#we need answers Bezos

[asthecrowcrafts]

Wheel of Time season 2 released OVER A MONTH AGO and I've literally heard nothing about it.

Big yikes. 😬

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Michael Tomasky at The New Republic:

I’ve had a lot of conversations since Tuesday revolving around the question of why Donald Trump won. The economy and inflation. Kamala Harris didn’t do this or that. Sexism and racism. The border. That trans-inmate ad that ran a jillion times. And so on. These conversations have usually proceeded along lines where people ask incredulously how a majority of voters could have believed this or that. Weren’t they bothered that Trump is a convicted felon? An adjudicated rapist? Didn’t his invocation of violence against Liz Cheney, or 50 other examples of his disgusting imprecations, obviously disqualify him? And couldn’t they see that Harris, whatever her shortcomings, was a fundamentally smart, honest, well-meaning person who would show basic respect for the Constitution and wouldn’t do anything weird as president?

The answer is obviously no—not enough people were able to see any of those things. At which point people throw up their hands and say, “I give up.” But this line of analysis requires that we ask one more question. And it’s the crucial one: Why didn’t a majority of voters see these things? And understanding the answer to that question is how we start to dig out of this tragic mess.

The answer is the right-wing media. Today, the right-wing media—Fox News (and the entire News Corp.), Newsmax, One America News Network, the Sinclair network of radio and TV stations and newspapers, iHeart Media (formerly Clear Channel), the Bott Radio Network (Christian radio), Elon Musk’s X, the huge podcasts like Joe Rogan’s, and much more—sets the news agenda in this country. And they fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win. Let me say that again, in case it got lost: Today, the right-wing media sets the news agenda in this country. Not The New York Times. Not The Washington Post (which bent over backwards to exert no influence when Jeff Bezos pulled the paper’s Harris endorsement). Not CBS, NBC, and ABC. The agenda is set by all the outlets I listed in the above paragraph. Even the mighty New York Times follows in its wake, aping the tone they set disturbingly often. If you read me regularly, you know that I’ve written this before, but I’m going to keep writing it until people—specifically, rich liberals, who are the only people in the world who have the power to do something about this state of affairs—take some action.

[...]

This is the year in which it became obvious that the right-wing media has more power than the mainstream media. It’s not just that it’s bigger. It’s that it speaks with one voice, and that voice says Democrats and liberals are treasonous elitists who hate you, and Republicans and conservatives love God and country and are your last line of defense against your son coming home from school your daughter. And that is why Donald Trump won. Indeed, the right-wing media is why he exists in our political lives in the first place. Don’t believe me? Try this thought experiment. Imagine Trump coming down that escalator in 2015 with no right-wing media; no Fox News; an agenda still set, and mores still established, by staid old CBS News, the House of Murrow, and The New York Times.

That atmosphere would have denied an outrageous figure like Trump the oxygen he needed to survive and flourish. He just would not have been taken seriously at all. In that world, ruled by a traditional mainstream media, Trump would have been seen by Republicans as a liability, and they would have done what they failed to do in real life—banded together to marginalize him. But the existence of Fox changed everything. Fox hosted the early debates, which Trump won not with intelligence, but outrageousness. He tapped into the grievance culture Fox had nursed among conservatives for years. He had (most of the time) Rupert Murdoch’s personal blessing. In 2015-16, Fox made Trump possible. [...]

The fake story about Haitian residents of Springfield, Ohio eating cats and dogs, for example, started with a Facebook post citing second- and third-hand sources, Gertz told me; it then “circulated on X and was picked up by all the major right-wing influencers.” Only then did Vance, a very online dude, notice it and decide to run with it. And then Trump said it himself at the debate. But it started in the right-wing media. Likewise with the post-debate ABC “whistleblower” claims, which Gertz wrote about at the time. This was the story that ABC, which hosted the only presidential debate this election, fed Team Harris the questions in advance. This started, Gertz wrote, as a “wildly flimsy internet rumor launched by a random pro-Trump X poster.” Soon enough, the right-wing media was all over it.

Maybe that one didn’t make a huge difference (although who knows?), but this one, I believe, absolutely did: the idea that Harris and Joe Biden swiped emergency aid away from the victims of Hurricane Helene (in mostly Southern, red states) and gave it all to undocumented migrants. It did not start with Trump or his campaign or Vance or the Republican National Committee or Lindsey Graham. It started on Fox. Only then did the others pick it up. And it was key, since this was a moment when Harris’s momentum in the polling averages began to flag.

[...]

To much of America, by the way, this is not understood as one side’s view of things. It’s simply “the news.” This is what people—white people, chiefly—watch in about two-thirds of the country. I trust that you’ve seen in your travels, as I have in mine, that in red or even some purple parts of the country, when you walk into a hotel lobby or a hospital waiting room or even a bar, where the TVs ought to be offering us some peace and just showing ESPN, at least one television is tuned to Fox. That’s reach, and that’s power. And then people get in their cars to drive home and listen to an iHeart, right-wing talk radio station. And then they get home and watch their local news and it’s owned by Sinclair, and it, too, has a clear right-wing slant. And then they pick up their local paper, if it still exists, and the oped page features Cal Thomas and Ben Shapiro. Liberals, rich and otherwise, live in a bubble where they never see this stuff. I would beg them to see it. Watch some Fox. Listen to some Christian radio. Experience the news that millions of Americans are getting on a daily basis. You’ll pretty quickly come to understand what I’m saying here.

[...] The reason? The right-wing media. And it’s only growing and growing. And I haven’t even gotten to social media and Tik Tok and the other platforms from which far more people are getting their news these days. The right is way ahead on those fronts too. Liberals must wake up and understand this and do something about it before it’s too late, which it almost is.

Michael Tomasky of TNR explains it perfectly: Donald Trump won due to the right-wing media apparatus feeding lies to the voters.

[dropoutconfessions]

I wanna start off by saying that I agree with the fans who say that the rep of trans women and transmisogyny affected comedians on dropout isn't enough (because it is orders of magnitude less than the rep of cis people and less than 1/10 the rep of transmisogyny excluded trans comedians iirc).

But I have to disagree with some folks I see calling Sam and Brennan greedy rich assholes as an explanation for why they don't wanna platform transfemmes. Because when we talk about class, it's very important to separate specific levels of "rich" between comfortable and ultra wealthy.

Robert Reich of all politicians is not going to hoard wealth, but he probably did make Sam's life growing up more comfortable than most people and gave him some financial grace to pursue comedy. But Dropout as it used to be was bleeding money in 2020. They have less than a million paid subscribers, and they share profits with the cast AND they're paying the wages of the crew. However much money Sam and Brennan are making, it is nothing compared to a billion dollars. It's not clear how much they make, but say Sam is worth $50 million (a high random number that I think is still way too high for what he'd have). That's still only 5% of $1 billion. We are all closer to Sam's level of wealth than he is to, say, Jeff Bezos. Any kids he and his wife may have are going to have a comfortable life, and he is probably going to have a good retirement, but I think you still have to look at the scale of things. And Brennan is likely making less than Sam while still being financially stable, but he clearly knows what it's like to be broke and starving and is still heavily affected by that past to this day.

Is it possible that Sam and the folks in charge of hiring casting at Dropout think TMA folks are less likely to bring profit and that's why they don't hire them? I don't know. I'm not psychic. But the image of them some people push in regards to their class is straight up wrong.

DEFINITELY more TMA comedians besides Persephone (I love her and I would actually want to see more of her in addition to other new cast members) should be hired as cast for Dropout shows in general. I think Sam should/could also pass off hosting duties of Game Changer at the very least and possibly Make Some Noise, too, bc the amount of cis men representation from him and Brennan alone in comparison to any trans people but especially TMA people is insane. They're always going to have the seasons they ran, and they can still be cast once in a while.

But I really think this lack of representation started as a blind spot rather than evil intent to squeeze as much profit out of Dropout as possible the way some people think it is. If it continues after all this conversation about it (they film like a year in advance, so maybe some grace can be given), yeah, I'm going to be upset. I already canceled my subscription, though, tbh just because the statistics of rep in terms of cis men/women and transmascs/transfemmes is extremely disproportionate for the kind of work they do.

I haven't personally seen people make it a "greedy white cis men" thing, but yk, I'm not omniscient, could be a part of tumblr doing that. I personally don't think it's an intentional thing, that's the vicious part of normalized bigotry/lack of diversity, you don't notice it until you do.

I will say though, I don't think Sam needs to stop hosting either Game Changer or Make Some Noise, he's addressed them being his dream projects and like, a love letter to game shows, I don't think either would be as good without him.

But like, they're creating a lot of new shows, there's clearly space for new regulars on Dropout. There's space for us to be included, just gotta wait for them to answer our ask for an invite and all that.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The super-rich got that way through monopolies

Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.

Just in time for Davos, here's 'Taken, not earned: How monopolists drive the world’s power and wealth divide," a report from a coalition of international tax justice and anti-corporate activist groups:

https://www.balancedeconomy.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Davos-Taken-not-Earned-full-Report-2024-FINAL.pdf

The rise of monopolies over the past 40 years came about as the result of specific, deliberate policy choices. As the report documents, the wealthiest people in America funneled a fortune into neutering antitrust enforcement, through the "consumer welfare" doctrine.

This is an economic theory that equates monopolies with efficiency: "If everyone is buying the same things from the same store, that tells you the store is doing something right, not something criminal." 40 years ago, and ever since, the wealthy have funded think-tanks, university programs and even "continuing education" programs for federal judges to push this line:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down

They didn't do this for ideological reasons – they were chasing material goals. Monopolies produce vast profits, and those profits produce vast wealth. The rise and rise of the super rich cannot be decoupled from the rise and rise of monopolies.

If you're new to this, you might think that "monopoly" only refers to a sector in which there is only one seller. But that's not what economists mean when they talk about monopolies and monopolization: for them, a monopoly is a company with power. Economists who talk about monopolies mean companies that "can act independently without needing to consider the responses of competitors, customers, workers, or even governments."

One way to measure that power is through markups ("the difference between the selling price of goods or services and their cost"). Very large companies in concentrated industries have very high markups, and they're getting higher. From 2017-22, the 20 largest companies in the world had average markups of 50%. The 100 largest companies average 43%. The smallest half of companies get average markups of 25%.

Those markups rose steeply during the covid lockdowns – and so did the wealth of the billionaires who own them. Tech billionaires – Bezos, Brin and Page, Gates and Ballmer – all made their fortunes from monopolies. Warren Buffet is a proud monopolist who says "the single most important decision in evaluating a business is pricing power… if you have to have a prayer session before raising the price by 10 percent, then you’ve got a terrible business."

We are living in the age of the monopoly. In the 1930s, the top 0.1% of US companies accounted for less than half of America's GDP. Today, it's 90%. And it's accelerating, with global mergers climbing from 2,676 in 1985 to 62,000 in 2021.

Monopoly's cheerleaders claim that these numbers vindicate them. Monopolies are so efficient that everyone wants to create them. Those efficiencies can be seen in the markups monopolies can charge, and the profits they can make. If a monopoly has a 50% markup, that's just the "efficiency of scale."

But what is the actual shape of this "efficiency?" How is it manifest? The report's authors answer this with one word: power.

Monopolists have the power "to extract wealth from, to restrict the freedoms of, and to manipulate or steer the vastly larger numbers of losers." They establish themselves as gatekeepers and create chokepoints that they can use to raise prices paid by their customers and lower the payout to their suppliers:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

These chokepoints let monopolies usurp "one of the ultimate prerogatives of state power: taxation." Amazon sellers pay a 51% tax to sell on the platform. App Store suppliers pay a 30% tax on every dollar they make with their apps. That translates into higher costs. Consider a good that costs $10 to make: the bottom 50% of companies (by size) would charge $12.50 for that product on average. The largest companies would charge $15. Thus monopolies don't just make their owners richer – they make everyone else poorer, too.

This power to set prices is behind the greedflation (or, more politely, "seller's inflation"). The CEOs of the largest companies in the world keep getting on investor calls and bragging about this:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/11/price-over-volume/#pepsi-pricing-power

The food system is incredibly monopolistic. The Cargill family own the largest commodity trader in the world, which is how they built up a family fortune worth $43b. Cargill is one of the "ABCD" companies ("Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus") that control the world's food supply, and they tripled their profits during the lockdown.

Monopolies gouge everyone – even governments. Pfizer charged the NHS £18-22/shot for vaccines that cost £5/shot to make. They took the British government for £2bn – that's enough to pay last year's pay hike for NHS nurses, six times over,

But monopolies also abuse their suppliers, especially their employees. All over the world, competition authorities are uncovering "wage fixing" and "no poaching" agreements among large firms, who collude to put a cap on what workers in their sector can earn. Unions report workers having their pay determined by algorithms. Bosses lock employees in with noncompetes and huge repayment bills for "training":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/04/its-a-trap/#a-little-on-the-nose

Monopolies corrupt our governments. Companies with huge markups can spend some of that money on lobbying. The 20 largest companies in the world spend more than €155m/year lobbying in the US and alone, not counting the money they spend on industry associations and other cutouts that lobby on their behalf. Big Tech leads the pack on lobbying, accounting for 82% of EU lobbying spending and 58% of US lobbying.

One key monopoly lobbying priority is blocking climate action, from Apple lobbying against right-to-repair, which creates vast mountains of e-waste, to energy monopolist lobbying against renewables. And energy companies are getting more monopolistic, with Exxonmobil spending $65b to buy Pioneer and Chevron spending $60b to buy Hess. Many of the world's richest people are fossil fuel monopolists, like Charles and Julia Koch, the 18th and 19th richest people on the Forbes list. They spend fortunes on climate denial.

When people talk about the climate impact of billionaires, they tend to focus on the carbon footprints of their mansions and private jets, but the true environmental cost of the ultra rich comes from the anti-renewables, pro-emissions lobbying they buy with their monopoly winnings.

The good news is that the tide is turning on monopolies. A coalition of "businesses, workers, farmers, consumers and other civil society groups" have created a "remarkably successful anti-monopoly movement." The past three years saw more regulatory action on corporate mergers, price-gouging, predatory pricing, labor abuses and other evils of monopoly than we got in the past 40 years.

The business press – cheerleaders for monopoly – keep running editorials claiming that enforcers like Lina Khan are getting nothing done. Sure, WSJ, Khan's getting nothing done – that's why you ran 80 editorial about her:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion

(Khan's winning like crazy. Just last month she killed four megamergers:)

https://www.thesling.org/the-ftc-just-blocked-four-mergers-in-a-month-heres-how-its-latest-win-fits-into-the-broader-campaign-to-revive-antitrust/

The EU and UK are taking actions that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. Canada is finally set to get a real competition law, with the Trudeau government promising to add an "abuse of dominance" rule to Canada's antitrust system.

Even more exciting are the moves in the global south. In South Africa, "competition law contains some of the most progressive ideas of all":

It actively seeks to create greater economic participation, particularly for ‘historically disadvantaged persons’ as part of its public interest considerations in merger decisions.

Balzac wrote, "Behind every great fortune there is a crime." Chances are, the rapsheet includes an antitrust violation. Getting rid of monopolies won't get rid of all the billionaires, but it'll certainly get rid of a hell of a lot of them.

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/17/monopolies-produce-billionaires/#inequality-corruption-climate-poverty-sweatshops

[murfeelee]

IWTV 2022 INSP - The Most Dangerous Man in the World

Daniel: I told my editor I was meeting with the most dangerous man in the world. Gave him two choices. He came back with Bezos and Putin! Louis: I wasn't sure you'd remembered me. Your book makes no mention of our prior meeting. Daniel: Gritty memoir, drugs, humiliation, self-pity kind of thing. Mention vampires in one of those, readers tend to call bulls***. You've got your own hangar at the airport, privileges on the Royal Meydan Bridge, and zero presence online. I know the Emirates are big on privacy, and that's probably important to you, but I gotta ask: what does it cost, this haven't-aged-in-half-a-century, killer views in all directions anonymity? Louis: Quite a lot. I have to be very careful whom I let in. Daniel: Yeah, well, things didn't end well the last time, so forgive me if I'm a little nervous! Louis: Back in San Francisco, you said, and I paraphrase, "Give it to me. Make me a vampire now." Daniel: In the eyes of a 20-year-old, you were wasting the gift. Louis: You're in your 20s, Rashid. What do you think? Rashid: Well, Mr. du Lac presides in the most desired real estate in the country. I do not see the "waste" Mr. Molloy sees. Daniel: Yeah, well, he lived in a dump the last time we did this. Louis: I'd give it to you now.

– Interview with the Vampire, S01E01, S01E06

MY THOUGHTS & CC CREDITS

MY THOUGHTS

My contribution to @iwtvfanevents' Vampterview rewatch of IWTV Season 1! \(^0^)/ I basically rebuilt Loumand's Dubai Penthouse from scratch, cuz in my other post it was on the same lot as Loustat's 1132 townhouse. 🤭 And I decided to remake my Daniel & Rashid/Armand sims, cuz I was too lazy to crack open my old saves and save a copy of them to my bin. So...yeah, "a do-over," in Daniel's words. XD

I just love thinking about Louis' strange life as a billionaire mogul, and how AMC's nodding to the life he had with Armand in Miami & NYC in the books, and the life he now has with "Rashid" in Dubai. I have many suspicions about what went down to bring Loumand to Dubai, and where in the books' timeline we even are. I need answers, Rolin!!!!

CC CREDITS

Dubai world; Zen Tower at Youtube (I just gutted the interior)

Limo by FreshPrince

Helicopter by @dailycard

IWTV Books & Rollercoaster "bridge" w/ Fullbright in beta by me

[mintyisms]

Even More Shit I've Read in Runescape Chat Starters

edited for clarity

"Keep talking like that and I'll be forced to kiss you."

"I'd rather have sex with a Digimon than a Pokemon, just saying."

"We get it. You're a rich, entitled asshole. Boo hoo."

"Nepotism is always the answer."

"Joke's on you, I slept with my teacher."

"What's harder, an 11th grade math test or clipping a big dog's nails?"

"100% of divorces start with marriage, just saying."

"Why the fuck does unsweet tea exist upon us?"

"Just sit there and smoke a couple joints."

"You speak in snake tongue."

"I'd pour ketchup on you."

"No, not my flour! I need that for baking!"

"I would fuck everything that moves on sight after an apocalypse."

"Only psychopaths say happy Monday."

"Can someone let me kill 'em in the fight pit?"

"If a blind person goes on vacation, do they still go sightseeing?"

"Ew. Why would I want to grow?"

"I call everyone dude, but even that is touchy now."

"I'm not a human and you offend me."

"We have to do a recount. Get to the ballots, Jimmy."

"Would you be interested in our exciting adventures?"

"Does rubbing your tummy help digestion?"

"You have to squat, then cough."

"The Conjuring, Chucky, and Annabelle scared me away from dolls."

"I'm coming for your property."

"Sorry I logged in and took up all y'all's bandwidth."

"I am here to play in the dirt and kick ass. And I'm all out of ass."

"Are we not all sad and lonely?"

"Tell that motherfucker to get some antihistamines."

"Text Bezos. Maybe he can get you one."

[olderthannetfic]

I'm not very comfortable with violent revolution because, while it does work (we have historical proof of this), I have no indication that any of these "violence is the only answer!" people I've seen are anything but bullies and fools.

I strongly suspect that if they got their bloodshed, a great number of minorities would suffer because he said that she said that so and so was buddies with whatsisname, so lets drag him into the street and beat him to death! and no one would bother to check until afterwards if any of it was actually true. So the mob would be weaponized against whichever minority is easiest to believe that kind of lie about, and against individuals who just aren't very well liked.

And a lot of these revolutionmongers honestly read like the kind of people who are just looking for an excuse to get violent. They'd torch your dumpy apartment just as soon as Bezo's third mansion, and they go right to war in the streets before even bothering with more practical things like forming unions or volunteering at a homeless shelter.

Every one of them has read to me like the "We should bring back bullying" crowd or the aphobic idiots or the fandom antis; they're upset that harassing neurodivergent and queer people on social media isn't enough, and they want to hurt people IRL, too. They just need an acceptable target.

--

[trainsinanime]

A City on Mars

It's really good!

"A City on Mars" is the newest popular science book by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith (@zachweinersmith). Besides their popular science books, they're mostly known for @smbc-comics (like xkcd but sometimes meaner and in color). This book deals with the question of space settlement: Where can we settle in space, how would we settle in space, which questions are still unanswered, and is this even a good idea? They review all the applicable research to come up with answers.

Interestingly, the answer to the question "is this a good idea?" turns out to be no, even to the author's surprise. As a result, they expect that the space settlement community, who helped a lot with creating the book, will absolutely hate it. My guess is that here on Tumblr, the conclusion "we shouldn't let Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos use their incredible wealth to build weird semi-independent company-controlled colonies on foreign planets" will prove to be rather popular. I think they make good arguments for their point of view. They conclude that if we want to do space settlement, the best solution is to "wait and go big". That means first do a lot of research, maybe with some temporary research outposts, and only then start with a long-term settlement once we worked out most of the kinks. And that first settlement should be very big, at least in the thousands of people, from basically the start, because anything less than that will cause way too many problems.

The book itself is really well written, full of fun anecdotes and drawings, and it makes all of its topics accessible without ever feel like it's talking down to people. It's funny, informative and well researched. If I have any criticism, it's that I almost wish it was twice as long. Its goal is to provide an overview into a field that is incredibly broad, reaching from physics, geophysics and biology all the way to international law and philosophical questions about property rights, and it does an admirable job with all of them. But the book can't go into too much depth on any of these issues, and some (like how an economy on such a settlement would be set up) needed to be skipped entirely. There's more than enough material here to write at least two to three more books like this, and I would absolutely love to read them if they ever happen.

But really, this book is great. I intended to only look into the first chapter yesterday, and accidentally ended up reading through all of it. Very much recommended.

[kuwdora]

Posting meme- CHRISJEN AVASARALA !!!!!!!!! (from runawaynun)

CHRISJEN AVASARALA !!!!!!!!! (from runawaynun)

Runawaynun your Expanse vids are amazing, everyone needs to watch them!!

Okay I fucking LOVE Chrisjen Avasarala. I love her in the show, I love her in the books. I fucking love where she starts at the beginning of the series and where she ends up—both in the show, and in the books Shohreh portrayed her beyond perfection. Her leadership style makes my eyes pop and I just love how she commands a room and is trying her fucking best despite all the shit happening. Her wardrobe. Her attitude. HER EVERYTHING. *flails a lot*

I watched season 1 of The Expanse and enjoyed it enough to want to read the first book after I finished the season. Just to hold me over until the second season. Well…I read the first book and then gobbled up the second book Caliban’s War. I lost my utter fucking mind when Chrisjen met Bobbie and then spent the rest of the hiatus waiting and salivating for Bobbie and Chrisjen scenes. THEY WERE MAGNIFICENT. Season 2 was incredible. 10/10 amazing stuff.

One thing that was readily notable after I read the first three books and continued to wait for the show to return, is how much cursing they wrote out of her dialogue in season 1. There was a noticeable uptick in her salty language once the show moved to Amazon and for that I am grateful (but still fuck Jeff Bezos, and I know the irony wasn’t lost on the authors that a real-life inspiration for Jules-Pierre Mao saved their show).

Anyway, I love the series but also the trilogies have some AMAZING QUOTES. Here are a few that I’ll share from the books. ItReachesOut compiled most of these on motivational posters which is linked below.

“My life has become a single, ongoing revelation that I haven’t been cynical enough.” ― Chrisjen Avasarala, Babylon's Ashes

“…and a familiar voice was coming from the terminal, "Going to be monitoring anything we fucking say. If you wanted to discuss menstruation at great length and detail, this is probably our best chance. He's always been squeamish about women. And no one likes a Peeping Tom, even if he is Prime Minister.” ― Chrisjen Avasarala, Nemesis Games

“It'd be a better world if there was always at least one right answer instead of a basket of fucked.” ― Chrisjen Avasarala

Realizing you've got shit on your fingers is the first step to washing your hands. -Chrisjen Avasarala

Always good to have a penis in uniform in the room. -Chrisjen Avasarala

I don't give a fuck whose birthday it is, you make this happen before my meeting is over or I'll have your nuts as paperweights. -Chrisjen Avasarala

I have crates of anti-herpes drugs that are more legitimate than you are. -Chrisjen Avasarala

I don't mean that they all fuck men. I mean they're all men, the fuckers. -Chrisjen Avasarala

That man's asshole must be tight enough right now to bend space. -Chrisjen Avasarala

Try not to put your dick in this. It's fucked enough already. -Chrisjen Avasarala

runawaynun's AMAZING EXPANSE VIDS:

Sexy Back (Chrisjen) THIS COVER is fucking brilliant.

Solid (Bobbie/Chrisjen) THEM!! god I love Bobbie.

Poor Atlas (Chrisjen) the lyrics and tone of this song is so devastatingly perfect omg

Thes are all STUNNING incredible amazing frothingly good Expanse vids with Chrisjen! runawaynun also has some delicious-looking femslash fic I have not dove into yet cause I haven't really had the brain to read Expanse fic but OH MY GODDDD. I love Chrisjen Avasarala.

[tolbachik]

List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who reblogged something from you! get to know your mutuals and followers <3

Hi Zia!! Thank you so much for the ask, I'm really excited to share my answers here! It was real hard to pick, but I had fun!!

5 - My girlfriend!! We met on tumblr years ago when I was looking for an artist to commission, and found out she lived real close by! We became friends, and then it all just kinda snowballed from there really. We really enjoy each other's company, and usually call once a day at night before bed to spend a little time together! She means a lot to me, and I'm really happy to have met her! I really love her, she means the world to me, and I always do my best to make sure she knows that. y'know what she's asleep right now but I'm gonna message her and tell her how much she means to me thank you for making me think about her

4 - My family! My sister especially; we're very close, and love to do pretty much everything together. I usually watch her play games on some of her consoles, maybe we'll watch shows together, all kinds of stuff. She's always been there for me and helped me be the person I am today, so I really appreciate her and all she's done for me! This also includes my cats. Me and my sister jointly own three cats; Quinn, the oldest (and my profile picture), Binky (looks just like Quinn but smaller), and Leon (typical white and orange cat). They all mean a lot to me! I try not to take their companionship for granted, even if they wake me up at all hours of the night lol

3 - Space & space exploration! Really, mostly just in our own solar system. And for the exploration part, just stuff from the 70s-80s and concepts from then. I really love the optimism of the 70s, and all they had thought we would achieve by now. And honestly, a lot of concepts developed around that time still hold up to this day; O'Neill cylinders, space-based solar power, maglev-based launchers, stuff like that! I really hope someday we can get rid of these capitalist chains and focus on making the world and universe a brighter place. I'm a firm believer that we're here to spread the gift of life as far as possible, allowing for as many beings as possible to enjoy the experience of… well, being. Life is very precious, and I fully believe that the exploitation and development of space is something we need to do in order to help bring the gift of life to as many worlds as possible. That being said, I hate Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and every single astrocapitalist asshole who dreams of turning the stars into nothing but lifeless ash with a burning passion. I hope they all choke. Also, my favorite objects in our solar system are Uranus and her moons, and Venus lol

2 - Music! I know it gets said a lot, but music is a very important thing for me. I don't listen as much as I used to, but I still try to as much as I can. I usually listen to stuff only from the 1960s-1990s, but I do branch out every now and again! I really love folk music from the earlier part of that time frame, with musicians like Norma Tanega, Emitt Rhodes, Jim Sullivan, and more taking up a large amount of my favorites there. I also really like international music, especially Soviet stuff! It's so interesting to hear the different melodies and instruments, as well as singing styles. It's such a neat crossroad of cultures, there was so much interesting & beautiful sounding stuff! It's a shame that it's largely ignored over here in the west.

Also, I'm currently on a big Telex kick right now, though! They were a Belgian band from the late 70s into the 80s, and made music that was synthesizer only. I've liked them for quite some time, but it's just kinda coming back full force right now! On top of that, I will admit... Sometimes autism gets the better of me and I can and will listen to a song dozens of time in a row lol.

1 - My book series I'm writing and developing! I really don't like to talk about it (shy + nervous), but it means a lot to me. I'm chronically ill and can't really do too much, so writing has been one of the only things I can do when I get the energy. Even then, progress is far and few between, but it's better than nothing! Long story short, it's a hard sci-fi novel series about an alien race's journey in exploring their world, system, and beyond. Despite being about space exploration and first contact between them and us, it's more about love, friendship, and finding your own place in the universe than it is about war, action, or anything like that. I wanted to write this because I was tired of the typical "woahhh aliens are invading..." type of thing; I wanted something more about understanding and kindness, rather than about hatred and fear.

I've got like... 7 books total planned, with three of those being "prologues" but still like +70k words each. It's a long, arduous process, but it's something that I'm proud of and happy to do. I honestly don't know what my long term plans are for it, if I'll publish it or not. If I do, I'll probably make sure I have at least two of the other books done first, that way I have time to let myself work on the others at my own pace. I do love talking about it, but more likely in private than on my public blog; I'm incredibly shy lol

Thank you so much for this ask, it was a lot of fun! I'll be sure to spread it to some of my friends here, then. I really appreciated this!

Take care, and have a good rest of your day!!!

[meltingpenguins]

hi, maybe its time to step back and take a breath. its ok if u hate good omens! its ur opinion and ur free to do whatever with it! but u cant control whether gaiman wrote another season, or whether other people like it or make art of it. maybe its time to just filter and block good omens tag and move on with ur life. there are still so many other art and stuff for u to discover, and u might find something u actually like!

This will be a long answer:

I don't hate Good Omens. I *love* Good Omens. The book is a constant source of joy and inspiration.

The radio play was a bit weird to me, but it's nevertheless immensely enjoyable.

I can't say anything about the graphic novel yet, but so far it looks good and solid. The only criticism for that I can give so far is that imo it's a little disappointing we got Crowley and Aziraphale in human-shapes in Eden again, when a drawn medium opened up a lot of possibilities for going wild with 'biblically accurate angel' and giant demonic snake. it's a case of YMMV.

No, I love Good Omens. What I hate is that show on amazon with the same name, because that is not Good Omens. Sure, the names are the same and Neil Gaiman is writing the script, but it still is not Good Omens. Because the core of it is missing, the heart.

That is what's making me so angry.

Of course, when you adapt any given story from page to a different medium, there will be changes. Take a moment very early on in the radioplay, when they gave Hastur a mobile phone so he could call up Crowley, leading to Crowley expositioning about the M25. Is it a little clunky? Sure, but for the medium it works.

The show, however, seems to make changes that make no sense for the story or medium.

Now, I give you this: It is unfair of me to lash out at Mr Gaiman like this, for which I apologise. I do not know what made him make these changes. It could, of course and in the worst case, be ignorance and malice. But malicious demands from amazon (after all, the book is very, very, very anti-establishment, if you want, and book!Crowley has no love for people like bezos) could very well be the reason just like being simply at a loss and throwing in whatever's deemed 'will make fans happy'.

We don't know. So, for the lashing out, I do apologize.

But for the criticism, that stands. Because the show is going in directions that are very much the polar opposite of the book.

The book is about humanity, about choice, and how we ALL matter. How there are no chosen ones, how we all have a part in shaping history. Names that go down in history do so because of the actions of many, not because they were predestined to do so.

Which is an amazing, refreshing and, most importantly, hopeful message, that's especially these days needed more than ever it would seem. Look around, how many people think that their actions don't matter because of, amongst others, people like bezos.

But look what the WGA strike accomplished. It was the actions of many, not just those at the picket line, but the support from fans, from all around the world.

But the show? The show is the opposite. Not only does it constantly demean the working class (Crowley likening Lucifer's rebellion to workers' unions so thinly veiled it's fishnet, or now the whole declaring demons (who in the book were akin to the working class while Heaven was posh upper class, and the book very much sided with the working class) especially too dumb to deserve to live (this very much reeks of meddling from amazon, unless Mr Gaiman really is that much of a pretentious, aloof asshole and it's been done on purpose... and seeing how he talks 'bout demons now...)) it also makes Crowley out to be the chosen one type who cannot do wrong. Even when this Crowley messes up, it's always exactly the right thing. Because Crowley did it. With Aziraphale it's the opposite. He can't do right. He has been reduced down to the bumbling, dim sidekick with a crush on the amazing genius chosen one (sound familiar?)

Why? There is nothing in the medium that would have required these changes.

But it gets worse. Both seasons, I give you that, have their good ideas:

Having Crowley and Az return to the bookshop after the birthday party, showing the two throughout history, Muriel, expanding the denizens of Heaven and Hell, yes, those are great ideas. But they are all not used as well as they could.

It's just baffling. The whole show has this bizarre vibe of hating the fans. As if we are (like demons) too dumb to deserve to live. It's what I ramble about. When the show's cinematography decides to frame scenes so supposed eastereggs cannot be missed, when the pacing is off and the editing makes little sense.

What I can give you (and Mr Gaiman) and will do so, is that the script-book for s1 (never checked if there's one for s2) is doing much better. The pacing is more even, the characters are better fleshed out, the flow of the story makes a lot more sense. So what happened?

As said initially, it might be a lot of things, none of them good.

And then we get crass changes to personality and all with characters like beelzebub and the explanation isn't just flimsy, it's frightening. Beelzebub has been stepford-wifed. Suddenly, supposedly by 'the power of love' they're submissive, cozy-wozy, caring, etc.

Love doesn't do that. people don't do a complete 180 just cause they're 'in love' especially when there's been almost no common ground

Beelzebub and Gabriel had their position in their respective companies, and an air of 'wanting to bite people's heads off', but what we have on the show now is nothing that builds up on that. It's really just catering to the fans that were the loudest. The people that are now so eager pairing off demons and angels to 'fix' demons.

Which is simply frightening. Especially looking at how they justify it, what they declare romantic in a distinct 'this is romantic in fiction AND IRL' way.

And then there's everything else of s2: Nothing. There's no plot, there's actions to pad out 5 3/4 episodes, but everything feels very 'throw everything and the kitchen sink at the wall, but don't wait what sticks'. Which, yes, could absolutely be amazon's fault again.

It really feels as if the whole season was only there to have the '6-6-8' pattern in the end.

And it makes me angry.

It's great that the WGA won with flying colours, but no matter what you, anon, or I may think about what s3 might bring, you have to admit that what we have right now isn't much of a solid foundation, even if there can now be proper rewrites, more input (so better sounding boards etc)

It makes me sad, it makes me furious, because it is such a great book, and I'm one of those people I want to understand why things happen.

Anon, you can message me again if you want to talk further (this goes for everyone), but to conclude:

I love Good Omens the book, I'd LOVE to see it adapted to screen proper, I love the creativity of the fandom, but so much of that is now found outside of the the show fans. Which... shouldn't be. We were a weird and creative bunch, even after s1. People began looking into mythology and history to produce amazing works, but now? Now it feels as if people and show try to snuff out every glimmer of creativity, any given bit that isn't 100% the shows canon. When the show itself can't even stick to continuity.

So, as said, you want to talk, my ask box is open. If not, as snarky as this may sound, I'd say practice what you preach and simply block the 'good omens critical' tag, that's what I tag my rambling for.

In any case, stay safe, stay healthy, don't lick the walls (see, told you there's stuff I like)

PS: I do my own stuff, both fanfic and original wise, don't worry.

[reasoningdaily]

Bias in AI. Examples how artificial intelligence discriminates aganst humans. | ArtInUX

The paradigm of (un)ethical futures.

Ask anyone what they think artificial intelligence is and they’ll have different opinions. Some, like Jeff Bezos, will sing its praises for humanity’s digital future, while others, like Elon Musk, will see it as a harbinger of doom. And those that have spent the last 5–10 years under a rock might dismiss it as a fad and yet another buzzword.

Indeed, some valid questions are stemming from concerns arising out of AI technology. For instance, is Elon right? Will AI pose a threat to the human race? The answer, as of writing this article, is “no”. Experts believe that this won’t change much for at least another 50 years or so as AI has yet to rise above human intellect. In her book “Hello World” Dr Hanna Fry compares the modern AI intelligence to a hedgehog.

Since we are growing ever dependent on AI systems, we also need to ask a very compelling question: Can we trust AI judgment? The answer is, — not yet, and certainly not blindly. AI technology suffers from something called bias, that has its foundation in human prejudices introduced in training data.

Bias?

Bias can be defined as “a disproportionate weight in favour of or against an idea or thing. In science and engineering, a bias is a systematic error.” Whether we like to admit it or not, we all have biases. It is a lack of awareness (or willful ignorance?) of these biases that often introduces issues when it comes to designing AI solutions and selecting training data.

“Yes, but that’s human. AI is not human” I hear you proclaim. That is true. To understand how this affects the models, lets briefly unpack how human bias creeps into your otherwise friendly AI. To illustrate this at a high level, I drew a comic.

As I hope I have been able to illustrate, the bias in AI is the covert prejudice in the data used to train algorithms (a set of instructions formulated so that a task can be performed). This can result in discrimination and have other social reactions when an AI tool is used. This can be demonstrated with a simple example. Supposing an algorithm has to be created to decide whether an applicant gets accepted into a university or not. Let's imagine that one input is location. Now let’s speculate that the location may correspond to ethnicity. In this case, the algorithm would favour, even though indirectly, certain ethnicities over others, which would lead to bias for one ethnic group over another.

Now. Back to humans and bias.

Cognitive Bias

Cognitive bias is an area of the human psyche that has been extensively studied to explain the prejudicial nature of human behaviour. A cognitive bias is a lack of objective thinking, and for a human brain, it’s a shortcut in information processing. This is because the human brain tends to perceive and process information based on personal experiences and preferences. The information received goes through a kind of filtration, and only that which is familiar or personally relevant gets processed.

There are types of cognitive bias, such as the “bandwagon effect”, selective perception, priming and confirmation bias, that all play a role in bias in AI.

The Bandwagon Effect- This is how the brain concludes that something/someone is valuable because others (or a majority) value it.

Confirmation bias — This is the brain’s tendency to use new information that matches or confirms/validates existing notions.

There is a lot to be said about the social media sites and giants like google.com reinforcing people’s confirmation bias through their algorithms, but more on that later. If we acknowledge and understand that this exists and is a large part of the way we humans think, we can get a grip on AI bias.

Data analysis uses objective tools for machine learning and making purely data-driven decisions. Nonetheless, it is humans who select the data to be analysed. Here is where the bias creeps into the final product.

These biases are unintentional (one would hope!) and can be called “human error” in some cases. Regardless, the presence of bias in machine learning systems can be quite significant, depending on the use of such systems. Biases can often lead to lower quality of customer service, reduced revenue and sales, illegal actions, and dangerous conditions. In industry and commerce, especially, such scenarios should be prevented. Organisations are required to keep a close eye on the data used to teach algorithms for cognitive bias as well as for (rigorous!) validation. Bias in AI can only be limited in this way.

The efficacy of data scientists, analysts and designers

Artificial intelligence can only be rid of inherent bias provided data scientists act in an efficacious, ethical and objective way, alerting themselves to possible bias. Data should represent a range of races, backgrounds, genders and cultures that could be adversely affected by prejudicial issues. Data scientists, analysts and, in some rare but increasingly more popular cases, UX designers play a part in developing these models. It’s the responsibility of this team to mould data samples in a way that deliberately decreases bias from faulty machine learning models. Decision-makers must evaluate the appropriateness of applying machine learning technology in all aspects of AI before it is in production. Have you (in)validated your algorithm with large enough dataset that you are absolutely sure it is bias-free?

The danger of bias in AI

Any discrimination is derogatory and undermines equal opportunity. As a result of this, often unintended outcomes may lead to oppression. This has been proven many times in real life, throughout history, and, as you will see in some examples I have collected, continues to be the case in everyday life. Wiping out this prejudice in humanity has been a Herculean task, let alone in machine learning. In AI, the task has to be simpler, but it means eliminating the prejudice at the root of when algorithms and models are written. Anomalies that result in bias occur when algorithms produce results that arise out of faulty assumptions in the process of data analytics and machine learning.

Examples of bias in AI

Making non-biased algorithms is hard. Here are a few real-life examples of instances of bias:

Bias in American healthcare

In 2019, an algorithm was used on more than 200 million Americans in US hospitals, as a predictor of patients who would need specially trained nursing staff and extra medical attention. The algorithm was not directly related to racial factors, but historical data on spending on healthcare was used as a proxy for medical needs. The rationale behind the algorithm was that cost indicated how much healthcare a person required — the more someone spent — the more care they needed. Since, on average, white patients incurred more costs, it was concluded they needed more care. Given the known factors of income inequality amongst minority groups in America, this data was already biased towards the wealthier groups. In addition, the dataset used to train the algorithm was not balanced — with white patients’ documents outnumbering those of black patients by a ratio of 7:1. This resulted in clear-cut healthcare discrimination.

Bias in America’s criminal justice system

Data in the criminal justice system has been gathered and used for making decisions for nearly 100 years. So it’s no surprise that an AI would be used in this sphere to assist judges in making consistent and just sentencing decisions. A criminal risk assessment algorithm was used to predict the likelihood of a defendant becoming a recidivist. The model predicted that there were twice as many false positives for recidivism in black offenders and twice as many false negatives in white offenders. This means that the algorithm would predict (and therefore likely to influence the judges’ decision) that the person before them are twice as likely to re-offend if they were black than if they were white. The flip-side of this coin is that the white offenders that are likely to re-offend were twice as likely to be marked as ‘low risk’ and receive lighter sentencing as their black counterparts.

These algorithms use statistics to find patterns and correlations in data. But correlation ≠ causation. When the algorithm is trained on historical data, especially if this data is loaded with stereotypical bias, what gets designed is a stereotype reinforcement machine that replicates errors of the past.

Gender bias in recruitment

In 2016 LinkedIn got hot under the collar as it was discovered to be suggesting male variations of female names in search queries, but not vice versa. For example, “Stephanie” would bring up a prompt asking if users meant “Stephen”, but queries for “Stephen” did not suggest “Stephanie”. The company said this was the result of an analysis of users’ interactions with the site.

Bias in biometric data sets

Rather embarrassing for Nikon back in 2010, Nikon’s cameras used image-recognition algorithms biased towards (read that as “trained on”) Caucasian faces consistently asked Asian users if they were blinking. Nikon was not the only giant who found themselves red-faces. A few years later, in 2015, Google received complaints about Google Photos image-recognition algorithm when users with darker skin tones were being identified as gorillas.

Bias in artistic expressions

AI-based art generation is programmed in a number of apps that let you repaint pictures in styles of the great masters to reproducing wood engravings. In an obvious example of bias, researchers found flaws in an app called “Abacus”. Young men with long hairstyles were mistaken for women in paintings by Raphael and Piero di Cosimo. Researchers who called out the bias decisively believed that the output was influenced by data analysts’ preferences and usage of Renaissance paintings of primarily white, female subjects as training data. (And if you want to explore more on AI in art, we’ve covered it here.)

Bias and Social Media Platforms

There are several examples of AI bias we see in today’s social media platforms. Data from tech platforms is used to train machine learning systems, so biases lead to machine learning models’ prejudice.

In 2019 Facebook permitted advertisers to match ads according to race, religion and gender intentionally. For example, women were displayed employment ads for nursing roles or secretarial jobs. On the other hand, men were being steered in the direction of job ads for janitors and taxi drivers. Particularly, men from minority backgrounds were shown these. This is a bias on more than one level. Since this was brought to light, Facebook doesn’t permit employers to specify gender, age or race priming in its ads anymore.

Bias Fixes

I won’t offer you a silver bullet. If I had it, I’d probably fix this problem myself. But what I would like to share is some ideas that emerged in my research, some of them are more obvious than others.

Ensure your follow the 4V’s of data. Volume & Variety — ensure you have a large enough sample size the brings with it enough variety, from a variety of sources and in a variety of formats. Volume and Variety ensure you represent your population as close to the real picture as you’re able. Velocity & Veracity — These refer to both data quality and availability. Velocity is the measure of how fast the data is coming in, whereas data veracity represents data accuracy and precision, informing you to what degree it can be trusted.

The efficacy of data should be controlled by an official authority, someone who has skin in the game. Social responsibility rests with companies as well as with individuals. Regulations must be in place to see that machine learning processes are ethically managed. For instance, internal compliance teams may need to be tasked to oversee an audit of each developed algorithm.

Ensure your data is current and timely. Training your algorithm on the reality of 70s will not help you solve the problems of today. Data should be developed with the future outcome in mind, and if it must challenge the status quo, then that needs to be given enough thought. It can be expected that some biases will creep into data that is randomly sampled. Bias is a fact of life. Nonetheless, there is a need to proactively ensure that the data used to train algorithms of tomorrow represents people equally and without prejudice.

Have a strategy to check for your biases within the team. If a team working on training the algorithm comes from a homogenous background, have different team assess your training data and outputs, have different people contribute their views to ensure your blindspots are checked.

Any AI tool that is put into production needs to be continuously monitored to ensure it is continuously bias-free, fair and representative.

In conclusion

Garbage in, garbage out

In isolation, AI is not inherently biased or evil. But AI is built by people, and people, as well as the data they use, can be implicitly or explicitly biased. Responsibility is, therefore, with the humans, not the machines.

Machine learning — a sub-area of artificial intelligence — is dependent on the objectivity, quality and quantity of training data set used to teach it, and validation data set used to validate or, more importantly, invalidate the model. Erroneous, incomplete or inadequate data will invariably lead to inaccurate predictions.

There is no doubt that the people responsible for creating these and other algorithms that unintentionally discriminated against some groups of people, were made in good faith and with good intentions. But these are just a few examples that highlight just how badly we need a regulatory body and independent experts to police the algorithm-driven future. There needs to be adequate training on bias and ethics for people responsible for designing these algorithms, to ensure that these algorithms are appropriate and minimise the harm they can cause to the society at large.

[darkmaga-returns]

According to this NPR article, “The Washington Post has been rocked by a tidal wave of cancellations from digital subscribers and a series of resignations from columnists, as the paper grapples with the fallout of owner Jeff Bezos’s decision to block an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president.

More than 200,000 people had canceled their digital subscriptions by midday Monday…the figure represents about 8% of the paper’s paid circulation of roughly 2.5 million subscribers…The number of cancellations continued to grow Monday afternoon.

Let’s Stop Right Here and Consider What We Just Read

At least 200,000 subscribers of the nation’s second-most-important newspaper threw a massive group temper tantrum because the paper’s Establishment stenographers would not endorse Kamala Harris.

If this doesn’t provide a “tell” about the political views of large swaths of the country, nothing will.

This reaction confuses me on multiple levels.

Does anyone actually think a Washington Post endorsement (or non-endorsement) will change the vote of one citizen in the country?

Doesn’t everyone already know that 99.9 percent of the staff of the Washington Post is pulling harder for Kamala than Americans pulled for the 1980 Olympic hockey team to beat the USSR?

Call me a skeptic, but I seriously doubt 8 percent of this newspaper’s subscribers – the population of a large city – instantly went to a website and hit “unsubscribe” because Jeff Bezos decided to not publish a presidential endorsement. “‘It’s a colossal number,’ former Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli told NPR.” Me: I agree with Mr. Brauchli. A colossal number of Americans are suffering from such extreme cases of Trump Derangement Syndrome that the FDA needs to issue another EUA “vaccine” to keep these people out of the ICU.

The NPR story doesn’t tell readers, but I wonder how many Trump supporters canceled their Post subscriptions because this newspaper didn’t endorse their candidate?

Out of curiosity, how many Trump supporters subscribe to the Washington Post?

The above, of course, is a rhetorical question. We all know the answer is “fewer than 10”…which prompts this question: How does a “fair and balanced” newspaper stay in business when half the population would rather eat a bug than support said newspaper?

So Little Time, So Much to Debunk…

[misfitwashere]

Friends,

I apologize for bothering you again today, but this is important. Will Lewis, the chief executive of the Washington Post, announced today that the paper would not endorse a presidential candidate this year. 

Why not? Lewis explained that the paper was “returning to its roots” when it didn’t endorse presidential candidates. 

Lewis’s explanation raises more questions than it answers. The Post has made an endorsement for president in every election since 1976, when it supported the candidacy of Jimmy Carter. 

Before the late 1970s, the Post did not usually make presidential endorsements, although it made an exception in 1952 to back Dwight D. Eisenhower. Yet it wasn’t until the 1970s — with its exposure of Richard Nixon’s illegal break-ins at the Watergate complex and subsequent cover-ups — that the Washington Post became a respected national newspaper with a reputation for holding the powerful accountable. 

Why decide not endorse now, when America faces an election with potentially enormous consequences for democracy at home and abroad — with someone on the presidential ballot arguably far worse than Nixon? 

Besides, the paper had endorsed Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016, and Joe Biden over Trump in 2020. What’s changed now? 

The only credible explanation I can think of is that the Post’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, doesn’t want to raise the ire of Donald Trump, should Trump become president — especially now that Trump has declared his intention to punish his opponents. 

Bezos’s other businesses have many federal government contracts, and his largest — Amazon — is the current target of a federal antitrust suit. 

Assuming this is the explanation, it stinks. It undermines the credibility of one of our leading newspapers. It prevents The Washington Post from exercising its responsibility to tell the public where it stands on Trump and why. 

The New York Times’s editorial board, which operates separately from the newsroom, endorsed Harris for president on Sept. 30, saying: “It is hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president of the United States than Donald Trump.” 

At least one member of the Washington Post’s opinions department, Robert Kagan, has resigned. The rest of the opinions department should do so as well. Immediately. 

We are come to a juncture in America where, as in the first Gilded Age, enormous wealth is lodged in a very few hands — hands that are now either actively supporting Trump (such as Elon Musk) or afraid to come out against him for fear he’ll wreak vengeance on them if they do. 

Trump has already seriously endangered American democracy. Those who are afraid to stand up to his bullying are only encouraging him to further assail democracy. 

Marty Baron, the recent editor of The Post called the decision “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty. Baron predicted that Trump would view it as an invitation to continue to try to intimidate Bezos and others. 

The Post’s move follows the decision by the billionaire owner of The Los Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, to block a planned presidential endorsement at that newspaper as well —resulting in the resignation of the head of the editorial board and two of its writers.

Mariel Garza, who resigned as editorials editor, said in an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review that the editorial board had planned to endorse Kamala Harris, but that Dr. Soon-Shiong informed the editorial board on Oct. 11 that The Times would not be publishing any presidential endorsement.

“I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent,” Ms. Garza said. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up.”  

Exactly. And in dangerous times, dishonest and cowardly billionaires shouldn’t be able to abuse their power by preventing honest people from standing up. 

This is how fascism takes root.

[mannorrr]

Asking Better Questions for Creative Problem Solving, Innovation and Effective Leadership with Hal Gregersen Discussion of the Topic: In this conversation, Hal Gregersen talks about how asking good questions is key to being a great leader. He explains that leaders today need to ask the right questions to deal with big changes, like digital transformation and innovation. Gregersen believes that being curious and asking thoughtful questions helps leaders solve problems and bring about new ideas. He has spent years studying how questions can make people and organisations more creative and successful. Leadership has changed over time. Today, leaders need to do more than just manage people. They have to lead big transformations, especially in the digital world. Gregersen explains that asking thoughtful questions is one of the most powerful tools leaders have. Good questions help break down old ways of thinking and lead to new ideas and ways of doing things. Gregersen also makes it clear that leaders must create a safe space where their team members feel comfortable asking questions without fear of judgment. This kind of environment encourages innovation and creativity. In addition to building a questioning culture, Gregersen believes that leadership requires adapting to the rapid technological changes happening in today’s world. He emphasizes how technology, especially artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, can help leaders ask better, more detailed questions. By combining human curiosity with the powerful data processing abilities of technology, leaders can uncover patterns and insights that might not be obvious otherwise. These insights can help them solve problems more effectively and push their organizations toward greater innovation. Gregersen uses examples of well-known business leaders like Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and Mark Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, to show how asking the right questions can lead to transformative business success. For example, Benioff asked, “What if we sold enterprise-level software like Amazon sells books on the internet?” This question led to the creation of Salesforce, which became a leader in cloud computing by challenging the traditional way software was sold. Similarly, Jeff Bezos built Amazon by constantly questioning how to improve customer service and create new opportunities. These leaders succeeded because they weren’t afraid to ask bold questions that challenged the norms in their industries. Gregersen's research shows that questions don’t just bring out new ideas, but they also help create a space where innovation thrives. He refers to questions that break down barriers and challenge assumptions as "catalytic questions." These kinds of questions drive change and lead to long-lasting impact by opening up new ways of thinking. Leaders who adopt this mindset are better equipped to lead their organizations through times of uncertainty and change. In Gregersen’s view, leadership in the modern world is less about having all the answers and more about asking the right questions to guide the organisation forward. The Researcher: Hal Gregersen is a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and co-founder of Innovator’s DNA, a group that helps companies become more innovative. He has written many books and has worked with big companies to help them ask better questions and solve tough problems. Why I Chose This Topic: I chose this topic because I see the need to understand how asking good questions can help us lead and inspire others. In my own work of helping Christian creatives, I believe that asking the right questions can help people grow and create better art. Gregersen’s ideas about curiosity and leadership can help me guide others and bring out their best work. Reference 1. Akhtar, W. (n.d.) Leadership. Available at: bridgingthegaps.ie/tag/leadership/. 2. Gregersen, H. (n.d.) Hal Gregersen. Available at: mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/directory/hal-gregersen.

[the-good-projxct]

May 30th, 2024

6.50 pm. Listening to Stormzy Firebabe. I am BORED AF. Like bored dot com. I have scrolled and scrolled. I don’t feel like reading. I don’t wanna be outside. I decided to write sooo shout out to me for choosing this. My period came this morning and the way I timed those cramps, I had drugs in my system before the uterus had a chance to rise and shine. So yaayyy! To a no cramps period. I got up around 11, chilled with Sweetie Banana and Moka wa Mwiti while they taught me wild Meru tings. Then I showered, went to buy pads at the mall, got measured by Ngina, walked to WWF (no, not wrestling but wildlife) to find out about volunteering/interning, then I walked home. The walk was so nice. I was just feeling God, the Universe, and Love. Like the trees we’re reminding me that I am them and they are me. Just like they deserve to be here, so do I. These are huge trees, likely some hundred years old. An Ancestor. And I heard them loud and clear. I also sang on my walk and just enjoyed being part of this magikal planet on this beautiful day. There are days I feel part of this world and there are days I feel out of this world. ‘Tis life innit? Sometimes when I am overcome by a lot to do or nothing to do, I ask myself what do I want? And there’s a time when that was a complex answer that would overwhelm me. Nowadays, the answer is nothing. I have everything I want. Honestly, I have all my needs met. I feel zen. I am not worried about my hierarchy of needs. Honestly, I feel like this blog/ the Gøod projxct is self-actualization. If I am in the present, the here and now, then I have everything I need and want. If I think ahead, wahala. If I think backwards, grief and sadness. So here is another reminder that I just need to be where my feet are. And that is enough. I am thriving where my feet are. Don’t you just Love that for me? I Love it for me. I am a sacred chubby baby girl living her best life in a complex volatile delusional world and that is OKAY. Hahahah this made me laugh out loud truly. I know I am not the delusional one. It’s the ones committing war crimes, choking on capitalism and colonialisms dick that are delusional. I am quite sane in the membrane. Like, I can see what is happening for what it is and where it came from. Hello Nettyboy, Biden, Bezos, Gates, Musk… you Gøod? No you ain’t. Niggas is DELUSIONAL. And tryna take us all out while they at it. I Love the Universe and I Love Karma. They cannot end the world even if they tried. And Gøod old Karma is coming for their future generations. In my tribe we have a belief in karma for four generations. So all this generational wealth them hoes is acquiring through violence will EAT their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren alive. Oooohh and we will Love to see it. As in, I hope in the afterlife I have a screen or an app where I can check on what's happening on Earth because LAWD, that tea will be spicy and hot. Lmao google tried to make me change dick and hoes? Ummm NO. All of them fuckin’ up Earth and the vibes on this planet are hoes and dicks mmkkaay. Period. Bila Shame. Musk, you is a hoe ass dick. Free Congo!!!! Anyway, at the end of the day everyone is doing the best they can with what they know. Which tells me that all them hoe ass dicks are sick, unwell, in the spiritual trenches. But money makes them look Gøod and makes them believe that they are Gøod. Like true delusion. They are sick dawg. Anyway, This month is basically over. I may or may not write tomorrow. So yeah…Happy June Loves. Don’t be a hoe ass dick. Okay. Be Gøod. Do Gøod. Believe in Gøod. Honor Gøod. Feel Gøod. Because Life is Gøod. God is Gøod. Earth is Gøod. The Universe is Gøod. You are Gøod. I am Gøod. Ase. Ase. Ase. Ase. Ase. Ase. Ase. Ase.