Chris Aldrich Blog: BoffoSocko.com

🎧 ‘The Daily’: Two Views of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem | New York Times

Listened to ‘The Daily’: Two Views of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem by Michael Barbaro from nytimes.com

Many Israelis see the relocation of the United States Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv as a historic milestone for the Jewish state. But for Palestinians, who hope to see the eastern part of Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state, it’s a betrayal.

On today’s episode:

• David M. Halbfinger, the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times.

• Declan Walsh, The Times’s Cairo bureau chief, who has been reporting from Gaza this week.

Background reading:

• At least 58 Palestinians were killed and 2,700 injured on Monday as demonstrators clashed with Israeli forces along the Gaza border fence.

• Meanwhile, an hour’s drive away, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel celebrated the new American embassy in Jerusalem at a ceremony attended by Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.

• Here are images of the two contrasting scenes, which illustrate the widening chasm between Israelis and Palestinians after 70 years of conflict.

While listening I forgot about the opener and thought the first half was too chipper and upbeat. I was ready to get upset at the break thinking that they were doing their usual commercial and closing. I had a sigh of relief that it continued. The second half made for a far more balanced picture.

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🎧 ‘The Daily’: The Prospect of Peace With North Korea | New York Times

Listened to ‘The Daily’: The Prospect of Peace With North Korea by Michael Barbaro from nytimes.com

The time and place for a historic meeting between the president of the United States and the leader of North Korea have been set. Does President Trump deserve credit for the diplomatic breakthrough on the Korean Peninsula?

On today’s episode:

• Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times columnist who writes about human rights and global affairs, and who has repeatedly traveled to North Korea for The Times.

Background reading:

• After the release of three American detainees in North Korea, President Trump confirmed on Thursday that he would meet with Kim Jong-un, the North’s leader, on June 12 in Singapore.

• North Korea has invited journalists from the United States and other countries to witness the dismantling of its underground nuclear test site before the summit meeting.

• It may now be possible to envision an era of peace with North Korea, but the odds that the North will forfeit its nuclear arsenal entirely are uncertain at best, Nicholas Kristof writes.

Does Trump get credit? He still hasn’t actually carried anything out yet. It’s even more ironic to be listening to this on the same day that they’re walking away from the table less than 10 days later. Nick Kristof should have held to his guns of doom and gloom.

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🎧 ‘The Daily’: A Life-or-Death Crisis for Black Mothers | New York TImes

Listened to ‘The Daily’: A Life-or-Death Crisis for Black Mothers by Michael Barbaro from nytimes.com

Black mothers and infants in the United States are far more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than their white counterparts. The disparity is tied intrinsically to the lived experience of being a black woman in America.

On today’s episode:

Linda Villarosa, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine.

Simone Landrum, a young mother in New Orleans.

Background reading:

Black women in the United States are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes as white women, and black infants are more than twice as likely to die as white babies. A growing body of research links this disparity to the toxic psychological stress experienced as a result of systemic racism.

The story in this episode is a superb and emotional follow-on of an excellent NPR/ProPublica story I read back in December. We need more stories like this.

I nearly had a panic attack while listening to this. The disparities in parts of America are so painful and distressing and we can, could, and should be doing more to improve them.

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🎧 ‘The Daily’: The C.I.A.’s Moral Reckoning | New York Times

Listened to ‘The Daily’: The C.I.A.’s Moral Reckoning by Michael Barbaro from nytimes.com

Gina Haspel, President Trump’s pick for C.I.A. director, faced the Senate Intelligence Committee for the first time on Wednesday as her confirmation hearings began. Lawmakers addressed her with an unusual line of questioning: What is your moral character?

On today’s episode:

• Matthew Rosenberg joins us from Washington, where he covers intelligence and national security for The New York Times.

Background reading:

• Ms. Haspel defended the C.I.A.’s torture of terrorism suspects after the Sept. 11 attacks, but vowed that she would not start another interrogation program.

• Among the issues raised in the hearing were Ms. Haspel’s involvement in a black site in Thailand where Qaeda suspects were tortured, her role in carrying out an order to destroy videotapes of C.I.A. interrogations, and her willingness to defy a president who has supported waterboarding.

We’ve recently seen the head of the F.B.I. be ousted because he ostensibly wouldn’t take a loyalty oath and refused to close an investigation. Could this happen again? Could it be far worse?

They stopped far too short here in opening up questions of harkening back to the Third Reich and Hitler and his government commanding people to commit genocide. We all know there’s a line one can’t cross and use the defense that “I was commanded to by the authorities.”

So the real question is: will Haspel stand up to Trump to prevent moral atrocities which Trump may want to inflict, whether this may extend to areas like torture or, perhaps, far worse?

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📅 RSVP to The (Bumpy) Road To The Robotics Revolution | Innovate Pasadena

RSVPed Attending The (Bumpy) Road To The Robotics Revolution

Fri, May 25, 2018, 8:15 AM to 9:30 AM
Cross Campus, 85 N. Raymond Avenue · Pasadena, CA

The robotics ecosystem is evolving, as technological advances have paved the way for the robotics revolution. Soon, robots will be part of our everyday lives. Despite these advances, robots are currently about as exciting and easy to use as the command line on the personal computer. We're in the "DOS days" of robotics. So what is the Windows of robotics? How will end-users unlock the potential of personal robots in their homes and workplaces?

In this talk, Dr. Ross Mead will discuss the technological advances paving the way for the robotics revolution, and the robotics hardware companies leading the charge along that path. He will also introduce the software innovations in development at Semio to bring robots to life. Finally, he will provide candid insights on personal setbacks as an entrepreneur working in an emerging market within an emerging market.

Biography
Dr. Ross Mead is the Founder and CEO of Semio. Ross received his PhD and MS in Computer Science from the University of Southern California in 2015, and his BS in Computer Science from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 2007. Ross’s dissertation work focused on enabling autonomous socially assistive robots, specifically, on the principled design and computational modeling of fundamental social behaviors (such as speech, gestures, eye gaze, social spacing, etc.) that serve as building blocks for automated recognition and control in face-to-face human-robot interactions, bringing robotic characters to life. His research provides the foundations upon which Semio software is being built.

Semio is a Los Angeles-based software startup developing the operating system, app ecosystem, and developer tools for personal robots. What Microsoft Windows did for personal computing, what Android did for smartphones, Semio is doing for personal robots. Semio software allows robot content developers to rapidly create and deploy robot apps, allows robot manufacturers to easily integrate with those robot apps, and allows robot end-users to transparently access and use robot apps entirely through natural language, including both speech and body language.

Semio seeks to accelerate the mass adoption of hardware robots into homes and workplaces, finally delivering on the vision of robots in daily life that people have always dreamed of.

Beyond Semio, Ross serves on the Board of Directors for two non-profit organizations: (1) AI LA to promote artificial intelligence in the Los Angeles community; and (2) the KISS Institute for Practical Robotics to promote robotics and STEM in K-12 education around the globe, with a focus on underrepresented populations. In 2018, he co-founded the Social Robot Community Slack team to spark an international community around robotics and natural language technologies. Previously, Ross also served as a technical and scientific advisor to Disney, Intel, and National Geographic, among others.

Email: ross@semio.ai
LinkedIn: /RossMead
Twitter: @RossMead

Reply to vishae’s issue Affects the status of private posts

Replied to Affects the status of private posts · Issue #70 · dshanske/simple-location by

vishae (GitHub)

I've noticed this issue for a little while now but it's only today that I took the time to try and weed out the source. Whenever I update a post marked as private (visibility set to private), the post would get published to the public instead. Even when I edit the post to try to set it to private again, it still remains public. I have to go to the All Post (edit.php) page and quick edit the post to change the privacy there. It's only when I deactivated simple-locations this issue stopped happening and I can update and change the privacy of my posts in the indvidual post editing page.

I could have sworn I filed this as an issue before myself, but I’m not seeing it in the queue. Perhaps I mentioned in chat somewhere?

Simple location’s privacy setting seems to override the post’s public/private settings on my site as well. Perhaps it’s a naming conflict (function/filter/etc.) with WP’s core content visibility code?

In any case, I can’t make a post private while Simple Location is installed/activated either. This seems to happen regardless of other plugins. I do seem to be able to use @vishae’s method of using the quick edit option to change a post to private. I’m not sure if this may indicate a potential solution to the issue based on what is firing on a post save/update versus what fires on a quick edit save.

Additionally, I don’t seem to be able to mark a particular location as “private” in a post either as upon saving it it defaults back to public in the UI. I only seem to be able to use “public” or “protected” options for locations.

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Repost of Jon Udell tweet about journalism and annotation

Reposted a tweet by

Jon Udell (Twitter)

Wanted: An annotation-savvy journalist to join @dangillmor and me at https://t.co/tMTAmHeHmH to discuss how annotation can streamline newsroom workflow.
— Jon Udell (@judell) May 23, 2018

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🎧 The IndieWeb – Martijn | jeena.net

Listened to The IndieWeb - Martijn by

Jeena Paradies from jeena.net

We're two senior IndieWeb participants talking about owning your own content.

I can see why several folks in the IndieWeb community love this discussion. Jeena and Marjtin have a wide-ranging conversation that hits almost all of the high points and most of the discussion is very accessible. There are some places in the second half of the episode where those who aren’t developers may feel like they’re in some higher weeds particularly with some jargon, but much of it is well defined and discussed. In solid journalistic fashion, they start from the most basic (with lots of attention to definitions and detail) and ramp up to the more advanced and detailed. If you’re a blogger, journalist, librarian, educator, other who is relatively web savvy and wants to supplement your knowledge of what is going on in this area, this is a great place to help fill in some gaps before delving into additional help and documentation.

In particular, I love that they do an excellent job of helping to communicate the intentional work, craft, morality, ethics, and love which most of the community approaches the topic.

As I suspect that Jeena doesn’t receive many “listen” posts, I’ll webmention his post here with an experimental microformat class like-of. Perhaps he’ll join some of the podcasting community who supports this and make it a stronger standard.

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📺 “60 Minutes” The Real Power of Google, The Theranos deception, The Spotted Pig | CBS

Watched "60 Minutes" The Real Power of Google, The Theranos deception, The Spotted Pig from cbsnews.com

How did Google get so big; then, the Theranos deception; and, Mario Batali and the Spotted Pig

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👓 For now, our own | Music for Deck Chairs

Read For now, our own by Kate Bowles (Music for Deckchairs)

Over the last week I’ve been skirting a significant conversation begun by Maha Bali (“I don’t own my domain, I rent it“) and continued by Audrey Watters (“A domain of ones own in a post-ownership society“). Never far away is Andrew Rikard’s Edsurge post “Do I own my domain if you grade it?”
The question for me is how the idea of “own” works as a metaphor. It’s complicated enough as it is: my own, to own, owned, owned. We own our mistakes, we own our work, we own our politics, and none of this is quite like the way we own our homes—which for most of our working lives means some version of renting, in a funhouse world in which access to credit, like debt itself, has become an asset.
Conceptually, home ownership makes an ironic pass at all this, promising dominion over property that is actually quite a temporary thing in geohistorical time. Home ownership offers a misleading sense of permanence in relation to our provisional space in the world. A home that’s owned is always haunted by both its past and future. Far from sheltering us against the churn of things, it’s a daily reminder that we’re not here for long.

An interesting piece about ownership and the web.

I’ll try to say more about these ideas which have been swirling about the #EdTech space for a bit, but I thought I’d outline a few bits before I forget them.

9/10 of the law is about ownership
Commons is an interesting framework, but perhaps is an outmoded concept given that the majority of ownership is now either private, corporate, or governmental. Commons is now generally part of governmental ownership now rather than the older versions of what commons used to be. We need some oversight, management, and support for the governmental portion now. Perhaps Hacker’s book has something interesting to add here.
No one is taking the next step to say that either government or educational institutions should be footing the entirety of the bill for marginalized students. Why? Again Hacker et al may have something interesting to say here.
The analogy of ownership to things like houses is fine, but it’s still only that, an analogy to help people more easily think about an abstract idea about which they’ve not got direct knowledge. What about the lack of “ownership” we get from “free” services like Twitter and Facebook? Recall the example of an editorialist saying roughly that we (rich, privileged Americans) shouldn’t leave Facebook because it will potentially damage service to third world groups which then wouldn’t have anything. (include citation). What does all this look like 10 years hence when more people have direct knowledge and we no longer need the “house” ownership model?
What could be added to the discussion at the IndieWeb’s longevity page?
Considerations of evolving complexity and mashups found in examples like When Ideas Have Sex.
Considerations from Why Information Grows (C. Hidalgo) and the creation of value in links as well as the evolution towards larger knowledge entities.
The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed. The same could also still be said about the Industrial Revolution which is still slowly coming to rural third world countries. Recall that it was only until the early 1900’s that the vast majority of people in the world were subsistence farmers.

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Biography

Community resources for the avid Micro.blogger