Latest news with #post-Ferguson
Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
I'm Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is (Again)
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. One hallmark of our current moment is that when an event happens, there is little collective agreement on even basic facts. This, despite there being more documentary evidence than ever before in history: Information is abundant, yet consensus is elusive. The ICE protests in Los Angeles over the past week offer an especially relevant example of this phenomenon. What has transpired is fairly clear: A series of ICE raids and arrests late last week prompted protests in select areas of the city, namely downtown, near a federal building where ICE has offices, and around City Hall and the Metropolitan Detention Center. There have been other protests south of there, around a Home Depot in Paramount, where Border Patrol agents gathered last week. The majority of these protests have been civil ('I mostly saw clergy sit-ins and Tejano bands,' The American Prospect's David Dayen wrote). There has been some looting and property destruction. 'One group of vandals summoned several Waymo self-driving cars to the street next to the plaza where the city was founded and set them ablaze,' my colleague Nick Miroff, who has been present at the demonstrations, wrote. [Read: Stephen Miller triggers Los Angeles] As is common in modern protests, there has also been ample viral footage from news organizations showing militarized police responding aggressively in encounters, sometimes without provocation. In one well-circulated clip, an officer in riot gear fires a nonlethal round directly at an Australian television correspondent carrying a microphone while on air; another piece of footage shot from above shows a police officer on horseback trampling a protester on the ground. All of these dynamics are familiar in the post-Ferguson era of protest. What you are witnessing is a news event distributed and consumed through a constellation of different still images and video clips, all filmed from different perspectives and presented by individuals and organizations with different agendas. It is a buffet of violence, celebration, confusion, and sensationalism. Consumed in aggregate, it might provide an accurate representation of the proceedings: a tense, potentially dangerous, but still contained response by a community to a brutal federal immigration crackdown. Unfortunately, very few people consume media this way. And so the protests follow the choose-your-own-adventure quality of a fractured media ecosystem, where, depending on the prism one chooses, what's happening in L.A. varies considerably. Anyone is capable of cherry-picking media to suit their arguments, of course, and social media has always narrowed the aperture of news events to fit particular viewpoints. Regardless of ideology, dramatic perspectives succeed on platforms. It is possible that one's impression of the protests would be incorrectly skewed if informed only by Bluesky commentators, MSNBC guests, or self-proclaimed rational centrists. The right, for example, has mocked the idea of 'mostly peaceful protests' as ludicrous when juxtaposed with video of what they see as evidence to the contrary. It's likely that my grasp of the events and their politics are shaped by decades of algorithmic social-media consumption. Yet the situation in L.A. only further clarifies the asymmetries among media ecosystems. This is not an even playing field. The right-wing media complex has a disproportionate presence and is populated by extreme personalities who have no problem embracing nonsense AI imagery and flagrantly untrue reporting that fits their agenda. Here you will find a loosely affiliated network of streamers, influencers, alternative social networks, extremely online vice presidents, and Fox News personalities who appear invested in portraying the L.A. protests as a full-blown insurrection. To follow these reports is to believe that people are not protesting but rioting throughout the city. In this alternate reality, the whole of Los Angeles is a bona fide war zone. (It is not, despite President Donald Trump's wildly disproportionate response, which includes deploying hundreds of U.S. Marines to the area and federalizing thousands of National Guard members.) I spent the better part of the week drinking from this particular firehose, reading X and Truth Social posts and watching videos from Rumble. On these platforms, the protests are less a news event than a justification for the authoritarian use of force. Nearly every image or video contains selectively chosen visuals of burning cars or Mexican flags unfurling in a smog of tear gas, and they're cycled on repeat to create a sense of overwhelming chaos. They have titles such as 'CIVIL WAR ALERT' and 'DEMOCRATS STOKE WW3!' All of this incendiary messaging is assisted by generative-AI images of postapocalyptic, smoldering city streets—pure propaganda to fill the gap between reality and the world as the MAGA faithful wish to see it. I've written before about how the internet has obliterated the monoculture, empowering individuals to cocoon themselves in alternate realities despite confounding evidence—it is a machine that justifies any belief. This is not a new phenomenon, but the problem is getting worse as media ecosystems mature and adjust to new technologies. On Tuesday, one of the top results for one user's TikTok search for Los Angeles curfew was an AI-generated video rotating through slop images of a looted city under lockdown. Even to the untrained eye, the images were easily identifiable as AI-rendered (the word curfew came out looking like ciuftew). Still, it's not clear that this matters to the people consuming and sharing the bogus footage. Even though such reality-fracturing has become a load-bearing feature of our information environment, the result is disturbing: Some percentage of Americans believes that one of the country's largest cities is now a hellscape, when, in fact, almost all residents of Los Angeles are going about their normal lives. On platforms such as Bluesky and Instagram, I've seen L.A. residents sharing pictures of themselves going about their day-to-day lives—taking out the trash, going to the farmers' market—and lots of pictures of the city's unmistakable skyline against the backdrop of a beautiful summer day. These are earnest efforts to show the city as it is (fine)—an attempt to wrest control of a narrative, albeit one that is actually based in truth. Yet it's hard to imagine any of this reaching the eyes of the people who participate in the opposing ecosystem, and even if it did, it's unclear whether it would matter. As I documented in October, after Hurricanes Helene and Milton destroyed parts of the United States, AI-generated images were used by Trump supporters 'to convey whatever partisan message suits the moment, regardless of truth.' [Read: I'm running out of ways to explain how bad this is] In the cinematic universe of right-wing media, the L.A. ICE protests are a sequel of sorts to the Black Lives Matter protests of the summer of 2020. It doesn't matter that the size and scope have been different in Los Angeles (at present, the L.A. protests do not, for instance, resemble the 100-plus nights of demonstrations and clashes between protesters and police that took place in Portland, Oregon, in 2020): Influencers and broadcasters on the right have seized on the association with those previous protests, insinuating that this next installment, like all sequels, will be a bigger and bolder spectacle. Politicians are running the sequel playbook—Senator Tom Cotton, who wrote a rightly criticized New York Times op-ed in 2020 urging Trump to 'Send in the Troops' to quash BLM demonstrations, wrote another op-ed, this time for The Wall Street Journal, with the headline 'Send in the Troops, for Real.' (For transparency's sake, I should note that I worked for the Times opinion desk when the Cotton op-ed was published and publicly objected to it at the time.) There is a sequel vibe to so much of the Trump administration's second term. The administration's policies are more extreme, and there's a brazenness to the whole affair—nobody's even trying to justify the plot (or, in this case, cover up the corruption and dubious legality of the government's deportation regime). All of us, Trump supporters very much included, are treated as a captive audience, forced to watch whether we like it or not. This feeling has naturally trickled down to much of the discourse and news around Trump's second presidency, which feels (and generally is) direr, angrier, more intractable. The distortions are everywhere: People mainlining fascistic AI slop are occupying an alternate reality. But even those of us who understand the complexity of the protests are forced to live in our own bifurcated reality, one where, even as the internet shows us fresh horrors every hour, life outside these feeds may be continuing in ways that feel familiar and boring. We are living through the regime of a budding authoritarian—the emergency is here, now—yet our cities are not yet on fire in the way that many shock jocks say they are. The only way out of this mess begins with resisting the distortions. In many cases, the first step is to state things plainly. Los Angeles is not a lawless, postapocalyptic war zone. The right to protest is constitutionally protected, and protests have the potential to become violent—consider how Trump is attempting to use the force of the state to silence dissent against his administration. There are thousands more peaceful demonstrations scheduled nationally this weekend. The tools that promised to empower us, connect us, and bring us closer to the truth are instead doing the opposite. A meaningful percentage of American citizens appears to have dissociated from reality. In fact, many of them seem to like it that way. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
a day ago
- Politics
- Atlantic
The L.A. Distortion Effect
One hallmark of our current moment is that when an event happens, there is little collective agreement on even basic facts. This, despite there being more documentary evidence than ever before in history: Information is abundant, yet consensus is elusive. The ICE protests in Los Angeles over the past week offer an especially relevant example of this phenomenon. What has transpired is fairly clear: A series of ICE raids and arrests late last week prompted protests in select areas of the city, namely downtown, near a federal building where ICE has offices, and around City Hall and the Metropolitan Detention Center. There have been other protests south of there, around a Home Depot in Paramount, where Border Patrol agents gathered last week. The majority of these protests have been civil ('I mostly saw clergy sit-ins and Tejano bands,' The American Prospect 's David Dayen wrote). There has been some looting and property destruction. 'One group of vandals summoned several Waymo self-driving cars to the street next to the plaza where the city was founded and set them ablaze,' my colleague Nick Miroff, who has been present at the demonstrations, wrote. As is common in modern protests, there has also been ample viral footage from news organizations showing militarized police responding aggressively in encounters, sometimes without provocation. In one well-circulated clip, an officer in riot gear fires a nonlethal round directly at an Australian television correspondent carrying a microphone while on air; another piece of footage shot from above shows a police officer on horseback trampling a protester on the ground. All of these dynamics are familiar in the post-Ferguson era of protest. What you are witnessing is a news event distributed and consumed through a constellation of different still images and video clips, all filmed from different perspectives and presented by individuals and organizations with different agendas. It is a buffet of violence, celebration, confusion, and sensationalism. Consumed in aggregate, it might provide an accurate representation of the proceedings: a tense, potentially dangerous, but still contained response by a community to a brutal federal immigration crackdown. Unfortunately, very few people consume media this way. And so the protests follow the choose-your-own-adventure quality of a fractured media ecosystem, where, depending on the prism one chooses, what's happening in L.A. varies considerably. Anyone is capable of cherry-picking media to suit their arguments, of course, and social media has always narrowed the aperture of news events to fit particular viewpoints. Regardless of ideology, dramatic perspectives succeed on platforms. It is possible that one's impression of the protests would be incorrectly skewed if informed only by Bluesky commentators, MSNBC guests, or self-proclaimed rational centrists. The right, for example, has mocked the idea of 'mostly peaceful protests' as ludicrous when juxtaposed with video of what they see as evidence to the contrary. It's likely that my grasp of the events and their politics are shaped by decades of algorithmic social-media consumption. Yet the situation in L.A. only further clarifies the asymmetries among media ecosystems. This is not an even playing field. The right-wing media complex has a disproportionate presence and is populated by extreme personalities who have no problem embracing nonsense AI imagery and flagrantly untrue reporting that fits their agenda. Here you will find a loosely affiliated network of streamers, influencers, alternative social networks, extremely online vice presidents, and Fox News personalities who appear invested in portraying the L.A. protests as a full-blown insurrection. To follow these reports is to believe that people are not protesting but rioting throughout the city. In this alternate reality, the whole of Los Angeles is a bona fide war zone. (It is not, despite President Donald Trump's wildly disproportionate response, which includes deploying hundreds of U.S. Marines to the area and federalizing thousands of National Guard members.) I spent the better part of the week drinking from this particular firehose, reading X and Truth Social posts and watching videos from Rumble. On these platforms, the protests are less a news event than a justification for the authoritarian use of force. Nearly every image or video contains selectively chosen visuals of burning cars or Mexican flags unfurling in a smog of tear gas, and they're cycled on repeat to create a sense of overwhelming chaos. They have titles such as 'CIVIL WAR ALERT' and 'DEMOCRATS STOKE WW3!' All of this incendiary messaging is assisted by generative-AI images of postapocalyptic, smoldering city streets—pure propaganda to fill the gap between reality and the world as the MAGA faithful wish to see it. I've written before about how the internet has obliterated the monoculture, empowering individuals to cocoon themselves in alternate realities despite confounding evidence—it is a machine that justifies any belief. This is not a new phenomenon, but the problem is getting worse as media ecosystems mature and adjust to new technologies. On Tuesday, one of the top results for one user's TikTok search for Los Angeles curfew was an AI-generated video rotating through slop images of a looted city under lockdown. Even to the untrained eye, the images were easily identifiable as AI-rendered (the word curfew came out looking like ciuftew). Still, it's not clear that this matters to the people consuming and sharing the bogus footage. Even though such reality-fracturing has become a load-bearing feature of our information environment, the result is disturbing: Some percentage of Americans believes that one of the country's largest cities is now a hellscape, when, in fact, almost all residents of Los Angeles are going about their normal lives. On platforms such as Bluesky and Instagram, I've seen L.A. residents sharing pictures of themselves going about their day-to-day lives—taking out the trash, going to the farmers' market—and lots of pictures of the city's unmistakable skyline against the backdrop of a beautiful summer day. These are earnest efforts to show the city as it is (fine)—an attempt to wrest control of a narrative, albeit one that is actually based in truth. Yet it's hard to imagine any of this reaching the eyes of the people who participate in the opposing ecosystem, and even if it did, it's unclear whether it would matter. As I documented in October, after Hurricanes Helene and Milton destroyed parts of the United States, AI-generated images were used by Trump supporters 'to convey whatever partisan message suits the moment, regardless of truth.' In the cinematic universe of right-wing media, the L.A. ICE protests are a sequel of sorts to the Black Lives Matter protests of the summer of 2020. It doesn't matter that the size and scope have been different in Los Angeles (at present, the L.A. protests do not, for instance, resemble the 100-plus nights of demonstrations and clashes between protesters and police that took place in Portland, Oregon, in 2020): Influencers and broadcasters on the right have seized on the association with those previous protests, insinuating that this next installment, like all sequels, will be a bigger and bolder spectacle. Politicians are running the sequel playbook—Senator Tom Cotton, who wrote a rightly criticized New York Times op-ed in 2020 urging Trump to 'Send in the Troops' to quash BLM demonstrations, wrote another op-ed, this time for The Wall Street Journal, with the headline 'Send in the Troops, for Real.' (For transparency's sake, I should note that I worked for the Times opinion desk when the Cotton op-ed was published and publicly objected to it at the time.) There is a sequel vibe to so much of the Trump administration's second term. The administration's policies are more extreme, and there's a brazenness to the whole affair—nobody's even trying to justify the plot (or, in this case, cover up the corruption and dubious legality of the government's deportation regime). All of us, Trump supporters very much included, are treated as a captive audience, forced to watch whether we like it or not. This feeling has naturally trickled down to much of the discourse and news around Trump's second presidency, which feels (and generally is) direr, angrier, more intractable. The distortions are everywhere: People mainlining fascistic AI slop are occupying an alternate reality. But even those of us who understand the complexity of the protests are forced to live in our own bifurcated reality, one where, even as the internet shows us fresh horrors every hour, life outside these feeds may be continuing in ways that feel familiar and boring. We are living through the regime of a budding authoritarian—the emergency is here, now—yet our cities are not yet on fire in the way that many shock jocks say they are. The only way out of this mess begins with resisting the distortions. In many cases, the first step is to state things plainly. Los Angeles is not a lawless, postapocalyptic war zone. The right to protest is constitutionally protected, and protests have the potential to become violent—consider how Trump is attempting to use the force of the state to silence dissent against his administration. There are thousands more peaceful demonstrations scheduled nationally this weekend. The tools that promised to empower us, connect us, and bring us closer to the truth are instead doing the opposite. A meaningful percentage of American citizens appears to have dissociated from reality. In fact, many of them seem to like it that way.
Daily Mirror
25-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mirror
British football's last 5 record transfers with Liverpool set to take top spot
Premier League champions Liverpool are closing in on a £125m move for young Germany star Florian Wirtz that will blow the previous record British transfer out of the water Florian Wirtz appears close to joining Liverpool in a British record £125m transfer deal with the Germany star set to follow Xabi Alonso out the Bayer Leverkusen door. And while only two years have passed since the Anfield club backed out of the race to sign Jude Bellingham for £100m because the price tag was too rich, they are now set to blow the rest of their domestic rivals out of the water with a bumper deal early in the summer transfer window. Wirtz, 22, has scored 16 goals and registered 15 assists this term having won the Bundesliga last season. Bayern have been pursuing a move for almost two years and had believed until recently that Wirtz preferred a move to Munich. But the player's father, Hans-Joachim, who also acts as his agent, informed the club's hierarchy this week that the young star is heading elsewhere. On Saturday, Bayern president Hainer declared: 'Max Eberl [the Bavarians' sporting director] informed me that Florian Wirtz is probably leaning towards Liverpool.' And should the move be completed it will break the record transfer fee paid by a Premier League club. The Reds will be hoping their blockbuster deal works out significantly better than others that reset the benchmark. Here are the five most recent examples of the glass ceiling being how that isn't always an indicator of immediate success. Angel Di Maria - Real Madrid to Manchester United - £60m (August 2014) The Argentina international arrived from Real Madrid to Old Trafford as the supposed man to stop the post-Ferguson era slide. But he hated the weather, could not adapt to the Premier League and disappeared to Paris Saint-Germain after a single season. Di Maria, 37, is set to leave Benfica this summer. Paul Pogba - Juventus to Manchester United - £89m (August 2016) Having left United for Juve on a free four years earlier, accused of disrespecting the club by Sir Alex Ferguson, the France midfielder returned for a huge fee and, really, failed to make much of an impact before heading back to Turin. Pogba is currently a free agent having served a doping ban for raised testosterone levels. Jack Grealish - Aston Villa to Manchester City - £100m (August 2021) Switch from his boyhood club to Pep Guardiola 's juggernaut has brought plenty of medals and silverware but the off-the-cuff excitement has been quelled and he has spent much of the past two seasons on the bench at City. Enzo Fernandez - Benfica to Chelsea - £106m (January 2023) Chelsea's transfer policy since being taken over by Clearlake in 2022 has been patchy at best. And the club's new owners wasted no time in showcasing their spending power in the market. Argentina midfielder has been much improved this season but questions remain over the size of fee paid and expectation remains that there is much more to come. Moises Caicedo - Brighton to Chelsea - £115m (August 2023) But that Fernandez record, lasted less than a year, with Chelsea spending big money on another midfielder in the following window. Having struggled to make an impact at Stamford Bridge last season, Caicedo has been Chelsea 's best player this time around. In recent months he has been used at right back out of possession while stepping into midfield when Enzo Maresca's team are on the ball. Join our new WhatsApp community and receive your daily dose of Mirror Football content. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice.
Daily Mirror
25-05-2025
- Sport
- Daily Mirror
Jurgen Klopp's reason for snubbing Man Utd job - and what his wife had to say
Jurgen Klopp enjoyed an immensely successful spell as Liverpool manager, but things could have been so different had he accepted an offer to take over at Manchester United earlier Jurgen Klopp could have taken the helm of Manchester United many moons ago if it wasn't for the sage advice of his wife, Ulla Sandrock. The German mastermind will go down in the annals of history as one of Liverpool's greatest-ever managers, leaving Anfield in 2024 with a Premier League and a Champions League to his name. Yet he might've been in the United dugout if not for Ulla's intervention, as Phil Thompson revealed an attempt to snatch Klopp for Old Trafford. The Liverpool legend, speaking to Norway's TV2 in 2019, said: "I interviewed Klopp for Sky, and I asked if he and Liverpool were created for each other. "He looked at me and asked, 'Why?' Then Klopp told me he could have taken over Manchester United, but his wife said it wasn't right. When Liverpool arrived, his wife said it was right. "There is something strange there. It is as if he's created for Liverpool," reports the Liverpool Echo. Meanwhile, Klopp himself has acknowledged past overtures from United as Sir Alex Ferguson's tenure winded to a close in 2013. As per Sky Sports, Klopp said: "We spoke. We spoke not a lot but, for me, it was a lot. It was a big honour, the whole talk, to be honest. "But I could not leave Dortmund. You are in April and you are in the middle of the planning for next season. You have this player and this player who are coming but then you are not there anymore? That doesn't work. "Not in my life. I didn't hear about a real offer [from United] but, if there was, I could not have done it. I first had to finish the job with Dortmund and then think about other things. "Maybe that is not smart but that is my way. It was the same at Mainz." Klopp's loyalty to Borussia Dortmund meant he passed up the chance to manage Manchester United, a decision that set him on a path to eventually take the helm at Liverpool. With Klopp's storied tenure at Dortmund yielding significant silverware, including two Bundesliga titles and three domestic cups, his career trajectory might have been vastly different had he opted for Old Trafford over Anfield. As United continue their search for post-Ferguson stability, now under the guidance of Ruben Amorim, they can only wonder what might have been if Klopp had chosen differently. After taking over from Erik ten Hag in November, Amorim has struggled to make an impact with his inherited squad in the 2024/25 season, resulting in United's lowest-ever Premier League finish after Sunday's season finale against Aston Villa. In stark contrast, Liverpool are set to celebrate their second Premier League title since the league's inception in 1992, after their own match against Crystal Palace at Anfield. Arne Slot, who took over from Klopp ahead of the 2024/25 season, has orchestrated a sensational debut season with the Reds - clinching the league title with four games to spare back in April following a 5-1 demolition of Tottenham. Join our new MAN UTD WhatsApp community and receive your daily dose of Manchester United content from Mirror Football. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice.
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The 120 Days of Martin
Back in November, when DC started processing the fact that Donald Trump would return to the presidency, I heard one note of optimism from some liberals. They said it very quietly, and without much confidence. But they figured that Trump, at least, would appoint a US attorney who prosecuted more criminal cases than Matthew Graves. Crime was falling when his term ended, but the low conviction rate in his first years was a disaster for the city's life and politics. When Republicans took the House, they cited the city's car-jacking wave to blow up a criminal code reform that took years to write. DC did not get an Eliot Ness prosecutor. It got Ed Martin, a conservative movement lawyer and activist whose 120-day appointment will end this month, because he didn't have the Republican support to get confirmed. Other reporters have told the Martin story, but a quick summary: He represented Jan. 6 defendants before getting the job, punished and demoted their prosecutors when he got it, and launched a series of ideological investigations (wokeness in medical journals, a five-year old Chuck Schumer gaffe) that went nowhere. It took too long for MAGA to realize that Martin might not get confirmed to a full term. Martin tapped a 'sherpa,' a strategist who might help him through the nominating process, just three weeks ago. This was after a heap of reporting on Martin's pro-Trump commentary — much of it not disclosed to the Senate — and some elementary mistakes he'd made that threatened cases. Before Thursday afternoon, when Trump pulled the nomination, his supporters tried to reframe the confirmation as a fight for DC's safety. 'It ought to be the best place to visit in our country,' Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley told Steve Bannon on Tuesday. DC's anti-Trump citizens (hard to find another kind) don't disagree with that. Martin arrived in a city that was winding back some of the reforms of the post-Ferguson, post-George Floyd era, from the light touch on juvenile car-jacking and gun crimes to the decriminalization of fare evasion. A less political DA wouldn't have converted the electorate into MAGA voters. But that's what DC gets; Trump's replacement for Martin will be former New York judge and district attorney Jeanine Pirro, who has far more relevant experience, but got the job because she defends the president on Fox News. If criminal justice reformers like Larry Krasner are right, the post-2020 crime spike in cities was due to COVID and closures of public spaces, not prosecutorial discretion. That would set up Trump and his justice system for four years of success, as Martin was ready to do. Instead, he acted for a national audience of MAGA conservatives who wanted Jan. 6 prosecutors punished and liberals humiliated, while not restoring $1 billion of DC funding that was basically cut by accident. It's a good way to anger people who hate Trump, but a strange way to prove that they were wrong about him. The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, which has picked its fights with Trump, praised Sen. Thom Tillis for sinking Martin: 'Mr. Trump pledged to end the weaponization of the Justice Department. What was Mr. Martin doing by all but threatening to prosecute the Senate Minority Leader over a speech a half-decade ago?' In Mother Jones, Dan Friedman Martin's failure as a big loss for Trump. 'The rejection of Martin's nomination is also a sign of the limits of Trump's effort to rewrite the history of January 6 and the lies that led to it.'
