aral, 25 days ago to random

If you don’t understand:

• The profit motive.

• Slowly boiling frogs.

• Institutional corruption (the influence of corporate finance in political decision-making – i.e., lobbying and revolving doors).

You will keep getting surprised over and over gain by what corporations and the politicians bought by the corporations do.

#crapitalism #capitalism #institutionalCorruption #revolvingDoors #followTheMoney #lobbying

aral, 3 months ago to random

But hey, remember (especially tech folks) that sponsorship doesn’t affect how an organisation behaves.

https://ar.al/2019/01/11/i-was-wrong-about-google-and-facebook-theres-nothing-wrong-with-them-so-say-we-all/

#institutionalCorruption https://scicomm.xyz/@mattjhodgkinson/112030680360805581

aral, 6 months ago to climate

From the I’m Shocked, Shocked That Gambling Is Going On In Here Department:

Cop28 thrown into crisis as ‘weak’ draft decision text rejected by EU and other countries

https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/climate-crisis/2023/12/11/cop28-thrown-into-crisis-as-weak-draft-decision-text-is-rejected-by-eu-and-other-countries/

#Cop28 #CopOut #climateCrisis #institutionalCorruption

aral, 6 months ago to Ethics

Ethics as PR (or the ‘Some Very Good People Work There!’ Fallacy)

https://ar.al/2021/05/08/ethics-as-pr-or-the-some-very-good-people-work-there-fallacy/

@RyunoKi just reminded me of this piece I wrote two years ago. It seems rather timely what with the news about Harvard and Meta, and, beyond tech, Cop28, etc.

#ethics #publicRelations #pr #surveillanceCapitalism #peopleFarming #google #deepmind #harvard #meta #artificialIntelligence #ai #climateChange #Cop28 #institutionalCorruption #lobbying #revolvingDoors #followTheMoney

aral, 6 months ago to meta

Harvard had 500 million reasons to fire this academic.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/04/joan-donovan-harvard-dismissal-complaint/

#harvard #meta #institutionalCorruption #corporatocracy #freezePeach #followTheMoney

opensourcedesign, 6 months ago to random

Have you submitted a talk to the Open Source Design devroom at @fosdem yet? 👀 CfP closing in 10 days!
https://opensourcedesign.net/2023/11/14/fosdem-cfp-2024

aral, 6 months ago to random

Corporations: just let us regulate ourselves, it’ll be fine…

Also corporations: https://old.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/17z8hsz/youtube_has_started_to_artificially_slow_down/

Regulate the absolute living crap out of the these bastards. (But who’s going to when the folks who should be regulating are having drinks with them at the pub every evening and eyeing their next gigs at them?*)

• Did you know Google’s lobbying offices are literally round the corner from the European Parliament?

#regulation #selfRegulation #lobbying #revolvingDoors #institutionalCorruption

aral, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago) to climate

Greta Thunberg pulls out of event due to its links with the fossil fuel industry.¹

Meanwhile, tech folks who see nothing wrong with surveillance capitalists like Google, Facebook, etc., sponsoring privacy events:

“We’re absolutely perplexed… what does any of this mean?”

https://ar.al/2019/01/11/i-was-wrong-about-google-and-facebook-theres-nothing-wrong-with-them-so-say-we-all/

#greenWashing #privacyWashing #institutionalCorruption #climate #surveillanceCapitalism #BigOil #BigTech

¹ https://web.archive.org/web/20230804132413/https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-66407059