What is arresting about this work to me is that it delivers an intimate and persuasive portrait of the painter as well as the painting, using her extraordinary quotation as a jumping off point. Then a perfect opening line, which must forge an instant connection with anyone who creates, “You wanted me to make it come out differently.”
The reader gets such a visual picture of the artist’s sadness throughout the poem, too. I particularly loved “The yellow dust of his house circles his throat/ like a gold chain” and “As consolation I deny myself memory. Soon you’ll forget /the boy with the purple birthmark, the leaf that spreads/across his face like the slap of a hand.”Such a beautiful and ambitious ekphrastic poem. --Sara Clancy
The idea that free speech is contrary to social inclusiveness represents a pernicious shift in Western culture. Stifling hate speech does not safeguard the oppressed. It empowers the oppressors... Naration
“That’s how an artist can best speak as a member of a moral community: clearly, yet leaving around her words that area of silence, that empty space, in which other and further truths and perceptions can form in other minds.”
If We’re Going To Have An Internet Of Things – And We Are – It Needs A Code Of Ethics
A leading computer ethicist: “We’re just at the tip of the iceberg in what is arguably going to be a brave new world. And it’s highly heterogenous: We’ll be seeing a lot more autonomous systems, we’ll be seeing enhanced humans and smart systems, devices, and organizations. When you put all of those together, and you start thinking about how to bring out the best of the Internet of Things rather than the worst of the Internet of Things, governance is really the key.”
Ever get the feeling that tech companies took your solitude and monetized it? They have. We've forgotten the value of being alone... Fearing loneliness and giving up identity
Don't worry, your metadata is still totally private... sort of
As Australia faces a new future under mandatory data retention, the government has officially ruled out the use of metadata for civil case
Facebook targets ‘insecure’ young people Australian Business Review. Interesting:
A 23-page Facebook document seen by The Australian marked “Confidential: Internal Only” and dated 2017, outlines how the social network can target “moments when young people need a confidence boost” in pinpoint detail.By monitoring posts, pictures, interactions and internet activity in real-time, Facebook can work out when young people feel “stressed”, “defeated”, “overwhelmed”, “anxious”, “nervous”, “stupid”, “silly”, “useless”, and a “failure”, the document states.After being contacted by The Australian, Facebook issued an apology, and said it had opened an investigation, admitting it was wrong to target young children in this way.
I’d want more verifiable technical detail on the actual targeting — this is, after all, a sales pitch — but regardless of what Facebook is actually doing here, should they even want to?
Employees at this Swedish company can get a microchip inserted under their skinWorld Economic Forum. “The process lasts a few seconds, and more often than not there are no screams and barely a drop of blood.”
Cybersecurity: Critical Infrastructure Authoritative Reports and Resources, Rita Tehan, Information Research Specialist, April 21, 2017.“Cybersecurity: Critical Infrastructure Authoritative Reports and Resources Congressional Research Service Summary Critical infrastructure is defined in the USA PATRIOT Act (P.L. 107-56, §1016(e)) as“ systems and assets, physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic security, national public health and safety, or any combination of those matters
The IRS recently dealt a blow to Bitcoin enthusiasts by ruling that Bitcoin and other similar currencies should be treated as property – and not foreign currency – for income tax purposes. As a result, those who use bitcoins to purchase goods or services must report gain or loss on each transaction if the bitcoins have changed value between the time they were acquired and spent. Treating Bitcoin as a foreign currency would have permitted individuals to take advantage of the personal use exemption, which could facilitate Bitcoin’s adoption, and required taxpayers to adopt a formulaic system for tracking the basis of commingled bitcoins. The IRS’s decision seems correct as a matter of positive law, but laws can always be changed.
‘The Avant-Garde That Lost By Winning’ (Jerry Saltz Goes To Glenn O’Brien’s Funeral)
The wild man of art criticism/failed artist/Instagram auteur is haunted by the thoughts he had seeing the art-world stars gathered to mourn the ’80s impresario: “I don’t mean that these people and theirideals lost. On the contrary, these people represent a kind of total victory!”
A Museum Built For Failure (You’ll Learn Something)
“The purpose of the museum is to show that innovation requires failure,” Dr. West said as he introduced some of the exhibits in a video posted this month on the YouTube channel of Fredrik Skavlan, a Scandinavian talk show host. “If you are afraid of failure, then we can’t innovate.” He said he started the museum “to encourage organizations to be better at learning from failures — not just ignoring them and pretending they never happened.”
UK Parliament fails to tackle financial secrecy in its overseas territories Tax Justice Network
Banks should let ancient programming language COBOL die The Next Web. Idea: Train new COBOL programmers and pay them commensurately? Wrong, perhaps, but oddly, or not, never mentioned!
The Looting Machine Called Capitalism Paul Craig Roberts, Counterpunch
The Looting Machine Called Capitalism Paul Craig Roberts, Counterpunch
The Age of War and Revolution Ian Welsh
Poorest pay higher taxes than richest, new figures show
THE RETURN OF THE REPRESSED: Neoliberalism arrived with globalization or else globalization arrived with neoliberalism; that is how the Great Regression began
On Le Monde, Adrien Sénecat has an excellent deconstruction of how satire and hyperpartisan truth-twisting can result in real misperceptions.
Step 1: A satirical site writes that French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron, caricatured as out-of-touch, feels dirty after touching poor people's hands. Step 2: Hyperpartisan Facebook pages take this at face value, mixing in footage from a video of Macron cleaning his hands after handling an eel. Step 3: A worker in a northern factory challenges Macron to shake his dirty, working class hands.
While we shouldn't generalize from one example — nor is it certain the critical worker was referring to those posts specifically —this is interesting anecdotal evidence of how fake news can have real effects.
ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION: Spying on Students in the Classroom.
THE RETURN OF THE REPRESSED: Neoliberalism arrived with globalization or else globalization arrived with neoliberalism; that is how the Great Regression began
On Le Monde, Adrien Sénecat has an excellent deconstruction of how satire and hyperpartisan truth-twisting can result in real misperceptions.
Step 1: A satirical site writes that French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron, caricatured as out-of-touch, feels dirty after touching poor people's hands. Step 2: Hyperpartisan Facebook pages take this at face value, mixing in footage from a video of Macron cleaning his hands after handling an eel. Step 3: A worker in a northern factory challenges Macron to shake his dirty, working class hands.
While we shouldn't generalize from one example — nor is it certain the critical worker was referring to those posts specifically —this is interesting anecdotal evidence of how fake news can have real effects.