Arkansawyer

I wear my skin only as thin as I have to, armor myself only as much as seems absolutely necessary. I try to live naked in the world, unashamed even under attack, unafraid even though I know how much there is to fear.

First off, I had one really neat idea, for which I’d like to get a simple implementation done quickly. I’m not sure doing so is within one person’s spare time efforts, but still, it was a neat idea. Other things:

1. The language used around data portability is confused and incoherent. Look at phrases describing data portability: take back, pull out, portable, removable, get out. Do those mean data portability meaning the ability of the user to access and copy? Or data portability meaning the ability of the user to remove–delete or make inaccessible on the original system–and transfer to another service. Data portability is itself an ambiguous term. Which of those meanings does it have for you?
2. Privacy advocates tend to believe what users say rather than what they do. I heard people argue this point at great length, at one point interpreting an experiment by danah boyd comparing perceived versus actual privacy settings for users–users think they’re much more private than they really are, boyd says–as showing users care more about privacy because they say they care more. I’ll look up her paper.
3. Many privacy issues will resolve (and have resolved) as social and cultural change destigmatize nonstandard behavior. We’ve seen this happen drastically in the aftermath of the sixties. Gay people are out of the closet all over the country. No one looks askance at a child born outside of wedlock. Just think what other changes have come, and what behavior no longer needs to be kept private. Those social changes solved many privacy issues by eliminating them.

Using technology from top Silicon Valley companies, advertisers are creating a new breed of digital signs that can be customized depending on a viewer’s age and gender, and on the age, gender, and intent of the person standing next to the viewer, standing behind the viewer, or looking furtively over the viewer’s shoulder.

“Anyone can microtarget advertisements to individuals,” said Norman Davidson, chief privacy officer of FaceFacts, “but our new FaceFacts API (FFAPI) allows microtargeting of groups. Not just as individuals, but by inferring their social relations and serving ads targeting the needs uppermost on their minds at that time. Let’s show some examples.

“Here we see a couple shopping for an engagement ring,” Davidson said. “First, facial recognition lets us ID both of them. Now we drill down, and there are their names and ages–that’s his real age, by the way, not what’s on his driver’s license. Back up and over to the biometric readings. Note his pupil dilation. That’s good for an extra three to ten percent markup at the jeweler’s. We get a taste of that.

“Now, look closely at this one. You’ll see one gentleman in the foreground and another in the background. The man in the background has been arrested three times for assault and robbery. We’re going to suggest pepper spray to the man in the foreground and, as he passes and the man in the background approaches, a nice set of handcuffs.”

Shuffling off this digital coil

If I knew the author approved of embedding, you’d be seeing it without clicking.

(Note: Why did I leave this in draft form for eight months?)

A little Easter gift for you: Rev. Dr. Rita Nakashima Brock: “Lamentation” Friday and the Power of Love:

Heloise understood compassion as something more than full identification with another’s pain and sorrow and the internalizing of the most abject, abyssal suffering. For her, compassion was more than subjective feeling, weakness, and devotion. Her compassion maintained a tensile consciousness that combined empathy for another’s pain with sufficient self-possession to be able to offer to someone mired in his own suffering a world beyond pain and helplessness, a world glimpsed in community and companionship—a world that offered, still, the possibilities of love, of friendship.

Okay, this one really is via Will Shetterly:

Today, says David Brooks, “the rich don’t exploit the poor, they just out-compete them.” And if out-competing people means tying their ankles together and loading them down with extra weight while hiring yourself the most expensive coaches and the best practice facilities, he’s right. The entire U.S. school system, from pre-K up, is structured from the very start to enable the rich to out-compete the poor, which is to say, the race is fixed. And the kinds of solutions that might actually make a difference — financing every school district equally, abolishing private schools, making high-quality child care available to every family — are treated as if they were positively un-American.

A quote from an excerpt from Walter Benn Michaels’ The Trouble With Diversity: How We Learned To Love Identity and Ignore Inequality. I’ve got the book waiting for me at the public library.

Exactly as the title says.

Terrible, Terrible Experience
When I ordered this, it said it would arrive on the 16th, but it didn’t show up until the 18th, and even then it was delivered while I was out buying garden supplies, so I had to go pick it up the next day. It works fine, but I’m so upset about the poor customer service I’m giving it one star.

Don’t miss the three-star review at the end.

If I could get that sentence on a bumper sticker, I would, and not simply for the sake of black people.

Understanding racism as a moral failing cripples white people who want, often desperately, not to be complicit in a racist system, and who are willing to make some level of sacrifice to do so.

There are a small number of incidents in my life–three that I can think of, each one tied up, oddly enough, with an anti-racist act or intent, but there may be others–when I’ve managed to act in a way that struck me later as badly wrong, and which, if I were to choose the “moral failing” understanding of racism, would eat my guts out.

That’s not a helpful way to view your life. It may be satisfying to pick at the scabs of your own wounds (and trust me on this, being white and anti-racist doesn’t keep the systematic societal racism that that bathes you like an acid from leaving wounds and scars behind) but it doesn’t do the world any good. It’s just another way of feeling enlightened in order to escape the responsibility of action.

The point is to change the world. Change the world and you change yourself.

(via Chalicechick’s Giant Gates FAQ, wherein what I wanted to say was mostly said)

To whom it may concern,

Due to the recent downgrade of your website, I am no longer able to post payments to my account. (I note you’ve added the highly insecure “personal question” to your authentication process; that’s not my issue, but it does suggest shoddiness in the rest of your redesign.) Honestly, what do you care who pays my bills, so long as they’re paid? What use is an ISIS account to me, or to you?

Enclosed find a check, to show good faith. Please advise on how to make future payments.