Reading

Created
Tue, 31/01/2023 - 01:22
Your next infection could be the one that permanently disables you. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 26th January 2023 You could see Covid-19 as an empathy test. Who was prepared to suffer disruption and inconvenience for the sake of others, and who was not? The answer was often surprising. I can think, for […]
Created
Tue, 31/01/2023 - 01:00

The poetry of Alex Dimitrov stays in the present. It’s the essence of contemporary. A living voice, an urbane voice, overstimulated and sweet and stylish and aware. To say it’s talkative is only to highlight the point, and point to its tradition, which is very old, older than the New York poets who embodied it, James Schuyler and Frank O’Hara and others: it’s as old as the intimate cutting voice of Catullus or the troubadours of Galicia. New York is not so much the subject of Dimitrov’s work—particularly true in his latest collection, Love and Other Poems—so much as its raison d’être. Even a poem like “New York,” a catalog of places in New York the speaker has cried in, is a love poem to “the best city to cry in.” Dimitrov’s voice is casual, open aesthete, open-hearted in a way that doesn’t forgo acid worldliness. No one could call his lines naïve, and yet they record—almost can’t help themselves—moments of awe, happiness, painful clarity, or, the beauty of true feeling, up or down. In that sense, Dimitrov is a first-class artist of the art of feeling, of giving a mood a shape in language.

Created
Tue, 31/01/2023 - 01:00
The question is what will? McKay Coppins presents a gallery of Republican donors and operatives eager to see Donald Trump gone before he can do more harm to the Republican Party. What’s left of it anyway. They just lack the guts to take on Trump and his (proven violent) cult members frontally. Their strategy is to hope Trump, 76, just dies. As his mother did at at 88 and his father at 93. Plying him with hamburgers and fried chicken may be a sounder plan. Former Michigan Republican congressman Peter Meijer “termed this strategy actuarial arbitrage.” Other Republicans hope indictments will take Trump out of the picture. Not a good plan either (The Atlantic): Michael Cohen, who served for years as Trump’s personal attorney and now hosts a podcast atoning for that sin titled Mea Culpa, grudgingly told me that his former boss would easily weaponize any criminal charges brought against him. The deep-state Democrats are at it again—the campaign emails write themselves. “Donald will use the indictment to continue his fundraising grift,” Cohen told me. They are hoping for a deus ex machina to appear.
Created
Tue, 31/01/2023 - 00:06

On 13 January 2023, the London-based organisation Index on Censorship named Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador its Tyrant of the Year for 2022. ‘While competition was tough, one leader surged ahead, by a mile in fact,’ insists the accompanying text, which goes on to recite a series of justifications for the designation, including violence […]

Created
Tue, 31/01/2023 - 00:00

Your eyes dance, and you gesture wildly as you tell me and two others about a recent rock climbing trip. Unfortunately, this seems to have all the makings of a multi-minute anecdote. But one thing keeps me from walking away: the opportunity to top your story with one of my own.

The moment you uttered the phrase “rock climbing,” it was over. I got the gist of things right then and there. So while you go on and on about a multi-day ordeal on a mountain range and some sort of bear encounter, I mentally retrieved a story from years ago that will eclipse everything you’re sharing right now. The bear thing may prove hard to outdo, sure, but I’ll get it done, even if it takes some light embellishing.

Though it’s been about ninety seconds since I tuned you out, I smile encouragingly and slightly shake and nod my head at what I assume are the appropriate times. It’s the polite thing to do, and I’m a polite guy. Despite these efforts, closer scrutiny of my face would reveal that my smile is all mouth, and my eyes betray a desire to fast-forward you.

Created
Mon, 30/01/2023 - 22:55
I was 28 when I first got a maid. She wasn’t even my maid. My partner and I spent a year renting a flat in Mexico City from friends-of-friends, a well-to-do family who were abroad, and who paid their maid to keep coming while we stayed at their place. So she was taking care of […]
Created
Mon, 30/01/2023 - 22:07

Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia have refused to send weapons to Ukraine, despite pressure by the US and EU. Latin American left-wing leaders have urged peace with Russia and called for neutrality in the West’s new cold war.

The post Latin America Refuses To Send Ukraine Weapons, Despite Western Pressure appeared first on scheerpost.com.

Created
Mon, 30/01/2023 - 22:00
What should our norms be regarding the publishing of philosophical work created with the help of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT or other forms of artificial intelligence? In a recent article, the editors of Nature put forward their position, which they think is likely to be adopted by other journals: First, no LLM tool will be accepted as a credited author on a research paper. That is because any attribution of authorship carries with it accountability for the work, and AI tools cannot take such responsibility. Second, researchers using LLM tools should document this use in the methods or acknowledgements sections. If a paper does not include these sections, the introduction or another appropriate section can be used to document the use of the LLM. A few comments about these: a. It makes sense to not ban use of the technology. Doing so would be ineffective, would incentivize hiding its use, and would stand in opposition to the development of new effective and ethical uses of the technology in research. b. The requirement to document how the LLMs were used in the research and writing is reasonable but vague.
Created
Mon, 30/01/2023 - 21:00
David Bronstein, previously lecturer in philosophy at the University of New South Wales, last fall became Senior Research Fellow/Associate Professor at the Institute for Ethics & Society at The University of Notre Dame Australia in Sydney. Dr. Bronstein works in Ancient Greek philosophy, and has interests in ethics, epistemology, philosophy of science, logic, and metaphysics in Plato, Aristotle, and beyond. He was recently awarded a 2023 Future Fellowship by the Australian Research Council. Valued at $777,019 over four years, the grant will support his research on “Virtue with Aristotle: Recovering an Ancient Ethical Theory for Our Time” The project aims to show how Aristotle’s theory of virtue can guide our individual and collective attempts to live good human lives in challenging times. You can learn more about Dr. Bronstein’s work here and here.
Created
Mon, 30/01/2023 - 20:00
The weekly report on new and revised entries at online philosophy resources and new reviews of philosophy books… SEP New: Legal Rights by Ori Herstein. Ernst Bloch by Ivan Boldyrev. Fitting Attitude Theories of Value by Christopher Howard. Revised: Ibn Bâjja [Avempace] by Josep Puig Montada. Dewey’s Moral Philosophy by Elizabeth Anderson. Bernard Williams by Sophie-Grace Chappell and Nicholas Smyth. Alfred Tarski by Mario Gómez-Torrente. Children’s Rights by David William Archard. Ibn Rushd’s Natural Philosophy by Josep Puig Montada. Négritude by Souleymane Bachir Diagne. Metaethics by Geoff Sayre-McCord. Coercion by Scott Anderson. Modal Logic by James Garson. IEP     ∅ NDPR     ∅ 1000-Word Philosophy     ∅          Project Vox     ∅ Recent Philosophy Book Reviews in Non-Academic Media On Paradox: The Claims of Theory by Elizabeth Anker is reviewed by Michael W. Clune at Los Angeles Review of Books. How to Say No: An Ancient Guide to the Art of Cynicism by Diogenes and the Cynics, and M.D. Usher (ed., trans.), is reviewed by Costica Bradatan at The Times Literary Supplement. Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility by Martha Nussbaum is reviewed by Sigal Samuel at Vox.