Capitalism
The pandemic accelerated the rise of this digital piecework where humans support AI “For a penny, you might pay for a person to tell you if there is a human in a photo,” Jeff Bezos explained, at the public opening of Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), the first and most infamous of such sites. Like other
Democracy
The majority of Americans support legal abortion. Redistricting has allowed extremism to flourish without fear of repercussion America is at a crossroads when it comes to abortion. In 2021, state legislatures have passed an unprecedented 106 anti-abortion bills. State lawmakers in five states are preparing legislation similar to Texas’s SB 8, an effective total abortion
Data
“Even though several of the ISPs promise not to sell consumers personal data, they allow it to be used, transferred, and monetized by others.” Over the last few years the justified fixation on the bad behavior of Google, Amazon, Facebook and other Silicon Valley giants has let the abuses of the telecom sector fly under
Democracy
In the life story of Donald Trump, to his mind an epic saga of unrivalled achievement, these are the wilderness years. After the US electoral college confirmed his 2020 defeat, an outcome he still mendaciously disputes, Trump plunged into despair. He sulked, he raged, he conspired. Yet the 6 January coup plot was an egregious step too
Capitalism
In June, the Hungarian parliament voted overwhelmingly to eliminate from public schools all teaching related to “homosexuality and gender change”, associating LGBTQI rights and education with pedophilia and totalitarian cultural politics. In late May, Danish MPs passed a resolution against “excessive activism” in academic research environments, including gender studies, race theory, postcolonial and immigration studies
Capitalism
Ursula K. Le Guin was born on this day in 1929. She used science fiction to explore the failures of capitalist society — and the alternative worlds we could build in its place. You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution.” This is the core of the