Hazel Henderson alerted us to this worthy campaign coming out of Puerto Rico. Reposted from the Barrio Solar Crowdfund page. On the subject of Puerto Rico’s energy grid, also don’t miss this reaction to Elon Musk’s white-saviour bro-capitalist solutions.
I was invited to write the Preface to Rethinking The Modular: Adaptable Systems in Architecture and Design edited by Burkhard Meltzer and Tido von Oppeln. As the book has just been published, here follows my text:
Back to the Present
Cerca de 250 mil visitantes llegan anualmente hasta la comuna de la región de Los Lagos para participar de esta fiesta de la música.
El próximo 29 y 30 de noviembre se habilitará una carpa en el frontis de dicho Hospital, que permitirá que todos los interesados mayores de 14 años se realicen uno de estos exámenes, los que serán aplicados por personal clínico especializado. La prueba consiste en una punción digital simple con un mínimo volumen de sangre que, en no más de 15 minutos, detectará la presencia de anticuerpos contra este virus.Como un brote epidémico de VIH en el país calificó el director del Centro de VIH del Hospital Clínico de la Universidad de Chile, Dr.
Con la presencia del Rector Ennio Vivaldi, este jueves 9 de noviembre el equipamiento fue inaugurado en el Campus Sur de la Facultad de Medicina de nuestro plantel, vinculado al Hospital Barros Luco Trudeau.
El lenguaje como herramienta central del psicoanálisis y su relación con procesos políticos, históricos y culturales fueron los temas centrales del encuentro que convocó a especialistas de las ciencias sociales, las humanidades y las artes.
William J. Drake project for the WEF on data localization and barriers to cross-border data flows
The latest blog post from the FairCoop project – of which [disclaimer] I am an active member – shows the adoption by the project of the Open Collaborative Platform software, itself a fork of the Open Value Network software originally developed by Bob Haugen and Lynn Foster in collaboration with the S
One of the quirks of people on the leftish end of the political spectrum is that we pay a lot of attention to language, especially to the words we use when we’re talking about a group of people. It’s a quirk that folks on the right know how to exploit. Let me explain…
Matthew Taylor at the RSA: “The core characteristics of modern Western societies are market-based economies, relatively extensive welfare systems and the rule of law presided over by representative democracy. All three of these elements have been subject to sustained critique in recent years….
Automating (In)Justice: Policing and Sentencing in the Algorithmic Age
Data for Black Lives (D4BL) is "a group of activists, organizers, and mathematicians committed to the mission of using data science to create concrete and measurable change in the lives of Black people." This is a liveblog from the Automating (In)Justice panel for the D4BL 2017 Inaugural Conference. Liveblogging contributed by Rahul Bhargava – apologizes for any errors or omissions.
Data for Black Lives (D4BL) is "a group of activists, organizers, and mathematicians committed to the mission of using data science to create concrete and measurable change in the lives of Black people." This is a liveblog from the opening panel for the D4BL 2017 Inaugural Conference. Liveblogging contributed by Rahul Bhargava and Catherine D'Ignazio. They apologize for any errors or omissions.
Yeshimabeit opens with a reminder that data and technologies have far too often been weaponized against black communities.
Panelists:
Kevin Stark: The word Decidim translated from Catalan means we decide, and it’s the name of Barcelona’s digital infrastructure for participatory democracy. One part functional database and one part political statement, organizers say Decidim is key to a broad digital transformation that is taking place in Barcelona — its institutions, markets, and economy.
Helen Margetts in OpenDemocracy: “In the course of the World Forum for Democracy 2017, and in political commentary more generally, social media are blamed for almost everything that is wrong with democracy. They are held responsible for pollution of the democratic environment through fake news, junk science, computational propaganda and aggressive micro-targeting.
Making All Voices Count: “Maputo has a population of over 1.1 million people, with 54 per cent living below the poverty line and 70 per cent living in informal settlements. The majority of the city’s roads are unpaved and flood control is limited, particularly in informal settlements in peri-urban areas. During the rainy season, streets flood and gutters quickly fill with debris and garbage, blocking the drainage of rainwater.
Die Westdeutsche Kieferklinik ist als eine Keimzelle der heutigen Düsseldorfer Universitätsmedizin ein historisches Beispiel dafür, wie durch ein schreckliches Ereignis, den 1. Weltkrieg mit vielen traumatisierten und gesichtsverletzten Frontkämpfern, die Entwicklung einer ganzen medizinischen Disziplin – der Mund-Kiefer und Gesichtschirurgie – angestoßen wurde, die später ihre segensreiche Wirkung entfalten konnte. Aus dem allerersten Lazarett des Düsseldorfer Zahnarztes Christian Bruhn entwickelte sich schließlich die Westdeutsche Kieferklinik bzw.
Am 17. November haben Vertreter aus Wissenschaft, Wirtschaft, Politik und Kultur der Region den Gründungsbeschluss des Vereins zur Förderung der Wissensregion e.V. im Haus der Universität unterschrieben. Anja Steinbeck (Rektorin der Heinrich-Heine-Universität) wurde zur Vereinsvorsitzenden, Brigitte Grass (Präsidentin der Hochschule Düsseldorf) zu ihrer Stellvertreterin gewählt. Der Politikwissenschaftler Ulrich von Alemann wurde mit der Geschäftsführung betraut.
Der Freundeskreis hat mit seinen 25 Stiftungen, die er inzwischen betreut, im Jahr 2016 die Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf (HHU) mit ca. 1,8 Millionen Euro gefördert. Dies war nur durch eine noch relativ günstige Rendite aus dem Kapital von 3 % und großzügigen Spenden für den Studiengang European Studies möglich.
Hervorzuheben ist, dass trotz Erhöhung des Kapitals des Freundeskreises und seiner Stiftungen die Verwaltungskosten stabil gehalten werden konnten.
[…] if we aim to change the energetic metabolism of modern industrial societies, for example, we should be aware of the scope of the project. It will not just be a technological task: it will in the end imply profound socio- economic, historical change […] you cannot profoundly alter a system’s output (i.e. its waste and emissions) without changing also its inputs and the ways it works internally […] to be able to deal with industrial metabolism, social and natural sciences must co-operate intimately.
Fischer-Kowalski (2003: 44–45)