Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America
Joe Biden speaks to his supporters during an event at Tougaloo College’s Kroger Gymnasium on March 8, 2020.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Wednesday endorsed Mississippi U.S. Senate candidate Mike Espy.
“A lifelong Mississippian, Mike Espy has spent his career working to improve the lives of Mississippi’s working families,” Biden said. “From his times as the first Black congressman from Mississippi since Reconstruction to his critical leadership as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture to his role helping to build a strong rural economy across the South, Mike Espy has the experience to move Mississippi forward.”
Espy said: “Joe Biden unites and heals. He has dignity and empathy. He is the leader our country needs right now to move forward … I look forward to working with President Biden and Vice President Harris to increase opportunities for all Mississippians.”
Espy is challenging incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who defeated Espy in a special election for the Senate seat in 2018. Hyde-Smith is a close ally of President Donald Trump and he aided her 2018 campaign with in-person rallies in Tupelo and Biloxi just before her runoff with Espy.
Espy’s endorsements this cycle include the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Congressional Black Caucus PAC, Collective PAC and Stacey Abrams, Rep. Karen Bass, Sen. Cory Booker and Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Hyde-Smith’s endorsements include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Huck PAC, Mississippi Manufacturers Association, National Rifle Association and National Right to Life Committee.
Dramatic political polarization. Rising anxiety and depression. An uptick in teen suicide rates. Misinformation that spreads like wildfire.
The common denominator of all these phenomena is that they’re fueled in part by our seemingly innocuous participation in digital social networking. But how can simple acts like sharing photos and articles, reading the news, and connecting with friends have such destructive consequences?
These are the questions explored in the new Netflix docu-drama The Social Dilemma. Directed by Jeff Orlowski, it features several former Big Tech employees speaking out against the products they once upon a time helped build. Their reflections are interspersed with scenes from a family whose two youngest children are struggling with social media addiction and its side effects. There are also news clips from the last several years where reporters decry the technology and report on some of its nefarious impacts.
Tristan Harris, a former Google design ethicist who co-founded the Center for Humane Technology (CHT) and has become a crusader for ethical tech, is a central figure in the movie. “When you look around you it feels like the world is going crazy,” he says near the beginning. “You have to ask yourself, is this normal? Or have we all fallen under some kind of spell?”
Also featured are Aza Raskin, who co-founded CHT with Harris, Justin Rosenstein, who co-founded Asana and is credited with having created Facebook’s “like” button, former Pinterest president Tim Kendall, and writer and virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier. They and other experts talk about the way social media gets people “hooked” by exploiting the brain’s dopamine response and using machine learning algorithms to serve up the customized content most likely to keep each person scrolling/watching/clicking.
The movie veers into territory explored by its 2019 predecessor The Great Hack—which dove into the Cambridge Analytica scandal and detailed how psychometric profiles of Facebook users helped manipulate their political leanings—by having its experts talk about the billions of data points that tech companies are constantly collecting about us. “Every single action you take is carefully monitored and recorded,” says Jeff Siebert, a former exec at Twitter. The intelligence gleaned from those actions is then used in conjunction with our own psychological weaknesses to get us to watch more videos, share more content, see more ads, and continue driving Big Tech’s money-making engine.
“It’s the gradual, slight, imperceptible change in your own behavior and perception that is the product,” says Lanier. “That’s the only thing there is for them to make money from: changing what you do, how you think, who you are.” The elusive “they” that Lanier and other ex-techies refer to is personified in the film by three t-shirt clad engineers working tirelessly in a control room to keep peoples’ attention on their phones at all costs.
Computer processing power, a former Nvidia product manager points out, has increased exponentially just in the last 20 years; but meanwhile, the human brain hasn’t evolved beyond the same capacity it’s had for hundreds of years. The point of this comparison seems to be that if we’re in a humans vs. computers showdown, we humans haven’t got a fighting chance.
But are we in a humans vs. computers showdown? Are the companies behind our screens really so insidious as the evil control room engineers imply, aiming to turn us all into mindless robots who are slaves to our lizard-brain impulses? Even if our brain chemistry is being exploited by the design of tools like Facebook and YouTube, doesn’t personal responsibility kick in at some point?
The Social Dilemma is a powerful, well-made film that exposes social media’s ills in a raw and immediate way. It’s a much-needed call for government regulation and for an actionable ethical reckoning within the tech industry itself.
But it overdramatizes Big Tech’s intent—these are, after all, for-profit companies who have created demand-driven products—and under-credits social media users. Yes, we fall prey to our innate need for connection and approval, and we’ll always have a propensity to become addicted to things that make us feel good. But we’re still responsible for and in control of our own choices.
What we’re seeing with social media right now is a cycle that’s common with new technologies. For the first few years of social media’s existence, we thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. Now it’s on a nosedive to the other end of the spectrum—we’re condemning it and focusing on its ills and unintended consequences. The next phase is to find some kind of balance, most likely through adjustments in design and, possibly, regulation.
“The way the technology works is not a law of physics. It’s not set in stone. These are choices that human beings like myself have been making, and human beings can change those technologies,” says Rosenstein.
The issue with social media is that it’s going to be a lot trickier to fix than, say, adding seatbelts and air bags to cars. The sheer size and reach of these tools, and the way in which they overlap with issues of freedom of speech and privacy—not to mention how they’ve changed the way humans interact—means it will likely take a lot of trial and error to come out with tools that feel good for us to use without being addicting, give us only true, unbiased information in a way that’s engaging without preying on our emotions, and allow us to share content and experiences while preventing misinformation and hate speech.
In the most recent episode of his podcast Making Sense, Sam Harris talks to Tristan Harris about the movie and its implications. Tristan says, “While we’ve all been looking out for the moment when AI would overwhelm human strengths—when would we get the Singularity, when would AI take our jobs, when would it be smarter than humans—we missed this much much earlier point when technology didn’t overwhelm human strengths, but it undermined human weaknesses.”
It’s up to tech companies to re-design their products in more ethical ways to stop exploiting our weaknesses. But it’s up to us to demand that they do so, be aware of these weaknesses, and resist becoming cogs in the machine.
Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn, left, and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann speak after Gov. Tate Reeves press conference in Jackson on Thursday, May 7, 2020.
The Mississippi Legislature will reconvene at 10 a.m. Thursday and is expected to remain in session Friday for what will be the last two days of the 2020 session, unless lawmakers opt to again extend the session.
Legislative sources, including House Pro-Tem Jason White, confirmed that lawmakers will reconvene Thursday to deal with funding issues related to the $1.25 billion the state received earlier this year in federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act funds.
Federal law mandates that the CARES Act funds be spent by the end of the year. Earlier this year, the Legislature earmarked those funds in a number of areas, including grants to help small businesses impacted by COVID-19, expanding internet access and providing aid to health care providers.
One of the primary reasons the Legislature is returning, House Speaker Philip Gunn and other legislative leaders said in recent weeks, is to determine what funds have been spent and whether some of the funds might need to re-allocated to other programs.
For instance, not all of the $300 million allocated earlier this year for small business grants will not be spent.
Gunn said he expects the Legislature to keep things “focused, very narrow.”
“Every time we return, everybody wants us to do everything, those who didn’t get their bills passed want to try it again,” Gunn said last week. “I have talked with the lieutenant governor, and we are aware of some other issues out there, that are CARES related but don’t necessarily have to do with the expenditure of money. We are going to evaluate where we designated spending back in June, determine how many of those dollars have been spent and do we want to move some of those dollars around, to get the maximum return.”
Many of the programs had provisions diverting any funds not spent by late in the year to the state’s Unemployment Trust Fund, which has been depleted as the number of the state’s unemployed skyrocketed during the coronavirus.
Jackie Turner, executive director of the Mississippi Employment Security Department, said the fund had $706 million in it in early March and was considered one of the most well funded unemployment trust funds in the nation. Now it is at $422.9 million, which includes $181 million the Legislature diverted to the program in June, Turner recently told legislative leaders.
The fund would be “extremely, dangerously low” if not for the infusion of funds from the Legislature earlier this year, Turner said. Taxes on businesses fund the trust fund and might have to be increased at some point to replenish the fund unless the Legislature diverts other sources of revenue. At the time the Legislature pumped $181 million in CARES Act funds into the trust fund earlier this year, Turner and Gov. Tate Reeves were advocating for the Legislature to divert $500 million into the program.
There is a possibility that lawmakers will look at other areas of need related to the coronavirus – such as a salary supplement for font-line health care providers.
The 2020 legislative session was scheduled to end in April before lawmakers opted to extend it to deal with coronavirus-related issues. Two legislative days remain on that extension, but legislators could by a two-thirds vote opt to provide themselves more days to meet, though, leaders have said that is not likely.
High School Student Marchellos Scott, Jr. (center) holds sign in sheet as he helps register a first-time voter in Clarksdale
CLARKSDALE — Students in Brett Wilson’s high school history class said until recently, no one taught them about voting or voter registration. That is, until Wilson helped launch the Clarksdale High School Future Leaders Club, a student social club to help them learn about civic engagement.
With an election looming this school year, Wilson and his colleague Ricky Fields started the club so students and the community they live in can become better informed about the importance of voting and the process.
“Did I really know anything about voting and voter education in my high school years? If not, why? Why did we not have those conversations? Why was that not included in the curriculum or even just small conversations in class?” Wilson said over a Zoom call. “This is nonpartisan … because voting affects all the sides. We want everyone to have access to that.”
Aallyah Wright, Mississippi Today
Clarksdale High School history teachers Brett Wilson (left to right) and Ricky Fields post during the voter registration event.
The teachers’ efforts empowered Clarksdale students to host a community-wide voter registration drive on Sept. 26.
“The hope is to bring in the change (and) make sure that everyone knows how important it is, and how important it plays into our future,” said Marchellos Scott, a 17-year-old Clarksdale senior.
“When it comes to voting, people don’t know, or my peers don’t know how big of an impact and how much of a difference that it really makes,” Scott continued. “But if we don’t fully educate ourselves on those (candidates), how can they accommodate our needs?”
With the Oct. 5 voter registration deadline days away, communities across the state are finding ways to engage prospective and current voters.
In Hinds County, circuit clerk Zack Wallace hosted a socially distanced safer absentee initiative during the week of Sept. 21. This consisted of food vendors, music, and tables with information about the election process and absentee voting.
“A lot of people are confused about the pandemic, mail-in ballots, and absentee voting. This (event) is to calm people’s concerns during this pandemic,” Wallace said in a phone call with Mississippi Today on Sept. 16.
Mississippi is one of few states which does not allow people to vote early by mail or in person. The exception is only for people 65 and older, those away from home on Election Day, and those who have a disability.
Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that if a person has a pre-existing health condition that places them at greater risk from COVID-19, it does not mean the person can vote early. This leaves local circuit clerks to make decisions on who can or can’t vote early.
“With the pandemic, we don’t know what it’s gonna look like in the next 30 to 40 days… folks having to stand in line for long times, if a major outbreak occurs, that’s a fear,” said Jarvis Dortch, executive director of the Mississippi affiliate of the ACLU. “Fear there are precincts that may be changed.”
Conor Dowling, associate professor of American politics at the University of Mississippi, said the more confusion there is, the increased chances of low voter turnout.
“The quicker lingering court cases are settled, the better. That way, accurate and consistent information can be disseminated to voters from then on until Election Day,” he said in an email response.
The coronavirus pandemic makes it more difficult to reach voters and build on a younger electorate, but this hasn’t deterred community members from taking action, said N’Spire Walker, a school teacher and community activist.
“That’s why we go to their living areas. We can walk up and catch them when they’re coming out of the house,” Walker said. “The main ones who need to vote are the ones you got to go to or meet them where they’re going.”
Walker, a middle school science teacher and founder of Dream Team of the South, a Meridian-based nonprofit, initially focused her efforts on registering voters. She soon realized some voters were inactive. Others were unsure of how to check their status.
“My main thing now is making sure the people who think they’re registered make sure they’re active and making sure ones who are registered take action,” she said.
Dr. Thessalia Merivaki, American Politics professor at Mississippi State University
Voter registration drives are usually successful, said Thessalia Merivaki, assistant professor in American politics at Mississippi State University. Incorrect information on registration forms and voters unaware of their rights and options can hinder the process, she said. This can be resolved through outreach and education.
This is why voter education is essential to the process. If it is not done, especially for the high school and college electorate, it exacerbates inequities in access to information, Merivaki added. For example, if a student comes from a household that is less likely to vote, it is likely the student won’t cast a ballot as opposed to a student in a civically active household, she said.
“This is another population that we know very little about, and it’s very hard to reach,” Merivaki said. “If we track this path towards college, that’s how we can explain why there’s so many students who are very unfamiliar with the process. The first time voters start college and they’re overwhelmed.”
In spite of challenges posed during this election cycle, exercising the right to vote keeps Clarksdale High School students and other communities motivated.
“By educating our students and bringing them along, they could also bring along their parents, their peers, and other family members that may not have that understanding (of voting),” Fields said. “There are adults my age that don’t understand the voting process.”
The deadline to register to vote is Oct. 5. Election Day is Nov. 3. To learn more about the candidates and voting process, visit Mississippi Today’s Voter Guide.
Mike Espy, the Democrat challenging Republican incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in November, released his third television ad of the 2020 Senate cycle on Tuesday. To date, Hyde-Smith has released just one.
Espy, whose campaign has raised more than $1 million in two weeks, has trailed Hyde-Smith in every poll released. But the most recent public polling showed him down just one point to Hyde-Smith.
Television and online spending could prove vital during the final five weeks of the cycle as campaigns struggle during the pandemic to reach voters with direct contact like door knocking and political events.
“I’m a Republican farmer, and I support Mike Espy because he’s the man that can work across the aisle,” Cliff Heaton said in the ad. “Cindy Hyde-Smith is holding us back… (Espy) can work with anybody that he needs to to get the job done.”
Two doctors are quoted in the ad — one criticizing Hyde-Smith for pushing to reopen too soon during the pandemic, and one praising Espy for supporting “expanding affordable health care in Mississippi.”
The fourth Mississippian in the ad is a public school teacher.
“I have not heard Cindy Hyde-Smith talk about increasing school funding,” said Rachel Killebrew. “Mike Espy supports raising teacher pay.”
Strange Brew Coffeehouse Tupelo, MS. Located @ 220 North Gloster Street, Tupelo, MS. First red light north of Crosstown.
Open 6:00am till 10:00pm 7 days a week. Check their page for updates menu and hours.
Strange Brew is fully equipped to satisfy all your coffee cravings! From a straight up cup of Joe, espressos, lattes, to super smooth cold brewed coffee.
With plenty of baked goods and sweet treats, they can satisfy a quick caffeine and confection craving via their drive thru, or hang out inside, or out front for a leisurely visit.
To drink, I requested the Maroon Velvet (hot) with white chocolate, red velvet, and whipped cream on top. With a sample of their baked cookies. It’s fresh brew and baked sweets that’ll melt in your mouth! Yeah….it….was….pure…. AWESOMENESS!
Strange Brew’s Starkville location has amassed a HUGE following and after being invited to experience the Tupelo location tonight, I understand the appeal. Although, Strange Brew already has a successful formula, BREWPELO as it’s been nicknamed, has a life of its own.
They have taken an old corner gas station and gave it renewed purpose…to serve Tupelo the best Strange Brew 7 days a week…CHEERS!!! 🤠 ☕️
One of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s favorite cases was an obscure case that originated in chancery court in rural Benton County in north Mississippi. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
The mammoth New York Times obituary highlighting the career and accomplishments of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg cited “one of her favorite cases” as M.L.B. v S.L.J. — an obscure case that originated in chancery court in rural Benton County in north Mississippi.
Ginsburg, who recently died after serving on the Supreme Court since 1993 where she solidified her legacy as a progressive icon, wrote the 6-3 majority opinion that ensured Benton County woman Melissa Brooks (M.L.B.) had the right to appeal a chancery court decision that stripped her of all parental rights of her two young children.
“We place decrees forever terminating parental rights in the category of cases in which the state may not bolt the door to equal justice, recognizing that parental termination decrees are among the most severe form of state action,” Ginsburg wrote in her ruling.
In 1996, Brooks’ ex-husband (S.L.J.) asked a Benton County chancery judge to strip her of parental rights because he contended she was not spending time with the children after the divorce. She countersued, saying her ex-husband was denying her visitation.
The Benton County judge ruled in favor of the ex-husband, stripping Brooks’ parental rights of her two children, removing her name from her children’s birth certificates and replacing it with the name of her ex-husband’s new wife.
Brooks then appealed the judge’s decision to the Mississippi Supreme Court. In a one-page order, the state Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal because she could not afford to pay the $2,300 to purchase the chancery court transcript and provide it to the Supreme Court, as required in Mississippi appeals.
At that point, north Mississippi attorney Danny Lampley, who represented Brooks, contacted Jackson attorney Rob McDuff to get his thoughts on the case. After researching the case, McDuff, a Jackson lawyer who has taken on various social and voting-rights issues during his lengthy career, decided to try to appeal the Mississippi Supreme Court ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
McDuff told Mississippi Today said he had always heard that the Benton County case was one of Ginsburg’s favorites and said he was pleased when he read the New York Times obituary validating her fondness for the case.
“It is pretty rare for the Supreme Court to take an appeal from an unpublished one page order from a state supreme court,” said McDuff, now an attorney with the Mississippi Center for Justice. “But the issue was particularly compelling because it raised the principle of equal justice for the rich and the poor, as well as the principle that a person’s relationship as a parent to her children should not be forever terminated without careful review.”
McDuff had to craft a unique argument because past rulings had made it clear that besides providing a defense attorney in a criminal trial, the government generally was not obligated to provide help to impoverished citizens in court proceedings, and especially in civil cases. He argued that the complete stripping of parental rights was a unique circumstance.
He said “two principles converged” in his successful argument of the case. The first was that the courts had ruled that a person convicted on a criminal charge — even a misdemeanor charge — was entitled to an appeal even if the person could not afford to pay for a transcript.
“That principle had never been applied to a civil case,” McDuff said. But he also argued that “a termination of parenthood involved rights so fundamental that extra procedural protections were required beyond the usual civil case.”
Three of the conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court at that time, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, dissented. Of those three, only Thomas remains on the court, though the conservative wing of the court now holds a majority that could be bolstered by Ginsburg’s replacement.
Amy Coney Barrett, nominated on Saturday by President Donald Trump to replace Ginsburg on the court, credits Scalia for helping to form her judicial philosophy. Many of the other conservatives on the high court also are viewed as similar to Scalia in terms of their views of the Constitution.
After the Ginsburg ruling in 1996, Lampley took the case back to the Mississippi Supreme Court, where the rights of Brooks were later restored.
Of his interactions with Ginsburg during oral arguments, McDuff said, “Justice Ginsburg had a quiet voice, but her questions were always incisive and went to the heart of the case. She constantly proved that a person doesn’t have to be loud or blustery to have a great impact on the world around them.”
Even among the select group of U.S. Supreme Court justices, McDuff contends that Ginsburg had an impact greater than most.
“Three justices who joined the Supreme Court in the last hundred years already had remarkable careers as social justice lawyers,” McDuff said. “Louis Brandeis joined in 1916 after many years fighting against industrial monopolies and protecting the welfare of workers suffering under appalling conditions in factories in the early years of mass production in the 20th century. Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice, joined in 1965 after decades as a brilliant trailblazing civil rights lawyer in the legal battle against racial discrimination.
“And Justice Ginsburg joined in 1993 after many years at the forefront of the legal movement against sex discrimination. Like the other two before her, Justice Ginsburg lived a rich and momentous life with a particular focus on helping those who were the victims of unfair treatment in this country. And she brought a perspective to the court that was sorely needed and made it a much better institution.”
Some might contend that M.L.B. v S.L.J. was an example of that perspective.
