Archive for October, 2018

Scholarship is always political

“Sokal Squared” is bad science. Its blatant manipulation of its own “data,” the lack of meaningful controls, and the disconnect between its methods and what it claims to prove are a remarkably poor model for nonpoliticized scholarship, even if it were true (as it clearly is not) that the hoaxers were any less driven by […]

If SV really believes AI is an existential threat…

Paradoxically, all the scenarios, apocalyptic or preventive, come from researchers and leaders of industry involved in the development of the very technology they are mobilising against. Source: Silicon Valley funds our helpless future, by Charles Perragin & Guillaume Renouard (Le Monde diplomatique – English edition, August 2018) If Silicon Valley actually believes AI is an […]

We don’t have an immigration problem, we have a labor problem

Re: Devin Nunes’s Family Farm Moved to Iowa, Employs Undocumented Workers The near total use of undocumented labourers is not news to anyone who’s ever lived in farm country. All the bullshit about illegal immigration is really just about labor exploitation. If a dairy farm would go out of business if it paid workers a […]

Do you really want to impeach Trump?

Impeaching Trump or backing out of Brexit won’t solve our problems. In both scenarios – impeachment or a second referendum – the suspicion of elites would become even greater, and the political alienation and economic marginalisation that contributed to it would still exist. That’s not a reason not to support them. It is a reason […]