"Glass Beads Made in Czech Village Adorn Bodies of the World’s Tribes"

"Preciosa sells directly to 70 countries and, through regional distributors, to 40 more. In Africa, the company sells to the Masai and Samburu tribes in Kenya and Tanzania, and to the Zulus, Xhosas, Ndebele and other tribes of southern Africa.

“You go to the Masai Mara and a lot of the beads you will see in the tourist markets are cheap Chinese products,” Mr. Adler said. “But the Masai themselves will only use our beads for their personal use.”

In North America, the largest market is for home hobbyists, but several Native American tribes also purchase the beads for higher-end pieces aimed at collectors and flush tourists."

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/13/world/europe/glass-beads-made-in-czech-village-adorn-bodies-of-the-worlds-tribes.html?_r=0

I want to know a lot more about the history of these tribes buying from the factory.

“Why Teens Find The End Of The World So Appealing”

“Teenagers are cynical, adds Aaron Yost, 16. And they should be: "To be fair, they were born into a world that their parents kind of really messed up."

Everyone here agrees: The plots in dystopia feel super familiar. That's kind of what makes the books scary — and really good. 

Think of it like this: Teen readers themselves are characters in a strange land. Rules don't make sense. School doesn't always make sense. And they don't have a ton of power.”

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/12/18/536007249/why-teens-find-the-end-of-the-world-so-appealing

And it’s social media that’s supposed to be making teens depressed.

“5 Signs Your Organization Might Be Headed for an Ethics Scandal”

“we see a “tone at the top” underpinned by widespread willful blindness, toxic incentives, and mechanisms that deflect scrutiny. These conditions seem to persist and metastasize. They replicate despite changes in leadership and in management systems.

Groups are more than the sum of their parts; we know we act differently when we’re on a team (or in a mob). And our explanations for ethical scandals are incomplete without a focus on group dynamics.

Although corruption, fraud, and other integrity scandals differ enormously in cause and trajectory, they correlate with particular group conditions with remarkable consistency...

In-group language: Humans need both to hide and rationalize unethical behavior, leading to the widespread use of in-group jokes and euphemisms. A rich terminology springs forth to describe bribes, from “gifts” and “commissions” to SNC Lavalin’s “project consultancy costs,” TSKJ’s “cultural arrangements,” and the funds Enron put aside to “educate Indians.” Metaphors of war and sport, common in this context, help to shift the frame away from that of individual choice...

Although leaders often complain that company culture is hard to measure, it is far easier to seek employees’ input on team culture and norms than to ask them to report fraudulent practices or call out powerful wrongdoers. Employee surveys, conversations, and focus groups can help us understand what actually happens in organizations, how seriously stated values and formal processes are taken, and which units or departments may pose the most ethical risk.“

https://hbr.org/2017/12/5-signs-your-organization-might-be-headed-for-an-ethics-scandal

FB: these are really interesting “Urgency and fear: Following corruption scandals, leaders tend to describe events in terms of pressure, necessity, and what the company needed to do to ”survive.” This perception of existential competitive threats can be used to justify the creation and maintenance of toxic incentives, and it will undermine any efforts to raise concerns.”

"How Syria's White Helmets became victims of an online propaganda machine"

"The White Helmets, officially known as the Syria Civil Defence, is a humanitarian organisation made up of 3,400 volunteers – former teachers, engineers, tailors and firefighters – who rush to pull people from the rubble when bombs rain down on Syrian civilians. They’ve been credited with saving thousands of civilians during the country’s continuing civil war.

They have also exposed, through first-hand video footage, war crimes including a chemical attack in April. Their work was the subject of an Oscar-winning Netflix documentary and the recipient of two Nobel peace prize nominations.

In spite of this positive international recognition, there’s a counter-narrative pushed by a vocal network of individuals who write for alternative news sites countering the “MSM agenda”. Their views align with the positions of Syria and Russia and attract an enormous online audience, amplified by high-profile alt-right personalities, appearances on Russian state TV and an army of Twitter bots...

The Russian strategy has been very successful at shaping the online conversation about the White Helmets. By gaming the social media algorithms with a flood of content, boosted by bots, sock puppet accounts and a network of agitators, propagandists are able to create a “manufactured consensus” that gives legitimacy to fringe views. Even Russia’s official channels, such as its UK embassy Twitter accounts, post memes discrediting the organisation."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/18/syria-white-helmets-conspiracy-theories

FB: well this is despicable "Russian state media such as RT and Sputnik started falsely claiming that Isis was the only target and throwing doubt on the bombings of infrastructure and civilian sites.

The same propaganda machine scooped up fringe anti-American activists, bloggers and researchers who believe the White Helmets are terrorists, giving them a platform on state TV and amplifying their articles through social media.

There is no evidence to suggest that these activists and bloggers are knowingly spreading disinformation, although the stories are often thinly sourced."

“What a Cross-Dressing Lady Knight Taught Me About Gender and Sexuality”

“My freshman year at Saint Francis began in the fall of 1999, a time when there were very few YA novels about gay teens. But even if more had existed, I would have been too afraid to read them: afraid both to be seen with these books, and afraid to identify with their main characters. The Song of the Lioness series let me think about the experience of being closeted in a way that was safely distanced from my real life. In Alanna, I found a heroine who thrives despite her inability to come out, and despite the psychological costs of remaining in the closet.

The novels also held another truth, one I wouldn’t be able to fully register for another few years: how important it is to fight back against all those voices — both outward and inward — that claim that being either female or effeminate is disgusting and shameful.”

https://electricliterature.com/what-a-cross-dressing-lady-knight-taught-me-about-gender-and-sexuality-bbb64a678d07?source=linkShare-7f7e96203de2-1513611865

FB: If you read Tamora Pierce as a kid, this will give you the warm-fuzzies. “At school I wanted to be forgotten, to erase myself like an Etch-a-Sketch when you shook it hard enough. But in front of the new computer, chatting with all my new friends, I wanted so much more. I wanted to burn with a light that you wouldn’t soon forget.”

"Are Heroes and Psychopaths Cut from the Same Cloth?"

"Comparing the profiles of first responders with the community sample, seemed to suggest, at least on the surface, that there is a connection between psychopathic traits and heroic behaviour. Unsurprisingly, first responders reported greater off-duty heroism, stranger altruism, and charity giving than the community sample. More interestingly, they scored higher on all measures of psychopathy and its components... 

even though first responders generally were more likely to engage in off-duty heroism than civilians, and to be higher in all psychopathic traits, those first responders who were higher than average in the more socially aversive traits (i.e. psychopathic traits other than boldness), were less likely to engage in such behaviour compared to their colleagues with less aversive personalities."

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/unique-everybody-else/201712/are-heroes-and-psychopaths-cut-the-same-cloth?amp

I guess this is supports all the 2000s shows about anti-heros

"The Sad Saps of Neoliberal Reddit Trying to Make Globalism Cool Again"

“Ocean, who asked to be quoted as his Reddit moniker, explains that he had a distinct vision for r/neoliberal’s rebirth. The term was thrown around so much after the election, why not lean into the momentum? “The goals were multifaceted,” he says. “First, to have a place to joke around and have fun, but also to have a place for serious discussion of politics, policy, and empirical research.”

By the spring of this year, the subreddit had emerged as the de facto online water-cooler for young people who still put their trust in the dominant 20th-century economic policies. When Ocean and his posse took over, r/neoliberal had less than 100 subscribers. Today, that number has spiked to 25,000. The moderators keep the community lively and well-stocked, with a curated schedule of discussion topics and an online book club. (At the moment they’re reading The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford.) To a certain extent, Ocean’s approximation of the subculture he’s fostered is correct. His forum is an environment where defused, collegiate economic dialogue can take place—like this thread in support of the Labour Party’s land value tax...

It’s only natural that a neoliberal take on online dada-ism would come off a tad hollow and borrowed. And Ocean himself regards the memes as little more than a strategic gateway to welcome newcomers to the more serious economic threads. It’s a typical neoliberal gambit, really: finding a niche and exploiting the market.”

https://splinternews.com/the-sad-saps-of-neoliberal-reddit-trying-to-make-global-1821123536

I did not realize. that people actively referred to themselves as neoliberals. 

FB: “It’s fascinating that as the American political spectrum feels more volatile than ever before, with a newly impassioned base organizing around a federal living wage and single-payer health insurance, there is still a population of 20-somethings among us who feel compelled to fight for corporate capitalism. This is a cause Ocean takes very, very seriously. Beyond the memes, beyond the boneheaded economic debates, and beyond any lingering shreds of irony, he tells me his collective maintains an unshakable faith in neoliberalism.”