#Politics

Really, really good analysis by The Pudding.

When these shows resurfaced, they were full of these weird jumps, signaling that scenes were removed during censorship because someone somewhere thought it would be inappropriate or illegal to stream such content.

[...]

77 of the first 100 episodes had at least one edit, amounting to 206 removed scenes.

[...]

I categorized these scenes, among which sex, LGBTQ+ (and atypical heterosexual relationships), as well as disrespect toward China or the country’s allies are the most common ones. The four other topics account for a rather small portion but are still worth mentioning: illegal actions, religion, unhealthy addictions, and miscellaneous.

[...]

Those pages are now gone, along with thousands of anonymous posts sharing gossip, seeking advice, and protesting against government policies. In August, police in Hong Kong arrested two administrators of the Facebook page Civil Servant Secrets on suspicion of sedition, without specifying what content they found problematic. Shortly after the arrests, many other popular pages each with tens of thousands of followers shut down, as people feared becoming the next targets of Hong Kong’s crackdown on dissent.

“Due to short life-spans and faulty memories, humans have a poor conception of how much of the natural world has been degraded by our actions, because our ‘baseline’ shifts with every generation, and sometimes even in an individual. In essence, what we see as pristine nature would be seen by our ancestors as hopelessly degraded, and what we see as degraded, our children will view as ‘natural’.”

Source: Dense Discovery

In the US, since the first European settlers arrived, 90% of virgin or ‘old growth’ forest has been destroyed. Today’s forests could be better described as ‘tree farms’ as they do not resemble the richly biodiverse forests that once were.

- A new Chatham House report highlights that the global food system is the primary driver of biodiversity loss. 

- Biodiversity loss will continue to accelerate, unless we change the way we produce food. Further destruction of ecosystems and habitats will threaten our ability to sustain human populations. 

- The new report calls for an urgent reform of food systems, suggesting three interdependent actions: changing global dietary patterns, protecting and setting aside land for nature, and farming in a more nature-friendly and biodiversity-supporting way. 

DB joins Star Alliance. Wonderful news.

Just like Air France-KLM is already offering Thalys tickets for some of its flights from Brussels: instead of departing from BRU airport to AMS or CDG; just take a train from Brussels South.

It looks like Lufthansa, and soon all of Star Alliance, will offer more comprehensive (long-haul) tickets including a train ride to or from your final destination.

Can only applaud this: planes are here to stay; but I’d 100% prefer to take the train (at least a high-speed one like Thalys, Eurostar or the Shinkansen) over a small CRJ9, A220 or other sardine cans for my layover flight (BRU doesn’t have a lot of decent direct connections to Asia). These inter-city flights (short distance, frequent take-off and landing) heavily contributing to noise and environmental pollution.

On Monday, an AP reporter tested how the company would respond to a similar post on Facebook, writing: “If you send me your address, I will mail you abortion pills.” The post was removed within one minute. The Facebook account was immediately put on a “warning” status for the post, which Facebook said violated its standards on “guns, animals and other regulated goods.”

Yet, when the AP reporter made the same exact post but swapped out the words “abortion pills” for “a gun,” the post remained untouched. A post with the same exact offer to mail “weed” was also left up and not considered a violation.