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25 votes
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Warner Bros. shelves John Cena’s ‘Coyote vs. Acme’ movie a year after it completed filming
34 votes -
Denmark topped a list of worst binge drinkers in a new health report from the OECD – Romania and the UK next worst offenders
9 votes -
Klarna reports first quarterly profit in four years – swing to profit of £9.6m by Swedish firm improves its fortunes in run-up to possible £12bn flotation
9 votes -
Disney to buy full control of Hulu in deal with Comcast
21 votes -
Hasan Minhaj offers detailed response to New Yorker story: “It was so needlessly misleading”
40 votes -
Norway's $1.4 trillion sovereign wealth fund, the world's largest, on Tuesday reported losses of 2.1% in the third quarter, as all asset classes fell in value
10 votes -
Denmark leads the Women Peace and Security Index 2023/24, scoring more than three times higher than Afghanistan at the bottom of the scale
14 votes -
‘Reddit can survive without search’: company reportedly threatens to block Google
71 votes -
Jon Stewart’s Apple TV Plus show ends, reportedly over coverage of AI and China
65 votes -
"The Reckoning" - there are some problems
BBC has just put out a 4 part "factual drama" based on Jimmy Savile. It is available here. Steve Coogan plays Savile. Here is the IMDB page for it. For those who don't know, Jimmy Savile was a...
BBC has just put out a 4 part "factual drama" based on Jimmy Savile. It is available here. Steve Coogan plays Savile. Here is the IMDB page for it.
For those who don't know, Jimmy Savile was a live dj, a radio dj, and a tv presenter. He played local dance halls, and then moved to Radio Caroline in 1958 when he was 32, and he moved to BBC TV in 1964 when he was 38. There were allegations made against him right from the start of his dj career, and as time went on these became more and more known among the public, but organisations failed to deal with them and failed to hold him to account. When he died hundreds of people came forward. After extensive police investigations police concluded he was a prolific sex offender, and probably the UK's most prolific sex offender. Wikipedia article about savile, and wikipedia article about the abuse scandal.
Coogan is a great, he's clearly a talented actor and he does pretty well here. The show heavily features a dramatic representation of Savile's biographer, Dan Davies.
The show covers Savile's entire career. It shows changing public perceptions of him, it shows him testing boundaries and getting away with minor rule breaking, it shows the manipulations of power he used to get access to girls.
But there are problems here. There are many complicated reasons why people don't report sexual abuse, and this show fails to do anything but pay minor lip service to those. Biggest for me is the focus entirely on Savile, and not the systems that enabled his abuse. Clearly he is the only person responsible for the abuse, but how did he get away with it so long, why didn't anyone stop him, why did organisations let him continue? There's a mealy-mouthed attempt to explain this, but that's a few lines of dialogue at most. This is important! The question of "How do we stop abusers?" needs a robust, evidence based, approach that doesn't stop at a shrug of the shoulders and "we dunno, he was a master manipulator". He absolutely wasn't, he was just brutally uncaring and wealthy. You come away from this show thinking that organisations were well meaning but a bit clueless, but that wasn't the case. Society just did not care about abuse enough to prevent it from happening, and we need to examine why we allowed it to happen.
Each episode starts by interview survivors, and it's good that their voice is prominent.
The TV drama Three Girls about the Rochdale Grooming scandal is better - it focuses on victims and how they were let down by the system. Or you could watch The Red Riding Trilogy one, two, and three - this is fiction, but features investigations into the Yorkshire Ripper case.
5 votes -
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas expected in Moscow, Russian media reports
15 votes -
‘Exorcist: Believer’ backlash: Franchise will live, but sequel changes likely
4 votes -
Consumer Reports releases "Permission Slip" app for requesting data removal
31 votes -
Donald Trump trials - Georgia election interference state court case - Megathread
Texts, documents hint at convicted witness bail bond business owner Scott Hall's wide ties to Coffee County breach, Trump allies ahead of trial Hall played a part in various post-election events,...
Texts, documents hint at convicted witness bail bond business owner Scott Hall's wide ties to Coffee County breach, Trump allies ahead of trial
Hall played a part in various post-election events, and he's taken a plea deal. He will testify in the Georgia 2020 election trials.
Hall's alleged involvement following the 2020 election reaches beyond the small south Georgia county. This includes personal relationships with those close to the former president.
Several media outlets, including CNN, have reported that Hall is related to David Bossie, chairman of the conservative group Citizens United who briefly led the former president's post-election legal challenges. Bossie's name appears in the Fulton indictment.
In late November 2020, David Shafer introduced Hall to a group of individuals including Robert Sinners, a current spokesperson for the Georgia Secretary of State's office who then worked for Trump's campaign. In the email, Shafer said Hall was "looking into the election" on behalf of the former president at Bossie's request.
This is described in Act 4 in the indictment, though Sinners is referred to as "unindicted co-conspirator Individual 4" by Fulton prosecutors. Sinners has since disavowed the post-2020 election activities that took place in Georgia.
Hall may also know about the letter former Justice Department official Jeffery Clark wanted to send that alleged the agency "identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia."
34 votes -
Walt Disney Pictures in-house VFX workers vote to unionize under IATSE
32 votes -
Suzuka F1 weekend report
Before I visited Suzuka, I found reading people's experiences (mainly on reddit) to be helpful, so I thought I'd post my own thoughts from driving down this past weekend. I came from Tokyo,...
Before I visited Suzuka, I found reading people's experiences (mainly on reddit) to be helpful, so I thought I'd post my own thoughts from driving down this past weekend.
I came from Tokyo, driving to Suzuka and parking in one of their official lots, and I stayed at a small resort about 50 minutes by car away from the track. The race tickets, and parking ticket were bought from the official "mobilityland" website, and it was 14,000 yen for a parking pass for the weekend, and I paid I think about 9000 yen to get there, and 6500 yen on the way back in tolls. For two people it worked out to be cheaper then the trains (and more fun to drive it!). They had some cheaper parking options as well in an unpaved lot, but I get the feeling the official parking passes sell out super quick, so you should take what you can get. There was a lot of unofficial lots nearby selling day parking, but I think you'd have to arrive very early to use them since most of them were full by the time I strolled up to the official lots around 9-10am. Speaking of which, if you buy the official parking ticket, you get an exact assigned space to use for the whole weekend, so no roving up and down the lots looking for a space. Also some people were sleeping in their cars as well so that's an option if you want to save on a hotel..
Crowds (cars and people) were managed really well. I was dreading leaving the parking lot at the end of the race, but I got out before it was crowded at all, and was able to make a beeline for the highways.
About the stands, my tickets were in Q1, at the final corners closest to the track. Aside from seeing Logan's accident in qualifying they weren't the best seats. The monitor was absolutely worthless, it was so small and so far away that without binoculars you couldn't tell the position of anyone on the track, or what lap they were on. There was also a pole blocking the middle of the monitor as well which was very distracting. Washrooms were quite far from these stands as well, although underneath the neighboring Q2 stands there was a water bottle filling machine which was pretty nice. Speakers were playing only the Japanese audio, and they have a FM radio station with the same Japanese commentary. I had hoped to get live timings on my phone, but there was basically no internet due to the huge number of people.
If anyone has questions, please ask. Overall I had a great time, although after the exciting Singapore race prior to Suzuka, this was pretty boring by comparison. Max held the lead at the first corner, and he just extended the lead over the whole race. Seeing Perez get retired and then suddenly show up again was really weird/ confusing, also it was good to see Sainz fighting with the Mercs.
11 votes -
For the fourteenth year running, Iceland takes the top position in the Global Gender Gap Report by the World Economic Forum
11 votes -
India ‘weaponising global anti-terror fund’ to crack down on civil society groups, Amnesty says
16 votes -
Dan Harmon is ready to talk about all of it (including the Justin Roiland drama)
26 votes -
CVE-2020-19909 is everything that is wrong with CVEs (false bug report for curl)
25 votes -
Writers Guild reaches tentative agreement with studios and streamers
28 votes -
Brainless jellyfish demonstrate learning ability
Veronique Greenwood In the dappled sunlit waters of Caribbean mangrove forests, tiny box jellyfish bob in and out of the shade. Box jellies are distinguished from true jellyfish in part by their...
Veronique Greenwood
In the dappled sunlit waters of Caribbean mangrove forests, tiny box jellyfish bob in and out of the shade. Box jellies are distinguished from true jellyfish in part by their complex visual system — the grape-size predators have 24 eyes. But like other jellyfish, they are brainless, controlling their cube-shaped bodies with a distributed network of neurons.
tap/click to know more...
That network, it turns out, is more sophisticated than you might assume. On Friday, researchers published a report in the journal Current Biology indicating that the box jellyfish species Tripedalia cystophora have the ability to learn. Because box jellyfish diverged from our part of the animal kingdom long ago, understanding their cognitive abilities could help scientists trace the evolution of learning.
The tricky part about studying learning in box jellies was finding an everyday behavior that scientists could train the creatures to perform in the lab.
- Roots of mangroves
Anders Garm, a biologist at the University of Copenhagen and an author of the new paper, said his team decided to focus on a swift about-face that box jellies execute when they are about to hit a mangrove root. These roots rise through the water like black towers, while the water around them appears pale by comparison. But the contrast between the two can change from day to day, as silt clouds the water and makes it more difficult to tell how far away a root is. How do box jellies tell when they are getting too close?
“The hypothesis was, they need to learn this,” Garm said. “When they come back to these habitats, they have to learn, how is today’s water quality? How is the contrast changing today?”
- Setup
In the lab, researchers produced images of alternating dark and light stripes, representing the mangrove roots and water, and used them to line the insides of buckets about six inches wide. When the stripes were a stark black and white, representing optimum water clarity, box jellies never got close to the bucket walls. With less contrast between the stripes, however, box jellies immediately began to run into them. This was the scientists’ chance to see if they would learn.
After a handful of collisions, the box jellies changed their behavior. Less than eight minutes after arriving in the bucket, they were swimming 50% farther from the pattern on the walls, and they had nearly quadrupled the number of times they performed their about-face maneuver. They seemed to have made a connection between the stripes ahead of them and the sensation of collision.
- “It’s amazing to see how fast they learn,”
Going further, researchers removed visual neurons from the box jellyfish and studied them in a dish. The cells were shown striped images while receiving a small electrical pulse to represent collision. Within about five minutes, the cells started sending the signal that would cause a whole box jellyfish to turn around.
“It’s amazing to see how fast they learn,” said Jan Bielecki, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Physiology at Kiel University in Germany, also an author of the paper.
Researchers who were not involved in the study called the results a significant step forward in understanding the origins of learning. “This is only the third time that associative learning has been convincingly demonstrated in cnidarians,” a group that includes sea anemones, hydras and jellyfish, said Ken Cheng, a professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, who studies the animals. “And this is the coolest demonstration, replete with physiological data.”
The results also suggest that box jellyfish possess some level of short-term memory, because they can change their behavior based on past experience, said Michael Abrams, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies the neuroscience of jellyfish sleep. He wonders how long the box jellies remember what they’ve learned. If they are taken out of the tank for an hour and then returned to it, do they have to learn what to do all over again?
Future work
In future work, researchers hope to identify which specific cells control the box jellyfish’s ability to learn from experience. Garm and his colleagues are curious about the molecular changes that happen in these cells as the animals incorporate new information into their behavior.
They wonder, too, whether the capacity to learn is universal among nerve cells, regardless of whether they are part of a brain. It might explain their peculiar persistence in the tree of life.
“There are organ systems popping up and going away all the time,” Garm said. “But nervous systems — once they are there, they very rarely go away again.”
Perhaps the ability to learn is one reason they are still here.
Seattle Times - Link to the article
9 votes -
In Spain, dozens of girls are reporting AI-generated nude photos of them being circulated at school: ‘My heart skipped a beat’
68 votes -
When using the wrong shell causes weird bug reports
26 votes -
Inside the very strange, very expensive race to “de-age”
Whizy Kim The Rejuvenation Olympics, an online leaderboard launched by tech millionaire Bryan Johnson earlier this year, takes the rivalry of the rich to the next level. The game? “Reversing” your...
Whizy Kim
The Rejuvenation Olympics, an online leaderboard launched by tech millionaire Bryan Johnson earlier this year, takes the rivalry of the rich to the next level. The game? “Reversing” your age
Participants compete not on physical abilities but on how quickly and by how much they can slow their “biological age.”
Competitors do this mostly by adjusting their diets (like which macronutrients and supplements they consume), being physically active, and retesting their “age” regularly. They’re not actually reverting to a more youthful version of themselves — that’s not biologically possible. Rather, these competitors are racing to see who can age the slowest; as the Rejuvenation Olympics website quips, “You win by never crossing the finish line.”
Some participants
Steve Aoki, the DJ and heir to the Benihana restaurant chain, appears toward the bottom of the site’s “absolute” ranking, which reflects the 25 competitors with the lowest rate of aging.
The biohacker Ben Greenfield makes the list, too, as does millionaire and longevity science advocate Peter Diamandis. Most of the top 25 names, however, don’t spark immediate recognition, and some are anonymous.
Right now, tech millionaire Bryan Johnson, who is 46 years old, is leading. But 46 is just what competitors describe as Johnson’s “chronological age,” which means, simply, the years that have passed since his birth date.
He has claimed that he eats 70 pounds of vegetables per month, most of it pureed. He receives blood transfusions from his 17-year-old son. He wears a red-light cap that’s supposed to stimulate hair growth. His body fat once fell to a dangerous 3 percent (though it has since bumped up a few percentage points).
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey is renowned for his eccentric wellness habits; he eats one meal a day, meditates for at least two hours daily, and has a penchant for ice baths. For a while, Steve Jobs was a “fruitarian” — as in, only ate fruit.
Lifestyles of ultrarich
Such extremes are common among the ultrarich, and particularly the Silicon Valley set, a crowd known for its obsession with making moonshot ideas into reality.
The wealthy indulge in countless health trends of varying dubiousness, whether it’s getting IV drips to reduce hangovers, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, implanting devices in the body to monitor health and live longer, even injecting themselves with young blood (a treatment called parabiosis, which Johnson is receiving). This year alone, Johnson will reportedly spend at least $2 million on reducing his biological age.
Society treats them as idols, geniuses whose savvy has vaulted them into the 0.0001 percent of the wealthiest people on Earth. It’s a small hop from there to believing they’d also be savvier than the rest of us about turning back the clock.
Investing in de-aging
Last year, according to a report from the news and market analysis site Longevity. Technology, more than $5 billion in investments poured into longevity-related companies worldwide, including from some big-name tech founders and investors. Many of these companies are aiming to prolong life by focusing on organ regeneration and gene editing.
The buzzy life extension company Altos Labs, which researches biological reprogramming — a way to reset cells to pliable “pluripotent stem cells” — launched last year with a whopping $3 billion investment, and counts internet billionaire Yuri Milner and, reportedly, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos among its patrons. Bezos was also an investor in the anti-aging startup Unity Biotechnology.
OpenAI founder Sam Altman, meanwhile, recently invested $180 million in Retro Biosciences, a company vying to add a decade to the human lifespan.
Some of the most famous names in the death-defying sector are old: Calico Labs, a longevity-research subsidiary of Alphabet, was launched by then-Google CEO Larry Page in 2013.
Tally Health, a new biotech company co-founded by Harvard scientist David Sinclair — who is something of a celebrity in the longevity community — boasts some Hollywood A-list investors: John Legend, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ashton Kutcher, Pedro Pascal, and Zac Efron.
Possibility of de-aging
“It’s not possible to reverse your age,” Stuart Jay Olshansky, an aging expert and professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Illinois Chicago, tells Vox. “There’s validity to some of the work that’s going on in epigenetics that may be telling us something about the rate of aging. It’s not yet telling us about longevity.”
No two people age in the exact same way. Discrete from chronological age, “biological age” is the attempt to capture the often invisible difference through epigenetic gene expression, the state of someone’s organs, their immune system, and more.
A 40-year-old with a history of heavy drinking and smoking, for example, may have a higher biological age than someone who never drinks or smokes. (In 2018, a Dutch man even complained that he ought to be able to change his legal age to match his biological age.)
Johnson again
Johnson, who made his hundreds of millions after selling a payments platform he developed to eBay in 2013, has become renowned not for what he’s invented, sold, or designed, as is the case for many other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, but for the unimaginably strict lifestyle he leads.
According to his website and the many interviews he has given, he exerts constant vigilance over the 78 organs of the human body, consistently tracking everything from BMI to brain white matter. Johnson is often described as the “most measured man in human history.”
The point isn’t merely being healthy. It’s laser-precision optimization of his health.
Johnson, for example, never eats pizza or drinks alcohol. It’s simply not a part of his algorithm. “I was just a slave to myself and my passions and my emotions and my next desire,” he said in an interview with Vice Motherboard. That doesn’t mean he never stumbles, but when he does, he calls it an “infraction,” as though he has committed a minor crime.
Leaderboard
Johnson tops the Rejuvenation Olympics leaderboard; he created the game along with Oliver Zolman — who leads Johnson’s team of 30-plus doctors and other health experts — and TruDiagnostic, an epigenetics lab based in Kentucky that provides the biological age test kits that participants in the Olympics must submit. The cheaper version costs $229. The more expensive one, at $499, provides more data on your results, including how habits like smoking or drinking alcohol have impacted a person’s aging speed.
Ultramarathon
It’s a contest that participants hope never ends — the most ultra of ultramarathons. The most dedicated members in the longevity community are, in essence, spending their lives obsessing over living. Says Lustgarten: “I plan on doing this for at least the next 70-plus years.”
27 votes -
American Library Association report: Texas led the nation in book ban attempts in 2022
14 votes -
Humanity's current space behavior 'unsustainable,' due to satellite and space junk congestion, European Space Agency report warns
49 votes -
China behind ‘largest ever’ digital influence operation
15 votes -
Finland picks Aki Kaurismäki's ‘Fallen Leaves’ in Oscars 2024 International Feature category
6 votes -
Work profile, akin to credit score?
I was scrolling through Tildes a while ago when I can across a comment talking about how employers fed data into a credit-bureau-esque application that they could check to see things like your...
I was scrolling through Tildes a while ago when I can across a comment talking about how employers fed data into a credit-bureau-esque application that they could check to see things like your past salary data. Unfortunately, I can’t find that comment anymore. Does anyone know what it was, or where to find it?
I find the concept to be incredibly worrying, especially as it seems like unregulated technology or at the very least operating in a gray area carved out by existing credit reporting.
(Please let me know if this should go in ~misc or somewhere else. Wasn’t sure where to put it!)
35 votes -
Hildur Guðnadóttir talks ‘A Haunting in Venice’ score, the influence of ‘Sicario’ and ‘Joker 2’
8 votes -
Analyst Hubert Horan on Uber's first reported profit
5 votes -
Taylor Swift box office: Theater owners predict record $100M opening for Eras Tour concert pic
13 votes -
Repeat victims of violence do not report to the police, even in cases involving serious injury and hospitalisation, a new study has found
14 votes -
Experimental-community thought experiment: constitution
** I wrote this a few years ago using 'wiki-how to write a constitution' as my basic outline. As you can see, I never finished. I realized that this is not something that can or should be written...
** I wrote this a few years ago using 'wiki-how to write a constitution' as my basic outline. As you can see, I never finished. I realized that this is not something that can or should be written as a singular person, and due to a lack of access to those who might find such a project interesting, albiet wholly theoretical, I never finsihed it. What you see at the bottom is the copy paste from the wiki how where I left off.
I don't know if any of y'all will find this interesting or worth editing and expanding with me, but I thought this would be an interesting place to put this and test the waters.
I tried really hard to figure out how to format this in tildes but I may have failed. Hopefully it's clear enough.
Here is the beginnings of a constitution I wrote for a hypothetical expeirmental community: **
We, the citizens of this community, in order to enact the willful abandonment of all other governing bodies and establish an independent mode of community-organization and self-rule, do ordain and establish this constitution for the government of our association.
Article I:
Section 1:
The name of this community shall be {}, hereafter referred to as ‘the community.’
Section 2:
The Heads of the community shall make up the ruling body of {}, hereafter referred to as ‘Those Responsible.’
Article II:
Section 1:
the purpose of this community is to establish and maintain a self-sustaining and self-perpetuating place and manner in which to live and live well, outside and beyond the current social paradigms subject to political, military, monetary, or any and all other coercive forms of power and control, including but not limited to all other authoritative bodies either public or private. This community intends to act as a sustaining reservoir and dispensary for human knowledge and creative culture. This community aims to secure a manner of human cohabitation and relation founded upon unconditional love and mutual respect for self, others, and the land.
Section 2:
Those Responsible shall ratify, guide, lead, and organize all actions of the community towards the aims of self-sustainability, cohabitation, co-creation, and social evolution, foremost and always with a prime consideration for all the offspring of the community in mind, whether of direct biological relation or otherwise. Those Responsible are tasked with representing and upholding the example and execution of communion and action under the fundamental philosophy of unconditional love and mutual respect for self, others, and the land. Those Responsible are beholden to the task of observing and evaluating the exact realities faced by the community at any given point in time, and in view of that Those Responsible are required to coordinate all community efforts in appropriate response to the imminent needs of the citizenry and the land.
Article III:
Section 1:
The general body of the community will be comprised of Citizen Families of no less than two adults and no more than ten adults, and all of their accompanying children and creature companions. In order to gain membership into the community a Citizen Family must be endorsed by a Family Head already a part of the community, and voted in unanimously by all Those Responsible. Appeals can be made and cases reassessed as depends on the situation, but finalization of familial citizenship requires the unanimous consent of all and every current Citizen Family through representative vote.
Section 2:
the privileges and responsibilities of every individual citizen, those granted to the Citizen Family, and those allowed to the community as a whole include but are not limited to:
Individual rights:
The right to appropriate understanding and care from family and community in times of physiological, psychological, and/or theological need due to age, injury, mental or bodily transition, trauma, or illness.
The right to formally express grievance, great or small, to all grievous parties with the option of third party witness with previously established all party agreement on third party power of decision-input and sway.The right to request and expect communion with specific individuals, the family whole, or the community at large for a specified time within the confines of the boundaries and privacy requested.
The right to request and expect celebration with specific individuals, the family whole, or the community at large for a specified time within the confines of the boundaries and privacy requested.
The right to give and receive without incurring debt.
Sufficient and sustainable food, shelter, and water, tailored to the individual needs of each citizen, with consideration insofar as possible to individual ability, desire, and proclivity.
Free access to all available community physical, psychological, and theological health resources and programs without bias to reason or cause.
Free access to all available community infrastructure, resources, and technologies insofar as it does not impede the well being of any other, the land, or the community at large.
Freedom of thought and expression and access to public outlet insofar as no permanent physical or psychological damage incurs.
Free access to all available information and means to education. Freedom of inquiry into all intellectual matters and free permission to explore all avenues of discovery not leading to permanent physical or psychological damage.
Full liberty of movement without untoward monitoring, self-delegation of personal time and energies beyond regulated family and community requirements and tasks, and a right to mental, physical, and spiritual regulation and privacy.
The right to call for a family or community hearing and action for whatever reason, and to expect due diligence in response to such a call.
The right to dictate placement, care and use of any personal property of which one is responsible for maintenance, re-purposing, and proper disposal.
The right to anonymity in all voting processes.
The right to vote on family leadership through unanimous consensus of all eligible family members.
The right to vote on family projects and endeavors through unanimous consensus of all eligible family members.
The right to decide the vote for the Heads on community projects through unanimous consensus of all eligible family members.
The right to decide the vote for the Family Head on the delegation of communal resources through unanimous consensus of all eligible family members.
The right to decide the vote for the Heads on all constitutional amendments through unanimous consensus of all eligible family members.
The right to request personal advocacy and counsel from outside the immediate family grouping in regards to internal family affairs.
The right to third-party mediation and safe sanctuary in times of unresolved conflict.
The right to propose projects for personal or community benefit, and to solicit the needed resources and work from the community at large.
The right to apply for membership in a different Citizen Family from their own, or to apply for the establishment of a new Citizen Family, without untoward consequences despite affirmation or denial of said application, and with the understanding that individual membership is restricted to a single Citizen Family.
The right to personal emancipation from the community in full for whatever reason, and the grant of sufficient supply of basic needs from the community, per the requirements of the current social paradigms, for the most benevolent and efficient plan and execution of exit.
Citizen family rights:
the right to family residence sufficient to the exact needs of the individual family and its members, with consideration to ability, preference and proclivity insofar as possible, and full dominion over space, design, and utility of family residence.
The right to equal representation in the community by an internally elected Family Head, Auxiliary Head, and Junior Head (a.k.a. The Heads).
The right to represented vote on all community affairs including but not limited to adoption of new Citizen Families, allocation of community resources, constitutional amendment, foreign affairs, military action and defense, and the introduction and use of new technologies and materials.
The right to volunteer or withhold labor from any non-essential community effort.
The right through the unanimous vote of all eligible family members to excommunicate individual members due to permanent physical or psychological damages to the family.
The right to handle internal family affairs as seen fit insofar as no permanent physical or psychological damages incur, and without rebuke so long as such affairs have no significant impact on community production or well being.
The right to confidentiality and privacy in personal family matters despite possible recruitment by one or more individual for external representation.
Community rights:
The right to excommunicate whole Citizen Families per Family Head and Auxiliary Head’s unanimous vote, excluding the family in question, in the event of permanent physical or psychological damages to the community.
The right to enact emergency measures in times of crisis per Family Head’s unanimous vote, including but not limited to the overrule of individual or familial privacy and individual or familial propriety over labor and resources.
The right to purchase or acquire additional lands and resources from outside the community per Family Head and Auxiliary Head’s unanimous vote.
The right of the Arbiters to oversee and mediate conflict between Citizen Families.
The right of the Heads to demand, organize and enforce labor and resources from all citizen families for the sake of community sustainability and well-being.
Individual responsibilities:
Primary responsibility for self care, self direction, self advocacy, and self representation in all matters related to personal development and involvement.
Responsibility to family wants, needs and concerns, insofar as they do not impede the well being of self, others, the land, or the community at large.
Responsibility to community wants, needs and concerns, insofar as they do not impede the well being of self, others, the land, or the Citizen Family.
Responsibility to fulfill all necessary labor requirements of family and community as per the changing requirements of sustainability and growth.
Responsibility to the land and its well being.
Responsibility to teach, care for and nurture all children and creature companions of the community whether or not blood related, insofar as it does not impede the well being of self, others, and the land.
Responsibility, insofar as it does not impede personal well being or privacy, to share all knowledge and resources within one’s possession and ability with any other citizen upon their request.
Responsibility to critically seek out knowledge and understanding of the current affairs and concerns of the Citizen Family and the community at large, and thereby cast vote based upon study and reason rather than selfish motive or emotional appeal.
Citizen Family responsibilities:
Prime responsibility for the care, representation and advocacy of the Citizen Family in all matters related to familial development and involvement.
Responsibility to individual wants, needs and concerns, insofar as they do not impede the well being of the family, individual citizens, others, the land, or the community.
Responsibility to community wants, needs and concerns, insofar as they do not impede the well being of the family, individual citizens, others, the land, or the community.
Responsibility to organize and deploy all labor requirements of the family as per the changing requirements of sustainability and growth.
Responsibility to fulfill all necessary labor requirements of the community as per the changing requirements of sustainability and growth.
Responsibility to the land and its well being.
Responsibility to teach, care for, and nurture all children and creature companions of the community whether or not blood related, insofar as it does not impede the well being of the family, individual citizens, others, and the land.
Responsibility, insofar as it does not impede familial well being or privacy, to share all knowledge and resources within the family’s possession and ability with any other citizen or Citizen Family upon request.
Responsibility to critically seek out knowledge and understanding of the current affairs and the concerns of individual members and the community at large, and thereby cast vote based upon study and reason rather than selfish motive or emotional appeal.
Responsibility to gather weekly all citizens of the family to report, evaluate, vote upon, and organize action for all family interests and concerns.
Community responsibilities:
Prime responsibility for the care, representation and advocacy of the community in all matters related to community development and involvement.
Responsibility to individual wants, needs and concerns, insofar as they do not impede the well being of the community, individual citizens, Citizen Families, others, or the land.
Responsibility to Citizen Families’ wants, needs and concerns, insofar as they do not impede the well being of the community, individual citizens, other Citizen Families, others, or the land.
Responsibility to organize and deploy all labor requirements of the community as per the changing requirements of sustainability and growth.
Responsibility to the land and its well being.
Responsibility to acquire, establish, organize, and maintain resources, infrastructure, and continuing education for the benefit of all citizens and Citizen Families.
Responsibility, insofar as it does not impede the community’s well being or privacy, to share all knowledge and resources within the community’s possession and ability with any citizen or Citizen Family upon their request.
Responsibility to critically seek out knowledge and understanding of the current affairs and concerns of individual members and all Citizen Families, and thereby organize all community efforts based upon study and reason rather than selfish motive or emotional appeal.
Responsibility to establish and maintain a means for citizens and Citizen Families to continuously participate and vote in all community endeavors and affairs through representation by the Heads or directly through survey and ballot.
Responsibility to organize and execute community outreach and relations with outside governments and organizations insofar as it does not impede the well being of citizens, Citizen Families, the community at large, or the land.
Responsibility to gather and allocate shared resources for the procurement and establishment of a new community on tenable land any time that the current community reaches maximum capacity.
Responsibility to establish and maintain co-beneficial relations and exchange, including relief efforts in times of crisis, with all extended communities whether or not directly derivative from the immediate community insofar as possible.
Responsibility to organize resources and efforts for the defense and rebuilding of the community when faced with internal or external aggression or biological or climate catastrophe.
Responsibility to procure and dispense all technological, medical, or otherwise necessary resources not internally available but required by a citizen or Citizen Family for their continued well being.
Responsibility to provide requested transportation and the means to initial basic survival, per the requirements of the current social paradigms, for any citizen looking to emancipate from the community and reenter the world at large.
Responsibility to provide and organize opportunities for travel to all citizens, upon request yet within community ability and reason.
Responsibility to gather weekly all Those Responsible to report, evaluate, and organize action for all voted upon community interests and concerns.
Responsibility to organize and coordinate weekly community celebration insofar as it does not impede the immediate needs of the community.
Responsibility to establish and maintain a central garden sanctuary for silent meditation, worship and reflection, open to all citizens at any time.
Responsibility, insofar as the community is able, to take in, protect, and provide for the basic necessities of any individual seeking asylum from the outside world, insofar as they adhere to the laws, customs, and requirements of the community, and within the agreed amount of time voted upon by Those Responsible in a case by case basis.
Section 3:
Membership may be revoked via a unanimous vote by the Family and Auxiliary Heads due to irrevocable physical or psychological harm to an individual, Citizen Family, the community at large, or the land. Membership shall be open to all those vetted and unanimously voted in by the Family and Auxiliary Heads regardless of age, creed, race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, socioeconomic status, disability, national origin, or status as a veteran. This list is not exhaustive.
Article IV:
Section 1:
Family meetings run by the Family Head will be held weekly, or as otherwise decided upon by majority vote within the family in order to discuss any general family business, upcoming and continuing family and community projects, and any other pressing comments or concerns of its members.
All Heads within a family shall weekly meet with each other to gather, discuss and organize all current concerns to be addressed in the next family meeting.
Community meetings composed of all Heads and run by the current Arbiters selected quarterly from the Heads by all Those Responsible will be held weekly in order to evaluate and coordinate all community efforts past, continuing, or new.
Each separate group of Heads from every family shall meet weekly in order to gather, discuss and organize all current concerns of their constituents to be addressed in the next community meeting.
Any individual can call for an auxiliary family or community meeting run by the Head of their choice or one of the current Arbiters at any time and for any reason and will be granted such a meeting within 72 hours of the request.
Section 2:
All policy decisions within the Citizen Family shall be voted upon by all family members of any age or identification who capably understands and willingly ratifies via signature the constitution of the community. Each voting citizen is allowed one vote. For sanctioned approval, all Citizen Family policy decisions require a unanimous vote. Family voting shall be counted and tallied by the Family Head.
All policy decisions for the community at large shall be voted upon by all Heads inline with the vote of their constituents. Each Head is allowed one vote. For sanctioned approval all community policy decisions require a unanimous vote by all Heads. Community voting shall be counted and tallied by the current Arbiter.
All voting shall be done anonymously, and no decision can be ratified without a submitted ballot from all voting parties.
Article V:
Section 1:
The community shall have the following officials:
One Family Head per Citizen Family. Any family member aged fifteen or older who has already ratified the constitution is eligible for election. Whereas campaigning is prohibited, any eligible family member can be nominated by any other family member. Selection must be voted upon annually and requires a unanimous vote by all eligible voters within the Citizen Family.
One Auxiliary Head per Citizen Family. Any family member aged fifteen or older who has already ratified the constitution is eligible for election. Whereas campaigning is prohibited, any eligible family member can be nominated by any other family member. Selection must be voted upon annually and requires a unanimous vote by all eligible voters within the Citizen Family.
One Junior Head per Citizen Family. Any family member below the age of fifteen who has already ratified the constitution is eligible for election. Whereas campaigning is prohibited any eligible family member can be nominated by any other family member. Selection must be voted upon annually and requires a unanimous vote by all eligible voters within the Citizen Family.
One Arbiter of the community. All Family Heads are eligible for election. Whereas campaigning is prohibited any Family Head can be nominated by any other Head. Selection must be voted upon quarterly and requires a unanimous vote by all Heads within the community.
One Auxiliary Arbiter of the community. All Auxiliary Heads are eligible for election. Whereas campaigning is prohibited any Auxiliary Head can be nominated by any other Head. Selection must be voted upon quarterly and requires a unanimous vote by all Heads within the community.
One Junior Arbiter of the community. All Junior Heads are eligible for election. Whereas campaigning is prohibited any Junior Head can be nominated by any other Head. Selection must be voted upon quarterly and requires a unanimous vote by all Heads within the community.
Section 2:
The duties of these officials are as follows:
Family Heads:
Responsible for tallying family vote taken during family meetings.
Responsible during all community meetings for representing fairly and impartially their own Citizen Family’s needs and affairs expressed through an internally decided vote.
Responsible during all family meetings for representing community needs and affairs fairly and impartially.
Responsible for community representation and outreach in the world at large.
Responsible for leading the community in its continued sustainability and growth through the organization of community projects and the establishment of new communities when need arises.
Auxiliary Heads:
Responsible during all community meetings for representing fairly and impartially family land and resource needs and affairs expressed through an internally decided vote.
Responsible during all family meetings for representing community land and resource needs and affairs fairly and impartially.
Responsible for advising the Family Head, and taking on the duties of the Family Head in times of their temporary absence, and organizing the vote for instating a new Family Head upon the current Family Head’s inability to continue in their duties.
Responsible for leading the community in its continued sustainability and growth through the organization of community projects and the establishment of new communities when need arises.
Junior Heads:
Responsible during all community meetings for representing fairly and impartially the community youth and creature companion’s needs and affairs expressed through an internally decided vote.
Responsible during all family meetings for representing fairly and impartially their family youth and creature companion’s needs and affairs expressed through an internally decided vote.
Responsible for advising both the Family and Auxiliary Heads, and studying the methods, tasks and duties, undertaken by the Heads and Arbiters.
Arbiter:
Responsible for tallying community vote during all community meetings.
Responsible for mediating upon request.
Responsible for running Family Head meetings and co-running community meetings.
Auxiliary Arbiter:
Responsible for mediating upon request.
Responsible for running Auxiliary Head meetings and co-running community meetings.
Responsible for taking on the duties of Arbiter in the current Arbiter’s temporary absence, and organizing the vote for instating a new Arbiter upon the current Arbiters inability to continue in their duties.
Junior Arbiter:
Responsible for mediating upon request.
Responsible for running Junior Head meetings and co-running community meetings.
Section 3:
Family Heads can hold office for up to a year until reelections are held. Family Heads can hold office indefinitely insofar as their family members continue to unanimously elect them annually.
Auxiliary Heads can hold office for up to a year until reelections are held. Auxiliary Heads can hold office indefinitely insofar as their family members continue to unanimously elect them annually.
Junior Heads can hold office for up to a year until reelections are held. Junior Heads can hold office until surpassing the age of fifteen insofar as their family members continue to unanimously elect them annually.
Arbiters can hold office for up to three months until reelections are held. Arbiters can hold office for up to a year insofar as the Heads continue to unanimously elect them quarterly.
Auxiliary Arbiters can hold office for up to three months until reelections are held. Auxiliary Arbiters can hold office for up to a year insofar as the Heads continue to unanimously elect them quarterly.
Junior Arbiters can hold office for up to three months until reelections are held. Junior Arbiters can hold office for up to a year insofar as they are under the age of fifteen and the Heads continue to unanimously elect them quarterly.
Article VI:
Section 1:
Elections of The Heads must take place at least once per year. Elections of the Arbiters must take place at least quarterly. The winners of the elections for Those Responsible shall be determined by unanimous vote. No individual, however, shall be elected as a Head or Arbiter unless having already ratified the constitution.
Section 2:
Before Heads can be instated for a new term each family must meet to nominate individuals for the roles of Family Head, Auxiliary Head, and Junior Head. In the case that more than one individual is nominated for one appointment, elections must be held within the week to determine through unanimous vote who shall fill the role in question. Voting in order to reach a unanimous decision will be held for consecutive days until such a consensus is reached by all family members eligible to vote. Similarly, appointment of the Arbiters shall follow quarterly the same route as Head appointments in the context of the meeting of Heads. Any individual nominated and unanimously voted into an official role must perform their duties as laid out in this consititution to the best of their abilities despite any explicit desire, or lack thereof, on the part of the nominated to hold office of any kind. Elected officials may only abdicate their possision in the case of severe physical or psychological disablilities which impede the ability to perform the required duties of the role.
Section 3:
An offical can be impeached and removed from office through an unanimous vote called for due to their failure to perform the neccessessary duties of their appointed role, or due to their neglect or outright affront of the constition and its tenets. In the case of the latter, a character hearing shall be called to evaluate the reasons for consititional neglect and/or affront and decide upon what, if any, diciplinary actions need take place to ammend the infraction.
Section 4:
In the event of a mid-term vacancy of a Family Head the Auxiliary Head of the family will take on the duties and responsibilities of Family Head in addition to their own duties, until an early election can be held to fill the vacancey with an interim offical upinto the time of the normal election cycle where a permanent official can be once again instated .
In the event of a mid-term vacancy of an Auxiliary Head the Family Head will take on the duties and responsibilities of Auxiliary Head in addition ot their own duties, until an early election can be held to fill the vacancey with an interim official upinto the time of the normal election cycle where a permanent official can be once again instated.
In the event of a mid-term vacancy of a Junior Head the post shall be appointed to the youngest family member eligible for the possition until an early election can be held to fill the vacancey with an interim official upinto the time of the normal election cycle where a permanent official can be once again instated.
In the event of a mid-term vacancy of an Arbiter, Auxiliary Arbiter, or Junior Arbiter early elections are to be held immediately to fill the vacancey with an interim official upinto the time of the normal election cycle where a permanent official can be once again instated.
- Write the rules on elections, appointments, and removal of officers. Article 6 of your constitution should provide the rules on elections, appointment procedures, and removal of members. This article should also provide the rules on interim appointments or elections in the case of a mid-term vacancy.[19]
• Section 1 of Article 6 can say, for example: “Organizational elections must take place at least once per year.”[20] This section should also provide the general rules on elections, whereas more specific election rules can be written in the organization’s bylaws.[21] The general rules on elections may include, for example, rules on voting procedure. You can write, for example: "The winners of the elections for representatives shall be determined by plurality vote. No student, however, shall be elected as class representative unless he or she receives the vote of ten percent (10%) of the class from which he or she was elected."[22]
• Section 2 of Article 6 should provide the general appointment procedures for appointing officers, whereas more specific appointment procedures can be written in the bylaws.[23]
• Section 3 of Article 6 can say, for example: “The members of the Board may be impeached and removed (enter grounds for impeachment and removal and enter impeachment and removal procedures).”[24]
• Section 4 of Article 6 can say, for example: “In the event of a mid-term vacancy of an elected officer…” followed by the procedure for electing an interim or permanent replacement officer.[25]
Write the rules on committees. Article 7 of your constitution should provide the names of committees, the duties of each committee, the rules on selection and removal of committee members, and the procedures for formation and dissolution of committees.[26]
• Section 1 of Article 7 can say, for example: “The standing committees of this organization shall be…” followed by a list of all standing committees.[27] Note: a standing committee is a permanent committee whose purpose is to consider all matters that relate to a particular subject.[28]
• Section 2 of Article 7 can say, for example: “The duties of each of these standing committees shall be…” followed by a list of the duties.[29]
• Section 3 of Article 7 should provide the rules on how committee members will be selected and removed.[30]
• Section 4 of Article 7 can say, for example: “Additional committees may be formed and dissolved by the organization…” followed by the procedures for adding and removing committees.[31]
Provide for the creation of bylaws. Article 8 of your constitution should provide the rules on how the organization’s and executive board’s bylaws will be created and amended and who has the power to do so.[32] Note: Bylaws are rules that an organization adopts to govern its internal operations and its dealings with others.[33] These rules are intended to complement the constitution. Bylaws can be detailed rules that cannot be covered in detail in the constitution itself.
• Section 1 of Article 8 can say, for example: “Bylaws of the organization shall be established and amended by…” followed by the procedures for creating and amending the organization’s bylaws.[34]
• Section 2 of Article 8 can say, for example: “Bylaws of the Board shall be established and amended by…” followed by the procedures for amending and creating bylaws of the executive board.[35]
• Bylaws should not contradict anything in the Constitution. Generally, bylaws contain detailed provisions on such topics as membership, dues, duties of officers, the Board, committees, order of business, amendment procedures, and other specific policies and procedures necessary for the organization or its operation.Write how the constitution can be amended. Article 9 of your constitution should provide the rules on amendments to the constitution. This article should state how and by whom amendments can be proposed and what percentage of vote is required for the amendment to be adopted. A common example is two-thirds of the voting membership.[36] This article may state, for example, "Amendments to the Constitution may be proposed by two-thirds (2⁄3) vote of the Student Council or a petition signed by fifty (50) currently enrolled students."[37]
Write how the proposed constitution shall be ratified. Article 10 of your constitution should provide for how the constitution you are proposing shall be ratified. This article can say, for example: “This constitution shall be established by a vote of a (insert fraction) majority of the membership of the organization.”[38] A recommended fraction for ratification is a 3/4ths majority.[39]
Write how questions concerning the interpretation of the constitution shall be decided. You can write, in Article 11, for example: "Questions concerning the interpretation of this document shall be decided by the Board."[40] *11 votes - Write the rules on elections, appointments, and removal of officers. Article 6 of your constitution should provide the rules on elections, appointment procedures, and removal of members. This article should also provide the rules on interim appointments or elections in the case of a mid-term vacancy.[19]
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Injured person reportedly dies after Cruise cars block first responders, according to reports from the San Francisco Fire Department
52 votes -
Pentagon's new website lets you explore declassified UAP sightings info. Eventually, people will be able to submit their own reports of "unidentified anomalous phenomena."
11 votes -
US President Joe Biden: Don't give Wall Street control of our public water systems
New advisory report pushes disastrous privatization schemes Link to the article This week, President Biden’s National Infrastructure Advisory Council issued a report recommending the privatization...
New advisory report pushes disastrous privatization schemes
This week, President Biden’s National Infrastructure Advisory Council issued a report recommending the privatization of the nation’s water systems.
The chair of the advisory council is the CEO of Global Infrastructure Partners, an infrastructure investment bank with an estimated $100 billion in assets under management that targets energy, transportation, digital and water infrastructure.
The report recommends, among other things, that the federal government “[r]emove barriers to privatization, concessions, and other nontraditional models of funding community water systems,” and open up all federal grant programs to support privatized utilities.
Food & Water Watch Public Water for All Campaign Director Mary Grant issued the following response:
Water privatization is a terrible idea. President Biden should have never appointed an investment banker to chair an advisory council for the nation’s infrastructure. Wall Street wants to take control of the nation’s public water systems to wring profits from communities that are already struggling with unaffordable water bills and toxic water.
Privatization would deepen the nation’s water crises, leading to higher water bills and less accountable and transparent services. Privately owned water systems charge 59 percent more than local government systems, and private ownership is the single largest factor associated with higher water bills — more than aging infrastructure or drought.
Instead of relying on Wall Street advisers, President Biden should support policies that will truly help communities by asking Congress to pass the Water Affordability, Transparency, Equity and Reliability (WATER) Act (HR 1729, S 938). After decades of federal austerity for water, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was a step forward, but it provided only about seven percent of the identified needs of our water systems. The WATER Act would fully restore the federal commitment to safe water by providing a permanent source of federal funding at the level that our water and wastewater systems need to ensure safe, clean and affordable public water for all.
Certain resources/commodities/services like water, food, electricity and health should remain in public domain. I don't understand the askance that is associated with this view.
Once these fall to the profiteering domain, we will be sucked dry and forced to accept abnormal standards as normal to gain access to these which in first place should be in public domain protected in public interest by public representatives.
These resources will be and are used by IMF and sister organisations that are usually called "banks" as leverage to get their debts serviced or sold as AAA+ securities.
They tried that with real estate but that burst since a physical house doesn't just disappear which leads to emergence of derelict patches within the estates. This would certainly destroy the demand and the dead estate would translate into toxic securities by just being there and not disappearing. Similarly things that are too volatile will also not be accepted as essential by the public as was the case with electronics/net. So that's not worth it.
But what if the resource or commodity is essential, which means it has sustained demand, as well as it is volatile enough which means it vanishes after its monetary utility. Now that's "gold". Theoretically its value will not only be retained but it may even increase with no downside. Perpetual profitability.
55 votes -
Buy now, pay later firm Klarna reports first month of profit in three years, as calls grow for sector to be regulated
6 votes -
Treasury Department releases first-of-its-kind report on benefits of unions to the US economy
61 votes -
France says Niger's junta has 'no authority' to ask ambassador to leave - other articles report Niger's government has cut off water to French embassy
16 votes -
Zoom CEO reportedly tells staff: Workers can't build trust or collaborate... on Zoom
52 votes -
Cruise autonomous car reportedly swerves in backhoe's way, is busted in San Francisco intersection
13 votes -
Where have all the DC fans gone?
9 votes -
Tesla reportedly asked US highway safety officials to redact information about whether driver-assistance software was in use during crashes
35 votes -
Why streaming services are pushing subscribers to ad tiers
27 votes -
Maryland reports first locally acquired malaria case in forty years
16 votes -
Report: Potential New York Times lawsuit could force OpenAI to wipe ChatGPT and start over
75 votes -
Power lines likely caused Maui’s first reported fire, video and data show
11 votes