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Spain

Death Count In Spanish Train Derailment At 78, High Speed Suspected

BBC (UK), ELPAÍS (Spain), ELMUNDO (Spain)

Worldcrunch

SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA - The death count had risen to 78 by Thursday morning after an express train derailed in northwestern Spain. More than 140 other people were injured (including 20 in critical condition) in the crash near Santiago de Compostela, reports El Mundo.

The train was reported to be traveling at more than twice the speed limit around a curve, with one of the conductors quoted in El País as saying he had taken the curve at 190 km/h (188 mph) in a section of track where the speed limit is 80 km/h, reports. (See Below: video footage at the moment of the crash captured by a surveillance camera)

All eight carriages of the Madrid-to-Ferrol train came off the tracks at 8:41 pm (local time), the state railway Renfe said.

After the worst train crash in Spain in 40 years, seven days of mourning have been declared in the Galicia region, reports the BBC. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy arrived at the scene of the accident.

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Ideas

Look At This Crap! The "Enshittification" Theory Of Why The Internet Is Broken

The term was coined by journalist Cory Doctorow to explain the fatal drift of major Internet platforms: if they were ever useful and user-friendly, they will inevitably end up being odious.

A photo of hands holding onto a smartphone

A person holding their smartphone

Gilles Lambert/ZUMA
Manuel Ligero

-Analysis-

The universe tends toward chaos. Ultimately, everything degenerates. These immutable laws are even more true of the Internet.

In the case of media platforms, everything you once thought was a good service will, sooner or later, disgust you. This trend has been given a name: enshittification. The term was coined by Canadian blogger and journalist Cory Doctorow to explain the inevitable drift of technological giants toward... well.

The explanation is in line with the most basic tenets of Marxism. All digital companies have investors (essentially the bourgeoisie, people who don't perform any work and take the lion's share of the profits), and these investors want to see the percentage of their gains grow year after year. This pushes companies to make decisions that affect the service they provide to their customers. Although they don't do it unwillingly, quite the opposite.

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Annoying customers is just another part of the business plan. Look at Netflix, for example. The streaming giant has long been riddling how to monetize shared Netflix accounts. Option 1: adding a premium option to its regular price. Next, it asked for verification through text messages. After that, it considered raising the total subscription price. It also mulled adding advertising to the mix, and so on. These endless maneuvers irritated its audience, even as the company has been unable to decide which way it wants to go. So, slowly but surely, we see it drifting toward enshittification.

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