A short but brilliant video from NPR explaining the segregation of lives and neighbourhoods in the US:
In 1968, Congress passed the Fair Housing Act that made it illegal to discriminate in housing. Gene Demby of NPR’s Code Switch explains why neighborhoods are still so segregated today.
In an article at MIT Technology Review, Ethan Zuckerman makes an interesting point on how years of police body cams and bystander cellphone video has not stopped police violence. He recalls how these kinds of surveillance are linked to the ideas of the panopticon. But that one aspect of Jeremy Bentham’s hope for a completely transparent system has not been achieved.
Een artikel van Lode Vanoost “Over korte gazons, droog weer en gezond verstand in coronatijden”. Groot gelijk dat door de populaire “gazons” het probleem van droogte gewoon veregeren:
Onze gazons zijn in werkelijkheid een permanente aanslag op de natuur. Een kort gazon is een tegennatuurlijk fenomeen. Elke permanente monocultuur van één gewas op dezelfde plaats, zoals ons gazon, leidt tot bodemverarming. Elke plant haalt uit de bodem immers alleen die elementen die hij nodig heeft. De natuur houdt met zijn mengeling van soorten alles in evenwicht. Verarmde bodems zijn op hun beurt veel gevoeliger voor droogte.
Ian Bogost and Alexis C. Madrigal wrote a fantastic piece at The Atlantic, “How Facebook Works for Trump”. In this article they explain how the systems developed by Facebook to optimise advertising campaigns based on machine learning and with little human interaction are effectively exploited by the Trump campaign. They are very right in their conclusion that in this way Facebook systems are taking over some of the work of the campaign.
In an article at The New York Times, Victoria Turk writes about “How the Coronavirus Is Changing Digital Etiquette”:
The pandemic has caused the way we communicate to evolve, and our relationship with technology is being pushed into new territory. Although states are slowly reopening, much of our professional and personal lives will continue to be lived almost entirely online for the foreseeable future. Digital etiquette rules remain more important now than ever.
Noam Chomsky explaining how the work ordinary people do every day that form the base on any change in the world. Via Open culture
Now playing via Klara radio, “Aldo Romano, Louis Sclavis, Henri Texier - Viso di donna” 🎧
A short video about the the Hong Kong’s (ding-ding) trams and an inside look into the workshops where the trams are made and maintained. I loved riding these trams when I was visiting a friend in HK.
The following video essay on the “The Late Capitalism of K-Pop” by a Youtube channel called “Cuck Philosophy” gives some interesting historical insights on the development of K-Pop. And links this development with related critiques on consumerism such as the work of Baudrillard.
Auguste Comte discusses the prerequisite of theory for observations1:
The most important of these reasons arises from the necessity that always exists for some theory to which to refer our facts, combined with the clear impossibility that, at the outset of human knowledge, men could have formed theories out of the observation of facts. All good intellects have repeated, since Bacon’s time, that there can be no real knowledge but that which is based on observed facts. This is incontestable, in our present advanced stage; but, if we look back to the primitive stage of human knowledge, we shall see that it must have been otherwise then. If it is true that every theory must be based upon observed facts, it is equally true that facts cannot be observed without the guidance of some theory. Without such guidance, our facts would be desultory and fruitless; we could not retain them: for the most part we could not even perceive them.