Hey, here’s the VICE on Twitch show notes for Tuesday, March 7th. You can watch the VOD replay here:
Important developments: Samir built himself a Game Boy Advance with a backlit screen (but didn’t bring it to show us), Dexter (yes i talk in third person) is trying to install Linux on his mom’s old computer, and it’s not going well.
Also, Republicans are pushing to make child labor easier. Now, to the news:
First up, Dipo Faloyin with a breakdown of why the Nigerian elections are so messy [at the 33 minute mark].
Bola ‘City Boy’ Tinubu was declared the winner by the slimmest margin in modern history. This isn’t quite what a lot of young people had hoped, given that early on in the election process, things were looking like they might swing the other way.
70-year-old Tinubu has a reputation as the ‘Godfather of Lagos’, but he managed to actually get beaten in Lagos by an outsider candidate, Peter Obi. A lot of young Nigerians looked at this as a sign of hope. It’s worth talking about young Nigerians, by the way, for a couple reasons: first, over half of Nigeria’s population is under 30.
Also, it’s relevant that this is the #EndSARS generation – in 2020, as people were marching in the streets in the US, there were marches and protests in Nigeria against the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, a notorious police unit that had been accused of, among other things, straight-up robbing and beating people in the streets. We watched a bit of a documentary on the #EndSARS movement, and you can check out the full thing here.
There are potential legal challenges to the election, so it’s worth paying attention to that – as well as to the governorship election in Lagos: the fact that Tinubu lost in his home state is definitely freaking out his party, and whatever happens there is going to influence not just politics, but culture, for years.
Next, we had Alexis Johnson on to talk about why airlines are doing their best to hire more black women pilots. [at the 1:25 mark].
Here’s the full piece:
I (back to 1st person) had some questions about why the airline industry would want to do this (and, brief aside: I’m not gonna lie, I think a lot of this has to do with PR. Samir brought up a great point about those in-flight Delta PSAs, and how diverse those are, when the pilots certainly don’t look like that) – but as an airline journalist says in the piece, this is also straight up about numbers.
Those recent flight delays are partially due to a lack of pilots: many have retired during the pandemic, and if airlines don’t start widening their candidate pool, they’re just not going to have enough people to staff the planes so that you can fly home to see Grandma.
I normally wouldn’t suggest this, but it might be interesting to check out the comments in the video. There are a few people whining about ‘diversity hires’ (the idea that an airline would be so hungry for ‘woke points’ that they would hire a pilot who isn’t, you know, good at flying a plane, is astonishingly silly), and then the back-and-forth about this is kind of fascinating to watch.
Lastly, VICE Book Club.
This time, two entries.
1 . This Legal Note in the Journal of Law and Policy by a student at Brooklyn Law School, about cops playing Disney music to ‘hack’ YouTube.
- This anime music video: Anamanaguchi - Miku feat Hatsune Miku
As Ben said in the chat: law and anime; the two great tastes that go great together.
And yes, I did assign you an article from a law journal. Trust me, it’s interesting. It also quotes Rick Astley’s ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ (aka ‘rickroll’), if that helps.
You know the drill: do your reading, and we’ll be talking about those on the next stream. See you then!
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