Links, Wednesday 23rd March

"It was Fan Hui’s first major tournament after his loss to AlphaGo, and at the outset he felt uncertain. “Everything was broken,” he told me. But he went on to win all his games. At the final awards ceremony, while accepting his trophy, he bent back and let out a victory roar. He was flouting the usual decorum of Go tournaments, but the crowd rose to its feet anyway, applauding the man who had lost to the machine." New Yorker

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This is pretty great. From about 40s in, the big white dude starts getting thrown about like a rag doll

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Great post title: Make Buses Dangerous

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Very useful piece. I don't think school independence is in itself a bad policy. I think it would make sense, for instance, to have a school be controlled by a board consisting of representatives from teachers, students and parents (as opposed to a local authority). But the actual academy system being constructed doesn't in any way resemble this, and is actually a means for private interests to extract money from the public schooling system.

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This is coming from an (acknowledged) very privileged perspective, but has some good insights into why "love your work" ideology has become so entrenched amongst the professional classes at least.

"Spending our leisure time with other professional strivers buttresses the notion that hard work is part of the good life and that the sacrifices it entails are those that a decent person makes. This is what a class with a strong sense of identity does: it effortlessly recasts the group’s distinguishing vices as virtues."

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"The study... found that when women moved into occupations in large numbers, those jobs began paying less even after controlling for education, work experience, skills, race and geography... The reverse was true when a job attracted more men. Computer programming, for instance, used to be a relatively menial role done by women. But when male programmers began to outnumber female ones, the job began paying more and gained prestige." NY Times

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Well this is an extremely worrying turn of events. Very obviously a targeted attempt to harass and gather intelligence on a part of the political opposition, as opposed to a simple robbery.

“We arrived to find the security guard handcuffed to the railing. He said that two men had entered the premises and had taken him to the basement. From there he made a phone call and white combi with four people, all of them well dressed and one of them with a shotgun, arrived. Three of them went upstairs and unlocked the security gate to our offices. A woman had a notebook and knew exactly what they wanted. They then received another call, took documents and the computers and they left,”

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Great profile piece on Jacobin Magazine and its editorial staff and policies

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"[Gentrification] brings newcomers to neighbourhoods with nonwhite populations, sometimes with atrocious consequences. Local newspaper The East Bay Express recently reported that in Oakland, recently arrived white people sometimes regard “people of color who are walking, driving, hanging out, or living in the neighborhood” as “criminal suspects.” ... What’s clear in the case of Nieto’s death is that a series of white men perceived him as more dangerous than he was and that he died of it." Guardian

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Wow, the level of frankness here...

"We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”"

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"I continue to believe that the political path of reconciliation forged by Nelson Mandela and the ANC was appropriate for the time: It was built on a commitment to peace, which was necessary during turbulent transition. As it came to power, the ANC exercised the gracious restraint that is the preserve of the victorious. But in a plural democracy such as ours, one where so much time and energy has been put into forgiveness, the voices of the hurt and the outraged have a place too." Guardian

Links, Wednesday 16th March

I have to say, the racial disparity really did jump out at me when I saw the trailer for the new Ghostbusters.

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Amazing

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"As poverty and prostitution increase so does criminalisation. We are currently fighting legal cases with women imprisoned for brothel-keeping because they worked in a flat with friends – obviously much safer than working alone. We are also working with women street workers, who are having their IDs confiscated by police before being told that they can only get them back if they show plane tickets back to Romania. This is happening despite these women having the right to reside in the UK." Open Democracy

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"the mice were offered two sweet solutions, one with sugar, and one with artificial sweetener. The solution with the sweetener tasted sweeter—and so, one would think the more attractive of the two. And indeed, for the first day, the mice consistently drank the sweeter water. But then something happened: They began to ignore the artificial sweetener and instead focused exclusively on the real sugar solution. “Somehow the brain knows when something is purely sweet and good-tasting versus when that good taste comes along with energy,” de Araujo said. In other words, we have two separate systems that signal the value of food." New Republic

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Not sure how seriously to take the Sapir-Whorf thesis being applied in the article, but this is interesting.

"Every language first had a word for black and for white, or dark and light. The next word for a color to come into existence — in every language studied around the world — was red, the color of blood and wine.

After red, historically, yellow appears, and later, green (though in a couple of languages, yellow and green switch places). The last of these colors to appear in every language is blue."

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"When he first played the Google machine, he was ranked 633rd in the world. Now, he is up into the 300s. In the months since October, AlphaGo has taught him, a human, to be a better player. He sees things he didn’t see before. And that makes him happy. “So beautiful,” he says. “So beautiful.”" Wired

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I remember reading an article a while ago arguing that people are often willing to be led by men (mostly men) with antisocial behaviour traits, because those men are good at breaking rules to the benefit of their friends and followers. I think the example the author used was of someone who figures out a way to jump a queue and so gets everyone into a venue sooner. In this context, evidence of a willingness to be unethical can actually be seen as a positive recommendation for leadership positions.

Struck by this dynamic and the Trump phenomenon, where he has explicitly argued that he wants to be "greedy" on behalf of the American population.

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"Groups of signers will naturally form circles or arcs to include everyone. They avoid long, rectangular tables, which impede views. The least Deaf-supportive space Bauman could think of, when I asked him what it might be, was the traditional classroom with straight rows of desks; that layout breaks up lines of communication, except between student and teacher. Many classrooms at Gallaudet have round or horseshoe-shaped seating arrangements. Meeting rooms may have oval desks; lecture halls are raked, and ideally have multiple aisles so an audience member can easily take the stage when he or she wants to ask a question." Curbed

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Could chimpanzees be engaging in ritual?

"What we have found might be more symbolic than a male display, and perhaps more reminiscent of our own past. Marking pathways and territories with signposts such as piles of stones is an important stage in human history. Mapping chimps’ territories in relation to stone accumulation sites could give us insights into whether this is the case here."

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Wow, Los Angeles literally confiscating homes from homeless people on (completely spurious?) safety grounds.

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I find these kind of statistics so wonderful, but also feel strangely envious. Kids nowadays obviously feel much more supported in their identities than would have been possible for most people during my adolescence. Progress :)

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This is pretty good advice for all relationships, actually, not only those with kids. It's all to easy to let conflict devolve into a power struggle, rather than a calm negotiation over the best course of action.

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This article goes to something I've been thinking a lot about lately, about how we all need opportunities to fail early and often (and starting with low stakes), so we're able to learn about our own capabilities in a safe environment. So there's a good point in here about young girls and physical risk, but you could also write a piece about young boys and emotional risk, and lots of broadly analogous other issues.

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Climate change is proceeding at a breakneck pace... :/

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So good

"Like the Manic Pixie Dream Girl before her, the Manic Pixie Dream Feminist is every brogressive's fantasy – an intelligent, socially aware woman whose liberal sexual politics mean she's also a freak in the sack. The MPDF is passionate, but not too passionate – she will never call you out on your shit, but patiently and gently hold your hand through the tricky maze of social justice, a human search engine with bottomless emotional labour available at your disposal.

This slimy fetishisation is a reconstitution of the male gaze for self-congratulating leftist men who loudly proclaim that they love smart, opinionated women, but are intimidated as hell when push comes to shove. Having their problematic views challenged or their offensive jokes called out tips the power balance scales away from the smug, comfortable patriarchal throne they've been sitting on all their lives – and boy, do they hate it."

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Fascinating history of Baghdad

"Under strict supervision [the Caliph] had workers trace the plans of his round city on the ground in lines of cinders. The perfect circle was a tribute to the geometric teachings of Euclid, whom he had studied and admired."

Links, Monday 7th March

Heh

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Getting on board the train...

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Great piece on anti-languages. Fun bit of trivia: "naff" is originally an acronym meaning "not available for fucking"

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Reproductive labour and academia

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"So many questions went unanswered during those seventy-two hours [offline] —so many curiosities cast aside and forgotten without being pursued. I was less harried, I suppose, but I was also far less informed, and not as advanced in my understanding of all sorts of things that interested me. I felt as though I were standing still rather than moving forward. And while standing still for a while can be pleasant, it’s not without its drawbacks. Instead of feeling more relaxed, I mainly felt unfulfilled." New Yorker

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"Having a white actor in this film turned out to be a financial imperative" MIC

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"Every year my white friends “condemn all violence and intimidation” when lectures are stopped by the power of song and dance, but are silent when violence breaks out shortly after. Every year white people pretend they didn’t call the police." Daily Maverick

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“When economic development happens, metal scenes appear. They’re like mushrooms after the rain,” WSJ

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[TW: rape, sexual assault]

Very good and important article, really gets to the core of how sexual coercion plays out at an emotional level

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"the evidence of a link between childhood misfortune and future psychiatric disorder is about as strong statistically as the link between smoking and lung cancer." Guardian

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"Only when people can stop in the middle of the street to talk without fearing what may be bearing down on them will we have fully restored the social function of streets." Washington Post

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Interesting piece about the escalating costs of nuclear power, and how it might be contained. This might all soon be rendered irrelevant, of course, as the costs of renewables keep coming down...

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"We're taught Lord Acton's axiom: all power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I believed that when I started these books, but I don't believe it's always true any more. Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals. When you have enough power to do what you always wanted to do, then you see what the guy always wanted to do." Guardian

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Wow, someone in Sweden has opened an entirely automated, 24-hour convenience store

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Great piece of analysis - so much commentary on Nene's firing describing Des van Rooyen as an "obscure backbencher", neglecting to mention that he's the secretary of the MK Veteran's Association and thus an important member of the securocrat cabal who are slowly capturing the South African state.

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Chess visualised!

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Hardly a surprising result - the widely publicised campaign encouraging people to report on benefit 'fraud' has nothing to do with catching actual fraud, and everything to do with destroying solidarity and undermining the welfare system.

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"Data reliably shows we have more leisure time than in the past, not less... All of which isn’t to say that the epidemic is imaginary – we really do feel too busy, after all – but that the real problem is the feeling, not the sheer number of things on our plates." Guardian

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" If everyone with a pointless, wasteful, or destructive job simply refused to show up to it, we would learn a lot about how much of our time is taken up with “work” that has everything to do with our dependence on wage labor, and nothing at all to do with the things we need to run a decent society." Jacobin

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This story is frankly quite upsetting, but still amazing

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"Society needs to be deprogrammed, subverted, or queered, and that involves a process of unlearning and deconditioning white supremacist, cisnormative and heteronormative behaviour and values. Straight and cisgender people engaged in that work could be considered queer but I feel it's not a label/identity cis and straight people are entitled to claim, more one that they need to earn. In the same way cisgender men can't just declare themselves feminists, or white people can't just declare their activism intersectional, they have to be held accountable to the people society places beneath them." Vice

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A reminder that the founding issue of the religious right in the US was not opposition to abortion, but opposition to racial desegregation