Links, Monday 30th March

“The demand would be a 10- or 12-hour working week, a guaranteed social wage, universally guaranteed housing, education, healthcare and so on,” he says. “There may be some work that will still need to be done by humans, like quality control, but it would be minimal.”

(There are some criticisms to be made of this piece for ignoring care work and reproductive labour, which is a problem with orthodox Marxist thought generally)

Guardian

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This is the sort of situation where facile defences of gentrification fall short. It's not simply a case of poor people responding to market forces and selling up. It's a case of poor people receiving eviction notices en masse to accommodate development. City Press

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Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee won a Nobel Peace Prize partly for organising a sex strike. Why is she not a household name?

"Then we launched the sex strike. In 2002, Liberia's Christian and Muslim women banded together to refuse sex with their husbands until the violence and civil strife ended." Telegraph

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Bummer :(

"According to the Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), global violence — as defined by a range of measures from conflict deaths, to displaced persons, to homicide rates — has been rising since 2007. This news is in many ways surprising because up to 2007, the data suggested the world was becoming a much safer place." Reuters

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"A sewage treatment facility in Tokyo that has already started extracting gold from sludge has reported a yield rivalling those found in ore at some leading gold mines." Guardian

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A really thorough demolition of the idea that encouraging weight loss is a useful medical intervention. Of people who diet, only around 3% manage to lose weight and keep it off, and that requires huge, enduring lifestyle changes. And there's not even any good evidence that people who successfully lose weight have better health outcomes than people who stay fat. Slate

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On US gun culture:

"You have guns because you like guns! That's why you go to gun conventions; that's why you read gun magazines! None of you give a shit about home security. None of you go to home security conventions. None of you read Padlock Monthly. None of you have a Facebook picture of you behind a secure door." Vox

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"In effect, the police officer was merely pointing out where these communities live or work. And, yes, different ethnic groups will have different crimes – often due to their national history or culture – but that in no way means one ethnicity is inherently more criminal than another.

The police officer could equally have pointed to the City, and said that here white people commit banking fraud; or to Wapping, where they hack phones; or to Westminster, where they plot illegal wars." Guardian

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The creation of patriarchal, polygynous societies in the wake of the agricultural revolution is visible in our genetic inheritance. PS Mag

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"The photo is exploitive, in the most deliberate sense—the site, Truthdig, is using the women in the photo as a way to provoke titillation and/or moral outrage and/or (more likely) both. The fact that the women are ... available is itself a selling point for the audience. Hedges condemns sex work, but he also participates in it. The main difference between Truthdig and the owner of that brothel is that the brothel owner presumably provided the women in the picture with a cut. Truthdig shows its higher morals by keeping all the money for itself." Ravishly

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"“The first Gilded Age, despite its glaring inequities, was accompanied by a gradual rise in the standard of living; the second by a gradual erosion,” he writes. In the first Gilded Age, everyone from reporters to politicians apparently felt comfortable painting plutocrats as villains; in the second, this is, somehow, forbidden." New Yorker

This reminds me of this comment: "With results like these, what will the epitaph for neoliberalism look like? I think historians will conclude it was a form of capitalism that systematically prioritized political imperatives over economic ones. Given a choice between a course of action that would make capitalism seem the only possible economic system, and one that would transform capitalism into a viable, long-term economic system, neoliberalism chooses the former every time." Baffler

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Friends, comrades: the War on "Drugs" Washington Post

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"Some Germans today insist that a debt is a debt, and that Greece must repay in full. They should know better from their own history, starting with Keynes’s unsuccessful plea to lower Germany’s reparations burden. They should recall the relief that Germany was granted through the Marshall plan, and the 1953 London agreement on German debts. Did Germany “deserve” the relief in 1953? That was not the right question. Germany’s new democracy needed the relief, and Germany needed a fresh start." Guardian

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Post-wine headaches are not caused by sulfites, just regular old alcohol in excess Wall Street Journal

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"All seemed to go pretty well; she was nodding all the time while saying, “yes, yes, you are so right…” But then I said something like: “well Ms Johnson, we….” She interrupted: ” Sorry, my name is Petersen, not Johnson.” I then experienced a terrible sinking feeling, because I then saw before me the horoscope of a Ms Johnson, but the person before me was surely not this Ms Johnson! Apparently I had taken the wrong chart from my file cabinet!" Link

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Interesting. It now appears that a key risk factor for myopia is lack of exposure to bright light (such as one might encounter outdoors on a sunny day). The traditional explanation, that myopia is caused by excessive close work, is the result of a spurious correlation - close work just often happens indoors. Nature

Links, Monday 16th March

"The guanine nanocrystals are arranged in a lattice throughout the cell, the spacing of which determines the cell’s colour. When the chameleon is calm, the crystals were found to be organised into a dense network, reflecting blue wavelengths most strongly. When excited, the chameleon was found to loosen its lattice of nanocrystals by about 30%, allowing the reflection of yellows or reds. " Guardian

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"It could be argued that anything that humanises and shows Arab women not being beaten, enslaved, force married or honour-killed is a good thing. But when everything that is not that is treated as a novelty, one is effectively reinforcing the stereotypes by saying, “Look! Here is a woman NOT being beaten, enslaved, force married or honour killed. How about that?” It is not worthy of reporting because it shows a woman defying the norms and prejudices of Arab society; it is newsworthy because it challenges your views and prejudices about Arab society." Guardian

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What I'm finding interesting about this piece is the extent to which it focuses on the *visibility* rather than the *fact* of inequality in South Africa. As in, what's the significance of building a massive luxurious golf estate right next to Diepsloot as opposed to in the middle of nowhere? I agree it definitely provokes more discomfort, but what are we to make of that discomfort?

Kind of reminds me of that Jonny Steinberg piece going around a while ago where he describes the discomfort of living in such an unequal society, but also *wanting* that discomfort, for aesthetic and professional reasons.

But does it matter to poor black people in South Africa whether Jonny (or a golf estate dweller) continues to be rich here or in England, except insofar as Jonny being rich in South Africa might mean a bit of that wealth gets directed their way?

I guess my worry is that our aesthetic reactions (positive or negative) to visible inequality risk obscuring the argument that needs to be head about the structural conditions of equality, and how they are to be tackled. But maybe we need to experience that discomfort before we can address the structural issues, idk. Thoughts?

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"Large-scale intervention in eastern Ukraine by regular Russian troops began last August, reaching a peak of 10,000 in December, and Moscow has been struggling to maintain operations on such a scale and intensity, according to a report." Guardian

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"The novel therapy involves taking stem cells from HIV-infected patients and using a gene editing tool to cause them to form into white blood cells with a specific mutation. The mutation affects a protein known as CCR5, and interferes with the virus’s ability to latch onto blood cells. The mutation occurs naturally in a small percentage of the world’s population and gives these individuals a life-long resistance to HIV infections." Medical Daily

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"For the first time in human experience, people had watertight containers readily available in any desired shape. With their new ability to boil or steam food, they gained access to abundant resources that had previously been difficult to use: leafy vegetables, which would burn or dry out if cooked on an open fire; shellfish, which could now be opened easily; and toxic foods like acorns, which could now have their toxins boiled out. Soft-boiled foods could be fed to small children, permitting earlier weaning and more closely spaced babies. Toothless old people, the repositories of information in a preliterate society, could now be fed and live longer. All those momentous consequences of pottery triggered a population explosion, causing Japan’s population to climb from an estimated few thousand to a quarter of a million." Discover

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The enforcement of austerity towards Greece and other EU countries in economic trouble is often justified by reference to "EU rules". But here's a little-known fact: Germany is also in defiance of EU "macroeconomic balance" rules, which prohibit maintaining a current account surplus greater than 6% of GDP for 3 years or more. Germany has in fact exceeded this threshold for 7 of the last 8 years, with a record high of 7.5% in 2014 (the rules have only been in place since 2011 however). Who thinks that this brazen rule-breaking will result in the German economy being subjected to external supervision by EU institutions?

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"Being in Yarl’s Wood opened my eyes to a lot of things I never knew went on in this country. That place was worse than a prison. There were so many women who, like me, were innocent of any crime, but had been locked up." Guardian

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What an excellent idea

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"White people in South Africa live by the grace of blacks’ willingness to pursue reconciliation, and therefore many of us would like for Mr. de Kock to remain “Prime Evil” so that we ourselves can escape blame; we prefer that he not change so that the rest of us, who find it hard to confess our beneficial co-culpability in apartheid, need not change ourselves." NY Times

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I'm currently reading up about slavery in the Cape and the related practices of Arab slavery in the Indian Ocean.

One thing I'm finding interesting is to the extent to which these practices, while abhorrent, were somewhat less predicated on racial ideology than slavery in the United States and were consequently less rigid. The manumission of slaves was far more common and protected by custom, slaves were able to own some property, there were substantial populations of "free blacks" who lived alongside free whites, and interracial unions were not prohibited. Indeed, in the Cape, many slave women were freed so that they could marry free white settlers (though this has enormously coercive implications in itself).

Also interesting to read about people of African descent in the Middle East and South Asia who are descended from slaves. Again, although they suffer discrimination, they are less of a distinct minority in these places than African Americans are in the US.

Links, Wednesday 11th March

Was just reminded of these wise words

"I am not suggesting that we give up looking for ways to create jobs. Of course not. But once we recognise that full employment is a pipe dream, that vast sections of our country are destined to transmit joblessness to their children and their grandchildren, the idea of welfare takes on new meanings. It is not something that pushes people away, making them idle and useless. On the contrary, it brings them in from the cold. It gives them some control over their destinies and thus renders them more alive, more like us." BD

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 "In January 1945 — two days before Franklin Roosevelt was to meet with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in Yalta — the Japanese were offering surrender terms almost identical to what was accepted by the Americans on the USS Missouri in the Japan Bay on September 2, 1945.

The Japanese population was famished, the country’s war machine was out of gas, and the government had capitulated. The Americans were unmoved. The firebombing and the nuclear attacks were heartlessly carried out." Jacobin

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"The organisation of the Soviet Union was directly modelled on the German postal service." FT

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The new MacBook is probably about as small as a laptop can get until we make some serious advances in battery technology Vox

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Part of the tragedy of this is that the criminalisation of assisted dying not only causes unnecessary suffering, but often ends up shortening the lives of the terminally ill. If this man had been assured that his wishes would have been respected, he would have been wiling to go to hospital and receive care. Instead, he opted to kill himself before being hospitalised, while he was sure he still had the physical capacity to do so. Daily Maverick

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"Hall describes four key changes since 1994. Commercial farm ownership is more concentrated. Fewer people are employed in the agricultural industry. Large companies in agribusiness have been the big winners from the state's policies, rather than farmers. And many families who have land through reform or in communal areas cannot use it effectively. Meanwhile, the state has re-opened restitution claims, which if processed at the current rate could take over 200 years to complete, suggesting some claims from connected applicants and traditional leaders could succeed while others are added to the thousands that have been uncompleted since 1998." Daily Maverick

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"The Violence Policy Centre, a thinktank in Washington DC, has counted the cases on the public record of permit holders firing their weapons. Over the past seven years, at least 722 people have been killed in at least 544 concealed-carry shootings. The deaths included 17 police officers. Only 16 shootings were ruled by the court to have been in self-defence." Daily Maverick

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"The civil court decision was made after a massage parlour offering sex services in the city was raided by labour inspectors." Independent

Oh, for a world in which the *only* people raiding brothels were labour inspectors, trying to make sure the workers get their social security benefits...

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I saw a dance performance earlier today: "We Left" at Infecting the City in Cape Town. I highly recommend it, while it's still on. It explores masculinity and intimacy between men. There's one very poignant scene featuring a smaller man repeatedly seeking physical contact with a larger man and being pushed away (I read it as the interaction between son and father).

What really got to me was that the audience reacted to some of the movements with a loud "Whooo!" noise, obviously thinking it was sexually suggestive. Again, I read this as a very sad scene. And I can't imagine how you'd interpret it that way, unless you think that physical intimacy involving a man is automatically sexual. Which, together with homophobia, is basically the reason men feel forced to shy away from physical intimacy! So the reaction of the audience was kind of a symptom of the attitudes the piece was attacking. Really sad :(

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The Irish parliament convenes an "emergency sitting", to prevent the horror of basically harmless drugs being legal for any period of time. Well done. Breaking News

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Here's something to play around with: a Watson application that tries to assess your personality from a sample of your writing. I can't say seems particularly accurate with me - it gives extremely low scores for extraversion and agreeableness. But then, I've only given it samples of academic writing, which maybe is too contrived. Let me know what you think!

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"Why do we only expect "empowerment" of sex work, and not of other jobs? In this patriarchal society a lot of labour is gendered, most of it in service industries of one sort of another, from nursing to child care. We don’t demand that waitresses feel "empowered" in their jobs for us to recognise their agency in choosing the work, and we don’t tell other workers who serve male customers that they can’t be feminist. The empowerment fallacy is only applied to the sex industry - and it’s deeply insidious." New Statesman

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"But the reason Shanghai’s schools are recognised as among the best in the world is because their teachers never stop thinking about how to get better at teaching... Staff meet once a week by grade and subject, and break into teams to work on problems of their choice – at one school, the teachers had rearranged their floor plan so that teachers from the same grade level shared an office. Every young teacher has an older mentor, of proven achievement, assigned to them. The Shanghai system, Tucker said, revolves around the premise that “not only is it possible for you to get better, it is your job to get better and it never ends”." Guardian

Links, Sunday 8th March

"The World Health Organization estimates that 80% of the world population lives in countries with limited or no access to opioid pain medicines, and that 5.5 million terminal cancer patients die each year without proper pain control. As in India, it is generally not financial constraints that prevent people from receiving these medicines, but ill-conceived drug regulations or irrational fears surrounding their use." LA Times

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"Imagine if you could say to a casual partner, “I love you. It’s no big deal. It doesn’t mean you’re The One, or even one of the ones. It doesn’t mean you have to love me back. It doesn’t mean we have to date, or marry, or even cuddle. It doesn’t mean we have to part ways dramatically in a flurry of tears and broken dishes. It doesn’t mean I’ll love you until I die, or that I’ll still love you next year, or tomorrow.”" Carsie Blanton

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If you want to understand why people in Ferguson rioted, read about the long history of racist abuse and violence that its citizens suffered at the hands of the police. The killing of Mike Brown was only the tip of the iceberg. Vox

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"Just as “Fight Club” showed that manliness and violence were imaginatively inseparable, “Gone Girl” raises the possibility that marriage and victimhood are inseparable, too... To be in a couple, in short, is to be in a power relationship. And in power relationships, there are always winners and losers." New Yorker

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“There has been a large long-term increase in the share of net income from housing for every country in the sample except Germany," Rognlie explains. "Meanwhile, the non-housing capital share shows no clear trend.” Bloomberg

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This guy attending elite universities in the US and Canada for years without paying any tuition fees. What a hero. (Too bad about his frankly creepy job now) Fast Company

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OK, so this probably won't be real for a long time, what with the difficulty of regenerating severed spinal nerves. But, supposing my body was riddled with metastatic cancer or something, I'd happily take a body transplant simply as a life support device. Sure, I'd only be able to move my head, but that's actually better than what Stephen Hawking has at the moment! Guardian

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"In a blind tasting, Laughlin’s guinea pigs found that copper and zinc were the sourest, while the spoon to end all spoons was, of course, made of gold. “Mango sorbet with a gold spoon is just heaven,” she sighs. “Mango never tasted so mangoey.” But too bad if you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth: in the blind tasting, it came out near the bottom." Guardian

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The sheer pettiness of life in the occupied territories: a newly built Palestinian town is denied connection the water network. Washington Post

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"I don’t know how many times I’ve been chattering along about something and accidentally make some careless, general statement about something, when whamo! I see that gleam in my philosopher’s eyes and I know the next thing out of his mouth is going to be something along the lines of, “So you think in all cases . . .” or “Do you really want to commit yourself to that?”" Philosiology

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"But because the job involves working with vulnerable kids and adults I'd have to have a full police check. The job would have been ideal for me, but I couldn't even say I was interested or I would have lost my own daughter. As she's classed as a vulnerable adult and I have a record for prostitution, they could have said my house wasn't a suitable environment for her." Vice

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Awesome work, SAPS, using stun grenades on peacefully protesting high school students. Groundup

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So many lols 

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Remembering $pread magazine Animal Tits & Sass

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"Such cases always come up against athletes of the third world. I've never heard of an athlete facing a similar ban from the developed countries," Vice

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"In September last year, Xola, a SAMU (South African Municipal Workers Union) member who worked in the procurement department of the parastatal, BloemWater, and who had uncovered tender irregularities, was murdered. He was shot three times outside his girlfriend’s house in Bloemfontein’s Hillside Township shortly after handing a dossier detailing the fraud to the Hawks. No one has yet been arrested for his murder." Daily Maverick

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"Porn is not monolithic, and it’s not even a genre – it is a medium. Yes, a lot of porn is sexist and too much of it has historically been made by men for men, but claiming that all porn is sexist because you’ve only seen the worst of it is like saying that all TV is sexist because you’ve only ever watched Top Gear." Pandora Blake

(Some images NSFW)

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I wasn't even aware this was a distinction, but I'm definitely towards the latter.

""Many studies have found that there are two domains of extraversion based on self reports," Tara White, study co-author and professor at Brown University, told Mic. First there's the "go-getter," who's more assertive, persistent and achievement-driven, the kind of person always raising their hand in class. This is called "agentic extraversion." Then there's the "people person," who is friendly, emotionally warm and great with ice breakers, known as "affiliative extraversion."" MIC

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That awkward moment when an ex-director of Mossad (i.e. hardly a dove) calls out Netanyahu for creating an "apartheid state" Telesur

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Slavery existed in the US for as long as it did because it was highly profitable, and contributed massively to industrialisation in Britain and North America.

"Many enslaved cotton pickers in the late 1850s had peaked at well over 200 pounds per day," Baptist notes. "In the 1930s, after a half-century of massive scientific experimentation, all to make the cotton boll more pickable, the great-grandchildren of the enslaved often picked only 100 to 120 pounds per day." Huff Post

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This is completely shameful, but remember that it exists in a context where people of colour are utterly economically marginalised. I don't think we should be more shocked by this than we are by the underlying fact that the circumstances of many citizens of Worcester are such that they are willing  to suffer this indignity in order to compete for poorly paid jobs as gardeners and domestic workers. IOL

Links, Wednesday 4th March

An analysis of Putin's increased willingness to engage in confrontation with the West Atlantic

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Appropriation in the most direct and literal sense of the word Die Antwoord

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Yet more detail about the shocking human rights abuses occurring at Yarl's Wood. Independent

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"if you look, for example, at Milton Friedman’s more polemical works, he says that if you want to cut the welfare system, you cut the subsidies and run it on deficit for a few years so that the quality drops — then people won’t be interested in defending the welfare system.

This is actually what the right wing normally does when it comes to power: they cut subsidies so that the quality of, for example, public schools drops, and then they propose private schools. People start saying, “Well, if public schools are so bad, then we have to have a private alternative for those who can afford it.” This was an ideological attack and an explicit strategy to undermine trust in the welfare system." Jacobin

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"When his issues with women do leak through, like when he becomes momentarily furious that a female detective is telling him what to do in his own home, he blames it on being raised by his father and thinks his self-awareness will absolve him. He is the classic male victim. Even his misogyny is something that was done to him." The Awl

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"Both marriage and polyamory require risk-taking — maybe not quite the same level or type of risk, but not as far from each other on the continuum as we might think. Meanwhile, remaining forever single — even while being a parent — is arguably the least-riskiest choice you can make. The only variable you have to deal with is you." The Week

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"What we have done over the past thirty years is to build a creditor’s paradise of positive real interest rates, low inflation, open markets, beaten-down unions, and a retreating state — all policed by unelected economic officials in central banks and other unelected institutions that have only one target: to keep such a creditor’s paradise going." Jacobin

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"The reaction wasn't "there's a rapist among us!?!" but "oh hey, I bet you're talking about our local rapist."  Several of them expressed regret that I hadn't been warned about him beforehand, because they tried to discreetly tell new people about this guy.  Others talked about how they tried to make sure there was someone keeping an eye on him at parties, because he was fine so long as someone remembered to assign him a Rape Babysitter." Pervocracy

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"Okay," Tsemberis recalls thinking, "they're schizophrenic, alcoholic, traumatized, brain damaged. What if we don't make them pass any tests or fill out any forms? They aren't any good at that stuff. Inability to pass tests and fill out forms was a large part of how they ended up homeless in the first place. Why not just give them a place to live and offer them free counseling and therapy, health care, and let them decide if they want to participate? Why not treat chronically homeless people as human beings and members of our community who have a basic right to housing and health care?" Mother Jones

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"There is a possible alternative, however, in which ownership and control of robots is disconnected from capital in its current form. The robots liberate most of humanity from work, and everybody benefits from the proceeds: we don’t have to work in factories or go down mines or clean toilets or drive long-distance lorries, but we can choreograph and weave and garden and tell stories and invent things and set about creating a new universe of wants. This would be the world of unlimited wants described by economics, but with a distinction between the wants satisfied by humans and the work done by our machines. It seems to me that the only way that world would work is with alternative forms of ownership. The reason, the only reason, for thinking this better world is possible is that the dystopian future of capitalism-plus-robots may prove just too grim to be politically viable." LRB

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If you liked woodpecker-riding weasel, you'll *love* hippopotamus-riding heron. 

Links, Monday 2nd March

"“Who gave this sonofabitch his green card?” Sean Penn demanded before presenting Mexican film-maker Alejandro González Iñárritu the best picture Oscar for Birdman" Guardian

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"When Mason and his friend aren’t punished for drinking and driving – indeed, when we are left longing so clearly for Mason’s success despite his being a rather mediocre shit – it reinforces a supremacist mindset about the value of darling white boyhood, while black and Hispanic boyhood, not to mention girlhood of any race, is not considered even worthy of mention." Guardian

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"Ulbricht began as an idealist, setting out to build a market free from what he described as the ‘thieving murderous mits’ of the state. He ended up paying muscle to protect the bureaucratic system that he had created." Aeon

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"According to one intelligence officer with extensive experience in South Africa, the NIA is politically factionalised and “totally penetrated” by foreign agencies: “Everyone is working for someone else.” The former head of the South African secret service, Mo Shaik, a close ally of the president, Jacob Zuma, was described as a US confidant and key source of information on “the Zuma camp” in a leaked 2008 Wikileaks cable from the American embassy in Pretoria." Guardian

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This study reiterates a useful point: that racism often operates at the level of discretion, i.e. whether or not someone in authority is willing to bend the rules to help someone out.

"A police officer is an out-and-out bigot if she targets innocent blacks for speeding tickets. But an officer who is more likely to give a pass to white motorists who exceed the speed limit than to black ones is also discriminating, even if with little or no conscious awareness. This is one reason the Twitter hashtag #crimingwhilewhite is so powerful: It draws attention to the racially biased exercise of discretion by police officers, prosecutors and judges, which results in whites getting a pass for the kinds of offenses for which minorities are punished." NYTimes

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"The chorus was made up of both People of Color and white people. The white people, however, weren’t singing. They simply marched in step, and side by side with the Black people on the stage. The only voices we heard were the voices of POC. White people showed UP. They walked. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder. They marched. And they let the people of color do the talking. They stood silently so Black voices could be heard. What a brilliant piece of staging that should really resonate, I thought." Broad Side

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And yet, so far as I know, a true land value tax has never been implemented.

"Contemporary sources and historians claim that in the United Kingdom, a vast majority of both socialist and classical liberal activists could trace their ideological development to Henry George. George's popularity was more than a passing phase; even by 1906, a survey of British parliamentarians revealed that the American author's writing was more popular than Walter Scott, John Stuart Mill, and William Shakespeare." Wiki

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Here's one for LSE grads. Basically arguing that NATO should have allowed Qadaffi to crush the Libyan rebels back in 2011 and allowed the country to reform gradually under the leadership of Saif Qadaffi. The benefit of hindsight is much in evidence, as you'd imagine. Foreign Affairs

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Trying to prevent drugs being used recreationally in rich countries often puts them out of reach of medics in both rich and poor countries. This article related to ketamine specifically, but I'm aware that opiates are generally under-prescribed for pain management. That is to say, the "war on drugs" hurts not only informal drug users, but even people within formal medical settings.

"A proposal that is about to come before the UN to restrict global access to ketamine, a drug abused in rich countries, would deprive millions of women of lifesaving surgery in poor countries, according to medicines campaigners." Guardian

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Here's the answer, ok everyone? Wired

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Cooking with physics XKCD