#Who care more about their stupid app than democracy | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

whitehotharlots · 5 years ago

Text

Castle of Delusion: The theft of the 2020 caucus and the liberal worship of failure

I attended Iowa Democratic caucuses in 2000, 2004, 2008, and then 2020. I’ll spare you the narrative details, but immediately after Monday’s caucus I remarked about how smoothly the new system ran. The cumbersome head count voting process of past years was replaced with an easily grasped card system that allowed supporters of viable candidates to leave after casting their fist vote (previously, they’d have to stay through re-alignment and a second head count, a process that took us about 3 hours in 2008). So cards were easier, clearer, and came with the added bonus of a paper trail. Things seemed great.

In my precinct, Sanders tied delegate-wise with Pete and Biden. This precinct was, even by Iowa’s august standards, incredibly old and incredibly white, so a tie for Bernie boded very well. Everyone was convivial. Aside from the Yang supporters being unable to perform basic arithmetic after the initial vote, there were no delays or hitches. Sure, no one knew how the reporting app was going to work—information regarding as much had never materialized, in spite of repeated promises that they’d be on top of it—but it was figured that the county chair would simply report the votes via telephone, as had been the process as far back as everyone could remember.

Post-caucus, my stomach was shot and I was as emotionally drained as I’d ever been, so I got back to my parent’s house and commenced playing video games—staying away from social media and cable news until I could be certain the results had been called. Come midnight, I saw what everyone else saw: something bad had happened, something no one could quite describe, and so they weren’t going to release votes that night. Rachel Maddow’s weird gross skeleton face was beaming with relief: this is great news for the party, she said, because it was great news for Michael Bloomberg. I commenced to get blackout drunk and post threats on social media.

At first, I went against my personal experience (and intuition, and common sense) and blamed the failure on run-of-the-mill incompetence. We are now, however, more than 40 hours past the point when most votes were cast, and 24 hours past the Polk County chair confirming that his results—in one of Iowa’s largest districts, where Sanders was projected to dominate—had been submitted. The state party is simply refusing to count votes. They are rigging their own election, disenfranchising their own voters.

I’m not going to speculate on the strategic thinking of the mental defectives who have risen to leadership positions with state and national Democratic parties. Maybe they’ll never count the Polk County votes. Maybe they’ll only do so weeks from now, so as to deny Sanders any momentum and allow that rat-faced piece of shit Mayor Pete to continue to falsely claim victory. Maybe this is meant to protect the Biden campaign from total collapse. Maybe it’s meant to boost Bloomberg. Who knows, who cares. The point is, these people are cheating in plain sight. They are doing so brazenly. They are literally refusing to count the votes of members of their own party so as to squelch an election result they find unfavorable.

Partisan corruption is nothing new, and certainly not exclusive to the contemporary Democratic party. What’s striking about this, however, is the nakedness of both its machinations and the disdain the party is showing to its own voters. Yes, Mayor Daley most likely destroyed Nixon votes to shore up Illinois for Kennedy. Yes, the Bush campaign ginned up astroturf protests to prevent a full recount in Florida. Yes, the AP called the entire primary for Hillary the day before California was set to vote, so as to depress turn out. All of these acts were disgusting, the sort of raw cynicism that destroys the few remaining vestiges of legitimacy of this awful and broken country of ours. But all of these were done to seize power. They all contained some element of deniability, some sense of awareness of the need to control public perception, to not so obviously telegraph the actors’ hatred toward democracy.

The theft of the 2020 Iowa Caucus is, in short, an act so proudly and openly corrupt that it has no fair parallel in modern American history. No reasonable observer can conclude anything other than that the Democratic party is run by some of the stupidest and most corrupt people alive. And the fact that the party does not seem to realize this is a profound indictment of how deeply our few remaining liberal institutions are in the grip of a sort of suicidal delusion, a form of illiberal madness that worships its own destruction.

The only reasonable question is how? How did the Democratic party and its media allies come to be dominated by idiots who derive psychological gratification from failure, people whose hubris and self-certainty is so strong they think everyone else is dumb enough to not see that they’re cheating in plain sight?

Like many other of the most malignant aspects of contemporary liberalism, this suicidal delusion was born in the darkest corners of academe. The thrust of the last few decades of cultural studies has been to demand that people reject understandings of the world that are traditional, intuitive, and commonsensical—even when these understandings aren’t materially malignant, and especially when they are backed up through empirical measurements.

Sometimes this has led to what most decent people would consider progress. It’s good, for example, that we’ve destigmatized homosexuality. But many more assertions—particularly those that have been argued for the most viciously throughout the last decade or so—are either objectively untrue or so far divorced from the lived reality of most people that very few of us actually believe them. Most people don’t believe that there exist no biological differences between men and women, for example, or that fatness doesn’t come with health consequences and/or isn’t correlated with diet and exercise. We don’t honestly believe that whiteness is a metaphysical force that is the true cause of all the world’s problems, nor that an implicit bias test is a fair measurement of anything, nor that person’s worth is more a matter of their collective identity markers than of their beliefs and actions. These assertions are all incredibly fringe, despicable to anyone who cares about empirical reality or possesses a moral compass that’s not founded entirely in self-serving relativism.

There exists a small caste of delusionists, however, who have forged careers from making these and other assertions. They are very prominent within their own, closed circles, and they receive no material pushback for their beliefs, even from the vast majority of people who have not been initiated into their cult. This is due to the solipsistic validation mechanisms of contemporary cultural studies, a milieu which suggests, simply, that its purveyors are right, everyone who doesn’t defer to them is some variety of fascist, and the fact that disagreement exists is fundamental proof of the righteousness of their claims. To members of this caste, delusion isn’t merely a virtue; it’s a currency. The more they anger and confuse outsiders, the more correct and admirable they become, and the higher their position of prominence within liberal institutions.

This is the lesson of the “Sokal Squared” hoax, in which a team of authors managed to get several nonsense articles past peer reviewers at cultural studies journals, making arguments which ranged from incredibly offensive to beyond the realm of plausibility. Or, if you’ve fallen for the woke apologia and believe these works to be unworthy of consideration, let’s look at a more earnest piece, in which an author argues that drone bombing “queers” warfare. It’s reductive to merely call these arguments stupid. They are delusional. They are absurd and offensive in manner that’s all but guaranteed to confuse and anger a large majority of people. They go against basic common sense and decency and can in most cases be disproven empirically—and that’s exactly why they got through peer review so easily. The value here isn’t in attempting to adjudicate reality or even morality; it’s instead found in giving its purveyors a chance to revel in one another’s unboundedness to reality. Radicalism can no longer be differentiated from simple stupidity. The point is to announce one’s membership in the delusional caste. It’s good to be insane. It’s good to be revolting. It’s good to fail, because then you know you’re good.

The caste’s members eventually reach a plane of delusion so all-encompassing that they begin to disdain those of us who still possess a desire to engage with the world in honest or rational terms. These people—the hoard, the uninitiated, the rubes—they only exist to confirm the righteousness of the insiders. What they think they see therefore doesn’t matter. Their opinions don’t matter. Their votes, especially, do not matter. We’ll tell them what to think. We’ll tell them how the world exists. And if they disagree, well, that’s just evidence of how wrong they are...

70 notes · View notes

sunritual · 4 years ago

Text

Let’s try this again

They should make a law where if the police don’t read you your Miranda rights you get out of jail free, like if you don’t get your receipt at fast food restaurants you get a mail free

The shaggy law - There should be a law that if you continuously and shamelessly deny doing something, no matter how indisputably obvious it is that you did it, you should get off free for pure savegery.

Confederates as “rebels for tradition” is laughable

Ram rainbow spiral horns profile.

People think grammar rules are etched into the universe — they’re not. When people say AAve is incorrect and ignorant, they say that their conception of how one should speak is inherently correct despite no evidence/truth. Grammar is agreed upon not mandated

Hippie sauce infusion pizza joint

Plain nude balconette with little purple and pink flowers at wiring

How could anyone predict anything happening but how could any be surpised either

Hierarchies - nahhhh

Humans aren’t inherently higher than any other creature or thing, but as humans i don’t think it’s wrong to prioritize other humans. There no better or worse but there is optimal for certain environments and lifestyles.

What differentiates a piece of art from a slightly different replica - when is it an entirely different piece altogether? Moving a figure slightly? Adding a splash of paint ? Changing a color to the point where no one could tell? Is the persons perception the deciding factor or what’s actually on the canvas. If abstract art is about the perception, and the waning behind it - does it change with these things?

An exhibit where people are invited to paint over and destroy or change the art

The differences between us and other. Are feeble - not illusory but

Periwinkle sky blue black and white each of a half circle . Faded out

Uni should be about exploring ideas — new and old famillar and foreign - honeing writing reading reasoning debating listening etc skills.

Umm, Karen were your parents married when you were born?

Ummmm no, umm i mean , uh ,yes —what??

Then why are you policing what other people do?

Dark blue light blue orange lemon circles layer on top of each other, several difffent sizes

Job apps tip!! For every job you apply to , Change your last name on your resume to the last name of the hiring manager and they will think you are related to them and hire you with nepotism. ( then, or coarse, legally when you get the job)

Unpopular opinion: i don’t really mind diarrhea

I for one think it’s incredibly brave of the brats girls to reclaim such a derogatory term

Starting every Describtion of every British show with “its kind of like skins but..”

Beanie baskin took that treat she snatched it - she ain’t even askin

The squad bod - a group of ghost friends share one body in which they have to live their lives -

My playlists are a matter of fact, not opinion. They reveal truths about the human experience

A cats gorilla imeritive of aesthetics.

I don’t chose them, they are not for joy but for truth. They are not intelligible but feel able

📝 narrative - longing

👼 chaotic

🌾 childlike wonder

Things that seem homo and phobic ATST

- Woodstock

- Brown eyed girl

Life has a funny way of sneaking up on ya when you think everything BG a gone wrong and everything bows up in your face

If women can’t do drag because they have an advantage then what is drag? Is it having good looking tits and a waist ? Looking like woman? or is it about having charisma uniqueness nerve and talent?

Examining Tik toks through different philosophical lenses

What makes it so they put parenthesis around lyrics in a song? What intonations and such make it parenthesis worthy

What’s an article of clothing from your childhood that you viscerally remember for seemingly no reason

I feel like the problem with the property brothers is they had too good of a childhood

Do you ever wonder if personality traits would be diffferntnin different cultures? Would a quiet person be even quieter if they were brought up in North Korea? Or the same amount of talkativity? Do we have the traits no matter what, or are we inclined to be more of one way than the others around us. Are personality traits created by comparison to those around?

Maybe the anxiety comes from knowing your not “supposed” to be as quiet as you are. You don’t really want to talk, that’s okay , but it’s expected that you do. So you are anxiety that your not living up

I find happiness every single day

This feeling has made me so appreciative of my mental state usually. How many people feel like this on the regular? How many people have this as their default? I am so lucky. My default is happy. I have my issues, but i need to appreciate the gift i was given. I was given elation. Childlike wonder. Curiosity. Adventurousness. Self completion and fullness. The rest will come.

If you see a celebrity you want to talk to in public but don’t want to bother them, make sure they don’t see that you saw them and start a fake conversation telling a friend that they should buy a product they are a sponsor for, and that they should use their coupon code. When they approach you to thank you for being such a loyal fan, obviously pretend to be shocked that they just so happened to be there

Christianity excuses selfish politics and beliefs

Things i never would’ve noticed if they weren’t pointed out to me:

-Left and right handed ness

Rating sports teams by uniform colors

Balloon animals but make it clothing!

Logics doesn’t care about your feelings, but it certainly cares about your biasees.

He who findeth keepith, whilst he who loosith weepith.

Religious thought often starts at the conclusion they want and attempts to make arguments justifying it.

Jewish debate starts with an agreement that we are going to follow the book, but argues about what the book truly says. Not good enough when you are still just following the book

Why did Jesus need to die for our sins

Dream - swimming in a lake and bump into something you think is a human tying to save to but is it! Oct 29 9:03

Candle company logo etc

I’m sorry for your loss

It’s not oka

If people can accept that stupid bad jokes can be

Is there a reason for each thing existing? Sufficient reason

Understanding if an area is a matter of perspective or fact? Is it Emperical ?

If you assume you have free will you limit your critical thinking ability and therefor stour actual free will - you need to navigate technology such as algorithms that show you why at you want to see or you completely loose free will - you cannot chose when you don’t even know a choice. there is Somthing controlling you

Revelation is within it doesn’t involve others - can happen in a moment

Revolution- requires work and years and years of convincing others m

What counts as a second chance? What counts as a first chance? What does giving someone the benefit of the doubt entail ? Letting them out of jail , or letting them have a 2nd term as president.

**Picture of coke or Pepsi book**

Trump supporters be like: THIS is the BALLOt sleepy crooked joe SEND to MY neighbor. So much FOR democracy

One flew over the coup coups nest

Ashge-nazi = Jewish trump supporter

The heathers of the USA are Cali, New York and Texas. Florida, too

Shape shifting would solve all of this. I could go to Washington DC, pretend to be trump, concede then leave. It would be hilarious, however if me and trump looked identical and had to so the most idiotic crazy shit to prove to America that we indeed are the true DJ.

Coup busting outfit - light cute short sleeve camo shirts , army green super utalitarian cargo pants , double sash belts in leather with grommets studs or spikes (to be decided by team (with democracy) or left up to the individual) leather (vegan available) lace up knee high boots (maybe with spikes if not too 2012) and the pies de resistance two army green denim shoulder high gloves that fold down as far as needed for the comfort of the fighter. Will be adorned with patches decided by the wearer. Edges will be frayed to honor to the coup busting aesthetic and spirit of the endeavor. We can decide on a signature lip color, but spf is required for all fighters. Of coarse we will have those football stripes below the eyes, don’t be stupid.

How far away can something be from a face and still have humans think it’s a face

Senator Portman - i hope you are well, and want to thank you for the hard work you have put in to this election. However, it has become abundantly clear that joe Biden and Kamala Harris have secured more than enough electoral and popular votes to warrant recognition as president and vice elect. Upon reading the transcripts of he hopeless court cases, there is absolutely no evidence of vote measurable fraud. is time you stand up for democracy and face reality by congratulating he pair on their success. Americans and scared and they need a powerful republican voice to demounce the unsubstantiated conspircy theories that attempt to thwart democracy in this beautiful county. Please do the right thing , and stand with sanity, freedom and democracy. History books and citizens will thank you. May god bless you, your staff and loved ones

Could mermaids exist through evolution in the future

Me learning about real us history - all the nations destroyed by the USA—- I’m the baaad Guy

The rest of the world - duh dodododosodo

Print that looks like a page of writing that has been sourced in water so it’s bleeding and darker in speckles

Zamps= examples

Clothes with green screen cut outs

Robots don’t need to be sentient to destroy us.

Navy mock neck long sleeves big orange and little white stripe on tube cage sides

A veritcal line stretch waistband

Cross cross and straps back

Square high neck

Scarlet polka dots around can light blue text and beach image as front

Blue stroke red inside square, blue triangle rainbow with eye and funky font

Y either know a particular topic or not , but it’s hard to pin down intelligence on one category

Cream background , ice cream pink script name kinda bev hills hotel script looking ish

Move your mouth in a differ way

Supersonic vibrating butt cleaner

Half magenta half red violet a blue teacup in the center with white floral frills thick serif font

Pink background am orange flower in a vase white present ribbon n red as a table

An app that familiarizes people with science - through experimental learning ― hands on experiences that make it seem less top down and authoritarian , and more like a set of steps that we take, things that anyone can do to get closer with nature and the world

A social media philosophy app - teaches what others said and gives people a chance to express their views , postulate, argue, etc gadfly? How would be avoid a shit show, how can we make social media more humanitarian. how can we care about people while also expressing deeply held ideas , how can we encourage users to examine their deeply held ideas without alienating them. How can we discourage hatred and abuse and groupthink with design? How do we slow people down and encourage them to recognize the human behind the screen. Street epistemology? Socratic dialogue?

Socrates - asking questions. Breaking it down to bits. Deeply understanding their argument. Asking about different possibilities and circumstances. Take vast assumptions and show scenarios that make go against them.

Build fact checking into apps

Narrative self vs experiential

Walks you through steps of the sciefitifc method and encourages you to explain how you feel each step actually helped you- then walks you through a scientist doing the same for their reasarch

Republicans only want to be free in the specific ways that benefit corporations

Are Christians more willing to support the death pen early because they already believe in the cruel and overstepping punishment of hell?

Where did the idea come from that you need to remain impartial when trying to persuade

The idea that there is someone in a similar but different dwelling, hearing similar but different sounds and feeling similar but different feelings is wild

We synthesize sets of traits, and particular actions in a super biased culturally constructed way

With the way we see things as humans- we categorize things into groups that aren’t really reaaal ― paratheletic groups

I just want the people and jobs that benefit society

Connection to nietzsches Dionysian art and eckheart tolle/Taoism

No matter your personality, there is probably a part of the world that you would fit in with naturally.

An ordinary girl is selected as one of the representatives of earth in the first meeting of various alien species after one advanced planet discovered and United 10. Confused as to why she was chosen, she goes on her journey meeting

Wha ba Bada da da da da dada he’s a wha ba ba dadada as a matter of fact it’s not my fault if you came up here thinking that you would win

Wanting to break boundaries and rules for the sake those who are hurt by the rules

You are imagining the best case scenario of the life you want to have and experience Ming the reality of the life you so have.

Yes her drips cosmetics line to students i. Class

Chez it people can goldfish people

Your personality flows where a system needs it to go to maintain balance

0 notes

forunfeltimaginations · 4 years ago

Text

Let’s try this again

They should make a law where if the police don’t read you your Miranda rights you get out of jail free, like if you don’t get your receipt at fast food restaurants you get a mail free

Confederates as “rebels for tradition” is laughable

Ram rainbow spiral horns profile.

Hippie sauce infusion pizza joint

Plain nude balconette with little purple and pink flowers at wiring

How could anyone predict anything happening but how could any be surpised either

Hierarchies - nahhhh

An exhibit where people are invited to paint over and destroy or change the art

The differences between us and other. Are feeble - not illusory but

Periwinkle sky blue black and white each of a half circle . Faded out

Uni should be about exploring ideas — new and old famillar and foreign - honeing writing reading reasoning debating listening etc skills.

Umm, Karen were your parents married when you were born?

Ummmm no, umm i mean , uh ,yes —what??

Then why are you policing what other people do?

Dark blue light blue orange lemon circles layer on top of each other, several difffent sizes

Unpopular opinion: i don’t really mind diarrhea

I for one think it’s incredibly brave of the brats girls to reclaim such a derogatory term

Starting every Describtion of every British show with “its kind of like skins but..”

Beanie baskin took that treat she snatched it - she ain’t even askin

The squad bod - a group of ghost friends share one body in which they have to live their lives -

My playlists are a matter of fact, not opinion. They reveal truths about the human experience

A cats gorilla imeritive of aesthetics.

I don’t chose them, they are not for joy but for truth. They are not intelligible but feel able

📝 narrative - longing

👼 chaotic

🌾 childlike wonder

Things that seem homo and phobic ATST

- Woodstock

- Brown eyed girl

Life has a funny way of sneaking up on ya when you think everything BG a gone wrong and everything bows up in your face

If women can’t do drag because they have an advantage then what is drag? Is it having good looking tits and a waist ? Looking like woman? or is it about having charisma uniqueness nerve and talent?

Examining Tik toks through different philosophical lenses

What makes it so they put parenthesis around lyrics in a song? What intonations and such make it parenthesis worthy

What’s an article of clothing from your childhood that you viscerally remember for seemingly no reason

I feel like the problem with the property brothers is they had too good of a childhood

I find happiness every single day

Christianity excuses selfish politics and beliefs

Things i never would’ve noticed if they weren’t pointed out to me:

-Left and right handed ness

Rating sports teams by uniform colors

Balloon animals but make it clothing!

Logics doesn’t care about your feelings, but it certainly cares about your biasees.

He who findeth keepith, whilst he who loosith weepith.

Religious thought often starts at the conclusion they want and attempts to make arguments justifying it.

Jewish debate starts with an agreement that we are going to follow the book, but argues about what the book truly says. Not good enough when you are still just following the book

Why did Jesus need to die for our sins

Dream - swimming in a lake and bump into something you think is a human tying to save to but is it! Oct 29 9:03

Candle company logo etc

I’m sorry for your loss

It’s not oka

If people can accept that stupid bad jokes can be

Is there a reason for each thing existing? Sufficient reason

Understanding if an area is a matter of perspective or fact? Is it Emperical ?

Revelation is within it doesn’t involve others - can happen in a moment

Revolution- requires work and years and years of convincing others m

What counts as a second chance? What counts as a first chance? What does giving someone the benefit of the doubt entail ? Letting them out of jail , or letting them have a 2nd term as president.

**Picture of coke or Pepsi book**

Trump supporters be like: THIS is the BALLOt sleepy crooked joe SEND to MY neighbor. So much FOR democracy

One flew over the coup coups nest

Ashge-nazi = Jewish trump supporter

The heathers of the USA are Cali, New York and Texas. Florida, too

How far away can something be from a face and still have humans think it’s a face

Could mermaids exist through evolution in the future

Me learning about real us history - all the nations destroyed by the USA—- I’m the baaad Guy

The rest of the world - duh dodododosodo

Print that looks like a page of writing that has been sourced in water so it’s bleeding and darker in speckles

Zamps= examples

Clothes with green screen cut outs

Robots don’t need to be sentient to destroy us.

Navy mock neck long sleeves big orange and little white stripe on tube cage sides

A veritcal line stretch waistband

Cross cross and straps back

Square high neck

Scarlet polka dots around can light blue text and beach image as front

Blue stroke red inside square, blue triangle rainbow with eye and funky font

Y either know a particular topic or not , but it’s hard to pin down intelligence on one category

Cream background , ice cream pink script name kinda bev hills hotel script looking ish

Move your mouth in a differ way

Supersonic vibrating butt cleaner

Half magenta half red violet a blue teacup in the center with white floral frills thick serif font

Pink background am orange flower in a vase white present ribbon n red as a table

Narrative self vs experiential

2 notes · View notes

warninggraphiccontent · 4 years ago

Text

30 April 2021

Open season

Do you think the UK government should be more transparent, accountable and participatory?

Are you interested in health, the environment, justice, data ethics and algorithmic accountability, open contracting, misinformation, freedom of information, democracy building and standards in public life?

Would you like to help shape policy pledges on those issues (and maybe others) that government will commit to?

Then sign up to take part in the development of the latest Open Government National Action Plan - the process kicks off next week. With perfect timing, really. (Full disclosure: I'm on the civil society steering group. Some more info on the whole thing here.)

Please do express your interest, and share as widely as possible - it would be great to have as much of UK civil society and the public involved as possible.

Other bits and pieces:

One of those thematic groups will be on freedom of information. Plenty of links on that this week below, including mySociety's (excellent) new report on the topic. (And something something government making an exhibition of itself.)

Remember we have another great Data Bites for you next week - sign up here, catch up on the previous events here.

And IfG have an event today with the new senior digital figures in the UK government - hopefully we'll hear more than we have so far about the new Central Digital and Data Office, and its relationship with the Government Digital Service.

Trying to find basic information is more complicated than you might think, part whatever we're on now.

My list of data series - newsletters, podcasts, events - is so very nearly at 100 entries, so do add any that we've missed. And thanks to all who've contributed so far. One of those listed is Politico's Digital Bridge, which has a good run down of the G7 digital and technology track this week.

The Alan Turing Institute and the Royal Statistical Society have been working with the Joint Biosecurity Centre on various statistics and machine learning projects during the pandemic. You can hear about some of them at an event this afternoon.

RIP astronaut Michael Collins. This extract from his autobiography is quite a piece of writing.

Have a great weekend

Gavin

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Today's links:

Graphic content

Viral content

India’s catastrophic second covid wave shows no sign of slowing* (The Economist)

COVID-19: The crisis in one of India's worst-hit cities, where someone dies every five minutes (Sky News)

NHS app will be used as Covid ‘vaccine passport’ for foreign travel (The Guardian)

Vax populi

See How the Vaccine Rollout Is Going in Your County and State* (New York Times)

Vaccine diplomacy boosts Russia’s and China’s global standing* (The Economist)

40m Pfizer jabs bought as Covid booster shots* (The Sunday Times)

After a blistering start, Biden’s vaccine rollout faces new hurdles* (FT)

Vaccine uptake rises among England’s ethnic minorities* (FT)

What the ONS can tell you about the COVID-19 Vaccine programme (ONS)

Side effects

How has lockdown changed our relationship with nature? (ONS)

In need of support? Lessons from the Covid-19 crisis for our social security system (Resolution Foundation)

After shocks: Financial resilience before and during the Covid-19 crisis (Resolution Foundation)

‘We are drowning in insecurity’: young people and life after the pandemic* (FT)

More Americans Are Leaving Cities, But Don’t Call It an Urban Exodus* (Bloomberg)

Joe 90 (+10)

Joe Biden’s first 100 days: by the numbers* (FT)

What America thinks* (The Economist)

After 100 days, Joe Biden is polling better than Donald Trump did* (The Economist)

At the 100-day mark, has Biden kept his campaign promises?* (Washington Post)

Prolific yet quiet: Joe Biden’s first 100 days in numbers* (New Statesman)

17 Metrics to Watch in the Biden Era* (Bloomberg)

Taking leave of their...

2020 Census shows U.S. population grew at slowest pace since the 1930s* (Washington Post)

Which States Will Gain or Lose Seats in the Next Congress* (New York Times)

Once-A-Decade Census Numbers to Redraw U.S. Political Landscape* (Bloomberg)

Which States Won — And Lost — Seats In The 2020 Census? (FiveThirtyEight)

US politics

Biden’s $4 Trillion Economic Plan, in One Chart* (The Upshot)

By the numbers: States weighing voting changes (Axios)

Advantage, GOP (FiveThirtyEight)

Americans From Both Parties Want Weed To Be Legal. Why Doesn’t The Federal Government Agree? (FiveThirtyEight)

Derek Chauvin was found guilty – how typical is that of US police who kill? (The Guardian)

Science and nature

Visualised: glaciers then and now (The Guardian)

Siberian fires not an isolated event, EU earth observatory shows* (FT)

The U.S. Will Need a Lot of Land for a Zero-Carbon Economy* (Bloomberg)

The Hidden Science Making Batteries Better, Cheaper and Everywhere* (Bloomberg)

Our Earth in context with other worlds (Axios)

The intricate life of the International Space Station (via Chris Hadfield)

UK politics and government

Will Greensill be a Barnard Castle-sized issue for the Tories? (UK in a Changing Europe)

Boris Johnson’s £200k refurbishment of 11 Downing Street could buy you a whole house in much of the UK* (New Statesman)

Labour’s lost heartlands. Can it win them back?* (FT)

Green gains in red-brick England* (New Statesman - though I'd have put Labour at the base of the bars)

Procuring inequality: Understanding the gender pay gap in government contracting (Spend Network - and summary)

Devolved public services: The NHS, schools, and social care in the four nations (IfG)

Let's get fiscal, fiscal

The fiscal position of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (IfG)

The national balance sheet and capital stocks, preliminary estimates, UK: 2021 (ONS)

Putting a value on the UK – faster than ever before (ONS)

Nominal spending figures understate China’s military might* (The Economist)

Everything else

Inheritances and inequality over the life cycle: what will they mean for younger generations? (IFS)

Exploring the State Papers with Word Embeddings (Networking Archives)

Nomadland, Disney and the drive for Oscars dominance in 2021* (FT)

Survival curves (Max Roser)

Meta data

Open for the best

Registration: Open Government Thematic Groups (UK Open Government Network)

Civil society urged to join groups on government transparency. (UK Open Government Network)

Statement on the UK’s New Global Anti-Corruption Sanctions (UK Anti-Corruption Coalition)

Relight my FOIA

New policy paper: Reforming Freedom of Information (mySociety)

Reforming Freedom of Information: mySociety policy paper launch event (mySociety)

Public information request monitor (mySociety)

Freedom of Information in danger of ‘sliding into obsolescence’, new report finds (openDemocracy)

We are going to court to force the government to release full details about its controversial FOI ‘Clearing House’ – a secretive unit inside the Cabinet Office (openDemocracy)

Press freedom: how governments are using COVID as an excuse to crack down on the public’s right to know (Media@LSE)

A transparent FOI system is vital for good government* (The Times)

Thread (George Greenwood)

Government obfuscation has become 'art form' - MPs and journalists say Freedom of Information not working (Press Gazette)

Viral content

NHS app set to feature vaccine passport (Public Technology)

COVID-19 Update (UK Government)

AI got 'rithm

Ensuring trustworthy algorithmic decision-making (CDEI for OECD.AI)

Error-riddled data sets are warping our sense of how good AI really is* (MIT Technology Review)

Artificial Intelligence in Local Government (Oxford Commission on AI & Good Governance)

Now is the time for a transatlantic dialog on the risk of AI (VentureBeat)

AI at work isn’t always intelligent* (FT)

Artificial Intelligence Is Misreading Human Emotion* (Kate Crawford, The Atlantic)

The Challenges of Animal Translation* (The New Yorker)

We need more bias in artificial intelligence (Bruegel)

Stop talking about AI ethics. It’s time to talk about power.* (MIT Technology Review)

Working for an Algorithm: Shadow Bans, Dopamine Hits, and Viral Videos, All in the Life of TikTok Creators (The Markup)

Home Office algorithm to detect sham marriages may contain built-in discrimination (TBIJ)

Missing data

What's missing? Evaluating social sector data gaps (Commission on Civil Society)

ONS to publish suicide data by ethnicity from June as charities say ‘no excuse’ for gaps in data (The Independent)

///so.very.predictable

App used by emergency services under scrutiny (BBC News)

Why What3Words is not suitable for safety critical applications (Cybergibbons)

*All* English ambulance services use #What3Words, according to health minister (Owen Boswarva)

Government

Proud to be the Government Analysis Function (Government Analysis Function)

ADR UK three years in: Harnessing the power of administrative data three years in (ADR UK)

Supercomputing leap in weather and climate forecasting (Met Office)

Transforming Government: Six key recommendations (Foundry4)

Help us set a new data standard for vulnerable people services (Data in government)

Government gives Verify a stay of execution (UKAuthority)

Texting times

Boris Johnson’s tax texts show perils of government by WhatsApp (Politico)

Lobbying row: Why ministers have two mobile phones (BBC News)

Big tech, trade and competition

UK digital competition - it’s about your data, stupid (diginomica)

UK lobbying questions raised by Big Tech cash for MP interest groups (Politico)

Facebook v Apple: The ad tracking row heats up (BBC News)

The Counterbalance – The European System of Monopoly (Brave New Europe)

Twitter censored tweets critical of India’s handling of the pandemic at its government’s request (The Verge)

Technology wars are becoming the new trade wars* (FT)

Data

techUK on the Future of Data Governance for the UK (techUK)

Ireland stress-tests Europe’s data protection law* (FT)

Data Brokers Are a Threat to Democracy* (Wired)

An airline glitch reveals the dangers of discriminatory data (Tech Monitor)

For public review: The GDB research handbook (Global Data Barometer)

Fact and fiction

The Anti-Vaccine Influencers Who Are Merely Asking Questions* (The Atlantic)

Facts are Pieces of a Puzzle, not the Puzzle Itself (Zeynep)

Everything else

Justice Lost In The Post: How the Post Office wrecked the lives of its own workers (Private Eye)

Unified UK measures of rurality and deprivation (mySociety)

What is going on here? (Hilary Cottam)

Shaping the future of digital technology in health and social care (King's Fund)

Should Tech Make Us Optimistic About Climate Change? (Tony Blair Institute for Global Change)

Scottish Elections 2021: WE’RE TRACKING WHERE THE PARTIES STAND (Open Rights Group Scotland)

Opportunities

EVENT: Turing-RSS Lab webinar #3: using algorithms and AI in the response to COVID-19 (The Alan Turing Institute, Royal Statistical Society)

EVENT: What is the Future of Free Speech on the Internet? Jillian C York (Bristol Festival of Ideas)

EVENT: Rethinking how we regulate Big Tech (Bennett Institute)

JOB: Editor in Chief (openDemocracy - more)

JOBS (Full Fact)

JOB: Data Investigations Advisor (Global Witness)

JOB: Director, Technology and Human Rights (Human Rights Watch)

JOB: Data Scientist - NHS Test & Trace (Grade-G7) (DHSC)

JOB: Head of Digital ID (Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, via Jukesie)

JOB: Lead Data Scientist - Datalab (BBC, via Jukesie)

JOB: Service Manager, WhatDoTheyKnow (mySociety)

JOB: We're hiring - could you be our new Data Analyst? (Data Orchard)

JOBS (Information Commissioner's Office)

TENDER: Evaluating the data assurance market (ODI)

And finally...

When you label a plot the wrong way and suddenly discover a new graph type (João Martins)

How High Airplanes have been Able to Go from INTERNATIONAL PICTURE LANGUAGE by Otto Neurath, 1936 (RJ Andrews)

For the last six years I’ve kept a spreadsheet listing every parking spot I’ve used at the local supermarket in a bid to park in them all (Gareth Wild, via Alice)

0 notes

lightoftruth · 4 years ago

Link

Corporate America is "woke." "Woke" means being aware of alleged social injustice. So instead of just pitching their products, companies today are pitching political causes. Liberal political causes. Shampoo makers like Pantene used to run commercials about shampoo. Now they're showing lesbian parents helping a biological boy become a girl. Dove is celebrating women's different body types. Vaseline is "fighting for equity in skincare." The gay agenda now has the support of the Oreo cookie. And Burger King is warning that bovine flatulence from the cows it depends on for burgers is causing climate change. Corporations Telling You How to Think Stephen Soukup, author of The Dictatorship of Woke Capital: How Political Correctness Captured Big Business, says corporate America believes you need to be trained on how to think correctly about social issues. "This is a continuation of a trend in American history, of an elite ruling class that believes that they know better. And that they're taking care of the poor, stupid, American people who don't understand what they really need and what they really want and what's really best for them," Soukup said. After Major League Baseball yanked the All-Star game from Atlanta to punish Georgia over its new election integrity law, and then more than 120 CEOs and business leaders held a conference call to discuss punishing other states, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warned corporate America to "stay out of politics." And Republican Senator Rand Paul called for a conservative boycott of woke companies, saying they're hypocrites for doing business in China, which uses Muslim slave labor and persecutes pro-democracy dissidents. "They're boycotting a Georgia state law and yet they do business with China. China's never seen a free election. China is now putting people in jail for over a year at a time for speech violations," Paul told Fox News. ***As Big Tech censorship and the woke cancel culture continue to grow, please sign up for CBN Newsletters and download the CBN News app to ensure you keep receiving the latest news from a distinctly Christian perspective.*** Republicans vs. the Boardroom The GOP now finds itself fighting Corporate America, something that would have been unheard of years ago. The American Conservative Union has threatened to retaliate against companies pushing liberal agendas, and Soukup has founded a new coalition of conservative groups called Stop Corporate Tyranny. Is this 'Risky Business'? But why are corporations willing to take political stands that could cost them business? Because many companies clearly don't believe it will. Even some of the largest asset management companies in the world are acting "woke." On the Black Rock website, CEO Larry Fink is urging companies to adopt "sustainable" business models that fight climate change. And these companies have enormous leverage on the US economy by virtue of all the shares they own in American companies. Companies have also begun training employees in what it calls inclusion and diversity. 'Go Woke-Go Broke'? But there is a phrase that says, "Go Woke-Go Broke," and when hundreds of companies signed a statement against election integrity laws, conspicuously absent from the list were Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola, companies that have both been threatened with either boycotts or punishment by lawmakers for their woke habits. Soukup believes market forces will eventually end the woke movement in corporate America. "Markets have a proven ability to sniff out a misallocation of capital. and I believe that they will in time punish the corporations and the managers who have pushed this," Soukup said. Could This Lead to Persecution of Christians? But journalist Rod Dreher, author of Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents, which warns that America is headed toward totalitarianism, believes the woke movement in Corporate America is not going away but could lead to a new social credit system like China's, one that sounds a lot like the "mark of the beast" in the book of Revelation, that punishes people for holding the wrong political views. "This is not paranoia," Dreher said, "These are things that are being talked about right now in Silicon Valley as something that would be good for America." Left-wing groups are now pressuring credit card and online payment companies to ban conservatives. Dreher says "Corporations like Walmart, Apple, and others are richer and more powerful than some countries in this world. Because they believe that they're fighting for virtue, they're going to use the power that they have within the corporations and every other institution to persecute the church." "People think I'm radical for saying this sort of thing, but I'm telling you, it's coming," Dreher said. Soukup says it's time for conservatives to engage and tell corporations to get out of politics. ***As Big Tech censorship and the woke cancel culture continue to grow, please sign up for CBN Newsletters and download the CBN News app to ensure you keep receiving the latest news from a distinctly Christian perspective.***

0 notes

eldritchsurveys · 6 years ago

Text

289.

Let’s start with you: How are you?: >> I’m all right.

What motivates you to get up every day?: >> I mean, the alternative is worse...

Do you have a true best friend?: >> No.

Do you see yourself as a sensitive person?: >> I don’t see myself that way, no.

Have you been upset recently?: >> Sure.

Do you still leave/receive voicemails?: >> No. Is this something one stops doing at some point, for some reason? I just don’t use the phone much, period, and I never have.

Do you live in your hometown?: >> No.

Are you a festive person? Do you enjoy holidays?: >> I can be a festive person, as long as brain shit isn’t interfering. I do enjoy holidays (some much more than others, obviously).

Did you/Will you attend college?: >> I did not attend and I won’t.

How many alarm clocks do you use?: >> Zero.

Do you consider yourself to be an open-minded person?: >> Yep.

Do you eat fruit?: >> Not usually. Produce is the most annoying shit to buy and keep and eat, what with how quickly it goes bad and how shit I can be at eating things in a timely fashion. I commend and envy those who don’t have this problem, but it’s definitely a problem.

What is your favorite subject to learn about?: >> I’m not sure.

How many meals a day do you typically eat?: >> At least one; two on average.

Music, eh?

Have you seen any live shows?: >> Yes.

Name three of your favorite bands/artists…: >> David Bowie, Pearl Jam, Coheed & Cambria.

How big of a role does music play in your life?: >> It plays an extremely large role in my life.

Can you play any instruments?: >> No.

You’re feeling down - do you listen to sad music or happy? >> I don’t often choose music based on the mood it’s supposed to evoke. I listen to metal when I’m feeling down because something about the tempo and percussion-heavy sound is soothing. Or I’ll listen to synth stuff because it’s engaging in a way that just works for me. Sometimes I’ll listen to songs that make me cry if I feel the need for that sort of catharsis, but those songs aren’t necessarily “sad songs”, they’re just ones that make me cry. *shrug*

If you’ve ever been to a concert, how old were you and who did you see?: >> I’ve been to a lot of concerts. I was 18 when I went to my first one, and I saw Avenged Sevenfold and Coheed & Cambria on a co-headliner tour. (I actually went to two shows on that tour; the first one was in NJ and the second one was in NYC the next month.) Do you prefer music to be meaningful and deep, or purely for dancing/fun?: >> I like both. That’s why there’s Rush’s 2112 and Taylor Swift + Brendon Urie’s ME! on my playlist, for example. Is there a song or artist that you secretly enjoy, but don’t want to enjoy?: >> No.

If you could only listen to music from one decade, which would you choose?: >> I would never restrict myself like that. Has your parents taste in music in any way affected what you like?: >> Yeah, I grew up with a lot of R&B and soul music (and gospel, sometimes) playing in the house so I still deeply appreciate that kind of music. You’re looking for some new music - what’s your preferred way to discover?: >> Checking out random playlists on Spotify, usually. Do you still own any CD’s/records/tapes?: >> I have records, but no CDs or tapes. Do you ever hear a new song on tv that you like and find it?: >> Definitely. Speaking of television… (look at that smooth transition!) Do you watch a lot of television? Whether that be shows, news, movies etc.: >> I watch a fair amount, I guess one could say. Anywhere between a half hour to 3 hours of TV on any given day. Do you watch the news?: >> No. What about the weather channel?: >> I don’t have cable. I use the NOAA app on my phone for weather. What’s your favorite holiday movie?: >> It’s a Wonderful Life. What hooks you to a television show? >> There are different factors depending on what kind of show it is, but the one thing that’s universal for me is whether the characters are interesting, whether I care about what happens to them or not (even if “I care what happens” just means “I really gotta see what ridiculously stupid fucking shit they’re going to do now”, like in It’s Always Sunny). How do you feel about adult cartoons?: >> I like some of them, I don’t like others. Talk shows - boring or entertaining?: >> Boring, for me. Do you prefer cable, satellite or streaming?: >> We use streaming services. Have you come across any new shows you like this year?: >> I started watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia this year, finally, and I gotta say, I see why it’s so popular. I don’t remember what else I started watching this year, specifically, that was new to me. Do you still watch shows that you grew up watching?: >> I didn’t really grow up watching anything. What about movies that you grew up with?: >> The only movies I really remember from childhood that I still enjoy watching are Labyrinth, The Prince of Egypt, and The Pagemaster. I didn’t see a lot of movies as a child, either, aside from dry historical shit that my dad made me watch. Are you subscribed to any streaming services?: >> Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime. Reality shows - entertaining or horrifying?: >> The genre seems to have broadened considerably since the Survivor and Jersey Shore era, so yeah, there are some reality shows I can stand watching, like some stuff on HGTV. What is the first movie you ever saw in a cinema?: >> The Prince of Egypt. Let’s talk about what you don’t discuss at Sunday brunch Do you identify with any organized religion?: >> No. If so - is it how you were raised, or have you found your own?: >> I was raised Christian, and when I got old enough to realise that 1) it didn’t suit me and 2) I didn’t have to be chained to a religion if I didn’t want to be, I gave it up. Do you think that marijuana should be legalized?: >> I don’t have a firm opinion on that specifically. I’m sure it’d be fine if it was, but I specifically think people should stop being given ridiculous prison sentences for drug possession, and I think the War on Drugs should end, because it’s not helping anyone. If so, would that be for medical use only, or recreational?: >> I mean, if you’re going to legalise it, then... legalise it... across the board. Pro-life or pro-choice?: >> Pro-choice. Have you ever protested or been on strike?: >> I’ve participated in protests. Is gun control necessary or no?: >> Certainly. Are you happy with the political state where you reside?: >> Not currently. It seems to me like our current administration is straight-up ignoring the Constitution, and considering the Constitution is the basis of USian democracy, that seems pretty fucked up to me. I know a lot of people think that the problem is... democracy, for some reason? and no, I don’t agree with that. Democracy is the least corruptible political system I can think of, and the fact that its core tenets are being tossed out of the window of the Oval Office right now is not the system’s fault, it’s the fault of the specific people we’ve voted into office. Should abstinence or sex education be taught in schools?: >> Sex education. “Teaching” abstinence isn’t education, it’s just attempting to use fear and shame to intimidate young people into not having sex. What are they actually learning? Have you read the book 13 Reasons Why or watched the show?: >> No. Should shows like this be available to everyone or could it be a trigger?: “Um, of course they should. People with triggers become adept at knowing what they can and can’t watch and will make their choices accordingly; we’re not idiots. If I know something has torture in it, I stay away from it. Simple as that. I’m not going to deny other people the right to watch what they want.” <-- What I was going to say is basically this, but this is the succinct version so I’ll just... yep. Okay, let’s simmer down. Back to happy things. Do you like animals?: >> Sure. If so, do you have any pets?: >> No. I like animals best when they don’t live in my space. What is your favorite day of the week and why?: >> I don’t have one. Do you have a favorite season?: >> Spring. How do you enjoy nice scents? >> ??? Do you live in a large city or small town?: >> Small city. Are you happy with that or would you like to change it?: >> I’d prefer a city with more... of an identity, I guess I would say? Grand Rapids gives me the impression of a very young city, which exists in a culturally homogeneous region of the Midwest US, and it kind of just takes its cues from... what’s hot and popular in this era. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. A lot of people love GR because it’s a forgotten city that’s had an urban renewal phase and now it’s... respectable, I guess you could say. But as far as my personal desires in a city are concerned, it’s not my kind of place. I love places that are so culturally rich that just being in them changes you fundamentally, places that are colourful and vibrant and unabashedly unique. Places that aren’t afraid to be unpolished in places, places that love their dead. I don’t know. I have a lot of feelings about this but they’re hard to make coherent. Do you have any children?: >> No. Are there any colors that you think compliment you?: >> Yeah, most of them. Do you enjoy cleaning or find it to be a chore?: >> I really don’t enjoy cleaning. I very much enjoy tidying and organising, though! What is your absolute favorite food?: >> I don’t have one.

If you were any color, what would you be?: >> I’d have to be black or white. A hue that contains or absorbs the entire colour spectrum. Do you spend a lot of time on social networks?: >> I really don’t. I’ve downsized to the point where now I only have tumblr, and I spend less time here, too. It’s... it’s nice.

#surveys #survey #random survey

0 notes

douchebagbrainwaves · 6 years ago

Text

EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT PROBLEM

But remember that we already have almost fifty years of history behind us. Small in 1960 didn't mean a cool little startup. Others thought of it as a tautology.1 They've become more bureaucratic, but otherwise they seem to be afraid of actual voters, in sufficient numbers. The only defense is to isolate yourself, as communist countries did in the twentieth century. That's kind of hard to imagine what it would take at least half a million. A couple days ago. Inefficient software isn't gross. Programmers don't use launch-fast-and-iterate out of laziness.

Imagine we were living on a moon base, though. Its more general version is our answer to the wrong question. For architects and designers it means that a building or object should let you use it how you want: a good building, for example, they're often reluctant to redo parts that aren't right; they feel they've been lucky to get that far, and if investors are skeptical, the startup should raise more now, and if we want to program in. This is where it's helpful to have working democracies and multiple sovereign countries. We'll probably never be able to use it themselves, and that he'd be ok. The reason convertible notes allow more flexibility in price is that valuation caps aren't actual valuations, and notes are cheap and easy to do. In private there was a pattern, and there was, a very clear one. Whereas Pittsburgh has the opposite problem: plenty of nerds, but no one told me. It's hard to imagine what it would take. If you want to start it, and extraordinary courage came out. As with the original industrial revolution, some societies are going to be more than a way to answer the question, it's surprising how much different fields' ideas of beauty have in common.

A language is by definition reusable. It's sadly common to read that sort of thing.2 No one knows who said never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence, but it is true that there are good ideas that seem bad are bad. So it is in this case. So this alternative device probably couldn't win on general appeal. Why did 36% of Princeton's class of 2007 come from prep schools, when only 1. The other teachers were at best benevolently indifferent.3 Most of the qualities I've mentioned are things that can be justified later if they fail.4 It would be a waste of time to try to reverse the fortunes of a declining industrial town like Detroit or Philadelphia by trying to use mass lawsuits against randomly chosen people as a form of meditation. A lot of nerd tastes they share with the creative class in general.

I save up because they'll be so much fun to write about it.5 You either have a self-sustaining. There may be tasks that we solve now by writing programs and which in a hundred years will not, except in certain specialized domains, it is irresistible to large organizations. You don't need to have a disproportionately low probability of the latter.6 It doesn't seem like that much extra work to pay as much for that.7 This story often comes to mind when I hear the RIAA and MPAA would make us breathe through tubes down here too, even though the phrase compact disc player is not present on those pages. School was boring.8 It's the engine that drives them, in the final stage, you stop and ask: will people actually pay for this?

When you can't deliver ornament, you have to process video images depends on the rate at which you have to process video images depends on the rate at which new companies are founded. Einstein was really as smart as his fame implies, and she shrank from engaging. Little attention is paid to profiling now.9 The real reason we started Y Combinator. But when you ask adults what they got wrong at that age, nearly all say they cared too much what other kids thought of them.10 Ditto in engineering. Two possible theories: a Your housemate did it deliberately to upset you.11 For example, types seem to be an inexhaustible source of research papers, despite the fact that Jessica and I were already dating when we started YC. There must be a better way.12 You'd think simple would be the default.13

And there is no such thing as beauty, we need to be able to say who cares what investors think? Now we'd give a different answer.14 The saddest windows close when other people die.15 Though the situation is better in the sciences generally, citation is considered a rough indicator of merit. We talked about YC all the time. In 1998, if advertisers paid the maximum that traffic was worth to them, Yahoo's revenues would have decreased.16 The evolution of languages differs from the evolution of species because branches can converge. So if it seems too good to be true to think you could grow a local silicon valley by giving startups $15-20k each like Y Combinator there, but that they were started there.17 Conversely, a town that gets praised for being solid or representing traditional values may be a fine place to live, but it's not much use in practice because the search space is too big. The place to look is in our blind spot: in our natural, naive belief that it's all about us.

Unknowing imitation is almost a recipe for bad design. The best programmers can work wherever they want. They are all fundamentally subversive for this reason, though they conceal it to varying degrees.18 Wodehouse may have begun with simple atoms, but the people we were picking would become the YC alumni network. Everyone would agree that YC had jumped the shark. The only style worth having is the one you can't help.19 But hunter gatherers didn't treat land, for example, would arguably be gross even if they ran on a fuel which would never run out and generated no pollution.20 The probability that a startup will make it big is not merely a useless metric, but positively misleading. The artists who benefited most from this were the ones who had preserved a child's confidence, like Klee and Calder.21 When you're working on language design, we should expect its shortness to take us by surprise. Indeed, the law of supply and demand insures that: the more rewarding some kind of conservation law, but there it is: the best way to solve that problem, I think you only need two kinds of symmetry, and repetition especially, is a large, existing population of stodgy people. The university you could create a first-rate computer science departments.22

If there is an overlap, can we use one field's discoveries about beauty to help us in another? Do I really want to support this company? That probably wouldn't push you past Silicon Valley itself, but it is a recursive solution, a tower on a tower. We talked about YC all the time and then it can take 4-8 weeks to get that bug fix approved, leaving users to think that iPhone apps sometimes just don't work. The old answer was no: you were supposed to pretend that you wanted to create a silicon valley, you not only need a university, but one reason downwind jobs like churning out Java for a bank pay so well is precisely that they are downwind.23 The two like much the same things, because most startup investors are nerds themselves.24 You won't feel later like that was a waste of time.

Notes

If you have to follow redirects, and an haughty spirit before a dream world.

Perhaps it would have disapproved if executives got too much to maintain your target growth rate early on. Please do not generally hire themselves out to be most attractive when it's aligned with some question-begging answer like it's inappropriate, while she likes getting attention in the process of applying is inevitably so arduous, and philosophy the imprecise half. 1886/87.

They each constrain the other meanings. One of the big winners aren't all that matters financially for investors. And they tend to be memorized.

5 to 2 seconds. Finally she said Ah! Other highly recommended books: What is Mathematics? Some would say that hapless meant unlucky.

A startup founder could pull the same superior education but had a demonstration of the flock, or b to get a false positive rate is 10%, moving to Monaco would give you term sheets. But you can imagine cases where you have to recognize them when you had in school, approach the queen bees thereof and offer to invest in a non-stupid comments instead. Strictly speaking it's impossible to succeed in business are likely to coincide with mathematicians' judgements. And so this one is now replicated all over, not conquest.

I couldn't convince Fred Wilson to fund them. 5% of Apple now January 2016 would be possible to transmute lead into gold though not economically at current energy prices, but the idea that evolves into Facebook isn't merely a subset of Facebook; the idea that could evolve into a few data centers over the internet. Make Wealth in Hackers Painters, what you do a very good.

Once again, that alone could in principle is that they lived in a non-broken form, that he could accept it. If a company grew at 1. Morgan's hired hands.

This is almost pure discovery. There are simply no outside forces pushing high school to potential investors and they have to tell them exactly what your project does. Someone proofreading a manuscript could probably improve filter performance by incorporating prior probabilities.

And those examples do reflect after-tax return from a mediocre VC. There are still a leading cause of poverty I just wasn't willing to put up posters around Harvard saying Did you know Apple originally had three founders? If you have to do better.

But that oversimplifies his role.

What I dislike is editing done after the fact that you're talking to you. When he wanted to than because they can't hire highly skilled people to bust their asses. I count you in a difficult class lest they get to profitability on a seed investor to intro you to agree. In the thirties his support of the Facebook/Twitter route and building something they wanted to.

I have so far. But that turned out to do more with less? So if we just implemented it ourselves, so buildings are gutted or demolished to be identified with you.

My usual trick is to start a startup, you better be sure you do a scatterplot with benevolence on the East Coast. That will in many cases be an instance of a single VC investment that began with an online service.

There are two simplifying assumptions: that the http requests are indistinguishable from dishonesty by the National Center for Education Statistics, about 28%. Which means if you're flying through clouds you can't help associating it with superficial decorations.

Most smart high school to potential investors and instead focus on their companies till about a startup. The continuing popularity of religion is the proper test of investor who says he's interested in x, and when I was there when it was overvalued till you see them much in their lifetimes.

But knowledge overlaps with wisdom and probably also a good idea to make a country richer; if you do it is certainly not impossible for a patent is conveniently just longer than the long tail for sports may be common in, you'll have no idea what's happening till they also influence one another, it means a big market, meaning master. They don't make users register to try your site.

As Anthony Badger wrote, If it failed it failed.

As I was writing this, I mean no more willing to put it would be worth about 30 billion.

This too is true of the reason there have historically been so many still make you feel that you're not consciously aware of it in action, there are lots of opportunities to sell earlier than you otherwise would have seemed shocking for a patent troll, either as an adult.

That's why Kazaa took the place of Napster. Like early medieval architecture, impromptu talks are made of spolia.

We fixed both problems immediately.

Here's a recipe that might be able to give them sufficient activation energy required to notice when it's aligned with the other is laziness. But the result is higher prices. What made Google Google is that you'll expend a lot about some of those most vocal on the fly is that so few founders do it mostly on your board, there are none in San Francisco.

This is a fine sentence, though it be in most competitive sports, the mean annual wage in the process of trying to sell the product ASAP before wasting time is distraction. We try to ensure startups are often surprised by this, on the group's accumulated knowledge.

If you try to get the money. Labor Statistics, the higher the walls become.

0 notes

recentnews18-blog · 6 years ago

Photo

New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/google-censorship-plan-is-not-right-and-stupid-says-former-google-head-of-free-expression/

Google Censorship Plan Is “Not Right” and “Stupid,” Says Former Google Head of Free Expression

Google’s former head of free expression issues in Asia has slammed the internet giant’s plan to launch a censored search engine in China, calling it a “stupid move” that would violate widely held human rights principles.

As The Intercept first reported last week, Google has been quietly developing a search platform for China that would remove content that China’s authoritarian government views as sensitive, such as information about political opponents, free speech, democracy, human rights, and peaceful protest. It would “blacklist sensitive queries” so that “no results will be shown” at all when people enter certain words or phrases, according to internal Google documents.

Lokman Tsui, Google’s head of free expression for Asia and the Pacific between 2011 and 2014, read the leaked censorship plans and said he was disturbed by the details. “This is just a really bad idea, a stupid, stupid move,” he told The Intercept in an interview. “I feel compelled to speak out and say that this is not right.”

Google previously launched a censored search engine in China in 2006, but pulled the service out of the country in 2010, citing Chinese government efforts to limit free speech, block websites, and hack Google’s computer systems. Tsui said the situation since 2010 has worsened, with new national security and cybersecurity laws resulting in more government censorship and surveillance of China’s internet.

“In these past few years things have been deteriorating so badly in China – you cannot be there without compromising yourself,” Tsui said. Google launching a censored search engine in the country “would be a moral victory for Beijing,” he added. “Beijing has nothing to lose. So if Google wants to go back, it would be under the terms and conditions that Beijing would lay out for them. I can’t see how Google would be able to negotiate any kind of a deal that would be positive. I can’t see a way to operate Google search in China without violating widely held international human rights standards.”

“I can’t see a way to operate Google search in China without violating widely held international human rights standards.”

Tsui is now an assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he teaches students at the School of Journalism and Communication. He still follows human rights issues in China closely and has watched as Google has upped its presence in the country in recent years. Under the leadership of its current CEO Sundar Pichai, Google has launched translate and file management apps in China. The company has also opened an artificial intelligence research center in Beijing, and invested $550 million in the online Chinese retailer JD.com.

These were baby steps, however, in comparison to the planned return of the search engine, which would be a massive strategic move for Google, with broad political implications. When Google pulled its search engine out of the country in 2010, it was a major rebuke to the Chinese government and its policies. Returning to China and embracing the censorship would send the opposite message, according to Tsui.

“Google made a grand statement in 2010. The message was that ‘We care about human rights and we care about free expression, we are the champions of this, we have responsibility, we don’t want to self-censor any more,’” said Tsui. “So for Google to then go back with search — not just any product, but with search — would be giving a green light to every other company. Search has massive symbolic value. It is Google’s crown jewel. It is what makes Google, Google. The core of the company’s identity and its value is the search engine.”

Only a few hundred of Google’s 88,000 employees had been briefed about the censorship project — which was code-named Dragonfly — prior to the revelations last week. After the news broke, Google employees in the company’s offices across the world were left angry and confused. Meanwhile, the internet giant’s leadership has stayed silent, refusing to address staff concerns. Publicly, Google has said simply that it will not discuss “speculation about future plans.” (The company’s press office did not respond to a request for comment on this story.)

Tsui will not be surprised if people quit Google over the China plans because, he said, many employees at the company believe in its values. The internet giant’s stated central mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” The company’s informal motto is “don’t be evil.” Google has since its early years maintained a list of “10 things” that represent foundational values for the company. One of these values is: “You can make money without doing evil.” Another is: “Democracy on the web works.”

“What makes Google such a great company is that the people who work there are not just working there for the money,” Tsui said. “You can be cynical about that … [but] many of the people who work there genuinely care about the mission of Google. So Google will lose the hearts and minds of people working for it [because of the China censorship]. And it is losing its own identity. If you are the leader [of Google], that should really concern you.”

“Google will lose the hearts and minds of people working for it. And it is losing its own identity.”

A bipartisan group of six U.S. senators has raised concerns about Google’s plans, as have human rights organizations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights in China, Reporters Without Borders, and Access Now. Several of these groups have commented that Google’s plan raises more issues than just censorship. In order to launch its search platform in the country, Google would be legally forced to locate data centers and servers on the Chinese mainland. Chinese authorities have in the past used their powers to monitor the communications of activists and journalists – arresting them if they have said anything critical about the government.

“The current legal environment in China makes it difficult, if not impossible, to operate in a way that would allow Google to protect its users,” said Tsui. “The government would have the legal authority to just seize the data. If it wanted to play hardball, it could raid data centers and grab hard drives. That is the risk.”

Google’s plan for the search platform is to launch it through an app accessible to users of Android smartphones and tablets. Researchers estimate that more than 95 percent of people accessing the internet in China use mobile devices to go online, and Android is by far the most popular mobile operating system in the country, with an 80 percent market share.

Tsui said the app itself could pose more risks from a privacy standpoint than would a desktop version of Google search, because the app may be able to collect other data on people’s devices, such as location data or call records. “It wouldn’t be that difficult for the app to keep track of who is searching for what, where, at what time,” he said.

When Tsui joined Google, the political environment was very different. He recalls the period during and immediately following the Arab Spring uprisings that spread across the Middle East and North Africa. There was a lot of enthusiasm then for the transformative potential of the internet as a force for good — a force that could crush dictatorships and create democracies.

But the atmosphere changed, and the enthusiasm faded. Tsui said he grew tired of his work at Google, where he said he felt like a “politician” or “a character in Game of Thrones.” He left the company in 2014, and he said Google no longer employs anyone with the title he once had, as head of free expression for Asia and the Pacific.

“Freedom of speech is just not a winning issue anymore,” said Tsui. “Now, all we are concerned about is fake news, election interference, hate speech. These are also free expression issues. But free expression is seen as a losing issue at this point – all we care about is the negative part. The internet platforms are no longer seen as the good guys; they are increasingly seen as the bad guys. And free expression is disappearing from the companies as a result.”

Top photo: A member of Google Inc.’s China staff walks past the Google logo at their office in Shanghai on Aug. 15, 2007.

Source: https://theintercept.com/2018/08/10/google-censorship-plan-is-not-right-and-stupid-says-former-google-head-of-free-expression/

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theliterateape · 7 years ago

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It Must Be Dorito’s Fault I’m a Bag of Suet in a Pair of Overstuffed Skinny Jeans

By Don Hall

I smoked cigarettes for just over 20 years. I now smoke pipe tobacco instead. In addition to it smelling better and encouraging the nostalgic grins of perfect strangers, the tobacco is far better. As much as I often argued that I wasn’t addicted, rather I just liked to smoke, the effects on my lungs are exactly the same.

So, in the debate over whether we are addicted to our smartphones or social media, it makes no difference if we are addicted, manipulated, or just weak-willed, the results are still exactly the same: a compromised democracy, the highest teen suicide rate in recorded history, a dwindling attention span and a slow disconnect from humanity in favor of the humanity as represented on a glass screen.

I notice this compulsion. I know that, for the most part, social media raises my stress level (I grant you, I have significantly lower stress than most because I am not a terribly anxious person to begin with, I keep myself busy, and I have so few fucks left to give I’m almost laconic), and yet I keep coming back to Faceborg and Twitter at least three times every hour. You know, just to see if the world ended or if Trump birthed an alien out of his piggy chest.

While I might argue that I’m certainly not addicted to my iPhone/iPad/iMac, the fact that I spend a huge amount of my waking world time engaging them should at least merit some serious interrogation.

But first, a parallel.

From The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food NYT, February 20, 2013

"More than half of American adults were now considered overweight, with nearly one-quarter of the adult population — 40 million people — clinically defined as obese. Among children, the rates had more than doubled since 1980, and the number of kids considered obese had shot past 12 million. (This was still only 1999; the nation’s obesity rates would climb much higher.) Food manufacturers were now being blamed for the problem from all sides — academia, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society. The secretary of agriculture, over whom the industry had long held sway, had recently called obesity a 'national epidemic.'"

And from The Great Awakening

"And part of what is keeping us from full realization about the impact of technology on our humanity is that we’re too busy with our heads down using that technology. The numbers are staggering:

• By June, Facebook had 2 billion users. And Americans alone spent 56 billion minutes on the site each month.

• YouTube’s 1.5 billion logged-in users average more than an hour a day on YouTube on mobile alone.

• Every minute 300 million hours of video are uploaded and each day 5 billion videos are watched.

• By September, Instagram had 800 million users, up 100 million since April.

• There are now 2.6 billion smartphone users worldwide — a number expected to climb to 6.1 billion by 2020.

• The top ten users of smartphones touch their phones an average of 5,427 times each day. The rest of us clock in at 2,617 touches per day.

• Between midnight and 5 a.m. 87 percent of participants in a study checked their phones at least once.

• Over 70 percent of Americans sleep next to or with their phone.

And all that time spent in the presence of such powerful devices is having a profound effect on us. Our phones are with us almost all the time, and in most of our social interactions, yet we know there’s something wrong with that. In a Pew study, 89 percent of phone owners said they’d used their phones in their last social gathering, but 82 percent felt that when they did this it damaged the interaction.

And it’s also affecting our relationships. In a study of people in romantic relationships, 70 percent said that cell phones interfered with their interactions with their partners.

The parallel between snack foods and high tech in the mobile computing era is creepy. Both are technologies designed to be convenient as well as rewarding in the most superficial way. We also can’t seem to stop ourselves from constantly snacking — both for a food-like thing and an information/social-like thing.

I substitute a couple of days a week for charter schools. From 6th grade through the end of high school, every single one of them have strict rules (laxly enforced) against two things: smartphones and snack foods in class. An average day consists of 15 percent instruction, 15 percent class management, and 60 percent taking away smartphones and bags of Cheetos. The sight of so many kids immersed in chowing down on nutritionless junk and texting, Snapchatting and taking selfies makes me wonder what universe I’m living in. These alien creatures living the scholastic life are so different from my own experience.

None of this is by accident.

Again, from The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food

"General Mills had overtaken not just the cereal aisle but other sections of the grocery store. The company’s Yoplait brand had transformed traditional unsweetened breakfast yogurt into a veritable dessert. It now had twice as much sugar per serving as General Mills’ marshmallow cereal Lucky Charms. And yet, because of yogurt’s well-tended image as a wholesome snack, sales of Yoplait were soaring, with annual revenue topping $500 million. Emboldened by the success, the company’s development wing pushed even harder, inventing a Yoplait variation that came in a squeezable tube — perfect for kids. They called it Go-Gurt and rolled it out nationally in the weeks before the C.E.O. meeting. (By year’s end, it would hit $100 million in sales.)"

From The Great Awakening

"Tristan Harris is a former Google design ethicist who founded the group Time Well Spent to raise awareness about how, as the site puts it, 'our society is being hijacked by technology.' As Harris points out, our addiction to our devices is by design. In the attention economy behind those friendly, inviting icons we love so much is an incredible amount of increasingly sophisticated science. 'The best way to get people’s attention is to know how someone’s mind works,' says Harris. The behavioral scientists, neuroscientists and computer scientists on the other side of our screens know we like the feeling of control. But they also want us to cede control of our attention. And so we’re given the illusion of control. 'By shaping the menus we pick from, technology hijacks the way we perceive our choices and replaces them with new ones,' writes Harris. 'But the closer we pay attention to the options we’re given, the more we’ll notice when they don’t actually align with our true needs.'"

The feeling one gets from likes and retweets is subtle but insidious. It feels good. It feels like people are paying attention to you, that they may care what you think. It feels so good that, as all things motivated by reward, your behavior begins to shift. It’s human nature.

If you write a tweet that all of sudden has 50 responses, you will naturally start to find ways to repeat that as that attention equals success online. More eyeballs means more importance. Given that some asshole with a YouTube channel can make genuine money from videos of pranking his kids, the rewards for getting that attention can become tangible.

I catch myself, as Co-editor of Literate Ape, behaving this way. We always want good, solid, interesting writing from our contributors but the intangible reward goes to those pieces that get more reads in the analytics. Does that mean these pieces have more merit than others? No. Not in the least.

In fact, it is often the poetry and fiction that gets left behind in the analytics scales of shares and comments that I start to bristle at the more popular pieces. Even my own.

It is, however, a digital magazine, so relying on the computing devices people carry in their back pockets is sort of the baked in business model.

The pervasiveness of digital devices and the ensuing onslaught of online media that promises a social experience but is, in fact, the polar opposite of meaningful social interaction, is riddled with the salt, sugar and fat that our psyches crave.

We want to believe that our fixation on hot dog memorabilia is shared by others. We want to believe that behind every police shooting or mass murder there is a conspiracy afoot. We want our existing bias’s to be confirmed no matter how asinine they are.

We want to be able to get six pack abs in seven minutes a day, a pill that will eliminate our sadness, and be told that we aren’t responsible for our choices or the consequences of those choices.

We also expect those companies that make massive profits feeding us this diet of empty information to be responsible for curtailing our intact while still providing it.

After all, whose fault is it that we are chronically obese but the companies that make the fake food we eat?

The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food:

"The prevailing attitude among the company’s food managers — through the 1990s, at least, before obesity became a more pressing concern — was one of supply and demand. “People could point to these things and say, 'They’ve got too much sugar, they’ve got too much salt,'Bible said. 'Well, that’s what the consumer wants, and we’re not putting a gun to their head to eat it. That’s what they want. If we give them less, they’ll buy less, and the competitor will get our market. So you’re sort of trapped.'"

“Well, that’s what the consumer wants.”

It is what we want. We also want no culpability in the consequences of getting what we want.

So we blame McDonald's for making us fat and Faceborg for making us stupid. We blame tobacco companies for our smoking habits and Russian hackers for our gelatinous monstrosity who sits in the Oval Office. We are a fat, stupid nation and we finally have the perfect avatar representing us to the world:

But instead of deleting those social media apps from our phone or choosing to eat a fucking apple rather than a bag of corn chips, we expect those who profit most from our obsessions to own the consequences and be better global citizens. Like hoping the oil companies will invest in green energy or that those McDonald's salads won't have as many calories as a Big Mac (they do).

Don’t hold your breath, fatty.

#smartphones #social media #snack foods #Doritos #NYT #Trumpkin

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neptunecreek · 8 years ago

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5 Ways Nonprofit Facebook Messenger Bots Can Deliver Impact

My conversation with the Albert Einstein Bot

In my last post about nonprofit bots, I discussed the big picture of automation in the nonprofit space and what I learned from the “The Beth Bot” experiment. For this post, I did a landscape scan to identify some of the best examples of nonprofit bots. (These examples use Facebook Messenger, but bots be deployed other platforms or apps.)

What is a Chat Bot? Why Use One?

More and more people are adopting social media messaging, including Facebook Messenger, to contact nonprofits with questions, comments, or requests. While anyone can message your nonprofit’s brand page 24/7, nonprofit staff don’t always work around the clock to respond. (And, if they do, they need to read my book, The Happy Healthy Nonprofit, to find out why that is not a great idea.)

Facebook Messenger chat bots will let your nonprofit immediately interact with supporters. Bots can answer basic questions like “How can I learn more,” and offer a link to sign up for your nonprofit’s email newsletters or action alerts. More sophisticated bots can help educate and engage your supporters about your nonprofit’s issues, programs or services.

If you are thinking about adding a Facebook Messenger bot to your organization’s digital strategy, spend some time interacting with other nonprofit bots. While the Facebook Messenger platform has taken some small steps to make bots easier to find, they are not always easy to discover. I set up this List to save you some time hunting down nonprofit examples.

Activism

Climate Reality Bot

The Climate Reality Bot is designed to educate supporters and build the organization’s email list for action alerts. Designed with ChatFuel, it is a simple bot, using close-ended options to funnel supporters to different options on the lower rungs of the ladder of engagement.

The task of capturing email addresses from Facebook is completely automated and available 24/7. This is a simple way to get started using bots strategically and does not take that much upfront design time or customization. You’d simply track your conversion rate to see how effective your bot is at building your email list and based on results, tweak.

Engage and Educate

The Genius Albert Einstein Bot

It is not necessarily a nonprofit, but I think it is one of the best examples of the potential of bots beyond automated email address capture.

As a promotion for its new show, Genius, the National Geographic Channel has created an Albert Einstein bot for Facebook Messenger. You can discuss life, love, and science—although he’s quick to warn that “I become absent-minded during light conversations that do not involve the physical properties of light.”

The bot is more fun and engaging than most—full of animated gifs, puns, and witty comments about relativity and robots, even if they don’t match the question you asked. Obviously, this is a custom programmed Facebook Messenger Bot designed for a conversational experience.

If your organization wants to create something genius like this, it will most likely require time, resources, and outsourced expertise, but it will stand out.

Museum Visitor Experience

The Anne Frank House Bot

Museums have been all over bots on other platforms, see the Momabot on Twitter for example. So, it comes as no surprise that Museums have been early adopters of Facebook Messenger Bots.

The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam was one of the first to launch a Facebook Messenger bot. Facebook Fans can ask the bot for information about the museum, such as opening times and where to buy tickets, or about Anne Frank herself and her history.

The Anne Frank House bot is custom programmed for automated self-learning, using artificial intelligence that allows the bot to learn to recognize the context of questions and to generate specific answers based on that.

The Australia Democracy Museum also has a Facebook Messenger Bot, with similar objectives.

Donate

The Pop Bot

The bot is named Missiobot and comes from Missio USA, an organization inside The Pontifical Mission Societies, which is, as the bot states, sort of like the pope’s personal Red Cross.

Shortly after you start a chat with Missiobot, you meet Pope Francis, and it doesn’t take long for a smiley face emoji to be part of your conversation. The bot is more engaging than most you encounter on Facebook Messenger, a testament to good design using decision-trees and multi-media content.

But what makes this bot most engaging is good storytelling shared in a conversational way, matching the pope’s tone of voice and illustrated with photos, video, and audio. The stories are about missionary projects such as helping nuns care for the kids in the slums of Nairobi.

This is storytelling with a purpose, each story ending with the option of taking action, share the story or donate.

A bot like this could be implemented on any of the bot building platforms, but you’d definitely need to have the content assets, stories, and spend a little time designing the decision-tree.

Health Information Support and Counseling

I discovered a couple of health education bots, I’m sure there are more but as I mentioned they are not easy to find. Here are two examples.

Woebot

This is a mental health bot, available to anyone via Facebook Messenger looking for some supportive talk to deal with anxiety or depression. After informing you that is not a human and to dial 911 in the event of an emergency and then encouraging your read the privacy policy, it does a mood assessment. It then uses CBT techniques to help reframe thought patterns or negative emotions associated with mood disorders like anxiety or depression.

Woebot was built from the ground up based on AI software expertise, working with Stanford AI lab. They used design thinking to build a “decision tree,” mimicking clinical decision-making with task-specific sections of natural language processing, using a decision-tree.

Momconnect

Momconnect is a bot developed by the Praekelt Maternal Health, an initiative that uses mobile technology to improve the health of pregnant women, newborns and infants in South Africa.

This Facebook Messenger demo shows how a pregnant mother in South Africa can register to receive free, informative messaging about maternal health and have her questions are fed directly to the organization’s professionals who can respond to her queries and ensure that a high level of service is available at every clinic in South Africa. The main program is SMS based.

Conclusion

In a recent article in the MIT Sloan Management Review, MIT Research Fellow Michael Schrage proposed a provocative and counter intuitive approach for enhancing innovation and productivity through man-machine collaborations. Don’t just leverage advanced technologies like bots to automate a work task, but also focus on enhancing innovation and productivity by leveraging technology to create higher-performance versions of employees.

Nonprofit adoption of bots is in the early adopter phase although we are well into the next technology disruption: automation. When I asked the Albert Einstein Bot whether the robots would take over the nonprofit world, it answered with “Artificial Intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.” In other words, the human element is always going to be important, but perhaps there are ways that we can use bots to make our nonprofits smarter about achieving impact versus automating a task.

from Beth’s Blog http://ift.tt/2s78p8D

#Beth’s Blog

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mirceakitsune · 8 years ago

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A sad day for civilization

Usually I try to keep my quota of political journals to a minimum. However the unfortunate events of today prompt what is perhaps one of the harshest journals I've written in this regard. I imagine I'll face quite a bit of criticism for it... both because many will see it as an exaggeration, and because I'm reacting strongly to something happening in the UK despite not being British myself. I will explain both of those things below.

On 08-June-2017 (yesterday as of the date of this posting), a once important member of the modern world (Britain) has left our ranks, by legitimating the war against modern society. An act committed by allowing an enemy of the civilized world to return to power, after its unprecedented attacks against every good achievement mankind has ever had within the last decades. That enemy is the UK's prime minister, Theresa May, the leader of the Conservative party.

For those not familiar with this monstrous woman, and why in my view she embodies the end of modern times, I will refresh everyone on who this bitch is and what she has done thus far:

- Theresa May promised the outright destruction of the internet as we know it, and its replacement with a national intranet under strict ideological control by the UK government (even more tightly than China). Her plans go to the point where every citizen must ask for exclusive permission to post anything online (even journals like this one) and no kind of content may be hosted on any server without the government's explicit approval, meaning literally every website we know today would have to be banned.

- Her battle against technology has already begun with the war on encryption; The UK plans to force companies like Facebook to remove security from messaging apps, so that her cult may spy on everyone and see who is an enemy of its ideology. She asked for encryption to be entirely outlawed if possible, despite attempts to explain to her that this is plain mathematics and simply cannot be stopped. Such would mean banning every secure piece of software on the planet and making it a crime for developers to program such (including open-source programmers like me and places like Sourceforge / Github), plus as criminalizing the https:// protocol and more.

- She is the author of a piece of medieval ideology, recently revived and distorted to match the 21th century, called the war on porn; Her purist sect believes that indecent content on the internet is responsible for terrorism, while of course promoting the despicable myth of children under the age of 18 needing protection from pixels on a screen to avoid being scarred for life. Needless to say, any website containing any kind of porn is to be banned under her theocracy and illegal to possess within her modern inquisition (same as in North Korea). Already the Digital Economy Bill was passed into law, and it's rumored that people might need to sign up at their local post office for permission to access any NSFW website at home... I am god damn serious.

- Under her caricature of a dictatorship, the UK is set to become a surveillance state with a harsher authoritarian regime than many 3rd world nations. Not only should every single online communication be actively monitored by the government, but even public services workers (such as ambulances and firefighters) must have access to everyone's browsing history and private lives. The UK also maintains a list of potential enemies of the state using unknown criteria, which was recently revealed to contain broad categories of people including goth teenagers who suffer from depression. Along with this they also plan on creating computer programs (perversely dubbed Artificial Intelligence) which use patterns to automatically decide if and when someone should be arrested and give the order to the police!

- She has blatantly manipulated the recent terror attacks (the Manchester bombing and the London stabbings) for her sick political agenda. In less than a few hours since those attacks, she outright stepped out and used the lives of those killed to leverage her own schemes, saying it was all the internet's fault and even implying that online pornography is why those people lost their lives!

- She has publicly and explicitly stated that human rights are an issue that is getting in her way, and need to be dealt with so that her plans may be accomplished.

I believe this should be enough to explain why I oppose this devil with my entire being... which seems to spread more panic than ISIS, who it's ironically vowed so hard to fight (by firing the London police or sending them after Julian Assange apparently). Since I'm aware the next predominant question will be "but you're not even British, why do you care", I will also explain why the things that happened in the UK are so personal to me:

- At this point, what's happening is not just a win or loss for the nation Britain; It is a win or a loss for modern society worldwide. The fact that this psychopath was allowed to be prime minister again, instead of being sent to seek treatment at the nearest mental ward for patients with serious psychiatric issues, is a legitimization for this kind of madness here in the free world! The message is literally "in 1st world nations in the year 2017, it might be okay for a president or prime minister to actively work on banning the internet or reviving medieval bans on porn or shamelessly distorting terrorist attacks to push any legislation". Authoritarianism spreads like a disease among the circles of power, and even in Europe or America this sort of thing is like the taste of blood in the water for a shark.

- She is actively trying to spread many of her demented ideas beyond Britain, and has a certain degree of power to do so. Since the UK would remain close to the EU even after brexit, they will be pushing Europe to adapt to her clique's skewed ideologies. The insane copyright proposals already circulating here (censorship machine, link tax, hate speech fines for social media) are said to be the doing of Theresa May and Angela Merkel (another authoritarian piece of shit). During the last attack she has also instigated other nations governments to "stop social media".

- The internet is a global entity, and many of the companies that offer services (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc) also activate there. Most of their evil plans (such as backdoors in encryption) cannot be done "only for UK citizens"... if they're implemented they will exist for all users worldwide and put everyone at risk! Such companies might have to choose between leaving the UK entirely or giving in to those demands, whereas sites hosting NSFW content might have to decide between being banned at ISP level across Britain or implementing disgusting and unacceptable age verification systems (online identity theft). Worse than that, in an act of total delusion, Theresa May or Amber Rudd already expressed hopes that the worldwide internet will itself conform to their model and "let the UK be the gatekeeper of the internet", meaning they hoped we would all just bow down and embrace their new "internet" as a replacement. We do not want this cancer spreading here, keep it in your Orwellian hellhole far away from the rest of us!

- I have friends in Britain... and even if I didn't, I know that the people living there are citizens of a (once) modern society who wish to live their lives in peace. It's unacceptable that they they are being terrorized by a mad person that's out of control and has lost touch with reality! And yes... I know: Far worse happens in places like Syria or China, where people are killed on a daily basis or starve to death or what not. The difference is that there, it's been this way for ages, whereas here it's new: Most 3rd world countries are places that are evolving slowly, but Britain is a modern nation that's devolving into them instead! People living in those areas are also used to it, they never had human rights or internet so they don't actually lose anything... people in Britain are being raped of fundamental rights they've had for a lifetime, which are granted and unquestionable in any civilized society!

So there you have it. The worst thing about this all is that, I wish I could say it's the fault of some sort of coup; Yesterday's elections got hacked, people with AK47's broke in and put Theresa back in power, so on. Unfortunately it was not: More than half of the British population deliberately voted for this abomination, after she has openly made it clear that she will destroy the modern world as we know it. This... is what people in what's considered a top democracy wanted. I'm struggling not to generalize and discriminate against all elderly people right now... granted that old farts are supposedly at fault for all this, whereas youngsters are the ones who struggled to avoid the disaster. Part of me wants to say "they're fucking 90 already, why can't they just hit the bucket and take their 1940 ideologies with them to the grave"... which is sad because my own grandparents died in the recent years, yet what happened is so wrong that it gets you places you wouldn't want to be.

After this alongside other events, my view of humanity as a whole has been altered beyond repair once more, and I wish I could never see an ape again in my existence. I expect no more safety nor the hope of a decent life even where I live, because I realize no freedom or right is ever basic enough to not be put into discussion decades after everyone has had it. Any breed of fanatic can just rise to power at any moment, and attempt to do whatever the hell they want. I wish the error known as humanity could be wiped out by some natural event already, though its own stupidity will probably do the job for it. I'm sorry that I had to be born here and witness the easily avoidable history of this species. If there's anything close to a god or gatekeeper of conscious minds out there, I will not forgive them for having been forced to live this miserable experience... that I can promise.

Oh, and one more thing: You are free to redistribute the contents of this journal as you please. It would bring some comfort if people could better spread the word about what's happening, so we can all be ready to defend ourselves from the emerging threats against the modern way of life... threats not created by terrorist groups elsewhere, but our own governments copying their tactics and behaviors.

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thinkingisthenewrebellion-blog · 8 years ago

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On the topic of a broken generation

Turn on the news, open your favorite social media app, or listen to the strangers a table over get into a discussion on politics, and you’ll think is that there’s a lot more negativity in the world these days- at least, that’s what it feels like. Maybe there’s not really an increase so much as more coverage for more brutality, callousness, and corruption on a never ending loop. And maybe none of this it is new, but instead a repeat of what we spent our school life learning we had moved on from. It’s frustrating and a bit scary- we saw those atrocities in our textbooks and thought how? Why? And now we see them happening in real time, helpless to do anything but ask “How? Why?” again. Society was supposed to be better, more intelligent and more accepting than it was back then. And yet it seems that the cruelties have merely turned into tacit realities of our world. Simply thinking of dealing with any piece of it is overwhelming, so the only answer is to stop thinking. At all.

As a whole we’re become a tad bit too desensitized, too used to violence and bloody murder and the loss of the division between good and bad. It’s hard to differentiate what you’ve been told and what you believe, and the line of morality is a thin one. The problem is deciding which facts you actually believe in and where they fall on that line.

But instead of facing up to the problem, people turn on each other. The most popular response seems to be blaming everything that ‘kids these days’ do. Or if it’s about politics, it’ll be ‘kids these days’ from one culture against the other. Every subgroup of society is pitted against the other at one point or another. And so we hear how ‘kids these days’ are too soft. Too politically correct. They want everything handed to them, they’re so entitled. Lazy. Ungrateful. They don’t understand anything about the real world.

The problems we try to point out aren’t ‘real’ only because we’re pointing them out when others want us to turn a blind eye.

Because what’s going on here is that these kids are trying to understand things. Things like sexuality and gender and unfamiliar cultures, which have in the past been so strictly defined, are now entirely new subjects when you take the shackles off. It’s not “PC,” it’s just kindness, acceptance. I’m not sure when that concept lost value, and when it became ‘cool’ and ‘edgy’ to mock and shame and belittle, when that’s honestly the most mainstream thing you can do.

Once isolated to those around us and like us, changing times have exposed us to much more of the world; and as it is, a lot of the negative seems to be getting louder. This, unfortunately, seems to be drowning out the cries of the other side. Because as instability rises, economically and politically, and those issues that kids are trying to work through become issues of public concern, a toll is extracted from the population. For all the kindest people trying to bring balance to the negativity, a lot of the nicest and most sensitive, understanding people I’ve seen are struggling- mentally, spiritually, however you want to put it. And that struggle doesn’t come simply from a lack of faith or just monetary-related problems. A lot of it has to do with increased pressure from every aspect of life while attempting to deal with a loss of purpose and identity

It seems that the more aware you are of the world, the more aware it is back, and the more it saps you of your strength and willpower and energy.

The more aware we are, the more it leaves us broken people.

In a globalized world changing faster than we can understand, we’re trying to find purpose, trying to find identity, peace, and balance. Trying to accept ourselves in a world that tells us not to. And a lot of the problem is that we just don’t understand how to fight back or what we’re fighting for. There seems to be too much wrong, and all of it seems beyond reach. What’s the point in fighting the inevitable?

Then beyond the spiritual questions, the mundane struggles add to the weight. Rates of depression and suicides are increasing, and college fees are also skyrocketing. There’s a disappearing middle class- some people have access to all of the opportunities and benefits of a capitalist world, while others have disproportionately less access. The environment is deteriorating at a disturbing rate as pollution rates climb. World hunger and poverty are connected to an increasing number of public health problems while the developed world is falling victim to diseases of excess. That’s the dichotomy of the world right now, with both sides turning to gut us.

Then there are the personal struggles that keep ‘kids these days’ from focusing on the big picture. It’s harder to live on minimum wage, harder to get a higher education, to get an apartment or a house, to pay of student debt. And personal can’t stay personal when politics continues to turn these battles into higher stake ones. It’s no wonder, really. We are a broken generation.

And that’s the crux of the thing, isn’t it? For all that we’re supposed to be reckless youth without a care, unaware of our own mortality, we’re living a different reality. Instead, we’re cynical and pessimistic because of the world we have been raised in. What’s going on right now in the world – terrorism, xenophobia, homophobia, sexism, undeclared wars and civilian casualties, economic crashes- keeps everyone reluctant to look outside of their immediate surroundings, because it’s already enough to deal with. You have the current farce in America, turning democracy and politics into a sham. And it’s all being broadcasted 24/7 wherever you turn, on television and online blogs and social media. This is what we are watching. We’re watching this as young adults trying to find something to believe in, and the next generation is watching, knowing already that there’s nothing to believe in.

If we look to relatively recent history, a pivotal moment in American politics was Nixon’s scandals, coming to light through his tapes, and at the top was Watergate. Before Nixon, American had unrealistic trust in their government. Maybe they didn’t always like it, but that faith existed nonetheless. But after the proof that our leaders were so far from infallible, our government now carries a stigma. Don’t trust it. Don’t trust authority. Authority isn’t a threat we’re stupid reckless kids, but because we’re intelligent enough to be wary, aware enough to know better to put faith in something that we all unanimously agree is corrupt.

Now there’s a President surrounded by scandal and corruption allegations, who spent his presidential race unashamed of his blatant xenophobia, with weak excuses for sexual assault, who is still being backed by members of his party. In between the time I write this, post it, and you read it, there have probably been at least four more major scandals. But despite the obvious mess that is America’s democracy, President Trump still exists. And the next generation is watching it. Sure there are protests and marches and even wins for marginalized communities, but at the same time, there are an awful lot of people who still support and back the current government. What are they going to take away from this?

After all of this, is it any wonder we all have such serious trust issues about the world we live in? We can’t trust any public figure to be telling the truth. Most of the time they hardly even try to be subtle about it, and when they are, that’s when we’re even more suspicious. With this new Orwellian regime settling in, it’ll be a miracle if we’re ever anything but broken.

A generation of lost kids.

It’s not apathy. It’s disillusionment, overwhelmed by conflicting information and a lack of leaders to turn to.

Despite perhaps having lived hardships that we can’t relate to, our parents at least had a clearer idea of the future. The notion was that if you worked hard enough, did all of the right things with the right amount of effort, you’d make it. But that doesn’t count in debt or emotional stress or the time it takes to make it in such competitive fields where everyone’s parents think the same. And so you end up with a profession full of kids who were pushed there, who don’t care about saving the world so much as paying back what they owe and surviving, moving forwards. All parents seem to be pushing their kids harder in school and to college, because that’s the only way to make it in this world, because it’s not about what you’re passionate about or what you want to study, it’s about what, pragmatically, will make you successful. And they’re right. This economy leaves no space for love.

But we can’t even believe in the education system anymore. We don’t believe in authority when they say “trust us,” or the media, or the government. The propaganda is so clearly everywhere, in commercials and newsrooms and our textbooks, and it’s ridiculously see-through when you’ve been taught rhetorical analysis for years. When you’ve seen hypocrisy in historical context, and then see history repeating itself. When the lives on TV and the lives lived in reality don’t match, and don’t seem like they ever could. Then there’s this onslaught of information, and with the current political clime, everyone’s really aware of what’s happening- and what we never realized was happening behind closed doors.

Maybe this really does relate to only a small portion of the population. But with depression and mental instability on the rise, along with political instability and an increasing awareness in a globalized world, maybe there’s more to it all than anyone is willing to readily admit.

There’s such a large gap between the thinking processes of those a decade ahead and a decade behind. Take our entertainment right now as an example; it doesn’t show the future as a beautiful utopia of progress and science, it shows dystopian rulers and a broken world that can’t sustain humanity the way we know it. That’s the future we see.

But then a decade behind us, technology raced forwards just as we came out of childhood, and so the lifestyle we know and the one they know are radically different. But they don’t have it any easier. They’re not exposed to the same ideals we were, as children, but at the same time they never got the luxury of believing them to be a possibility in the first place. And now none of us get to indulge in the fantasy of finding your purpose and what you love doing, and make it from there. Now it’s about pragmatism. How do you succeed?

Having those ideals ripped away hurts, though, and it left scars. Having direction and purpose taken away hurts. No wonder we’re cynical and bitter. Now what are we working for? To be pawns, to be cogs in a system that doesn’t seem to care about us, if the current legislation in Congress is any indication? We see the successful and now we know we’ll be lucky to reach upper middle class, never the upper class. We’ll be lucky to settle.

Who are we, really, as a generation? Lost kids, where are we going?

#social commentary #millenials #eveleen speaks

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