The Echo Chamber

It has been well remarked, that in pre-packaging the selection of articles they show you, based on your personal browsing history and what their metrics predict you’ll want to see, news outlets and news aggregators are swaddling their readers in solipsism, so that what you ever get to see is a foregone conclusion.  That, superadded to the bias problems of outlets with an agenda to push.

I try to fight this, in part by sampling a wide variety of outlets in various languages and countries (the taboos in America differ from those in Europe, for example, so that a story suppressed in one venue  might be reported in another).   But access to these (apart from those I regularly check into as a matter of course, like nzz.ch and figaro.fr and heise.de/tp and derstandard.at, usw.) is generally, again, via aggregators -- news.google.*….  Naturally, the Google staff may have their own slant, but hopefully that differs from country to country.

Recently, however, something quite disturbing happened, on the British version --news.google.co.uk [not a typo:  .co, not .com]:  They suddenly started adding entire sections grouped by special-interest material. (This happened only on this Mac, not on our tablet running Android.)
The only previous one, “Suggested for You”, is unobjectionable, being clearly so labeled, and moreover they offer a “Still interested? Yes/No” opt-out option.  For example, they flag articles about the TV show Blindspot, a holdover from when I nursed hopes (since dashed) that it might prove any good.

But now additionally, all of a sudden, from nowhere, there are sections, titled with the same font as the standard ones that everybody sees (unless you specifically opt out), like “World” or “Business”, clearly culled (though very spottily) from my search history:

“Physics” [this, in addition to the “Sci/Tech” section that is standard]

“Computer Security”  [ditto]

“topological” [sic, this one lower-case; the relic of once search on the math topic; but results were flooded with engineering senses like “topological insulators”]

“yemen” [again lower-case -- bizarre]

That is marginally more concerning, since I didn’t ask for it, and since the selection is odd (I haven't searched on "topological" for well over a year).  But what is really hair-raising is that, here on news.google.co.uk, the section that I mostly log in for, namely “U.K.”,  has been entirely suppressed, and replaced by the same “U.S.” section (today’s top story on this supposedly U.K.-focussed site: “Headless body found in Texas Pick-up”).

Why they did that is baffling.  Certainly it bears no relation to my own clicking history (since that is the one and only section I ever click on at that site), let alone to common sense (suppress the U.K. section for someone specifically asking for .co.uk).
So now there are two countries whose press I cannot access via news.google -- the other being Spain, which Google stopped indexing a while back, in (justified, IMO) protest against an overreaching law passed by the Spanish parliament.

[The Label for this piece La société du spectacle, a notion popularized by the situationistes half a century ago, and in the U.S. by Boorstin’s The Image and subsequent works..  All that has changed since then is that, increasingly, the spectacle we watched is an individualized peep-show booth.]

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The decline in quality -- in sheer competence -- at the news outlets (television especially, but newspapers as well) over the past couple of decades, is noticeable.

An interesting perspective from the White House messaging guy:

“40 percent of newspaper-industry professionals have lost their jobs over the past decade … The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/05/heres-how-white-house-shapes-foreign-affairs-coverage

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Facebook (which I never go near -- or anyhow, not knowingly) likewise pushes certain news stories over others, and has lately been embroiled in controversy over their slant.  To be fair, though, the company has been under intense pressure from the Rot-Grün-Merkel faction  to censor  not only news recommendations, but individual Facebook pages, cleansing them of opinions that dissent from the Willkommenseuphorie route to the destruction of Germany.  (We here at WDJ suffer, as you see, from no such bias.)

At another level -- more fundamental -- than that of issue-specific bias, is the general self-generated self-reflecting echo-of(echo-of(echo-of…)) incestuous nature of “trending” stories -- trending because they’re trending, like celebrities  famous for being famous.

-- Well, so long as we’re beating up on Facebook, we hereby huffily object to their far-from-adequate plugging of this blogspot, the “World of Dr Justice”, pourtant the most respected source of worldly and otherworldly insight apart from The Onion  (en revanche, we’re much funnier than they are).

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In an interview the other day, an economist called the market position of entities like Amazon and Google, monopolies on a scale not seen since the days of the robber barons -- of Standard Oil and the railroads.   But while those behemoths primarily impacted our pocketbooks, the current cyber-masters are in a position to mess with our minds.

The comparison is obvious enough, once made;  but it is hard to wrap your heads around it, since monopolists (we are brought up knowing) are men in suits, with smokestack hats and villain whiskers -- not cheeky dudes in chinos.

All the economist could come up with, by way of remedy, was to somehow nationalize all that stuff, “Like the Post Office” -- a comparison less than reassuring.

The segment struck me  since, just the day before, none other than Donald Trump had brought up much the same point, in the process  pointing out that the agenda-drenched billionaire Bezos, the king of the Amazon, bought up (the bedraggled remains of) the Washington Post -- his new toy.  

For this Trump was sniffily dismissed by the knowing, as naïve and ill-informed.  (Much as Hillary and her minions dismissed candidate Obama as “naïve”.)

(Hey, just sayin';  credit where credit is due.)

[TBC]

Yet another reason never to say anything online, anywhere, ever, at all

From this morning’s news:

A former Countdown champion hunted down and attacked a teenager after she posted a bad review of his book online.

Richard Brittain smashed a bottle of wine into Paige Rolland’s head as she stacked shelves in an Asda supermarket in Glenrothes, Scotland.

He tracked the 18-year-old down online through her social media accounts after reacting badly to her analysis of his self-published title.

Brittain, 28, who was crowned Countdown champion in 2006, travelled 500 miles from his home in Bedford to the Fife town.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11986144/Teenager-bottled-by-ex-Countdown-champion-for-giving-his-book-bad-review.html

PS:   Every book I have ever read  was simply wonderful.

(With the possible exception of some by certain dead guys.  Only, even they might have their fanatical fans.   So, yeh, I totally loved “Paradise Regained”.)

Further proof (if more were needed) that “silence is golden”:

No comment!

Flames and inflammation

In principle, this site does not comment on local news.  Facebook already handles that, down to a granularity of minutes and inches.  But public rhetoric does fall within our brief, as a linguist.  And as the city burns, it is hard not to notice these wingèd words of an elected official, destined to pass into legend.

Mayor of Baltimore, sounding like a French socialo:

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake held a press conference Saturday alongside community and religious leaders and asked for peace as hundreds marched in Baltimore in honor of Freddie Gray.

But when one reporter asked to comment on how Baltimore police responded to the protestors she said she instructed officers to allow protestors to express themselves and that “we also gave those who wished to destroy   space to do that as well.”

http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2015/04/25/baltimore-mayor-gave-those-who-wished-to-destroy-space-to-do-that/

Such, indeed, is the covert policy of administrations that send cops unprotected, in short sleeves, to face swarms of assailants, knowing they will be attacked;  and secretly hoping that the sight of injured officers  will pacify the mob.  But, Madame Mayor -- you're not supposed to say that out loud.  -- Anyhow, she got her wish.

Police say 15 officers have been injured in the Baltimore riots and two are still in the hospital.

More than two dozen people have been arrested after people looted stores, set cars on fire and threw bricks at police.

As police moved away from the mall into a nearby neighborhood, the mall became unprotected and people started carrying clothes and other items away.

Cars have been burned, other stores have been looted and a pharmacy caught fire during the mayhem.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/04/27/us/ap-us-suspect-dies-baltimore-the-latest.html

Fire sale

Smoke billowed from the broken windows of the pharmacy. Police said via Twitter that rioters cut a hose firefighters were using to battle the blaze.

Police said on Twitter that looters were "continuing to break into businesses and set cars on fire'' in the area, and that they were responding to reports of looting inside Mondawmin Mall.

http://www.wfmynews2.com/story/news/nation/2015/04/27/baltimore-police-protests/26470867/

Shop till you drop!

The mayor’s remark may be the most ill-starred executive intervention  since Dubya’s “Bring it on!”, which indeed helped bring it on, to the discomfort of the guys who had to do the actual fighting.

Reader comments:

There's no walking it back. She said it and she meant it.

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Hate to say it, but the residents of Baltimore have earned the reputation. I remember the 1978 snow storm, and the looting that followed.

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[Update 28 April 2015]  The media have done a good job pointing out a most curious background of Monday’s rioting:  the flash-mob aspect, based on social-media propagation of an invitation to a “purge” at a certain mall.  
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-riots/bs-md-ci-freddie-gray-violence-chronology-20150427-story.html#navtype=outfit
 The reference -- and it is an essentially literary reference, not a tropism of the id -- is to a fairly schlocky but popularly successful movie called “The Purge”, depicting a controlling dystopian future  in which, however, annually, for a brief period  all law and morality are suspended.  That might strike you as a weird futuristic wrinkle on the standard post-apocalyptic flick, but actually the notion has roots in classical antiquity:  in the ancient Roman festival of the Saturnalia.  Since Wiki has a characteristically excellent article on that, I’ll not discuss that Fasching-like revelry further.

Gaudeamus  igitur

Wikipedia itself, however, in its article on “The Purge”, offers an even more recondite classical comparison, to the Crypteia -- q.v.

Rule of thumb in Socialmedialand:  The rioters are calling for The Purge;  the Second-Amendment fundamentalists, for the Crypteia (in the Plutarchian sense).

(Incidentally -- purely from the standpoint of art criticism -- notice the similarity in the staffage of the painter’s vision, and the actual figures frolicking at the 7/11.

Uncanny.

Here is a cropping of the same painting that brings out the more classical aspect.  You could probably do the same thing with the photograph -- the youngster in the orange hoodie  corresponding to the young man seen full-face.)

[Update 30 April 2015]  This mayor continues to amaze.

BALTIMORE — With buildings ablaze and looters rampaging through city streets, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake faced television cameras Monday night and sternly denounced the rioters as “thugs.” The next day, with some black residents in an uproar over a word they call racially charged, she walked it back.

“There are no thugs in Baltimore,” the mayor, who is African-American, said at a church, where she met with members of the clergy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/30/us/baltimore-mayor-treads-fine-line-in-divided-city.html?_r=0

So, we suddenly have a thug-free Baltimore!  That is very good news indeed.

[Update 3 May 2015]   Now, here’s a detail you probably haven’t heard:

Residents say arsonists singled out businesses owned by Asian-Americans during the rioting on Monday.

Try fitting that into The Narrative.

It actually does make sense, though at a level deeper than that in which the media deals.   We have glanced at the matter here.

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Meanwhile in Tel Aviv, même jeu :

Une cinquantaine de personnes, en majorité des policiers, ont été blessées dans des heurts dimanche 3 mai au soir à Tel-Aviv après un rassemblement contre les violences policières et la discrimination dont sont victimes les Israéliens d'origine éthiopienne.

La police montée a tiré des grenades assourdissantes pour disperser la foule et l'empêcher de s'en prendre à la mairie de Tel-Aviv. Les manifestants ont lancé des pierres, des bouteilles et des chaises sur la police. Des canons à eau et des bombes lacrymogènes ont également été utilisés pour éloigner des manifestants des rues alentours, en vain.

Selon la police, 46 policiers et au moins sept manifestants ont été blessés

http://www.lemonde.fr/proche-orient/article/2015/05/03/a-tel-aviv-la-communaute-ethiopienne-manifeste-contre-la-violence-policiere_4626613_3218.html

That’s a lot of injured cops …

[Update 4 May 2015]  Oh, great;  thanx, Fox.

Baltimore police said on Monday that a Fox News report of a black man being shot by police in the city was not true, and the cable news network quickly issued an apology.

Baltimore police later tweeted that the report of a man being shot was not true and that a suspect had been arrested at the scene with a handgun.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/04/us-usa-police-baltimore-shooting-idUSKBN0NP1TJ20150504

That sort of premature-ejaculation on the part of reporters  could get buildings burned.

Pining for “Pinterest”

“This case presents certain features of pinterest.”

-- Psherlock Pholmes

As mentioned here,  a young friend has just informed me that, if I want anyone at all to so much as glance at my blog, who doesn’t have a beard as white as mine (quite becoming, though, she told me the other day), I absolutely have to gear uP and get with the Program  and begin seeking Pinnings on something called “ “ “Pinterest” “ “.  (Additional quotation marks added for hazmat security.   The thing has gone viral, in ways reminiscent of ebola.)   And that is essential because, only in that fashion will thousands of milling visitors throng my site, and, no doubt charmed, ask themselves “Hmm!  Wonder whether this fellow has published any exciting mysteries??”   And upon learning (to their surprise and delight) that he has indeed, they rush out to rid themselves of their surplus dollars, here and here and here.   (Remember, you can’t take it with you. -- Of course, you’re a little young for that thought.)   Whereupon I take the resulting royalty money to the neighborhood bank, and retire and buy a yacht and sail around the oceans in a sailor suit, on a deck bustling with penguins and pangolins.  That’s the plan.

The only price you must pay, to get Pinned to, is to chuck out your old preoccupation with the dusty print culture (logic and history and ideas and reasoning and like that) and focus on images.  Eye-candy.  Pictures.  

Well, sure, whatever.   Why not.  For an old guy, I’m pretty “hep”, you dig?

But I am still enough of a philologist  that this bizarre coinage and novel vocable, 

“Pinterest”

(of all things), has got me scratching my snowy-locked head.  Whatever can be the derivation of this strange-looking word?

Well, let’s start with the root. Morphologically, we have:  Pint|er|est.  Pint (rhymes with mint) is German slang for ‘penis’; so far so good.  Now -er can be either the masculine (natch) adjective ending, or else a comparative suffix:  thus,  something like ‘he-penis’ or ‘more-penissy’.  Finally, -est is, in German just as in English, the mark of the superlative;  hence the word as a whole means, etymologically, ‘most-more-penissy’ or perhaps ‘superlatively penissy’ or perhaps ‘so penissy you could spread it on toast’.

Checking with Wikipedia to confirm this hypothesis, I learned that the site “is managed by Cold Brew Labs” -- evidently a beer laboratory.   Awesome. This has got to be a total guy thing.

Such, youngsters, are the teachings of philology.

~

Curiosity by now aroused, I  for the first time  visited their website -- carefully typing in the word, P - I - N - T - E - R - E - S -T (can that be right?  It reads like a typo) -- blushing a bit that the all-seeing Google (which probably spies on the enn ess ay, rather than the other way around), drawing the conclusion that I have a fascination with, um, superlative images of ‘Pint’s, no doubt will start pimpling the response-pages with image ads for Viagra and masculine enhancement and whatnot, rather than penguin-grooming products as they normally do now;  but bit my lip and proceeded anyway:  I’ve got to get that yacht!

So it landed me at www.pinterest.com, and … I felt as though I had accidentally wandered into the wrong restroom.    Not only do more than four times as many women as men use the site (or so we're told), but to say that its design and presentation were expressive “principally” of women, would be an understatement;  it is positively estrogenic.   So, looks like the proposed German etymology  is refuted by the old method of Wörter und Sachen.

Having now looked around there a bit, it remains obscure to me how anybody is ever going to find my most important posts via that site -- essays on Theologia Mathematica, or Trinitarian Minimalism, or Eliminative Materialism -- or etymology, for that matter.   I didn’t spot any pictures of the Riemann hypothesis, nor the Poincaré conjecture neither; no hint of Indo-European roots.   Just … weird hairdos and stuff.  True, there was one image of some guy doing woodworking;  but in context, I suspect it’s intended to be ironic.

So, I may have to settle for a rowboat, and retirement at ninety-five.

As it is, half the visitors to my site these days seem to be horny guys over in Belgium  searching on images for “Aurélie Delvaulx” (la divine Aurélie) -- whose portrait we here reproduce, for research purposes:

To rotate this image:

using your free hand,

manipulate the mouse;

double-click to remove the panties.

.