Month: October 2016

Why We’re Living in the Age of Fear – Rolling Stone

This is the safest time in human history. So why are we all so afraid?

“What we’re talking about is anxiety, not fear,” LeDoux says. Where fear is a response to a present threat, anxiety is a more complex and highly manipulable response to something one anticipates might be a threat in the future. “It is a worry about something that hasn’t happened and may never happen,” says LeDoux.
…
This may seem like a small distinction. But in actuality, it is everything. Because where fear is about a danger that seems certain, anxiety is, in LeDoux’s words, “an experience of uncertainty.”

And that uncertainty is the exact lever that politicians regularly use to try to influence your behavior.

The goal, however, is to separate real threats from manufactured ones. And to find a balance where we are not so scared that we’re making bad decisions that hurt us and our freedom, but not so oblivious that we aren’t taking steps to protect ourselves.

Source: Why We’re Living in the Age of Fear – Rolling Stone

Today’s Innovations Are Tomorrow’s Baseline · Collaborative Fund

Innovation works like compound interest. Today’s group uses yesterday’s hard work and discovery as a starting point to build off of, rather than a finish line.

a lot of pessimism about the future comes from being incredulous that today’s generation is producing, say, another Bill Gates, Henry Ford, or Tony Hawk. This misses a critical point: We now get to use all of those people’s discoveries as a starting point, a foundation to build off of. Never underestimate the power of someone armed with the accumulated trial and error of every genius who came before them.

[my emphasis]

Source: Today’s Innovations Are Tomorrow’s Baseline · Collaborative Fund

Three Things Trump Means When He Says the Election is ‘Rigged’

Two ways he uses the charge are absurd. The third is absurdly dangerous.

This is the third sense in which the election is allegedly rigged. If Hillary wins, it will be with substantial majorities of the votes of women, of blacks, of Hispanics—but quite likely with support from only a minority of white voters. And it will signal a demographic shift that may prove irreversible. Unlike the claims of media conspiracies or systemic fraud, this charge is accurate on its own terms.

She’s suggesting that if most Americans disagree with her, she won’t be bound by the results of the election. She’d rather flirt with secession than accept an outcome in which the “us”—Americans as she’s used to defining them—get outvoted in an increasingly diverse nation. That represents a betrayal of the democratic faith.

It is also vile.

An American is an American. Our votes are equal. And the agreement to abide by the results of elections, particularly those whose outcomes we regret, is the pact that sustains our democracy.

Source: Three Things Trump Means When He Says the Election is ‘Rigged’

Feds Walk Into A Building. Demand Everyone’s Fingerprints To Open Phones – Forbes

Legal experts were shocked at the government’s request. “They want the ability to get a warrant on the assumption that they will learn more after they have a warrant,” said Marina Medvin of Medvin Law. “Essentially, they are seeking to have the ability to convince people to comply by providing their fingerprints to law enforcement under the color of law – because of the fact that they already have a warrant. They want to leverage this warrant to induce compliance by people they decide are suspects later on. This would be an unbelievably audacious abuse of power if it were permitted.”

The justifications didn’t wash with Medvin or Lynch. Of the Fourth Amendment argument, Medvin said the police don’t have the right to search a person or a place in hopes of justifying the search later as reasonable. “That’s not how the 4th Amendment works,” Medvin added. “You need to have a reasonable basis before you begin the search – that reasonable basis is what allows you to search in the first place.”

Source: Feds Walk Into A Building. Demand Everyone’s Fingerprints To Open Phones – Forbes

Amy Goodman Is Facing Prison for Reporting on the Dakota Access Pipeline. That Should Scare Us All.

The charges against Goodman are a clear attack on journalism and freedom of the press.

When asked to explain the grounds for arresting a working journalist, Erickson told the Grand Forks Herald that he did not, in fact, consider Goodman a journalist. “She’s a protester, basically,” Erickson told the newspaper. “Everything she reported on was from the position of justifying the protest actions.” And in The Bismarck Tribune he later added, “I think she put together a piece to influence the world on her agenda, basically. That’s fine, but it doesn’t immunize her from the laws of her state.”

It’s worth pausing here for a moment to contemplate the full and chilling absurdity of this statement: According to Erickson, a woman who appeared at a protest carrying a microphone emblazoned with the name Democracy Now! and trailing a video crew; who can be heard in the resulting video report identifying herself to a security guard as a reporter; and who then broadcast the video on the daily news program she has hosted for 20 years is not actually a journalist. She is not a journalist, because she harbors a strong perspective, and that perspective clashes with his own.

Source: Amy Goodman Is Facing Prison for Reporting on the Dakota Access Pipeline. That Should Scare Us All.