Nota Bene: Twitter, Neo-Nazis, and the GOP

On April 27, 2019 By chrisbarsantiIn Nota Bene, politicsLeave a comment

In March of this year, Twitter had an all-hands meeting at which an employee asked why the company can’t do as good a job of keeping white supremacist material off the site as they have done with ISIS propaganda?

According to Motherboard, another employee provided a simple explanation:

With every sort of content filter, there is a tradeoff, he explained. When a platform aggressively enforces against ISIS content, for instance, it can also flag innocent accounts as well, such as Arabic language broadcasters. Society, in general, accepts the benefit of banning ISIS for inconveniencing some others, he said…

The employee argued that, on a technical level, content from Republican politicians could get swept up by algorithms aggressively removing white supremacist material. Banning politicians wouldn’t be accepted by society as a trade-off for flagging all of the white supremacist propaganda, he argued…

Screening Room: ‘City of Ghosts’

On July 7, 2017July 7, 2017 By chrisbarsantiIn Film - Awards, Film - Festivals, Film - New, Film-DocumentaryLeave a comment

The latest documentary from the director of Cartel Land, City of Ghosts is opening this week in limited release and expanding wider later. Expect a push for the Oscars later in the year for this incredible story.

My review is at Film Journal International:

The heroes of this riveting account are the brave men—they have woman in their number, but none are onscreen for their safety—of the group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS). These are mostly middle-class guys, including a math teacher and a film buff, who started documenting what was happening to “our forgotten Syrian city on the Euphrates that has become a city of ghosts…

Here is the trailer:

Weekend Reading: October 28, 2016

On October 28, 2016October 28, 2016 By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium GatherumLeave a comment

rarebooks1

Remember, guns don’t kill people, toddlers do.
281 things, people, places that/whom Donald Trump has insulted (so far) in graphic form.
Attention deniers: the first reports linking pollution and climate change started hitting the media in about 1883.
Frank Serpico: Americans are more likely to be killed by their own police than terrorists.
Nasty women vote.
As fails Trump the man, so fails Trump the brand.
Print and read: ISIS, Putin, and the PR flacks pushing the new Taylor Swift album have all adopted the same social media tactics.

Weekend Reading: September 23, 2016

On September 23, 2016September 22, 2016 By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium GatherumLeave a comment

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Do you care about endangered places? Then stay the hell away from them.
Bill Murray as bartender.
How conservative lawmakers can just overrule laws they don’t like.
Parties unknown probing crucial sites as a way (probably) of taking down the entire Internet, just in case a full-on cyberwar happens.
Don’t forget Pence, and what he’s truly like.
Here’s how The Donald launders his money.
P.J. O’Rourke on the election: “Better the devil you know than the Lord of the Flies on his own 757.“
A list of things that New Yorkers are more afraid of than ISIS.
So what happens if (or when) Saudi Arabia becomes another failed state?
This is what a Congressional temper tantrum looks like.
Hey, where can you find a million-dollar pile of art-dirt in Soho?
“There are effective Green parties in Europe , but ours is a hot mess.”
Thinking of voting Libertarian? Make sure to read their (crazy, crazy) platform first.
Yes, the media is to blame, but not in the way you think.
What do you say, time to stop “orange Muppet Hitler”?
Yes, about half.
Print and read: Ta-Nehisi Coates on what O.J. Simpson meant to him as a young black man.

Quote of the Day: Nostalgia Kills

On August 17, 2016August 17, 2016 By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium GatherumLeave a comment

From Peter Pomerantsev’s Granta essay, “Why We’re Post-Fact“:

‘The twenty-first century is not characterized by the search for new-ness’ wrote the late Russian-American philologist Svetlana Boym, ‘but by the proliferation of nostalgias . . . nostalgic nationalists and nostalgic cosmopolitans, nostalgic environmentalists and nostalgic metrophiliacs (city lovers) exchange pixel fire in the blogosphere’. Thus Putin’s internet-troll armies sell dreams of a restored Russian Empire and Soviet Union; Trump tweets to ‘Make America Great Again’; Brexiteers yearn for a lost England on Facebook; while ISIS’s viral snuff movies glorify a mythic Caliphate. ‘Restorative nostalgia’, argued Boym, strives to rebuild the lost homeland with ‘paranoiac determination’ . . . In extreme cases it can create a phantom homeland, for the sake of which one is ready to die or kill. Unreflective nostalgia can breed monsters’…

Weekend Reading: August 12, 2016

On August 12, 2016August 11, 2016 By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium GatherumLeave a comment

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“Donald Trump” as literary critic.
So how come coffee shops have to look the same everywhere in the world?
Coming soon: new Love and Rockets comics!
Marlon Brando to Jared Leto: Is Method acting really just more macho nonsense?
Apple move into the utility business.
Two years of airstrikes on ISIS cost about $12 million per day.
How come people in Arkansas and Kentucky are healthier than Texans?
Is that it for the election? Already?
Also: Setting the stage now to claim that the election won’t be legitimate.
Even Jill Stein and Gary Johnson have more support from black voters than Donald Trump.
Study finds that 1 in 10 Muslim doctors have had a patient refuse their care because of their religion.
Yet another reason why every politician should stay far, far away from Henry Kissinger.
Print and read: The introduction to Polarized: Making Sense of a Divided America – “The idea persists that America is a moderate nation and most Americans are moderates. That is a myth.”

Weekend Reading: May 27, 2016

On May 27, 2016May 22, 2016 By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium GatherumLeave a comment

readingposter1

Some reasons that Nikola Tesla might have been the greatest geek in history; and that’s a good (if unrecognized) thing.
Maybe a ham sandwich would work.
Why robot cars could create an amoral world on the road.
Coming soon: the Electric Dreams of Philip K. Dick.
How guys drag down the ratings of shows about women.
An Open Letter to White People Who Like to Sleep Around (Anna Karenina) and other classic book titles redone as clickbait.
A few years ago there was a hops shortage; here’s what Samuel Adams did.
Gimme convenience, and to hell with the ethics.
Print and read: “We can make it work;” until you just plain can’t anymore.

Weekend Reading: December 18, 2015

On December 18, 2015December 17, 2015 By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium GatherumLeave a comment

readingposter1

The GOP in 1952 and now — same as it ever was.
The jaded-sounding Mark Boal makes an interesting change for Serial‘s season 2.
From shock and awe to quagmire: Jeb’s Iraq War.
Of swans, tea, armor in Parliament, and other British legal silliness.
The Donald and the focus group that loves, loves, loves him.
Iraq turns down US offer of more equipment and advisers to help fight ISIS.
What could happen to college athletes who go on strike.
Where all the folks with advanced degrees tend to live.
With 409 scripted shows this year, we have unofficially hit Peak TV.
Obligatory YouTube: Bros before Shows.
Print and read: Up until about 3,000 years ago, humans weren’t even truly conscious.

Weekend Reading: December 4, 2015

On December 4, 2015December 3, 2015 By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium GatherumLeave a comment

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Contraband smoking in ISIS territory.
Black Friday means … more sales of this, too.
How do you make Japan’s military accouterments simply adorable? Add super-cute anime figures.
What it looks like when a country just plain gives up.
Who are the modern-day thought police?
Every single actor in Hollywood is auditioning to play young Han Solo.
Some Russian commanders no longer need authorization to launch nuclear weapons.
Between Robert Peace and Ta-Nehisi Coates: A crisis of the black intellectual.
Donald Trump: Poet.
So what did Haruki Murakami read when he was a kid?
Cool stuff from next month’s Sundance Film Festival.
Print and read: What the one percent want to do to Illinois.

Weekend Reading: June 12, 2015

On June 12, 2015June 11, 2015 By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium GatherumLeave a comment

Department of Weekend Reading: October 31, 2014

On October 31, 2014October 30, 2014 By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium GatherumLeave a comment

Silent Missouri State protesters told to “go back to Ferguson.”
Sullivan: Did a Times columnist actually “throw a hissy fit” about Francis’s reforms and suggest that there should be a schism in the Church?
What happens when straight white boys text.
Everybody needs to calm down about Ebola yesterday.
In 1923, Virginia Woolf was asked by her two nephews to contribute to a family newspaper they were putting together; she went all in.
The Israel-U.S. alliance isn’t quite irreversibly damaged yet, but it’s getting there.
The dismal science and zombies: Economics and the dead.
Who’s fighting ISIS on the ground while the West bombs from the air? Iran and Syria.
Psst: Wanna buy an attorney general?
Print and read: A shattered community regroups at the Ferguson Burger Bar & More.

Department of Weekend Reading: October 17, 2014

On October 17, 2014October 17, 2014 By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium GatherumLeave a comment

And now the protests come even to Plaza Frontenac.
Pushing black voters to go Republican in St. Louis.
If the CDC’s budget hadn’t been cut in half since 2006, we might have an Ebola vaccine by now.
Signs of real-world openness, and reactionary backlash, at the Vatican synod.
The gentrification of the humble dosa and inconvenience as a indulgence of the rich.
It’s not good enough to just jog anymore, the truly fit must now train as if for the apocalypse.
The abandoned mall in Kurdistan where Iraqi Christian refugees hope to wait out ISIS: “There are only 200,000 of us, Europe could take us.”
Print and read: The most devastating thing Europeans introduced to the Western Hemisphere was the pig, and other surprises about pre-Columbian America.

Book Flashback: The Iraq War ‘Gamble’

On June 19, 2014June 19, 2014 By chrisbarsantiIn Books, WorldLeave a comment

American tanks patrol Baghdad on April 14th, 2003 (U.S. Marine Corps)

As the ISIS campaign to topple Iraq’s government roars on, it seemed worthwhile to look back at the many books written on Iraq to see what predictions had been made about what could happen after the last American unit moved out.

I posted “The 2009 Book that Foretold the (Possible) Collapse of Post-American Iraq” at Re:Print:

For years, especially after the American troop drawdown, it seemed as though Iraq would muddle along in a chaotic but eventually stabilizing way familiar to many Middle Eastern countries with oil wealth. Although the bombings continued, it was possible to believe that the conflict was in fact done. What the recent events have proven is that [Thomas Ricks’s The Gamble] was right: the 11-year-old Iraq War is far from over…

Chris Barsanti

Tag: ISIS