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→ Public intellectuals support Brazil’s X ban
Several public intellectuals have banded together in support of Brazilian judge Alexandre de Moraes’s suspension of X in the country. Moraes banned access to the platform in Brazil after a lengthy public feud with Elon Musk over free speech. The X CEO had refused Moraes’s request that he ban certain accounts, citing censorship concerns.
✊ Our CEO @avilarenata is one of over 50 activists and intellectuals who signed a public letter denouncing the #BigTech lobby against #DigitalSovereignty after X’s court ban in Brazil.
You can sign it too: https://t.co/LxuKBTr6E3 #Support_Brazil #AgainstBigTech pic.twitter.com/SrBaG17X5K
— Open Knowledge Foundation (@[email protected]) (@OKFN) September 17, 2024
Scholars including Thomas Piketty and Yanis Varoufakis have sided with Moraes, arguing in the open letter that Musk’s noncompliance was part of a “broader effort to restrict the ability of sovereign nations to define a digital development agenda free from the control of mega-corporations based in the United States”. Who are the real authoritarians?
→ Former NIH director suggests ‘immunising’ people against ‘misinformation’
Former National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins has claimed that Americans need to be immunised against disinformation preemptively during a Wednesday discussion on MSNBC.
WATCH: Former NIH Director Francis Collins demands we must “immunize people against misinformation prospectively.”
Excuse me? pic.twitter.com/wW2gQqqX7Q
— Natalie Winters (@nataliegwinters) September 18, 2024
“We need to figure out how to immunise people against misinformation, prospectively,” Collins said. “Not always playing catch-up, but when something comes along, say: okay, get ready. You’re going to start to hear some crazy things about this. Be ready for that, and don’t be taken in.”
Collins is currently promoting his unironically titled new book, The Road To Wisdom. Writing in the Atlantic this week, he admitted to some informational failures from the NIH under his leadership: “The sources that were supposed to share objective information […] failed to achieve that.” Everyone makes mistakes.
→ Saudi Arabia’s flop city
This town has everything: modern urban planning, ancient sodomy laws, and a summer temperature approaching that of the Sun. But Saudi Arabia’s ambitious “The Line”, currently being built in Neom, has not yet achieved the “civilisational revolution” it promised in its massive PR campaign.
Influencers have started posting about their daily lives in the new Saudi city of Neom. The Saudis seem to be marketing Neom as some kind of planned suburb/encampment for wealthy Westerners: pic.twitter.com/cjncZfckxZ
— Murtaza Hussain (@MazMHussain) September 17, 2024
The streets and pavements were desolate, as was the public park, in a video shared by a South African influencer living in Neom. The few residents appeared to eat all their meals in a sad, fluorescent-lit “dining hall”. All of the buildings in the clip were three storeys high, a far cry from the promised 105-metre-high metropolis, and the bike lane was predictably not in use. The scene closely resembled a collection of hotels surrounding a mid-sized regional airport. Granted, Rome wasn’t built in a day — or a desert.
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SubscribeAnother day in dystopia.
Why would anyone be ‘influenced’ by that nonsense? She seems a bit croaky too, maybe could do with a Fisherman’s Friend?
The political class and technocrats – politicians, bureaucrats, media etc – are losing their status as information gatekeepers and they hate it. You can shut down X, but you can’t put the genie back in the box. Information has been democratized.
In my opinion, the main problem is not the status of the elite, but its quality.
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Global warming. Even if we accept the hypothesis that we are the cause, none of them can explain why we should use windmills instead of nuclear energy.
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Fighting COVID. A continuous series of errors mixed with lies.
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Transgenders. Men can have vaginas, women can have penises – What kind of mental illness must these idiots suffer from to claim this nonsense?
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Same-sex marriage. Never in the history of mankind has the institution of marriage been applied to same-sex couples. Do you need a legal union? Sign a contract and go to hell.
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Of course, the elite who have shit themselves need censorship, depriving the citizen of the right to tell them “You are shit”. Simply because it’s what they are.
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This is not the first time in human history. Rome in its period of decline, France before the French Revolution, Russia on the eve of the October Revolution – each time we see the stunning madness and stupidity of the elites, inevitably ending in a bloodbath.
I can’t believe they were actually stupid enough to try building Neom.
a summer temperature approaching that of the Sun
Ha! Well done!
Nothing says “empty poser” better than a public intellectual supporting a judge ignoring the law, the Constitution, and international treaties.
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