#atlantic
Longo reado, but worth the while, for it's excellently written:
Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever
The buffet is groaning with what sounds like sophisticated dishes—marinated octopus, boiled egg with anchovy, chorizo, lobster claws—but every animal tastes tragically the same, as if there was only one creature available at the market, a “cruisipus” bred specifically for Royal Caribbean dining. The “vegetables” are no better. I pick up a tomato slice and look right through it. It tastes like cellophane.
Back on the Icon, some older matrons are muttering about a run-in with passengers from the Celebrity cruise ship docked next to us, the Celebrity Apex. Although Celebrity Cruises is also owned by Royal Caribbean, I am made to understand that there is a deep fratricidal beef between passengers of the two lines. “We met a woman from the Apex,” one matron says, “and she says it was a small ship and there was nothing to do. Her face was as tight as a 19-year-old’s, she had so much surgery.”
The Real Anthony Fauci, by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., appears to be a popular form of literature, especially among young men with very complicated versions of the American flag on their T-shirts. Other opinions blend the personal and the political. “Someone needs to kill Washy guy, right?” a well-dressed man in the elevator tells me, his gray eyes radiating nothing. “Just beat him to death. Am I right?” I overhear the male member of a young couple whisper, “There goes that freak” as I saunter by in my white spa robe, and I decide to retire it for the rest of the cruise.
Before the cruise is finished, I talk to Mr. Washy Washy, or Nielbert of the Philippines. He is a sweet, gentle man, and I thank him for the earworm of a song he has given me and for keeping us safe from the dreaded norovirus. “This is very important to me, getting people to wash their hands,” he tells me in his burger getup. He has dreams, as an artist and a performer, but they are limited in scope. One day he wants to dress up as a piece of bacon for the morning shift.
It is unfair to put a thinking person on a cruise ship.
The fighting in and around Gaza is an asymmetric conflict, but there are two sides. Against the accusation of genocide, Israel says it is acting in self-defense, and this latest round of fighting began when Hamas slaughtered some 1,200 men, women, and children—even infants in their cribs—on October 7. Moreover, unlike Israel, which denies any genocidal intent, Hamas has publicly espoused genocide against Israelis for decades.
The asymmetry of the conflict has legal bearing, exposing a grave loophole in the international legal system. Hamas cannot be called before the International Court of Justice, nor can any government of Gaza, nor even Palestine, which is not a fully sovereign state and has only observer status at the United Nations.
#Atlantic #Genocide #Justice #ICJ #InternationalLaw #Palestine #Hamas #Israel #SouthAfrica
"This amazing #stone #artifact, found in the 80s in a #tunnel #system in #Ecuador depicts a roughly etched #world-map, and its thought to be at least 10,000 years old. Here you can see the last remnants of the Atlantean continent in the #Atlantic off the #Florida #coast.
#Cayce. He purports that at this time there were two civilizations on #earth: one very primitive, #ancient #Man that we know about, mere hunter gatherers who populated most of the #world; and an isolationist group, the Atlanteans on their #island who were #extremely #advanced.
Atlantis was real, Cayce was correct, and as a continent civilization it existed for over a hundred thousand years, until about 12,000 years ago" #history
#quote from #pa
Even with Altman out, this tumultuous weekend showed just how few people have a say in the progression of what might be the most consequential technology of our age. AI’s future is being determined by an ideological fight between wealthy techno-optimists, zealous doomers, and multibillion-dollar companies. The fate of OpenAI might hang in the balance, but the company’s conceit—the openness it is named after—showed its limits. The future, it seems, will be decided behind closed doors.
How the Media Got the Hospital Explosion Wrong
The Palestinian health authorities claimed that Israel was responsible for the death of some 500 civilians. Because the details were extremely murky, it was impossible to tell who had caused the explosion or how many people had died. And yet some of the most reputable names in news media sent push alerts that broadcast Hamas’s claims far and wide.
But both push alerts would have led reasonable readers to conclude that these statements must basically be true. Both talked about “Israeli” air strikes. Both uncritically reported that many hundreds had died.
News of the supposed Israeli strike quickly had huge real-world consequences. The king of Jordan canceled a planned meeting with President Joe Biden. Mass protests broke out in cities across the Middle East, some culminating in attacks on foreign embassies. In Germany, two unknown assailants threw Molotov cocktails at a synagogue in Berlin.
A live video transmission from Al Jazeera appeared to show that a projectile rose from inside Gaza before changing course and exploding in the vicinity of the hospital; the Israel Defense Forces have claimed that this was one of several rockets fired from Palestinian territory. Subsequent analysis by the Associated Press has substantially corroborated this. In addition, pictures of the site taken by Reuters showed a small crater that, according to independent analysts using open-source intelligence, is inconsistent with the effect of munitions typically used by Israel. It came to look doubtful that the missile had directly hit the hospital; as a BBC team investigating the blast reported, “Images of the ground after the blast do not show significant damage to surrounding hospital buildings.”
The cause of the tragedy, it appears, is the opposite of what news outlets around the world first reported.
Such a glaring example of major outlets messing up on a very consequential event helps explain why trust in traditional news media has been falling fast. As recently as 2003, eight out of 10 British respondents said that they “trust BBC journalists to tell the truth.” By 2020, the share of respondents who said that they trust the BBC had fallen to fewer than one in two. Americans have been mistrustful of media for longer, but here, too, the share of respondents who say that they trust mass media to report “the news fully, accurately, and fairly” has fallen to a near-record low.
Four Nigerians survive 14 days on ship’s rudder before Brazilian rescue
source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/01/four-nigerians-survive-ship-rudder-brazil-rescue
Their remarkable, death-defying #journey across about 5,600km (3,500 miles) of ocean underlines the risks some migrants are prepared to take for a shot at a better life.
#news #Africa #Nigeria #Brazil #migration #poverty #risk #Atlantic