#we can coexist and do our own things on the internet instead of viewing this in such a black and white kinda way !

[bnuuys]

i love u aira tumblr i love u aira tumblr i love u so much aira tumblr

[usa-lawsuit]

The United States District Court, Northern District of California, Case No: 21-cv-08066 KAW set the trial date for June 16, 2025, at 9:00 AM in Courtroom TBD. We look forward to proving our claims.

Dear Students, Proud Graduates, Potential Students, and anyone with an interest in our mission,

The greatest joy we have is fostering a community in which each one of us can help ourselves and others grow spiritually and intellectually and find a greater purpose. That mission is Dr. Paul Leon Masters’ legacy, and the administration feels a great responsibility to protect his legacy for future generations.

Unfortunately, over the last few years, protecting Dr. Masters’ life’s work has meant that we have been forced to engage in a lengthy, expensive, and very stressful legal battle with another metaphysical school to protect our name and reputation. Now, instead of staying within the court system and relying on actual evidence, the other school (founded by a person with two degrees from our schools) has decided to argue its case via misinformation on the Internet. The latest statement online is that the Federal court has dismissed the current lawsuit. This is false, and our litigation is ongoing. View IMM’s latest court filing, Doc. 200 and Exhibits, filed on July 22, 2024. (View PDF-25 Pages)

In light of that misinformation, we feel forced to break our public silence on the lawsuit. At the outset of this statement, it is important to explain two things. While we present facts below, the Court has not yet determined whether those facts are actionable. But the point of this statement is not to prove our case – we will have the opportunity to do that in Court. The point is that the facts below differ from statements others have made on the Internet. Second, and related, we have no interest or need to cast aspersions nor do we want to try this case on the Internet. As we have navigated this difficult time, we have trusted that the legal process would resolve the dispute. And we firmly believe that it will. The judges overseeing the case have ably guided the process and provided each side ample opportunity to make their case. The judge had set a trial for May 2024 but recently moved that date back, and we are currently waiting for a new trial date to be set.

If you were unaware of this lawsuit, it is not because we felt we had done something wrong or had anything to hide. It was our sincere intention to avoid commenting on this situation until we were able to reach a resolution of the dispute, either through a mutually agreeable settlement or by letting the legal process play out through a trial. The reason we have avoided posting on the Internet about the case is because the ultimate decision will be in the hands of our judge and a jury of ordinary citizens. We look forward to presenting the evidence we have accumulated and to put this ordeal behind us.

That said, we cannot sit idly by while others spread misinformation, hurting the reputation of our institutions worldwide and placing not only Dr. Masters’ legacy in jeopardy but also our graduates’ degree credentials. We want to set the record straight and ask for your support (be it positive thoughts or helping us spread the word about our mission). At a fundamental level, the court case is about conducting business and advertising fairly so that both schools can coexist and bring their unique points of view to the students that choose their preferred school – and to ensure the students have access to accurate and truthful information in making their choice.

While we want the legal process to play out so the case reaches its fair resolution, we encourage you to do your own research. A list of the case documents (with numbers assigned to each filing) can be found at (https://dockets.justia.com/docket/california/candce/4:2021cv08066/386583) and (https://unicourt.com/case/pc-db5-international-metaphysical-ministry-inc-v-wisdom-of-the-heart-church-dba-the-university-of-metaphysical-sciences-1049747). Anyone can view these federal court records through PACER, but first, they need to register for a PACER account. Access to the filed documents requires a small subscription fee. You may register for a PACER account here if you want to peruse ALL the court documents and filings.

Importantly, throughout the litigation, there have been statements by others on the Internet that appear contrary to the evidence produced in the case. For example, in Internet posts, the founder of the other school claimed, “it has never run ads using any other school’s name, and [the other school] has never done anything wrong.” However, documents that have been disclosed and publicly filed in the litigation suggest that the other school did knowingly use our names and trademarks in its internet advertising in an effort to direct searches to their school. One of the other school’s key employees even admitted under oath in her deposition that the other school ran advertising online using the keywords “The University of Metaphysics,” “University of Sedona,” and “International Metaphysical Ministry.” (Deposition of J.P., pp, 87-90.)

The other school’s founder wrote an internal email in August 2020 explicitly setting forth their plan to use our names in their advertising, stating:

[W]e can have Kirstie take their school name off the negative keywords list and run ads on metaphysics university and university of metaphysics, university of metaphysics sedona, univ of sedona etc, ALL the suggested searches, just like they found the keywords for our school name, just look at what good search suggests when you start typing their name in, and LETS RUN ADS FOR [other school] ON THEIR NAME! If they are doing it to us, we can do it to them. In fact, WE would get more out of it because they have more searches for their name. So it would actually work for us!

[buzzdixonwriter]

Colonialism

You back into things sometimes.

One of my many guilty pleasures is old school pulp, which I first encountered with the Doc Savage reprints in the 1960s, then old anthologies, then back issues at conventions, and now thanks to the Internet, an almost limitless supply.

And to be utterly frankly, a lot of the appeal lays in the campiness of the covers and interior art -- brass plated damsels fighting alien monsters, bare chested heroes combatting insidious hordes, etc., etc., and of course, etc.

Once past age 12, I never took these covers or the covers of modern pulps such as James Bond, Mike Hammer, or Modesty Blaise seriously; they were just good, campy fun.

While my main focus remained on the sci-fi pulps, I also kept an eye on crime and mystery pulps, war stories, and what are sometimes called “sweaties”, i.e., men’s adventure magazines.

Despite the differences in the titles and genres, certain themes seemed to pop up again and again.

Scantily clad ladies, typically in some form of distress, though on occasion dishing out as good if not better than they got.

Well, the pulps that drew my attention were the pups made for a primarily male audience (though even in the 1930s and 40s there were large numbers of female readers and writers in the sci-fi genre).  Small wonder I was drawn to certain types of eye candy; I had been culturally programmed that way.

That’s a topic well worthy of a post or two on its own, so I’m putting gender issues / the patriarchy / the male gaze aside for the moment.

What I’m more interested in focusing on is the second most popular characters to appear on the covers (and in the stories as well).

The Other.

The Other comes in all shapes / sizes / ethnicities.  Tall and short, scrawny and beefy, light or dark, you name it, they’ve got a flavor for you.

“Injuns” and aliens, Mongols and mafiosi, Africans and anarchists.

Whoever they were ”they ain’t us!”

Certain types of stories lend themselves easily to depicting the villainous Other.

Westerns, where irate natives can always be counted on to launch an attack.

War stories, where the hero (with or without an army to help him) battles countless numbers of enemies en masse.

Adventure stories, where the hero intrudes in some other culture and shows them the error of their ways.

Detective stories, where the Other might be a single sinister mastermind but still represents an existentialist threat.

And my beloved sci-fi stories?

Why, we fans told ourselves our stories were better than that!  We didn’t wallow in old world bigotry, demonizing blacks and browns and other non-whites because of their skins.

Oh, no:  We demonized green skinned aliens.

Now I know some of you are sputtering “But-but-but you wrote for GI Joe!”

Boy howdy, are you correct.

And boy howdy, did we ever exploit the Other with that show.

I never got a chance to do it, but I pitched -- and had Hasbro accept -- a story that would have been about the way I envisioned Cobra to have formed and been organized, and would focus on what motivated them.

They were pretty simplistic greedheads in the original series, but I felt the rank and file needed to be fighting for a purpose, something higher to spire to that mere dominance and wealth.

I never got to do “The Most Dangerous Man In The World” but I was trying to break out of the mold. 

For the most part, our stories fit right into the old trope of The Other.

Ours were mostly about the evil Other trying to do something nefarious against our innocent guys, but there’s an obverse narrative other stories follow, in which our guys go inflict themselves on The Other until our guys either come away with a treasure (rightfully belonging to The Other but, hey, they really don’t deserve it so we’re entitled to take it from them), or hammer The Other into submission so they will become good ersatz copies of us (only not so uppity as to demand equal rights or respect or protection under law).

These are all earmarks of a very Western (in the sense of Europe and America…with Australia and New Zealand thrown in) sin:  Colonialism.

Now, before going further let’s get out terms straight.

There’s all sorts of different forms of colonialism, and some of them can be totally benign -- say a small group of merchants and traders from one country travel to a foreign land and set up a community there where they deal honorably and fairly with the native population.

The transplanted merchants are a “colony” in the strictest sense of the term, but they coexist peacefully in a symbiotic relationship with the host culture and both sides benefit, neither at the expense of the other.

Oh, would that they could all be like that…

Another form of colonialism -- and one we Americans are overly familiar with even though there are all sorts of variants on this basic idea -- is the kind where one culture invades the territory of another and immediately begins operating in a deliberately disruptive nature to the native population.

They seek to enslave & exploit or, failing that, expel or eradicate the natives through any means possible.

It’s the story of Columbus and the conquistadors and the pilgrims and the frontiersmen and the pioneers and the forty-niners and the cowboys and the robber barons.

It’s the story where different groups are deliberately kept separate from one another by the power structure in place, for fear they will band together and usurp said power structure (unless, of course, they band together to kelp make one of ours their leader, and build a grand new empire just for him).

It’s the story where our guys never need make a serious attempt to understand the point of view of The Other, because they are just strawmen to mow down, sexy lamps to take home.

I think my taste in sci-fi and modern pulp writing in general started to change around the mid-1970s.

Being in the army quickly cleared me of a lot of preconceptions I had about what our military did and how they did it.

The easy-peasy moral conflicts of spy novels and international thrillers seem rather thin and phony compared to the real life complexities of national and global politics.

Long before John Wick I was decrying a type of story I referred to as “You killed my dog so you must die.”  Some bad guy (typically The Other) does a bad thing and so the good guy (one of ours -- yea!) must punish him.

Make him hurt.

Make him whimper

Make him crawl.

Make him suffer.

The real world ain’t like that.

Fu Machu falls to Ho Chi Minh.

As entertaining as the fantasy of humiliating and annihilating our enemies may be…we gotta come to terms with them, we gotta learn to live with them.

That’s why my favorite sci-fi stories now are less about conflict and more about comprehension.

It’s better to understand than to stand over.

. . .

The colonial style of storytelling as the dominant form of story telling is fairly recent, dating only from the end of the medieval period in Europe and the rise of the so-called age of exploration.

This is not to say colonial story telling didn’t exist before them -- look at what Caesar wrote, or check out Joshua and Judges in the Old Testament -- but prior to the colonial age it wasn’t the dominant form of storytelling.

Most ancient stories involve characters who, regardless of political or social standing, recognize one another as human beings.

And when gods or monsters appear, they are usually symbols of far greater / larger forces & fates, not beasts to be subdued or slain.

Medieval literature is filled with glorious combat and conflict, but again, it’s the conflict of equals and for motives and rationales that can easily be understood.

It was only when the European nations began deliberately invading and conquering / dominating foreign lands that colonialism became the dominant form of storytelling.

It had to:  How else could a culture justify its swinish behavior against fellow human beings?

Even to this day, much (if not most) popular fiction reflects the values of colonialism.

Heroes rarely change.

Cultures even less.

We’ve kept The Other at arms length with popular fiction and media, sometimes cleverly hiding it, sometimes cleverly justifying it, but we’ve had this underlying current for hundreds of years.

Ultimately, it hasn’t served us well.  

It traps us in simplistic good vs evil / us vs them narratives that fail to take into account the complex nature of human society and relationships.

It gives us pat answers instead of probing questions.

It is zero sum storytelling: The pie is only so big, there can’t be more, and if the hero doesn’t get it all, he loses.  (John D. MacDonald summed up this philosophy in the title of one of his books:  The Girl, The Gold Watch, And Everything.)

It’s possible to break out of that mind set -- The Venture Brothers animated series brilliant manages to combine old school pulp tropes with a very modern, very perceptive deconstruction of the form -- but as posted elsewhere, imitation is the sincerity form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness, so while I certainly applaud The Venture Brothers I don’t want to encourage others to follow in their footsteps.

Because they won’t.

They’ll pretend they will, but they’ll veer off course and back into the old Colonialism mindset.

We need to break out, break free.

Here in the U.S. it’s African-American History Month.

The African-American experience is far from the Colonialism that marks most white / Western / Christian storytelling (and by storytelling I include history and journalism as well as fiction; in fact, anything and everything that tells a narrative).

It’s a good time to open our eyes, to see the world around us not afresh, but for the first time.

Remove the blinders. 

I said sometimes you back into things.

Getting a clearer view of the world I’m in didn’t come from a straightforward examination.

It came from a counter-intuitive place, it found its way back to the beginning not by accepting what others said was the true narrative, but by following individual threads.

It came from Buck Rogers and the Beat Generation and Scrooge McDuck and the sexual revolution and Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance and the civil rights era and Dangerous Visions and the Jesus Movement and Catch-22 and the Merry Pranksters.

It came from old friends, some of whom inspired me, some of whom disappointed me, and yet the disappointments probably led to a deeper, more penetrating insight into the nature of the problem.

This Colonialism era must come to a close.

It can no longer sustain itself, not in the world we inhabit today.

It requires a new breed of storytellers -- writers and artists and poets and journalists who can offer 

It’s not a world that puts up barriers by race or gender, ethnicity or orientation, ability or age.

There’s ample opportunity for open minds.

All it asks of us is a new soul.

  © Buzz Dixon

[thehouseofjohndeaf]

How did this happen?

(photo cred)

The global pandemic has shed a light on some misconceptions regarding individualism and anti-authority.  The line between anti-authority and anti-science has been blurred during a major public health crisis putting health officials and medical experts in the driver’s seat.  This has led to major outcries against stay-at-home advisories, the closing of non-essential businesses, and mask mandates.  The groups of people who are against the public health regulations are primarily right-wing, and are viewing these precautions as government overreach, despite the fact that the republicans have current control of the federal government.  The current president has found ways to pawn off responsibility to the governors of individual states, and we see the outcry mostly coming from those living in blue states.  These are primarily Americans who are part of a spectrum of right leaning politics, and identify as conservative, libertarian, alt-right, and republican.  Despite all these identities and beliefs there is also a heavy anti-authoritarian and anti-government overtone to these outcries.  How is this?  How have right leaning individuals started believing they are the real anti-establishment counterculture, holding a firm belief that the left are the true authoritarians?

First, this starts with one of the biggest misconceptions in America; most people believe the liberals are the left.  This is not true.  Liberals are the center.  The US does not currently have a left-wing party.  Instead we have a centrist party that houses both the center and the left, this causes both and left and center to constantly lean further right.

The graph above, from Quartz Media, shows where the 2020 democratic candidates fall on the political spectrum as opposed to the incumbent republican president.  The DNC continues to be a right-wing organization while being only slightly left of the republican party.  The final two democratic candidates during the 2020 primaries were on opposite sides of the spectrum of the democratic party, a centrist and a leftist.  The same thing that happened in 2016.  The DNC ultimately gave the nomination to the centrist, because they are a centrist organization.

This next graph shows how the US major party candidates of 2020 compare to political parties in the UK.  As we can see, the conservative right-wing of the UK is in line with the sitting republican US president, the centrist liberal democrats of the UK align with the majority of the US democratic candidates, and the UK’s leftist labour party is even further left than the left leaning outliers of the US democrats.

This misconception that the left is liberal in the US has led us to believe that our current definitions of right and left have a chasm of differences between them, when they are in fact all in the same wheelhouse.  The republicans appear authoritarian yet successful because they are unapologetically right-wing and will stir the pot and make a lot of noise to get their way, whereas the democrats appear authoritarian yet incompetent because they are centrists who would more often rather keep the peace with a steady-as-she-goes approach than stir up actual progressive change.  Democrats will pretend to be leftist, inciting progressive change, all while bombing innocents overseas and allowing their own citizens’ water to be poisoned.  Republicans will explain to you why they all deserved it.  It’s the same song played on a different instrument.

Since the left are the outliers, they are viewed as radicals whose ideas would never work in the western world.  This has gone so far as to target anyone who identifies with politics left of center as the “alt-left”.  And yet, every other major western nation has some degree of socialism working for the people in the form of state funded healthcare programs, prison reform, welfare, child tax benefits, pension systems, social housing, and public education.  The US even embraces some of these things, we just refuse to call it socialism or fund it properly, we refuse to allow the right and center to be tainted by the left.

It seems a relatively simple explanation for certain groups of people to be outraged by public health officials making drastic changes to our daily lives; the effects on their income, social and mental health, as well as the economy.  The question is, how is this viewed as anti-authoritarian if the outcry is both in support of the current political party with the most government control and yet also against government overreach enacted by these same people?

For the older generations and those who consume media in a traditional sense, it appears a healthy diet of Fox News and an overall distrust of the “liberal” or “mainstream” media would lead to mass misinformation and a skewed sense of reality.  For the younger generations who grew up on the internet, a diet of reactionary propaganda and alt-right message boards will lead them down a rabbit hole of misinformation.  Both have a distrust for “liberal” media and have a skewed concept that the liberal media is a leftist organization with an agenda to dismantle their freedoms.  Ultimately, this is one way we may arrive at the concept that liberals, who are really centrists but we think they’re leftists, are trying to implement an authoritarian regime of socialist communism, when in reality the liberals have a more middle-of-the-road approach to reactionary thought, which causes conservatives and other right-wing theorists to distrust any form of organized press while they congregate online and adopt conspiracy theories to help them untie the mental knots they tied for themselves in the first place.  Really, the only way for new age conservatives to believe the lies they’re churning out is for there to be some conspiracy at the center, because their views cannot coexist with reality.

But still, how did we get here?  How did we brew a force of pro-conservative anti-establishment?

There was a lot of angst in the post-9/11 world for our youth, as a counterculture emerged against the Iraq War and government oversight including the patriot act and the NSA.  Anarchist thought gave birth to post-anarchism, as anarchism coexisted in a technologically advanced world.  How do we grapple with the concepts of individual freedom and collective living when we’re tethered to companies to provide products that keep us connected and informed?  Even prior to this, most anti-authority groups understood liberalism and conservatism to be of the same breed.  In 2002 Against Me! released the album Reinventing Axl Rose, Laura Jane Grace sings, “Baby, I’m an anarchist, you’re a spineless liberal…” a song referencing the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle.  If one had the misconception that liberalism is leftist, they may interpret this lyric incorrectly.  If liberal is left, then liberalism is more attune with socialism, meaning right-wing and libertarian thought would be opposite liberalism, and ultimately one might come to the conclusion that anarchism is more aligned with right leaning politics than left leaning politics.  This person would then continue on to believe that the conservatives, the alt-right, libertarians, and republicans were the faces of anti-authority as part of their fringe groups.

It appears that millennials who grew up in a post-punk era, were clinging to the anti-establishment messages of the early 2000s during a Bush presidency.  They were eventually thrust into an Obama presidency of “progressive change” as some were just entering high school and beginning to pay attention to the world around them, while others were out on their own for the first time in their lives attending college, and the oldest of the generation were first entering the workforce.  This “progressive change” led to a lot of real social changes, what reactionaries call “PC culture”, and what the rest of us just recognize as time moving forward at a steady pace.  Nonetheless, the Obama presidency was rather anticlimactic.  While the liberals patted themselves on the back and slept peacefully to the social changes, the working poor and minorities saw little-to-no benefit, and the conservatives stewed in their rage as a smug charismatic black man was in charge of their beloved homeland.  Eventually, in the height of the Obama years the housing market crash brought libertarians, socialists, and anarchists together in the national movement, Occupy Wall Street.

The problem that eventually erupted was a disdain for liberalism, critically noted as neoliberalism.  While the left has been critical of liberalism and conservatism alike, the right used their view of liberalism as a leftist ideology to create a division at a time when everyone was coming together to recognize the stark inequalities of our current capitalist system, famously uniting us all as the 99%.  This tactic allowed libertarianism to be recognized as the opposite of authoritarianism, however a right-wing libertarian will likely have complete faith that the free market and corporations will do the most good over the individual workers.  We then wind up back at square one, with the corporations as the voices of authority.  When we become dependent on their products, or they come to as close to a monopoly as possible, the working class begins to lose their freedoms.  During the pandemic we’re witnessing this happen as huge corporations like Walmart and Target are open for business and able to adhere to public health and safety guidelines, whereas small businesses cannot remain open because they don’t have the proper space for social distancing or the funds for the required PPE.  The outcries against this have not been against Walmart or Target for hoarding their wealth and becoming some of the only stores able to sell clothes, books, electronics, toys and other nonessentials.  The outcry has been against public health officials for putting safety guidelines into practice in response to the virus.

A socialist response to this issue would have been for the government to provide PPE to small businesses so that they may remain open.  What we have is a libertarian response of letting the bigger fish eat the smaller fish, and the working class are footing the bill.  The current administration has put the majority of the power for economic recovery into the hands of corporations and the wealthiest individuals.  This is what is hurting the working class.  Yet the outrage has been against the public health officials who have put forth social distancing guidelines, stay-at-home advisories, and mask mandates.  None of these things are the reason for the economic turmoil we are experiencing, it’s the current administration's hands-off approach and ignoring small businesses.

The funds for small business loans were given directly to the banks to distribute to their communities.  Problems with this tactic were immediately recognizable.  The banks were more likely to offer loans to the businesses who already had accounts with them, and were more likely to award loans to a business they felt would easily pay back this loan.  Franchises were also recognized as single entities and rather than the corporations bail out their own chains, individual franchise owners were dependent on government funded bank managed loans.  This is how the right and center handle social issues, they give money to the already wealthy and ask them to provide a service to those in need, allowing very little relief to reach those who need it most.

So no, being anti-science in the midst of a global pandemic is not rebellion, nor is it remotely anti-authority.  It is playing directly into the hands of the elite.  If you’re protesting government overreach and the sitting president encourages the protests with messages like “LIBERATE MICHIGAN”, it’s quite obvious the government approves of your actions.  If you’re protesting government overreach while wearing merchandise you purchased from the sitting president, and holding signs in support of him, that irony is so palpable, it’s concerning that so many people cannot see it.

[grokkingchair]

Lethal Rigidity

Required reading in today's NYT Magazine: "The 1619 Project and the long contentious history of American history" by Jake Silverstein. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/magazine/1619-project-us-history.html

Ideas that sang to me:

"As Bancroft demonstrated and Jones noted, history is not simply an academic exercise - it is inherently political. Those without political standing in the present are generally discounted as historical actors in the past."

"The sheer volume of new history fractured what had been a simple story and fostered a sense of anxiety that the days of a single master narrative were over. Among academics, this collapse of “synthesis” was fretted over throughout the 1980s. And yet, as the scholar Nell Irvin Painter pointed out at the time, “The new histories expose the sad fact that the purported syntheses of the 1950s ... claimed to encompass all the American people but spoke only of a small segment.”

Voices are missing. Voices are always missing. How do we accurately capture all voices, all points of view? Our best tool is the human brain. But it seems that we haven't yet honed our practices and abilities to accommodate the complexity. (two dimensional paper as presentation has limitations; editing tools don't support easy multi-dimensional linking, which might facilitate the level of synthesis needed as we go forward. But perhaps I'm unduly influenced by reading Ted Nelson's work of late.)

Another thing that strikes me is the extent we will go to in order to eliminate information that conflicts with our own narratives, tenets, etc. When did we become so adroit in this particular skill? At what point in our human development do we become so brittle that we cannot endure even the mere observance of challenging, dissonant ideas? Why is it that we can no longer simply bear witness to the truths of others and acknowledge, "It is so, because it is so for them"? How does bearing witness to others turn into a frontal attack on ourselves? My heart breaks writing these words.

"You could see the pitched battles over public memory that have occurred since then as a product of the new history’s corrosive effect on national unity; or you could conclude that a republic founded on an irresolvable contradiction — freedom and slavery — was always going to wind up in an irresolvable argument over how to tell its story, that this contentiousness is American democracy, that the loss of consensus means we’ve finally arrived."

Here, I'm reminded of the Buddhist teachings on non-duality; that a thing is composed of non-thing parts. The self is composed of non-self parts. The flower is composed of non-flower parts--like water, soil, nutriments, and sunshine. Democracy is composed of non-democratic parts. We would never be sensitized to the harms of oppression without experiencing it. Most likely, democracy wouldn't have emerged as an idea were it not for institutions like fascism. These ideas co-arise together: fascism and democracy. So, not to despair or lament about the coexistence of freedom and slavery; they're not irreconcilable. Better to see clear-eyed their co-arising. Better to deeply understand the causes and conditions for the harmful (slavery, oppression) so that we may build better social institutions and norms, so that we never have to re-learn the lesson again in the future. Also, if we can work through the hard truths of our harmful past, our approach could become a model for the world.

"We may need, instead, legislation that requires us to study divisive concepts, beginning with the most basic one of all: All men are created equal. As Quarles and others have explained, our founding concept of universal equality, in a country where one-fifth of the population was enslaved, led to an increase in racial prejudice by creating a cognitive dissonance — one that could be resolved only by the white citizenry’s assumption of Black inferiority and inhumanity. It’s an unsettling idea, that the most revered ideal of the Declaration of Independence might be considered our original divisive concept."

What a revolutionary idea that the Declaration of Independence might be our original divisive concept--and not wrong. As we know, in many ways, the Declaration of Independence was one of the biggest examples of "what the hell's water?"--in this case, the authors having no self-awareness that they weren't actually representative of the full population.

The time of systemic denial of voices -- of women, people of color, indigenous, LGBTQ+, others -- is over. (Maybe this is something we can thank the internet for.) This genie doesn't go back in the bottle--unless fascism globally reigns (which is possible).

Instead, we need to figure out how to reach each other, particularly the unreachable. I think this can only start as a personal project. Where are the places where we are chronically, lethally brittle? Where are we unreachable? And why? What can't we bear witness to because it undermines our friable scaffolding of understanding of the world? How have we become so self-identified with our "rightness"? What will happen if/when I'm wrong? If/when I take in information that contradicts cherished ideas? What are the costs of being wrong? Why do I cherish these ideas so much? We are clinging to our cherished ideas like life rafts in a roiling ocean. As if they are the only thing we can count on. Do we no longer trust our minds and their naturally inquisitive, resilient and compassionate nature?

Maybe this chronic distrust is also something we can thank the internet for: a funhouse reality distortion mirror through the medium of ideas. So much information, casting doubt into our beliefs and our facts. All these ideas and words - it's not real life. Because in real life, if you are suffering in any way, I want to help you suffer less, regardless of what ideas you cherish.

Easy to write that now, on a peaceful Sunday morning. The practice, however, is actually much more difficult. Because the ideas often mask the suffering--on both sides--I don't see your suffering because of both your and my rigid, angry ideas. As I say, it's a personal project. May we all be more inquisitive about the workings and habits of our minds.

_()_

[swampgallows]

did not go on the hike. still eating breakfast. going to make more cocoa.

i’m really disturbed by the conversations earlier. it’s amazing what people will say when they think you aren’t listening. the moment i came out of the bedroom, they all stopped talking. they switched the subject to waiters, and how tip shouldn’t be necessary, but it was “proven” that waiters give shittier service without tip as an incentive. be nice or you dont get to live. wow! great incentive. but thank god we have nice “service” right

i dont even know what to think. part of me is thankful i escaped these hateful, self-stroking mindsets but another part of me is ever mourning that i was ever subjected to this upbringing at all, and that my family still maintains these views. I hear what they say about me when they think I’m not listening. I hear what they say about gay people and people of color and trans people when they think I’m not listening. then they clam up when i’m near, not because they dont want to hurt me, or because they know they’re wrong, but because i’m the ~pc police~ to them. they think i’m being “offended” for the sake of woke points or some bullshit, just like my ex-qp thought me saying “I don’t want to play DotA with you if you keep saying ‘nuke peru’ every time we beat a portuguese-speaking team” (especially because half the time they were actually speaking SPANISH, not portuguese, which made my bullshit idiot friends look even stupider and makes them even MORE racist) was me trying to keep up a good SJW image even though we were having a private one on one conversation, like i was doing it to alleviate my own white guilt instead of because i thought my friends were acting like racist fucking morons and i dont want to be friends with racist fucking morons.  “I’m sure the peruvians appreciate your sacrifice” was his response

it’s amazing how deep the delusion goes. how adamantly they believe they’re in the right about this stuff. i feel like it’s so easy to get educated, so easy to quash these erroneous beliefs, yet there are plenty of very intelligent people that i know who still ascribe to white supremacist values and even actively protect them, and somewhat on a subconscious level. They defend it so passionately but they don’t even know why. I was the same way as a teenager; i was bred into it. It’s really, I think, about dissolving that membrane of the “other”; when you start to coexist with these people, they are just people. You don’t think of them as personifications of these false beliefs youve been fed. but then i know people who have plenty of friends of color, plenty of gay friends, yet still hold onto these beliefs, and that’s how i know it’s systemic. everything in our society caters to segregating these people to keep them from those in power, to keep the system in place, to make them the Other. 

i mean, I “know” all of this consciously but i guess it’s just... im surrounded by accepting communities online and within my immediate friend group that i forget how the majority of the world operates. i’m thankful for these communities but i’m just reminded all the time how shocking it is that this is not the norm. it’s like when i remove my glasses and remember that yeah actually i do have a disability and i cant see shit. as long as i have my accommodation, my disability aid, my glasses, i can function and live a typical life without oppression or opposition or inaccessibility in terms of not being able to see. but without them? shit. im helpless and alone and weak. I cant do anything for myself. i become a burden and an outlier. 

it’s just... no wonder i rely on the rave scene and the internet so much. it’s really hitting me how truly unwelcome i feel within my own family. they support me financially and sometimes emotionally but they... live in opposition of what i am. like i’m still going through some kind of a phase and will smarten up and bloom into an upstart heterosexual business executive woman with a briefcase in one hand and my child in the other. my parents always say they want happiness for me and they want me to be whoever i am and that theyll support me, but how can they say that and then ALSO say all of these terrible things? how can they view them as just “harmless debate” or “opinions” when they directly affect people like their own children? my parents cursed obamacare up and down about how their taxes are going to “slackers” and “the illegals” to fund their healthcare, but then are delighted that I only had to pay $200 a month for healthcare while I was still employed. Then when i became unemployed and they drove me to the social services office to get medi-cal, they complained about the inefficiency of the system and the lack of options and how come they couldn’t just claim me as a dependent?? yet they dont want to pay any money into this system, nor do they want “slackers” to “skate by” as dependents.

i dont like to talk about hypocrisy because i have been gaslighted too many times by such a concept, but the double bind here, the direct contradiction, is just ...remarkable. 

[solmartelli]

Thumbelina by M.Serres.

This is my reflection after reading ‘Thumbelina’ by M. Serres.

I. Thumbelina.

    Millennials have never seen a cow since land life has been decreasing along this decade. It’s important to notice that our culture has suddenly changed. During this chapter, M. Serres explains that our students, who are called ‘Thumbelina’, do not have the same relation to the world as his generation did. Thumbelina lives in a world which is packed full; her life expectancy is close to 80 years old due to the advance of medicine. She does not have the same body or behaviour; for instance, her birth was programmed and her parents can divorce. She does not have the same head; she communicates through Facebook, she writes (or texts) and speaks differently. Thumbelina does not perceive the world in the same way as her grandparents did because she lives in a world crossed by multiculturalism, where different religions, languages and customs coexist. This generation is formatted by the media and advertising. Thumbelina has access to every kind of information, which is available online anywhere at any time. However, she is not able to completely understand or integrate the information she manipulates. Consequently, teaching has changed. All the knowledge is distributed online so teachers do not have to transmit it; it is already done! This situation requires a change in teaching which will affect all the institutions. Everything has to be redone and reinvented.

NOTE: On an interview, Michel Serres explained that he decided to call his book ‘Thumbelina’ instead of ‘Tom Thumb’ to show the victory of women. Even though the society is still male chauvinist, he thinks a new world is emerging.

II. School.

    Thumbelina has a full-head which has an enormous stock of information and processes data quickly. Her mind is better made. However, it’s the computer who contains and manages our ex human faculties: memory-imagination-reasoning. Those human qualities used to be inside our mind, but we suffered an externalization where technology is the one who remembers things for us. Therefore, Thumbelina does not have to work hard to gain knowledge since it’s already in front of her on the computer. It is common to hear a chatting in lectures because students have all the knowledge which was promised by the university. Thumbelina is not interested in what the teacher has to say because the information is available on any device; it’s already explained and illustrated. The demand that teaching had is now irrelevant; it has changed. Teachers need to implement a new one which will require another kind of knowledge. Thumbelina is no longer a passive passenger; she has a body driver now. She is active; she is in alert while she is typing on her computer. She has become a professor. For this reason, it is essential to adapt our teaching by considering the future implicated in the new technology.

III. Society.

    It’s said our society is structured by work. However, employees have been replaced by machines, which are controlled easily since they do not have mouths to complain. Facing the death of work, Thumbelina searches for a job even if she has one; she could lose it as easily as she got it. According to Thumbelina, her work is boring; it’s not stimulating and she does not find fulfilment in it. She dreams of a new kind of work which would make her happy, but there is a presumption of incompetence against Thumbelina. Her voice is anesthetized by the social media. We communicate with each other online but we do not speak face-to-face. Now, Thumbelina reproaches her parents, who accused her of being selfish and individualistic. Nevertheless, Thumbelina’s parents are divorced and their political parties are weak, so it’s in the blood*. At this point, our old belongings began to disappear. They were bloody, full of suffering, hunger and wars. Our belongings built a society on the massacres of others. Serres, M. (2013) ‘It’s preferable the immanent virtual world which does not need anyone’s death.’ Pulgarcita (pg 57) Buenos Aires: Fondo de cultura Económica.  In the society we live, everyone has become an epistemologist and we do not belong to one single community. In conclusion, Thumbelina will change the society we live in; it’s her future; it’s the revolution.

*`It is in the blood’ is an idiom. If we translated it into Spanish, it will be ‘Lo que se hereda, no se roba’. That’s what I initially meant to say. After doing some research, I found it was the right ‘translation’. I hope it is right.

IV. My own reflection.

    From my point of view, parents and grandparents should read this book in order to understand my generation. I am nineteen years old and I am a Thumbelina. The way I learn and the way I see the world is different from what it used to be thirty years ago. My mind is different because it has mutated along technology. Grandparents sometimes say that our mobile phone is the extension from our body. On the contrary, I think our thumbs are the extension of our brain. We have the chance to see everything, to learn anything anywhere just by using our thumbs. Our world has been expanded through technology and we have access to it. I believe that if our previous generations try to be open about the significance of internet, we could help them to discover this new world. Instead of underestimating Thumbelina, they could try to understand her world. The age is not an excuse. Michel Serres was 83 years old when he published this book. If he could, why is it impossible for our grandparents? It does not matter how old you are, you can be capable of discovering Thumbelina’s world if you want too; but be careful, you have to be ready to open your mind.

[pogueman]

VICTOR sums up the trends that dominated CES 2018

For normal people, the end of the year is a time for celebration, vacation, and family.

For people in the tech industry, though, it’s a time of frantic preparation for the biggest trade show in the Western Hemisphere: CES.

The Consumer Electronics Show takes place in Las Vegas every January, perfectly timed to drain the joy out of the holidays for 170,000 people. It’s not open to the public — only to members of the industry and the media that covers it.

The Consumer Electronics Show comes once a year, whether we like it or not.

The purpose of the show is for nearly 4,000 companies to show off what they’re working on. When will these products reach stores shelves? Some of it soon, some of it next year, and lots of it, never.

Every year, everyone wants to know: What was new at CES? The world is hungry for an exciting answer, like, “Oh, there’s this thing called an iPad!” or “They showed this car called a Tesla!”

But every year, there are fewer new breakout inventions; at CES 2018 last week, I’d say there were zero. (In fact, the most talked-about display at CES last week was when the power went out for two hours. At an electronics show. #irony.)

Instead, CES these days is more about the same buzzword, technologies seep into existing products from across the industry, cross fertilizing. This year, six of these seeping technologies were on display — which, for your convenience, I’ve boiled down to a handy acronym: VICTOR.

It stands for voice, Internet of Things, cars, TVs, oddballs, and robots.

Voice

At this point, you probably know that the Amazon Echo is that cylinder that sits in your house and responds to voice commands, kind of like Siri for the home. Google has its own copycat version, called Google Home. These things are incredibly popular — already, they’re in 16% of American homes.

Both Amazon and Google have been aggressively encouraging other companies to build their voice technologies into their own appliances: refrigerators, light switches, lamps, speakers, robo-vacuums, TVs, headphones, security cameras, door locks, washers, dryers, cars, and so on. “Works with Amazon Alexa!” and “Works with OK Google!” signs were everywhere at CES last week.

You couldn’t swing a cat without hitting an Alexa-enabled product.

What’s great is that this isn’t an either/or thing. It’s not another Betamax/VHS war, or a Blu-ray/HD-DVD war. Since Alexa and “OK Google” are just software, there’s nothing to stop them from coexisting in the same product. The Sonos One speaker, Vivitar smart speaker, and new TiVo models, for example, can all understand commands barked in either command language.

Internet of Things

The Internet of Things, of course, is the nonsensical name for home devices that are networkable, so that we can control them by pulling out our phones and opening an app. For something that’s supposed to make our lives simpler and easier, that’s too much hassle. Consumers have been staying away in droves.

What may save the “I” in VICTOR is the “V” in VICTOR — voice control. “Alexa, is the dryer done yet?” “Hey Google, make it two degrees warmer in here.” “Alexa, lock the doors.” “OK Google, I want to watch ‘Rambo.’”

That arrangement actually works — and was everywhere at CES 2018. Samsung and LG, among others, demonstrated entire model living rooms and kitchens filled with appliances waiting for your verbal command.

An LG employee shows how its new fridge has six cameras inside that let you see its contents.

Cars

The self-driving car courses at CES were a third bigger than last year. Every car company you’ve ever heard of, and a few you haven’t, were demonstrating their self-driving prototypes. Lyft was even giving a few lucky showgoers rides around town in self-driving cars.

Sleek-looking concept cars filled the CES exhibit halls.

For 10 years, people have been saying that these cars would hit the roads in 2020 — and guess what? Unlike most heavily hyped new technologies, this horizon isn’t receding. People are still saying 2020. That means it’s probably real.

Lots of people were also talking about Toyota’s e-Palette, a prototype self-driving store.

Toyota envisions its E-Palette as a self-driving store, delivery van, or even hotel room.

TVs

CES show floors have always been dominated by massive walls of brilliant TV screens, and this year was no exception. The industry is still hard at work pushing us to buy 4K TV screens, which have four times the number of pixels as hi-def screens. Only one problem: You can’t see the difference from a normal seating distance.

As it does every year, LG created a dazzling wall of TV screens—this time, in an undulating canyon.

Even if you could see it, there’s very little to watch. Not a single TV network or cable channel broadcasts in 4K. If you own a 4K television, and you want to watch 4K shows and movies, you have two choices: Buy a 4K Blu-ray player and buy new movies on disc — or stream your shows online, from services like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, iTunes, Google Play, Vudu, and YouTube.

In short, 4K is kind of a hoax.

(What you can see — what is worth upgrading to — is a much less catchy format. It’s called HDR, for high dynamic range. Much brighter brights, much darker darks; more detail in those bright and dark places; and more shades in between. More shades of color, too. Really fantastic.)

So the forehead-slapping breakthrough of CES 2018 was — get this — 8K screens. That’s right: four times as many pixels as 4K. If 4K was a stupid hoax, then 8K is four times as stupid. Really? They think we’re going to re-buy all our movies on disc again, to play on another new special disc player?

Samsung displayed a new display technology called MicroLED, which it claims to be as great-looking as OLED but at a lower price and less chance of burn-in. Cooler yet, the company proposes selling these TVs as one-foot, borderless tiles, which you can assemble to make as big a TV as you like. The one on the show floor, at 146 inches diagonal, dubbed “The Wall,” was a huge hit with showgoers.

LG also displayed (in an off-floor, invitation-only hotel area) a huge flat screen TV that rolls up. It’s built like an upside-down window shade; when you need the screen to get smaller, it wraps up around a roller at the bottom, hidden inside a wooden box.

LG’s prototype TV rolls upward or downward into the box below, to fit the video material.

Why? Because, the company says, you may want to watch different movies or shows that have different screen proportions. The real reason, of course, is, “Because we could.”

Oddball things

The “O” in VICTOR is the catch-all for all kinds of other crazy stuff on display. Walk the 50 football fields’ worth of exhibit space, and you’d find:

Two laundry-folding machines. One, the Foldimate, will cost $980 but will require you to attach each piece of clothing to clips; the other, the Laundroid, will go for $16,000 but does everything for you.

A full-body suit for playing virtual-reality games, so that bullets can “hit” you anywhere, or you can walk into a hot or cold virtual place, and you’ll feel it.

An electronic breast pump that you wear secretly inside your bra as you go about your day.

A tiny, battery-free sensor that you wear on your fingernail to detect excessive exposure to UV light.

Another stab at the Google Glass concept. This time, the virtual screen is superimposed on your field of view by a full pair of sunglasses.

Not one, not two, but three self-driving suitcases that follow you through the airport.

The Puppy 1 self-driving suitcase balances on two wheels, using technology adapted from Segway.

Remember my exhaustive (and exhausting) report about the struggles of the through-the-air charging industry? The products that can charge your gadgets at a distance? Well, the FCC just approved some of these products, including the Energous three-foot charging system. The very first product to include it is called the Myant Skiin, a line of clothing that tracks your vital statistics as you wear it.

Robots

No surprise here: Robotics and automation were the stars of the show. Heck, they’re the stars of every show right about now. Everywhere you looked, there were shiny white plastic robo-things with big eyes and smiley mouths to look less threatening. Most of them seemed to be “because we could” designs, rather than “you need one of these.”

Here and there, though, you could spot far more purpose-built robots:

Honda displayed a series of robots designed for specific tasks: an all-terrain model for outdoor work; a self-balancing wheelchair; and a weird, globule-shaped, huggable “empathy robot” with facial expressions projected onto its face from within.

LG offered three new robots for commercial use: one for restaurants, to deliver food or drinks; one for hotels, to carry luggage up to your room; and one for grocery stores, which guides you to the food shelf you’re looking for, and scans the package as you drop it into its hopper.

LG’s new service robots are designed for restaurants, hotels, and grocery stores.

Sony is re-introducing its Aibo robotic dog, this time in a more advanced, more puppy-like incarnation (probably $1,700 when it hits the U.S.). Sensors make the dog respond appropriately when you pet it or swat it; it learns your voice over time and seeks you out; and, like the original Aibo, it plays fetch with a pink ball.

Omron built a ping-pong-playing robot — not ever intended to be for sale, but to show off its robot-making skills.

Just to make sure all of Vegas’s bases were covered, the Sapphire Gentlemen’s Club featured two pole-dancing stripper robots as a CES gimmick.

Hail to the VICTORs

So, you get it: Same as last year, just more of it.

If all of that seems like a lot to read, well hey — here’s a rhyme to make it go down easier:

V is for the voice control in every gadget here — “Alexa, do my bidding!”… “OK Google, bring my beer!” In TVs, cars, and speakers, it’s a miracle of choice. The world’s at your command — at least if you don’t lose your voice!

I is for the second realm, called Internet of Things, It’s networked household stuff, complete with all the fun that it brings It’s thermostats, refrigerators, all your kitchen gear… So far, nobody’s buying it — but hey, perhaps next year.

C is for self-driving cars! So many at this show! We’re told they’re really coming soon — about two years to go. T is for the TV screens on all the expo floors. They look amazing when they’re here — but less so once they’re yours. 

O is for the oddball stuff! The offbeat and bizarre: This laundry-folding robot, or this crazy concept car. R is for the robots — Sony’s puppy stole my show. This grocery bot asks what you want, then shows you where to go.

So there’s your whole mnemonic — VICTOR! Hope you liked the show And don’t forget the greatest part — you didn’t have to go!

David Pogue, tech columnist for Yahoo Finance, welcomes non-toxic comments in the Comments below. On the Web, he’s davidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s @pogue. On email, he’s poguester@yahoo.com. You can sign up to get his stuff by email, here.  

Read more:

Exclusive: What Fitbit’s 6 billion nights of sleep data reveals about us

Tech that can help you keep your New Year’s resolutions

Pogue’s holiday picks: 8 cool, surprising tech gifts

Google’s Pixel Buds: Wireless earbuds for the extremely tolerant

Study finds you tend to break your old iPhone when a new one comes out

Rejoice: Sonos Speakers are finally voice-controllable

Follow Yahoo Finance on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn

[saltycharacters]

Hi!! I've been a big fan of your work for awhile. Just wanted to say that! Do u think u could tell me about the world all ur OCs are living in? If u also have a main story blog or even places u get inspiration from for your characters that I could see that would be great! Thx

Heyo, I’m so so glad you like my stuff! Thank you!! And regarding my character’s world, well, it’s not really a single tale I can tell. While some character world’s have an order and purpose and a huge complex story that it revolves around, mine is just a planet that houses separate little stories that are usually incomplete, don’t make sense or don’t have anything to do with one another. I can totally lay out some sick world facts for you though:

-The planet is not Earth, but similar in it in environment and appearance. It’s basically another goldilock planet like ours. A lot of things on it overlap with Earth, but other things don’t.

-The solar system has no other planets. My characters have little concept of outer space or aliens or anything extroterestrial. In fact, even the best scientists know or care very little about space. And nothing really comes from space either, like there’s no aliens roaming my character’s world. The stories and people mostly focus on the place they’re on rather than what’s beyond.

-Instead of coming together and building states and continents and being more connected like we did here, my characters have done the opposite and divided into little towns and cities that stretch as far as anyone knows. The pros are that no single government is needed, there are no wars or really big battles, and no one town is the same so it’s interesting to travel. Cons are that no one knows what’s happening beyond a few towns over, they have little connections with other places and people and no one knows how far or were these towns go.

-Government varies from towns to towns. Some have a mayor, some have multiple mayors/authorities, others have a direct democracy (where everyone in the town votes and participates in decisions), and some have no government or leader. Although those with no government are often secretly governed by my bug characters, under the illusion that they are gov. less.

-The Internet is less of a fun thing and more of a research tool. The ony thing that’s on there are studies and information uploaded by scientists, so that people can find answers to things whenever they want. Direct phone call and text is more popular.

-Genetic modification, creating/combining living things and anatomy alterations are all a specialty science in my characters world. They are so advanced at modifying our bodies and creating new living things that it has become a form of art- (Although to create new life you often need a permit). Many of my characters have been created or modified thanks to this widespread practice.

-There have become less “continuous” animal species and more dead-end animal species. This means they are one of a kind, unable to reproduce with anyone (unless they can asexually) and examples include Bail, CeeCee, Stare, and so on. These are often artificially created.

-Some animals on Earth don’t exist there, and vice versa. For example, they don’t have groundhogs. But we don’t have birds with snake heads.

-Cows are rare and exotic animals, to the point where only two real cows exsist in my character’s world.

-Humans and non-human semi-coexist, but tend to stay in their own spaces and lead their own lives. Some don’t even know of the other’s existance.

-Some humans/humanoids there have only half ears. The top half of their ear is gone, only leaving the bottom. This varies among person to person, like how some people have freckles and some don’t.

-Donkeys are vastly viewed as an animal representing sadness and depression (not that it will bring you sadness, but more like it is an Idea of sadness.) and is often depicted in art, symbols and so on.

-They also use to chop off “donkey elbows” (the back right or left leg of the animal) for good luck, it’s their equivalent of a rabbits tail. There are special farms and organizations that have rescued these disabled donkeys and try to find better homes for them.

-Striped hyenas are plentiful. And millipedes. They’re everywhere

-Hyper chemicals are the cause of everything abnormal and unexplainable. It’s like a completely separate periodic table of elements that exists in the planet’s core, constantly seeping onto the surface and creating unique chemical reactions with things that Make Weird Things Happen. It’s basically what I use to excuse a lot of things I don't want to make an effort to make a real explication for.

[techspotguruji]

The Future of Open Source

inux and the open source business model are far different today than many of the early developers might have hoped. Neither can claim a rags-to-riches story. Rather, their growth cycles have been a series of hit-or-miss milestones. The Linux desktop has yet to find a home on the majority of consumer and enterprise computers. However, Linux-powered technology has long ruled the Internet and conquered the cloud and Internet of Things deployments. Both Linux and free open source licensing have dominated in other ways. Microsoft Windows 10 has experienced similar deployment struggles as proprietary developers have searched for better solutions to support consumers and enterprise users. Meanwhile, Linux is the more rigorous operating system, but it has been beset by a growing list of open source code vulnerabilities and compatibility issues. The Windows phone has come and gone. Apple's iPhone has thrived in spite of stagnation and feature restrictions. Meanwhile, the Linux-based open source Android phone platform is a worldwide leader. Innovation continues to drive demand for Chromebooks in homes, schools and offices. The Linux kernel-driven Chrome OS, with its browser-based environment, has made staggering inroads for simplicity of use and effective productivity. Chromebooks now can run Android apps. Soon the ability to run Linux programs will further feed open source development and usability, both for personal and enterprise adoption. One of the most successful aspects of non-proprietary software trends is the wildfire growth of container technology in the cloud, driven by Linux and open source. Those advancements have pushed Microsoft into bringing Linux elements into the Windows OS and containers into its Azure cloud environment. "Open source is headed toward faster and faster rates of change, where the automated tests and tooling wrapped around the delivery pipeline are almost as important as the resulting shipped artifacts," said Abraham Ingersoll, vice president of sales and solutions engineering at Gravitational. "The highest velocity projects will naturally win market share, and those with the best feedback loops are steadily gaining speed on the laggards," he told LinuxInsider.

Advancement in Progress

To succeed with the challenges of open source business models, enterprises have to devise a viable way to monetize community development of reusable code. Those who succeed also have to master the formula for growing a free computing platform or its must-have applications into a profitable venture. Based on an interesting GitLab report, 2018 is the year for open source and DevOps, remarked Kyle Bittner, business development manager at Exit Technologies. That forecast may be true eventually, as long as open source can dispel the security fears, he told LinuxInsider. "With open source code fundamental to machine learning and artificial intelligence frameworks, there is a challenge ahead to convince the more traditional IT shops in automotive and oil and gas, for example, that this is not a problem," Bittner pointed out. The future of the open source model may be vested in the ability to curb worsening security flaws in bloated coding. That is a big "if," given how security risks have grown as Linux-based deployments evolved from isolated systems to large multitenancy environments. LinuxInsider asked several open source innovators to share their views on where the open source model is headed, and to recommend the best practices developers should use to leverage different OS deployment models.

Oracle's OS Oracle

Innovative work and developer advances changed the confidence level for Oracle engineers working with hardware where containers are involved, according to Wim Coekaerts, senior vice president of operating systems and virtualization engineering at Oracle. Security of a container is critical to its reliability. "Security should be part of how you do your application rollout and not something you consider afterward. You really need to integrate security as part of your design up front," he told LinuxInsider. Several procedures in packaging containers require security considerations. That security assessment starts when you package something. In building a container, you must consider the source of those files that you are packaging, Coekaerts said. Security continues with how your image is created. For instance, do you have code scanners? Do you have best practices around the ports you are opening? When you download from third-party websites, are those images signed so you can be sure of what you are getting? "It is common today with Docker Hub to have access to a million different images. All of this is cool. But when you download something, all that you have is a black box," said Coekaerts. "If that image that you run contains 'phone home' type stuff, you just do not know unless you dig into it."

Yesterday Returns

Ensuring that containers are built securely is the inbound side of the technology equation. The outbound part involves running the application. The current model is to run containers in a cloud provider world inside a virtual machine to ensure that you are protected, noted Coekaerts. "While that's great, it is a major change in direction from when we started using containers. It was a vehicle for getting away from a VM," he said. "Now the issue has shifted to concerns about not wanting the VM overhead. So what do we do today? We run everything inside a VM. That is an interesting turn of events." A related issue focuses on running containers natively because there is not enough isolation between processes. So now what? The new response is to run containers in a VM to protect them. Security is not compromised, thanks to lots of patches in Linux and the hypervisor. That ensures all the issues with the cache and side channels are patched, Coekearts said. However, it leads to new concerns among Oracle's developers about how they can ramp up performance and keep up that level of isolation, he added.

Are Containers the New Linux OS?

Some view today's container technology as the first step in creating a subset of traditional Linux. Coekaerts gives that view some credence. "Linux the kernel is Linux the kernel. What is an operating system today? If you look at a Linux distribution, that certainly is morphing a little bit," he replied. What is running an operating system today? Part of the model going forward, Coekaerts continued, is that instead of installing an OS and installing applications on top, you basically pull in a Docker-like structure. "The nice thing with that model is you can run different versions on the same machine without having to worry about library conflicts and such," he said. Today's container operations resemble the old mainframe model. On the mainframe, everything was a VM. Every application you started had its own VM. "We are actually going backward in time, but at a much lighter weight model. It is a similar concept," Coekearts noted.

Container Tech Responds Rapidly

Container technology is evolving quickly. "Security is a central focus. As issues surface, developers are dealing with them quickly," Coekearts said, and the security focus applies to other aspects of the Linux OS too. "All the Linux developers have been working on these issues," he noted. "There has been a great communication channel before the disclosure date to make sure that everyone has had time to patch their version or the kernel, and making sure that everyone shares code," he said. "Is the process perfect? No. But everyone works together."

Security Black Eye

Vulnerabilities in open source code have been the cause of many recent major security breaches, said Dean Weber, CTO of Mocana. Open source components are present in 96 percent of commercial applications, based on a report Black Duck released last year. The average application has 147 different open source components -- 67 percent of which are used components with known vulnerabilities, according to the report. "Using vulnerable, open source code in embedded OT (operational technology), IoT (Internet of Things) and ICS (industrial control system) environments is a bad idea for many reasons," Weber told LinuxInsider. He cited several examples: The code is not reliable within those devices. Code vulnerabilities easily can be exploited. In OT environments, you don't always know where the code is in use or if it is up to date. Systems cannot always be patched in the middle of production cycles. "As the use of insecure open source code continues to grow in OT, IoT and ICS environments, we may see substations going down on the same day, major cities losing power, and sewers backing up into water systems, contaminating our drinking water," Weber warned.

Good and Bad Coexist

The brutal truth for companies using open source libraries and frameworks is that open source is awesome, generally high-quality, and absolutely the best method for accelerating digital transformation, maintained Jeff Williams, CTO ofContrast Security. However, open source comes with a big *but,* he added. "You are trusting your entire business to code written by people you don't know for a purpose different than yours, and who may be hostile to you," Williams told Linuxinsider. Another downside to open source is that hackers have figured out that it is an easy attack vector. Dozens of new vulnerabilities in open source components are released every week, he noted. Every business option comes with a bottom line. For open source, the user is responsible for the security of all the open source used. "It is not a free lunch when you adopt it. You are also taking on the responsibility to think about security, keep it up to date, and establish other protections when necessary," Williams said.

Best Practices

Developers need an efficient guideline to leverage different deployment models. Software complexity makes it almost impossible for organizations to deliver secure systems. So it is about covering the bases, according to Exit Technologies' Bittner. Fundamental practices, such as creating an inventory of open source components, can help devs match known vulnerabilities with installed software. That reduces the threat risk, he said. "Of course, there is a lot of pressure on dev teams to build more software more quickly, and that has led to increased automation and the rise of DevOps," Bittner acknowledged. "Businesses have to ensure they don't cut corners on testing." Developers should follow the Unix philosophy of minimalist, modular deployment models, suggested Gravitational's Ingersoll. The Unix approach involves progressive layering of small tools to form end-to-end continuous integration pipelines. That produces code running in a real target environment without manual intervention. Another solution for developers is an approach that can standardize with a common build for their specific use that considers third-party dependencies, security and licenses, suggested Bart Copeland, CEO of ActiveState. Also, best practices for OS deployment models need to consider dependency management and environment configuration. "This will reduce problems when integrating code from different departments, decrease friction, increase speed, and reduce attack surface area. It will eliminate painful retrofitting open source languages for dependency management, security, licenses and more," he told LinuxInsider.

Where Is the Open Source Model Headed?

Open source has been becoming more and more enterprise led. That has been accompanied by an increased rise in distributed applications composed from container-based services, such as Kubernetes, according to Copeland. Application security is at odds with the goals of development: speed, agility and leveraging open source. These two paths need to converge in order to facilitate development and enterprise innovation. "Open source has won. It is the way everyone -- including the U.S. government -- now builds applications. Unfortunately, open source remains chronically underfunded," said Copeland. That will lead to open source becoming more and more enterprise-led. Enterprises will donate their employee time to creating and maintaining open source. Open source will continue to dominate the cloud and most server estates, predicted Howard Green, vice president of marketing for Azul Systems. That influence starts with the Linux OS and extends through much of the data management, monitoring and development stack in enterprises of all sizes. It is inevitable that open source will continue to grow, said Contrast Security's Williams. It is inextricably bound with modern software. "Every website, every API, every desktop application, every mobile app, and every other kind of software almost invariably includes a large amount of open source libraries and frameworks," he observed. "It is simply unavoidable and would be fiscally imprudent to try to develop all that code yourself." Read the full article

[angrycollectordaze-me-blog]

Paper代写：The biological art

本篇paper代写- The biological art讨论了生物艺术。20世纪50年代DNA被发现后人类进入了分子生物学时代，艺术与基因工程相关的人工组织培养、克隆和转基因等生物技术相结合，在这样的技术背景下逐渐产生了生物艺术领域。生物艺术发展到今天，其概念更加饱满，艺术家运用细菌、细胞株、分子、植物、体液和组织、活体动物等这些有机的物质创作的艺术。以及通过医学的生物影像，还有显微摄影术来制作显示身体内部和分子结构的科学成像都被定义为生物艺术。本篇paper代写由51due代写平台整理，供大家参考阅读。

With the development of economic and cultural globalization, ecological civilization and sustainable development are the primary task of the 21st century. As a newly developed art category, biological art is developing itself step by step. The 21st century is known in biology as the age of biotechnology. Since the discovery of DNA in the 1950s, human beings have entered the era of molecular biology. Art is combined with artificial tissue culture, cloning and transgenic biotechnology related to genetic engineering. Under such a technical background, the field of biological art has gradually emerged.

In the late 20th century, the concept of biological art was embodied in the works of avant-garde artists. However, the term "biological art" was created by American artist Eduardo Kac for his work "time capsule" in 1997. In the piece, KAC implants a microchip into the ankle -- the spot where slaves are usually branded. "This piece is meant to express the blurry line between human autonomy and electronic memory," KAC said. In another interview, KAC explained why he coined the term bioart: "I coined the term bioart in 1997 because of one of my works, time capsule. At that time, "bioart" was used to define all works created on living biological media. In 1998, I devoted more energy to "transgenic art", so I redefined "biological art" as a brand new art form of creating living individuals based on genetic engineering. If art involves genetically modified technology, then all creative processes must be handled with great care, backed by complex knowledge and built on respect, cultivation and love for the life created. However, the so-called "origin" of biological art is not realized through transgenic technology." In 2000, the artist katz, with the help of scientists, created a new work of art called "green fluorescent rabbit" using green fluorescent protein. The living rabbit was implanted with a fluorescent green protein extracted from a jellyfish. Under normal circumstances, it is a normal rabbit with white hair and red eyes, but under certain blue light, it emits a clear and bright green light. In his works, katz embodies his attitude towards life and the world: he wants to play the role of a technologically supremacist creator, a "god", with the use of human technological means, and use this attitude to trigger human thinking. He wants to interact with ordinary people and give them part of the power to change nature. As an artist, he carried this attitude into the spiritual core of his works. Biometrics become an extension of man's ability to create. When the work appeared, it caused a huge response, and both the work and the artist faced a huge controversy. It is because of this work that green fluorescent protein has gradually become familiar to the public. This also proves that biological art comes from the process of scientific research.

Since the development of biological art, its concept has been enriched. Artists use bacteria, cell lines, molecules, plants, body fluids and tissues, living animals and other organic materials to create art. And the use of biological imaging in medicine, as well as photomicrography to produce scientific images of the body's interior and molecular structure, are defined as biological arts.

The human body is composed of cells, each cell has a nucleus, and the nucleus consists of 46 chromosomes, each chromosome is actually a thread, the thin line is we usually say that DNA, DNA is a long list of spiral winding double strand molecule, only four kinds of material between the spiral twin: TACG, it is the base of four kinds of forms. The whole DNA is written as a long code with these "four letters". Ben fry, an artist devoted to "genetic mapping", is also the inventor of the popular graphics interactive software "Processing". In chromosome 21, he decodes the 48 million bases on the body's chromosome 21 and turns them into a cool and solemn giant abstract painting by decoding their effective or ineffective colors. In his latest work, "the mystery of a natural history," katz transfers his DNA into the vein of a flower's red stem. The Plant is Plant, the Animal is Animal, and katz named his work Pinmal. Life on earth has evolved over four billion years, and plant and animal features have been distinct from each other at an early stage. Katz believes that from an evolutionary perspective, humans themselves are also a genetically modified species. The general understanding that gm is unnatural is problematic; It is important to understand that genetic changes from one species to another are part of the wild world, even without human intervention. Even though the human genome evolved from viruses and bacteria over a long evolutionary history; We have DNA in our bodies from non-human organisms, so we are genetically modified ourselves. Before coming to the conclusion that all gmos are malformed, people should look at the status of their gmos. In addition, scientific research has found that there are ten times more bacterial cells in the human body than in our own cells. We, for example, have about ten trillion cells, but we have about a hundred trillion bacterial cells in our bodies. We are both genetically modified and bacterial, so in this case, do you think this flower is strange?" On April 21, 2016, "when life itself becomes art -- li shan art exhibition" curated by takaling opened in K space, chengdu. As an artist in the southwest of the first exhibition, exhibition with "biological art" as the theme, show the li creation "reading" series, "restructuring" and "the pumpkin plan" and other works, types include painting and photographic art, rendering the artist more than 20 years in the field of "biological art" for life and art of exploration and research.

Through the analysis of the existing biological art works, the biological art can be temporarily classified into two types: one is the artistic creation based on the living body as the medium, and the other is the artistic creation based on changing the gene of living things, increasing or changing the biological form.

Today we have entered the century of biology, a 21st century with the rapid development of bioengineering and biotechnology. Looking back at the history of art development, every technological progress of mankind will bring about great changes in art. For example, the development of anatomy and perspective has influenced the classical art in the Renaissance. The rise of optics influenced impressionist painting; The industrial revolution influenced modern art; The Internet era has influenced new media art and so on, and the technological revolution has played a vital role in these artistic trends. In the past two decades, the progress of genetic technology and biotechnology has enabled human beings to obtain the technical power to create nature, and also triggered the debate and reflection on science and belief, artificial and natural. In contemporary times, the functions of art and philosophy are more and more similar. As one of the most sensitive groups in this era, the artist has no doubt started to pay attention to this field that is related to human survival and existence. From this point of view, biotechnology as a medium in the field of art, is an inevitable existence. However, human-computer interaction and transboundary new life have become the reality of the moment, instead of becoming a harmonious world that accommodates all kinds of life. Peaceful coexistence is our goal.

要想成绩好，英国论文得写好，51due代写平台为你提供英国留学资讯，专业辅导，还为你提供专业英国essay代写，paper代写，report代写，需要找论文代写的话快来联系我们51due工作客服QQ：800020041或者Wechat：Abby0900吧。

[aliciabuncle]

The curious case of IoT: Unlock new value from data with AI

Data is the new currency. And actionable data is vital to future competency. These are among the conclusions reached by experts who participated in round table discussions hosted by ISA Watson IoT.A series of ISA Watson IoT round tables took place in Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad in May. They were led by IBM subject matter experts (SMEs) Sanjeev Agarwal, Harsh Kumar, Rohit Kumar and Vinod Boggarapu, and attended by operations and CIOs from many large organizations.

Those who were present at the events acknowledged that high quality, actionable data is critical, and they posed many questions about the adoption of IoT. I’d like to share with you the issues that were discussed at this event, and that will also be addressed at our upcoming IoT Exchange in Sydney.

1. Data is the cornerstone of any IoT strategy. How do we ensure we have the right data in the right place? And how do we rationalize security concerns?

Quantity and quality: While organizations have set themselves on a path to capture data, they want to ensure they are capturing all the relevant data to derive meaningful analytics. Experts advise that a business standpoint rather than a technology lens should drive the approach. After you have the business goal in mind, you need to break that down into sub-components to understand what data is relevant and the best way to capture the same.  It can take between six and twelve months to have enough relevant data to predict outages and guide data driven decisions. As for the quantity of data, both prescriptive and predictive will require significant amounts of data. Getting the connected layer in place with real-time alerts will also improve the situation, subject to the specific use case.

Security: Security remains a top priority. Resiliency and business continuity need to be built into the transformation agenda. With the convergence of IT and operational technology (OT), the firewall that separates the two becomes more complex and less well defined with IP-enabled devices.

Often, the CIO, whose primary concern may be network security, owns the IT organization. The person in charge of the OT might be a field operator, like a foreman, who is more concerned with performance. As IoT emerges, it will be increasingly important for both sides to focus on the same security goals without making the networks and systems difficult that it interferes with the functionality.

2.What is the gestation period before we have significant data? Also how do we handle compatibility issues when data arise from different sources and formats?

Data to initiate: Start with your ERP or historic data which by default will be a couple of years old. The prescriptive models on an average require at least 1+ years of data.

Compatibility: IBM systems are flexible to accept a wide array of data sources. A Design Thinking workshop is effective to examine sources of disparate data and standardization and agree upon customization.

IT professionals participated in stimulating discussions

3. What is the ROI that justifies the investment for IoT?

The genesis of seeking the right technology is usually a question about efficiency, outdated technology, risk aversion or expense reduction. For example, business owners often ask one of these questions:

How can I work smarter, cheaper and faster?

Can I automate inefficient manual processes?

Does aging technology or environmental wear and tear put my industrial assets at added risk?

The ROI for IoT manifests itself as a combination of many factors.

Save time, operational expenses and mitigate worker-risk: Automation supports a predictive maintenance model that prevents unnecessary downtime and replenishment of spares for machinery that is not in need of servicing. Further, this may also infuse efficiencies like improved output, reduced time to market, and even reduced workplace injuries. As an example, imagine placing sensors in a hazard prone area such as an oil well or a mine to sense conditions to send data instead of manual monitoring.

Insights can guide business decisions: Analysis of data gathered from IoT can help improve productivity. Optimal workloads, energy consumption, best configurations and orientation for moving machinery for optimized output are some use cases that find relevance in an industrial setting.

Enhance customer acquisition through experiences: One of the best ways to attract customers is to create a popular commodity, or become known as a cutting-edge company.  IoT can be a tremendous differentiator— from smart carts that provide a rapid check-out and an improved shopping experience to sensors for water bottles that send a signal when it’s time to hydrate. If a delivery company can improve delivery times and service their customers more efficiently, the customer retention and positive word-of-mouth feedback alone could be worth the IoT investment. As for the magnitude of impact, a lot depends on the baseline. For example, 1 percent of USD 10 billion is huge, but a 10 percent improvement over current levels should be a reasonable target.

4. What are the consequences associated with shifting cost and coexistence with incumbent systems?

IBM systems can coexist with a wide variety of vendors so a total upheaval is not necessary. Taking baby steps from design workshops to piloting on subsystems can build confidence to modernize systems and leverage the full benefits of the technology.

A series of round tables were held in May 2019.

5. What is the impact on human personnel?

When does the system gain complete domain knowledge?The goal of AI at the current stage of maturity is to augment human intelligence. It is to aid a human being’s unique creativity and abstract thinking with high processing speeds, analytics and domain knowledge gained through analyzed data, best practices, known issues and resolutions, and constantly changing regulations. It’s an era of augmented intelligence for most areas and will continue for at least a decade. Some of the most mundane and repetitive tasks have and will see replacements.

 6. What skill-levels and culture are needed to address new technology?

Skills remain a challenge, so organizations need to take a realistic view of what they have in-house and where they need to outsource or use partners. With the advent of AI-based computing comes a need for different set of skills. Traditional IT teams and field workers need to be re-skilled, trained and counseled for next-gen technologies. Culture is pivotal on the innovation road map. The culture of the organization and change management can define the success of the deployment.

 7. Does IBM use the data to make its own systems more intelligent?

As IBM Chairman, Ginni Rometty has pointed out repeatedly, we believe the customer owns their data and the analytics derived from it. IBM will never use their data to enrich its systems without explicit approval from the customer. Clients in fields like healthcare do realize that it’s for the common good to share some level of data. This would be applicable for areas like cancer research. That apart, clients in manufacturing and allied fields may be willing to share best practices that enhance the industry as whole. Core competencies and intellectual properties are the property of the clients, for the clients’ intended purpose only.

8. Off-the-shelf Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) and automation are already available. Why IBM?

OEM systems with silos put interoperability at risk. Also, dealing with multiple-vendors is an operational nightmare. To address this, IBM stays at the forefront of technology innovation, earning more patents than any other organization. Further, IBM has demonstrated its commitment to advances in IoT technology by investments of USD 3 billion1. With domain expertise, access to technology SMEs, and a thriving business partner ecosystem, IBM is the obvious choice. Further, IBM is proud to be a Leader in The Forrester WaveTM: Industrial IoT Software Platforms, Q3 2018. Check this report.

Clearly, IT has entered the next phase of transformation; it is not just an enabler, but the business itself. This blog addresses some of the concerns faced by businesses. However, please feel free to connect with me to discuss any concerns you might have.

To continue the conversation, please join us at IoT Exchange in Sydney, 23-24 July 2019

I would like to extend an invitation to business leaders facing similar challenges to IoT Exchange in Sydney on 23-24 July 2019. It’s a great opportunity to engage in discussions with IBM staff, business partners and customers, and network with your peers. You’ll participate in two full days of learning about new technologies through 40 information packed sessions. The curriculum has been divided into three distinct academies that will present how AI, IoT and agile technology can unlock the full value of your data: TRIRIGA® Academy for facilities operations, Maximo® Academy for asset management, and Engineering Academy for software and systems engineering. I hope to see you there!

  1 https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulmiller/2015/03/31/ibm-bets-3-billion-on-internet-of-things-opportunity/#66d167b1a485

  The post The curious case of IoT: Unlock new value from data with AI appeared first on Internet of Things blog.

The curious case of IoT: Unlock new value from data with AI published first on https://decalsgraphicstore.tumblr.com/

[newsnigeria]

Check out New Post published on Ọmọ Oòduà

New Post has been published on http://ooduarere.com/news-from-nigeria/world-news/abc-of-modern-empire/

ABC of Modern Empire

by Naresh Jotwani for Ooduarere.com

This post attempts to dig a little deeper into the dynamics of ‘the empire’ and ‘the resistance’. In particular, we examine the specific psychological drives at work. Surely the Ooduarere community understands these issues very well, but another honest perspective can still add value.

Then there is the somewhat distracting effect of naming specific individuals or groups, when our interest is in specific human traits. Suppose someone says to me, ‘My neighbour Bob is a very greedy person’. Then my mind turns naturally to Bob, rather than to greed. Our talk veers to Bob, or to other greedy persons – but not to greed. After all, Bob is the subject of that sentence, not greed.

Our subject here, however, is greed and rapacity – not any specific individual or group. No effort will be wasted to identify specific individuals or groups who are consumed by greed or rapacity. Suffice it to say that, at any given time, there are plenty such among Homo Sapiens. The point is that a mind consumed by greed is diminished, its powers of discrimination being totally enslaved to greed. So it serves no purpose to even attach a name to such a mind!

Also, terms such as ‘capitalism’, ‘free markets’ et cetera usually mean different things to different people. But if we speak in terms of the basic human drives at work, greater clarity may well emerge from the ensuing discussion.

***

War is said to be the continuation of diplomacy by other means. But then what is the deeper goal of diplomacy – behind the publicly traded and often misleading verbiage?

We look for an answer based solely on observed human nature – without any fig-leaf of ‘cover story’ based on ideology, history, economic theory, political theory or other blah blah blah.

History shows that human nature has the potential to be both sublime and ugly almost beyond belief. Sages have said that the two evil genies of greed and lust, once they are ‘out of the bottle’, are inimical to the development of discrimination and wisdom – and therefore to the attainment of durable peace. In recent centuries, it is the first of these two evil genies which seems to have dominated global diplomacy.

[Unlike in the time of Henry VIII, today the second evil genie does not have much direct effect on how ‘the empire’ behaves. ‘Trophy wives’ and other discreet service channels exist for those with the moolah, and awkward matters are easily hushed up. Even then, a mind consumed by the second evil genie is incapable of sound and rational decisions. So this genie must also have a strong indirect effect on how ‘the empire’ behaves – for example, by exposing decision-makers to blackmail. But such shadowy matters are necessarily speculative, and are therefore left out of further discussion here.]

So we narrow our focus to greed, to which we must add rapacity – since historically rapacity has driven many a wannabe ‘world conqueror’. A rapacious person need not be greedy; he or she may well enjoy throwing around or sharing the loot; conversely, a fearful greedy person may not be outwardly rapacious.

***

It is time now to turn our attention to the modern – or ‘high tech’ – instruments of greed and rapacity. Clearly, financial power is the preferred instrument of sophisticated ‘raiders’ today.

So what exactly is financial power? How come person X has it but not person Y?

To get to the answer, we consider an example of financial power at work. Our cast of characters here is: banker B, company C, hedge fund manager M.

M decides to ‘make a hit’ on C, not too different from a mob hit. With money borrowed from B, M short-sells C and hammers down its price, making it difficult for C to raise capital. Perhaps M also arranges some bad publicity for C. Then, again with borrowed money, M executes a hostile takeover of C at its lowered price. Under the new ‘efficient management’, M strips C of its assets, leaving it crippled by debt and on the verge of bankruptcy. M – or another hedge fund manager – then makes more money from C’s bankruptcy.

Huge profits and commissions are made by B and M, with no mercy shown to anyone formerly making a decent living from C. The whole episode is not unlike a pack of wolves attacking a prey.

To create another example of financial power, we only have to make C into a country. B and M now merge into a gang of banks, hedge funds and diplomats; the gang is backed up by threats of military power, and joined by readily available disgruntled elements within the target C.

To raiders and marauders, there is no fundamental difference between a company and a country; they are just two types of prey.

So what do these examples tell us about the make-up of financial power?

We learn that its main elements are: Easy access to finance, sharp eye for juicy and vulnerable prey, contempt for the prey, single-minded focus, skill in financial number-crunching, tight networking, secrecy, shamelessness, and mastery over the legal system.

Sadly, these qualities define the new standard of human excellence and achievement. Self-proclaimed ‘top business schools’ churn out wannabe raiders and marauders by the thousand.

The thrust of ‘the empire’ today comes from such financial raiders and marauders – not the brave and valiant armies we read about in history. Evidently there is no unified command structure among these raiders and marauders; and of course no higher vision either guides them or binds them together.

It should be a no-brainer that a society relying on such unmanly and slimy tactics cannot attain lasting happiness – but of course a brain consumed by greed would not get that.

Physical and political power today is an essential backup to financial marauders, somewhat like lawyers and bouncers employed by casino owners. Taxpayers pay for that backup – in money and in broken lives – while the ultra-rich live behind layers of security.

Bad enough as that sounds, it gets even worse!

Even while availing full protection of law and the armed forces, the ultra-rich do not pay taxes in any country. Instead, they ‘invest’ in government debt. The difference is this: Taxes are paid out to the common pool, whereas a creditor retains legal claim over the principal and interest. Also, sovereign debt instruments are safe and readily marketable; default is highly unlikely, since taxpayers can be forced to pay.

Evidently, the 1% would rather ‘own’ everything around them than be fellow-citizens of the 99%. That they share the planet with the other 99% is a fact they would rather not face up to, while operating without emotional or cultural bonds with any community on the planet.

***

This is how ‘the empire’ is attempting to expand – through financial and legal shenanigans, supplemented by military force against weaker opponents. It is not true to say that ‘All options are on the table’; the option of peaceful coexistence is absent.

But the seemingly headless ‘empire’ does face a dilemma – ‘expand or bust’.

This is a deadly dilemma to face, and the strain has lately been showing. The incredible scale of ‘quantitative easing’ seen recently is a sign of desperation.

Both psychological and financial reasons underlie the ‘expand or bust’ dilemma.

Psychologically, a paranoiac wannabe conqueror – a bully, in simple words – cannot stand any sign of autonomy in potential prey, viewing that as an existential threat. After all is said and done, truth remains an existential threat to untruth. Further, a bully cannot afford to lose face among peers and potential victims; that is bad for future business. So the option of making a wise course correction is necessarily ‘off the table’.

Financially, ‘expand or bust’ arises from the fact that today’s financial shenanigans are Ponzi schemes. With artificial fiat money created in HUGE quantities, and asset bubbles forming as a result, a ‘musical chairs’ game of bad money chasing sound assets is in progress. Everyone wants genuine assets in exchange for phony ones, and is desperate not to be left behind – creating, in effect, a ‘free-for-all in deception’ as a basis for ‘progress’!

Victory achieved through deception is necessarily short-lived. And, after every defeat, the marauders have no choice but to double down. Therefore, in either case, there is no lasting benefit for these ‘one-trick ponies’. Indeed, the only way any individual can justify playing this game on that side is with the aim of bailing out before ‘all hell breaks loose’.

Underneath the greed and the rapacity, therefore, there is insecurity. Indeed there should be, since the model is not sustainable in longer term. The planet will not support ever-growing Ponzi schemes; and in adversity the marauders will turn on one another.

It helps to recall that much of history is driven by delusion.

***

If this is ‘the empire’, then what is ‘the resistance’?

Clearly ‘the resistance’ comprises those who resist the raiders and marauders in one way or another.  There may be several different motives behind the resistance, for example:

(a) Ongoing defense: A society is actively defending itself against ongoing attack.

(b) Proactive defense: A society has the time to implement suitable defenses.

(c) Wisdom: That is, ‘This cannot be in everyone’s overall long-term interest’.

(d) Compassion: That is, ‘We cannot stand by while communities are being destroyed’.

We must remove (a) from this discussion, since an ongoing battle cannot be captured in the abstract language of such a discussion. We can only wish that the righteous defenders have the strength and wisdom to overcome the threat to their way of life.

As for (b), (c) and (d), what are some of the options available?

One powerful option is so-called ‘soft power’ – that is, spreading honest explanations through the internet and other media. This is akin to immunizing minds against deception. People should not think that non-predatory mechanisms of commerce cannot be devised.

Institutional, commercial and legal mechanisms must be designed to resist hostile takeovers and avoid debt-traps. Of course these mechanisms may be criticized as being against ‘free and open trade’. Such self-serving propaganda must be countered firmly, and proper models of fair and beneficial commerce established.

A hostile takeover is possible only if the relevant laws make it possible. The model of ‘publicly traded joint-stock company’ seems devised for financial skullduggery. A ‘cooperative society’ works on the basis of ‘one member-one share-one vote’, enabling grassroots control.

Every society needs effective defense mechanisms against hostile raids and debt-traps. For this, it is imperative for it to be economically competitive. That is the challenge of the times.

The so-called ‘finance capitals’ of the world must be exposed clearly for what they are: capitals of phony money and shameless financial skullduggery. These ‘phony money capitals’ have no organic ties even to the society in which they function and flourish.

SWOT analysis is needed within a society, and also on the adversary – so that proper economic strategies can be devised. This is what successful football managers do for every match!

***

It is time now for a simple question. The answer is based on common sense, and as such it should be obvious to anyone without too many university degrees or think-tank experience:

Who protests the most in the village square about his or her impeccable pedigree and character?

Now look around the ‘global village’ and see who is protesting the most.

Related reading:

(1) At Davos recently, the Chairman of a large global bank was interviewed on RT (link). The Chairman put forward a point of view which, presumably, is that of a typical banker. Surprisingly, the interviewer let him off far too lightly on many key points. The response here brings out the points on which the Chairman could legitimately have been pressed for more honest answers.

(2) This post here is a plausible exploration of how debt and money originated, some 5000 years ago.

[emairead]

relevance today- an movement towards inter-culturalism

tidying up old files, came across a a final essay for a course that was arguably the most stimulating of my scholastic undertaking. I wrote it 4 years ago, pre-Trump, pre-#metoo, pre-yoga journey, but it’s funny to see that the point’s I expressed then are still relevant to my worldly perspective today. 

Globalization has brought about a process in which beliefs, religions, and ideas are circulating at an incredible rate within the 21st century. Through various shared public milieus like the internet, environmental discourse and education spaces have opened up to discuss various stances that people take with regards to how the world is progressing and increasingly rooting their understanding of globalization within religion. The propagation of religious ideals through globalization touches upon every realm of social interaction within the world at large. Human Beings are being internationalized at an astonishing pace and are constantly having our worldview shattered, influenced and rebuilt by varying perspectives.  

One might ask, are these culturally diverse views, being brought forward by globalization helpful for us in creating a plural, fair and tolerant global polity? Everyone has their own individual sense of belief, but if globalization is the epitome of interdependent social life on the planet, what purpose does religion, a historically divisive instrument, serve to unite the globe in an innocuous way? Globalization perpetuates a process of internationalization, it thrusts the individual into an amorphous realm of competing worldviews, it does not, however give the individual the right to cling tightly to their own unchanging life stance. If individuals are increasingly alienated and segregated by their belief system and their historicized identity it will only lead to violent clashes between global actors. A holistic understanding and underpinning of others, and a permeable self must be fostered regardless of the individual’s rooted historicized identity. This essay will focus on three interdependent realms that can help foster a holistic understanding of the globalized self: the global, the local and the individual. Firstly, I will be outlining the globalizing forces that make it necessary to create a composite identity. Secondly, I will argue that that state instruments within education, such as the Ethics and Religious culture program aim to broaden the individual’s worldview through fostering a sympathetic understanding of the world as a whole while simultaneously creating a solid sense of identity for the student. And finally I will be examining a religious perspective to help underscore the importance of creating a comprehensive space within ones self to embrace others with various views.

In Esposito’s survey of globalization he views the world as entering into a post modern situation in which “no single story can be all encompassing for all people in a given culture especially as global culture emerges. Everyone is left with their own story knowing full well that others live by other stories” (Esposito, 24).  Notions of secularity dominate the Western view of the world , whereas the west has been slowly moving away from public religious discourse, secularization theory has been disproven in showing that religion itself shows no sign of disappearing as we enter modernity (Casanova, 102). There is no single modernity that has spread worldwide; this leaves us disconnected while trying to understand the views of others who have alternate religious and social experiences worldwide. According to Volf, a pervasive feature of liberal democracies is that “citizens are not to base their positions on religious convictions, instead they are to base their decisions in the public on principals yielded by some source independent of any and all religious perspectives found in society”(Volf, 6).

Where does this leave the religious individual who bases their comprehensive worldview within religiously sanctioned doctrines? Where is the ability to openly voice concerns if religion or rather faith is seen as something to be ignored by the public sphere?

The reasoning behind growing secularity, or separation of church and state may have to do with the notion of modernization and progress, which is generated, by truth claims and hard science that is often seen as incompatible with religion (Volf, 6). The issue with secularity is that it is also infused with hard and inflexible beliefs at the core. Identity is grounded in individual belief, and by trying to fuse all perspectives into the narrow mold of secularity, we are losing some of the religiously diverse plural groundings for social harmony. “Secularism is just another perspective on life that isn’t above the clashes but participates in them” (Volf, 12).

Throughout Volf’s dialogue he mentions potential solutions for establishing this religious voice within a religiously plural yet secular society.  He contends that:

“The only way to attend to the problem of violent clashes among differing perspectives on life-whether religious or secular- is to concentrate on the internal resource of each for fostering peace. These resources, for each perspective, would be different though again they may significantly overlap” (Volf,13)

How do we allow a rich dialogue to flourish in a state that is tempered by highly secular notions? What internal resources can overlap within all these beliefs to create a peaceful society? Arguably, the dignity of the human person and the importance of human rights doctrine would be central to this claim.  In Charles Taylor’s Conditions for an Unforced Consensus on Human rights he states:

“Continued coexistence in a broad consensus that continually generates particular disagreements, is impossible without mutual respect. And that negotiations (between parties) will be difficult unless each side can come to some more fine-grained understanding of what moves the other (Taylor, 138).

Particularly what Taylor seems to be advocating for is the establishment of self, knowing where one comes from but having a dynamic perspective where we can learn from one another. This is exactly what Volf describes when he states that

“People and communities with dynamic identities will have firm but permeable boundaries. With such boundaries, encounters with others don’t serve to assert out position and claim our territory; they are also occasions to learn and to teach, and to be enriched and come to new agreements and explore new paths” (Volf, 14).

Volf’s wider argument can be extended to the boundaries of permeable identities and to developing an openness and tolerance of others. Although secularism is a dominant viewpoint in Western Liberal Democracies it is crucial that this notion of permeable identity and openness to various viewpoints is established through institutions in the Western world that can help us develop as tolerant global citizens.

In Conditions for an Unforced Consensus on Human Rights, Charles Taylor underlines that “the danger in any form of either individualism or group identity that undercuts the trust that we share a common allegiance as citizens” (Taylor, 131). In Quebec this notion is especially salient, while attempting to establish a new order of social cohesion between citizens of the same polity.  The Quebec model of interculturalism advocates for a dynamic understanding of others from diverse backgrounds while simultaneously developing self-awareness. Interculturalism has a strong emphasis on the value of cultural interaction and an orientation toward integration within the context of a common culture (Waddington et al., 3). Quebec interculturalism, calls for a “dynamic, open-ended process of transforming a common societal culture through intercultural contact” (Waddington et al.,7).  There is a specific interest in cultivating a framework for "acceptance of difference, mutual respect, and cultural rapprochement as conditions facilitating convergence towards a common societal culture" (Waddington et al., 7).  This is of specific interest in a globalized society, since there is a culmination of all cultures trying to come to a comprehensive understanding of one another. The Quebec model itself, aims at mutual learning where active dialogue is crucial to individuals and to society as a whole:

“Newcomers are responsible for integrating and adapting, while established citizens have the responsibility of welcoming and accepting newcomers by, among other things, learning about and engaging with their cultures and adjusting their practices in order to facilitate social inclusion” (Waddington et al., 7).

Quebec, due to its specific cultural experience aims to establish a degree of social asymmetry, which recognizes that the values, beliefs, and practices that immigrants bring with them, and those of the dominant cultural space into which they have moved do not carry equal weight (Waddington et al. , 7). It does not wish for other diverse practices to superimpose moral values onto Quebec society, but rather for them to be intertwined and integrated into the discourse of a secular state. Dialogue facilitates encounters, democratic interactions, and cultural exchanges between citizens of various cultural origins and values perspectives (Waddington et al. , 6). This is crucial in a society where people are attempting to integrate their own views into the social fabric of interculturalism.

The establishment of a common culture through Interculturalism has been facilitated at the institutional level through the Ethics and Religious Culture Program. The Ethics and Religious Culture Program, helps to establish a sympathetic understanding of others life stances while simultaneously embodying a holistic comprehension of individual identity.

“The learning’s carried on in the ERC program are based on four principles: they are continuous learning’s, rooted in the student’s reality and in Québec culture; they respect the freedom of conscience and religion, and foster living in harmony with others. (MELS, 5).

By rooting the learning’s in the reality of an intercultural society, there is an emphasis on listening, interaction, questioning and rethinking one’s own belief system. The ethical portion of the curriculum focuses on reflection towards values and social prescriptions, appreciation of different views of the world and of humans and teaches the ability to take a reflective position on moral or ethical issues (MELS, 7). This critical reflection on ethics and religion is beneficial for harboring a stable and inclusive dialectic of other faiths and trying to develop a sympathetic understanding of others.

The Religious Culture section of the program focuses mainly on the Quebec experience of religious teaching, which is secularity and neutrality:

“The purpose is to give students an understanding of a secular representation of the world, the individual, life, death, suffering, etc.; how these views are expressed in Québec culture by certain important groups or figures, through certain events or particular symbols or in certain texts; and how the secular representations are a reference that influences human actions and religious views as well.” (MELS, 8).

The religious culture portion of the ERC, gives the student an adequate representation of life in modern Québec, which is inherently secular.  This unique fusion of ethics and religious culture allows students to form a composite identity; one in which they can honor their specific belief systems, fully integrate their beliefs into Quebec society, while simultaneously becoming aware of the norms of secular doctrine within Quebec itself. The ERC allows for a fluid dialogue of plurality to enter the common space of education, and also encourages the notion of ethics to be taught from a neutral standpoint. Although ethics can be taught from a specifically religious angle, the secular method of teaching within Quebec is preferred. Within the Quebec context, secularity makes sense due to the fact that religiously neutral teaching allows for a plurality of views to flourish within a common framework, rather than favoring one specific religious view, which could potentially exclude other faiths.

The broader implication of the ERC curriculum is that it views Quebec as a microcosm of the wider phenomenon of globalization. Education helps to build future citizens and as such the Quebec system is attempting to instill mutual understanding of diversity and integration into the curriculum.  Furthermore the ERC allows for dialogue to surface between and among groups to build a common society where the cohesive bond is centered around respect for others.

In the Quebec context it has been crucial to underscore secular values at the level of society but to encourage individual beliefs and a rich intercultural dialogue to promote mutual learning.  Much of this dialogue is facilitated from the top-down through education. An alternative way of examining the social transformation necessary to foster a tolerant globe is to ground transformation in the self or rather to take a bottom- up approach. Buddhism sees social transformation as a product of the self through “focusing on perfecting the individual through the cultivation of morality, meditation and insight” arguably the Buddhist perspective focuses on empathy and embracing change to build a more peaceful world (Florida, 9). Buddhist ideology sees all “human beings of one fundamental nature; they are essentially equal although their specific circumstances differ greatly.” (Florida, 23)

Buddhism gives us some perspective on our Western ideals of identity. Buddhism sees life stances as circumstantial, they are not who we are, life stances are instead a function of our history.  Life stances are who we make ourselves out to be, rather than who we are at the core.  “There is no permanent, unchanging spirit which can be considered the self, soul or ego” (Florida, 21). Arguably, the error in modern Western society “comes when the relative self is taken as an absolute unchanging essential being rather than as it really is- conditioned, ever changing and perishable” (22). We must keep this ever-changing notion of self in mind especially when globalization “refers to both the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole” (Steger, 13).  If we can develop a sense of consciousness and space within ourselves and cultivate mutual understanding and the capacity to learn and grow from others rather than rooting ourselves in permanent life stances then it is much simpler to gain a comprehensive understanding of the wider world. “By turning away from selfish grasping, Buddhists understand that harmony is the right way to a truly beneficial life is when the individual, society and the environment serve each other” (Florida, 19). By becoming in touch with the impermanent nature of the self and understanding that all people are interconnected we can foster a broader understanding of others, who may have radically different viewpoints. By creating these strict walls in which historicized identity becomes a barrier to mutual understanding. By holding on tightly to our beliefs, we are “craving for permanency, for substantiality in the world of flux” (Florida, 22). Buddhists notions have started in the correct place to underscore a real change in the way that we can begin to relate to one another in this diverse world.

Through examining Volf, Esposito and Taylor we have come to the conclusion that a composite self must be created to live in a tolerant world. Within the Quebec context, which has been mired by notions of secularity, the Education and Religious Culture Program develops a way to temper the differences between individual life stance and a broader awareness of the global polity and the forces at work within a national and provincial level. Finally, by examining some of the tenants within Buddhism we see that adversarial action and supreme life stances only go against the natural flow of human life and through developing a core understanding of self through meditation and reflection, we can build a future together. Where do we go in the future? It’s evident that all institutional structures must move toward inclusivity, and that dialogue must enter public discourse to allow for all life stances to become permeable, not absolute. If reciprocal respect, mutual understanding and awareness are cultivated at all levels of the natural world: throughout the globe, within local society at the individual level then we can begin to share the experience of being human rather than be divided by unchanging beliefs.

Works Cited:

Casanova, Jose. “Public Religions Revisitied”. Relgion: Beyond a Concept. Edited by Henry de Vries. New York: Fordham University Press, 2007. p. 101-119

Esposito, John. Fasching, Darrell. Lewis, Todd. Introduction. Religion and Globalization: World Religions in Historical Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. p 1-33.

Florida, Robert. Are There Human Rights in Buddhism?. Human Rights and the World’s Major Religions: Vol. 5, The Buddist Tradition, William Brackley, series editor, Westport Conn.: Praeger, 2004. p. 3-34

MELS. Establishment of an ethics and religious culture program: Providing

future direction for all Quebec youth, (Quebec: Ministere de L’Education, 2005), p. 4-12, online, www.mels.gouv.qc.ca.

Taylor, Charles. Conditions for an Unforced Consensus on Human Rights . The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights. edited by Joanne Bauer and Daniel Belle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 124-144

Volf, Miroslac. A Voice of their Own: Public Faith in a Pluralistic World. www.yale.edu/faith/downloads/x_volf_voice.pdf

Waddington, David. Maxwell, Bruce. McDonough, Kevin. Cormier, Andree-Anne. Schwimmer, Marina. Interculturalism in Practice: Québec’s New Ethics and Religious Culture Curriculum and the Bouchard-Taylor Report on Reasonable Accommodation.

[cryptochurp]

Op Ed: Tulip Myths and Modern Cryptocurrency Skepticism

“Ever heard of tulips?” It’s a question anyone who is publically involved in the cryptocurrency space has been asked multiple times. With the enormous gains in value the industry has seen, many observers come to the same conclusion. It’s a bubble.

The take is not a terrible one and many experienced cryptocurrency traders agree with the sentiment. Bubbles have come to be an expected occurrence in the space. The difference in opinion comes when deciding whether the “pop” will be a minor setback or the final conclusion in an exciting but short-lived ride.

On one side are the supporters of cryptocurrency. Their motivations can be boiled down to two points: desire for profits and a belief that the technology will benefit humanity. They believe that bubbles are a natural phenomenon in price discovery and an inevitable part of the long-term upward trend in value that will occur as cryptocurrencies become more utilized. They also understand that, while bubbles can hurt some traders in the short term, they are a necessary evil in the development of a technology which stands to dramatically increase human financial freedom. Sometimes these motivations can seem at odds, but in general they coexist within the community.

Get rich making the world a better place. It’s an attractive pitch.

On the other side are the skeptics. Doubt in cryptocurrency has made strange bedfellows of a band of commentators as diverse as it is vocal. Nobel prize economists, billionaire bankers, goldbugs and central banks have all weighed in to signal their prediction of the industry’s inevitable demise. And with the spotlight of increasing coin valuations has come even more doubters. In the age of Twitter, it’s almost essential that you have an opinion on the matter and that you let the world know it. For detractors, the tulip meme often comes into play:

OG Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/qQSMJYhLR7

— Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) January 6, 2018

For skeptics as much as believers, there is a personal economic motivation. While they may not have cashed in on the extraordinary rise of cryptocurrencies, they think the game is rigged from the start. By keeping their hard earned cash out of the market, they are saving themselves from an “inevitable” crash to zero.

But under this current of self-preservation is an ethical play opposite to that of cryptocurrency supporters. Many detractors believe that this technology is not just ridiculous but actually harmful to society. What drives this outlook? The true history of the tulip bubble can give us an interesting view of the motivations driving their sentiment.

An Early Mania

Tulip Mania is the go-to story whenever someone wants to talk about humanity’s penchant for irrational exuberance in financial markets. It’s the catchy name for the extraordinary rise in value, and subsequent crash, of Dutch tulip bulb valuations over a four month span from November 1636 to February 1637. This phenomenon had devastating effects on the Dutch economy and left many people in financial ruin.

At least that’s how the story is told.

But according to Anne Goldgar, Professor of Early Modern History at King’s College London and author of Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age, the popular story is mostly an exaggeration.

The description of her book reads like this:

“We have heard how these bulbs changed hands hundreds of times in a single day, and how some bulbs, sold and resold for thousands of guilders, never even existed. Tulipmania is seen as an example of the gullibility of crowds and the dangers of financial speculation. But it wasn’t like that … not one of these stories is true.”

Goldgar uses extensive research to expose that, while there was a rise and crash of tulip prices, much of what we believe about the period is the product of historical exaggeration from a small number of writers.

What drove this? According to Goldgar, it was a product of societal anxieties triggered by the immense riches of the Dutch Golden Age. As Lorraine Boissoneault writes in Smithsonian Magazine’s recent piece on the book, “All the outlandish stories of economic ruin, of an innocent sailor thrown in prison for eating a tulip bulb, of chimney sweeps wading into the market in hopes of striking it rich — those come from propaganda pamphlets published by Dutch Calvinists worried that the tulip-propelled consumerism boom would lead to societal decay.”

English historian Simon Schama also writes of the period: “The prodigious quality of their [the Dutch] success went to their heads, but it also made them a bit queasy. Even their most uninhibited documents of self-congratulation are haunted by the threat of overvloed (abundance) ... a word heavy with warning as well as euphoria.”

When looked at through the lens of this historic research, the legend of the tulip bubble becomes less about financial mania and more about the way that an economic memory can reflect a society’s collective mindset. The Dutch Golden Age represents a period during the 17th century when “Dutch trade, science, military, and art were among the most acclaimed in the world.”

This transformation was termed the “Dutch Miracle” by historian K.W. Swart. But, while it is easy to look back now and realize this era was a huge stepping stone to the modern prosperity the Dutch people enjoy today, at the time the progress was not as apparent. Many of the Dutch found a hard time adjusting to a society where fortunes were being created overnight. Schama compares the mindset to one which was found by de Tocqueville in 19th century America: “that strange melancholy which often haunts the inhabitants of democratic countries in the midst of their abundance, and the disgust at life which sometimes seizes upon them in the midst of calm and easy circumstances.”

While there was undoubtedly a run on Dutch Tulip prices, it seems there was an equal run on seizing the opportunity to find a negative aspect to extraordinary societal progress. Today, we are seeing the same mindset from cryptocurrency skeptics.

Modern Anxieties

Cryptocurrency has arrived at an uncomfortable moment in history. There is a wide debate surrounding whether or not technology is hurting human progress. Many argue that smartphones are making kids depressed and robots are taking our jobs. The thought is that technology which was supposed to make life better is instead causing us to become stupid, antisocial and unhealthy. On top of this, the freedom of speech made possible by the internet is being questioned for the alleged harm it can cause to democracy.

It is in this atmosphere of negativity that critics have found their “tulip moment” in cryptocurrency. It is being latched onto as an lightning rod for these growing worries about a society that is becoming radically shaped by the digital age. Detractors consistently ignore any possible justification for cryptocurrency to be considered useful and instead focus on its most distasteful features:

Haha, I feel sorry for all you losers who missed out on the Bitcoin train. You should've bought in years ago, like me: A perfectly normal man who coincidentally hoarded a virtual currency during a time when it's only use was for sex trafficking and purchasing organs.

— Shane (@Shanehasabeard) December 8, 2017

Many cannot push their analysis past observations of price movements. Warren Buffett partner Charlie Munger has described the cryptocurrency scene as “total insanity” and recently told an audience at University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, “I think it is perfectly asinine to even pause to think about them. It’s bad people, crazy bubble, bad idea, luring people into the concept of easy wealth without much insight or work.”

Others, echoing popular sentiment questioning unbridled freedom of speech, are worried about a lack of governmental oversight. Back in 2013 author Charlie Stross wrote in Why I Want Bitcoin to Die in a Fire that “Bitcoin looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central banking and money-issuing banks, with a Libertarian political agenda in mind — to damage states’ ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens’ financial transactions … late-period capitalism may suck, but replacing it with Bitcoin would be like swapping out a hangnail for Fournier's gangrene.”

Economist Paul Krugman cited the article in his piece Bitcoin Is Evil, adding “Stross doesn’t like that agenda, and neither do I.” While Krugman did admit he was open to conversation on the topic, fellow economist, Joseph Stiglitz, has been less forgiving. Recently he told Bloomberg “Bitcoin is successful only because of its potential for circumvention, lack of oversight...So it seems to me it ought to be outlawed … It doesn’t serve any socially useful function.”

The Progress Paradox

Are these arguments baseless? Not at all. Cryptocurrencies do in fact make many unsavory things possible. But, much like supporters believe bubbles are a necessary evil for price growth, they also believe that some illicit activities are a worthwhile trade-off for the ability to have a censorship-resistant, value-transfer system. They believe the win for personal freedom trumps all else.

It looks as if this idea is spreading. Bitcoin alone has grown from roughly 6,000 transactions per day in January of 2011 to 240,000 transactions on January 1, 2018. With 1000+ other cryptocurrencies, each growing their own communities, this desire for this financial independence appears contagious.

To the critics, these statistics do not matter. They will continue to focus on perceived faults. As the myth of the Tulip Bubble illustrates, this is rooted in human psychology. Some people are set on ignoring the progress around them.

De Tocqueville observed: “In America I saw the freest and most enlightened men placed in the happiest circumstances that the world affords; it seemed to me as if a cloud habitually hung upon their brow, and I thought them serious and almost sad, even in their pleasures.” Over the last few centuries, technology has made our lives less nasty, brutish and short. But, for some of us, the natural reaction has been to question whether it was really worth it.

Cryptocurrency now finds itself at the center of this larger debate over the morality of technology in a developing society. If supporters have their way, it holds the power to usher in a new era of human economic freedom. If critics have their way it will be regulated to death.

Let’s hope one side ends up as forgotten as Calvinist pamphlet writers.

This is a guest post by Kenny Spotz. Views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Bitcoin Magazine or BTC Media.

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2HnIjpp via IFTTT

[ellahmacdermott]

Op Ed: Tulip Myths and Modern Cryptocurrency Skepticism

“Ever heard of tulips?” It’s a question anyone who is publically involved in the cryptocurrency space has been asked multiple times. With the enormous gains in value the industry has seen, many observers come to the same conclusion. It’s a bubble.

The take is not a terrible one and many experienced cryptocurrency traders agree with the sentiment. Bubbles have come to be an expected occurrence in the space. The difference in opinion comes when deciding whether the “pop” will be a minor setback or the final conclusion in an exciting but short-lived ride.

On one side are the supporters of cryptocurrency. Their motivations can be boiled down to two points: desire for profits and a belief that the technology will benefit humanity. They believe that bubbles are a natural phenomenon in price discovery and an inevitable part of the long-term upward trend in value that will occur as cryptocurrencies become more utilized. They also understand that, while bubbles can hurt some traders in the short term, they are a necessary evil in the development of a technology which stands to dramatically increase human financial freedom. Sometimes these motivations can seem at odds, but in general they coexist within the community.

Get rich making the world a better place. It’s an attractive pitch.

On the other side are the skeptics. Doubt in cryptocurrency has made strange bedfellows of a band of commentators as diverse as it is vocal. Nobel prize economists, billionaire bankers, goldbugs and central banks have all weighed in to signal their prediction of the industry’s inevitable demise. And with the spotlight of increasing coin valuations has come even more doubters. In the age of Twitter, it’s almost essential that you have an opinion on the matter and that you let the world know it. For detractors, the tulip meme often comes into play:

OG Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/qQSMJYhLR7

— Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) January 6, 2018

For skeptics as much as believers, there is a personal economic motivation. While they may not have cashed in on the extraordinary rise of cryptocurrencies, they think the game is rigged from the start. By keeping their hard earned cash out of the market, they are saving themselves from an “inevitable” crash to zero.

But under this current of self-preservation is an ethical play opposite to that of cryptocurrency supporters. Many detractors believe that this technology is not just ridiculous but actually harmful to society. What drives this outlook? The true history of the tulip bubble can give us an interesting view of the motivations driving their sentiment.

An Early Mania

Tulip Mania is the go-to story whenever someone wants to talk about humanity’s penchant for irrational exuberance in financial markets. It’s the catchy name for the extraordinary rise in value, and subsequent crash, of Dutch tulip bulb valuations over a four month span from November 1636 to February 1637. This phenomenon had devastating effects on the Dutch economy and left many people in financial ruin.

At least that’s how the story is told.

But according to Anne Goldgar, Professor of Early Modern History at King’s College London and author of Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age, the popular story is mostly an exaggeration.

The description of her book reads like this:

“We have heard how these bulbs changed hands hundreds of times in a single day, and how some bulbs, sold and resold for thousands of guilders, never even existed. Tulipmania is seen as an example of the gullibility of crowds and the dangers of financial speculation. But it wasn’t like that … not one of these stories is true.”

Goldgar uses extensive research to expose that, while there was a rise and crash of tulip prices, much of what we believe about the period is the product of historical exaggeration from a small number of writers.

What drove this? According to Goldgar, it was a product of societal anxieties triggered by the immense riches of the Dutch Golden Age. As Lorraine Boissoneault writes in Smithsonian Magazine’s recent piece on the book, “All the outlandish stories of economic ruin, of an innocent sailor thrown in prison for eating a tulip bulb, of chimney sweeps wading into the market in hopes of striking it rich — those come from propaganda pamphlets published by Dutch Calvinists worried that the tulip-propelled consumerism boom would lead to societal decay.”

English historian Simon Schama also writes of the period: “The prodigious quality of their [the Dutch] success went to their heads, but it also made them a bit queasy. Even their most uninhibited documents of self-congratulation are haunted by the threat of overvloed (abundance) ... a word heavy with warning as well as euphoria.”

When looked at through the lens of this historic research, the legend of the tulip bubble becomes less about financial mania and more about the way that an economic memory can reflect a society’s collective mindset. The Dutch Golden Age represents a period during the 17th century when “Dutch trade, science, military, and art were among the most acclaimed in the world.”

This transformation was termed the “Dutch Miracle” by historian K.W. Swart. But, while it is easy to look back now and realize this era was a huge stepping stone to the modern prosperity the Dutch people enjoy today, at the time the progress was not as apparent. Many of the Dutch found a hard time adjusting to a society where fortunes were being created overnight. Schama compares the mindset to one which was found by de Tocqueville in 19th century America: “that strange melancholy which often haunts the inhabitants of democratic countries in the midst of their abundance, and the disgust at life which sometimes seizes upon them in the midst of calm and easy circumstances.”

While there was undoubtedly a run on Dutch Tulip prices, it seems there was an equal run on seizing the opportunity to find a negative aspect to extraordinary societal progress. Today, we are seeing the same mindset from cryptocurrency skeptics.

Modern Anxieties

Cryptocurrency has arrived at an uncomfortable moment in history. There is a wide debate surrounding whether or not technology is hurting human progress. Many argue that smartphones are making kids depressed and robots are taking our jobs. The thought is that technology which was supposed to make life better is instead causing us to become stupid, antisocial and unhealthy. On top of this, the freedom of speech made possible by the internet is being questioned for the alleged harm it can cause to democracy.

It is in this atmosphere of negativity that critics have found their “tulip moment” in cryptocurrency. It is being latched onto as an lightning rod for these growing worries about a society that is becoming radically shaped by the digital age. Detractors consistently ignore any possible justification for cryptocurrency to be considered useful and instead focus on its most distasteful features:

Haha, I feel sorry for all you losers who missed out on the Bitcoin train. You should've bought in years ago, like me: A perfectly normal man who coincidentally hoarded a virtual currency during a time when it's only use was for sex trafficking and purchasing organs.

— Shane (@Shanehasabeard) December 8, 2017

Many cannot push their analysis past observations of price movements. Warren Buffett partner Charlie Munger has described the cryptocurrency scene as “total insanity” and recently told an audience at University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, “I think it is perfectly asinine to even pause to think about them. It’s bad people, crazy bubble, bad idea, luring people into the concept of easy wealth without much insight or work.”

Others, echoing popular sentiment questioning unbridled freedom of speech, are worried about a lack of governmental oversight. Back in 2013 author Charlie Stross wrote in Why I Want Bitcoin to Die in a Fire that “Bitcoin looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central banking and money-issuing banks, with a Libertarian political agenda in mind — to damage states’ ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens’ financial transactions … late-period capitalism may suck, but replacing it with Bitcoin would be like swapping out a hangnail for Fournier's gangrene.”

Economist Paul Krugman cited the article in his piece Bitcoin Is Evil, adding “Stross doesn’t like that agenda, and neither do I.” While Krugman did admit he was open to conversation on the topic, fellow economist, Joseph Stiglitz, has been less forgiving. Recently he told Bloomberg “Bitcoin is successful only because of its potential for circumvention, lack of oversight...So it seems to me it ought to be outlawed … It doesn’t serve any socially useful function.”

The Progress Paradox

Are these arguments baseless? Not at all. Cryptocurrencies do in fact make many unsavory things possible. But, much like supporters believe bubbles are a necessary evil for price growth, they also believe that some illicit activities are a worthwhile trade-off for the ability to have a censorship-resistant, value-transfer system. They believe the win for personal freedom trumps all else.

It looks as if this idea is spreading. Bitcoin alone has grown from roughly 6,000 transactions per day in January of 2011 to 240,000 transactions on January 1, 2018. With 1000+ other cryptocurrencies, each growing their own communities, this desire for this financial independence appears contagious.

To the critics, these statistics do not matter. They will continue to focus on perceived faults. As the myth of the Tulip Bubble illustrates, this is rooted in human psychology. Some people are set on ignoring the progress around them.

De Tocqueville observed: “In America I saw the freest and most enlightened men placed in the happiest circumstances that the world affords; it seemed to me as if a cloud habitually hung upon their brow, and I thought them serious and almost sad, even in their pleasures.” Over the last few centuries, technology has made our lives less nasty, brutish and short. But, for some of us, the natural reaction has been to question whether it was really worth it.

Cryptocurrency now finds itself at the center of this larger debate over the morality of technology in a developing society. If supporters have their way, it holds the power to usher in a new era of human economic freedom. If critics have their way it will be regulated to death.

Let’s hope one side ends up as forgotten as Calvinist pamphlet writers.

This is a guest post by Kenny Spotz. Views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Bitcoin Magazine or BTC Media.

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

from InvestmentOpportunityInCryptocurrencies via Ella Macdermott on Inoreader https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/op-ed-tulip-myths-and-modern-cryptocurrency-skepticism/