The BRICS partnership (Of which China is a key player) encompasses almost 50% of the world's population, and their Belt and Road initiative is a soft power wet dream.
The world has actually already become multipolar, but most Western media won't make that clear because they are still stuck in the old Colonial mindset of Captialist-Democracy = 100% civilized / Not-a-Capitalist-Democracy = 100% backwards.
There's a YouTube version now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfqLcBwUT_E
I partially wanted to show that, as twisted as Fox news is, they are at least hosting this interview without (much) bias on their front page. It's important, as this is what most of their audience will see of Zelenskyy, and this is essentially as "primary" the source can get.
Ah cheers, misread that!
I highly recommend Kara Swisher's recent book "Burn Book" for insights into the Tech lads like Brin, etc, as she's known most of them since the 90s.
Really helps contextualize the crazy cocktail of engineering/commercial power with general naivety a lot of these guys have going.
"Democracy dies on live TV" - wow that headline hits hard.
Might not be exactly what you have in mind, but I have a separate browser that has set as Home the following state-owned or aligned news sources from around the world to check different perspectives on current headlines:
https://www.bbc.com/ - Britain
https://www.abc.net.au/news - Australia
https://english.news.cn/ - China
https://www.foxnews.com/ - US Right-wing
https://edition.cnn.com/ - US Left-wing (@GuyFawkes recommends MSNBC over CNN here)
https://www.rt.com/ - Russia
https://english.alarabiya.net/ - Saudi Arabia
https://www.dw.com/en/top-stories/s-9097 - Germany
https://www.batimes.com.ar/ - Argentina
https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/ - South Africa
https://ddnews.gov.in/en/ - India
https://www.cbc.ca/news - Canada
https://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/en - Brazil
https://www.straitstimes.com/global - Singapore
https://news.un.org/en/ - United Nations
https://www.sbs.com.au/news - Australia, but more multicultural perspective
Watching this feels like a masterclass of diplomacy. Zelenskyy is talking directly and respectfully to the Fox audience, while trying to clearly explain why Ukraine can’t just bow down to faulty peace deals without question.
Watching this feels like a masterclass of diplomacy. Zelenskyy is talking directly and respectfully to the Fox audience, while trying to clearly explain why Ukraine can't just bow down to faulty peace deals without question.
I would just like to push back and say that the Internet was an open public project, and it has helped countless people across the world. Every single problematic tech that people are pointing to at the moment are closed-source commercial projects.
That is Capitalism at work.
Bloomberg and others are funding the Paris agreement for the US, where the government pulled out: https://www.bloomberg.org/press/un-special-envoy-michael-r-bloomberg-announces-effort-to-ensure-u-s-honors-paris-agreement-commitments/
big sad
I grew up as a Christian. When I was around 15, someone asked me "if I hadn't been born a Christian, would I be a Christian?" Considering it, I opened my Bible and immediately a verse popped out (in classic God fashion) saying "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have"
So then I felt called even more to really explore, based on that:
The more I explored these arguments, as well as gaining a better understanding of what the Bible actually is (in a historical and literature sense), more and more of the belief system unraveled, eventually to the point I didn't call myself a Christian anymore.
Then over the next decade I went back and forth exploring alternative denominations in Christianity, as well as other religions (Daoism, Buddhism, Judaism), especially as I still felt a "spiritual pull" / intuition in a lot of situations. So it took me a really long time to separate that intuitive sense of direction from the belief system around the Holy Spirit specifically, and learn where trusting that intuition is effective, and where it can be misleading. That's been the most complex part of all of this.
I still enjoy exploring other belief systems, components of Christianity, and connecting with whatever that intuition is occasionally, as I do think there is a lot there for human psychological and emotional health that Western modernity sorely lacks. (I suspect this hole in our culture is why a lot of fundamental US Evangelism has flourished btw)
But that's how I lost my faith - God gave me the push I needed :P