Author: Brendan James

New York States Of Mind

by Brendan James

A new study processed over 600,000 tweets to determine the “mood landscape” of New York Sh– ahem, City:

Some of the patterns are no surprise. For example, people tended to be happiest near green areas such as Central Park and unhappiest around transportation hubs such as Penn Station and the entrance to the Midtown Tunnel. But the fine-grained details are striking. The closer people were to Times Square, the happier they got. And the city’s mood had a daily rhythm, mirroring that of the individuals who live and work there. People’s feelings—both positive and negative—were muted in the morning and peaked around midnight.

Brian Merchant puzzles over the supposed happiest spot in all five boroughs:

Not only is Times Square the most joyful place in the city, it is the city’s veritable epicenter of happiness. That’s disturbing, for the obvious reasons, but it also makes a certain amount of sense. Times Square is the gleeful buzzing monument to American consumerism. It’s the place where many new arrivals and tourists go to feel like they’ve arrived in New York—and that feeling is exciting. It makes them happy. Happier than anywhere else in the city. And they tweet about it.

Right. It’s probably important to remember that last detail: the place where most New Yorkers feel truly content or jubilant will generate less tweets than the spot where loads of people are jazzed about a Broadway show or the Naked Cowboy. Or, at least, one hopes.

From Bradley To Chelsea Manning

by Brendan James

https://twitter.com/attackerman/status/370619079151075328

This morning Bradley Manning released a statement declaring a new gender identity, taking the name Chelsea and resuming a transition interrupted by her military trial. Manning’s biographer Denver Nicks places the announcement in context:

We’ve known for some time that Manning struggled with gender identity issues–a struggle that got top billing in his defense–and considered herself, at least for a time, to be a woman, so I’m not surprised by the announcement. I suspect it is coming only now, after his sentence has come down, because Manning wanted to avoid antagonizing the court by appearing to make more of a spectacle of the trial than it already is. … Inevitable rhetorical challenges aside, the important thing for us in the media is to report on Manning with respect for the trans experience.

In response to the NYT and other outlets referring to Manning as “he” while reporting the change, Ryan Kearney points out that most style guides provide easy rules in this case:

The Guardian, to its credit, changed its topic page to “Chelsea Manning.” This should not be the exception, but the rule. Even the Associated Press stylebook says so: that reporters should “use the pronoun preferred by the individuals who have acquired the physical characteristics of the opposite sex or present themselves in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth. If that preference is not expressed, use the pronoun consistent with the way the individuals live publicly.”

Maureen O’Connor notes that the media respects other types of name changes:

Why is it so hard for people to type an extra s when they write about Manning? We updated our nomenclature for “Snoop Lion” and “the Artist Formerly Known as Prince.” “Ali Lohan” and “Lil’ Bow Wow” became “Aliana” and “Bow Wow” to reflect personal growth. We accept typographical requests from branded products like iPhone, PowerPoint, and eHarmony — and from branded humans like Ke$ha, A$AP Rocky, and ‘N Sync. (The last being unusual even without the asterisk.) The idiosyncrasies of capitalism, apparently, are more compelling than a human’s self-professed gender.

Amanda Marcotte urges the press to start using the new pronoun:

The goal here should be to move as quickly as possible from referring to Manning by a male name and male pronouns to her female name and pronouns. The sooner journalists stop writing “Bradley” and start writing “Chelsea,” the quicker everyone following this story will adapt—and even change their Google search terms when looking for coverage. A gender-free headline to indicate that this is an in-between stage in coverage makes sense, but with this announcement, Manning herself gave everyone a nice, clean break—a point to just stop saying “he” and start saying “she.”

Even if you disagree with Manning’s actions and believe she deserves the harsh sentence she received, her gender identity had nothing to do with her crimes.

Katie McDonough views the episode as a rallying point for coverage of transgender subjects:

[T]hese failures in reporting have not gone unchecked. There is a growing chorus of transgender rights advocates rallying for accountability from major news outlets. Formal complaints have been submitted to the BBC and the New York Times, and this conversation, probably the most mainstream discussion the press has had to-date about transgender identity and the importance of respectful (and truthful) use of pronouns and chosen names, could very well set an important precedent for future coverage of transgender issues.

Of course, Rod Dreher isn’t having it:

I presume Bradley Manning still has a penis and male chromosomes. He is not a female simply because he says he is. Though I very much doubt that the military will give him the female hormones he has requested for his prison stay, Manning may have the operation one day, but for now, he is still a he. I don’t see why feeling pity for Manning’s psychological suffering requires us to play along with his hallucination. If you want to do so, be my guest, but shouldn’t journalists hold themselves to different standards?

Meanwhile, Sarah Kliff looks into whether Manning is likely to receive the hormone therapy she’s requested, since Fort Leavenworth denies they supply it:

“Where inmates have been denied care, courts have said that’s unconstitutional,” says Jennifer Levi, director of the Transgender Rights Project at Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders. “I don’t know of any cases that have been brought yet against military prisons. But they would have the same obligation to provide adequate medical care.” Levi worked with a North Carolina inmate to reform federal policy on hormone replacement therapy in prison. Vanessa Adams entered a North Carolina facility at age 29. She was biologically male but “self-identified as female throughout her adult life,” according to court documents.

“Because of this, she wanted to initiate the gender transition process prior to her incarceration, but found herself unable to do so in the face of the restrictions imposed on her by a conservative family and workplace,” the lawsuit continues. Adams had been diagnosed with gender identity disorder; Manning has also received the same diagnosis.

Al-Jazeera Arrives, Ctd

by Brendan James

Laura Bennett is impressed with the new American channel, but notes that “the overall effect is not quite as different from the rest of cable news as Al Jazeera imagines it”:

The overall message is clear: that this is an open and democratic forum, a place for guests to freely express complicated and wide-ranging views rather than have them crammed into ideological categories. Of course, in its own sly way, Al Jazeera pushes its politics with the same insistence as Fox or MSNBC, if not with nearly the same theatrics; an undercurrent of Bush-era exasperation with American blinkeredness still runs through every report from the Middle East. And it’s strange to see #pray4Egypt flashing on the bottom of the screen, a subtle bit of community-building that makes audience participation seem more ideological than ever.

But Al Jazeera’s coverage is fueled by a placid faith in the reasonableness of its position rather than a knee-jerk ideological defensiveness.

Lloyd Grove felt that, during the network’s debut, the “pace was slow, the production values were plodding and predictable, and the presentation relied heavily on yakking, and more yakking, straight to camera.” But he hopes the network will succeed:

[I]n an age of media belt tightening, when once-imposing journalistic institutions are being shuttered or sold for a fraction of their historic value, it is heartening that a Gulf-state emir, of all people, is willing to spend hundreds of millions, and probably billions, of dollars to field a serious news organization in the United States. For that reason alone, I am rooting for Al Jazeera America and its 850-odd staffers led by veteran ABC News executive Kate O’Brian, and hope they find a way to reach an audience, attract advertisers, and land on a growing number of cable systems.

Ana Marie Cox doles out high praise for AJAM’s nightly news program, America Tonight:

What’s revolutionary about the show is what wasn’t in it: no mention of “Obamacare” (indeed, I’m not sure there was a mention of Obama, specifically). No mention of rodeo clowns, or Ted Cruz’s birth certificate, or Hillary. Nothing about gun control or Trayvon Martin, either. Nor voting rights, gay rights and the Olympics, nor the Tea Party.

It’s as if the producers: a) knew that the first primaries for 2016 were a year away; and b) understood that some topics, while worthwhile, had not further evolved since they were last discussed. While there was a suspicious lack of “America” to the stories on “America Tonight”, what stories did run bore more relevance to the contemporary lives of average Americans than anything on the other networks.

Antiheroes Everywhere, Ctd

by Brendan James

A reader makes an interesting point about our attraction to antiheroes:

All the antiheroes that have been mentioned so far have a single thing in common: competence. We are invested in a character if they are shown to be competent at what they do. It gives them dimension. We don’t care about those truly rotten, no-good, one-dimensional thugs and ne’er-do-wells who serve as their subordinates, simply because they get caught easily, or are shown in some other way not to be very good at it, the ‘it’ here being evil. But we care about their bosses, the Tony Sopranos and the Walter Whites, because their bosses have been demonstrated to be good, very good, at being terrible.

Is that really all it takes for us to forgive, or at least look past, murder, treachery, deceit, betrayal, and manipulation, of which both Tony Soprano and Walter White are most certainly guilty? That you’re good at it? That’s what it takes in real life, too. We have a secret respect for sociopaths whom we find to be talented, even if what they do is abhorrent to us. That’s why we elect them to higher office.

Shouldn’t we change that? Doesn’t that say more about us than them?

Another supports the view that Breaking Bad is a critique, not an example, of the antihero ethos:

Your reader wrote, “Walter White … is the show, and we very much care what happens to him.”

Um, sorry. No.

Anyone who cares what happens to Walter White shares at least some of his extensive laundry list of pathologies.  Except for the obvious hiccup it would cause in the show’s dramatic arc, Walter White should have been put down like a rabid dog a long time ago and I wouldn’t care who did it – Jesse, Skyler, Gus, Mike, Jane, Tio or any of the thugs who drift in and out of the show, apparently unable to figure out how depraved Walter White is because of his mad chemistry skillz.

The only reason I’ve watched this long is to see Walter White take his licks and hope that someone takes off that stupid hat of his…with his head still in it. I’ve never wanted any character in film or TV – including the villains – to meet his or her demise more than I want it for Walter White. Not an iota of redemptive value in the man. (Yes, I suppose hating on Walter White is one of my pathologies.)

Another can’t accept viewers are still feeling for Walter, despite his role as the protagonist:

That reader has written himself or herself out of the moral universe. If there is to be sympathy for Walter White, it is only of the most limited kind: grief for what he was and what he has become.

But even that’s a stretch. At this point, if you still hope that Walter somehow makes it out of this alive, you truly are fraternizing with the devil, and a devil that has systematically dismantled the chances for wholeness of all the people around him. Hoping the best for him is wicked.

Syria In The Red

by Brendan James

More images and testimonials of this week’s purported chemical attack flood in, with Human Rights Watch currently placing the death toll at several hundred. Jay Newton-Small sums up the administration’s tepid response, despite previous red-line rhetoric:

[T]he White House isn’t exactly springing into action. “We are calling for this U.N. investigation to be conducted,” said Obama spokesman Josh Earnest on Wednesday. “This is a situation that is ongoing, and our efforts to work with the international community and to work with the Syrian opposition to remove [President Bashar] Assad from power are ongoing.” Earnest upgraded his rhetoric slightly Thursday morning, telling reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Buffalo where the President was scheduled to give a speech about making college more affordable, that the images out of Syria “are nothing short of horrifying.”

Still, the translation amounts to: Don’t hold your breath waiting for air strikes.

Jon Western wonders if this latest attack will serve as “Syria’s Srebrenica”:

If you recall, Srebrenica did not fundamentally change the traditional, realist strategic logic on the ground during the Bosnian conflict — yet all of the internal notes on White House deliberations (as reported in Ivo Daalder’s Getting to Dayton or Derek Chollet’s history of Dayton) reveal how conceptions of interests and ideals became intertwined with the scale of the atrocity.   Domestically, there was some Congressional pressure to do more in Bosnia, but very little pressure from public opinion. Srebrenica was a game changer.

I think this is what we are likely to see happen now in Syria — and I think it changes the equation regardless of whether or not there is definitive proof as to who perpetrated the attack.  The mere fact of such a large scale loss of life in a chemical attack — along with changing dynamics throughout the region — will produce significant pressure on, and within, the administration to commit resources — airstrikes on key Syrian military installations and probably no-fly, no missile zone over Syria — something, anything, to move the conflict to some kind of end-game.

Still, Max Fisher lists off the reasons not to expect a new agenda from the White House:

Any White House cares first and foremost about domestic politics, and this administration was punished severely for its leadership on Libya; many of the same political voices that demanded the intervention spent months hammering the White House when, in the foreseeably dangerous post-conflict disorder of Benghazi, a militant group succeeded in attacking the local U.S. diplomatic outpost and killing the ambassador. You might think that Libya would have been considered a political success for the Obama administration, but it became a major political liability.

The White House’s efforts to reach out to Islamist groups in Egypt and Tunisia, meanwhile, received condemnation and criticism at home. Pragmatic, long-view Middle East watchers turn out to represent a fairly narrow slice of the American electorate. And political figures who ask the White House to take big foreign policy risks appear quite willing to punish the administration if anything goes wrong.

Egypt’s Martial Media, Ctd

by Brendan James

Joshua Hersh notes that the creeping censorship of the Egyptian press post-coup is actually “self-censorship, growing out of an instinct for conformity”:

In the final years of the Hosni Mubarak era, private television networks and newspapers had opened the door to critical coverage of the regime; their encouragement and reporting helped pave the way for the revolution. There was hope that with a toppled regime might also come a truly independent press, one of the few institutions that could steer the country as it tumbled through a tumultuous post-revolutionary era.

But now, when the official state-run television channel puts a banner reading “Egypt Fighting Terrorism” in the corner of its screen (referring, of course, to the Brotherhood), the private networks do so as well. Over the weekend, the privately owned OnTV treated viewers to a highlight reel of the police clearing the Brotherhood sit-in, set gloriously to the soundtrack of “Rocky.”

This was the only coverage of the event many of those watching would have seen; local newspapers and television stations give no information about the number of Brotherhood dead, and have never shown images of them. And when reports broke on Wednesday that the former dictator Hosni Mubarak might be imminently released from prison, the local media took hours to mention the news. In the interim, they covered the traffic.

Caffeine Cologne

by Brendan James

A product of Peter Thiel’s fellowship program for young entrepreneurs:

The big idea is to make caffeine palatable to people who get the jitters from coffee and energy drinks. Four sprays, the recommended dose, has less caffeine than a cup of coffee, Yu says. Since it’s applied to the skin, it’s absorbed steadily, avoiding the rush and the crash of a strong cup of joe. Yu’s father, who has a Ph.D. in bioorganic chemistry and owns his own lab in China, helped develop it.

Sprayable isn’t the first business to market atomized caffeine, though Yu notes the others are meant to be sprayed into the mouth, requiring significantly more caffeine. To allay safety concerns, Yu, who uses his product regularly, says he’s tested it on hundreds of people without negative reactions. Drinking it is an explicit no-no, and Yu notes that because of caffeine’s bitterness, it would “probably be more pleasant to eat a cockroach.”

The Authorship Algorithm

by Brendan James

Patrick Juola developed a program that performs a mathematical analysis of literature; the software helped identify J.K. Rowling as the true author of The Cuckoo’s Calling. He considers the possible abuse of this kind of program:

This technology is clearly a double-edged sword. If Rowling can be identified by computational analysis, what about whistleblowers? Is anyone safe from the modern equivalent of Sherlock’s all-seeing eye? For the moment, yes. The person who truly violated Rowling’s privacy was not my computer or even the Sunday Times reporter, but the tipster who suggested the investigation in the first place. It’s simply not feasible to look at every potential author to see who might have written a book; without old-fashioned detective work (and informants), the haystack is still large enough that needles can successfully hide.

The Bradley Manning Sentencing: Reax

by Brendan James

This morning he received a 35-year prison sentence. Michael Scherer sums up the news:

The sentence was considerably less than the lifetime sentence Manning faced under the original charges brought by the government, including aiding the enemy, for which he was acquitted. It was also nearly half of the 60 years recommended by the prosecutors after he was convicted in July of leaking information and six violations of the Espionage Act. Manning’s lawyer, David Coombs, had previously suggested that Manning face only 25 years in prison, given that the information he leaked would likely be declassified after that time.

Manning, 25, was dishonorably discharged and had his rank reduced to private and his pay forfeited. He will get credit for three and a half years already served in prison. If he serves his entire term, he would be a free man at the age of 58, but under military rules he could become eligible for parole after serving one third of his sentence.

Molly Redden suspects he could have faced much worse:

For their part, Manning’s defense team is probably relieved.

Earlier this week, his attorney David Coombs asked the judge, Col. Denise Lind, for a sentence that would allow Manning “to have a life,” while attorneys for the military asked her to make an example of him. Said Capt. Joe Morrow, “There is value in deterrence. … This court must send a message to any soldier contemplating stealing classified information. National security crimes that undermine the entire system must be taken seriously.” Not visibly reacting to the verdict was Manning himself—who appeared stone faced as Lind read out his sentence, and as a military escort walked him out of the courtroom.

Marcy Wheeler walks throughs Manning’s chances for parole:

Bradley could be released after serving one third of his sentence. In light of the fact Judge Lind has imposed a term of 35 years, Mr. Manning, considering the time he has already served, could potentially be eligible for release in as little as 9 years from now. As painful as it is to admit, this sentence, and Bradley Manning’s prospects could have very easily looked far worse.

Ryan Evans declares good riddance:

Manning is lucky he did not receive life, which he should have. The sympathy for this “troubled young man” is emblematic of a post-accountability society. No one, it seems, is to be held responsible for their actions any longer. Instead, blame is shifted to a difficult childhood, bullying, loneliness, or—my personal favorite—“the system.” In Manning’s own words, he was “dealing with a lot of issues.” … Manning himself has admitted that he understood what he was getting into when he agreed to provide these documents to WikiLeaks. To those who argue that he should not be held accountable for that decision, I ask: Why not?

Charlie Savage notes that, in addition to time already served, Manning “will be credited with 112 days for the treatment he endured at a military jail that the judge ruled was unlawful.” Charles P. Pierce adds:

Manning was treated barbarically over those 112 days. This didn’t happen by accident. This wasn’t an oversight. It was a policy decision. He was treated that way deliberately by this government. He was treated that way because that is how this administration wanted him treated. This is an administration that simply does not want the people to know what is being done in its name. The last administration didn’t want that either, but C-Plus Augustus wasn’t a constitutional law professor promising the most open and transparent administration in history, either.) And that’s the part of the story that shouldn’t go away with Bradley Manning.

Scott Lemieux, who expected a gentler sentence, agrees:

I don’t object to Manning being charged with a crime. I certainly strongly object to the way he was treated in prison. And I think the idea that his leaks merit a 35-year sentence is absurd. And as I said before, it’s particularly appalling when you consider the Obama administration’s “look forward not back” approach on torture. It’s hard to square this life-ruining sentence with the fact that no torturer was even considered worthy of being charged. I’d also say that at this point that it’s pretty hard to the American government to complain when other countries refuse to extradite whistleblowers.

All Eyes On Egypt

by Brendan James

PAKISTAN-EGYPT-UNREST-PROTEST

Madawi Al-Rasheed observes how the Saudi theocracy is keeping its own Islamist opposition in order as Egypt burns nearby. King Abdullah recently set the tone, declaring full support for the junta in Cairo:

The king’s message was clear: zero tolerance for all those who use Islam to pursue political agendas, sort of an oxymoron in the Saudi context as the state itself had been manipulating, co-opting, and promoting Islam for agendas that are nothing but political. The foundation of the state itself is a process of instrumentalizing Islam to revive the Al-Saud control of vast territories, under the pretext of purifying Arabia from blasphemy, innovation, and atheism. The Muslim Brotherhood and its likes appear to be latecomers to the project of politicizing Islam.

King Abdullah’s message, supposedly meant for Egyptians, did not go unheeded among the many Saudi Islamists who abhorred their government’s support for the Egyptian coup. Since July 3, they have turned into defenders of Morsi and the Brotherhood, issuing statements on social media condemning their own government for backing the coup.

A small group of activists launched an online petition to gather signatures against the aid that had been promised to Egypt immediately after the coup. Following the circulation of the petition, a couple of veteran activists such as Mohsin al-Awaji were briefly detained while many other Islamists remain banned from travel, most famous is Sheikh Salman al-Awdah whose television program “you have Rights” was abruptly stopped on an Islamist independent television channel. The government is carefully watching the hyperactivity of Islamists and their statements on television and online, which have so far strongly condemned the Egyptian coup and their own government’s unequivocal endorsement of General Sisi.

Michael Koplow notices that Turkey’s government is alarmed for the opposite reason, as an Islamist party supportive of the Brotherhood:

[T]he specter of crowds massing in the streets and the military overthrowing the government hits a little too close to home for Erdoğan given what he was dealing with in June and the history of Turkish military coups. Erdoğan’s biggest claim to fame is his defanging of the military, and even after demonstrating that Turkish civilian control (and undemocratic intimidation) over the army is complete with the Ergenekon verdicts a couple of weeks ago, no Turkish prime minister – and certainly no Turkish prime minister with Erdoğan’s background – is ever going to feel completely safe from the long arm of the military. Erdoğan looks at what is taking place in Egypt through a distinctly Turkish prism, and in many ways his views on the Egyptian coup are actually a complex psychological projection of his fears about his own position. …

Erdoğan sees the army removing an elected government amidst accusations of policy overreach and undemocratic behavior, and he imagines a nightmare alternate universe where the same could happen to him.

Previous Dish on the region’s reaction to Morsi’s ouster here and here.

(Photo: Islamic political party Jamaat-e-Islami activists march in support of ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi in Karachi, Pakistan on August 20, 2013. Supporters of Morsi announced new demonstrations as Egypt grew increasingly polarised and the death toll in four days of violence topped 750. By Asif Hassan/AFP/Getty Images)