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Blog: Fighting Authoritarianism: 20 Lessons

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Jason Tate

Reproduced on Kottke:

Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so. Here are twenty lessons from the twentieth century, adapted to the circumstances of today.

1) Do not obey in advance. Much of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then start to do it without being asked. You’ve already done this, haven’t you? Stop. Anticipatory obedience teaches authorities what is possible and accelerates unfreedom.

2) Defend an institution. Follow the courts or the media, or a court or a newspaper. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you are making them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions don’t protect themselves. They go down like dominoes unless each is defended from the beginning.

3) Recall professional ethics. When the leaders of state set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become much more important. It is hard to break a rule-of-law state without lawyers, and it is hard to have show trials without judges.

Read the whole thing.

Wi-Fi Mesh Systems Compared

Technology
Jason Tate

Wi-Fi mesh systems are the future of home networking. Mac Observer has a really good run down on what they are and which one is best for your home:

Mesh routing completes that puzzle because the access points act as one. They are all aware of each other and can work with client devices to decide which access point is best for that client at that time, not just which one is closest or has the strongest signal. If one device starts streaming a ton of Netflix, for example, the mesh can identify this and either tell that client to move or start moving other clients to free up that radio for the video stream.

This kind of setup is simply not possible to build yourself with off-the-shelf routers.

My place isn’t big enough to need something like this, but damn, it’s still cool.

Netflix Adds Offline Mode

Jason Tate

Netflix has finally added an offline mode.

While many members enjoy watching Netflix at home, we’ve often heard they also want to continue their Stranger Things binge while on airplanes and other places where Internet is expensive or limited. Just click the download button on the details page for a film or TV series and you can watch it later without an internet connection.

Screenplay Based on The Menzingers ‘On the Impossible Past’

The Menzingers
Jason Tate

Adam Reiss has written a screenplay based upon The Menzingers’ On the Impossible Past. The entire thing has been put online for fans to read and give feedback.

Hi. I’m Adam. I wrote a screenplay called “On the Impossible Future.” I’ve created this website to share it with whoever might read it because I’ve been working on this for years and I’ve reached a point in the creative process where I desperately need fresh eyes to look it over and give me feedback. All of my friends are probably sick of reading drafts (even if they’re too nice to tell me).

Blog: For Helping Immigrants, Chobani’s Founder Draws Threats

The New York Times
Jason Tate

The New York Times:

By many measures, Chobani embodies the classic American immigrant success story.

Its founder, Hamdi Ulukaya, is a Turkish immigrant of Kurdish descent. He bought a defunct yogurt factory in upstate New York, added a facility in Twin Falls, Idaho, and now employs about 2,000 people making Greek yogurt.

But in this contentious election season, the extreme right has a problem with Chobani: In its view, too many of those employees are refugees.

As Mr. Ulukaya has stepped up his advocacy — employing more than 300 refugees in his factories, starting a foundation to help migrants, and traveling to the Greek island of Lesbos to witness the crisis firsthand — he and his company have been targeted with racist attacks on social media and conspiratorial articles on websites including Breitbart News.

The Quest to Make a True Blue M&M

The New York Times
Jason Tate

Malia Wollan, writing for The New York Times:

The team of color scientists hovered in their white coats and hairnets, staring down at a clear plastic box full of strangely colored M&Ms. “They look like pebbles, ugly little pebbles,” said Rebecca Robbins, the color-chemistry manager for Mars Chocolate. She propped open the lid to show off a muted array of gray, tan, mauve, pale purple and sickly pink chocolate nuggets. Each attenuated shade was the disappointing outcome of an early attempt by Mars to replace a bright, artificial dye with natural pigments extracted from algae, roots, seeds and other parts of plants. Not a single piece of candy in this tackle box of failure looked edible — let alone tempting.

American Apparel Seeks Bankruptcy Protection Again

Money
Jason Tate

Bloomberg:

American Apparel Inc. filed for bankruptcy less than a year after ending its first stint under court protection, and agreed to sell the brand to Gildan Activewear Inc., a Canadian maker of T-shirts and underwear, for about $66 million.

American Apparel filed for protection from creditors Monday, Gildan said in a statement. The Montreal-based company said it’s not buying any stores.

What.cd Shut Down

Jason Tate

One of the more infamous private music sharing sites, What.cd, has been shut down:

What.cd, an invite-only music torrent website first launched in 2007, has been shut down after a raid by French authorities. The private tracker offered free (and often illegal) access to a massive, deeply thorough collection of music and was popular among audiophiles for its strict rules around quality and file formats. The site was created after the shutdown of another well-known torrent website, Oink, which operated between 2004 and 2007.

Google and Facebook to Ban Fake News Sites From Ad Networks

The New York Times
Jason Tate

Facebook and Google have decided to ban fake news sites from using their advertising networks. Again, this seems like something that would have been useful a few months ago, but it’s a good step in the right direction.

Google kicked off the action on Monday afternoon when the Silicon Valley search giant said it would ban websites that peddle fake news from using its online advertising service. Hours later, Facebook, the social network, updated the language in its Facebook Audience Network policy, which already says it will not display ads in sites that show misleading or illegal content, to include fake news sites.

Twitter Rolls Out New Anti-Harassment Tools

Twitter
Jason Tate

Twitter is finally rolling out some new anti-harassment tools. Buzzfeed has a good look at what probably would have been nice to have before Nazi-frogs took over the platform during the election:

As such, Twitter also announced it will add a new “hateful conduct” reporting option (when users report an “abusive or harmful” tweet, they’ll now see an option for “directing hate against a race, religion, gender, or orientation”). Similarly, the company is adding new “extensive” internal training for its support teams that deal with hateful harassment. According to the company, its Safety team support staff will undergo “special sessions on cultural and historical contextualization of hateful conduct” as well as refresher programs that will track how hate speech and abuse evolve on the platform (a necessary step, as many trolls have begun to create their own hateful code language with which to bypass traditional censors and filters).

Elvis Presley Documentary Coming to HBO

Elvis Presley
Jason Tate

A career-spanning documentary on Elvis Presley will be coming to HBO.

Director Thom Zimny will helm the project based on a script by Alan Light; Zimny previously worked with HBO on a pair of Bruce Springsteen documentaries, 2015’s The Ties That Bind and 2010’s The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town.

Deadline reports that the documentary, which tracks Presley’s life from childhood to his final Jungle Room recording sessions in 1976, was made with the complete cooperation of the Presley estate.

Sex Pistols About Talked About Writing New Music in 1996

Sex Pistols About Talked About Writing New Music in 1996
Jason Tate

Apparently back in 1996, the Sex Pistols considered releasing new music. NME reports that the lone dissenter was John Lydon.

Matlock went on to reveal that he had been keen to write new music during their first reunion: “Back in 1996, there was a bit of talk about it. Me, Steve [Jones] and Paul [Cook] [wanted to] but John thought shy of it. I don’t know why, maybe he thought stuff that he’d written didn’t match up to [the past] and that [the band’s legacy] might be diminished by it somehow.”