It gets at what you assume about your audience when you include vs. don't include these.
I'm sometimes amused by what gets the explanatory comma in The New Yorker. I recall one issue where they included one for what an MLA citation was. But in the same issue assumed familiarity with someone like Jacques Derrida and their ideas. (This probably wasn't the exact example, but it was close to this.)
"Yanis Varoufakis, a self-proclaimed erratic Marxist, [...]" vs "Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the President of the Eurogroup, [...]"
What about "Varoufakis, a PhD economist who taught economics in three continents, [...]" vs "Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the President of the Eurogroup who accidentally claimed he obtained an MA from University College Cork, [...]"
See what I did there? :-)
Truth of the matter is that Varoufakis dwarfs the Eurogroup in terms of knowledge much like Keynes dwarfed everyone else at the Bretton Woods. Both of them, came from a position of weakness and for <reasons> failed to deliver.
The Economist doesn't like Varoufakis, so Varoufakis must always be always shown in a derogatory light, while complete clowns like JD, and many others (see Krugman's assessment of Schäuble's speech and analysis, laughable at best - comparing a state's economy to a household) as "high ranking, noteworthy authorities".
Varoufakis is an example ofc. There are others (e.g. Beppe Grillo, Berlusconi, etc.).
The other thing the Economist has (not) going on is that you can tell beforehand what you're going to read... I mean from MILES away, you already know the magazine's stance of everything that matters. China, Russia, Iran (bad)... US (good), UK (okay-ish), EU (almost-good).
Consistently pro-war: Supported and pushed (Syria) for all kinds of invasions (Libya, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.).
If you take away all that (and it's a lot), the rest is fine :-)
Whenever the Economist speaks about the Iraq War, they add in parentheses “(which this newspaper supported)”. They don’t need to do that after so many years, but they do it anyway. That level of candour impressed me.
This from 2018, 15 years after the war started - “Iraq, in other words, is doing well (see article). Some will argue that this justifies America’s invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein (which we supported). It does not. Too much blood was shed along the way in Iraq and elsewhere.” (https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/03/28/fifteen-years-a...)
This level of self-reflection is rare.
The Economist as a paper overall is very open-minded when it comes to different ideological points of view. I remember the analysis of Harry's and Meghan's move to the US through a Marxist lens[1], or their surprisingly positive take on China's developmentalist state[2]. For a magazine with a self-declared pro free-trade and market-based bias they tend to reflect a lot. I'm way to the left politically of the target-audience of the paper but I really don't think they deserve the reputation they get as some sort of unabashedly capitalist magazine.
[1]https://www.economist.com/britain/2020/01/16/harry-meghan-an...
[2]https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/08/13/xi-jinping-is-r...
On a deeper level, there's no apolitical journal. Consciously or unconsciously authors, magazines, etc. are pushing specific agendas. If the magazine wants to play fair, needs to avoid cheap shots.
Beppe Grillo did not govern but for a long time was a kind of opposition leader in Italy. The econ referred to him as a "comedian-turned-politician" at all times. I find this deeply unethical. I never read the "mediocre-actor-turn-politician" about Ronal Reagan. The "actor" or "comedian" capacity doesn't matter when you talk public policy.
Since you seem to like dictionary definitions, here:
context | ˈkɒntɛkst |
noun
the circumstances that form the setting for an event,
statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully
understood.Well worth a listen, even it does end up with me muttering curses at the 'radio' sometimes.
I don't care how widely used the acronym for a noun is, first use should always be the full form.
Only time I don't think it should be applied is in the case of a standard/protocol, or policy (such as gif or VAT). Then the first use should be the concept explained, not what it stands for.
I do like their style-guide definition:
acronym: A pronounceable word, formed from the initials of other words, like radar, nimby or NATO. It is not a set of initials, like the BBC or the IMF.
One example is the amount on comments here on hn about some acronyms thrown without explanation. There are, for instance, 1200 matches for 'What is IC' (Individual Contributor)
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...