It also fits squarely with corruption in Venezuela, specially regarding energy. Venezuela has been rationing electricity across the country since 2009 and has been involved in countless corruption scandals involving Odebrecht, PDVSA, Derwick Associates.
I understand the US's foreign policy is a global threat, but let's not let that be an excuse for the atrocities and corruption of tyrants in Venezuela and other places.
What is the scandal supposed to be in the first one? No water in the dam? Mismanagement? Nationalization itself?
The Derwick one seems pretty light too, at least the article here just mentions an accusation from a journalist. And even then, if we are using corruption/overbilling with regard to a government contractor as an "atrocity" now.. That's going to have wider repercussions than here.
And ok, Venezuela took bribes from another government contractor, along with many other countries. I wouldn't call that an atrocity, but if that's what it is I guess I will give you the benefit of the doubt about it.
I give you benefit of the doubt about everything really! I just don't know if you have packaged your case here well is all.
The scandal is that the energy crisis was declared in 2009, and 17 years later, after investing $100 billion of which up to $80 billion disappeared, there are still blackouts across the country. That's all in the first article. The Derwick one is not just one reporter either, there's local and international reporters involved including claims from Reporters Without Borders where reporters received "threats, pressures, bribe offers". That's also in the article.
As for the attrocities I meant the Maduro (and current) government in general. There are currently over 1000 political prisoners in the country, a mix of protesters, politicians, reporters, etc. A lot of them have been tortured and many have died in custody. Most of the sources from NGO are in Spanish but the Wikipedia is a good start, specially the section about the Maduro government [1]
If you check the news right now you'll see that only in the past month about 50 have been released. There's a huge effort in the country right now to get the hundreds of others out.
Ultimately, what I want to say is that while we can express disdain for the US government we can do the same for the Venezuelan one, even if they claim to be against each other. Maduro and his gang are not the victims here, they've oppressed the Venezuelan people for 27 years, let's not give them an easy out
Perhaps there's more at play here than pretending like Maduro is a uniquely bad guy but also so hilariously incompetent his corruption scheme blacked out the country.
Let's be clear here, there are many evil states in this world. But Maduro isn't exactly Mohammed bin Salman or Donald Rumsfeld.
>> But Maduro isn't exactly Mohammed bin Salman or Donald Rumsfeld.
Just showed you an article describing all the human right abuses, tortures and forced disappearances done under the Maduro regime and this is your take away? I can only assume you're not arguing in good faith.
Check the news right now, about the prisoner releases happening as we speak and the hundreds still to go. One died only last week in captivity. Guess we can tell their families at least Maduro is not bin Salaman. Such cruelty, man
Perhaps. This seems somewhat suicidal of a corruption scheme for the leader of a country. Surely there must be easier ways to personally profit than making an international embarrassment of the country—every other country on earth manages this sort of graft just fine.
Let's not take Maduro at his word, he's great at playing the victim to hide their corruption. Venezuela has been in an energy crisis since 2009 with rationing still happening everywhere in the country except in Caracas [1] big part of it from the Odebrecht corruption scandal [2]
Irrelevant, Chavez died 13 years ago, a lot has happened and changed. Maduro lost the last election hard, he wrecked the support he inherited back then
I have the same, my commute is a 10min walk, I have no dependants and make a good salary and I find it impossible to cook, I'm just depleted after work. If I add exercise and some social interaction then my time is spent recovering energy... It's probably a sign of burn out or of a bad job
What's going on on this thread? why are so many people defending Ryanair? I understand it's cheap and you get what you pay for but to defend this race to the bottom and scammy UX is so weird. Why do we need to simp for companies like this? It's great to have cheap options but we can also expect more from life. I'm sure we all here know how to navigate the dark patterns on the website but millions of people don't, so we just don't care anymore? Do we just shrug and go "as long as I get a cheap flight"?
Yes, especially for a short flight I do not have high expectations. I don't want to be charged an extra $10 so I can get a "free" half sized water bottle or tea hat's been brewing since the late 90s. I don't need extra baggage, legroom, or any of the other add-ons that other airlines try to provide and charge for.
I don't love the dark patterns, but believe the CEO when he says they are basically traps that enable the low prices for the people that don't fall for them.
> I don't love the dark patterns, but believe the CEO when he says they are basically traps that enable the low prices for the people that don't fall for them.
I don't know what to respond to this. Are you saying you're fine with other people falling for the dark patterns if that allows for a cheaper ticket for you?
Yes, they've always had a model of "people in the know" being subsidized by others.
Didn't pre-print out your ticket? 100 euro fine. Your bag is too large at the gate? Same thing.
It's the airline of Compound Interest- "He who understands it, earns it... he who doesn't... pays it"
An airline that isn't purely catered to the rich, but to those who are intelligent, knowledgeable, and don't mind the lack of frills. It's like an airline crafted for grad students.
There's some mention as to why in the article, I don't think it's about being effective but about it becoming a tag and movement and the people associated with it
"EA ... was originally concerned with how to get rich philanthropists to donate to the most “effective” charities but is now just as well known for its booster-doomerism about artificial general intelligence and for having had the convicted crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried as a notorious benefactor"
It's only known for doomerism and SBF because reporters like the FA author chose to focus on this, and not on, say, the hundreds of thousands of lives saved around the world by EA donors and their recipient organizations.
I gotta say, I'm also pretty annoyed at the guilt-by-association with the SBF thing. If word got out that SBF liked puppies, would his enemies forswear dogs? It seems pretty easy to disavow fraud and even crypto in general (I'm not a fan of crypto), while simultaneously embracing taking a giving pledge, figuring out metrics by which to judge philanthropies, and focusing donations on the effective orgs (by whatever metric makes sense to you). It's like our civilization has lost the ability to hold two ideas in mind at a time, or to think beyond "bad people are bad"
That's the risk of it becoming a tag and movement associated with a particular group of people. Millions of people donate to charity in different ways, effectively or not and they're not part of a movement. When it becomes uppercase Effective Altruism with very prominent yet very similar in profile advocates (tech millionaires) it becomes something different and will attract scrutiny.
People can and will continue to donate their time and money regardless of this particular movement.
Using your time and money to help people is amazing, everyone should be encouraged to do it, of course.
But what does that have to do with EA? The EA movement is associated with tech millionaires arrogantly telling the world they are better at knowing what people need, at the same time some of these people have proven to have a dubious moral compass. So do I want these people as leaders of such a movement, absolutely not. Ultimately why do we need to tribalise the topic? You want to donate to charity in a particular way, then go ahead and encourage people to do so, that's amazing. Maybe we don't agree on the specifics but I think our opinions are actually not that far apart :)
But again, it's only associated with tech millionaires because reporters make the association to helpfully enable their readers to hate stuff! Engaging negative emotions -- you know, the thing modern media does best!
In my mind, EA is associated with Peter Singer and William MacAskill, some of the most powerful voices in contemporary philosophy, people whose work inspired me to think morally about my own choices, and who beyond being academics safe in their ivory towers founded a practical movement which has saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
I am doggedly pursing this thread because it encapsulates everything that's wrong with our modern times. We must regain the ability to organize into movements, otherwise those tech bosses we both dislike will rule us each separately. We must uplift moral courage, standing by convictions, and doing doing good in the world, otherwise the forces of nihilism (such as Trumpism) will destroy all that we hold dear, including the ability to hold things dear. We must make common cause, and not get torn apart by the narcissism of small differences. We must popularize doing good, and I don't see anyone else doing as, ahem, effective a job as EA.
I'm not the one tribalizing the topic! I'm not even a member of any EA club or group! I just want to end the casual hate, like what's exhibited in TFA. Why is it so hard to acknowledge that the movement on the whole has done more good than harm, even if some questionable individuals have used the movement as a cover for bad choices?
>> There have been other attempts to use genetically-modified fungi (Trichoderma) for protein production, where they secrete in the cultivation medium a water-soluble animal protein
Honest question, what does "animal protein" mean here in regards to it being produced by a fungi? is it that it's the same as as one from a cow at the molecular level?
Yes, they have replaced the gene used to synthesize the fungus protein that was secreted in the environment with a cow gene or a chicken gene.
So the cow lactoglobulin or chicken ovalbumin produced by the fungus is chemically identical to that from the protein powders that are currently made from cow milk or whey or from chicken egg white.
That means that such fungus-produced protein has an optimal amino acid profile, unlike the natural fungal proteins and if it forms a part of the daily protein intake (e.g. around a third) it can compensate the inadequate amino acid profiles of vegetable proteins.
For about 4 years I have eaten only vegetable proteins, but this created some constraints in what I could eat that were too inconvenient, so eventually I gave up. While now most of my protein intake remains of vegetable origin, I use some whey protein powder in the cooking of certain foods, to enhance their protein content, which has enabled me to make much more varied choices in the menu. Therefore I would know how to use such a product from fungi, if it would become widely available. There are a few startups in this domain, both in USA and in Europe, but for now their target is mostly in selling to big industrial producers of food, not at retail.
I understand the US's foreign policy is a global threat, but let's not let that be an excuse for the atrocities and corruption of tyrants in Venezuela and other places.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_crisis_in_Venezuela
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odebrecht_case#Venezuela
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derwick_Associates