Animal Abuse And Other Disturbing Content: The Videos Tiktok Moderators Have To Watch — Have you ever thought about the moderators on the various social media platforms? What their job looks like? I hadn’t until recently 25-year-old Moroccan Imani (not her real name) works as a moderator for the booming social network Tiktok. Working for the Luxembourg outsourcing specialist Majorel, in her one-room apartment in Casablanca, she sifts through content that has been marked as offensive automatically or by users. And she doesn’t just come across…

Start a war with the neighbors and gamble with your main source of income — The Russian president isn’t as smart as his admirers think — here’s why. He started a war he won’t win and he cut off his nose to spite the West. Screwing with the gas supplies to Europe was a step too far. Because Russia is dependent on its exports to…

Concepts Of Wealth Will Have To Change — Prosperity does not only mean income and economic growth, says Ulrich Brand, a political scientist at the University of Vienna. He sees the current crises as an opportunity to redefine what prosperity actually means in our society and how we can continue to live a life worth living in the…

Failing at the small things — it’s okay! — Everybody out there — that’d be everyone on social media, advice newsletters, various blogs, etc — is always telling me what to do, how to do it, why do it, when to do it. Enough already. Tune out because I got the news: It’s okay not to have your life…

Internalized violence runs through practically all areas of life — The atrocities committed by the Russian army in Ukraine are not unilaterally embraced by all Russians. There are those who are horrified but they must do so in silence or while abroad or risk prison or the gulag. Having said that, violence is deeply rooted in the fabric of Russian…

With its isolation from the West, Russia is fast becoming an outsider in the world economy — For a university project — part of Global Politics in the 21st century — I’ve been researching, reading, and writing a bit on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. This post and previous posts on the topic are the results of ongoing research and studies. As horrific as it is now, the future…

Words as weapons — The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade has ensured that abortions can no longer be performed in a number of states. Since then, the decision has been the subject of heated international debate. Members of extremist groups are using the opportunity to share radical right-wing ideologies. A research…

Overturning Roe v Wade is just another domino to fall. Can we stop it? — The danger is not that a dictatorship will emerge in the USA like in China or Russia. The political system is too decentralized and federal for that. But the attacks on its institutions are weakening the world’s most powerful state domestically and internationally — and making it more difficult for…

It basically comes down to hiking vs waltzing — When asked by a journalist why he prefers the Berlin Philharmonic over the Vienna Philharmonic — Conductor Herbert Von Karajan said this: “If I tell the Berliners to step forward, they do it. If I tell the Viennese to step forward, they do it, but then they ask why.” Suspicion…