The Indy Brief: Tech Oligarchs’ Anti-Democratic Worldview

Elon Musk’s ‘Anti-Democratic Worldview’ Imperils Twitter as an Open Forum

On October 27, billionaire and CEO of Tesla Elon Musk finalized his takeover of Twitter, after several months of attempting to back out of the deal. As visiting professor at Georgetown and writer for The Guardian Thomas Zimmer pointed out in a twitter thread on Friday, with Musk’s purchase, the world’s wealthiest continue to build a concerning level of unaccountable control over technology and media.

“It’s highly problematic that tech oligarchs are amassing so much power and influence,” Zimmer said. “They are not democratically controlled in any way, there are no checks and balances, they are not guided by any concern for the public good.”

Read more from Zimmer on The Edge.

NYT Downplays Assault on Paul Pelosi, Sparking Outrage

In the wake of the brutal assault on Paul Pelosi during the attempted kidnapping of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on October 28th, media critics and readers alike have expressed their discontent with the New York Times’ immediate coverage of the attack, which seemed to downplay the significance of an attempt on the Speaker of the House’s life.

On the morning of October 29th, the Times’ front page featured a ‘below the fold’ placement of the attack. It described the assault merely as a “hammer attack by an intruder” and not as an attempt by a right-wing extremist to kidnap and possibly even assassinate the Speaker of The House, the person third in line to the presidency.

Read more on The Edge.

Opera Ithaca Festival Runs Through November 6

The inaugural Opera Ithaca Festival runs from October 22 to November 6 and includes mainstage performances of a double bill of Missy Mazzoli’s “Proving Up” and William Grant Still’s “Highway 1, USA” running in repertory with Giuseppe Verdi’s “Nabucco.”

Focusing on the confluence of social justice and the arts, the Opera Ithaca Festival also features pre-performance panels before the mainstage performances with artists, scholars, and activists, and a series of pop-up performances at Ithaca’s favorite places.

Tickets for these events are available on the Opera Ithaca website.

Read more on The Edge.

Roundtable on Russia-Ukraine War and the Media

In September, the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival and the Park Center for Independent Media facilitated a conversation with scholars and media experts on coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war in independent and mainstream media. Speakers offered perspectives spanning on-the-ground reporting, Eastern European history, and film production.

Ukrainian journalist Natalie Gryvnyak began the conversation by reviewing the situation on the ground in Ukraine and how the roles and expectations of Ukrainian journalists have changed.

“Ukrainian journalists are learning how to become war reporters,” stated Gryvnyak. “A lot of Ukrainian journalists are collecting [documentation of] war crimes for investigations and reports.”

Read more from the panel on The Edge.

Watch the full recording here.

‘The Best Kind of Bumpy Ride’: Book Launch of Naeem Inayatullah’s ‘Pedagogy as Encounter’

On October 19, The Park Center for Independent Media and the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival hosted a book launch with author and Professor of Politics at Ithaca College Naeem Inayatullah for his new book, “Pedagogy as Encounter: Beyond the Teaching Imperative.”

Aida Hozić, Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Florida, joined Inayatullah for an engaging discussion that probed concepts such as the assumption that teaching is possible at all, and how to bring politics to the classroom.

“The deepest assumptions are the ones I claim are really not possible to learn,” Inayatullah said. “These are the assumptions that hold our world together, and that we’re not really conscious of. And that if we expose those assumptions to the light of day, we might lose our friends. We might lose our family members. We might lose our orientation toward the world.”

Watch the full recording here.

In Other News

1. Former Pakistan PM Imran Khan wounded after ‘shots fired’ near convoy during protest march | The Independent

2. Democrats Keep Falling for ‘Superstar Losers’ | The Atlantic

3. Senate Dems Criticize Biden Admin For Discouraging Abortion Pill Prescriptions Before Pregnancy | HuffPost

4. Climate change: Kilimanjaro’s and Africa’s last glaciers to go by 2050, says UN | BBC

5. ‘A renewed sense of urgency’: climate on the ballot in US midterm elections | The Guardian