No fucking roots shall hold.

A classic!

Like workday hours v weekend hours.

The grey is faster than the red, then I ask to myself, what a wonderful world.

“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”

James D. Nicoll

I think this is something most people rarely talk about but it strikes home to many of us. As a parent, I have a responsibility to defend my children against this persistent cognitive manipulation and experimentation. Just as I would not want a random stranger at the corner have exclusive attention of my kid and sell them insurance or grammarly or mesothelioma, I would also never want them to have that unfiltered access to my kids online. One can then say AdBlocks are a parental obligation.

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.