I'm having a very Jewish week.
It started, mostly, with the column I published in Haaretz calling "bullshit" on the claim that the New York Times presents a greater antisemitism threat than contemporary mainstream conservatism.
That led to a completely out-of-the-blue call from none other than ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt. Like, literally, I was sitting on my couch and the phone rang and it was him. We've never conversed or connected in any other way (I've bent the ear of the San Francisco ADL office more than a few times), and there didn't seem to be any other motive behind the call other than to say he liked the Haaretz piece.
Then today, I had another phone call with a different prominent Jewish public figure -- I won't say who, since the project she was asking my take on isn't yet public, but let's just say that if Greenblatt is part of the "establishment" wing of the Jewish community, this person is more on the "insurgent" side. Somehow, I seem to be bridging that gap -- at least a little bit.
Tomorrow, I have a conference call to discuss my participation on a panel at the Goethe-Institut on resurgent antisemitism and White nationalism. Then Friday, I'm meeting with a student who sought me out to discuss how one researches issues of antisemitism in contemporary academia.
Oh, and Jill and I went to Talmud study for the first time last night.
* * *
Jews are the religious group most likely to view Muslims favorably. And wouldn't you know it -- but those positive sentiments are reflected right back at us -- Muslims also overwhelmingly view Jews favorably!
Very interesting new article in the Yale Law Journal experimentally measures whether people feel free to refuse intrusive search requests. Answer: they don't, which doesn't surprise. What might surprise a little is that even explicitly telling people "you're free to refuse this search" doesn't move the needle much.
Radical settler Rabbis caught on type expressing admiration for Hitler and racism. Nice.
Robert Farley thinks Team Living actually had decent military strategy in the Battle for Winterfell.
Trump pick Stephen Moore might not have the votes to get a Fed seat -- which is weird because, if he's a crank extremist too far gone to even get through this pliant GOP Senate, how did he occupy all these respectable conservative sinecures for all these years? Such a mystery.
Artist behind NYT's antisemitic cartoon denies it's an antisemitic cartoon, says controversy is a product of the "Jewish propaganda machine." Checks out!
Showing posts with label privacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label privacy. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 01, 2019
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
Spring Break Roundup!
It's Spring Break! Sadly, that's markedly less exciting when you're 31 years old and revising article drafts.
Nonetheless, it does present a good opportunity to do a roundup.
* * *
Kate Manne has an incredibly powerful essay on sexual violence, the struggles over reporting it, and why men get away with it. It follows on Martha Nussbaum's revelation, in a lecture last year, that she was sexually assaulted at 20 years old by a famous actor and her explanation for why she didn't report it. This is a must-read.
A neat looking art exhibit by Indian Jewish artist Siona Benjamin.
Truly every dark cloud has a silver lining: Donald Trump's army of internet trolls is in a state of panic over the upcoming rollback of internet privacy protections.
Hungary's right-wing government looks to try to close the Central European University. CEU was founded by George Soros, and if what the Hungarian right says about Soros sounds familiar, that's because it's identical to what the American right says about him. And if talking about shadowy international Jewish financiers threatening our way of life sounds a wee bit antisemitic when Hungarians do it, well, thank God for American exceptionalism.
Mayim Bialik and Emily Shire on Zionism and feminism (it's the latest salvo in this whole thing).
Maajid Nawaz, a former Muslim extremist turned liberal reformer, is profiled in the New York Times magazine. It is hardly uncritical, but it does seem to support the argument that the SPLC did a hatchet-job on him. And the observations about why it is difficult to promote "eat-your-peas" secular liberalism have resonance well beyond the Muslim community.
Nonetheless, it does present a good opportunity to do a roundup.
* * *
Kate Manne has an incredibly powerful essay on sexual violence, the struggles over reporting it, and why men get away with it. It follows on Martha Nussbaum's revelation, in a lecture last year, that she was sexually assaulted at 20 years old by a famous actor and her explanation for why she didn't report it. This is a must-read.
A neat looking art exhibit by Indian Jewish artist Siona Benjamin.
Truly every dark cloud has a silver lining: Donald Trump's army of internet trolls is in a state of panic over the upcoming rollback of internet privacy protections.
Hungary's right-wing government looks to try to close the Central European University. CEU was founded by George Soros, and if what the Hungarian right says about Soros sounds familiar, that's because it's identical to what the American right says about him. And if talking about shadowy international Jewish financiers threatening our way of life sounds a wee bit antisemitic when Hungarians do it, well, thank God for American exceptionalism.
Mayim Bialik and Emily Shire on Zionism and feminism (it's the latest salvo in this whole thing).
Maajid Nawaz, a former Muslim extremist turned liberal reformer, is profiled in the New York Times magazine. It is hardly uncritical, but it does seem to support the argument that the SPLC did a hatchet-job on him. And the observations about why it is difficult to promote "eat-your-peas" secular liberalism have resonance well beyond the Muslim community.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Private Eyes, Public Lies
A Texas high school teacher was discovered to have had nude photos of her taken while she was in college. Some parents are calling for her to be fired. Students, by contrast, are reallying to save her job (via). At the Texas Monthly, Dan Solomon asks if we're entering a new era where having some old naked photos crop up isn't a big deal. Naked selfies are becoming so common, he argues, that people will soon no longer be able to muster up any outrage about them.
This is something I've thought of a lot -- less from the naked selfie perspective than from the more general fact that far more of our lives (and particularly our young lives) are documented for posterity than ever before. As a society, we are forgetting how to forget -- everything you do is part of your permanent profile. Young people are constantly warned that those Facebook pictures of themselves at the kegger in high school could have serious consequences when they try to apply for jobs. Old transgressions can come back to shame people years later with a few well-placed google searches.
And that may be true, in the short-term. But in the long-term, I suspect it's more likely that we will systematically recalibrate our expectations. The shock value of a picture showing a guy passed out on the couch surrounded by PBR cans is dramatically diminished when the HR director has the same photos floating around. If everyone has embarrassing photos, dumb teen angsty poetry, and nude self-portraits scattered throughout the internet, then nobody does.
This has more profound consequences than I think are typically acknowledged. We talk about the dangers of the internet's limitless memory as if I current conceptions of shame, guilt, condemnation, and even personal continuity will survive intact. But it's at least as likely that the fact that a documented past is now the norm rather than the exception will cause significant alterations to all of these things. The regulation of underage drinking, for example, occurs now even though it is exceptionally likely that virtually every state and federal politician drank while underage. We know that, but we don't know that, and if a picture surfaced of Congressman John Doe drunk while in college would still be news. It's a different thing when the existence of these photos is commonplace and mainstream -- it prevents us from even maintaining the facade to shield ourselves from charges of hypocrisy -- or so I think.
The result, I hope, is a more forgiving society. If everyone's dirty laundry is out there for the rest to see, there's no sense preserving its status as reputation-annihilating. Reputation is a collective action problem, and the share-everything mentality of the internet helps resolve it. Or so I think.
This is something I've thought of a lot -- less from the naked selfie perspective than from the more general fact that far more of our lives (and particularly our young lives) are documented for posterity than ever before. As a society, we are forgetting how to forget -- everything you do is part of your permanent profile. Young people are constantly warned that those Facebook pictures of themselves at the kegger in high school could have serious consequences when they try to apply for jobs. Old transgressions can come back to shame people years later with a few well-placed google searches.
And that may be true, in the short-term. But in the long-term, I suspect it's more likely that we will systematically recalibrate our expectations. The shock value of a picture showing a guy passed out on the couch surrounded by PBR cans is dramatically diminished when the HR director has the same photos floating around. If everyone has embarrassing photos, dumb teen angsty poetry, and nude self-portraits scattered throughout the internet, then nobody does.
This has more profound consequences than I think are typically acknowledged. We talk about the dangers of the internet's limitless memory as if I current conceptions of shame, guilt, condemnation, and even personal continuity will survive intact. But it's at least as likely that the fact that a documented past is now the norm rather than the exception will cause significant alterations to all of these things. The regulation of underage drinking, for example, occurs now even though it is exceptionally likely that virtually every state and federal politician drank while underage. We know that, but we don't know that, and if a picture surfaced of Congressman John Doe drunk while in college would still be news. It's a different thing when the existence of these photos is commonplace and mainstream -- it prevents us from even maintaining the facade to shield ourselves from charges of hypocrisy -- or so I think.
The result, I hope, is a more forgiving society. If everyone's dirty laundry is out there for the rest to see, there's no sense preserving its status as reputation-annihilating. Reputation is a collective action problem, and the share-everything mentality of the internet helps resolve it. Or so I think.
Friday, February 12, 2010
I've Lost Top Billing
But it was time, and this was important.
For a long, long time, this was the top post if you searched "fuck you google". It was a response to Google Maps pinpointing a location in Virginia when you searched "Maryland" (they've fixed the problem).
This post, about Google's new "Buzz" product, at Fugitivus is also titled "Fuck you, Google". Now I found Buzz a mix of perplexing and annoying, so I pretty quickly turned it off. But what was a minor aggravation for me, was a serious threat to her, as it essentially involuntarily passed on private (or semi-private) data towards people that the author might not have wanted to see it. Like her abusive ex-husband. Or her abusive ex-husband's friends. Or creepy blog-stalkers. To be sure, Google has now taken steps to mitigate the damage, but not all of the harm can be put back in the box.
Her post is now tops on the "fuck you google" search. And quite deserved. For as incensed as I may get over disrespect towards my home state, being reckless with the lives of one's customers is clearly a leap and bound beyond that. Privacy on the internet is nothing to be trifled with -- you don't know why someone chooses to hide or reveal what they do. Google wasn't thinking, and while I'd like to say they paid the price, they really didn't. Some of their most vulnerable customers did.
For a long, long time, this was the top post if you searched "fuck you google". It was a response to Google Maps pinpointing a location in Virginia when you searched "Maryland" (they've fixed the problem).
This post, about Google's new "Buzz" product, at Fugitivus is also titled "Fuck you, Google". Now I found Buzz a mix of perplexing and annoying, so I pretty quickly turned it off. But what was a minor aggravation for me, was a serious threat to her, as it essentially involuntarily passed on private (or semi-private) data towards people that the author might not have wanted to see it. Like her abusive ex-husband. Or her abusive ex-husband's friends. Or creepy blog-stalkers. To be sure, Google has now taken steps to mitigate the damage, but not all of the harm can be put back in the box.
Her post is now tops on the "fuck you google" search. And quite deserved. For as incensed as I may get over disrespect towards my home state, being reckless with the lives of one's customers is clearly a leap and bound beyond that. Privacy on the internet is nothing to be trifled with -- you don't know why someone chooses to hide or reveal what they do. Google wasn't thinking, and while I'd like to say they paid the price, they really didn't. Some of their most vulnerable customers did.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Know Thyself
Over at Concurring Opinions, Frank Pasquele blogs on a presentation by a Silicon Valley entrepreneur on privacy in cyberspace. He made a bunch of interesting points, but I thought his most interesting demand was this:
I had never thought of this. But now that it's been said, it strikes me as completely intuitive. Nobody should have more information on me than I do. Why shouldn't this be a rule?
You should know more about yourself than anyone else knows about you.
Consumers should have the right to find out what data is being collected about them. As a consumer, you should be able to go to DoubleClick, AdBrite, Advertising.com, Google, Yahoo, Aggregate Knowledge, etc. and a list of all the websites that track you. You should be able to go to Choicepoint, Experian, Acxiom, Rapleaf, etc. and see all the data they collect on you. . . . And you should be able to access this data for free at anytime.
I had never thought of this. But now that it's been said, it strikes me as completely intuitive. Nobody should have more information on me than I do. Why shouldn't this be a rule?
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