source: https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/08/1124362
“Recent #digital #currency shocks in the market suggest that there are private risks to holding #crypto, but if the central #bank steps in to protect financial #stability, then the #problem becomes a public one,” #UNCTAD said.
#risk #warning #uno #economy #money #news #technology #politics
#Insurance is based on modelling #risk and the likelihood that some event is going to occur during, say your travels or occupancy of your home. How does this work with #MedicalInsurance? As far as I can tell, the chances of you getting ill and dying are 100% and so unless you want to charge exorbitant premiums for those who are already likely to be afflicted (the elderly, the very young, and sufferers of chronic illness) it doesn't work. And if you do charge extra them extra then you're a heartless bastard.
In a recent discussion, a friend makes the repeated claim that "near miss" is a nonsensical term, and should instead be "near hit". In the context in which the term arose, and in much of its present usage, that is incorrect.
As Mirriam-Webster notes, "near miss" rose in prominance during World War II: "In war usage, a near miss was something that still very much had a destructive consequence."
Again, the distinction "near miss" makes is not vs. "hit", but vs. "far miss". The latter isn't a term so far as I'm aware, but relates to relative risk and peril. A distant peril isn't something to be concerned about, a nearby peril is. In warfare, and in comlex technological operations, a near miss is a sign that although direct harm was avoided, the danger was imminent.
Aircraft passing at, say, 10 miles separation is considerably different from passing at 1 mile separation. At 600 mph, 10 miles is still 60 seconds of travel. One mile is 6 seconds separation. Closure occurs quickly, and most critically, in the sky, as at sea, without frames of reference, it is very difficult to visually detect motion when on a collision course. The thing that's going to hit you isn't moving rapidly across your field of view, it is staying in the same position. It eventually starts getting larger, but only in the moments before impact. Our eyes and visual cortices weren't evolved to deal with that. This is why air traffic control (and sea traffic control) prefers to operate with what seem to the layperson to be absurdly large separation distances. Yes, the spatial distance is large, but the temporal distances are not. In the case of ships, it's time vs. reaction speed --- a containership or bulk crude carrier which takes several km to stop or change course requires a commensurately long navigational planning horizon.
(This raises all kinds of interesting questions about avian navigation and visual processing, particularly amongst flocking birds, as well as prey/predator birds. Occurring to me as I write this.)
In industrial safety, a key tracking point isn't simply accidents, but excursions and deviations --- variations outside normal or permitted parameters. A deviation is a "far miss". An excursion is a "near miss". If those are trending upwards, or appearing with a regular consistency, even if you have not yet had an accident, you have a very large problem Much of Charles Perrow's work concerns just this point, especially the "normalisation of deviance".
Per Wikipedia:
OSHA defines a near miss as an incident in which no property was damaged and no personal injury was sustained, but where, given a slight shift in time or position, damage or injury easily could have occurred. Near misses also may be referred to as near accidents, accident precursors, injury-free events and, in the case of moving objects, near collisions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_miss_(safety)
Citing "Everybody gets to go home in one piece" --- How reporting close calls can prevent future.
When these incidents take place on the job, it can serve as a warning that a serious incident is waiting to happen.
In warfare, a "near miss" indicates that the enemy probably has a good idea as to where you are. Your concealment, camouflage, maneuver, etc., are no longer effective, and it's only a matter of time or aiming variance before you're hit. A near miss is actionable information. And you'd best act on it.
In my own technical career, I've seen multiple instances where disaster was averted not by situational awareness or careful planning, but by a fortuitous accident. A case from the news in recent years was when the shipping concern Maersk saw its entire Microsoft Active Directory configuration wiped from every server and workstation online by the NotPetya worm. I said "online", because there happened to be one copy offline, due to the locally-unreliable power grid, in Lagos, Nigeria. In this case, poor national infrastructure reliability proved to be a critically-useful corporate asset. This wasn't good planning, howerver. It was a near miss.
https://www.csoonline.com/article/3444620/rebuilding-after-notpetya-how-maersk-moved-forward.html
Language is not strictly logical, determinative, or consistent. It is socially constructed within a specific context to convey useful information. As in the case of "near miss".
And that is why the term is useful and accurate within the context it originated.
What seems to have pushed the United States to the brink of losing its democracy today is a multiplication effect between its underlying flaws and recent shifts in the society’s “material” characteristics. These shifts include stagnating middle-class incomes, chronic economic insecurity, and rising inequality as the country’s economy – transformed by technological change and globalization – has transitioned from muscle power, heavy industry, and manufacturing as the main sources of its wealth to idea power, information technology, symbolic production and finance. As returns to labour have stagnated and returns to capital have soared, much of the U.S. population has fallen behind... Economic insecurity is widespread in broad swaths of the country’s interior, while growth is increasingly concentrated in a dozen or so metropolitan centres.
Two other material factors are key. The first is demographic: as immigration, aging, intermarriage and a decline in church-going have reduced the percentage of non-Hispanic white Christians in America, right-wing ideologues have inflamed fears that traditional U.S. culture is being erased and whites are being “replaced.” The second is pervasive elite selfishness: The wealthy and powerful in America are broadly unwilling to pay the taxes, invest in the public services, or create the avenues for vertical mobility that would lessen their country’s economic, educational, racial and geographic gaps. The more an under-resourced government can’t solve everyday problems, the more people give up on it, and the more they turn to their own resources and their narrow identity groups for safety.
Thomas Homer-Dixon, whom I strongly recommend reading, at the Globe and Mail.
Dixon's website with more publications: https://homerdixon.com/
HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29778363
#ThomasHomerDixon #Collapse #Fascism #UnitedStates #Politics #Trumpism #Risk #Institutions #LiberalDemocracy
According to Pfizer data reported to the FDA and recently released to the public via FOIA request, 20.07% of pregnancies are terminated as a result of administering the Pfizer mRNA "vaccine" to pregnant women.
Assuming the Pfizer data is authentic, this risk profile means that nobody who is pregnant should take the Pfizer mRNA Covid "vaccine."
5.3.6 Cumulative Analysis of post-Authorization Adverse Event Reports of PF-07302048 (BNT162B2) Received Through 28-FEB-2021
#pfizer #pfizervaccine #fda #foia #pregnancy #pregnant #abortion #USA #UK #baby #babies #children #child #vaccines #vaccination #mrna #vaccine #albertbourla #billgates #covid #covid19 #coronavirus #risk #women #female #woman #fertility #data #statistics #report #study
I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.
Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.
So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.
Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it.
Make your mistakes, next year and forever.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
Neil Gaiman’s Journal, “My New Year Wish” (31 Dec 2011)
#quote #quotation #attempting #endeavor #error #failure #fear #learning #mistake #resolution #risk #striving
More notes and sourcing on WIST: https://wist.info/gaiman-neil/50545/
After more than a decade as a mortgage underwriter at USAA, Brenda Gentry resigned in October 2021. Rather than continue in traditional finance, she pivoted to crypto full-time. Now, Gentry runs a crypto consulting firm, which she launched after leaving her job.
The San Antonio resident sees crypto as a way to accumulate and pass on generational wealth. She and her family are excited about the “unprecedented opportunities offered by crypto,” Gentry, 46, tells CNBC Make It.
Before going “all in” and leaving her steady 9-to-5, Gentry began investing in cryptocurrencies during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020. She started small, but gradually began investing more.
By early 2021, she had garnered substantial returns. “My investment portfolio surpassed my 401(k) — which had taken 11 years to get to $200,000 — in six months,” Gentry says. She acknowledges that cryptocurrency is a risky investment, but her experience in finance and process of due diligence helps her feel comfortable investing in the space.
#crypto #investment #not-an-investment #risk
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/21/why-this-mom-quit-her-job-to-go-full-time-into-crypto.html
I heard of the Rust film production firearms mishap early today. Following details of current Hollywood productions isn't my metier, but the filming had come up in a conversation between Alex Baldwin and Bob Garfield (of Bully Pulpit) recently.
The context brought the headline into sharper focus for me.
Details of the incident are beginning to emerge. Among them, a labour action in which numerous production members had walked off the site. The film, for which Baldwin is producer, continued regardless.
Alec Baldwin ‘Rust’ camera crew walked off the set in protest before the fatal shooting
Hours before actor Alec Baldwin fatally shot a cinematographer on the New Mexico set of “Rust” with a prop gun, a half-dozen camera crew workers walked off the set to protest working conditions.
The camera operators and their assistants were frustrated by the conditions surrounding the low-budget film, including complaints of long hours and getting their paychecks, according to three people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to comment.
The camera crew showed up for work as expected at 6:30 a.m. Thursday and began gathering up their gear and personal belongings to leave, one knowledgeable crew member told the Los Angeles Times. ...
The prospect that corners were cut, risks were made, crew were fatigued, and as a consequence one life was lost and another put in severe jeopardy, seems increasingly likely.
#HalynaHutchins #AlexBaldwin #Rust #Risk #Hollywood #FilmProduction #Shootings #Accidents #NewMexico #SantaFe
It's a bad meme, and precisely as, if not more, manipulative and ill-advised as that which it argues against. It concerns a recent high-profile death, probably a murder, though the specifics really don't matter.
One of the best tactics when faced with a specific threat is to put distance beween it and you.
When you’re experiencing an active threat is NOT the time to be attempting to change the threat landscape. Ignoring the advice to seek safety is an excellent way to get hurt or dead.
(Both approaches have merits. Demonising one over the other does nobody any good. Knowing the proper place for each is the difference between knowledge and wisdom.)
Personal relationships are complex. The narratives we all want to believe and/or are familiar with … sometimes bear out, and sometimes don’t. I make a point of suspending judgement until those with better information and greater access to events speak. My history here should bear that out.
Being lead by emotional appeals no matter how well-justified still leaves you vulnerable to manipulation, and may well be denying someone justice.
Toxic relationships are widespread. They are often hard to recognise, from both within and without, the roles we may be prepared to believe could well be reversed, and complex codependencies are also common. You would do well to look around you, here and now, and consider who it is that you know who might well be in the midst of one right now.
What I would very much like to see in relationship disputes is an approach that looks at mutual separation without prejudice to either party. This should be in the interests of the safety not only of the parties directly involved but others around them. Greater support for independence and exits from toxic situations would also help immensely. Far too often all involved are blamed for their various victimhoods and circumstances rather than given the (often very slight, but hugely impactful) help that would make a tremendous difference.
(Failure to comply with such terms, or a continuation of hostilities by either or both parties could lead to stronger isolation and more punative responses.)
Most jurisdictions are, sadly, a very long way from such practices. Even landmark and primary legislation concerning such circumstances is often explicit in assigning perpetrator and victim roles with no consideration of facts. This should be a national cause for shame.
We know that in this instance at least one person is dead, and another hasn’t been talking (in part perhaps given the presumption of guilt that’s been imposed on him). There are both cases where early presumptions have been born out (Laci Peterson) and others where they have not (Chandra Levy, the Central Park Five).
Truth and justice out slowly. Give them time.
That mutual, nonprejudicial separation and support I mentioned above would have spared at least one life here. Quite possibly more.
I’ll note as well that this meme does precisely what it chastises others for: explicitly and specifically exploits an event to sell its narrative. I’m pretty sure its author(s) think they’re justified. They should harbour the suspicion that they are in fact mistaken.
#relationship #abuse #risk #separation #prejudice #vawa #safety #HelpYourNeighbours
See "Leaded petrol is gone – but lead pollution may linger for a very long time" and discussion on @Andrew Pam 's post
I increasingly view technology as a verb: technology is a means, ,a mechanism or process, to some ends. (This borrows heavily from J.S. Mill.) The devices we build as artefacts of technology merely serve to channel and control those processes. Materials and inputs take part in the processes, some are consumed, some are not. We tend to mistake the tangible objects for the intangible process (more on that discussing cognizability).
The problem begins when we realise that there are intended and unintended consequences. There's the end we want, and the end we get. All technology has positive and negative impacts, varying with time, cognizability, and expressibility.
Time is the easiest of these three to address: there are short- / near-term effects, and long-term effects. Ends that happen closer to means are easier to recognise and realise.
Cognizability is a somewhat unfashionable word (though you may recognize similarities to others) expressing the ability for a thing to be perceived or known. And for technology, more cognizable effects dominate in social realisation over less cognizable ones. In general, simple, clear, distinct, large, and immediate effects are more cognizable.
Expressability simply means the ease or difficulty of of describing or communicating about a factor. Something that's complex, multi-factored, long-term, subtle, and indistinct, is exceedingly difficult to communicate especially in mass media which relies on a minimum viable audience and a low common level of understanding and perception. There's also the challenge of competing for time and attention within a crowded media sphere.
This gives multiple factors or a matrix defining technological impacts:
X = f(p, n, t, c, e)
Where X is technology (from the Greek chi), p is positive impacts, n is negative impacts, t is time, c is cognizability, e is expressibility.
This also ties strongly to Robert K. Merton's notions of both latent vs. manifest functions, and of unintended consequences.
Too much to get into here, but I increasingly find discussions of risk to be unsatisfactory. Generally:
Risks have contexts. Individual risk isn't the same as global risk. Your individual risk of dying in an automobile accident may be roughly equal to that of dying in a meteor impact. One is common but small-scale (at least in the current era), one is uncommon but global. But the odds of all of humanity, or all life on Earth, dying in an auto accident is minuscule relative to of dying in a meteor impact. Global catastrophic risks are global. I don't know if it's the Western focus on individualism that gives rise to this fallacy, but I see it constantly.
There's a distinction between randomness and uncertainty. Radioactive decay is random, but (in aggregate) its behaviour is highly certain. Abstract risks, say, of Roko's Basilisk, are highly uncertain. We simply don't know what the probabilities are. (Numerous other "it can only happen once, because once it happens, it's all over" events are similar: global total nuclear war, grey goo, Skynet, global catastrophic logistical collapse, etc.) Treating these as intrinsically similar is ... well, I'm pretty sure it's just plain wrong.
Risks accrue differently to different parties. All life is a risk-externalising mechanism, and within its own domains, market-capitalism is as well. Profits are privatised, risks are socialised, as we've become profoundly aware over the past two decades. This is inherent.
Risks in space differ profoundly from risks in time. Private insurance works best for small-scale risks which occur frequently, at small scale, within a given market, in an uncorrelated fashion. Automobile accidents and house fires are classic examples. Rare, large-area, highly-correlated risks affecting many policyholders simulataneously, are far more difficult to insure against. Wildfires, urban firestorms, earthquakes, major flooding events, sea level rise, cyclonic storms, droughts, and famines are wide-spread events, some are global. Conventional commercial insurance providers fail to address these well if at all. In most cases, "insurance" comes in the way of government (state or national) disaster response, or international aid. An asteroid impact, gamma-ray burst, nearbye supernova, major solar storm, or supervolcano erruption, would be truly global. Global warming moves more slowly but is of a similar nature (as are other global catastrophic risks.)
Numerous private industries benefitted by use of lead whilst externalising most of the costs and impacts. (Thomas Midgely somewhat infamously was not immune to the effects and did suffer lead poisoning.) More generally, though, investors and creditors faced minimal direct exposure, whilst front-line workers and the public at large, especially in poorer areas more exposed to contamination, bore the brunt.
Profits were privatised, costs socialised.
Industry and its advocates were strongly motivated to confound the issue. They lied, misled, delayed, and otherwise contaminated not just the physical environment but the epistemological one. It's here that I have some extreme misgivings over popular notions of free speech, in which rights to say anything are at odds with the general public's right to accurate and truthful information. It seems to me that there's a profound conflict here, and a growing problem. It's not one that's easily resolved, though my thinking in terms of #AutonomousCommunication is poking around that space. See here https://joindiaspora.com/posts/622677903778013902fd002590d8e506
(I'm not happy with that term. "Information Autonomy" or "Communication Autonomy" are probably better.)
See also especially Oreskes and Conway, Merchants of Doubt.
#lead #leadedGasoline #environment #contamination #risk #speech #liability #technology #manifestation #RobertKMerton #NaomiOreskes #MerchantsOfDoubt #ErikConway
Apple’s new system update introduces a particular risk of misuse in the hands of authoritarian governments. But democratic countries such as India and Indonesia have already passed content censorship laws for which Apple’s tool could be used as an enforcement mechanism.
#apple #surveillance #risk #spying #smartphone
https://ipi.media/apple-should-withdraw-plans-for-new-scanning-feature/
The instinct for self-deception in human beings makes them try to banish from their minds dangers of which at bottom they are perfectly aware by declaring them non-existent.
Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist, biographer
Beware of Pity (1939)
#quotation #quote #danger #defiance #risk #self-deception #willful-ignorance
More notes and sourcing on WIST: https://wist.info/zweig-stefan/48464/
Elsewhere a friend laments:
The frequency with which I need my email and a notebook while I'm on the phone makes integrated devices foolish.
I'd covered that point a few years ago in a larger essay on the tyranny of the minimum viable user:
It's also interesting to consider what the operating environment of earlier phones was -- because it exceeded the device itself.
A business-use phone of, say, the 1970s, existed in a loosely-integrated environment comprising:
- The user
- The phone itself
- A Rolodex or addressbook / contacts list
- The local PBX -- the business's dedicated internal phone switch.
- A secretary or switchboard operator, serving also as a message-taking (voice-to-text), screening, redirect, directory, interactive voice response, and/or calendaring service
- A desk calendar
- A phone book
- A diary or organiser
- Scratch paper
Critically: these components operated simultaneously and independently of the phone.
A modern business, software, or smartphone system may offer some, or even all, of these functions, but frequently:
- They aren't available whilst a call is in process
- They have vastly less capability or flexibility than the systems they replaced
https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyranny_of_the_minimum_viable_user/
There's also the increasingly evident problem that having all your critical data on a communications device is a fundamental and intractable risk. The dis-integrated business telephony environment of the 1950s--1990s maintained data isolation between elements. Telephone numbers served as the reasonably-viable data-exchange-and-linking interface between components (map a name or address to a number, enter the number on a calendar or correspondence, etc.).
It's almost as if putting your filing system, personal diary, correspondence, photo album, and directory on a surveillance and exfiltration device was a Bad Idea.
And not just from a UI/UX / accessibility perspective.
It turns out that a chief affordance of the old POTS landline telephone was the air gap between it and everything else inside your office / home.
(We can talk about the solicitations, robocalls, and phishing issues separately.)
#telephony #telephones #risk #AirGap #data #DataAreLiability #UIUX #Usability #SmartPhones #DumbPhones #computers #communications #privacy #security #surveillance
... Ultimately, it isn’t undue pessimism that is dangerous, but undue optimism. Over the past two decades, undue optimism produced irrational exuberance, housing bubbles and unbridled confidence in the benefits of financial innovation. Undue optimism also encouraged commentators to label anyone who expressed doubts about the trajectory of the global economy or about the dangers of financial innovation as a crank, which served only to discourage healthy skepticism.. ...
The death toll from catastrophic floods in western Germany and Belgium has risen to more than 180, as emergency services continued their search for hundreds still missing.
The German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said he was “stunned” by the devastation caused by the flooding and pledged support to the families of those killed and to cities and towns facing significant damage. It is Germany’s worst natural disaster in more than half a century. ...
Other stories report over 1,000 people unaccounted for, with widespread telephone and electrical outages.
Overall, the disaster looks to rival the North Sea Floods of 1953 in which 2,551 lost their lives.
Here's the Fed's choice: continue making expedient "saves" permanent policy, the system collapses. Withdraw the guarantee that risk will never have any consequences, and the system collapses. The Fed's "choice" is as illusory as the "wealth" the Fed has created with its perfection of moral hazard--a perfection that could only end in the collapse of the entire fraudulent fantasy of risk-free gains forever.
#Federal-Reserve #economy #risk #investments #wealth
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjune21/expedient-saves6-21.html
…Commissioner Sally Heyman of Miami-Dade County said county officials informed her that as of 10 a.m., 51 people who own units in the building had not been accounted for. That did not mean they were missing, she said, just that the authorities had not been able to reach them. She added that not all of the units may have been occupied by full-time residents.
Daniella Levine Cava, the mayor of Miami-Dade County, said that about half of the 136 units in the 12-story tower had collapsed. “We’re going to do everything we can possibly do to identify and rescue those who have been trapped in the rubble,” the mayor said at a news conference Thursday morning. …
Note that “partially collapsed” understates the severity of this failure.
The building is a a 12-storey (some reports say 13) residential condominium. A substantial wing has collapsed, another section is still standing. Roughly half the building is down. This tweet shows the now-collapsed and still-standing sections.
55 of 130 units collapsed.
The building appears to have pancaked straight down.
The collapse occurred at about 2 am local time.
"Partial" in the sense that "the entirety of the building didn't fall", but misleading in that "the half that did is now rubble and dust". By photos, the rubble itself seems slightly below-grade, suggesting both that it's very compressed and has occupied a sub-surface void, whether a basement structure or geological in origin.
Reports are that 35 people have been rescued from the building, two pulled from the rubble. There are two people in hospital in critical condition (unclear if the same two). Search dogs have had few hits, “there’s just not a lot of voids that they’re finding” according to the mayor of Surfside, FL. Two confirmed deaths, numerous unaccounted for.
Large residential structures collapsing in the dead of night is not normal for the US.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/06/24/us/miami-building-collapse
#miami #florida #MiamiBeach #SurfsideFL #BuildingCollapse #news #risk #disasters
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