Category: Disruptive Tech
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Life’s Labor, When Labor isn’t Needed
What will people do, when labor isn’t part of life expectations? If China can use robots and other advanced technologies to retool types of production never before automated, that might turn the country, now the world’s sweatshop, into a hub of high-tech innovation. Less clear, however, is how that would affect the millions of workers…
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Gun Culture and Parental Responsibility in USA circa 2016
I am sorry these toddlers died, but what does this say about parent responsibility and the insane gun culture that some people in the US hold so dear. To me, it looks like the Darwin Awards in action. During a single week in April, four toddlers — Holston, Kiyan, Za’veon and Sha’Quille — shot and…
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Axis Shifting as Pole Ice Melts
Talk about the earth moving under one’s feet… The movement of the Earth’s axis has no practical effects on humans, because it is so small. “We suspect these changes are occurring at a meter [or] a meter-and-a-half, at the most, per year,” Ivins says. But tracking the shifts in the Earth’s axis is crucial for…
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A serious problem the news industry does not talk about — We Are Hearken
A serious problem the news industry does not talk about — We Are Hearken Now that I’ve stepped back from the newsroom/classroom culture of the journalism department, I wish I had spoken up about this more. Sometimes I was surrounded and just thought I must be a pollyanna. I didn’t do enough to fight the…
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Automated Reporting in Political Journalism and Polls
Automated reporting is coming to political reporting. This site uses prediction markets, econometric models and a couple of traditional kind of polling to feed into its algorithm, which then gives forecasts for upcoming elections. As of April 14th, all the methods except econometric, put the Democrats ahead in November. The PollyVote predicts the two-party popular…
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Porn Withheld in Opposition to anti-LGBT Bill
A low blow, or more aptly, “no blow” for Tar Heels as large online porn site withholds its content to show its opposition to the anti-LGBT bill recently passed into law in North Carolina XHamster.com, a porn website that, as of Monday, is one of the world’s 100 most visited websites according to data from Alexa, is refusing…
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Monkey Cowboys
(via Welcome to the Cowboy Monkey Show — MEL Magazine) A wonderful story. How strange though, because Norm and I were just talking about monkeys riding dogs the other day… “The monkey-dog teams will be chasing four sheep, which also travel with the show. The idea, played out night-after-night in venues like this one, is…
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PoMo Blog on Panama Papers/Iceland news
Technology may be providing the means, but it’s the culture’s rebellion against hierarchies that is providing the heat for the Postmodern awakening…Every complex organization will be impacted, because the view from the top is no longer private, and as I wrote long ago, every day that an average person uses the internet, they become more…
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Panama Papers Explainer (fall of Iceland’s leaders)
Vox is getting to be my “go to” news summary each day. This explainer about Iceland/Panama papers is short, useful, and includes a bit of humor… Gunnlaugsson’s party has said it will simply name a new prime minister. But other parties might force an election. The current government was facing labor unrest and discontent long before…
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Vice’s Explainer on the “Panama Papers” and Mossack Fonseca
The leaked documents show that Mossack Fonseca has worked with ponzi schemers, diamond traders, drug kingpins, Ukrainian oligarchs, Saudi kings, and close associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The documents also link Mossack Fonseca to an infamous 1983 gold heist in England, where six thieves tied up security guards, doused them with gasoline, and set…
Barbara K Iverson 