Is the world being taken over by bigoted algorithms?
Pasquale cites a 2013 study, “Discrimination in Online Ad Delivery,” in which Harvard professor Latanya Sweeney found that black-identified names (including her own) frequently generated Google ads like “Lakisha Simmons, Arrested?” while white-identified names did not.
More on Frank Pasquale’s ‘Black Box Society’ here.
Time for the annual celebration of the value of the UK’s creative industries.
“From Art to Architecture, Film to Fashion, British talent leads the world”
“The UK’s Creative Industries, which includes the film, television and music industries, are now worth £76.9 billion per year to the UK economy.”
Strange to mention the creative activities with some kind of cultural or artistic bent, but not to flag up the ‘creative’ sector which accounts for almost half of that £76.9bn figure – ‘IT, Software and Computer Services‘.
More here.
Hans de Zwart discusses the present and future of surveillance and privacy, including some tips on how to hide:
So what can you do to escape ubiquitous government surveillance? We know how Obama tries to do it. Whenever he is outside the US and needs to have a private conversation or read a secret document he will go to a special hotel room that has an opaque-walled tent that constantly emits noise.
More here.
Is a Universal Basic Income,
the neoliberal alternative to unionization
?
Some thoughts at interfluidity.
In removing its total ban on blood donation from gay men, the USA leaves the company of Germany and Greece, and joins the company of Argentina and Australia in allowing donations only from men who have not had sex for over a year. Will it one day be so liberal as to remove the ban entirely, and join Poland and Portugal?
A consideration of the effects of Master and Servant laws at Flip Chart Fairy Tales:
For most of the period since the middle ages […] labour law was firmly on the side of the employer. […] State intervention in the labour market is nothing new. The only aspect that is relatively new is its intervention on behalf of employees.
More here.
Does high altitude increase suicide rates?
In a 2011 study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, a group of researchers, including Renshaw, analyzed state suicide rates with respect to gun ownership, population density, poverty, health insurance quality and availability of psychiatric care. Of all the factors, altitude had the strongest link to suicide — even the group of states with the least available psychiatric care had fewer suicides than the highest-altitude states, where psychiatric care was easier to find.
More here.
Google wraps its underwater fiber cables in Kevlar material, at least in part to protect against shark attacks, an official with the company said recently.
More here.
Maia Szalavitz at substance.com leverages a range of statistics to argue that the best treatment for addiction is ageing:
the average alcohol addiction is resolved within 15 years. Heroin addictions tend to last as long as alcoholism, but prescription opioid problems, on average, last five years. In these large samples, which are drawn from the general population, only a quarter of people who recover have ever sought assistance in doing so (including via 12-step programs). This actually makes addictions the psychiatric disorder with the highest odds of recovery.
More here.
Where is the Milky Way? Just on the edge of Laniakea, apparently.