Selfishness and Self-love

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If it is a virtue to love my neighbor as a human being, it must be a virtue and not a vice-to love myself since I am a human being too. There is no concept of man in which I myself am not included. A doctrine which proclaims such an exclusion proves itself to be intrinsically contradictory. The idea expressed in the Biblical “Love thy neighbor as thyself!” implies that respect for one’s own integrity and uniqueness, love for and understanding of one’s own self, can not be separated from respect for and love and understanding of another individual. The love for my own self is inseparably connected with the love for any other self.

The affirmation of one’s own life, happiness, growth, freedom, is rooted in one’s capacity to love, i.e., in care, respect, responsibility, and knowledge. If an individual is able to love productively, he loves himself too; if he can love only others, he can not love at all.

The selfish person.. can see nothing but himself; he judges everyone and everything from its usefulness to him; he is basically unable to love. Does not this prove that concern for others and concern for oneself are unavoidable alternatives? This would be so if selfishness and self-love were identical. But.. selfishness and self-love, far from being identical, are actually opposites.

Eric Fromm, Man for Himself

The Process of Transitions

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Change is a situational shift.

Getting a new boss is a change, and so is receiving a promotion or losing your job.

Moving to a different house is a change, and so it remodeling your house or losing it in a fire.

Having a new change is a change for everyone in the family—including the new baby, who was pretty well situated before all the change too place.

And, of course, losing a loved one is a change—a huge one.

Transition, on the other hand, is the process of letting go of the way things used to be and then taking hold of the way they subsequently become. In between the letting go and the taking hold again, there is a chaotic but potentially creative “neutral zone” when things aren’t the old way, but aren’t really a new way yet either. This three-phase process—ending, neutral zone, beginning again—is transition.

William Bridges, The Way of Transition

Loose, Messy and Chaotic

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Tight ways of thinking and working, while being superficially attractive and comforting, don't work. They have been built on the illusion of control. This illusion – propagated by legions of consultants, economists, market researchers and other purveyors of empirical snake oil – has actually made businesses less capable of embracing the complex realities of the modern world.

Agility, flexibility, a willingness to exercise judgement and an ability to improvise will become the defining characteristics of successful institutions in the next decades. This means fighting the instinct to solve every problem through rules and regulations and recognising the limitations of long-term planning and the painfully slow nature of most internal decision-making processes.

It means accepting the need to operate in real time and making the organisational and cultural changes necessary to achieve it. And most importantly, it means building a strong, self-sustaining, trusting organisational culture rather than in investing in yet more process and bureaucracy.

The future is loose, messy and chaotic: now is the time to embrace it.

Martin Thomas, Loose: The Future of Business is Letting Go

7 Media Webinars this week about journalism, social media, accessibility, sports & more

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Tues, Jan 10 – Solutions Journalism 101

What: This webinar will explore the ins and outs of solutions journalism, talk about why it’s important, explain key steps in reporting a solutions story, and share tips and resources for journalists interested in investigating how people are responding to social problems.

When: 7 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The Solutions Journalism Network

More info

 

Tues, Jan 10 – Social Media 101 for Nonprofits

What: This session includes practical tips and tools for extending your cause and mission via social media. We cover the basics of using social media for your nonprofit organization and give you handy tips for the “big 3:” Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Who: Kiersten Hill Director of Nonprofit Solutions for FireSpring

When: 2 pm, Central

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: FireSpring

More info

 

Wed, Jan 11 - The role of journalism in disrupting corruption

What: This special collaboration from the institute's Global Journalism Seminars series and the Blavatnik School of Government's Chandler Sessions on Integrity and Corruption will include contributions to the discussion by editors and journalists from countries including Kenya and Peru, and RISJ Journalist Fellows and Chandler Session members.

Who: Jane Bradley, New York Times, Mitali Mukherjee, Director of Journalist Programmes at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Reuters Institute

More info

 

Wed, Jan 11 - Making Your Nonprofit's Website More Accessible and Inclusive

What: Is your website meeting your organization's legal requirement for accessibility? During this webinar, attendees will learn how to identify accessibility problems on your website, even if you're not a developer, and tools you can use to resolve those problems. Additionally, attendees will learn more about the existing laws related to website accessibility and if they pertain to your organization.

Who: Amber Hinds, Equalize Digital

When: 3 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Nonprofit Learning Lab

More info

 

Wed, Jan 11 - Is a Career in Sports Journalism Your Goal?

What: Inside information on sports writing, breaking into the field, and how the panelists have navigated being the only Latino in the newsroom

Who: Iliana Limón Romero, Sports Editor, Los Angeles Times; Joe Rodriguez, Director of Digital Content, MLS NEXT Pro; Siera Santos, Host, MLB Networks

When: 5 pm, Central

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: National Association of Hispanic Journalists

More info

 

Thu, Jan 12 - 2023 Advertising and Media Data Trends and Forecast

What: Notable trends in retail media and data management  The increasing importance of multi-currency measurement  How to implement better customer journey analytics

Who: Snoeflake’s Adrian Bolosan and Erin Foxworthy       

When: 12 noon, Central

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Ad Week

More info

 

Thu, Jan 12 - How to Be an Advocate for Student Press Freedom

What: This workshop will allow student journalists to share their stories with their peers and learn other advocacy techniques to help fight for student press freedom.

Who: SPLC advocacy and organizing director Hillary Davis

When: 7:30 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Student Press Law Center

More info

5 Articles about Google Security

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10 Articles about Privacy Tools

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A ChatGPT-assisted academic paper

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A ChatGPT-assisted paper is posted to the arXiv. The topic is AI use in drug discovery and the authors conclude, “AI has the potential to revolutionize the drug discovery process.”

The paper is an example of how the ChatGPT bot might be used in academic papers and offers a potential model for AI-assistance transparency. Their conclusion:

As a result of this experiment, we can state that ChatGPT is not a useful tool for writing reliable scientific texts without strong human intervention. One of the main reasons why this AI is not yet ready to be used in the production of scientific articles is its lack of ability to evaluate the veracity and reliability of the information it processes. A real risk is that predatory journals may exploit the quick production of scientific articles to generate large amounts of low-quality content. Overall, addressing the risks associated with the use of AI in the production of scientific articles will require a combination of technical solutions, regulatory frameworks, and public education.

Tuesday Tech Tools: Three “unsubscribe” tools

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Leave Me Alone - Unsubscribe from several email accounts at the same time. Will bundle newsletters as well. Free trial then $9 a month.

Clean Email- Remove yourself from email accounts and bundle newsletters. Free trial then $30 a year.

Mailstrom - Unsubscribe from lots of lists, or quickly delete many email. Works with Outlook, Gmail and Yahoo. Free trial then yearly accounts starting at $60.

The clarity of the next hour and the fuzziness of the next year

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Studies show that the parts of the brain that are primarily responsible for generating feelings of pleasurable excitement become active when people imagine receiving a reward such as money in the near future but not when they imagine receiving the same reward in the far future.

If you’ve ever bought too many boxes of Thin Mints from the Girl Scout who hawks her wares in front of the local library but too few boxes from the Girl Scout who rings your doorbell and takes your order for future delivery, then you’ve experienced this anomaly yourself. When we spy the future through our prospectiscopes, the clarity of the next hour and the fuzziness of the next year can lead us to make a variety of mistakes.

Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness

Critical Ignoring compliments Critical Thinking

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On the web, where a witches’ brew of advertisers, lobbyists, conspiracy theorists and foreign governments conspire to hijack attention, the same strategy spells doom. Online, critical ignoring is just as important as critical thinking. 

That’s because, like a pinball bouncing from bumper to bumper, our attention careens from notification to text message to the next vibrating thing we must check. A flood of information depletes attention and fractures the ability to concentrate.

Sam Wineburg writing in The Conversation

25 Data Science Articles from Dec 2022

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A Pandas DataFrame cheatsheet for exploratory analysis & data manipulation 

Five ways that data roles will change in 2023 related to Chief Data Officers

AI & machine learning are “top of mind for the Army, especially as it pertains to protecting its assets in space”

10 weird things about SpaceX's more than 3,000 Starlink satellites (and that number keeps growing)

Initial specific steps toward launching a machine learning project 

Adobe has just released a remarkable and free AI-powered enhanced speech tool

The four biggest trends they expect to shape the AI landscape in 2023

Synthetic data applications, limitations & vulnerabilities

A guide to the roles and responsibilities on a data migration team

A tech journalist goes back to high school to find out what OpenAI’s Chatbot can pass AP Lit

The current limitations of AI’s military impact & where tech could one day spark “revolutionary changes” 

How Bayesian network structure learning can incorporate missing data 

The NGA has plans to develop an overarching cloud-based enterprise management system capable of automating its data collection and dissemination and ultimately replacing the overall Foundation GEOINT storage and management process 

A new paper on “Localization and classification of space objects using EfficientDet detector for space situational awareness”

Potential uses of ChatGPT for data scientists

McKinsey on the state of AI since the research firm began tracking it five years ago

A new collaborative effort is designed to “support interoperable open map data as a shared asset that can strengthen mapping services worldwide”

Different kinds of geospatial specialists are needed in different situations

China outpaces efforts by U.S. intelligence agencies to harness power of publicly available data 

The Space Dev Agency’s first major satellite launch has been delayed again

A look under the hood: How does ChatGPT work internally? 

An AI method from MIT and IBM research “improves the training and inference performance of deep learning models on large graphs”

Some basics about the new AI called ChatGPT 

Why Neural Network explainability is important, how to do it, & the tools for it

“The FCC approved part of SpaceX’s application for the second generation of the Starlink constellation, which will allow SpaceX to deploy up to 7,500 satellites”

The abundance-oriented approach

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When you don't need to compare yourself to other people, you gravitate towards things that you instinctively enjoy doing, and you're good at, and if you just focus on that for a long enough time, then chances are very, very high that you're going to progress towards mastery anyway, and the fame and the power and the money and everything will come as a byproduct, rather than something that you chase directly in trying to be superior to other people.

If you were to go back to the three things that people need—mastery, belonging, and autonomy—I'd add a fourth, after basic necessities have been met. It’s the attitude or the worldview that you bring to life. And that worldview can be characterized, just for simplicity, in one of two fashions: One extreme is a kind of scarcity-minded approach, that my win is going to come at somebody else's loss, which makes you engage in social comparisons. And the other view is what I would call a more abundance-oriented approach, that there's room for everybody to grow.

Raj Raghunathan quoted in the Atlantic