Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (Arabic: محمد بن سلمان آل سعود, romanized: Muḥammad bin Salmān ʾĀl Su‘ūd; born 31 August 1985), colloquially known by his initials MBS or MbS, is Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia. He is also the chairman of the Council of Economic and Development Affairs and the chairman of the Council of Political and Security Affairs. He is considered the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, being deemed as such even before his appointment as prime minister in 2022. He was minister of defense from 2015 to 2022. He is the seventh son of King Salman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_bin_Salman

Lester Lawrence "Larry" Lessig III (born June 3, 1961) is an American academic, attorney, and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University,[1] and is a member of the Illinois Bar. Lessig is a candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination for President of the United States in the 2016 U.S. presidential election (Presidential Candidates 2016). Lessig is a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on Copy Right, trademark, and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications. In 2001, he founded Creative Commons, a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon and to share legally. Prior to his most recent appointment at Harvard, he was a professor of law at Stanford Law School, where he founded the Center for Internet and Society, and at the University of Chicago. He is a former board member of the Free Software Foundation; Software Freedom Law Center; the Washington, D.C. lobbying groups Public Knowledge and Free Press; and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig (more)

Top MIT officials knew of Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to Media Lab, e-mails show. According to e-mails that circulated in 2014 and 2015 among university officials, at least two top MIT fund-raisers, along with a finance department administrator, were aware of Epstein’s involvement in the Media Lab and knew that his donations were to be treated as anonymous in the university’s donor tracking system. (more)

Larry Lessig: On Joi and MIT. A couple of weeks ago, I signed a petition (the site has since been taken down, but you can see it at archive.org) expressing my support for Joi Ito. Not unexpectedly, that signing produced anger and outrage among many, and among some of my friends. I had wanted, in the spirit of the Net, to respond and explain then. I was asked by Joi’s friends not to. Yesterday’s events terminate that injunction. (more)

Ethan Zuckerman: On me, and the Media Lab. A week ago last Friday, I spoke to Joi Ito about the release of documents that implicate Media Lab co-founder Marvin Minsky in Jeffrey Epstein’s horrific crimes. Joi told me that evening that the Media Lab’s ties to Epstein went much deeper, and included a business relationship between Joi and Epstein, investments in companies Joi’s VC fund was supporting, gifts and visits by Epstein to the Media Lab and by Joi to Epstein’s properties (more)

Head of MIT Media Lab faces crisis that tears at lab he helped elevate. Last week, Joi Ito acknowledged that he had extensive personal and professional ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who committed suicide in prison this month while facing federal charges of sex trafficking of underaged girls. (more)

Why MIT Media Lab thought it was doing right by secretly accepting Jeffrey Epstein’s money. What on earth were they thinking? On Sunday, we got a partial answer via an essay by Larry Lessig. (2019-09-08-LessigOnJoiAndMit) (more)

Justin Peters: The Moral Rot of the MIT Media Lab. The Lab’s leaders weren’t averse to making the world a better place, just as long as the sponsors got what they wanted in the process. (more)

Jorge Arango interviews Dorian Taylor on Christopher Alexander. And I wrote something a while back when I was sort of thinking about like these 15 properties — there are 15 of them — from the perspective of information theory, like they kind of like cluster into three categories. And of course, I’m going to categorize the categories here. One of them is like, it generates information. The other one, it compresses. And then the other one kind of like de-noises, I think? (Nature of Order) (more)

Joseph F. Kahn (born August 19, 1964) is an American journalist who currently (since Apr'2022) serves as executive editor of The New York Times... In 2016, Dean Baquet appointed him as managing editor for the Times, where in time he was recognized as Baquet's likely successor as executive editor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kahn_(journalist)

Doubling down at the Times. Dean Baquet’s departure as executive editor of the New York Times has been one of the worst-kept secrets in media. Baquet turned sixty-five in September—“the traditional age when executive editors at the Times step down,” the paper notes in its own coverage—and, ever since, he has been notably open about his impending exit. (more)

Thomas Bryant Cotton (born May 13, 1977) is an American politician, attorney, and former military officer serving as the junior United States senator from Arkansas since 2015. A member of the Republican Party, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2013 to 2015. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Cotton

Dean P. Baquet[1] (/bæˈkeɪ/;[2] born September 21, 1956[3]) is an American journalist. He served as the editor-in-chief of The New York Times from May 2014 to June 2022.[4] Between 2011 and 2014 Baquet was managing editor under the previous executive editor Jill Abramson.[5] He is the first Black person to have been executive editor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Baquet (more)

An op-ed piece is a short newspaper column that represents the strong, informed, and focused opinion of a writer on an issue of relevance to a targeted audience. It is a written prose piece which expresses the opinion of an author or entity with no affiliation with the publication's editorial board.[1] The term is short for "opposite the editorial page",[2] referring to the practice of newspapers placing op-eds on the opposite side of their editorial page. The New York Times is often credited with developing and naming the modern op-ed page... The modern op-ed page was developed in 1970 under the direction of The New York Times editor John B. Oakes.[7] Media scholar Michael J. Socolow writes of Oakes' innovation: "The Times' effort synthesized various antecedents and editorial visions. Journalistic innovation is usually complex, and typically involves multiple external factors. The Times' op-ed page appeared in an era of democratizing cultural and political discourse and of economic distress for the company itself. The newspaper's executives developed a place for outside contributors with space reserved for sale at a premium rate for additional commentaries and other purposes." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op-ed

Choice architecture is the design of different ways in which choices can be presented to decision makers, and the impact of that presentation on decision-making. For example, each of the following: the number of choices presented[1]; the manner in which attributes are described[2]; the presence of a "default"[3][4] can influence consumer choice. As a result, advocates of libertarian paternalism and asymmetric paternalism have endorsed the deliberate design of choice architecture to nudge (nudging) consumers toward personally and socially desirable behaviors like saving for retirement, choosing healthier foods, or registering as an organ donor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choice_architecture (more)

vs real magick?

The goal of this research project is to find data structures and interfaces that support synthesis and innovation in a decentralized discourse graph... Welcome to our living hypertext notebook. This notebook will continue to evolve going into the future and is by no means a finished product- as such, pages exist at varying stages of completion. https://scalingsynthesis.com/ (more)

Robin Hanson: This short "manifesto" describes a new form of government. In "futarchy," we would vote on Values, but bet on beliefs (Idea Futures). Elected representatives would formally define and manage an after-the-fact measurement of national welfare, while market speculators would say which policies they expect to raise national welfare... GDP is today the most common measure of national wealth. It seems hard for frequent travelers to escape the impression that people in high GDP nations tend to be richer and better off than those in low GDP nations. Economists thus tend to be willing to recommend policies that macroeconomic data suggest are causally related to increasing GDP. It seems that it is not that hard to, after the fact, tell rich satisfied nations from poor miserable ones. GDP may be good enough, and with the full attention of our elected representatives, we should be able to do even better, such as by including happiness, inequality, health, leisure, and environment measures. (more)

Cedric Chin: Notes From Building a CFT Business Case Library. Last week, we ran an alpha test for a Cognitive Flexibility Theory-inspired business case study library. (more)

similar frame as edutainment