Daily Archives: September 28, 2023

Anti-LGBTQ laws in the US are getting struck down for limiting free … – Oregon Capital Chronicle

Posted: September 28, 2023 at 5:19 am

Nearly 500 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in state legislatures in the U.S. in 2023. Many of those bills seek to reduce or eliminate gender-affirming care for transgender minors or to ban drag performances in places where minors could view them.

Most of those bills have not become law. But many of those that have did not survive legal scrutiny when challenged in court.

Anti-LGBTQ laws that federal judges have concluded do not pass constitutional scrutiny include anti-trans legislation in Arkansas and anti-drag legislation in Tennessee.

A notable feature of these rulings for me a First Amendment scholar is how many rely on the First Amendments protection of free speech. In several of the decisions, judges used harsh language to describe what they deemed to be assaults on a fundamental American right.

On June 2, 2023, a federal judge permanently enjoined Tennessees attempt to limit drag performances by restricting adult entertainment featuring male or female impersonators. When a law is permanently enjoined, it can no longer be enforced unless an appeals court reverses the decision.

The judge ruled on broad grounds that Tennessees law violated freedom of speech, writing that it reeks with constitutional maladies of vagueness and overbreadth fatal to statutes that regulate First Amendment rights. He also ruled that the law was passed for the impermissible purpose of chilling constitutionally-protected speech and that it engaged in viewpoint discrimination, which occurs when a law regulates speech from a disfavored perspective.

Three weeks later, a federal judge granted a temporary injunction against Floridas anti-drag law on similar broad grounds.

And in Utah, a federal judge required the city of St. George to grant a permit for a drag show, ruling that the city had applied an ordinance in a discriminatory manner in order to prevent the family-friendly drag show from happening. As in the other cases, the judges ruling was based on First Amendment precedent.

On June 20, 2023, a federal judge permanently enjoined an Arkansas law, passed in 2021 over the veto of then-Gov. Asa Hutchinson, preventing transgender minors from receiving various kinds of gender-affirming medical care, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy.

The judge held that Arkansas law violated the Fourteenth Amendments equal protection clause which ensures laws are applied equally regardless of social characteristics like race or gender because the law discriminated on the basis of sex.

Arkansas claimed its law was passed in order to protect children and to safeguard medical ethics. The judge agreed that these were legitimate state interests, but rejected Arkansas claim that its law furthered those ends.

The judge also held that Arkansas law violated the First Amendment free speech rights of medical care providers because the law would have prevented them from providing referrals for gender transition medical treatment.

During June 2023, federal judges in Florida and Indiana granted temporary injunctions against enforcement of similar state laws. This means that these laws cannot be enforced until a full trial is conducted and only if that trial results in a ruling that these laws are constitutional.

In striking down these unconstitutional state laws on First Amendment grounds, many judges went out of their way to reinforce the point that freedom of speech protects views about sexual orientation and gender identity that may be unpopular in conservative areas.

In his ruling on the St. George, Utah case, U.S. District Judge David Nuffer stressed that Public spaces are public spaces. Public spaces are not private spaces. Public spaces are not majority spaces. The First Amendment of the United States Constitution ensures that all citizens, popular or not, majority or minority, conventional or unconventional, have access to public spaces for public expression.

Nuffer also noted that Public officials and the city governments in which they serve are trustees of constitutional rights for all citizens. Protecting the constitutional rights of all citizens includes protecting the constitutional rights of members of the LGBTQ community and of other gender-nonconforming people.

Free speech rights also extend to those who want to use speech in order to help promote the well-being of LGBTQ people. In ruling that Arkansas law violated the First Amendment, Judge Jay Moody stated that the state law prevents doctors from informing their patients where gender transition treatment may be available and that it effectively bans their ability to speak to patients about these treatments because the physician is not allowed to tell their patient where it is available. For this reason, he held that the law violated the First Amendment.

As additional anti-LGBTQ state laws are challenged in court, judges are likely to continue to use the First Amendment to show how such laws fail to respect Americans fundamental free speech rights.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Experts Debate Social Media and the First Amendment – Tech Policy Press

Posted: at 5:19 am

Justin Hendrix is CEO and Editor of Tech Policy Press.

On Friday, I attended a packed lunchtime discussion hosted by the Harvard Law School Rappaport Forum titled Censorship, Content Moderation, and the First Amendment. The panel was moderated by Noah Feldman,a Professor Law at Harvard. Speakers included Jameel Jaffer,Adjunct Professor of Law and Journalism at Columbia Law School & Executive Director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, Columbia University; and Daphne Keller,Lecturer on Law at Stanford Law School & Director of the Program on Platform Regulation at the Stanford Cyber Policy Center.

The discussion focused on issues that may soon be considered by the US Supreme Court, including the constitutionality of laws passed in Texas and Florida that would prevent social media platforms from taking action on certain political speech. In August, the Biden administration urged the Court to decide whether the laws are constitutional, and it is expected to do so.

And, the Rappaport Forum panel also considered Missouri v Biden in light of the recent US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against the Biden administration. That case concerns what is permissible government persuasion and what is impermissible coercion and significant encouragement when lobbying social media companies to make certain content moderation decisions. On Tuesday, the government asked the Supreme Court to pause a block on its contacts with social media companies, while the plaintiffs seek a rehearing of the Fifth Circuit decision to address its scope.

(For another compelling, recent perspective on the issues in Missouri v Biden, I recommend reading former Twitter trust and safety head Yoel Roths essay, published today by the Knight First Amendment Institute, which focuses on the portion of the Fifth Circuit ruling concerning the FBI drawing on his personal experience.)

With the Law Schools permission, Im publishing the transcript of the Rappaport Forum discussion here, as it is a useful and accessible way to engage with the issues at play. As the Knight First Amendment Institutes Jaffer put it, the courts are going to hear this full slew of cases over the next few years relating to the governments power to influence or coerce or expose the social media companies content moderation decisions. And I think it hardly needs to be said that those cases are going to have an immense effect on the character of digital public sphere and therefore on our democracy as well.

Id add only that the effects will extend well beyond the US, since it will change the ways in which global social media platforms conduct themselves when it comes to content moderation and political speech. The implications may be even more profound in countries far beyond the jurisdiction of US courts.

This transcript is lightly edited.

Noah Feldman:

I just want to say a word about the two leading topics that well be talking about. And we will, Im sure expand beyond just those topics. The first is a set of cases that are in front of the US Supreme Court now that are being briefed and will be argued this Supreme Court term and decided, one expects, by the end of June, involving laws passed by Florida and Texas that in their form regulate what social media platforms may and may not do in their content moderation.

And to oversimplify, each of these laws imposes on the platforms something like the standard that the First Amendment imposes on government in moderating content. As you know, that standard and not just those of you who were in my First Amendment class, welcome, glad youre here. We just had two hours of First Amendment. So these are the real, the people really committed to the First Amendment and I thank you for coming.

As you know, all of you, the standards that a private company and the social media platforms are private companies, are ordinarily held to, are not First Amendment standards. Because the first amendment in the first instance only regulates the government. These state laws therefore would put the content moderation operations within those companies in a very different position with respect to what they can and cannot moderate than they presently are. It would require far, far less moderation of things like hate speech and misinformation and possibly even ordinary everyday offensiveness than they practice under current circumstances. And the circuit courts of appeals split on the constitutionality of those laws and thats why its before the Supreme Court now.

Hard to imagine a topic more important for free speech in the United States today than what are the standards that the social media platforms may or may not use to determine what content can be on those platforms? And here that issue arises in direct relationship to the First Amendment.

The other is also before the Supreme Court, but in a slightly different procedural posture, if youll forgive the legalese. It is a case involving an argument by individuals whose content was taken down from social media sites for violating their rules on COVID misinformation. Who alleged in district court where they won a preliminary injunction. That the Biden administration convinced by means of encouragement and even coercion the platforms to take down their content by fine-tuning their content moderation misinformation standards to prohibit what they were doing.

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit partly upheld a preliminary injunction issued by the lower court. It narrowed it down to just the Biden administration and not people in the CDC and the Supreme Court decided to stay that order until I think four oclock today and gave until the end of the day Wednesday for people to submit briefs. So its very probable that before you go off to your happy hours this evening, there will be a Supreme Court decision on this fascinating and rich issue, which sometimes we use the shorthand to call it, we call it jawbone. I actually dont know the intellectual origins of that phrase because it sounds to me like Samson and the jawbone of the ass, and that didnt end well for the Philistines.

Daphne Keller:

It is.

Noah Feldman:

Is that actually the origin? I always thought it had something to do with the fact that you talk out of your jaw, but I guess not. If so, its a very loaded metaphor, I guess it assumes a conclusion.

But what is meant is circumstances where government officials use persuasion, and persuasion that may go up to the line, will cross the line of coercive persuasion to the point where the decision to remove the speech becomes in law the speech of the government. And by becoming the speech of the government, is regulated by the First Amendment. Okay, so for those of you who havent taken First Amendment or havent taken it recently, the idea is that the government ordinarily can say whatever it likes, but it cant stop people from speaking. Private parties can stop other private parties from speaking and theyre not stopped by the First Amendment from doing so.

But if the private party, the social media company, removes the speech of another private person and does so because the government made them do it, then at that point it becomes the governments speech Act and then it cannot lawfully be performed. It wouldve been fine on that theory if the platforms did it themselves, but its not constitutional if they did it by being pushed into it according to some complex legal standard by the government. Without further ado, Daphne, the floor is yours.

Daphne Keller:

Thank you so much and thank you to Harvard and the Rappaport Forum for hosting us here.

So Ive been practicing platform speech law for a long, long time and Ive been teaching it for 11 years, I just realized. And when I started teaching it, every single class was on the topic that lawyers call intermediary liability. So thats the question of when the law can or should require platforms to take down user speech because that speech or that content is unlawful and its doing harm in violating the law by being distributed further by the platforms. And every year that I teach for the past five or six years, Ive had to drop a day of talking about that question, which is when does the law require platforms to silence their users? And add more material about the opposite question, which is when can the law stop platforms from silencing their users?

Are there situations where there can be, what we call must carry laws compelling platforms to carry speech against their will because a government body has decided that thats whats in the public interest? And as we know from Noahs introduction, in these cases coming out of Texas and Florida, that theyre likely to go to the Supreme Court soon, those states are asserting the right to compel platforms to carry speech that they dont want to. But lest you think that other issue has gone away, there have been three state laws requiring platforms, effectively requiring them to take down user speech that got struck down as unconstitutional in the past two and a half weeks. So there is a lot of action on both sides of this. When does the law make platform silence people? When does it compel them to let people speak? And its a very complicated set of issues because there really are speech considerations on all sides.

It is quite understandable that people want to be able to talk in some of the most important public forums of our age and they dont like it when a giant corporation stops them from doing that. That is not surprising and while it is passed as politically an issue of concern to the right and to Republicans right now, I think it is absolutely a bipartisan issue. Liberals dont like being silenced by corporations either. It is, I think unsurprising that were seeing the great wave of regulation right now, including the three state laws that were just struck down and the Texas and Florida laws, because were in this historically unprecedented situation of very concentrated power over public discourse and private discourse. The things that we once would have said to each other in a church or a bar or a note passed in class are instead passed through these private companies and transmitted digitally.

And that introduces both a greater capacity for control because theyre there at all, because its a centralized power and because they can have tools that automatically detect what words you use and automatically, if inaccurately you suppress things. So its unprecedented power and because it is private power, the tools to defend users rights from surveillance under the Fourth Amendment and from censorship under the First Amendment, those legal tools dont work or they dont If they work, we dont know how they work yet because the idea of applying them to private actors in the way that some advocates want to do now is unprecedented, is unexplored territory, figuring out how that could possibly work.

I think I want to suggest that there is a problem in the way that states have responded to this concentration of power, and that this is a problem that appears on the right and the left. Again, I think a lot of this gets passed as partisan and isnt necessarily. The problem is that regulators say, Wow, private companies, YouTube, Facebook, Google, you have so much control over discourse, its terrible. Were going to have to take that over and tell you how to use it. So instead of saying, Theres a concentration of power, lets undo the concentration of power, which is conceivable through interoperability mandates or through changes in privacy law. Instead of taking that approach, the approach that you get from both the left and the right is to say, use your power in the following way. Use it to take down more of this kind of speech or use it to keep up more of this kind of speech.

And I want to drive home that, the Texas and Florida laws, although they get called must carry laws and Texas and Florida themselves claimed that they are common carriage laws, which suggests that the platforms are supposed to just carry everything that people say, they actually introduced some pretty significant state preferences about speech. They are not content neutral, theyre not speaker neutral and they incentivize platforms to do things that will suppress speech as well as maybe carrying more speech. So, one way that that works is Texass law has a mandate to be viewpoint neutral when platforms are deciding what content to take down. If they want to take down anti-racist content, then they have to also, and I said that backwards. If they want to take down racist content, they also have to leave up anti-racist content. You pick your really difficult issue and theyre supposed to carry speech on both sides of it. If they want to take down pro-anorexia content aimed at teenagers, they might have to take down anti-anorexia content aimed at teenagers.

What that does for listeners, if youre on the internet and you wanted to follow a speaker you already respect or learn about something, is as the cost of accessing the information you want, which maybe is the anti-racist speech, you have to also put up with this state mandated inclusion of the stuff that you didnt want. So it is very much changing what it is that users can see and read online at state behest in a way that raises questions, not just about platforms rights to decide what to do, but about users rights to speak or rather to access information online. It is also, I think, quite likely speaking as a former platform lawyer, that if the platform is trying to decide how to comply with the viewpoint neutrality mandate, theyll say, You know what? Id rather have no one talking about racism at all than have to carry both the pro-racist and the anti-racist viewpoints. So Im just going to take down a whole lot more speech than I used to. And thats the consequence of this, the nominally pro-free expression law in Texas.

I can tell you more about ways in which I think the laws more in the weeds to introduce state preferences for speech, but hopefully that sets out the basics of it. I have about three more minutes, right? All right. I think theres an underlying problem here or an underlying difficulty, which is about what in the trade gets called lawful but awful speech. This is this very large category of speech and I had an article in the UChicago Law Review going into more depth on this, that is legal, its protected by the First Amendment, thats probably not going to change. But it is also morally abhorrent to many people, it violates social norms and they dont want to see it. So the pro-anorexia content, the pro-suicide content, the beheading videos, the Holocaust denial, the list is very long, and its very ugly.

If we dont want to see that content on the internet, we cant use the law to make it go away. And so where weve been so far is were stuck having private companies come up with rules and enforcing the rules that theres economic demand for and social demand for, but nobody likes that either because of this concentration of power issue. And so the deeper question I think is, how to deal with that. And the answer cant be, or I hope it cant be, Well, well just ban a bunch more speech. If we will use the law to restrict all this stuff that is currently First Amendment protected. Or theres a version of that that says, You can still say all that stuff offline, but if you say it on platforms, its more dangerous, so they have to take it down. And maybe the FCC will administer a new set of rules for previously lawful speech and say platforms have to take it down.

There are a lot of directions you could go to use legal power to address that. And I think theyre all pretty scary. And so I am much more interested in approaches that go back to this idea of maybe lets not have that concentration of power. Lets build what my Stanford colleague Francis Fukuyama calls middleware or what other people call it, adversarial interoperability or competitive compatibility. Which is finding ways to make it so that internet users can decide for themselves what speech rules they want to be subject to and have a competitive marketplace of different providers coming along, letting you select the Disney flavor of YouTube or the version of Twitter that is curated by a Black Lives Matter affiliated group or the combination or something from your church. There are all these ways to layer competing speech rules on top of existing platforms that I think can take us away from this idea that there has to be just one set of rules and the government gets to say what its going to be.

Noah Feldman:

Thank you so much, Daphne. On that last topic, itll be interesting to talk about A, whether that puts people into filter bubbles and B, whether were not actually seeing the market competition now in the way that, the company formerly known as Twitter, now has radically different rules of engagement than it did previously and is yet were in competition with other factors. Jameel.

Jameel Jaffer:

So I totally disagree with everything that Daphne said.

No, its really a privilege to be up here with Daphne and Noah who are both wonderful people and really smart thinkers on this set of issues. I do need to correct one thing that Noah said. I did not, in fact, dream up the Knight Institute. It was Columbia University and the Knight Foundation that dreamt it up and then made the mistake of hiring me to build the institute. So as youve already heard, the courts are going to hear this full slew of cases over the next few years relating to the governments power to influence or coerce or expose the social media companies content moderation decisions. And I think it hardly needs to be said that those cases are going to have an immense effect on the character of digital public sphere and therefore on our democracy as well.

Some of those cases have already been mentioned, in Florida and Texas. We have these laws that require the social media companies to carry content that they would rather not carry. The laws also limit the use of recommendation algorithms, they require the companies to dispose all sorts of information to their users and to the public. Theres also this Missouri case that Noah referred to where users have sued the Biden administration over its efforts to coerce the platforms or influence the platforms into taking down what the administration saw as vaccine disinformation. I would put into this category of cases, also the TikTok cases where the Montana has banned TikTok altogether from operating in the state. And one way to think about that law is as the most extreme content moderation where TikTok cant serve any content at all to its users. There are lots of other cases Daphne referred to some of them. Lots of other cases in the lower courts right now that raise these kinds of issues. I think that the plaintiffs have a pretty good chance of prevailing in most of those cases.

And in my view, the plaintiffs probably should prevail in most of those cases. Because most of them involve what I think can fairly be described as government efforts to rig public discourse. And that is precisely what the First Amendment was meant to protect against. But I think that it matters a lot how the courts resolve those cases, how the plaintiffs win those cases. Im worried that the courts are constructing a First Amendment that sees every regulatory intervention in this sphere as a form of censorship. And I dont think that that version of the First Amendment would serve free speech or democracy very well. In my view, the First Amendment should be able to distinguish between regulation that undermines the values that the First Amendment was meant to serve. Values like accountability and tolerance, self-government and interventions that promote those values. The First Amendment needs to be able to distinguish those two categories of interventions.

And of course its important that the First Amendment be attentive to the possibility that any intervention in this sphere is an effort to distort public discourse, or that the intervention will have that effect. And I dont want to move past that too quickly. I think thats hugely important, if you doubt the importance of that, just look around the world at the way that fake news laws are being used now against journalists. So I think its hugely important that First Amendment doctrine continue to be attentive to the possibility that any regulation in this sphere has that intent or that effect. But I do think it would be a sad thing and something terrible for our democracy if the courts constructed a First Amendment that was indiscriminately deregulatory. A First Amendment that left essentially no space for regulatory intervention at all, even intervention that might be important to protecting the integrity or the vitality of the digital public sphere.

So I think its worth taking a close look at some of the arguments that the social media companies and the technology companies, more broadly, are making in these cases that we have identified already. So one of the arguments is that, the collection of user data is speech within the meaning of the First Amendment. Another is that, any regulatory intervention that implicates the platforms editorial judgment has to be subject to the most stringent form of constitutional review. Another argument is that, any regulatory intervention that focuses specifically on social media companies should be subject for that reason to the most stringent form of constitutional review. And then finally, any regulation that would be unconstitutional if applied to newspapers must also be unconstitutional if its applied to social media companies. So its not surprising that you see social media companies making those arguments. What business wouldnt want to be totally beyond the reach of regulation?

So I understand and appreciate why theyre making these arguments. But if courts accept those arguments, its not just the bad laws that we have already identified that will be struck down, its also good laws. Those kinds of arguments will preempt legislatures from passing laws that I think most of us, no matter what our political views are, would agree make sense. Privacy laws for example, that would restrict what data the platforms can collect and what they can do with that data. Interoperability laws, which Daphne already mentioned, that might make it possible for third parties to build on top of the networks that the social media companies have created. Transparency laws that would allow the public to better understand what effect the platforms engineering decisions are having on public discourse. Or process oriented laws that would give users whose speech is taken down the right to an explanation or the right to appeal that decision.

Now, I know Noah wants me to make this argument in the strongest possible way, but I need to caveat it in one respect at least, which is that, the details are going to matter a lot. Im not making the argument that every transparency law is necessarily constitutional. Again, its important that the courts be attentive not just to the reasons why legislatures are passing these laws, but to the actual effect that the laws are likely to have on First Amendment actors exercise of editorial judgment. But a First Amendment that precluded any and all regulation of social media platforms would make the First Amendment, I think the enemy of the values that we need the First Amendment to protect. Should I stop there or do I have a couple more minutes? You want me to-

Noah Feldman:

You can go on for another minute.

Jameel Jaffer:

Yeah. Okay, well only-

Noah Feldman:

Say something provocative.

Jameel Jaffer:

Okay. All right.

Noah Feldman:

The last time I had a discussion with Jameel, we got into a yelling argument that took an hour and a half and its all on video somewhere.

Jameel Jaffer:

You werent the moderator.

Noah Feldman:

I wasnt the moderator, thats true.

Jameel Jaffer:

I guess the only thing, maybe this will sharpen the argument slightly. So the argument that the First Amendment shouldnt make any distinction between newspapers say and social media companies seems especially misguided to me. Theres no question in my mind that social media companies exercise editorial judgment. They make judgments all the time about the relative value of different categories of speech that seems like editorial judgment of the kind that, or at least analogous to the kinds of judgments that newspapers make about what should appear in their pages or that parade organizers make when they decide which floats can appear in the parade, that seems like a form of editorial judgment to me. But the relationship that a social media company has, to the speech that appears on its platform is different from the relationship that a newspaper has to the speech that appears in its pages. To say that another way, both of these kinds of actors exercise editorial judgment, but they exercise editorial judgment in different ways.

And those differences I think should matter to the First Amendment analysis. Why dont I leave it there? I can say more on that.

Noah Feldman:

Great. I would love to ask a question to both of you that derives from something that Jameel said, but I think its relevant to both of your comments. And that is the question of why we have a First Amendment in the first place at all. So I think you said in passing Jameel that the whole point of the First Amendment is to avoid the government distorting free speech or rigging what discourse is out there is the public. And I want to push back from the standpoint of the people who passed the Florida and Texas laws. I think what they would say is, Thats not the main purpose of the First Amendment, although it might be a purpose. The main purpose of the First Amendment isnt to enable people to speak freely. And nowadays, the place that people speak is on social media. And as platform lawyers certainly know, and everyone who uses social media knows, an enormous amount of content that you might want to say on social media, you cant.

It gets taken down and the more controversial you are, the more quick they are to take it down. And so from that perspective, if the government cant tell social media to allow free speech, and if you cant define free speech by saying, Were not going to make up a special definition for you, were just going to use the definition that the courts make us use, how on earth can that be in violation of the principles of the First Amendment? It seems like the only way it could be is if you think something that you guys both claim not to think, I think, which is that, the platforms are not just like newspapers who can say whatever they want.

So if theyre not like newspapers, what could possibly be wrong with Florida or Texas saying, You know what guys? Youre subject to the same standards that were subject to. And the reason for that is that the First Amendment is about maximizing peoples capacity to communicate and you are in the real world, the thing that stands between this generation and the possibility of free speech. So I would like each of you to address that.

Daphne Keller:

So thats not what they said though.

Noah Feldman:

Well, lets reconstruct it in the strongest argument that they could. Lets then just imagine a statute which is a variant on this, these statutes that just says, The platforms may not do anything that the government may not do with the regulation of free speech. Is that constitutional in your view?

Daphne Keller:

I dont think so.

Noah Feldman:

Thats what I thought.

Daphne Keller:

And so to be clear, the difference is, so Florida says, You have to let politicians say anything and journalists say anything. So it is picking winners as speakers and giving them special privileges. And I think those are important special speakers too, but the way they do it is very clumsy. And then Texas says, You have to be viewpoint neutral, but actually you dont have to be viewpoint neutral as to these things we think are really bad, you can just take that down.

Noah Feldman:

Just imagine they did it well.

Daphne Keller:

Yeah. So, instead were imagining a law that says theres a common carriage law, which is what Texas and Florida claim they have, which says, You have to carry every single thing period. Or you have to carry every single thing thats legal. And so if you know somethings illegal, take that down, but you have to carry everything else. I think one, I guess, the constitutionality, but man, those lawmakers constituents would hate that. Their kids and grandparents and cousins and whatever would go on YouTube and suddenly see a bunch of extreme porn or go on TikTok and see a bunch of pro-suicide videos and think this is not something people would actually be happy with. But setting that aside, I think, so I have been focusing on the speech rights of internet users and how theyre affected. But here the impact on the speech rights of the platforms is quite visible and quite extreme. Is taking away their ability to set any editorial policy at all, which I think is clearly a First Amendment problem. It also will, I think would be a .

Noah Feldman:

But why? Because corporations deserve free speech rights?

Daphne Keller:

Well, because we have a bunch of precedents saying that the parade operators and the cable operators and so forth, various commercial entities or non-commercial entities that just aggregate third party speech and set some rules for it, they do have First Amendment rights. So because the Supreme Court I think is my main answer there. But I also think it would destroy the

Noah Feldman:

Can I just push back? I mean, what if the Supreme Court said that, A parade is one thing, because can always make your own parade. But I tried to make my own Facebook and I wasnt so successful. So theyre not exactly like a parade, and so were going to treat them differently. And I think Jameel thinks that they should be treated differently from newspapers. So if that were the case I mean I dont think, imagine the precedent doesnt limit us here, because I personally dont think that it does. Would you still think, if you were on the Supreme Court and not bound by a precedent, do you believe that these giant gajillion dollar multinational corporations that control all of our speech have their own free speech to shut us up? Or thats the question that Im asking.

Daphne Keller:

Yes. Yes, they do. I dont think there should be-

Noah Feldman:

Why?

Daphne Keller:

There should be more of them. They shouldnt have the power that they do, but they are providing a service that most users want in curating the speech that they see. So its not a free speech mosh pit, every day when you show up on Twitter or YouTube or Facebook. And theyre doing that in expressing, theyre expressing their own priorities about what speech is good and bad in so doing. It seems like, I agree with you, the court can just change it and maybe they will, and maybe thats the world were heading for. So precedents not that important, but I think that there is a First Amendment value being served that would be served better with more competition, but its definitely a First Amendment value.

Noah Feldman:

Jameel, and especially given that you think theres a difference between the social media companies and newspapers, I want to know what the principle is behind that difference. Unless you are willing to allow the government to force the social media companies to allow free speech.

Jameel Jaffer:

Well, I mean I think it depends. So the answer for newspapers, the Supreme Court has already given us in a case called Miami Herald. So there was a law that wouldve required newspapers to run opposing viewpoints when they editorialize on certain topics. And the Supreme Court struck it down, saying, You cant force newspapers to publish opinions they disagree with and to carry speech so they dont want to carry. And so the question is, does that principle apply or apply with the same force to social media companies? And I dont think it should. I do think that there are circumstances in which legislatures should be able to impose, must carry obligations on platforms even if they couldnt impose the same ones on newspapers. Im not totally unsympathetic to that aspect of the Florida law. The Florida law says, the best version of the Florida law would say, A couple of weeks before elections, the big social media companies can take down political candidates posts only according to, say, published procedural rules that are applied generally and not just to political candidates or to a particular subset of political candidates.

Now, do I think that law might be constitutional because I think the social media companies have no First Amendment rights at issue here? No. I think the social media companies are exercising editorial judgment as Daphne says, theyre just exercising it in a different way than newspapers do. But the fact that theyre exercising editorial judgment isnt the end of the analysis. Then theres the question of, is the public justification for overriding that editorial judgment strong enough to justify overriding it? And I think you could make a strong case or at least a plausible case, that in the weeks before an election, the publics interest in hearing from political candidates should prevail over the interests of Facebook or TikTok in promoting the political candidates that they might prefer at that particular moment in time.

Now, the Florida law, Im not defending the Florida law. The Florida law I think was passed in order to retaliate against companies that were perceived to have a liberal bias. I dont think there are any legislative findings in the Florida law to justify the must carry provision I just described. But Im not unsympathetic to that argument and I dont think we want a first amendment that categorically precludes legislatures from even considering those kinds of must carry provision.

Noah Feldman:

So can I push you just a tiny bit to what seems to me like it would be the logical conclusion of that view? You say there has to be a compelling governmental interest, fair. What about the compelling governmental interest in the next generation of people who communicate only on social media, for the most part, having free speech? I mean, we dont have a public The Supreme Court has said that the public sphere today is online and on social media. So if you accept that, then I cant even imagine an interest more compelling to override the supposed free speech interests of these gajillion dollar corporations. I think neither of you is jumping up and down about the idea that all corporations have free speech rights, but well leave that to one side.

But the core idea would be that we cant have free speech anymore if the platforms are treated as exercising the editorial control. And you yourself, I mean, I think Im expressing a view, its closer to your view than to mine, because I tend to be on neither newspapers. But Im really trying to articulate the counter view. Once youve conceded that under some circumstances their editorial control can be overridden, why not override it just all the way down the line and lets just have free speech and we dont have to invent some bad free speech law. Well just use the free speech law the Supreme Court has already created for governments.

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100 years ago in Spokane: The stakes were high for the city to avoid … – The Spokesman Review

Posted: at 5:19 am

Emil Herman, a Seattle socialist, made an open threat to carry on a free-speech war in Spokane, backed by the Socialist Party.

Herman appeared before the Spokane City Council to ask for permits to hold street meetings on Stevens Street between Main and Trent avenues. He intended to address crowds on the subject of amnesty for political prisoners.

The council rejected Hermans request.

You are making a mistake to deny the right of free speech and we may be forced to speak without permission, Herman replied.

Spokane was no stranger to the issue. It was the center of a famous Wobbly free speech fight in 1909-1910, and city leaders were clearly not anxious to repeat that kind of street disruption. Yet they were also in no mood to be threatened.

Let me tell you something, Herman, council member Charles Fleming said. We are not denying you nor anyone else the right of free speech. There is a $100,000 stadium down here, provided for just such purposes, and if you desire to speak there I have no doubt permission would be gladly given.

From the aviation beat: Daisy Smith, Spokanes sole woman aviator, was still in St. Lukes Hospital after her near-fatal airplane crash two months earlier.

She was reported to be recovering well, and might be able to leave her bed within the next few weeks.

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100 years ago in Spokane: The stakes were high for the city to avoid ... - The Spokesman Review

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Eric Nam and SG Lewis on Feeling Lonely and Getting Healthy – Interview

Posted: at 5:18 am

Eric Nam, photographed by Kigon Kwak.

Eric Nam and SG Lewis are embarking on health kicks. The two musicians, both with ten years of touring under their belts, are asking the big questions: How do I maintain my health? How do I keep anxiety at bay? NamThe Atlanta-born, Seoul-based singerentered the K-Pop world in 2013 as a contestant of Star Audition (think X Factor, but in Seoul) and quickly entered a splashy new world of screaming crowds and tour bus naps. After his struggles with anxiety culminated in a massive panic attack on a flight, he opted to be more transparent about mental wellness, starting with his new album, House on a Hill. Just before the record dropped, he and Lewis got together on Zoom to talk about songwriting, the temptations of hedonism, and running a marathon.

SG LEWIS: Eric, my friend. How are you doing?

ERIC NAM: Im good. How are you? Long time no see.

LEWIS: Long time no see, man. Im good. Im on the verge of illness.

NAM: Oh, no.

LEWIS: I feel like this is such a bah humbug thing to say, but Im ready for festival season to be over. Im clinging on for dear life at this point.

NAM: Honestly, I dont know how you do such big festivals. It seems like youre in a new city literally every day.

LEWIS: Yeah, its a lot of flying and those are environments where its pretty easy to get ill, just in and out of air-conditioned airplanes. Im back in London at the moment, so Im chilling. Where are you in the world right now?

NAM: Im in L.A. Ive been bouncing around the past three months, so Im like you, trying not to get sick. Actually, Im late because I had to go to the doctors. I love what we do, but this is not perhaps the healthiest way to live.

LEWIS: Well, lets segue very seamlessly into a conversation about your new album, House on the Hill. Ive been spending some time with the project and I would say its my favorite work from you. Of your albums, for me, its the one thats resonated the most. How are you feeling about releasing the album, which is inherently more vulnerable, personal and perhaps honest than projects youve put out before.

NAM: Its nerve wracking, but Im also just ready to be done with it. I just want it to be released. Maybe because Ive sat on it for so long, Ive come to terms with the lyrical content that were putting out there, so I dont think Im necessarily anxious or nervous about that. I think Im excited to be able to talk about things that are relatable to anybody when it comes to finding purpose or happiness, or an existential crisis, in musical form. But you still want it to hit the right chord.

LEWIS: It didnt feel contrived or on the nose. Like you say, it felt like you were speaking from experience of 10 years of making and releasing music and touring. Starting with the title track House on the Hill. For me, the song reflects on this idea of perceived success. What are the things that you require for your own happiness, sanity, and success?

NAM: Well, I wrote that song because I literally was looking to buy a house and it happened to be on this crazy hill in L.A. I was like, This is the most perfect house and I must have it. I did a lot of soul-searching and thought, Am I really about to put it all on this house? I didnt get it for multiple reasons, but I walked away from that thinking, even if I were to get this house, theres always going to be a better, bigger, brighter, sexier house that Im going to want. Thats just the way that were wired. But Im realizing its not so much about having a certain thing, its about enjoying and appreciating the progress and the process of getting to that point. Thats what Im trying to focus my energy on.

LEWIS: I know, for myself anyway, the part of it thats the most fulfilling is that creation moment, where you make something and youre like, Oh my god, this is great. And that excitement around it is the part that makes the rest of the work worth it.

NAM: Absolutely. I think that speaks to why youre so prolific. I look at your discography and Im like, How does he do so much? Not only so much, its so diverse. Im always astounded. Im like, This guy, hes a genius.

LEWIS: Oh, man. Thank you, my guy. I think its just the ADHD kicking in. I wanted to talk about your collaborations on this album. In particular, youve had some British influence on this album in the form of our good friends, Honne and Oh Wonder. This is a real personal favorite on the album. How did you find that writing process with Andy [Clutterbuck] and James [Hatcher], and what kind of roles did three of you assume in that process?

NAM: Yeah, it was fun. Weve been trying to do something together for years and the schedules never aligned. I was like, You know what? Im just going to book a flight. Im coming to you guys. And the first day, Andy said I have this thing. It was a very somber piano song. The next day, this melody just popped into my head. I was on the train out to their studio and it was the hook of Only for a Moment. That day, we just went for it. I dont even remember if there was a certain process, they just worked their magic, starting on a piano and building it up. We shot this music video essentially in a Korean subway. And theres just 12 different characters doing the most insane things. Its about how, in any second, serendipity can step in.

LEWIS: Thats definitely how I felt listening to it. You touch on these large existentialist themes about love, purpose and happiness. At what point in the process did you realize that this was going to be a more, for lack of a better term, serious album, or that the themes were going to be quite heavy?

NAM: It happened after we wrote House on a Hill. Id started writing while I was in the middle of my last tour, and I feel like in order to write, as creatives, we need to go out and make mistakes and find love and fall apart and do all these things. But when Im on tour, Im pretty much only on tour. Im working constantly. So it was the pandemic, then I was on tour for nine months straight and I was like, I have nothing to really write about, I havent had many other experiences. And for so many artists, the pinnacle of your career is to be able to say, Im doing a headline show, this is massive. But then you take a step and you say, Am I happy? Do I have everything I want? And if I dont, what else do I need? And it was those types of things that I kept coming back to.

LEWIS: Yeah, you just made a good point, which is that [when] youre on tour youre in this survival mode. But its great that you managed to draw something out of that, because touring is such a select and privileged experience. We are lucky to get to tour, and if you were to write a song thats like, the tour bus is hard to sleep on, most people would be like, Whats he talking about? Id give a left nut to be on the tour bus. but it was really great that you managed to draw these more universal, life-affirming themes and stuff. How do you deal with anxiety? Is it something that comes about more when you are touring? Do you have any practices that help you to steady yourself?

NAM: It manifests in different times. Four or five years ago, I had this crazy schedule where I was bouncing back and forth between the States and Korea at least twice a month and I had this massive panic attack on the flight. I thought I was dying. It was terrifying, and I never experienced anything like that before. Since then, I wear my heart on my sleeve when it comes to mental health. When youre on stage and youre having the best time ever, you have this adrenaline rush, and then you get off and its silent and theres just this sudden drop of, How do I deal with this? Youre in the green room by yourself and its really quiet. Its just this never-ending cycle of anxiety, self-consciousness. We just dont talk about it or normalize it enough. So now I just take time to myself to refocus and rebalance. How do you deal with it?

LEWIS: Ive personally found that the larger the show, the more lonely and anxious I felt. Everyone treats you in a slightly different way, where they give you a wide berth, and theyre like, Oh, I dont want to bother Eric or something. I found it became more and more isolating, where you dont necessarily know everyone as well, like whos working the venue. Thered be times when the crew and the band went off to dinner and I was sitting by myself, like a lonely kid in the cafeteria. I was like, This sucks.

NAM: Dude, I dont mean to laugh, but thats exactly how I feel. I was like, Wait, the dancers are going out? The bands going out? Everybodys going out! I guess Ill just sleep on the bus. I was like, Do they hate me?

LEWIS: I now lean heavily on exercise. I have to be running. Then its just trying to look after yourself in any way that you can. Especially in the DJ world, I came up through a path where partying and late nights go hand in hand. Playing in clubs, and in electronic music, you are serving hedonism. People are in Ibiza for one week of the year where they want to go until 8:00 AM. Im 29 now, and those late nights definitely leave more of a mark than they used to. So its more green juice and yoga now. After the summer, Im going to take a bit of a break and do about three or four months just completely sober. I love to drink. Im British, we all love to drink. We got drunk in Seoul that time.

NAM: That was a fun night. We had a lot of soju.

LEWIS: That was a messy night.

NAM: That was a fun night. But Im at that point as well where I think I need to just roll off the alcohol and really focus on maintaining my health. I look at DJs, and on one hand, Im so jealous because I feel like its a different type of show. But I cant even imagine the toll is on your body or your mental health.

LEWIS: I said to a friend, I feel like Ive seen most things and done most parties, but the thing that I havent done is be sober for a bit. I just signed up for a marathon, actually, in April.

NAM: What?

LEWIS: Yeah, I mean

NAM: Sam, that goes beyond just being sober. A marathon, to me, is ridiculous. That is a type of pain that I will never be able to do, I promise you.

LEWIS: I mean, it sounds slightly sadistic. For me, its just putting a flag in the ground. Like, Okay, heres a goal in April for me to focus and get my health in order. But Im sure Ill regret it. Ive never run anything even close to a marathon. So yeah, its slightly nerve-wracking.

NAM: Thatll be great.

LEWIS: Whats next? Are you touring?

NAM: Yeah, Im on tour starting mid-September. We have close to 80 shows for the next tour, so were hitting everything and everywhere. I dont know where youll be, but Im playing the Shrine in L.A.

LEWIS: Lets go! Thats incredible, man.

NAM: If youre around, come through.

LEWIS: Yeah, absolutely.

NAM: What about you? Youre taking the next few months off to recover?

LEWIS: I finish in mid-November. Im pretty much flat out till then. And then Im going to lock myself in the studio and just make a lot of music. If you find yourself with some time, lets make it happen.

NAM: Lets do it. Well do some matcha, some breathing, some hiking.

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Tom Ford Waxes Nostalgic and Prada Plays the Slime Card – The New York Times

Posted: at 5:18 am

Ever dreamed of a do-over? Wished you could climb into a special mystery machine like Dr. Who and end up sometime in the late 20th century, before smartphones and social media, before alternative facts and the return of autocracy, when climate change was still a question mark, air conditioning could blast with impunity and hedonism was a subversively appealing marketing concept?

That kind of magical thinking is exactly how it felt on Thursday, walking through a wall-to-wall-carpet-lined tunnel into the Tom Ford show: the first major new designer debut of the Milan fashion season. It was the first live show since Mr. Ford sold his namesake brand to Este Lauder, who in turn handed over the reins of the ready-to-wear to the Zegna Group; the first since Mr. Ford stepped down, and his longtime No. 2, Peter Hawkings, was appointed creative director in his place.

One minute you were outside in the Milanese rain, a crowd of looky-loos shrieking happily at Elizabeth Banks and Rebecca Dayan. The next minute, you were swirling down the decade drain into 1995 or 96 or 97, the era when Mr. Ford was busy reinventing Gucci and bringing excitement back to Milan with show sites covered in plush carpet to recreate a haute nightclub circa 1979.

It has been almost 20 years, cultural schisms and a whole other company since Mr. Ford left Gucci, and yet Mr. Hawkings, who could have taken his mentors brand almost anywhere (literally and aesthetically), chose to bring everyone right back to the beginning.

And not just with the carpet and the dcor, but with the clothes: an effective tour through Mr. Fords greatest Gucci hits (with a touch of his Yves Saint Laurent) in 50-plus moments of dj vu.

Remember the slinky jersey dresses cinched at the hip with a curvy, Elsa Peretti-inspired buckle from Gucci fall 96? They were here, in black with a bronze-buckle belt, the backs cut to the lowest curve of the spine. Remember the rock-star velvet pantsuits from the same collection? Ditto, in teal and raspberry (one with shorts, instead of pants). Remember the slick pencil skirts that Mr. Fords Gucci stylist, Carine Roitfeld (sitting front row at Mr. Hawkingss show), once made her signature, along with slinky silk charmeuse silk shirts unbuttoned to the navel? Those too, though this time the skirts, like the slick suits for both men and women, were in faux patent leather croc rather than the real thing.

Every look came with a pair of shades and a stiletto sandal (or, for the men, a sharp leather boot). Most also included some gold chains and a clutch. The only thing lacking, really, was the follow spot. Oh, and the frisson of discovering the gleeful sex-power-strut thing.

After all, its not quite the same any more. The world isnt; gender isnt; the relationship of sex and power isnt. So why double down on the past?

Maybe this was a transition collection; an attempt by a protg to pay homage to the man who trained him by proving that he understood the legacy, and to show his new owners that he was a steady pair of hands. Maybe, in a season in which a new designer is about to debut at Gucci itself and rumors have been floating around about a return to that brands classics, it was an effort to reclaim those looks; to out-Tom Ford the house that Mr. Ford helped build. Maybe, after 25 years of working with Mr. Ford, this is simply what Mr. Hawkings knows.

Or maybe Mr. Hawkings believes (correctly) that we live in a time of nostalgia for the past, especially that turn-of-the-millennium past, where generations that didnt experience it the first time around try to recreate it as closely possible the only way they really know how: pants!

After decades in mens wear, Mr. Hawkings is a dab hand at those (and he did succeed in uniting the Tom Ford mens wear and womens wear. But in doing that, he forgot one thing: When Mr. Ford first blew fashion open, he wasnt going through the motions of existing norms. He was unzipping them, with a dash of irony and a self-aware wink.

If Mr. Hawkings learned one thing from his mentor, it should have been that: Real seduction comes garbed in the confidence of an original point of view. After all, you cant repeat the past. You can just play dress-up in it.

Its not that a designer needs to reject history (theirs, ours, a brands) entirely if you dont learn from it, you are doomed to repeat it and yadda, yadda, yadda. But it needs to be remixed rather than reproduced, so that suddenly the familiar looks entirely different. Thats how progress happens.

Thats what Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons do so brilliantly at Prada, and what they did again this season.

Starting with slime, which oozed down from the ceiling in long, transparent sheets, bisecting the runway and pooling in sea-foam clumps on the floor, like some sort of delicate alien plasma (or sneaky metaphor).

We had the 20s, 30s, sort of sliding together, and then the 90s, and some 80s, Mr. Simons said backstage after the show, as he and Mrs. Prada were swarmed by the usual flock of well-wishers and journalists pecking at their crumbs of wisdom.

He was talking about the echoes of decades past in iridescent organza shift dresses bathed in dawn shades, wisps of material floating behind them like mist. Talking about the strong-shoulder suit jackets that narrowed to a point at the waist over tiny tailored shorts. With, perhaps, a shard of a chiffon scarf thrown over the shoulders for good measure and a gold or silver carwash skirt, or at least notional skirt, belted atop, like a can-can dancer on her way to a board meeting.

He was talking about the Milky Way swirls of rhinestones and comet trails of silver grommets that decorated leather and velvet frocks, under distressed oversize barn coats (they are turning into something of a trend this season, as seen in 80s-style dyed denim at Max Mara and at Etro). Not to mention the freaky little baldheaded icon that doubled as a handbag clasp and turned out to be a recreation of a bag clasp from around 1913, when Mrs. Pradas grandfather founded the brand.

It was, Mrs. Prada said, a mythological head, but set against the ominous strains of the Vertigo soundtrack, it bore an unsettling resemblance to Alfred Hitchcock, peering out from an alternate accessories dimension.

The effect was to de- and re- contextualize the clichs of femininity and masculinity; to challenge any entrenched sense of surety about what is fancy, what is professional, what is kitschy, what is tough, what is fragile. And in doing so, open up the sense of what is possible.

Its about shifting things, Mr. Simons said backstage. Expectations, preconceptions, the ground under everyones feet.

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Tom Ford Waxes Nostalgic and Prada Plays the Slime Card - The New York Times

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September Horoscopes – The New Paltz Oracle – SUNY The New Paltz Oracle

Posted: at 5:18 am

The September 29 Full Harvest moon will be in the sign of Aries. Photo courtesy of Sky at Night Magazine.

Aries: Youre caught in a push-pull between your partnerships and your need for self-preservation. Your head feels scrambled and, above all, youre tired. You need to retreat in order to fully enjoy whats around you. You need a long break, and if you arent given one, you have to fight for one. Feeling what you feel and resting with yourself is the only way you can reset and recuperate. Dont be afraid to be alone. Dont be too proud to ask for space.

Taurus: You cant quite make sense of your circumstances right now. Your self-image is shifting rapidly, your relationships feel both filling and unfulfilling and you feel like youre thriving and spiraling at the same time. Things dont have to be black and white. The stubborn part of you wants to have everything figured out and everything simple, but unfortunately, that cant be life. Experience everything thats shifting and accept it. Struggle through hardships while embracing all of the goodness wholeheartedly.

Gemini: Your natural charm is in full bloom. Creative and career opportunities are popping up endlessly. Dont miss out on all the good coming towards you. That means dont lean too far into hedonism too sometimes minor sacrifices have to be made in order to reach your highest goals. Enjoy your time and your relationships as you enjoy the more difficult, more rewarding ventures coming your way. Embrace luck.

Cancer: Who are you when youre separated from home? Who are you when home is the opposite of what it should be? Ask yourself these questions as you deal with the emotional or physical separation of home right now. Its not your natural inclination to expand beyond the familiarity of home and family; you cling too tightly to what may not even exist. Theres more to life than how you grew up. As much as you dont want to, sooner or later, you have to step out of your comfort zone.

Leo: While exciting things are happening in terms of relationships and passions, you find yourself getting more and more insecure. Youre doubting yourself and your abilities, worried about pursuing your dreams for fear of failure. You need to redefine what failure is to you. The opportunity alone is a success. Whats coming your way is coming because of your talents. Theres no way to fail because of that. Shift your expectations and be kinder to yourself.

Virgo: From the outside looking in, things seem perfect. Youre successful, venturing into the unknown and you feel like you should be happy. Not everything needs to feel as good as it may seem. Theres a massive rockiness in your life right now, like you can never be sure what to expect next. Everything must be broken before it can be rebuilt. This rockiness will be short-lived. Remember that there is something to learn from every regret. Believe it or not, its okay to fail.

Libra: All eyes are on you. It feels like youre attracting so much goodness and opportunity, but you cant help but feel emotionally disconnected from it. It doesnt feel like anything in life is happening at all. All of the attention youre receiving only makes you feel worse. Deep down, youre exhausted. Youre sick of how things are and how things feel bound to be. Whats most important right now is rest. Dont worry about change yet. Take care of yourself. You havent done that in so long.

Scorpio: Youre shrouding a part of yourself and your life right now. Sometimes, thats necessary. You find restfulness in brooding, but you still tend to let that block out the light. Things arent easy right now, but youre still allowed to let love and kindness in. You have so many gifts and so many people who would do anything for you. They gravitate towards you for a reason. No matter what, theres more to life than solitude and sadness.

Sagittarius: You feel tightly bound by your surroundings and daily routine. Something feels wrong. It feels as though you could be doing so much more, living with so much more intensity, but something is sub-

duing you. You feel as though you can barely hear your own voice. Identify what is restricting you and reject it. Not feeling like yourself is okay, if it leads to becoming who you want to be. You can do better than your normal day-to-day. You deserve the thrill of the unknown.

Capricorn: Use your words and writing to advance your life right now. You have a wealth of intelligent ideas waiting to be shared. Youre focused on your work and career right now, taking risks and throwing all your time and energy into your job and classes. This can be a fantastic thing. In fact, its encouraged, especially in terms of networking. Youre in luck. Make connections and apply for promotions. Just dont neglect your emotions as a result.

Aquarius: Your life is expanding. Seize it at every opportunity. While youre prone to being a homebody, now is the time to break that impulse and take the risk. Do more when you want to do less. Go out when you want to stay home. Youre surrounded by positive social, emotional and spiritual opportunities and you are worthy of it all. The ideas coming into your mind right now are there for a reason. Harness creativity and motivation and make yourself proud.

Pisces: You have to pay attention to your identity crises. You cant ignore then try to run on empty. Youre naturally skilled in self-exploration and this shakiness of identity is the perfect chance to hone in on that. You want something so much deeper from life right now, so go deep into yourself. Reconnect with your values, goals, insecurities and what you consider to be fundamental about yourself. You might find that you have to let go of some pieces of identity in order to focus on who youre meant to be. Thats okay.

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Attracting Gen Z Workers and Future Leaders to Automotive – Ward’s Auto

Posted: at 5:18 am

According to Deloitte, entire industries could rise and fall in the wake of Generation Z-ers, and few sectors are ready for them.

Its a bold claim. Are you prepared as an employer in the auto industry?

The World Economic Forum says that, globally, the inability to attract talent is the automotive sectors most significant barrier to transformation and workforce strategies.

Who Are Generation Z?

Those born between 1995 and 2012. They come with a range of labels, including the iGeneration, Post-Millennials, TrueGen and digital natives. By 2025, theyll comprise 27% of the global workforce. Theyre the most diverse generation in U.S. history, says Deloitte.

Most Gen Z-ers are technologically savvy and adapt well to change, even seeking out disruption, says HR platform Employment Hero. Meanwhile, a recent global study, the BCW Age of Values 2023 report, says Gen Z seeks power, achievement, stimulation and hedonism more than other generations.

When it comes to all things auto, Gen Z tends to have a different relationship with cars. Theyre changing car culture, with fewer being licensed, owning or having access to personal vehicles. Part of that is the cost, but their values also are involved, drawing on an awareness of cars environmental and health impacts.

Thats why working for businesses involved in hybrid or electrified vehicles might resonate with them more than traditional vehicle types. But research shows that for some Gen Z consumers, the novelty and status of owning an EV appeals to them more than being kind to the climate.

How might the yardsticks and needs of Gen Z detailed above translate to what theyre expecting if they work for you?

Meeting Expectations

The Deloitte study says this generation prioritizes financial security over personal fulfillment.

Many Generation Z-ers have multiple jobs to make ends meet. Growing up during a pandemic may have been a factor, too. Therefore, they may be ready to forge a two-way commitment. Or they may balk at the cost of traditional post-school education and taking on student-loan debt.

Employers need to make sure their expectations match those of Gen Z. Employee well-being and mental health support is key for stable employment.

Young job seekers will research your business to make sure it is compatible with their values. Does your recognition and reward program need revamping? How well do your staff work in teams and across your business? Does your workplace have a strong collaborative and inclusive work culture?

Consider how you can package a role and its benefits to cater to Generation Zs desire for work-life balance. Investigate options for remote work and flexible scheduling where possible. Check out these other top practices to attract talent and boost retention that automotive businesses use globally:

Highlighting Purpose and Values

There has been a backlash in our country against positive-discrimination hiring programs that embrace DEI. But such programs make good business sense and can transform businesses, including in the automotive industry.

Here are the DEI workforce strategies most common among automotive organizations globally, says the WEF:

A More Sustainable Approach

The global automotive ecosystem is feeling the impact of digital as well as green transformations, according to an OECD report. The sector is transitioning to green hybrids and EVs. The latter will still need collision repairs and additional skills and specialized equipment to repair their higher electronic content. Other green jobs include electric-vehicle engineers and battery engineers as well as sustainable supply chain managers. All are in top demand. Check out these 26 green auto jobs, according to ESH Jobs.

To be part of that transition, your auto business can emphasize to would-be workers your investment in ongoing professional development and learning. Spell out potential career pathways (even segues) in training, mentoring programs and expected timelines. Registered apprenticeship programs can outline these benefits and be tailored to exactly the skills development your business needs.

There is a lot to promoting and packaging a role that appeals to Generation Z. Ensure you highlight sustainability, a green job and one with an enduring future. This might prove a useful lure to appeal to candidates and improve retention.

Nicholas Wyman (pictured, above left) writes about a range of topics related to workforce development, apprenticeships and the future of work.

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C Pam Zhang on Relishing Pleasure, Observing Billionaires, and … – Vanity Fair

Posted: at 5:18 am

That year of the pandemic, and my first book coming out during the pandemic, was one of deep disconnection from a lot of the things that used to be important to me, C Pam Zhang says over a call late one summer afternoon, including writing, including eating, and being part of community and just being in my body. Writing this book was a way to get back to a lot of that.

Land of Milk and Honey (Riverhead), following her Booker Prizelonglisted debut, How Much of These Hills Is Gold, which hit shelves April 2020, is a sensuous if complicated ode to hedonism. In it, a killing smog has blanketed the earth; strawberries are gone, then nuts and seeds and powdered basil. Life spans are shorter than they have been in three generations, borders are closed, and much of the world subsists on a miraculous mung-protein-soy-algal flourentirely life-sustaining and utterly joyless.

As she watches her world crumble, a 29-year-old cook with substantial debt and a wobbly UK visa impulsively quits her restaurant job to take a position as private chef to a research community on a privately owned mountain on the French-Italian border, the full scale of which she will only gradually come to understand. Her role is to concoct meals delicious enough to woo a handful of potential investors. A complicated task, the chef realizes, when she finds she can no longer stomach the rich ingredients shes been longing for.

While her billionaire employer is, at least initially, a shadowy presencea sharky black eye peering out of a reversing carhis passionate and mercurial daughter, 20-year-old Aida, blazes into the chefs consciousness full force, shaggy furs above, stick legs below, with the slight stagger of a bird blown off course and stranded thousands of miles from its destination. Her posh accent cloaks crude zingers. He would eat a pigs asshole if you called it calamari, she says of her father. Its through Aida that the chef rediscovers her palate for pleasure, but their relationship isnt without barbs and mysteries: The chefs mother was Chinese, her father Korean American, and, hungry for connection, she asks half-Asian Aida, Your mother, what was she? only to be rebuffed, Who the fuck are you to pry?

The book arrived to Zhang chronologically, beginning with a prologue in which the chef appears as an older woman revisiting a pivotal year. The first line of the prologue: One day, after my life is already over, a girl comes up to me at the back of the auditorium and says, Are you the famous chef from Miele? Throughout 2020, Zhang found herself largely unable to read fiction, turning instead to biographies of women artists like Georgia OKeefe and Angela Carter. Creatively, I became really interested in writing something that was able to look back, she says. I think I needed to write to remind myself that it was possible to live through what felt like an apocalypse and make meaning of it. There was one exception to the novel rule: The Lover by Marguerite Duras, which also starts with that framed narrative of an older woman looking back at a moment in her life, that despite the many decades that have passed, remains incredibly vital and visceral.

Because eating out was still deeply constrained, Zhang says of her time writing the novel, it was kind of an elegy, a way to experience food and the senses through the page when I couldn't access them in my body. I think that whenever we access something that we loved, or love through a memory, theres this extra layer of emotional intensity embedded in it because we know that it is lost.

Im reminded of Evelyn Waughs 1959 introduction to his 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited (which Zhang notes in her Acknowledgements alongside such entries as eggplant cookies eaten in Bangkok and the authors R.O. Kwon and Raven Leilani) in which he describes writing his novel during the bleak period of present privation and threatening disasterthe period of soya beans and Basic Englishand in consequence the book is infused with a kind of gluttony, for food and wine, for the splendors of the recent past

Here, in conversation with Vanity Fair, Zhang discusses favorite recent meals, the parallels between cooking and writing, and the dire importance of pleasure.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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C Pam Zhang on Relishing Pleasure, Observing Billionaires, and ... - Vanity Fair

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Paramount+: new shows and films streaming in October 2023 – ScreenHub

Posted: at 5:18 am

Have a Paramount+ account but dont know what to watch? Let our highlights package for the month help you out.

This series follows a 12-year-old boy as he goes on new adventures in the town of Royal Woods with his best friend, while also navigating the chaos of living in a family with ten sisters.

Monster High follows Clawdeen Wolf, Draculaura, Frankie Stein and Deuce Gorgon, as they discover who they are, embrace their differences, and learn to be fierce and fearless at the one place they all belong.

Bargain. Image: Paramount+.

A South Korean dystopian thriller series in which men are lured to a remote hotel under the guise of sexual encounters only to be caught in a trafficking ring where their organs are auctioned off to the highest bidder.

This music documentary examines Louis Tomlinsons musical journey from One Direction onwards and promises an intimate and unvarnished view of his life and career.

This film follows Clawdeen, Draculaura and Frankie as they enter sophomore year at Monster High. The power of three is put to the test as they face even bigger challenges this year new students, new powers, evolving friendships, and a threat that could change the world forever.

The annual Halloween Spooktacular returns in this TV movie. Lincoln and his best friend Clyde skip the Loud familys Halloween Spooktacular to attend a party hosted by the new cool kid at school, Xander, leaving his sisters to plan the annual event and grandiose neighbourhood performance.

In 1969, a young Jud Crandall has dreams of leaving his hometown in Maine behind, but soon discovers sinister secrets buried within and is forced to confront a dark family history that will forever keep him connected to it.

A new documentary examining contemporary celebrity in the internet age AKA the virtual Wild West.

Its back! Filmed in front of a live studio audience, Frasier Crane is back to face new challenges, new relationships and, surely, to give us a few good laughs along the way.

A thriller about Sarah, a teenager imprisoned by her dad in the family basement for more than 20 years, while others in the family think shes run off to be with her boyfriend.

The Burning Girls. Image: Paramount+.

A new series set in Chapel Croft, a village haunted by a dark and turbulent history, starring Samantha Morton and Ruby Stokes, who discover the truth can be deadly in a community with a bloody past.

A new music documentary about Robert Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Fab Morvan who became international R&B superstars, before it all went very, very wrong.

Four survivors of the Ghostface murders leave the past behind for a fresh start in New York City but soon find themselves fighting for their lives when a new killer starts a bloody rampage.

Read: ScreamVI review: cue shrieks of delight

Season 39 pits 24 returning contenders against each other, one of whom will take home their first victory.

Fellow Travelers. Image: Paramount+.

This new series, based on the novel by Thomas Mallon, is an epic love story and political thriller, chronicling the clandestine romance of two very different men who meet in McCarthy-era Washington and their lives across the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s, the disco hedonism of the 1970s and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.

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Paramount+: new shows and films streaming in October 2023 - ScreenHub

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At 2nd Debate, Rivals Laud Reagan, Trump Dances on His Grave – TIME

Posted: at 5:18 am

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIMEs politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took incoming fire from all sides as he stood at center stage Wednesday night at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif. So, too, did tech investor Vivek Ramaswamy, who again doubled-down on his belief that transgender kids were mentally ill; former Vice President Mike Pence followed-up with a proposed federal ban on gender-affirming care for students and almost insta-executions for guilty mass shooters. Andhooboydid no one see Sen. Tim Scott launching a rocket alleging Ramaswamy was in business with the Chinese Communist Party and the same people that funded Hunter Biden.

Messy? Of course. And yet, despite the drama and shade, borderline slander and sinister sneering, Wednesdays second GOP debate among White House hopefuls may still have mattered less than the man who didnt show: former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner in polls, money, and self-confidence who couldnt be bothered. Instead of joining his fellow Republicans under Ronald Reagans Air Force One at The Gippers presidential temple, Trump instead jetted to Michigan in the midst of an autoworker strike to offer his version of worker-based populism. Whereas Ronnie fired 11,000 striking air traffic controllers during his first year on the job and set back the labor movement in a huge way, there was Trumpsome 2,300 miles awayrambling at a nonunion factory, yet still seemingly contradicting a half-century Republican orthodoxy once again.

All of which explains why, with Trump leading his nearest competitor, DeSantis, by a 42-point spread using a platform of grievance, gotcha, and goblins, it might be worth asking if anyone is looking for Reagans Morning in America any longer. At the first GOP debate, staged in Milwaukee, Ramaswamy seemed to mock that nostalgia: It is not Morning in America. We live in a dark moment. Such sacrilege was unthinkable in a pre-Trump era.

After the first Republican debate, Trumps lead widened, his hold on the party hardened, and his challengers largely seemed to fade into the background. As much as former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley made gains with her defense of the neocon standards and traditional Republican values, it still didnt move the needle enough to give Trump reason to worry. Which begs this question: Is Ronald Reagans place as a sacralized figure in the Republican Party a thing of yesterday? Or has its crown been replaced by one shaped like a baseball cap and stitched with Make America Great Again? Has Reagan reached peak irrelevance in a party seemingly hellbent on hewing to Trump's whims?

Since Reagan first burst onto the national scene with an ideology-resetting speech at CPAC in 1974, he was considered the gold standard for the modern conservative movement, a new true north for what it meant to cut taxes, provide international security through an unbeatable American military, and demonstrate an absolute indifference to most social-safety nets in pursuit of bigger gains. Politicians still jockey to emulate The Great Communicator, activists still wear replicas of his campaign T-shirts, and donors still respond to the Pavlovian ring of those 80s-era slogans that sometimes feel like gospel. For years, the thinking was that if a candidate could replicate Reagans magic, they could crack the code to the modern Republican Party.

Then, along came Trump. Where Reagan saw a City on a Hill, Trump saw American Carnage. Where Reagan promised Morning in America, Trump promised to Lock Her Up. As Reagan negotiated amnesty for 3 million immigrants in the country illegally, Trump sought to build a border wall, lock up migrants, and gleefully discussed separating families. And Trump came within striking distance of winning a second term in the White House, winning more votes than any other incumbent President in history.

Now on his second contested run for the nomination, Trump may be looking as much to get back into power as to tapdance on Reagans grave, which is on the same hillside campus that hosted the debate Wednesday evening. Everything that Reagan stood forworthy of honor or abhorrenceseems deserving of Trumps contempt. Reagan sought to win the Cold War with allies and internationalism, while Trump preached isolationism and deference to Moscow. So much so that Trump declined to return to the scene of his second ever political debate in 2015, the one where he said hed get along with Putin, wanted to put Ivanka Trump on the $10 bill, and refused to apologize to Jeb Bushs Mexican-born wife.

So as the candidates Wednesday night sparred about how to secure the Southern border and combat Chinese influence, there was an almost aggressive ahistorical appreciation for Reagans record. Scott said The City on the Hill needs a brand new leader. DeSantis invoked Reagans 1989 farewell message and Ramaswamy sought to hide behind Reagans 11th Commandment to never speak ill of another GOP figure. And, as Ramaswamy broke a half-century of conservative foreign policy normsmany made seemingly unbendable by Reagan himselfPence roared the Reagan mantra that peace comes through strength.

But it may have all been in service of a legend that no one longer moves the modern Republican Party, and the candidates at times seemed all too aware of it. That much was clear when the evening coasted toward a close with a pointed debate about how much responsibility Haley bore for costly curtains installed at her government-provided home where she lived while serving as the U.N. Ambassador in New York. (The decision actually dates to the Obama administration.)

For decades, Reagan was a must-kiss ring. Even after his passing in 2004, candidates still made the pilgrimage to meet with his widow. And after she passed in 2016, mainstream candidates and hopefuls still made the trek to Simi Valley to offer their view of conservatism and its future.

For Trump? All of that seems beneath him. And his rivals hoped voters would catch the snub.

You know who else is missing in action? Donald Trump is missing an action, DeSantis said. He should be on this stage tonight. He owes it to you to defend his record. Christie offered his own twist, testing a new nickname in the style of his nemesis: If you keep doing that, no one up here is going to call you Donald Trump anymore. They will call you Donald Duck.

Trump knows his ideology: whatever makes him feel popular and powerful in the moment. He seemed to know who Margaret Thatcher was, but he couldnt contain his giddinessor hyperbolewhen he met the Queen of England. While MAGA is his official slogan, Hedonism Over History might be more accurate. And if that means tossing aside the long-held deification of Reagan, thats just part of the deal. His supporters get it, his party excuses it, and the country may just reward it.

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Write to Philip Elliott at philip.elliott@time.com.

At 2nd Debate, Rivals Laud Reagan, Trump Dances on His Grave - TIME

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Daily Archives: September 28, 2023

Anti-LGBTQ laws in the US are getting struck down for limiting free … – Oregon Capital Chronicle

Experts Debate Social Media and the First Amendment – Tech Policy Press

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C Pam Zhang on Relishing Pleasure, Observing Billionaires, and … – Vanity Fair

Paramount+: new shows and films streaming in October 2023 – ScreenHub

At 2nd Debate, Rivals Laud Reagan, Trump Dances on His Grave – TIME

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