Category: Miscellaneous

the purpose of this guide is to combat the mindset of learned helplessness by promoting simple, level-headed, personal preparedness techniques that are easy to implement, don’t cost much, and will probably help you cope with whatever life throws your way

Effective preparedness planning can be simple, but it has to be rooted in an honest and systematic review of the risks you are likely to face. Plenty of preppers begin by shopping for ballistic vests and night vision goggles; they would be better served by grabbing a fire extinguisher, some bottled water, and then putting the rest of their money in a rainy-day fund.

It’s always fun to speculate about solar flares and supervolcanoes; it’s far more mind-numbing to seriously evaluate the consequences of backed up sewage or burst water mains. But in reality, such unglamorous, small-scale incidents are far more likely to disrupt and reshape our lives.

Source: Doomsday prepping for less crazy folk

“If you’re young, privileged, and interested in creating a life of meaning, of course you’d be attracted to solving problems that seem urgent and readily solvable.”

pretend, for a moment, that you are a 22-year-old college student in Kampala, Uganda. … You’ve never been to America. But you’ve certainly heard a lot about gun violence in the U.S. It seems like a new mass shooting happens every week.

You wonder if you could go there and get stricter gun legislation passed. You’d be a hero to the American people, a problem-solver, a lifesaver. How hard could it be? Maybe there’s a fellowship for high-minded people like you to go to America after college and train as social entrepreneurs. You could start the nonprofit organization that ends mass shootings, maybe even win a humanitarian award by the time you are 30.

Sound hopelessly naïve? Maybe even a little deluded? It is. And yet, it’s not much different from how too many Americans think about social change in the “Global South.”

I’ve begun to think about this trend as the reductive seduction of other people’s problems. It’s not malicious. In many ways, it’s psychologically defensible; we don’t know what we don’t know. … but it can be reckless. For two reasons. First, it’s dangerous for the people whose problems you’ve mistakenly diagnosed as easily solvable. … Second, the reductive seduction of other people’s problems is dangerous for the people whose problems you’ve avoided.

Source: The Reductive Seduction of Other People’s Problems – The Development Set

In theory, the Internet of Things—the connected network of tiny computers inside home appliances, household objects, even clothing—promises to make your life easier and your work more efficient. … In theory, connected sensors will anticipate your needs, saving you time, money, and energy. Except when the companies that make these connected objects act in a way that runs counter to the consumer’s best interests

companies set up proprietary standards to ensure that their customers don’t use someone else’s products with theirs … To stop competitors just reverse-engineering the proprietary standard and making compatible peripherals, these companies rely on a 1998 law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). … Specifically, the DMCA includes an anti-circumvention provision, which prohibits companies from circumventing “technological protection measures” that “effectively control access” to copyrighted works. That means it’s illegal for someone to create a Hue-compatible lightbulb without Philips’ permission, a K-cup-compatible coffee pod without Keurigs’, or an HP-printer compatible cartridge without HP’s.

Because companies can enforce anti-competitive behavior this way, there’s a litany of things that just don’t exist, even though they would make life easier for consumers in significant ways.

the Internet of Things is on track to become a battleground of competing standards, as companies try to build monopolies by locking each other out.

Source: How the Internet of Things Limits Consumer Choice – The Atlantic, by Bruce Schneier

RE: President Barack Obama’s televised address from the Oval Office on Sunday night in the wake of the San Bernardino, California attack.

What follows is not meant as criticism of what he said, but is rather an exegesis of what he left unsaid, mostly because of either raison d’état or seemingly insurmountable domestic politics. … All this was right, proper, and sensible. But there were many things that the president either couldn’t say or chose not to bring into the open.

the president didn’t mention how the fear of terror is promulgated … the Western (and especially American) media—which, in “doing their job,” blow the actual terrorist acts far out of proportion.

Source: Obama’s Address: The Truth but Not the Whole Truth « LobeLog by Robert E. Hunter