Chomsky on education-video

Why the Term ‘Psychopath’ is Racist and Ableist 01

1/22/14/by Lydia Brown

I have become used to being told that I do not have feelings, that I am innately incapable of relating to other people as human beings or having any empathy at all, that this is a core component of what it means to be autistic. I have become used to hearing this said constantly by so-called professionals, dramatically by television personalities, clinically by journalists and academics, and casually by friends, acquaintances, family. But I have never become used to the feeling of absolute devastation weighing somewhere deep in my chest each time I find myself on the receiving end of this accusation.

Empathy is what makes us human.

Kant on revolution

• Kant was well aware of conflict. An extract from the paper posted on Deleuze’s Aesthetics and another paper on Animals and Politics in the OnLine Journal PhanEx.

  First, there is the encounter with rude Nature, then the shock of submission, and finally, the joy of realizing our supersensible nature, all made possible, of course, only through the encounter with Nature. Our mind feels elevated, abandoning itself to Imagination’s freedom from limits which comes only thanks to the Ideas of Reason. Imagination’s greatest effort, which is, to refer to something absolutely great, arises only by reference to the laws of Reason, a correspondence with Rational Laws. As such, the mind is moved, vibrating between attraction and repulsion, dis-harmonious through their contrast. In this manner the two poles of vibration might be said to form a disjunctive synthesis, a disharmony of the faculties. This is how Imagination and Reason generate the subjective purposiveness of our mental powers; they do it by means of conflict.(CJ 27 120-1).

The Rich and Their Robots Are About to Make Half the World’s Jobs Disappear

By Brian Merchant

A tech titan surveys his robotic workforce. Image: Wikimedia

Two hugely important statistics concerning the future of employment as we know it made waves recently:

1. 85 people alone command as much wealth as the poorest half of the world.

2. 47 percent of the world’s currently existing jobs are likely to be automated over the next two decades.

Combined, those two stats portend a quickly-exacerbating dystopia. As more and more automated machinery (robots, if you like) are brought in to generate efficiency gains for companies, more and more jobs will be displaced, and more and more income will accumulate higher up the corporate ladder. The inequality gulf will widen as jobs grow permanently scarce—there are only so many service sector jobs to replace manufacturing ones as it is—and the latest wave of automation will hijack not just factory workers but accountants, telemarketers, and real estate agents.