This is not the house that pain built

Posted by Gary McGath

https://garymcgath.com/new-hampshire-questionable-alert-system/

https://garymcgath.com/?p=6383

The state of New Hampshire has a system where you can sign up to get emergency alerts. In itself, that’s a good thing, but the way it’s run raises red flags. The registration site is on genasys.com, and registering requires providing more personal information than necessary. The probability is close to 1 that Genasys sells this information. It’s also easy to exploit the system to annoy people.

When you register, you’re required to give your first and last name and exact street address. There’s no reason for either. A Zip code would be sufficient to localize information. You can give false information and it won’t complain; I gave just initials (not mine) and the address of a public building in my area. You also have to give an email address and a phone number. I provided my spam-trap email address and real phone number. Some kind of contact information is necessary if you want alerts, but that brings us to the second problem.

The email I received from the system said “Registration successful! Your registration has been successfully completed, and you are now part of our network, helping us keep our community informed and safe. If at any point you wish to update your preferences or unsubscribe from specific alerts, you can easily manage your settings by logging into your portal.”

Notice what’s missing? Any attempt to confirm it was me who registered. Someone could engage in petty harassment by signing up people for unwanted alerts. Since they didn’t create the account and its password, they can’t log in. The best they can do is block email from that sender. Well-run sites always ask for confirmation by email when they get a subscription request.

Websites that collect personal information often sell it. When information from multiple sites is aggregated, it can provide extensive information about individuals. Genesys’s privacy policy offers no reassurance. They share information “to our customers” and “as part of a corporate business transaction.” They do say “We do not sell or share your personal information for direct marketing purposes,” but that still leaves a lot open. You can be sure they aren’t collecting your name and address just to increase their database storage requirements. In particular, nothing stops them from handing your information to an evil government agency.

Genasys also makes long range acoustic devices (LRAD) which Russia has tested as “sound cannons” on dogs, apparently with an eye to using them to disrupt protests. However, Genasys doesn’t seem to have been directly involved in this use of its devices.

If you sign up in spite of these concerns, I suggest giving a nickname, a nearby public street address, and a throwaway email address. Avoid giving someone else’s home address. And don’t install their app.

https://garymcgath.com/new-hampshire-questionable-alert-system/

https://garymcgath.com/?p=6383

Posted by Gary McGath

https://garymcgath.com/four-dark-laws/

https://garymcgath.com/?p=6372

Derek Thompson has listed four “dark laws of online engagement” that explain a lot of what’s wrong with social media, and perhaps a significant part of what’s wrong with America. He discusses their effect on people, especially young men, who are socially isolated. I’d like to look at the way they distort the information that we get on the Internet.

1. Negativity bias increases clicks. As a survival trait, humans pay special attention to bad things. You can survive missed opportunities, but missing one serious danger can kill you. This leads people to pay special attention to any alleged bad news. According to Thompson, just adding negative words without affecting the content increases click-through rates. If it motivates people to take useful action, it could be good, but negative thinking can make people feel helpless. If everything is terrible, the terrible is routine.

As Aaron Ross Powell put it, “The doomer responds by taking any criticism of their ‘it’s hopeless’ assessment, in no matter how narrow the domain, as evidence of complacency in the face of macro-level badness. To believe ‘Things Are Bad,’ you must believe all things are hopelessly bad. Which is just giving up.”

2. Extreme opinions increase sharing. People who throw around overblown accusations such as “Fascism” and “Communism” get rewarded. The words lose their meaning, and people have a hard time picking out the real thing. Posts advocating the armed overthrow of the US government or a new Reign of Terror get a lot of attention.

3. Out-group animosity increases engagement. Increasing engagement gives extra publicity to the chosen enemies, and increased visibility often means greater popularity. A huge part of Trump’s rise to power came from all the people on the Internet who boosted his every outrageous statement. Meanwhile, people saying worthwhile things get neglected.

4. Moral-emotional language goes viral. The phrasing here bothers me. The moral and the emotional are two different things. Moral judgment is supposed to consist of applying principles to actions. People can get emotional about their judgments, just as they can about anything they consider important. Thompson seems to mean the idea that emotions, the “heart” and not principles, are the basis of valid moral judgments. That approach provides unlimited license for double standards. When “we” do something, we feel that it’s good. When “they” do the same thing, we feel repulsed. It’s hard to debate or persuade people who think with their guts.

When these forces drive engagement, we lose nuanced analysis, encouraging news, and thoughtful explanations of how people think. There’s a lot to be angry about these days, but anger by itself doesn’t lead to thorough comprehension, reasoned responses, and productive action. Seeing so many posts driven by the Four Dark Laws sometimes makes me think everyone out there is just stupid. It’s important to remember they aren’t a representative sample of humanity.

As I’ve said before, a good way to maintain perspective is to build a varied set of RSS feeds. It will let you find articles with better analysis and a broader set of facts. You can also control your social media experience by picking a reliable set of accounts to follow and being careful what you boost. When I post to Bluesky, I look for a trustworthy article to link to.

It’s been frustrating that my video, “Yearning to Breathe Free,” hasn’t gotten more views. Maybe I should have titled it “Immigrants get ABUSED, VILIFIED, and MURDERED.” Putting the words in all caps is important.

https://garymcgath.com/four-dark-laws/

https://garymcgath.com/?p=6372

Posted by Gary McGath

https://garymcgath.com/ice-watching-in-maine/

https://garymcgath.com/?p=6365

On Wednesday I learned that ICE had launched an incursion into Maine. They call it “Operation Catch of the Day,” implying that human beings are just fish to be swept up in their net. Maine is alarmingly close to home. I considered what I could do and decided that going to Maine to watch for ICE activity would be useful. Yesterday (as of Friday, when this will be posted) I drove to York, which is about an hour from home. The biggest trouble area is in Lewiston, which is twice as far, but I decided I couldn’t justify that much travel. Besides, ICE might strike anywhere in Maine.

I followed recommended precautions: Have a plan. Let people know your plans. Turn off phone face unlocking. Dress inconspicuously. Bring food and water.

York is a town of about 14,000 people. There’s nothing bigger in the southern end of Maine. My destination was the York Public Library. It would be a place to rest between rounds of looking around. As I got close, I saw the kind of houses, shops, churches, and town hall that you might see in any New England town. Then I saw something a shade more unusual: an anti-ICE protest! I waved at them and pulled into the nearby library parking lot, then walked down and joined them. It was only about a dozen people and their planned time was nearly over, but I had a chance to talk with some of them. In particular, I got into a conversation with James Kences, the town historian. We kept talking and shortly headed for the library, where he was working on a huge research project on Donald Trump. I mostly listened as he talked about York from Revolutionary times, Trump, and a lot of other things. Occasionally I said something to reassure him I wasn’t losing the thread.

He mentioned a set of four murals in the Town Hall showing the history of York from the first British settlement in 1624 to the end of the 20th century, so I walked over and looked them over. They have lots of detail, with events superimposed on a map as the area was in each century. York is the second-oldest incorporated town in the state.

I spent some time in the library and periodically walked around the area. Along the way I discovered Village Scoop ice cream and had a cup of Moose Tracks (what other flavor would I have in Maine?). Eventually I found a place in the library where I had a good view of a significant area, including a site where some construction workers were working, so I made that my lookout point after I was tired of walking.

Nothing exciting happened out there, fortunately. As it got close to 3 PM, I made one more walking round, went back to my car, and headed home.

It was definitely a good day, even if bad news motivated it.

https://garymcgath.com/ice-watching-in-maine/

https://garymcgath.com/?p=6365

Posted by Gary McGath

https://garymcgath.com/auburn-troy-nh-seek-alternate-routes/

https://garymcgath.com/?p=6344

The towns of Auburn and Troy, New Hampshire, have set up “task force agreements” with ICE. According to the Boston Globe, they let the local police ” interrogate people suspected of being present in the country illegally and arrest those accused of violating immigration laws.” The ICE standard of “suspicion” includes looking foreign or speaking with a foreign accent. Accusation (by whom?) is an abnormally low bar for arrest; probable cause is normally required. The Troy police have made at least a dozen arrests for ICE. The towns of Colebrook and Carroll, in the northern part of the state, also have entered agreements with ICE, as have the New Hampshire State Police.

ICE is secretive about exactly how it trains these agencies to act. The New Hampshire ACLU has filed a lawsuit to get that information.

If your looks or accent might arouse “suspicion” in a cop, you may want to avoid these towns. Troy is south of Keene, and NH Route 12 passes through it. It’s not a major route, and there are other ways to travel between Keene and points south.

Auburn is a bigger concern. Route 101, the most important east-west route in New Hampshire, passes through the town. Auburn police chief Charles Chabot has said that his cops will be on the lookout on Route 101. In addition, Route 121 goes through Auburn between Chester and Hooksett. If you’re at risk, you may want to find another route or at least be prepared. Many of the precautions for attending a protest also apply when going through areas of high ICE risk.

Administrative note for email subscribers: I changed the blog settings so you should be getting the full text of each post in email. It doesn’t seem to be working. I don’t know why.

https://garymcgath.com/auburn-troy-nh-seek-alternate-routes/

https://garymcgath.com/?p=6344

Posted by Gary McGath

https://garymcgath.com/4-beethoven-recordings/

https://garymcgath.com/?p=6336

I’ve never been very good at noticing differences in performances of classical pieces and picking a favorite. Occasionally one really jumps out, like the Zurich Tonhalle’s recording of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, but usually the differences are subtle. It takes careful listening even to notice that there are differences. As an exercise, I picked out four recordings of a piece I know well and listened to them repeatedly to compare them. There really are differences.

The piece I picked was Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3. The recordings were:

• Herbert von Karajan with the Berlin Philharmonic on Karajan 1980s/3 from DG.
• George Szell with the Cleveland Orchestra on George Szell conducts Beethoven Symphonies 1-9 & Overtures.
• Wilhelm Furtwängler with the Vienna Philharmonic on Wartime Recordings from DG.
• Georg Solti with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on Wagner: Overtures & Preludes from Decca. The Beethoven piece is on there in spite of the title.

Karajan

All of these recordings hold good performances. The Furtwängler is from the 1940s and doesn’t have nearly the sound quality of the others, but the performance is worth hearing.

Karajan’s approach is on the extroverted, even noisy side. He allows the brass and tympani to let loose. It’s not a vulgar performance, but it’s more assertive than any of the others. Some of the details are harder to hear. The tempi are close to average among these performances.

The trumpet call is a conspicuous feature, and there are multiple ways to treat it. It’s marked “Auf dem Theater,” which I think means “out in the theater, not on the stage” in this context. In this overture, as in the opera, the call is repeated. In the opera, there’s a direction that the second call sounds nearer. (Presumably it’s relaying the call of a trumpet out on the tower.) The overture doesn’t have any direction to that effect, but it makes sense. On the other hand, that means having two offstage trumpets in different locations. In Karajan’s recording, the trumpet sounds distant, and the volume is the same both times.

If I’d bought this recording, I wouldn’t complain, but it’s not my favorite among the four. I like a bit more subtlety.

Szell

Szell’s recording is in the middle of the road, at least within this group. Or maybe it sounds that way to me because I had a recording of Szell’s performance and heard it repeatedly long before hearing any of the others. It has the shortest playing time of the set, perhaps because he takes the tempo of the main section just slightly faster than the others. The trumpet call isn’t very far off.

The score says that at the start of the Presto ending just “2 or 3 violins” should play. I can’t tell if any of the recordings observe this request.

This is a safe choice, at least for me.

Furtwängler

The Furtwängler recording has the longest play time of these four. He takes the introduction very slowly and expressively. To make up for it, he takes the final Presto faster than everyone else. (Anyone who’s heard his recording of Beethoven’s 9th won’t be surprised by that.) Within the main body, he uses a bit more rubato than the others.

The trumpet is off in the distance both times.

While I don’t consider myself an audiophile, a recording that’s conspicuously short of modern standards gets in the way of my enjoyment. Not only is this one limited by the technology of the 1940s, it probably suffered from wartime restrictions on equipment and schedules. I’m glad to have heard it, but if I could have only one recording of the Leonore No. 3, this wouldn’t be it.

Solti

Solti’s recording is strong on controlled excitement and clarity. There’s a run of 64th notes in the introduction; that’s fast even at an Adagio tempo. Solti’s recording is the only one where I can make out the separate notes. It helps that he takes the introduction slowly and expressively, though it’s not quite as slow as Furtwängler’s. This recording is the only one that makes the second trumpet call louder than the first. Throughout the overture, the trumpets in the orchestra attack strongly and then diminish in volume, giving them strength without obscuring the other parts.

I’m declaring the Solti recording the winner. It has strength, expression, clarity, restraint where it’s needed, and decent sound quality. Don’t take this too seriously as a recommendation; it’s a practice run for me, showing my thinking when I try to compare recordings. If there’s a lesson in this post, it’s that not all recordings of a classical piece are identical, and you can notice the differences and pick your favorites with careful listening. Listening carefully is a habit worth cultivating, when there is so much pressure to hear music without paying attention.

https://garymcgath.com/4-beethoven-recordings/

https://garymcgath.com/?p=6336