Weekend Reads (Feb 26): Tucker Carlson, Ukraine, Oscars, The Amazing Johnathan, Metaverse
Recommended weekend reading material for February 26, 2022.
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Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable, thought-provoking weekend reading material.
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One of the strangest developments in recent history — for this child of the Cold War, anyway — has been to see those ostensibly connected to “the party of Reagan” come out in support of Vladimir Putin and Russia. Case in point, Tucker Carlson.
Carlson downplayed the putative moral differences between Russia, Ukraine, Canada, and the United States. He asked why Americans should side with Ukraine against Russia, since Ukraine was “not a democracy.” (Actually, on the Freedom House democracy scale, Ukraine gets a rating of 39 out of 100. Russia gets less than seven.) Carlson also ridiculed the notion that “dastardly old Vladimir Putin” is “much worse than Justin Trudeau,” the prime minister of Canada, who — according to Carlson’s absurd lie — has imposed “martial law” and reduced Canada to a “failed democrac[y].” Turning to his own country, Carlson denounced America’s current leaders, saying they “don’t care at all” about our country’s stated principles.
Carlson’s schtick is even more egregious now that Russia has, in fact, invaded Ukraine. But he’s since changed his tune and is now criticizing Putin’s actions. (I wonder if that has anything to do with Russian state media rebroadcasting his pro-Putin statements as propaganda.)
Related: Several fake or mislabelled photos and videos have gone viral in light of Russia’s invasion. No doubt we’ll see even more such misinformation pop up in our newsfeeds in the coming days. Make sure you double-check the veracity of anything before you share it. A healthy skepticism is a good thing.
If Russia does succeed in taking over Ukraine, then the country’s evangelical Christians and other religious minorities should brace themselves for persecution.
During the pandemic, Russia has continued its crackdown on evangelism and unregistered church activity — which includes almost all religious practice outside of the Russian Orthodox Church. The 2016 regulations restrict people in Russia from sharing about their faith or announcing church activities, even online or at home, unless permitted through a religious organization that has registered with the Russian government. Even then, evangelism is only sanctioned to occur within those designated churches.
I wonder if Putin/Russia supporters who also claim to be Christians ever stop to think about what their support might mean for their fellow Christians living in Putin-controlled territories.
The Oscars announced that several categories, including film editing, makeup/hairstyling, original score, and production design, won’t be part of the live broadcast, but rather, prerecorded and edited into the live broadcast.
In a move that is already causing tension within the leadership of the Academy, but is likely to be well received by the general public, the presentations and acceptance of eight awards — documentary short, film editing, makeup/hairstyling, original score, production design, animated short, live action short and sound — will take place inside the Dolby Theatre an hour before the live telecast commences, will be recorded and will then be edited into the subsequent live broadcast, a variation of a controversial approach that the Academy first adopted and then abandoned in 2018. (The Tony Awards employ a similar model.)
Among those upset by the decision is Patton Oswalt, who took to Twitter to explain, in detail, why the Academy’s decision was “a dumb and disrespectful move.”
Do you have problems remembering what happened on your favorite TV series when they come back for a new season? You might be suffering from “hiatus brain.”
Hiatus brain is exactly what it sounds like – it's what happens when a narrative show leaves its viewers alone for too long before returning to continue the narrative. Once the lag between seasons begins to surpass, say, 10-12 months, the mind has a significantly harder time picking up where the show last left off. Plotlines are lost to the sands of time, established character arcs exist as little more than blemishes barely imprinted on the surface of the mind.
You then have to scour the internet for decent recaps or season finale reviews in order to feel up to speed – and yet even then, you may worry some important details have been left out and you're going into the new installments woefully unprepared. Wait, who formed an alliance with who and why? And does so-and-so know so-and-so betrayed them yet, or are they still in the dark?
Mark Lanegan, who performed with Screaming Trees and Queens of the Stone Age, died earlier this week at the age of 57.
Mark Lanegan got his start with the Screaming Trees in Washington in the mid-1980s. The band was part of the Pacific Northwest rock scene that also included Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and more. Screaming Trees released their debut album, Clairvoyance, in 1986. The LP helped earn Screaming Trees a deal with SST Records, which issued Even If and Especially When the following year. After two more SST albums, the band moved to the major label Epic Records for 1991’s Uncle Anesthesia, which was produced with Terry Date and Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell. The band went on to release three more albums and, for a time in the mid-’90s, featured Joshua Homme as a touring guitarist.
Pitchfork has also posted a list of 8 essential Mark Lanegan songs.
The Amazing Johnathan, one of the greatest comedy magicians of all time — and self-described “Freddy Krueger of comedy” — died from heart failure earlier this week. He was 63.
Props were a signature of the Amazing Johnathan’s performances. During a 1997 appearance on Letterman, he claimed he had a compulsion to run naked and proceeded to drink glass cleaner. “This prevents me from streaking,” he quipped. Later, he appeared to remove his eyeball with a power drill and bat the orb around with his tongue. At one point, he asked the host if he liked birds, manifested one beneath a handkerchief, and then smashed it into feathery death with his palm. The capper was slicing a knife through his bloody forearm. “It’s a fake blade, it’s fake!” Szeles admonished the shocked audience.
I loved watching his performances and TV specials. There was a madness and zaniness present in every single joke, gag, and trick that was thrilling to watch.
Due to climate change — which, among other things, necessitates the use of man-made snow, which is more dangerous than natural snow — the Winter Olympics may be running out of time.
The climate crisis is changing winter weather around the world. What was once a predictable season of cold weather and snow is now a hodgepodge of extreme snowfall and dry spells. This year’s Winter Olympic Games have worried both climate advocates and winter sport athletes. Beijing has experienced dangerously high levels of pollution, and venues are using artificial snow for outdoor sports — this year’s games are in fact using all fake snow. Seeing this, athletes, scientists, and outdoor sporting enthusiasts are concerned that it will become harder and harder to stage future Winter Olympics.
A Missouri journalist has been cleared of charges for supposedly hacking a public website after he reported a long-existing security flaw that exposed teachers’ Social Security numbers.
[T]he resulting police report confirms in detail that Renaud did exactly what he said from the beginning: He identified a security flaw by viewing publicly available HTML code on a misconfigured state website and delayed publishing an article on his findings until after the state closed the security hole.
The police report also revealed that the security flaw had existed since 2011. The mistake exposed teachers' Social Security numbers on a Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) website that allowed anyone to search for information about teachers. Up to 576,000 teachers' Social Security numbers may have been exposed because the data goes back to 2005, the report said.
Basically, the journalist discovered that Social Security numbers were encoded in the website’s HTML source, which is publicly viewable because that’s how web browsers work. What a bizarre case. It seems to only further highlight the cluelessness of some politicians when it comes to technology.
The metaverse, as envisioned by Meta (formerly Facebook), will give us entirely new ways to connect with each other. But I doubt they meant for that to include virtual groping.
In early December, The Verge reported that a Horizon beta tester posted on Facebook that they were groped by a stranger and that “there were other people there who supported this behavior which made me feel isolated in the Plaza.” A Facebook representative said that “unfortunate” incident happened in part because the tester didn’t use built-in safety features, including the ability to block problematic users.
Via Web3 Is Going Just Great. Meta has now implemented a default personal boundary that “prevents avatars from coming within a set distance of each other, creating more personal space for people and making it easier to avoid unwanted interactions.”
Never underestimate the human ability to turn any new development or advancement into an opportunity for sleaziness.
The Associated Press came under fire after they announced that they’d be selling a video of migrants adrift in the Mediterranean as an NFT in their marketplace.
The organization has deleted the tweet and canceled the planned sale. “This was a poor choice of imagery for an NFT. It has not and will not be put up for auction. The tweet promoting it was also deleted,” said Lauren Easton, the global director of media relations and corporate communications at the Associated Press.
“AP’s NFT marketplace is a very early pilot program, and we are immediately reviewing our efforts. As a not-for-profit, AP’s mission is to inform the world with accurate, unbiased journalism.”
Despite canceling the sale, the AP continued to receive criticism concerning their NFT plans. The organization’s “Director of Blockchain” ultimately decided to ban critics and delete their messages from Discord.
Most NFTs are just plain ugly. They don’t take that added step of depicting actual human misery and suffering. But NFTs in general sure do seem to encourage a lot of unwise and terrible behavior, don’t they?
We know that social media can make us miserable, so why don’t we leave? In part because, writes T. M. Suffield, doing so feels like going into exile.
For the average Gen Z student I interact with, it’s actually worse than that. If the primary setting for many of your social interactions is one or another app on your phone then even my suggestions — that you turn your notifications off or turn your phone off while you’re asleep — sound draconian. To leave these apps behind is unthinkable. Based on the reactions I get to gentle suggestions it sounds like I’ve recommended the Green Martyrdom of the desert fathers or the early medieval Irish monks: leaving Civilization to live in a cave or on a distant Skellig.
Suffield then uses this as a jumping off point for a broader discussion about hospitality, i.e., if people don’t want to feel exiled when they leave social media, then how can we make sure they feel included if they do leave?
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