How to fix social media

How to fix social media

Nicholas Carr writes: There are several ways to decipher intent in social media communications. Some are straightforward. Certain platforms, like YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, and Clubhouse, operate largely as broadcasting channels, while others, like Messenger, Zoom, and Facetime, are used mainly for personal conversation. Many platforms, Snapchat being a prominent example, offer users different modes of communication, some geared to personal speech, others to public speech. On platforms where personal and public speech are intertwined, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram,…

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Facebook understands the metaverse all too well

Facebook understands the metaverse all too well

Ian Bogost writes: In science fiction, the end of the world is a tidy affair. Climate collapse or an alien invasion drives humanity to flee on cosmic arks, or live inside a simulation. Real-life apocalypse is more ambiguous. It happens slowly, and there’s no way of knowing when the Earth is really doomed. To depart our world, under these conditions, is the same as giving up on it. And yet, some of your wealthiest fellow earthlings would like to do…

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Facebook’s rebrand ‘does not affect how we use or share data,’ says Zuckerberg

Facebook’s rebrand ‘does not affect how we use or share data,’ says Zuckerberg

The Verge reports: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday at his company’s Connect event that its new name will be Meta. “We are a company that builds technology to connect,” Zuckerberg said. “Together, we can finally put people at the center of our technology. And together, we can unlock a massively bigger creator economy.” “To reflect who we are and what we hope to build,” he added. He said the name Facebook doesn’t fully encompass everything the company does now,…

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Why I still believe Covid-19 could not have originated in a lab

Why I still believe Covid-19 could not have originated in a lab

By Wendy Orent Where did the Covid-19 pandemic come from? Almost since the beginning of the outbreak, a bitter and explosive controversy has raged over the origins of the novel coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2. The rapid shut-down of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan immediately suggested to Western observers that the Chinese government itself thought that the market was the source, especially since 26 out of 47 of the original cases could be linked to it. An article published…

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Gain of function research

Gain of function research

Derek Lowe writes: The NIH has not been doing itself any favors recently when it comes to questions about coronavirus research. Ever since the advent of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, there have been questions about coronavirus work conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. My own view hasn’t really changed since the last time I wrote about that particular issue: I think a natural origin for the current virus is very much more likely than it being some sort of engineering…

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World’s ‘greenest city’ will be totally unaffordable because of climate change

World’s ‘greenest city’ will be totally unaffordable because of climate change

Vice News reports: Five winters ago, one of the biggest local storm surges in 50 years hit Vancouver, a city on the front lines of climate change that’s also among the world’s most expensive places to own a home. “I got scared: ‘Oh, my God, we’re gonna flood,’” recalled Ricky Point, a member of Musqueam First Nation and part of the public works department. Point had good reason to be frightened. The Musqueam reserve is located in southeast Vancouver on…

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Spiders are much smarter than you think

Spiders are much smarter than you think

By Betsy Mason People tend to associate intelligence with brain size. And as a general guideline, this makes sense: more brain cells, more mental capabilities. Humans, and many of the other animals we’ve come to think of as unusually bright, such as chimpanzees and dolphins, all have large brains. And it’s long been assumed that the smallest brains simply don’t have the capacity to support complex mental processes. But what if they do? The vast majority of Earth’s animal species are…

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An open letter in defense of democracy

An open letter in defense of democracy

In a letter co-signed by luminaries across the political spectrum from Noam Chomsky to Francis Fukuyama, Todd Gitlin, Jeffrey C. Isaac, William Kristol write: We are writers, academics, and political activists who have long disagreed about many things. Some of us are Democrats and others Republicans. Some identify with the left, some with the right, and some with neither. We have disagreed in the past, and we hope to be able to disagree, productively, for years to come. Because we…

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Trump-backed QAnon candidates launch group to ‘control the election system’

Trump-backed QAnon candidates launch group to ‘control the election system’

Vice News reports: A coalition of right-wing MAGA candidates, including multiple Trump-backed candidates, are seeking to take control of elections in states across the U.S.—and one says they’re formally working with a group of conspiracy theorists, as well as with a QAnon influencer who some in the conspiracy movement believe is John F. Kennedy Jr. in disguise. The group consists of five GOP candidates running for the key election position of secretary of state in Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Georgia, and…

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Biden closes in on deal with Manchin, Sinema as liberals wince

Biden closes in on deal with Manchin, Sinema as liberals wince

Politico reports: Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema left a two-hour meeting with White House officials seemingly on the verge of an agreement to advance President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda — depending on whether their fellow Democrats sign on. And, in a sign of Biden’s entreaties to progressives, the president hosted Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for an afternoon meeting, according to a Democratic source. Sanders has objected to the possible exclusion of his Medicare expansion proposal from a deal, as Manchin…

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Kyrsten Sinema’s commitment to personal ambition over party loyalty

Kyrsten Sinema’s commitment to personal ambition over party loyalty

Hank Stephenson writes: Walk the streets of Kyrsten Sinema’s old stomping grounds, Phoenix’s artsy Roosevelt Row, on a busy Friday night and you might see a dozen or so Kyrsten Sinemas, none of them flattering. A local dance crew calling itself the Moderate Pixie Dream Girls, whose members dress in pink tutus and purple party wigs, perform on local street corners to protest the Arizona senator’s opposition to increasing the minimum wage or her resistance to immigration reform. Stickers at…

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Facebook tells employees to preserve all communications for legal reasons

Facebook tells employees to preserve all communications for legal reasons

The New York Times reports: Facebook has told employees to “preserve internal documents and communications since 2016” that pertain to its businesses because governments and legislative bodies have started inquiries into its operations, according to a company email sent on Tuesday night. The move, known as a “legal hold,” follows intense media, legal and regulatory scrutiny over the social network’s harms. Lawmakers and the public are up in arms after Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee turned whistle-blower, provided thousands…

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Top U.S. general confirms ‘very concerning’ Chinese hypersonic weapons test

Top U.S. general confirms ‘very concerning’ Chinese hypersonic weapons test

Reuters reports: The top U.S. military officer, General Mark Milley, has provided the first official U.S. confirmation of a Chinese hypersonic weapons test that military experts say appears to show Beijing’s pursuit of an Earth-orbiting system designed to evade American missile defenses. The Pentagon has been at pains to avoid direct confirmation of the Chinese test this summer, first reported by the Financial Times, even as President Joe Biden and other officials have expressed general concerns about Chinese hypersonic weapons…

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The secret lives of cells — as never seen before

The secret lives of cells — as never seen before

Nature reports: For a few weeks in 2017, Wanda Kukulski found herself binge-watching an unusual kind of film: videos of the insides of cells. They were made using a technique called cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) that allows researchers to view the proteins in cells at high resolution. In these videos, she could see all kinds of striking things, such as the inner workings of cells and the compartments inside them, in unprecedented detail. “I was so overwhelmed by the beauty and…

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