Day: December 24, 2018, 3:18 PM

Risk and Loss

Chill Uncategorized

This is a good analogy I will use for attempting to explain why it’s worth doing quite a lot about climate change even if you think it’s likely to be no big deal:

People appear to have extreme problems not only reasoning about risk when the consequences are remote in time (erroneous future discounting) but when the results will be calamitous beyond the ability to imagine. It’s thus worse when those effects are not only distant in time but distant both chronologically and consequentially from some easily-imagined state (for instance, living in an okay house versus becoming a climate refugee or a child dying due to climate-change induced infrastructure failures). Needless to say, this misprices the risk substantially as even a 1 in 10,000 chance of a hugely negative outcome is worth devoting substantial resources to prevent or to at least ameliorate.

Crush

Chill Regular-ass Post

“In Sparta, in the third century BCE, a fissure had opened up between the ruling elite and ordinary people in the two centuries following the state’s victory in the Peloponnesian War. Those who were ruled demanded change because the gap between rich and poor had become too large to tolerate. A succession of radical monarchs, Agis IV, Cleomenes III and Nabis, created a structure to help revive the state. Nobles were sent into exile. Debts were forgiven. Slaves were granted their freedom and the franchise. And land confiscated from the rich was distributed to the poor (something the European Central Bank wouldn’t tolerate today).

The early Roman Republic, threatened by this example, sent its legions under Titus Quinctius Flamininus to crush Sparta.”

-Tariq Ali in The Extreme Centre: A Second Warning

Not Lacking Tracking

Chill Uncategorized

For those who say there’s not a lot of tracking and surveillance in Microsoft’s products, why would a domain controller need to contact various places at Microsoft so many times in less than 11 minutes? And this happens day in, day out, 24 hours a day.

I have it all blocked, of course. Two different ways: at the DNS level and at the firewall. That’s why it’s in red (in this case, from pihole). But I’ve been told that I am paranoid; another instance of gaslighting about these issues that is so common now. But it’s not paranoia if it’s happening.