Before we delve into the posts we’re reading and loving elsewhere on the internet, don’t forget Natalia Antonova’s #WednesdayWisdom, on how Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination is a good thing for women, really.
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‘How much would the iPhone cost if it were made in America?‘ (Emily Stewart for Vox)
Many people assume that companies like Apple rely on China for manufacturing because of cheap labour and lax environmental laws. That might be part of it, but the bigger picture is that these companies have invested heavily in infrastructure to develop facilities and train skilled personnel to do assembly work, and that’s not something you can replace overnight when you move manufacturing to the US.
If Apple managed to bring manufacturing jobs to the United States, analysts say that assembling the iPhone here wouldn’t actually make it much more expensive. As Konstantin Kakaes wrote in the MIT Technology Review in 2016, putting together the iPhone in the US from parts made abroad would only cost about $30 to $40 more per phone, a modest increase for a device with a 64 percent profit margin. Even if every part was made in the US, an iPhone would cost about $100 more, Kakaes concluded, assuming raw materials were still purchased on global markets.
‘Disaster in the Alps‘ (Lane Wallace for Outside)
Fascinated by chilling tales of disaster? Definitely settle in for this read.
How could such an experienced group, with such an experienced guide, have gotten into such trouble? Because so many of the group died, including the guide himself, some of the answers will never be known. But there are enough pieces to reconstruct, at the very least, an important cautionary tale.
‘The business of voluntourism: do western do-gooders actually do harm?‘ (Tina Rosenberg for the Guardian)
Voluntourism is big business, and one of the things it facilitates is the institutionalisation of children who have parents and homes to go back to.
Donors from wealthy countries – most often, religious groups – often establish orphanages in response to a crisis. But after the crisis is over, donations keep arriving, so the institution stays open. In Aceh, Indonesia, after the 2004 tsunami, hundreds of institutions for children were opened. But Maestral found that more than 97% of the children in them were brought by their families so they could get an education. “Very few of the children had been affected by the tsunami at all,” says Goldman.
‘A Warning From Europe: The Worst Is Yet to Come‘ (Anne Applebaum for the Atlantic)
Conspiracy theories, attacks on the media, escalating interpersonal tensions…sounds like a country we know, right? Hold up, though: It’s actually a sinister pattern that unfolded in Europe, offering future insight into what might be in store for the US.
The Smolensk conspiracy theory, like the Hungarian migration conspiracy theory, served another purpose: For a younger generation that no longer remembered Communism, and a society where former Communists had largely disappeared from politics, it offered a new reason to distrust the politicians, businesspeople, and intellectuals who had emerged from the struggles of the 1990s and now led the country. More to the point, it offered a means of defining a new and better elite. There was no need for competition, or for exams, or for a résumé bristling with achievements. Anyone who professes belief in the Smolensk lie is by definition a true patriot—and, incidentally, might well qualify for a government job.
‘The Country’s First Climate Change Casualties?‘ (Elaina Plott for Pacific Standard)
What do you do when your entire way of life is being swallowed up by climate change?
This has been his rhythm for decades—arguably since he was four years old, when Eskridge’s father, a crab fisherman like both his father and grandfather before him, first took him out on the water. The 60-year-old knows every inch of Tangier, this 1.2-square-mile strip off the coasts of Maryland and Virginia, population about 450. So it’s with confidence when he crouches down to show me the waterline on one of the wooden pylons propping up the shanty. “It’s the same as it was 30 years ago,” he says. “If sea level’s rising, it’s not enough to where we can see it.”
Photo: Fabrice Florin