The first step is to adopt a strategic approach.

temptation for diplomats to measure their performance on public diplomacy by describing activities rather than assessing outcomes

e. To be measurable, the mission needs to be broken down into achievable and time-limited objectives.

many public diplomacy goals are necessarily intermediate or long-term.

much public diplomacy work is wrapped up within a specific policy goal

whether the organisation itself, the foreign ministry in this case, is structured as it should be,

based on continuous monitoring against specific performance indicators

strategy remains on track. Are the objectives realistic, have the right target groups been identified, has the right balance of activities been drawn up?

little understanding of how diplomats contribute to the well-being of their own countries

particularly important for foreign ministries, much of whose work is not understood by their own domestic public

any activity that involves spending tax-payers’ money should be assessed for cost-effectiveness,

justify program expenditures

erformance measurement and evaluation ensure accountability and transparency so that stakeholders,

iplomats will say that it is not possible to quantify results of activities

valuation is often the most neglected area of activity in foreign ministries.

A New Type of Geopolitical Power: China’s Competitive Strategy for the Digital Revolution

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Frequently Asked Questions

defends the human person in her dignity and the most profound choices.

three dimensions of the relationship with himself, relationship with God, and relationship with others,” he said.

they carry within them a new anthropological vision that differs significantly, if not substantially, from the idea of the Christian proposal, especially in the sense of a conception of rights in an exclusively individualistic form.”

“Given the misunderstandings that exist around free speech on platforms I sometimes think it is hard to grasp until you’re on the frontline having to make these decisions to get the gravity & difficulty of the work,” tweeted Esther Crawford, a Twitter executive whose own social network, Squad, was acquired by Twitter. “I’m very pro free speech but there must be limits for the health of a platform and to ensure the safety of people.”

The company has gotten much better at detecting fake accounts and disinformation, for example, and also was the first social network to penalize Trump for violating its policies. (Trump is now banned from Twitter.)

In 2019, Twitter also developed labels that would cover up tweets by powerful people and politicians who broke the service’s rules but whose tweets were considered newsworthy. And in 2020, it developed new policies to tackle misinformation during the 2020 election and the pandemic.

Twitter’s shift from being a largely unmoderated platform into one with more robust content moderation took place a year after the 2016 presidential election, when it was revealed that Russian operatives spread disinformation on social media to try to tilt the election outcome toward Trump.

“To [many of the older tech leaders], the Internet represented freedom, a new frontier, a flowering of the human spirit, and a great optimism that technology could birth a new golden age of mankind,” Wong, a Silicon Valley pioneer, said in a widely-viewed thread. “It’s not that the principle is no longer valid (it is), it’s that the practical issues around upholding that principle are different, because the world has changed. ”

long subscribed to the ideal that more speech is the best antidote to harmful or bad speech.

“My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization,” he said.

to make available to the public the company’s algorithm, helping people understand how content surfaces on the platform.

“Twitter has become kind of the de facto town square, so it’s just really important that people have the, both the reality and the perception that they are able to speak freely within the bounds of the law.”

“What Musk seemingly fails to recognize is that to truly have free speech today, you need moderation,”

have spent billions of dollars and employed armies of people to create and enforce policies to reduce hate speech, misinformation and other toxic communication that degrades public discourse.

his ambition for what the platform should be — a largely unpoliced space rid of censorship — is naive, would hurt the company’s growth prospects and would render the platform unsafe.

The promotion of multilingualism is not only a cultural issue; it is directly related to the need for the further development of the internet, especially local content

access to online education

Do you believe that internet companies are/should be the main actors responsible for dealing with such content?

He also insisted that the algorithm Twitter uses to rank its content, deciding what hundreds of millions of users see on the service every day, should be public for users to audit.

Mr. Musk argued that taking Twitter private would allow more free speech to flow on the platform. “My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization,” he said in an interview at the TED conference on Thursday.

they are responsible for the driving task, thereby automating the movement of people and goods to reduce accidents and congestion

Advancing automated driving systems (ADS) technology

The privilege of issuing money is synonymous with economic power.

It makes it possible to trade products and services across great geographic distances, between people who may not know each other and have no particular reason to trust each other.

Money is one of humankind’s most remarkable innovations.

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fear that comes from the idea that AI will ultimately ‘overthrow’ humanity as superior beings.

The combination of AI and religion has been applauded by one member of the Vatican as “an opportunity for evangelization.”

chatbots and algorithms are the real faces of AI in religion.

the Vatican went a step further to create an exorcist robot.

Just as it is almost impossible to take religion out of humanity, it is just about the same with artificial intelligence.

how an advanced enough AI could achieve consciousness and potentially be one of God’s messengers to make our lives easier.

While some denominations have welcomed artificial intelligence, such as the Vatican, in creating an exorcist robot, others remain wary of fears that it could lead to the end times.

Balance Independence and Collaboration

10. Reedsy

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to adopt an inclusive narrative and language, and to move towards more inclusive platforms, products and services.

It is our duty to navigate these differences with empathy and to strive for meaningful inclusion of all cultures, genders, sexualities, races, abilities and disabilities into proper global society.

inclusivity is a mode of operation

Differences in age, culture, geography, daily habits, societal structures (among other things) can lead to significantly different expectations about what constitutes a satisfying user experience.

cherish any occasions for happiness and enjoyment.

With bold, animated, and interactive typography as the centerpiece, many websites also do without the use of any background images — for a clean and sophisticated look.

With a careful selection of fonts, websites are making bolder statements than ever, to catch their audience’s attention and to communicate their messages effectively.

Stylish hero sections with big bold typography and little to no imagery will be everything in the following year.

he did not offer any alternative solutions for those concerned that Apple's control over the App Store allows it to charge app developers exorbitant fees or subject developers to capricious or unfair rules.

could become so commonplace that important apps will only be installable by that method, rather than through the App Store

That means data-hungry companies would be able to avoid our privacy rules, and once again track our users against their will.

The current iteration of the Digital Markets Act no longer includes a sideloading requirement, but it is still not finalized.

the European Union's Digital Markets Act and the United States' Open App Markets Act, which incorporate language about forcing platform holders like Apple to allow sideloading.

Apple are "deeply concerned about regulations that would undermine privacy and security in service of some other aim," like protecting competition.

a new platform should utilise design thinking, prioritising the experience of its users: time-poor decision-makers in need of accessible, concise, and tailored analysis and advice.

the “cable”, a platform that, as its name suggests, was designed around 20th century technology

Staff should be encouraged to take career breaks to study and work elsewhere by making leave without pay a right rather than a rare privilege.

“risks losing the ‘war for talent,’

it would elevate diplomacy as the government’s primary foreign policy tool.

as a “central agency” rather than a “line agency”, to adopt Canberra bureaucrat-speak, joining the departments of Prime Minister & Cabinet (PMC), Treasury, and Finance

to lead a whole-of-government national security strategy.

alignment of means with ends

more aspiration than strateg

Russia accounts for just 2.3 percent of German trade. While that isn’t much in the grander scheme of things, the modest trade volumes also help explain the continued allure of Russia to German business.

After the Berlin Wall fell, “Go East” quickly became German industry’s rallying cry as the boardroom engineers behind Europe’s economic motor searched for new markets and cheap skilled labor to keep the pistons firing.

How much of what we are seeing is true? Or is this new front providing a false perception of control and understanding of the narrative? How can different camera angles skew reality?

the Krasukha electronic warfare system

“There are countries that would like to invent a system that freed them of reliance on the dollar, but I think it will be a long time, if ever, before the dollar is replaced as a key reserve currency in the global economy.”

“friend-shoring”

deeper economic integration with Europe and other partners embracing similar “core values and principles”.

"Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate."

the flow of arms into Ukraine will risk a direct military confrontation between Russia and Nato. Whereas Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria had no nuclear weapons, Russia has nearly 6,000, with an estimated 1,600 active and deployed.

China and others will not be keen to enforce a sanctions regime that could well be used against them next. Russia thus will not be as isolated as the US and Europe seem to think.

they will create countless arbitrage opportunities for Russia to sell its valuable commodities to entities beyond the reach of US sanctions.

The US tried similar measures to topple Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, but succeeded only in crushing the economy. Nor have US sanctions overturned the regimes in Iran and North Korea.

the crisis was defused by diplomacy and compromise, not by a one-sided victory.

To be sure, a diplomatic compromise does not fit with the current mood. European and US leaders' instinct is to crush Russia economically, to prove decisively that barbarism does not pay. From this perspective, compromise seems like appeasement, yet the compromise would be to save Ukraine, not to cede it. Economic warfare is also fraught with profound risks.

“The role of the gaming and digital entertainment industry in boosting consumption and economic recovery, and the development of the entire market, should be taken into account,” said Zhang.

“Over 5,000 game companies have now connected to the national anti-addiction system, and non-compliant companies have been investigated and fined by the relevant regulators,”

the collapse of at least 14,000 gaming companies

Meanwhile, the number of gamers in China rose by just 0.22 per cent to 66.6 million gamers in 2021, compared with growth of 3.7 per cent in 2020, according to the same report.

The industry’s gross sales revenue grew at a meagre rate of 6.4 per cent in 2021, down from growth of 20.7 per cent in 2020.

reflects positive social values and to avoid excessive violence.

under 18 players in the country were restricted to playing only between 8pm and 9pm on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and statutory holidays – turning China into an unfriendly place for young gamers.

“Anti-addiction” functions

Aside from content, pressure on the industry was amplified last year after President Xi Jinping said gaming addiction among the country’s youth had become a social problem that must be fixed.

In a regulatory reshuffle in 2018, the power of licensing new games was centralised within the NPPA, an agency that sits under the supervision of the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party.

all online video games that reach Chinese players must be screened and censored by the state in the same way that it scrutinises books, films and television programmes.

China ended its eight-month freeze on new video game licences on Monday, bringing hope to an industry that has been assailed for inappropriate content and for encouraging addiction among players.

a thorough investigation by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International

Antony Blinken, America’s secretary of state, first levelled this charge more than a year ago, infuriating the government of Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, which strongly denied it.

Supply chain constraints, delivery, and transport expenses plus difficulties in meeting customer shipping requirements are a challenge for many online platforms forcing customers to opt to shop on marketplaces, rather than e-commerce stores.

Survey results published in a UNCTAD report in March this year also found that more than 40% of customers in four large African countries were planning to reduce their supermarket shopping in the future by purchasing food, clothing, and electronics online.

We’re already putting it toward empowering underserved communities to connect themselves in ways they find relevant and meaningful.”

“Our team is working on making it easier for users to control who gets access to which content and services, which are sometimes sacred and sensitive.”

they can’t find entertaining, educational, or otherwise valuable content in their language.

“About 60 percent to 80 percent of humanitarian funding is spent on logistics and supply-chain activities,

for communities to bring their own hardware and add it to their Nimble

less than 100 watts of power and can handle thousands of users.

small form-factor networking hardware housed in a weatherproof case

planned, designed, built, and operated by the community and local partners

web of wireless nodes is resilient to the failure of individual nodes

can cover a village, a city, or entire regions,

“If it’s open-source software, there’s a good chance we can bring it into the platform and run it offline,”

users can conduct video and voice chats, stream videos, share files, build and run e-learning courses and websites, create shared spreadsheets and documents, read e-books, play games, and more, completely offline.

“The goal is to enable communities to quickly build a low-cost, low-power, and yet still portable network that meets their own connectivity and education needs.”

They proceeded to morph into what I thought was Elon’s face but have since learned was Nikola Tesla’s face, then a Tesla car with rotating wheels, and then the Cybertruck.

A fairly brutalist design that feels incredibly out of place in the Texas Hill Country, with its hallmark bungalows and modern wood-paneled angular homes.

the city would be home to a new, massive car-making factory — the largest in the world by volume, according to Elon

The commitment to spectacle at the Tesla Gigafactory was impressive

Many of his friends also use apps to trade in foreign currencies, cryptocurrency, or foreign stocks—options that weren’t unavailable even a few years ago.

in lobbying universities to block betting sites on their networks:

to introduce an app that allows addicts to block access to all gambling sites on their devices

Data from Safaricom, which controls more than 99% of Kenya’s mobile money market, shows that M-Pesa users’ transactions with betting sites were worth $737 million in the six months ending in September 2021, up from $436 million in the same period of 2020.

to tighter regulations and a growing awareness that sports betting is “not as rosy” as many had thought.

gambling firms can no longer advertise on radio and TV during daytime hours.

New taxes on stakes and winnings appear to have incentivized some bettors to cut back

betting firms themselves have become important sources of employment

taxes derived from betting have become an important source of revenue for Kenya’s cash-strapped government

Some argue that Kenya should ban sports betting entirely.

seven out of 10 with gambling disorders.

One 2016 poll at Kenyatta University found that 78% of male and 57% of female students had tried betting, with nearly half gambling at least once per week (and 80% reporting net losses).

Kenyans were spending $1.3 billion a year to place bets on the platform—more than the annual budget of the country’s Ministry of Health.

SportPesa, a firm founded in Nairobi by a group of Bulgarian and Kenyan investors, including a former mayor of the city, was the vanguard. Established in 2014, it offered a sleek online interface that allowed users to fund accounts via M-Pesa and place bets on matches from around the globe within seconds

“People believe that when you do genuine bets, when you take time to do good analyzation, you can win.”

“Nowadays in Kenya, we term betting as a job,”

New undersea cables and an influx of Chinese-branded smartphones had drastically reduced the cost of getting online (today an estimated 85% of the population has access to a connection).

Kenya’s status as an early tech adopter helped fuel the trend.

“People are comparing themselves not just with their neighbors but with everyone, even strangers from across the globe,” Ogachi says. “That breeds an even higher level of frustration.”

citizens have long complained that this new wealth hasn’t trickled down.

the country’s GDP doubled in the 15 years before the pandemic

there were 310 mobile money services available in 96 countries, with 300 million active accounts—more than half of them in sub-Saharan Africa.

improves resilience to financial shocks and facilitates higher rates of household saving.

access to M-Pesa helped pull 2% of Kenya’s households out of extreme poverty

In 2006, according to the Central Bank of Kenya, only 27% of Kenyan adults had access to formal financial services, such as means for saving, borrowing, or making non-cash payments. Thanks to M-Pesa, 84% do now

Today, Safaricom boasts 30 million active M-Pesa accounts in Kenya, roughly equivalent to the country’s adult population

Safaricom invested heavily in building a network of agents who acted like human ATMs so recipients could withdraw cash from their digital wallets

sending money home

to disburse and repay microfinance loans.

When online betting came along, it found this ideal system was in place.”

Most people who bet in Kenya are not doing it for recreation—they’re doing it because they want to make money,”

a December 2021 survey by the US research firm GeoPoll found that 84% of Kenyan youth polled had tried betting, and one-third of those reported betting on at least a daily basis.

M-Pesa’s role in betting presents something of a paradox. T

not an entirely digital phenomenon

The practice has produced tales of riches far greater than Kirwa’s, but it has also broken families, consumed college tuitions, and even driven some to suicide.

Mobile money has widened financial opportunities in Kenya. It has also made sports betting, which still persists in brick-and-mortar locations even easier.

broken families, consumed college tuitions, and even driven some to suicide.

the alarm over the rising popularity of sports betting

matter more in terms of geopolitics than economics.

when asked why India will not ally with America in this democratic cause, the mandarins who run its deep state and shape its foreign policy respond with looks of cynical scorn.

But many are refraining from either openly criticising or penalising Russia, owing to commercial incentives, ideological commitments, strategic ambitions or simple fear.