I wouldn’t say it in the same words as Esther, but she makes a point: why would you want to amass all that wealth and not do anything good with it?
The word “shame” may be a bit too strong, but I see what she means. After all, the only way to make that kind of money is by taking it from other human beings, by exploiting them in some way, regardless of where they are on the planet. It’s not hard to find examples of such exploitation these days!
So yes, this is a matter that deserves a public debate.
The Indigenous Literacy Foundation (ILF) is a national charity working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander remote Communities across Australia. We are Community-led, responding to requests from remote Communities for culturally relevant books, including early learning board books, resources, and programs to support Communities to create and publish their stories in languages of their choice.
The ILF has just been awarded the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award – sort of a Noble Prize for youth literature. It’s good to see respect and recognition for the original inhabitants of Australia.
For an example of the book promoted by the ILF, have a look at this reading of “No Way, Yirrikipayi!“, a story about a hungry crocodile:
“According to the World Meteorological Organization, 2022 relative to 1991-2020 in central and eastern Mexico and the Yucatán Peninsula and Guatemala and El Salvador registered +1°C to +3°C throughout the region. Whereas Paris ’15 set a key threshold holding temps to less than +1.5°C (but compared to 1850, not 1991) or trouble ensues. Well, the consequences of excessiveness are only too evident. One solution for too much heat – Migrate north. According to the US Institute of Peace: Climate change has disrupted up to 70% of crops in some regions of Central America. Solution – Move north.”
Daily global surface air temperature increase relative to the average for 1850–1900, the designated pre-industrial reference period, for 2023. The plot highlights temperature increases within three ranges: 1–1.5°C (orange), 1.5–2°C (red), and above 2°C (crimson). Source: ERA5. Credit: C3S/ECMWF
“Move north”, or more specifically: move to cooler areas, just like many animal species are doing all over the world. That’s why we start to see mediterranian mosquitos in Western Europe, for example. And the increasing droughts in Africa are part of the reason Europe sees increasing numbers of African migrants.
So the “US border issue” is actually a consequence of climate change…? Trump (and other climate change deniers) won’t like that!
When I read a paragraph such as the following one, my heart (and my brain!) cringes:
Project 2025 makes it clear the Department of Justice is not independent from the executive branch and implies the agency will be used to take legal retribution against whoever Trump decides to investigate.
Why the cringeing? Because no matter your political leanings, that is a direct negation of one of the pillars of democracy (at least democracy as we know it in the modern Western world since Montesquieu described it): the separation of the three powers in a state: the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. When that separation is broken, democracy is gone. All that will be left is something on a scale between an oligarchy and a dictatorship… meaning the end of justice, solidarity and a cohesive society. A few decades ago, when I was a teacher, I tried to explain the principles of democracy to youngsters. No, that wasn’t easy, and I don’t think a majority of my students realised how important those principles actually are.
Montesquieu (left) and Alexander Hamilton (right) laid out the foundations of a modern democracy, with separation of powers and “checks and balances”.
There are more very disturbing “policy proposals” in the Project’s document, all of them quite frightening, and more so if you put them together… What’s worse: since quite a few elections in the USA have nothing to do with “democracy” there is a real chance that such a project can be put into motion, even when a clear majority of US citizens is against it.
It’s no surprise that Project 2025 sprang from the mind of extreme right-wing people in the USA. You should NOT call them “conservatives” because that is not what they are (unless going back to the Middle Ages is what conservatism is about, but since there were no Middle Ages in the USA that can not be the case). Also no suprise: what they describe is more or less what has already happened in Russia, which has turned into a robber state. No wonder that Tr*mp wants what P*tin already has – as far as I can see T is just jalous of P.
Enough of that. As a European citizen I do wonder: do extreme right-wingers in Europe have a similar “plan” ready? Or will they just copy Project 2025?
It’s nothing to joke about, hence I’m publishing this on April 2. March 2024 was yet another warm, wet and gloomy month, according to the Belgian Royal Meteorological institute – and our solar panels concur with that conclusion when it comes to the “gloomy” part. Indeed, the photovoltaic electricity production on our roof was limited to 74% of the expected average…
Yes, it’s a video made by/for WordPress-the-company, so it’s biased. No, the video does not succeed in recreating the NYT frontpage in all its detail and finesses.
As you may have discovered while reading this blog, I have owned and own a lot of Apple hardware. Why? Because I appreciate design, the attention to detail, and the way Apple tries to make their products and the users of those products work together a seamlessly as possible. But even so, Apple has made mistakes on each of these.
Does that make me a “fan”, blinded to all alternatives? Of course not. After all, Apple is just a company; their strategy centers around “business”, not integrity or being perfect.
Apple is far from perfect, and that is very clear in the way the App Store works. I once contemplated building apps for the iPhone, but have to pay 30% of my income to Apple was a no-go for me (I already pay taxes, thank you).
Not allowing other app stores to exist in order to better protect the users is another example of “business over integrity”. Russell Ivanovic said it well:
Just to be sure I looked up the meaning of the word “gaslighting”: “to manipulate (someone) using psychological methods into questioning their own sanity or powers of reasoning“. That definition makes the verb a lot stronger than what I had in mind ;-)
Anyway, here’s what I wanted you to look at: “Marta Peirano: Gaslighting AI” (at the conference (Un)real Data – Real Effects last February). This journalist is not the best storyteller, but the talk is worth listening to! She gives a series of examples of how AI can get derailed, including getting Grok to call Elon Musk “the Oprah of censorship”…
Screenshot of Marta Peirano talking (video is also available on Youtube)
The ease with which some of the LLM’s can be gaslighted confirms my disdain for the “I” in “AI”…
Following up on my post about the passing away of Dave Myers: I saw one of the episodes of their last series “The Hairy Bikers Go West“. It was somewhat harrowing to see Dave Myers so frail and somewhat shaky. No wonder that Sy “Kingie” King seemed to be worrying about Dave the whole time, and you could read that worry and fear in his eyes… Somehow that had more impact on me than the recipes they worked on.
The documentary “20 Days In Mariupol” is probably heartbraking, and the political context in the world may have contributed to its win of the 2023 “Documentary Feature Film” category at the 96th Academy Awards in Hollywood.
I’m just wondering: how long will it be before a russian propaganda film about the war in Ukraine wins a prize in Moscow?
Dave Myers (left) and Sy King, as photographed by the BBC on the set of their latest series, “The Hairy Bikers Go West”
As a motorcyclist, I was surprised to see “bikers” cooking on TV many years ago. But from the first episode I saw it was clear: this were not your average TV cooks. They were just two good friends, having a great time together on their bike as well as in the kitchen. Sad to see him go at such a young age…
The belgian Royal Meteorological Institute calls February 2024 a “very warm, wet and gloomy month”. Specifically: no temperatures below zero Celcius, more than twice as much rain than normal in 23 rainy days, and only 30 hours of sunshine (compare that to the almost 73-hour average of the past 30 years). Combine that with somewhat stronger than usual wind from the SSW, and it’s hard not to link a part of what happened with the rising water temperature in the Atlantic Ocean.
Considering all those numbers, it’s almost a miracle that our solar panels managed to generate 59% of what we expected in terms of solar energy production! Nevertheless, even with a “good” performance of our panels in January, that makes it the darkest Winter of our solar array…
I can’t remember why I started reading all the comments on the article titled “Over a decade later, climate scientist prevails in libel case” (on Ars Technica). But there was a pearl to be found there, so I’m glad I did read on. There it was: a suggestion concerning a certain category of Internet usernames, stating that “Usernames indicating a participant’s predilection towards exercising careful thought, valid reasoning, or sound judgement, are reliable warning signs that their actual contributions will prove to be otherwise.“
It remains to be seen whether this law can only be applied to discussion forum names, or if it as more generally applicable. And perhaps it might need a bit of rephrasing to be 100% exact ;-) But I can say that it appears to be true in many languages, not just in English.
Anyway, I propose to call this law “Verda’s Law of Internet User Names“. Thank you for your insight, Bernardo!
PS. Albert Einstein is suposed to have said: “Common sense is the sum of all prejudices that we acquire up to out 18th year“. Meaning that there is no real knowledge in common sense, right?
It’s bad enough that we get blasted with spam and lies in our mailboxes – at least most mail providers do not sponsor the writers of that spam (well, at least I hope that Google and Microsoft do not do that). I do not have a Spotify account, but I fully appreciate the reasoning of this Mastodon user:
January 2024 was a somewhat exceptional month in this region. It had been a while (years!) since we had real snow here, and last month did bring snow, especially in the south of Belgium.
After three consecutive months with substantially less than average sunshine, I’m happy to report that January 2024 did a lot better. In fact, never since 2017 did we get that much sun on our solar panels than the previous month! For the time being, our solar energy production numbers look promising for the new year. I know of course that a single number does not define the rest of the year, statistics being what they are: I will make no predictions for the future.
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