Humanitarian Unknown 049.
1. I Was Born Missing an Ear. To the World, It Was a Problem to Fix.
"I would get to know this man well in the years that followed. He was a man who could twist my stomach into knots just by entering the room, a man who tried his best to relate to me through bad jokes and kid jargon. A man of good intentions, who wanted only to build me the best ear he could. A man who, despite his efforts at kindness, was still the man who sliced into me while I was asleep."
Terrifying and tender. From Kate Gies.
2. Lessons for the End of the World
"What [Octavia Butler in 'Parable of the Sower'] imagines is a future in which surviving the seemingly unsurvivable requires people to show some emotional dexterity, some ability to surrender whatever selfishness they’ve been harboring and see if they have something that someone else needs. This is the starting point of mutual aid: What do I have that someone else may need? Butler’s work is outlining a future where posing that question is a requirement."
From Hanif Abdurraqib at New Yorker.
3. China May Not Want the U.N. Opening Trump Is Handing It
Everyone has an opinion, and then there is Richard Gowan who knows what he's talking about. Mandatory reading if what's currently happening even remotely relates to your work.
4. How a TikTok Code Word Is Exposing the Limits of Online Organizing
"Much of the concern around the cute winter boots trend isn’t that it could become dangerous, but rather that TikTok users participating in the trend might think that posting is enough. Hundreds of users have complained that the trend doesn’t serve a real purpose, or has gone so far from its intended goal that it’s just a way for people to virtue signal —?show their beliefs in a public way online."
CT Jones reports.
5. Western Values Are Steadily Diverging from the Rest of the World’s
"Much of the concern around the cute winter boots trend isn’t that it could become dangerous, but rather that TikTok users participating in the trend might think that posting is enough. Hundreds of users have complained that the trend doesn’t serve a real purpose, or has gone so far from its intended goal that it’s just a way for people to virtue signal —?show their beliefs in a public way online."
It was interesting to read this 2023 article from "The Economist" in the early 2025. Whose values?
6. The Zero-Sum Presidency
"Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal tells us more about Trump’s view of the world than a hundred profiles in national magazines – [it] argues that negotiation is a form of warfare. The best way to prevail is to make extreme demands, to bluff about such things as your own resources or the willingness of other investors to step into the breach, and even to use psychological tricks like artificial deadlines to get under your adversary’s skin. The goal isn’t for both parties to go home satisfied; it is for each to extract as much value from the other as possible.
If you're having difficulties understanding what's currently happening, this piece from Yascha Mounk provides the best manual to date.
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7. The Failed Strategy of Artificial Intelligence Doomers
"The AI Doomers’ track record at steering the course of AI development is abysmal. Over two decades of advocacy, they have caused exactly the fate they claim they want to prevent, via a series of own goals which can only be compared to environmentalist opposition to nuclear power causing the construction of coal-burning power plants."
Your ultimate primer on the AI Doomers movement.
From Ben Landau-Taylor .
8. The Movement to Expel Muslims and Create a Hindu Holy Land
"Late on a hot night this summer, Mohammad Ashraf paced around his house, wondering if the time had finally come for him to flee his home of 40 years. Outside his window lay the verdant slopes of the Himalayas. All of Purola, a small mountain village in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, appeared to be asleep, tranquil under the cover of darkness. But Ashraf was awake. Could he hear noises? Were those footsteps beneath his window? Did his neighbors mean to do him harm?"
In the mountains of Uttarakhand, a northern Indian state revered by Hindu pilgrims, a campaign to drive out Muslims is underway – reported by Tusha Mittal and Mohammad Alishan Jafri .
9. Africa Cannot Wait on Climate Finance. We Need a Global Shipping Levy Now.
"2025 could be a milestone on climate finance, providing the much-needed and much-overdue funds for the world’s most climate vulnerable. The unique opportunity to make this happen is rapidly approaching at the UN’s International Maritime Organization (IMO) as governments finalise negotiations on a global carbon price on the 1 billion tonnes of annual emissions from international shipping."
Eldine Chilembo Glees MNI reports.
10. Gen Z Nihilism over Chinese Tech Fears Shows Gulf with Washington
"However, younger generations in the US appear unfazed by the debate over security threats posed by Chinese-owned tech, with app downloads of TikTok, RedNote, and DeepSeek soaring among Gen Z users. (...) 'It’s a post-Snowden and post-WikiLeaks generation that throws its hands up in the air and says, ‘we don’t care about the Chinese spy, everyone has our data,’ Elizabeth Ingleson, an international history professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science told Semafor."
Mizy Judah Clifton reports.
11. Philanthropy at a Time of Chaos
"Amidst all this chaos, what of philanthropy? What should donors and funders be doing? And what particular challenges might they face?"
A long read from Rhodri Davies .