If you become a philosopher you’ll be able to read anything you want and call it work.
— Daniel DennettTaliban kill woman for not wearing burqa on same day they vow to honor women’s rights.
Gizmodo: “Amid the catastrophe that’s been the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan this week, U.S. agencies have initiated sweeping purges of online information concerning friendly Afghan nationals. Fears have arisen that the country’s ruling Taliban could seek retaliation against individuals with even the slightest associations to the Americans and the shattered Afghan security forces. The Associated Press reported Tuesday that the U.S. departments of State and Agriculture, among others, were engaged in efforts to scrub websites and social media accounts of content that may be viewed as evidence of collaboration by the Taliban, whose unchallenged forces entered the capital city of Kabul on Sunday and swiftly assumed control. One now-deleted article, for instance, reviewed by journalists at the AP, included photos of a town hall between U.S. agricultural officials and local Afghan leaders and farmers. On a page that now reads “Access Denied,” the article once noted that the attendees had “risk[ed] their safety” simply by attending the meeting…”
Economic Policy Institute – “CEOs were paid 351 times as much as a typical worker in 2020: “What this report finds: Corporate boards running America’s largest public firms are giving top executives outsize compensation packages that have grown much faster than the stock market and the pay of typical workers, college graduates, and even the top 0.1%. In 2020, a CEO at one of the top 350 firms in the U.S. was paid $24.2 million on average (using a “realized” measure of CEO pay that counts stock awards when vested and stock options when cashed in rather than when granted). This 18.9% increase from 2019 occurred because of rapid growth in vested stock awards and exercised stock options. Using a different “granted” measure of CEO pay, average top CEO compensation was $13.9 million in 2020, slightly below its level in 2019. In 2020, the ratio of CEO-to-typical-worker compensation was 351-to-1 under the realized measure of CEO pay; that is up from 307-to-1 in 2019 and a big increase from 21-to-1 in 1965 and 61-to-1 in 1989. CEOs are even making a lot more than other very high earners (wage earners in the top 0.1%)—more than six times as much. From 1978 to 2020, CEO pay based on realized compensation grew by 1,322%, far outstripping S&P stock market growth (817%) and top 0.1% earnings growth (which was 341% between 1978 and 2019, the latest data available). In contrast, compensation of the typical worker grew by just 18.0% from 1978 to 2020…”
Meet the Censored: Paul Jay Matt Taibbi. Please circulate widely. And kudos to Matt for going after YouTube
An Old Hacker's Tips On Staying Employed
Further Blow to Press Freedoms as US Wins Appeal in Effort to Extradite Julian AssangeCommon Dreams
A World Awash In Capital Barry Ritholtz, The Big Picture
We need more independents to check “power hungry” political parties
Ian Macphee, speaking to the Voices of Goldstein in a meeting to plan the ousting of Tim Wilson MP the current Goldstein representative, expressed the need for more independents in the Australian Senate and House of Representatives to check the implementation of dodgy policies by “power-hungry” government MPs....
[Via Library Boy] “The Chandos Digital Information Review recently published a book chapter (free, open access) entitled Crowdsourcing COVID-19: A Brief Analysis of Librarian Posts on Reddit by Daniella Smith of the University of North Texas:
“Initially, COVID-19 was mistaken for a cold. As time passed, the entire world was infected. It became evident that social distancing was needed to counteract the virus’s spread when the infection rate increased. Although social distancing was a viable option for many professions, it impeded the services offered by libraries. Libraries are cultural institutions that facilitate the social and educational health of their communities. Many citizens rely on libraries to obtain resources critical to their well-being. As such, libraries continued to offer their much-needed services, and librarians worldwide sought to implement the best-known practices to survive the COVID-19 disaster. This study explores how librarians responded to COVID-19 by examining their posts to the Reddit social media network. Popular discussion topics, questions posed by librarians, and the strategies used to cope with the pandemic are presented.”
It is part of a book called Libraries, Digital Information, and COVID by Chandos Publishing.
RIOTS IN THE AGE OF MORAL NARCISSISM: ‘Let’s start a riot:’ Illinois man sentenced to nearly 9 years in prison for setting Minneapolis store on fire after posting his crimes on Facebook.
(Classical reference in headline.)
Living With Depression and Anxiety During a Global Pandemic
“With mood disorders on the rise during the COVID-19 pandemic, people who’ve never experienced mental health issues are enduring some of the emotions I feel almost every day of my life. Maybe that’s why I can finally tell my story.”
The Book Business Has Always Been Roiled By Technology
Why Xi Jinping Waited Years to Launch His Crackdown on Tycoons Bloomberg
China Tech Crackdown Dampens Luxury BoomJing Daily
A guide for budding foreign policy journalists in Australia working for Nine Network and News Corp.
The uniform reality of our US-leaning foreign policy media experts suggests a possible template for training suitably compliant foreign policy journalists....