Digital warfare
... plus curiosities from Paris, the world of cryptocurrency, and more.
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Without further ado, here’s what’s on deck this week:
💻 An anatomy of Israel-Hamas misinformation
🪙 Crypto’s kingpin gets sentenced
🧠 The origins of consciousness
1.2 miles — The distance that 200 French waiters raced across Paris during the revival of the Course des Cafés on Sunday amid the cheers and jeers of thousands of Parisians. In a game founded in 1914, contestants were tasked with testing their garçon prowess by speeding through the streets of the French capital while carrying trays with a cup of coffee, a glass of water, and a croissant without spilling. Pauline Van Wymeersch of Café le Petit Pont and Samy Lamrous of La Contrescarpe were deemed the fastest woman and man and earned themselves a free ticket to the Olympic opening ceremony this summer.
80% — The percentage of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, that is now controlled by gangs, according to a United Nations report published earlier this month. Haiti’s rapid spiral into political instability punctuates a decades-long spell of foreign intervention, natural disasters, gang violence, and controversial leadership. Today, hundreds of thousands of Haitians remain internally displaced due in large part to the primacy of gangs. (Readers of The Detour may well be privy to this, as we’ve covered the topic in prior editions.)
137 — The number of schoolchildren kidnapped by gunmen who have been safely released on Monday in Kuriga, Kaduna, Nigeria after they were taken earlier this month, according to CNN and a report from Nigeria’s Channels Television. The return of the children is in part due to Nigeria’s National Security Adviser Nuhu Ribadu’s security agencies, according to CNN interviews with the governor of Kaduna, Uba Sani. Nigeria has long dealt with the child abductions, principally from the Islamist insurgency group Boko Haram and other armed groups. But, why target children? In a piece I edited during my Foreign Policy days, Philip Obaji Jr. put it this way:
“[Boko Haram is] likely to continue targeting schools because the attacks help it weaken state security forces while gaining publicity and funding in the form of ransoms.”
The abductions from this month are not confirmed to be the makings of Boko Haram. Other armed groups in Nigeria have been known to use a similar playbook.
400 — The number of parliamentary votes in favor of legalizing gay marriage in Thailand out of 415 total seats on Tuesday. Having passed in the House, the historic bill will now be put to vote in the Senate, and then need to get endorsement from Thai King Maha Vajiralongkorn. If it passes, it could make Thailand the first country in Southeast Asia to pass a marriage equality law and the third in Asia, following Nepal in 2008 and Taiwan in 2019.
And now onto the cover story: Misinformation quickly became a weapon of war in the Israel-Hamas conflict. But what has made it so convincing even for the most discerning of audiences — from seasoned journalists to state leaders? In our latest at Frame, journalist Maya Abuali breaks down the anatomy of information warfare in the Israel-Hamas war: what it is, how it spreads, and who is impacted most in its wake.
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Now for a guest post from our friend Andrew Chow of TIME magazine.
Cryptocurrency’s most notorious criminal knows he’s going to jail. Tomorrow, he’ll find out how many years he’ll spend there. Sam Bankman-Fried, the one time-billionaire and founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was found guilty of defrauding customers and investors in a criminal trial last fall. The trial, which played out in a New York courthouse over one month, had all the makings of a gripping future movie: Sam, a boygenius-turned-pathological-liar, going to war with his embittered ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison, who helped him embezzle the funds until she was overcome with guilt. She then decided to testify against him to help seal his fate (and reduce her own sentence as a co-conspirator). “He thought that the only moral rule that mattered was doing whatever would maximize utility,” she explained miserably on the stand, averting his eyes at all costs. “He didn’t think rules like ‘don’t lie’ or ‘don’t steal’ fit into that framework.”
When Caroline said that, I was about three rows behind Sam. I’m Andrew Chow, a technology & culture reporter at TIME Magazine. I’ve been covering crypto for the last four years in all of its rollercoaster insanity. I put all my reporting on crypto and Sam into a book, Cryptomania, which will publish this August and is available for pre-order now. Between now and then, I’m publishing a weekly Substack, featuring snippets of my reporting and exclusive previews of the book.
On Sunday, March 31 — Transgender Day of Visibility occurs worldwide. Founded by activist and psychotherapist Rachel Crandall Crocker, who also founded the first transgender help line in the U.S, the day is meant to celebrate the global transgender community while recognizing the mounting challenges it faces: In the U.S. alone, lawmakers in 41 states have introduced at least 533 bills to limit access to gender-affirming healthcare and transgender human rights, according to the Trans Legislation Tracker.
Also on Sunday, March 31 — Easter occurs worldwide to commemorate the resurrection of Jesus Christ in the Catholic faith, among others. On Thursday, Pope Francis will travel to a women’s prison in Rome for the traditional washing of the feet ritual.
On Monday, April 1 — The first cohorts of wild geese make their way northward through the Central Flyway of North America to begin their spring mating season. Geese hunters have reported the first sightings of geese flocks as far north as North Dakota in the last few days. Late winter storms this year have delayed some geese flocks from making their way north past the United States and into Canada as expected. Speaking of geese, this Mary Oliver poem continues to be deeply relevant, rejuvenating, and hopeful. Enjoy.
Also on Monday, April 1 — Peak season for The Netherlands’ Fish Doorbell season begins. Every spring, various species of fish swim through Utrecht, Netherlands, to reproduce. To make their journey as easy as possible, city officials at the Weerdsluis lock in western Utrecht have installed an underwater live-stream camera for viewers worldwide to look out for fish seeking to pass. If they see fish, they can click on a pink button on the website, which will alert the lock operator to open the lock for fish to swim through. Restore your faith in human ingenuity to do good by checking out the live stream here.
The idea of pure consciousness has existed in religious traditions for centuries. It’s a meditative state where consciousness of the self or one’s thoughts fade away and one becomes aware of everything at once — a state of detached bliss. Some meditators describe the state as feeling like it exists outside themselves, like pure consciousness is something “out there” to be tapped into.
The German philosopher and total badass Thomas Metzinger has a new book out that explores pure consciousness from an academic perspective, weaving together 500 reports of meditators' experience of it. Metzinger is fascinated by the idea of a “minimal model explanation for conscious experience”, i.e. is there a basic, elementary form of consciousness that all of our conscious experience is built on top of?
Metzinger isn’t sure that that elementary form of consciousness is pure consciousness, but he thinks there’s something there worth exploring. If it turns out that the pure experience of infinite awareness is the building block of consciousness, it raises all sorts of interesting questions. Do animals experience pure consciousness? What about plants? Does consciousness somehow exist outside of us, woven into the fabric of celestial gas clouds and galaxies? Or is it a unique communion with the interconnectedness of the universe, concocted by the human brain, that only exists in our minds? I hope not.
I found out about Metzinger through this episode of New Books in Psychology and highly recommend a listen if you’re curious to learn more.
— Ben
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Until next week,
Kelly at Frame