Portside

Ultimately the only long-term solution to the problem of national leaders launching a nuclear war is to get rid of the weapons. This was the justification for the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968, which constituted a bargain between two groups of nations. Under its provisions, non-nuclear countries agreed not to develop nuclear weapons, while nuclear-armed countries agreed to dispose of theirs.

It isn’t necessarily automation itself that should be feared—just Puzder and other executives’ version of it, where jobs and unions and social services are dismantled. Like Hamon, authors such as Paul Mason and Peter Frase argue that job-killing automation should go hand-in-hand with a universal basic income. “A low-work society,” Mason writes, “is only a dystopia if the social system is geared to distributing reward via work.”

Media con; Filtering news in China; The net over Africa; FCC under the rabid right; Fight for net neutrality; Fallon on hard times; Screwed at the border

Barry Jenkins’s movie is a brave, brilliant work of art that also happens to be a black, gay story. What a shame if the announcement gaffe is what people remember about its victory. There were echoes of Hattie McDaniel, 76 years ago, who had to walk up to collect her Best Supporting Actress Oscar from a table way down the back of the hall and was seated separately from the rest of the Gone With The Wind stars. A moment of triumph tranished.