SOAS has posted an interview with the team that developed a “Toolkit for Decolonising”

What is decolonisation in an academic sense and why is it important?

Lizi: Decolonisation means questioning and dismantling the assumed ways of thinking and the ways in which we study and disseminate information, who we study and why, and looking at the methods of study and assessment. Traditionally it’s been centered around Europe and western cultures. Decolonisation looks outside of that and outside of those preconceived notions and assumptions to include a more expansive worldview.

Lesley: I think in the UK, SOAS is the only university to bring decolonisation to all the curricula over time, not just philosophy. Our curriculum is about diversity and our assessment performance is diverse too, which other universities do not do. Even though we have a lot of room to improve, I hope it can raise awareness to other universities to showcase that this is what can be done and how important it is.

What was the motivation to approach decolonisation with this toolkit?

Dr Giladi: Philosophy – as an intellectual discipline in higher education – is very parochial. The Anglo-European tradition has been obsessed with – in the latter part of the 20th century – the conflict between Anglo-American philosophy and continental European thought. The idea of thinking about philosophy as something outside Europe has never been sufficiently addressed, partly because so much of western philosophy is built on systemic exclusion of African, Asian and Middle Eastern voices.

What Year Is It? Has Elon Musk’s White Supremacist Empire Taken Control of Mars Yet?

Elon Musk, a boy who grew up in apartheid South Africa, fled his family’s declining empire in 1988. Today, his plans to colonize Mars seem to be an attempt to restart their failed imperialist ambitions. Many speculate that his “mission to Mars” is less about humanity’s future and more about reviving neo-colonial fantasies—a technocratic, Rhodesian-style ethnostate powered by robotic labor, far removed from Earth’s inconvenient ability to end his apartheid prince ambitions.

Musk’s ventures often flirt with unsettling symbolism. His Tesla Taxi reveal was timed for 8/8, a date some link to white nationalist dog-whistles. Tesla cars once promoted an 88 km/h driving optimization, using 88 dashboard features, with 88 kW engines and charging stations with—you guessed it—88 ports. We’d be fools not to hold the man accountable, given he then rebranded Twitter with fascist imagery of a Swastika and fueled hate speech via AI-driven translations of Hitler rhetoric to reach English speaking audiences.

Meanwhile, despite promises to be on Mars by 2018, Musk’s feverish technological empire still here on Earth is showing signs of failure like it’s a 1988 South African fire-sale again. Tesla vehicles are plagued by ongoing software and hardware failures, often causing predictable accidents. Just before the much-delayed Tesla “driverless” Taxi reveal, one vehicle crashed into the huge high-visibility backside of a West Hollywood yellow bus, a stark reminder that Musk’s grand futuristic visions of constant improvisation very likely will collide catastrophically with basic reality (laws of society and physics).

Elon Musk spreads thick propaganda of a Mars project as the next great human adventure, while obvious troubling origins and implications behind it — like who it seeks to include or murder on the way — means the whole thing is far from settled.

A Tesla vehicle crashed into a WeHo PickUp trolley early Saturday morning, around 2 a.m. The incident occurred on Santa Monica Boulevard, east of Westbourne Drive, in front of the John Reed Fitness gym. The Tesla appears to have sustained significant damage.

These ongoing incidents raise serious concerns. Tesla, despite years of promises, has failed to live up to its claims of creating safer roads. With its deeply flawed software and repeated crashes, it’s becoming clear that Tesla’s narrative of innovation is about as trustworthy as a Rhodesian plan to reinvent government. As fatalities and injuries continue to mount (47 reported deaths and counting), we must do more to halt Musk’s racist ambitions and intervene where his reckless, unregulated technologies threaten to shape any future.

Here’s an old and well-known attack that exploits QR codes, still being used in 2024.

At least five parking machines with fake QR codes that said “PHONE PAY” were discovered at Fisherman’s Wharf on Thursday, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency said in a Friday social media post.

The fake codes were discovered by SFMTA crews, Michael Roccaforte, an SFMTA spokesperson, told SFGATE. The agency is unsure whether any visitors were affected, Roccaforte said

Notably, nobody targeted, or even exploited, reported these bad codes.

The point of QR codes is machine readable text, yet countermeasures are all going to require human readable text. Thus a QR code found in uncontrolled public places is inherently unsafe and can’t be trusted.

Instead of “look out” on that third sign, Calvin could have written “welcome to Truth Social”. This fish-in-a-barrel problem of manipulated followers being curated into harm’s way… seems like something a cynical GOP strategy back in 2008 should have anticipated better.

Truth Social seems to be a target-rich environment for people who are easy to con. […] Many of the people don’t seem to understand that any amount they might see on their end that’s supposedly sitting in an account is completely fictitious. The scammers will often give the victim access to a website that shows a certain dollar amount in “their” account but the money is long gone. It’s not sitting there for them to withdraw. It’s simply a ruse for the victim to see their imaginary money grow, luring them into “investing” even more.

Let me check my 2008 political analysis notes here…

The people calling themselves conservatives seem to have an amazing “hubris”. They not only stick to their guns in the face of science or even just details (like Lehman’s CEO who refused to believe his company was in trouble) but they actually become more convinced they are in the right when evidence starts to challenge them. …a vast group of Americans apparently are so unable to process information that they have become highly vulnerable to manipulation (social engineering, foreign influence) in a very, very bad way.

Yup, checks out. The GOP knew they were putting their own fish into a barrel for practically anyone to shoot. Sadly, driving followers into a highly vulnerable mass manipulation system for exploitation is exactly the problem; it’s truly tragic what this party has become.