https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/14/is-capitalism-a-threat-to-democracy
Polanyi makes a comeback
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Off the map: New Zealand tourism ad takes on ‘conspiracy’ – video | World news | The Guardian
So, I’m sitting at my computer diligently earning money on a Friday when the sun is out, and there’s a heavy “thump” on the roof. Shelley looks at me with alarm, and goes outside to see what’s up. Nothing obvious; we go back to what we were doing. Then Shelley fires up the mower and goes to mow the lawn. Disturbs a few frogs, finds a birds nest, clears twigs and … she finds a dead fish. On the lawn.
Theory is: one of our resident raptors was fishing the lake, and dropped it from a great height onto our roof, where it bounced off into the grass.
Irony and synergy
Two stories back to back on the news tonight: a piece about public caning in Indonesia, ending with a note that the UN Commission on Human Rights regards public caning as torture and calls for it to be banned.
Followed with unintended irony (maybe) by a piece on an octogenarian put to death by some state here in the US. No mention of the UN calling for banning capital punishment as inhumane, which of course they do.
Good thing we are so much more enlightened than those theocratic third world states.
Clams and Mussels
https://photos.app.goo.gl/C6FgZJDZRpwAnv8F3
Locally-sourced seafood. Good reason to live on an island.
Glitch is cool
https://medium.com/glitch
Jewdas
Jeremy Corbin went here for Passover. Cool guys.
http://www.jewdas.org/
Fantastic show
Listen to We, the Liberators on TuneIn http://tun.in/tiovM8
A painful review of Amercian intervention in the middle east on the 15 th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. With deep analysis of the mechanisms we use to deflect from our responsibility for the damage we have caused.
An interesting confluence of the discussion around self-delusion in this and another show I listened to lately, also “On the Media”, about racism. One of the commentators suggested that the traditional narrative, that racist ideology caused racist policy, was backward: that in a more realistic reading of history, the ideology was a post-facto justification for the policy, which directly benefited those who made the policy.
In “We, the Liberators”, there’s a suggestion of something similar at work in the invasion of Iraq. The neocon ideological case, making the world safe for democracy, liberating the people from their oppressors, etc, was used to justify the action. But maybe it was the invasion that was primary, with the ideology conveniently at hand to justify the action.
I think this is called rationalization when we apply it to individuals. Perhaps “imperialism” when we apply it to cultures, or countries? Wasn’t the Victorian Englishman convinced that, by dominating the foreigner, he was “civilizing” him, imparting a superior way of life? And incidentally making himself rich and powerful in the process?
WA state leads the way
Cambridge Analytica “whistle-blower”
I watched the Guardian’s interview with Christopher Wylie, the former (founding) staffer of what became Cambridge Analytica, as he described what the organization did, and pointed the finger at the CEO, at Steve Bannon, and so on. He described his own role as “data scientist”, “running an experiment” using psychological profile information to modify voter behavior, making it sound like some sort of value-neutral lab test. Apparently he left the firm only after deciding that the right-wing clients his company was working for were not to his taste.
When asked about the result of the experiment, he professed not to know how much what he and his colleagues had done had influenced the outcome of the elections in the US and the Brexit referendum in the UK. Not much of the scientific method there.
It seems clear to me that this is a man with a self-professed blindness to the moral position of the work he, personally, did. Blanketing it in sciency-sounding terms is an attempt to obscure the fact that what he was doing was morally indefensible.
The Steve Bannons and Donald Trumps of the world can’t wreak the havoc they do without the technical people like Mr Wylie providing them with the tools. I see and hear of technical people all the time electing to work on questionable ends, all the time touting the value-free nature of the tools they’re building (“it’s not the tool, it’s the person using it” – sound familiar?) This is particularly hurtful to me, since I’m in a technical field.
We all get to make these decisions with the work we choose to do, or not to do. We all should live with the consequences.