Archive

Law & Order, or Game of Thrones? The Legal Landscape of Space Exploration

I personally am not worried about settlements. I think they’re so far in the future that we can’t predict what they’ll look like. We can’t even keep human beings, particularly a lot of human beings, alive in space or have real settlements, the way we envision a colony or a settlement. I don’t think the lack of sovereignty is going to hurt any of this.

Decentralize, Democratize, or Die

You might be more comfortable thinking about deploying math and code as your tactic, but I want to talk to you about the full suite of tactics that we use to effect change in the world. And this is a framework that we owe to this guy Lawrence Lessig.

The Conversation #64 – Peter Gleick

We have even in the United States serious and growing water scarcity challenges. We have contamination problems with chemicals that we have not adequately regulated here in the United States. We have conflicts between states in the United States about who gets to use what water to do what. We have evidence that climate change is already influencing water demand, affecting water availability, changing extreme events. There are a whole suite of water-related problems, here, unrelated to these basic human need challenges that’re pressing in other parts of the world.

The “Monkey Selfie” Case: Can Non-Humans Hold Copyrights?

Naruto, then 3 years old, came up and picked up one of his cameras and started looking at it. And he made the connection… By Mr. Slater’s own admission he made the connection between pushing the shutter release button and the change to his reflection in the lens when the aperture opened and closed.

Inflection Point on Truthiness

Well I believe there is a truth we share. I think it’s our sense of justice. I think of the great Paul Newman depiction in The Verdict, his closing argument when he speaks to the jury and says, “You are the law. I believe there is justice in our hearts.” So the truth, the verdict. Vera dictos, speak the truth. That’s what juries are told to do.

1,862 Fewer Years in Prison

We make the family an essential and effective part of the defense team, so they could change the outcome of cases and transform the landscape of power in the court system.

Data & Society Databite #41: Ifeoma Ajunwa on Genetic Coercion

The mythology of genetic coercion is thoughts that genetic data, especially large-scale genetic databases, have the ability to pinpoint certain risk of disease. They provide agency to act to prevent such disease, and it can be used to create accurate personalized treatment for disease, and it should also be entrusted with the authority to dictate the modification of the genome for future generations.

Nobody Knows a Damn Thing

I’ve always been really interested in this idea of whether or not we can predict hits. You speak to anyone who works in the entertainment industry, and everyone has their was stories of that film they were sure was going to become a hit which somehow became a miss. There are niche films which appeal to everyone, and perhaps more likely, films that are designed to appeal to everyone which somehow appeal to no one.

The “Essence of Sandwichness,” Including the Official New York Definition of a Sandwich

I love reading government memos because the world is an unclassifiable place, but the people that write these memos have to try to classify it anyway, and the results get weird. You get these classification oddities, these regulatory platypuses.