Category Archives: Annals of Inequality

AGI - Artificial General Intelligence, AI, Annals of Inequality, Arts: Cartoons, Current Affairs, Future, Quakers, Signs of the Times, Think piece, Tyranny, Work

Yikes!! AI Is Coming for My JOB — Even Though I’m Already Retired!

3 Comments

Tom Edsall writes a very valuable  weekly column in the New York Times, and he’s paid a lot of attention to the rise of Artificial Intelligence. Like other observers, he’s particularly concerned about AI’s developing impact on jobs and society, present and future.

In his June 5 column, Edsall picks the brains of several scholars who are delving deeply into these matters. One piece of what he found jerked me upright. Continue reading Yikes!! AI Is Coming for My JOB — Even Though I’m Already Retired! →

Abortion, Annals of Inequality, Black & White & Other Colors, Conscription/military draft, Corruption, Crime & Punishment, Cross-Generational Issues, Current Affairs, Future, Justice?, LGBTQ & Gender, Minority Rule, Passing the Torch(es), Scams & Frauds, Supreme & Other Courts, The Law — Inside & Outside it, To Save Democracy

My True Confession, from 1968: All Downhill from There

4 Comments

Here it is:

I didn’t vote for Hubert Humphrey for president in 1968. Humphrey lost to Richard Nixon, by less than one percent. And as Andy Young had warned me, it’s been (almost) all downhill from there.

Not that I voted for Nixon instead. Or for George Wallace, the fiery segregationist Alabama governor, who carried five deep southern states that year.

Instead, I didn’t vote at all.

I’m not proud of it; but my feelings and regrets are not the point here. Continue reading My True Confession, from 1968: All Downhill from There →

Accountability, Activism, AFSC, Annals of Inequality, antisemitism, Apartheid, Arts: Blogging, Famine, Fire This Time, Gaza, Hamas, Hostages, Israel, Israel/Hamas War, Jews & Judaism, North Carolina, Palestine, Quakers, Racism, Religious Issues & Conflicts, Resistance, Revolution, Terror and Terrorism, Torture & Human Rights, Tyranny, War Notes

AFSC: When the Slides Went Awry, And The Key Questions Weren’t Asked . . .

15 Comments
Brian Blackmore

Last month I attended two presentations by the new AFSC Director of Quaker Engagement, Brian Blackmore, at Durham and Chapel Hill Meetings here in North Carolina.

Blackmore, just a year in the job, is the successor to Lucy Duncan, a longtime AFSC staffer who was unceremoniously fired in early 2022 when she tried to start a staff uprising to stop a major internal reorganization. Continue reading AFSC: When the Slides Went Awry, And The Key Questions Weren’t Asked . . . →

Annals of Inequality, Cross-Generational Issues, Current Affairs, History, Justice?, Minority Rule, Politics—U. S., Racism, Resistance, Selma & Civil Rights, Signs of the Times, Social Justice, To Save Democracy

Selma Alabama “Bloody Sunday” 59th Anniversary: La Lutta Continua

2 Comments

Garrison Keillor: “It’s the anniversary of the first March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama (1965), known as “Bloody Sunday.”

Six hundred civil rights activists left Selma to march the 54 miles to the state capitol, demonstrating for African-American voting rights.

They got six blocks before state and local lawmen attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas.

ABC News interrupted a Nazi war crimes documentary to show footage of the violence. In the blink of a television set, national public opinion about civil rights shifted. Demonstrations broke out across the country.

Two weeks later, the March from Selma made it to Montgomery, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, federal court protection, and these words from President Lyndon Johnson: “There is no issue of States rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights.” When they got to Montgomery, they were 25,000 strong.

In response, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in August 1965. That law enfranchised millions of excluded Americans. It made possible the election of three presidents: Carter, Clinton & Obama.

The American right worked relentlessly to roll back the law. In 2013 the Supreme Court began to gut it, and vote suppression has become a legislative crusade in much of the country.

The struggle continues.

 

More on Selma & the struggle here.

Abortion, Annals of Inequality, Anti-semitism, Black & White & Other Colors, Carolina & the World, Conservative Perspectives, Cross-Generational Conversation: YAFS & OFFs, Culture wars, DEI, Election 2024, Evangelicals, Jews & Judaism, KKK, LGBTQ & Gender, North Carolina, Politics—U. S., Populism, Racism, Religious Issues & Conflicts, Signs of the Times, Trans, Weird & Peculiar

NC Governor’s Race: It’s a Black & White Choice

Leave a comment

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The Democratic attorney general and the Republican lieutenant governor won North Carolina’s primaries for governor on Tuesday, setting the stage for what will be an expensive and high–stakes November contest in a state that the two parties see as a pivotal battleground in 2024.

Josh Stein and Mark Robinson, each of whom turned back multiple party rivals, will present a stark contrast for voters in the ninth–largest state’s fall elections.

Stein is a longtime member of North Carolina’s political scene, a lawyer with the endorsement of term–limited Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and a long history of consumer advocacy before and during his time as AG. He’d be the state’s first Jewish governor if elected.

Robinson, meanwhile, is a former factory worker who splashed into conservative circles after a 2018 viral speech to his hometown city council — catapulting him to lieutenant governor in 2020 and the endorsement of former President Donald Trump. He’s North Carolina’s first Black lieutenant governor and would become the state’s first Black governor as well.

Continue reading NC Governor’s Race: It’s a Black & White Choice →