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Tuesday, December 04, 2018

Learning Our Relationships With Robots

The true test of a man's character is what he does when no one is watching.” 
- John Wooden 

“Abusers – they’ll manipulate and they’ll lie to you.
And when you no longer give them that power, they’ll try to manipulate your family or the people close to you instead. Abusers want everyone to hate you just as much as they do. It’s sick.
Their lack of morals and integrity is sick. The amount of hate they harbor in their hearts is sick, as are their psychopathic or sociopathic traits.”
LaTasha “Tacha B.” Braxton   



Female journalist kicked out of Question Time for showing 'too much skin' ...


Australian politics live: Monday December 3

The rules of parliament were slammed after ABC journalist Patricia Karvelas was kicked out of .... question but “if there was something unparliamentary I'd ask for it to be withdrawn”.
Scott Morrison faces MPs after intervention in Craig Kelly saga ... The Guardian

NEWS.com.au





Something crazy happened in parliament last night, and no one is talking about it New Statesman. Windsock: “Meanwhile, in Brexitannia, the Bonkers is now at pandemic proportions.”



Scientific American, The Science of Inequality:



How high economic inequality negatively impacts nearly every aspect of human well-being—as well as the health of the biosphere.




Like sabermetricians, Industrial and Organizational (I/O) Psychologists study human behavior in organizations. They use the five factor model of personality characteristics aka “the big five” to assess an individual’s personality traits. Studies show that strengths of certain personality traits can predict professional success. Generally, candidates are likely to be top performers across industries and jobs when scoring high on these traits:


  • Conscientiousness—a person’s ability to be organized, disciplined, achievement-oriented, and dependable.
  • Emotional resilience—a person’s ability to remain calm under pressure and adapt to stressful situations and people. ...


I've looked at tax from both sides now | Andrew Mills Australian Taxation Office - ATO




The Hadrian X machine recently successfully completed a series of tests, proving it was capable of complying with various building requirements. Once these tests were completed, the robot was free to build its first full-home structure, which it completed within the allocated three-day time period.











Learning Our Relationships With Robots

The word “robot,” like the words “shalom” and “free-range chicken,” does not have a universally agreed-upon definition, but the usual criteria include autonomy, an ability to change its surroundings, intelligence, and the possession of a body. Then it gets trickier: How intelligent? Must a robot be mobile? Is a dishwasher a robot? According to the podcast “Robot or Not?” a self-driving car is not (you designate its destination), but a Roomba is (because it’s more in control of its path than you are)


How a future Trump Cabinet member gave a serial sex abuser the deal of a lifetime Miami Herald. It’s good that the Epstein sack of pus has been lanced, again, but see Gawker back in 2015, before Hulk Hogan and Peter Theilmortally wounded it: Flight Logs Put Clinton, Dershowitz on Pedophile Billionaire’s Sex Jet, and Billionaire Pervert Jeffrey Epstein and His Famous Friends: A Primer. It makes sense, when you think about it, that private planes would be a lawless hellscape where elites, very much elites plural, indulge their worst (and thoroughly bipartisan) impulses with even more impunity than they already have. Private planes are like private equity in that way.





Pining For An Age Of Reason (And When Was That, Exactly?)

If we are to heal the divides of the contemporary historical moment, we should give away the fiction that reason alone has ever held the day. The present warrants criticism, but it will do no good if it’s based on a myth about some glorious, dispassionate past that never was.
Read the story: Aeon

What do we mean when we talk about “quality of life”? Aging is not a problem to be solved. It is a meaning to be lived out Dead on Holidays 





ALL SIGNAL, NO NOISE: Galley, a forum built explicitly to talk about journalism, is now part of Columbia Journalism Review. “Precisely when there is so much in journalism to discuss,” CJR’s Kyle Pope writes, “the places we can have those conversations seem inadequate.” Instead of using comments sections (“toxic"), Facebook (“politically fraught”), email (“impersonal”) and Twitter (“chaotic”), CJR sees Galley as a place where people interested in journalism can find interviews, AMAs, articles, posts, and conversation threads. Log in with Twitter (which Galley looks a lot like) and get started with the user’s guide


THE READ, PART I: If you've had a busy week but crave some great journalism for weekend reading, two major investigations dropped recently. The first is a strikingly detailed story in the New York Times that makes new revelations about Les Moonves. CBS has yet to comment on how these fresh allegations of sexual assault contained in the story will affect his $120 million exit package.


THE READ, PART II: The Miami Herald spent a year investigating how current labor secretary Alexander Acosta, while working as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, gave accused pedophile Jeffrey Epstein the "deal of a lifetime." Poynter spoke to reporter Julie K. Brown about her groundbreaking investigation.

Kurt Schlichter: Liberals And Their Lackies Hate You And Want You Silenced.



To tackle tax abuse and crime, we must take on the enablers


 There is increasing public awareness worldwide of the level of malpractice by (and lack of accountability of) banks, law firms, the offshore magic circle, real estate agents, trust companies, large corporations and so on. Yet the 'enabler industry' is mounting a fightback against the modest … [Read more...]



German prosecutors raid Deutsche Bank offices amid investigations into tax havens
Deutsche Bank heads into uncharted territory this week after prosecutors raided the bank's Frankfurt HQ and central German offices for its alleged complicity in the creation of offshore companies in tax havens. The Panama Papers revealed the financial secrets of the world's financial and criminal elite, detailing years of tax avoidance and money laundering in the hundreds of millions — including millions of pounds from the House of Windsors’ private estate. The analysis "gave rise to suspicion that Deutsche Bank was helping clients set up so-called offshore companies in tax havens and the proceeds of crimes were transferred there from Deutsche Bank accounts," without the bank reporting it.


Since it was uploaded to YouTube just ten weeks ago, Michael Oswald’s seminal documentary film on Britain and its tax haven empire has gained over 1,000,000 views. “The Spider’s Web: Britain’s Second Empire” documents how British elites created a network of tax havens after World War II and the lengths they take today to preserve it – exemplified in a chilling scene where a Jersey police officer harasses and interrupts the filmmakers’ interview with a tax haven whistleblower. Based on Nick Shaxson’s (pictured below) best-selling book Treasure Islands: The Men Who Stole the World, the film delivers a sobering account of Britain’s role in corrupting the global economy.