Friday, January 06, 2023

Lessons From the Start of the Cold War

The best way to understand most behavior of most agencies and companies is to think of them as single-celled organisms with a single sensory input: pain. They swim away from pain. The end


How to Grow Old by Bertrand Russell. Of his elderly grandmother, he said, "I do not believe that she ever had time to notice that she was growing old. This, I think, is the proper recipe for remaining young."


The Ghosts of George Kennan: Lessons From the Start of the Cold War Foreign Affairs


Police in China Can Track Protests By Enabling ‘Alarms’ on Hikvision Software Guardian. Have the Chinese not heard of Faraday bags?


Biometric privacy 2022 year-in-review Biometric Update


New York approves composting of human bodiesBBC 


Porn, Piracy, Fraud: What Lurks Inside Google’s Black Box Ad Empire ProPublica 


EXCLUSIVE: TikTok Spied On Forbes JournalistsForbes 


Lula launches stinging attack on Bolsonaro in inaugural address FT. Lulu: “The responsibilities for this [Covid] genocide must be investigated and must not go unpunished. It is up to us now to show solidarity with the relatives of almost 700,000 victims.” Finally, somebody said it.



In just 7 minutes, Vox takes a visual look back at the biggest events of 2022, including Ukraine, inflation, Musk/Twitter, tech layoffs, Serena retires, TikTok, the World Cup, the pandemic continues, the climate crisis intensifies, mass shootings, no more Roe, Iranian protests, the death of Queen Elizabeth, and more.

See also 2022 in Review (AP), 2022 Year in Review (Reuters), 50 Wonderful Things from 2022 (NPR), 2022 Year in Review(United Nations), 2022 in Review (New Yorker), and the Year in Search 2022(Google).


The 100 Best Documentaries of 2022. #1 is Fire of Love, which "chronicles the romantic and tragic story of volcanologists Maurice and Katia Krafft, who died together doing what they loved".

From NPR's pop culture correspondant Linda Holmes, 50 wonderful things from 2022.


Austin Kleon's year in reading for 2022. I also loved Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. "I'm reminded that all bestsellers have this in common: they are page-turners, they make you want to turn the page."

Pelรฉ, one of the greatest football players in history, is dead at the age of 82.

How Fast Food Began: The History of This Thoroughly American (and Now Global) Form of Dining.

Since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v Wade and Republican states started banning abortion, "hospitals and doctors across the country are reporting a marked increase in both calls and appointments" for vasectomies.


Why 2023 May Be the Year That Fate Finally Catches Up With Donald Trump New Republic 



The Hidden Cost of Cheap TVs

The Atlantic: “…But the story of cheap TVs is not entirely just market forces doing their thing. Perhaps the biggest reason TVs have gotten so much cheaper than other products is that your TV is watching you and profiting off the data it collects. Modern TVs, with very few exceptions, are “smart,” which means they come with software for streaming online content from Netflix, YouTube, and other services. Perhaps the most common media platform, Roku, now comes built into TVs made by companies including TCL, HiSense, Philips, and RCA. 

But there are many more operating systems: Google has Google TV, which is used by Sony, among other manufacturers, and LG and Samsung offer their own. Smart TVs are just like search engines, social networks, and email providers that give us a free service in exchange for monitoring us and then selling that info to advertisers leveraging our data. 

These devices “are collecting information about what you’re watching, how long you’re watching it, and where you watch it,” Willcox said, “then selling that data—which is a revenue stream that didn’t exist a couple of years ago.” There’s nothing particularly secretive about this—data-tracking companies such as Inscape and Sambaproudly brag right on their websites about the TV manufacturers they partner with and the data they amass…”