O Vento mudou

O Vento Sueste agora passa a estar no wordpress: https://ventosueste.wordpress.com/

Aqui explico os motivos da mudança.

 

Somos e fomos todos fascistas? (1)

Parece ser o que Ricardo Dias de Sousa alega neste artigo no Observador, "Agora somos todos fascistas".

A mim parece-me que ele está simplesmente usando "fascismo" quase como uma palavra genérica para dirigismo estatal (ou pelo menos, para dirigismo estatal mantendo a propriedade privada dos meios de produção), o que, a ser assim, se calhar tornaria "fascistas" a maioria das sociedades existentes nos últimos milhares de anos, com um hiato no século XIX e princípios do XX (bem, excluindo, a ter existido, o "modo de produção asiático", já que aí o estado também era suposto ser o proprietário das terras; mas o chamado "MPA" provavelmente nunca foi mais do que a mesma coisa que o feudalismo europeu visto por um prisma "orientalista").

Um aparte (que não tem diretamente a ver com o texto de Ricardo Das de Sousa, mas acho que acaba por ter indiretamente): porque é que, quando se fala de Mussolini, cita-se muito mais vezes o "tudo no estado, nada contra o estado, nada fora do estado" do que o "abaixo o estado em todas as suas formas e encarnações: o estado de ontem, o de hoje e o de amanhã; o estado burguês e o estado socialista" ou "Nós somos liberais em economia mas não somos liberais em política"? Se se dizer que é porque a primeira (de 1925) é posterior à segunda (de 1920) ou à terceira (de 1921), isso não impede muita gente de ir buscar coisas ainda mais antigas (como o programa dos "Fascios" de 1918 ou a sua militância socialista até 1915) para fazer a exegese do fascismo....

O texto de Ricardo Dias de Sousa parece conter duas teses: a primeira é de que a planificação europeia no pós-guerra teria sido, na sua essência, "fascista"; a segunda é que no final dos anos 60 terá aparecido um novo tipo de marxistas, e que na sua rejeição do marxismo ortodoxo e do establishment do pós-guerra, acabar por, à sua maneira, ser também "fascistas".

Ler mais

Representações

É frequente em eleições legislativas dizer-se "Votem no partido X para Fulano ir para o parlamento, porque é preciso lá alguém da nossa cidade/sub-região/região/etc. para defender os nossos interesses específicos (e ele é o único num lugar potencialmente elegível)".

Mas parece que isso já não vale para outros agregados que não os geográficos.

[Post publicado no Vias de Facto - podem comentar lá]

Consequências não previstas

Uma thread no Twitter com uma série de exemplos:

Found an incredible Reddit thread, "What's a rule that was implemented somewhere that massively backfired?"

Here are the best ones 🧵

1/ Alcohol bans at college football games led to increased intoxication problems b/c fans were getting really drunk before entering the stadium.

— 𝚃𝚛𝚞𝚗𝚐 𝙿𝚑𝚊𝚗 (@TrungTPhan) September 30, 2020

Como se calcula a mortalidade da gripe

O que se conclui logo daqui é que aquelas comparações que frequentemente se fazem entre o número de pessoas que morreram "de Covid" e o número de pessoas que morreram "de gripe" é um bocado comparar alhos com bugalhos; a contagem dos mortos "de gripe" não é uma contagem feita pessoa a pessoa, como com os mortos "de Covid"; é uma estimativa feita no fim do ano, comparando a evolução da mortalidade total e a evolução do número de casos de gripe ao longo do ano.

Programa Nacional de Vigilância da Gripe Relatório da época 2018/2019 (páginas 63-65, PDF):

Durante a época de gripe 2018/2019 o nú- mero de óbitos por todas as causas esteve acima do esperado entre a semana 02/2019 e a semana 7/2019 (Figura 27 e Figura 28) 40. Aplicando um método de regressão cíclica foram construídas linhas de base que correspondem à mortalidade esperada sem o efeito de fatores externos e que permitem estimar os excessos de mortalidade por todas as causas pela diferença entre a mortalidade observada e a linha de base. Este cálculo foi efetuado para a população geral e estratificado por sexo, grupo etário e região de saúde. No total, estimou-se um excesso de 2.844 (IC95%: 2.229 a 3.459) óbitos em relação ao esperado, o que corresponde a uma taxa de 28 óbitos por cada 100.000 habitantes e a um excesso relativo à linha de base de 19 % (IC95%: 17 a 22 %). O excesso de mortalidade atingiu o seu valor máximo na semana 4 de 2019 (excesso relativo de 25 %).

(...)

Durante o período de excesso de mortalidade ocorreram dois eventos que podem explicar este aumento do risco de morrer. Nomeadamente, a epidemia de gripe sazonal cujo período epidémico decorreu entre as semanas 01/2019 e 09/2019, com um pico na semana 03/2019, e períodos com temperaturas mínimas abaixo do normal nos meses de janeiro e fevereiro de 2019 (Figura 30). Para estimar a mortalidade atribuível à epidemia de gripe e às temperaturas extremas, aplicou-se um modelo de regressão de Poisson de forma a modelar a taxa de mortalidade observada em função do índice Goldstein (taxa de incidência de síndrome gripal multiplicada pela percentagem de casos de síndrome gripal positivos para o vírus da gripe) e das temperaturas extremas, ajustada para a tendência e sazonalidade (Figura 31). Esta metodologia foi desenvolvida no grupo de trabalho FluMOMO 41 do projeto Europeu EuroMOMO 42.

Com base nesta abordagem, e considerando um histórico desde a semana 40/2013 até à semana 20/2019, estimaram-se 3.331 (IC95% 3.115 a 3.552) óbitos atribuíveis à gripe e 397 óbitos (IC95% 315 a 489) atribuíveis às temperaturas extremas.

[Post publicado no Vias de Facto; podem comentar lá]

O fascismo como reação ao socialismo

Além de ser a opinião mais que ortodoxa sobre o assunto, é também a tese de um recente paper - War, Socialism and the Rise of Fascism: An Empirical Exploration, por Daron Acemoglu, Giuseppe De Feo, Giacomo De Luca e Gianluca Russo (NBER Working Paper No. 27854):

The recent ascent of right-wing populist movements in many countries has rekindled interest in understanding the causes of the rise of Fascism in inter-war years. In this paper, we argue that there was a strong link between the surge of support for the Socialist Party after World War I (WWI) and the subsequent emergence of Fascism in Italy. We first develop a source of variation in Socialist support across Italian municipalities in the 1919 election based on war casualties from the area. We show that these casualties are unrelated to a battery of political, economic and social variables before the war and had a major impact on Socialist support (partly because the Socialists were the main anti-war political movement). Our main result is that this boost to Socialist support (that is “exogenous” to the prior political leaning of the municipality) led to greater local Fascist activity as measured by local party branches and Fascist political violence (squadrismo), and to significantly larger vote share of the Fascist Party in the 1924 election. We document that the increase in the vote share of the Fascist Party was not at the expense of the Socialist Party and instead came from right-wing parties, thus supporting our interpretation that center-right and right-wing voters coalesced around the Fascist Party because of the “red scare”. We also show that the veterans did not consistently support the Fascist Party and there is no evidence for greater nationalist sentiment in areas with more casualties. We provide evidence that landowner associations and greater presence of local elites played an important role in the rise of Fascism. Finally, we find greater likelihood of Jewish deportations in 1943-45 and lower vote share for Christian Democrats after World War II in areas with greater early Fascist activity.

Como disse, isso é a visão mais que ortodoxa sobre o fascismo, que será uma movimento de reação contra o socialismo - é uma visão que vai desde os marxistas ortodoxos (o fascismo como "ditadura aberta da burguesia") até Ernest Nolte, passando por Ludwing von Mises. Há exceções, como Bruno Rizzi (que considerava tanto o fascismo como o comunismo soviético como exemplos de uma tendência para o gestores não-proprietários substituírem  os capitalistas como a classe dominante) e imagino que tmbém os liberais como Hayek; e semi-exceções como os trotskistas (que consideram que o fascismo começa como uma movimento revolucionário da classe média tanto contra a classe operária como contra o grande capital, mas que só sobe ao poder quando é recuperado pelo grande capital como instrumento de luta contra o socialismo). Será que seria possível fazer também estudos similares ao paper acima para testar essas exceções e semi-exceções?

India e Coreia do Sul (nos anos 60): "capitalistas" ou "socialistas"?

Pseudoerasmus argumenta que a mesma descrição deveria ser aplicada às duas:

One mustn't simultaneously call India under Nehru 'socialist' & South Korea under the generals 'capitalist'. They should bear the same label, what ever the label. Indian & Korean planners made different choices, but the degree of control exerted on the private sector was similar

— Pseudoerasmus (@pseudoerasmus) September 11, 2020

A discussão nas respostas ao tweet é interessante, com muita enfase no ponto se, para distinguir "capitalismo" de "socialismo", é relevante qual o objetivo do planeamento estatal e quais as classes que beneficia.

Dia de Petrov

26 de setembro de 1983 - não sei o que estava a fazer nesse dia, mas provavelmente estaria a brincar com a gata que tínhamos em casa há alguns meses, ou a jogar com a consola Videopac G7000, ou talvez tivesse ido ao Ciclo Preparatório de Portimão ver em que turma tinha ficado, que as aulas estariam quase a começar. Mas enquanto eu (e mais milhões de pessoas por tudo o mundo) vivia tranquilamente a minha vida, acontecimentos potencialmente mais dramáticos se desenrolavam: o conflito Leste-Oeste estava a aquecer e poucas semanas antes a União Soviética havia abatido um avião de passageiros da Coreia do Sul; era neste contexto que o tenente-coronel Stanislav Petrov, estava, a 26/09/1983, responsável pelos radares de uma base militar soviética; a dado momento os radares indicam que cinco misseis dos EUA tinham sido lançados para a URSS - no entanto, o tenente-coronel Petrov achou estranho um ataque norte-americano de cinco mísseis (seria de esperar um ataque total, para destruir a capacidade da URSS retaliar), pelo que assumiu que era um engano e não deu a informação (que eventualmente poderia dar origem a um contra-ataque nuclear soviético) que estaria a ocorrer um ataque dos EUA - dias depois veio a verificar-se que um fenómeno meteorológico tinha criado a ilusão dos supostos cinco mísseis.

Trump quer sabotar as eleições? Duvido muito.

Nos últimos tempos tem-se tornado quase um dogma da fé em certos meios que Trump, caso perca, se estará a preparar para "roubar" as eleições; como disse aqui, eu duvido muito desses cenários.

Atendendo que toda a carreira de Trump, desde pelo menos os anos 80, tem assentando no primado da imagem sobre o conteúdo (hum, será que acidentalmente acabei também por descrever os anos 80 no geral?), eu suspeito que o grande desejo dele não é tanto permanecer na presidência, mas poder dizer (e ter muita gente a acreditar) que é o presidente, e todas essas conversas dele a pôr em causa o processo eleitoral se destinam, não a preparar o terreno para um "autogolpe", mas a preparar o terreno para, se perder, poder passar 4 anos a apresentar-se aos seus convidados em Mar-a-Lago como "o verdadeiro Presidente dos EUA", vítima das conspirações do "deep state" (em vez de ser um "looser" que não conseguiu a reeleição). Até imagino facilmente daqui a uns anos uma gravação dele dizendo "When you’re the President - the real President-, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by by the pussy. You can do anything."

O problema aqui é se parte da base Republicana (incluindo as milícias armadas e grande parte do corpo policial) leva o show dele a sério e tenta por sua iniciativa um "contragolpe" contra os "golpistas" no poder.

Já agora, ver este post de Noah Smith no Twitter e respetiva thread, onde ele sugere um cenário parecido (e muita gente acha que é mesmo o cenário mais provável).

 [Post publicado no Vias de Facto; podem comentar lá]

Trump pode sabotar as eleições?

Eu duvido muito desses cenários de autogolpe, mas deixo aqui um artigo sobre o assunto:

The Election That Could Break America, por Barton Gellman (The Atlantic):

If the vote is close, Donald Trump could easily throw the election into chaos and subvert the result. Who will stop him? (...)

The worst case, however, is not that Trump rejects the election outcome. The worst case is that he uses his power to prevent a decisive outcome against him. If Trump sheds all restraint, and if his Republican allies play the parts he assigns them, he could obstruct the emergence of a legally unambiguous victory for Biden in the Electoral College and then in Congress. He could prevent the formation of consensus about whether there is any outcome at all. He could seize on that un­certainty to hold on to power.

Trump’s state and national legal teams are already laying the groundwork for postelection maneuvers that would circumvent the results of the vote count in battleground states. Ambiguities in the Constitution and logic bombs in the Electoral Count Act make it possible to extend the dispute all the way to Inauguration Day, which would bring the nation to a precipice. The Twentieth Amendment is crystal clear that the president’s term in office “shall end” at noon on January 20, but two men could show up to be sworn in. One of them would arrive with all the tools and power of the presidency already in hand.

Isto parece-me um cenário parecido com o que o João Vasco previa aqui.

A "cancel culture" como dupla vitória da esquerda "progressista"

Este post de Bryan Caplan faz-me pensar numa coisa: a chamada "cancel culture" pode ser vista como uma dupla vitória da esquerda (nomeadamente a esquerda feminista, anti-racista, etc.).

Em primeiro lugar, pela razão óbvia - a acreditar no que se diz, é sobretudo este esquerda que está "cancelando" e a direita a ser "cancelada".

Mas também por uma razão mais profunda - se efetivamente existir uma tendência para pessoas serem discriminadas na vida profissional por causa das suas opiniões políticas, isso desmente a teoria de que no mercado não há discriminação e que portanto diferenças de rendimento entre homens e mulheres, ou entre negros e brancos só podem ser explicadas por diferenças de produtividade ou opções pessoais dos individuos supostamente discriminados. Afinal, se se considera que os conservadores estão a ser sistematicamente discriminados por causa de um ambiente social e cultural que leva as empresas a fazer essa discriminação, então temos forçosamente que concluir que também pode existir (ou tenha existido) um ambiente social e cultural que leve (ou tenha levado) as empresas a discriminar contra mulheres ou negros.

Agora, o reverso - junto com estas duas vitórias da esquerda "nova", há também uma derrota da esquerda "tradicional": é que com isto estão se a tornar populares na esquerda argumentos como "ninguém tem direito a um emprego" ou "uma rede social privada deixa falar quem quer e expulsa quem quer".

Os EUA à beira de uma insurreição? (III)

Storm coming, por John Cochrane:

Imagine, as seems quite possible, that  Trump scores an early lead in the days after the election, with a narrow electoral college majority, though losing the popular vote, with 90% - 10% losses in the deep blue cities. Trump declares victory. Blue cities erupt in  protest.

As mail in votes come in and are tabulated, Biden gets closer and closer and by his party's count has won.

 But lawyers have already fanned out around the country. Every single smudged postmark, questionable signature is challenged by both sides. Conspiracy theories abound. Vote harvesting stories are told. A few bales of forgotten mail are discovered. As the key battleground counties are isolated, we have 50  hanging chad controversies, with warring and disagreeing injections by different courts.  More protests erupt on  both sides. (...)

No, this makes it a virtual certainty that courts will weigh in.(...)

We will have the 2000 hanging chads all over again -- except in multiple states and counties all at the same time.

All that ends up in the Supreme Court, on a tight deadline. (There are abundant legal issues, which are beside the point. The suits will be filed, argued heatedly, and people will be in the streets protesting.)

This was going to be bad enough. Now suppose that the Senate has flipped to Democrats, 51-49, but the lame duck Senate confirms a Trump appointee to the court. Protests and riots erupt. (There are already protests, here for example, and Trump hasn't even nominated anyone. Another, from "grandma, team resistance:"   "If he tries to appoint someone, it's civil war, and I'll be on the front line." There are demonstrators in front of Senator Mitch McConnell's house now.  I just googled "Ginsburg protest," there's lots more.)

And then suppose that  court decides, 5-4, or even 6-3 with the new member, in favor of Trump. In the softer gentler era of 2000, many democrats never acknowledged that Bush legitimately won the election. (I read the New Yorker which called it  "stolen" for years afterwards. I have never seen them acknowledge that in the final count, Bush did, actually, win.) Democratic acknowledgement that Trump really did win in 2016 and is the legitimate President of the United States has been soft at best.  Can you imagine they would sit still for the legitimacy of this outcome?
There will be widespread protest, violence and looting. Right and leftwing "militias" will face off. We are not fighting about abstractions like "social justice." This a good old fashioned fight about political power.

What do you do if you are president with cities burning? You send in the troops. Republicans will call it "law and order, " "protecting life, property and the rule of law." Democrats will decry this as "martial law," and a "coup." And with some justification:  To their view, protesting such a presidential outcome is the same as protests all over the world, in Hong Kong, in Iran, in Belarus, that aim to topple illegitimate regimes, though those regimes are "lawful" by their laws and procedures for implementing those laws.

Isto é uma mistura de b) e c) no meu cenário.

Cochrane (um economista conservador de Chicago) apresenta mais uns quantos cenários possíveis ("Risk analysis 101: If there is one path to disaster, by which 5 improbable events have to fail, you're probably ok. But if many scenarios all come back to the same disaster, the chance of that disaster is larger").

Zona Autónoma Temporária?

DOJ Designates New York City as an “Anarchist Jurisdiction” (NBC New York)

Quantos juizes do Supremo Tribunal dos EUA foram confirmados a menos de dois meses de uma eleição presidencial?

De acordo com esta lista, parece-me que nenhum.

Poderá-se perguntar se não é uma simples questão de probabilidade estatística, mas haveria 1/24 de probabilidade de isso acontecer (o Supremo Tribunal já teve 114 juizes, mesmo se descontarmos os 10 nomeados por George Washington, já poderiam ter havido uns 4 ou 5).

E já depois das eleições, mas ainda antes do novo presidente tomar posse?

William Burnham Woods, confirmado em dezembro de 1880, nomeado pelo Republicano Rutherford Hayes, já depois do Republicano James Garfield ter sido eleito

Howell Edmunds Jackson, confirmado, por unanimidade, em fevereiro de 1893, nomeado pelo Republicano James Garfield, já depois do Democrata Cleveland ter sido eleito (Howell Jackson era Democrata)

Samuel Nelson, confirmado, por unanimidade, em fevereiro de 1845, nomeado por John Tyler (eleito como um Whig, mas entretanto expulso do partido), já depois do Democrata James Polk ter sido eleito (Samuel Nelson era Democrata)

Peter Vivian Delan, confirmado em março de 1841, nomeado pelo Democrata Martin Van Buren, já depois do Whig William Harrison ter sido eleito (Peter Delan era Democrata); esta parece que foi mesmo muito polémica, mas como os Democratas tinham a maioria no Senado, a oposição dos Whigs de nada serviu

John Catron, confirmado em março de 1837, nomeado pelo Democrata Andrew Jackson, já depos do Democrata Martin Van Buren ter sido eleito

John Marshal, confirmado, por unanimidade, em janeiro de 1801, nomeado pelo Federalista John Adams, já depois do "Republicano" (isto é, Democrata) Thomas Jefferson ter sido eleito (Marshal era Federalista)

Como o poder da Apple reforça o poder dos governos

A fight over freedom at Apple’s core, por Jonathan Zittrain, no Financial Times (é um artigo de 2010, mas se calhar é atual):

Thirty years later Apple gave us the iPhone . It was easy to use, elegant and cool – and had lots of applications right out of the box. But the company quietly dropped a fundamental feature, one signalled by the dropping of “Computer” from Apple Computer’s name: the iPhone could not be programmed by outsiders. “We define everything that is on the phone,” said Mr Jobs. “You don’t want your phone to be like a PC. The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn’t work any more.”

The openness on which Apple had built its original empire had been completely reversed – but the spirit was still there among users. Hackers vied to “jailbreak” the iPhone, running new apps on it despite Apple’s desire to keep it closed. Apple threatened to disable any phone that had been jailbroken, but then appeared to relent: a year after the iPhone’s introduction, it launched the App Store. Now outsiders could write software for the iPhone (...)

But the App Store has a catch: app developers and their software must be approved by Apple. If Apple does not like the app, for any reason, it is gone. (...)

If Apple is the gatekeeper to a device’s uses, the governments of the world need knock on the door of only one office in Cupertino, California – Apple’s headquarters – to demand changes to code or content.

Nassim Taleb sobre "acordos de paz"

Just a reminder (frm #SkinInTheGame) that
1) Peace with the top is not peace.
2) The best peace is one that is struck w/ the most radical enemies, not "moderates", or, worse, Gulf states that were never at war with Israel. Learn from Ireland & the IRA.https://t.co/jmQRStQC88

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) September 15, 2020

Manifestantes violentos nos EUA condenados a 20 anos de prisão?

Attorney General Bill Barr Encourages Federal Prosecutors To Charge Violent Protesters With Sedition, por Christian Britschgi (Reason):

Barr, according to a story published today by The Wall Street Journal, encouraged prosecutors on a conference call last week to charge violent protestors with federal offenses wherever possible. The attorney general encouraged the use of sedition charges even in contexts when state charges would apply, reports the Journal, which spoke to several people familiar with the call.

Federal sedition law makes it a crime for two or more people to "conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force" the U.S. government, and it comes with a potential penalty of 20 years in prison.

The invocation of rarely used sedition laws to go after protestors is raising alarm among civil libertarians and some legal experts.

Vaga de esterilizações nos campos de detenção do "SEF" dos EUA?

Provavelmente não - parece tratar-se de um médico que está a defraudar o ICE executando (?) procedimentos desnecessários e depois cobrando ao ICE.

Now that Amin's name is public: this is about a doctor with a history of medical fraud allegations, gaming a system that wasn't designed to protect im/migrant women. He's an immigrant himself; I've seen no evidence that he's a white supremacist.

— Aura Bogado (@aurabogado) September 15, 2020

If Amin wanted to sterilize women, he could have used cheap IUDs. Hysterectomies are very expensive, an easy way to rack up taxpayer money. "Concentration camps are sterlizing women" headlines are paternalistic and further erase victims. Victims no one talks *to*, only *about*.

— Aura Bogado (@aurabogado) September 15, 2020

"OK, Boomer"

Esta sequência de posts no twitter de Noah Smith, dizendo que afinal os maiores apoiantes de Trump não são os "boomers" (nascidos algures entre 46 e 64), mas sim a ala conservadora da "Geração X" (nascidos para aí entre 65 e 80), fez-me lembrar algo que há muito tempo estava a pensar escrever (este post estava nos rascunhos desde dezembro, ou seja, comecei a escrevê-lo ainda antes dos "boomers" entrarem na lista de espécies ameaçadas da WWF; depois deixei-o de molho exatamente porque o assunto tinha largamente sido abandonado).

É que desde para aí uns dois anos,  parecia ter havido uma inversão quase total dos estereótipos ideológicos tradicionalmente associados à geração "boomer".

Isto é, de há uns tempos para cá, surgiu a ideia que os "boomers" seriam uma geração particularmente conservadora (exemplo) - quando eu passei toda a minha juventude a ouvir falar que a "geração de 60" (a geração de Gloria Bunker e Michael Stivic, e também a de Steven e Elyse Keaton) era A GERAÇÃO PROGRESSISTA por excelência, não apenas mais progressista que as anteriores (o que é normal) mas até que as posteriores (era esse o ponto da série "Quem sai aos seus..." - o contraponto entre a progressista "geração de 60" e a conservadora "geração de 80")

Já agora, cá em Portugal eu passei a minha adolescência com as escolas secundárias dominadas pela JSD, e na primeira campanha eleitoral que dei nota, o liceu estava a abarrotar de autocolantes "P'rá Frente Portugal" - embora em Portugal houvesse a peculiaridade que a geração "progressista" não era tanto a dos nosso pais, mas sim  mas sim um misto de tios mais novos, primos afastados mais velhos e professores no principio de carreira (o pessoal na casa dos 30 anos, que tinha sido jovem nos nossos "anos 60" - 1974 e 1975; pelo menos uma prima afastada minha, então com 30 e tal anos, consta que ex-simpatante do PRP e típica "progressista nos costumes", era fã de uma série que havia na altura que era "Os Trintões" e dizia que representava bem a geração dela; essa série era por vezes descrita como o contraponto a "Quem sai aos seus...").

Sinais da mitificação da "geraçao de 60": ainda me lembro de há muitos anos (para aí em 1990) ter lido um artigo (penso que do João Martins Pereira, o já falecido ex-marido da Fátima Bonifácio... - ou será que mesmo isto é um exemplo da mudança do que se espera dum boomer?) que algures dizia "todos as pessoas entre os 30 e os 60 anos tendem a descrever-se como da geração de 60, grande abrigo anti-sismico mais seguro que as de 50 e de 70"; e alguém se lembra de por volta de 1973 ter surgido (com o impacto que teve) algum filme similar a "Os amigos de Alex", mas a evocar os anos 50? (o mais parecido seria o American Graffiti, mas muito longe - nem que seja porque o período que evoca é já o principio dos anos 60).

Isto talvez seja uma especificidade da chamada "Geração X", mas nós crescemos a ouvir associar a geração de 60 à geração dos contestatários e dos progressistas (sempre que havia um protesto de estudantes nos anos 80, alguém falava em "regresso aos anos 60?"), pelo que agora me dá alguma dissonância cognitiva a conversa do "OK Boomer"; por outro lado, també é verdade que "boomer" não é sinónimo de "geração de 60" - se adotarmos a definição de "nascido entre 1946 e 1964", isso incluirá também muitos dos então tão atacados yuppies dos anos 80 (mesmo o Alex P. Keaton era suposto, in-universe, ter nascido em 1965, logo só não seria um boomer por um ano).

Nota 1: suspeito que nestas coisa de conservadorsmo versus progressismo por gerações, há também 
uma grande mistura entre a função e a derivada, ou talvez até a segunda derivada...

Nota 2: tenho também uma ainda maior desconfiança face ao conceito de "geração X" (tenho também um post nos rascunhos sobre isso), que em Portugal abrangeria tanto a geração "Prá Frente Portugal" como a "geração rasca", largamente opostas; eu suspeito que há uma diferença marcada entre as pessoas da minha idade ou mais velhas (a típica geração de 80), e as mais novas que eu (a "geração rasca", e também a do grunge e, em Portugal, do rap).

[Post publicado no Vias de Facto; podem comentar lá]

"Cuties"/"Mignonnes" e o #CancelNetflix (II)

Cuties is Not What You Think, por Emina Melonic (Splice Today):

Maïmouna Doucouré’s directorial debut, Cuties (French: Mignonnes, 2020) has been consistently under attack since Netflix released it on September 9. Netflix’s promotional poster and trailer primarily includes a group of 11-year-old girls dancing in a sexually suggestive manner, and it’s caused an uproar. The rage has extended beyond mindless, uninformed noise. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) have officially filed a letter to Attorney General William Barr to investigate Netflix for the distribution of child pornography. (...)

Setting aside the absurdity of this controversy, Doucouré’s film is an exploration of the difficulty young girls face growing up in today’s demanding society. The story centers on Amy, a Senegalese 11-year-old girl, who’s caught between two cultures: her fundamentalist Muslim upbringing and the disordered, libertine culture of France. This is already a problem for a young immigrant girl, but the added issue of the Internet culture that forces girls into a hyper-sexualized image creates an even bigger interior conflict for Amy. (...)

Amy does make a choice. She leaves the metaphysical and cultural stage of destructive reality that the overly secular society imposes on her. In her room, the skimpy outfit she wore during the dance competition and the traditional Senegalese dress she’s supposed to wear at her father’s wedding are left in the room. Now, she wears simple jeans and an elegant sweater, as she leaves the apartment complex and jumps rope with different neighborhood girls. It’s Amy’s face that is finally affirmed.

O radicalismo político como forma de fugir ao tédio?

Going to political extremes in response to boredom, por Wijnand A. P. Van Tilburg e Eric R. Igou (European Journal of Social Psychology):

Boredom makes people attempt to re‐establish a sense of meaningfulness. Political ideologies, and in particular the adherence to left‐ versus right‐wing beliefs, can serve as a source of meaning. Accordingly, we tested the hypothesis that boredom is associated with a stronger adherence to left‐ versus right‐wing beliefs, resulting in more extreme political orientations. Study 1 demonstrates that experimentally induced boredom leads to more extreme political orientations. Study 2 indicates that people who become easily bored with their environment adhere to more extreme ends of a political spectrum compared with their less easily bored counterparts. Finally, Study 3 reveals that the relatively extreme political orientations among those who are easily bored can be attributed to their enhanced search for meaning. Overall, our research suggests that extreme political orientations are, in part, a function of boredom's existential qualities.

Uma coisa que isto me fez pensar foi no livro "Admirável Mundo Novo", de Huxley; pessoalmente, acho a parte "subjetiva" (as motivações dos personagens) da história mais interessante que a parte "objetiva" (a descrição da sociedade e da tecnologia): isto, o tipo de sociedade apresentado no livro não me parece ter grande relevância para os dias de hoje, mas suspeito que a psicologia de personagens como Bernard Marx, o amigo publicitário ou o Selvagem explica muito a psicologia de "descontentes" em vários contextos sociais - sobretudo o desejo de ter uma grande causa a que se dedicar, em vez de uma vida banal "narrada por um idiota".

Teoria da ferradura (variante "vamos tomar conta do estado daqui a uns meses, mas queremos acabar com ele")?

Pondo no google (sem aspas) um frase de 1920 de Mussolini contra o estado, a primeira coisa que aparece é "O Estado e a Revolução", de Lenine (onde este, em 1917, também defende que o estado deve começar a desaparecer).

Vaga de esterilizações nos campos de detenção do "SEF" dos EUA?

‘Like an Experimental Concentration Camp’: Whistleblower Complaint Alleges Mass Hysterectomies at ICE Detention Center, por Jerry Lambe (Law and Crime):

Several legal advocacy groups on Monday filed a whistleblower complaint on behalf of a nurse at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center documenting “jarring medical neglect” within the facility, including a refusal to test detainees for the novel coronavirus and an exorbitant rate of hysterectomies being performed on immigrant women. (...)

Multiple women came forward to tell Project South about what they perceived to be the inordinate rate at which women in ICDC were subjected to hysterectomies – a surgical operation in which all or part of the uterus is removed. Additionally, many of the immigrant women who underwent the procedure were reportedly “confused” when asked to explain why they had the surgery, with one detainee likening their treatment to prisoners in concentration camps.

“Recently, a detained immigrant told Project South that she talked to five different women detained at ICDC between October and December 2019 who had a hysterectomy done,” the complaint stated. “When she talked to them about the surgery, the women ‘reacted confused when explaining why they had one done.’ The woman told Project South that it was as though the women were ‘trying to tell themselves it’s going to be OK.’”

2020?

Há uns tempos, no princípio do confinamento, escrevi algures num comentário do Facebook que de certeza que a epidemia e o confinamento iriam aparecer, daqui a uns anos, como pano de fundo ou tema de vários filmes.

Mas depois comecei a duvidar disso, já que as gripes asiática e de Hong Kong mataram muito mais gente e penso que a única marca que deixaram na cultura popular foi uma história do Pato Donald, que inclui também motins nas ruas e extra-terrestres*.

*diga-se que, além da história de hoje da fosfina venusiana, há vários meses que andam a correr notícias, na imprensa de referência e/ou com fontes institucionais, relacionadas com OVNIs.

O fim do moderno conservadorismo "liberal na economia, conservador nos costumes"?

Talvez um pouco em sentido contrário ao post anterior...

The Failure of Fusionism, por Grant Wyeth, na Quillette:

Conservative parties throughout the West are in crisis. This may not be fully understood by simply looking at recent election results, as conservative parties have continued to win elections. But these parties are currently in a state of ideological flux, and their commitment to existing liberal democratic principles and institutions are in noticeable decay. The conventional perception of conservative parties as steady and secure governing hands has made way for a more volatile and agitated form of politics. Parties that have routinely positioned themselves as defenders of the established order have instead become actively hostile to it. Conservative parties, the Economist noted last year, are now “on fire and dangerous.” (...)

The forces of freer markets; their unanchored spontaneous order, their economic and social creative destruction, and their inherent cosmopolitanism have deeply affronted those of a conservative disposition. With conservative parties accelerating these forces, Fusionism became an ideology in constant conflict with itself, failing to create a harmonious set of ideas to advance, and instead fostering a sense of discord and disorder for these parties’ natural constituents.

A história do moderno conservadorismo norte-americano

The Long New Right and the World It Made [pdf], por Daniel Schlozman e Sam Rosenfeld

Um aspeto interessante é a referência que os autores fazem ao "pequeno grande capital" - que a base da chamada "nova direita" tem sido as pessoas e famílias que são "ricas" a nível local e regional, não tanto o "grande capital" a nível nacional, e que será isso que explica como a combinação de liberalismo económico e populismo cultural aguentou estas décadas todas (já que o pequeno grande capital se identifica tanto com o liberalismo económico como com o populismo cultural).

Mas acho que se calhar o trumpismo desatualiza um bocado isso (mesmo sendo um paper de 2019); a mim parece-me que o movimento que os autores descrevem no artigo corresponde largamente aos apoiantes de Ted Cruz nas eleições de 2016 (que não a lado nenhum), e que está a surgir uma nova "nova direita" que largamente põe o liberalismo económico na gaveta.

Ainda sobre "discurso de ódio"

French book I Hate Men sees sales boom after government adviser calls for ban, em The Guardian:

Pauline Harmange’s Moi les hommes, je les déteste explores whether women “have good reason to hate men”, and whether “anger towards men is actually a joyful and emancipatory path, if it is allowed to be expressed”. Its small French publisher, Monstrograph, called it a “feminist and iconoclastic book” that “defends misandry as a way of making room for sisterhood”.

Ralph Zurmély, a special adviser to France’s ministry for gender equality, called it an “ode to misandry”. Zurmély, in an email obtained by Mediapart, told Monstrograph that “incitement to hatred on the grounds of gender is a criminal offence”, and asked the publisher to pull the book from publication “on pain of criminal prosecution”.

A respeito disto, Jesse Walker escreve: «This is both a "Hate speech laws will be used against the left too" story and a "Censorship can make things more popular" story.».

Como as leis contra o "discurso de ódio" acabam por atingir a esquerda

In Europe, Hate Speech Laws are Often Used to Suppress and Punish Left-Wing Viewpoints, por Gleen Greenwald, no Intercept:

If hate speech laws existed in the U.S., their prime targets would be pro-Palestinian groups, Muslims, atheists, Black Lives Matter activists, and antifa. (...)

 An excellent Guardian article on Monday by Julia Carrie Wong examines the implications of the growing liberal/left desire for “hate speech” to be restricted — either by the state wielding the power of “hate speech” laws or by private tech executives prohibiting the use of their platforms to disseminate what they regard as “hateful ideas." (...)

Many Americans who long for Europe’s hate speech restrictions assume that those laws are used to outlaw and punish expression of the bigoted ideas they most hate: racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, misogyny. Often, such laws are used that way. There are numerous cases in western Europe and Canada of far-right extremists being arrested, fined, or even jailed for publicly spouting that type of overt bigotry.

But hate speech restrictions are used in those countries to suppress, outlaw, and punish more than far-right bigotry. Those laws have frequently been used to constrain and sanction a wide range of political views that many left-wing censorship advocates would never dream could be deemed “hateful,” and even against opinions which many of them likely share.

France is probably the most extreme case of hate speech laws being abused in this manner. In 2015, France’s highest court upheld the criminal conviction of 12 pro-Palestinian activists for violating restrictions against hate speech. Their crime? Wearing T-shirts that advocated a boycott of Israel — “Long live Palestine, boycott Israel,” the shirts read — which, the court ruled, violated French law that “prescribes imprisonment or a fine of up to $50,000 for parties that ‘provoke discrimination, hatred or violence toward a person or group of people on grounds of their origin, their belonging or their not belonging to an ethnic group, a nation, a race or a certain religion.'”

Uma coisa peculiar a respeito do "discurso de ódio" é que frequentemente as mesmas pessoas que acham que a polícia e o sistema judicial são racistas, estão dispostas a atribuir a esse mesmo sistema judicial o papel de poder decidir o que se pode ou não dizer.

Sobre Twitter e blogues

The World That Twitter Made, em The Scholar's Stage:

In many ways the twitter experience of the user with a low follower account is somewhat similar to the experience of the old blogosphere. Many of my readers came to the internet in the 2010s; before I proceed with this point it is probably sketching out just what the internet was like in the world before them. That internet was organized differently. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Medium, Reddit, and Instagram either did not exist then or were the preserve of teenagers and university age students. Those platforms were for flirting and goofing off and gossiping behind your parents back. People who wanted to discuss bigger things—culture, art, history, science, business, politics, or what have you—went to the blogs. Well, the blogs and the forums.

There were two aspects of this older internet ecology that set it apart from the current get up. The first was its clear division into hundreds of separate communities.(...)

 This leads to the second big difference between the internet of the aughts and the internet of the 2010s: the standards for participation were different—in some ways the barrier to entry was both higher and lower than on twitter. In the old days people used to say "if you don't like it, make your own blog!" That directive was easy to follow. It is near impossible for someone de-platformed from twitter to create some new twitter to replace it; in contrast, anybody really could create their own blog (and forums were not hard to stand up either).

But if writers were to have people read their blogs, then their blogs had to be good. This was the price of participation. On twitter, anybody who can think up a snarky 140 characters retort can contribute to the "conversation." In the blogosphere, you had to create your own blog and write up your thoughts in long-form.(...)

The twitter user with 500~ followers in some ways exists in a world similar to the blogosphere of old. She is part of a small, self-selected community. Her followers chose to follow her because they are sympathetic with her ideas or at least interested in them. It is not difficult to have open and honest exchanges when you swim in safe waters. Most people in her network know her, and she knows most of them, so there is little incentive for mischief.

This changes with scale.

Um dia deste, se calhar vou experimentar essa coisa do Twitter (mas por outro lado, pelo que tenho lido, desconfio que já está na fase do declínio).

‘Cuties’/Mignonnes e o #CancelNetflix

Pelo que eu percebo, a mensagem do filme é capaz de ser muito semelhante às opiniões dos supostos críticos do filme.

The people freaking out about ‘Cuties’ should try it. They might find a lot to like, por Alyssa Rosenberg, no Washington Post:

It’s a real shame that so many conservatives are condemning “Cuties” when they might find a great deal to like about the movie — and no, I don’t mean they harbor a secret taste for twerking preteens.

This is very much a film about what happens to kids when their parents aren’t physically or emotionally present in their lives. It’s highly skeptical of social media platforms and what sexualized mainstream culture teaches children about what behavior is normal or desirable. Though its characters post provocative dance videos and wear revealing costumes, “Cuties” doesn’t present their actions as liberated or admirable: Instead, the movie repeatedly shows other characters reacting with sadness or disgust when these girls try to act like grown women.
AD

The triumphant climax of the movie isn’t a dance competition, but when Amy returns to age-appropriate clothes and games, finding an authentic version of herself in acting like the gummy-bear scarfing, giggly girl she was earlier in the film. In that moment, Amy is not bound by the religious and cultural traditions she found so constraining, but she’s not trying to live up to a different and equally restrictive idea of what it means to be a girl, either.

Os EUA à beira de uma insurreição? (II)

A respeito disto, eu imagino 4 situações que possam dar origem a uma revolta armada nos EUA nos próximos tempos:

a) Biden ganhar o voto popular mas Trump o colégio eleitoral, sobretudo se a "vitória" de Biden no sufrágio individual for por uma margem maior que a de Hillary

b) Haver alguma polémica (estilo Florida em 2000) decisiva para o resultado, e um decisão do Supremo, com todos os juizes "liberais" votando contra, dar a presidência a Trump

c) Biden for eleito, mas, antes da tomada de posse morrer ,algum juiz do Supremo Tribunal (RBG?) e os o presidente e o senado cessantes nomearem à pressa um conservador para o lugar

d) Trump ser reeleito e decretar alguma "ordem executiva" procedendo ao que na prática sejam mudanças constitucionais, como o número de imigrantes ilegais deixar de contar para a distribuição de lugares no congresso (bem, ele já tentou isso, mas talvez tentando mudar uns detalhes) ou os filhos de imigrantes ilegais deixarem de ser automaticamente cidadãos (ainda mais se isso for conjugado com com a) ou b))

e) Biden ser eleito e os Democratas terem a maioria no Senado e na Câmara e aproveitarem isso para fazer mudanças constitucionais de facto, como aumentarem o número de membros da Câmara dos Representantes (o que diminuiria o peso dos pequenos estados no Colégio Eleitoral - e até na própria Câmara, devido à regra que cada estado tem que ter no mínimo um representante), promoverem Porto Rico ou a cidade de Washington a estados ou aumentarem o número de membros do Supremo Tribunal (o que signficaria que os novos membros seriam Democratas) - tudo coisas que podem ser feitas por legislação ordinária sem mexer na constituição, mas que mudariam significativamente as regras do jogo

Neste cenários, só no último imagino uma rebelião vinda da direita; em todos os outros seria vinda da esquerda.

Ver também o post de 2012, Cenário para um guerra civil nos EUA.

Os EUA à beira de uma insurreição? (I)

Is America in the Early Stages of Armed Insurgency?, por Fred Kaplan (Slate):

One of the world’s leading counterinsurgency experts is alarmed by what he sees.

David Kilcullen is one of the world’s leading authorities on insurgencies. For decades he has studied them. As an infantry soldier in the Australian army and an adviser to the U.S. Army, he’s fought against them. His latest scholarly work has focused on their role in urban conflicts.

So when Kilcullen says that America is in a state of “incipient insurgency,” it’s worth sitting up, taking notice, and trembling just a little.

America in 2020: “Insurrection” or “Incipient Insurgency”?, por David Kilcullen (Fundation for the Desense of Democracy):

Thus, as this month’s disorder fades, the main long-term impact may be its radicalizing effect on a tiny minority of participants who join more violent groups as a result. It is commonplace in insurgencies for guerrilla talent spotters to identify recruits through street violence, inducting them into armed, organized groups over time. More broadly, the military concept of insurgency –subversion plus violence, intended to seize, nullify, or challenge political control – may be more applicable here than insurrection.

A centralização e a Revolução Francesa, vistas por Marx e Engels em 1850 e 1885

Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League (Março de 1850):

...The democrats will either work directly towards a federated republic, or at least, if they cannot avoid the one and indivisible republic they will attempt to paralyze the central government by granting the municipalities and provinces the greatest possible autonomy and independence. In opposition to this plan the workers must not only strive for one and indivisible German republic, but also, within this republic, for the most decisive centralization of power in the hands of the state authority. They should not let themselves be led astray by empty democratic talk about the freedom of the municipalities, self-government, etc. In a country like Germany, where so many remnants of the Middle Ages are still to be abolished, where so much local and provincial obstinacy has to be broken down, it cannot under any circumstances be tolerated that each village, each town and each province may put up new obstacles in the way of revolutionary activity, which can only be developed with full efficiency from a central point. A renewal of the present situation, in which the Germans have to wage a separate struggle in each town and province for the same degree of progress, can also not be tolerated. Least of all can a so-called free system of local government be allowed to perpetuate a form of property which is more backward than modern private property and which is everywhere and inevitably being transformed into private property; namely communal property, with its consequent disputes between poor and rich communities. Nor can this so-called free system of local government be allowed to perpetuate, side by side with the state civil law, the existence of communal civil law with its sharp practices directed against the workers. As in France in 1793, it is the task of the genuinely revolutionary party in Germany to carry through the strictest centralization....

Nota de Engels em 1885:

It must be recalled today that this passage is based on a misunderstanding. At that time – thanks to the Bonapartist and liberal falsifiers of history – it was considered as established that the French centralised machine of administration had been introduced by the Great Revolution and in particular that it had been used by the Convention as an indispensable and decisive weapon for defeating the royalist and federalist reaction and the external enemy. It is now, however, a well-known fact that throughout the revolution up to the eighteenth Brumaire c the whole administration of the départements, arrondissements and communes consisted of authorities elected by, the respective constituents themselves, and that these authorities acted with complete freedom within the general state laws; that precisely this provincial and local self-government, similar to the American, became the most powerful lever of the revolution and indeed to such an extent that Napoleon, immediately after his coup d’état of the eighteenth Brumaire, hastened to replace it by the still existing administration by prefects, which, therefore, was a pure instrument of reaction from the beginning. But no more than local and provincial self-government is in contradiction to political, national centralisation, is it necessarily bound up with that narrow-minded cantonal or communal self-seeking which strikes us as so repulsive in Switzerland, and which all the South German federal republicans wanted to make the rule in Germany in 1849.

Os próximos meses da Venezuela

Venezuela - Tense Months Ahead, por James Bosworth (Latin America Risk Report), com um misto de análise e previsão para o que poderá acontecer de setembro a abril (em dezembro é suposto haver eleições parlamentares).

Isto agora é provavelmente apenas um pet issue meu, mas chamo a atenção para a sua análise à rotura de Maduro com algumas forças tradicionais da esquerda chavista:

Maduro’s disputes with former Chavistas - The crackdown on political parties that used to support the Chavistas has created new enemies for the ruling coalition. In some ways, Maduro treats his former allies who aren’t fully in line with him worse than he treats the traditional “opposition.” While this may help his stealing of the legislative elections, it is creating new opponents with some legitimacy among populations that the Guaido coalition often fails to engage.

As várias formas de estruturar uma organização vistas pela "bussola política"

Eu suspeito que foi por acaso (isto é uma figura num livro), mas concordo com "antirobust" quando diz que parece um "political compass meme", já que os vários tipos de organização acabam por estar nos quadrantes mais apropriados:


Esquerda autoritária - centralização
Direita autoritária - hiearquia, autoridades e corpos intermédios
Direita libertária - individualismo, ordem espontânea
Esquerda libertária - decisões participadas, cooperação entre iguais

Reflexões de um economista sobre o teletrabalho

Um artigo meu no Sul Informação sobre o teletrabalho.

O verdadeiro problema com o colégio eleitoral dos EUA

Não, não tem a ver com estados muito ou pouco povoados.

The Electoral College Will Destroy America, por Jesse Wegman (New York Times):

The main problem with the Electoral College today is not, as both its supporters and detractors believe, the disproportionate power it gives smaller states. Those states do get a boost from their two Senate-based electoral votes, but that benefit pales in comparison to the real culprit: statewide winner-take-all laws. Under these laws, which states adopted to gain political advantage in the nation’s early years, even though it was never raised by the framers — states award all their electors to the candidate with the most popular votes in their state. The effect is to erase all the voters in that state who didn’t vote for the top candidate. (...)

As Madison wrote in an 1823 letter, states using the winner-take-all rule “are a string of beads” and fail to reflect the true political diversity of their citizens. He disliked the practice so much he called for a constitutional amendment barring it.

It’s not only liberals who understand the problem with winner-take-all. In 1950, a Texas representative named Ed Gossett took to the floor of Congress to vent about the unfairness of a system that gave some voters more influence in the election than others, solely because of where they live. New York was at the time the nation’s largest and most important swing state, and the voters who decided which way it swung were racial and ethnic minorities in large urban areas.

“Now, please understand, I have no objection to the Negro in Harlem voting and to his vote being counted,” Gossett said, “but I do resent the fact that both parties will spend a hundred times as much money to get his vote and that his vote is worth a hundred times as much in the scale of national politics as is the vote of a white man in Texas.”

Já agora, convém lembrar que, nos anos 60, uma das críticas que se faziam ao colégio eleitoral era que, extamente devido ao winner-take-all, daria demasiado poder aos grandes estados; não é difícil perceber porquê: se ser o mais votado num estado, nem que seja por um voto, significa ganhar TODOS os votos desse estado, à partida os votos nos grandes estados tornam-se mais preciosos que nos pequenos (convencer meia-dúzia de eleitores na Florida pode ter muito mais impacto no colégio eleitoral do que convencer a mesma meia-dúzia no Maine); isso só não acontece na prática porque os grandes estados (Nova Iorque, Texas, Califórnia...) tendem a ser estados em que o vencedor ganha por margens esmagadoras (a exceção é capaz de ser mesmo a Florida).

Os artigos academicos pirateados são mais citados?

Sci-Hub Downloads Boost Article Citations -- And Help Academic Publishers, por Glyn Moody, no TechDirt:

Techdirt readers know that Sci-Hub is a site offering free online access to a large proportion of all the scientific research papers that have been published -- at the time of writing, it claims to hold 82,605,245 of them. It's an incredible resource, used by millions around the world. Those include students whose institutions can't afford the often pricey journal subscriptions, but also many academics in well-funded universities, who do have institutional access to the papers. (...)

So irrespective of the legal situation, an interesting question is: what effect do Sci-Hub downloads have on article citations? That's precisely what a new preprint, published on arXiv, seeks to answer. (...)

Assuming that those are representative, and that the statistical calculations are correct, the end result is important. It suggests that articles that are downloaded from Sci-Hub are nearly twice as likely to be cited as those that aren't -- a big boost that will doubtless be of great interest to academics, whose careers are greatly affected by how widely they are cited. It seems to confirm that Sci-Hub does indeed help spread knowledge, not just in terms of the free downloads it offers, but also by virtue of leading to more citations for downloaded papers, and thus a wider audience for them.

The Sci-hub Effect: Sci-hub downloads lead to more article citations, por J.C. Correa, H. Laverde-Rojas, F. Marmolejo-Ramos, J. Tejada e Š. Bahník (arXiv):

Citations are often used as a metric of the impact of scientific publications. Here, we examine how the number of downloads from Sci-hub as well as various characteristics of publications and their authors predicts future citations. Using data from 12 leading journals in economics, consumer research, neuroscience, and multidisciplinary research, we found that articles downloaded from Sci-hub were cited 1.72 times more than papers not downloaded from Sci-hub and that the number of downloads from Sci-hub was a robust predictor of future citations. Among other characteristics of publications, the number of figures in a manuscript consistently predicts its future citations. The results suggest that limited access to publications may limit some scientific research from achieving its full impact.

Interrogo-me se não poderá haver outra relação causal - os artigos potencialmente mais interessantes serem simultaneamente os mais pirateados e os mais citados.

O que é exatamente "vida"?

Um artigo que fala num assunto em que há muito tempo ando a pensar, a respeito daquelas missões espaciais em busca de vida extra-terrestre: que propriedades deverá ter um composto químico que essas sondas descubram noutro planeta para poder ser considerado "um ser vivo"? 

Eu inclino-me para algo como: a) formar cristais; e b) essa substância tenha a propriedade de provocar/acelerar reações químicas que produzam mais moléculas dessa mesma substância (algo como isto?).

 [Não, não tem nada a ver com esta conversa]

Ainda sobre a "apropriação cultural"

Uma coisa que me ocorre é que as críticas à "apropriação cultural" parecem  aquelas conversas dos punks contra os poseurs, dos surfistas contra os surfistas da banheira, dos hackers contra os script kiddies, etc.

Em defesa da "apropriação cultural"

Stop apologising for cultural appropriation, por Ralph Leonard, no UnHeard:

An irony of this argument is that most opponents of cultural appropriation proclaim, often radically, to be for diversity, immigration and multiculturalism, yet they are same people who bitterly resent the actual results of such a symbiosis. Tribally marking off permission rights over who can use what cultural form, or whose “voice”, and in what way is puerile. It attacks the main benefits of living in a modern, culturally diverse, cosmopolitan society: freedom of expression, cultural innovation and experimentation and expansion of one’s horizons and liberation of the imagination

A burguesia pode cooptar as "políticas de identidade"?

Identity Politics and Elite Capture, por Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (Boston Review):

The black feminist Combahee River Collective manifesto and E. Franklin Frazier’s Black Bourgeoisie share the diagnosis that the wealthy and powerful will take every opportunity to hijack activist energies for their own ends.

II Guerra Mundial - a última guerra de conquista colonial?

The last colonial war?, por Branko Milanovic:

The Lebensraum objective, as Hitler’s numerous statements such as “Russia will be for us what India is for England” or “Russians will be destroyed as the red-skins were dealt with” can be understood only in a strict colonial context. As indeed Mark Mazower argued in “Hitler’s Empire” (see my review here), and before him Aimé Césaire, it was “colonialism applied to Europe”.

Hitler’s post-War imagination of how the immense Ukrainian and Russian spaces would look like was not dissimilar to what King Leopold accomplished in Congo, or Spanish conquistadores in Peru. First, all existing cities had to be razed to the ground—Hitler especially wished to destroy St Petersburg (“even if it is architecturally more beautiful than Moscow”) because it was the cradle of “Judeo-Bolshevism”. Then, after the Soviet or Russian government of whatever stripe has been pushed beyond the Urals, that is, out of Europe—once there, it was to Hitler a matter of indifference what type of government it would be—the European Russia, Belarus, and the Ukraine would be settled by German soldier-farmers who would live in clean and even palatial agro-towns, connected by beautiful autobahns, and served by Russian helots. The latter will be given only a very elementary education. It would suffice, according to Hitler, that they be able to read traffic signs (one thinks of Congo having, at the independence only a dozen graduates). The Russian helots would work on German-owned estates in a form of modern-day encomienda, and return in the evening to their filthy huts.

It was to be European colonialism complete with slavery and forced labor, but augmented by racial pseudo-science, and implemented by modern technological means that were lacking in earlier colonizations.

Milanovic chama-lhe "a última guerra colonial", mas o que ele realmente quer dizer é "a última guerra para conquistar colónias" (já que guerras coloniais para não perder colónias houve muitas depois disso, incluido a guerra colonial portuguesa). 

Os "casamentos gay" do século XIX

The Gay Marriages of a Nineteenth-Century Prison Ship, em The New Yorker:

Grundy recounted how, soon after arriving in Bermuda, he saw two men engaged in “filthy action” in the middle of the day. He instantly reported them to officials. The men—Samuel Jones and Burnell Milford—were charged with “being found in a position ‘derogatory to the laws of God.’ ” They were given twenty-four lashes each, and their pay was suspended. “Being a new prisoner at the time, I thought I should be generally supported,” Grundy wrote. “But such was not the case.” The convicts retaliated against him. He was ostracized, and some of the men threatened to put him “to sleep.” He also felt unsafe among the prison guards—who, he claimed, did not like it that he had exposed the ship to criticism.

What happened between Jones and Milford, Grundy had learned, wasn’t an isolated incident: “the abominable sin” was practiced “to such an extent,” he wrote, that many of the convicts “boast of it.” He underscored, too, that this wasn’t just sex: the men would refer to their relationships as marriages. The practice became so commonplace, according to his account, that “marriage” was the rule rather than the exception: “if they are not ‘married’ as they term it, it is out of the fashion.” In his telling, at least a hundred men aboard the prison ships in Bermuda had same-sex partners whom they considered spouses.

Minority report

Pasco’s sheriff created a futuristic program to stop crime before it happens.  It monitors and harasses families across the county (Tampa Bay Times):

Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco took office in 2011 with a bold plan: to create a cutting-edge intelligence program that could stop crime before it happened.

What he actually built was a system to continuously monitor and harass Pasco County residents, a Tampa Bay Times investigation has found.

First the Sheriff’s Office generates lists of people it considers likely to break the law, based on arrest histories, unspecified intelligence and arbitrary decisions by police analysts.

Then it sends deputies to find and interrogate anyone whose name appears, often without probable cause, a search warrant or evidence of a specific crime.

They swarm homes in the middle of the night, waking families and embarrassing people in front of their neighbors. They write tickets for missing mailbox numbers and overgrown grass, saddling residents with court dates and fines. They come again and again, making arrests for any reason they can.

As atividades extra-curriculares fazem mal?

Aparentemente sim, sobretudo nas classes altas.

Should Children Do More Enrichment Activities? Leveraging Bunching to Correct for Endogeneity, por Carolina Caetano, Gregorio Caetano e Eric Reed Nielsen (FEDS Working Paper No. 2020-036):

We study the effects of enrichment activities such as reading, homework, and extracurricular lessons on children's cognitive and non-cognitive skills. We take into consideration that children forgo alternative activities, such as play and socializing, in order to spend time on enrichment. Our study controls for selection on unobservables using a novel approach which leverages the fact that many children spend zero hours per week on enrichment activities. At zero enrichment, confounders vary but enrichment does not, which gives us direct information about the effect of confounders on skills. Using time diary data available in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), we find that the net effect of enrichment is zero for cognitive skills and negative for non-cognitive skills, which suggests that enrichment may be crowding out more productive activities on the margin. The negative effects on non-cognitive skills are concentrated in higher-income students in high school, consistent with elevated academic competition related to college admissions.

[Via Tyler Cowen]

"Fragmentos de uma Antropologia Anarquista", de David Graeber

http://abahlali.org/files/Graeber.pdf (ou clicar na imagem para ler)

Regressando às estátuas

On statues and history: The dialogue between past and present in public space, por Pippa Catterall (LSE Blogs):

This issue is not new. As long ago as 1868, the statue of ‘Bloody’ Cumberland was removed from Cavendish Square in London and melted down. Neither his sanguinary associations nor his artistic representation were felt to be worthy of commemoration or retention. The British have also replaced other people’s statues in the process of replacing one empire with another. That of Hermann von Wissmann, for instance, was removed from Dar es Salaam after the British conquered German East Africa during the First World War. They sent it to the University of Hamburg. As Wissmann’s reputation shifted from imperial hero to racist villain, the statue was first attacked and then removed in 1967-68. It has taken Bristol 52 years to catch up with its German counterpart. Now, however, both statues have become monuments to anti-imperial and anti-racist protests. The dialogue between Past and Present they represent has dramatically altered.

Because of their role in this dialogue, statues cannot be treated as sacrosanct. They represent what people in the Past chose to celebrate and memorialise, they do not represent history. Indeed, teaching history is almost never the reason why they are erected. Instead, statues in public spaces since Antiquity have most typically been used to represent power and authority. It is therefore no coincidence that so many of the Confederate monuments that have proved so controversial in America in recent years were erected less to commemorate the US Civil War than to express the power relations of the Jim Crow era decades later.

Tecnologia e liberdade de expressão

Tech and Liberty, por Ben Thompson:

Over the last several weeks debate has raged over Facebook’s policy to not fact-check politician speech on its platforms, either in organic posts or paid advertisements. Twitter, meanwhile, decided to ban political ads completely. (...)

Frankly, I find it deeply concerning that I might have any trepidation in writing that Facebook made the right decision. The unquestioned assumption of the media world in which I live is that Facebook is uniquely guilty of all manners of crimes, first and foremost the election of one Donald Trump as president. Never mind the questionable campaign choices of his opponent, or the unrelenting focus on emails by the mainstream media (...).

This is not a blanket defense of Facebook. I believe the company has it right from a big picture perspective, both in terms of American values generally and tech values specifically, but could do better on the details.

First, while the letter from Facebook employees was wrong, at least constitutionally speaking, in asserting that “free speech and paid speech are not the same thing”, the practical impact in terms of Facebook is very different. Organic posts are subject to the vagaries of the Facebook algorithm, whereas advertisements can be targeted at specific groups.

Both are problematic in their own way. Facebook’s algorithm is, as far as we know, predicated first and foremost on engagement, which inevitably favors the outrageous and controversial. Targeting, meanwhile, both grants a right to be heard that is something distinct from a right to speech, as well as limits our shared understanding of what there is to debate.

O "chavismo" como crony capitalismo?

Chavismo as Savage Capitalism (Caracas Chronicle):

Chavismo is a money-making machine that feeds on the disgrace of Venezuelan people. The most recent evidence is the price increase of fuel through a two-pronged system that has a subsidized scheme on one side and a litre-for-half-a-dollar scheme at the other. The regime that always prided itself on an alleged oil “nationalization”—which really took place in 1976 by Carlos Andrés Pérez—now privatizes fuel sales in a murky way—what it’s really doing is handing benefits to a group of privileged people who can buy low and then sell at a higher price, in the not-so-revolucionario American dollar.

But fuel privatization won’t be the last initiative of savage capitalism by the Bolivarian socialism. Other upcoming privatizations have shown their heads on the horizon, individually chosen to favor the corrupt and their front friends. Carabobo’s flamboyant state governor, Rafael Lacava, said in November 2019 that “it’s necessary to privatize the electric power service” at rates that represent “what electricity is worth” (meaning: rates that are profitable).

2020: as últimas eleições razoavelmente democráticas nos EUA?

Cassandra of Troy (Brynn Tannehill):

The more I write about this, the more it becomes plain: if Biden loses, 2020 will be the last remotely free and fair election we have for decades, and certainly my lifetime. We are in the middle of an autocratic attempt, and it looks so much like Hungary's... 1/n

— Cassandra of Troy (@BrynnTannehill) August 28, 2020

A ala esquerda do chavismo contra Maduro

Já que estamos em tempo de convenções dos grandes partidos dos EUA

Relembrando, há 52 anos, a Convenção dos Democratas

"Elite"

Este artigo combina coisas que me parecem um bocado disparatadas (como é costume na Spiked) com algumas interessantes; e nomeadamente tem o mérito de reconhecer que a maneira com que a direita (sobretudo) norte-americana usa a palavra "elite" (para se referir à classe média/média-alta de esquerda) é incorreta:

Collins: You refer to the post-Protestants who promote these ideas as the ‘Elect’. From a sociological perspective, why do you prefer to use the term ‘Elect’ rather than say the ‘elite’ or another designation?

Bottum: Ross Douthat, in a column in the New York Times, said that one of the things we need to take from An Anxious Age is the distinction between the elite and the Elect. I chose the term Elect because those people who are part of it are not elite in the sense of having a hundred billion dollars. They are not the elite in the sense of being political figures with lengthy careers, like Bill and Hillary Clinton, or Joe Biden for that matter. They are not elite in the sense they control things in terms of ownership. So we need another term for them. They certainly have elite educations, but that elite education is not translated into the enormous wealth and power that the true elite has.

Continuando com a Venezuela

O Supremo Tribunal já substituiu a direção do partido Pátria Para Todos:

La Sala Constitucional del Tribunal Supremo de Justicia (TSJ) decretó medida cautelar suspender la actual Dirección Nacional del partido Patria Para Todos (PPT), por lo que se designó una Junta Directiva Ad Hoc para llevar adelante el proceso de reestructuración necesario del mencionado partido, presidida por la ciudadana Ilenia Medina, en su condición de Secretaria Nacional de Organización y las secretarías generales regionales, ciudadanas Lisett Sabino y Beatriz Barráez. [APORREA]

Como já disse, convém não esquecer que a atual direção também chegou ao poder com o Supremo Tribunal destituindo a anterior..

Já agora, indo 10 anos para trás -  Eleições venezuelanas - o meu endorsement, no Vias de Facto.

O colapso gradual do regime venezuelano (II)

A intervenção judicial nos partidos venezuelanos (mesmo nos próximos do regime) continua com novos episódios: uma deputado do Pátria Para Todos (um partido nos últimos anos pró-governamental, mas que vai concorrer nas próximas eleição numa lista separada) pretende que o Supremo Tribunal retire à direção do partido o poder para apresentar candidatos (a deputada aparentemente era a favor de uma coligação com o PSUV de Maduro, e se essa providência for avante, o PPT não poderá apresentar candidatos próprios). Claro que uma ironia disto é que a atual direção do PPT também foi colocada na liderança  na sequência de uma sentença do Supremo Tribunal.

A respeito da nova força que o PPT pretende integrar, junto com o Partido Comunista e outras organizações: - PCV y PPT se desmarcan del PSUV y lanzan plataforma electoral propia para las elecciones del 6-D (APORREA).

O colapso gradual do regime venezuelano

Até grupos tradicionalmente próximos do regime estão em choque com Maduro (ou Maduro em choque com eles):

Politics and Polls - 19 August 2020, por James Bosworth, no Latin America Risk Report:

In recent weeks, members of various leftwing political organizations in Venezuela claim that the regime has sent armed criminal groups to target them. Maduro appears to be attacking communists and other leftwing ideologues who once supported Hugo Chavez but have retained some independence from Maduro’s party structure. Part of that fight spilled over into the public this week as the regime’s Supreme Court ordered the takeover of the Tupamaros political organization.

Maduro’s current attempt to hijack the traditional left-wing Tupamaros party comes with additional risks for the ruling regime. The Tupamaros leadership have called for other leftwing allies to rise up against Maduro. The Tupamaros have long-standing ties to armed groups that predate the Chavez era. Their call for people and parties to rise up may not imply peaceful protests and could lead to an increase in politically-motivated violence in the country.

Venezuela: Supremo impõe nova direção a partido pró-regime Tupamaro (Notícias ao Minuto):

O Supremo Tribunal de Justiça da Venezuela (STJ) suspendeu na terça-feira a direção do partido Tupamaro, uma organização venezuelana de ideologia comunista que faz parte do Grande Polo Patriótico, composta por partidos que apoiam o regime.

Contexto: já há alguns anos que tem sido costume na Venezuela, o Supremo Tribunal demitir a direção de partidos e nomear direções alternativas; em 2011/2012 tinha feito isso com o Pátria Para Todos e com o Pela Democracia Social, dois partidos inicialmente do campo chavista mas que tinham passado para a oposição, e que por via judicial regressaram às mãos oficialistas (os opositores afastados entretando criaram o Movimento Progressista da Venezuela e o Avanço Progressista); recentemente, foram os partidos oposicionistas Primeiro Justiça. Ação Democrática e Vontade Popular que viram as suas direções afastadas. Mas com a destituição da direção dos Tupamaro penso que pela primeira vez isso aconteceu mesmo com o partido pró-regime (provavelmente devido às lutas faccionais dentro do governo, ou algo parecido).

#18Ago| Pronunciamiento de #TUPAMARO ante la consumación del asalto de nuestra Organización rojinegro por poderosos factores económicos disfrazados de revolucionarios. Basta de ataques contra partidos de izquierda y movimientos populares.#RespetoALaAutonomíaDeTupamaro pic.twitter.com/4xgnFAAIlL

— Tupamaro Venezuela (@Venezuela_MRT) August 19, 2020