Weekend Reading, Watching and Listening Recommendations (September 18, 2020)

Constructing a New Global Order; How The Banana Became So Commonplace; How Singapore Built a Harmonious Society; Inside China’s unexpected quest to protect data privacy

1. Read: Constructing a New Global Order: A Project Framing Document by Dani Rodrik.

2. Read: Is America A Myth: A beautiful essay in the New Yorker by Robin Wright. “ When Athens and Sparta went to war, in the fifth century BC, the Greek general and historian Thucydides observed, ‘The Greeks did not understand each other any longer, though they spoke the same language’,” she writes. “In the 21st century, the same thing is happening among Americans.”

3. Read: Inside China’s unexpected quest to protect data privacy: A new privacy law would look a lot like Europe’s GDPR—but will it restrict state surveillance?

4. Listen: The banana is a staple of global diets and has been for generations. But how did this exotic tropical fruit become so commonplace? How one Brooklyn-born entrepreneur created the modern banana industry and the infamous banana republics.

5. Listen: Land of a billion faces: Clearview AI probably has pictures of your face in its database. And its software—which police departments use—can almost certainly identify you.

6. Watch: Can we call it a "world map" if it's missing a billion people? | Rebecca Firth

7. Watch: How Singapore Built a Harmonious Society. Singapore suffered from race riots sparked by deep political and economic differences in 1964, tensions that contributed to the decision to separate from Malaysia in 1965. To avoid the mistakes of the past, the Singaporean government entrenched multiracialism in its major national policies, from education, housing, politics to community development.