“Imagine a woman in the long skirts and high collar of the early 20th century standing in front of the painting she created. It is a massive piece—about 10 feet tall by 8 feet wide—and it is not a landscape, a portrait, a still life, nor a scene from myth or history. Dominating the composition is a bold yellow form reminiscent of a plant or sea creature, glowing amid colorful, biomorphic shapes and vigorous lines. This is just one of 10 such works that she has created almost entirely alone—sometimes walking on her work as she lays down the paint—and one of 193 radically abstract paintings that she has made in a few short years, between 1906 and 1915. None of these details fit with the story told in museums and art history courses. We know the first abstract painters so well that we often refer to them by last names alone: Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian. We know who is celebrated for doing “action painting” on giant canvases laid on the floor—Pollock. Each of these men has been lauded for opening a way into new territory. As it turns out, that territory had already been explored by another artist. Her name was Hilma af Klint.”
One of the more fascinating and horrible details in Reuters’ thoroughly fascinating and horrible long-form report
on Trump’s cruel border policies is this nugget: ICE hacked the
risk-assessment tool it used to decide whom to imprison so that it
recommended that everyone should be detained.
This gave ICE a kind of empirical facewash for its racist and inhumane
policies: they could claim that the computer forced them to imprison
people by identifying them as high-risk. The policy let ICE triple its
detention rate, imprisoning 43,000 people.
To conform to Trump’s policies, Reuters has learned, ICE modified a tool officers have been using since 2013 when deciding whether an immigrant should be detained or released on bond. The computer-based Risk Classification Assessment uses statistics to determine an immigrant’s flight risk and danger to society.
Previously, the tool automatically recommended either “detain” or “release.” Last year, ICE spokesman Bourke said, the agency removed the “release” recommendation, but he noted that ICE personnel can override it.
Of course, said ICE personnel would have to a) know that the option has been removed entirely, not just that the software isn’t recommending it in that particular case, and b) actually be a decent enough of a human being to give a shit and override it.
