Otto's Message on Unpredictability

Hurricane Otto devastated Central America in the last couple of days and no one was ready for it. People living in Nicaragua and Costa Rica are used to extreme storms and know how to take precautionary measures against them. But none of them expected a hurricane so late in the year. Had the storm come in April or May, it still would have resulted in the loss of many innocent lives, but at least people would have been ready for it and a catastrophe could have been avoided. Being accustomed to the hurricane season made central americans particularly sensitive to the changes produced by global warming. Now, Otto is breaking all kinds of records by cementing itself as the strongest hurricane in the tropical Atlantic basin to hit so late in the year. 

As we all know, human pollution has had extremely detrimental effects on the environment, and has resulted in multiple calamities throughout the years, most notably in third world countries that lack the proper infrastructure to fight back. This has been felt in Indonesia, Haiti and Chile, among countless others. The effects of man-made natural disasters are amplified even further when you become unable to predict when one might occur. Now, all sense of security is put on jeopardy because mass chaos could strike at any moment and without notice. Central Americans are used to relying on their years of experience dealing with vicious storms, but now they have to be on their toes at all times. 

This severely undermines not only their sense of agency over their own lives, but also other less abstract concepts like their country’s economic advancement. Economies struggle when they have to pay investors high risk premiums, and no investor is gonna want to dump his cash on a country that could be struck by a hurricane at any time, unless he gets a juicy premium for taking such a risk. Third world countries already have to deal with political and social unrest, and adding environmental unpredictability just makes it a lot harder to progress.

Its easy to downplay this as another hurricane out of dozens, but the fact that this came at such an odd time of the year means that people living in those countries have to be constantly fearful of the looming specter of mother nature. Now more than ever is the time to control carbon emissions and expand environmental protection programs, and more thought should be paid to the effect we have on people thousands of miles away, simply trying to get by.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/11/25/watch-record-breaking-hurricane-otto-transit-central-america-eye-intact/

Not-So-Subliminal Islamophobia

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/11/28/ohio-state-university-warns-of-active-shooter-on-campus/

I read through this news article once and it seemed cohesive, well-constructed, and overall an exemplary piece of investigative integrity. Except for one sentence that was none of these.

The article talks about the violent attack that took place on Friday ate the Ohio State University campus, in which a student used both his vehicle and a knife as his primary weapons. He was reported to have slashing around and causing mayhem in an uncalculated and erratic manner. The article includes multiple eyewitness reports, most of which corroborate one another thus providing sound evidence that the events took place as described in the news story. But, halfway through the piece is a very odd paragraph that for some reason tries to theorize on the attacker’s potential motives. It reads: “Local police are still leading the investigation, and a motive was far from clear. The Islamic State and Al Qaeda have publicly called for supporters to use vehicles as weapons, as an attacker who killed dozens in Nice over the summer did.” Wait, what?

Where did this come from? How is Al-Qaeda related to any of this? I am just perplexed. At no other point in the article is any of this mentioned. Kathy Lynn Gray, the author of this particular piece, is showing her bias in a laughable attempt to link an incident in Ohio to a terrorist attack in Nic with absolutely no evidence. She doesn’t even have the guts to say that the attacker may be in cahoots with Al-Qaeda or Islamic extremists, she just implies it by throwing it in there “subliminally”. It immediately jumped out at me when reading it, but I’m sure this wasn’t the case for everyone reading the Washington Post. Skimmers doubtlessly read right through it without a second glance, and many might unconsciously attribute the attack to those damn Muslims despite the lack of any connection. This is especially true if you happen to already be biased against Muslims, as biased views tend to augment each other easily. Gray’s complete lack of journalistic integrity may cause the further alienation of minorities in the spread of fear against “others”. In other words, this article is the real act of terror. 

Farcebook: A Discussion About Diffusion of Responsibility Through Social Media

        Its surprisingly easy to manipulate people through social media. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter rely on almost incessant exposure to short bursts of news both about your friends’ everyday lives and about the world in general. More often than not, people read a post on Facebook and share it with their friends without a second thought about how accurate the news sources are. These news articles have become so pervasive on Facebook that even those who claim to take them with a grain of salt can’t help but be affected by them subconsciously sometimes. Giving people this degree of influence over others can be very risky, and social media giants like Facebook should be able to keep this power in check to avoid unwanted circumstances. This power can be especially dangerous during important elections, as it can change the tides with news that may or may not be true but that is shared regardless.

About 44% of Americans use Facebook as their primary source of news. This is pretty alarming when you consider what this means: their friends decide what type of information they receive everyday. This includes their views on political issues, ecological concerns, and even morality and human rights. The way Facebook is set right now, users have a huge influence on how their friends think about current events by contributing to the flood of news stories on their feed, and they rarely consider this when sharing one that seems interesting.

Facebook should really restructure the way information spreads on their platform. The average Facebook user cannot possibly be expected to sift through the millions of news stories out there in order to choose the least biased version, or the one that has the most reliable sources. This may seem excessive, but people usually expect this kind of rigorous behavior by professional news outlets, and frankly Facebook is bigger and reaches a wider audience than any one of them. From a certain point of view, everyone that uses Facebook “works” for the largest newspaper in the world, and should be held up to the standards of integrity that such a position requires.

This, of course, is neither feasible nor enforceable. Its unlikely that anyone will ever be fired, arrested or even fined for sharing a fake news story on Facebook. Users are given an immense power with very little responsibility, and this is a structural problem that is completely Facebook’s fault. Regarding this, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that they’ve “made significant progress, but there is more work to be done”, as they are trying to make it easier for users to report fake news and for computers to identify and take them down automatically. While these efforts are certainly a step in the right direction, Facebook is too influential to be allowed to function while issues remain unfixed. Recently, a fake news story about Hillary Clinton’s emails, in which they were revealed to be a plot to assassinate a police officer, received widespread attention. Its feared that, despite the falsehood of the news, many people who read it either believed it or let it influence their voting preference. A seemingly insignificant prank like this could have been the defining factor of this past election. This is simply ridiculous. Facebook’s stance of news propagation has to be extreme, to the point in which they should consider removing the feature altogether. By diverting responsibility among millions of people, the world could get very messy with no one getting they hands dirty. Social media can be a great thing, but as all great things it has to be respected and cannot be taken lightly.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/19/zuckerberg-reveals-plans-to-address-misinformation-on-facebook/

Know What You’re Fighting For

Most people protesting in the streets the last couple of days have no idea what they actually want. The overall consensus amongst them is that Donald Trump shouldn’t be the 45th president of the United States because he didn’t win the popular vote. But that is not how the POTUS is elected, nor has it been since 1787. The Electoral College System has been in place almost since the country’s inception, and while have been several movements that have tried to repeal it in the past, almost none of the people protesting right now would have a problem with it if Hillary had won. 

Regardless of what you think about Trump or Hillary, there was a clear winner in terms of electoral college votes, and only a negligible difference in the popular vote. Had Hillary lost the popular vote by a small margin but been elected President, the same arguments would be heard today except it would be Trump supporters wanting the popular vote to count. The winning side will never try to convince their opponents that they won by mere chance or due to a faulty system. People don’t care about how broken the system is or isn’t when they win, its only once they’ve lost that the idea of an unfairness is brought up to justify their loss. The real issue being fought for is not reforming the election process, it’s changing the election’s results, and everyone that thinks otherwise is delusional. 

When Donald Trump said the system was rigged a few weeks ago, Democrats immediately jumped on his comment. His implication that he probably wouldn’t accept the results of the electoral college was met with widespread criticism and hatred, especially from those who are out there this very day doing exactly that. The only difference is that most media outlets and news sources seem to be pretty complacent with the protests if they’re on the “right side”. Somehow, Trump implying he’d cause riots is a lot worse than people actually rioting.

Lets imagine for a moment that the protesters get their wish: Trump gets prematurely impeached and Hillary steps into the Oval Office next year. What then? What does that say about democracy, if it is to be put aside when the wrong person wins? Trump getting kicked off the presidency because of nationwide protests would undermine the whole idea of elections. If the person with the rowdiest crowd gets the final say, democracy devolves into anarchy and civil war. Its easy to ignore the implications of getting what you ask for, but its a civic responsibility to be true to the results of an election all citizens agreed to trust.

The truth is, Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States of America. You can’t start thinking about making changes until to come to terms with that. If you legitimately care about reforming the election process, don’t complain about it the same week your candidate loses the presidential election. That’s just called whining. If Trump is so inadequate for the job, his mandate will provide many opportunities to impeach him and will probably make it easier to argue for change in the way the president gets elected. Its not unreasonable to believe that most people would be all for electing their chief executive through popular vote, but its all about timing it right. 

Protesting now dilutes the message of “I want the system to change” with “I want Trump out”. Its hard to tell one from the other at times, because most people say they want both, but they only really want the former to achieve the latter. That’s why you don’t see any Trump supporters out there asking for popular vote to be implemented. This is an issue both sides probably want (the electoral college system is about as democratic as drawing a name out of a hat, and provides about the same sense of agency), but now they are pitted against each other because Trump is the only thing on everyone’s minds. Wanting the people’s votes to count is a noble endeavor, but this cannot be about Trump. He is short-term, this is long-term. We’re not talking about how the 45th is to be elected, but about everyone that is to follow.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/portland-oregon-anti-trump-protest-1-shot-after-confrontation-n682896

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/11/13/massive-anti-trump-protests-planned-for-inauguration-day-police-on-alert.html

A Sign of Things to Come

         Austyn Crites walked into a Republican rally in Reno this Saturday under the delusion that he had the right to express his own opinion. He is one of those poor souls who believe in the ideals and values of the Republican party, just not in the man who sits at its head. According to Crites, he had no intention of causing a commotion when he held up the outrageously offensive sign reading “Republicans Against Trump”. How dare he! How dare he trust his fellow Republicans not to gang up on him and beat him up for voicing a different opinion? Some of the people in Crites’ vicinity later said they thought he had a gun, others claimed he had started the brawl in the first place. There was, of course, no such gun. And, right, he tried to single-handedly take on a mob of angry Republicans. 

The only sensible thing to do in this situation is obviously to help this poor defenseless mob, which is exactly what 45 year old professional bystander Michael Newton did. “I thought I had to do something. I put my knee on what I think was his head, so I’m not really sure. There were five guys on him and he was moving. I tried to help them immobilize him.” I guess the bystander effect only works when the person yelling for help has the right political stance, otherwise the “I’m in an environment of hate and distrust” effect kicks in and all your senses tell you to attack the person being attacked. 

Getting kneed in the head hurts, but getting burned on social media can hurt even more. As is to be expected, Crites’ devious cohorts got him placed among the likes of John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald. He was instantly labeled a “Clinton Thug” and a “Trump Killer” and many more much less cool-sounding names with a little more profanity added for good measure. He tried to explain that all he did has hold up a sign, but his post received so much hate and threats that he had to delete his Facebook account. Another win for free speech!

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/11/06/donald-trump-nevada-rally/93385996/