The climate may be even more screwed up than we thought.
There are a couple of reasons. One of the major reasons is that we are seeing ice sheets pushed to a point where processes are coming into play that we hadn’t seen before. And we’re still struggling to understand these processes. We saw this in the early 2000s with the complete disintegration of sections of the Larsen B ice shelf. Researchers knew that this region was one of the more rapidly warming places on the planet and that it was likely to be one of the first dominos to fall as atmospheric temperatures increased, but the speed of the disintegration was shocking at the time and I think we are still trying to fully understand the spectrum of processes that led to it.
We see similar things in the Amundsen Sea Embayment of West Antarctica, where warm ocean waters are triggering retreat of a swath of glaciers. To really understand and predict this, we need to understand not only the ice, but also the oceans and how the oceans and ice interact. These have been difficult processes to observe.Why sea-level rise models have been wrong | Michigan Engineering
On being in the moment.
Only a few decades ago, we lived mostly free of this strange tension between the desire to enjoy something and the desire to document it. Because we did so much less documenting, we must have been much better at enjoying sensory experiences as they happened, since we had no recourse to a “captured” version later. Before photography and videography became a reflex, it must have been exceedingly obvious—too obvious to even think about it—that the only time you can enjoy an experience is when it’s happening.No Moment Can Be Saved For Later by David Cain
The USA is still being run by the same people.
Adding its voice to the growing chorus demanding stronger laws targeting politically motivated violence, the FBI Agents Association called on Congress to make domestic terrorism a federal crime. The members of this chorus are, to various degrees, sincere, panicked, and self-serving, but they all have something in common: they're advocating a very bad idea that's bound to threaten liberty more than it hampers terrorists.
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The surveillance, labelling, and incarceration of protesters, especially Black protesters, because of their alleged criminal or terrorist activity is a well-worn trope. And while it may not surprise, it should still shock.J.D. Tuccille
Is something missing from social sharing photography?
The "remarkable" phones pics have something I miss in photography that is often present in vernacular photography from the past: most of the pictures show something that, for lack of a better phrase, was worth taking a picture of. Something remarkable.The Online Photographer
Sigh. Perhaps the USA should start gun control legislature with the disarming of police.
The story begins in 2013, when sheriff's deputies in Kaufman County, Texas, responded to reports of a man terrorizing a neighborhood by kicking mailboxes, pointing a gun at residents' houses, and yelling, "I'm just trying to get back what's mine." One complainant stated that there was a man "walking up and down the street, screaming and firing a gun."
Upon arriving at the scene, Officers Gabriel Hinojosa and Matthew Hinds, a defendant in the suit, stated that they encountered a black male wearing a brown shirt; he allegedly fired one round at the officers before ducking out of sight on two occasions. Then Gabriel Winzer, wearing a blue shirt, "emerged from behind a house and biked toward the officers," Ho writes, prompting them to open fire.
Winzer retreated. He was found several minutes later in his father's backyard with four gunshot wounds to his chest, shoulder, and upper back. His dad was with him, "trying to comfort and revive him." As Winzer lay dying, officers attempted to handcuff him, but he resisted, so they tased him. Only then were paramedics allowed to enter the scene, where he was pronounced dead shortly thereafter.
Winzer was 25 years old. He was mentally handicapped. And he probably wasn't the man terrorizing the neighborhood.Billy Binion
I love the first amendment. It's what allows me to publish to this blog, unfettered by the government (aka "we the people").
If the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment were consistently supported by most Americans, of course, there would be little need to enshrine them in the Constitution. The whole point of a constitutional guarantee is to protect fundamental rights against the whims of passing majorities.Jacob Sullum
But some people think they should be able to decide what I can say, including an asshole state representative in Massachusetts.
Massachusetts is taking the fight against nasty words to the next level with a new state bill that would ban the use of the word bitch in certain contexts.
State Rep. Daniel Hunt (D–Boston) has put forward H. 3719 that would prohibit the use of the big, bad b-word when deployed to "to accost, annoy, degrade or demean" another person. Anyone who did so would be considered a "disorderly person" under state law.CHRISTIAN BRITSCHGI
Can we demand rights from online platforms?
Online platforms would not have grown to the impressive size that they have if they did not create a correspondingly great amount of value for both types of users. Really, when we worry about data, we're worrying about externalities, or the social costs or benefits that are not internalized in market exchange.Andrea O'Sullivan
American are privacy hypocrites.
Even while people remain concerned about their own privacy in the workplace and online, most still admit to violations of their coworkers’ privacy by “creeping” on PC screens and “peeking” at documents found in printer trays, a new survey has found.Elizabeth Montalbano
