George Packer's Blog, page 171

The Hype—and Hope—of Artificial Intelligence

Earlier this month, on his HBO show “Last Week Tonight,” John Oliver skewered media companies’ desperate search for clicks. Like many of his bits, it became a viral phenomenon, clocking in at nearly six million views on YouTube. At around the ten-minute mark, Oliver took his verbal bat to the knees of Tronc, the new name for Tribune Publishing Company, and its parody-worthy promotional video, in which a robotic spokeswoman describes the journalistic benefits of artificial intelligence, as a string section swells underneath.

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The Cartoon Lounge: Look, Ma, No Hands—Driving My Tesla
F.B.I. Report on Mafia Decline Caused by Group Text and E-Mail Chains
Snapchat, Instagram Stories, and the Internet of Forgetting

At Last, a Peace Deal in Colombia

On Wednesday, Colombia’s warring parties signed an agreement to end the Western Hemisphere’s longest civil war, which has lasted for over half a century. The official toll, as it stands today, is two hundred and eighteen thousand dead and forty-five thousand disappeared. Inestimable numbers of people have been wounded, tortured, and imprisoned, and nearly seven million have been internally displaced—the highest number of any country. The deal was struck after four years of negotiations, in Havana, Cuba, between Colombia’s government and the guerrilla army known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Colombia will hold a public referendum on the accord on October 2nd. Of course, there is always a chance that it may not pass. As the world has recently learned, referendums can be risky propositions.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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Is There Any Hope Left for South Sudan?
What Putin Has Done for Assad
Comment from the March 7, 2016, Issue

Trump Embraces Nigel Farage, His British Alter Ego

At a big rally in Mississippi on Wednesday night, Donald Trump appeared alongside Nigel Farage, the former head of the U.K. Independence Party, who helped lead the successful Leave campaign in the recent referendum on whether Britain should stay in the European Union.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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Republicans to Pull Money from Trump Ads and Spend it on Alcohol
How to Save the Clinton Foundation
Politics and Personality: Most of What You Read Is Malarkey

Why the High Cost of Big-City Living Is Bad for Everyone

In 1948, a federal housing bureaucrat named Paul Oppermann, trying to come to terms with the perils of the nuclear age, proposed a solution to the problem of protecting America’s cities from the bomb: empty them out preëmptively by encouraging the population to move to suburbs and small towns of fifty thousand or fewer. “No power in the world could afford to drop an atomic bomb on a city of 50,000 or less” is how the San Francisco Chronicle summarized the talk that Oppermann gave to a local planning organization. Plus, Oppermann explained, you get slum clearance into the bargain. The next year, Oppermann assumed office as San Francisco’s planning director.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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What We Look Like When We Fall
King of New York
The Hole in Obama’s Legacy

Roger Ailes, the Clintons, and the Scandals of the Scandalmongers

This election year, the big question was supposed to be whether Hillary Clinton would shatter the glass ceiling. Instead, it has become the year in which one of the country’s most towering glass houses has shattered. Few people may remember it now, but Fox News, which Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation launched in 1996, became a ratings leader largely because of its gleefully censorious coverage of Bill Clinton’s sex scandals. Now the network is mired in its own scandal. Last month, Roger Ailes resigned as Fox News’s chairman and C.E.O. in the face of multiple allegations of sexual harassment, including a lawsuit filed against him by the former anchor Gretchen Carlson. (Ailes has denied Carlson’s allegations.) The unfolding embarrassment at the network poses a host of questions—not the least of which is how the network’s executives justified their Javert-like pursuit of Clinton’s extramarital affairs, given their boss’s own repeated sexual misconduct. If you go back and look carefully at the chronology, some of Ailes’s most egregious alleged harassment of women was taking place at the same time that Fox News was suggesting that Clinton deserved to be impeached. Sexual harassment is a serious issue, and it merits serious coverage, but it’s hard to believe that the suits at Fox were motivated by genuine concern, given their own corporate culture.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Fox News and the Repercussions of Sexual Harassment
What Are Donald Trump, Roger Ailes, and Steve Bannon Really Up To?
The Cracked Integrity of Donald Trump

How to Save the Clinton Foundation

It’s getting hard to keep track of all the developments in the story of the Clinton Foundation and Clinton e-mails. On Monday, Bill Clinton posted an open letter on the Web site of the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation announcing that, if his wife is elected President, the organization will accept donations only from “U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and U.S.-based independent foundations.” In addition to ruling out donations from foreign sources, this statement appeared to preclude donations from U.S. corporations and their charitable foundations. The former President also said that he would no longer raise money for the foundation and would resign from its board of directors. He added that the organization, which he set up in 1997, would change its name to, simply, the Clinton Foundation.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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Daily Cartoon: Wednesday, August 24th
Politics and Personality: Most of What You Read Is Malarkey
Ted Cruz Is Still Running for President

Why the U.S. Is Right to Move Away from Private Prisons

People who have spent time in prison say that it is difficult to adequately convey what it means to have someone else in full control of your movements—when you eat, when you sleep, where you go, and how you get there. But when control is combined with a profit-making business model, it takes on a different character.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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A Decade After Prison, a Poet Studies for the Bar Exam
The Rehabilitation Paradox
Virginians with a Felony Conviction Can Now Vote, But Getting a Job Is No Easier

Ryan Lochte and the Impatience of Corporate Sponsors

In just a little more than a week, Ryan Lochte went from lauded Olympic swimmer to ugly American. As of Monday, he had also became a much less wealthy American, as four companies decided to quit sponsoring him after he misrepresented a series of events at a Rio gas station. Speedo, Syneron Candela (whose products include a line of hair-removal devices), and Airweave (a mattress maker) terminated their contracts with Lochte, while Polo Ralph Lauren said that it had no plans to renew its relationship with him. (Lochte had appeared in pre-Olympics ads for the company.) What the companies’ relatively swift action showed was that Lochte had chosen the wrong era for misadventure: these days, companies are much quicker to cut athletes loose for even the appearance of bad behavior. And, given Lochte’s lunkheaded deceptions about being robbed in Rio, it was hard to see any company benefitting from being associated with him.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
America’s Overperforming Olympic Marathoners
How to Save Olympic Track for Its Fans
The Mystery of Ryan Lochte

Ted Cruz Is Still Running for President

Ted Cruz, it appears, has had a dismal time since the Republican National Convention, where his decision not to endorse Donald Trump drew vigorous boos. Cruz’s national favorability rating among Republicans has plummeted from fifty-nine per cent to forty-three per cent. Several Texas Republicans, including perhaps former Governor Rick Perry, are said to be weighing primary challenges when Cruz seeks reëlection to the Senate, in 2018. Cruz has devoted several weeks to travelling around his home state, apparently trying to mend fences and persuade the locals that he hadn’t forgotten them during his long race for the White House. Is Cruz doomed, locally as well as nationally?

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Daily Cartoon: Tuesday, August 23rd
Trump’s Anti-Science Campaign
What Are Donald Trump, Roger Ailes, and Steve Bannon Really Up To?

America’s Overperforming Olympic Marathoners

How many caps did Galen Rupp wear during the men’s marathon race on Sunday morning, as a light rain fell in Rio, along with most of his rivals and doubters? It was hard to tell with all the poorly timed NBC commercial breaks, such as the one that prevented viewers from seeing when the Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge dropped those last few runners still nipping at his heels, with about four miles to go, or the one that aired right when Rupp finally fell back to third place for good. But six is probably a safe estimate. Rupp kept changing his hats at hydration stations. Were they packed with cooling gel? Chilled in ice water? Few beyond Rupp and his coach—the divisive but effective Alberto Salazar, Nike’s dark wizard of track and field—know for sure. (Reports surfaced in June of 2015 that Salazar had been accused of urging some of his athletes to use banned substances. Rupp, however, has never been caught doping and has never been sanctioned.)

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Ryan Lochte and the Impatience of Corporate Sponsors
How to Save Olympic Track for Its Fans
The Mystery of Ryan Lochte