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The most influential work of literature?
When that happens, their mere existence will skew what is perceived as the greatest and most influential works of literature on Earth. For it won't be the great religious works of the major religions by which our descendants in space will be able to trace their mere existence. The Bible, Koran, I Ching, or the Vedas won't get us there. It won't be the great works of philosophy from Plato's many works through to modern times. Or almost anything we consider great literature today. One doesn't get into space by the unsteady hand of Hamlet, for example.
Works of economics are similarly disfranchised. This future might be enabled by Das Kapital or Wealth of Nations, but it's not going to be able to trace its lineage to these. Nor most great works of science such as Origin of Species (though Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica will have a prominent role in the foundation leading up to this great work).
There is a peculiar aspect to early space engineering (basically everything before the Second World War). Namely, that it was very insular, even from its closest neighbor, astronomy which would reasonably be thought to share common interests. There are very few notable researchers in the field until one gets to the late 1920s. There was little official interest in space development until the Nazis got involved in the mid-30s. But they all share common inspiration. And everything that involves putting anything in space or doing anything in space comes from this inspiration.
So when humanity has gone beyond Earth, there will be one work of literature which will stand out from all the rest. I, of course, speak of From the Earth to the Moon, by Jules Verne, published in 1865.
Trump's October Surprise: He's SEXIST
It's a wrap! Get ready for President H. R. Clinton!
Trump recorded having extremely lewd conversation about women in 2005
Billy Bush was already polarizing. His lewd Donald Trump conversation makes things much worse.
Tape Reveals Donald Trump Bragging About Groping Women
'You Can Do Anything': In 2005 Tape, Trump Brags About Groping, Kissing Women
In talking about kissing women, Trump boasted: "I'm automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything."
"Grab them by the p****. You can do anything," the Republican nominee continued, using vulgar slang for the female anatomy.
Trump also told Bush — who is the nephew of former President George H.W. Bush and cousin of former President George W. Bush and former 2016 candidate Jeb Bush — about a time he unsuccessfully tried to seduce a married woman.
"I moved on her, and I failed," he said. "I'll admit it. I did try and f*** her. She was married." He continued, "I moved on her very heavily."
He said he even took her furniture shopping to try to get her to sleep with him.
"I moved on her like a b****," he said, "but I couldn't get there. And she was married. Then, all of a sudden, I see her — she's now got the big phony t*** and everything. She's totally changed her look."
[...] In regard to trying to shift blame to Bill Clinton, Trump has also threatened to bring up the former president's infidelities in an attempt to damage his wife during the next debate. That's despite Trump's having been divorced twice and admitting to his own adultery. At the time of this 2005 recording, Trump had just married his third (and current) wife, Melania.
'America deserves far better': Republicans react to crude comments from leaked Trump audio
"No woman should ever be described in these terms or talked about in this manner. Ever," Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus said in a statement, in a sharp, unprecedented response about the party's presidential nominee.
“This was locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course - not even close. I apologize if anyone was offended.”
Kim Kardashian Robbed of $10 Million in Jewelry in Paris
Kim Kardashian Bound, Gagged and Held at Gunpoint: Exclusive New Details on the Robbery in Paris
The French Interior Ministry said five men threatened a concierge with a weapon, handcuffed him and forced him to open Kardashian's private apartment. Per Today, the Paris Prosecutor's office confirmed two of the men gained entry to her room. One of Kardashian's rings, worth an estimated $4.49 million, as well as a jewelry box, worth an estimated $5.6 million, were stolen.
This is a critical moment in human history.
"Smack for a Snack" at Kentucky Daycare
Kentucky day care worker cited for 'smack for a snack' game
The report says two male staff members would play a "Smack for a Snack" game. The report says the only way school-age children could get a yogurt is to allow the men to hit them with a stick on their leg and/or hand. State officials say at least two students had noticeable bruising. Lexington Police cited one staff member with second-degree assault.
An ingenious cost-cutting move that builds character.
More problems are noted in the article.
Hillary Clinton Hacked Audio
https://theintercept.com/2016/09/30/hillary-clinton-center-right/
IN THE HACKED recording of a private conversation with campaign donors in February, Hillary Clinton distanced herself from progressive goals like “free college, free healthcare” and described her place on the political spectrum as spanning from the center-left to the center-right.
Clinton has been inconsistent in the past about espousing political labels. She has at times touted herself as stalwart liberal. For instance, she said last July: “I take a backseat to no one when you look at my record in standing up and fighting for progressive values.” But a few months later, she told a group in Ohio: “You know, I get accused of being kind of moderate and center. I plead guilty.”
The newly disclosed comments came in audio, apparently from hacked emails, that was revealed this week by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative blog run by a Republican communications strategist. Clinton was speaking at a Virginia fundraiser hosted by Beatrice Welters, the former U.S. ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago, and her husband Anthony Welters, the executive chairman of an investment consulting firm founded by former Clinton aide Cheryl Mills.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-supporters-audio-leak-228997
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-jumps-leaked-audio-hillary-clinton-fundraiser/story?id=42499760
Fixing work by breaking it
meustrus:
Underemployment could be a society-side solution to class disparity caused by systemic unemployment. Think about mechanization especially: a single factory may have had 100x as many workers before robots, but all the remaining workers are still working full hours. Perhaps instead of concentrating that wealth in the investors, we could keep more like 1/2 of the workers earning the same wages for fewer hours. That way we could maintain a wider income distribution while improving overall quality of life. But there is a fundamental problem that may be intractable: human greed. The investors want the maximum return on investment for the robots they bought, whether or not that return comes at somebody else's expense. And the individual worker, with the opportunity to work 30 hrs/week for the same wage as their former 40 hrs/week, would usually rather keep their hours and earn 33% more.
While there's a lot more written in this discussion thread, I'll stop with that.
There's this idea that work is broken. We're working too much, paid too little, and employers are fat cats leeching off our work. So we're going to force everyone to work less so that these employers have to pay us more. There's a certain sense to it. Lowering the hours worked per week constrains the supply of labor and hence, in a vacuum would raise to some degree the price of labor.
But then we start getting into the many, many problems. The most obvious is simply that work does things and makes stuff. The less we work, then the less things we do and the less stuff we make. This is a problem in a variety of ways.
It means we're doing considerably less overall - the virtues of that level of underemployment aren't enough to compensate for the drawbacks. And I doubt it's a great idea to slow down the rate of progress just for some labor policy. For example, I'd much rather we at least get the developing world up to developed world status and some major progress on human longevity done before we dial back.
That output of work also pays for our labor. The less we do, then the less output there is to pay for our labor.
We also have large fixed costs per worker in the developed world. The less labor per worker the more these costs dominate. That means yet another way employers end up employing less people.
Moving on, another key observation here is that work (not effort!) and employment are not fixed. We can always find more stuff to do, we can find ways to do that stuff better, we can start new businesses, or change existing ones. This leads to another observation. Why curb supply of labor when we can increase demand for labor? Well, that would require throwing bones to employers such as reduced minimum wage; easier employment termination; lower thresholds to business creation, growth, and shrinkage; lower taxes; and reduced mandatory benefits.
One notices a striking component of these work reduction proposals. The employer is the enemy often labeled as "human greed" (as in meustrus's comment) or as the impersonal "investor". Somehow it's not human greed to pass laws to force employers to pay you the same for less work (on top of all the other wealth extraction ploys out there) even though you're pursuing your own benefit at the expense of the employer and threatening the viability of the whole system. But it is human greed just to be an employer. So of course, throwing bones to employers is unthinkable and we are left with this dysfunctional spiral.
Who's more important? A horde of underemployed workers who can't do stuff for themselves? Or the relatively few employers who keep everything going? Sure, you need workers, but when you're in an underemployed situation, there are too many of them and not enough employers.
And of course, the idea of forcing this change on everyone, the unspoken iron fist in this discussion, is completely ignored. In a free society, we certainly should have the choice to work harder to better ourselves and circumstances.
So here's my take on the whole matter. Breaking work further will not make it better, particularly in a world which already has attractive substitute goods for your labor: developing world labor and automation. The perverse and stilted ideology behind this proposal will not consider the obvious alternative, making employing people more attractive.
The proposed benefits of labor reduction are laughable such as income equality (devaluing labor hurts the poor far more than the rich making income inequality worse), inflation prevention (making stuff that people pay money for is deflationary so forcing people to make less stuff is inflationary), better quality of life (why do I need to work less to make your life better? Perhaps, you ought to unilaterally work less? I'm not holding you back), and of course fighting the good fight against human greed (human greed has always been with us, why is it suddenly more of a problem now than the past?).
So how about we fix what actually is broken or do something positive rather than entertain proposals that aren't even pointed in the right direction to fix anything or help anyone?
Only white supremacists use Oculus Rift!
Omagerd I can't even.
Some developers dropping Oculus support to protest founder’s politics [Updated]
Indie developers Polytron (best known for Fez) and Kokoromi (makers of the intriguing VR puzzle game SuperHyperCube), have joined in the developer protest against Oculus. Last year, SuperHyperCube was announced as a PlayStation VR exclusive "at launch," but today, the companies made it clear "we will not be pursuing Oculus support" for the game after that exclusivity expires.
"In a political climate as fragile and horrifying as this one, we cannot tacitly endorse these actions by supporting Luckey or his platform," they wrote (and announced via tweet). "If you are a voting citizen of the United States, please remember to register and make your voice heard this Nov. 8. Do not let bigotry, white supremacy, hate, and fear win."
Instead of making it so that any dumb VR headset can view our game, we will take a stand against bigotry (and having political opinions) and work only with Sony VRDRM.
Palmer Luckey, Millionaire Founder of Oculus Rift, Loves Donald Trump and Dates a Gamergater
It’s been an open secret for some time that Palmer Luckey, the 24-year-old founder of VR company Oculus Rift and heir apparent to the future of gaming, is a strange guy—the type who argues with his customers on Reddit and casually cosplays as My Little Pony characters. Turns out, he also appears to be an active supporter of Donald Trump and the alt-right, and in a long-term relationship with an avid Gamergater.
Rags-to-riches nerd dates a hottie, gets called out for it. No pussy for anti-social white nerds, EVER.
It's all a conspiracy to derail anti-social VR technology! Everyone who is anti-social will be exterminated! You must buy the upcoming Apple augmented reality product, which is pro-social! But not Google's, because that one is just as anti-social as VR, you problematihole!
I'm sure these articles would do "well" on the front page, but I don't want to put them there.
Maybe we need some new options for journals. For example, an option to nest journals (from friends only) between stories on the main page, or an RSS feed that lists all of the journals (if this one exists, I haven't seen it).
A summary of the Clinton email saga to date
The FBI could not review all of the Hillary Clinton emails under investigation because: The Clintons’ Apple personal server used for Hillary Clinton work email could not be located for the FBI to examine.
- An Apple MacBook laptop and thumb drive that contained Hillary Clinton email archives were lost, and the FBI couldn’t examine them.
- 2 BlackBerry devices provided to FBI didn’t have their SIM or SD data cards.
- 13 Hillary Clinton personal mobile devices were lost, discarded or destroyed. Therefore, the FBI couldn’t examine them.
- Various server backups were deleted over time, so the FBI couldn’t examine them.
- After State Dept. notified Hillary Clinton her records would be sought by House Benghazi Committee, copies of her email on the laptops of her attorneys Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson were wiped with BleachBit, and the FBI couldn’t review them.
- After her emails were subpoenaed, Hillary Clinton’s email archive was also permanently deleted from her then-server “PRN” with BleachBit, and the FBI couldn’t review it.
- Also after the subpoena, backups of the PRN server were manually deleted.
Notice the "after the subpoena" stuff at the end of the list. That's destruction of evidence which is likely yet another felony for whoever did that. After that, the report lists all classified information that was discovered from what emails the FBI investigators were able to reconstruct; a list of Clinton players involved in the scandal; and a timeline. The timeline repeatedly lists concerns raised about the email setup, security training for Clinton and her staff, events like destruction of evidence, and hacking attempts, some which were successful, into State Department affairs and personal email accounts of State Department officials and Clinton associates.
Thus, we have strong evidence for gross negligence, which is a felony even if it is not intentional, evidence of coverup of something, and a presidential candidate with a remarkable disregard for the responsibilities of her duties.
Rick & Morty co-creator shows off free Accounting VR game
NPR Reports on the Kratom Scheduling Outrage
Kratom Advocates Speak Out Against Proposed Government Ban
The White House petition has surpassed the 100k needed for a response, and is now at 119,024 signatures.
