2025-06-11
Horseshit
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Real reasons people do not have the number of children they want in new report
While right-wing governments, including the US and Hungary, are increasingly blaming falling fertility rates on a rejection of parenthood, the UNFPA’s 2025 State of World Population report found most people wanted children. Dr Natalia Kanem, executive director of UNFPA, said: “The issue is lack of choice, not desire, with major consequences for individuals and societies. That is the real fertility crisis, and the answer lies in responding to what people say they need: paid family leave, affordable fertility care and supportive partners.”
According to a new report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN agency for reproductive rights, Namrata's situation is becoming a global norm. The agency has taken its strongest line yet on fertility decline, warning that hundreds of millions of people are not able to have the number of children they want, citing the prohibitive cost of parenthood and the lack of a suitable partner as some of the reasons. UNFPA surveyed 14,000 people in 14 countries about their fertility intentions. One in five said they haven't had or expect they won't have their desired number of children. The countries surveyed - South Korea, Thailand, Italy, Hungary, Germany, Sweden, Brazil, Mexico, US, India, Indonesia, Morocco, South Africa, and Nigeria - account for a third of the global population.
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The NYC Algorithm Deciding Which Families Are Under Watch for Child Abuse
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What Ending the U.S. Ban on Supersonic Flight Means for the Future of Travel
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'Humans need solitude': How being alone can make you happier
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Did the Camera Ever Tell the Truth? Death of a Fantastic Machine
celebrity gossip
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
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Telegram is indistinguishable from an FSB honeypot
IStories found evidence that all network communication to and from Telegram’s infrastructure go through a company linked to the Russian FSB. This would provide the kind of network visibility that combined with auth_key_id would allow it to identify traffic coming from specific users, globally. In other words, what for years seemed like a protocol design oddity is now looking more like a deliberate decision to facilitate global surveillance of all Telegram users by the Russian state, while obscuring Telegram’s infrastructure provider’s role and providing some measure of plausible deniability for Telegram itself. The two decisions Telegram made (choice of infrastructure provider who happens to cooperate with the Russian FSB, and attaching a cleartext device identifier to encrypted messages) taken together reinforce surveillance capability of the FSB considerably more strongly than either of these decisions would have on its own. It doesn’t matter if these decisions were made on purpose or accidentally. Telegram is indistinguishable from a honeypot.
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BBC insiders fear Russia will fill void after World Service cuts
Musk
Electric / Self Driving cars
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
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A third reason I didn’t identify with the Rationalists was, frankly, that they gave off some (not all) of the vibes of a cult, with Eliezer as guru. Eliezer writes in parables and koans. He teaches that the fate of life on earth hangs in the balance, that the select few who understand the stakes have the terrible burden of steering the future. Taking what Rationalists call the “outside view,” how good is the track record for this sort of thing?
The cult thing brings me to the deepest reason I hesitated for so long to identify as a Rationalist: namely, I was scared that if I did, people whose approval I craved (including my academic colleagues, but also just randos on the Internet) would sneer at me. For years, I searched of some way of explaining this community’s appeal so reasonable that it would silence the sneers. It took years of psychological struggle, and (frankly) solidifying my own place in the world, to follow the true path, which of course is not to give a shit what some haters think of my life choices
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Sorry Docker: macOS 26 adds native support for Linux containers
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For Some Recent Graduates, the A.I. Job Apocalypse May Be Here
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YouTube has loosened its content moderation policies
YouTube has previously attracted the ire of conservatives for its removal of QAnon and anti-vaccine content. According to The New York Times, YouTube's content moderators have been provided with new guidelines and training on how to handle the deluge of provocative content on the platform. The changes urge reviewers to pull back on removing certain videos, a continuation of a trend not just at YouTube, but on numerous platforms that host user-created content. Beginning late last year, YouTube began informing moderators they should err on the side of caution when removing videos that are in the public interest. That includes user uploads that discuss issues like elections, race, gender, sexuality, abortion, immigration, and censorship. Previously, YouTube's policy told moderators to remove videos if one-quarter or more of the content violated policies. Now, the exception cutoff has been increased to half. In addition, staff are now told to bring issues to managers if they are uncertain rather than removing the content themselves.
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What If Google Just Broke Itself Up? A Tech Insider Makes the Case
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Saving Green Books From Poison Paranoia
While toxic books will still remain under lock and key, the hope is that with quick and easy identification tens of thousands of currently-quarantined texts that use safer green pigments can be returned to circulation.
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According to Layne, the explosion of interest in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings in the 1960s sparked a gold rush. Publishers, suddenly profit-driven in a postwar America, saw dollar signs. The genre's path was sealed not by literary ambition but by opportunism—specifically that of Lester Del Rey. "This is the man who made fantasy into a serious and marketable literary genre," Layne says of Del Rey, "and who also killed fantasy before it ever even had a chance to come into its own." "You can probably guess what happened next," Layne says. Other publishers followed suit. Fantasy lines emerged that mimicked Del Rey’s model. Tor Books, founded in 1980, explicitly based their plans on Del Rey’s methods. "We looked at how Del Rey made Terry Brooks, and we did that," one editor said.
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Canonical Confirms Ubuntu 25.10 Will Drop Support for Gnome on X.org
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Disney to pay almost $439M to take full control of streaming service Hulu
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Misogyny in the metaverse: Mark Zuckerberg's dream world a no-go area for women?
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Microsoft is moving its Build conference out of Seattle for 2026
It’s not clear where Build will be located next year, or even if Microsoft may decide to make it an online-only event. The Seattle Medium reports that the decision to move Build could have been related to attendee experiences in downtown Seattle. It cites an unnamed email that claims Build attendees had “cited the general uncleanliness of the streets, visible drug use, and the presence of unhoused individuals.”
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Google offers buyouts to employees across the company, including Search
TechSuck / Geek Bait
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A history of the Internet, part 2: The high-tech gold rush begins - Ars Technica
The excitement over a new way to transmit text and images to the public over phone lines wasn’t confined to the World Wide Web. Commercial online systems like CompuServe were also evolving to meet the graphical age. These companies released attractive new front-ends for their services that ran on DOS, Windows, and Macintosh computers. There were also new services that were graphics-only, like Prodigy, a cooperation between IBM and Sears, and an upstart that had sprung from the ashes of a Commodore 64 service called Quantum Link. This was America Online, or AOL.
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Car audio gurus schooled by DSP
This is what impressed me the most. EMMA judges have a very rigorous framework how they judge sound quality. And no, they only do SPL measurements for SPL participants. To become an EMMA judge one has to go through a training course and prove their listening ability and technical prowess. To find out whether a sound system cuts the mustard they use a test CD. And it’s not something like Diana Krall or Random Access Memories, it’s full of nasty sound samples designed to bring out shortcomings in audio systems.
I have full digital control over most aspects of my system. And I base my designs on measurements. This allows me to select speaker drivers, without taking into account things like frequency response flatness or sensitivity. For me it’s more about low distortion and maximum SPL, the rest can usually be fixed by digital calibration. It’s also the reason why I got away with using these affordable drivers.
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You Can Drive but Not Hide: Detection of Hidden Cellular GPS Vehicle Trackers
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
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AI re-analyzes old SETI data, finds 8 previously missed signals of interest
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1.5 TB of James Webb Space Telescope data just hit the internet
Although the raw data was already publicly available to the science community, the aim of the COSMOS-Web project was to make it more usable for other scientists. "Those raw data are public, but it takes a lot of work to do all of the calibrations and correct for all of the different types of artifacts that you can get in the imaging... such as the background light, so that you end up with a final image that's clean and usable for science," said Jeyhan Kartaltepe, associate professor at Rochester Institute of Technology and lead researcher of COSMOS-Web.
- So Not actually JWST data, but carefully sculpted derivatives of it. real data might lead the in-experienced to Unapproved Conclusions.
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Prepping for Starship, SpaceX is about to demolish one of ULA’s launch pads.
Crypto con games
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Largest US crypto exchange hit by cyber-attack, costs expected of up to $400M
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Kraken to List Tokenized Version of Nvidia, Apple, Tesla Shares
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Crypto Owners May Get Priority in the Event of Bank Failures
- Silicon Valley Bank proved that insurance terms are "at the whims of the regulators"
Economicon / Business / Finance
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States sue to block sale of 23andMe genetic data without customer consent
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Whole Foods' primary distributor forced to shut down systems after cyberattack
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Taking Government Out of GDP, An Update | The Daily Economy
Imports are subtracted from GDP as a matter of accounting, not because they hurt economic growth. Investment, consumption, and government spending already include imported goods so imports are subtracted from GDP calculations to avoid double counting. Conversely, government spending is treated as a boon to economic growth while the cost of government spending is ignored. Government spending gets paid for through taxation, taking on debt, and/or printing money, all of which are a cost upon ordinary Americans. It’s time our measures of economic growth reflect some hard truths: that government spending comes at a cost to our standard of living and that the economy grows despite government intervention, not because of it.
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World Bank predicts worst decade for global growth since 60s
Mostly Peaceful Riots
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Who Organized the LA Anti-ICE Protests That Escalated Into Riots?
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ABC News Drops All-Time Insane Description of ‘Mostly Peaceful Protesters’ in Los Angeles
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The weaponization of Waymo - by Brian Merchant
Google suspended Waymo service to downtown LA, and also in San Francisco, where solidarity protests unfolded. “Why the self-driving cars were targeted remains unknown” is a refrain I heard multiple times on TV and radio news. The reason does not seem so secret to a lot of people. “Oh they called them up on purpose, lit ‘em on fire like that,” a cameraman shooting on the scene the next day told me. The charred husks in a neat line do seem to suggest that was the case. Other witnesses and journalists who were there shared the same story: People summoned the cars to light them on fire when they arrived. Protestors were reportedly calling them “spy cars” as they were vandalized and set ablaze, and some noted how the cars can share data with the LAPD.
No one I spoke to would cop to having anything to do with actually burning the cars, much less discuss the reason the headline-grabbing tactic was deployed. But it might be noted that ICE raids are carried out using data provided by Silicon Valley companies—most notably Peter Thiel and Alex Karp’s Palantir, which has a $30 million contract with ICE to manage a “real-time” surveillance system on immigrants. But whether directly or through third party contractors, much of big tech, including Google, has made deals with ICE, too. Who knows whether that played a role in ICE protestors’ coordinating a pyrotechnic display on Sunday, whether it was a spontaneous idea to make a memorable visual provocation, or just part of the pure chaos unfolding that day. But as I’ve argued in this newsletter before, in light of previous epidemics of self-driving car trashings and torchings, such actions are liable to spring from the growing reservoir of public anger towards a Silicon Valley that has grown unaccountable and extractive—and has now largely aligned itself with a punitive state.
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Why Waymo's self-driving cars became a target of protesters in Los Angeles
The Wall Street Journal reported that part of the reason the cars were vandalized was to obstruct traffic—a traditional, albeit controversial, protest tactic. Some social media users have suggested that self-driving vehicles in particular have become a new target because they are seen by protesters as “part of the police surveillance state.” Waymo’s cars are equipped with cameras that provide a 360-degree view of their surroundings, a tool that has been tapped by law enforcement, according to reports. Independent tech news site 404 Media reported in April that the Los Angeles Police Department obtained footage from a Waymo driverless car to use as part of an investigation into an unrelated hit-and-run.
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Ana Navarro: Trump, National Guard Are Setting A ‘Trap’ To Force Latinos Into Violence
She went on to warn the Latino community that Trump had sent the National Guard to goad them into committing acts of violence. “We must be strategic, we must be nonviolent. We have the right to protest, we are Americans, this is our country, we have the right to free speech, but we cannot fall into the trap that Donald Trump is setting of wanting to turn this into violent protests.” She then asserted that Trump wanted violence to distract from the fact that he and Elon Musk had argued over the One Big Beautiful Bill. Navarro concluded by attacking the ICE agents for wearing masks — which, according to acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, has been permitted due to the number of agents who have been threatened or have had their families threatened. “The people who didn’t want to wear during a pandemic really want to wear a lot of masks now that they’re dragging women through the streets,” she complained.
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The White House Marching Orders That Sparked the L.A. Migrant Crackdown
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Pentagon says deploying Marines and National Guard to LA will cost $134M
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Trump Orders Additional 2,000 National Guardsmen To LA As Riots Continue | ZeroHedge
- There have been four days of protests and riots since they broke out in Los Angeles on June 6.
- President Donald Trump has now federalized and deployed 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quell the violence.
- Trump has also deployed 700 Marines to Los Angeles to help the Los Angeles Police Department tame the violent protests.
- There have been dozens of arrests since the protests and riots broke out.
- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other top military officials are heading to Capitol Hill to testify before House committees, where lawmakers are all but certain to ask them about their response to the violence.
- "The FBI is investigating any and all monetary connections responsible for these riots," FBI Director Kash Patel told media outlet Just the News.
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Body found on downtown L.A. sidewalk near looted businesses | KTLA
A death investigation is underway Tuesday after a man’s body was found on a sidewalk in an area of downtown Los Angeles that has been the site of recent protests and lootings. Police were called to the area of West 3rd Street and Broadway shortly after 1:30 a.m., where they found the unresponsive man, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles Police Department confirmed to KTLA. The T-Mobile store at the intersection was one of several businesses that were looted the night before as immigration protests turned violent. The spokesperson said it was unknown whether the man’s death was related to any protests or looting.
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Footage shows anti-ICE protester doling out tactical gear in Los Angeles
The unidentified person was caught on camera dispersing what appeared to be riot shields and gas masks to the crowd from the back of a pickup truck Monday afternoon — just steps from downtown federal buildings. Scores of rioters could be seen running toward the truck to grab the masks, which had the brand “Bionic Shield” emblazoned across them, the footage shot by Fox11 showed.
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Amid LA Protests, Conspiracy Theories and Fake Images Spread Online - The New York Times
There were numerous scenes of protesters throwing rocks or other objects at law enforcement officers and setting cars ablaze, including a number of self-driving Waymo taxis. At the same time, false images spread to revive old conspiracies that the protests were a planned provocation, not a spontaneous response to the immigration raids. The latest deployments prompted a new wave of misleading images to spread — some purporting to show Marines and the military service’s weapons in action. One was a still from “Blue Thunder,” a 1983 action-thriller about a conspiracy to deprive residents of Los Angeles of their civil rights. It features a climactic dogfight over the city’s downtown. Darren L. Linvill, a researcher at Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, said conservatives online were “building up the riots in a performative way” to help bolster Mr. Trump’s claims that Los Angeles had been taken over by “violent, insurrectionist mobs.” Dr. Linvill said the posts were also “a bit self-fulfilling.” “As they direct attention to it,” he said, “more protesters will show up.”
Trump
Democrats
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt is one of the most important presidents of American history, a man who stabilized the economy during the Great Depression, laid the foundations of the social safety net, won World War II, invested in public infrastructure and beyond. So it’s no surprise that he’s often held up by contemporary progressives as a model for how to get things done, including in progressive publications like The Nation. Nor is it particularly surprising that the Roosevelt Institute is the name of a leading think tank on the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
These days, essentially every conference I go to features some procession of speakers who talk about how Democrats need to be pragmatic but also that we can’t just “abandon our values.” But on certain issues, FDR really did ruthlessly abandon progressive values. In some instances, he did this in ways that I think were tough-minded and admirable and that contemporary progressives should take more seriously as a model. But in others, he did so in ways that make me profoundly uncomfortable and seem clearly much too far. Mass internment of Japanese-Americans, for example, really was more of a major historical crime than a concession to political reality.
Left Angst
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The Pentagon is gutting the team that tests AI and weapons systems
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Privacy Victory - Judge Grants Preliminary Injunction in OPM/Doge Lawsuit
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Look Over There! Tactical Obliviousness in Modern Political Communications
In the case of content like the post by JD Vance, there is a nudge and wink to the audience, acknowledging indirectly that something significant has happened. Rather than ignoring the uproar entirely, here we have a jokey reference. The manoeuvre satisfies two audiences at once: critics see a fleeting flash of self-awareness, while loyal supporters read the glib aside as an in-group signal that the story is not worth serious attention. In psychoanalytic terms the joke becomes a shared fetish object; the embarrassing Real is admitted only to be neutralised through laughter, allowing the collective fantasy to continue unruffled. We can broaden the psychoanalytic angle. Slavoj Žižek, updating Lacan, speaks of the cynical subject who knows the uncomfortable fact yet behaves as if he does not. Feigned obliviousness gives that posture a concrete, public ritual. The damaging information is neither refuted nor hidden; it is rendered socially irrelevant. Supporters participate in what Lacan might call fetishistic disavowal: I know very well, but still… The price of entry to the group fantasy is a small performance of looking elsewhere.
- "Biden is sharp as a tack! / the economy has never been better!"
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Get Ready to Hear a Lot More About Your Mitochondria - The Atlantic
mitochondrial health is poised to become a pillar of the MAHA movement, already showing up in marketing for supplements and on podcasts across the “manosphere.” Casey Means, President Donald Trump’s newest nominee for surgeon general, has singled out the organelle as the main casualty of the modern American health crisis. According to Means (who has an M.D. but no active medical license), most of America’s chronic ailments can be traced to mitochondrial dysfunction. Should she be confirmed to the post of surgeon general, the American public can expect to hear a lot more about mitochondria.
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GitHub Is Leaking Trump's Plans to 'Accelerate' AI Across Government
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ABC News staffers 'pissed' at Terry Moran over 'stupid' verbal assault on Trump aide Stephen Miller
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Judge cites big OPM records leaks from 2015 in DOGE slapdown
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Trump guts digital ID rules, claims they help 'illegal aliens' commit fraud
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A Student at Brown Channeled Elon Musk. Then He Got in Trouble.
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Doge: Musk Is Out, but More Than 100 of His Followers Remain
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The Trump-Musk feud exposes America's wealth-hoarding crisis
World
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Rolls-Royce chosen to build the UK's first small modular reactors
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Ofsted criticised over training manual linking autistic children to extremism
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Fears grow over London market in 'bid fever' for UK tech firms
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Ireland's data centres now consume more than a fifth of national electricity
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School shooting in Austria leaves at least eight people dead.
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Ofcom Investigation into 4chan and its Online Safety Act compliance
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France Moves to Classify X as an Adult Site Amid Digital ID Crackdown
Russia Bad / Ukraine War
China
Health / Medicine
Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp
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The Vaccine Trust Project is led by ReD Associates, a strategy consultancy rooted in the humanities and social sciences, in collaboration with partners in Kenya, Pakistan, and Nigeria, and funded by the Gates Foundation.
Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda
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Google battling 'fox infestation' on roof of £1B London office
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Australia's guerilla rewilders skirt rules and take conservation into own hands
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Splash-free urinals for global sustainability and accessibility
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There's nothing you can do about climate change
The point is, what we think we can do now with all our fancy promises about carbon emissions in 2050 and technologies we can chat to will have absolutely no effect on a chain of events that takes thousands upon thousands of years to unfold. We're just not prepared to accept it. Think about the evolutionary cycles the planet has already witnessed in 4 billion years and will witness again. Our involvement has only hurried some of that along by wiping out species by our own actions but arguably they could have been wiped out anyway.
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But what does platypus milk taste like? More specifically, what does milk from a dead platypus taste like? It turns out, we actually know; it doesn't actually taste or smell of anything.
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Tech giants' indirect emissions rose 150% in three years, UN agency says