Explosions (& Emptiness) in the Sky
September 20, 2019
“If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.”
“I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.”
– Edgar Allan Poe
Quoth The Ravens Nevermore
When parents of future generations talk to their children about the birds and the bees, it won’t be a conversation about human reproduction, it’ll be about animals that have vanished. Not only are bees becoming extinct, but according to a new analysis published in the journal Science, since 1970 the number of birds in the US and Canada has declined by 3 billion, or 29 percent. The results of this most exhaustive analysis and attempt yet to learn what is happening to avian populations is shocking researchers and conservation organizations. On Thursday the president of the National Audubon Society called the findings “a full blown crisis.”
The new study, based on a broad survey of more than 500 species, reveals steep declines even among traditionally abundant birds like robins and sparrows. Loss of habitat and wider use of pesticides top the list of likely causes. Rachel Carson warned of pesticide dangers with her prophetic 1962 book Silent Spring, in which she wrote: “On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens and scores of other bird voices, there was now no sound.”
One conservation biologist said the new findings signaled a “loss of nature.” Likewise, another expert noted that while declines in common species likely won’t draw the same attention as the loss of bald eagles or sandhill cranes, they will have a much greater impact on the environment. Common bird species are vital to ecosystems; they control pests, pollinate flowers, spread seeds and regenerate forests. When these birds disappear, their former habitats are changed.
Greta Thunberg Brings The Thunder
- 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg spoke volumes Tuesday when she addressed a Senate climate change taskforce meeting in Washington DC.
- She told the panel: “I know you are trying but just not hard enough. Sorry.” Thunberg was one of several teen activists invited to speak, and she was both passionate and blunt in urging Congress members to listen to scientists and take action.
- “Please save your praise,” she said. “We don’t want it. Don’t invite us here to just tell us how inspiring we are without actually doing anything about it…. We want the science to be heard.”
- It is simply unconscionable that despite overwhelming evidence of what is happening to the planet and what leaders must do to curb continuing disaster, the Republican-controlled Senate refuses to act, and a hostile administration actively exacerbates the crisis with fervent regulatory roll-backs. (Guardian)
- It’s Greta’s World: But it’s still burning. The extraordinary rise of a 16-year-old, and her Hail Mary climate movement. (NY Mag)
- Additional song: Imagine Dragons – Thunder
Hey Hey Ho Ho Big Tech Companies Have Got To Go
- Recently the New York Times published an op-ed entitled: “There is no tech backlash.” The writer’s argument was that despite the dissing big tech platforms have been getting from media and politicians, consumers remain enamored of them, and the companies’ financial performance remains stellar.
- The Verge would like to counter that argument — with evidence from antitrust moves to changing consumer attitudes — showing the tech backlash is real, and it’s accelerating. (Verge)
- Here’s why the top two antitrust enforcers in the US are squabbling over who gets to regulate Big Tech (CNBC)
- To Decarbonize We Must Decomputerize: Why We Need a Luddite Revolution (Guardian)
Duterte Out Of Whack Over A Whack
- Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte appeared to admit in a speech Tuesday night at the presidential palace in Manila that last year he had ordered an assassination attempt on a politician.
- He mentioned the deaths of two mayors he had accused of drug crimes, one gunned down in his jail cell by police in 2016, and another killed in a police raid on his home in 2017.
- Then the president mentioned another mayor and former general who survived an attack by gunmen in May 2018. “General Loot, you son of a bitch,” Duterte railed. ” I ambushed you, you animal, and you still survived.”
- Wednesday morning a spokesman for Duterte said the president had misspoken, explaining he meant to say: ” You were ambushed” not “I ambushed you.” (NYT)
Additional World News
- Whistleblower complaint about President Trump involves Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the matter (WaPo, $)
- Intel Inspector General suggested whistleblower had concerns about multiple actions (CNN)
- Trump’s Challenge: Can His Word on Iran Be Trusted? (NYT, $) and Trump Hits Back After Ally Denounces ‘Weakness’ With Iran (NYT, $)
- Iran warns U.S. of ‘all-out war’ if attacked (WaPo, $)
- Trudeau scrambles to halt damage as third blackface incident emerges (Guardian)
Do You Separate Your Church From Your State?
- Liberals have been leaving organized religion in high numbers over the past few decades, and conservative Christian leaders like Robert Jeffress, a Dallas pastor with close ties to President Trump, have accelerated calls on religious conservatives and Republican politicians to defend the country against what they say is a growing wave of liberal secularism.
- “Politics can drive whether you identify with a faith, how strongly you identify with that faith, and how religious you are,” said a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research demonstrates that “… some people on the left are falling away from religion because they see it as so wrapped up with Republican politics.” (FiveThirtyEight)
The Earth Is Warming Up So They’re Speaking Up
- The Trump administration has worked overtime to bury climate science, roll back regulations, and muzzle whistleblowers.
- But people are beginning to speak out, among them a former senior engineer at the EPA’s vehicles lab in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “I was an engineer at the EPA, working for 40 years in a very technical job. In 2009 … In August 2018 the [Trump] administration proposed an eight-year freeze of the greenhouse gas standards … for the first time in the history of the EPA the political leadership decided to change pollution standards …They cooked the books and changed every assumption they could to get the answer they wanted.” (Guardian)
- Revealed: how US senators invest in firms they are supposed to regulate (Guardian)
- Tap water contaminants linked with 100,000 cancer cases, US study finds (Guardian)
- Vaping-Sickness Cases Rise to 530 as U.S. Searches for Cause (Bloomberg, $)
- America’s Abortion Rate Has Dropped to Its Lowest Ever: New research suggests contraception and fewer pregnancies may be more responsible for the decline than state laws restricting abortion. (NYT, $)
Bye Bye Bias
- In a time of political fury and hardening cultural divides there is one thing on which virtually everyone is agreed — that the news and information we receive is biased. Every second of every day, someone is complaining about bias, in everything from the latest movie reviews to sports commentary, from CNN’s coverage of the Trump administration to the BBC’s coverage of Brexit.
- The mentality spans the entire political spectrum and pervades societies around the world. A recent survey found that the majority of people globally believe their society is broken and their economy is rigged. Both the left and the right feel misrepresented and misunderstood by political institutions and the media, and outrage with “mainstream” institutions has become a mass sentiment.
- Is it possible to have too much skepticism? How exactly do we distinguish this critical mentality from that of the conspiracy theorist, who is convinced that they alone have seen through the official version of events. (Guardian)
- Additional movie trailer: In the 90s, a movie was made about Mel Gibson’s conspiracy newsletter: Conspiracy Theory (1997) Official Trailer – Mel Gibson, Julia Robert Movie HD
When You Wish Upon A Corporate Logo
- Space technology, like the hundreds of new satellites launched each year, is altering the night skies and posing a problem for astronomers looking out across the universe. An astronomer at London’s Royal Observatory Greenwich said: “Just as we have light pollution in cities, preventing us from seeing fainter stars, they [satellites] have a similar effect and even with larger telescopes it’s still a difficult thing to combat.”
- And now there are plans to further crowd the night skies with new types of spacecraft that will have purely aesthetic or commercial purposes. A Russian start-up wants to launch into low earth orbit a few hundred small satellites with retractable reflective sails that can be arranged like pixels on a screen to depict company logos as star-like constellations. (BBC)
Weekend Tech Reads
- He “Was Struggling Not To Laugh”: Inside Netflix’s Crazy, Doomed Meeting With Blockbuster (Vanity Fair)
- Uber’s baffling claim that its drivers aren’t core to its business, explained: Uber and Lyft may not convince anyone that drivers aren’t core to their business, but the argument is a strategic move to buy time. (Vox)
- How Adam Neumann’s Over-the-Top Style Built WeWork. ‘This Is Not the Way Everybody Behaves.’: The skills that helped fuel We Co.’s breakneck growth are piling up as potential liabilities as the company prepares to go public (WSJ, $)
- The Simple Strategy Fueling the Rise of Bill Gates’s Fortune (Bloomberg, $)
- Richard Stallman and the fall of the clueless nerd (Wired, $)
LAST SONG