| Time |
Event |
| 2:31a |
Call not to allow spy software
Civil liberties activists called for governments to decide not to allow
spy software such as Pegasus.
I wish getting rid of spy software were that easy, but I don't think
it is. When programs have bugs, some people will exploit them as
security holes, and just saying "That's prohibited" won't stop it.
Indeed, gangs do this and they are probably breaking a law by doing
so, but that doesn't faze them — they break many other laws too.
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| 2:31a |
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| 2:31a |
ISDS clauses in trade treaties
Senator Warren has called for the US Trade Representative to confirm
he will oppose ISDS clauses in future trade treaties, as Biden promised.
This is the most salient requirement for making a trade treaty
acceptable; but it by itself is not sufficient. There are other ways
a treaty can give business an advantage over human beings and society,
thus making it a business-supremacy treaty. |
| 2:31a |
Sexual pressure on women in the CIA
Dozens of women who worked for the CIA have accused it of disregarding
accusations of some sort of sexual pressure on them.
It is not clear to me what the bounds of the term "sexual assault" are.
The term is so loose that it is inherently misleading. But whatever
it includes, the CIA should have handled these accusations properly. |
| 2:31a |
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| 2:31a |
Study on raising minimum wage
A study of 50 counties in California and New York found that raising
the minimum wage to $15 per hour had several good overall economic effects.
In places where the minimum wage had previously not been unusually high,
right-wing economists would predict increased unemployment, but the study
found that did not happen. |
| 12:31p |
Investigating Bolsonaro's tenure
*Brazilian thugs are
investigating Bolsonaro,
accusing him of counterfeiting
a Covid-19 vaccination certificate.*
This is bizarre, because Bolsonaro says he proudly refused to be vaccinated
and never claimed otherwise.
He visited the US on a special head-of-state visa. Maybe heads of state
are not asked to prove vaccination.
It is idiotic not to be vaccinated, unless you have some specific
medical problem which contraindicates vaccination. Please don't
believe the disinformation which cherry-picks occasional problems with
this vaccine and exaggerates their significance, while minimizing the
continued danger of catching Covid-19. |
| 12:31p |
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| 12:31p |
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| 12:31p |
Starmer's Labour betrayals
Starmer has dropped the policy commitments he made when he ran for leadership
of the Labour Party, and it seems he was
planning all along to do so.
Apparently, all Labour stands for with him in charge is winning power.
Most horribly, he has made sure that all new Labour MPs will be like him.
It's like the British equivalent of the "centrist" US Democrats,
but worse. Imagine if the Democratic Party machinery had the
official power to forbid progressive candidates from running
in a primary. That's what Labour is now.
|
| 12:31p |
Suicide sales from Canadian
Canada persecutes
people who help anyone commit suicide
— even with advice.
Limited to only incomplete and bad advice, some people may survive,
physically damaged, and compelled to return to life even worse than it
was before.
|
| 12:31p |
Dissident journalist kidnapped, now imprisoned
Two years ago, Belarus forced down an airliner crossing its territory
so as to seize dissident journalist Raman Pratasevich and his (then?
former?) girlfriend, Sofia Sapega. Now Lukashenko has tentatively
decided to keep him
in prison for 8 years for the crime of journalism.
There is no reason to suppose Lukashenko would actually release him, 8
years from now. It might do to him what Israel has done to Mordechai
Vanunu — keeping him effectively incommunicado indefinitely,
and pretending it is has a purpose other than making him suffer.
Sapega was sentenced to 6 years in prison.
|
| 12:31p |
Resilience as luck and teamwork
What we think of as
tales of individual resilience
are the tales of
those that survived danger by chance, and assume it made them stronger.
The chance sets you on a good path may result in your learning to be
good at something. But chance doesn't turn out good for everyone.
|
| 12:31p |
Chomsky on the AI news
Noam Chomsky criticizes large language models
as useless —
fundamentally, by the way they are designed — for advancing
understanding of cognition.
This is because cognition plays no part in them.
They don't try to understand anything.
Machine-learning systems can do many practical tasks well — those
tasks that don't inherently involve conceptual understanding of
anything. They can be useful, for good purposes and bad purposes. At
the same time, they can treat their users justly (if released as free
software) or unjustly (if released as
nonfree software
or
only as a "service")
But we should distinguish this from intelligence, and reserve the
term artificial intelligence for artificial systems that can understand.
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