This cartoon illustrates a problem I would have if I ever got one of those voice-activated virtual assistants.
It would go completely against the grain for me to issue commands to anyone and yet it would feel a little silly to be polite to a machine. In the end, I would likely be polite just so as not to develop bad habits.
Over in Sweden, a storm has been brewing over the public burnings of the Koran and the Torah.
Sweden is once again caught in the political crosshairs over its decision to greenlight burnings of the Quran and Torah in Stockholm. Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said this week that far-right figures have filed more requests for Quran-burning protests with the police, and he is “extremely worried” about what could happen as a result.
Sweden, as well as neighboring Denmark, have allowed the protests to take place in recent months, sparking criticism, counterprotests, and diplomatic blowback from several majority-Muslim nations. We’ve curated reporting and insights about the latest developments.
The reason the protests have been allowed to proceed: Sweden “has one of the world’s strongest legal protections for freedom of expression” and cannot ban protests unless they are a threat to public safety, Marten Schultz, law professor at Stockholm University, told the BBC. Experts determined that the burnings targeted a text instead of individuals. The freedom of speech right dates back to 1766 and is seen as a “fundamental value” in Swedish culture, Schultz said.
Swedish officials have condemned the Quran burnings, and said this week that the country is the target of a disinformation campaign led by “Russia-backed actors” trying to imply that Sweden is behind the protests. Sweden’s national security service said the incidents have changed the world’s view of Sweden, “from a tolerant country to a country hostile to Islam and Muslims.” — The Guardian
Sweden also recently approved a request for a 50-year-old woman to burn a copy of the Torah, the sacred Jewish text, outside the Israeli embassy in Stockholm. Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said he warned his Swedish counterpart that the demonstration could worsen the two countries’ relationship. Jewish community leaders in Israel said the burning shouldn’t qualify for freedom of expression protections. — The Times of Israel
One wonders if there is going to be an escalation of this, with the sacred texts of many religions going up in smoke as each side retaliates..
I am not a fan of burning any book, religious or otherwise, but would not be up in arms over it. since such gestures are usually futile and have only a transient effect. But for some religious people, defense of their texts is seen as a duty that can only be satisfied with violence.
I always wonder why such people do not leave it up to their gods to take appropriate retaliatory action. If the gods are deeply offended by the burning of the books they supposedly gave to their followers, surely they would not just stand by hoping that some of their worshippers would rise up on their behalf. The fact that they never do anything seems to me that they do not care either.
Or maybe they do not exist.
Since I had enjoyed the original three Star Wars films (Episodes 4, 5, 6) that came out in the 1977, 1980, and 1983, I went to see the first of the three prequels (Episode 1) when it was released in 1999. I found it to be a waste of time so that I did not watch Episodes 2 and 3 either.
One of the really off-putting features of Episode 1 was the exceedingly annoying character Jar Jar Binks. My dislike for the character was shared by many who mounted a hate campaign against him. Since I thought that he was a purely CGI animation, I did not pay much attention to this campaign. But it turns out that behind the mask was a real actor Ahmed Best, who had been a huge fan of the films and was overjoyed to be selected to be part of the franchise. But his life was made such hell by the vitriol and even death threats aimed at him that he seriously contemplated suicide. The idea that one would not just intensely dislike a fictional character but go after the hapless actor playing that role amazes me. Mind you, this was even before the current social media environment made such pile ons easier. Thankfully he did not carry out that plan to kill himself and has managed to make a comeback as a new character in The Mandalorian
This article tells his story.
Given all the depressing news in the world right now, it is refreshing to read about things that are really silly but taken seriously by people who should know better, like the members of Congress. I am referring of course to the hearings on so-called Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). On the surface is nothing remarkable about things in the sky that we have not as yet identified. But they have become identified in the minds of true believers with visitations by extra-terrestrials. Furthermore these people are convinced that the US government knows about these things but is hiding it from us.
[Read more…]
Twitter owner Elon Musk has abruptly renamed the company as simply X. He had earlier named his first company X.com. Jill Lepore writes that Musk has long had a fascination with this particular letter, that can be traced back to his father and grandfather who were leaders of a so-called Technocracy movement and called themselves Technocrats and “believed that only engineers and scientists could save the world from a looming catastrophe.”
Technocrats objected to politicians and economists, democracy, and socialism. They wanted an end to all banks. In the future that Technocrats including Musk’s grandfather were planning for,“There will be no place for Politics or Politicians, Finance or Financiers, Rackets or Racketeers. There would also be no place for personal names. One technocrat, for instance, renamed himself 1x1809x56. Musk named one of his sons X Æ A-12—X, for short.
Why name a baby X Æ A-12, something that is going to result in the child being tormented by their peers and likely require years of therapy as an adult? This whole business of parents trying to give their children weird names to make some ideological point seems to be sheer vanity, seeing the child as a vehicle for their own obsessions and ignoring their needs. I am really glad that my parents gave me an utterly common name. As least it is common in Sri Lanka though, because it is simple enough, it is only a little exotic now that I am in the US.
But Musk has big plans for the company that he now has renamed X, seeing it as the precursor to an ‘everything app’, whatever the hell that is.
X, Musk promises, will be the “everything app.” X is the Technocrats’ dream deferred, a way to engineer society, the economy, and politics. Extreme capitalism—Muskism—as the answer to existential risk. With any luck, it will be a disaster.
I hope so too.
As soon as I saw the sad news story that Tafari Campbell, the personal chef of the Obamas, had drowned last Sunday while swimming near Martha’s Vineyard, I knew that conspiracy mongers would seize upon it, since any tragic event connected to the Obamas or Clintons is like catnip to them. And sure enough, they have.
The death of Tafari Campbell, a Barack Obama employee whose body was recovered near the former president’s home on Martha’s Vineyard on Monday, has sparked a wave of entirely unverified conspiracy theories online.
A number of prominent right-wing accounts, some with hundreds of thousands of followers, have questioned the official version of events. One described Campbell’s death on the Massachusetts island as “strange” and asked “what do you think really happened?”
…Liz Crokin is a Trump supporter and advocate of the QAnon conspiracy theory that says America is secretly being run by a cabal of satanic child molesters. She asked, “what did he know?” referring to Campbell.
…The Carrie loves America Twitter account, which has 102,000 followers and a picture of Trump as its headed image, wrote: “Tafari Campbell isn’t the only person who has died inexplicably in Obama’s orbit.
“Did you know that the woman who verified the authenticity of Obama’s birth certificate, Loretta Fuddy, was the only person to die in a plane crash in Hawaii in 2013. Everyone else survived,” the Carrie loves America account added.
Fuddy was responsible for approving the release of Obama’s long-form birth certificate in 2011. In December 2013, the 65-year-old was the only fatality when a light aircraft crashed off the coast of Hawaii, which an investigation attributed to “catastrophic engine failure.”
The Fuddy story illustrates the weird logic of these people The fact she was the only person who died in the crash is seen as the clue to it being suspicious. Somehow we are asked to think that the people who wanted to kill her and engineered the plane crash were able to arrange it so as to make just one person die. Surely it would have been easier to kill them all or, if they had some scruples about doing that, to just kill her on land in a car accident or something, rather than this far more complicated plan? But it is the convoluted nature of the plans that is appealing to conspiracists. Something that is straightforward is simply no fun for them.
I have never seen the so-called ‘green flash’, the brief appearance of green light just as the sun sets over the horizon. It requires special conditions for it it occur and although those conditions are not that rare, your chance of being in the right place for those few seconds is low. Fortunately with cameras, you can now capture the green (and even more occasionally blue and red) flashes as can be seen in this video compilation by Dutch filmmaker, photographer and artist Michiel de Boer.
When I need to learn how to do something around the house or with the computer, I will go to the internet and will frequently find a video on YouTube that gives instructions on what to do and those are usually helpful. But I only do this for things that are relatively minor. I can tell when I am getting out of my depth and need to call in a real expert.
But the easy availability of self-help videos can mislead us into thinking that that is sufficient even for major tasks and lead to tragic consequences, when people think that they can use that information for life-changing decisions. This is apparently what happened to three people who died in the wilderness of Colorado in their attempt to live off the grid.
[Read more…]
The Teamsters union that represents UPS workers yesterday came to a tentative deal with the company. Although the deal still has to be ratified by the members, that appears to be a formality because it looks like a big win for the 340,000 workers in the company, one of the largest workforces in the country. This new contract replaces a despised one that was forced on the workers five years by the former union president James Hoffa. A subsequent revolt by workers forced Hoffa out and replaced him with Sean M. O’Brien who negotiated the new deal. The deal resulted in many of the things that the union had demanded being agreed to by company management.
[Read more…]
Some Hindu groups in India are up in arms about a scene in the new film Oppenheimer, a biopic about physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the leader of the Manhattan project that developed the first atomic bomb in the top secret laboratory created just for that purpose in Los Alamos, New Mexico.
Oppenheimer was a very cerebral person who taught himself Sanskrit and was fond of the classic work the Bhagavad Gita that is considered one of the holy scriptures of Hinduism. He said in a later interview that when he witnessed the first explosion of the bomb at the Trinity test site in the New Mexico desert and saw its explosive power, these words from the book “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” came to his mind. Here is a more complete quote from the interview of the reactions of the observers as they witnessed the mushroom cloud:
[Read more…]