FROM this week’s news ON: society generally, and broader issues

From this week’s news on society generally, and broader issues (note: I may continue to add links for a few days, possibly up to a week, after these are published):

• “For Those Who’ve Had Enough Tough Love | John Beckett”   https://www.patheos.com/blogs/johnbeckett/2024/01/for-those-whove-had-enough-tough-love.html  
  

• “Why you shouldn’t let guilt motivate you to exercise”   https://theconversation.com/why-you-shouldnt-let-guilt-motivate-you-to-exercise-220342   “using the wrong type of motivation for your workouts ... could even have consequences for your mental health”   

• “I’m A_____ T___’s audience and I know why he appeals to young men”   https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/jan/06/im-andrew-tates-audience-and-i-know-why-he-appeals-to-young-men   “A year of investigating the [social media] ‘megabrand’ personality has shown me that – in the midst of a debate on masculinity – many fans like his focus on success more than his views on women”   To put success and attention/adulation/fame ahead of decency is morally repugnant - and yet so many people do, often in the form of social status, and that is destroying the world as it is putting the acquisition of bigger/flashier “things” ahead of survival ...      

• “‘There are different ways of being a woman’: Jodie Foster on beauty, bravery, and raising feminist sons”   https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-interview-true-detective   

• an online sales platform was “fined $3m after workers harassed couple and sent spiders to their home | The Guardian”   https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/11/[online sales platform]-fined-harassment-couple-spiders-cockroaches-newsletter-ecommercebytes   This raises the issue of the sort of commercial pressures such platforms and those who use them are subjected to - which is why I will not use them (once was enough)  
  

• “The New York Times’ lawsuit against OpenAI could have major implications for the development of machine intelligence”   https://theconversation.com/the-new-york-times-lawsuit-against-openai-could-have-major-implications-for-the-development-of-machine-intelligence-220547   “Just as we had to develop new words and a new common understanding of technology to make sense of computers in the 1950s, we may need to develop new language and new laws to help protect our society in the 2020s.”  
  

My links for activism post may aid any activism you may decide to do on any/all of these. If you do, don’t get too fixated on specific instances of problems - important though they may well be: take a moment to also consider the broader issues these incidents and groups of incidents may suggest/reveal.

 

Assumptions / basis 

In writing this, I have assumed / started from the following: 

• this blog states quite clearly that it is about political and human rights matters, including lived experience of problems, and thus I will assume readers are reasonable people who have noted the content warning in the post header;

Possible flaws 

Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:

• there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan  Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”; 
  
• I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.
  

 

If they are of any use of interest, the activism information links from my former news posts are available in this post. 

 

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Remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing, and all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering”.

Copyright © Kayleen White 2016-2024     NO AI   I do not consent to any machine learning aka Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarise, or otherwise  replicate any part of this post or other posts on this blog via any means. Typo’s may be inserrted deliberately to demonstrate this is not an AI product.     Otherwise, fair and reasonable use is accepted under Creative Commons 4.0 on an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike basis   https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/