Fifty shades of Brown: Workplace bullying occurs when an employee is subjected to repeated behaviours that harass, exclude, or negatively affect someone’s work. This may range from obvious acts of physical violence to more ambiguous behaviour, such as mocking, insulting or socially excluding someone.
Bullying: why most people do nothing when they witness it – and how to take action
Why Algorithms Are Called Algorithms - Because of their relevance to social media dragons, the algorithm has become an everyday concept. Why do we see the posts we see on Instagram or TikTok? Oh, it’s the algorithm. This video from BBC Ideas explains that the term has its roots in the work of 9th century Persian mathematician Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, who also gave the world the word “algebra”. (via the morning news)
Everything Worth Streaming In April
Alexander Skarsgård Wants to Teach You All About The Vikings With The Northman
How to Grow a Perfect Copper Acetate Crystal with Scrap Copper & Vinegar.
Washington Post: “Here’s how you can opt out of carriers ad programs, which run on your personal data. When you signed up for your cellphone plan, your carrier may have signed you up for something extra: a program that uses data including your Internet history to target you with ads. I visited my own Verizon account settings and found that yep, I was enrolled in what the company calls “Custom Experience.” Not only do I have no memory of saying yes, I had no idea wireless carriers were in the business of peeking in on my activities and using that information to market to me. And my blissful ignorance works in the company’s favor…I read privacy policies from the three major wireless carriers — Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile — and my eyeballs are only bleeding a little. All three carriers have some less-than-great privacy practices hiding in plain sight. Depending on the carrier, they can draw on your Internet history, app use, location and call history to learn things about you and nudge you to spend more money on products from themselves or third-party companies…”
Cell carriers can use your web history for ads - Washington Post’
Discontent Grows in Berlin over Chancellor’s Ukraine Response Der Spiegel
Why isn’t Germany supplying Ukraine with heavy weapons? Deutsche Welle
***
Russia-Ukraine live news: Russia confirms Moskva ship casualties Al Jazeera
No Response From Ukraine On Diplomatic Proposals Presented By Russia: FM Sergey Lavrov Republic TV
Exclusive: Goldman, JPMorgan among banks left holding Russian stocks by sanctions switchReuters
The fall of Yandex, the shining star of Russian tech France 24
***
Synthetic Left Joins Corporate Right in Getting Ukraine War Wrong Covert Action Magazine
- “It’s hard not to feel that the machine is thinking in some meaningful way” — NYT article on what large language models are doing, and what they’re doing when they’re doing it
- “The story of Mary Hesse shows how quickly even well-known women from our recent past can vanish from the collective memory of their peers” — Ann-Sophie Barwich (Indiana) on the mechanisms of “collective forgetting” that have erased women from the history of philosophy of science
- The “cultural wilderness” of bad movies — 7 philosophers comment on a book by Matt Strohl (Montana) on movies that “fall outside the scope of culturally constructed notions of artistic seriousness”
- “How is it not a ‘fallacy’ to feel guilty about something for which you are not blameworthy?” — John Martin Fischer (UCR) takes up this question and related ones about individual moral responsibility in regard to Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in an interview
- Do non-human animals have moral experiences? — James Hutton (Edinburgh) on the philosophy and science relevant to that question
- AI-created portraits of philosophers in the style of Maurice Sendak — some fun with a new AI art generator
- “Relying upon adjunct labor is wrong, because it is cruel” — Alexandra Bradner explains the “useless, unnecessary, and preoccupying disorder it brings to a person’s mind, family, and community”
