tobychev @tobychev@qoto.org

Going through an archaeological exhibition in southeast Europe is mostly a familiar experience for a Swedish prehistorian. Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, everything looks nice and familiar. But then comes this weird urban semi-industrial Classical interlude with the Romans, and you're completely confused in that museum hall. Finally though the Goths and the Slavs show up and put everything to rights again, so you can relax back into fond recognition.

#Archaeology #slovenia

🇫🇷 The French welfare agency uses an algorithm to detect potential fraudsters. Every month, it ranks the households of 32 million people, including 13 million children, with a "risk score".

For the first time, @LaQuadrature obtained its source code and could run it.

The criteria that increase the risk score are
- being poor,
- living in a poor neighborhood,
- being a single mother,
- being unemployed,
- having a disability.

https://www.laquadrature.net/2023/11/27/notation-des-allocataires-lindecence-des-pratiques-de-la-caf-desormais-indeniable/

Rightwingers are promoting aggressive anti-bikeism as a key element of the reactionary political identity. Just the most destructive people, reflexively raging against anything coded “left” or “woke.” And so even the most universally beneficial trends and behavior are declared evil and “Un-American” 1/

Paywalled article here, I'll share once I have a non-paywalled link (hopefully soon): https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03610-5

The summary: astronomers spent a lot of time asking SpaceX and other large satellite operators to pretty please make their satellites fainter and/or use fewer satellites. And then BlueWalker 3 was launched by some tiny company and is one of the brightest things in the sky. Asking nicely isn't working: international regulation and pollution penalties are needed.

So, what do I think of Finland closing all but the northernmost border crossing with Russia?

That Finns are stupid and in haste and thus do not make good decisions. They are also quite racist, and when someone is both stupid and racist, they are very easy to play, as Russia have been doing here. Finns do exactly what Russia wants them to do. The northernmost crossing is kept open only because it was made clear to the government that closing them all would be illegal and the gov doesn’t have guts to do such openly illegal decisions.

We might also argue whether low hundreds asylum seekers are such a _serious_ threat to national security that is needed to close border crossings at all according to Finnish law, especially considering that Finland is prepared to receive six-digit number of asylum seekers in short notice.

As I said, Finland has been really stupid. We have opposed EU-level solutions to asylum seekers coming to EU, as if we are not the country with longest land border of the EU. Russia has done border control for us on its side, with no legal obligation to do that, and we simply trusted that they will keep doing that so we don’t have to worry about it. You can always trust Russia to play fair, right?

We have a long tradition of being very legalistic country. That was actually a form of resistance against Imperial Russia back in the days of Autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland. There was even very famous painting by Edvard Isto called “The Attack” (1899), where the two-headed eagle tries to rip the law from the hands of the maid of Finland. Even and especially under the attack, Finland sticks to law.

There was strategic pragmatism in following the rules ourselves and making sure that if someone breaks them it is the other guy. Especially after WWII it was evident that for a small country such as Finland it would be of utmost importance that international relations are based on laws, contracts and agreements.

For big countries like Russia it is more beneficial to have an order where everyone bends and breaks the rules at will, and in this case right now they wanted to make evident to everyone, especially the majority world, that also Finland, this former poster child of human rights and playing by the rules, is actually willing to ditch them in an instant. This is what Russia wants.

And Finns as fools were ready to do exactly that. A large part of the society started immediately demanding that now we need to get rid of all international agreements and such.

The cartoonist Ville Ranta illustrated that very well by drawing the maid of Finland holding the law, and small one-headed sparrow trying to bite a corner. Behind a rock hysterical people shout to let it go, that we can't afford to hold into that anymore.

My proposal would be that all and every asylum seeker that comes to Finnish border will be given due process. They come from countries where majority of asylum seekers have got refugee status in Finland, and looking at their countries of origin, it is more likely than not that they have a case that at least needs to be investigated properly.

Like, 100% of Jemenis get refugee status in Finland because the country is in ruins, and weapons systems Finns sold to the Emirates have been used there.

But because Russia is using those people as an instrument to pressure Finland, Finland should get other EU countries to the bandwagon, and announce that for every third-country asylum seeker that comes to Finland from Russia, there will be extra 10 million euros donated to artillery rounds and other arms supplies to Ukraine.

In addition EU could announce that for every 1000 asylum seekers that Russia sends to Finnish border, one Eurofighter would be donated to Ukraine.

It would mean that people fleeing from some of the worst conflict areas in the world will get a due process from civilized world, and Ukraine would get more weapons to drive Russian invaders out faster.

And instead of being stupid and letting Russia set the play, we could play smart, take the initiative and keep our cool.

There are important stories to be reporting in this space. When automated systems are being used, who is being left without recourse to challenge decisions? Whose data is being stolen? Whose labor is being exploited? How is mass surveillance being extended and normalized? What are the impacts to the natural environment and information ecosystem? 25/

Wow, IEA dropping this just before COP28 is quite a move.

https://youtu.be/UzQJ2norrEw?si=2KRwFw70s0oL9Q3f

This video is one minute long, but I’ll also link to the one hour long report launch video with the key findings in the next post. It feels as close as I think you’ll ever get to an energy thinktank doing a mike drop on debunking the usual fossil fuel talking points.

Especially when they were set up in the 70s to *secure* fossil fuel supply for rich westerners on economies.

Doing reviews for a conference and 1) getting annoyed about the authors assuming US readers, and 2) learning horrible things about the US.

"[...]having an eviction on record makes it more difficult to [...] qualify for affordable housing programs."

WHAT? That's who those programs are _for_?