The Times for Trump: Why the bullsh*t artist shouldn’t hang up his hat, but it can sail into the sunset

In taking those steps, Musk could singlehandedly upend the media and political ecosystem, reshape public discourse online and disrupt the nascent sphere of conservative-leaning social media properties that emerged largely in response to grievances about bans and restrictions on Twitter and other mainstream services.

Musk pledged at a conference that he would reverse the ban were he to become the company’s owner.

But relations between the pair seem to have soured since, with the men publicly trading barbs over the summer. After Trump called Musk a “bullsh*t artist” at a rally in July, Musk responded by tweet, writing, “I don’t hate the man, but it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset.”

An associate professor in the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University is writing about issues affecting women and social media. She was spokeswoman for international affairs in the Treasury Department during the Obama administration. The opinions in this commentary are of her own. CNN has more opinion on it.

Kanye West and the Free Speech Loss: How Twitter Becomes More Censorially Outloud in the Light of Musk’s Decay

The conservative social media company Parler announced on Monday that it is being purchased by Kanye West, who was temporarily suspended from Twitter this month for an antisemitic tweet. A statement from Parler’s parent company described West as having taken a breakthrough move into the free speech media space where he will never have to fear being removed from social media again.

West said that in a world where conservative opinions are viewed as controversial, we should make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves.

Imagine if Musk suggested China control Taiwan and Russia and West released a song about Pete being kidnapped and buried, as well as the way these owners already post. If this is a glimpse of what social networks will look like in the future, we should all be very scared.

Musk has repeatedly stated that he wants to loosen Twitter’s reins on speech. The day after he purchased the company, there was a spike in hate speech. According to Musk, by October 31, the company had removed 1,500 accounts related to such posts, and the moderation policies have not changed.

When women become victims of online hate, they often “shut down their blogs, avoid websites they formerly frequented, take down social networking profiles, (and) refrain from engaging in online political commentary,” according to University of Miami law professor Mary Anne Franks.

In practice, what these so-called free speech policies really boil down to is an ugly form of censorship that scares away the voices of people who are attacked by users of these platforms.

West has already described Parler as a place where conservative views can flourish, and nonconservatives are unlikely to flock to Truth Social, given its association with Trump. If women, people of color and others start fleeing Twitter, that could leave it as a platform for conservatives as well. This would likely make the views of those who remain even more zealous.

Twitter is not the only social network: The Musk-Pulse deal is about removing the bulls and letting the bullies out

“When like-minded people get together, they often end up thinking a more extreme version of what they thought before they started to talk to one another,” Harvard University law professor Cass Sunstein writes in “On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, and What Can Be Done.” Sunstein says that their exchanges make them more confident.

For many years, so many people have used the website to converse openly about topics they feel are important. Of course, only 23% of Americans are on Twitter and of those who use the platform, the top 25% of users by tweet volume produce 97% of tweets, according to the Pew Research Center. The conversations ont he social network seem to influence what reporters talk about offline in the same way that users influence the public debate.

Male owners are allowed to amplify their own views on their platforms even when they are sexist, misogynistic, racist or otherwise offensive.

The deal’s closing removes a cloud of uncertainty that has hung over Twitter’s business, employees and shareholders for much of the year. After initially agreeing to buy the company in April, Musk spent months attempting to get out of the deal, first citing concerns about the number of bots on the platform and later allegations raised by a company whistleblower.

If it weren’t obvious before, the latest moves make clear that Musk tends to run this company the way dictators run their states: by making decisions that serve his personal interests rather than those of the public, and capriciously getting rid of people who stand in his way. Tech workers and journalists, who have lost their jobs over the last few weeks, should come together to create non-profit social networks designed to serve the public interest.

Musk made a vow to fight the bot’s that are active in his replies to his retweeted messages and those of other users with large followings.

How Facebook and Twitter Changes Are Affected by the Second Law in the First Year of the Tax Determination Proposed by the Delaware Chancery Court Judge McCormick

Delaware Chancery Court chancellor Kathaleen St. Judge McCormick gave the parties until 5 p.m. on Oct. 28 to close the deal or face a rescheduled trial.

Stringhini says that some of the users who have been banned from Twitter will shift to lesser-known platforms which have less regulations on what can be said. Once there, their social-media activity tends to become more toxic and more extreme2. He says that they see a community that becomes committed but also smaller.

“The long-term potential for Twitter, in my view, is an order of magnitude greater than its current value,” he said on Tesla’s earnings conference call last week.

This week on Gadget Lab, we talk with WIRED platforms and power reporter Vittoria Elliot about the changes coming to Twitter and how they may affect the future of the social network.

It is your job to encourage your male-presenting friends to watch House of the Dragon. Mike recommends the new album from Natalia Lafourcade, De Todas las Flores. Lauren recommends reevaluating your relationship with Twitter, and social media in general.

Hate Speech and Cosmic Inevitations on Twitter: The Case of the Congolese Monstrous Victor Ndahinda

Vittoria Elliott can be found on Twitter @telliotter. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. The person is Michael Calore. Call the main hotline atGadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth. The theme music is by Solar Keys.

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Felix Ndahinda was alarmed last week when billionaire mogul Elon Musk said that the bird would be freed soon.

To Ndahinda, however, it is clear that the normalization of hate speech and conspiracy theories on social media could have contributed to violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, even if academics have not yet been able to delineate its contribution clearly. It is difficult to find the link from atweet to violence. “But we have many actors making public incitements to commit crime, and then later those crimes are committed.”

Weiss suggested that such actions were taken “all without users’ knowledge.” But Twitter has long been transparent about the fact that it may limit certain content that violates its policies and, in some cases, may apply “strikes” that correspond with suspensions for accounts that break its rules. Users are notified when their accounts have been temporarily suspended.

How the company will proceed is still uncertain. Civil rights leaders met with Musk to discuss his plan to put a council in charge of establishing policies on hate speech. Musk has stated that users who were banned before he took the company would not be given the chance to do so.

Hate and Harassment on Social Media: A Case Study of Musk’s Decay at the T Tauri Center in Washington DC

Usually, these platforms are where false narratives start, says Stringhini. When those narratives creep onto mainstream platforms such as Twitter or Facebook, they explode. “They get pushed on Twitter and go out of control because everybody sees them and journalists cover them,” he says.

James Piazza, who studies terrorism at Pennsylvania State University, says that he is scared of people with public stature using inflammatory speech on social media. “That’s the situation where you can have more violence.”

And regulations on the way from the European Union could make Musk’s ‘free speech’ rhetoric impractical as well, says Rebekah Tromble, a political scientist at George Washington University in Washington DC. Social media companies that allow illegal content will be required by the EU’s Digital Services Act to reduce their risks. In theory, platforms could try to create separate policies and practices for Europe, but that would be very hard to do in practice, Tromble says. “When it’s fundamental systems, including core algorithms, that are introducing those risks, mitigation measures will necessarily impact the system as a whole.”

Due to Musk taking over, Stringhini expects researchers will compare and look at the effect of Musk’s takeover on the site, as well as the spread of misinformation and whether users quit the platform in protest. Tromble will be paying attention to coordinated harassment on the micro-blogging site.

If users can determine if the company has a limit on how many other users can see their posts, then it will be easier for them to join. It’s quite clear that Musk is exploiting an issue that has been a popular cry among some conservatives, who claim that they have had their content suppressed by the social network.

The software update will show your true account status, so you know what to do if you’ve been shadowbanned. He did not provide additional details or a timetable.

His announcement came shortly after a new release of internal Twitter documents that were cheered by Musk, which highlighted the practice of limiting the reach of certain potentially harmful content, a practice that Musk himself has been a critic of.

When Musk took the reins at Twitter in the fall, he did a lot to destroy the company and rid it of users who had been involved in offensive speech on the platform before. Hate and harassment, already a problem, skyrocketed. Roxanne Jones deleted her account on the same day Musk took over, after years of battling haters online as a Black woman in the public eye. She wrote: “Waking up to toxic attacks on Twitter kept me in beast mode, on and off the site. That is what will happen to you on the TWITTER-verse. Twitter will have you fighting anonymous bots meant to misinform the masses and real people who don’t have the courage or the intellect to challenge you in person. I’m done, so nah. I will use my voice and power in the real world.

The outrage came from conservatives who accused Musk of continuing a practice that they did not like. At a time when the billionaire is promising a more maximalist approach to free speech, and also attempting to assure advertisers and users that there will still be content moderation safeguards, the clash is indicative of the tension within the company.

The first drop from the “twitter files” was shared by Matt Taibbi, a journalist, who shared internal emails regarding the company’s decision to suppress a 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden and his laptop.

In both cases, the internal documents appear to have been provided directly to the journalists by Musk’s team. Musk on Friday posted a thread that stated, “TheTwitterfiles, Part Duex!!” Along with the popcorn symbol.

What has the czar told us about Twitter and the media? Reconciling Twitter and right-leaning journalists to creating healthier, healthier online spaces

Weiss offered several examples of right-leaning figures who had moderation actions taken on their accounts, but it’s not clear if such actions were equally taken against left-leaning or other accounts.

In tweets, Musk accused the journalists of violating the platform’s policy against doxing — or posting private information online — by sharing his “exact real-time” location. But none of the banished reporters — including CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan and The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell — appeared to have done so. Musk and Twitter didn’t respond to CNN’s requests for comment.

Reliable information should be found in a healthy town square. Before Musk took over, researchers found that the refuting of hate and misinformation was an order of magnitude larger on the social media site.

The account suspensions came on the heels of Twitter’s announcement on Monday that it was disbanding its Trust and Safety Council — a group of outside experts that advised the company on issues like human rights, child sexual exploitation and mental health.

The recent power moves by Musk are very dangerous. Recently unemployed tech and journalism workers should take them as a rallying call to unite to create new, healthier online spaces. Our dependence on the czar to set terms of public debates is our only chance of survival.

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Spring and All: A Poetic Birth of the American Dream, Inspired by William Carlos Williams, George Orwell, and Issac Bailey

William Carlos Williams is perhaps best known for the red wheelbarrow on which so much depends, but “Spring and All” – the 1923 book which includes that poem – is a manifesto on how language, through its own slow renewal, can recreate the world. Williams wrote, “It is the imagination on which reality rides.” “To whom then am I addressed? To the imagination.

In 2012, the Library of Congress cited “Spring and All” as one of 88 “books that shaped America,” which feels, as we prepare to take on 2023, like a prescient gesture, one that anticipated the power of imagination to create change and the role of culture in efforts to attend to the present while staying connected to the past and committed to transforming the future.

The past might speak from the page. According to George Orwell, the bedrock of all other freedoms will be freedom of expression, with it being the most vulnerable to attack and suppression. For Issac Bailey, a free copy of Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” opened his imagination in ways a childhood stutter had kept locked inside – and prompted him to speak out against ongoing efforts to ban books.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/18/opinions/year-in-culture-opinion-column-carr/index.html

From the Word of the Year to Everything Everywhere All At Once: How One Word May Change Your Life and What It Tells You About It

Or it’s a single word. The word of the year is gaslighting. Its selection was a statement on the precarity of truth in our lives, but Nicole Hemmer, who wrote one of the first pieces connecting the term to then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016, objected to synonymizing “gaslighting” with lying without emphasizing its origins as a form of psychological abuse against women. “This loss of context for a single word might not feel urgently important – after all, words evolve as they work their way from novel to commonplace to, eventually, trite (as the word ‘gaslighting’ now feels after years of overuse). But in a culture where histories of abuse are regularly erased – even five years into the #MeToo movement – the erasure feels significant,” insisted Hemmer. Changing one word’s meaning can empower women to claim their experiences and take one more step toward justice and equality.

Consider also how cultural figures have loomed large this year in our most painful moments. The massacre of 19 children in Uvalde, Texas, served as a motivator for cultural icons like basketball coach Steve Kerr and actor Matthew McConaughey to speak out against systems of oppression.

The richness of Mississippi’s cultural and literary heritage was one of the reasons that W.Ralph Eubanks believed that Mississippi mattered. While in Jackson, he encountered a new way the past and present are colliding in Mississippi. I was confronted by remnants of Jim Crow Mississippi, not the cultural charm of this place that I love so much.

But if I might borrow and riff on Williams’ formulation to look back at 2022 in cultural commentary, another part of the reason reality rides the back of imagination is because the latter functions as a source of joy and revelation that can invigorate the former. We deserve more of that after the last few years.

In March, absurdist dramedy “Everything Everywhere All At Once” – led by Michelle Yeoh playing Evelyn Wang – took the screen by storm, offering what Jeff Yang described as a “perfect metaphor for this thing we call Asian America.” The character in the film can conjure up any reality that she dreams of, bringing substance to the outrageous worlds of her imagination by taking power from the infinite diversity of her multiple selves. And we, as Asian Americans, are in the process of doing the same, building a cultural collage out of mixed media and lived experiences,” wrote Yang.

Emma Thompson gave a sexy portrayal of a recently-wedded character with a sex worker in “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande.” The dramedy chronicled the character’s quest for sexual pleasure and her first orgasm. This is a new kind of romance, affirmed Sara Stewart – a romance between Thompson’s Nancy and her own post-60 body: “Talk about a message at odds with our current political moment, where women’s bodily and autonomy and power are under siege.”

Come fall, noted Stewart, it was time to be served some “eat the rich” satire in “The Menu” and “Triangle of Sadness.” Predictable, perhaps, given a pandemic “in which billionaires got richer while millions died,” she wrote. It is more likely that investing in a film with single-handedly dismantling capitalism will not work than it is that it will. We can at least capitalize, so to speak, on these films’ painting their ultra-rich subjects as inherently ridiculous. Stewart was able to puncture the idea that obscene wealth is the ultimate American aspiration.

Emmy glory and the second season premiere of “Abbott Elementary,” the beloved comedy set in a Philadelphia school, was a triumph for an underdog that “has earned its stature – and then some,” wrote Gene Seymour, who has lived in the City of Brotherly Love off and on for 40 years. It’s more than a show about teaching, he insisted – it’s a show that, like its city of origin, “teaches you. One of the lessons is to give each person time and space to figure themselves out, rather than trying to understand them as quickly as possible.

That’s a far cry from “The Crown” – now a fifth-year senior with a new cast – where love is nowhere to be found and, as Thomas noted, fiction is rightly putting history in the corner. (In other streaming period drama-drama of the Regency variety, Thomas also praised the Jane Austen “adaptation” of “Persuasion” for being a so-bad-it’s-brilliant work of sneaky genius.)

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/18/opinions/year-in-culture-opinion-column-carr/index.html

The Light We Carry: Portrait of a First Lady that picks up where Ford left off during her time on the throne

Franchetta Groves, a student at Catholic University, wrote in June that the Dobbs decision didn’t feel like a setback, but rather a triumph for those like herself who identify as pro-life. “After Roe, I believe it will be possible for our nation to be one that doesn’t cast judgment on women who become pregnant, but one that embraces them with love and compassion,” she reflected.

Anxieties over the realities of a post-Roe America touched families who fear the rollback of rights around contraception and same-sex marriage. In her first marriage to a black man and in her later same-sex union to a woman, she had survived the legal marital shadows. “I wonder and worry: are they coming for my marriage next?” They touched our daily lives as directly as the phones in our pockets do (as Katherine Yao and Megan L. Ranney noted in citing the vulnerability of data gathered by period-tracker apps) – or as routinely as our kids’ activities (as Ranney also wrote after a Florida school’s request for athletes’ period data raised legal and security issues).

Queen Elizabeth met 13 American presidents and many other world leaders during her 71 years on the throne, but was still a princess. “Queen Elizabeth’s sovereignty was framed by her gender even before she came to the throne,” observed Sarah Gristwood. The British people have been singing God Save the Queen for 70 years. The British will probably do for at least three generations a version of “God Save the King”, which will catch in the throat for some time to come.

In November, Michelle Obama published another best-selling book, and what made “The Light We Carry” fascinating, assessed Nicole Hemmer, was that it was not a follow-up to her memoir “Becoming.” The self-help book was categorized as a life coach by Hemmer but it was also a memoir of a former first lady. Unlike Eleanor Roosevelt, who wrote an advice column for two decades, Hemmer wrote that Obama picks up where Betty Ford left off, sharing her own authenticity in service of a social purpose and building a brand beyond the limitations of her. In this book, Obama shows her desire to use that tangle of emotion and power to bring people together, but the ease with which feelings and politics now blend is also a reminder of how easily that combination could also be used to divide.”

A series of long-standing questions about the modern academy were raised after a renowned chemistry professor was dismissed from New York University in October, as a result of a series of student complaints. “Are academic standards dropping? Are professors and administrators too beholden to students’ fragile emotions – and their parents’ tuition dollars? What is wrong with kids these days? Filipovic argued that the university got it wrong: “Whether or not [Dr. Maitland] Jones was an effective teacher for aspiring medical students is up for debate, but in firing him, NYU is effectively dodging questions about the line between academic rigor and student well-being with potentially life-and-death matters at stake.”

The stakes are higher when it comes to mental health on campus, which is why the recent lawsuits against Yale and Stanford universities are important. There are solutions, he said. The good news is that with Generation Covid’s arrival there will be less pressure on college life because students whose entire high school experience has been shaped by living through an ongoing global mass death event are going to get worse.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/18/opinions/year-in-culture-opinion-column-carr/index.html

Why did Aaron Judge win the World Cup? A woman and a man making a new history from winning the Moroccan national team, Morocco’s victory at a World Cup

In a year filled with the Beijing Olympics and the first World Cup in the Middle East, it was obvious that some of the biggest landmarks were at arenas beyond the field of play.

In August, Serena Williams rewrote what retirement means in an essay in Vogue. Roxanne Jones praised Serena for using the word evolve to describe her approach to women who excel early in a chosen career and leave on their own terms. Seeing women realize their full capacity for greatness is beautiful. Many women of all economic background, such as my own peer group are expanding what success looks like in their lives. It isn’t an easy choice to make.”

The magic spun by the bat of Aaron Judge in late summer and early autumn kept many in thrall, but Jeff Pearlman had harsh words for Major League Baseball’s myth-making attempts to capitalize on the spark, finding them hypocritical after years of sweeping rampant doping under a rug of greed. Pearlman wrote that Judge has had a season for the ages. This is supposed to be an exciting time for baseball. The time should be an historic one for Judge. Baseball’s history was taken with it by greed.

At a Qatar World Cup staggeringly diminished by human rights protests and the untimely death of legendary US soccer journalist Grant Wahl, the Moroccan national team brought light by praying and joyously kissing the covered heads of their mothers – in a year when in France (whose team are the defending World Cup champion), women athletes had been banned from wearing hijab while playing sports (a move Shaista Aziz contended dehumanized French Muslim women). The World Cup victories ofrocco has given it vicarious avenge against some of its former colonial overlords. While France is largely trapped in a dark history of its own making,rocco is making a new history by claiming its place in the World Cup.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/18/opinions/year-in-culture-opinion-column-carr/index.html

How much do we need for music? A reflection of Tess Taylor on Taylor-Paley: a poet, a psychoanalytic and a priest

Tess Taylor read three books – by a poet, a psychoanalyst and a priest (who really should walk into a bar together, she noted) – about radical joy to ready herself the holidays. She also reflected on a recent conversation with friends, all of whom are grinding through a time of suffering, that brought her to tears. She was told by her friend that it was okay to be fragile. We are all fragile now. “Yeah,” she thought, “and maybe we’re ready to be joyful, too. It is winter. It is cold. The holidays are coming. We’re about to try to find light in darkness.”

Amy and her friend are going to rock concerts with their two teenage daughters. It has been a great experience. I loved every second of watching our girls battle for position in the pit at Harry Styles’ show. … Indeed, just as we once joined the thousands of voices walking out of a U2 show singing ’40’ long after the band had left the building, our girls are part of a generation of fans that seems to look out for one another,” Bass wrote in a reflection on Taylor Swift-mania and Ticketmaster. Bass remembers sleeping in the cold to stay in line for tickets, and her mom accompanying her into a venue at age 15 because of her lack of identification, because it was difficult to get tickets to concerts. But Bass argued this amazing generation of kids deserves more magic and less merch. She pledged to support her child’s love for music the same way her mother did for her.