These kind of work makes me realize we need to do more to own our ‘newspapers’ by going more local and vernacular.
The traffic posted by African airlines rose 9.5 percent in December 2023, compared with the same month in 2022.
> “Despite political and economic challenges, 2023 saw air cargo markets regain ground lost in 2022 after the extraordinary Covid peak in 2021. Although full-year demand was shy of pre-Covid levels by 3.6 percent, the significant strengthening in the past quarter is a sign that markets are stabilising towards more normal demand patterns,”
A big one is when an advert is made to look and feel like organic content. The “Ad” flag (legally required) is in faint small font like someone forced them to have it there.
From the article, they seem to have figured out temperature control. So Mole people might be less agitated than a Vancouver wild-fire neighbor :)
The internet sees censorship as failure and routes around it. People treat censorship and surveillance as failure and tunnel around them.
And even if you ‘exit’ to the woods, you’ll be easy to note, just by your absence (When the majority of the population are present, it is easier to note who is absent).
But we have to keep pushing back about these absurdities.
The refrigeration sounds like a great idea! Do you do this as part of its preparation or is it just economies of time and scale?
If you can’t own your seeds, how can you own your food?
United States 2024 Elections, Palestine/Israel Agenda, and the International Consequences
I am looking at Gaza and the lives whose loss we are witnessing every hour and thinking how this will directly shape the US election. The traditional US camps are pro-Israel as usual, and I don’t expect any of them to relent on that position else they lose the “numbers at the polls”.
We saw in 2020 how COVID response was constrained by the general election in the US. Even when it was clear why public policy should have saved more lives, the assumptions in Republican strategy limited clear action on the biological threat.
In 2024, we are faced with a similar scenario where clear decisions on saving lives and avoiding genocide in Gaza — and easily avoiding an unpredictable war — is constrained by the upcoming 2024 elections.
Fuel prices will blow up, inflation always lurks behind fuel prices, social dislocation, and perhaps more authoritarian rules emerging around the world as they justify increased (in)security measures to ward off terrorism.
We are staring at a dark phase.
Horrible! The dam’s structures could not be maintained as required due to the extended political dysfunction in Libya. Just messy!
That sounds like something gamers will add to their “tourist destination”.
Fascinating! Never seen anything like this before.
Do they charge by the minutes spent there + extras or is this a membership thing?
Their seniority allow(ed) them free passes on details or precision.
My grandma, having to call for help but doesn’t know who of the many kids are around: hey, hey human who was named
Translation takes away from it.
Oh yes, this is the path to giving up.
Then it should be the responsibility of the EU people to avoid joining the fediverse. I do not see a practical way to align with GDPR. The effort is non-trivial and the rewards are extremely minimal.
From your perspective, what should be the way out?
Ugandan authorities on Tuesday brought criminal charges against an author critical of the government whose ongoing detention has sparked concern at home and abroad.
> Kakwenza Rukirabashaija, who has been detained since Dec. 28, was charged with two counts of “offensive communication” for his alleged efforts on Twitter to “disturb the peace” of President Yoweri Museveni and his son, Lt. Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, who commands the East African country’s infantry forces.
Facing Ongoing Litigation Challenge, Federal GMO Food Labeling Regulations to Go into Effect on January 1
> First, the lawsuit challenges USDA's unprecedented allowance of electronic or digital disclosure on packaging, also known as "QR code" or "smartphone" labeling, without requiring additional on-package labeling. Second, CFS is challenging USDA's labeling language restrictions. When on-package text is used, the rules limit it to only "bioengineered," despite the law allowing use of similar terms. But for 25 years, every aspect of the issue—science, policy, and marketplace—has used genetically engineered (GE) or genetically modified organism (GMO). Lastly, the USDA rules prohibit grocers from providing more and better labeling, in violation of their First Amendment rights.
Navdanya International launched its global Seed Freedom Campaign in 2012 to bring to citizens’ attention the crucial role of seed in the battle to defend food sovereignty and food safety and help …
The Messy World of Fermentation
When modernity meets its end-point and creates a world where everything is sterile, controlled, and known, there will be little space for fermentation.
> According to Alex Lewin, author of Real Food Fermentation and Kombucha, Kefir, and Beyond, fermenting is the opposite: ‘It’s unlike canning—with canning you kill all of the microbes and seal it hermetically. With fermentation you invite the microbes you want and don’t let in the ones you don’t. Fermentation is diplomacy and canning is a massacre. Canning is a high-tech food technology.’
20 Sudan troops killed in Ethiopia border clash
At least 20 members of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have died during a clash with Ethiopian forces and militiamen, who reportedly ambushed them in the border area of El Fashaga El Soghra in El Gedaref. The SAF said in a statement that it inflicted “heavy losses of life” on Ethiopian troops and mi...
> The border area has been the source of frequent clashes over the last two years. Reportedly, 700,000 acres of Sudanese agricultural land has been illegally appropriated by Ethiopian farmers since the 1960s.
Different elements of the pomegranate, both tree and fruit, had a wide range of uses in premodern therapeutics. Pomegranate also had a rich symbolic role in the art, literature, and religion of numerous cultures. In nearly every part of the globe where the pomegranate grew, it came to represent fund...
> The pomegranate tree was also the source of life-giving waters in Mesopotamian religion (Muthmann 1982: 13–14), and Neoassyrian seals often depicted pomegranate, the “tree of life” (Avigad 1990: 165). Scholars have suggested that the Tree of Life from the book of Genesis was a pomegranate because of this symbolic history, though of course many fruit-bearing trees have auditioned for this role.
Mr NKosana Makate says the R47 million (Sh354m) paid to him was insufficient since Vodacom had understated the profits drawn from his invention.
Muhuri wants an order prohibiting the exclusive use of the M-Pesa service for payment of toll charges at the channel.
cross-posted from: https://baraza.africa/post/7986
> > “While the introduction of a cashless payment system is laudable in view of containment of the spread of Covid-19, KFS’ refusal to accept cash or any other cashless payment system save for M-Pesa is discriminative, oppressive, unfair and unjust,” Muhuri says in its petition. > >
Muhuri wants an order prohibiting the exclusive use of the M-Pesa service for payment of toll charges at the channel.
> “While the introduction of a cashless payment system is laudable in view of containment of the spread of Covid-19, KFS’ refusal to accept cash or any other cashless payment system save for M-Pesa is discriminative, oppressive, unfair and unjust,” Muhuri says in its petition.
Narok women's elephant dung fortune
The jumbos’ excreta is the main raw material for a soap-making venture in Narok.
> “Elephants eat vast amounts of food each day, 200-250kg, from many different types of plants, so it is not surprising that people have found numerous uses for the stuff that comes out of the other end,” adds Ole Reyia.
When the story of the Rinderpest vaccine is told, the work of Walter Plowright in Muguga is usually silently celebrated.
> Thus, by possessing the most virulent strain of rinderpest, and which had been kept safely and alive in the Muguga laboratory, Kenya was sitting on two things: a biological warfare agent or the answer to rinderpest control. > > Scientists had designated this strain as “Kabete O”. It is still one of the oldest laboratory strains of any virus in existence.
Thousands of cheering and flag-waving supporters welcomed Morales in Bolivia a year after he was removed from power.
> Fernandez told the crowd that the electoral turmoil in Bolivia reminded all Latin Americans about the need for regional solidarity. “We are part of a large nation,” he said. “We don’t want countries for some, we want countries for all. It is the duty of all of us to stand up for threatened peoples.”
BIOMETRICS, RACE MAKING, AND WHITE EXCEPTIONALISM: THE CONTROVERSY OVER UNIVERSAL FINGERPRINTING IN KENYA
Abstract
This article excavates the imperial origins behind the recent turn towards digital biometrics in Kenya. It also tells the story of an important moment of race-making in the years after the Second World War. Though Kenya may be considered a frontier market for today's biometrics industry, fingerprinting was first introduced in the early twentieth century. By 1920, the Kenyan colonial government had dictated that African men who left their reserves be fingerprinted and issued an identity card (known colloquially as a kipande . In the late 1940s, after decades of African protest, the colonial government replaced the kipande with a universal system of registration via fingerprinting. This legislative move was accompanied by protests from members of the white settler community. Ironically, the effort to deracialize Kenya's identification regime only further normalized the use of biometrics, but also failed to fully undermine associations between white male exceptionalism and exemption from fingerprinting.