DanPlaza

The Paris Agreement

It's really annoying having to deal with problems on top of solutions. Specially when who causes that is somewhat out of your reach. When people near those persons can't make them do the right thing.

Which companies think it's good for business supporting something the vast majority of the world believe to be bad for us? Which other companies would do business with them?

How does money laundering work?

It’s unbelievable how legislation takes so long to react to a problem that is obvious to society. Perhaps, the main issue are the methods used to collect evidence, and how to balance privacy and safety. Wouldn’t it be nice if technology could solve this?

It is very hard for people to have privacy while preventing criminals from hiding their activities. On the other hand, governments benefit from the cash flow that comes from those activities, and at the same time they don’t want it there (well, as long as officials are not in on it.) The great challenge, nowadays, is to find creative ways to identify criminals without invading people’s privacy.

Technology might hold the answer. The problem with the invasion of privacy is the use humans make of anyone’s information and that such information might be stored in a place where others can reach it. Sometimes people are afraid to show secrets, sometimes they just want privacy.

Either way, the advancement of AI can help, in a very large extent, address those issues. Availability of information is still going to increase in the future. A Deep Learning machine can go through all the information and identify patterns that are consistent with criminal activities and money laundering. Of course, it would be necessary to be constantly improving it, not only in terms of sophistication, but as well in terms of security, integrity, and confidentiality.

Think about the argument of the series Person of Interest. A machine feeds the characters the Social Security Number of people related to a terror attack, they may be victims or perpetrators. Well, in this case it would work very similarly, but more advanced, the machine could give one or more persons that are possibly related to criminal activities and in which way they are associated to the crime(s).

With this information, intelligence agencies can use their resources more efficiently to find criminals, they could verify the information given by the machine and catch them more elegantly. Criminals won’t be able to know if there’s an investigation going on them because there won’t be until the machine provides suspects.

Via Flickr: www.instagram.com/p/BNKF5InhYzP/

The History of Tea

It’s very likely that even if I drink a lot more coffee than tea, my love for tea is several times greater.

It has a culture that’s way more deep than coffee’s and I appreciate it.

The World If... drugs become legal

It's the right approach. Unbelievably, conservative politicians love wasting money on this instead of earning from it.

Maybe it's not so unbelievable if you realize that it's the system that primarily feeds private prisons in the US.

But what is it to the rest of the world? Sustaining criminal organizations? Government contracts for supplies for the war on drugs?

The budget is better spent on rehabilitation and treatments for users, as well as educational campaigns on the effects of drug usage and how to use them responsibly.

French Elections: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

People from every place on Earth who cares a little about this planet should listen to this and share. French people as tired and sick as they may be about their situation should do their part on preventing a greater disaster.

Populist leaders from every country have done their share to make things worse every time they get elected. No, things will not be just a little different. If you do not sympathize with any of the other candidates, you should prevent an idiot to win the presidency.

Do not stop there, be serious and convince as many people as you can, that people like Marine Le Pen must be stopped from sending, not just France, but pretty much the whole World to hell.

Simon Anholt: Who would the rest of the world vote for in your country's election?

This talk reflects extensively the way I see the world these days. There's a shared responsibility that politicians avoid. What they do in their own countries affects the whole world, and it is very obvious.

Still, nationalist agendas take presence and are celebrated by many, as if the demise of others in favor of our wellbeing results in benefits... Don't think so? See what happens after a war.

There's not enough cohesion among progressive, pro-globalization citizens around the world (excluding politicians) to spread this message clearly to get the attention it deserves, and there should. I, myself, would like to find that community if it exists.

Via Flickr: Denali, Alaska

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If you’re sensitive do not watch this (Strong violence)

To me, this shows passion and the quest for a place to belong.

I can only imagine the desensitivity they achieve by doing this. It must require more than the disposition to go and face the pain, but the comprehension of the feeling and how to manage it. You should see that their pay is not much. What they do comes from the satisfaction of doing it, whether it is for the appreciation of the audience, the pleasure of causing pain, the pleasure of receiving pain, or the adrenaline rush, it comes down to something human above the material.

There are still a lot of primal responses in us, humans, and the fact that a crowd of people move to see this show each year, says that we want to keep them. Perhaps we’re not secure enough to let this go, but seeing people beat one another like this, causing this type of graphical damage, kind of says something about some repressed emotions. Living the fantasy through others.

Nice and Creepy

Lanercost Priory, Cumbria By Malcolm Cooper

I adore this woman. Her beautiful beliefs, her consistent statements have inspired me from the moment I got to know her art. Unknowingly, I had already been influenced by the power of performance artists, but with her is different. I find myself seeing her as this strong role model to be human and to be a creator.

Zeynep Tufekci: Machine intelligence makes human morals more important

Jimmy Fallon, Metallica & The Roots Sing “Enter Sandman”

Multilevel Marketing: They are PYRAMID SCHEMES!!!

I don’t know how long is going to take to take them down, but at some point we are going to look at this like the Mafia and say: “It was obvious they existed, why didn’t we do anything sooner?!”