Avi

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Sun, 16 Jun 2013 01:32:04 -0700

When a Fire Starts to Burn - Disclosure

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 16:05:51 -0700

When a Fire Starts to Burn - Disclosure

Moxie Marlinspike >> Blog >> We Should All Have Something To Hide

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 13:50:35 -0700

Moxie Marlinspike >> Blog >> We Should All Have Something To Hide:

Why the NSA wiretaps are a big deal:

As a majority of people in these states apparently favor these changes, advocates for the US democratic process cite these legal victories as examples of how the system can provide real freedoms to those who engage with it through lawful means. And it’s true, the bills did pass.

What’s often overlooked, however, is that these legal victories would probably not have been possible without the ability to break the law.

The state of Minnesota, for instance, legalized same-sex marriage this year, but sodomy laws had effectively made homosexuality itself completely illegal in that state until 2001. Likewise, before the recent changes making marijuana legal for personal use in WA and CO, it was obviously not legal for personal use.

Imagine if there were an alternate dystopian reality where law enforcement was 100% effective, such that any potential law offenders knew they would be immediately identified, apprehended, and jailed. If perfect law enforcement had been a reality in MN, CO, and WA since their founding in the 1850s, it seems quite unlikely that these recent changes would have ever come to pass. How could people have decided that marijuana should be legal, if nobody had ever used it? How could states decide that same sex marriage should be permitted, if nobody had ever seen or participated in a same sex relationship?

The cornerstone of liberal democracy is the notion that free speech allows us to create a marketplace of ideas, from which we can use the political process to collectively choose the society we want. Most critiques of this system tend to focus on the ways in which this marketplace of ideas isn’t totally free, such as the ways in which some actors have substantially more influence over what information is distributed than others.

The more fundamental problem, however, is that living in an existing social structure creates a specific set of desires and motivations in a way that merely talking about other social structures never can. The world we live in influences not just what we think, but how we think, in a way that a discourse about other ideas isn’t able to. Any teenager can tell you that life’s most meaningful experiences aren’t the ones you necessarily desired, but the ones that actually transformed your very sense of what you desire.

We can only desire based on what we know. It is our present experience of what we are and are not able to do that largely determines our sense for what is possible. This is why same sex relationships, in violation of sodomy laws, were a necessary precondition for the legalization of same sex marriage. This is also why those maintaining positions of power will always encourage the freedom to talk about ideas, but never to act.

Did Obama Just Destroy the U.S. Internet Industry?

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 15:52:42 -0700

Did Obama Just Destroy the U.S. Internet Industry?:

A linkbait title, but good points within…

While these services have not seemed very American, of course they are. In many countries Facebook is not perceived to be an American service at all, since it operates completely in the local language. Now being American becomes potentially a concrete commercial and political disadvantage. To be an American service is now to be a tool for U.S. surveillance.

Do we really want to impair such powerful tools for spreading dialogue, political discourse, and U.S. values? Is it worthwhile to impair the extraordinary financial and commercial success of these great flagships for the American economy? Does Obama want Facebook et al just to be seen as tools of American power? That is certainly not the way the average user in Bolivia sees it. They see it as a tool of their own personal power, and they don’t want governments interfering with that.

…

It’s easy to see why leaders in Washington presume Chinese networking equipment company Huawei must be spying on us through its products. Apparently in their eyes it makes perfect sense to take advantage of any domestic asset to achieve geopolitical aims. Of course, they think, Huawei and the Chinese government would be doing that. We do. Obama and the NSA now seem determined to give Facebook, Google, and the other American Internet companies the same reputation internationally that Huawei has here. Huawei, incidentally, recently decided to forsake the giant U.S. market because of the condemnations of politicians, despite little evidence of actual espionage. This may foreshadow the experience of American companies elsewhere.

NBA Playoffs Shootaround: The King's Speech

Fri, 31 May 2013 13:31:00 -0700

NBA Playoffs Shootaround: The King's Speech:

These playoffs are amazing.

Everything we ever wanted from LeBron is happening here. It’s been happening since Game 6 in Boston last year, or the Pacers series beforehand. He could always do this stuff, but with each passing year, he can control it a little more. Turn it on when his team needs it, and be unstoppable in the biggest moments possible. This Heat team’s more vulnerable than anyone would’ve imagined a few months ago, and that was made clear again Thursday night. But this could be a blessing for us. Because if Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh keep struggling, it means LeBron has to turn it on more than ever. And he can. He’s harnessed all his powers, and every challenge from the Bulls or Pacers or Spurs is one more opportunity for him to unleash hell.

For the past week, we’ve been enjoying this series for all it’s worth and gawking at how well both teams have played. But Game 5 was about LeBron, and taking the time to ignore everyone else on the floor and properly lose our minds for 12 minutes in the third quarter. It was also a good reminder before the NBA Finals.

It may not matter how much help the Heat give him. When LeBron goes nuclear, there’s no better show in sports.

Some of David Graeber's Thoughts

Wed, 29 May 2013 17:42:06 -0700

Some of David Graeber's Thoughts:

A worthwhile read. A distanced (if biased) look at our current world that provides good perspective. There are alternate narratives that explain the facts he tells, but it’s right to question which ones are correct.

In fact, most of the economic innovations of the last thirty years make more sense politically than economically. Eliminating guaranteed life employment for precarious contracts doesn’t really create a more effective workforce, but it is extraordinarily effective in destroying unions and otherwise depoliticizing labor. The same can be said of endlessly increasing working hours. No one has much time for political activity if they’re working sixty-hour weeks.

Summer is here.

Fri, 24 May 2013 15:29:28 -0700

Summer is here.

Mom Did Not Make Pizza Rolls: When Did the Thunder Get So Depressing?

Thu, 16 May 2013 15:24:30 -0700

Mom Did Not Make Pizza Rolls: When Did the Thunder Get So Depressing?:

The Thunder got so depressing when Sam Presti and the Thunder scorned all that is good by trading love for money.

The Thunder will be title contenders as long as Westbrook and Durant are around, but the pressure’s only going to get worse from here; both will be asked to do more and more with less. In two years Sam Presti and the OKC management have taken what seemed like an endless reservoir of potential and drained it away to leave us with something cheaper, not as good as it should be, and nowhere near as fun. All while Clay Bennett continues to make ungodly annual profits on a team that was bought for $350 million and could probably sell for at least $500 million tomorrow. This is what I couldn’t stop thinking about while OKC’s season faded to black Wednesday.

Biggest picture? Last year, the Thunder were the team you could point to if you wanted to make someone fall in love with the NBA.

This year, the Thunder turned into a team that embodies everything that should make someone cynical about loving the NBA.

Happy Mother's Day

Mon, 13 May 2013 13:57:00 -0700

Happy Mother's Day:

The story of Bret Dunlap’s mother

“I have sat in a bathtub full of bubbles having a glass of wine, crying and feeling sorry for myself,” your mother says. “Then I got out of the goddamn bathtub and went to bed and got up the next day.”

The Art of Fiction No. 78, James Baldwin

Sun, 05 May 2013 11:46:47 -0700

The Art of Fiction No. 78, James Baldwin:

I enjoyed reading this interview with author James Baldwin. A favorite quote:

I had to be released from a terrible shyness—an illusion that I could hide anything from anybody.

Photo

Wed, 01 May 2013 12:39:41 -0700

Death and Information

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 09:02:47 -0700

Death and Information:

The Hillsborough Stadium disaster, the Boston Marathon bombing, and the facts about how we experience and understand tragedy.

I’ve been thinking, though, about how we talk to each other after a catastrophe, about the ways we try to grasp and manage it, and I think that in cases like these our devotion to fact can also conceal a lie. This is the lie: that the kinds of stories journalists tell can somehow help us isolate the event, allow us to see it from every side, like a globe we’re free to spin. The fiction of nonfiction is that if we line up the facts, if we assemble them into objective sentences in chronological order, then we will know what happened. We will understand. Whereas in truth, catastrophe is always a matter of particular, lived experience — of so many hundreds or thousands or millions of particular experiences, or of one particular experience. I’m not talking about the kind of narrative that makes for good magazine copy — heroic tourist charges into burning wreckage — but about the angle of sunlight the tourist was watching strike the trees the moment she heard the blast, and how she was thinking about whether to illegally import a pet fox, knowing she’d never do it, and how the sunlight and the thought were somehow still present in her mind as she felt herself running toward the flames. You are walking to a game, feeling vaguely anxious because you left your 4-year-old with his aunt, who’s a lousy babysitter, and you’re hoping you can catch the 5:56 train home so he won’t have to fall asleep in a strange bed, and maybe you’ll eat something at halftime, and wait, why’s that person screaming — don’t push me — stop pushing …

A History of Like – The New Inquiry

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 07:59:08 -0700

A History of Like – The New Inquiry:

Or maybe not. We are now allowed, even expected, to like other things than what’s sold in Super Bowl ads. If you read even only the first two sentences of any given marketing paper today, you invariably learn that we are living in a new age where the user is in control. Social media in general, and Facebook in particular, are supposedly driving a brand-new world where marketers, editors, and other gatekeepers are marginalized and mass culture is dissolving into niche cultures and individual expression. But if we keep the history of marketing in mind, including the development of Liking Studies, we see how Facebook is caught up in longer histories, specifically the history of the desire to dissect, study, and recompose a particular subject, the sovereign consumer.

Looking at the Girl with a Pearl Earring

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 15:03:00 -0700

Looking at the Girl with a Pearl Earring:

An essay I wrote reflecting on viewing the “Girl with a Pearl Earring”

The other day I went to the De Young museum to look at the Girl With A Pearl Earring, on special exhibition. But just as interesting was the “Rembrandt’s Century” exhibition you had to walk through to see the Vermeer. Some of my favorites were those from the Baroque period. Baroque, as a term, describes things that are heavy with ornamentation or composed of dramatic exaggeration, like an old Cadillac with 24 inch chrome rims. The Baroque aesthetic is often heavy handed in its explication of theme; many artists explicitly labeled elements of their art, for example writing Liberty under an angel or Father Time above an old man.

http://www.impreciselipwork.com/post/LPearlE

Fatigue makes cowards of us all.

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 19:51:00 -0700

Fatigue makes cowards of us all.

The one and only Brian Dawkins

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 17:05:04 -0700

The one and only Brian Dawkins

Find The Thing You're Most Passionate About, Then Do It On Nights And Weekends For The Rest Of Your Life

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 12:15:26 -0700

Find The Thing You're Most Passionate About, Then Do It On Nights And Weekends For The Rest Of Your Life:

I have always been a big proponent of following your heart and doing exactly what you want to do. It sounds so simple, right? But there are people who spend years—decades, even—trying to find a true sense of purpose for themselves. My advice? Just find the thing you enjoy doing more than anything else, your one true passion, and do it for the rest of your life on nights and weekends when you’re exhausted and cranky and just want to go to bed.

Ideals, Introspection, and Interfaces

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 16:15:01 -0700

Ideals, Introspection, and Interfaces:

An essay I wrote discussing problems when deciding on Ideals.

I think the biggest problem in any discussion of Ideals is that the favored Ideal usually turns out to be suspiciously close to a description of the author. This problem likely comes from the fact that ideas of an Ideal come from inside yourself, from introspection. Ideals are a search for a guiding light from within and glimpses of the light often blind the eyes of the seeke

Superlative

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 12:48:28 -0700

Superlative

The New Aesthetic: Personality trait and predictive Likes, according to the studyHigh...

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 14:33:00 -0700

The New Aesthetic: Personality trait and predictive Likes, according to the studyHigh...:

Personality trait and predictive Likes, according to the study

High IQ

The Godfather

Lord of the Rings

The Daily Show

Low IQ

Harley Davidson

I Love Being A Mom

Tyler Perry

Emotional stability – neurotic

Emo

Dot Dot Curve

So So Happy

Emotional stability – calm and relaxed

…

I thought the craziest part of this study was that they could associate likes with a person’s parents being split or together at the age of 21.