Tuesday, March 9, 2021
The Singleton Hypothesis
Does history have a goal? Is it possible that all the human societies that existed are ultimately a prelude to establishing a system where one entity will govern everything the world over? The Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom proposes the "singleton hypothesis," maintaining that intelligent life on Earth will at some point organize itself into a so-called "singleton" – one organization that will take the form of either a world government, a super-intelligent machine (an AI) or, regrettably, a dictatorship that would control all affairs.
Other forms of a singleton may exist, and, ultimately, Bostrom believes one of them will come into existence. The philosopher argues that historically there's been a trend for our societies to converge in "higher levels of social organization". We went from bands of hunter gatherers to chiefdoms, city-states, nation states and now multi-national corporations, the United Nations and so forth, all the way to globalization – one of President Donald Trump's favorite targets for attack. One view of that trend sees increased power going to multi-national businesses and world government bodies, making globalization somewhat of a punching bag concept, often seen not as a needed re-organization of societies around the world, leading to increased cooperation and a peaceful international order, but rather for its potential to bring about the loss of jobs and undermine the sovereignties of individual countries, making citizens beholden to faceless totalitarian bureaucrats from foreign lands.
While some aspects of such technologies could certainly be unwanted and infringe upon individual freedoms, Bostrom thinks that there are situations in which there could be broad support for either a technological solution or a single government agency to take control of the society. As the world grows more complex, it's harder to achieve efficient coordination between countries and individuals within them. Tech solutions in conjunction with converging moral values and a democratic worldwide government could facilitate that. (...)
Before you get set for your life to be dominated by a single agency, Bostrom's classic paper on the subject lays out some specific pros and cons of a singleton. (...)
by Paul Ratner, Big Think | Read more:
Image: uncredited
[ed. Read Nick Bostrom's paper "What is a Singleton?" here.]
Monday, March 8, 2021
Macmuffin: A Tragedy
McDonald’s will test a meat-free burger in several markets . . . which it has dubbed “McPlant.”SCENE 1. The S’moors.
—CNBC.
SHAKES: Bubble, bubble, rat hair and stubble
Cellulose churn, diglycerides bubble.
(Enter Macmuffin.)
Who is morning taste treat now, Mayor of Arches soon.
MAC: Thy speakest vanilla falsehood, though ’tis true:
I am now morning taste treat; but Mayor of Arches?
I knowest not of what you speak.
In menu marquee
Macmuffin shall appear above all:
Above McNuggets, ’bove McCheese.
MAC: Above McCheese? But this cannot be! The Mayor lives.
Are you sure ’tis I who shall reign?
3 SHAKE: Fear not, Macmuffin. No burger born of beef
Shall e’er have power upon thee.
(Exeunt.)MAC: This strange news hath poached double my yolk.
Could it be true the news from paper cups parted?
Just as milkshakes boast o’ no dairy
And factory farm is a phrase contrary
A muffin testing destiny must be wary.
SCENE 2: Macmuffin’s Castle.
(Enter Lady Filet-O-Fish and Mac.)
MAC: Lady Filet!
How fares my tender fish sandwich?
LADY: Golden brown, my lord, with the news of late:
The forecast of those triple thick hath reached my ears. And hast thou heard? With Mayor McCheese have we for lunch together been order’d.
MAC: ’Tis true then the prophecy!
But dar’st I yank
The sweating patty from its limp bun?
LADY: Hear me now: for with my plan
Greasy arches we shall quickly span.
When McCheese comes, greet him with the smile of Ronald,
But with the heart of Hamburglar.
Mayor Macmuffin you shall be
And no burger born of beef
Shall have the power to stop thee.
This sauce offer, laced it is with drug.
Strike first and never worry
Your heart as cold as a McFlurry.
(Exit. Enter McCheese, Lords, Fries.)MAYOR: Hail noble Macmuffin of Egg
Fulfiller of that most important meal.
MAC: Hail Mayor McCheese!
Yet I see thy patty hath grown dry.
A special sauce will surely greasen thy extremities, making thee juicy anew.
MAYOR: Spread on, then, McMuffin!
My beefy Cheddar awaits.
MAC (aside): Special it is, in both intent and effect.
MAYOR: Yet I feel a sudden fatigue. Go forth, and I will join thee of late.
To my chamber I’ll retire for twenty winks to take. (Exeunt.)
MAC: More than twenty winks into this night he’ll fit—
A sleep of no waking: I’m lovin’ it.
by Jay Martel, New Yorker | Read more:
Image: Luci Gutiérrez
Art is a Game
Here’s my suggestion: The struggle is actually the point. We don’t study art and have long conversations about it just in order to understand the art. It’s actually the other way around. We take on the task of trying to understand art so that we may have those delightful conversations and be propelled into those wonderful studies. We have shaped our practice of art appreciation for the joys of the process. We engage with art for the satisfactions of the struggle—for the pleasures of careful attention, interpretation, and evaluation. In this way, art appreciation is like a game. In a game, the goals and restrictions shape the gaming activity, fine-tuning it into just the kind of struggle we wish to be absorbed in.
And thinking of art appreciation as a kind of game will help us to understand some of the oddly Byzantine ‘rules’ of art appreciation. It will help us resolve a long-running debate about the value of independent judgement in art appreciation. Consider: There are two norms of art appreciation that seem deeply in tension. On the one hand, we seem to care about making correct judgements. We want our beliefs and judgements to match the fine details of the artworks. On the other hand, we seem to also value a radical independence of mind. We are supposed to judge the Van Gogh for ourselves, to experience its strange twisting bubbling life for ourselves. We are supposed to decide for ourselves whether Kanye’s new album is a tragic overreach, a misunderstood masterpiece, or a lazy sell-out. We seem to think that an we should not declare that an artwork is beautiful or failed, based simply on the testimony of another. We are supposed to judge art for ourselves.
But these two demands seem deeply at odds. Elsewhere in intellectual life, our interest in correctness usually trumps the demand for independence. When we want to get it right, we usually defer to experts. I defer to my doctor about what medicines to take; I defer to my mechanic about which repairs my car needs. Even the scientific experts need to depend on thousands of other experts. So: if we really care about getting things right with art, shouldn’t we also defer to experts there, too? After all, Beethoven may give me all kinds of rich, shimmering feelings and responses, but I know so little of the music theory that is apparently required to understand much of what Beethoven is doing. If I wanted to have the right judgements about Beethoven, shouldn’t I just defer to some classical music expert? But such deference seems to miss something crucial about the whole activity of art appreciation. Here’s one traditional explanation: such deferences misses the essential subjectivity of aesthetic judgement. It would be absurd defer to others in our aesthetic judgements, if those judgements were just expressions of our own subjective responses.
I wish, here, to offer a very different explanation. It could very well be that some aesthetic judgements are objective. But the reason we pursue those right answers are different with art appreciation than with many other objective domains. In science, we care about actually getting the right answers. But with art appreciation, we care most about engaging in the activity of trying to get it right—about going through the whole process of looking and searching and imagining and interpreting. This is why we don’t defer to experts. Correct judgements are the goal, but not the purpose, of art appreciation. The value of art appreciation lies in the activity of trying to get correct judgements, rather than actually having made correct judgements.
The games analogy is quite useful here. With a puzzle game, we don’t just look up the answers online. We avoid deferring to the experts who have already solved the puzzles. But the reason we don’t defer to experts here is not because the solutions are subjective. For many puzzles, there is, indeed, a single objectively correct solution. And if the whole point of the exercise was simply to have the correct solution, then we should proceed to that solution by the most efficient means possible, which often will be looking it up online. But often we don’t just look it up online, because the whole point of the activity is to try and figure it out for ourselves.
To understand this point better, we need to distinguish between goals and purposes. The local goal of an activity is what you aim at and pursue during the activity. The purpose of an activity is your reason for taking it up in the first place; it is the real value you find in the activity. For some players, goal and purpose can be identical, or close to it: like the Olympic athlete trying to win because they really just want to win; or the professional poker player trying to win because they want the money that follows from winning. But for many other players, goal and purpose sharply diverge. A lot of the time, my purpose in going rock climbing is to relax and shut up the endless, nattering voice in my head. But in order to relax, I have to throw myself into the local goal of getting to the top of the rock. I need local dedication in order to fully absorb myself in the climb—and that absorption is exactly what I need to clear my head. But in the larger scheme of things, I don’t really care if I get to the top. If I spend the day failing and failing, but go home mentally and spiritually refreshed, then it is a day well spent.
There are, then, two very different motivational structures that can be involved with playing games. First, one could be engaged in ‘achievement play’—playing a game for the value of winning itself (or something that follows from the win, like money). Second, one could be engaged in ‘striving play’—playing a game for the value of the struggle (or something that follows from that struggle, like fitness or relaxation). Notice that, for a striving player to have that desirable struggle, they have to actually try to win. But winning isn’t the point for them; playing is.
by C. Thi Nguyen, Forum For Philosophy | Read more:
Image: Katrien Vanderlinden
America Is Not Made for People Who Pee
Here’s a populist slogan for President Biden’s infrastructure plan: Pee for Free!
Sure, we need investments to rebuild bridges, highways and, yes, electrical grids, but perhaps America’s most disgraceful infrastructure failing is its lack of public toilets.
Greeks and Romans had public toilets more than 2,000 years ago, with people sitting on benches with holes to do their business. There were no partitions, and Romans wiped with sponges on sticks that were dipped in water and shared by all users.
I’m not endorsing that arrangement, but at least the ancient Romans operated large numbers of public latrines, which is more than can be said of the United States today.
The humorist Art Buchwald once recounted an increasingly desperate search for a toilet in Manhattan. He was turned down at an office building, a bookstore and a hotel, so he finally rushed into a bar and asked for a drink.
“What kind of drink?” the bartender replied.
“Who cares?” Buchwald answered. “Where’s the men’s room?”
America should be better than that. Japan manages what may be the world’s most civilized public toilets — ubiquitous, clean and reliably equipped with paper — and almost every industrialized country is more bladder-friendly than America. Even poorer countries like China and India manage networks of public latrines. But the United States is simply not made for people who pee.
“I go between cars or in bushes,” Max McEntire, 58, who has been homeless about 10 years, told me as he stood outside the tent where he lives here. “Sometimes at my age, if your body says pee, you’ve got to pee. If your body says poop, you can’t wait.” (...)
Most stores and businesses are of little help, he said, because they often insist on a purchase to use the restroom — and that’s even before a pandemic closed many shops.
“At night you’ll see men and women pulling their pants down and peeing and pooping in the gutter,” McEntire said. “People lose their dignity, they lose their pride.”
Cities also lose their livability, and open defecation becomes a threat to public health. Americans have painstakingly built new norms about dog owners picking up after their pets, but we’ve gone backward with human waste. (...)
In the 19th century, the United States did set up public toilets in many cities. They were often called public urinals, abbreviated as P.U. (this may be part of the origin of “P.U.” to mean something that stinks, although there are competing theories). In the early 20th century, these were supplemented by “comfort stations” for men and women alike, but most closed in waves of cost-cutting over the years.
That’s partly because this is a class issue. Power brokers who decide on infrastructure priorities can find a restaurant to duck into, while that is less true of a Black teenage boy and utterly untrue of an unwashed homeless person with a shopping cart.
Sure, we need investments to rebuild bridges, highways and, yes, electrical grids, but perhaps America’s most disgraceful infrastructure failing is its lack of public toilets.
Greeks and Romans had public toilets more than 2,000 years ago, with people sitting on benches with holes to do their business. There were no partitions, and Romans wiped with sponges on sticks that were dipped in water and shared by all users.
I’m not endorsing that arrangement, but at least the ancient Romans operated large numbers of public latrines, which is more than can be said of the United States today.
“What kind of drink?” the bartender replied.
“Who cares?” Buchwald answered. “Where’s the men’s room?”
America should be better than that. Japan manages what may be the world’s most civilized public toilets — ubiquitous, clean and reliably equipped with paper — and almost every industrialized country is more bladder-friendly than America. Even poorer countries like China and India manage networks of public latrines. But the United States is simply not made for people who pee.
“I go between cars or in bushes,” Max McEntire, 58, who has been homeless about 10 years, told me as he stood outside the tent where he lives here. “Sometimes at my age, if your body says pee, you’ve got to pee. If your body says poop, you can’t wait.” (...)
Most stores and businesses are of little help, he said, because they often insist on a purchase to use the restroom — and that’s even before a pandemic closed many shops.
“At night you’ll see men and women pulling their pants down and peeing and pooping in the gutter,” McEntire said. “People lose their dignity, they lose their pride.”
Cities also lose their livability, and open defecation becomes a threat to public health. Americans have painstakingly built new norms about dog owners picking up after their pets, but we’ve gone backward with human waste. (...)
In the 19th century, the United States did set up public toilets in many cities. They were often called public urinals, abbreviated as P.U. (this may be part of the origin of “P.U.” to mean something that stinks, although there are competing theories). In the early 20th century, these were supplemented by “comfort stations” for men and women alike, but most closed in waves of cost-cutting over the years.
That’s partly because this is a class issue. Power brokers who decide on infrastructure priorities can find a restaurant to duck into, while that is less true of a Black teenage boy and utterly untrue of an unwashed homeless person with a shopping cart.
Sunday, March 7, 2021
Google’s FLoC Is a Terrible Idea
The third-party cookie is dying, and Google is trying to create its replacement.
No one should mourn the death of the cookie as we know it. For more than two decades, the third-party cookie has been the lynchpin in a shadowy, seedy, multi-billion dollar advertising-surveillance industry on the Web; phasing out tracking cookies and other persistent third-party identifiers is long overdue. However, as the foundations shift beneath the advertising industry, its biggest players are determined to land on their feet.
Google is leading the charge to replace third-party cookies with a new suite of technologies to target ads on the Web. And some of its proposals show that it hasn’t learned the right lessons from the ongoing backlash to the surveillance business model. This post will focus on one of those proposals, Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), which is perhaps the most ambitious—and potentially the most harmful.
FLoC is meant to be a new way to make your browser do the profiling that third-party trackers used to do themselves: in this case, boiling down your recent browsing activity into a behavioral label, and then sharing it with websites and advertisers. The technology will avoid the privacy risks of third-party cookies, but it will create new ones in the process. It may also exacerbate many of the worst non-privacy problems with behavioral ads, including discrimination and predatory targeting.
Google’s pitch to privacy advocates is that a world with FLoC (and other elements of the “privacy sandbox”) will be better than the world we have today, where data brokers and ad-tech giants track and profile with impunity. But that framing is based on a false premise that we have to choose between “old tracking” and “new tracking.” It’s not either-or. Instead of re-inventing the tracking wheel, we should imagine a better world without the myriad problems of targeted ads.
We stand at a fork in the road. Behind us is the era of the third-party cookie, perhaps the Web’s biggest mistake. Ahead of us are two possible futures.
In one, users get to decide what information to share with each site they choose to interact with. No one needs to worry that their past browsing will be held against them—or leveraged to manipulate them—when they next open a tab.
In the other, each user’s behavior follows them from site to site as a label, inscrutable at a glance but rich with meaning to those in the know. Their recent history, distilled into a few bits, is “democratized” and shared with dozens of nameless actors that take part in the service of each web page. Users begin every interaction with a confession: here’s what I’ve been up to this week, please treat me accordingly.
Users and advocates must reject FLoC and other misguided attempts to reinvent behavioral targeting. We implore Google to abandon FLoC and redirect its effort towards building a truly user-friendly Web.
by Bennett Cyphers, EFF | Read more:
Image: uncredited
No one should mourn the death of the cookie as we know it. For more than two decades, the third-party cookie has been the lynchpin in a shadowy, seedy, multi-billion dollar advertising-surveillance industry on the Web; phasing out tracking cookies and other persistent third-party identifiers is long overdue. However, as the foundations shift beneath the advertising industry, its biggest players are determined to land on their feet.
Google is leading the charge to replace third-party cookies with a new suite of technologies to target ads on the Web. And some of its proposals show that it hasn’t learned the right lessons from the ongoing backlash to the surveillance business model. This post will focus on one of those proposals, Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), which is perhaps the most ambitious—and potentially the most harmful.
Google’s pitch to privacy advocates is that a world with FLoC (and other elements of the “privacy sandbox”) will be better than the world we have today, where data brokers and ad-tech giants track and profile with impunity. But that framing is based on a false premise that we have to choose between “old tracking” and “new tracking.” It’s not either-or. Instead of re-inventing the tracking wheel, we should imagine a better world without the myriad problems of targeted ads.
We stand at a fork in the road. Behind us is the era of the third-party cookie, perhaps the Web’s biggest mistake. Ahead of us are two possible futures.
In one, users get to decide what information to share with each site they choose to interact with. No one needs to worry that their past browsing will be held against them—or leveraged to manipulate them—when they next open a tab.
In the other, each user’s behavior follows them from site to site as a label, inscrutable at a glance but rich with meaning to those in the know. Their recent history, distilled into a few bits, is “democratized” and shared with dozens of nameless actors that take part in the service of each web page. Users begin every interaction with a confession: here’s what I’ve been up to this week, please treat me accordingly.
Users and advocates must reject FLoC and other misguided attempts to reinvent behavioral targeting. We implore Google to abandon FLoC and redirect its effort towards building a truly user-friendly Web.
by Bennett Cyphers, EFF | Read more:
Image: uncredited
[ed. Not sure about "terrible", but incomprehensible definitely. I wonder how they sell this to advertisers.]
Saturday, March 6, 2021
How the Senate Pared Back Biden’s Stimulus Plan
WASHINGTON — The $1.9 trillion economic stimulus plan approved by the Senate on Saturday follows the outlines of the sweeping pandemic aid package that President Biden proposed, but senators made a series of notable changes that narrowed the bill.
While the House passed a version of the bill that largely kept Mr. Biden’s proposals intact, the Senate omitted an increase in the minimum wage that he had included and limited how much Americans will receive in supplemental unemployment benefits in the coming months. It also pared back eligibility for the next round of stimulus checks compared with the House’s bill.
The changes made by the Senate are likely to stick, as the version passed by the chamber is scheduled to go before the House for its final approval on Tuesday. The bill would then head to Mr. Biden for his signature.
Here are some of the major differences between the two chambers’ bills.
The minimum wage increase was dropped.
The House bill would gradually raise the federal minimum wage, which is currently $7.25 per hour, to $15 per hour by 2025. The Senate bill does not incorporate a wage increase.
The Senate parliamentarian said last month that the wage increase violated the strict rules governing what can be included in bills passed through a special process known as budget reconciliation — prompting Democrats to jettison it from the package.
Democrats used the reconciliation process because it allowed the bill to pass the Senate with only a simple majority, protecting it from a filibuster — which requires 60 votes to break — and thus eliminating the need to win support from Republicans.
On Friday, an amendment to add back the minimum wage increase fell well short of the 60 votes needed to do so, failing 42 to 58 in a procedural vote. Seven Democrats and one independent who caucuses with them joined all 50 Republicans in opposition, signaling that the wage increase lacked sufficient support to clear the Senate regardless of the parliamentarian’s ruling.
Stimulus checks will be available to fewer Americans.
Both the House and Senate bills would provide another round of direct payments to Americans, with payments of up to $1,400 going to hundreds of millions of people. But the Senate bill places stricter income limits on who is eligible, disqualifying millions of people from receiving a payment.
Both bills would provide $1,400 payments for individuals earning up to $75,000, single parents earning up to $112,500 and married couples with incomes up to $150,000. Gradually smaller payments would go to those earning more, declining as income levels rise and phasing out altogether for those above a certain income cap.
But while the House set the cap at $100,000 for individuals, $150,000 for single parents and $200,000 for couples, the Senate lowered those thresholds to placate moderates who wanted the payments to be more targeted.
Instead, the Senate bill would set the cap at $80,000 for individuals, $120,000 for single parents and $160,000 for couples, meaning those earning more than that would not receive checks.
Unemployment payments would remain at $300 per week, instead of increasing to $400.
The last stimulus package passed in December partly restored a federal unemployment payment that lapsed last summer, offering $300 per week and extending it through March 14. The House bill increased the benefit in line with Mr. Biden’s proposal, but the Senate, where moderates balked at raising the payment, left it the same.
The House version would provide a more generous benefit of $400 per week through Aug. 29. The Senate measure would provide $300 per week through Sept. 6.
The Senate bill would also exempt $10,200 in unemployment benefits received in 2020 from federal income taxes for households making less than $150,000.
Both the House and Senate also sought to help workers who lost their jobs keep their employer-provided health insurance coverage, but the Senate bill is more generous. The House measure would cover 85 percent of premiums through a program called COBRA through September, while the Senate measure would cover the full cost of those premiums.
by Thomas Kaplan, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Will Budiaman[ed. The usual suspects, Republicans and the filibuster (see: Divided Senate Passes Biden’s Pandemic Aid Plan (NYT). But, also this: Sen. Kyrsten Sinema complains criticism of her vote against $15 minimum wage hike is sexist (Salon); and Sinema Show: the First Bisexual Senator Screwed Every Man and Woman in America (Ghion Journal).]
While the House passed a version of the bill that largely kept Mr. Biden’s proposals intact, the Senate omitted an increase in the minimum wage that he had included and limited how much Americans will receive in supplemental unemployment benefits in the coming months. It also pared back eligibility for the next round of stimulus checks compared with the House’s bill.
The changes made by the Senate are likely to stick, as the version passed by the chamber is scheduled to go before the House for its final approval on Tuesday. The bill would then head to Mr. Biden for his signature.
Here are some of the major differences between the two chambers’ bills.
The minimum wage increase was dropped.
The House bill would gradually raise the federal minimum wage, which is currently $7.25 per hour, to $15 per hour by 2025. The Senate bill does not incorporate a wage increase.
Democrats used the reconciliation process because it allowed the bill to pass the Senate with only a simple majority, protecting it from a filibuster — which requires 60 votes to break — and thus eliminating the need to win support from Republicans.
On Friday, an amendment to add back the minimum wage increase fell well short of the 60 votes needed to do so, failing 42 to 58 in a procedural vote. Seven Democrats and one independent who caucuses with them joined all 50 Republicans in opposition, signaling that the wage increase lacked sufficient support to clear the Senate regardless of the parliamentarian’s ruling.
Stimulus checks will be available to fewer Americans.
Both the House and Senate bills would provide another round of direct payments to Americans, with payments of up to $1,400 going to hundreds of millions of people. But the Senate bill places stricter income limits on who is eligible, disqualifying millions of people from receiving a payment.
Both bills would provide $1,400 payments for individuals earning up to $75,000, single parents earning up to $112,500 and married couples with incomes up to $150,000. Gradually smaller payments would go to those earning more, declining as income levels rise and phasing out altogether for those above a certain income cap.
But while the House set the cap at $100,000 for individuals, $150,000 for single parents and $200,000 for couples, the Senate lowered those thresholds to placate moderates who wanted the payments to be more targeted.
Instead, the Senate bill would set the cap at $80,000 for individuals, $120,000 for single parents and $160,000 for couples, meaning those earning more than that would not receive checks.
Unemployment payments would remain at $300 per week, instead of increasing to $400.
The last stimulus package passed in December partly restored a federal unemployment payment that lapsed last summer, offering $300 per week and extending it through March 14. The House bill increased the benefit in line with Mr. Biden’s proposal, but the Senate, where moderates balked at raising the payment, left it the same.
The House version would provide a more generous benefit of $400 per week through Aug. 29. The Senate measure would provide $300 per week through Sept. 6.
The Senate bill would also exempt $10,200 in unemployment benefits received in 2020 from federal income taxes for households making less than $150,000.
Both the House and Senate also sought to help workers who lost their jobs keep their employer-provided health insurance coverage, but the Senate bill is more generous. The House measure would cover 85 percent of premiums through a program called COBRA through September, while the Senate measure would cover the full cost of those premiums.
by Thomas Kaplan, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Will Budiaman
"For the People Act" Would Make the U.S. a Democracy
Since the 117th Congress was convened on January 3, over 2,000 bills have been introduced in the House and Senate. But the very first legislation proposed by the Democratic Party majorities in both chambers — making it both H.R.1 and S.1 — is the “For the People Act” of 2021.
This is appropriate, because the For the People Act is plausibly the most important legislation considered by Congress in decades. It would change the basic structure of U.S. politics, making it far more small-d democratic. The bill makes illegal essentially all of the anti-enfranchisement tactics perfected by the right over the past decades. It then creates a new infrastructure to permanently bolster the influence of regular people.
The bill’s provisions largely fall into three categories: First, it makes it far easier to vote, both by eliminating barriers and enhancing basic outreach to citizens. Second, it makes everyone’s vote count more equally, especially by reducing gerrymandering. Third, it hugely amplifies the power of small political donors, allowing them to match and possibly swamp the power of big money.
Make Voting Simple
There’s a popular, weary American aphorism (often attributed to the anarchist Emma Goldman, although she apparently did not say it): “If voting could change anything, it would be made illegal.” The meaning is always taken to be that voting is pointless.
However, the past decades of U.S. politics demonstrate that this saying is accurate — but in fact its meaning is exactly the opposite. We can gauge how much voting can change important things by the lengths to which America’s conservatives have gone to make voting difficult for the wrong people.
The For the People Act would require states with voter ID requirements to allow people to vote without identification if they complete a sworn statement attesting that they are who they say they are. It would make it impossible for states to engage in bogus purging of voter rolls. States could no longer stop people with felony convictions from voting after they’ve served their time — and would be required to inform them in writing that they now can vote again.
The act would then create what the U.S. has never had: a functioning, modern voting infrastructure. America is almost alone in its bizarre, two-step process in which citizens must register to vote, and then vote. And only two-thirds of the U.S. voting age population is in fact registered. In comparable countries, voting registration is automatic: You don’t have to do anything first, you just show up and vote. The For the People Act would make voter registration near-automatic here too, and anyone who fell through the cracks would be able to register and vote on Election Day.
The bill would also require states to allow a minimum of two weeks of early voting, for a minimum of 10 hours a day. All eligible voters could vote by mail for any reason. And to ensure voters can be confident that elections are secure and that their votes will count, all states would be required to conduct elections via paper ballot.
Thanks to Republican success at creating gerrymandered congressional districts, Democrats can win the majority of the popular congressional vote in many states while only garnering a minority of the state’s seats in the House of Representatives. With the once-every-10-years redistricting coming, and the GOP’s 2020 success in state legislatures that control redistricting, the situation is set to become even more lopsided and fundamentally unfair. If nothing changes, it’s almost certain that Democrats will lose the House majority in the 2022 midterms, even if they get the most votes.
The For the People Act would head this off at the pass, requiring states to create independent commissions to conduct redistricting.
A New Strategy to Beat Big Money
While it’s forgotten now, Watergate was, among other things, a campaign finance scandal. The bill of particulars supporting President Richard Nixon’s articles of impeachment mentioned the chair of the board of McDonald’s bribing his reelection campaign with $200,000, in return for permission to raise the price of the company’s Quarter Pounder cheeseburger.
Shortly after Nixon’s resignation, Congress passed extensive campaign finance reforms, which placed limits on contributions to campaigns as well as campaign expenditures. The Supreme Court struck down the limits on campaign expenditures in 1976. Then the Citizens United case in 2010 and related decisions made unlimited contributions possible to super PACs, as long as everyone pretended the super PACs and formal campaigns were separate and uncoordinated.
The For the People Act accepts that it will be difficult to reverse these decisions for the immediate future and addresses the problem from the opposite direction. Instead of placing limits on big money, it multiplies the power of small money.
[ed. See also: Crucial Voting Reform Measure Just Passed the House. What's Next? (The Intercept). The filibuster.]
This is appropriate, because the For the People Act is plausibly the most important legislation considered by Congress in decades. It would change the basic structure of U.S. politics, making it far more small-d democratic. The bill makes illegal essentially all of the anti-enfranchisement tactics perfected by the right over the past decades. It then creates a new infrastructure to permanently bolster the influence of regular people.
The bill’s provisions largely fall into three categories: First, it makes it far easier to vote, both by eliminating barriers and enhancing basic outreach to citizens. Second, it makes everyone’s vote count more equally, especially by reducing gerrymandering. Third, it hugely amplifies the power of small political donors, allowing them to match and possibly swamp the power of big money.
Make Voting Simple
There’s a popular, weary American aphorism (often attributed to the anarchist Emma Goldman, although she apparently did not say it): “If voting could change anything, it would be made illegal.” The meaning is always taken to be that voting is pointless.
The For the People Act would require states with voter ID requirements to allow people to vote without identification if they complete a sworn statement attesting that they are who they say they are. It would make it impossible for states to engage in bogus purging of voter rolls. States could no longer stop people with felony convictions from voting after they’ve served their time — and would be required to inform them in writing that they now can vote again.
The act would then create what the U.S. has never had: a functioning, modern voting infrastructure. America is almost alone in its bizarre, two-step process in which citizens must register to vote, and then vote. And only two-thirds of the U.S. voting age population is in fact registered. In comparable countries, voting registration is automatic: You don’t have to do anything first, you just show up and vote. The For the People Act would make voter registration near-automatic here too, and anyone who fell through the cracks would be able to register and vote on Election Day.
The bill would also require states to allow a minimum of two weeks of early voting, for a minimum of 10 hours a day. All eligible voters could vote by mail for any reason. And to ensure voters can be confident that elections are secure and that their votes will count, all states would be required to conduct elections via paper ballot.
Thanks to Republican success at creating gerrymandered congressional districts, Democrats can win the majority of the popular congressional vote in many states while only garnering a minority of the state’s seats in the House of Representatives. With the once-every-10-years redistricting coming, and the GOP’s 2020 success in state legislatures that control redistricting, the situation is set to become even more lopsided and fundamentally unfair. If nothing changes, it’s almost certain that Democrats will lose the House majority in the 2022 midterms, even if they get the most votes.
The For the People Act would head this off at the pass, requiring states to create independent commissions to conduct redistricting.
A New Strategy to Beat Big Money
While it’s forgotten now, Watergate was, among other things, a campaign finance scandal. The bill of particulars supporting President Richard Nixon’s articles of impeachment mentioned the chair of the board of McDonald’s bribing his reelection campaign with $200,000, in return for permission to raise the price of the company’s Quarter Pounder cheeseburger.
Shortly after Nixon’s resignation, Congress passed extensive campaign finance reforms, which placed limits on contributions to campaigns as well as campaign expenditures. The Supreme Court struck down the limits on campaign expenditures in 1976. Then the Citizens United case in 2010 and related decisions made unlimited contributions possible to super PACs, as long as everyone pretended the super PACs and formal campaigns were separate and uncoordinated.
The For the People Act accepts that it will be difficult to reverse these decisions for the immediate future and addresses the problem from the opposite direction. Instead of placing limits on big money, it multiplies the power of small money.
by Jon Schwarz, The Intercept | Read more:
Image: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Friday, March 5, 2021
A 'Stolen' River
‘The river was stolen from us’: a tribe's battle to retake the Skagit River (The Guardian)
Images: markk
[ed. A functionally important dam, no historical records, not going to happen. But it will elevate a tribe's stakeholder status (if briefly), and probably send a few million dollars in study contracts to a few consultants and tribal programs.]
Senate Clerks Forced to Read Entire 628 Page Bill Aloud
Schumer says Senate will 'power through and finish' coronavirus relief bill
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said the chamber would “power through and finish” passing the coronavirus relief bill, no matter how long it takes.
Because of the number of amendments that Republicans are expected to introduce, the final Senate passage of the bill likely won’t happen until sometime this weekend.
“The Senate is going to take a lot of votes. But we are going to power through and finish this bill, however long it takes,” Schumer said. “The American people are counting on us and our nation depends on it.”
Schumer also thanked the Senate clerks for reading the full text of the bill aloud, which took more than 10 hours and concluded early this morning.
The Senate usually skips reading the full text of the bill, but Republican Senator Ron Johnson objected to Schumer’s motion to dispense with the reading, forcing the clerks to read all 628 pages aloud.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you for your efforts yesterday and every day,” Schumer told the clerks today. He added this pointed remark to Johnson: “And, as for our friend from Wisconsin, I hope he enjoyed his Thursday evening.”
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said the chamber would “power through and finish” passing the coronavirus relief bill, no matter how long it takes.
Because of the number of amendments that Republicans are expected to introduce, the final Senate passage of the bill likely won’t happen until sometime this weekend.
“The Senate is going to take a lot of votes. But we are going to power through and finish this bill, however long it takes,” Schumer said. “The American people are counting on us and our nation depends on it.”
Schumer also thanked the Senate clerks for reading the full text of the bill aloud, which took more than 10 hours and concluded early this morning.
The Senate usually skips reading the full text of the bill, but Republican Senator Ron Johnson objected to Schumer’s motion to dispense with the reading, forcing the clerks to read all 628 pages aloud.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you for your efforts yesterday and every day,” Schumer told the clerks today. He added this pointed remark to Johnson: “And, as for our friend from Wisconsin, I hope he enjoyed his Thursday evening.”
Image: Twitter
William Shatner Calls Leonard Nimoy
[ed. See also: William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy in 1985 Western Airlines ad (Boing Boing)
via: Photographer Wanders NYC Streets To Reveal Neo-Noir Stories Hiding in Plain Sight (My Modern Met)
Thursday, March 4, 2021
Backup Singer Dolette McDonald on Her Years With Talking Heads, the Police, and Don Henley
Her stint with Talking Heads was the start of an incredible career as a backup singer that included tours with the Police, Sting, Don Henley, and Steve Winwood, and recording sessions with the Rolling Stones, Tears for Fears, Chic, and Laurie Anderson. When it quieted down in the Nineties, McDonald moved to Naples, Florida, and started a whole new life far away from the spotlight. We called her up at her new home in Savannah, Georgia, to hear all about her incredible journey.
How has your pandemic year been?
Considering all that has gone on, it’s been great. It has allowed me to sort of pay attention to me and grow a little bit more and spend more time on me instead of running around doing God knows what. In terms of not being able to see people, that’s been really, really hard. I happen to be an extroverted introvert, so I’m OK with being home a lot. However, the fact that I can’t go out, human nature is like … I’m pissed right now. [Laughs] My cooking skills have also become amazing.
I want to go back here and talk about your life. What are your earliest memories of hearing music as a child?
Whew! My earliest memories would be hearing Dinah Washington. We had a record player, and that was before my mother became very religious and all that was taken away. But I do recall as a little child, Dinah Washington’s voice.
Where did you grow up?
Newark, New Jersey.
How old were you when your mother got very religious and banned most music?
I wasn’t in school yet, so I think I was about five years old. I’m the baby of seven. So my mother didn’t get religious until me. [Laughs] I was fucked. [Laughs] She decided to become this religious fanatic and I was the one that paid for it. (...)
How did your career evolve after your time with Cissy Houston?
When I was with Cissy Houston, I did a recording with [producer] Michael Zager. It was the Afro Cuban band. I sang a song with them called “Black Widow Woman.” That was my first solo endeavor.
That’s when I became interested in recording. And then I started touring with Walter Murphy and the “Fifth of Beethoven” band. I was just doing gig after gig. Eventually, I sang background for a disco group called the Bombers. Through them, I met a man named Busta Jones.
He was so wonderful to me, like a brother. And probably my first cheerleader, really. He realized that I had some kind of talent and asked me to sing on a record of his, and I did. It turned out that, at that time, the Talking Heads were looking to expand their band. Busta recommended me for the job.
Did you know about their music at all?
Hell, no! [Huge laugh] Hell, no! I didn’t know a damn thing! I was like, “What the hell is the Talking Heads?” [Laughs] I don’t know how, but Busta was always in the middle of everything in terms of punk and New Wave. He was a black guy that wore cowboy hats and cowboy boots. I was amazed that he found his way to where everyone knew him. He was just one of those guys.
Tell me about first meeting the Talking Heads. Did they audition you?
No. The funny thing is I met them at rehearsal. How fabulous is that? I didn’t even have to audition. They believed Busta. I was completely unknown.
What was your first impression of David Byrne?
I was so nervous that I don’t even know if I had an impression. I thought they were kind of weird. However, Chris Frantz, the drummer, was so normal. Everyone, except for David, turned out to be so normal. David was quirky and weird, but on the other hand, there was [keyboardist] Bernie Worrell, who was equally as weird. [Laughs]
What was it like to first hear their music? Hearing Remain in Light must have blown your mind.
Funnily enough, my first reaction was, “What is this?” You’re talking about a girl from Newark, New Jersey who was used to singing in bars and singing soul music. I had never been introduced to punk or New Wave. I had no idea what that type of music was. Although, as I became more educated, I realized they really weren’t doing punk or New Wave. They had their own thing that they were doing. It was almost like dance music, actually, but more sophisticated.
by Andy Greene, Rolling Stone | Read more:
Image: Paul Natkin/Getty Images[ed. Some great videos accompanying this article.]
Wednesday, March 3, 2021
The Cancel Culture Checklist
Cancel culture now poses a real threat to intellectual freedom in the United States. According to a recent poll by the Cato Institute, a third of Americans say that they are personally worried about losing their jobs or missing out on career opportunities if they express their real political opinions. Americans in all walks of life have been publicly shamed, pressured into ritualistic apologies or summarily fired.
But critics of the critics of cancel culture make a powerful retort. Accusing others of canceling can, they claim, be a way to stigmatize legitimate criticism. As Hannah Giorgis writes in the Atlantic, “critical tweets are not censorship.”
So what, exactly, does a cancellation consist of? And how does it differ from the exercise of free speech and robust critical debate?
At a conceptual level, the difference is clear. Criticism marshals evidence and arguments in a rational effort to persuade. Canceling, by contrast, seeks to organize and manipulate the social or media environment in order to isolate, deplatform or intimidate ideological opponents. It is about shaping the information battlefield, not seeking truth; and its intent—or at least its predictable outcome—is to coerce conformity and reduce the scope for forms of criticism that are not sanctioned by the prevailing consensus of some local majority.
In practice, however, telling canceling apart from criticism can be difficult because both take the form of criticizing others. That is why it is probably impossible to devise a simple bright-line test of what should count as a harmful instance of cancelation.
A better approach might therefore be diagnostic. Like the symptoms of cancer, the hallmarks of a cancellation are many. Though not all instances involve every single characteristic, they all involve some of its key attributes. Rather than issuing a single litmus test, the diagnostic approach allows us to draw up a checklist of warning signs. The more signs you see, the more certain you can be that you are looking at a cancel campaign.
Six warning signs make up my personal checklist for cancel culture.
Punitiveness
Are people denouncing you to your employer, your professional groups or your social connections? Are you being blacklisted from jobs and social opportunities? Does what is being said to or about you have the goal—or foreseeable effect—of jeopardizing your livelihood or isolating you socially?
A critical culture seeks to correct rather than punish. In science, the penalty for being wrong is not that you lose your job or your friends. Normally, the only penalty is that you lose the argument. Even the phenomenon of retracting papers is new and deservedly controversial, because the usual—and very effective—method has been for science to simply discard mistakes and move on. Wrong answers and bad science die on the vine and disappear. Incentives are mostly positive, not punitive: for being right, you win citations, promotions, fame and fancy prizes. Taking a punitive attitude toward mistakes undermines the scientific process because knowledge advances by trial and error.
Canceling, by contrast, seeks to punish rather than correct—and often for a single misstep rather than a long track record of failure. A professor swears to “ruin [a graduate student’s] reputation permanently and deservedly.” Campaigners against an art curator declare he “must be removed from his job, effective immediately.”
The point is to make the errant suffer. (...)
Moral Grandstanding
Is the tone of the discourse ad hominem, repetitive, ritualistic, posturing, accusatory, outraged? Are people flattening distinctions, demonizing you, slinging inflammatory labels and engaging in moral one-upmanship? Are people ignoring what you actually say—talking about but not to you?
Precisely because speech can be hurtful, critical culture discourages extreme rhetoric. It encourages people to listen to each other, to use evidence and argumentation, to behave reasonably and to avoid personal attacks.
Cancel culture is much more invested in what philosophers Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke call “moral grandstanding”: the display of moral outrage to impress one’s peer group, dominate others, or both. Grandstanders who condemn someone are not interested in persuading or correcting her; in fact, they are not really talking to her at all. Rather, they are using her as a convenient object in a campaign to elevate their own status. Pile-ons, personal attacks and bidding wars to show the most outrage are all ways of engaging in moral grandstanding.
by Jonathan Rauch, Persuasion | Read more:
But critics of the critics of cancel culture make a powerful retort. Accusing others of canceling can, they claim, be a way to stigmatize legitimate criticism. As Hannah Giorgis writes in the Atlantic, “critical tweets are not censorship.”
So what, exactly, does a cancellation consist of? And how does it differ from the exercise of free speech and robust critical debate?
In practice, however, telling canceling apart from criticism can be difficult because both take the form of criticizing others. That is why it is probably impossible to devise a simple bright-line test of what should count as a harmful instance of cancelation.
A better approach might therefore be diagnostic. Like the symptoms of cancer, the hallmarks of a cancellation are many. Though not all instances involve every single characteristic, they all involve some of its key attributes. Rather than issuing a single litmus test, the diagnostic approach allows us to draw up a checklist of warning signs. The more signs you see, the more certain you can be that you are looking at a cancel campaign.
Six warning signs make up my personal checklist for cancel culture.
Punitiveness
Are people denouncing you to your employer, your professional groups or your social connections? Are you being blacklisted from jobs and social opportunities? Does what is being said to or about you have the goal—or foreseeable effect—of jeopardizing your livelihood or isolating you socially?
A critical culture seeks to correct rather than punish. In science, the penalty for being wrong is not that you lose your job or your friends. Normally, the only penalty is that you lose the argument. Even the phenomenon of retracting papers is new and deservedly controversial, because the usual—and very effective—method has been for science to simply discard mistakes and move on. Wrong answers and bad science die on the vine and disappear. Incentives are mostly positive, not punitive: for being right, you win citations, promotions, fame and fancy prizes. Taking a punitive attitude toward mistakes undermines the scientific process because knowledge advances by trial and error.
Canceling, by contrast, seeks to punish rather than correct—and often for a single misstep rather than a long track record of failure. A professor swears to “ruin [a graduate student’s] reputation permanently and deservedly.” Campaigners against an art curator declare he “must be removed from his job, effective immediately.”
The point is to make the errant suffer. (...)
Moral Grandstanding
Is the tone of the discourse ad hominem, repetitive, ritualistic, posturing, accusatory, outraged? Are people flattening distinctions, demonizing you, slinging inflammatory labels and engaging in moral one-upmanship? Are people ignoring what you actually say—talking about but not to you?
Precisely because speech can be hurtful, critical culture discourages extreme rhetoric. It encourages people to listen to each other, to use evidence and argumentation, to behave reasonably and to avoid personal attacks.
Cancel culture is much more invested in what philosophers Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke call “moral grandstanding”: the display of moral outrage to impress one’s peer group, dominate others, or both. Grandstanders who condemn someone are not interested in persuading or correcting her; in fact, they are not really talking to her at all. Rather, they are using her as a convenient object in a campaign to elevate their own status. Pile-ons, personal attacks and bidding wars to show the most outrage are all ways of engaging in moral grandstanding.
by Jonathan Rauch, Persuasion | Read more:
Image: uncredited
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