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Doctora Malka Older Profile picture
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17 Nov, 6 tweets, 2 min read
watching this because how could I not?
oh no starting with way too much reality about the possibility of nuclear explosions, more fiction please
some good stuff here on the difficulty of comprehending the abstraction of these enormous arsenals - Benoît Pelopidas of @NKnowledges presenting
so fiction allows us to get passed this impossibility of believing such horror - Pelopidas, now going through 4 examples from Dr. Strangelove to Akira. Def recommend this event if you understand French and are interested in this stuff.
yes, liking this from Yannick Rumpala about how science-fiction problematizes through the slippage in time/place
also appreciate the CYBERPUNK IS NOT DEAD background ✌🏼
the discussion has turned to the difficulties of social sciences in dealing with the future, relevant to the our interests @CynthiaSelin. Really too bad Jenny Andersson couldn't make it as planned to contribute at this point.

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More from @m_older

Doctora Malka Older Profile picture
18 Nov
We KNOW what to do to solve/slow climate change. Instead of new tech solutions someday/greenwashing increments, what we need to figure out is 1) how to make the change in the face of narrow but powerful interests that don't want to 2) support the vulnerable during the transition
In order to do 1), we first need to be clear that these are narrow, entrenched interests. The fossil fuel industries are not equivalent to the economy; their profit margins do not correlate to high standards of living for us; their interests are not our interests. Further,
our decision-makers are chosen through a flawed process only tenuously related to democracy; their motivations are not solely (if at all) the well-being of voters; we do have levers to influence them but those levers are attenuated and indirect, unlike lobbying $$$ & corruption.
Read 27 tweets
Doctora Malka Older Profile picture
19 Oct
Because of moving and new jobs and so on, I've had to do a lot of paperwork and identification stuff lately, and it keeps bringing me back to Seeing Like a State and how desperately governments try to pin down something as slippery as identity.
One of the examples in SLaS is the institutionalization of last names, and it's fascinating to think about that long moment in which first name and maybe casual identifier (John the Baker, Wang from Qingdao) became insufficient and States felt a family name would do the trick
Now that seems laughable, the idea that first name-last name, maybe with a middle initial, would be unique enough to identify someone. Or couldn't be changed. Or those old passports - not that old even - that include hair & eye color, as if that helped AT ALL.
Read 32 tweets
Doctora Malka Older Profile picture
18 Oct
My research on FEMA is mainly related to Katrina, somewhat outdated, but 15 years ago the GOP-led report on Katrina is full of unevidenced ideology that govt is bad at disasters (& everything else) & private sector is better; that moral hazard is an important consideration ergo
rebuilding money was carefully rationed, tied to previous value (rather than building more resilience) and sometimes to insurance too (even though the people without insurance needed more help). This kind of ideology, and the prioritization of assets over humanity, are deeply
built in to disaster response in the US. Ideology evolves but it's sticky, particularly with career civil servants who have learned the hard way what gets funding from congress and what slashes it. Also, FEMA was badly damaged by the creation of DHS, with a torqued "all-hazards"+
Read 5 tweets
Doctora Malka Older Profile picture
6 Apr
Rich countries failed to deal with the pandemic. They failed to prepare for or deal with ice storms & hurricanes. They can't even protect their citizens from poverty. We should stop chasing economic growth and find other aims. My latest for @ForeignPolicy foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/06/cov…
Remember that map of the countries considered best prepared for pandemics? And how it looks next to the map of pandemic statistics?
That first map is based largely (though not entirely, see ghsindex.org) on which countries were putting money towards preparedness.
Read 25 tweets
Doctora Malka Older Profile picture
6 Apr
doing some research on poverty rates and wow the data is sketchy AF
gosh for a global hegemony that's all about 👋🏼economic growth👋🏼 and 👋🏼 markets👋🏼 the State sure isn't trying very hard to see poverty with any accuracy
receipts: data.oecd.org/inequality/pov… en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c…
Read 6 tweets
Doctora Malka Older Profile picture
5 Mar
To prepare for my talk at @BelferCenter in a few hours I'm reviewing the literature on technological disasters belfercenter.org/event/nuclear-…
I'm reviewing them through my own article about disaster responses as human-made disasters in Disaster Research and the Second Environmental Crisis edited by Kendra, @USofDisaster, @ProfDisaster springer.com/gp/book/978303…
I adapted my main argument in that paper for @newhumanitarian here: thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/2020/0…
Read 14 tweets

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