SNL Returns With a Look at Everything in America That Still Works

Saturday Night Live was last on the air on Dec. 19, and as you may have heard, a few things have happened since. The riot at the capitol and the Georgia senatorial races rated their own sketches later in the show, but for the cold open, rather than focus on any catastrophe in particular, SNL went broad. Kate McKinnon kicked off the show by shuffling the audience from disaster to disaster as part of an investigations into which American institutions still work. The answers will probably not surprise you:

On first glance, this relatively unfunny cold open might make it seem like Saturday Night Live is just one more American institution that no longer works. Just like you have to listen to the notes jazz musicians don’t play, though, you have to pay attention to what SNL is not doing, and in this cold open they’re not doing quite a lot. They didn’t draft Kristen Wiig or Amy Poehler or whoever to play fringe congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. They didn’t bring back Jim Carrey as Joe Biden or Maya Rudolph as Kamala Harris. Best of all, they made it through an entire cold open without once mentioning the name Donald Trump. It’s an amazing use of negative space, and with any luck heralds a new era in SNL, one where the cast members and host play people in the news instead of the rotating team of celebrity ringers that characterized the Trump years, one where Cecily Strong’s impression of Marjorie Taylor Greene becomes a popular recurring character, one where Strong inadvertently raises Greene’s public profile so much that NBC decides to let her host an episode, and one where before you know it, it’s 2025 and President Greene has canceled Saturday Night Live to free up the 11:30 time slot for more televised executions. It’s far too late to switch timelines, but there’s good news, too: Alex Moffat’s Mark Zuckerberg impression still works, and we’ll probably get to enjoy it for another four years.

from Slate Magazine https://ift.tt/39yM1fH
via IFTTT

Marjorie Taylor Greene Says She Has Trump’s Support Amid Increased Calls for Her Ouster

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said Saturday she had spoken with former President Donald Trump, claiming he offered his support at a time when Republican leaders are under increased pressure to punish the freshman lawmaker for the way she has behaved toward colleagues, her embrace of conspiracy theories, and past statements in which she spouted extremist and racist rhetoric. “I had a GREAT call with my all time favorite POTUS, President Trump! I’m so grateful for his support,” the Georgia lawmaker tweeted Saturday morning. “The blood thirsty media and the socialists hate America Democrats are attacking me now just like they always attack President Trump.” She went on to “promise” that she won’t “back down” and “never apologize.”

A spokesman for Trump didn’t comment on the call and Greene’s office also didn’t provide any further details. But the alleged call comes at a time when Republican Party leaders are under pressure to punish the controversial lawmaker and some Democrats have even demanded her ouster. As more examples surface of her support of dangerous and baseless conspiracy theories and even her apparent endorsement for killing of top Democratic leaders, Republicans have largely stayed silent. The situation is a reflection of the divisions that exist among Republicans as the party tries to decide how it will move forward without Trump in the White House.

Sen. Mitt Romney, who was the only Republican senator to vote to convict Trump in the impeachment trial, criticized both the former president and the freshman lawmaker. “Lies of a feather flock together: Marjorie Taylor Greene’s nonsense and the ‘big lie’ of a stolen election,” Romney tweeted.

The alleged support from Trump came a day after Rep. Cori Bush, a freshman Democrat, said she was moving offices to get far away from Greene. Bush said Greene “berated” her in a hallway and said she would move her office “for my team’s safety.” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said he will talk with Greene next week, but it’s unclear whether that means there will be any actual consequences for the freshman lawmaker. At least 50 House Democrats have called for Greene to be removed from Congress. On Friday, Greene sent a warning to any Republican leaders who were thinking about punishing her. “If Republicans cower to the mob, and let the Democrats and the fake news media take me out,” Ms. Greene said, “they’re opening the door to come after every single Republican until there’s none left.”

McCarthy vowed to speak to Greene after reports surfaced of Facebook posts she wrote in which she discussed executing Democrats before she was elected to Congress. “These comments are deeply disturbing and Leader McCarthy plans to have a conversation with the Congresswoman about them,” McCarthy’s spokesman said earlier this week.

While some Republicans want McCarthy to send a message that makes clear the party won’t support lawmakers who back conspiracy theories, others are worried about what that will do to a big chunk of their supporters who are still loyal to Trump. And even though some are now trying to portray her as a firebrand outsider, the Washington Post details how many key party leaders embraced her in her rise to power despite the fact that her history of spreading lies and her penchant for violent rhetoric.

from Slate Magazine https://ift.tt/3tdROPF
via IFTTT

CDC Issues New Rule Requiring Face Masks on All Forms of Public Transportation

The vast majority will now have no choice. Starting Tuesday, pretty much anyone who travels on any form of public transportation will have to wear a face mask, according to a sweeping order issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention late Friday. The order, which takes effect at 11:59 p.m. on Monday requires travelers wear face masks while on airplanes, ships, trains, subways, ferries, buses, taxis, and any kind of ride-share vehicle. Passengers will have to wear the mask while “boarding disembarking, and for the duration of travel.”

The order specifies that the face mask must be worn properly and completely cover a traveler’s nose and mouth. It also specifies that face shields, scarves, and bandanas don’t count as proper face masks, which have to be “a solid piece of material without slits exhalation valves, or punctures.” Children under the age of two and people with disabilities who can’t safely wear masks are exempted from the order. And taking off the mask for brief periods to eat, drink, or take medication will also be permitted.

The CDC order came days after President Joe Biden on Jan. 21 called on government agencies to “immediately take action” to require masks in public transportation. The CDC tried to push a mask mandate in public transportation during Donald Trump’s administration but was blocked from doing so and instead only issued a recommendation that all travelers wear masks. “Requiring masks on our transportation systems will protect Americans and provide confidence that we can once again travel safely even during this pandemic,” reads the 11-page order signed by Martin S Cetron, director of the CDC’s Division of Global Migration and Quarantine. “Therefore, requiring masks will help us control this pandemic and aid in reopening America’s economy.”

Although airlines and most public transportation system already require masks, the CDC order means it will be easier to enforce the rules because those who refuse to wear one will be violating federal law. Although criminal penalties are possible, the CDC said it doesn’t “intend to rely primarily on these criminal penalties but instead strongly encourages and anticipates widespread voluntary compliance.”

from Slate Magazine https://ift.tt/3oCNzcB
via IFTTT

SOPHIE’s Music Was Completely Artificial and Utterly Real

The electronic producer SOPHIE died in Athens after an accident on Saturday, an immense loss to the world of music and the trans community. SOPHIE, who was 34, created a wide-ranging—but still too small—body of work that includes high-profile collaborations with artists like Madonna, Charli XCX, Vince Staples, and many others. But SOPHIE also leaves a solo legacy rivaling any other producer of 21st century music—both for its influence and its sheer creative bravado.

Originally from Glasgow, SOPHIE first emerged as an anonymous character in the milieu of hyper-real U.K. electronic pop most closely associated with the label PC Music: music calibrated to such candy-sweetness as to reveal the hollowness of said pop. But SOPHIE quickly became one of electronic music’s most essential voices with singles like 2013’s “BIPP,” a fully formed vision of what futurist pop could be. With a cutesy, chirping vocal backed by a skeleton of warped pops and industrial bass, “BIPP” is textbook SOPHIE: pop music as non-Newtonian fluid, a tactile but slippery surface, able to mold itself around a listeners’ perceptions. When I listen to “BIPP,” I hear a fun, happy song concealing something terribly sad, but I couldn’t for the life of me tell you why.

SOPHIE’s early singles were collected in the 2015 compilation PRODUCT, along with some new tracks that broadened the artist’s template like “VYZEE,” a twisted bubblegum ode to going a bit too far on a night out. But its final track, “JUST LIKE WE NEVER SAID GOODBYE,” a tranced-out torch song combining the overwhelming falsity of electronic pop with human longing. It would signal SOPHIE’s next move. It’s pop music at the height of all its contradictions: completely artificial and utterly real.

For SOPHIE, that metaphor applied not only to music, however, but to the concept of identity as a whole. SOPHIE re-emerged in 2018 with the masterpiece OIL OF EVERY PEARL’s UN-INSIDES, an album that explored SOPHIE’s fascination with surface and a newly public identity as a trans person. (SOPHIE preferred not to use gendered or nonbinary pronouns.) In “Faceshopping,” SOPHIE argues that one’s true identity is whatever they create for themselves, be it through Photoshop, plastic surgery, or any other mode. For SOPHIE, the surface isn’t artificial; if you master it, it’s the realest part of you. As the song says: “My shop is the face I front, I’m real when I shop my face”.

OIL OF EVERY PEARL’s UN-INSIDES is an incredibly diverse record, with “Ponyboy,” an all-time great S&M-themed banger; “Immaterial,” a gleaming celebration of self-conception; “Pretending,” a droning industrial piece; and “Whole New World/Pretend World, a paranoid alarm call. But the most shocking moment on the record is the first one, its lead single: “It’s Okay to Cry.” Besides being the artist’s first-ever singing credit, the video was also SOPHIE’s official coming out party. It’s a twinkling power ballad with a soft vocal, and little of the heaviness associated with SOPHIE’s past work. It was puzzling at the time. Here was the most avant-garde artist on the planet coming out with the uncoolest thing possible, a simply beautiful, sincere song about forgiveness and self-kindness. The taste-obsessed electronic music scene was genuinely scandalized. But now, on the day of SOPHIE’s death, it seems like the only song for the moment. SOPHIE had limitless potential, and so much more to show the world as both an artist and an advocate. SOPHIE’s death is an incredible loss. It’s OK to cry.

from Slate Magazine https://ift.tt/3jdu1Lb
via IFTTT

Capitol Rioter Who Said She Wanted to Shoot Pelosi “in the Friggin’ Brain” Arrested

Federal prosecutors charged two Pennsylvania women for their participation in the Capitol riot and the FBI said one of them expressed a desire to shoot House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Dawn Bancroft and Diana Santos-Smith are facing charges of knowingly entering a restricted building without authority, violent entry, and disorderly conduct. The two women were identified through a video that showed the two women as they left the Capitol among a large group of insurrectionists. “We broke into the Capitol…we got inside, we did our part,” Bancroft says in the video. “We were looking for Nancy to shoot her in the friggin’ brain but we didn’t find her.” Both Bancroft and Santos-Smith are wearing Make America Great Again hats in the video.

In an affidavit, an FBI special agent describes how Santos-Smith lied to authorities. Santos-Smith first tried telling law enforcement that she and Bancroft did not go inside the Capitol building. When she was shown the video, Santos-Smith admitted they had gone inside the building but insisted “they did not have a pre-planned agenda of entering the Capitol.” Santos-Smith said that when she and Bancroft got close to the Capitol they heard people in the crowd yelling, “They’re letting us in,” which she said they interpreted as being allowed inside. They proceeded to enter the Capitol through a broken window. She alleged they were only inside for “approximately 30 seconds to one minute.” Bancroft acknowledged she shot the video and sent it to her children but later deleted it and told her children to delete it as well.

The revelation of the arrest comes as security is increasing for lawmakers amid rising concerns about their safety. The Acting House Sergeant at Arms has called on lawmakers to share their travel plans to help local law enforcement agencies keep track of their movements.

from Slate Magazine https://ift.tt/3pCAVf9
via IFTTT

Future Tense Newsletter: Now Comes the Real Test for the Facebook Oversight Board

Is 2021 the next 1848 or 1968, a year of insurrection? It’s still January and we’ve had two seismic stormings of seemingly impregnable ramparts organized by very different sets of disaffected outsiders on social media. After the Capitol and Wall Street, which citadel will be targeted next?

Anyone still in possession of their reason was obviously appalled to their very core by the Jan. 6 attack on our democracy. An assault on Wall Street hedge funds that seek to profit from the woes of troubled companies, on the other hand, will naturally elicit a wider range of emotions. Schadenfreude, for one. Short the short sellers! And what could be more peak pandemic-innovation than people coming to the rescue of mall mainstays Gamestop and AMC from the comfort of their homes?

Still, this probably won’t have a happy ending. Don’t shed tears for large Wall Street firms losing billions in a short squeeze, but history suggests that when those big firms start having to cover outsized losses incurred on some niche bets by selling other assets, markets can spiral downward as a result, and then most Americans lose, as pension plans and retirement accounts across the country take a hit. And even if that doesn’t come to pass in this case, most of those participating directly in the Robinhood mania, driving up these stock prices to unsustainable levels are likely to end up getting hurt. A pyramid scheme with a stirring marketing narrative is still be a pyramid scheme.

In other news, Joseph Goebbels.

We could hold a contest to try to find the right adjective to attach to the fact that Hitler’s chief propagandist figured in the first batch of five cases decided by Facebook’s Oversight Board, but there it is. The case, which the social media platform referred to the new content moderation review board composed of outside experts, involved a post that had been removed because it contained a quote attributed to Goebbels about how to mobilize popular support. The Facebook user sought to analogize between Nazi methods of propaganda and Donald Trump’s in the run-up to the election, but Facebook keeps a list of dangerous individuals and any mentions of them or citations of their sayings are removable unless the post explicitly rejects them. The Oversight Board’s decision, as was the case in three of the other four rulings handed down Thursday, was to reverse Facebook’s initial call to remove the content. The board found that the context made clear this was permissible commentary on the current leader of the United States, not an endorsement of the Nazi regime.

What was most interesting, and this was true in several of the other cases handed down, wasn’t the decision itself but the thoroughness and tone of the board’s analysis, and the recommendations it offered  Facebook to avoid similar mistakes in the future. There has been a lot of understandable skepticism about the independence of this board (it can only review cases referred to it), but the decision’s consideration of Facebook’s arguments and actions here reads very much like a federal court’s treatment of ordinary defendants. It’s also noteworthy to have an international panel, deciding on cases from around the world, and citing international human rights law (and presumably Donald Trump’s forthcoming case will be treated similarly), which will push for a convergence of liberal global speech standards likely to make plenty of governments queasy.

The real test of how consequential the board will prove is whether Facebook adopts the Board’s recommendations. In the Goebbels quote case, those include a call for users to always be notified of the reasons for any enforcement action, and a more transparent policy explaining how it treats content pertaining to “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations.”  And even if Facebook has the will to act on the board’s rulings, scaling these thoughtful retrospective judgments to apply to the firehose of daily content moderation will remain a daunting challenge.  It was not rocket science in this case to determine that Goebbels was being cited to attack Trump, not to praise Nazis. But those distinctions may be harder for an A.I. to perceive.

And on the topic of recommendations, Future Tense has one for the Oversight Board itself:

If you really want to fulfill your potential, you need to work on your case names.  I mean, you can’t have your Marbury v. Madison be “2020-005-FB-UA.” Given that you really don’t want to have users’ names in there (good call!), we strongly advise you adopt the Friends episode citation approach. So, this decision would go down as “The One With Joseph Goebbels.”

All in all, though, this is an impressive debut by the Oversight Board. If I were Jack Dorsey, I’d feel a certain why-didn’t-I-do-that-first envy.

Future Tense Fiction

Today we published our latest story: “Speaker,” by Simon Brown. In “Speaker,” a hyena and human team up as part of an experiment in animal-human communication. In the response essay, Iveta Silova, director of the Center for Advanced Studies in Global Education at Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, asks: If nonhumans can learn to speak, will humans learn to listen? “Speaker” is the first of three stories looking at the future of education.

Stories From the Recent Past of Future Tense Wish We’d Published This

“WallStreetBets Founder Reckons With Legacy Amid Stock-Market Frenzy,” Wall Street Journal

Future Tense Recommends

In the midst of the ongoing movement around racial justice and anti-Black violence, Joey Eschrich, one of our fiction editors and the program manager at ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination, says this is a perfect time to seek out the true video-store classic: 1984’s The Brother From Another Planet. Written and directed by legendary indie filmmaker John Sayles, the film pulls off a neat trick by harmoniously blending science fiction tropes—a three-toed alien who otherwise passes as a Black man crash-lands his ship in Harlem and eludes two nefarious proto-Agent Smith white agents sent to track him down—with perceptive social realism: a look at the diversity, cultural vitality, and open-armed solidarity of this iconic and much-stereotyped-about Black community.

What Next: TBD

This week on Slate’s technology podcast, host Lizzie O’Leary spoke with Bloomberg reporter Brandon Kochkodin about where the GameStop chaos began, r/WallStreetBets (plus a Redditor who took part). Last week, Lizzie tried to get to the bottom of an enraging question: Why are the vaccine appointment websites so terrible?

Upcoming Events

On Feb. 3 at noon Eastern, as part of our Future Agenda series, we’ll host a discussion on how the Biden administration can create forward-looking policy on technology, global health, and the environment. Lizzie O’Leary will moderate a discussion with Rep. Sean Casten, D-Illinois; Charles Kenny, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and author of the new book The Plague Cycle; and Sarah Morris, director of the Open Technology Institute. RSVP here. (And read an excerpt from The Plague Cycle.)

On Feb. 4 at noon Eastern, our collaborators in the Learning Futures group at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University will host a conversation with Simon Brown about his Future Tense Fiction Story “Speaker,” multi-species communities, non-human intelligences, and the future of learning. Along with Simon, speakers will include Iveta Silova, director of the Center for Advanced Studies in Global Education at Arizona State University, and Punya Mishra, associate dean of scholarship and innovation at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. Register here.

On Feb. 10 at noon Eastern, director Hao Wu will discuss his new documentary 76 Days with Slate’s Joshua Keating. 76 Days follows the heartbreaking experience of medical workers and patients in Wuhan, China, during the city’s 76-day lockdown in an attempt to contain the virus. RSVP here.

And on Tuesday, Feb. 16, at 1 p.m. Eastern, the New Yorker’s Atul Gawande and Helene D. Gayle, co-chair of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee on Equitable Allocation of Vaccine for the Novel Coronavirus, will discuss what we’ve learned so far from the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. RSVP here.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.

from Slate Magazine https://ift.tt/3pAiLum
via IFTTT

One of Two Proud Boys Charged With Conspiracy in Capitol Riots Had Bomb-Making Manuals

Federal prosecutors unveiled the first conspiracy charges against two members of the far-right nationalist group Proud Boys for their actions during the violent Capitol riot. It marked the first time that members of the Proud Boys are accused of working together to attack the Capitol. Prosecutors allege Dominic Pezzola, of Rochester, N.Y., and William Pepe, of Beacon, N.Y. cooperated to interfere with the work of law enforcement officers who were protecting Congress. The two men had already been facing lesser charges two weeks ago connected to the attack on the Capitol.

Of the some 175 people who have been charged for their actions during the Capitol riot, at least eight have ties to the Proud Boys, reports CNN. But these latest charges stand out because the vast majority have been accused of relatively minor crimes like disorderly conduct. For now, the only others who are facing serious conspiracy charges are three members of the Oath Keepers, a militia group, who are accused of planning the violent riot far in advance.

Prosecutors argued that Pezzola should be jailed before trial in part because authorities found “weapons- and bomb-making manuals” on a thumb drive in his home. Pezzola, who is known as “Spaz” to his friends, poses a “serious danger to the community and a serious risk of flight,” prosecutors said. Pezzola’s lawyer disputed the characterization of the material, saying it was given to Pezzola, he never opened it, and it really was a “survivalist” manual. “The government has cherry-picked a small portion of the paper to suit their narrative,” the lawyer said. The files that were found in Pezzola’s home included “Advanced Improvised Explosives,” “Explosive Dusts” and “Ragnar’s Big Book of Homemade Weapons.”

A previous court filing said Pezzola used a police shield to break a window at the Capitol and was one of the first rioters inside the building. “Pezzola was not the only person trying to break windows and forcibly enter the Capitol at that time, but he appears . . . first to breach a window so successfully that he and other rioters could enter the Capitol through it,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Erik Kenerson wrote. “The defendant’s actions show planning, determination, and coordination.”

from Slate Magazine https://ift.tt/39v4zNF
via IFTTT