Habaritag:www.rfjseddon.net,2024-03-19:atom/405e59ee7d277b4e1939d6c1deee2f2554a0f68aR.F.J. Seddon2023-02-22T17:05:25+00:00Ink LosingRobert Seddonhttp://www.rfjseddon.net/logtag:rfjseddon.net,2023:ink-loosing/16770854932023-02-22T17:05:25+00:002023-02-22T17:07:55+00:002023-02-22T16:59:09+00:00<p>From the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/draft-legislation-to-help-more-people-prove-their-identity-online/consultation-on-draft-legislation-to-support-identity-verification">consultation on digital identity verification:</a></p>
<blockquote>Inclusion is at the heart of GOV.UK One Login. The proposed data-sharing legislation will ensure that more people than ever before will be able to prove their identity online and access government services, so that anybody who wants to use online services is able to.</blockquote>
<p>Also from the consultation:</p>
<blockquote>Our preference would be for you to respond online through our survey. We cannot accept postal responses to this consultation unless there are exceptional circumstances.</blockquote>Database StaleRobert Seddonhttp://www.rfjseddon.net/logtag:rfjseddon.net,2022:database-stale/16679337032022-11-08T18:56:29+00:002022-11-08T18:56:29+00:002022-11-08T18:52:24+00:00<p>Has the threat of the database state ever involved people who actually understood databases and how to maintain them?</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">EXC: A Labour government could introduce “basic” ID cards to help to count how many people there are in Britain and reduce illegal immigration.<br><br>More on <a href="https://twitter.com/TimesRadio?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@TimesRadio</a> from 10am<a href="https://t.co/NYQXxqssOc">https://t.co/NYQXxqssOc</a></p>— Matt Chorley (@MattChorley) <a href="https://twitter.com/MattChorley/status/1589880398288674816?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 8, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Researching a long piece on aslyum seekers and I had not realised quite how borked our processing system it is. It's jaw dropping - it's literally run via manual data entry on excel spreadsheets that keep crashing.</p>— Sam Freedman (@Samfr) <a href="https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1589945276995096576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 8, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>Defined as FineRobert Seddonhttp://www.rfjseddon.net/logtag:rfjseddon.net,2022:defined-as-fine/16626652922022-09-08T20:28:32+01:002022-09-08T20:28:32+01:002022-09-08T20:06:29+01:00<p>Bad news for researchers in museum ethics, whose field is now officially redundant: <a href="https://advisor.museumsandheritage.com/news/museum-icom-announces-new-definition-15-years/">ICOM has announced</a> that museums operate ethically <em>by definition</em>.</p>
<p>It must have startled the sector’s numerous internal critics to learn that they can’t do that any more.</p>So ThereRobert Seddonhttp://www.rfjseddon.net/logtag:rfjseddon.net,2022:so-there/16612015982022-08-22T21:57:08+01:002022-08-22T21:57:08+01:002022-08-22T21:46:42+01:00<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aleksandr_Dugin&oldid=1105811002"><img alt="From a Wikipedia page: [by whom?][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][excessive citations]" src="/log/user/files/img/Dugin_Wikipedia.png" /></a></p>Pay-sithanatosRobert Seddonhttp://www.rfjseddon.net/logtag:rfjseddon.net,2022:pay-sithanatos/16513366472022-04-30T17:39:47+01:002022-04-30T17:40:06+01:002022-04-30T17:22:48+01:00<p>Well, at least one can hardly accuse <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-is-canada-euthanising-the-poor-">this ethicist</a> of mere armchair philosophising:</p>
<blockquote>A man with a neurodegenerative disease testified to [the Canadian] Parliament that nurses and a medical ethicist at a hospital tried to coerce him into killing himself by threatening to bankrupt him with extra costs or by kicking him out of the hospital, and by withholding water from him for 20 days.</blockquote>
<p>Of course, what one really wants to know is missing, i.e. was the ethicist a utilitarian?</p>BemusedRobert Seddonhttp://www.rfjseddon.net/logtag:rfjseddon.net,2022:bemused/16509199932022-04-25T21:54:33+01:002022-04-25T21:54:33+01:002022-04-25T20:49:44+01:00<p>It’s always nice to see <a href="https://www.museumsassociation.org/campaigns/ethics/our-response-to-the-dcms-contested-heritage-meeting/">stout defences of intellectual liberty:</a></p>
<blockquote>It is both a hallmark of a democratic society and a cornerstone of museum ethics that our sector should operate at arm’s length from the government. Museums must be able to carry out research and inquiry into all areas of history – it is not for ministers to dictate what constitutes a legitimate subject for investigation or what the outcome of that research might be. […] We are particularly concerned that a climate of fear has been created amongst museums and museum staff, especially those working on subjects relating to Britain’s imperial past, and we support the rights of everyone working on these issues to do so free of interference, threats and intimidation.</blockquote>
<p>Researchers’ freedom from interference is an interesting framing for the organisation’s concerns. The Museums Association openly states that it is worried about interference in the ‘work to decolonise museums’ which it ‘unreservedly supports’. It proudly <a href="https://www.museumsassociation.org/campaigns/decolonising-museums/our-statement-on-decolonisation/">considers</a> ‘decolonising work to be ethically the right thing to do’ and believes that ‘sector support organisations, the MA Ethics Committee and museums should work together to establish new guidance for the sector and ensure that museums take a proactive approach in the reinterpretation and decolonising of collections’.</p>
<p>Of course the Museums Association is not obliged to affect neutrality on a matter of moral imperatives; but then it does become hard to look like a convincing champion of sectoral non-interference and academic freedom.</p>UneventfulRobert Seddonhttp://www.rfjseddon.net/logtag:rfjseddon.net,2022:uneventful/16502271842022-04-17T21:26:59+01:002022-04-17T21:26:59+01:002022-04-17T21:16:08+01:00<p>From a gaming forum thread on the <a href="https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=151658&viewfull=1#post2485147">atmospherics of loneliness and isolation:</a></p>
<blockquote>In games that progress you in a linear fashion from area to area, sometimes you’re able to go back quite a distance through previous areas, although you’re not really expected to. In these games, there’s almost like an intangible sphere of “life” or “action” or “presentness” that you would normally follow, but you can go back to previous areas where it used to be but isn’t anymore. Previous areas where you’ve cleared out the enemies, solved the puzzle, met the new character, watched the cutscene, whatever... and there’s less than nothing left. If you were to go back to a very early area, it feels deader than dead. It’s still there physically, being correctly rendered and behaving as designed and all, but the intangible feeling of livingness has left it. There’s a very strong and foreboding feeling that you are <em>not</em> meant to be here. That you’re in a place “forgotten by the game”.</blockquote>
<p>This seems like a relative of the phenomenon where you can sense that an area feels oddly empty as you explore it, and either you’ve been able to go there ‘too early’ for the plot, or you’ve found the remnants of something that was planned but otherwise largely cut, like the <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/horizon/comments/7jgfuw/things_that_make_you_wonder_in_the_game/">huge gate that will never open</a> in <i>Horizon Zero Dawn</i>: a sort of digital <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperart_Thomasson">Thomasson</a>.</p>