556 Matching Annotations
  1. Last 7 days
    1. ake all the money thou canst. If sanctimonyand a frail vow betwixt an erring barbarian andsupersubtle Venetian be not too hard for my wits and allthe tribe of hell, thou shalt enjoy her.

      Showing that he believes his wills make him the God of the world, that he has ultimate power over the chessboard just through intention alone -- and that is the work of the devil, the rejection of emotion's sway on decision making, and pure reason

  2. Mar 2024
    1. I have the opposite of low hums, I hear incredibly high-pitched sounds. This video contains one of those frequencies. CRT monitors and other tube TVs are incredibly loud to me even if the volume is off.

      same here, tinnitus at 16 KHz. i guess this comes primarily from the power grid, because when i measure my body skin voltage versus power ground, via microphone port of a smartphone and spectrogram app, then i see the noise around 16 KHz. i guess the source are power electronics connected to the power grid, especially IGBT transistors which have a working frequency around 16 KHz. i spent 2000 euros on EMF shielding for my bedroom (YShield HNV80), but that can only shield high frequencies like 2.4 GHz wifi, but not the low frequencies from the power grid - 50 Hz to 16 KHz. i started hearing this after a LSD trip... expanding ones consciousness in a bad setting is a bad idea

  3. Feb 2024
    1. Die EU-Kommission hat sich bei der Festlegung der Emissionsziele fur 2040 an den Empfehlungen ihres wissenschaftlichen Rats orientiert, aber an der Untergrenze von 90% Reduktion. Sie nennt kein Ausstiegsdatum für fossile Energien. Lutz Weischer von Germanwatch kritisiert, dass sie damit auf die Signalwirkung eines ehrgeizigeren Ziels verzichtet. https://taz.de/Experte-ueber-EU-Klimaziele/!5987458/

    1. Oh, compliance moats are definitely real – think of the calls for AI companies to license their training data. AI companies can easily do this – they'll just buy training data from giant media companies – the very same companies that hope to use models to replace creative workers with algorithms. Create a new copyright over training data won't eliminate AI – it'll just confine AI to the largest, best capitalized companies, who will gladly provide tools to corporations hoping to fire their workforces: https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/09/ai-monkeys-paw/#bullied-schoolkids

      Concentration of power.

    1. Wir sind längst keine Bürger in Machiavellis florentinischem Stadtstaat mehr; Fürstenherrschaft und Willkür sind Demokratie und Rechtsstaatlichkeit gewichen.

      genau das ist der fundamentale denkfehler

      "wir sind besser als die dummen menschen vor 500 jahren"

      genau das ist der unterschied zwischen idealismus und realismus

      realismus akzeptiert naturkonstanten wie feudalismus, "geld regiert die welt", "sieger schreiben geschichte", ...

      nur idioten fallen rein auf "soft power", also auf eine diktatur im schafpelz, auf eine demokratie-simluation, auf eine pseudo-demokratie... dumm und glücklich, auch das ist eine naturkonstante, so dumme menschen wird es immer geben

  4. Jan 2024
    1. Eine neue, grundlegende Studie zu Klima-Reparationen ergibt, dass die größten Fosssilkonzerne jählich mindestens 209 Milliarden Dollar als Reparationen an von ihnen besonders geschädigte Communities zahlen müssen. Dabei sind Schäden wie der Verlust von Menschenleben und Zerstörung der Biodiversität nicht einberechnet. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/19/fossil-fuel-firms-owe-climate-reparations-of-209bn-a-year-says-study

      Studie: Time to pay the piper: Fossil fuel companies’ reparations for climate damages https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(23)00198-7

    1. for whitehead persuasion is so much more um um important for the evolution of human beings than coercion

      for - adjacency - persuasion instead of coercion - China - power

      adjacency - persuasion instead of coercion - Whitehead - China - power - Whitehead believed power is most effective when it employs persuasion instead of coercion - If the Chinese government adopts more of the spirit of Whitehead, it can only mean better collaboration between states

    1. Der Ausbau der Windenergie in Deutschland hat sich unter der Ampelkoalition beschleunigt. Es werden aber im Augenblick nur etwa halt so viele Anlagen gebaut, wie es nach den Plänen der Bundesregierung nötig wäre. In den südlichen Bundesländern ist der Ausbau viel zu langsam. Genehmigungsverfahren z.B. für den Transport dauern zu lange. https://taz.de/Ausbau-der-Windenergie/!5983011/

      • for: collaborative commons, rapid whole system change - governance, 3rd party, TPF, power2thepeople political power, criminal power

      -SUMMARY - A good article that - briefly traced the roots of the the major categories of power in modernity: - government - business - NGOs - and provides an argument for the emergence of a 4th power - the collaborative commons - it provide a model for the collaborative commons and a system diagram showing the various parts - I've critique I raise it that since it could only emerge within the technological mileau of the internet, it cannot be based upon an archaic, corporate and centralized power be structure. Even cryptocurrency is still centralized and there is generally a single point of failure. - When more important than decentralisation however, is that the current web id not people-centered and intertwingled with interpersonal - a necessary condition for a collaborative commons is their what we call a "flipped" web. - The indyweb and Indranet are being designed as an open function opens learning ecosystem for humanity at the level of trust networks - inter-operating with other larger systems, it can pay a role in creating the flipped web which can provide the human communication media for a collaborative commons

      • comment

        • There night also be a bother 4th category of power not me- criminal mentioned - criminal power
      • epiphany: new slogan

        • power2thepeople has a double meaning
          • political power
          • physical power
        • since modern society runs on physical power, we need the people too control it rather than serving a small group of financial elites
  5. Dec 2023
      • for: climate crisis - multiple dimensions, polycrisis - multiple dimensions, climate crisis - good references, polycrisis - good references, polycrisis - comprehensive map, power to the people, climate change - politics, climate crisis - politics

      • comment / summary

        • The content on this website may be what some call "doomers" that support a narrative of unavoidable catastrophe and civilization collapse
        • The author does an excellent job of drawing together many scientifically validated research papers and news media stories on various crisis and integrates them together to support his narrative.
        • As the author states, it is still incomplete but it is comprehensive and detailed enough to use as a starting foundation to build a complex polycrisis map upon. becaues it shows the complexities of the interwoven nexus of problems we face and the massive network of feedbacks between them that makes solving any one of them alone in isolation an impossibility
        • The Cascade Institute focuses on social tipping points, complexity and polycrisis. We could synthesis a number of tools to map out and reveal effective mitigation strategies including:
          • Cascade Institute tools
          • Social tipping point tools
          • SRG mapping tool along with Indyweb / Indranet
          • Culture hacking tools
          • SIMPOL strategy
          • Downscaled Earth System Boundary tools
          • SRG Deep Humanity BEing journey tools
          • James Hansen's recommendation that the biggest leverage point is new form of governance
            • We need to rapidly emerge a new global third political party that does not take money from special interest groups
          • Progressive International comes to the same conclusion as James Hansen, that the key leverage point for rapid whole system change is radically new governance that puts power back to the hands of the people - power to the people
          • SONEC's
          • Indyweb's people-centered, interpersonal methodology is a perfect match for SONEC circle-within-circles fractal structure
            • mention to @Gyuri
            • I've seen this circle-within-circle fractal, holonic group idea with Tim's software as well as Roberto's
        • Feebate from local governance groups (from another Doomer site - Arctic Emergency)
        • What the author's narrative shows is
          • how precarious our situation is
          • how many trends are getting far worse in the immediate future
          • how we are already undercapacitated to deal with existing crisis so how will we deal with new ones that are exponentially worse?
          • all these crisis will impact our supply chains. Why are these important? Our reliance on technology is dangerous and makes us very vulnerable
          • Think of your laptop, cellphone or other electronic device that relies on a vast, complex and globally operational internet. Imagine that tidal surges wipes out the globally critical data centers located in New York. Or imagine electronic factories in China and Taiwan are wiped out due to extreme weather. How will you get or fix a broken piece of electronic equipment? We rely on each millions of specialized jobs all working smoothly in order for our laptop to continue working and communicating with each other.
      • epiphany

      • recommendation for new Indyweb / Indranet tools
        • independent time and date stamp tool for every online, virtual sentence we write so we recognize in a long composition when we inserted a new idea
        • ability to trace rapid trains of thought to reveal how new insights emerge from within our consciousness
      • While writing this, I just recalled that we should have a way to time and date stamp every single virtual online action, like in this annotation because recall happens so nonlinearly and we won't have a hope to trace and trailmark without it. Hypothesis doesn't have time and date stamps of every sentence available to the user. So we don't know what nonlinear memory recall led to a specific sentence in an annotation. We need some independent Indyweb / Indranet tool that will do this universally. Trains of thoughts are so fragile we can forget the quick cascades very easily.
    1. I think that we should be putting a high priority on developing the Next Generation nuclear 01:45:54 power uh but it's uh it's uh it's going to be a a tough job and as long as the as the special 01:46:05 interests are controlling our government uh we're not going to solve it
    1. we need to find things and issues and events that people care about that brings together the big social blocks that we have so 00:53:07 people as workers people as women people as disabled people as racialized and so on and so forth uh to into having a a united front and then when there has 00:53:21 that United f it needs to have a radical Democratic element extremely radical Democratic element as in this is not just we're changing some of the people that are at the top of the 00:53:34 state we have to go into democratize the state
      • for: appropriate cliches - united we stand, appropriate cliches - power to the people

      • suggestion

      • cliches
        • we need modernize old cliches
          • united we stand, divided we fall
          • power to the people - energy cooperative
          • water to the people - water cooperative
          • food to the people - food cooperative
          • knowledge to the people - media and education cooperative
        • Stop Reset Go and Indyweb / Indranet can converge media from across the web via mindplex of trans-disciplinary social annotations
    2. how do we organize a green de Democratic Revolutio
      • for: question - how do we organise a green democratic revolution when power is so entrenched?

      • question

        • how do we organise a green democratic revolution when power is so entrenched?
    3. let's go back to focusing on like these forces that exist to undermine 00:46:38 popular power um and maintain the the the ruling class
      • for,: question - maintaining ruling elites

      • question

        • how do the elites maintain the tiling class in their favour and undermine popular power,?
  6. Nov 2023
    1. many who joined the industry did so precisely because they thought that their work would be useful.
    1. Here's the email I just sent Jeff:

      Jeff,

      Please add my name - David Blue - as a participant in the boycott of Feedback Assistant.

      I don't want to take too much of your time right now, but after spending the past two years or so becoming truly familiar with Apple, Inc.'s negligence (my girlfriend is a third grade teacher... our district paid full retail price for each of the 15,000+ iPads assigned to elementary school children, none of which came with a power supply,) the experience of reading your statement of purpose was a tremendous, full-body release lol.

      We don't know each other, but I am so proud of and excited for you... Some of the people I admire most are those who've been filing exceptionally/diligently documented favors regularly for who knows how many years only to be met with literally nothing most of the time.

      This organization cannot be allowed to continue to cost so many people what it does. If it's practical/of any benefit, feel free to put my name on any future declarations critical of Apple, Inc.'s behavior. I hope we get to have a conversation some time.

      Thank you so much.

    2. they've made Apple the most profitable company in the world.

      So, so incredibly glad to see this acknowledged, here. It's something I try to repeat literally every time Apple, Inc. comes up in conversation (though I usually say in the history of the world lol,) as much to remind myself.

      I have been kicked out of public group chats for doing so - public group chats full of beautiful, clever, original, and heroically prolific volunteers who will have spent obtuse fractions of their lives in service to this organization by their ends.

    1. Malm, Andreas. How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Verso Books, 2021. https://www.versobooks.com/products/2649-how-to-blow-up-a-pipeline.

      Aram Zucker-Scharff indicated that this was one of his favorite books on the climate crisis and has interesting consequences for both individual and group action. He said it might make an interesting pairing with Palo Alto (@Malcolm2023).

      It came up as we were talking about the ideas of climate crisis in the overlap of The Monkey Wrench Gang.

      Might also be interesting with respect to @Hoffer2002 [1951].

    1. For an example of an unintended consequence, let’s say the result of your optimization project is spare capacity at a cloud provider. Then that capacity is then offered on the spot market, which lowers the spot price, and someone uses those instances for a CPU intensive workload like crypto or AI training, which they only run when the cost is very low. The end result is that capacity could end up using more power than when your were leaving it idle, and the net consequence is an increase in carbon emissions for that cloud region.

      This is because capacity, utilisation and power used are related, but different concepts.

      Your capacity, which you share back to the pool is then avaiable to someone else, who ends up buying it to use for a task that has a higher average utilisation, resulting in more power being used in absolute terms, even if less is attributed to you.

      This also raises the question - who is responsible - the customer for making the capacity available, for the cloud provider who accepts this workload?

      The cloud providers get to set the terms of service for using their platform.

  7. Oct 2023
    1. https://web.archive.org/web/20231019053547/https://www.careful.industries/a-thousand-cassandras

      "Despite being written 18 months ago, it lays out many of the patterns and behaviours that have led to industry capture of "AI Safety"", co-author Rachel Coldicutt ( et Anna Williams, and Mallory Knodel for Open Society Foundations. )

      For Open Society Foundations by 'careful industries' which is a research/consultancy, founded 2019, all UK based. Subscribed 2 authors on M, and blog.

      A Thousand Cassandras in Zotero.

    1. Power dissipation due to OUTPUT slewing during FET turn ON in the recirculation path is given by:PSW3 [W] = (0.5 x VD x IL x VD / SRrise x fPWM) + (0.5 x VD x IL x VD / SRfall x fPWM), where, (4)i. fPWM = PWM switching frequency [Hz]ii. VD = FET body diode forward bias voltage [V]iii. IL = Load current [A]iv. SRrise = Output voltage slew rate during rise [V/sec]v. SRfall = Output voltage slew rate during fall [V/sec]This dissipation is typically not considered as it is quite insignificant.
    2. Power dissipation due to the dead times between switching FETs is given by:PSW2 [W] = (VD x IL x tDEADrisex fPWM) + (VD x IL x tDEADfallx fPWM), where, (3)i. fPWM = PWM switching frequency [Hz]ii. VD = FET body diode forward bias voltage [V]iii. IL = Load current [A]iv. tDEADrise = dead time during rise [sec]v. tDEADfall = dead time during fall [sec]Dead times are necessary to mitigate any risk of current shoot through between the switching powerFETs. Integrated FET drivers often have a feedback based self timed FET switching sequence to ensurethe smallest possible dead times while avoiding any shoot through current.
    3. Power dissipation from conduction loss of each FET due to its on-resistance is given by:PRON [W] = RON × IL2, where, (1)a. RON = FET on-resistance [ohm]b. IL = Load current [A]

      power dissipation from conduction loss

    4. Power dissipation due to output slewing during rising and falling edges is given by:PSW1 [W] = (0.5 x VM x IL x VM / SRrise x fPWM) + (0.5 x VM x IL x VM / SRfall x fPWM), where, (2)i. fPWM = PWM switching frequency [Hz]ii. VM = Supply voltage to the driver [V]iii. IL = Load current [A]iv. SRrise = Output voltage slew rate during rise [V/sec]v. SRfall = Output voltage slew rate during fall [V/sec]Output slewing rate is a balance between EM (Electro magnetic) performance and device powerdissipation.

      power dissipation due to output slewing

  8. Sep 2023
  9. Aug 2023
    1. I’m going to start with the U.S.; technology in the U.S. is caught up in American late-stage (or financialized) capitalism where profitability isn’t the goal; perpetual return on investment is. Given this, the tools that we’re seeing developed by corporations reinforce capitalist agendas.
      • for: corporate power, technology - capitalism, capitalism - exploitation, Danah Boyd, progress trap
      • paraphrase
      • quote
        • technology in the U.S. is caught up in American late-stage (or financialized) capitalism
          • where profitability isn’t the goal;
          • perpetual return on investment is.
        • Given this, the tools that we’re seeing developed by corporations
        • reinforce capitalist agendas.
        • Innovation will require pushing past this capitalist infrastructure to achieve the social benefits and civic innovation that will work in the United States.
        • China is a whole other ball of wax.
        • If you want to go there, follow up with me. But pay attention to Taobao centers.
        • We haven’t hit peak awful yet.
        • I have every confidence that social and civic innovation can be beneficial in the long run
          • with a caveat that I think that climate change dynamics might ruin all of that
        • but no matter what, I don’t think we’re going to see significant positive change by 2030.
        • I think things are going to get much worse before they start to get better.
        • I should also note that I don’t think that many players have taken responsibility for what’s unfolding. -Yes, tech companies are starting to see that things might be a problem,
          • but that’s only on the surface. -News media does not at all acknowledge its role in amplifying discord,
          • or its financialized dynamics.
        • The major financiers of this economy don’t take any responsibility for what’s unfolding. Etc.
      • author: Dana Boyd
        • principal researcher, Microsoft Research
        • founder, Data & Society
    1. The fourth step is to Apply the Reflection. Adjust behavior based on reflection. We improve not for validation, we improve for ourselves (stoic philosophy)

      Document the journey in for example a journal. Make a comparison between what would be done in the past and what will be done in the future.

      Data collection. Measurement.

      Marginal Gains. It's sort of a daily continous Kolb's cycle but in a more lightweight form. I can already see the power in this. Absolute gem.

      Could also be overwhelming if applied to a lot. therefore, use the power law and focus on what is essential to life change. (thanks Dr. Benjamin Hardy.)

    1. why does it in a sense if we think of money as a voting tool why is it that a billionaire has a 00:32:31 billion times more power to decide what society should be like than i do
      • for: voting, power - money, money - voting, inequality, voting - money, equity, voting power - rich
      • paraphrase
      • question
        • if we think of money as a voting tool
          • why does a billionaire have a billion times more power to decide what society should be like than i do?
    1. Ricklefs and Wikelski 2002)]. In this context, Pianka (1970) argued that, “…natural selection will usually act to maximize the amounts of matter and energy gathered per unit time.” Brown et al. (1993) likewise offered an energetic definition in which fitness is “reproductive power, or the rate of conversion of energy into offspring.” This reproductive power was taken to be a function of both the rate of assimilation of energy from the environment and the rate of conversion of energy to offspring (but see (Kozlowski 1996)).
      • for: energy offspring, natural selection energy
      • paraphrase
        • Pianka (1970) argued that, “…natural selection will usually act to maximize the amounts of matter and energy gathered per unit time.”
        • Brown et al. (1993) likewise offered an energetic definition in which fitness is “reproductive power, or the rate of conversion of energy into offspring.”
        • This reproductive power was taken to be a function of both
          • the rate of assimilation of energy from the environment and
          • the rate of conversion of energy to offspring (but see (Kozlowski 1996)).
    2. To Gowdy and Krall, the ultra-social nature of human groups allowed for a shift in the primary level of selection from the individual level to the group level. Thus, “With the transition to agriculture the group as an adaptive unit comes to constitute a wholly different gestalt driven by the imperative to produce surplus
      • for: ecological collapse, overshoot, progress trap, progress trap - cultural evolution, ultra-sociality, Lotka's maximum power
      • paraphrase
        • to Gowdy and Krall, the ultra-social nature of human groups allowed for a shift in the primary level of selection
          • from the individual level
          • to the group level.
        • Thus, “With the transition to agriculture the group as an adaptive unit comes to constitute a wholly different gestalt
          • driven by the imperative to produce surplus
  10. Jul 2023
    1. Civil society is the sector where the power of We thePeople ultimately and properly resides.
      • for: collective action, bottom-up, bottom-up movement, M2W, individual/collective
      • Civil society is the sector where the power of We the People ultimately and properly resides.
      • Consequently, in the fully functioning Ecological Civilization,
        • government and business sectors must be
        • creations of and
        • accountable to
        • a civil society of people who embrace
          • the rights and
          • responsibilities
        • of their citizenship at all system levels from - the local to - the global.
      • We can be citizens of only one locality.
        • But we are all citizens of Earth—and the many levels in between.
      • This must be acknowledged by any truly democratic system of self-governance.
    1. first, building your own search engine thus starts with a surprisingly philosophical question: what makes a webpage good?

      Going forward, I would (and have) strongly make the case against rethinking this assumption...

    1. Winston Churchill had a secret 01:47:06 that the Germans didn't know during the middle of the war. The secret was this. They had cracked the Nazi enigma codes.
      • example
        • difficult choices for people in power
          • Winston Churchill breaks Enigma code
          • Knowledge that an Australian ship was going to be torpedoed by the Nazis but Churchill could not prevent it
          • He made the choice to allow hundreds of sailors die to save millions of people who would have died had the Nazis found out that the Enigma code was broken
    2. And so when we have this simplistic view of power, we're missing the story. What you really need is a system that attracts the right kind of people 01:18:20 so that the diplomats who are clean and nice and rule-following end up in power. Then you need a system that gives them all the right incentives to follow the rules once they get there. And then if you do have people who break the rules, there needs to be consequences. So the study from UN diplomats and their parking behavior actually, I think, illuminates a huge amount of very interesting dynamics around power,
      • how to create a system that mitigates abuse, based on the UN diplomat parking example
        • create a system that attracts the right kind of people so that the people who are clean and nice and rule-following end up in power.
        • Give them all the right incentives to follow the rules once they get there.
        • If you do have people who break the rules, there needs to be consequences.
    3. if we want to end up with a world that is shaped by the best of us, rather than very often the worst of us, we have to think carefully, we have to engineer a system.
      • key insight
      • quote
        • if we want to end up with a world that is shaped by the best of us, rather than very often the worst of us,
          • we have to think carefully, we have to engineer a system.
          • think of the worst person for the job position you are hiring for
          • design the system to
            • screen that person out
            • if they do manage to get in, have oversight that can eliminate them from the post
            • have a system in place that looks upwards to the top position to scrutinize them and hold them accountable
    4. the problem is that we've engineered a society in which power itself is costly to everyone, and that means that the only people who think it's worth paying the cost are those who are power-hungry.
      • key insight
        • we've engineered a society in which power itself is costly to everyone
        • cost
          • it's invasive, your life will be scritinized, your family may pay a price, and may be destroyed
            • for the power-hungry, they can often accept the cost
            • for most ordinary people, that cost is too high
    5. power-hungry literally means someone who wants power. Someone who wants power 00:11:34 is going to seek power more than everybody else. As a result of that, we have a real problem on our hands. How do we stop this, right? So there's a few answers.
      • problem
        • power hungry people intentionally seek out power more than anyone else.
        • this creates a real problem.
        • the more power a position has, the more likely power-hungry people will be attracted
      • solution
        • make systems of power more attractive for ordinary and decent people
    6. when we design systems in an intelligent way, we can screen out 00:11:09 and topple the Martin McFifes of this world.
      • key strategy
        • design system to screen out power hungry people
    7. some systems of power have absolutely no barriers,
      • key finding
        • some systems of power have absolutely no barriers
      • comment
        • when there are no barriers, then power seekers will have opportunity to actualize power
    8. What are your four main arguments about power?
      • four main arguments about power
          1. worse people get power, corruptible people seek power
          1. power makes people worse, power corrupts
        • 3 we are drawn to the wrong kinds of leaders for all the wrong reasons
        • 4 we can design systems to make better people end up in power
    9. Lord Acton
      • quote
        • power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely
      • Author
        • Lord Acton
      • Context
        • Lord Acton coined the term to whiitewash the brutality o Spanish Inquisition
    10. Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How it Changes Us
      • Source
        • Big Think interview
      • Book Title
        • Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How it Changes Us
      • Book Author
        • Brian Klaas
    1. I can think of little more reductive, repugnant, reckless, or racist crusades as a model figure than indoctrinating your child with an inherent distaste for their own culture, and nothing more deeply alarming to hear from the mouth of someone born in the 21st century than shit like “Queen was better than any rapper will ever be,” or “real musicianship will die forever with Eric Clapton.” It’s unfair and unnatural: imagine if your high school classmates had consistently turned up their scrunched nose at the living whole of rock & roll, declaring Scott Joplin to be the last musician they could stand.
    1. For any action, habit, and belief you have, ask yourself: "Does this help toward my goals and future self or not?", if the answer is no, it is a distraction and part of the 80% you need to let go in order to reach 10X

      Your future self and 10X (or 100X) vision and goals serve as a massive filter for action and belief.

      Note: You should not 10X everything! Just 3 priorities.

    2. Counterintuitively, the 10X mindset and goal setting is not about goals. It is about identifying the essential PROCESSES that lead to significant progress.

    3. What is the game you want to play? What is the game you could play? What is a game you could go all in on and succeed at and be really good at?

      This defines your pathways and strategies within your 20%

      The path can change and adjust over time.

    4. To achieve goals, raise the floor, FOCUS on removing bottlenecks. Also create constraints by Schwerpunkt (primary objective), contrary to common wisdom, constraint actually gives freedom, it prevents analysis paralysis.

  11. Jun 2023
    1. Something to introduce into your yearly review is to reflect on the period and find out what your 10x cycles were.

      A 10x mindset is defined by letting go of the 80% that isn't useful, and focusing on the 20% that is essential while building 80% new skills or standards that benefit your purpose. A lot of true progress requires sacrifice (stripping down that which is not beneficial or essential).

      Related to what Mihaly Csikszentmihaliy, author of Flow, calls the Ulterior purpose, where the purpose serves as a big filter to focus on what actually matters. Antonin Sertillanges gives a similar account in The Intellectual Life

      The solid maxim: Big change requires great sacrifice.""

      Likely, identifying the essential 20% (and the 80% to learn) requires a lot of introspection and reflection. Something that will help significantly is Kolb's.

    1. One) Successful men realize that the most important decision in their life is the woman they choose, because outside of work, this is what they'll be spending most time on. The woman must understand the man's grand ambition, and support them with it. (Cf. Flow & The Intellectual Life as well). Women should be chosen on personality, not looks. Looks fade (attraction as well), personality "stays".

      Two) Everyone deserves an opinion but not everyone deserves a say. Charlie Munger sums this up right: "I don't ever allow myself to have [express] an opinion about anything that I don't know the opponent side's argument better than they do." Or Marcus Aurelius, who says: "The opinion of ten thousand men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject." In short: Only state your opinion when you can back it up!; knowledge and experience. The same goes for judging opinion (and advice) from others.

      Three) Successful people buy assets when the money is enough. Assets > Luxury. (See also: Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki). Only buy glamor and other "interests" once your assets are there to secure your financial success.

      Four) Be pragmatic. Do what's practical, not what is "sexy". Notice inefficiencies and solve them. The entrepreneurial mindset.

      Five) The morning sets the tone for the rest of the days. Time is subjective, waking up early doesn't matter as much as waking up later. It depends on the person. Someone who wakes up at 10am can be as successful as someone who wakes up at 6am. Instead, what defines success, is a highly effective morning routine.

      Six) The less you talk, the more you listen. Talking less means less mistakes. In addition, the less you talk, the more people will listen when you do speak. It puts extra weight on your message. Listening means analysis and learning.

      Seven) Pick the right opportunity at the right time. Pick the right vehicle. Do the right things in the right order! The advice "don't do what someone says, do what they do" is bullshit, as you can't do what someone is able to do after ten years of experience.

      Eight) Discipline > Motivation. Motivation, like Dr. Sung says, fluctuates and is multifactorial dependent... When you are lead by motivation you will not be as productive. Don't rely on chance. Rely on what is stable.

      Nine) Once a good career has been made, buy A1 assets and hold on to them to secure a financially successful future.

      Ten) Just because you won, you are not a winner. Being a winner is a continuous process, it means always learning and reflecting as well as introspecting. Don't overvalue individual wins but do celebrate them when appropriate.

      Eleven) Build good relationships with the banks early on. At times you need loans to fund certain ventures, when having a good relation with them, this will be significantly easier. Understand finance as early as possible. Read finance books.

      Twelve) Keep the circle small. Acquintances can be many, but real close relationships should be kept small. Choose your friends wisely. "You become the average of the five people you spend most time with." Privacy is important. Only tell the most deep secrets to the Inner Circle, to avoid overcomplication.

      Thirteen) Assume that everything is your fault. Responsibility. It leads to learning. It requires reflection and introspection. It leads to Dr. Benjamin Hardy's statement: "Nothing happens to you, everything happens for you."

      Fourteen) Work like new money, but act like your old money. Combine the hunger of the new with the wisdom of the old.

      Fifteen) Assume that you can't change the world, but slightly influence it. It prevents disappointments and gives a right mindset. Do everything (that has your ambition) with an insane drive. Aim to hit the stars. To become the best of the best.

      Sixteen) Private victories lead to public victories. The solid maxim is the following: "The bigger the public victory, the more private victories went into it." Work in private. Social media doesn't need to known the struggle. Let your results talk for you. This is also why you should never compare yourself to others, but rather to your own past self.

      Seventeen) After extreme experience, the most complicated task will look elegant and effortless. Unconscious competence.

    1. Das neueste Kohlekraftwerk in Bangladesch musste kurz nach seiner Eröffnung bereits zweimal stillgelegt werden, weil Bangladesch nicht über die Devisenreserven verfügte, um die nötige Kohle aus Indonesien zu importieren. Die New York Times stellt ausgehend von diesem Beispiel die zunehmenden wirtschaftlichen Schwierigkeiten wegen der Kosten der Köhleenergie dar. Im Augenblick ist China das einzige größere asiatische Land, das massiv Kohlekraftwerke ausbaut. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/18/climate/coal-electricity-bangladesh.html

    1. These two terminals are connected together, forming a common return pathfor load current, as shown in Fig. 2.32. The connection between the negative and thepositive terminals of the supplies results in a common or floating return. The floatingcommon may be connected to the earth ground terminal of a supply, if a particularcircuit requests this. Generally, it will neither help nor hinder circuit performance.

      This shows the proper way to hookup two DC power supplies and how to incorporate them along with grounding them

  12. May 2023
    1. Dave Pollard writes about types of silence and its cultural role in different situations. Prompted by a K-cafe by David Gurteen. Great to see such old network connections still going strong.

      Book mentioned [[The Great Unheard at Work by Mark Cole and John Higgins]] something for the antilib re power assymmetries?

    1. To measure the periodic activity, we would like to describe these peaks, without our measures of these peaks being influenced by co-occurring aperiodic activity.

      Otherwise the aperiodic components could mislead the results

    1. Power allows people to act freely, power leading to approach motivation

      "Most contemporary psychological scientists define approach motivation as the impulse to go toward positive stimuli, where stimuli are external goal objects (Lang & Bradley, 2008)."

    2. Hierarchies in the correlated forms of power (resources) and status (prestige) are constants thatorganize human societies. This article reviews relevant social psychological literature andidentifies several converging results concerning power and status. Whether rank is chronicallypossessed or temporarily embodied, higher ranks create psychological distance from others, allowagency by the higher ranked, and exact deference from the lower ranked. Beliefs that status entailscompetence are essentially universal. Interpersonal interactions create warmth-competencecompensatory tradeoffs. Along with societal structures (enduring inequality), these tradeoffsreinforce status-competence beliefs. Race, class, and gender further illustrate these dynamics.Although status systems are resilient, they can shift, and understanding those change processes isan important direction for future research, as global demographic changes disrupt existinghierarchies.

      Abstract

    1. When I questioned an FCC spokesperson about the accuracy the agency's warning by pointing out that I wasn’t aware of any security experts saying juice jacking is a real threat, they asked if I had spoken to every cyber expert.

      lmao.

  13. Apr 2023
    1. As you're watching someone stream, you can leave comments, which the Broadcaster (in Periscope parlance) can see and respond to. This, Beykpour says, is the app’s real secret sauce. "The magic moment of Periscope is not when you see video for the first time," he says. "Because you’ve experienced that before, whether it’s YouTube or another live broadcasting tool. The magic moment for Periscope is when you as viewer say something and you end up influencing the broadcast."

      Even since I highlighted this, some years ago, the actual tragedy of the Periscope story got so much worse...

      (Including Bekypour reap Periscope for parts to build Twitter Spaces and then forget for some 10 straight days after the public commitment date to actually put it out of its misery.)

  14. Mar 2023
    1. Mentioned this to someone who moved to Bushwick and kept saying "I wish more of Brooklyn was like this" with a rebuttal saying "this is why the people who made it attractive to you aren't here anymore" and got the "it's not my problem" shit. https://twitter.com/hollley/status/1641149981678530560. I think that's where being a "transplant" into a different place becomes violent - your presence IMMEDIATELY disrupts the environments you're in (and because of that, you have an obligation to minimize it as much as possible).
    1. Apple Acknowledges OpenStreetMap

      The fact that Apple Maps would not/could not exist without OpenStreetMap, and yet Apple, Inc. has not spoken that organization's name aloud once.

      When I can get people to just hear me out on that fact, they are almost always astonished and activated.

      So, that's why I'm annotating here. Howdy, Timbo!

    2. Unless specifically identified as such, Apple Maps' use of any third party trademarks does not indicate any relationship, sponsorship, or endorsement between Apple Maps and the owners of such trademarks.

      Fuck you, mayne.

    1. This will not be the last terrifying scientific report on climate change. But the only path out of the dull repetitiveness of increasingly dire headlines is a politics that acknowledges that science and truth won’t automatically lead to change. The struggle for the planet is a struggle for political power.

      or more directly, people power.

    1. OpenAI has not detailed in any concrete way who exactly will get to define what it means for A.I. to ‘‘benefit humanity as a whole.’’

      Who get's to make decisions?

    1. Just transformations challenge power politics, which are often based on vested interests, cost-effectiveness and cost-recovery principles. Addressing deforestation through forest policy may not be adequate to counter agricultural policies that promote land use change to ensure more production and higher gross domestic product (GDP). Carbon markets may be captured by entrepreneurs seeking profit and may not be equitable or effective and can allow pollution to continue. In ‘allocating policy responsibilities’, it is important to not only understand and challenge dominant discourses on increasing GDP at all costs, but also ensure that solutions do not reproduce, redistribute or increase injustices.

      -Summary - Justice arguments transcend the normative status quo arguments that are usually based purely on GDP alone. - Carbon markets / Carbon offsets also need to be challenged as they can often be unjust and wealth concentrating through capitalist entrepreneurship that merely increases injustice.

  15. Feb 2023
    1. state’s responsibility to protect the safety of its citizens so policing falls to the states and the federal government cannot suspend habeas corpus (protection from unlawful imprisonment)

      One of the States Power

    2. Tenth Amendment

      Is clarity between the relationship of the Constitution and the Federal Government. That if the ("paperwork") Constitution doesn't specify it the power to be delegated by the Federal Govt, that power belongs to the state and/or the people. This comes in handy when there are concurrent powers(powers shared between the state and federal govt, the tenth amendment with come into play to divide the specifics.Limiting the powers of the Fed Govt.

    1. What is Image Masking? Image masking is a technique used in photo editing to isolate or remove specific parts of an image. This is often done by creating a mask, which is a grayscale image that defines which parts of the original image should be visible and which should be hidden. With image masking, you can selectively hide or reveal parts of an image, making it an essential tool for photo editing. It allows you to remove backgrounds, change colors, and multiple composite images together to create a single image.

      Unveiling The Power Of Image Masking In Photoshop: A Comprehensive Guide See more on https://vectorwiz.com/image-masking/

    1. Kawakatsu et al. (1) make an important ad-vance in the quest for this kind of understanding, pro-viding a general model for how subtle differences inindividual-level decision-making can lead to hard-to-miss consequences for society as a whole.Their work (1) reveals two distinct regimes—oneegalitarian, one hierarchical—that emerge fromshifts in individual-level judgment. These lead to sta-tistical methods that researchers can use to reverseengineer observed hierarchies, and understand howsignaling systems work when prestige and power arein play.

      M. Kawakatsu, P. S. Chodrow, N. Eikmeier, D. B. Larremore, Emergence of hierarchy in networked endorsement dynamics. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 118, e2015188118 (2021)

      This may be of interest to Jerry Michalski et al.

  16. Jan 2023
    1. 3.1 Guest Lecture: Lauren Klein » Q&A on "What is Feminist Data Science?"<br /> https://www.complexityexplorer.org/courses/162-foundations-applications-of-humanities-analytics/segments/15631

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7HmG5b87B8

      Theories of Power

      Patricia Hill Collins' matrix of domination - no hierarchy, thus the matrix format

      What are other broad theories of power? are there schools?

      Relationship to Mary Parker Follett's work?

      Bright, Liam Kofi, Daniel Malinsky, and Morgan Thompson. “Causally Interpreting Intersectionality Theory.” Philosophy of Science 83, no. 1 (January 2016): 60–81. https://doi.org/10.1086/684173.

      about Bayesian modeling for intersectionality


      Where is Foucault in all this? Klein may have references, as I've not got the context.


      How do words index action? —Laura Klein


      The power to shape discourse and choose words - relationship to soft power - linguistic memes

      Color Conventions Project


      20:15 Word embeddings as a method within her research


      General result (outside of the proximal research) discussed: women are more likely to change language... references for this?


      [[academic research skills]]: It's important to be aware of the current discussions within one's field. (LK)


      36:36 quantitative imperialism is not the goal of humanities analytics, lived experiences are incredibly important as well. (DK)

    1. https://www.complexityexplorer.org/courses/162-foundations-applications-of-humanities-analytics/segments/15630

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwkRfN-7UWI


      Seven Principles of Data Feminism

      • Examine power
      • Challenge power
      • Rethink binaries and hierarchies
      • Elevate emotion an embodiment
      • Embrace pluralism
      • Consider context
      • Make labor visible

      Abolitionist movement

      There are some interesting analogies to be drawn between the abolitionist movement in the 1800s and modern day movements like abolition of police and racial justice, etc.


      Topic modeling - What would topic modeling look like for corpuses of commonplace books? Over time?


      wrt article: Soni, Sandeep, Lauren F. Klein, and Jacob Eisenstein. “Abolitionist Networks: Modeling Language Change in Nineteenth-Century Activist Newspapers.” Journal of Cultural Analytics 6, no. 1 (January 18, 2021). https://doi.org/10.22148/001c.18841. - Brings to mind the difference in power and invisible labor between literate societies and oral societies. It's easier to erase oral cultures with the overwhelm available to literate cultures because the former are harder to see.

      How to find unbiased datasets to study these?


      aspirational abolitionism driven by African Americans in the 1800s over and above (basic) abolitionism

    1. one reason the Golden Age of Piracy remains the stuff oflegend is that pirates of that age were so skilled at manipulatinglegends; they deployed wonder-stories—whether of terrifyingviolence or inspiring ideals—as something very much like weaponsof war, even if the war in question was the desperate and ultimatelydoomed struggle of a motley band of outlaws against the entireemerging structure of world authority at the time.
    1. 个人学习可能取决于他人行为的主张突出了将学习环境视为一个涉及多个互动参与者的系统的重要性
    1. It is not by erecting fences between power and right that governance can be steered toward justice, but by entangling power within solidarity, care, and other modes of right relationship.

      !- strengthen governance : by entangling power with care, rights and solidarity

    1. surveillance capitalism represents an unprecedented concentration of knowledge and the power that accrues to such knowledge. They know everything about us, but we know little about them. They predict our futures, but for the sake of others’ gain. Their knowledge extends far beyond the compilation of the information we gave them. It’s the knowledge that they have produced from that information that constitutes their competitive advantage, and they will never give that up. These knowledge asymmetries introduce wholly new axes of social inequality and injustice.

      !- surveillance capitalism : key insight - knowledge assymetry between corporations and government bodies vs individuals

    1. we we can know that the 00:26:37 illusion the mueller liar illusion is an illusion we can draw it ourselves a hundred times but knowing that doesn't make it go away and that's because that illusion is perceptual not conceptual it's a we're 00:26:51 absolutely wired to see things that way and it may well be that we are wired or badly wired um to see ourselves as selves instead of as persons

      !- knowing that its an illusion : doesn't itself prevent us from falling under its spell

  17. Nov 2022
    1. indirectly maintain and explicitly reject and reshape existing norm

      Hier geht es um die Definition der Normen auf deren Basis das zweite Cluster das erst legitimiert oder in Frage stellt.

    2. the image is of a legitimizing collaborator, the Enabler cluster, w

      Diese Macht legitimiert aber die einschränkende Macht des ersten Clusters.

    3. boundaries decreed by the powers of the Davos cluste

      Die Grenzen setzende Macht des ersten Clusters bestimmt den Raum für die instrumentelle Macht des zweiten Clusters.

    4. deep-seated and largely unchallenged forms of power.

      Deep seeted and largely unchallenged forms of power: entspricht dem Davos-Cluster. Die neun Linsen entsprechen verschiedenen Formen der Macht.

    1. The problem when the asset is people is that people are intensely complicated, and trying to regulate how people behave is historically a miserable experience, especially when that authority is vested in a single powerful individual.
    1. federated mastodon is neat. that “ericajoy”can exist on any server is going to be a problem, especially around impersonation. a third party “verification” player will be necessary if mastodon gains broad traction.

      Poster implies that a benefit of globally centralised structures like Twitter, FB and LinkedIn is verification. I think impersonation is rife there, and will be less on Mastodon. Apart from basic measures (rel-me verification against your website, use your own domain for an instance), there are similar to T/FB/LinkedIn ways to verify someone outside the platform itself, where people check it's you through a channel they already know it's you. Above all the potential benefit of impersonation does not exist on M: no immediate global audience, no amplification of messages through self-feeding loops of engagement. Your reach is limited to your own follow(er)s mostly, and they won't fall for an impersonation, as you're already there among them. The power assymmetry inherent in T/FB's algo's doesn't exist on M. So impersonating would cost the impersonator way more, and become unsustainable to them.

  18. Oct 2022
    1. She used to stand at the top of the steps and I used to stand at the bottom

      the quote can be symbolic to power, as the lady is at the top of the steps she has more power, it makes the man look weaker compared to her. this is interesting due to the reality being the exact opposite. where the women is at the bottom of the economic and the man at the top.

    1. All these types have a right to do as theyplease or as they must; they have no right to impose in then a m e of science such narrow limits on others.

    Tags

    Annotators

  19. Sep 2022
    1. Unemployed workers are much more likelyto fall into poverty in countries like the United States, Canada, and Japan,compared with countries such as the Netherlands and Iceland.

      Is part of this effect compounded by America's history of the Protestant work ethic (see Max Weber)?

      Do the wealthy/powerful benefit by this structure of penalizing the unemployed this way? Is there a direct benefit to them? Or perhaps the penalty creates a general downward pressure on overall wages and thus provides an indirect benefit to those in power?

      What are the underlying reasons we tax the unemployed this way?

    1. Running this simulation over many time steps, Lilian Weng of OSoMe found that as agents' attention became increasingly limited, the propagation of memes came to reflect the power-law distribution of actual social media: the probability that a meme would be shared a given number of times was roughly an inverse power of that number. For example, the likelihood of a meme being shared three times was approximately nine times less than that of its being shared once.
    1. Pollin: Neither negative emissions technologies nor nuclear power can likely contribute significantly to building an alternative global clean energy infrastructure. Indeed, it is more likely that they will create still more severe problems. Let’s start with nuclear.

      Notes on some problems with continuing to use nuclear power instead of switching to clean power.

    2. Renewable energy critics argue that wind and solar are not reliable sources because of their variability. Others argue that wind farms encroach on pristine environment and destroy a country’s natural habitat, as is the case with the installation of thousands of wind turbines on scores of Greek islands in the Aegean Sea. How would you respond to such concerns, and are there ways around them?
    1. McConnell said it’s up to the Republican candidates in various Senate battleground races to explain how they view the hot-button issue.   (function () { try { var event = new CustomEvent( "nsDfpSlotRendered", { detail: { id: 'acm-ad-tag-mr2_ab-mr2_ab' } } ); window.dispatchEvent(event); } catch (err) {} })(); “I think every Republican senator running this year in these contested races has an answer as to how they feel about the issue and it may be different in different states. So I leave it up to our candidates who are quite capable of handling this issue to determine for them what their response is,” he said.

      Context: Lindsey Graham had just proposed a bill for a nationwide abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

      McConnell's position seems to be one that choice about abolition is an option, but one which is reserved for white men of power over others. This is painful because that choice is being left to people without any of the information and nuance about specific circumstances versus the pregnant women themselves potentially in consultation with their doctors who have broad specific training and experience in the topics and issues at hand. Why are these leaders attempting to make decisions based on possibilities rather than realities, particularly when they've not properly studied or are generally aware of any of the realities?

      If this is McConnell's true position, then why not punt the decision and choices down to the people directly impacted? And isn't this a long running tenet of the Republican Party to allow greater individual freedoms? Isn't their broad philosophy: individual > state government > national government? (At least with respect to internal, domestic matters; in international matters the opposite relationships seem to dominate.)

      tl;dr:<br /> Mitch McConnell believes in choice, just not in your choice.

      Here's the actual audio from a similar NPR story:<br /> https://ondemand.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/me/2022/09/20220914_me_gop_sen_lindsey_graham_introduces_15-week_abortion_ban_in_the_senate.mp3#t=206


      McConnell is also practicing the Republican party game of "do as I say and not as I do" on Graham directly. He's practicing this sort of hypocrisy because as leadership, he's desperately worried that this move will decimate the Republican Party in the midterm elections.

      There's also another reading of McConnell's statement. Viewed as a statement from leadership, there's a form of omerta or silent threat being communicated here to the general Republican Party membership: you better fall in line on the party line here because otherwise we run the risk of losing power. He's saying he's leaving it up to them individually, but in reality, as the owner of the purse strings, he's not.


      Thesis:<br /> The broadest distinction between American political parties right now seems to be that the Republican Party wants to practice fascistic forms of "power over" while the Democratic Party wants to practice more democratic forms of "power with".

    1. in south australia we've got the hornsdale power reserve which is a 00:32:43 100 megawatt capacity this is one that elon musk very famously uh put in so this is what the european union is now using as the standard to talk about you know it's 00:32:56 been done in australia we can do it here so in the global system we would need 15 million 635 and 478 such stations across the planet 00:33:08 in the power grid system just for that four week buffer so and that is actually about 30 times capacity uh compared to the entire global

      !- for : global capacity renewable energy storage - this is not realistic

    1. Taking carbon steel as an example, as shown in Picture 1, using a 1000w fiber laser cutting machine, for carbon steel materials thickness below 10mm, when the thickness of carbon steel is less than 2mm, the cutting speed per minute can be up to 8 meters. When the thickness is 6mm, the cutting speed is about 1.6 meters per minute, and when the thickness of the carbon steel is 10 mm, the cutting speed is about 0.6 to 0.7 meters per minute.

      Taking carbon steel as an example, as shown in Picture 1, using a 1000w fiber laser cutting machine, for carbon steel materials thickness below 10mm, when the thickness of carbon steel is less than 2mm, the cutting speed per minute can be up to 8 meters. When the thickness is 6mm, the cutting speed is about 1.6 meters per minute, and when the thickness of the carbon steel is 10 mm, the cutting speed is about 0.6 to 0.7 meters per minute.

      • Taking carbon steel as an example, as shown in Picture 1, using a 1000w fiber laser cutting machine, for carbon steel materials thickness below 10mm, when the thickness of carbon steel is less than 2mm, the cutting speed per minute can be up to 8 meters. When the thickness is 6mm, the cutting speed is about 1.6 meters per minute, and when the thickness of the carbon steel is 10 mm, the cutting speed is about 0.6 to 0.7 meters per minute.

      It can be seen that when the thickness of carbon steel material is less than 2mm, customers who attach great importance to cutting speed can consider using 2000W fiber laser cutting machine, but the 2000W machine is much higher than 1000W in equipment price and operating cost. When the carbon steel material is larger than 2mm, the 2000W machine is not much faster than the 1000W cutting speed. Therefore, the 1000W fiber laser cutting machine is more cost-effective than the 2000W fiber laser cutting machine.

      The cutting speed can directly reflect the efficiency of the fiber laser cutting machine. For cutting different materials with different thickness, the cutting speed will also change greatly. The thicker the thickness, the slower the speed!

  20. Aug 2022
    1. Looking for books with wider margins for annotations and notes

      https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/wue2ex/looking_for_books_with_wider_margins_for/

      Not long after I posted this it had about 3 upvotes, including my automatic 1. It's now at 0, and there are several responses about not writing in books at all. It seems like this particular book community is morally opposed to writing in one's books! 🤣

      Why though? There's a tremendously long tradition of writing in books, and probably more so when they were far more expensive! Now they're incredibly inexpensive commodities, so why should we be less inclined to write in them, particularly when there's reasonable evidence of the value of doing so?

      I might understand not writing in library books as part of their value within the commons, but https://booktraces.org/ indicates that almost 12% or more of the books they've tracked prior to 1924 have some sort of mark, writing, or evidence that it was actively read.

      Given what I know of the second hand markets, it's highly unlikely that my books (marked up or not) will ever be read by another person.

      There's so much more to say here, but I just haven't the time today...

    1. limitintegerThe maximum number of items to return. Default: 20. Minimum: 1. Maximum: 50.>= 0<= 50Default value:20Example value:10

      I find it hilariously telling that Spotify's official, very-credentialed own Web API will not retrieve more than 50 fucking tracks from a playlist lmao.

      (I lied to you just then. I find it makes me want to commit systematic acts of violence on myself.) - WTF

    1. For instance, some projects have time locks so that a coin can’t be used to vote for some period of time after it has been exchanged.

      Similar idea to the"eloboosting" that is happening in esport games like csgo and lol <--this is a great angle to explain the "time lock" mechanism and why it makes sense.

    1. Thus, the geek foregrounds his/her put-upon status in order to artfully and self-deceivingly demonstrate how s/he is not empowered, and thus not part of the problematic and enfranchised identity of the tourist who oppresses the vagabond out of self-interest.
    1. But commission member Kondratiuk, a heraldic expert who served as a military historian for the National Guard and US Army for more than four decades, said such objections are “a misreading of the heraldry.”“That’s the arm of God protecting the Commonwealth,” he said, referring to the upraised sword. “That symbol has been used in European heraldry for hundreds of years.”He added that the Native figure’s downward-facing arrow indicates “peaceful intent.”“The Native American on there is an homage to the Native Americans,” Kondratiuk said, adding he “voted with the pack” to see what recommendations the commission would produce. As for the motto: “That’s an allusion to the monarch,” he continued. “The Founding Fathers would have been very familiar with that.”

      Example of how older traditions have passed from memory and are now re-read (mis-read) in new contexts.

    2. Latin: “By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty.”
    1. Even though I’m an amateur researcherMeaning I do it as part of my job as a designer and writer, but in a rather a naive way compared to anyone writing a PhD., I still spend a good chunk of time hunting down and reading academic publications.

      One really oughtn't downplay their research skills like this, rather they should wear them as a badge of honor. Downplaying them leeches away one's power.

      Ph.D. researchers may potentially go deeper into sources, but this is only a function of time and available attention.

      This sort of debate also plays out in spaces like writing computer code. The broader industry determines who is and isn't a "coder", but this is only a means of creating power structures that determine who has power and who doesn't or who is part of the conversation and who isn't.

      Don't let Maggie fool you here, she is definitely part of this conversation.


      What areas of work over time does this pattern of level of experience not apply to?

      There is definitely a level of minimal literacy at which one could be considered a reader, but there is no distinction between amateur reader and professional reader the way there might be between an "amateur researcher" and a full time "academic researcher".

      Other examples of this? Video game playing?

    1. The ideas expressed in Creative Experience continueto have an impact. Follett’s process of integration, for example, forms the basisof what is now commonly referred to as a ‘‘win-win’’ approach to conflictresolution; and her distinction between ‘‘power-with’’ and ‘‘power-over’’ hasbeen used by so many distinguished thinkers that it has become a part of ourpopular vocabulary. ≤

      While she may not have coined the phrase "win-win", Mary Parker Follett's process of integration described in her book Creative Experience (Longmans, Green & Co., 1924) forms the basis of what we now refer to as the idea of "win-win" conflict resolution.

      Follett's ideas about power over and power with also stem from Creative Experience as well.

      1. Those using the power-over, power-with distinction include Dorothy Emmett, the first woman president of the British Aristotelian Society, and Hannah Arendt; Mans- bridge, ‘‘Mary Parker Follet: Feminist and Negotiator,’’ xviii–xxii.

      Syndication link: - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Win%E2%80%93win_game&type=revision&diff=1102353117&oldid=1076197356

  21. Jul 2022
    1. “Algorithms are animated by data, data comes from people, people make up society, and society is unequal,” the paper reads. “Algorithms thus arc towards existing patterns of power and privilege, marginalization, and disadvantage.”
    1. Pasteboard permission Apps need your permission before accessing the pasteboard to paste content from another app.

      I am going to fucking 🆁🅴🅳🅰🅲🆃🅴🅳 myself.

    1. Silos, by their very nature of being centralized services under the control of the privileged, cannot be good if you look at the power structures imposed by them. Instead, we should use our privilege to lift others up, something that commercial silos, by design, are incapable of doing.
  22. Jun 2022
    1. surveys indicate that screens and e-readers interfere with two other important aspects of navigating texts: serendipity and a sense of control.

      Based on surveys, readers indicate that two important parts of textual navigation are sense of control and serendipity.

      http://books.google.com/books/about/Electronic_journal_literature.html?id=YSFlAAAAMAAJ


      How does the control over a book frame how we read? What does "power over" a book look like compared to "power with"?

      What are the tools for thought affordances that paper books provide over digital books and vice versa?


      I find myself thinking about people publishing books in index card/zettelkasten formats. Perhaps Scott Scheper could do this with his antinet book presented in a linear format, but done in index cards with his numbers, links, etc. as well as his actual cards for his index so that readers could also see the power of the system by holding it in their hands and playing with it.

    1. But systems of schooling and educational institutions–and much of online learning– are organized in ways that deny their voices matter. My role is to resist those systems and structures to reclaim the spaces of teaching and learning as voice affirming. Voice amplifying.

      Modeling annotation and note taking can allow students to see that their voices matter in conversation with the "greats" of knowledge. We can and should question authority. Even if one's internal voice questions as one reads, that might be enough, but modeling active reading and note taking can better underline and empower these modes of thought.

      There are certainly currents within American culture that we can and should question authority.

      Sadly some parts of conservative American culture are reverting back to paternalized power structures of "do as I say and not as I do" which leads to hypocrisy and erosion of society.

      Education can be used as a means of overcoming this, though it requires preventing the conservative right from eroding this away from the inside by removing books and certain thought from the education process that prevents this. Extreme examples of this are Warren Jeff's control of religion, education, and social life within his Mormon sect.

      Link to: - Lawrence Principe examples of the power establishment in Western classical education being questioned. Aristotle wasn't always right. The entire history of Western science is about questioning the status quo. (How can we center this practice not only in science, but within the humanities?)


      My evolving definition of active reading now explicitly includes the ideas of annotating the text, having a direct written conversation with it, questioning it, and expanding upon it. I'm not sure I may have included some or all of these in it before. This is what "reading with a pen in hand" (or digital annotation tool) should entail. What other pieces am I missing here which might also be included?

    1. 22. We may note in passing the archaic nature of the US Supreme Court, whosejudges are named for life like the pope of the Catholic Church and the apostles of theMormon church. However, a pontifical bull of 1970 denied cardinals over eighty yearsold the right to vote in papal elections, which proves that all institutions can be re-formed, even the most venerable ones.
    2. In France, a wealthyvoter giving 7,500 euros (the current ceiling) to his preferred politicalparty has a right to a tax deduction of 5,000 euros, financed by the restof the taxpayers.
    3. today’s billionaires would not dare to openly demandrights to vote like the ones Sweden used to have, but they often resortto other methods to arrive at the same ends.
    4. As long as all the states on the planetwere equally weak, a certain balance prevailed. But from the momentthat several European states developed a significantly greater fiscal,administrative, and military capacity, a new dynamic emerged.
    5. But it was pre-cisely this fiscal, financial, and military capacity that was to provedecisive for the rise of Europe’s power.
    6. In concreteterms, a state that levies taxes amounting to only 1 percent of the na-tional income has very little power and capacity to mobilize society.
    1. Ahmed teaches us how much we can learn from complaints. “The path of a complaint… teaches us something about how institutions work,” what she calls institutional mechanics.
    2. I’ve also learned, thanks to my doctoral training in sociology, that one must expand one’s personal problems into the structural, to recognize what’s rotten at the local level as an instantiation of the institutional. Our best public sociologists, like Tressie McMillan Cottom and Jess Calarco, do this exceptionally well.
    1. No additional considerations for iOS, macOS, or tvOS.

      Believe it or not, finding this sentence, just now was actually a huge breakthrough in my iPhone Keyboard Reference project...

      Proud of you, bastards, for actually saying one sentence!

    1. O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone; and you have no longer an aristocratical, no longer a democratical spirit. Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation, brought about by the punishment of those in power, inflicted by those who had no power at all? You read of a riot act in a country which is called one of the freest in the world, where a few neighbors cannot assemble without the risk of being shot by a hired soldiery, the engines of despotism. We may see such an act in America.

      Oh the ironies of this as he was talking about a small proportion of the population at the time, a large swath of which (namely enslaved persons with no power) had no arms to protect themselves against him.

      His definition of "freemen" was painfully limiting for someone speaking about freedom in such lofty terms.

    1. Harness collective intelligence augmented by digital technology, and unlock exponential innovation. Beyond old hierarchical structures and archaic tools.

      https://twitter.com/augmented_CI

      The words "beyond", "hierarchical", and "archaic" are all designed to marginalize prior thought and tools which all work, and are likely upon which this broader idea is built. This is a potentially toxic means of creating "power over" this prior art rather than a more open spirit of "power with".

    1. In 1968, he resigned as Secretary of Defense to become President of the World Bank.

      Similarly Paul Wolfowitz was U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense running the U.S. war in Iraq before leaving to become the 10th President of the World Bank.

      McNamara was the 5th President of the World Bank.

    1. https://sustainingcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/01/4-types-of-power/#comment-122967

      Given your area, if you haven't found it yet, you might appreciate going a generation further back in your references with: Mary P. Follett. Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett, ed. by E. M. Fox and L. Urwick (London: Pitman Publishing, 1940). She had some interesting work in organization theory you might appreciate. Wikipedia can give you a quick overview. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Parker_Follett#Organizational_theory

    2. Power within is related to a person’s “sense of self-worth and self-knowledge; it includes an ability to recognize individual differences while respecting others” [1] (p. 45). Power within involves people having a sense of their own capacity and self-worth [2]. Power within allows people to recognise their “power to” and “power with”, and believe they can make a difference [1].

      I've seen definitions of the others before but not "power within".

  23. May 2022
    1. The cycle thermal efficiency (net power/heat input) for a supercritical vaporgenerator will exceed that for a subcritical cycle.
    2. A possible advantage to using the recuperative preheaters is that they reducethe heat load on the condenser and cooling tower. The lower capital cost for asmaller condenser and cooling tower must be compared to the extra cost for therecuperators; over the long haul, the resulting higher efficiency should meanlower operating cost
    3. The features that distinguish the Kalinacycles (there are several versions) from other binary cycles are as follows
    4. Given thesmall size of turbines using organic working fluids, practical considerations maylead to an alternative design using two separate turbines; see Figure 8.13.
    5. Dual-pressure binary plant: pressure-enthalpy process diagram
    6. Dual-pressure binary plant: Simplified schematic flow diagram
    7. The Carnot efficiency is the highest possible efficiency

    Tags

    Annotators

    1. By exam-ining how movement toward equality has actually been produced, wecan learn precious lessons for our future and better understand thestruggles and mobilizations that have made this movement possible,as well as the institutional structures and legal, social, fiscal, educa-tional, and electoral systems that have allowed equality to become alasting reality.

      Understanding the history of inequality and how changes in institutional structures in legal, social, fiscal educational, and electoral systems have encouraged change toward equality, we might continue to change and modify these to ensure even greater equality.

    1. I originally said: It feels like the principle of least power in action. But another way of rephrasing “least power” is “most availability.” Technologies that are old, simple, and boring tend to be more widely available.

      This is also the reason that space platforms are built on incredibly old computing systems, we know what all the problems and issues are. Then when the satellite is up in outer-space where it's not accessible and not easily repairable, it will hopefully work as expected forever.

    1. therefore the gases should be removed from the condenser. This can be achieved byinstalling vacuum pumps, compressors, or steam ejectors. The condenser heat removalis done either by using a cooling tower or through cold air circulation in the condenser.The condensate forms a small fraction of the cooling water circuit, a large portion ofwhich is then evaporated and dispersed into the atmosphere by the cooling tower. Thecooling water surplus (blow down) is disposed of in shallow injection wells. In singleflash condensation system, the condensate does have direct contact with the coolingwater.
    2. Single flash power plants are classified according to their steam turbines types, i.e., theturbine exit conditions. Two such basic types are the single flash with a condensationsystem and the single flash back pressure system. In the first type, a condenser oper-ating at very low pressure is used to condensate the steam leaving the steam turbine.The condenser should operate at low vacuum pressure to maintain a large enthalpy dif-ference across the expansion process of the steam turbine, hence resulting in a higherpower output. The geothermal fluid usually contains non-condensable gases which arecollected at the condenser. Such a collection of gases may raise the condenser pressure,
    1. Whig history (or Whig historiography), often appearing as whig history, is an approach to historiography that presents history as a journey from an oppressive and benighted past to a "glorious present".[1] The present described is generally one with modern forms of liberal democracy and constitutional monarchy: it was originally a satirical term for the patriotic grand narratives praising Britain's adoption of constitutional monarchy and the historical development of the Westminster system.[2] The term has also been applied widely in historical disciplines outside of British history (e.g. in the history of science) to describe "any subjection of history to what is essentially a teleological view of the historical process".[3] When the term is used in contexts other than British history, "whig history" (lowercase) is preferred.[3]

      Stemming from British history, but often applied in other areas including the history of science, whig history is a historiography that presents history as a path from an oppressive, backward, and wretched past to a glorious present. The term was coined by British Historian Herbert Butterfield in The Whig Interpretation of History (1931). It stems from the British Whig party that advocated for the power of Parliament as opposed to the Tories who favored the power of the King.


      It would seem to be an unfortunate twist of fate for indigenous science and knowledge that it was almost completely dismissed when the West began to dominate indigenous cultures during the Enlightenment which was still heavily imbued with the influence of scholasticism. Had religion not played such a heavy role in science, we may have had more respect and patience to see and understand the value of indigenous ways of knowing.

      Link this to notes from The Dawn of Everything.

    1. GS11=Γin=Z02−Z01Z02+Z01

      According to the definition (2.4.11) and (2.4.10), GS11 should be :

      (Z_02 - Z_01^*)/(Z_02 + Z_01)

      There is a complex conjugate of Z_01 at the numerator, which is a consequence of the power-wave definition.

      Of course there is no change is Z_01 is real, but I think it should be mentioned, since the power-waves definition may lead to unexpected results for complex-valued impedances.

    1. Section 3.3 indicates that the parameters most correlated to suitable geothermal sites are carbon diox-307ide, earthquake density, elevation/depth, global heat flow, sediment thickness, and surface air temperature.

      How is carbon dioxide a parameter? Is it talking about the carbon dioxide emission of the plant?

    Tags

    Annotators

    1. instead of the “Mastodon appraoch” we take the “Replit approach”

      I'm confused by the continual references to the Replit. Once you have Replit-style power, you can do Mastodon interop—but it keeps you dependent on third-party SaaS. Continuing to violate the principle of least power isn't really any improvement. If you're going to shoot for displacing the status quo, it should be to enable public participation from people who have nothing more than a Neocities account or a static site published with GitHub Pages or one of the many other providers. Once you bring "live" backends into this (in contrast to "dead" media like RSS/Atom), you've pretty much compromised the whole thing.

    2. What happens if - maybe! - there’s a model of decentralization that feels more like a bunch of weird Replits networking with each other.

      Get rid of the networking, and make it more like the RSS/Atom model.

      ActivityPub, for example, shouldn't really require active server support if you just want publish to the clear Web (i.e. have no use for DMs). Anyone, anywhere can add RSS/Atom "support" to their blog—it's just dumping another asset on their (possibly static!) site. Not so with something like Mastodon, which is unfortunate. It violates the Principle of Least Power at a fundamental level.

    1. I wrote about my idea for Library.json a while back. It’s this idea that we might be able to rebuild these monolithic centralized services like Goodreads using nothing by a little RSS.

      See also this thread with Noel De Martin, discussing a (Solid-based) organizer for your media library/watchlist: https://noeldemartin.social/@noeldemartin/105646436548899306

      It shouldn't require Solid-level powers to run this. A design based upon "inert" data like RSS/Atom/JSON feeds (that don't require a smart backend to take on the role of an active participant in the protocol) would beat every attempt at Solid, ActivityPub, etc. that has been tried so far. "Inert"/"dead" media that works by just dumping some content on a Web-reachable endpoint somewhere, including a static site, is always going to be more accessible/approachable than something that requires either a server plug-in or a whole new backend to handle.

      The litmus test for any new proposal for a social protocol should be, "If I can't join the conversation by thumping on my SSG to get it to produce the right kind of output—the way that it's possible with RSS/Atom—then the design is fundamentally flawed and needs to be fixed."

    1. Theoretically, there are many plugins for webservers adding support for scripting using any scripting language you can name. These are sometimes used to host full-blown web applications but I don't see them being used to facilitate mildly dynamic functionality.

      All in all, despite its own flaws, I think this piece hints at a useful ontology for understanding the nuanced, difficult-to-name, POLP-violating design flaws in stuff like Mastodon/ActivityPub—and why BYFOB/S4 is a better fit, esp. for non-technical people.

      https://hypothes.is/search?q=%22black+and+dead+is+all+you+need%22+user:mrcolbyrussell

    2. They might have a style selector at the top of each page, causing a cookie to be set, and the server to serve a different stylesheet on every subsequent page load.

      Unnecessary violation of the Principle of Least Power.

      No active server component is necessary for this. It can be handled by the user agent's content negotiation.

  24. Apr 2022
    1. The historian in me always wants to look back at how this sort of media control has played out historically, so thinking about examples like William Randolph Hearst, Henry Luce, David Sarnoff, Axel Springer, Kerry Packer, or Rupert Murdoch across newspapers, radio, television, etc. might be interesting. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_proprietor

      Tim Wu's The Master Switch is pretty accessible in this area.


      On the intercultural front, the language (very careful public relations and "corporate speak") used in this leaked audio file of the most recent Twitter All Hands phone call might be fascinating and an interesting primary source for some of the questions you might be looking at on such an assignment. https://peertube.dk/w/2q8cdKR1mTCW7RyMQhcBEx

      Who are the multiple audiences (acknowledged and unacknowledged) being addressed? (esp. as they address leaks of information in the call.)

    1. Power over Ethernet (PoE) is a network technology that allows us to deliver both data and power over a single standard Ethernet cable. So we can use network cables like Cat5/Cat5e/Cat6/Cat6a cables to provide data connections and power to a Wifi access point, IP camera, VoIP phone, PoE lighting or any other device.

      Power over Ethernet (PoE vs PoE+ vs PoE++) makes money Power over Ethernet (PoE) is a network technology that allows us to deliver both data and power over a single standard Ethernet cable. So we can use network cables like Cat5/Cat5e/Cat6/Cat6a cables to provide data connections and power to a Wifi access point, IP camera, VoIP phone, PoE lighting or any other device.

    1. Even as he was critical of overabundance, Gesner exulted in it, seeking exhaustiveness in his accumulation of both themes and works from which others could choose according to their judgment and interests.

      Note here the presumed freedom to pick and choose based on interest and judgement. Who's judgement really? Book banning and religious battles would call to question which people got to exercise their own judgement.

  25. Mar 2022
    1. An early example of a timber circle witnessed by Europeans was recorded by watercolor artist John White in July 1585 when he visited the Algonquian village of Secotan in North Carolina. White was the artist-illustrator and mapmaker for the Roanoke Colony expedition sent by Sir Walter Raleigh to begin the first attempts at British colonization of the Americas.[2] White's works represent the sole-surviving visual record of the native inhabitants of the Americas as encountered by England's first colonizers on the Atlantic seaboard.[3] White's watercolor and the writings of the chronicler who accompanied him, Thomas Harriot, describes a great religious festival, possibly the Green Corn ceremony, with participants holding a ceremonial dance at a timber circle. The posts of the circle were carved with faces. Harriot noted that many of the participants had come from surrounding villages and that "every man attyred in the most strange fashion they can devise havinge certayne marks on the backs to declare of what place they bee." and that "Three of the fayrest Virgins" danced around a central post at the center of the timber circle.[4]

      Artist, illustrator and mapmaker John White painted a watercolor in July 1585 of a group of Native Americans in the Secotan village in North America. Both he and chronicler Thomas Harriot described a gathering of Indigenous peoples gathered in the Algonquian village as part of Sir Walter Raleigh's Roanoke Colony expedition. They describe a festival with participants holding a dance at a timber circle, the posts of which were carved with with faces.

      Harriot wrote that participants had come from surrounding villages and that "every man attyred in the most strange fashion they can devise havinge certayne marks on the backs to declare of what place they bee."

      Secotans dancing in a timber circle in North Carolina, watercolor painted by John White in 1585


      This evidence would generally support some of Lynne Kelly's thesis in Knowledge and Power. A group of neighboring peoples gathering, possibly for the Green Corn Ceremony, ostensibly to strengthen social ties and potentially to strengthen and trade knowledge.

      Would we also see others of her list of markers in the area?

      Read references: - Daniels, Dennis F. "John White". NCpedia. Retrieved 2017-12-19. - Tucker, Abigal (December 2008). "Sketching the Earliest Views of the New World". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2017-12-19. - "A Selection of John White's Watercolors : A festive dance". Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved 2017-12-19.

    1. Refinement is a social process

      The idea that refinement is a social process is a powerful one, but it is limited by the society's power structures, scale, and access to the original material and least powerful person's ability to help refine it.

    1. it’s even less clear if the current war in Ukraine will speed up stalled federal climate policy. But the war might convince some consumers to retrofit their own homes.

      Community scale efforts can play a big role now....mobilise the commons!

  26. Feb 2022
    1. Understanding the effects of introducing Solar PV and how it can affect “Power Factor” on complex Industrial/Commercial sites
    1. First, consider who gets to make the rules. Tenured scholars who, as we’ve noted, are mostly white and male, largely make the rules that determine who else can join the tenured ranks. This involves what sociologists call “boundary work,” or the practice of a group setting rules to determine who is good enough to join. And as such, many of the rules established around tenure over the years work really well for white scholars, but don’t adequately capture the contributions of scholars of color.

      Boundary work is the practice of a group that sets the rules to determine who is and isn't good enough to join the group.

      Link to Groucho Marx quote, "I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member."

  27. Jan 2022
    1. Books can indeed be dangerous. Until “Close Quarters,” I believed stories had the power to save me. That novel taught me that stories also had the power to destroy me. I was driven to become a writer because of the complex power of stories. They are not inert tools of pedagogy. They are mind-changing, world-changing.

      —Viet Thanh Nguyen

    1. Figure 1. Autocratic leadership transitions, 1946 to 2014.

      peaceful vs. unpeaceful power transitions:

      From 1946 to 2014, only 44 percent of autocratic leadership transitions were peaceful and resulted in the continuation of the regime after the departure of the incumbent.

  28. Dec 2021
    1. Pratt persuaded tribal elders and chiefs that the reason the "Washichu" (Lakota word for white man, loosely translates to Takes the Fat) had been able to take their land was that the Indians were uneducated. He said that the Natives were disadvantaged by being unable to speak and write English and, if they had that knowledge, they might have been able to protect themselves.

      Example where literacy provides perceived power over orality.

    1. But we often find such regional networks developinglargely for the sake of creating friendly mutual relations, or having anexcuse to visit one another from time to time;33 and there are plentyof other possibilities that in no way resemble ‘trade’.

      There is certainly social lubrication of visiting people from time to time which can help and advance societies, but this regular visiting can also be seen as a means of reinforcing one's oral cultural history through spaced repetition.

      It can be seen as "trade" but in a way that anthropologists have generally ignored for lack of imagination for what may have been actually happening.

    2. Already tens of thousands of years ago, one can find evidence ofobjects – very often precious stones, shells or other items ofadornment – being moved around over enormous distances. Oftenthese were just the sort of objects that anthropologists would laterfind being used as ‘primitive currencies’ all over the world.

      Is it also possible that these items may have served the purpose of mnemonic devices as a means of transporting (otherwise invisible) information from one area or culture to another?

      Can we build evidence for this from the archaeological record?

      Relate this to the idea of expanding the traditional "land, labor, capital" theory of economics to include "information" as a basic building block

  29. Nov 2021
    1. “Evangelical militancy is often depicted as a response to fear,” she told me. “But it’s important to recognize that in many cases evangelical leaders actively stoked fear in the hearts of their followers in order to consolidate their own power and advance their own interests.”

      This sort of power dynamic in smaller individual churches sounds like the problems of power in the centralized Catholic church. In this case it's decentralized into thousands of smaller churches.

    1. “(T)he 2020 election revealed that, at least with respect to an administration’s senior most officials, the Hatch Act is only as effective as the White House decides it will be. Where, as happened here, the White House chooses to ignore the Hatch Act’s requirements, then the American public is left with no protection against senior administration officials using their official authority for partisan political gain in violation of the law,” it reads.
    1. It’s not just the hyper-social and the flirtatious who have found themselves victims of the New Puritanism. People who are, for lack of a more precise word, difficult have trouble too. They are haughty, impatient, confrontational, or insufficiently interested in people whom they perceive to be less talented. Others are high achievers, who in turn set high standards for their colleagues or students. When those high standards are not met, these people say so, and that doesn’t go over well. Some of them like to push boundaries, especially intellectual boundaries, or to question orthodoxies. When people disagree with them, they argue back with relish.

      How much of this can be written down to differing personal contexts and lack of respect for people's humanity? Are the neurodivergent being punished in these spaces?

      Applebaum provides a list of potential conflict areas of cancel culture outside of power dynamics.

    2. Once it was not just okay but admirable that Chua and Rubenfeld had law-school students over to their house for gatherings. That moment has passed. So, too, has the time when a student could discuss her personal problems with her professor, or when an employee could gossip with his employer. Conversations between people who have different statuses—employer-employee, professor-student—can now focus only on professional matters, or strictly neutral topics. Anything sexual, even in an academic context—for example, a conversation about the laws of rape—is now risky.

      Is it simply the stratification of power and roles that is causing these problems? Is it that some of this has changed and that communication between people of different power levels is the difficulty in these cases?

      I have noticed a movement in pedagogy spaces that puts the teacher as a participant rather than as a leader thus erasing the power structures that previously existed. This exists within Cathy Davidson's The New Education where teachers indicate that they're learning as much as their students.

    3. In The Whisperers, his book on Stalinist culture, the historian Orlando Figes cites many such cases, among them Nikolai Sakharov, who wound up in prison because somebody fancied his wife; Ivan Malygin, who was denounced by somebody jealous of his success; and Lipa Kaplan, sent to a labor camp for 10 years after she refused the sexual advances of her boss. The sociologist Andrew Walder has revealed how the Cultural Revolution in Beijing was shaped by power competitions between rival student leaders.

      Note the power here of Applebaum providing very specific and citable examples.

      The specificity is more powerful than the generality of these sorts of ills which we know exist in these regimes.

    4. Kipnis, who was accused of sexual misconduct because she wrote about sexual harassment, was not initially allowed to know who her accusers were either, nor would anyone explain the rules governing her case. Nor, for that matter, were the rules clear to the people applying them, because, as she wrote in Unwanted Advances, “there’s no established or nationally uniform set of procedures.” On top of all that, Kipnis was supposed to keep the whole thing confidential: “I’d been plunged into an underground world of secret tribunals and capricious, medieval rules, and I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about it,’’ she wrote. This chimes with the story of another academic, who told me that his university “never even talked to me before it decided to actually punish me. They read the reports from the investigators, but they never brought me in a room, they never called me on the phone, so that I could say anything about my side of the story. And they openly told me that I was being punished based on allegations. Just because they didn’t find evidence of it, they told me, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

      While the accusers should definitely be believed and given a space to be heard and prosecute their cases, one of the most drastic harms I see here and repeated frequently are Universities sitting as judges and juries for harms that should be tried in the courts.

      These cases have been removed entirely from the public social justice system and are tried in a space that is horribly ill-equipped to handle them. This results in tremendous potential for miscarriage of justice.

      If universities are going to engage in these sorts of practices, they should at least endeavor to allow all parties to present their sides and provide some sort of restorative justice.

      Somewhere I've read and linked to (Reddit?) communities practicing restorative justice in doing these practices. As I recall, it took a lot of work and effort to sort them out, but it also pointed to stronger and healthier communities over time. Why aren't colleges and universities looking into and practicing this if they're going to be wielding institutional power over individuals? Moving the case from one space to the next is simply passing the buck.

    5. Nobody is perfect; nobody is pure; and once people set out to interpret ambiguous incidents in a particular way, it’s not hard to find new evidence.

      Wouldn't it be better for us to focus our efforts and energies on people who are doing bigger mass scale harms on society?

      Surely the ability to protect some of these small harms undergird ability to build up protection for much larger harms.

      Why are we prosecuting these smaller harms rather than the larger (especially financial and) institutional harms?

      It is easier to focus on the small and specific rather than broad and unspecific. (Is there a name for this as a cognitive bias? There should be, if not. Perhaps related to the base rate fallacy or base rate neglect (a form of extension neglect), which is "the tendency to ignore general information and focus on information only pertaining to the specific case, even when the general information is more important." (via Wikipedia)

      Could the Jesuits' descent into the particular as a method help out here?

    6. One of the people I spoke with was asked to apologize for an offense that broke no existing rules. “I said, ‘What am I apologizing for?’ And they said, ‘Well, their feelings were hurt.’ So I crafted my apology around that: ‘If I did say something that upset you, I didn’t anticipate that would happen.’ ” The apology was initially accepted, but his problems didn’t end.

      Even in cases where one apologizes for offences which don't break existing rules and the apology is accepted by the transgressed, the social ostracism doesn't end. This is a part of the indeterminate length of the social sentences that transgressors suffer.


      What exactly are these unwritten rules? In some cases they may be examples of institutional power wielding influence in cases where people aren't giving the full benefit of humanity and consideration to others. Some may call some of these instances microaggressions or social constructs similar to them.

    7. All of them, sinners or saints, have been handed drastic, life-altering, indefinite punishments, often without the ability to make a case in their own favor. This—the convicting and sentencing without due process, or mercy—should profoundly bother Americans.

      There is a growing number of cases in which people are having their lives being completely upended because they are being deprived of due process.

      In some cases, it may actually be beneficial as people may have been abusing their positions of privilege and the traditional system wouldn't have prosecuted or penalized them at all. In these cases the dismantling of institutional power is good. However, how many of them aren't related to this? How many are being decimated without serving this function?

    8. There is a reason that Laura Kipnis, an academic at Northwestern, required an entire book, Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus, to recount the repercussions, including to herself, of two allegations of sexual harassment against one man at her university; after she referred to the case in an article about “sexual paranoia,” students demanded that the university investigate her, too. A full explanation of the personal, professional, and political nuances in both cases needed a lot of space.

      Definitely unfortunate for Laura Kipnis (to me on the surface), but are these growing cases helping to deconstruct some of the unfair power structures which we've institutionalized over time? Dismantling them is certainly worthwhile, but the question is are the correct institutions and people paying the price and doing the work? In Kipnis's case, she probably isn't the right person to be paying the price, but rather the institution itself.

      Another example of this is that of Donald McNeil in the paragraph above (in the related article).

    1. There was no ancient poet called “Homer,” he argued. Nor were the poems attributed to him “written” by any single individual. Rather, they were the product of a centuries-long tradition of poet-performers.

      Are there possibly any physical artifacts in physical archaeology that may fit into the structure of the thesis made by Lynne Kelly in Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies?

      What would we be looking for? Small mnemonic devices? Menhir? Standing stones? Wooden or stone circles? Other examples of extended ekphrasis similar to that of the shield of Achilles?

      cf: Expanding Ekphrasis to the Broader Field of Mnemotechny: or How the Shield of Achilles Relates to a Towel, Car, and Water Buffalo

    1. I will use Drexel’s treatise asrepresentative of the basic principles of note taking that were widely sharedin sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe across national and religiousdivides.

      Religious and national divides were likely very important here as authority from above would have been even more important than in modern time. Related to this is the change in mnemonic traditions due to religious and political mores around the time of Peter Ramus.

  30. Oct 2021
    1. Analog zur Struktur des Zettelkastens baut Luhmanns Systemtheorie nicht auf Axiome und bietet keine Hierarchien von Begriffen oder Thesen. Zentrale Begriffe sind, ebenso wie die einzelnen Zettel, stark untereinander vernetzt und gewinnen erst im Kontext Bedeutung.

      machine translation:

      Analogous to the structure of the card box, Luhmann's system theory is not based on axioms and does not offer any hierarchies of terms or theses. Central terms, like the individual pieces of paper, are strongly interlinked and only gain meaning in the context.

      There's something interesting here about avoiding hierarchies and instead interlinking things and giving them meaning based on context.

      Could a reformulation of ideas like the scala naturae into these sorts of settings be a way to remove some of the social cruft from our culture from an anthropological point of view? This could help us remove structural racism and other issues we have with genetics and our political power structures.

      Could such a redesign force the idea of "power with" and prevent "power over"?

    1. We do, even asking in our conclusion, “How might the social life of annotation serve the public good?” Any social benefit mediated by annotation must address power.

      The parallel structure here reminds me of the book The Social Life of Information which is surely related to this idea in a subtle way. I wonder if they cited it in their bibliography? I wonder if it influenced this sentence?

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Life_of_Information