L.T. Greer

Blog, page 9

“lack of empathy in technology doesn’t exist because people who write algorithms are heartless but because they lack the reality outside the tech bubble”

Om Malick in The New Yorker:

…the designers didn’t consider it, perhaps because those who write these algorithms have not experienced such trauma, or perhaps they just weren’t talking about the human feelings in their product meetings—a particularly likely possibility when a company is focussed on engagement and growth. The lack of empathy in technology design doesn’t exist because the people who write algorithms are heartless but perhaps because they lack the texture of reality outside the technology bubble. Facebook’s blunders are a reminder that it is time for the company to think not just about fractional-attention addiction and growth but also to remember that the growth affects real people, for good and bad.

“The End of Identity Liberalism”

Columbia humanities professor Mark Lilla in the NYT:

But the fixation on diversity in our schools and in the press has produced a generation of liberals and progressives narcissistically unaware of conditions outside their self-defined groups, and indifferent to the task of reaching out to Americans in every walk of life. At a very young age our children are being encouraged to talk about their individual identities, even before they have them. By the time they reach college many assume that diversity discourse exhausts political discourse, and have shockingly little to say about such perennial questions as class, war, the economy and the common good.

h/t @nickoparsons

The “shaggy-bearded figure in combat fatigues, whose long shadow spread across the world, is dead”

Fascinating — and scathing — profile in the Miami Herald:

As he [Castro] changed the face of Cuba, he remapped South Florida as well, transforming it from the southernmost tip of the United States to the northernmost point of Latin America. The suffering of the refugees he sent pouring into Miami eventually turned to triumph as they forged economic and political success.

“If the U.S. had 100 people: Charting Americans’ religious affiliations”

Pew Research:

As of 2014, there were roughly 245 million adults in the United States, including 173 million Christians and 56 million people without a religious affiliation. These are big numbers that, along with many others in the religious demographic pie, can at times make it difficult to fully understand the American religious landscape.

But what if we looked at this big picture a little differently? What if we imagined the United States as a small town, population 100, instead of a continent-spanning nation with hundreds of millions of people?

Elections and why cities vote the way they do

Richard Florida in a February 2013 piece:

America’s political divide is an outgrowth of its increasingly divided economic landscape. The very same forces of talent-clustering and knowledge industry concentration that shape the divergent economic fortunes of our cities and regions, increasingly shape our politics.

In short, cities tend to vote democratic. (Florida cites some of the reasons why, like education and the kinds of jobs people have.)

Florida in a piece this week:

But the bigger reality [regarding the post-election narrative] according to my own analysis is that the 2016 election follows the same basic contours of class and location — the same divides of knowledge and density — of the last several election cycles.

In short, cities tend to vote democratic.

Where are we? “A controversy-ridden former first lady is running for president against a wealthy former ally and megalomaniac”

Yinka Adegoke, Quartz Africa editor:

It’s all very ironic because much of what’s happened in this very unusual US election season (unusual in recent American history) are familiar themes in Africa.

A controversy-ridden former first lady is running for president against a wealthy former ally and megalomaniac who accuses the other side of rigging the election before it happens. There’s much fear of his supporters rioting if results don’t go their way. There are also rumors that some people in certain regions won’t be allowed to vote. Meanwhile, the current president’s half-brother is complaining the president hasn’t done enough for his people (in a different country). If you’d pitched that script to a Hollywood producer about an imaginary African country it would get turned down for lazy stereotyping (well, it should).

“Ten years after the crash, it’s still a monument to the limits of suburban sprawl”

Crain’s:

Then, starting in September 2006, the housing crash hit.

A decade later, at least 150 of the lots at Ashwood Park are empty, homes built since the crash come in at price points as much as 40 percent below those built in the heady days of 2006, and the handsome $7 million Ashwood Park clubhouse, built to provide recreational facilities to the occupants of several hundred high-end homes, is staffed only eight hours a week.