"Seeing humans and computers as interchangeable also meant that humans had begun to conceive of themselves as computers, and so to act like them"
“For Weizenbaum, judgment involves choices that are guided by values. These values are acquired through the course of our life experience and are necessarily qualitative: they cannot be captured in code. Calculation, by contrast, is quantitative. It uses a technical calculus to arrive at a decision. Computers are only capable of calculation, not judgment. This is because they are not human, which is to say, they do not have a human history – they were not born to mothers, they did not have a childhood, they do not inhabit human bodies or possess a human psyche with a human unconscious – and so do not have the basis from which to form values…
Seeing humans and computers as interchangeable also meant that humans had begun to conceive of themselves as computers, and so to act like them. They mechanised their rational faculties by abandoning judgment for calculation, mirroring the machine in whose reflection they saw themselves.”
Weizenbaum’s nightmares: how the inventor of the first chatbot turned against AI - The Guardian
Colonial science
European colonies became the frontiers of exploration, extraction and production of tropical plants. They also became captive markets for exports, where colonial states were able to establish monopolies and manipulate import-export taxes. The botanical sciences aided the colonial enterprise and were, in turn, organized by it. The Long Shadow Of Colonial Science
An interesting and worthwhile piece. I’ve been increasingly concerned that social research remains largely colonial in its outlook: an obsession with frontiers; ongoing extractivism (usually, but not solely, in terms of data); deep-rooted and largely uninterrogated beliefs that there should be a power imbalance between subjects and investigators.
We talk a big game in terms of decolonising and ethical practices but reality still falls a long way short.
Empire of dust
In 2019, a Financial Times investigation declared the London underground “the dirtiest place in the city”, with parts of the Central Line between Bond Street and Notting Hill Gate having more than eight times the WHO limit for PM2.5s. Tube dust is particularly high in iron oxide from the metal brakes and rails, but it’s not only mechanical. “A lot of the dust in this environment is coming from the passengers themselves,” Alno Lesch, operational manager for track cleaning, told the Financial Times, pulling out a black tangle from under the train platform. Human hair. Empire of dust: what the tiniest specks reveal about the world - The Guardian
All I can say is yikes.
Understand who this person was, who they are, their challenges, their triumphs: What leads to brilliant aged care?
Even though many aged care services don’t provide the care that older people and carers need and want, some do it much better than others. Why?
That’s the question colleagues from WSU, UNSW, SESLHD, SWSLHD, RCSI and I explored in an open access article that explores these questions, led by Associate Professor Ann Dadich.
Rather than focusing on the substantial and systemic problems facing aged care, this study examined brilliant aged care — practices that exceeded expectation.
There are many insights into what can lead to brilliant aged care, which can be broadly categorised into:
- deep understanding of the older person
- more than a job
- innovative practices
- permission to reprioritise.
Some of the best insights came from the artefacts that people were asked to bring to the interview, which were items (e.g. photos, items, artworks or other objects) that reflected brilliant aged care for them. These artefacts opened up new lines of discussion and new ideas, for example:
“people in the late stages of dementia are like an oyster, one of the ugliest, kind of gnarled shells you could possibly think of. There are so many beautiful shells in the world. The oyster isn’t one of them and yet when you open it up, it has this extraordinary little pearl inside it and that’s what we need to find in every older person. Every older person, no matter … what their state of health or wellbeing, still has that pearl that is that beautiful human being inside them and it’s our job, not their job, it’s our job to open that up and find that pearl.” (Grace)
There’s a lot more in the open access article – take a look.
Dadich, A., Kearns, R., Harris-Roxas, B., Ni Chroinin, D., Boydell, K., Ní Shé, É., Lim, D., Gonski, P., & Kohler, F. (2023). What constitutes brilliant aged care? A qualitative study of practices that exceed expectation. Journal of Clinical Nursing, online first. https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.16789
“subsea cables are the workhorses of global commerce and communications, carrying more than 99% of traffic between continents” The Secret Life of the 500+ Cables That Run the Internet - CNET
How Monotype became a font behemoth
On the enshittefication of fonts.
That optimism, however, will likely be tested as Monotype begins dabbling with AI. The company already owns WhatTheFont, an app that uses deep learning to identify fonts from photographs, and it’s added an AI-powered font-pairing feature.
Monotype says it plans to use machine learning and AI to improve how users discover new fonts on its platform — an innovation that will undoubtedly affect foundries, though it remains to be seen exactly how.
Where do fonts come from? This one business, mostly - The Hustle
Fortress Europe's culpability for the Melilla massacre
Official figures from that day indicate that of the roughly 1,700 migrants who attempted to cross the border, 133 were able to claim asylum; 470 individuals, like Basir, entered Spanish territory, but were forcibly returned to Morocco. At least 37 people died, and 77 people remain unaccounted for. The event quickly came to be known as “the Melilla massacre”.
The Melilla massacre: how a Spanish enclave in Africa became a deadly flashpoint - The Guardian
The Marxist in the Machine
“With remarkable humility and a relatable sadness Wang confronted the fact that it is much harder than he had thought to get a handle on reality and to improve it, especially in the face of political ambition. He wrote in 1979 that “the ideal of a ‘strong country with rich people’ needs to be combined with socialist ideals so as to avoid the pitfall of saving the country without saving the people and to achieve a society that is both prosperous and equal.” Wang’s faith in Marx and Mao was political, personal, and intellectual, and all three strands are woven through his philosophical work and his automated logic in ways that are deeply tied to his lived experience of being a Chinese logician in America navigating the cleavages of the Cold War. In this way, Wang proves his own point: reasoning, even in its most formal mode of logical inference and formalism, is not universal but is, rather, the product of the history of one’s mind and body.”
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/725135 journals.uchicago.edu
Plenty of horrifying detail on here
Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule newyorker.com
A detailed account of what it’s like to be a GP in the English NHS. A lot of this would be the same in Australia, with a range of additional, distinct pressures that are unique to our system as well.
Diary of a GP: 12-hour plus shifts, 'nonsense' admin, vandalism and tears at the end of the day inews.co.uk
A worthwhile post by Patricia Rogers, a major figure in évaluation in Australia Risky behaviour — three predictable problems with the Australian Centre for Evaluation
Tell me your favourite blogs and why, briefly. My collection of RSS feeds needs pruning and replanting to encourage new (mental) growth
🌱 🧠
"It’s a name that speaks to contemporary forms of neocolonialism and climate profiteering, like the real estate agents who have been cold-calling Lahaina residents who have lost everything to the fire and prodding them to sell their ancestral lands rather than wait for compensation."
Why was there no water to fight the fire in Maui? | Naomi Klein and Kapuaʻala Sproat theguardian.com
Links on the links between the gambling industry and USyd research
USyd’s ties to the Australian gambling industry honisoit.com
University of Sydney establishes Centre of Excellence in Gambling Research sydney.edu.au
austgamingcouncil.org.au/sites/default/files/2023-08/226A1503.PDF.pdf austgamingcouncil.org.au
AMA tells University of Sydney to ‘read the room’ over research funded by gambling industry theguardian.com
A rogues gallery of investors, ranging from Binance to Andreessen Horowitz to Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud to… Jack Dorsey (why?)
Here’s who helped Elon Musk buy Twitter - The Washington Post