The Atrocity of American Gun Culture - After mass shootings like those in Uvalde and Buffalo, pro-gun officials say they don’t want to politicize tragedy. But the circumstances that allow for the mass murder of children are inherently political. - link
The Staff of Uvalde’s Local Paper Cover the Worst Day of Their Lives - The paper’s employees lost neighbors, acquaintances, and a daughter in a school shooting. Then they had to report the story. - link
What the End of Roe v. Wade Will Mean for the Next Generation of Obstetricians - An aspiring ob-gyn’s views on abortion might determine what training she seeks out, which specialities she pursues, and where she chooses to live. In a post-Roe world, that self-sorting process would grow even more intense. - link
Two January 6th Defendants and the Consolidation of Right-Wing Extremism - As Congress searches for accountability, Guy Reffitt and Jessica Watkins remain defiant. - link
Souvankham Thammavongsa Reads “Trash” - The author reads her story from the June 13, 2022, issue of the magazine. - link
From Vox
What the deepfake controversy about this Chinese actor says about conspiratorial thinking -
Actors including Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan attend a Word of Honor fan concert in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province of China, on May 4, 2021. | VCG/VCG via Getty Images
Zhang Zhehan’s fans think his dog is an imposter. That says a lot about how we distort reality online.
It’s easy to believe what you want to believe. The internet, from deepfake videos to social media that connects like-minded people, has made it that much easier.
For instance, when a fan sees two beautiful, famous people working together, it may be natural to hope that they’re secretly in love. Sometimes these ships come true — the people who thought from their onscreen interactions, for example, that Robsten were dating, or Brangelina, or Dan and Phil, eventually discovered they’d been right all along.
But there’s wanting your ideas about a certain celebrity to be real and then there’s wanting them to be real so badly that you decide that an actor is being held hostage, that his social media has been taken over by a group of evil conspirators, and that all of his recent posts are deepfakes of himself.
That’s what’s happening to an alarmingly high number of fans of the actor Zhang Zhehan, in what seems to be a growing conspiracy theory.
Conspiratorial thinking has come to characterize many conversations around tech, politics, and internet culture in general. But a conspiracy theory that can yoke itself to the intensity of fandom has an especially alarming capacity to turn toxic and dangerous. When I wrote in 2016 that fandom shipping “has increasingly taken on all the characteristics of a religious dogma,” I had no idea how much worse things would get. At the time, fandom conspiracy theories such as Larry Stylinson (the belief that One Direction’s Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson are in love but forced to hide) were the exception rather than the rule; now, as the Zhang Zhehan fandom illustrates, not only are such fandom conspiracy theories more and more commonplace, but they’re marrying the intensity and fervor of fandom with modern social media and technological pitfalls.
Last year, Zhang starred in the hit Chinese drama series Word of Honor. The show, an adaptation of a queer danmei novel, was overtly homoerotic, following in the vein of 2019 hit The Untamed. The series was a Netflix hit and propelled Zhang and his costar Gong Jun to international stardom. Legions of fans began shipping the two actors, typical fan behavior that in Chinese culture is often encouraged heavily by marketing teams and often the actors themselves. After a designated promotional period for the show, however, the pairing typically gets “broken,” and fans expect them to go their separate ways.
This studio-driven approach to shipping is the inverse of American fandoms, where fans often create ships out of thin air, much to the consternation of studios who have no idea what to do with the monster they’ve created. It’s not surprising that even after the promotional period for Word of Honor ended, international fans continued to ship “Junzhe” — the ship name for Zhang Zhehan and Gong Jun.
Before either actor could fully move on from their Word of Honor roles, however, Zhang Zhehan found himself in the middle of a scandal involving his alleged visitation of a Japanese war memorial so controversial it got Justin Bieber permanently banned from performing in China. Within days, Zhang’s career appeared to be over.
Many of Zhang’s Chinese fans moved on, but his international fandom was left floundering. A large subset of these fans were people who still shipped Junzhe and believed gossip that the two actors were still in regular communication. Fans read into interviews and social media posts Gong Jun made, seeking evidence that he was sending support to the man they believed he loved.
Meanwhile, in early spring, Zhehan reportedly returned to posting under the pseudonym “Zhang Sanjian.” He made references to his new clothing brand but also began implying that Gong Jun’s marketing team was still capitalizing on the Junzhe ship to boost his career, when Zhang no longer had a career.
This development meant only one thing to international Junzhe shippers: The Zhang Sanjian account had to be fake.
Good morning peeps! This man has a name. This man has a face. This man is #张哲瀚#ZhangZheHan#zzh
Many shippers grew convinced Zhang Sanjian was an imposter created by Zhang’s former manager and a group of cohorts, including his therapist. Then a small group of Twitter fans crossed several huge ethical lines: They doxxed Zhang’s therapist and allegedly reported him to the Chinese government as anti-Chinese — an act that could have extremely dangerous consequences for him and his family. Though insistent Zhang had been the victim of an authoritarian government, they weaponized that same authoritarianism against a perceived enemy.
In April, Zhang resumed posting to Instagram. Instead of celebrating his return, however, these fans, by now completely convinced all his posts must be an impersonation, created increasingly elaborate theories about how that impersonation was being carried out. They reported Zhang’s real, actual Instagram account for impersonation. When Zhang got his account restored and continued posting content, elaboratedeepfaketheoriesemerged. In the process of insisting his videos had to be fake, they raked Zhang himself over the coals: He was too “robotic,” his “eye twitched,” he “lacked body movement,” he was “creepy.”
I’m too lazy to use words. See for yourself. Watch the video closely.
When Zhang posted a picture of his dog, the shippers decided the evil band of conspirators around him had replaced his dog with a different dog.
That most recent Lufei picture on the IG account? This is the analysis of a fully qualified veterinary surgeon (with degrees in veterinary medical sciences, veterinary medicine and veterinary surgery) & over 10 years of experience in clinical practice: FAKE.#ZhangZhehanpic.twitter.com/txX4ffhtPW
The most infuriating thing about the Zhang Zhehan conspiracy is how extraordinary it isn’t. Increasingly, fandom is awash with conspiracies like this one. In 2016, a huge subset of the Sherlock fandom was so incensed at the fact that the show didn’t put Watson and Sherlock together in a queer relationship (a ship theory the fans titled “the Johnlock conspiracy” with zero apparent self-awareness) that they decided there must be a different, entirely secret final episode of the show — a wild card that left them angry and upset when the totally anodyne show that premiered the week after the Sherlock finale turned out, in fact, not to be Sherlock.
In Star Wars fandom, the fictitious “J.J. Cut” from director J.J. Abrams doesn’t exist, and no evidence for its existence exists, but fans still created an entire ideology around it. At this very moment, the One Direction fandom is having a meltdown because Liam Payne just shaded Zayn Malik, much to the chagrin of “Ziam” shippers who’ve spent years building elaborate rabbit-hole arguments that the two were in a secret closeted relationship. And let’s not get started on the fan narratives and magical thinking around the Depp-Heard trial.
Yes, of course, people lie, and of course rare real-life conspiracies do occur; but at some point, it becomes irrational and irresponsible to prioritize a fandom belief — or any conspiratorial belief — to the point that you are continually distorting reality. In this case, there’s no logical reason to believe Zhang Zhehan was lying when he asked shippers to move on and stop harassing his family and friends. Now, a fandom that spent months uniting to support him after a huge personal setback has now become fully committed to dehumanizing him — to insisting he literally isn’t real — all in the name of “supporting” a nonexistent relationship.
Watching all this go down, a friend of mine mused that perhaps this was the real dystopian impact of deepfakes — not that the deepfakes themselves would distort reality, but that their mere existence now allows people an excuse to distort reality all by themselves.
That seems instinctually true to me. This isn’t just happening in fandom; it’s happening across the internet. While conspiracy theories like QAnon get all the attention, it’s conspiracy theories like Johnlock and Zhang Zhehan that keep me up at night because they are paths to radicalizing good-hearted fans, conditioning them to see the world primarily as fantasy, as a high-stakes battle between good and evil. It doesn’t help that decades of internet culture have taught people to be deeply analytical but haven’t taught them how to think critically and rationally about what they’re doing.
I don’t know how to tell you your fave is not a deepfake. I don’t know how to tell you that when you’ve given up this much of yourself to a bottomless well of belief, it’s your responsibility — to yourself and to the world — to drag yourself out and move on.
Vox launches a new section, Even Better, focused on direct, actionable advice for living a better life -
An expansion of offerings in service journalism.
Today, Vox launched a new service journalism section, focused on giving readers deeply sourced information, helpful frameworks, and actionable advice to help them live better lives individually and collectively. The section will showcase reporting on many aspects of modern life: mental health, relationships of all kinds, community, work, money, and more.
For the launch of this section, inaugural contributors include Lindsay Bryan-Podvin on how money is emotional — but personal finance advice rarely accounts for that; Alex Hazlett on how to talk to teens about body image; Allie Volpe on the case for having fewer friends; and Rebecca Leber on how to take action in the climate crisis.
“Vox’s core mission has always been to empower the public with information that helps them better understand the world,” says editor-in-chief Swati Sharma. “This new section goes to the heart of that mission by examining the tools that can help readers live more enriching, balanced, and happier lives.”
With empathy and practicality, the section aims to provide readers with tangible resources and applications they can use in their day-to-day.
The end of history is history -
Photo by Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for The Leakey Foundation
Francis Fukuyama on liberal democracy and its discontents.
Francis Fukuyama is easily one of the most influential political thinkers of the last several decades.
He’s best known for his 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man, which arrived on the scene as the Cold War was ending. Fukuyama’s central claim was that liberal democracy had won the war of ideas and established itself as the ideal political system.
Not every society around the world was a liberal democracy. But what Fukuyama meant by declaring it “the end of history” was that it was only a matter of time. The claim made a big splash.
Now, 30 years later, Fukuyama’s written a new book called Liberalism and its Discontents. It’s both a defense of liberalism and a critique of it. It does a great job of cataloging the problems of liberalism, but also argues that liberalism is still the best option there is. Fukuyama writes about some very current challenges, like the American right’s move toward authoritarianism, and the resurgence of nationalism around the world. The upshot: It’s not clear that liberal democracy really is the end of history.
I reached out to Fukuyama for a recent episode of Vox Conversations. We discuss the promise of liberalism, whether he thinks it’s failing, and if there’s anything he’d like to revise about his end of history thesis.
Below is an excerpt, edited for length and clarity. As always, there’s much more in the full podcast, so listen and follow Vox Conversations on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Sean Illing
Do you think we’re in a genuine political crisis?
Francis Fukuyama
Well, I think we’re in a big political crisis. If you look around the world, liberal democracy has been in decline pretty steadily for the last 16 years. And it’s not small countries that are involved in this decline. It’s countries like the United States and India — the world’s two largest democracies. And we’ve seen great powers rising, like Russia and China, that are overtly anti-liberal and anti-democratic. So there’s been a lot of stress on democracy and particularly the liberal part of liberal democracies.
Sean Illing
What’s the liberal part of liberal democracy?
Francis Fukuyama
The democratic part of liberal democracy has to do with institutions like free and fair multi-party elections. The liberal part really has to do with constraints on the power of the state, through rule of law, through constitutional checks and balances that make sure that even though a leader is democratically elected and legitimate, that that person isn’t able to do whatever he or she wants in terms of violating individual rights or legislative will.
Sean Illing
Would you say that liberalism has lived up to its many promises? Has it delivered for enough people in enough places to justify itself?
Francis Fukuyama
There are so many dimensions to liberalism that it’s hard to answer that question in any simple way. You wouldn’t have the modern world if you didn’t have liberalism, meaning you wouldn’t have rich developed countries with long lifespans and high degrees of personal wealth, and the kind of individual freedom that exists. So in general, it’s been an enormous benefit.
I think there are many reasons why people don’t like liberal societies. For example, they tolerate a higher degree of economic and social inequality, because they are linked to a market economy.
And because they agree to disagree about the most important ends of life, a lot of conservatives don’t like liberalism because they would prefer to live in a society where everybody shares the same highest religious values, and liberalism doesn’t offer that. So there are a number of reasons why people are discontented.
In general, though, I’d say the promise of liberalism is equal treatment of individuals that are equally worthy of respect, and no liberal society ever fully lives up to that.
Sean Illing
I count myself a liberal, despite some misgivings, but I wonder if you think that some of those conservatives are right that a society without some shared vision of the common good will eventually unravel? Or perhaps that the myth of liberal neutrality falls apart once a certain level of cultural and moral diversity is reached?
Francis Fukuyama
There are a couple of different answers to that. The first is that liberal societies do have their own cultures. For example, if people are not basically tolerant of diverse opinions, a liberal society won’t work. If they’re not public-spirited enough to do the work of self-government — paying taxes, voting, paying attention to public affairs — then a liberal society isn’t going to work. And so there are common things that liberal societies have.
The other answer is that existing liberal societies have been built on top of non-liberal foundations. You have nations and pre-existing cultures that give people a common heritage. One of the most important things in most countries is language. If you’re German or French or British, you have that common linguistic basis. You have a shared history. You have cultural traditions that are carried forward that give your life a certain thickness that just being a liberal individual doesn’t necessarily give you.
But this creates a tension because sometimes those cultural foundations are exclusionary and they can’t be entered into equally by everybody in the society, in which case they start being illiberal. So I think the trick for a successful liberal society is to have enough of a culture that people do have a sense that they are in a common endeavor, that they do share things with their fellow citizens. But that common shared core has to be tolerant and accessible.
Sean Illing
I suppose what I’m getting at is something you write in the book: “Liberalism sought to lower the aspirations of politics, not as a means of seeking the good life as defined by religion, but rather as a way of ensuring life itself, that is, peace and security.”
To be clear, I do think liberalism has failed materially for lots of people, but what if the reduced aspirations of liberalism aren’t enough for human beings? What if too much “peace and security” for too long leads to complacency and boredom? What if the metaphysical needs that go untouched by liberalism finally lead people (mistakenly, I’d argue) to reject it?
Francis Fukuyama
I think we’re seeing examples of that in the present-day world. And historically we’ve seen that liberalism is the most attractive when it’s threatened. So if you experience terrible world wars like Europe did in the 20th century, or if you live under a terrible dictatorship, then you’re really eager to live in a liberal society.
But once you start taking that society for granted, and we’ve had 75 years of peace since the end of the Second World War, you start taking that for granted and then you aspire to other things. And I think there is complacency that has affected a lot of people in peaceful, liberal countries. And they want something more than that. They’re bored, in a way, with peace and prosperity.
In The End of History and The Last Man, I had a line where I said something to the effect that if people can’t struggle for justice and peace, then they’ll struggle against justice and peace because it’s a part of human nature that we want to struggle. We want respect for our ideals, for ourselves. And if it’s given to us too freely, then we’re going to want something else, and that’s a source of instability in liberal societies.
In many respects, a lot of the resentments and anger in the United States is a product of people losing sight of what the absence of liberalism would really mean.
Sean Illing
You have a whole chapter in the book about neoliberalism, and you basically argue that liberalism has been undermined by excesses of market economies. But what if we think of neoliberalism not as a cancerous outgrowth of liberalism but rather as liberalism fulfilling its own logic? It does seem like we have enough evidence to say that market societies tend toward the concentration of wealth and power, and that that leads to political corruption, and that that finally undercuts the ability of liberal societies to mitigate their own excesses.
Is that account too simplistic for you?
Francis Fukuyama
No, it’s correct. I would agree with that. For a liberal society to be successful in the long run, you need to link liberalism with democracy because you need a political mechanism to do a certain degree of redistribution — not to completely equalize, but to mitigate the kinds of inequalities that a market society produces.
That’s why I think that the most successful liberal societies were the social democratic ones that emerged after World War II, where the elites had this recognition that a lot of the horrors of the early part of the 20th century were due to these class cleavages in both Germany and Japan, for example. In other democracies as well, there was a real effort to create a welfare state, and to try to be more inclusive in terms of having everybody sharing the benefits of economic growth. I think that’s the way that liberal democracy survives.
Sean Illing
You don’t quite endorse a Bernie Sanders-style progressive economic agenda, but unless I’m missing something, that does seem to be exactly the thing we need to save liberalism from itself —
Francis Fukuyama
Yeah, I’m not shying away from any of that. I think we need more redistribution. We need some kind of universal health care system, and it’s a tragedy and kind of outrageous that we’re the only developed country that doesn’t have one.
There are other aspects of the Sanders program that I think are not terribly well thought out. For all the complaints about fiscal conservatism and austerity, if you don’t worry about those sorts of things, you’re not going to be able to sustain a progressive redistributive agenda. So you gotta be a little bit careful about it. But yeah, I do think that you need to correct some of the inequalities that have been created by this very ruthless capitalism that we’ve experienced in the last generation or two.
Sean Illing
Reading your book and listening to you now, it’s never entirely clear to me whether you think liberalism has failed or whether you think we’ve failed liberalism —
Francis Fukuyama
A lot of this depends on your definition of liberalism. And mine is a fairly expansive one. I can see a version of liberalism that was actually quite successful when combined with other institutions and other features. I do think that there was an effort to push things to extremes on both the right and the left that were not intrinsic to the design of liberalism.
So I believe that neoliberalism is a deformation of classical liberalism in the sense that it takes the ideas of property rights and market transactions and absolutizes them and demonizes the state in an inappropriate way.
Similarly, I think there’s a version of identity politics that turns into something very illiberal. When you begin denying the premise that, under the skin, we’re all fundamentally equal individuals, and begin to say that our group characteristics are the most essential things about us, and that society ought to be organized around those group, that’s a clear deformation of the liberal principle of universal human equality.
UEFA Nations League 2022: Ronaldo brace leads Portugal to big win over Switzerland - William Carvalho and Joao Cancelo were also on the scoresheet as the hosts wasted numerous opportunities to inflict more humiliation on Switzerland who are now winless since they qualified for the FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar
England captaincy became unhealthy relationship, says Root - “It had become a very unhealthy relationship, to be honest — the captaincy and me,” said Joe Root after his century helped England to a five-wicket win over New Zealand in the first Test
French Open | Coco Gauff's ranking to career-high 13th; Nadal up to 4th - American teenager Coco Gauff has moved up to a career-best No. 13 in the WTA rankings after her runner-up finish to No. 1 Iga Swiatek at the French Open
Bale scores as Wales goes to FIFA World Cup after 64 years, Ukraine’s hopes end - Gareth Bale led Wales to the FIFA World Cup for the first time in 64 years by beating Ukraine 1-0 to take the final European spot in Qatar
NBA Finals | Warriors grab home win over Celtics in Game 2 to level series 1-1 - Jayson Tatum found his scoring touch in Game 2 of the NBA Finals against the Golden State Warriors but the individual effort was not enough as the Boston Celtics were routed 107-88
From The Hindu: National News
‘To say that it’s all over with COVID-19 would be premature right now’ - Monkeypox is not causing a pandemic; we have to watch and be prepared: Priya Abraham, Director, ICMR-NIV
Girijana Sangham holds protest for ITDA in Srikakulam district - NOTE: PHOTO FOLLOWS THE REPORT
BJP demands release of pending ₹4,000 crore fee reimbursement - Colleges demanding advance fees, 14 lakh students affected by government’s delay
India continues to play a vital role in space technology, says ISRO scientist - ‘New rockets will be able to carry humans for research in space’
Six internet service providers shortlisted for KFON - Net connection to 14,000 BPL families and 30,000 govt. offices in the State
From BBC: Europe
Ukraine war: UK to send Ukraine M270 multiple-launch rocket systems - A small number of cutting-edge rocket systems will be sent, despite a fresh warning from Russia.
Ukraine war: Putin warns over Western long-range weapons - Russia will expand its target list in Ukraine if Western countries send long-range weapons, he says.
Ukraine war: Flight ban hits Russian foreign minister’s visit to Serbia - Balkan countries deny Sergei Lavrov’s plane use of their airspace, scuppering his Serbia visit.
Mercedes recalls almost 1m cars over faulty brakes - The German carmaker said the brakes of some older cars may be affected by “advanced corrosion”.
World Cup play-off final: Wales edge Ukraine 1-0 to end 64-year World Cup wait - Wales reach a World Cup for the first time since 1958 as Gareth Bale’s deflected free-kick sees them beat Ukraine 1-0 in Sunday’s play-off final in Cardiff.
From Ars Technica
Gut check: Fossil finds give us a history of life—and what it ate - The remains of the digestive process can tell us a lot about past ecosystems. - link
Making blockchain stop wasting energy by getting it to manage energy - Instead of useless calculations, researchers get it to optimize energy use. - link
The privately funded killer-asteroid spotter is here - It’s a new tool for tracking space-rock trajectories—even with limited data. - link
An actively exploited Microsoft 0-day flaw still doesn’t have a patch - Microsoft downplays severity of vulnerability in all supported versions of Windows. - link
The weekend’s best deals: Switch Pro Controller, Fitbits, Roombas, and more - Dealmaster also has Sonos speakers, Steam gift cards, and Google’s Nest Hub. - link
From Jokes Subreddit
Some jerk glued every card in my deck together so now its just a block of cardboard. -
The doctor says, “Okay, what seems to be the problem?”
The mother says, “It’s my daughter Suzie. She keeps getting these cravings, she’s putting on weight and is sick most mornings.”
The doctor gives Suzie a good examination, and then turns to the mother and says, “Well, I don’t know how to tell you this, but Suzie is pregnant. About 4 months would be my guess.”
The mother says, “Pregnant?! She can’t be, she has never ever been left alone with a man! Have you, Suzie?”
Suzie says, “No mom! I’ve never even kissed a man!”
The doctor walks over to the window and just stares out of it.
A few moments later, the mother says, “Is there something wrong out there, doctor?”
The doctor replies, “No, not really. It’s just that the last time something like this happened, a star appeared in the East and three wise men came over the hill with gifts. I’ll be damned if I’m going to miss it this time!”
