John Murray

No longer active here. Find me elsewhere under the same username.

[NASA @NASA]

Warm your holiday gatherings with the cozy glow and relaxing roar of four burning rocket engines. This RS-25 yule log is guaranteed to blow your guests away: https://t.co/jhuqaJwSWU

[Ben Norton @BenjaminNorton]

South Korea launched a government campaign in 1973, using the state to develop 6 strategic industries.

The US-dominated World Bank adamantly opposed this, telling South Korea it went against its comparative advantage. The WB said to stick with textiles.

Fortunately Seoul didn't listen.

(Source: Lan Xiaohuan, How China Works: An Introduction to China’s State-led Economic Development, translated by Gary Topp, Horizon Media, Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 2024, p. 136.)

[jeremy scahill @jeremyscahill]

🚨The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant

https://t.co/oQJ0vo6c6l

[Gergely Orosz @GergelyOrosz]

When being surprised on "why does tech hiring work like X?"

It's worth understanding that hiring processes are not built to make the most sense for candidates. They are created by companies/teams to work for *them*. So that the process meets their own hiring goals.

[Mike Coutermarsh @mscccc]

This is the best take so far on the Netflix buffering drama.

[Tinus le Roux @tinusleroux]

I didn't enjoy that.
Feel this #Springbok team is 20-30 points better than this England team. Ref very influential. Seemed to be consistent, but players also seemed confused by his calls. Maybe it was the stop start nature of the game that spoiled it for me
Congrats Bokke.

[Gray Connolly @GrayConnolly]

Claire has written some brilliant pieces this year but I think her analysis of Donald Trump's 2024 presidential victory is her best - I will not summarise. Read it all. Bravo @clairlemon

[John Murray @avesse]

Ugh.

[Anton Eberhard @AntonEberhard]

Electrification progress in South Africa

[Andrea C. Love, PhD @dr_andrealove]

Organic food is not grown without pesticides.
Organic food is not healthier.
Organic food is not better for the environment.
Organic food can be worse ecologically - lower yield, more off-target pesticide impacts, more land use, more tillage = worse for the planet.

1/

[Donald Tusk @donaldtusk]

Harris or Trump? Some claim that the future of Europe depends on the American elections, while it depends first and foremost on us. On condition Europe finally grows up and believes in its own strength. Whatever the outcome, the era of geopolitical outsourcing is over.

[Max du Preez @MaxduPreez]

Basotho 200: Product of one of Africa’s giants https://t.co/haGIa7JoLK via @vryeweekblad

[Eve Fairbanks @evefairbanks]

Walter Isaacson’s Elon Musk biography begins: “As a kid growing up in South Africa, Elon Musk knew pain and learned how to survive it.”

But when I shared Musk’s recollections of his youth w/ a dozen other South Africans his age, they all thought he had fabricated much of it.

[Terrible Maps @TerribleMaps]

Using the Mercator Projection on a sphere is bold

[Auschwitz Memorial @AuschwitzMuseum]

This is one of the hardest but also one of the most important warnings from the history of Auschwitz coming for us today.

Perpetrators were in fact people who accepted and followed an ideology that made them believe that they were better than others, an ideology that rationalized and promoted hatred & evil. This became part of their everyday lives and their environment.

They were not monsters. They were people: fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, sons and daughters. They had their family joys and problems, their favorite desserts or songs, hobbies or fears. They were people like us. But they also perpetrated horrible things, monstrous things on behalf of the ideology they believed in. Dehumanization of all "others" was a tool that helped them achieve their goal.

The perpetrators thought of themselves as moral people. And this is the scary part of this history. We cannot dehumanize them, as their story and choices are our human warning.

[Tim Soulo 🇺🇦 @timsoulo]

Can you relate to this: You see a Twitter/X post with 1000s of likes... But you can't stand how trivial it is.

Then you see someone posting something really smart, and it barely gets any traction.

"optimising for algorithm" ≠ "good content"

^ John O'Nolan @JohnONolan mentioned this in our recent episode of Ahrefs Podcast.

[ watch the 103-second clip > ]

What (most) "Twitter/X experts" are teaching you to do?

Two things:

1. Find viral posts and copy them.
2. Find viral opinions and disagree with them.

^ and that's why we see so much "ragebait" and banal carousells/infographics with thousands of likes. 🤷

Please don't follow the herd and add something unique to the conversation. 🙏

[Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis]

Israel has just won the war crime of the century prize: The IDF used chemical weapons on UN peacekeepers! https://t.co/R5FzMK6Qa6

[Yatharth Mann @yatharthmann]

The resemblance is uncanny

[John Murray @avesse]

@Oom_Rugby Some of the criticism of Manie feels a lot like the criticism of Willie le Roux a couple of years ago. The mistakes are glaring while the brilliance is more subtle. Fans see the mistakes, coaches see the brilliance.