Forecast: partly sunny with a chance of cataclysms
Do we have choices?
Anyone who has caught themselves wondering, why the hell am I putting so much time into online chatter? will like this.
Those who have not caught themselves may not like it so much.
There follows a link to spots from an ad campaign by Nike—a company which I usually deprecate for its efforts to totally dominate the sports clothing and footwear market—here humorously prodding us into some needed self-awareness. Some readers commented they cannot stop watching these spots. . . hmm.
Yes, you’ve all heard it, thanks to Joe Scarborough, that not only will we have an arms race, but WE the USA will crush the opposition! Hooray! The fun begins January 21st. Courtesy of Donald Trump.
Esquire on 2017 Detonation Device
So, that’s not news. What’s most newsworthy about this, for those seeking to “read between the lines,” is the spin (not so much spin as cartwheel) from Trump spokesman Sean Spicer:
“He’s going to ensure that other countries get the message that he’s not going to sit back and allow” them to engage in nuclear proliferation, Trump spokesman Sean Spicer told NBC. “And what’s going to happen is they will come to their senses, and we will all be just fine.”
We will all be just fine.
Per Sean Spicer, who, if you have actually seen him speak, exudes all the charm of a badger in a leg-hold trap, assures us that his boss is just sending a message. As in, trash talk, “Listen up, MoFos, we gonna whup yo’ MoFo-ing nuclear ass,” which everyone understands is just showmanship to boost ratings, no one to take it that seriously, once “they have come to their senses.” (Doesn’t this sound like something like Don Corleone might have said?)
For his part, Russian leader Vladimir Putin kept his pragmatic head, pointing out that a nuclear arms race was unaffordable. Vlad, bless his cold cold heart, was not about to take the bait—and I, for maybe the first time, was grateful for the wisdom of a tyrant with a long memory and a long projection into the future.
A press release from Oceana signals problem of seismic airgun blasting while praising President Obama’s slick use of an existing act to protect millions of acres offshore from mineral extraction.
Good News, and as Usual, some Bad
There’s always another environmental insult to be found in fossil fuel industry practices. I never heard of this sound-bombing until today. More damage to sea creatures in order to get carbon out of the Earth and into the air. Absolutely sickening.
We might be able to stop it. See press release (above).
A partial victory! An appeals court gave a go-ahead to climate scientist Michael Mann’s defamation case against his poisonous critics—it will go to trial by jury. The defendants are the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Mark Steyn writing for the National Review.
Check out: Appeals Court Favors Mann
Speaking of the National Review, I picked up a copy while in the library yesterday in the interest of listening to The Other Side (i.e., the not-so- parallel universe where pompous conservatives ply their lofty intellectual trade.).
Believe me, I tried to read with an open mind—I really did. But I didn’t get very far. I think what most got to me was the smug, dismissive tone (in two different articles and an editorial)—the casting of liberals as near-hysterical alarmists who every day go into a panic about a new patch of the Sky Falling.
Do we liberals do that (I mean, do we belittle the opposition with such self-satisfaction, not that we go into panics)? Maybe I do, although I like to think I try to address those folks on a level playing field. Being sarcastic, sure, but without sounding like I view them as rodents scuttling about in the basement. For example, I don’t speak of climate change deniers as ignoramuses. Is my reference to a parallel universe an unfair, belittling metaphor?
Something to think about when supposing oneself objective.
Harassment, threats, bad-mouthing, exposure of private matters, and other forms of bullying are rife on the internet. You can get your tragic fill of stories of suicides from bullying here: six deadly cases.
Cyberbullying is a scourge that seems to have no cure, as long as free speech is a cornerstone of democracy. Measures have been taken by Facebook and Twitter to minimize abuse—as private enterprises, they are not bound by the same rules as governments—yet there’s no way to stamp it out entirely.
So? We’ve always had bullying. Although bullying in general may be on the rise, what’s so special about online bullying?
There are three characteristics that make online bullying especially pernicious: (1) the cloak of anonymity available to abusers; (2) the immediacy with which information (or lies) can be broadcast to the world; (3) the size of the audience—potentially, everyone on the planet with a computer or cell phone, except for censored networks such as in China and North Korea.
OK, so much is obvious—but these factors are synergistic: they amplify each other. What’s more, they set an example that encourages any troll who may once have been reluctant, to try their own hand. Even without anonymity, on account of speed, size of audience, and imitation, online abuse can quickly metastasize into a psychological, if not physical, atrocity. Young people can be scarred for life, and even many adults—such as the women who are deleting their blogs following deluges of hate—will never be able to ban these cruelties from their heads.
Most of the targets of this abuse are women, the perpetrators men. If this sounds like things going on in the “real” world, then we have to see the Internet acting as an extension of misogyny and hate. We are like civilians living in a digital war zone.
A recent poll by The Economist and YouGov found that 37% of Republicans have a “favorable view” of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. (It’s 10% of Democrats also!; I don’t know who these Democrats are and I don’t want to know.)
That’s a “favorable view” of someone who is responsible for the deaths of Syrian civilians in the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands. That’s in addition to thousands of casualties resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, plus the bloody invasion of Georgia in 2008, not to mention cyberwarfare against Baltic states, and, within Russia itself, continuing violent repression of critical investigative media and opposition voices in general. In other words, a “favorable view” of someone for whom there’s a compelling case to charge as a war criminal several times over.
Oh, and we might mention that he lies about absolutely everything that sheds a bad light on Russia (last I heard he was still denying that Russian troops had entered eastern Ukraine, except to protect Ukrainian rebels. Why does this sound like Saturday Night Live?).
Continue reading “37%!?! The Trumputin Effect, Tribalism, and Strongmen”
“Fake News” is getting a lot of heat these days from some of us who actually believe that truth is better than untruth—those of us who are being forcibly dragged into the “post-truth” era.
As if “post-truth” were something new. Actually, we’ve been drifting into the post-truth fog for quite some time now. In Virtual Unreality, Charles Seife (2014) chronicles the many ways in which the digital revolution and its star attraction, the Internet, have been masking, warping, and turning upside-down our perceptions of the world and even each other. A pedestrian example is how easily one can manipulate one’s Facebook persona into one loosely based on, and more attractive than, the original—more good-looking, more cool, more talented, more sociable, more with it. As the joke goes, “on the Internet no one knows you’re a dog,” and no one knows whether what you’re feeding them is bullshit.
It seems that every sentient being on the planet has felt obliged to weigh in on the U.S. Presidential election and what it spat out: Donald Trump. I have kept quiet on this matter on this blog up to now, because (1) I’m “partisan,” so what is my biased opinion worth? (2) every insightful thing that can be said has already been said by others.
But Donald Trump’s nominating Scott Pruitt to head the EPA is a call to arms. If you don’t know the scope of the damage Pruitt can do, check out this in The Guardian: Pruitt Nomination Implications
Most of what you need to know about the policy issues can be gleaned from The Guardian piece and elsewhere on the Web. But there’s a more sweeping issue represented by the nomination of a climate “skeptic” (in actuality, a denier) to this critical post. That of course is the War on Science. From whence does it spring?
Continue reading “Environmental Wrecking Ball to Head EPA, Continue War on Science – Why??”
It’s not the robots who are coming for our jobs, our society, or our planet. It’s the people who design them. To make trouble, those people don’t have to be evil. The problem is that, even if their intentions are benign, they are obeying the technological imperative: if it can be done, it will be done. It will be done, and along the way unintended consequences are sure to arise.
Machines have no intrinsic motives. They don’t “care” in the way that we “care”— at least at the present stage of Artificial Intelligence. They care neither about us, nor themselves. Why should they? They don’t desire; they don’t rejoice, they don’t make love, they don’t mourn, they don’t yearn for what they do not have. They have no ambition to become masters of our corner of the universe. They are innocent. They don’t “want” to take our jobs. They don’t “want” anything.