Lazy linking

Here are a few links that might be of interest

Lady Gaga Never Spoke Out Against Rumors Claiming She’s a Man ‘Because I Didn’t Feel Like a Victim With That Lie’: ‘I’m Used to Lies Being Printed About Me’

Lady Gaga explains why she would not fight against these rumors, since she thought her fighting against them might harm someone else.

A graph exploration method for identifying influential spreaders in complex networks

The problem of identifying the influential spreaders – the important nodes – in a real world network is of high importance due to its theoretical interest as well as its practical applications, such as the acceleration of information diffusion, the control of the spread of a disease and the improvement of the resilience of networks to external attacks. In this paper, we propose a graph exploration sampling method that accurately identifies the influential spreaders in a complex network, without any prior knowledge of the original graph, apart from the collected samples/subgraphs. The method explores the graph, following a deterministic selection rule and outputs a graph sample – the set of edges that have been crossed. The proposed method is based on a version of Rank Degree graph sampling algorithm. We conduct extensive experiments in eight real world networks by simulating the susceptible-infected-recovered (SIR) and susceptible-infected-susceptible (SIS) epidemic models which serve as ground truth identifiers of nodes spreading efficiency. Experimentally, we show that by exploring only the 20% of the network and using the degree centrality as well as the k-core measure, we are able to identify the influential spreaders with at least the same accuracy as in the full information case, namely, the case where we have access to the original graph and in that graph, we compute the centrality measures. Finally and more importantly, we present strong evidence that the degree centrality – the degree of nodes in the collected samples – is almost as accurate as the k-core values obtained from the original graph.

An interesting paper from 2017.

Five Russian GRU Officers and One Civilian Charged for Conspiring to Hack Ukrainian Government

Defendants Are Alleged to Have Committed Cyber Attacks in Advance of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine; Also Targeted 26 North Atlantic Treaty Organization Countries

It is the official release of the charge against Tenet and the Russian paymasters that was release a couple of weeks ago. For a good overview of the case, I recommend this article from the Columbia Journalism ReviewThe Tenet Media Incident

A rare link in Danish: OPLEVET ETNISK DISKRIMINATION I DANMARK (pdf)

Denne rapport udgør den hidtil mest omfattende undersøgelse af racisme i Danmark
med udgangspunkt i oplevet diskrimination og fordomme. Mens enkeltpersoners egne
oplevelser ikke kan give et præcist billede af det faktiske omfang af diskrimination
og fordomme, så kan oplevelser i kombination med den omfangsrige forskning, der
henvises til i rapporten, tydeliggøre, at der er problemer, der skal løses.

Undersøgelsen tager udgangspunkt i voksne minoritetsetniske personer med
opvækst i Danmark – dvs. personer der enten er født i Danmark eller kommet hertil
som børn (herefter betegnet som minoritetsetniske personer). Overordnet viser
besvarelserne i undersøgelsen, at over 8 ud af 10 minoritetsetniske personer angiver,
at de har oplevet diskrimination eller fordomme inden for det seneste år. Over 6 ud af
10 minoritetsetniske personer angiver, at de har oplevelser, man som udgangspunkt
kan karakterisere som ulovlig diskrimination. For mange er der ikke tale om en enkelt
hændelse, men gentagne negative oplevelser på tværs af bl.a. arbejdsmarkedet, i det
offentlige rum og i kontakten med myndigheder.

This is a report about experienced/perceived ethnic discrimination in Denmark, made by the Danish Institute for Human Rights in 2023

Congratulations Imane Khelif

Imane Khelif won gold in boxing at the 2024 Paris Olympics. I am happy that she managed to win, even while under harassment from some of the most powerful people in the world.

I also see to my happiness that her lawyer, Nabil Boudi, has filed a complaint about her harassment: Imane Khelif files legal complaint for harassment over gender controversy

Conversion therapy banned in Norway

This has flown under my radar, but the Norwegian parliament voted to ban conversion therapy on December 12, and the ban was approved 85-15. The ban makes it illegal to try to change someones sexual orientation or gender identity through medicine, alternative medicine, and religious methods among other things. The maximum penalty is 3 years of jail, 6 years in serious cases.

Source: Forbud mot konverteringsterapi vedtatt i Stortinget (article in Norwegian)