fivethirtyeight.com
fivethirtyeight.com
Most places are requiring masks now because they work. Wearing one doesn’t hurt much and might even help a lot.
nytimes.com
nytimes.comA growing list of businesses I appreciate that are willing to break with the status quo to send a message. List includes REI, North Face, Patagonia, and Ben & Jerry’s. Since this was published, Verizon has said they’ll stop advertising on Facebook:
Update: Unilever joins: Driving a Responsible Digital Ecosystem in These Polarized Times.
"We found an advertisement for Verizon appearing next to a video from the conspiracy group QAnon drawing on hateful and antisemitic rhetoric," the letter read, "warning that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is planning to bring on civil war with concentration camps and coffins at the ready and claiming Americans are already quarantined in militarized districts."Appearing next to hateful conspiracy garbage is not a good look for brands.
Update: Unilever joins: Driving a Responsible Digital Ecosystem in These Polarized Times.
nytimes.com
"At every crucial moment, American officials were weeks or months behind the reality of the outbreak. Those delays likely cost tens of thousands of lives."The weakness of positive thinking visualized.
siipo.la
siipo.la"Since most of the time WebP is used alongside JPEG fallback, by using WebP you will essentially double your storage costs with little benefit."ah-HA! Unless all of your images < 500px you don't get a big benefit moving to WebP when you can use MozJPEG for encoding.
Facebook is on the Wrong Side of History
So much Facebook in the news:
NYT: What’s Facebook’s Deal With Donald Trump?
The Atlantic: How Facebook Works for Trump
NYT: What’s Facebook’s Deal With Donald Trump?
"While executives across Facebook insist that Mr. Zuckerberg’s position on free speech on the platform is a matter of long-term planning and principle, not political expediency, his political team also recognizes that they are badly out of position for a Democratic administration."Mashable: Facebook faces boycott push from NAACP, ADL, and other civil rights groups
"They allowed incitement to violence against protestors fighting for racial justice in America in the wake of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks, and so many others. They amplified white nationalists by including news sources with known extremist ties into their 'fact checking' program. They turned a blind eye to blatant voter suppression in their platform."And I think this older article from April gives important context about why exactly Facebook's alliance with the administration is dangerous:
The Atlantic: How Facebook Works for Trump
"Instead of paying to put particular media in front of a specific audience, an advertiser now pays Facebook to deliver a selected outcome from a certain stripe of people. For example, a clothing manufacturer might pay Facebook for webpage visits from women in their 30s who live in Los Angeles, or for likes by parents with college degrees whose online behavior is similar to that of users who had previously made purchases."The combination of microtargeting, proprietary machine learning, increasing radicalization through recommended groups, and an unwillingness to prevent voter supression or misinformation is hurting our ability to have a healthy democracy.
The Atlantic
The Atlantic"The election is in 160 days. That's usually not enough time to pass new laws, let alone build new voting infrastructure, and it’s certainly not enough time to test any of these systems before they are implemented. And most state legislatures are now working remotely, slowing them down even more."Throw another log on the anxiety fire.
Large and Small
youdownloadtheappanditdoesntwork.com
youdownloadtheappanditdoesntwork.com"On June 15, Apple rejected an update to a previously-approved iOS app called Hey. The app is for a new email service created by a company called Basecamp.This site has dozens of examples of apps that you can download from the iOS app store that don't work without a subscription you purchase elsewhere. This makes the rejection of the new email app Hey seem like Apple is singling out a potential direct competitor rather than evenly enforcing an existing policy.
The rationale for said rejection was that Hey offered a subscription via-website without also offering a parallel subscription via Apple's in-app purchase (IAP). Apple takes a 30% cut of IAP revenues during an app's first year, and 15% thereafter."
More background: Apple doubles down on controversial decision to reject email app Hey.
Update (6/23): We're all good here? Apple, HEY, and the Path Forward.
campfire
Red-winged Blackbird
ft.com
ft.com"The main reason is obvious: the respiratory droplets thought to carry the virus have a much greater opportunity to disperse harmlessly outside, particularly if there are breezes to carry them away."Indoors is still cancelled.
the economist
the economist"What matters is not only how many votes candidates get, but where they get them. Because electoral-college votes are assigned by state rather than by the country as a whole, and because smaller states receive a disproportionately high number of votes, it is possible for smaller states to overrule the majority of voters."Time to get rid of the electoral college.