The Global Order is Crumbling, Brb
Issue 20 of 🙉 the One Seventeen 💅
A weekly email you’ve been missing on poverty, inequality, and the planet.
Welcome to the One Seventeen.
Heading straight for ya with some big trends this week!
For one, there’s a crack in the global order. (At least one.) And BRICS (an international club comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) is poised to take advantage. It’ll do so, according to one commentator, by supporting global trade just as the US dumps on it.
Have you ever told Siri, “I’m lonely”? Apparently, Russian and American bots give very different answers to this question. Their responses are based on an unspoken system that dictates how different emotions are valued. No, machines don’t have feelings, except the ones they learn from us.
And your inspirational Twitter bio of the week:
Making life = the action, not just the idea.
This week, how are you making your life about the action, not just the idea?
DEVELOPMENTS
Blood, land and soy: Behind the Amazonian struggle for indigenous rights.
“Agribusiness is destroying our dreams, the source of our spirituality and our future.” In this wonderful deep dive, we learn about deforestation, its many impacts, and its causes in the everyday choices of consumers. “It’s possible to change what’s happening. It will be difficult, but there is no alternative.”
Amazon’s facial recognition falsely identifies 28 members of Congress as suspects.
The ACLU tested the Amazon AI, called Rekognition, and voila, it falsely matched men and women, Democrats and Republicans. But, of course, disproportionately people of color. This test highlights not only the algo’s inherent racial bias but also its inaccuracy, and the ACLU is calling for police not to use it.
Fixing America’s forgotten places.
The creation of “opportunity zones” is aimed at revitalizing blight-stricken areas of the country by luring private dollars to build office parks and supermarkets. Could this lessen inequality? These aren’t the very poorest places, so it’s unlikely for a number of reasons. Investing in the poorest places still has higher upside.
RESOURCE
A community of people building products for social impact.
Open Good is a Telegram group (the chat app, no morse code needed) for techies, designers, and others interested in building stuff that improves the world. See you there. ;)
SOMEONE TO WATCH
Yelitsa Jean-Charles, Founder of Healthy Roots Dolls.
Societal beauty standards negatively impact the self perception of girls of color. So Jean-Charles and Healthy Roots create dolls and storybooks that reinforce positive self-perceptions of the richly diverse, varying shades of complexion and natural hair textures among girls of color. You can watch her TEDX talk here.
RESEARCH
Almost all of the world’s oceans are damaged by human impact.
A new study finds that only 13 percent of the world’s oceans haven’t been touched by humans, mostly in the remote Pacific and at the poles. That’s not a lot of ocean wilderness left.
COMMENTARY
Is inequality a problem?
A look at the data, says one conservative commentator, shows that we could be “wringing our hands over a modest trend”. Although he admits that the human consequences of this are still unacceptable… so probably still a problem.
I love you. Thanks for reading. :)
Please send all responsible soy products, telegrams (the morse code kind), and Healthy Roots dolls to me at christianpetroske@gmail.com.
What on Earth is this?
The One Seventeen is a weekly email that presents the latest in how the world is doing on ending poverty, reducing inequality, and protecting the planet, delivered with emojis. Each email has 5 parts: Recent developments; a resource; a profile of someone to watch; a summary of recent research; and commentary from around the web. Subscribe here.
