Here is some non-basketball content I read or listened to this week that I found interesting:
-
The Plan to Use Fitbit Data to Stop Mass Shootings Is One of the Scariest Proposals Yet - “Aside from assuming a strong link between mental illness and violence, this kind of surveillance creates mistrust in the system, forcing people with mental health issues to consider whether getting help could put them on a federal watch list.”
-
Immigration panic: how the west fell for manufactured rage - “Researchers at the University of Warwick recently studied every anti-refugee attack – 3,335, over two years – in Germany. They found that among the strongest predictors of the attacks was whether the attackers are on Facebook. The social network aids the dissemination of rumours, such as that all refugees are welfare cheats or rapists; and, unmediated by gatekeepers or editors, the rumours spread, and ordinary people are roused to violence. Wherever Facebook usage rose to one standard deviation above normal, the researchers found, attacks on refugees increased by 50%. When there were internet outages in areas with high Facebook usage, the attacks dropped significantly.”