Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 98

If (virtual) reality feels almost right, it’s exactly wrong

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This article was originally published by Scientific American.

We can all remember the crisply beveled edges of our cheery-yellow No. 2 pencil, the cool, smooth feel of a chalk-powdered blackboard, the gritty red bricks of the schoolhouse walls. Surely that all wasn’t just an illusion?

No, of course not.

But — as it turns out — it kind of is.

The sense of touch (and indeed, all of our senses) is more or less illusory because no sensation stands alone. Stretch out your hands and snap your fingers. This, of course, feels very real. But you’re seeing your fingers, hearing your fingers, and feeling your fingers — and all of these sensations fully correspond.

Now, what if they didn’t?

Virtual Reality (VR) is a great tool for revealing this strange and otherworldly foundation of our everyday sensory perceptions. Sneaky (but, of course, highly ethical) experimentalists such as ourselves can render a completely computer-generated world. If we hand you a pair of controllers that can vibrate on command, we can play tricks.

We can even use this simple apparatus to produce a sensation of touch that “feels like” it originates in the completely empty space between your outstretched hands — an experiment we discuss in our paper in the current issue of Science Robotics.

This VR equivalent of a carnival trick is known as funneling. Each controller provides the user with synchronous vibrotactile stimuli of different amplitudes. In the virtual environment, we show the participant a wooden dowel that they grip with each hand. The dowel is only imaginary, of course — the hands are not physically linked, and the dowel does not exist. We then show a small white marble that seems to knock on the dowel at different locations as we vary the vibratory sensations.

This is where it gets weird. The apparent spatial location of the touch sensation will persist, even if the marble is invisible to the eyes of the beholder. Your brain fills in these gaps and inconsistencies — the vibratory sensations felt by your hands, the (at times imaginary) little white marble knocking on the dowel in the physically empty space in-between. A particular spatial location that happens to be completely outside of your own body.

Figure 2: Participants were able to estimate the location with high accuracy of the touch both when the marble was visible (green dots) and when the marble was invisible (red dots). Credit: Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Christopher C Berger and Ken Hinckley

This is a neat perceptual illusion, but why does it matter?

Well, in virtual environments (or robotic tele-operation tasks), producing higher-fidelity haptic (that is, tactile) sensations of this sort come with the (oft-unstated) assumption that such “improvements” will always yield more a realistic and immersive experience. Using this funneling illusion when the marble was imaginary we can demonstrate an “uncanny valley” effect for haptic sensations, in which the distorted sensations of touch produced in our experiments that were almost right.

As a result, they were exactly wrong, and the immersion was broken.

But this uncanny valley can be shifted or eliminated by subtly manipulating the experimental conditions. For example, if the dowel appears to be inside a smoky-looking cylinder, thus partially obscuring the location of the knocking (but invisible) marble, this provides a plausible reason for any discrepancy between the perceived location of the haptic sensation, versus what we see with our eyes — and the simulation feels more realistic.

Likewise, the sensation can be manipulated based on whether we are simply holding the virtual dowel — thus experiencing the knock of the marble as a passive participant — or actively moving the dowel up and down, thus becoming the ‘agent’ of the sensation through our own actions.

Although demonstrated in our curious VR testbed at present, these effects are rooted in human perception. As such, understanding them more deeply helps us build better and more convincing virtual environments.

The “superpredator” myth was discredited, but it continues to ruin young black lives

Getty Images/istockphoto

Vincent Thompson was first arrested when he was 14. It was a Friday night and Thompson and some friends in his neighborhood in Hempstead, Long Island, had just come home from a party. They were clustered outside their buildings not yet ready to call it a night, when the police "rushed" the group, he said, and searched them. Thompson had just started selling crack, and the police found it. He was handcuffed and stuffed into the back of a police car. "It was my first time ever being in that position," Thompson recalls. "I was young."

He was released into his mother's custody, but placed on juvenile probation — a label that would come to define his adolescence, as was the process of shuttling back and forth to court. By this point in his life, Thompson had already witnessed his older brother and sister get arrested; the images of them sitting in the back of a police car, handcuffed, were cemented in his conscience.

Thompson's home situation was loving. His mother was strong, stable and the sole provider for her three children. But the realities of the neighborhood were dominant. There were two constants for Thompson growing up in Hempstead: drugs and police. He described his community as swallowed by drugs. He often saw the buying and selling of it, but also a heavy, perpetual police presence. If a group of kids were hanging together outside, there was a significant possibility that they would be searched and harassed.

In the early 2000s when Thompson became a teenager, the "superpredator" myth was largely unquestioned. This was the theory that certain cohorts of young people in urban settings (and almost always black or Latino) are violent, terrifying and with "no conscience, no empathy," as Hillary Clinton famously said in 1996. Thompson experienced stop-and-frisk long before he even knew there was a name for it. And Thompson witnessed so many arrests, beyond his siblings, so many people leaving the neighborhood for stretches of time, so many people returning to the community, that incarceration became normalized.

The superpredator condemnation was conceived by John J. Dilulio Jr. in the mid-1990s. ''A new generation of street criminals is upon us — the youngest, biggest and baddest generation any society has ever known," he said, and the term ushered in a methodology of putting violent teenagers in adult prisons with no thought given to intervention or rehabilitation. Dilulio's description of "brutally remorseless youngsters" won out against children's inexperience and suggestibility. William J. Bennett, with John P. Walter and Dilulio, penned "Body Count" in 1996 and promoted the theory that superpredators would skyrocket the level of teenage violence by the new millennium. But violent crime declined; what surged was the juvenile justice population.

The reality that the U.S. has the highest prison population in the world is both devastating and well-known. The U.S. also leads the world in youth incarceration. There are more than 850,000 juvenile arrests per year and nearly 50,000 young people sit in incarceration every day. And like the adult prison population, black and brown youths are disproportionately impacted. Black children are five times more likely to be held and detained than white children, according to data from the Department of Justice.

The superpredator theory has been disproved. Dilulio and Clinton have apologized for propagating it. But the policies that followed and the effects of this thinking are still very much in place. In California, people from as young as 14 years old can be transferred to adult courts and tried and sentenced as such. It is a proposition still on the books from 2000. And California is not alone. In a new VICE documentary called "Raised in the System," it says, "There are up to 200,000 youth, tried, sentenced, or incarcerated as adults annually."

"That superpredator myth really scared generations," Bahiyyah Muhammad, assistant professor of criminology at Howard University, said. "That myth is continuing to go on, even in the midst of the apology for it."

The next year, Thompson was arrested again. This time, the police observed him making a drug sale. They chased him into his apartment and "put the guns to me and all that," he said. They thought he broke into someone's home. "I'm 15 years old," he added. For this charge, he spent 60 days in the Nassau County Juvenile Detention Center. Thompson's major takeaway from the center was, "it really got you ready for prison."

"They make very little even pretense at rehabilitation at this point anywhere," said WNYC reporter Kai Wright. He takes an in-depth look into the juvenile justice system in a new podcast series "Caught." He added, "Coming out of, again, the politics of the '90s ... it really started to crowd out the idea that we would be rehabilitating people instead of punishing them."

Thompson remembers that when he was incarcerated there, the detention center held about 60 young people from all over Long Island. But at least one-third were from his same neighborhood. That's because juvenile justice is local and incarceration overwhelmingly cripples distinct geographic areas, but research by Harvard sociologists shows that when law enforcement finds its focus, entire neighborhoods in major cities — mostly poor, and black and brown — can be swept up by the prosecutorial zeal.

When it comes to youth incarceration and one's ZIP code, "it's an immediate correlation," Muhammad said. "That really is the bread and butter of the entire juvenile justice system." Wright added, "The sorting of innocence from irredeemable guilt starts young. And more often than not, that stark divide depends on what you look like and where you live."

Researchers labeled areas with high concentration of crime and plagued by mass incarceration as "hot spots." Informally, they have been dubbed "'million-dollar blocks' to reflect that spending on incarceration was the predominant public sector investment in these neighborhoods," the American Prospect magazine reported.

This means mass incarceration can be totally invisible to some Americans or ever present for others. The same is true for youth incarceration. Muhammad says that like the criminal justice system, "the doors revolve" in the juvenile justice system and "the majority of people incarcerated have a juvenile record. So it’s clear that there is this pathway." One common denominator is the lowest-performing schools — those that are the most underfunded and underresourced — are often in areas where incarceration rates are the highest.

Eighth grade was the last grade Thompson completed as a teenager. He started at Hempstead High School, but was kicked out for truancy, and was officially expelled his second year for the same thing. "I didn't need to be pushed out of school," he said. "I needed to be inside a school." Thompson felt his expulsion drove him right into the juvenile justice system.

It didn't help either that his high school already resembled a place of lockup. It had metal detectors; police patrolled the halls; status offenses, misbehavior or fistfights meant you could leave handcuffed in the back of a police car. Thompson thought school was supposed to be a "safe haven," but with his expulsion, his problems spiraled. "It doesn’t help living in highly criminal areas and the school system just pushes you back into that area," he said.

The superpredator myth didn't just infect courtrooms. Schools became these militarized "zero-tolerance" zones, where childish behavior was criminalized, and schools, in specific underresourced neighborhoods, became gateways to youth incarceration. It is a phenomenon known as the school-to-prison pipeline.

Muhammad described the pipeline as:

Individuals in certain schools are being pushed out and being disciplined in a way that’s very vicious, that’s disrespectful and is a disregard for young black bodies within schools. You started to see metal detectors popping up in these different schools and it was connected to zip code. So if it was a zip code that was plagued by mass incarceration — connected to the statistics that come out of the Bureau of Justice highlighting the different communities and city that individuals are returning home to — their children started to get targeted within the schools that they are attending. And not reaching out to help them, but creating an environment where the school is almost just like prison.

In WNYC's "Caught," Judith Browne Dianis, executive director of a civil rights organization, explained that in schools, talking back became disorderly conduct; writing on desks became vandalism. In some states, schools have to alert the courts if a student is cutting class, and fights at school became felonies. So instead of providing social services in schools, children as young as elementary and secondary are facing draconian-style laws and are shifted into the juvenile justice system, which VICE estimates makes a young person 38 times more likely to enter the criminal justice system as an adult.

A horrific video surfaced from a South Carolina high school in 2015, when a school police officer wrapped his arm around a 16-year-old black girl's neck to forcibly remove her from her desk. The desk flipped over and he proceeded to drag her and throw her across the floor before arresting her. Classmates said the teenager used a cellphone in math class and then refused to leave the classroom. For this, she faced a misdemeanor charge for "disturbing schools." Wright worries that even as we are in a political moment where the school-to-prison pipeline is named and known, which he says is progress — as a society, we have yet to wrestle with the long-term effects of these zero-tolerance policies.

With no school to attend, Thompson spent more time on the streets, more time selling drugs and more time face to face with what he says were "the hardships of the neighborhood." Thompson was arrested again for a drug sale at 17 and sent to Nassau County jail — an adult jail, but he was housed in the adolescent block for one year. There, he turned 18 and got his GED. And five months after his release from jail, Thompson was arrested for manslaughter and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

"Very few people would look at this and say this works," Wright said of the juvenile justice system. "It is almost unanimous that this does not work. The debates are really about how much harm does it do." 

But something clicked for Thompson during his sentencing as a legal adult. He saw scores of young black men shuffling in and out of courtrooms and it amplified the way the system disregards young black bodies. To see his mother in tears at his sentencing was exemplary of the way the system crushes entire families. And to see the district attorney pine for a plea deal made clear the system's priority for a conviction over justice. Thompson said that if he didn't devise a plan for himself, the system had the possibility of determining the rest of his life. So education became his primary goal once he learned there was a possibility of getting a college degree while incarcerated. 

It is no accident. "The teenage brain is like a sports car," is the title of "Caught's" fifth episode. It follows the scientific brain research that demonstrates how teenagers are unpredictable and how brains do not mature fully until young people are in their 20s. (This adds to the long-established research of how most people age out of crime.)

In 2002, the Supreme Court deemed it unconstitutional to execute mentally disabled people, because they lack culpability, judgment and impulse control. Wright shows how this opened the door for lawyers to argue for the same treatment for youth — that a teenager is just as impulsive as someone with intellectual disabilities.

In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional for a teenager under the age of 18 to be sentenced to death. Then, in 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that a juvenile could not be sentenced to life without parole for a non-homicidal crime. And in 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that a juvenile could not be sentenced to mandatory life without parole. (This does not bar life sentences for youth, just mandatory ones.)

"Brain science, and juvenile life without parole, I think that's a perfect example of where the conversation around youth incarceration and youth criminalization is driving us into a space to think newly about what is justice," Wright said. "We've done this before, because we've thought newly about what is justice and made it a more punitive and more avenging space. We can think newly about justice and make it more about reform."

Reforms are happening. In Tuledo, Ohio, the documentary "Raised in the System" shows how juvenile court administrator Deborah Hodges has diverted a significant portion of juvenile offenders from detention to a youth assessment center. The Annie E. Casey Foundation's Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative is another well-known project that reduces juvenile detention populations. What began as a pilot project in the 1990s is now present in 300 counties. And in Illinois, youth under 18 are no longer tried as adults, but now automatically sent to juvenile court. Other nationwide programs like Models for Change incorporate mental health and community-based alternatives to youth incarceration.

"There are efforts inside the system and around the system to figure out how can we put rehabilitation back on the table and find ways to intervene with mental health," Wright said. "They are swimming against the tide of what the system is built to do at this moment."

Muhammad says to upend the superpredator myth, what's needed is a cultural upheaval for how we treat juvenile offenders. She added that it is crucial to keep youth in their communities, to connect them with mental health and other social services, to include their families in the reentry process and to provide young people with employment. Beyond the structural reforms, Muhammad stresses that, most important, young people need to be listened to and forgiven.

Thompson served just under 10 years in Sing Sing, Attica, Coxsackie, Eastern and Wallkill Correctional Facility. He tried three different times to enter college programs, but either did not qualify or did not make the cut. "It's so hard to get into a college program inside prison, so it took me about eight years to qualify," he said. "It's highly competitive."

At Wallkill, Thompson was accepted into New York University's Prison Education Program and earned his associate's. Now free, Thompson is at NYU working toward his bachelor's in American Studies. In his spare time, he works with Just Leadership, an organization that empowers formerly incarcerated individuals and others most affected by incarceration to craft prison reform through policy. Thompson is helping to create a Just Leadership branch in his hometown, Long Island. For the long term, he plans to start his own organization, "to provide mentorship to the youth and the support that I felt I should have gotten at that age," he said.

"No longer is the criminal justice system swallowing the juvenile justice system," Muhammad said of the research and reform dedicated to youth incarceration. Formerly incarcerated individuals like Thompson are increasingly leaders in this work. And since the juvenile justice system is the starting point of criminalization and incarceration for so many adults in prison, juvenile justice reform is integral to repairing the criminal justice system.

A nationwide cultural shift is still needed, but "you're starting to see a drive for juvenile justice," Muhammad continued. "And by looking at these children, this is the way that we’re beginning to free them. And I feel like it’s allowing us to humanize these children that should have never been animalized or dehumanized in the first place."

Superman at 80: How two high school friends concocted the original comic book hero

AP

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Superman — the first, most famous American superhero — turns 80 this year.

The comics, toys, costumes and billion-dollar Hollywood blockbusters can all trace their ancestry to the first issue of “Action Comics,” which hit newsstands in April 1938.

Most casual comic book fans can recite the character’s fictional origin story: As the planet Krypton approaches destruction, Jor-El and his wife, Lara, put their infant son, Kal-El, into a spaceship to save him. He rockets to Earth and is taken in by the kindly Kents. As he grows up, Kal-El — now known as Clark — develops strange powers, and he vows to use them for good.

But the story of the real-life origins of Superman — a character created out of friendship, persistence and personal tragedy — is just as dramatic.

From villain to hero

When I was a kid growing up in Cleveland, my dad would regale my brother and me with stories of Superman’s local origins: The two men who had concocted the comic book hero had grown up in the area.

As I became older, I realized I wanted to understand not only how, but why Superman was created. A 10-year research project ensued, and it culminated in my book “Super Boys.”

In the mid-1930s, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were two nerds with glasses who attended Glenville High School in Cleveland, Ohio. They worked on the school newspaper, wrote stories, drew cartoons, and dreamed of being famous. Jerry was the writer; Joe was the artist. When they finally turned to making comics, a publisher named Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson gave them their first break, commissioning them to create spy and adventure comics in his magazines “New Fun” and “Detective Comics.”

But Jerry and Joe had been working on something else: a story about a “Superman” — a villain with special mental powers — that Jerry had stolen from a different magazine. They self-published it in a pamphlet titled “Science Fiction.”

While “Science Fiction” only lasted for five issues, they liked the name of the character and continued to work on it. Before long, their new Superman was a good guy. Joe dressed him in a cape and trunks like those of the era’s popular bodybuilders, modeled the character’s speedy running abilities after Olympic sprinter Jesse Owens, and gave him the bouncy spit-curl of Johnny Weissmuller, the actor who played Tarzan. It was a mishmash of 1930s pop culture in gladiator boots.

When they were finally ready, they started pitching Superman to every newspaper syndicate and publisher they could find.

All of them rejected it, some of them several times. This continued for several years, but the duo never gave up.

When Superman finally saw print, it was through a process that is still not wholly clear. But the general consensus is that a publisher named Harry Donenfeld, who had acquired the major’s company, National Allied Publications (the predecessor to DC Comics), bought the first Superman story — and all the rights therein — for US$130.

Was Jerry trying to create a Superdad?

The world was introduced to Superman in “Action Comics” No. 1, on April 18, 1938, with the Man of Steel appearing on the cover smashing a Hudson roadster. The inaugural issue cost 10 cents; in 2014, a copy in good condition sold for $3.2 million dollars.

When the comic became a runaway hit, Jerry and Joe regretted selling their rights to the character; they ended up leaving millions on the table. Though they worked on Superman comics for the next 10 years, they would never own the character they created, and for the rest of their lives repeatedly filed lawsuits in an effort to get him back.

But there is another more personal piece to the puzzle of Superman’s origins.

On June 2, 1932, Jerry’s father, Michel, was about to close his secondhand clothing store in Cleveland when some men walked in. Michel caught them trying to steal a suit, and ended up dying on the spot — not in a hail of gunfire, but from a heart attack.

Jerry was 17.

Some believe Jerry may have created Superman as a fantasy version of his own father — as someone who could instantly transform from a mild-mannered man into a hero capable of easily overpowering petty thieves. Indeed, some of the early Superman stories feature Jor-El out of breath (as Michel often was from heart disease) and show criminals who faint dead when confronted by Superman. As many victims of childhood trauma often do, Jerry may have used Superman to re-enact his father’s tragic death over and over in an attempt to somehow fix it.

In Superman’s never-ending battle of good versus evil, this same story is repeated again and again on the page, in cartoons and in movies. It’s seen in kids who pretend to be Superman, tucking towels in at their neck and playing out battles in their backyards.

Why is Superman’s 80th birthday important? It isn’t just about celebrating a “funny book” about a guy who has heat vision and can fly. It’s about using fantasy to make sense of the world, plumbing personal tragedy to tell a story, and using art to envision a more just and safe society.

Brad Ricca, Lecturer of English, Case Western Reserve University

Scott Pruitt purchased a home in 2003 from retiring lobbyist: report

AP/Carolyn Kaster

Details around Scott Pruitt’s alleged unethical behavior continue to emerge, painting him as even more corrupt politician provoking some in Washington to continue to call for his resignation.

Indeed, according to a new report in the New York Times on Saturday, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator allegedly bought a house from a retiring lobbyist—via a Shell company listed to business partner, Kenneth Wagner, who is now employed at the agency. The real estate records, and other public records, examined in today’s New York Times’ report are from Pruitt’s career in Oklahoma.

The report specifically cites two alleged events: the first, in 2003 with Wagner, who is now the now an EPA senior adviser for regional and state affairs. The second is regarding the mortgage on the house, which was reportedly issued by Albert Kelly, who currently leads the agency’s Superfund program, according to the report.

Pruitt reportedly reached out to “an influential telecommunications lobbyist,” Marsha Lindsey—when he reportedly had a state salary of $38,400—after attending a gathering at the home. She was preparing to retire and move.

“For those ego-minded politicians, it would be pretty cool to have this house close to the capitol,” Lindsey told the New York Times. “It was stunning.”

Pruitt eventually stayed at the pad, and according to Lindsey in the report, bought her dining room set, art and antique rugs.

The report further explains:

According to real estate records, the 2003 purchase of the house for $375,000 came at a steep discount of about $100,000 from what Ms. Lindsey had paid a year earlier — a shortfall picked up by her employer, the telecom giant SBC Oklahoma.

SBC, previously known as Southwestern Bell and later as AT&T, had been lobbying lawmakers in the early 2000s on a range of matters, including a deregulation bill that would allow it to raise rates and a separate regulatory effort to reopen a bribery case from a decade earlier. Mr. Pruitt sided with the company on both matters, state records show.

In 2005, the shell company — Capitol House L.L.C. — sold the property for $95,000 more than it had paid. While shell companies are legal, they often obscure the people who have an interest in them, and none of Mr. Pruitt’s financial disclosure filings in Oklahoma mentioned the company or the proceeds — a potential violation of the state’s ethics rules.

The Oklahoma City deal, which has not been previously reported, was one of several instances in which Mr. Pruitt appeared to have benefited from his relationships with Mr. Kelly and Mr. Wagner while in state politics.

Pruitt is currently under investigation and facing allegations of unchecked spending, and various ethical wrongdoings including additional suspicious relationships with lobbyists. Earlier in April, news broke that Pruitt had reportedly rented a townhouse at below-market rates from the wife of a lobbyist who represents major fossil fuel companies in Washington.

Salon exclusively reported that was not the first time Pruitt’s behavior around a property purchase raised concerns.

According to documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy, a nonprofit watchdog group, Pruitt and his wife bought a property in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a few days before a court concluded that it had been fraudulently transferred by a Las Vegas developer who was being held responsible for a $3.6 million loan default.

“While this transaction raises numerous questions, there is nothing on the face of these documents that is clearly illegal,” Arn Pearson, the executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, wrote in Salon. “If any of the parties involved knowingly arranged for a preferential transfer to avoid a court judgment, however, that would imply significant legal issues. The same would be true of any pre-arranged deal to flip the property in a way intended to provide Pruitt, who was then Oklahoma's top law enforcement official, with a quick windfall profit.”

As allegations continue to emerge, more lawmakers are calling for his resignation—leading to some voice their opinions on Twitter and use the hashtag #BootPruitt.

I’m part of a group of 39 senators and 131 representatives calling on Scott Pruitt to resign. This is the most Senators in U.S. history to sign on to a resolution formally calling for a cabinet official’s resignation.

The bottom line: Pruitt is corrupt. He must go.

— Kamala Harris (@SenKamalaHarris) April 20, 2018

It turns out Scott Pruitt's $43,000 phone booth was not only a massive waste of taxpayer money, it was also illegal. This disregard for our oversight laws is completely unacceptable for anyone, much less a cabinet official. Pruitt needs to go. #BootPruitt https://t.co/NwCaGNNHZj

— Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) April 16, 2018

Nearly 170 lawmakers have also signed a resolution calling for his resignation.

“Westworld” returns, upgraded and simplified

HBO

“Westworld,” the series and the theme park from which it derives it title, displays a consciousness of drive. Human drive, specifically. The second season comes to us in full awareness of why the vacation destinations of the world thrive on repeat business: People crave the comfort of familiarity.

Adventure and wonder hook the first-timers, but loyal customers return because they've already sampled pleasures and mapped the landscape of a chosen place. There's a whole wide world out there, more than an individual can see in one lifetime. But who really wants to work at vacationing?

This notion serves us well as we dive into season 2 of “Westworld” because we know what sort of narrative chicanery to expect. Time, place, perspective and reality cannot be taken at face value. Memory might as well be sand on a beach — shifting, unmanageable, easily washed away. Identity, too, may be a manufactured construct.

The first season laid bare all of those deceits, occasionally in legitimately shocking ways, as it galloped toward an inevitable robot uprising.

This new season of “Westworld,” debuting Sunday at 9 p.m. on HBO, promises another serving of violent delights while exhibiting an increased sense of awareness on the part of series creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy and its writers. Hated the way the show exploited the abuse of the park’s artificial women as a storytelling catalyst at the beginning of season 1? Joy, Nolan and their fellow producers craft their reply by making the second season's opening episodes feel like one long, bruising shout-out to "Time's Up" via Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood) and Maeve Millay (Thandie Newton).

Out in the park's synthetic plains and meadows Dolores, the sweet rancher’s daughter who paints landscapes and marvels at the splendor of creation, snarls as she hunts the humans responsible for her torment. Inside the park's nerve center, Maeve struts the halls like the boss she was made to be, stepping over bodies and dodging bullets along the way.

The days of the hosts’ obligation to cater to the comfort and whims of the park’s natural-born visitors are over.

But this revolution does not deliver freedom in equal portion. Bernard (Jeffrey Wright), on top of reeling from the cruel joke of discovering who and what he truly is, is glitching, slipping between memory and time, much in the way Dolores does through the first season — before she wakes up from her dream.

“Westworld” is exploding into chaos, and its servants are wreaking their vengeance. Beyond that bloody exhibition, however, are other worlds to discover. New dangers. But they still cater to the same fantasies of dominance that the Western-themed park peddles, with an additional dash of colonialist exoticism. The viewer gets a glimpse at two of these spaces, although a lengthier sojourn into Shogun World (a place hinted at in the season 1 finale) immediately broadens the larger story's scope.

If nothing else, the feudal Japanese setting provides new eye-candy for the viewers and a chance for producers to channel the style and artistry of Akira Kurosawa. Fortunately the result is a reasonable homage, as one expects from a series about realistic simulations.

I can’t say that all bets are off now that the robots have seized control and gained some semblance of consciousness, some at higher levels than others. But there's a fresh uncertainty about where the plot is headed. Combining that with the outstanding performances of its main players, particularly Newton and Wood, makes this new season simpler but more watchable than the first.

At its start “Westworld” gazes at humanity’s propensity for casual cruelty with regard to artificial intelligence, evolving midway through its first 10 episodes into an existential examination of conscience and consciousness. The journey could be messy and aggravating, and at times it became so caught up in its own contrivances and misdirects that a viewer couldn’t help but notice the trickery at work.

The writers also dipped into the character-reset well a few too many times, nearly pushing a few subplots into a rut of redundancy. That's the peril of placing the audience’s perspective with the hosts as opposed to the humans they meet in the park. We may feel empathy for their falsified humanity for a time, only to be yanked back to the start screen each time one is killed off.

But now, assuming the audience expects a sizable dose of duplicity, this second season downplays the narrative gimmickry and retrains the show's focus on giving the audience what it wants. Now "Westworld" is an action-adventure sequel to the more contemplative and occasionally haunting first round, adrenalizing the fear and edge Michael Crichton’s original 1973 film sought to produce in its observer.

In doing so, the viewer’s concept of protagonist and antagonist disappears. Dolores has shed her gentle nature, replacing it with the conviction of her kind’s supremacy. Maybe that's understandable, given what she's endured. Perhaps not. Knowing that Bernard was complicit in creating a prison for his own kind, is there a reason to have compassion for his in-between status and broken state? Questions, questions.

Other elements are clearer. The Man-in-Black (Ed Harris) is a nihilist with no regrets; in the past William, what the Man-in-Black used to be (Jimmi Simpson), begins shifting his moral compass toward the man we know he will become. Luke Sizemore (Simon Quarterman) is still such a pompous prick that Maeve can’t resist cutting him down to size.

And one of this season's smarter strategies involves teaming Newton, playing a queen in love with the new crown she’s acquired, with Quarterman, the show’s version of an entitled male perpetually angling to get ahead. Wood and her dynamic with James Marsden’s perpetual White Hat Teddy works as well as it did last season, but if the word of the day is evolution it is Newton who defines season 2, in her full and fabulous brilliance.

So if you scoffed at the meandering progression of season 1’s first half, you’re bound to appreciate the firmed-up drive and sense of purpose in “Westworld” 2.0, in the way gamers clamor for expansion packs, and technophiles adore upgrades.

The danger is real for the humans, and a select number of hosts gain powers that make them more than human. Dolores foretold that a new god will walk on the bones of humankind at the close of season 1, and at least one of her number seems to be manifesting a mechanical version of divine powers. Why, it’s almost like something we’ve seen in any number of movies or played through in countless video games.

To which the writers answer, Of course. They intentionally cop to leaning on well-trodden tropes; in an upcoming episode a character even admits as much, defending himself when he’s caught in an act of self-plagiarism by complaining about how difficult it is to maintain any originality when dealing with tales that have so many moving parts. The tension in these new episodes is derived from the humans realizing that the hosts are off their loops; the pathos comes from the recognition that some of those same humans may be caught in loops of their own.

Humor in "Westworld," such as it is, springs from the recognition that the tale itself a predictable construct; that's why it works. By streamlining its mission parameters, these new episodes adopt a vision we’re familiar with — the escapist epic. Surely the greater story must be building toward a loftier moral, but presumably that’s far off into the distance. For now, having a notion of what to expect means returning visitors can relax, indulge in the place's diversions, and ponder the cost later on.

Revisiting “Transformer”: Lou Reed’s walk through the David Bowie Superstar Machine

Getty/Bloomsbury Publishing/Salon

RCA Records made a radio spot for the release of "Transformer" that may have been amusing, disturbing or both to Reed. Over a medley of the most hard-rocking moments of the album, the announcer reads: “In the midst of all the make-believe madness, the mock depravity and the pseudo-sexual anarchists, Lou Reed is the real thing. Lou Reed: the original. He’s been one since the birth of the New York underground, and now he’s back with a new album: 'Transformer.'”

So Reed is advertised as honest, as opposed to all the phonies. In the process of capitalizing on his “real”-ness, he reaches an apex of phoniness which he will never match in all his career. Bowie, whether to his credit or discredit, took him there.

Together, they present an alternative to the future of rock music a million miles away from the likes of Three Dog Night. As music critic Ken Tucker put it: “In the face of the hippie era’s sincerity, intimacy and generosity, Bowie presented irony, distance and self-absorption.” In an era where nobody trusts anyone they hear on the radio or see on TV, it was refreshing to find someone who wasn’t pretending to be just like the regular folks in the audience.

Throughout his career Bowie aims to create distance between himself and his work, between himself and his audience. This is an aspect he noticed immediately in the Velvet Underground, and part of what made hearing them such a sea change moment for him. “The music [on "The Velvet Underground & Nico"] was savagely indifferent to my feelings,” he wrote in New York Magazine in 2003. “It didn’t care if I liked it or not. It could give a f**k.” But this distance from and indifference to the audience, which came so naturally to Lou Reed, became, in Bowie’s hands, a gateway to a pure artifice that had nothing to do with the Velvet Underground’s plainspoken, tough prose-poetry. Bowie wanted distance so he could create a fantasy, an artificial icon with the power to transfigure culture and make it less boring. Lou’s version of distance from the audience is understatement and lack of affect while he tells, essentially, the truth about himself and the world around him. Where Bowie wants to create his own dystopian world, Reed wants to shine a light on the dark places of the real one.

One might agree with what the RCA radio ad suggests: Bowie is a phony and Reed is authentic. This would be to overlook Reed’s dodgy, noncommittal career path as well as Bowie’s stunning moments of earned emotional sincerity. But if Bowie is one of the “pseudo-sexual anarchists” and Reed is “the real thing,” keep in mind that that doesn’t necessarily tell you which one of them makes better records.

This core difference between the two artists is thrown into stark relief when questions of queerness come up. Here’s David Bowie talking to NPR’s Terry Gross in 2002:

GROSS: So did you see the kind of gender aspects of your performance, you know, dressing—you know, sometimes wearing an evening gown, sometimes, you know—often wearing lipstick, dyeing your hair, lots of eye makeup. Did you see the gender stuff as being a statement about postmodernism or a statement about sexuality?

BOWIE: Well, neither—I think they were just devices to create this new distancing from the subject matter.

Bowie, as he has confessed more explicitly elsewhere, was faking his bisexuality and gender ambiguity. Reed was not. But as for showy femininity—makeup, glitter, etc.—that was pretty much a stage persona for both artists, one which, for Lou, clearly didn’t stick. A year later he’s looking pretty much masculine again, as he did in the sixties. He didn’t need a device to create distance. For one thing, sounding (and being) emotionally distant is his specialty; for another, his artistic goal is honesty, not artifice. In many ways, Lou Reed is fighting against his automatic tendency to dissemble. Most of his career is a quest to write a straightforward, three-chord song that tells the plain truth. And for that kind of an artist, Bowie’s theatrical version of rock is an uncomfortable fit.

The Bowie superstar machine took Lou Reed and made him into an icon, amplifying and distorting him. What became famous was a stylized snapshot of Lou, not the man himself. It becomes almost impossible to pin down who the real Lou Reed is because, at least on "Transformer," he’s not cast as himself. He’s cast to play the pop culture version of himself, the Lou Reed his fans have imagined was behind his earlier records.

Admittedly, this is part of what celebrity is: turning a person into a symbol. Both Bowie and Reed appreciate this kind of iconography; after all, they’re both admirers of Andy Warhol. “I’d like to be a gallery / put you all inside my show,” Bowie sings in “Andy Warhol” (1971). “Andy Warhol looks a scream / Hang him on my wall.” To Bowie, Warhol represents the dehumanization of the artist into art piece, into celebrity icon. Warhol repurposed and distorted Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe into his material; Bowie used Andy Warhol, Iggy Pop, and Lou Reed.

Lou Reed, of course, was an eager collaborator in this move, but dropped hints all along that he was conflicted about it, even in the songs themselves. If the album seems uneven or half-hearted, this is why: because the singer, watching himself move further than ever before into the artifice of celebrity, is not entirely sure he even wants to go through with it.

After "Transformer," Reed is left with the fallout of becoming a rock ’n’ roll symbol along with the dividends. He will be rich and famous. But he’ll also be plagued for the rest of his career by nosy and tone-deaf journalists, moronic fans, cheap imitators, and the impossible task of managing how the pop culture world sees him. “Watch me turn into Lou Reed before your very eyes!” he mocks on the epic rambling version of “Walk on the Wild Side” from 1978’s "Live: Take No Prisoners." “I do Lou Reed better than anybody so I thought I’d get in on it.” It’s the sound of an artist alienated from his famous persona and its uncontrollable mutations in a scene and ascendant genre he influenced more than anyone—and thus, one he can’t resist getting in on. Again he’s doing an imitation of an imitation of himself. But the real thing, in fleeting moments, still shines through.

 

 

Excerpted from "Lou Reed's Transformer" by Ezra Furman (Bloomsbury, 2018). Reprinted with permission from Bloomsbury Publishing.

 





 

When virtual reality feels real, so does the sexual harassment

AP

This article originally appeared on Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting

At 27 years old, Renee Gittins is on top of her game.

The former biotech software engineer went from developing mini-games that helped diagnose childhood concussions to becoming CEO and creative director of the independent Seattle game studio Stumbling Cat and a board member of the International Game Developers Association.

As a consultant and speaker, Gittins is granted access to events featuring the latest virtual reality technologies. But one experience testing a multiplayer game in March 2016 at a limited access event that left an impression she can’t shake. The players were on two teams — two men on one and Gittins and another man on the other. Motion tracking allowed players to move their hands in the game. Gittins waved at the man embodied in a female avatar next to her.

“He replied, ‘Look! I’m rubbing my tits at you!’ Then he proceeded to rub his avatar’s chest, Gittins said. “It was unsettling. I felt like I walked in on locker room banter. That’s not behavior considered appropriate in real life, so I felt like something menacing was to come.”

This is the latest experience in a string of cyber harassment incidents throughout Gittins’ life.

The rise of graphics capabilities for mobile phone technology in the first decade of the 21st century gave developers a way to make VR portable, accessible and abundant. Introduced in 2014, the Google Cardboard head mount paved the way for more ubiquity, offering an affordable and simple tool to view and interact with VR experiences.

Many journalists and technologists have embraced virtual reality as an “empathy machine.” Its ability to place viewers in the midst of visceral experiences affords them a strong sense of presence unparalleled in gaming.

Viewers can stand in scenes alongside three displaced children from Ukraine, South Sudan and Lebanon in “The Displaced” or switch genders in“Perspective Chapter 1: The Party” to witness a sexual assault from both the male and female points of view.

Social VR platforms such as Rec Room, AltspaceVR and High Fidelity offer virtual forums that allow users to engage in social activities, including talking, playing games, conducting meetings and even hugging each other while embodied as avatars.

Yet, one looming problem in VR is that someone can invade your personal space from thousands of miles away in ways that feel far too real.

In a 2016 blog post, author Jordan Belamire shared her experience of being virtually groped while playing the SteamVR game “QuiVr.” Despite being embodied in a gender-neutral avatar, Belamire thinks her feminine voice enticed player BigBro442 to rub her avatar’s chest, follow her and ultimately grope her avatar’s crotch minutes after beginning the game.

She called his actions “unbridled misogyny that spawns from gaming anonymity.” Ten days later, BigBro442, who claims to live in California, changed his SteamVR profile name to Shadowraith. He blamed Belamire’s public post for the change, referring to her as a “subhuman female scumbag” and “wench” on the QuiVr discussion forum. He also complained that the game’s new “personal bubble” option “will no longer allow me to virtually molest people.”

Shared and cited by media outlets in the U.S. and beyond, the post raised troubling questions about the visceral nature of VR, its potential for sexual harassment and questions of accountability among developers.

After Belamire’s incident, QuiVr developer Jonathan Schenker responded in a post on Upload advocating for tools that could change the outcome of a player’s encounter “before it ended in a negative way.” But Schenker also stated he sees “no way to prevent it entirely so long as multiplayer experiences exist.”

Heightened focus on sexual harassment

Since last fall, the national conversation on sexual harassment and assault heightened due to allegations against prominent media figures,  including Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer. Earlier in 2017, two female employees of influential companies brought lawsuits against their employers that shook the VR industry.

Tannen Campbell, former vice president of strategic marketing and brand identity at Magic Leap, sued her former employers in February and Elizabeth Scott, former digital and social media director at Upload, suedthat company in May.

Campbell’s suit accused Magic Leap of perpetuating a company culture deeply ingrained misogyny and gender discrimination. Magic Leap filed a response denying it engaged in any kind of discrimination, and in May, Campbell filed a notice of settlement, its terms confidential. In the Upload suit, Scott referenced “rampant sexual behavior and focus” in the office, saying it created “an unbearable environment,” including a “kink room” with a bed to encourage sexual encounters. Her suit also settled quietly.

Introduced at the 2017 Virtual Reality Developers Conference in San Francisco, a self-funded study conducted by behavioral scientist Jessica Outlaw analyzed the social VR experiences of 13 women ages 21 to 38 from Portland, Oregon. The study found that after 30 minutes of exposure to Facebook Spaces, AltspaceVR or Rec Room, most participants reported feeling unsafe, had difficulty navigating the spaces and struggled with self-expression.

Outlaw says she self-funded the study after a company that observes significant on-platform harassment told her it didn’t see the value of conducting the research because it would deplete resources earmarked for engineering. While Outlaw acknowledged the sample size is low, she says she hopes her study will inspire developers to research equality and VR experiences.

In its 2017 online harassment survey, the Pew Research Center found 41 percent of Americans have been subjected to harassing behavior online, while 66 percent witnessed it. Regarding more severe forms such as physical threats, sexual harassment or stalking, nearly 18 percent of Americans have found themselves targets.

Gittins, the Stumbling Cat CEO, says she’s observed other female gamers receive death threats, recalling one incident in which the person being harassed was sent a picture of the door to her home.

Suzanne Leibrick, a VR developer and co-leader of ARVR Academy, says there is something magical about putting on a headset and going to another world, though at times, she thinks it can be easy to forget there is a person behind the avatar.

After spending over 100 hours playing “Hover Junkers,” a multiplayer VR game, she stopped participating when another player followed her repeatedly and made sexist comments. This was similar to an earlier uncomfortable experience of being followed, heckled and encircled by other avatars while appearing as a female avatar on AltspaceVR. Leibrick said it produced an uncomfortable sensation of being surrounded by a crowd. She says the occurrences are a frequent part of her VR social and gaming experiences.

“On many platforms, there are maybe three women in a room of 15 people,” Leibrick said. “I worry women trying VR for the first time will be harassed, take off their headset and never come back. I should not have to end my social or game experience just because someone is acting unruly.”

A history of VR abuse

One of the earliest instances of avatar defilement is detailed in Julian Dibbell’s 1993 Village Voice article “A Rape in Cyberspace.” Occurring in “LambdaMOO,” a virtual community founded in 1990, a user called Mr. Bungle used the voodoo doll he obtained to commit virtual rapes of female characters. A decade later, reports of avatar rapes began surfacing after Linden Lab’s virtual world “Second Life” launched in 2003.

Within that time frame, 12-year-old Gittins’ feminine voice attracted salacious comments in the multiplayer shooter game “Counter-Strike,” including, “How old are you? Are you hot?” and “What are you wearing?” The backlash caused her so much stress and pressure it drove her from the platform completely.

In 2007, while then-17-year-old Gittins was playing “World of Warcraft” as a druid avatar, hecklers wrote comments such as “ugly bitch”  and “scrawny nerd” in public chat areas on her YouTube and Reddit accounts. Gittins said the harassment escalated to death threats on her cellphone while she was a student at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California — an institution lauded for its concentration on math, engineering and the advancement of women in computer science. Gittins called the police department where her main harassers claimed to live but could not file a formal report because she didn’t know their names or other identifying information.

In 2009, she filed a complaint with Blizzard Entertainment, the game’s developer. Although Blizzard never disclosed what actions it took, she thinks her main harasser was banned from the forums at least temporarily after he posted a threat to find her in person and assault her at BlizzCon, the company’s video game convention.

“When they threatened me, my gut would drop,” Gittins said. “They told me they would find me in person and beat the shit out of me. If I had the knowledge I do today, I would have ensured (my complaint) was taken more seriously, but I, like many victims, wasn’t aware of my rights or how to approach the situation.”

The harassment discouraged her from participating in the “World of Warcraft” community. It persisted in random bouts on various internet platforms for nearly seven years even after she ceased from actively playing the game, causing her to live in fear.

Sameer Hinduja, a criminology and criminal justice professor at Florida Atlantic University and co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center, says the anonymity a VR headset and avatar afford can be alluring to antagonists because it allows them to shed social norms for power and control.

“When the ‘Grand Theft Auto’ video game series was popular, players could abuse a prostitute on the streets,” Hinduja said. “Now in VR, we’ve seen virtual groping of the chest and groin area, masturbatory gestures using hand controllers, threats and degrading comments. Harassers take full advantage of victims by holding power over their experience. This power play is very attractive, especially if developers have not afforded the victim tools of defense.”

Who should provide accountability?

Because avatar rape and VR groping are neither physical in the sense that the harassee’s physical body is not being touched nor geographic since VR worlds are not recognized as places on a map, determining victim recourse can be confusing. VR platforms fall under cyberspace communication, touching on state and federal laws including the First Amendment, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and possibly criminal and civil statutes covering defamation, harassment, public disclosure of private facts and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

University of Miami School of Law professor Mary Anne Franks said that under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, online intermediaries that host or republish speech are protected against laws (apart from certain exceptions) that might otherwise hold them legally responsible for user behavior. Website owners are required to act only on serious criminal complaints such as child pornography or intellectual property claims.

VR Companies may find immunity under this provision if their users commit harassment. While most platforms self-regulate by posting community decency standards such as temporary or permanent account suspensions, it is up to site administrators to enforce these.

Victims of harassment also can sue perpetrators for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, public disclosure of private facts and even copyright violations if photos are involved and, depending on the case, if the victim knows the harasser’s real-world identity. These routes can be costly, however.

So far, how laws would adapt and apply to concepts such as photorealistic VR avatars is unknown. Despite the uncanny valley hypothesis, a theory postulating that people feel uneasy seeing lifelike humanoid objects, industry leaders predict avatars will become more intricate.

The ability to create 3-D-scanned photorealistic versions now exists through startups such as Uraniom. As Franks mentions in a recent article for the UC Davis Law Review, future threatening VR behaviors could include hacking into the account of a user and using his or her avatar, or creating an avatar resembling a victim to perform acts of defilement or violence against it. Franks says technological innovations should be subjected to testing that asks whether the product advances or undermines equality.

“We are nearing a situation where inputting a person’s body type with scary accuracy into scenarios where they can be raped, assaulted and even killed,” Franks said. “You’ll never know if the guy in the cubicle next to you or the guy sitting across from you on the train isn’t doing exactly that on his phone. There are ways to try to update our laws to protect users. We just need the political will.”

In recent years, a few initiatives have swept gaming’s legal landscape, such as New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman’s Operation: Game Over, which requires convicted sex offenders to register their online gaming profiles and accounts for voluntary purging by entertainment companies. But developers Leibrick and Gittins say relying predominantly on state and federal laws to protect users is not ideal. They argue that responsibility lies with developers because social conventions in VR, such as introducing yourself to a stranger or greeting friends, can be misunderstood.

“Sticking a controller in the crotch of someone’s avatar is seen as funny to some, but in reality,  if I tried to do that in a coffee shop, I could be arrested, possibly even charged with assault,” Leibrick said. “The worst that can happen on a platform is a person will be banned, flagged or muted. We should program in social conventions as much as possible.”

The 2017 Pew online harassment survey revealed that 94 percent of U.S. adults have some degree of familiarity with online harassment and that 79 percent believe online companies and platforms should help prevent and alleviate it.

Katie Kelly, senior program manager at Microsoft and head of engagement at AltspaceVR, which Microsoft acquired, says the company continues to make improvements for better social interaction, offering interest gatherings from LGBT meetups, talk shows and book clubs to Campfire, where avatars can hang out.

After an influx of harassment complaints in March and April 2016 that coincided with the availability of new VR headsets, the company introduced more user control tools in July 2016, including a moderator, “ignore” feature, private events, personal space bubble, blocking feature and 24/7 customer support.

“Our hope is in AltspaceVR, you can meet people that you want to be around,” Kelly said. “You’ll feel like you have a living, breathing person in front of you and will not act like you would on forums where people use their anonymity to behave badly. We try to come off not as a game, but as a platform where different people can find value in virtual social interaction.”

Gittins hopes developers continue to improve harassment prevention tools. She also recommends they create a database to track violators from popular VR social and gaming environments. After years of enduring threats and crude behavior, she’s built up a tolerance, but she says no one should have to do that. While the threatening phone calls have dissipated, she wonders whether they will return.

“Who’s to say it’s over?” Gittins said. “For all I know,  they could come back.”

CDC tells U.S. consumers to toss romaine lettuce after E.coli outbreak

stable via Shutterstock

Attention all salad-enthusiasts, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has expanded its warning on the E.coli strain that’s linked to Romaine lettuce, recommending consumers to toss all romaine lettuce—unless one can prove it didn’t come from the Yuma, Arizona, growing region. If the source of the lettuce is unknown, the CDC warns that consumers across the country should toss any store-bought romaine lettuce.

“Product labels often do not identify growing regions; so, throw out any romaine lettuce if you’re uncertain about where it was grown,” the CDC says. “This includes whole heads and hearts of romaine, chopped romaine, and salads and salad mixes containing romaine lettuce. If you do not know if the lettuce is romaine, do not eat it and throw it away.”

Outbreak Update: 53 people sick in 16 states with E. coli infections linked to chopped romaine lettuce. Don’t eat any store-bought chopped romaine, including salad mixes with romaine, and organic romaine. Throw it away. https://t.co/r8k0N9Mjhf pic.twitter.com/gqG3fIJpRF

— CDC (@CDCgov) April 18, 2018

Additionally, the warning asks consumers to be cautious when eating out, and to once again be aware of where it was grown.

“Do not buy or eat romaine lettuce at a grocery store or restaurant unless you can confirm it is not from the Yuma, Arizona, growing region,” the CDC advises on its website.

The updated warning is based on information from new illnesses that have been emerged in Alaska, specifically from an outbreak in a correctional facility in Nome.

“The recently discovered cases appear to be connected to a nationwide E. coli outbreak affecting at least 53 persons in 16 states and linked to romaine lettuce grown in Yuma, Arizona,” the press release on the outbreak in Alaska stated.

The CDC claims that based on information provided to date, the lettuce is likely contaminated with E. coli O157:H7; A specific grower, supplier or distributor has not been identified yet.

While the investigation is ongoing, according to the CDC, 53 people have been infected with the outbreak in 16 states. Thirty-one people have been hospitalized, and five of those people have developed hemolytic uremic syndrome—a type of kidney failure.

The initial announcement regarding the outbreak was made on April 10.

“Ill people range in age from 12 to 84 years, with a median age of 41,” the announcement stated. “Among ill people, 65% are female. Six ill people have been hospitalized, including one person who developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, a type of kidney failure.”

No deaths have been reported. Last week, a woman reportedly got sick after eating at Panera Bread. According to the Washington Post, she has since filed a lawsuit.

According to Mayo Clinic, severe abdominal cramps, bloody diarrhea and vomiting are symptoms of  E. coli O157:H7.

“Healthy adults usually recover from infection with E. coli O157:H7 within a week, but young children and older adults have a greater risk of developing a life-threatening form of kidney failure called hemolytic uremic syndrome,” Mayo Clinic states.

If diarrhea is persistent or bloody it is advised to call a doctor.

Last year, there was a separate outbreak connected to leafy greens when 25 people were infected with a strain of STEC O157:H7 in 15 states. The outbreak had nine hospitalizations and one death.

The rise of fascist fashion: Clothing helps the far right sell their violent message

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In the months since white supremacist blogger Andrew Anglin urged his followers to dress in “hip” and “cool” ways at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., far-right fashion has rapidly evolved. The clean-cut aesthetic of the white polo shirts and khakis that drew national attention last August has been supplanted by new brands marketing to and for the far right, using messages and symbols embedded in the clothing to convey white supremacist ideology.

There was the Arizona woman indicted for burglary and other crimes at a mosque — while coaching her children to use anti-Muslim slurs — wearing a T-shirt with the phrase “you can’t coexist with people who want to kill you” written across the chest. In Northwest Washington, D.C., I glanced out of my office window and saw a young man with the Nazi imperial eagle emblazoned across his jacket — part of a British fashion brand’s controversial logo. One of the torch-bearing Charlottesville marchers’ polo shirt bore a logo from the white nationalist group Identity Evropa.

The idea that the humble cotton T-shirt — long deployed as a walking billboard to advertise anything from the local auto shop to children’s summer camps — could be used to market extremism may seem absurd. But it turns out the T-shirt is an ideal channel for racist and nationalist messaging. What I’ve learned through nearly two decades of research in Germany, where clothing brands marketing far-right ideology are carefully monitored by authorities and educators, suggests that ignoring this clothing here in the United States would be a mistake. Fashion has increasingly become part and parcel of the far right’s outreach.

More than a dozen brands in Europe sell high-quality, well-made, expensive clothing with embedded far-right symbols and messages, most of which appear across the chests and backs of T-shirts and sweatshirts. U.S. consumers can buy these brands through U.S. distributors, or directly from the brands’ websites, which are complete with translation and currency converters. Americans can also choose from a growing array of products marketed directly to radical and extreme right consumers in the U.S.

These brands directly and indirectly market hatred, sometimes couched within iconography that is pro-veteran, pro-military or pro-gun rights. There are T-shirts that market and sell white supremacist ideology, espouse violence against immigrants, Muslims and Jews, and encourage consumers to rise up in revolution against liberal ideals. One T-shirt tells consumers to “celebrate the real diversity” by wearing a T-shirt that displays nine different kinds of headgear, including a World War II gas mask and a Christian Crusader helmet.

Hate clothing celebrates violence in the name of a cause, often using patriotic images and phrases and calls to act like an American along with Islamophobic, anti-Semitic and white supremacist messages. In this way, far-right clothing links being a patriot with being violent and xenophobic.

Studies of hate music have shown how hateful lyrics can spread intolerance and prejudice against minorities. In the same way, hate clothing can expose consumers to extremist opinions, shaping ideological views on immigration, religion, violence and gun control toward the extremist fringe and opening the door to further engagement and more dangerous actions. In Germany, I found that brands marketing hate offer legitimacy, signal membership and ideology to far-right insiders, and act as an entry ticket to concerts and underground events where dressing normally would raise a red flag. Far-right clothing also acts as an icebreaker for youth to strike up conversations in school, at stadiums, in bars, and at parties.

Clothing messages also call consumers to action in ways that have been shown to be effective in recruiting followers, whether in populist campaign promises to make a nation great “again” or in extremist calls to restore a caliphate. In the U.S., calls to action in clothing iconography include messages that express anti-government sentiments, valorize violence, describe a "new revolution," and call on consumers to defend the Second Amendment. Such calls to action need to be understood in light of T-shirts sold on the same websites that tell consumers “It’s OK to be white” and that “you can’t co-exist with someone who wants to kill you” – the T-shirt worn by the woman in Arizona.

Let me be clear: Free speech is an important American value, protected by the First Amendment. I would not recommend government monitoring or legal censorship of clothing. But in the face of ever-more retail that traffics in far-right ideology, there are steps we can take.

For decades, journalists, civil society and watchdog groups have monitored white power and hate music in the U.S. and Europe, documenting the music’s production, sale and distribution and its impact on recruitment to white supremacist scenes. The same groups can put pressure on clothing manufacturers and distributors not to produce or sell these items. This strategy worked after Charlottesville, when Spotify removed white power music from its platform, and other tech companies — including YouTube, GoDaddy and Twitter — pledged to monitor and remove accounts linked to white supremacists.

Can a T-shirt cause extremist violence? Of course not. But like other gateways to far-right extremism — secret Facebook groups, racist music lyrics, alt-right conferences and campus speaker confrontations — clothing should be taken seriously as an entry point. If we are going to find ways to disrupt radicalization toward hate, we need to identify — and intervene in — as many of these gateways as we can.

Stormy Daniels’ lawyer to Bill Maher: “Trump trusted a moron”

Since Michael Cohen's office was raided, it's been widely speculated that Cohen was indeed President Donald Trump's fixer. On Friday night, Michael Avenatti joined Bill Maher on "Real Time wit Bill Maher" to discuss his lawsuit on behalf of Stormy Daniels—and throw a few jabs at Cohen.

"I want this recorded, a lawyer got a standing ovation," Maher said after Avenatti took a seat. "You are something of a folk hero now, how are you coping with your newfound fame?"

"Well, wait until we actually accomplish something in the coming months," Avenatti said.

Maher proceeded to ask how a liberal's dream can come true with the help of him and Daniels.

"The whole reason we love you and Stormy is because we think you're the tip of the spear that is going to take down Donald Trump," Maher said. "Walk me through how our dreams can come true."

"You want me to take you through the foreplay is what you're saying," Avenatti responded.

Then, in all seriousness, Avenatti continued.

"Well, I think we are going to get an opportunity to depose Michael Cohen and the president within the next 60 and 90 days and I think that what we've seen, Bill, what we’re seeing is the dominoes are already starting to fall. I truly believe this is the Achilles heel of the president,” he said. "He has trusted a moron with his inner-most secrets, and the problem is that he has surrounded himself in his adult life with people that are incompetent and the chickens are going to come home to roost.”

"How do you get Donald Trump to show up?" Maher asked.

"Well, we get a federal judge to order him to appear for a deposition," Avenatti said.

"You think Donald Trump will really show up?" Maher inquired.

Avenatti said he think she will—and that he should.

“He — should? Donald Trump should? Hello! He should do a lot of things,” Maher said. “And then what happens if he doesn’t show up?”

Avenatti said well perhaps the U.S. Marshals would show up for him. The conversation eventually circled back to Cohen.

“I think that Michael Cohen knows where all of the bodies are buried,” Avenatti said. “And I think he’s going to sing like a canary. Like you cannot — Bill, here’s the problem — no I know he’s going to fold. Because, here’s the problem: when you have a fixer you need two things at least, you need a guy that’s tough and you need a guy that’s smart. This guy is neither tough nor smart.”

Watch the video here: