| Time |
Event |
| 4:33a |
Invertebrate species at risk of extinction
Around 25% of invertebrate species are estimated to be at risk of
extinction in the mass extinction that humans are bringing about.
This includes important pollinators. The loss of pollinators will cause
problems for the growth of food.
</li> |
| 4:33a |
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| 4:33a |
Australia's "drug sniffer" dogs
When Australia's "drug sniffer" dogs indicate sniffing drugs, 75% of the time
the following search does not find any drugs.
- Maybe drug mules have adopted a clever new way to hide the drugs,
so dogs can sniff them but humans can't find them.
- Maybe these dogs do a bad job.
- Maybe all "drug sniffer" dogs do a bad job. How would we know?
- I've read that the cops that control the dogs actually decide
whether to report that the dog "sniffed drugs" on any given person.
Maybe these cops make that decision based on a whim to harass certain
people, and maybe those people mostly don't carry any drugs.
</li> |
| 4:33a |
Methane from Texas oil and gas production
*Oil and gas production in Texas is spewing out double the rate of
methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, than in the more regulated state of
New Mexico, new satellite data shared with the Guardian shows,
prompting calls for tougher curbs of “super-emitter” sites that risk
tipping the world into climate breakdown.*
</li> |
| 4:33a |
Human-cause heating behind extreme droughts
*Human-caused heating behind extreme droughts in Syria, Iraq and Iran, study
finds.
[Such] droughts … used to happen once
every 250 years but now expected once a decade.*
</li> |
| 4:33a |
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| 4:33a |
Anti-abortion Republican legislators in Ohio
Now that Ohio citizens have voted to amend Ohio's constitution to
protect the right to have an abortion, anti-abortion Republican
legislators are looking for ways to undermine it.
I wonder, how gerrymandered is Ohio? Would fair districting and
protecting every citizen';s right to vote remove Republicans from
power there?
</li> |
| 4:33a |
Steps towards ceasefire cannot be one-sided
[Australia's foreign minister] Penny Wong says, "steps towards
ceasefire" in Israel-Hamas war "cannot be one-sided."
Actually, it's just the opposite: if you are committing war crimes, it
behooves you to stop — regardless of what your enemies are doing.
Neither Israel nor HAMAS can justify continuing crimes on the grounds
that "our enemy is committing crimes and/or fighting us."
</li> |
| 4:33a |
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| 4:33a |
Old stamps at UK post office
The UK post office declared all old stamps unusable and replaced them with
new stamps carrying bar codes. People who follow the recommended procedure
for exchanging the valid but unusable old stamps are often told they
were "used or fake", or sent too few.
It seems that society has got in the habit of imposing incompetent service
and declaring it satisfactory.
</li> |
| 4:33a |
Birds resistant to avian flu
* Research shows birds with small alterations to one gene are highly
resistant to avian flu.*
They are not totally resistant, but maybe could lead with further
research to a variety that would be,
I think sort of genetic engineering would be beneficial, in and of itself.
But if it is patented, it could put all chicken farming, for practical
purposes, under the control and power of the patent holder. We should
not allow such patents.
</li> |
| 4:33a |
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| 4:33a |
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| 4:33a |
Israelis kidnapped by HAMAS viewed as partisan
A campaign of posturing about Israelis kidnapped by HAMAS and held hostage
is viewed by supporters of one side or the other as partisan.
This tendency to close one's eyes to the suffering of people on the
other side is the main obstacle to peace. If people on each side
assume, "If they aren't crushed, we must be crushed," they tend to
reject any plan other than to crush the other side. Often they do
this without recognizing they rejected anything.
Often they do this by dehumanizing everyone "on the other side",
they crush all but the worst part of themselves.
The Anti-Defamation League lists peace rallies by Jews in its database
of "antisemitism", and calls them "anti-Israel".
This equates calling on Israel to cease war crimes with seeking
to destroy Israel. Meanwhile, a Republican elected official
called for genocide of the Palestinians.
Perhaps this should not be a surprise, since we know that the
Republican Party now includes Nazis.
The same sort of extremist thinking can be seen on the Palestinian side
in the young men that "want to be martyred".
They have dehumanized themselves, and often others too. HAMAS
supporters care nothing about committing war crimes.
</li> |
| 4:33a |
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| 4:33a |
Civilian deaths in Gaza
* Each recorded fatal Israeli airstrike on Gaza since 7 October has
caused an average of 10.1 civilian deaths, a monitoring group has
said, amid warnings that reported civilian casualty figures are
likely to be an underestimate..*
</li> |
| 4:33a |
French law for "influencers"
A new French law tries to make "influencers" acknowledge when their
publications are actually paid ads.
This law seems like a step forward, but in my view the mere intent to
act as an influencer is wrong in spirit. If the goal of a
presentation is to get me to buy a product, that alone will make me
think of it as a trap — so why look at it?
</li> |
| 4:33a |
Number of retail jobs eliminated
A study reports that private equity and hedge funds have eliminated at
least 1.3 million retail jobs in the US in the past decade.
They have also reduced competition in retail. Competition among the
big middlemen is how capitalism sometimes benefits to producers and
consumers; if that competition is lost, capitalism becomes sheer
exploitation.
</li> |
| 4:33a |
Right to food
*UN hunger expert: US must recognize "right to food" to fix broken system.*
These days, the US always produces enough food for everyone to have
something to eat. If anyone can't obtain food, it is due to
right-wing politics that advocates behavior modification by denial of
food.
In 10, 20 or 30 years, when no-longer-natural disasters are even more frequent
and harvests are often lost, that may no longer be the case. Insufficiency
of food will arrive sooner or later if we keep making things worse.
We can deduce that establishing a human right to food implies a human
right to a stable climate and a stable environment — including a
stable chemical environment. Continued use of neonicotinoid
pesticides,
for example, would make future violation of the right to
food probable, and therefore have to be forbidden.
</li> |
| 7:48p |
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| 7:48p |
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| 7:48p |
Why Biden doesn't get credit for good things he has done
Robert Reich theorizes why Biden does not get credit for the good things
he has done: when he speaks, he focuses on substantial points rather
than emotional impact.
I agree that Biden has done some good things for the US economy, for
clean energy, and for the well-being of poor Americans, and that the
public does not give him the credit those actions deserve. At the
same time, he has done quite a few bad things to set against those
good things.
Thus, while Biden's record puts him miles above any Republican,
it also puts him disappointingly far below a progressive Democrat.
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| 7:48p |
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| 7:48p |
Ocasio-Cortex and Taylor-Greene unite in push to free Assange
*Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Marjorie Taylor-Greene unite in push to free
Julian Assange.*
It is ironic that elected officials from the two ends of the political
spectrum have joined to defend Assange, and freedom of the press.
However, their letter might influence Biden more if some elected
officials from the middle joined in.
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| 7:48p |
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| 7:48p |
Stealing to feed their children
*Garment workers in Bangladesh say their pay is so low that they
have to steal to feed their children.
One jaw of the vice they are in is that the businesses pay them too
little. The other jaw of the vice is that they have had children
that they cannot afford to raise -- and they expect to go on having
children regardless of whether they can afford to raise them.
To have a lasting solution for this problem, both need to change. The
businesses must pay the workers a living wage, and the workers must
limit their reproduction to the amount they can provide for.
|
| 7:48p |
AI economic crisis
Artificial Intelligence, put in charge of banking, could cause a
economic crash. The AIs could invent new types of financial
instruments that humans can't understand how to regulate properly, and
their use could lead to a crash.
That should not be surprising, since human bankers already did just that, and
the crash came in 2007.
It seems to me that the crucial cause of that crash was the
deregulation that allowed banks to invent and use dangerous new
financial instruments. The lesson we should draw is never to
deregulate them. Neither human nor nonhuman intelligences can cause a
crash by means of incomprehensible innovative financial instruments if
inventing and using innovative financial instruments is strictly
punished.
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| 7:48p |
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| 7:48p |
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| 7:48p |
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| 7:48p |
Al-Shifa hospital
Attacking Israeli troops are closing in on al-Shifa hospital in
Gaza, *where it is said more than 50,000 people may have taken
shelter.*
Israel has already bombed or shelled near the hospital and even on
its grounds. That is likely to kill thousands of civilians. It is
surely a war crime.
The army is also bombarding buildings in a nearby refugee camp. It
says the buildings were used by HAMAS. Does that mean there are no
civilians in or near them. Israel arbitrarily declared any civilians
in northern Gaza are ipso facto "terrorisms". If that could make it
legitimate to bombard them with artillery or air attacks, humanitarian
law would be a pushover.
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| 7:48p |
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| 7:48p |
Flash drought dangers
On the danger of "flash droughts", which can lead to a destructive wildfire
before government agencies wake up and try to prevent that.
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| 7:48p |
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