"Amazon's view is that since "printing" an extra copy of an e-book is really cheap, e-books should be really cheap. Publishers' view is that since "printing" an extra copy of an e-book is really cheap, e-books should offer enormous profit margins to book publishers. If you care about reading or ideas or literature, the choice between these visions is not a difficult one. The publishing incumbents have managed to get some intellectuals sufficiently tangled-up to believe that it is. But ask yourself this — do you regret the invention of the printing press? Of the paperback? Do you think public libraries devalue books and reading?" Vox
>>><<<
Toni and I watched Gone Girl the other night. Much to chew over, and would like to discuss with anyone who has an opinion on it. Here is a rather good review (with spoilers).
>>><<<
Marcel Golding describes how he has been put under pressure by SACTWU (an e.tv shareholder) to change the political coverage of that channel. Biznews
>>><<<
[TW: rape]
"In other words, my partners have been normal men, and I have had a conservative sex life. But none of my partners were taught to actively seek consent, and in some cases they were not really taught to seek consent at all. Because of the rape that I experienced, I usually felt terrified and paralyzed during sex, but I had no idea how to communicate that fact to anyone" Atlantic
>>><<<
So very true...
"We’ve all see papers with gratuitous formalism (I confess, I’ve even written some). The use of LaTeX to prepare ones academic papers is just another instance of this phenomenon - giving ones papers the outward appearance of a paper in physics or mathematics in order to bask in the glow of intellectual seriousness and indispensability that we attach to those disciplines. But using LaTeX does not make you a mathematician any more than building a runway makes you an airport." Josh Parsons
>>><<<
"Jose Calzada, 35, placed a call to a suicide prevention hotline at 4:00 a.m. Tuesday morning and threatened to kill himself, seven hour later he was shot and killed by police" Free Thought
>>><<<
Another attack on middlemen. Vox
>>><<<
I'm not on board with all of this, but I think it makes a valid point about private property development. In cities where housing supply has been constrained for some time, *at the margin* new development will likely cater mostly to the rich, and in effect remove affordable housing from the market. This is not to deny that mass-scale private development would *eventually( reduce the cost of housing and so improve affordability. But, under present political circumstances, this appears to be impossible in many places (e.g. London, New York) - we are effectively stuck at the margin. I think you would probably have to bring a huge amount of supply online via public housing before market forces would really start to bring prices down. Jacobin
>>><<<
Very important piece.
"The way sex workers were talked about was particularly chilling. It was noted that many trafficked people, in particular people who are selling sex, don't identity as victims. There was no reflection on the reasons why this might be. A case study about a Romanian sex worker was discussed. She had been clear that she was not a victim, that she was happy with her life and her work, and yet, we were told: "She was a victim and she was treated as such".
No-one from the women's sector seemed troubled by a case study that presented as standard the idea that a male-dominated police force should have the final say over the words and views of a marginalised woman; that the police thought they knew better than her what was "good for her"." Herald Scotland
>>><<<
"It’s the unspoken belief that your day radiating sickness at the office is worth a couple of your colleagues being bedridden with your flu for a week. You may not be actively thinking that, but that’s the math your actions—and those of the 40 percent polled in that survey—imply. It’s selfishness and solipsism, pure and simple." New Republic
>>><<<
Breast self-examination doesn't significantly reduce breast cancer mortality. Neither does routine mammography. Atlantic
>>><<<
I certainly don't endorse every claim in here, but there is some interesting insight into existing cultural diversity around sexual behaviour, and the effect that globalised media may have on this.
"The men in the Great Lakes nations of Uganda, Burundi, Congo and Tanzania have long been inducing female ejaculation. What is a relatively modern trend in Western sexual consciousness has been used by these men to the degree that frequent female ejaculators are colloquially referred to as shami ryiikivu, or “put a bucket under her”." City Press
>>><<<
"the number of content moderators scrubbing the world’s social media sites, mobile apps, and cloud storage services runs to “well over 100,000”—that is, about twice the total head count of Google and nearly 14 times that of Facebook." Wired
>>><<<
"Earlier this year, a male Reddit user tried setting up a fake, female OkCupid profile using a picture of a friend (with permission). Seconds after he created his username, he received his first message. He finished uploading the photo and figured he’d check back in about a day. But before he could close the tab, he got another message. And another... He deleted his profile after two hours." Atlantic
>>><<<
"In this case, Ghomeshi made a pre-emptive strike, setting the terms of the debate: don’t demonize me for being kinky, even if you don’t like my proclivities. But so far, this doesn’t seem to be a scandal about kink at all.... the anonymous women who wanted to get involved with him at first aren’t complaining about how gross his supposed perversions are. They’re making allegations of regular old non-consensual violence." Ms Magazine
>>><<<
Toni and I watched Gone Girl the other night. Much to chew over, and would like to discuss with anyone who has an opinion on it. Here is a rather good review (with spoilers).
>>><<<
Marcel Golding describes how he has been put under pressure by SACTWU (an e.tv shareholder) to change the political coverage of that channel. Biznews
>>><<<
[TW: rape]
"In other words, my partners have been normal men, and I have had a conservative sex life. But none of my partners were taught to actively seek consent, and in some cases they were not really taught to seek consent at all. Because of the rape that I experienced, I usually felt terrified and paralyzed during sex, but I had no idea how to communicate that fact to anyone" Atlantic
>>><<<
So very true...
"We’ve all see papers with gratuitous formalism (I confess, I’ve even written some). The use of LaTeX to prepare ones academic papers is just another instance of this phenomenon - giving ones papers the outward appearance of a paper in physics or mathematics in order to bask in the glow of intellectual seriousness and indispensability that we attach to those disciplines. But using LaTeX does not make you a mathematician any more than building a runway makes you an airport." Josh Parsons
>>><<<
"Jose Calzada, 35, placed a call to a suicide prevention hotline at 4:00 a.m. Tuesday morning and threatened to kill himself, seven hour later he was shot and killed by police" Free Thought
>>><<<
Another attack on middlemen. Vox
>>><<<
I'm not on board with all of this, but I think it makes a valid point about private property development. In cities where housing supply has been constrained for some time, *at the margin* new development will likely cater mostly to the rich, and in effect remove affordable housing from the market. This is not to deny that mass-scale private development would *eventually( reduce the cost of housing and so improve affordability. But, under present political circumstances, this appears to be impossible in many places (e.g. London, New York) - we are effectively stuck at the margin. I think you would probably have to bring a huge amount of supply online via public housing before market forces would really start to bring prices down. Jacobin
>>><<<
Very important piece.
"The way sex workers were talked about was particularly chilling. It was noted that many trafficked people, in particular people who are selling sex, don't identity as victims. There was no reflection on the reasons why this might be. A case study about a Romanian sex worker was discussed. She had been clear that she was not a victim, that she was happy with her life and her work, and yet, we were told: "She was a victim and she was treated as such".
No-one from the women's sector seemed troubled by a case study that presented as standard the idea that a male-dominated police force should have the final say over the words and views of a marginalised woman; that the police thought they knew better than her what was "good for her"." Herald Scotland
>>><<<
"It’s the unspoken belief that your day radiating sickness at the office is worth a couple of your colleagues being bedridden with your flu for a week. You may not be actively thinking that, but that’s the math your actions—and those of the 40 percent polled in that survey—imply. It’s selfishness and solipsism, pure and simple." New Republic
>>><<<
Breast self-examination doesn't significantly reduce breast cancer mortality. Neither does routine mammography. Atlantic
>>><<<
I certainly don't endorse every claim in here, but there is some interesting insight into existing cultural diversity around sexual behaviour, and the effect that globalised media may have on this.
"The men in the Great Lakes nations of Uganda, Burundi, Congo and Tanzania have long been inducing female ejaculation. What is a relatively modern trend in Western sexual consciousness has been used by these men to the degree that frequent female ejaculators are colloquially referred to as shami ryiikivu, or “put a bucket under her”." City Press
>>><<<
"the number of content moderators scrubbing the world’s social media sites, mobile apps, and cloud storage services runs to “well over 100,000”—that is, about twice the total head count of Google and nearly 14 times that of Facebook." Wired
>>><<<
"Earlier this year, a male Reddit user tried setting up a fake, female OkCupid profile using a picture of a friend (with permission). Seconds after he created his username, he received his first message. He finished uploading the photo and figured he’d check back in about a day. But before he could close the tab, he got another message. And another... He deleted his profile after two hours." Atlantic
>>><<<
"In this case, Ghomeshi made a pre-emptive strike, setting the terms of the debate: don’t demonize me for being kinky, even if you don’t like my proclivities. But so far, this doesn’t seem to be a scandal about kink at all.... the anonymous women who wanted to get involved with him at first aren’t complaining about how gross his supposed perversions are. They’re making allegations of regular old non-consensual violence." Ms Magazine
No comments:
Post a Comment