politics

There are 113 posts filed in politics (this is page 7 of 15).

A look inside the Fake News business

Scott Shane profiles Cameron Harris for The New York Times:

In a raucous election year defined by made-up stories, Mr. Harris was a home-grown, self-taught practitioner, a boutique operator with no ties to Russian spy agencies or Macedonian fabrication factories. As Mr. Trump takes office this week, the beneficiary of at least a modest electoral boost from a flood of fakery, Mr. Harris and his ersatz-news website, ChristianTimesNewspaper.com, make for an illuminating tale.

Harris rode the wave of fake news’ popularity on social media to significant revenue, creating a website that was at one point valued at over $100K. Unlike Jestin Coler, another well-profiled fake newser who helped propagate many anti-Hillary Clinton stories, Harris is actually a Trump supporter.

In 2016, fake election news had a significant presence on social media, generating significantly more engagement than news from mainstream outlets.

While misleading websites exist on both the right and left, analyses have shown that those on the right can be misleading at a higher rate. 

Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

Huge move by Obama on his way out the door:

President Obama on Tuesday largely commuted the remaining prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, the army intelligence analyst convicted of an enormous 2010 leak that revealed American military and diplomatic activities across the world, disrupted the administration, and made WikiLeaks, the recipient of those disclosures, famous.

Source: Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence – The New York Times

Being an Asian Man Means Being Made To Feel Undesirable

This Opinion piece by Eddie Huang really speaks to me:

As a kid, you believe the things you’re told about yourself. But as I grew, I started to see things unravel. I wasn’t subordinate, I didn’t count good, I hated bowing, and outside downloading GIFs of Daisy Fuentes, I was terrible with computers. My first reaction, and the reaction of everyone at Chinese language school as well, was that I was defective and destined for life on a rack at T.J. Maxx begging to get chosen despite my imperfections. So many Asian-Americans I grew up with bought into the expectations the dominant culture placed on them and did everything they could to meet them. I recognized from a young age that I couldn’t and began to plan for life on the margins.

I realized that people on the margins aren’t afforded the privilege of being complicated, whole, human beings in America; we have to create that existence ourselves, and it is that experience that I feel fundamentally binds us. Over time, I began to find solidarity with my singularity and difference. Yet the one joke that still hurts, the sore spot that even my closest friends will press, the one stereotype that I still mistakenly believe at the most inopportune bedroom moments — and I know Joe and Steve do as well — is that women don’t want Asian men. Attractiveness is a very haphazard dish that can’t be boiled down to height or skin color, but Asian men are told that regardless of what the idyllic mirepoix is or isn’t, we just don’t have the ingredients.

The Magic Number? $75,000

Research shows that in the U.S., money correlates with happiness until you get to an income of about $75,000. After that, happiness returns diminish rapidly. The key is what you do after you hit $75,000:

Interestingly, and usefully, it turns out that what we do with our money plays a far more important role than how much money we make. Imagine three people each win $1 million in the lottery. Suppose one person attempts to buy every single thing he has ever wanted; one puts it all in the bank and uses the money only sparingly, for special occasions; and one gives it all to charity. At the end of the year, they all would report an additional $1 million of income. Many of us would follow the first person’s strategy, but the latter two winners are likely to get the bigger happiness bang for their buck.

A Case Against File Sharing

The Trichordist (via Matthew) responds to a blog post by Emily White at NPR, in which White grapples with the ethics of file sharing:

“[S]mall” personal decisions have very real consequences, particularly when millions of people make the decision not to compensate artists they supposedly “love”. And it is up to us individually to examine the consequences of our actions. It is not up to governments or corporations to make us choose to behave ethically. We have to do that ourselves.

Greece’s Dilemma

A moving piece by Nikos Konstandaras on the terrible position Greece has found itself in:

We hear that about 80 billion euros has been pulled from bank accounts and that 500 million to 800 million euros is being withdrawn each day. Some of this goes toward paying bills, while the rest is being hidden or moved abroad. And yet, last month there was still about 170 billion euros in Greek banks, despite the growing chorus of economists declaring that Greece will leave the euro. Why? Maybe when the volcano rumbles, when the thugs come for our neighbor, when a society gives up the fight for progress, the familiarity of our routines numbs us to the dust and roar of the coming stampede. Maybe we do not think bad things will happen to us.

The Life of a Chinese Immigrant

As an Asian immigrant whose parents owned a Chinese restaurant, Kevin Heldman’s story for Capital New York story about the perils of being an Asian delivery person in the Bronx really hit home with me. For immigrants, so little separates us between prosperity and poverty. The line is difficult to contemplate:

You go to that drawer full of menus with dragons or pandas or bamboo on them, and the random Chinese characters, and the obligatory promise of fast and free delivery. And in 25 minutes or so a Chinese man on a bike will come to your door and you’ll maybe drop him a xie xie with your tip and he’ll give you a bye bye and he’s gone. End of story.

But there’s a different version of that story that goes on in many parts of this city. And that version is about money, class, race, and education. And in that version people are robbed, assaulted and killed, and people live in fear, constantly on guard and under threat over Chinese food.