untethered

The Picture of Alice

The porch was a concrete block with steps formed into it and a visible tilt, or so I thought, like some chunk of brutalist architecture that had fallen out of the sky. It was about five by five feet. Young people were crowding there to smoke, despite the rain having lapsed into the faintest trace, with individual drops coming like random stragglers.

She stood on the corner of this grotesque pedestal facing me on the lawn below. She was a standing shadow shrouded in the halo from the bare porch light behind, a white trash Birth of Venus, and, I knew, no less beautiful behind the dark there, mercifully hidden from my searching eyes.

The outline of her hair was the only discernible, familiar thing about her–otherwise it could have been anyone there–but it was undeniably her. This minimalist sketch evoked the full light of memory, the memory of her still compiling that final version to take her place when she’s gone, the dead thing to replace the living, the trace of her arc across my life, documented and filed away on paper already yellowing.

That was Alice up there on the porch, looking down on me with–what? I couldn’t see. Was she talking? I couldn’t tell. Was she talking to me? Was she smiling at me? Did she see me, finally? See my desire?

That was Alice, midway through her ruin, long after mine.

Jussie Smollet’s lynching documentary.
“You can’t have reconciliation until you, first, have truth.”

Modern communications necessitate desensitization to gore and obscenity. Sensitivity to personal offense rises in inverse proportion.

The Verge has published an expose of life at one of Facebook’s content moderation contractors:

The panic attacks started after Chloe watched a man die. She spent the past three and a half weeks in training, trying to harden herself against the daily onslaught of disturbing posts: the hate speech, the violent attacks, the graphic pornography. In a few more days, she will become a full-time Facebook content moderator, or what the company she works for, a professional services vendor named Cognizant, opaquely calls a “process executive.”

For this portion of her education, Chloe will have to moderate a Facebook post in front of her fellow trainees. When it’s her turn, she walks to the front of the room, where a monitor displays a video that has been posted to the world’s largest social network. None of the trainees have seen it before, Chloe included. She presses play.

The video depicts a man being murdered. Someone is stabbing him, dozens of times, while he screams and begs for his life. Chloe’s job is to tell the room whether this post should be removed. She knows that section 13 of the Facebook community standards prohibits videos that depict the murder of one or more people. When Chloe explains this to the class, she hears her voice shaking.
Returning to her seat, Chloe feels an overpowering urge to sob. Another trainee has gone up to review the next post, but Chloe cannot concentrate. She leaves the room, and begins to cry so hard that she has trouble breathing.

No one tries to comfort her. This is the job she was hired to do. And for the 1,000 people like Chloe moderating content for Facebook at the Phoenix site, and for 15,000 content reviewers around the world, today is just another day at the office.

The piece doesn’t address the political bias guiding Facebook and others’ attempts at moderation, probably because the publication and author share it. The article comes with a trigger warning for “mental health issues and racism”–but not for such as the leading paragraph’s disturbing account of a man being stabbed to death.

The article focuses on the working conditions of the underpaid employees of Cognizant, a contractor moderating content for Facebook, but stumbles on a serious problem for the socials in their efforts to excise right wing expression and conspiracy theories. The potential for radicalization of the gatekeepers:

The moderators told me it’s a place where the conspiracy videos and memes that they see each day gradually lead them to embrace fringe views. One auditor walks the floor promoting the idea that the Earth is flat. A former employee told me he has begun to question certain aspects of the Holocaust. Another former employee, who told me he has mapped every escape route out of his house and sleeps with a gun at his side, said: “I no longer believe 9/11 was a terrorist attack.” 

I don’t know if there’s something about our historical moment that makes conspiracy theories more appealing or that exposure to them is so much greater, but it seems some percentage of us is always going to buy into them, so the gross number of casual conspiracy theorists is going to keep rising.

Like most of the former moderators I spoke with, Chloe quit after about a year.
Among other things, she had grown concerned about the spread of conspiracy theories among her colleagues. 

One QA often discussed his belief that the Earth is flat with colleagues, and “was actively trying to recruit other people” into believing, another moderator told me. One of Miguel’s colleagues once referred casually to “the Holohoax,” in what Miguel took as a signal that the man was a Holocaust denier. 

Conspiracy theories were often well received on the production floor, six moderators told me. After the Parkland shooting last year, moderators were initially horrified by the attacks. But as more conspiracy content was posted to Facebook and Instagram, some of Chloe’s colleagues began expressing doubts. 

“People really started to believe these posts they were supposed to be moderating,” she says. “They were saying, ‘Oh gosh, they weren’t really there. Look at this CNN video of David Hogg — he’s too old to be in school.’ People started Googling things instead of doing their jobs and looking into conspiracy theories about them. We were like, ‘Guys, no, this is the crazy stuff we’re supposed to be moderating. What are you doing?’”   

If people are falling for flat-earth theory and other silliness, just imagine what happens when someone of reasonable intelligence is exposed to the truth about, say, black crime as explicated in the work of Colin Flaherty.

Eventually they’ll take moderation out of the hands of humans entirely and turn it over to AI.

That people don’t know there are human beings doing this work is, of course, by design. Facebook would rather talk about its advancements in artificial intelligence, and dangle the prospect that its reliance on human moderators will decline over time.  

But given the limits of the technology, and the infinite varieties of human speech, such a day appears to be very far away. In the meantime, the call center model of content moderation is taking an ugly toll on many of its workers. As first responders on platforms with billions of users, they are performing a critical function of modern civil society, while being paid less than half as much as many others who work on the front lines. They do the work as long as they can — and when they leave, an NDA ensures that they retreat even further into the shadows.

The sheer volume of content monitored by AI will create a great black hole into which human communications disappear.

The very profusion of information may perversely lead to a world where the average person is in fact less informed and less exposed to truth. Brave new world.

“Well private collections are a problem, certainly. We have no idea how many are out there. What constitutes a collection, also, is a legitimate question.”
Herbert perked up at this.
“Yes. That’s my concern. Say a guy has, in the classic example, an old newspaper announcing the moon landing–“
Genero looked at him with sly sympathy.
“Well, if this friend of yours had only that, and just that, while he’d be in clear violation, it’s not like they’re going to come busting down his door. As long as it doesn’t circulate, he’s not going to get into trouble.”
“But he could be arrested.”
“Yes. Of course. Look what they got that last fellow for, what was he, chairman of the national bank or something? It was a stack of old pornographic magazines. It wasn’t even political stuff, they were more in the line of curiosities.”
“Aren’t they all really?”
“No. No. There’s still some very dangerous stuff in there. Even the sort of stuff in the chairman’s collection, there were to be found political articles expounding all kinds of uncorrected facts. Anything of a political nature would be a stew of hate notions. Anything touching on social issues from that era would be inherently dangerous.”
“Really?”
Herbert regretted the intrigue in his voice.
Genero continued.
“But I point him out only to note they had some other, reason to come after him and the collection was a pretext. They wanted him for something else.”
“They say everybody possessing any text is in violation.”
“Any text older than sixty years was to have been turned over by 2042, yes, that’s the catch-all.”
“And images?”
“Well there’s no reason to worry about photographs, paintings or the like yet, of course, but you know President Feltyear He-Him said just the other night, the international direction is clearly toward the gradual cleaning up and elimination…”
“So, with the inclusion of imagery, it might become true that virtually everyone is in violation of the International Convention on Intolerance and Hate Communication?”
“That’s an exaggeration. But it isn’t such a bad thing. Everyone has something on them. Everyone has a stake in making things work–because everyone is on notice not to screw up or, worse, go over to the wreckers.”
“What did he do, anyway?”
“Who?”
“The bank chairman.”
“Who cares?”

Philip Weiss:

I’ve been reading Amos Oz’s books since his death, and one of the feelings he leaves me with is: Self-contempt. Many of Oz’s characters look on American Jews with disdain. “To be without power is, in my eyes, both a sin and a catastrophe. It’s the sin of exile, and Diaspora,” says one. Another says that Diaspora Jews “shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of… life.”

The message is clear. Jews in the west are half-made because they never had to fight. They haven’t served in the Israeli army, at the front line of reborn Jewish sovereignty. But those exiled Jews derive pride and strength from the armed Jewish nation; Israel has given them international prestige. Because once Jews went like sheep to slaughter, we formed lines to get on the cattle cars. Now we are a proud nation.

A long time ago a comedian, I don’t recall who, used to joke something along the line that there were two kinds of Jews, Israeli commandos like Moshe Dayan and diaspora neurotics like the characters in a Woody Allen film.

But those exiled Jews have no skin in the game. They are living comfortable idle existences. Getting up like me this morning and going to my desk.

This is the core truth of the Israel lobby. The American Jews feel guilty that they are not on the front lines. They are lesser; the Hebrew language even describes Jews who leave Israel as such: yordim, lower. So they must do everything they can for the higher, fighting Jews of Israel. Raise money for Israel, buy off politicians, make sure that the U.S. government sticks by Israel through thick and thin and every massacre too…It’s been this way for a long time. American Jews may be peaceniks here but they can’t criticize Israel beyond the mild demurral.

When I saw the title of this piece, “The Israel lobby is built on the biggest guilt trip in the world”, I naturally thought he was referring to guilt-tripping white gentiles over the Holocaust.

…The heroes in the Amos Oz books are the brawny tanned Israeli warriors, who don’t think twice about blowing up “enemy” villages. They go on courageous “reprisal raids” against faceless enemies at night. Arthur Koestler said 80 years ago that European Jews were a “sick race”: because they don’t know how to wield arms and till the soil.

Jewry’s long landless history left it without a martial and agricultural (and subsequent working) class, but it arguably outfitted them advantageously for modernity vis a vis their WASP elite competition, who can’t shed theirs fast enough as traditional labor becomes increasingly unnecessary.
Modernity having released them from noblesse oblige, WASPs view their working class as unemployable dead weight in the coming economy, valuable primarily as consumers, to be replaced with more fecund and spendthrift immigrants.

Of course if they still thought of themselves as WASPs they’d see what a dumb bargain they’ve made, but I guess you can’t be cheated out of something you’ve already handed over. Not wanting your history and posterity is just weird, though. Viewed uncharitably, and charity isn’t warranted, the wretched WASP elite is now just pretending to have chosen this world, pretending they haven’t been beaten, somehow, by a tiny, determined foe. Whites created the modern world, indeed. And handed it right over.

As a non-WASP, let me just say, you’re not fooling anyone.

As the WASPs dissemble and dismantle, the Jews make themselves whole.

The Jews of the Israel lobby believe this. They think that Israel has figured out the right relationship to the Arab world and we are never to question it. We might suggest some minor changes in the p.r. campaign, but we’re going to hold the bag for you forever.

Massacre all the Palestinians you think it’s necessary to massacre and when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says it’s a massacre, even liberal Zionists will go after her and say she’s not being nuanced enough.

But when Tzipi Livni goes to J Street and says that Any Israeli soldier who did anything ethically wrong on the Gaza border will be prosecuted, she is a hero.

For the Jewish nation now it’s what America used to be; before, at the end of the day we were all still Americans. That no longer applies.

And as for the famous Jewish love of argument—STFU. The Jews who are against Israel must be squashed. They are non Jews or self-hating Jews. You’ll never see an anti-Zionist Jew at J Street except by mistake; and AIPAC doesn’t let anti-Zionist Jews in even to cover their hootenanny.

It’s an insipid counter-signal from WASPs seeking to debunk “tropes” about Jewish power, to cite Jewish argumentativeness; how could they ever “conspire” against us? You think they’d notice how much of that arguing is about being a good Jew.

Because if American Jews divide over Israel it is a signal to American politicians that they can divide over Israel, too. We’re the gatekeepers. Everyone takes their cue from us. “The perception that AIPAC represents a consensus among American Jews has always been a key to its political influence, which explains the group’s sometimes seemingly outsized opposition to Jewish dissent from its line,” writes Doug Rossinow, whose piece on the dark roots of AIPAC in the Washington Post is one of the rare slams of the Israel lobby ever to appear in our papers.

Guilt-tripping whites over their historical transgressions is like a photographic negative of the guilt-tripping of Jews to accept Israel’s current transgressions.

Must be nice to control the narrative.

Kamala Harris is not having a very good campaign.

When grilling Bret Kavanaugh she did her best imitation of a character from Law & Order, all self-righteous condescension, even appearing to corner him (in the eyes of those who wanted to see him cornered) with a probing question about whether or not he’d had improper discussions about the Mueller investigation.
So far so good. The whole effort came off badly in the end, but nobody who might vote for her noticed.

Her quick enlistment in the Jussie Smollet hoax suggests a lack of judgement and astounding gullibility for a former prosecutor. I doubt she’s that naive; she took her confidence in the gullibility of the public and the reasonable expectation that no real evidence one way or the other would emerge (no new facts would be “unfolding”). Which is pretty craven when you think about it–she didn’t care if it was true or not.
There’s also the possibility her friend Jussie assured her the hoax was sound.

But the alacrity with which she pounced reflects either very badly, or very, very badly on her.

It’s a far cry from the smug questioner of Kavanaugh, in the tightly controlled setting of Congressional hearings, and the blustering panic of this caught-in-the-headlights moment:

Then her campaign stuttered like, well like she does above, when her ongoing attempt to convey cool (apparently it’s all about smoking weed and listening to–what are the kids listening to?) revealed a very embarrassed dad:

When Sen. Kamala Harris said last week that she obviously supports marijuana legalization and has smoked the plant, she cited her ethnicity — “Half my family’s from Jamaica. Are you kidding me?” 

Her Jamaican father is not happy about that. 

In a statement to Jamaica Global Online, Donald Harris called his daughter’s remarks a “travesty” and accused her of stereotyping. 

“My dear departed grandmother … as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics,” he said. 

“Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty,” Mr. Harris, an economics professor at Stanford University, concluded in a statement to the news site for the Jamaican diaspora.

The language reveals a family spliff, I mean rift. This is not the first time the girl has embarrassed her father.
Kamala, meet intersectionality. It starts at home.

As Democrats crowded each other to join the Jussie Smollet hoax, Kamala Harris distinguished herself by pointing out she knows the boy personally, and by stumping for her state-of-the-legislative-art anti-lynching law (segregated lunch counters you’re next!) and denouncing the “modern day lynching” in chorus with the affable and clueless Corey Booker

As the hoax played perfectly into Harris’ anti-lynching stunt-legislation, and Harris speaks so highly of the man, a few naturally asked if she might have had some hand in his conspiracy.

Three of those photos appear to be from the same rally. The photo with Valerie Jarrett reminds me Chicago, site of the hoax, is not only not “MAGA country” but Obama country. Smollett lives in “the capital of black America” as declared by Ta-Nehisi Coates (if whites have to read Coates to absolve themselves of racism, like Governor Northam, what should Jussie have to read for his transgressions?), making it holy writ.

I doubt any politician as canny as Kamala would be foolish enough to conspire with Jussie Smollet, who appears to lack a certain, er, sophistication, but it’s not inconceivable Smollet was inspired by Harris’ anti-lynching campaign.

As it turns out he probably attempted an easier hoax by having hate mail sent to him at the Empire set, maybe by the same Nigerians. Speculation that he was to be written out of the show was of course denied by the producers. The show’s ratings are imploding as well; maybe Jussie thought to take one for the team. But I do hope someone is investigating the possibilities.

Smollett had to add production value to his next hoax attempt, and he had big plans. We were supposed to see him getting abused, on grainy black and white by shadowy figures. Imagine how much worse it all would have been with the visceral addition of video. He would have been believed by even the skeptical. Normal people project their normality onto others; the idea of him going to the trouble to stage the hoax would have been inconceivable. I think I would have found it convincing–the perversity of celebrity (and black) narcissism is hard for the average white to comprehend.

If only Jussie hadn’t messed up the scene blocking by putting his actors behind the camera instead of in front of it, he probably would have got away with it and convulsed the nation in a cycle of race hysteria to rival fellow Chicagoan Barack Obama’s murderous Black Lives Matter campaign.

One of the sources of skepticism was the lack of video evidence in a city covered with security cameras. People can’t imagine someone going to the trouble. Producing two live bodies for your story lends realism and also makes any possible conspiracy less likely in the minds of the skeptical: it’s easy for one sissy to make up a story, but to produce video evidence that would have involved two more conspirators isn’t so easy (at least if you don’t have agreeable Nigerian bodybuilders and a little money).