Thai students and dancing dinosaurs rally in Bangkok

Issued on: 21/11/2020 - 

Thai protestors dressed as dinosaurs rally with students for reform of the education system Mladen ANTONOV AFP

Bangkok (AFP)

Thousands of high school students upset about Thailand's lacklustre education system rallied alongside protestors dressed as dancing dinosaurs in Bangkok on Saturday.

It was the first mass gathering in the kingdom since Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha warned authorities would use all laws, including harsh royal defamation charges, to crack down on pro-democracy protesters.

Since August, emboldened by a broader political protest movement sweeping Thailand, a group called the "Bad Students" have campaigned for the resignation of Education Minister Nataphol Teepsuwan, demanded cultural change, equality, a curriculum overhaul and relaxation of strict rules.

Ahead of Saturday's rally three student leaders were summoned for police questioning and Thai Lawyers for Human Rights said there were now four juveniles facing potential prosecution.

But despite the threats the youngsters remained defiant as they danced alongside half a dozen T-Rex characters representing Thailand's "political dinosaurs" and bounced around giant "asteroid" balls.

"We have to come out and make our voices heard to force change," Leaf, 15 told AFP.

Many students wore coloured wrist bands to indicate they were underage, so older protesters could protect them.

"School is not a safe place (for girls)," one student's placard said.

Hundreds of protesters at the rally wore rubber duck hair clips, a reference to pro-democracy protesters using inflatable pool toys to shield themselves from police water cannon and tear gas on Tuesday.

- Anger over poor teacher quality -

Many protesters were upset families have to fork out extra money on tutoring because of the poor quality of teaching.

"I spend so much for my daughter's tutoring fees and need to enrol her in a faraway school so that she could get a good education. It should not be like this," said Supaporn Pratumrat, 41, who attended the rally with her daughter.

Izzy 18, went to the US on an student exchange last year and said students there were able to have fun and pursue their hobbies after school but many Thai students don't have that luxury.

"In Thailand some students go to extra classes from 4pm to 9pm," he told AFP.

Since July, Thailand has been rocked by youth-led protests demanding a new constitution, unprecedented calls to reform the untouchable monarchy, and for Prime Minister Prayut, who came to power in a 2014 coup, to resign.

Police used tear gas and water cannon against protesters outside parliament on Tuesday and 55 people were injured including six people shot during scuffles between democracy activists and hardline royalists.

A day later protesters graffitied the outside the national police headquarters and threw paint at the complex.

The government's decision to give police the green light to pursue royal defamation charges against pro-democracy protesters is likely to increase tensions ahead of the next major rally scheduled for Wednesday.

"Destroying public property, unprecedented violation of the monarchy, I personally cannot accept this," Prayut said on Friday night.

In Thailand lese majeste charges are routinely interpreted to include any criticism of the monarchy -- including content posted or shared on social media.

Anyone convicted of defaming, insulting or threatening the king, queen, heir or regent faces between three and 15 years in prison on each count.

Meanwhile, Berlin is keeping an eye on events in Thailand.

"If the democratic movement was crushed by the army or the security forces, and victims were killed, then I do not believe that the king of Thailand can continue to stay in Germany," German Social Democratic parliamentarian Nils Schmidt told German channel ARD.

New French law banning images of police sparks civil rights concerns, protests

Issued on: 21/11/2020 

Protesters in Paris against France's proposed security law. 

© Stephane de Sakutin, AFP
Text by:Romain BRUNET

France’s parliament voted to approve a controversial law Friday that will ban the publication of images of on-duty police officers as well as expand the use of surveillance drones and police powers. Journalists’ groups, human rights activists and unions – including Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty International’s French branch – organised protests in Paris and other French cities on Saturday.

Article 24 of France’s new security bill would make it a criminal offence for anyone to disseminate images that might “harm the physical or mental integrity” of police officers. People found guilty could be punished by a year in prison or a fine of up to €45,000.

Critics of the bill say it threatens to make it more difficult for journalists and others to report on police brutality or other infractions, with journalists’ groups, human rights activists and unions organising the protests in French cities.

Facing a backlash, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin tried to assuage public fears in comments to parliament on Friday. Journalists and members of the public can still “film and broadcast” images of police officers even “without blurring their faces”, he said. It is only when the images are shared with comments “intended to harm” or incite violence that they would fall afoul of the new law.

Media organisations had criticised Darmanin for telling a press conference on Wednesday that journalists covering protests or demonstrations should inform the authorities beforehand to “avoid confusion” if police are forced to respond to violence.

Alice Thourot, an MP for President Emmanuel Macron’s La République En Marche (LREM) party and the co-author of the controversial clause, also tried to quell concern.

“The bill will not jeopardise in any way the rights of journalists or ordinary citizens to inform the public,” Thourot told French daily Le Figaro, adding that it only “outlaws any calls for violence or reprisals against police officers on social media”.

MPs are scheduled to vote on the bill as a whole on Tuesday. It will then go to the Senate, France's upper house.

In response to claims that Article 24 would have unintended consequences on press freedom, the government added an amendment ahead of Friday’s vote specifying that the clause “will not be an obstacle to the right to inform the public”. The offence outlined by the text “will only target the dissemination of images clearly aimed at harming a police officer’s or soldier’s physical or psychological integrity”, the amendment reads.

But the article’s passage has raised eyebrows, coming as it does after a summer of mass public protests against police brutality and accusations of systemic racism.

Activists have alleged that police brutality was responsible for the killing of Adama Traoré, a Frenchman of Malian origin who died after his arrest in the Paris suburbs in 2016. An autopsy commissioned by his family said that he died of asphyxiation. The official health report released in June said he died of heart failure, clearing three police officers of responsibility.

Several instances of alleged police violence were revealed by videos broadcast on social media. Cédric Chouviat, a delivery driver in Paris, suffered a heart attack and died in January after police put him in a chokehold. Several Yellow Vest protesters were bludgeoned inside a Burger King in Paris in December 2018. Images of both incidents originally surfaced on social media, prompting public outrage.

‘A freedom-killing law’?

Anne-Sophie Simpère, an activist for Amnesty International France, said the amendment is not enough and that the government should withdraw Article 24 in its totality.

“It is a freedom-killing law that would threaten freedom of expression, the right to demonstrate and the right to privacy,” she said.

France’s official rights ombudsman, Claire Hédon, also said Article 24 should be withdrawn, describing it as “unnecessary”. She added that several other clauses in the text were “likely to contravene human rights”, including the right to privacy.

Article 22 of the security bill would allow police greater latitude in the use of surveillance drones. Simpère said drones could now be used in more circumstances that are not subject to regulation. The development of facial recognition technology “raises further concerns”, she said, adding that drones should only be used “if there is a legitimate need and a clear objective”.

Amendments to ban the use of facial recognition technology in drones were rejected on Friday morning.

Addressing parliament, Thourot pointed out that there is currently no “legal framework” regulating the use of drones. Article 22 will allow them to be used only by security forces for purposes including the “prevention of terrorist acts”, she said.

Another clause in the security bill would give local police new powers, including the ability to record minor offences such as traffic violations and to carry out identity checks. Currently, only the national police has these powers.

The security bill would also reform regulations of the private security sector, notably ahead of the 2023 Rugby World Cup in France and the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. In particular, it aims to “drastically reduce” the number of subcontractors in the industry to tackle what Thourot has called the “Uberisation” of the industry. The legislation would encourage the employment of retired police officers by allowing them to combine their pensions with pay from security work.

In addition, the bill would allow the broadcast of recordings from police body cameras so that social media videos of police officers could be cross-referenced with them. Supporters of the proposed legislation say that videos of police that are posted on social media are often truncated and frequently present the actions of officers without the necessary context.

Stanislas Gaudon, the head of the Alliance police union, told FRANCE 24 that such images would help protect police who are carrying out their duties.

“We hope to use image body cameras in these instances to show the truth about what happened” when there are claims of improper behaviour by police officers, he said.

Rights groups, press freedom advocates protest against French security bill

Issued on: 21/11/2020 -

A woman holds a placard reading 'Democracy in danger' during a rally to protest against the 'global security' draft law seeking to limit filming of police officers on duty, near the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, on November 21, 2020. 

© Stephane de Sakutin, AFP

Text by:NEWS WIRES

Thousands protested in Paris and other French cities Saturday against a security bill that would outlaw the publication of images of on-duty police officers. The government says the law is aimed at protecting officers from retribution while critics say it would violate press freedom and the ability to document police abuses. 
ADVERTISING


Rights campaigners and journalists organizations staged street protests in Paris and other French cities on Saturday against a security bill that they say would be a violation of the freedom of information.

The proposed measure would create a new criminal offense of publishing images of police officers with intent to cause them harm.

The government says it is intended to protect police officers from online calls for violence. Critics fear that, if enacted, the measure would endanger journalists and other people who take videos of officers at work, especially during violent demonstrations.

Saturday's protests were called by Reporters without Borders, Amnesty International France, the Human Rights League, journalists’ unions and other groups.

Some slogans from the #StopLoiSecuriteGlobale rally:
“your laws, our shame”
“your weapons, our cameras”
“blurred democracy” and... “say cheese”. pic.twitter.com/vkSCg7ETgz— mike woods (@mawoods) November 21, 2020

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and France’s human rights ombudsman have also voiced concerns this week over risks that the measure would undermine fundamental rights.

In response to the criticism, Prime Minister Jean Castex announced Thursday an amendment to the measure in order to specify that it "won’t impede the freedom of information” and that it will focus only on images broadcast with “clear” intent to harm a police officer.
Protestors in Paris are angry at controversial new security law


Offenders would face a maximum penalty of up to one year in prison and a 45,000-euro ($53,000) fine.

The proposed law is championed by lawmakers of President Emmanuel Macron’s party, which has a majority in the National Assembly.

Lawmakers are scheduled to vote Tuesday on the bill, which also includes other security measures. It will then go to the Senate.

   

A College Student Behind A Massively Popular Paint-Mixing TikTok Page Was Fired From Sherwin-Williams

Tony Piloseno even used his wildly successful and viral TikToks as part of a digital marketing pitch to the company to appeal to younger members of Gen Z.

Tanya Chen BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on November 18, 2020, at 4:46 p.m. ET

An Ohio University senior who worked a part-time job at a local Sherwin-Williams store was fired after the company discovered his popular paint-mixing TikTok channel @tonesterpaints, which currently has over 1.2 million followers.

Tony Piloseno said that for months he'd been pointing to his viral account as an example of what Sherwin-Williams could do on social media and by marketing their brand to a younger audience.

But instead it led corporate personnel to investigate his social media account, and they ultimately fired him after determining he was making "these videos during [his] working hours" and with company equipment.

According to termination papers Piloseno provided to BuzzFeed News, the official offense the company handed down to him was "gross misconduct," which included the offenses of "wasting properties [and] facilities," and "seriously embarrass[ing] the Company or its products."

Shortly after this story was published, the company spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that it was due to a "customer complaint" about Piloseno's TikToks that they terminated his employment.

Piloseno told BuzzFeed News he did admit to filming TikToks while he was already mixing paints for customers when he first started posting to his channel in December 2019. But, as his page grew, he committed to purchasing cans of paint with his employee discount.

"They first accused me of stealing — I told them I purchased all my paint," he said. "They made me answer a bunch of questions like when I was doing this, where, if there was anyone in the store while I was doing [filming]. There was never anyone with me while I doing it."

Piloseno said he had been working at the Sherwin-Williams store in Athens, Ohio, for three years as a senior sales associate when he began recording and posting his paint mixing to @tonesterpaints.

"I'd just downloaded TikTok, and the videos took off almost immediately. It was just me doing a few customer orders here and there," he said. "When we were slow, I was making videos showing the process of it all."

The sixth paint-mixing video @tonesterpaint ever shared gained a million views.

Piloseno said he fell in love with paint, and mixing colors, when he started work at his local Sherwin-Williams.

"I loved the job immediately," he said. "I love how colors blend together, what goes with what... It’s hard to explain, but I really enjoy mixing paint. I like showing what stuff it can do."

Sometime in March or April, Piloseno said he began assessing his TikTok account as "as a marketing opportunity for Sherwin-Williams." He created a pitch deck "to show the company how TikTok has a younger base" and "to basically develop brand awareness through TikTok."

He said he presented the pitch to his manager and a sales rep at the store, who "loved" it, and he was given a contact in the marketing department of the company's headquarters.

"I emailed [the marketing contact] about two or three times, I even reached out to him on LinkedIn. It took two months to get a response from him," Piloseno said. "He basically told me that there wasn't really any promotions going on so there wasn't a need to see the presentation."

However, a month later, he received a call from the "loss prevention" department about his social media account. Apparently, the combination of his marketing pitch and calls the company would get about experimental paint mixing inspired by his TikToks had put the company on high alert.

The company specifically received a high volume of inquiries about mixing blueberries into their paint because of this viral TikTok.

He was fired in late July. His formal termination letter signed by the district manager stated that Piloseno admitted to making TikToks during "working hours and sometimes after work."


"At times in making the videos, you used company tint machines while both on the clock/and off the clock for your personal use," the letter went on to say.

"Upon conclusion of our investigation, it has been determined you are in violation of several gross misconduct policies," the district manager wrote.

Piloseno was baffled. "I never got a chance to tell my side of the story. I thought an HR person would call me about it — I never even talked to my district manager," he said. "I was pretty pissed at first, but there was nothing I could really do."

The company told BuzzFeed News on Wednesday that a "customer's concerns" is what launched their investigation, and what ultimately led to their decision to let him go "due to multiple company policy violations."

"While we don’t discuss the details of employee matters publicly, what I can tell you is that we were made aware of the TikTok videos produced by Anthony Piloseno through a customer complaint," said Julie Young, the vice president of global corporate communications. "We take all complaints seriously and thoroughly investigated the customer’s concerns. Following the investigation, Mr. Piloseno was let go in July 2020 due to multiple Company policy violations."

Piloseno has since shared what happened to him publicly. For the past few months, he's continued to film paint-mixing TikToks in a friend's basement.

"I bought myself a light box. I bought some empty gallons at Lowe's — I basically started shopping at Lowe's afterward," he added.

In response to what happened to him, @tonesterpaint's fans believe Sherwin-Williams missed out on a major opportunity to expand their customer base.


"They FIRED YOU?? It's 2020 and companies still don't understand the benefit of digital/social marketing," one person commented in response to his news.

Piloseno said he enjoyed his job and colleagues but hopes the company takes a different approach in the future.

"I know they have a lot of employees that might not have as much influence or say, but you got to hear them out if they have an idea," he said.

Despite how big his account has grown, he only makes money on a few promotional opportunities here and there because he's not a part of TikTok's Creator Fund. But he said he does hope his page can sustain a full-time income one day.

"I'm working on making a logo; I just bought a domain name to make my own website," he said. "I'm hoping to sell my own merchandise and my own paint colors."

TIK TOK VIDEOS https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tanyachen/college-student-behind-a-massively-popular-paint-mixing

UPDATE
November 18, 2020.
This post has been updated with statements from Sherwin-Williams headquarters.


Tanya Chen is a social news reporter for BuzzFeed and is based in Chicago.

Senators introduce legislation to block $23.7B arms sale to UAE

U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., seen arriving at the Senate Chambers in September, is one of three senators that said Thursday they will introduce legislation to stop a series of weapons sales to UAE that was announced by the Trump administration last week. File Photo by Ken Cedeno/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 19 (UPI) -- A bipartisan group of lawmakers has introduced legislation to block the Trump administration's effort to expedite the sale of $23.7 billion worth of military equipment to the United Arab Emirates.

Last week, the State Department approved three possible weapons deals, totaling $23.37 billion, to the UAE, including $10.4 billion for 50 F-35A aircraft.

The deal prompted some in the Senate to ask the State Department to certify that it "does not diminish Israel's qualitative military edge and poses no vulnerabilities to U.S. military systems and technology."

On Wednesday, Sens. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said they plan to introduce four separate Joint Resolutions of Disapproval rejecting the administration's effort to equip the country with the munitions.

A press release from the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations said the administration "circumvented the informal congressional review process that grants the Congressional committees of jurisdiction time to ensure proposed arms sales of this magnitude are consistent with U.S. values, national security objectives, and the safety of our allies."

"There are a number of outstanding concerns as to how these sales would impact the national security interests of both the United States and of Israel," Menendez said in the release.

"As a result, Congress is once again stepping in to serve as a check to avoid putting profit over U.S. national security and that of our allies, and to hopefully prevent a new arms race in the Middle East," Menendez said.

RELATED Senate raises concern about potential $24B sale of F-35s, Reapers to UAE

The administration also refused to respond to Congressional inquiries about potential national security risks related to the sale, the senators said.

"The UAE has violated past arms sales agreements, resulting in U.S. arms ending up in the arms of dangerous militia groups, and they have failed to comply with international law in Libya and Yemen," Murphy said.

"A sale this large and this consequential should not happen in the waning days of a lame duck presidency, and Congress must take steps to stop this dangerous transfer of weapons," Murphy said.

RELATED State Department approves $23.37B in weapons sales to UAE, including 50 F-35s

The press release includes a link to a letter Menendez and Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., sent to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper in October with questions about the potential sale.

Sentinel-6 to help NASA track climate change's effects on oceans


Saturday morning NASA plans to launch the Sentinel-6 satellite, which is expected to help scientists better measure sea levels, among other weather and climate patterns. File Photo by NOAA/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 20 (UPI) -- While NASA has been using satellites to measure the height of the ocean for the last 28 years, the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite is slated to offer greater precision than ever before.

Sentinel-6, jointly developed by NASA, the European Space Agency, the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites and NOAA, is set to launch Saturday at 12:17p.m. EST from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The satellite will use a trio of instruments to calculate its position and distance above the ocean's surface as the satellite follows its polar orbit.

"It's going to be a new star in the sky, giving us the best possible measurements of sea level rise, ocean waves and wind," Craig Donlon, Sentinel-6 mission scientist with ESA, said during a press conference on Friday.

To measure the height of sea surface, Sentinel-6 will use its state-of-the-art Poseidon-4 radar altimeter to bounce a radar pulse off the top of the ocean and measure the time it takes for the pulse to return to the satellite.

Because water vapor in the atmosphere can influence the speed of the radar pulse, a second instrument, the Advanced Microwave Radiometer for Climate, will measure water vapor, allowing the altimeter to properly calibrate its measurements.

In addition to measuring the height of the ocean surface, Sentinel-6's altimeter will be able to calculate the angle at which radar pulses bounce off the ocean surface, which will help scientists monitor the height of ocean waves.

The instrument will also be able to measure the roughness of the ocean surface, data that will allow researchers to keep tabs on ocean winds.

Sentinel-6 will follow the same orbit as its predecessor, as well its successor, Sentinel-6B, scheduled for launch in 2025. The sibling satellites will provide continuity to the effort to monitor changes to Earth's sea surface topography.

"Sea level rise isn't going to go away any time soon, so we have to keep measuring it, and the longer the record, the better," said Josh Willis, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich project scientist and researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Scientists at NASA and NOAA will use data from a variety of other satellites and surface-level instruments to provide context for the data collected by Sentinel-6.

"It's when we combine altimetry observations with observations from our gravity-measuring missions and so forth that we can see, not only that sea levels are rising, but also how much of that change is coming from melting ice sheets and glaciers and how much is coming from thermal expansion of the oceans," said Karen St. Germain, director of the Earth Science Division at NASA.

Though global warming reports often focus on changes in air temperature, the majority of the sun's energy is absorbed by the ocean. That energy is transferred into Earth's atmosphere only later.

"Global warming is really ocean warming," Willis said.

Warming isn't happening uniformly everywhere, and because the ocean expands as it warms, researchers will be able to use Sentinel-6 observations to more precisely monitor where the ocean is warming fastest.

"Because 70 percent of earth's surface is covered by the ocean, we're literally watching the shape of the planet change before our very eyes," Willis said.

In addition to helping scientists keep long-term records of sea-level rise, Sentinel-6 data will also help scientists more accurately model and predict weather patterns.

Its ability to detect areas of taller, warmer water will be particular useful to scientists working to predict the paths and intensities of hurricanes, as well as to research studying the influence of El Nino on weather patterns around the world.

Another instrument, the Global Navigation Satellite System-Radio Occultation, or GNSS-RO, will aid the work of meteorologists and climate scientists by intercepting the radio signals of communication satellites appearing and disappearing over Earth's horizon.

By measuring slight changes in the radio signals as they bend around the curvature of the planet, GNSS-RO will be able to extract information about temperature and humidity at different altitudes.

Sentinel-6 will carry more than just instruments.

As it orbits the Earth more than 800 miles above its surface, the satellite will carry the name and legacy of Michael Freilich, the former director of NASA's Earth Science Division who passed away earlier this year.

Freilich was instrumental in advancing efforts to monitor Earth's oceans from space.

"Mike was a leader in the field and a friend and a mentor to many of us in the earth sciences division," St. Germain said.

Survey of microbes reveals some history of Da Vinci's drawings


Researchers sampled and sequenced microbes from seven of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings, including Portrait of a "Man in Red Chalk." Photo by Guadalupe Piñar, et al./Frontiers in Microbiology

Nov. 20 (UPI) -- Studying the community of microbes living in the guts of humans and animals can help scientists answer all kinds of biological and evolutionary questions, providing insights into the links between diet, environment and health.

But what can a microbiome say about a piece of art?

That's what an international team of researchers, including museum curators and bioinformaticians, wanted to find out when they sequenced the microbes living on seven different 15th century drawings of Leonardo da Vinci.

The results -- published Friday in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology -- revealed a surprising dominance of bacteria over fungi. Previously, researchers assumed fungi dominate the colonization of paper-based art.

As such, fungi and their biodeterioration potential are often the primary focus of scientists working to preserve or restore pieces of art.

Researchers suspect many of microbes that make up the bacterial community found on the five drawings were introduced by human handlers and restoration workers through the decades. But they estimate some of the bacteria was deposited by insects -- microbial signatures from 15th century fly excrement.

Scientists were also able to identify microbial signatures consistent with the drawings' geographic origins, though research suggests these geographic localization patterns are linked with modern museums and storage facilities, not 15th century Italy or Da Vinci's studio.

"The sensitivity of the Nanopore sequencing method offers a great tool for the monitoring of objects of art," lead study author Guadalupe Piñar said in a news release.

"It allows the assessment of the microbiomes and the visualization of its variations due to detrimental situations. This can be used as a bio-archive of the objects' history, providing a kind of fingerprint for current and future comparisons," said Piñar, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna.

It's not the first time microbes have helped scientists study the history of ancient art. Researchers have previously used microbiome sequencing to identify the animal origin of the skins used for ancient parchments.

In 2019, Piñar and her colleagues used Nanopore sequencing to identify the likely origins and storage conditions of a trio of ancient statues confiscated from smugglers

Humans simultaneously evolved the ability to use tools, teach tool usage


To understand the role of teaching in the development and improvement of tools, researchers recruited people to build paper boats and baskets made of pipe cleaners using different types of learning. Photo by University of Exeter


Nov. 18 (UPI) -- The ability to sustain technological improvement across multiple generations, a phenomenon called "cumulative cultural evolution," was key to the success of the human species, but its origins remain a mystery.

New research suggests the human ability to teach was key to the process of cumulative cultural evolution.

In a new paper, published this week in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers at the University of Exeter contend that natural selection favored humans capable of both using complex tools and teaching others how to do the same.

According to researchers, the two abilities, using tools and teaching tool usage, likely evolved simultaneously.

"Humans have an unrivaled ability to pass knowledge down the generations," senior study author Alex Thornton said in a news release.

"Traditional theories assumed that cumulative cultural evolution requires specialized processes, like teaching, to transmit information accurately, but this cannot explain why these processes evolved in the first place," said Thornton, a researcher at Exeter's Center for Ecology and Conservation in Cornwall, England.

For their study, scientists recruited hundreds of participants to form creation "chains."

Half of the creation chains produced a simple tool, a boat made of waterproof paper, while the other chains of participants created a more complex tool, a basket made of pipe cleaners. Both tools were used to carry marbles -- the more marbles, the better.

Each chain yielded ten generations of technological improvements, or design iterations.

In each chain, participants were able to either look at the tool made by the previous generation, watch the creation of the previous generation's tool or talk to the maker of the previous design iteration.

The three different forms of communication allowed some level of teaching to inform subsequent design iterations.

"Simple and complex tools generally improved down the generations, and for simple tools this improvement was about the same in all three study conditions," said study co-author Amanda Lucas, researcher at the University of Exeter.

"With complex tools, teaching consistently led to more improvement compared to other conditions. Teaching seemed to be particularly useful in allowing new, high-performing designs to be transmitted," said Lucas, a researcher at the University of Exeter.

Researchers say their creation chains involved a diverse range of people from the Cornwall community, from club sports captains and museum curators to librarians and community gardeners.

"This meant that our study represented a diversity of ages, backgrounds and skills, which is important as many of these types of experiments, that intend to investigate something essential about being human, recruit a narrower sample of university students only," Lucas said.

The findings suggest there is something essentially human about not just technological innovation, but the act of teaching.

"Our findings point to an evolutionary feedback loop between tool-making and teaching," Thornton said. "This suggests that our ancestors could have started to make modest cumulative improvements to simple tools without the need for teaching, but as tools became more complex, teaching started to become advantageous."

Researchers theorize that as humans got better at teaching technological skills, more efficiently passing knowledge from generation to generation, groups were able to produce increasingly complex and effective tools.

SEE

The Part Played by Labor in the Transition From Ape to Man

www.marxists.org › marx › works › part-played-labour

It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself. ... This was the decisive step in the transition from ape to man.

Facebook Has A Rule To Stop Calls To Arms. Moderators Didn't Enforce It Ahead Of The Kenosha Shootings.

“What we learned after Kenosha is that Facebook’s call to arms policy didn’t just fail. It was never designed to function properly in the first place.”

Ryan MacBuzzFeed News Reporter

Craig SilvermanBuzzFeed News Reporter


Posted on November 16, 2020

Andrew Lichtenstein / Getty Images
A small memorial decorates a lamppost near where a 17-year-old shot and killed Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, two supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August.

In August, following a Facebook event at which two protesters were shot and killed in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Mark Zuckerberg called the company’s failure to take down the event page asking militant attendees to bring weapons “an operational mistake.” There had been a new policy established earlier that month “to restrict” the ability of right-wing militants to post or organize in groups, Facebook’s CEO said, and under that rule, the event page should have been removed.

BuzzFeed News has learned, however, that Facebook also failed to enforce a separate year-old call to arms policy that specifically prohibited event pages from encouraging people to bring weapons to intimidate and harass vulnerable individuals. Three sources familiar with the company’s content moderation practices told BuzzFeed News that Facebook had not instructed third-party content moderators to enforce a part of its call to arms policy that was first established in June 2019.


“What we learned after Kenosha is that Facebook’s call to arms policy didn’t just fail,” said Farhana Khera, the executive director of Muslim Advocates, a civil rights organization that pressured Facebook to create the rule. “It was never designed to function properly in the first place.”

“It was never designed to function properly in the first place.”


Facebook’s lack of enforcement around its call to arms policy exacerbated its failure to prevent violence in Kenosha, where, on the night of Aug. 25, armed right-wing militants heeded a call on Facebook to counterprotests against the police shooting of a 29-year-old Black man, Jacob Blake. It also shows that while Facebook touts its stated policies, its enforcement of those rules can be haphazard and hamstrung by internal restrictions that render its army of contract moderators unable to act in the face of dangerous content and organizations.

On Monday, 15 Democratic senators sent a letter to Zuckerberg that condemned Facebook for its abetting of violence and hate speech against Muslims, as well as its failure to enforce the call to arms policy. The year-old rule was created in large part due to pressure from Muslim advocacy groups, which since 2015 had flagged multiple instances where organizers of Facebook events had advocated for followers to bring weapons to mosques and other places of worship.

“We understand that the contractors who review user-reported content are not instructed to enforce a core component of the call to arms policy,” Sens. Chris Coons, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and others wrote to Zuckerberg. “It is not apparent that Facebook ensures meaningful enforcement of this policy, and that is not acceptable.”

Two sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity told BuzzFeed News that after discussions with Facebook, they learned that the company only selectively enforced its call to arms policy. If, for example, an event page specifically asked people to bring guns to a place of worship or other high-risk locations, a third-party content moderator had the ability to disable that event.


If, however, an event page asked people to bring guns but didn’t explicitly intimidate a protected group or target a high-risk area, third-party moderators could not take action or rule against the page, those people said.

“Our global team of content reviewers are trained to enforce our policies including against hate speech, violence and incitement and dangerous organizations, but certain elements of our policies require additional context and expertise to enforce and in those cases, it is our specialized teams that review this content and take action accordingly,” said Facebook spokesperson Liz Bourgeois.

She did not specifically say why the company’s "specialized teams" did not take action on the posts calling for people to bring weapons to Kenosha.
Do you work at Facebook or another technology company? We’d love to hear from you. Reach out at ryan.mac@buzzfeed.com, craig.silverman@buzzfeed.com, or via one of our tip line channels.

The lack of enforcement on a portion of the call to arms policy, which was introduced in June 2019 as the company was undergoing a civil rights audit, is part of the reason why the Kenosha Facebook event stayed online long after it led to the shooting deaths of two protesters. As BuzzFeed News previously reported, Facebook users had flagged the event page, “Armed Citizens to Protect our Lives and Property,” 455 times ahead of its start date on the night of Aug. 25, but four moderators had deemed it “non-violating” of any Facebook rules.

During a companywide meeting in late August following the night of violence, Zuckerberg acknowledged the company had made a mistake in not taking the event down sooner, particularly because it violated a rule labeling right-wing militant groups as “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations” for their celebrations of violence.

The company did not catch the page despite user reports, Zuckerberg said, because the complaints had been sent to content moderation contractors who were not versed in “how certain militias” operate. “On second review, doing it more sensitively, the team that was responsible for dangerous organizations recognized that this violated the policies and we took it down.”

Zuckerberg made no mention of the call to arms policy, part of which Facebook had not instructed moderators to enforce, according to Khera. She told BuzzFeed News that shortly after the shooting deaths in Kenosha, Muslim Advocates held a call with members of Facebook’s policy, content, and dangerous organizations teams to understand what had happened.

“Based on Facebook’s response, it became clear not only that the call to arms policy should have applied to the Kenosha Guard event page, but also that the people whose job was to receive complaints about the page were not trained to enforce the policy and did not know they were supposed to escalate complaints about a call to arms,” Khera said. “As a result, when the complaints started coming in about Kenosha, the content reviewers effectively denied them and did not escalate anything.”

Facebook is now facing a lawsuit from Black Lives Matter protesters and the partner of a man who was killed in Kenosha. That suit, which was filed in September in Wisconsin federal courts, argues that Facebook was negligent in allowing the militant group Kenosha Guard to persist on its platform and ultimately create an event page.

In previous statements, Facebook said the alleged Kenosha shooter did not RSVP to the Kenosha Guard’s event and did not follow its page. It remains unclear if he viewed the page or otherwise knew about the event.

“It seems like only a matter of time before this happens again,” said Joan Donovan, the research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. “Facebook must confront its business model that favors scale over public health and well-being.”

“Facebook must confront its business model that favors scale over public health and well-being.”


On Tuesday, Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey are expected to testify in a Senate Judiciary hearing focused on exploring censorship and platform moderation on the world’s largest social networks. With their letter, the 15 Democratic senators are signaling Facebook’s leader may be in for plenty of questioning — and criticism — during the event.


“As members of Congress who are deeply disturbed by the proliferation of this hate speech on your platform, we urge you to do more,” they wrote.

Harvard lecturer and content moderation researcher evelyn douek commended the senators’ letter for attempting to highlight the gap between Facebook’s policy announcements and its applications of those policies.

“We've gotten to a place where for many of the major platforms, their policies on paper are mostly fine and good,” she said. “But the question is always, always ‘Can and will they enforce them effectively?’”

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Facebook Said It Removed A Militia Event Page Threatening Violence In Kenosha. It Didn’t. Ryan Mac · Sept. 3, 2020

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“Facebook Is Hurting People At Scale”: Mark Zuckerberg’s Employees Reckon With The Social Network They’ve Built  Ryan Mac · July 23, 2020

This Neo-Nazi Group Is Organizing On Facebook 

Despite A Year-Old Ban

Ukraine’s Azov movement, which the State Department calls a “nationalist hate group,” is running ads, organizing violence, and exporting its far-right ideas.

Christopher MillerBuzzFeed News Contributor


Posted on November 16, 2020

Sopa Images / SOPA Images/LightRocket via Gett
Members of the Azov movement shout slogans during the March of Patriots in Kyiv, March 2020.


Despite attempts to drive it off the platform, a violent Ukrainian far-right group with ties to American white supremacists is using Facebook to recruit new members, organize violence, and spread its far-right ideology across the world.

Although it banned the Azov movement and its leaders more than a year ago, Facebook continues to profit from ads placed by the far-right organization as recently as Monday.

Since July, Azov, which sprung up during the Russian invasion in 2014, has opened at least a dozen new Facebook pages. Alla Zasyadko, a 25-year-old member, has used one to place 82 ads on the social network, paying Facebook at least $3,726, according to the platform’s ad library. Many of the ads called for street protests against the Ukrainian government. One of the ads encourages children to sign up for a patriotic youth training course. Similar courses have included firearms training.

Zasyadko did not respond to requests for comment.

A Facebook spokesperson told BuzzFeed News, “The Azov Battalion is banned from our platforms and we remove content that represents, praises or supports them when we’re made aware of it.”

At the time this story was published, the Azov movement’s main Facebook page, listed as Ukrainian Corps — a name that resembles that of the movement’s political arm, National Corps — was still active.

Facebook has come under heavy criticism for allowing US right-wing militant organizations to organize and run ads on the platform. Some of those groups have committed violence during Black Lives Matter protests, advocated for civil war, and allegedly conspired to kidnap and kill elected political officials. Facebook said last month that it had deleted thousands of pages and groups tied to “militarized social movements.” Many of those pages and groups were taken down after BuzzFeed News brought them to Facebook’s attention.

But driving right-wing extremists from the social network has proven difficult, with many of them popping up again days or weeks after removal.


Sopa Images / SOPA Images/LightRocket via Gett
Far-right activists with the Azov movement and other groups hold a banner during the March of Patriots in Kyiv, March 2020.

Facebook banned the Azov movement, which has many members who espouse neo-Nazi beliefs, in April 2019. The company removed several pages associated with the group, including those operated by its senior members and the various branches they lead.

But since July 16, the group has been operating the new Ukrainian Corps page. The page does not try to hide that it belongs to the Azov National Corps — it openly discusses National Corps activities and leaders, links to Azov’s websites and email, and posts photos of members in uniforms at rallies and torchlight marches.

Facebook has no reason not to know that the Azov movement is dangerous. In the wake of a series of violent attacks on Roma and LGBTQ people across Ukraine by members of the National Corps and its paramilitary street wing, the National Militia, the US State Department named Azov’s National Corps a “nationalist hate group.”

Matthew Schaaf, who leads the Ukraine office of the human rights group Freedom House and has closely observed the group, said the Azov movement’s ability to mobilize people through social media poses a threat to society.

“In the last couple of years, participants of Azov-affiliated groups have used violence against vulnerable groups in Ukrainian society and threatened public officials, with social media serving as an important tool to organize these actions and share their results,” Schaaf told BuzzFeed News. “Many of these assaults are accompanied by before-and-after propagandistic posts on social media.”

Azov began in 2014 as a volunteer military battalion that helped Ukraine defend itself against an invasion by Russia and its separatist proxy forces. The battalion’s symbol is similar to that of the Wolfsangel, the insignia widely used by the German military during World War II. Although human rights groups accused the battalion of torture and war crimes during the early months of the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, in late 2014, Ukraine’s National Guard incorporated the Azov battalion into its official fold, where it was renamed the Azov regiment.

The military unit has been a favorite bogeyman of the Kremlin, with Russian President Vladimir Putin using the group to justify his attacks against Ukraine as fighting against fascism. Although the group is not broadly popular in Ukraine, its neo-Nazi links are clear. In 2010, the battalion’s founder, Andriy Biletsky, said that Ukraine ought to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen [subhumans].”


Biletsky could not be reached for comment.

While the regiment still looks to Biletsky for inspiration, he has moved into politics; he served as a member of the Ukrainian parliament from 2014 to 2019 but lost reelection. He now heads the National Corps political party, which has been largely unsuccessful at getting members into elected positions but is using social media to try to grow support. He is also one of the founders of the movement’s Intermarium project, which builds bridges to white nationalists and neo-Nazis in Western Europe and the US.

Although Facebook previously took down Intermarium pages, a new Intermarium page was created on Sept. 9. Run by the National Corps’ international secretary, Olena Semenyaka, it has been sharing news and information about far-right and neo-Nazi figures in Europe and promoting “cultural” events at its Kyiv office.

After a ban, Semenyaka too has reopened Facebook and Instagram accounts under a pseudonym.

Semenyaka did not respond to a request for comment.

Thanks in part to social media, the National Corps has made inroads with white nationalist groups in the US, including the California-based Rise Above Movement, whose members participated in 2017’s Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, but saw charges over their actions later dropped. In April 2018, RAM founder Robert Rundo visited Kyiv and took part in an Azov-organized fight club. That October, the FBI wrote that it believed Azov was involved in “training and radicalizing United States-based white supremacy organizations.”

Last month, Ukraine deported two American neo-Nazis associated with the US-based Atomwaffen Division who had attempted to set up a local branch of the group with Azov fighters to gain “combat experience.”

As Azov uses Facebook to expand beyond Ukraine’s borders, experts are growing concerned. “The use of violence and the possibility that they could muster large crowds of mostly young men ready to use violence, all of it facilitated by social media,” Schaaf said, “gives them power.”


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Christopher Miller is a Kyiv-based American journalist and editor.

Luck By Chance: Meteorite Worth Rs 9.8 Crore Comes Crashing Through Man's House in Indonesia


Screenshot from video uploaded by Josua Hutagalung.

Josua Hutagalung, a coffin-maker by profession was reportedly working outside his home in August, when a 2.1 kg precious space rock rushed through the roof of his living room in the Kolang area, North of Sumatra in Indonesia.

LAST UPDATED:NOVEMBER 19, 2020, 4:24 IST

An Indonesian man saw a meteoric rise in his fortunes after a rare type of precious meteorite smashed through his roof.

According to the local news outlet Kompas, Josua Hutagalung, a coffin-maker by profession was reportedly working outside his home in August, when a 2.1 kg precious space rock rushed through the roof of his living room in the Kolang area, North of Sumatra in Indonesia.

“The sound was so loud that parts of the house were shaking too. And after I searched, I saw that the tin roof of the house had broken,” he told the news outlet. A video of the incident shows where the meteorite made its landing in his house. The space rock had buried itself several inches in the soil due to its impact.

Watch the video here:


According to a report on the Independent, the meteorite is classified as a CM1/2 carbonaceous chondrite. It is an extremely rare variety and estimated to be 4.5 billion years old. The rare celestial drop is reportedly worth around 645 pounds per gram (approx. Rs 63,000).

Hutagalung was reportedly paid over 1 million pounds or roughly Rs 9.8 crore. He sold the rock to a specialist collector Jared Collins from the United States. Collins, in turn, reportedly re-sold it to one Jay Piatek, a fellow collector with a doctorate at the Meteor Study Center, Arizona State University.

Such a once in a lifetime incident gave Hutagalung a celebrity status locally, as dozens flocked to his house to see the heavenly rock.

He did not specify the exact amount he was paid in exchange for the meteorite. However, he indicated that the amount was over a million pounds.

The amount is reportedly equivalent to 30 years’ worth of salary for his find, with which he plans to retire and build a new church in his village.