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Home Featured News News Black Women in California Say Democratic Party Takes Their Vote and Voice for Granted
Changing the Game: Ice Cube's Battle to Buy Regional Sports Networks
Published on Thursday, 09 May 2019 14:55
Written by Bryan 18X Crawford and Barrington Salmon
By Bryan 18X Crawford and Barrington Salmon
The Final Call
More and more, Black athletes and entertainers are looking to expand beyond the field of expertise that gained them fame, notoriety and riches, and leverage these positions to help them make their same mark in the world of business. There are Black people who successfully transitioned from their respective art or sport, turning themselves into well-respected businesspeople and a positive example of what entrepreneurship looks like. The life of the late rapper and entrepreneur Nipsey Hussle personifies this point.
However, Ice Cube, Nipsey's West Coast predecessor and elder—or "O.G."—in the rap game and one of the founding fathers of the hip-hop genre known as "gangsta rap," has been blazing big time business trails of his own for the past two decades.
Many are familiar with O'Shea "Ice Cube" Jackson, either from his days as a rapper in the group "N.W.A.," or from his acting roles in popular movies such as "Boyz In The Hood," and the "Friday," "Barbershop," and "Are We There Yet?" series of films. However, in 2017, Ice Cube decided to delve into previously uncharted business waters by getting involved in professional sports as one of the founders of the BIG3 professional 3-on-3 bas-ketball league. The BIG3 features 12 teams coached by former NBA All-Stars and Hall of Famers, with rosters made up of players who have all competed professionally, either in the NBA or overseas. The BIG3 league has become one of the premier events for basketball fans during the summer, a time when there isn't a lot of com-petitive professional basketball going on.
Now entering its third season, Ice Cube is looking to take the next step in not only raising the profile of his professional basketball brand, but his personal profile as a Black business mogul. In early April, with his FOX Sports contract having expired at the conclusion of the 2018 BIG3 campaign, the league inked a new deal to have games televised on the CBS network. However, armed with a high-profile group of investors with deep pockets of their own, Ice Cube has a much bigger vision. But reaching that goal won't come without challenges, or a fight.
"The BIG3 is not part of the old boys club and that doesn't sit well with a company like Charter, which has been called out many times for unfair treatment of minority organizations and for consistent disregard of its own customers," Ice Cube said in a statement regarding his investor group's bid to purchase 21 regional sports net-works (RSN). The channels include networks in markets such as Atlanta, Dallas, Detroit, and Los Angeles.
Ice Cube and the BIG3, should they win the bid, would then have the foundation in place to build a brand new national network with original programming, sports, and other culturally relevant content.
In an April letter written by the BIG3 to the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Jus-tice, the company accused Charter Communications of interfering with the BIG3's investment group—which includes Ice Cube, fellow hip-hop legends LL Cool J and Snoop Dogg, basketball Hall of Famers Magic John-son, Julius "Dr. J" Erving and Clyde Drexler, tennis star Serena Williams, comedian Kevin Hart, and other prominent figures in sports and entertainment—bid to purchase 21 regional sports networks currently owned by Disney, which the company acquired in its recent merger with FOX. Disney has until June to sell the RSNs if they want to avoid antitrust issues in the future.
BIG3 said that Charter threatened to drop the RSNs from the cable networks it owns should they come under new ownership. Pre-emptively making this threat would effectively lower the current $10 billion price package. However, what makes the move curious is that Liberty Media, Charter's largest shareholder, is also bidding for the RSNs. Charter has been accused before by a Black man for biased practices. In 2016, Byron Allen filed a $10 billion discrimination suit against the company, accusing them of not giving networks owned by minority groups the same broadcasting opportunities as White-owned media companies.
"In response to our filing, Charter says they are willing to talk to 'whomever.' Given their consistent animosity toward diverse ownership groups with inclusive messages like ours, we say we don't believe them. Anyone who looks at the facts won't either. They have done everything they can to keep us from owning these RSNs and that's why we have asked the FCC and the DOJ to investigate," Ice Cube said in a statement.
In response to the letter, Charter didn't explicitly push back against the allegations, saying, "Charter currently has an agreement to carry these networks and welcomes the opportunity to discuss a future carriage agreement for these networks with whoever ultimately owns them, including Big3. Regardless of who owns the program-ming, we approach all negotiations with the same singular objective of reaching carriage agreements that best meet the needs of our customers."
The BIG3 met on April 17 with the antitrust division of the DOJ, two days after the deadline to enter bids for the RSNs. Others in the bidding include conservative media company Sinclair Broadcast Group, Major League Baseball in partnership with Liberty Media.
At Final Call press time, it was unclear if anything regarding the sale had been resolved.
Cori Harvey, an attorney who specializes in business law, economics and entrepreneurship, said the mere fact that Ice Cube, LL Cool J, Serena Williams and other athletes and entertainers have joined forces to purchase the sports channels is deeply significant. He predicts a ripple effect on Blacks and the larger Black community.
"If this succeeds, even the attempt I think, represents movement along a much-needed path," said Ms. Harvey, a former law professor at Florida A&M University. It shows that it takes generations to shift into this space of access and mentorship. African Americans have had to build across generations. This is also our Horatio Alger story. Hip hop and sports is often how we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps."
"This is a coming-of-age story. This is an example of employees buying the company. It shows that many hands make light work."
Dr. Wilmer Leon, III, agreed.
"This is incredibly, incredibly important if we're ever going to have a chance of moving our situation forward," he said. "We're seeing major assets and more media assets falling into fewer and fewer hands."
Dr. Leon, who teaches at Howard University, said it is gratifying to see this clique of celebrities coalescing around a common goal. It's important, he added, that the group appears to have the financial wherewithal to withstand whatever challenges they may face.
"They are not immune (to being derailed) but their financial wherewithal gives them a definite mechanism to withstand challenges," said Dr. Leon, the political scientist, author, columnist and talk show host. "These re-sources put them at another level. They'll have resources to pay an attorney like Willie Gary."
The most immediate challenge is apparently Channel Communications and Liberty Media. According to the New York Post, BIG3 accuses Charter Communications of conspiring with Liberty Media and the owner of the Atlanta Braves and was trying "to pollute the bidding process."
Ms. Harvey said, without knowing all the details, if Charter and Liberty Media may have engaged in, these tac-tics, it may be simply cut throat business as usual.
"I think a part of this is learning how to function in this environment," she said. "It may not necessarily be a race-based issue. This may be a competitive obstacle. Some people may react viscerally to Black people seeking to jump into the bidding, but the Black celebrities are dealing with people who have had generations of expo-sure to this playing field. We see people battling for six inches of land, not willing to give up an inch of ground. Business is no different."
"This is the cost of doing business. Throwing money to thwart the opposition isn't unusual. It's a part of the game, a part of the business. They are creating barriers to entry for all competition."
Dr. Leon said those entering business and other arenas should come prepared to make a difference. "The only way to change the game is that you gotta play the game," he said. "And the only way to win the game is to play the game. It may be a White man's game, but I'm not ready to give it to them yet."
Ms. Harvey said she's struck by the positive turn this development represents.
"What jumps out is this is a shining light because many of these ills in the Black community are because of the impact of the hip hop culture of consumerism and violence," said Ms. Harvey, a former Philadelphia public de-fender. "This a good foil."
Dr. Leon argued the ownership group should seek to use the venture as more than a more investment. "If your belief system is not focused on the liberation of your people, it's a waste of time," he said.
Ms. Harvey disagreed with Dr. Leon's premise, while noting the importance of what the ownership group is at-tempting to do. "We don't have enough archetypes," she said. "I'm sick of the fact that the only available ar-chetypes are the drug dealer, hip hop artists and athletes. We often don't have enough role models at high lev-els. Fourteen-year-old Black boys' role models need to be a Black man in a suit. The image of Barack Obama and his beautiful, strong, Black family is something all of us can aspire to. All we can imitate is what we see."
BIG3 basketball league founder Ice Cube smiles as he is introduced during Game 2 in the BIG3 Basketball League's debut, Sunday, June 25, 2017, at the Barclays Center in New York. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)


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Q: $emit an event from child to parent in vue.js, es6 syntax I'm pretty new to Vue.js, and I use ES6 syntax with vue-class-component. I'm having a problem while trying to emit an event from a child to its parent.
I followed the logic of the default Vue.js syntax but can't seem to have my parent catch an event emitted by the the child. Code:
Child Component
I attached a click event listener on every
, which calls a function that emits an event. The event listener is defined on the parent.
 export default class HorizontalNavigation {

  handleClick (e) {
    e.preventDefault();
    // console.log(e.target.dataset.section);
    this.$emit('ChangeView', e.target.dataset.section);
  }

  render (h) {
    return (

We are

Services

Cases

Studio

Career

Contact

    );
  }
}

Parent Component
export default class ViewsContainer {

  ChangeView (data) {
    console.log(data);
  }

  render (h) {
      return (

          <HorizontalNavigation />

            <SingleView dataSection='weare' id='1' class='selected' />
            <SingleView dataSection='services' id='2' />
            <SingleView dataSection='cases' id='3' />
            <SingleView dataSection='studio' id='4' />
            <SingleView dataSection='career' id='5' />
            <SingleView dataSection='contact' id='6' />

      );
    }
}

Following the vue.js syntax, I should be able to listen to the child's event from the parent, by emitting the event from the element, but the parent doesn't seem to catch the event.
Where am I going wrong?

A: Unless I'm missing something (very likely), in a simple example like this, you just need to listen for the emitted event in your component. For example, in your parent element, you would have:
<HorizontalNavigation v-on:ChangeView={this.ChangeView} />

Then in your child (HorizontalNavigation) component, you would emit the 'ChangeView' event:
this.$emit('ChangeView', e.target.dataset.section);

I tried this in similar code myself, based on a comment you made on @craig_h's answer, and it was what I needed. I didn't need to emit to parent, or use a bus, or vuex.

A: You need to $emit on the view model you want to receive your $emit, use a bus or use https://vuex.vuejs.org/.
Emitting to parent directly
The easiest way, is to simply $emit from the child directly to the parent component:
this.$parent.$emit('ChangeView', e.target.dataset.section);

This is OK, but if you have a long chain of components you need to $emit to each $parent in the chain.
Emiting via an Event Bus
You can use Vue to create a global event bus very simply. You create an instance of Vue in your main component, then all other components in your application can emit events to it, and use on to react to those events.
var bus = new Vue({});
var vm = new Vue({
  methods: {
    changeView() {
      bus.$emit('ChangeView', e.target.dataset.section);
    }
  });

It is also possible to emit to $root but this isn't recommended. However, if your app does get quite complex you may want to consider using Vues own state management system, vuex, instead.
Listening for events
You can listen for the $emit in the viewmodel using $on and listening for the specific event:
    var vm = new Vue({
      created() {
         this.$on('ChangeView', section => {
            console.log(section);
          });
      }
    );

This would also be similar is you were using the bus, but you would just reference the bus instead:
bus.$on('ChangeView', ...);

And you may also use it directly in your html using v-on:

A: If you end up here looking for Vue 3 script setup
It's good practice for readibility to declare emits with defineEmits and then use the returned function for emitting
Child component :
<template>

    <button @click="handleClick">Increment</button>

</template>

Parent component :
<template>

{{ counter }}

  <Button @custom="handleCustom"/>
</template>

Here is the working implementation

A: In Vue, you can communicate from children up to parent components by emitting events. The child compoment "emits" an event with $emit  & the parent component "listens" for it like so:
Child Component:
<template>

    <button @click="this.handleClick">Click me!</button>

</template>

Parent Component:
<template>

Passing a event from child up to parent!

    <BaseButton @clickFromChildComponent="handleClickInParent"/>

</template>

You can find a working sample code implementation here & use it in your own context.

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Who We Are We Are One! Your Team We Care Careers What We're Up To
How We Work Group Benefits Retirement Services Executive Benefits Risk Management
Business Blog What We're Up To Resources
Protecting and Promoting Your Company Culture
Raffa Financial Services on 01/23/2020
It seems like everywhere you turn, there's another article about company culture. How to build a good one, how to avoid a bad one, how this company rocked it, or how that company completely screwed it up.
No one would blame you if you were tired of hearing about it. But here's the thing: company culture can literally make or break you as a business.
Who you are, how you act, and what you believe will eventually come back to you. Or come back to haunt you. Very few people start a business with bad intent, and yet it's shocking how many "good" companies end up with poor practices, corrupt leaders, and in horrible, cringe-worthy situations.
It's a gradual process
Just about every business you can think of began with a great idea and few people dedicated to making it work. During the incubation stage, it's pretty easy to create an atmosphere of teamwork, camaraderie, and commitment to the company goal. Startup culture is often known for being highly productive, ultra-creative, and super exciting.
When new people and processes start to get added into the mix, it becomes harder to maintain that united passion, sense of purpose, and team spirit. As the business grows, so does the risk of bringing on individuals who aren't a good cultural fit. It may be hardly noticeable at first, but over time the organization can shift from one person's big, crazy dream to everyone's big, crazy nightmare.
Now here's the good news: Because company culture is created from within, it can be changed.
Take it step by step
It all starts by clearly defining who you are and who you want to be.
What kind of people do you want on your team?
What are the values that will drive every action and interaction, from every employee, manager, and staff person, every single day?
Once you decide what matters most and how you will live that truth, you can start filling your bus with the right kind of people— and reinforcing those values in big and small ways at every turn.
But getting and keeping the right people is only one part of the equation. To properly build and maintain the vision, organizations need to go all in on their values. They've got to live and breathe their core beliefs and be completely committed to demonstrating them with everything they say and do.
If you're looking for an example of this concept in action, The Ideal Team Player is a quick read that illustrates how vitally important company culture is and how to go about finding and hiring the perfect-fit people. The book identifies ideal team players as people who work hard, leave their egos on the shelf, and have a knack for dealing with a variety of personalities and situations. It also illustrates ways you can determine if your current and potential employees have these qualities.
But more importantly, The Ideal Team Player also paints a vivid picture of what can happen when an organization continually commits to its culture.
Every part counts
When you emphasize your company values in a strong and consistent manner in all things big and small, those who don't share those beliefs will feel uncomfortable in the environment you've created.
Not only will they not fit in, they will naturally select out, taking their bad behaviors to a company that is more accepting of such things, or who isn't as clear about how to live their truth.
And then you'll know you've done it right.
Want to be a local employer of choice? Need help with performance management, employee turnover, and HR strategy? At Raffa, we work with businesses in the greater Maryland, Virginia and Washington, DC area to implement strategic employee benefits plans designed to position them as coveted employers of choice. Whether you're looking to build a healthy team, lower employee turnover, or recruit and reward executive talent, we can help.
Photo by Александр Ермолаев
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text:
Geoffrey Miller on Effective Altruism and Rationality
I help organize a weekly rationality meetup in New York; a couple of weeks ago we had the pleasure of hosting evolutionary psychologist and author Geoffrey Miller for a very wide-ranging discussion.
I've read two of Dr. Miller's books so far and highly recommend both. The Mating Mind tells how many of humans' most impressive achievements (art, humor, altruism, blogs) evolved to attract mates. Mate turns that scientific knowledge along with Tucker Max's real-nightlife experience into a dating guide for men that covers most dating advice you've seen on Putanumonit and a thousand things besides. Aside from the two books, in preparation for the interview I did a deep dive into Miller's archive of papers and snarky tweets – both are worth your while.
Instead of subjecting you to a podcast, my friend Brian and I turned the conversation into a 7,500-word transcript which I'll publish in three parts:
On effective altruism, AI, and rationality. (This one)
On politics, society, and academia.
On mating, dating, and polyamory.
Our questions are in bold, Dr. Miller's answers are in normal font and lightly edited for readability, my post hoc comments are [in brackets].
You are now teaching your first class on effective altruism, I want to start with that topic. There are a few explanations for the origin of altruism in humans: kin selection, expectations of reciprocity, and sexual selection. Donating to AI safety or malaria or animal welfare has nothing to do with reciprocity or helping relatives, so it must depend on your area of expertise – impressing mates. And yet, few things are less sexy than nerds talking about utilitarianism.
How do we make EA sexy and high status? Or would it require sacrificing our core values too much, and we should keep it to utilitarian nerds?
It's a really good question. One extraordinary thing about modern humans is that we do anything other than kin selection and taking care of our family or reciprocity and trading favors. The idea of a social primate that cares about other members of the species on the other side of the world and does anything at all to help is extraordinary.
In 2007 I wrote a paper called Sexual Selection for Moral Virtues that was trying to explore why we care about anything beyond members of our clan. The only evolutionary pressures I could think of were sexual selection to attract mates and social selection to attract friends and allies. Those are all signaling theories basically, you're showing off moral virtues which are a confluence of agreeableness, kindness, empathy, and rationality. You show those by caring about other human beings or other species and sentient beings.
On the other hand, Effective Altruism only appeals to a tiny fraction of one percent of the population. Basically, high IQ aspie people who can think systematically about suffering. Very few people seem good at that. It seems very weird to people, in fact, it's a turn-off. There's psychological research coming out that says that if you adopt utilitarian views on moral dilemmas like the trolley problem, most people feel moral disgust towards you.
But, people mate so assortatively that you don't have to impress everybody. You just have to impress people within your mating market. And Effective Altruism is, among other things, a fascinating mating market. And hopefully, it will grow.
But the strategic question is: how fast should it grow, how big should the church be. The talk that I gave at EA Global a couple of years ago was about how high an IQ is needed to be an EA member, how broad do you go with personality traits, how broad do you go in terms of political orientation. EAs tend to skew progressive and liberal but not social justice activists. Could you imagine Christian conservative Texan EAs? I've no solution to that.
I think for the moment it makes sense for EA to stay pretty small and elite, until it develops its principles, cause prioritization, infrastructure, and coherence as a movement.
In your book Mate, you and Tucker Max wrote that men should avoid all sugar and grains, but you're also vegan. So what do you actually eat?
I'm a breatharian!
We wrote that book five years ago when both Tucker and I were on a Paleo kick. We hung out at the Paleo FX conference in Austin where between talks everyone was lifting kettlebells. If you set aside the ethical issues, Paleo would be a great diet for most people most of the time. For purely health reasons it's excellent.
But then I met my current girlfriend, Diana Fleischman, who is a long-time vegan and veganism advocate, and she introduced me to that and to effective altruism. She made me read animal welfare books like Do Fish Feel Pain by Victoria Braithwaite. And I thought "Oh shit, I can't be Paleo anymore".
And then we had a negotiation phase because I don't feel well if I go full vegan. So, in her style, she said: "Let's get quantitative about it. If you just give up chicken, then in terms of life years of subjective suffering by the animals per pound of meat you're 85% vegan ethically. And also some farmed fish – you can eat tuna because they're big, but not anchovies." So I gave up chicken and small farmed fish, and then we had a discussion about beef. I think that pastured beef cows have a net-positive utility life. Of course, the last day is kind of bad.
The last day is kinda bad for humans as well. Is it ironic that Diana's last name literally means "meat man" in German?
It's hilarious, I know.
I also offset: I give $1,000 a year to Vegan Outreach. The logic there is that there are now a dozen vegans being ethical on my behalf, and I paid to convert them. That's our compromise.
[Jacob: I'm not vegetarian, but I buy the argument about suffering-per-calorie and try to eat large animals that are humanely raised. Right now my desire to avoid causing chicken suffering is really conflicting with my desire to order Chick-fil-A after seeing this nonsense.]
There's a stereotype of rationalists that we're not in touch with our System 1, which I think is a strawman. A lot of the Center for Applied Rationality techniques are about listening to your System 1 and aligning all the parts of your mind together.
With that said, rationality researcher Keith Stanovich wrote: "[System 2] is more attuned to the person's needs as a coherent organism than is System 1, which is more directly tuned to the ancient reproductive goals of the subpersonal replicators." He basically says that System 1 does what's good for our genes, and System 2 knows what's good for us. So he says that when they clash we should let System 2 override our intuitions.
You think a lot about the goals of our subpersonal replicators. Do you agree with Stanovich on this?
I think it depends a lot on the domain. Most of my 30-year career has been in evolutionary psychology, studying the adaptive challenges and problems we faced in prehistory. And often, how those don't match what we face in our modern life.
If you're making financial investment decisions, prehistoric hunter-gatherers didn't really do that at all. They did certain forms of it, but they had no concept of compound interest. So in that domain, you probably shouldn't trust System 1 much at all. But if you're doing mate choice you probably should trust System 1 pretty strongly, except insofar as you've been ideologically indoctrinated to have sexual values that are contrary to your biological interests.
It's very domain-specific, and we should have a mental map of which domains System 1 works in, the domains in which we faced ancestral challenges that are analogous to modern challenges. That's really useful.
We hear about signaling a lot recently. Rationalists talk a lot about the pursuit of truth, but also about how everyone is signaling all the time. Do you see those as being fundamentally in tension?
I think it's all signaling all the way down. The question is what traits are you signaling and how, and what are the social norms around that. I think that everyone here does a lot of intelligence-and-rationality signaling, showing how well your System 2 works. You're also signaling open-mindedness. This is very different from standard SJW virtue signaling of caring about the oppressed.
Public culture decides which kinds of signaling are validated and which are discouraged. Thinking that rationality is opposed to signaling is a false dichotomy. It's all signaling, you just choose what kind you value.
I think human cognition works well enough that your intelligence, openness, curiosity, and epistemic hygiene can allow you to discover true and novel ideas that will also get the approval of other people who value truth. That's valid, and that's great.
[Jacob: Putanumonit is basically just me signaling my intelligence, rationality, and openness, and hoping that some bits of truth fall out in the process.]
Robin Hanson talks a lot about our deep desire to signal group loyalty, and he's saying that even people who pride themselves on being "non-conformists" are just playing to a different, narrower audience. According to the logic of sexual selection, should we expect women to be attracted to someone who boldly breaks convention or someone who signals loyalty to the woman's tribe?
It depends on what convention you break. If you're the real badass in your tribe and you have so much formidability that you can break social norms with impunity, that can be a way of signaling formidability. That might be a reason why adolescent girls are famously attracted to "bad boys" who don't care what the teachers think because they're the only ones who can get away with it.
At the intellectual level, signaling that you're an apostate, or that you have heterodox views, or that you're a contrarian is more of an IQ signal rather than a formidability signal. It can also signal the personality trait of openness, which is attractive to other highly open people. If you're an eccentric who's interested in other eccentrics, you would want to signal eccentricity rather than conformity.
A have a follow up to that, about the Intellectual Dark Web. There are two narratives around the IDW. Their own is that they are speaking honest truths that other people are afraid to say because of political correctness, and those people attack the IDW for the purpose of virtue signaling. The counter-narrative is that they're not really thinking hard about the truth, and just trying to piss off progressives.
Robin Hanson would say that once you see someone as your outgroup there's a strong temptation to succumb to your identity biases and show your tribal loyalty by pissing off the "enemy". Do you see the IDW having leftist media as an outgroup hurting their ability to pursue the truth?
I think some people who are non-PC clearly get a thrill out of pissing off Social Justice Warriors. And sometimes on Twitter, I do that, just because I fucking hate SJWs and they have given me a lot of grief over the years. Everyone in my field of evolutionary psychology has had their career handicapped in one way or another by the Leftist domination of academia, just in terms of getting grants, jobs, and publications in journals. So a lot of us love to fuck with those people to the extent that we can.
But I think that the better people in the Intellectual Dark Web, to the extent that it's a thing at all, what they're doing looks very tribal but I don't think it is. If you're really after the truth about human nature or society, you tend to adopt certain views that are diametrically opposed to certain kinds of progressive ideology. There's a coherence to progressive ideology that centers around the blank slate, egalitarianism over everything, and multiculturalism – it's a package. As soon as you break away from that package you start questioning many elements of it because it's so interwoven.
There's something I'm getting really worried about recently, I hope this will make sense.
In the early days of AI alignment research, people talked about Coherent Extrapolated Volition and figuring out the utility function that humans are (or would want to be) maximizing. But from an evolutionary perspective, this "utility function" just doesn't exist. What we're programmed to maximize is inclusive genetic fitness, but we're not pursuing that explicitly.
All we have are desires and motivations that fall out of us executing our evolutionary adaptations given our current abilities, environment, etc. Nothing we care about is explicitly written down anywhere, including in our brains, and it's all contingent on the particular physical and social context we're in right now.
How worried does this make you about the prospect of friendly AI? Is it even coherent to imagine an AI with totally different abilities and environment having stable "human" values?
As a psychologist, I don't think it's very useful to talk about human motives, preferences, and decisions as being driven by some master utility function. You can describe certain kinds of behavior using utility functions if you're an economist, but that's not how human motivations actually work. It's not how evolution would have designed things.
I just visited MIRI six months ago – they still work as if we can solve the problem of AI risk by giving the artificial general intelligence the right utility function and it will forever afterward behave in a way that's aligned with us. I worked a lot in machine learning 20-25 years ago, ao I'm pretty familiar with that. I can't imagine any way you can actually implement a master utility function in an AI that's truly general. And I can't imagine that you can lock in an all-purpose, safe, helpful utility function in a way that protects against mutation, drift, learning, and damage. I think it's fun to think about, but I don't think AI safety will make a lot of progress in that framework.
If MIRI-style research can't result in a benevolent singleton or friendly AGI, what kind of research can be helpful? Or are we just screwed?
I wrote a paper a year ago about the risks of not just the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, SETI, but also METI, the effort to message aliens. There's a guy in Russia who's been using the Yevpatoria radio telescope to send megawatt messages to nearby candidates for extraterrestrial civilizations. In the first draft of the paper, I said that the UN should have the equivalent of SEAL Team Six to take out anybody who's doing that. The potential risks of doing that are so high it's insane. Nobody should be allowed to do that without total planetary consensus.
Part of me thinks that there should be a SEAL Team Six with respect to AGI safety, that if anybody gets close to AGI it should be shut down with extreme prejudice. We should not rely on some informal social norm like the Asilomar principles. That won't work, because China won't do that. And then the question is what happens when a Chinese group in 15 years gets close to AGI and their incentives are such that they don't care about the Asilomar principles.
The problem is serious enough that we should have the same institutions we have to address nuclear proliferation. Not just symposia at AI conferences encouraging everyone to be careful, I don't think that's enough.
June 13, 2018 June 20, 2018 AI, effective altruism, Geoffrey Miller, rationality
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Pattern says:
"There's psychological research coming out that says that if you adopt utilitarian views on moral dilemmas like the trolley problem, most people feel moral disgust towards you."
Have these been replicated?
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Concession Stand
By Hendrik Hertzberg
The New Yorker, November 11, 1996 P. 35
Talk story about concession speeches by presidential candidates. At least since 1952, the elements of the concession speech have been tolerably consistent. They include, in roughly this order: (1) a manful, rueful acknowledgement of the pain of defeat; (2) a message of congratulations to the victor...; (3) a pledge, sometimes made over the shouted protests of the audience, to close ranks behind the people's choice; (4) thank-yous to wife, children, and supporters; (5) praise for the political system; (6) an assertion that what unites us as Americans is more important than what divides us; (7) a pledge to carry on the cause to which the campaign was allegedly devoted; and (8) a bit of concluding graciousness and/ or ruefulness, preferably including a quotation, preferably from Lincoln... Concession speeches have been in decline over the past couple of generations. The most beautiful loser was Adlai E. Stevenson. His 1952 concession to Dwight D. Eisenhower was perfection itself. It began with a nobly phrased Element 3... After similarly graceful Elements 4, 5, and 6... Stevenson departed from his prepared text to conclude with an Element 8 [an anecdote about Lincoln: "He said that he felt like a little boy who had stubbed his toe in the dark. He said that he was too old to cry but it hurt too much to laugh."] that became an instant classic and has been imitated many times since... The concession that Stevenson delivered the second time Ike beat him, in 1956, was almost as good. It featured a wonderfully eloquent Element 5... Things go downhill from then on. Richard Nixon's sentiments in 1960 were like Adlai's, but the writing needed work. In 1964, Barry Goldwater stressed Element 7... Hubert Humphrey, in his 1968 concession to Nixon, petered out to a wan Element 8... Jimmy Carter's 1980 concession was notable for the fact that he made the mistake of delivering it hours before the polls closed out West... George Bush was subdued and gracious. His best line, in Element 8, echoed the Master. Stevenson, '56: "If I lost an election, I won a grandchild." Bush, '92: "I plan to get very active in the grandfather business." The concession highlight of 1992, however, came from the 3rd candidate... After his speech, Ross Perot switched to body English. Cackling wildly, he swept his wife into his arms and danced to a deafening recording of Patsy Cline's "Crazy."
Published in the print edition of the November 11, 1996, issue.
Hendrik Hertzberg is a senior editor and staff writer at The New Yorker. He regularly blogs about politics.


text:
Missing Wikileaks Associates' Belongings Discovered In Waters Near Norway
More than three weeks after Wikileaks associate Arjen Kamphuis disappeared without a trace, a local fisherman has discovered his belongings in a sea in northern Norway, prompting local police to search the water and land around where the items were found, the Daily Mail reports.
Arjen Kamphuis, 47, had been missing since leaving his hotel in the northern Norwegian town of Bodo on Aug. 20. He was staying there while on holiday, but the time had come for him to travel back to his home country, the Netherlands. He had been expected to fly home to Amsterdam on Aug. 22, but Kamphuis didn't show up for his flight, which was set to depart from the Norwegian town of Trondheim, located more than 700 kilometers south of Bodo.
Kamphuis's belongings were found in the waters of a fjord near Kvaenflaget, some 30 miles east of Bodo. Police have so far refused to comment beyond confirming that the items belonged to Kamphuis.
"Due to the ongoing investigation the police do not at this time wish to release any information about which specific items that have been found," Norwegian police said in a statement on Wednesday.
An avid hiker, Kamphuis disappeared after leaving his hotel in Bodø, Norway on August 20, as we reported earlier this month. He was set to fly out of Trondheim on August 22 after a 10-hour train ride. Wikileaks said that it's possible Kamphuis disappeared on the 10-hour train ride between Bodo and Trondheim, though authorities have claimed he had taken a train from Bodo to the town of Rognan on the day he disappeared.
"The train between the two takes (approximately) 10 hours, suggesting he disappeared either in Bodo, Trondheim or on the train," the organization said.
Judging by a recent tweet claiming that Kamphuis' cellphone was used more than ten days after his disappearance, Wikileaks remains hopeful that Kamphuis will eventually be found alive. Though news of the cellphone's activation has only added to the mystery. His phone was purportedly used near the southwestern city of Stavanger on Aug. 30, which is roughly 1,600 km from Bodo. But authorities could not confirm if it was Kamphuis who had switched the phone on. Both German and Dutch SIM cards had been used by the phone on that day.
So far, authorities have given no indication that foul play was involved in his disappearance.
While the police report of finding of @ArjenKamphuis belongings in a Fjord in northern Norway, 30kms from where he was last seen in Bodø on August 20 are grim, police say his phone was activated by someone for 20 minutes, 1,500kms away in southern Norway (Stavanger) on August 30.
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) September 12, 2018
Police are reportedly examining three theories to explain Kamphuis' disappearance: a voluntary disappearance including a possible suicide, an accident, or a crime.
"We haven't made enough progress in the case to be able to eliminate or confirm any of these three theories," said inspector Bjarte Walla."We are keeping all options open."
However, a friend of Kamphuis has emphasized that his involvement with Wikileaks was "minimal" and that he really only helped the organization with information security to secure its valuable trove of leaked documents. The same friend added that "there were absolutely no signs that he wanted to disappear," claiming instead that he "wanted to live a private life."
Still, speculation over what's happened to the Assange associate has ranged from "going dark" for a clandestine Wikileaks mission to being killed by agents of the "five eyes" intelligence alliance.
Posters bearing Kamphuis's likeness have begun circulating online:


Can you make a GRACoL Proof using your RGB print driver?
Well… yes. I loaded up my trusty Epson 4800 with some CMG Sureproof Media and launched i1Profiler. I'm on a mac running OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard), and was worried about getting my profile targets to print out of Photoshop. Instead, I printed directly from i1Profiler.
I am lucky to have an iSis XL, so I just created a target with the highest patch-count, that would fit on one page: 2976. I printed, measured, and built my profile… done.
You can also download this same file from www.idealliance.org if you like. In Photoshop, I opened the file, assigned the standard GRACol profile to it, and then printed using the output profile I made (absolute colorimetric of course!). No paper tint on this stock as it is dead-on the GRACoL white point out of the box.
I then switched to "Printer QA" in i1Profiler. I measured the printed wedge against the GRACoL standard and voila! The QA report says I'm good!
For kicks, I went ahead and iterated the profile by feeding the GRACoL lab values back through it. It tightened up a bit.
Making the profile was easy and knowing the right settings to use in Photoshop was very important. Plus, it was a big help having a clear objective and knowing how to get there. Basically, I did all of this through i1Profiler. You can to.
Last note: This is RGB people! That means that i1Profiler did this through a black box! Direct to CMYK (or CMYK+) should be even sweeter. Mmmmmm……..


Invite your potential client or partner to a cup of hot coffee or tea. With our hectic days, it's hard to resist a chance to sit down and relax. This personalized mailer features their company logo in the middle of the mug, and makes anyone want to sit down and enjoy whatever is inside.


A dark violet-brown hardwood from a Brazilian tree, Dalbergia cearensis. The rare and expensive wood is figured with golden markings. Kingwood has a fine texture and polishes to a high gloss. It is used for veneer and inlaying and was popular among French cabinetmakers.
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You are here: Home / Awards Granted / ASL Spelling Bee
ASL Spelling Bee
March 30, 2016 By Friends of OSD
Kathleen Davis's request for up to $605.31 for launching a Spelling Bee competition at OSD was funded. This project is intended to develop bilingual learning (ASL and English), improve independent reading and research skills, instill school spirit and a sense of community and demonstrate the value placed on ASL as a language.
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Gayle Robertson requested $2,500 to create a start-up collection of e-books for student and teacher use in distance learning. That amount was approved. This … [Read More...]
The FOSD mission and purpose is to support the enhancement of programs and services for students at OSD beyond the State's funding responsibility*. The FOSD Board has identified four initiatives for which awards may be granted: education, cultural activities, innovative programs and minor capital improvement projects.
Founded by a small group of dedicated people in 2006, FOSD was established to support the students at the Oregon School for the Deaf (OSD). From that beginning, Friends of OSD has grown into a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with an all-volunteer Board of Directors. In 2014, FOSD created an Advisory Council of 15 members.
The Friends of OSD Strategic Plan provides direction as the nonprofit continues to expand. We are proud to say that 95% of all grants and donations go directly to programs that benefit students.
*The State of Oregon is responsible for operating programs and services for the students at the Oregon School for the Deaf (OSD). Federal case law establishes the expectation that special education services provided by a school be reasonably designed to ensure students make progress. Friends of OSD will not replace or supplant the responsibilities of the state.
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"Salvation has become secondary in the hearts of many, while what they want to receive from God is the primary. Being in Christ should be the greatest joy of any Christian," says Christ Apostolic Church Worldwide Youth Officer, Pastor Samson O. Gbuyiro.
He stated further that being born again is the greatest miracle that can happen to any man, saying that it is a thing of joy to be born again because it is a liberty.
Pastor Gbuyiro noted this while anchoring a Bible Study session on the theme "New Beginning in Christ" on Tuesday January 15, 2019.
The Youth Officer said in as much as it is very important for someone to be a church member, it is far important to be in Christ, adding that it is possible to be in church without being in Christ.
He added that:"We have not satisfied God when we depend on God alone, but we have to move to the level where God will depend or trust us like Job. If you are in Christ, people must be able to observe something special about you to the glory of God."


Women's meaningful involvement in civil resistance movements has shown to be a game changer. Examining movements in Argentina, Chile, Egypt, Liberia, the Palestinian territories, Poland, Syria, and the United States, this report advocates for the full engagement of women and their networks in nonviolent movements for a simple and compelling reason—because greater female inclusion leads to more sustainable peace.
Nonviolent movements are nearly twice as successful as violent ones in achieving their objectives.
Mass participation is part of what makes nonviolent movements so successful, particularly—and importantly—when women are included.
Women have historically been denied full access to political spaces usually reserved for, or dominated by, men.
All over the world, women have persisted in the face of inequalities to assume roles as strategists, organizers, and active participants in various nonviolent campaigns and movements.
Argentina, Chile, Egypt, Liberia, the Palestinian territories, Poland, Syria, and the United States offer pertinent examples of women capitalizing on these inequalities to change the trajectory of nonviolent movements.
Research shows that sustainable peace is more likely if women are meaningfully involved, but more quantitative data on the roles women play in nonviolent campaigns is needed.
Scholars, policymakers, and practitioners all have a role to play in advancing the understanding of and support for women's meaningful participation in nonviolent movements.
This Special Report examines the influence of gender dynamics on women's contributions to nonviolent movements, and how women capitalize on these dynamics to create special opportunities for participation and tactical innovation. Funded by the United States Institute of Peace, the report is based on research and interviews, complemented by the author's expertise in the intersection of gender and political instability.
Marie A. Principe is currently the program associate for the Women in Public Service Project and Global Women's Leadership Initiative at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Her research focuses on the ways conflict and political instability affect women, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa.
Senior Training Officer Ted Feifer again provided two days of training in communication, negotiation and the role of the third party in cross-cultural and emotional situations to 18 participants in a month-long course conducted by the Spanish non-governmental organization Helsinki Espana.
Recent years have given rise to an intense debate about appropriate roles for Latin America's armed forces: Should they remain the guardians of political stability, or should they restrict themselves mainly to external defense?


While AC provides a wide range of customisation options for your game's interaction system, the more ambitious developers out there may find that they want something completely unique. Therefore, this version adds a new Custom Script option for both the Interaction method and Hotspot detection method settings, which allow you to control both using script commands only. Coding knowledge is obviously required, but the new Section 12.12 covers the principles involved - and the included Custom Interaction System Example script demonstrates how your own interface can be written.
A lot of requests have been made for integration with Unity 5.6's new Video Player component, though @Alverik's custom Action has helped tide them over in the meantime. This upgrade enhances the existing Engine: Play movie Action with the ability to play/stop/resume Video Players, and the new Remember Video Player component allows you to store a VP's state in save games.
In a case of 'Unity best practice', Rigidbody-based 3D characters now move by having forces applied - as opposed to having their positions set explicitly. This allows for smoother movment, however be aware that you will need to enable Rigidbody Interpolation for this to be noticeable. You may also find that NPCs and other Rigidbodys can be 'pushed' by the player more easily - but this can be combated by increasing their Mass value (which won't affect their own walking speeds). This feature can be disabled in the character Inspector, however.
Changed: The "Audio source" field in the "Engine: Play movie" Action has renamed to "'Sound' to play audio"
Fixed: Minor display issue with Menus when "Position type" is set to "On Hotspot"
Fixed: Incorrect time showing in save game labels if "Time display" is set to "Time And Date"
Added: "OnUpdateDragLine" custom event - use to draw a custom joystick on-screen when dragging a Player instead of the default "drag line"
Fixed: Issue with volumes of AudioSources with "Sound type" set to "Other"
Awesomeness! Can't wait to test some of these stuff out! (but right now I'm off to bed, lol. But tomorrow for sure ).
Good stuff. That video player seems like a good incentive to upgrade to 5.6. Has this issue been fixed by Unity though?
I think it may be related to the use of a Rigid Body in the scene, and possibly interpolation is what causes it - this is what I read on the Unity forums at least.
Whoooooooah! Downloading now! This looks rad, @ChrisIceBox!!
Argh, don't give me new features to play with - I'm trying to finish a game here!
@Deckard_89: The bug tracker report suggests its fixed in Unity 2017. Though AC v1.57 fixes the compilation issues for that Unity version, support won't be official until it's out of beta.
This caused problems because mouse wheel scroll called menu re-position and shift even if there is nothing to shift. What I wanted are this 2 situations, which is position of elements depending if they require scroll or not. As in if there are more then 5 options available to show buttons, if not to hide them and re-position them to the left. On mouse wheel scroll this caused to text to move as if buttons for shifting were there.
@Nick: There's nothing in AC's code by the name of "ConversationScroll". What are you referring to, exactly - your own script? Please provide details in a new thread - this thread is not intended for technical issues.
I was tired and I messed up, the problem came from a script I used to extend AC conversation and I copied the header commented disclaimer and I thought it was a native AC script. Ops.
I am sorry. I will try to post next time only the next day when my head is cool and I am rested. I am extending some AC functionality while game developing, but in a way that allows me to upgrade to the latest version and still have everything working.
Hi all, I just updated AC to 1.57. Not sure if this is a bug, I've got video player hooked up on one action list that's set to run in the background. I also created another action list containing Engine: Wait and that's also set to run in the background. I want an action to run a few seconds after the first action list runs, without blocking gameplay. I'm calling the second action list from the first as per suggestions here and on other threads. The second action list does not run past the Engine: Wait node when both action lists are set to run in the background but it does run through when it is set to pause gameplay. As far as I can see, that should not be the case. Could this be a bug in AC 1.57 or there's something else I should be aware of?
@DADA_universe: What are your ActionLists, exactly? Please post screenshots of them showing the way you're attempting this in a new thread in Technical Q&A - this is not the best thread for debugging such issues.
Know that you can use the ActionList: Run in parallel Action to have two chains of Actions or ActionLists run simultaneously, and you can check List active ActionLists in Game window? at the bottom of the Settings Manager to debug exactly what's running at any time.
Thanks Chris, running ActionList: Run in parallel does not solve it. I'll create a post in Technical Q&A with screen shots.
Quick question: does anyone still make use of any 2D Moving and turning option other than Unity 2D? They were originally added before Unity gave us a proper 2D mode, and shouldn't be necessary any longer.
@dude: I'm referring to the Moving and turning field in the Settings Manager - not the actual ability to move and turn.
ups, sry. Using Unity 2d with 2d cam.


I need to find a room to rent for a month by NUMC from 9/30-10/28. I'm just doing one rotation in NY and need a room to rent. I don't need it to be furnished. Just a closet and my own room will do. Give me a call at 305-607-4243 or email me at dannylima24@gmail.com.


When it comes to humor, we tend to shy away from many more serious topics. But comedians for years have been breaking those barriers, and some have even shown that you can joke about serious hings in a way that isn't offensive. One topic that many people, including myself, would have never thought could ever fit into humor is mental health. Many comedians have been using their own experiences with mental health as a way to shed some light on it and make fun of themselves as well. One comedian that did this was Pete Davidson on SNL.
In this particular comedy sketch, he talks about Kevin Love who had posted about his mental health issues. During his whole sketch, Pete tried to shed some light on mental illness as a whole, and did it in a way that is respectful and tasteful. He also has another video on SNL of him talking about how he was recently diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, and did a skit on that as well. Pete Davidson is known for his comedy on SNL, and is also known for his comedy skits regarding mental health. he makes fun of himself while also letting the audience know hat it is still a problem that needs to be taken seriously. But what makes these sketches so funny is the fact that he's able to take a serious situation and laugh about it which is something many people forget.
Another comedian who touches on this issue of mental illness is John Oliver on his Last Week Tonight show.
In this sketch he talks about how people don't want to talk about mental illness, and when they do they get it wrong. He first brings up the issue about how every time there's a school shooting they blame mental illness on it. He also brings up the point that people assume that mental illness consists of "nut jobs" as was shown in the Dr. Phil clip he showed, when in reality most people with mental health issues are not nut jobs and are actually pretty normal. He brings up serious issues and sheds light on them and throws jokes in here and there, making the weight of this topic much lighter. He takes a serious topic and makes it tastefully funny while also spreading awareness which I really liked.
In general, people don't like to joke about anything that may wind up being offensive, but both of these videos prove that you can spread awareness on serious topics like mental health, and still be funny and make jokes about it. Many people with mental illness, including myself, just want to get through every day in one piece. An to see people actually care, or people with mental illness shedding light on it and are able to make fun of themselves about it makes me feel better. i lets me know that not only am i not alone, but that it's ok to laugh about it. Pete Davidson even mentions i the video that he likes that he's able to joke and talk about his mental illness, and doing so helps him cope with it himself and he doesn't have to hide it anymore. So I say, as long as it's tasteful, joke away! There's no harm in laughing at yourself sometimes.


But Roman's title defenses aren't just exclusive to Raw, as he recently told GufiNews.com that he'll be defending the title when he faces off against Triple H in Abu Dhabi on Friday.
Bo Dallas of The Miztourage wants to put the extraordinary Finn Bálor to the test tonight, live on Raw.
- Below is video from last night's "Straight To The Source" premiere on the WWE Network with Corey Graves interviewing WWE Intercontinental Champion Roman Reigns.
Opinion: I'm not sure how strong things are going to go over the next few weeks, though hopefully the build towards the next big show (I'm assuming the Christmas episode of "Monday Night Raw"?) hasn't been bad.
Nia Jax has a question for Enzo Amore that leaves The Certified G at a loss for words.
If they regain the belts then all Shield members will be wearing gold as long as Reigns doesn't lose his Intercontinental title.
As Mickie James, Bayley, Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville look on from ringside, Sasha Banks battles Paige one-on-one. Metalik worked three WWE Main Event tapings in November but his last 205 Live appearance came on Halloween, which was a Fatal 4 Way with Tony Nese, Ariya Daivari and Mustafa Ali, won by Ali.
How will Kane and Braun Strowman settle the score?
The Empress of Tomorrow takes on the unpredictable Alicia Fox. A Shield vs. Revival feud would be ideal, especially if it's for the Shield's Raw Tag Team Titles.
What's Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated (NASDAQ:VRTX) Upside After This Short Interest Decrease?


We are honored to have made the Top Five in the Oklahoman's Readers' Choice Awards 2018 in two categories: Best Employer over 500 and Best Physical Therapy Company. If you think Valir is the best, please vote for us to WIN! Click on this link www.oklahoman.com/readerschoice and chose Best Local to vote for Valir. Remember to vote for both Physical Therapy and Best Employer over 500! Voting ends July 2nd.


When they are dead, heroes and heroines cannot let you down. When they are contemporary, still writing and thinking, they can cause the most frightful disillusionment. I still remember my indignation when, more than 20 years ago, I read the last chapter of EP Thompson's book on the Black Acts of the 18th century, Whigs and Hunters. The chapter, which subscribed to the idea of an eternal and consistent rule of law independent of economic circumstances, seemed to me an appalling betrayal of the Marxist clarity of Thompson's great history book, The Making of the English Working Class.
I recall something very similar much later when I started, but could not finish, Doris Lessing's novel The Good Terrorist, published at the height of Thatcherism during the Great Miners' Strike. This novel seemed to me nothing more nor less than reactionary propaganda. How could such a ferocious assault on left wing commitment have been mounted by such a committed left winger? Doris Lessing's early Martha Quest novels are full of life and energy and a passion to change the world. She became a Communist in the most unlikely circumstances - in Rhodesia during the war - and, against all the odds, lived her life according to her principles.
The Golden Notebook, which was started in the late 1950s and published in 1962, is one of the great novels of our time. Its central theme is the condescension of women, and the relationship of that condescension to the subordination of the majority of the human race. The Golden Notebook is often described as a 'women's book' and so of course it is. But it is a man's book too. The novel hardly ever pontificates, but more than anything else I have ever read it grapples with a secular sexual morality which makes it compulsive and compulsory reading for men. After taking part in a debate with Islamicists not long ago at a London college, I was rebuked by one of the women in the audience (they sat separately from the men, and wore veils). 'If there is no God,' she asked, 'how would we know what was right and wrong?' I was tempted to reply (but didn't) that for a bit of an answer to this impossible question, The Golden Notebook is a million times better than any religious work.
The novel throbs with a passion for liberation: liberation from masculine patronising, from puritanical commandments and enforced stereotypical nuclear families, from baptisms and weddings and all other superstitious ceremonial. Her demand for women's liberation had nothing of the feminine exclusivity of the separatist women's liberationists of the 1980s. When she wrote The Golden Notebook Doris Lessing's socialist commitment, however damaged by the behaviour of male socialists or by Stalinism, was still strong. The point in exposing the absurd ways in which men, including socialist men, treated women was to move forward to a new society in which both sexes could freely take part.
The sections in the book entitled the 'Red Notebook' cover the central character's membership of and disillusionment with the Communist Party before and after the 20th Congress of 1956 in which Nikita Khruschev denounced the crimes of Joseph Stalin, his predecessor as general secretary of the Russian Communist Party.
The Congress led to mass defection from Communist Parties all over the world. Among those who left the British CP were Edward Thompson and Doris Lessing who, at 37, was in her prime. Two passages from The Golden Notebook stand out in my memory. The first is a report by a member of a British teachers' delegation to Russia in the early 1950s when Stalin was still alive. At the end of his stay, the teacher reports, he was summoned to meet the general secretary, a plain simple man in a plain simple office smoking a pipe, asking plain simple questions about the state of affairs in Britain, and nodding wisely as the earnest teacher spilled out his plain simple opinions. The story was the most ludicrous fantasy. But the fantasy was shared, The Golden Notebook argues, by almost every such delegate in those times. When I read the passage I remembered the great Clydeside revolutionary Harry McShane telling me in some embarrassment about his visit to Russia as part of a delegation in 1931. 'I sat listening to the trams outside, and revelling in the fact that these were our trams, the people's trams.' It took Harry more than 20 years to discover that they had been 'just trams after all, trams just like everywhere else'.
The point about the fantasy was not simply that iconoclastic socialists demeaned themselves by dreaming up such fantasy and pretending it was true. There was another side to it - the great yearning among socialists for a place and time where rulers have no airs or graces and are, because of the democratic nature of the society they represent, quite normal, secular people whose only aim in government is to run the society as fairly as they can. This yearning comes out more clearly in another remarkable passage when the writer of the Red Notebook recalls her stint as a literary adviser to a Communist newspaper. She publishes an advertisement asking readers to send in their own fictional work. She is astounded by the flood of original material which pours into the offices and the accompanying letters in which the authors, almost all working class people, give vent to their literary ambitions, some political, some romantic, some crude, but all throbbing with desire for a world where such expression is natural and free.
The shock of the revelations at the 20th Congress runs through the novel. The Communists in it are angry and disillusioned at the way they have been hoaxed. But the rational arguments which inspired these people is there too. I did not read The Golden Notebook until 25 years after it was written, and for a time could not believe that its author was also responsible for The Good Terrorist. The shock of the comparison sent me scurrying back to find a book by Doris Lessing which corresponded as a turning point, as Edward Thompson's Whigs and Hunters had done. I think I found it, at least to some extent, in her 1973 novel The Summer Before the Dark, where a liberated woman starts to revel in the sentimental domesticity which Doris Lessing rejected and mocked in her early novels and lifestyle. After that, I was inclined to assume that hers was yet another dreary example of older people abandoning the ideas and zest of their youth and settling for the safe, comfortable and reactionary condescension they once exposed.
Such was the prejudice with which I embarked on her new autobiography, especially this second volume which covers the crucial period of her membership of the British Communist Party, the 20th Congress and the writing of The Golden Notebook.
Why? Her answer nowhere reflects that sympathy and concern for former Communists which is so central to The Golden Notebook. Her only answer is 'belief'. She explains: 'This (Communism) was a religious set of mind, identical with that of passionate religious True Believers...we inherited the mental framework of Christianity.' This is demonstrable drivel. Pretty well everyone who joined the Party at that time or any other were non-believers, secularists, humanists, people who rejected and argued passionately against religious superstition and a substitute for independent thought.
No one joined the Party from 'belief'. They joined because they were disgusted with the state of capitalist society, because they believed that capitalism had led the world into two world wars and would probably lead to a third, because they hated inequality and improverishment, because they were convinced that the world economy could and should be run on egalitatian lines, and above all because they realised that they could only win a new world by combining their resources with others to fight against the old one. They joined, in short, for rational reasons.
The fact that they supported a regime every bit as murderous and tyrannous as anything thrown up by private capitalism must, therefore, be explicable in rational terms. Chief among these was the fact that Stalinist Russia pretended to be socialist, that its economy seemed to be based on planning, not free enterprise, and that its foreign policy appeared to be implacably opposed to that of the free market US.
The facts, now accepted by almost everyone, that Russia was not socialist, that its planning was bureaucratic in the interests of its own ruling class, and that its foreign policy was as imperialist as that of the US, were stubbornly resisted by the Stalinists. The refusal to accept these facts, and a party structure founded on Stalin's Russia where all ideas and inspiration came from the top down and not in the other direction, led to an intellectual tyranny, an abject acceptance of everything which emerged from the Kremlin and its Communist Parties, and an atmosphere of collective lying which understandably still shocks Doris Lessing even though (or perhaps because) she was part of it.
'I have come to think,' she concludes, 'that there is something in the nature of Communism that breeds lies, makes people lie and twist facts.' She does not, cannot even begin to, justify that sentence. Communism is about the democratic control of the economy, need before greed, public interest before private interest, the pooling and conserving rather than the atomisation and waste of human and natural resources. How can such a concept by its nature 'make people lie'? It was not Communism nor socialism, but the betrayal of both, which led to people lying in and about Stalinist Russia. Once the essence of socialism, democratic control from below, was jettisoned, everything else, including straight talk and honest accounting, was jettisoned too.
Doris Lessing, of course, was not at all responsible for a single bloodbath. She had plenty of moral fervour left - she had not even started on The Golden Notebook, after all. Her acceptance of the blame for Stalin's crimes in such absurd terms is the measure not just of the depth of her disillusionment, but of the abandonment of the socialist zeal which started her off in the first place. The socialist baby was thrown out with the Stalinist bathwater. Like thousands of other former Communists she placed the blame not on the intellectual and political failures of the actual party they joined, but on the very idea of joining a socialist party at all. She indentified the chief cause of the failure of the Stalinist parties as the most essential element of socialist commitment, cooperating with others to establish a cooperative world.
Once the principle of collective activity, discussion and thought is abandoned, there is nothing left but individual initiative and whim. These desperate letters in 1957 and 1958 contain more clues than anything else about the decline in the power of Doris Lessing's writing. The abandonment of the ideas of her youth took a long time to complete. If anything, her initial doubts and disillusionment contributed to the wonders of The Golden Notebook. The real decline followed later, taking her, 'simmering' on her own, into all sorts of absurdities, weird cult religons, extra sensory perception, even a campaign to install nuclear shelters at the bottom of every garden. Again and again in this autobiography she reproaches herself for her Communist past, denounces all organised socialists as 'bigots and fanatics', lumps Trotsky in with Stalin and rejoices grotesquely (and quite inaccurately) that 'by the time I had finished The Golden Notebook, I had written my way out of the package'.
Can her autobiography then be chucked aside as yet another apology for the existing order from a former socialist who has grown into a petulant reactionary? No, it most certainly cannot. As I look back on the marks I made on this book I am suprised not at all by the number of 'Oh Nos' and other exclamations of irritation, but by continuous surprised delight at the flashes of the old Lessing intuition and fury. It is almost as though, as she forces herself to remember her socialist youth, as she summons up what kept her active and militant for so long, her former commitment comes back to inspire her.
She has been all round the houses but she has not gone down the drain. There is a lot of the old fire and passion left, and her story, as easy as ever to read, puts flesh and bones on the fictional characters in The Golden Notebook. We organised socialists may have a lot to say to her, but she has some advice for us too. In October 1956, at the height of the crisis of Stalinism, she wrote to Edward Thompson, 'Unless a communist party is a body of individuals each jealously guarding his or her independence of judgement, it must degenerate into a body of yes men.' And yes women too, of course, which Doris Lessing has never been.


text:
Predicting the next NFL players who could force contract standoffs
57dDan Graziano
How it started: First jobs in football for all 32 NFL head coaches
2dNFL Nation
Eagles agree to terms to re-sign RB Sproles
2hTim McManus
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3dMina Kimes
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Forecasting the next three NFL seasons: 25 predictions through 2022
5dDan Graziano
The NFL's best and worst offensive arsenals: Barnwell's 32-1 ranking
9dBill Barnwell
Fantasy football sleepers, busts, breakouts for 2019
18dFantasy staff
Berry: 100 facts for the 2019 fantasy football season
24dMatthew Berry
Rating the offseason for all 32 NFL teams: Why the Browns are on top
32dESPN.com
The surprise offseason standout for all 32 teams
33dNFL Nation
The NFL's 'off' season: Ranking the seven biggest whiffs this spring
45dKevin Seifert
Could Elliott end up in a Bell-like contract situation? (1:23)
The NFL Live crew weighs in on whether Ezekiel Elliott's contract situation will mirror Le'Veon Bell's impasse with the Steelers. (1:23)
Dan GrazianoESPN Staff Writer
New Jersey native and author of two published novels
What Le'Veon Bell did in 2018 was historic. And when someone does something historic, it's natural to wonder who will be the next to try it.
Sitting out an entire NFL season to make sure he reached free agency healthy and scored the kind of contract Bell believed he deserved was a gambit few saw coming, and it challenged many of the commonly held perceptions of an NFL player's individual power in the marketplace. In an economic structure that allows teams to delay long-term contracts well beyond the point at which players have earned them, Bell exerted the leverage he had (the withholding of services) to deny the Pittsburgh Steelers what they wanted.
This was a win for other players, if they were paying attention, because it proved to them (and to their teams) that it's possible for a player to make good on a threat to sit out if he doesn't get what he wants. The next time a player or his agent suggests that he might skip the season, we'll only have to go back to 2018 to find an example of one who did just that.
Le'Veon Bell's New Deal
Age: 27 | NFL experience: Entering sixth season
Contract details: Four years, $52.5 million, with $27 million guaranteed. Maximum value with incentives nearly $61 million.
• Gase: 'Ridiculous' to consider trading Bell
• Inside Bell's year in NFL exile
• Bell is a big risk at perfect time for Jets
With that in mind, Pittsburgh could have a similar problem on its hands in a couple of years with another star second-round pick. Standout wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster is entering his third NFL season and is vastly underpaid. He can't make an issue of it this year or next, because unless a player has put in four years' worth of service time, he has to report within 30 days of the start of the season or lose a year of credit toward free agency. But the Steelers and their fans certainly hope Smith-Schuster continues to play at a level that keeps his contract looking like a steal.
Now, every circumstance is different, and many players likely wouldn't want to subject themselves to the public heat Bell absorbed. We don't know this far out whether Smith-Schuster is the kind of guy who would make a major issue out of his rookie contract in its final years or chafe against a franchise tag as Bell did. Just Wednesday, Smith-Schuster made a point of announcing he didn't plan to make trouble. As one person I interviewed while researching this story pointed out, being a lifelong Steeler carries post-career financial benefits that Bell won't get to enjoy the way guys like Franco Harris do.
All of that said, the NFL's economic structure remains one in which great young players often are playing for far less than what the market would say they're worth. And as long as that's the case, some players and agents are going to try to see what they can do to get around it. We took a look at some players who could, over the next few years, be the next Le'Veon Bell and force a team's hand by sitting out. This is a partial list.
Jump to a player:
Clowney | Gordon | Byron Jones | Michael Thomas
Ngakoue | Smith-Schuster | Kamara
Jadeveon Clowney, OLB, Houston Texans
Pick: No. 1 in 2014
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For the most part, first-round picks don't fit into this category because they get paid so much up front. Clowney already has pocketed more than $34.5 million from his fully guaranteed four-year rookie contract and its fifth-year team option. This is his sixth season, and the Texans have elected to franchise him at the cost of $15.967 million. Assuming he has saved well and invested wisely, Clowney never has to work another day in his life.
Unlike a lot of the other guys on this list, he can afford to sit out the season if he doesn't want to play on the franchise tag. The problem is, Houston could franchise him again next year (an option that wasn't financially realistic for the Steelers with Bell, since they already had franchised him twice). So if he doesn't like the tag, Clowney's best hope is that the Texans do for him what the Kansas City Chiefs did for Dee Ford and the Seattle Seahawks did for Frank Clark: Trade him to a team that will give him the contract he wants. Clowney is really the only star player from the 2014 draft who hasn't yet scored a long-term deal, so we put him in here because his situation is front and center and could be an issue this summer.
Melvin Gordon, RB, Los Angeles Chargers
Pick: No. 15 in 2015
Gordon falls into the "underpaid" category because of his position. He has averaged $2.67 million a year on his four-year rookie deal and is scheduled to play this season on a $5.605 million team option. (The rookie wage scale doesn't do any favors for running backs or safeties picked outside of the top 10.) Gordon has averaged 1,457 scrimmage yards and 13 touchdowns a season over the past three years, and he obviously would have made much more than $5.6 million had he hit the free-agent market this offseason.
Byron Jones, CB, Dallas Cowboys
2019 NFL OFFSEASON COVERAGE
Catch up on the draft:
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• Kiper's grades » | McShay's best picks »
• Team-by-team analysis » | Takeaways »
Catch up on free agency:
• Biggest impact moves for all 32 teams »
• Winners and losers of free agency »
• Barnwell: Grades » | Lessons from FA »
More on the draft » | More on FA »
Jones' case is an odd one. He is playing cornerback for the Cowboys now, but his fifth-year-option salary for this season is the safety number of $6.26 million, as opposed to the corner number of $9.07 million. This is because Jones played the bulk of his third-season snaps at safety, and that's how they decide your position for purposes of the fifth-year option. (Cleveland's Damarious Randall, a safety who used to play cornerback, is in the opposite position, which helps his leverage in contract talks with the Browns.)
The Cowboys would like to extend Jones, and they likely will, after they address the Dak Prescott and Amari Cooper situations. But it hurts Jones that the starting point for negotiations (that is, his current salary) is lower than it would be if it reflected the position he currently plays.
Michael Thomas, WR, New Orleans Saints
First-rounders from 2016 such as Joey Bosa, Ezekiel Elliott and Jalen Ramsey could create contract-related messes for their teams in the coming years, but let's leave those guys out for now because they were picked very high and already have made a bunch of money.
EARLY LOOK AT THE 2020 NFL DRAFT
An early glimpse at the 2020 class' talent:
• McShay's way-too-early mock draft »
• Kiper's Big Board: The top 25 prospects »
• Meet the QBs » | Watch: The QB class »
• Every Top 25 team's best prospect »
• Tagovailoa early favorite to be No. 1 »
Thomas is in a group with a real gripe. Unlike the first three guys on this list, he was not a first-round pick, but rather a second-rounder in 2016. This means the Saints don't get a fifth-year option on him, and Thomas has only one year left on his rookie deal. No player in NFL history has caught more passes in his first three seasons than Thomas.
Julio Jones, Antonio Brown, DeAndre Hopkins and Mike Evans are the only players who have caught more passes than Thomas over the past three seasons.
Those guys make an average of $16 million per year. Thomas is scheduled to earn $1.148 million this year, and it's not even guaranteed. What would you do if you knew you were worth 14 times more than you're making? I'm guessing "show up for voluntary offseason workouts" isn't part of the answer, though Thomas has been doing just that. It would be a major shock if New Orleans didn't make Thomas a lucrative extension offer this summer. The question is whether that offer will be good enough to convince Thomas to take the bird in the hand or whether he wants to bet on himself, wait it out and try free agency.
Atlanta Falcons linebacker Deion Jones ($1.07 million) and Chicago Bears center Cody Whitehair ($1.026 million) are two other 2016 second-rounders whose salaries fail to reflect their roles and production levels.
Yannick Ngakoue, DE, Jacksonville Jaguars
Ngakoue has 29.5 sacks in his three NFL seasons. Only nine players have more, and their average annual salary is $17.14 million per year. Ngakoue is scheduled to earn $2.025 million this year, which actually is more than his original rookie contract called for. Players picked in the third round or later who participate in at least 35 percent of their team's offensive or defensive snaps in two of their first three seasons get performance-based salary escalators in their fourth seasons, and Ngakoue fell into that category. (Note: Second-round picks do not get the escalators, providing yet another gripe for those in the Thomas/Jones/Whitehair group discussed above.) But even with the bump, Ngakoue is earning maybe one-ninth of his market value this year, unless the Jags extend him.
Other third-through-seventh-round picks from 2016 who fall into Ngakoue's category include (but are not limited to) Tennessee Titans safety Kevin Byard, Baltimore Ravens linebacker Matthew Judon, New England Patriots offensive lineman Joe Thuney and, of course, Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott. And don't forget about Indianapolis Colts backup quarterback Jacoby Brissett, who is a fascinating case unto himself. Franchising him isn't going to be an option as he sits behind Andrew Luck. What kind of deal could he get from the Colts if he really wanted to force their hands?
JuJu Smith-Schuster, WR, Pittsburgh Steelers
We mentioned Smith-Schuster earlier, but the year in which he could "pull a Le'Veon" would be 2022. This assumes he continues his high-level production and that the Steelers franchise him in 2021 and again in 2022, mirroring Bell's path. Smith-Schuster is in line to be the Steelers' No. 1 wide receiver with Antonio Brown gone. Even with Brown on the team last season, Smith-Schuster finished fifth in the league in receiving yards. He is scheduled to make nearly $850,000 this year and $1.04 million in 2020. And remember, as a second-rounder, he is not eligible for performance-based escalators. Another 1,400-yard season would make Smith-Schuster the league's best bargain. Except for maybe this next guy.
Alvin Kamara, RB, New Orleans Saints
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It's a weird quirk of the system that Kamara, the third pick of the 2017 third round, will end up making more on his rookie deal than Smith-Schuster, the 30th pick of that year's second round. Once the performance-based escalator kicks in, Kamara's 2020 salary will jump from $977,500 to more than $2 million. A nice bump, but nowhere close to the salaries of Todd Gurley II, Ezekiel Elliott or Julio Jones, the only players with more yards from scrimmage than Kamara over the past two seasons. (Gurley is the only player who has scored more touchdowns.) Even with Elliott on his rookie deal, that trio averages $11.6 million a year. Kamara will average maybe $1.5 million over the next two years. Just like Smith-Schuster and anyone else drafted in 2017, Kamara has to wait until after this season to negotiate a new contract. If the Saints can't get him extended next offseason, you wonder if Kamara decides to create a problem.
Other third-through-seventh-round picks from 2017 who could fall into Kamara's category include Steelers running back James Conner, Bears safety Eddie Jackson, Bears running back Tarik Cohen and San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle. You could even add Denver Broncos running back Phillip Lindsay to this particular list of names to watch, as he was undrafted in 2018 and rushed for more than 1,000 yards as a rookie. Undrafted players only sign three-year deals, so Lindsay's contract runs out at the same time as those picked after the first round in 2017. If he goes over 1,000 again in Year 2 ... who knows?


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text:
package com.wo2b.xxx.webapp.manager.user;

/**
 * 用户角色信息
 */
public class Role implements java.io.Serializable
{

	private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

	/**
	 * 普通用户, 默认
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	private int id;
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	private String name;
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		return this.id;
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	public void setId(int id)
	{
		this.id = id;
	}

	public String getRole()
	{
		return this.role;
	}

	public void setRole(String role)
	{
		this.role = role;
	}

	public String getName()
	{
		return this.name;
	}

	public void setName(String name)
	{
		this.name = name;
	}

	public String getRemark()
	{
		return this.remark;
	}

	public void setRemark(String remark)
	{
		this.remark = remark;
	}

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub