I'm not familiar with this blog so I had to look up some of the background for the story.
Although I couldn't find this in the blog, I believe The Keep refers to some type of missionary/community food kitchen the author runs or is a part of. [1]
Mzungu is term used in the African Great Lakes region to refer to people of European descent [2].
Jonny Long gave some amazing talks at security conferences. He also wrote Google Hacking, and No Tech Hacking, which are equally amazing.
When he was at the top of his game, he rediscovered his religion and moved to Africa to start Hackers for Charity. One of their most noteworthy projects is a school that teaches computer/ it skills in order to help these people find jobs.
Its a great charity and Jonny Long is a great guy.
The Keep is a restaurant, but they also run "The Jinja House" which is a bed-and-breakfast guesthouse for adoptive parents and traveling missions teams. There is also the Computer Training Center http://www.hackersforcharity.org/computer-training-center/
> Warning: Attack Detected. All activity has been logged.
> Sorry, but we do not allow the use of TOR users on our network, due to abuse and attacks from TOR users in the past, you have ruined TOR for everyone who uses it for legit reasons.
> We do not have an issue with TOR in and of itself, and do not believe in censorship, but over the years, it has been widely used and abused by attackers, and as such, we take this into consideration when protecting our websites.
I couldn't read this article because of this nonsense. It gives me the impression that it's probably not worth reading, but does anybody have a mirror so I can see if I'm wrong?
> It gives me the impression that it's probably not worth reading
Would you be willing to expand on this impression? I've worked with a number of charities who have suffered various minor website attacks, and blocking Tor (only for non-activist sites, of course) is a common mitigatory technique.
How do we reconcile the part of humanity pushing advancement towards understanding the universe and creating entirely new paradigms every six months while half the world is still monkeys with sticks (and the monkeys inevitably get advanced technologies without the wisdom or maturity required to use it responsibly)?
As explained in the article, every person's actions were explainable by aspects of our shared humanity. We are not inherently better than those people, we're just luckier about our surroundings. A human in fear of his/her life every day can't take any risks, so they can't make new paradigms. You can recruit these people to your "universe-understanding" side by changing their circumstances to be more like yours.
Quite. I've often wondered how different I would be if I was born to a higher higher (affluenza) or lower (government assistance) family.
We should make a point of getting people out of mud huts and away from mob mentality though. That's just good world building.
Or we can make another Uber for Buzzfeed. Get the top 10 cutest kittens EVAR delivered to your door in 20 minutes or less or you get free toppings next time.
The dating world is full of monkeys. Baristas, out of work actors, "office managers," bartenders, literal starving artists, set designers who make $15k/year for working 60 hours a week all year, .... (We're talking "this is what they do" people, not goodwill hunting "unlimited potential" people who turn into rocket scientists at the drop of at hat.)
Imagine you're a YC person: Altman or Dallas or Quinto or whoever they have these days. At what point in a relationship does it get annoying not being able to share the upper parts of what you are and what you do? Sure, you can always commiserate about the weather and the latest TV shows or what your 188th level Orc Paladin did in WoW this week, but does that give meaning to "high achievers?"
That's the lanterns in the dark versus the rabble of reality tv watchers.
(Cutting off some replies here: yes, there's a continuous gradient between "only-a-barista" and "only-a-serial-billionare," but there are levels people seems to get chunked into fairly easily after talking with them for 5 seconds to 5 minutes. yes, some of these positions are due to life circumstances and coincidences along the way, but that's the life we end up with—we can't all go back in time to be born to the mother of Bill Gates.)
Thought experiment: How many famous people date busboys and cater-waiters? How many CEOs date Starbucks baristas?
People in Hollywood date other famous people. Successful people tend to go after other successful people. As much as generic 16 year old Jessica in Montana wishes, One Direction is not going to swoop out of the sky and date her.
It's of course nowhere near accurate or absolute those positions hold, but, social spheres (and intimate octahedrons) form around people of like interests and abilities.
There will always be a romcom to say otherwise though. CEO meets hostess. President of USA meets stripper. College professor meets checkout person at Target.
>the part of humanity pushing advancement towards understanding the universe and creating entirely new paradigms every six months while
>half the world is still monkeys with sticks
These categories are not exclusive. Middle-class professionals are the authors of most of the horrors of the modern world. Just because you can do math and/or program for a smartphone doesn't mean that you don't have utterly irrational and/or repugnant views.
>the monkeys inevitably get advanced technologies without the wisdom or maturity required to use it responsibly
They "get" them because middle-class people sell them for profit, or give them away because they agree with what the "monkeys" are doing.
The side without minds just going along with their tribal affiliations for the glory of their own actions.
Wait, that doesn't clear anything up.
Also see: UK football hooliganism, SF/LA sports riots, SF/Berkeley injustice riots, and YC circles making rich well known people richer and weller knowner.
Courts in the western world also make mistakes, police brutality is a fact of life and deaths do sadly occur while in custody. Bad things happen everywhere.
Yup. Just because we're not talking about shared grandmothers in villages doesn't mean we're more sophisticated. The brutal kill-the-infidel groups can form anywhere scared people with low self esteem get grouped together. "If I hurt these people, others will think highly of me!" Except here, the weak low self esteem people have electricity, chemicals, and guns instead of sticks and stones.
There are two kinds of accidental racisms. The kind where the speaker means what he says, but does not identify it as being wrong. The second is where the speaker mis-speaks and doesn't actually mean to convey what the readers see as racist. I believe this is a case of the second.
You could see it this way, or you could also claim that those "creating entirely new paradigms" themselves don't have "the wisdom and maturity required to use it responsibly". (See: nuclear weapons, nuclear power facility meltdowns, climate change, overfishing, the list goes on and on.) Perhaps a desire to live in a state of less technological advancement is in most cases just fine. Not at all defending stoning here, but you should realize that technologically advanced societies have a great deal of problems, in most cases to a larger scale than tiny undeveloped countries.
I think you missed the part about village justice, that's an excellent way to get your shop burned down and not have any effect on society. Might feel good for awhile, especially if its not your shop, but a talking to might be a lot more effective WRT social change.
Although I couldn't find this in the blog, I believe The Keep refers to some type of missionary/community food kitchen the author runs or is a part of. [1]
Mzungu is term used in the African Great Lakes region to refer to people of European descent [2].
[1] - http://www.hackersforcharity.org/hackers-for-charity/nov-28-...
[2] Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mzungu