Portside

• Anger Isn’t Enough, So the #Resistance Is Weaponizing Data – Issie Lapowsky (Wired)
• Inside Color of Change’s Successful Campaign to Make Bill O’Reilly’s Advertisers Flee – Cynthia Littleton (Variety)
• Duke Nukem’s Dystopian Fantasies – Liz Ryerson (Jacobin)
• The Evidence is Piling Up — Silicon Valley is Being Destroyed – Matt Stoller (Business Insider)
• I Just Love This Juicero Story So Much – Albert Burneko (The Concourse)
• Mobile Industry Loses Its Bid to Stop Berkeley’s Cellphone Warning Law – Cyrus Farivar (Ars Technica)

Anger Isn’t Enough, So the #Resistance Is Weaponizing Data

By Issie Lapowsky
April 18, 2017
Wired

For all the momentum, efforts to galvanize a grassroots liberal response to the Trump administration have largely relied on anger and happenstance—a series of somewhat random opportunities upon which supporters have seized. But over time, anger wanes and luck runs out.
For the past several election cycles, the major parties have sought to hedge against the fickle feelings of the electorate with cold, hard statistics. Data has become at least as prized as a powerful stump speech for turning out voters. Now the #resistance is getting its own number-crunchers.

Inside Color of Change’s Successful Campaign to Make Bill O’Reilly’s Advertisers Flee

By Cynthia Littleton
April 19, 2017
Variety

As soon as the New York Times story about Bill O’Reilly’s sexual harassment settlements hit on April 1, Color of Change began to mobilize.
The nonprofit African-American civil rights group sent an email blast to its 1.2 million members, calling on them to help ramp up a campaign to pressure advertisers to pull money out of Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor.”
The campaign was remarkably effective, hastening the withdrawals of more than 60 major advertisers from the top-rated hour in cable news. The success that Color of Change enjoyed was rooted in a previous effort to target O’Reilly over his racially charged statements, and the two-year battle COC waged against former Fox News personality Glenn Beck.
 

Duke Nukem’s Dystopian Fantasies
By Liz Ryerson

April 20, 2017
Jacobin

Two map designers are credited on all of the levels featured in the first commercial release of Duke Nukem 3D. In total, twenty-three people are credited for the creation of the original game. By contrast, a small army of hands touched its horrific long-delayed sequel, 2011’s Duke Nukem Forever, before release.
This is not unusual. It’s what defines the gaming industry now; large numbers of workers are made to feel disposable in environments rife with exploitation.
All of this is also interesting because Duke Nukem 3D is one of the first games to attempt to represent realistic modern spaces in a more or less “3D” space. And the way it’s done is far stranger and more anarchic than almost any mainstream game of today.
 

The Evidence is Piling Up — Silicon Valley is Being Destroyed

By Matt Stoller
April 19, 2017
Business Insider

When platform monopolies dictate the roll-out of technology, there is less and less innovation, fewer places to invest, less to invent. Eventually, the rhetoric of innovation turns into DISRUPT, a quickly canceled show on MSNBC, and Juicero, a Google-backed punchline.
This moment of stagnating innovation and productivity is happening because Silicon Valley has turned its back on its most important political friend: antitrust. Instead, it's embraced what it should understand as the enemy of innovation: monopoly.

I Just Love This Juicero Story So Much

By Albert Burneko
April 19, 2017
The Concourse

Juicero founder Doug Evans spent three years laboring to invent a $400 WiFi-enabled tabletop machine that squeezes juice ... out of a bag of Juicero-brand juice.
Silicon Valley is a stupid libertarian dystopia where investor-class vampires are the consumers and a regular person’s money is what they go shopping for. Easily opened bags of juice do not give these awful nightmare trash parasites a good bargain on the disposable income of credulous wellness-fad suckers; therefore easily opened bags of juice are a worse investment than bags of juice that are harder to open.
 

Mobile Industry Loses Its Bid to Stop Berkeley’s Cellphone Warning Law

By Cyrus Farivar  
April 21, 2017
Ars Technica

On Friday, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of the City of Berkeley, allowing the city to keep its law that requires radiation warning signs in all cellphone stores within the city limits.
The CTIA, the cellphone industry trade group, sued the city to stop the law from taking effect by asking a lower court to impose a preliminary injunction. The group argued that forcing retailers to display the warning (pictured below) constituted compelled speech, which violates the First Amendment.
In its Friday decision, the 9th Circuit conducted a line-by-line analysis of the actual warning sign. The court found that language such as "RF radiation" is actually "largely reassuring," as it tells prospective buyers that the phones they are buying meet or exceed safety regulations.
Beyond that, the court also noted that the CTIA had presented no "evidence showing that sales of cell phones in Berkeley were, or are likely to be, depressed as a result of the compelled disclosure."