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Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination
by Mark Bergen
Published 5 Sep 2022

* * * • • • Cristos Goodrow had sent his email right as YouTube’s leaders convened. For maximum attention, he sent it to all of them and gave it a compelling subject line: “Watch time, and only watch time.” Goodrow came to YouTube after two decades programming software for companies across Silicon Valley and for Google search. At YouTube he ran search and “discovery,” the company’s term for its systems that surfaced videos like buried treasure. A mathematician with a marine’s cropped hair and build, Goodrow immediately sensed YouTube’s gridlock and lack of clear marching orders. In his prognosis he proposed rewiring YouTube’s machines to favor just one outcome: how long people stayed with videos.

Starting around 2017, she began to complain about YouTube. “I’m filtered on YouTube,” she said in one video. “And I’m not the only one.” On her website she documented this corporate crackdown, which she viewed as retaliation for her outspoken challenge to the meat industry. She posted three screenshots of her YouTube dashboard, showing watch time, views, and subscribers on her videos and how they kept falling. One post listed 307,658 minutes of watch time and 366,591 views. “Your estimated revenue,” the YouTube dashboard read, “$0.10.” This she circled in red pixels. “There is no equal growth opportunity on YouTube,” her website blared in bright, frantic text.

Perhaps it was because Kjellberg played himself—a reserved, slightly awkward YouTuber—not PewDiePie, the cartoonish maniac he performed on-screen. Despite good production the series felt like stale TV. Those around Kjellberg noticed that filming it drained his energy. As YouTube premiered more than a dozen of these Originals shows, many YouTubers noticed a central paradox. On the one hand, YouTube wanted gloss, pizzazz, expense; in Los Angeles, the company converted a 40,000-square-foot airplane hangar into a state-of-the-art production studio for select creators called YouTube Space. But YouTube’s algorithm still wanted the opposite. It desired watch time and daily views; videos that delivered that were usually made cheap.

pages: 439 words: 131,081

The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World
by Max Fisher
Published 5 Sep 2022

“Subject line: ‘Watch time, and only watch time.’ It was a call to rethink how we measured success.” Goodrow asked his bosses to consider a hypothetical user who looks up how to tie a bow tie. Imagine that YouTube, he wrote, could show the user a video demonstrating the answer in a brisk minute. Or it could show a video that “is ten minutes long and is full of jokes and really entertaining, and at the end of it you may or may not know how to tie a bow tie.” Google orthodoxy said to show the first video: surface the most useful information as quickly as possible. But Goodrow argued that YouTube should promote the second.

Chaslot and his team leader, who shared his concerns, dedicated their 20 to developing a new algorithm that might balance profit goals with public well-being. That fall, in 2012, at a YouTube leadership conference in Los Angeles, an executive pulled aside Goodrow and a few others to tell them he was going to make a surprise announcement. The company would reorient itself around an all-consuming goal: to increase daily watch time by a factor of ten. Their servers already logged 100 million hours of watch time per day. But even as YouTube expanded to new countries and as TV viewers gradually shifted online, viewership could only grow so fast. Users who intended to watch one video would have to be enticed into staying for many more.

For another thing, Google treated YouTube as its cash machine rather than its brand leader, so kept it and Wojcicki a step back from the limelight. Perhaps most important, YouTube never shared Facebook’s or Twitter’s or Reddit’s pretensions of saving the world, and in later years seldom followed those companies’ public-facing efforts to prove they were rethinking their place in the functioning of society. Wojcicki’s YouTube existed to convert eyeballs into money. Democracy and social cohesion were somebody else’s problem. Shortly after Wojcicki took over, Goodrow warned her, “We are not going to meet this watch-time OKR if we don’t do something about it.”

pages: 280 words: 71,268

Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World With OKRs
by John Doerr
Published 23 Apr 2018

When users spend more of their valuable time watching YouTube videos, they must perforce be happier with those videos. It’s a virtuous circle: More satisfied viewership (watch time) begets more advertising, which incentivizes more content creators, which draws more viewership. Our true currency wasn’t views or clicks—it was watch time. The logic was undeniable. YouTube needed a new core metric. Watch Time, and Only Watch Time In September 2011, I sent a provocative email to my boss and the YouTube leadership team. Subject line: “Watch time, and only watch time.” It was a call to rethink how we measured success: “All other things being equal, our goal is to increase [video] watch time.”

It was a call to rethink how we measured success: “All other things being equal, our goal is to increase [video] watch time.” For many folks at Google, it smacked of heresy. Google Search was designed as a switchboard to route you off the site and out to your best destination as quickly as possible. Maximizing watch time was antithetical to its purpose in life. Moreover, watch time would be negative for views, the critical metric for both users and creators. Last (but not least), to optimize for watch time would incur a significant money hit, at least at the start. Since YouTube ads were shown exclusively before videos started, fewer starts meant fewer ads.

The billion hours of daily watch time gave our tech people a North Star. But nothing stays the same. In 2013, the watch-time metric was the best way to gauge the quality of the YouTube experience. Now we’re looking at other variables, from web-added videos and photos to viewer satisfaction and a focus on social responsibility. If you watch two videos for ten minutes apiece, the watch time is the same—but which one makes you happier? So by the time this book is published, we may have found a whole new metric to grow by. As early as 2015, we began to advance beyond watch time by factoring user satisfaction into our recommended videos.

Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything
by Kelly Weill
Published 22 Feb 2022

Viewers don’t want exactly what they have already seen, YouTube has realized—they want novelty, tailored to them. Guillaume Chaslot is a former YouTube employee who helped devise the company’s recommendation algorithm when he worked there, starting in 2010. During that time, YouTube veered away from recommending videos based on their relevance to someone’s previous viewing habits and started recommending videos that viewers were likely to spend more time watching. “It’s not trying to optimize for relevance,” Chaslot told me. “It’s trying to optimize for watch time, or at least it was when I was working there.”

“Extreme videos are extremely good for watch time,” he said. The bizarre, the fringe, and the impossible lured in the most viewers. So YouTube’s recommendation algorithm, at least before a major overhaul in 2019, prioritized the strange. The recommendations often had a tenuous link to whatever a person was already watching. The blueberry muffin tutorial could lead you to a video on survivalist food preparation; a video on stargazing could lead you to moon-landing conspiracy theories, which could lead you to a Flat Earth clip. “There’s a spectrum on YouTube between the calm section—the Walter Cronkite, Carl Sagan part—and Crazytown, where the extreme stuff is,” Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist at Google told the New York Times in 2019.

Now I’m lucky if I get one hundred new subscribers in four months.” Davidson was reluctant, however, to implicate YouTube. “The weird thing is, I don’t think YouTube is evil. I think they’re getting so much pressure. Everyone’s blaming YouTube,” for conspiracy theories, he said. “All the media is pointing to YouTube.” Though it won me no love from my Flat Earth friends, I was certainly among “the media” in this instance. YouTube’s algorithm change came after a series of reports from me and other journalists highlighting the role of YouTube recommendations in luring people to fringe beliefs. But while YouTube faced mounting pressure to give recommendations that more closely reflected reality, another social media giant was evading similar scrutiny for the profit-driven, algorithmic havoc it was wreaking on truth.

pages: 324 words: 89,875

Modern Monopolies: What It Takes to Dominate the 21st Century Economy
by Alex Moazed and Nicholas L. Johnson
Published 30 May 2016

Chen, “App-Powered Car Service Leaves Cabs in the Dust,” Wired, April 5, 2011, http://www.wired.com/2011/04/app-stars-uber/all/. 7. “Statistics,” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html, accessed June 2015. 8. Quotes from Cristos Goodrow are from Jillian D’Onfro, “The ‘Terrifying’ Moment in 2012 when YouTube Changed Its Entire Philosophy,” Business Insider, July 3, 2015, http://www.businessinsider.com/youtube-watch-time-vs-views-2015-7. 9. Eric Meyerson, “YouTube Now: Why We Focus on Watch Time,” YouTube Creator Blog, August 10, 2012, http://youtubecreator.blogspot.com/2012/08/youtube-now-why-we-focus-on-watch-time.html. 10. “Twitter Usage Statistics,” Internet Live Stats, http://www.internetlivestats.com/twitter-statistics/, accessed November 2015. 11.

“We realized that if we made the viewer click that many times, it didn’t seem to be a good estimate of how much value they were deriving from YouTube.” So YouTube decided to make the switch to prioritizing viewing time over clicks. According to the company, the goal was to “increase the amount of time that the viewer will spend watching videos on YouTube, not only on the next view, but also successive views thereafter.”9 So on March 15, 2012, YouTube flipped the switch. Watch time—not just views—was now the determining factor for its matching system. Not surprisingly, the move upset many content creators, who were used to optimizing their videos to take advantage of the old system, where they would get paid based on clicks even if users didn’t stick around for long.

Doing this at scale requires the smart use of data. Why YouTube Changed How It Measures Success YouTube—content platform For YouTube, March 2012 will go down as one of the most traumatic months in its history. Just as Google Search was an empire built on links, YouTube was built on clicks. For a long time, YouTube used clicks (“view count”) above all else as a proxy for popularity and quality. Likewise, YouTubers didn’t see clicks as just a vanity metric. Since views were used to determine advertising rates, clicks were currency. But on March 15, 2012, YouTube’s view count plunged by 20 percent in one day—on purpose.

pages: 364 words: 119,398

Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists, the Truth About Extreme Misogyny and How It Affects Us All
by Laura Bates
Published 2 Sep 2020

But, for impressionable young people who start out looking at quite mainstream political content, it has much more serious implications. Chaslot told the Daily Beast he very quickly realised that ‘YouTube’s recommendation was putting people into filter bubbles… There was no way out.’ In a 2019 New York Times interview, YouTube’s chief product officer, Neal Mohan, denied that the platform created a ‘rabbit hole’ effect, saying that it offered a full spectrum of content and opinion, and that watch time was not the only feature used by the site’s recommendation systems. He acknowledged that the algorithm might queue up more extreme videos, but claimed it might also offer ‘other videos that skew in the opposite direction’.12 But that didn’t seem to be the case in my own experiments, or those of other writers who have documented this phenomenon.

One major public misconception set straight by Chaslot, when he voiced his concerns to multiple media outlets in 2018, is the assumption that the algorithm seeks to serve people the most relevant or highest-quality content. This, Chaslot says, is definitively not the case. Instead, it focuses entirely on ‘watch time’. And research has shown that what makes people keep watching, and clicking for more, is increasingly extreme content. Academics quickly picked up on the significance of this pattern. Writing in the New York Times, sociologist Zeynep Tufekci described how, no matter what ordinary video she started out with, YouTube’s algorithm would quickly send her down a spiralling rabbit hole of associated, but far more hardcore, content. ‘Videos about vegetarianism led to videos about veganism.

So look at pickup artists and their agenda – they’ve got the validation from the very beginning with the tool that they’re using.’ There are several features of manosphere communities and the types of videos they produce that play particularly well with YouTube’s algorithm. The videos tend to be long, meaning they automatically rack up extended watch time, particularly if viewers watch the whole thing, which is more likely with a community as dedicated and invested as the manosphere. They pick up swiftly on current and trending news stories (taking any incident of a false rape allegation, for example, as an instant confirmation of their self-victimising worldview), and are often able to produce content very quickly, free of the burdensome task of fact-checking or balanced reporting.

pages: 277 words: 70,506

We Are Bellingcat: Global Crime, Online Sleuths, and the Bold Future of News
by Eliot Higgins
Published 2 Mar 2021

pfmredir=sm 16 www.aljumhuriya.net/en/content/narrative-war-coming 17 news.un.org/en/story/2019/02/1032811 18 www.transparency.org/news/feature/regional-analysis-MENA www.gfmag.com/global-data/economic-data/richest-countries- in-the-world 19 www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/02/gun-control-yemen-style/273058/ 20 www.acleddata.com/2019/06/18/press-release-yemen-war-death-toll-exceeds-90000-according-to-new-acled-data-for-2015/ 21 www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6278080/ 22 news.un.org/en/story/2019/03/1035501 23 mwatana.org/en/day-of-judgment/ 24 yemen.bellingcat.com/work 25 www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2019/04/22/the-yemen-project-announcement/ 26 yemeniarchive.org/en 27 www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ54GDm1eL0 28 www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDOo5nDJwgA 29 www.whichfaceisreal.com/ 30 www.wsj.com/articles/fraudsters-use-ai-to-mimic-ceos-voice-in-unusual-cybercrime-case-11567157402 31 amp.theguardian.com/technology/2019/feb/14/elon-musk-backed-ai-writes-convincing-news-fiction?__twitter_impression=true https://openai.com/blog/better-language-models/ 32 www.vice.com/en_us/article/594qx5/there-is-no-tech-solution-to-deepfakes 33 lab.witness.org/projects/synthetic-media-and-deep-fakes/ 34 www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=Qh_6cHw50l0 35 amp.axios.com/deepfake-authentication-privacy-5fa05902-41eb-40a7-8850-5450bcad0475.html?

t=27www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/a-book-that-captures-the-singular-life-of-marie-colvin 22 www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2012/0801/Syria-s-iPhone-insurgency-makes-for-smarter-rebellion 23 cpj.org/2014/02/attacks-on-the-press-syria-analysis.php 24 brown-moses.blogspot.com/2012/04/daily-selected-syria-videos-april-2nd.html 25 brown-moses.blogspot.com/2012/04/daily-selected-syria-videos-april-3rd.html 26 brown-moses.blogspot.com/2012/05/syria-houla-massacre.html 27 See EH tweets of 25 May 2012. 28 www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14482968 29 brown-moses.blogspot.com/2012/05/syria-houla-massacre.html 30 www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18233934 31 www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/05/20125279530938874.html 32 https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/world/middleeast/kofi-annan-meets-with-bashar-al-assad.html 33 www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/PRCoISyria15082012_en.pdf 34 www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/05/26/153792544/brutal-and-appalling-attack-on-syrian-city-of-houla-kills-32-children?sc=tw&cc=share 35 hassan699721, FreedomAlhoula, nontherful and samerd3 36 sabotagetimes.com/life/how-i-accidentally-became-an-expert-on-the-syrian-conflict 37 www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=47&v=dRJnStU4izg 38 A prolific Twitter poster, @HamaEcho, pointed this out to me. On 5 December 2012, the account tweeted: ‘#offline forever. We are going to Ghouta soon. I have a bad feeling about this but the only thing that can happen is martyrdom or victory.’ That was the last recorded tweet.

In the early days of Bellingcat I met with executives from Google and Facebook about fact-finding and the disinformation spreading on their platforms. Google wanted to help our work and created a tool to add metadata to clips on YouTube, which it owns. But later, YouTube’s relationship with open-source investigation grew more complicated when the video platform came under public pressure to remove violent content, especially that which could radicalise viewers. In the summer of 2017, YouTube introduced an algorithm to flag videos that violated its standards, and hundreds of thousands of Syria videos vanished,30 wiping out reams of potential evidence. Meantime, Facebook sought partner organisations like ours to provide credibility and quality to its content moderation, preferably for free.

System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot
by Rob Reich , Mehran Sahami and Jeremy M. Weinstein
Published 6 Sep 2021

It’s a virtuous circle: More satisfied viewership (watch time) begets more advertising, which incentivizes more content creators, which draws more viewership. Our true currency wasn’t views or clicks—it was watch time. The logic was undeniable. YouTube needed a new core metric. To argue for this new metric, he wrote an email to the YouTube executive team arguing that “Watch time, and only watch time” should be the objective to improve at YouTube. In essence, he equated watch time with user happiness: if a person spends hours a day watching videos on YouTube, it must reveal a preference for engaging in that activity. But the simple fact that we engage in activities is not necessarily an indicator that these activities—including things such as doing dishes, mowing the lawn, or even smoking—make us happy or contribute to our well-being.

But the simple fact that we engage in activities is not necessarily an indicator that these activities—including things such as doing dishes, mowing the lawn, or even smoking—make us happy or contribute to our well-being. Yet the focus on watch time ultimately became the basis of one of YouTube’s most significant objectives: to reach 1 billion hours of watch time per day by 2016—a goal it ultimately surpassed. To be fair, Goodrow notes that in pursuing its goal, YouTube did sometimes take actions that had a negative impact on watch time if the company believed that the action was in the user’s interest: “For example, we made it a policy to stop recommending click-baity videos.” But he followed up by saying “We never did anything without measuring impact on watch time.” Left out seem to be questions such as whether it’s really healthy for children (or adults, for that matter) to watch an endless stream of videos; whether conspiracy theory videos by flat-earthers should be recommended with the same gusto as more benign videos; or what the race for watch time could do to the ecosystem of content producers—who are paid by advertisers when their videos are watched—who might create more outrageous videos in order to have their content be the centerpiece of the user’s coveted watch time.

“Competition,” he says, “is for losers”: Peter Thiel, “Competition Is for Losers with Peter Thiel (How to Start a Startup 2014: 5),” Y Combinator, uploaded March 22, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fx5Q8xGU8k. he quickly rose: David Shaw, not uncoincidentally, received a PhD in computer science from Stanford University and was a professor at Columbia before starting the company that bears his name. “the key result”: Doerr, Measure What Matters, 23. “biggest bet in nineteen years”: Ibid., 3. “first PowerPoint slide”: Ibid., 7. “the marriage of Google”: Ibid., 11. “I think it’s worked out”: Ibid., xi. “As Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella”: Ibid., 161. “Watch time, and only watch time”: Ibid. “For example, we made it”: Ibid., 164.

pages: 297 words: 83,651

The Twittering Machine
by Richard Seymour
Published 20 Aug 2019

Journalist Paul Lewis and academic Zeynep Tufekci have each gone down the rabbit hole of YouTube’s ‘up next’ recommendations algorithm.7 The algorithm is there to keep users glued to the screen with content likely to be addictive. As with the other social industry platforms, the priority is time on device or, in the case of YouTube, ‘watch time’. Each found that no matter the viewing history of the dummy accounts they used, the algorithms kept pointing them progressively towards more ‘extreme’ content: from Trump to neo-Nazis, from Hillary Clinton to 9/11 Truth. But what is so addictive about ‘extreme’ content? Part of the answer is that much of what is characterized as extreme in this context is conspiracy infotainment: for example, in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, the algorithms were promoting anti-Clinton conspiracy stories.8 When so many distrust the news, and find it frustrating and confusing, infotainment seems to be less ‘hard work’.

The content agnosticism of computational capitalism has political valences, but the algorithm’s effects go well beyond political content. The artist James Bridle has written of the surprisingly outré and noir YouTube content for kids, which involves erotic or violent content: Peppa Pig eating her daddy or drinking bleach, for example.12 This material was created to meet a demand identified by the algorithms – in other words, it reflected data coming from users: searches, likes, clicks and watch time.13 In this respect, it was not unlike the algorithm-driven merchandise of previous years: t-shirts with such slogans as ‘Keep Calm and Rape a Lot’, ‘Kiss Me I’m Abusive’ and ‘I Heart Boiling Girls’.

, Business 2 Community (www.business2community.com), 2 May 2015. 35. It had proven wildly profitable . . . Madeleine Berg, ‘Logan Paul May Have Been Dropped By YouTube, But He’ll Still Make Millions’, Forbes, 11 January 2018; Gavin Fernando, ‘How Logan Paul went from one of the world’s most famous YouTube stars to universally hated’, News.com.au, 3 November 2018. 36. Fellow YouTuber Japanese-American internet . . . Reina Scully, ‘I have a lot of intense feelings’, Twitter.com, 1 January 2018. 37. Paul, being a savvy entrepreneur . . . James Vincent, ‘YouTuber Logan Paul apologizes for filming suicide victim, says “I didn’t do it for views”’, The Verge, 2 January 2018. 38.

Four Battlegrounds
by Paul Scharre
Published 18 Jan 2023

“List of social platforms with at least 100 million active users,” updated September 17, 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_platforms_with_at_least_100_million_active_users. 143over half of adults get their news from Facebook: Elisa Shearer and Elizabeth Grieco, Americans Are Wary of the Role Social Media Sites Play in Delivering the News (Pew Research Center, October 2, 2019), https://www.journalism.org/2019/10/02/americans-are-wary-of-the-role-social-media-sites-play-in-delivering-the-news/. 144500 million tweets per day: “Twitter Usage Statistics,” Internet Live Stats, n.d., https://www.internetlivestats.com/twitter-statistics/. 144Facebook clocks four billion video views: “Facebook Video Statistics”, 99Firms, https://99firms.com/blog/facebook-video-statistics/. 144over a billion hours of video every day, and over 500 hours of new content: “YouTube for Press,” YouTube Official Blog, n.d., https://blog.youtube/press/. 144Twitter employs a “ranking algorithm”: “About Your Home Timeline on Twitter,” Twitter Help Center, n.d., https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-timeline; @mjahr, “Never Miss Important Tweets from People You Follow,” Twitter Blog, February 10, 2016, https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/a/2016/never-miss-important-tweets-from-people-you-follow.html; Nicolas Koumchatzky and Anton Andryeyev, “Using Deep Learning at Scale in Twitter’s Timelines,” Twitter Blog, May 9, 2017, https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/insights/2017/using-deep-learning-at-scale-in-twitters-timelines.html; Nicholas Léonard and Cibele Montez Halasz, “Twitter Meets TensorFlow,” Twitter Blog, June 14, 2018, https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/insights/2018/twittertensorflow.html; Twitter Cortex (website), n.d., https://cortex.twitter.com/. 144Facebook’s News Feed algorithm: “How News Feed Works,” Facebook Help Center, 2021, https://www.facebook.com/help/1155510281178725. 144boost their content’s visibility: Katie Sehl, “How the Twitter Algorithm Works in 2020 and How to Make It Work for You,” Hootsuite Blog, May 20, 2020, https://blog.hootsuite.com/twitter-algorithm/; Paige Cooper, “How Does the YouTube Algorithm Work in 2021? The Complete Guide,” Hootsuite Blog, June 21, 2021, https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-the-youtube-algorithm-works/; Paige Cooper, “How the Facebook Algorithm Works in 2021 and How to Make It Work for You,” Hootsuite Blog, February 10, 2021, https://blog.hootsuite.com/facebook-algorithm/. 144more sophisticated algorithm: Eric Meyerson, “YouTube Now: Why We Focus on Watch Time,” YouTube Official Blog, August 10, 2012, https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/youtube-now-why-we-focus-on-watch-time. 144deep learning to improve their algorithms: Koumchatzky and Andryeyev, “Using Deep Learning at Scale in Twitter’s Timelines.” 1449.3 million problematic videos: “YouTube Community Guidelines Enforcement,” Google Transparency Report, June 2021, https://transparencyreport.google.com/youtube-policy/removals. 145algorithm for recommending videos to watch next: Paul Lewis, “‘Fiction Is Outperforming Reality’: How YouTube’s Algorithm Distorts Truth,” The Guardian, February 2, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/02/how-youtubes-algorithm-distorts-truth; Zeynep Tufekci, “YouTube, the Great Radicalizer,” New York Times, March 10, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-politics-radical.html; Sam Levin, “Las Vegas Survivors Furious as YouTube Promotes Clips Calling Shooting a Hoax,” The Guardian, October 4, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/04/las-vegas-shooting-youtube-hoax-conspiracy-theories; Clive Thompson, “YouTube’s Plot to Silence Conspiracy Theories,” Wired, September 18, 2020, https://www.wired.com/story/youtube-algorithm-silence-conspiracy-theories/. 145over 70 percent of viewing hours are driven by the algorithm: Joan E.

Camargo, “We Don’t Understand How YouTube’s Algorithm Works—and That’s a Problem,” Fast Company, January 24, 2020, https://www.fastcompany.com/90454610/we-dont-understand-how-youtubes-algorithm-works-and-thats-a-problem. 145reduce recommendations of “borderline” content: “Continuing Our Work to Improve Recommendations on YouTube,” YouTube Official Blog, January 25, 2019, https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/continuing-our-work-to-improve; “The Four Rs of Responsibility, Part 2: Raising Authoritative Content and Reducing Borderline Content and Harmful Misinformation,” YouTube Official Blog, December 3, 2019, https://youtube.googleblog.com/2019/12/the-four-rs-of-responsibility-raise-and-reduce.html. 14570 percent drop in watch time for borderline content: “The Four Rs of Responsibility, Part 2.” 145flat earth videos: Thompson, “YouTube’s Plot to Silence Conspiracy Theories.” 145promoting “meaningful interactions”: Mark Zuckerberg, “One of our big focus areas for 2018 is making sure the time we all spend on Facebook is time well spent . . .”

YouTube altered its algorithm in 2019 to reduce recommendations of “borderline” content, such as conspiracy theory videos, and promote authoritative content. The result, according to YouTube, was a 70 percent drop in watch time for borderline content, which is content that does not violate the platform’s moderation rules but comes close. (Some affected content producers, such as those who make flat earth videos, noticed and lamented the change.) Facebook has had its own challenges surrounding unintended effects from its algorithm. In 2018, Facebook made a major change to its News Feed algorithm with the aim of promoting “meaningful interactions.” Facebook said the changes gave greater weight to posts that “spark conversations” and “back-and-forth discussion in the comments.”

Crushing It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence—and How You Can, Too
by Gary Vaynerchuk
Published 30 Jan 2018

You can find this out by using tools like VidIQ, Google Adwords Keyword Planner, and Keywordtool.io. Thumbnails: Does the thumbnail accurately reflect the video’s content? If there is text on the thumbnail, is it easy to read on all devices? If there is text, does it complement the title? YouTube cards: To extend watch time on your channel, are you including YouTube cards within your video to drive traffic to other relevant videos you’ve posted? Channel Optimization Banner: Does the banner accurately reflect the channel’s content and genre? Does the graphic transfer well to all devices? About Section/Channel Description: Are the top two lines keyword optimized?

However, you will never, ever know the extent of that potential until you try. I guarantee it’s greater than you think it is. For a couple of years now, the tech-savvy early adopters have been watching YouTube on their television sets. Very soon, everyone is going to be doing it, and the next generation will not see any difference between the two. YouTube will be television; television will be YouTube. YouTube is a monster. Yet Facebook is making plans to add more features that will make it look a lot like YouTube. With YouTube in possession of a decade of equity as the established video platform, Facebook is going to have to work its ass off to compete. As you’re about to see, it’s gonna be a hell of a fight.

Slime Is Big Business,” New York Times, June 25, 2017, p. 6. 2. In August 2017: Sam Gutelle, “Karina Garcia, YouTube’s ‘Slime Queen,’ Is Heading on Tour with Fullscreen,” Tubefilter.com, July 7, 2017, www.tubefilter.com/2017/07/07/karina-garcia-youtubes-slime-queen-is-heading-on-tour-with-fullscreen. Chapter 1: The Path Is All Yours 1. YouTube’s daily viewership: Feliz Solomon, “YouTube Could Be About to Overtake TV as America’s Most Watched Platform,” Fortune.com, Feb. 28, 2017, fortune.com/2017/02/28/youtube-1-billion-hours-television. 2. One in every five minutes: Facebook Audience Insights. 3.

pages: 540 words: 119,731

Samsung Rising: The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech
by Geoffrey Cain
Published 15 Mar 2020

“As this is going to another company”: Nilay Patel, “Samsung Is Sending Incomprehensible Emails to Note 7 Owners Looking for a Refund,” The Verge, October 10, 2016, https://www.theverge.com/​2016/​10/​10/​13227058/​samsung-galaxy-note-7-refund-support-email-incomprehensible. “Does anyone here have”: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, “Donald Trump Asks the Terminally Ill for a Huge Favor,” posted by YouTube user The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on October 7, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/​watch?time_continue=396&v=f_Flwq_zUVY. “Hey @sprint, what if”: Sapna Maheshwari, “Samsung’s Response to Galaxy Note 7 Crisis Draws Criticism,” The New York Times, October 11, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/​2016/​10/​12/​business/​media/​samsungs-passive-response-to-note-7s-overheating-problem-draws-criticism.html.

“The fact that a Health Ministry official”: Michael Katz, “Former Korean Minister Found Guilty of Pressuring Pension,” Chief Investment Officer, June 12, 2017, https://www.ai-cio.com/​news/​former-korean-minister-found-guilty-pressuring-pension/. “Jay Lee?”: Analyst at Wall Street investment house, meeting with the author, December 22, 2016. “Are you indeed an accomplice?”: SBS News, “[SBS LIVE] Park Geun-hye—Choi Soon-sil Gate Live Broadcast,” SBS, December 5, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/​watch?time_continue=1&v=gkhXFaPbNSk. The conversation beginning with “Are you indeed an accomplice?” plays at 1:20:57. The quote “Jay Y. Lee seems like he has memory problems” plays at 5:05:07. Jay Lee says “I don’t know” and “I don’t remember” many times throughout the hearing. A full transcript of these proceedings is in National Assembly of the Republic of Korea, “Notes from Special Investigative Committee for Private Persons’ Interference in Park Geun-hye Administration,” December 6, 2016.

“Today we’re taking it”: Apple Inc., “Apple Special Event 2012—iPhone 5 Introduction,” posted by YouTube user the unofficial AppleKeynotes channel on September 14, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=82dwZYw2M00&t=911s. “As the data flowed in”: Michal Lev-Ram, “Samsung’s Road to Global Domination,” Fortune, January 22, 2013, http://fortune.com/​2013/​01/​22/​samsungs-road-to-global-domination/. talking points pulled from social-media: Lev-Ram, “Samsung’s Road to Global Domination.” “The headphone jack is going”: Samsung Electronics, “Samsung Galaxy S3 Ad: The Next Big Thing Is Already Here,” posted by YouTube user DYP WWI on September 19, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/​watch?

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Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy
by Jonathan Taplin
Published 17 Apr 2017

As he told Auletta, if they had asked authors and publishers, Google “might not have done the project.” This same dynamic plays itself out on Google’s YouTube platform, where the company has somehow managed to make it the responsibility of the content owner to police the site for copyright infringement. YouTube watch time is growing 60 percent year over year, and revenues could reach $12 billion in 2017. Because of the “don’t ask permission” policy, every single tune in the world is available on YouTube as a simple audio file (most of them posted by users). So as the following chart shows, YouTube is the largest streaming music site in the world, with a 52 percent market share, even though it pays only 13 percent of the streaming music revenues that the music business does.

In a world where four hundred hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute of every day, the commodification of what was once considered an art (or at least a craft) has become inevitable. For all the stories promoted by Google about YouTube millionaires, the traffic statistics tell another story. Most YouTube videos have fewer than 150 views. The same thing happens in the streaming music business, where in 2012 ad-supported services such as Spotify paid artists $0.0048 per track. One hundred thousand people listen to your track, and you make less than $500. YouTube is now the world’s dominant audio streaming platform, dwarfing Spotify and virtually every other service.

But this of course neglects one crucial provision of the DMCA—does YouTube receive financial benefit directly attributable to the presence of infringing content on the site? The answer, of course, is yes: in fact you could argue that YouTube achieved success in a crowded field precisely because of its laxity toward pirated content. Competitors such as Yahoo and RealNetworks were thinking they were in a boxing match, where there were rules, while YouTube was performing in a professional wrestling match, where there are no rules. In another email exchange from 2005, when full-length movies were being posted on YouTube, Steve Chen, a cofounder of the company, wrote to his colleagues Hurley and Jawed Karim, “Steal it!

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Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy
by Talia Lavin
Published 14 Jul 2020

Cain alleged that he was radicalized by a “decentralized cult” of far-right YouTube creators who, Roose writes, “convinced him that Western civilization was under threat from Muslim immigrants and cultural Marxists, that innate I.Q. differences explained racial disparities, and that feminism was a dangerous ideology.” Underlying this push toward radicalization was not just YouTube’s algorithm, which has a documented propensity for recommending extreme content to increase engagement and watch time. There’s a consistent pattern of cross-promotion, collaboration, and high production value that builds audiences for far-right content and draws viewers deeper into the rabbit hole. Roose documented a single forty-eight-hour binge-watch by Cain that started with right-wing commentators who specialize in antifeminist content; escalated to overt conspiracy theory videos; and concluded with racist propaganda, including videos that called black men “coons.”

I’d spent the day at the Minds IRL Conference, a conference for right-wing YouTubers and their fans. IRL is online slang for “in real life”—i.e., not online—and, as such, this was a gathering for people who spent a lot more time on the internet than anywhere else. The conference organizers had invited a few token liberals and their slogan was: “Minds IRL: Ending Racism, Violence and Authoritarianism.” The big draws, according to conference attendees, were YouTubers who skirted the line between the far-right and the mainstream, or had crossed it fully into propaganda. Figures like Carl Benjamin, aka “Sargon of Akkad,” a massively popular right-wing YouTuber; Blaire White, an antifeminist trans YouTuber with close to a million subscribers; right-wing gadfly Tim Pool; and fascism-adjacent dickwad Andy Ngo.

In a groundbreaking article for the New York Times, journalist Kevin Roose, who has studied YouTube radicalization extensively, revealed one individual’s pathway through the video site to the far right.1 Caleb Cain—a twenty-six-year-old college dropout who spent five years as part of the alt-right before renouncing it publicly, and buying a gun to counter the death threats he received—sent Roose the entirety of his YouTube history, which consisted of more than twelve thousand videos. Cain alleged that he was radicalized by a “decentralized cult” of far-right YouTube creators who, Roose writes, “convinced him that Western civilization was under threat from Muslim immigrants and cultural Marxists, that innate I.Q. differences explained racial disparities, and that feminism was a dangerous ideology.”

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Walled Culture: How Big Content Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Keep Creators Poor
by Glyn Moody
Published 26 Sep 2022

The copyright industry may have intended to curtail the power of US online giants with the EU Copyright Directive, but the resulting legislation leaves them with the ability to determine how people in the European Union use some of the most popular sites online largely undiminished. YouTube is dominant in ways that few people realise, and not just in the video sector. The third quarter 2021 results for Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, show YouTube advertising revenue went from $5 billion to $7.2 billion, year on year.596 According to The Hollywood Reporter in September 2021 YouTube’s chief business officer, Robert Kyncl, told a conference: ‘We are roughly neck-and-neck with Netflix on revenue, actually we are slightly larger and growing faster.’597 Kyncl also revealed that video represents 25% of YouTubewatch time’, 50% is YouTube creators and 25% is music.

abstract_id=2628827 593 https://web.archive.org/web/20220617092736/https://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/10519/Lessig 594 https://web.archive.org/web/20220617092802/https://lessig.org/product/code 595 https://web.archive.org/web/20220617092632/https://walledculture.org/interview-katharine-trendacosta-the-us-dmca-upload-filters-sopa-pipa-fanfiction-platform-competition/ 596 https://web.archive.org/web/20220617092830/https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2021Q3_alphabet_earnings_release.pdf?cache=f1ba3f6 597 https://web.archive.org/web/20220617094352/https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/youtube-netflix-revenue-content-licensing-1235013502/ 598 https://web.archive.org/web/20220617094419/https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/youtube-just-generated-5bn-from-ads-in-a-quarter-and-youtube-music-has-over-30m-subscribers/ 599 https://web.archive.org/web/20220617094457/https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/youtubes-ads-business-is-now-bigger-than-the-entire-global-record-business2/ 600 https://web.archive.org/web/20220701141838/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Music_Group 601 https://web.archive.org/web/20220617095249/https://qz.com/2062550/universal-music-groups-ipo-shows-the-potential-of-streaming/ 602 https://web.archive.org/web/20220705070707/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_public_offering 603 https://web.archive.org/web/20220531053439/https://www.vivendi.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Universal-Music-Group-Prospectus-14-September-2021.pdf 604 https://web.archive.org/web/20220617095449/https://walledculture.org/interview-evan-greer-lia-holland-rethinking-copyright-fighting-creative-monopolies-and-more/ 605 https://web.archive.org/web/20220617095509/https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/universal-buys-bob-dylan-publishing-rights-acquiring-catalog-worth-hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars/ 606 https://web.archive.org/web/20220617095530/https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/neil-diamond-sells-complete-song-catalog-and-all-master-recordings-to-universal/ 607 https://web.archive.org/web/20220617095555/https://www.wsj.com/articles/tencent-in-talks-to-buy-stake-in-universal-music-group-11565078272 608 https://web.archive.org/web/20220617095627/https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/major-record-companies-are-losing-market-share-on-spotify-but-spotify-is-gaining-market-share-in-warners-own-revenues/ 609 https://web.archive.org/web/20220617095653/https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2021/11/29/spotify-has-plans-to-move-beyond-music-and-become-the-instagram-and-tiktokofaudio/ 610 https://web.archive.org/web/20220617095449/https://walledculture.org/interview-evan-greer-lia-holland-rethinking-copyright-fighting-creative-monopolies-and-more/ 611 https://web.archive.org/web/20220701142134/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin_Random_House 612 https://web.archive.org/web/20201109153839/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_%26_Schuster 613 https://web.archive.org/web/20220701142307/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachette_Book_Group 614 https://web.archive.org/web/20220629234053/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarperCollins 615 https://web.archive.org/web/20220630003959/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macmillan_Publishers 616 https://web.archive.org/web/20220617095734/https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-block-penguin-random-house-s-acquisition-rival-publisher-simon 617 https://web.archive.org/web/20220617100520/https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/activision-blizzard-microsoft-ea-disney-sony-buy-1235081056/ 618 https://web.archive.org/web/20220617100557/https://www.theverge.com/22910846/sony-bungie-acquisition-playstation-destiny-halo 619 https://web.archive.org/web/20220617100858/https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/global-gaming-market 620 https://web.archive.org/web/20220617100924/https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/12/18/2147663/0/en/Global-Publishing-Industry-Almanac-2020.html 621 https://web.archive.org/web/20220516043610/https://www.forbes.com/sites/rosaescandon/2020/03/12/the-film-industry-made-a-record-breaking-100-billion-last-year/ 622 https://www.toptal.com/finance/market-research-analysts/state-of-music-industry 623 https://web.archive.org/web/20220617101104/https://www.niskanencenter.org/author/brink-lindsey/ 624 https://web.archive.org/web/20220617101209/https://www.niskanencenter.org/author/steles/ 625 https://web.archive.org/web/20220617101040/https://capturedeconomy.com/ 626 https://web.archive.org/web/20220617101233/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking 627 https://web.archive.org/web/20220617104335/https://www.communia-association.org/2021/05/31/the-public-domain-belongs-to-all-and-is-often-defended-by-no-one-we-want-to-change-that/ 628 https://web.archive.org/web/20220617101040/https://capturedeconomy.com/ 629 https://web.archive.org/web/20220408054820/https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?

In 2019, lawyer Annemarie Bridy435 (who has since joined Google as copyright counsel) explained the idea: “The ‘value gap’ is a slogan that music industry trade groups created to sell policy makers on the idea that copyright safe harbors are not a sound policy choice for the whole internet but a legal loophole that allows YouTube to unfairly exploit the music industry’s valuable intellectual property. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and other industry groups, safe harbors create a value gap between what content-sharing services like YouTube pay per stream of copyrighted music and what dedicated music streaming services like Spotify pay. The fact that copyright law treats YouTube and Spotify differently, they argue, distorts the digital music marketplace by suppressing streaming royalty rates across the board.”436 Bridy pointed out that the claimed equivalence between music streaming services like Spotify and platforms like YouTube that are based on material uploaded by users is false: “Spotify is a closed distribution platform; it directly chooses and controls the whole universe of content it makes available to subscribers.

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The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives
by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler
Published 28 Jan 2020

short film Sunspring: “Sunspring” (video). See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY7x2Ihqjmc. upcoming thriller Morgan: “BM Creates First Movie Trailer by AI [HD] | 20th Century FOX,” August 31, 2016. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJEzuYynaiw. an AI that creates Choose Your Own Adventure–style stories for video games: Matthew Guzdial, “Crowdsourcing Open Interactive Narrative.” See: https://www.cc.gatech.edu/~riedl/pubs/guzdial-fdg15.pdf. See also: “Artificial Intelligence System for Crowdsourcing Interactive Fiction” (video), September 1, 2016. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=znqw17aOrCs. From Passive to Active Video games with user-generated gameplay content: “Category: Video Games with User-Generated Gameplay Content,” Wikipedia.

forty-eight years by 1950, then to seventy-two years by 2014: James Riley and Max Roser, “Life Expectancy by World Region,” Our World in Data, 2015. See: https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy. Ray Kurzweil: Ray Kurzweil, author interview, 2018. See also this conversation between Peter and Ray where they discuss the concept of longevity escape velocity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=SaOfLtoaKqw. Aubrey de Grey: Kira Peikoff, “Anti-Aging Pioneer Aubrey de Grey: ‘People in Middle Age Now Have a Fair Chance,’ ” Leapsmag, January 30, 2018. See: https://leapsmag.com/anti-aging-pioneer-aubrey-de-grey-people-middle-age-now-fair-chance/. The Anti-Aging Pharmacy Easter Island is remote: Joe Schwarz, “The Right Chemistry: Easter Island Might Just Hold the Key to Fighting Aging,” Montreal Gazette, March 5, 2019.

The Rise of the Uber-Creator Jawed Karim posted “Me at the Zoo,”: “Me at the Zoo” (video), April 23, 2005. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw. Brazilian soccer phenom Ronaldinho: “Ronaldinho Nike Ad” (video), August 2, 2006. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_JS1YG8H2c. $3.5 million investment from Sequoia Capital: Miguel Helft, “Venture Firm Shares a YouTube Jackpot,” New York Times, October 10, 2006. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/10/technology/10payday.html. $1.65 billion to purchase YouTube: Ibid. billions of people watch billions of videos on the site: “Over One Billion Users.” See: https://www.youtube.com/about/press/. shows like Binging with Babish: “Binging with Babish” (video).

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Who’s Raising the Kids?: Big Tech, Big Business, and the Lives of Children
by Susan Linn
Published 12 Sep 2022

Kids who start out watching clips from the benignly popular British animated series Peppa Pig, for instance, on YouTube, and continue to watch each recommended video as it appears on their screen can find themselves immersed in violent, sexually suggestive, and drug-related content.51 But regardless of the suitability of the content children are led to, the fact that YouTube knows enough about young viewers’ interests to seduce them into extending their viewing is troubling, especially when excessive screen time is so pervasive and problematic. Guillaume Chaslot, a former YouTube engineer, puts it more strongly: “Recommendations are designed to optimize watch time, there is no reason that it shows content that is actually good for kids. It might sometimes, but if it does it is coincidence.… Working at YouTube on recommendations, I felt I was the bad guy in Pinocchio: showing kids a colourful and fun world, but actually turning them into donkeys to maximise revenue.”52 Chaslot left YouTube and founded AlgoTransparency, an organization that works to shed light on the influence of algorithms on deciding what we see when we’re online.

Natalya Saldanha, “In 2018, an 8-Year-Old Made $22 Million on YouTube. No Wonder Kids Want to Be Influencers,” Fast Company, November 19, 2019, www.fastcompany.com/90432765/why-do-kids-want-to-be-influencers. 58.  Madeline Berg and Abram Brown, “The Highest-Paid YouTube Stars of 2020,” Forbes, December 18, 2020, www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2020/12/18/the-highest-paid-youtube-stars-of-2020/?sh=3185e9a56e50. 59.  “Ryan’s World—Shop by Category,” Target.com, www.target.com/c/ryan-s-world/-/N-nxa8t. 60.  Jay Caspian Kang, “Ryan Kaji, the Boy King of YouTube,” New York Times Magazine, January 9, 2022, 22. 61.  

“Child and Consumer Advocates Urge FTC to Investigate and Bring Action Against Google for Excessive and Deceptive Advertising Directed at Children: So-Called ‘Family-Friendly’ YouTube Kids App Combines Commercials and Videos, Violating Long-Standing Safeguards for Protecting Children,” Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood, April 6, 2015, commercialfreechildhood.org/advocates-file-ftc-complaint-against-googles-youtube-kids. 57.  Alistair Barr, “Google’s YouTube Kids App Criticized for ‘Inappropriate Content,’” Wall Street Journal, May 19, 2015, blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/05/19/googles-youtube-kids-app-criticized-for-inappropriate-content. 58.  Benjamin Herold, “Big Data or Big Brother?

The Non-Tinfoil Guide to EMFs
by Nicolas Pineault
Published 6 Dec 2017

I’m here to talk about solutions, so let’s see what you can do about the issue: 1. Ask your utility company to opt-out of the smart meter program, and to replace your smart meter with an old-school, analog one instead. 485 486 487 488 489 490 smartgridawareness.org thestar.com emfsafetynetwork.org emfsafetynetwork.org See the proof here: youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=4NTSejgsjTc mainecoalitiontostopsmartmeters.org © 2017 N&G Media Inc. Depending on where you live, the utility company might charge you a monthly penalty, do it for free, or just say “no” in certain states or cities where they have the right to do so. 2. If you are stuck with your meter, let’s work on reducing the amount of EMFs it emits as much as possible.

CC BY 3.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ SAM Cell Phone Testing Equipment — screenshot from CBC’s Marketplace exposé “The secret inside your cellphone”. Retrieved on June 25th 2017. See youtube.com/watch?v=Wm69ik_ Qdb8&app=desktop Chapter 4 Ants Dance Around Smartphone — screenshot from Youtube ViralVideoLab’s “Ants Circling My Phone - iphone ant control - Ameisen umkreisen iphone”. Retrieved on June 25th 2017. See youtube.com/watch?v=GFX7mRl7xDs VGCCs Pathways — Reproduced with minor aesthetic changes with the permission of Martin Pall, PhD. You can watch a more in-depth presentation of his work here: youtube.com/ watch?v=Pjt0iJThPU0 Rat Brain With Compromised BBB — Photo by Mrs. Brigitte May. static-content.springer.com/esm/ art%3A10.1186%2F2040-7378-4-6/MediaObjects/13231_2012_52_MOESM8_ESM.jpeg.

and autism.300 I’ve personally watched every single talk I could find on Youtube from Dr. Pall, and I can tell you that he’s always very conservative when saying that one thing causes another thing, unless there’s incredibly solid science behind his claims. With that in mind, he now states that “the autism epidemic is probably caused by EMF exposure”. Excess calcium in cells lead to an inflammatory overload, impaired neuron formation, bloodbrain barrier disruption, and a bunch of other processes that could all contribute to the overload autistic children are affected by. 299 300 youtube.com youtube.com © 2017 N&G Media Inc. 89 Dr.

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The Key Man: The True Story of How the Global Elite Was Duped by a Capitalist Fairy Tale
by Simon Clark and Will Louch
Published 14 Jul 2021

Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, “Statement of Matthew McGuire, Nominee for United States Executive Director,” May 14, 2014, www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/McGuire_Testimony.pdf Arif’s turn to speak: Milken Institute, “Framework for Investing in the Long Term,” published on June 26, 2017, YouTube video, 1:01:45, www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3364&v=JTrHX7RjmKQ&feature=emb_title the supreme court removed: Salman Masood, “Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Is Toppled by Corruption Case,” New York Times, July 28, 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/07/28/world/asia/pakistan-prime-minister-nawaz-sharif-removed.html The dairy company: Abraaj Group, Abraaj Private Equity Fund IV Investor Report, September 30, 2017.

Panama in March: World Economic Forum, “World Economic Forum on Latin America: Opening Pathways for Shared Progress,” April 1–3, 2014. “that’s just a fact”: World Economic Forum, “Panama 2014—Middle Class Matters,” published on June 5, 2014, YouTube video, www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3_Zkn0QL18 appeared on the screen: Skoll Foundation, “Skoll World Forum 2014 Opening Plenary,” published on April 9, 2014, YouTube video, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry9sVvfQIHg “double espresso”: Skoll Foundation, “Skoll World Forum 2014 Opening Plenary,” published on April 9, 2014, YouTube video, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry9sVvfQIHg Arif’s team devised: Dubai Financial Services Authority, “Decision Notice to Abraaj Investment Management Limited,” July 29, 2019, 40.

: Arif Naqvi, “In Conversation with Arif Naqvi & Fadi Ghandour,” Step Conference, published on June 9, 2016, YouTube video, www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdQ2WVavcx4&fbclid graduating in 1982: Paul Peachey, “British University Edits Out ex-Abraaj Boss Arif Naqvi from Recruitment Video,” National, April 30, 2019, www.thenational.ae/business/british-university-edits-out-ex-abraaj-boss-arif-naqvi-from-recruitment-video-1.855703 “Well, I want your job”: Arif Naqvi, “Arif Naqvi, Founder and Group Chief Executive, the Abraaj Group,” Yale School of Management, published on September 24, 2014, YouTube video, www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OC6Y3NTLZo “what I am looking for!”

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Don't Be Evil: How Big Tech Betrayed Its Founding Principles--And All of US
by Rana Foroohar
Published 5 Nov 2019

Their mentality, according to Chaslot, was that “watch time was an easy metric, and that if users want racist content, ‘well, what can you do?’ ” This was a culture in which the metrics were always right. The company was simply serving users, even if that meant knowingly monetizing content that was undermining the fabric of democracy.3 A spokesperson at YouTube, which doesn’t contradict the basic facts of Chaslot’s account, told me in 2018 that the company’s recommendation system has “changed substantially over time” and now includes other metrics beyond watch time, including consumer surveys and the number of shares and likes.

It was an initiative that had begun in response to the “filter bubbles” that were proliferating online, in which people would end up watching the same mindless or even toxic content again and again, because algorithms that tracked them as they clicked on cat videos or white supremacist propaganda once would suggest the same type of content again and again, assuming (often correctly) that this was what would keep them coming back and watching more—thus allowing YouTube to make more money from the advertising sold against that content. But because the subtler algorithms resulted in lower “watch time” than the original ones, the project was dropped. Chaslot was gutted; he believed that these new algorithms would not only help mitigate the fake news problem, they would also increase business over the long haul. More diverse content, he reasoned, could open up lines of revenue that would pay off over time, as opposed to sensationalized, eye-popping content that pays off in shorter—albeit more immediately profitable—bursts.

The leadership at YouTube, Google, Facebook, and Twitter have known for years about the risks of platforms being misused by nefarious actors to send users down rabbit holes of propaganda. They just decided that fixing this problem wasn’t worth the risks to their own business model. The Data-Industrial Complex A few years back, Guillaume Chaslot, a former engineer for YouTube who is now at the Center for Humane Technology, a group of Silicon Valley refugees who are working to create less harmful business models for Big Tech, was part of an internal project at YouTube, the content platform owned by Google,2 to develop algorithms that would increase the diversity and quality of content seen by users.

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Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts
by Jill Abramson
Published 5 Feb 2019

utm_term=.bg42ZjJGE#.qad3RlLn5. “The lessons we can learn: Marc Tracy, “The Tweeps on the Bus,” New Republic, August 24, 2012, https://newrepublic.com/article/106490/buzzfeed-influence-campaign-reporting. (“We’re very pro-animal: Andrew Gauthier, “BuzzFeed on Local Tampa TV,” YouTube (video), 2:13, August 30, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=133&v=c26gALhsrwA. Spirits flowed as some: Erik Maza, “BuzzFeed Hosts Republican National Convention Party,” WWD, August 31, 2012, https://wwd.com/business-news/media/buzzfeed-hosts-republican-national-convention-party-6212618/. As candidates Romney and Obama: David Carr, “How Obama Tapped into Social Networks’ Power,” New York Times, November 9, 2008, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.html.

See also Joshua Green interview with Matthew Boyle, “Exclusive—A Devil’s Bargain: How Steve Bannon Met Andrew Breitbart, Then Put Conservatives on Path to Destroy Hillary Clinton Once and For All,” Breitbart, July 19, 2017, https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/07/19/exclusive-a-devils-bargain-how-steve-bannon-met-andrew-breitbart-put-conservatives-path-destroy-hillary-clinton-once-for-all/. From its very origin: “#WAR—Breitbart 1st Installment,” YouTube (video), 1:41, August 6, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=A7Vwc1jgGSY. It would be different things: Sarah Posner, “How Donald Trump’s New Campaign Chief Created an Online Haven for White Nationalists,” Mother Jones, August 22, 2016, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/stephen-bannon-donald-trump-alt-right-breitbart-news/.

With the slogan “Tune In: Stuart Dredge, “YouTube Was Meant to Be a Video-Dating Website,” Guardian (UK), March 16, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/16/youtube-past-video-dating-website. “This is the next step: Associated Press, “Google Buys YouTube for $1.65 Billion,” NBCNews.com, October 10, 2006, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/15196982/ns/business-us_business/t/google-buys-youtube-billion/#.W1evqdhKjBU. The site was attracting: Reuters, “YouTube Serves Up 100 Million Videos a Day Online,” USAToday.com, July 16, 2006, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-07-16-youtube-views_x.htm. The author David Foster Wallace: David Foster Wallace, “Deciderization 2007—A Special Report,” The Best American Essays 2007 (Wilmington, Massachusetts: Mariner Books, 2007).

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Frenemies: The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business
by Ken Auletta
Published 4 Jun 2018

Dave Morgan, the CEO of Simulmedia, a marketing technology company that designs targeted TV ad campaigns, says TV’s ability to attract eyeballs far exceeds that of Internet darlings like YouTube. “Judge Judy today in thirty minutes,” he says, “will deliver more seconds of advertising consumed by more people than all of YouTube will in all of America all day. One show!” Actually, more than YouTube delivers in an entire month, an RBC Capital Markets 2014 analysis reported. With 260 episodes per year, each containing 8 minutes of advertising for Judge Judy’s 9 million daily viewers, an estimated 1.6 billion minutes of ads were offered viewers, or twice as many as the 830 million minutes of ads per month on YouTube. Some disruptions occur more slowly.

But so far, people haven’t come to us and said, ‘I’m not buying you because you have too many commercials.’” Moonves was aware of other competitive threats, including Google’s YouTube and Facebook, each of which commonly—and falsely—boast that their audience exceeds that of network TV. In June 2014, RBC Capital Markets’s respected television and video analyst, David Bank, released a study revealing that for advertisers the ratings value of watching YouTube for an entire week would only match the value of a single original episode of CBS’s The Big Bang Theory.* YouTube executives invented new ways to assert that their audience was bigger than it was. They proclaimed that their twenty-three videos from Jimmy Kimmel Live!

The mistake was made because for two years their engineers only counted videos that were watched for more than three seconds, when large numbers of viewers only watch for a second or two. Facebook did its measurement based on two numbers: the number who viewed the video for more than three seconds, and the average time spent on the video. The math mistake was that Facebook calculated the average time spent by totaling all the video watch time, including those who watched for less than three seconds. In arriving at the average time watched, Facebook divided by the number of those who watched more than three seconds, inflating the average view time. When this surfaced, client and agency confidence was shaken. This proved, Martin Sorrell and Keith Weed independently said, the need for Facebook to open its walled garden and allow an independent measurement of its results.

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New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI
by Frank Pasquale
Published 14 May 2020

On the other hand, they do not have much competition, so there is little reason to fear user defection. Meanwhile, bots inflate platforms’ engagement numbers, the holy grail for digital marketers. In 2012, YouTube “set a company-wide objective to reach one billion hours of viewing a day, and rewrote its recommendation engine to maximize for that goal.”67 “The billion hours of daily watch time gave our tech people a North Star,” said its CEO, Susan Wojcicki. Unfortunately for YouTube users, that single-minded fixation on metrics also empowered bad actors to manipulate recommendations and drive traffic to dangerous misinformation, as discussed above.

For a searing critique of internet giants’ complicity in sowing hatred, see Mary Ann Franks, The Cult of the Constitution (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019). 12. Michael H. Keller, “The Flourishing Business of Fake YouTube Views,” New York Times, August 11, 2018, at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/11/technology/youtube-fake-view-sellers.html. 13. Zeynep Tufekci, “Facebook’s Ad Scandal Isn’t a ‘Fail,’ It’s a Feature,” New York Times, September 23, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/23/opinion/sunday/facebook-ad-scandal.html; Zeynep Tufekci, “YouTube, the Great Radicalizer,” New York Times, March 10, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-politics-radical.html; Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Googlization of Everything (and Why We Should Worry) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011); Siva Vaidhyanathan, Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). 14.

Without such safeguards, the ethical standards of educators will give way to the rough and tumble “whatever works” ethos of tech firms.37 Pearson’s experimentation is common in the tech world, which has been less than careful about obeying existing laws protecting children. Criticizing Google’s ecosystem, activists have accused both YouTube and the Android operating system of improperly targeting ads at kids and tracking them.38 As a de facto short-term babysitter for the children of harried parents, YouTube has also fallen down on the job by hosting bizarre and disturbing kids’ videos, some of which feature automated remixes of cartoon characters tormenting or abusing each other.39 YouTube eventually responded to public outcry by promising a youth-focused app curated by humans, not algorithms.40 That backtracking on automation signals a lesson for educators as well; when it comes to children, “whatever keeps their attention” is not an adequate ethical guide for content creation, however easy it may be to measure that engagement using viewership data.

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No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram
by Sarah Frier
Published 13 Apr 2020

The effect had already played out in other parts of the internet, where user-generated content reigns. On YouTube, the site’s algorithm gradually started to reward creators according to watch time, thinking that a longer time spent on a video meant it was engaging enough to be displayed higher in searches and recommendations. In response, those seeking fame on the site stopped making short skits and started making 15-minute makeup tutorial videos and hour-long debates about video game characters, so they could be displayed in rankings more prominently and slot in more ads. YouTube also measured average percentage of a video viewed, as well as average watch duration, as signals for ranking.

According to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act: Protection for private blocking and screening of offensive material, 47 U.S. Code § 230 (1996). 3 | THE SURPRISE “He chose us, not the other way around.”: Dan Rose, interview with the author, Facebook headquarters, December 18, 2018. Google had bought YouTube for $1.6 billion: Associated Press, “Google Buys YouTube for $1.65 Billion,” NBC News, October 10, 2006, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/15196982/ns/business-us_business/t/google-buys-youtube-billion/#.XX9Q96d7Hox. One billion dollars, Reuters said: Alexei Oreskovic and Gerry Shih, “Facebook to Buy Instagram for $1 Billion,” Reuters, April 9, 2012, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook/facebook-to-buy-instagram-for-1-billion-idUSBRE8380M820120409.

Until that happened, he and Krieger decided, it was time for Instagram to execute on one of Zuckerberg’s other priorities. It was time to address a competitive threat. Systrom thought about his counterparts at other acquired companies. Tony Hsieh, the CEO of the online shoe business Zappos, hadn’t gotten to remain in Jeff Bezos’s orbit after Zappos was acquired by Amazon in 2009. YouTube’s founders weren’t even relevant to YouTube anymore—they’d left the company after the 2006 Google acquisition. He had no intention of being forgotten like that. DOMINATION “We’re looking to have a level of impact on the world that is unmatched by any other company, and in order to do that we can’t sit around and act like we’ve made it.

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Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age
by Clay Shirky
Published 9 Jun 2010

idx=6585 (accessed January 7, 2010). 33 I’m here because of Dong Bang Shin Ki: Mizuki (Mimi) Ito, “Media Literacy and Social Action in a Post-Pokemon World” (paper presented as keynote address for the fifty-first NFAIS (National Federation of Advanced Information Services) annual conference, Philadelphia, PA, February 22-24, 2009), http://www.itofisher.com/mito/publications/media_literacy.html (accessed January 7, 2010) 34 access to better, faster, and more widely available communications networks: For a review of the various capabilities offered to citizens in high-tech cities, see “Tech Capitals of the World,” The Age, June 18, 2007, http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/tech-capitals-of-theworld/2007/06/16/1181414598292.html (accessed January 7, 2010). 35 during the month of May, that figure plummeted to less than 20 percent: “No Bottom to Lee Myung-bak’s Approval Ratings,” Anti2mb, June 3, 2008, http://anti2mb.wordpress.com/2008/06/03/no-bottom-to-lee-myung-baksapproval-ratings (accessed January 7, 2010). 35 websites were filled with images of policemen with water cannons: You can find many of these videos on YouTube, such as “Seoul Protest Against Mad-Cow Beef,” uploaded by a user going by dawitjaidii, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf-nutNE_iQ# (accessed January 7, 2010), or a trio of videos on the situation uploaded by a user going by digitallatlive at http://www.youtube.com/user/digitallatlive (accessed January 7, 2010). Interestingly, many of the videos are from users who created their YouTube accounts in early June 2008 and uploaded only one or a few protest videos, suggesting that the protests didn’t just rely on social media, but further drove its use. 36 The People Formerly Known as the Audience: Jay Rosen has been using that phrase for much of this decade, but the most coherent statement of purpose is his blog post of that title, at http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2006/06/27/ppl_frmr.html (accessed January 8, 2010). 37 trying to require citizens to use their real names online: Michael Fitzpatrick, “South Korea Wants to Gag the Noisy Internet Rabble,” The Guardian, October 8, 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/oct/09/news.internet (accessed January 8, 2010). 38 As Ito describes the protesters: Ito made these observations in a keynote speech, “Media Literacy and Social Action in a Post-Pokemon World,” delivered to the fifty-first NFAIS annual conference.

A search for the word “Disclaimer” in http://www.fanfiction.net/book/Harry_Potter will bring up many examples of the form. 91 the other charge leveled at Cassandra Claire: The Fan History Wiki has a discussion of this issue called “Cassandra Claire: Profiteering” at http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Cassandra_Claire#Profiteering (accessed January 9, 2010). 93 twenty-four hours of video were being uploaded every minute onto YouTube: M. G. Siegler, “Every Minute, Just About a Day’s Worth of Video Is Now Uploaded to YouTube,” Tech Crunch, May 20, 2009, http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/20/every-minute-just-about-a-days-worth-of-video-is-uploaded-to-youtube (accessed January 9, 2010). 93 Twitter receives close to three hundred million words a day: “In-depth Study of Twitter: How Much We Tweet, and When,” Royal Pingdom, November 13, 2009, Pingdom AB, http://royal.pingdom.com/2009/11/13/in-depth-study-of-twitter-how-much-we-tweet-and-when (accessed January 9, 2010). 93 asked its readers to rank a list of the 50 Most Beautiful People: “Can You Trust Web 2.0?”

For the same reason that the disapproval of Parliament didn’t reduce the consumption of gin: the dramatic growth in TV viewing wasn’t the problem, it was the reaction to the problem. Humans are social creatures, but the explosion of our surplus of free time coincided with a steady reduction in social capital—our stock of relationships with people we trust and rely on. One clue about the astonishing rise of TV-watching time comes from its displacement of other activities, especially social activities. As Jib Fowles notes in Why Viewers Watch, “Television viewing has come to displace principally (a) other diversions, (b) socializing, and (c) sleep.” One source of television’s negative effects has been the reduction in the amount of human contact, an idea called the social surrogacy hypothesis.

Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All
by Michael Shellenberger
Published 28 Jun 2020

Sonia Elks, “Suffering Eco-anxiety over Climate Change, Say Psychologists,” Reuters, September 19, 2019, https://www.reuters.com. 104. Rupert Read, “How I Talk with Children About Climate Breakdown,” YouTube (video), August 18, 2019, https://youtu.be/6Lt0jCDtYSY. 105. Zion Lights, interviewed by Andrew Neil, The Andrew Neil Show, BBC, aired October 10, 2019, on BBC, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=pO1TTcETyuU&feature=emb_logo. 106. Lauren Jeffrey, “An Open Letter to Extinction Rebellion,” YouTube (video), October 21, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyYPLkWV3l0. 107. Peter James Spielmann, “UN Predicts Disaster if Global Warming Not Checked,” Associated Press, June 29, 1989, https://apnews.com. 108.

Ibid., 317. 9: Destroying the Environment to Save It 1. Bryan Bishop and Josh Dzieza, “Tesla Energy Is Elon Musk’s Battery System That Can Power Homes, Businesses, and the World,” The Verge, May 1, 2015, https://www.theverge.com. 2. Tesla, “Tesla introduces Tesla Energy,” YouTube, May 2, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=82&v=NvCIhn7_FXI&feature=emb_logo. 3. H. J. Mai, “Tesla Powerwall, Powerpack deployment grows 81% to 415 MWh in Q2,” Utility Dive, July 30, 2019, https://www.utilitydive.com. 4. Andy Sendy, “Pegging the All-in, Installed Cost of a Tesla Powerwall 2,” Solar Reviews, October 3, 2017, https://www.solarreviews.com; Sean O’Kane, “Tesla Launches a Rental Plan to Help Its Slumping Home Solar Panel Business,” The Verge, August 19, 2019, https://www.theverge.com. 5.

Viswanathan et al., Energy Storage Technology and Cost Characterization Report, U.S. Department of Energy, July 2019, https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/07/f65/Storage%20Cost%20and%20Performance%20Characterization%20Report_Final.pdf. 85. Tesla, “Tesla Introduces Tesla Energy,” YouTube, May 2, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=82&v=NvCIhn7_FXI&feature=emb_logo. 86. Victor Tangermann, “Elon Musk Is Talking About Powering All of America with Solar,” Futurism, December 12, 2019, https://futurism.com. 87. Smil, Power Density: A Key to Understanding Energy Sources and Uses, 247. 88. Ibid., 247. 89.

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The Ones We've Been Waiting For: How a New Generation of Leaders Will Transform America
by Charlotte Alter
Published 18 Feb 2020

fears of generational change: Vanessa Williamson, Theda Skocpol, and John Coggin, “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism,” Perspectives on Politics 9, no. 1 (March 2011), scholar.harvard.edu/files/williamson/files/tea_party_pop_0.pdf. drawn with devil horns: “Lloyd Doggett’s Meeting on Obamacare,” YouTube video, August 1, 2009, youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=a8UjY3YDlwA. or presented with nooses: Glenn Thrush, “Rep. Kratovil Hung in Effigy by Health Care Protester,” Politico, July 28, 2009, politico.com/blogs/on-congress/2009/07/rep-kratovil-hung-in-effigy-by-health-care-protester-update-020260. turned on his Facebook Live: Braxton Winston, Facebook Live, September 20, 2016.

THOUGHTS & PRAYERS We are following some breaking news: “Breaking News: Tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School (WVIT-TV),” PeabodyAwards.com, 2012, peabodyawards.com/award-profile/breaking-news-tragedy-at-sandy-hook-elementary-school. of them are children: “Newtown, Connecticut Shooting: 27 Killed, Gunman Dead at Sandy Hook Elementary Tragedy,” ABC News, December 14, 2012, YouTube video, youtube.com/watch?v=zTeuAojMa3c. “students would say things”: Interview with Kaitlin Roig, ABC News, YouTube video, youtube.com/watch?v=TX8V_ZWwgb4. LANZA’S RIFLE STILL LEGAL: Matthew Kauffman, “In State with ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban, Lanza’s Rifle Still Legal,” The Hartford Courant, courant.com/hc-newtown-assault-weapons-20121217-8-story.html. @SpeakerBoehner: John Boehner, tweet, December 14, 2012, twitter.com/SpeakerBoehner/status/279674132080250880.

“Trump’s victory has blown”: Dyanna Jaye and Varshini Prakash, “How We Got Here: Sunrise Movement,” Medium, May 3, 2017, medium.com/sunrisemvmt/welcome-sunrise-c63943c00f37. in their announcement video: Welcome to Sunrise, Sunrise Movement, YouTube video, youtube.com/watch?v=an5GbckznRQ. released a report that warned: IPCC Special Report, “Global Warming of 1.5° C,” ipcc.ch/sr15/. “And yet you are stealing”: Greta Thunberg, speech at UN climate change, COP24 Conference, December 15, 2018, YouTube video, youtube.com/watch?v=VFkQSGyeCWg. the end of February: Tara John, “How Teenage Girls Defied Skeptics to Build a Global Climate Movement,” CNN, February 13, 2019, edition.cnn.com/2019/02/13/uk/student-climate-strike-girls-gbr-scli-intl/index.html.

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Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art
by James Nestor
Published 25 May 2020

David-Néel used: It’s worth noting that David-Néel eventually became a national hero in France, an idol to the Beat writers, and had a tea and a tram station named after her, both of which are still in use today. Maurice Daubard: “Maurice Daubard—Le Yogi des Extrêmes [The Yogi of the Extremes],” http://www.mauricedaubard.com/biographie.htm; “France: Moulins: Yogi Maurice Daubard Demonstration,” AP Archive, YouTube, July 21, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=104&v=bEZVlgcddZg. Stanislav Grof: This interview and my experience with Holotropic Breathwork happened several years before the Stanford experiment, and just a year or so after that jarring experience with Sudarshan Kriya that sent me on the path to deeper research.

His doctor told him to push through. Matt got sicker. He learned Tummo breathing and followed Hof’s protocol, practicing the Wim Hof Method every day. Wim Hof, YouTube, Jan. 3, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4tIou2LnOk; “Wim Hof—Reversing Autoimmune Diseases | Paddison Program,” YouTube, June 26, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZO9uy JIP44; “In 8 Months I Was Completely Symptom-Free,” Wim Hof Method Experience, Wim Hof, YouTube, Aug. 23, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nO v4aNiWys. reducing inflammatory markers: In 2014, Hof took a group of 26 random people, aged 29 to 65, up Mount Kilimanjaro.

Mew, “Craniofacial Dystrophy. A Possible Syndrome?,” British Dental Journal 216, no. 10 (May 2014): 555–58. “a new health craze”: Elena Cresci, “Mewing Is the Fringe Orthodontic Technique Taking Over YouTube,” Vice, Mar. 11, 2019, https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3medj/mewing-is-the-fringe-orthodontic-technique-taking-over-youtube. viewed a million times: “Doing Mewing,” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hmf-pR7EryY. survival of the fittest: Quentin Wheeler, Antonio G. Valdecasas, and Cristina Cânovas, “Evolution Doesn’t Proceed in a Straight Line—So Why Draw It That Way?” The Conversation, Sept. 3, 2019, https://theconversation.com/evolution-doesnt-proceed-in-a-straight-line-so-why-draw-it-that-way-109401/.

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Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies
by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh
Published 14 Apr 2018

I strongly believe that as a whole company, you can’t get behind more than three to five metrics. The key metrics we picked were free users, free users that become paid users, and then user engagement metrics—number of surveys, and return rate.” Sometimes even a single metric can tell you a lot. At YouTube, Shishir Mehrotra decided that their single clarifying metric would be watch time. “Our goal was to get to one billion hours per day of watch time,” he said. “At the time, we were doing 100 million hours per day. Facebook had about double that. Television as a whole was 5.5 billion hours per day….Picking a single clarifying metric is very hard, but it clarifies decision-making and what constitutes success.”

For example, Sal Khan’s Khan Academy began when Sal started tutoring one of his young cousins over the Internet. When other cousins started signing up, he decided to post his lectures on YouTube so that anyone in the world could use them. The critical decision to leverage the YouTube platform meant that Khan Academy had both an enormous market (anyone who could access YouTube, which is to say, most of humanity) and a powerful distribution platform (anyone searching for educational content on YouTube was likely to run across Khan Academy). As the Khan Academy gained a massive user base, it began to benefit from both indirect and standard-based network effects.

A BIG NEW OPPORTUNITY To achieve massive success, you need to have a big new opportunity—one where the market size and gross margins intersect to create enormous potential value, and there isn’t a dominant market leader or oligopoly. A big new opportunity often arises because a technological innovation creates a new market or scrambles an existing one. Shishir Mehrotra, the former general manager of YouTube, visited our Blitzscaling class at Stanford and explained how technological changes created a big new opportunity for YouTube to exploit: Why was YouTube at the right time? Networks were finally big enough to stream video. Cell phone cameras allowed everyone to record videos. And the investment environment allowed a very capital-intensive bet. If the gross margins of this new opportunity are low, the market size has to be even bigger to make it a big opportunity.

The Smart Wife: Why Siri, Alexa, and Other Smart Home Devices Need a Feminist Reboot
by Yolande Strengers and Jenny Kennedy
Published 14 Apr 2020

An “internet user” is defined as someone who can access the internet at home via any device type and connection. International Energy Agency, SDG7: Data and Projections (IEA: Paris, 2019), https://www.iea.org/reports/sdg7-data-and-projections. 92. UNESCO and EQUALS Skills Coalition, I’d Blush If I Could. 93. “Alpha the Robot” (1934), YouTube video, posted by Matt Novak, March 13, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=18&v=a9l9pt_Jzn8. 94. Among the male-identified devices are digital assistants called Albert and Josh, and robots called Temi and Buddy, while less obviously gendered devices include the digital assistants Mycroft and Branto. 95. UNESCO and EQUALS Skills Coalition, I’d Blush If I Could.

Moving toward the more debasing end of the everyday sexism spectrum, researchers have exposed how readily some users consider the sex potential of any woman-looking robot. In a study of comments on YouTube videos—which depict a range of social robots with some degree of human similarity—one respondent framed it as an ongoing question: “Can you fuck it?”45 The study found that users were more likely to make dehumanizing or objectifying comments to female-gendered robots than neutral or male-gendered robots. The YouTube videos examined for the study likely skew toward a white and male homogeneous audience. What’s more, sexualized comments were not just made by a small percentage of users; when the robot was female gendered, over half of all comments made about the video were sexualized.

UNESCO and EQUALS Skills Coalition, I’d Blush If I Could. 63. Andrea Fjeld, “AI: A Consumer Perspective,” Connected Consumer (blog), LivePerson, March 13, 2018, https://www.liveperson.com/connected-customer/posts/ai-consumer-perspective. 64. “Gatebox Virtual Friend Azuma Hikari,” YouTube video, posted by Robotics AI, January 7, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YgCC454lsI; Kara Dennison, “Gatebox Begins Mass-Production of Tiny Virtual Girlfriends,” Crunchyroll, September 11, 2019, https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2019/09/11/gatebox-begins-mass-production-of-tiny-virtual-girlfriends. 65. Jennifer Yang Hui and Dymples Leong, “The Era of Ubiquitous Listening: Living in a World of Speech-Activated Devices,” Asian Journal of Public Affairs 10, no. 1 (2017): 1–19. 66.

Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen
by Dan Heath
Published 3 Mar 2020

fishermen were paid to retrieve abandoned fishing nets: Interview with Miriam Turner, December 2015. Also: http://net-works.com/about-net-works/locations/philippines/; https://www.econyl.com/blog/architecture-design/net-works-fishing-nets-arrived-in-ajdovscina-for-regeneration/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=10&v=1HCfLMVgub8. return would have been 3.6%: Via calculations on Bloomberg, TILE versus SPX Index, December 31, 1993, to December 31, 2018. untangle a dispute between staff members: Interview with Jeannie Forrest, February 2019, and follow-up via email March 2019. The quotes from “Dawn” and “Ellen” reflect Forrest’s recollection of the conversation.

BHC’s theory of change: The California Endowment, Building Health Communities, https://www.calendow.org/building-healthy-communities/. The city manager vetoed the ad: KFSN ABC 30, “#Parks4All Bus Ad Controversy,” 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_4q8yZRXG4. Sandra Celedon posed in front: KFSN ABC 30, “#Parks4All Initiative for More and Better Parks,” 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asV3d6uYCrI. “too controversial and too political”: Ezra David Romero, “City of Fresno Rejects Controversial Bus Banner,” KVPR, May 27, 2015, https://www.kvpr.org/post/city-fresno-rejects-controversial-bus-banner.

Gilbert Welch, “Korea’s Thyroid-Cancer ‘Epidemic’: Screening and Overdiagnosis,” New England Journal of Medicine 371 (November 6, 2014):1765–67, https://www.ecmstudy.com/uploads/3/1/8/8/31885023/nejm-koreas_thyroid-cancer_epidemic-screening_&_overdiagnosis.pdf. 15-fold since 1993: Ibid., 1766. five-year survival rate: Gil Welch, “Cancer Screening & Overdiagnosis,” 2018, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwfZFskoifw, 00:24:59. promoted “medical tourism”: Ibid., 00:24:15. “only a matter of time until it killed”: Gil Welch, Less Medicine, More Health: 7 Assumptions That Drive US Medical Care (New York: Beacon Press, 2015), 57. the analogy of a barnyard pen of cancers: Ibid., 57–58.

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The People vs Tech: How the Internet Is Killing Democracy (And How We Save It)
by Jamie Bartlett
Published 4 Apr 2018

These algorithms are designed to serve you content that you’re likely to click on, as that means the potential to sell more advertising alongside it. For example, YouTube’s ‘up next’ videos are statistically selected based on an unbelievably sophisticated analysis of what is most likely to keep a person hooked in. According to Guillaume Chaslot, an AI specialist who worked on the recommendation engine for YouTube, the algorithms aren’t there to optimise what is truthful or honest – but to optimise watch-time. ‘Everything else was considered a distraction,’ he recently told the Guardian.17 These non-decision decisions have huge implications, because even mild confirmation bias can set off a cycle of self-perpetuation.

An algorithm interprets this as you expressing an interest in left-wing politics, and therefore shows you more of it. You’re more likely to click again, since that’s the choice in front of you – which is interpreted as another signal. According to research conducted by Chaslot since he left YouTube, the company systematically amplifies videos that are divisive, although YouTube denies this. To be fair, no one I’ve ever met in tech is happy about this: over the last couple of years most have recognised that it is an issue and have promised to fix it. But the problem is that no one is intentionally programming it to be sensationalistic – it’s just a mathematical response to our general preference for edgy and outrageous videos.

.* What’s happening to political identity as a result of the internet is far more profound than this vote or that one. It transcends political parties and is more significant than echo chambers or fake news. Digital communication is changing the very nature of how we engage with political ideas and how we understand ourselves as political actors. Just as Netflix and YouTube replaced traditional mass-audience television with an increasingly personalised choice, so total connection and information overload offers up an infinite array of possible political options. The result is a fragmentation of singular, stable identities – like membership of a political party – and its replacement by ever-smaller units of like-minded people.6 Online, anyone can find any type of community they wish (or invent their own), and with it, thousands of like-minded people with whom they can mobilise.

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The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt
Published 14 Jun 2018

Retrieved from https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/no-imminent-threat-at-evergreen-state-college-after-classes-canceled-for-third-day 22. Atomwaffen division visits Evergreen State College. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.bitchute.com/video/bZMiTj2TC5bf 23. TheFIREorg [Producer]. (2018, February 8). Lisa Durden on her famous Fox News interview [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=310&v=PfmdlqdC3mE 24. L. Durden (personal communication, March 24, 2018). 25. In his statement, the newly appointed college president claimed that the college had been “immediately inundated with feedback from students, faculty and prospective students and their families expressing frustration, concern and even fear” about “the views expressed by a College employee,” and said the college had a “responsibility to investigate those concerns.”

Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/happiness-and-the-pursuit-leadership/201604/we-re-giving-bullying-bad-name 5. Play:groundNYC: built for children, by children. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://play-ground.nyc. For a brief history of adventure playgrounds, visit https://play-ground.nyc/history. To see a video about this kind of playground, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=74vOpkEin_A 6. Daniel Shuchman is also the chairman of the board of FIRE. 7. “Let Grow License.” Available at www.LetGrow.org/LetGrowLicense 8. Of course, the nature of an “abuse of authority” is that it exceeds what is legally allowed; accordingly, we cannot guarantee that someone won’t detain your child.

[Video file].Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynnNArPi8GM 75. VICE (Producer). (2017, June 16). Evergreen State College controversy (HBO) [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/2cMYfxOFBBM?t=2m19s 76. Heying & Weinstein (2017, December 12); see n. 78. S See also Boyce, B.A. (2017, July 29). Social Network Justice at Evergreen [Video File]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/Jye2C5r-QA0?t=8m23s 77. Sexton, J. (Publisher). (2017, July 13). Evergreen student: “I’ve been told several times that I’m not allowed to speak because I’m white” [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ8WQnsm14Y 78. best of evergreen (Publisher). (2017, May 27).

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Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity
by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson
Published 15 May 2023

Journalist Robert Evans studied how scores of ordinary people around the country were recruited by these groups, and he concluded that the groups themselves mentioned YouTube most often on their website: “15 out of 75 fascist activists we studied credited YouTube videos with their red-pilling.” (“Red-pilling” refers to the lingo that these groups used, with reference to the movie The Matrix: accepting the truths propagated by these far-right groups was the equivalent of taking the red pill in the movie.) YouTube’s algorithmic choices and intent to boost watch time on the platform were critical for these outcomes. To increase watch time, in 2012 the company modified its algorithm to give more weight to the time that users spend watching rather than just clicking on content.

One of the Oath Keepers’ leaders, Thomas Caldwell, is alleged to have posted updates as he entered the Capitol and to have received information over the platform on how to navigate the building as well as to incite violence toward lawmakers and police. Misinformation and hate speech are not confined to Facebook. Around 2016, YouTube emerged as one of the most potent recruitment grounds for the Far Right. In 2019, Caleb Cain, a twenty-six-year-old college dropout, made a video about YouTube explaining how he had been radicalized on the platform. As he said, “I fell down the alt-right rabbit hole.” Cain explained how he “kept falling deeper and deeper into this” as he watched more and more radical content recommended by YouTube’s algorithms. Journalist Robert Evans studied how scores of ordinary people around the country were recruited by these groups, and he concluded that the groups themselves mentioned YouTube most often on their website: “15 out of 75 fascist activists we studied credited YouTube videos with their red-pilling.”

There is also nothing inherently antidemocratic in digital technologies, and social media certainly does not have to focus on maximizing outrage, extremism, and indignation. It was a matter of choice—choice by tech companies, AI researchers, and governments—that got us into our current predicament. As we mentioned earlier in this chapter, YouTube and Reddit were initially as much afflicted by far-right extremism, misinformation, and hate speech as Facebook was. But over the last five years, these two platforms took some steps to lessen the problem. As public pressure mounted on YouTube and its parent company, Google, after insider accounts such as Caleb Cain’s and exposés in the New York Times and the New Yorker came out, the platform started modifying its algorithms to reduce the spread of the most malicious content.

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Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections
by Mollie Hemingway
Published 11 Oct 2021

Edward Moreno, “Government Health Agency Official: Coronavirus ‘Isn’t Something the American Public Need to Worry About,’ ” The Hill, January 26, 2020, https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/479939-government-health-agency-official-corona-virus-isnt-something-the. 122. KPIX CBS SF Bay Area, “Speaker Pelosi Visits SF’s Chinatown to Show Support amid Coronavirus Fears,” YouTube, February 24, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=134&v=eFCzoXhNM6c&feature=emb_title. 123. David Siders, “Dems Sweat Trump’s Economy: ‘We Don’t Really Have a Robust National Message Right Now,’ ” Politico, April 28, 2019, https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/28/democrats-economy-2020-trump-1291371. 124. Ben White, “Warning to Democrats: Economy Points to a Trump Win,” Politico, October 15, 2019, https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/15/warning-to-democrats-economy-points-to-a-trump-win-047021. 125.

In December 2018, Google CEO Sundar Pichai testified under oath before Congress that the company doesn’t “manually intervene” in search results.23 The next month, a Google employee leaked internal discussions to Breitbart showing that the company did, in fact, interfere with search results. Google-owned YouTube, the world’s second most popular search engine after Google itself, had a “blacklist”—Google’s term—related to a number of political topics. If you searched YouTube for abortion, Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters, gun control activist David Hogg, or other political topics, Google was rigging the results.24 But that was just the tip of the iceberg. “We have tons of white- and blacklists that humans manually curate,” said one Google employee. “Hopefully this isn’t surprising or particularly controversial.”25 Another employee noted that the YouTube intervention on abortion search results happened shortly after left-wing publication Slate asked Google to comment on the prominence of pro-life videos on the platform.

Hit 73% of 2016 Voting before Election Day: At Least 101.9 Million Voted Early Nationwide,” Washington Post, November 3, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/elections/early-voting-numbers-so-far/. 22. CNN, “Barr Interview Gets Tense When Pressed on Mail-In Voting,” YouTube, September 2, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC6PxLJ3dDU. 23. Eldon Cobb Evans, “History of the Australian Ballot System in the United States” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1917), 3–6. 24. Ibid., 1. 25. Ibid., 7. 26. Ibid., 3. 27. Ibid., 12. 28. Craig C. Donsanto and Nancy L. Simmons, Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses (Washington, D.C.: U.S.

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Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World
by Joseph Menn
Published 3 Jun 2019

Chapter 13: The Congressman and the Trolls “a punk band, Foss”: The band also featured Cedric Bixler-Zavala, later lead singer of Grammy Award–winning the Mars Volta. Here’s Foss on a television show in El Paso in 1994: “Foss on Let’s Get Real TV show- El Paso, TX- 1994 Pt 3- The Song,” posted by elephantandseal, YouTube video, 9:59, June 30, 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=eI5GGPFnX24. “one of the poorest cities in America”: And still eighth-poorest several years later, per a CBS News ranking in February 2015: Bruce Kennedy, “America’s 11 Poorest Cities,” MoneyWatch, CBS News, February 18, 2015, www.cbsnews.com/media/americas-11-poorest-cities/.

“a secure operating system on a memory card”: Mudge talked about the project at Google’s annual developer’s conference in 2015; the talk can be viewed here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpbWQbkl8_g. “a harder time attacking Google’s Chrome browser”: Mudge and Sarah Zatko have released various findings from the lab in talks at Black Hat and other conferences. “I hate Adobe”: A large proportion of criminal and geopolitical malware depended on Flash vulnerabilities for years. The bad security was one of the reasons that Steve Jobs killed Apple support for it. In 2018, Flash is nearing end of life. “Gallagher gave him a shout-out”:Hugh Gallagher, “White Boy Rocks Harlem,” posted by zpin, YouTube video, 2:40, June 28, 2006, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv1ihFI5iKI.

Similar wording is in a DARPA fact sheet here: www.darpa.mil/attachments/DARPA_Fact_Sheet_1_07-25-17.pdf. “Now he called in a dozen”: My main sources for the meeting are Song and Mudge. Mudge also credited Song with the CFT idea in a talk on YouTube. “Miller was presenting”: The story of Miller’s funding comes from both Miller and Mudge. “Cyber Analytic Framework”: Parts of the Framework are classified, but Mudge has discussed other aspects of it with me and in talks available on YouTube. It has been reported elsewhere that another project of Mudge’s, to detect unusual activity on a network, was aimed at ferreting out moles and whistle-blowers. But Mudge vigorously disputes that, saying that it hunted for actions by user credentials being wielded by outsiders.

pages: 506 words: 151,753

The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze
by Laura Shin
Published 22 Feb 2022

Gavin Wood (@gavofyork), “ANNOUNCING PARITY, the World’s Fastest and Lightest Ethereum Implementation Written in Rust Language,” Reddit, February 9, 2016, https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/44y9vv/announcing_parity_the_worlds_fastest_and_lightest/cztzz5p. 5. “CoinScrum & Proof of Work Present: Tools for the Future—Gavin Wood,” video uploaded to YouTube by Satoshi Pollen, December 10, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=13&v=WdgQI6CA4-E&feature=emb_logo. 6. DAO contributions from June 21, 2015, to July 26, 2016, GitHub, https://github.com/slockit/DAO/graphs/contributors?from=2015-06-21&to=2016-07-26&type=c. 7. Other DAOs pushed back on Slock.it for giving its DAO the generic name of all DAOs.

Jemima Kelly, “Nine of World’s Biggest Banks Join to Form Blockchain Partnership,” Reuters, September 15, 2015, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-banks-blockchain-idUSKCN0RF24M20150915; Jemima Kelley, “Thirteen More Top Banks Join R3 Blockchain Consortium,” Reuters, September 29, 2015, https://www.reuters.com/article/banks-blockchain-idUSL5N11Z2QE20150929. 13. “DevCon 1,” YouTube, video playlist, last updated March 1, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJqWcTqh_zKHQUFX4IaVjWjfT2tbS4NVk. 14. “DECVON1: Slock.it—Christoph Jentzsch,” video posted to YouTube by Ethereum, January 7, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uy6P5_WQoUI. 15. “Former Ethereum CCO Stephan Tual Joins Slock.it Team,” Slock.it (blog), November 6, 2015, https://blog.slock.it/former-ethereum-cco-stephan-tual-joins-slock-it-team-9fd956f2408. 16.

#omise #blockchain #ethereum https://ethereum.org/foundation,” Twitter, March 8, 2016, https://twitter.com/jun_omise/status/707168442449661952. 37. “Thomas Greco—About ECF,” video uploaded to YouTube by LinkTime, May 17, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6bl9vClE0M&t=216s. 38. “Clarifying the Role of the Ethereum Foundation with Ethereum’s Aya Miyaguchi | EDCON Toronto 2018,” video uploaded to YouTube by LinkTime, June 19, 2018, 0:13, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3GhsbhsdSg. 39. Amir Taaki (@Narodism), “Bitcoin is turning into a failed project. The seeds of its destruction among the debris of a community blinded by numerical price increases, and imminent divine reclamation.

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The Lonely Century: How Isolation Imperils Our Future
by Noreena Hertz
Published 13 May 2020

In addition to Twenge, whose book iGen (Simon & Schuster, 2017) placed teen smartphone use front and centre in the discussion of mental health, vocal critics of teen smartphone usage include Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, co-authors of The Coddling of the American Mind (Penguin, 2018). 72 Hunt Allcott et al., ‘The Welfare Effects of Social Media’ (2019), 6, https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/facebook.pdf. 73 Melissa G Hunt et al., ‘No More FOMO: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression’, Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 37, no. 10 (8 November 2018), 751–68, https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.2018.37.10.751. 74 Hunt Allcott et al., ‘The Welfare Effects of Social Media’, 23. 75 Kyt Dotson, ‘YouTube sensation and entrepreneur Markee Dragon swatted on first day of YouTube Gaming’, Silicon Angle, 28 August 2015, https://siliconangle.com/2015/08/28/youtube-sensation-and-entrepreneur-markee-dragon-swatted-on-first-day-of-youtube-gaming/; see also Jason Fagone, ‘The Serial Swatter’, New York Times magazine, 24 November 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/magazine/the-serial-swatter.html. 76 Matthew Williams, ‘The connection between online hate speech and real-world hate crime’, OUP Blog, 12 October 2019, https://blog.oup.com/2019/10/connection-between-online-hate-speech-real-world-hate-crime/.

Analysis of characteristics and circumstances associated with loneliness in England using the Community Life Survey, 2016 to 2017’, Office for National Statistics, 10 April 2018, https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/articles/lonelinesswhatcharacteristicsandcircumstancesareassociatedwithfeelinglonely/2018-04-10; Alana Schetzer, ‘Solo households on the rise, and so is feeling lonely and less healthy’, The Age, 14 December 2015, https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/solo-households-on-the-rise-and-so-is-feeling-lonely-and-less-healthy-20151214-gln18b.html. 44 Zoe Wood, ‘Tesco targets growing number of Britons who eat or live alone’, Guardian, 6 July 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jul/06/tesco-targets-growing-number-of-britons-who-eat-or-live-alone. 45 The word mukbang is a portmanteau of the Korean words for ‘eating’ and ‘broadcast’. 46 Anjali Venugopalan, ‘Feast & stream: Meet India’s biggest mukbangers’, Economic Times, 7 September 2019, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/feast-stream-meet-indias-biggest-mukbangers/articleshow/71027715.cms; see also Jasmin Barmore, ‘Bethany Gaskin is the Queen of Eating Shellfish Online’, New York Times, 11 June 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/style/youtube-mukbang-bloveslife-bethany-gaskin.html; ‘The Pleasure and Sorrow of the “Mukbang” Super Eaters of Youtube’, News Lens, 25 June 2019, https://international.thenewslens.com/article/118747. 47 Tan Jee Yee, ‘Google: The Future Consumer of APAC Will Do More than just Consume’, Digital News Asia, 20 March 2020, https://www.digitalnewsasia.com/digital-economy/google-future-consumer-apac-will-do-more-just-consume. 48 See for example Hillary Hoffower, ‘A 25-year-old YouTuber quit her job and now makes 6 figures recording herself eating, and it’s a trend more and more influencers are cashing in on’, Business Insider, April 10 2019, https://www.businessinsider.com/mukbang-influencers-youtube-money-six-figures-2019-4. 49 Andrea Stanley, ‘Inside the Saucy, Slurpy, Actually Sorta Sexy World of Seafood Mukbang Influencers’, Cosmopolitan, 9 April 2019, https://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a27022451/mukbang-asmr-seafood-videos-youtube-money/. 50 ‘The Pleasure and Sorrow of the ‘Mukbang’ Super Eaters of Youtube’, News Lens, 25 June 2019, https://international.thenewslens.com/article/118747. 51 Kagan Kircaburun, Andrew Harris, Filipa Calado and Mark D.

Analysis of characteristics and circumstances associated with loneliness in England using the Community Life Survey, 2016 to 2017’, Office for National Statistics, 10 April 2018, https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/articles/lonelinesswhatcharacteristicsandcircumstancesareassociatedwithfeelinglonely/2018-04-10; Alana Schetzer, ‘Solo households on the rise, and so is feeling lonely and less healthy’, The Age, 14 December 2015, https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/solo-households-on-the-rise-and-so-is-feeling-lonely-and-less-healthy-20151214-gln18b.html. 44 Zoe Wood, ‘Tesco targets growing number of Britons who eat or live alone’, Guardian, 6 July 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jul/06/tesco-targets-growing-number-of-britons-who-eat-or-live-alone. 45 The word mukbang is a portmanteau of the Korean words for ‘eating’ and ‘broadcast’. 46 Anjali Venugopalan, ‘Feast & stream: Meet India’s biggest mukbangers’, Economic Times, 7 September 2019, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/feast-stream-meet-indias-biggest-mukbangers/articleshow/71027715.cms; see also Jasmin Barmore, ‘Bethany Gaskin is the Queen of Eating Shellfish Online’, New York Times, 11 June 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/style/youtube-mukbang-bloveslife-bethany-gaskin.html; ‘The Pleasure and Sorrow of the “Mukbang” Super Eaters of Youtube’, News Lens, 25 June 2019, https://international.thenewslens.com/article/118747. 47 Tan Jee Yee, ‘Google: The Future Consumer of APAC Will Do More than just Consume’, Digital News Asia, 20 March 2020, https://www.digitalnewsasia.com/digital-economy/google-future-consumer-apac-will-do-more-just-consume. 48 See for example Hillary Hoffower, ‘A 25-year-old YouTuber quit her job and now makes 6 figures recording herself eating, and it’s a trend more and more influencers are cashing in on’, Business Insider, April 10 2019, https://www.businessinsider.com/mukbang-influencers-youtube-money-six-figures-2019-4. 49 Andrea Stanley, ‘Inside the Saucy, Slurpy, Actually Sorta Sexy World of Seafood Mukbang Influencers’, Cosmopolitan, 9 April 2019, https://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a27022451/mukbang-asmr-seafood-videos-youtube-money/. 50 ‘The Pleasure and Sorrow of the ‘Mukbang’ Super Eaters of Youtube’, News Lens, 25 June 2019, https://international.thenewslens.com/article/118747. 51 Kagan Kircaburun, Andrew Harris, Filipa Calado and Mark D.

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Bezonomics: How Amazon Is Changing Our Lives and What the World's Best Companies Are Learning From It
by Brian Dumaine
Published 11 May 2020

Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox. Notes Introduction At his all-hands meetings: “Jeff Bezos on Why It’s Always Day 1 at Amazon,” Amazon News video, posted on YouTube, April 19, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8&v=fTwXS2H_iJo. As Bezos put it: Jeff Haden, “20 Years Ago, Jeff Bezos Said This 1 Thing Separates People Who Achieve Lasting Success from Those Who Don’t,” Inc., November 6, 2017. As Bezos put it in Brad Stone’s 2013 book: Brad Stone, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon (New York: Back Bay Books, 2013), 12.

As Steve Boom: Micah Singelton, “Amazon Is Taking a More Simplistic Approach to Music Streaming. And It Isn’t Alone,” The Verge, April 25, 2017. Chapter 2: The Richest Man in the World He runs Amazon as if every penny: “10 Most Expensive Things Owned by Jeff Bezos,” Mr. Luxury video, posted on YouTube, December 17, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-IwSI1cDrM. His most recent purchase: Vivian Marino, “Luxury Sales Spike as Buyers Rush to Avoid Higher Mansion Taxes,” New York Times, July 5, 2019. He portrays himself online: Jeff Bezos Instagram photo, https://www.instagram.com/p/BhkcyHpn_J1/?utm_source=ig_embed.

Yet, in 2019, he divorced: Aine Cain and Paige Leskin, “A Look Inside the Marriage of the Richest Couple in History, Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos—Who Met Before Amazon Started, Were Married for 25 Years, and Are Now Getting Divorced,” Business Insider, July 6, 2019. “Jeff Bezos” wasn’t always: “Jeff Bezos Talks Amazon, Blue Origin, Family, and Wealth,” video interview by Mathias Döpfner, the CEO of Axel Springer, with Jeff Bezos (4:51), posted on YouTube, May 5, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCpgKvZB_VQ. His father, Ted: Stone, The Everything Store, 140–42. Ted’s unicycling job: Ibid., 142. Bezos never saw his biological father again: Ibid., 321–24. After Stone unearthed Jorgensen: Laura Collins, “Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos’s Ailing Biological Father Pleads to See Him,” Daily Mail, November 17, 2018.

pages: 391 words: 105,382

Utopia Is Creepy: And Other Provocations
by Nicholas Carr
Published 5 Sep 2016

Confessed Starr: “I find myself getting bored even in the middle of songs simply because I can.” And so, bored by the content, bored by the art, we become obsessed with the interface. We seek to master the mechanism’s intricate, fascinating functions: downloading and uploading, archiving and cataloging, monitoring readouts and notifications, watching time counts, streaming and pausing and skipping, clicking buttons marked with hearts or uplifted thumbs, checking Like totals. We become culture’s technicians. We become bureaucrats of experience. Managing the complexities of the interface provides an illusion of agency while alleviating the agony of choice.

What about the rise of amateur media production, abetted by sites like YouTube? That trend, at least, must be shifting us away from media consumption. Wrong again. As Bradley Bloch explained in a recent Huffington Post article, the ease with which amateur media productions can be distributed online actually has the paradoxical effect of increasing people’s media consumption far more than it increases their media production. “Even if we count posting a LOLcat as a creative act,” observes Bloch, “there are many more people looking at LOLcats than there are creating them.” Bloch runs the numbers on one oft-viewed YouTube entertainment: “One of the most popular videos on YouTube, ‘Charlie bit my finger—again!

It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. . . . It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.” Web 2.0 is “really a revolution.” Also part of the cover package is a fawning profile of YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. The duo, proclaims Time, are “the new demiurges of the online world.” Demiurges? Someone might want to tell Lev Grossman that the Great Man theory is still alive and well in the pages of Time. But it’s the cover, really, that contains the subtlest thinking in the issue.

pages: 482 words: 121,173

Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age
by Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne
Published 9 Sep 2019

Josh Fruhlinger, “Petya Ransomware and NotPetya Malware: What You Need to Know Now,” October 17, 2017, https://www.csoonline.com/article/3233210/petya-ransomware-and-notpetya-malware-what-you-need-to-know-now.html. Back to note reference 13. Greenberg, “The Untold Story of NotPetya.” Back to note reference 14. Microsoft, “RSA 2018: The Effects of NotPetya,” YouTube video, 1:03, produced by Brad Smith, Carol Ann Browne, and Thanh Tan, April 17, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=QVhqNNO0DNM. Back to note reference 15. Andy Sharp, David Tweed, and Toluse Olorunnipa, “U.S. Says North Korea Was Behind WannaCry Cyberattack,” Bloomberg, December 18, 2017, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-19/u-s-blames-north-korea-for-cowardly-wannacry-cyberattack.

“Charter of Trust,” Siemens, https://new.siemens.com/global/en/company/topic-areas/digitalization/cybersecurity.html. Back to note reference 24. Emmanuel Macron, “Forum de Paris sur la Paix: Rendez-vous le 11 Novembre 2018 | Emmanuel Macron,” YouTube video, 3:21, July 3, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tc4N8hhdpA&feature=youtube. Back to note reference 25. “Cybersecurity: Paris Call of 12 November 2018 for Trust and Security in Cyberspace,” France Diplomatie press release, November 12, 2018, https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/french-foreign-policy/digital-diplomacy/france-and-cyber-security/article/cybersecurity-paris-call-of-12-november-2018-for-trust-and-security-in.

Information about Challenge Seattle can be found at https://www.challengeseattle.com/. Back to note reference 40. CHAPTER 11: AI AND ETHICS Accenture, “Could AI Be Society’s Secret Weapon for Growth? – WEF 2017 Panel Discussion,” World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, YouTube video, 32:03, March 15, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i_4y4lSC5M. Back to note reference 1. Asimov posited three laws of robotics. First, “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” Second, “A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.”

We Are the Nerds: The Birth and Tumultuous Life of Reddit, the Internet's Culture Laboratory
by Christine Lagorio-Chafkin
Published 1 Oct 2018

“wasn’t on a glass cliff”: Noah Kulwin, “Reddit Chief Engineer Bethanye Blount Quits After Less Than Two Months on the Job,” Recode, July 13, 2015. “If the world ends”: Osnos, “Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich.” “Serendipity” and “Bullshit” “Reddit hasn’t been known”: “Behind the Scenes: Reddit’s New Mobile App” (Reddit), YouTube, April 7, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=196&v=6IWMbdAuy1M. r/The_Donald they shared a vocabulary: Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis, “Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online,” Data & Society, 2017. massive private-message threads on Twitter: Shawn Musgrave, “The secret Twitter rooms of Trump nation,” Politico, August 9, 2017.

“This bill would allow the government”: “Aaron Swartz: How We Stopped SOPA,” YouTube, August 17, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl0vHBsapBc. “a battle to define everything”: Ibid. “bunker-buster bomb”: Grant Gross, “Senator Threatens to Block Online Copyright Bill,” IDG News Service/PCWorld.com, November 19, 2010. Some, including Sony and Nintendo: Data from the Center for Responsive Politics lobbying database (example: www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientbills.php?id=D000042273&year=2011). “without bringing in the nerds”: “Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) on SOPA: ‘Bring in the Nerds,’” YouTube, December 20, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrrj9Wc2L84.

Spotify removed musicians deemed “hate bands” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and LinkedIn blocked a profile of the Daily Stormer. As mainstream sites such as YouTube and Facebook cracked down on high-profile proliferators of hate speech, the alt-right vowed to circumvent their gateways and create their own parallel Internet. More than a dozen alt-tech companies launched bizarro versions of mainstream sites, including PewTube, an alternative YouTube, WrongThink, an alt-Facebook, as well as GoyFundMe and Hatreon, alt-crowdfunding alternatives to GoFundMe and Patreon. Google booted Gab from its app store a week after the Charlottesville hate rally, and after the neo-Nazi publication the Daily Stormer’s domain registration was shuttered by GoDaddy and was reregistered on Google, Google blocked the registration, too.

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This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race
by Nicole Perlroth
Published 9 Feb 2021

Google’s project for the Pentagon and the ensuing backlash were also covered by my colleagues Scott Shane and Daisuke Wakabayashi for the Times: “A Google Military Project Fuels Internal Dissent,” April 5, 2018. For Google’s YouTube troubles, see my colleague Kevin Roose’s reporting in “The Making of a YouTube Radical,” New York Times, June 8, 2019. For an account of the problems with YouTube Kids, see Sapna Maheshwari, “On YouTube Kids, Startling Videos Slip Past Filters,” New York Times, November 4, 2017, which showed that videos encouraging suicide were slipping past YouTube’s filters. Morgan Marquis-Boire spent several hours, days even, sitting for interviews for this book in late 2016 and 2017.

The reference to Kevin Mitnick’s emergence in the zero-day exploit trade was sourced from Andy Greenberg’s September 24, 2014, Wired article, “Kevin Mitnick, Once the World’s Most Wanted Hacker, Is Now Selling Zero-Day Exploits.” A description of Immunity’s Canvas tool was adapted from Immunity’s own website, www.immunityinc.com/products/canvas. For further reading on the mass disappearance of Kurds in Turkey in the 1990s, see Human Rights Watch, “Time for Justice: Ending Impunity for Killings and Disappearances in 1990s Turkey,” September 3, 2012, www.hrw.org/report/2012/09/03/time-justice/ending-impunity-killings-and-disappearances-1990s-turkey. Some of the reporting in this chapter was also included in a comprehensive account of Dark Matter and NSO that I wrote with my colleagues Mark Mazzetti, Adam Goldman, and Ronen Bergman at the New York Times, “A New Age of Warfare: How Internet Mercenaries Do Battle for Authoritarian Governments,” March 21, 2019.

In the States, Google contracted with the Pentagon on a program—code-named Maven—to improve imaging for military drone strikes, prompting dozens of Google employees to quit in protest. Google’s advertising had long been a sore subject for the company, but after the 2016 election, it became clear that the company had profited off advertising on sites that peddled blatant disinformation and conspiracy theories. Google’s YouTube algorithms were radicalizing American youth, particularly angry young white men. Even YouTube Kids programming came under fire after journalists discovered that videos encouraging children to commit suicide were slipping through Google’s filters. And I would learn that Morgan Marquis-Boire, the hacker who had played such an integral role in Google’s 2010 attack, a person I had spent countless hours alone with, even days, had a much darker past than he had let on.

pages: 497 words: 123,778

The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It
by Yascha Mounk
Published 15 Feb 2018

But to slow or halt their spread, Facebook should stop accepting advertising dollars to boost such posts and change its algorithms to stop them from being displayed in a prominent position in the news feeds of other users. On the continued ability of hate speech groups to make money through advertising on platforms like YouTube, see Patrick Kulp, “Big Brands Are Still Advertising on YouTube Vids by Hate Groups—Here’s the Proof,” Mashable, January 26, 2017, http://mashable.com/2017/03/23/youtube-advertisers-hate-groups/#gqeCW7JsAOqk; and Charles Riley, “Google under Fire for Posting Government Ads on Hate Videos,” CNN Money, March 17, 2017, http://money.cnn.com/2017/03/17/technology/google-youtube-ads-hate-speech/index.html. 8. Gideon Resnick, “How Pro-Trump Twitter Bots Spread Fake News,” Daily Beast, November 17, 2016, http://www.thedailybeast.com/how-pro-trump-twitter-bots-spread-fake-news.

Campbell, “Self-Regulation and the Media,” Federal Communications Law Journal 51, no. 3 (1999): 711–772. 5. Victor Luckerson, “Get Ready to See More Live Video on Facebook,” Time, March 1, 2016, http://time.com/4243416/facebook-live-video/; and Kerry Flynn, “Facebook Is Giving Longer Videos a Bump in Your News Feed,” Mashable, January 26, 2017, http://mashable.com/2017/01/26/facebook-video-watch-time/#XvOsKlECZZqi. 6. @mjahr, “Never Miss Important Tweets from People You Follow,” Twitter blog, February 10, 2016, https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/a/2016/never-miss-important-tweets-from-people-you-follow.html. 7. The rapid progress of artificial intelligence is likely to facilitate the automatic detection of such harmful content in the near future.

Shear, “Once Skeptical of Executive Power, Obama Has Come to Embrace It,” New York Times, August 13, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/14/us/politics/obama-era-legacy-regulation.html?_r=0. 31. Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, It’s Even Worse than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism (New York: Basic Books, 2016). 32. Associated Press, “McCain Counters Obama ‘Arab’ Question,” YouTube, October 11, 2008, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrnRU3ocIH4. 33. Carl Hulse, “In Lawmaker’s Outburst, a Rare Breach of Protocol,” New York Times, September 9, 2009. 34. Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, David Vitter, and Mike Huckabee are among the Republican politicians who spread the birther conspiracy either explicitly or gave it implicit support.

pages: 523 words: 154,042

Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks
by Scott J. Shapiro

first personal computer: See Hal Stucker, “Among the Virus Thugs,” Wired, March 25, 1997, https://www.wired.com/1997/03/among-the-virus-thugs-2/. Ping-Pong virus: Ping-Pong A targeted floppy drives; Ping-Pong B infected the hard disk’s boot sector. For a demonstration of the Ping-Pong, see www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=52&v=yxHalzuPyi8&feature=emb_logo. “polymorphic virus engine”: Mark Washburn had written a polymorphic virus, known as 1260, as early as 1990. See Fridrik Skulason, “1260—the Variable Virus,” Virus Bulletin, December 1991. The 1260 was a variant of Vienna. genetic variations: Source code and documentation: https://github.com/bnjf/mte.

without a valid license: Steve Gorman, “Paris Hilton Sentenced to 45 days in Jail,” Reuters, May 4, 2007, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hilton/paris-hilton-sentenced-to-45-days-in-jail-idUSN0339694420070505. Confessions: Paris Hilton, Confessions of an Heiress: A Tongue-in-Chic Peek Behind the Pose (New York: Touchstone, 2006). “Everything I’ve done”: 06afeher, “Paris, Not France,” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeV_59Lz5fk at 33:46. Cameron was born: Telephone interview with Cameron LaCroix, March 18, 2022. (First interview with CL). The representatives usually reset the password: Christopher Null, “Hackers Run Wild and Free on AOL,” Wired, February 21, 2003, www.wired.com/2003/02/hackers-run-wild-and-free-on-aol.

Valencia, “Apologetic New Bedford Hacker Gets 4-Year Jail Sentence,” The Boston Globe, October 28, 2014, www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/10/27/new-bedford-computer-hacker-sentenced-years-federal-prison/XwXxwL0TGGfiLk9QimRQiM/story.html. suggested by the guidelines: Transcript, Case 1:14-cr-10162-MLW, Document 53, Filed September 2, 2019, 9. the Today show: NBC, “‘Paris, I’m Sorry,’ Says Cameron LaCroix: A Super-Hacker Interview,” YouTube, uploaded by z plus tv, November 6, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=sggPiw43WCA. he wrote in a public letter: Stephanie Merry, “Matt Lauer Breaks Silence: ‘To the People I Have Hurt, I Am Truly Sorry,’” The Washington Post, November 30, 2017. he had two more to go: Transcript, Case 1:14-cr-10162-MLW. Bill Barr announced: Attorney General William Barr, “Memorandum for the Director of Bureau Prisons,” March 26, 2020, https://www.bop.gov/coronavirus/docs/bop_memo_home_confinement.pdf; Ian MacDougall, “Bill Barr Promised to Release Prisoners Threatened by Coronavirus—Even as the Feds Secretly Made It Harder for Them to Get Out,” ProPublica, May 26, 2020, https://www.propublica.org/article/bill-barr-promised-to-release-prisoners-threatened-by-coronavirus-even-as-the-feds-secretly-made-it-harder-for-them-to-get-out.

pages: 404 words: 95,163

Amazon: How the World’s Most Relentless Retailer Will Continue to Revolutionize Commerce
by Natalie Berg and Miya Knights
Published 28 Jan 2019

Notes 1 Vena, Danny (2018) Amazon dominated e-commerce sales in 2017, The Motley Fool, 12 January. Available from: https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/01/12/amazon-dominated-e-commerce-sales-in-2017.aspx [Last accessed 12/6/2018]. 2 YouTube (2018) Jeff Bezos on breaking up and regulating Amazon (Online video). Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=85&v=xVzkOWxd7uQ [Last accessed 12/6/2018]. 3 Nickelsburg, Monica (2017) Chart: Amazon is the most popular destination for shoppers searching for products online, Geekwire, 6 July. Available from: https://www.geekwire.com/2017/chart-amazon-popular-destination-shoppers-searching-products-online/ [Last accessed 12/6/2018]. 4 Thomas, Lauren (2018) Amazon’s 100 million Prime members will help it become the No. 1 apparel retailer in the US, CNBC, 19 April.

Available from: http://www.startribune.com/best-buy-and-amazon-partner-up-in-exclusive-deal-to-sell-new-tvs/480059943/ [Last accessed 2/11/2018]. 2 Khan, Lina (2017) Amazon’s antitrust paradox, Yale Law Journal, 3 January. Available from: http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5785&context=ylj [Last accessed 7/7/2018]. 3 CNN (2018) Sen. Bernie Sanders: Amazon has gotten too big, YouTube, 1 April. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxDWoR_zaQ&feature=share [Last accessed 8/7/2018]. INDEX Note: Chapter notes are indexed as such page numbers in italic indicate figures or tables Ackerman, D (CNET senior editor) 218 Ahrendts, A (SVP of Apple Retail) 187, 199–200 AI and voice: the new retail frontier (and) 147–64 AI’s ability to improve ROI instore/online 161 supply chain complexity (and) 150–53 Amazon Go 152–53 ‘Just Walk Out’ technology system 152 the untapped potential of voice (and) 153–63 see also Alexa competitive landscape 160–63 first-mover advantage 154–55 retail technology smarts 158–60 voice as the next frontier 155–58 the value of recommendation 148–50 AI (artificial intelligence) 23, 133, 136, 139, 148–50, 161, 175, 237 AI-powered concierge GWYN (Gifts When You Need) 179 Aldi 33, 51, 122, 203 Alexa (and) 14, 20, 23, 32, 71, 77, 96, 97, 102, 136, 143, 147, 153–58, 160–61, 213, 217 see also research ‘Ask Peapod’ skill for 157 -based store customer service system (HIT Sütterlin) 180 in BMW and Toyota cars 161 Home Skills API 158 International 10, 19 see also McAllister, I prioritizes search results 125–26 top Alexa-enabled commands 155 voice-enabled Connected Home ecosystem 237 Alibaba (and) 39, 46, 63, 75, 76, 111, 135, 136, 230, 234–35 see also Alipay Ant Financial Services 183 Buy+VR mall 71 in China 150 China Smart Logistic Network (Cainiao) 234 food delivery app Ele.me 238 food delivery drones for China 238 Hema Supermarkets 183, 191 its market share in China 234 leases containers on ships 234 Logistics 234 ‘Singles Day’ shopping festival (2016) 150 AliPay 183, 214 AlixPartners 53 and underreported costs of trading online 72–73 Amazon (and) 63, 179–80 see also Alexa; Amazon Books; Amazon flops: Amazon’s grocery ambitions; Prime 2.0; Prime ecosystem; a private label juggernaut and WACD 3D printer patents 231–32 acquires Kiva Systems 229–30 acquires Quidsi 97 acquires Ring 237 acquires Whole Foods Market 3, 37, 82, 103, 235–36 advertising 124 ‘Amazon Prime Delivers More’ 216 AI development 237 AI framework DSSTNE 149 Air 231 Amazon.com 224 Amazon Remembers 173 ASOS: creating versions of trying before you buy 198 AWS 11, 14 Basics range 123 Body Labs 128 Business (Amazon Supply 2012–15) 232 Cash 39 Cash (US)/Amazon Top Up (UK) 39 checkout and payment strategy 215 China: ocean freight services 231 Cloud Cam security camera 237 cloud computing/storage services (AWS) 19 customer touchpoints – Alexa and Dash 96, 97 Dash 153 Dash Buttons 143–44, 147, 213 Dash replenishment scheme 96 Destinations 10 Echo 11, 14, 37, 71, 112, 121, 153–54, 237 Echo Look 128 Effect 5, 39, 46–47, 65, 212 see also retail apocalypse Elements brand 128 Family (Mom) 97 Fire 121 Fire Phone 140–41, 154, 173 Firefly app 140–41, 173 Flex 74, 223–24 Flex Android-based app 224 Flow (camera search feature) 173 Fresh 94–95, 124, 219, 223, 226, 227 and Solimo 124 Fresh Pickup 237 fulfilment strategy 235 Go 68, 152–53, 166, 182, 214 at inflection point 3 Instant Pickup 237 ‘Just Walk Out’ technology 152, 182 Key In-Car 237–38 Key in-house and in-car deliveries 237 Kindle 14, 20, 37, 140, 237 Fire HD device 173 Kohl’s, partners with 81, 233 Leadership Principles 9, 135, 137 leasing patterns 228 Local 10 Lockers 70, 77, 80, 208–09, 216, 237–38 see also lockers/collection lockers in UK and Europe 209 Logistics 224 logistics warehouse investment facilities 228–29 Maritime, Inc. and US Federal Maritime Commission operating licence 231 market share 234 Marketplace 142 the middleman 232 as number one destination for online product search 66 Pantry 219, 223 Pay 232 Pay with Amazon service 142–43, 147 Payments (online payments gateway) 213 Prime see subject entry refunds 234 Restaurants 219 returns process 233 Robotics 230 ‘SLAM’ line (scan, label, apply, manifest’ 223 Stellar Flex 232 Studios 20 Subscribe & Save 96 Super Saver 210 sues Barnes & Noble over ‘1-click’ patent 141–42 testing delivery drones in UK (Prime Air) 151 third Leadership Principle – ‘invent and simplify’ 136 top-performing clothing brands 127 see also reports Treasure Truck 236–37 truck drivers, first app for 231 as ultimate disruptor 21 Vine 125 Wand 213 working conditions 229 Amazon Books (and) 80–81, 80, 169–70 criticisms of store 169 its objective 170 pricing 81, 169, 213 utilitarian look and feel of 169 ‘The Amazon Effect’ 5 Amazon flops Amazon Destinations 10 Amazon Local 10 Amazon Wallet 10 Fire phone 10 Amazon Web Services (AWS) 135 an Amazon world – notes 1–4 Amazon’s grocery ambitions (and) 86–106 see also Amazon factors correlating to online grocery adoption and profitability 88 food: the final frontier and importance of frequency 90–92 2022: the online grocery tipping point?

Available from: https://www.morganstanley.com/ideas/millennial-boomer-spending [Last accessed 11/9/2019]. 50 Sarah Quinlan from Mastercard, speech at Shoptalk Copenhagen Oct 2017 based on Christmas 2016. 51 Farrell, Sean (2016) We’ve hit peak home furnishings, says Ikea boss, Guardian, 18 January. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/18/weve-hit-peak-home-furnishings-says-ikea-boss-consumerism [Last accessed 29/3/2018]. 52 Mastercard News (2017) Sarah Quinlan on how consumers choose experiences and services over goods (Online video). Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCiZqtSDumY [Last accessed 28/6/2018]. 53 Thompson, Derek (2017) What in the world is causing the retail meltdown of 2017? The Atlantic, 10 April. Available from: https://www.theatlantic.com/ business/archive/2017/04/retail-meltdown-of-2017/522384/ [Last accessed 29/3/2018]. 54 Cahill, Helen (2017) Debenhams boss shuns selling stuff, City A.M., 4 April.

pages: 276 words: 71,950

Antisemitism: Here and Now
by Deborah E. Lipstadt
Published 29 Jan 2019

lang=en; Tally Krupkin, “Linda Sarsour at Racial Justice March: ‘It Is Not My Job to Educate Jewish People That Palestinians Deserve Dignity,’ ” Haaretz, October 2, 2017; Debra Nussbaum Cohen, “Why Jewish Leaders Rally Behind a Palestinian-American Women’s March Organizer,” Haaretz, January 25, 2017; “Young Man Asks Challenging Question to Linda Sarsour—Here Is Her Response,” www.youtube.com/​watch?time_continue=436&v=uMisnUF14io. 22. “Nation of Islam,” Southern Poverty Law Center, n.d., www.splcenter.org/​fighting-hate/​extremist-files/​group/​nation-islam. 23. Elad Nehorai, “Memo to the Left: Denounce Anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan,” Forward, March 2, 2018. 24. https://twitter.com/​TamikaDMallory/​status/​970032405577961473. 25. www.instagram.com/​msladyjustice1/​?

Belew, Bring the War Home, pp. 237–38. 22. “ ‘Hail Trump!’: Richard Spencer Speech Excerpts,” Atlantic, November 21, 2016, www.youtube.com/​watch?v=1o6-bi3jlxk; “As Trump Disavows ‘Alt-Right’ Support, Critics Question If He Will Still Normalize White Supremacy,” Democracy Now, November 23, 2016. 23. Joseph Bernstein, “Alt-White: How the Breitbart Machine Laundered Racist Hate,” BuzzFeed, October 5, 2017; “Milo Yiannopoulos and White Supremacists at Karaoke,” www.youtube.com/​watch?v=XLNLPIRS62g. 24. Ben Shapiro, “The Breitbart Alt-Right Just Took Over the GOP,” Washington Post, August 18, 2016. 25.

Howard Jacobson, “Pox Britannia,” as quoted in Alvin H. Rosenfeld, ed., Resurgent Antisemitism: Global Perspectives (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), p. 37, n. 36. 14. Mass Tea Party—Wake Up America!, “Teaching Kids to ‘Shoot Jews’ Hamas TV Show Encourages Kids to Shoot Jews on the Record,” YouTube, May 8, 2014, www.youtube.com/​watch?v=Ck6TCQghpCE; Sharona Schwartz, “Hamas TV’s Bumble Bee Character Encourages Children to Do Some Disturbing Things to Jews,” TheBlaze, May 11, 2014. 15. Ryan Grenoble, “Brooklyn Coffee Shop Slammed after Owner’s Anti-Semitic Rant,” Huffington Post, October 2, 2014. 16.

pages: 241 words: 70,307

Leadership by Algorithm: Who Leads and Who Follows in the AI Era?
by David de Cremer
Published 25 May 2020

They are machines and, as such, not guided by outcomes that are value-driven or meaningful in light of our unique human identity. Rather, algorithms operate within a utilitarian framework which optimizes their actions. A great example of how utilitarian companies really employ their algorithms is the discussion surrounding how the YouTube algorithm makes recommendations to viewers. The metric that YouTube uses to decide on their recommendations for you as a customer (i.e. watch time) is not aimed at helping customers to get what they want, but rather to maximize their engagement – and, hence, make them addicted – without any other consideration.²¹⁰ Despite all the promising narratives floating around that AI will soon surpass human competence across the board, and as such that any human task will come into reach of algorithms (including leadership), reality shows a different face.

Microsoft – IDC Study: Artificial Intelligence to nearly double the rate of innovation in Asia Pacific by 2021. https://news.microsoft.com/apac/2019/02/20/microsoft-idc-study-artificial-intelligence-to-nearly-double-the-rate-of-innovation-in-asia-pacific-by-2021/ 209 Boston Consulting Group (2019). ‘The death and life of management.’ Retrieved from: https://www.bcg.com/d/press/18september2019-life-and-death-of-management-229539 210 Maack, M.M. (2019). ‘Youtube recommendations are toxic, says dev who worked on the algorithm.’ Retrieved from: https://thenextweb.com/google/2019/06/14/youtube-recommendations-toxic-algorithm-google-ai/ 211 Mitchell, M. (2019). ‘Artificial Intelligence: A guide for thinking humans.’ Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 212 Davies, B. Diemand-Yauman, C., & van Dam, N. (2019). ‘Competitive advantage with a human dimension: From lifelong learning to lifelong employability.’

Insights and trends from over 3,500 service leaders and agents worldwide. Retrieved from: https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2019/03/customer-service-trends.html 34 Hoffman, P. (1986). ‘The Unity of Descartes’ Man,’ The Philosophical Review 95, 339-369. 35 Google Duplex (2018). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5VN 56jQMWM Chapter 2: The Leadership Challenge in the Algorithm Age The machine age arrived a long time ago, but today’s need for the machine seems to know no limits. Modern machines need more room, more execution power and yes, maybe also the desire to lead. But who will they lead?

pages: 390 words: 108,171

The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos
by Christian Davenport
Published 20 Mar 2018

“That Professor Goddard”: “A Severe Strain on Credulity,” New York Times, January 13, 1920. Goddard responded by saying that: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/research/f_goddard.html. “How many more years”: “Apollo 11.” “Further investigation”: “A Correction,” New York Times, July 17, 1969. 9. “DEPENDABLE OR A LITTLE NUTS?” Musk was thrilled: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=CUmnzaDGifo. When the company was told: Irene Klotz, “SpaceX Secret? Bash Bureaucracy, Simplify Technology,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, June 15, 2009. When it was building Falcon 1: Jennifer Reingold, “Hondas in Space,” Fast Company Magazine, February 1, 2005. The rocket’s avionics: Ibid.

Now they had shown that rockets could fly not just up, but back down, landing with precision and reigniting interest in human space travel in a way not seen in decades. The landings had touched off celebrations not just at Blue Origin and SpaceX, but among their legions of growing fans, who watched the viral videos by the millions. It was the 1960s revisited, but on YouTube and Reddit, where the new space fans congregated the way enthusiasts once crowded Cocoa Beach along the cape. With unbridled enthusiasm, they cheered this new Space Age, just as their parents cheered John Glenn blasting off to orbit in a moment that eroded Walter Cronkite’s steely, newsman’s detachment.

When he founded SpaceX a lifetime ago in 2002, Musk was an unknown eccentric with a wild idea to privatize space that even he didn’t think would work. Now, he was a worldwide celebrity, Tony Stark in a Tesla, with a space company that had attracted a cultlike following that clicked on the company’s launch and landing YouTube videos by the millions. SpaceX had transcended corporate America the way NASA had once transcended government bureaucracy, becoming an institution of hope and inspiration. Now Elon—always the one name—was the new face of the American space program, the embodiment of exploration, a modern-day amalgam of JFK and Neil Armstrong, with 10 million Twitter followers.

pages: 661 words: 185,701

The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies and Finance
by Eswar S. Prasad
Published 27 Sep 2021

Decentralizing Jesus on the Blockchain,” Chain Why, https://www.chainwhy.com/upload/default/20180629/cc7814b402a92dd452854e8638a3082c.pdf. The promotional video, featuring “Jesus” himself trying to persuade investors to buy his cryptocurrency, ends with enthusiastic investors saying that Jesus Coin could be bigger than Bitcoin, to which Jesus responds, “Dad would be so proud”!, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=90&v=MgaDBYamU7g&feature=emb_logo. The price and market capitalization date for Jesus Coin are from “Jesus Coin,” CoinGecko, https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/jesuscoin/historical_data/usd?end_date=2021-01-02&start_date=2016-01-01#panel. See https://dogecoin.com/ for more information on the provenance of Dogecoin and to sign up.

Merkle patented the concept in 1982 (see Method of providing digital signatures, US Patent US4309569A, https://patents.google.com/patent/US4309569A/en), and the published version of the paper is Merkle (1988). The structure of the Merkle tree makes it easy to prove to others whether a particular transaction is or is not included in that large block. Here is a video that succinctly explains this process: YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0fruNfgW30, IOTA Tutorial 18, March 19, 2018. Note that, while the root is a compact representation of the full tree, the tree itself is twice as large as the data it contains in its leaves. As will be explained in more detail below, the root is part of the block header in the Bitcoin blockchain, while the leaves are in the block itself.

file=04092017_183512if2017-09-04T18_31_05.htm (in Russian). The official confirmation of the Buterin-Putin meeting is available at http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/54677. In a Q&A session at a conference in China in July 2017, Buterin describes his interaction with Putin as a one-minute meeting in which Putin did not say much: YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyBwRl-sDzs (at roughly the 2:55 mark). The orders issued by the Kremlin on October 10, 2017, are available (in Russian) at http://kremlin.ru/acts/assignments/orders/55899. The statement by Nikiforov is available at “Russia Is Considering an Official Cryptocurrency Called the ‘CryptoRuble,’ ” Business Insider, October 19, 2017, https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-is-considering-an-official-cryptocurrency-2017-10.

Machine Learning Design Patterns: Solutions to Common Challenges in Data Preparation, Model Building, and MLOps
by Valliappa Lakshmanan , Sara Robinson and Michael Munn
Published 31 Oct 2020

This seems like a reasonable reframing since our goal is to provide content a user will select and watch. But be careful. This change of label is not actually in line with our prediction task. By optimizing for user clicks, our model will inadvertently promote click bait and not actually recommend content of use to the user. Instead, a more advantageous label would be video watch time, reframing our recommendation as a regression instead. Or perhaps we can modify the classification objective to predict the likelihood that a user will watch at least half the video clip. There is often more than one suitable approach, and it is important to consider the problem holistically when framing a solution.

You can access this page at https://oreil.ly/MLDP. Email bookquestions@oreilly.com to comment or ask technical questions about this book. For news and information about our books and courses, visit http://oreilly.com. Find us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/oreilly Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/oreillymedia Watch us on YouTube: http://youtube.com/oreillymedia Acknowledgments A book like this would not be possible without the generosity of numerous Googlers, especially our colleagues in the Cloud AI, Solution Engineering, Professional Services, and Developer Relations teams. We are grateful to them for letting us observe, analyze, and question their solutions to the challenging problems they encountered in training, improving, and operationalizing ML models.

Suppose that the model is exported with a custom serving input function as described in “Design Pattern 16: Stateless Serving Function”: @tf.function(input_signature=[tf.TensorSpec([None], dtype=tf.string)]) def source_name(text): labels = tf.constant(['github', 'nytimes', 'techcrunch'],dtype=tf.string) probs = txtcls_model(text, training=False) indices = tf.argmax(probs, axis=1) pred_source = tf.gather(params=labels, indices=indices) pred_confidence = tf.reduce_max(probs, axis=1) return {'source': pred_source, 'confidence': pred_confidence} After deploying this model, when we make an online prediction, the model will return the predicted news source as a string value and a numeric score of that prediction label related to how confident the model is. For example, we can create an online prediction by writing an input JSON example to a file called input.json to send for prediction: %%writefile input.json {"text": "YouTube introduces Video Chapters to make it easier to navigate longer videos"} This returns the following prediction output: CONFIDENCE SOURCE 0.918685 techcrunch Saving predictions Once the model is deployed, we can set up a job to save a sample of the prediction requests—the reason to save a sample, rather than all requests, is to avoid unnecessarily slowing down the serving system.

pages: 1,261 words: 294,715

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
by Robert M. Sapolsky
Published 1 May 2017

The violence is key—aggression isn’t boosted by material that’s merely exciting, arousing, or frustrating. Heavy childhood exposure to media violence predicts higher levels of aggression in young adults of both sexes (“aggression” ranging from behavior in an experimental setting to violent criminality). The effect typically remains after controlling for total media-watching time, maltreatment or neglect, socioeconomic status, levels of neighborhood violence, parental education, psychiatric illness, and IQ. This is a reliable finding of large magnitude. The link between exposure to childhood media violence and increased adult aggression is stronger than the link between lead exposure and IQ, calcium intake and bone mass, or asbestos and laryngeal cancer.

Patrick Leigh Fermor obituary, Daily Telegraph (London), June, 11, 2011. For footage of the reunion with Kreipe, see “H AΠAΓΩΓH TOY ΣTPATHΓOY KPAIΠE,” uploaded by Idomeneas Kanakakis on October 21, 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zlUhJwddFU. For a documentary about the kidnapping and journey, see “The Abduction of Gengeral Kreipe.avi,” uploaded by Nico Mastorakis on February 25, 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN1qrghgCqI. 55. E. Krusemark and W. Li, “Do All Threats Work the Same Way? Divergent Effects of Fear and Disgust on Sensory Perception and Attention,” J Nsci 31 (2011): 3429. 56. Footnote: M.

* There is a great contemporary version of human ritualistic aggression, namely the haka ritual performed by rugby teams from New Zealand. Just before the game starts, the Kiwis line up midfield and perform this neo-Maori war dance, complete with rhythmic stamping, menacing gestures, guttural shouting, and histrionically threatening facial expressions. It’s cool to see from afar on YouTube (even better is watching the YouTube clip of Robin Williams doing a haka display at Charlie Rose on PBS), while up close it typically appears to scare the bejesus out of the other team. However, some opposing teams have come up with ritualistic responses straight out of the baboon playbook—getting in the haka-ers’ faces and trying to stare them down.

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The Rise of the Network Society
by Manuel Castells
Published 31 Aug 1996

File sharing and peer-to-peer (p2p) networks make the circulation, mixing, and reformatting of any digitized content possible. New forms of mass self-communication have originated from the ingenuity of young users-turned-producers. One example is YouTube, a video-sharing website where individual users, organizations, companies, and governments can upload their own video content. In July 2007, YouTube launched 18 country-specific partner sites and a site specifically designed for mobile telephone users. This made YouTube the largest mass communication medium in the world. Websites emulating YouTube are proliferating on the Internet, including Ifilm.com, revver.com, and Grouper.com. Tudou.com is one of China’s fastest growing and most popular video-hosting websites.

A Pew Internet and American Life Project study found that in December 2007, 48 percent of American users regularly consumed online video, up from 33 percent a year earlier. This trend was more pronounced for users under 30, 70 percent of whom visit on-line video sites. Thus, YouTube and other user-generated content web sites are means of mass communication. However, they are different from traditional mass media. Anyone can post a video in YouTube, with few restrictions. And the user selects the video she wants to watch and comment on from a huge listing of possibilities. Pressures are of course exercised on free expression on YouTube, particularly legal threats for copyright infringements and government censorship of political content in situations of crisis.

All in all, the average adult American uses 6.43 hours a day in media attention.27 This figure can be contrasted (although in rigor it is not comparable) to other data which give the figure of 14 minutes per day and per person for interpersonal interaction in the household.28 In Japan in 1992, the weekly average of television watching time per household was 8 hours and 17 minutes per day, up by 25 minutes from 1980.29 Other countries seem to be less intensive consumers of media: for example, in the late 1980s French adults watched TV only about three hours a day.30 Still, the predominant pattern of behavior around the world seems to be that in urban societies media consumption is the second largest category of activity after work, and certainly the predominant activity at home.31 This observation must, however, be qualified to truly understand the role of media in our culture: media watching/listening is by no means an exclusive activity.

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Transport for Humans: Are We Nearly There Yet?
by Pete Dyson and Rory Sutherland
Published 15 Jan 2021

A lot of effort has already been invested in making journeys faster, but the next leap forward in passenger experience will be to make them feel faster. This may be the closest any of us will get to time travel. A brief history of time travel Many civilizations have invented technology to track time: sundials, hourglasses, water clocks, pendulums and, more recently, clocks and watches. Time measurement has helped societies to coordinate labour and leisure time. As Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, commented in 1759 about a radical new technology: The sole use of watches, however, is to tell us what o’clock it is, and to hinder us from breaking any engagement, or suffering any other inconveniency by our ignorance in that particular point.1 Mass transport necessitated time management, and consequently it pioneered it.

The concept’s trial period in a Stockholm subway station saw 66% more people choosing the stairs.8 It has inspired dozens of replicas in universities, malls and hospitals around the world, proving that the healthy choice needn’t be the tiresome one.9 * * * 4 Colorado Department of Transportation. 2013. CDOT seeks reduction of project traffic delays. Report, 10 July, CDOT (www.codot.gov/news/2013-news-releases/07-2013/cdot-seeks-reduction-of-project-traffic-delays). Video explainer available on YouTube at https://youtu.be/dMnM_o2ZsaQ. 5 European Transport Safety Council. 2011. ETSC fact sheet – drink driving in Belgium. Report, January (https://archive.etsc.eu/documents/C.pdf). 6 Embassy of Portugal in Italy. 2016. How the expression ‘Do the Portuguese’ was born. Italian Embassy website, 10 November (https://bit.ly/3hlT3Hh). 7 The Economist. 2019.

Pod Parking began in 2011 with a fleet of twenty-one pods whisking up to 1,000 users a day along a 3.9 kilometre elevated guideway between the parking lots and Terminal 5. The system isn’t cheaper or faster than the shuttle bus but it is exceptionally reliable, uses 50% less energy and each pod arrives upon request in under a minute.11 The experience is eye-catching. By 2020, YouTube hosted five separate ride-a-long reviews that had over a million views each. Toilet humour This approach doesn’t always go over well. For example, toilet blockages cost Virgin Trains 18,000 lost toilet hours per year and a repair bill in excess of £182,000.12 To combat this problem, in 2012, when you locked the toilet door, you heard this: Toilet door locked.

Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America
by Sarah Kendzior
Published 6 Apr 2020

Howard Blum, “Exclusive: What Trump Really Told Kislyak After Comey Was Canned,” Vanity Fair, November 22, 2017, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/11/trump-intel-slip. 37.   Lennart Meri Conference, “Dealing with the White House: The Limits of Transactional Foreign Policy,” Tallinn, Estonia, May 31, 2017, https://youtube.com/watch?v=7J7G-bF2zlI. 38.   Sarah Kendzior, “Speech at the March for Truth in St. Louis,” June 3, 2017, https://sarahkendzior.com/2017/06/03/my-speech-at-the-march-for-truth-in-st-louis/. 39.   “Donald Trump Rally Speech in Denver, Colorado July 29, 2016,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2096&v=5Mg7UPLEX4I. 40.   Thom Hartmann, “Bill Barr—Cover-Up Artist,” Salon, January 20, 2019, https://www.salon.com/2019/01/20/bill-barr-cover-up-artist_partner/. 41.   

Cristina Maza, “Paul Manafort Briefed Russian Intelligence Member on ‘Battleground States’ that Nearly All Voted for Trump: Mueller Report,” Newsweek, April 18, 2019, https://www.newsweek.com/paul-manafort-russian-intelligence-kilimnik-collusion-trump-campaign-1400826. 30.   Charles Davis, “Jill Stein’s Recount Cash Pays for Her Russia Legal Defense,” Daily Beast, July 13, 2018, https://www.thedailybeast.com/jill-steins-recount-cash-pays-for-her-russia-legal-defense. 31.   “Sarah Kendzior Responds to Breitbart,” https://youtube.com/watch?v=1ZsJlLfGkkQ. 32.   Carole Cadwalladr, “Cambridge Analytica a Year On: ‘A Lesson in Institutional Failure,’” The Guardian, March 17, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-year-on-lesson-in-institutional-failure-christopher-wylie. 33.   BBC News, “Salisbury Novichok Poisoning: Russian Nationals Named As Suspects,” September 5, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-45421445. 34.   

Radiant Rest
by Tracee Stanley
Published 9 Mar 2021

Michael Grady, “A Practice of 61-Points to Sharpen Concentration,” Yoga International, https://yogainternational.com/article/view/a-practice-of-61-points-to-sharpen-concentration. 2. Swami Veda Bharati, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Volume 2, p. 763. 3. This is a video that we used in our training when we were unable to meet due to the pandemic. The students really loved it, and it gave them a very powerful experience of being under the stars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=1-YOlGoKxeM&feature=emb_title&ab_channel=4KUltraHDVideo. 9 · PRACTICE FOUR: THE LIGHT OF INNER KNOWING 1. Frawley, Ranade, and Lele, Ayurveda and Marma Therapy, loc. 1973 of 2939, Kindle. 2. Maheshkumar Kuppusamy, Dilara Kamaldeen, Ravishankar Pitani, and Julius Amaldas, “Immediate Effects of Bhramari Pranayama on Resting Cardiovascular Parameters in Healthy Adolescents,” Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research 10, no. 5 (2016): CC17–19. doi:10.7860/JCDR/2016/19202.7894. 3.

Rishikesh, India: Himalayan Yoga Publications Trust, 2007. ———. “Shiva Sankalpa Sukta,” Ahymsin. February 26, 2011. https://ahymsin.org/main/swami-veda-bharati/shiva-sankalpa-sukta.html. ———. “Yoga Nidra No. 1.” Lecture, 1:00:34. Filmed 2009. Posted by Panditji Tejomaya, November 30, 2015. www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_ee3q9cl1A. ———. Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. 2 vols. Honesdale, PA: Himalayan International Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy, 1984. ———. Yogi in the Lab. Rishikesh, India: Himalayan Yoga Publications Trust, 2006. Birch, Jason, and Jacqueline Hargreaves. “Yoganidrā: An Understanding of the History and Context.”

Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity
by Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods
Published 13 Jul 2020

Saxe, “Denying Humanity: The Distinct Neural Correlates of Blatant Dehumanization,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 147, 1078–1093 (2018). 89. N. L. Canepa, “From Court to Forest: The Literary Itineraries of Giambattista Basile,” Italica 71, 291–310 (1994). 90. C. Johnson, “Donald Trump Says the US Military Will Commit War Crimes for Him,” Fox News Debate, published online March 4, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/​watch?time_continue=9&v=u3LszO-YLa8. 91. B. Kentish, “Donald Trump Blames ‘Animals’ Supporting Hillary Clinton for Office Firebomb Attack,” The Independent (2016), published online October 17, 2016, http://www.independent.co.uk/​news/​world/​americas/​us-elections/​us-election-donald-trump-hillary-clinton-animals-firebomb-attack-north-carolina-republican-party-a7365206.html. 92.

Wilson, “Rage Against the Machines: Explaining Outcomes in Counterinsurgency Wars,” International Organization 63, 67–106 (2009). 78. Malcolm X with Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Grove Press, 1965). 79. E. Chenoweth “The Success of Nonviolent Civil Resistance” in TedX Boulder (2013). Published online, https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=YJSehRlU34w. 80. E. Chenoweth, M. J. Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). 81. M. Feinberg, R. Willer, C. Kovacheff, “Extreme Protest Tactics Reduce Popular Support for Social Movements,” Rotman School of Management Working Paper 2911177 (2017); B.

I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan
by Steve Coogan
Published 1 Sep 2011

(And for the record, Fernando shouldn’t have let it out of its cage in the first place.) And it was in my shell that I would stay for most of my time on On the Hour. To be honest, you’d find this unfriendly attitude across the whole BBC News and Current Affairs team. It saddened me because the department was populated by heroes of mine, faces I’d watched time and again on the news while eating my dinner: pork chops and gravy, beans on toast, hot pot, chicken pie and chips, maybe even a coq au vin, sometimes just a quick can of soup. Any meal, it doesn’t matter really. I’ve just realised I’m listing things I have for dinner when I should be listing faces I’d seen on the news.

People assume the episode must have profoundly affected me but I can honestly say it’s not something I ever think about. Move on. (You may now remove your Kevlar body armour.) 157 Press play on Track 30. 158 I’ve got a lot of time for Ireland. Its economy was known as the Celtic Tiger, which I loved. Then, of course, it hit the wall, much like that sleeping dog on YouTube. Very funny. Just type in ‘sleeping dog runs into wall’. If you don’t watch it about ten times back-to-back, there’s something wrong with you. I also like sneezing panda, keyboard cat, dramatic chipmunk, skateboarding dog, otters holding hands and ‘Don’t Taze Me, Bro’. 159 Each to his own and all that, but the idea of a man looking at my rock-hard buttocks and salivating makes me want to run home and dead-lock the doors.

That night, he’d had six pints of lager and half a bottle of wine – pretty much the sweet spot for his driving capability. To the untrained eye, he looked very, very drunk. To the trained eye, my eye, I know that he was fine to drive. So, having ruled out alcohol as a contributing factor in the crash, you have to ask who wanted Pete dead and how did they do it? I’m in the process of making a YouTube video about the case under the banner of ‘Alan Partridge scrutinises …’ (hopefully the first of many). Funnily enough, it’s the kind of case that would be perfect for a regional detective like Swallow.173 Pete was a massive fan of Swallow, perhaps seeing a little of himself in the rule-breaking cynic.

pages: 665 words: 159,350

Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else
by Jordan Ellenberg
Published 14 May 2021

Accessed at https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.00508. The introduction explains how traditional neural network architectures fail on this particular problem, and the main body of the paper suggests a possible fix. “I am convinced”: CBS, “The Thinking Machine” (1961), YouTube, July 16, 2018. David Wayne and Jerome Wiesner at 1:40 to 1:50 of the video compilation. Available at www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=154&v=cvOTKFXpvKA&feature=emb_title. solved a long-standing: Lisa Piccirillo, “The Conway Knot Is Not Slice,” Annals of Mathematics 191, no. 2 (2020): 581–91. For a nontechnical account of Piccirillo’s discovery, see E.

a 1970 paper: David Lewis and Stephanie Lewis, “Holes,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 48, no. 2 (1970): 206–12. reappears in 2014: https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=162056763&page=1. a Snapchat clip: The video has been reproduced in many online locations: for example, at metro.co.uk/2017/11/17/how-many-holes-does-a-straw-have-debate-drives-internet-insane-7088560/. shot a video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0tYRVQvKbM. No—you roll: Truth be told, among bagel makers there are those who snake and connect and those who make a dough ball and open up the middle, but definitely none who remove a hole from a fully baked no-holed pastry. “I recall above all”: Galina Weinstein, “A Biography of Henri Poincaré—2012 Centenary of the Death of Poincaré,” ArXiv preprint server, July 3, 2012, 6.

pages: 1,104 words: 302,176

The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World)
by Robert J. Gordon
Published 12 Jan 2016

Though less than half of American households had a DVR in October 2013,96 on average about thirty minutes per day was spent watching time-shifted TV.97 Table 12–1. Home Access to Media in 2011 Percentage of Households 1970 2011 Cell Phone 0 87.3 DVD Player 0 86.7 Internet at Home 0 77.1 Peronsal Computer 0 80.9 Satellite Dish 0 26.3 Video Game System 0 35 VCR 0 69.6 MP3 Player 0 45.3 HDTV Capable 0 69.8 DVR 0 41.3 Television 95.3 98.9 Source: “TV Basics” (2012). Another important development has been the emergence of online video streaming. From video sharing on YouTube to the copious movie and television offerings on Netflix, the number of viewing options has exploded, with people in full control of when, where, and what they watch.

Though e-mail continues to be indispensable for the many people whose jobs depend on exchanging files and web links, gradually e-mail has been replaced for communication by social media and social networking. The former creates social interaction among people in which they share or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks. Social networking is narrower, a platform to build relations among people who share interests, activities, or background. For instance, YouTube is largely a social media website on which the primary purpose is to view videos. LinkedIn is largely a social networking service or online social network, for its primary purpose is to help people connect with others in related businesses or fields of study. LinkedIn has become a worldwide network of business cards and has become a primary way for people, particularly young adults beginning their careers, to find and change jobs.

The Internet allows both good and bad ideas to travel around the world instantly, and the Internet can not only create revolutions like the Arab Spring, but also spread disillusionment and misleading information. There are other problems with the new world of constant connectivity. Teenagers, especially boys, have so much distraction available online that increasingly they have difficulty concentrating in school. Like anyone, instead of doing their homework, they can watch a YouTube video, check up on a friend’s Facebook page, or play video games with friends. Psychologists worry that this early exposure to the Internet can change human interaction, and school officials grow concerned about adopting technology without a strong positive effect on test scores and class engagement.

pages: 412 words: 121,164

Nomads: The Wanderers Who Shaped Our World
by Anthony Sattin
Published 25 May 2022

Notes In the Zagros Mountains, Iran 1.Deleuze, p. 73. 2.The Marriage of Martu, https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr171.htm Part I: The Balancing Act 1.www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/international-programs/historical-est-worldpop.html 2.King James Bible, 2:9. 3.Daily Mail, 5 March 2009, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1157784/Do-mysterious-stones-mark-site-Garden-Eden.html 4.Fernández-Armesto, p. 547. 5.Langland, p. 3. 6.Tolkien, p. 35. 7.Northwestern University, https://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2008/06/ariaaltribe.html 8.National Institute of Mental Health, https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder-adhd.shtml 9.Quoted in Daily Telegraph, 10 June 2008, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/3344025/ADHD-may-be-beneficialfor-some-jobs.html 10.Speaking to Jeremy Paxman on BBC Newsnight, 1999. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=220&v=FiK7s_0tGsg&feature= emb_logo 11.The Travels of Ibn Battuta, AD 1325–1354, vol. 1, ed. H. A. R. Gibb (Routledge, 2017), p. 145. 12.Herodotus, 3.38. 13.Inscribed on a clay tablet in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. 14.George, A. R., p. 49. 15.Ibid., p. 3. 16.Ibid., p. 2. 17.Ibid., p. 5. 18.Ibid., p. 8. 19.Ibid., p. 14. 20.Ibid., p. 16. 21.Chekhov, vol.

II, Essay IV, p. 20. 35.Stats from worldometers.info. 36.Anderson, p. 21. 37.Goldsmith, ‘The Deserted Village’, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44292/the-deserted-village 38.Marsden and Smith, p. 59. 39.https://songsfromtheageofsteam.uk/factories-mines/102-other-industry/97-bar004 40.Atkinson and Roud, p. 299. 41.Blake, p. 673. 42.Hansard, HC Deb, 10 July 1833, vol. 19, cc479–550. 43.O’Sullivan, pp. 426–30. 44.https://constitutionus.com/#a1s8c3, Article XIII, Amendment 13. 45.Thoreau, Walden, pp. 8–9. 46.Thoreau, Walking, p. 21. 47.Quoted in Schneider, pp. 108–9. 48.Thoreau, Indian Notebooks, p. 46. 49.US Fish and Wildlife Service. 50.Library of Congress, https://guides.loc.gov/indian-removal-act 51.Hämäläinen, p. 372. 52.Quoted in Lindqvist, p. 122. 53.Thoreau, Indian Notebooks, p. 7. 54.Ibid., p. 8. 55.Gros, p. 100. 56.Quoted in Novak, p. 44. 57.San Francisco Chronicle, 18 June 2019. 58.Rousseau, A Discourse on Inequality, p. 169. 59.Lee, pp. xcv–xcix. 60.Quoted in Olusoga, p. 398. 61.Quoted in Lindqvist, p. 140. 62.https://www.qso.com.au/news/blog/five-pieces-of-music-inspired-bythe-great-outdoors 63.Roth, pp. 23–7. 64.https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ernest-B-Schoedsack. 65.Schoedsack’s ‘tape letter’, 1960s or 1970s, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMLIn8UTQ-E 66.Ibid. 67.Commentary from the film Grass, 1922. 68.Sackville-West, Passenger, ch. 8. 69.Sackville-West, Twelve Days, p. 27. 70.Ibid., p. 66. 71.Ibid., pp. 67–8. 72.Ibid., p. 80. 73.Ibid., p. 90. 74.https://newint.org/features/1995/04/05/facts/ 75.Lorimer, 1955, p. 110. 76.Carson, p. 77. 77.Layard, vol. 1, pp. 487–9. 78.Herodotus, 3.38. 79.Bowlby, p. 293. 80.Chatwin, Songlines, p. 227. 81.The term appears in Matthew Syed’s Rebel Ideas. 82.Mackintosh-Smith, Arabs, p. 518. 83.Rimbaud, Une Saison en Enfer, p. 145. 84.Cavafy, ‘The City’, in Collected Poems, p. 22. 85.Cavafy, ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’, in ibid., p. 15.

pages: 209 words: 53,175

The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness
by Morgan Housel
Published 7 Sep 2020

Weart, “The Discovery of Global Warming,” history.aip.org/climate/cycles.htm (January 2020). (January 2020). 16 S. Langlois, “From $6,000 to $73 billion: Warren Buffett’s wealth through the ages,” MarketWatch (January 6, 2017). 17 D. Boudreaux, “Turnover in the Forbes 400, 2008–2013,” Cafe Hayek (May 16, 2014). 18 M. Pabrai, www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=200&v=YmmIbrKDYbw.. 19 “Art Dealers: The Other Vincent van Gogh,” Horizon Research Group (June 2010). 20 www.collaborativefund.com/uploads/venture-returns.png 21 “The Agony and the Ecstasy: The Risks and Rewards of a Concentrated Stock Position,” Eye on the Market, J.P.

pages: 1,324 words: 159,290

Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made
by Vaclav Smil
Published 2 Mar 2021

Images from the US Patent Office. Introduction of digital cable and HDTV with superior image resolution has not fundamentally changed the media’s long-established role but it has contributed to a further increase of average watching time. That daily rate grew from five hours per household in 1955 to the peak of nine hours in 2009–2010, and nearly a third of the increase in average watching time since the beginning of broadcasting to its peak took place during the first decade of the 21st century before it finally began to decline (Madrigal 2018). Despite widespread availability of internet and mobile phones, TV watching continued to grow for another 15 years before finally declining—or not, as a part of it has shifted to watching the same broadcasts on smaller portable screens.

In 2017 smartphone sales surpassed 1.5 billion units (Gartner 2018), and saturation may be reached at around 2 billion units. The economic and social impacts of increasing capacities for instant and affordable connection and communication have been greatly potentiated by the rise of new, highly addictive forms of electronic interaction. The choices range from millions of blogs and YouTube postings to Facebook interactions: by 2020 the company had more than 3 billion accounts worldwide (Facebook 2020. As the capacities for data flow increased, text had rapidly become a marginal component of these interactions, with the global traffic dominated by video and music streaming. Large and small conveniences and enormous information, organization, and learning benefits brought by these flows have been accompanied by many negative consequences.

H., 219 Williams, M., 211–12 windmills, 127–28, 132 window air conditioners, 142 wind turbines, 127–28, 274–75, 282 women adult female obesity, 106 fertility reduction’s impact on, 43 as in-home workers, 182–83 in labor force, 41, 43, 45, 181, 182f, 184–85, 192 life expectancy and longevity, 48, 50 wood energy cost of, 287–88 wood-to-coal transition, 16, 115–20 work-related travel (commuting), 63, 195–96 World Bank, 44, 161, 165 World Economic Forum, 279 World Wide Web, wireless access to, 199–203 World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Living Planet Report, 224–25 Wright, Orville, 172–73 Yemen, fertility rates, 264 Yoshida, Y., 94 Youngstedt, S. D., 226 YouTube, 203 Zipf, George Kingsley, 62f Zola, Émile, 4 zoomass, redistribution in, 84

pages: 242 words: 71,943

Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity
by Charles L. Marohn, Jr.
Published 24 Sep 2019

It was his idea to form a nonprofit named Strong Towns to explore the startling ideas we started to uncover in Pequot Lakes. 2 Jared Diamond, The World Until Yesterday: What We Can Learn from Traditional Societies (New York: Penguin Books, 2012). 3 http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/88/7/10-010710/en/. 4 http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/noncommunicable-diseases/diabetes/data-and-statistics. 5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=948&v=iEnmjMgP_Jo. 4 The Infrastructure Cult The point is that perfectly standard, mainstream economics makes a powerful case for much more infrastructure spending. And this needs to be said often.1 —Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize–winning economist The case for a substantially increased programme of public infrastructure is undeniable.2 —Lawrence Summers, former U.S.

pages: 292 words: 85,381

The Story of Crossrail
by Christian Wolmar
Published 5 Sep 2018

Digging Under London 1 Institution of Civil Engineers, Crossrail Project: Designing and Constructing the Elizabeth Line, London, May 2017, p. 24. 2 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8574619.stm 3 Gillian Tindall, The Tunnel Through Time: A New Route for an Old London Journey, Chatto & Windus, 2016, p. 15. 4 Institution of Civil Engineers, Crossrail Project, p. 23. 5 Ibid., p. 24. 6 Hugh Pearman, Platform for Design, Crossrail, 2016, p. 10. 7 Interview with author. 8 Institution of Civil Engineers, Crossrail Project, p. 48. 9 Email to author. 10 Institution of Civil Engineers, Crossrail Project, p. 38. 11 Ibid., p. 37. 12 Crossrail website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=150&v=vBkb1dS9QB4 13 Rail Technology Magazine, 23 July 2017. 14 Interview with author. 15 Tindall, The Tunnel Through Time, p. 14. 16 Email to author. 17 Institution of Civil Engineers, Crossrail Project, p. 38. 18 Ibid. 10. Stations for the Future 1 Interview with author. 2 Interview with author. 3 Interview with author. 4 Hugh Pearman, Platform for Design, Crossrail 2016, p. 11. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., p. 25. 7 Ibid., p. 26. 8 https://www.londonreconnections.com/2015/crossrail-progress-paddington/ 9 Interview with author. 10 Pearman, Platform for Design, p. 93. 11 Interview with author. 12 Interview with author. 13 Interview with author. 14 Railconnect, May 2012, p. 23. 15 Institution of Civil Engineers, Crossrail Project: Designing and Constructing the Elizabeth Line, London, May 2017, p. 57. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid., p. 62. 11.

pages: 347 words: 94,701

Don't Trust, Don't Fear, Don't Beg: The Extraordinary Story of the Arctic 30
by Ben Stewart
Published 4 May 2015

Okay, so the metropolitan elites in St Petersburg and Moscow might think it’s a bit hard sending those poor Greenpeace protesters to jail, or sending those girls playing their guitars to jail. But in the provinces people love that. Ivan and Masha out in the sticks, they’ll be loving this.’ ‘Really?’ ‘You bet.’ He looks at his watch. Time is up. ‘You have to go?’ ‘I’m afraid so.’ Ruth Davis folds her notebook. ‘Thank you so much.’ Sixsmith shrugs. ‘No problem. And don’t worry too much. He won’t keep them in for the Olympics.’ ‘No?’ ‘Well, he might. But if he does, he’ll regret it.’ The campaign is deliberately not talking about Russia’s Winter Olympics, which are scheduled to start in four months.

type=larn 65http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/10-reasons-to-take-action-to-stop-gazproms-pr/blog/46766/ 66Martin Sixsmith, Russia: A 1,000-year Chronicle of the Wild East (London, 2011), p. 510. 67Russia, p. 511. 68Russia, p. 511. 69Russia, p. 511. 70Charles Emmerson, The Future History of the Arctic (London, 2010), pp. 227–8. 71Russia, p. 511. 72Russia, p. 509. 73http://pages.uoregon.edu/kimball/Putin.htm 74http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/energy.htm 75http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/countries-lay-claim-to-arctic-in-battle-for-oil-and-gas-reserves-2087040.html 76http://origins.osu.edu/article/russia-and-race-arctic 77http://www.amnesty.org.uk/russia-crackdown-human-rights-lgbt-gay-law-protest-censorship-pussy-riot-sochi#.VCJuvFb4vwI 78http://segelreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/193757266-4e69c8ea-0547-4f60-a28a-ae07a21ea275.jpg 79http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/the-mothers-of-the-disappeared-want-the-arcti/blog/47004/ 80http://www.greenpeace.org/africa/en/News/news/Desmond-Tutu-joins-the-call-to-free-the-Arctic-30/ 81http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/press/releases/Eleven-Nobel-Peace-Prize-winners-write-to-Russian-President-Vladimir-Putin-over-Greenpeace-case/ 82https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xRT7wQiebw 83http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/17/russia-greenpeace-gazprom-idUSL6N0I73BV20131017 84http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/pete-willcox-high-seas-avenger-20140324 85http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/pete-willcox-high-seas-avenger-20140324 86http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/pete-willcox-high-seas-avenger-20140324 87http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/pete-willcox-high-seas-avenger-20140324 88http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis63.htm#1963selma1 89http://www.crmvet.org/info/lithome.htm 90http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilrights/al4.htm 91http://www.nps.gov/semo/historyculture/index.htm 92http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/28/newsid_4264000/4264241.stm 93http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/publication/2009/01/20090107151130srenod0.5167658.html#axzz3EDtsZjvF 94http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/pete-willcox-high-seas-avenger-20140324 95http://www.sciencephoto.com/media/152694/view 96http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/pete-willcox-high-seas-avenger-20140324 97http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/pete-willcox-high-seas-avenger-20140324 98http://www.academia.edu/1005097/The_Rainbow_Warrior_bombers_media_and_the_judiciary_Public_interest_v_privacy 99http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/jul/15/activists.g2 100http://www.academia.edu/1005097/The_Rainbow_Warrior_bombers_media_and_the_judiciary_Public_interest_v_privacy 101David Lange, My Life (Auckland, 2005), pp. 222–3, pp. 274–5. 102Terry Crowdy, Military Misdemeanours: Corruption, Incompetence, Lust and Downright Stupidity (Oxford, 2007), p. 246. 103http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/article1980551.ece 104http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2007/may/25/usnews.france 105http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/pete-willcox-high-seas-avenger-20140324 106Dear Comrade 107http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1059107.html 108http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-06/dutch-urge-release-of-greenpeace-crew-in-court-clash-with-russia.html 109http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2458302/DOMINIC-LAWSON-Putins-brute-Greenpeace-bigger-menace-future.html 110http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/article1323429.ece 111http://best-museums.com/russia/85-museum-crosses.html 112http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/anna-akhmatova 113http://www.spb.aif.ru/society/135936 114http://www.spb.aif.ru/society/135936 115http://articles.latimes.com/1999/oct/17/news/mn-23277 116http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/press/releases/Greenpeace-Current-draft-of-Russian-amnesty-does-not-include-Arctic-30/ 117http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/press/releases/Russian-parliament-votes-for-amnesty-for-Arctic-30/ 118http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/vladimir-putin/10527779/Vladimir-Putin-pardons-oil-tycoon-Mikhail-Khodorkovsky-in-Amnesty.html 119http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/19/russia-never-worked-edward-snowden-nsa-putin 120http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/7040 121http://www.ship-technology.com/projects/mikhail_ulyanov/ INDEX Akhan, Gizem, in SIZO-1, Murmansk 198 Akhmatova, Anna 277, 278 Alexander (lawyer) 243, 263 Alexei (inmate) 101, 108, 109–10, 211 imprisonment of 110 Allakhverdov, Andrey, in SIZO-1, Murmansk 110–11, 125 Amnesty International, Litvinov Sr alerts 86 Anders, William 1 Andrews, Iris 136 Andropov, Yuri 95 Anton (inmate) 282, 295, 305, 310, 311, 317 Arctic: ‘always been Russian’ 176 calls for sanctuary status of 346–7 as planet’s air conditioner 131 Russian platform in, see Arctic 30 activists/crew; Prirazlomnaya platform and Russian seabed flag 129, 170, 176 Arctic 30 activists/crew: accused of being CIA 49 and Amnesty Bill 329–33 bail applications for 290–1, 296–300, 302–4, 305–11, 319; granted, see individual activists/crew calls to Russian embassies for release of 134 campaign to free: apology statement drafted by 173–4; appeals launched by 155, 179–80; Christensen made leader of 51–2; and Christensen’s global sources 168; Emergency Day of Solidarity 134–5; further global action by 193, 296–7; Gazprom stations shut down by 139; global co-ordination by 136–7; global hubs of 135; London hub of 135–6; and UEFA Champions League game 137–9 charges against 204 eventual numbers calling for release of 346 families called from Arctic Sunrise by 53 hashtag devised for 50 initial interrogations of 57–8 Investigative Committee HQ arrival of 56 Investigative Committee tries to split 252 jail arrival of, Murmansk 68–9 jail arrival of, St Petersburg 276–7 jail sentences pronounced on 65–6 London homecoming of members of 335–6 Moscow march for release of 208 Murmansk arrival of 55–6 Nobel laureates’ plea for 199 piracy charges against 5, 58, 101, 109, 121, 147; hooliganism substituted for 204–6 post-release bonds among women of 323 post-release confinement of 328 Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights offers to act as guarantor for 263 at Prirazlomnaya protest 19–28 prison psychologist’s meeting with 119–20 prison transfer of 270–3, 275–6; prospect of 257–8, 260, 264, 267–9 Russian citizens complain about detention of 129 smuggled letters to and from 159–60 state broadcaster’s news reports on 110–11 supplies got to 162 thirtieth day of imprisonment of 193 Tutu’s letter concerning 198 see also Arctic Sunrise Arctic Sunrise: film footage of Russians’ raid on, see camera memory card, footage on FSB’s drugs-find claim concerning 189–93 guns fired towards 25–6, 28–9 ITLOS orders release of 322 Prirazlomnaya hailed by 21 Prirazlomnaya platform observed by 11–12 RHIBs launched from 11–12 Russian occupation of 31–41 Russians’ aggressive radio messages to 14 Russians disable comms systems of 37 towing of, to Murmansk 41–7 see also Arctic 30 activists/crew Argus 342, 348 Artamov, Andrey 8 Auden, W.H. 93 Ayliffe, Ben 33, 136, 172, 186–7, 289, 302, 306 and FSB’s drugs-find claim 190 ‘Babinski, Mr’ (smuggler) 160, 163, 205, 226 Ball, Phil: and Amnesty Bill 332 appeal of 181 bail application of 319; granted 321 camera memory card hidden and smuggled out by, see camera memory card, footage on cell of 73 jail arrivals of, see under Arctic 30 activists/crew jail sentence pronounced on 66 leaves Russia 334–5 and Mikhail Ulyanov 340, 347–8 at Prirazlomnaya protest, see under Arctic 30 activists/crew prison messages of 85, 102 release of, on bail 321–2, 325–6 and Russian seizure of Arctic Sunrise, see under Arctic Sunrise in SIZO-1, Murmansk 73, 75, 79, 85, 102, 144, 155–6, 202, 262; and cell searches 163; and Gulag Gazette 212–15; and ‘Why I am not a hooligan’ letter 205–6 in SIZO-1, St Petersburg, awaiting paperwork for release 321, 325 strip-searched 71 and Winter Olympics campaign design 172 see also Arctic 30 activists/crew Beauchamp, Jon, in SIZO-1, Murmansk 263 Beránek, Jan 297–8, 299, 302, 303, 306, 307–8 Bolshevik Revolution in 90 Boris (inmate) 7–10 passim, 109, 112–15, 122–3, 142, 148, 194–5, 202, 206, 251–2, 267–8, 269 charges against 6 described 5–6 Borman, Frank 1 BP: Deepwater Horizon platform of, see Deepwater Horizon platform Northstar drilling operations of 128 Brezhnev, Leonid 95, 96 Bronshtein, Lev 89 (See also Leon Trotsky) Brownell, Sonia 93 Bryan, Kieron: appeal of 181 camera memory card hidden by 45 cell of 71–2 described 71 and fellow inmate (Ivan) 72–3 girlfriend of (Nancy) 182 jail arrivals of, see under Arctic 30 activists/crew jail sentence pronounced on 66 leaves Russia 334–5 marriage of 343 at Prirazlomnaya protest, see under Arctic 30 activists/crew prison messages of 85 and Russian seizure of Arctic Sunrise, see under Arctic Sunrise in SIZO-1, Murmansk 71–3, 74–5, 79, 85, 100 Cairn Energy 127–9, 131 camera memory card, footage on 43–4, 155–6, 163–4, 181 Christensen downloads 182 handed to ‘Mona’ 181 handed to Rondal 182 shown to ITLOS Dutch delegation 261 TV stations transmit 261–2 Camp Artek 247 Chaplin, Charlie 244 Chilingarov, Artur 129–30, 176 Christensen, Mads, 128, 135, 137, 167–8, 185, 289, 290–1, 302–3, 306 and Amnesty Bill 331 bail amount proposed by 291 first, most urgent task of 52 and FSB’s drugs-find claim 190–1, 193 global sources run by 168 leadership of campaign to free Arctic 30 handed to 51–2 London HQ connection to office of 135 and Naidoo’s letter to Putin 186–8 Christensen, Nora 135–6 Chuprov, Vladimir 192 Cold War 244 Daily Mail 273–4 D’Alessandro, Cristian: at gunpoint 23 release of, on bail 315 Davies, Andrew 50 Davis, Ruth 136, 168–9, 173, 345 and Sixsmith 168–72 Day-Lewis, Cecil 93 Deepwater Horizon platform 83, 87, 127–8, 133 Desert Island Discs 342 Dillais, Louis-Pierre 247 Dolgov, Roman 8–10 appeal of 179–80; and judge’s silly antics 180 arrest of 8 bail application of 319; granted 321 calendar made by 144 described 76 jail sentence pronounced on 65 release of, on bail 321–2 and Russian seizure of Arctic Sunrise, see under Arctic Sunrise in SIZO-1, Murmansk 8–9, 10, 76–8, 115, 123–4, 144; video link from, to court appeal 180 in SIZO-1, St Petersburg 287 see also Arctic 30 activists/crew doroga (road), see SIZO-1 isolation jail, Murmansk Dubček, Alexander 94, 95 Dzerzhinsky, Felix 174 Dzhugashvili, Josef, see Stalin, Joseph Eells, Josh 246, 249 Esperanza 128 European Parliament, call of, for Arctic sanctuary 347 Exxon 87 Fainberg, Viktor 95 Federal Security Bureau (FSB) 50, 55, 121, 147, 239–40, 291 drugs-find claim of 189–93 Litvinov interviewed by 207–11, 252–5 and possible raid on Greenpeace office 185–6 Putin appointed to head 175 suspected false intelligence from 168 see also Russia Fedotov, Mikhail 263, 287–8 Finland, call of, for Arctic sanctuary 347 First Circle, The (Solzhenitsyn) 92 French secret service 15 Gagarin, Yuri 247 Galich, Aleksandr 94 Gazprom 8, 16, 131–2, 344 campaigners shut down stations of 139 continuing demonstrations against 197–8 Izvestia owned by 257 lies from 49 as proxy for Kremlin 137 Putin congratulates 339–40 TV channel owned by 87 and UEFA Champions League game 137–9 Germany, Nazi government in 91 Gold, Nina 122, 147, 148–9, 195, 251, 311, 329, 343 Golitsyn, Vladimir 261 Gostev (security official) 255–6 Greenpeace: and Amnesty Bill 329 Arctic Sunrise’s occupation communicated to 42 Cairn campaign of, see Cairn Energy campaign of, to free Arctic 30, see Arctic 30 activists/crew: campaign to free crew’s relatives contacted by 44 growth of, in size and scope 248–9 Hewetson’s history of sailing with 12 initial actions of, after Arctic Sunrise occupation 49–51 lawyers assembled by 50 Mail article on 273–4 North Pole sanctuary plan of 130 possible bugging of 51 possible raid by FSB on 185–6 Putin furious with 168 TV programme’s claims against 87 youth movement pickets office of 198–9 Gulag Archipelago, The (Solzhenitsyn) 276–7 Gulag Chronicle 212–18, 226 Gulag Gazette 212–15 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, see Deepwater Horizon platform Gumilev, Lev 277 Hamilton, Neil 136, 167 Harper, Stephen 130 Harris, Alex: in Amazon 83 appeal of 183 bail granted to 310 becomes Greenpeace volunteer 83 cell of 70–1 email to parents from 29–30 in Galápagos Islands 83 jail arrivals of, see under Arctic 30 activists/crew jail sentence pronounced on 66 leaves Russia 334–5 parents called from Arctic Sunrise by 53 prison transfer of, see under Arctic 30 activists/crew and Russian seizure of Arctic Sunrise, see under Arctic Sunrise in SIZO-1, Murmansk 70–1, 78–9, 81–4, 116–17, 124–5; ‘curling tongs’ sent to 162, 163; Speziale’s tapping code with 84, 145, 204 in SIZO-5, St Petersburg 282–3, 299–300 SIZO-5, St Petersburg 285–6 strip-searched 70 tweet of 38–9 Willcox’s reunion with 319 see also Arctic 30 activists/crew Harris, Cliff 82, 183 Harris, Lin 82 Haussmann, David 65 Hewetson, Frank: and Amnesty Bill 333 arrest of 8 bail granted to 311 and Cairn Energy 129 ‘Colonel’ sobriquet of 13 diary entries of: post-release 328–9, 333, 335, 342–4; in SIZO-1, Murmansk 156–7, 159, 193, 194–5, 197, 202–3, 206–7, 251–2, 267; in SIZO-1, St Petersburg 281–2, 295, 305, 309–10, 311, 317 and father’s wartime experiences 196 grappling hook skewers 12–13 jail arrivals of, see under Arctic 30 activists/crew jail sentence pronounced on 87 leaves Russia 335 memory stick hidden by 45 other activists blame 272–3, 275, 281–2, 328 panic attack suffered by 6, 149–54 piracy charge put to 120 plane’s take-off blocked by 12 post-release diary entries of 328–9, 333, 335, 342–4 post-release family reunion for 329 postponement of hearing concerning 67 power stations broken into by 12 Prirazlomnaya platform observed by 11–12 at Prirazlomnaya protest, see under Arctic 30 activists/crew prison transfer of, see under Arctic 30 activists/crew release of, on bail 317–19 ‘review’ of prison by 220–2 Russian commandos kick 33 and Russian seizure of Arctic Sunrise, see under Arctic Sunrise in SIZO-1, Murmansk 5–10, 100, 101–2, 109, 112–15, 119–23, 142, 147–50, 154, 219–20; and Arctic Sunrise film footage 262; diary entries of 156–7, 159, 193, 194–5, 197, 202–3, 206–7, 251–2, 267; Popov’s interview with 220–3 in SIZO-1, St Petersburg 280–2, 317–19; British consuls visit 292–3; diary entries of 281–2, 291, 295, 305, 309–10, 311, 317 Sunrise crew first met by 15–16 suspicious hotel man followed by 325–6 tuna protest of 13 US bans 12 and Valium 5, 6 wife’s letter to 147, 148–9 see also Arctic 30 activists/crew Hewetson, Joe 195, 206, 251, 329, 342, 343 Hewetson, Michael 195–7 Hewetson, Nell 195, 206, 311, 329, 342, 343 Hitler, Adolf, Molotov signs pact with 91 House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) 244–5 Human Rights Watch, Litvinov Sr alerts 86 Hurricane (RHIB) 20, 23–4 in SIZO-1, St Petersburg, officials’ tour of 285–6 Independent on Sunday 221 International Herald Tribune 93, 256 International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, Kremlin contemptuous of 263–4 International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) 155, 260–1, 263, 290, 322 ITLOS, see International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea Ivan (inmate) 72–3, 74–5, 79, 269 Izvestia 255–7 Jensen, Anne Mie, release of, on bail 313–14 Kenyon, Laura 185, 191 Khodorkovsky, Mikhail 64, 176, 330, 345 King, Martin Luther 245–6 Kopelev, Lev 91–2, 93, 94, 97, 300 Korean War 244 Kresty jail, see SIZO-1, St Petersburg Kulluk platform 132 Ladoga 11, 12, 20 Arctic Sunrise challenged by 21 Saarela and Weber detained on 26–7 shots fired by 25–6, 28–9 Larisa (lawyer) 178–9 Lawson, Dominic 273–4 Lenin, Vladimir 89 Lenin’s Tomb (Remnick) 96 Leonid (inmate) 75 Liddle, Rod 274 Litvinov, Anitta 97, 226, 300 Litvinov, Dimitri (Dima): bail application of 320; granted 321 border guard’s exchange with 334 boss cell’s circular to 103–4 described 13 exile childhood of 96 father compares protests of, with own 344 father discovers fate of 86–7 fist of fear felt by 143 grandfather of, see Kopelev, Lev great-grandfather of, see Litvinov, Maxim homophobia fears of 54 initial interrogation of 57–9 jail arrivals of, see under Arctic 30 activists/crew jail sentence pronounced on 87 Kresty governor’s gift to 321 leaves Russia 333–4 letter of, to son 300–1, 309 other activists blame 272–3, 281–2, 328 piracy charge put to 58–9 postponement of hearing concerning 67 previous arrests of 46, 274 Prirazlomnaya hailed by 21 prison transfer of, see under Arctic 30 activists/crew release of, on bail 321–2 and Russian seizure of Arctic Sunrise, see under Arctic Sunrise Siberia upbringing of 13 in SIZO-1, Murmansk 99–108, 109–10, 141, 143, 207–12, 252, 257–60; and discovered letters 225–8, 240–1; and FSB 207–11, 252–5; letters smuggled from 161; library discovered by 143; messages of 102; Popov’s interview with 232–41; and prison psychologist 227–8; and punishment cell 229–32; and radio report heard in cell 60–1; and smoking 211–12 in SIZO-1, St Petersburg 279–80, 287–8, 300–1, 309 smoking quit by 343 strip-searched and fingerprinted 60 US move of 97 see also Arctic 30 activists/crew Litvinov (née Low), Ivy 90 Litvinov, Lara 97 Litvinov, Lev 97, 230, 300–1 Litvinov, Maxim 89, 90–1 Litvinov (née Kopelev), Maya 93, 96 US move of 97 Litvinov, Pavel 85–7, 92–8, 320, 323–4, 344–5 and FSB’s drugs-find claim 192–3 Izvestia letter of 255–6 and KGB 93, 95, 96, 255–6 and son’s bail application 319–20 tried and convicted 95–6, 344 US move of 97 Lost Child of Philomena Lee, The (Sixsmith) 169 Lovell, Jim 1 McCarthy, Joe 244 McCartney, Paul 199–200 Maciel, Ana Paula 303–4 bail application of 305–6; granted 306 release of, on bail 312 Mafart, Lt Col.

pages: 372 words: 92,477

The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State
by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge
Published 14 May 2014

William Baumol, an American economist, argued that it was impossible to reduce the size of the state because it is concentrated in labor-intensive areas, such as health care and education, where spending will continue to rise faster than inflation. Productivity in the public sector has indeed been dire. But computers and the Internet are beginning to do for services what machines did for agriculture and industry. You can now watch the world’s best lecturers for free on your iPad instead of having to pay good money to watch time-servers in smelly lecture halls. Championing the cause of better management should be completely apolitical. Who doesn’t believe in providing young children with a good start in life? Or old people with a decent retirement? It is unlikely to be that way, because the prime obstacles to modernization are often public-sector unions, be they America’s teachers or France’s railway workers, which are closely allied with parties of the Left.

New technology encourages more efficient teaching methods. Schoolteachers can “flip the classroom”: record their bread-and-butter lessons so that students can watch them at home and then use the classroom for personal instruction. It even provides personal tutoring for nothing. In 2004 Salman Khan made a series of videos and posted them on YouTube to help tutor his extended family. The videos soon acquired millions of fans (including Bill and Melinda Gates, who used them to tutor their own children): Khan is an excellent tutor and you can stop and rewind the videos if you want to go over the material again. The Khan Academy now serves more than four million students a month, ranging from the children of billionaires to the children of day laborers, and provides more than three thousand lessons ranging from simple arithmetic to calculus and finance.

pages: 323 words: 94,683

The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You
by Elaine N. Aron
Published 1 Dec 2013

• Deeply affected by other people’s moods and emotions. Of course, there are many exceptions, especially to our being conscientious. And we don’t want to be self-righteous about this; plenty of harm can be done in the name of trying to do good. Indeed, all of these fruits have their bruised spots. We are so skilled, but alas, when being watched, timed, or evaluated, we often cannot display our competence. Our deeper processing may make it seem that at first we are not catching on, but with time we understand and remember more than others. This may be why HSPs learn languages better (although arousal may make one less fluent than others when speaking).

There have been articles about high sensitivity in many prominent media throughout the world. In the U.S., that has included a feature in Psychology Today, a shorter discussion in Time, and many women’s and health magazines such as O Magazine as well as numerous health websites. There are “HSP Gatherings” and courses on the subject in the United States and Europe, plus YouTube videos, books, magazines, newsletters, and websites and all sorts of services exclusively highly sensitive persons—most good and some, well, not as good. Tens of thousands subscribe to my own newsletter, Comfort Zone, at hsperson.com, where there are now hundreds of newsletter articles archived covering every aspect of being highly sensitive.

pages: 778 words: 239,744

Gnomon
by Nick Harkaway
Published 18 Oct 2017

A woman binds me to a tree in a black desert and rails at me for sins I have not practised. That I know of. I spit back at her, whatever comes into my head. She commands the earth, and the pain is exquisite. She’s looking for something I don’t have. She does not believe me. I kill the boy in the box and try to find it. Something drives me away. I hang in salt water and watch time itself fall away into the depths. Endless depths and endless time, and a cool water that is for ever, a paradise of now. I hang, and exist in that instant. I glide away into the dark. I eat the man. I leave him be. I don’t change my mind. My mind changes. Or perhaps someone else changes it for me.

There was no but. This was her pitch. Not someone like me: me. ‘I don’t know anything about computers.’ ‘You don’t need to. You design. We’ll build. But you’ll pick stuff up! I solemnly swear,’ she raised her hand, ‘that by the end of this process you will be fluent in the magic of email, Google and YouTube. You will speak the tongues of Adobe. After that, everything else is incremental. The fear goes away because you’re doing stuff. Doing is learning. And Dad will be in awe.’ ‘How big is your world?’ ‘The environment? About the size of London, at a resolution roughly equivalent to the human eye.’ A whole city.

Michael was pleased with me: proud and amused as much as bemused – though Lord knows, his daughter becoming a multimillionaire in her twenties must have been a little startling. The game was a phenomenon. You could choose not to play it – but by the end of the year, you couldn’t claim not to have heard of it. Then one afternoon Annie was asked, in an interview with a small YouTube channel run by a friend, whether she thought women and particularly women of colour were still under-represented in games. She laughed, and said that, given that they were people of colour, and particularly female people of colour, she didn’t see how in a global society still obedient to a tiny minority of rich white men they could be anything but under-represented.

pages: 350 words: 109,521

Our 50-State Border Crisis: How the Mexican Border Fuels the Drug Epidemic Across America
by Howard G. Buffett
Published 2 Apr 2018

Retrieved October 14, 2017, from https://apnews.com/967208c49e3d4e7ea6a9453076ae3ec7/city-says-drugmaker-knowingly-let-pills-flood-black-market. 12 Quinones, S. (2015). Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic. New York: Bloomsbury Press. 13Deutsche Welle (2016, December 2). Mexican Cartels Shift to Heroin for US Market. Retrieved January 26, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=Ec9PMHCFpjI. 14 National Institute on Drug Abuse. (2017, August). What Are Marijuana’s Long-Term Effects on the Brain? Retrieved October 14, 2017, from https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/marijuana/what-are-marijuanas-long-term-effects-brain. 15 Kennedy, M. (2014, December 19).

pages: 382 words: 114,537

On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane
by Emily Guendelsberger
Published 15 Jul 2019

To do this, Taylor used a relatively new technology—the affordable, accurate stopwatch—to measure and analyze previously subjective tasks. It was the birth of literal micromanagement. First, Taylor would pull the best, strongest “first-rate men” and pay them extra to work as fast as possible while he watched, timing their motions to fractions of a second. From this, he’d determine the “one best way” of doing a task, use that to calculate how much a first-rate man should be able to do in a day, then use that to calculate a new piece rate for all workers. Taylor generally set his new rates somewhere between “extremely ambitious” and “ludicrous,” which might explain why everyone hated him.

The silicon computer chip was invented in the late ’50s, but it took until 1971 for Intel to come out with the first widely successful commercial version. What would Taylor think of all this? is another hypothetical to distract myself with. My scanner gun is his vision incarnate—my own personal stopwatch and pitiless robo-manager rolled into one. Amazon’s system constantly watches, times, deskills, and micromanages hundreds of thousands of workers in real time, all day, every day. Would Taylor be horrified that his fears about the abuse of his ideas had come true? Or would he jizz in his pants? I force myself to keep walking through those first weeks at SDF8. And, as the nice blue-badge lady promised, it does start to get a little easier.

A small mushroom cloud takes out your birdbath. Ten seconds before midnight, Wanda walks on the moon. She then invents birth control pills, the microprocessor, personal computers, cell phones, the Big Mac, and the internet. Five seconds to midnight, Wanda’s gotten herself a laptop, wireless internet, a smartphone, Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Amazon. At one second to midnight, Wanda’s made self-driving cars, Tinder, and commercial space flight. The society Wanda’s built in your backyard is, for this single second, identical to the one you live in right now. By the time the clock finishes striking midnight, Wanda will have technology you can’t even imagine.