While I will be dead before all of this plays out, it will be interesting to see if the crowd who wants America to be the number one superpower is also willing to overcome its bigotry toward immigrants enough to allow that to happen: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/world/americas/global-population-trends.html

#population #demography #immigration #racism

A shift to an inquisitorial justice system may reduce costs and overhead, allowing millions of Americans to actually have their days in court: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2019/04/rebootingjustice.html

#legalreform #law #civilrights

There are several responses to the recent Letter on Justice and Open Debate and the flood of responses is impossible to navigate but this is the best take that I have seen: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200707/13451544860/harpers-gives-prestigious-platform-to-famous-writers-so-they-can-whine-about-being-silenced.shtml

#freespeech #censorship

@Kitty62862 Agreed. I have been very glad to see that Nazis are not allowed. I love free speech and I also love not allowing the most angry and loud troll to drown out normal human beings and drive them away. Thanks for being so welcoming.

I guess there is something named Parler that is some right-wing/“free speech” version of Twitter and in today’s unsurprising news, it is banning users: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200627/23551144803/as-predicted-parler-is-banning-users-it-doesnt-like.shtml

The *only* way to have any kind of community or social media site that works involves having clear rules, trusted moderators who aggressively enforce those and use their best judgement for grey areas, and to not allow Nazis and trolls to piss in the pool. This is not hard to understand. #socialmedia #parler #rightwing

Unbundle the police: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/06/why-are-the-police-in-charge-of-road-safety.html

Why do we think that police officers should be mental health intervention specialists, social workers, local despotic military forces, and a million other jobs? Reduce police violence by decoupling many of these responsibilities to other agencies to provide basic support for society and keep policing (and the courts and prison system, etc.) for the very small minority who actually pose a threat to society. #police #nonviolence

A healthy stock market belies an unhealthy economy, privileging a small handful: https://theweek.com/articles/886198/booming-stock-market-shows-america-diseased #economics #wealth #inequality

Machine learning is inherently conservative and only performs correlation, not causation: https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/provocations/neophobic-conservative-ai-overlords-want-everything-stay/ This should have a lot of (mostly negative) implications for things like how the police treat minorities or if new ideas are accepted (and who accepts them). #machinelearning #conservatism #scams #artificialintelligence

Anne Dagg (among others) is awarded the Order of Canada: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/queen-of-giraffes-among-new-order-of-canada-recipients-with-global-influence #women #zoology #canada

Happy Public Domain Day: https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2020/ If anyone wants to help me promote free culture via Wikimedia projects, let me know. #freeculture

Some good news from Oklahoma, with the mass commutation of now-misdemeanor charges: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/11/oklahoma-clemency-drug-criminal-justice-reform.html #oklahoma #justice

Meritocracy is really just elitism due to the massive advantages that the rich have from birth: https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/10/21/20897021/meritocracy-economic-mobility-daniel-markovits #classwarfare #elitism #democracy #meritocracy #education #inequality #wealthconcentration #bigotry #classism #latestagecapitalism #capitalism

Protests are more frequent and much less effective than in decades past: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316474594_Trends_in_Nonviolent_Resistance_and_State_Response_Is_Violence_Towards_Civilian-based_Movements_on_the_Rise?te=1&nl=the-interpreter&emc=edit_int_20191104 (academic) https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?uri=nyt://newsletter/375eeb8b-49fd-4a0f-933c-9ef2ed0a10d8 (popular) #democracy #authoritarianism #socialmedia #peoplepower

The state of Newsweek is a microcosm of journalism in 2019: https://www.cjr.org/special_report/newsweek.php #journalism #scams #latestagecapitalism #capitalism #google #facebook

Today in uplifting news: it looks like American markets are refusing to be fooled by tech unicorns: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/are-we-cusp-next-dot-com-bubble/600232/ #scams #capitalism #latestagecapitalism #techbros #siliconvalley #stockmarket

Exhibit A of how San Francisco is not a liberal city: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7x57mb/san-francisco-property-owners-can-do-basically-whatever-they-want-to-homeless-people-now The Bay Area is made up of vicious capitalists who love get-rich-quick-schemes and tech-libertarianism but agree that climate change is probably happening and don’t really care if a couple of men get married but that is far from a left-wing utopia. #liberalism #capitalism #latestagecapitalism #sanfrancisco #hatecrimes #homelessness

@Kitty62862 I am equally glad that she has you and that you have her.

Today in depressing journalism news: https://deadspin.com/inside-themavens-plan-to-turn-sports-illustrated-into-a-1838756286 This has everything: pivots to video, content mills, unpaid labor, underpaid labor, bosses claiming to be friends, serial abusers, sexual harassment, and the tarnishing of multiple long-lived publications. Truly despicable. #sexualharassment #techbros #journalism #sports #sportsillustrated #thelosangelestimes #capitalism #latestagecapitalism #scams #theft #lies

@Kitty62862 As someone who does not have a daughter with autism but who did work with the special needs community on and off for about a decade, I agree. There is no excuse for outbreaks of whooping cough in the 21st century other than bad science. You did the right thing for your daughter and for society and no vaccine can cause autism.

Have you ever wondered what sociopathy looks like? https://newrepublic.com/article/155212/worked-capital-one-five-years-justified-piling-debt-poor-customers As always, being poor is more expensive than being rich. #classwarfare #debt #capitalism #oppression #cruelty #latestagecapitalism