This is the type of person Tucker, Trump etc sucks up to

Putin is not a nice person. He is a despot and a warmonger.

Today we saw another piece of evidence for this, as yet another of his critics was killed

Putin critic Alexei Navalny, 47, dies in Arctic Circle jail

Russia’s most significant opposition leader for the past decade, Alexei Navalny, has died in an Arctic Circle jail, the prison service has said.

It is highly likely he was killed directly, but even if the death wasn’t caused by a direct murder, it was still caused indirectly by Putin by sending him to this harsh prison. I don’t, however, believe for a second that he wasn’t murdered – it is not like it was the first attempt to kill him after all

Most of the Russian president’s critics have fled Russia, but Alexei Navalny returned in January 2021, after months of medical treatment. In August 2020 he was poisoned at the end of a trip to Siberia with a Novichok nerve agent.

Yet despite this, and the invasion of Ukraine, you have powerful people in the US singing Putin’s praise. You have so-called journalists interviewing him and Trump praising him, even encouraging him to attack US allies.

For the best dissection of Tucker Carlson’s interview of Putin, I highly recommend Knowledge Fight’s podcast episode on it.

Science Vs limiting their output

I have listened to the Science Vs podcast for a while, but had somehow missed the fact that they had become exclusive to Spotify. This is not a good situation to be in for a podcast promoting the understanding of science, and the host/producer Wendy Zukerman and the editor Blythe Terrell have taken the consequences and are now limiting their output to shows that debunk stuff released on the Spotify platform

Zukerman, the host and executive producer for “Science Vs,” and Terrell, an editor for the science podcast, plan to limit their production on new episodes because they do not believe Spotify’s rules regarding misinformation go far enough.

“Until Spotify implements stronger methods to prevent the spread of misinformation on the platform, we will no longer be making new Science Vs episodes, except those intended to counteract misinformation being spread on Spotify,” they wrote in a letter to Ek, posted on Twitter on Monday.

“Science Vs,” which is exclusive to Spotify, looks at the science behind topics including pandemics.

They have already started doing this, with their latest episode Joe Rogan: The Malone Interview, which you can listen to here.

I applaud the principled stance that they have taken. You can find their twitter feed here.

Engadget have a few more details in Spotify’s ‘Science VS’ podcast will only fact-check misinformation being spread on Spotify

Quitting Spotify Premium

The Neil Young ultimatum to Spotify about the Joe Rogan podcast, and the afterwards removal of Young’s music from the platform has gotten me to do something which I had considered several times before – cancelling my Spotify Premium account.

I am not a fan of neither Neil Young as a person nor of his music, but he is right that Spotify helps spread dangerous misinformation, and we need to show them that it is unacceptable.

I have been using Spotify, either the free version or the Premium version, since I was on a project in Sweden in 2008 or so. Back then, Spotify was only available in Sweden, and they checked your location when you signed in, so I could only use it when at work. Later the service became available in the rest of the world.

In the past, I have considered cancelling Spotify due to their fairly low pay to the artists (of the big streaming services, YouTube is the only one that’s worse), but one of the reasons I’ve stuck around has been the lack of alternative, and the lack of a definitive push. Well, promoting Joe Rogan is definitely a definitive push, so I guess I will be looking for a new streaming platform to hear music on.  I have heard good stuff about Tidal so I will be checking that streaming platform out.

If you want a good explanation why Joe Rogan is so problematic, I highly recommend listening to the Joe Rogan episode of the Decoding the Gurus podcast.

 

Lazy linking

I have gotten my first jab of the Pfizer vaccine this morning, and while I don’t really feel any side effects, I am a bit exhausted, which might as well be due to a busy schedule than anything else. Anyway, I am working on some posts about Danish politics, but until I get around to finishing them, I thought I’d do a quick link round-up.

I case you are curious about the kind of work I do on a daily basis, you can get a glimpse into it, through an article I have written on being a Product Owner in a DevOps environment for Scrum Alliance.

I might have recommended this before, but I highly recommend the “Woking up” series of episodes of Elynah’s Polite Conversations podcast, where she discusses Sam Harris and why she left his fandom. The podcast can be found on all places where you can get podcasts. Otherwise, the first full episode can be found on Soundcloud here. Be aware that Elynah first releases a shorter preview episode. Currently there are six full episodes out.

A new fascinating, if somewhat frustrating podcast is The Turning: The Sisters Who Left, about women who joined the Missionaries of Charity under Mother Theresa, and since left the order. It is fascinating, as it shows how cult-like the order was. It is frustrating, because it still buys too much into the myths around Mother Theresa . Though there is an episode entirely dedicated to the criticism from Hitchens etc., it is clear that the former sisters are still somewhat reverent of Mother Theresa, and while they occasionally talk about the problems with the order (e.g. how proper medicine isn’t used), they don’t seem to blame her for it.

I, a philosophical zombie

I have just listened to the newest episode of the Serious Inquiry Only, which is about how peoples’ brains work differently.

SIO227: Do You Have an Internal Monologue?

… because one of your beloved hosts of SIO does not! Needless to say, this was a mind blowing realization to that person. We talk about the extraordinary differences in human internal experience, and some of the current science and philosophy on the topic.

The episode mostly focused on internal monologues, but the hosts also mentioned the fact that not everyone have a mind’s eye, and even mentioned someone on twitter who had neither an internal monologues nor a mind’s eye.

In the podcast, one of the hosts, Thomas Smith, said that people with neither an internal monologue nor a mind’s eye must be philosophical zombies.

As I understand the podcast, having an internal monologue means that there is an auditory aspect to peoples’ thought process, where they hear their thoughts as voices, either their own or someone else’s.

You might have guessed it from my description and the post’s headline, but I don’t have an internal monologue. Nor do I have a mind’s eye (I just learned that not haven’t a mind’s eye is called aphantasia,I have just always said that I’m not visual).

This means that, for me:

  • An earworm is just a song that I instantly recognize
  • I don’t visualize characters in books
  • I don’t read dialogue in the voice of the characters/people
  • For me, picture this/visualize this is just a metaphor for thinking about some

It also means for me that most memorizing techniques doesn’t work for me, since they often require the ability to visualize things.

What it doesn’t mean:

  • I am unable to make figures and diagrams that are useful

Quite contrary, I often make quite clear and useful diagrams/figures, since I have to think about how to communicate through them than people who make them “on the fly”.

  • I don’t enjoy reading

I have always read a lot, and I enjoy well written books. Unlike what some might think, I can also be affected emotionally by books.

  • I can’t improvise speeches and writing

On the rare occasions where I am giving a speech, I usually note a couple of subjects that I need to cover, and then improvise from there. When writing for my blog, I only have a faint outline of what I want to cover, before starting to read the blogpost.

Having listening to the podcast, I did realize that there probably is a connection between my lack of inner monologue, and why I don’t particular sing along songs. I much prefer to listen to the artists doing the singing, and I don’t have a inner monologue pushing me to open my own voice.

Feel free to ask questions about how my thinking process work, but do remember that I don’t have a shared experience with most of you, so I can’t describe the differences, just how I experience it.

 

 

 

New podcast recommendation: In Research Of

I have started to listen to a new podcast In Research Of, which describes itself thus:

This is the homepage of the podcast “In reSearch Of…” a show where we go back and watch the TV show In Search Of… and consider some of the explanations the producers chose to ignore.

Hosted by:

Blake Smith (Monstertalk, The Horror Podcast) a writer, researcher, and podcaster.

Jeb Card, archaeologist and author of Spooky Archaeology.

Even if you haven’t seen the original In Search Of… (I haven’t) it is well worth a listen.

New podcast recommendation: DeepMind the Podcast

I have just come across a new podcast hosted by the always-brilliant Hannah Fry. It is on AI, and was made in collaboration with the DeepMind laboratory in the UK, and it is simply called DeepMind the Podcast.

The website has the following description:

What’s AI? What can it be used for? Is it safe? And how do I get involved? These are the kinds of questions we often get asked at public events like science festivals, talks and workshops. We love answering them and really value the conversations and thinking they provoke.

Sadly, we can’t have face-to-face conversations with everyone who is interested in AI. So, to help us bridge that gap, we’re now launching DeepMind: The Podcast, a new series that we hope will answer these questions and more, while also giving listeners an inside look at how AI research is done at an organisation like DeepMind. You can subscribe now on your favourite podcast app.

 

Monster Talk has gone independent

The excellent podcast Monster Talk, hosted by Blake Smith and Dr. Karen Stollznow, has gone independent.

It used to be connected to Skeptic, the magazine which is edited by Michael Shermer. Even though the podcast had no connection to Shermer, it still meant it was hard to promote the podcast, or even worse, support the podcast financially, without somehow benefiting Skeptic and Shermer.

Luckily, this is no longer the case. A few weeks ago, Smith and Stollznow went independent with the podcast, which is now produced by Blake Smith’s company Monster House, LLC.

If you want to support their new independence, Blake Smith has set up a fundraiser and they have a patreon

I haven’t been able to find a link to the actual podcast which isn’t under the Skeptic domain, but I am sure it is only a matter of time before they have a website I can link.

 

Podcast recommendations

A few months ago, I made a list of podcast recommendations, so I thought I’d bring an updated list of what I am currently listening to.

The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry – I mentioned it in my last post, but I have listened quite a bit more to it since then, and I still highly recommend it.

The Infinite Monkey Cage – Robin Ince, Brian Cox, and friends take on scientific subjects. There is one in-joke, where people ask Brian Cox whether it is true that “things can only get better”, which is a reference to a hit by the band D-REAM, which Brian Cox used to play guitar in.

Making History – A history podcast/radio show. The latest season was hosted by Tom Holland and Iszi Lawrence. It is not secret that I am a great fan of Iszi and her podcast The Z List Dead List, but even if I hadn’t already been a fan of her, I would have liked Making History.

In these Trump times, it can be hard to make sense of what is going on in the legal realm in the US. A great podcast to help you with that is Opening Arguments, where the two hosts, Andrew Torrez and Thomas Smith explains things. Andrew Torrez is a lawyer, who brings his expertice to the table, while Thomas Smith plays the role of the interviewer. The podcast has a liberal bend, as does reality, but will also take on legal nonsense from the left.

Monster Talk is another podcast I love. It is hosted by Blake Smith and Dr. Karen Stollznow, and describes itself as “a free audio podcast that critically examines the science behind cryptozoological (and legendary) creatures, such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, or werewolves.”

Podcast recommendations

I have come across a few interesting podcasts, that I thought I’d share with the rest of you.

The first of them, came to me via Tony, who recommended it. It is Uncivil, which is described thus:

A history podcast from Gimlet Media, where we go back to the time our divisions turned into a war, and bring you stories left out of the official history.

The second podcast, is really a series of episodes of a podcast. It is the Seeing White series of the Scene on Radio podcast.

Just what is going on with white people? Police shootings of unarmed African Americans. Acts of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. The renewed embrace of raw, undisguised white-identity politics. Unending racial inequity in schools, housing, criminal justice, and hiring. Some of this feels new, but in truth it’s an old story.

Why? Where did the notion of “whiteness” come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for?

Scene on Radio host and producer John Biewen took a deep dive into these questions, along with an array of leading scholars and regular guest Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika, in this fourteen-part documentary series, released between February and August 2017. The series editor is Loretta Williams.

This was again a podcast that came to me via Tony.

Opening Arguments a podcast by Andrew Torres and Thomas Smith. A progressive podcast, focusing on legal matters. It describes itself thus:

Opening Arguments is the show that pairs a real-life, Harvard-educated lawyer (Andrew) with an inquisitive host (Thomas). Every episode, Thomas and Andrew take on a popular legal topic and give you all the tools you need to understand the issue and win every argument you have on Facebook, with your Uncle Frank, or wherever someone is wrong on the Internet.

Thomas and Andrew have tackled Hillary Clinton’s emails, Jill Stein’s recounts, the Emoluments clause, overtime regulations, Roe v. Wade, the wacky “sovereign citizen” movement, and much, much more!

It’s law. It’s politics. It’s fun. We don’t tell you what to think, we just set up the Opening Arguments.

A few weeks ago, I was at QED in Manchester, where I heard Hannah Fry give a brilliant talk. This made me look up her work, and I was reminded that she is one of the two hosts of The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry, a show that addresses listener questions from a scientific angle.

The Archaeological Fantasies Podcast describes itself thus:

Welcome to the Archaeological Fantasies Podcast. Join Sara Head and Doctors Ken Feder and Jeb Card as they explore the wild world of pseudoarchaeology. They look critically at topics ranging from Transoceanic travliers, Ancient Aliens, and Vikings in America, all the way to archaeological evidence of Big Foot.