Meanderings, 9 October 2021
Good morning!
Photo by Dave Hoefler on Unsplash
Last night, the whistleblower who handed a trove of documents to Congress, the Securities Exchange Commission, and The Wall Street Journal appeared on 60 Minutes and revealed her identity. Frances Haugen, a former product manager in Facebook's now-disbanded Civic Integrity Unit, said things were "substantially worse at Facebook than anything I'd seen before." Her goal, in coming forward, is to "fix the company, not harm it."
Haugen talked about a list of things she found as she began digging through company documents and research on the company's Workplace site, a sort of corporate internal social network. For example, she talked about how Facebook's research shows that people are more likely to engage with content that makes them angry, and engagement leads to monetization.
"Facebook has realized that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site, they'll click on less ads, they'll make less money," Haugen told 60 Minutes reporter Scott Pelley.
The most devastating revelation, however, is one that most people already knew -- Facebook's biggest problem is its founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.
"I have a lot of empathy for Mark," Haugen said. "And Mark has never set out to make a hateful platform. But he has allowed choices to be made where the side effects of those choices are that hateful, polarizing content gets more distribution and more reach."
Haugen is probably too generous to Zuckerberg. He didn't "allow choices to be made," he set the tone. He made the choices. Zuckerberg exerts almost complete control over Facebook. If he believed something was wrong, he could change it and there's nothing anyone could do. No single shareholder exerts more control over any publicly traded company than Zuckerberg does at Facebook.
Mike Bird contends for universal healthcare in all nations:
In many places around the world, healthcare is a live political issue, especially in the US where there are millions of people without adequate health care, where medical bankruptcies are common, there are problems accessing insurance, the Obamacare wars of the last decade, and government in bed with Big Pharma.
Healthcare is a controversial topic in other places too, esp. when it comes to things like co-payments, waiting lists, costs, and sustainability.
Nonetheless, every western democracy from Norway to New Zealand has universal healthcare for its citizens except for one of the most prosperous nations on earth, i.e., the USA.
There’s a lot of misconceptions about universal healthcare, that it is “socialized medicine” and leads to “rationing” of medicines, or even “death panels.” So let me point out several things:
(CNN)Anyone who has had a tough time convincing their kid to mow the lawn may want to enlist the help of Rodney Smith Jr.
Over the last five years, he has inspired thousands of young people to mow dozens of yards in their communities for free, often for people they just met.
How does Smith do it? He leads by example.
Smith, 33, is the founder of Raising Men & Women Lawn Care Service in Huntsville, Alabama. He and the organization's volunteers help anyone who may need it, including seniors, the disabled, single parents, and veterans.
"My mission in life is to give back," he said. "Especially to those who need it the most."
In 2017, Smith decided to take this idea nationwide -- and he personally mowed at least one lawn for free in all 50 states.
Andrew Root discusses depression and the speed of our times:
But it isn’t as though depression completely has no source. Rather, Ehrenberg argues that its source is late modernity’s demand to create and continue to curate your own self (hence his title). This task is taxing and deeply fatiguing. The speed of late modernity, its frantic pace of life imposed on us by the blitzing social and technological change since the 1970s, makes life a raging river. In this raging river, you need to not only create your own identity but also reach out into the world to receive recognition for that identity, swimming madly to keep up in the breakneck currents. It is your individual job in a constantly moving environment to be a self in the always-increasing pace of late modernity. And you need to be not just some generic, bland self but a happy, successful, recognized self who’s not spitting out water but riding the rapids, maybe even with style. Needing to swim yourself to the crest of the current means that the self in late modernity can never rest. To be this kind of self requires constant navigating. This self constantly rushes to keep up.
Ehrenberg believes depression is not necessarily a response to some objective disappointment outside of you, but a response to the fatigue of failing to keep up, to over and over and over again create and curate a distinct self. It is la fatigue d’être soi: depression is the fatigue of being yourself. When this fatigue becomes too much, when we can’t find the energy to keep going into the water, creating and curating our self, we feel stuck. We feel sucked back by the current, passed over (a potent nightmare in our late-modern secular age). Everything else is moving so fast, changing and adapting every minute, and we just don’t have it in us. Perhaps we even feel something overtaking us that just won’t allow us to ever catch up. “I just can’t be the parent, employee, spouse, friend I should be. I should try harder, but I just don’t have the energy.” I have every invitation to change and change again and then change more. But I don’t have the energy to meet this demand. If I had the energy, the openness of identity construction would be exciting. But without it, the choice and openness are depressing. According to Ehrenberg, this is the source of my depression.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli archaeologists have found a rare ancient toilet in Jerusalem dating back more than 2,700 years, when private bathrooms were a luxury in the holy city, authorities said Tuesday.
The Israeli Antiquities Authority said the smooth, carved limestone toilet was found in a rectangular cabin that was part of a sprawling mansion overlooking what is now the Old City. It was designed for comfortable sitting, with a deep septic tank dug underneath.
“A private toilet cubicle was very rare in antiquity, and only a few were found to date,” said Yaakov Billig, the director of the excavation.
“Only the rich could afford toilets,” he said, adding that a famed rabbi once suggested that to be wealthy is “to have a toilet next to his table.”
Animal bones and pottery found in the septic tank could shed light on the lifestyle and diet of people living at that time, as well as ancient diseases, the antiquities authority said.
The archaeologists found stone capitals and columns from the era, and said there was evidence of a nearby garden with orchards and aquatic plants — more evidence that those living there were quite wealthy.
CHICAGO — A historic all-female honor flight departed from Chicago’s Midway Airport Wednesday morning.
The 93 veterans, all with Illinois ties, will spend the day in Washington DC — touring memorials and monuments honoring their service.
The flight is called Operation HerStory. The female veterans arrived around 4 a.m. Wednesday and will return to Chicago around 8:30 p.m.
The honor flight began in 2005 and has flown thousands of vets to DC. This is the 98th flight from Chicago, but the first all-female honor flight.
Bette Horstman of Morton Grove will be on the flight. Horstman is 99-years-old, turning 100 in December. She spent 18-months in the South Pacific as a physical therapist and is still working today.