Lara Hogan - "What Does Sponsorship Look Like"

 https://larahogan.me/blog/what-sponsorship-looks-like/

 

 

What members of underrepresented groups in tech often need most is opportunity and visibility, not advice.

 

Ursula Le Guin - "The word for world is forest"

Short book about a world far from Earth (Terra), colonized by humanoids, with all the same stereotypes as per old

And the translator is the god. Selver had brought a new word into the language of his people. He had done a new deed. The word, the deed, murder. Only a god could lead so great a newcomer as Death across the bridge between the worlds.

Dongh was worried by these multiple-choice futures, but Lyubov enjoyed them. In diversity is life and where there's life there's hope, was the general sum of his creed, a modest one to be sure.

Kenneth Boyd - "The Antidote to fake news is to noursih our epistemis wellbeing"f

https://psyche.co/ideas/the-antidote-to-fake-news-is-to-nourish-our-epistemic-wellbeing

One of the most lamentable aspects of our current epistemic situation is the rise of conspiratorial thinking: people are willing both to believe a whole host of outlandish theories, and to share them widely on social media. This might come about partly as a response to a decreased sense of epistemic wellbeing, with the result that we look to potentially surprising places to try to find truths, trusthworthy sources and opportunities for dialogue.

Cooking, Monasteries, Arithmetic: Lorraine Daston on the history of Rules

https://www.publicbooks.org/cooking-monasteries-arithmetic-lorraine-daston-on-the-history-of-rules/

The root of the word arbitrary refers to "an act of will," and its associations are quite positive up until about the 16th and 17th century, when it starts to take on a distinct odor of whim and caprice–often cruel whem and caprice–in the political theory of the era. John Locke, writing in the Second Treatise on Government, can think of nothing, aboslutely nothign more intolerable than to be subject to the arbitrary will of another. "Arbitrary will" is somewhat redundant (because arbitrary is always about the exercise of will), but the ipso facto assumption is that all exercises of will as only an act of will are somehow unjustified, excessive, and a form of the unacceptable exercise of power that in the most extreme cases is that of master over slave.

Paul Bloom - "The Strange Appeal of Perverse Actions"

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/perverse-incentives

Wegner proposed that such attempts at thought suppression [trying not to think about racial stereotypes makes people more conscious of them, sometimes to the point of distraction and anxiety] involve two distinct mental processes. First, there's a conscious and effortful system that works to create the desired outcome–for example, by finding something to think about that's not a white bear. Second, there's a part of the mind that remains alert to what's being suppressed–it scans for white-bear thoughts so that they can be shooed away. Sometimes, especially if we are tired or distracted or inebriated, the workings of the second system seep into consciousness. Now you're thinking of, and maybe talking about, just what you were trying to avoid thinking about.

And there might be something respectable about perversity done right. The righteously perverse individual appreciates the value of rationality, morality, and the good life–and then, chafing against them, chooses another path. Evolutionairy biologists sometimes speak of "hopeful monsters": although evolution typically occurs when tiny changes in phenotypes lead to greater reproductive success, hopeful monsters, which are the products of macromutations, make huge leaps through evolutionary space. Such leaps, theorists say, would be almost certain to fail–but, theoretically, could spawn new lineages. The standard procedure for a rational decision-maker is to consider the alternatives and settle on the option that has the highest probability of maximizing whatever it is that one wants to mazimize, all the while trying to avoid pitfalls, such as myopia, weakness of will, whishful thinking, fear, and overconfidence. But what if you sometimes choose to behav erratically, unpredictably? A small dose of perversity might have its benefits. On an organizational level, for instance, it makes sense for a granting institution to spend its money on the proposals that its experts think are best. And yet it could also make esense, simulatenously, to allocate some of the money by lottery–or even to put aside some small fund for the proposals that the experts think are the worst.

Stefano Mancuso - "Why Bumblebees Love cats and Other Beautiful Relationships"

https://longreads.com/2021/03/23/nation-of-plants-excerpt-stefano-mancuso/

excerpt from "The Nation of Plants"

There is a famous story along these lines told for the first time by the German biologists Ernst Haeckel and Carl Vogt. As the story goes, the fortunes of England would seem to depend on cats. By nourishing themselves on mice, cats increase the chances of survival of bumblebees, which, in turn, pollinate shamrocks, which then nourish the beef cows that provide the meat to nourish British sailors, thus permitting the British navy—which, as we all know, is the mainstay of the empire—to develop all of its power.

Darwin tells us that trying to imagine the final consequences of any alteration in these relationships would be as “hopeless” as throwing up a handful of sawdust on a windy day and trying to predict where each particle would land.9

bales of finely woven cotton and delicate yarns of an amazing carmine red. The dye used by the Aztecs to produce this incredible tone of red was obtained from a tiny insect, the cochineal, that lives on cactus plants (various species belonging to the genus Opuntia, the prickly pear). The color was so beautiful and precious that states under Aztec domination were required to furnish annually to the emperor a certain number of sacks full of cochineals as tribute. A fine brilliant carmine dye was, and still is, obtained from the dried bodies of these insects.

...an aamazing carmine red. The dye used by the Aztects to produce this incredible tone of red was obtained from a tiny insect, the cochineal.

Enamored of Spanish carmine, which they used to color their military uniforms (their famous red coats)

Nature always wants the last word.