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News Briefs 12-12-2016

It’s beginning to look a lot like….Monday.

Quote of the Day:

The struggle for human rights [is] and eternal struggle in which a final victory can never be won. But to tire in that struggle would mean the ruin of society.

Albert Einstein

Editor
  1. ET & Amazon
    ET: He called yesterday telling me he was Microsoft tech support 😛

    Amazon: They treat their employees like slaves. 12-hour work days, very little time off and calling you off hours. You can never relax because they will call you. Also, this store seems easily hacked.

  2. Events that happened
    I think people can be convinced they heard about something. If you show them an image and tell them it was reported, the human mind becomes convinced they have heard about it. The majority of people are easily persuaded by people of authority (i.e. a news source). Shit, look at how Trump won. One of the main reasons he won because the news only focused on him and his celebrity, ignoring all other Republican candidates. He won because the news convinced people to vote for him.

    1. Deja View
      I’m sure our brains are filled with false memories from film and television. There is a well-know store in Toronto (Honest Ed’s) that is closing at the end of 2016, and I wanted to visit because I wasn’t sure if I’d ever been there before. I am glad to say that after visiting, I can honestly say, that I’d never been there before. (And you’re not missing much if you haven’t either.)

  3. I won’t be shopping at an
    I won’t be shopping at an Amazon checkout free store.

    I won’t even use the self-checkout lanes at traditional grocery stores (the lines are usually longer and several of the machines are always out of order so there’s no decrease in wait time).

    I prefer to check out with a human anyway because they can handle any special need I have that doesn’t fit some pre-determined algorithm.

    I don’t find shopping Amazon to be a consistent cost saver. (I’ve often found lower prices on big ticket items at bricks and mortar stores as well as other Websites (often with free shipping without needing to pay for Amazon Prime or meeting an Amazon minimum purchase amount).

    I’ve found Amazon not a time saver when something bought online sight unseen is unsatisfactory and needs to be returned.

    In short, Amazon is a convenience some of the time, but it’s not a go-to for everything, especially for groceries for those who love to cook and want to talk to the butcher, fishmonger, green grocer, or baker about what we’re purchasing. So no thanks to a fully automated food buying experiences.

    1. “I won’t even use the
      “I won’t even use the self-checkout lanes at traditional grocery stores (the lines are usually longer and several of the machines are always out of order so there’s no decrease in wait time).

      I prefer to check out with a human anyway because they can handle any special need I have that doesn’t fit some pre-determined algorithm.”

      Totally agree – and I would add: I refuse to assist any retailer in order to put their remaining Staff out of a job…

    2. Amazon is good but …
      I do like Amazon for things that I can’t buy locally. Electronics stuff for example, computer monitors, cables and whatnot. I don’t like travelling around the neighborhood for hours to see if they have that kind of thing.

      Fresh food I get at supermarkets of the lower priced competition, while it is fresh. We can feel sorry for the farmers going broke, but that has been a myth for a long time now. Farming in North America is an industry, the local farm has been extinct for decades. Do feel sorry for the farm workers, and please do let them into the country legally. That is for the USA and Canada, do let them in.

      As for buying stuff without checkout lines – the intended effect is that you don’t feel you are paying. Like paying with plastic, only more so. I prefer to pay in cash, so I am more aware of how much I spend.

        1. evangelizing, forgive me 🙂
          All right, now is the time that I preach.

          There is no need to buy software. Unless you want to finance the kids
          that enjoy writing games perhaps. Otherwise:

          There is tons of free software. Not stolen or copied in strange ways that are legal only in the sense that they got away with it. No, Free. Open Source.

          You all use it. Major companies use it, all of them. The free operating system Linux runs from computers the size of a wrist watch to the biggest supercomputers in the world. The telephone system runs on linux. The internet runs on linux. So does the DoD. So does all of science.

          Hmm. I need to talk to the catholic church, don’t I – unless they have seen the way already 🙂

          1. Buy software
            I’m a graphic designer and sadly the only alternatives to Adobe out there would not suit my needs. So sometimes you have to pay for software (although I go through Adobe’s site mostly).

            Do I pay for my antivirus – no
            Did I pay for my typing program – no I use open office (Word is brutal and Pages can suck it)
            Did I pay for my copy of Windows 7 – yes

            So no I don’t by all my software, but sometimes you have no choice. Unless they changed it, Adobe can’t run on Linux. I’d love if it did because I’m sick of Windows and Apple’s BS.

            Peace.

  4. ET
    I replied to the ET question on another site as follows:

    I believe that it’s teeming with intelligent life out there. I’ve always been a proponent of initiating contact – until recently that is.

    I’ve recently read the Three Body Problem series of 3 books by Liu Cixin (not quite finished part 3 but I don’t think I’m going to change my mind whatever the outcome!).

    In the second book, entitled aptly enough, “The Dark Forest”, he expounds on his Dark Forest theory. I found it very believable.

    I am now firmly against betraying our existence at this stage of our development. Which is great shame as I always hoped I might still be around if/when contact is made. Having said that, as others have commented, there is no doubt that we will continue our search and we will continue to advertise our presence. As Cixin says, chances are, if we can see them, they will probably see us at some stage…

    To add to my last post – someone has kindly already transcripted some of the text:

    “[…] two axioms for cosmic civilization. First, survival is the primary need of civilization. Second, civilization continuously grows and expands, but the total matter in the universe remains constant. […] The universe is a black forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life – another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod – there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people. An eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out. This is the picture of cosmic civilization. It’s the explanation for the Fermi Paradox. […] But in this dark forest, there’s a stupid child called humanity, who has built a bonfire and is standing beside it shouting, ‘Here I am! Here I am!’ “

  5. I remember it well
    The experiment of telling people about some mildly fascinating event, that these people then remember as being part of or creating themselves, is not really surprising.

    One part is that this has happened to me, where I remember a conversation with a friend that I knew really well at the time. I had two memories of that conversation, in two different languages. Including the mistakes he would have made in one language and the other. So one of these distinct memories was invented by my brain. At least one.

    Another part is that I still believe that imagination and episodic memory are based on the same mechanism in the brain. Imagination is just a memory of an event that has not happened (yet). And then episodic memory details are often filled in when the memory is recalled. Colors change, sounds change, based on what we have experienced since the episode.

    1. The writer William Faulkner
      The writer William Faulkner was often accused of plagiarism or short snippets of it which accusation dumbfounded him until he began to realize that he had a steel trap memory for turns of phrase that he found artful. In this case, his memory of the written word sequence was perfect, but he had forgotten where the wording came from, so he assumed it must have emerged from his own mind.

      1. It’s not funny!
        I have a good memory for jokes. Many people don’t, I do not understand the difference.

        It happes fairly often that someone tells me a joke, and 3 or 4 years later I tell the same joke back to them, they laugh and don’t remember that I got it from them. But I do, usually.

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