She was falsely accused of being racist in a video that went viral. Then some on the internet came to her rescue - "Just about every week we see the same story. Someone takes a jittery smartphone video of a white person caught in the act of doing something that's labeled racist. An army of online commentators mobilizes. The video goes viral. And the person in the video is publicly shamed, often losing a job or being ostracized by the community. His or her name becomes a hashtag for hate.The circulation of these racist outrage videos is so common that they've become the online version of background noise. The social scientist Eugenia Siapera says they often trigger "ambient digital racism" -- racially toxic online posts from ordinary people that are so commonplace they no longer shock... Chipotle fired Moran after the video went viral. Soon after that, she would be vindicated. But while the internet mob moved on, she hasn't. "Life is really difficult," she said. "Everything has changed."She talks as if she's experiencing some digitally induced form of post-traumatic stress disorder. Mood swings, anxiety -- she sometimes recoils when someone tries to take a smartphone video or picture of her...
There were three factors at play that made her story so disturbing -- one of which offers at least some hope.
Reason 1: The power of confirmation bias... The incident was framed as a white person's humiliation of black men, but Moran is Mexican-American. Still, many people kept identifying her as white as her story spread... caution doesn't get you clicks on the internet. Why pause to see if a sensational video is true when you can quickly post it and get attention with a snarky comment?
Reason 2: The power of internet mob justice... rage has become the fuel of online discourse. Critics accuse President Trump of normalizing racism by referring to Mexican immigrants as "rapists" and African nations as "shithole" countries. But Moran discovered that some people on the left can be just as vicious when they denounce racism... truth is unimportant in online shame culture, Kain wrote, because"whoever is most outraged wins."... "always the shaming circumvents due process, precedes true justice, and serves mainly to inflate the sense of self-importance and egos of its progenitors."...
Reason 3: All you need is one person with a question... Moran's reputation was salvaged by a stranger. He decided to ask a question no one else seemed to ask after watching the video...
When a crime is committed, someone is supposed to pay. But where is justice for me?She has received no apologies from any member of the internet mob that stalked her.No contrition from the anonymous commentators who branded her a racist, called her names and threatened her safety.She knows she's not the only one who's been falsely labeled a racist."
Pakistan vet charged with blasphemy over medicine 'wrapped in religious text' - "A Hindu veterinary doctor in south-east Pakistan has been charged under the country's strict blasphemy laws after allegedly selling medicine wrapped in paper bearing Islamic religious text.An angry crowd set fire to his clinic near Mirpur Khas, Sindh province, and other Hindu-owned shops were looted.The vet said his use of the paper, apparently torn from an Islamic studies school textbook, was a mistake."
Somehow this sort of thing gets less attention than more minor incidents in India
Yiqin Fu on Twitter - "A Germany-based Chinese programmer said he and some friends have identified 100k porn actresses from around the world, cross-referencing faces in porn videos with social media profile pictures. The goal is to help others check whether their girlfriends ever acted in those films"
DIY Facial Recognition for Porn Is a Dystopian Disaster - ""This is horrendous and a pitch-perfect example of how these systems, globally, enable male dominance," Soraya Chemaly, author of Rage Becomes Her, tweeted on Tuesday about the alleged project. "Surveillance, impersonation, extortion, misinformation all happen to women first and then move to the public sphere, where, once men are affected, it starts to get attention." Whether the Weibo user’s claims are trustworthy or not is beside the point, now that experts in feminist studies and machine learning have decried this project as algorithmically-targeted harassment"
Being against female hypoagency means you're misogynistic
Man Restoring a Classic Synthesizer Goes On a 9-Hour Acid Trip After Accidentally Touching LSD-Covered Knob
Home Ministry to retain religion on MyKad - "The government will not remove one’s religious status on the identity card, Home Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said today.He said the government has yet to conduct any findings on the suggestion to remove one’s religious status on the MyKad.A Muslim’s faith is printed as “Islam” on the physical card, but the religious status of non-Muslims is not printed on the document, even though it is kept in the National Registration Department’s database."
Muslim registries are Islamophobic. Therefore Malaysia is Islamophobic
40% of India's MPs face criminal charges, including rape and murder: Study - "None of the 185 lawmakers from the previous Parliament who faced criminal cases was convicted. Many have returned for a new term.Firebrand Hindu nationalist Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, a newly elected BJP MP, faces a terrorism charge over a 2008 attack near a mosque that killed six people. She denies the charges and says she was framed by a previous Congress government.Parties often brush off charges against their candidates by saying they were victims of political vendettas."
Japanese spas feel the heat over 'tap water and bath salts' scandal - "The japanese swear by their therapeutic benefits, but the nation's hot springs have been hit by scandal after some were found to consist of nothing more than warm tap water laced with bath salts.Owners of traditional springs spend millions of yen every year pumping geo-thermally heated water to the surface, but some operators have discovered that it is cheaper to set up outdoor spas - known as onsen - in places where no natural spring exists.Under the 1948 Hot Spring Law, anyone who can harness a water source with a temperature of 25C or above can set up an onsen, no matter what the mineral content of the water. And, with the number of such spas doubling in the past 40 years, business has become increasingly cut-throat... Spas that have to pump up water, expensively, from far below the surface have taken to recycling water that has already been used by previous customers, in order to cut costs. That has led to problems such as germs proliferating - seven people died of legionnaires' disease in Miyazaki in 2002. Now the environment ministry is to require owners to give a chemical analysis of their waters to customers, who pay up to yen20,000 (£95) for an overnight stay in a traditional inn with a shared spa."
From 2007
Parents sue, saying Harrisburg police violated rights of 15-year-old killed when he crashed stolen car after chase - pennlive.com - "The parents of a 15-year-old Harrisburg boy who was killed when the stolen car he was driving crashed into a tree during a chase by city police has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city.Waleska Santiago and Jaime Winston claim the pursuit that killed their son Kobe Santiago in November was “reckless, dangerous and unreasonable” and should not even have been initiated by an officer... Kobe’s parents claim the pursuit violated a “clandestine” city police policy that bars officers from engaging in chases in cases that don’t involve “forcible felonies,” such as robberies and assaults. Through sources, PennLive confirmed such a policy exists."
I'm surprised they're not claiming law enforcement is racist
Video of Wendy's employee taking bubble bath in restaurant sink goes viral - "A Wendy’s employee was captured on video taking a bubble bath in the kitchen restaurant, a gag that got him fired... Yahoo Lifestyle contacted the woman who filmed the bath and her coworker for comment. A Wendy’s employee wrote on Facebook, “He was off the clock and the ‘repulsive’ incident was two minutes long. People have done it before and the only reason it’s a problem now is because old people have access to Facebook.”... Haley Leach, the woman who posted the Facebook video writing, “I don’t suggest anyone eating at the Milton Wendy’s again” did not return Yahoo Lifestyle’s inquiry.According to The Daytona Beach News-Journal, Leach wrote, “The actions in the video were appalling and I felt like the public had the right to know...”"
Maybe an online mob will try to get Leach fired for racism
While you're sleeping, your iPhone stays busy harvesting data - "You might assume you can count on Apple to sweat all the privacy details. After all, it touted in a recent ad: "What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone."... iPhone apps I discovered tracking me by passing information to third parties - just while I was asleep - include Microsoft OneDrive, Intuit's Mint, Nike, Spotify, The Washington Post and IBM's The Weather Channel. One app, the crime-alert service Citizen, shared personally identifiable information, in violation of its published privacy policy. And your iPhone doesn't feed data trackers only while you sleep. In a single week, I encountered over 5,400 trackers, mostly in apps, not including the incessant Yelp traffic. According to privacy firm Disconnect, which helped test my iPhone, those unwanted trackers would have spewed out 1.5 gigabytes of data over the span of a month. That's half of an entire basic wireless service plan from AT&T... Citizen, the app for location-based crime reports, published that it wouldn't share "your name or other personally identifying information". Yet when I ran my test, I found it repeatedly sent my phone number, e-mail and exact GPS coordinates to the tracker Amplitude."
ISIS Lays Down Arms After Katy Perry's Impassioned Plea To 'Like, Just Co-Exist' | The Babylon Bee - "Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, released a statement Wednesday confirming that ISIS would be immediately surrendering its fight to establish a powerful caliphate after viewing an interview in which pop singer Katy Perry said, “The greatest thing we can do just unite and love on each other and like, no barriers, no borders, like, we all need to just co-exist.” The powerful statement which single-handedly dismantled ISIS came shortly after a terrorist attack on civilians in Manchester killed 22 people, and led the reclusive head of ISIS to hold an emergency press conference declaring the group’s jihad finished... al-Baghdadi further confirmed that a recent advertisement in which Kendall Jenner offered a group of riot police a Pepsi was also influential in his decision to immediately cease their murderous reign of terror and lead ISIS down a path of peace."
It's Easier To Get Good Pizza In New York Than In Most of Italy - "most pizzerias across non-Naples parts of Italy only serve pizza—and not very good pizza, at that—because tourists demand it. Depending where you go, a pizza in Milan or Rome can be fundamentally different from Neapolitan pizza, and is often made with low-quality ingredients, and by pizzaioli that have no idea what they're doing other than topping a simple crust with some form of tomato sauce and cheese... The dirty little secret about Italian cuisine is that it's highly regional, and that the only place where you can find great pizza pretty much anywhere consistently is in Naples... You know where there are a lot of Neapolitans outside of Naples? That's right—New York City. In fact, America's first pizzeria was opened by a Neapolitan, and New York-style pizza was directly inspired by Neapolitan pizza."
Only Half Of Your Friends Actually Like You - "half of the people you consider a friend probably don’t feel the same about you... Robin Dunbar, a British anthropologist, led a study that found we only have room to cultivate a limited number of relationships — approximately 150 relationships, max, and only about five close friends."