It’s time once again for news and views that you can peruse! It’s time for another Weekly Reader! As always, if you have something you’d like to share, drop a link in the comments!
What Myths About the Anthropocene Get Wrong (from Smithsonian Magazine): “It’s absurdly simple. The shift from the Holocene to the Anthropocene epoch hits like a brick wall when looking at graphs that show changes in three major greenhouse gases and in global temperature during the last 30 millennia. All four of these critical planetary parameters shift from near-horizontal to near-vertical lines in the last 70 years or so. The graphs are simple, but they show changes in atmospheric chemistry and—lagging a little behind—temperature, that affect the habitability of the planet for all its organisms, including humans. On a time scale of millennia, the shifts don’t resemble a hockey stick as much as a stair step. Furthermore, these changes affect the whole atmosphere and ocean, so they are essentially irreversible on any human time scale. Our distant descendants will still be living with the planetary changes that humans have wrought in a single lifetime.”
Raw Milk Sales Skyrocket as Idiots Believe Drinking Bird Flu Will Give Them ‘Immunity’ (from Gizmodo): “Incredibly, the surging popularity of raw milk seems to be directly related to the detection of bird flu in unpasteurized dairy products and a mistaken belief that being exposed to the virus will be beneficial to humans.”
Ocean water is rushing miles underneath the ‘Doomsday Glacier’ with potentially dire impacts on sea level rise (from CNN): “As the salty, relatively warm ocean water meets the ice, it’s causing “vigorous melting” underneath the glacier and could mean global sea level rise projections are being underestimated, according to the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”
Police are not primarily crime fighters, according to the data (from Reuters): “Records provided by the sheriff’s departments in Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego and Riverside showed the same longstanding pattern of racial disparities in police stops throughout the country for decades. Black people in San Diego were more than twice as likely than white residents to be stopped by sheriff’s deputies, for example.”
As conservatives put religion in schools, Satanists want in, too (from NBC News): “When conservative lawmakers in Florida and Texas won the fight to allow religious chaplains in public schools, they swung open the door to ministers from other faiths — including the Satanic Temple.
The demonic-sounding group, which describes itself as “nontheistic,” is using this debate and others like it to make a point about the growing encroachment of religion on public life.”
New research shows the true cost of reproduction across the animal kingdom (from Phys.Org): “The study found that the energy invested by parents in reproduction includes not only the energy contained in the offspring themselves (direct costs), but also the energy expended to produce and carry them (indirect costs). In most species, indirect costs, such as the metabolic load of pregnancy, exceed the direct costs.”
Small, well-built Chinese EV called the Seagull poses a big threat to the US auto industry (from the Associated Press): “But the rapid emergence of low-priced EVs from China could shake up the global auto industry in ways not seen since Japanese makers exploded on the scene during the oil crises of the 1970s. BYD, which stands for “Build Your Dreams,” could be a nightmare for the U.S. auto industry.”
There’s A GOP Plan For An Execution Spree If Trump Wins The White House (from the Huffington Post): “Meanwhile, Trump, the GOP’s presumptive 2024 presidential nominee, has openly fantasized about executing drug dealers and human traffickers. He reportedly suggested that officials who leak information to the press should be executed, too. And behind the scenes, there’s a team of pro-Trump conservatives who are pushing for a second Trump term that involves even more state-sponsored killing than the first.”
Super-aged Japan now has 9 million vacant homes. And that’s a problem (from CNN): “Abandoned houses are known in Japan as “akiya” – a term that usually refers to derelict residential homes tucked away in rural areas.
But more akiya are being seen in major cities, such as Tokyo and Kyoto, and that’s a problem for a government that’s already grappling with an aging population and an alarming fall in the number of children born each year.”
Over 500 million years ago, weird complex creatures emerged on Earth. Scientists now think they know why (from CNN): “Prior to this time, life had been largely single-celled and microscopic. The researchers believe that a weak magnetic field may have led to an increase in oxygen in the atmosphere, allowing early complex life to evolve.”
BETRAYAL: From “He Gets Us” To “He Tricked Us” (from Patheos): “Simply put, their goal is to collect this private information and sell it to an organization called GLOO who then sells that information to local pastors seeking to grow their churches.
According to GLOO, a US-based Christian Data-Mining Company started by Scott and Theresa Beck in 2013, their mission is to “help ministry leaders scale their impact through technology.” To do that, they purchase meta-data from a variety of groups like He Gets Us, K-Love, Barna Research, and other organizations, to create a database of potential targets – like Kathy Wilson – and then they sell that data on their platform to more than 38,000 churches who sign up for their “Explorer” program.”
Half of U.S. women say they were lied to about motherhood, new research shows (from Oregon Live): “Moms often participate in pressuring non-moms, whether they mean to or not, just like drinkers trying to get you to buy another beer or smokers asking if you want one of your own. Or if you already have one, don’t you really want two? Maybe it’s because parenthood is bewildering and if other people do it, we feel like maybe we weren’t so insane to get into this in the first place.
Misery loves company. And a lot of moms are miserable.”
Musk’s SpaceX is quick to build in Texas, slow to pay its bills (from Reuters): “But a Reuters review of Texas property records shows that SpaceX and its contractors can be far slower to pay builders and suppliers than they are to break ground. Unpaid bills and finger-pointing among contractors, Reuters found, have led many construction-industry businesses to file liens against SpaceX properties in efforts to get compensated.”
‘I’m really curious about the dog’: Trump weighs in on Kristi Noem at a private fundraiser (from NBC News): “Trump has so far largely tried to avoid weighing in on the dog controversy, even as Noem has taken criticism from both Republicans and Democrats. During a radio interview Tuesday on “The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show,” Trump simply said that Noem had “had a bad week. We all have bad weeks.””
Kristi Noem’s Team Told Her to Nix the Dog Story 2 Years Ago (from Politico): “Then, as now, Noem wanted the story in because it showed a decisive person who was unwilling to be bound by namby-pamby niceties, while others on the team — which included agents, editors and publicists at Hachette Book Group’s prestige Twelve imprint, and a ghostwriter — saw it as a bad-taste anecdote that would hurt her brand. The tale was ultimately cut, according to two people involved with the project.”
Trump-linked dark-money group spent $90m on racist and transphobic ads in 2022, records show (via the Wayback Machine): “These new records show that wealthy special interests are spending incredible amounts of money on messaging campaigns that mainstream extremism and push patent disinformation to voters in critical swing states and districts.”
Donald Trump wants to control the Justice Department and FBI. His allies have a plan (from Reuters): “The plan is essentially twofold, according to the nine people interviewed by Reuters, some of whom requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
First: flood the Justice Department with stalwart conservatives unlikely to say “no” to controversial orders from the White House. Second: restructure the department so key decisions are concentrated in the hands of administration loyalists rather than career bureaucrats.”
They made one-of-a-kind quilts that captured the public’s imagination. Then Target came along (from ABC News): “Unlike the pay structure of the Freedom Quilting Bee of the 1960s — an artist-run collective that disbursed payment equitably to Gee’s Bend quilters, who were salaried and could set up Social Security benefits — one-off partnerships with companies like Target benefit only a small number of people, in this case five women from two families.
The maxim “representation matters” is not new, but it’s gaining wider traction. Still, when visibility for some doesn’t translate into meaningful change for a marginalized community as a whole, how is that reconciled?”
Behind the Bankruptcy: Rue21 Employees Speak Out on Misconduct During Company Collapse (from The Voice of the Frontline): “This is the story of regular people who saw abhorrent behavior and shockingly bad choices being made but could do nothing. Nothing but execute, be quiet, or quit.
Thousands of people are scrambling to pay their bills, find new jobs, and sort through the wreckage this bankruptcy is leaving in its wake.
This is their story.
Everyone needs to hear it.”
We asked 380 top climate scientists what they felt about the future… They are terrified, but determined to keep fighting. Here’s what they said (via the Wayback Machine): “The task climate researchers have dedicated themselves to is to paint a picture of the possible worlds ahead. From experts in the atmosphere and oceans, energy and agriculture, economics and politics, the mood of almost all those the Guardian heard from was grim. And the future many painted was harrowing: famines, mass migration, conflict. “I find it infuriating, distressing, overwhelming,” said one expert, who chose not to be named. “I’m relieved that I do not have children, knowing what the future holds,” said another.”
That’s all for this week, but don’t fret. I’ll be back again with more articles that might pique your interest. Until then, have a great rest of your week and happy reading!
Iacon East 