It’s fascinating how much the grown-ups want to keep squeezing their own phones. No matter how much youth suffer or are exposed, we simply can’t let go of the screen ourselves. When will it stop?
Author: danni
The debate on hybrid warfare and Russia
During the conference Society and defense (Folk och Försvar), the Supreme Commander of the Swedish Armed Forces said that the Swedish people must acknowledge the contingency of war. It caused an outcry. Presumably, this is posed as a fact to make people realize that we cannot be the ever-present observer, never involved or engaged in truly troublesome things with exogenous causes. We tend to have an immunized perception of catastrophes. What disturbs me is rather how the term of hybrid warfare is used. It’s misleading, to say the least.
Book review: Fancy Bear Goes Phishing
As soon as I noticed a book published with this savvy title this year, I knew I had to read it: Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in five Extraordinary Hacks. In his youth, Scott J. Shapiro spent much time with computers, but later chose a career in philosophy and law. When writing about cyberwar, he returned to computers, re-learning programming and computer science. Attempting to answer the simple questions of why the Internet is insecure, how do hackers exploit insecurity and how they can be prevented, or at least decreased in numbers, Shapiro takes us on a journey with five stops, from the late 1980’s to the hacks of the Democratic National Committee and the Minecraft wars.
Swedish economy – still in free fall
Listening to certain “experts” is like watching a very bleak comedy, French style. They seem bent on negating anything that proves a crisis is coming. The employment rate is going strong, the housing market will soon rise again, Riksbanken (the central bank) won’t increase the interest rate further… If you borrow too much money, one day you’ll have to pay.
Democracies in time
Russian authorities are trying hard to foil Swedish plans to join NATO, and try to vie “experts” to argue for the sake of Russia. I still assert democracies should help Russia lose on the battlefield. No one should even consided abandoning Ukraine. You stand by your promise, by your friends.
Book review: Quantum Supremacy
Lately, I’ve become interested in quantum computing and wrote a short paper on the subject, combining the search for quantum computers and equality. As a brief introduction I bought Michio Kaku’s new book.After some initially wild assertions Michio Kaku delves into the real stuff: quantum theory and quantum mechanics and it gets exciting!
Book review: Weapons of math destruction
Cathy O’Neil is a computer scientist and mathematician, who left the academic life for the financial industry in the early 2000’s, working with computers, for companies making lots of money. There she discovered what is now called Big Data and later became troubled by the purposes and intents of algorithms. After realising the even more troublesome side effects on society, she thus wrote this book, with the secondary title How Big Data increases inequality and threatens democracy.
Studies proceeding
Since roughly one month I’ve been attending the master programme in political science, first semester, and I must admit it’s delightful.
Book review: The creativity code
Marcus du Sautoy is a British mathematician, who’s published several books on mathematics, appeared on TV and is highly regarded as an educator. He released a book in 2018 called The creativity code: How AI is learning to write, paint and think (du Sautoy is very fond of the word code in general, like in human code and creativity code), where he writes and ponders on the meaning of artificial intelligence and its implications for culture.
Book review: The Russo-Ukrainian War
This is the second book of Serhii Ploky I review, a very contemporary, and initially, personal account of The Russo-Ukrainian War, beginning a few days prior to the full-scale invasion and war. The book provides historical insights, and retrospect accounts of Ukraine’s position in the Soviet Union, the aftermath of the Cold War and the beginning of the 2000’s, with the Orange Revolution, EuroMaidan and first invasion of 2014-2015 at its focus. All this, puts the war into a context and provides the reader with a coherent comprehension of what has happened prior to the war beginning last war and why Ukraine is attacked by Russia.