Everyone: call on Comcast to withdraw its Supreme Court challenge of the first US civil rights law.

If you sign, please spread the word!

US citizens: call on Congress to pass the PROTECT Hong Kong Act.

If you sign, please spread the word!

StackExchange has imposed a code of conduct saying that participants have to refer to each other person by per specified pronouns.

Paraphrasing to avoid pronouns is forbidden; people are required to get practice using all sorts of pronouns.

The rule was received with tremendous hostility. I have never used in StackExchange and wasn't thinking of doing so. (Too busy, in any case.) I don't even know whether it is possible to post on the site without running nonfree Javascript software — if it isn't, I urge you to reject posting there, for your freedom's sake.

But I reject the demand to speak or write with singular "they". I have a better system for gender-neutrality in English, and I will use that.

I hope others will take it up; I suggest you consider it. But I don't claim the power to demand you use it.

If you do participate in StackExchange, you might choose unusual pronouns for yourself. Not absurd ones, or nasty ones, just unusual.

Machine learning can be useful for guiding the priorities of social services, as long as humans think about the actual decisions.

This could be a good thing provided the government doesn't use it as an excuse to cut budgets even more. Right-wing governments are looking for any excuse, and whatever makes for more efficiency will mean they can cut more.

Sanders advocates government programs that aid everyone, whereas Warren advocates similar aid only for the poor.

The weakness of the latter is that the rich can organize the middle class to support cutting these programs and attaching onerous conditions — which is exactly what right-wing politicians do.

As for the waste of subsidizing a few rich people along with the many non-rich, it will be a small fraction of the total cost of these programs. A progressive tax on the rich will easily make up for it.