549 Matching Annotations
  1. Jun 2021
    1. One way to do this is by using first-party data to connect in-store transactions back to digital advertising campaigns.

      I work for a jewelry store and get to see all of this happening first hand. I believe this is like what we did when Covid hit and our store kept closing down and re opening. We use Shopify that is linked to our website and then I have a Shopify POS system in store that helps keep everything connected. So I believe that is an example of this.

  2. May 2021
    1. So the truth is that the influencer economy is just a garish accentuation of the economy writ large. As our culture continues to conflate the private and public realms—as the pandemic has transformed our homes into offices and our bedrooms into backdrops, as public institutions increasingly fall prey to the mandates of the market—we’ve become cheerfully indentured to the idea that our worth as individuals isn’t our personal integrity or sense of virtue, but our ability to advertise our relevance on the platforms of multinational tech corporations.
    1. Systems for encoding, transmission, and protection of essential knowledge for group survival and cohesion were developed by multiple cultures long before the advent of alphabetic writing.

      Focusing in on the phrase:

      essential knowledge for group survival

      makes me wonder if we haven't evolutionarily primed ourselves to use knowledge and group knowledge in particular to create group cohesion and therefor survival?

      Cross reference: https://hyp.is/LWtjtLhjEeuTqHPwUUMUbA/threadreaderapp.com/thread/1381933685713289216.html and the paper https://www.academia.edu/46814693/The_Signaling_Function_of_Sharing_Fake_Stories

    1. Examples of this sort of non-logical behaviour used to represent identity can be found in fiction in:

      • Dr. Seuss' The Butter Battle Book (Random House,1984) which is based on
      • the war between Lilliput and Blefuscu in Jonathan Swift's 1726 satire Gulliver's Travels, which was based on an argument over the correct end to crack an egg once soft-boiled.

      It almost seems related to creating identity politics as bike-shedding because the real issues are so complex that most people can't grasp all the nuances, so it's easier to choose sides based on some completely other heuristic. Changing sides later on causes too much cognitive dissonance, so once on a path, one must stick to it.

  3. commonplace.knowledgefutures.org commonplace.knowledgefutures.org
  4. Apr 2021
  5. Mar 2021
  6. Feb 2021
  7. Jan 2021
  8. Dec 2020
  9. Nov 2020
    1. EBF was much more potent than Pax5 in inducing B celldevelopment, as its expression in MPPs yielded at least 100-foldmore B lineage progeny than did expression of Pax5 (Fig. 3band data not shown). These data suggest that promotion of B cellgeneration from MPPs by EBF is not mediated solely throughactivation of Pax5 expression.

      EBF expression represses and restricts alternative lineage genes, also help promote B cell independently of Pax 5.

  10. Oct 2020
  11. moodle.southwestern.edu moodle.southwestern.edu
  12. moodle.southwestern.edu moodle.southwestern.edu
    1. The challenges before us—the worst public health crisis in a century, the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, the worst period of global upheaval in a generation, the urgent global crisis posed by climate change, the intolerable racial injustice that still stains the fabric of our nation—will test America’s character like never before.

      I know that we are making history but it doesn't exactly feel like it. The election feels like a joke. There is a stark difference between what came out of Roosevelt's mouth and either of the presidential candidates mouth's. Now it is a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils than a heroic leader to help our country achieve greatness.

  13. Sep 2020
    1. “We’re changing federalism from the idea of shared expertise in different policy areas into partisan stakes in the ground that are meant to obstruct opponents,” Robertson says.

      This is so true with the Trump Administrations "Alternative Facts" it is as though we will soon be living in the dystopian novel Brave New World.

    2. “The coronavirus response is actually sort of a perfect measuring stick of our transition to our contemporary, very polarized model of federalism.”

      I want to reference the Netflix documentary Social Dilemma. The documentary says that the reason politics has become so polarized is because of social media. Everyone is operating off of a different set of facts.

    1. It could create incentives for action by conditioning a portion of funds going to states in any future relief packages on states’ adherence to the measures

      Why did this not happen? I feel like it isn’t the federalist system in general that are failing us— it’s the leaders of the system. Why did congress not make a playbook and create incentives for states to follow them? This reminds me of how the drinking age became 21 in every state from the funding of the highways.

    2. Lacking strong federal leadership to guide a uniform response, the United States quickly fulfilled the World Health Organization’s prediction that it would become the new epicenter of Covid-19.

      I wonder if a democrat was in office when covid hit if we would have stronger federal leadership. Would we have been in a state of emergency if someone who believed in the facts of science wasn’t in office? I have trouble believing that there is nothing the president could have done to prevent covid from getting this out of hand.

    3. subject to constitutionally protected individual rights such as due process, equal protection, and freedom of travel and association

      I didn’t know that it is within our rights to travel and associate with whomever we choose. I wouldn’t think the government would be able to control who would be able to leave their house or hang out with who anyway. I guess this shows how right the article about uninformed citizens we read last week is right.

    1. El matrimonio igualitario Argentina, Uruguay, México, Brasil y Colombia son los únicos países de América Latina que han legalizado el matrimonio de parejas homosexuales, con todas las condiciones legales que tienen los matrimonios convencionales. De igual manera, Holanda, Bélgica, Suecia, Alemania, Sudáfrica, España, Inglaterra, Portugal y otras 12 naciones más han hecho lo propio.   Entretanto, sólo 11 países permiten la unión civil entre parejas del mismo sexo (no incluye todos los derechos legítimos maritales) entre estos Ecuador, Chile, Austria, Italia y Grecia. Cambio de identidad El proceso de cambio de género o sexo es un proceso quirúrgico y psicológico que contempla el cambio físico. En la actualidad, naciones como Venezuela, Colombia, Uruguay, Bolivia y Perú permiten que la transformación también sea legal, con el cambio del nombre y género en los documentos de identidad de las personas LGBTI. Sin embargo, en Brasil y Argentina, este tipo de decretos han sido desaprobados o son procesos difíciles por lo riguroso de los exámenes y requisitos que truncan el derecho al trámite. Igualdad en derechos patrimoniales Las garantías, protecciones legales en los matrimonios tras el fallecimiento y divorcio también son logros alcanzados en menos de 20 años por la comunidad LGBTI. Pero estos aún están condicionados dependiendo del país, por la diferencia entre permitir la unión civil (algunos derechos de cónyuges) o el matrimonio igualitario (derechos legítimos).   Adopción homoparental Uruguay, México, Canadá (el primer país en permitirlo en 1999) y algunos estados de EE.UU. han legalizado la adopción para personas unidas del mismo sexo. Asimismo, España, Holanda, Francia y otros permiten que las parejas no heterosexuales puedan tener hijos por medio de la adopción legal. Protección a víctimas de discriminación Hasta 1948 la homosexualidad era considerada una enfermedad mental, pero esto cambió lo que permitió la apertura de sistemas de protección a víctimas de discriminación y agresión. En la actualidad, existen programas de atención social y judicial para el seguimiento de los casos de hostigamiento y asesinatos contra los homosexuales. Además hay coberturas de salud gratuitas para tratar enfermedades como el sida y la programas de integración laboral en distintas áreas. Tags Día contra la Homofobia LGBTI Derechos Discriminación BBC - La Vanguardia - El Excelsior - La Semana Por: teleSUR- db - SB - JCM Noticias Relacionadas OLP exhorta a Oriente Medio a tomar medidas contra Guatemala Bolivia afirma que Venezuela frena dominación de EE.UU. 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Do This Immediately (Watch)Fungus Clear SupplementsCCPA Notice window._taboola = window._taboola || []; _taboola.push({ mode: 'thumbnails-a', container: 'taboola-below-article-thumbnails', placement: 'Below Article Thumbnails', target_type: 'mix' }); window.fbAsyncInit = function() { FB.init({ appId : '1009084795820552', xfbml : true, version : 'v2.5' }); }; (function(d, s, id){ var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;} js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/es_LA/sdk.js"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/es_LA/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.5&appId=1009084795820552"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); $(document).ready(function () { $("#comentNativos").addClass("coment"); $("#btn-face").addClass("activeComent"); $("#btn-cf").click(function () { // alert("btn-facebook"); $("#comentNativos").addClass("coment"); $("#btn-face").addClass("activeComent"); $(".fb_ltr").css({width: "940px"}); $("#comentFace").removeClass("coment"); $("#btn-nativo").removeClass("activeComent"); }); $("#btn-cn").click(function () { // alert("btn-nativo"); $("#comentFace").addClass("coment"); $("#comentNativos").removeClass("coment"); $("#btn-nativo").addClass("activeComent"); $("#btn-face").removeClass("activeComent"); }); }); Comentarios con facebook () Comentarios con teleSUR (0) Comentarios 0 Ingresa o Regístrate para poder comentar, usar el foro y más Ingresar Regístrate Nota sin comentarios. //]]>--> footer .legal{ font-size:15px; background:var(--bg-footer-legal,#1c2036); border-bottom: 2px solid #fff; opacity:.5; float:left; } footer .colFootRedes .wpFootSuscrip input[type="text"]:focus{ border: 2px solid #555; border-radius:5px; width:320px; height:46px; } footer .colFootRedes .wpFootSuscrip input[type="text"]{ border: 2px solid #555; border-radius:5px; width:320px; height:46px; } footer .colFooti h4{ color:transparent; cursor:context-menu; } .vivoFooter{ position:relative; } .vivoFooter h4{ position:absolute; margin-top: 6%; margin-left:8em; } footer .wpRedesFoot{ top:135px; border:none; } footer .wpRedesFoot a{ margin-top:-20px; } footer .wpRedesFoot a:hover{ opacity:0.5; } .vivoFooterBoton{ Width:25em; height:3.5em; border-radius:5px; border: none; color:#fff; margin-top:5px; background:#9a1212; transition:1s; font-weight:bolder; } .vivoFooterBoton:hover{ opacity:0.8; transition:1s; } .vivoFooterBoton a{ font-size:16px; } .colFoot img{ margin-left:3px; margin-bottom:-5%; } footer .colFoot{ font-size:12px; line-height:15px; } .colFooti a{ font-size:14px; line-height:15px; } footer .colFootRedes .wpFootSuscrip input[type="submit"]{ background:url("/https://www.telesurtv.net/arte/subNew.png"); background-repeat: no-repeat; width:9%; line-height:32px; margin-left:0px; color:transparent; } footer .colFooti{ color:transparent; font-size:0px; cursor:context-menu; } @media only screen and (max-width: 600px) { footer .wpRedesFoot a{ margin-right:-5px; } footer .colFootRedes .wpFootSuscrip input[type="text"]{ width:210px; } footer .colFootRedes .wpFootSuscrip input[type="text"]:focus{ width:210px; } footer .colFootRedes .wpFootSuscrip input[type="submit"]{ width:12%; color:transparent; } .vivoFooterBoton{ width:20em; margin-top:8px; margin-bottom:5px; } footer .colFooti{ margin-left:28%; margin-bottom:5%; } } Términos de uso Sobre teleSUR Acerca teleSUR Contactos Equipo Empleos Terminos de uso Cobertura satelital Canales Latinoamérica y el Caribe Mundo Deportes Cultura Opinión Programación Servicios Catálogo Multimedia Blog Videos teleSUR Inglés teleSUR Inglés

      https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telesurtv.net%2Fnews%2Fhomofobia-lgbti-derechos-discriminacion-logros-retrasos-20180517-0018.html&group=__world__

  14. Aug 2020
  15. Jul 2020
  16. Jun 2020
  17. May 2020
  18. Apr 2020
    1. The world’s largest exhibitions organizer, London-based Informa plc, outlined on Thursday morning a series of emergency actions it’s taking to alleviate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on its events business, which drives nearly two-thirds of the company’s overall revenues. Noting that the effects have been “significantly deeper, more volatile and wide-reaching,” than was initially anticipated, the company says it’s temporarily suspending dividends, cutting executive pay and issuing new shares worth about 20% of its total existing capital in an effort to strengthen its balance sheet and reduce its approximately £2.4 billion ($2.9 billion) in debt to £1.4 billion ($1.7 billion). Further, Informa says it’s engaged in “constructive discussions” with its U.S.-based debt holders over a covenant waiver agreement.

      Informa Group, que posee editoriales como Taylor & Francis, de Informa Intelligent Division toma medidas en su sector de conferencias y eventos. Provee dos tercios de sus ingresos totales, 2.9 billion dólares. Emite acciones y para el mercado norteamericano acuerdos de deuda. Mientras la parte editorial que aporta un 35% de los ingresos se mantiene sin cambios y con pronósticos estables y sólidos. Stephen Carter CEO

  19. Jan 2020
    1. Suppose the algorithm chooses a tree that splits on education but not on age. Conditional on this tree, the estimated coefficients are consistent. But that does not imply that treatment effects do not also vary by age, as education may well covary with age; on other draws of the data, in fact, the same procedure could have chosen a tree that split on age instead

      a caveat

    2. hese heterogenous treatment effects can be used to assign treatments; Misra and Dubé (2016) illustrate this on the problem of price targeting, applying Bayesian regularized methods to a large-scale experiment where prices were randomly assigned

      todo -- look into the implication for treatment assignment with heterogeneity

    3. Chernozhukov, Chetverikov, Demirer, Duflo, Hansen, and Newey (2016) take care of high-dimensional controls in treatment effect estimation by solving two simultaneous prediction problems, one in the outcome and one in the treatment equation.

      this seems similar to my idea of regularizing on only a subset of the variables

    4. Even when we are interested in a parameter β ˆ, the tool we use to recover that parameter may contain (often implicitly) a prediction component. Take the case of linear instrumental variables understood as a two-stage procedure: first regress x = γ′z + δ on the instrument z, then regress y = β′x + ε on the fitted values x ˆ. The first stage is typically handled as an estimation step. But this is effectively a prediction task: only the predictions x ˆ enter the second stage; the coefficients in the first stage are merely a means to these fitted values.

      first stage of IV -- handled as an estimation problem, but really it's a prediction problem!

    5. New Data

      The first application: constructing variables and meaning from high-dimensional data, especially outcome variables

      • satellite images (of energy use, lights etc) --> economic activity
      • cell phone data, Google street view to measure wealth
      • extract similarity of firms from 10k reports
      • even traditional data .. matching individuals in historical censuses
    6. Zhao and Yu (2006) who establish asymptotic model-selection consistency for the LASSO. Besides assuming that the true model is “sparse”—only a few variables are relevant—they also require the “irrepresentable condition” between observables: loosely put, none of the irrelevant covariates can be even moderately related to the set of relevant ones.

      Basically unrealistic for microeconomic applications imho

    7. First, it encourages the choice of less complex, but wrong models. Even if the best model uses interactions of number of bathrooms with number of rooms, regularization may lead to a choice of a simpler (but worse) model that uses only number of fireplaces. Second, it can bring with it a cousin of omitted variable bias, where we are typically concerned with correlations between observed variables and unobserved ones. Here, when regular-ization excludes some variables, even a correlation between observed variables and other observed (but excluded) ones can create bias in the estimated coefficients.

      Is this equally a problem for procedures that do not assum sparsity, such as the Ridge model?

    8. 97the variables are correlated with each other (say the number of rooms of a house and its square-footage), then such variables are substitutes in predicting house prices. Similar predictions can be produced using very different variables. Which variables are actually chosen depends on the specific finite sample.

      Lasso-chosen variables are unstable because of what we usually call 'multicollinearity.'<br> This presents a problem for making inferences from estimated coefficients.

    9. Through its regularizer, LASSO produces a sparse prediction function, so that many coefficients are zero and are “not used”—in this example, we find that more than half the variables are unused in each run

      This is true but they fail to mention that LASSO also shrinks the coefficients on variables that it keeps towards zero (relative to OLS). I think this is commonly misunderstood (from people I've spoken with).

    10. One obvious problem that arises in making such inferences is the lack of stan-dard errors on the coefficients. Even when machine-learning predictors produce familiar output like linear functions, forming these standard errors can be more complicated than seems at first glance as they would have to account for the model selection itself. In fact, Leeb and Pötscher (2006, 2008) develop conditions under which it is impossible to obtain (uniformly) consistent estimates of the distribution of model parameters after data-driven selection.

      This is a very serious limitation for Economics academic work.

    11. These choices about how to represent the features will interact with the regularizer and function class: A linear model can reproduce the log base area per room from log base area and log room number easily, while a regression tree would require many splits to do so.

      The choice of 'how to represent the features' is consequential ... it's not just 'throw it all in' (kitchen sink approach)

    12. Picking the prediction func-tion then involves two steps: The first step is, conditional on a level of complexity, to pick the best in-sample loss-minimizing function.8 The second step is to estimate the optimal level of complexity using empirical tuning (as we saw in cross-validating the depth of the tree).

      ML explained while standing on one leg.

    13. egularization combines with the observability of predic-tion quality to allow us to fit flexible functional forms and still find generalizable structure.

      But we can't really make statistical inferences about the structure, can we?

    14. This procedure works because prediction quality is observable: both predic-tions y ˆ and outcomes y are observed. Contrast this with parameter estimation, where typically we must rely on assumptions about the data-generating process to ensure consistency.

      I'm not clear what the implication they are making here is. Does it in some sense 'not work' with respect to parameter estimation?

    15. We consider 10,000 randomly selected owner-occupied units from the 2011 metropolitan sample of the American Housing Survey. In addition to the values of each unit, we also include 150 variables that contain information about the unit and its location, such as the number of rooms, the base area, and the census region within the United States. To compare different prediction tech-niques, we evaluate how well each approach predicts (log) unit value on a separate hold-out set of 41,808 units from the same sample. All details on the sample and our empirical exercise can be found in an online appendix available with this paper athttp://e-jep.org

      Seems a useful example for trying/testing/benchmarking. But the link didn't work for me. Can anyone find it? Is it interactive? (This is why I think papers should be html and not pdfs...)

    16. The fundamental insight behind these breakthroughs is as much statis-tical as computational. Machine intelligence became possible once researchers stopped approaching intelligence tasks procedurally and began tackling them empirically.

      I hadn't thought about how this unites the 'statistics to learn stuff' part of ML and the 'build a tool to do a task' part. Well-phrased.

    17. In another category of applications, the key object of interest is actually a parameter β, but the inference procedures (often implicitly) contain a prediction task. For example, the first stage of a linear instrumental variables regres-sion is effectively prediction. The same is true when estimating heterogeneous treatment effects, testing for effects on multiple outcomes in experiments, and flexibly controlling for observed confounders.

      This is most relevant tool for me. Before I learned about ML I often thought about using 'stepwise selection' for such tasks... to find the best set of 'control variables' etc. But without regularisation this seemed problematic.

  20. Dec 2019
  21. Nov 2019
    1. We can take any data set and put it into a pie chart, a continuous graph, a scatter plot, a tree map and so on.

      I have always questioned this because I feel that some information or data can not be put into any sort of visual representation.

    1. The use of a legend and symbols helps, but cartographers, artists, and designers have also introduced spatial distortions and warps that are unusual and imaginative.

      I never thought that mapping would be so complex!

    2. how we might expand the conventions of map-making to include the kinds of experiential aspects of human culture that are absent from many conventions.

      I am interested to see where the mapping industry goes, as everything is becoming digitalized, will paper maps still be used? What demographic still buys them now and who will buy them in the future?

    3. very projection is a distortion, but the nature of the distortions varies depending on the ways the images are constructed and the purpose they are meant to serve

      I find this to be so interesting. Every map of the globe that I look at I assumed was the same, but this is making me rethink that logic.

  22. Oct 2019
    1. Eyewitness News has learned that the organisation that runs the Spar supermarket franchise has instructed that a human resources audit be conducted at all the Spars owned by Chris Giannakopoulos, who has been accused of assaulting staff and unfair labour practice.Giannakopoulos first started making headlines in October last year when he was accused of beating a female employee at the Food Lover's Market store in Hartebeespoort. He was scheduled to appear in court a week ago, but that the matter was struck from the role.The Giannakopoulos Group owns and operates more than two dozen Spars and also has interests in Food Lover's Market and OK Foods.Eyewitness News has seen a Spar guild letter to Giannakopoulos in which it states that he will no longer be allowed to play in role in the management and control of the Spars in the Giannakopoulos Group.The guild says that a human resources audit will be conducted at their Spars twice a year and the group is to dispose of its interests in Food Lover's Market and OK Food.The guild warns that if the Giannakopoulos Group fails to adhere to these instructions, it will remove all the Spars from the group.Spar’s Mandy Hogan declined to answer questions related to the content of the letter but says the company does not condone criminal behavior by any person and will take appropriate action where a person is found guilty.

      https://ewn.co.za/2019/01/14/spar-issues-ultimatum-to-franchise-owner-over-compliance-with-hr-audit Eyewitness News has learned that the organisation that runs the Spar supermarket franchise has instructed that a human resources audit be conducted at all the Spars owned by Chris Giannakopoulos, who has been accused of assaulting staff and unfair labour practice.

      Giannakopoulos first started making headlines in October last year when he was accused of beating a female employee at the Food Lover's Market store in Hartebeespoort. He was scheduled to appear in court a week ago, but that the matter was struck from the role.

      The Giannakopoulos Group owns and operates more than two dozen Spars and also has interests in Food Lover's Market and OK Foods.

      Eyewitness News has seen a Spar guild letter to Giannakopoulos in which it states that he will no longer be allowed to play in role in the management and control of the Spars in the Giannakopoulos Group.

      The guild says that a human resources audit will be conducted at their Spars twice a year and the group is to dispose of its interests in Food Lover's Market and OK Food.

      The guild warns that if the Giannakopoulos Group fails to adhere to these instructions, it will remove all the Spars from the group.

      Spar’s Mandy Hogan declined to answer questions related to the content of the letter but says the company does not condone criminal behavior by any person and will take appropriate action where a person is found guilty.

    1. https://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/news-update/2192688/business-as-usual-for-spar-stores-closed-after-owners-accused-of-bringing-brand-into-disrepute/

      The 22 stores, which would have re-opened on Saturday under the control of the Spar Group South Africa, will revert to the control of the Giannacopoulos Group. It was business as usual for the Giannacopoulos Group after winning its High Court appeal late on Friday, reports Zululand Observer.

      The group appealed the closure of its 22 Spar stores and 21 Tops Bottle Stores, which was overturned. The stores, which would have re-opened on Saturday under the control of the Spar Group South Africa, will revert to the control of the Giannacopoulos Group.

      Shoppers at various Spar outlets in Richards Bay and Empangeni, as well as in Hartebeespoort, were greeted on Thursday morning by signs on the closed doors, after stores were sealed by the Sheriff’s office in accordance with a High Court application, Zululand Observer and Kormorant reported.

      A statement from the Spar Divisional Managing Director Desmond Borrageira, said a decision was taken by The Spar Guild of Southern Africa Limited “to terminate the membership of the stores which fall within the Giannacopoulos Group”, claiming it was “competing with businesses of retail members and bringing the Spar brand into disrepute”.

    2. Annotations

      https://ewn.co.za/2019/01/14/spar-issues-ultimatum-to-franchise-owner-over-compliance-with-hr-audit

      Eyewitness News has learned that the organisation that runs the Spar supermarket franchise has instructed that a human resources audit be conducted at all the Spars owned by Chris Giannakopoulos, who has been accused of assaulting staff and unfair labour practice.

      Giannakopoulos first started making headlines in October last year when he was accused of beating a female employee at the Food Lover's Market store in Hartebeespoort. He was scheduled to appear in court a week ago, but that the matter was struck from the role.

      The Giannakopoulos Group owns and operates more than two dozen Spars and also has interests in Food Lover's Market and OK Foods.

      Eyewitness News has seen a Spar guild letter to Giannakopoulos in which it states that he will no longer be allowed to play in role in the management and control of the Spars in the Giannakopoulos Group.

      The guild says that a human resources audit will be conducted at their Spars twice a year and the group is to dispose of its interests in Food Lover's Market and OK Food.

      The guild warns that if the Giannakopoulos Group fails to adhere to these instructions, it will remove all the Spars from the group.

      Spar’s Mandy Hogan declined to answer questions related to the content of the letter but says the company does not condone criminal behavior by any person and will take appropriate action where a person is found guilty.

    3. https://ewn.co.za/2019/01/14/spar-issues-ultimatum-to-franchise-owner-over-compliance-with-hr-audit

      EWN has learned that the organisation that runs the Spar supermarket franchise has instructed that a human resources audit be conducted at all the Spars owned by Chris Giannakopoulos, who has been accused of assaulting staff and unfair labour practice.

      Eyewitness News has learned that the organisation that runs the Spar supermarket franchise has instructed that a human resources audit be conducted at all the Spars owned by Chris Giannakopoulos, who has been accused of assaulting staff and unfair labour practice.

      Giannakopoulos first started making headlines in October last year when he was accused of beating a female employee at the Food Lover's Market store in Hartebeespoort. He was scheduled to appear in court a week ago, but that the matter was struck from the role.

      The Giannakopoulos Group owns and operates more than two dozen Spars and also has interests in Food Lover's Market and OK Foods.

      Eyewitness News has seen a Spar guild letter to Giannakopoulos in which it states that he will no longer be allowed to play in role in the management and control of the Spars in the Giannakopoulos Group.

      The guild says that a human resources audit will be conducted at their Spars twice a year and the group is to dispose of its interests in Food Lover's Market and OK Food.

      The guild warns that if the Giannakopoulos Group fails to adhere to these instructions, it will remove all the Spars from the group.

      Spar’s Mandy Hogan declined to answer questions related to the content of the letter but says the company does not condone criminal behavior by any person and will take appropriate action where a person is found guilty.

    1. https://ewn.co.za/2019/01/14/spar-issues-ultimatum-to-franchise-owner-over-compliance-with-hr-audit

      SPAR ISSUES ULTIMATUM TO FRANCHISE OWNER OVER COMPLIANCE WITH HR AUDIT EWN has learned that the organisation that runs the Spar supermarket franchise has instructed that a human resources audit be conducted at all the Spars owned by Chris Giannakopoulos, who has been accused of assaulting staff and unfair labour practice.

      Eyewitness News has learned that the organisation that runs the Spar supermarket franchise has instructed that a human resources audit be conducted at all the Spars owned by Chris Giannakopoulos, who has been accused of assaulting staff and unfair labour practice.

      Giannakopoulos first started making headlines in October last year when he was accused of beating a female employee at the Food Lover's Market store in Hartebeespoort. He was scheduled to appear in court a week ago, but that the matter was struck from the role.

      The Giannakopoulos Group owns and operates more than two dozen Spars and also has interests in Food Lover's Market and OK Foods.

      Eyewitness News has seen a Spar guild letter to Giannakopoulos in which it states that he will no longer be allowed to play in role in the management and control of the Spars in the Giannakopoulos Group.

      The guild says that a human resources audit will be conducted at their Spars twice a year and the group is to dispose of its interests in Food Lover's Market and OK Food.

      The guild warns that if the Giannakopoulos Group fails to adhere to these instructions, it will remove all the Spars from the group.

      Spar’s Mandy Hogan declined to answer questions related to the content of the letter but says the company does not condone criminal behavior by any person and will take appropriate action where a person is found guilty.

  23. Sep 2019
  24. Aug 2019
  25. Jul 2019
    1. Pretender in Spain

      The “Pretender in Spain” is a reference to James Francis Edward Stuart, who made a claim to the British throne in 1701. He was called "The Old Pretender" because, though he was son of King James II, he was a Catholic and, in 1701, the Act of Settlement was passed making it illegal to for the throne to be held by any non-protestant. He was recognized, however, as the King of England, Scotland and Ireland by the Pope and the King of France and he ultimately lived out his days in Rome where he established a court in exile. Most of the Irish were Catholic and viewed the English as oppressors. He was, therefore, a symbol of hope to the Irish and some left Ireland to enlist in support of him. More info here. Swift is suggesting that this large cohort of poor, Irish children are likely to be supporters of a figure who is a threat to the English monarch.

  26. May 2019
    1. I can see how the drama of this moment is enticing. It offers a grandeur, a sweeping purity to our possibly flawed and fumbling and ambivalent selves. It justifies all our failings and setbacks and mediocrities; it wasn’t us, it was men, or the patriarchy, holding us back, objectifying us. It is easier to think, for instance, that we were discriminated against than that our story wasn’t good enough or original enough to be published in The Paris Review, or even that it did not meet the editor’s highly idiosyncratic yet widely revered tastes. Or that a man said something awful and sexual to us while we were working on a television show, and we got depressed and could never again achieve what we might have. And yet do we really in our hearts believe that is the whole story? Is this a complete and satisfying explanation? There is, of course, sexism, which looms and shadows us in all kinds of complicated and unmappable ways, but is it the totalizing force, the central organizing narrative, of our lives? This is where the movement veers from important and exhilarating correction into implausibility and rationalization. (One of the deeply anonymous says, “This seems like such a boring way to look at your life.”)

      I absolutely agree with this conclusion--mob mentality has always been more detrimental than beneficial if at all, and we should be able to see this clearly in the United States today. However, I feel like this point could have been made in a satisfactory manner halfway through this essay. I could see this conclusion coming from the beginning of the second page and the bits about Lorin Stein and Moira Donegan's hypocrisy could have been a separate essay by themselves. Otherwise a very sensible and interesting read.

    2. I have a feeling that if one met @yoloethics or the rest of her Twitter cohort in person, they would seem normal, funny, smart, well read. But the vicious energy and ugliness is there beneath the fervor of our new reckoning, adeptly disguised as exhilarating social change. It feels as if the feminist moment is, at times, providing cover for vindictiveness and personal vendettas and office politics and garden-variety disappointment, that what we think of as purely positive social change is also, for some, blood sport.

      I love the references to the Roman empire here--the description of twitter followers as cohorts and the twitter frenzy as a blood sport really hits home the disturbing and vindictive nature of this entire issue.

    3. It can be hard to disentangle one man and the things he may or may not have done from hundreds of years of sexist oppression.

      In terms of workplace harassment in particular, this statement is revealing of a larger issue--I was searching for a comprehensive analysis of the global incidence of workplace sexual harassment in the, but apparently as of 2015 there was no survey done since 1994. This is truly alarming to me, as there is a sincere lack of data and this is just helping to feed this twitter frenzy issue. This may be the main reason why company policies are slow to change.

      Source: https://wol.iza.org/uploads/articles/188/pdfs/sexual-harassment-in-workplace.pdf

    4. “I like Lorin,” she told me. “I don’t have a personal stake in this.” She then informed me that he had sexually harassed two interns at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, where he had worked before his Paris Review tenure, leading to hushed-up, sealed settlements. She delivered this piece of highly specific information so confidently that I did not stop and think, even though I teach in a journalism department: Is this factually correct?

      I understand that this feeds into Roiphe's argument that the twitter frenzy happens the same way, but it would have served her argument better to include an instance from twitter itself. This and the next few paragraphs make this and the twitter issue seem resigned to human nature. The final paragraph is a good objection to it, but here its treated too lightly in my opinion.

    5. The night the New York Times broke the news of Stein’s resignation, I was with one of the deeply anonymous women in a coffee shop, and after I left she ran out and caught up to me on the dark street to tell me about it. When I got home, I saw that @MegaMoira had tweeted a photo of the piece with the words, “champagne anyone.” I thought of the email Lorin had sent me when my book on writers’ deaths, The Violet Hour, came out. It was such a strange, private project, but in a few lines he made it vivid again to me, renewed and energized me on a long winter afternoon to sit down and start something new. However one feels about the end of an era at The Paris Review, it doesn’t seem like a time for celebration.

      While I believe that Stein's resignation needed to happen, Roiphe is correct in her sentiment that nobody really wins from this situation. The Paris Review is worse off as a company for not having him anymore and the fact that he would commit such offenses broke the hearts of everyone close to him.

    6. However, after the list came out but before Lorin Stein resigned as editor of The Paris Review, she tweeted: “every profile of Lorin Stein calls him ‘skinny and bespectacled’ but here’s the thing: he’s not that skinny.” She added: “I guess ‘bespectacled, bald, and busting out [of] the bespoke shirts he’s still having made with 15 year old measurements’ doesn’t have the same ring to it.” Later, these tweets were deleted. But if we could think in less gendered terms for a moment, one could reasonably ask: Who is harassing whom?

      I absolutely agree here--this does not venture beyond petty name-calling and is more crucially a demeaning of the person based on his appearance, which is one of the behaviors considered harassment by Donegan. This certainly puts renewed insight into her mindset when she says she wants a more respectful world.

    7. I feel blessed to live in a society where you are free to walk through the city at night. I just don’t think those of us who are privileged white women with careers are really that afraid.

      The question of safety at night is an interesting one and I don't think the answer is as simple as the society (especially in the city, where intimacy is not ambient but compartmentalized) in which one acts. Even the presence of streetlights (and by extension the invention and proliferation of electric lighting) has a large impact on safety at night. Money surely has a place in it as well.

    8. Here is what the last few days have reminded me: white men, even those on the left, are so safe, so insulated from the policies of a reactionary presidency, that many of them view politics as entertainment, a distraction without consequences, in which they get to indulge their vanity by fantasizing that they are on the side of good. . . . The morning after the election, I found the penis-shaped shot glass in my kitchen and threw it against the wall. I am not proud of this, but it felt good to destroy something a white man loved.

      And yet, the way you write those sentences, especially the one at the end, makes it look like you are indeed proud of that. It makes you seem pettier than you intended to be. Also I really don't understand the concept of penis shaped shot glasses--it seems like it would be more difficult to drink from than a wide glass.

    9. Every woman, every day, when she leaves her house, starts to think about safety. Can I go here? Should I go out there?. . . Do I need to find a taxi? Is the taxi driver going to rape me? You know, women are so hemmed in by fear of men, it profoundly limits our lives.

      It really does not help Solnit's cause to make statements like this that are unverifiable in nature.