Interesting Links for 28-03-2018

[andrewducker]

"A Small Fiction" is a rabbit-hole of micro-stories

(tags: short_story fiction twitter )

When you lied on your CV about having previous sheepdog experience.…

(tags: funny dogs sheep video )

Wondering what news stories most people noticed this week? Prepare to be very disappointed.

(tags: news people OhForFucksSake )

Before The Handmaid's Tale: Revolt in 2100

(tags: viaSupergee heinlein scifi review )

Why is Edinburgh University teaching that creationism and evolution are on the same level?

(tags: Edinburgh university evolution OhForFucksSake )

The first American woman to command a ship1 was a pregnant teenager. She did it while fighting off a mutiny, nursing an incapacitated husband, and braving gale-force winds.

(tags: women ship history usa )

Claims students have created university free speech crisis have been exaggerated

(tags: freespeech UK university )

Nasty, 3ft-long parasitic worms are on the cusp of being wiped from the planet

(tags: Parasites GoodNews africa )

Brokenness is not an identity - ‘Rick and Morty’ and The Rise of The ‘I’m a Piece of Shit’ Defense

(tags: TV men identity failure emotion )

An example of a Russian fake account on Tumblr acting against Hillary Clinton

(tags: tumblr fake russia fraud )

Here's Facebook's CEO promising not to sell user information, back in 2009

(tags: facebook privacy )

Here's Facebook's CEO in 2010 saying that users don't really want any privacy

(tags: privacy facebook )

You Know Who's Really Addicted to Their Phones? The Olds.

I totally am.
(tags: age phones )

Cybernetic memory enhancement is now a real thing

(tags: Technology thefuture memory cyborg )

Comments

[danieldwilliam]

The review of Revolt 2100 has a curious non sequitur - after banging on about oppressive monocultural societies and the tendency of any ideology that requires an investment of faith to misuse the controls of socieity in order to eliminate ideological opposition it just baldly states that "Multiculturalism is not the way forward, but a demonstration of political cowardice, a refusal to stand up to bullies of all stripes. "

As if we were unable to come up with a set of common foundational norms in and through which many cultures could thrive.

[andrewducker]

I *think* he's using multiculturalism to mean a system whereby there are lots of groups which are all separate and constantly fighting to get their own way. One where people are part of culture X, and thus obey that culture's rules, rather than any of the other cultures' rules.

[danieldwilliam]

A kind of ghettoisation / religious war sort of situation?

[andrewducker]

I'm not sure it has to be war necessarily. But if you think of a monoculture as being something where a central belief system is centrally enforced (which seems to be part of his thesis) then a multiculture would be somewhere where there are lots of smaller cultures embedded next to each other, each mostly stick to its traditions. Which could look like "a collection of bullies" each enforcing their own rules. (So the Jews would enforce the Halakha, the Muslims would enforce Sharia, etc, etc.) I assume he'd want a cultural equivalent of secularism - where no culture gets to enforce laws, any more than religions do in a secular nation.

[danieldwilliam]

Conflict or tension then?

I'm not sure that a monoculture *has* to be centrally enforced. Chomsky (IIRC) has a theory that the freer the society from central control the more the citizens indoctrinate themselves. If you are allowed to *do* whatever you can think of, then in order to protect your society from incoherent or dangerous actions you need people to indoctrinate themselves not to *think* in ways that are antitheical to your culture.

I think I would describe multi-culturalism as a situation where a) no one cultural tradition has it's moral assumptions privileged in to positive law, b) people are free to adhere to any cultural tradition they choose, or none,, c) people are able to adopt different aspects of different cultures, either as a hobby or as an attempt at cultural synthesis, d) many of the ground norms of society are about finding ways to disagree or explore differences without that becoming violent or existential for any group. I think that's someway torwards the idea of "cultural secularism" that you mention.

If you're explaination of where the OP is coming from is correctly then I think they are thinking of a number of mono-cultures cohabiting in the same physical or political space and competing in a zero-sum for both resources and the ability to turn their own (unexamined) moral assumptions in to positive law.

Wondering what news stories most people noticed this week? Prepare to be very disappointed.

[doug]

I wasn't that surprised, and not particularly disappointed. Am I missing something?

Re: Wondering what news stories most people noticed this week? Prepare to be very disappointed.

[andrewducker]

I do find it disappointing that most people aren't aware of any news at all.