The 263rd Block: Space cadet (me)
I didn't want to touch on AI this week and yet I did
This week…
Your reading time is about 5 minutes. Let’s start.
I’m on a mini election watch this weekend, and working on an essay about applying the principles of jus in bello to outer space, which means I’ve been quite occupied. So, here’s some filler text.
[Also: If you listen to this week’s podcast recommendation, I resonated with what Karen Hao said about how when you’re knee deep in something, your vocabulary changes and you start to adopt some of the things they say as your own and at some point you’d have to step away from that and reset your language. I’m reading way too many articles from military colleges that I’m thinking I would have had a decent career in the military if I had chosen that path. Calibrated me wouldn’t think that thought?]
Your Wikipedia this week: Etaoin shrdlu
And now, a selection of top stories on my radar, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.
ICYMI: The Previous Block was about language, law, and the terrible, horrible, not so good, very bad media.
CORRECTION NOTICE: None notified. POLITICS
How Belgium elected its most right-wing government
Khaled Diab for New Lines Magazine:
For the first time in its history, Belgium has a prime minister who is a Flemish nationalist. Bart De Wever, who wants the Dutch-speaking Belgians to separate from the French-speaking Walloons and have their own state, rode a wave of nativist and right-wing sentiment to bring his New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) party to power in the February election. The election results show that the country is lurching to the right even in the traditionally leftist stronghold of Wallonia, which has seen a surge of support for right-wing populists and authoritarians alongside mounting anti-immigrant sentiment. If Flemish nationalists have their way, De Wever will be Belgium’s last prime minister.
De Wever is a man of many paradoxes. Although he is a passionate defender of the Dutch language and his N-VA party criticizes the Walloons — the French-speaking Belgians who compose 40% of the population — for not speaking enough Dutch, he also has a penchant for weaving expressions in Latin and English into his speeches.
De Wever is committed to dismantling Belgium and replacing it with two independent states — Flanders and Wallonia — but his mission is to hold it together until he can rip it apart constitutionally. This plan was on full display during the excruciating eight months when Belgium was without a functioning government, while De Wever engaged in intense horse trading to form a coalition of five parties to create the federal government he had spent his career trying to tear apart. On Feb. 5, he took the oath of office, swearing allegiance in French and Dutch to King Philippe of the Belgians, although the monarchy symbolizes the country his party rejects and is committed to abolishing.
Loosely linked:
Germany bans far-right ‘Kingdom of Germany’ group by Richard Connor and Timothy Jones for DW.
A fractured Portugal votes again, amid corruption cloud by Ana Naomi de Sousa for Al Jazeera.
Romania’s election front-runner sucks up to Trump by Andrei-Constantin Gudu for Jacobin.
The same faces, swapping places: Polish candidates aim to break two-party hold on power by Jakub Krupa for The Guardian.
Why are right-wing populists so opposed to climate policy? by Marte Dæhlen for Science Norway.
SCIENCE
The space archaeologists hoping to save our cosmic history
Mark Piesing for BBC:
Space is being commercialised on a scale unseen before. Faced by powerful commercial and political forces and with scant legal protections, artefacts that tell the story of our species' journey into space are in danger of being lost — both in orbit and down here on Earth.
Like Stonehenge, these are irreplaceable artefacts and sites that have a timeless significance to humanity because they represent an essential stage in the evolution of our species. They are often also expressions of national pride because of the industrial and scientific effort needed to achieve them. Sometimes they are also memorials to those who died in the course of ambitious space programmes.
They also have another use. Studying these artefacts and sites helps researchers better understand how astronauts interact with new technology, adapt to new environments and develop new cultural practices. The conclusions of researchers can influence the design of future spacecraft and help future space missions succeed.
Maybe because I’m in the midst of writing an essay on astroenvironmentalism and space law, but I think this smells a little bit colonialist. Loosely linked:
The chilling effect of DEI crackdowns in scientific publishing by Peter Andrey Smith for Undark.
Are we hardwired to fall for autocrats? by Jonathan R. Goodman for The Guardian.
Improving human beings to make them perform better: Why is transhumanism so harmful? by Nicolas Le Dévédec (HEC Montréal) for The Conversation.
Other curious links, including en español et français
LONG READ | Alleged pyramid scheme targets Filipino migrant workers, promising a life in Canada by Aloysius Wong for CBC.
PHOTO ESSAY | Palestine before the Nakba in 100 photos by Mohamed A. Hussein for Al Jazeera.
América Latina no será lo mismo sin Pepe Mujica (Obituario) por Soledad Gago en CTXT.
La trampa de la resiliencia: hacia una inteligencia artificial que repare lo colectivo por Miguel Alexandre Barreiro-Laredo en Retina.
Es mejor no escuchar las listas de Spotify por Jordi Pérez Colomé en El País.
Des accents africains au cœur du «P'tit Québec» par Éric Robitaille, photographies par Jimmy Chabot et Mouhamadou Seck dans Radio-Can.
« Notre rapport à l’IA traduit une forme de conscience tragique » par Blaise Mao dans Usbek & Rica.
Comment préserver les traces numériques des écrivains ? par Esther Michon dans Usbek & Rica.
What I read, listen, and watch
I’m reading The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet (2016) by Justin Peters. This book is almost a decade old but not a lot has changed that is felt like it was writing in the 2020s. (If you’ve read this already, you’ll understand why I chose this particular hyperlink for the book.)
I’m listening to Better Offline with Ed Zitron with Karen Hao on the mind-poison of artificial general intelligence.
I’m watching BBC Africa’s investigations of the shootings of demonstrators during the 2024 finance bill protest in Nairobi.
Chart of the week
No surprises here: the length of tasks AI systems can do has been increasing quickly, wrote Charlie Giattino for Our World in Data — but the visualisation showed just by much. Around three years ago, GPT 3.5 could only do tasks that take humans around 10 seconds to complete, such as selecting the right file. These days, the best AI systems can do tasks on its own that would take humans 20 minutes to complete, such as finding and fixing bugs in code with an 80 per cent success rate (which, I would presume, is comparable to the reliability of humans in completing the same tasks successfully).