Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• ‘This Is True Barbarity’: Life and Death Under Russian Occupation: The town of Trostyanets was occupied by Russian forces for a month before the Ukrainian military liberated it. Residents described weeks of hunger and horror. (New York Times)
• Congress is cutting corners on Covid-19 funding. We may pay for it later. The global vaccination campaign got cut out of Congress’s new Covid-19 funding bill. That’s a mistake. (Vox) see also Why experts are terrified of a human-made pandemic — and what we can do to stop it As biology gets better, biosecurity gets harder. Here’s what the world can do to prepare. (Vox)
• Heaps of money got Disney what it wanted in Florida, until now The Walt Disney Co. has dominated Florida for so long that the very idea of a backlash from the state’s political leaders has been unimaginable. Yet here we are. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and his GOP colleagues in the state legislature are threatening to bring the hammer down on the entertainment behemoth. Why? Because Disney is expressing disapproval of their latest effort to pander to their far-right base, the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law aimed at oppressing transgender people. (Los Angeles Times)
• Student debt: What it is, how we got it, and why it’s so hard to cancel Pausing student loan payments is easy. Fixing the system will be much harder. (Grid) How Viktor Orbán Built His Illiberal State Fidesz’s victory Sunday was the culmination of many events that, once upon a time, we thought couldn’t happen here. (New Republic)
• Why China stands firmly with Russia — for now Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has known China as a student, scholar and head of state. When it comes to China’s “limitless partnership” with Putin’s Russia, he thinks he knows where the red lines are. (Grid)
• A Facebook bug led to increased views of harmful content over six months: The social network touts downranking as a way to thwart problematic content, but what happens when that system breaks? (The Verge)
• Inside the Bitcoin Bust That Took Down the Web’s Biggest Child Abuse Site They thought their payments were untraceable. They couldn’t have been more wrong. The untold story of the case that shredded the myth of Bitcoin’s anonymity. (Wired)
• The Latest Covid Misinformation Star Says He Invented the Vaccines Dr. Robert Malone says he helped invent mRNA vaccines and has been wronged for decades. Now he’s spreading unfounded claims about the vaccines and the virus. (New York Times)
• The Future of the International Space Station Looks Dire For 30 years the U.S.-Russia partnership at the ISS was above it all. Now the U.S. finds itself in need of a friend, not a foe. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-29/russia-ukraine-invasion-puts-iss-future-in-doubt
• By Any Memes Necessary: How the Far Right Took Over France’s Election Eric Zemmour’s tactics pushed nativism to the center of the campaign—and show how social media platforms have done little to stop misinformation. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-04-07/zemmour-s-facebook-powered-french-election-rise see also US right wing figures in step with Kremlin over Ukraine disinformation: False narratives pushed by Tucker Carlson and key Republicans in Congress have been embraced and recycled by Moscow (The Guardian)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Jonathan Lavine, co-managing partner of Bain Capital, and Bain Capital Credit’s Cheif Investment Officer. He is co-chair of the Board of Trustees of Columbia University.
What’s really holding the world back from stopping climate change
Source: Vox
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