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Social media was supposed to liberate us, but for many people it has proved addictive, punishing and toxic. What keeps us hooked?
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Roundup has been a cash cow for Monsanto since the 1970s, fueling billions of dollars in annual profits. Its use has skyrocketed in recent decades since the company developed genetically modified corn and other crops that are resistant to it; it is now the world’s leading herbicide.
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More fascinating research on HIV. “The team estimates that the virus first arose sometime between 1896 and 1905—a little earlier than what others have calculated, but within the right ballpark. HIV’s present, it seems, is a good indicator of its past.”
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The Bolsonaro government has as one of its priorities to strategically occupy the Amazon region to prevent the implementation of multilateral conservation projects for the rainforest, specifically the so-called “Triple A” project.
Starbucks has around $1.6 billion in stored value card liabilities outstanding (the sum of all physical gift cards held in customer's wallets and electronic balances held in the Starbucks Mobile App). You, the loyal customer, are providing the company with free debt: Starbucks doesn't pay any interest on balances held ...Read More
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Meet Barry: his sole purpose in life is to listen patiently, and then protest or sob a little as you fire him from an imaginary job in virtual reality.
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"Planting as many trees as possible would reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by about nine gigatons each year, according to Pamela McElwee, a professor of human ecology at Rutgers University and one of the report’s lead authors. But it would also increase food prices as much
...Read More
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"To much of the world, the cartoon frog is a hate symbol. To Hong Kong protesters, he’s something entirely different: one of them."
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It’s distressing, if not surprising, that the Chinese government has allegedly been using social media to systematically dehumanize its own citizens in the same stark language that helped to fuel the Rwandan genocide. From the standpoint of social media, however, it’s emblematic of a wider problem in which platforms built
It also suggests that Facebook’s focus on “election interference” in the wake of 2016 has been too narrow. China’s campaign in Hong Kong makes it clear that public discourse can and will be gamed and distorted at any time, rendering irrelevant tactics like the “election war room” that Facebook has ...Read More
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This recycling how-to (desktop) is pretty informative but also shows how much cannot be recycled in the US mostly just because the facilities don't have the capacity to sort everything and small plastics clog machinery. There are a lot of low effort hacks to research to avoid purchasing/using the small ...Read More
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"This disclosure consists of 936 accounts originating from within the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Overall, these accounts were deliberately and specifically attempting to sow political discord in Hong Kong, including undermining the legitimacy and political positions of the protest movement on the ground. Based on our intensive investigations, we ...Read More
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"Twitter and Facebook have taken steps to block what they described as a state-backed Chinese misinformation campaign.
Twitter said it removed 936 accounts it said were being used to “sow political discord in Hong Kong”. ...Read More
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An optimistic view on where we are headed as exemplified by local sharing and barter economies popping up in Greece.
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Slavery, the argument goes, was an inefficient system. The use of enslaved labor has been presented as premodern, a practice that had no ties to the capitalism that allowed America to become a leading global economy. This is untrue. Slavery, particularly the cotton slavery that existed from the end of
(People who applaud the achievements of economic growth tend to omit the fact it was achieved off the back of exploitation like this) ...Read More