#extraction – @protoslacker on Tumblr

Religious Belief and Practice in the Age of AI

Dr. Damien Patrick Williams writes of the talk:

Seriously engaging with tools and concepts from comparative religious studies, mythology, ritual studies, and the occult to help elucidate both major contextual cues about a LARGE swathe of past and present-day "AI" and tech culture, and also potential insights for how to both react to and shape those contexts.

#extraction #values #religion #ai #Youtube

protoslacker

Two neighbouring countries, Rwanda and Uganda are extensively involved in illegal exploitation of DRC’s mineral resources and the violence that has plagued the eastern region in the past three decades. In recent years, the Rwanda-backed rebel group M23 has intensified its activities, which resulted in the resurgence of widespread violence and massive displacement of people. For years, the United Nations has sounded the alarm over Rwanda’s continued assistance to the M23, putting forward solid evidence of the “direct involvement” of Rwandan Defense Forces in the conflict in eastern Congo-Kinshasa, as well as Rwanda’s provision of “weapons, ammunitions, and uniforms” to the M23 rebels. The United Nations has also implicated Uganda, which has allowed M23 “unhindered” access to its territory during its operations. Despite this evidence, Western countries, especially the United States, have continued to provide support to the two countries, including military aid.

Soleil-Chandni Mousseau in African Arguments. Colonialism Revamped in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Lord Leverhulme’s 1911 concession in the Congo is now held by an African-run New York-based private equity firm with strong links to global philanthropy.

#DRC #africa #colonialism #extraction #american foreign policy

protoslacker

The deceptive story Musk told was key to getting his companies past initial hurdles and himself to the position he’s in today. With SpaceX specifically, it was the idea that the thrust of the business was to achieve the sci-fi vision of setting the foundation for Mars colonization in the short term as a stepping stone to turning humanity into a multiplanetary civilization in the long term. In reality, the company’s real business model was to use that story (paired with some key lawsuits) to get the US government and NASA to provide it with public contracts that would eventually allow it to dominate US rocket launch capabilities and crowd other companies out of low-earth orbit with its Starlink satellites — the space activities that can actually turn a profit.

Paris Marx in Disconnect. What if we never live on Mars?

Tech billionaires sell us the dream of realizing sci-fi fantasies, but that distracts us from building a better society on Earth

#billionaires #fascism #extraction #narrative #plunder

protoslacker

Hiring specifically in back-office functions such as human resources will be suspended or slowed, Krishna said, adding that 30% of non-customer-facing roles could be replaced by AI and automations in five years.

Reuters. IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI - Bloomberg News

I don't understand Large Language Models (LLM) and Geneative AI well enough to have an opinion about them, except that we had better pay attention.

As a worker, "HR is not your friend." is a truism. If one wanted to train AI to be evil the backend of HR seems just the right place. Things are about to get a whole lot worse at work.

#AI #extraction #human suffereing #health insurance

protoslacker

As much as publishers like to claim they “love libraries,” their actions here speak quite clearly that they would destroy them if they could. Controlled digital lending is no different from how a library lends out books today. In both cases, it gets a physical copy of the book (either through purchase or donation), and then proceeds to lend out that copy. With a physical library it’s literally that physical copy. With CDL it’s a scan of that book, but the scan is tied to the physical copy, so that if a digital copy is loaned out, no one else can take out another cop

Mike Masnick at TechDirt. Book Publishers Won’t Stop Until Libraries Are Dead

#libraries #law #enclosure #extraction #knowledge

protoslacker

Such draconian seed laws have paved the way for a neo-colonial capitalistic culture of exploiting farmers to thrive – by encouraging corporate control on seeds and the food system in Kenya. These punitive laws will limit the farmers’ ability to grow their desired, nutrient dense, locally available crops leading to a loss in the food diversity from farm to plate,” continued Nasike. Studies have shown that 90% of the seeds planted in Kenya are from informal seed systems. 80% of smallholder farmers in Kenya depend on informal seed systems which include sharing seeds with other farmers, selling and buying at local markets. Denying these farmers the right to use their indigenous seeds is a theft of the biological resources which will translate to low food production leading to food insecurity.

Hellen Dena at GreenPeace. Punitive Seed Laws Protect Big Corporations Over Kenya’s Farmers

Petition

#food #enclosure #extraction #oppression #law #corporations #seeds #information

protoslacker reblogged

edwordsmyth

her-moth

‘Extraction and assimilation go together. Colonialism and capitalism are based on extracting and assimilating. My land is seen as a resource. My relatives in the plant and animal worlds are seen as resources. My culture and knowledge is a resource. My body is a resource and my children are a resource because they are the potential to grow, maintain, and uphold the extraction-assimilation system. The act of extraction removes all of the relationships that give whatever is being extracted meaning. Extracting is taking. Actually, extracting is stealing—it is taking without consent, without thought, care or even knowledge of the impacts that extraction has on the other living things in that environment. That’s always been a part of colonialism and conquest. Colonialism has always extracted the indigenous—extraction of indigenous knowledge, indigenous women, indigenous peoples … Children from parents. Children from families. Children from the land. Children from our political system and our system of governance. Children—our most precious gift. In this kind of thinking, every part of our culture that is seemingly useful to the extractivist mindset gets extracted. The canoe, the kayak, any technology that we had that was useful was extracted and assimilated into the culture of the settlers without regard for the people and the knowledge that created it.’

- Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

In conversation with Naomi Klein

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Yes! Magazine (2013). Dancing the World into Being: A Conversation with Idle No More’s Leanne Simpson

#idelenomore #Leanne Betasamosake Simpson #extraction #assimilation #land #landscape #politics

protoslacker

The legal mechanisms for enclosure in the world of ideas mirrored those of physical territory. As communication technology rapidly advanced, the mechanical copyright emerged to protect property in the cultural realm. This mechanism ensured a structural advantage for those with the resources to extract and define the value of the culture of those at the margins. The owners of patents and copyrights did more than just document their changing world, they also ossified racial categories and ushered racism along from the biological realm into the cultural one. This was the foundation on which the global entertainment industries of today were built.

Boima Tucker in Africa is a Country. What is whiteness to a cyborg?

Tracing the digital contours of the settler colony helps us understand how old inequalities will shape a future with artificial intelligence.

#culture #inequality #extraction #internet

protoslacker

The debate over CRT is at its heart the assertion, through censorship and punishment, that Black people do not—and should not have—the ability to indict the historical legacy of white civilization and the virtue of white individuals. Insofar as the dissent of Black peoples and other non-white victims of white violence become popularly endorsed, the white managerial structures of American and British societies demand a limit on the discussion of racism and critiques of white societies. As such, the failures of Black people—their poverty, death, and under-representation—cannot be attributed to their history of exclusion and oppression, only their cultural inadequacies or personal failures. In short, the white managerial classes have decided that censorship is necessary to curb not only undesirable speech, but unwanted social empowerment among Black, Brown, and indigenous populations who seek a redistribution of power and economic resources. The effect of which is that Black peoples, despite the rhetoric of equality, remain subject and not a citizen within white democratic societies.

Tommy J. Curry at iaiNews. Racism and the equality delusion

The real critical race theory

#crt #racism #extraction

protoslacker

[T]he ongoing injustices of climate change are based in economic systems that privilege some people over others. Centuries of unequal power relationships have embedded this structural injustice, so that climate change echoes the power relationships of colonialism and empire. Independence may have brought political freedom, but many structural injustices remain. The flow of wealth is the same as it was under empire, with rich white countries extracting what they need from other countries.

Jeremy Williams at BBC Future. Why climate change is inherently racist

Climate change divides along racial lines. Could tackling it help address longstanding injustices?

#climate change #extraction #race #racism #empire #capitalism

protoslacker

Paying people to make the transition from one kind of economy to another is not welfare. Those who work with toxic materials on a daily basis … in order to provide the world with the energy and the materials it needs deserve a helping hand to make a new start in life.

Robert Pollin & Brian Callaci in American Prospect. A Just Transition for U.S. Fossil Fuel Industry Workers A combination of better jobs and pensions will remove one political obstacle to a green transition—and it’s the right thing to do.

#energy #work #extraction #economy

protoslacker

The foundations of prosperity are political struggle against privilege.

Paul Collier review in The Guardian. Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson – review

Two US academics offer a compelling analysis of the world's financial malaise

Why Nations Fail Web site

#economics #sociology #governance #extraction