In an age of AI, Pope looks for “artisans of hope.”

In sounding this call to both disarm and to build, Leo turns to “twentieth-century Catholic author” JRR Tolkien. Though he can’t quite bring himself to say that he’s quoting Gandalf from Lord of the Rings, that’s exactly what’s happening.

(The encyclical says only that the quote comes from “the words of a protagonist in one of [Tolkien’s] novels.” Though Pope Francis previously spoke of Tolkien’s work, this appears to be the first time that Tolkien has ever been quoted in the highest levels of the church’s official doctrinal publications.)

It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.

Comments

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/9156148

Archived version

Here is the full study: China's mercantilist squeeze on developing countries (pdf)

• The "China Squeeze" affects low- and middle-income countries through three major channels: intense competition in global export markets, rising Chinese import competition in their own domestic markets, and limited access to China’s own consumer market for low-skill-intensive exports from developing countries.
• The scale of the squeeze is historically unprecedented and may represent hundreds of billions of dollars in lost exports and forgone jobs in labor-intensive manufacturing in developing countries.
• Macro indicators on wages, productivity, and exchange rate policy suggest that distortions, especially an undervalued renminbi, may have played a role. Regardless of the cause, China’s dominance may be closing off the traditional manufacturing-led development path for low- and middle-income countries.

...

China’s resurgent trade surplus has revived concern in the United States and Europe, but consequences for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) remain underappreciated.

This paper documents a “China Squeeze”: China’s compression of the industrialization space poorer economies need in labor-intensive manufacturing.

Using historical benchmarks and labor-endowment comparisons, we show that China, despite becoming richer and moving up the technology ladder, still commands a historically unusual share of global low-skilled manufacturing export markets. We estimate that this squeeze costs LMICs hundreds of billions of dollars in forgone exports.

It also operates through rising Chinese import competition in LMIC markets and China’s limited absorption of low-skilled imports from poorer countries. Macro evidence suggests that policy distortions, including exchange rate undervaluation, may have amplified the squeeze.

The central concern is developmental: China’s export strength may close off pathways to industrialization for poorer economies.

...

The link is just a context to start a light hearted discussion on what is Europe's expectations from lndia in particular, and from Asia in general !

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.radio/post/13448746

Meta has sold 7M+ Ray-Ban glasses that look identical to normal glasses but can record you silently.

NoPeek detects them using immutable BLE manufacturer company IDs - signals that cannot be randomized or hidden unlike MAC addresses.

Detects: Meta Ray-Ban, Snap Spectacles, Oakley Meta, TCL RayNeo, Meta Quest, Apple Vision Pro, Pico VR and more.

No ads. No tracking. No internet permission. Fully open source. MIT license.

github.com/getnopeek/nopeek-android

Comments

Comments

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8607436

China is home to some of the most brutal deserts on earth, stretching across 2.6 million square kilometers of land so dry, so scorching, and so hostile that billions of tons of sand swallow entire farms and villages every single year. For decades, the desert kept winning, advancing into productive land, burying roads within hours, and sending massive dust storms across East Asia every spring. For a country with 1.4 billion people to feed, losing farmland to sand wasn't just an environmental problem. It was a threat to the entire nation.

But what China did next is one of the most extraordinary stories of the 21st century. Starting with nothing more than dry straw pushed into shifting sand, China launched the largest land reclamation project in human history, planting 66 billion trees, investing over 50 billion dollars, and engineering an entirely new kind of farming system in the middle of the world's most unforgiving terrain. Today those same dead deserts produce 30 million tons of food every year, power hundreds of thousands of homes with solar energy, and even raise fish in a place with almost no water. This is the full story of how they did it.

Comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/47888119

Duration - 5:49

[a video about Cuba from the news collective Belly Of The Beast]

Belly of the Beast recently held a screening of two documentaries on Cuban medical missions. One is focused on Cuban doctors deployed to Calabria, Italy, and another follows a brigade of African students from ELAM (Cuba's Latin American School of Medicine), who traveled to Guinea-Bissau to provide medical care based on the training they received on the island. Some of the ELAM students attended the screening and were given a standing ovation.

One audience member said: "Thank you for being heroes, not just of Cuba, but of the entire world."

𝗦𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 ❤️ Make a tax-deductible donation or join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/BellyoftheBeastCuba

00:00 – Why We Made From Cuba to Calabria 00:31 – Southern Italy’s Healthcare Crisis and Cuban Doctors 01:05 – Discovering Cuba’s Medical Brigades 01:24 – “Cuban Doctors Bring Hope” 01:43 – Filming ELAM Students in Guinea-Bissau 02:31 – Medical Students React to the Documentary 02:54 – Audience Member: “Thank You for Being Heroes” 03:38 – Criticism of the U.S. Healthcare System 04:13 – Can Documentaries Help End the Blockade? 04:34 – Liz Oliva Fernández on Sanctions and Infant Mortality 05:20 – “1,800 Babies Could Have Been Saved” 06:03 – Belly of the Beast’s Mission to Humanize Cuba

#cuba #cubanews #blockade #sanctions #solidarity #embargo #havana

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/30351140

;3

Ideally no paint as buying an entire bucket if white paint for a white print seems wasteful.

Is there any sort of filler I could use to hide the seams between the parts I have glued together?