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A Short History of the World, by H. G. Wells, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . PRIMITIVE NEOLITHIC CIVILIZATIONS PRIMITIVE NEOLITHIC CIVILIZATIONS About 10,000 B.C. the geography of the world was very similar in its general outline to that of the world to-day. It is probable that by that time the great barrier across the Straits of Gibraltar that had hitherto banked back the ocean waters from the Mediterranean valley had been eaten through, and that the Mediterranean was a sea following much the same coastlines as it does now. The Caspian Sea was probably still far more extensive than it is at present, and it may have been continuous with the Black Sea to the north of the Caucasus Mountains. About this great Central Asian sea lands that are now steppes and deserts were fertile and habitable. Generally it was a moister and more fertile world. European Russia was much more a land of swamp and lake than it is now, and there may still have been a land connexion between Asia and America at Behring Straits. It would have been already possible at that time to have distinguished the main racial divisions of mankind as we know them to-day. Across the warm temperate regions of this rather warmer and better-wooded world, and along the coasts, stretched the brownish peoples of the Heliolithic culture, the ancestors of the bulk of the living inhabitants of the Mediterranean world, of the Berbers, the Egyptians and of much of the population of South and Eastern Asia. This great race had of course a number of varieties. The Iberian or Mediterranean or “dark-white” race of the Atlantic and Mediterranean coast, the “Hamitic” peoples which include the Berbers and Egyptians, the Dravidians; the darker people of India, a multitude of East Indian people, many Polynesian races and the Maoris are all divisions of various value of this great main mass of humanity. Its western varieties are whiter than its eastern. In the forests of central and northern Europe a more blonde variety of men with blue eyes was becoming distinguishable, branching off from the main mass of brownish people, a variety which many people now speak of as the Nordic race. In the more open regions of northeastern Asia was another differentiation of this brownish humanity in the direction of a type with more oblique eyes, high cheek-bones, a yellowish skin, and very straight black hair, the Mongolian peoples. In South Africa, Australia, in many tropical islands in the south of Asia were remains of the early negroid peoples. The central parts of Africa were already a region of racial intermixture. Nearly all the coloured races of Africa to-day seem to be blends of the brownish peoples of the north with a negroid substratum. We have to remember that human races can all interbreed freely and that they separate, mingle and reunite as clouds do. Human races do not branch out like trees with branches that never come together again. It is a thing we need to bear constantly in mind, this remingling of races at any opportunity. It will save us from many cruel delusions and prejudices if we do so. People will use such a word as race in the loosest manner, and base the most preposterous generalizations upon it. They will speak of a “British” race or of a “European” race. But nearly all the European nations are confused mixtures of brownish, dark-white, white and Mongolian elements. A MAYA STELE Showing a worshipper and a Serpent God. Note the grotesque faces in the writing Brit. Mus. It was at the Neolithic phase of human development that peoples of the Mongolian breed first made their way into America. Apparently they came by way of Behring Straits and spread southward. They found caribou, the American reindeer, in the north and great herds of bison in the south. When they reached South America there were still living the Glyptodon, a gigantic armadillo, and the Megatherium, a monstrous clumsy sloth as high as an elephant. They probably exterminated the latter beast, which was as helpless as it was big. The greater portion of these American tribes never rose above a hunting nomadic Neolithic life. They never discovered the use of iron, and their chief metal possessions were native gold and copper. But in Mexico, Yucatan and Peru conditions existed favourable to settled cultivation, and here about 1000 B.C. or so arose very interesting civilizations of a parallel but different type from the old-world civilization. Like the much earlier primitive civilizations of the old world these communities displayed a great development of human sacrifice about the processes of seed time and harvest; but while in the old world, as we shall see, these primary ideas were ultimately mitigated, complicated and overlaid by others, in America they developed and were elaborated, to a very high degree of intensity. These American civilized countries were essentially priest-ruled countries; their war chiefs and rulers were under a rigorous rule of law and omen. These priests carried astronomical science to a high level of accuracy. They knew their year better than the Babylonians of whom we shall presently tell. In Yucatan they had a kind of writing, the Maya writing, of the most curious and elaborate character. So far as we have been able to decipher it, it was used mainly for keeping the exact and complicated calendars upon which the priests expended their intelligence. The art of the Maya civilization came to a climax about 700 or 800 A.D. The sculptured work of these people amazes the modern observer by its great plastic power and its frequent beauty, and perplexes him by a grotesqueness and by a sort of insane conventionality and intricacy outside the circle of his ideas. There is nothing quite like it in the old world. The nearest approach, and that is a remote one, is found in archaic Indian carvings. Everywhere there are woven feathers and serpents twine in and out. Many Maya inscriptions resemble a certain sort of elaborate drawing made by lunatics in European asylums, more than any other old-world work. It is as if the Maya mind had developed upon a different line from the old-world mind, had a different twist to its ideas, was not, by old-world standards, a rational mind at all. This linking of these aberrant American civilizations to the idea of a general mental aberration finds support in their extraordinary obsession by the shedding of human blood. The Mexican civilization in particular ran blood; it offered thousands of human victims yearly. The cutting open of living victims, the tearing out of the still beating heart, was an act that dominated the minds and lives of these strange priesthoods. The public life, the national festivities all turned on this fantastically horrible act. NEOLITHIC WARRIOR Modelled from drawing by Prof. Rutot The ordinary existence of the common people in these communities was very like the ordinary existence of any other barbaric peasantry. Their pottery, weaving and dyeing was very good. The Maya writing was not only carven on stone but written and painted upon skins and the like. The European and American museums contain many enigmatical Maya manuscripts of which at present little has been deciphered except the dates. In Peru there were beginnings of a similar writing but they were superseded by a method of keeping records by knotting cords. A similar method of mnemonics was in use in China thousands of years ago. In the old world before 4000 or 5000 B.C., that is to say three or four thousand years earlier, there were primitive civilizations not unlike these American civilizations; civilizations based upon a temple, having a vast quantity of blood sacrifices and with an intensely astronomical priesthood. But in the old world the primitive civilizations reacted upon one another and developed towards the conditions of our own world. In America these primitive civilizations never progressed beyond this primitive stage. Each of them was in a little world of its own. Mexico it seems knew little or nothing of Peru, until the Europeans came to America. The potato, which was the principal food stuff in Peru, was unknown in Mexico. Age by age these peoples lived and marvelled at their gods and made their sacrifices and died. Maya art rose to high levels of decorative beauty. Men made love and tribes made war. Drought and plenty, pestilence and health, followed one another. The priests elaborated their calendar and their sacrificial ritual through long centuries, but made little progress in other directions. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. H. G. Wells (2011). A Short History of the World. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022, from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11870/11870-h/11870-h.htm This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

PRIMITIVE NEOLITHIC CIVILIZATIONS

NEOLITHIC MAN IN EUROPE

**BREVARD, NC, April 2nd, 2024/Chainwire/--**In a significant move within the decentralized finance (DeFi) real estate landscape, is set to revolutionize the ecosystem with the launch of its native token, $YAKS, on the Arbitrum network, available for trading on Uniswap starting April 2, 2024. This launch is not just a testament to YakDAO's innovative approach in DeFi but also highlights its pre-sale success and strategic partnerships aimed at fostering strength, resilience, and long-term success. YakDAO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXbG_5lnzKI&embedable=true Innovative Integration of Real-World Assets: YakDAO has ventured into integrating real-world assets (RWAs) into its ecosystem, with its first property in Brevard, NC. This venture according to the team, not only showcases YakDAO's innovative spirit but also marks a significant step towards bridging the gap between decentralized finance and real world assets. The YakDAO's Brevard property has begun generating revenue through bookings, illustrating how Real World Assets can play a role in the DeFi sector and contribute to the utility of the $YAKS token. $YAKS Pre-sale milestones include: TrustSwap: Showed an oversubscription rate of over 1,200%, indicating to the team a strong interest and confidence in YakDAO's vision and potential. DuckDAO: Sold out in merely an hour, reflecting for the team the high demand and enthusiasm from the community. NeoLaunch and TokenFi: Both platforms witnessed the $YAKS token selling out in minutes, underlining in the team's view of the support and anticipation for YakDAO's initiatives. YakDAO: Opening Luxury Real Estate YakDAO focuses on creating luxury camping resorts, areas traditionally dominated by investors and institutional private equity funds. The team states that YakDAO offers broader access to a highly profitable real estate sector, previously out of reach for 98% of individuals. The YakDAO team is passionate about solving these problems and has the experience to do it. The team has worked at the intersection of technology and the outdoors recreation industry for nearly a decade. RWAs are a hot niche for crypto in this market cycle as major players look to scale tokenization. YakDAO sets itself apart, having built in the bear market, and is poised for growth in 2024 and the years to follow. YakDAO's strategic partnerships are meticulously chosen to contribute unique strengths, propelling the organization forward in its mission to democratize access to DeFi services. These alliances not only reinforce YakDAO's ecosystem but also enhance user experiences, ensuring a seamless integration of decentralized financial services. "We are incredibly proud to announce the launch of $YAKS on Arbitrum and its availability on Uniswap," said David Woodbury, CEO and ChiefYak of . YakDAO "The overwhelming success of our pre-sale and the strength of our strategic partnerships underscore the community's trust in our vision. We are excited to continue building on this momentum, driving innovation, and unlocking new possibilities within the DeFi, sustainable expansion of monetization of land in the RWA space. YakDAO is truly a passion project for our team!" For more details on the $YAKS token and YakDAO's future initiatives, users can . visit About aims to revolutionize the fusion of luxurious glamping experiences with the dynamic world of decentralized finance (DeFi). Launched in 2022 to establish a global network of upscale camping sites, YakDAO blends the beauty of nature with the power of digital finance, starting with a successful glampsite acquired in 2022 as a testament to this innovative model. YakDAO Contact CMO Brent Rangen YakDAO Brent@Yak.Camp This story was distributed as a release by Chainwire under HackerNoon’s Business Blogging Program. Learn more about the program here.

YakDAO Debuts $YAKS Token On Arbitrum, Innovating DeFi Real Estate

This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED license. Authors: (1) Alyvia Walters, Rutgers University, USA; (2) Tawfiq Ammaris, Rutgers University, USA; (3) Kiran Garimella, Rutgers University, USA; (4) Shagun Jhaver, Rutgers University, USA. Table of Links Abstract & Introduction Background and Related Work Methods The Tools of CRT Meme Production Knowledge Production in a Post-Truth World Conclusion & References The Tools of CRT Meme Production After iteratively coding each meme, we were left with 21 unique codes which could be subsumed under one or more of the following major rhetorical tactics: 1) struggles over definition, or how the meme makes sense of what critical race theory is; 2) constructing “antiracism,” or the ways in which the meme’s ideologies are coded as definitively not-racist to its intended audience; and 3) appeals to authority, or the ways in which the meme uses people or symbols to appear correct. These strategies, then, appear to be the most salient paths through which both pro- and anti-CRT arguments within these memes are built. Defining CRT With two exceptions, neither the pro- nor anti-CRT memes analyzed appear to be concerned with the “real” critical legal studies definition of critical race theory. Because CRT was not generally circulated within public discourse prior to the early 2020s, as mentioned above, there was a wide berth for political and epistemological work to be done in the construction of this definition in the public consciousness. Our analysis reveals that these memes do just that: while both proand anti-CRT memes provide a technically incorrect definition of what CRT actually is, the politics of sensemaking unfolds within these memes. Their consumers are left with bifurcating definitions of the bounds, risks, and benefits of critical race theory that ultimately serve to re-define the bounds and values of the communities in which these memes circulate. Within pro-CRT memes, the aggregated definition reads something like this: critical race theory means teaching history accurately and not being a racist and/or a Republican. These memes went to far fewer lengths than anti-CRT memes to define what CRT actually is, and relied instead upon defining it against other things: racism, Republicans, and/or the erasure of history. The top-circulated meme in our analysis is a prime example of this. In this meme, artist Jonathan Harris stands alongside his now-viral artwork entitled “Critical Race Theory,” which depicts the literal whitewashing of Black history (Figure 1). While this does nothing to define critical race theory, it certainly defines what it is not: the erasure of America’s violent, racist past. Similarly, image cluster 4 (Figure 2) is a computer-generated text-heavy meme that reads, “Republicans are not afraid of critical race theory. They don’t even know what it is. They’re afraid of theories critical of racists. They know who they are.” The irony, of course, is that this meme also does not indicate a real definition of CRT, or an indication of “knowing what it is”–it simply defines CRT against racists and Republicans, both of which believers in CRT cannot be. In contrast to this strategy, anti-CRT memes often utilize quite specific points of definition. Take, for instance, cluster 22 (Figure 3): In providing a six-point bulleted list, this meme lays out, in no uncertain terms, how its consumers are meant to understand CRT. These definitional strategies, however, are not always so concrete as a bulleted list. Whereas proCRT memes defined CRT against other ideas, anti-CRT memes sometimes worked to define it by conflating it with other “anti-American” ideas, such as Marxism (Figure 4) and straying from Christianity (Figure 5). In other words, antiCRT memes often tied CRT to other “woke” ideologies in order to define it, even as “wokeness,” in and of itself, lacks definitive boundaries. In all, anti-CRT memes essentially define critical race theory in the following way: CRT is a racist idea that makes people believe that race matters more than it should, and it is yet another way that “wokeness” is destroying America. This conceptualization is starkly different than that of the pro-CRT memes, and both are far from the “real” legal studies definition, as outlined above. As such, there is obvious political struggle in the fight to win the hegemonic, accepted definition of critical race theory — a definition which has little to do with its origins in critical theory and law. In this discussion on the political struggle over defining CRT, one particularly interesting meme to highlight is that of Cluster 27 (Figure 6). Metadiscourse on the Stakes of Defining CRT In this meme, a screenshot of a quoted tweet, two people are explicitly naming this struggle and pointing to its risks. By indicating that The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank known for their right-wing ideologies, is a top hit in searching for information on critical race theory, the original tweet author is pointing out that knowledge acquisition via the internet is deeply politicized, and without careful, critical consumption habits, people can be easily misled by seemingly authoritative information. The quote tweet, agreeing with this view, further interpolates into an ongoing debate in U.S. culture on whose “job” it is to educate on topics surrounding race and racism: people of color, who are exhausted by confronting this responsibility every day, but are also the people who have actual experience with racism; or white people, who are the ones who should be expending energy into acquiring knowledge to better educate themselves, without needing to further exploit the time and energy of people of color to do so (see, for example, Zheng (2021)). Both Twitter users, “naima, an improvisation,” and “Ramy” land in the same place: passing this responsibility to educate over to the internet is dangerous territory in a politicized information environment. If “some reactionary think tank” such as The Heritage Foundation is where people are gaining their knowledge because “Google is free” and no one else is providing this information, the struggle over defining these words–words which have actual policy impact, as seen through Youngkin’s Executive Order 1–is of utmost importance, and it appears that memes are one avenue in which this epistemological struggle occurs. Defining “Antiracism” These pro- and anti-CRT battles over definition, and the recognition in the metadiscourse that this is, indeed, a battle, is almost exclusively fought on the same grounds: that of antiracism. While there are some other nods to bigotry in its various forms, for example, transphobia as displayed in Figure 5, race and racism are unsurprisingly the main sites upon which definitions of critical race theory and its risks and/or benefits, are built. However, in a similar fashion to how “critical race theory” was defined to meet community needs rather than to reflect a “real” definition of the term, “antiracism,” too, is made into a fungible ideal constructed to meet the dire need of both sides of this argument to appear not-racist: a near necessity in 2023 America. According to Ferguson (2022), antiracism has suffered from a lack of coherent and accessible academic definition. Thus, she proposes a paraphrase of Black author and activist Ijeoma Oluo’s tweeted definition: “the commitment to eradicate racism in all its forms,” with a noted special interest in recognizing the difference between systemic and interpersonal racism. However, the tension we encounter in the analysis of these images is that, under this definition, both overt racism and a quieter “not-racism,” a term we will more clearly define below, is easily able to masquerade as antiracism to the undiscerning eye. In this way, the memes’ constructed definitions of antiracism become a technology through which racism is perpetuated. Bonilla-Silva (1997)’s oft-cited definition of racism demands recognition of both structural and interpersonal forms of racism, and it also demands acknowledgment of the difference between the two. Because these pro-CRT memes often fail to address structural racism, they fall short of forwarding truly antiracist ideologies even as they consistently present themselves as performing antiracism. These failures come through in what we are deeming “not-racism,” or essentially a focus on the interpersonal aspects of racism only, rather than on the structural ones. For instance, in Cluster 4 (Figure 2), the deflective “they” indicates several things all at once: first, that “we,” those who identify with this meme, are not like “them,” the racist Republicans; and second, that the stakes of this argument on critical race theory reside at the individual, interpersonal level. Each of these two implications constructs racism as something that happens within the hearts and minds of individuals, rather than at the structural level, and further, it absolves those who resonate with the meme from racism: “I am not a racist, because I support critical race theory.” This is not-racism in practice: a positionality that is not reflective of true antiracism, which is an ideology and practice that requires recognition of and action toward dismantling systems of racism, interpersonal racism, and the implicit bias that each of us holds. This is not to say that pro-CRT memes always failed at performing antiracism, either. There certainly were instances of successful acknowledgement of structural racism, such as in Cluster 7, which reads “If people attacked White Supremacy like they are attacking critical race theory, there would be no need for critical race theory.” However, the failures were all failing in the same way: by framing themselves and their ideologies as not-racist, and falsely equating that with doing antiracist work. On the other hand, anti-CRT memes wholly fail at performing true anti-racism, and they fail in many different ways: through rhetorics of racial neoliberalism, colorblind racism, and not-racism. Importantly, each of these tools of racism are constructed as antiracism, and sold to audiences as such. While not-racism presents a bit differently on this side of the aisle, the main takeaway is meant to be rhetorically the same: “we” are not the racists, “they” are. For instance, Figure 3 reads, in part, “What does critical race theory teach?...The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.” This swiftly both dismisses racism as in the “past,” thus ignoring its structural persistence and constructs those that support critical race theory as the racists. In this way, both pro- and anti-CRT memes variably fail at performing antiracism, often forwarding what Blake et al. (2019) call “antiracist appropriation,” or a strategy that is “primarily concerned with deciphering who is a racist and who is not, rather than working to dismantle racism’s socially shared institutional and affective structures” (p. 23). By forwarding this claim, we do not mean to engage in an uncritical false balance (Rietdijk and Archer 2021) analysis here, as there is clearly one group that is getting closer to actual antiracism than the other: pro-CRT memes. It is important to note, however, that even pro-CRT memes are not actually accomplishing an antiracist agenda, as they are rather uncritical of the structural aspects of racism and choose to focus, instead, on interpersonal-level issues. Though using appeals to authority is not a groundbreaking rhetorical strategy and is, in fact, one of the pillars of Aristotelian rhetorical philosophy, the ways in which this ethos appears within these memes present an interesting finding: equally often, both pro-and anti-CRT memes deployed the imagery and/or quotes of Black people. Through circulating these images widely, those captured in these memes essentially stand in as Black spokespeople for each side of the argument, lending credence to the meme’s ideology–no matter the side of the argument–through the color of their skin. Appeals to Black Authority Anti-CRT memes that used this rhetorical strategy–all of which, notably, were produced and originally disseminated by the conservative Media Research Center (MRC)†–constructed these Black spokespeople as both authoritative in their experience and authoritative in their Blackness. Alveda King, Civil Rights Leader; Dr. Ben Carson, M.D. and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; and Dr. Carol Swain, Ph.D. and professor of political science and law appeared in these memes, each in visage and in quote (see Figure 7 for an example of these memes, each of which followed this aesthetic template). The embodied Black professional positionalities which these people inhabit make it difficult for pro-CRT advocates to argue against their claims—claims which invariably speak to the sure pitfalls of socioculturally adopting critical race theory—and thus a comfortable space of disseminating racism through the rhetorics of not-racism opens up. Using Black spokespeople to deliver implicitly or explicitly racist information has been a tactic used for decades to make news reporting (Entman and Rojecki 2007), campaign strategy, and political policy (Mendelberg 2001) appear notracist. The implicit suggestion is that if a Black person indicates something is not racist, it must not be. This, then, “bolsters [whites’] denials that racism still impedes the lives of African Americans” (Entman and Rojecki 2007, p. 106) and invites a level of assurance that they, too, are notracist. In the context of the memes analyzed for this study, these Black spokespeople are consistently reflecting a well-established space of Black conservative thought which taps into individualism, self-help, and egalitarianism as answers to discussions on racism (Lewis 2005). Critical race theory–the “real,” institutional one–actually warns against this very scenario: CRT argues that constructing Black spokespeople as people who can speak for the entire race is both essentialist and ignorant to the importance of intersectionality (Delgado and Stefancic 2023). While it is true that Black Democrats far outweigh Black Republicans in the electorate (Cox 2022), and thus pro-CRT memes that deploy Black spokespeople likely reflect a larger share of Black thought, it is still unproductive to count any single person as representative of a race of people. Despite this, however, constructing Black spokespeople through memes–Black spokespeople who are made to appear as the reasonable “Black voice”–was a way of building authority and “assurances” for those against CRT that they were not thinking in a racist way. While their Blackness operates, rhetorically, as an appeal to authority in a conversation about race, the idea of the “Black spokesperson” takes on a different function and meaning in these pro-CRT memes. Whereas anti-CRT memes were curating quotes from a very specific set of Black spokespeople, seeking out those who have said something condemning CRT, overlaying these quotes on an image of the Black orator, and circulating that image, those on the pro-side of the issue are more often amplifying already-existing media that Black people created. For example, the image of artist Jonathan Harris (Figure 1) was an organic, pre-existing photograph of the artist posing with his work–not a computer-generated, curated message that was created without his knowledge or consent. Similarly, the meme featuring Michael Eric Dyson’s thoughts (Figure 4) is simply a screenshot of a tweet he chose to write and publish on the internet–again, not something that an outside entity needed to create. The only exception is the meme featuring John Legend (Figure 9). This meme has a similar aesthetic to the anti-CRT memes in that it is a computer-generated image of Legend alongside a quote about Black parents needing to get involved in conversations around the banning of critical race theory. This meme represents just one way that anti- and pro-CRT memes perform “not-racism” in rhetorically similar ways, even if they have different end goals. [†] The Media Research Center (MRC) is more than simply a Facebook page, which is where many of these other memes are sourced. To the contrary, MRC is an entire conservative media network that self-describes its mission as being in accordance with "America’s founding principles and Judeo-Christian values." For more, see mrctv.org

Online Knowledge Production in Polarized Political Memes: The Tools of CRT Meme Production

This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED license. Authors: (1) Alyvia Walters, Rutgers University, USA; (2) Tawfiq Ammaris, Rutgers University, USA; (3) Kiran Garimella, Rutgers University, USA; (4) Shagun Jhaver, Rutgers University, USA. Table of Links Abstract & Introduction Background and Related Work Methods The Tools of CRT Meme Production Knowledge Production in a Post-Truth World Conclusion & References Conclusion This study entices us to continue asking how we might confront mis-/disinformation in our current moment. It becomes especially urgent as we encounter the fact that much of the information circulating through highly transmissible media, such as memes, is not only incorrect but is also fungible: in the case of CRT-centered memes, CRT could “mean” almost anything race-related to forward each camp’s agenda, and seemingly very few care to engage with an institutional definition. When politicized definitions are a practice in power assertion, the discursive work these definitions do–“correct” or not–is more necessary than ever to understand. As Cassam (2021) warns us, it is important not to mistake a lack of engagement with “true” definitions as a disregard for the truth as a whole, and assuming that mis- /disinformation is merely bullshit is perhaps an unproductive lens through which to view knowledge production. We must take these definitions seriously, as they are, from a political epistemology stance, thoughtfully crafted messages that are “true” in some way to their consumers. There are several fruitful routes that we can identify for further work around the production and consumption of these memes as they relate to knowledge-building practices. In the space of production, contacting those who created these media objects would potentially lend useful insight about how they, as creators, gained their own understanding of CRT, and why they chose to disseminate this information in these particular ways attached to these particular visual formats. The Media Research Center would be an interesting first place to start, as they crafted each of their anti-CRT memes in the same aesthetic format with the same rhetorical appeals to Black spokespeople. Additionally, study of those who consume these memes is warranted to uncover how users’ encounters with these media shape their understandings of CRT and their opinions on it. Further, we argue that platforms, too, have some responsibility to contextualize memes such as these through content moderation practices. We acknowledge that this is more than a simple technical issue: filters for racist material, for example, would not flag memes as nuanced as these, and indeed, platforms would likely encounter bad publicity around censorship if any of the memes included in this study were removed. However, there are ways to approach this information landscape through socio-technical solutions, such as by providing the public, experts, and other cultural gatekeepers the ability to contextualize information on social networking sites (Morrow et al. 2022). By adding “notes,” or otherwise interacting with the information in such a way that its complex relationships to institutional fact are immediately evident to users who may encounter that information, platforms could greatly diminish the power of partisan information masquerading as fact. Finally, educational curricula and the students who learn from them would deeply benefit from incorporating critical media consumption practices into their core goals and outcomes. It is no longer possible to separate learning from media consumption in the everyday lives of the vast majority of students in the U.S., and we all suffer when there is a lack of commitment to creating critical media consumers who are trained to think before believing–and even more importantly, re-circulating–a politicized meme. Training young people on how mis-/disinformation and hate speech are disguised as fact and/or humor in memes is an important step forward in strengthening our information landscape and democratic future. Teachers are extraordinarily overburdened already, but a curriculum that integrates media literacy as a guiding principle would partially shift the burden from teachers directly and instead task those who guide the direction of school districts nationwide with creating pathways to teach this skill in all subject areas. There is no simple solution to curtailing the circulation of harmful visual media, as it is neither a purely tech issue nor purely a lack of education: this is a social issue which can only be resolved through the engagement of a wide variety of actors. It is incumbent upon all of us to take these seemingly insignificant memes seriously for their social impact and what they reveal about current ideological trends. It is crucial to better understand how bottom-up knowledge production on politicized topics, such as CRT, occurs on social media, particularly through compact, madeto-share media such as memes. In doing so, we can move beyond a deterministic conception of post-truth politics which generalizes disregard for truth, and instead interrogate the construction of politicized “truth” as a sustained process of thoughtful rhetorical decision-making with real-world effects. References Askanius T (2021) Memes and media’s role in radicalization. The Journal of Intelligence, Conflict, and Warfare 4(2): 115–121. DOI:10.21810/jicw.v4i2.3753. Barakat M and Rankin S (2022) Youngkin looks to root out critical race theory in virginia. URL https://apnews.com/article/education-richmondrace-and-ethnicity-racial-injustice-virginia8ad5da65b9cb05265f2b8081c41827cd. Beauchamp Z (2021) Did critical race theory really swing the virginia election? URL https://www.vox.com/policy-andpolitics/2021/11/4/22761168/virginia-governorglenn-youngkin-critical-race-theory. Bonilla-Silva E (1997) Rethinking racism: Toward a structural interpretation. American Sociological Review 62(3): 465–480. DOI:10.2307/2657316. Burroughs B (2020) Fake memetics: Political rhetoric and circulation in political campaigns. The MIT Press. Carney N (2016) All lives matter, but so does race. Humanity & Society 40(2): 180–199. DOI:10.1177/0160597616643868. Cassam Q (2021) Bullshit, Post-Truth, and Propaganda. Oxford University Press. Cestone LM, Jones LV, Harris M, Quezada N and Roest-Gyimah N (2022) Black americans’ social emotional responses to race-related discriminatory content on social media. Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work : 1–12DOI: 10.1080/15313204.2022.2137716. Cox K (2022) 10 facts about black republicans. URL https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/ 11/07/10-facts-about-black-republicans/. CrowdTangle T (2022) Crowdtangle. facebook, menlo park, california, US. list id: 1733230. https://crowdtangle.com/ . Dean J (2018) Sorted for memes and gifs: Visual media and everyday digital politics. Political Studies Review 17(3): 255–266. DOI: 10.1177/1478929918807483 Delgado R and Stefancic J (2023) Critical race theory an introduction. New York University Press. Edenberg E and Hannon M (2021) Political epistemology. Oxford University Press. Entman RM and Rojecki A (2007) The black image in the white mind: Media and race in America. University of Chicago Press. Ester M, Kriegel HP, Sander J and Xu X (1996) A density-based algorithm for discovering clusters in large spatial databases with noise. In: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, KDD’96. AAAI Press, p. 226–231. Fairclough N (2018) Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. Routledge. Farid H (2021) An overview of perceptual hashing. Journal of Online Trust and Safety 1(1). Ferguson A (2022) Redefining antiracism: Learning from activists to sharpen academic language. Sociology Compass 17(1). DOI: 10.1111/soc4.13057. Gantt Shafer J (2017) Donald trump’s “political incorrectness”: Neoliberalism as frontstage racism on social media. Social Media + Society 3(3): 205630511773322. DOI:10.1177/ 2056305117733226. Lankshear C and Knobel M (2019) Memes, macros, meaning, and menace: Some trends in internet memes. The Journal of Communication and Media Studies 4(4): 43–57. DOI: 10.18848/2470-9247/cgp/v04i04/43-57. Lee-Won RJ, White TN and Potocki B (2017) The black catalyst to tweet: The role of discrimination experience, group identification, and racial agency in black americans’ instrumental use of twitter. Information, Communication & Society 21(8): 1097–1115. DOI:10.1080/1369118x.2017.1301516. Lewis AK (2005) Black conservatism in america. Journal of African American Studies 8(4): 3–13. DOI:10.1007/s12111-005-1000- 1. Low J (2019) A pragmatic definition of the concept of theoretical saturation. Sociological Focus 52(2): 131–139. DOI:10.1080/ 00380237.2018.1544514. Matamoros-Fernández A (2017) Platformed racism: The mediation and circulation of an australian race-based controversy on twitter, facebook and youtube. Information, Communication & Society 20(6): 930–946. DOI:10.1080/1369118x.2017.1293130. McIntyre L (2018) Post-truth. MIT Press. Mendelberg T (2001) The race card: Campaign strategy, implicit messages, and the norm of Equality. Princeton University Press. Monga V and Evans B (2006) Perceptual image hashing via feature points: Performance evaluation and tradeoffs. IEEE Transactions on Image Processing 15(11): 3452–3465. DOI: 10.1109/TIP.2006.881948. Moody-Ramirez M, Tait GB and Bland D (2021) An analysis of George Floyd-themed memes. The Journal of Social Media in Society 10(2): 373–401. Morrow G, Swire-Thompson B, Polny JM, Kopec M and Wihbey JP (2022) The emerging science of content labeling: Contextualizing social media content moderation. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 73(10): 1365–1386. DOI:10.1002/asi.24637. Nieubuurt JT (2021) Internet memes: Leaflet propaganda of the digital age. Frontiers in Communication 5. DOI:10.3389/ fcomm.2020.547065. Noble SU (2018) Algorithms of oppression: How search engines reinforce racism. New York University Press. Ray R, Brown M, Fraistat N and Summers E (2017) Ferguson and the death of michael brown on twitter: #blacklivesmatter, #tcot, and the evolution of collective identities. Ethnic and Racial Studies 40(11): 1797–1813. DOI:10.1080/01419870.2017.1335422. Rietdijk N and Archer A (2021) Post-truth, false balance and virtuous gatekeeping. In: Snow N and Vaccarezza MS (eds.) Virtues, Democracy, and Online Media: Ethical and Epistemic Issues. Routledge. Rose J (2017) Brexit, trump, and post-truth politics. Public Integrity 19(6): 555–558. DOI:10.1080/10999922.2017.1285540. Ross AS and Rivers DJ (2018) Internet memes as polyvocal political participation. In: Schill DJ and Hendricks JA (eds.) The presidency and social media: Discourse, disruption, and digital democracy in the 2016 presidential election. Routledge. Schaffner BF, Macwilliams M and Nteta T (2018) Understanding white polarization in the 2016 vote for president: The sobering role of racism and sexism. Political Science Quarterly 133(1): 9–34. DOI:10.1002/polq.12737. Shifman L (2013) Memes in a digital world: Reconciling with a conceptual troublemaker. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 18(3): 362–377. DOI:10.1111/jcc4.12013. West C (1996) Foreward. In: Crenshaw K, Gotanda N and Peller G (eds.) Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement. The New Press. Woods HS and Hahner LA (2020) Make America meme again the rhetoric of the alt-right. Peter Lang Publishing Inc. New York. Zannettou S, Caulfield T, Blackburn J, Cristofaro ED, Sirivianos M, Stringhini G and Suarez-Tangil G (2018) On the origins of memes by means of fringe web communities. 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Online Knowledge Production in Polarized Political Memes: Conclusion & References

581 Stories To Learn About Non Fiction

I. Introduction Web applications keep getting more advanced and multifaceted, providing users with tons of features. But this also makes them more vulnerable to performance problems, especially when handling lots of requests simultaneously. That can lead to slow response times, crashes, errors, and even downtime - all of which hurt the user experience and company reputation. To make sure web apps deliver high-quality service and meet user expectations, it's crucial to do load testing. Load testing simulates real user scenarios and measures how the app handles different load levels. It can identify and fix bottlenecks, optimize resources, improve scalability, and ensure reliability and availability. Mastering load testing for web apps takes understanding the basics, the process, tools, best practices, common pitfalls, and future trends. So, let's dive in and take a look. II. Load Testing Basics Before we get into the process and tools for load testing, let's first define what load testing is and the key metrics used. Definition Load testing simulates realistic user traffic to see how a web application handles varying load levels. It should be done on all the steps of the software lifecycle like development, integration, and deployment. The main goals are to: Verify that the app can handle expected and peak traffic without hurting performance. Find and fix bottlenecks that cause slow responses, crashes, errors, or downtime. Optimize resource use like CPU, memory, disk, and network by tuning configs. Improve scalability by determining max capacity and throughput, and how to increase them. Ensure reliability and availability by testing recovery from failures and consistent performance. Key Metrics To evaluate performance under load, we measure key metrics like: - how long requests take to process and respond. Affects user satisfaction so should be low. Response time - requests handled per unit of time. Indicates efficiency and capacity so should be high. Throughput - the percentage of failed requests. Indicates reliability so should be low. Error rate - resources consumed during testing like CPU, memory, etc. Should be within acceptable limits. Resource utilization III. The Load Testing Process The load testing process consists of four main steps: identifying workload and performance requirements, test scenarios and environment setup, test execution, and result analysis. Identifying Workload and Performance Requirements The first step in load testing is defining the expected performance and goals under different loads. This includes: - The minimum response time, throughput, etc. that should be met. Performance requirements - How users interact with the app. This covers user types, actions, locations, concurrency, arrival rate, think time, and more. Workload - The normal, peak, and stress loads that will be tested. Load levels These points should be realistic, based on business needs, user feedback, historical data, industry benchmarks, and other sources. Test Scenarios and Environment Setup The next step is designing a test plan and setting up the test environment to execute the load tests. The test cases should cover the most critical and frequently used functions, as well as the riskiest scenarios under load. They should align with the workload model and load levels. The test environment should mirror production as closely as possible in terms of hardware, software, network, configs, data, etc. It should include: - Generates and sends requests per the test cases and workload model. Load generator - Distributes requests across multiple app instances or servers. Load balancer - The app being tested. Application under test - Collects and displays performance metrics of the app and components during testing. Monitoring system Test Execution and Result Analysis The third step in load testing is to execute the test cases and analyze the results. The test execution should be done according to a predefined test plan that specifies the order, duration, frequency, and intensity of each test case. The test execution should also be monitored and controlled by adjusting the load levels, stopping, or restarting the tests, etc. The result analysis should be done by comparing the actual performance metrics with the performance requirements and identifying any deviations or anomalies. The result analysis should also include identifying and diagnosing the root causes of any performance issues, such as code defects, configuration errors, resource bottlenecks, etc. Test Reporting and Improvement The final step is reporting the findings and recommendations and implementing improvements based on the analysis. The test report should summarize the objectives, methodology, environment, execution, results, analysis, findings, recommendations, and conclusions. It should include supporting data like graphs, charts, tables, screenshots, logs, etc. Improvements may involve applying fixes or optimizations to the code, configs, architecture, design, etc. Changes should be verified by re-running load tests to validate their effectiveness. IV. Load Testing Tools A diverse array of tools exists for load-testing web applications, each with unique capabilities. , an open-source Java tool, enables load generation and performance measurement across various protocols like HTTP, WebSocket, and FTP. It provides recording, scripting, dynamic data simulation, result analysis, and more. Extensibility through plugins is a key benefit. JMeter by Micro Focus excels at load testing beyond just the web, with support for mobile, IoT, and media. Scripting uses languages like C and JavaScript. Visual analysis is facilitated through dashboards. LoadRunner , written in Scala, separates test logic from execution for scalability. Recording HTTP sessions and converting them to code accelerates test creation. Interactive charts empower insightful results analysis. Gatling leverages Python for load test scripting. Its master-slave architecture readily scales simulated users across multiple machines. An intuitive web interface displays live test metrics. Locust These tools and many others each have unique strengths. Careful selection based on the technology, test environment, metrics, integrations, and workflows to be assessed is advised. Thorough evaluation guides the way to the optimal choice. V. Best Practices and Common Pitfalls Mastering the art of load testing requires adhering to key best practices while avoiding frequent missteps. To conduct effective load testing: Set clear, realistic performance targets based on business needs, user feedback, historical data, and industry benchmarks. Don't define criteria that are unattainably high or low; Design comprehensive test cases that cover critical functions and probable high-risk scenarios under load. Align cases to workload models and load levels; Pay special attention to possible peak load scenarios: new marketing campaign planned and a lot of new users expected? Make sure to test the registration and login parts. Black Friday coming? Check scenarios for huge simultaneous checkouts; Build a test environment that closely resembles production in terms of hardware, software, network, configs, and data. Isolate it from anything that could skew results; Use capable, reliable load-testing tools that can simulate workflows and measure metrics accurately per the technology stack. Avoid inappropriate or unstable tools; Make sure test servers and bandwidth can generate the load required for testing. Using one request-generating server to test 100 servers might not generate the required load that would result in incorrect test results; Execute load tests per a systematic plan defining order, duration, frequency, and intensity. Monitor and adjust load levels carefully during execution; Analyse results by comparing metrics to criteria and diagnosing issues through data visualization and statistics. Avoid raw data or unclear graphs; Implement optimizations, then re-test to validate improvements. Don't deploy changes without verifying effectiveness. Common pitfalls to avoid: Inaccurate performance targets leading to false positives or negatives; Incomplete test cases missing critical functions and scenarios; Unrealistic test environments that skew metrics due to differences from production; Poorly matched tools that can't simulate workflows, generate required load, or measure metrics properly; Lack of execution plan causing disorganized, inefficient test runs; Weak analysis lacking visualization and statistics to surface meaningful insights; Failure to re-test and validate the impact of optimizations before deployment. VI. Future Trends in Load Testing Load testing continues to evolve as web development advances. Key emerging trends include: leverages scalable cloud computing services like and for benefits such as flexibility, cost savings, and geographic reach. The cloud enables large-scale distributed testing. Cloud-based load testing BlazeMeter Grafana Cloud k6 are transforming load testing through intelligent automation. AI can generate realistic workloads, predict metrics, diagnose issues, and recommend solutions. Tools like , , and incorporate these technologies. Artificial intelligence and machine learning Dynatrace Neoload Apica helps identify and prevent vulnerabilities under load. , and are examples of WAST tools that can detect risks like denial-of-service attacks and cross-site scripting. Integrating web application security testing (WAST) OWASP ZAP , Nmap Burp Suite Mastering these emerging practices will be key for load testing excellence as the web evolves. Forward-looking organizations are already putting them into practice. VII. Conclusion Mastering load testing is critical for releasing high-performing web applications. It requires blending technical and analytical expertise to model realistic user behaviors, select appropriate tools, develop comprehensive test cases, conduct controlled experiments, and extract meaningful performance insights. As technology evolves, agile adaptation alongside diligent mastery of load testing fundamentals will remain key. By building robust in-house competencies or working with experienced partners, organizations can gain a significant competitive advantage through expertise in this vital discipline. References Top 15 Open-Source Load Testing Software 2023 | TestGuild 9 Load Testing Best Practices (Don't Make These Mistakes) (testguild.com) Load testing best practices  |  Cloud Run Documentation  |  Google Cloud What is Load Testing: Process, Tools, & Best Practices | BrowserStack Load Testing Best Practices (multiple.dev)

Mastering the Art of Load Testing for Web Applications

402 Stories To Learn About History

92 Stories To Learn About 2020

The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . Chapter I CHAPTER I Everybody has been at me, right and left, to write this story from the great (represented by Lord Nasby) to the small (represented by our late maid of all work, Emily, whom I saw when I was last in England. “Lor’, miss, what a beyewtiful book you might make out of it all—just like the pictures!”). I’ll admit that I’ve certain qualifications for the task. I was mixed up in the affair from the very beginning, I was in the thick of it all through, and I was triumphantly “in at the death.” Very fortunately, too, the gaps that I cannot supply from my own knowledge are amply covered by Sir Eustace Pedler’s diary, of which he has kindly begged me to make use. So here goes. Anne Beddingfeld starts to narrate her adventures. I’d always longed for adventures. You see, my life had such a dreadful sameness. My father, Professor Beddingfeld, was one of England’s greatest living authorities on Primitive Man. He really was a genius—every one admits that. His mind dwelt in Palaeolithic times, and the inconvenience of life for him was that his body inhabited the modern world. Papa did not care for modern man—even Neolithic Man he despised as a mere herder of cattle, and he did not rise to enthusiasm until he reached the Mousterian period. Unfortunately one cannot entirely dispense with modern men. One is forced to have some kind of truck with butchers and bakers and milkmen and greengrocers. Therefore, Papa being immersed in the past, Mamma having died when I was a baby, it fell to me to undertake the practical side of living. Frankly, I hate Palaeolithic Man, be he Aurignacian, Mousterian, Chellian, or anything else, and though I typed and revised most of Papa’s Neanderthal Man and his Ancestors, Neanderthal men themselves fill me with loathing, and I always reflect what a fortunate circumstance it was that they became extinct in remote ages. I do not know whether Papa guessed my feelings on the subject, probably not, and in any case he would not have been interested. The opinion of other people never interested him in the slightest degree. I think it was really a sign of his greatness. In the same way, he lived quite detached from the necessities of daily life. He ate what was put before him in an exemplary fashion, but seemed mildly pained when the question of paying for it arose. We never seemed to have any money. His celebrity was not of the kind that brought in a cash return. Although he was a fellow of almost every important society, and had rows of letters after his name, the general public scarcely knew of his existence, and his long learned books, though adding signally to the sum-total of human knowledge, had no attraction for the masses. Only on one occasion did he leap into the public gaze. He had read a paper before some society on the subject of the young of the chimpanzee. The young of the human race show some anthropoid features, whereas the young of the chimpanzee approach more nearly to the human than the adult chimpanzee does. That seems to show that whereas our ancestors were more Simian than we are, the chimpanzee’s were of a higher type than the present species—in other words, the chimpanzee is a degenerate. That enterprising newspaper, the Daily Budget, being hard up for something spicy, immediately brought itself out with large headlines. “We are not descended from monkeys, but are monkeys descended from us? Eminent Professor says chimpanzees are decadent humans.” Shortly afterwards a reporter called to see Papa, and endeavoured to induce him to write a series of popular articles on the theory. I have seldom seen Papa so angry. He turned the reporter out of the house with scant ceremony, much to my secret sorrow, as we were particularly short of money at the moment. In fact, for a moment I meditated running after the young man and informing him that my father had changed his mind and would send the articles in question. I could easily have written them myself, and the probabilities were that Papa would never have learnt of the transaction, not being a reader of the Daily Budget. However, I rejected this course as being too risky, so I merely put on my best hat and went sadly down the village to interview our justly irate grocer. The reporter from the Daily Budget was the only young man who ever came to our house. There were times when I envied Emily, our little servant, who “walked out” whenever occasion offered with a large sailor to whom she was affianced. In between times, to “keep her hand in” as she expressed it, she walked out with the greengrocer’s young man, and the chemist’s assistant. I reflected sadly that I had no one to “keep my hand in” with. All Papa’s friends were aged Professors—usually with long beards. It is true that Professor Peterson once clasped me affectionately and said I had a “neat little waist” and then tried to kiss me. The phrase alone dated him hopelessly. No self-respecting female has had a “neat little waist” since I was in my cradle. I yearned for adventure, for love, for romance, and I seemed condemned to an existence of drab utility. The village possessed a lending library, full of tattered works of fiction, and I enjoyed perils and love-making at second hand, and went to sleep dreaming of stern, silent Rhodesians, and of strong men who always “felled their opponent with a single blow.” There was no one in the village who even looked as though he could “fell” an opponent, with a single blow or with several. There was the Kinema too, with a weekly episode of “The Perils of Pamela.” Pamela was a magnificent young woman. Nothing daunted her. She fell out of aeroplanes, adventured in submarines, climbed skyscrapers and crept about in the Underworld without turning a hair. She was not really clever, the Master Criminal of the Underworld caught her each time, but as he seemed loath to knock her on the head in a simple way, and always doomed her to death in a sewer-gas chamber or by some new and marvellous means, the hero was always able to rescue her at the beginning of the following week’s episode. I used to come out with my head in a delirious whirl—and then I would get home and find a notice from the Gas Company threatening to cut us off if the outstanding account was not paid! And yet, though I did not suspect it, every moment was bringing adventure nearer to me. It is possible that there are many people in the world who have never heard of the finding of an antique skull at the Broken Hill Mine in Northern Rhodesia. I came down one morning to find Papa excited to the point of apoplexy. He poured out the whole story to me. “You understand, Anne? There are undoubtedly certain resemblances to the Java skull, but superficial—superficial only. No, here we have what I have always maintained—the ancestral form of the Neanderthal race. You grant that the Gibraltar skull is the most primitive of the Neanderthal skulls found? Why? The cradle of the race was in Africa. They passed to Europe——” “Not marmalade on kippers, papa,” I said hastily, arresting my parent’s absent-minded hand. “Yes, you were saying?” “They passed to Europe on——” Here he broke down with a bad fit of choking, the result of an immoderate mouthful of kipper-bones. “But we must start at once,” he declared, as he rose to his feet at the conclusion of the meal. “There is no time to be lost. We must be on the spot—there are doubtless incalculable finds to be found in the neighbourhood. I shall be interested to note whether the implements are typical of the Mousterian period—there will be the remains of the primitive ox, I should say, but not those of the woolly rhinoceros. Yes, a little army will be starting soon. We must get ahead of them. You will write to Cook’s to-day, Anne?” “What about money, papa?” I hinted delicately. He turned a reproachful eye upon me. “Your point of view always depresses me, my child. We must not be sordid. No, no, in the cause of science one must not be sordid.” “I feel Cook’s might be sordid, papa.” Papa looked pained. “My dear Anne, you will pay them in ready money.” “I haven’t got any ready money.” Papa looked thoroughly exasperated. “My child, I really cannot be bothered with these vulgar money details. The bank—I had something from the Manager yesterday, saying I had twenty-seven pounds.” “That’s your overdraft, I fancy.” “Ah, I have it! Write to my publishers.” I acquiesced doubtfully, Papa’s books bringing in more glory than money. I liked the idea of going to Rhodesia immensely. “Stern silent men,” I murmured to myself in an ecstasy. Then something in my parent’s appearance struck me as unusual. “You have odd boots on, papa,” I said. “Take off the brown one and put on the other black one. And don’t forget your muffler. It’s a very cold day.” In a few minutes Papa stalked off, correctly booted and well mufflered. He returned late that evening, and, to my dismay, I saw his muffler and overcoat were missing. “Dear me, Anne, you are quite right. I took them off to go into the cavern. One gets so dirty there.” I nodded feelingly, remembering an occasion when Papa had returned literally plastered from head to foot with rich Pleiocene clay. Our principal reason for settling in Little Hampsly had been the neighbourhood of Hampsly Cavern, a buried cave rich in deposits of the Aurignacian culture. We had a tiny Museum in the village, and the curator and Papa spent most of their days messing about underground and bringing to light portions of woolly rhinoceros and cave bear. Papa coughed badly all the evening, and the following morning I saw he had a temperature and sent for the doctor. Poor Papa, he never had a chance. It was double pneumonia. He died four days later. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Agatha Christie (2020). The Man in the Brown Suit. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/61168/pg61168-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

Anne Beddingfeld starts to narrate her adventures

Unveiling the Nexus: Blockchain in the Context of Contemporary Philosophical Theories

Portugal loves rock music and more specifically 1970s Classic Rock. Bars, clubs gyms put The Who on rotation. Uber drivers tune to “Best Rock FM”, a radio station devoted to The Beatles and Led Zeppelin. A popular vintage-themed barbershop, whose motto is “ ”, excels at the understated art of appreciation of Pink Floyd. There, I usually get a hot towel shave in the span of a full listen to “The Dark Side of the Moon”. Only classic, no shit In the Post-War, Portugal was living under a regime of censorship and corporateness, with an economy dominated by few, and continuous surveillance. With the "Carnation Revolution" of 1974, a bloodless left-wing military coup installed the "Third Republic". The country started to open up politically, socially, and culturally to the Western world, which at the time was shedding the establishment’s skin and embracing a counterculture. There are two prevailing explanations for why an entire culture couldn’t fall out of love with its myths of the past. The first is that some are just monogamous lovers of history: Portuguese, as well as Italians and generally Southern Europeans, encode old memories as successes. The second psycho-analytic account has to do with an irrational fear of progress, and the overlap between forward motion and failures. Recent history has exacerbated this sentiment. If you come across the collection of economic and social graphs from the website , it is hard not to conclude that something fundamental broke during that time. The charts seem to narrate a story of stalled science. Portugal, Italy, and vast portions of the West are capitulating to a collective nostalgia that yearns for some sort of ‘Golden Era’. Our perspective on time and the future is tied hand in glove with the evolution of scientific and technological progress. “WTF Happened In 1971?” There is a subconscious collective belief that the Golden Era was somewhere in the past, and it’s not to be found again. At the collective, psychological level, this is one of the fundamental barriers to progress. This condemns entire populations to live with nostalgia, refrain to adopt new technologies, and become hard skeptics of whatever progress brings. In a way, has the extraordinary potential to lift people from poverty, but also establish different paradigms of time conception. technology The Western idea of progress revolves around the concept of motion. Mankind has advanced in the past, is advancing in the present, and is expected to progress in the future. The grounds of this belief range from mere individual caprice to the assumption of progress as an indisputable law of nature that nothing can resist. The semantic perimeter of progress engulfs spiritual enlightenment as well as material dynamism. Ever since the Greeks, the most common idea of progress referred to an aesthetic advancement. The Greeks were used to identify the beautiful and the good. They excelled at marble life-like sculptures that glorified the male nude form. To them, beauty instills progress by correcting our sense of scale, proportion, and poise. Throughout history, the idea of progress also referred to what early Christians called heaven: a state of spiritual exaltation and liberation from all physical torments. Mankind has generally lived with either a dim faith in some "far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves". And this movement has been assumed to be one of progress. This perspective of progress has always been used to characterize the hope of a future of individual freedom, equality, and justice. Only in Western Civilization, though, did the idea of humanity improving itself established roots. Progress is a step-by-step motion until at some remote, indefinite time in the future a condition of near-perfection is achieved. It’s safe to assume that the idea of progress is inseparable from modernity and it became possible only after Western thought had finally been able to throw the shackles of the dogma. The Greeks were unable to shake off ideas of fate, degeneration from a Golden Age, cycles, limitations, and endemic pessimism. The Christians turned their minds entirely to the supernatural, believing that the things of this world are of no importance. Christian In his (hilarious) , Louie CK argues that “the Christians won everything”. He then adds: “If you don’t believe me, let me ask you a question: what year is it, according to the entire human race? And why?”. In a way, he hit the nail on the head: Christianity is not a religion, but a social substrate of consciousness. It’s a culture and a system of values—a culture of relentless optimism. 2017 special Greeks believed the Golden Age belonged to the past. The Golden Age denotes a period of stability, harmony, and prosperity. Back then, people did not have to work to feed themselves. The Earth provided food in abundance. The Greek Golden Age is like a happy childhood: you are fed, clothed, and washed, and gaze into the eyes of your mother while safe and protected. Like anything that goes on well for too long, the Golden Age can be unbelievably boring. Eventually, Christianity came up with an alternative, linear subdivision of time into the past (the capital sin), present (redemption), and future (salvation). The linear idea of time is seductive for science too. The Enlightenment buckets the past as ignorance, the presence as research, and the future as progress. Even Marx, in his own way, was a fervent Christian. He views the past as social justice, the present as class conflict, and the future as social justice. In “The Future of an Illusion”, Freud writes that neurosis and trauma are the past, analysis is the present and healing is the future. This is the optimistic push of Christianity. Look forward! To Greeks, however, death is a serious business. Socrates committed suicide when his cycle reached completion. Greeks envision pain as an integral part of life. They don’t “make lemonade” when life give them “lemons”. Instead, they “ soldier through without much fanfare. No citrusy squeezing. Just passive acceptance. substine and abstine”, Unlike them, Christians don’t really believe in death. Nietzsche believes that the Christian idea of time has been the stroke of genius that erased the Greek perspective. In Christianity, pain has a deep meaning, because by showing pain you close the tab with your guilt and sins while negotiating access to eternal life. Those who suffer find consolation in the fact that pain is valuable currency for a place in paradise. But of all the enigmatic aspects of the idea of the future (the infinite number of possibilities, the charm of hope that contrasts reality, its difficult relationship with the truth) perhaps the most baffling one is this: it is not immediately clear why the future should be qualitatively better than the present, as well as a significant improvement from the past. The Greek answer to this dilemma isn’t particularly mysterious, as they believed in a cyclical vision of time, not a linear one. They nurtured the idea that history repeats itself and looked up to senior citizens’ experience as a well of knowledge for the youths. For them, time progresses, like seasons, from repeated cycles. Christians instead interpret the flow of time as one-way, not recurrent. In the modern West, youths are gatekeepers of relevant knowledge (think about ), and not seniors. And rightly so, you might argue. Because they are in the best moment of their life. Not because invigorated by athletic prowess, but by a creative, intuitive spark. explaining Bitcoin to your grandpa In Daniel Kahneman separates the youth’s intuitive push (“System 1”) from a slower, more deliberative assessment (“System 2”). I am not sure that account can be tested, but it was System 1 that generated the current technological revolution and, with that, the metamorphosis of the concept of time. “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, Galileo was the first one to theorize the idea of measurable time with the pendulum at the age of 20. Alexander the Great conquered most of the known world before turning 33. Beethoven was 38 when he composed the Fifth. Einstein introduced E = mc² when only 24. You can enlist the Silicon Valley college drop-outs founders here too, if you wish. All embraced their youth’s power of intuition as a lowercase act of magic to measure, conquer and transform the reality around them. With Galileo, Christianity and scientific progress shake hands on the concept of linear time, and optimism for the future. In the words of Nietzsche, “God is dead” now. Christianity has passed the baton to science and technology to inject optimism into the idea of the future. Without technological progress, there’s no optimism for the future. Peter Thiel is convinced that meaningful technological revolutions stopped a good half a century ago. His view is not unique. There are plenty of on the velocity of progress (or lack thereof) that highlight a sort of scientific and technological plateau as a defining feature of the 21st century. studies Imagine aliens observing the Earth at a great remove. Our artistic, religious, and aesthetic achievements are unlikely to carry any meaning. But the would make sense to them. It reshaped landscapes, increased the human population, and leveraged non-human energy sources. It was the first step in knitting all of humanity into a common complex system. Neolithic revolution But the Neolithic Revolution took centuries to invent and millennia to spread. The technical innovations that went to market in the late 19th century were different. They brought about changes equally epochal—but the innovations behind them were invented in the course of one human lifespan. For the first time, our imaginary observers in orbit would see the dark side of Earth twinkle with light. Because of the technical advances that occurred in the late 1800s, the modes of human travel, the mediums of human communication, the methods by which humans heated, formed, and shaped their environment, and the source of the energy flow that powered all these wonders all changed. This is, by and large, the same civilization we still live in today. The list of technical inventions that made this new world possible is fairly small: steam turbines, internal combustion engines, electric motors, incandescent light, electromagnetic waves, photographic film, aluminum smelting, steel, reinforced concrete, nitroglycerin, and synthesized ammonia. Most of this stuff saw commercial applications before the First World War. The transition from an animal-powered, low-mass civilization to an electrified, mechanical, high-mass civilization allowed our species to replace villages of mud with cities of steel. This transition accounts for the boom years of American, European, and Japanese expansion in the 20th century, as well as the growth of China in the 21st. Interestingly, Thiel seems to locate the turning point with the rise of the anti-nuclear movement and the flowering of the counterculture — an era of material rejection and experiential embracement. Thiel defines Western civilization by its history of discovery, exploration, and progress. If Western culture has turned away from the material, it has truly turned its back on innovation. Our relationship with technological innovation runs deeper than we think. It encompasses our view of time and our optimism toward the future. It creates a collective sense of motion and an invisible layer that glues us together. Technology historian Carlota Perez argues that all the five major technological transformations our civilization exhibit the same cyclical pattern. The interplay between financial and production capital generates financial bubbles, which then lead to uneven resource distribution, social unrest, and a sense of urgency for the next breakthrough. Silicon Valley dreams of an algorithmic revolution. But all information-age technologies participate in the coordinating, organizing, calibrating, centralizing, and of existing modes of production. This will not be sufficient. A future boom will not come from improvements in organization and information. Growth is the physical transformation of an entire society. Mud to concrete. Wood to steel. Sweat to dynamos. Shovels to dynamite. Wicks to lightbulbs. Carts to cars to airplanes. decentralizing The Internet, telecommunications, and the revolutionary free flow of information started in the 1970s. Since then, very little has been built. If it’s true that great technological transformations follow a forty-year cyclical scheme, we are well ripe for our next transformation. Also published here.

Wicks to Lightbulbs: Why We Are Ripe for Our Next Technological Transformation

উইকস টু লাইটবাল্ব: কেন আমরা আমাদের পরবর্তী প্রযুক্তিগত রূপান্তরের জন্য উপযুক্ত

Dochte werden zu Glühbirnen: Warum wir reif für unsere nächste technologische Transformation sind

De mechas a bombillas: por qué estamos maduros para nuestra próxima transformación tecnológica

Des mèches aux ampoules : pourquoi nous sommes mûrs pour notre prochaine transformation technologique

विक्स टू लाइटबल्ब्स: व्हाई वी आर रिप फॉर अवर नेक्स्ट टेक्नोलॉजिकल ट्रांसफॉर्मेशन

芯から電球へ: 次の技術的変革の機が熟している理由

심지에서 전구로: 우리가 다음 기술 혁신에 적합한 이유

De pavios a lâmpadas: por que estamos prontos para nossa próxima transformação tecnológica

Ampul Fitilleri: Bir Sonraki Teknolojik Dönüşümümüze Neden Hazırız?

Bấc đèn đến bóng đèn: Tại sao chúng ta đã chín muồi cho sự chuyển đổi công nghệ tiếp theo của mình

灯芯到灯泡：为什么我们已经准备好进行下一次技术转型

THE ART OF RELIGION

Despite covering a few months ago, I didn't take the next logical step to try Copilot, Github's AI coding support tool. However, my interest was sparked last week, as a coworker of mine shared a screenshot of an AI-generated test suite. some neat ChatGPT feats The prompt was reasonably simple, and the generated test cases were relevant; enough to make me want to subscribe to GC free trial and contribute to the advent of the singularity event. I will avoid covering in detail what Copilot can or can't do: others already anticipated me by a long shot. The interesting part to me is how I can get to terms with this new technology. In this post, I will also use Github Copilot as a benchmark to infer what an "AI for coding" can do today, as I think it represents the state-of-the-art in the field. The Real Role of AI in Programming Jobs Many spontaneous questions come to mind when thinking about AI in the software domain. Is it useful? Is it dangerous? Will it take our jobs? The most important thing is not cornering ourselves with a limiting mindset and letting our emotions forge some weird narrative around AI - either as neoluddists or utopian techno-enthusiasts. Instead, I find other types of questions more interesting, and way easier to answer: these questions don't imply a "yes" or "no" reply, but usually start with "what", "when", and "where". For instance, What tasks does it facilitate, and what personal skills does it demand? how can I integrate Copilot into my day-to-day work? The value of AI in our work is mostly clear to software engineers. Still, I understand that people from other walks of life may grossly misjudge what the possibilities are, especially as many content creators or journalists like to attract eyeballs by suggesting catastrophic scenarios (or promising that building software is now accessible to anyone). Yes, it's true that tools based on GPT-3 - and just recently GPT-4 - can write code, and yes, the code being generated will often compile and do what is expected from it. However, this doesn't necessarily represent an to my job security, since writing code isn't what software engineers really do. Let me elaborate better. immediate threat Our job is not about typing code into a text editor. We are not stenographers. The job is about deciding what to code. In fact, whenever I am designing software and I finally start typing something into my IDE, I already hold in my mind what the next snippet of code will be like. At this point, AI is just connecting the dots, instantly generating the method or data structure I intended, minus involuntary typos or other obvious mistakes. Even if , as it carries enormous information that GC needs to operate correctly. And you won't get that initial prompt without an engineer behind the keyboard. AI could contribute to more than 80% of some code base, giving the appropriate prompt (the initial 20%) is essential Copilot... or Autopilot? I believe that a good comparison can be made with airplane autopilots. AFCS (Auto-Flight Control System) can perfectly perform a variety of flight operations: adjusting the flight path, approaching an airport, or even landing. I still wouldn't dream of jumping on a commercial flight without any human supervision. The fact that the computer is able to control the plane doesn't mean that the pilots sit idle on the flight deck. There is still plenty to do: checking the weather ahead, communicating with air traffic control, planning alternate routes, and, most importantly, supervising the autopilot and taking the reins if need be. Therefore, we can see how pilots are still the ones flying the plane. In a similar guise, . AI is a tool. Engineers are trained to streamline their workflow by using automation, but they will always monitor what their tool is doing. If it's not behaving as intended, the engineers will jump in and redress the situation. AI doesn't develop software, engineers do This is the mindset that I have when using Copilot: I will gladly delegate to it the menial tasks but, in the meanwhile, I will be vigilant about what output it will produce. Conclusion As you may know, the underlying ML algorithm of Copilot is called GPT-3 and makes predictions of the most likely sequence of tokens to be generated. While the generated code is usually syntactically correct, the tools have no cognition of what the specs are and whether the produced code is valid. A possible countermeasure is helping GC with some prompt engineering: for instance, writing a comment stating what the next snippet does is a powerful technique to help the AI. Even better, sometimes even the comment could be autogenerated after typing in the first few words. However, it must be said that, even under the most ideal conditions, Copilot doesn't always offer a helpful suggestion, or any suggestion at all if that's the case. While GC is pretty amazing, I believe it is still highly imperfect as a coding tool. For now, I didn't decide whether to fully incorporate Copilot in my toolset or not: the hit-or-miss nature of its suggestions can sometimes be a hindrance. In any case, I'd suggest everyone to get their feet wet, and at least try it once: think of it as a utility tool like your syntax highlighter or your favorite IDE's autocompletion feature. What's your opinion on Github Copilot? Did you incorporate it into your daily job or was it a hard pass for you? Don't be shy, and let me know in the comments! Also Published Here

The Modern Coder's Cockpit: My Thoughts on GitHub Copilot

আধুনিক কোডারের ককপিট: গিটহাব কপিলট সম্পর্কে আমার চিন্তাভাবনা

Das Cockpit des modernen Programmierers: Meine Gedanken zu GitHub Copilot

The Modern Coder Cockpit: Mis pensamientos sobre GitHub Copilot

Le cockpit du codeur moderne : mes réflexions sur le copilote GitHub

आधुनिक सांकेतिक शब्दों में बदलनेवाला कॉकपिट: GitHub Copilot पर मेरे विचार

最新の Coder コックピット: GitHub Copilot に関する私の考え

현대 코더의 조종석: GitHub Copilot에 대한 나의 생각

O Cockpit do Coder Moderno: Minhas Opiniões sobre o GitHub Copilot

Modern Kodlayıcının Kokpiti: GitHub Copilot Üzerine Düşüncelerim

Buồng lái lập trình viên hiện đại: Suy nghĩ của tôi về GitHub Copilot

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