Linkage

First to the lectern was Mike Burgess, director general of the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation, who opened by saying “The internet is a transformative information source… and the world’s most potent incubator of extremism.”

As he outlined an argument that a dynamic tension exists between security and technology, Burgess added “encryption protects our privacy and enables our economy…and creates safe spaces for violent extremists to operate, network and recruit.”

[…]

“But even when the warrant allows us to lawfully intercept an encrypted communication, we cannot actually read it without the assistance of the company that owns and operates the app,” he said. “The company has to be willing and able to give effect to our warrant.”

[…]

ASIO boss Burgess also discussed AI, a technology he said is “ equal parts hype, opportunity, and threat”

[…]

“Finding a critical piece of intelligence is less like looking for a needle in a haystack than looking for a needle in a field of haystacks,” he said. “AI makes that process easier and faster; it can identify worrying patterns and relationships in minutes and hours rather than weeks and months.”

But only if the data it’s working on isn’t encrypted.

There's the sleight of hand; start out talking about executing warrants, and while people are nodding, slip ever-so-gradually into advocating for carte blanche to conduct limitless, methodologically dubious, extrajudicial fishing expeditions.

This is so great.

Welcome to City Smart Toys, where we're on a mission to reframe playtime with urban toys, books and vehicles! It all started with a simple realization – after our 3 year old received his 3rd(!) plastic parking garage set, we knew there had to be more to playtime than endless loops of car-centric toys. As parents, we were determined to provide a different kind of play experience, one that celebrates the richness and diversity of urban life.

At City Smart Toys, we believe that playtime should reflect the vibrancy of urban places around us. That's why we've curated a thoughtful collection of toys and books that embrace the urban experience in all its glory. From bustling cityscapes to boundless imaginations, our selection is designed to inspire creativity, exploration, and a sense of wonder.

This mission is not anti-car. Many families depend on cars to get around because their neighbourhoods and towns are designed a certain way. For certain trips, cars are indeed the best option. But there is a clear imbalance that is apparent when you step into any toy-store. Our goal is to fix this. Yes, car toys are great fun but there need to be options for more urban-positive alternatives.

Join us in embracing the urban-positive movement and discover a world of play that goes beyond the car, the parking lot and the traffic jam. Whether it's through imaginative city adventures or captivating stories, let's redefine playtime together – one toy at a time.

Oh, my! It is worth the price of admission for this passage alone.

A Hypothetical Example

Once upon a time, a writer proposed that humanity should be divided into large-eared and small-eared people. The writer suggested that small-eared people do not listen, have lower musical ability, are deficient in the ability to empathize with others, and much more. Because they lack interpersonal skills, small-eared people are also responsible for cruelty and some of the greatest evils in world history. The government of the time endorsed the writer’s ideas and enacted laws that divided children, based on the new concept of earedness, into separate kindergartens and schools. As a consequence, the whole of society was divided into large- and small-eared classes, with separate education, health, and legal systems, and with separate housing and recreational spheres for each group.

Later, and at the time when psychology became an independent discipline, researchers began to test hypotheses regarding earedness with empirical means. They found that several of the assumptions regarding earedness, although not all, had empirical support. More recently, evolutionary psychologists discussed the adaptive advantage of ear size; clinical psychologists used the concept as a broad diagnostic tool; psychologists of religion found that religious founders had disproportionately larger ears than their contemporaries; historians of psychology estimated the large-earedness of psychological pioneers using paintings, photographs, and ear descriptions; and debates as to whether Kant had larger ears than Descartes, or whether Kant’s large-earedness had been overestimated, took place among personality psychologists.

Yet, some criticism of the concept also emerged: Methodologists argued that earedness must be adjusted for by height and gender and that the variable is continuous rather than discontinuous. Other critics argued that earedness is a social construct. However, defenders of the concept pointed out that empirical studies confirm the significance of earedness, that the variable is an excellent predictor of professional success, and that earedness demonstrates high correlations with many other psychological variables. They also pointed out that the average person knows that earedness has always existed and that to deny it would contradict common sense.

This is straight out of the Project 2025 template.

A completed draft Texas Republican Party platform refers to homosexuality as “an abnormal lifestyle choice,” gender-affirming care as “child abuse,” and Drag Queen Story Hour as “predatory sexual behavior.” The platform has been voted on by state party delegates and will be formally adopted on Wednesday after a final vote count.

The list of state party priorities calls for an end to legal same-sex marriages, same-sex parenting, all LGBTQ+ anti-discrimination laws, all transgender rights — including gender-affirming care for children and adults — a ban on LGBTQ+ content in schools and libraries, the defunding of all diversity-equity-inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and legal protections for anyone who discriminates against queer people based on “religious or moral beliefs.”

Furthermore, the Texas GOP platform calls for a complete end to all of the following: pornography, federal welfare programs, minimum wage laws, mandatory sick or family leave policies, net neutrality, removal of Confederate monuments, pro-immigrant sanctuary cities, public education of undocumented children, no-fault divorce, non-abstinence sex education, abortion, birthright citizenship, professorial tenure in colleges and universities, cannabis legalization, anti-climate change legislation, contact tracing for the tracking of communicable diseases, federal regulations ensuring safe farm food production, and U.S. participation in the United Nations and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Days after dozens of Palestinians were killed by Israeli air strikes against displacement camps in Southern Gaza, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley wrote “Finish them!” on Israeli artillery shells. 

[…] 

Alongside her chilling note, Haley wrote “America loves Israel!” and autographed the bomb.

This year alone, nearly 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced in state legislatures nationwide. Last year, more than 75 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were signed into law, prompting the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, to declare a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people in the United States.

Previous Data for Progress polling of the LGBTQ+ community has found that many LGBTQ+ Americans feel unsafe in their communities and that a majority of transgender adults report a low sense of belonging in U.S. society, while less than half feel comfortable expressing themselves in their local community.

In this new report, Data for Progress surveyed 873 LGBTQ+ adults, including an oversample of transgender adults, nationally using web panel respondents. The findings emphasize the negative impacts of recent anti-LGBTQ+ policies and rhetoric on LGBTQ+ people’s lives, including a worse quality of life and mental health, experiences of discrimination and harassment, and difficulties accessing health care. Additionally, the findings point to the importance of having access to LGBTQ+ representation in media and LGBTQ+-affirming online spaces and resources, particularly for young people.

This is the paper I will give at this year's System Dynamics conference in Bergen, Norway, on August 4-8 2024. It should be of use to anyone trying to argue sense with politicians.

Abstract

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is a non-mainstream economic theory that contradicts conventional economic analysis of government debt and deficits. We use the system dynamics program Minsky to develop a mathematical model of MMT. This model shows that the core tenets of MMT are correct, and Neoclassical arguments about government debt and deficits are wrong.

The impression of unparalleled depravity from Hamas was reinforced by the willingness of the western media to allow Israeli spokespeople, Israel’s supporters and western politicians to continue spreading unchallenged the claim that Hamas had committed unspeakable, sadistic atrocities - from beheading and burning babies to carrying out a campaign of rapes.

The only journalist in the British mainstream media to dissent was Owen Jones. Agreeing that Israel’s video showed terrible crimes committed against civilians, he noted that none of the barbarous acts listed above were included.

What was shown instead were the kind of terrible crimes against civilians all too familiar in wars and uprisings. 

Jones faced a barrage of attacks from colleagues accusing him of being an atrocity apologist. His own newspaper, the Guardian, appears to have prevented him from writing about Gaza in its pages as a consequence.

Now, after nearly six months, the exclusive narrative stranglehold on those events by Israel and its media acolytes has finally been broken.

Last week, Al Jazeera aired an hour-long documentary, called simply “October 7”, that lets western publics see for themselves what took place. It seems that Jones’ account was closest to the truth.

Yet, Al Jazeera’s film goes further still, divulging for the first time to a wider audience facts that have been all over the Israeli media for months but have been carefully excluded from western coverage. The reason is clear: those facts would implicate Israel in some of the atrocities it has been ascribing to Hamas for months. 

Now, as concerns about the UK's housing-affordability crisis continue to grow, author and journalist Anna Minton believes changing public sentiment about social housing may be turning the tide against further estate regeneration.

"The stock has been decimated and people would love to live in it," said Minton, a vocal critic of estate regeneration. "I think it's lost its bad reputation – people think, 'if only houses were available on council estates in the way they used to be'."

"There is a renewed interest because affordable housing and the housing crisis is right at the top of the political agenda in a way that it wasn't before," she told Dezeen. "This big push on estate regeneration – I think it has kind of peaked."

 If we still think of the totalitarian governments that ruled Europe before the Second World War we can easily say that it would be difficult for them to reappear in the same form in different historical circumstances. If Mussolini’s fascism was based upon the idea of a charismatic ruler, on corporatism, on the utopia of the Imperial Fate of Rome, on an imperialistic will to conquer new territories, on an exacerbated nationalism, on the ideal of an entire nation regimented in black shirts, on the rejection of parliamentary democracy, on anti-Semitism, then I have no difficulty in acknowledging that today the Italian Alleanza Nazionale, born from the postwar Fascist Party, MSI, and certainly a right-wing party, has by now very little to do with the old fascism. In the same vein, even though I am much concerned about the various Nazi-like movements that have arisen here and there in Europe, including Russia, I do not think that Nazism, in its original form, is about to reappear as a nationwide movement.

Nevertheless, even though political regimes can be overthrown, and ideologies can be criticized and disowned, behind a regime and its ideology there is always a way of thinking and feeling, a group of cultural habits, of obscure instincts and unfathomable drives. Is there still another ghost stalking Europe (not to speak of other parts of the world)?