CFR is one of the biggest foreign relations think tanks in Washington. As far as I can tell they don't have too much of an imperialistic standpoint, most of the analysis is from a higher worldview, not just US-centric.

Thats what I like about Foreign Affairs, some of the things they post are wrong, but they post them anyway, and will usually post a followup later.

Here's the authors follow-up article if your interested.

Yea, this was written before Russian forces showed up in Ukraine and I thought the reversal was interesting

Probably the best response I have to that is (and possibly the rational for the offer), it doesn't matter of "The Facebook" fails if Facebook the company owns the alternative that people start using.

Thanks didn't see it the other day, will delete

I feel really conflicted about the whole thing. On one hand he exploited the system and made a bunch of money on the backs of the Russian people. But on the other hand it's very obvious that he was a better businessman than the other oligarchs who did very little to improve their assets. If not Kodorkovsky, someone else would have bought Yukos and just sat on it, and I wonder if that would be any better.

Funny you should mention that, first I time heard about him was through the documentary "Kodorkovsky".

Can't find a youtube link, but it is on Netflix

con·tem·po·rar·y

1. living or occurring at the same time.

2. belonging to or occurring in the present.

How the hell did you come to the conclusion that contemporary is a buzzword? If anything its the proper name for current architecture. Every architectural movement you named is historical, thus the name. Can't have a name that sums up the movement if it hasn't run its course yet can you?

All the designs were done probably done for free, like every other architectural competition, so I agree that they are shit, but your complete ignorance of the realities of the projects just to put down the post doesn't help anybody.

While money is obviously an issue (most architects really don't make that much money) its interesting that none of these architects actually bought their own dream home (and very few architects live in houses they designed)

I wouldn't exactly call that a list of important thinkers, its more like a list of the years important or pivotal people. Edward Snowden and John Kerry may have made important statements this year, but neither of them have revolutionary world views that could change the way people see the world.

That is to say, Snowden doesn't say anything new about libertarian-socialism or state surveillance, he was just a pivotal figure in publicizing the US domestic spying program.

But at the same time I wouldn't go change my whole lifestyle over an blog post that only lists secondary and even tertiary sources.

At most I see this happening to the USPS within the decade, or sooner if it becomes politically advantageous to do so.

I appreciate that he is vetting and staggering releases, but I'd disagree, they are getting incredibly insignificant. I always get a bad reaction when I dismiss the snowden leaks, and confirmation of domestic spying is certainly important, but the things about spying on other countries, I mean that the FUCK did people expect, its their job.

But Greenwald carefully timed, well marketed, and over-hyped releases are equally as obnoxious. Of course they are going to become the base of NewCo so I don't blame him from a business perspective, but as the leaks get less and less significant the process of hype, announcement and discussion is going to get really tedious.

I should be noted that one of the reasons New Urbansim became so popular was because developers are willing (and eager) to build these communities. While there are great things about walkable cities (nobody talks about walkable suburbs) from a developer's perspective they can sell smaller lots for the same amount of money as a larger lot under the banner of making things more "walkable".

But it doesn't matter, because very few people that live in these communities walk anywhere at all. Since there aren't any big points of interest inside a suburban real estate development everybody just drive out anyway. Killer Cul-de-sacs is just clever marketing, nobody is out there tearing them up, they just build new developments and its much easier to get people to move in when they don't like their old street.

Isn't that kind of the point of a dynasty

Sounds like a sloppy rewriting of Richard Carrier's "Proving History: Bayes' Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus."

While I only did a quick search this is the only reference I can find about using Bayes Theorem to analyze history. Besides my hatred some people making everything a technocratic or statistical problem, the use of Bayes just seems conveniently trendy.

Unless I am missing something, it doesn't seem like he is talking about assisted suicide, he is talking about euthanasia.

I know he mentions assisted suicide, but he never mentions anything about his father wanting to die. If somebody wants to die then I think they have a right to, but euthanizing someone just because you think they are suffering too much is just wrong. Even if I am laying in a hospital bed, and nobody else sees a reason to keep me alive, I still want to be given the chance to live, because I only get to do this once.

And you never know how true this is until you own one.

I tried online dating recently just out of curiosity (didn't go only dates, I just wanted to see if it would jive with me) and I found the experience really off-putting. Really the biggest thing I noticed was the lack of information that you get when you look at someone's profile. I'm already a pretty picky person when it comes to dating, and I found that the whole process brought out the worst of that. Beside wanting more information about people (which I'll admit involved a bit of sleuthing) I found that I started judging people on the tiniest things, how their profile picture was taken, the way they wrote their bio, etc. And when I stepped back I thought to myself "Man, I'm dismissing people one really tiny things, and if I met them in irl I would at least consider them for a few days".

I can't say anything certain, and of course all of this is anecdotal, but I wonder if this is where the dismissal of black women comes from. Because there is so little to go on, you start inferring all of this other stuff from stereotypes, cultural context, where they are from and anything else that might be a clue into their personality. Personally I hate that I started thinking that way.

Thats the one that really got me too. Besides being a tenuous geographic relationship given the other regions, the culture, but not necessarily voting history is very different. But I would also think that by segmenting Yankeedom, the author would be forced to split up some of the other regions too, which would distract from his point.

All your programmer needs is to learn how to be a lazy designer. Helvetica Bold - Centered. Everywhere.

It might be horrible, but at least it looks decent.

If it makes it any better, I hadn't seen the video until a few minute before I posted.

The only upside to this is that they did not stoop to the level of giving everyone participation awards.

Yeasayer - O.N.E.

This is not real. Explanation

No.

Why: Because every country in the world does it.

While I agree that the author was off base when he talked about the morality of homosexuality, I don't think is overall analysis of contemporary performance art is wrong.

Obviously his moral perspective comes from a conservative Christian worldview, that sex is something sacred and homosexual is something morally objectionable. A liberal would take offense to that view, but from the authors perspective its totally valid. Arguing about whose view is right and whose is wrong doesn't get us anywhere. Ultimately I think his line about putting aside the morality of homosexuality was directed towards readers who would stop reading as soon as they read the word homosexual.

Performance art has just dropped into this realm of trivializing actions that would otherwise mean something. A piece like Shoot allows rich white benefactors to look at the act of getting shot as something entertaining. Hardly the thought of someone getting shot on the wrong side of town. "Wow what an experience."

The author might be off with the moral argument, but so much of performance art trivializes intimate acts (that in many cases would be intimate) by doing things just because they are interesting. If there wasn't this degree of intimacy in the act of losing his virginity Clayton Pettet would have never done the piece.

I wouldn't even limit this to Facebook. Any social media that allows people to talk as "equals" or behind a veil of anonymity allows for crazy conspiracy theories to thrive in communities that present themselves as immune from crackpot theories. Most of the time, on sites with a less diverse user population (I'm classifying Facebook as having a very diverse user group) the right-wing conspiracies get dismissed simply because the users are more liberal. Yet after the Snowden leaks I notice a huge influx in the number of conspiracy theories floating around sites like Reddit and Ycombinator that framed in a wholly evil, all-knowing organization. Things like "Micheal Hastings was assassinated by the CIA" were widely talked about and accepted even though the evidence was circumstantial at best. They are communities that claim to be above the theories, yet they embrace them when they explain something that is confusing to them.

So while the article talks about Facebook and climate denial, recent my recent experiences online given me doubt that any community is immune from conspiratorial explanations, especially when they are one the "losing" side of the news.

Having worked with a computer scientist in computer vision it is really interesting to see the huge difference between what people can imagine and what is actually possible. For instance, tracking people isn't a hugely difficult thing to do, but using multiple cameras to track people in 3d space is one of the hard problems of the day. Those kinds of things are possible in real-time, but doing facial recognition in real-time is nearly impossible.

My favorite quote about computer vision comes from one of this professors PhD students:

The thing you have to remember about computer vision is that everything is nearly impossible

3vr is one of the In-Q-Tel (CIA venture capital arm) supported companies doing a majority of the work for the NSA and looking their products is a good measure of what is currently possible.