Here’s a handy service — only hires atheists and non-Christians. via Bruce Sterling’s Tumblr
What happens to your pets after the Rapture?
Queen Victoria, 18th century marriage and the rise of the middle class
A fascinating sociological study of what happened when Queen Victoria became a widow and her mourning period interrupted the London Season — the period in which eligible bachelors tried to find eligible young ladies to marry. That interruption led to more intermarriage between peers and commoners, and that in turn helped change the economic landscape in Great Britain forever.
Peers courted in the London Season, a matching technology introducing aristocratic bachelors to debutantes. When Queen Victoria went into mourning for her husband, the Season was interrupted (1861–1863), raising search costs and reducing market segregation. I exploit exogenous variation in women’s probability to marry during the interruption from their age in 1861. The interruption increased peer-commoner intermarriage by 40 percent and reduced sorting along landed wealth by 30 percent. Eventually, this reduced peers’ political power and affected public policy in late nineteenth-century England.
Introducing Quinn Leanne Hemrica
On Sunday, June 26th at about 4 in the morning, I became a grandfather. It seems strange to type those words, in part because it makes me feel really old 🙂 but it’s true. And as soon as I saw little Quinn Leanne Hemrica, I fell in love! I know every parent and grandparent says this, but she was and is perfect — even when she is crying. Caitlin had a pretty rough labour, but she toughed her way through it, and I thought she looked fantastic even after all that.
Twitter goes to court in India over free speech
Note: This was originally published as the daily newsletter for the Columbia Journalism Review, where I am the chief digital writer
On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that Twitter had filed a lawsuit against the government of India in the Karnataka High Court in Bangalore, challenging a recent decree that ordered Twitter to take down content and block a number of accounts. Twitter obeyed the order, removing the content and blocking the accounts, according to the Times, but then filed the suit in an attempt to overturn the order. A source who spoke with the Times said Twitter isn’t trying to invalidate the law under which the order was issued, but instead argues that the government interpreted it too broadly. A TV network in New Delhi reported that the suit alleges the order was “overbroad, arbitrary, and disproportionate,” and that the content in question is either political commentary, criticism, or otherwise newsworthy, and therefore should not be removed.
It’s not known which specific tweets or accounts are the subject of the order, in part because India’s laws forbid platforms from talking about the takedown orders they receive, or any of the content they refer to, or the reasons for the order. Last year, the Indian government ordered Twitter to remove tweets by Freedom House, a US-based nonprofit group that promotes democracy around the world. The group noted that internet freedom was declining in India, and included maps whose borders the government of India disputes. Tweets from Rana Ayyub, an Indian journalist, and Mohammed Zubair, the co-founder of a fact-checking organization, were also subject to a similar order, as were accounts belonging to a number of political parties and groups.
Other accounts ordered to be blocked allegedly made “fake, intimidatory, and provocative tweets” that some took to be accusing the Indian government of genocide. In a number of cases, Twitter simply blocked access to tweets from within India, using what it calls its “country withheld” tool, a form of geo-blocking. In February of last year, in one of the largest such moves, Twitter removed more than 500 accounts (after initially refusing the order) and used geo-blocking to hide others, because of remarks those accounts made about Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India. At the time, Twitter said it refused to remove any accounts belonging to journalists, politicians, or activists because it believed doing so “would violate their fundamental right to free expression.”
Continue reading “Twitter goes to court in India over free speech”On the shores of the Polar Sea in 1875
Public Domain Review highlights a document from 1875, written (and illustrated) by the ship’s surgeon on a British Arctic expedition
When the British Arctic Expedition set sail from Portsmouth on May 29, 1875, the explorers hoped to reach the highest latitude, and perhaps even approach the ever-elusive North Pole. It was believed that, should they successfully pass through Smith Sound, between Greenland and Canada’s Ellesmere Island, they would encounter an Open Polar Sea free from troublesome ice. With this primary goal, three steamships set out across the stormy Atlantic only to immediately become separated by a violent cyclone, reconvening at Disko Bay on the western coast of Greenland some weeks later. Perhaps they could have interpreted this early inconvenience as a sign of the winter to come, or a warning that the Arctic waters are rarely kind. Regardless, the captains pressed on.
In Shores of the Polar Sea, Edward L. Moss, an artist and esteemed Royal Navy Surgeon, records this journey from his first-hand seat in the belly of HMS Alert. A mixture of intimate journal entries, miscellaneous engravings, and sixteen chromolithographs, the book provides a unique, often surreal, retelling of life on the ice. Moss prefaces his work with a modest appeal: “Whatever may be the artistic value of the Sketches — and they lay claim to none — they are at least perfectly faithful efforts to represent the face of Nature in a part of the world that very few can ever see for themselves.”
Paddled up the Nottawasaga River
We went to a wedding that was held at the Notawasaga Inn north of Toronto, so of course I brought my kayak and put it in just south of the resort, near a dam. I didn’t have time to go downstream and have Becky come and get me afterwards, so I paddled upstream through the golf course that is part of the resort. It was pretty shallow, but it was a great paddle.