Leettaschmidt

Georgia v Public.Resource.Org, Inc, 140 S Ct 1498 (US 27 April 2020)

NPR reports on a new survey from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) that shows how far a significant percentage of Republicans are willing to go to force the majority of Americans to live in their autocratic fantasyland.

From NPR:

The level of distrust among Republicans evident in the survey was such that about eight in 10 said the current political system is "stacked against conservatives and people with traditional values."

— Read the rest

With control of the White House and both houses of Congress, Democrats are looking to make major changes in government initiatives – including on climate change, immigration and education.

But many of those ideas may end up in court – where they will face a Supreme Court dominated by conservatives.

Donald Trump’s appointments of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett make the Supreme Court more conservative than it has been at any time since the 1930s, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president. Many court watchers expect that the current court’s decisions will lean much further to the right than Congress, the president and public opinion do.

Fearing a clash between the branches, some have even suggested that President Joe Biden consider adding justices to the court – as Roosevelt considered but ultimately decided against – to prevent key legislation from being struck down.

As scholars of U.S. legal history know, the court is often less insulated from politics than many people assume. Roosevelt’s threat to pack the courts, and what happened next, illustrate the pressures the Supreme Court faces to limit how far it strays from the other branches and from public opinion.

The Lochner era

Most Americans today are not accustomed to a right-leaning Supreme Court. Instead, they have viewed the judicial branch as a reliable – or lamentable – champion of liberal values. That dates back to the 1950s and 1960s, when the court, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, made a series of landmark liberal rulings generally expanding civil rights on issues from school desegregation to criminal defendants’ rights.

But the liberalism of the Warren court was itself a major shift.

From the late 19th century through to the 1930s, federal courts, including the Supreme Court, were generally considered to be the most conservative branch of the federal government, especially on economic issues. The courts championed limited government and broad freedom for corporations.

That period of pro-business jurisprudence came to be known among legal scholars as the “Lochner era,” named for the 1905 case of Lochner v. New York.

In that case, the Supreme Court struck down a New York law that, to protect employees, had regulated working conditions in bakeries. The majority of the justices held that the law violated bakeshop owners’ liberty to contract with their employees as they wished.

The court also continued to limit Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce to a narrow range of economic activity that excluded most manufacturing and services.

The New Deal and the court

In 1933, Roosevelt came to power with a strong mandate to tackle the Great Depression. He quickly established several new government agencies, reformed financial regulations and sought to regulate business in unprecedented ways.

The National Industrial Recovery Act, for instance, called for industrywide codes of fair competition that set minimum wages, prices, maximum working hours, production quotas and regulations for the process of selling goods. Although Congress saw the need for such a transformative piece of legislation, it was challenged in the courts by a poultry company that had been charged with violating a new code governing the poultry industry. Schechter Poultry’s violations included selling chickens on an individual basis and selling them to nonlicensed purchasers. The right-wing majority on the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Schechter and struck down key parts of the NIRA, drawing in part on its restrictive understanding of the commerce clause.

In this and other cases during Roosevelt’s first term, the Supreme Court demonstrated a growing divergence from the other branches and public opinion. The public had expressed its hunger for strong and far-reaching economic legislation by electing New Deal Democrats to Congress and the presidency. But unelected lifetime appointees on the court held onto a more conservative understanding of the scope of governmental power.

A crucial shift

When Roosevelt was reelected in a landslide in 1936, he proposed a bill to reform the federal judiciary in an attempt to stop the Supreme Court’s obstruction of his policy initiatives.

This bill included what became known as his “court-packing plan,” which would have potentially allowed Roosevelt to appoint six more justices, tilting the majority in his favor.

The Constitution doesn’t prohibit expanding the court, but even Roosevelt’s supporters were wary, so the eventual bill was passed without that provision.

As the bill was being debated in Congress, court-packing became less urgent to Roosevelt and his supporters because a change occurred within the Supreme Court itself. Nobody died, but someone switched sides. Associate Justice Owen Roberts had previously voted with the right-wing opponents to the New Deal, but in 1937 he joined the more liberal justices to uphold a minimum-wage law in the state of Washington.

From that point on, the court expanded its interpretation of the commerce clause to give Congress much broader powers to regulate the economy.

Some commentators claim that Justice Owen Roberts shifted his opinion in direct response to Roosevelt’s threat to pack the Supreme Court, seeking to avoid executive and congressional interference in the judicial branch and therefore preserve its apparent independence.

But Owen Roberts actually had decided his position in that case before Roosevelt publicly proposed the judicial reform bill.

Perhaps Owen Roberts already suspected that a court-packing plan, or something like it, was on the horizon when he decided to shift his position. But he might have been sufficiently concerned about the court’s departure from public opinion and the other branches even without such a threat.

When the court diverges drastically from the political mainstream, the public views it as less legitimate. That is an outcome Supreme Court justices are usually eager to avoid.

Lessons for today

There are perhaps more differences than similarities between Roosevelt’s confrontation with the court and the relationship between the Biden administration and the court today. For one thing, this court has not had a decadeslong rightward slant. Biden’s record is also as a centrist, and with a narrow majority in the Senate and a divided American public, he may not seek as transformative an agenda as Roosevelt did.

But the lesson from the 1930s remains: It is difficult for the Supreme Court to sustain a drastic divergence from other branches or public opinion without its legitimacy coming into question. To maintain the reputation of the institution, Supreme Court justices often limit their own divergence from the political mainstream, whether or not the other branches explicitly threaten to interfere.

Lucy Cane does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Hackers managed to break into a Tampa Bay water plant and momentarily poison the water, remotely, on Friday. Fortunately, a plant operator noticed his mouse moving across his computer screen. Although he thought it was nothing at first, minutes later he noticed the levels of sodium hydroxide – or lye, used in liquid drain cleaners – shoot up from 100 parts per million to more than 11,100 parts per million, "a hazardous level that could sicken residents and corrode pipes," according to The Washington Post. — Read the rest

A recent white paper from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization shines a necessary but depressing light on working conditions within the arts industry throughout the world. There's the positives…

It shows that the industry sectors making up the creative economy generate annual revenues of US$2.250 billion, global exports of over US$250 billion, often generate up to 10% of national GDP, provide nearly 30 million jobs worldwide and employ more people aged 15-29 than any other sector.

— Read the rest

On January 25, psychiatrist and gun violence expert Dr. Amy Barnhorst posted a Twitter thread that lobbed a very severe and shocking allegation. According to her, she had been plagiarized by an editor of a publication that, previously, she had been working with.

1/ I reached a new academic milestone last week when I read a published journal article about firearm suicide and realized it was my and my colleague's writing!

Except that the authors on the paper were these two other guys we don't know….

— Amy Barnhorst, MD (@amybarnhorst) January 25, 2021

According to Barnhorst, the story began after the editor in question, Dr. Gary VandenBos, solicited a piece from her and her co-author. The two co-authors worked on it and produced a draft but, after a found rounds of revisions, they decided to pull the paper.

Barnhorst says that the editor had limited knowledge of the topic, firearm suicide, and that he was trying to alter the paper in ways they weren’t comfortable with.

Sometime after that, the editor in question sent them a copy of the paper that he along with a new co-author, Michael O. Miller, had published. However, after a review of the new paper, Barnhorst concluded that it was about 40% verbatim and 30% near-verbatim plagiarism.

The new paper included their case vignette, bibliography, clinical interventions and much more.

To make matters worse, when Barnhorst brought this to the attention of the journal’s editor in chief, the editor waited a week to respond and, instead of retracting the paper, offered the original authors co-authorship.

They further tried to dissuade her from taking the matter to Springer, the journal’s publisher, saying that it would “complicate things” for them. They did so anyway and, according to Barnhorst, a retraction is in process and she is working with an attorney to prevent them from doing this to anyone else.

But, while this seems to be a happy ending to this story, Barnhorst isn’t alone. As this case has highlighted, the unusual part of her story isn’t that it happened, but that something was done about it.

A Bigger Problem Than Many Thought

To outsiders, the story seems outrageous. However, to the researchers Barnhorst told the story too, it was eerily familiar.

In a reply to the original thread, Twitter user @ScienceIntegrity highlighted similar cases reported to them in IEEE and Elsevier. However, in those cases, no action has been taken over the course of several months.

Similar cases reported to us in IEEE and Elsevier, We submitted these cases to the publishers and still under investigation for months. Although both of these plagiarized papers were accepted in just a few weeks. pic.twitter.com/t8QsCslUSt

— Science Integrity (@ScIntegrity) February 3, 2021

Barnhorst, for her part, has also seen an outpouring of support with many telling her that similar things have happened to them.

“I got so many messages and emails and comments from people saying, ‘This [also] happened to me,’ ” Barnhorst said in an interview with MedScape.

Sadly, there seems to be no firm numbers on how common this is. Not only are these types of cases chronically underreported, but there’s no centralized location for tracking such incidents.

However, the anecdotal evidence is clear, what should be an almost unheard of problem happens more often than most would like to admit and the response to it often far too weak.

Sadly, without better data and better handling of such cases, this seems like a problem that’s only going to get worse.

Bottom Line

Editors are in a position of trust. That’s regardless of the field. Whether you’re a researcher, author, musician or any other type of creator, gatekeepers and editors are in a trusted position with your work.

When they abuse that trust to further their own careers through plagiarism, the consequences should be swift and severe. The problem is that people in positions of authority rarely face even the same consequences as those that are underneath them.

As many have pointed out, a high schooler that committed this kind of plagiarism would face significant disciplinary consequences. However, editors seem to be committing this kind of plagiarism without any notable repercussions.

This isn’t a case of a student being ignorant about citation standards or a new student being unclear about paraphrasing, this is a clear abuse of power from someone who, as part of their job, is supposed to detect and prevent plagiarism.

As we discussed in the previous article, there’s no point in one’s career that plagiarism is acceptable. However, I would argue that, once you reach a position of trust and authority, plagiarism, especially of those in your care, becomes a much more serious offense.

Here’s hoping that those at Springer see it the same way.

Denver replaced front-line cops with healthcare professionals. In six months, how many times did the healthcare professionals need to make an arrest or call for backup? Zero times.

A young program that puts troubled nonviolent people in the hands of health care workers instead of police officers has proven successful in its first six months, according to a progress report.

— Read the rest

Published nearly 170 years ago, Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe had a profound impact on American slavery. But Uncle Tom is not a relic from the 19th century: this complex figure still has a hold over Black politics. In fact, the Uncle Tom stereotype is quite possibly the most resilient figure in American history. He has survived pandemics, lived through 33 presidents (including President Joe Biden), and remains the most recognizable Black character in history.

While most people know that Uncle Tom is the titular character of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, few people know how and why this literary character has transformed since his initial appearance. Why is Uncle Tom still alive in the 21st century?

Stowe’s Uncle Tom

The bestselling novel of the 19th century, and the second bestselling book of that century (after the Bible), Uncle Tom’s Cabin first appeared in the United States in 1851 as a serialized work of fiction published one chapter at a time, in the National Era, a weekly abolitionist newspaper edited by Gamaliel Bailey.

Today, we do not necessarily think of novels as shaping national identity. However, in 19th-century America, Stowe’s vision of Uncle Tom constructed a form of Black manhood that deeply impacted the nation. Despite being ripped from his wife and children, chained and sent off in a coffle with other enslaved men and women, let down by even a “good master,” and beaten, finally to death, Uncle Tom does not ever speak ill of anyone. He is loyal, passive in the midst of white violence and dies as a martyr.

Since then, various Black men have been called “Uncle Toms.” From Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to former president Barack Obama, at some point, they were accused of being too passive or a sell-out to the race.

Legalized rights did not translate to reality

In the 1896 landmark case, Plessy vs. Ferguson, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that African Americans had access to the legal system, equal to that of whites, but they had to maintain separate institutions to facilitate these rights. The ruling institutionalized a racial hierarchy that placed whites at the top and Black people at the bottom in nearly every facet of public life.

To live in North America meant that one had to choose not only between racial loyalty and disloyalty, but also between life and death. Survival meant performing servile roles as Uncles and Mammies, in public or on the job.

In this environment, Black people were forced to acquiesce to the white public’s desire to perpetuate the servile relations of slavery. Black men and women who violated these Jim Crow norms risked their homes, jobs and lives.

For survival in a racially segregated environment, the Pullman sleeping car porters, for instance, Black men who were employed on the railways of North America, had to perform the role of, and were measured against the image of, a servile Uncle Tom.

In Canada, the only reference for Uncle Tom is at Uncle Tom’s Cabin Historic Site. The former home of Rev. Josiah Henson, who lived from 1789–1883, has been turned into a museum to showcase Henson’s life, as founder of the Dawn Settlement in Dresden, Ont., for fugitive African Americans. Stowe’s novel was loosely based on Henson’s biography, The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada published in 1849. The museum documents Henson’s life but also reaffirms his connection to Stowe’s Uncle Tom.

The insatiable appetite of the white North American public for a docile, symbolically emasculated Black male archetype and the Uncle Tom controversies that follows them, speaks profoundly to how monumentally resistant to change this character has been.

From servant to sellout

In the decades following the novel, Uncle Tom transformed into a stereotype of Black masculinity characterized by docility, castrated sexuality, a happy-to-please-whites attitude with a safe, child-like essence, at the same time. Shirley Temple’s blond ringlets paired with Bill “Bojangles” Robinson’s soft-shoe routine in their “buddy” films of the 1930s is one example of the cinematic repackaging of Stowe’s Uncle Tom and his child-patron, Little Eva.

The servile Uncle Tom has been reproduced in Joel Chandler Harris’ Uncle Remus tales published in the 1880s, later adapted by Disney for Song of the South. Uncle Tom also became a feature at blackface minstrel shows known as “Tom shows.” Later, he mutated into commodity spokespersons such as Rastus the Cream of Wheat trademark and Uncle Ben.

The concept of the sellout Uncle Tom, however, is characterized by the idea of a Black man who appears only interested in serving whites, the government, corporations or “the system” generally. The insult is meant to connote that these men, these “Uncle Toms” will ensure that white needs come before the needs of both the Black community and themselves.

Men (or the fictionalized characters of men) who have faced accusations of being a sellout Uncle Tom include the film roles of actors like Sidney Poitier and, later, Bill Cosby during the height of his fame in the ‘70s and '80s, as well as Christopher Darden during the O.J. Simpson trial (not to mention O.J. himself), and even athletes like Tiger Woods.

Black people hate him, but it also seems we cannot live without him. The trope is especially brought up when it comes to political figures. Some political careers have been marred by Uncle Tom accusations. This includes people like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and more recently Kentucky’s Attorney General Daniel Cameron.

Foils for Black social progress

The challenges that are brought to contemporary Black men in positions of authority, power and prestige who are either in service to white institutions or become the public spokespersons for white companies are very real.

The reason these Black men are accused of Uncle Tomism is that communities suspect them of thwarting Black social progress. It is a reliable trope called upon during moments when a Black individual is perceived by the Black community as maligning the race in order to win favour with white authority and institutions.

Beyond politics, we are surrounded with imagery of Black men who serve one purpose: to make the public (imagined as white) feel safe. They are useful only if they are clearly committed to the American way of life, which is to say consumer culture. From Uncle Remus there to sell white childhood innocence, Uncle Ben to sell rice, and even Michael Jordan’s squeaky-clean image, this image of Black masculinity has had a firm grip on what it means to be a Black man in North American society.

Why can Uncle Tom not just fade from memory, as have so many other characters from other mid-19th-century novels?

Stowe may have created this character to support the abolition of slavery. However, through constant reinvention and reproduction, Uncle Tom will continue to exist if the Black community remains divided on how to live within a capitalist system built on slave labour.

Yet this figure also reminds us to look deeper and to ask difficult questions about how we choose to relate to white society and its institutions. Uncle Tom will persist as long as anti-Blackness persists.

This article is adapted from Cheryl Thompson’s forthcoming book, 'Uncle: Race, Nostalgia and the Politics of Loyalty’ (Coach House Books).

Listen to Cheryl Thompson on Episode 1 of Don’t Call Me Resilient, a new podcast from The Conversation.

Cheryl Thompson receives funding from the Social Sciences Humanities Research Council.

Most academics regularly submit papers and compete for grants and promotions. These endeavours are necessary for their success but often end in rejection.

Responses to rejection in academia have typically been individually focused. Most discussions of the topic describe what academics themselves can do to cope with rejection.

For example, in a watershed tweet in 2017, Nick Hopwood posted a picture of his office wall papered with rejection letters. Academics were encouraged to celebrate rather than commiserate rejection, spawning the #NormaliseRejection hashtag.

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Read more: Please reject me: a survivor's guide to 'publish or perish'

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But, as we explored in our recent paper, persistent rejection is problematic, and focusing on the individual academic is not the whole solution.

Just how toxic is the rejection culture?

Academics’ careers are strongly linked to their success in publishing and funding applications. Unfortunately, rejection rates are high, ranging from 50% in general journals to 92% in prestigious outlets like Nature. The Conversation, too, rejects most submissions.

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Read more: A guide to how we decide what to publish in Politics and Society

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Such high levels of rejection have three adverse consequences.

First, it squanders a valuable opportunity for professional learning and development. Learning sciences show clearly described success criteria and constructive, task-specific feedback promote effective learning and development. Yet these are lacking in many decisions on publication or grant submissions.

In our teaching of students, we adopt this nuanced, incremental and developmental approach because it improves learning. In contrast, academic publication or funding decisions can be binary: submissions are rejected or accepted, with little or nothing in between. What’s missed in the process is a powerful learning and developmental opportunity for the academics whose work has presumably been assessed and evaluated.

Second, it wastes an inordinate amount of academics’ time, contributing to their well-documented excessive workload. One study showed that for one round of a funding scheme in Australia researchers altogether spent more than 500 years of their time preparing proposals. Most of their proposals did not get funded.

Third, rejection culture on top of excessive workloads contributes to stress and anxiety among academics. Mental health issues have significant impacts on their work satisfaction, productivity and general well-being.

Mental health problems among academics are already at an all-time high. These problems occur at twice the rate of the general population, an incidence higher even than among police or medical staff.

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Read more: More academics and students have mental health problems than ever before

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This is what institutions can do

Most papers on academic rejection focus on how the individual can improve their response – the so-called “suck it up” response. We argue, in contrast, that systemic or institutional responses can reduce the toxicity of the culture. Our recommendations for change fall into three main categories.

First, make success criteria clear prior to applications and provide timely and targeted feedback afterwards. The opportunity costs of applying for grants, funding and publications – time and effort that could have been invested in something else – would then be minimised.

This approach could involve pre-submission quality assessments. This can involve communities of academics assessing the quality of manuscripts before they are submitted for publication; journal editors would then only expend resources on the ones most likely to succeed. This would ensure academics pursue only submissions that are most likely to succeed.

When funders and editors approach researchers directly and “commission” proposals, that greatly reduces the opportunity costs. The MacArthur Foundation, for example, now commonly does this.

Second, the process of publication can be improved in several ways. For a start, editors can reduce the number of submissions forwarded for peer review.

Researchers have studied the benefits of providing authors with prompt decisions and specific feedback aimed at improving chances of future publication. When the submissions review history is included too, it ensures the incremental improvements from feedback are not wasted. Future reviewers also appreciate this as it avoids the problem of different reviewers rejecting for conflicting reasons.

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Read more: Peer review has some problems – but the science community is working on it

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Third, prioritising the mental health of academics at an institutional level will lessen the impacts of the rejection culture. Institutions can and should provide awards that recognise performance in writing and research – independent of publication metrics – ideally without any time-consuming application process.

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Read more: Unis want research shared widely. So why don't they properly back academics to do it?

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Institutions can also take steps to maximise mentorship and collaboration among academics. The recruitment of peer mentors enhances professional learning, research productivity and community and social connection.

Some journals have already successfully adopted initiatives that involve the recruitment of peer mentors to journal editorial teams who, like peer reviewers, volunteer their time to work collaboratively with authors to improve their manuscripts for publication.

To maximise the benefits to society from the academy’s pursuit and dissemination of new knowledge, academics need to function at their best. The current culture of rejection doesn’t help them do this.

There is little point in relying on academics to just suck it up or celebrate their failure – institutions need to play their part. A cultural problem requires a cultural solution.

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Read more: 2020 locked in shift to open access publishing, but Australia is lagging

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Clarification: An embedded tweet seeking to comfort academics whose work has been rejected by publishers depicts a supposed Einstein rejection letter, which is a fake. As embedded tweets lack explanatory captions, it has been removed from the article.

Kelly-Ann Allen is an honorary Fellow of the Centre for Positive Psychology, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, and a Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society and College of Educational and Developmental Psychologists. Kelly-Ann is an international affiliate of the American Psychological Association (APA) and a member of APA D15 (Educational Psychology) and APA D16 (School Psychology). Kelly-Ann is the Editor-in-Chief of the Educational and Developmental Psychologist and Journal of Belonging and Human Connection.

Dr. Gregory Donoghue is a consulting reviewer of The Educational and Developmental Psychologist journal. For his work in projects not related to this article, he has received Special Research Initiative funding from The Australian Research Council through the Science of Learning Research Centre, University of Melbourne (SRI 120300015). No conflicts of interest exist in relation to the publication of this article.

Saeed Pahlevansharif is an Associate Professor at Taylor’s University, Malaysia, and an Adjunct Professor at Saito University College, Malaysia. Saeed is the Director of Centre for Industrial Revolution and Innovation (CIRI). He is the editor-in-chief of Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Administration and the editor of Taylor’s Business Review. Saeed has received several research grants for projects not related to this article. There is no conflict of interests regarding the publication of this article.

John Hattie and Shane Jimerson do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Dark Patterns at Scale is a thorough collection of the high-pressure and deceptive tricks used on websites to get you to do things you didn't intend. Some are merely the online equivalents of the late J.C. Penney's neverending sales (96% off socks!), — Read the rest

Oregon made history today. It has decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine, heroin, and meth, via Measure 110. Users in possession of drugs can now opt for rehab rather than go to prison. Oregon is, of course, the first state in the US to pass this type of legislation. — Read the rest

A few days ago, a friend asked if I'd ever heard of the "Digital Creators Coalition," an apparently new group that claimed to be representing independent artists. I was unfamiliar with it, and its website provided basically no information about who was actually behind it, beyond this vague statement on its "who we are" page:

The Digital Creators Coalition (DCC) is a group of associations, companies and organizations that represent individual creators, independent producers, small-and-medium-size enterprises (SMEs), large businesses, and labor organizations from the American creative communities. We contribute significantly to U.S. GDP, exports and employment – collectively employing or representing millions of American creators, and contributing billions of dollars to the U.S. economy.

Right... but... uh... who? There's no named staff. There's nothing that shows who these associations, companies, and organizations actually are. Though, if you click through on the website to their "comments" page, it takes you to two separate letters that were sent nearly a year ago to negotiators trying to sort out a US-UK trade agreement, asking for the most extreme versions of copyright possible, including copyright term extension, secondary liability on websites that host content, no language on "balance" or "fair use" (yes, they explicitly say neither term should be mentioned). It's insanity.

Of course, that letter also reveals who they are, and it's a who's who of industry associations that lobby for the interests of the largest gatekeepers, and not, as the organization's website suggests, small and independent creators:

I mean, you've got basically all the copyright maximalist extremist groups there: the RIAA, the MPA, the Author's Guild, Creative Future, the Recording Academy, ASCAP, SoundExchange, NMPA, the IIPA. Not surprisingly, but incredibly disappointing is that the News Media Alliance is there. The News Media Alliance used to be the Newspaper Association of America, and, as such, you'd think would be supportive of free speech and the 1st Amendment. Considering how much newspapers rely on fair use, you'd think it would be odd that they're now against fair use. But, over the past few years, the leaders of the News Media Alliance have become so obsessed and infatuated with "GOOGLE BAD!" that apparently they have no problem throwing their lot in with copyright maximalists against their own members' interests. The organization literally came out against fair use a few years ago, and has since become just as bad (in some ways worse!) than some of the other organizations here.

But, just as if to prove that this group has nothing to do with small and independent creators, and is just a front for the big gatekeepers who screw over small and independent creators, the RIAA itself put out a press release announcing this group's official launch. Oh, and in case there was any doubt who is really behind this group, a simple whois lookup on who registered the website reveals all:

Yup. This organization set up to supposedly support small and independent artists... was literally set up by the RIAA itself.

This would be the same RIAA whose chairman and CEO's key claim to fame is that while he was a Congressional staffer, he snuck four words into an unrelated bill that literally would take the copyrights from artists and give them to record labels. No one realized he had done this until after it was passed and became law, at which point, the RIAA immediately hired him, and where he's moved up the ranks until he was in charge. This move set off a huge fight with tons of artists screaming about how the RIAA had actually "stolen" their copyrights out from under them, and Congress had to go in and fix this.

That's who's protecting the interests of small and independent creators? Don't make me laugh.

This is also the same RIAA made up of the major labels who have a long and detailed history of screwing over some of its biggest artists through creative accounting (the only thing the RIAA really does that is creative) to make sure it never needs to pay artists and to keep them tied to the system. These are not the friends of independent artists.

Notice who is not a part of this coalition? Any of the companies who have made it possible for actual small and independent artists to make, distribute, promote, build an audience, and make a living these days. No Apple. No YouTube. No TikTok. No Kickstarter. No Patreon. No Spotify. No Bandcamp. No Substack. Odd, isn't it? Then again, maybe not.

But seeing as this group is now officially "launched" you can expect to see a bunch of bullshit quotes from them that gullible reporters will repeat without question, saying that it's a group to support artists. Don't believe them. This is an organization to support the copyright maximalism of groups that have spent decades screwing over independent artists.

Headexplodie, otherwise known as Oakland-based artist Annie Wong, has been cooking up weirdness in her stop motion studio for over a decade. Her creations are undeniably adorable, even when they're oozing, barfing, or shaped like poop. Though I love it all, I'm especially fond of her Ovary Actions GIF series, Wong's project designed to combat period stigma with help from an angry uterus, a friendly maxi pad blob, and a diva cup surfing a crimson wave. — Read the rest

Everyone's favorite "death positive" Goth mortician, Caitlin Doughty, vents her spleen over the overwhelming number of COVID deaths her small LA funeral home and many others have been dealing with this winter. Doughty is not feeling so positive about the lack of organization and facilities for dealing with all of the victims of this lingering tragedy. — Read the rest

“Happy New Year!” I’ve always loved declaring this to others each January. The sentiment doesn’t ring with the same enthusiasm as it usually does. The events of 2020 and ongoing shifted many of our perspectives, for better but mostly for worse. To say people are very cautiously optimistic about heading into 2021 is an understatement.

I recall the phrase, “Feel the fear and do it anyway.” It is said that courage isn’t a lack of fear but moving forward despite of it. I agree with these sentiments while understanding all too well how hard they can be to live by. The fact of the matter is many of us, scarred from the events of the prior year, are battle-weary and afraid of what’s to come. But there’s no stopping time from moving forward in this human experience. How do we move into 2021 with hopes and expectations of success and joy, not just fear and dread?

Fear can be a useful tool and is necessary for survival. However, constantly being in fear clouds our judgement and can cause us to make terrible decisions. Times of fear will put us in survival mode and threaten to cut us off from the source of all life, Spirit. Time and experience will tell, but I believe the solution will be to move forward with fear and with hope. And to move forward knowing that our spirits are ultimately unbreakable. We are powerful beyond measure. Yeah, I said it!

The Strength card in the tarot comes to mind. This tarot card usually portrays a woman either gently closing or possibly opening a fierce lion’s mouth. This wild and dangerous creature stands or sits alongside her, utterly tamed but yet no less fearsome for having been tamed. We all know what a lion in the wild is capable of. But Strength isn’t about conquering fear so much as it is about taming it. Managing it. Fear may not leave us but we can tame it and walk with it.

How do we manage our fear like the maiden tames the lion? The first step is understanding that fear likely won’t be conquered. You’ll feel fear when thinking about and planning for the year ahead. You’ll feel fear when pondering the political landscape. You’ll feel fear when trying to protect yourself and your loved ones. Heck, you might even feel fear going to grocery store at this point. Wanting fear to just “go away” is something I’ve wanted so many times in my life. And it has hardly ever left my side! Think of fear as an annoying ever-present companion. Don’t look to get rid of it, expect to let it ride along with you while hopefully not taking up all of your attention.

Therefore, another helpful step is to monitor how much time you spend in worry/fear. Many of us spend hours of every day, if not entire days, weeks, and months in fear. This is not a useful, helpful, or constructive use of your energy. Yes, you will feel fear, but start to pay attention to how often it crops up. Once you notice feelings of fear, set them aside and say to yourself, “Yes, fear, I hear you. But I’m not going to entertain you right now. Maybe I’ll feel afraid or worried later. But not right now.” This may sound impossible to do, but I promise, it works!

Finally, know that you are so much greater and more powerful than anything you could ever be afraid of, including death. None of us wants our human journeys to include painful experiences and especially not death! But all our lives include these things regardless, don’t they? The maiden in the Strength card has a lemniscate above her head. The lemniscate or infinity symbol signifies our never ending battle to tame the beast within and without. It also symbolizes, more poignantly I believe, the infinite soul. The strength and power of our spirit will never stop being tested, for as long as we live. But our spirit will also defeat any foe and transcend any obstacle. Your strength is eternal. Our strength is eternal. The power and resilience of our human collective of souls dwarfs the greatest fears known to man. Whatever fears ride along with you this year and in this life, never forget you are greater.

It was only mid-day yesterday that it was confirmed that Congress has slipped in two controversial copyright provisions into the must-pass government funding bill. Last night, as everyone expected, that must-pass bill did indeed pass, and it will soon be law.

There are many, many reasons to be frustrated about this. First, just the way this was done is incredibly stupid. The government waited until the very last minute (with a couple of "extensions") to work out this agreement on a combination of the COVID relief bill (which is way too small and way too late for many, many people) and a bill to actually fund the government and avoid a shutdown. It's already ridiculous that we have to do this government funding bill each year, especially considering that Congress already approves a budget earlier in the year, and the appropriations bill is really just a fight over how to apportion what Congress has already agreed to spend. And then, because the appropriations bill is considered a "must pass" to keep large parts of the government funded, Congress lights it up like a Christmas tree with totally unrelated bills they couldn't get passed through normal process.

Incredibly, some politicians, like Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, seem proud of this practice:

I get why he's proud of getting some things into the bill, and many of the things he may be proud of are good. But many of them do not belong in this bill and should not be in a 5,000 page bill that was revealed mid-day and voted on hours later.

Incredibly, while the bill does have 2,000 pages of actual appropriations details, the other 3,000 pages are totally unrelated bills that Congress couldn't pass through the rest of the year. Even if you like the bills, even if you are mad that Congress is gridlocked at other times, that's no excuse to support this awful undemocratic process. Everything about it is bad.

Now, lots of people are still combing through the bill to find all the awful landmines that it's too late to do anything about, but the two that we've been talking about here are the copyright provisions. I've already explained multiple times why the felony streaming bill and the CASE Act are extremely problematic, so I won't go over either again. I will note that neither final provision is as bad as they were in earlier versions. Both were somewhat limited from truly terrible provisions to what is today merely awful. But that's nothing to celebrate.

As I said yesterday with regards to both bills, copyright law is controversial for a wide variety of reasons, but the biggest one is this: small tweaks to copyright law can have a massive impact on expression. Few people are even willing to grapple with the fact that significant parts of copyright law raise 1st Amendment issues. And when you rush through both of these bills (the felony streaming bill received literally no discussion or debate), you impact speech in a massive way. The felony streaming bill, even with its restrictions to platforms, may scare off many platforms from being willing to host streaming content, despite it being a key way in which many people -- especially younger generations -- express themselves these days.

The CASE Act, similarly, threatens to unleash a new generation of copyright trolling, at a time when we already have too much copyright trolling, threatening and shaking down people for money over incidental and accidental infringement. On top of that, especially in the midst of a pandemic when so many people are stuck at home and communicating, living, and working virtually, doing perfectly normal things can and will be seen as infringing. Nearly 15 years ago, law professor John Tehranian wrote about how on a random day that he tracked, he realized he (a copyright law professor!) probably committed 83 acts of infringement.

As we wrote a few years back, the only reason that copyright doesn't destroy speech is that he world has recognized a concept of copyright toleration -- which is that, more or less, copyright holders have mostly looked the other way at incidental and accidental infringements that happen all the time. The entire point of the CASE Act is to slam the door shut on the entire idea of copyright toleration, and open the floodgates for copyright holders to shake down basically anyone for such incidental uses -- telling them they could owe up to $30,000 as assigned by a non-judicial tribunal housed in the Copyright Office itself.

Supporters of the CASE Act say it's no big deal because you can opt-out of the process if you don't like it. But the opt-out process is unclear and potentially confusing. And, of course, in doing so, you are poking the copyright holder, and potentially egging them on to file an even more disastrous federal copyright lawsuit against you. But, honestly, just the mere threat of facing $30,000 fines from this new tribunal will cause many to shut up. It will cause many to pull down speech or never make it at all, because who wants to deal with that threat?

And, as law professor Eric Goldman notes, we did all this to get a stimulus package that will give a mere $600 to individuals... but that $600 likely won't cover your CASE Act bill, and you'll need many more stimulus checks to deal with the fact that you promoted a song you liked. It's a complete travesty.

In early March 2020, New York Magazine published an excellent article the went behind the scenes of a Shell corporate conference. It's a long read, but has continued to haunt me ever since, as journalist Malcolm Harris (author of Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials) chats it up with oil executives who — shockingly — aren't as in denial about climate change as one might expect. — Read the rest

James Sligh is a brilliant sommelier and writer, who also hosts the delightfully post-colonial Children's Atlas of Wine online club and tasting series. Sligh's knack for knowledge and words means that he's not just interested in the way that wines tastes — he's also deeply engaged with the cultural, historical, and geopolitical context of the wine. — Read the rest

The new National Native American Veterans Memorial is now open on the National Mall in DC.

Throughout US history, American Indians and Alaska Natives have enlisted in the Armed Forces at a rate five times the national average, despite the fact that they weren't even recognized as US citizens until 1924. — Read the rest

“No comments from the peanut gallery!” For many Americans who were born in the 1940s or 1950s, this phrase conjures up fond memories of the “Howdy Doody” show. It launched in 1947 as one of the first children’s television programs.

On that show, Buffalo Bob Smith – the host – his marionette sidekick, Howdy Doody, and Clarabell the clown entertained children who sat in bleachers onstage. Each episode opened with the kids singing the “It’s Howdy Doody Time” theme song and were then filmed reacting to the performers’ antics. Buffalo Bob referred to them as the “peanut gallery,” but the term didn’t originate with his show.

In fact, “peanut gallery” predates Howdy Doody by at least 80 years. Its first reference dates to an 1867 review of a vaudeville show published in the New Orleans Times-Picayune – and the term has a surprisingly controversial history.

Vaudeville came to North America from France. You could find almost any kind of act at a vaudeville show. On a given evening, spectators might be entertained by a comedian, acrobat, juggler, ventriloquist, magician or trained animal acts. Music and song-and-dance acts were mainstays. The lineup sometimes included burlesque acts, one-act plays or movies.

These traveling shows toured cities and towns from the early 1880s through the early 1930s. They were especially popular among the working class and recent immigrants who sometimes made up a majority of the audience.

Just like Broadway shows or concerts today, ticket prices varied, according to the location of the seats, with the most expensive up front. Those who sat in the most inexpensive seats in the back had a habit of throwing concession snacks at any performers who displeased them.

Since peanuts were the cheapest snack, they were the projectiles of choice for hecklers. Untalented – or unlucky – entertainers were pelted from the back of the theater – a section that became known as the “peanut gallery.”

Vaudeville fell into decline with the rise of motion pictures and lower-priced entertainment. But the phrase “peanut gallery” was given a new lease on life – and was cemented into the lexicon – with its use on “Howdy Doody.”

The term lives on, with a few meanings. One refers to any noisy or disorderly group of spectators. Another is a racial slur. During vaudeville’s heyday, the cheapest seats were usually high up in a balcony, a section often reserved for Black patrons. As a result, “peanut gallery” is now among a long list of terms becoming socially unacceptable because of apparently racist origins.

But since those seats were also occupied by poorer people and immigrants, there is some debate over whether the expression was racially motivated or was a more general derogatory term for less affluent people.

“Peanut gallery” is just one of many phrases whose problematic origins have become obscured, in this case by smiling, excited children laughing at a cowboy puppet. It’s more common for terms to acquire an unsavory connotation over time.

[You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors. You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter.]

Many terms fall out of fashion as cultural sensitivities shift. For example, just a century ago, “imbecile” and “moron” were considered scientific terms describing mental development – and are now considered offensive.

The passage of time can obscure a term’s problematic origins or illuminate facts about a widely used and seemingly innocent term. As with “the peanut gallery,” an awareness of a term’s history can be essential to avoid giving offense.

Roger J. Kreuz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The Star Feminine Band is a whole lot of girl power. The seven member all-female group hails from a remote West African town called Natitingou, a place where "forced marriages and early pregnancies" are all too common. Their self-titled debut album, dropping in November, really has something to say to the girls in their community. — Read the rest

What started as a small project between two engineering friends to gain experience within their field became a source for the USF community to stay informed about the latest COVID-19 cases across the campuses.

Computer science major students Adheesh Shenoy and Rafael Flores Souza created on an interactive COVID-19 dashboard July 10 as a way to facilitate the visualization of the latest positive COVID-19 cases across all three campuses — Tampa, St. Pete and Sarasota-Manatee. In less than two weeks of gathering and coding the data, the website was up and running.

“It was a personal project, but it was mainly to inform people at USF,” Flores Souza said. “We would go to the USF’s website and then be really confused about it or see a lot of letters that don’t really mean anything. So the main objective was to inform as many people as possible to share it as much as we could just to help people basically.”

USF has been tracking the daily number of cases reported across all campuses since March, but its platform leaves much to be desired. Filled with bullet points and no graphs, the website only displays the daily number of cases identified.

As a way to help the community better visualize the data, Shenoy and Flores Souza gathered data from the USF COVID-19 website and created interactive graphs and tables, ranging from bar graphs to box plots, showcasing the total number of cases, the percentage increase in cases and a comparison between the student and employee populations across campuses.

The website not only organizes the data in one place, but it also allows users to see the correlation, patterns and trends of positive cases reported by USF.

“It’s basically just so that people can see the correlation,” Shenoy said. “If you see on the graph, Sept. 7 is exactly the date from which it goes exponential. And what’s 14 days minus Sept. 7? It’s Aug. 24, and that was the first day of class.

“The [USF’s website] couldn’t really tell you all these things because it’s just saying there were eight cases today, six cases today, so you can’t see these things and so that’s the main reason we thought [the dashboard] was needed.”

All the data provided in the dashboard is updated every time a user accesses the website, according to Shenoy. Since USF does not provide an exact time when the cases are updated, Shenoy said they configured the dashboard so it reads USF’s COVID-19 website every time their dashboard is accessed.

“That’s all happening instantaneously,” Shenoy said. “Basically, every time any user logs on to the website, the website reads through the USF cases to see whether any updates have been made and if they have been made, it does the changes and then it updates the graphs.”

At first, Shenoy and Flores Souza created a dashboard to track COVID-19 cases around the world. However, after noticing the difficulty to interpret the COVID-19 cases from USF’s website, they decided to be the first to address the concerns many had.

“We started working on a world COVID-19 dashboard showing for every country, very similar,” Flores Souza said. “But we realized that there were so many projects about that, that we just used it to gain more experience and how to deal with websites. And then we were like, ‘could we work on a project that is going to be useful to someone?’ Working on a project that is better, feels better.

“So then, Adheesh and I had that idea of providing the same dashboard that we created, but for USF because we realized nobody actually did it. We just worked on it and in the end, it seems to be working and it’s really useful to people.”

For Shenoy, the most challenging part was to optimize the website’s speed so it provides information to its users simultaneously.

“We both have never really created something that people have actually used, so the most challenging part was to make it as fast as possible,” Shenoy said.

New features will be added to the dashboard throughout the semester to optimize the user experience, according to Flores Souza.

“There’re always going to be changes and, when we’re free, we’re going to be adding them but for now, the website is pretty functional. It shows enough information for people to know what’s happening,” Flores Souza said.

Based on the number of cases and the data reported, the dashboard also calculates future predictions on how the cases might be impacted across campuses. Shenoy said the predictions are updated on a monthly basis to reflect the number of cases reported.

For Flores Souza, the intent was to make the website as accessible for users as possible so they could better visualize and interpret the data.

“We also had the intent to show the website as something very simple and then add more complex graphs for people that are actually really interested in learning more.”

“There were a lot of people who were oblivious about the number of cases or what’s actually happening because the cases are really hidden. It’s a long text and people don’t really read that, so that’s the idea.”

Vivid retellings of Korean folktales by an American scholar and Protestant minister, including several stories about the sprite Tokgabi.

Almost two-thirds of Americans 18-39 didn't know that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, according to a survey. From The Guardian:

According to the study of millennial and Gen Z adults aged between 18 and 39, almost half (48%) could not name a single concentration camp or ghetto established during the second world war.

Almost a quarter of respondents (23%) said they believed the Holocaust was a myth, or had been exaggerated, or they weren't sure. One in eight (12%) said they had definitely not heard, or didn't think they had heard, about the Holocaust.

More than half (56%) said they had seen Nazi symbols on their social media platforms and/or in their communities, and almost half (49%) had seen Holocaust denial or distortion posts on social media or elsewhere online.

"The results are both shocking and saddening, and they underscore why we must act now while Holocaust survivors are still with us to voice their stories," said Gideon Taylor, president of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) which commissioned the survey.

Tarot is an amazing tool for spiritual exploration and esoteric study. What is also wonderful about the tarot is how it can guide us through everyday life, no matter how mundane the situation in question. I firmly believe there is no situation in life for which tarot cannot provide guidance. In this blog post I’d like to share with you one of my favorite tarot exercises or spreads I created to help with any situation that has you in a bind.

Certain situations in life are beyond our control, or they certainly feel that way. Our reaction, of course is what we can control. And even that feels impossible at times! We panic, our emotions get the best of us, or we freeze with indecision. Feeling empowered to make decisions is so important, but it’s also intimidating and overwhelming at times.

I came up with a simple tarot spread for guidance one day and found it worked so well, I’ve used it ever since. Many tarot spreads answer questions like, “What do I need to know about situation (fill in the blank).” Answering a question like this can be helpful when you have no clue what is going on. However, when you do have some information, a question like this can render an answer that feels too vague. Common spreads will also cover the past, present, and future of the situation. You think, “I don’t need to know about the situation, I need to know what to do about the situation!”

This is where a spread I call “Stop, Start, Continue” comes in. Knowing that some kind of action must be taken but needing guidance and clarity, I pull three cards, asking, “What do I need to stop doing. What should I start doing? And what am I already doing that I should continue doing?”

As an example, I asked the cards, “When it comes to growing my client base, what should I stop doing, what should I start doing, and what should I continue doing?” Using the Spirit Keeper’s Tarot, Vitruvian Edition, by Benebell Wen, the cards I pulled were the 8 of Swords, the Herald of Awakening (the Page of Wands), and the 6 of Orbs (Coins).

The adjustments I need to make are immediately apparent to me! I need to get out of my own head and stop trapping myself by over thinking. I need to start expressing my creativity and communicating spiritual messages with more confidence. Lastly, I need to continue providing content and offering my spiritual services to any would-be clients. I need to take action and continue to be of service. This is much clearer than if I’d just asked, “What do I need to know about growing my client base.”

Let’s look at another example. It’s a controversial one! I asked, “How best can America handle the upcoming election?” Using the Mystic Mondays Tarot by Grace Duong, I pulled the 5 of Cups, the Queen of Swords, and the Ace of Swords! Alrighty then! What Americans need to stop doing is focusing on the disappointment we feel at how things are going in the political landscape and in 2020 in general. We’re seeing the glass as half empty, not half full. Then, we need to start communicating our thoughts and ideas with respect and clarity. We need to say what we think with measure and grace. The Queen of Swords doesn’t shout – she doesn’t need to. Then, we need to continue speaking our minds and communicating with each other. Keep having those difficult conversations, don’t shut down.

Hopefully you can see this tarot exercise is great for when you need clear direction and actionable guidance. Try it out for yourself and let me know what you think!

Following Trump's posthumous pardon for suffragist Susan B. Anthony, the museum founded in her memory is rejecting the gesture.

"Objection! Mr. President, Susan B. Anthony must decline your offer of a pardon," Deborah L. Hughes wrote in a statement. She continued:

"Anthony wrote in her diary in 1873 that her trial for voting was 'The greatest outrage History ever witnessed.' She was not allowed to speak as a witness in her own defense, because she was a woman. At the conclusion of arguments, Judge Hunt dismissed the jury and pronounced her guilty. She was outraged to be denied a trial by jury. She proclaimed, 'I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty.' To pay would have been to validate the proceedings. To pardon Susan B. Anthony does the same."

Hughes pointed to Anthony's support of sex education, fair labor practices, excellent public education, equal pay for equal work and elimination of all forms of discrimination.

A key issue for voting rights activists, obviously, is that Trump's effort to steal an election he fears he will otherwise lose hinges on voter suppression.

Harrods is a fancy department store in London and the largest in Europe, with an illustrious history to go with its sprawling floor plan—and similarly enormous catalogues. The 1912 Harrods for Everything book is 1,525 pages long, illustrates more than 15,000 products, and was backed by a then cutting-edge logistics operation that included telephone ordering and home delivery by automobile van. An epic scanning operation, led by Eric Hutton, is finally complete. [via Metafilter]

Yale University's doors are opening to incoming students despite the pandemic, and one administrator, Head of College and psychology professor Laurie Santos, plainly told them the disease may kill them there this semester and that life will look more like hospital than college.

In a July 1 email to Silliman College residents when Yale first announced its plan to reopen on-campus housing, Head of College and psychology professor Laurie Santos warned Yale's "community compact" was not to be taken lightly [and] explained that some staff members are from sectors of society that are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, and that they do not have the choice of whether to come to campus. …

"We all should be emotionally prepared for widespread infections — and possibly deaths — in our community," Santos's email reads. "You should emotionally prepare for the fact that your residential college life will look more like a hospital unit than a residential college."

We're past the point where the people in charge have decided widespread death is necessary for the financial wellbeing of American institutions, and at the point where they're calmly explaining to us the terms and conditions of our demise.

The Washington Post's Hannah Natanson writes: "Maybe at this point nothing should shock anymore. But this email, from a Yale administrator to returning students, is *stunning*"

Notre Dame started in-person classes a week ago; yesterday it reported that 146 students tested positive, more new cases than the whole of Ontario.