Meet The Line

 

 Saudi Arabia’s 106-Mile City of the Future

Imagine a city that isn’t spread out with neighborhoods, streets, and parks as you know them, but instead, a single, massive building stretching for miles and miles. This might sound like something out of a science fiction movie, but it's not. It’s real, and it’s being built in Saudi Arabia. This incredible project is called "The Line," and it’s part of a bigger plan called Neom, which aims to transform a vast desert into a futuristic oasis.

What Is The Line?

The Line is unlike any city you’ve ever seen or heard of. Instead of spreading out horizontally, like the cities you know, The Line goes straight up and down. Imagine two parallel skyscrapers, each one stretching 106 miles (170 kilometers) long and 1,640 feet (500 meters) high. To give you some perspective, that’s taller than most of the tallest buildings in the world! These two skyscrapers will be only 656 feet (200 meters) wide and will have a shiny, mirrored exterior that reflects the surrounding desert and sky.

Inside these buildings, everything you need for life will be stacked vertically. That means homes, schools, parks, offices, and shops will all be layered on top of each other. You could walk from your house to a park or a classroom in just a few minutes without ever leaving the building!

A City Like No Other

One of the coolest things about The Line is how it’s designed to work. Because it’s so tall and narrow, getting around won’t involve cars or buses. Instead, there will be a high-speed train that zooms from one end of the city to the other in just 20 minutes. So, if your friend lives 106 miles away, you could visit them in the time it takes to watch an episode of your favorite show.Everything in The Line is planned to be super convenient. No matter where you live, you’ll be just a five-minute walk from anything you need, whether it’s a store, a school, or even a park. And speaking of parks, The Line will have lots of green spaces and nature woven right into the city. There’s even talk of including things like waterfalls and an artificial moon that you can look at every night.

A Green and Clean City

One of the big goals for The Line is to be environmentally friendly. Unlike most cities, there will be no roads, no cars, and no pollution. Instead, The Line will run entirely on clean energy. This is part of Saudi Arabia’s bigger plan, called Vision 2030, to create a more sustainable future.

Vision 2030 and The Line

So, when will people actually start living in this futuristic city? The first residents are expected to move in by the year 2030. That might seem like a long way off, but in the world of city-building, it’s just around the corner. The Line is part of a huge project called Neom, which is designed to attract millions of visitors every year and make Saudi Arabia a top travel destination, competing with popular places like Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Neom isn’t just about The Line, though. It will also include airports, green energy plants, and other high-tech developments. The idea is to create a “country within a country,” where people from all over the world will want to live and work.

Why Not Everyone’s Excited

Even though The Line sounds amazing, not everyone thinks it’s a good idea. Some people are worried that building a city like this might not be the best way to solve problems like pollution and overcrowding. For example, one scientist pointed out that a straight-line city might not be the most efficient shape for getting around. If you live in The Line and want to visit someone far away, it could still take a long time to get there, even with a fast train.

Others are concerned that Saudi Arabia might be focusing too much on tourism and not enough on other important areas, like education and research.

What Do You Think?

The Line is one of the most ambitious projects the world has ever seen. It’s a city that could change the way we think about urban life and the environment. But like all big ideas, it has its challenges. As students and future leaders, it’s important to think critically about projects like this. What do you think about The Line? Would you want to live in a city like this? Or do you think there are better ways to create the cities of the future?

Common Internet Abbreviations

 What is an abbreviation?

An abbreviation is a shortened form of a written word or phrase. Abbreviations may be used to save space and time, to avoid repetition of long words and phrases, or simply to conform to conventional usage.

Here are the most common Internet abbreviations:

LOL: laugh out loud

OMG: Oh my God

ILY: I love you

LMAO: laughing my a** off

FBO: Facebook official (when on one's facebook profile it says "In A Relationship" and your significant other's name)

SFW: Safe for work (describes a web page, picture, video, or other content that is not inappropriate to view in a formal setting, such as a workplace).

ASL: Age/Sex/Location ( is an article of Internet slang used in instant messaging programs and in Internet chatrooms. It is used as a question to find out the age, sex (or gender), and general location of the person one is talking to).

AFAIK: As far as I know

IMHO: In my humble opinion

IRL: In real life

ISO: In search of

J/K: Just Kidding

POV: Point of view

RBTL: Read between the lines (look for or discover a meaning that is implied rather than explicitly stated).

BTW: By the way

CTN: Can’t talk now

CYE: Check your email

dI: Download

ETA: Estimated time of arrival

FYI: For your information (It is often used in both personal and business correspondence to show that information is simply being shared and that no immediate action is required or expected).

gr8: Great

GTG: Got to go

OT: Off topic

PC: Personel computer

pls: Please

POS: Parent over shoulder

ppl: People

Txt: Text

BRB: Be Right Back

B4N: Bye for Now

TY: Thank you

w/e: Whatever

W8: Wait

XOXO: Hugs and kisses ( is an informal term used for expressing sincerity, faith, love, or good friendship at the end of a written letter, email or text).

Y: Why

BBC: "TikTok profits from livestreams of families begging"

 By Hannah Gelbart, Mamdouh Akbiek and Ziad Al-Qattan

BBC Global Disinformation Unit (Μονάδα Παραπληροφόρησης), BBC News Arabic and BBC Eye Investigations

Displaced families in Syrian camps are begging for donations on TikTok while the company takes up to 70% of the proceeds(έσοδα), a BBC investigation found.

Children are live streaming (σωντανή μετάδοση) on the social media app for hours, pleading for digital gifts with a cash value.

The BBC saw streams earning up to $1,000 (£900) an hour, but found the people in the camps received only a tiny fraction (μικροσκοικό κλάσμα) of that.

TikTok said it would take prompt action against "exploitative begging"(επαιτεία εκμετάλλευσης).

The company said this type of content was not allowed on its platform, and it said its commission from digital gifts was significantly less than 70%. But it declined to confirm the exact amount.

Earlier this year, TikTok users saw their feeds fill with livestreams of families in Syrian camps, drawing support from some viewers and concerns about scams from others.

In the camps in north-west Syria, the BBC found that the trend was being facilitated by so-called "TikTok middlemen"(μεσάζοντες), who provided families with the phones and equipment to go live.

The middlemen said they worked with agencies affiliated to (συνδεδεμένος με)TikTok in China and the Middle East, who gave the families access to TikTok accounts. These agencies are part of TikTok's global strategy to recruit livestreamers and encourage users to spend more time on the app.

Since the TikTok algorithm suggests content based on the geographic origin of a user's phone number, the middlemen said they prefer to use British SIM cards. They say people from the UK are the most generous gifters.

Mona Ali Al-Karim and her six daughters are among the families who go live on TikTok every day, sitting on the floor of their tent for hours, repeating the few English phrases they know: "Please like, please share, please gift."

Mona's husband was killed in an airstrike and she is using the livestreams to raise money for an operation for her daughter Sharifa, who is blind.

The gifts they're asking for are virtual, but they cost the viewers real money and can be withdrawn from the app as cash. Livestream viewers send the gifts - ranging from digital roses, costing a few cents, to virtual lions costing around $500 - to reward or tip creators for content.

For five months, the BBC followed 30 TikTok accounts broadcasting live from Syrian camps for displaced people and built a computer program to scrape information (απόξεση πληροφοριών) from them, showing that viewers were often donating digital gifts worth up to $1,000 an hour to each account.

Families in the camps said they were receiving only a tiny fraction of these sums, however.

With TikTok declining to say how much it takes from gifts, the BBC ran an experiment to track where the money goes.

A reporter in Syria contacted one of the TikTok-affiliated agencies saying he was living in the camps. He obtained an account and went live, while BBC staff in London sent TikTok gifts worth $106 from another account.

At the end of the livestream, the balance of the Syrian test account was $33. TikTok had taken 69% of the value of the gifts.

The $33 remaining from the BBC's $106 gift was reduced by a further 10% when it was withdrawn from the local money transfer shop. TikTok middlemen would take 35% of the remainder, leaving a family with just $19.

Hamid, one of the TikTok middlemen in the camps, told the BBC he had sold his livestock to pay for a mobile phone, SIM card and wi-fi connection to work with families on TikTok.

He now broadcasts with 12 different families, for several hours a day.

Hamid said he uses TikTok to help families make a living. He pays them most of the profits, minus his running costs, he said.

Like the other middlemen, Hamid said he was supported by "live agencies" in China, who work directly with TikTok.

"They help us if we have any problems with the app. They unlock blocked accounts. We give them the name of the page, the profile picture, and they open the account," Hamid said.

Agencies like these, known as "livestreaming guilds" (συνδικάτο)and based all around the world, are contracted by TikTok to help content creators produce more appealing livestreams.

TikTok pays them a commission according to the duration of livestreams and the value of gifts received, the agencies told the BBC.

The emphasis on duration means TikTokers, including children in the Syrian camps, go live for hours at a time.

Marwa Fatafta, from digital rights organisation Access Now, says these livestreams run contrary to TikTok's own policies to "prevent the harm, endangerment or exploitation" of minors on the platform.

source: {13/10/22} https://www.bbc.com/news/world-63213567