sábado, 1 de janeiro de 2022
Trump’s Social Media Return — and What Else to Expect in 2022
OPINION
KARA
SWISHER
Trump’s Social Media Return — and What Else to
Expect in 2022
Dec. 30,
2021
Kara
Swisher
By Kara
Swisher
Opinion
Writer
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/30/opinion/trump-facebook-matrix.html
I know, I
know: “Not another prediction list …” But stick with me. After all, my first
forecast from last year came true — although the Capitol siege moved the
timetable forward considerably.
I wrote:
“Soon after our forever troller in chief leaves office on Jan. 20, his account
will be suspended by Twitter temporarily, and then, since he cannot stop
breaking rules, he’ll get tossed off, just like his hideous pal, Alex Jones …
after Joe Biden is inaugurated, Mr. Trump should be treated like any other
mendacious loudmouth, and Twitter will be well within its rights to put a sock
in it.”
Because of
Donald Trump’s social media behavior around the deplorable events of Jan. 6,
Facebook and YouTube also shoved him off (where he remains in a sort-of
purgatory).
Which
brings me to my first prediction for 2022: Trump will be posting once again on
at least one of the giant platforms this year. My guess is it’ll be Meta that
lets him back on, even after announcing a two-year suspension that’s meant to
run until January 2023. The company, parent to Facebook and Instagram, said it
could restore his accounts at the end of the suspension if “the risk to public
safety has receded” — so it’s easy to see how Zuck could justify an early
parole. While that would invite a heap of negative attention, it’s time to
accept that the company that started as a “Mark Zuckerberg Production” couldn’t
care less what you or I think of it. If you need more evidence, consider what
lasting changes it’s made in the wake of the revelations brought forth this
year by the whistle-blower Frances Haugen.
That’s why it
really is worth listening to Haugen’s insights in a long Sway interview I did
with her recently. TL;DR: The drip-drip-drip of information that the company is
eroding society has made nearly no difference in Zuckland. Though the rest of
us have been waiting for lawmakers to act (and Senator Amy Klobuchar even
promised me it would happen in 2022, in a Christmas card she sent me), I think
the penny has finally dropped with increasing numbers of consumers,
particularly parents.
Polls show
a growing distrust of tech companies — yes, the public distrusts the media too,
but that’s not new — and are open to new alternatives if they’re presented.
That sounds like a golden opportunity for a round of entrepreneurs to come up
with new ways of interaction that don’t rely on sucking up more and more data
in exchange for free access to digital services. In 2022, we’ll see new forms
of social interaction being built on the blockchain, as well as formidable new
search (Neeva) and e-commerce alternatives (Shopify) that will slowly leech at
the foundations of the larger operations.
And there
will be important legislation to help that soon too — just not in the United
States. Instead, it will come from Europe, which is trying to finalize the Digital
Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, much as they passed the General Data
Protection Regulation nearly six years ago. While imperfect, it did set a tone
for regulation that has been used worldwide.
In the
United States, which never passes up an opportunity to let the perfect be the
enemy of the good, Congress is mulling over several important tech-related
bills, dealing with everything from privacy to safety to consolidation, none of
which is likely to get moving unless the Biden administration gets more
aggressive.
The
administration signaled that it would with the appointments of Tim Wu as a
White House adviser, Lina Khan as chair of the Federal Trade Commission and
Jonathan Kanter as head of antitrust at the Justice Department. But without a
big push from President Biden and with the altogether likely possibility of a
power shift in Congress to the Republicans, a major opportunity to move will
have been lost.
Biden
should, for example, push hard for the Klobuchar bill, assembled with Senator
Chuck Grassley, which would put the brakes on Big Tech platforms preferencing
their own products at the expense of others’. This ought to be an obvious thing
to do, right?
That’s why
I expect that no significant laws will be passed to dampen tech’s reign and I
am even less confident on new stuff heading down the pike. I, too, would like
to see where the metaverse, blockchain and Web3 lead us, but it is long past
time to clamp down on the excesses of Big Tech.
The next
few months offer an opportunity for regulators like Khan to make some bold
moves, like suing to stop a merger or going back and trying to unwind one. You
can’t win if you don’t play, right?
A few more
quick predictions for the coming year:
Apple will
vault ahead of Facebook in virtual reality. There’s a new Oculus headset due,
but expect Apple to be the one that creates an experience that’s appealing to
regular folks. VR takes quality hardware, which is firmly in Apple’s
wheelhouse. But for true mass adoption, prices have to come down.
GAS — Gyms
as Software. Augmented, rather than virtual, reality will emerge as a major
outlet for fitness buffs and regular Joes trying to keep in shape. That said, I
have started going to the analog gym again and, refreshingly, use almost no
tech at all.
Lastly, it
turns out you can use language tech called GPT-3 to create AI versions of
prominent podcasters. “Using famous quotes, podcast transcripts and GPT-3,
we’ve created AI versions of 10 popular podcast hosts,” like yours truly,
according to the folks behind the Shuffle app. Welp, nice knowing ya.
4 Questions
I caught up
with Emily Oster, a Brown University professor of economics and public policy,
and the author of several books, including her most recent, “The Family Firm: A
Data-Driven Guide to Better Decision Making in the Early School Years.” She
gave her thoughts on people’s risk assessment capabilities and the pandemic.
I’ve edited her answers.
Sign up for
the Kara Swisher newsletter, for Times subscribers only. The host of the "Sway" podcast
shares her insights on the changing power dynamics in tech and media. Get it in
your inbox.
Everyone
now fancies themselves an amateur risk assessment analyst. What tips can you
offer to make them better at it, so they don’t drive me — and others — crazy?
I am not
sure how to keep people from driving us crazy! The biggest mistake I think
people make in analyzing risk is that it’s very hard to understand small
probabilities. Humans are just really poor at this. We think of 1-in-100 and
1-in-1,000 and 1-in-10,000 as all kind of similar and small, whereas in reality
those are totally different. But since our experience doesn’t give us access to
a lot of 1-in-10,000 probability events, it’s not hard to see why we can’t
really understand them. The best way I have found to think about small
probability events is to find a comparison event. 1-in-30,000 is the risk of an
emergency room visit in a given year because of a blanket injury, for example.
Another good way to think about it is: “If I took this risk every day, how long
would it take before the bad thing would happen?” For a 1-in-10,000 event, this
is 27 years.
I just had
my fourth child and we really want to protect him, as well as my two-year-old.
What is your best advice from an economist’s viewpoint for parents of children
who may still be months or years from being eligible for a Covid vaccine?
One of the
very lucky things about this terrible pandemic has been that children are much
less affected by Covid than older people. For the most part, the older you are,
the more dangerous Covid is. Vaccines lower your risk, but given how large the
differences in risk of serious illness, vaccinated adults are still at higher
risk for this outcome than unvaccinated kids. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t
vaccinate kids, but it should give some reassurance to worried parents waiting
on the vaccine. With your two-year-old, it makes sense to take the same
precautions you do with yourself, but not to be more cautious. Babies are
higher risk for all illnesses, so just as in flu season, it likely makes sense
to keep the baby a little more isolated if you can, especially from any older
sibling’s illness.
You’ve been
a proponent of keeping schools open. What should parents and school
administrators be thinking in the new year with respect to in-person education?
The biggest
issues during the Omicron wave are likely to be staffing and quarantines. Too
much sick staff may make keeping schools open difficult. There are a few
solutions. One is to replace quarantine with test-to-stay programs, which
administrators should start now to think about how to implement, though parents
may be needed to help actually implement such programs, given staffing issues.
A second key question is how to keep staff in place, a feat which is likely
going to be possible only if we shorten quarantine rules for recovered
individuals. Basically, I think we should all be prepared for some pretty
significant disruptions over the next six weeks.
You
recently wrote about what kept you sane in 2021: running, reading and cooking.
How will you maintain that in 2022?
Like
everyone else I’m desperately hoping for more of a return to normal, but at
this point I’m not really expecting it. My big hope for 2022 is less volatility
around Covid policy. As the disease becomes endemic, we’re facing a future in
which many of these issues — a new variant, need for testing, updated vaccines
— will always be present. This next period is the time to face that and figure
out how we are going to adapt our policies to those that can be effective in
the long term.
Don’t look
now, but “The Matrix Resurrections” was actually good
With a
small Omicron outbreak in my family, which turned me into a hotel manager, maid
and full-time caregiver for 10 days since I did not get a case of breakthrough
Covid (yet!), I found myself with time to stream the disaster movie “Don’t Look
Up” on Netflix and the newest installment of the “Matrix” series on HBO Max.
And let me tell you, I caught endless flak on Twitter when I posted that I
liked both of them.
Every movie
available to be streamed will be streamed in big numbers, or it will suffer a
speedy exile into irrelevance. That’s happened to a lot of films that did well
only in their theatrical release this year — as I predicted. A lot of Hollywood
types strafed me for saying this, but the nearly two years of a pandemic have
made analog filmgoing a lot more niche. That is, unless it is an obvious
megamovie like “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” which can attract a younger
demographic, unworried about the pandemic, and is just far more entertaining to
see on the big screen.
But I
digress: The reason I liked the “The Matrix Resurrections” and “Don’t Look Up”
is that these are both stories about the limits of big tech, big media and big
politics and the importance of heartfelt, real family connections. These are
critically important ideas as we move into the next iteration of tech, which
will have a lot more to do with virtualizing everything. How we evolve and
connect as humans as the world moves to VR is a critical issue.
The first
“Matrix” explored the idea of existing in what was essentially a metaverse —
though no one used that term in 1999 — that become reality to most people. The
notion of becoming confused over what’s real and what’s fake was profound then,
and even more so now that we have become consumed by tech to a level that we
still don’t quite grasp. The director and co-writer Lana Wachowski was
apparently inspired to plumb this idea after the death of her parents, which is
why she revived the main characters Neo and Trinity from the last film,
“Revolutions,” in 2003. And, anyway, what is “The Matrix” without Keanu?
“I couldn’t
have my mom and dad, yet suddenly I had Neo and Trinity, arguably the two most
important characters in my life,” Wachowski said earlier this year, adding, “It
was immediately comforting to have these two characters alive again.” She said,
“You can look at it and say: ‘OK, these two people die and OK, bring these two
people back to life and oh, doesn’t that feel good.’ Yeah, it did! It’s simple,
and this is what art does and that’s what stories do: they comfort us.”
So, too,
Adam McKay’s much-maligned “Don’t Look Up.” If you ask me, you should ignore
the critics. Yes, there are some obvious plot points and over-the-top
characterizations, but ultimately it’s a story about the gravity of humanity,
however doomed it becomes because of its most pernicious members. That
includes, particularly, the tech billionaire Peter Isherwell, a part played to
geek perfection by Mark Rylance, who has managed to cohesively mash together
the worst parts of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Zuckerberg.
Isherwell’s
character hits it on the nose with his know-it-all certainty and data-driven
lunacy, calling to mind tech’s ruling class, with its proclivity to be
frequently wrong but never in doubt. And within the movie is a caution, that we
ought not let Big Tech alone govern the world we share. “We really did have
everything, didn’t we?” says the feckless astronomer played by Leonardo
DiCaprio in the movie’s last scene.
Well, as it
turns out, we do still have everything, so join me and look up in 2022 and
beyond. And not at dumb spaceship stunt rides by billionaires, but at the
things we really need to focus on — like the humanity in the rest of us.
Kara
Swisher writes a weekly newsletter and is the host of “Sway,” the twice-weekly
interview podcast about power.
In Alaska, climate change is a supply chain stressor jeopardizing food security
In Alaska, climate change is a supply chain
stressor jeopardizing food security
BY TIM
LYDON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 12/28/21 05:30 PM EST THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY
CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL
The cargo
ships lined up outside U.S. ports have revealed cracks in the global supply
chain. And while businesses and consumers are feeling the pinch, the problem is
projected to ease over time. But for America’s northernmost citizens, those
living in the Alaskan Arctic, more intractable supply chain woes are at hand.
They stem from the dizzying pace of climate change in the North and pose real
threats to food security, mental health and long-held cultural traditions.
For many
Alaskans, the supply chain that puts food on the table is a thing called
subsistence. It entails striking out onto the land or the sea to obtain foods
that are then shared with family and community members. Residents across Alaska
engage in subsistence, but in rural areas it can provide most of the protein in
individual diets. The practice is often informed by millennia of hard-earned
traditional knowledge about the land and, especially for Alaska Native people,
it is central to cultural identity.
The
diversity, abundance and nutritional value of Alaska’s food resources are
remarkable and range from crab and salmon to moose and caribou, along with a
seemingly infinite array of berries and other wild plants. For Alaska Natives,
it also includes legally protected harvesting of marine mammals such as walrus,
whales and seals. Combined, these foods staple together Northern diets,
providing the nutrition that both builds young minds and keeps elders warm.
Subsistence,
which Congress first protected with the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act,
passed 50 years ago this month, is sometimes mischaracterized as a lifestyle.
But for many it is an economic imperative, especially in communities lying far
from the continent’s road system. These include dozens of Arctic communities along
Alaska’s far western and northern coasts, including Nome, Kotzebue, and
Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow). Here, store-bought food can be prohibitively
expensive, delivery is slow and healthy options are limited, making food from
the land an essential resource.
But
especially in Arctic Alaska, climate change is upending the subsistence supply
chain by rearranging every major element of the landscape, including its
vegetation, soil, snow cover, ocean temperatures, wildfire regimes and more.
Scientists and community members say it is swiftly turning the landscape into
something unrecognizable, which is disrupting the predictability of weather,
ice and other conditions long tied to subsistence.
Consider
the loss of sea ice as just one cascading example. Although autumn 2021 saw
some of the best seasonal sea ice formation in a decade, steady declines since
1990 have created vast areas of open ocean. Along with skyrocketing water
temperatures, it is believed to be connected in complex ways to fatal illnesses
in seals, dramatic shifts in fisheries central to both human and marine mammal
diets, as well as multi-year seabird die-offs, which have killed hundreds of
thousands of kittiwakes, puffins, murres and others.
It is
implicated in more insidious change, too. Scientists working off Alaska’s
Chukchi Sea coast recently discovered massive beds of the marine algae that
triggers deadly red tides, which could further disrupt northern ecosystems. The
phenomenon sparks fish and marine mammal die-offs and fishery closures in other
parts of the world but is not historically known to occur in Arctic waters.
Scientists have stopped short of predicting imminent red tides, but they say
the collapse of Arctic sea ice now heightens their likelihood.
All these
changes impact traditional foods, from bird eggs to shellfish to marine mammals
and beyond. But the concurrent effect on commercial fisheries, like this year’s
sharp cutbacks on Alaska’s famed crab fisheries, also threaten economic losses.
Those, in turn, impede residents’ ability to maintain boats and other equipment
necessary for subsistence.
Declining
sea ice also erodes vital wintertime travel routes, curtailing affordable
transit between communities and erasing the access that hunters rely on to
reach fish, seals, walrus, whales and other resources. It has also made coastal
communities susceptible to stronger wave action, which tears away at the land,
threatening schools, homes and even entire villages.
All that is
just from declining sea ice. Similar chain reactions can be traced through
thawing permafrost, warming rivers and changing precipitation patterns. The
latter was highlighted over Christmas weekend, when a major rain-on-snow event
struck the Fairbanks area. It destroyed the roof of one community’s only food
store, with the next closest option 70 miles away. But its long-term effect is
likely more hardship for declining caribou, another key human food source,
which struggle to survive when ice hardens the snowpack.
Just like
the many Americans whose lives are disrupted by strengthening wildfires,
droughts and storms, Alaskans are resilient and resourceful people. But their
experience at the leading edge of the climate crisis is a warning to the rest
of the country, especially as Congress ends yet another year without adequately
acting on climate.
Tim Lydon
has worked on the public lands in the West and Alaska for three decades, in
both commercial guiding and federal lands management. His is the author of
“Passage to Alaska, Two Months Sea Kayaking the Inside Passage.” Follow
him @TimLydonAK.
Warmest December 31 on record as thermometers hit 14.4 degrees
FRIDAY,
DECEMBER 31, 2021 - 07:50
Warmest December 31 on record as thermometers hit
14.4 degrees
The
temperature in De Bilt, Utrecht rose to 14.4 degrees Celsius during the early
morning hours on Friday, making it officially the warmest New Year's Eve on
record, according to Weer.nl. The previous record was set in 2017, when it was
13.7 degrees at the country’s most central weather station.
It was even
milder at other locations in the country, according to Weer.nl. The thermometer
rose to 14.6 degrees in Westdorpe, Zeeland.
The high
temperature record was also broken on Thursday, and Weer.nl expects more
records will be broken on New Year’s Day. The temperature should be about 11
degrees at the turn of the new year in some parts of the country, and it should
be no colder than 10 degrees everywhere else.
Later in
the morning on January 1, the maximum temperature will be 14 degrees. The
current official record for January 1 stands at 12.9 degrees.
Reporting
by ANP.
Hotter or colder: What changed the climate in 2021?
Hotter or colder: What changed the climate in 2021?
Key moments in a year of conflicting climate signals.
BY KARL
MATHIESEN AND ZIA WEISE
December
28, 2021 10:39 am
https://www.politico.eu/article/climate-change-cop26-carbon-energy-2021/
2021 was a
breakout year for climate change.
Huge
political, media and public attention was devoted to discussions on halting
global warming. But despite all the noise, carbon emissions surged back to near
pre-pandemic levels in one of the biggest single-year increases ever recorded.
Here's a
look at what happened this year that may help cool the planet and steps that
could turn up the heat.
Colder
EU Climate
Law
The EU's
landmark Climate Law enshrines the commitment to reach climate neutrality by
2050 into law — a landmark for such a large economic bloc. The deal also raised
the EU’s 2030 goal for cutting emissions below 1990 levels from 40 percent to
55 percent. That gave the EU a calling card for its diplomacy in the lead-up to
the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow. As former German Environment Minister
Svenja Schulze said at the time, the key is that the EU’s efforts are now
“irreversible.”
COP26
Like all
U.N. climate conferences, the 26th edition was an exercise in expectations
management. With the media-obsessed British government in charge, the effort to
frame and reframe the conference became an exhausting distraction from the
actual achievements — of which there were some.
The
pressure on countries to raise their climate goals ahead of the Glasgow talks
brought major new commitments from most big emitting economies. The final pact
will increase pressure on countries with emissions plans that are not in line
with the Paris Agreement to review and raise them next year.
The U.K.
claimed the talks kept the possibility of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees
Celsius in reach. That view requires a fair degree of optimism and a belief in
the broad credibility of the pledges made in Scotland. Already there have been
examples of backsliding. One of the most vaunted single announcements — Indian
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promise to boost clean energy and reach net-zero
by 2070 — still hasn’t been lodged with the U.N. as an official new climate
goal, more than six weeks later.
The EU’s
carbon price
For years,
the EU’s Emissions Trading System — which puts a price on CO2 emissions in
energy-intensive sectors with the aim of making fossil fuels less attractive —
was considered a largely toothless tool. But market reforms and signs the EU
was stepping up climate action sent the ETS on a steady upward curve. The price
doubled from about €30 per ton in January to €60 in the fall and higher coal
use helped push it briefly past €90 this month.
The speed
of its rise and the simultaneous energy crunch mean the carbon price “is not
triggering any immediate emission reduction,” said Ingvild Sørhus, an analyst
with Refinitiv. “But all emitters in Europe now know that the time when you had
low carbon prices is over. It gives a signal that if you are to survive in the
future, you need to actually reduce your emissions because you're exposed to an
increasing carbon price.”
Germany’s
coalition agreement
Climate change
played a major role in Germany’s election campaign. The coalition agreement
promises nothing less than a wholesale green transformation this decade,
featuring plans for a massive expansion of renewables to 80 percent of the
energy mix and moving the country’s coal phaseout from 2038 to 2030. A new
climate and economy ministry, under the leadership of the Greens, was put in
charge of the transformation. But it’s too early to say whether the new
government can fulfill its ambitious promises.
Court orders
It’s been a
big year for climate court cases. Germany’s constitutional court forced the
outgoing government to amend its climate law with a higher target for reducing
emissions, with judges arguing that it violated the basic rights and freedoms
of future generations by placing the burden of reducing emissions on them.
A Dutch
court then ruled that oil giant Shell had to cut its emissions. And following
an October court ruling, France has until the end of 2022 “to repair the
damage” of its failure to meet its own climate targets.
Attribution
science
When the
U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the first part
of its latest summary of the state of climate science in August, a prominent
part of the report was attribution science, a new development linking climate
change to single weather events. In a summer marked by record heat, drought and
floods around the world, attribution scientists were able to provide immediate
forensics on the wildest extremes.
China
cancels coal (abroad)
In his
speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Chinese President Xi Jinping effectively
ended the practice of states financing the construction of coal power stations
beyond their own borders. After Japan and South Korea had promised to end
international coal financing earlier in the year, Xi said China — by far the
largest backer — “will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad.”
The Chinese
pipeline of projects is so large that the potential emissions savings, if they
are canceled, could be as consequential as the EU reaching net-zero by 2050,
the International Energy Agency (IEA) later said.
Hotter
Joe Manchin
A question
followed U.S. President Joe Biden and his climate envoy John Kerry around the
world in 2021: What if you can’t pass laws to implement your new climate goals?
That got a lot harder to answer the Sunday before Christmas when West Virginia
Senator Joe Manchin said "no” to Biden’s $1.7 trillion spending bill. The
legislation includes $555 billion in climate provisions and is viewed as the
most credible way for the U.S. to deliver on its 2030 emissions goal and also
to lock in a future Republican president — Donald Trump or otherwise.
Manchin,
who holds an effective veto in the 50-50 Senate, reportedly objected to
non-climate elements of the bill. That leaves Democrats scrambling to find
other ways to pass the measures and salvage their climate ambitions at home and
their credibility abroad.
Pandemic
recovery is a missed opportunity
Throughout
2020, the refrain among climate activists and leaders such as U.N. boss António
Guterres was that the pandemic and its stimulus provided a one-time get out of
climate jail card. They petitioned governments to direct a portion of the
trillions spent to keep economies afloat into clean energy.
The EU
followed through, earmarking 37 percent of its €723.8 billion recovery facility
for climate spending. But other parts of the world didn’t. By December, G20
governments had spent about €45 billion more on supporting fossil fuel energy
sources than clean ones, according to Energy Policy Tracker. As a result of
this and the gas crisis (see below), the IEA said coal power generation will
jump by 9 percent in 2021 to a new all-time high.
Energy
prices
Coal power
is also having a moment thanks to surging gas prices. Europe, in particular,
has seen a perfect energy price storm, fueled by insufficient supply, market
design flaws and a bad year for wind power generation. Despite a record-high
ETS price, coal became a cheap and attractive option. Those power prices also
led to political pressure from some EU capitals for Brussels to tone down its
climate measures.
Energy
Charter Treaty
A post-Cold
War-era deal that protects energy investments from government intervention has
governments across Europe worried. They are concerned about its power to land
them with major settlement costs if they pursue aggressive climate policies.
The Dutch government was sued this year by coal plant operators Uniper and RWE
over its coal phaseout plans.
Energy
Charter reforms pushed by the EU have so far found little traction with other
members of the treaty and some EU capitals — including Madrid, Paris, Warsaw
and Athens — want to abandon the treaty. The problem is that countries
withdrawing from the deal could still be subject to lawsuits for 20 years.
The G20
The Italian
government was exceedingly proud of the climate outcomes of its G20 presidency
in 2021, producing the most forthright backing for action on climate change
ever from the group of major economies. The problem is that the bar was so low.
The group remains split between advanced economies, pushing hard for greater
efforts, and fossil fuel-dependent developing countries.
G20 members are responsible for around four-fifths of global emissions. If China, India, Turkey, Russia, Saudi Arabia and others continue to slow walk, climate goals will sli
