Inside the Romanian Sex-Cam Industry

Inside the Romanian Sex-Cam Industry

Society,

After the recent revelations about the way pornography influences our society, here’s another sobering piece, this time about the sex-cam industry, the fastest-growing sector of the global pornography business. In Romania, thousands of women work as “cam-girls” from studios and from home.

Let me be clear: it’s not shameful to have a job, and this job is less demeaning to women compared to other jobs in the pornographic industry. But from an ethical perspective, it’s a highly debatable topic. Often, it’s one step away from abuse and in general it tip-toes on the edge of the knife between legal and social inequality.

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Kids Start School Too Early

Kids Start School Too Early

Society,

A Stanford University study has shown that children who postponed kindergarten for up to one year showed dramatically higher levels of self-control. The study uses data from Denmark, where children have access to good pre-kindergarten (starting as early as 12-18 months).

The results of this study make perfect sense to me. It’s a confirmation of something I long believed to be true. I think that whatever parents can do to delay the institutionalization of their child (enrollment into the current industrialized educational system) will greatly help any young mind. I believe more studies like this will show up in the coming years. The sooner the better.

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Love

Painful Facts about Pornography

Society,

When asked, “How do you know a guy likes you?,” an 8th grade girl replied: “He still wants to talk to you after you [give him oral sex].” A male high school student said to a girl: “If you [give me oral sex] I’ll give you a kiss.” Girls are expected to provide sex acts for tokens of affection, and are coached through it by porn-taught boys. A 15-year-old girl said she didn’t enjoy sex at all, but that getting it out of the way quickly was the only way her boyfriend would stop pressuring her and watch a movie.

This was a quote from the article below. The topic of pornography has been debated a gazillion times but there is now a renewed discussion in the light of what is quickly becoming a torrent of painful social studies. These findings keep popping up increasingly often. Through statistics and surveys, we keep finding a direct connection between pornography and dismal changes in the attitude men have towards women. Were women emancipated only to wake up in an age where their freedom is transformed in a choice of what sort of sex object they want to be?

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How Lack of Touch Damages Men

How the Lack of Touch Is Damaging Men

Society,

Most people feel much more comfortable seeing two women holding hands rather than two men, even if the two men are father and son. The men might be brothers, but still, a large part of society will assume some sort of sexual background behind the simple and beautiful act of sharing the sense of touch. And when it comes to sex, the differences in social acceptance between lesbians and gays is even greater. Why is that?

The article below explains the developmental and educational roots of what is one of the most damaging discriminations made by society: starting already from early childhood, men are deprived of platonic touch. This is robbing men of the emotional security that touch brings to most mammals and particularly primates.

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Jonathan Haidt

About Politics Polarization with Renowned Psychologist Jonathan Haidt

Society,

This is one of the most interesting and informative presentations about the times we’re living. It is about how social factors have created a climate of mutual distrust in the world and about how our society has become dangerously split. Doctor Jonathan Haidt focuses on the political arena because it is there where our future is often decided. In this most critical area, the current social polarization is doing the most damage.

This talk is of even more value than it was last year, before the democratic catastrophe that took place in the United States, where the electorate was basically asked to choose between two of the least popular candidates ever. The warning is clear: it is up to every single one of us to contribute to the healing of our society, lest even darker days will be upon us.

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Automated Writing

The Rise of the RoboJournalist

2 CommentsSociety,

The quality of online journalism has been dropping like a stone during the past decade. The main reason is websites trying to cut corners as a way to survive in a publishing landscape completely transformed by the Internet. Websites have lowered their standards regarding whom can write for them. This leads to such sad examples^ where armies of (mostly) amateur exploited writers generate a humongous amount of content, spamming the web and suffocating quality writing.

An even more worrying development is the so-called “rise of the robo-journalist. The following article reveals how automated writing is on the rise. The quality of these machine-authored creations might increase, but will continue to lack soul (at least until we develop true AI^). Even more importantly, the low-quality articles spam will explode in quantity.

I believe we need a service similar to Audible, Spotify or Netflix, but for online publications. I’m sure very many people thought about the very same thing, but the timing when an idea reaches the market is critical. Is the market ready? Will the idea propagate explosively or will it fizzle and die out?

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Food Delivery Guy For Uber And Foodora

Just How Bad Is It to Do Food Delivery for Today’s App-Overlords

2 CommentsSociety, ,

As it turns out following this journalist’s two-week investigation, it’s pretty bad. The man could barely manage $4.4 per hour working his legs off (for Uber Eats) in Stockholm, capital of Sweden, where the cost of living has increased drastically in the past decade. The pay was better when working for Foodora, a similar service, but still unfair given the amount of work, not to mention the minimum salary in Sweden. The interviewing procedure for Foodora is outright humiliating. The practical test encourages possible employees to jeopardize their life by breaking traffic regulations. Here’s the story in all its juicy (read gory) details:

Some of the things a technologically interconnected world has brought us are great. But damn, some of the others are pretty sad. I bet the argument that “at least they’re creating jobs” will eventually pop up. No, these are not jobs. This is slavery, plain and simple. The fact that the slaves are willingly performing this demeaning work is even worse. This shows the decay of the social structures that were meant to ensure our progress as a species.

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Mark Zuckerberg's "Building Global Community"

About Zuckerberg’s Global Community Vision

Society, , ,

Two weeks ago Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of FaceBook, dropped what I consider to be an ideological bombshell on the tech industry and on business in general. It doesn’t even matter what the true intentions behind it are. It grabbed attention and dared to change – at least for a little while – the tune of the global business discourse.

Mark’s Global Community post is very well written and published at the ideal time to provide maximum PR value. I’m not surprised that some have even seen it as a sort of political statement.

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Romania Takes on Corruption in the 21st Century

Romania Takes on Corruption in the 21st Century

Society, ,

Following the proposal and then adoption of a law that would have allowed corruption to thrive, on the 5th of February, 2017, the capital of Romania was the scene of the largest public protest since toppling the communist regime in 1989. The number of people participating in the capital alone was anywhere between 120,000 and 300,000, depending on who did the estimating. The protests spiraled to other cities in Romania as well as many cities around the world that host large Romanian diaspora communities. As a result, the law was repealed.

Here’s a beautiful video showing the scale of the protest as well as some wonderful moments that took place during the peaceful manifestation.

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Hypernormalisation

Hypernormalisation

Society, ,

Wait wait wait. Before you start screaming “Whaaat!? An almost three hours long documentary about manufactured truth and propaganda through social media?!”, just watch this short, 1 minute extract from mentioned documentary.

Now, imagine that there are a lot more minutes like that in the documentary located at the link below. Also imagine that together, these seconds are more powerful than taken in individual extracts (think “interconnected brains math”: 1+1=3, 3+3=a million). Now feel free to go ahead and advance your awareness of the world.

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