Here are some of the topics that have caught my attention as I’ve been browsing the internet:
1. Editing Martin Luther King Jr.
The Present Age’s Parker Malloy catches my former local newspaper, the Bangor (Maine) Daily News, running a heavily-edited version of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech to remove the liberal politics that were at its core.
As Malloy explains, “The BDN piece gives audiences the sanitized King, the mythologized man and beloved civil rights hero. What it omits is a messy, important reality.”
Malloy highlights the text the Bangor Daily News cuts from the speech transcript and how what the editors cut changes the meaning of the speech significantly:
“I understand why someone might cut the “Let freedom ring from…” refrain where King lists New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and so on.
Other changes are harder to reconcile. For instance, why omit King saying “…Alabama, with its vicious racists”? Why cut the paragraphs about “the fierce urgency of Now” and calls against “engag[ing] in the luxury of cooling off”? Why remove the paragraph about not being satisfied “as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality”?
Those are the core components of the speech! Those portions of the speech help us understand what King meant when he talked about dreaming of a future in which people are “judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Many (especially on the right) cite that line as evidence that King thought the world would be just fine if suddenly people just started acting “colorblind” to race. It’s not true. That is not what he said, and omitting the list of things that still needed to happen in order to achieve the world he dreamed of, is how the world has been handed a sanitized version of a man who was extraordinarily controversial and despised by a significant portion of Americans during his life.”
This is not the first time the Bangor Daily News has run this edited version of King’s speech, and Professor Kevin Kruse highlighted what the paper had to say the day of the address. Surprise! The paper’s opinion doesn’t age well.
If you want a good example of how sanitized and sterilized we’ve made MLK’s memory, here’s the editorial the @bangordailynews ran on the day of his “defining speech.”
— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) 12:47 AM ∙ Jan 16, 2023
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2. Decision Time for Meta
Meta is approaching a self-imposed deadline this month to announce whether it will reinstate former President Donald Trump’s posting privileges on Facebook and Instagram. Meta suspended Trump because of his actions that led to the January 6, 2021, insurrection.
Meta’s leadership tried to get its Oversight Board to decide whether to end Trump’s indefinite suspension, but it kicked the final determination back to Meta’s executives in May 2021. The decision is now former British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s to make in his role as Meta’s president of global affairs.
Given that Trump’s posts have gotten even more extreme on his Truth Social platform, I believe Meta should make Trump’s ban permanent. Facebook may not be as powerful as it was in 2020, but it was one of the social media platforms used to organize the failed coup attempt in Brazil earlier this month. The danger to our democracy remains.
Given the damage done to the United Kingdom in the aftermath of Clegg’s decision to take his Liberal Democrats into a coalition government with David Cameron’s Conservatives in 2010, however, I fear this is another big call Clegg will get wrong.
3. Junk Science Convicts Innocent People
The latest episode of the Legal Talk Network’s On the Road podcast features a great conversation with the Innocence Project’s Chris Fabricant. Fabricant is the author of Junk Science and the American Justice System, a book that analyzes discredited forensic sciences and their impact on our criminal justice system. Fabricant and host Laurence Colletti also discuss why we should do more to ensure people convicted based on junk science or police misconduct can easily access the courts to appeal the verdict against them.
4. Apple’s False Alarms
The Daily Beast’s Dan Ladden-Hall writes about an unintended consequence of the Apple Watch’s fall detection feature: “An avalanche of unintentional 911 calls are being made by smart watches attached to skiers’ and snowboarders’ when they fall over, authorities in Idaho said. The Bonner County Sheriff’s Office said the devices’ “fall detection” feature has been repeatedly contacting law enforcement from the Schweitzer Mountain ski resort.” I didn’t realize this fall detection feature existed until I tripped while jogging this past weekend, and I had to tell my watch that there was no need to call 911. (How about that humblebrag? Well, the jogging was the dog’s idea, not mine, although he was right.) Anyway, you will want to be aware of this feature before going out.
5. China’s Population Decline
China reported its first population decline in 61 years, the start of what demographers expect will be a long period of decline. As the Wall Street Journal’s Liyan Qi writes, “The National Bureau of Statistics said Tuesday that China’s population dropped to 1.412 billion in 2022, from 1.413 billion in 2021. It was the first decline since the early 1960s, when the country was devastated by famine after Mao Zedong launched his “Great Leap Forward.” This decline reinforces the likelihood that India will surpass China this year as the world’s most populous nation (and will have twice as many people as China by the end of the century). These demographic changes will impact the world’s economy and China’s foreign policy.
6. Artificial Intelligence Could Help Learning
The most recent episode of Hard Fork, the technology podcast cohosted by the New York Times’ Kevin Roose and Platformer’s Casey Newton, featured the first optimistic conversation with an educator I’ve heard about the potential impact of the new artificial intelligence tools on classroom learning. Their interview with Cherie Shields, a high school English teacher from Sandy, Oregon, went in a direction I didn’t expect, given all of the worries I’ve previously heard about how OpenAI’s chatbot will kill the high school and college essay. Shields explained how she uses OpenAI in her classroom to help her lesson plan and how we can teach students to use the tool as a supplemental personal tutor. I also always appreciate a proper mention of the paperclip maximizer artificial intelligence thought experiment.
7. The Green Comet is Coming
A comet with a green hue is headed toward Earth this month for the first time in 50,000 years. The Planetary Society’s Kate Howells tells us more, “Comet 2022 E3 (ZTF) — still without a snappy nickname — is currently visible using a telescope, but as it approaches Earth it is expected to get brighter and easier to see. The comet has a long orbit that takes it from the outer reaches of the Solar System in toward the Sun over thousands of years. It will reach its closest point to the Sun on Jan. 12, 2023, after which it will continue on past Earth. The comet will be closest to us on Feb. 1, at a distance of about 42 million kilometers (26 million miles). In the weeks surrounding its closest approach it may be visible with the naked eye or with binoculars.”
8. The JFK Airport Runway Incursion
James Fallows examines what went right and wrong on Friday at John F. Kennedy International Airport when an American Airlines plane took a wrong turn and almost led to a catastrophic situation. Fallows examines the transcripts and the information we currently know. But as he explains, “There is still a large amount we don’t know. About what was happening in that American cockpit, and how a two-pilot team missed the taxi instructions and mixed up which runway was which. About what was happening among the Kennedy control team, and when exactly they realized where the errant plane was heading. About what practices and safeguards will be revised, to reduce the chance of this ever happening again. Because we know that the aviation world is ruthless about learning from its mistakes. And the stakes are high: the highest-fatality airplane disaster in history involved a similar confusion about runway clearances.”
9. Another Warning About a National Debt Default
Kurt Eichenwald explains why the GOP’s decision to play chicken with the world economy by using the national debt increase to extract concessions is so dangerous in The Greatest Disaster in American History. Eichenwald writes, “I hope we don’t have to get there. We must stop this perennial economic terrorism. If Congress wants to cut the debt, stop doling out tax cuts and spending increases. But that requires hard choices, and Washington doesn’t seem prepared to make them. So, we turn to this performative gimmick every few years, and one of these times, we will pay the price.“ I also wrote about the national debt crisis yesterday and will continue highlighting this perilous situation.
10. A Statue for My Favorite Player
The first Cubs Convention in three years concluded over the weekend, and I watched the events about my favorite team from my Bay Area location. I was particularly pleased to see Bleed Cubbie Blue’s Sara Sanchez share that my all-time favorite player, Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg, will become the fifth player honored with a statue outside Wrigley Field. I haven’t had many opportunities to write that I was pleased with the Cubs’ ownership in recent years, so this Cubs Con was a nice change of pace. Son Ranto’s Danny Rockett also shared this fun overview of the weekend on Bleed Cubbie Blue.
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