ruff linkage 2018419 min read

[weekly linkdump, somewhat edited from my diigo]


#tumblr

Tumblr Image of the Week
Tumblr Image of the Week
Tumblr Image of the Week


#twitter


#ifyouonlyreadone

Steven Pinker: False Friend of the Enlightenment – “Pinker’s technocratic liberalism is inadequate to this task; this is a premodern, even mystical affair. For the creation of values, what is required is some transcendent authority, a law-giving Father to rule and to judge us. The liberal will tell us that the self-organization of the masses is both futile and dangerous. But this is merely a negative warning. The reactionary will positively insist that the masses must be ruled with a firm hand, and that hierarchy is a good in itself.” The Prozac philosopher is dismantled. It’s just hot air.


#watch,

chaotic magnetic fidget spinner – “Chaotic magnet movement effects.”

Electric Light Orchestra – Mr. Blue Sky (Brass Quintet feat. Seb Skelly!) – Hot damn.

Postmodernism is not identity politics – A comment: “why does Jordan Peterson make so many inaccurate conflations? It can’t be to appeal to some emotional audience could it? For money? Is he just dumb?” Yes. He is.

“Robotics Skins” turn everyday objects into robots – “Developed in the lab of Yale’s Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio, NASA-inspired robotic skins enable users to turn soft objects – a stuffed animal or a foam tube, for instance – into robots.”

Is Ted Cruz “Tough As Texas”? – “Directed by Richard Linklater. #ComeOnTed #FireTedCruz” Fired!


listen and

Freiheit in Gefahr – Der Faschismus ist zurück – aber anders – “Wir sind umgeben von Ideen. Wir mögen in Bern oder in Helsinki den Eindruck haben, dass die ideologischen Kriege vorüber sind. Das sind sie nicht.” Der amerikanische Historiker Timothy Snyder über die Rückkehr des Faschismus.


#learn

Never Trust The Cato Institute – “Surprise: free market libertarians are going to distort experts’ research to support free market conclusions…” It’s a cultural war and one side (hint hint: the right wing) plays very dirty.

Stephen Elliott Sues Spreadsheet Creator Moira Donegan – “Stephen Elliott, a New Orleans–based writer is suing Moira Donegan, the creator of the Shitty Media Men List for libel and emotional distress.” Deplorable attempt to silence women speaking out against abuse.

A New Academic Hoax–Complete with Fake Articles Published in Academic Journals–Ventures to Show the “Corruption” of Cultural Studies – “The whole affair may speak to broader failures in academic publishing that go beyond a tiny corner of the humanities. In part, those failures may stem from a general trend toward overworked, underpaid, increasingly precarious scholars whose disciplines, and funding, have been under relentless political attack since at least the 1990s and who must keep grinding out publications, sometimes of dubious merit, as part of the overall drive toward sheer productivity as the sole measure of success.” Unethical,cheap shot, with a hidden agenda = assholes.

The “grievance studies” hoax does not reveal what its authors think. – “In fact, given that the poison of postmodernism has been spreading for so long and it hasn’t killed us yet, perhaps it’s time to tweak the diagnosis. The most aggressive symptom of this “corruption” throughout academia may be psychological: a pervasive sense of sadness and disquiet—of grievance, if you will—at the notion that the world is changing and we don’t know how.” I could repat what I just one step above. But I won’t, except: assholes.

Building A Global Democratic Movement to Counter Authoritarianism – Bernie Sanders – “We need to be proactive and understand that just defending the failed status quo of the last several decades is not good enough. In fact, we need to recognize that the challenges we face today are a product of that status quo.” Bernie is right, of course, but he’s just Bernie.

We Need an Ecological Civilization Before It’s Too Late – “The crucial idea behind an ecological civilization is that our society needs to change at a level far deeper than most people realize. It’s not just a matter of investing in renewables, eating less meat, and driving an electric car. The intrinsic framework of our global social and economic organization needs to be transformed.” We do need that. But, humans…

You or Your Dog Can Now Pee All Over Trump Thanks to These Statues – “In lieu of seeing the president get pissed on, you can now go ahead and wiz all over him yourself—or at least your dog can, thanks to this insurrectionary, urinary masterpiece from an artist in New York City” Dude, I ain’t even a dog and would love to pee on this.

Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions, study says – “A relatively small number of fossil fuel producers and their investors could hold the key to tackling climate change” Sue the shit out of these bastards and use the money to remedy the damage they have done. Simple.

Are dark kitchens the satanic mills of our era? – “They are known as “dark kitchens”: cramped boxes, usually plonked in city centres, in which cooks prepare meals that are ordered and sent out via food-delivery apps. Britain is reckoned to have at least 70, most of which are owned and run by the delivery giant Deliveroo under the brand name Deliveroo Editions. The food that comes out of them is sold in the name of established restaurants, and innocent customers might assume it somehow still comes from their high-street premises. But no: this is a new reality of “virtual branding”, in which all that sits behind this or that logo are the bare essentials – a couple of ovens, a handful of chefs and couriers frantically delivering what they cook.” The so called sharing economy is not disrupting, it’s destroying.

Myth Busting Banksy
“So our conclusion for the engineering questions?
Yes, a battery can last for up to 10 years; there are also other plausible theories that do not implicate Sotheby’s
Yes, there was a functional shredder (in the loosest sense of the word)
Yes, the work was partially pre-shredded and spooled
Yes, the device in the video is the one that was used to further shred the painted during the auction” Theorycrafting if the Banksy hoax was technologically possible.

How the mushroom dream of a ‘long-haired hippie’ could help save the world’s bees – “The paper describes how bees given a small amount of his mushroom mycelia extract exhibited remarkable reductions in the presence of viruses associated with parasitic mites that have been attacking, and infecting, bee colonies for decades.” Shrooms will save us.

Racist Nazi symbol found on North Charleston police flashlight; origin a mystery – “After a white North Charleston officer was fired for hitting a handcuffed black man, a search of his car revealed a police-issued flashlight emblazoned with a racist Nazi symbol and the words “The Wig Splitter.”” What a mistery…

My Great-Grandfather the Bundist by Molly Crabapple – “Founded in 1897 in Vilna (Vilnius in modern-day Lithuania), and reaching its height in interwar Poland, the Bund was a sometimes-clandestine political party whose tenets were humane, socialist, secular, and defiantly Jewish. Bundists fought the Tsar, battled pogroms, educated shtetls, and ultimately helped lead the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Though the Bund was largely obliterated by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the group’s opposition to Zionism better explains their absence from current consciousness. Though the Bund celebrated Jews as a nation, they irreconcilably opposed the establishment of Israel as a separate Jewish homeland in Palestine.” I never knew about this before.

Banksy Shredder – Let’s you shred any piece of art you want. Or at least a photo thereof.


#oldiebutgoodie

Noam Chomsky on Language Acquisition and Memory Formation – “A clip from Michel Gondry’s Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?”


#francais_deutsch_other

Warum der “Presse”-Kommentar über Frauenprivilegien Bullshit ist – Der 87-jährige Journalist Jens Tschebull hat offensichtlich keine Ahnung von der Lebensrealität von Frauen und doch kommentiert er sie.

Antifeministische Internationale – “Die Debatte um den US-amerikanischen Richter Brett Kavanaugh zeigt, wie die Neue Rechte mit aggressivem Sexismus Politik macht. Die Frauenfeinde sind aber nicht nur dort, sondern weltweit auf dem Vormarsch.”


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