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”.

Frrom 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):

• “Senior [deaths by] suicide: the silent generation speaking up on a quiet killer”   https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/25/australia-suicide-rates-seniors-data   “Over-85s have become the Australians most susceptible to [death by] suicide and a general lack of support is threatening to make the problem worse”  
  

• “Alan Kohler: An idea Milton Friedman could never, ever grasp – ‘social licence’”   https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/opinion/2024/02/26/kohler-business-social-licence   “I never believed in the Friedman doctrine. Even as an 18-year-old cadet it seemed to me that companies were nothing more than the people in them, indistinguishable from them, and those people have social responsibilities ....   Fifty four years later those truths are more evident than ever.   ...   The warnings of Karl Polanyi were ignored ... that economies (and businesses, by implication) are embedded in society and can’t be separated ... [and] that free-market liberalism makes demands on people that are not sustainable”   “The Fijian myth of the greedy god - Raiana McKinney and Esther Wozniak”   https://youtu.be/CBWgOe8HsV0?si=v5hjMjb5fx6SqCc1   Well told - and some good teaching on attitudes that some still need to learn ...         “The Side Hustle Bait and Switch”   https://joanwestenberg.medium.com/the-side-hustle-bait-and-switch-d64ee8e9aa08   “Exhausted, Broke and Still Hustling: The New Normal   It’s no coincidence that the “side hustle” economy has grown exponentially at the same time that corporate profits have hit 70-year highs while wage growth has hit a 40-year low. A cynic might call the confluence deliberate.”   

• “Google chief admits ‘biased’ AI tool’s photo diversity offended users”   https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/feb/28/google-chief-ai-tools-photo-diversity-offended-users   “Google’s chief executive has described some responses by the company’s Gemini artificial intelligence model as “biased” and “completely unacceptable” after it produced results including portrayals of German second world war soldiers as people of colour”   
  

• “Meta unveils team to combat disinformation and AI harms in EU elections | Elections | Al Jazeera”   https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/2/26/meta-unveils-team-to-combat-disinformation-and-ai-harms-in-eu-elections   BUT   “Social media star warns Meta’s political changes make platforms a ‘pay-to-play model’”   https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/life/tech/2024/02/25/jack-toohey-meta         “70% of Australians don’t feel in control of their data as companies hide behind meaningless privacy terms”   https://theconversation.com/70-of-australians-dont-feel-in-control-of-their-data-as-companies-hide-behind-meaningless-privacy-terms-224072  
  

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/