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From Vox
Why Apple’s weather app is so bad -
The last seven weekends in New York City have looked like this. | Gary Hershorn/Getty Images
Your local meteorologist is always going to be more accurate than a weather app.
For the last seven weekends in New York City, it has rained. Never during the week. Never for just an hour. Never not inconvenient. At this point it feels like the inclement weather has gone fully sentient, and knows the exact time on Friday to start ruining New Yorkers’ plans.
Over this time, this relentless weekend-only rain has also affirmed that Apple’s weather app is pretty much useless. Personally, I’ve learned that the app cannot distinguish between “light rain” and “rain,” that the percentages it spits out feel bogus, and to never trust it when it tells you what time the rain will stop. I’m not alone. My friends and coworkers also have various stories about how the app has let them down, or how sometimes it just won’t work. Some even talk about Dark Sky, a weather-forecasting app that Apple bought in 2020, with a mournful, wistful sadness, like a lost love. Apple says Dark Sky’s most beloved features have been integrated into its app, but Dark Sky fans aren’t convinced. Things were different then, they say. Things were better.
My growing frustration spurred me to find out why Apple’s weather app stinks. In speaking to experts, I was comforted by the fact that there’s actually a reason — algorithms, specifically — for my annoyance. It’s nice to be mad at something in particular. But in my search I also discovered newfound appreciation for local meteorologists and more about weather and weather forecasting than I had initially planned.
What we mean when we say Apple’s weather app stinks
My serious complaint with Apple’s weather app is that it won’t give me a straight answer when it comes to rain. Rain means wet socks, puddles, a dampness in my clothes that hangs around all day. It also means dealing with people who say, “Oh, we needed this” with a polite smile.
Rain sucks.
My needs are simple: I want to know if it’s going to rain, how much it’s going to rain, when the rain will start and when it’ll stop. Ideally, I would like to not have to go outside to check if it’s raining, because why else would I have a powerful computer in my hand if it couldn’t tell me things that were happening around me?
Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Is this man’s weather app wrong? It depends where he lives!
“The Apple weather app is not good for specifics,” says John Homenuk, the meteorologist behind NY Metro Weather. Homenuk has gained a loyal New York City following for his accurate and jaunty daily weather forecasts. “And, unfortunately, specifics is what we need if we’re planning our life. ‘Do I need a jacket tonight? Is it gonna rain when I go to sit on the rooftop later?’ It struggles with that type of stuff.”
Homenuk explained to me that Apple’s weather app, and weather apps in general, work by using algorithms to interpret data — weather models, location, current observations — culled from various sources. Other experts I spoke to said apps don’t disclose what data they’re using nor how frequently they source the data, which can lead to imprecise readings.
These algorithms also have limits. In weather forecasting, these limits show up because those equations are based on models that meteorologists understand to be imperfect.
“There’s one big model that is used not only in apps, but weather data around the United States. It’s called the GFS, the Global Forecast System,” Homenuk said, adding that the GFS tends to err on the side of speed, sometimes projecting storms going out to sea and out of the area faster than anticipated. Meteorologists who understand the GFS know its faults, and use those faults and what the GFS is predicting to provide a more accurate forecast.
“If there’s a snowstorm developing … the app could be showing that four days from now it’s going to be sunny and 45 degrees because the app’s using the GFS. But we know as human beings that this model always does this. It’s always too far out to sea with the storms, and we’ll be more careful,” Homenuk said, providing a hypothetical example.
The GFS is just one model of many, and each one has its own tendencies and errors that humans can correct for. Algorithms don’t have that kind of discernment yet, which in turn makes app predictions like precipitation and storms somewhat imprecise. Algorithms also can’t compete with the human experience of living somewhere and knowing how weather behaves in that particular area.
“Terrain can have a huge effect on how those models perform,” Jeff Givens, a meteorologist based in Durango, Colorado, told me over email. Givens’s accurate forecasts (especially when it comes to snow and storms) have garnered him a following on his extremely popular site Durango Weather Guy, because the San Juan Mountains tend to bork general weather predictions in his area. “Apps and models perform better in flat terrain.”
Given this information, it seems like weather apps perform best in places with predictable precipitation patterns, as well as places where there aren’t mountains or any kind of topographical features to skew things. People in Southern California probably do not complain about Apple’s app as much as someone in Durango or even New York City would.
Apps are great, when you put them into perspective
When I asked Alexander Stine, a professor at San Francisco State University’s earth and climate sciences department, why Apple’s weather app sucked, he scoffed at me.
“Not knowing whether it’s going to rain in an hour? I would say that’s just being fussy about where the peas are on your plate,” Stine said. “It’s an incredible technological achievement to know that it’s going to rain at all this week. I grew up in a world where weather prediction was not accurate. We didn’t have enough data. But over my lifetime, the skill of weather prediction has increased pretty astoundingly.” Talking with Stine gave me a new perspective on my gripe with weather apps. When you consider how much better these predictions have become over time, these apps feel more like an achievement of technology, instead of a point of annoyance.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
The National Weather Service does important work, like modeling weather patterns and issuing warnings. But it’s less concerned if you get rained on tonight.
Stine explained that everything we think about forecasting comes from the National Weather Service, a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Every six hours they run a simulation which then gives them information for the next few weeks. Regional offices break down that information pragmatically, with attention to past data. Weather companies (e.g. Accuweather, Weather Underground, etc.) then go and make nudges and tweaks to that information to create predictions.
“Ultimately, whatever someone’s putting on an app — they don’t have access to different information than anyone else,” Stine said. “There is not different information available to different weather predictors. They’re all using the National Weather Service.”
The models, Stine says have improved greatly as time has gone on, getting better and better every day. That’s mainly due to more and more detailed data being fed into the equations over the years, to the point where there’s more uncertainty in current satellite observations than in the forecast models themselves.
The basic idea: everyone gets their weather data from the same place, and there shouldn’t be drastic variances between what weather companies and apps are saying. Also: stop complaining.
But Stine did have a small concession. He explained that my complaints aren’t about the grand scale of weather forecasting which, as he pointed out, can have major economic and governmental impacts. My grumble, he said, is more about the trend of what he calls “now-casting” — and that’s a very different animal.
“The traditional weather forecasting problem is a problem of understanding the fluid dynamics of the entire planet,” Stine said. “Whereas the problem is if it’s gonna rain in five minutes, that’s a very localized [concern]. That’s not something that, to my knowledge, the National Weather Service is very interested in. It’s kind of neat though, and maybe you can go put on a coat, or maybe you can go out back and stick the bicycle in the garage.”
Complaining about Apple being wrong about rain in Manhattan in seven minutes when, over Stine’s lifetime (he’s 49), there have been massive developments in weather prediction does feel a little like complaining about the way the peas have been arranged on my plate. How Stine thinks about weather forecasting and how I, pre-Stine, thought about weather prediction differed in scale and scope.
But those disparate perspectives find common ground when it comes to the importance of meteorologists.
As accurate as these models and forecasts are, meteorologists are key to understanding the weather around us, how it behaves, and the places we live. Apps will never, barring some kind of future, massive technological advancement, be as good at weather prediction as the meteorologists who understand how a particular combination of physics, mathematics, and geography work.
“It’s part of understanding the value of meteorologists. And this is not me, like, trying to defend my job,” said Homenuk, of NY Metro Weather. “Human input is needed to understand the complexities of weather.”
Homenuk told me, as of the time we spoke, that he didn’t expect any rain in the forecast for New York City for Halloween. I’d check the app, but I am gonna trust him on this one.
What unites the global protests for Palestinian rights -
Protesters stage a demonstration in support of a ceasefire against the Palestinians in Gaza in the Cannon House Office Building on October 18, 2023 in Washington, DC. Members of the Jewish Voice for Peace and the IfNotNow movement staged a rally to call for a ceasefire in the Israel–Hamas war. | Alex Wong/Getty Images
In recent weeks, tens of thousands of people have marched in rallies across the world.
The protests, which vary by country or even by city, still have some common themes: They broadly condemn Israel’s military siege of Gaza, call for a ceasefire on all sides, and criticize US military aid for Israel. They have been notable in their size and scope, with demonstrations including tens of thousands of people in the US, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
There are also some takeaways that are unique to each region: In the US, the protests appear to mark an increase in public support for Palestinians compared to past conflicts. In the Middle East, where protests have previously been repressed by multiple countries in the region like Qatar, Egypt, and Morocco, it’s revealing about autocratic leaders’ political calculuses that protests are being allowed to take place at all. Some of these protests have been condemned for supporting Hamas’s horrific violence, while other rallies and organizers have actively denounced such positions and criticized the killings of both Israeli and Palestinian civilians.
In many places, the demonstrations expressing support for Palestinians share the goal of putting pressure on Israel and the Western policymakers who have thrown their support behind the Israeli government in its response to the militant political group Hamas’s October 7 attack. Separate protests in support of Israel have also been held over the past weeks, calling for the release of the roughly 200 Israeli hostages Hamas took captive during its violent incursion.
Nearly two weeks ago, Hamas launched a surprise attack into Israel, brutally killing roughly 1,400 people and seizing approximately 200, many of them civilians. In response, Israel launched an ongoing series of devastating airstrikes, and enacted a “complete siege” of Gaza, which is overseen by Hamas, keeping its roughly 2.2 million people — most of them civilians — from getting food, water, and fuel. Following external pressure, it has recently allowed in minimal humanitarian aid.
This is an outbreak of violence unlike recent ones, both in terms of the brutality of Hamas’s attack and the deadly scale and stated aims of Israel’s response. The outpouring of protests criticizing this violence — particularly those condemningIsrael’s military response — has also felt unique.
That paradigm shift helps explain why this moment of global protest can seem different — especially to audiences in the US, watching protests abroad and in New York City, Washington, DC, and Los Angeles. The US demonstrations seem to reflect shifts in public sentiment in support of Palestinian rights; for example, a March 2023 Gallup poll found for the first time that Democrats’ sympathies aligned more with Palestinians than with Israelis.
Broadly, the Gallup poll found that Americans overall are still more sympathetic with Israelis, though it documented a growing trend of support for Palestinians over time. In 2010, 15 percent of Americans said their sympathies lay more with Palestinians than Israelis in the Middle East. In 2023, that number was at 31 percent.
An October 2023 Economist/YouGov survey conducted after the Hamas attacks, however, found that sympathy for Israelis grew following the militant group’s violent incursion as sympathy for Palestinians or for both groups has declined. While 31 percent of Americans were more sympathetic to Israel in March 2023, that number went up to 48 percent in October 2023 following the attacks.
At the same time, an October 2023 poll from the progressive firm Data for Progress found that 66 percent of likely American voters strongly or somewhat agreed with the need for the US to call for a ceasefire. And an October 2023 Quinnipiac survey found that younger voters, in particular, were less likely to support the US’s plans to send military weapons to Israel, with 51 percent of registered voters between the ages of 18 and 34 disapproving of such actions.
In many other Western countries — including France, Spain, Italy, and Britain — the public has been more sympathetic to the Palestinians’ cause than Israel’s, a dynamic reaffirmed in a 2023 YouGov survey. German respondents have sympathized more with Israelis, however, a continuation of a past pattern. In the Middle East, public sentiment has also consistently favored Palestinians, and the recent military actions in Gaza have only served to spur additional outcry.
The US shift in public opinion and subsequent surge in global protests supporting Palestinians are driven by a couple of factors. In the US, the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 helped reshape conversations about racial justice, taught new leaders to mobilize, and raised broader awareness about human rights abuses. Additionally, there has been increased understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict globally due to social media and a wider range of information sources. And in recent years, there has been more scrutiny among civil rights groups of settlements in the West Bank, violence toward Palestinians in the occupied territories, and the role that US military aid is playing in this conflict. Together, these factors have contributed to a ripe environment for protest.
“You do see more people, particularly in younger generations, being willing to support Palestinian rights, who equate this stance with broader stances on a number of different issues including racial justice in the US,” Sarah Parkinson, a Johns Hopkins political scientist who is an expert in Middle East studies, tells Vox.
What protesters are calling for
There has been a lot of variation in the protests — local political contexts, regional history, what was happening in the war the day of a rally, and even individual protest speakers can shape the message significantly. But let’s start with what many of them share: Broadly, the demonstrations in DC and globally have criticized the Biden administration’s policy choices, the Israeli government’s current airstrikes on Gaza, and the Israeli government’s longstanding occupation of Palestinian territories.
“We came to make clear to President Biden that he has a choice,” Eva Borgwardt, political director of IfNotNow, a Jewish American advocacy group that opposes Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, tells Vox. IfNotNow was among the organizations that staged a sit-in on Capitol Hill last week as well as a protest in front of the White House. “Either he can uphold the value that every human life is precious or he can let Netanyahu’s far-right government enact a genocidal campaign against Palestinians that will destabilize the region and make peace an impossibility for another generation.”
BREAKING: Jewish protesters for a #FreePalestine flood rotunda of Canon Building demanding CeaseFire chanting NOT IN OUR NAME!”
A chief demand that activists have is for a ceasefire, which would put a temporary halt to the military actions taken in Gaza, and center negotiations for the return of hostages that Hamas has taken. In the Middle East, activists have called for their governments to back away from the normalization of ties with Israel, which establishes open channels for diplomacy and trade, a move multiple countries have taken in the past.
Beyond the immediate push for a ceasefire, some protesters are calling for longer-term policy changes including ending Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories. That push involves ending Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and its blockade of Gaza. Many protesters who support Palestinian rights have growing concerns about the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza and in the West Bank, where it has been accused of governing Israeli settlers under one legal system and Palestinian residents under another. That, along with longtime Israeli limits on access to Gaza, has led a number of protesters and activists to accuse Israel of practicing apartheid. The Israeli and US governments have both refuted this claim.
“This movement and conversation has been growing in the last few years as more and more people come to recognize the reality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the reality that this cannot continue,” says Liv Kunins-Berkowitz, the media coordinator at Jewish Voice for Peace, another organization that participated in protests supporting Palestinian rights and urging a ceasefire last week.
Some of the protests that have occurred, like a Times Square rally organized by the Democratic Socialists of America that took place shortly after the Hamas attack, have also been criticized for being pro-Hamas and for condoning the killings of Israeli civilians, a position that many activists have forcefully denounced. Demonstrations that occurred in Beirut and Amman following a former Hamas leader’s call for a Day of Rage were also pro-Hamas and included violent chants directed at Israel and the United States.
Other activists in large-scale demonstrations in cities like DC have condemned the killings of Israeli and Palestinian civilians and sought to make it clear their demands relate to Palestinian civilians. “This march is not a pro-Hamas march, it’s about starving children,” Angela Braithwaite, a protester in London, toldthe Guardian.
Domestically and internationally, ire about the conflict is also targeted at the US, which has staunchly backed Israel. “So many lawmakers have, as they should, said that the over 1,000 Israeli lives lost was an unacceptable tragedy,” says Borgwardt. “I want to ask them: How many Palestinian lives is an unacceptable tragedy? Because for some, several thousand is not enough. And they are clearly waiting to speak out until this massacre reaches unheard-of, horrifying proportions.”
Throughout the Middle East, protests have taken place outside Israeli and US embassies. And in an apparent signal of the concern with the United States’ stance, Arab leaders of Jordan, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority canceled a scheduled meeting they were to hold with Biden following an explosion at a Gaza hospital that left hundreds dead. The US and Israel have since noted that intelligence points to Palestinian militants being responsible, while Hamas has blamed the Israeli military.
Biden’s trip to Israel went ahead as planned last week. In a public address, he expressed his support and requested $14 billion in military aid from Congress. “We will make sure Israel has what it needs to take care of its citizens, defend itself, and respond to this attack,” he said in remarks following the Hamas attack.
Biden has begun to speak more about Palestinian civilians in recent days, saying in a national address on Thursday, “We mourn every innocent life lost. We can’t ignore the humanity of innocent Palestinians who only want to live in peace and have an opportunity.” Additionally, he has negotiated a deal that enables $100 million of humanitarian aid to move to Gaza through Egypt. This position appears to acknowledge some activists’ calls for humanitarian assistance, though it does not alter the US’s commitment to backing Israel militarily.
In pushing for a ceasefire, many protesters are urging the Biden administration to reconsider its military support for Israel, which they view as contributing to mass killings of civilians in Gaza. They also question why Gaza is being given a fraction of the aid Biden requested for Israel.
Political scientists note that the US’s support of Israel has harmed its image with other countries in the Middle East, including among protesters who view its stance as hypocritical.
“What has particularly incensed many in the region is the rapid and extensive support that Israel received on multiple fronts — political, financial, and, most significantly, military,” says Najib Ghadbian, a University of Arkansas political scientist and expert in Middle East studies. “The sudden deployment of aircraft carriers and other weapons, along with logistical support to Israel in anticipation of a potential ground invasion of Gaza, is seen as a direct contribution to the suffering of the people in Gaza.”
The latest protests supporting Palestinians’ rights are different from those that have come before
Younger people, as polls show, are among those most concerned with the United States’ policies toward Israel and Palestine. For some in the US,previous Black Lives Matter protests helped raise awareness about racism and discriminatory policies and mobilized people for causes related to racial justice, not just at home but globally.
“I saw the parallels of Black Americans facing a militarized police force and Palestinians facing militarized policing,” says Borgwardt of her experience participating in protests following the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
A shift in public opinion in 2021 “happened in part due to the George Floyd uprising,” Sam Klug, an assistant teaching professor of African American history at Loyola University Maryland, previously told Vox’s Fabiola Cineas. “This uprising, and the longer-term Black Lives Matter movement of which it was a part, influenced many Americans, especially young people, to begin viewing the situation in Israel-Palestine in terms of structural violence, occupation, and colonial oppression. Of course, it wasn’t the only cause of this shift, but it was significant.”
Younger generations are also more likely to get their information from social media and from primary sources, as one expert notes. “You have, particularly with younger generations, a shift away from mainstream media outlets, which means people have access to more diverse media,” says Parkinson. “People are actually able to access voices straightforwardly and to see images direct from places like Gaza and the West Bank and East Jerusalem.”
Social media and global justice movements have influenced protesters in the Middle East, as well, along with ongoing Israeli policy choices. In addition to the military strikes on Gaza, there has been coverage in the region of the Israeli government’s killings of Palestinians in the West Bank and of Israeli forces’ attacks on Palestinians at al-Aqsa Mosque in recent months, says Ghadbian.
“They are united in one demand: ending the Israeli bombardment of Gaza and ending the Israeli occupation,” Kuwait University history professor Bader Al-Saif told CNN, of protesters in the Middle East. “I have not seen such a scale of protests in the region since the Arab Spring.”
Protesters aim to pressure policymakers
Protesters hope their actions can influence policymakers’ decisions in a bid to prevent more civilian deaths, and to find a longer-term resolution to this entrenched conflict.
DC activists pointed to growing the support of progressive lawmakers’ resolution backing a ceasefire as a chief goal, with the aim of increasing the pressure on Biden as well. As these demonstrations have continued, the US government hasn’t altered its central policies, though the Biden administration’s approach toward the conflict does appear to be shifting slightly. While Biden said Thursday he wants Congress to approve an “unprecedented commitment to Israel’s security that will sharpen Israel’s qualitative military edge,” he also reiterated a point he made in his address in Israel, saying, “As hard as it is, we cannot give up on peace.”
His language, while still bellicose, represented a tempering of the rhetoric his administration used in the days after the conflict began, such as when White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre called the initial push for a ceasefire “disgraceful.”
In the Middle East, protesters want to see their governments adjust their postures toward Israel as well. In Morocco and Bahrain, demonstrations have featured calls for their countries to reverse the normalizing of ties with Israel, the New York Times reports. Egypt, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates are among the countries that have normalized relations with Israel.
Saudi Arabia was also on the verge of considering such an agreement, a move that would have dealt a blow to Palestinians’ ongoing fight for an independent state, since normalization means it’s moving ahead with establishing this diplomatic relationship despite the policies Israel has implemented toward Palestinians. Saudi Arabia’s normalization would also take an incentive Israel was previously offered in exchange for negotiations with Palestinians off the table.
In a rare signal of support for such demonstrations, countries like Egypt, which are more repressive toward political speech, have remained somewhat open to such protests — a move some activists view as staged and designed to increase support for domestic leaders.
“One of the things that governments want to do by permitting them is to insulate themselves domestically but also to send a signal internationally that the region is really angry, with really good reason,” says Parkinson, citing Qatar as another example where government historically cracks down on this type of political speech but isn’t doing so this time around.
Meanwhile, French and German leaders have restricted pro-Palestinian protests due to what their governments describe as concerns about “disorder and antisemitism,” Reuters reports, raising concerns about suppression of free speech in these countries.
Don’t blame social media for the fog of war -
Palestinians stand around a crater caused by an Israeli strike in Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip. | Mohammed Talatene/Picture Alliance via Getty Images
Elon Musk and the other platform owners aren’t entirely to blame for misinformation around the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Social media is a good place to get a lot of bad information. That’s not a new problem, but it’s particularly acute right now, during a war between Israel and Hamas.
I’m happy to cast the shame net widely. But I also think people complaining about inaccurate information on their platform of choice during a brutal conflict are also going to have to come to grips with a difficult reality: Getting the “right” info during a war — especially in real time or close to it, when that news is happening in a place where journalists may have limited access and are under dire threat themselves — is an inherently difficult exercise that may never get you the results you want.
Last week’s deadly explosion at a Gaza hospital is the newest data point in that argument: Hamas immediately blamed the strike on Israeli rockets, and initial reports from news outlets including the New York Times ran with that framing; Israel subsequently blamed an errant Palestinian missile launched from inside Gaza.
As I’m typing this, a week later, the consensus — at least in Western media — seems to have shifted toward the Israeli explanation. Meanwhile, the Times published an editor’s note on Monday that says its initial coverage “relied too heavily on claims by Hamas” and “left readers with an incorrect impression”; the paper’s most recent coverage of the blast doesn’t say the Israeli narrative is correct but does say that Hamas “has yet to produce or describe any evidence linking Israel to the strike.”
This isn’t a nihilistic, there-is-no-truth argument. Something caused that explosion and loss of life, and at some point, there will most likely be enough forensic evidence to establish what actually happened, with some degree of confidence.
But for the duration of this conflict, we’re going to have to live with the fact that a lot of what we first learn about what happens in a war is wrong, or misleading. We can’t primarily blame social platforms for that: It’s the very nature of the conflict itself.
In this case, it will be even harder to suss out the truth immediately after an incident, for a couple of reasons:
*Both Israel and Hamas have longstanding and deserved reputations for putting out misleadingpropaganda about their military actions.
*Journalists have very limited access to on-the-ground facts. Only a small number of them were in Gaza prior to the Oct. 7 attacks, and any reporting they undertake now is incredibly difficult and risky. Nearly two dozen of them have reportedly been killed in the first two weeks of the war. Meanwhile, the Israeli government won’t allow anyone — including journalists — to enter Gaza.
In the wake of the hospital explosion last week, we’ve seen attempts to counteract those weaknesses, with a combination of forensics and crowdsourcing: Using snippets of video and audio recorded at the time of the explosion, plus photos taken the day after the blast, researchers such as Bellingcat, a nonprofit fact-checking group, have published their own findings — which remain inconclusive.
And none of that will satisfy people who expect black-and-white answers about something that happened a week ago.
And if that’s frustrating for you, I have news you won’t like: This is likely going to get worse, for quite some time. If Israel goes forward with plans to invade Gaza, you can expect all kinds of conflicting reporting about shootings, explosions, and military and civilian casualties. And that information will be even harder to verify with tanks in the streets.
More context you won’t like: While we can blame some of this on a news environment sped up by phones and digital platforms, getting bad info about what happened in a war is a longstanding problem. And that almost always begins with the fact that most information about what happens in a war initially comes from the government fighting the wars.
That’s why, for instance, the early coverage of the death of Pat Tillman, the NFL player turned Army Ranger, at first reported he’d been killed in a 2004 ambush in Afghanistan — and not, as we eventually learned, that he’d died in a friendly fire incident. The same goes for the story of Jessica Lynch, the US soldier captured by Iraqi soldiers in 2003. Lynch later said the tale of her abduction and rescue, which received enormous attention at the time, had been distorted and exaggerated by US officials. If you want a more recent — but pre-Musk — example of how hard it is to decipher what’s happening in a war, look into the sabotage of Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines, which may or may not have been the work of Ukrainian militants.
The fog can also apply to war in places we don’t traditionally think of as war zones: While there is no shortage of reporters on the ground in Israel itself, it has still been difficult to get confirmation of exactly what happened during the October 7 attacks, leading to claims and counterclaims about specific atrocities. This week the Israeli military tried to address that by screening graphic footage of the violence for a group of reporters.
So faced with those structural obstacles that aren’t going anywhere, what can you do? One answer, counseled by Giancarlo Fiorella, Bellingcat’s director of research and training: “Slow down.”
“That’s something we’ve always been good at,” he tells me. “But in particular this past week or so, we’ve come to appreciate how that’s a skill — the ability to say, ‘Look, we’re not going to rush to publish something. Let’s take our time.’”
But I have a similarly unsatisfying suggestion: While waiting for the truth to surface in the wake of something horrible, you could spend some time … using social media.
Wait! Didn’t we just establish that the platforms are riddled with untruths?
Yes. And there’s plenty of data supporting that assertion, as well as a small group of hardworking people cataloging many of those posts that are wrong.
But it’s worth noting that not all disinformation has the same impact or ambition: Yes, Twitter and TikTok users were sharing footage of people running at Bruno Mars concert and claiming it was filmed during the Hamas attack at the Negev desert rave that killed hundreds. But that attack was real, and the mislabeled footage doesn’t change that — it was just an opportunity for people to gain social media clout.
But no matter what, you’re going to get a slew of this stuff. To help sort through it, my colleague A.W. Ohlheiser suggests using the SIFT method: “Stop, Investigate the source, Find better coverage, and Trace claims, quotes, and media to the original context.”
That may be more than what the average TikTok or Twitter user wants to do with the stuff they’re scrolling through. But since you’re deep into a story about accuracy in media, you can definitely give it a shot.
Used responsibly, and cautiously, what social media can do is open your window on the world a little bit wider. I’ve been gratified, for instance, that alongside clips from the likes of CNN and ABC News, my TikTok feed shows me excerpts from Al Jazeera and the UK’s Channel 4, which tend to be much more skeptical of Israeli claims than US news organizations. I have to caveat emptor all of that, obviously — but that has always been the responsibility of the conscientious news consumer, and I feel I’m much better off seeing how other parts of the world see the conflict. And that may be, for now, the best I can hope for. Not all of it is going to be right, but we’re not getting real-time truth right now — and in wartime, we never have.
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Ukraine war: Avdiivka civilians cling on amid Russian assault - Just over 1,000 civilians remain in Avdiivka, focus of a bloody Russian assault in eastern Ukraine.
Iceland’s PM strikes over gender pay gap - Katrín Jakobsdóttir is refusing to work on Tuesday in protest at the gender pay gap.
The Rock waxwork museum makes skin tone fix after criticism - Paris’s Grevin Museum says it has “remedied the skin tone” of the life-sized wax figure overnight.
From Ars Technica
Daily Telescope: A closer look at the most-distant object visible to the naked eye - Looking far away to understand our own home. - link
How to make almost any computer a modern-day PLATO terminal - A dive into the past, whether you’re using a vintage or new computer. - link
For the first launch of ULA’s Vulcan rocket, it’s Christmas or next year - Astrobotic’s lunar lander ships to Florida later this week for final launch prep. - link
I used a $28 mechanical keyboard for a month—maybe you should, too - The best budget mechanical keyboard I’ve ever used. - link
US surprises Nvidia by speeding up new AI chip export ban - Nvidia tried to end-run restrictions with new designs, but US govt said not so fast. - link
From Jokes Subreddit
Three women die and go to heaven. -
While in heaven, God tells the women not to step on the grass while in heaven or they will be punished.
The grass is everywhere so they have to make an effort to avoid it. One girl steps on the grass and is instantly handcuffed to an ugly man. The other woman also steps on the grass and is instantly handcuffed to an ugly man for all eternity.
The last woman manages to avoid the grass for several years and feels that she should be rewarded. One day, a man suddenly appears handcuffed to her and she can’t believe her eyes at how handsome he is. She asks him, “are you the man of my dreams” and he responds, “I’m not sure but I just stepped on some grass”
My pastor told this during a sermon once and it still kills me -
Two fellas are walking in the woods one day when they come upon a gigantic hole, so big and deep that they can’t see the bottom of it. Naturally, their curiosity gets the best of them and they start looking for things to throw in the hole. They find sticks and rocks and throw them in but never hear anything hit the bottom of the hole.
Eventually they find an old railroad tie and figure they’ll definitely hear that hit the bottom, so they lug it over and throw it in. A few seconds pass, but they still don’t hear it hit the bottom. They shrug and start to walk away, when all of a sudden a cow comes charging through the woods at them and jumps into the hole!
“That was crazy!” they say to each other as they’re walking out of the woods. A farmer is walking into the woods at the same time and greets them. The guys tell the farmer about the hole they found. The farmer asks if the guys have seen his cow. They say, “as a matter of fact we saw a cow come sprinting through the woods and jump into that hole!”
The farmer shakes his head and says, “hmm, well that couldn’t have been my cow. My cow was tied to a railroad tie.”
After a hour of labor, a woman gives birth to a beautiful baby boy.. -
Moments after taking his first breath in the real world, the baby looks at the doctor holding him and asks, “Are you my father?” The doctor responds, “No sweet child, I am not your father.”
The doctor hands the baby to his mother. As she gazes into his eyes lovingly, the baby asks, “Are you my father?” His mother responds, “No sweet child, I am not your father.”
She hands him to his father, who is overcome with emotion. As tears of joy stream down his face, the baby asks him, “Are you my father?” Struggling to answer through his tears, the man responds, “Yes sweet child, I am forever and ever, your father.”
The baby sits up and starts rapidly slamming his fist into his father’s forehead: “THEN TELL ME HOW YOU LIKE IT, MOTHERFUCKER!!!”
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