This idea increasingly resonates with me. link to ‘To Make Social Media Work Better, Make It Fail Better | Electronic Frontier Foundation’

Oh good, our fears about deepfakes are coming true. link to ‘Hacked News Channel and Deepfake of Zelenskyy Surrendering Is Causing Chaos Online’

Intellectual property is a social justice issue. link to ‘Now That White Musicians Are Getting Sued For Copyright, Lawyers Say Copyright Needs To Change | Techdirt’

Latest guest post on official blog of far right Gab platform could have been a Latter-day Saint General Conference sermon. Sure, rejecting truth and embracing evil sounds bad, but there are a lot of assumptions that need to be surfaced and interrogated about what both terms mean.

I do not always have praise for the local Republican supermajority, but I’m glad to see this goes beyond Ukraine to provide support for all kinds of refugees. Tentative optimism here. link to ‘Kentucky lawmakers advance bill to resettle war refugees | Lexington Herald Leader’

Yemen has been on my mind a lot since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but mostly because I’m belatedly realizing I haven’t been paying attention. It’s not that Ukraine doesn’t deserve our attention, it’s that Yemen has long deserved just as much. There, we’re the ones complicit in civilian deaths, and we need to own up to that. link to ‘Yemen Crisis Has Only Worsened, Despite Biden Pledge’

I missed most of this yesterday, but Masnick sums up my thoughts so much better than I could. link to ‘Performative Conservatives Are Mad That A Search Engine Wants To Downrank Disinformation | Techdirt’

I will only accept complaints about gas prices from people who also bemoan our failure to invest in public and alternative transportation.

The Onion speaks uncomfortable truth. Americans must hold Putin accountable, but we meed to turn our attention inward, too. link to ‘U.S. Condemns Russian Bombing Of Hospital As Horrific Act That Any World Power Could Theoretically Commit’

KONY 2012 has been on my mind a lot lately, and this is a good read. It doesn’t bring up why I’ve had it on the mind, though. I’m afraid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could turn into a sequel of sorts: Something important and meaningful that people glom onto because they see something oversimplified on social media. link to ‘How KONY 2012 Trained the Audience— and YouTube — to Love Reactionary Media | by Jamie Cohen | Mar, 2022 | OneZero’

Interesting if disconcerting story. The idea of whataboutism as misinformation is particularly disturbing, and it’s important to remember that misinformation is a non-partisan phenomenon (even if the GOP is particularly keen on it). The worst part from a personal angle is how this relates to my own struggling to balance calling out the invasion of Ukraine with knowing that I haven’t been as attentive to other conflicts that deserve my brainspace.

Textbook example of why it is never enough to say you didn’t mean any harm. This is shameful and gross. link to ‘Ky. lawmaker apologizes for comments about Jewish women during abortion debate | Lexington Herald Leader’

On one hand, this is actual social media censorship, not what bad actors in the U.S. complain about. On the other, it is a reminder that even the best intentioned laws against misinformation, etc. could have unintended effects. We need to tread carefully when figuring out legal responses to social media problems. link to ‘Russia Can Now Jail People for 15 Years for Tweeting About the War on Ukraine’

Lots of thoughts about this. As someone with an education PhD who teaches and researches outside traditionally education topics, I want to emphasize that the prevalence of education PhDs is a symptom, not the actual problem. In my teaching and research outside my home discipline, I work hard to learn the content and communities that I’m branching into. The disdain for those content and communities at BYU Religious Education is the real problem here and therefore what I’m really worried about.

We can support Ukraine generally and still be concerned about the integration of the far-right into their armed forces. link to ‘Ukraine’s ‘Neo-Nazi’ Battalion Is Greasing Bullets in Pig Fat for Russia’s Muslim Soldiers’

So very gross. What’s happening in Ukraine is terrible, but terrible things are happening all over the world, and we shouldn’t make Ukraine more terrible out of some kind of chauvinism. link to ‘Critics Call Out ‘Racist’ Western Coverage of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine’

Proud of Lexington for hosting this. Also wondering if I should check the Lexington groups on Gab to see if the local far-right is cranky about it. link to ‘Lexington KY peace vigil for Ukraine set for Wednesday | Lexington Herald Leader’

Tremendously worrying stuff. Taxes are the price we pay for democratic society. link to ‘House Introduces Tax Bill that Would Devastate Kentucky’s Budget for a Giveaway to the Wealthy - Kentucky Center for Economic Policy’

Because the Web feels new to us, it’s easy to forget how important it is to preserve it for the future. link to ‘Ukrainian Websites Are Going Dark. Archivists Are Trying To Save Them’

Oh no no no. This hadn’t crossed my mind as a possibility, but how terrible. link to ‘Afghans Who Relocated to Ukraine Are Reliving Their Worst Nightmare’

Eurovision is not supposed to be political, but it always sneaks in. My money is on a lot of sympathy votes for Ukraine’s entry, and a very low score for Russia. link to ‘Russia’s still eligible for the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest : NPR’

Lots of important reminders in here. I also feel ashamed that I have not protested my country’s wars in the way these Russians are doing so now. link to ‘How liberal Russians are reacting to Putin’s war with Ukraine.’

Greene is repeatedly awful, and the GOP’s refusal to do anything substantial about it is telling. link to ‘Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Openly Advocating Violence Against Trans People’

Hits too close to home for me. I have work to do. link to ‘Man Dreams Of More Equal America That Just Sort Of Happens On Its Own’

Amazon already has too big a footprint here. Don’t feel great about this. link to ‘KY lawmakers advance data center tax incentives to woo tech giants | Lexington Herald Leader’

Putin has outwitted every U.S. President since W, not necessarily because he’s smarter, but because he doesn’t operate with the same constraints U.S. presidents do. To blame this on Biden is moronic. We obviously shouldn’t let this episode of the culture war overshadow the more important crisis happening in Ukraine itself, but this appropriation of the crisis really worries me in the context of U.S. politics. These stances are largely indefensible.

Remembering the time that the only person at church who understood my dissertation research was the one who worked for the state of Michigan doing social media surveillance of social justice movements.

There is no denying that Putin is smart and strategic, but expressing awe instead of concern is typically Trump in its idiocy. link to ‘Trump Thinks Putin Is a ‘Genius’ for Invading Ukraine’

Worrying stuff here. Right-wing media consumption appears to be the big predictor for QAnon beliefs. link to ‘QAnon Isn’t Dead, It’s Growing’

Happy that my much cheaper bike does not rely on servers to function properly. link to ‘Peloton Outage Prevents Customers From Using $2,500 Exercise Bikes | Techdirt’

Kentucky has taken some bad steps in this direction lately, but this is horrific. link to ‘Texas Is Going to Start Investigating Parents of Trans Kids for Child Abuse’

Bellingcat does good work. It gives me hope to see people using the internet to fight back against disinformation spread by the internet, but I’m also glad the article touches on the dangers involved. link to ‘The Internet Is Debunking Russian War Propaganda in Real Time’

The students in my fundamentals of computers class have repeatedly heard me bring up this story to explain that technology is never just technical. link to ‘This Is the ‘Hacking’ Investigation Into Journalist Who Clicked ‘View Source’ on Government Website’

This has been around long enough that I used to show it to my FREN 102 students, but very glad to see it cross my radar again via Boing Boing. The whole show is fantastic, but this bet might be the best. Great, nerdy deployment of mostly-right French. [link to ‘Comedian Bill Bailey reimagines the Doctor Who theme as Belgian jazz | Boing Boing’](https://boingboing.net/2022/02/22/comedian-bill-bailey-reimagines-the-doctor-who-theme-as-belgian-jazz.html?utm_source=rss

City council member responded to my concerned email by basically telling me I should have spoken up before the vote happened. Feels harsh but fair—want to do better about showing up and speaking up.

Can we please refrain from electing the alleged Q to Congress? link to ‘QAnon Celebrity Ron Watkins Wrote a Terrible Poem to ‘Prove’ He’s Not Q’