How misinformation fueled a coup in Myanmar
—
“People can’t get real information… They restored the internet but not the television."
#
Danielle Baskin shares the story behind her satirical Blue Check Homes site
—
"not everyone understands your commentary and will share your jokes as fact"
#
Inside China’s police state tactics against Muslims
—
The Intercept obtained millions of leaked police files detailing the oppressive surveillance of the Uyghur people
#
Sonification of coronavirus deaths in the U.S.
—
grim conversion of the NYT's visualization of 425,000 deaths as audio
(via)
#
Audrey Hepburn’s Favorite Song
—
a short comic of a true story; watch the quartet perform "Audrey" live in this 1954 short by photographer Gjon Mili
#
After 27 years, Jeff Bezos stepping down as Amazon CEO later this year
—
breaking: the new CEO's favorite band is Dave Matthews Band
#
NYT report on Trump’s campaign to subvert the election
—
Times examination of how lies about election fraud spread in the 77 days between election and inauguration
(via)
#
The COVID Tracking Project will end on March 7
—
this work should be the responsibility of federal public health agencies, and they're finally meeting the challenge
(via)
#
Everything’s a Joke Until It’s Not
—
John Herrman on WallStreetBets and The_Donald; "a potent mixture of nihilism, obfuscating humor and a clear common goal"
(via)
#
The Princess Bride remade in lockdown by all-star cast
—
originally running on Quibi, a delightful series compiled here as a YouTube bootleg
#
WSJ reports Facebook knew calls for violence plagued Groups
—
an internal report from August found 70% of top civic groups too toxic to recommend
#
archives.design
—
organized collection of graphic design-related items available in the Internet Archive
(via)
#
Black Bart, the unaired TV sequel to Blazing Saddles
—
correction: there was a pilot that aired, but four seasons weren't made
(via)
#
Lessons from A Pandemic Anniversary
—
Zeynep Tufekci looks back at what we knew and didn't yet know in January 2020
#
NYT’s Kashmir Hill on how one woman destroyed the online reputations of more than 145 people
—
during the reporting process, the same woman started defaming the writer, her husband, and editor
#
NYT Mag’s Yudhijit Bhattacharjee confronts an Indian phone scammer
—
assisted by Jim Browning, who made his own video on finding the guy
#
Ben Zotto reconstructs a corrupted Apple II game he made in elementary school
—
interesting look at 30-year-old data recovery
#
Casey Newton on the battle inside Signal
—
Signal's exploding in popularity after WhatsApp's fumble, but very vulnerable to abuse
#
Twitter introduces Birdwatch, community reporting of misinformation
—
starting to address an obvious gap in their reporting tools
#
How Reddit traders pushed GameStop’s struggling stock to the moon
—
one trader turned $53k into more than $11 million, while short-sellers lost $1.6 billion in a day
#
Garbage Day on Reddit manipulating GameStop stock
—
r/WallStreetBets pushed the stock to an all-time high, making it the most actively-traded U.S. company for a time
#
The moderation war is coming to Spotify, Substack, and Clubhouse
—
they seem determined to repeat the mistakes made by social platforms before them
(via)
#
Adobe’s Flash kill switch shuts down Chinese railway
—
they resolved it by installing an older pirated version
(via)
#
Facebook continued to push users to join partisan political groups after saying they stopped
—
Facebook pushed political groups to Trump voters most often, 25% of the top 100 recommended groups
#
Kalidoface
—
puppet a virtual character with your webcam, supports P2P calling and uploading your own model
(via)
#
Inside QAnon’s virtual inauguration watch party
—
highlights from Gab and Telegram; Ron Watkins called it quits too
#
Amanda Gorman reads “The Hill We Climb”
—
the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history finished writing it the night of the attack on Congress
#
Biden sworn in, Harris becomes first woman and woman of color to serve as VP
—
a historic moment in a period of multiple national crises, marking an end to the worst presidency in American history
#
Three.js Journey
—
lovely landing page for Bruno Simon's new course, who made one of my favorite homepages ever
#
Bot that turns Reddit arguments into Ace Attorney scenes
—
add !objectionbot to any Reddit comment chain, the results may be NSFW
(via)
#
Bill Wurtz’s “here comes the sun”
—
Bill quit releasing new music and videos in March 2019, but he's finally back
#
What Parler Saw During the Attack on the Capitol
—
ProPublica's interactive timeline of over 500 POV videos, with highlights and a breakdown of how/why they made it
#
The Radicalization Of Giggle Palooza
—
Ryan Broderick on the rapid descent from Minions memes to QAnon for one 1.6M follower Facebook page
#
Panic re-releases Audion for modern macOS
—
mostly an archival project preserving the hundreds of fan-created faces
#