In the last few months, I have been mostly reading newspaper headlines:

• Remembering Robert Fisk — Ian Williams in Tribune: Having braved the sectarian battles of Belfast, Fisk was prepared for the bitter conflicts he covered when he reported from Beirut over so many years. He brought a sense of history that Western media pundits on drop-in visit tend to lack, the cable and internet sock-puppets pontificating from faraway studios. Not least of his assets was that he lived in the region and spoke Arabic – and did so directly to ordinary people. A consummate beat reporter, he cultivated local sources even as he listened carefully to what official sources said. To report on the region, he advised, “we journalists have to fight the Trumps as well as the Arab dictators, the pro-Israeli lobbyists and the Muslim factions and sometimes, yes again, tolerate the anger of our colleagues.” […] But Fisk was always the maverick, prepared to blaze his own trail. He would not profess the spurious objectivity so often honoured in the breach by the media of record. He said that journalism must “challenge authority, all authority, especially so when governments and politicians take us to war.” When most of the media were being rounded up to support the Iraq War, Fisk was among the who not only saw the transparent absurdity of the WMD evidence, but also detailed the massive support Britain and the US had given to Saddam Hussein – which is why, he suggested, the Iraqi leader was quickly hanged to prevent him revealing his persecutors’ complicity.
• Facebook Forced Its Employees To Stop Discussing Trump's Coup Attempt — Ryan Mac at Buzzfeed: Facebook employees were appalled by President Donald Trump’s encouragement of his supporters as they stormed the US Capitol building on Wednesday to prevent the ratification of a free and fair election. The employees were scared and frustrated, and some came to the realization that the platform they had helped build and operate had contributed to the wave of fear, disinformation, and chaos that flooded Congress. So they spoke out on an internal message board, and some called for Trump’s removal from the platform. In less than an hour, Facebook moved to silence them. Without any apparent explanation, administrators froze comments on at least three threads in which employees had discussed removing Trump from the site.
• Honey, Do We Need Soap This Expensive? - Maynard Blarvin — Phil Are Go!:
  
• Everything pundits are getting wrong about this current moment in content moderation: An ongoing list — Jillian C. York: First of all, the only “precedent” set here is that this is indeed the first time a sitting US president has been deplatformed by a tech company. I suppose that if your entire worldview is what happens in the United States, you might be surprised. But were you took outside that narrow lens, you would see that Facebook has booted off Lebanese politicians, Burmese generals, and even other right-wing US politicians…nevermind the millions of others who have been booted by these platforms, often without cause, often while engaging in protected speech under any definition. 2020 alone saw the (wrongful, even in light of platform policies) deplatforming of hundreds, perhaps thousands of people using terms related to Iran (including a Los Angeles-based crafter’s “Persian dolls” by Etsy) in an overzealous effort by companies to comply with sanctions; the booting of Palestinian speakers from Zoom on incorrectly-analyzed legal grounds; the deplatforming by Twitter of dozens of leftist Jews and Palestinians for clapping back at harassers, and so much more.
• The Roots of Josh Hawley’s Rage — Katherine Stewart in the New York Times: In multiple speeches, an interview and a widely shared article for Christianity Today, Mr. Hawley has explained that the blame for society’s ills traces all the way back to Pelagius — a British-born monk who lived 17 centuries ago. In a 2019 commencement address at the King’s College, a small conservative Christian college devoted to “a biblical worldview,” Mr. Hawley denounced Pelagius for teaching that human beings have the freedom to choose how they live their lives and that grace comes to those who do good things, as opposed to those who believe the right doctrines. […] The line of thought here is starkly binary and nihilistic. It says that human existence in an inevitably pluralistic, modern society committed to equality is inherently worthless. It comes with the idea that a right-minded elite of religiously pure individuals should aim to capture the levers of government, then use that power to rescue society from eternal darkness and reshape it in accord with a divinely approved view of righteousness.
• Q-Nuts: "It's the Great Storm, Charlie Brown" — Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling:
  
• Ed-Tech and Trauma — Audrey Watters: The reporter asked me "what if we could build an AI that didn't have any privacy or security issues, that didn't have any bias?" And I argued with her that that was absolutely the wrong way to think about this. What if, for example, someone built an online proctoring tool that was bias-free, privacy-respecting, and absolutely secure? Well, I'd say that it would be impossible, but sure, okay. What if? It would still be a terrible idea because online proctoring is carceral pedagogy — that is, a pedagogy that draws on beliefs and practices that echo those of prisons — surveillance, punishment, and too often literal incarceration. Carceral pedagogy is the antithesis of education as a practice of freedom. And carceral pedagogy is deeply traumatizing.