Very important read - how the Norwegian policy billed as "decriminalising sex workers" in fact heaps legal sanctions upon them, making them vulnerable to abuse, exploitation, eviction and deportation.
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This is a very confusing and thought-provoking essay. I would love to hear opinions
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This is why we need decriminalisation URGENTLY!
CN: rape, police violence
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"white males see less risk in the world because they create, manage, control, and benefit from so much of it. Perhaps women and nonwhite men see the world as more dangerous because in many ways they are more vulnerable, because they benefit less from many of its technologies and institutions, and because they have less power and control." Vox
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People continue to die crossing the Mediterranean :( :(
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"Under their watch, they hope to see elephants roam the Danish landscape for the first time in millennia." BBC
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Would love to hear thought on this:
"There is a very simple way that truly great buildings can be preserved–they can be bought or their preservation rights paid for. The problem with historic preservation laws is not the goal but the methods. Historic preservation laws attempt to foist the cost of preservation on those who want to build (very much including builders of infrastructure such as the government)."
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"For centuries, American mill workers had used systems of hand signals to tell each other, across the unending roar of the saws, how to cut wood. What [the researchers] discovered, though, floored them. [They] witnessed a sign language system complete enough that workers could call each other “you crazy old farmer,” tell a colleague that he was “full of crap,” or tell each other when the foreman was “fucking around over there.”" Atlas Obscura
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Why human minds will (probably) never be uploaded:
"Unlike artificial computers, there is no clean digital abstraction layer in the brain; given the biological history of nervous systems as evolved, rather than designed, systems, there’s no reason to expect one. The fundamental unit of biological information processing is the molecule, rather than any higher level structure like a neuron or a synapse; molecular level information processing evolved very early in the history of life. Living organisms sense their environment, they react to what they are sensing by changing the way they behave, and if they are able to, by changing the environment too. This kind of information processing, unsurprisingly, remains central to all organisms, humans included, and this means that a true simulation of the brain would need to be carried out at the molecular scale, rather than the cellular scale." Soft Machines
"To understand even the basics of how the brain maintains the human intellect, we might need to know not just the current state of all 86 billion neurons and their 100 trillion interconnections, not just the varying strengths with which they are connected, and not just the states of more than 1,000 proteins that exist at each connection point, but how the moment-to-moment activity of the brain contributes to the integrity of the system." Aeon
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A very important read: A sexual assault survivor's statement after the conviction of her assailant. (It does go into graphic detail, so be prepared)
Also some good commentary on the evidence of rape culture that have been brought out by this case:
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Would love to hear thoughts on this - although the Nordic have higher levels of gender equality than other EU countries (by some measures), they also have *higher* rates of intimate partner violence against women. And no, it's not just a reporting issue - if anything, Nordic countries actually have *lower* rates of reporting than other EU countries.
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"cutting-edge airborne laser scanning technology has revealed multiple cities between 900 and 1,400 years old beneath the tropical forest floor, some of which rival the size of Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh." Guardian
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Well this is just disgusting - auction house in SF has a *sprinkler system* set up to occasionally douse homeless people trying to sleep on the pavement outside :( :(
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Ugh god, this is so difficult to watch. Owen Jones trying to make a very simple point about homophobic violence and being continually derailed. Incredible restraint not to walk off sooner, tbh.
