technology

NOVA: If this region—New Orleans, the wetlands, and all—were a patient in the hospital, how would you describe them? At what stage are they?
IVOR VAN HEERDEN: Close to death.
[…]

More than 350 profiles and pages linked to the Saudi government with some 1.4 million followers were taken down by Facebook on Thursday.

As I sit on the small balcony on the top floor of an old house in the working class neighborhood of Alfama in Lisbon, Portugal, it is early evening, the time for wine and voices wafting on the fragrant breeze through the twisting cobble-stoned streets.  The National Pantheon (Panteao Nacional) stares me in the face.  I stare back, and then look up to the heavens and to the cross that is silhouetted against the blue sky.  It crowns the Pantheon’s massive dome.  On its façade stand three statues, only one of which I can see clearly.  She is Santa Engracia, a Christian martyr from before the p

One of the biggest things we’re up against, and something few people are talking about, is social impact investing and pay for success finance. Within the hollowed out shell of the welfare state, which admittedly was always inadequate and used for purposes of racialized social control, global finance has built a new machine that will use predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, and wearable and screen-based technologies to monitor the global poor and profit from their misery.

The more reified the world becomes, the thicker the veil cast upon nature, the more the thinking weaving that veil in its turn claims ideologically to be nature, primordial experience.
— Theodor M. Adorno, Critical Models, Columbia University Press, 1963
Year after year
On the monkey’s face:
A monkey’s face.
— Basho (translated by Earl Miner)
Nature contains, though often unnoticed, an extraordinary amount of human history.
— Raymond Williams, Culture and Materialism, 2005

What happens when people are given too much information? They feel overwhelmed, which quickly becomes apathy and political paralysis. In...

What happens when people are given too much information? They feel overwhelmed, which quickly becomes apathy and political paralysis. In...

(CONVERSATION Op-ed) — Facebook has announced a plan to launch a new cryptocurrency named the Libra, adding another layer to its efforts to dominate global communications and business. Backed by huge finance and technology companies including Visa, Spotify, eBay, PayPal and Uber – plus a ready-made user base of 2 billion people around the world – Facebook is positioned to pressure countries […]

(ANTIWAR.COM) — Expanding on weekend reports that the US had been carrying out cyberattacks against Russia’s electricity grid and other infrastructure, Russian news agencies are quoting unnamed security sources who say that the US attacks were thwarted. Kremlin officials said they consider the reports “worrying,” and that a major cyber war was possible. Security officials said that so far they […]

(ZH) — After weeks of anticipation, the day has finally arrived: In a dramatic push into uncharted waters for the social media behemoth that saw Mark Zuckerberg make overtures to his former arch-nemises (the Winklevii), Facebook has finally published the white paper for its long-awaited stablecoin, “Libra”. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Facebook’s white […]