Links der Woche

“The GOP tax bill will mark the Trump administration’s first major legislative achievement. (…) However, given that the congressional year has otherwise been marked by turmoil and inaction, and given the high staff turnover and the parade of scandals at the White House, it’s been easy to miss what this administration has already done. In the background, Donald Trump’s Cabinet members and their collaborators have been working hard to deliver on Steve Bannon’s vision of dismantling the “regulatory state.” With Trump’s blessing, they have made drastic, structural changes on education, immigration, environmental protections, broadcasting and internet laws, and rules of military engagement, among other issues. Most often the changes have taken direct aim at Obama’s legacy, but some apply to regulations and programs that date back decades.”

“The Nazis were a party of the middle and upper classes. This was a surprise to me. I thought that unemployment was the principal reason why people turned to the Nazis. But the researchers found that unemployment growth was negatively correlated with support for the Nazis. In other words, Nazi support grew when unemployment was falling”

“When you take away bureaucracy and hierarchy and politics, you take away the ability to negotiate the distribution of resources on explicit terms. And you replace it with charisma, with cool, with shared but unspoken perceptions of power. You replace it with the cultural forces that guide our behavior in the absence of rules.”

“Die Grenze zwischen Natur und Technik ist schon vor Millionen Jahren
gefallen, als man begann, mit einem Stein die gebrechliche Hand zu
unterstützen“

“The average user checks their smartphone 88 times per day. So what’s all this constant connection doing to our heads? Berlin’s foremost expert on smartphone use and mental health, Charité’s Dr. Jan Kalbitzer, gives us his surprising answer: Not much!”

“Viele Menschen glauben, Algorithmen seien allein wegen ihrer
mathematischen Grundlagen neutral. Dieser verbreitete Irrglaube macht es
möglich, dass Vorurteile ungeprüft kursieren und Unternehmen und
Organisationen sich ihrer Verantwortung entziehen, indem sie Algorithmen
als Alibi nutzen.”  

“Meanwhile, in the first half of 2017, there were almost 25,000 projects
that were logged on the platform. According to Deloitte, the majority
of the projects, however, have become inactive in the long run and only
eight percent are active so far.”