We bring you the TBB Best of Web links: We get up to date with the current social media reality, we learn all about the Madagascar vanilla, we get the best Eritrea travel guide where you probably can not travel for free like the Maldives, bring you a chilling story about a USA kill list in the terrorism wars and an amazing Alt Rock history map and that’s about it. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, stop reading blogs…except mine lol.
TBB Blog Mission: To Educate. Entertain. Inspire. In That Order!
Support TBB by applying for CREDIT CARDS, shopping with our AMAZON AFFILIATE LINK & clicking our REFERRAL LINKS
Back from vacation, so lets get back into TBBing!
As always, click on the headline to be taken to the original source. Sometimes I insert my incendiary comments on article excerpts between [brackets].
Every Sunday I pick the best reads that blew my mind in the week that just went by. It can be…anything!
If you enjoy my blog, please pass it on to someone you care about so they can enjoy it too.
How Social Media Took Us From Tahrir Square to Donald Trump
This is a deep take on the subject of social media. Its huge promise early on and then all the awful crap that is swallowing us all…
Power always learns, and powerful tools always fall into its hands. This is a hard lesson of history but a solid one. It is key to understanding how, in seven years, digital technologies have gone from being hailed as tools of freedom and change to being blamed for upheavals in Western democracies—for enabling increased polarization, rising authoritarianism, and meddling in national elections by Russia and others.
The article posts five lessons from this era. Part five, at least read that! And it ends this way:
Even the free-for-all environment in which these digital platforms have operated for so long can be seen as a symptom of the broader problem, a world in which the powerful have few restraints on their actions while everyone else gets squeezed. Real wages in the US and Europe are stuck and have been for decades while corporate profits have stayed high and taxes on the rich have fallen. Young people juggle multiple, often mediocre jobs, yet find it increasingly hard to take the traditional wealth-building step of buying their own home—unless they already come from privilege and inherit large sums.
If digital connectivity provided the spark, it ignited because the kindling was already everywhere. The way forward is not to cultivate nostalgia for the old-world information gatekeepers or for the idealism of the Arab Spring. It’s to figure out how our institutions, our checks and balances, and our societal safeguards should function in the 21st century—not just for digital technologies but for politics and the economy in general. This responsibility isn’t on Russia, or solely on Facebook or Google or Twitter. It’s on us.
Fighting the vanilla thieves of Madagascar
I almost did not give this article a chance but so glad I did! I learned A LOT and you will too. Sorry, no shocking videos like other bloggers, just awesome reporting and photography!
So, some of what you will learn:
The island of Madagascar is the world’s largest producer of vanilla beans.
Less than 1% of the world’s vanilla flavour comes from real beans.
Five years ago, the price of 1kg (2lb 3oz) of vanilla was $20 (£15). In 2018, it briefly became more expensive than silver, reaching a peak of $600 a kilo, before a modest decline to $515 in June.
I found the way real vanilla is brought to life in your favorite coffee drink is mind boggling, no wonder it is so expensive! And of course the long term damage to nature is probably going to be destructive but until then…Madagascaran vanilla farmers and traders are rolling it in while they stay alive as crime has skyrocketed!
A Comprehensive Guide to Travel in Eritrea, Africa’s Best Kept Secret
Well, if you wanted to visit Eritrea this is the blog post you should read. Why are you reading bloggers with the same luxury travel experiences who specialize on selling plastic for the banks huh? This is REAL travel, you know, because there will not be a Hyatt here for a while lol.
How to Survive America’s Kill List
This is what the article is about:
When a U.S. citizen heard he was on his own country’s drone target list, he wasn’t sure he believed it. After five near-misses, he does – and is suing the United States to contest his own execution
Matt Taibi is not exactly a conservative guru okay? So take that into account as you read it. It raises some distressing questions on the powers of the US government to do things to…its own citizens, what the hell? Then again, if you read the history of this guy you at least should be concerned.
This is an excerpt to get a taste:
In the waning days of the Battle of Aleppo, as Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s forces closed in on the city, Kareem found himself in a room full of desperate Free Syrian Army rebels.
“I was understandably nervous,” he remembers. “I was the only American inside of this very small area that was besieged.”
The talk in the room turned ominous.
“One of the guys said, ‘You know what? I heard you get $20,000 for kidnapping an American.’”
Kareem pauses as he recalls the scene. He would have stood out in that crowd, as he does everywhere in the Middle East: a black New Yorker with a loud belly laugh.
“You’ve got these nanoseconds to come up with some kind of response,” he explains. “You don’t want them to see you sweat.”
All the eyes in the room turned toward Kareem. Would this American fetch $20,000?
“Nah, man,” he said to his audience. “That’s just for the white ones.”
The room roared with laughter.
“I was like, ‘Phew,’” Kareem says. Then, slipping out: “‘All right, guys, I gotta go.’”
As a fan of alternative music in the 80s, whoever did this is just brilliant!
For a better view go to the source where you can buy the print directly! [I do NOT get paid by sneakily inserting $$$ links okay!]
And I leave you with this…
TBB
travelbloggerbuzz@gmail.com
Follow TBB on Twitter @FlyerTalkerinA2 and now on Instagram.
You can subscribe to TBB below, winners only!
Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post.
Good morning!
It was…running away in a few local parks, first long run after vacay….12 miles full of pain!
Thanks as always for the informative articles. For once, it’s nice to not have to hear all of the whining and complaining about the new Marriott travel packages.
Amen!
Yeah, the Marriott blog posts were like that giant sucking sound…
to be replaced by something else….
The SPG Luxury card most likely on Aug 23rd…when they get their affiliate link on it…watch them post about how amazing Marriott points will be again, sad!
I think I’m going to use a mifi product like skyroam for an upcoming trip to Japan. Any idea if the rental option still qualifies for the $20 off with your link?
I don’t know, I asked them on Twitter, no response yet.
Perhaps go through it and see if the $20 still comes off in the end?
Awesome article about Eritrea!
I only use real vanilla extract in baking. It’s really interesting to see all that goes into getting it to us. Never knew about the vanilla thieves!
Agreed about Eritrea article. I can imagine Lucky in that restaurant lol.
Most amazing part of the vanilla article was this:
On Réunion, an enslaved boy named Edmond Albius invented a painstaking way of pollinating by hand. A sharp, thin stick is used to lift the fragile membrane between the male and female parts of the flower, which are then pushed into each other for pollination to occur. This has to be done for every single flower on every vine in order to produce the fruit – vanilla pods filled with thousands of the tiny black seeds we eventually see in high-quality vanilla ice cream.
When I was at Masoala, the villagers I talked to had a cooperative to grow vanilla. That was in 2007, there were not even locks on the door of the cabin where I stayed, this was how peaceful it was. What a sad thing for all concerned.
It isn’t just vanilla, they had a revolution not long after my visit, and at that time, the thieves were logging away all the old valuable tropical wood. The forest supported the rediscovered species, Madagascar Serpent-Eagle, no idea if the species is now lost but they can’t live without trees. I no longer use real vanilla, I can’t support the destruction of the forest, esp. if the money is not even going to help the locals but instead to enrich thieves.
Thanks for your perspective.