Berlin in 1945 and today

In additional to the video I posted yesterday, here are some comparison images of Berlin in 1945 and today, in 2015.

Reichstag

And this is just a single city from the World War II.  I’m pretty sure most of Europe and half of Russia looked like that.  And these are cities, which survived.  Think of hundreds or thousands of villages that were completely erased from the face of the earth.  Think of tens of millions of people who perished.  All that was just 70 years ago.  And it looks likes we haven’t learned or remembered our lessons.  It’s 2015 and the world is still at war.

“It’s different now”, you might say.  But I’ll argue.  People die the same.  And places are destroyed the same.  Just have a look at some of the images from Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Syria, Egypt … the list of countries grows every year.

It’s Official: Google Says More Searches Now On Mobile Than On Desktop

Search Engine Land reports:

Last year we heard informal statements from several Google employees that mobile search queries would probably overtake desktop queries some time this year. Google just confirmed this has now happened.

The company says that “more Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries including the US and Japan.” The company declined to elaborate further on what the other countries were, how recently this change happened or what the relative volumes of PC and mobile search queries are now.

[…]

Google groups tablets with desktops. So this is just smartphones and does not include tablets.

There’s also an interesting misalignment of this report with some Comscore reports.

Almost a third at risk of poverty

Cyprus Mail reports:

ALMOST ONE third of Cyprus is at risk of poverty and social exclusion, according to figures released by the statistical service that show an increasing trend since 2008.

The latest numbers show that in 2013, the risk was 27.8 per cent compared to 23.3 per cent in 2008, both of which are way off the national target of 19.8 per cent.

One measurement new to me was the “material deprivation” items:

In 2013, 16.1 per cent of the population in 2013 could not afford to pay at least four out of nine ‘material deprivation’ items. These are the ability to pay rent or utility bills, to cover unexpected charges, to keep their home adequately heated, to eat meat, fish or a protein equivalent every second day, to take a week’s holiday away from home, or to buy a car, washing machine, colour TV and telephone.

Now that puts it a bit into a perspective … “at least four out of nine”.