UBI is in fact not a single proposal. It’s a field of proposals that’s perhaps better thought of as a philosophical intervention, a new conception of macro-economic and political structure. It’s unusual to argue wholeheartedly against representative government, taxation or universal suffrage, while it is common to disagree on which party should govern, whether taxes should be raised or cut, and particular elements of voting procedure. In the same way, we shouldn’t argue all-out for or against UBI but instead inspect the make-up of each approach to it – that’s where we can find not only meaningful debate, but also possibilities for working out what we might actually want.
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Everything you need to know about tree data structures - 0 views
Unlocking 'the shape of water' in mechanisms of antibiotic resistance - 0 views
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New high-resolution structures of the bacterial ribosome determined by researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago show that a single water molecule may be the cause-and possible solution-of antibiotic resistance.
The Fischer Random Chess Stock Market - Vitaliy Katsenelson Contrarian Edge - 0 views
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There is a parallel between today's stock market and Fischer random chess. The last time we faced a global pandemic was in 1918, and this might as well have been in the BC era. Few of us were alive then, but even the history books are not that useful, as the structure of the US and global economy, the central bank system, the diversity and dynamism of society, and the state of technological progress are nothing like the world knew then. Most of the mental models we as investors rely on are based on an environment that no longer exists. The only common denominator between now and then is that humans have not really changed that much - it takes a few millennia to rewire our DNA and thus our fundamental behavior.
COVID19 and the Indo-Pacific Decade | ORF - 0 views
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Great powers rise and fall, shaping each transitional period of global power shift and its geographic concentration. Currently, the world is witnessing a profound transformation in the geopolitical arena of international affairs. For the past years, the pundits have been propagating the emergence of an Asian multipolar century, with a shift from the Atlantic to the Pacific realm. However, following the COVID-19 virus outbreak, this year marks the obvious manifestation of an Indo-Pacific decade, with the US, China, and potentially India being the main protagonists in an emerging competition. This time, it is the unfolding of regional centres of power, which create the delusive impression of multipolarity, while in fact a new systemic bipolarity between the US and China comes to light. In the post-COVID-19 global context, the virus has become a catalyst of multiple systemic changes, inducing ad hoc constellations of regional actors-shaped by their geopolitical and geoeconomic interests-in a changing global order with eroding multilateral structures.
China's Great Boom as a Historical Process | IZA - Institute of Labor Economics - 0 views
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Beginning in the late 1970s, China's economy delivered the largest growth spurt in recorded history. Striking discontinuity between recent outcomes and the economic experience of the prior 200 years invites portrayal of recent events as a "China miracle" that requires neither economic nor historical analysis. This overlooks deep institutional constraints arising from authoritarian rule and its supporting elite networks and fails to recognize the link between central government weakness and the origins of the recent boom. In both the pre-1949 treaty ports and in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, the retreat of central control enabled episodes of economic openness and dynamism built upon 'bottom up' initiative and decentralized innovation. Historic legacies that shape political structures and individual behavior will continue to influence China's economic trajectory.
Geographical fragmentation of the global network of Twitter communications: Chaos: An I... - 0 views
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The introduction of the Internet rapidly enabled unprecedented global connectivity. In about two decades, communication became instantaneous, affordable, and independent of physical barriers. People, however, do not seem to be communicating with each other homogeneously. Online communication networks appear to be polarized and echo-chambers are manifesting for political1-5 and non-political6-9 reasons. Understanding the emergent structure of information flows on the Internet and its implications for the complexity of society is a challenge for scientists and technology developers. Mapping the organization of social systems is crucial for effective policy making involving ethnic groups10 as well as economic growth.11
How conspiracy theories emerge-and how their storylines fall apart - 0 views
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A new study by UCLA professors offers a new way to understand how unfounded conspiracy theories emerge online. The research, which combines sophisticated artificial intelligence and a deep knowledge of how folklore is structured, explains how unrelated facts and false information can connect into a narrative framework that would quickly fall apart if some of those elements are taken out of the mix.
Understanding vacuum fluctuations in space - 0 views
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An international research team from Germany and France has created structures in which light fields interact with electrons so strongly that the quantum vacuum itself is significantly altered. Using extremely short bursts of light, they interrupted this coupling much faster than the timescale of a vacuum fluctuation and observed an intriguing ringing of the emitted electromagnetic field, indicating the collapse of the vacuum state. Their key achievement could improve our understanding of the nature of nothingness-the vacuum of space itself, paving a way toward photonics exploiting vacuum fluctuations. The results are published in the current issue of Nature Photonics.
The Conversation About Basic Income is a Mess. Here's How to Make Sense of It. | naked ... - 0 views
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The most important distinguishing feature between the different iterations of UBI is where the funding comes from. Wrapped up in this are ancillary questions: what would a UBI replace, compensate for, or complement in the rest of the economy? What would the knock-on effects be for social welfare and the government’s responsibility to its citizens? Who gets the money is another question worth looking at (just how ‘universal’ is the income?), as is its amount and regularity.
The idea of intellectual property is nonsensical and pernicious - Samir Chopra | Aeon E... - 0 views
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A general term is useful only if it subsumes related concepts in such a way that semantic value is added. If our comprehension is not increased by our chosen generalised term, then we shouldn’t use it. A common claim such as ‘they stole my intellectual property’ is singularly uninformative, since the general term ‘intellectual property’ obscures more than it illuminates. If copyright infringement is alleged, we try to identify the copyrightable concrete expression, the nature of the infringement and so on. If patent infringement is alleged, we check another set of conditions (does the ‘new’ invention replicate the design of the older one?), and so on for trademarks (does the offending symbol substantially and misleadingly resemble the protected trademark?) and trade secrets (did the enterprise attempt to keep supposedly protected information secret?) The use of the general term ‘intellectual property’ tells us precisely nothing.
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Property is a legally constructed, historically contingent, social fact. It is founded on economic and social imperatives to distribute and manage material resources – and, thus, wealth and power. As the preface to a legal textbook puts it, legal systems of property ‘confer benefits and impose burdens’ on owners and nonowners respectively. Law defines property. It circumscribes the conditions under which legal subjects may acquire, and properly use and dispose of their property and that of others. It makes concrete the ‘natural right’ of holding property. Different sets of rules create systems with varying allocations of power for owners and others. Some grants of property rights lock in, preserve and reinforce existing relations of race, class or gender, stratifying society and creating new, entrenched, propertied classes. Law makes property part of our socially constructed reality, reconfigurable if social needs change.
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‘Property’ is a legal term with overwhelming emotive, expressive and rhetorical impact. It is regarded as the foundation of a culture and as the foundation of an economic system. It pervades our moral sense, our normative order. It has ideological weight and propaganda value. To use the term ‘intellectual property’ is to partake of property’s expressive impact in an economic and political order constructed by property’s legal rights. It is to suggest that if property is at play, then it can be stolen, and therefore must be protected with the same zeal that the homeowner guards her home against invaders and thieves.
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Bernard Lietaer, A Financial Justice Warrior Who Fought for Freedom of Currency - 0 views
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“I sometimes feel like a flying fish who has had the opportunity to take a ‘bird’s eye view’ of the water in which we swim, and is now trying to report back to its fellow fish and explain what it has learned about what we usually cannot see.”
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“The real issue is not whether widespread changes will happen or not, but how much awareness there will be about where these changes are leading us. The real question is whether we are even conscious that we have a choice in the matter.”
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“The urgent message for economics from nature is that the monoculture of national currencies, justified on the basis of market efficiency, generates structural instability in our global financial system. Complementary currencies of diverse types of money enable the economy to flow back towards greater sustainability. While this process clearly reduces efficiency, that is the price to pay for increased resilience of the whole.”
Germany Cracks Productivity Puzzle as Others Lag | Fast Forward | OZY - 0 views
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“It’s clear that Germany has very distinct differences in its business structure and cultural makeup,” says Tony Danker, CEO of Be the Business, which campaigns to spread best practice on productivity to British companies. “There is real interest in continuous improvement and building business networks and institutions that focus on this. This spirit and activity feels eminently replicable even if the institutions are not.”
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Indeed, a key difference between the U.K. and Germany lies in the training that workers receive. Although German managers are less likely to have higher educational qualifications, they have often received vocational training that builds workplace expertise. And despite the U.K. having more tertiary-educated managers than Germany, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data show their actual skills, in literacy and data management, are lower.
New houses in Puerto Rico designed to survive future storms - 0 views
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The design is “based on what we know is affordable housing in Puerto Rico for a single family,” says Hector Ralat, an architect based in the firm’s Puerto Rican office. “But the focus was to alter the DNA of that knowledge and to put in the essential components that someone would need to sustain living conditions for at least two weeks, which is the recommended time here for someone to receive aid after a disaster.” The houses will likely cost around $120,000, a number that lets homeowners access favorable interest rates on mortgages. The units can be stacked on top of each other; in Villalba, most of the community will be three stories high (the solar will serve the whole building).
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“We just know our product is better than stick-built construction in these types of dangerous environments,” says Paul Galvin, chairman and CEO of SG Blocks, the parent company of SG Residential. “Heavy-gauge steel structures are just designed to a high tolerance for the effects of climate change.” The houses, most of which will have two bedrooms, will start at $90,000 to $130,000. It might be possible to build cheaper houses, Galvin says, but the company is “trying to deliver product that is quality-driven, in that it’s going to be built once and it’s not going to be destroyed every storm.” The company is also working with a bank to create a mortgage that is similar in monthly cost to a car payment. The design can incorporate solar panels.
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HiveCube, another modular housing company, is also using shipping containers, and has targeted a much lower cost–the houses start at $39,000 for a two-bedroom home. “We believe that your safety should not be a matter of income, but a given when you are planning to buy a home for your family,” says María Velasco, cofounder of HiveCube. The homes are designed to be fully off the grid, with solar power and batteries, a rainwater collection system, and a gray and black water treatment system that uses plants and bacteria to treat wastewater instead of septic tanks.
Beyond Prisons, Mental Health Clinics: When Austerity Opens Cages, Where Do the Service... - 0 views
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Today, states grapple with decarceration and deinstitutionalization, not necessarily because of an ethical recognition of the continuing harm of confinement and segregation, or because of an understanding of the intertwined histories of capitalism, white supremacy, ableism, and punishment in the United States, but because of a desire to curb public spending on social services. These include the very services that people need as alternatives to more oppressive edifices and as preventive measures to winding up in such places. While public neighborhood urban schools, public housing, and mental health clinics are shuttered, private companies and “not for profit” services partially fill the void.
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Alternatives emerge when facilities shut their doors. Closures, as prison justice organizer Angela Davis suggests, provide an opportunity for not only a “radical imagining” of the kind of social landscape desperately needed—but also the moment to build it. As people move between different forms and scales of cages, and as patterns of surveillance and punishment morph, new forms of capture do emerge and yet resistance is also possible. The state often refuses to offer services in place of the ones that were shuttered, leaving the responsibility to the individual (or her family and the market). This is a moment to collectively demand, fund, and build public infrastructure that will move everyone closer towards a world that does not rely on segregation and confinement, or access to private capital, as its mode of dealing with structural inequities.
Google and corporate news giants forge new alliance - 0 views
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The “new media” monopolists of Silicon Valley and the once-dominant traditional print media have clearly agreed that the “fake news” frenzy is a convenient pretext to step up their censorship of the internet through new algorithms, allowing them to boost their profit margins and silence opposition through a new framework of “algorithmic censorship.”
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Last April, Google clamped down on alternative media with new structural changes to its algorithms — accompanying the change with an announcement tarring alternative media with the broad black brush of “misleading information, unexpected offensive results, hoaxes and unsupported conspiracy theories” as opposed to what it called “authoritative content.”As a result, organic search-engine traffic to these sites uniformly plummeted to less than half of what it had previously been, devastating many publishers.
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The “new media” monopolists of Silicon Valley and the once-dominant traditional print media have clearly agreed that the “fake news” frenzy is a convenient pretext to step up their censorship of the internet through new algorithms, allowing them to boost their profit margins and silence opposition through a new framework of “algorithmic censorship.”This new model overwhelmingly favors those who see information and journalism as an article of commerce alone. It poses a stark threat not only to internet users’ ability to access information, but to the ability of citizens and social movements that hope to interact with, participate in, and wield influence over the political and economic activities that determine our lives and the fate of communities across the world.
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