position:pilot

  • The Women Who Walked on Wings
    https://www.messynessychic.com/2019/02/26/the-women-who-walked-on-wings

    Gladys Roy, pictured above on the far wing, is probably the only woman in the world who could say she’s played tennis on an airplane– at least in our circle of friends. As it turns out, a lot of women did some pretty crazy stuff on airplanes in the 1920s…

    Take Gladys Ingle, for example (pictured above). She was the only female member of 13 Black Cats, the daredevil wing walkers who did some of Hollywood’s best stunt work in the 1920s. Gladys was able to hop from one plane to another in mid-air without any protective gear (and lived to the age of 82). Sadly Gladys Roy (playing tennis and not to be confused with Gladys Ingle) was killed at the age of 25 when she was struck by a whirling propeller.
    Gladys Ingle, a female “Black Cat”

    The origins of wing-walking were pretty practical: pilots would often need to venture onto their plane’s wings in-flight to make technical adjustments. The earliest documented case was in 1911, but it was the dashing American Army Pilot Ormer Locklear who saw dollar signs on the horizon with wing-walking.
    He founded the Locklear Flying Circus, bringing his skills as an expert, ex-Army pilot to the new spectacle of “barnstorming” (another name for wing walking) to train a generation of walkers.

    “I don’t do these things because I want to run the risk of being killed,” Locklear said in 1919, “I do it to demonstrate what can be done. I am convinced that someday we will all be flying.” Above all, it was Locklear who cranked up the romance factor of the whole thing. He took his skills to Hollywood, worked with greats like Cecil B. de Mille, but died tragically during production for a movie called The Skywayman while performing a nocturnal stunt where his plane crashed into an oil well.

    His female equivalent in the movie industry was the aptly named Ethal Dare, who earned the nickname “the Flying Witch” for her larger-than-life stunts, such as the “Breakaway” and “the Iron Jaw Spin.” During the latter trick, Dare would suspend herself by rope with a special mouthpiece, and twirl non-stop in the plane’s propwash like a spinning top in the sky.

    Lillian Boyer

    That women were also so heavily involved in the spectacle, when they didn’t even have the right to vote, wasn’t just remarkable – it was liberating. “These were heady days for young women,” explains author Janann Sherman in Tennessee Women: Their Lives and Times, “at the climax of the woman suffrage movement.” Consider Lillian Boyer, a textbook case of chasing the good ‘ole American Dream…
    Lillian Boyer

    Boyer was a small-town waitress in Nebraska, and had always dreamt of taking to the skies, and when two customers invited her along for a flight she seized the opportunity to try barnstorming then and there, walking right out onto the wing of the plane. It was love at first walk. She’d complete 352 shows in her lifetime and become an active stunt-woman throughout the 1920s, branching out into parachute jumping, automobile-to-airplane jumps.
    Lillian Boyer

    The list of lady walkers goes on, and on. There was Phoebe Fairgrave Omlie, who in addition to dancing the Charleston on her plane’s wings, became the first woman to get an airplane mechanic’s license, become a female transport pilot, and be appointed to a federal position as an aviatrix…
    Phoebe Fairgrave Omlie

    And there was Bessie Coleman, one of America’s greatest stuntwomen, and the first female African American wing walker. “The air is the only place free from prejudices,” she said, “I knew we had no aviators, neither men nor women, and I knew [African Americans] needed to be represented along this most important line, so I thought it my duty to risk my life to learn aviation.”
    Bessie Coleman in tailor made officer’s uniform posed standing on the running board of a Ford Model T automobile with nose and right wing of her Curtiss JN-4 Jenny to her left.

    That tenacity has taken wing-walking into 2019 in as fierce shape as ever. UK walker Norma Howard took to the skies in 2018 at 91-years-old, and AeroSuperBatics’ Breitling Wing Walkers, a company run for and by female barnstormers, is going strong. Who knows, maybe you’re the next member they need. And if it means we’d get to wear a club jersey like that of Gladys Ingle’s 13 Black Cats, you can count us in too…

  • Finland’s basic income trial boosts happiness but not employment | Reuters
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-finland-basic-income/finlands-basic-income-trial-boosts-happiness-but-not-employment-idUSKCN1PX0
    https://s4.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20190208&t=2&i=1354502227&w=1200&r=LYNXNPEF170XW

    HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finland’s basic income scheme did not spur its unemployed recipients to work more to supplement their earnings as hoped but it did help their wellbeing, researchers said on Friday as the government announced initial findings.

    The two-year trial, which ended a month ago, saw 2,000 Finns, chosen randomly from among the unemployed, become the first Europeans to be paid a regular monthly income by the state that was not reduced if they found work.

    Finland — the world’s happiest country last year, according to the United Nations — is exploring alternatives to its social security model.

    The trial was being watched closely by other governments who see a basic income as a way of encouraging the unemployed to take up often low-paid or temporary work without fear of losing their benefits. That could help reduce dependence on the state and cut welfare costs, especially as greater automation sees humans replaced in the workforce.

    Finland’s minister of health and social affairs Pirkko Mattila said the impact on employment of the monthly pay cheque of 560 euros ($635) “seems to have been minor on the grounds of the first trial year”.

    But participants in the trial were happier and healthier than the control group.

    “The basic income recipients of the test group reported better wellbeing in every way (than) the comparison group,” chief researcher Olli Kangas said.

    Chief economist for the trial Ohto Kanniainen said the low impact on employment was not a surprise, given that many jobless people have few skills or struggle with difficult life situations or health concerns.
    Owner Sini Marttinen poses for a picture at her coffee shop she founded while benefitting from Finland’s basic income scheme in Helsinki, Finland January 30, 2019. REUTERS/Philip O’Connor

    “Economists have known for a long time that with unemployed people financial incentives don’t work quite the way some people would expect them to,” he added.
    PSYCHOLOGICAL BOOST

    Sini Marttinen, 36, had been unemployed for nearly a year before “winning the lottery”, as she described the trial.

    Her basic income gave her enough confidence to open a restaurant with two friends. “I think the effect was a lot psychological,” the former IT consultant told Reuters.

    “You kind of got this idea you have two years, you have the security of 560 euros per month ... It gave me the security to start my own business.”

    Her income only rose by 50 euros a month compared to the jobless benefit she had been receiving, “but in an instant you lose the bureaucracy, the reporting”, Marttinen said.

    Mira Jaskari, 36, who briefly found a job during the trial but lost it due to poor health, said losing the basic income had left her feeling more insecure about money.

    The center-right government’s original plan was to expand the basic income scheme after two years as it tries to combat unemployment which has been persistently high for years but reached a 10-year low of 6.6 percent in December.

    That followed the imposition of benefits sanctions on unemployed people who refused work.

    The basic income has been controversial, however, with leaders of the main Finnish political parties keen to streamline the benefits system but wary of offering “money for nothing”, especially ahead of parliamentary elections due in April.
    Slideshow (2 Images)
    TAX BIND

    Prime Minister Juha Sipila’s Centre Party has proposed limiting the basic income to poor people, with sanctions if they reject a job offer, while Conservative finance minister Petteri Orpo says he favors a scheme like Britain’s Universal Credit.

    The higher taxes that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) says would be needed to pay for basic income schemes might also be off-putting for voters.

    In a review of the Finnish scheme last year, the OECD warned that implementing it nationally and cost-neutrally for the state would imply significant income redistribution, especially towards couples from single people, and increase poverty.

    The researchers have acknowledged that the Finnish pilot was less than realistic because it did not include any tax claw-back once participants found work and reached a certain income level.

    Swiss voters rejected a similar scheme in 2016. Italy is due to introduce a “citizens’ wage” in April in a major overhaul of the welfare state, which will offer income support to the unemployed and poor.

    Trial participants were generally positive, however, with Tuomas Muraja, a 45-year-old journalist and author, saying the basic income had allowed him to concentrate on writing instead of form-filling or attending jobseekers’ courses.

    He said the end of the two-year trial, during which he published two books, had made it difficult again for him to accept commissions, because “I ... can earn only 300 euros per month without losing any benefits”.

    “If people are paid money freely that makes them creative, productive and welfare brings welfare,” Muraja told Reuters about his experience of the pilot.

    “If you feel free, you feel safer and then you can do whatever you want. That is my assessment.”

    ($1 = 0.8817 euros)

  • « Je ne m’assieds pas » : elle bloque le décollage pour empêcher l’expulsion d’un migrant
    https://www.lemonde.fr/immigration-et-diversite/video/2018/07/25/je-ne-m-assieds-pas-une-etudiante-suedoise-empeche-l-expulsion-d-un-afghan-e

    Pour éviter qu’un demandeur d’asile soit renvoyé par avion en Afghanistan, Elin Erson, une étudiante suédoise de 22 ans, a acheté un billet sur le même vol, lundi 23 juillet, au départ de Göteborg en Suède. Une fois à bord, elle a refusé de s’asseoir, empêchant l’avion de décoller. « Je ne vais pas m’asseoir avant que cette personne soit descendue de cet avion », a-t-elle prévenu.

    Pendant de longues minutes, elle a diffusé son action en direct sur Facebook. « Il se fera certainement tuer s’il reste dans cet avion », a-t-elle répété aux passagers et au personnel de bord agacés. Peu à peu, elle a reçu le soutien de voyageurs, qui se sont levés à leur tour. L’Afghan de 52 ans a finalement été débarqué de l’avion, et son expulsion provisoirement reportée.

    #brava #résistance à #loi_scélérate #tou·tes_debout

  • #MH370 four years on: until the plane is found, theories run wild | World news | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/23/mh370-four-years-on-the-main-theories-on-what-happened-to-the-plane

    In the vacuum of information, theories – some more likely than others – have sprung up. These are the four main contenders:

    Mass hypoxia event
    The official theory, adopted by both the Malaysian government and the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, is that the passengers and crew of MH370 were incapacitated by an unknown “unresponsive crew/ hypoxia event”. Hypoxia is a deficiency of oxygen.
    […]
    Fire or accident
    In the immediate aftermath of the disappearance, former pilot Christopher Goodfellow speculated that an electrical fire broke out on board. He said this explained the first turn towards Malaysia as Shah was searching for an emergency landing strip. He believes the fire then incapacitated Shah and the cabin crew, leaving the plane to fly south on autopilot.

    Patrick Smith, another pilot, has cast doubt on the fire theory, saying it was unlikely MH370 could have continued for six hours on autopilot after a major fire. Officials believe Shah was unconcious, but have not offered any theories as to why or when this occurred.
    […]
    The rogue pilot
    Byron Bailey, a former RAAF trainer and captain with Emirates, believes the plane was under the control of its captain as part of a deliberate descent into the Indian Ocean.

    This would radically alter the current search operation – and potentially explain why the plane has not been found. Current and previous searches assumed the plane dived steeply and suddenly, with nobody at the helm, near the location of the seventh handshake.

    But if Shah was conscious, he could have manoeuvred the plane in a long, slow glide, travelling almost 200km further south. This also would have kept the plane more intact, with less debris.
    […]
    A northern landing
    Yet another theory says the plane is not near Australia at all, but rather to the north of Malaysia.

    This theory stems from the way satellite data is calculated. After MH370 turned back towards Malaysia, its last known military radar point showed it travelling slightly north-west towards India.

    Bonus…

    Photo evidence
    Other armchair investigators have claimed to have discovered photo evidence of debris that places MH370 in various other locations, but all have been discredited.

    On Monday, Peter McMahon, an Australian investigator, told the Daily Star he had discovered the plane on Google Maps near Mauritius and submitted photo evidence to the ATSB.

    But the ATSB pointed out his images were more than 10 years old and predated the plane’s disappearance.

    The images sent to ATSB by Mr McMahon were captured on 6 November 2009, more than four years before the flight disappeared,” a spokesperson for the ATSB said.

    • L’ancien premier ministre malaisien y rajoute sa propre hypothèse… Prise de contrôle à distance

      Possible that MH370 was taken over remotely, says #Mahathir, SE Asia News & Top Stories - The Straits Times
      http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/possible-that-mh370-was-taken-over-remotely-says-mahathir

      Missing flight MH370 might have been taken over remotely in a bid to foil a hijack, Malaysia’s former leader Mahathir Mohamad said, reviving one of the many conspiracy theories surrounding its disappearance.
      […]
      Tun Dr Mahathir, 92, who is leading an opposition bid to topple Prime Minister Najib Razak in elections due this year, said he did not believe Kuala Lumpur was involved in any cover-up.

      But he told The Australian newspaper in an interview that it was possible the plane might have been taken over remotely.

      It was reported in 2006 that Boeing was given a licence to operate the takeover of a hijacked plane while it is flying so I wonder whether that’s what happened,” said Dr Mahathir.

      The capacity to do that is there. The technology is there,” he added of his theory.

      Reports say Boeing in 2006 was awarded a US patent for a system that, once activated, could take control of a commercial aircraft away from the pilot or flight crew in the event of a hijacking.

      There is no evidence it has ever been used in airliners due to safety concerns.

  • Putin’s Syrian dilemma: Back Israel or Iran?

    All of the Russian president’s achievements in Syria could come crashing down unless he answers this one fundamental question

    Anshel Pfeffer Feb 19, 2018

    Russian President Vladimir Putin thought he could succeed where the U.S.’s then-President Barack Obama failed. Pacify Syria, rescue the regime of his client, President Bashar Assad, and balance the conflicting interests of Iran and Israel in the war-torn country. All this he did with a relatively small investment: the deployment of a couple of dozen aircraft and 2,000 men. As foreign campaigns go, it was power projection on the cheap. The United States on a similar mission would have used a force 10 times the size – aircraft carrier groups and hundreds of fighter jets, aerial tankers and electronic warfare planes. Not to mention boots on the ground.
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    But Russia could pull it off thanks to the cannon fodder supplied by Iran. Tens of thousands of Shi’ite mercenaries, mainly refugees from Afghanistan, propped up Assad’s failing battalions. Hezbollah fighters came from Lebanon to carry out the more difficult operations. Russia made do with small teams of special-force troops and, where more muscle was needed, its own mercenaries.
    It was a relatively small investment with few casualties and not, as some predicted two years ago, a rerun of the Soviet Union’s disastrous occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

    President Vladimir Putin addressing Russian troops at Hemeimeem air base during a surprise visit to Damascus, December 12, 2017.Mikhail Klimentyev/AP
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    >> Iran and the Assad regime are drawing a line in Syria’s skies | Analysis <<

    With perfect timing, and taking advantage of the vacuum left by Obama’s decision not to get involved in Syria, Putin had put Russia back on the geopolitical map. He made a surprise visit to Damascus in December to declare: Mission accomplished. He should have learned from former U.S. President George W. Bush never to say that – because now everything is starting to fall apart for the Russians.

    A serviceman holds a portrait of Russian air force pilot Roman Fillipov, who was killed after his aircraft was shot down over rebel-held territory in Syria, February 8, 2018.\ HANDOUT/ REUTERS
    There was last month’s Sochi conference, where attempts to agree a political process for Syria’s future under Assad, with the usual farce of elections, failed even before the delegates arrived. Turkey has launched a large-scale incursion into northwestern Syria, in an attempt to prevent Kurdish YPG (People’s Protection Units) forces from establishing a military presence on its border. Meanwhile, the Turks are clashing with the Iranians as well, and as of Monday with regime forces too.
    Much more worrying for Russia is that in the east of the country, another Kurdish force – the Syrian Democratic Forces, which also includes Arab, Turkmen, Assyrian and Armenian forces – is widening its control of areas once held by the Islamic State. The SDF is now the only player in Syria with U.S. military support: During a clash 10 days ago between the SDF and regime forces working together with Russian mercenaries, the United States launched a devastating airstrike. The Kremlin still won’t acknowledge any casualties, but unofficial reports from Russia claim that as many as 200 Russian mercenaries died.
    And then last week there was the first direct confrontation between Israel and Iran.
    The Turkish front is less concerning for Putin, since it doesn’t directly threaten Russia’s main interests. The clashes in the northeast are a much larger problem as they are sending coffins back home to Russia – the last thing Putin needs before the presidential election in mid-March.
    For now at least, the Israeli-Iranian front may not directly put Russian personnel in the line of fire. But it is a much greater threat to the Assad regime itself. Damascus is close to the Israeli border and Assad, with Iranian encouragement, is trying to assert himself by firing anti-aircraft missiles at Israel Air Force planes.
    >> Delve deeper into the week’s news: Sign up to Chemi Shalev’s weekly roundup
    For the past two and a half years, the deal between Jerusalem and Moscow was simple: Israel allowed Russia to resupply Assad’s army and help the regime – through aerial bombardments of rebel-held areas, indiscriminately killing thousands of civilians – to retake large swaths of territory. Russia, meanwhile, turned a blind eye as Israel continued its periodic attacks on convoys and depots of Iranian-supplied weapons destined for Hezbollah. Russia collaborated with Iran in reviving the regime, while not intervening when Israel struck at Iran’s proxies.
    When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded that Russia prevent Iran’s forces from building permanent bases on Syrian soil, Putin tried to strike a compromise. Iran continued entrenching its Shi’ite militias, but at the same time didn’t come too close to the Israeli border or begin building large bases.

    Israeli soldiers in the northern Golan Heights after an Iranian drone penetrated Israeli airspace and was shot done, February 10, 2018.Gil Eliahu
    That balance can no longer hold. The decision by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) to send a drone into Israeli airspace in the early hours of Saturday February 10, followed by Israel’s retaliation against the Iranian command unit that launched the drone and the ensuing air battle between Israeli fighter jets and Syrian air defense batteries, was proof that Russia can no longer contain the interests of all the different sides within Syria.
    Putin has utilized “hybrid warfare” – a combination of military power, deniable proxies and cyberattacks – to destabilize neighboring countries like Georgia and Ukraine, which tried to get too close to the West. Relatively small investments for major gain.
    But just like Russian interference with the U.S. presidential election, where the Kremlin wanted only to undermine America’s democratic process but never actually believed it could help get Donald Trump elected, he may have gone too deep. What was supposed to be an exercise in troublemaking is, despite Trump’s reluctance, now a full-blown confrontation with the U.S. intelligence services.
    Managing a multitrack Middle East policy and engaging simultaneously with all of the regional players takes time, resources and, especially, experience. Until recently, the United States had the combination of seasoned diplomats, military and intelligence officers – with extensive contacts and time spent in the region – to maintain such a complex operation.
    Under President Trump, many of these professionals have left the administration, and there is no clear sense of direction from the White House for those remaining. But the lack of any real U.S. presence or policy doesn’t mean someone else can just come along and take over its traditional role.
    It’s not just that the Kremlin doesn’t have anything resembling this kind of network. Putin’s centralized way of doing business means that every decision goes through him in Moscow. This isn’t helping Russia keep a handle on evolving events on the ground, but it is an advantage for Netanyahu – who is currently the regional player with the best personal relationship with Putin.
    There are currently two schools of thought within the Israeli intelligence community. The skeptics believe Putin will not give up on his Shi’ite boots on the ground and will ultimately limit Israel’s freedom to operate in the skies above Syria – pushing Israel to make a difficult choice between sitting on the sidelines while Iran and Hezbollah build up their outposts or confronting Russia as well. The optimists believe Putin knows Israel has the power to jeopardize its achievements and threaten the Assad regime, and will therefore rein in the Iranians.
    Netanyahu’s team has been working closely with the Russian president for years, and the two leaders speak regularly on the phone and meet every few months. When they’re on their own, with just fellow Likud lawmaker Zeev Elkin to interpret, does Netanyahu openly threaten to destabilize the Assad regime? Probably not. The implied threat is enough.
    Putin will have to make the call on Israel or Iran soon – or risk losing all he has invested in Syria.

  • What Happens When We Let Tech Care For Our Aging Parents | WIRED
    https://www.wired.com/story/digital-puppy-seniors-nursing-homes

    Arlyn Anderson grasped her father’s hand and presented him with the choice. “A nursing home would be safer, Dad,” she told him, relaying the doctors’ advice. “It’s risky to live here alone—”

    “No way,” Jim interjected. He frowned at his daughter, his brow furrowed under a lop of white hair. At 91, he wanted to remain in the woodsy Minnesota cottage he and his wife had built on the shore of Lake Minnetonka, where she had died in his arms just a year before. His pontoon—which he insisted he could still navigate just fine—bobbed out front.

    Arlyn had moved from California back to Minnesota two decades earlier to be near her aging parents. Now, in 2013, she was fiftysomething, working as a personal coach, and finding that her father’s decline was all-consuming.

    Her father—an inventor, pilot, sailor, and general Mr. Fix-It; “a genius,” Arlyn says—started experiencing bouts of paranoia in his mid-eighties, a sign of Alzheimer’s. The disease had progressed, often causing his thoughts to vanish mid-sentence. But Jim would rather risk living alone than be cloistered in an institution, he told Arlyn and her older sister, Layney. A nursing home certainly wasn’t what Arlyn wanted for him either. But the daily churn of diapers and cleanups, the carousel of in-home aides, and the compounding financial strain (she had already taken out a reverse mortgage on Jim’s cottage to pay the caretakers) forced her to consider the possibility.

    Jim, slouched in his recliner, was determined to stay at home. “No way,” he repeated to his daughter, defiant. Her eyes welled up and she hugged him. “OK, Dad.” Arlyn’s house was a 40-minute drive from the cottage, and for months she had been relying on a patchwork of technology to keep tabs on her dad. She set an open laptop on the counter so she could chat with him on Skype. She installed two cameras, one in his kitchen and another in his bedroom, so she could check whether the caregiver had arrived, or God forbid, if her dad had fallen. So when she read in the newspaper about a new digi­tal eldercare service called CareCoach a few weeks after broaching the subject of the nursing home, it piqued her interest. For about $200 a month, a human-powered avatar would be available to watch over a homebound person 24 hours a day; Arlyn paid that same amount for just nine hours of in-home help. She signed up immediately.

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    A Google Nexus tablet arrived in the mail a week later. When Arlyn plugged it in, an animated German shepherd appeared onscreen, standing at attention on a digitized lawn. The brown dog looked cutesy and cartoonish, with a bubblegum-pink tongue and round, blue eyes.

    She and Layney visited their dad later that week, tablet in hand. Following the instructions, Arlyn uploaded dozens of pictures to the service’s online portal: images of family members, Jim’s boat, and some of his inventions, like a computer terminal known as the Teleray and a seismic surveillance system used to detect footsteps during the Vietnam War. The setup complete, Arlyn clutched the tablet, summoning the nerve to introduce her dad to the dog. Her initial instinct that the service could be the perfect companion for a former technologist had splintered into needling doubts. Was she tricking him? Infantilizing him?

    Tired of her sister’s waffling, Layney finally snatched the tablet and presented it to their dad, who was sitting in his armchair. “Here, Dad, we got you this.” The dog blinked its saucer eyes and then, in Google’s female text-to-speech voice, started to talk. Before Alzheimer’s had taken hold, Jim would have wanted to know exactly how the service worked. But in recent months he’d come to believe that TV characters were interacting with him: A show’s villain had shot a gun at him, he said; Katie Couric was his friend. When faced with an onscreen character that actually was talking to him, Jim readily chatted back.

    Jim named his dog Pony. Arlyn perched the tablet upright on a table in Jim’s living room, where he could see it from the couch or his recliner. Within a week Jim and Pony had settled into a routine, exchanging pleasantries several times a day. Every 15 minutes or so Pony would wake up and look for Jim, calling his name if he was out of view. Sometimes Jim would “pet” the sleeping dog onscreen with his finger to rustle her awake. His touch would send an instantaneous alert to the human caretaker behind the avatar, prompting the CareCoach worker to launch the tablet’s audio and video stream. “How are you, Jim?” Pony would chirp. The dog reminded him which of his daughters or in-person caretakers would be visiting that day to do the tasks that an onscreen dog couldn’t: prepare meals, change Jim’s sheets, drive him to a senior center. “We’ll wait together,” Pony would say. Often she’d read poetry aloud, discuss the news, or watch TV with him. “You look handsome, Jim!” Pony remarked after watching him shave with his electric razor. “You look pretty,” he replied. Sometimes Pony would hold up a photo of Jim’s daughters or his inventions between her paws, prompting him to talk about his past. The dog complimented Jim’s red sweater and cheered him on when he struggled to buckle his watch in the morning. He reciprocated by petting the screen with his index finger, sending hearts floating up from the dog’s head. “I love you, Jim!” Pony told him a month after they first met—something CareCoach operators often tell the people they are monitoring. Jim turned to Arlyn and gloated, “She does! She thinks I’m real good!”

    About 1,500 miles south of Lake Minnetonka, in Monterrey, Mexico, Rodrigo Rochin opens his laptop in his home office and logs in to the CareCoach dashboard to make his rounds. He talks baseball with a New Jersey man watching the Yankees; chats with a woman in South Carolina who calls him Peanut (she places a cookie in front of her tablet for him to “eat”); and greets Jim, one of his regulars, who sips coffee while looking out over a lake.

    Rodrigo is 35 years old, the son of a surgeon. He’s a fan of the Spurs and the Cowboys, a former international business student, and a bit of an introvert, happy to retreat into his sparsely decorated home office each morning. He grew up crossing the border to attend school in McAllen, Texas, honing the English that he now uses to chat with elderly people in the United States. Rodrigo found CareCoach on an online freelancing platform and was hired in December 2012 as one of the company’s earliest contractors, role-playing 36 hours a week as one of the service’s avatars.

    After watching her dad interact with Pony, Arlyn’s reservations about outsourcing her father’s companionship vanished.

    In person, Rodrigo is soft-spoken, with wire spectacles and a beard. He lives with his wife and two basset hounds, Bob and Cleo, in Nuevo León’s capital city. But the people on the other side of the screen don’t know that. They don’t know his name—or, in the case of those like Jim who have dementia, that he even exists. It’s his job to be invisible. If Rodrigo’s clients ask where he’s from, he might say MIT (the CareCoach software was created by two graduates of the school), but if anyone asks where their pet actually is, he replies in character: “Here with you.”

    Rodrigo is one of a dozen CareCoach employees in Latin America and the Philippines. The contractors check on the service’s seniors through the tablet’s camera a few times an hour. (When they do, the dog or cat avatar they embody appears to wake up.) To talk, they type into the dashboard and their words are voiced robotically through the tablet, designed to give their charges the impression that they’re chatting with a friendly pet. Like all the CareCoach workers, Rodrigo keeps meticulous notes on the people he watches over so he can coordinate their care with other workers and deepen his relationship with them over time—this person likes to listen to Adele, this one prefers Elvis, this woman likes to hear Bible verses while she cooks. In one client’s file, he wrote a note explaining that the correct response to “See you later, alligator” is “After a while, crocodile.” These logs are all available to the customer’s social workers or adult children, wherever they may live. Arlyn started checking Pony’s log between visits with her dad several times a week. “Jim says I’m a really nice person,” reads one early entry made during the Minnesota winter. “I told Jim that he was my best friend. I am so happy.”

    After watching her dad interact with Pony, Arlyn’s reservations about outsourcing her father’s companionship vanished. Having Pony there eased her anxiety about leaving Jim alone, and the virtual dog’s small talk lightened the mood.

    Pony was not only assisting Jim’s human caretakers but also inadvertently keeping an eye on them. Months before, in broken sentences, Jim had complained to Arlyn that his in-home aide had called him a bastard. Arlyn, desperate for help and unsure of her father’s recollection, gave her a second chance. Three weeks after arriving in the house, Pony woke up to see the same caretaker, impatient. “Come on, Jim!” the aide yelled. “Hurry up!” Alarmed, Pony asked why she was screaming and checked to see if Jim was OK. The pet—actually, Rodrigo—later reported the aide’s behavior to CareCoach’s CEO, Victor Wang, who emailed Arlyn about the incident. (The caretaker knew there was a human watching her through the tablet, Arlyn says, but may not have known the extent of the person’s contact with Jim’s family behind the scenes.) Arlyn fired the short-tempered aide and started searching for a replacement. Pony watched as she and Jim conducted the interviews and approved of the person Arlyn hired. “I got to meet her,” the pet wrote. “She seems really nice.”

    Pony—friend and guard dog—would stay.
    Grant Cornett

    Victor Wang grew up feeding his Tama­got­chis and coding choose-your-own-­adventure games in QBasic on the family PC. His parents moved from Taiwan to suburban Vancouver, British Columbia, when Wang was a year old, and his grandmother, whom he called Lao Lao in Mandarin, would frequently call from Taiwan. After her husband died, Lao Lao would often tell Wang’s mom that she was lonely, pleading with her daughter to come to Taiwan to live with her. As she grew older, she threatened suicide. When Wang was 11, his mother moved back home for two years to care for her. He thinks of that time as the honey-­sandwich years, the food his overwhelmed father packed him each day for lunch. Wang missed his mother, he says, but adds, “I was never raised to be particularly expressive of my emotions.”

    At 17, Wang left home to study mechanical engineering at the University of British Columbia. He joined the Canadian Army Reserve, serving as an engineer on a maintenance platoon while working on his undergraduate degree. But he scrapped his military future when, at 22, he was admitted to MIT’s master’s program in mechanical engineering. Wang wrote his dissertation on human-machine interaction, studying a robotic arm maneuvered by astronauts on the International Space Station. He was particularly intrigued by the prospect of harnessing tech to perform tasks from a distance: At an MIT entrepreneurship competition, he pitched the idea of training workers in India to remotely operate the buffers that sweep US factory floors.

    In 2011, when he was 24, his grandmother was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia, a disease that affects the areas of the brain associated with memory and movement. On Skype calls from his MIT apartment, Wang watched as his grandmother grew increasingly debilitated. After one call, a thought struck him: If he could tap remote labor to sweep far-off floors, why not use it to comfort Lao Lao and others like her?

    Wang started researching the looming caretaker shortage in the US—between 2010 and 2030, the population of those older than 80 is projected to rise 79 percent, but the number of family caregivers available is expected to increase just 1 percent.

    In 2012 Wang recruited his cofounder, a fellow MIT student working on her computer science doctorate named Shuo Deng, to build CareCoach’s technology. They agreed that AI speech technology was too rudimentary for an avatar capable of spontaneous conversation tailored to subtle mood and behavioral cues. For that, they would need humans.

    Older people like Jim often don’t speak clearly or linearly, and those with dementia can’t be expected to troubleshoot a machine that misunderstands. “When you match someone not fully coherent with a device that’s not fully coherent, it’s a recipe for disaster,” Wang says. Pony, on the other hand, was an expert at deciphering Jim’s needs. Once, Pony noticed that Jim was holding onto furniture for support, as if he were dizzy. The pet persuaded him to sit down, then called Arlyn. Deng figures it’ll take about 20 years for AI to be able to master that kind of personal interaction and recognition. That said, the CareCoach system is already deploying some automated abilities. Five years ago, when Jim was introduced to Pony, the offshore workers behind the camera had to type every response; today CareCoach’s software creates roughly one out of every five sentences the pet speaks. Wang aims to standardize care by having the software manage more of the patients’ regular reminders—prodding them to take their medicine, urging them to eat well and stay hydrated. CareCoach workers are part free­wheeling raconteurs, part human natural-­language processors, listening to and deciphering their charges’ speech patterns or nudging the person back on track if they veer off topic. The company recently began recording conversations to better train its software in senior speech recognition.

    CareCoach found its first customer in December 2012, and in 2014 Wang moved from Massachusetts to Silicon Valley, renting a tiny office space on a lusterless stretch of Millbrae near the San Francisco airport. Four employees congregate in one room with a view of the parking lot, while Wang and his wife, Brittany, a program manager he met at a gerontology conference, work in the foyer. Eight tablets with sleeping pets onscreen are lined up for testing before being shipped to their respective seniors. The avatars inhale and exhale, lending an eerie sense of life to their digital kennel.

    CareCoach conveys the perceptiveness and emotional intelligence of the humans powering it but masquerades as an animated app.

    Wang spends much of his time on the road, touting his product’s health benefits at medical conferences and in hospital executive suites. Onstage at a gerontology summit in San Francisco last summer, he deftly impersonated the strained, raspy voice of an elderly man talking to a CareCoach pet while Brittany stealthily cued the replies from her laptop in the audience. The company’s tablets are used by hospitals and health plans across Massachusetts, California, New York, South Carolina, Florida, and Washington state. Between corporate and individual customers, CareCoach’s avatars have interacted with hundreds of users in the US. “The goal,” Wang says, “is not to have a little family business that just breaks even.”

    The fastest growth would come through hospital units and health plans specializing in high-need and elderly patients, and he makes the argument that his avatars cut health care costs. (A private room in a nursing home can run more than $7,500 a month.) Preliminary research has been promising, though limited. In a study conducted by Pace University at a Manhattan housing project and a Queens hospital, CareCoach’s avatars were found to reduce subjects’ loneliness, delirium, and falls. A health provider in Massachusetts was able to replace a man’s 11 weekly in-home nurse visits with a CareCoach tablet, which diligently reminded him to take his medications. (The man told nurses that the pet’s nagging reminded him of having his wife back in the house. “It’s kind of like a complaint, but he loves it at the same time,” the project’s lead says.) Still, the feelings aren’t always so cordial: In the Pace University study, some aggravated seniors with dementia lashed out and hit the tablet. In response, the onscreen pet sheds tears and tries to calm the person.

    More troubling, perhaps, were the people who grew too fiercely attached to their digi­tal pets. At the conclusion of a University of Washington CareCoach pilot study, one woman became so distraught at the thought of parting with her avatar that she signed up for the service, paying the fee herself. (The company gave her a reduced rate.) A user in Massachusetts told her caretakers she’d cancel an upcoming vacation to Maine unless her digital cat could come along.

    We’re still in the infancy of understanding the complexities of aging humans’ relationship with technology. Sherry Turkle, a professor of social studies, science, and technology at MIT and a frequent critic of tech that replaces human communication, described interactions between elderly people and robotic babies, dogs, and seals in her 2011 book, Alone Together. She came to view roboticized eldercare as a cop-out, one that would ultimately degrade human connection. “This kind of app—in all of its slickness and all its ‘what could possibly be wrong with it?’ mentality—is making us forget what we really know about what makes older people feel sustained,” she says: caring, interpersonal relationships. The question is whether an attentive avatar makes a comparable substitute. Turkle sees it as a last resort. “The assumption is that it’s always cheaper and easier to build an app than to have a conversation,” she says. “We allow technologists to propose the unthinkable and convince us the unthinkable is actually the inevitable.”

    But for many families, providing long-term in-person care is simply unsustainable. The average family caregiver has a job outside the home and spends about 20 hours a week caring for a parent, according to AARP. Nearly two-thirds of such caregivers are women. Among eldercare experts, there’s a resignation that the demographics of an aging America will make technological solutions unavoidable. The number of those older than 65 with a disability is projected to rise from 11 million to 18 million from 2010 to 2030. Given the option, having a digital companion may be preferable to being alone. Early research shows that lonely and vulnerable elders like Jim seem content to communicate with robots. Joseph Coughlin, director of MIT’s AgeLab, is pragmatic. “I would always prefer the human touch over a robot,” he says. “But if there’s no human available, I would take high tech in lieu of high touch.”

    CareCoach is a disorienting amalgam of both. The service conveys the perceptiveness and emotional intelligence of the humans powering it but masquerades as an animated app. If a person is incapable of consenting to CareCoach’s monitoring, then someone must do so on their behalf. But the more disconcerting issue is how cognizant these seniors are of being watched over by strangers. Wang considers his product “a trade-off between utility and privacy.” His workers are trained to duck out during baths and clothing changes.

    Some CareCoach users insist on greater control. A woman in Washington state, for example, put a piece of tape over her CareCoach tablet’s camera to dictate when she could be viewed. Other customers like Jim, who are suffering from Alzheimer’s or other diseases, might not realize they are being watched. Once, when he was temporarily placed in a rehabilitation clinic after a fall, a nurse tending to him asked Arlyn what made the avatar work. “You mean there’s someone overseas looking at us?” she yelped, within earshot of Jim. (Arlyn isn’t sure whether her dad remembered the incident later.) By default, the app explains to patients that someone is surveilling them when it’s first introduced. But the family members of personal users, like Arlyn, can make their own call.

    Arlyn quickly stopped worrying about whether she was deceiving her dad. Telling Jim about the human on the other side of the screen “would have blown the whole charm of it,” she says. Her mother had Alzheimer’s as well, and Arlyn had learned how to navigate the disease: Make her mom feel safe; don’t confuse her with details she’d have trouble understanding. The same went for her dad. “Once they stop asking,” Arlyn says, “I don’t think they need to know anymore.” At the time, Youa Vang, one of Jim’s regular in-­person caretakers, didn’t comprehend the truth about Pony either. “I thought it was like Siri,” she said when told later that it was a human in Mexico who had watched Jim and typed in the words Pony spoke. She chuckled. “If I knew someone was there, I may have been a little more creeped out.”

    Even CareCoach users like Arlyn who are completely aware of the person on the other end of the dashboard tend to experience the avatar as something between human, pet, and machine—what some roboticists call a third ontological category. The care­takers seem to blur that line too: One day Pony told Jim that she dreamed she could turn into a real health aide, almost like Pinoc­chio wishing to be a real boy.

    Most of CareCoach’s 12 contractors reside in the Philippines, Venezuela, or Mexico. To undercut the cost of in-person help, Wang posts English-language ads on freelancing job sites where foreign workers advertise rates as low as $2 an hour. Though he won’t disclose his workers’ hourly wages, Wang claims the company bases its salaries on factors such as what a registered nurse would make in the CareCoach employee’s home country, their language proficiencies, and the cost of their internet connection.

    The growing network includes people like Jill Paragas, a CareCoach worker who lives in a subdivision on Luzon island in the Philippines. Paragas is 35 years old and a college graduate. She earns about the same being an avatar as she did in her former call center job, where she consoled Americans irate about credit card charges. (“They wanted to, like, burn the company down or kill me,” she says with a mirthful laugh.) She works nights to coincide with the US daytime, typing messages to seniors while her 6-year-old son sleeps nearby.

    Even when Jim grew stubborn or paranoid with his daughters, he always viewed Pony as a friend.

    Before hiring her, Wang interviewed Paragas via video, then vetted her with an international criminal background check. He gives all applicants a personality test for certain traits: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. As part of the CareCoach training program, Paragas earned certifications in delirium and dementia care from the Alzheimer’s Association, trained in US health care ethics and privacy, and learned strategies for counseling those with addictions. All this, Wang says, “so we don’t get anyone who’s, like, crazy.” CareCoach hires only about 1 percent of its applicants.

    Paragas understands that this is a complicated business. She’s befuddled by the absence of family members around her aging clients. “In my culture, we really love to take care of our parents,” she says. “That’s why I’m like, ‘She is already old, why is she alone?’ ” Paragas has no doubt that, for some people, she’s their most significant daily relationship. Some of her charges tell her that they couldn’t live without her. Even when Jim grew stubborn or paranoid with his daughters, he always viewed Pony as a friend. Arlyn quickly realized that she had gained a valuable ally.
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    As time went on, the father, daughter, and family pet grew closer. When the snow finally melted, Arlyn carried the tablet to the picnic table on the patio so they could eat lunch overlooking the lake. Even as Jim’s speech became increasingly stunted, Pony could coax him to talk about his past, recounting fishing trips or how he built the house to face the sun so it would be warmer in winter. When Arlyn took her dad around the lake in her sailboat, Jim brought Pony along. (“I saw mostly sky,” Rodrigo recalls.)

    One day, while Jim and Arlyn were sitting on the cottage’s paisley couch, Pony held up a photograph of Jim’s wife, Dorothy, between her paws. It had been more than a year since his wife’s death, and Jim hardly mentioned her anymore; he struggled to form coherent sentences. That day, though, he gazed at the photo fondly. “I still love her,” he declared. Arlyn rubbed his shoulder, clasping her hand over her mouth to stifle tears. “I am getting emotional too,” Pony said. Then Jim leaned toward the picture of his deceased wife and petted her face with his finger, the same way he would to awaken a sleeping Pony.

    When Arlyn first signed up for the service, she hadn’t anticipated that she would end up loving—yes, loving, she says, in the sincerest sense of the word—the avatar as well. She taught Pony to say “Yeah, sure, you betcha” and “don’t-cha know” like a Minnesotan, which made her laugh even more than her dad. When Arlyn collapsed onto the couch after a long day of caretaking, Pony piped up from her perch on the table:

    “Arnie, how are you?”

    Alone, Arlyn petted the screen—the way Pony nuzzled her finger was weirdly therapeutic—and told the pet how hard it was to watch her dad lose his identity.

    “I’m here for you,” Pony said. “I love you, Arnie.”

    When she recalls her own attachment to the dog, Arlyn insists her connection wouldn’t have developed if Pony was simply high-functioning AI. “You could feel Pony’s heart,” she says. But she preferred to think of Pony as her father did—a friendly pet—rather than a person on the other end of a webcam. “Even though that person probably had a relationship to me,” she says, “I had a relationship with the avatar.”

    Still, she sometimes wonders about the person on the other side of the screen. She sits up straight and rests her hand over her heart. “This is completely vulnerable, but my thought is: Did Pony really care about me and my dad?” She tears up, then laughs ruefully at herself, knowing how weird it all sounds. “Did this really happen? Was it really a relationship, or were they just playing solitaire and typing cute things?” She sighs. “But it seemed like they cared.”

    When Jim turned 92 that August, as friends belted out “Happy Birthday” around the dinner table, Pony spoke the lyrics along with them. Jim blew out the single candle on his cake. “I wish you good health, Jim,” Pony said, “and many more birthdays to come.”

    In Monterrey, Mexico, when Rodrigo talks about his unusual job, his friends ask if he’s ever lost a client. His reply: Yes.

    In early March 2014, Jim fell and hit his head on his way to the bathroom. A caretaker sleeping over that night found him and called an ambulance, and Pony woke up when the paramedics arrived. The dog told them Jim’s date of birth and offered to call his daughters as they carried him out on a stretcher.

    Jim was checked into a hospital, then into the nursing home he’d so wanted to avoid. The Wi-Fi there was spotty, which made it difficult for Jim and Pony to connect. Nurses would often turn Jim’s tablet to face the wall. The CareCoach logs from those months chronicle a series of communication misfires. “I miss Jim a lot,” Pony wrote. “I hope he is doing good all the time.” One day, in a rare moment of connectivity, Pony suggested he and Jim go sailing that summer, just like the good old days. “That sounds good,” Jim said.
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    That July, in an email from Wang, Rodrigo learned that Jim had died in his sleep. Sitting before his laptop, Rodrigo bowed his head and recited a silent Lord’s Prayer for Jim, in Spanish. He prayed that his friend would be accepted into heaven. “I know it’s going to sound weird, but I had a certain friendship with him,” he says. “I felt like I actually met him. I feel like I’ve met them.” In the year and a half that he had known them, Arlyn and Jim talked to him regularly. Jim had taken Rodrigo on a sailboat ride. Rodrigo had read him poetry and learned about his rich past. They had celebrated birthdays and holidays together as family. As Pony, Rodrigo had said “Yeah, sure, you betcha” countless times.

    That day, for weeks afterward, and even now when a senior will do something that reminds him of Jim, Rodrigo says he feels a pang. “I still care about them,” he says. After her dad’s death, Arlyn emailed Victor Wang to say she wanted to honor the workers for their care. Wang forwarded her email to Rodrigo and the rest of Pony’s team. On July 29, 2014, Arlyn carried Pony to Jim’s funeral, placing the tablet facing forward on the pew beside her. She invited any workers behind Pony who wanted to attend to log in.

    A year later, Arlyn finally deleted the CareCoach service from the tablet—it felt like a kind of second burial. She still sighs, “Pony!” when the voice of her old friend gives her directions as she drives around Minneapolis, reincarnated in Google Maps.

    After saying his prayer for Jim, Rodrigo heaved a sigh and logged in to the CareCoach dashboard to make his rounds. He ducked into living rooms, kitchens, and hospital rooms around the United States—seeing if all was well, seeing if anybody needed to talk.

  • Pilot captures unbelievable photo of haboob sweeping over Phoenix - The Washington Post

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/08/23/pilot-captures-unbelievable-photo-of-haboob-sweeping-over-phoenix/?tid=sm_fb

    identifié par Elisabeth Vallet

    On Sunday afternoon, a thunderstorm collapsed over Phoenix, and a downward burst of wind collected a towering plume of dust that swept across the region.

    To the east, a Southwest Airlines pilot, Ryan Vermillion, captured an unforgettable view of the gathering storm, known as a haboob.

    [Arabic weather term ‘haboob’ is apparently troubling for some Texans]

    Vermillion was extremely fortunate to witness the blinding wall of dust from the air, as Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport closed just moments after his flight took off.

  • I piloti disobbediscono ai rimpatri forzati

    La disobbedienza civile di alcuni comandanti di #Lufthansa, #Air_Berlin e #Germanwings. Sono oltre 330 le deportazioni fallite nel 2016 perché il personale di volo ha preferito seguire le regole sulla libertà del «passeggero»

    http://www.osservatoriorepressione.info/piloti-disobbediscono-ai-rimpatri-forzati
    #désobéissance #résistance #pilotes #avions #asile #migrations #renvois #réfugiés #renvois_forcés #désobéissance_civile
    cc @reka @albertocampiphoto

  • Féminisme impérialiste et libéral, Deepa Kumar - Prenez ce couteau...
    http://prenezcecouteau.tumblr.com/post/148487558263/comme-lont-soutenu-plusieurs-f%C3%A9ministes-du-tiers

    "Comme l’ont soutenu plusieurs Féministes du Tiers Monde, une faiblesse historique du féminisme libéral occidental a été son attitude condescendante envers les femmes racisées qui ont été perçues non pas comme des alliées/ des personnes indépendantes mais plutôt comme des victimes ayant besoin d’être sauvées. Cette attitude prédomine à la fois dans la relation avec les femmes racisées dans les états occidentaux, et parmi les femmes des pays du Sud. C’est cela qui permet qu’on considère des personnalités telle que Madeline Albright et Hillary Clinton comme des sauveuses féministes en dépit du fait qu’elles aient toutes deux, dans leurs rôles de Secrétaire d’Etat, fait avancer l’impérialisme américain. C’est cette conception libérale de l’Etat comme un corps neutre, plutôt que comme un appareil coercitif utilisé pour faire avancer le capitalisme et l’empire, qui est à la racine de ce point de vue. Cependant, le féminisme impérialiste n’a pas été uniquement le domaine des élites blanches occidentales ; les compradors* intellectuel.le.s dans les pays du Sud ont aussi toujours joué un rôle productif. Aujourd’hui, dans l’ère “post-raciale”, ce n’est pas seulement les libéraux.les blanc.he.s et les féministes qui ont renforcé le féminisme impérialisme, des femmes racisées issues de classes sociales moyennes ou dirigeantes dans l’occident et dans les pays du Sud ont contribué activement à l’articulation de nouvelles formes et de nouveaux agents du féminisme impérialiste. Un exemple récent de la manière dont le féminisme impérialiste peut occasionnellement incorporer l’autonomie des femmes musulmanes est la grande attention médiatique occidentale portée sur la pilote émirienne Maryam al-Mansouri. Hautement encensée par les libéraux et les conservateur.rices aux Etats-Unis (à l’exception d’une blague misogyne sur Fox News), al-Mansouri est devenue un moyen de camoufler l’atroce bilan en matière de droits humains dans la monarchie du golf. Même tandis que l’image d’une femme pilote musulmane servait à compromettre l’image habituelle de la victime, l’histoire plus large était un récit où les Etats-Unis étaient placés comme des sauveurs menant une alliance de “bon.nes musulman.es” en guerre vertueuse contre l’Etat Islamique. À la place de Lawrence d’Arabie, on a Barack Obama. Le féminisme libéral a toujours vu la participation des femmes dans l’armée comme quelques chose de positif. En 1991, après la première guerre du Golfe, la féministe Naomi Wolf a félicité les femmes soldates de susciter “le respect et même la peur” et de faire avancer la lutte pour les droits des femmes. Ce dont elle n’a pas parlé, c’est des 200000 Iraquien.nes, hommes, femmes et enfants, qui ont été tué.es durant cette guerre. Les femmes Américaines ne peuvent pas accomplir leur libération sur les corps des victimes de l’empire, pas plus que les femmes Arabes ne le peuvent en faisant pleuvoir des bombes sur les Syrien.nes. L’empire ne libère pas, il asservit."

    Imperialist feminism and liberalism, Deepa Kumar (via empirescollapse http://empirescollapse.tumblr.com )

    As several Third World Feminists have argued, a historical weakness of liberal feminism in the West has been its racist, patronizing attitude towards women of color who have been seen less as allies/agents and more as victims in need of rescue. This attitude prevails both in relation to women of color within Western nation states, as well as women in the global South. This is what allows figures such as Madeline Albright and Hillary Clinton to be viewed as feminist saviors even while both, in their roles as Secretary of State, have advanced US imperialism. It is liberalism’s understanding of the state as a neutral body, rather than as a coercive apparatus used to advance capitalism and empire, which is at the root of such perspectives.Yet, imperialist feminism has not been the province only of white elites in the West; comprador intellectuals in the global South have always played a productive role. Today, in the “post-racial” era, it is not only white liberals and feminists that have bolstered imperialist feminism, middle and ruling class brown and black women in the West and the global South have actively contributed to the articulation of new forms and new agents of imperialist feminism.One recent example of how imperialist feminism can occasionally incorporate Muslim female agency is the widespread media attention in the West focused on the UAE female pilot Maryam al-Mansouri. Widely praised by liberals and conservatives in the US (not withstanding the “boobs on the ground” comment), al-Mansouri became a means by which to paper over the gulf monarchies’ atrocious human rights record. Even while the image of a Muslim female pilot served to disrupt the standard victim imagery, the larger narrative was one which cast the US as savior leading a coalition of “good Muslims” in a righteous war against ISIS. In place of T. E. Lawrence, we have Barack Obama.Liberal feminism has routinely viewed women’s participation in the military as positive. In 1991, after the first Gulf war, feminist Naomi Wolf praised US female soldiers for eliciting “respect and even fear” and for taking the struggle for women’s rights forward. What she failed to discuss is the over 200,000 Iraqis, men, women and children, who were killed in that war. US women cannot achieve their liberation on the bodies of the victims of empire any more than Arab women can by raining bombs on Syrians. Empire does not liberate, it subjugates.

    * définition de comprador
    https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprador

    #féminisme #femmes #impérialisme #libéralisme #colonialisme #neo-colonialisme #comprador

  • Why Chinese cities are different - Geographical

    http://geographical.co.uk/places/cities/item/1431-why-chinese-cities-are-different

    hongqing, China, one of eight low-carbon pilot cities Sean Pavone
    08 Dec
    2015
    Urban design and sustainable infrastructure will play a huge role in building a low-carbon global economy. But cities in one key player – China – have some significant differences to the rest of the world

    Since becoming the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter in 2007, China now contributes nearly 20 per cent of global emissions. While 58 per cent of China’s energy-related CO2 emissions are currently derived from cities, in the coming decades this figure is likely to climb closer to the 70 per cent global average, according to a report, issued by the China Energy Group of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Stockholm Environment Institute with the support of Bloomberg Philanthropies. Therefore, as Lynn Price, Senior Staff Scientist and Group Leader at China Energy Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory puts it: ‘The importance of cities in China cannot be understated’.

    #chine #urban_matter

  • We Are About to Start Mining Hydrothermal Vents on the Ocean Floor - Facts So Romantic
    http://nautil.us/blog/we-are-about-to-start-mining-hydrothermal-vents-on-the-ocean-floor

    Forty years ago, scientists found alien life. Not on another planet, but on Earth, in the deep sea, in places where plumes of steam and nutrients heated by volcanic activity fed entire ecologies of creatures adapted to harness chemical energy rather than energy from the sun. A submersible takes samples from a microbial ecosystem near a hydrothermal vent in the Juan de Fuca Ridge, a tectonic spreading center located off the western coast of North America.Pilot Mark Spear/Woods Hole Oceanographic InstitutionThe discovery redefined life’s biophysical possibilities, and scientists and explorers have since charted another world. Or, rather, many worlds: there are more than 500 hydrothermal vent fields scattered across Earth’s seafloors, containing not just the iconic smoking vents but (...)

    • Companies and countries have filed prospecting permits or secured mineral rights on 20 percent of the vent fields; the first deep-sea mining operation is expected to break seabed in 2018 off the coast of Papua New Guinea.

      That fate of our ocean’s hydrothermal vent fields depends on how carefully they are mined. Mining can be destructive, but it can also be done judiciously, with attention to its consequences on life other than our own. “We’re going to have to make a choice,” wrote deep-sea ecologist Andrew David Thaler on Twitter recently, “between disposable technology and ecosystems we’ll never see.
      […]
      What will mining companies send down to the sea floor?
      Nautilus Minerals has built some big, Michael Bay-esque machines on the seafloor. As someone who both builds robots and works in deep-sea conservation, I’m amazed and a little terrified. I don’t think there will be autonomous seafloor machines, though. We’re going to be looking at human-controlled vehicles. Some involve dredging up the seafloor. One proposal I saw was just dragging a big bucket across the seafloor and pulling it up, the same way we do strip-mining.

      Can the deep sea be safely mined?
      Like any mining process, it’s ultimately destructive, but there are ways to do it to minimize the extent of the destruction. Companies are building the tools, laying the groundwork, identifying the ore bodies and target prospects, getting the permits—but nobody’s gone down and actually mined the deep sea. Companies have every incentive to look as green as possible. But until someone goes down and mines, we don’t know if they’re actually walking the walk rather than talking the talk. So the first deep-sea mines will be an experiment.

      With deep-sea mining, because conservationists and explorers got there first, we’ve got 40 years of baseline data about the ecosystem including high-resolution seafloor maps and an understanding of populations around hydrothermal vent fields. This gives us the opportunity to think about how to do deep-sea mining right.

      Can the ecosystems around deep-sea vents recover from mining?
      These are dynamic systems. Some communities, with lifespans of 10 to 12 years, have evolved to handle disturbance. Underwater volcanoes erupt regularly and wipe them out. When we talk about mining a hydrothermal vent, there’s a possibility for the community of life to come back. It’s possible that if you remove just one, then 10 years from now there will be no trace of it being mined at the site—though there is damage to the rest of the seafloor, which is prolonged, because the deep seafloor tends to be undisturbed.

      Cobalt-rich crusts and manganese nodule fields, however, are “slow” ecosystems. They can last for centuries. Any affront to a slower system is going to have more consequences. The question becomes: Is there an acceptable loss before we’ve wiped out too much of an ecosystem?

  • Detroit by Air - NYTimes.com

    http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/07/opinion/sunday/exposures-detroit-by-air-alex-maclean.html?_r=2

    You can learn a lot about a place by seeing it from the air. I’m a pilot and an aerial photographer; I am also trained as an architect. I’ve always been interested in how the natural and constructed worlds work together, and sometimes collide. Issues like income inequality also reveal themselves quickly from above, and in Detroit and the surrounding area, the stark contrast between the haves and the have-nots couldn’t be more apparent.

    #detroit

  • Exception Handling: A Pilot’s Perspective - Brandon Savage
    http://www.brandonsavage.net/exception-handling-a-pilots-perspective

    One of the most amazing things about earning my pilot certificate was the ways that what I learned as a pilot interfaced with what I knew as a programmer. Things like evidence-based problem solving and data-driven decision making are core tenants of aviation and software development. A large portion of training, for both the primary […] …

    Source: BrandonSavage.net