For the sake of the disabled:

On social media, many people are ecstatic about the crush of cities and businesses pledging to ban plastic straws once and for all. Ever since a video showing a sea turtle with a straw stuck up its nose went viral, campaigns like #StopSucking for a strawless ocean have gained considerable traction. Seattle this month implemented a citywide ban on plastic straws, Starbucks announced on Monday that it will phase out the use of plastic straws by 2020, and many other municipalities and businesses are likely to follow suit. As one Twitter user posted, “My waiter asked ‘Now, do we want straws OR do we want to save the turtles?’ and honestly we all deserve that environmental guilt trip.”

But for many people with disabilities, going without plastic straws isn’t a question of how much they care about dolphins or sea turtles; it can be a matter of life or death.

There are many alternatives to plastic straws — paper, biodegradable plastics and even reusable straws made from metal or silicone. But paper straws and similar biodegradable options often fall apart too quickly or are easy for people with limited jaw control to bite through. Silicone straws are often not flexible — one of the most important features for people with mobility challenges. Reusable straws need to be washed, which not all people with disabilities can do easily. And metal straws, which conduct heat and cold in addition to being hard and inflexible, can pose a safety risk.

And also to… uhhh… use less plastic?

The World Wildlife Fund and Ocean Conservancy both provided ebullient quotes for Starbucks’ press releases. Liberal magazine The New Republic praised the move as an “environmental milestone.” Slate hailed the Starbucks straw ban as evidence of as a victory for a bona fide anti-straw movement, one that would hopefully lead to bans of more things plastic in years to come.

Yet missing from this fanfare was the inconvenient fact that by ditching plastic straws, Starbucks will actually be increasing its plastic use. As it turns out, the new nitro lids that Starbucks is leaning on to replace straws are made up of more plastic than the company’s current lid/straw combination.

Right now, Starbucks patrons are topping most of their cold drinks with either 3.23 grams or 3.55 grams of plastic product, depending on whether they pair their lid with a small or large straw. The new nitro lids meanwhile weigh either 3.55 or 4.11 grams, depending again on lid size.

(I got these results by measuring Starbucks’ plastic straws and lids on two separate scales, both of which gave me the same results.)

This means customers are at best breaking even under Starbucks’ strawless scheme, or they are adding between .32 and .88 grams to their plastic consumption per drink. Given that customers are going to use a mix of the larger and smaller nitro lids, Starbucks’ plastic consumption is bound to increase, although it’s anybody’s guess as to how much.

And the main argument in favor seems to be… raising awareness?

Straw bans aren’t going to save the ocean, but they could jumpstart much-needed conversations about the level of non-biodegradable trash in them.

Please do be so kind as to share this post.

DAG Rosenstein announced indictments of 12 Russian GRU members for various activities related to the 2016 Presidential Election.

WaPo:

The 12 were members of Russian military intelligence, known as the GRU, and are accused of engaging in a sustained effort to hack the computer networks of Democratic organizations and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein planned to detail the new charges at a mid-day press conference. Mueller, as has been his practice, was not expected to attend the announcement. Court records show a grand jury Mueller has been using returned an indictment Friday morning.

Mueller and a team of prosecutors have been working since May 2017 to determine if any Trump associates conspired with Russia to interfere in the election. His work had already led to charges against 20 people on crimes ranging from money laundering to lying to the FBI. Fourteen of those charged earlier are Russians who are unlikely to ever be put on trial in the United States.

CBS News:

“There is no allegation in this indictment that Americans knew they were corresponding with Russian intelligence officers,” Rosenstein said in his announcement.

The charges come just days before President Trump is set to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland. Rosenstein said he briefed Mr. Trump on the indictment earlier this week.

The charges come after Mueller’s investigation has already led to the indictment of 12 Russian nationals earlier this year.

The indictment charges 11 of the defendants with conspiracy to commit computer crimes, eight counts of aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy to launder money, according to the special counsel’s office. Two of the defendants are charged with a separate conspiracy to commit computer crimes.

In the face of alleged foreign interference, Rosenstein urged unity and patriotism against foreign interference.

“The partisan warfare fueled by modern technology does not fairly reflect the grace, dignity and unity of the American people,” Rosenstein said.

Let’s all hope that last statement hold ups. Full indictment can be read here.

Please do be so kind as to share this post.

Center-left parties all over Europe are struggling. Could they find their foot-hold by turning against immigration?

Several factors lie behind the Social Democratic policy change on immigration.

First, welfare state ideology. SD believes itself to be the prime sponsor of the Danish welfare state. As various scholars have pointed out, there is a fundamental contradiction between a very liberal immigration policy and the survival of the welfare state. A welfare state simply cannot afford anything other than a restrictive immigration policy if welfare arrangements are to remain at a reasonable level. This has now been fully agreed upon by the Danish Social Democratic leadership.

The contradictions between a liberal immigration policy and the continued existence of the welfare state has most recently been emphasized in an analysis from the Danish Ministry of Finance, which shows that immigration from third world countries costs the Danish exchequer more than DKK 30 billion (€4bn) a year. This, of course, means a loss of public money which cannot at the same time be spent on the welfare state’s core activities.

In its latest manifesto, “United on Denmark”, SD describes the dilemma as follows: ‘As Social Democrats we believe that we must help refugees, but we also need to be able to deliver results in Denmark via local authorities and for the citizens. For the Social Democratic Party, it is about finding the balance between helping people in need and ensuring the coherence of our country, and continuing to be able to afford the high level of welfare provision that characterizes our society. […] We have therefore been tightening asylum rules and increased requirements for immigrants and refugees. And we will continue to pursue a tight and consistent asylum policy, which makes Denmark geared to handling refugee and migratory pressures’.

It could be! One of the problems they have is when the center-right parties are sufficiently centrist on the issue that they get challenged from their right. In turn, they end up occupying political middle ground and having a cultural pose that makes it difficult for center-left parties to distinguish themselves. That, combined with post-Cold War communist chic splitting the broader left between center and left, is a significant part of their problem. This does at least shake up the board.

More:

For those who imagine Denmark as some form of progressive paradise, the notion of parents being forced to hand over toddlers or face punishment might seem bizarre and alarming. The idea of some criminals receiving lighter punishment because they robbed someone in a well-to-do area seems equally concerning. We look to Scandinavia for wind-turbines and nice furniture, not baby-snatching and Apartheid-lite. The story behind the measures is, however, more complex, if not less alarming: They have been presented as a way of easing social and residential segregation in Danish cities.

The measures come as part of a national plan to get rid of concentrated areas of poverty, and the attendant problems such as low educational performance and lower levels of public health. Also included in the plan, for example, is a ruling that in areas of high deprivation, no more than 40 percent of future housing can be public—an attempt to increase the country’s social mix. Denmark is not alone in Europe in trying this approach. As CityLab has noted in the past, cities like Berlin and Rotterdam have experimented with public housing quotas aimed at diluting concentrations of ethnic minorities, while the Paris region offers frequent tax breaks to encourage businesses to relocate to the deprived banlieues.

Denmark also aspires to integrate by acculturation: The plan would dilute other cultures with (typically wealthier) residents from Danish backgrounds and oblige ethnic minorities to send their children to institutions where their inculcation into official Danish culture is overseen by the state.

Please do be so kind as to share this post.

The questions surrounding AI development are heavy on the why, the how, the should, and other things; so what about what culture that AI would be operating from? Naturally the designer will be reflected, but something as complex as culture meeting the brave new world of AI, there are questions to answer for both fields.

William Michael Carter writes an interesting piece in The Conversation “How to Get Culture Right When Embedding It Into AI,” and the whole thing is a great read, including this excerpt:

What happens when these very unique ecosystems begin to communicate with each other? How will norms and values be determined as the various AI entities begin to exchange information and negotiate realities within their newly formed cultures?

MIT’s Norman, an AI personality based on a fictional psychopath produced a singular example of what we have long known in humans: With prolonged exposure to violence comes a fractured view of cultural norms and values. This represents a real danger to future exposure and transmission to other AI.

How so?

Envision Norman and Alexa hooking up. Both AI’s are representative of the people who made them, the human data that they consume and a built-in need to learn. So whose cultural values and norms would be more persuasive?
Norman was built to see all data from the lens of a psychopath, while Alexa as a digital assistant is just looking to please. There are countless human examples of similar personalities going awry when brought together.

Social scientists argue that the debate over AI is set to explode and, as a result, that multiple versions of AI are bound to co-exist.

As philosophers, anthropologists and other social scientists begin to voice their concerns, the time is ripe for society to reflect on AI’s desired usefulness, to question the realities and our expectations, and to influence its development into a truly pan-global cultural environment.

Read the whole piece at The Conversation, and comment below.

Please do be so kind as to share this post.