The Anti-Woke King of Hollywood Lets Loose
Taylor Sheridan’s shows explain how and why we got Trump again by Rick Marin
Commentary Magazine – January 2025 Preview
Tag Archives: Media
World Economic Forum: Top Stories – Nov 16, 2024
0:15 AI robot zaps weeds while saving crops – It’s called Concentrated Light Autonomous Weeding and Scouting or CLAWS for short. CLAWS uses AI-powered image processing to identify the crops, then targets weeds around the crop with blasts of concentrated light. This gets rid of unwanted intruders without damaging either crops or soil.
1:52 5 ways bioeconomy affects daily living – The bioeconomy uses renewable resources from land or sea to produce food, energy, and other resources. It focuses on leveraging nature’s processes and products to create sustainable economic outputs. The bioeconomy is already a part of our daily lives, influencing various sectors and industries.
6:08 Iceland sees benefit of a 4-day work week – The Nordic nation of 380,000 is rolling out a new way of working. Between 2020 and 2022, 51% of Iceland’s workers accepted an offer of shorter hours, such as a 4-day week for no loss of pay. The shift has had a positive impact on work-life balance and personal stress, new research shows.
8:17 Restored Amazon ecosystems beat logging – Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance is fighting to safeguard 35 million hectares of rainforest through a collaboration between 30 Indigenous nations of the Amazon basin. There’s an economic case for protecting the Amazon, says Atossa Soltani, Director of Global Strategy, Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance.
Commentary Magazine – December 2024 Preview
The New Republican Majority
The New Democratic Minority
They’re Hunting Us Down
The Suicide of the Mainstream Media
World Economic Forum: Top Stories – Nov 9, 2024
0:15 Finfluencer financial advice revolution – A finfluencer is a content creator on social media who shares information on budgeting, saving and financial investments, among other topics. Finfluencers use blogs, podcasts or videos to get their message out. They help widen financial access to groups who didn’t have it before.
3:49 These vegetables grow in-store without soil – Instead of soil, they use plugs of rockwool, irrigated with nutrient-rich water in a method called hydroponics. They come in different sizes producing from 2,000 to 15,000 plants monthly. These farms have a tiny environmental footprint. The largest models can grow as much as a 3-hectare farm.
5:44 Telehealth platform empowers millions – Altibbi offers 24/7 access to online doctors along with accessible, up-to-date medical information. It offers a cheaper, more accessible alternative to in-person consultations but it also aims to ‘change the narrative’ around the patient-doctor relationship.
8:43 ‘Underwater tractors’ replant seagrass – They were created by Reefgen, an UpLink Top Innovator. The robot scoots over the seabed, steadily and carefully restoring the ecosystem. Reefgen’s technology aims to aid conservation efforts by augmenting the efforts of human restorers.
World Economic Forum: Top Stories – Oct. 5, 2024
0:15 What’s next for urgent climate action? – At the Sustainable Development Impact Meetings in New York, leaders discussed how to curb carbon emissions while building an inclusive economy. Regulations can be a lever for systemic change but local innovation is crucial, too.
3:09 Solar stoves reduce air pollution deaths – It cooks food while emitting hardly any smoke. It uses a hybrid system, powered by energy from solar panels and from fuel such as small sticks or crop waste. The ACE One was created by African Clean Energy which is a part of the World Economic Forum’s Equitable Transition Initiative.
5:08 Chief economists’ outlook for the rest of 2024 – Many chief economists polled by the World Economic Forum are optimistic about 2025. In the United States, nearly nine in ten chief economists anticipate moderate or strong growth in the coming year. Similarly, in South Asia, 71% predict strong or very strong growth.
9:33 Earth exceeds 6 of 9 planetary boundaries – In 2009, a team of scientists identified the 9 natural processes that regulate Earth’s biosphere and keep it stable. These include climate change, biodiversity, ocean acidification and freshwater. The team also defined the safe planetary boundary for each process. A safe and sustainable future for humanity lies within these boundaries.
World Economic Forum: Top Stories – Sept. 28, 2024
0:15 How investment advice is changing – ‘The film is a rollercoaster ride into the last few years of how technology is changing our relationship to money’, says Chris Temple, director of This Is Not Financial Advice, a documentary that follows four online investors, including one who made – and lost – millions in crypto.
5:56 New tech reveals the impacts of climate change – Using AI, we can process Earth Observation (EO) data faster. Helping us monitor disaster impact in hours, not days. AI is also improving climate and weather forecast models. Through AR and VR, engineers are transforming these complex datasets into interactive, intuitive experiences that can help leaders make climate decisions.
7:39 This debt plan can save coral reefs – The deal reduces Indonesia’s debt repayments to the US by $35 million over the next 9 years and redirects those payments towards reef conservation instead. Indonesia is home to 16% of the world’s coral reefs and around 60% of the world’s coral species. Its reefs generate around $1.6 billion in value every year through fisheries, coastline protection and tourism. But Indonesia’s reefs face a range of threats.
9:21 Ray Dalio on funding climate action – By 2050, climate damage could cost between $1.7 trillion and $3.1 trillion per year. However, the costs of inaction could be even greater, says Ray Dalio, the founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates. Right now, climate action is hugely under-financed.
Commentary Magazine – October 2024 Preview
Why Won’t We Let Ukraine Win?
…the U.S. has been too slow in arming its ally, too restrictive in setting conditions on the use of weapons, and generally too fearful of Vladimir Putin’s threats. The result is that Ukraine, for all its unfathomable courage and boundless ingenuity, has been permitted to fight, but not win, the war. If this keeps up, Ukraine could actually lose.
Mark Zuckerberg Is Just So Very Sorry, You Guys
When I step back a bit, I can see that Zuckerberg isn’t just haplessly begging our forgiveness. He’s trying to save his business. Meta Platforms, the company he controls, contains some of the world’s most widely used and profitable digital brands, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Meta appears to be thriving, with its stock price more than quadrupling since a rocky 2022. But Zuckerberg knows that his company’s brands are built on foundations of sand. Just as a sandbar will move with tides, the user base of any social platform can drift away in a surprisingly short time.
The Harris Shuffle
This is Harris’s challenge: She’s the incumbent vice president running for higher office in a change election. She’s an undefined candidate whose positions and job performance are vulnerable to attack. She wants to be seen as a disruptor while remaining loyal to President Biden. And she wants to move away from the far-left views she held as a senator while she continues to proclaim that her values have stayed the same.
World Economic Forum: Top Stories – June 15, 2024
0:15 Mini-factories in space – Space Forge says its technology could revolutionize manufacturing. The satellites contain miniature manufacturing systems. They take advantage of the conditions in low-Earth orbit such as microgravity, extreme temperatures and a contaminant-free environment to forge materials that would be impossible to manufacture here on Earth.
1:53 Biodiversity credits explained – Nature is under unprecedented threat. Around 2 million plant and animal species could go extinct in the next few decades as climate change and habitat loss push ecosystems towards irreversible tipping points. To fight this crisis, experts are coming up with new ways to protect life on Earth by assigning value to the ecosystems around us. These innovations include biodiversity credits.
6:58 Nairobi switches to electric buses – Private minibuses called matatus are the main mode of public transport in Nairobi. Most matatus are old, diesel-powered and inefficient and 60% of the city’s population rely on them to get around. Electric mobility start-up BasiGo has built an all-electric alternative. The first bus rolled off its Nairobi production line in early 2024. Nairobi bus operators have already ordered 500 more. More than 90% of Kenya’s electricity is generated renewably, which means BasiGo’s buses are virtually emission-free.
8:40 How to build healthier cities – This architect designs buildings that bring communities together – Sumayya Vally grew up in post-Apartheid Pretoria, South Africa in what had been an Indian-only township and saw how division kept communities apart. Vally founded the Johannesburg-based architecture practice Counterspace to fight the built legacies of colonization and highlight the peaceful coexistence between communities.
World Economic Forum: Top Stories – May 13, 2024
0:15 Banking uplifts women in Pakistan – Pakistan has a large gender gap in financial inclusion. 47% of men have at least one registered financial account but just 13% of women. Even for those with an account, banking can be prohibitively time-consuming, especially for women who are running a business alongside a household. Now a new kind of digital banking service is helping to close this gap.
2:23 World’s busiest airports revealed – The world’s busiest airports in 2023 were dominated by the United States, with five airports cracking the top 10. Overall, global airports saw a significant rebound in 2023, handling a total of 8.5 billion trips.
4:39 WMO: Asia hardest hit by climate – In 2023, Asia saw a wave of extreme weather events from floods to cyclones. World Economic Forum Head of Climate Adaptation Eric White explains why climate change is making extreme weather more likely.
7:07 Saving Earth with space science – Simonetta Di Pippo says that space is already helping tackle the greatest challenges on Earth. Satellite connectivity is improving our management of disasters and powering digital transformation. Which is revolutionizing sectors from healthcare to education, retail and communication.
Commentary Magazine – April 2024 Opinion Preview
The Elite War on the American Middle Class—and How to End It
Being middle class in America used to mean something—something socially transformative, something even revolutionary. The American middle class represented a form of national social order never before seen on this earth—cultural domination not by the very rich and very educated, or the political domination either by tyrants or the mob, but by a mass of people, relatively well-to-do, who felt themselves fortunate in their circumstances. That was what made the American middle class different from the French or English bourgeoisie. Its members believed, and the country believed, that they were the nation’s backbone, its true governing class, and its moral compass.
The Four Questions of 2024
President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump squared off four years ago and are on track for the first major-party rematch since 1892. Biden and Trump are the oldest presidential candidates in history, and each man has an established political brand. Biden first won federal office in 1972, and it’s been over a decade since the GOP nominated someone other than Donald Trump. The 2024 election is like all the SIRIUS XM oldies stations—Classic Vinyl, Classic Rewind, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Radio—rolled into one.
The Hateful Candace Owens
If you had never heard of Candace Owens until recently, you aren’t alone. Less than a decade ago, she was an unknown college dropout working as a marketing professional in New York, writing pieces for her company’s website about the “bat-s—t crazy antics of the Republican Tea Party.” Then, suddenly, she claimed to have experienced a political conversion. She told the libertarian political commentator Dave Rubin in 2017, “I became a conservative overnight. . . . I realized that liberals were actually the racists. Liberals were actually the trolls.”
Boomers Daily 