What I’m Reading, May 26, 2014

Posted on May 26, 2014 by wellsdc

Why the ’90s are literally disappearing from history, Andrew Leonard, Salon, May 17, 2014

So what do we keep, and what do we let go? Much is made in Silicon Valley today of the notion that access is replacing ownership. We don’t need to own cars in the age of ride-sharing. The “cloud” will take care of all our computing needs. We don’t even have to employ full-time workers, we just grab them from TaskRabbit. We rent, we share, we outsource — this is the millennial way. Owning is just so feudal.

Much of this is rhetorical bullshit aimed at justifying $10 billion market valuations for the likes of Airbnb and Uber. But there is grist to it that can’t be dismissed.

Men and Feminism, The Belle Jar, May 19, 2014

Continue reading →

What I’m Reading, May 19, 2014

Posted on May 19, 2014 by wellsdc

By Peter Mackinnon, Kerry Calder, and Stef Moir/First Photographics [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons Amazon’s ridiculous photography patent makes Mark Cuban happy, Andrew Leonard, Salon, May 9, 2014

If you are, like Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, a person who believes that the U.S. patent system is completely out-of-whack, then the news that Amazon was recently granted a patent for the process of shooting pictures against a white backdrop was simultaneously a cause for outrage and reason for jubilation.

The outrage part is easy. Studio photographers have been taking pictures against white backgrounds for ages. The notion that such a thing could be patented strikes many people as inexplicable and bizarre. But that’s also exactly why this particular tidbit exploded so quickly out of the amateur photography blogosphere and into the mainstream tech press and finally to the attention of Mr. Cuban. It’s the perfect example of why we need comprehensive patent reform.

The NFL Will Never Be ‘Ready’ for an Openly Gay Player, Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic, February 10, 2014

[Sam] will be challenging a deep and discrepant mythology of who is capable of inflicting violence and who isn’t. Last week, Jonathan Vilma speculated about how he might feel if a gay teammate saw him naked:

Imagine if he’s the guy next to me and, you know, I get dressed, naked, taking a shower, the whole nine, and it just so happens he looks at me. How am I supposed to respond?

What undergirds this logic is a fear of being made into a woman, which is to say a fear of being regarded sexually by someone who is as strong as, or stronger than, you. Implicit to the fear is the gay player’s ability to do violence. It exists right alongside a belief that the gay player is a “sissy.” (“Grown men should not have female tendencies. Period,” Vilma once tweeted.) The logic is kin to the old Confederate belief that Southern slaves were so loyal and cowardly yet they must never be given guns.

The mythology Jonathan Vilma endorses will not fade through vague endorsements of “tolerance,” lectures on “acceptance,” nor any other species of heartfelt magic. The question which we so often have been offered—is the NFL ready for a gay player?—is backwards. Powerful interests are rarely “ready” for change, so much as they are assaulted by it. We refer to barriers being “broken” for a reason. The reason is not because great powers generally like to unbar the gates and hold a picnic in the honor of the previously excluded. The NFL has no moral right to be “ready” for a gay player, which is to say it has no right to discriminate against gay men at its leisure which anyone is bound to respect.

Photo credit: By Peter Mackinnon, Kerry Calder, and Stef Moir/First Photographics [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

What I’m Reading, May 1, 2014

Posted on May 1, 2014 by wellsdc

By Pkg203 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons The Sharing Economy Isn’t About Trust, It’s About Desperation, Kevin Roose, New York, April 24, 2014

Wired‘s cover story this month is about the rise of the “sharing economy” — a Silicon Valley–invented term used to describe the basket of start-ups (Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, et al.) that allow users to rent their labor and belongings to strangers. Jason Tanz attributes the success of these start-ups to the invention of a “set of digital tools that enable and encourage us to trust our fellow human beings,” such as bidirectional rating systems, background checks, frictionless payment systems, and platforms that encourage buyers and sellers to get to know each other face-to-face before doing business.

Tanz’s thesis isn’t wrong — these innovations have certainly made a difference. But it leaves out an important part of the story. Namely, the sharing economy has succeeded in large part because the real economy has been struggling.

A huge precondition for the sharing economy has been a depressed labor market, in which lots of people are trying to fill holes in their income by monetizing their stuff and their labor in creative ways. In many cases, people join the sharing economy because they’ve recently lost a full-time job and are piecing together income from several part-time gigs to replace it. In a few cases, it’s because the pricing structure of the sharing economy made their old jobs less profitable. (Like full-time taxi drivers who have switched to Lyft or Uber.) In almost every case, what compels people to open up their homes and cars to complete strangers is money, not trust.

Most of What You Think You Know About Sex Trafficking Isn’t True, Amanda Hess, Slate, April 23, 2014 Continue reading →

Great Moments on the Internet: “Google Image Search” Edition

Posted on May 1, 2014 by wellsdc

Do a Google image search for “search warrant,” filtered for free usage rights (for work reasons, duh).
Get a picture of the band Warrant.

Here are some memories for you: Continue reading →

The Greatest Star Wars GIF You Will Ever See

Posted on April 19, 2014 by wellsdc

This masterpiece comes to us via MrTidbits. It appeared almost a year ago via khaos324, on Geeks of Doom, and I’m sure elsewhere. It originated, it would appear, as a video from 1A4STUDIO, may their name resonate through all eternity.

Also, no littering.

What I’m Reading, April 16, 2014

Posted on April 16, 2014 by wellsdc

By Novis-M (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons The irresponsibly stupid and dangerous camouflage patterns of the U.S. military, David W. Brown, The Week, January 22, 2013

When the Marine Corps selected a digital pattern for its combat uniform in 2002, the U.S. military as a whole seemed to fracture, with each branch wandering aimlessly in a bizarre search for sartorial identity. It’s been a long, strange trip since. So let’s take a brief look at the camouflage patterns of the U.S. military, and the sorry stories of their adoptions.

If You Don’t Like “Rape Culture” Then Focus For A Minute On Sex and Status, Soraya Chemaly, Huffington Post, April 7, 2014

The idea that we live with a culture that promotes rape is anathema to people who a) don’t want to believe it because, when you start to really think about it, it’s awful and scary and defies reason; b) live in communities filled with words used to deny, promote or camouflage sexual assault or c) are people who have power and benefit, in multiple, intersecting ways, from the status quo.

“Status” is the operative word. If you don’t like the words “rape culture” or you are uncomfortable with the idea that men rape women (and that is the vast preponderance of cases) in huge numbers, here is a different way to think about this: People with higher status are entitled to rape and abuse people with lower status in society.

Fear of becoming a racial minority makes white Americans more conservative: study, Scott Kaufman, The Raw Story, April 10, 2014 (h/t LGM)

Two researchers from the Department of Psychology and Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University demonstrated that the more white Americans know about the changing demographics of the United States, the more likely they are to endorse conservative policy positions.

***

Maureen Craig and Jennifer Richeson conducted three studies in which white Americans were presented with information about the racial demographic shifts that have led the U.S. Census Bureau to project that “racial minority groups will make up a majority of the U.S. national population in 2042, effectively creating a so-called ‘majority-minority’ nation.”

The result was that, “[d]espite being self-identified political independents, respondents who were asked about the [majority-minority] racial shift reported being somewhat more conservative than did respondents” who were asked the less salient question about Hispanics being roughly equally to African-Americans.

AA and Rehab Culture Have Shockingly Low Success Rates, Dr. Lance Dodes, Zachary Dodes, AlterNet, April 2, 2014

Twelve-step programs hold a privileged place in our culture as well. The legions of “anonymous” members who comprise these groups are helped in their proselytizing mission by hit TV shows such as “Intervention,” which preaches the gospel of recovery. “Going to rehab” is likewise a common refrain in music and fi lm, where it is almost always uncritically presented as the one true hope for beating addiction. AA and rehab have even been codified into our legal system: court-mandated attendance, which began in the late 1980s, is today a staple of drug-crime policy. Every year, our state and federal governments spend over $15 billion on substance-abuse treatment for addicts, the vast majority of which are based on 12-step programs. There is only one problem: these programs almost always fail.

Peer-reviewed studies peg the success rate of AA somewhere between 5 and 10 percent. That is, about one of every fifteen people who enter these programs is able to become and stay sober. In 2006, one of the most prestigious scientific research organizations in the world, the Cochrane Collaboration, conducted a review of the many studies conducted between 1966 and 2005 and reached a stunning conclusion: “No experimental studies unequivocally demonstrated the effectiveness of AA” in treating alcoholism. This group reached the same conclusion about professional AA-oriented treatment (12-step facilitation therapy, or TSF), which is the core of virtually every alcoholism-rehabilitation program in the country.

Photo credit: By Novis-M (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

What I’m Reading, April 15, 2014

Posted on April 15, 2014 by wellsdc

"Dragons famili" by mapazhe [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)], via deviantART How We Won the War on Dungeons & Dragons, Annalee Newitz, io9, March 26, 2014

[U]nlike my fantasy of being a hot half-elf, the Christians actually had some control over our lives. My best friend got kicked out of Catholic school for playing D&D, which we counted as a win because it meant she could come to our shitty public school and play D&D with us. Outside our southern California town, however, D&D players weren’t getting off so easily. They were ostracized by their peers, kicked out of public schools, and sent to glorified reeducation camps by parents who feared their children were about to start sacrificing babies to Lolth the spider demon.

It sounds crazy in our world today, where there are Dungeons & Dragons movies and a rich game industry full of titles inspired by those old paper-and-dice games we played back in the twentieth century. One of the most popular shows on television, Game of Thrones, features plots that my friends and I might have cooked up back on that playground at lunch. Somehow, the popularity of epic fantasy and role playing overcame America’s fear of young people making up stories about monsters and gods.

The Cost Of Permission Culture: Or Why Netflix Streaming Library Sucks Compared To Its DVD Library, Parker Higgins, TechDirt, April 9, 2014

The problem is that, unlike earlier movie-rental options, streaming rights fall fundamentally within a permission culture. Netflix is a great illustration of what’s gone wrong here. It’s gone from having a nearly unrivaled catalog of films available to rent to being the butt of Onion jokes. What happened: It shifted from a system where nobody had a veto power over its operations, to one where it had to get permission and make deals with Hollywood. Sometimes it’s difficult to find the concrete costs of living in a permission culture, but the decline of Netflix’s selection is an important cautionary tale.

Physicist surprised to see himself in ‘documentary’ claiming the sun revolves around the earth, Robyn Pennacchia, Death and Taxes, April 8, 2014

Like any other Christian pseudoscience theory, geocentrism is built upon the premise that humans are special and earth is special and God made them special, so any science conflicting with that must be wrong. Like, probably Satan somehow made it look like the earth is really old and revolves around the sun just to destroy our self-esteem. The film makes this premise clear, with its suggested hashtag, #areyousignificant.

How Hatred of Islam Creates Strange Bedfellows of Christians and Atheists, CJ Werleman, AlterNet, April 11, 2014

Despite claims by David Silverman, president of the 501(c4) political lobby group American Atheists, atheism does not earn an atheist the title of freethinker. With very few exceptions, movement atheists are not. They’re parrots. Don’t believe me? Ask an atheist to opine on the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, and he or she will invariably wax lyrical about religious motivated violence, Islamic extremism and suicide bombers. In other words, expect a recital from atheist luminaries Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens.

***

Atheists, myself included, enjoy mocking religious fundamentalists for their inability to question authority or dogma. But very few atheists sound dissimilar to the aforementioned atheist heavyweights when it comes to assessing the roots of Islamic terrorism. In the aftermath of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, American Atheists president Silverman tweeted, “Dear Peaceful Muslims: Sorry, but yet, that IS your Islam and your Prophet’s followers.” Silverman included the hashtag #IslamIsBarbaric. If you were told neo-con firebrand Ann Coulter had posted this careless tweet, you would have believed it.

No doubt, Harris (neuroscience) and Dawkins (evolutionary biology) are leaders in their respective fields. What they’re not is experts on terrorism and the Middle East. So movement atheism needs to stop pretending like they are, because the words of Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens serve only to make movement atheists sound like neo-conservatives, Zionists and the Christian Right, which ultimately makes seeking peace even harder to attain.

[Ed. note: The URL slug for the above article is “how-atheists-are-complicit-atrocities-and-oppression-palestinian-people.” Just thought that was worth noting.]

Photo credit: “Dragons famili” by mapazhe [CC BY 3.0], via deviantART.

What I’m Reading, April 1, 2014

Posted on April 1, 2014 by wellsdc

NOTE: None of these links are in any way related to April Fool’s Day, however much one might like to think otherwise.

By LadyofHats [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

This picture makes no sense in the context of this post.

The War on Christmas is On! These Christians Are Angry That a School District Renamed Christmas Break ‘Winter Recess’, Hemant Mehta, Friendly Atheist, March 29, 2014

Damn, it must be good to be a Christian. This is the sort of thing that makes your blood boil?! Atheists are working on things like getting openly-non-theistic people elected to public office… meanwhile, McNulty’s angry because the universe doesn’t completely revolve around her.

Target Had Chance to Stop Breach, Senators Say, Elizabeth A. Harris, New York Times, March 26, 2014

Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia and chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, said at a hearing that the hacking last year of Target, one of the nation’s largest retailers, “must be a clarion call to businesses, both large and small, that it’s time to invest in some changes.”

Senators Rockefeller and Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said that Target’s failure to heed warning signs of incursions by cybercriminals ultimately was the fault of its top executives.

“The best technology in the world is useless unless there’s good management,” Mr. Blumenthal said. “And here, to be quite blunt, there were multiple warnings from the company’s anti-intrusion software; they were missed by management.”

Photo credit: By LadyofHats [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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