Richard Stallman's Political Notes' Journal
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Wednesday, August 7th, 2024
| Time |
Event |
| 2:52a |
| | 2:52a |
Aqsa Mosque Imam arrested, ISR
*Israel arrests Aqsa Mosque Imam Ekrema Sabri
after
eulogizing Ismail Haniyeh*
Israel says it is investigating his sermon for possible incitement of violence, which Sabri denies.
They could certainly wait to make up their minds whether to prosecute before arresting him.
| | 2:52a |
Israel targeting water, Gaza
A video posted by an Israeli soldier shows the demolition of the
main
water facility in Rafah. That is no military target; attacking it was a war crime.
| | 2:52a |
| | 2:52a |
Manchin's fossil-fuel bill
* Critics say [US energy reform bill] is a "fossil fuel wolf in clean energy clothing" that would
gut
environmental protections.*
US plutocratists
have made the word "reform" effectively vacuous by repeatedly using it to describe
the elimination of regulations that protect us from their power and greed.
| | 2:52a |
Power cables plans, UK
It was reprehensible of Starmer to expel Labour MPs for voting to help
poor British families, but entirely justified to
stop
local governments from blocking power cables for wind-powered generators. Hundreds of millions
of human lives, if not more, are at stake in decarbonization — aesthetic preferences are hardly
sufficient reason to delay that work.
However, a creative compromise may perhaps soothe some of the
opposition. Is it possible to design power pylons to serve the
humanities as well as human survival?
Could pylons, and cables, support homes for endangered birds and bats? Could the hanging meadows of
Britain help re-wild the land? If disused drilling platforms can help wildlife survive, maybe pylons
can too.
Might some of them act as scaffolding for colossal art works and installations, or sport walls for
rock climbing competitions, or be painted with amusing designs?
If buried cables are cheap enough that burying them won't interfere with saving civilization, by all
means bury them. Otherwise, the pylons are coming to save us and we should rejoice.
| | 2:52a |
National leaders' qualifications
Women as national leaders are no longer unusual, and we have seen enough of them to recognize that
they run the gamut of good and bad qualities, just as men as leaders do. Women, as leaders, do not
systematically have any particular important qualities. And no leader is perfect.
Thus, we can't find a good national leader by choosing by gender. We should judge a candidate by
what per goals and values, and
per
abilities — not by aspects of per identity.
| | 2:52a |
Congressional conspiracy-theories up
*New Report Details
Dangerous
Normalization of Bigoted Conspiracy Theories in 118th Congress.*
| | 8:54a |
Ultra-cheap energy
Some countries charge a household a very low price per joule for up to
a specified low rate of energy use, and a higher price per joule for
additional energy beyond that necessary minimum. That eliminates the
danger of shut-offs for the poor, and assures that
high fuel costs
won't crush them.
Note that a kilowatt hour equals 3.6 mega joules.
Any kind of energy can be measured in either of these units,
and any system for delivering energy could be covered by a charging
system like this one.
| | 8:54a |
For-profit colleges
For-profit colleges fund the right-wing extremists in Congress
that ignited the persecution of
students protesting atrocities in Gaza.
For-profit colleges are often predatory, and some were
shut down for
this a few years ago.
I've recommended prohibiting them in general, to avoid the need to
prove wrongdoing case by case, because that situation tends to
encourage predatory behavior.
| | 8:54a |
AI friend
A portable digital product now
offers to be your "friend".
When these "services" are implemented on servers that a user communicates with,
they create a dangerous vulnerability in society. A change in one server could
convert all the "friends" based there into marketing "influencers", right-wing
extremists, antivaxxers or Putinites. In other words, the sort of propagation
that sometimes happen, over months, to a collection of real people could be
activated on command
We should not allow that situation to exist.
If the system is implemented in a product that communicates with no one except
its user, that danger is avoided, unless it has other communication channels.
The article does not make it clear whether the "Fried" box has a back channel
to the manufacturer. If this model doesn't, the Apple model surely will.
| | 8:54a |
| | 8:54a |
Scottish beach eroding
The coast of Scotland near Montrose is eroding around 3 meters per
year. It has eroded 70 meters in the past 30 years,
but this is sure
to accelerate.
In a few years, the town will be flooded.
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