Weekend Reads (Sep 3): Truth Social, Twitter, Fall Previews, Pastor Scandals
Recommended weekend reading for September 3, 2022.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.
Truth Social, aka, Donald Trump’s attempt at creating a Twitter clone, officially launched in February after a rocky rollout and development process. However, the platform still faces ongoing controversies, including financial losses and accusations from unpaid vendors.
Further illuminating the social platform’s financial woes, Fox Business Network reported on Thursday that Truth Social is locked in a bitter battle with its vendor, RightForge, and is accused of stiffing the hosting service out of $1.6 million in contractually obligated payments.
Three people with direct knowledge of the matter told Fox Business Network that Truth Social made just three payments to RightForge for its web hosting services and stopped making payments in March.
A Trump-associated business acting in an unscrupulous manner? I don’t believe it. (At this point, if you go into business with Trump, maybe you deserve whatever you get. Or don’t get, as the case may be.)
Related: Truth Social has been successful in one thing: supporting and promoting QAnon, i.e., the conspiracy theory/cult that claims Trump is leading the fight against a secret cabal of cannibalistic, sex-trafficking, Satan-worshiping liberals who’ve taken over the government.
Also related: The Truth Social app is currently unavailable for Android users because of concerns over its content moderation (or lack thereof).
Truth Social isn’t the only social media platform with issues, however. Earlier this year, Twitter was considering a new feature — monetizing adult content — to compete with OnlyFans. There was just one problem: Twitter doesn’t have the resources to deal with illegal sexual content.
“Twitter cannot accurately detect child sexual exploitation and non-consensual nudity at scale,” the Red Team concluded in April 2022. The company also lacked tools to verify that creators and consumers of adult content were of legal age, the team found. As a result, in May — weeks after Elon Musk agreed to purchase the company for $44 billion — the company delayed the project indefinitely. If Twitter couldn’t consistently remove child sexual exploitative content on the platform today, how would it even begin to monetize porn
Launching [Adult Content Monetization] would worsen the problem, the team found. Allowing creators to begin putting their content behind a paywall would mean that even more illegal material would make its way to Twitter — and more of it would slip out of view. Twitter had few effective tools available to find it.
I use Twitter every day, but if it suddenly shut down and disappeared tomorrow, I wouldn’t shed a single tear.
One can’t help but wonder if a lot of today’s tech-related controversies are due, in part, to the tech industry’s fixation on disruption. But Paul Ford’s had enough of disruption.
The world of technology is infinite and exhausting, and everyone will tell you their giant thing is the real next thing. But you can always see the big, boring, true future of the field by looking at the on-ramps — the code schools, the certificate programs, the “master it in 30 days” books. One year everyone was learning Rails at coding boot camps. Then it was JavaScript. Then many of the boot camps closed, and now it's DevOps (software development plus IT operations). These are the things the industry needs right now, on a two- to five-year horizon. And stick around long enough and you'll find a lot of old Unix code and Java beneath the new stuff — dull systems, a stable stack of technologies so reliable that we forget them.
Via Frosted Echoes.
Disruption is definitely a thing in web development. Every week, it seems, I read about some new language, framework, build tool, or coding technique that promises to be the best. Thing. Ever. But in my experience, simplest and basic is best, which is why I will always advocate for the “Rule of Least Power.”
Fall is right around the corner, and the good folks at Treble have compiled a list of their most anticipated albums of the season, including new releases from Björk, Built to Spill, Brian Eno, Junior Boys, and Beth Orton. Pitchfork has published a similar list.
Similarly, Polygon has released their “rest of 2022” preview, including upcoming anime titles, video games, TV shows, and sci-fi/fantasy novels.
Finally, here are all of the original movies coming to Netflix for the rest of 2022 (and beyond). Personally, I’m most looking forward to Enola Holmes 2 and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.
Upon its release in 2017, The Last Jedi quickly divided fans. Some felt it ruined Star Wars and Luke Skywalker while others felt it expanded the franchise in some interesting ways. Five years after its release, writer/director Rian Johnson reflects on the film.
In a major new Empire interview, Rian Johnson looks back on The Last Jedi for its fifth anniversary, reflecting with a few years’ distance on his episode in the Skywalker Saga. “I’m even more proud of it five years on,” he says. “When I was up at bat, I really swung at the ball.” The film, he says, is not just a Star Wars movie — it’s a movie about Star Wars, and what it means to fans (himself included). “I think it’s impossible for any of us to approach Star Wars without thinking about it as a myth that we were raised with, and how that myth, that story, baked itself into us and affected us,” Johnson explains. “The ultimate intent was not to strip away — the intent was to get to the basic, fundamental power of myth. And ultimately I hope the film is an affirmation of the power of the myth of Star Wars in our lives.”
I enjoyed The Last Jedi (read my review). It’s not without flaws, but it challenged the Star Wars status quo, explored the meaning and value of myths, and ended with one of the most poignant and wonder-filled scenes of any Star Wars title — a scene that suggested and celebrated an even bigger Star Wars galaxy.
And then we got The Rise of Skywalker (read my review), an exhausting film that ditched all of that wonder to play it safe.
Amazon’s The Rings of Power has garnered considerable critical acclaim with its first two episodes, but according to Rotten Tomatoes, fan approval is much lower — a sign that the series is possibly being review-bombed. And Richard Newby thinks he knows why.
For the past week, I’ve been bombarded with messages of hate, called the N-word, told to go back to Africa, and called on to be executed. The reason? The Lord of the Rings. It would almost be laughable if it wasn’t so profoundly sad. A wealth of stories, and a willingness to believe in wizards, Balrogs, giant spiders and magical swords. But allow people of color to exist in Middle-earth? Well, that is an affront to all that’s good and decent. At least that’s the primary argument for those ruinous trolls apparently review bombing and harassing fans of color over Amazon’s Rings of Powers series.
Tom Nichols explains why Superman is still America’s greatest superhero.
Superman, who is as corny as Kansas in August, is a study in what happens when ultimate power is constrained by self-discipline and virtue. In the 1978 movie, a young Clark Kent complains to his father about hiding his powers, and about how, if he went out for the football team, he could win every single time. His father, played by Glenn Ford, reassures him that there is more to life: “You are here for a reason. I don’t know whose reason, or whatever the reason is … But I do know one thing. It’s not to score touchdowns.”
It’s a wonderful moment, in which a father gently guides a teenager toward wisdom and responsibility. Imagine if any of us woke up and found that we were able to fly, that we were invulnerable even to nuclear blasts, that we could laser anything we don’t like into ashes by just staring real hard. Would we have the foundation of character, of patriotism, of self-control to use our gifts in the service of our country and the human race? Or would we end up like Homelander, a sadistic, insecure (and very dangerous) bully whose credo is “I can do whatever I want”?
Superman can do whatever he wants, too, but he doesn’t. He was raised better than that.
The Internet Archive’s Live Music Archive turned twenty this week.
In July 2002, Jon Aizen, a software engineer at the Internet Archive and live music enthusiast, proposed to Brewster Kahle the idea of archiving live music recordings. Brewster was enthusiastic and so on July 23, 2002, Jon reached out to the etree community via their email list to make an offer. The Internet Archive was offering to provide “unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, forever, for free” to ensure the preservation and easy distribution of these live music recordings. The reply came back: “We don’t believe you. But if you could, that would be our dream.” And we were off to the races to create the first library archive of lossless, legal, live audio recordings.
The very first concert uploaded to the Archive was a Rusted Root audience recording from 2001. As of today, the Archive has over 240,000 recordings, with approximately 1,000 new recordings uploaded every month. Not surprisingly, Grateful Dead is the top artist, with over 16,000 recordings, but other popular artists include Drive-By Truckers, Smashing Pumpkins, String Cheese Incident, and Yonder Mountain String Band.
The Village Church’s Matt Chandler is the latest high-profile pastor to be embroiled in controversy, this time after he confessed to an inappropriate (though non-sexual) relationship with another woman. But as Aimee Byrd writes, Chandler’s confession is deeply problematic.
Think of all the money spent on this investigation already. Think of the church offering plate footing that bill. Think of the six months the church has been kept in the dark, while it was happening. Think of the way Chandler gets to control the narrative, over the victim, in telling it to the church. Think of how nothing is mentioned about the power dynamics at play in this relationship or the pain all this is causing her or her family. Think about the silencing of this woman. She isn’t even prayed for. Think of how the witness of Christ is not mentioned. What is going on here?
And think of how this framing of the relationship will affect women in the church. It yet again sends the message that men, especially pastors, cannot have healthy siblingship relationships with women. Be careful not to talk frequently with us! Be careful not to be too familiar with us! Be careful not to joke around us! You will not be above reproach. Look what happened to our beloved Chandler!!
This is an issue that weighs heavily on me. Our church’s founding pastor was removed from ministry after admitting to an affair with a woman in the church. To this day, twelve years after the fact, he has yet to apologize or repent to the congregation that he betrayed. Meanwhile, our church is still dealing with the trauma caused by his sin — a reality that’s becoming more apparent as I step into a leadership role. And as a (male) leader in the church, I know that it’s incumbent on me to recognize the power dynamics at play, especially where the women of the church are concerned, so that I can more effectively support them.
Related: Dave Miller urges congregations to stop applauding pastors who publicly confess their sins: “When leaders admit wrongdoing, we should respond with quiet sobriety, not clapping.”
Finally, Suzannah Lipscomb explores how our notions of rude or offensive speech have evolved over time.
Many words we consider, at best, crude were medieval common-or-garden words of description — arse, shit, fart, bollocks, prick, piss, turd — and were not considered obscene. To say “I’m going to piss” was the equivalent of saying “I’m going to wee” today and was politer than the new 16th-century vulgarity, “I’m going to take a leak.” Putting body parts or products where they shouldn’t normally be created delightfully defiant phrases such as “turd in your teeth,” which appears in the 1509 compendium of the Oxford don John Stanbridge. Non-literal uses of these words — which is what tends to be required for swearing — like “take the piss,” “on the piss,” “piss off” — all seem to be 20th-century flourishes. For the latter, the Tudors would have substituted something diabolical — “the devil rot thee” — or epidemiological — “a pox on you.”
From the Blog
Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is now streaming, and with it comes a lot of high expectations from Tolkien fans and nerds such as myself. Sadly, I haven’t had a chance to watch the first two episodes myself, but I have been following what the critics are saying about the series.
Will Amazon give Tolkien’s legendarium the Game of Thrones treatment, i.e., upping the sex and violence to make it more “appealing” to modern audiences? The series is clearly pulling out all the stops in terms of effects and visuals, but how faithful will it remain to the spirit of Tolkien’s seminal fantasy? And how will the series compare to Peter Jackson’s beloved Lord of the Rings film trilogy?
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