March 15, 2026

DO BETTER DOED: Education Department sits on nearly 400 college discrimination complaints from one activist. “The U.S. Department of Education has not been responding to questions about a backlog of complaints, including nearly 400 from civil rights activist Mark Perry alleging race and sex-related discrimination in higher education.Some disability rights organizations have also expressed frustration with the office, agreeing its response time is slow. Perry flags programs that are open only to female students, or only to students of color, in violation of federal civil rights laws.”

Posted at 10:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

THE 21st CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT THE WAY I HAD HOPED: Meta Glasses Send Nude, Bathroom Photos Unknowingly to Kenyan Workers for Review.

Meta Glasses sends video and audio recordings to human reviewers in Nairobi, Kenya, according to a recent investigative journalism report from Svenska Dagbladet, a Swedish outlet. This includes sensitive recordings of naked bodies, bathroom activities, and unblurred bank card numbers. “In a large office complex, long rows of employees sit in front of computer screens,” Svenska Dagbladet reports. Thousands of people work at this center for a Meta subcontractor, Sama. They review the images and audio sent across the world by often unsuspecting users of Meta’s innovative VR Glasses.

The investigation included interviews with workers at the data annotation center who have all signed non-disclosure agreements and thus are speaking anonymously to the journalists.

“We see everything – from living rooms to naked bodies,” one worker said. “Meta has that type of content in its databases. People can record themselves in the wrong way and not even know what they are recording. They are real people like you and me.”

* * * * * * * *

This report comes as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is facing multiple lawsuits alleging failures to keep children safe on his social media platforms, Instagram and Facebook.

Flashback to 2019: Facebook Paid Contractors to Transcribe Users’ Audio Chats:

Facebook Inc. has been paying hundreds of outside contractors to transcribe clips of audio from users of its services, according to people with knowledge of the work.

The work has rattled the contract employees, who are not told where the audio was recorded or how it was obtained — only to transcribe it, said the people, who requested anonymity for fear of losing their jobs. They’re hearing Facebook users’ conversations, sometimes with vulgar content, but do not know why Facebook needs them transcribed, the people said.

Facebook confirmed that it had been transcribing users’ audio and said it will no longer do so, following scrutiny into other companies. “Much like Apple and Google, we paused human review of audio more than a week ago,” the company said Tuesday.

As Christine Rosen of Commentary wrote that year in an article titled “What Is To Be Done About Facebook?” This is a standard pattern for Facebook when caught: “From the company’s earliest days, Facebook’s leaders have adopted a remarkably consistent approach to the exposure of problems and missteps: a mercenary variation of the ‘ask for forgiveness, not permission’ strategy. Any time the company does something irresponsible or privacy-violating, Zuckerberg issues an apology on Facebook and Sandberg appears on television programs to reassure an anxious world that Facebook will do better. As Zeynep Tufekci observed in Wired: ‘By 2008, Zuckerberg had written only four posts on Facebook’s blog: Every single one of them was an apology or an attempt to explain a decision that had upset users.’”

(Via Small Dead Animals.)

 

Posted at 10:14 am by Ed Driscoll

PAST PERFORMANCE ART IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Shot: Sweden charges Greta Thunberg for blockading oil port.

—The BBC, July 6th*, 2023.

Chaser:

Earlier: Cuba Becomes The First Country To Reach Net Zero. Shouldn’t We Be Celebrating?

* Greta found a new grift after October 7th of that year: Israeli official slams Greta Thunberg after she backs Palestinians in Gaza.

Posted at 10:14 am by Ed Driscoll

I SUSPECT THAT MONEY, AND POSSIBLY BLACKMAIL, ARE BEHIND THIS:

Posted at 9:47 am by Glenn Reynolds

PRIORITIES:

You don’t have to be paranoid to read something sinister into that.

Posted at 9:36 am by Stephen Green

NEO: One movie after another.

The Oscars are tomorrow, and about a week ago I watched the first half hour of the movie One Battle After Another, nominated for Best Picture and several other awards. I was visiting a friend who lives at one of those large complexes for older people, and they show a movie for free every week. She wanted to take a look at that one, and so I went too.

But after a half hour of the movie we both left.

Simply put, it was the worst movie I’ve ever seen, bar none. Let me count the ways in which it was bad – no, maybe that’s impossible, because it was awful in every way. Its terribleness was absolutely astonishing.

Earlier: ‘One Battle After Another’ Is Irredeemable.

And from the Critical Drinker:

Posted at 8:44 am by Ed Driscoll

STRATEGERY:

Posted at 8:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

IT’S THE DEMOGRAPHY, STUPID:

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 8:14 am by Ed Driscoll

MUCH MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE:

Tweet continues, “You do get he’s basically walking on water. Making every elected hack, bureaucrat and diplomat of the last 40 years or so look like dithering incompetent fools, when they weren’t actively and despicably enabling said dictatorships, that is. Could it all go wrong? Yeah. But for the first time since Ronald Reagan blew up the Soviet Union, someone’s trying.”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Related thoughts here. “If the public realizes you can actually solve problems, there will be more pressure to do that — rather than just manage them endlessly.”

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll

LOCK THEM UP:

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

DISPATCHES FROM M-SNOW:

But Democrats with lavaliers and Chyrons already took us down this route 14 years ago: Mark Steyn: Racist dog whistles and the men who hear them.

And so it goes with American racism: The less there is, the more extravagantly the racism-awareness lobby patrols its beat. The Walmart carding clerks of the media are ever more alert to those who “appear to be” racist. On MSNBC, Chris Matthews declared this week that Republicans use “Chicago” as a racist code word. Not to be outdone, his colleague Lawrence O’Donnell pronounced “golf” a racist code word. When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell observed that Obama was “working to earn a spot on the PGA tour,” O’Donnell brilliantly perceived that subliminally associating Obama with golf is racist, because the word “golf” is subliminally associated with “Tiger Woods,” and the word “Tiger” is not-so-subliminally associated with cocktail waitress Jamie Grubbs, nightclub hostess Rachel Uchitel, lingerie model Jamie Jungers, former porn star Holly Sampson, etc, etc. So by using the word “golf” you’re sending a racist dog whistle that Obama is a sex addict who reverses over fire hydrants.

Last year, MSNBC considered Sydney Sweeney’s jeans a racist dog whistle: MSNBC Goes Full Racist, Attacking Sydney Sweeney Ad Campaign.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

THE GREATEST ENTHUSIASM FOR COMMUNISM REMAINING IS FOUND AMONG UNDERGRADUATES AND THEIR PROFESSORS:

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds