Needless to say, this is absolutely despicable:
”Working while traveling is a tactic many use to keep their wanderings going longer, hence the trend of digital nomads. But intentionally choosing to forgo money—rather than just running out of it while on the road—are two different things. And while some who crowdfund (or beg) their own travel may claim to have charitable leanings, the common thread among these free-loading wanderers is that they have a choice in the matter.
Needless to say, this is absolutely despicable:
> ”Working while traveling is a tactic many use to keep their wanderings going longer, hence the trend of digital nomads. But intentionally choosing to forgo money—rather than just running out of it while on the road—are two different things. And while some who crowdfund (or beg) their own travel may claim to have charitable leanings, the common thread among these free-loading wanderers is that they have a choice in the matter.
Another thoughtful piece on Black Panther over at The Atlantic:
Black Panther is a love letter to people of African descent all over the world.
Analyzing the tragedy of Erik Killmonger, the film’s main antagonist:
The part of Killmonger that makes him a supervillain is not the part of him that is African.
Indeed the fact that this character has so much interesting backstory, and a complex logic that is the result of his environment makes Killmonger the most interesting villain I’ve seen in a blockbuster since The Joker in Nolan’s The Dark Knight back in 2008.
I’ve been catching up on a lot of Wakanda-related reading over the past week. This one from The New Yorker makes a series of great points:
“There is a fundamental dissonance in the term “African-American,” two feuding ancestries conjoined by a hyphen. That dissonance—a hyphen standing in for the brutal history that intervened between Africa and America—is the subject of “Black Panther,” Ryan Coogler’s brilliant first installment of the story of Marvel Comics’ landmark black character.
Another thoughtful piece on Black Panther over at The Atlantic:
> Black Panther is a love letter to people of African descent all over the world.
Analyzing the tragedy of Erik Killmonger, the film’s main antagonist:
> The part of Killmonger that makes him a supervillain is not the part of him that is African.
Indeed the fact that this character has so much interesting backstory, and a complex logic that is the result of his environment makes Killmonger the most interesting villain I’ve seen in a blockbuster since The Joker in Nolan’s The Dark Knight back in 2008.
I’ve been catching up on a lot of Wakanda-related reading over the past week. This one from The New Yorker makes a series of great points:
> “There is a fundamental dissonance in the term “African-American,” two feuding ancestries conjoined by a hyphen. That dissonance—a hyphen standing in for the brutal history that intervened between Africa and America—is the subject of “Black Panther,” Ryan Coogler’s brilliant first installment of the story of Marvel Comics’ landmark black character.
2017 was another stellar year for Bandcamp, with double digit growth in every aspect of the business. (…) Meanwhile, standalone music streaming companies continued to lose money in 2017, and industry-wide record sales continued to decline. (…) Allowing the distribution of an entire art form to be controlled by so few has troubling implications, and those continued to play out in 2017.
[≠]
> 2017 was another stellar year for Bandcamp, with double digit growth in every aspect of the business. (…) > Meanwhile, standalone music streaming companies continued to lose money in 2017, and industry-wide record sales continued to decline. (…) > Allowing the distribution of an entire art form to be controlled by so few has troubling implications, and those continued to play out in 2017.
[≠]
Data privacy is not like a consumer good, where you click “I accept” and all is well. Data privacy is more like air quality or safe drinking water, a public good that cannot be effectively regulated by trusting in the wisdom of millions of individual choices. A more collective response is needed. This week’s data/privacy debacle has to do with Strava’s heat map. To sum it up quickly: Strava is a really good app to track your workouts, runs, and bike rides.
“If you go to New York and want to meet a big company such as Budweiser you are just one of a thousand firms pitching to them, whereas if you got to Tokyo and seek a meeting with Nissan you might be the only Irish company and one of only a handful from Europe knocking at their door” My friend Eamonn is in Dublin this evening and I’m well excited to catch-up.
Aside from work and prospecting for new clients, possibly jobs too, this week has revolved around a lot of walking in the different neighborhoods of the city centre, searching for and viewing apartments…
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This was hands-down the best meal/dinner I’ve had and it happened out of curiosity!
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We struggled to find a place in Vienna that wasn’t fully booked tonight and then I remembered this place we stumbled upon close to our hotel. They were able to book us a table for the four of us, Shana, my parents and myself.
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We sat down to discover that almost everything is made in premise, from baking their own bread to pickling their own vegetables.
There won’t be an internet where you can watch shows on Hulu then jump over to Gmail — you’ll watch Facebook TV and send Facebook Messages. Services that look and act like something distinct but are sadly part of a homogenized whole will also be available; Instagram and WhatsApp do this already. There you will be delivered ads according to your interests, interests predicated on the content you view, content promoted by bots and agents of a corrupt government and its many corporate and civilian allies.
This interview between the Editor in Chief of the Times and Jay Z was incredible.
Really respect the humility and empathy coming from him in this video:
www.nytimes.com/video/t-m…
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I really loved this article from Longreads over the weekend. A thrilling piece of non-fiction writing about the rise of bitcoin and an ongoing investigation about the maybe-but-probably-not creator of Bitcoin.
On December 9, 2015, Craig Wright woke up to the news that two articles had come out overnight fingering him as the person behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Reading the articles on his laptop, Wright knew his old life was over.
The goal of #MeToo, as Milano’s friend told her, was simply to give people a sense of “the magnitude of the problem.” Over the last day, I’ve seen the MeToo status pop up, without an explanation. But after seeing it multiple times from some of my female friends, I understood quickly what this was about. In the last 24h, the status has been tweeted 500 thousand times already. Think of the gravity of the situation.
Cameron Kunzelman for Polygon has a great opinion piece this week about one of my favorite video games: Final Fantasy IX.
Final Fantasy 9 shows us the closest thing to a fantasy weapon of mass destruction that exists in video games. I really appreciate the thoughts that went into this piece, especially given the current news and the constant will-they-won’t-they regarding our nuclear overlords.
If you’ve not had the chance to play through this wonderful Shakespearian experience, it’s available on PS4, iOS, and on Steam — which means you really have no excuse!
It's hard to believe it's been nearly a decade since New York Times photographer Damon Winter used Hipstamatic to create an award-winning photo for a cover story about the war in Afghanistan. It's even harder to believe that the app is still downloadable in close to its original form. It still takes three seconds to "print" your photo to a Polaroid-esque frame that loads in the bottom corner. As someone who’s been using Hipstamatic on and off over the past few years, I’m yet to find a camera app with the same unpredictable feel!
Goldman Sachs valued eSports at $500 million in 2016 and expects the market will grow at 22% annually. via eSports Data: The Huge Industry That’s Constantly Misunderstood | Brandwatch
“I am horrified but absolutely not surprised by this amount of data.” via Security News This Week: The Deloitte Breach Was Worse Than We Thought | WIRED
After a month in Vietnam, I switched things up with a short week in Singapore. I had a blast there: discovering a story, culture, and people that are mixed, welcoming, and have a truly unique place in the world!
vimeo.com/tibz/vlog…
Over on Remotive1 this week, we were introduced to Pilotfish, and its founder Joseph. They’re a social enterprise tackling issues related to Mental Health for Remote Workers.
With the continuing rise of remote workers or location independent workers, there’s a lot of things to navigate through, especially for first timers. It’s not easy to go from a social open office environment where you get to see your coworkers in person every day of the week, to working alone at home (or even in a coworking space where you might not know people around you.
For my last weekend in Bali, I wanted to explore the infamous peninsula. I met up with my driver, Ketut, the same driver that showed me around the previous Saturday.
Bali Peninsula Nusa Dua / Water Blow We started the day by driving down to Nusa Dua / “Water Blow”, which is a beautiful natural beach area with patches of grass around. It’s surrounded by luxury resorts, however, local Balinese and Indonesian families still go there to relax over the weekend.