Weekend Reads (August 31): Paralympics, Oasis Reunion, Telegram Arrest, Corn Sweat
Recommended weekend reading for August 31, 2024.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.
The 2024 Summer Paralympics began this week, featuring over 4,000 athletes competing in 22 sports, including archery, badminton, cycling, powerlifting, and taekwondo.
Oasis, arguably the biggest band in the world during the Britpop craze of the mid-to-late ’90s, is reuniting.
Fifteen years after their breakup, brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher have apparently put aside their differences, announcing a run of concerts in the U.K. and Ireland for 2025. The group announced the Oasis Live ’25 tour early Tuesday morning, though details on North American shows have yet to be announced. It’s also unclear which original band members will join the Gallagher brothers.
[…]
“The guns have fallen silent,” the band said in a statement. “The stars have aligned. The great wait is over. Come see. It will not be televised.”
Related: Stephen Thomas Erlewine reflects on the band’s reunion and the 30th anniversary of their 1994 debut, Definitely Maybe.
As people have grown increasingly tired and overwhelmed by social media, they’re starting to unplug and escape via analog pleasures like flip phones, vinyl, and print magazines.
Some of this shift to the analog world could be a signal that society, as a whole, is not so much ready to return to older forms of technology as it is for a new kind of technology, one that would better suit our lives. “There is a dream and a passion for technologies that slow you down at first but in the end offer a lot of feeling and sensation that digital tech cannot give you,” said Florian Kaps, the founder of an analog manufacturing shop in Vienna called Supersense. The majority of the tech products we use today are distracting by design; using them tends to feel like hanging out in “an extremely cluttered mall” rather than what it should be: “a quiet home,” said Thielen-Esparza.
Via Jake Meador.
It’s interesting that “analog” pleasures like a printed magazine are now being considered “luxury” goods. It wasn’t too long ago that “digital” was equated with “luxury” — with everyone wanting the latest and greatest iPhone — but as “digital” media has become increasingly ubiquitous (for better or worse), it’s now commonplace. We often talk about the “digital divide” between those with the means to easily access technology and those without, which is a real issue given how necessary internet access has become for modern life. But are we now looking at the beginnings of an “analog divide” between those who have the means and capacity to unplug, and those who don’t?
AnandTech, a site well-known for their in-depth tech reviews, is shutting down after 27 years.
AnandTech was hardly the first hardware enthusiast website, nor will we be the last. But we were fortunate to thrive in the past couple of decades, when so many of our peers did not, thanks to a combination of hard work, strategic investments in people and products, even more hard work, and the support of our many friends, colleagues, and readers.
Still, few things last forever, and the market for written tech journalism is not what it once was — nor will it ever be again. So, the time has come for AnandTech to wrap up its work, and let the next generation of tech journalists take their place within the zeitgeist.
27 years is a heckuva run. Fortunately, AnandTech’s publisher will keep the site running indefinitely. Which, given the ever-present scourge of link rot, is a refreshing change of pace.
Earlier this week, French authorities arrested Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of the Telegram messaging app. Casey Newton breaks down the situation and its possible ramifications.
A worrisome outcome of France’s ultimate prosecution of Telegram, assuming there is one, is that it will embolden countries around the world to prosecute platform CEOs criminally for failing to turn over user data. We have already come worryingly close to this reality, and I have covered it closely here over the years. India and Russia were among the first countries to use so-called “hostage-taking laws” to threaten platform employees with jail over content moderation decisions, but many more have followed since.
On the other hand, Telegram really does seem to be actively enabling a staggering amount of abuse. And while it’s disturbing to see state power used indiscriminately to snoop on private conversations, it’s equally disturbing to see a private company declare itself to be above the law.
Durov currently faces several charges, including “complicity in managing an online platform to enable illegal transactions; complicity in crimes such as enabling the distribution of child sexual abuse material, drug trafficking and fraud; and a refusal to cooperate with law enforcement.”
In general, I believe that privacy is a Very Good Thing that should be protected, especially given both government snooping as well as online advertisers gobbling up as much personal information as possible. But it’s frustrating to see some of privacy’s most public defenders behave recklessly and immaturely. (See also Elon Musk.) I’m with Nick Heer:
Durov’s arrest presents an internal conflict for me. A world in which facilitators of user-created data are responsible for their every action is not conducive to effective internet policy. On the other hand, I think corporate executives should be more accountable for how they run their businesses. If Durov knew about severe abuse and impeded investigations by refusing to cooperate with information the company possessed, that should be penalized.
Speaking of Musk, X/Twitter has been officially banned in Brazil after failing to select new legal representation and pay fines for violating Brazilian law.
Alexandre de Moraes ordered the “immediate and complete suspension” of the social media platform until it complies with all court orders and pays existing fines.
The row began in April, with the judge ordering the suspension of dozens of X accounts for allegedly spreading disinformation.
Reacting to the decision, X owner Elon Musk said: “Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes.”
When sex trafficker Michael James Pratt fled the U.S. to avoid prosecution, it seemed like he might never be brought to justice — until a team of private citizens tracked him down to Barcelona, Spain.
The team had been preparing for this deployment for weeks. They knew he was likely in Barcelona because he’d used Ledger, a crypto wallet company, with his real name but also under an alias, Mark Williamson. Hackers exposed more than 270,000 Ledger customers’ identities, including physical addresses, in a data leak in 2020, and Pratt’s info was in there, including his stay at the W Hotel and a mailing address to a shipping services store, Mailboxes Etc. in spring 2020. The Ledger leak was their strongest lead, but not their only one: They knew, from Holm and DeBarber’s years of studying this man, that he was a prolific patron of sex workers and that he loved Air Jordan shoes.
Finally, eastern Nebraska is just now starting to cool off — a sign, hopefully, that autumn’s right around the corner — but it was disgustingly hot for a week or so, with temperatures exceeding 100 degrees and the humidity off the charts. Two words: corn sweat.
A single acre of corn can give off 3,000 to 4,000 gallons of water per day, according to a post on X by the National Weather Service in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
That added moisture in the air then increases already high dew points, making it feel even more humid on a localized scale. The increased humidity can then help boost heat index temperatures even higher.
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