Krugman is, of course, right about this. BUT, note that universities can do a lot to revitalize declining and rural regions.

Today's @bopinion post is about Nigeria. I expect its conclusions will not come as a surprise to most Nigerians, but it's good for Americans to be thinking about Nigeria and its problems.

Nigeria is very dependent on oil, for its government revenues and for its foreign exchange earnings.

When oil prices fall, Nigeria's people suffer.

And like many oil-rich countries, the government tries to cushion the blow by subsidizing fuel (this is more expensive than you might think, since Nigeria can't refine all of its own oil).

When oil prices rise again, this puts a strain on govt. budgets.

Meanwhile, fewer and fewer Nigerians have jobs, which could portend a rise in social instability.

To escape the doom spiral of the Resource Curse, Nigeria should look to a country that seems to have beaten the curse:

Met a Brazilian-American Lyft driver from San Diego who passionately attacked the racism of Republicans, then switched to passionately defending Bolsonaro.

If I were Thomas Friedman, I could tell you what this means.

Met a Haitian-American in a restaurant who said he'd always vote for Democrats because of the immigration issue, but that he has conservative beliefs too. "I don't want to pay for someone's abortion!", he declared.

Met a Latino Lyft driver from San Jose who said that while he was liberal, California was getting too liberal for him and he was considering moving to San Antonio.

Again, not being Tom Friedman, I am unable to offer any commentary on the political and policy implications of these conversations.

I guess my only thought is that political opinions are pretty complex and multidimensional, out there in the real world.

(end)

Confession: I haven't the slightest interest in my genetic ancestry or where my ancestors came from or what they did.

I mean, my dad's family came from Lithuania. They changed their name from Kuznets in 1905. At some point they were blacksmiths. My mom's family came from Halychyna in Ukraine. I have no idea what they did. That's about all I know.

Oh, I do know that pretty much all of my extended family who stayed in Europe got wiped out by the Nazis.

I like to think that my ancestors were nothing and nobody. Random boring peasants with no special talents or wealth.

Except for Genghis Khan, of course. But he's everyone's ancestor.

The best thing about this approach is that I don't have anything to live up to. ;-)

(end)

We have to talk Crunchyroll yet the fuck again, but this time over a issue with Translation in the Zombie Idol recent episode but first i need to apologize to .@BigBootyWitches because i got it wrong between trans and futa but it turns out we all got played by Crunchy...

first off. One Poster i retweeted turned out to say that Lily, is more of a Ototo No Ko. She later confirms from those that watch the show in Japan that the audio doesnt match the translation and the translation itself was a self insert.

This is the major problem I have. Look, i get it. The west still has no handle on these issues. Other countries dont raise a huge fit about it and in Asia certain countries societies dont really accept it and some reluctantly accept it.

But this continuation of the bullshit from Crunchy since High Guardian Spice is beyond the pale. They lied about helping the Japanese animators. They lied about their new projects and their dubs, Funimation took most of their projects away from Crunchy...

And now, so desperate for relevance and kicks and outrage, they do this self insert, just to get some of their more conservative folk on edge, ranting about how they left one "pozzed" medium with the western animation industry to see the "pozz" get into the only thing left...

Oh are we talking about Sheryl Sandberg again? Well, your reminder that disabled feminists, LGBQT feminists, and feminists of color criticised her ‘lean in’ deal from day one. Don’t let anyone retcon that out of existence.

Like, a pretty narrow slice of feminists actually endorse and support corporate feminism, they’re just white, nondisabled, straight, cis, and noisy so their voices have a bigger reach.

So if your impression is that ‘feminism’ gave her a ‘free pass’ maybe you should question your overall impression of feminism rather than continuing to centre a handful of people as ‘thought leaders’ or whatever.

Critics within feminism have been doing this work for a long time and have been getting shat on it for about as long and I'm tired of seeing them erased. But what do I know — I am, after all, not a feminist.

But I WILL say, from my not-a-feminist perspective, that people who aren’t feminists who are criticising feminism should maybe understand the movement more deeply beyond a handful of high profile celebrity feminists.

THREAD: We filed RTIs on behalf of @no2uid asking the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare questions about how your personal data will be protected while you're using CO-WIN, the COVID-19 vaccination registration platform.

We got answers... kind of. Here's the new info.

1/n

Just like with Aarogya Setu, many Indians are worried that about the potential CO-WIN has to leak your data or threaten your privacy in the name of dealing with a pandemic. So, we asked the MOHFW some questions about data protection under the Right to Information Act.
2/n

In the responses we received, MOHFW said that it cannot provide us with a privacy policy on CO-WIN (?!).

Thankfully it was clarified that Aadhaar is not mandatory for registration on Aarogya Setu or CO-WIN, and that physical vaccine certificates will be provided to everyone.
3/n

The data it says it will collect will be your name, gender, date of birth, photo ID, and number.

National, State, and District level admins will have access to use the app, but there is not much further clarity on this point.

But most importantly...
4/n

The responses (or rather lack of them) related to your data privacy and protection are completely vague. We received no clear answers on which Ministries/Depts will have access to your personal data, the permissions provided, etc. This is a failure in terms of transparency.
5/n

Did you realize there is a movement to normalize anti-white hatred? It works with white guilt and psych-op to dehumanize white people. They are working to dehumanize "whiteness". Do not make the mistake of thinking this is an isolated incident because it has been going on for ...

some time. I have collected nearly 100 articles in the last few yrs.
Today there was a whistleblower from Coca Cola, who revealed classes they were to take to learn how to "try to be less white". The classes are provided by Linked In on Linked In.

Many large companies are not only doing diversity training, but "What It Means to be White" seminars. Inside our government seminars are available. Recently we learned the Defense Secretary said he is going to root out extremism,

which we know means white supremacists aka Trump supporters. I do not think he was talking about the Muslim Brotherhood, as he has been fine with them.

A Federal contractor: "A filmmaker and policy researcher has posted online a series of documents showing how the federal government required "white men" who work at Sandia National Laboratories to learn how to "deconstruct their white male culture."(WND 8/13/20