NEWS COLLECTORS AND TAX COMMISSIONERS CAN USE: Testing to Find the Best Tactical Flashlight.
SCOTT JOHNSON: “But at least the CDC is consistent, they have done an absolutely atrocious job of communication.”
HAPPY NATIONAL WHISTLEBLOWERS Week
Related: Don’t Fear the Leaker
Shorter version here
MIT Technology Review: “The world first learned of Sophie Zhang in September 2020, when BuzzFeed News obtained and published highlights from an abridged version of her nearly 8,000-word exit memo from Facebook. Before she was fired, Zhang was officially employed as a low-level data scientist at the company. But she had become consumed by a task she deemed more important: finding and taking down fake accounts and likes that were being used to sway elections globally. Her memo revealed that she’d identified dozens of countries, including India, Mexico, Afghanistan, and South Korea, where this type of abuse was enabling politicians to mislead the public and gain power. It also revealed how little the company had done to mitigate the problem, despite Zhang’s repeated efforts to bring it to the attention of leadership…”
THE PROBLEM ISN’T SALESMANSHIP, IT’S A LOSS OF TRUST, AND A REACTION TO BULLYING: Emphasize personal health benefits of COVID-19 vaccination, researchers say. Especially the bullying.
Related:
When members of multidisciplinary teams are asked to describe their colleagues, many will say their peers are collegial, professional, and accomplished. While we would all love to be on a team that’s not dysfunctional, behind this insipid description lurks a peril that is far from bland: the lack of collaboration between siloes.
7 Strategies to Break Down Silos in Big Meetings
Global phone hacks expose darker side of Israel's 'startup nation' image
About 300,000 Australians who may have made purchases of luxury cars, private jets, yachts, thoroughbred horses and artwork are being warned by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) to declare all their income or they could face a review or audit.
ATO matches insurance info on luxury goods with declared incomes to catch out tax cheats
Felipe De Brigard, associate professor of philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience at Duke University, and leader of the Imagination and Modal Cognition Lab there, has been awarded a grant of $988,602 for his project, “Forgetting and Forgiving: Exploring the Connections between Memory and Forgiveness.” (more…)
PEA Soup, a blog about “philosophy, ethics, and academia” that has been running for 17 years, is in need of new leadership.
The Guardian: “Last year the artificial intelligence group DeepMind cracked a mystery that has flummoxed scientists for decades: stripping bare the structure of proteins, the building blocks of life. Now, having amassed a database of nearly all human protein structures, the company is making the resource available online free for researchers to use. The key to understanding our basic biological machinery is its architecture. The chains of amino acids that comprise proteins twist and turn to make the most confounding of 3D shapes. It is this elaborate form that explains protein function; from enzymes that are crucial to metabolism to antibodies that fight infectious attacks. Despite years of onerous and expensive lab work that began in the 1950s, scientists have only decoded the structure of a fraction of human proteins. DeepMind’s AI program, AlphaFold, has predicted the structure of nearly all 20,000 proteins expressed by humans. In an independent benchmark test that compared predictions to known structures, the system was able to predict the shape of a protein to a good standard 95% of time…”
Moscow plans expansion of trans-Arctic shipping Splash 24/7
Swiss prosecutors end Magnitsky ‘dirty money’ probe without bringing charges FT
ANALYSIS: Substack: Last, Best Hope for Free Speech.
Patience may be a virtue, but it's a difficult one to cultivate — especially in a world that is moving ever-faster. Yet with this quote, Enlightenment-era philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau reminds us that patience also comes with great rewards. Such rewards are never instant, but can increase over time, like an investment that must be allowed to mature. Research suggests that people who cultivate patience experience better mental and even physical health, and have happier relationships with others over the course of their lives.
Pandemics, like wars, change us. We live in an age of total surveillance.
Lockdown has certainly saved lives but it has also stripped us of freedoms and history reminds us those freedoms may never fully return.
It’s a near certainty that humanity will come to an end, but what form this end might take, and when it might happen, are of course unknown. What should we think about the end of humanity and its various variables? What do we think? (more…)
When Scott Morrison became prime minister, two dimensions of his persona seemed potentially positive: a Christian faith that might have illuminated his leadership with kindness and compassion, to say nothing of integrity, and a widely-touted marketing background (‘Scotty
from Marketing’) that might have lifted the standard of political communication and inspired some brilliance in government...
JPMorgan grants Jamie Dimon ‘special’ stock award to stay at bank FT
Companies claim there’s a labor shortage. Their solution? Prisoners Guardian
Shoplifting Is Big News; Stealing Millions From Workers Is Not Fair
The Billionaires Did It. They Made Spaceflight Uncool. Defector
Bezos Blasts Off & Gets Blasted Consortium News
One of the First Things Bezos Says After Returning From Space: Humanity Should Pollute It Common Dreams
Emailed Jeff Bezos. pic.twitter.com/uu3mZXFF0O
— Trisha Greenhalgh (@trishgreenhalgh) July 20, 2021
NPR’s Brilliant Self-Own TK News. Matt Taibbi.
Argument and Argumentation, by Catarina Dutilh Novaes.
History of Western Philosophy of Music: since 1800, by Matteo Ravasio.
History of Western Philosophy of Music: Antiquity to 1800, by Matteo Ravasio.
Revised:
NDPR ∅
SA Premier Steven Marshall said authorities did not want to see people turn into "Gladys Kravitz from Bewitched", the nosy neighbour portrayed by Alice Pearce in the 1960s television sitcom.
Don't be a Gladys Kravitz' and snitch, says SA Premier, as mask-wearing goes wide
The Insecurity Industry Edward Snowden
This is no ordinary spying. Our most intimate selves are now exposed Guardian. Whoa, look at what Pegasus cost!
Pegasus, Pandemics, and the Normalization of Surveillance Plebity
A little over $3,000 — that’s how much stolen corporate network credentials tend to go for on the dark web. Although the exact asking price for an individual’s credentials may depend on several factors, like how much revenue their enterprise makes, particularly valuable organizations may even see their login details auctioned off for as much as $120,000. While a successful ransomware attack is capable of fetching cybercriminals almost 10 times as much in ransom, even expensive credentials can be money well spent
Why is it fine to consume some consciousness-altering plants, like coffee, but not others, like opium? opium v coffee
Liverpool now seeks to have UNESCO’s decision deferred or overturned at a meeting scheduled to occur in July.
China, US draw lines in sand at top-level meeting but agree to keep talking South China Morning Post
China’s hammer blow to private education shows it will do whatever it takes to meet its goals RT
International journalists face intense harassment, threats of violence while covering flooding in China Committee to Protect Journalists
COVID authoritarianism sweeps across Europe – but the economy is saved
Bleeping Computer: “DuckDuckGo is rolling out an email privacy feature that strips incoming messages of trackers that can help profile you for better profiling and ad targeting. Users of the service get a free “@duck.com” email address that cleans messages of trackers and forwards them to your normal inbox. Currently in private beta, DuckDuckGo’s Email Protection service aims at shielding you from hidden trackers that are often embedded in emails from various companies. Trackers can let email senders know when you open their messages and help ad companies create a profile for you based on collected metadata such as the device you used to read the email when you opened the message, and your general location. This sort of information can also end up in the hands of third parties. Email Protection works by using a “@duck.com” address that filters out the hidden trackers in your messages and then sends them to your normal inbox. “This means if you use an email service like Gmail or Yahoo, it’s no problem! Emails sent to your Personal Duck Address will arrive there as usual so you can read your email like normal, in any app or on the web, worry-free.” Another benefit of this is that you can protect your real address from data breach incidents. Furthermore, once the level of spam increases to unacceptable levels, there is the possibility to deactivate the email address and use another one…”
11 Essential Apps for Protecting Your Privacy Online PC Magazine: “Walking down the street, you have options for privacy. You can pull up the hood of your jacket, hide behind dark glasses, even wear a mask. Once you go online, though, you don’t have the same choices. Clawing back personal data is impossible once it’s loose on the internet, and revealing more than you should is painfully easy. You may think that there’s no problem, that you have nothing to hide. But you risk abuse of your private data by advertisers, hackers, identity thieves, and others. Just as there are various ways to ensure your privacy on the street, there are many different approaches to online privacy, from VPNs to email encryptors to monitors that warn if dark web denizens are selling…you! We’ve rounded up a collection of utilities that cover a broad spectrum of privacy protection techniques so that you can choose one or more to enhance your own privacy…”
PC World: “Web browsers used to be a place where folks could only play flash games, check emails, hang out in chat rooms, and torrent music (and malware) from LimeWire. Those days are long gone. Thanks to the sophisticated development of web technologies such as HTML5, web browsers have grown to such a level that you can do almost all of your personal- and work-related tasks using a powerful web app. This, for the most part, successfully eliminates the need to download desktop software, saving you hard drive space and the headache of dealing with complicated installation and set-up processes. The rise of web apps also gave birth to a new breed of Internet-centric devices like Chromebooks. While not a definitive list, as many tasks have a plethora of web apps that can do the job quite well, here’s what we think are some of the best, from video editors to music players to project management tools and yes, even games…”
Respected corporate leader and distinguished public servant Dana Fleming has been appointed as the new Deputy Electoral Commissioner.
Ms Fleming’s appointment follows a distinguished 25-year career including international appointments in the private sector and a senior partnership role at KPMG.
With a proven track record of executive leadership in complex environments and experience in an Australian statutory agency, Ms Fleming is well suited to her new role of Deputy Electoral Commissioner.
A former Deputy Commissioner at the Australian Tax Office, Ms Fleming brings a wealth of experience working in a statutory environment to the Electoral Commission – understanding regulation and compliance, delivering of government programs, and working closely with stakeholders.
As Deputy Electoral Commissioner, Ms Fleming will play a critical statutory function in Victoria. This includes leading the planning of all State, local government and commercial elections, and managing the Commission’s engagement with the Parliament’s oversight body, the Electoral Matters Committee.
New Deputy Electoral Commissioner Appointed
Patience may be a virtue, but it's a difficult one to cultivate — especially in a world that is moving ever-faster. Yet with this quote, Enlightenment-era philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau reminds us that patience also comes with great rewards. Such rewards are never instant, but can increase over time, like an investment that must be allowed to mature. Research suggests that people who cultivate patience experience better mental and even physical health, and have happier relationships with others over the course of their lives.
