News Headlines I Want to Read

Post from March 2, 2015 (↻ June 8, 2021), filed under Everything Else.

A brainstorming with assumptions and implications.

• Human Rights Charter Honored by All Countries
• Five Eyes Spying Program Shut Down, Multiple Arrests over Rights Infringements
• [U.S. Politicians] Return Peace Nobel Prizes, Say “Will Work Hard to Earn It”
• Guantánamo Torturers Sentenced, Former Detainees Awarded Record Damages
• Israel with Wide Concessions to Palestine, Parties “Willing to Accept Period of Unrest” to Achieve Permanent Peace
• No More Nukes! Last Nuclear Weapon Dismantled
• The Death Penalty is Dead
• “Citizens in Uniform”: Police Violence at a Low, New Wave of Mutual Respect
• Low Crime, High Happiness: The Rebirth of Trust and Faith
• Long-Term Thinking, Values, Transparency: How Our Leaders Built Strong Trust
• Spying, Torture, Killing: A Look Back at Criminal Statesmanship
• Conflicts of Interest: Where Did They Go?
• Money and Politics: Last Country to Make it Criminal Offense for Corporations to Lobby
• All Central Banks Under Government Control, Harsh Sanctions Imposed on Speculation
• Interest and Compound Interest Abolished
• “No More Debt” Program to Curb Financial Choking, Going Beyond Axing of Old Financial System
• World Economies Shrinking, Experts: “Healthy Development”
• “We Had Wasted 50% of Our Food”: How Undernourishment Became History
• World’s Energy 90% Solar and Wind—Experts Say “5 Years” to Be Fully Green
• Global Warming: International Unity with “Remarkable Effects”
• “Spectacle Sports are Out”: How Athletes Came to Earn Terrestrial Wages
• Vegetarianism and Veganism at new 80% Record High; More Slaughters to Turn into Farmers
• Last Zoo to Close 2019, Follow Closing of Aquariums
• How Animals Got to Live Free and Well Among Humans
• Global Literacy Rate Reaches 99%
• Education Spending now at 40% of Public Expense—“New Era of Human Development”
• The Right to Copy: How a Nation’s Wealth Came with Education and Intellectual Liberty
• Health: Philosophers and Scientists to Find Holistic Approach
• Helpful Disease: How We Learned to Live with Maladies
• Cure to AIDS, Cancer: Breakthrough “When We Saw Patients as People and Looked at Their Thinking”
• Researchers Present Unified Reality Model, Acknowledge Mental Powers
• “Why Did We Ever Reward Anti-Social Behavior”: On the Decline of Competition and the Rise of Cooperation
• The Family: How the Almost-Dead Institution Rose Again and Rebuilt our Societies
• New Record Low in “Selfies,” Youth Finding Confidence in Family and Education
• Loving Technology: How Humanity Found an Ally—and Itself
• “Military-Industrial What?” How an Industry Perished over the Longing to Work Together
• World Peace! Last Countries to End all War Activities, Sign Peace Treaties

I’m not sure I’m a particularly good writer of microcontent, and yet it feels liberating to envision us succeed. And that shouldn’t come as a surprise: Utopias seem to give us more useful guidance than dystopias. Dystopias that already creep into our reality and threaten to strangle us. I believe we need more utopias. Amazing ones.

About Me

I’m Jens Oliver Meiert, and I’m an engineering manager and author. I’ve worked as a technical lead for Google, I’m close to the W3C and the WHATWG, and I write and review books for O’Reilly. Other than that, I love trying things, sometimes including philosophy, art, and adventure. Here on meiert.com I share some of my views and experiences.

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