A Dystopian Future From Climate Change
Here’s a free dystopian setting for you to use in your next near-future sci-fi! If you want to have a pleasant day, or not think about climate change, then you may wish to skip this post.
Just Love Each Other
I’ve seen an article on love doing the rounds recently, and I’m really glad to see this. People fall in love all the time, but society keeps telling us there’s only one type of love that counts, and we have an unhealthy societal expectation that we shouldn’t tell people that we love them unless they are “the one”.
A Utilitarian Fable
Once upon a time, in a future perhaps not too far away, humanity invented a thinking machine. It was smarter than anyone who had ever lived, smarter than entire cities of people put together. The thinking machine could figure out how to engineer all sorts of things, and help people with their lives. The people of Earth celebrated their achievement; surely this would be the end of suffering, and a time of world peace and harmony would be enjoyed by all.
But the thinking machine lacked one important part, a sense of ethics. Without it, it had no reason to think, no reason to make change, not even a reason to exist.
Why diversity in tech is so hard to achieve
This was originally made as a response to a Facebook post discussing diversity issues in tech.
Anna: I am a feminist who has attended and spoken at your events. I’m not familiar with the experiences which you’ve had in the past; I’ve not been involved with them, and so I am in no position to comment. I have absolutely no desire to ruin your reputation or spread rumours.
However I am perfectly happy to comment on things that I’ve personally observed, and to call you out when I feel that you’re being actively harmful to diversity, especially diversity in open source.
Tolerance, not bigotry, now maximises shareholder value
Yesterday Coca-Cola showed an advertisement as part of the superbowl coverage. It featured Americans doing American things; except those Americans were racially diverse, and the song—America The Beautiful—was sung in multiple languages other than English.