“We’re belittling science just as we expect it to rescue us.” -- Andy Slavitt
Deaths
US: 311,068 (+2979)
World: 1,641,576 (+13,676)
Cases
US: 17,143,779 (+200,957)
World: 73,805,834 (+615,421)
Countdown 1: 21 days.
Countdown 2: 36 days.
Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine. The architecture of the modern web poses grave threats to humanity. It’s not too late to save ourselves. Today’s social networks, Facebook chief among them, were built to encourage the things that make them so harmful. It is in their very architecture...No one, not even Mark Zuckerberg, can control the product he made. I’ve come to realize that Facebook is not a media company. It’s a Doomsday Machine. The social web is doing exactly what it was built for. Facebook does not exist to seek truth and report it, or to improve civic health, or to hold the powerful to account, or to represent the interests of its users, though these phenomena may be occasional by-products of its existence...it took the concept of “community” and sapped it of all moral meaning. The rise of QAnon, for example, is one of the social web’s logical conclusions. That’s because Facebook—along with Google and YouTube—is perfect for amplifying and spreading disinformation at lightning speed to global audiences. Facebook is an agent of government propaganda, targeted harassment, terrorist recruitment, emotional manipulation, and genocide—a world-historic weapon that lives not underground, but in a Disneyland-inspired campus in Menlo Park, California...No single machine should be able to control the fate of the world’s population—and that’s what both the Doomsday Machine and Facebook are built to do...These dangers are not theoretical, and they’re exacerbated by megascale, which makes the platform a tantalizing place to experiment on people. Facebook has conducted social-contagion experiments on its users without telling them. Facebook has acted as a force for digital colonialism, attempting to become the de facto (and only) experience of the internet for people all over the world. Facebook has bragged about its ability to influence the outcome of elections. Unlawful militant groups use Facebook to organize. Government officials use Facebook to mislead their own citizens, and to tamper with elections. Military officials have exploited Facebook’s complacency to carry out genocide. Facebook inadvertently auto-generated jaunty recruitment videos for the Islamic State featuring anti-Semitic messages and burning American flags...Facebook is a borderless nation-state, with a population of users nearly as big as China and India combined, and it is governed largely by secret algorithms...“In every situation of extremist violence we’ve looked into, we’ve found Facebook postings. And that reaches tons of people. The broad reach is what brings people into the fold and normalizes extremism and makes it mainstream.” In other words, it’s the megascale that makes Facebook so dangerous.
America’s hollow middle class. The cost of living has risen, wages have not, and debt just keeps on accumulating. As journalist and social critic Barbara Ehrenreich has pointed out, it’s very expensive to be poor. It’s also increasingly expensive to be middle class, in part because wages for all but the wealthy have remained stagnant for the past four decades. Most middle-class Americans seem to be making more — getting raises, however small, sometimes billed as “cost of living” increases. Yet these increases largely just keep pace with inflation, not the actual cost of living.
Coronavirus Is Surging: How Severe Is Your State's Outbreak?
FDA Authorizes Antigen Test as First Over-the-Counter Fully At-Home Diagnostic Test for COVID-19.
Trump Organization seeking to shield documents from New York attorney general.
Trump Organization must turn over documents to NY attorney general, judge rules.
Georgia Senate race holds far-reaching implications — especially for LGBTQ Americans. NBC News reached out to the candidates to ask about their stances on LGBTQ issues. The two Republican incumbents, Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, did not respond to multiple requests for comment, including follow-ups asking for responses to their rivals' comments. The two Democrats, Jon Ossoff (challenging Perdue) and Raphael Warnock (taking on Loeffler), did respond.
Covid is having a devastating impact on children — and the vaccine won't fix everything. “We’re going to almost need a New Deal for an entire generation of kids to give them the opportunity to catch up.”
For Hungry Americans Across The Country, Food Insecurity Crisis Deepens.
Online harms bill: firms may face multibillion-pound fines for illegal content. UK government sets out strict guidelines to govern removal of material promoting child sexual abuse and terrorism. Social media companies will need to remove and limit the spread of harmful content or face fines of billions of pounds, the UK government has announced, as it finally reveals the details of its proposed internet regulation.
U.S. tech firms including Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google face fines of up to 10% of annual turnover and could even be broken up under the new draft European Union rules.
Hungarian lawmakers passed a law that bans same-sex couples from adopting children. Hungary's parliament also backed a change to the constitution that defined what a family is. "The mother is a woman, the father is a man," the amendment said.
Fashion mogul Peter Nygard arrested in Winnipeg on sex trafficking and racketeering charges brought by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York.
Dozens of members of Congress call on Biden to end the federal death penalty. More than three dozen members of Congress are calling on Joe Biden's incoming administration to prioritize abolishing the death penalty in all jurisdictions.
Pornhub crackdown by credit card companies cuts off sex workers' livelihoods. Adult performers fear "war on porn" after Visa, Mastercard and Discover block use on Pornhub.
Joel Osteen's Texas megachurch received $4.4 million COVID-19 stimulus loan. The loan received by Osteen's Lakewood Church was the first time federal lawmakers provided direct financial assistance for a house of worship, the Houston Chronicle reported.
Over 60 million people are under a winter storm watch as heavy snow takes aim at the East Coast.
Feds to delay seeking legal protection for monarch butterfly. Federal officials on Tuesday declared the monarch butterfly “a candidate” for threatened or endangered status, but said no action would be taken for several years because of the many other species awaiting that designation.
Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.
Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.
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