Humanitarian Unknown 051.
1. The Tyranny of Now
Are information and knowledge adversaries?
"There’s no time like the present to revisit the warning of forgotten media theorist Harold Innis: 'Enormous improvements in communication have made understanding more difficult.'"
The long read. Really good. From Nicholas Carr.
2. "This Will Finish Us"
"It was high safari season in Tanzania, the long rains over, the grasses yellowing and dry. Land Cruisers were speeding toward the Serengeti Plain. Billionaires were flying into private hunting concessions. And at a crowded and dusty livestock market far away from all that, a man named Songoyo had decided not to hang himself, not today, and was instead pinching the skin of a sheep."
Great storytelling from Stephanie McCrummen.
3. Earth’s Record Heat in 2024 – see it visualized
"The Guardian took the average temperatures for each month in 2024, as recorded by the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service, and compared them with the hottest month since 1979."
Click here for the interactive maps:
4. New Junior Developers Can’t Actually Code
"We’re at this weird inflection point in software development. Every junior dev I talk to has Copilot or Claude or GPT running 24/7. They’re shipping code faster than ever. But when I dig deeper into their understanding of what they’re shipping? That’s where things get concerning. Sure, the code works, but ask why it works that way instead of another way? Crickets. Ask about edge cases? Blank stares."
From Namanyay Goel .
5. Chatbots of the Dead
"This imaginative potential is obscured when chatbots of the dead are envisioned as flimsy stand-ins for deceased loved ones (...) The potential of these technologies would be better understood if they were thought of more like artworks – or, rather, like theatrical performances."
An essay from Amy Kurzweil.
6. Battle for Khartoum Marks a Crossroads in Sudan’s Civil War
"A momentous battle now under way seems likely to open a volatile new phase in Sudan’s grisly war. The Sudanese army is advancing into Khartoum, close to two years after being ousted from the capital at the start of the civil war that erupted in April 2023. The stakes are huge."
From International Crisis Group .
7. Remember Joseph Kony? Meet his son, Ali.
"I wanted another life."
From Kristof Titeca .
8. Ayn Rand in Ukrainian Crimea
What the Russian-born author would have thought of Russia's war in Ukraine?
"Rand's 1964 essay collection?The Virtue of Selfishness, composed amid the tensions of the Cuban missile crisis, helps illuminate the moral underpinnings of the geopolitical tensions surrounding Ukraine today."
9. The Aftermath of War
"The trauma and instability precipitated by war can last for generations. We see it today in the faces of Holocaust survivors and their children; in the commemorations we hold annually for significant events like D-Day or the dropping of the first A-bombs; in the thousands of films, books and TV shows we produce every year devoted to the Second World War.
For nations like Ukraine or Syria or Somalia, all of this lies in the future. The long-term processing of violent events is a luxury that post-conflict zones can only take part in once some kind of stability is restored. First they have to bring an end to the violence, take stock, and rebuild."
New substack for new times. From Keith Lowe.