quillette | There’s no reason to think that the definition of racism will stop
expanding any time soon. And there’s no reason to think that
progressives will ever stop demanding institutional reforms to fix
racism—up to and including attempts to reform our subconscious minds
with such things as mandatory implicit bias trainings. In a BBC feature on racism, the acclaimed poet Benjamin Zephaniah
remarked, “laws can control people’s actions, but they can’t control
people’s thoughts. As racism becomes more subtle, we need to keep
pressuring our institutions to change.”
Black political debate and action through the early 1960s
focused on concrete issues—employment, housing, wages, unionization,
discrimination in specific venues and domains—rather than an abstract
“racism.” It was only in the late 1960s and 1970s, after the legislative
victories that defeated southern apartheid and restored black
Americans’ full citizenship rights, that “racism” was advanced as the
default explanation for inequalities that appear as racial disparities.
If the early 1960s were about reaching the mountaintop, then the
modern era is about running on the Treadmill. Coates’s refrain,
“resistance must be its own reward,” has become the watchword of the
movement.13
The War on Racism, though intended to be won by those prosecuting it,
will, in practice, continue indefinitely. This is because the stated
goals of progressives, however sincerely held, are so apocalyptic, so
vague, and so total as to guarantee that they will never be met. One
often hears calls to “end white supremacy,” for instance. But what
“ending white supremacy” would look like in a country where whites are already out-earned by several dark-skinned ethnic groups (Indian-Americans top the list by a large margin) is never explained. I would not be the first to point out the parallels between progressive goals and religious eschatology. Coates, for instance, professes to be an atheist, but tweak a few details and the Rapture becomes Reparations––which he has said will lead to a “spiritual renewal” and a “revolution of the American consciousness.”14
Staying on the Racism Treadmill means denying progress and stoking
ethnic tensions. It means, as Thomas Sowell once warned, moving towards a
society in which “a new born baby enters the world supplied with
prepackaged grievances against other babies born the same day.”[15]
Worse still, it means shutting down the one conversation that stands
the greatest chance of improving outcomes for blacks: the conversation
about culture.
By contrast, getting off the Treadmill means recognizing that group
outcomes will differ even in the absence of systemic bias; it means
treating people as individuals rather than as members of a collective;
it means restoring the naive conception of equal treatment over the
skin-color morality of the far Left; and it means rejecting calls to
burn this or that system to the ground in order to combat forms of
racial oppression that grow ever more abstract by the day. At bottom, it
means acknowledging the fact that racism has declined precipitously,
and perhaps even being grateful that it has.
Mr. Rodger, who killed six people
in Isla Vista, Calif., in 2014, recorded YouTube videos raging against
“spoiled, stuck-up” women he called “sluts” who sexually rejected him.
And before Mr. Rodger, there was George Sodini, who killed three women
in a Pennsylvania gym in 2009. He left behind an online diary complaining that women ignored him and that he hadn’t had sex in years.
Despite
a great deal of evidence that connects the dots between these mass
killers and radical misogynist groups, we still largely refer to the
attackers as “lone wolves” — a mistake that ignores the preventable way
these men’s fear and anger are deliberately cultivated and fed online.
Here’s
the term we should all use instead: misogynist terrorism. Until we
grapple with the disdain for women that drives these mass murderers, and
the way that the killers are increasingly radicalized on the internet,
there will be no stopping future tragedies.
Over
the past decade, anti-women communities on the internet — ranging from
“men’s rights” forums and incels to “pickup artists” — have grown
exponentially. While these movements differ in small ways, what they
have in common is an organized hatred of women; the animus is so
pronounced that the hate-watch group Southern Poverty Law Center tracks their actions.
The
other dangerous idea that connects these men is their shared belief
that women — good-looking women, in particular — owe them sexual
attention. The incel community that Mr. Minassian paid homage to, for
example, was banned from Reddit last year because, among other issues, some adherents advocated rape as a means to end their celibacy.
theatlantic | A strange story about MSNBC host Joy
Reid has been unfolding for a week. It began when a Twitter user with
about 1,000 followers, @Jamie_Maz, dug up what appeared to be homophobic posts on Reid’s defunct blog, the Reid Report. They were similar in nature to posts that Reid apologized for as “insensitive” back in December, after @Jamie_Maz brought those to light.
The
new round of posts contain a lot of cliche gay jokes about Charlie
Crist and others, concerns that “adult gay men tend to be attracted to
very young, post-pubescent types, bringing them ‘into the lifestyle,’”
and commentary like “part of the intrinsic nature of ‘straightness’ is
that the idea of homosexual sex is ... well ... gross ... even if you
think that gay people are perfectly lovely individuals.”
The
triumph of the gay-rights movement has been so complete and fast that
it’s easy to forget that 10 years ago—in the same election that swept
Barack Obama to the White House—California voters passed a state constitutional amendment
banning same-sex marriage. Attitudes changed, the moral arc bent, and
now, a lot fewer people disparage gay people like this than did in 2006.
A liberal talk-show host would and should be embarrassed and ashamed by
these posts popping up, but Reid apologized once, and could have done
so again.
Instead, Reid released a statement to Mediaite
saying that she’d been hacked and was not responsible for the posts.
“In December I learned that an unknown, external party accessed and
manipulated material from my now-defunct blog, The Reid Report, to
include offensive and hateful references that are fabricated and run
counter to my personal beliefs and ideology,” Reid said.
The posts
had been dug up on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which
maintains copies of many pages on the web. When Reid said she’d been
hacked, many jumped to the conclusion that it was the Wayback Machine
that had been hacked. On its blog, the Internet Archive said that Reid’s
lawyers had contacted them about a possible hack, but that they had no
indication that one had occurred.
“This past December, Reid’s
lawyers contacted us, asking to have archives of the blog
(blog.reidreport.com) taken down, stating that ‘fraudulent’ posts were
‘inserted into legitimate content’ in our archives of the blog,” they
wrote. “Her attorneys stated that they didn’t know if the alleged
insertion happened on the original site or with our archives (the point
at which the manipulation is to have occurred, according to Reid, is
still unclear to us).”
On review, the Internet Archive “found nothing to indicate tampering or hacking of the Wayback Machine versions.”
Aghdam, a 39-year-old Southern California resident,
worked for her father’s electrical company and at one time operated a
business called Peace Thunder, NBC News reports. She was listed on Facebook as an artist, NBC adds.
Aghdam, who was found dead by law enforcement
officials Tuesday, wore glasses and a scarf and carried a “big huge
pistol,” according to a YouTube employee who witnessed the incident from
a second-floor window.
San Bruno police said they found Aghdam, who died of
what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound, at 12:53 p.m. in a
courtyard area inside the YouTube complex.
Little is known about her motive, according to law enforcement officials. San Bruno police said there is no evidence that the shooter was previously acquainted with any of the victims.
Aghdam was an animal rights activist, according to
the Associated Press, who participated in a 2009 protest with the People
for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in Oceanside, Calif.
She was also a prolific YouTube user, posting videos
on a range of topics from multiple accounts, according to a report by
NBC’s Bay Area Investigative Unit. In a video posted in January, Aghdam
alleged that the company “discriminated and filtered” her videos to
reduce their number of views; she also published rants attacking the
company on her personal website. A photo posted on her Facebook page
last February also shows her standing on a street corner with a sign
that reads “YouTube Dictatorship” and “Hidden policy: Promote stupidity
discrimination, suppression of truth,” NBC News reports.
Aghdam’s father, Ismail Aghdam, said that he told police
earlier this week that Nasim was “angry” at YouTube and “hated” the
company. Aghdam had reported his daughter missing on Monday, and early
Tuesday morning was informed that she had been found sleeping in her car
in Mountain View, about an hour from YouTube’s San Bruno headquarters.
Ismail said he warned the police that she might be headed toward
YouTube.
WaPo | The scenario in “Ready Player One” seems extreme,
but it’s not so different from the fundamental dynamics at work between
fans and corporations in the entertainment industry today. Wade and his
friends, including Aech (Lena Waithe), Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), Sho
(Philip Zhao) and Daito (Win Morisaki), don’t love the Oasis not because
it represents some ideal of independent artistry — in fact, it’s
flooded with licensed versions of video game, superhero and anime
characters. They love it because the game gives them the opportunity to
live inside their fantasies, whether that means dressing in Buckaroo
Banzai’s suit to go to a club or wandering around the Overlook Hotel
from “The Shining.” And Sorrento and his fellow IOI honchos differ from
contemporary entertainment executives mostly in that they aren’t very
good at disguising their eagerness to monetize fans’ passions.
Though
the conflict between Wade and Sorrento is meant to seem epic, there’s
something strangely small-scale about the core of their disagreement. As
BuzzFeed critic Alison Willmore put it on Twitter,
“Ready Player One” is “a super dark story about how the world is a
disaster but all its main character cares about is keeping ads out of
his [massively multiplayer online role-playing game].” It’s as if “Ready
Player One” were an epic movie about whether it’s okay for the
streaming service Hulu to charge a few extra dollars a month to let
viewers skip the 30-second spots that air a few times per episode.
While
Cline’s novel and Spielberg’s adaptation both suggest that it’s
probably good for people to spend some time outside of the Oasis
developing their real-world relationships, neither is capable of
grappling with the idea that, whoever owns it, preserving the Oasis
means preserving the status quo.
If IOI wins
control of the environment, spending time there may be more expensive
and irritating, given the ad placements IOI hopes to sell. If Wade and
his diverse group of friends win control of the Oasis, they intend to
preserve it as a purer experience and run it without the abuses
routinely practiced by IOI, including encouraging people to rack up debt
they can’t pay off, purchasing those debts and moving the debtors into
IOI labor camps.
But as bad as debt peonage is,
the biggest problem with the world of “Ready Player One” isn’t that IOI
is press-ganging people into spending their time in the Oasis. It’s that
reality is such a hopeless mess that everyone would rather escape it.
Closing the Oasis for a couple of days to force people to spend time
with their actual friends and family doesn’t actually make a country
defined by savage economic inequality, environmental degradation and
social unrest a more appealing place to live. If Wade and his friends
make the Oasis a more appealing place to spend time, saving it from
becoming an ad-cluttered wasteland, they may make escape even more
enticing, sapping energy from making the world habitable and enjoyable
again. Tweaking the exact organic composition of a drug doesn’t make it
something other than a narcotic.
(It’s
also true that “Ready Player One” quietly rebukes the idea that giving
women and people of color the opportunity to tell their own stories
would automatically result in very different stories getting told.
Aech’s race and gender don’t mean that she plays as a version of Audre
Lorde; rather, her avatar is a formidable, orc-like brawler and
engineer, and Wade spends much of the movie assuming she’s a man.
Art3mis isn’t just a woman; her avatar is the Oasis’s version of a Cool
Girl, an expert gamer who looks equally good in leather motorcycle gear
or a ballgown, drives a motorcycle and is lethal with a gun.)
On
a smaller scale, this dynamic is also at play in conversations about
the contemporary American entertainment industry. None of this is to say
that fighting to get power and opportunities in Hollywood for women,
people of color, people with disabilities and members of other
underrepresented communities is a worthless task. Money is valuable.
Chances to decide who gets employed on a project are valuable. The
ability to tell your story is valuable. But it’s possible to acknowledge
all of this and to recognize that putting Kathleen Kennedy in charge of
Lucasfilm or tapping Ava DuVernay to direct a $100 million adaptation
of “A Wrinkle in Time” is proof that the corporate entertainment
industry is very good at adapting just enough to endure in its present
form. Developments such as these are preemptive reforms made by savvy
companies aimed at heading off a revolt, not proof that some revolution
is underway in Hollywood, much less the wider world.
CounterPunch | Whereas the fictional rulers of Wakanda preserve their wealth by
pretending to be poor, using advanced to technology to mask their vast
fortune, the real Studio City tycoons behind the film have conjured
their own bit of subterfuge in order to receive corporate handouts.
Hence the main reason why the principal shooting for Black Panther took
place in Atlanta, Georgia: tax breaks. Over the last decade, in fact,
Georgia has become known to producers as the Hollywood of the South
thanks to the state government doling out more than $1 billion in tax
credits to industry behemoths like Disney and Sony. In return Georgia
has become the leading runaway-production site for Hollywood films,
despite few if any economic benefits.
Of course proponents say that hundreds of millions given to Hollywood
studios will eventually trickle down to the population, but there’s no
way of knowing since the state hasn’t developed a mechanism for
evaluating its impact. Furthermore, because these incentives typically
go to productions that shoot on-location, they require little in the
way of long-term investment and produce mostly temporary employment.
Even when they do
beget jobs, they’re not great: after ten years of tax subsidies, for
example, Georgia has added only 4,209 film jobs, just under 2 percent of
the industry total, and those jobs don’t pay well: on average
film-industry workers in Georgia are the lowest waged.
This is why Vicki Mayer and Tanya Goldman (following Thomas Guback) call such movie production incentives “welfare for the wealthy:”
because they function “like every other bloated financial system in the
U.S., moving capital between elites while workers live with exaggerated
job insecurity, declining market value, and uncertain futures that make
up the rest of the workforce.”
Of course revenue lost from tax credits means lower government
spending in other areas like education. And indeed since 2003, Georgia
has ranked among the nation’s austerity leaders in cuts to public school
funding. As of the 2018 state budget plan, the state’s schools will
have been slashed by a cumulative total of $9.2 billion. Those cuts in turn play out in places like Atlanta, a city that currently ranks first in the US for income inequality, and where 80 percent of black school students live in areas of high poverty and 75 percent
qualify for meal assistance. Not coincidentally, it’s also a place
where local rap stars like T.I.—“The King of the South”—have teamed up
with corporate sponsors like Walmart to make sure those same kids who
can’t eat still get to go see Black Panther.
Is it any wonder, then, why this city, located in the same state
which has lost millions in tax revenues to one the most profitable
industries in the US, is now obliged to its pop culture “royalty” for
taking its kids to the movies?
Certainly this scenario is not out of step with a blockbuster about
monarchical superheroes doing good under the specious cloak of poverty.
Nor is it out of step with a Hollywood system that delivers such
high-priced spectacles on the basis of an overall political economy of
regressive wealth redistribution, neoliberal governance and precarious
labor.
That a billion dollar industry might capitalize on such conditions and still be considered a champion
of black empowerment is telling. Indeed it’s agreeable with a
hegemonic model of identitarian wokeness that considers films about
mega-rich superheroes to be progressive insofar as those superheroes
(and the stars that play them) aren’t all white and male. The fact that
those same heroes emerge at a time when intensifying economic
inequality is acutely affecting black communities is enough to recall
Theodor Adorno’s dictum about the false promises
of the Culture Industry: wherein “the idea of ‘exploiting’ the given
technical possibilities, of fully utilizing the capacities for aesthetic
mass consumption, is part of an economic system which refuses to
utilize those same capacities when it is a question of abolishing
hunger.”
Obviously, that’s not the way the film’s promoters would have it. For
them, Black Panther affords “positive images” that take the form of
African nobility—something most welcome at time of Trump and other
noxious emitters of anti-black bigotry. But to classify such images as racial uplift
is to confuse the symbolic value of highborn black superheroes with the
ostensible communities they represent. Indeed it clouds the way we
might think about the inequalities that prevent such communities from
seeing the film in the first place. As Joseph told
the Wall Street Journal in the successful wake of
#BlackPantherChallenge: “I understand that there are other struggles
that these children have, whether housing, food or education. [But] it’s
not just any movie. It’s a symbol that you can transcend in this
turbulent era.” By this logic, which assumes
“representation and inclusion are essential to creating dreams for
yourself,” the main thing poor black kids need is inspiration, not
money.
Guardian | RuPaul likes to speak in deeply heartfelt but somewhat opaque
rhetorical flourishes, so I ask if he means that Drag Race has a
political message about humanity.
“Yes! It doesn’t have a political agenda in terms of policies in
Washington. But it has a position on identity, which is really the most
political you can get. It has politics at its core, because it deals
with: how do you see yourself on this planet? That’s highly political.
It’s about recognising that you are God dressing up in humanity, and you
could do whatever you want. That’s what us little boys who were
maligned and who were ostracised figured out. It’s a totem, a constant
touchstone to say, ‘Don’t take any of this shit seriously.’ It’s a big
f-you. So the idea of sticking to one identity – it’s like I don’t care,
I’m a shapeshifter, I’m going to fly around and use all the colours, and not brand myself with just one colour.”
Pinning him down on precisely what all of this means can be tricky,
in part I think because he doesn’t want to offend anyone by explicitly
acknowledging the contradiction between his playfully elastic
sensibility and the militant earnestness of the transgender movement.
The two couldn’t be further apart, I suggest.
“Ye-es, that’s always been the dichotomy of the trans movement versus
the drag movement, you know,” he agrees carefully. “I liken it to
having a currency of money, say English pounds as opposed to American
dollars. I think identities are like value systems or currencies;
there’s not just one. Understand the value of different currencies, and
what you could do with them. That’s the place you want to be.” But to a
transgender woman it’s critically important that the world recognises
her fixed identity as a female. RuPaul nods uneasily. “That’s right,
that’s right.”
What I can’t understand is how transgender women can enter a drag
contest. Last year RuPaul’s Drag Race was widely acclaimed for featuring
its first openly transgender contestant, called Peppermint – but if
transgender women must be identified as female, how can they also be
“men dressing up as women”?
“Well, I don’t like to call drag ‘wearing women’s clothes’. If you
look around this room,” and he gestures around the hotel lobby, “she’s
wearing a shirt with jeans, that one’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt,
right? So women don’t really dress like us. We are wearing clothes that
are hyperfeminine, that represent our culture’s synthetic idea of
femininity.”
In the subculture of drag you do occasionally find what are known as
“bio queens” – biological women who mimic the exaggerated femininity of
drag. Would RuPaul allow a biological woman to compete on the show? He
hesitates. “Drag loses its sense of danger and its sense of irony once
it’s not men doing it, because at its core it’s a social statement and a
big f-you to male-dominated culture. So for men to do it, it’s really
punk rock, because it’s a real rejection of masculinity.”
So how can a transgender woman be a drag queen? “Mmmm. It’s an
interesting area. Peppermint didn’t get breast implants until after she
left our show; she was identifying as a woman, but she hadn’t really
transitioned.” Would he accept a contestant who had? He hesitates again.
“Probably not. You can identify as a woman and say you’re
transitioning, but it changes once you start changing your body. It
takes on a different thing; it changes the whole concept of what we’re
doing. We’ve had some girls who’ve had some injections in the face and
maybe a little bit in the butt here and there, but they haven’t
transitioned.”
There’s something very touching about RuPaul’s concern to stay
abreast of subcultural developments and find a way to embrace even those
he finds confronting. “There are certain words,” for example, “that the
kids would use, that I’d be like, ‘Wait a minute, hold up now.’ But
I’ve had to accept it because I understand where it comes from.” Such
as? “Well, one of the things that the kids do now is they’ll say,
referring to another drag queen, ‘Oh that bitch is cunt, she is pure
cunt’, which means she is serving realness,” by which he means
presenting herself as realistic or honest. “They say it knowing it’s
shocking, knowing it’s taboo, and it’s the same way that black people
use the N-word.”
NewYorker | The sixty-eight-year-old style legend Lana Turner doesn’t own a cell
phone. If you wish to reach her at her home, in Hamilton Heights, you
must call in the morning, when she is near her landline. For the rest of
the day she is out and about, swanning around town in one of the five
hundred vintage hats that she keeps in neatly stacked towers, filling
her foyer and library.
It was when Turner was out, moving through the city, that the
photographer Dario Calmese first saw her—they were both at church, on a
Sunday. Calmese, whose father was a pastor, was immediately drawn to
Turner’s radiant self-presentation, spotting her bright organza gown and
jaunty felted chapeau across the pews of Abyssinian Baptist. At the
time, Calmese was a graduate student at the School of Visual Arts and
thought he might ask to photograph Turner’s hats for a class project.
Instead, once the two met inside her brownstone, which is a living
museum to her sartorial collection—she keeps her gowns and gloves
encoffined in velvety tissue paper, alongside notes to herself about
where she was, and who she was, when she procured each item—Calmese knew
immediately that it was Turner who should be his main subject. It was
only when she stepped into a strapless, pleated silk Mignon dress or a
pastel-pink suit with black velvet buttons by Cosi Belle that the items
in her wardrobe began to sing and reveal their stories.
Turner, who was born at Women’s Hospital, on West 110th Street, never
formally worked in fashion, but said in one interview that she learned
to dress by taking after her parents, who “worked as a chauffeur and a
chambermaid, but by evening they would put on those formal clothes,
gowns, and gloves, and, like so many other people in Harlem, would go
out and socialize and define themselves by who they really were.” By
day, Turner worked in real estate and in the art world, where she
defined herself by her ornate attire, never leaving her apartment
without a statement toque. People took notice—she was a favorite muse of
the late street-fashion photographer Bill Cunningham, and the chef Marcus Samuelsson put several of Turner’s hats on display at his Harlem
restaurant Red Rooster, in 2016.
As Calmese began to style Turner for these photographs, he realized that
they were collaboratively creating a work about “Sunday presentation,”
or about the ways in which churchgoers—particularly black women
churchgoers—consistently infuse glamour and imagination into the realm
of faith. As Andre Leon Talley, the editor-at-large for Vogue, writes
in the catalogue that accompanies an exhibition of Calmese’s photos this
month, at the Projects + Gallery, in St. Louis, Calmese’s photos capture
how the black woman “who intersects her faith, her religion, and her
personal style” is “reborn every single Sunday through the rituals and
universal codes of deportment, carriage, and dress.”
WaPo | The Justice Department’s special counsel announced the indictment
Friday of a notorious Russian troll farm — charging 13 individuals with
an audacious scheme to criminally interfere with the 2016 U.S.
presidential election.
The Internet Research Agency, based in St. Petersburg, Russia, was named in the indictment as
the hub of a massive effort to trick Americans into following
Russian-fed propaganda — a stunning accusation of criminal conspiracy
reaching halfway around the world.
Deputy Attorney General Rod J.
Rosenstein said the indictment is “a reminder that people are not
always who they appear on the Internet. The indictment alleges that the
Russian conspirators want to promote social discord in the United States
and undermine public confidence in democracy. We must not allow them to
to succeed.”
Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who is
leading the probe into Russian interference in the U.S. election, did
not attend the press briefing about the indictment, but the 37 pages of
charges laid out an ambitious effort in late 2016 to push U.S. voters
toward then-candidate Donald Trump and away from Democrat Hillary
Clinton.
Prosecutors
said the group kept a list of real Americans who their employees had
contacted using false personas and had asked to assist the effort. The
list, which numbered over 100 people by late August 2016, included the
U.S. citizen's contact information, a summary of each person's political
views and the activities the Russians had asked them to undertake.
FoxNews | Steele was a no-show Monday for a long-requested deposition in
London, Fox News has learned. The news comes as Senate Judiciary
Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Lindsey Graham,
R-S.C., have announced a criminal referral on Steele.
Evan Fray-Witzer, a Boston-based attorney representing
Russian tech tycoon Aleksej Gubarev in multi-million dollar civil
litigation, described Monday's U.K. court actions to Fox News. “My
understanding is that Mr. Steele’s lawyers spent a good deal of time
arguing why they thought he (Steele) should not be required to sit for a
deposition and that ultimately the court took the entire matter under
advisement.”
Gubarev is suing the British-based Steele’s company
Orbis Business Intelligence because the dossier claimed Gubarev's
companies, including XBT Holdings and Webzilla, used “botnets and port
traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs and steal data.”
Fray-Witzer said, “Certainly with respect to Mr. Gubarev, Webzilla
and XBT there has never been a single scrap of evidence about them in
the dossier.”
Congressional testimony and ongoing Fox News reporting revealed
that Steele and Orbis Business Intelligence were paid $168,000 by
Fusion GPS’ Glenn Simpson to write and promote the dossier among select
journalists when it was opposition research funded in part by the
Democratic National Committee. As Fox News has reported based upon
review of British court records, Steele promoted and met with five media
outlets repeatedly between the spring and fall of 2016. At the same
time, Steele also was meeting with the FBI in Rome, according to
reports.
Meanwhile, records obtained and reviewed by Fox News
from related civil ligitation in Florida reveal that Steele maintains
that even showing up for a deposition would “implicate state secrets in
London.”
Fray-Witzer stressed in that hearing that the British
government “has not asserted” Steele’s claims. The attorney has said
Steele “is asserting he can’t speak about things. We have pointed out
that he’s spoken to anyone who is willing to listen, every journalist,
and the FBI.”
philosophyofmetrics | The cryptocurrency craze is built upon the blockchain technology.
Blockchain was created in mystery, with the assumed inventor
disappearing into obscurity. Some have made the case that blockchain was
in fact created by AI for the purpose of building a de-centralized AI
economy. That could be the case, but regardless, the technology is here
to stay, and will infiltrate and transform all aspects of human
existence and interaction.
The best way I’ve found to understand blockchain is to compare it to
the human brain. The brain has synapses which serve the function of
allowing neurons to transfer electrical and chemical signals to other
neurons. Like the neurons in the human brain, the blockchain technology
has nodes which serve the same purpose of transferring information and
data. Once the data exists on the blockchain, it can never be destroyed
or altered. There will always be an accurate record of all transactions.
This is being likened to an artificial intelligence hive mind which
will eventually connect everything in the world, including SMART
appliances, SMART watches, SMART cities, and eventually SMART human
beings. But I would like to take it a step further and suggest that
blockchain technology, and Ethereum specifically, is more comparable to
the whole human body and DNA in particular. The complex interactions and
transactions which take place within the body and our DNA are being
replicated on the blockchain and Ethereum platforms.
This has explosive repercussions on our understanding and acceptance
of the de-centralized world which is now emerging in our midst. One of
the big esoteric questions we’ve always asked ourselves regarding our
individual material, spiritual, and mental fragmentation, was how do we
complete a process of de-fragmentation without surrendering to a
material centralization which would dominate the totality of our lives?
We can see with blockchain and Ethereum, that a massive
de-centralization, or de-fragmentation, of processing and functionality,
will allow each individual component to maintain individuality, while
the art of de-fragmenting our human inefficiencies can proceed without
corrupting into ideological disasters, such as Communism and other
externalizations of human weakness.
The recent explosion in the value of Bitcoin is indicative of the
growing interest in the blockchain technology. But in some regards
Bitcoin is already obsolete. There are some fundamental differences
between Bitcoin and Ethereum. Here is a list of just seven which have
been complied by Cryptocompare.com:
In Ethereum the block time is set to 14 to 15 seconds compared
to Bitcoins 10 minutes. This allows for faster transaction times.
Ethereum does this by using the Ghost protocol.
Ethereum has a slightly different economic model than Bitcoin –
Bitcoin block rewards halve every 4 years whilst Ethereum releases the
same amount of Ether each year ad infinitum.
Ethereum has a different method for costing transactions
depending on their computational complexity, bandwidth use and storage
needs. Bitcoin transactions compete equally with each other. This is
called Gas in Ethereum and is limited per block whilst in Bitcoin, it is
limited by the block size.
Ethereum has its own Turing complete internal code… a
Turing-complete code means that given enough computing power and enough
time… anything can be calculated. With Bitcoin, there is not this form
of flexibility.
Ethereum was crowd funded whilst Bitcoin was released and early
miners own most of the coins that will ever be mined. With Ethereum 50%
of the coins will be owned by miners in year five.
Ethereum discourages centralised pool mining through its Ghost
protocol rewarding stale blocks. There is no advantage to being in a
pool in terms of block propagation.
Ethereum uses a memory hard hashing algorithm called Ethash that
mitigates against the use of ASICS and encourages decentralised mining
by individuals using their GPU’s.
The information in that list represents the core areas in which our
world is transforming. This cannot be stopped. Though Bitcoin may
explode even higher, and some nations and institutions may attempt to
regulate and slow the onset of the blockchain and Ethereum, the genie is
now out of the lamp and nothing can put it back. Blockchain is not just
for cryptocurrency and economics. It will build the foundation and
framework of everything in the world of tomorrow.
BostonGlobe | ‘‘In my 45 years in journalism, I have prided myself on being an
advocate for the careers of the women with whom I have worked,’’ Rose
said in a statement provided to The Post. ‘‘Nevertheless, in the past
few days, claims have been made about my behavior toward some former
female colleagues.
‘‘It is essential that these women know I hear
them and that I deeply apologize for my inappropriate behavior. I am
greatly embarrassed. I have behaved insensitively at times, and I accept
responsibility for that, though I do not believe that all of these
allegations are accurate. I always felt that I was pursuing shared
feelings, even though I now realize I was mistaken.
‘‘I have
learned a great deal as a result of these events, and I hope others will
too. All of us, including me, are coming to a newer and deeper
recognition of the pain caused by conduct in the past, and have come to a
profound new respect for women and their lives.’’
Most of the women said Rose alternated between fury and flattery in
his interactions with them. Five described Rose putting his hand on
their legs, sometimes their upper thigh, in what they perceived as a
test to gauge their reactions. Two said that while they were working for
Rose at his residences or were traveling with him on business, he
emerged from the shower and walked naked in front of them. One said he
groped her buttocks at a staff party.
Reah Bravo was an intern
and then associate producer for Rose’s PBS show beginning in 2007. In
interviews, she described unwanted sexual advances while working for
Rose at his private waterfront estate in Bellport, New York, and while
traveling with him in cars, in a hotel suite and on a private plane.
‘‘It
has taken 10 years and a fierce moment of cultural reckoning for me to
understand these moments for what they were,’’ she told The Post. ‘‘He
was a sexual predator, and I was his victim.’’
rawstory | The ‘Atlas Shrugged’ author made selfishness heroic and caring about others weakness.
Ayn Rand’s “philosophy” is nearly perfect in its
immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous
and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society….To
justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only
immoral, but evil.— Gore Vidal, 1961
Only rarely in U.S. history do writers transform us to become a more
caring or less caring nation. In the 1850s, Harriet Beecher Stowe
(1811-1896) was a strong force in making the United States a more humane
nation, one that would abolish slavery of African Americans. A century
later, Ayn Rand (1905-1982) helped make the United States into one of
the most uncaring nations in the industrialized world, a neo-Dickensian
society where healthcare is only for those who can afford it, and where
young people are coerced into huge student-loan debt that cannot be
discharged in bankruptcy.
Rand’s impact has been widespread and deep. At the iceberg’s visible
tip is the influence she’s had over major political figures who have
shaped American society. In the 1950s, Ayn Rand read aloud drafts of
what was later to become Atlas Shrugged to her “Collective,”
Rand’s ironic nickname for her inner circle of young individualists,
which included Alan Greenspan, who would serve as chairman of the
Federal Reserve Board from 1987 to 2006.
In 1966, Ronald Reagan wrote in a personal letter, “Am an admirer of
Ayn Rand.” Today, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) credits Rand for inspiring him
to go into politics, and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) calls Atlas Shrugged
his “foundation book.” Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) says Ayn Rand had a major
influence on him, and his son Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is an even bigger
fan. A short list of other Rand fans includes Supreme Court Justice
Clarence Thomas; Christopher Cox, chairman of the Security and Exchange
Commission in George W. Bush’s second administration; and former South
Carolina governor Mark Sanford.
But Rand’s impact on U.S. society and culture goes even deeper.
radiolab | We begin with a love story--from a man who unwittingly fell in love with
a chatbot on an online dating site. Then, we encounter a robot
therapist whose inventor became so unnerved by its success that he
pulled the plug. And we talk to the man who coded Cleverbot, a software
program that learns from every new line of conversation it
receives...and that's chatting with more than 3 million humans each
month. Then, five intrepid kids help us test a hypothesis about a toy
designed to push our buttons, and play on our human empathy. And we meet
a robot built to be so sentient that its creators hope it will one day
have a consciousness, and a life, all its own.
thefederalist | I have to admit, I was surprised to read this particular rant by Paul Krugman, the Nobel-winning economist and columnist for the New York Times (he won the Nobel for his work on economics, not his writing). Having read a New York Magazine piece
that theorizes that some state election machines may have been
“hacked,” thereby costing Clinton the election, Krugman declared:
[N]ow
that it’s out there, I’d say that an independent investigation is
called for…Without an investigation, the suspicion of a hacked election
will never go away.
Really: “never?” Well. Krugman quickly backed off after Nate Cohn challenged this thesis (so much for “never”), but a number of hours later he shared a Vox piece: “The election probably wasn’t hacked. But Clinton should request recounts just in case.” Just in case!
It
might be fair to say that Trump’s election kind of broke the brains of
many people both left, right and center: nobody expected it and a great
many people really didn’t want it to happen. But the Left seems to be
taking it the hardest, and this is perfectly exemplified by Paul
Krugman, a genuinely brilliant fellow who has started to sound like a
tinfoil-hat-wearing neighborhood crank.
Just so
we’re clear, the “suspicion of a hacked election” that Krugman latched
onto—the one that “will never go away”—was spelled out this way:
While it’s important to note [the Center for Computer Security and Society] has not found proof of hacking or manipulation, they
are arguing to the campaign that the suspicious pattern merits an
independent review — especially in light of the fact that the Obama
White House has accused the Russian government of hacking the Democratic
National Committee.
Yes, it is
surely “important to note” that there has been no “proof of hacking or
manipulation.” But that doesn’t go far enough by half: there isn’t even
any evidence of such, except for some voting patterns that, as Nate Cohn points out, vanish when you control for certain variables. Gabriel Sherman mixes up the cause and effect: proof is demonstrated after an investigation, the latter of which is undertaken only on the basis of strong-enough evidence—which doesn’t exist here (unless you’re an aggrieved liberal pundit, I guess).
powerlineblog | This email blast comes from the Office of Multicultural Affairs at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. This is not a joke:
From: Otero, Elsie F
Date: Wed, Nov 9, 2016 at 10:49 AM
Subject: Post Election Support
Dear Students,
We at the Multicultural Affairs Office hope this email reaches you and you are doing ok. We know many of you stayed up waiting to hear of the election results. These are unprecedented times. The nation as well as our community is reacting in many different ways. We are reaching out to each of you because we know that this was an intense election and we are already hearing a number of reactions, feelings and emotions. This is a critical time to make sure that you, your friends, classmates, neighbors are doing ok and seeking the appropriate support especially if they need a place to process or work through what they’re feeling.
You may hear or notice reactions both immediate and in the coming weeks, some anticipated and many that may be difficult to articulate or be shared. While it may take some time to fully take in all the recent events, please also know that the OMA office is here for you. Our UMass Lowell community is here for you. Do not hesitate at all to come in or ask for support.
Today there is a Post-election self-care session from 12-4pm in Moloney. The event will include cookies, mandalas, stress reduction techniques and mindfulness activities. Counseling and Health Services will also be available. We have sent out messages through our Social Media sites as well as encouraging students to drop in all week. Above all, take good care and know that there is strength in our community that you can lean on.
Kind regards,
Office of Multicultural Affairs Staff
Leslie Wong, Director
Elsie Otero, Associate Director
Francine Coston, Associate Director
Allyson Lynch, Coordinator
Michelle, Zohlman, Graduate Fellow
Elsie Otero
Associate Director, Office of Multicultural Affairs
University of Massachusetts Lowell
220 Pawtucket Street, Suite 366
Lowell, MA 01845
socialethology | There is a hypothesis
according to which the lack of accessible women for sexual relationships
and marriage in Moslem polygamous societies would be one of the causes
of the spread of suicidal terrorism’s phenomenon in our times.
A lot of young men who have an insufficiently high status to get women
chose the path of suicidal terrorism, because they have the conviction
that, after their death, according to the Quran, they would get into
Heaven, where they would enjoy the company of 72 virgins. Given the fact
that a lot of men are practically excluded from the reproductive
process, even a vague promise regarding the access to women, as that
from the Islamic precepts is, is pretty persuasive.
Our brains are designed to work after the same principles as they were
100.000 years ago, when there were only real things; today, when we have
to face abstract or artificial things, our brains keep perceiving them
as being real and touchable. This is why the abstract promise of the
life to come is perceived as being realistic and those 72 virgins are
seen as an authentic war trophy that is offered to the bravest martyrs
[ibid., p. 12].
It is curios the fact that the terrorist organization Al Qaeda has had
the greatest support in the most polygamous countries: Afganistan,
Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, but not in Turkey, where polygamy is forbidden
since 1920. It is considered that one way to diminish the support for
terrorism in those countries is to emancipate the women and to gradually
liquidate polygamy, in order to reduce the number of men who are
excluded from the reproductive process [4].
The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, made once an eccentric comment, is
his unique way, as regarding the factors that motivate young men to
become terrorists. Referring to the fighters for the Islamic State
(ISIS), Johnson said that, if one were to study carefully the
psychological profile of jihadis (presented in a report from British
secret service MI5), one would notice that they are obsessed with
pornography.
Johnson said: “If you look at all the psychological profiling about
bombers, they typically will look at porn. They are literally wankers.
Severe onanists”. He continued: “They are just young men in desperate
need of self-esteem who do not have a particular mission in life, who
feel that they are losers and this thing makes them feel strong – like
winners.” [5].
In general, the role of sexual frustration in the genesis of terrorist
behavior is intensely analyzed in the writings of evolutionary
psychology and they will produce a change of perspective in assessing
the phenomenon of terrorism [Thayer, Hudson, 2010; Caluya, 2013].
HuffPo | Perhaps Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) thought he had been too subtle in expressing his views on black and Hispanic people in the past. How else to explain what he said in a Friday press conference while discussing a threatening, expletive-filled voicemail that he’d left for a state legislator?
LePagewas widely criticizedearlier this year for claiming men with names like “Smoothie, D-Money and Shifty” were coming into his state to deal drugs. Earlier this week, he said he keeps a binder with mugshots of all the drug dealers arrested in Maine, and he claimed that 90 percent of the people in that binder were black or Hispanic.
Note that95 percentof Maine residents are white, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
On Friday, LePage first denied that Maine police officers were racially profiling people ― an obvious concern if they really are arresting almost exclusively people of color for drug crimes.
Then the governor suggested that people of color in Maine were “the enemy.”
PressHerald | LePage later invited a Portland Press Herald reporter and a two-person television crew from WMTW to the Blaine House, where during a 30-minute interview the governor described his anger with Gattine and others, told them he had left the phone message and said he wished he and the lawmaker could engage in an armed duel to settle the matter.
“When a snot-nosed little guy from Westbrook calls me a racist, now I’d like him to come up here because, tell you right now, I wish it were 1825,” LePage said. “And we would have a duel, that’s how angry I am, and I would not put my gun in the air, I guarantee you, I would not be (Alexander) Hamilton. I would point it right between his eyes, because he is a snot-nosed little runt and he has not done a damn thing since he’s been in this Legislature to help move the state forward.”
Gattine is the House chair of the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee, which has opposed some of LePage’s welfare, drug enforcement and other reforms. He said the governor’s phone message was uncalled for.
A Foundation of Joy
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Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
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4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
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Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
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Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...