FROM this week’s news ON: society generally, and broader issues [Note: Content Warning - may be links to distressing reports on this topic. Reader discretion is advised]

Note: CONTENT WARNING - some of this content is about upsetting, disturbing or triggering events & attitudes. Seek competent help - including professional - if you need it. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that linked articles may contains names and/or images of deceased people. READER CAUTION IS RECOMMENDED! For anyone distressed by anything in this post, or for any other reason considering seeking support, resources are available in Australia here, here, and here. In other nations, you will have to do an Internet search using terms such as “mental health support - <your nation>” (which, for instance, may lead to this, this, and this, in the USA, or this, this, and this, in France [biased towards English-language - my apologies]), or perhaps try https://www.befrienders.org/. 

Note: in my “from the news” posts, quotes are shown italicised and blue, my comments are in a different shade of blue, and “good” items are shown in green. I have loosely grouped the posts where such seemed reasonable, but that is subjective (i.e., my opinion - others are free to disagree), and challenging, as some posts belong in multiple “groups”.

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):

• “‘Laying claim to nature’s work’: plant patents sow fear among small growers”   https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/25/plant-patents-large-companies-intellectual-property-small-breeders   

• “Existential Lessons of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Depression”   https://aninjusticemag.com/existential-lessons-of-martin-luther-king-jr-s-depression-86991874d328   “Personal Perspective: “Depression doesn’t discriminate” misses the point of Dr. King’s experience   These possibilities ... detract from the political trauma that must have upended Dr. King’s philosophical development, leading to transformations that entailed depression, but weren’t necessarily treatable by clinical means.   We cannot forget that Dr. King spent 15 years witnessing firsthand that there was no “best” way to debunk or disarm white supremacy. A doctorate didn’t help. Devout Christianity didn’t help. Colorblindness didn’t help. Disavowing armed struggle didn’t help. Invoking the innocence of children and the frailty of the elderly didn’t help”   An excellent article   

• “‘Work needs rest and rest takes work’: fatigue specialist Vincent Deary on coping with life”   https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/21/work-needs-rest-and-rest-takes-work-fatigue-specialist-vincent-deary-on-coping-with-life   Yes, they do ...   

• “Reimagining the soul of urban planning | Nature Cities”   https://www.nature.com/articles/s44284-023-00010-8.pdf   

• “Two-faced AI language models learn to hide deception”   https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00189-3   “‘Sleeper agents’ seem benign during testing but behave differently once deployed. And methods to stop them aren’t working”   and   “Fake Biden robocall to New Hampshire voters highlights how easy it is to make deepfakes − and how hard it is to defend against AI-generated disinformation”   https://theconversation.com/fake-biden-robocall-to-new-hampshire-voters-highlights-how-easy-it-is-to-make-deepfakes-and-how-hard-it-is-to-defend-against-ai-generated-disinformation-221744   and   “Medical AI could be ‘dangerous’ for poorer nations, WHO warns”   https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00161-1   

• “Horizon scandal: post office operator cleared after years of suffering in silence”   https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/25/horizon-scandal-post-office-operator-kathleen-crane-cleared-conviction-quashed   “Court quashes Kathleen Crane’s conviction, adding that she was ‘kept in ignorance’ of IT system’s defects”   
  

• “Bootstrapped to death: why America’s favourite saying is strangling mobility”   https://joanwestenberg.medium.com/bootstrapped-to-death-why-americas-favourite-saying-is-strangling-mobility-91b1f34f6d09  
  

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. 

 

If you appreciated this post, please consider promoting it - there are some links below.

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/