“Algorithmic recommendation engines are the currents in which we are swept up as a society, choosing what we watch and listen to, sure, but also what we eventually find joy in. Filterworld starts from the beginning, rooting readers in the historical context of both mathematics and ghosts in machines. Two threads run through Filterworld: one is the Mechanical Turk; the other is the technology of algorithms themselves. The mathematics at play are old. There is an algorithm written on a Babylonian tablet dated to sometime between 1800 and 1600 BCE. Apparently it can determine the square root of integers with a very high level of accuracy. (I haven’t tested it because that’s not how I make my money.) We didn’t get a name for algorithms until a couple thousand years later, when European scholars translated Kitab al-Jabr wa-l-Muqabala (‘The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing’), the landmark work of Persian mathematician al-Khwarizmi, from Arabic to Latin. Those researchers also Latinized al-Khwarizmi’s name to ‘Algoritmi,’ which was then used to describe mathematical processes. We also get the word ‘algebra’ from the book’s shortened title (Al-Jabr). The Mechanical Turk was retired in the 19th century, but Chayka considers the technological novelty a rough metaphor for the current state of things. “Algorithmic recommendations are the latest iteration of the Mechanical Turk: a series of human decisions that have been dressed up and automated as technological ones, at an inhuman scale and speed,” he argues early in Filterworld. Mechanical Turk is also the name of Amazon’s low-wage job service, where technology companies can hire armies of workers to do mundane tasks to give their platforms the illusion of automation. Silicon Valley hasn’t figured out how to scale irony yet, I suppose.” (TM Brown/LARB)
“As the war in Gaza burns on and its regional repercussions continue to reverberate, the United States is struggling to deter foes, while trying to ensure its friends are on the same page. US strikes on Houthi positions inside Yemen aim to deter the militant group, and its Iranian backers, from any serious escalation in the Red Sea. In Iraq and Syria, US attacks on militias allied with Iran carry the same message. In all three of those arenas, the jury is still out as to whether this deterrence is working: The Houthis vowed to keep up their attacks in the Red Sea, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed responsibility for an attack yesterday, near the US consulate in Erbil, Iraq, which Tehran purports was an Israeli spying location; but we have not seen a major escalation beyond those incidents either. In Lebanon, meanwhile, the US is trying to mediate between Israel and Hezbollah to avoid a full-scale escalation there. A policy of what we can call ‘limited and measured escalation’ suits Iran just fine. It does not want a large flare-up with the United States — or Israel — but it hopes that raising and sustaining the costs for the US in the region is both popular in Arab and Muslim public opinion and unpopular with American voters in an election year. Iran’s long-term strategy is to push the US out of more parts of the Middle East. The low-hanging fruit for the Iranians might be the US military presence in both Syria and Iraq. It’s additionally clear that the US has also been wrestling with its friends during this crisis. Relations between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are reportedly at a serious low. The US is disappointed at the Israeli timetable in the Gaza Strip, having expected a much more rapid shift away from large-scale military operations to a more targeted approach — Israel had indicated such a shift in northern Gaza but not the rest of the strip. Netanyahu is also rejecting the US vision for governance in postwar Gaza; the US sees the Palestinian Authority (PA) as playing a central role in that order, while Netanyahu opposes such an outcome and even refuses to release the tax revenues the PA is due.” (MEI Blog)
“The Houthis are Zaydis, a minority Shiite Muslim sect that makes up around a third of Yemen’s overall population. They have long felt marginalized in the majority Sunni country. In 2014, the Houthis captured the Yemeni capital Sanaa, sparking a civil war with the government, which was backed by the US and Saudi Arabia. The Houthis today control essential parts of Yemen, including Sanaa, the populous north of the country, and the critical port of Hudaydah, which sits on the Red Sea approaches to the Suez Canal. I spoke to (Elizabeth) Kendall on Sunday to get her take on who the Houthis are and what motivates them … ELISABETH KENDALL: … This is such an unequal war because the whole character of war has changed. It’s not about the biggest military. It’s more about who has the biggest appetite to just keep going. The Houthis know we’re not going to launch a land war because not only would it be unbelievably unpopular with all our allies in the Arab world, but it would be immensely unpopular back home as well with voters who don’t want to see us mire ourselves in another Afghanistan or another Iraq. And we’ve seen from both of those countries that it doesn’t matter if you have a stronger military. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to win. The Houthis have been fighting in civil wars in Yemen on and off since 2004. Let’s say you’re 22 years old, and you’re in the Houthi territories, particularly those up in the north, which is very populous. You will barely remember anything other than war. And that’s really important because we think of war as a last resort. They think of it as a way of life.” (CNN)
“Galit Distel Atbaryan, a hard-line minister in Netanyahu’s government, resigned after October 7th; she later talked of her ‘burning anger’ toward him. She was hesitant to attack Netanyahu during wartime, but, she told Israeli television, she herself had ‘sinned’ for her own role in dividing Israeli society. When she woke on the morning of the seventh and heard the news of the catastrophic attack, her first thought was ‘You did this. You weakened the nation.’ Now, she said, ‘the days of this government are numbered—that’s obvious.’ Naftali Bennett, a former Prime Minister, told me that Israel was experiencing a self-defeating level of division. ‘In the past year,’ he said, ‘Israel has been tearing itself apart and its immune system became weak. Our enemy saw that and attacked.’” (David Remnick/TNY)
“Beneath much of Israel, deep underground, there is a mirror world of ancient winding tunnels, tight burrows and broad chambers hewn into the rock. Archaeologists have long known that most Jewish settlements in Roman-era Judea were equipped with a labyrinth of elaborate concealed spaces that enabled the inhabitants to hide from attacks, and if necessary, survive underground for a long time. These hiding complexes were initially linked mostly to the Bar Kochba Revolt, a grueling conflict in the second century C.E. that was the last major attempt by Jews to shake off Roman rule. But recent discoveries have shown that the phenomenon began much earlier, possibly even before the arrival of the Romans, experts interviewed by Haaretz say. These hiding places have a more complex history than previously thought, and they evolved over time to become a key element in the long-term strategy of Jewish resistance to foreign encroachment. Many readers will be more familiar with the use of natural caves, particularly around the Dead Sea, as last-resort shelters in times of strife. That is largely because these remote caverns, thanks to their relative isolation and the dry desert climate, have yielded spectacular ancient finds, from the famed Dead Sea Scrolls to perfectly preserved ancient weapons.” (Ariel David/Haaretz)
“Elon Musk and other prominent people have attributed the problems with the 737 Max to Boeing's diversity efforts … Here are the FACTS … 2/3 of Boeing's employees are white .. 80% of Boeing exes are white … Boeing’s CEO, CFO, and Chief Aerospace Safety Officer are white men … But none of the people ACTUALLY IN CHARGE of Boeing are being called out by Musk and his ideological allies ..” (John Legum)
“You have no doubt seen the incredibly depressing news about the incredibly depressing purchase of The Baltimore Sun by the incredibly depressing David Smith, chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group, the right-wing media empire best known for gobbling up local television news operations and forcing local anchors to spout toxic Big Brother gibberish like this. The Sun was once a great newspaper. I remember reading, once upon a time, that it had sprung more foreign correspondents into action across the planet than any American newspaper save The New York Times and The Washington Post. It had eight foreign bureaus at one point, all of which were shuttered by the Tribune Company by 2006. But the Sun’s real triumphs came in covering its gritty, organic city. And even well after its glory days, it still won Pulitzers—as recently as 2020, for taking down corrupt Mayor Catherine Pugh, who served a stretch in prison thanks to the paper. Smith wasted no time in showing his cards during his first meeting with the staff Wednesday. He was asked about a comment he made to New York magazine back in 2018, when he said, “Print media is so left wing as to be meaningless dribble.” (‘Dribble’? Let’s hope he won’t be on the copy desk.) Did he feel that way about the Sun specifically? ‘In many ways, yes,’ Smith said, adding that he wants the paper to emulate the local Fox affiliate, which is owned … by Sinclair.” (Michael Tomasky/TNR)
“Monday brought big news for two men’s magazines. First, The New York Times reported that Playboy will stop publishing images of naked women. Then, The New York Times reported that Pitchfork has been bought by Conde Nast. Yes, Pitchfork—the music-reviews website/video studio/concert organizer/print magazine—is a men’s publication, at least to hear Conde Nast’s Chief Digital Officer Fred Santarpia tell it: The acquisition brings ‘a very passionate audience of Millennial males into our roster,’ he said to the Times.On Twitter, the amount of ire directed at his comment quickly seemed to eclipse any other sort of reaction to the news that the most influential music publication to emerge in the Internet age, one closely associated with the word “independent,” was being bought by the old-media home to Vogue, The New Yorker, Allure, and more than a dozen other titles. The backlash comes in part from a fact of timing: Though Pitchfork has faced criticism over the years for white-dude-centricism, lately it’s diversified its bylines and stepped up its coverage of gender, race, and identity (sample headlines: ‘Riot Grrrl and Queerness in the American South’; ‘Sex Positivity in the Music of Bob’s Burgers’; ‘The 13 Best Songs About Women Masturbating’). Besides, its mission is to champion music, period—and contrary to certain sexist stereotypes, members of both genders can and do obsess over the same bands. ‘Women are a huge part of Pitchfork’s staff and readership,’ Pitchfork founder Ryan Schreiber tweeted in response to the outcry. ‘We’re totally about reaching all music fans everywhere.’” (Spencer Kornhaber/ The Atlantic)
“Mayor Adams will almost certainly lose the city’s recently filed lawsuit against more than a dozen of the bus companies hired by Texas to bring migrants to New York. But this is a case where defending the city matters more than a legal victory. ‘Texas Governor Abbott’s continued use of migrants as political pawns is not only chaotic and inhumane but makes clear he puts politics over people,’ Adams said in a video message announcing the lawsuit. The mayor is suing 17 of the bus companies hired by Abbott for violating Social Service Law 149, an obscure state law designed to punish ‘any person who knowingly brings, or causes to be brought, a needy person from out of the state into this state for the purpose of making him a public charge’ … But hauling the bus companies into court, even on flimsy legal grounds, is exactly what Adams should be doing. The expense of defending themselves will make transportation companies think twice about whether they wish to continue aiding and abetting Abbott’s callous political stunts. More importantly, the lawsuits allow the the elected leader of our city to demonstrate that some values are worth fighting for whether or not the courts agree. Adams is showing malicious political pranksters like Abbott that there will be legal and financial consequences for ferrying thousands of needy people without proper food, clothing, health care, or so much as a heads up to the receiving authorities in New York. It wouldn’t be the first time one of our mayors fought the good fight against impossible legal odds.” (Errol Louis/NYMag)
“Just after 7:30 Monday evening in Iowa, many Republicans were settling in at their caucus locations to listen to candidate nomination speeches before voting when their phones started buzzing with news alerts: former president Donald Trump had already won. Barely a half hour into the official start of the Iowa caucuses and with only a few hundred votes reported, multiple TV networks and the Associated Press had independently come to the exact same conclusion. The result wasn’t a shock—Trump had held dominant leads in polls for months—but the timing seemed to catch some TV anchors off-guard. ‘This is the earliest I can remember ever calling such a thing,’ CNN’s Jake Tapper said, right after announcing Trump’s victory. Soon, TV screens lit up with a surreal display: a split screen of studio hosts talking about a race that was already over, paired with live shots of Iowans still waiting to cast their votes. Once again, on a big election night, the media themselves had become a story—and fodder for criticism.” (Cameron Joseph/CJR)
“Often in politics, you see politicians from opposing parties explain the compromises they make with one another differently to different audiences. But I’m not sure I’ve seen anything quite as stark as the tax deal reached Tuesday by House Ways and Means chair Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO) and Senate Finance Committee chair Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR). What they separately describe in the announcement of the agreement does not sound like the same deal. Wyden highlights how ‘fifteen million kids from low-income families will be better off’ from an expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC), as well as a change to the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit that ‘will build more than 200,000 affordable housing units.’ Smith doesn’t mention either of these specifically, but has much to say about how the deal ‘locks in over $600 billion in proven pro-growth, pro-America tax policies.’ It’s to be expected that Democrats and Republicans, talking about a deal that trades a Democratic priority (Child Tax Credit expansion) for a Republican priority (business tax cuts), would highlight the particular partisan victories. But let’s go back to what Smith said about locking in $600 billion. That doesn’t match the topline reporting about the deal, which has a total cost of $78 billion, fully offset by curtailing the pandemic-era Employee Retention Credit.” (David Dayen/TAP)
“By 2018, Will Compton, a 28-year-old backup linebacker on a one-year contract with the Tennessee Titans, knew his playing days were numbered. Contemplating a career after football, he considered going into real estate or coaching but couldn’t muster much enthusiasm for either. Driving home after a game one evening, he called Taylor Lewan, an offensive tackle for the Titans and his closest friend on the team, with whom he’d just done a postgame segment on Titans Radio. The two, who had bonded over their fondness for podcasts like The Joe Rogan Experience, had undeniable chemistry on the air, and the experience got them thinking about starting their own podcast. For Lewan, who had just signed a six-year deal with the Titans, it sounded like a fun time. For Compton, it was a go-for-broke career plan. The following year, they launched Bussin’ With the Boys. The only podcast of note by an active athlete at the time was basketball player JJ Redick’s show, launched in 2016. In football, there was no precedent. Essentially winging it, Compton and Lewan devoted 20 minutes of their first episode to the intricacies of using toilet paper. ‘I just felt like, all of our conversations in the sauna, the cold tubs around the locker room, the cafeteria table — if we could find that rhythm, people would enjoy the banter,’ says Compton, who retired from the NFL last year. Unconstrained to football, the show shattered the stereotype of the tight-lipped, cliché-spouting athlete. Twenty episodes in, Barstool Sports acquired the podcast. Now, Bussin’ With the Boys boasts 2 million-plus social followers (including 444,000 YouTube subscribers) for a show that records mostly in a 1970s Bluebird bus turned bro-cave.” (Julian Sancton/THR)
“Amateur archaeologists in England have unearthed a stunning Roman dodecahedron — a mysterious class of objects that has baffled experts for centuries. The dodecahedron — a 12-sided metal shell about the size of a grapefruit — was found this past summer during a dig in a farmer's field near the Lincolnshire village of Norton Disney, located about 35 miles (56 kilometers) southeast of Sheffield … These objects date from between the first and the third centuries A.D. and they have only been found in former northern territories of the Roman Empire. They're sometimes called ‘Gallo-Roman’ dodecahedrons, after the Gauls (or Celts) who lived in these areas. Each dodecahedron is a 12-sided hollow shell of metal, usually bronze, with differently-sized holes in each face; these holes are often surrounded by concentric rings imprinted in the metal, and there is a stud at each corner where the 12 faces meet. But they bear no writing of any kind, and no description of the dodecahedrons has ever been found in Roman writings. As a result, modern archaeologists are at a loss to explain what they might have been used for. Some have proposed that the dodecahedrons were toys, dice, the heads of maces, sling stones, or range-finding devices for Roman artillery. Additional theories on the internet range from their being devices for calculating dates from stars to serving as knitting patterns for Roman gloves. But the objects are much too intricate to have been weapons, and none of the other explanations have been satisfactory.” (Tom Metcalfe/LiveScience/ image via Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group)