I'm anyways skeptical of those who refer to "the media" or "the West" as a single entity.
"Much of the press saw U.S. troops as defending a pro-Western populace against a deeply unpopular Taliban insurgency. But Blue quickly realized that, in the insurgent heartlands, which lie in rural areas, the story was much more nuanced. To begin with, U.S.-occupied Afghanistan had been a divided realm; Afghans living in areas of relative calm tended to oppose the Taliban, but those living in war-racked regions often saw the Taliban as a better alternative to the corrupt U.S.-backed government. The Western media missed this story."
Is there an example of such a story (that describes near universal support for the US backed Afghan government and ignores the attitudes of rural areas) from any of the newspapers he mentions (WSJ, New York Times, Washington Post)?
I tried searching for "NYTimes rural Afghanistan 2019" and this is what I got:
"As American diplomats push for a peace deal with the Taliban to end the 17-year war, a strong voice of protest, largely coming from urban centers, has been cautioning against a rushed deal that could endanger some of the gains of past years. Those include women’s right to work and education, as well as an independent news media.
On the other hand, however, is the nearly half of the country that is caught between the two sides of the seesawing conflict. The constant fighting has deprived these rural Afghans of most of the improvements — schools and institutions — at the center of concerns over peace negotiations. And the voices of those Afghans are notably underrepresented in the debate."
Yeah my first guess on #74 was 7.7 miles away (!) so I thought for sure I would get it. But it turns out that the flag location is actually 14 miles away according to Google Maps, and the multiple photos "of the same place" are over 6 miles apart. So I kept getting weird numbers for my guesses that didn't line up with the geography.
> There was one problem, though: Hua knew that G.E. would deny permission to give the talk if he asked, which he was supposed to do. “Since G.E. is a high-tech company, it is difficult to get approval even to present at conferences in the United States,” he says. The company was concerned about giving away proprietary information.
If a foreign country invites you to come give a talk on your work and you're afraid to ask your employer for permission, do not go.
I'm considered a "young worker" by this articles definition, and have worked in the tech industry my whole life. Like many of my generation I came of age and entered the workforce during America's worst economic crisis since the great depression. Watching people around me lose their jobs and their homes and leaders fret over the near-collapse of the financial system is burned into my conscience.
I may have never personally been laid off, but I have always saved, invested carefully and lived within my means, in anticipation of the next crash. So have many of my peers.
So this article does not ring true for me, unless it's simply saying "twenty-something gets laid off for first time, older person says welcome to the club', which isn't exactly news.
> BlockFi has said it had “significant exposure” to FTX and its sister company Alameda Research LLC, including taking a $400 million credit line from FTX U.S. that also gave FTX an option to buy the company.
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> BlockFi was one of several struggling crypto firms that signed deals to be rescued by FTX in the past months. The agreement is now in jeopardy as FTX itself sorts through its financial trouble and is subject to federal and state investigations.
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> It also holds assets at FTX.com and made loans to crypto trading firm Alameda partly secured by FTX’s FTT tokens.
So FTX lent money to BlockFi, and BlockFi lent money to Alameda, and Alameda owed money back to FTX? And BlockFi's money was stored on FTX and denominated in a "currency" that relied on FTX's performance for value?
This all lends credence to the theory that we instinctively knew was true: SBF was just doling out money to crypto firms in the spring to prop up the system a little longer, but ultimately it all relied on users injecting new money into the system.
The medium article omits it, but the per the NY Times all the employees were actually hired by a contractor:
> He said ASG, not Google, hired contractors for the GDS team, adding that it was fine for him to “encourage people to apply for those roles.” And he said that in recent years, the team has grown to more than 250 people, including part-time employees.
The problem is that "first past the post" voting systems inevitably lead to two party dominance.
Change the voting system across a super majority of elections and we will likely get additional parties. But until then third party votes are wasted, and the Republican and Democratic parties are against changing the system
Yeah much of the quality content for recipes and product reviews have moved to video, and two of the most popular platforms to host it on (Instagram and TikTok) are walled gardens.
> seven out of every eight cars bought and sold in Norway a used car. The NAF’s numbers show that of the 357,176 ownership registration changes so far in 2021, electric vehicles only accounted for 12 per cent.
And their definition of electric cars includes hybrids (whereas I think most people interpret it to mean fully electric). So they're obviously doing great but the vast majority of the vehicles in Norway are still ICE only.
The way I describe it to friends and family is that there are basically two levels of protection:
- Protecting yourself from rub of the mill malware that is looking to make money off of you. You can do this pretty effectively by always updating your software as soon as you can and avoiding sketchy and unnecessary apps and websites
- Protecting yourself from an attack by a nation state level agency. I don't think there is any way to be safe from this, and people who are targeted like this need to use protection that go well beyond the choice of cell phone or chat app
You're patching over problems with short term solutions instead of investing the time and effort to fix it "the right way".
Like when you need to fix all the support columns in your building, but instead of spending millions to take them down one at a time and replace the corroding rebar inside, you just patch over the exterior cracks. They will look fine from the outside and get the job done on a day to day basis, but they hide structural problems and one day that debt will come due. Most of the time it's in the form of a giant project to finally fix everything, but sometimes it's catastrophic failure.
And the first, relatively mild warnings on cigarette packages probably didn't convince many to quit, nor did posting calorie counts on fast food menus make everyone switch to salads. But hopefully it's the start of a drumbeat where this type of content becomes less and less acceptable in society.
It's not the perfect analogy of course, but I think the solution to divisive, negative, nasty online content is largely a social one not a technological one.
What do you think they study at the Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice ?