Missives

"The problem we face here is social, institutional. Bribery, blackmail, influence peddling, flattery..."

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 23:53:12 -0400

“

The problem we face here is social, institutional. Bribery, blackmail, influence peddling, flattery — these have always been and always will be part of any political landscape. Our challenge is to minimize the degree to which they corrupt the political process. “Make better humans” is not a strategy that is likely succeed. “Find better leaders” is just slightly less naive. Institutional problems require institutional solutions. We did manage to reduce the malign influence of the J. Edgar Hoover security state, by placing institutional checks on what law enforcement and intelligence agencies could do, and by placing those agencies under more public and intrusive supervision. I think that much of our task today is devising a sufficient surveillance architecture for our surveillance architecture.

But as we are talking about all this, let’s remember what we are talking about. We are not talking about a tradeoff between “security” and “privacy”. That framing is a distraction. Our current path is to pay for (alleged) security by acquiescence to increasingly corrupt and corruptible governance. We ought to ask ourselves whether a very secure, very corrupt state is better than the alternatives, whether security for corruption is a tradeoff we are willing to make.

”

- Tradeoffs - Steve Randy Waldman (via llimllib)

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban funds flopping study

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:28:35 -0400

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban funds flopping study :

One of Cuban’s companies has provided $100,000 to Southern Methodist University for an 18-month investigation of the forces involved in basketball collisions. The goal is to figure out whether video or other motion-capture techniques can distinguish between legitimate collisions and instances of flopping. “The research findings could conceivably contribute to video reviews of flopping and the subsequent assignment of fines,” SMU biomechanics expert Peter G. Weyand, who leads the research team, said in a statement.

Why Men Work So Many Hours - Joan C. Williams - Harvard Business Review

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:00:02 -0400

Why Men Work So Many Hours - Joan C. Williams - Harvard Business Review:

So here’s where we stand. If institutions are serious about advancing women, they’ll have to address the hours problem — that’s the only way to get a critical mass of women poised for leadership. But we’ll never address the hours problem until we open up a conversation about what drives it.

It’s not productivity. It’s not innovation. It’s identity. If you’ve lived a life where holidays are a nuisance, where you’ve missed your favorite uncle’s funeral and your children’s childhoods, in a culture that conflates manly heroism with long hours, it’s going to take more than a few regressions to convince you it wasn’t really necessary, after all, for your work to devour you.

"The transition is now mostly led by emerging countries seemingly eager to get rid themselves as..."

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 12:42:53 -0400

“The transition is now mostly led by emerging countries seemingly eager to get rid themselves as quickly as possible of the weight of the past. At a much faster pace than in the West, Latin America and Asia publishers take advantage of their relatively healthy print business to accelerate the online transition. These many simultaneous changes involve spectacular newsroom transformations where the notion of publication gives way to massive information factories equally producing print, web and mobile content. In these new structures, journalists, multimedia producers, developers (a Costa-Rican daily has one computer wizard for five journalists…) are blended together. They all serve a vigorous form of journalism focused on the trade’s primary mission: exposing abuses of power and public or private failures (the polar opposite of the aggregation disease.) To secure and to boost the conversion, publishers rethink the newsroom architecture, eliminate walls (physical as well as mental ones), overhaul long established hierarchies and desk arrangements (often an inheritance of the paper’s sections structure.)”

- In Bangkok, with the Fast Movers | Monday Note, by Frédéric Filloux (as pull-quoted by Nieman J’Lab). (via journo-geekery)

temperatebreeze: poptech: And the highest paid public...

Fri, 10 May 2013 14:44:34 -0400

temperatebreeze:

poptech:

And the highest paid public employee in your state is…

I hate everything.

Free Airport Parking for Congress: A Reminder that the Rich Write the Rules » Sociological Images

Mon, 06 May 2013 15:05:38 -0400

Free Airport Parking for Congress: A Reminder that the Rich Write the Rules » Sociological Images:

This little perk, saving congress members time and $22-a-day parking fees, is a great example of the way that privilege translates into being “above society.” The more power, connections, and money you have, the more likely you are to be able to break both the legal and social contract with impunity. Sometimes this just means getting away with breaking the law (e.g., the fact that, compared to the crimes of the poor and working classes, we do relatively little to identify and prosecute so-called “white collar” criminals and tend to give them lighter or suspended sentences when we do). But these perks are also often above board; they’re built into the system. And who builds the system again?

In other words, some of the richest people in the world get free parking at the airport because they’re the ones making the rules. I like this as a concrete example, but be assured that there is a whole universe of such rules and, like this sudden revelation about free parking, most of them go entirely unnoticed by most of us most of the time.

"automation isn’t an inevitable result of capitalism. If the workforce is pliant enough and surplus..."

Mon, 06 May 2013 03:12:53 -0400

“automation isn’t an inevitable result of capitalism. If the workforce is pliant enough and surplus value extraction high enough, a very low level of machinery will be deployed. This is the case with so-called artisanal mining in Africa, where individuals (often children) with meager tools hop into pits to scrape out minerals by hand. Automation has proven unprofitable enough that grocery stores are replacing self-checkouts with old-fashioned human beings again.”

- The Rise of the Machines | Jacobin

"Automation’s prime function is to destroy the ability of workers to control the pace of work. The..."

Mon, 06 May 2013 03:09:24 -0400

“Automation’s prime function is to destroy the ability of workers to control the pace of work. The results are bloody. As Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin document in Detroit, I Do Mind Dying, while management attributed productivity gains in the auto industry to automation, black workers credited “niggermation”: the practice of forcing them to work at high speeds on dangerous machinery. Such shocking terminology underscores a crucial truth. Robots weren’t responsible for those cars; rather, it was brutalized black bodies. A 1973 study estimated that sixty-five auto workers died per day from work-related injuries, a higher casualty rate than that of American soldiers in Vietnam. Those who survived often suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. This bloodbath is directly attributable to the disempowering effects of automation. Had workers retained control, they wouldn’t have worked at such a deadly pace.”

- The Rise of the Machines | Jacobin

Why Are People with Health Insurance Going Bankrupt? « naked capitalism

Fri, 03 May 2013 12:06:06 -0400

Why Are People with Health Insurance Going Bankrupt? « naked capitalism:

[T]here’s several levels of insurance coverage [available under ObamaCare:] 90/10, where the insurance company pays 90 percent, consumer pays 10 percent; 80/20; 70/30; 60/40. The subsidy provided by Obamacare to people who can’t afford insurance will only cover 70/30 plans. So when you get a serious illness, you’re paying 30 percent of the cost of that health care.

Now, what’s really bad about this is that prior to Obamacare, some of the state insurance regulators were pushing insurance coverers to a higher level, where they would provide more coverage rather than less. Obamacare has now put it into law that 60/40 is okay and 70/30 is what the government will pay for. And so the 80/20 and 90/10′s become less common. So you’re going to see more and more people with under-insurance and not going to see lack of insurance completely go away.

"You don’t have that much time to work with. You are going to get a very few number of things done...."

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 04:46:23 -0400

“You don’t have that much time to work with. You are going to get a very few number of things done. You are going to get way fewer things done than you think you’re going to get done. And those things will take you much longer than you plan for.”

- How the Productivity Myth is Killing Your Startup — about work — Medium

"Conservatives have realized that having a choke-hold on the narrative and maintaining constant..."

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 17:15:01 -0400

“Conservatives have realized that having a choke-hold on the narrative and maintaining constant pressure is the best way to ensure that, even if the facts eventually betray them, they’ll have framed the event to their advantage. The Newton massacre, which unequivocally concerned the ready availability of unnecessarily high-powered weapons, is now a marginal debate about maybe closing gun-show loopholes and never doing anything about mental healthcare deficiencies because that would be communism. But ask a conservative and he’ll insist that his views aren’t being represented in the mainstream media — because he’s incapable of understanding that a system in which liberals on television ineffectually call for change while “liberals” in Congress noisily twiddle their thumbs is the perfect mechanism for maintaining conservative policy. I’m using the term “conservative” in the broader sense of “conserving structures as they currently exist,” but given that the country’s been stumbling into Sharia for the better part of five years now, how does erecting such a system constitute anything other than a conservative victory?”

- Lawyers, Guns & Money (via abbyjean)

journo-geekery: emergentfutures: CHART OF THE DAY: The...

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 17:10:33 -0400

journo-geekery:

emergentfutures:

CHART OF THE DAY: The Difference Between What You Share And What People Want To Read

The stories people share aren’t necessarily the stories their friends want to read, according to data from 33Across, which tracks links for online publications.

It found that people are sharing science related content more often than other content category. However, science content is clicked on significantly less than the content that is less popular for sharing, like politics, news, or celebrity gossip.

There’s some rationale behind the split in what’s read and what’s shared. People will want to share science content because it makes them seem smart. People will click on celebrity content because no one will know.

Full Story: Business Insider

Lost this one in my drafts/queue shuffle awhile back, however it is still worth sharing.

"Hip-hop is now the lingua franca and the background music for an entire generation of kids. And one..."

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 17:09:56 -0400

“

Hip-hop is now the lingua franca and the background music for an entire generation of kids. And one of its dynamics — the idea of a marginalized group rapping about that marginalization — has remained essentially intact as hip-hop has conquered the world, in part because marginalization is the narrative that teenagers everywhere fit themselves into.

If something is everywhere and everyone trafficks in it, who gets to decide when it’s real or not? What happens when hip-hop stops being black culture and becomes simply youth culture?

”

- Gene Demby on the demographic shift in America via When Our Kids Own America (via nprmusic)

"White privilege is knowing that if the bomber turns out to be white, he or she will be viewed as an..."

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:56:54 -0400

“White privilege is knowing that if the bomber turns out to be white, he or she will be viewed as an exception to an otherwise non-white rule, an aberration, an anomaly, and that he or she will be able to join the ranks of Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols and Ted Kaczynski and Eric Rudolph and Joe Stack and George Metesky and Byron De La Beckwith and Bobby Frank Cherry and Thomas Blanton and Herman Frank Cash and Robert Chambliss and James von Brunn and Robert Mathews and David_Lane and Michael F. Griffin and Paul Hill and John Salvi and James Kopp and Luke Helder and James David Adkisson and Scott Roeder and Shelley Shannon and Wade Michael Page and Byron Williams and Kevin Harpham and William Krar and Judith Bruey and Edward Feltus and Raymond Kirk Dillard and Adam Lynn Cunningham and Bonnell Hughes and Randall Garrett Cole and James Ray McElroy and Michael Gorbey and Daniel Cowart and Paul Schlesselman and Frederick Thomas and Paul Ross Evans and Matt Goldsby and Jimmy Simmons and Kathy Simmons and Kaye Wiggins and Patricia Hughes and Jeremy Dunahoe and David McMenemy and Bobby Joe Rogers and Francis Grady and Demetrius Van Crocker and Floyd Raymond Looker, among the pantheon of white people who engage in politically motivated violence meant to terrorize and kill, but whose actions result in the assumption of absolutely nothing about white people generally, or white Christians in particular.”

- Terrorism and Privilege: Understanding the Power of Whiteness » Sociological Images

abbyjean: The graph shows the gap between African and...

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 15:14:57 -0400

abbyjean:

The graph shows the gap between African and non-African focus on a given topic. The bars measure the percent of all papers submitted by Africans which went to a given topic area, minus the percent of all papers submitted by non-Africans that went to the same area. If the bar is zero, the topic was equally popular among African and non-Africa researchers. It’s a bit hard to draw firm conclusions here, given the large number of topic categories. But if you squint a little (and group topics into broad conceptual categories), what strikes me is the following: African scholars are disproportionately interested in labor (i.e., jobs), firms (possibly jobs again), and monetary policy. Non-African scholars are disproportionately interested in political economy, conflict, natural resources, and (an outlier) migration. Roughly speaking, there’s a division between jobs-focused papers by African researchers and papers by non-Africans focused on institutions. (Center For Global Development)

The Non-Inevitability of Same-Sex Marriage

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 13:51:19 -0400

The Non-Inevitability of Same-Sex Marriage:

But the problem is that people greatly overestimate the effect of public opinion on public policy. This is one of the really key problems with the “Roe was counterproductive” argument. The assumption is that because outright bans on abortion are unpopular in most states, they were doomed whether the Supreme Court intervened or not. The problem is this isn’t how actually how American politics actually works. Madisonian institutions protect the status quo, and people vote for bundles of policy positions, not a la carte. Parties can maintain majority status while maintaining unpopular positions on individual issues, and this goes triple when (as is the case with abortion regulations and prohibitions) the policy disproportionately burdens people with the least political influence. Which is why the movement to legalize abortion had essentially stalled by 1973, with abortion having been decriminalized in only 4 states and the District of Columbia. More battles for legalization would eventually would have been won, but abortion would have remained illegal in many states, perhaps a majority.

And the same thing is true with same-sex marriage. Public opinion may well favor same-sex marriage in the vast majority of states where it’s now illegal by the end of the decade. But this doesn’t mean that people not directly affected by the issue will instantly become single-issue voters unwilling to settle for anything less than full equality. Plenty of affluent suburbanites in states where SSM is still illegal will be happy to keep voting for Republicans who oppose SSM even if they nominally favor it. To argue that the Supreme Court should stay its hand because most states will soon grant marriage equality is to rest on assumption with very little basis.

"Academia may not be a traditional bureaucracy but we forget that public colleges are embedded in..."

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 13:50:20 -0400

“

Academia may not be a traditional bureaucracy but we forget that public colleges are embedded in state governments, making them more like the public sector is some ways than the private sector. That is particularly true when you account for the fact that many black PhDs end up working in Historically Black Colleges and Universities, many of which are part of state college systems. It is not totally beyond the realm of possibility then that black students should engage with some sectors of higher education similarly to how we have engaged the Post Office. That is to say, credentialism is rewarded and, thus, we should pursue it.

The nature of the rewards, however, seems to be what trips up a lot of this advice.

And that is rooted in some fundamental, unexamined privilege.

It is difficult to be embedded in higher education today, particularly if you study it, and not be acutely aware that academic labor is changing and likely not for the better. Adjunct labor conditions are pretty deplorable: low pay, long hours, little prestige, no mobility, etc. When we are in that we can forget that our crappy jobs can be someone else’s upward mobility.

I suspect part of our not understanding this is ideological. To recognize that crappy is relative is to undermine our own fragile, tenuous class consciousness. It’s an old problem. Unions had similar issues as they tried to bring black, brown and white labors together through their shared position in the class structure. The problems arise when your shared position isn’t exactly shared. Focusing so narrowly on class to the exclusion of structural racial projects can put you in this quagmire. Black poverty is not the same as white poverty. That’s not the fault of white poor people but is a function of a complicated mix of social constructs, organizational processes, politics, history and probably magic. It’s complicated. It is also inconvenient, particularly when you really want and need people to focus on deplorable class conditions. So we like to sometimes ignore it. We do so to our peril.

When we obscure those meaningful differences we end up counseling black students considering graduate school that it is a waste of time and money. We do that because our class consciousness says this whole pyramid hierarchy is a scheme and those at the bottom are losing.

The thing with losing is there’s always some construct of what constitutes “winning”. The dominant construct of winning is rooted in privilege and biases.

Winning is different for different folks. I think of Boudon‘s work which I likely oversimplify when I call it a cross-sectional, longitudinal, empirical analysis that conludes that we’re always from where we’re from. Apologies to the philosopher Rakim but sometimes it ain’t where you’re at but is indeed all about where you’re from. Part of Boudon’s argument for me is about social distance being as important to understanding mobility as status occupational/income/prestige outcomes. Basically, if I get a master’s degree that increases my labor value to $45,000* it can sound like crap to a person who went to graduate school, got a PhD and earns $50,000. However, if my parents didn’t have their GEDs and I grew up helping my mom clean banks after hours for her janitorial freelance business — one of her three jobs — I have actually traveled quite a bit of social distance. That can make the value of my graduate degree different than the value of yours.

”

- Tressie McMillan Cottom, “Blanket ‘Don’t Go To Graduate School!’ Advice Ignores Race And Reality?” tressiemc 4/5/13 (via racialicious)

"We recommend banning the danza and danzón because they are vestiges of Africa and should be replaced..."

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 18:03:18 -0400

““We recommend banning the danza and danzón because they are vestiges of Africa and should be replaced by essentially European dances such as the quadrille and rigadoon.””

- Danzón is the official genre and dance of Cuba.[1] It is also an active musical form in Mexico and is still beloved in Puerto Rico. The danzón evolved from the Cuban Habanera (known inside and outside of Cuba as the habanera).Originally, the contradanza was of English origin and was most likely introduced by three different ways to Cuba in 1762 with the invasion of the British to Havana, Spanish colonists, and French colonists (who were fleeing the Haitian Revolution of 1791 to 1804).[2]In Cuba, these dances were influenced by African rhythmic and dance styles and so became a genuine fusion of European and African influences.

MORE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danzón#cite_note-14

(via diasporadash)

"Twitter elicits a more poisonous information anxiety. It moves so fast that if I’m not continuously..."

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 13:01:05 -0400

“Twitter elicits a more poisonous information anxiety. It moves so fast that if I’m not continuously checking in, I completely lose track of the conversation — and it’s almost impossible to figure out what happened three hours ago, much less two days ago. I can’t save Twitter for later, and thus there’s always a pressure to check Twitter now. Twitter ends up taking more of my time than I’d like it to, as there’s a constant reason to check it rather than, say, reading a magazine article.”

- Ezra Klein, The Washington Post. The Problem with Twitter.

Klein is reacting to Nick Beaudrot’s piece about Twitter, which is an account of why he’s not returning to Twitter after giving it up for Lent until he can figure a way to sort the useless from the useful. Beaudrot graphs Twitter content as 10% links to interesting things and 90% faff, snark and debates better suited to blogging.

FJP: Obviously Twitter has its unbeatable pros as well, and Klein does appreciate them. See reader comments on the piece for some organization solutions to his laments, one of which is to build lists. For tips on how to built newsy twitter lists, see our post here.

(via futurejournalismproject)

"Sandberg has penned not so much a new Feminine Mystique as an updated Protestant Ethic and the..."

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:57:15 -0400

“Sandberg has penned not so much a new Feminine Mystique as an updated Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Where other feminists focus on articulating the amount of free or underpaid labor that women do, Sandberg places a priceless value on labor itself and encourages more of it, whether paid, unpaid, or poorly paid. “If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, you don’t ask which seat,” she says, quoting advice she received from Google executive Eric Schmidt”

- Feminism’s Tipping Point: Who Wins from Leaning in? | Dissent Magazine