Choice sounds like something people should not be fighting over :)

May I have the honor of introducing you to African Rhumba: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O3BexfHBTIg

That is a favorite one. The album is by two of the greatest in African music: Franco Luambo (of TPOK Jazz) and Tabu Ley (of Afrisa International). They did this album to cool down rumours that they were fighting and don’t see eye to eye. They called it Lisanga ya Banganga (Congress of the Wizards).

This specific song I share is solemn, as they are mourning the death of their mentor, Kabaselle.

Check their respective Wikipedia entries. It is a whole new world you are peeking into.

Luddites were not as opposed to new technology as you say it here. They were mainly concerned about what technology would do to whom.

A helpful history right here: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/?lens=little-brown

No matter how far we have come as a society, you look again and realize on some things we have really not moved much. if anything, there might be regression. Think of Belgium owning forests in DR Congo for “carbon credits”!!!

This kind of research is interesting. There are several of these that I know of (Ethiopia’s Injera cost, Kenya’s Kikapu, Tanzania’s gharama etc). Hopefully someone can put these indices in comparison to other cost-of-living/inflation measures. Link to the report page - https://www.sbmintel.com/2024/04/the-sbm-jollof-index-crisis-at-the-table/

I am not into the political economy weeds of this situation but is there a reason why this is so hard to do? I can think of a host of reasons but is there agreement within African(-ist) thinking why this is usually the case?

We demonstrate that political orientation can be predicted from neutral facial images by both humans and algorithms, even when factors like age, gender, and ethnicity are accounted for. This indicates a connection between political leanings and inherent facial characteristics, which are largely beyond an individual’s control. Our findings underscore the urgency for scholars, the public, and policymakers to recognize and address the potential risks of facial recognition technology to personal privacy.

“peer-reviewed” bullshit.

I call it TED. Temporary Employee Discount. Don’t forget to ring your TED. Always.

It would be more complex if the US didn’t believe in 13th floor story and UK did. Even though both would have 14th floor on the same level from the ground, there is a lot that would be missed if you only elevated straight from the parking basement to your 14th floor.

Images could as well be copies of immigration documents for secretive efforts to run away from abusive family relationships or financial details for whatever plans or projects.

Findroid/Finamp? Quite robust.

Link: https://github.com/jmshrv/finamp

Retired mouth and bum.

Tanzania tried this sometime back. Foreign billionaires made local millionaires partners. All check boxes were ticked. Still a good idea.

Swahili. If you want to translate “she/he went to the river”, you say “Alienda mtoni” which collapses she/he into the subject A- (Alienda) to mean “the person”. You always need context to use a gendered word (like mwanamke for woman) otherwise general conversation does not foreground it. There is literally no word for he/she in Swahili, as far as I know.

Same here. My native langauge is not gendered and I rarely associate “man” in academic spaces with “gender” category. I usually need more info to tilt to gender in discussions.

The 2020 Primary felt like high strategy game. I don’t know much about Américan politics but I do remember seeing Bernie Sanders continue the 2016 momentum only for Biden to pick up in South Carolina. The orchestration they did to keep primary candidates in to weaken Bernie while working for Biden felt to me less a Biden thing and more of Biden as a chess-piece. He was not the force behind it. His familiarity and seemingly calm demeanor appealed to most voters compared to the erratic image of Trump. But deep down there was a feeling of “screw you Bernie”. Luckily for Dems, that is not a fault line Republicans are exploiting.

Still fair point. The grind is in placing the new reimplementation of federated link aggregator in opposition to Lemmy as if they are competing, and sadly to trash Lemmy and its developers.

And if they develop a good tool, that is also fine. The more the merrier. But I think their resources may have served more people if they were not duplicating effort and rather contributed into existing work. To each their own.

Something feels off with this post. It comes off as “we are better than Lemmy” as if there is any competition and awards to be won. To say Lemmy’s development is “toxic” and this project is “more inclusive and less toxic” without backing it up with evidence is unfair.

The audacity of justifying looting! - https://www.britishmuseum.org/about-us/british-museum-story/contested-objects-collection/maqdala-collection

Contemporary written accounts describe widespread looting of the fortress and church by soldiers and the released hostages. Many of the pillaged objects were subsequently re-assembled and auctioned. This auction was presented as a means of generating ‘prize money’ for the troops. After Maqdala was destroyed the expedition force soon left Maqdala and shortly afterwards departed Ethiopia.

Accompanying the expedition in an official capacity as ‘archaeologist’ was Richard Rivington Holmes, assistant in the Department of Manuscripts at the British Museum. Holmes was one of the principal buyers at the auction and returned to the UK with a significant collection of objects including over 300 manuscripts (now in the collections of the British Library (Opens in new window)), regalia, sacred vessels and liturgical equipment from the imperial treasury, library and church at Maqdala. Objects entered the British Museum collections via Holmes and through the Secretary of State for India in 1868.