Removing a GPS Tracking Device From Your Car Isn’t theft

An Indiana man may beat a drug prosecution after the state's highest court threw out a search warrant against him late last week. The search warrant was based on the idea that the man had "stolen" a GPS tracking device belonging to the government. But Indiana's Supreme Court concluded that he'd done no such thing—and the cops should have known it.

Last November, we wrote about the case of Derek Heuring, an Indiana man the Warrick County Sheriff's Office suspected of selling meth. Authorities got a warrant to put a GPS tracker on Heuring's car, getting a stream of data on his location for six days. But then the data stopped.

Officers suspected Heuring had discovered and removed the tracking device. After waiting for a few more days, they got a warrant to search his home and a barn belonging to his father. They argued the disappearance of the tracking device was evidence that Heuring had stolen it.

During their search, police found the tracking device and some methamphetamine. They charged Heuring with drug-related crimes as well as theft of the GPS device.

But at trial, Heuring's lawyers argued that the warrant to search the home and barn had been illegal. An application for a search warrant must provide probable cause to believe a crime was committed. But removing a small, unmarked object from your personal vehicle is no crime at all, Heuring's lawyers argued. Heuring had no way of knowing what the device was or who it belonged to—and certainly no obligation to leave the device on his vehicle.

An Indiana appeals court ruled against Heuring last year. But Indiana's Supreme Court seemed more sympathetic to Heuring's case during oral arguments last November.

"I'm really struggling with how is that theft," said Justice Steven David during November's oral arguments.

“We find it reckless”

Last Thursday, Indiana's highest court made it official, ruling that the search warrant that allowed police to recover Heuring's meth was illegal. The police had no more than a hunch that Heuring had removed the device, the court said, and that wasn't enough to get a search warrant.

Even if the police could have proved that Heuring had removed the device, that wouldn't prove he stole it, the high court said. It's hard to "steal" something if you have no idea to whom it belongs. Classifying his action as theft would lead to absurd results, the court noted.

"To find a fair probability of unauthorized control here, we would need to conclude the Hoosiers don't have the authority to remove unknown, unmarked objects from their personal vehicles," Chief Justice Loretta Rush wrote for a unanimous court.

by Timothy B. Lee, Ars Technica |  Read more:

Image: Indiana Supreme Court

[ed. Harassment pure and simple (how did this ever get past an appeals court?). I hope Mr. Heuring is now able to recover legal expenses (and more) from the police department. Cop logic: if you remove something of ours from your property it's called theft, if we seize all of your belongings during an arrest it's called civil forfeiture.]

Maria Delliou, Beer Cap
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Craigslist Turns 25 – A Reminder That a More Democratic Version of the Internet Can Still Thrive

Fake news. Online surveillance. Phishing scams. Biased algorithms.

It’s easy to be cynical about the internet, and harder to remember a time when being online felt less commercial and more democratic. But there was a period when websites didn’t rely on user data for profit margins, when people still viewed the internet as a radical laboratory for freedom and liberty.

Can those ideas and values from the earliest days of the web be revived? Or is the internet a lost cause?

In my new book, “An Internet for the People,” I look at one popular website that has a lot to teach us: Craigslist. Twenty-five years after its launch, Craigslist is a reminder that the earlier, more democratic version of the internet can still thrive.

The platform has weathered the internet’s boom-and-bust cycle, with countless peers and competitors coming and going. The site looks more or less the same today as it did in the late 1990s.

Sort of like a shark that’s never had to evolve, Craigslist has remained incredibly successful without giving up values of anonymity, accessibility and transparency.

You don’t need to turn users into data

Craigslist started as an email listserv in 1995, when early web enthusiasts were looking for a sense of community and DIY education. By 1996, it had become a website with job listings, apartment rentals and personal ads. Almost as soon as the internet was becoming widely available – roughly 1 out of 5 households was online at the time – Craigslist was there to help people find roommates, look for jobs, go on blind dates or sell used furniture.

Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster has been at the helm since 2001 and the founder, Craig Newmark, is still involved in the company. For years, Newmark did customer service, responding to design complaints and concerns about scams. Today, Craigslist has more monthly page visits than The New York Times or ESPN, and it’s been incredibly profitable.

Its profitability might come as a surprise to some. Many of those I spoke with thought Craigslist was a nonprofit or that it was community-run. In fact, Craigslist has always charged money for certain ads, like job postings and classified ads. (By siphoning revenue from classified ads, Craigslist has been one reason newspapers across the country have struggled to stay in business.)

More recently, Craigslist has started charging for other kinds of ads, like real estate listings from firms and car ads from dealers.

But regular users don’t have to pay a fee. The site doesn’t display banner ads, nor does it sell user data to third parties.

This is a very direct relationship between user and platform – and it’s totally different from the convoluted streams of data and targeted advertising used by platforms like Facebook and Google. When Facebook users aren’t sure how the platform makes money, it’s because the process of analyzing data and selling ads is deliberately hidden.

When Craigslist users don’t know how the platform makes money, it’s because they’re part of the user group who simply doesn’t get charged. With its straightforward relationship between people and profits, Craigslist is an important reminder that platforms don’t have to turn their users into data in order to make money.

by Jessa Lingel, The Conversation | Read more:
Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
[ed. See also: At 25 Years, Understanding The Longevity Of Craigslist (NPR).]

The American Media Elite Has Learned Nothing From 2016

The biases of the professional classes replicate themselves, and we find figures as horrified and baffled by the progressive left as they are by the reactionary right.

Journalism was supposed to save us. They promised. After the election of Donald Trump, which the good gentlemen and ladies of journalism assisted in facilitating, much was made of the ability of the fourth estate to soften the blow, to shorten the reign of corruption, to protect the public from the madman in the White House. It hasn’t really worked out that way, and the increasingly unhinged rhetoric of the opinion-havers and the public faces of news networks does little to restore our faith.

The media has come under fire for its role in helping President Trump make his way to the highest office in the land – from making too much of Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, to giving Trump untold hours of free publicity by broadcasting his every word and deed, to fundamentally misunderstanding their own country and what the people who live between New York and Los Angeles might want or need.

Yet, for the most part, the media did not take its failure to foresee or prevent the results of the 2016 election as a cue to pause, assess what it has been doing wrong, and realign itself and its mission in response to the hard lessons it has learned.

Instead, the media rebranded, like an oil company recently discovered to be dumping toxic sludge down the throats of sea turtles. It announced it would be the bulwark against Trump and all of his cronies, the last line of protection between us and fascism. Ta-da. It created whole ad campaigns around Trump’s hatred for the press. If he hates us, that must mean we’re good, right? Right?

Like those companies, it never stopped its sludge dumping, just changed the name under which it committed its sea turtle murder. No one lost their job for assuring the country of the impossibility of Hillary Clinton losing the election. No pundits had to apologize for never once stepping inside a red state before pontificating about the state of things in Trump country. The New York Times relied on the same six “swing voters” to provide commentary whenever the paper of record decided it need to prove it was in touch with the common people.

Billionaires buying newspapers also became something of a trend, like fidget spinners or insulin rationing due to a lack of comprehensive health insurance – either because these billionaires seek to make themselves look philanthropic, or because they want to control the coverage of their financial goings-on, or both. (Democracy dies in darkness, Mr Bezos? Yeah, well, so do workers on your warehouse floors.)

Yes, the media made a few cosmetic changes to prove they understood the diversity of thought across this nation. The New York Times, for example, decided it lacked the conservative voices that could explain the populist rightward tilt the electorate took, so the paper hired man-of-the-people Bret Stephens – son of a corporate scion, graduate of the University of Chicago and the London School of Economics – as a columnist. You know, someone who could really give some insight into the kind of opinions circulating at the Beloit, Kansas, diner at harvest time. Other publications followed suit, fawning over anyone who might have accidentally found themselves briefly living in a conservative state before their inevitable elevation to the elite university system, like the Yale graduate/Appalachia expert/venture capitalist JD Vance, despite the multitude of critics who say his theories about the white working class are naive at best.

Journalism has become a well-gate-kept little bubble, if bubbles were created out of ignorance and contempt for what lay outside of them instead of just soap. And unlike soap bubbles, so easily pricked and burst, the walls of the ideological bubbles of our professional class are nearly impenetrable.

by Jessa Crispin, The Guardian |  Read more:

Image: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
[ed. See also: The Populist Pundits (Jacobin), and 'A Wake Up Moment for the American Power Establishment' (Common Dreams).]

Stéphane Beilliard, Cessna 140
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[ed. I used to have one of these. Sweet little plane. See also: No One Can Explain Why Planes Stay In The Air (Scientific American.]

The Design of Everyday Things

Donald A. Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things frequently pops up on lists of “must read” design books, but I’ve somehow managed to avoid reading it until now. I finally included the book in my last Amazon order, and now I wish I hadn’t waited so long to get my hands on a copy, because it really is a classic that deserves all the praise that’s been heaped on it.

The Design of Everyday Things was first published in 1988 under the title The Psychology of Everyday Things, and is aimed at anyone involved in the design process, regardless of which field they work in. Norman’s background is in cognitive science, and in the book he explores the psychology of everyday objects, making a persuasive argument for the importance of a user-centered approach to design. After reading The Design of Everyday Things you will never look at a tap, light switch, stove top, or telephone the same way again (and I guarantee you’ll learn a thing or two about the layout of your computer keyboard!)

A big part of what makes The Design of Everyday Things so enjoyable are the descriptions of flawed designs that Norman peppers throughout the book. These case studies serve to illustrate both how difficult it is to design something well, and how essential good design is to our lives. Norman draws on his own (often humorous) experiences with poorly designed objects, as well as anecdotes from colleagues and friends, and paints an all-too-familiar picture of design gone awry. If you’ve ever struggled to program a VCR, pulled a door handle when you were supposed to push, or been mystified by the taps in a public restroom, then you’ll be sure to relate to these encounters with bad design. Norman uses the book’s examples of substandard design as a springboard for examining the factors that frequently derail the design process, and he proposes that matters can be improved when designers adopt a user-centered design philosophy and focus on the needs of the user.

While The Design of Everyday Things deals mostly with the design of physical objects, its principles are equally applicable to the design of websites and other interactive systems. Consider this description of the relationship between the number of visible controls a device has and how difficult it is to use, which has obvious implications for the design of web applications and navigation systems:

by Jonathan Nicol | Read more:
Image: via
[ed. I just recently became aware of this classic (and there's a companion book, too - Emotional Design). See also: Norman Doors (NY Times), and The Design of Everyday Things - Why It is a Great Resource for UX-ers and Everybody Else (Ergomania).]

Doyon 26

North America’s Largest Mobile Land Rig to Travel from Alberta to Alaska’s North Slope (Doyon Limited)

[ed. My friend who works on the North Slope (-90 degree wind chill last week) was telling me about this massive new rig that's being assembled there for Conoco. It weighs 9.5 million lbs. (equivalent to 10 fully loaded Boeing 747s), can drill 35,000 feet (seven miles!), and drain up to 154 square miles of reservoir. Wow. See also: North America’s largest mobile land rig travels to Alaska’s North Slope (SpiritNow). And, in other oil/gas related news (specifically, climate change and the extensive flaring or venting of natural gas/methane): Permian Produces More Gas and Condensate Instead of Oil and Profits (Naked Capitalism).]

Hilary Duff Confronts Paparazzo Taking Photos of Children

Hilary Duff has made it clear she is not OK with paparazzi invading her personal space — and that goes double when her kids are involved.

On Saturday, February 22, the Lizzie McGuire star posted a video of herself confronting a paparazzo who was seemingly photographing children on a football field. “Do you know any people on the team? Can you stop taking pictures of the kids please?” Hilary can be heard asking in the clip. In turn, the photographer pushes back by saying what he was doing was “legal.” When Hilary offers that she is uncomfortable by him photographing children, the paparazzo asks if she wants to see his ID.

“I'm not asking for your ID,” Hilary says in response. “I'm asking you to stop taking pictures of our 7-year-old children if you don't know anyone that's here. I'm asking you human-to-human — as a mother — if you don't know anyone here, can you please stop taking pictures of our children playing football this morning?” The photographer can be seen responding: “I'm taking pictures, I'm practicing photography,” adding: “Your paranoia is unwarranted.”

The video ends after the photographer puts his hand over Hilary’s phone, but not before the actor pans the camera to show all the other parents sitting on the sideline. “Paparazzi shooting KIDS,” Hilary wrote in the caption on Instagram. “Go ‘practice’ your photography on ADULTS! Creep! Laws need to change! This is stalking minors! Disgusting!” At the time of writing, the photographer has not commented on the incident.

From the comments, it’s clear that many people — including a lot of celebs — were ready to support Hilary for confronting the photographer. “Children should be protected under the law. 👏” wrote Emmy Rossum, while Katie Stephens added several clapping emojis. “This is beyond unacceptable and I stand behind you with an army of Mothers who applaud you for refusing to back down in an instance where yet again, a paparazzi is stating his right to photograph minors,” commented Nikki Reed, adding: “The bottom line is this industry should not be allowed to make money off of children. Period end of story. Not only is that morally wrong, but more importantly, in the process of making money off of little kid’s private moments, these children grow up feeling unsafe.”

by De Elizabeth, Teen Vogue |  Read more:

Image: Sarah Morris/Getty

[ed. It's a fine line. I could see some discomfort on a beach maybe, but on a soccer field? I'm sure many parents have cameras out as well. Plus, Ms. Duff is a celebrity and surely must expect these types of situations (although that doesn't make them any less intrusive). Definitely recommend reading: The Sacred Child (Duck Soup/ScienceBlogs).]

Ethnic Labels: Latinx

One of the greatest challenges facing marketing departments and political campaigns today is the inability to discern signals from noise. As a professional market researcher, I see this on a daily basis. Social media listening teams regularly confuse online chatter for real-life trends and this can misinform entire PR and advertising strategies.

Over the past few months and years, several of our clients have noticed the term “Latinx” trending as a new ethnic label to describe Latinos. It has been used by academics, activists, and major companies, including NBC and Marvel, as well as politicians like Senator Elizabeth Warren. We were curious about the appeal of “Latinx” among the country’s 52 million people of Latin American ancestry and decided to test its popularity.

While my colleagues and I are progressive on social issues, as researchers, we have to put aside our personal biases and render advice based on the best available empirical evidence. To examine the acceptance of “Latinx” our firm conducted a nationwide poll of Latinos using a 508-person sample that is demographically representative of Census figures, yielding a ± 5% margin of error with a 95% confidence interval.

We presented our respondents with seven of the most common terms used to describe Latinos and asked them to select the one that best describes them. When it came to “Latinx,” there was near unanimity. Despite its usage by academics and cultural influencers, 98% of Latinos prefer other terms to describe their ethnicity. Only 2% of our respondents said the label accurately describes them, making it the least popular ethnic label among Latinos.

Some have speculated that “Latinx” resonates with women and Latino youth. We found no evidence of this in our study. While Latinos’ preferences for other labels vary by age, the limited appeal of “Latinx” is consistent across generations and genders. Only 3% of 18–34 year-old respondents in our poll selected the term as their preferred ethnic label. This was roughly the same as the 2% of 35–49 year-olds. No respondents over 50 selected the term. In other words, 97% of millennial and Gen-Z Latinos prefer to be called something other than “Latinx.” Meanwhile, only 3% of women and 1% of men selected the term as their preferred ethnic identifier.

Given the very small pool of respondents who indicated a preference for the “Latinx” label, it is difficult to develop a statistically reliable demographic profile of its users. Further research is also needed to ascertain how familiar Latinos are with the term, but in our survey its users tended to be English dominant and US-born.

So, what do Latinos want to be called? Consistent with past studies by Gallup and Pew Research, our poll found a plurality of respondents preferred the term Hispanic (44%) over Latino (24%). Among 18 to 24 year-olds, the preference for Hispanic versus Latino is less pronounced with 38% choosing the former and 27% the latter.

by Mario Carrasco, Medium | Read more:
Image: uncredited

Subprime Credit Card Delinquencies Spike to Record High, Past Financial-Crisis Peak, as Other Consumers Relish the Good Times. Why?

The rate of credit card balances that are 30 days or more delinquent at the 4,500 or so commercial banks that are smaller than the top 100 banks spiked to 7.05% in the fourth quarter, the highest delinquency rate in the data going back to the 1980s (red line).

But at the largest 100 banks, the credit-card delinquency rate was 2.48%, which kept the overall credit-card delinquency rate at all commercial banks at 2.7% (blue line), though it was the highest since 2012, according to the Federal Reserve. What’s going on here, with this bifurcation of the delinquency rates and what does that tell us about consumers?

Clearly, those consumers that have obtained credit cards at the smaller banks are in a heap of trouble and are falling behind at a historically high rate. But consumers that got their credit cards at the big banks – lured by 2% cash-back offers and other benefits that are being heavily promoted to consumers with top credit scores – do not feel the pain.

A similarly disturbing trend is going on with auto loans. Seriously delinquent auto loans jumped to 4.94% of total auto loans and leases outstanding. This is higher than the delinquency rate in Q3 2010 amid the worst unemployment crisis since the Great Depression. On closer inspection, there was that bifurcation again; prime-rated loans had historically low delinquency rates; but a shocking 23% of all subprime loans were 90+ days delinquent.

During the Financial Crisis, delinquencies on credit cards and auto loans were soaring because over 10 million people had lost their jobs and they couldn’t make their payments.

But these are the good times – with the unemployment rate near historic lows. And yet, there are these skyrocketing delinquency rates in the subprime subset of credit cards and auto loans. It means these people are working, and they’re falling behind their debts.

Consumers with subprime credit scores (below 620) can still get credit cards, but under subprime terms – namely interest rates of 25% or 30% or more.

These rates comes at a time when, according to the FDIC, banks’ average cost of funding was around 1.0%. The difference between a bank’s average cost of funding and the interest it charges is its net interest margin. For banks, subprime credit-card balances, with interest rates of 30%, are the most profitable assets out there.

To get these profits, banks take big risks. Even when a portion of those credit card accounts have to be written off and sold for cents on the dollar to a collection agency, they’re still profitable overall. In addition, banks offload part of the subprime risk to investors by securitizing these subprime credit-card loans into asset backed securities. And investors love them and chase after them for the slightly higher yield they offer.

So I’m not worried about the banks or the investors. If they take a beating, so be it. But what does it tell us about the consumers?

The largest 100 banks have a delinquency rate of just 2.48%, which is low by historical standards. With their sophisticated marketing, they go aggressively after consumers with high credit scores and high incomes, and to get them, the big banks offer big benefits, and so a bidding war has broken out for these high-credit-score consumers, with “2% cash back on every purchase” and other benefits that small banks cannot offer.

These big banks have most of the customers and most of the credit card balances (assets for the banks). Their special offers rope in the lion’s share of consumers with top credit scores. They also issue credit cards to consumers with subprime credit scores. But since these big banks have the lion’s share of prime-rated customers, their subprime customers, when they default, don’t weigh heavily in the mix.

Smaller banks can’t offer the same incentives and don’t have the marketing resources the big banks have. But subprime-rated customers are easy to hand a credit card that comes with few incentives and charges a 30% interest. And those credit card balances, producing 30% interest income, do wonders for a small bank’s bottom line. Proportionately, these small banks end up with more subprime customers. And in this way, they become a gauge for subprime credit card delinquencies.

So why are these delinquencies spiking now? We haven’t seen millions of people getting laid off. These are the good times.

by Wolf Richter, Wolfstreet |  Read more:

Image: Fed Board of Governors/Wolfstreet
[ed. Interesting economic times (for a variety of reasons), especially with the coronavirus hitting global supply chains and millions of firms facing collapse (Bloomberg). Even Amazon is worried (NY Times).]

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Cash Crop

The United States may give American farmers additional money until trade deals with China, Mexico, Canada and other countries fully go into effect, President Donald Trump said on Friday.

“If our formally targeted farmers need additional aid until such time as the trade deals with China, Mexico, Canada and others fully kick in, that aid will be provided by the federal government,” Trump wrote in a Twitter post entirely in capital letters.

It was not immediately clear how large the aid package would be or how long it would last.

The Trump administration set aside a $16 billion aid package to farmers in 2019, and $12 billion a year earlier. In January, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said farmers should not expect another bailout package in 2020.

Trump is seeking re-election in the Nov. 3 presidential election. Farmers form a key part of his electoral base, but they have been badly bruised by low commodity prices and Trump’s tit-for-tat tariff dispute with China.

Trump: U.S. may give farmers more aid until trade deals 'kick in' (Reuters)
Image: Photo illustration: 731; Photos: Alarmy; Getty via

[ed. Because, of course (who cares about trillion dollar deficits when you have an election to win). See also: Farmers say Trump's $28 billion bailout is not a solution (Bloomberg).]

The Hunt for a Healthy Microbiome

What does a healthy forest look like? A seemingly thriving, verdant wilderness can conceal signs of pollution, disease or invasive species. Only an ecologist can spot problems that could jeopardize the long-term well-being of the entire ecosystem.

Microbiome researchers grapple with the same problem. Disruptions to the community of microbes living in the human gut can contribute to the risk and severity of a host of medical conditions. Accordingly, many scientists have become accomplished bacterial naturalists, labouring to catalogue the startling diversity of these commensal communities. Some 500–1,000 bacterial species reside in each person’s intestinal tract, alongside an undetermined number of viruses, fungi and other microbes.

Rapid advances in DNA sequencing technology have accelerated the identification of these bacteria, allowing researchers to create ‘field guides’ to the species in the human gut. “We’re starting to get a feeling of who the players are,” says Jeroen Raes, a bioinformatician at VIB, a life-sciences institute in Ghent, Belgium. “But there is still considerable ‘dark matter’.”

Currently, these field guides are of limited use in distinguishing a healthy microbiome from an unhealthy one. Part of the problem is the potentially vast differences between the microbiomes of apparently healthy people. These differences arise through a complex combination of environmental, genetic and lifestyle factors. This means that relatively subtle differences can have a disproportionate role in determining whether an individual is relatively healthy or at increased risk of developing disorders such as diabetes. Understanding the clinical implications of those differences is also a challenge, given the extensive interactions between these microbes, and with their host, as well as the conditions in which that individual lives. “One person’s healthy microbiome might not be healthy in another context — it’s a tricky concept,” says Ruth Ley, a microbial ecologist at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, Germany.

Researchers such as Ley are trying to better understand the forces that shape the human gut microbiome — both in the modern era, and across evolutionary history. The emerging picture indicates that even if there is no one healthy microbiome, there are ample opportunities for our lifestyle to interfere with the proper function of these complex commensal communities. And to understand how the breakdown of these ecosystems drives disease, researchers will need to move beyond microbial field guides and begin dissecting how these species interact with their hosts and with each other.

by Michael Eisenstein, Nature | Read more:
Image: Antoine Doré

[ed. Probably one of the most exciting fields of study these days. The influence of the microbiome on health (mental and physical) appears to be amazingly important (if not enormous) and we're just beginning to understand why. In other news: Powerful antibiotics discovered using AI (Nature).]

Harding Icefield

The Harding Icefield: A shrinking landscape on the Kenai Peninsula (FWS - pdf)

There’s something as big as the island of Maui on the Kenai Peninsula that many locals have not seen or not seen well. Unless you’re a pilot, your exposure to this mystery blob has likely been constrained to the hiking trail at Exit Glacier, or perhaps to viewing the tidewater glaciers in Northwestern Fjord from a commercial tour boat, or perhaps to the edge of Skilak Glacier if you’re hunting sheep or goat. These glaciers, as big as they seem, are three slivers among the more than 30 glaciers that feed off the Harding Icefield.

The icefield embraces Truuli Peak, the highest point in the Kenai Mountains at 6,612 feet above sea level, suggesting that the Harding is likely a mile deep in some places.

Image: Mario Tama/Getty Images

[ed. This isn't the Harding but it's the best photograph I could find that really captures what it looks like. One of the most stunning and humbling places I've ever visited in Alaska - horizon to horizon, as far as you can see, just snow and ice and emergent mountaintops.]

It's Complicated

In the second episode of HBO’s Watchmen series, Angela Abar, also known as Sister Night, explains a few things to her adopted son, Topher. (...) Some people think that world is rainbows and lollipops, Angela tells Topher. But “we don’t do lollipops and rainbows. We know those are just pretty colors that hide what the world really is.” And what is the world really? The world is “black and white.”

More and more of us seem willing to share in Sister Night’s wisdom. There is black and there is white; there’s right and there’s wrong. No lollipops, for sure, and no multi-toned rainbow zones, either. As a nation and a people, we are what the pundits like to call “polarized.” We are divided, radically and insistently on any number of matters: abortion, immigration, race, the politics of gender, homosexuality, or transgender rights. We’ll even fight about who’s going to use which bathroom. For many, if not most of us, it seems there is no going back and no backing down. Right is right; wrong, wrong. What more is there to say?

Every issue is manifest in extremes. Someone is not “racially insensitive” if he laughs at a dopey joke. He’s a racist out and out. Pose questions about the motives for gender transition? You’re a transphobic, and that’s all there is to say. Don’t believe all women all the time when they discuss sexual assault? Misogynist.

It works both ways. Question the president’s fitness to lead? You’re disloyal. Maybe you’re a traitor. Ask moderate questions about abortion rights and join the ranks of the baby-killers. Insult the military, refuse to honor all the police all the time: Maybe you’re not a real American.

Not only have our opinions become more emphatic and violent, served up like roundhouse punches. We’ve developed a proclivity for suppressing the opinions of others. We cancel. We de-platform. Some of us stage a riot even before hearing the scheduled talk by the controversial speaker. We will not risk our own simplicities by exposing them to the views of others. Direct, clear, and emphatic is what we aspire to be, making our pronouncements from the judge’s elevated chair.

What’s up with us humans, us American humans, that we’re committing ourselves more and more to unbending postures? Why have we developed what seems an allergy to nuance, complexity, irony?

One answer might be that the world has grown radically complex—perhaps unbearably so, for some of us. Or at least it has taken on the appearance of boiling complexity. Information comes our way at an unprecedented speed and in unprecedented amounts, through our various technologies. Step into the world of the Internet and you can see how much blooming, buzzing, laughing, teeth-gnashing, mind spinning confusion is on offer.

It’s natural, isn’t it, that we would revert to simplicities and reductions in the face of all this whirl?

Another reason for this state of our culture is what could be called the pleasures of judgment. The more affairs threaten to run out of control, the more it may help to have not only a firm position but also a judgmental temperament. Judgment brings order. We go thumbs-up, or we go thumbs-down, and so appear to rule our own lives in imperial fashion. When we judge emphatically, it seems that the world is our domain. Simplification (which we might also call “reduction”) and judgment: These are the ways we hold complexity at bay.

The Internet? We shape our tools, Marshall McLuhan famously said, and thereafter our tools shape us. The most powerful tool of our time is the Internet, which McLuhan would probably call an extension of the mind. (To McLuhan, tools are always extensions of the human: A shovel extends the hand; a steam-shovel is a super-extension. The mind is made larger by the Internet, but it is made more confusing, too.) We’re not being shaped by this tool so much as we are being mis-shaped by it—confused, disordered, maybe slightly deranged. That’s not the way it’s supposed to be with a tool as marvelous as the Internet, but that appears to be the way that it is. (...)

Is the Internet chaos? It may approach that condition. But the Internet is also a collaboration (if we follow McLuhan), a collaboration between the mind of the individual and the scattered, revealing, often invaluable pseudo-mind of the technology. A person takes of two things, says Chaucer, that which he finds and that which he brings. To use the Internet well, you need to bring a lot. You need an existing cognitive and (dare one say it?) spiritual frame to order what you learn there. You need to know some history, and preferably more than some. It helps to understand the rudiments of philosophy, religion, economics, and science. You have to have an education, in other words, to be educated by the Internet. You need to have created a context for what you know and what you might learn. You also need to have standards for what to believe and what not to. A built in bullshit detector, a la Ernest Hemingway? Nothing so emphatic, but surely a strong, functioning sense of skepticism. To be educated by the Internet, you first need to be educated by something other than the Internet.

by Mark Edmundson, Hedgehog Review |  Read more:

Image: via
[ed. See also: On Critical Thinking (Hedgehog Review).]

Locust Swarms Despoil Kenya

‘Like an Umbrella Had Covered the Sky’: Locust Swarms Despoil Kenya (NY Times)

Image: Khadija Farah

[ed. Pretty horrifying, and another unforseen consequence of climate change.]

Politics Without Politicians

The political scientist Hélène Landemore asks, If government is for the people, why can’t the people do the governing?

Imagine being a citizen of a diverse, wealthy, democratic nation filled with eager leaders. At least once a year—in autumn, say—it is your right and civic duty to go to the polls and vote. Imagine that, in your country, this act is held to be not just an important task but an essential one; the government was designed at every level on the premise of democratic choice. If nobody were to show up to vote on Election Day, the superstructure of the country would fall apart.

So you try to be responsible. You do your best to stay informed. When Election Day arrives, you make the choices that, as far as you can discern, are wisest for your nation. Then the results come with the morning news, and your heart sinks. In one race, the candidate you were most excited about, a reformer who promised to clean up a dysfunctional system, lost to the incumbent, who had an understanding with powerful organizations and ultra-wealthy donors. Another politician, whom you voted into office last time, has failed to deliver on her promises, instead making decisions in lockstep with her party and against the polls. She was reëlected, apparently with her party’s help. There is a notion, in your country, that the democratic structure guarantees a government by the people. And yet, when the votes are tallied, you feel that the process is set up to favor interests other than the people’s own.

What corrective routes are open? One might wish for pure direct democracy—no body of elected representatives, each citizen voting on every significant decision about policies, laws, and acts abroad. But this seems like a nightmare of majoritarian tyranny and procedural madness: How is anyone supposed to haggle about specifics and go through the dialogue that shapes constrained, durable laws? Another option is to focus on influencing the organizations and business interests that seem to shape political outcomes. But that approach, with its lobbyists making backroom deals, goes against the promise of democracy. Campaign-finance reform might clean up abuses. But it would do nothing to insure that a politician who ostensibly represents you will be receptive to hearing and acting on your thoughts.

The scholar Hélène Landemore, a professor of political science at Yale, has spent much of her career trying to understand the value and meaning of democracy. In recent years, she has been part of a group of academics, many of them young, trying to solve the problem of elected democratic representation—addressing flaws in a system that is widely believed to be no problem at all. In her book “Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many” (Princeton, 2012), she challenged the idea that leadership by the few was superior to leadership by the masses. Her forthcoming book, due out next year and currently titled “Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the 21st Century,” envisions what true government by mass leadership could look like. Her model is based on the simple idea that, if government by the people is a goal, the people ought to do the governing.

“Open democracy,” Landemore’s coinage, does not center on elections of professional politicians into representative roles. Leadership is instead determined by a method roughly akin to jury duty (not jury selection): every now and then, your number comes up, and you’re obliged to do your civic duty—in this case, to take a seat on a legislative body. For a fixed period, it is your job to work with the other people in the unit to solve problems and direct the nation. When your term is up, you leave office and go back to your normal life and work. “It’s the idea of putting randomly selected citizens into political power, or giving them some sort of political role on a consultative body or a citizens’ assembly,” said Alexander Guerrero, a professor of philosophy at Rutgers who, in 2014, published an influential paper arguing for random selection in place of elections—a system with some precedents in ancient Athens and Renaissance Italy which he dubbed “lottocracy.” (It’s the basis for his own forthcoming book.) In open democracy, Landemore imagines lottocratic rule combined with crowdsourced feedback channels and other measures; the goal is to shift power from the few back to the many.

To many Americans, such a system will seem viscerally alarming—the political equivalent of lending your fragile vintage convertible to the red-eyed, rager-throwing seventeen-year-old down the block. Yet many immediate objections fall away on reflection. Training and qualification: Well, what about them? Backgrounds among American legislators are varied, and members seem to learn well enough on the job. The belief that elections are a skills-proving format? This, too, cancels out, since none of the skills tested in campaigning (fund-raising, glad-handing, ground-gaming, speechmaking) are necessary in a government that fills its ranks by lottery.

Some people might worry about commitment and continuity—the idea that we are best served by a motivated group of political professionals who bring experience and relationships to bear. Historically, such concerns haven’t weighed too heavily on the electorate, which seems to have few major reservations about choosing outsiders and weirdos for important roles. If anti-institutionalism has become a poison taken as a salve, then maybe it’s the institutions that require adjustment. Landemore’s open-democratic model purports to work with the people as they are, with no reacculturation or special education required—and its admirers describe the idea as being durable, sophisticated, and able to channel populist sentiment for good.

“Democratic governments are losing perceived legitimacy all over the world,” Jane Mansbridge, a professor of political leadership and democratic values at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, told me. “The beauty of open democracy is that it has a firm understanding not just of the complexity of democratic principles but of how to make those principles cohere in a way that meets people’s deepest intuitions.” She sees it as an apt response to population-sized problems, such as climate change, that seem to require solutions more pervasive and willful than professionalized leadership can muster. “Landemore is very much on the side of all the young people in the world who are saying, ‘How the heck are we going to manage this?’ ” Mansbridge said.

Landemore herself would point to the last U.S. Presidential election—a contest between two candidates so unpopular with the people as to have the lowest approval ratings in the history of American Presidential races. Roughly four in ten eligible voters did not bother to show up at the polls, and Donald Trump was elected against the will of the majority of citizens who did. Such an outcome seems to strain the premise of democracy. Could picking leaders randomly, and getting everyone involved, be worse?

by Nathan Heller, New Yorker |  Read more:

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