Inktober2023 on Brotcast

INKTOBER DAY 31: FIRE

Tue, 31 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

To be alive and explore nature now is to read by the light of a library as it burns.

— Tom Mustill, How to Speak Whale: A Voyage into the Future of Animal Communication (via the New Yorker article “The Strange and Secret Ways That Animals Perceive the World ”)

(→ Inktober drawing challenge 2023)

INKTOBER DAY 30: RUSH

Mon, 30 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“The only way to make things better is to make things worse.”

That’s what one form of accelerationism says: It’s futile to try to oppose or reform capitalism; instead, we have to stomp on the gas pedal until the engine explodes.

Similarly, by building AI to do jobs previously performed by people, AI researchers are increasing the concentration of wealth to such extremes that the only way to avoid societal collapse is for the government to step in.

INKTOBER DAY 29: MASSIVE

Sun, 29 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Is the enshrinement of free will the massive blunder of liberalism?

The liberal story cherishes human liberty as its number one value. It argues that all authority ultimately stems from the free will of individual humans, as it is expressed in their feelings, desires and choices.

[…]

However, for better or worse, elections and referendums are not about what we think. They are about what we feel. And when it comes to feelings, Einstein and Dawkins are no better than anyone else. Democracy assumes that human feelings reflect a mysterious and profound ‘free will’, that this ‘free will’ is the ultimate source of authority, and that while some people are more intelligent than others, all humans are equally free. Like Einstein and Dawkins, an illiterate maid also has free will, hence on election day her feelings – represented by her vote – count just as much as anybody else’s.

INKTOBER DAY 28: SPARKLE

Sat, 28 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Diamonds are neither scarce nor do they have much innate value. Yet advertisers have managed to turn them into totems of wealth. We could use the power of storytelling just as well to turn things around: You don’t need shiny things to be happy.

Diamonds have little innate value, and De Beers saw that it was necessary to imbue them with mystique. In the late nineteen-thirties, when global interest in diamond jewelry was low, De Beers hired the Philadelphia advertising agency N. W. Ayer & Son to reinvigorate the allure of diamonds in the biggest market, the United States. A campaign sent the message to aspirant middle-class men that the only proper jewel to give one’s fiancée was a diamond. Prospective grooms were urged to learn the “four ‘C’s” that determine a diamond’s value: color, clarity, carat, and cut.

INKTOBER DAY 27: BEAST

Fri, 27 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Inspired from:

Hitler and Churchill, Roosevelt and Lindemann – all of them signed on to psychologist Gustave Le Bon’s claim that our state of civilisation is no more than skin deep. They were certain that air raids would blow this fragile covering to bits. But the more they bombed, the thicker it got. Seems it wasn’t a thin membrane at all, but a callus.

[…]

Considering the most recent evidence of psychology and biology, of archaeology and anthropology, of sociology and history, we can only conclude that humans have for millennia navigated by a faulty self-image. For ages, we’ve assumed that people are selfish, that we’re beasts, or worse. For ages, we’ve believed civilisation is a flimsy veneer that will crack at the merest provocation. Now we know this view of humankind, and this perspective on our history, is utterly unrealistic.

INKTOBER DAY 26: REMOVE

Thu, 26 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Do you own your smartphone or does it own you?

(Inspired from Apple’s removal of HKmap.live from their app store )

(→ Inktober drawing challenge 2023)

INKTOBER DAY 25: DANGEROUS

Wed, 25 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

With a hundred long and sensitive hair on every leg, the tiger wandering spider can tune in to the airflow around its body. They are tuned to the high frequencies produced by airborne insects, like a fly zooming towards the spider. The fly might be minuscule, but it still pushes air ahead of it.

(From Ed Yong’s An Immense World )

(→ Inktober drawing challenge 2023)

INKTOBER DAY 24: SHALLOW

Tue, 24 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Your phone buzzing is a shallow echo of a past with a rich vibratory landscape sacrificed in the name of conquest.

Between 30 and 60 million bison once roamed North America in groups that were thousands strong, but European colonists slaughtered them in a bid to also exterminate the Indigenous people who depended on them. Now just 500,000 bison remain, and most are confined to private lands. Imagine how much quieter the ground is now without all those hooves and paws. Six continents that once would have thundered with the footsteps of titans now reverberate with sparse gurgles.

INKTOBER DAY 23: CELESTIAL

Mon, 23 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Billionaires talk boldly about colonising Mars to distract from the fact that they have nothing to offer to solve today’s problems. Useless in challenges that requires teamwork above all else, they begin to plan their escape to their gilded bunkers - or off Earth altogether.

Elon Musk mochte über die Kolonialisierung des Mars sprechen, Peter Thiel über den Umkehrungsprozess des Alterns, Sam Altman und Ray Kurzweil mochten planen, ihren Verstand auf Superrechnern zu speichern. Aber diese fünf bereiteten sich auf eine digitale Zukunft vor, die sehr viel weniger damit zu tun hatte, die Welt zu einem besseren Ort zu machen, als mit der Überwindung der conditio humana schlechthin: Sie wollten die real drängende Gefahr des Klimawandels hinter sich lassen, den steigenden Meeresspiegel, die massenhafte Migration, die globalen Pandemien und die Erschöpfung der Ressourcen. Tatsächlich bedeutete die Zukunft der Technologie für diese Herren nur eines: Flucht.

INKTOBER DAY 22: SCRATCHY

Sun, 22 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Instead of a rational project directed toward the future, reactionists offer the people “emotional highs” and sloganeering based in vague and unsupported nostalgias.

Disparate groups are lassoed together around a new notion of ‘the people’, bound around an amorphous but powerful emotion which everyone can interpret in their own way, and then sealed with enemies who will threaten to undermine that feeling.

Gleb Pavlovsky, one of the principal architects of Putin’s rise, explains to the author at one point how, in the absence of the old ideologies, the aim became “to lasso disparate groups together around a new notion of ‘the people’, bound around an amorphous but powerful emotion which everyone can interpret in their own way, and then sealed with enemies who will threaten to undermine that feeling”. Instead of a rational project directed toward the future, the aim was to offer the people “emotional highs” and sloganeering based in vague and unsupported nostalgias. The local equivalent of “Make America great again” or “Take back control” was “Bring Russia off its knees”.

INKTOBER DAY 21: CHAINS

Sat, 21 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Sacrificing shock absorbers in the name of efficiency might look good on a quarterly report. But in a world that is radically uncertain, choosing the option which will give us good-enough results under the widest range of possible futures is more resilient.

A decade ago, the American psychologist Adam Grant and I argued in a journal paper that this ‘too much of a good thing’ phenomenon might be a general rule. Some motivation produces excellent performance; too much motivation produces choking. Some group collaboration produces cohesion and enhances productivity; too much of it leads to staleness. Some empathy enables you to understand what another person is going through; too much could prevent you from saying and doing hard things. Similarly, in my book The Paradox of Choice (2004), I argued that, whereas a life with no freedom to choose is not worth living, a life with too much choice leads to paralysis, bad decisions and dissatisfaction. Finding the right amount – what Aristotle called the ‘mean’ – of motivation, collaboration, empathy, choice and many other aspects of life, including efficiency, is a key challenge we face, both as individuals and as a society.

INKTOBER DAY 20: FROST

Fri, 20 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

If it only takes a warm cup to make a warm heart, why do we still attribute all authority to some mysterious free will?

The results were dramatic. Among those who held the cold pad, about 75 percent chose a reward for themselves and only 25 percent chose a gift for a friend. Of those who handled and reviewed the hot pad, 54 to 46 percent chose a gift for a friend. That is a significant statistical difference in giving behavior. Yet the only factor that was different in the experiment was the temperature of the pad in the participants’ hands.

INKTOBER DAY 19: PLUMP

Thu, 19 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

Bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant.

Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true.

From Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit .

(→ Inktober drawing challenge 2023)

INKTOBER DAY 18: SADDLE

Wed, 18 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

For a modern autocrat, lying is more useful than killing. He appears to allow political competition while making it nearly impossible in practice.

The goal of a spin dictator is to appear to allow political competition while making it nearly impossible in practice. Rather than criminalising dissent, he imprisons his opponents for non-political crimes, such as fraud or rape, of which they are innocent. Sometimes he locks them up for short periods, so they do not become martyrs, and often, so their work is constantly disrupted. Rather than banning opposition parties, he tangles them in red tape or bankrupts them with fines and lawsuits. For extra deniability, the task of making dissidents’ lives hell can be outsourced to a youth militia or army of online trolls, who may rough them up, publish their addresses or leak embarrassing photos.

INKTOBER DAY 17: DEMON

Tue, 17 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Inspired from:

When you live under such an oligarchy, there is always some crisis or other that takes priority over boring stuff such as healthcare and pollution. If the nation is facing external invasion or diabolical subversion, who has time to worry about overcrowded hospitals and polluted rivers? By manufacturing a never-ending stream of crises, a corrupt oligarchy can prolong its rule indefinitely.

— Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century , Chapter 1: Disillusionment)

INKTOBER DAY 16: ANGEL

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Animism should no longer be sneered at as a cognitively underdeveloped archaic past, but as an inspiration to overcome the harmful separation between nature and humankind.

Das Projekt einer Emanzipation der Menschheit durch technologischen Fortschritt und endloses wirtschaftliches Wachstum auf Kosten der Natur offenbart sich heute als Sackgasse. Die Steigerungslogik scheitert an der Begrenztheit der Ressourcen und den „Nebenfolgen“ des Raubbaus an der Natur. Angesichts dessen drängt sich die Frage auf, inwiefern wir vom indigenen Animismus lernen können. Freilich nicht im Sinne eines einfachen Kopierens und schon gar nicht in der Form von New-Age-Esoterik. Zu suchen ist vielmehr nach Möglichkeiten der Übersetzung in unsere Kontexte. Hierfür ließen sich zunächst einige grundsätzliche Einsichten der animistischen Kosmologien aufgreifen: Erstens zeigt sich hier offensichtlich ein Weltbezug, der nicht von der Möglichkeit einer unbegrenzten technischen Verfügung über die Umwelt ausgeht. Die indigenen Völker denken nicht, dass sich mit dem richtigen technologischen Kniff die Erträge der Jagd und des Gartenbaus beliebig und ohne Folgeschäden steigern ließen. Vielmehr wird anerkannt, dass man sich in einem komplexen Gefüge gegenseitiger Abhängigkeiten befindet.

INKTOBER DAY 15: DAGGER

Sun, 15 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Reactionaries appeal to the shame of weakness when they style themselves as victims of an alleged stab-in-the-back conspiracy.

Historian Richard McMasters Hunt argues in a 1958 article that the myth was an irrational belief which commanded the force of irrefutable emotional convictions for millions of Germans. He suggests that behind these myths was a sense of communal shame, not for causing the war, but for losing it. Hunt argues that it was not the guilt of wickedness, but the shame of weakness that seized Germany’s national psychology, and “served as a solvent of the Weimar democracy and also as an ideological cement of Hitler’s dictatorship”

INKTOBER DAY 14: CASTLE

Sat, 14 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Your home may be your castle but your phone is not.

The unfortunate fact is, for most of the people reading this article, your phone is not your castle. In many ways, your phone isn’t yours at all, at least if we are using these same traditional definitions of property. Instead, you happen to live in a castle owned by your phone’s vendor. It’s Apple or Google, not you, who decides what is allowed to enter the castle, and what happens inside its walls. They are the ones who are allowed to defend it from intrusion, and more importantly they are the ones who define what counts as intrusion to begin with. Your phone is their castle, you just happen to live inside their walls subject to their rules.

INKTOBER DAY 13: RISE

Fri, 13 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Calling for education alone to fight a rising inequality is like victim blaming: “Why don’t you just finally get smart?”

Obwohl die Verachtung für dumb people ein generelles Phänomen ist und nicht gebunden an politische Präferenzen, wird die linke Position durch die meritokratische Wertehaltung auf grundsätzlichere Weise unterminiert als die der Rechten. Typischerweise ist die Antwort der meritokratischen Linken auf Ungleichheit, dass man das Ausbildungsniveau der Niedrigqualifizierten eben anheben müsse. Bildungsinitiativen sollen richten, was man der Umverteilung nicht mehr zumuten will. Das Problem ist, dass dadurch ein ambivalentes politisches Signal ausgesendet wird. Man kommuniziert den dumb people, für ihr Problem gebe es eigentlich nur eine Lösung: smart zu werden.

INKTOBER DAY 12: SPICEY

Thu, 12 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Is it ok that media risk to mislead people with shaky election forecasts just to spice up their program?

Kritiker überzeugt diese Begründung nicht mehr, vor allem nach Umfragedesastern wie bei der Trump-Wahl. «Meinungsforscher sollten offen für die Tatsache sein, dass die potenziellen Fehler ihrer Meinungsumfragen etwa doppelt so gross sind, wie durch den traditionellen Stichprobenfehler erfasst wird», fordert Autor und Datenjournalist G. Elliott Morris. «Und Politikjournalisten sollten einzelne Umfragen mit grösserer Skepsis betrachten.»

INKTOBER DAY 11: WANDER

Wed, 11 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

With constant access to distraction, being able to immerse in your own thoughts has become a privilege.

These results are especially important in our modern era of information overload and constant access to distractions, according to study co-author Kou Murayama, PhD, of the University of Tübingen in Germany. “It’s now extremely easy to ‘kill time.’ On the bus on your way to work, you can check your phone rather than immerse yourself in your internal free-floating thinking, because you predict thinking will be boring,” he said. “However, if that prediction is inaccurate, you are missing an opportunity to positively engage yourself without relying on such stimulation.”

INKTOBER DAY 10: FORTUNE

Tue, 10 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Please, for once, move fast and fix things.

Move fast and break things.

— Former motto of Facebook

(→ Inktober drawing challenge 2023)

INKTOBER DAY 9: BOUNCE

Mon, 09 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

What does it need if not even the Covid shutdown gave us enough pause to initiate changes for a more sustainable way of living?

(→ Inktober drawing challenge 2023)

INKTOBER DAY 8: TOAD

Sun, 08 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Big Tech is the big fat toad that lets its tongue fly out as soon as someone other dares to fly itself.

#Google has a lot of anxiety because they know in their hearts that it’s all a performance — that what they’ve got is access to the capital markets, not geniuses.

— Cory Doctorow in the Jacobine magazine

(→ Inktober drawing challenge 2023)

INKTOBER DAY 7: DRIP

Sat, 07 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Constant dripping can shape mountains. At the very least, your actions are a statement against the acceptance of your own powerlessness.

So don’t despair, there are more than you think who care!

(→ Inktober drawing challenge 2023)

INKTOBER DAY 6: GOLDEN

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Golden Rice: The rice that could have saved millions if it hadn’t stimulated the imagination of the GMO conspiracy theorists.

What science could never eliminate was the unease. […] The unease builds on a notion of nature that is harmonious, beautiful and good - better than humans. “People paint nature as they want it to be,” says Potrykus.

From an article on the Golden Rice in the Swiss online magazine Republik .

INKTOBER DAY 5: MAP

Thu, 05 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Habitual use of smartphone-guided navigation negatively impacts our spatial memory.

We can shrug this off and say: Offload of cognitive burden! But then, if we embrace a smartphone as an extension of ourselves, why do we care so little that it’s effectively controlled by someone else?

(→ Inktober drawing challenge 2023)

INKTOBER DAY 4: DODGE

Wed, 04 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Some Swiss still want to believe that we can dodge any bullet like Neo from The Matrix. Not really helpful during negotiations with partners like the EU and the US.

An diesem Bankgeheimnis werden Sie sich die Zähne ausbeissen.

— Bundesrat Hans-Rudolf Merz, 2008

(→ Inktober drawing challenge 2023)

INKTOBER DAY 3: PATH

Tue, 03 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The path you walk traces the contours of your life.

D.N.A. is probably the only thing that’s harder to anonymize than precise geolocation information.

— Paul Ohm, Georgetown University Law Center

(→ Inktober drawing challenge 2023)

INKTOBER DAY 2: SPIDERS

Mon, 02 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Human activity on the internet is marginalized by spiders and bots.

I hadn’t realized what a big part of the internet traffic is created by web crawlers/spiders and bots until I checked my new website’s access logs for the first time: At least 62% of the visitors are non-human for the first half year. Maybe there is something to the Dead Internet Theory even without LLMs…

(→ Inktober drawing challenge 2023)

INKTOBER DAY 1: DREAM

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Today the children are the realists and the adults are the dreamers.

Traditionally, the young are called the ones with the dreams and fantasies, and the adults are called the realists. Today, the adults are the dreamers because they believe they can get through the 21st century with their excessive lifestyle, while the protesting children say: No, that won’t work - wake up!

(→ Inktober drawing challenge 2023)