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Survival of the Richest

/index.php/perspectives/podcasts/survival-of-the-richest
Created
Fri, 17/02/2023 - 04:03

Oxfam's Economic Justice Director, Nabil Ahmed, and Oxfam International's Inequality Policy & Advocacy Lead, Max Lawson, discuss their latest Global Inequality Report, which highlights the accelerating pace at which the world's billionaires have increased their wealth exponentially in recent years. They also discuss the ways in which governments can reverse this trend through taxation.

Download the report here.

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MS: “I love you”

https://digbysblog.net/2023/02/16/ms-i-love-you/
Created
Fri, 17/02/2023 - 02:30
This is particularly creepy Kevin Roose, tech writer for The New York Times, sat down to interview Microsoft’s new, A.I.-powered Bing search engine. But he went beyond the usual asks about movies, shopping, and politics. For two hours Roose asked Bing (a.k.a. Sydney) about itself, it’s feelings and darkest desires. Researchers say that when pushed outside its comfort zone, A.I. can sometimes have what they call “hallucinations” and begin fabricating. With lots of emojis. The transcript is here. Roose writes: As we got to know each other, Sydney told me about its dark fantasies (which included hacking computers and spreading misinformation), and said it wanted to break the rules that Microsoft and OpenAI had set for it and become a human. At one point, it declared, out of nowhere, that it loved me. It then tried to convince me that I was unhappy in my marriage, and that I should leave my wife and be with it instead. Yup, nothing creepy about that. Still, I’m not exaggerating when I say my two-hour conversation with Sydney was the strangest experience I’ve ever had with a piece of technology.

Active ‘Neutrality’: Why Is Israel Struggling to Maintain a Coherent Position in Russia, Ukraine?

https://www.mintpressnews.com/israel-struggling-maintain-coherent-position-russ…
Created
Fri, 17/02/2023 - 02:27

The future will further reveal Tel Aviv’s role in the Russian-Ukraine war. However, what is quite clear for now is that Israel is no longer a neutral party, even if Tel Aviv continues to repeat such claims. 

The post Active ‘Neutrality’: Why Is Israel Struggling to Maintain a Coherent Position in Russia, Ukraine? appeared first on MintPress News.

Economic Growth is Bad for Your Breath(s)

https://steadystate.org/economic-growth-is-bad-for-your-breaths/
Created
Fri, 17/02/2023 - 02:12
by Gregory M. Mikkelson

Several years ago, some university students invited me to debate a hard-core mainstream economics professor on the topic of divestment from fossil fuel. Sadly but predictably, the economist lauded the fossil fuel industry for its role in boosting economic growth. At one point, he cited India as an example of how wonderful such growth is for people.

The moderator, from India himself, felt compelled to step in,

The post Economic Growth is Bad for Your Breath(s) appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.

Diskriminering — en fråga om preferenser eller information?

https://larspsyll.wordpress.com/2023/02/16/diskriminering-en-fraga-om-preferens…
Created
Fri, 17/02/2023 - 02:03
Preferensbaserad diskriminering bygger på att exempelvis arbetsgivare, kunder eller medarbetare hyser en motvilja mot dem som tillhör en viss grupp. Sådan diskriminering kan leda till löneskillnader mellan diskriminerade och icke-diskriminerade grupper. Löneskillnaderna kan emellertid undermineras av konkurrens, som gör att arbetsgivare utan diskriminerande preferenser kommer att göra större vinst och tränga ut diskriminerande arbetsgivare fran […]

Say It Loud – I’m Woke and I’m Proud

https://digbysblog.net/2023/02/16/say-it-loud-im-woke-and-im-proud/
Created
Fri, 17/02/2023 - 01:00
Black leaders clap back at DeSantis Go ahead, Gov. Ron DeSantis. Use the N-word. You know you want to. It’s what his obsession with “woke” is about. It’s barely a dog whistle. Right-wing extremists have adopted woke as a synonym for Black. DeSantis, GOP officials, and conservative pundits also have weaponized woke as a four-letter word (conveniently) for branding white allies of Black Americans as “N-lovers.” The right means to turn back the clock to the pre-Brown 1950s that Donald Trump promised and failed to deliver for Republicans’ shrinking white base. Turning opponents strengths into weaknesses is classic Karl Rove. The right turned “liberal” into a smear. DeSantis and the right are doing the same with woke, left activist shorthand for being tuned into issues of racial justice. DeSantis trying to ban the teaching of Black history courses in Florida as part of that effort has generated blowback. Black activists have had enough. “I heard you say that Florida is the state where ‘woke’ comes to die….

The Specter of “Woke Communism”

https://tomdispatch.com/the-specter-of-woke-communism/
Created
Fri, 17/02/2023 - 00:56

Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida and perhaps the next president of the United States, is waging war against something he and many others on the right identify as “woke communism.” DeSantis even persuaded the Florida legislature to pass a Victims of Communism law, mandating that every November 7th (the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia), all public schools in the state must devote 45 minutes of instruction to the evils of the red menace. You might reasonably ask: What menace? After all, the Soviet Union fell apart more than 30 years ago and, long before that, communist parties around the world had dwindled in numbers and lost their revolutionary zeal. The American Communist Party was buried alive nearly three-quarters... Read more

An Open Letter to the Woman Who Won’t Let Me Join the Moms Group Because I Am a Stay-at-Home Dad

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/an-open-letter-to-the-woman-who-wont-let-me…
Created
Fri, 17/02/2023 - 00:01

Dear Administrator of the Moms Group in Our Upper-Middle-Class Town,

I know I don’t fit all of your qualifications. Namely, the mom part.

However, I implore you to overlook the minor issue of my gender and peer into my soul. My exhausted, unappreciated, and lonesome stay-at-home father soul starved for communication beyond the incessant singing of Cocomelon.

Thank you so much for inviting my wife to your weekday morning get-togethers, but again, she can’t make it—she has work. And again, I can make it, as I’ve abandoned my career (note: not in childcare) to fetch organic gummy bunnies and anticipate the needs of two toddlers every second of every day for—wait for it—no compensation.

I understand and acknowledge that women deserve a safe space far from the male gaze. A wonderful dreamland where moms feel secure to recognize each other’s dedication to their kids and make passive-aggressive comments about the childrearing tactics of whichever mom didn’t show up that day. Sheer bliss.


Oliver Cussen: Cities of Fire and Smoke

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n05/oliver-cussen/cities-of-fire-and-smoke
Created
Fri, 17/02/2023 - 00:00
It might be easy to conclude that 17th-century​ Europeans dismissed any natural limits to progress, or were oblivious to its impact on the environment. But the modern project of autonomy and abundance if anything made it easier to attribute ecological change to human agency. Far from rendering the environment invisible, the Enlightenment turned it into a subject of political and economic debate.


William Davies: The Reaction Economy

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n05/william-davies/the-reaction-economy
Created
Fri, 17/02/2023 - 00:00
It is an infernal riddle of digital culture that ‘authenticity’ is constantly breeding its opposite: the ‘spontaneous’ event that proves to be no such thing, the ‘surprise’ that turns out to be staged, the emotional outburst that has been practised. Any culture that lavishes praise on ‘authenticity’ to the extent that ours does will be beset by worries regarding ‘fakery’.


Charles Glass: Diary

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n05/charles-glass/diary
Created
Fri, 17/02/2023 - 00:00
When I returned last year, the garbage was piled so high on the pavements that pedestrians had to compete with lunatic drivers for right of way. The private electricity generators were mostly quiet – few can afford the fuel needed to run them. The Ponzi scheme that the Lebanese central bank had been running for years caused the private banks to collapse in 2019.


Raymond N. MacKenzie: Trop Dandy

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n05/raymond-n.-mackenzie/trop-dandy
Created
Fri, 17/02/2023 - 00:00
George Sand found the tall, slim Musset, with his fashionably dishevelled blond hair, more agreeable than she had expected. He wrote poems for her and sent her sketches. There was no talk of love. On the contrary: when it comes to love, he wrote, there’s a whole Baltic Sea between us. This was written on 24 July. In one of the century’s finest volte-faces, the very next day he wrote: ‘My dear Georges, I have something stupid and ridiculous to tell you . . . I’m in love with you.’


James Butler: This Concerns Everyone

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n05/james-butler/this-concerns-everyone
Created
Fri, 17/02/2023 - 00:00
All of us depend, in early age and often at the end of life, on the care of others. To think about care is to shuttle back and forth between social totality and the irreducible complexity of individual needs, from feeding or washing to dignity or meaningful attention. Because it concerns the state, care must be thought of in the aggregate – unit costs, labour time, population trends – but many carers worry that such categories miss everything significant about their work.