<div dir="auto"><div>The Windup Girl won a Hugo. It was about the takeover of essentially all food production by huge corps making patented crops. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Nice questions. Old Bill needs to squirm.</div><div><br></div><div data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr">-- <br>James P. Kinney III<br><i><i><i><i><br></i></i></i></i>Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you
gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his
own tail. It won't fatten the dog.<br>
- Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain<br><i><i><i><i><br><a href="http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/</a><br></i></i></i></i></div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, May 20, 2025, 2:53 PM lollipopman691 via Ale <<a href="mailto:ale@ale.org">ale@ale.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">I am sending this to the New York Times re the latest Sunday Magazine, which features a softball interview with mr. Bill Gates..<br>
<br>
<br>
David Wallace Wells<br>
New York Times Magazine<br>
<a href="mailto:letters@nytimes.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">letters@nytimes.com</a><br>
<br>
Your interview with Bill Gates in this week's New York Times magazine<br>
was filled with softball questions. It avoided the real difficulties<br>
with Mr. Gates's contributions both to software and to charity. I am quite sure you're familiar with Mr. Gates' famous letter to hobbyists ( <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists" rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists</a> ). Here are some questions I would've been more interested in having answered.<br>
<br>
* Who gets to make vaccines for the third world? You are on record saying that COVID vaccines should remain proprietary, with royalties going to the biggest drug companies in the world. How do you feel now about malaria drugs, or filariasis drugs?<br>
<br>
* Unlike hybrid plants, GMO seeds can be made to breed true. Should third-world farmers pay royalties to the first-world companies who develop those seeds after the first crop is in? Are<br>
those companies within their rights to engineer genetic traps into GMO seeds which will prevent farmers from planting seeds saved from their own crops? Are they within their rights to engineer seeds which require tailored chemicals available only from them to germinate or to grow?<br>
<br>
* When local-language artificial intelligence tools lie to ("hallucinate") farmers or businessmen about best practices and those people lose their livelihoods or savings, who pays? Does anyone?<br>
<br>
Sadly, none of these questions made it into the interview.<br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div>