May 2010 | Page 9 of 11

MonthMay 2010

Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative

May 9, 2010 / Klint Finley

There’s obviously a big opportunity for a start-up here – “PrivateBook”:

Setting up a decent system for controlling your privacy on a web service shouldn’t be hard. And if multiple blogs are writing posts explaining how to use your privacy system, you can take that as a sign you aren’t treating your users with respect, It means you are coercing them into choices they don’t want using design principles. That’s creepy.

Facebook could start with a very simple page of choices: I’m a private person, I like sharing some things, I like living my life in public. Each of those would have different settings for the myriad of choices, and all of those users could then later dive into the control panel to tweak their choices. That would be respectful design – but Facebook isn’t about respect — it’s about re-configuring the world’s notion of what’s public and private.

Epicenter: Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative

(Photo by _Max-B / CC)

Previously: Facebook steps up lobbying, deepens ties with intelligence agencies, FTC

Phishing: how Cory Doctorow (and I) got punk’d

May 9, 2010 / Klint Finley

Cory Doctorow got tricked by a phisher and shares some insight into how phishing succeeds:

Phishing isn’t (just) about finding a person who is technically naive. It’s about attacking the seemingly impregnable defenses of the technically sophisticated until you find a single, incredibly unlikely, short-lived crack in the wall.

If I hadn’t reinstalled my phone’s OS the day before. If I hadn’t been late to the cafe. If I hadn’t been primed to hear from old friends wondering if some press mention was me, having just published a lot of new work. If I hadn’t been using a browser that didn’t fully expose URLs. If I hadn’t used the same password for Twitter as I use for lots of other services. If I’d been ten minutes later to the cafe, late enough to get multiple copies of the scam at once – for the want of a nail, and so on. […]

I don’t have a solution, but at least I have a better understanding of the problem. Falling victim to a scam isn’t just a matter of not being wise to the ways of the world: it’s a matter of being caught out in a moment of distraction and of unlikely circumstance.

Locus Magazine: Cory Doctorow: Persistence Pays Parasites

I got tricked by a phisher in 2004 when that specific method was first getting popular (tricking people into giving up their passwords is as old as passwords themselves, but the spam ‘n spoof strategy now known as phishing seems to have started around then).

I was tricked by a PayPal phisher – I’d been having problems with my PayPal account and I got an e-mail that purported to be from PayPal urging me to login. The URL was something like “paypalcustomerservice.com” and the site looked just like PayPal’s. Lucky for me I accidentally typed the wrong password and realized it just as I was hitting enter. When I saw that I was logged into the site anyway, I realized that I’d been phished. I was lucky because the phishers only got a wrong password out of me, but I can see how even very savvy people can get fooled.

The World’s Most Prominent Hyper-Realist Sculptors

May 9, 2010 / Klint Finley

Patricia Piccinini

Above: sculptures by Patricia Piccinini

Blog of Francesco Mugnai: The 8 world’s most prominent hyper-realist sculptors

Previously: The art of Ron Mueck

Hunter S. Thompson signs a contract

May 7, 2010 / Klint Finley

Hunter S. Thompson signs a contract

Above: a contract “signed” by Hunter S. Thompson.

From Hollywood Reporter

(via Dangerous Minds)

Which illegal drug is best for the environment?

May 7, 2010 / Klint Finley

Green

Let’s be frank: Most highs for you are kind of a downer for the planet. The conditions under which illegal drugs are produced make it impossible for the government to enforce any sort of clean manufacturing regulations, and the long-standing “War on Drugs” inflicts its own environmental damage. (Think of the RoundUp herbicide sprayed on 120,000 hectares of rural Colombia each year.) There are some ways to measure the eco-credentials of various narcotics, though. To understand how various drugs affect the environment, we need to take a close look at where each one comes from and compare the ways they’re harvested or synthesized.

Slate: Which illegal drug is best for the environment?

Ecstasy (made from sassafras oil derived from endangered trees) and crystal meth (enormous carbon footprint due to chemicals being imported from India and China) are the worst. Cannabis is the best.

I hadn’t heard an ecological argument for ending the war on drugs before.

(via Dangerous Minds)

R.U. Sirius: The Best-Case Scenario For Posthumanity, And Who Is Making It Happen

May 7, 2010 / Klint Finley

R.U. fuckin' Sirius

Annalee has asked me to comment on what is the best-case scenario for posthumanity and what groups are working on putting that scenario in motion. This is the sort of question that invites utopian musings. I’ve become somewhat shy of utopian projections, which is maybe why I tend to interview other people and let them take the fall… but what the hell, I’ll give it a shot.

The fun, of course, would be in visions of tall, thin, beautiful blue skinned beings that are superbright rather than corny (maybe winged, too. Winged would be nice), a third arm for carrying groceries, skinny little fingers for ever-tinier portable devices, and everybody engineered at the germ line to be crazy sex freaks.

But being of nobler stuff, I’ll give you what I think is the best down to earth scenario for near-term enhanced humanity, and then I’ll also mention a few further out vision – some of which I’m fond of.

io9: The Best-Case Scenario For Posthumanity, And Who Is Making It Happen

Want to get involved in building the future, but lack a background in engineering science and hard science? Get started learning get started studying engineering online for free.

(Thanks Cole Tucker)

Kyoto’s student-run dormintory/squat

May 7, 2010 / Klint Finley

Kyoto squatters

Actually, I don’t fully understand why they are called squatters if they pay rent and are authorized to live there. But the photos are cool.

Nearly a century old, and looking every day of it, Yoshida-ryo is very likely the last remaining example of the once common Japanese wooden university dormitory. This building was built in 1913. Organized from the very beginning to be self-administering through a dormitory association (????), the students themselves have been responsible for selecting new applicants for residency. This autonomy, however, came under full-scale assault in 1971, when the Ministry of Education began a policy of regulating or closing dormitories, which were seen as “hotbeds for various kinds of conflict.” University authorities first tried to close Yoshida-ryo completely in 1979, and after failing to overcome opposition over the next 10 years finally closed the Western Yoshida-ryo across the street.

With the death of Japan’s violent student activism, the campaign to close the dormitory subsided for a time, but in the aftermath of the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake there were new calls to replace the poorly aged building, which had already seen its maintenance neglected for decades by a university that had wanted to demolish it.

At present, the future of the dormitory is unclear.

CNNGO: Yoshida-ryo dormitory at Kyoto University

(via Arthur Magazine)

Group finds uniquely toxic conditions for Portland minorities

May 7, 2010 / Klint Finley

Income by race and education-level

Speaking of Portland:

A new report by a coalition of minority groups labels Multnomah County a “uniquely toxic place” for people of color, where minorities consistently lag behind whites on nearly every indicator, from poverty rates to jobs.

Conditions in the county are worse than in other parts of the country and continuing to slide, said Ann Curry-Stevens, the lead researcher and an assistant professor of the graduate school of social work at Portland State University. […]
* About 7 percent of whites drop out of high school, compared with 30 percent of minorities.
* Some 62 percent of whites own homes, while only 45 percent of minorities do. A larger percentage of minorities spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing.
* One in three children of color live in poverty, compared with 12.5 percent for whites. The child-poverty rate for Native Americans is 46 percent, for African Americans 41 percent and for African immigrants 56 percent.
* People of color earn about half that of white individuals: $16,636 a year compared with $33,095. Individual income for Latinos is about one-third that of whites.
* Minorities in Multnomah County fare worse on measures such as child poverty, rent burden, incomes and education than minorities in King County, Wash., (home to Seattle) which has a slightly higher number of minorities.
* For the first time, data are available on Slavic and African immigrants and refugees in the county. Education levels are high in both groups, but both struggle with poverty.
* While Asian Americans tend to perform the same as whites in education and occupation nationally, that’s not the case in Multnomah County.

Oregon Live: Communities of Color Coalition finds ‘toxic’ conditions for Multnomah County minorities

Read the comments on the OregonLive piece for examples of the ignorance festering here.

I knew Portland was far from a progressive-utopia on issues of race, but this report (and the recent shooting of a local anti-fascist activist) make me realize that the problem is much worse than I’d thought.

Via Johnny Brainwash who adds: “I can tell you that I’ve never been jew-baited more than I have been here, not even when I lived in North Idaho. And if that’s the experience of someone like me, white-skinned and crawling with privilege, you can bet it only gets worse from there.”

I haven’t read the full report yet, but the PDF is available here.

Will Oldham and Jay Babcock on the importance of all ages venues

May 7, 2010 / Klint Finley

Arthur Magazine has just posted this interview from 2006 on their blog:

Arthur: One of the weird things, from what I can tell about the performance environment in America, is that one of the few places where people of all ages can see quality music in a live setting now is the record store.

Yeah. “Quality music.” One thing that I had started to think about before we started on this topic was… like, how old are you?

Arthur: 35.

I’m 36, and my sense is that, if you won’t take offense, is that we are out of touch. There are quality shows going on six out of seven nights a week that are all-ages shows, in people’s houses, in public places, and we just don’t know those bands. Because I’ve seen some this year—I’ve seen some every year. And it’s like, Whoa, where’d these kids come from? And these kids came from the same places we came from, and they’re making great music that we don’t have access to, because… It’s the same way that bands that I went to see play 20 years ago, people who were 22, to 36, to 50, they would be saying ‘There’s just no music going on these days. There’s no shows like I remember.’ And meanwhile, I was having the fucking time of my life!

Arthur Magazine: “I think the best thing we can probably do would be to make fake IDs more available” (Will Oldham)

I think about this every time I see some blogger or columnist lament that there is no alternative culture any more. It’s almost always someone over 30 – often over 40.

ALSO:

Portland’s all age venue The Parlour, run by a buncha swell guys, needs support to carry-on. They’re accepting donations by Paypal at the e-mail address drpfenderson@pinkonbrown.org

(I play at this venue often, and they sell my wife’s crafts, so it would be a big help to us if they survived!)

Timothy Leary

May 6, 2010 / Klint Finley

Timothy Leary

Timothy Leary was a psychologist, writer, and lecturer best known for his promotion of LSD in the 60s. Richard Nixon called him “The most dangerous man in America.” However, by his death in 1996 he was a more active proponent of cyberspace and virtual reality than of psychedelics.

In 1969 Leary ran for governor of California against Ronald Reagan and John Lennon wrote the song “Come Together” as a campaign song for him. In 1970 Leary was sentenced to 20 years in prison for possession of less than half an ounce of marijuana. While in prison he was subjected to several psychological tests, including some he designed himself. He was able to get himself transferred to low security prison and escaped later that year. He was smuggled by the Weather Underground to Algeria.

He was eventually arrested and extradited in Switzerland in 1972. He remained in prison until 1976, during which time he feigned cooperation with the FBI during their investigation of the Weather Underground.

During his prison and post-prison years Leary’s interest in futurism blossomed and he became more concerned with space migration, intelligence increase, and life extension. He coined the acronym SMI²LE for his agenda. He also developed the 8-Circuit Model of Consciousness while in prison. In the 90s he was an occasional contributor to the early cyberculture magazine Mondo 2000 and co-authored the book Design for Dying with the magazine’s editor R.U. Sirius.

Official Sites

leary.com

Unofficial Sites

Wikipedia entry

Deoxy Timothy Leary site

Erowid Timothy Leary Vault

Documentaries

Above: BBC Documentary on Leary Timothy Leary – The man who turned on America

Writings by Leary

Digital Polytheism by Leary and Eric Gullichsen, from the proto-Mondo 2000 magazine Reality Hackers

Platform from Timothy Leary’s campaign for governor of California

Lectures

Second Attention: lectures on consciousness expansion Audio of lectures by the likes of Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, and Alex Grey. Plus a couple of videos.

Interviews

Cyberpunk documentary from 1991 includes interviews with Leary.

Tim Leary In Folsom Prison (Video interview) 1978

Mavricks of the Mind interviews Collection of interview with Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, Terrence McKenna, John Lily, Alex Grey and many more.

Writings/interviews on Leary

Interview with editor of new Timothy Leary book

Timothy Leary, the Internet, and libertarianism essay at lewrockwell.com

R.U. Sirius Show interview with Tim Leary’s biographer Robert Greenfield.

Viking Youth interview R.U. Sirius and discuss his friendship with Leary

Timothy Leary: Is The Party Over? by R.U. Sirius

Misc

A promotion video spot for William Gibson’s book Neuromancer, with commentary by William Gibson and Timothy Leary from the early 90s

Technoccult

Mutate Your Mind

MonthMay 2010

Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative

Phishing: how Cory Doctorow (and I) got punk’d

The World’s Most Prominent Hyper-Realist Sculptors

Hunter S. Thompson signs a contract

Which illegal drug is best for the environment?

R.U. Sirius: The Best-Case Scenario For Posthumanity, And Who Is Making It Happen

Kyoto’s student-run dormintory/squat

Group finds uniquely toxic conditions for Portland minorities

Will Oldham and Jay Babcock on the importance of all ages venues

Timothy Leary

Official Sites

Unofficial Sites

Documentaries

Writings by Leary

Lectures

Interviews

Writings/interviews on Leary

Misc

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