Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.” —David Bohm, via @cogden

@jhagel — “If you don’t follow the news you’re surprisingly good at estimating the views of people with whom you disagree — you misjudge preferences of political adversaries by under 10%.  If you follow the news, you’re terrible at understanding your adversaries.” — discussing — study shows Americans have little understanding of their political adversaries—and education doesn’t help

“Unfortunately, the ‘Perception Gap’ study suggests that neither the media nor the universities are likely to remedy Americans’ inability to hear one another: It found that the best educated and most politically interested Americans are more likely to vilify their political adversaries than their less educated, less tuned-in peers.”

@mekkeokekeroke — “The year is 2019. Breitbart publishes stuff that should be on 4chan. The New York Times publishes stuff that should be on Breitbart. Teen Vogue publishes stuff that should be in the New York Times.”

“The Nazi strategy of destroying vital research was intentional since it erased the power of the knowledge contained within. Even now, the current administration struggles to find the adequate information to support its own LGBTQ policies, underscoring the importance of reliable information.

The Nazis exploited existing laws to attack the LGBTQ community, but the legacy of their enforcement practices lingered for decades. It took East Germany until 1968 and West Germany until 1994 to repeal the laws Nazis used to persecute LGBTQ people. Modern-day Germany only just officially voided those charges this June.”

AJ: Why a hipster, vegan, green tech economy is not sustainable via @vmorganschmidt

“What’s potentially more problematic with the classist nature of green production and consumption is that urban hipsters pride themselves as being ‘woke’ about sustainability issues, while simultaneously alienating the rural and overseas agricultural, peri-urban, and manufacturing classes, without whom ‘hip’ lifestyles would not be possible.”

Intelligent, automated self-service by @gideonro

“As machines enable us to do more things for ourselves, they eliminate service jobs without necessarily eliminating service work. Automated self-service technologies enable us to work directly with a company without interacting with its employees. The travel agent no longer books my flight; I do. That job disappears, but not necessarily the work. These interactions may not feel like work, since we engage in it voluntarily and aren’t compensated for doing it. Shopping on Amazon or booking flights on Expedia feels more like consumption than actual work, but that is only because our notion of work has yet to catch up with an automated service economy.”

“Ceci n’est pas une pipe”

Image by @numberless