Build yourself a drone. Before they are made illegal.
Why?
One big reason is that drones/bots make the emergence of police states (as my tech thriller post on this topic shows) more likely since they allow a very small number of people to automate their control over a great many people. So, in order to ensure the future doesn’t careen in that direction, we should democratize the technology as a counter-weight.
In the July/August 2001 issue of the late, great magazine Lingua Franca, James Ryerson published an enthralling article about an anonymous benefactor who was paying professors huge sums of money to review a strange 60-page philosophical manuscript. Slate editor David Plotz talked about “The Mystery of the Millionaire Metaphysician” on this week’s Political Gabfest, citing it as one of his favorite magazine articles of all time. Ryerson gave Slate permission to republish the story in full.
Autumn Mantra (by Oer-Wout)
(via ruineshumaines)
Inadequate and ill-adapted property institutions in the third world prevent the extralegal assets of the poor from serving as capital. In particular, the absence of credible systems of title transfer makes real estate holdings ineffective as collateral for loans. How can this barrier to wealth creation be surmounted? Country-by-country institutional reform is possible, but inevitably slow. New options based on computer networks and trusted computational agents may provide a shorter path. By leveraging trust in first-world institutions while enabling the evolution of contractual arrangements that fit local needs and traditions, this approach could bring advanced property systems to regions now paralyzed by their absence.
- Mark S. Miller and Marc Stiegler, The Digital Path: Smart Contracts and the Third World
Over the past several years, the Justice Department has increasingly attempted to criminalize what is clearly protected political speech by prosecuting numerous individuals (Muslims, needless to say) for disseminating political views the government dislikes or considers threatening. The latest episode emerged on Friday, when the FBI announced the arrest and indictment of Jubair Ahmad, a 24-year-old Pakistani legal resident living in Virginia, charged with “providing material support” to a designated Terrorist organization (Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT)).
What is the “material support” he allegedly gave? He produced and uploaded a 5-minute video to YouTube featuring photographs of U.S. abuses in Abu Ghraib, video of armored trucks exploding after being hit by IEDs, prayer messages about “jihad” from LeT’s leader, and — according to the FBI’s Affidavit — “a number of terrorist logos.” That, in turn, led the FBI agent who signed the affidavit to assert that ”based on [his] training and experience, it is evident that the video … is designed as propaganda to develop support for LeT and to recruit jihadists to LeT.” The FBI also claims Ahmad spoke with the son of an LeT leader about the contents of the video and had attended an LeT camp when he was a teenager in Pakistan. For the act of uploading that single YouTube video (and for denying that he did so when asked by the FBI agents who came to his home to interrogate him), he faces 23 years in prison.
Let’s be very clear about the key point: the Constitution — specifically the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment — prohibits the U.S. Government from punishing someone for the political views they express, even if those views include the advocacy of violence against the U.S. and its leaders.
–Glenn Greenwald, The DOJ’s escalating criminalization of speech
Joyful
by athena113 (via thetruthisone)
RUN!! LIBERTARIANS WANT TO TAKE OVER THEN LEAVE YOU ALONE!!
1925 aka Hell is one of two animation loops directed by Max Hattler, inspired by the work of French outsider artist Augustin Lesage. 1925 is based on Lesage’s painting ‘A symbolic Composition of the Spiritual World’ from 1925.
Symbolic Composition of the Spiritual World
Augustin Lesage, 1925
