ads are among the most common ways tech startups find new customers. 
[…]
On Meta platforms, some app developers were running hundreds of ads apiece, according to searches of the Meta library. Magir AI-Art Generator, an app from Singapore, had 170 active ads running Monday; in one, the viewer sees the curvy rear end of a digital woman in workout clothes with the initialism “NSFW” written alongside. An app from China called AI Art Generator — Fantasy had 190 active ads; one used an image of Marvel’s Wolverine character with the caption “No one should know about this. This app can generate NSFW.” (The app appears to have no connection to Marvel.) Neither app company responded to requests for comment. 
[…]
Instagram and Facebook have kicked off sex workers and sex educators in a series of sweeps over the years, and the apps banned photos of breastfeeding and breast cancer scars until people protested the policies with hashtags such as #freethenipple. Instagram still forbids nudity, but it has carved out exceptions to those rules for photos depicting “breastfeeding, birth giving and after-birth moments, health-related situations” and acts of protest.

Some sex workers say that even when they have tried to comply with Meta’s rules about nudity, they still get punished by the platform while celebrities post sexualized content at will. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/ai-girlfriend-ads-instagram-tiktok-chat-pics-chatgpt

…so…it’s not hard to infer the target audience

In a statement to NBC News, CCDH founder and chief executive Imran Ahmed took direct aim at Musk, arguing that the Tesla and SpaceX tycoon’s “latest legal threat is straight out of the authoritarian playbook — he is now showing he will stop at nothing to silence anyone who criticizes him for his own decisions and actions.”

“The Center for Countering Digital Hate’s research shows that hate and disinformation is spreading like wildfire on the platform under Musk’s ownership and this lawsuit is a direct attempt to silence those efforts,” Ahmed added in part. “Musk is trying to ‘shoot the messenger’ who highlights the toxic content on his platform rather than deal with the toxic environment he’s created.
[…]
The research report that drew particular ire from X Corp. claimed that the platform had failed to take action against 99% of 100 posts flagged by CCDH staff members that included racist, homophobic and antisemitic content.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/elon-musks-x-corp-sues-nonprofit-group-tracks-hate-speech

…& it’s hard to feel like it makes sense to tell people not to just leave the zones in which it’s clear the assholes have the whip hand

As DeSantis pursues his quest for the Republican party’s presidential nomination in 2024, he made battling liberal causes across the state a core part of his campaign. His attempt to transform New College was a centerpiece of that effort, triggering national headlines and unleashing chaos on the campus.

Now the transformation of New College that he set in motion eight months ago continues unabated. The exodus of staff represents a staggering 40% of the entire faculty who were employed during the spring semester of the 2022-23 academic year.
[…]
Approximately 125 undergraduates have transferred to other colleges and universities or dropped out in the face of what some have likened to a hostile, rightwing takeover of NCF. Hampshire College in Massachusetts has admitted 36 New College students ahead of the fall semester after it guaranteed admission to all applicants in good academic standing at the state-run college and pledged not to increase their existing tuition costs.
[…]
The college’s recently appointed vice-president of communications and marketing, Ryan Terry, has hailed the metamorphosis underway on its campus as “a renaissance” that is reinforcing the institution’s traditional “passion for creating lifelong learners”.

A series of changes in student recruitment and housing policies has fueled the outflow of students. Under Corcoran, a former Republican legislator who previously served as DeSantis’s commissioner of education, New College has sharply increased the percentage of student-athletes in the incoming class of 328 undergraduates.

Average Scholastic Aptitude Test scores are down among members of the college’s class of 2027 by a factor of 100 points compared with the incoming class of a year ago.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/03/new-college-florida-desantis-teachers

…one way or another…it’s all gotten kinda old

“Both political parties are pulling their punches,” said Frank Luntz, a political consultant who has worked on many Republican campaigns. “Democrats have been quiet about McConnell because they know their own party is run by someone who has the same challenges McConnell has.”
[…]
When McConnell suffered his second freezing episode while talking to reporters in Kentucky, Biden was quick to defend the “friend” he served with in the Senate. He said: “I’m confident he’s going to be back to his old self.” Asked if he had any concerns about McConnell’s ability to do his job, the president replied: “No.” Asked again, he insisted: “I don’t.”
[…]
Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “It’s lIke both parties are being led by decrepit leaders. Frankly, if there were people in the wings who could step forward, there would have been an effort.

“But in the Democratic party, if Biden’s not the candidate, it’s a free-for-all and in the Senate, if McConnell’s not the leader, the wings of the party are going to bash each other: there’s the Trump supporters and there’s the let’s-move-past-Trump. That’s what’s keeping Biden and McConnell in place: the venomous battles that would ensue as soon as they step down.”

This standoff creates a headache for party strategists on both sides going into next year’s elections. Jacobs added: “What’s going on here is handcuffing the Democratic communications masters. The talking points for going after McConnell just get turned around on Biden. The Republicans want to move past McConnell because going after Biden’s age is one of their very few talking points at this stage.”

There have been no such inhibitions for rightwing media, including Fox News hosts such as Sean Hannity. Some dissident voices have also emerged in both parties. Dean Phillips, a Democratic congressman from Minnesota, has called on the president to retire because of his weak poll numbers and advanced age. Phillips told the Washington Post newspaper: “God forbid the president has a health episode or something happens in the middle of a primary.”
[…]
Such talking points could strike a chord with the public. Six in 10 Americans told a Reuters/Ipsos poll last November that they were very or somewhat concerned that members of Congress are too old to represent the American people.

The oldest current senator, Dianne Feinstein of California, is 90 and was absent for months earlier this year after she suffered complications from shingles; she has said she will retire at the end of her term next year. Senator Bernie Sanders, the voice of progressives in the past two Democratic primaries, turns 82 next week. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa turns 90 later this month. A rematch between Biden and Trump appears the most likely scenario next year.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/03/old-age-mcconnell-biden-trump-politics

…which is…fun

Biden campaign won’t ‘focus on Donald Trump’s legal problems,’ co-chair says [NBC]

…not that youth is much of a shield when it comes to political incontinence

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/04/pressure-mounts-on-sunak-and-keegan-over-school-concrete-crisis

…seriously…it’d be a classic bit of reap what you sow…if the ones who did the sowing werethe same ones who had that shit hanging over them in a physical sense…but…needless to say…that’s not how that works

Crumbling England: from schools to hospitals, how bad is the current crisis? [Guardian]

Now, more than ever, complaining about the state of the country is one of the main ways that Britain talks about itself. But in all the endless exchanges about the decay of public services and the cost of living, there is one theme that typically is raised only briefly before the conversation moves on.

How does today’s Britain compare with other rich countries? The answer is increasingly unsettling. Despite facing many of the same problems, such as an ageing population, the climate crisis and the diminishing returns for most people from modern capitalism, Britain seems to be struggling more than other western states. From our fragile education and transport infrastructure to our sluggish productivity, our unusually high inflation to our relatively poor public health, it appears to be falling behind traditional peers such as France and Germany, while being steadily caught up by previously much poorer societies such as Slovenia and Poland.
[…]
This summer, however, the unease about this country’s performance became more public. “Why has Britain become so poor?” asked the Sunday Times in July. “Even eastern Europe is catching up with our sluggish GDP.” Last month, Tim Harford wrote in the Financial Times after visiting Germany, “This is what prosperity looks like – and the UK doesn’t have it.” In the same paper, another respected data journalist, John Burn-Murdoch, calculated that without London, the UK would be poorer, in terms of GDP per capita, than even the poorest US state, Mississippi.
[…]
In fact, “the Mississippi Question”, as Burn-Murdoch calls it, was first raised nine years ago, in a Telegraph article by the Tory journalist Fraser Nelson, partly about Britain’s alleged backwardness compared with most of the US. Then, as now, the Conservatives were in power. Unlike the last period in our history when there was widespread talk of national decline – the 1970s – the country’s deep problems can’t be simplistically pinned on Labour administrations, however hard some Tories still try to blame the distant governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, or the modest powers of the London mayor, Sadiq Khan.
[…]
Meanwhile, other aspects of how the country is doing – social, cultural, environmental – barely feature in these gloomy state-of-the-nation assessments. Life for Britons is reduced to playing a part in a never-ending competition between nations, in what the government of David Cameron and George Osborne joylessly called “the global race”, a phrase that, depressingly, Keir Starmer also sometimes uses.

This notion of Britain as an economy rather than a society feels like a backward step. Fourteen years ago, in their acclaimed book The Spirit Level, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett described in convincing detail “the contrast between the material success and social failure of many rich countries”. They explained: “As affluent societies have grown richer, there have been long-term rises in rates of anxiety, depression and numerous other social problems.”
[…]
Then again, there is an argument that we live in such tough times now – in many ways tougher than the 70s or the 80s – that economic revival has to be the national priority. Without it, there won’t be enough money to repair the damage the Tories have done to public services and to Britons’ individual finances. In essence, this has become Labour’s position under Starmer, as it has gradually given up on the idea that a better Britain can be created partly by increasing taxes on the elites who have exploited our profoundly unequal economy. It will be interesting to see if abstinence from such populist, and potentially highly popular, tax-raising policies remains Labour’s position if it makes it into office.
[…]
Realists have understood this for a very long time. In 1835, after visiting the US, the British entrepreneur and economic reformer Richard Cobden wrote: “Our only chance of national prosperity lies in the timely remodelling of our system, so as to put it as nearly as possible upon an equality with the improved arrangement of the Americans.” Economic decline compared with some other countries has always been our destiny. We need to accept that, and instead worry more about the state of our society.

Is the UK falling behind other rich economies? Yes, but that’s only part of the story [Guardian]

…I guess we just have to be grateful for small mercies…like…well…john crace is still gracing the pages of the guardian?

The metaphors keep piling up like a multiple car wreck. Or do they keep crashing down? It’s so hard to keep up. But you get the drift. Yet again, we have a government that’s out of control. That can do little else but bunker down in the cabinet room and pray for the roof not to fall in. Desperate for a break that just isn’t coming. Helpless to do anything but gradually disappear under the rubble of its own making. Policies in tatters and no sense of direction. Reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete is just the latest in a long line of shitshows.

…maybe it shouldn’t…but…that kind of makes me feel better about the world…certainly in his absence I’d be less well-disposed to the state of the place this morning

What we got was Rish! on autopilot defence mode. Quick to shift the blame on to anyone but him. Just a jumble of nonsense. His own artificial stupidity. RishGPT. Schools had never been anything to do with him, even though he had signed off the schools budget. And he had committed to rebuilding as many as 50 schools a year. Er … precisely.

The Department for Education had estimated that at least 300 schools needed rebuilding each year. And maybe the department had capacity to do 200. But Sunak, in his brilliance, had given enough money for 50.

“It’s not true that I didn’t care,” wittered RishGPT. He had cared. Just not very much. If there was a victim in this, it was Sunak himself. Surely the country could see he was desperately unlucky that the schools had started falling down on his watch. Why couldn’t they have held together till after the next election, when Labour could carry the can?

…a lot has been said about the legacy of tony blair’s “new labour” & its influence on the political environment in the UK…but at least part of it is a generation of politicians who seem almost universally to have drunk whatever kool-aid it is that makes you mistake actions designed to massage tomorrow’s headlines & push your preferred sound-bites down the throat of an unwitting populace for…you know…the actual substance of what doing the job means when you’re in charge of a fucking country…so it’s hardly a surprise that post-brexit it turns out turning the entire country into a brewery wouldn’t help these fools to organize the proverbial piss-up…but…damn

In the meantime, Gillian Keegan was fighting a rearguard action herself. The education secretary is an unusual sort. A minister with no radar for danger. Her default position is overconfidence. Do nothing and let things sort themselves out. Hakuna matata. When news came in that A-level results were worse this year, her message to students had been to chill. It was no big deal. She couldn’t really work out why so many pupils had worked so hard in the first place, as in 10 years’ time no one would care. University was just a debt mountain. People would have been far better off doing nothing. Careers were so overrated. Not exactly an endorsement of the education system.

Keegan felt much the same way about school buildings. You could have too much of the nanny state. Not that it was her department’s responsibility to make sure the buildings were safe anyway. That was down to someone else. She wasn’t sure who. Probably the local authorities whose powers her government had stripped away.

So what if a few buildings fell? People were far too attached to their children. Modern wokery and all that. “Buildings can collapse for many reasons,” she said. Like earthquakes. These things happened all the time. So there was no point in trying to repair crumbling concrete.

…jonathan swift on line one…something about the poor & their children & a self-solving problem with nutrition

“Everyone else has sat on their arse,” she moaned. The government’s very own Nicola Murray from The Thick of It. And how come no one had praised her “for doing a fucking good job”? Er, possibly because she hadn’t been doing one. And possibly because no one had asked her to become education secretary. But since she was there, they would rather she got on with the job. Not act as if she was doing everyone a favour. A sense of entitlement is the lifeblood of this government. Keegan looked as though she couldn’t wait for hospitals to start falling down and take the heat off her.
[…]
None of this impressed the shadow education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, who shredded Keegan’s excuses. The short- and long-term negligence. Years of doing nothing when the department knew the buildings were past their sell-by date. Talk your way out of that one. Keegan couldn’t. She already felt she had done far too much for everyone. Give, give, give.

The Tory backbenchers were by and large supportive, if not enthusiastic. Preferring not to have a fight in public. Vicky Ford felt MPs shouldn’t frighten children by telling them they could get hurt if the roof fell in. We should all just pretend it was a cartoon. Mark Francois was the only one spoiling for a fight. What the minister had said didn’t square with what he had been told. Keegan ignored him. It was all she could do. Raac and ruin.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/sep/04/rishgpt-offers-a-word-salad-of-nonsense-on-school-buildings-crisis

…I mean…even the indomitable gauls fear the possibility that the sky might fall on their heads

…speaking of which…the stuff I’m supposed to be doing with my day that isn’t this is quite literally hovering over my shoulder with a silhouette reminiscent of the proverbial ton of bricks…so if I don’t down tools & find tunes I might miss my chance to get this posted at all…& then where would I be?

…actually…you know what…maybe don’t answer that…today isn’t looking too good to me as it is…I probably just need some of that blue sky thinking