Mammon category archive
Dead Lobster 0
I blame the Chicago School and the notion it birthed that the first duty of a company is to provide returns to shareholders.
Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Not So Much. 0
Watching and recording your every move? Let’s see.
Bruce Schneier takes a look at Microsoft’s new effort to create an “AI” digital assistant. He–how shall I put this?–has some qualms. Here’s a tiny bit from his post:
It will act trustworthy, but it will not be trustworthy. We won’t know how they are trained. We won’t know their secret instructions. We won’t know their biases, either accidental or deliberate.
We do know that they are built at enormous expense, mostly in secret, by profit-maximizing corporations for their own benefit.
Cry Babies 0
Paul Krugman warn us “to beware the pettiness of the powerful,” observing that
Follow the link for his evidence.
He’s All about the Benjamins 0
How is this not begging for a bribe?
Lead Poisoned 0
Anna Clark, reporter at ProPublica covering issues in the MidWest, discusses her recent reporting on the Flint water crisis, 10 years later.
Learn more here.
It’s All about the Benjamins 0
PoliticalProf follows the money.
What’s in a Name? 0
At Above the Law, Joe Patrice considers a Reuters report that Tesla is under investigation for inflating the “self-driving” capabilities of its vehicles. A snippet:
It’s All about the Benjamins 0
At The Nation, Katrina vanden Heuvel looks at what went wrong at Boeing. A snippet (emphasis added):
That view quickly took hold at the new Boeing. One CEO after another drove up Boeing’s stock value by skimping on its greatest assets: its world-leading engineering and the experts who made it possible. In the last decade alone, the company spent over half a billion dollars on executive pay and $40 billion on stock buybacks instead of reinvesting those profits in operations. Cracks in this approach started showing in 2018 and 2019, when two faulty 737 Max planes crashed, leaving 346 people dead.
Non-Compete Non-Compensate Agreements
0
Sam talks with David Dayen about the FTC’s recent ruling on “non-compete” agreements and how those agreements became weaponized to suppress wages.
The Louse Always Wins 0
Sportswriter extraordinaire Bob Molinaro runs the numbers:
The Cryto Con 0
The grifter gifter.
The Fix Is In . . . 0
. . . and it’s all about the algorithm.
Misdirection Play, Crime Wavers Dept. 0
Thom makes the case that, despite conventional wisdom, inequality (such as, for example, the effects of Ronald Reagan’s “trickle on economics”), not poverty alone, is the primary root of crime.
He provides some telling examples.
In related vein, speaking of arrogant billionaires . . . .
It’s All about the Algorithm 0
Shorter Cameron Smith: Paul Simon was prescient.
The Disinformation Superhighway 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, Stacey Woods offers some tips to avoid being taken in by scams on “social” media.
It’s required reading, because, as has been so often demonstrated, “social” media isn’t.