#1.2 billion views

[tanagause]

😍🥰😘

[xtruss]

Pro-Palestine 🇵🇸 demonstrators gathered to protest Google's Project Nimbus, blocking an entrance to the Google 1/0 conference in Mountain View in the US State of California on May 14. Conference attendees were redirected to a different entrance while the protest continued. Project Nimbus is a controversial $1.2 Billion Al and Cloud computing contract between Google, Amazon and “The Terrorist , Fascist, Apartheid, War Criminal, Liar, Conspirator, Genocidal and the Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-helli” Government.

The system can collect all data sources provided by “The Terrorist , Fascist, Apartheid, War Criminal, Liar, Conspirator, Genocidal and the Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell” and Its War Criminal Military, including databases, resources, and even live observation sources such as street and drone cameras. Critics argue that the project could help “The Terrorist , Fascist, Apartheid, War Criminal, Liar, Conspirator, Genocidal and the Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell” continue its occupation of Palestinian territories and segregation of the Palestinian people.

[reasonsforhope]

No-paywall version.

"You can never really see the future, only imagine it, then try to make sense of the new world when it arrives.

Just a few years ago, climate projections for this century looked quite apocalyptic, with most scientists warning that continuing “business as usual” would bring the world four or even five degrees Celsius of warming — a change disruptive enough to call forth not only predictions of food crises and heat stress, state conflict and economic strife, but, from some corners, warnings of civilizational collapse and even a sort of human endgame. (Perhaps you’ve had nightmares about each of these and seen premonitions of them in your newsfeed.)

Now, with the world already 1.2 degrees hotter, scientists believe that warming this century will most likely fall between two or three degrees. (A United Nations report released this week ahead of the COP27 climate conference in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, confirmed that range.) A little lower is possible, with much more concerted action; a little higher, too, with slower action and bad climate luck. Those numbers may sound abstract, but what they suggest is this: Thanks to astonishing declines in the price of renewables, a truly global political mobilization, a clearer picture of the energy future and serious policy focus from world leaders,

we have cut expected warming almost in half in just five years.

...Conventional wisdom has dictated that meeting the most ambitious goals of the Paris agreement by limiting warming to 1.5 degrees could allow for some continuing normal, but failing to take rapid action on emissions, and allowing warming above three or even four degrees, spelled doom.

Neither of those futures looks all that likely now, with the most terrifying predictions made improbable by decarbonization and the most hopeful ones practically foreclosed by tragic delay. The window of possible climate futures is narrowing, and as a result, we are getting a clearer sense of what’s to come: a new world, full of disruption but also billions of people, well past climate normal and yet mercifully short of true climate apocalypse.

Over the last several months, I’ve had dozens of conversations — with climate scientists and economists and policymakers, advocates and activists and novelists and philosophers — about that new world and the ways we might conceptualize it. Perhaps the most capacious and galvanizing account is one I heard from Kate Marvel of NASA, a lead chapter author on the fifth National Climate Assessment: “The world will be what we make it.” Personally, I find myself returning to three sets of guideposts, which help map the landscape of possibility.

First, worst-case temperature scenarios that recently seemed plausible now look much less so, which is inarguably good news and, in a time of climate panic and despair, a truly underappreciated sign of genuine and world-shaping progress...

[I cut number two for being focused on negatives. This is a reasons for hope blog.]

Third, humanity retains an enormous amount of control — over just how hot it will get and how much we will do to protect one another through those assaults and disruptions. Acknowledging that truly apocalyptic warming now looks considerably less likely than it did just a few years ago pulls the future out of the realm of myth and returns it to the plane of history: contested, combative, combining suffering and flourishing — though not in equal measure for every group...

“We live in a terrible world, and we live in a wonderful world,” Marvel says. “It’s a terrible world that’s more than a degree Celsius warmer. But also a wonderful world in which we have so many ways to generate electricity that are cheaper and more cost-effective and easier to deploy than I would’ve ever imagined. People are writing credible papers in scientific journals making the case that switching rapidly to renewable energy isn’t a net cost; it will be a net financial benefit,” she says with a head-shake of near-disbelief. “If you had told me five years ago that that would be the case, I would’ve thought, wow, that’s a miracle.”"

-via The New York Times Magazine, October 26, 2022

[apod]

2023 November 8

Perseus Galaxy Cluster from Euclid Image Credit & License: ESA, Euclid, Euclid Consortium, NASA; Processing: Jean-Charles Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay) & Giovanni Anselmi; Text: Jean-Charles Cuillandre

Explanation: There's a new space telescope in the sky: Euclid. Equipped with two large panoramic cameras, Euclid captures light from the visible to the near-infrared. It took five hours of observing for Euclid's 1.2-meter diameter primary mirror to capture, through its sharp optics, the 1000+ galaxies in the Perseus cluster, which lies 250 million light years away. More than 100,000 galaxies are visible in the background, some as far away as 10 billion light years. The revolutionary nature of Euclid lies in the combination of its wide field of view (twice the area of the full moon), its high angular resolution (thanks to its 620 Megapixel camera), and its infrared vision, which captures both images and spectra. Euclid's initial surveys, covering a third of the sky and recording over 2 billion galaxies, will enable a study of how dark matter and dark energy have shaped our universe.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap231108.html

[soon-palestine]

On Monday, a brave Google Cloud engineer spoke up against the corporation’s complicity in Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people. A video of the worker standing up for their rights went viral, with some reposts reaching up to 8 million views and generating widespread global support, including from Palestinians in Gaza. Three days later, Google fired this worker.

Google has engaged in a clear cut act of retaliation against its own worker for speaking up about the terms and conditions of their labor.

This is the first immediate firing of a worker after a public, brave act of employee dissent against Project Nimbus, Google and Amazon’s shared $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli military and government. This is the second worker associated with the No Tech For Apartheid campaign that Google has retaliated against for organizing within their workplace, and the latest in a series of cases in which Google has retaliated against workers for speaking up about the corporation’s ethical malpractice in a range of business decisions.

While touting the importance of “democratic values” in the workplace, Google is shutting down free speech and silencing debate and dissent among workers within the company.

Google’s aims are clear: The corporation is trying to silence workers to hide their moral failings. Google is enabling the world’s first AI-powered genocide through Project Nimbus. Through this contract, Google and Amazon are aiding and abetting the Israeli apartheid state and genocidal campaign in Gaza against Palestinians. Instead of cleaning up its own house, and dropping its contract with a genocidal regime, Google is punching down on its own workers. For almost three years, thousands of Google & Amazon workers have organized against the companies’ contracts with the Israeli government and military, with no response from management or executives.

As a Cloud Software Engineer on critical technology that enables Project Nimbus to run on sovereign Israeli data centers, this worker spoke from a place of deep personal concern about the direct, violent impacts of their labor. They spoke from a deep belief that truly ethical engineering must account for the impact on communities around the world.

While terminating this brave worker, Google HR asked how they were feeling. The worker replied: “proud to be fired for refusing to be complicit in genocide.”

[itsvivace]

— SAD GIRLS CLUB . . THE DISCOGRAPHY !

tw: flashing lights !!!

Sad Girls Club is a fictional sub-unit of the fictional thirteen-member girl group, VIVACE, consisting of five members : EUNMI, NOELLE, ARA, YANA, & HAYEON. VIVACE is split into three active sub-units to promote in, and today, we’ll be exploring their first and most famous unit, Sad Girls Club. Sad Girls Club explores more of VIVACE’s mature side, along with heavily Second Gen inspired music, which has captured the hearts of fans all around the world.

— 2019 - 2021 . . ALL EYES ON ME . .

A few weeks after VIVACE’s debut, I-Teen Media announced that they would be debuting their first sub-unit under the name Sad Girls Club. Due to the popularity of ARA, NOELLE, & HAYEON, their debut was hugely anticipated by even non fans of VIVACE. Sad Girls Club debuted on October 2, 2019, with the self-titled mini album “SAD GIRLS CLUB” consisting of five tracks, “Like This” serving as the title track. SAD GIRLS CLUB debuted with 96K album sales, and Like This immediately charted #1 on every South Korean chart within the first week of release, even getting the girls their first win on their second week of promotions.

Sad Girls Club would return six months later on April 4, 2020, with their first single album, “My Attitude”, consisting of two tracks, “Inside Job” serving as the album’s title track. The album debuted with 139K album sales, with Inside Job debuting at #3 on the chart and moving up to #1 a week after release. Inside Job was the start of their slower and more mature sounding music, which gained them a bunch of fans during this era.

A few months later on August 5, 2020, they released their second mini album, “REVOLUTION”, which consists of six tracks including the title track, “VILLAIN”. REVOLUTION is a more noisy and experimental sound than what they usually did but the album still debuted with 194K album sales and debuted #2 on charts.

As an end-of-the-year release, they dropped their third mini album, “WOMAN”, consisting of five tracks, including the title track “Woman”, on December 14, 2020. Woman trended for its second-gen sound and woman-empowering message, which earned the album 482K album sales and #1 across global charts.

Sad Girls Club would only release two things in the year 2021. On May 23, 2021, they put out their first digital single, “Pretty Savage”, which charted #3 on Melon and #2 globally. They would then come back on July 15, 2021, with their fourth mini album, “Movie Star”, consisting of six tracks, including the title track, “N♡︎DE”. They would comment on the unfair standards and sexualization women go through, especially in the music industry, which earned them Album of The Year in 2021. Movie Star would give them their first million-seller album, debuting with 1.3M album sales and all of the songs on the album hitting the top ten on charts.

— 2022 - 2023 . . I LIVE FOR THE APPLAUSE . .

With the hype from Movie Star starting to die down and having no comeback announcements from Sad Girls Club, fans were beginning to get anxious waiting for a new release. They would release their first full album, “SUPERWOMAN”, on January 28, 2022, consisting of twelve tracks, including the pre-release single, “SUPERLADIES”, and the second title track, “I Am The Best”. SUPERWOMAN is a powerful album about empowering women, self-love, and self-appreciation. SUPERLADIES would gain 85 million views within the first 24 hours and earned them six music show wins. As of August 2024, SUPERLADIES is one of Sad Girls Club’s most viewed music videos, with 953 million views. I Am The Best went viral for its second-gen influence and powerful sound, releasing with 294 million views in the first 24 hours and giving Sad Girls Club eleven music show wins. The music video is currently at 1.2 billion views, their most viewed music video ever. SUPERWOMAN debuted with 7.8M album sales and sold out almost instantly, making it Sad Girls Club’s biggest release.

Sad Girls Club would come back on June 23, 2022, with their fifth mini album, “Club 5”, consisting of five tracks including the title track “Live It Up”. Club 5 shows a slower and more mature side to Sad Girls Club which earned the album 4.8M album sales and Live It Up hitting the top five on the South Korean charts.

They would end the year off with the release of their second single album, “Bad Boy”, consisting of three tracks including the title track of the same name, “Bad Boy”. They would continue their slower and mature sounding songs for this album which made it get 4M album sales and debuted first on the Global Charts.

Sad Girls Club released their sixth mini album, “Breakfast At Tiffany’s”, on February 4, 2023, which consists of six tracks, including the title track, “Lion Heart”. Breakfast At Tiffany’s has a '60s aesthetic and is heavily themed around media created from then. It also talks about the downside of Hollywood and the movie industry as a whole and how it treats its actors, which gave the album 7.6M sales and charted in the top ten.

In a huge suprise to fans, they released their second full album, “The Plastics”, on June 3, 2023, consisting of fifteen tracks, including the pre-release singles “Get In, Loser”, “You Can’t Sit With Us”, and the title track, “Queen B”. The album was completely based off the movie “Mean Girls” made in 2004 and is filled to the brim with references to the movie. The album debuted with over 9 million sales, five music show wins, and a performance at the 2023 Grammy Awards, which they were nominated for.

Sad Girls Club released their third full album, “I’m The Drama” on October 16, 2023, consisting of eleven tracks including the title track, “DRAMA”. This album brought many worries of Sad Girls Club being possibly overworked but nothing was outwardly confirmed other than a few hints some of the members made. The album sold 14 million copies overall and is what fans say was the start of their “Reputation” era.

The latest release from Sad Girls Club is their second digital single, “Hopeless Romantic”, released on November 29, 2023. The song charted third on the charts but fans still say it was overall forgettable and earned the group a suprising amount of hate. As of September 2024, Sad Girls Club have not made a comeback despite the members outwardly stating they would like to have one soon.

[athena5898]

(PrR)Journalist Anas Al-Sharif (https://x.com/anasalsharif0/status/1854161925363392718?s=46) in North Gaza: After the account reached more than 1.2 million followers and more than a billion views, Meta blocked my Instagram account and shut it down completely

[ausetkmt]

The Onion, the Chicago-based satirical news company, won a bid Wednesday in a private bankruptcy auction to acquire conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars and related assets to his media empire, with backing from the families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims, who are owed compensation due to Jones’ years of dismissing the massacre.

Families of Sandy Hook victims support the new deal

According to The Associated Press, Jones spread false claims about the Sandy Hook shooting, calling it a hoax, which led to over $1 billion in defamation judgments against him. The families have supported this move, viewing it as a form of justice for the 20 children and six teachers killed in the 2012 Connecticut shooting.

“The dissolution of Alex Jones’ assets and the death of Infowars is the justice we have long awaited and fought for,” Robbie Parker, whose daughter Emilie was among the victims killed in the shooting, said in a statement from his lawyers, per AP.

Jones breaks silence on Infowars sale

While the sale price remains was not made public, The Onion now owns the Infowars website; video archive; social media accounts; studio in Austin, Texas; and trademarks, per AP. Jones, 50, shared a video Thursday on X, formerly known as Twitter, providing an update about the sale to his followers.

“I just got word 15 minutes ago that my lawyers and folks met with the U.S. trustee over our bankruptcy this morning, and they said they are shutting us down even without a court order this morning,” Jones said.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’m going to be here until they come and turn the lights off,” he added.

The Onion partners with Everytown for Gun Safety to raise awareness

Jones founded Infowars in 1999, which is operated under Free Speech Systems with around $6 million in cash and $1.2 million in inventory, according to June court filings obtained by NBC News.

Despite his earlier claims about Sandy Hook, Jones has since testified in court multiple times, stating that he now believes the shooting was “100% real.” However, the litigation between him and the families in Connecticut and Texas remains ongoing, per NBC News.

The Onion also reached a multiyear agreement with Everytown for Gun Safety — the anti-violence organization will be the exclusive advertiser on the new Infowars website in order to highlight gun control and related issues.

[gwydionmisha]

Elon Musk’s X accused of bias after pro-Harris accounts labeled as ‘spam’

If you wouldn't watch FOX "News" or read the daily Stormer, unsubscribe from Xitter. It is a Neo-Nazi Republican disinformation machine.

[partisan-by-default]

Trump’s nominee to head the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a physician and economist at Stanford, reportedly wants to target so called “cancel culture” at a number of top progressive universities, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Those with knowledge of Bhattacharya’s thinking told the newspaper that he’s considering linking the doling out of billions in federal research grants to a measure of “academic freedom” on campuses and punishing those that apparently don’t adequately embrace perspectives championed by conservatives.

Bhattacharya wants to take on what he views as academic conformity in science, which pushed him aside over his criticism of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including his opposition to school closures and mask mandates to stop the spread of the virus. He suggested in a Wall Street Journal op ed in 2020 that only up to 40,000 Americans would be killed by the pandemic. More than 1.2 million people died.

While he hasn’t yet established how to measure academic freedom, he has been looking at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and the nonprofit’s scoring of universities and their rankings based on freedom of speech.

[stephen-barry]

Elon Musk's misleading election claims have accrued 1.2 billion views on X, new analysis says

The nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate said Musk’s debunked claims are spreading widely and don't appear to be subject to X’s Community Notes fact-checking system.

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Lunar ice deposits are widespread

Deposits of ice in lunar dust and rock (regolith) are more extensive than previously thought, according to a new analysis of data from NASA’s LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) mission. Ice would be a valuable resource for future lunar expeditions. Water could be used for radiation protection and supporting human explorers, or broken into its hydrogen and oxygen components to make rocket fuel, energy, and breathable air.

Prior studies found signs of ice in the larger permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) near the lunar South Pole, including areas within Cabeus, Haworth, Shoemaker and Faustini craters. In the new work, “We find that there is widespread evidence of water ice within PSRs outside the South Pole, towards at least 77 degrees south latitude,” said Dr. Timothy P. McClanahan of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of a paper on this research published October 2 in the Planetary Science Journal.

The study further aids lunar mission planners by providing maps and identifying the surface characteristics that show where ice is likely and less likely to be found, with evidence for why that should be. “Our model and analysis show that greatest ice concentrations are expected to occur near the PSRs’ coldest locations below 75 Kelvin (-198°C or -325°F) and near the base of the PSRs’ poleward-facing slopes,” said McClanahan.

“We can’t accurately determine the volume of the PSRs’ ice deposits or identify if they might be buried under a dry layer of regolith. However, we expect that for each surface 1.2 square yards (square meter) residing over these deposits there should be at least about five more quarts (five more liters) of ice within the surface top 3.3 feet (meter), as compared to their surrounding areas,” said McClanahan. The study also mapped where fewer, smaller, or lower-concentration ice deposits would be expected, occurring primarily towards warmer, periodically illuminated areas.

Ice could become implanted in lunar regolith through comet and meteor impacts, released as vapor (gas) from the lunar interior, or be formed by chemical reactions between hydrogen in the solar wind and oxygen in the regolith. PSRs typically occur in topographic depressions near the lunar poles. Because of the low Sun angle, these areas haven’t seen sunlight for up to billions of years, so are perpetually in extreme cold. Ice molecules are thought to be repeatedly dislodged from the regolith by meteorites, space radiation, or sunlight and travel across the lunar surface until they land in a PSR where they are entrapped by extreme cold. The PSR’s continuously cold surfaces can preserve ice molecules near the surface for perhaps billions of years, where they may accumulate into a deposit that is rich enough to mine. Ice is thought to be quickly lost on surfaces that are exposed to direct sunlight, which precludes their accumulations.  

The team used LRO’s Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector (LEND) instrument to detect signs of ice deposits by measuring moderate-energy, “epithermal” neutrons. Specifically, the team used LEND’s Collimated Sensor for Epithermal Neutrons (CSETN) that has a fixed 18.6-mile (30-kilometer) diameter field-of-view. Neutrons are created by high-energy galactic cosmic rays that come from powerful deep-space events such as exploding stars, that impact the lunar surface, break up regolith atoms, and scatter subatomic particles called neutrons. The neutrons, which can originate from up to about a 3.3-foot (meter’s) depth, ping-pong their way through the regolith, running into other atoms. Some get directed into space, where they can be detected by LEND.  Since hydrogen is about the same mass as a neutron, a collision with hydrogen causes the neutron to lose relatively more energy than a collision with most common regolith elements. So, where hydrogen is present in regolith, its concentration creates a corresponding reduction in the observed number of moderate-energy neutrons.

“We hypothesized that if all PSRs have the same hydrogen concentration, then CSETN should proportionally detect their hydrogen concentrations as a function of their areas. So, more hydrogen should be observed towards the larger-area PSRs,” said McClanahan.

The model was developed from a theoretical study that demonstrated how similarly hydrogen-enhanced PSRs would be detected by CSETNs fixed-area field-of-view. The correlation was demonstrated using the neutron emissions from 502 PSRs with areas ranging from 1.5 square miles (4 km2) to 417 square miles (1079 km2) that contrasted against their surrounding less hydrogen-enhanced areas. The correlation was expectedly weak for the small PSRs but increased towards the larger-area PSRs.

IMAGE: This illustration shows the distribution of permanently shadowed regions (in blue) on the Moon poleward of 80 degrees South latitude. They are superimposed on a digital elevation map of the lunar surface (grey) from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter instrument on board NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. Credit NASA/GSFC/Timothy P. McClanahan

[reasoningdaily]

It’s easy to forget that people of African descent come from a rich legacy of community and wealth-building as the first kings and queens on the planet. In a world that stifles Black progress and seeks to recreate a Eurocentric world-view of history, the brilliance of Black business owners shines through like a diamond in the rough.

As communities of the African diaspora, from Historic Greenwood District to Cape Town, South Africa, seek to build generational wealth after decades and centuries of pillaging and persecution, a few exceptional entrepreneurs stand out. The 10 wealthiest people of African descent prove the potential that’s often locked away inside Black people everywhere.

Using data from Forbes, which tracks the net worth of the wealthiest human beings in the world, The Black Wall Street Times compiled a list of the top 10 wealthiest Black people. Out of the 10, four are American, and three are Nigerian. Additionally, two are women, and eight are men.

What lessons can we learn from their success? Let’s meet them.

10. Folorunsho Alakija — Nigerian businesswoman and philanthropist.

Alakija has an estimated net worth of $1 billion as of 2020. Alakija is the founder and executive vice chairman of Famfa Oil, one of Nigeria’s largest oil exploration companies. Entering the business world with a fashion label, Alakija rose to financial prestige by cultivating high-profile clients, including the wife of former Nigerian president Ibrahim Babangida. At 72 years old, Forbes ranks her as the 20th wealthiest person in Africa and the wealthiest woman on the continent.

I have faced many hurdles in my own life, but I have learned that with the right mindset, every challenge is a chance to create bigger and better opportunities. pic.twitter.com/KJDholX9tx— Folorunso Alakija (@alakijaofficial) March 20, 2023

9. Mohammed Ibrahim — British-Sudanese businessman and philanthropist.

Ibrahim has an estimated net worth of $1.2 billion as of 2023. Born in Sudan, he’s the founder and chairman of Celtel International, one of Africa’s largest mobile phone companies. He also established the Mo Ibrahim Foundation to support good governance in Africa. He sold Celtel International to Kuwait’s Mobile Telecommunications Company for a whopping $3.4 billion in 2005, pocketing $1.4 billion in the process.

— startupAFRICA (@startupafrimag) April 28, 2019

8. Michael Jordan — Former NBA player and American businessman.

The six-time NBA champion has stayed busy in his retirement years. He’s now a successful businessman with an estimated net worth of $2 billion as of 2023. Jordan is the majority owner of the Charlotte Hornets franchise and has several other investments in business ventures across the world.

7. Strive Masiyiwa — Zimbabwean businessman and philanthropist.

Masiyiwa has an estimated net worth of $2.1 billion as of 2023. In 1998, he overcame government opposition to launch the mobile phone network Econet Wireless Zimbabwe. He also owns stakes in fiber optic and fintech companies in several African countries. Together with his wife Tsitsi, he found HigherLife Foundation. The organization supports orphaned and low-income children in  Zimbabwe, South Africa, Burundi and Lesotho.

I met Strive Masiyiwa’s Higher Life Foundation & Celebration Ministries International fact finding team that will help Joyce Banda Foundation International provide immediate & long term help to cyclone Freddy victims. Our people need urgent help. Looking forward to their support. pic.twitter.com/SvRuG7CSB0— H.E. Dr. Joyce Banda (@DrJoyceBanda) March 20, 2023

6. Oprah Winfrey — American media mogul and philanthropist.

Arguably one of the most famous Black American women, Winfrey has a net worth of $2.5 billion as of 2023. She is the founder and chairwoman of Harpo Productions, which produces television shows, films, and digital media for a variety of platforms. Beginning her career as a TV journalist, Winfrey transitioned her hit talk show into a media empire with the OWN network, reinvesting profits from movies into more ventures.

Top five

5. Patrice Motsepe — South African businessman.

In 2008, Motsepe became the first Black African billionaire and has an estimated net worth of $2.7 billion as of 2023. Motsepe is the chairman and founder of African Rainbow Minerals, a South African-based mining company. In 1997, he flippled low-producing mining shafts into a profitable enterprise. He is the owner of the Mamelodi Sundowns Football Club and was elected president of the Confederation of African Football in 2021.

This is Patrice Motsepe. He bought an unknown South African club to frustrate Orlando Pirates and Kaiser Chiefs. All the cups prize money is shared among the players. Today Mamelodi Sundows is the best football club in Africa pic.twitter.com/k2vhDRXtBo— Tolo (@021Nongwadla) March 28, 2023

4. David Steward — American businessman and philanthropist.

Steward has a net worth of $6 billion as of 2023, making him the fourth wealthiest Black person in the world. Steward is the founder and CEO of World Wide Technology, Inc., a privately held technology solutions provider. A man who once watched his car get repossessed has progressed past poverty to become owner of a company that boasts high-profile clients, such as: Citi, Verizon and the U.S. government. In 2018, Steward donated $1.3 million to the University of Missouri-St. Louis to establish the David and Thelma Steward Institute for Jazz Studies.

David Steward battled with obstacles like poverty and racism. David didn’t enjoy the best resources from his parents. However, he learnt lessons from his parents that gave him significant wealth. One such is “treating people right.”https://t.co/b1ntWaFeEX— Business Elites Africa (@ElitesAfrica) March 27, 2023

3. Mike Adenuga — Nigerian businessman and billionaire.

Adenuga has an estimated net worth of $6.1 billion as of 2023. He’s the founder and chairman of Globacom, one of Nigeria’s largest mobile phone networks. It’s the third largest operator in Nigeria, with 55 million subscribers. Adenuga also runs a profitable oil exploration company in the Niger delta. He supported himself as a college student earning an MBA in New York by moonlighting as a taxi driver. At age 26, he earned his first million dollars selling lace and soft drinks.

Mike Adenuga worked as a taxi driver to help fund his university education. A student in New York, USA, he drove a taxi to pay for his studies, even though his parents belonged to the upper middle class in Nigeria. He was born and raised in Ibadan, Oyo. pic.twitter.com/qs7CCk0CVh— Yorùbáness (@Yorubaness) March 17, 2023

2. Robert F. Smith — American businessman.

Smith a net worth of $8 billion as of 2023, making him the second wealthiest Black person in the world. He is the founder and CEO of Vista Equity Partners, a private equity firm that specializes in software, data, and technology companies. Vista is one of the most successful private equity firms, with $96 billion in assets. The persistent self-starter earned an internship at Bell Labs during college after calling the company every week for five months. As an engineer, he worked at Goodyear Tire and Kraft Foods before earning an MBA from Columbia University. In 2019, he vowed to pay the student debt for the entire graduating class of Morehouse College.

1. Aliko Dangote — Nigerian businessman.

Topping the list of the wealthiest Black person in the world with an estimated net worth of $13.7 billion as of 2023, is none other than Nigeria’s own Aliko Dangote. He’s founder and chairman of Dangote Cement, one of Africa’s leading cement producers and he’s Africa’s richest man. The company has operations in 10 countries across the Motherland, and he also boasts a newly created fertilizer company as of 2022. Once completed, Dangote Oil Refinery is expected to be one of the world’s largest, even as climate change continues to disrupt the planet.

Today we celebrate a polio-free Africa, the result of decades of vaccination, hard work, collaboration. Tomorrow we get back to work, to ensure wild polio does not come back. Together, we all can #EndPolio globally.— Aliko Dangote (@AlikoDangote) August 25, 2020

While Nigeria boasts the third and first richest Black people in the world, the list reflects a diverse array of personalities, backgrounds, and ingenuity across the African diaspora.

[scalamore]

Thoughts on Manhwa adaptations

I have no objective evidence, but I suspect the more the popular a series is, the more the studios want to keep it popular and serializing, so they'll milk it for all it's worth.

The complaint that Matriarch is dragging is a valid one: it's been 120 chapters and they're still kids. I'm not sure, but I think they're still following a roughly 1:1 adaptation with the novel and manhwa. At this rate, they won't finish by chapter 200 or anytime soon. It's a super hit at 1 billion views, so they're keeping it strong.

Villains are Destined to die ended Season 3 with episode 124. This is also roughly a 1:1 adaptation with its novel. The novel has about 230 chapters, so it'll likely have a volume 5 IMO. It's also massively popular with 67 million views.

Actually, I was the Real One (54 million views) is still ongoing, but it has quite a bit of manhwa original content so I'm not sure if it has enough content for a season 4. Its novel is about 180 chapters, and it's currently at about chapter 110 and nearing the end.

Father, I don't want this marriage (55 million views) just finished at chapter 123, it's novel had about 230 chapters. So it went at a quicker rate than the others. I was honesty surprised they didnt' drag it out.

Villain Duke's Precious One (26 million views) - another one of Eclair's novels adapted to a manhwa by Luna-Heng. The main story ended at novel 181 chapters, and the manhwa ended at chapter 113 (?) I think? I noticed that they rushed the end, doing a 1:2 speedy adaptation.

I noticed newer serializations of manhwa start off with a rapid pace to hook readers in (makes sense, with all the competition around), but that very much depends on the studio).

YM (20 million views) - Main story 234 chapters, epilogue 11 chapters, special side story 8 chapters. I noticed the rate of Chapters 1-65 was about 1:1, then starting near the end of season 2 the rate went crazy to about 1:1.2 to 1:2.4 for an adaption (basically about 1 manhwa chapter adapts 2.4 novel chapters). Officially, the announcements say they were going for for "more dramatic and exciting events", so I hope it's not a sign that they want to rush to get it finished with. I do agree it's hard to adapt all of that internal monologue to make it interesting and exciting....

Anyways, the current rate is about 1:1.5 right now, which is.. OK I guess. I can see them speedrunning it back to about 1:2.4 though.

Depending on how the rest of season 3 goes, I suspect chapter 117 will end with RupeLali reuniting (pt 1). Which makes sense because it gives some sort of reasonable ending (anywhere else is a massive 5 month cliffhanger of separation).

After that, if a season 4 is greenlit, then ~ chapters 118-140 would adapt the rest of the main story. If we're super lucky, chapters 141-146 would be the epilogue, which is where most of the rupelali sweetness and couple moments are. If we are the luckiest readers on earth, they'll adapt the special side stories, which is like another 4 chapters.

[a-moment-captured]

Jack has surpassed over 1.2 billion views on YouTube. It’s things like this that make me giggle at people who say that Jack isn’t famous or those that say “who” when Jack is talked about.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Rob Rogers

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 16, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 17, 2023

A few quick notes tonight about some ongoing stories: There is more news about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his misreporting of his financial connections. This morning, Shawn Boburg and Emma Brown of the Washington Post reported that for twenty years, Thomas has reported rental income totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars from a real estate firm that was shut down in 2006. The misstatement might be dismissed as a problem with paperwork, the authors note. “But it is among a series of errors and omissions that Thomas has made on required annual financial disclosure forms over the past several decades, a review of those records shows. Together, they have raised questions about how seriously Thomas views his responsibility to accurately report details about his finances to the public.” The cascade of stories about Thomas threatens to continue to undermine the legitimacy of this Supreme Court. Last night, the nation suffered one mass shooting in Dadeville, Alabama, that killed four people and wounded twenty-eight others, and another in Louisville, Kentucky, that killed two and wounded four. On Friday, Republican hopefuls for the 2024 presidential nomination courted members of the National Rifle Association, the NRA, at the organization’s 2023 annual convention, promising looser gun laws. South Dakota governor Kristi Noem complained about liberals who “want to take our guns,” and boasted that her granddaughter, who is not yet two, has a shotgun and a rifle. Meanwhile, the Biden administration continues to focus on rebalancing the Indo-Pacific to counter China. Just two weeks after the fiftieth anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam and nearly thirty years after the restoration of diplomatic ties in 1995, the U.S. has broken ground on a new $1.2 billion embassy compound in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh yesterday and vowed to “broaden and deepen” relations between the two countries. Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, U.S. Agency for International Development administrator Samantha Power, and members of Congress have all visited Vietnam recently as part of a long-term strategy to help area friends and allies counterbalance China in the Indo-Pacific region. Yesterday, Blinken emphasized how the U.S. and Vietnam, working together, “can advance a free and open Indo-Pacific, one that is at peace and grounded in respect for the rules-based international order.” But, as Vietnam has a one-party communist government, he explained, “When we talk about ‘free and open,’ we mean countries being free to choose their own path and their own partners and that problems will be dealt with openly; rules will be reached transparently and applied fairly; and goods, ideas, and people will flow freely across land, the seas, the skies, and cyberspace.” Vice President Harris spoke yesterday at a march for reproductive rights in Los Angeles, where she emphasized how deeply our international standing depends on our commitment to freedom at home. “I’ve been traveling around the world as your Vice President,” she said. “When we, as Americans, walk in those rooms around the world, we have traditionally walked in those rooms, shoulders back, chin up, having some authority to talk about the importance of rule of law, human rights. “But here’s the thing we all know about what it means to be a role model: People watch what you do to see if it matches what you say. So let us understand that what is happening in our nation right now, by extension, can impact people around the world who dare to say, ‘I want my country to be like the United States and protect rights.’ And those autocrats and those dictators might look at those folks and say, ‘What are you pointing to as the example?’” “We are seeing, around the country, in a myriad of ways, those who would dare to attack fundamental rights and, by extension, attack our democracy,” Harris said. “Around our country, supposed so-called extremist leaders…dare to silence the voices of the people.” “A United States Supreme Court, the highest court in our land, that took a constitutional right that had been recognized from the people of America. “We have seen attacks on voting rights; attacks on fundamental rights to love and marry the people that you love; attacks on the ability of people to be themselves and be proud of who they are. “And so, this is a moment that history will show required each of us, based on our collective love of our country, to stand up and fight for and protect our ideals…. [W]e have been called upon to be the next generation of the people who will help lead and fight in this movement for freedom and liberty based on our love of our country…. [W]e stand for our democracy. And we stand for foundational and fundamental principles that have everything to do with freedom, liberty, and equality for all people.”

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON