The Home for Wayward Statisticians
In a time of universal surveillace, privacy is a revolutionary act.
Ellen Bennett is the Marie Kondo of kitchen organization. She has lots of clever ideas, my favorite one is this:
I found a good quick-drying paint marker at my favorite art supply store yesterday, and started labeling. It works!
Phylagen, a San Francisco biotech company, has developed a technique for tracking previous locations of objects based on the composition of dust the object has collected.
In another experiment, the sampling technology allowed researchers to determine where a person had walked within 1 kilometer in San Francisco, because of the microbes picked up by their shoes.
Right now, this technique is proposed for use in tracking manufacturing locations in supply chains. If it’s successful, expect it to be used first in forensics, and then in ubiquitous “backwards” location tracking for behavior profiling.
Oh, great. Now, in addition to fresh clothes and a good scrub in the shower, I need to swap/brush/scrub my shoes to keep the snoops of the world at bay.
Social media platforms have been given a “sweetheart deal,” according to Hawley, which includes “immunity from liability for illegal content posted by third parties.”
They were given special consideration, he said, because they promised to provide “a forum for a true diversity of political discourse.”
Went to Lunds. They had a sale: $1.99 on Coke 12-packs. Well! I bought one, the new Orange-Vanilla Dreamsicle flavor. LIMIT ONE PER DAY said a handwritten sign, because obviously people had been loading up. Drove south, decided I would check the other Lunds for the large paper bags. They had them! I also picked up another 12-pack, and I was thinking: this goes against the rules. I wonder if I can get away with this.
On the way out I noticed that the receipt did not give me the sale price; I went back. A manager asked: did you buy one earlier today?
“I did!” I said. “I’m sorry! I wasn’t trying to get away with anything. Well I guess I was.”
“The computer knows everything,” she said.
Doofus. If you’re going to sail close to the wind, pay cash. It leaves no footprints.
For a while there has been a subset of people concerned about Google’s privacy and antitrust issues, but now Google is eroding trust that its existing customers have in the company. That’s a huge problem. Google has significantly harmed its brand over the last few months, and I’m not even sure the company realizes it.
Surveillance technology enables bad behavior from individuals as well as large institutions. Looking for a new way to be a creep? a pervert? an asshole? There’s an app, or gadget for that.
The whole “liking” and “sharing” model is just garbage. There is no effort and no quality control. In fact, it’s all geared to the reverse of quality control, with lowest common denominator targets, and click-bait, and things designed to generate an emotional response, often one of moral outrage.
Thanks to Twitter and Facebook, mob action no longer requires any significant investment of time or physical energy. In essence, mobs have been subsidized, so we’re getting more of them.
What if live-streaming required a government permit, and videos could only be broadcast online after a seven-second delay? What if Facebook, YouTube and Twitter were treated like
traditional publishers, expected to vet every post, comment and image before they reached the public? Or like Boeing or Toyota, held responsible for the safety of their products and
the harm they cause?Imagine what the Internet would look like if tech executives could be jailed for failing to censor hate and violence.
In December of 1969, the Selective Service held a lottery to determine the order in which young men would be called up for the Draft. My number was a low 53, and that set the course for much of my adult life. Turns out, the odds were against me.
..despite the fact that some folks wish is wasn’t so
Neurosexism: the myth that men and women have different brains https://t.co/OOtJaICQ0t
— Gina Rippon (@ginarippon1) February 27, 2019
In fact, the National Institute of Health requires that sex be included as a variable in all studies:
Sex can influence health & disease in many ways, which is why NIH requires that researchers consider sex as a biological variable (SABV) in all stages of research: https://t.co/G2fy2PxLrJ. Visit @NIH_ORWH for #SABV research tips. #WomensHealthInFocus #ThisIsNIH
— NIH (@NIH) January 8, 2019
My favorite line from the review: “The mammalian brain is clearly a highly sex-influenced organ.” As anyone who’s observed young GIs or frat boys would know. It takes a PhD to believe in something as patently absurd as neurosexism.
Tip from Maggie’s Farm, where it’s always a bit skeptical.
Update: Looks like the SAT is owned and operated by neurosexists. Like I tell my students, “You knew that, you just didn’t know you knew that.”
I wish I was foolin’. All this stuff’s real, so the joke’s on us.
As an authoritarian regime with an abysmal human rights record, Cuba’s got an incentive to keep its citizens offline, and regularly harasses and arrests digital dissidents. Reporters Without Borders calls the nation an “Internet Enemy,” putting in the same list as North Korea, Syria, and Iran.
The censorship manifests itself in a really interesting way. While there’s not much actual site-level blocking, Cuba does surveil its citizens online.
Google just wants a piece of the action.
Smartphones and their ilk are the ultimate tools for pooling our ignorance. And pettiness. And intolerance.
