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Apple Faces French Investigation Over Opt-In Siri Voice Recordings

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Benoit Berthelot and Gaspard Sebag, reporting for Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. faces an investigation in France over the use of voice recordings made with its assistant Siri. The probe has been referred to the Office for Combating Cybercrime, the Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement on Monday. An Apple spokesperson referred to a blog post the company published in January about its use of voice recordings, and declined to comment further.

Politico earlier reported the investigation.

The investigation concerns Apple’s collection of user recordings through Siri, the digital assistant available on most of its devices. Apple can record and retain audio interactions through Siri to help improve its services, a feature the company says is opt-in. Some of that data can be retained for up to two years and reviewed by “graders”, or subcontractors, according to Apple.

Sending recorded Siri voice interactions to Apple is opt-in, and the opt-in screen is very clear and cogent. It’s not just something Apple claims.

Amazing stuff continues to happen in the EU.

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“The Most Miserable Experience” Ayn Rand Ever Had: The Battle over Night of January 16th

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“The Most Miserable Experience” Ayn Rand Ever Had: The Battle over Night of January 16th

Ayn Rand’s Broadway hit put the audience on trial—but behind the curtain, she struggled to defend the integrity of her artistic vision.

The post “The Most Miserable Experience” Ayn Rand Ever Had: The Battle over <i>Night of January 16th</i> appeared first on New Ideal - Reason | Individualism | Capitalism.

 



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'Why Cynicism is Just Moral Cowardice'

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"The cynic who treats all institutions as corrupt helps make all institutions corrupt by withdrawing the good-faith engagement that makes them not corrupt."
~ Joan Westenberg from har article 'Why Cynicism is Just Moral Cowardice' [hat tip Duncan B]
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How our "knowledge system" catastrophizes the side-effects of fossil fuels

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This is the second of 11 “Alex Notes” on my book Fossil Future—like Cliff’s Notes, but actually written by the author. (Read the first one here.)

Get Fossil Future

(Also, for those who preordered Fossil Future or who are premium subscribers to this newsletter, I’m doing a special live event “How to talk to anyone about climate change” on October 23. The invite will come to you later this week.)


The mainstream “knowledge system” has an unrepentant track-record of catastrophizing the side-effects of fossil fuels: wildly overpredicting negative side-effects and ignoring our ability to master them.

(A summary of Fossil Future, Chapter 2)

  • Not only does our “knowledge system”—the people and institutions we rely upon to research, synthesize, disseminate, and evaluate expert knowledge—consistently ignore the massive benefits of fossil fuels, it also consistently catastrophizes the side-effects of fossil fuels.

  • Our Knowledge System’s Real Track Record on Climate: 180 Degrees Wrong

    The mainstream knowledge system has predicted far faster warming than has occurred, and has predicted a massive increase in climate-related disaster deaths when these deaths have dramatically decreased.1

  • In 1989, AP News reported climate predictions from New York office director of the UN Environmental Programme, Noel Brown, including that “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.”2

  • The Error of Catastrophizing

    The 180-degree wrong prediction of increasing climate-related disaster deaths was the result of the error of catastrophizing, which consists of

    1) dramatically overstating a negative side-effect
    2) ignoring our ability to master that side-effect

  • The “Expert” Prediction of Rapid Catastrophic Global Cooling

    Our knowledge system, before it publicized predictions of rapid/deadly global warming, publicized designated expert predictions of rapid/deadly global cooling—in both cases in contradiction to most experts’ views.

  • Many of the same trusted news institutions that today are warning us about catastrophic global warming—e.g., The Guardian, The New York Times, Newsweek—were in the 1970s warning us about catastrophic global cooling!3

  • Catastrophizing Resources

    Our knowledge system has a track record of catastrophizing resource availability—predicting catastrophic resource depletion of fossil fuels and other resources when in fact fossil fuel machine labor produced unprecedented availability of all resources.

  • “Expert” Paul Ehrlich catastrophizing resource availability in 1971:

    By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people... I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”4

  • Catastrophizing Environmental Quality

    Our knowledge system has a track record of catastrophizing environmental quality—predicting unlivably bad air and water when in reality human beings improved air quality, including through reducing fossil fuels’ harmful emissions.

  • Designated expert Kenneth Watt catastrophizing environmental quality in 1970:

    “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”5

  • Catastrophizing Nuclear Energy

    Our knowledge system has a track record of catastrophizing nuclear—the most promising competitor to fossil fuels with side-effects that experts recognize as masterable—revealing a broader pattern of catastrophizing cost-effective energy as such.

  • Nuclear has been so successfully catastrophized by our knowledge system that it is virtually criminalized.

    The extremely safe levels of radiation are treated as so dangerous and thus requiring so many costly “safety” requirements that cost-effective nuclear is almost impossible.

  • An Uncorrected Failure

    Instead of acknowledging its track record of catastrophizing fossil fuels, the mainstream knowledge system has been unrepentant and in fact elevated the catastrophizing designated experts to new heights of influence.

  • According to designated expert Bill McKibben in 2009, “Every time we thought we understood something about climate, the truth has turned out to be worse than we thought.

    And seven years later, “The numbers on global warming are even scarier than we thought.”6

  • Deadly Prescriptions

    Our knowledge system’s proven, uncorrected willingness to ignore the massive benefits of fossil fuels and catastrophize side-effects means it is fully capable of prescribing the rapid elimination of fossil fuels even if this would be catastrophic.

  • In 1998, “expert” Bill McKibben endorsed a scenario of outlawing 60% of fossil fuel use to slow catastrophic climate change, even though that would mean that each human would only get to produce enough CO2 to, in his words, “drive an average American car nine miles a day.”7

  • Our Missing Protection

    While in the past we were protected from calls for eliminating fossil fuels because our knowledge system significantly valued cost-effective energy, today’s knowledge system as a whole ignores fossil fuels’ benefits—meaning we have no such protection.

  • Fossil fuel elimination policies of going “net zero,” “fossil free,” and “100% renewable” were just a decade ago considered idealistic if not crackpot policies most prominently advocated by Bill McKibben.

    Today they are the dominant policy idea in most of the world.

  • Understanding Both Our Knowledge System’s Energy Failure and Ours

    To know the right path forward on fossil fuels we need to understand how our knowledge system has come to oppose cost-effective energy based on (irrationally) ignoring benefits and catastrophizing side-effects.

Coming next week: A summary of Chapter 3 of Fossil Future, “The Anti-Impact Framework”

Get Fossil Future

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Is ‘Misery’ the Best Stephen King Adaptation?

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Rob Reiner’s “Misery” (1990) has become one of the director’s most well-known and frequently quoted films, which is ironic, as Reiner mostly made comedies up to that point.

“I’m your number one fan.”

Is there anyone alive who doesn’t know the origin of that quote? While many have uttered that phrase, it’s safe to say that few have meant it as much as Annie Wilkes, in declaring her love for Paul Sheldon, her favorite writer and captive.

YouTube Video

In Stephen King’s 1987 novel, “Misery,” Wilkes, a reclusive former nurse, is keeping her favorite writer holed up in her cabin. Their relationship turns from devoted fan/guest to brutal punisher/captive, as she forces him to write a blatantly commercial novel…or else. Reiner’s film of King’s “Misery,” adapted by William Goldman for the screen, remains an artistic high point for everyone involved.

Reiner’s sole thriller is his best film, a cleverly constructed seat gripper that was a real surprise coming from him. At this point in his career, Reiner had made “This is Spinal Tap” (1984), “The Sure Thing” (1985), “Stand by Me” (1986), “The Princess Bride” (1987) and “When Harry Met Sally…” (1989), all great films, none of them remotely like the other.

The only connective thread they share is Reiner’s consistent directorial flexibility, in which he was willing to adapt to the demands and tone of the material.

Working with Goldman’s smart, rich screenplay and Barry Sonnenfeld’s versatile, acrobatic cinematography, Reiner manages to set the story mostly in one room, which alternates between appearing either invitingly warm or a dreaded location for a wake.

YouTube Video

The cast is another essential reason for the film’s success. James Caan was no one’s first pick for a romance novelist, and the against-type casting works. Caan’s Paul Sheldon is admittedly writing the Misery Chastain novels as an artistic compromise and a means for revenue, not critical acclaim.

Caan’s face conveys the long, sad, sell-out that Sheldon has been enduring and how the creation of his latest, Misery-free novel is a reason to feel alive again.

Kathy Bates was the film’s biggest discovery, as the former stage star and sometime character actress was assigned a role conceived by King as older. From her first moment on camera, Bates is ideal as Annie Wilkes, making the character’s brute strength, folksy demeanor, and pride a thin mask of sanity that is always about to break.

Her outbursts become bigger and scarier as the film progresses, and Bates makes Wilkes a hypnotic tour de force.

I share a film buff’s enthusiasm for “The Shawshank Redemption” (1994), “The Shining” (1980), “The Dead Zone” (1983), “Pet Sematary” (both versions), “The Mist” (2007), “Dolores Claiborne” (1995), “Cat’s Eye” (1985), “The Green Mile’ (1999), “1408” (2007) and Reiner’s “Stand By Me” (1986) but I’d say “Misery” is the best King film. The core reason is that it’s a much better movie than it is a book.

Reiner and Goldman have deleted the aspects of the novel that were, to use King’s terminology, “gooshy.” An absurd murder with a lawn mower and a too-much moment with an axe (replaced, rather artfully, in the film with a sledgehammer) have been altered or are altogether gone.

“Misery” is quite violent at times and the grisly moments are well-earned and expertly staged.

 

Reiner has made it more of a psychological chess match than a gory free-for-all that King inched towards. The emphasis on Buster the Sheriff (movingly played by Richard Farnsworth), his wife (the always-wonderful Frances Sternhagen) and Paul’s literary agent (film legend Lauren Bacall) adds a relief from the two-person structure and welcome comic relief. The actors make these figures engaging and real, as opposed to mere supporting character distractions.

“Misery” became a Broadway stage play at the Broadhurst Theater in 2015. Laurie Metcalfe played Wilkes and, as Paul Sheldon, her co-star was no less than Bruce Willis. While the Broadway adaptation was written by Goldman, I was present at the legendary 2008 production, penned by Simon Moore, that took place in the Miner’s Alley Playhouse in Golden, CO.

It was a two-person show starring Paige Larson and Carjado Lindsey (both riveting as Wilkes and Sheldon). The production maintained the original foot-severing scene from King’s novel. It made for a terrifying night of theater that still haunts my wife and me.

“Misery” is a perfect thriller and a rich commentary on how one writes “for a living,” literally and figuratively. It works as a cautionary tale against embracing one’s fandom. It’s also a grisly romantic comedy.

Even the final scene, which could have played as a jokey fade-out, is truly chilling in its implications. When you’re Paul Sheldon (or Stephen King, or Steven Spielberg, or anyone famous), everyone you meet is a potential Annie Wilkes.

The post Is ‘Misery’ the Best Stephen King Adaptation? appeared first on Hollywood in Toto.

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LACALLE AND BLOCK: Murray Rothbard Would Have Really Liked Javier Milei

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We will never know for sure the reaction Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995) would have had to Javier Milei (1970-) when he became the President of Argentina in 2023. Murray passed all too early in 1995; at that time, Javier was still a 25 year old relative unknown.

We know how the latter viewed the former. Javier called the anarcho-capitalist economist theoretician one of his mentors. He named one of his precious dogs “Murray.” Mr. Milei adopted the term libertarian, and anarcho-capitalist as did his mentor, and eschewed the phrases minarchist, and classical liberal as not radical enough in terms of liberty.

In the view of the present authors, Murray Rothbard would have been jumping for joy at the rise into the political stratosphere of his in effect student Javier Milei. He would have been ecstatic. Rothbard had pet rabbits. There is no doubt in our minds that he would have named one them in honor of this Argentinian leader, returning the compliment. No, no, to say this is to damn his likely reaction with faint praise. Murray would have literally jumped out of his skin with the prospect of Javier on the horizon. A long time atheist, Rothbard would have believed that God had brought Milei down from the heavens (Ok, ok, we’re exaggerating a bit here; we don’t know how better to express Rothbard’s wildly positive probably reaction to Milei).

All this is in sharp contrast to the very critical reaction to Milei of a whole host of other anarcho-capitalist libertarians. They are looking a gift horse in the mouth and not much liking what they see. The German Mises Institute recently announced it was giving its prestigious Ludwig von Mises award to Mr. Milei. In protest, Hans Hoppe and Guido Hulsmann, both libertarian followers of Murray Rothbard, resigned from the Scientific Advisory Board of that organization. Hoppe in particular has excoriated Javier Milei on numerous occasions. Other anarcho-capitalist libertarians, many of them associated not with the German Mises Institute, but with the American one located in Auburn, Alabama, have been viciously critical of the Argentinian president.

Why are we so sure the Rothbard would have carried Milei around on his shoulders in glee (if he could lift him) in a ticker tape parade in his honor? After all, this man has been president of Argentina for some eight months now. Is this country a bastion of anarcho-capitalism yet? Has the Argentinian government completely disappeared? Has gold replaced the peso after all this time? No, no and no. True he has radically reduced inflation from some 25% to 3% per month, but that is still too high. He has ridded the country of the scourge of rent control, ended numerous stultifying business regulations, and fired numerous bureaucrats. But, still, the country is not yet a libertarian paradise. (Here you see the main reservations of these “libertarians;” oh, yes, Milei also supports Israel, a big no-no for them).

We are certain of our expectations based on Rothbard’s relationship with Pat Buchanan. The former was a strong supporter of the latter. And yet the latter cannot hold even a small candle to Milei in term of support for free enterprise. Buchanan was a protectionist tariff monger, anathema to economic freedom. Murray was desperate for any high-profile public figure to at least give a small nod in the direction of libertarianism. Buchanan did fit that bill; he jumped over that exceedingly low barrier, to be sure. Given that Rothbard enthusiastically supported Buchanan, just imagine the glee with which he would have welcomed Javier to the ranks of laissez faire capitalists.

Golda Meir once said: “When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons. Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”

We now say that these Austro-libertarian denigrators of Javier Milei hated Israel, and anyone who supports this only civilized country in the Middle East, more than they love the prospects he represents for promoting liberty. Libertarianism will be promoted when these Austro-libertarians will love liberty more than they hate Israel.



Originally published here.

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